City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, we're going to get started.

Before we start, I just want to mention something before we start the meeting. If you want to speak to an agenda item, back there, there's a sign-up sheet, a green sheet. This is something that we just started the last meeting. If you want to speak on anything Any other items? There's a blue sheet back there to sign up. So what we do during the meeting, somebody will go back and pick them up and bring them up to me if you want to speak tonight. So just something new to get used to. And with that, we'll stand up and do the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, Indivisible with liberty.

Anybody else get wet tonight? Roll call, please.

Breidenauer?

Here.

Osborne?

Here.

Lattari? Here. Jones? Here. Euler?

Here. Approval of city council minutes, motion to approve regular meeting minutes dated August 24th, 2026. Move to approve as presented.

Bridenhour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Lattari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes. Thank you. Adoption of agenda. Move to approve.

With one change.

One change, yes.

Do you like integrating?

Yes, please.

Mayor Euler, thank you. We would like to move item 9-4, which is a resolution adopting 2026-2027 schedule of fees to other business as item 11-2 after council's consideration of the Bricer agreement. would be the reason why.

It kind of puts them in logical order. You can talk about the bracer agreement and fees first, and then you can act on the comprehensive fee schedule that includes those bracer fees.

Motion to approve agenda as revised.

Amended. Yes.

And then you'll put those words in.

I will. Breidenauer?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a proclamation tonight. Very exciting. It's the National Hispanic Heritage Month 2026.

And I know Ana's here.

Any of you else want to come up or?

Let's stand up here if you want.

National Hispanic Heritage Month Proclamation, September 15, 2026, October 15, 2026. Whereas each year, the United States observes National Hispanic Heritage Month by celebrating the culture, heritage, and countless contributions of those ancestors who are indigenous to North America, as well as those who came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. And whereas what began in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Month under President Johnson was expanded by President Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on September 15 and ending on October 15. And whereas many Hispanics serve as government employees, public servants, civil rights leaders, community organizers, politicians, soldiers, educators, journalists, first responders, and pioneers in art and science, healthcare professionals, athletes, inventors, entertainers, and so much more. Now, therefore, I, Bruce D. Euler, Mayor, along with the City Council of the City of Warrensburg, Missouri, do hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th, 2026 as National Hispanic Heritage Month. I call upon all citizens of Warrensburg, Missouri to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies and programs to celebrate Hispanic heritage and witness whereof I hereunto set my hand this ninth day of September 2026.

Thank you.

Yes. The green one. Yes. Thank you. Okay.

So item number six is public comment regarding agenda items. And if you want to call your name and if you come forward to the podium and just say your name and city of residence. Scott Raisa.

Scott Raisa from Higginsville.

Oh, OK. Thank you. thank you thank you okay

Thank you.

I have a question for staff. Is there a reason why we don't have the TVs?

No worries, I appreciate it.

Is the first one on the agenda? Pardon? Is the first one on the agenda or off the agenda?

It's on the agenda. I'm just giving everybody another minute. You want Scott to go ahead and start?

I'm sure that's fine with me.

Okay, Scott, you have three minutes, please. Thank you for coming.

I'd like to call this speech, Reconsider McGuire Street. I'm Scott Racey, the owner of Earthworks Excavation. On August 27th, I bid on the Rethink McGuire project. I ended up being the lowest bidder. Normally in the construction industry, as long as you have met all the criteria and had all the required documentations, you'll be awarded the job. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for this project. It will be announced tonight that Capital Paving will be recommended to be awarded the project due to their size. It was expressed to me that my competitor has a bigger bench to pull from. And that's the reasoning behind not awarding this project to my company. Nowhere in the specs does it require 1,500 employees. It did not specify that subs were not encouraged or they would be looked down upon when utilizing other businesses. Our concrete contractor is a certified WBE contractor, and there were good faith goals in the specs. Our sub consists of approximately 12% of this job. In the past 18 months, we have bid approximately $4.9 million on several local jobs. We have placed second on the Southeast Sewer Road Sanitary Sewer Improvement, Lions Lake Improvement, Hudson Building. We also came in fourth for the Enterprise Sanitary and Scepter Project. All projects have been awarded to the lowest bidder. What was the change from these four projects to rethink McGuire Street for not being awarded to the lowest bidder? We bid this in a competitive fashion to be the lowest and most responsible bidder per the city's requirements, and I felt like we were getting railroaded out due to my size, not our ability. In the 20 years I've owned the business, my bond has never been pulled, questioned, or drawn upon. Same goes for any liquidated damages. I've supplied the same bond as capital. My company has a perfect safety record. Our track record really demonstrates a consistent history in responsibility and accounting. I'm the type of owner who would never take a bid or take on that responsibility I believe our company could not handle. We have put forth so much effort on this project. We have followed all requirements, including details like placing a bid on a separate color of paper unlike my competitors. I personally have witnessed that being thrown out for lack of detail. We have met with other suppliers and coordinated with vendors to be as prepared for this project. If you would refer to the handout I gave you, our base bid was $2,519.82 less than capital's. When you add all one, capital was lower by $48.38 like the staff report. When you add both alternates, we were lower by $7,951.62. When you add in Alt 1, they should remove approximately 30% to 50% of line item 4 because it's already been accounted for. And we would have made the lowest bidder by $16,398. My goal tonight is to shed light on the discrepancies that occurred throughout the decision-making process of this project. My staff has specifically chosen toward this bid to accompany from Boone County. Of the 13 million proceeds capital has gained through earlier phases, how much has been reinvested back in town. As a stakeholder in this community, I would hate to see all the projects go to another county other than ours. They are taking this opportunity away for more than one community member here. I am not the only one being let down, and this is what has led me to stand in front of you. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Scott.

Thanks, Scott.

Thank you.

Toby Williams?

Oh, OK. Oh, that's all right.

That's why it's kind of new for us with those callers. So thank you very much. Item 7, public comment regarding matters not listed on the agenda. Scott Raisa. Scott Raisa.

Name this one, Rethink Russell Road. I would like to introduce Rethink Russell Road Avenue. I've owned 11 acres in town between Russell Avenue and Young Avenue for the past seven years. In the past two months, I was able to buy one more acre from the city, which I was very thankful for, the old lift station. I've recently secured two more acres, and I have two more in the works. This brings me to a total of 16 acres. On this 16 acres, I have a vision. I've had multiple concept drawings done in the past seven years. Now that my vision is closer to reality than ever, I have provided you with the latest concept drawing created a month ago. My company has executed and completed several local jobs that benefit the local community. In Odessa, I built and owned the live flight helicopter facility that also provides for Warrensburg with better emergency response time. In Higginsville, I have been on the board of the Higginsville Fire Protection District for 10 years. and led the way to obtain bonds to complete the construction of a brand new $3 million fire station. Across the street from that, I built and own a $3.5 million USDA building to serve Lafayette County. I own land in both Lafayette, Johnson Counties, specifically Warrensburg, Concordia, Odessa, Higginsville, Lexington, and Waverly. plan to continue and prove them all. My bench may not be bigger, but it's committed to my communities. Here in Warrensburg, I would like to develop these 16 acres according to the needs of the community and Whiteman Air Force Base. Without the support of this council and staff, business income, tax incentives, community support, and a stakeholder in the community willing to invest, such projects are impossible. This may seem like a carrot on a string, It is not. It's generational wealth for the community. I'm sure you can see the connection to my speech. my last speech. This is my proof of how involved I am with the community and how far I'm willing to get these improvements. Without them, we could easily go back to the absolute mess it used to be. Through showing you these drawings, I would like your input from the community for this space. My vision consists of multiple apartment buildings, retail space, restaurants, bars, maybe a sand volleyball recreation. I'm interested in what you have to say for the invention. Based on the Based on the previous use as a homeless camp, tow storage lot, trash, crime, and drugs, the city collects about approximately $300 in sales taxes or in real estate tax. This concept would create a dramatic financial benefit for the city, not just in the construction, but years of improvement to the city, millions of residual tax base and additional jobs. On one end of Russell Avenue, you can be getting your overpriced coffee of your choice. On the other end of Russell, you could get an ice cream cone. If you prefer neither, then you must be part of the group in the middle that does crack cocaine, meth, camping, or crime committing. So which version of the 16 acres would you prefer? Homeless camps are beneficial community revenue. This council preaches before me, buying, spending, and support our local. I think it's time you start practicing what you preach. Reconsider McGuire so we can reconsider Russell. Thank you again for your time.

Mr. Scott. Thank you.

Item 8, second reading of ordinance, an ordinance adopting the annual operating budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026 for the City of Warrensburg, Missouri, presented by Michael D. Scrag, City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. As you know, you've been working on this for quite some time in budget retreats and work sessions, and then you approved the budget on first reading at your last meeting. So this would be the final step in approving the fiscal year 27 budget as it's attached to the packet and as we've prepared through that process. I'd be happy to answer any questions, but given the work that's gone into it where we're at at this point, the recommendation would be to approve it on second reading.

I did have a quick question. I've been so focused on looking at the expenses and didn't really look at the revenue as well. So I noticed in the budget packet, page 27, the use tax, which use tax is online sales. Is that correct? Okay.

Yes.

And it has grown 15%, but it's now steady. So are we saying that our tax revenue from online sales has not gone up at all in the last... Four or five years. I mean, it's minuscule amount or.

So we did see quite a decrease after that. Last year or so, it was really flat out. And right now we're actually a bit lower than we were this time last year. So we're keeping an eye on it. So we did adjust our projections down a little.

And the Wayfair legislation expanded the tax base. So that kind of took it to that new level. And now we're just experiencing annual minimal growth from that point forward.

So online sales are just stagnant while sales tax, general sales tax across the city is growing year over year. Is that correct? Is there any reason behind that?

The law enforcement sales tax, the marijuana sales tax,

Sounds good. Thank you.

Any other questions? We spent 16 hours in meetings, so we've gone through this, plus the other council meetings we've had, but we've spent a lot of time on this budget. So it's not like we don't know what's in there. We do. No other comments, though? Okay.

Move to approve the ordinance as presented.

Okay.

Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

Thank you. And just once again, Jessica, thank you for such wonderful work. It is a document that is so easy to read and follow for someone who's not a numbers person. I just really appreciate that. And I think you've made it really accessible for the public as well. And I very much appreciate that, all that work.

As I mentioned last week, you had 400 pages in here and this week was 411.

I was hoping it was going to be a little less this time, but that's all right. That's the job.

Item nine, other business. A resolution of the City Council of the City of Warrensburg, Missouri, accepting a proposal by Mike Keith Insurance for property liability and cyber insurance for fiscal year 2027, presented by Jessica Benderlow, management analyst.

Hello, good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. Tonight, I'm going to be opening act for Mike Keith. They have some representatives here, so I'm going to kind of give you a brief summary of our upcoming renewal for our property liability and cyber insurance, and then I'll kick it over to them for them to provide you some details. So we maintain property liability and cybersecurity insurance to protect our assets and our operations from any unforeseen loss. So we carry coverage under three different policies, the first of which is the star insurance package. So that covers our general liability and property for all the departments, except for the fire department. They're special and they get their own insurance package under fire pack. That's that same general liability and property coverage, but just for that. We also have a cyber liability package. So this provides protection against losses from data breaches, cyber attacks, other kind of technology related incidents. So each year we work with our broker, Mike Keith, to prepare a renewal for the various insurance packages that we carry. Our renewal term is October 1, so it coincides nicely with our fiscal year. And drum roll, please. This year's proposal includes a 3.43 total premium increase of about $21,581. So that's excellent news. In years past, we've seen more of an 8% to 10% increase. So we're very, very pleased with that renewal terms that they brought back to us. So I have just a summary table in your packet of kind of the premiums from 26 and then 27 for those three packages, just kind of a summary as we see. So that 3.43% increase is for the base proposal. So what that would do is maintain our $5,000 per occurrence property deductible. You also have the option tonight to amend the resolution and accept a proposal that would increase that deductible to $25,000. That would give us premium savings of almost $32,000. It would actually decrease our net premiums from last year. So we'd see a cost savings there. And Mike Keith has prepared a pro forma of some of our claims history so they can kind of go through what the net impacts of that would be if you were to elect that deductible instead. So with that, I will turn it over to Christian Delosier and he'll provide you some details and answer any questions you might have about the specifics.

Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor and Council. We enjoy the opportunity to come present before you this evening. And Jessica did a very good job. She kind of said everything that I was going to say. I was going to try to keep it high level. If you all received our proposals in your packet, and you will notice when you look at our proposals that we try to keep it down to just numbers. We don't want to put 50 pages of fluff for you guys to wade through. We know that your time is valuable. We want to just get straight to the numbers. Like Jessica said, we've got three different programs here. We've got the STAR package, that you've had for several years. The Continental Western, which is a specialty product, it allows your fire department to have guaranteed replacement costs on the buildings and the equipment. So chief back here just has to give, basically give us an estimate of what the building value would be or what the contents value would be. And at the time of loss, Whatever it is, we're going to put it back like it is. That's a special program for the fire departments. And then one of the big features is that it does designated value. Does anybody in here know what agreed value is? Does anybody have a collector car or anything where you've had to? Okay. So designated value is much like agreed value. So when you all go out and buy a new 1.5 million ladder truck, or is it... Okay. That'd be a good deal. $1.5 million for a ladder truck, maybe $2 million. If anybody's ever had to suffer through a car accident, when the insurance adjuster shows up, somehow your car is just not worth what you thought it was after the claim. Well, when we do designated value or agreed value, we're agreeing with the underwriter what the value of that truck is before we ever have an accident. So if we've agreed that it's $2 million, the company will have the opportunity to repair, replace, or pay that $2 million to get you back in something very similar or the same thing. If it's a brand new one, it ought to buy another. Well, are they still on two-year back order? I like that response. So it wouldn't probably buy the same thing because we have to wait two years and the values have been going up, but you get the concept behind it. That's the reason that we've gone with that specialty product. And the one that you have is exclusive to Mike Keith Insurance in this area. We represent that program on a statewide basis. There are other brokers in other parts of the state that we allow to get access, but nobody here in the state, nobody here on the West Central side of the state can get access to this program. We put this together 10 or 15 years ago to benefit our larger cities with larger, more complex fire departments. There's about seven companies that we represent. There's seven primary companies that are representing or offering terms to cities like yours. We represent all of them. We keep a tight pulse on all of them every year. The company that you're with has been very stable for you over the years. Of the last five years, we've had single-digit renewal offers. In 2022, it was a 2.2% increase, and that was during what we call the hard market. Right after COVID, everything went just haywire. 2023 was an 11%. That was a little bit higher. Then 2024 was 8%. 2025 was 8%. And then this year, we've got a 3.4% increase. The reason that we're able to do that is because of our relationship with the company. We are one of their premier brokers. So when we go each year and talk to them after we've sat down with your team, you know, last year we went out and toured all the facilities and talked to your department heads and we go back and put color to what normally is black and white. We put a very nice narrative together that positions the city of Warrensburg in the very best light possible. That's how we consistently get these really good renewals. So we are very proud to be here this evening. Does anybody have any specific questions for us? We are very happy with the renewal terms. You'll see, if you look at the proposal, some of the lines like the general liability went up, the employee benefits liability went up just a touch. Some of them went up and down, but when you get to the bottom line, the total overall savings is, Good, or the increase was only 3.4%. The premium is generated by two primary factors. There's rates per line. Each insurance company has to go to the division of insurance and file a rate per hundred or per thousand. And then there's exposure. So rate and exposure what affect your premium exposure could be that this year we're ensuring the building for a million dollars. Next year, we want to increase it just a little bit 4% to keep up with inflation, because the cost of the two by four a piece of steel is more next year we're going to keep up with inflation. That would be the exposure if you add more vehicles that's more exposure. So the two things that impact your premium the most are rate and exposure. Then claims, which you guys have had a good claims history. The loss control and our firm partnered with you guys about 10 years ago and got your safety committee going. We invested in that with you all.

What am I missing, Mike? Well, I was going to go to a different topic and ask you to explain the logic of the pro forma a little bit. Oh, okay. Perfect. Okay, well,

So you have an option of a $25,000 property deductible. We looked at that option this year because your property losses have been very low over the last five to seven years. So do you all have a copy of this profile?

Yes.

Okay. So what we did here was we tried to look at five years. You're actually going to see there's six rows there because in... Oh boy, what year was it? It was 22 or 23. We changed your effective date from a January effective date to an October effective date to align with your fiscal year to make it easier for budgeting purposes. But if you go down to the bottom on seven and then J, you'll see that if you guys, we've made some assumptions. We went back historically and used the percentage of savings this year, applied it to the five prior years. we're estimating that you would have saved over the last five years, $94,000 collectively with that $25,000 deductible. So it looks like it's a good buy. And based on your claims history, It should be a safe bet with the 30. I've got 30. I know Jessica said almost 32,000 somewhere in there with that savings. What I would recommend we do is we set that money aside and start building up a claims fund. That's something that we started talking about with Courtney several years ago, trying to start building a claims fund. The deductibles that you have with Star are the best in the marketplace. They've been very low. Most of the companies want to do a $250,000 deductible or 2% or Mike remembers 5% from his prior life. Per location. That is a... That's major. And that is a mess. I hope we don't ever get there. But in the spirit of preparing for the future, knowing we have good deductibles now, I don't foresee them going away anytime soon. But if we could go ahead and start building a little claims war chest, per se, I think that would be a good strategic move. Now, if you take the $25,000 deductible, we're essentially moving the goalpost. So if you take a $25,000 deductible, you need to think about what would you be comfortable retaining? You're not going to turn in a $26,000 claim. You could, and we'd give you $1,000 back. That wouldn't be a good deal. So we need to think about, if you take this option, what are we comfortable retaining? $30,000? $40,000. I mean, you could turn in a $26,000 claim, but I really want you guys thinking conceptually about what are we capable of retaining if we go with this $25,000 option. We've got a little claim going, I think right now, maybe at the little bit of a leak somewhere, the One of the community buildings, maybe. Community center roof. I don't know what that's going to turn into. I don't even know if it's a covered peril. But there's going to be small things that are going to come up that when we take that little bit higher deductible, we're just going to know that we're retaining it and we're preserving our long-term claims history.

The deductibles, do they stack?

It is one per occurrence. So that if you take the 25,000 and you have a big, this storm right here, we had damage from this big storm. There was lots of lightning. You would have one deductible Everything in the city got hit by hail or wind. A big storm comes through and hits every single building in the city. Right now, you have a $5,000 deductible, so you would just pay that one time. It doesn't stack per building. If you move to $25,000, it would be a $25,000 deductible per, we'll call it storm, or per event. So if you have a storm today, you'll have a $25,000 deductible if you have damage. If you have one next month, we'll have another $25,000 deductible. So yes, if that was what you were asking, there's no cap on it.

Again, what I'm asking is in an instance like that, would it be $25,000 deductible on the building and then on each vehicle that is damaged in that one storm? This back them per item.

That's a good question. I would want to double check, but I'm pretty sure your policy has a deductible waiver, which says in the event of that scenario where the vehicles get it and the equipment gets it and the buildings get it, that we take the single highest deductible. I believe that's the way it's designed. I'm 99% sure, but I wouldn't want to sit here in front of you today and say, I'm absolutely sure I can find that out from Mike.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And you said, though, if we retain the same plan that we have now, $5,000, that would not be the case. We'd have two storms in a row, different months.

It's going to work the same way.

It would work the same way.

It'll work exactly the same way. Whatever your single highest deductible is, is what should apply to the entire storm.

Gotcha.

I had some questions regarding the cyber policy, if I may. I didn't want to step on if you had something else you wanted to add. No, that's okay. The cyber policy on almost every single line starting at page 17 says each and every claim. Can you define what that really means?

It's very literal in what it means. So that policy that you guys have is unique. It will pay a million dollars per claim where most of the cyber policies are going to be on an annual basis. They'll have a $1 million policy for all claims in that given year. Sometimes there's a sublimit, but that policy that you have is unique in that regard.

So let's say we have a privacy breach. Somebody hacks our systems and takes all of our residents' data from our sewer system or something like that, whatever the reason. If we have a claim from each resident, Or are you saying per occurrence, really?

It would be per occurrence.

It would be a per occurrence basis, okay.

It's going to be for each one of those lines in there. And forgive me, I don't have it right in front of me. We could take a deep dive. I would love it if we would.

You're good. I just want to make sure I was thinking properly on that. So I'm big on cyber policies and I haven't really seen a cyber policy like you have it structured. So I just want to double check.

The only ones. And we double checked that. I went back to my account manager and I'm like, This reads different than some of the other ones. It says each and every policy. He was like, yeah, they don't really want to broadcast that. But that's the way that policy is designed for each line on there. You've got a separate million dollars worth of coverage. It's not a million for that homeowner and that homeowner and that homeowner. That would be on a per event basis.

Okay. Understood. And then second question, I didn't see any reference to ransomware or anything like that. What would that be covered under with this policy?

It would be a cyber breach. Each company calls it something a little bit different, but they're all going to have, all the ones that we're going to sell are going to have ransomware. It could be cyber extortion, might be the name.

And I'm sorry, because we brought the executive summary, I don't have the...

It is cyber extortion. Okay. In your policy. would be ransomware. And then hardware, you know, threat actors are getting better and better. If they do affect the hardware to where the hardware is inoperable, you know, we have enough technology across all of our servers, workstations, everything else, we're probably going to be over the million dollars. You know, it's, What would occur in that situation? I mean, we would just get the full million dollars and everything else we're out of pocket on.

If it's not sub-limited on the, what they might call bricking, where they turn it into a brick, it's worth nothing. I wish they would have called it boat anchoring. That would have been a whole lot more. Anyway, they call it bricking. If there's not a sub-limit on there, if the million dollar limit is on there, then that's what's going to show. Again, I'm sorry. I don't have the proposal with me tonight. But I would love to go into more detail if you would like to. On the ransomware, there's something that I want to point out. There's two primary ways that the company will respond, either on a reimbursement basis, where that's where you get to contact the hackers and negotiate. Bruce breaks out his crypto wallet and goes and starts to negotiate with Bitcoin. That's on a reimbursement basis, or there's a pay on behalf basis. And every single time it's available, we're going to go on pay on behalf. because we want the insurance company negotiating with those bad guys using their own crypto wallet. I don't even have a crypto wallet.

Bruce, do you have a crypto wallet? No. No, okay.

I didn't think so, but not very many people do.

I do appreciate it. I know cyber is a big, big deal right now. So I just want to make sure that we're covering our bases on that front.

It is. I just got an email came through from Missouri Rural Water Association talking about the increase in water and sewer utilities that are getting hit. And there was some that had some names to it, but there was something related to Iran. And, you know, it's not going to go away. Very true.

I just had a quick question. Any effect with us leasing the vehicles with the enterprise program on insurance?

We're not really growing the fleet, but as we've refreshed the fleet, it has more value, so it does impact the premium rate. But that's all part of this conversation. And then as we change out, whether it's vehicles or equipment, we keep them informed and keep the policy up to date.

If it's not evident, I love what I do. I could talk to you all all evening about this stuff. I usually get one of those. I get it. I'm a consumer, too. I understand. But it is complex. You guys have a very large policy. It's one of your largest non-revenue generating expenses. We're very sensitive to that, which is why we negotiate so strongly every year on your behalf. But if you all would like to set up a work session at some point in the future and really get down in the weeds, I would be happy to help facilitate.

I'll nominate Max for the Cyber Insurance Committee. And again, our condolences for Lawsome Mike. Thank you. We've had a great relationship with him for years.

