City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome, good morning, and happy birthday, Wichita. We will call this meeting to order, and with us today is Pastor Marsha Haney to provide the invocation. Following the invocation, we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance, and I invite you to join us for both. Pastor?

Good morning, and let us spend an attitude of prayer. Almighty God of all things above the earth, on the earth and below, we come today once again saying thank you for our life, our health, and our strength. Today, God, we lift up. our elected officials, and all city workers. And we pray that you continue to supply them with great ideas, resources, and funding for our city and neighboring partners. We ask your blessings upon this meeting. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

First, we'll have the approval of the minutes of the meeting of Madam Clerk. Could you call that?

Approve the minutes of the regular meeting, July 14th, 2026.

Is there any corrections to be made? Seeing none, I move that we approve the minutes. Second. There's a motion and second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Passes 6-0 with one abstention. We will now move on to proclamations. We have one proclamation today and that's Historically Black Colleges and University Appreciation Day. Can I have representatives who submitted the proclamation join up front? There you go. Fantastic. A proclamation of the city of Wichita, Kansas, founded in 1870. Whereas historically black colleges and universities were founded to provide educational opportunities to African Americans and have served as centers of academic excellence, leadership development, and cultural enrichment for more than 180 years. And whereas historically black colleges and universities continue to produce generations of educators, physicians, attorneys, engineers, entrepreneurs, public servants, and community leaders who make significant contributions throughout Wichita, Kansas, and the nation, And whereas many Wichita residents have attended historically black colleges and universities and have returned to strengthen the community through service, business leadership, education, healthcare, public policy, the arts, and civic engagement. And whereas the city of Wichita recognizes the lasting impact of historically black colleges and universities and celebrates the achievement of their students, alumni, faculty, and supporters, while encouraging future generations to pursue higher education and leadership opportunities. And now, therefore, be it resolved that the Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim August 1st, 2026 as Historically Black Colleges and University Appreciation Day. Congratulations. Thank you. Do you want to say some words?

Good morning. I represent Howard University, the Mecca in Washington, D.C., of HBCUs. And these two young women that are with me are also students from Wichita State. I mean, Howard University. Oh, shoot. I'm in Wichita. But all I want to say is that the collective will be on August the 1st. Come here, girls. One stand on one side and one stand on the other. August 1st, and we are going to honor and salute young people that are going to HBCUs, and we will be gifting them. And our head leader, Kiana Nolan, was one of the fine students from the Boys and Girls Club. She made National Student of the Year. And so she's got just great ideas to pull together people. to honor them and salute them for going to HBCUs. You have something you want to say?

Yes. I think for both Alexis and I, We just finished our first year at Howard University in Washington, DC. And it was a phenomenal, phenomenal year. And HBCUs really provide resources and experiences and opportunities that are like no other. And it's just a great way to learn more about culture and excellence. And HBCUs, they're really where they're at. And so we want to try and get more students to know about HBCUs and the opportunities, because there's hundreds of HBCUs. There's not only just Howard University. So we want to expose more of our Wichita youth to HBCUs. And so if you would like to support, please go follow us on Facebook. It's the Wichita HBCU Alumni Collective. And we also have tickets for sale if you would like to support the youth. It's Saturday, August 1, from 430 to 630. at the Haven Restaurant and Lounge. And yeah, so please help us support our youth. Your ticket would cover a drink, an appetizer, and fun, and really just helping us support those new freshmen.

I appreciate you all for giving us the time. And yeah, if you know anybody who would like to attend our event or you'd like to attend our event, you don't have to be HBCU affiliated to attend. We just want to send our freshmen off with love and support surrounded by their Wichita community. So thank you.

Okay, one, two.

Thank you.

We also have some awards to present today, and so they're gonna be in video form. Well, we run the first ones, that's Kansas Recreation and Park Association 2026 Distinguished Public Service Award, Chris Rogers. Let's see, we may not have those videos ready to go right now.

We will, Councilmember Shepherd. Thank you, Vice Mayor Glasscock. I just want to acknowledge that the individual who you heard speaking today on behalf of the proclamation is our at-large Board of Education member, Ms. Sheila Kennard. And so we thank you for being here. It's an honor to know that we have an HBCU alumni serving our USD 259 schools. And your mother, Ms. Jo Brown, was actually the first African-American woman to serve on the USD 259 school board. So thank you for being here. And then also in reference to HBCUs, not Wichita, Kansas actually had an HBCU at one point. Western University, right outside of Quindaro, and unfortunately due to financial struggles, it closed and then later it was burned down. But Kansas has a history in connection to HBCUs, and I'm so proud of the remarkable young people who continue to represent the city of Wichita everywhere they go at HBCUs. and they come back every single summer to pour back into their community, and that's what excellence looks like. And honesty, our new fellow is also an HBCU grad. So the city of Wichita is covered with HBCU grads, and I couldn't be more proud. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I also just wanted to point out Amaya, who served on the District 3 District Advisory Board for a couple of years, and I always appreciate seeing you and seeing the great things you're doing out there. She's going to continue to make a lasting impact in our city. And our community and our country. So, so many of the youngsters are, it's up to us to build those bridges for them to cross. So, I'd just like to say, appreciate seeing you out here again and the great things that you're doing out there. And keep up the good work.

Thank you, council members. Unfortunately, the awards are not queued right now, and so we will move that to the next scheduled meeting in August. So I apologize, Ms. Rogers, for coming today, but we will make sure to recognize you at the August meeting, and thank you for being here today. I wanted to recognize you as well, and as well as council member Ballard, who is receiving one of the awards. We'll move on to the next agenda item. Madam Clerk?

From the city's recently adopted civility pledge, the city council is committed to promoting civility. They stand united, they lead with respect and dignity, and they honor every resident in all communities. They are working to create an environment that values shared goals with increased empathy and genuine dialogue. We now come to public agenda. The public agenda allows for up to five speakers to have five minutes each to address the council. Please bear in mind that this is not a period of dialogue with council or a question and answer period. This is your opportunity to address the city council with your concerns. I ask that you address your remarks to the city council as a body and not to any individual council member. No action will be taken relative to items on the public agenda other than referral to the city manager for information as necessary. Speakers will please speak into the microphone. Please state their name and address for the record. A time clock will display the speaker's remaining time to speak. Order and rules of decorum will be observed. The first speaker today is Trish Heilman, Making Animal Licensing Easier.

Good morning. Trish Heilman, 139 South Fountain. Good morning. Serving Mayor and City Council members, thank you for your service to Wichita. Many people may not realize that City Council members are paid as part-time officials, while often working full-time to serve our community. I appreciate the time, care, and thoughtful leadership you invest in making Wichita a better place to live. My name is Trish Heilman, and I serve as the President of Wichita Independent Neighborhoods, or WIN. Ask any neighborhood Facebook administrator or spend a few minutes on Nextdoor, and you'll quickly see that pet-related issues consume a great deal of neighborhood leaders' time. Loosed dogs can lead to suspended mail service, frightening encounters, injuries, and the heartbreak of families losing a beloved pet. I want to begin by thanking you for your recent investment in increasing the number of animal control officers our neighborhoods have noticed, and we appreciate your commitment. I'm here today because I believe we have an opportunity to work together to make Wichita a better place for pets, pet owners, veterinarians, and all residents. Over the past several weeks, I've been learning more about Wichita's dog licensing system and meeting with members of the Animal Control Advisory Board. What I found is encouraging because I believe the challenges we face are very fixable. I have three requests for your consideration. First, dedicate a meaningful portion of dog license revenue, perhaps 50%, to clearly defined animal services such as animal control, shelter operations, spay and neuter programs, and emergency veterinary care. When residents know where their license dollars go, licensing becomes more than a requirement. It becomes an investment in Wichita's animals and neighborhoods. Second, work with staff and animal control advisory board to make licensing much easier for veterinary clinics. Across the country, many cities collect dog licenses during routine rabies vaccines. Responsible pet owners are already visiting the veterinarians. If licensing becomes one more simple step, that visit participation, in that visit, participation will naturally increase. I was really surprised as somebody who didn't grow up here that this was not already like a normal thing. Third, recognize veterinarians as partners. Compensate them fairly for the staff time required to collect licenses and submit information and make the reporting system simple and reliable. The advisory board is gathering feedback from veterinary clinics and I encourage you to listen carefully to what they recommend. If we want their partnership, we need to give them a process that works. This is not about placing blame. It's about improving a system. 15 years ago, Wichita licensed approximately 40,000 dogs a year. Today, we're on pace to collect about 8,000. 40,000 to 8,000. That tells me this isn't a problem with Wichita's pet owners. It's not a problem with the veterinarians. It tells me the process has become too difficult. The good news is that processes can be improved. We're all about that. By making licensing easier, we can increase participation, improve rabies compliance, help reunite lost pets with their families, and generate additional revenue to strengthen animal services. In today's budget environment, improving existing revenue stream is an opportunity worth pursuing. I also encourage you to continue supporting the Animal Control Advisory Board as they work with staff to modernize and better communicate the value of dog licensing. When residents understand both how easy it is to license their pets and how their fees directly support animal services in Wichita, participation will grow. With city's council's leadership, staff's expertise, veterinarians' partnership, and citizens' willingness to do their part, we can create a licensing system that is simple, effective, and sustainable, and revenue generating. Together, we can make Wichita a safer, more responsible, and more compassionate city for pets, pet owners, and our neighborhoods. Thank you for your service, your participation, your partnership, and your continued commitment to make Wichita City we all are proud to call home. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Trish. Madam Clerk, next speaker.

