City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to our regular scheduled meeting. Come on in, Mona Keisha. We call to order, and we're going to start with our invocation. We have Pastor Zach Terrell from Become Church. Come on. Please stand with us.

Father, we thank you for Spring Hill, Kansas. It's a privilege and an honor to live and to serve here, and I pray for a blessing on our community. Lord, thank you for the growing number of people who call Spring Hill home, and I thank you for the opportunities and the challenges that we face as a growing community to honor one another, to respect each other, to be able to live in an organized way together. God, I pray for wisdom over this governing body as they make decisions that affect all of our lives. Lord, I Pray that you would give grace in the decision-making process so that we might be able to have a place here that reflects the culture that you would want. God, we pray that the decisions that are made would honor you and honor one another as we choose the things that will build the future for ourselves and for many generations to come. God, we pray that it would be in Spring Hill as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. And now we'll do the pledge.

All right, Madam Clerk, please take the roll.

Mr. Thrun?

I'm here.

Mrs. Cravier? Here. Mr. Grant?

Here.

Mr. Delgado?

Here.

Mr. Savage?

Here.

Mayor, we have a quorum present.

Thank you. Next up is our approval of the agenda. We don't have any requested changes, but it does look like we have some typographical errors. Do I need to put that on the record, Spencer, or can we just approve as presented?

You can approve it subject to the typographical error change. I guess that wasn't published. So I would say seven. Approve it subject to the change that item number seven should be 202605B. So I would just read out what typographical change is marked on.

I will entertain that, PJ. You can tackle it. I move to approve tonight's agenda correcting the typographical error on the consent item number seven. The task order number should be number 202605B. 2026-05B, not 26-02B. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. Next up, we're going to have a quick executive session, I think, for 15 minutes. 10. I think 10 minutes is probably fine. So we'll do a quick executive session for 10 minutes, and we'll be right back. So if you'd like to entertain a motion.

I move the city council recess into executive session for 10 minutes to receive advice of council regarding matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA 75-4319B2 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The open meeting will resume in the city council chambers at 7.14 PM. No formal action is anticipated following the session. 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 passed 5-0-0. We'll be back in a few.

All right, let the record reflect.

The governing body reconvened the open meeting at 7 14 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. The discussion was limited to the subject stated. All right, that moves us into announcements and reports. I don't really have any announcements. We had our last first Friday, I'll let Rhonda go through that, but it was really well attended, and I did get dunked by quite a few people, so that was fine. But outside of that, school's getting ready to start. We do have some road projects out there still going, so please be safe on the road. I think they're gonna be finishing up here soon enough. Jacob will talk about that a little bit, What else is not here? So, Jacob. But outside of that, everything's going pretty good, I think. So, PJ, do you have anything for us?

I'm excited to get the back-to-school year going. We've been cutting a lot of hair at the barbers on the boulevard. We've seen a lot of kids coming in really excited to get back to school. Keep in mind with your teenage drivers, please let them know that the construction is crazy. 169, we're getting closer to getting that light, but as we're crossing, getting to and from the high school, make sure they're being cautious. Consider going down to 199, cross the light where it's much safer. Just make sure that our young drivers are getting their head back on the swivel as more and more people get on the roads in the morning. That's it, I got nothing.

Thanks, PJ.

James? Spring Hill Car Club has a car show Saturday, 10 to 3, Early Learning Center. There'll be food trucks. Chief will be there with a with the show truck, so come out, have some food, check out some cars. Thanks. Kendra.

I have nothing.

Ivan. Just had a quick question about the crosswalks over there on South Street. Are they going to be installed here soon, or have they been installed?

Yeah. All right. Yes, so I'll get started on this now. The paving, if you'll recall, we repaved Webster, and that paving work included the intersection of Webster and South Street. There were some problems with that paving that it needs to be redone. We haven't been able to get the contractor scheduled to get back in there. Knowing that that asphalt is going to be torn up and redone, We didn't have them paint the crosswalks or mark the crosswalks. So they are slated for first week of September to be in to peel up the asphalt in that intersection, redo it, and then we'll follow up right behind that with the permanent pavement markings. We're going to get out and do some temporary markings in the meantime just to kind of bridge these few weeks until that paving can get redone. Appreciate it.

That's all I got.

All right. Thanks, Adam.

Mike? No report. All right.

We'll go to the other Mike, Mike Mallon.

Thank you. Just a few quick updates on some things that are going to be upcoming in the next month. The first Community Improvement Committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 20th at 6 p.m. Community Development has a few different comprehensive plan, kind of kickoff sessions coming up soon. There will be a booth at the Fall Fest on Saturday, so we encourage all residents and businesses and anybody that stops by or attends that event to stop by and learn more, and we'll have some interactive exercises to help gain some feedback and get people's opinions about the future of Spring Hill and growth and development. Along those same lines, there is a Joint work session between the Planning Commission and City Council which is scheduled on September 3rd from 6 to 7 which will be kind of a an initial kickoff meeting with the two the two bodies and Consultant and staff to help really launch this process and then there will be a public open house on September 10th from 4 to 7 prior to uh that evening's meeting so we encourage all residents to attend and There's also some new announcements to come we have a meeting with the consultant tomorrow But really trying to pin down some dates For a new website to be launched We're working on some new branding materials to really kind of set this comprehensive plan process apart from the last one and so we've been doing quite a bit of work and all the fruits of that work will be available to be shared and you know we're really going to jump into this process publicly to get all that feedback here within the next two to three weeks all right sounds great spencer no report chief

Yeah, thank you. Good evening, everyone. I just wanted to say a big thank you to the community. National Night Out, I believe, went very well. And a big thanks to those who hosted an event or our churches who hosted events. And so I thought it was a really good turnout. Also, we are doing the Giving Tree tomorrow morning at our three elementary schools. So we got a great response from the community also on that. And so we have lots of items to give out to our teachers to help support them during this coming school year. So we're looking forward to doing that event. It's always one of those that is fun for the department. And just to finally wrap up, just recognize a couple of officers. Basically, Officer Jeremy Johnson, who coordinated National Night Out. So he did a great job. Just wanted to publicly recognize him and also publicly recognize our public safety officer, Jody Livengood, who also heads up the Giving Tree and does a lot of work to get that going. So I appreciate those two folks getting those things done.

All right. Thank you. Next, we'll go to Rhonda.

Good evening. I have a couple of things. First Friday, you're right. We had our final first Friday last weekend. I think it was a great summer and super successful. We had a lot of the community out having a good time. And this last one was no exception. The theme was back to school. We had a nice crowd and a lot of kids running around. It was a good time, good music. We're looking forward to next year and having a wrap up meeting from the summer and we'll get planning on next year. So looking forward to that. The other thing, um, I attended a meeting with the rec commission, uh, with the national fitness campaign, which is the organization involved in the fitness studio. That's out here on the west side of city hall. And we, as the, as a community spring hill has outperformed the average community, our size for use of the fitness studio, an average community would have 5,000 sessions in a year. And a session is when somebody goes up and uses their phone and scans a QR code and gets the plan of how you use the fitness studio and everything. And an average is 5,000 and the city averaged 8,000 in the year. So it is well used. It also shows that using those sessions, an average community burns about 1.8 million calories a year. And in Spring Hill, we burned about 2 million and 50,000. And by the way, that equates to 585 pounds. of calorie burning activity. So if you haven't tried it out, please check out the fitness studio and we worked with the rec commission to make a plan to jointly promote the use of the fitness studio as well as use it with social media and things like that and plan programming so that we can burn more calories and use even more sessions. So that was a good one and that's my report.

All right, thanks Rhonda. Thank you. Glenda? No report, thank you.

Jacob. I'll keep going on the street projects. The street resurfacing project is going well, wrapping up. specifically the UBAS or the ultra-thin asphalt process. If you'll recall, we were scheduled to do five neighborhoods this year. Four of those five have been completed. The fifth one is underway right now and they expect to wrap it up this weekend. So that's gone well. We've been happy with it and look forward to continuing the use of that material. I think it's been a big improvement. And then also this year's sidewalk project on Madison, Harrison Streets. The work on Madison is they're working today. They were forming up the last block. They've poured probably three quarters of the sidewalk on Madison. And so they'll be finishing that up here in the next few days and then move immediately to Harrison to get to work on that. So that's been going well also.

Yeah, the UBAS has really exceeded my expectation. When we did the chip and seal years ago, that was kind of a nightmare, and this was a big change. I think it was a lot better, and we plan to try to do a lot more next year and in the coming years. The only thing I will ask is I've had a couple questions about some of the overspray and things like that, like on the curbs. Will they come back through for a cleanup on those type of things?

Yes, we're compiling a list, and if anyone out there has not reached out to us and has noticed an issue in front of their home, please let us know. I have found that they're spraying that tack oil down before they put the material down, and that's a solid bar on the back of a truck spraying out. on a straight line, a straight stretch of street. They've done a pretty good job. It's pretty clean. On a cul-de-sac where you get those curves and they're trying to go around the curve, but it wants to cut the corner in places. And that's where we've seen the issues. We've talked internally about some things that we can do next year and how we bid that out and what we specify. They can mask off the... not necessarily with tape but with paper and put it down um on those curves so that uh it that overspray gets on the paper that that can be discarded as um because it is really hard to get it off once it's on that concrete concrete's fairly porous and it's you can make it better but you can't make it like it was before yeah okay good to know thank you any other announcements and reports if not we will move into our citizen participation

We do have three people sign up. And we will start with Linda. And Linda, I can't read your name. So I would have you just say your name and address up at the podium, please. I don't want to butcher it.

LINDA FALLS- Exactly like it looks. My name is Linda Falldorf. Got it. I'm at 22541 South Franklin.

Thank you.

In the Blackhawk Villas, and I was here last time about the fireworks, and I'm back again about the fireworks. I wanted to share with you that I've done some research, and I have some maps that show where I live, in case you don't know where the Blackhawk Villas are. I have found that Paola and Lewisburg do not allow fireworks at all. And so in Miami County, we are the only other bigger community that's still allowing them in the city limits. Our problem is we are very close knit where they are being lit. The apartment complexes cannot shoot them in there. So they are, and I also checked with the fire department, and the state fire department has a rule, no streets, sidewalks, or driveways. That is not what's happening up on Arc 226 in Franklin. If you go in on the east side to the back of the apartments, that corner is, and right behind our villas is where they are being shot off on the streets. on the sidewalks, and it was from, you know, Friday night was some, Thursday night was some, Saturday night, and I know it was the fourth, but it was from seven until one constant. We couldn't even hear our TVs. I mean, it was very, very loud, and it did not let up for a minute. I mean that sincerely. It was loud bangs. People had things fall off of their shelves. because it was that loud and that affected our, and we're seniors. There's assisted living right there. I'm sure that they were having a problem with their people as well. It's just not the place. It's not that we don't like fireworks, it's just not the place. It's right in our backyards and our master bedrooms are all back there. And if you see the pictures, I mean it's, Right there And it's just not safe. We have stuff on our roofs. We have stuff on our yards so I Do have some pictures but if how many of you are familiar with the area I'm talking about I think a lot of us live kind of in that area Okay, that Blackhawk kind of area South Miami County. Yeah, so anyway because of you know payola and Lewisburg and I know we're bigger and we're more scattered, but we are not where we live. And I don't know if there's a possibility that you could say Miami County. That would take in a lot of the senior stuff. And where we are is just too concentrated. And that's the problem. So I would like to have you look at it and think about it and consider making some kind of a for next year so the police can act on it. The fire department said that it's against the laws as far as they're concerned.

We do have a discussion item number 18 tonight, so if you stay for the whole meeting, we will have a discussion on it tonight to talk about this past season and future seasons.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

Next on the list, I have Jason O'Kane.

Jason O'Kane, 18804 Skyview Lane, Foxwood Ranch. Hi. Appreciate you guys. First off, data centers. I'm joking. That's in the past. Fireworks. I'm gonna give you I have three things and my opinion on the fireworks discussion. I Think you should consider removing July 2nd. I get third fourth and fifth. I think that's plenty of time Fourth if you can't do it on do it on the third can't do it on third or fourth do it on the fifth I have dogs. I have small children. My children love it I think it's a insane spectacle that Spring Hill puts on for fireworks and it is awesome in my opinion But there's a lot of people that take advantage of these times the July 2nd for instance I had people in my neighborhood at 8 a.m. And go down the street from their property and light off fireworks near people that they know don't like fireworks just to say that they could. Um, so that brings me to my next point is I think the timeframe 8am is early and that's pretty much, you know, ordinance for any making any noise for construction and things like that. But I think pushing that back to 11 to 11 noon to 11, I think would be more inadequate. It gives you plenty of time to shoot off fireworks in the middle of the day if you want to. The third thing is, and I don't know if this is already law or not, it's just something I thought of, is I think that they should be done on your property only. lot of people do travel if they don't want to do it in their property they go to side streets they go to other places that you know you could be living on a side street and you might have small children you're not participating in it next thing you know you got a whole gathering of people next to your property shooting off fireworks and you technically can't tell them to leave it's public property so I think they should be limited to your property Um, also, but otherwise I love it. I mean, it's, I've, I lived in Olathe where they were banned for ever. So, um, I, I loved it. Um, our neighborhood puts on a fantastic show. Um, the other thing is, is that you guys have storm protection, some type of code thing coming up. Is that storm shelter related? Storm shelters. Yeah. We talked about that before. And I, I explained, we had a bunch of bad storms this year and, uh, there's a lot of people out there that, may not be their choice that they don't have any type of place to go to for storm shelter stuff. So I don't know exactly what this is going to entail. So I'm curious to see, but, um, I think that's awesome that you guys are considering that. Um, the third topic that I wanted to talk about was, um, and it's not on the agenda. I apologize. Um, but solicitors, I think that's a topic you guys have heard from people a ton. Um, solicitors in the neighborhoods are awful, absolutely awful. Right now, if you have a no soliciting sign, you're supposed to be like, they're not even supposed to ring your doorbell, but they do anyways. And they tell you they're not trying to sell anything. You know, they get around that. They get a response out of you. I guess they're just giving away free stuff. I don't really know. But they do that because they work in deception. About every door-to-door salesman is deceptive practices. Their whole speeches are all deception. I know other cities do some type of registry. They offer permits and you have a list of people And you have to be on a permit to even solicit in the town. And then your permit can be revoked if you violate any of those rules. So it might be something we can look into. I know I'm not the only one that hates the solicitors. I don't want solar panels on my house. I don't need bug spray. I'm good. The other thing is my street light. We've paid every G I don't know what's going on with that, but, uh, um, it'd be nice to maybe talk to that rep and see what's going on with my street light. Cause it's dark. So 40 seconds. I don't know what else to talk about. So appreciate you guys really. You guys are doing a great job. I think, uh, these meetings are awesome and I love coming here. So

Thanks for coming.

Thanks, Jason.

Jacob, you can probably follow up with him later. Thanks. All right, next I have Sean Woods.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Shawn Woods with Ashlar Homes. I'm also here to speak on behalf of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City. First off, your 2018 code adoption. We met with staff. They were great to work with. We're generally in support of everything you're doing on the 2018 code adoption. You took a nice practical stance on energy, which is nice to see. That's not what a couple other jurisdictions have done, which they've been greatly penalized in their permits by doing so, so I appreciate your help in that. Mostly here tonight to talk about the storm shelter issue. I don't know if you guys are aware, but in our country right now, affordability and attainability of houses is probably the largest issue in the housing industry we have right now. And 40% of the cost of a new house is attributable to government regulation. So a $400,000 house you see on the market, $160,000 of that is because of government regulation. So we could drop that price by taking all that government regulation out. The storm shelter provision you're taking up tonight is another one of those things that is just adding to the attainability of homes, that it's pushing people out of the market to where they can't afford it. My company builds homes slab on grade. We offer the option of storm shelters on every single house we build. In the last 65 slab on grades we've built, one customer has chose to take that storm shelter provision. Most of them are doing it because of the cost. Others are doing it just because, like myself, I've lived in Kansas City my entire life. Never once have I taken shelter in my basement for a storm. I currently live in a slab on grade home. My personal home is a slab on grade. I do have a storm shelter, but I've never been in it. I'm concerned with continuing to add things on top of things on top of things that push people out of the ability to afford a new home. So the other thing I'd bring up is just like your code provision tonight, the 2018 code that you're adopting means that the houses that we're building today are much more apt to sustain the winds than houses built 10 years ago. We now have to build houses with portal frames in the garage. That whole reason for a portal frame is because typically when a tornado hits a house, the garage is what goes out. So we have provisions now where we have to build portal frames. We have to do wind loads on every single house. So we're building the house engineered with a wind load bracing design that wasn't done 10 years ago. So you're adding something on top for a consumer that we're already designing for today to try to prevent those things. So again, my concern is just affordability and especially the consumer choice of a storm shelter. And it goes to everything. Just like the energy thing. We give a customer an energy provision upgrade if they choose to take it. Very few take it because they are wanting to get into home ownership or wanting to afford a home and those things are gonna push them out of being able to afford that house. They can always go back and add a storm shelter in the outside underground. They can add it in the garage. It can be cut out and added later. So it's not something that has to be in that house as of today. But yeah, for the HBA especially, consumer choice is the biggest thing. We are all about upgrading codes. We're all about life safety issues. but we don't feel like that this is something that a consumer should be given the choice. And there's ways for you guys to do that. Like in Missouri right now, we have to have a waiver in every single new home contract that the customer is waiving the rights to put a sprinkler in their home. You could do the exact same thing on a storm shelter. You could say, if you're building a new home with a slab, we want it in the contract. The customer was given the option, and they refused it. So again, you're leaning on that customer choice. But again, I want to encourage you. The 2018 coded option is great. Staff was great to work with. But we are always fighting for things that are gonna make homes attainable for people to actually get into them. And this is just another thing that's adding on top of that 40%, that $160,000. And it seems like not a lot, You have $8,000 here, $2,000 there, $5,000 there. Even your 2018 code adoption from where you sit today on codes to 2018 is probably adding somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 to the cost of a home at Spring Hill. You're adding that for your code adoption, and then you're adding on top of that a storm shelter provision. I just ask that you take that into consideration, and I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks.

