City Council - Regular Meeting

Lord, I lift up this council to you, God. I pray for each member that you would just give them wisdom and understanding. I pray for your blessing on each person and on our city for your protection and your presence here. I pray for your kingdom to come and your will to be done in Spring Hill as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen.

Madam Clerk, please take the roll.

Mr. Theron?

Here.

Mrs. Craveer? Here. Mr. Grant? Here. Mr. Grant is...

He's on the phone.

Yeah, he's on the telephone just for the audience. Mr. Delgado?

Here.

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

Thank you. Next up, we have our approval of the agenda. We don't have any requested changes at this time, so I will entertain. Yes, we have one. We're gonna delete the executive session that's listed on there So that we do have one change So I will entertain a motion. I move to approve tonight's agenda as amended Second we have a motion a second all those in favor aye opposed Opposed motion passes 5-0-0. I always forget the phone they take forever to respond Thanks, Mike Next up, we've got our announcements and reports. I don't necessarily have any announcements tonight. We'll just move on to PJ. No reports tonight. James? No report. Kendra?

I don't have much. I am going to be gone out of the country for the next meeting. So I just wanted to mention that on September 25th, 26th, and 27th, we'll be having our Spring Hill Fall Festival. On Friday night, we have a cornhole tournament at the Spring Hill Rec Ball Fields there by Sonic. And they'll be playing the homecoming football game. The Rec puts that on so you can sign up. At the rec website and then on Saturday we have the parade on Webster Craft and vendor fair at the park and then at the ball fields Saturday night we have a music festival with three bands and a kids zone and Food trucks and a beer garden and then on Sunday we have the craft festival In the park again, and we're showing the Chiefs game on the big screen and we'll have food trucks and stuff So come on out and support and hopefully the weather will be great Always a lot of fun

Ivan.

Yeah, tomorrow is going to mark 25 years since the terrorist attack on 9-11. The Spring Hill football team and some of the members over there are going to be doing something to honor the vets. I'm sure some of you have seen it on Facebook. If you haven't, contact me. I can forward the information to you. The veterans will be able to get into the game for free and they will be Honoring all the veterans, so please come out for that tomorrow All right, thanks Ivan Mike do you have anything for us?

All right, thank you Mike Malin

Sorry, I need longer arms and longer legs, just in general. Yeah, I just have one thing. I wanted to let the governing body know and the public know that we have a wonderful engineering staff. And we have a lot of projects we've put on to them to do, from capital projects, sewer projects, street projects, and all of our development reviews. So we see the need to get some assistance for that, especially in the development review side, which can be very technical in nature in those reviews. And a good review is very time consuming. And frankly, right now, we don't have the staff to be able to dedicate to that. So I'm going to be working with Jacob and Allison to identify some of our on-call consultants that we have that we brought forward to you earlier this year. to see if some of them can provide services for those initial technical reviews. So we're going to be reaching out to them to get a ballpark on costs. But also, more importantly, I think, is their approach to development review. trying to find solutions that work for the city and our community, and also their ability to handle the workload, their technical expertise, capabilities, and also their ability to handle the timelines that we want to make sure to be able to get development applications through to the planning commission and then before you in a timely manner. So just want to make you aware of that. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me, Jacob or, or Alison. But, um, that, that could be something that comes back before you or you may start seeing, um, technical reviews that come in from, from a consultant at some point. Um, in terms of trying to figure out where that need was, um, Development applications kind of come and go and so rather than just putting a consultant on call or something to help with our project management of our capital projects Which would be very expensive I think because that would be a full-time thing We could utilize these services the way we do for building plan review for example to really just be there when we need it And so just want to make you aware of that again. If you have any questions, please feel free to

Well, I think that's a good thing, because it gives us a barometer, because we've talked about adding engineers in the future. So it'll give us, once they're kind of being used more often than not, I think it lets us know that we're ready for that position. So this is, I think, a good jump point to do that. And I know Allison's got all the projects that she's working on, along with great wins in the grant section. So I'm all for this. I think that's a great plan, because I want to make sure we're not holding up our developers as they're trying to. And I want to make sure we're not cutting corners in any way to get that done. So I'm for that. Anything else?

No.

All right. Thank you. Spencer?

No report.

Chief?

Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to add on to what Councilman Delgado had mentioned. I want to publicly say thank you to the service members who are currently serving and who have served since we are celebrating or remembering, I should say, 9-11 and 25th year anniversary of that. And I also want to recognize those first responders. who have also served during that time or lost their lives during that time. And I'll be over at Overland Park as a part of their memorial remembrance ceremony in the morning just to recognize the 9-11 day. And so I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that to know that they know we remember. Thank you, Chief. Allison.

couple of project updates, so we have scheduled a public meeting for the 223rd street loop trail, we are currently working on the survey of that and the preliminary engineering design it's going to include the layout for where we want where we think the best location is for the trail. around the loop of Webster, Victory, and 223rd Street. So we have scheduled that for Wednesday, October 21st. I know that is like several weeks out, but I wanted to get it out there now. I will be talking about it in the next two meetings to try to get the word out about that. We'll start having flyers. We'll post it on social media. Likely it'll be 5 to 7 p.m. and it will be at the community center. We wanted to try to have it in Miami County since it is a Miami County project. For the 199th Street project, the contractor continues to work, not today because it was raining, but they are planning on working on the entrance to Norton, which is the only entrance to the Prairie Ridge subdivision. We realized that. We are working very closely with the contractor to make sure that the residents will have access at all times. during the construction. So what they'll do is they will rip out the existing entrance and they will work on constructing that a half at a time so that they will have traffic control through flagging and other traffic control measures so that residents can get in and out of the subdivision safely and have uninterrupted access in and out of their subdivision during that construction. That work should start on Monday. I'm told it's only a couple of days so I'm not gonna hold them to that but hopefully it'll be done next week.

Thanks and also I know we had some concerns about the speed signs and stuff like that I know Jacob and she jumped all over that so I thank you guys for for working with quickly on it. Rhonda.

Good evening I have a couple of quick items I left for each of you and and the staff members that are here, the July financial snapshot. I wanted the public to know it's available online on the city's website. We keep them for several years, usually about five years worth of data. People often talk about the debt of the city and how much do we owe on the police station? How much do we owe and that's all reported every month on page five It only changes a couple times a year when we make debt payments, which we did recently Also at the end here of the Aquatic Center's season We're getting this is probably close to final on their results. They had a pretty good year out there Revenue above Target which is a great thing. I think it was a good summer at the Aquatic Center The second thing I just wanted to report quickly on was I did make contact with Evergy a couple of times since our last meeting over the light at... Foxwood. Thank you, Foxwood Ranch. And the short answer is they referred me to the south office of Evergy and the person I needed is out of town. And so we've done the work we can do. We're just waiting on Evergy. But the short answer is we don't have that light up yet and I'm waiting for Evergy to give us a plan.

Great, thank you for the update. Linda. All right. Jacob, you're next up.

Just one quick project update. The sidewalk project on Madison and Harrison, There's about 200 feet of sidewalk left to complete on Harrison. Found a gas line that was in conflict with that sidewalk, very, very shallow gas line. We're waiting for Atmos to come back with their plan to relocate or not, but just to tell us what they're going to do with that gas line so then we know how and when to proceed with the sidewalk work. Similarly, because the contractor was not able to continue work on the sidewalk, they pulled off, sent their crews to work on other projects. There's some of the cleanup work on the Madison side has yet to be done as well. So once they're able to finish pouring all the sidewalk, then they'll come back and do the rest of the backfill, the turf restoration and things like that. It's not finished yet, but also the contractor has not submitted a pay application, hasn't asked for any payment for all the work they've done so far. So we're just in a holding pattern right now.

So we still have some leverage is what you're saying. Yes. Make sure it's done. Yeah. Has Atmos given you any kind of ETA on when they'll decide?

They haven't given us an ETA yet. I will say this with cautious optimism. We did a couple days ago see some line locate markings, fresh line locate markings in that area that we're hopeful means that they are close to doing some work there, but they haven't communicated anything to us. That's speculation based on what we're seeing on the ground. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Just drove by there. It looks great. I saw somebody walking on it, so...