He was a pillar of the Clinton community. He was very active in this community. He's missed every single day. There's times I want to go tell him something and it's like, you know, the winds aren't quite as sweet when there's not someone to share him with. But He taught us all very well and we're trucking on.

Thanks, Christian.

Thank you all very much. Thank you.

I do have a couple of questions for staff. As far as, I noticed that this pretty much covers everything, parks, enterprise fund and everything. Are we charging them back for the insurance premiums that we're paying? Okay. Yeah.

Yes, we split out those costs. The general fund covers all of the general fund departments, and then we split it all into the different funds.

Perfect. And then another question I had, when was the last time we went to bid on our insurance? Do you happen to know off the top of your head?

I don't know off the top of my head.

Yeah, I don't know either. I know, and we talked with Christian that as just kind of best management practices across all different platforms, that's something that we are targeting. And There's a little bit of work in preparation for all that, but I've shared with them that there's been interest by other vendors, and that is something that we would just need to do as part of Best Mayhem.

And as I recall, I think It's pretty much the same vendors you all go after, whether we went to another company. I think we went through this last year, two years ago.

Yeah, well, in one family clarification, there's broker services that then help us go to market. So partly what we would probably be doing is doing RFQs for qualifications for brokers to select a broker, then help us go to market.

There's about seven primary companies in the United States. Most insurance brokers have access to those companies. Ultimately, what you all may want to do is select the most qualified broker to go to market and bring those companies back to you. If you were to do the old-fashioned quote method, you would have five insurance agents in here all arguing about why theirs is the best, and then you've got to wade through all that. But on an annual basis, we keep a close eye on the marketplace. And if something were to arise, we would automatically, you guys wouldn't even need to tell us. We would have to have your assistance, of course, and your approval. But you wouldn't even need to tell us if there was a claim that didn't get paid, or the financial stability of the company, or service was really lacking, or pricing, we thought pricing was gonna go up. We saw, because of where Ural's renewal is in October, we started seeing the pricing from Star back in January, for their January one renewals, and we knew we had a really good renewal coming in. We thought it was gonna be 5%, and it came in at 3.4%. If you take the $25,000 deductible, it gets it down to almost a 0% increase. So in 2022, 23, and 24, and you wouldn't want to do that on a regular basis because you can get what they call market fatigue. If I go to every company every year, eventually they will give up. I've literally gotten emails before that says, what's changed? We've seen this account four years in a row. We've had good terms. We've never won it. We don't want to get in that position. We want to get in a position. We want to stay in the position that we're in now, which is where the insurance companies are fighting for the city of Williamsburg. But we did approach in 22, 93, and 24, we approached a company that we thought was going to be a good fit for you. Neither one of those, none of those years worked out. We just came through the hard market where pricing was very difficult, but we were able to keep you guys with single digit renewables and deductibles, which we talked about tonight. You know, they're not 5%, but, you know, a company like Travelers, for instance, is one that they could put 2%. deductible and that's 2% per building. So then you do add them all up. It's 2% for this building, 2% for city hall, 2% for, you know, everything, cumulatively.

2% of the value of that asset, right?

And it's of the asset, it's not of the damage. So you have a, let's use the community center, you know, $15 million community center, but the 2% lend and hail deductible, you're looking at what? It's a

I don't know the value off the top of my head, but the point is big.

Did I introduce Jake? Jake Farnsworth here. Sorry, he's my associate. He's the math guy. Is it $300,000? $300,000. You would have a $300,000 deductible on that one building. So when you're looking at $5,000 deductible for the whole storm, the program that you guys are aware of is really good.

I do want to be clear. My questioning is not a reflection on your guys' work. I know you all do a lot of great work. Several organizations I'm a part of have used you guys for insurance as well. I think you all do great work. It's more just an initiative I'm working on to make sure that we are going through a competitive process for all of our services, not only insurance, but attorney, finance, everything else in between. I do appreciate everything you have for us tonight. It really was a a good read for me. So thank you.

Anything else? Thank you all. Have a good evening. Thank you.

As a quick reminder, the option we've presented for you tonight are to approve the resolution to accept the insurance renewal proposal, maintaining a $5,000 per occurrence property deductible. You can amend the resolution to accept the insurance renewal proposal, increasing the property deductible to $25,000. And of course, you can also defer action until the next meeting and direct us to gather more information about the proposal or the deductible structures. In light of the savings that are estimated based on our past claims history, staff recommends that we make that.

I really appreciate your questions, Max. Thank you. We're lucky to have a cyber guy on city council.

I move to amend the resolution to accept the insurance renewal proposal, increasing the property deductibles to $25,000.

A quick question I have on that. We had talked about maybe a policy, an internal financial policy of some sort to figure out when it's worth putting in that claim. Is that just going to be an internal policy for you all? Will that come before us?

I think that'll be more on a case-by-case basis rather than articulating a hard number. I mean, we'll just have to look at the incident, our claims history, get some advice from the brokers and make a strategic decision at that time. But I think his point's a good one. You're not going to make a claim right over the threshold while you're doing this, running up your claims history and setting yourself up for a premium increase. Absolutely.

Thank you.

Does our motion need a second? It does. A second.

Okay. Fred Naur?

Yes.

As for yes, let's hurry. Yes, Jones. Yes, you learn.

Yes. You know, I'm going to bring it with the amendment.

You'll need to vote on that's what I thought. Right. Okay. Actually,

To approve the amended resolution.

So we need a motion to do that? Okay, I still move to do that. Okay. A second. Okay.

And just to be clear, last motion was to amend it. This is a motion to approve the actual resolution, the amended resolution.

The amended resolution. The last motion was to approve the amendment to the resolution, and then this motion would be to approve that amended resolution.

Correct. Right?

Yes. Okay.

Thank you.

Sure. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. We made the changes. We're still here. Mm-hmm.

Just want to mention. Yes, item 9.2. The resolution adopting implementing the city of Warrensburg paid plan for fiscal year 2026-27. Presented by Michael E. Scragg.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This, too, is in combination with quite a bit of effort on Staff, on your part, in those 16 hours of meetings, we took up the pay plan as well as the budget. And so this would be adoption of the pay plan, which has been incorporated in the cost of which has been incorporated into the budget. You may recall that when we met and went over the pay plan, we talked about pay plan structure, the minimum rate, the breadth of the pay range. We standardized that in this pay plan. Step progression within the pay ranges. We modeled it on 13 steps to get through the pay range. Pay grade progression. We created a pay plan that has 5% progression between grades, and then we can place employees or job titles into the appropriate range. We talked about the pay grade placement. I'm sorry, we talked about the maximum rate, the other end of the range. Pay grade placement relative one position to another. Cost of living adjustments, and I think the point there is that when we make a cost of living adjustment, the recommended approach is you then adjust the pay range to account for the cost of living adjustment and the entire pay plan steps forward reflecting the cost of living adjustment. There was some conversation about kind of the starting rate. There was some conversation about why we start with grade 10. I don't feel like I had a really good answer when that question came up, but I guess it leaves a little bit of room if we ever created a part-time position or something that would be in a range below kind of the beginning of our hourly full-time positions. We then, I shared with you the source of the data that was available, and that was the Missouri Municipal League survey that they did. We reviewed the 35 communities that were incorporated into the salary survey, as well as the 38 job positions that seemed like they were points of reference for our organization. Um, and I wouldn't acknowledge that not every city had every position. So depending on the position, the number of cities that had that available have varied. Um, we reviewed the fact that took all those starting pay rates of the communities that were responding, ranked them in order from highest to lowest, and then slotted where we were at currently with our pay range for each of those positions. And I've said it a number of times now. I'm not going to say that Warrensburg was consistently rock bottom, but we were rock bottom in a number of instances, and we were in the lower third in a number of instances. So the plan that built around trying to get us to the middle midpoint of that range, so kind of middle of the pack, I would acknowledge that on a high end, there's Springfield and Kansas City and some communities that probably are expected to be paying more than what we might be paying. But middle of that range helps us get a sense that we're at market or trying to be at market. And so based on all that information, we then went over that position by position and looked at those numbers. You may recall the approximate cost of implementation across the organization was about $1.2 million. We knew that was a challenge going in last fiscal year. We focused on trying to stabilize the general fund such that we moved expenses that we could to capital improvement when appropriate to then create some capacity in the general fund to even be able to take up the pay plan. Um, the other thing that the department heads were asked to do was to tow the line on, uh, any discretionary increases in expenditures. And some things are unavoidable, uh, and insurance being one of them and, and, and asphalt prices, those types of things. But the department heads did a terrific job of agreeing, recognizing that the pay plan was priority one. And we really just had to, uh, focus on that and, and, uh, hold the line on everything else that we could. So, um, What's before you is the resolution adopting the pay plan. There's two things I want to point out to you. I left a copy at your desk. There's one correction and one revision. Correction, we had battalion chief in two grades, and they only needed to be in one. So I removed them from the incorrect grade and left them in grade 25. And then I had some conversations about the firefighter specialist and their qualifications relative to the MML. Our approach is a little bit different in that we don't have EMS, but we do have firefighters and then we have firefighter specialists. And so this plan reflects moving that firefighter specialist up to pay grade 21. I did run the cost calculation given our current staffing, what that would amount to is about 13, almost $14,000. So that can be absorbed into the budget. Now, having said that, that is something that if they get their qualifications, they earn that that rank and then they earn that pay rate. And so much like a lot of the rest of the organization, staffing can vary and we just have to kind of see how the year plays out. But we've done our best to calculate as precisely as we can the cost implications of the pay plan. And the other thing that I would note is this proposes not just moving the pay ranges around the employees, but taking each employee, their years of service and their position and then looking at their appropriate placement within the pay range, recognizing those years of experience. So one of two things will happen. The employee would get what is more beneficial to them, either a 3.5% COLA or that adjustment for the pay plan update and their years of service placement. And so employee by employee, it can vary greatly just kind of based on their years of service, how past pay plans have impacted their pay rates and how they've been factored in. But this is sincerely a best effort to figure out what the market is with objective data. And then try to place employees in their ranges, not just update the pay plan for new hires or going forward. I would acknowledge, too, that I have a number of positions that are a little bit unique in our organization, the way they're slotted or they weren't in the MML data. So then I found myself taking what data we had, what positions we had, slotting those, and then looking at the existing relative relationships of positions today. to slot the rest. So a lot of work, a lot of, I feel like a lot of progress. I know some employees may be hoping for more depending on the circumstances, but trying to be data-driven, objective, and trying to fund it, be aggressive in attacking funding it so we can do this in the first place. Having said that, then you could Adopt the resolution, adopting the pay plan with the provisions that I noted. You can make amendments as you see it fit. You can postpone consideration, or you can choose not to amend the pay plan, and we can stay at our current pay rates. That would be happy to answer any questions.

As far as the titles go here, we had some talks about how our titles don't necessarily line up with MML data. Are we changing anything on that front or is that all pretty much staying the same?

I haven't as part of this action. I think we could take a look, but we have to be mindful of what we're doing in our organization. Just changing titles to match may not always be a good fit, but I think we can be a little bit more deliberate in how we title things going forward. Every organization is going to have some uniqueness, but we certainly are no exception to that.

And then as far as implementation goes, uh, you know, I know budget starts October one is the intention to do these increases on October one, or what does that implementation look like?

I'm feeling the pressure to get this finalized, uh, get it shared with the employees. We've scheduled a, an all employee meeting September 24th. We have to produce a personnel action forms that then, uh, make the individual, uh, adjustment for employee to get all that into payroll. So, um, We say HR, but we don't have HR. So that Jessica and HR staff can implement it. Absolutely.

I did want to just say thank you for all the work that you've done on this. I know it's been a lot of data that you've been going through and a lot of stuff that a lot of information you've given us. So I do appreciate that. And also just wanted to thank department heads for the onboarding costs. I know that was a big question I had during our budget retreat. And I really appreciate It really shows off how much it costs to onboard a new employee and really keeping employees as the retention of employees is the most important thing because these are some substantial costs.