Naomi Madison, Clean Safe Water.

Good morning members of the city council. My name is Naomi Madison. I reside at 2217 South Parkridge. Thank you so much for your time today and I wanted to start by saying I really appreciate the acknowledgement of HBCUs that was made earlier this morning. I am a current HBCU student at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. But I am a resident of Wichita and a community advocate and I'm here today to talk about the importance of water equity, transparency, and accountability for the residents specifically of District 1 and in the greater Wichita community. I'm a current District 4 resident, but I grew up in the industrial area of Wichita, Kansas in the 67214 zip code. It's a community rich in culture, history, and resilience, but it also has been burdened by the consequences of being overlooked, including environmental and infrastructural challenges that many residents have had to navigate for generations. One of these challenges is water insecurity. At 15, I began an internship with Root the Power, a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving young people the tools to participate in civic engagement and advocate for the issues affecting their communities. During that internship, the CEP and one of her interns came to speak with us about water insecurity in Wichita neighborhoods. Our assignment was to help distribute information about the challenges facing our communities. While preparing those materials, I looked through one of the brochures and learned about contaminants such as TCE and potential risks associated with water pollution. My parents reassured me that we had been taking precautions and that we were not regularly drinking straight from the tap, and their awareness and ability to protect our household gave me comfort, but it also made me think about the families who did not have the same information, resources, or ability to make those choices. Clean water should not depend on whether a family has the time, money, or knowledge to search for answers. I'm grateful to the CEP and the EPA Climate Energy Project and Environmental Protection Agency that work to protect communities and bring attention to environmental issues that are often overlooked. However, accountability cannot only come from outside organizations. I believe it must also come from our local government. Today, I'm asking the City Council to commit to consistent, accessible, and transparent communication regarding water quality in District 1 of Wetata. Residents deserve clear information about the water they drink, the testing being conducted, and the results of those tests, and any potential concerns that may affect their health and safety. Even though I study out of state, I love Wichita. I love the neighborhoods that raised me, the people who shaped me, and the communities that continue to fight for a better future. Protecting our water means protecting our neighbors, our families, and future generations. I have two requests of the city council. I urge the City Council to recognize that access to clean, safe water is not only an environmental issue, but an issue of public health, equity, and justice. Please commit to a resolution or pledge making water quality information more accessible and ensuring that every resident of Wichita can trust the water they rely on every day. Two, please do everything in your power to protect our water against private interests in AI data centers near Wichita. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Naomi. Adam Clark, next speaker.

We have three open spots for speakers.

Is there anybody present today that is currently on the agenda? We'll have two speakers that have indicated that.

James Underwood, 142 South St. Paul, Wichita. Vice Mayor, members of council, I actually had not planned to be here today, but yesterday I received two emails which gave me cause for concern and a couple issues I believe need to be addressed. Since February of 2025, I've been on the Wichita-Sedgwick County Access Advisory Board. Yesterday, that meeting for tomorrow was canceled by the chair, not by vote. I find this disturbing in the fact that two of the reasons given said there is no assistance with setting up the audiovisual recording information. While the city and county ADA coordinators are at a conference, would be the first time I've ever heard the county refusing to set up their electronics in their own building, which is where the median occurs. The other reason was stated that several members indicated they couldn't attend, and this was a first for me, I thought we'd always held the meetings regardless of how many of the 39 board members could attend. I do not know of the makeup of this select group of board members who can cancel a meeting by not showing up, but it is a surprise. I'm asking the city council, the city government, to do a summer review of the conduct, and since we don't do it here, I have my phone, I have my emails on it, If the city wishes me to present it to a city official, I shall. I'll turn the phone on, hand it to them, let them read it. I will not interfere. I will step back. I will ask simply that no additions or deletions be made to my communications. To me, it's an issue. ADA access, the equality of access advisory board, it's essential. There is no question about that. It always has been. There are a couple of council members who are aware of my concerns about this issue for over a year. But it's not been brought up and I have not attended meetings for it. The second email brought up a third point. It was a email broadcast that solicited attendance at a event for a private entity. I found it extremely questionable because the very person who sent it had been right here in this chamber receiving the proclamation last year. for 40 years of ADA, which the United States government implemented. Only the event scheduled was for the 36th year of ADA, almost more than a year later and a number far lower than the original proclamation. I think you need to look into these and make some determinations of the way to go forward. I can't make you, no one can make you. I just hope you realize as I do that something is not right and it has to be reviewed with action taken by the city. And I'm hoping it generates future discussion where there will be public meetings and I will be in attendance of those, most likely here, and speak my piece at that time. but I do encourage that this get reviewed and immediately, it's a little late for tomorrow's meeting, but we do need to set up for next month's meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim. Next speaker.

Hi, Cindy Marion, 2670 North Ridgewood Court. I am a member of College Hill United Methodist Church and a USD 259 retired high school teacher. And I am on the Justice Together Steering Committee for Gun Violence. Thank you for the privilege of speaking to you today. Our Justice Together research team met with Councilmember Glasscock on Friday. And he invited us to share our proposals with you at this meeting today. As you are aware, gun violence is a growing problem in our community. In the past 10 years, more than 400 people have been killed in Sedgwick County through gun violence. The Nurses Union even recently went on strike because of their concerns about gun violence. And more and more people are starting to see the effects of gun violence in their neighborhoods, hoods, schools, and families. In addition to the moral crisis, the cost is staggering. The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform estimates a cost of $625,000 to the community for each homicide. Using this estimate, the 45 homicides in Wichita last year cost our community $28.1 million. We must work together to find effective and fiscally responsible solutions to this crisis. In our extensive research, we've discovered that communities like ours who are successful in experiencing significantly reduced gun violence started with a community violence problem analysis, and that is what we are proposing we do in Wichita. A community violence problem analysis looks at the people, places, and behaviors driving gun violence. It's not enough to know what happened in a shooting and who was involved, and our police force does an incredible job, but that information alone is not enough to prevent the next shooting. Communities with effective violence prevention programs start with a community violence problem analysis because it lays the groundwork and data needed for finding solutions. First, the community problems analysis allows us to dive deep into the social context surrounding shootings by combining the perspectives of people on the ground with the data surrounding violent incidents. Secondly, this approach allows us to identify high-risk social networks that are driving cycles of retaliation and violent incidents. Typically, most of the gun violence in a city is driven by only 0.06% of the people living there. We need to reach the people at highest risk of being involved and intervene. Thirdly, we need to bring everyone working toward a solution to the table together around the same data so that stakeholders can coordinate each approach so that their resources are used as effectively as possible. It is essential that we have an outside group do this assessment. In our research, we have found that similar areas, cities to ours being able to reduce gun violence by up to 60% by using the data from an independent gun violence assessment. We look forward to our upcoming conversations to answer further questions with the community violence problem analysis with the city manager on August the 3rd, and we've appreciated conversations we've had with council members so far. We need investment in proven, data-driven, all-inclusive approach to reducing the epidemic of violence in this community that we all love. And it starts with you and the city managers, Marstow, including making a community violence assessment a priority in 2027. Thank you very much.