All right. That was the last person signed up. for citizen participation. Was there anyone else that would like to come up?

Bill Peterman, come on up. Thank you. Bill Peterman, 19431 West 200th Street. The guy talking about the people coming to the door all the time. The city of Spring Hill gave me a whole stack of the stickers. No soliciting. And it has the rule number on it and everything, right? Do you still have those? I believe you still have them. Okay. All you have to do is put it on your door by your doorbell. You put that on there. When people come to my door and wake me up and want to sell me something, I point at that. And if they don't understand, then I take my phone and I start dialing. The next thing you know, they're gone. They don't stick around long enough to mess with the police. That's all you got to do. Real easy. The city gives it to you. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Bill.

By the way, thank you guys so much for the sidewalks that you're doing because sidewalks are great. Did you see the Blue Valley deal on TV, Channel 41? I did, yeah. 75th Street? Yeah, the new school. Now, why would you want to walk on 175th Street?

They put a new school there that kids want to walk.

So they don't want to go a block around and—

I guess not.

Well, and it'd be nice. But the city of Blue Valley is not going to be able to put a sidewalk in this year at this time. We all know it. So let's be honest. Nobody plans ahead. That guy just proved it. Nobody plans ahead. It's cheaper to go this way. I'll go this way. And then I'll bitch at city council and say, oh, I need city storm shelters. You guys pay for it because I couldn't afford it. Thank you.

Thanks, Bill.

Thanks, Bill.

anyone else I'd like to come up and speak before we close citizen participation all right we will move on thank you very much everyone we now have a public hearing for the ms4 stormwater management plan who's presenting this one Jacob all right do I need to open I'm gonna open the hearing Thank You mayor good evening council so

Last year, the state issued a stormwater permit, specifically a, and I got to read this because I never get it all right, it's a mouthful, a municipal separate storm sewer system permit, also known as an MS4. The state issued this to the city based on our growing population. Larger cities have fallen under permits like this for a number of years. This wasn't something that we sought out, but rather the state issued it based on our growing size and our proximity to Hillsdale Lake. So the permit requires the city to create, implement, enforce a stormwater management program. Also the state through that permit outlines all of the requirements and they, they break it up into six different categories. And then they list best management practices within each category. Different practices are worth different level of points. We have to, our plan has to include that at least that minimum number of points in each category. So that's the process that we've been going through over the last year is trying to develop that plan. The nice thing about that process is it's kind of an a la carte list of all of those best management practices and it lets cities make individual decisions for What their plan is going to entail so Spring Hills plan will not you know necessarily look like Gardeners which won't look like Olathe's and it so it gives cities some flexibility to choose the best management practices that Best align with with what each city is is looking to do the Here These are the six categories that I mentioned. Public outreach and education, public involvement and participation, illicit discharge detection and elimination. Illicit discharges are wastes and anything going into the open waters that's not natural. It can be everything from blowing your leaves and grass clippings into an inlet, which makes its way to a body of water, paint or household chemicals that are dumped in, spills on the roadway, things of that nature. Construction site runoff control is the fourth one. Post-construction management is the fifth, and pollution prevention, good housekeeping on municipal operations. So that's leading by example. I'm not going to read every one of these, but I've gone through each of these six categories and identified or at least summarized the best management practices that are included in our proposed plan. Like I said, they're up there. I won't read all of them, but these meet all of those qualifications. Staff's been working with representatives from the state, from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, on our proposed plan. I think we're in good shape. There will be an item before you later tonight to consider a resolution to approve this plan. If approved, this is the plan that we will submit to the state for consideration. Here's the second one, and if you see or have seen any of these best management practices that you have a question about or are interested in more information, just let me know. The illicit discharge detection elimination, I mentioned that's those waste streams or non-stormwater discharges into the storm sewer system. They can definitely present problems to both public health and the environment. Not necessarily coincidentally, if you look at the first best management practice there is to hold a public hearing to educate the public about illicit discharges and alternate methods. So something like this at a council meeting each year checks that box and provides for that best management practice. So as you'll see in here, a number of these best management practices are things that we are already doing. And it's just a matter of taking credit for it or putting it in the plan and saying, yes, we we are indeed committing to doing this on a regular basis. The construction site stormwater runoff control in a growing community like ours is a big one, and it's a challenge to strike that balancing act between creating an environment that is hospitable to that construction process, but also is being good stewards of the environment and making sure that that construction activity doesn't have a negative impact on the surrounding area and the water in the area. Post-construction is when, as the dust settles, making sure that those elements are in place to continue keeping those best management practices in. even after the subdivisions are completed and people have moved in. And then finally, that pollution prevention and good housekeeping piece. So what this means going forward, if council approves this plan, we will submit it to the state for their approval. then we will immediately begin to both perform those program elements, those best management practices, and track our, you know, yes we have done this we've made this available we put this on our website so we walk through through that and that will be important because each year then going forward we will have to prepare and submit a report to the KDHE that confirms that we have performed all of those practices that we put into our plan so it's it's not just enough to say oh yeah here's our here's our great plan but every year we have to demonstrate that we are in fact following the all of the elements of that plan that is a real quick rundown of a 20 plus page document but uh that that's the the stormwater permit and the plan that goes with it i'm happy to answer any questions you have and and also welcome any public input or comment on it as well i think we can start what should we start with public comment or public input and then we can have a discussion around it

All right, is there anybody in the audience that would like to come up and make a comment or speak? If not, oh, go ahead.

Sorry, it was still turning in my head. Jason O'Kane, 18804 Skyview Lane, Foxwood Range. So they talked about erosion control and construction sites. And they also talked about household chemicals, accidental spills into storm waters and inlets. Like the picture he was showing was a residential, Construction site like the neighborhoods that are going up all over the place Which you know all those stormwater inlets are already put in before they start putting in all that stuff It's so erosion control and so like that so they showed the fence for erosion control Not only is that important but most of those job sites are full of chemicals all over the yards paint buckets caulking nails, debris, construction stuff, they use the yards as pretty much a trash can, which when it rains, all that stuff is going into stormwater. So maybe something about maybe cleaning up, making sure, stuff like that in the neighborhoods, is being taken care of um i know my construction house i had to ask my contractor when i was moving in if they could please clean up my yard they weren't going to do it i had to ask them the neighbors had to ask them apparently that's not built into a half million dollar budget um so They treat the neighborhoods like crap while they're building them. They don't they don't care about anything until the very end. So Maybe something like that for for stormwater Would be probably appropriate Because I'm sure those are probably dumping in quite a bit of chemicals into the Into those inlets.

So I'm not sure Jacob. Can you address any of those or anybody? I know we have quite a few folks in the stands here Yeah, good

Yeah, I'll back up here to the construction site that third bullet point the third best management practice Calls for us to establish effective requirements for construction sites to Control waste and it lists several of those much like Jason was mentioning that the discarded building materials Chemicals, just general litter, sanitary waste, requiring that there be a portable toilet on every job site, things like that. One of the things I failed to mention earlier is you will see in the coming months over the next several meetings, you'll see a lot of resolutions, ordinances coming forward that will be related to this. And it's putting these requirements in place that are outlined in this plan. So we need to have both the the state and the plan requires it but also just to be effective we need to have some teeth behind it so it's it's not enough to simply have a plan but but we need to get the ordinances in place so that we can make sure that these things happen and hold people accountable for it well i think going back to i know just me mike and pj were up here when we first had to implement this the main ones were number four and five i feel like it was

weren't necessarily at the size they normally require but it was the growth pattern that caused us to jump into this sooner than we probably would have normally so I think the construction sites are probably the biggest issue why we're in this it's yeah it's likely a you know a significant part that state doesn't have to tell us and or did they you know why but

simply that our population was getting close to that threshold and we were growing so quickly. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Given the rapid growth that we are seeing, this is one of those areas that will absolutely keep our staff busiest. A lot of the others are best management practices that you set up and they don't require daily intervention. Staying on top of things like this Dave Kuntz, requires you know regular effort and that's part of the reason that we proactively set up our stormwater utility is recognizing that. Dave Kuntz, Creating this plan and, more importantly, complying with this plan is going to cost the city money just in in resources to to make all of this happen, so the stormwater utility was was like I said creative proactively. to provide a revenue stream to help offset those expenses that we knew were coming.

I think we had anticipated at least one employee, right? That kind of has to manage this plan going forward. So what's the process from when we implemented or we got told, this MS4 is required to, we're at the point of a plan now, when do we start getting kind of managed by the state or by KDHE?

So we will submit this plan, and the 2027 calendar year will be the first year that we are required to report on. we will as a as a trial run we aren't required to but i plan for us to submit an annual report in february based on our 2026 efforts we've got the plan in place i think we'll have some of these resolutions and ordinances there so i think it'll be a good opportunity with a you know no no real pressure on us, but as a trial run to submit an annual report for 2026, not because we're required to, but I just think it'll be good practice. 2027 will be the first full calendar year that we'll need to track all of this and then report on our compliance with the permit.

Okay. All right. Good to know. I mean, this has kind of been a long time coming. I don't necessarily have any questions. I don't know if anybody up here does or comments.

I don't have any real questions for, um, more on, or at least not about the, uh, the plan as a whole. I think it's, uh, I think by and large is going to be good. Um, I love that we have so many, uh, builders that are partner, good partners to the community, helping us build our homes, make sure that people that want to live here have somewhere to live. But we absolutely have some, uh, some tightening up around the edges that we can do to make sure that things are being done smartly and in good practice. I am, um, kind of, uh,

not super sure about like as far as the state's requirements on us and as we submit this plan and we become we kind of fall under their uh purview what uh what kind of enforcement activities if they find us out of compliance can we expect from things like that most of the time and it's one of those it absolutely depends on on the scope and nature of the infraction can be as simple as notification saying hey you're out of compliance give us some time to, you know, to correct it. We get back, demonstrate, Hey, we've corrected it. You know, they say, thank you. Um, that's kind of the best case scenario. If, if you have to go through enforcement action, um, uh, the other end of that spectrum is, is, uh, you know, a fine or some other, uh, a penalty and, and the dollar amount of those fines, again, is going to vary based on the severity of the infraction.

Okay. Well, I think the big thing that I've noticed with, uh, Well, like Jason talked about with, you know, just the debris from building, it wasn't probably as big of a deal before, but now that we have completed neighborhoods or people that are living in these areas that are still being built or new neighborhoods are going across a larger road, like 207th or 199th or wherever they're building, you know, across town, now that debris is flying into the existing homes, so that's where we're getting more complaints. I don't think it's any worse or It probably is better actually from what it was 10, 12 years ago, but we're seeing it more because there's people living there and they're having it in their yard. So I think this will only help that we'll be able to stay on top of it and maybe if we can get somebody dedicated to keeping track of this type of stuff. Do we have, public wants to come up and say something else?

Stay right there. I do have to say, Amy and Brandon, Worked your ass off. Brandon doesn't have enough man hours to do some of the things. If you guys remember, I brought up, I brought pictures in here of, what's the name of the subdivision beside me? Woodland Crossing. When they was digging for a base, or a partial basement or whatever it was, and piled the dirt up right by the the sewer, or the storm water, and it was running right into our pond. We're gonna have to spend a bunch of money to dredge our pond out to keep the fish alive. Now, you guys need to hire another person so Brandon can, we got what, 13,000 people in this town now, right? Pretty damn close. Last year's stuff was 12, so I know we're 13. So we need to hire some people. You guys are doing a good job. I'm not saying anything about that. When they try to screw you around and say, oh, yeah, we're going to do that, I want to be the one to come in and say they're lying to you. But I hate to be that one. Because I came in and didn't take pictures. Woodland Ridge sweeping dirt down into the storm and after I find out why are they doing that? Well because they can get away with it, but if they if you take pictures you can get get them, you know, a fine. And I don't want to be having everybody fined. I just like everybody to do what they're supposed to do. Kind of like the one guy was talking about, you know, I can build a house and I can show them that for this amount of money they can get something. Oh, no, we're going to wait until the city has to put it in and spend the city money. I mean, it's just Brandon needs help. Not next month, not two months from now. He needs help now. So am I right?

She's not going to answer.

Yeah. Well, I think he does a good job, but he can't be everywhere. We need to have somebody that just drives around so that you guys can check on this stuff. Whatever that is, the farmer that started to lose his land and then they built a subdivision over here off of Webster?

Oh, Wiswell.

Who?

Was it Wiswell?

Wiswell, yeah. Anyway, yeah, he put all those sewers in and thought he was going to get the school to come in, but that kind of backed out on him. So anyway, but over there I saw him sweeping into the dam.

Yeah, that's the hope with this is that we can get another person that can help with that enforcement.

Yes, yes, yes. So think about it. So when you guys talk about this, think about putting another person out there. I don't mind spending money for a person that's going to work.

Yeah.

but I hate to have a person get lied to all the time, so let's help them. Let's help them. Thank you.

All right, thanks, Bill. Is there anybody else from the public that would like to speak? Do we have any other questions? Go ahead, yeah.

Just based off of everything else that was going on, I just wanted to add, I mean, a city, do I have to say my name and address again? You guys got that multiple times. Anyways, city inspectors, I mean, is Brandon a city inspector? Is that who he's talking about? Code enforcement officer, I think you guys were talking about hiring another city inspector also? We've got a couple different building inspectors. Building inspector?

Yeah, we have those.

Yeah. We didn't before, I think. I mean, a great person to do that job would be a building inspector. He's going to those job sites. He could easily fill out a form, click a box on a report, and say out of compliance. And then fines probably aren't the best way to do it, but holding permits. that gets a builder to do something. If they apply for a permit and you say, well, you guys are out of compliance on all these other properties, we're not issuing you a permit until you get that done. That tends to get things going. Water One has been doing that with the plumbers out in a lot of these neighborhoods because they can't seem to put a water meter at the right height. So they start threatening to hold permits for their water taps. Boy, does that get them out there to start getting stuff done. So just think about that too. Fines aren't always the answer, but holding permits for a builder will definitely get it. All right, thanks.

Any other questions or comments up here? All right, public, last chance. All right, we're going to go ahead and close this public hearing. That moves us into our next, we have two presentations tonight. The first one is our GFOA budget award. I think Ron is going to present that.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. You're probably getting tired of me talking about this subject, but I'm going to keep talking about it. As you know, for the 2026 budget, we prepared for the first time the city's first budget book and we submitted it to the government finance officer associations process for receiving awards we found out earlier this summer that we were receiving the distinguished budget award for a 2026 budget book the GFOA presented the city with this plaque which is very heavy we'll have to build on to the city hall to put it up say it again and the um this plaque for our first award and we look forward to filling all these medallions in for future years when we get an additional award for our budget book we're very proud of our accomplishment and it took the effort of every department to make this book come to life we did it on our first try. We were pretty proud of that and I give credit to the finance staff and especially Natalie Talley who's here with us tonight for her work producing the book and driving that process forward. This book creates a framework for us for the city's budget reporting and also creates challenges to us to maintain it and get that medallion every year and we accept that challenge. We have some work to do to continually to improve our budget and our budget processes and to reflect it in the document that we produce. So on behalf of city staff, we present to the council and mayor the 2026 GFOA Distinguished Budget Award. And thank you for your support in the process.

I know It's Natalie gonna come up.

Yep. She's gonna come come on up Natalie.

She got a certification I think it was what six to twelve months ago or something more than that long two years. It's been that long CPFO yeah, and do you have to have that to be able to submit it into this? No, okay but that was a big deal when she got that because there's hardly any and even the state of Kansas, I think and And so I know she manages this process almost completely. So I wanted to tell you thank you very much. I know you told me earlier, it's not your information, but you put it all together. But obviously, you did a great job. So thank you. And the rest of the finance staff. Absolutely.

You bet. She is one of 12 certified public finance officers in the state.

I love it. That's amazing. Natalie, take it back.

Where would you like us to go?

I didn't do anything for this. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks, Mayor.