I don't think that was all inclusive. There's some intangibles there and some things that you just realize as you're transitioning. So good point. There's definitely an expense there.

Like Mac said, I appreciate the hard work you've done. I think we started this process two and a half years ago, maybe, with Danielle and Courtney, and then you all to carry through. But the main thing was, how do we pay for it? And you guys have done a great job to work through this, so we appreciate it.

And it's just so important to pay people well. pay them for their expertise, pay them for the time that they've taken to get professional development and to keep good people because yeah, it is so much more expensive to onboard a new person than to keep a good person. So this is common sense, I think. And so it's, yeah, it's been a lot of effort to get to this point that, um,

Yeah, I would say this was a big swing in terms of what we tackled, and now it's going to take ongoing refinement, and it's going to evolve. We're going to need to, on an annual basis, pay attention to the market, or we find ourselves falling behind. I shared with you previously, as well as in my budget message, that I think this, combined with the rest of our financial planning, has got our operation going. and stabilize how the challenge is going to be revenue growth, keeping up with our pay plan and our expenses. And that's an ongoing challenge for most cities.

Yes, our goal, we set a goal of recruitment and retainment. And this is finally meeting that goal. And I too would also like to thank all of the department managers for keeping their budgets and their expenses as flat as possible in order for us to put this into place. So thank you all.

I'd like to make a motion to approve this resolution, adopt and implement this pay plan. I'll second that resolution.

Bridenhour?

Yes.

I was born.

Yes.

Atari. Yes. Jones. Yes. Euler.

Yes. Thank you. Okay. One point three. Yeah.

All right. Mm hmm. Item 9.3, a resolution of the City Council, the City of Warrensburg, Missouri, establishing rates for solid waste residential collection services for fiscal year 2027, presented by Barbara Carroll, Director of Community Development. Thanks, Barbara.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. I'm going to walk through the staff report for the most part. As we begin, this is your... your resolution and rate discussion for what will be our third year of service. So it's kind of hard to believe that, but this is our third year of service we're about to embark on. So in year one, you'll recall was fiscal year 25. It was a short year of service, but the first year it hit our budget and we ended that year We went into that year thinking we would need about a $450,000 loan from the general fund. We ended that year with a final amount of loan of $272,061, which gave an ending fund balance to the solid waste management fund for fiscal 25 of $93,246. That was your ending balance that year. In March of 2025, we began service and you set rates at that time of $26 and 50, well, $31 a month for the base service, $12.95 for the hardship service and the $6.15 for an additional trash cart and $1 for an additional recycling cart. There's a $30 cart replacement fee. We set penalties at 10% and termination of an account at $25 and a restart service fee of $25. So the numbers people always remember is the $31 for your base service and the $12.95 for the hardship service. Those are the main two numbers. We are looking at ending fiscal year 26. with a net income of approximately $88,677, which would bring the total for the two years of fund balance of $181,923. Now, this year, we did not make any type of loan repayment to the general fund. But also we didn't need to borrow any new money. So that was good. And it did not include any type of franchise fee to the general fund. So Constable Sanitation let us know in April. that they were not planning to ask for a rate increase for fiscal year 27. They by contract are required to let us know that in April of every year so that we can then do our rate analysis and prepare the budget accordingly. Knowing that staff looked at rate scenarios and how this year was going, fiscal 26 was going and have brought forward a rate increase on the city's administration fee. So currently Constable charges the $2,656 and the city charges 31, and that $4.44 is our administration fee. So we're proposing a $1 increase on the city's administration fee, bringing the total for the month to the customer charge of $32, and that represents an overall increase from $31 to $32. That represents a 3.23% increase to the customer. We're also proposing adding a proportionate 3.23% increase to the hardship rate, which would bring it from $12.95 a month to the $13.37 a month. None of the services would change. Staff is not proposing any changes to the additional trash cart, additional recycling cart, cart replacement rate, the penalty percentage, the termination of service rate, or the restart service rate, or the vacation hold fees. So none of those fees require an additional bill, additional postage. Really, they're not much of that administration fee. So you're already generating for an additional trash cart. We're already generating that bill each month. for the first trash cart. So we're not looking at charging any addition on those other fees. Looking forward to fiscal 27, give you some ideas of how we look out from fiscal 27 to fiscal 33, which is the last potential year for our contract with Constable Sanitation. So when we modeled that all the way out with this rate increase, then that would look like ending net income for fiscal 27 of $132,897. That would, over the three year, give a total fund balance of $314,820. This year in fiscal 27, we are proposing to make a loan payment to the general fund, an $18,137 loan payment to begin paying back that initial startup loan. Then next year, we would pay off, we would spend down that fund balance and pay off the remainder of the loan. And so we would then start fiscal 29 with that. no loan payment. This rate scenario is premised on an annual delinquency rate of 3%. We initially started our budgeting in past years at 10%, but we have been able, we think we're tracking that better and it collecting Our collections group, Carrie Heads Up, is tremendous. And we are seeing closer to a 3%. So this year, in 27, the Solid Waste Management Fund would not pay a franchise fee to the general fund. but we would begin paying a franchise fee in fiscal 28 of 4.5%. Franchise fees typically, those are offsetting your road maintenance impacts from the trucks, as well as expenses for administrative support provided to the funds, such as human resources, information technology, finance, billing, and administrative staff time. It also, this scenario is premised on constable taking the entire 5% increase each of the remaining contract years. They would be allowed to do so under the contract terms. They don't have to do so, but they are allowed to do so. So worst case scenario, we plugged in that they would do that. We will continue to monitor and come back annually. So we'll be back in a year to let you know what is how that looks for fiscal 28. And then you get the quarterly financial reports as well. So you'll have an idea how we're going throughout the year. But we are here this evening asking for that rate increase you have attached. to your packet a resolution that has those fees that I discussed shown in the resolution. Your options this evening would be to adopt that resolution as presented. You could postpone action on the resolution to September 28th, if that's your desire. It is written so that it would become effective October 1. Because we bill in arrears, the actual charges will not start appearing until we build Zone 1 in the middle of November. So the first bill you would see the new dollar amount will be in mid-November. You could amend the resolution with different rates, or you could not approve the resolution and keep the rates at the current level for fiscal year 27, if that's your desire. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Can you walk me through how the delinquencies exactly work? Are we shutting off their service at some point? Are we putting a lien on there?

We do after 60 days. Yes, after 60 days, they get several shut off notices. They get several warnings to I think warnings with hang tags and phone calls typically. But after 60 days, then they we shut off the solid waste service. It does not impact their sewer or water service. It's just their solid waste service for nonpayment. And then depending on what the outstanding bill is, I believe it has to be over $50 before it gets turned over to collections. But then we do turn them over. So if the charges, which by 60 days, it should be $62. So it would be over that. Then it gets turned over to a collection agency.

At that point, it's just in collections or are we doing a lien or anything like that on the property?

No.

Okay. So, I mean, they could just not pay collections. We just, we won't see that money is what you're saying.

Correct. Okay. And or you may see it in several years, right? You may not see it in this budget year, but it may affect their credit at some point in five years from now, they choose to make good on it and it will go into the budget in five years.

Gotcha. Okay. And then a termination of service fee, that is, if we have to terminate due to delinquency. Is that correct? It's not whenever they move for... No, no.

Just if you... Yeah, for non-payment.

Okay. I just want to make sure that was accurate. I did want to mention... It's unfortunate to see these rates go up. That being said, I was looking at CPI. We're about 3.5% on the inflation rate right now as far as July, or as of July. So, I mean, we're under that. But I really don't want to get to the habit of raising rates right now just because I have had a lot of complaints from residents, especially about sewer rates, just how high it is. And then increasing these rates is just... It can be hard on a lot of people. So I do think that this is something that we need to do because we do need to get that loan paid off and make sure that this is going to break even on an annual basis. But I would be concerned about continuing to raise those rates year over year as we move forward.

And it's actually over two years because we didn't have one last year. So it's really one and a half, 1.7 over two years. And the fact that Constable has not raised the rates to us in the two years and with the price of diesel and everything, I think we're real fortunate that we are where we are compared to some of the services other people outside the city are having to pay today, which is terrible, but appreciate it. Thanks, Max. Any other comments?

I have a couple, so maybe it'll double up. So just kind of piggybacking on what Max said, the logic behind the increase is not to do with increased costs to the city or to the department or to the fund. It's about being able to pay back the loan more timely.

I think it's to be able to pay back a little more timely, but also to be able to be in a position to pay a franchise fee going forward. Other funds are... covering some of these expenses. We do our billing on the sewer bill. So all the postage, all the paper, all the envelopes, all the ink, the rental and the lease payment on the equipment that prints the bills, that folds the bills, that stuffs the envelopes, and the merchant fees for the credit card, all of that is paid by other departments. That is not in your solid waste management fund expenses. So that adds up quickly. But you also, and those are real costs, that's around $138,000 right there that is not in your solid waste management fund. So it puts us in a position to begin paying that franchise fee in the future.

And as I think I'm calling it correctly, as an enterprise service, it needs to pay for itself.

Yes.

And so we need to get it where it no longer has a loan and it's no longer dependent upon other funds to be supporting it.

And so... Well, we want to... We... We want to continue to see the efficiency in having combined billing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that continues to be a selling point of the city doing this. Right. But to be able to recognize that they are spending that, yeah, with that franchise fee. Right, absolutely. So it needs to be...

It needs to be paying for its own way.

Yes, that's the general concept. It's not uncommon. And that also dovetails into what we were talking about earlier about trying to stabilize the general fund operation, get our operations stabilized and be able to keep up with rates of inflation. So you won't ever see them have their own IT director and HR director and finance officer, but the franchise fee is to offset some of that expense that general fund is subsidizing essentially. Right. as well as then impacts on streets, wear and tear in streets. So as we go through our financial planning, we're trying to look at that as it relates to all the other funds and make sure that it's equitable and see that we're not ignoring the general fund's contributions and overfunding out of the general fund.

I would like to propose an amendment, or I would like to propose that we do adopt this ordinance, this resolution with the increase of the $1 to the majority of the households, but that we do not increase the hardship fee. I know it's a small amount. I completely get the logic here. I'm not arguing against the logic. I would just like to see the hardship fee stay the way it is for the folks who are already on that fee for a reason. That's my feeling. I don't know if any of you might agree with that or not. It's 40-some cents. It's 42 cents, I believe.

Barb, do you happen to have the... amount of households or amount of service addresses that are not on the hardship currently.

Yeah, that would be your base service. As of 9-1, it was 5,039 house service units. How many of them are hardship? None of the $5,039 are hardship. Those are all base service. Okay. Hardship is 128 units. Okay. As of 9-1. You're expecting about a $60,468 increase in the fund if we didn't increase the hardship.

That'd be $5,039 times 12.

Yes.

And do we have any firms on the loan from the general fund should we need to have a paid off by certain date. Even even by statute were were totally fine on right right.

For those what are the requirements to be hardship.

You need to be able to show that you have a mobility impairment. So we see people with handicap placards. They don't do as many placards anymore as they just do it on their license plates. So proof of that with your license plate. And in some cases, we get a doctor's note or a letter from a doctor because if you You might have a shorter-term mobility issue, and then you could break both legs for a year, but in a year, you're fine. So sometimes we just get the doctor's note instead.

Okay, thank you.

I will second Susie's motion to amend. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. This is on the motion to amend. Right now are yes, I was born yes, but sorry yes Jones yes Mueller yes.

Make a motion to approve amended the amended resolution.

I second that. Right now or yes, I was born yes, but sorry yes Jones yes, you learn yes. Thank you. Now we need to tell. Item 10.1.

An ordinance of first and second reading ordinance and ordinance approving and accepting the minor plat of Alexander commons plat to subdivision, the city of Warrensburg, Missouri, located one one one five and one one two five North Poland Street presented by Barbara Carol.