Is there anybody else present that would like to speak? We have one additional spot. Mr. Ballard.

My name is Doug Ballard. I live in District 6. You probably all know that. I'm going to talk about parking. None of you up there are old enough. Most of you weren't even around. I'm going to tell you how you got where you are. And I'm not sure how much that will help you, but at least you will. It has always bothered me as an employee, as a whatever, that we come up with complete new plans because we have a problem and we never identify the reason why we got where we were. So anyway, in 1992, summer of 1992, my wife and I committed to work on a space at 519 East Douglas. It's in the Eaton Hotel Complex. We were going to turn it into an antique store. It had originally been the Eaton Coffee Shop and it had been abandoned in 1975. In 1971, after I got out of the Army, I still had the same girlfriend, not the one that I married. Occasionally, we would over-entertain and close out some bar somewhere. We would stop at the Eaton Coffee Shop on the way home because they were open 24 hours a day. In 1971, they're open 24 hours a day. In 1975, they're completely closed. The building, the entire square block was owned by Phil and Senator Nancy Castlebaum. Anyway, we went in there and put the thing back together and so on and so forth. We opened up, I think, on December 9th, just before Christmas of 92. I'm going to say, for conversation, probably the spring of 93, a man came into our store named Sheldon Kamen. Most of you at least know that name. He was a mayor. He was a city commissioner, I believe, at that time. He was called commissioners. He welcomed us to downtown Wichita. We're taking a chance and so on and so forth. He also said, he said, hey, there's a bunch of people. I don't remember all of it. This has been a while. So he said, there's some people that would like to go to diagonal parking on St. Francis and Emporia. Do you have any problems with that? And I said, no, not at all. He said, in his opinion, he said, the vendors that we buy our parking meters from, I think they gouge us. And he says, we'll pay for restriping the streets. I don't want to put parking meters in. And I don't want to pay somebody dollars to collect dimes out of those meters. So that's how it started. And then it just continued to evolve from there. So there's not as much to... meters to check parking, and it just continued to evolve from that. One of the things that happened that caused all this, I worked for a construction company. I know I'm jumping around here, but it's all related. So I remember the job numbers. I have an unusual memory. We got the job number on the 4th National Bank, which is now called the Ruffin Building, for us was 137. About 40 or 50 days later, we got this job right here. It was job number 140. Seven jobs later, we got Town East. When they built Town East, when they finally got it done, The retailers in downtown Wichita jumped ship and they went out there. And then there was no place to shop, they couldn't support bars and restaurants, and the office workers started moving to the outskirts of town. And so that's how we got where we are. And part of it has to do with parking. So anyway, I just wanted to, nobody would be able to tell you that, but I'm sneaking up on 80. I've lived here my whole life. So anyway, that's all. Thank you, sir.

I want to thank our public speakers, Trish, Naomi, James, Cindy, and Doug. It shows the diversity of issues that come before City Hall, from dog and animal control to public safety to housing and to parking as well. So thank you all for coming out and engaging. We do have the award videos available now. And so we're gonna return to that portion of the agenda. Thank you to staff. We have some of the most incredible staff for preparing that and making sure that we were able to move forward on that today. So let's roll the first video for Chris Rogers.

Chris Rogers has played a transformative role in shaping one of Wichita's most vibrant community spaces. As treasurer of Wichita Community Gardens Inc. and a guiding force behind the Riverside Garden, Chris has helped cultivate far more than vegetables. She has helped grow connection, sustainability, and community pride in the historic Riverside neighborhood. What began in 2016 as a small neighborhood garden has flourished under her leadership. When the group outgrew its original site, Chris stepped forward to help form a nonprofit, build a long-term vision, and partner with the city of Wichita in securing a new home for the garden. In 2022, Riverside Garden moved to a vacant city-owned lot at 802 Amidon. Ideally situated across from Botanica and the Arthur B. Simm Golf Course, a relocation made possible through strong collaboration, strategic planning, and countless hours of volunteer coordination. Chris has helped build a network of support that fuels the garden's success. Under her leadership, Riverside Gardens strengthened its partnership with Sedgwick County Extension Master Gardeners and secured grant funding for capital improvements and engaged neighbors, volunteers, and local organizations in ongoing stewardship. The addition of pollinator beds, the launch of the Riverside Pollinator Project, in collaboration with Bee City, Wichita, have positioned the garden as a regional model for sustainability. But perhaps most impactful is the garden's commitment to food access and community well-being. With Wichita facing several food deserts, Chris helped establish donation beds, ensuring that at least 10% of all produce grown on site goes to charity. Through partnerships with ICT Food Rescue and the Master Gardeners Plant a Row program, The Riverside Garden donated nearly 1,200 pounds of fresh food in 2023, a meaningful contribution to local families and organizations, including the Kansas Wildlife Exhibit. Beyond food production, the garden has become a hub for learning and community gathering. Educational workshops, neighborhood coffee and dirt meetups, volunteer days, and special events bring people together to share skills, support one another, and build a stronger, healthier community. Through her dedication, vision, and steady leadership, Chris Rogers has helped create an outdoor space that enriches lives, strengthens neighborhoods, and expands access to nature and nutrition for residents across Wichita. Please join us in honoring Chris Rogers as the recipient of the 2026 KRPA Distinguished Public Service Award.

So I wanted to say thank you to the Parks Department because this was a big surprise at the time, but also to the City of Wichita for enabling us to take a piece of land that you weren't using and turn it into what has become a community hub. This morning I was on morning water duty and by the weekend we will have donated 450 pounds of produce, so we're not quite a third of the way. We have dreams of hitting a larger goal that way. But it's become a beautiful space. I was chatting this morning with a friend from Linwood Senior Center and she was talking about the difficulty that they're having compared to last year in finding food much less fresh food. And so it's an honor to be able to negotiate and collaborate and work with people from across the city who are interested in the same kind of goal. So I want to thank you all again for what you've made possible and looking forward to some more good years. Thank you.

Chris, when I went to the Riverside Garden, it was the best radish that I had ever had.

I think it might have been the first radish I had as well.

So thank you for all the work you've done. And we'd like to recognize one of our colleagues who received the Kansas Recreation and Park Association 2026 Distinguished Elected Official Award, and it was very well deserved. So could we roll that video?

Vice Mayor Maggie Ballard has emerged as one of Wichita's most engaged and enthusiastic champions for parks, recreation, and community well-being. Since being elected to represent District 6 in 2021, she has consistently demonstrated what true public service looks like, showing up, lifting up others, and working side-by-side with residents and city staff to strengthen neighborhoods. Her advocacy is rooted in presence. In the past year alone, Vice Mayor Ballard has attended ribbon cuttings and celebrations across her district, supporting projects such as the Pat Garcia Veterans Memorial Park Fitness Court, the Lawn Game Rental Kiosk at Central Riverside Park, the Millwood Park Dedication, and the new sand volleyball courts at Evergreen Park. She also extends that support citywide, attending events like the College Hill Pool Ribbon Cutting and volunteering at Wichita Park and Recreation Programs simply because she believes in the mission. Her commitment to environmental stewardship is equally strong. She coordinates the annual Arc River cleanup, which recorded its highest participation in impact to date in 2024, collecting nearly nine tons of debris from the river corridor. She also played a key role in District 6's Unity in the Community initiative and assisted with the department's tree seed planting project, helping local students plant thousands of seed for future distribution. Vice Mayor Ballard's leadership is felt through major projects across Wichita. She championed the development of Pat Garcia Veterans Memorial Park, securing long-delayed funding and turning a 20-year community vision into reality. She also protected and formalized Millwood Park, transforming an unused piece of land into a permanent green space that preserves mature trees, rarer views, and a cherished sense of place. Her commitment to addressing food insecurity extends far beyond her time in office. She founded Paxton's Blessing Box, now with more than 119 locations across Kansas. providing free, accessible food and hygiene items to those in need. She also helped bring ICT Farms to life, an innovative urban agriculture program operating on leased parkland and offering fresh produce on a pay-what-you-can model. Vice Mayor Ballard has been instrumental in advancing the Downtown Restrooms and Hydration Stations Project, emphasizing dignity, accessibility, and public health. The first hydration station is already installed at Nosker Park and additional improvements are on the way. With vision, compassion, and a community-first mindset, Maggie Ballard continues to elevate the role of parks and recreation in Wichita. Her leadership is making the city healthier, more connected, and more equitable for all who call it home. Please join us in honoring Vice Mayor Maggie Ballard as the recipient of the 2026 KRPA Elected Official Award.

