City Council - Regular Meeting

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 and justice for all.

So I believe this is everyone. The mayor is online. Councilmember Shepard looks like he is at the Miss Kansas competition in Pratt is going to be my assumption. And then Maggie is doing bike across Kansas. So we wish her the best of luck in her 500 mile journey across the southern part of the state. Manager, pass it over to you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Chair. A couple of things to look at for the June 9th agenda to make sure we've got the same updated information. I do want to first highlight, we've still been enjoying Riverfest. With Riverfest, we've had different crowds, great reports of an enjoyable experience with no police incidents for the past week actually. And so it's great that people are enjoying Riverfest and no incidents. The highlight for Riverfest of last night was our robotics equipment the dog spot is in and was on display and they were doing demonstrations last night and it seemed to capture a lot of interest from the community who was there so a lot of folks videotaping and taking pictures of the robotics so nice to have that demonstration opportunity for the public to see so happy to present that you do have with your agenda pack I want to highlight part of the presentations. We do have the first quarter report for 2026. Our financial information, again, a very comprehensive document for transparency for everyone to see our first quarter report through March 31, 2026.

So you will see that. You will see on your agenda, looking at June 9th, we do have a lot of economic activity to highlight through four IRBs or industrial revenue bond requests going forward. One of them does reflect Boeing's recent announcement or commitment to expand their operations within the community and so there will be A presentation is one of the four from Boeing that will be on there. You'll also see a lot of construction. We have temporary easements on there for June 9th. We do have a couple of planning amendments to the zoning code for you to consider. under the planning agenda and housing. We do have some housing sales continuing our program for disposing of some of the assets and you'll see those housing sales all meet appraisal or exceed appraisal has been common as of late. You will see, I wanna make sure you all have on your agenda regarding the district advisory boards, making that adjustment where you can have the option for a student representative or a youth representative. And then also we do have on there the resolution for you to read in advance related to the civility pledge. So those have been council member generated items that we have on the agenda for the 9th.

City Manager Dennis, I have a question about the Civility Act. There was an asterisk on the resolution, and I wanted to make sure that that asterisk had either source. I think it's regarding the percentage of individuals that trust government. I think it's a source that's missing on the asterisk.

Thank you. I'll be sure to check that out, and we'll get that updated for you. I think from some of the information that we've gotten, because we pulled from the discussions with council members from the National League of Cities has been where this is really generated from. So making sure that information reflects what they are producing. So thank you, Mayor. We will track that down to make sure we have that sourced correctly for you.

City Manager, this is Council Member Shepherd. Can you hear me by chance?

Yes, we can hear you very good.

I just want to make sure that in regards to the ordinance change regarding youth members, I want to make sure that seat is going to be there in perpetuity. Now, whether or not council members decide to fill that seat is certainly up to them. who may think a little differently than I do on this and happy to have more conversations with them. But my intent with this is to ensure that young people ages 16 through 18 have a designated seat on the district advisory boards and they are given the opportunity to vote on this recommended body board just as everyone else. But as I said, if council members wanna appoint and fulfill that seat, that's on them. If not, then, you know, as long as they have quorum, I don't think it violates any potential policies. So I just want to make sure that it is presented in that way.

I think is thank you for highlighting that as we have it structured is this is not changing the membership. of the district advisory boards. It is just encouraging or allowing one of those positions to be the youth voice that each individual council member can choose how you do the appointment. So it's more, I guess, permissive or encouraged, but that will be the conversation for council to determine if you want to have a designated slot. As of now, it's not stipulated that way. And so that will be, I think, the conversation for you all to determine. It gives each council member basically the flexibility of how you want to do your appointee and how you want to have the youth voice represented on your district advisory board.

So, OK, I'm going to read through the policy and make sure that I'm understanding it correctly. I know that I worked with Jennifer or Attorney Magana to present this. But again, as I'm hearing it now, it sounds like it's going to be encouraged. And that's not my intent. My intent is to ensure it is required. And so I will just go back and forth with you before Tuesday. So we're all on the same page, but no need to belabor the point right now.

Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate you highlighting that. So yeah, that is what we have for you on Tuesday, the June 9th agenda. Then if you look ahead to the June 16th agenda, really the... Things to highlight on the June 16th is a little preview is there are some fire grants on there. So we are still working on a lot of opportunities where we have some grant funding to pull in additional resources. So that is specifically there are three fire grants on the agenda for the 16th for you to see. And then also you'll see some more property disposition on there as well for some housing information for you. And then we do have some MAPC, again, some zoning change requests on there for you. So that's the... preview of things for you to highlight on the 16th agenda for council members. And so otherwise, we have our weekly update of tracking for requests that are presented here today for council members. And that concludes what I wanted to highlight. If there's any questions I can take from council members, please let me know.

I have one on consent item 3B pertaining to BNR. I see Gary over there. It talks about the digital simulator for the BNR sewage treatment plant. And I was curious, is that around weather? So that way we have the processes figured out depending on the weather, pressure changes. Just a little more information about the simulator, the simulation that we're looking at here.

Councilmember, this is a really pretty cool evolving technology that's being used on facilities like this across the country and it's something we wanted to try here. But if you've heard the term digital twin where basically it creates a virtual facility just like we're building so we can train our operators. It helps us get ahead of understanding the new technology and the treatment processes. And it helps us to overcome any issues we might have. It looks to the future. Even it can help us once the new BNR facility is operational. If we've got challenges at any point in time in any of the processes, any of the treatment facilities, it helps us diagnose issues and help to overcome those. So it's got a lot of really cool uses. It's the first time we've ventured into this. I think it's got a future for us in other places too. Okay, I appreciate that. And I might just mention real quick, too, you probably noticed, we were able to offset the cost with some unused portion of the original contract, so there is no net added cost. Yes, sir. Appreciate that.

Thanks, Gary. Okay, any other questions for the manager? Is there anything for the good of the order, anything happening in the districts? Hey, I encourage all Wichitans to come out to the last few days of Riverfest. Tonight, I'll be going out to Gym Class Heroes, and then tomorrow is the Fireworks Show in the evening along the river. So we encourage all residents to partake and enjoy what our city has to offer. We're adjourned.