All right, any other announcements or reports before we move on? All right, we will now move on to citizen participation. We have our first person up is Brooklyn Peterman. Could you say your name and your address for us?

Brooklyn Peterman and 17219 West 197th Place. Jump right in whenever you're ready. Hi, my name is Brooklyn Peterman, and I'm 14 years old and a freshman at Spring Hill High School. When I was eight, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia July 10th of 2020. I went through two and a half years of treatment, and I'm proud to say I'm six years cancer free. September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I was able to do a fundraiser with Spring Hill High School this past Friday, September 4th, to raise money for Braden's Hope and a Gold Out Night. I was a little bit about Braden's Hope. This is an organization for childhood cancer that raises money for the research. Did you know that 4% of the money is given to childhood cancer research? That's insane and way too low of a number. It means so much to me that I get to be able to help raise money for Braden's Hope. I was able to raise $3,500 and I'm hoping to raise more before the 2026 Hope Gala on October 3rd where I'll be presenting the money to them. Thank you for your time and have a great rest of your evening.

All right. Thank you very much. And I think she's going to have some signs throughout town.

Absolutely.

Different businesses and areas like that. Whoever's willing to put those up for the rest of this month, right?

Appreciate that, yep, absolutely.

Yeah, make sure to stop along Blackhawk by Price Shopper there. We'll put stuff out. Excellent.

Thank you. Do you have something circulating through Facebook or anything like that, Chris? We have, yes. Okay, so find it on your page.

Yes. Okay, put that up and we'll all try to share it as we can. Very good. Also from the school side, Link Luttrell, very, very helpful. Thank you to him and also Clay Fregon. So thanks very much to both of them for their help. helping Brooklyn set this up for the Friday night football game.

Well, and I know I've been watching from afar for years now through your grandpa. He always comes and talks about it, and you've been doing a lot of great things. So we're all proud of you for watching.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you. Congratulations on six years cancel free.

All right. Next up we have Sarah Grady.

Sarah Grady, 15690 West 199th Street. Good evening, mayor and council members. In the spirit of the comp plan open house tonight, I wanted to come and as we discuss the future vision for Spring Hill, I would ask that you make a clear decision about the area surrounding our homes around Renner, Lackman, 199th and 191st, and to keep it rural residential. The approximately 300 acres is surrounded by families who chose to live here because this is a rural residential area. We built homes, invested our properties, and want to raise our kids here. We planned our futures based on the character and land use expectations that existed when we made those decisions. A comprehensive plan should provide predictability. It should tell residents, property owners, developers, and future councils, this is where residential belongs, this is where commercial belongs, and this is where industrial development belongs. If every piece of undeveloped land is viewed primarily as an opportunity for commercial or industrial development, then rural residential zoning becomes little more than a temporary placeholder. And once that area becomes industrial, it's extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, as we know, to restore the rural residential character that once existed. We understand that our city will grow. We would like it to grow. We are not asking the city to stop growth. We are asking you to plan growth thoughtfully. Industrial and commercial development should be directed toward areas that are appropriate for those uses. Areas with compatible nearby properties and appropriate separation from existing and established residential communities. There also needs to be a meaningful transition between intensive development and families homes. Our homes should not become the buffer zone for industry. The comprehensive plan is an opportunity to protect what already works while deciding where future growth belongs. Rural residential areas can provide something valuable to a growing city, provides open space, larger lots, natural areas, lower density housing, wildlife habitat, and a different quality of life than residents can find in a subdivision or commercial corridor. That diversity should be considered as an asset, not simply undeveloped land waiting for a more intensive use. Property rights matter. The owner of the 300 acres near my home has rights, but so do the hundreds of people who own property around it and made substantial investments based on the expectation that they were living in a rural residential community. Good planning balances those interests. It does not allow one property to fundamentally redefine an entire surrounding area. 20 or 30 years from now, people will live with the decisions you make in this comprehensive plan. And land use map especially is what I'm speaking to. Please create a future land use map that clearly protects established rural residential areas and directs commercial and industrial growth to locations where those uses belong. Growth and preservation do not have to be opposites. A strong city can have both. Please keep our area rural residential. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. That was all we had signed up for tonight. Was there anyone else who would like to come and speak? Come on up, Jason.

Sorry, I forgot to sign up.

That's all right. Say your name and address.

Jason O'Kane. 18804 Skyview Lane, Foxwood Ranch development. I think 191st Street pavement looks great. All that stuff got completed and looks like it got striped and everything like that. I think it looks great. I think that was a good project. I just wanted to say that because I was driving down it today. Another thing I wanted to bring up was, I talked a little bit about it last time I was up here, was solicitors. And one of the reasons why I'm talking about it is because we had an issue this last week with a solicitor. We had one that was canvassing our neighborhood for the entire week, hitting house after house after house. And when I say this, I say in the evening time. There was lots of reports from my neighborhood where he was coming at 8.45, 9 o'clock at night. He would also come multiple times to houses if he couldn't actually make contact with you. So if you talked to him through your ring doorbell, generally he would come back. And a day or two later, my neighbor reported him coming three times to their house. When you start getting that, that's borderline harassment. When you're coming at 8.45, 9 o'clock at night, that's not only against city ordinance, but that's, I mean, questionable on what your intentions are, especially this day and age. Um, I know the city does have ordinances against that seven o'clock at the time. Um, you know, but at the same time, like it's from what I've found, it's, it's hard to enforce. If you call the police, which we did, they came out and made contact, but they didn't know the circumstances. So they just told the guy to leave. And he said he was finishing up some appointments, which I guarantee you, he had no appointments in the neighborhood. because they know what they can say, they know what they can get away with, because they deal with it all the time. And then he didn't stop. When we called the police again, they came back out, and he was already gone. which was unfortunate because, you know, maybe, maybe a citation could have been, you know, submitted and might've stopped him for future, you know, you know, maybe I should be paying attention to these times. I mean, if he was doing it during the times I can't, you know, can't say anything. It's just annoying. You know what I mean? Like we all have solicitors come to our house and most of the time it is annoying, but when they start breaking those, breaking the laws that we have in place knowingly, you know, that's when it becomes a problem. Um, There's a lot of things you can do to try to combat solicitors. I mean, we have those, and what we have in place, I've heard other cities doing type of permits and stuff like that, but all I see is that just costs money to manage stuff like that, because you'd have to have the permits, you'd have to have the list, they'd have to come in and get it. That's just time and effort. In my opinion, that's not necessary. One thing that I'm thinking is I don't see a plus side to having solicitors. in a city. Now, when I say that, I don't mean religious groups. I don't mean Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts. I don't mean charity organizations that are wanting funding and stuff like that. I'm talking about businesses that work in deception. And that's what they do. They try to deceive people. They tell you, well, we're not selling you anything. We'll drop your free stuff right at the end of my driveway then. I'll look at it later. But that's never the case. I don't know if we can go with an outright ban on solicitors. That's what I would push for, be my suggestion. But I think it's something that we should talk about because it is a big problem in some of these neighborhoods. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's complained about it. So I just want to give you guys something to think about. Thank you. Perfect.

Thanks. Thank you. All right, anyone else would like to come speak? If not, I'm going to go ahead and close citizen participation. Next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. And tonight, we don't have any requested changes, but we are going to vote on this as a roll call. So does anybody have any comments or questions on the consent agenda? If not, I will entertain a motion, and then we'll have Ms. Garrity take the roll. I move to approve tonight's consent agenda.

Second.

A motion and a second. Miss Garrity?

Mr. Delgado?

Yes.

Mr. Savage?

Yes.

Mr. Throne? Yes. Mrs. Craveer?

I vote yes to all on the consent agenda with the exception of number four in regards to the fall festival as I have a conflict of interest.

Thank you. Mr. Grant? Motion passes five zero zero with the exception stated by Mrs. Graviera.

Perfect. Thank you. That'll move us into our public hearing. And, uh, that is our hearing to or an extension of our hearing from last meeting, uh, to exceed revenue neutral for the 2027 budget hearing. I will now open the, uh, public hearing. I believe Rhonda is going to have a presentation for us.