Would you like to say anything?

Sure, I would just like to thank Parks for helping come up with all of these creative ideas to expand across our city. I try to support all of my colleagues and all of the fun things that they are taking a lead on also. Thank you, Chris, for being here and doing such wonderful work in the Riverside Community Garden. So truly appreciate the honor and thank you.

Fantastic. Before we move on to the consent agenda items, I just want to let everybody in the crowd know as well, again, today's Wichita's birthday on July 21st, 1870. Wichita was officially incorporated. What began as a small cow town has grown to the air capital of the world. And so the council would like to invite you, we're gonna take a brief recess at 10.30 and for any staff watching, please join us outside of the council lobby. We'll take a 15 minute recess to cut cake and sing happy birthday. I won't do it from the bench. I was kicked out of church choir when I was a kid and so you do not wanna hear me sing for you. So we'll sing happy birthday to Wichita out there and we invite you all to join us. So it's an incentive to stay through the first hour of the meeting. Now we will move on to the consent agenda items. Madam Clerk, can you call that item?

Consent agenda items 1 through 18.

Before we move on to that, we do have a few members on the board.

Council Member Shepherd. Thank you so much, Vice Mayor Glasscock. A couple of things. Let the record reflect that all the excellence in Park and Rec is happening under an HBCU grad. Our Director of Park and Recreation, Reggie, is a graduate of an HBCU, so shout out to you. Also want to say congratulations to my colleague, Anne Chris-Rogers. Maggie's always a team player and willing to support in multiple areas. Naomi was here earlier today and had to leave another HBCU grad but I appreciate her thoughts about the environmental issue and public health issues so I'm going to ask my colleague Becky Tuttle who has done a phenomenal job on the water reuse program alongside Gary Jansen to meet with Naomi and really talk about the transformation from toilet to treatment to treatment to treatment to treatment to tap. See, I've been working on it to make sure that we talk about the good things that we're doing in that area. But I also commit to making sure that we draft a resolution and identify the environmental issue and public health crisis as it relates to the contaminated water. And for those who may be concerned about the impact that that has had in 67214, I encourage you to please get tested. My predecessor continues to be a large advocate for this. You can go to Health Corps, you can go to Hunter Health, you can go to any local health clinic in the area for the most part, and Clearway Testing is providing that. And then finally, as it relates to gun violence, not only am I committed to that, the city manager has my full support in making sure that we invest in that study. And I asked my colleagues to join me in finding at least $500,000 in this upcoming budget cycle to invest in a violence intervention programming. There's no shortage of events, even as of this past weekend, where a teen takeover was supposed to happen all across the country. And Wichita was one of the lucky cities where nothing happened because we had our Cure Violence team intervene, as well as our Wichita Police Department. Many of our neighboring cities, including Oklahoma City, was not as lucky. There was a shooting happening in their community, and 20 people were impacted. So I think it speaks to the testament of violence intervention, and I look forward to finding pathways to continue to support violence intervention. Thank you for being here.

Council Member Hoheisel?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, Councilmember Shepherd took a lot of the things I was going to say. First off, Naomi, I know you're probably listening now or come back and watch it later, but the previous Councilmember and the current Councilmember, I believe, are dedicated towards transparency and communication with the community. especially around 29th and Grove. So I do appreciate their work on that. And it's to all of the council to continue to advocate for solutions and clean drinking water access to clean drinking water around the city. Trish, I agree with you on the pet licensing thing. We're going to work on that. Mr. Underwood, I'll look into this. I'm curious what the quorum is. You said 39 members of the Access Advisory Board, so I wonder how many are voting and how many of those voting members were able to show up. That might have been the issue is meeting quorum. Also, bylaws are different from board to board, so it may have been that... the chair has that ability to cancel a meeting if they find that there's not gonna be quorum. So we'll look into that. Justice Together, as Council Member Shepherd said this last weekend, is not the only proof that we have that this model There have been others around the mall and some other cases of potential violence down there, East High, for example, that us actually getting out there and reaching out to the kids and the kids who are at risk and the kids who are driving a lot of this violence that we can't cut down. So we're going to continue to look at that and I do support funding for violence interruption in our communities. To the Ballards, Maggie, congratulations. You're the hippie queen of Wichita, the tree queen of Wichita. But I do appreciate it because that speaks volumes to just the health and environment around the city. So continue to push on the tree canopy. Doug, you're one of my favorites. I love the history. I love the conversation, so continue to reach out and advocate to us because you're just a wealth of knowledge, and I do appreciate that. Council Member Ballard.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Gary, I'm going to give you my card. If you could please forward me those emails, I'd like to take a look at them and at least have it to reference while I'm asking some questions. So thank you.

Council Member Tuttle.

I'll just pile in real quick. Congratulations to Chris Rogers, my dear friend. We've known each other a long time, and you've been a passionate advocate for Wichita and especially for Food Desert. So thank you for all of your work on this, something that I also share in my heart. And then congratulations to Council Member Ballard. Truly appreciate all of your efforts and just your courage for taking on initiatives when sometimes they're controversial. So it's an honor and privilege to work with and learn from you.

Councilman Reheisel. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Congratulations to Chris as well. I didn't want to leave you out, so I appreciate the work that you do.

Thank you. The clerk has called the consent agenda items, so is there anything to be pulled from the consent agenda? Seeing none, I would move that the consent agenda items 1 through 18 be approved. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you. All in favor, cast your ballot. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Passes 5-0 with two abstentions. Madam Clerk, next item.

Board of Bids and Contracts, dated July 20th, 2026.

Morning, Vice Mayor, City Council, Josh Lauber, Department of Finance. The Board of Bids and Contracts convened yesterday, July 21st, for the following items. For engineering, we have the water distribution system, stormwater drain number 537 through 539, and sanitary sewer improvements to serve Yellowstone addition phases one, two, and commercial addition. For NOAC Construction Company Incorporated, for an aggregate bid total of $4,429,510.17. We have Douglas Avenue, Washington to Grove pilot project for Sillison and Sons Incorporated for $288,951.20. For purchasing, we have 31,000 gross vehicle weight cab and chassis flatbed winch truck for Omaha Truck Center Incorporated doing business as truck center companies for an aggregate bid total of $157,412. We have the track skid steer loader for White Star Machinery and Supply, a division of Berry Companies Incorporated for an aggregate bid total of $105,687.97. We have the construction of fire station number 23 for Icon Structures Incorporated for an aggregate bid total of $4,357,000. We have the 16,000 gross vehicle weight super cab and chassis with herbicide spray rig for Rustiac Ford Incorporated, Midwest Truck Equipment Incorporated, and Fairbank Equipment Incorporated for the items listed with an aggregate bid total of $160,802.61. And we have two 10,000 gross vehicle weight cabin chassis with animal transport body for PFVT Motors LLC for $207,537.30. We have the Kubota tractor with Terrain Master Flail Mower for McCulloch Enterprises Incorporated doing business as Wichita Tractor Company for $140,704.11. We have the Variable Frequency Drives for Logic Incorporated for $74,472.56. We have the Wavetronics Matrix and Advanced Vehicle Detection System for MidAmerican Signal Incorporated for $255,815. We have the Soda Ash Change Order for Dubois Chemicals Incorporated for an amended amount of $114,750. We have the Water Works Supply Group 1 change order for Mountainland Supply Company LLC for an amended amount of $139,010. And we have the Janitorial Services Various Buildings Contract change order for Wilson Building Maintenance Incorporated adding Group 22 for $15,240 per year. This is how to become a vendor with the city of Wichita. And this is our purchasing calendar, small business resource partner events the city's hosting or participating in. And these are open public opportunities out on the street today. And I'd be happy to try to answer questions on the 13 items and recommend your approval.