I wanted to take a minute to say thank you for this. The work that goes into getting an award like that from a group of people whose entire job is making sure you've checked your numbers right is no small feat. My home county is currently struggling with the budget reconciliation and making sure that they're not having troubles accounting for things. So knowing that we've got someone that represents that county up here doing good work and showing what people from from Bourbon County and other counties in the state do. I think it's something to be really, really proud of, especially as small as we are as a municipality. Operating at this level with the staff that we have is just absolutely astounding to me, and I really appreciate the work you guys put in. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Next up, we have a presentation about storm shelters. I think Mike Mallon's going to take that on for us.

all right thank you mayor members of council brought back some information to you earlier this spring we had a work session with some pictures and presentation materials a little bit related to storm shelters within single-family homes and the different types as you may recall they're they're the the types that kind of look like a i don't know something like a burial thing in the garage floor. Others are standalone, self-contained little boxes that can be put into a garage and or a basement. And there were some pictures of some reinforced pantries or closets and things of that nature for storm shelters and single family homes. So, uh, council directed us to bring back, uh, some information and related to what other cities are doing, uh, in metro area and also some purport proposed language. So that's what we've done here this evening. Um, So as we're getting ready to adopt the 2018 International Residential Code as required by Kansas Senate Bill 418 for the Buy Right Housing Act, we took a look at what would be required if the city chose to require these new storm shelters and single family homes. So the language that will be in the ordinance for you under formal items later in the agenda would require either an ICC slash NSSA 500 store protection area or a shelter if you will or a qualifying basement and there's provisions within that ordinance which talk about what does constitute a qualifying basement in essence it's it's not just like a walkout basement with nothing else down there and windows all around it actually has to be something that is protected from the elements And so that language is proposed in the attached ordinance Regional practices we found varied during that Work session in which we propose or presented items on neighboring cities and communities at that time only in Lenexa Kansas required it has since changed other cities have in that time have adopted storm shelter requirements such as Gardner and or I have that list here in a second but it's either Gardner or baser and Olathe so there are cities that are doing this we sent the proposed language and draft ordinance to the Homebuilders Association of Greater Kansas City. We held a stakeholder meeting with them including builders three or four different builders and representatives from the KC HBA They we presented that had a discussion about it and as indicated during public participation their primary and Concern was the additional cost that this would add to the bottom line price of a single-family home And they also had some questions regarding when would this become effective whether it would be effective immediately upon if approved for all new homes to be built in a subdivision that is currently building or would it apply to homes after a certain date or you know timing of it would it apply to new subdivisions uh because as presented with their commentary at that meeting as subdivisions develop the prior to them even buying the ground and running the numbers on what the development is going to cost and then the subsequent numbers of what they can build each lot for and then the housing price All of their proprietary calculations and performances how much money they're gonna be able to or have to sell houses for and to make the development work You know additional costs like this by the time it gets to a Final plat and building permits being issued in a neighborhood. Those those costs are pretty well ironed out and so adding an additional You know five to twelve thousand dollars could just across maybe a hundred homes remaining could disrupt a their overall project. So those are some of the concerns raised. Staff did reach out to those communities and found out more information about their rather than just researching their code. So we did our due diligence on that. We believe that the language presented before you is in keeping with what some of those cities are doing. We modeled our language off of their language. Let me see if I can get to this. So in essence, this is what the language would do. Kind of hard for me to read, but there you are. It would require storm protection areas in new one and two single family dwellings or townhouses constructed in accordance with ICC, which is the International Code Council, NSSA 500, or a qualifying basement refuge area complies with Section R323, which is the International Residential Code. There are requirements for occupant capacity usable floor area Such as you know to the required occupant capacity is not less than two occupants for the first bedroom and one occupant for each additional bedroom Qualifying basement refuge area must be on an approved subsurface can be beneath a concrete stoop There's certain square footage sizes three square feet for each occupant required occupant 20 square feet or that three square feet. Different things to make sure that the actual storm protection area is going to be safe and not just open to all the elements like I mentioned earlier. It has to be accessible from within the dwelling unit, which means you don't have to go outside to get into it, things of that nature. So I'm happy to answer any questions specifically on those. The comparisons, if I can find my mouse here.

When you say you don't have to go outside, the garage is considered inside the house?

Yes, accessible from within the dwelling unit, yeah. So there's meeting notes, if you had a chance to read those, that summarized our meeting with them and who attended, representatives from Ashler Homes, the Kilar Group, Lenar, KCHBA, D.R. Horton. So a good representation of all the different builders that we do have here. And proposal language again. And then this is the... comparison of adjacent cities So Spring Hill it's under consideration Olathe does require that that happened earlier this summer Lenexa requires it so I was mistaken it was baser does require it in one and two family single-family dwellings Kansas City, Kansas Wyandotte County It can be construed or argued that they are required based on some of their development regulations. Edgerton is required with the owner having to actually opt out of that. It has to be offered or it can be offered, but then the builder or the property owner has to opt out of that. Leawood is a basement requirement with limited alternatives. So in general some cities just do flat-out require basement Gardiner no general mandate and Then these are the additional jurisdictions that we reviewed that do not have a comparable local mandate including Overland Park Shawnee Prairie Village Miriam as you can see so there are still a number more Neighboring communities that do not require anything then there are that do require storm protection areas But as we've seen in the past two or in the past few months since the last time we spoke Two cities have agreed to to add those in so that is our presentation when the formal item comes up I can ask further questions about the ordinance languages for the language within that ordinance and then some of the alternatives that you know for you to consider is either approving the language as it's written denying the language as it's written or asking us to come back with some more research or some amended language that could address any concerns that that any of you may have so we're happy to We're at the pleasure of council and the mayor to do what you direct us to do. Any questions?

We'll have that discussion at the formal action item?

We can have the discussion then or we can do it now. I would prefer to do it at the formal item.

Okay. Let's just move it on to formal. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Perfect. Thanks for the presentation. Thank you, Mike. That will end our presentation section and move us into our consent agenda. We had number seven was adjusted there to the different task order number, but outside of that, there's no other changes to our consent agenda. And if not, I will entertain a motion to approve. I approve to, or excuse me, I move to approve the agenda as amended. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. That'll move us into formal council action. And our first, we have quite a few tonight. Our first one is number 8, consider resolution number 2026-R-14, adoption of the MS4 stormwater management plan. And Jacob Spears back up.

This may be my quickest item. This is the resolution approving the plan that I mentioned earlier and was discussed in the public hearing. Happy to answer any questions, but staff recommends approval of the permit as drafted and submitted by staff.

Does the plan have an additional position part of that?

It does not specifically. It lists the requirements. How we go about meeting those requirements aren't specified. We can get more specific. We actually went toward staying general because this is a state mandated plan and we have to demonstrate that we adhere to it. Things happen throughout the year, so you got to be careful if you get too specific on what you commit to and things change and you aren't able to meet that commitment, it can get sticky. It's that balancing act of being clear with our intentions, but also not painting ourselves in a quarter.

So we kind of have an interesting setup right now because building inspectors and things like that are under community development. Wastewater is under public works, and then we have some inspections happening under engineering. Where would somebody in this type of position fall?

Or would we have it could report up, you know, it could be it honestly would could fit in any of those it As you mentioned because it covers several different disciplines I don't know that one person will be solely responsible for all of the content of this Again just efficiencies if we have a building inspector already out on the site looking at at the building adding a few more things that they're looking at makes a lot more sense than bringing another staff member there for a separate visit. Similarly, if it's an engineering construction inspector or a public works staff member investigating, I think from an efficiency standpoint, it makes sense to empower our staff that if you're onsite and you see something, address it rather than taking the, hey, it's not my job approach and waiting for that one person.

Yeah, no union workers here. Basically, my thought is if we're trying to use this fund to help pay for a position that's going to help in this area, will that – I know back when we had water and wastewater, we had some times where, like, they were paid for multiple areas. Is that kind of how we would handle this, Rhonda? I think this might be a Rhonda question. Because I know we have this utility fund to help do this, and I agree with Bill, who was up here earlier. It says we do need the help. the inspection area it seems like so I don't know if we've thought about that yet or not I think it's something that we probably should consider like what consensus we have to say we have appetite to add more staff and in that respect I feel like just on our budget discussion items over the last over the last several weeks we've yeah staffing has been a number one concern for all this the priority for all of us and Jacob has brought up on locations that he's

he sees a need for it in certain areas.

That's why I was kind of interested where they would fall, because would it be community development with where a lot of ours are?

I think this is just me speaking off the cuff, kind of hitting me cold with it right now, but I think as we look at and think about the specific job duties and look at those job descriptions, That will probably give us a roadmap and tell us, you know, well, okay, about 30% of this job is stormwater related and 50% of this one is stormwater related. And that will begin to develop that formula that we'll use sitting down with Rhonda and Mona Keisha to decide how that should be split up.

Yeah, but it had a nod of approval in the back there, so it sounds good to me.

Yeah, I definitely encourage that. So I like the plan. I think it's great. I'm glad that it's more general because that's always better, especially when we're being managed by someone else. So if we get too specific, it's going to cause us more issues down the road. So I like your approach and I just wanted to show my encouragement to make sure you add that person as needed because I think I think we're there. So thank you.

It is included in the 2027 budget.

Okay, great. Awesome. Any other questions or comments for Jacob?

I know. I support this in its entirety. I'm never a fan of a larger government entity sticking their hands in and saying, hey, you've got to do things a certain way. But in this case, it seems like good practice across the board. So you're not going to get any complaints out of me.

Well, and I agree. I agree that it's necessary, not only with construction, but along with anything else, like you were saying, grass clipping, things like that. And when the data center was a topic of discussion, everyone talked about effect on our water and this is i feel like being good stewards of the community the land everything to make sure that the proper things are going into the storm water system not the building materials and the grass clippings and oil or anything else like that so i i think it's necessary i think it's great and i'm excited to see this being put into action

Anyone else? If not, I will entertain a motion.

I would love to say, as stated in tonight's agenda, but as I'm reading the suggested motion, the resolution number is not actually filled in. So do I have a resolution number? Is it on the paper? It's on the paper. R14. Yeah, R14. Awesome. All right, I move to approve resolution number 2026-R-14 to adopt the municipal separate storm sewer system MS4 stormwater management plan for the city of Spring Hill as presented by staff. Second.

A motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. That was a mouthful. They're doing it on purpose so that you have to start reading it out. All right, we'll move on to item number nine, consider resolution number 2026-R-15, adopting the employee purchasing policy, second edition 2026 of the City of Spring Hill, Kansas.

I plan to be the fastest action you take tonight. We needed to adjust the purchasing policy because we added a new position, the interim assistant city administrator. He did not have any purchasing authority for that position. So we added it. We also added the city attorney so that right now our city attorney is an outside vendor, and so they don't have any purchasing authority. We added those two things to this policy, and that was the only change.

All right. Pretty straightforward. Any questions or comments?

That being the only change was my only question.

the other thing is the assistant city administrator will have the same authority as the city administrator so he can act one can act in the absence of the other right and will this be ongoing when we have permanent in those two positions if we have both positions right or if you the position is eliminated in the future it can sit there dormant until the position yeah that was my question all right perfect so we're not changing back and forth constantly okay

All right. If there's no questions or comments, I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number nine as stated. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. We'll move on to item number 10, consider adoption of ordinance number 2026-18 and amending ordinance number 2026-17 to correct clerical errors. That's a lot of words.

Thank you, Mary. Uh, this is a ordinance to, uh, correct some clerical errors, uh, from the ordinance, uh, 2026 17 that was presented on June 25th, uh, 2026, uh, that amended chapter 17, uh, related to two items. The, um, that in general with that, uh, zoning amendment ordinance did, uh, was amended our plan district protected overlay, uh, process. it also created the new m2 heavy industrial zoning district while also modifying the m1 now the light industrial zoning district there were two clerical errors in that and they were purely clerical errors staff didn't feel that they were small enough or typo enough or a number missing or something that they could have qualified under a scrivener's error or anything. And so rather than trying to make an interpretation that the governing body had approved these, and so we're just going to rewrite the ordinance. We felt it's best in the spirit of transparency to bring it back in one fell swoop and just redo this. So apologize on the air on our behalf in community development. And I take full responsibility for that. So the two clerical errors are that that zoning ordinance inaccurately reflected the third edition of the unified zoning ordinance from 2025 it should have been the first edition of the unified zoning ordinance and sub debate subdivision regulations of 2026 so typically what we have done in the past is used the zoning unified zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations within a calendar year and then if we amend those at one point that that's the first edition we amend it and Again, that's the second edition. We amended the third edition So that would have been the third amendment for 2025, but it happened in the beginning part of the in 2026 So it's the first amendment in 2026. So that is just a purely clerical error and Tracking issue on our part. We are looking at whether or not we need to specifically identify those or if we just need can say we're amending that zoning ordinance the second is There were some omitted sections in the ordinance that was contained in the back of the packet that was brought to you. The planning commission staff report and the land use table that was presented to you. And there was a third document within there. There was the land use table, proposed language, and then the ordinance itself is what came before you. Some of the land uses that were going to be permitted in the m1 versus m2 Were left out of the ordinance they were correct and presented both to the Planning Commission and the governing body in the land use table and the other document so Neither of these clerical errors materially change anything under the code as was presented to you that evening We're not modifying any of the land uses whatsoever. We're just making sure that the actual ordinance as it's enrolled is

Officially with the city matches the information that was presented to you So, yeah just for clear understanding for me basically we're just Making it right so that nobody can try to argue our changes to the zoning code.

I assume yes exactly It doesn't change what was voted on that day just to clear clear.

Yep, not at all reading through it that's kind of what I it just looked like a lot of cleanup like general light industrial generals now gone it's just light industrial things like that where verbiage is really updated yes I don't really have a ton of questions PJ do you have any kind of no questions I just appreciated you taking the ownership of this and leading us towards a solution I appreciate that that means a lot to me and I always Prefer this route rather than fixing it on the back end Behind doors just because again the transparency issue is big for us. So I do appreciate that too Any other comments or questions? All right, if not I will entertain a motion I move to approve agenda item number 10 as stated Motion is second and this is a roll call I believe madam clerk

Mr. Delgado? Yes. Mr. Savage?

Yes.

Mr. Throne?

Yes.

Mrs. Craveer? Yes. Mr. Grant? Yes. Mayor Young?

Yes.

Ordinance 2026-18 passes 6-0-0. Thank you very much.

We'll move on to item number 11, consideration of ordinance number 2026-19, amending chapter 6, section 6-104B, fire protection of the Spring Hill Municipal Code related to display fireworks 1.3G. Let's get this going.

So before you this evening is an ordinance modification change under Chapter 4, Section 6, fire protection related to consumer fireworks and display fireworks. The city has been approached by the school district wanting to discharge fireworks at the high school when there's a touchdown or some kind of celebration during the high school football games. And in reviewing our city code requirements as to whether or not we could Grant them a permit to do that or to have any regulations relating to that We you know noted that there are insurance requirements there are requirements for especially with the display fireworks for the license or the person who's setting them off to be a licensed pyrotechnician and To have some other requirements including a permit through the city to help regulate that In looking at how we can better be partners with the school district and other Political subdivisions of the state taxing entities such as Johnson County or the state of Kansas we were proposing to not entirely, but exempt out some of those political subdivisions of the state from complying with some of the requirements of the display fireworks regulations, including the insurance requirements, the requirements for a licensed pyrotechnician to light off the fireworks. We are still going to require a permit and just for general record keeping purposes so that we're aware of it. uh community development public works the fire department uh we'll send those by reference to the fire district police department so that if we do get calls or there are people wondering what's going on we have the information to know in many ways what the proposed uh time frame is and what is going on so um they you know these entities would not be subject to the standard window of which you know consumer fireworks could be lit off it so it would exempt them from that as well so that we don't have to change the dates for one specific you know like the school district to light them off in say October on a Friday night at a football game outside of the window of when normal consumer fireworks can be discharged by the general public so that's what we're proposing to do I'm happy to answer any questions with that. In thinking about how we drafted this and some of our thoughts going into it is the insurance requirements really are dependent upon the property owner, the school district or the state or the county if they ended up with a park or something in the city limits or within Miami County either. Their insurance requirements are gonna fall to them. It's kind of... not really us to regulate what their insurance requirements are. And they may have different insurance requirements or liability constraints for lawsuits and things as provided by state law. And so the other is the licensed pyrotechnician. In their request, the school district said that they likely contract with somebody to do it but if somebody wants to light off a mortar or something and just do one or two fireworks after a touchdown rather than a full display we thought it was a little bit of overreach for us to tell them they needed a licensed pyrotechnician to you know light off a couple of you know mortars or other fireworks which really aren't at that same level as a full fireworks display right so that is uh all that we have proposed for you

I think this would be a cool thing for the high school to have a score touchdown through a You know how fireworks go off. I think Yeah, I mean loosening restrictions for that for them on a very specific time date. I don't have any issues with I know the the thing I heard from somebody over there was that I'm not sure if they're able to or is it because we're releasing the Insurance portion they will be able to because I know the insurance was quite expensive

Yeah, the insurance limits that the city had put in when we adopted the fireworks regulations is the same the same insurance requirements that the city uses and requires When we're signing contracts for people doing work at the city. Okay, same insurance amounts of a million dollars or you know a And I don't know them all. It's on my head. I'm sure Spencer could help us. But $1 million general and $2 million comprehensive.