Good evening again. I just wanted to present the same data that I did at the last hearing so we're consistent between the two. I don't plan to go on for a long period of time, but I just wanted to make sure the same data was available to the public regardless of which hearing they saw. Tonight we're taking public comments. One difference, this is the exact presentation I did last time. Purposely so they see consistent information. You are going to vote on the revenue neutral Resolution tonight and of course tonight. We're having the second hearing This you probably get tired of me showing this slide, but this is the mill levy history For over the last nine years it also shows where we are presenting the 27 budget equal to the mill levy for 26 and and then what the 19, or the 2027 revenue neutral rate is, which is 19.486. The council and the councils before you have worked very hard on the mill levy, keeping it down, keeping it level, lowering it where they can, and it shows in the results. So the impact of meeting R&R, we would have to reduce the mill levy 2.375 which is a total of $553,717, or a savings of $137 a household. However, to do that, you would have to cut expenses, and I'm encouraging you to not reduce your mill levy for two important reasons. One is we don't know what the state legislature's going to do. They have a lot of, they've put a lot of work into managing the mill levy and property taxes, And so we should hang on, give them another year and then look at where we are because it may be very difficult to ever get any mill levy back if we needed it. And I also wanted to point out that we have some projects coming up that there will be debt associated with, for example, the net of 199th Street and then the stoplight at 191st. Those will come with debt payments we will be adding to this budget in the future. We typically find other revenues, but I'd like you to protect your mill levy a little bit right now until we get past some of those things. And then this is a value of one mill that if you cut a mill today, it's worth $233,000 in 20 years. That'll be worth a million dollars a year if we continue to grow like we're growing. So a mill today is not the same as a mill in the future. It will just continue to grow as Spring Hill grows. So the proposed, keeping the mill levy the same, our proposed property tax would be $5,096,701,761. And on a per household basis in 2027, we would actually reduce the cost per household by about $28 a year, a couple dollars a month for... individual household on their property taxes if we keep the mill levy the same in our budget and then I presented this last time I presented earlier in the year I read on Facebook and hear people say we have the highest mill levy and I want to make sure people have the data that's not true In the metro area, the average is just over 22 mills for a city, and Spring Hill's at 21.861, and Overland Park, the biggest suburb that we have, is 14.50, so we are a competitive, reasonable mill levy for a town of our size and below the average in the metro. When you look at the state of Kansas, Spring Hills mill levy is the seventh lowest mill levy in the state. So I feel like I would love to save money on my property taxes at my house, but I feel like the city's in the right position and in a competitive position to other communities. So I come back to my favorite slide, and I'll leave this one up here on the screen while people are talking just as a good reference point. And if you have any questions you'd like me to answer, I'm always here to answer them for you. Otherwise, I'll get out of the way.

Would you be able to explain a little bit more of the one slide you had that showed the decrease based off of the mill staying the same? That's just averages?

Yes, it's averages. So we have more households in a year than we do today. And as we spread the cost of our property tax across more households, the average would go down.

Okay.

I still don't quite understand. But I'll take your word for it for now. We'll talk more about that later.

The math works.

Okay.

I'll present it a different way.

Oh, okay. The number of households. Yeah.

We're having more houses contributing to the mill levy.

Yeah. Okay. It's not real dollars house to house. It's just average. All righty. We'll move into public comment next. Thank you, Ronna. We have a sign-up sheet for that, and the one and only person signed up is Rodolfo Arevalo. So please come on up.

Rodolfo Arevalo, 19419 West 200th Street. And it's a broken record because I disagree with Rhonda, as you well know. I believe that the benefits to the city, I'm not advocating that you go revenue neutral. I'm advocating that you go just barely above revenue neutral because that'll give you all the benefits of additional homes coming on board, and variations in valuation. The other thing that Rhonda did not mention today that she mentioned at the last meeting is that she found $1.5 million that she was going to add to the budget in terms of revenue. That basically is about six mil. So why are we arguing over two mills when you've already found more money than you knew you had? So I'm suggesting that the mill rate should be about 19.8. Gets you above the revenue neutral, gives you all the benefits of collecting additional revenue from new homes that come online, and it probably will give you about the $2.9 million carry forward at the end of 2027. As I looked at the numbers on the multiple page budget that was presented last, and you were given this earlier today, it seems like the mill levy for general expenditures is going down by almost five mills. Last year was 20.376. This year, she's proposing 15.994. Where the difference stays the same is because you've increased the mill levy on indebtedness, on debt service. And the reason for that probably has to do that the city now owes approximately $90 million in bonds. And in addition to that, interestingly enough, this year or this past year, you took a temporary note in indebtedness of 28.5. $28.5 million. And the bad thing about that is that it's due next year. So you're slated to have to pay about $33 million next year on indebtedness, on your debt service. I don't think the city can do it. because I don't know where you're going to come out with $33 million. So my assumption is that you're going to sell more bonds in order to pay for it. And so that means that you're going to raise the bond indebtedness again of the city. Approximately seven years ago, the indebtedness of the city was $30 million. Now we're up $60 million. When you add the cost of the water plant, anywhere from 100 million to 160 million, the city is going to be in tremendous debt in the next five years. She mentions that the per mill rate is going to go up by a million dollars. If you still have $19 million, I mean, mill levy of 19.8, that's going to go up too. So instead of generating, you know, $5 million in property tax revenue, you're going to be generating perhaps $10, $15, $20 million. So lowering it two mils is not a death note. The future budget of the city so I implore you to reduce the rate give the citizens a hundred and thirty seven dollar savings on Average on their property tax. Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Adolfo He was the only person to sign up tonight, but if there's anybody else would like to come up to speak now would be your time I If not, I can close the public hearing and we can move on to our deliberation. Or do you have anything else, Rhonda?

No, I was just ready for the next one.

All right, I'll close the public comment section. Is that the whole hearing, right?

Yes.

And now we'll move into our deliberation on it. What questions, comments do you all have?

I'd love to give Rhonda an opportunity to address the city debt. because there were some big numbers being thrown around there and things were being blocked together in a zero-sum game and that's not how it works.

Right. We did borrow $28.5 million last year. The projects that are involved in that are the Northeast Sewer, 199th Street, 191st Stoplight. Fox Hollows Special Benefit District. So not all of that debt, not all of it will become debt, because Johnson County cars will pay part of 199th Street. We're getting, I think, $2 million towards a stoplight. So the debt will be less than $28.5 million. The benefit district will be paid by the homeowners in that Fox Hollow. so that will not be paid by the taxpayers. You're really down to the sewer, which has users that will pay for that, not taxpayers. And then you have the two I mentioned earlier, there will be a debt payment on the 199th and a debt payment on the stoplight when we get there, depending on all of our cash balances and things at that time, how you want to pay off that temporary note. I am budgeting because we have the obligation to pay that temporary note next year. My guess is we will refinance it because some of those projects aren't quite that far along, and so we'll refinance it somehow in 2027. And then we would pay off the temporary debt and either replace it or permanently bond it, whichever makes sense at that time.

Yeah, so kind of the process for the bonding is the temporary notes are Almost what I would call like a line of credit to kind of get you through the construction portion and then we go to permanent financing. Sometimes we're able to pay those off. Sometimes we go to permanent financing. Similar if you're like building a house. So yeah, we're in the temporary finance. We kind of lumped a lot together because we got more favorable pricing that way, but they might even break out when we go to permanent or we might be able to bond them together. So it's a little bit different there. Coming to the extra revenue that was talked about, in my understanding, that's more of one-time fees that we've collected for permitting and things like that rather than actual budgeted funds.