Thank you. Are there any questions from the bench? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve? Second. Was that a motion? OK. Motion to approve. Is there a second? Is there a second? Second. OK. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Madam Clerk, the next item.

Petitions for public improvements.

Morning, Vice Mayor, City Council Members, Paul Gunzelman, Public Works and Utilities. For the record, I have a few new petitions for your considerations this morning. The signature on the petitions represent 100% of the improvement districts, and the petitions are valid per Kansas statute. Copper Fox Estates, located in District 3, the project will provide water improvements required for new commercial development. Estancia Commercial Second Edition, located in District 5. The project will provide a northbound right turn lane for existing commercial development. And with that, it is recommended that the City Council approve the new petitions and budgets, adopt the new resolutions, and authorize the necessary signatures. And I will stand for questions.

Is there any questions from the bench? Seeing none, I will make the motion to approve. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay. There is a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Passes six with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

Public hearing and request for approval of a letter of intent to issue industrial revenue bonds for CW3 LLC.

Good morning. Cory Knisely with Development Services. You know, I'll try to make this quick because I do not want to be the person that holds up cake time. So I only have one presentation for you, and this is, you know, from CW3 looking to build a spec building. So CW3 is constructing a spec building in District 3 near Seneca and... near Seneca and McArthur Road. The spec building program was first adopted by city council in 2017 and in 2022 had a change to the spec program that allowed for different building types. For the program, there are different types building specifications that are there on your screen. And so with that, CW3 is asking for around, you know, that is asking for like around 8.5 million for the construction of the project. You know, with the sales tax, an evaluation on your screen there as well. You know, I forgot to mention that the SPEC program also does now have jobs, you know, with the property tax abatement, you know, and no tenant has to be chosen by the construction time. So the project qualifies for a five plus five. The first five years would be at 95%. You know, once it comes to the five year mark, that will be lower to the 50%, you know, if the billing is at least a 50%. you know, leased at that year five mark, you know, and that is based upon policy. And, you know, and the property tax abatement for the first full year is about 100 and, you know, is about, you know, $156,000. Our friends at CEDBR performed the CBA for us with the 10-year meeting or achieving that one-to-one. This is our standard disclaimer for these types of projects. No taxpayer dollars are at risk as a part of this project. And it's with that that I ask the City Council close the public hearing, adopt the resolution and authorize the necessary signatures. I have Jeff Lang here today to help, in case there are any questions from the developer today. And I stand for questions.

Are there any questions from the bench? Okay, seeing none, we'll open it to public comment. Is there anybody from the public that would like to speak on this agenda item? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the bench. Are there any of my colleagues with remarks? I do have one. There are two things about this that I really appreciate that I haven't seen in all of our economic development presentations. To be eligible to receive the incentive the developer is required to be construction with 120 days of city council. There are some projects that get approved for different incentives that don't have that contingency. And so we have this conversation in September. I'm very interested in that. I know Council Member Ballard and I have talked about that on a couple of projects as well. The other thing that I appreciate about this is the stair-step debatement goal, where it goes from 95% and then 50%, where it brings it back on the property tax rules. And so those are two things about this that I don't see in all of our agenda packets. So when we have this discussion at our September workshop, I think those should be points as well. Well, seeing there is nobody else on the board, is there a motion to approve? Council Member Hoesel?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Before I make this motion, I do want to say that there has been some concern out there about the process that IRBs have played out over the past couple of weeks. I have spoken to Commissioner Beatty and state officials to ensure that this project is not going to face the same challenges the same issues that we've had with some of the previous ones as well. Also, making sure that the taxpayers have not been harmed by some of the oversights of the past. So this is the very definition of what we set out the IRBs to do, industrial building specs. So with that, I would like to make the motion to close the public hearing, adopt a resolution, and authorize the necessary signatures. Second.

Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? 6-0 with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

Good morning, Vice Mayor, Mark Manning, and members of the City Council, Mark Manning with the Department of Finance. Today we will present to you the 2025 ACFR, which is an acronym for the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. Now, I would suggest to you the ACFER is one of the most important documents, at least from the finance department, that you will receive each year right up there with the budget which we provided you one week ago. It's going to provide a snapshot of our financial position as of December 31st of 2025. It also reports all our financial activity in 2025. So the audit reflects an independent third-party review of our financial statements. We utilize Eide Bailey to do that review. They are a CPA firm, and we're required to do that by state statute, by the way. Eide Bailey is extraordinarily valuable to the finance department and to the city. They provide year-round assistance to us. They do conduct our annual audit as well as some other things, but they are a year-round partner to us. We meet with them frequently, and they help us guide us throughout the year on a variety of topics in the accounting realm. So they're very valuable to us. Now, one objective of the external auditors is that they will reach an opinion. One of our objectives, I guess, is that they will reach an opinion that our financial statements are free of material misstatements. And if they are comfortable with that, then we will have what we call a clean opinion. And you'll hear from them in just a second on that. I'd point out that our audit is available online. It's available, of course, attached to the agenda report. It's also available in the finance department section online under the documents tab. And finally, I'd point out that creating the annual audit is exhaustive. It takes about seven months. It's very comprehensive. It requires a lot of work by staff, so I'd like to acknowledge Nikki Babcock in the controller's office and Luke Stoltz in particular, who I've spent an extraordinary amount of time over the last seven months working on this, as well as a variety of other staff in the controller's office. So with that, sorry, I forgot to advance the slide. Let me introduce Jamie Fay from Eide Bailey. Again, she is our external auditor. Their team is our external auditor, and she's going to provide the rest of the presentation to you today.