So we're waiving that when it comes to these fireworks?

Yeah. And for example, like, and this would also apply to the city. If the city wants to do something in, say, the holiday season, Christmas or something, this would apply to the city as well. under Kansas law and again Spencer can correct me if I'm wrong there are certain liability limits that government governmental entities are not required to pay beyond. For example, maybe $500,000 for a claim or something, if those are the right numbers. And so requiring the school district to have extra insurance above what they're required under state law just to do something in the city, which technically the state would say that they're not liable for anything over what they are per the state requirements, we decided to let those entities that would want to take advantage of this to utilize their own insurance requirements as dictated by what they need for state law.

And so when we do the permit, I was assuming it'd be like from five to nine, these specific dates they can do it

one-time request to us or is it going to be a lot of extra work for our staff to every week they have to get a new permit no I we would like to streamline it as much as possible so for example when the school district has made that request we would say that on these nights throughout the year then you can do it. And if they want to do a different event or something else throughout a school year or a calendar year on their own property, then they would let us know about that event. It wouldn't just not be a carte blanche. All of these political subdivisions could light off fireworks at any point throughout the year just for us to have an idea of what is going on. Is that going to include playoffs as well if they make it?

Assume they probably I would assume that they would try to plan for the entirety of the season And the entire length of hopefully what could be a very long season So you'll be able to direct them as you as you see fit for like if they're looking specifically for the football season Give us what your schedule is, but include that in the permit And if you choose to do any other event, then you can provide a separate permit at that time.

Yes That's fair. I think What what are all the entities that we're including in this?

in general any governmental agencies which for our sake would include both counties yeah both counties school district ourselves the rec ourselves what about the neck are they included the rec would be yes since they are a taxing entity okay I mean I think that's fair I think they're all groups that should have a use for it and

including ourselves. And so I think it would be kind of fun, especially when it's in control and they're not shooting off 100 fireworks for one touchdown within reason. And I don't think we'll have to address that. I don't think they're going to spend that much money, especially after last year. That'd be a lot of money with how much they scored. So hopefully they can continue it.

And the intent would be for these entities to do it on their own property and just on that property for that given event. It's not that any employee or representative of one of these entities can go light them off on their own personal property on property they don't own.

Okay.

Perfect. So the language as it currently reads, is it going as far as the waiver on the professional pyrotechnician? Is it, does it specify what types of fireworks they're allowed to discharge in lieu of using a professional? Have we gone that far with it? No. To make sure that they're not, we're not using professional grade stuff with somebody.

They're probably still consumer grade.

I'm not sure they can even purchase them. Yeah. I know people that are very resourceful. So I want to make sure that we're covered from that we're not we're not providing Waivers to somebody so he can say I don't I don't have a license But I know a guy and then shows up with something that he's not qualified to to handle those our language cover us in that Instance good questions measured and you're reading of that language.

Do you think we just have to categorize it at 1.4, right?

Sorry, well, I think at the 1.3 in here.

Yeah. Yeah, so it essentially exempts them from having to get

Dave Kuntz, To have yeah so I guess that could be a loophole yeah so I would if that's not how we've got it written, that would be my only concern is I don't want an opening for somebody on license to be using. Dave Kuntz, A higher grade fire work that they're not qualified to fire under. Dave Kuntz, That would probably be my biggest concern there.

Dave Kuntz, yeah I don't know that it's necessarily a loophole. and that someone could just go do it and exploit it because they will be coming to staff and applying for these permits. So staff will have both a front.

Will staff be on site to verify that they're firing off what they said they were going to? Typically no.

Typically no. That said, it's something like a governmental football game for the school district. If staff gets complaints, there will be follow-up.

Right.

and that would certainly affect the review of future permits. So there's a bit of a self-policing there, expecting of the city doing a favor for other governmental entities, and I do think this is a bit different of a concern. If it was for any commercial entity, that's a valid concern. For other governmental entities that understand that they're being given not quite a favor, but a collaborative approach.

And they're probably going to need to make sure they stay within their

insurance guidelines too right there's some things there but um no i get that concern this may be a silly question or beyond anything that we could govern maybe but if i know there hasn't been one in years but if there were a burn ban in place or something like that these permits were already given and approved how would how would that be regulated to make sure that Are they still allowed to shoot them off in a burn ban, potentially, or severe drought situation?

Is that... My guess would be that if there's a burn ban instituted by a county or the state that specifically relates to this about fires and discharge and open burning or open explosion, that would supersede anything that we do.

Okay, so then they would have to be responsible for that, then that has nothing to do with us and if it's already been approved?

Yes. In a similar fashion, if you know, a city allows for open burning in a fire pit or something like that and the state comes down because of extreme drought and says, we're not even going to allow that, then all cities would have to comply with that.

Okay, thank you.

Is there any proposed changes to this or are we okay with the...

If Spencer's comfortable with the language as it's written, I'm perfectly comfortable with it. I just wanted to make sure that was addressed.

I just wanted to make sure. Anybody else have comments or questions?

This is exciting. I can't wait to see a football game. Although I'm a Pitt State alumni, I prefer a cannon to go off.

All right. Well, if there's no other questions or comments, I will entertain a motion. Make sure I've got the right agenda item number.

I think it's 11. I move to approve agenda item number 11 as stated in tonight's agenda. Second.

We'll have a motion and a second. This will be a roll call vote. Madam Clerk?

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mr. Savage?

Yes.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mr. Throne? Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mrs. Cravier? Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mr. Grant?

Yes.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mr. Delgado? Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mr. Young? Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mayor Ordinance 2026-19, that's a 6-0-0.

Great. Thank you. Item number 12, consider ordinance number 2026-20, amending chapter 4 of the Spring Home Municipal Code by adding section 4-202.R323, storm protection.

That's a lot of numbers tonight. Yeah. That's the... building codes codes and fun stuff all those I code so as presented previously this is a proposed language to be added in to the city's code to require storm shelters for you know one and two family homes single-family homes or you know applicable townhome units to require a storm shelter or a compliant basement in all new single-family homes the way it is proposed it would also have our building official Cody here as he worked very hard to draft these in terms of when they would be enforced but as it is today they would be the ordinance would go in take effect and be enforced from passage of approval. I don't remember. Cody, if you could come up here, do we have a specified date in the proposed language of when this would be enforced for new single family homes?

I believe we put in January 1st.

to January 1st, but it would also be a requirement of new preliminary plots that come in so that this would give enough time for the builders to plan for these costs, absorb the costs, and then work to get the plans drawn up to be submitted to us with those single-family homes and to give them time to have their architects and design engineers draw those up to be included and potentially amend the plans that they have into us right now.

Would that be permits by January 1st or permit pulls? Yes. Okay. I guess the main question I had from the presentation is what constitute a townhome? I know some cities had, you know, single unit. Obviously houses are easy. Duplexes make sense to me. When you get into townhomes that may or may not have garages or much space, if they have single car garages, shouldn't they? how do we handle those or how are those being handled kind of across the board? I know you did some research on this Cody.

Yeah, so it's basically all inclusive. Any single family dwelling that's governed under the International Residential Code is going to need to meet this requirement. Okay. So stating single family dwellings

two family dwellings and townhomes covers all of those and then four or more units counts or is it one to four units counts as a single-family home and is applicable under the IRC because I think Lenexa had that verbiage right anything that's covered under the residential code I think they were the only ones that had that

yeah well and then the other thing is now depending on what happens tonight we're working on the code updates for our commercial codes and then the rest of the type of occupancy is covered that aren't covered by the residential code that are in the commercial codes we're gonna have to look at what we're doing with those in terms of storm shelters I mean I know this was a pretty specific request from me and I think a couple others up here

Because of the issues we had over the last, this year especially, we had the big storms that came through. And I know we've worked with Generation Bible Church has been really good to offer. And they said they'll be our go-to every storm. They'll be ready to go with a place for our current homes that don't have them. But going forward, if we continue to add 200 to 300 houses a year that don't have storm shelter or basement, We're going to be up a creek a little bit, I think, with trying to figure out where people can go if there's a bad storm. So I'm not... So I don't know what...

So this is first of all, thank you guys so much for the work I know that especially going through and sitting down having these meetings with all the invested or the vested parties Looking at what the other municipalities have that's exactly what we asked for. So thank you so much for bringing us that information For me, that's that I don't have a way of just easily access accessing that information so I really appreciate the work that went in with all that and Um, I think the, the having two or 300 homes built without storm shelters is kind of a, a bit of hyperbole maybe because it's, those aren't, that's not the count for what a house, uh, the, the slab house on grade that we're going to be building. That's just the total count that we usually get.

No, I think was well built over 200 last year or between was well and a couple of other developments on slab I think was over two. Okay.

Um, So kind of to sound off or kind of re restate my my my personal views on this whole storm. shelter adjustments at the beginning so just kind of like How I felt that the city as a whole the expectation that we have clean up Organized moved out boots on ground and every stick fence and everything repaired within 24 hours was just an unrealistic expectation I think we've worked really really hard with these builders and these developers to bring in affordable housing options for people that are in an economic and an economic situation where finding a first-time home is really, really hard to do. Mandating just outright that they have to do this in an area where largely while we do have bad storms from time to time, we're not constantly dodging tornadoes. It was definitely a scary situation, and I under no circumstances want to downplay the struggles that our neighbors down to the south of us dealt with with all the damage and property damage and utility issues. And all the things are still working to work through. I don't want to downplay that all. Um, but I don't think that just outright mandating, um, builders to have to provide these things and then adding that cost to the, to the end user is probably the best, at least in my opinion, the best, uh, the best course forward. I like the idea of, um, Providing the option, um, letting the individual homeowner is $10,000 too much is $15,000 too much. or is it something that they absolutely want to eat for the safety of their family? I feel like that's a reasonable request here. That way each individual buyer has the opportunity to make that decision. And then any homeowner that buys that home later down the road is going to have the same decision to make moving forward. Do I want to buy a home without a storm shelter or don't I? And if I do want to buy one without a storm shelter, this house is an option. If I don't, I need to find something that has built one. I like the idea of options. I don't like the idea of just mandating things across the board because something scary happened um i think we we made a lot of good decisions and this information is great information um i just think that maybe dialing it back to something a little bit more reasonable might be uh might be appropriate for the situation so to keanu what pj is saying um i have a completely different perspective on it um so back from 2007 to 2016 my husband and i were renting homes because we had no established credit couldn't build anyways

so we had to rent and every home we had was on slab slab on grade we didn't have a basement and when my twins were infants back in 2011 we had no less than five tornado warnings that spring through summer and we had to load up our three kids because i had a three and a half year old and twins that were less than six months old our two dogs our two cats and we had to drive over here to next to the cemetery to go to my grandma's basement because there was nowhere else to go And we had to do that no less than five times. So as a mom of young kids, that was incredibly stressful because you had to wrangle all the animals, all the kids, everything to do that, that much was wild. And at the time we couldn't buy, we didn't have a choice whether there was a basement or anything like that. So knowing that going forward, any home would have a storm shelter in it, built in, whether it be in the master closet, in the pantry, in the garage, under the stoop. That would be so like a weight or a ease of mind knowing that you had something that you didn't have to scoop up your children in the middle of the night and get them into car seats and get in the car, which is not safe either. But to have something like that, I don't, I'm not totally opposed to the idea of letting someone building a home opt out of it. However, if it's someone who is going to build and then rent out those homes. We can't control that. We can't guess that. I am opposed to that. I'm opposed to that just because everyone should have a safe place to be in their home and not everyone can afford to build or buy. I'm sorry. Um, but I don't know. It's one of those things that, yes, it saves eight to $12,000, but also if something were to happen and if a life was lost, you can't put a price on that.

That's absolutely fair.

And so, so to me, having been in that situation, I am incredibly passionate about every house should have a basement or every house should have a storm shelter. Um, just because of what I experienced and how I didn't, I didn't necessarily have a choice in, in the matter. And so not everyone here has, you know, their grandma lives, you know, two minutes drive. So I was very fortunate in that scenario, but I know that so many people aren't and.

would never want anyone to experience the fear and stress and everything else that i had to so i'm i'm very much in favor of i absolutely i absolutely respect that position in its entirety um again my my concern boils down to the do we let our fears and experiences of something that i'm assuming your home ultimately was okay after the storm right it was did you lose the home So letting those fears dictate real-life implications, like people are going to have to spend more on houses. That's the reality of it. Those are things that are verifiably going to happen if we make this decision versus things that may or may not happen. And when I make decisions, my focus is I make decisions based on what I hope to be true, not what I fear to be true. So when it comes to this, I hope that we can provide affordable housing to the people that are trying to move into our area. So I'm going to vote no for this.

And I'm the opposite. I hope that no one dies in a tornado, so I'm going to vote yes for this. Because also, building costs are going up constantly. So housing prices are going up. To me, the argument of the price is moot, because building prices are constantly going up. Housing values are constantly going up. The land value is going up. And if- So you just want to make it worse? It's happening. I want people to be safe. So no, I don't want to make it worse, but I don't want anyone to die. I want everyone to feel safe. I want everyone to feel secure. So that's where I stand. I'll be voting. Yes.

Fair enough. Can this change to something where it's single family, you know, single home versus duplex, quadplex. That was kind of where I was wired in, in those duplexes and up. Whereas a single family, whether it's live or not, it's a mandatory owner opt out and then everything above that would be required.

We can certainly tailor the language to meet that request. I would suggest that depending upon how the governing body feels going forward, whether it's to approve the language as written or if there's some modifications to it, whether it's to only apply to single family. And if that's the case, then there's an opt out or an opt in or whatever direction you provide that we can bring back some language to meet the overall goal where we don't have any, you know, under no impression this was perfect what we brought before you and we knew that this would generate conversation and dialogue and that ultimately what gets decided may need to be tweaked so we'd be happy to bring that back at the next meeting I think I look at it from a little bit kind of in between the two of you so I get where Kendra's coming from and people being scared and that's the big push we hear every time there's a storm I get the side where you're coming from where it's

how often does it really cause a real life threatening issue? I think there's an inherent risk that we take at least when I've ever, I've gone into housing that says if I'm in multi family, more like town homes, there's probably not an expectation for that particular type of safety cause that's where the affordability is really coming in. The single family and the duplex in my opinion is more of a longterm, you know, uh, housing option that not necessarily is our responsibility to make sure that that is the cheapest to get into rats work for me when I think multifamily housing that's where first-time homebuyers and things like that if we're really trying to focus as a city towards making that affordable so for me I'm more kind of like Mike where it's a single-family duplex that's where I'm more thinking it's a more mandatory and then in the the townhome portion is where I'd be a little bit more apt to say hey it's kind of like apartments right we know you're not going to have a basement apartment townhome four plex or higher i would kind of think you're kind of in the same boat of where do they go because when i think about the townhomes i've lived in were single car garage but they were three or four bedrooms there's no way you can fit without a basement the requirements needed for having four bedrooms so i could see the required like hey it has to be a basement that's a bit way bigger cost but it was the type of storm shelters that we were presented with um that we could put in homes or in i mean To me, that's where I'm leaning more towards personally. So that's where I feel like I fall between you a little bit there. But I kind of get where everybody's coming from.

I like them being given the option. I mean, if they're going to make an option, they're purchasing a home, making a choice, they should have a choice in that also, I think.

No, and I agree there. I mean, if you're buying a home, you need to have it as an option, just like you do for carpet or something like that. Whereas if you're renting, you don't have a choice in what it is. And that's where I think those need to, because I mean, we also lived in a duplex and you don't have that luxury of having somewhere to go and just being able to have that available I think is good for that, whether it's, you know, it may not be necessarily in every duplex, but maybe there's a requirement to have so many square feet within the community. So kind of like they have the, um, the clubhouses having a required space in there that they can go to in the clubhouse that is close. It's nearby. Yes. It's an inconvenience, but it also keeps that affordability.

Yeah. And that would be, uh, addressed when we talk about the commercial codes specifically. Um, mine, this is just for, uh, residential, residential one and two family homes and town homes.

Yeah.

But yeah.