That's correct. I was recommending or suggesting that we do take some criticism about our building fees exceed our budget every year. well, when we go into the year, we don't know if it's gonna be chicken or feathers, and so I conservatively budget so we're not reliant on income that may not come. And then at the end of the year, you get to choose, if there's a surplus, how that money gets spent, like towards debt if you wanted to or something like that. And so I was suggesting we can take that, 1.5 million in additional revenue that could come from building permits But I would not recommend spending it in the budget or reducing your mill levy Because you don't know if that revenue is going to happen Where we started out this year and permits were coming in very quickly Revenue looked like it was going to go through the roof and as I think it's probably cyclical it slowed down, they got their permits and they went to work, and so everything slowed down. So we're about 1.8 million surplus related to building permits right now. And so I don't feel it's prudent to put in $1.5 million worth of risky revenue, if you will, and then budget to spend it. I was recommending you put in a contingency and you guys decide how it gets spent. So, I don't know that you are all in favor of doing that. I'm proposing it as an option that we are taking in more developer revenue and holding it to be spent in the future.

I know I've always kind of looked at our building permits, excise tax as kind of like a bonus. Like when I was working in a heavily bonus environment at work, we didn't live off those because I didn't know how I was going to get them. And that's how I've kind of looked at the building permits and excise tax too because it only happens when we're building as much as we're building. So if we have an off year or so, if we're living off that money, it can get bad quick. And so I'm okay with not including that only because of that reason. But I do think using that money for something positive is a good thing. And you'll see if I had improvements to my house, it's because I had a good year. And the next two years, I may not do anything, right? Right. But yeah, that's kind of how I handle my personal life. So I've kind of thought about the same way here, where these are one-time kind of fees that we're getting, and it's not guaranteed to continue.

Right.

So to really use a lot of it. I mean, I think sometimes we can supplement. We've done a good job of lowering the mill over the last couple of years, and even last year. It lowered more than we even anticipated because there was some stuff that came on the books that I don't think we anticipated. And so looking at it overall, I think for me, and this is separate from the revenue neutral, but I've always looked at we can control what we charge or what people get charged per $100,000 of their house value. And if we look at it that way, to me, that's how we can be the most fair to everybody because these average numbers are tough to... You can make anything averaged out look the way you want it to look. But if we look at it straight... What's it cost you per 100,000 of your house? That's a lot easier way for everybody to understand, including myself. So that's the way I'd like to look at it going forward as far as, because the mill's confusing. Most people don't know what a mill is, and I didn't know until five, six years ago.

And I'll tell you, that is my plan for the next time we meet will be to approve the budget. And that is my plan to break it down by household, what it means in a household. So when the public hears that information, and you can weigh that into your decisions. Yeah.

But the main thing we're looking at tonight is we've set this rate. Are we going to guarantee that we're going to stay below this? And we could or could not exceed revenue neutral, but it gives us the opportunity to do so if we decide. But it keeps us kind of honest that we're not going to raise the mill, which I like.

Right.

So that's what we're looking at in this particular vote right now.

I'd like to talk a little bit about process. This is a statutorily required piece of business. You are setting the ceiling, and the ceiling is the current mill levy. The one I'm recommending is 21.861. That means you cannot approve a budget above 21.861. You can pick any budget below that number that you want to approve. And it is my plan to bring you a budget at 21.861, and I typically bring an alternative. Depending on how your discussion goes, I kind of feel like I know this group wants to lower the mill levy, so I'll bring you one with a lower mill levy and see how we can make that work as well. That's my intention for next week. But tonight what you'll be doing is passing a resolution that you will exceed the revenue neutral rate, that checks some boxes legally for us, and that you're setting the cap at 21.861.

Is there any other comments or anything that people? This is for me, especially when we look at the growth that we're doing and we start talking about the movement that is taking place at Topeka. There is a growing drive to change the way fundamentally we do taxes as a whole. And there's no telling how those ones are going to go over the next couple of years. There's no telling whatsoever. Whatever decision they make, even if it's a smaller decision in scope that they anticipate, there's always unintended consequences. So making any dramatic shifts when there's that much uncertainty is always something that I try to avoid as a whole. And then specifically as it goes to revenue neutral, revenue neutral is a fantastic concept when your city is maintaining. It's got all the services it needs. The roads are the way everybody likes it. All of the city assets are managed appropriately and responsibly when there's no consideration of growth. Revenue neutral is a fantastic concept to strive for because that means you're managing your budget as responsibly as you can. We are a growing city. We're one of the fastest growing cities in Kansas. Our needs, as put to us by the taxpayer, are going up year in and We're asking for more roads. We're asking for more sidewalks, safer streets with more police officers, more involved public works services, services for the city as a whole. All of that requires increased funding as time progresses. So for me, I think the rate as we are As we're looking to set it tonight to not exceed. I think it's perfectly appropriate I would love like Rhonda said I love to see an option lower because I'm always going to want to get down lower We're arguing about pennies and once we talk about point two to point five So there's a lot of I think there's a lot of wiggle rooms to to talk about but I think this this rate as a whole I think it's perfectly appropriate for the growing needs of our city. We've got a laundry list in our CIP of things that people want that we need that are going to need funding from somewhere. And again, just to circle back to surpluses, a great month is a great month, a great year is a great year, but you've got to operate off what you know is coming in and not what you hope is going to come in. Otherwise, you find yourself getting to choose which bills you pay that month, and that's not a way I try to do anything. So I like the idea of, as we identify surpluses, if they end up being there at the end of the year, finding a way to tackle that CIP, give the citizens the things that they want, because that's the reward for investing in the community, is us being able to provide the things. So that's my take on the whole thing.

I agree.

I agree with PJ. The only difference is I'd rather take that money, that surplus money that we have, and pay towards the debt. Try to get that down. How much do we owe right now?

It's on page five of your... I'm going to say $60 million is probably close. And our payment every year, so you know, is close to $4 million. And that is what's in that debt fund. we assess taxes and other special assessments and things to pay that $4 million.

Right, and a lot of that debt service is paid for through the sources of revenue that we've generated with that debt.

Right, including the sewer fund. The water fund used to do it.

A lot of that debt is going to resolve itself as we continue to grow our infrastructure, and it's going to pay for itself. That's kind of the whole point of setting it up the way we've been setting it up.

But you're also exactly right. You get to make those choices if you choose to. I look at it. we're paying off some debt this year and I look at it each time we go to pay things is there some small one there that we have the cash and we can pay that one off or do we want to hold on and we can pay the slightly bigger one that is something I try to manage and would make a recommendation when it makes sense yeah I'd argue that either paying down debt or paying cash for certain projects I would say is equally as beneficial because there is things as we go along it's like you know you can pay off your house but if it's all rotted out and

everything's dilapidated because you didn't maintain it, it's not going to be worth anything at the end either. So we've got to be able to do a little bit of both, but I do agree that I think we strategically look at how we use that money. It's not just flip it how we go. Mike, you have anything you want to say? All right. Any other questions or comments on this subject? If not, I will entertain a motion. I think we...

It is a roll call vote.

It is a roll call vote. So we'll entertain a motion, then we'll do a roll call vote.

Let me get this pulled up real quick. I move to adopt Resolution 2... 2026-R-17 to levy a property tax rate for the 2027 budget exceeding the revenue neutral rate. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Go ahead, please take the roll.

Mr. Thrun?

Yes.

Mrs. Cravier?

Yes.

Mr. Grant? Yes. Mr. Delgado?

Yes.

Mr. Savage?

Yes.

Mayor Young?

Yes.

Resolution 2026-R-17 passes 6-0-0 to exceed the revenue neutral rate. All right.

Thank you very much. We'll now move on to our one formal council action item. It is number nine. Consider submitting a project programming request to KDOT for the transportation alternative funding for the pedestrian intersection improvements along South Street from US 169 to Webster. Okay.