Planning and Zoning Commission took action on this item at their meeting last night. So I have copies of their written recommendation that I'm going to pass around.

Well, the ordinance that was drafted in your packet had a blank where we needed to insert their recommendation.

And so this is a substitute ordinance that just for that blank wrote the line approves it. This is a ordinance approving a minor plot of land that is located north of the tractor supply on the north side of town along between McGuire Street and North Holden Street. So originally, Alexander Commons consisted of two lots, the lot that tractor supply is on and a lot north of that. And this plat, the replat, takes that northern lot and now further subdivides it into two new lots. And the lot on the north end, which would be the one right adjacent to the roundabout, is lot 2A and then the lot 2B. between it and Tractor Supply becomes lot 2B. You do see construction on lot 2B. It's north of the Tractor Supply. You've seen construction start there in the last month with some moving dirt. And that their sign is up is going to be a Dobbs tire. So that is on the proposed plat lot to be. And then north of it is a vacant lot. And at this time remains undeveloped. So this takes one existing lot on paper and turns it into two new lots on paper. And one of those lots is currently being developed. Both of the lots that are being created meet the minimum depth width and lot area standards required by the zoning ordinance and the subdivision regulations. Both lots are in a general business district and the plat. continues to pull forward the requirements from the original Alexander Commons plat that improvements be made along the right-of-way with curb and gutter and sidewalk along the North Holden Street and sidewalk along McGuire Street. They have, we did have some corrections that they've made during the review process. At this time, staff recommends approval of the ordinance and the plat as presented. The Planning and Zoning Commission considered this at their meeting last night, and they recommended approval as presented, and you now have a copy of those written findings and their recommendation. I'd be happy to answer any questions. And with us this evening is a representative from the applicant, Toby Williams. He's here in the room. If you have questions of him, he'd be happy to answer those as well.

I want to make sure I'm looking at this right. I don't, I don't see a, what, what it's currently plotted as I don't believe. So we're,

So if you're looking at the map in your packet that says aerial map, it's just the one with the photo. What the plat is this blue outline.

The new one. The proposed plat.

Yeah, the proposed plat that you're asked to approve or act on tonight is all the land inside the blue outline shape.

So the land that you're... Fantastic. The whole lot goes all the way up to the curve of North Holden Street. Is that correct?

Well, it doesn't go... You're seeing some grass between the blue and the roundabout. That's right-of-way. It's not in the lot. There is land there in but it's part of the right of way. It's not part of the lot and it's not inside the plat.

Barb, what we have in our packet is not the, it is the full lot, but it is not dividing the lot. We don't have, you open up what you have, the plat, the big plat that divides it into lot A and B, We don't have a picture of that in our packet. You don't have... We don't have that in our packet.

Yeah, we don't know what A and B is.

We don't know what A and B is, except that I saw that last night.

All we have is that blue shaded aerial map.

It shows the whole thing before it was divided into two pieces. So we don't see the setbacks, the sidewalks, any of it.

I got to get past my dual certification. should have been attached to both of those.

I can pass this.

Yeah, can you show that?

I don't need to see it. I saw last night. Well, you are.

And then you can see that through the barcode.

I might be able to see it on this map, but just looking at this aerial map, I did want to confirm the sidewalk. So we are going to ask them to put the sidewalk in, even with Rethink McGuire future phases in mind. That sidewalk in front of Tractor Supply ends at their tree line, but that's not their lot line. So is there going to be a small gap between those two lots, if that makes sense. I'm only looking at the satellite map here. I haven't actually walked this.

It is real quick on that, if you want to.

Is it? Yeah. There should not be a gap. OK. I don't know if it's the error on the part of the map, or it was an error on the part of our, yeah, I'm not sure where the error is there. It's there, stand up. The intentions, I think, match.

Okay.

They match on the two plats, I'll say that.

I would not be surprised if that has something to do with the suit launch that had not yet been processed. Because that's exactly where all that was. Gotcha.

So that could be just easement that they haven't built on yet.

Just because it's still in construction phase and that part of that construction is still an issue and that is exactly where that sidewalk stops and where the new park will start. That's where that sewer connection will start. That's where that all is.

Who's going to be responsible for putting that? Are we going to tell Tractor Supply they need to do that? The contractor or the contractor.

I'm good, thank you.

Anything else, council?

We have to second by title only.

Right now.

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

And the ordinance approving and accepting the minor plat of Alexander Commons plat two, a subdivision in the city of Warrensburg, Missouri, located at 1115 and 1125 North Bolden Street. This is for adoption or rejection. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler? Yes. Thank you.

All right, two.

I will be in this post for a moment.

Okay.

Yep. Yeah.

Item 10.2. An ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute change order number one with Bowen Engineering Corporation for the West and East Wastewater Treatment Plant Improvements Project presented by Phil Adler, Director of Public Works.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. So the change order sitting in front of you is for blowers to be added to SBR3 sequential battery reactors number three at both east and west wastewater treatment facilities. This blower that is currently operating there were installed in 2009. They're positive displacement blowers. We've already had to replace one of them. With this change order, we will upgrade to the intervary blowers that we have at SBR 1, 2, and 4. So we will become more reliable or familiar with the equipment. We'll have less parts on the shelf. We'll have more comprehensive equipment. Training on those blowers will be able to do more in-house stuff with not having to know this blower, that blower. And that will be a big help for our operators. We'll know more how to operate them in case there's issues. So just getting it all one type of unit will be really convenient and helpful for the operators and keeping things there. getting it during this upgrade. I know it's a large amount of money, but it will actually save because in the future, if we don't get it approved now, we will come back and ask for it to be done. And at that time, it's going to be a whole nother process of getting the engineering, getting the contractor. So.

Just keep you with us. Within the budgeted amount.

This does. So this is change order one, we will be coming back with change orders here in the future because we do have Some typing that is going to be changed. So this one's coming before you now because we need to get this ordered in the packet. You saw that this will extend the date of the ending of the project due to the fact that this piece of equipment's not just sitting somewhere. It does have to be built. It does have to be provided. So we need to get this in front of you, get your approval so that we can get this ordered so it can get built and then it can get in and get it installed. So, but there will be other change orders. This does stay, this is a no cost change order. There has been substantial savings through the CMAR process due to the You know, they've been able to not move as much dirt off site. They've been able to have savings in spots that they thought there would be more expense. They're working really great out there and doing a good job. So due to those savings, they came to us and after they realized it and they said, hey, we can now get you this for this price, the $1.1 million. So we're bringing it in front of you so that we can hopefully get it passed, get it ordered, and get it installed before they leave. The project is over halfway done. They are cleaning up the lot, putting up fence, and this would be one of the final items that they got done, if approved. We will come back for, like I say, the change order. Another change order, there was some piping that's required for the discharge point moving at the west plant. They're still working on the engineering of all of that and getting it squared away and the price of it. But that one will also be a no-change or no-cost change order, and we will stay within the allotted amount of money.

And approximately when do you think this is going to be done?

So the proposal here is pushing it out to final completion of June 14th. But if you have an opportunity to go out there, The SBR, or sequential battery reactor number four, is already built. They've got most of the equipment in. We're connecting it electronically to HMI. That's probably the slowest part from here on out. You can go out there. They've put in the reed beds. They've done a lot of landscaping. They're waiting on putting down Z. They're basing fences. rock all over the place. They've actually started removing some of their trailers. So it's starting to look like the plant should without a construction site.

Okay, wonderful.

No questions.

Great news today.

Do you want to find the budget?

Oh, if you have one. I can come up with something real quick.

I'll stay in for questions, but staff does recommend that this is approved and we can get to move forward with it.

Motion to move to second reading by title only. Thank you.

Thanks, Phil.

Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Lachari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller?

Yes.

An ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute change order number one with Bowen Engineering Corporation for the West and East Wastewater Treatment Plant Improvements Project. This is for adoption or rejection. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller?

Yes.

Thank you.

10.3. Okay. We're on the same page.

Item 10.3. An ordinance authorizing the city manager and city clerk to enter into an agreement between the city of Warrensburg and Bracer Advisory Group, LP, for fire protection system inspection management and establishing a fee for the submission and processing of fire protection system inspection reports presented by Chief Ken Jennings. And congratulations on your certification. It's fantastic.

Yes.

Very proud of you.