And meet me personally. Um, don't like being forced to do something if I don't want to so I like that opportunity to opt out of something if I don't want it now if I'm renting something and I don't have a choice in that I want that option to be available for me is there a way that we can do it for rental properties so if we know that they're gonna be a rental property that they have to it's difficult for us to do that because of fair housing laws for us to dictate whether any type of

Residential unit that gets constructed is going to be owner occupied or rental occupied Um, you know, multifamily such as, you know, higher density typically can be apartments, but there's also condominiums. Uh, so we typically, you know, our code does not regulate that today. Um, and we, we don't have a means through the city's code to stipulate that a house has to be rental or it has to be owner occupied. So that could be difficult for us to enforce. We could try to see what other cities may have done to, to tackle that. Um, that then opens up a slippery slope for all future developments, not just on storm shelters, but whether a neighborhood is being proposed as single family and whether that developer or those homeowners within that development choose to rent their house out or whether the entire neighborhood is for rental, then I think we could run afoul of some housing statutes that were overstepping our bounds and dictating how those properties

think something important to note is uh thankfully we're kind of either at the tail end or through the storm season for the year um so as a whole if we need to dive into this more we need to talk more about it i think we've got a little bit of time before we ultimately have to make any moves on it especially if we're still trying to get it outside of that 2027 timeline like i think we've still got a little bit of flexibility there that's not up yet well and i think the big thing is this is not necessarily a storm a year-to-year storm issue it's a

these houses we built and they'd be hard to change later on. Right. You know, so I mean, again, the other, another concern I have is as we get further down the road of more of these houses being built, whether it's, 50 or 200 a year, there's going to be more of them. And then what requirement are we going to have as a city to say, we have a place for those people to go? Um, which seems to be, as we've seen over the last couple of years, an expectation that there's somewhere for them to go.

I think the market will probably address it. If we start having houses that have the option and one builder says, you know what, we're going to put, we're going to take the time. We're going to make them $10,000 more expensive. We're going to build them with a little basement space or something. that's going to be a marketing opportunity for them where they can create a little bit of a little bit of competition in the housing market as a whole. Um, again, when I, when I was playing my rental game, when I was living in other people's properties, I, I shopped around for my priorities and my priorities were some kind of storm shelter. So when I found a house, when I found a townhouse to rent, I had one with the basement. That doesn't mean that I should be able to say that you have to build your house with the basement just because I want you to have it.

Yeah.

It's just that people are going to meet the market needs, and we have lots and lots of different builders with lots and lots of different housing designs that have every amenity that anybody could ask for. So I feel like staying as flexible for the people's needs coming into the city as a whole means not forcing them all to do the same thing. If we're trying to be flexible, it makes sense to not force everybody to do everything the same way.

We're also not the only city trying to do this, though. Like, we're not.

That's where I would be a little concerned is that with the other cities doing it, are we going to get an influx of a lot of that type of housing when now we're attracting it only because we're the only ones who haven't.

Do we want to be Olathe and Overland Park or do we want to be Spring Hill?

We'd like to be as safe as Olathe and Overland Park. I would counter that with why are we updating our other codes if safety is not an issue?

I'm not, again, this is me arguing. I'm concerned about the characterizations that have No, because I'm not saying that I'm ignoring safety. That's not what I'm saying.

I understand.

It is simply, it's a matter of option, and it's a matter of flexibility for people. We have homes that are way too expensive for people, and you acknowledge that, and now we're saying we're going to make them the cheapest of our homes more expensive. What good does that do us?

To potentially save a life, absolutely.

I'm not comfortable telling people that they can't buy a home in our area because I'm telling them they have to have something they don't want. Okay.

I'd be okay with it if it was one and two family homes and townhomes out, and then you had the owner opt out, kind of like Edgerton has.

So would the townhomes then fall under the commercial?

Well, and that's where I think we should have more discussion and try to figure out what we want to do with that.

I think also, are we looking at, when they have the opt-out, is it only ground-up construction for the homeowner, or is it? Are we going to let them build spec homes without the storm shelter because that option wasn't presented prior to the house being kind of built?

Yeah, we haven't fully fleshed that out the way we proposed it.

So that's where if you put in the option to have it or not, can you go back and how much more cost is there? Well, we're just going to put all the slabs in and then now we'll give the option, but the price is even higher because it's after. So I think there's a little bit of difference there too. So if we have somebody doing spec homes, do we say it's on the spec home you have to do it because there's nobody there to have the option? I don't know, that's kind of. I'd be comfortable with having that discussion as a whole.

But I feel like it's, I mean, it ties in, but it's a separate issue at the same time.

Yeah. Because I would think if we were going to go the option route, I would like to have that discussion to say, we have the option, but if you're building spec homes to where they're not already bought before you start, then those ones maybe have the requirement. I think that's perfectly reasonable. And that was kind of where my mind was anyway is that a lot of these are getting built out. Like mine was a spec house, right? So I got in and I didn't get to pick quite a few of the things that were there and I would have changed it. So the option wasn't there for me to have or not have in the basement. So that would be maybe the direction we look at if that's where we have more support. But I'm not totally opposed to the option know to giving it to them again same thing I said with it's a total separate issue but benefit districts you know as long as it's if we're I would like to at least make it if we're not going to require it a bigger deal to where they have to specifically say I do not want right this safety feature in the house yeah exactly yeah so I think some of the it sounds like we may have like a group that's has a mixture of those things that were looking for. I'm not sure. I mean, we'd have to get a little bit more of a consensus, but that's where I'm hearing it going a little bit more, but you guys and gals tell me what you think. Because I'm kind of stuck in the middle here. I kind of Could be pulled either way depending on a good argument.

Like I said, I'm open to being a little bit like finding a more flexible Option here, but as it's written tonight, it's just that's a carte blanche for all these types of properties from now on We're gonna say they cost more. Okay, so I would rather find something more in the middle more flexible We need flexibility in our housing affordability and this is the opposite of that.

Yeah so we have I would consider one hard line one way, one hard line the other. But the rest of us sound like we're kind of in the middle. I would propose a spec home requirement. And I could get behind even townhomes included in that. And then ground up construction, a very specific separate form from everything else that says you're refusing or turning down this particular safety option. that the city requires you to sign this when we're building your house that says you do not want this. I could get behind that, that type of stuff.

I'd like to see a separate presentation if we're going to change that.

Oh, no, I wouldn't want to do it tonight. I think we put something together that says that. But that would be, that's kind of the gist I'm getting from the group. But you guys tell me if I'm wrong or not. Or if there's any other thoughts outside of the ones that haven't spoke as much. The rest of it, I think us three have ours out there. So what do you guys think? You think that last proposal is probably the table and maybe some options like that? And we'll see how it goes.

We could certainly bring that back and also reach out directly And ask some of these more pointed, fine-tuned questions to some of our neighbors about how they're planning to deal with this, whether they apply to spec homes or not. Some of these more nuanced questions. I don't know if we'll be able to get that done by the next meeting, but bring something back.

I don't think it's like a super big rush. I think, yeah, next couple meetings would be good to readdress.

I'd love to see it fleshed out.

I think there's somewhere happy medium that we've got in the group that we can get to. But I do think it's something that we need to have something in place. It's not just leave it the way it has been.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay. So we can do that. Cool. Some good options.

Okay.

Appreciate it. Yep. So we will officially, do we need to make a motion to table this?

Yes. And I think the motion needs to be at a table indefinitely rather than typically we table it until the next meeting, but I think table it with a direction to staff too.

Considered the conversation tonight and come forward to the presentation rather than continuing to come forward every meeting with Potential new language for you guys to debate so if unless you'd like to do that and then it's your motion But yeah, I'll leave it in Mike's hands if he feels like he can get something put together by the next meeting and that's great If not, I would rather you take time to make sure it's fleshed out Should we say something like by the end of by the second meeting in September?

Would that be fair?

That's fair

I just don't want to do indefinite because then it feels like it goes away. But if we say, hey, table it to the second meeting of September.

Okay. I'm with that as long as that's a reasonable timeline. I think that's reasonable.

I just don't want to push it out too far. What's still top of mind right now? We can certainly keep it. There's a lot of groups involved that I think want to have an answer. So.

Table it until no later than this.

No later than, okay, that's perfect, yeah.

We don't want to accidentally tell Mike he can't come back on this.

Sorry, too early. All right. I move to table agenda item number 12, no later than the second meeting in September, pending staff review and further updates.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0 for the tabling. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

We're going to move on to item number 13, consider ordinance number 2026-21, amending chapter 4 of the Spring Home Municipal Code to adopt and incorporate by reference the 2018 International Residential Code as amended herein.

Thank you. This is a completely separate item. As you know, earlier this year, the state legislature enacted Senate Bill 418, which is the Buy Right Housing Act. As part of that, it mandates that single-family houses under 2,500 square feet all cities or jurisdictions approving building building permits have to review building permits for those houses under the International Residential Code which is again single-family up to four unit building under a version of the 2018 International Residential Code it can either be a version that the city has previously adopted a lot of our neighboring cities are on the 2018 s already and we're planning to go to the 2024 IRC but they've had to pivot a little bit in relation to that we were planning to do the same until that Senate bill was passed So we can either have used the 2018 we previously adopted, we can just straight accept another city's, we have to specify which city, version of the 2018 IRC. So each city adopts local amendments to the International Residential Code that that jurisdiction feels are most appropriate for that city. So we could do one of those two things, and there's a third option which really isn't applicable. So what we have proposed is in advance of us bringing the balance of the 2024 codes for the International Building Code, Plumbing Code, Mechanical Code, all of those, we need to get onto the 2018s. And so we've proposed a version of the 2018 International Residential Code with some local amendments for the city and in order to bring that into effect and to allow all of the builders who are building in the city oftentimes they're already building to the 2018 codes so it shouldn't be and what we've the feedback we've heard is it's not that difficult for them to to move to that they're already designing to it but all of their permits they have all their plans that they have into us that they reuse over and over are all designed and their code sheets all stay the 2006 codes so in order to give them enough time to update those We would have an effective date of January 1st 2027 however We don't feel that that's a significant impact because most of those builders if not all of them are already building to those 2018 codes it's more of a formality and So that would apply. And some of the local amendments we proposed are merely cleanup of what was in the 2006. So we had a bunch of amendments to the 2006 IRC that are no longer necessary because the 2018 version automatically included a lot of those. and then some of the local amendments are in keeping with what some of our surrounding jurisdictions have done. Back when cities moved from either the 2006 or the 2015 codes, the IRC codes, to the 2018 cities where the Home Builders Association typically puts out a their commentary on that new code cycle and what changes that they would like to see jurisdictions make in terms of local amendments. Those are almost always the same between different jurisdictions. So whether it's in Blue Springs, Missouri, or Lenexa, Kansas, the Home Builders Association is related to that section of the code. So we reached out to the Home Builders Association again during that stakeholder meeting, so it was both for the storm shelters and for this section of the code. We received feedback that our proposed changes were in keeping with what their requested changes were and that have been employed by surrounding jurisdictions for quite some time now. we are not doing anything over and above what other cities have done and what other cities are going to continue to do for those homes that are under 2,500 square feet. For ease of administration, we felt that this code is a significant step up from the 2006, and it would be difficult for us, so a lot of our homes are under 2,500 square feet. So this is right in Spring Hill's wheelhouse. Some of our larger neighbors, they don't have many homes that are under 2,500 square feet. So they're adopting the 2018 IRC or keeping their version of it for homes under 2,500 square feet and then adopting the 2024 IRC for homes over 2,500 square feet. We feel that given our breakdown of house sizes and our limited staff and Essentially ability to disseminate and apply different codes when we're viewing all these different permits We're proposing to bring them just make the 2018 IRC with local amendments applicable to all single-family homes regardless of size Okay And these are here to answer any specific questions related to the IRC and some of our local amendments Yeah, I don't pretend to know much about any of this stuff.

I'm gonna defer a little bit to our I our local tradesman over here, James. I know he's got much more knowledge in this than I do.

Yeah, my only concern is making sure that, I mean, like we've talked about before, with the A2L refrigerants and the new HVAC that's taken care of and addressed appropriately, because that is not a 2018 thing. That is a 2025 thing. I mean, I can't appreciate that we're bringing these up, and I mean, With our builders already building it 2018 codes, I mean that helps But do we know that they're really building them at 2018 because the gentleman before said we weren't and he's gonna raise our prices up another 15 grand So that's my that's another concern of mine if they're already building it and then wait who's in Spring Hill They're building at the 2018 codes

They're designing the homes to the 2018 code.

Oh, for being future use? Yes. Or future builds?

So they're building the same houses all around in the area, and they're not, because the 18 requirements surpass what we require on the 06 code, they don't want to have a separate plan just for Spring Hill. So they build the same thing here that they're already building in the 18 required areas, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

So by and large, this gives us the ability to enforce at that level to make sure that they're meeting those standards as opposed to just hoping that that's what they're doing because the standards that we currently have in place are less strict.

Yes. And the Senate bill requires us to use a version of the 2018. if directed to do so, we could go take a look at Gardner's version of the 2018 with their own local amendments or Lenexa's with their own version of their local amendments. Some cities are trying to kind of circumvent this by adopting the 2024 code with local amendments that essentially equal the 2018 code. And so ultimately because of the way that that language or that that Senate bill was drafted as it wasn't written by code professionals, mainly other people with interests outside of that. It left some things vague. And so how this all plays out may end up in court one day. But rather than being forced to use another city's, if we were to find that we weren't complying with this, someone could potentially find that we need to use somebody else's version. So we thought it best to bring forward a version that we were comfortable with. I appreciate that consideration for sure.

And Cody, what are your thoughts as far as implementing this? It sounds like most of the builders

working towards this so there shouldn't be a huge change what you're seeing yeah well like Mike said when we sat down with them at the stakeholders meeting we spent most time talking about storm shelters they across the board felt all felt they were already building to this standard of the 2018 and they had no concerns with us moving to it okay what about

Addressing James's, I know he's talked about there's been a lot of changes over the last 10 years.

Was that specifically in regards to like the energy code?

Yeah, to the HVAC code, the mechanical code.

Yeah. So, and we had to make a decision. So, there's multiple compliance paths in the IRC, just to keep it simple. So, a builder can choose two or three different paths on how they want to meet the energy code. Rough percentage, 95-ish percent of builders in Kansas are choosing the HERS method. And so that's almost what everyone's doing. So as part of that, they have to meet a certain score. And us as a jurisdiction, we have to decide what that score is gonna be. The score table runs from like 60 to 100. The higher the score, the less strict. or stringent your code is for energy, which would affect your HVAC and stuff like that. So some of the surrounding jurisdictions, they're 60, 62, and like the gentleman stated when he came up to spoke, he said that he liked to see that we are proposing to adopt a HERS rating of 80 rather than being lower at the 60 and being stricter. Those are such an improvement from the 06 anyways, even that higher HRS rate in 80. And then... Yeah, just I think it's a good spot to be with the energy code because we can get a lot stricter with it. But there's also some national stuff going on right now where folks are starting to talk about that maybe the energy code has gotten too strict. So I think that we kept that in mind with the proposal of a HERS of 80 not coming in real strict with it because I just feel like it's a good spot to be.

Councilmember Savage and I have had that conversation specifically related to the refrigerant type within the HVAC system, correct?

Yes. The new A2Ls are flammable, so that's a big concern to me. It's a government requirement. As of last year, you can't even buy the Old refrigerant, every refrigerant made is an A2L refrigerant and requires special sensors for that if there were a leak because it is combustible.

Okay, gotcha. I'm not, I don't know anything about refrigerants.

might have to talk to you yeah we can talk and figure out a little more about that so yeah yeah we are planning to bring back or bring forward the the full 2025 or 2024 version of the codes uh later this fall and so um if this is approved tonight or if we're directed to to find some answers to these questions we can certainly do that as well or we could whatever we adopt we can clean up To make sure that that's to see how other cities are doing this and and reach out specifically to the building officials of those communities that are on the 18th to figure out how they're Accommodating the new Refrigerant type, okay Yeah, that would be I guess that was my next question is how often are we planning to update this because obviously we didn't do it for a long time and This would just we're planning to do it this turn for the 2018 and then We can even modify that date as to when it's applicable. But our goal is to then bring forward the full balance of the 2024 codes. We never want to be the first city out of the gate to adopt all of these things. We also certainly don't want to be the last. And we have typically, we missed a few cycles, if you will.

Yeah, that was kind of my question, is what is the cycle typically so that we know kind of going forward? Is it every kind of three or four years that we look to update?

Go ahead. Well, so the Code Council puts out new code books every three years. Okay. Most jurisdictions aren't updating to the newest code book every three years. A lot of places are doing every other other places do every third. So it just depends.

So if we do 2024, we're going to be pretty dang close to the current one coming out. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I think that's a good plan. I just was kind of curious cause I didn't know if it was every other year, how often they came out with it.

So it could be as, as often as every three years if you want it to. But I think most places kind of stick with, I like the plan of being in the middle.

We don't want to be first. We don't want to be last either.

It's nice to have an opportunity to get some lessons learned. Yeah, and then that way we can pick up from some of those lessons as more and more cities in the metro move to the 24 codes, which I would say a lot of them have now. A year ago it was still relatively new. Right. And so we can certainly reach out and ask some specific questions related to the mechanical code and how that would apply to the 2018 IRC or, you know, the 2024 IBC, which is for commercial structures.

I think this is a fair step in the right direction. If we're continuing to go forward, it makes a big difference. I'm okay with this as long as I'm trusting your guys' expertise on this to put us in the right direction.

We feel that we are. I love it.

Any questions or comments? I would like to maybe just follow up with this on the refrigerant stuff because I think that could be a big deal.

Mike and I will meet about it and talk about it a little bit more in depth.

All right.

Thank you, bud. Thanks.

If there's no other questions or comments, I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve agenda item number 13 as stated. Second.