I'm about ready to spend some money that you guys just saved, so thank you for that. The next item before you is a request to have a programming funding agreement with KDOT for the Transportation Alternatives Grant Program. We were approved by KDOT to receive grant funding for the South Street sidewalk improvements. This is going to include improvements to South Street on the north side. to include curb, gutter, storm drains. We've got a lot of storm drains along the north side. That will allow us to have a platform to put the sidewalk on. That is very important. That's what we're gonna have to do. You can't just put sidewalk in the middle of a ditch. It just doesn't work that way. So we're gonna have to reconstruct these streets as we start to put the sidewalks in. This also does include intersection improvements, some safety intersection improvements. there at Lone Elm and South Street. The total cost of the project is $2.6 million. The city is responsible for a local match of $189,000, which is pretty good for putting in a sidewalk for that entire stretch of South Street from its Mill Ridge to almost a 169 all the way to the school at Webster Street. And once we get the agreement signed with KDOT then we can start moving forward get an engineer on board and start the design. And again we're just trying to get the public involved as much as we can. So as soon as we have like a preliminary layout we'll probably have a public meeting just to get the public's reaction make sure everybody is on board before we start working on the final design. And I still have hopes and dreams of getting the south side done as well So I'm still waiting to hear back on the SS for a grant program we have I Get that grant then we get sidewalk on both sides of the street So everybody wins and then that's also going to that grant opportunity will include some intersection improvements at 215th on 169 So doing some intersection improvements to improve the safety at that intersection. Yes, so hopefully we'll get that I haven't heard back yet, but We're gonna go ahead and move forward with this project just because we need sidewalk.

Oh, yeah Well, I want to be the first one to tell you I'm Very grateful. Thank you so much for all you've done on this It's been something that's been talked about ever since I've been around the last 20 years I think since Kendra was born they've been talking about it and And so, um, this is probably the most exciting thing I think we'll get in my five years that I've been up here because it's something that every single person, at least within, you know, 199 south has always talked about. South street is the number one scary thing throughout the day that kids are walking inside the ditches, walking on the street and to give them a sidewalk finally after however many years, this is going to be huge. The one question I have is how wide will that sidewalk be, you think?

We're trying to do five foot sidewalk.

Oh, that would be great. I've been driving up and down ever since I heard trying to picture it. I'm like, okay, how are they going to do this?

I think Jake would kill me if I did anything less than five feet just because we're trying to go to that standard. In the future, I can't do anything wider just because that corridor is so narrow.

It's a tough street.

It's a tough street. You've got houses that are super close to the street. You've got utilities. You've got trees you've got all the things in there so we're going to do our best five foot is the goal so we'll see how that and what's a realistic timeline on yeah even asking questions I don't know the answer to I hope to uh so as soon as we get this started we can go ahead and start engaging an engineer hopefully we'll have that by the beginning of 2027 we can start working on the design the design is going to take some time because we'll have to do survey utility coordination Um, we'll have acquisition because I'll say, do we have easement or are we going to have to go through? We're probably going to need easements and right away all along there. So that's going to take some time. So we're looking at probably about nine months to possibly a year. So hopefully what would that be? Fingers crossed. We can have it by August of 2028. If my math is right, start a school of 28, maybe. Maybe. Don't hold me to it.

I'm just hearing a date, an end date possible on this project.

Well, I'm trying to do it to the beginning of school.

I think that seems fair. Two years, you know. And really our match is only about $189,000. That's, I mean, again, thank you very, very much on this one. That's amazing. Yeah, this is, like I said, something we've talked about as long as I can remember.

It's one of the most impactful things, I think. Agreed. that I've seen come up in a long time. So that's, this is awesome. It's awesome. Okay. I don't think you're going to get any frowns from up here.

I'm trying to get, I'm trying to avoid being emotional right now.

Cause it's a, it's a big deal for a lot of people. Yeah.

So this is a, this is really, really exciting. Yeah.

Well, and it just shows that although sometimes you don't see the work we try and do for the older part of town or original part of town, we've been going. I mean, you've been going after it for a long time. We've been trying to do everything we can. It seems kind of patchwork when you look at, like, oh, we're doing sidewalks at Harrison. We were trying to figure out how to get sidewalks out, and so this one's going to be just a big one. So I'm really proud of you and of our city staff that's been working on it and, you know.

I think it's great. I do think playing devil's advocate is appropriate here. There are a lot of individual property owners along that, and working with them as being a good partner to those people is going to be important. So I would anticipate some level of hangups as we go through and work with each of them on certain things. But as a whole, I'm really, really hopeful that this project moves smoothly.

Well, and that's why having that public engagement is key in some of these projects. Trying to get them engaged early and often. We'll probably, you know, we'll have a public open house just to, you know, get everybody's reaction as a whole in the community. But we're going to have to work directly with some of those homeowners to show them this is what we're trying to do. This is the impact to your property. This is the value of the project to try to work directly with them so that they can see our overall vision. There is a method to my madness here.

I'm so excited.

Yeah.

Well, and I will say it goes back to what you're talking about earlier. We're doing an open house about the trail system that's going in. We did open house on 223rd street. We'll do an open house for this one. We'll eventually have one for Hale and Nichols. Like we are trying to do as much as we can through the comp plan, through all these different open houses to get, uh, everybody's inputs that we can do the thing that the things that everybody wants, it does take money. And like PJ was talking about earlier, kind of have to think about those things as we as we go through and as we as much as we want to save we also want to make sure we can get these things done so one the grants help a lot because 189 000 is a lot better than 3 million for us to have to spend um but it's also sometimes it does take some significant um money from us so again this is great i have will um i'm going to encourage somebody to uh make a motion on this so i can go and sign the After the meeting because we want to sign it before anybody changes Okay Any other questions or comments? Good job Yeah, or even just 215th and 169 some improvements there It's never ending we got something for you all the time.

Yeah, that's okay. That's what I'm here.

Yeah All right.

I'll entertain a motion now anything else. I'm gonna read this one too because it's exciting I move to accept the KDOT Transportation Alternatives funding for the South Street sidewalks improvements and authorize the mayor to sign the project programming request form. Second.

A motion and a couple seconds. I think Ivan said it first. We can do a roll call if you like. All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed? Passes 5-0-0. Probably one of the easiest passings we've ever had. Good job. Next up, we are done with formal council action. We're going to move into a discussion item. And I think this is Mike Mallon. We're going to discuss development applications and public feedback. You'll see a theme going forward. When we don't have a huge agenda, I'd like to have some discussion items so we can try to give the staff as much information Well, just direction that we can so that they know what we're looking for and what we want to do. Because there is so many things they're working on that make sure that they're steering in the right direction and not going off path. So I appreciate you having this for us, Mike.