This topic should sound fairly familiar to you, but it was presented to you in May and had some questions that came along with it. So tonight to help accompany it, just with some of those questions and the confusion around some of the terms last time I put together a presentation to kind of go along with it, but This is exploring a solution to a problem that we identified a couple years ago in the verification of the annual inspection requirements of fire protection systems throughout the city of Warrensburg. So the ordinance tonight would, if approved, authorize the city manager and city clerk to enter into an agreement with Bryce for LP. to provide that third-party service. And we'll get into a lot of that as we go through this to help us out and improving the efficiency there. As I said, we discussed this in May. There was some questions that came. So we'll come back tonight with a lot of the answers to those questions to help kind of guide that. We have built this on the existing international fire code that we adopted last January. So within that code, it does several things. So one is it establishes the type of fire protection systems that have to be installed in certain types of occupancies based off their use, how many people are in there, building, all factors considered. Also in there, when they are required to have a fire protection system, ranging from a fire extinguisher to a sprinkler system, a hood suppression system, or anything in between or over that, they have to be inspected on an annual basis. And this inspection is performed by a certified inspection company that comes in and tests function and makes sure that it works. They certify it. and move on to the next. So that all falls under the existing code. This doesn't change anything in the code. Those requirements are there. Fire protection systems, this is a quick refresher we went through. Fire alarms, those count. Fire pumps, so large buildings that have to support their sprinkler systems or standpipe systems will have fire pumps. Hood suppression, you see those in a lot of restaurants. Sprinkler systems, I think we're all familiar with. Our best inventory puts us around 1,100 existing fire protection systems throughout the city. Over half of those are portable fire extinguishers of some sort. There was a question in the last presentation, fire extinguisher listed twice. It's all one. So if it's a fire extinguisher, big, tall, small, on the wall, on the ground, in your pocket, fire extinguishers, fire extinguishers. So we have that cleared up. Fire alarms and sprinklers are our next biggest, most prevalent system throughout the city. And then there's some unique ones sprinkled in there, of course. So the problem that we identified is that since we don't perform the function testing and we don't have the staffing, we have one in the prevention division, we weren't able to... It would be very, very challenging. I won't say we can't. It's not something that we're very good at in the fire department. We always try to figure out a way. But with one person and everything else that that job entails, hitting every occupancy to verify that the system has been inspected is unrealistic. We do get to check on those. So new business licenses, liquor licenses every year, they get inspected annually. So while we're conducting a fire code compliance inspection, our inspector does check those things. So hood, extinguishers, sprinkler systems to make sure they've been tested. Our crews are out throughout the year doing pre-plans in different occupancies. If those types of things are noticed, because they are looking, they try to pass that word on to the business owner. But we try to separate an inspection rules and then being allowed into businesses so that we can better prepare to respond to them and keep ourselves and the public safe. So we estimate that around 10% of the occupancies that have these may get eyes on every year. What we're proposing is a compliance engine through Brycer LP. It's a third-party repository. Inspections that are conducted in the city limits of Warrensburg by those vendors are then uploaded into this cloud-based storage. It's managed by Brycer LP. We are provided access to it as the fire department for free. Their business model is built off of the submission fee that that vendor pays to upload into that system. So quick refresher how it works. Brycer, the compliance engine, will send out notifications. We'll give them our inventory of what we have. New ones will come across their board as they come online or as they're found throughout the system. But they'll get a notice that says, hey, your systems are coming up to be inspected. Get those scheduled. So they'll, depending on what they have, they survey vendors. It's their choice to pick who they'd like, who may offer the best service, the best price. They take all of that on on their own, as they should be doing now. Inspector comes, completes the inspection of the system or systems that they may have. The property owner or the system owner pays the vendor directly, whatever that agreed price may be. The vendor then uploads that into the cloud-based system. The vendor then pays that fee to upload it. How they pay that fee is where it varies. So previously surveyed, the companies that provide this service half give or take had that fee already built in. So if it costs a hundred dollars for me to come look at your extinguisher and that fee was just built in, I'm paying it. Others that don't charge that would then tack that onto their bills. Somehow they would fit that into their payment structure. But the vendor is actually the one that's paying the compliance engine directly. TCE gets that, they verify that the upload's good, that the information is correct, that's released almost instantly then to us. Our fire marshal then takes that data, reviews, cross-checks that to our existing occupancy data, gets the record updated. If there's a deficiency for some reason, then they would reach out to that occupancy here locally, set up a time in then to come in and look at it, work with them to try to figure out how to get that resolved. So it really streamlines that when we do find those deficient systems to be able to allocate our one person to that a lot quicker. And then that regular inspection, maintenance, testing of the system, when they do need to work, there's a higher probability that they are going to work. There's always that chance that They could have checked it yesterday and it didn't work today, but it definitely increases those odds. So the overall goal in this is to make sure that those buildings that require fire protection systems are getting inspected on an annual basis, that they are working, that those things have been serviced so that if there's an emergency, reduces the risk to life, reduces the property loss potential, and then obviously keeps the fire folks a little bit safer in that situation. Landing on TCE, how we got there. There were three primary providers to make things a little bit easier. Last year, two of the biggest ones combined, Brycern and iRoll. The third actually goes to our existing RMS, but they don't do a lot of the services that TCE would supply like sending notices, past due notices, things like that. So the other advantage here with Brycer and TCE is that it's pretty common in the KC metro area. So 17 fire agencies are currently requiring TCE as that upload vendor. So it's something that the companies that would work in this area already or should be pretty familiar with. I've kind of gone over their funding, how that comes in from that submission fee. Their fee ranges that are set for us range from $16, and that $16 is one to five fire extinguishers, 21 for six or more fire extinguishers, and then $27 for just about everything else. So that's kind of their range. And then it's per system. So if you had 30 fire extinguishers, you're going to pay that $21 once for all 30. With TCE, we have the option, they'll manage a local revenue share option. So it's a way for us to, on that administrative piece, collect some of that revenue. service fee, if you will, to verify this compliance, to conduct those follow-ups. So that is an option that is out there. They collect it with that submission and they remit that to us quarterly, but less than 7% on their piece for processing that. So previously in the ordinance, we proposed that local fee assessment at 18 per upload. We did some staff hour calculations to come up with that based off the information we had at that time. Some of those concerns were the fee structure and impact to the business. There were some questions on alternative fee options for compliance. So we had fees in place, good player, good actor. They were compliant, so we gave them some type of future credit or we reimbursed them. I already cleared up the fire extinguisher category. And then the question came up of what do inspections cost to begin with? So what we did is we went back and engaged Brycer for a lot of those questions. Some of them, they were like, huh, that's a new question. And so we worked through that together. And then we also surveyed five fire departments. We got responses from four of them on some more specific stuff, like what their experience was with their staff hours, their fee structures, and then the community and vendor feedback when they implemented it. So from Brycer, the individual local exemption I'm compliant fee exemption or reimbursement isn't an option through their platform. That's just something that their system just can't handle on that granular of a basis, considering all of the different jurisdictions that they're in. It would theoretically be something that we could manage internally, but with that comes all the workload and then billing follow-ups, non-payment notices, all that stuff. And then that fee offset then changes pretty drastically to be able to manage that. So. Not a real feasible way to look at any fee exemption. Also found out that the local fees, Brycer, when there's that revenue share option, typically doesn't see any fee attached to that. So there was a question before on if I have one extinguisher and then I pay that. the TCE fee and a local fee, it's pretty substantial. So they don't typically see any local revenue share fee tied to extinguishers. Set four, the departments that we surveyed responded. One of those four have an established local fee. Their prevention divisions had two, the lowest was two, the highest was seven people dedicated to the fire prevention divisions, just for reference. And then they said they averaged two to four hours a week managing the results of the records that are coming in through TCE. Their compliance that they were seeing locally mirrored was pretty similar to what the national average of 89%. And by compliance, I mean of the inspections that were coming in, around 10% had some type of deficiency reported that required additional follow-up. Overall, they reported positive feedback from the business community. There was definitely a transition period on the implementation that required some communication, one being that the notice letters came with our letterhead but they came from a St. Louis post office. So communicating some of that was some of the things that they just kind of gave us a heads up on. Vendors typically report pretty good feedback. And then of course, they've all gotten used to it in that area. So it keeps things pretty uniform. But overall, the use of the system, they've had very minimal, if any, negative feedback. So some of the changes in the ordinance before you tonight. The compliance engine fees, they're the same as you saw last time. Those are set by them. We have removed the local fee for all fire extinguisher inspection submissions, and then we recalculated the local fee using the same formula, but with the new data that we got from those fire departments. So how that reduced it, what we figured was that that two to four hours a week. So we landed on three minimum of two people. That's how we came up with the six hours per week is this initial best calculated estimate. So run all that through the systems, that annual cost per system, and then nine dollars and thirty six per system. So out of that down to nine dollars. The fee structure breaks it down by system category. So as I pointed out, Brycer's fee is $27 on most of the systems, $16 and $21 on extinguishers, $9 on everything except for extinguishers on our end. So you would see normally the $36 on anything but extinguishers and then $16 to $21 on your extinguishers alone. That's that total fee. So national averages was kind of tricky. There's such a wide range of possibility there. But Brycer did some work for us and got us kind of what they were seeing out of their network. So a lot of things going into it, size of building, complexity of the system. So those prices can really range. So don't be alarmed by these numbers. It's still a big, it depends. But you look at a system that's as complex and large as the Dollar Tree warehouse. You got 26 acres under roof. It's a lot of sprinkler heads. It's a lot of staff bars. So that is definitely going to be a lot higher with that sprinkler system than City Hall. And I did check just recently. To visualize, we're paying for City Hall, Public Works, and the Police Department just shy of $4,000 is what that annual inspection for all three of those facilities, just to kind of give you a ballpark. So those fees are in there. They'll probably be a little.

If I could throw in a point, this may be obvious to you already, but these are not new costs being generated as part of this action. This is the activity they should be doing to be code compliant on their own on a regular basis. Thank you for clarifying that. Next point.

Sorry. I want to skip right over this. Yes. So these should be occurring. Let's see. So just kind of the cost benefit there. It can or it's going to, in most cases, increase that unless you already had a vendor that had absorbed that fee into it. So there is going to be some price there. We've clarified it's per system type. That regular inspection can reduce maintenance costs. So we have had that experience in the past where there's been a delay in like a business license or a liquor license renewal that they've deferred that inspection. And then they've had a little issue that didn't get repaired. And then the next year, that issue is even worse. So then it ends up costing that owner a lot more to then finally repair that system to get it back up in compliance state. So even though that annual inspection is occurring every year, hopefully getting ahead of those problems ends up saving that system owner some money in the long run. Looking at ISO, so fire code adoption, fire prevention practices, those are all contributing things into that ISO scoring classification. Implementing this does not guarantee it's not going to hold a two, it's not going to give you a one, but in the totality of everything, as I hit the microphone there for you, It is part of that entire plan and improving that fire prevention and that fire code adoption element. That ISO in most cases does help, especially that commercial industry and their insurance premiums. So it does support those goals that we've had for years. It's the city to maintain and lower that rating. A big one, especially for me. I used to love running lights and sirens, and every time that they do, it just makes me nervous. So just a cool career transition for me. But scene reduction and false alarms. So when those fire alarm systems or sprinkler systems malfunction, we still get dispatched to it. And until we find out that it's not something, we go. So currently in ordinance, it's set so that anything after three false alarms that are caused by a malfunction. So essentially, you get three chances to get it fixed. Then you start incurring a $75 fine for occurrence. So just for example, in 2025, we responded over 20 times to a single location for false alarms. Did generate a fine over $1,000, but it was 20 times it was taking an engine company out of service, putting them out of the central part of town. So if there's other emergencies that are occurring, they're tied up on something that should have been resolved about 19 fire alarms ago.

Wow.

As we pointed out, inspection is already required. This is just going to help us with that record collection and make sure that we can allocate our resources as best as possible. Failure to comply does carry some consequences. So if there was a noncompliance and there was an issue, say a fire or other type of report, it could create some legal issues to work through, which The fire code leaves it up to the judge, but it'd be $500 per occurrence or 90 days in jail per occurrence. So it does carry a little bit of weight with those fire code violations. So with all that, some options prepared for you this evening is to adopt the ordinance as presented, and that would to be adopt TCE and incorporate that local revenue share component. The second is to move forward with adopting Bryce or LP or LP the compliance engine, but remove the local fee for those submissions. And then the third is to not pass the ordinance, which would leave us where we stand today and our, our, our effort to ensure that we have as many compliance systems as possible. Be happy to answer any questions.

Chief, I just want to say thank you for all of this. I know I had a lot of questions last time and a big ask on looking over those fees. And I really do appreciate all the work you did putting all this together and excited to see those fees come off on the fire extinguisher. So that's going to be a huge help to our businesses around here. The only question I had was the, what is considered a submission? Is it the business's entire fire inspection or is it like per, what is a system submission exactly?

So it would be by system type. So if, for example, I have fire extinguishers, a commercial hood system, and a sprinkler system. All three of those are different inspections. And so when that vendor, after they complete the inspection, they would go and submit a sprinkler inspection test result, a hood inspection test result, and a fire extinguisher inspection result. So each one of those systems would generate their own fee. So be 27 for the hood, 27 for the sprinkler system, 16 and 21 for the extinguishers. Plus the $9 for the hood and the sprinkler system that we use.

So at Dollar Tree, they have how many acres?

It's approximately 26 acres on the roof.

And so they have hundreds of sprinklers. So that would generate one fee for all of those hundreds of sprinklers.

Right. So the fire, yeah. And it may vary depending on the vendor exactly what they lump into that sprinkler system test. But the sprinkler system itself would be one inspection and the submission fee. The fire pumps that are out in the house that supply that would be their own inspections. upload and fee associated with it, the extinguishers, so on and so forth. So the more systems, the more they will pay that submission fee each upload for each individual system.

For each system, regardless of if it's a thousand sprinkler heads versus two sprinkler heads. Correct. Okay, thank you.

I also appreciate all the work very, very much and glad to see that it can it can work without having to charge our local businesses for The fire extinguishers. Thank you for Figuring it took to do that.

Okay, I'm kind of in favor option number one myself.

I would agree with that. I would like to move to second reading by title only. As presented.

Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Motari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller?

Yes. Chief, when you... Real quick, tell us your certification and how long it took, what you just received.

Sorry, can we finish this real quick? We'll finish this.

Sorry.

Don't go away. An ordinance authorizing the city manager and city clerk to enter into an agreement between the city of Warrensburg and Bricer Advisory Group LP for fire protection system inspection management and establishing a fee for the submission and processing of fire protection system inspection reports. This is for adoption or rejection. I'm looking at him because I'm sure he helped with this title. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler? Yes. Thank you.

So it's the Executive Fire Officer Program that's administered through the National Fire Academy. It's a two-year graduate level program, four visits on campus in Emmitsburg, Maryland. So the four phases focus on just leadership development, self-organization, community, and then it culminates with a capstone research project. So my capstone included... conducted research on the limitations of peer support for fire chiefs.

So it's a very- Would you learn about that?

It's a stressful job.

And there aren't a lot of people who understand that.

Thank you for doing that. Yeah. I appreciate the support and the time away to do it, but took a lot of work.

Congratulations. Congrats.

We did, but it's in other business. Item 10.4.