We have a motion and a second. And this is an ordinance, so be a roll call.

Mrs. Cravier? Yes. Mr. Grant?

Yes.

Mr. Delgado?

Yes.

Mr. Savage?

Yes.

Mr. Throne?

Yes.

Mayor Young?

Yes.

Ordinance 2026. dash 21 passes 6-0-0.

All right, that moves us into item number 14, consider approval of change orders number 4, number 5, number 6 with Superior Bowen Asphalt Company LLC for the 199th Street, Ridgeview to Renner improvements.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, these are three change orders for the 199th Street project. The first one, change order number four, but the first one before us tonight, has to do with the material used to backfill on the pipes, mostly the storm sewer pipes on that project. It was an oversight and there was a In the specifications, our preference and plan all along for the longevity of the project was to use a product called flowable fill. Think of it as a little light duty concrete. But the specifications in the plans didn't absolutely require flowable fill. So it was bid without flowable fill. We got in and said, yeah, that's still the product that we want to use. So there's a cost associated with that. We worked with the contractor to look at the cost of the flowable fill, but then subtracted out the cost for the backfill that was originally planned. So it's not this change order doesn't represent the full cost of the flowable fill, but the difference between the two products. So that one is a total of $17,360.49. change order number five has to do with some temporary drainage pipe once we got in and had the the temporary roadway built it became clear and it was one of those things that wasn't clear and evident looking at plans on paper, but once we saw it in the field, there were some drainage issues created by the construction of that temporary roadway, and we needed to get some pipes in to get that water to drain more effectively. So that second change order is an additional $6,435.65 to allow for the installation of those temporary pipes for drainage purposes. And finally, the larger dollar amount item has to do with embankment or what I refer to as cut and fill. There was a big change from the estimated quantities when the plans were put together versus you get out and start doing it. It's one of the hardest things to estimate when putting plans together on that cut and fill. You're measuring it by... the cubic yard of dirt or material but how compacted was the soil that you're taking out what kind of compaction do you need to get going back in can have a significant difference on how much material is required so the this change order doesn't really represent a new elements to the contract it's just calculation of the actual quantities installed versus what the estimated quantities in the bid so this is a this is a new number not a new not a new bid item not a new project item no change to the scope just an extension of the quantities and really getting those current actual quantities in versus what was in the the plans and that is in the amount of ninety seven thousand one hundred five dollars and seventy seven cents I think it's worth noting this project was you know luckily came in about million for a little over a million for under budget so you know even with these changes in quantities and unexpected costs, we're still in good shape. We also went back and even checked the bids, and we are still below what the second low bidder amount was. Not that that really means anything Contractually, but I think it just helps to know where we're at and you know, make sure that we're You know in a good spot moving forward.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have So more interest than anything with a change item number four the flowable backfill or the flowable fill Product as a whole why did we opt for that versus an alternative?

I So the flowable fill, especially when you're trying to compact around a round pipe, you put that pipe, you cut a straight sided ditch and you put a round pipe in it and you're trying to put that material back in and get it compacted, it's really difficult to accurately and fully compact that material, especially on the underneath sides of that pipe. And flowable fill as the name would suggest is is is flowable so it uh think about something like a pancake batter kind of thing so it will move in underneath the haunches of the pipe it will fill those crevices and and voids much more effectively than trying to mechanically or manually get native soil or an AB3 gravel or something else in there. So it's more effective and less apt. I won't even call it user error, but it is really difficult to get that compaction all the way around a round pipe. And so the flowable fill works, works much better. And I'm assuming that's going to help over time with settling erosion, things like that.

Exactly. Keep those pipes where they need to be for longer.

So hopefully we don't keep the pipes where they need to be and keep the road where it needed to be. You know, one of the big problems with settlement is if you don't get that compaction and that, that ground settles, it creates a void between the bottom of the pavement and and that and that soil that over time the pavements gonna fail and that's a not only an expensive fix but then we're disrupting traffic again so it's more expensive but I really feel that that that product is still in in our best interest long-term awesome and how how deep are we into this to where

we won't see any significant change orders going forward. Cause I know you were saying we're a little bit that what we're under on budget, but yeah, is that kind of, uh, kind of an assumption that we'll finish that way? Or is there going to be quite a bit bigger?

Uh, yeah, I mean, I, You can't you can't really guess but yeah, but yes where we're at in the in the process of construction and How long the contractor has been on site? They've had time to to think about and flesh out, you know bigger surprise anything different They've got that plan of attack and here's what we're gonna need to do. Here's what was Called out in the you know in the contract versus what what's going to be done to need to be done to complete it so can't say that we won't have any more but we are we are definitely well past the midway point and i would i would not expect nearly as many going change orders going forward as we've had you know early on well i figure we'll have nominal ones but for the most part i'm thinking big you know half a million dollars i think if we see them now they will be more like that change order six where it's just that the quantities were different yeah it's the same item just the dollar amount is changing because the actual quantities are going to vary some from the planned quantities that's more likely what we'll see going forward then oh hey we didn't account for this right i just like where we are and i want to keep it there yeah absolutely same

Any questions?

Oh, I'm sorry. So the flowable fill has not been done yet, correct? We're approving to...

In some places, it has been done. It was one of those where those were some of the pipes that had the road completely closed, and we needed to get that backfill done in order to get the road opened back up. So staff directed them, yes, put it back in. We'll work out the change order and work the pricing out. But... understanding that you know in the in the grand scheme of a you know seven plus million dollar project of that seventy thousand dollar expense versus keeping 199th street closed for you know days longer while we went through this process staff made the call that hey let's approve it and and in the field let's get the change order you know cleaned up later to my understanding that's well within your guys's um purview legally to do that yeah

Well, technically that particular one's small enough you probably could just approve without coming to us.

Yeah, you know, we talk a lot about it and you talk about it. We absolutely take to heart that transparency piece and council approved a contract for a certain amount. And if that's changing, you know, we want to make sure we get that before you. But, yeah, there are times, especially with the smaller amounts and in the interest of keeping the project moving.

Will will authorize it and come back with more of a accounting cleanup exercise like this So my husband is a superintendent for commercial construction and so he tells me all the time about change orders and things like that and things that weren't in the contract things that got missed whatever and so I Being on his side of things since he is a superintendent. I Get a little finicky and persnickety about change orders and how long whose fault was that because you know, it falls on him being the superintendent and But in this case, however, I mean, that's the cost of doing business. And that's the right call in this situation, like I said. So yeah, because it's going to be the longest lasting, the most forgiving, and the most sustainable. So yeah.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Still under budget, so I like that. Yeah. We're still doing good on budget.

Can you, I'm sorry. looked over this but then forgot because numbers are not multiplying. What was the total budget for this? If you scroll down a little bit, it's on that.

I can't see. 8.6. 8.679.

Okay, thank you. It's all fuzzy.

So we're at seven. Yeah, the screen's a little bit fuzzy.

Okay.

But 7252 is where we're at now.

Seven?

7252 is where we're at.

Oh, perfect. Okay.

But 8679 was the budget.

Thank you. Awesome.

So that was kind of what I was saying. I'm like, if we can keep it closer to that 7-2, that's a big savings we've had based off our budget.

Yeah. Perfect.

All right. Questions or comments?

I will entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number 14 as stated.

Second.

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

Yours is so clear.

My screen's a little blurry, too, so I don't know if you do. I made it bigger, but then it's still, I guess it's better on this one. I did something earlier, it shrunk down, it got blurry, and I was like. Part of our annual eye exam. I thought maybe I'm just getting older. Who knows? Okay.

Apparently, I closed out of something on the right side and it cleared things up.

I touched something earlier.

Mr. IT over here is helping me out. Thank you. I apologize, guys.

James is a man of many talents.

I'm still learning.

All right. Item number 15, consider approval of amendment number 1 to a professional services agreement with Crossland Heavy Contractors, Inc. to provide design services for the wastewater treatment facility.

So, Mayor and Council, this is a continuation of an item we've talked about several times, most recently a work session last month out at the wastewater treatment plant. I've got a few slides. I just want to go through a little bit of a background and get you, just kind of remind everyone how we got to where we're at now, give you a little update, what's happened in the last month and an idea of things going forward. The big question, why? This project is a large expenditure. I haven't done this research, but I think it's safe to say, you know, will be the largest expenditure that Spring Hill has made to date. So, it certainly makes sense to ask the question, you know, why? Why are we doing this? Do we really need to spend this much money? This chart up here, we've shown you before, this is looking at wastewater flows relative to our treatment capacity. And we are currently under our total treatment capacity. If you look at the exploded version up kind of in the top left, look a little closer, The first part of that line that's dark blue or black color, those are known projects. That is either actual current flows or subdivisions, home projects that have already been approved, platted. Those are homes that we know are coming or we are committed to. Then it begins to, so that first several years on there I feel like are pretty well known numbers. Then there are three different lines. All of those represent just residential growth, future residential growth in the community at a few different rates. So it's 8%, 6%, 4% growth. Our crystal ball kind of like our computer screens aren't always that clear. And so we gave a few different percentages in there so that we could kind of show the range of possibilities in terms of growth in the community and the impact that will have on on wastewater flows. I think the big takeaway from this in terms going back to that initial question of why, why are we doing this? Do we have to spend that much money? And it really comes down to that, you know, the fact that within about three to five years of residential, our current residential growth, we're going to be at our maximum treatment capacity. And so beyond that, then we're facing the unpleasant choice of saying no to future growth and development in the community, simply not because we don't want it, but because we won't be able to handle the wastewater or accommodate the wastewater flows. Let me, Move ahead. So just to refresh, this is the overall site, the entire piece of property that the city purchased down on Woodland Road near 239th Street. I'll zoom in a little closer. The red is future, way, way out future, but the purple and blue colors are more current and relevant. Excuse me. Everything shown in blue is what we are proposing to build now. The purple is just us trying to be good stewards of the tax dollars and plan ahead and know that what we build today is not going to meet the needs of the community forever and we want to have a good path forward where we can add to that without undoing everything that we're investing in right now so blue is current proposed treatment plant up to five million gallons a day and then just trying to show that we have planned for the ability to double that to a 10 million gallon per day treatment capacity at whatever point in the future that's needed and Kind of going back to that earlier graph, that could be, you know, anywhere from, I think it was around 20, 2030, 2031 to 2061. So there's a big range in there. But either way that you look at it, it's clear that this plan and this 5 million gallons of treatment capacity will meet the community's needs well into the future. And then we have that plan for expansion beyond. So we talked a little, let me back up one. Since the work session, the design team has gone back, taken the information from that work session out at the wastewater treatment plant and adjusted this site plan the plan to reflect some of the process changes that we talked about the the budget number that was set and and really worked worked to get those treatment elements in working within the budget that we have some of the things that we talked about I won't go through all the details of this but we talked about the the UV disinfection building or it wasn't a building in the most stripped down value engineered version. This is back to a full traditional building and is adding more of the elements in that that budget number that you all, that we talked about before, allowed for building some of that back in. So this reflects that. Now what we have, what we've done is Earlier, the design team came up with a basis of design report, but we've made changes to the plan and we value engineered and we've set a budget. So we need to back up a little bit and develop a new basis of design report to submit to the state that will act as that concept plan and starting place that the rest of the design will be built upon. So the action item before you, we've been working under a professional services contract with the Crossland Heavy Black & Veatch design build team. And the reason that we've been, We've been working under a professional services agreement. We will ultimately be going to a traditional progressive design build process and contract. But we're trying to preserve the flexibility for the city. This is a big investment. with a lot of moving parts. So we're trying to avoid locking the city into a multi-million dollar commitment until we're really comfortable that this is the direction that we want to move. So the approach that we've taken is this professional services agreement for design, which you all approved initially to get this design started. That was establishing the, setting the limits and the dollar amounts and the scope of work for this design work that's got us to this point. Moving forward, we need to redo that basis of design report. We need to redo a lot of the materials that will get submitted to the state for permitting. And we need to get started even further into the design process for the wastewater treatment plant. What we're proposing right now is to amend or extend that professional services agreement, and that'll let the design team keep going and get a little further in design and take us through to the point where we're ready to then later graduate to that full design build contract. There are costs, of course, associated with this professional services amendment, but there are no There are no requirements and no commitments by the city beyond that design effort. We aren't committed to build anything under this professional services agreement. If we get further down the design and we're all in agreement, yes, we're headed down the right path, this is the right method, this is the right budget, the right scope, the right time, then we can bring back that that design build contract and even in that there are a few a few more um off ramps if you will um and this is just showing you know we're estimating say in january of 2027 bringing back that design build contract and then later, middle of 27, there would be another guaranteed maximum price developed. And we could even do kind of a partial package where they will tell us, all right, this is what it will cost to get going with the site work, earthwork, foundation work, hard bid numbers, and then still estimates on the rest of it because they're still working on the design. then toward the end of 27 beginning of 28 would be another guaranteed maximum price as And that would be kind of the final one where the design is far enough along They've been able to remove a lot of the contingency and give a good hard price So we you know, we aren't committed beyond You know each step is the overall approach and philosophy All of that to say and kind of going back That's the background that's kind of reminding you and bringing you up to speed with where we're at on this process. The action item before you tonight is to consider that amendment to the existing professional services agreement. It'll update the basis of design report, Let the team begin the detailed design work now that we have the concept plan worked out. They can continue working with us on securing the SRF and WIFIA financing and keep it moving. What we don't want to have happen We really don't have time, going back to that earlier calendar, to have things stop. So we're trying to keep this moving in phases where we've always got enough scope and budget that the team can keep moving and still not commit us too far. So it's just that stair-step effort. The total amount for the amendment to the professional services agreement is $4,330,498. There is a long list of very detailed scope of services in your packet and what we are getting and all of the services that they are providing. I've just scratched the surface of it tonight. The team from Crossland Heavy Black & Veatch is here. detailed questions but staff recommends approval of this professional services agreement to let the process keep moving forward and like I said it still preserves our our ability to make changes and and and adjust and adapt as this business project develops happy to answer any questions you have

So this is obviously a large dollar amount, and it's only going to get larger as we get further on through the project. I'm going to spare Rhonda the very broad question tonight, because I understand that there's a lot of moving pieces in making a project like this work for a city with our budget. Um, but with that being said, um, as far as what we're paying for tonight, what we're agreeing to pay for tonight, my real concern about this investment that we're putting in the city's future, um, which is something I think most of us agree with is something the city has been in dire need of for a long, long time. Um, I've been here now for, Coming up on two years and the amount of work we've had to do to get to the point where we can start setting our predecessors up with some kind of a successful infrastructure. has been a long time coming, and I think this is a group like one of our first biggest steps in that direction so with That being said, the dollar amount that we're spending. As far as when we say we're getting these services from them and we decide for whatever reason, this is purely hypothetical, this isn't that I'm advocating for any changes of direction moving forward, but just for a purely hypothetical, what are we entitled to keep from the services that they're providing us up to this point? Any information that they provide us, is that something that at any point we'll be able to take somewhere else or table and put down and it be viable for use down the road?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Anything that they've any any work product that they have done, you know, as a part of this for us, you know, is ours. Yeah. So and the total amount is up to this four point three million. we you know we are contractually obligated to pay them for the services that they have rendered to date right um so if again that hypothetical something unexpected happens and we're two million dollars into this effort and it stops then that is the extent of of our financial obligation it's to pay them for the work they have done up to this $4.3 million. It's not just a blanket $4.3 million simply because we signed this amendment.

It's just like a not to exceed.

Yes, it is their estimate looking at that scope of work and all of the effort that's going to go into it, and they believe this is the cost to get us to that point. But, again, it's billed out and it's work done hourly, so we will build up to this amount. It's not an all or nothing.

Okay.

My last kind of overarching statement here is, again, back to setting a foundation for the future of Spring Hill. We've got a history of people having a struggle with making the courageous decision to take on these larger projects for the good of not only the needs we have today, but for later. And this is no small dollar amount. It's only going to get bigger. This is the kind of work that most of us were elected to do was looking forward and finally having an opportunity to not just operate off the back foot all the time. So for me, this is this is a big deal. This is a culmination of a lot of work from staff. This is what I screamed for before I decided to put my name in the hat to run as getting to a point where Spring Hill can start thinking about the future. and not constantly be playing catch up and trying to fix things that we messed up moving or in the past. So just keeping that in focus for everybody I think is important.