Just waiting to see if it works. And there we go. So this is to get the governing body's feedback about some proposals the staff is looking at doing to help Encourage more public feedback and throughout our development review process for development applications rezoning preliminary plats Any of our development applications that would go to the Planning Commission or governing body to really kind of make it more accessible to the general public and to concern citizens, to neighbors of adjoining property, and really kind of demystify this entire process. I think over the last few months, there's been this sense that people want more information about what's being proposed. And so we agree with that. And so we think that some policy changes that we could implement would help do that. So these are some suggestions, and happy to listen to any feedback that you may have or answer any questions. Of course, this may not be fully encompassing. We may be able to come up with some other ideas as well. So the first one would be to modify the way in which staff releases information to the public when they submit a public records request to view application materials. Currently it has been the city's practice to not release those While the application is quote-unquote under review and therefore we we don't make those publicly available until a agenda has been posted for a Planning Commission or a governing body meeting City Council meeting so in other Cities that I have worked in they have taken the approach of really kind of drawing a line in the sand that anything that is submitted as a formal application, public, you know, A developer has a rezoning request with an attached plan or a preliminary plan or a planned district, and they have submitted that formally through our formal process. They've paid their fee. It's been uploaded into our portal. For all intents and purposes, it is a formal application, and it is on a schedule to go to a planning commission meeting or a city council meeting. We would make those available to anybody that asks to see them. Just flat out. Informal applications, where it's just a developer saying, hey, I have an idea on this site. Or what would be your feedback for something? economic development projects where the business trying to locate in the city needs to maintain that confidentiality so as to not disclose trade secrets to their competitors would still not be released because they're not formal applications at that point. But even the business that doesn't want to disclose their their competitive tactics. Once they submit a formal application, that would be able to be released. But while they're kind of in those negotiating stages with the city, we would not release those. And it kind of goes for, it serves two purposes by not, especially for the confidential economic development projects. One, those types of businesses don't necessarily want that information to go out to the public. They're negotiating with landowners, they're negotiating with their investors, they're working against their competitors. And there are a number of businesses within the same industry that don't do their own homework as to where they're going to locate their sites they simply go where the leader of the pack if you will decides they're gonna go and then they just jump on that and say they're going there we're going there and I can understand why a business may not want that information to be public secondly from the city standpoint We don't necessarily want to make our confidential negotiations with those businesses or industries that we're trying to attract open to the public as well because a neighboring city could easily swoop in, make a quote-unquote better deal, and steal that project right out from under the city that could be very beneficial to the city. So those are very rare, actually. They don't happen all the time. And most businesses don't have a problem with using their name. They often use it as a source of... trying to generate hype for that application, but in those instances where they do, um, then, then we would like to honor that request. Um, so, but for all, you know, for 90% of development projects, we would make those available to the public to be able to see those, uh, to hopefully demystify that entire process to let them see what is being proposed. Um, and it kind of rolls into the second one, which is, We want the developers to actively seek out input from the neighboring properties where they're proposing a development. And so having a public meeting or neighborhood meeting policy would be beneficial. I was told we have one in place and that we've had one since 2007. And we may have utilized it, but that was 20 years ago. Even if we did have a policy from 20 years ago it it probably needs to be updated today to write to accurately reflect the changes in trends about how those meetings have taken place and Really look at what role the city place Some cities want the city staff to hide in the corner not let anybody know they're there for fear that the city may actually have to speak or provide information I don't necessarily subscribe to that view or perspective. I think that the city staff could be there to help lay out what the process is. Here's, you know, this developer has made an application to do this on this property. Here's where it is at in the stage of the process. This is, you know, staff has reviewed the plans. We've provided comments. This is their opportunity for the developer to present their project to the neighbors and to hear feedback from those neighbors, ideally so that they could try to modify their plans to help alleviate some of those concerns or to make the project more compatible with surrounding properties. And then that would be the extent of the city process, or city role, it's just process, how these things happen. More often than not, I feel that residents believe that by the time it comes before the planning commission or governing body, a decision's already been made, and there's no point in providing feedback because everybody knows it's gonna happen and has already approved it. That is very far from the truth. And so by inviting them into this and then staff taking an active role further explaining what the process is, what steps will happen after that, I think can again help demystify that process. So we want to be able to provide as much information as possible and also have the developers take a more active role in seeking that feedback as well. And then that way, ideally, we get to a point where that feedback can help have an impact on development that we have in the city. So that would be the first two. The third one would be creating additional avenues for the public to provide feedback on proposed development. Um, as of right now, we put, could we comment on the first two? Yeah, go right ahead. This is your discussion.

Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll start off with, uh, um, this is great for transparency. Um, this is. I loved it when I saw the email, I'm happy that we're doing this. Everybody's going to love it. People in the community are going to feel like they're part of the plan because their voice is going to be heard that being able to talk to developers, being able to look up certain projects that, uh, they might feel is secret. to them. My question for you is, is this going to scare any developers from coming, applying here in the city or anything like that?

The potential is always there, yes, as cities adopt new processes and tries to raise standards or development requirements or processes. Yes, there's always the potential for a developer who previously had looked at Spring Hill as an opportunity to not have to do these things as a a market they wanted to be in. So there is that possibility. My experience, and that's limited because of the few places I've worked, is I have yet to meet one that was scared off by this requirement or these policies. More and more cities and jurisdictions do this. It is becoming very commonplace, if not, you know, fully adopted. Some cities may not want to disclose those plans. Again, I have not worked in a place where that has come back to bite anybody or, you know, the opposite actually can come true where a developer can show that they are working with residents. And they might not be able to implement everything that the residents around them want, especially if the primary feedback is don't build this at all. They're going to continue with that. But I would argue that if a developer is scared off by any of these,

I think my opinion is I want to do business with people who want to do business with us, and if this is how we do business and they don't want to do it, then we don't want them. So for me, I like... Mike and I have talked a lot about this over the last couple months, and it's like, what can we put into place to help with transparency? What can we put into place to help the process for all developers that want to come in, whether it be industrial, commercial, residential, and how we make it easier for the public... to accept and be involved with it. And Mike's come up with all these great ideas.

These are awesome.

I was really happy with all of them. So that would be my two cents on it.

As far as item one goes, if I have access to it to inform my decision-making process, if we've got an application that has been formally submitted, I need time before a meeting to address my concerns, which is why we send out the agenda as early as we can to give us time to review those items. So I think in situations like this specifically, when we're talking about things going to the Planning Commission, that is one of our residents' only opportunities to address concerns and ask questions about that, that they don't have access to that information prior to the meeting. There's just no realistic expectation that anything productive can come from it. We take the blind side effectively. Yeah. So for me, this isn't even a matter of... Should we or shouldn't we? We should have been the whole time. And this is what good practice looks like as far as I'm concerned and as far as the Kansas Open Meetings Act.

To piggyback what you're saying, having been on planning commission, there were a few different instances where I was asking, is there any way that we can get this information sooner? Because this is a huge decision rather than the Monday before the meeting. And I think that this would help with the commissions, the residents to ask questions and come up during public comment. think you're right that this would help make more informed decisions and show that we are trying to be transparent and we're not you know there's not secret deals going on necessarily or you know whatever anybody thought and I think that this would do nothing but help that I think what you see a lot of is it's a negative reaction because it's such a quick turnaround yes

and you don't have time to think through it, get comfortable with it. And this is going to do that. And I think this is important. Like I said, I didn't really know what the process should look like. I just said, we got to do something different. And Mike came up with all this. So, I mean, I, I, I didn't have really anything to change. I had questions about number three, only just about what avenues you kind of had in mind. But outside of that, I mean, I think even number four is really nice to have because it gives them that clear path. Is that something you kind of run through? We also had another thing today that we went to a city-county meeting in Miami County, and Lewisburg had a really good one-pager that showed the vision and all the priorities of what the governing body had. And that's a good thing for the community to see and I think developers. So we both looked at it and we're like, Oh, this is awesome. Like it had their governing body went through and picked all these things. That's another thing that we can, Hey, go look at our vision statement and what our, what our priorities are as a governing body that we've kind of come together with. And that's another thing that I think you can kind of implement with this. It says people can come back, gives us another thing for you to come back and say, this is a meet your, priorities well then we gotta kind of think twice about what we're looking at so yeah it gives us a little bit more accountability but i think that kind of all comes into this whole transparency thing so like i said i think all these are good i would like to dive into three a little bit that was i was kind of waiting on three that's the one i had major comment or questions about but uh no so far i'm I'm very much on board for the first two.

I do have a quick question before we move on. Is there a way for if a developer coming in didn't want their business name out there for competition, anything like that, is there a way that they could ask for that to be redacted for the public, the forms that are given out or something?

That would probably be a legal question. They might be able to ask for that to be redacted. What I've seen more often than not is they just don't put their name on it.

Oh, okay.

It's a complete, it's just an omission. They don't put it on there. They don't want to be judged by their name. They want to be judged by the type of business it is. So sometimes a business that doesn't want to have negative connotation associated with it, such as a big box retailer, might put a big box retailer so that they don't have whatever negative connotation or brand loyalty or disloyalty that may have. So they will do that.