Good morning. Thank you, Mark. Well, my name is Jamie Fay, as Mark indicated. I am a partner with Ida Bailey, work exclusively in the government sector. So I work in audits and I only speak Gatsby, which if you don't work in government, that is a foreign language to you. If you take a look at the ACFER that Mark was referencing, it's about 400 pages. So we are not going to go through that whole thing today. Not everyone gets as excited about numbers as I do. So what we've done is we've taken out pieces that seem valuable to you. And then hopefully we can step through what that audit looks like. As Mark indicated, we are talking about the 2025 year. So that's the year ended December 31st, 2025. So first, just want to introduce us a little bit. So I'd Bailey is in, um, we have over 50 offices. We have 80,000 clients. We're a top 20 CPA firm, and we have been partnering with the city of Wichita for a few years now, and it's been a great relationship. I know Mark talked about talking to us throughout the year. Every time I get a phone call from someone at the city of Wichita, it is always something that I get to dig in and research and really work collaboratively with the city to try to figure out what their problem is and what I can do to help kind of guide, whether it be research or pointing them in the right direction to say, hey, maybe talk to this other government. It's always a great relationship. So within I. Bailey, we serve a lot of different governments. We serve cities, schools, counties, states, kind of a wide variety. Government is one of our largest industries throughout the firm. So if I don't know the answer to something, I know that there is someone within the firm that I can lean on to find an answer for the city. Your service team this year was made up of these partners, senior manager and managers. We also had a few different staff members helping out, but these are the familiar faces that helped out with the audit this year. Really got to dig in with Nikki and Luke and Mark and the whole team to get the audit completed. So one thing I'd like to talk about is the financial statement audit and the objective, because when people hear audit, there's a wide variety of things that they think of. So in audit, we come in and we test a variety of selections of transactions, we recalculate some things, we have a materiality threshold. I know Mark had mentioned materially misstatement or making sure that the financial statements are not materially misstated so that materiality threshold is something important to the audit process. So when it comes to the audit, there are a few different buckets. So management responsibilities are things that management within the city is responsible for. So making sure those financial statements are prepared right, making sure that there are controls in place within the city to make sure everything is reviewed properly. And then the auditor's responsibility is to make sure that there is reasonable assurance about if those financial statements are free from material misstatement. So for the financial statement audit, we do a financial statement audit over kind of the general activity of the city. And then there's also a separate single audit, which is over the federal dollars. So if you spend over a certain threshold, you need to have a separate single audit out there. So for the financial statement audit, you received an unmodified opinion, no findings. That is great news. That's what Mark was indicating that you want. So that's that clean opinion that he was talking about. For the federal audit, we are required to test a certain number of programs, get some coverage. That's really guidance that we get from the federal government. So this year we tested the CDBG grants, the housing voucher center cluster, airport improvement program, federal transit cluster, and then the WIFIA dollars. We did have an unmodified opinion over all of those as well. So that's that clean opinion that you want. over the five programs that we tested. There were three findings that did come up with the federal audit that we'll talk about just briefly. It's important to note for the federal audit, we test two things. We test compliance, so were the items in compliance with the requirements? That's really pretty black and white, it's a yes or no. And then we also test controls. So are there controls over things like transactions? Is there sign offs? Is there things being reviewed before they get submitted? So the first finding is in related to the CDBG and the housing voucher cluster. So there was one instance out of the 40 transactions we tested for CDBG and then two out of the 40 for the housing voucher cluster. where there was no formal documented review of timesheets by supervisors. This was the same individual that was noted in both of these cases, and it was simply, there was just a control that was not in place. It wasn't saying that the timesheets were not appropriate, it was just that there was a review being done that was not documented, and in the audit world, if it's not written down, it doesn't happen. The second finding, that 2025-002, One of the reports that was tested for CDBG didn't have a formal documented review on that as well. So that was where that one came from. And then for 2025-003, that one was over the housing voucher cluster. One of the tests that we do is in relation to remediation and making sure that remediation follow up happens within a certain number of days. And we found one instance out of the 40 we tested that that was not happening, that that instance didn't happen. So overall, it was more of a control for the first two and then a compliance item for the last one, but still got to that unmodified opinion. You can have findings with unmodified opinions, definitely. So next we'll talk through the letter to governance. So along with the ACFR and our opinions, we also issue a letter to governance. This really just spells out a couple things that the audit standards had said you need to be very clear with people on what these are. So significant accounting estimates are simply saying, hey, there's some numbers in the financial statements that are estimates. They have some judgment involved in them. So if a discount number changes a little bit, that could really sway people. what these dollar amounts are. And if you look at it with a different lens, you could potentially come up with different numbers. So things like the net pension liability, the compensated absences, those are significant estimates. The second is sensitive disclosures. Same thing. It just says, hey, there's a few things in the disclosures that are a little bit more sensitive in terms of how they are determined. Those go right along with those estimates. And then uncorrected and corrected misstatements. So if there was anything that we noted throughout the audit that either was not corrected but immaterial or that we worked with the city to have an audit adjustment done on to get the dollars materially accurate, that would be noted here. There's none. That's great news. I love to report that. Mark also talked about the fact that IBELE works with the city to do a number of other engagements throughout the year. And so we're just gonna touch on that real quick. So in addition to the city audit, we also do the audit of the Wichita Retirement System. That audit was buttoned up and I presented to that board last month. And then we do a number of what's called agreed upon procedures. So they're not audits, but they are a list of procedures that either an outside party has said you need to do these or they make sense for the city to do. They have to do with the landfill. sales tax bonds, star bonds, ICE Center and Century II. Those are all completed AUPs that we've already done. So we worked with the city to get those completed. A few of them have deadlines, so they have to be done in a certain amount of time. And then a couple of them are kind of as they are able to be done. And then two of them that are in process, there is a REAC filing that's required along with the HUD information that's annual, that's in process. And then the Federal Transit Administration, the FTA, has a, AUP that's also required on a certain timeline. Those are in process simply because they're not due yet. So we will work with the city to get those done in accordance with their timelines as well. So the last piece of information I have for you is what's next. I am not going to bore you with GASB specifics. This slide really is just a good reminder that your finance team is working hard and GASB continues to put out new standards and they never get easier. They always get harder. So there's a few new standards going out in the next few years. There have been a number of pretty challenging standards that have happened over the last few years. So shout out to the finance team for keeping up with those. So with that, are there any questions that I can answer for you on this information?

Council Member Shepherd. Thank you so much. This is my newness, but I just wanted to confirm that we are required to do an annual audit of all city accounts to be performed by an independent certified public accounting firm.

Yes, that's accurate.

How long has that been in place?

I think as long as I've been in the profession for 20 years, and it's much longer than that. I couldn't tell you the exact date, but it's just kind of always been for government's sake.

Thank you so much. Can you go back to the slide that specifically outlined Century 2, landfill, sales, tax bonds, star bonds, and the ICE Center? We had a very robust discussion last week. We unfortunately didn't get the pleasure of having that discussion today on the last agenda item regarding IRBs, but I'm just curious if maybe you can explain what that process looks like when you talk about the AUP completes. What are you looking for in that audit? how would a city be deemed for doing something wrong?

Sure, yeah. So AUPs are a little bit different than an audit. We don't give an opinion on AUPs. It's mostly a report saying, hey, can you check this item and then report if there are any differences? So like one of the things is the landfill. Can you double check that the calculation is being done in accordance with the rules? And then there's a letter that goes along with that. So I'll step through like ICE Center. That's a good example. So one of the steps is, hey, can you verify... that the bank reconciliation and the bank statements all tie together. It's not an audit, we're not giving an opinion, but if there's any differences, report on that. So then we would look at those, do that step to make sure they agree, and then if there are any differences, we would list out and say, hey, there is a difference of $5, or there's no difference, and report that in the AUP report that we provide to the city then. So it's a little bit, it's a lesser of a degree of opinion assurance than an audit, but it's a number of different steps and some of them are like the sales tax bond that's required uh legislation has said that that's required it's also a way that the city could say hey we just want to double check some things and so there can be an aop that's not necessarily required by an external party thank you so much and my final question is can you go back to the slide that mentions that there were no corrections um

Help me understand what it means when you say uncorrected or corrected misstatements, none.

Yes. So what that means is there are two different types of misstatements that can be noted during an audit. So one of them is called a corrected misstatement, where we're working with the city and we say, hey, this number looks like it's materially not accurate. What do you want to do with this? And then they make an entry that's considered an audit entry Then at the end of the day the financial statements are materially accurate. That would be a corrected misstatement There are none of those so that means everything we got was materially right when we got it And then the uncorrected piece is there can be items that are off by a certain dollar amount, but if they're not material they do not affect the opinion so you can still get a clean opinion and and also still say, hey, there's something here that's not quite right. We can't pass on it, but we can report it this way. That's getting to be actually pretty common for a number of reasons. A lot of governments simply either will not make the entry because it's a very big administrative burden or whatever reason they have, but uncorrected misstatements do happen, just simply saying, hey, the number is a little bit different than what it should be, but we can still get a clean opinion on that, so that would be listed here as well. The city didn't have either, so that's great news.

Final question that I have a comment following is the city obviously does a lot of work in terms of financial transactions. Walk us through how you determine which items you will be reviewing in the annual audit review.

Yeah, absolutely. So it depends on the area. So certain areas we test differently. So payroll we're going to test differently than we're going to test expenses in terms of like invoice transactions. So everything we look at, we look at on a risk basis. And so depending on the risk of the area, we look at a certain number, either more or less. And so when it comes to, hey, we're going to test a certain number of payroll transactions, we use software to determine our haphazard selections. So that software is going to spit out and say, hey, test these seven things or 10 things. There's also scoping guidelines out there for auditors to say, hey, if you've got a population that is this many, you should test this many of the populations. So we follow all of that. in terms of how it's done. So we are not going down a list and saying, oh, I really wanna look at those four things. Other areas, we look at a coverage, so we're gonna look at the biggest things and then get a certain percentage of coverage of the population. So it really varies depending on which area you're looking at, but for the most case, if we're just testing, hey, there's thousands of transactions, we're gonna pick 40 of them, we're gonna put that into a system that's gonna populate a totally haphazard sample selection for us.

Scientific, random, consistent with the unique makeup of the city of Wichita.

Exactly.