Well I thought it was interesting recently I was talking to somebody who was kind of involved back when this wastewater treatment plant was built and they thought back then it would last till about 25. Right. So it was pretty close. So when you look at this and we talk probably like 61 and that's really without even the growth of what can happen there. We really are setting it up long term and like we've talked about for the folks who've lived here their whole life, we've kind of always just done enough to get by and now we're not, we're trying to get away from that a little bit and make sure we're setting it up. So I agree, it's a scary thing sometimes to jump into projects like this but I think it's necessary and you know, when we look at these trends and I don't think everybody realizes that's strictly housing. Like we're not talking, restaurants that use a ton of water and wastewater. We're not talking any kind of other uses that are out there that are typically happening in our growing city, which we don't have. We haven't had a big influx of restaurants yet. And I think we're on the verge of that happening soon. And this could kick us into high gear on this. Know we could sit and say let's wait another six or twelve months to see what happens. I don't think we have that I think we're kind of at a our backs against the wall and we got to figure it out we have those cheaper options that we talked about all those options when we're at the wastewater treatment plant and It's really don't make sense. And this is one of those things that we go and we say well you know, we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and rebuild the engine rather than you know rather than replace it so I think this point we just need to replace it and go move forward so this is the right direction and I like going with the 5m GD because we talked about doing the two and a half but again long term if we grow too quickly we're gonna be in the same boat we're spending a lot more money too so it's construction costs yeah five years from now we're only gonna go up yeah yeah so I think this is the right right way to go um yeah I mean I This seems like the, I like this too, because again, if things get sideways with you guys, not saying it's going to, but if it does, I like having an out, I don't like saying, oh, we're stuck with this whole bill. So, um, also keeps them on their toes to make sure we're doing the right thing. They've been great partners. They've been doing good so far. So let's keep it up. Um, so yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

And I appreciate that. We're starting on a fairly, it's bigger than the 2.5, but a fairly conservative size. And then, but the option is already built in with the plan. to grow and expand in the future if need be, or we don't have to if it all stalls out where we're not stuck. And so I, I really appreciate so far what I've seen. And I, like Chad said, I do feel like a lot of times, we've been playing catch up. And I know some of the other surrounding towns, primarily one, I've seen fight growth and um it happens anyways and they're they're struggling they're always behind the eight ball trying to catch up and it's um if you it's it's been rough and it's been interesting to watch them so i really appreciate that we're trying to get ahead of this even though it is a tremendous amount of money um i mean all of us sitting up here in city limits will all be affected you know potentially but um I really appreciate the thought and the forethought into getting this going ahead of time and not trying to play catch up, like you said, and struggling. So thank you guys for all the work that's gone in so far and we'll go in and I appreciate it. Thank you.

It's inevitable that we're going to grow and we absolutely need this right now.

I agree kind of with everybody else. Long-term planning is key. And if we are planning not just for two years down the road or four years down the road, but 20, I mean, that's what we need to do across the board. And this is a good start.

Yeah. It's interesting. Like I said, I think about that when they say 25 and I'm like, they didn't have any idea the growth we were going to have. And it's like, oh crap. Now they're lucky. We got lucky that it lasted that long.

It was built in the year 2000, right?

Think it was right at 2000 2001.

Yeah, which we're what three four thousand people.

Yeah, I know it was next to nothing It's interesting how You folks in this world as you build these know this stuff when you know, we're looking at him like that seems crazy Yeah, it should last a hundred years, but how much we're doing so I think and it's like no you're right. You're right. I

the range along those lines I think it's important to note too that those those trend marks that we had for what you say two four and six percent four six and four six and eight thank you what was our growth last year do we have that number around 13 so the reality is we've averaged over the last five just under 11 percent right so it's It's a hard thing to predict, but the trends are that we've got five years of data at this point saying that this is a necessity and we're heading in that direction.

Again, that's without, I don't think people realize how much water and wastewater restaurants have. And those, as they stack up, can become a huge user. Any other questions or comments on this?

All right, I will entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number 15 as stated. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye.

Opposed? I think there was two of them, but no time. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0.

Jacob's got a lot tonight.

Covering for Allison, huh? Yes. Let's see. Number 16, consider approval of task order number 2026-01 with Merge Midwest for the survey and design of a temporary signal pole at the intersection of 183rd Street.

Thank you, Mayor. So this is Actually related to the upcoming traffic signal at 191st and 169 but with the Understanding that while that intersection is under construction it's it's going to push traffic elsewhere and One of those locations as you know, we fully anticipate 183rd and 169 seeing significantly more traffic than it does today and So to try to get out in front of that, be a little proactive instead of reactive, we want to look at and have talked with KDOT about putting a temporary traffic signal up at 183rd and 169 to be in use during the construction of the permanent signal at 191st and 169 with the hope that maybe it kind of begins to set travel habits and patterns and the hope is that with some future development that will grow into a permanent, the need for a permanent signal at 183rd, but right now we're talking about a temporary signal to help with the congestion that's going to come as a result of the work at 191st. The item before you is a task order. with Merge Midwest, a traffic engineer, for the survey and design of that temporary signal for 183rd and 169. The total dollar amount is $25,474. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

I don't have any questions, but I just want to say I'm really happy that KDOT is working with us on this. This was something that I was really concerned about, only because if you ever go to that west side of town that a lot of us don't hit, it's County Road between 191st and 199th, and that's a gravel road. So for that whole neighborhood of Dayton Creek, there is no good way to get across if we shut that cross section down. If we shove too many people to 175th, it can be probably even more detrimental. So this is going to give that alternate route on all paved roads. Like you said earlier, we're going to have a lot of students driving here. It's going to be a rough time of year to do this. But I think it's going to be a really helpful thing to have in the meantime. Again, a lot of development in that area, too, that kind of depended on a stoplight at that intersection. So I think even long term, it gives us an idea of what it looks like and if that's really going to work. And so I think it's kind of a twofold. It's going to be helpful. I know not everybody's in favor of having stoplights, but unfortunately that's just the option we have at this point. So I think this is a good thing. I'm really happy. I appreciate you guys really pushing on. I think Allison was really instrumental in this. So I know she's not here, but... Thumbs up to her for work credit.

Is this going to be a timed light, or is it going to have a sensor to detect if there's cars there waiting, or am I going to have to wait five minutes and then illegally run a red light?

That is part of what this task order is. One of the things that the traffic engineer will look at is what is the best timing you know, system and mechanism for that? Is it strictly, you know, timed on recall or is it, you know, are there sensors there? And that's that's part of of this task order is doing that that traffic engineering evaluation to see given the traffic levels and patterns, what's going to make the most sense. Awesome.

Is there not really for the 183rd, but is there a drawing or a design anywhere of what the light will look like? like the signals and things like at the at the intersection because I've been just clocked me my brain broke when I was trying to picture what all of the with the crossing and all the stoplights what it would look like and I remember seeing one for for this temporary signal or the permanent either of them so there we do have we do have drawings for the proposed signal at 191st with the permanent signal I don't have any drawings yet that

Most of the time, and again, the engineer will have to look at span distances and loads and things, but oftentimes these temporary signals are wood poles with a span wire all the way across and the signal is going to hang from them.

I just meant where the lights were going to be because they have entrances onto the highway. That's why I was trying to picture that in my brain, how that would work and

I would assume that after we approve this, we'll have all that information.

Yeah, because they haven't really given us a good... Where is that drawing for the one at 191st? That's what I'm saying.

We haven't really gotten one.

Oh, haven't even gotten that. Oh, okay.

That's what I'm saying. We haven't really gotten a good one because it's gone back and forth so many times.

Gotcha. Okay. I was afraid I was missing something.

And when KDOT took over, I think there's been even some more.

Perfect.

Okay.

Not as behind as I felt.

Yeah. And if we do move forward with this, how much would a temporary line cost us? Is it something that we're renting or something that we...

It would be purchased. I don't know that we necessarily rent it. Once those things are pulled out, there's minimal value left. I don't know. Again, I don't Seem like I don't have any answers for you, but again, part of this design effort will be to develop that engineer's estimate of cost as well.

I just say when this one's done, we swap it to another intersection and just tell Canada, we're just going to keep moving it. Have lights, we'll travel. Move this one 215th after, see how it goes. But yeah, no, I think this is a good move. I'm happy it's happening, especially during the construction portion because that was a big concern of mine. And so I think it'll be good. I think we'll see kind of how it works. I think, like, if you look at Gardner, they really struggled when those first came in. And every time I go over there, I think it's so much better than it used to be. So I know a lot of people still complain, but somebody's going to complain about everything. So I think at the end of the day, it just makes it a way better transition. Not necessarily that first one on the bridge, but... the one over kind of by like the timing as a whole. So I think just, yeah, with those turns, anything is going to be better. So I'm happy about it. Yep. Any other questions or comments? Nope. All right.

Time frame for the survey.

Um, they're the both survey and design. They're estimating to be completed by the beginning of October this year. So relatively short duration.

Perfect If no other questions or comments, I'll entertain a motion I move to approve agenda item number 16 as stated second motion in a second all those in favor aye opposed motion passes 5-0-0 All right now we're an item number 17 consideration of separation agreement of Lane Massey and that'll be Spencer Lowe our city attorney

All right. Thank you very much. Uh, we, the city recently terminated the employment agreement of its former city administrator, Lane Massey, part of that agreement, which was, uh, approved by the city back in October of 2025 as a separation payment. It's worked in the standard term for city administrator, city, city manager. Contracts statewide nationwide. Um, so the amount that was part of this as 12 months salary plus accrued vacation. That is the same amount that was in that agreement back in October of 2025 So sort of a sum already certain other than every year his salary changed a bit and then increased the numbers But other than that, this is a separation agreement that kind of outlines how that payment will go and then outlines Mr. Massey's some continued obligations to the city as far as Helping to ensure a smooth transition for our city administrator and interim assistant city administrator So other than that happy to answer any specific questions but it's in your packet and you've had a chance to review.

I don't have any questions. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Everything's fairly standard from my understanding, so I'm ready to move on. All right. If not, I will entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number 17 as stated. Second. We have a motion and a second.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. That concludes our formal action items, and we will move into, we have two discussion items tonight. The first one is fireworks. I don't know if we're going to have much of a back and forth. I did kind of want this one to be a little bit, if there was any public comment at the time. I know we had some during citizen participation, but basically this year was probably, in my opinion, one of the bigger years for fireworks. I think it was some of the least amount of days that we've had. uh, off the last couple of years. Cause we had one that was like seven days long. Uh, I think typically we try to handle these based off of giving two weekend nights for people to be able to shoot off fireworks. Um, so it's not as easy as I know we had a comment earlier of just doing the third, fourth and fifth. Sometimes it's not necessarily that easy. We could make it that easy, but that's not how we've looked at in the past. I think I had some concerns in certain areas of fireworks and it's, nothing outside of the legal limits that we have now. It's more about enforcing those legal limits. And so for me, I know, you know, we've had some complaints. We always have some complaints, right? And, uh, uh, as, as in large, you'll see the way that the fireworks displays happen. I think there's an overarching, uh, approval of them across the city and so really all we can do is say hey, these are issues that we saw or heard from our staff and take consideration of what the community members who don't care for them are and then Try to just make it a little bit better every year. So this was kind of we're close enough to it still We can talk about what we all saw individually what we heard from residents and kind of at least give some direction to I think made mainly to our police chief and and uh and to adam with captain captain khan and and mike and jacob just kind of what we're thinking for next year so that they can prepare and be ready for it so um a couple ideas i had kind of strict enforcement outside of the days we approve uh and the times we approve so you know i know this year there was i was driving down the street and it was 11 15 and i saw fireworks going on you know i'm like midnight Come on, guys. Like, we got plenty of time to do it. And if we come across that, you know, it's not a slap on the hand. I got a fireworks ticket when I was 17. It was a lot of money. I don't know how much we would put into place or how it is in place now, but believe me, I stayed within the guide rails, the guard rails after that. And so sometimes you need that. Sometimes we need to get a little bit stricter. So I think I wanted to get your guys' opinion and see what everybody thought. And this year, I know we all...

partake in our own ways and so I mean we're lucky that as a city we allow fireworks here and it just sucks that we have certain individuals that don't adhere to the rules and they ruin it for everybody else I wouldn't be opposed to throwing the book at them if they're doing it outside of the legal hours yeah yeah and I'd like to figure out

random people, citizens here in Spring Hill going to different streets instead of doing it in front of their house, going in front of other houses, whether they're trying to upset somebody or they're just picking a random cul-de-sac. Yeah, that's a little bit. I mean, because I think that's what's happening over there in the Blackhawk area is people are traveling over there, and that's a senior area, so they're doing it in front of their house.

Well, and I think one thing, too, is we probably need to – and, Chief, you can start speaking to this maybe – I've heard different things of the fire marshal says this, the fire department tells them this. What are our rules and regulations around where you fire, how you fire? State and city laws.

Thank you. My computer logged me out of my session here, so let me get back over here so I can guide you appropriately. Mr.

IT. He solved all my problems over here. I don't know.

Currently, one of the things that I heard mentioned in the public comment and then I've heard before governing body discuss is the idea of setting off fireworks or discharging fireworks on the street. Currently, our city ordinance under the code does allow for people to set fireworks off in the street. It currently prevents people from doing it in any gathering of persons in public parks, including golf courses and public parking lots of the city, unless the discharge is authorized by a display that you all approve. Within any building, that one seems pretty reasonable. And then from a moving car, doing it, setting them off in a car, so kind of obvious ones. I believe from historically, and Captain Kahn could speak to this if I misspeak or Spencer, but I believe there was a provision in the code before setting fireworks off on public roadways. And it was somehow removed, whether that was by accident or intentionally, I don't know. That was probably before this council was governing the city. So that would be something, if you wanted to consider, I would just throw that out there to you, is that currently we can't enforce anybody setting fireworks off on a public street. If you wanted to confine it to private property or things like that, that would probably be something that would have to be update to the city ordinance I heard another thing I just wanted to kind of mention while I was up here that the fire department prohibits the discharge of firearms or a discharge of fireworks sorry I'm sure they would just disapprove of firearms Yeah, but that particular part of the code is a statewide restriction and it's only enforceable by the fire marshal. So we don't have jurisdiction under that particular code that I've heard several of our community members refer to. It's just not something that we have the ability to enforce and there's not very many fire marshals in the, uh, in the state that are probably, you know, making that concentration. So, so it's good to have backup. Um, but, um, but yeah, that's something else that I just wanted to make you aware of is that that's something that is in the, in the state regulations, but it's not anything that the police department can enforce. And typically from my perspective, this year we did take, I will admit that we did take a more probably relaxed approach to fireworks enforcement. That is kind of the environment that I felt like the governing body wanted us to take on this particular issue. And so if it's your direction next year that we do a more strict enforcement of fireworks, the fireworks times, we can certainly do that. I will let you know that we did have 26 total calls for service for fireworks. This is between June 24 and July 5. 17 of those were taken before fireworks were legally able to be set off in the city. And a majority of those occurred in the evening, um, when, uh, when we were getting those calls and then during the legal time of, of, uh, uh, being able to discharge them, we received 14 of them. And so, and most of those were, um, more due to noise. In fact, all of them were mainly due to Either they were setting them off before it was legal to do so, or when it was legal to do so, it was because of the noise, not necessarily because of after hours. We had three calls for service that involved after hours complaints. Now, that could just be that people just didn't feel like they wanted to call the police because there were so many people setting them off that they didn't think that we would be able to get to them, or maybe they just didn't want to call us. But we did only receive three calls for service that happened after 2300 hours or 11 p.m. at night. And one of those calls that was in that 13 was because a dog ran off because of the fireworks. So there was one animal situation. But that kind of gives you a summation of what we dealt with when it came to the fireworks.

Chief, do you have any historical numbers from the years past? How does that stack up compared to the last two years or so?

Yeah, I apologize. I don't have those numbers. But what I'm told, and maybe Captain could speak to this, but I think it's pretty similar to our past studies. Yeah, pretty steady. Adam, can you speak to was this year's calls for service about similar to past years, what we dealt with?

Yeah, and I'll add the caveat that those 26 calls were responded to calls. We had several because of our kind of lower posture on them where we took those reports by phone. Those are catted as telephone calls, so it was hard to distinguish those from actual fireworks calls. But there were probably another couple dozen of those that were likely fireworks calls that are catted as telephone calls. Years past, we're pretty similar with that. You know, we've had fires related to, we had two vehicle fires last year and one house fire. And then the calls, I think last year was the year that we had kind of the extended time. So we got a lot more calls two years ago. So that year was probably the highest volume, but part of that was because people either didn't know that the time was extended or were just kind of getting tired of it by the time we got to the 4th and 5th of July. but I think if we're averaging it out with the way that we enforced it this year, we're probably right on par. Yeah.

Do you know if the calls were like more region specific, whether it was more Miami versus Johnson or, you know, yeah, this was a very, um, I didn't do a real deep dive into the data, but most of them seem to be in the original down town, the old town, I think is what, um, we refer to it as. Um, and then there were several that were south of 215. Um, so I think the majority of them were in the old town and then a little bit south of 215. Okay.

Chief, is there a way to even just put up signs or something in, um, Like when Linda spoke, is there any way, because they just have in those villas, I believe it's just one, maybe two streets in there. Is there a way to put signs up for no fireworks to try and enforce that around the assisted living communities? Any?

Mean we could the property owners would be responsible for putting those signs up But then they would just call us and and really we were probably looking at other ordinance violations besides fireworks. It would be Trespassing or you know stuff like that if they weren't allowed to be on someone's private property setting off fireworks So it could apply to other city ordinances that we could We and we could work with

Communities to I would think more multifamily communities would that would be helpful to do I don't know about neighborhood Yeah, because I saw at the apartments there off of 226 I believe they have the no-firework signs and stuff like that I but I That's property owner not.