Okay.

industrial user that qualifies under this land use under the code. So that way we're not trying to get outside of the scope of the review criteria under which the planning commission or governing body can review applications, and we're not letting business reputation or things that are not relevant, if the business had declared bankruptcy, then that is not something that the governing body or the planning commission could consider because that is not one of the criteria. businesses know how to do this and to do it in a way that really just lays it out in an objective format. I would like to add, though, that as we roll these out, there will probably be some new training that we need to do with our planning commission and with you all so that if a planning commissioner requests to see the plans before the public hearing, that they know what they can and can't do with those and that their decision really needs to be made for, I would say, 90%. on what happens at the public hearing that night. Going out and soliciting input from residents or even taking phone calls from residents that have a concern about it could constitute ex parte communication. Or doing additional research or making a decision based upon information that they found on the internet that not all of the decision makers on that board or governing body Privy to and then making the decision based on that these are gonna fall outside of that realm of those criteria What is acceptable and could put them at live? You know make them liable for for you know, potentially making a decision that's arbitrary or capricious So there there will be some training that we would and some guide rails to put onto this So that we don't want anybody to get put into an awkward position and we have standard policies for You know, for example, some cities would put direction to a city council member if somebody wants to talk about that project. And their kind of standard answer would be, we do have an application in process. It is an active application, so I'm not allowed to speak about the details of it. I encourage you to attend the public hearing on this date and this time. And that's just one example. But to help everybody have the best chance for success, those might be some of those training guidelines we want to make sure everybody's aware of, and that the public's aware of as well, so that they know that there are acceptable avenues for trying to get their feedback to the city. And so that ties into number three. We need to create additional avenues for people to provide feedback. As of right now, we do the state statute mandated notifications. We post notice in a newspaper of general circulation in the city. We post a sign on the property and we mail notices to property owners surrounding the property within a given radius. And that's generally accepted as the minimum that people do. And so we're not suggesting that we don't do the minimum here. And so anything we do above and beyond that would be viewed as above and beyond that. So during COVID, when people couldn't have these public hearings as much and in order to try to get as much feedback as possible. They used a lot of trial and error. What works, what doesn't, and I think we could do that as well. And also pick up some best practices that maybe were sustained after COVID as well. So some cities have created websites where a given application and the details of it are posted on a webpage that the city hosts, and then people can go in and type in their comments there. Or Some even permitting software may have a module within that that we could open up public comment or feedback on a given development application for a specified amount of time. So utilizing some of the newer technology could be an option, whether it's a website or something in our portal.

just quick response would be a can we put a QR code on the signs that are out that would take you directly to that comment site and then even on the notifications are mailed you know that type of thing so people have a direct access to that particular project certainly they can make a comment for and it just goes on record and it gets sent out to everybody on the board that it's you know approaching yeah certainly something we can we can look at doing other ideas might be to

frankly, get bigger signs so that people can see them.

It's a little tough the way they are now. I will say one complaint that we've gotten over the years that I've been around, I think PG heard this too plenty of times, but the amount of people that get notified are usually very little because it's only like certain amount of footage right yes and so do we want to open that up at all is that something that we're interested in saying hey or do we want to try other avenues so that's that's probably a question that we need to answer do we want to stay with the minimum or do we want to go above and beyond a notification style stuff but I think that comes into play too if we're having the developer do meetings, I mean, maybe that's not as important because we have more information going out prior to there.

My stance is always going to be creative solutions before changes and laws.

Yeah, so that's just minimum. We can always go above and beyond. We just haven't. And so I think I like the ideas of having a site where people can make their comments because, again, saying they have to be here at 7 o'clock on the first Thursday of the month, it's probably hard for a lot of people to get get here depending on schedules and things like that. So I don't know how we're able to, because for planning, I mean, for us it's different, but for planning commission, I'm trying to think a little bit outside of what our purview is, but they don't get as much, nearly as much like headway as we do. And what information can they get before meetings? Is it, you know, the type of thing is we kind of tone a line a little bit too. Right.

I think the two biggest issues One of the biggest takeaways is whatever we decide to do, we have to be consistent and apply it to all development applications. Expanding the radius is things a lot of cities have looked at. The question becomes how far is too far?

Well, and I wonder, too, is it really development or is it rezoning?

It would, I mean, whatever we would need, like a conditional use permit requires a public hearing.

Okay.

things that require public hearing or things in our code that we do require.

Cause I would think it's probably more things that require public hearing to me rather than just your run of the mill. It's already gone through, you know, rezoning and it's a neighborhood in the RP one area. We've already given them the information.

Housing development is coming, but now we're actually doing it.

I don't know how much more we need to spend on that, but I think rezonings, the conditional use permits, I think those are fair to say we can probably do a lot more than what we're currently doing. So that at least be my opinion.

Yeah, and I think our development code update, you know unified development ordinance and Zoning and subdivision regulations that we would look to adopt sometime after The comprehensive plan would be a good avenue for us to compare and contrast what other cities around us are doing And so there's incremental steps that we can take I don't want to wait a year to get some of these but trying to figure out what is what is too much, because there is such a thing. We could notice everybody in the city and then that starts to get really expensive in terms of mailing. But there's other ways to let people, even that may not be adjacent to that property, to have input to it. What often happens, and I think it's fair, is that the people around a development tend to have the most immediate gut reaction. It's rare when we get letters of support. And I'm trying to tap into how do we get people to say if they're OK with it or they hate it, positive and negative, or ambivalence. They may think, oh, that's a great idea, and then wonder why it didn't happen. Or they think that's a horrible idea. I should have said something. So we want to be able to tap into that feedback from people who are too busy to provide that feedback because they have commitments on nights like these, or they don't know how they can participate. And it's this, again, that mystique of, think it's already going to happen so what's the point or it just seems like such a big concept that they don't know where to start and so that is incumbent upon us as a city and us as a city staff to help make that known and to really make it be an easy process for them. So I think on number three, we're going to brainstorm some ideas. We're going to look at what other cities are doing right now and see what's working, what isn't working. It doesn't hurt to try, like we're doing with the comp plan, trying to get public feedback on that. We're trying in person. We're trying online. We're going to get creative. And so we want to do... We don't want to make it too above and beyond because then we might scare some developers away. Because they're like, geez, we've got to notify every resident in the city of Spring Hill that that kind of gets a little... We don't want to be too far one way or the other. We want to be kind of in line with what other cities are doing.

I think technology is a piece that is always going to be increasing. I think tonight we had three miners that made comments on our comp plan. I saw a couple and I had a couple made comments about it. They put their post-it notes up there. And then we have, you know, even my kids will come out and I'll say, oh, this might get, you know, something over here might get developed. And they're like, oh, you're getting rid of all the open land. And I'm like, yeah, but what if it's this? And they say, oh, I'd be okay with that. And I think that's everybody's gut reaction is, ah, I kind of, I'm used to this. I don't want it to change. But, oh, but if it is something that's, favorable to me, I'm okay with that. So I think sometimes it's, like you said, a matter of being able to process, giving information out. Sometimes notification with additional information is better than just notification with no information. So I think we've got to think about all those things.

I was going to ask if there was something similar to the notify me for trash delays, or is there something like that that we could potentially do? Like, oh, public hearing this date, or Something just to get people's attentions.

It goes out like in a notify me type thing.

Yeah, so then you don't actually have to mail it out.

Does that already go out, Glenda? If there's a public hearing?

That's synopsis of what's going to be on the agendas. I think she does that.

But I meant to notify me like you're.

Notify me is like for agendas.

Only for agendas. But do we have something? That's what I think.

There's a whole list.

Things that we could do voluntarily maybe like that too.

I think we can explore the capabilities of our current online permitting software. A lot of those have capabilities. And it may cost a little bit of money for us to enact some of those modules or to start them up. But yes, those types of services are available where somebody can say, notify me of all development applications within a thousand miles or a thousand feet of my house or within five miles of my house. So there are ways for us to do it. It's just looking at what our capabilities are or exploring what add-ons we can do.

Yeah. I do think people who sign up for the notify me's are already paying attention.

Agreed.

And so utilizing, how do we expand that? Yeah. And I think we've done a good job when people come here to, to talk about their concerns, I usually try and tell them, hey, sign up for Notify Me because Glenn is constantly pushing stuff out on there. And I think that has helped because there's a lot of people that were never involved that are now heavily involved or at least pay attention. And that's probably half the battle focusing on utilizing what we've currently got in place as much as we can It would be preferable that immediately jumping down and spending more money on So I think whatever whatever avenues we have they're there and if it's a menial cost of it and it makes sense I think something to entertain can we get a giant poster?