Thank you. I just want the record to show that this is a Kansas law that's done annually. According to the speaker, who I consider to be the expert for at least 20 years since you've been in the profession, I hope that folks who are listening, including us, will continue to mobilize what we are doing as a city to ensure that we are protecting taxpayer dollars that's not to say that perhaps there's not mistakes that have not happened in the past but not only are we taking this step as required by law i want to give a huge thank you to our internal auditors who do a phenomenal job making sure that we catch mistakes we correct the mistakes and we hold the folks accountable when those mistakes are happening thank you for breaking this down for those who are listening and myself

Yeah, absolutely. My only last item is I just want to give a huge shout out to the finance group. They have full-time jobs. And when the auditors come, we really shake things up. So Nikki, Luke, Mark, their whole team, we really appreciate their assistance. And I will pass it down to Mark.

Any further questions from the bench? Mark, do you have anything to add to the presentation at the end?

The only thing we would add is your recommended action is just to receive and file.

Fantastic.

No questions from the bench. We'll open it up to the public. Are there any questions or comments from the public? Seeing none, we'll move back to the bench. Are there any comments from my colleagues? Seeing none, I will move that we receive and file the 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the fiscal year into December 31st, 2025.

Second.

There is a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes six to O with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

457B, Deferred Compensation Plan Automatic Enrollment.

Well, good morning again. Vice Mayor, members of City Council, Mark Manning with the Department of Finance. So I'm going to try really hard to get this done in about 13 minutes because I'm a foodie and I'm not missing the cake at 1030 today, so I'm just saying. So today I want to present to you a auto enrollment option for our deferred compensation plan. So as you know, the city offers a 457 plan or deferred compensation plan. I'm going to call it the plan today for city employees. This plan provides city employees a very simple way to save for retirement and in ways that can have some significant tax advantages for our employees. The plan doesn't have any impact on our city retirement plans at all. In fact, it supplements those plans and provides opportunities for our employees to generate additional savings for retirement. The plan is administered by a deferred compensation board. They have six members, three of which are elected city employees, one is an elected city retiree, and the city manager has an appointee, and our pension manager, Latonya Williams, is also a member of that board. So they administer the plan from a policy standpoint, make recommendations. Our record keeper is Empower LLC. Some of you may be familiar with them. And finally, all costs are paid by the plan. The city doesn't contribute to the deferred compensation accounts for any employees other than a few in transit. We do not pay any of the costs of the plan either. So why do we think deferred compensation is of strategic value to the city of Wichita? Why do we have a deferred comp plan? We think increasing retirement savings benefits both the employees and the employer, which in this case is the city. Enhancing financial viability, a lot of studies have shown that that generally supports better mental health, better physical health for our employees in a lot of cases. It's also beneficial for the city as an employer because it helps our workforce to be more stable and engaged and more productive and we might have decreased absenteeism. So again, we view deferred compensation plan as a strategic benefit not only to the city of Wichita but also to our employees. So how do you enroll in the plan currently? Information about the plan is presented to employees during their new hire orientation and onboarding process. However, employees typically choose to enroll at a later date. Participation is completely voluntary up to the employee, and currently employee penetration is about 59%. So about 59% of our employees are in the deferred compensation plan, which we think is kind of low. Our neighbors, well, the county's not across the street anymore. I guess our peers at the county, their penetration rate is, their participation rate is a little closer to 80%. So the Deferred Compensation Board looked at this issue and looked at it comprehensively over several meetings. They meet quarterly, and they have proposed a model in which we implement a auto-enrollment plan. Again, this is very similar to what Sedgwick County does. So each new employee would be automatically enrolled in our Deferred Compensation Plan when they're hired. That would not take effect for 60 days though, but we would set the contribution rate for them at 4% of their earnings. And then we would stair step that up to increase their retirement savings by a percent each year. Now, there's plenty of off-ramps for employees that do not want to participate in the program, although again, we would think that it's beneficial for all our employees to participate. They would have the ability to opt out at any time, I emphasize that, opt out at any time, before the auto-enrollment starts, in that 60-day window, or even after we take contributions. In the first 90 days, they can tell us, no, I didn't want to do that, retroactively. And if they do that, we'll refund their account balance. And even after that period, any time they want to change your contribution, increase, decrease, eliminate, they have the ability to do that. This auto-enrollment plan is just basically about getting them on what we consider to be the right foot starting out of the gate when they're hired. The effective date of this would be October 10th of 2026. This would have no impact on current employees at all. It's only for new hires, and there's no impact to the City of Wichita. Now, I mentioned there's six representatives on the board. Two of those represent bargaining units, in this case, FOP and IFF. Nick Hall, I think, is our president, and Micah is with the fire department. By the way, I think most of them are here today and supportive of this plan, as well as several others. In addition to the deferred comp board, we also wanted to touch base with all our bargaining units, so we touched base with all of them, the Teamsters, SEIU, Teamsters Airport, and again, FOP and IFF. All of them are supportive of this concept. So our recommended action today is, all this is established by city ordinance. I think it's chapter 2.3.0. So there are some amendments to that ordinance that we need to make to implement this. But based on the recommendation of the Deferred Comp Board and the support of our bargaining units, staff would recommend that you approve the proposed amendments to city code. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Again, President of our Inferred Comp Board is here. I'm sure if you had any questions of him, he'd be happy to address them if that's your pleasure. And with that, I'd stand for any questions.

Thank you. Council Member Tuttle?

Thank you. Thank you, Mark, for your great presentation, all your work, and thanks to the bargaining units for being here today as well. I just have a quick question. I remember times in my life, especially when I was much, much younger where every penny of my paycheck mattered and I wasn't thinking about 20 or 30 or 40 years down. So I just want to make sure I understand. So a new employee, because this is not for current employees, there's no grandfather clause, this is new employees, comes to the city of Wichita and And it does concern me that only 59% of our employees are engaging in our benefits because we have fantastic benefits and truly. So when they come for orientation, they are told that they are going to go into auto enroll. Is that correct? Yeah. And I know I'm trying to say this as delicately as I can. I'm sure that everybody thoroughly enjoys every moment of new employee orientation. But like me, sometimes attention spans are, you know, short-lived. So an employee, let's say, you know, they miss it, how do they get their paycheck? And they go, oh my goodness, something isn't right, it's less. Do they go online? Do they have to reach out to HR? I mean, is it a pretty quick and easy process for them to unenroll if they choose? Or they choose to enroll and then a life circumstance happens and they need, you know, additional funds and they have to postpone. Is it pretty easy?

I would say it's very easy. We make it very easy for them. Online is the preferred course. They can do that anytime they want to, obviously. But having said that, staff and pension management works very closely with Empower. They can help employees navigate that process as well. So we try to make it very, very easy because, as you noted, we recognize that our employees have a lot of other things to worry about than how to opt in or opt out of their deferred comp. So we make it as easy as possible.

Okay. Thank you so much. I was sure you did. I just want to make sure. Council Member Johnston.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mark, I know the answer to this, but maybe we just point out that any deferred comp reduces your taxable income and reduce your tax burden.

That is correct. There's actually two options. You can do that or you can have a Roth account, too, which provides you a little bit different benefit. But yes, that's what is beneficial about deferred comp. When you take out 4% of your salary, you're really not taking out 4%. You're taking out less than that when you figure the tax consequence. So it's a relatively easy way to save a lot of money for retirement on a tax-advantaged basis.

Yeah, I think that's important for people to know. Yes. Does it affect your Social Security at all for employees?

I suppose in theory it might reduce your Social Security wages slightly, but I don't think that's going to be material for most of our participants. Okay.

Thank you. Seeing no other questions from the bench, I'll take it out to the public. Are there any representatives of the public that would like to speak to this agenda item? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the bench. Do any of my colleagues have any remarks? Seeing none, I will make the motion that we place the ordinance under first reading and authorize the necessary signatures. Second. All in, Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Passes six to O with one absent. Okay, instead of having you call the next item, we're at 1026. So I will make, I don't think we have to make a motion. So we will recess. Let's do 1045. That gives us time to serve cake and be back here. We invite everybody in the audience to join us for cake. And anybody in the city, if you can make it here in the next 15 minutes, you're welcome to join for cake.

as always.

Amending City Code 264 and Charter Ordinance 228, increasing from $50,000 to $100,000, the change order limit and the purchasing manager authorization limit.