Yeah, they have those roads, so that's where it's a little bit different. Oh, gotcha. Public street.

And we could ban it from there.

Oh, okay. Well, yeah, I don't know how that works. Could we do certain areas? That might be a Spencer question that they're not allowed. Yeah, that might be a Spencer. It's titled that.

Sorry, we were looking at Devon. Say that again.

Do we have the ability to not allow fireworks in certain areas of town? Certain streets. Certain streets. Be more specific.

I think you could work that out. Because the Kansas admin regs say not on the public right-of-way, right? So, I mean, I think it would be easy to exempt out certain parts of town as no fireworks. I mean, enforcement's a back end.

of problem to sort through but yeah you could specifically isolate out almost like i think that's more of like if if the apartment building like say they're banning it and they came to us today can you ban the street that everybody goes out onto to do it because we don't want near the apartments at all and i think he also owns all those duplexes if he says hey i don't want them in my area at all yeah whether we agree with that or not like i'm just wondering if that is something we could do

I think he typically puts out signs.

I know he doesn't, and for the apartments, yeah.

I mean, that boils down to simple enforcement activity. If he calls specifically as a property owner and makes a complaint that people are using his private property, I feel like that's something that you guys would have the ability to enforce.

I'm talking more the public street, the one that's outside of, that's where I guess a lot of people will go back there and do it.

Well, and the villas that she was talking about are connected.

Yeah, those are still public streets, yeah.

And so...

I think those are private streets.

Yeah, the road that goes to the villa, that's what we were looking at. Oh, that is a private street? You had asked about signage in that area. That would be on them because we were just trying to determine is that a private road or a public road. It appears to be a private road. Oh, really?

Yeah. Interesting. So kind of with all this being said, I've got some ideas that I think would be like effective ways to kind of pursue this. We've got a whole year to... to kind of spitball and bounce some of these ideas off of each other, but we've got our new committee that's set up. I feel like community improvement falls in the line of how do we make holidays more engaging, more fun for people. We did a really good job. I think you and the rec specifically did a great job engaging some of the local volunteer groups When it came time for storm cleanup and things like that, I think that if we started tapping the city for the people, the young people specifically, who are looking for opportunities to volunteer and be part of the community, a citywide cleanup day after the 4th of July, specifically targeting these areas where we've got retirement communities that aren't able to do some of the harder things like cleaning their pools. Cleaning up their backyards their roofs I think getting young men and women out there to help their community and see if there are opportunities where we can get Get that organized. I think would be a fantastic use of that committee's that committee's time potentially some education opportunities for our PD to give everybody a brief overview of here is what the city ordinances read have between Facebook, Instagram, and all the other social media platforms we use have worked with Jenna to put together some Here's how we want you to be able to have fun this year. Here's the rules. Here's where you can do your things. Putting together some kind of a citywide education campaign I think would be a really, really effective way of trying to at least garner some compliance with our rules as a whole. I think you hit the nail on the head. The sheer volume that we were able to reach in Spring Hill The best consensus we can have for any decision we make here that Spring Hill loves their fireworks I think one of my one of the saddest things that I feel like as we've had people come up and talk about this is They they really they to me it seemed like they felt like they weren't Being listened to they weren't being respected. They weren't being cared about and To me that that's people that are not necessarily feeling like they're welcome in the community they live in so I don't think there's any any law that we can set here that's gonna make somebody feel connected our community but sending volunteers and people to help them willing to to go through and help them work on some of those complaints and make it more tolerable if nothing else I think might go miles to helping them feel like they're more part of the community and that's that's the whole point of the fourth of july in my opinion when it comes here celebrating together as a community our independence and all the freedoms that we do have and as you look up to our northern uh our northern uh brothers and sisters in johnson county um it is getting more and more and more locked down um it's getting more and more restricted there's less and less of a sense of community people are becoming more and more separated there's more rules dictating you can do this here you can't do this here you got to stay away from this and i just don't want for me i don't want spring hill to get to the point where we can't yeah be a community because the minute you start legislating and dictating what you can and can't do where and when you can't that's when people stop gathering because it's so complicated yeah Um, so I think we've got some resources in hand that are probably untapped and I'm, I'm excited to see what they can come up with. And I think that that's a, I think the foresight was there that we can, we can start to engage that committee and find some creative ways to make people feel more sound or more heard.

Hey chief. I know this is a big ask for you to do as far as, uh, enforcing everything within the city. Will you have enough manpower to enforce this throughout? the fourth season?

I mean, yes, it'll take some overtime. Yeah, we'll have to do some overtime. Because we'll have to, you know, probably have two people just dedicated to handling those kind of calls and then, but yes, I think we can handle it without any problem.

And then as far, I know when I worked in Ottawa, if we found somebody lighting off fireworks illegally, we would confiscate the rest of their fireworks. Would that be something that we would do here or would it just be a citation?

Yeah, typically we'd have to work through that. But yes, um, if we found somebody discharging fireworks illegally, usually we would confiscate those. We're going to have to develop a program to safely dispose of those. So I do have some familiarity with that from my previous organization and how we dealt with fireworks and how we kept what we needed to just show for the court that this is a sample of what they had and then we had a safe place to store them until they could be disposed of properly.

So since they aren't Necessarily illegal. It's more of a Outside of allowed time.

Well, we'd still want to confiscate or will we just want to take evidence of I think it would be Kind of like a case-by-case basis, you know it we didn't want to have some flexibility and we wouldn't have a Hard and fast rule because you might have you know an adult who's legally able to to possess fireworks but they're just setting them outside the the normal hours that would be a ticket and a And a warning. If you have a juvenile, someone under 18 who's not being supervised and they're setting them off, then that might be a part where we confiscate the fireworks.

I think so, yeah. So, yeah, I'm in that realm of, you know, because we obviously allow to purchase prior to the shoot-off date. I think if maybe you've got some sitting out in the street and it's the day before, those get confiscated. They're not supposed to be out here and you're actively trying to light them. they've got them all in the garage and they had one out there and hey you know i think that's a different scenario so i think yeah if if we keep a good generalization i wouldn't want to get too crazy with confiscating if we don't have to only because now if it's bottle rockets or whatever then i think that's yeah things that are primitive yeah sure um i'm in full support of having additional officers on duty throughout that time frame um giving them autonomy to be a little bit more strict in those time frames that it's not allowed especially the days before i think that was probably the biggest issue i don't there was fewer and farther between after the fifth it was the it was the time leading up it was a couple days before that we got you know more issues sure um so that would be where my support lies is i think we we start issuing citations for it i think we you know we know we do the education portion and i'm sure a lot of it's going to have to do with how people are oh i really i thought today we could already because i bought them today

a different conversation then it's america i'll do what i want well yeah yeah right and i think i could have done a better job of getting the word out no no and you just give you any direction you were responding to our requests we were all excited about the the same thing so it's it's if anybody's to blame it's on this side of the aisle today i think something that would be beneficial too is all the fireworks stands if we have a giant poster that says what time it is i've seen small tiny ones yeah

Nobody ever reads those if you have a big one like hey go between the second third fourth and fifth That might help alleviate a lot of the I would entertain using Use that we have a fund specific to the City Council for specific things so for that that holiday may be printing out as People as our vendors come in to get their permits We send them the signage that we need them to set up with is that certain size or something?

So yeah

something large and visible that we provide to them as vendors, since they're, you know, they're coming and bringing us all the goods, something that we can give to them and say, well, this is our education piece that we'd like you to put out. Um, so everybody knows as they're purchasing clear as day, this is what the city expects of you. Yeah.

I think that's a great idea for when they get their permit, they get that sign too.

Yeah. I'm for all that kind of stuff because that's half the battle. No, he's at the battle. Yeah. Just getting the information out there is everything.

Yeah.

Great.

And then, uh, my last thing, actually I got two more things. Um, As far as banning it from the street, doing it on private property, I think that's a bad idea because now you're going to have fireworks closer to the house, and now we're going to need the fire department to come out and take care of some fires. So I hope we don't want to go that route. And then clean up, we do something about 24 hours or 12 hours after the day that needs to be done because I've seen some places a couple days after, and there's still debris out in the street.

I think that's a little tough only because if it's constant for three or four days, you know, it's after the last.

Oh, after like the fifth. Yeah, no, that's and I would assume that there are already laws in place that prevent people from putting things in the middle of the road and leaving there unattended. Right.

Yeah, I believe there. I mean, I'm sure there is littering and other other things that we could, uh,

we can enforce if we need to. So I feel like we've got some options there that don't require any additional ordinances, just about kind of focusing on the priorities and what enforcement we want to pursue.

And I think, again, it's like you said, it's the information we put out too. Hey, you know, you've got 24 hours to clean up. If you need help, this is an avenue that we've got. We've put together to say, even if it's not yours, you know, that's the big thing too is that I know that was the biggest complaint was, None of it was mine. A couple of Facebook posts I got screenshotted to me where somebody going to come pick up their fireworks in my yard. I'm like, you know.

And that's, again, that's that sense of community that we need to develop. Because in my neighborhood, we don't all spend a lot of time together. But when it comes time to clean up from the 4th of July, we get out there with brooms and we clean it up.

I mean, my neighbor across the street from us, she never comes out on the 4th, and when we blow stuff up, it's all in her driveway, and we go back straight over.

Yeah, I did the same thing for my neighbor across the street. It's common decency, and I think doing the things we can to encourage that, I think, is a good way to handle this.

All right, well, I think you got more? Sorry, go for it.

How do we feel about changing the time? Because, you know, 8 o'clock is a little early, even though I do enjoy going out at 8 in the morning and lighting off the loudest mortar I can find.

I mean, if you're up all night doing them, are you going to be up early doing them?

No, just the first.

No, I mean, I always, I'm a 12 to 11 kind of guy anyway. So I think if we said, hey, it's a, even if it's 11 to 11, I give 12 hours a day. I don't know if there's really a reason. be lighting them off that early. I mean, you can't even really see it. If it's more of you're doing it, it sounds like we have people doing it to cause a problem. Right. Because I can. Yeah. So that's where I'd be open to a later start time.

I think it's reasonable. I'm not... I, again, I grew up having the ability to shoot off fireworks when I wanted to. And on the 4th of July, specifically, that was my entire 6 a.m. That was as soon as mom said it was okay to start annoying her. I started blowing stuff up. So I just, I want to make sure that whatever we're doing, we're not being overly restricted. We're not removing the spirit of what makes Spring Hill special.

Well, I think we look at things like, you know, pools open at 10 typically. I mean, I think 10 is a fairly fair time to do that. people aren't necessarily sleeping typically at 10 a.m but you can have a nice quiet morning on your porch if you'd like before the order goes off right next door yeah yeah i think it's reasonable yeah so i think yeah we can definitely look at that next year as far as uh yeah time limits a lot of these again we can talk about it now and the next year rolls around like what did we say yeah so i have my notes oh yeah so we'll see uh kind of how that goes but i think that's a good Just of giving, especially for me, for Captain and Chief to say, next year let's plan for more enforcement. We can get that word out too this year. It's not going to be as much of a slap on the hand.

The most information we can put out as early as possible will help out a lot.

I just don't see as a whole that we have any kind of consensus from the community that they would like to stop fireworks. No, not at all.

The only thing that I would say for anybody watching is if you do live in an apartment, villa, anything like that, contact your landlord, contact the business manager or the property manager and let them know that, you know, you'd like signs out because if it's private street, we obviously can't do anything. Police can't do anything, but your property manager can. So contact them.

And that we're, we are going to beef up enforcement and that is something that we take serious. We're going to try and put some things into place that we have, community groups that will help with cleanup if needed. And I think addressing those issues first and seeing if we can, uh, at least, uh, minimize the bad apples.

I'm just kind of thinking along those lines. I mean, we don't have a designated city location for people to shoot off. What about having a designated city location where the apartment complex, they can go light stuff off or You know, so we don't have this influx of people coming in and shooting them off on the roads that they're not supposed to because they don't live there.

Yeah. But chief, do you have any recommendations there or is there anything Spencer that we're just worried about? Probably some legal case over there and then just, yeah.

I mean, as chief walks up, there's some risk management side of that, of maybe over packing or finding the right location that the city owns to allow people to shoot off safely. That doesn't otherwise violate our state admin regs or the fireworks code. So. I think that's something to explore, but I have a little bit of hesitation on telling everyone go shoot off your fireworks in this one block area.

Which we didn't have this happen here, but where I'm from, fireworks are illegal. and everything around it is illegal. So no matter where you live, you walk across the street with your box of fireworks, and you do them in front of my house, and there's no rules outside of these are the ones you can do, and then they leave. And so that would be a concern here. I think that's where Mike's getting at is if people are doing that, luckily I haven't seen them on my cul-de-sac, but I could see on a thoroughfare where somebody could be like, oh, this looks like a fairly open spot. I'm going to stop and... do fireworks here and then leave. Um, I don't know if there's a way to even minimize that at all or we have to say you have to live near where you're shooting them off at.

Which, how could you?

That's the hard part.

I, I, I agree with, with Spencer and I also think another, issue that may come up is if there's a designated spot you may invite people from outside of the city to come here and not that that's a bad thing because we obviously know that friends and family invite other family and friends to come over and shoot fireworks off in in the city of spring hill but if you have that designated spot it may um create a create another problem there that we don't anticipate with others from outside of the city coming for just that purpose so

Gotcha. Okay.

Thank you, Chief.

Fair. Thank you. Captain Cullum.

Yeah. Thanks for all the info. Like I said, it's not a, I don't think it's a cut and dry issue. I think there's caveats and there may be things every year like, hey, this is a new thing that popped up and how do we address it? I like your outlook of we don't want to overregulate anything. I'm never a huge fan of that too much. I think there's sometimes we have to. Right. Again, it's a smaller minority of people that are upset about it, but how can we make it better for them without stopping what we're doing outside of that? Again, I did think this year seemed a little bit heavier. I don't know, Adam, did you have more sales this year or was it about the same?

It was a great year. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so it seems like there was more done this year than typical, but. I think that's more of, we just have more people, so we're going to see more of them.

I have family members that still are dressed head to toe in two 50 year. They take it very seriously. Yeah.

All right. Anything else anybody wants to talk about? I think this gives us a good walking to get us to, we typically address this in what month, like in March, April is kind of when we start talking about timeframes and a lot of stuff. Glenda, what do you think? You've been here longer. Amy's shaking her head yes. It's about March, April typically we start talking about it. It's been a long time. I think we start taking it a lot more serious at that point and we say, hey, these are the things we talked about last year and take it from there.

Time to let Rhonda.

All right, let's move on so we can at least hear what Rhonda has to say. I don't know the process. The 2027 budget.

I'm gonna take one for the team, people. Mayor, you guys have covered a lot of ground tonight and you have covered a lot of heavy topics tonight. I am prepared to go forward and talk about budget. I'm also okay if you prefer to table this until the next meeting when it's not 1045 and you've worked really hard tonight. The next meeting is the public hearing, so I will be doing a budget presentation. and I can roll into it the things I was going to cover with you tonight. We could also do it as an open forum, and you have questions or something specific, or you can say, hey, table it, we'll do it next time. So I'm just looking at the time.

Could you give some highlights about what you wanted to talk about tonight?

I'm sorry, I said something wrong. You have the next meeting, the public hearing is September 10th.

Oh, then we're good.

So we could cover it next time.

The only thing that I think if we have anybody who has like something pressing, I had one thing I would like to address only to give you some direction going into the next couple. Was there anybody else have anything or was there any pressing subjects you thought we need to touch on tonight?

I think the one thing is and I gave all of you and if the public would like a copy, I have a number here. I gave you the copy. This is what will be in the paper and it'll be out I think on Wednesday or soon. It won't have a color coding on it, but you could get questions I don't know that you've ever had council member has ever gotten a question But I wanted you to have a copy of it for yourselves and I kind of highlighted the things people might ask about like Why did the general why is the general fund spending four million dollars more this year than they did last year and I Those answers are straightforward because we budget to spend all the cash, but we don't really spend it Yeah, and so we bumped the budget so you have the authority to to spend every penny if you need to. And so some things like that. But the big key is what's going in the paper is the same mill levy. You can approve a mill levy lower than that. You can't go above it. And I know you don't have the plan to go above it. So I'm comfortable putting it in the paper this way.

Think some quick questions. I had okay then to give the staff some direction. I want to get some feedback from all of you is I would like to address We've been talking about for years now to have a larger reserve fund than I think is necessary and I I wanted to see where everybody else's thought is typically most cities are 25 to 30 percent a reserve fund of their revenue and

of their total budget total budget an expense budget expense budget and so what is our expense budget for 27 roughly or 26 I guess you need to go by fund because the full budget is 39 million dollars yeah so I'm talking about your general reserve fund right your general fund is about 13 million but when you take out the cash and this and that it's about a nine million dollar nine to ten million so you need and what do we

What do we typically try to run or where have we been percentage-wise or where are we at percentage-wise?

Our goal was about 50%, so somewhere between 30 to 50.

Where are we sitting now?