An ordinance authorizing the city manager and city clerk to execute a contract from the McGuire Street Road Improvements Phase 2 project in the city of Warrensburg, Missouri, presented by Phil Adlitz, Director of Public Works.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. So, tonight I have Phil Clifford here, Project Manager. Thanks for Earthworks showing up, and we have Capital Improvement here as well. So if any major questions come up that I can't answer, I've got some support. And then we also have Mike Briggs, who will help in any way. So presented for you is the Rethink McGuire Phase 2 that is going to be paid for by the EC grant, Emerging Contaminants Grant. Thank you. In August 27, we had 12 plan holders request packets. We had three submit bids. They were very close. We received the first reading, Earthworks was the lowest. But when you add alternate one, which is the geo grid that was used throughout the rest of phase one and three, when capital painting came in low. Brandon, it was less than $100 difference between the two. Due to the fact that capital had already done phase one and three, we felt they were the most responsive and best bid for the project. They were the lowest with less than $100 once you add alternate one. As so that is what we were going to present, but we put in this packet that you could choose either artwork or capital. It'll be your choice. Staff recommends capital. Got presented some great stuff. But the rock clause or the rock excavation on the bid that is always put in there as a cubic yard so that we get a set price for that cubic yard. The cubic yard, if they do hit a lot of rock, could go higher than that price or could be lower. It's not a set amount. We did do borings in those areas and the borings that we have was provided to the contractors does not show any rock in that area until very deep. deeper than we're projecting they have to go. So we're projecting that they don't hit rock, but we don't know. The 50% embankment that Scott was showing, that is a line item. I can't go and choose and pick which line items I want to deduce about that. So you can't really consider that number. This project has been in the works for a while. The state's been requesting. The state also requests that we make a decision tonight. We need to have the decision tonight. I don't mind it. Whichever way you all want to go, it's going to be up to you. Mike, is there anything that you want to add?

So I think it's conveyed in the staff report, and Phil touched on it. Well, number one, I've done quite a few construction projects. I've had some close bids. I've never had one this close. So that didn't get our attention, how close it was and the designation of who the low bidder was with the ad alternates. And we approached it from that standpoint, the presumption, our policy by way of the request for proposal language, as well as our vendor language is lowest and best. I shared the staff report with Mr. Raisa. He and I had conversations and traded emails. I was the one that said that capital had a deeper bench. I think that was in response to why would you pick capital over me? And so some of the points that we were making in that conversation, I shared with him that if you as the council asked me what was our opinion of capital, I don't have any basis to recommend disqualifying capital based on our working experience with them on the last project. We had challenges there. But I don't think any of those challenges were attributable to capital as much as they were timing with Evergy's power lines and multiple utilities and a number of things. And we tried to convey in the staff report that not a criticism of Earthworks. Their references check out. We're not trying to intimate that they can't do the work or they wouldn't do quality work. We find ourselves with a low bid with a contractor that worked on the prior phases of the project that we had a good experience with. And so that's kind of where the staff recommendations coming from. As far as the local preference, that was something that came up on a totally different topic at the last meeting. And the question came up. So tried to give you a little bit more background there. You may recall. At that time, I made the comment that if that's something that you want to consider formalizing, I do think that's very much a work session conversation. There's a lot of variables, pitfalls to having some type of formalized local vendor preference. Having said that, totally appreciate what Mr. Race is doing on Russell. He and I worked together on the Yonge Street project. This is This is an awkward bid result. I've never seen one this close before. I haven't even calculated it as a percentage, but it's got to be. 0-0-1-3. Yeah, so it's pretty small. But we proceeded on the basis of it is our recommendation. We do the geogrid. We did it across the rest of the corridor. And when you put those two together, our take was that capital came out low and they were good. Qualified we didn't have a reason to recommend not going with them.

Question just discussion.

I'm curious about. Either contractors experience with this specific kind of project. Since it's not just a road project, it's, you know, the installation of the catch basins. Um. not being a contractor. I don't know if that's unusual or not unusual, but it's, I'd be curious about whether either of these companies had specific experience in that kind of placement of an underground structure underneath a road. I don't know if that's something that you could find out. And feel free to somebody educate me if that's, Oh, that's a very common thing that everyone has experienced.

I wouldn't know. Whatever's in big packets is what we've asked them to provide. So in terms of soliciting additional information, you know, Mr. S is certainly fine to come up and talk and provide the information as he did tonight. Yeah, it could be the same in terms of that part of it. But what we have in the response packet is what we have to make our decision based on that.

Got it. Okay. then I want to keep it simple then and not money the waters and retract that request. Just an interesting thing that I think might make a difference.

Well, I just didn't follow up on her question there and on the fact that in response to a bill in the

Sorry, could you come up to the microphone and state your name?

Just state your name. I'm Ryan Porter. I'm with Capital Paving. I'm the pre-construction manager for the team, but appreciate that question. I'm president of the school board around home and knowing that we get a lot of topics that we're always not familiar with, so tried to make the effort to showcase the type of work that we've done similar to this. Deep excavation is a dangerous a piece of this project. And we've done this frequently and tried to showcase that with some of the four projects we highlighted with the Fountain Grove and many others. There was some pictures and everything, but our team during phase one and three worked close with the Warrensburg City staff and Burns McDonald with this particular project and was able to get a good understanding of what it was going to take to do this. And I think, you know, the bid results speak to the quality of the plans that the city's put out and just appreciate the opportunity. And like I said, we're here for any questions. Thanks.

Thank you. Yes.

Any questions? Sorry. Back to Capital, so you have put in this brand of specified. The storm track.

At this point, I want to be very careful.

This is not an open debate. No, it is not. I didn't get clarity on the answer.

That's not for this. Yeah. So to speak on behalf of myself, we have not put this specific brand of StormTrack in. We have installed other brands. And yes, in parking areas, streets, and the meeting with the supplier, she said, if you put those in, this is actually a lot easier. It's like putting together Legos. If you can put together Legos. So I have no doubt that we can complete this job for you.

Okay. Thank you, Scott.

If we want to not a question, just discussion.

Okay.

Sure. I I understand where the concern is. This is impressively close, how close these numbers are. I did want to point out, I know our core samples didn't show any rock, but the cost per cubic yard is substantially cheaper with earthworks compared to capital. um i think that is worth noting yes they did come in 48 cheaper but if they have to remove one cubic yard they're all sudden 150 yards cheaper so i think that that is worth noting um Obviously, I don't think that this is a local business debate. I know we've talked about the local business aspect of it, but both businesses are located outside of this county. Earthworks advertises they're out of Higginsville. I understand they may own some property here in town, but their principal business is out of Higginsville, while Capital is out of Jeff City. It's not a local debate. I do think that there is some value in putting money back into a business that has been, that is a property owner in town, though, that does have projects lined up and has actively been working on their property.

And just for clarity, that is not part of your rubric. It was not part of the bid. It is not part of your scoring at all.

Correct. Yeah, I could see that could be very concerning if we're favoring a particular business owner or landowner, that's not proper.

I would tell you that the case law on this topic uses phrases like good faith and without bias and with faithful performance. Just so that's there.

Correct. I was just explaining the mentality there, but not necessarily in favor or against the, it was just part of the discussion.

Potentially violate Missouri case.

Fair enough. Um, but yeah, that was pretty much my point.

Any other discussion?

I guess I'm trying to find the wording for the ordinance. Um,

You have two ordinances. Two ordinances. One under the, one at the very bottom and one above it.

Where?

On the letter. Yeah. The letter in ordinance? Yes. Keep scrolling down.

I have to keep going down? Yeah. Okay, I haven't gone down far enough. Mike made me do it. Mike made you do it?

I agree.

Oh, I see it.

Got it. The titles are different. The first one is capital. The second one is earthworks.

And because we have not read the ordinance even once, right? You haven't read the ordinance. No. So what the moat.

You're just in topic discussion right now. You haven't, you're not in any. OK. Yeah, nothing is happening technically.

Right.

So if you're intending to make a motion, it would be a first reading.

It would be a first reading, and I would read the ordinance that I want to .

If you read the title of the ordinance of what you want to do, that would be your motion.

OK. All right. Are we ready for that?

Eddie, anything? No. So we have any further questions.

Do I make it as part of a motion? My motion is to approve an ordinance authorizing the city manager and city clerk to execute a contract with Capital Paving and Construction LLC for the McGuire Street Road improvements phase two project in the city of Lawrenceburg, Missouri. By title only.

Pardon me?

By title only. By title only.

Okay. We have some motion. Does that go to second reading?

There could be more discussion or they can vote on the first.

They haven't voted on the first reading. And then after we vote on the first, we can have additional discussion. And then go to the second.

As a reminder, like Phil explained, this is something that the state has asked to be done tonight. Tonight. So a no vote on a first reading would necessarily pushing ordinance off and cannot be completed on the second reading on the same night. So something to consider depending on how you're going to move forward.

So having one clarification on that. The reason the state wants it is due to the fact that their fiscal year ends at the end of this month.

Right.

And they need to know So that we can be great.

We can get our money.

Right. Wait a while.

We call I'm confused. So does as do we need a second to on this question? No.

We're not changing anything.

Okay. So we're calling to go to second reading on this motion. Breidenauer? Yes. Osborne? Yes. Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller?

Yes.

An ordinance authorizing the city manager and city clerk to execute a contract. And I don't have the wording pulled up. Thank you. With Capital Paving and Construction LLC for the McGuire Street Road Improvements Phase 2 project in the City of Warrensburg, Missouri. This is for adoption or rejection. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Lattari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay.

Item 10.5. An ordinance vacating a portion of Bowen Street right away running north and south between the lots known as 508 Jefferson Street and 600 Jefferson Street of Gallagher's first addition to the City of Warrensburg with an exception of continued access for utility easement presented by Phil Adlich. Good evening, Mayor, City Council Members, again.

So this is just a simple vacate of an alleyway that we no longer maintain, use. So pretty cut and dry. There is easement still going to be there for utility. Hopefully you've looked at the map and know where it's at.

Any questions? I'm glad that the map was included because I had to Google Bowman. I'd never heard of it.

There's a little section over there.

Yes. And anyways, where I went was the wrong location. And I was like, There's no way we can close this. So I was glad you included the map and I did go and drive it. No, you can't drive it. But I have walked forward to see the pile of rock and well, the dormitory that is piled down there. So I have walked that easement. And I do like the, what you included that showed where other easements, right-of-ways of easements were vacated by ordinance number. This was so complete. I don't know who put it together, but they're genius. So I think this is great. If anybody has walked this or driven by, did you drive by and see it? It's a ditch, kind of a ditch with trees and You know, these things sticking up, say, in sewer line.

But there's another Bowen, too. I mean, it connects. There's one that points right at Jersey. I know you guys probably know that one, the police department.

Yeah, the little section.

The little one. Yes. Yeah, there's some action up there.

Action up there on the one between Grover and Broad?

I live near there. I know. It seems to be a busy street there. Okay.

Yes, that was where I went the first time. Oh, sure.

That's what's on the map, right.

Yeah. Okay, so. Now, what do we do?

Any questions? I had just one. You mentioned Cost of maintenance quite a bit in your letter. What is the cost of maintenance for a right-of-way like that typically? I mean, is there much maintenance involved?

Well, it's the road. It's a right-of-way. So if someone required it, we go in and put a asphalt down and curb. Depending on what the road was, we have sidewalk on one side too.

So just to be clear, you don't just call one day and ask us and we run out and do that.

Well, it's a little unlikely scenario. Improbable possibilities.

But there is no ongoing cost currently.

This one currently because it's an unmaintained alley or right away. Okay. Sounds good. We don't do anything with it.

Thank you.

Any other discussion? Thank you, Phil.

Motion to move to second reading by title and review.

Bridenhour?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller? Yes. An ordinance vacating a portion of Bowen Street right-of-way running north and south between the lots known as 508 Jefferson Street and 600 Jefferson Street of Gallagher's First Addition to the City of Warrensburg with exception of continued access for utility easement. This is for adoption or rejection. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller?

Yes.

Thank you.