Find me information right there on the wall will come in

Maybe it's something we when we go to do all our neighborhood comp plan meetings is everybody sign up for notify me right now Yeah, if you're here, you can't leave before you sign up You know, it might be it might be worth it Wow, this can be like those emails. I delete every time

Mike, as a whole, and I love the way you've got this discussion outlined for us. It really helped me prepare for this as a whole and kind of sort through my feelings beforehand to be productive with this. I also love that everything's on topic. They all feed into each other really, really well. And The reality here is these are a lot of things that a lot of people have had problems with. Seeing you pay attention to the public speakers and the different complaints that we've generated over the last few months and how soundly you've addressed those, this is the good stuff that I like to see as a whole. This is the kind of conversations we need to have regularly. I love the way this is laid out.

Absolutely. Number four, do you want to address that in any other way?

Very quickly, I think part of the other problem with, and this may irk a few developers and their consultants because it may cost them some more money, but typically the plans that get submitted to us are difficult to read for the person who doesn't read them all day every day. Line weights, usually in black and white. I think some people aren't used to looking at the world from a 2D perspective hovering over a site, removing all of the satellite imagery that we can see on Google Earth. And so to that effect, working with these developers and consultants to get pictures that are more legible, easier to follow, easier to read. We often get a full set of construction drawings that accompany a McDonald's restaurant, when we get a McDonald's restaurant. A lot of the information contained with there is actually not under the purview of the Planning Commission or the governing body. The exact color that McDonald's uses, their whatever specific brand color, isn't really something that anybody can say, I don't like that color. They can say, I don't like the scale of the color or how bright it is or things like that. But there's things on those plans for you know, I'm kind of drawing a blank because it gets so, there's so many of them, but like detailed sewer information and manhole depth or, you know, some of our city specs and standards for what is a, you know, a water line vault or a transfer box look like. It's really not the planning commissions or the governing body's purview to say, yeah, that six inches isn't what I think I would use. I would use seven and a half, you know, or the electrical lines, 220, 221, whatever it takes. That's really not the purview. That is technical stuff. And so we want to work with these developers and consultants put color to these to show what the buildings look like, to show what the site plans look like. So it's easily able to be determined what's going to be grass, what's a parking lot, where's the building, where's an outdoor play place, or where's a trash enclosure, what's it going to look like. Those drawings can be very difficult to read because there's so much information on them. And oftentimes they'll mix in existing grading with proposed grading on top of all the utility lines, on top of the parking lot dimensions, on top of the building dimensions. And it's cheaper for those consultants working for the developers to put it all on one page and say, hey, all the information's there sitting, you figure it out. That makes it difficult for us to do our reviews. It makes our reviews more time-consuming. And then by the time we present that to the planning commission and to you all, it's hard to read. It's hard to discern. And I think sometimes... people don't want to speak up and say, I don't understand what's happening here.

Just present it to me like I'm five. Cause that's where my brain is anyway. So that's, yeah, I get where you're coming from. Cause yeah, I look at some of this stuff and after I've been looking at it for years and I'm like, I still have no idea.

Just for the record. Um, I do prefer, uh, golden arcs to arches.

That's a good reference. I appreciate that. All right. So kind of all of this to say we can do better as staff in making this process more easily understandable and relatable from, you know, how we share information to really putting some of the burden back onto the developer and consultant and not to be – Difficult to work with but actually to help them put their best foot forward when they're presenting development projects to The governing body the Planning Commission and and trying to get feedback from the residents It may be some more money, but it's going to help them put their best foot forward And so that's in my mind us helping them to have the best chance of success whether we agree with it or not and

Well, and setting that standard, I think, saves a little bit of money. My assumption is if you go back and ask for it, it's going to cost more than if they do it in the first go-around for their engineers and their architects. Also, like you said, it's always a scary thing when something new is going to go next.

Right.

You don't know what it looks like. You don't know what it's going to be. If I have a picture that's going to show me something what it looks like, it's a lot better than the scary drawing that I don't know how to read or look at. And so I do agree that I think... Although, like we said before, we want to be easier to work with, but easier to work with is really just having standards that you know ahead of time. And it's not, oh, go back and get this for us now. Go back and get this. We say, hey, this is what we need. It's on you to meet that. We're not all Allison. We can't just picture everything the way she does when she looks at a drawing.

No. No, I think that when they know what is expected coming into the process, that eliminates surprises at the end of the process.

Like I said, I want... us as a governing body i at least i hope that this is the general consensus i want us to put that foot forward that we are open for business that we do want to invite opportunities for partnerships with developers but anything we can do to be as transparent as possible and to set those expectations clearly both for our public and for our partners i think that's that's the win all day yeah that's uh everything about this discussion tonight is exactly where i want our heads to be it's been a good meeting absolutely

Yeah. A lot of good news tonight. Okay. I don't have anything else on this. I would just say, yeah, let's move forward with whatever, um, kind of, I don't know if it's a policy or if it's, or how we move forward from this, but it sounds like we're all kind of, sorry, Mike, do you have anything for us? Michael Grant? No. Bueller? We've ignored him. Oh, did he leave? He got tired of this conversation. I assume Mike is with us on this. It sounds like we have a consensus that we're all on board with this direction of being more transparent and having these things in place. Whatever that looks like as far as creating a policy, having just expectations, just move forward with that and bring it back to us for whatever you need from us. Okay.

Sounds good. I appreciate the feedback. Thank you. This is great. Thank you.

Allison's creeping up here. What's going on?

Oh, you're fine, you're fine. Okay, I'm gonna take the crown off now. So back to the item that we talked about before this. I thought the local match was a little low, so I went back and checked my calculations. It is an 80-20 grant.

20% would get us $650,000.

thought something seemed off but that's why that's why I asked because I was like that seems low but yeah so I went back and double-checked and there was a number off so yes so six hundred fifty thousand dollars and I checked in with Rhonda and she said that between bake sales and go fund me and other things I think we got this I think what we need to do is get Brooklyn Peterman back up here and she can figure out how we fund it she's raising money like a she is like a mad woman yeah Yeah, I think I need to take some tips from her.

It wasn't part of that. Thank you so much for correcting us. Spencer, for you, since that is new information that was not present, do we need to address that, either formal action next time, or is that something we can address now?

I need to turn in the agreement by next Monday, so I'll just kind of clarify it. So it is, what was it, $2.7 million or something along those lines. 2.6. Well, 2.6 is what we're going to get from the state.

That's what we're granted, yeah.

That's what we're going to be granted. But the total project is going to be well above that. And then $650,000 is what we're going to contribute to the project. And that is going to come from the sidewalk fund. And then Rhonda said that there was $900,000 in the capital improvements fund. So we don't have to do bake sales or pass the hat or anything like that. So we do have funding available to cover that expense. So that's going to be the 80-20 match.

Okay.

Why don't we give Spencer an opportunity to give us a recommendation?

Sure. So the item that was before you was accepting the KDOT funding, which doesn't change. I mean, Allison, so what we had in the packet was It's just $2.6 million. Is that the total overall coming in? That's what we're accepting, yeah.

Yeah, we're going to be accepting $2.6 million from the state. We're going to contribute $650,000. The total project is, what, $3.5 million?

Yeah, my only concern is the local match was written down as a different number.

Correct, yeah. So technically the money you're accepting hasn't changed, and what you're doing is you're authorizing the mayor to sign that acceptance agreement. That said, I think it probably makes sense. To have a motion to confirm your vote given the updated. Okay.

Okay from staff and that way there's a clear record that I'll entertain a motion to confirm our vote on item number nine of accepting the The KDOT grant and I move to approve that that change Motion in a second all those in favor aye I don't believe so Michael still here It's good to catch it now though not later I believe we've got four zero one since Michael is no longer on here Yeah, so I don't know if we want to change that or if it since is it confirming how we want to do that, but By the way, I think we're good Let's do this new motion Okay, so this one's 4-0-1. And that was a PJ and Ivan again. James is just a little too short, a little too slow. Yes, speed up. He's not short.

What's with the personal attacks, Jeff?

I know.

Might be the first time in your life you've been accused of that.

We do not have an executive session tonight. That was taken off during the approval of the agenda. Is there anything else anybody would like to speak of tonight?

Just wanted to clarify one thing. With the football game, it's also open to first responders as well. I've got a message to clarify that.

What did I do? I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. That's so moved.

Second.

I haven't got the second. Motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-1. Thank you. I don't.