I appreciate everybody still staying with us tonight. It's kind of a long meeting, so appreciate it. Thanks. Item 10.6, an ordinance approving and accepting a release of restricted covenants for real property owned by a city of Warrensburg presented by Mike Sprague, city manager.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. As you know, we have some restrictive covenants that are attached to a property in the industrial park dating back to 2001. That's quite some time ago, and we've concluded that those have expired. And for the purpose of releasing those formally and getting it on the record for the property owner and any other interested parties, This ordinance would be your action to release those, and that would be on record, formal action on your part. It would clarify the question that comes up every now and then of what's the status of those outdated, restricted covenants. So you have an ordinance before you. You could, I don't know that you could amend it. You could postpone it or choose not to act, but the recommendation is to approve the attached ordinance.

This, at one time, was in the process of being released, and somehow or another, the paperwork got lost.

There's just a long history.

The best we can unravel from it, as we discussed that one night a while back, is that both sides kind of thought it was going to happen, and then it just didn't happen. I couldn't possibly guess as to why, because there's nothing that shows us why, but it didn't. So that's Go ahead and drafted it up based on the discussion we had with counsel about this and to present it. And of course, the release itself is drafted as I'm sure Councilperson Jones probably would note with a nice three inch version. So it's ready.

Motion to move to second reading my title only.

Excuse me.

Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

An ordinance approving and accepting a release of restrictive covenants for real property owned by the City of Warrensburg. This is for adoption or rejection. Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes. Thank you.

Item 11, 11.1, a resolution authorizing the disposal of two fire engines and sale to Brindley Mountain Fire Apparatus for a total of $150,000 presented by Fire Chief Ken Jennings.

Good evening again. If you'll recall, earlier this year we authorized... $1.9 million to buy two new fire engines. And so with that, it was with the understanding that we were going to be replacing two of our older fleet. And so the time has come to start working on getting rid of those. So the resolution tonight is very similar to what we do when we get rid of property with the exception of where they go. So typically when we do this, it gets past the department heads. Nobody needed a fire truck, which really surprised me. But then it typically goes to some type of auction service. Our experience in the past with that being such a unique piece of equipment is we feel pretty obligated to set a minimum bid that has to be met. And we often struggle with that. So we just slowly lower that minimum bid until we find the right thing. And all the while we're sitting on a piece of apparatus that we're having to maintain and store and all of that. So what Brindley Mountain does is we send them the information on the apparatus. We send them a whole lot of pictures because they're located down in Alabama. Their buying team reviews all of that and then puts together a purchase proposal for those apparatus. So after reviewing what we had, they proposed 75,000 per individual engine. uh, for $150,000 total. So they're about 20 years old. So just point of reference, 150,000 is about half of what we paid for one of those back in 2008. Uh, so that's neat. Um, but, um, That was their proposal. Once we execute the agreement, we have it staggered out in there that we have to do a final pump test on them before they go, which I'm confident will have no issue. They'll pick up one late September, early October with the anticipation of the new apparatus being here in November. I wanted to make sure that we saw both of those arrive before we got rid of all of our reserve fleet after they get here, then they'll come and pick up the 2nd, 1 in December. So, uh, those agreements, uh, have that slated out, uh, so that that can be accommodated. I felt like, uh, or something else extremely important. I was going to tell you about that. Um. Really streamlining the process. What affords us the ability to do this is it was a service that was solicited through Sourcewell. So they have a standing contract through Sourcewell that allows us to do this. to proceed this process instead of receiving sealed bids or going out to an auction type service. So kind of looking at what the market is, again, kind of challenging since they are a unique piece of apparatus. They all have their own little differences, but that range from around what I could find available today. Well, a couple weeks ago, $24,000 to $170,000. But just to point out that $170,000 one was still for sale. So it's hard telling what they may end up going for. So after the review of all of that, we know there will be some minor repairs and upkeep that they have to do on that to then resell that. That's what they choose to do. We felt that 75,000 per truck was a fair offer. So the resolution before you tonight is to authorize that disposal of the property and... sell both of those apparatus based off those offers. I have to answer any other questions you may have.

I'm just going to get a good deal.

I make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the disposal of the two fire trucks and sale to Brindle Lee Mountain Fire Apparatus for a total of $150,000. Please, Chief.

Karen Hollweg, Right now, our yes Osborne. Karen Hollweg, Yes, Atari. Yes. Jones. Yes. Mueller. Yes.

Thank you. Harmon Zuckerman, Home stretch everybody. Here we go. Harmon Zuckerman, I didn't 12 Mayoral appointments.

Hold on. We have 11.2, which was 9.4.

9.4. 11.2 is now 9.4. 9.4 is now 11.2. Thank you. A resolution of the Council of the City of Warrensburg adopting a schedule of fees and setting fees charged by the city presented by Jessica Vendrillo, Management Analyst.

That's the last. So for you tonight, you have a resolution that would adopt our fee schedule for 26-27. So we charge a variety of fees for services like permits, licenses, open records requests, and of course, recreation programs. We consolidate all these fees into one schedule for transparency purposes, but then also for consistency sake and continuing operations on staff's behalf. So we review the schedule annually when we're doing the budget, and then we bring it forth to you for an annual readoption. The 26-27 schedule maintains the current cost for nearly all of our fees. There are three updates we're making that I just want to bring to your attention. The first is to incorporate the proposed, now approved, fire protection system compliance management program fee, so that local fee, the proposed reduction in our building permit modifier that's detailed in Barb's staff report before you tonight, and to reflect the updated parks and rec fees that were recently approved by the Parks Board. So we receive the revenue for all our fees charged and it helps support the services that we provide the community and staff recommends approval of the resolution as submitted.

No questions from me.

No questions. No questions.

Thank you, Jessica.

Thank you.

Eddie, you're on. Move to approve the resolution. The resolution adopting the 2026-2027 schedule of fees and setting fees charged by the city.

Breitenhauer?

Yes.

Osborne?

Yes.

Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Euler?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Item 12.1, mayoral appointments. Motion to approve the following mayoral recommendations. Appoint Jennifer Calloway as a member for the Warrensburg Convention and Visitors Bureau for an unexpired term through April 2027. And appoint Jamesha Stoudemire as a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Commission for a first term of three years through September 2029. Motion to approve.

Ridenour?

Yes.

Osborne? Yes. Latari? Yes. Jones? Yes. Mueller?

Yes.

Okay.

Item 13, Miscellaneous Matters from the Mayor and or City Council. Joe Andrews, welcome back. Long meeting for you tonight, so... Plus doing sports, I guess, somewhere tonight. Yeah, I would resolve that. Okay.

A couple things that citizens have mentioned to me. I'll make it fast.

All right.

One is if and when there's going to be a discussion on City Council regarding alleyways and the use of alleyways for something other than for a car to drive through it, such as...

seating that kind of thing just wondering that that was a question that was posed to me if that's going to be on our agenda sometimes yes so it's drafted staff reports written i've kept pulling it off for the last couple of meetings given the volume so i mean it could be as early as uh your next meeting or the one thereafter

Thank you. And the other question, well, and a comment first about the, as this person put it, kerfuffle at Seven Brew the other day. And their question was, is that something the city can control preemptively? instead of apparently what happened. And I know that fortunately our law enforcement had to get involved, which is not what they should have to be spending their time on. But the question was, can that be prevented somehow?

Yes.

So if Seven Brew had said, we're going to do a promotion that's going to cause people to go bananas nuts about being in line and sitting and waiting 45 minutes to come and get this thing. And we knew that that was going to happen. Sure. But unfortunately, what we experienced was a reactive result because that was, you know, they had simply called and we don't have chief, but I think us Morris would be able to confirm that if they had let us know, Hey, maybe we're going to have a traffic issue. We'll go, great. We'll have a couple officers there to make sure that everything stays in control. Yeah. And so, and we know it was already, unfortunately,

We talked about it in management team after it occurred. And what I learned is it may be the nature of the seventh falling on Labor Day, but apparently they either have been or they intend to do seven brew promotions from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. the seventh of each month. And so our officers that responded to the traffic had productive conversation with them about the problem they were facing at the moment and then strategizing more going forward. Now, having said that, we brainstormed a little bit about what that traffic movement needs to look like. And with them sitting on the corner like that and people wanting to line up through the intersection, that's going to take a little bit of coaching and direction.

And to what degree, though, should the Wondered Police Department have to be basically private security for a business that's causing a problem? Yeah, that's not their job.

It spilled into legitimate traffic issue in that particular instance. But yes, we're having conversations about, number one, how likely is it that we'll get that type of turnout again? And then how can we be prepared for that?

Let me be clear. I like 7-Brew. It's not anti-7-Brew. It's just not acceptable for that to keep happening and for police officers to have to keep making that.

I do think there's an opportunity on Russell to have an MQ on Russell, but how you get people to do that and not cut in line because the other lane has an immediate right in in front of the left-turning movement.

And I know that human behavior is, boy, it's odd sometimes. But yeah. And this is a minor thing that I think Adam can probably answer. What is the difference between a resolution that requires a number and a signature and a resolution that is just read? What causes those things to be different?

So proclamation versus resolution.

In doing some history, digging into the cycling and pedestrian transportation task force, there was a resolution that was read that never got a number, never got signed. And I think I've come across some others that way.

So that resolution would automatically expire after a year. Okay. For sure. Because it wouldn't have been able to have any expertise in that. But that would be really rare. When did that happen?

I have the answer. 2014. 15.

Yes, that'd be a pretty rare to have a resolution that doesn't have anything. Okay. 28.

I think it was 28. Anyway, it was a while ago.

Interesting.

Yeah. So, okay. That's it. Thank you.

Any other miscellaneous matters? No. All right.

City staff update, city manager. Uh, well, I think we had to take a breath and recognize what a banner set of items we just covered. We, McGuire sewer plans, budget and pay plan, uh, We covered a lot of ground tonight and a lot of work going into that. So thank you for sticking it out. One of the other citizen items that I thought might come up is a question of where are we at on the Main Street bridge and box. There has been design work done on that. We have a cost number. And I will acknowledge I'm the one that asked, I want to see what Wright looks like. Well, Wright looks pretty expensive in the $900,000 range. So I'm going to have some conversation.

I'm sorry.

Yeah. So intend to have some conversations with parties of indicated interest in developing along main street to see if there's enough interest to try to collaboratively put together a funding district, something like that. Not overly optimistic. Haven't got those conversations started yet, but I would tell you, this kind of rolls into the underlying policy decisions of when development does occur, what's expected of them in terms of road improvements and the impact they have on the road system beyond just their subdivision. That's a thorny issue. It can be perceived as pro or anti-growth. But as you well know, it comes down to the city's bottom line as well. So I wanted to at least get a look at the cost of all that to see in the long-range planning what that looked like so that we then can make some informed decisions. So I'm working on that as well. And then I assume Jody's going to talk to you about MML Conference.

So what is the short-term plan?

It's a detour for the time being. The next immediate step is to have conversations with those that indicate an interest in developing to see if there's enough interest to try to pursue some collaborative funding of the ultimate design fix.

It could be months or many, many months.

It could. If it's apparent that that is not viable, then we'll have to kind of regroup in terms of cost-effective short-term solutions.

Anything else? I don't think so. Administrative services, city clerk.

Thank you, mayor and city council. I delivered this evening travel arrangements for the MML conference. The majority will be going down when conference begins on the 13th and ends on the 16th. There's a variety of training that occurs at the conference, so it should be very interesting, very good. The keynote speaker has been recommended not to miss. So if there are any questions, the only thing I could say, and I don't know if this is apropos, but All of all of your lodging recommend accommodations have been already pre authorized. So if they ask you to pay again, say no way you have to talk to our city clerk. That would be my only caveat. Right. Right. Anyway, that's all I have.

Thank you. Thank you. Community development.

In addition to what's in the written packet, I would just add that we have set The date and time for Brett Penrose's retirement party, that will be Friday, September 25th at 2 p.m. here in this room. So if you can join us, that would be great. If not, that will be his last day in the office as well.