Good morning again, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council. I'm Mark Manning with the Department of Finance. So today I want to talk about staff authorization levels in our procurement process. So first let me talk about what the objectives are in city procurement. And this is specifically objectives for the purchasing division which is located in the finance department. We want to serve our customers well. We do that by obtaining the goods and services that operating departments need based on their needs. They are our customers and we want to serve them. But we also want to do that at the best possible price or value. So we do that by competitively selecting vendors, again, based on the specifications of our operating departments. So that's essentially what we do. But we also want to do that in a risk-off environment. We want to mitigate risk to the city in all things, financial, but in purchasing activity as well. And finally, we want to operate in procurement as efficiently and effectively as possible. So our parameters in our purchasing world are defined by city code and by charter ordinance. And there's really three guardrails that they set for us. They set the level of staff authority. That is the level at which staff can approve things. Anything in excess of that, we bring to you as the governing body. Currently that limitation is $50,000 and that's things like purchases or change orders or engineer estimates or things of that nature. So anything over 50 is staff is able to approve. Anything over 50 basically we bring to you in a variety of different forms. The statute also outlines the bid process over a certain dollar amount, and again, that dollar amount is also $50,000. So there's a number of ways for us to bid things, and as I mentioned previously, almost all of our purchases are purchased competitively. It's kind of a misnomer among some people, but it doesn't matter what the dollar amount is, we purchase competitively, other than a few exceptions. But currently, if that procurement is over $50,000, we go through what we call a legal bid process, or technically in city code, it's called an advertised bid process. That process is significantly more expansive in the amount of work it takes, and that's for good reason. But just be recognized that there's a threshold on the legal bid requirement. And finally, there are some exceptions to all of this in city code. Those are very limited. We use them relatively infrequently, but city code does authorize some specific exceptions. Now, I'll talk about all three of those a little bit later, but just recognize those are the parameters under which we operate. So why would we want to consider changing the parameters? One reason is inflation. Our $50,000 limit was set in 2014, which is, what, 12 years ago. And basically, based on inflation, really we have the equivalent of a $35,000 limit if you can equate it back to $50,000 in 2014. So our limits change annually based on inflation. Another big reason is we want to enhance flexibility in our vendor base, and particularly with our small businesses and our local businesses. As I noted, legal bids take a lot longer to process. And again, for good reason, but they're much more complex They're also much more challenging for our vendor community to submit bids on, again, particularly our smaller and local businesses. Again, that's not intentional. It's for due diligence on our part, but it is a fact that legal bids are much more cumbersome for our small vendor community to complete. And finally, we want to enhance staff effectiveness and efficiency. We want to allocate our time to the most critical functions. With a lower limit, what we find is we spend a lot of time on legal bids in areas where the risk is very low, and that precludes us from spending time maybe in other areas of higher dollar amounts where the risk might be a little bit higher. So let me go through the different kind of purchases we make, the different thresholds. And again, I'll go through these relatively quickly. Can't emphasize enough that all of these are purchased competitively. We have what we call micro-purchase amount. That's under $5,000. We actually delegate that to departments. So if a department director needs something that is $5,000 or under, we ask them to try to get three quotes. Usually they do that over the phone. It's very simple, very efficient. Usually it takes a day or two. And they can buy what they need to buy. The next level is what we call the informal bid process. That's everything up to the $50,000 limit established by city code. Now in those we have a little bit more structured process. They submit, the department will submit a requisition to purchasing along with three quotes. And we like those to be written quotes. And purchasing will review them for due diligence and check a few things and make sure that the quotes are legitimate and make sure that the quote that the department is recommending is the most appropriate one. After we do that, we'll issue a purchase order So again, this is a competitive process, but it is much more efficient for staff and city vendors. We usually turn all those around in two or three days. Again, I'm giving you generalities. Some get more complicated than that, but it's a fairly efficient process. So legal bids. Legal bids are anything over $50,000. And I'm also lumping in proposals. Recognize when we buy services, we do that on a proposal process. I'm going to use bids today just to keep it simple. Just recognize when I say bid, I mean bids and proposals, purchases of goods and services. So the first thing we do is we develop specifications with departments and those specifications are often very lengthy because again we have a lot of due diligence in them. We review the specifications the departments provide for us and then we help modify them as needed in order to make sure they're standardized and things of that nature. That can take several days. Then we're gonna put them out on the street. We're gonna put them on our bonfire portal. We typically give vendors two or three weeks to respond. Again, we don't wanna, we wanna give them time to contemplate what it is we're purchasing and to provide us the best possible bid. We give them an opportunity to ask questions a lot of times. We have pre-bids. So that's gonna add two or three weeks. Then we have a bid opening and after that we spend a little bit of time purchasing due in our due diligence to make sure they have the appropriate bonding and insurance and that they are compliant with our specifications as they represented in their bid. And then when we do all that, then we place it on Board of Bids which meets I think on Mondays and then we take it to the City Council which, I'm sorry, Board of Bids meets on Friday and then we take it to the City Council the following Tuesday.

So this is a little graphic I made. It's not very good. It's got a lot of fine print.

But the takeaway is the bottom arrow is a lot longer than the top two arrows. That's the point of this. The process is much more complicated and time consuming if it's a purchase over $50,000. And again, on proposal, that arrow would probably extend out to about right here because we've got a lot of other challenges with staff screenings, selection committees, and things like that. Again, not bad to have a lengthy process. Good in the right circumstances. Our premise today is that we would define the right circumstances for that more lengthy process and a little bit higher threshold than what we have now. So let's look at some of our peers. Currently we're setting up $50,000. I don't know that I'd consider the federal government a peer, but I put it on there just for perspective. Their limit's $350,000. But some of the other cities that are about our size in the region, KCMO's at 160. Topeka's at 50. They've got kind of a hybrid model where they actually have a little different limitation for the requirement for a legal bid, but effectively their staff authority is $50,000. Olathe, Johnson County, Wyandotte County, all what I would consider direct peers to City of Wichita in population and in complexity, you can see are all materially higher than us. 150 at Johnson and Wyandotte County and 100,000 at Olathe. Now, I didn't put it on the slide, but you may be aware that Sedgwick County's limit is $25,000. I don't want to speak to how they operate their procurement division. I know they have some different ways of doing business than what we do, which significantly diminishes the amount of of bids and proposals that they do, so their workload is not lower than us, but they are at $25,000. So let's talk about change orders. The approval for change orders is $50,000 as well, and combined with that, not specifically related to the procurement process, but the requirement for an engineer's estimate is also at $50,000. So what is a change order? Change order is when something unforeseen happens that were not contemplated in the original bid specifications. Now we have very talented engineers on our staff here and we in some cases use very good consultants. Our bid specifications are done very well. A change order is not the result of bid specifications that were not done appropriately. A change order is rather something that we discover after the project is bid, things that are unanticipated. Think of an underground project. You know, we may be putting in a pipeline somewhere. It's hard to know exactly what's underground, particularly when we provide the bid specs. So sometimes you'll see where we discover things underground that we did not know were there. And so you might see a change order for that. Things of that nature are typically what your change orders are for. And again, I can't emphasize enough, change orders are not, repeat, not to compensate vendors that bid intentionally low the first time. That is not the purpose of a change order. That's not what we allow as a change order. Again, purchasing reviews all change order requests. Final topic is competitive exemptions. I mentioned everything we purchase is done competitively. I mentioned there are a few exceptions. Again, those are outlined in city code right now. Those are areas in which, regardless of dollar amount, we are allowed to purchase on a noncompetitive basis. Those are things like emergencies. For example, I think you'll see one on your agenda next week for an emergency. We don't really have time for a competitive procurement process, so we are allowed to do the best we can to select the best vendor at the best price as expeditiously as possible. Sometimes we don't get bids on things. That's pretty rare, but that can happen occasionally, too, and the purchasing managers in those cases are authorized to buy what we need to buy. High technology purchases is one that's used a little bit more frequently. That's obviously in the technology area. By the way, that's one that's going to come up in a couple slides because I think there's some modifications we can make to that one. There are a few instances where we buy things that have some security-related concerns. So we have some exemptions there on our competitive process. And then there are cases in which there is only one supplier. That's what we call sole source. So those are primarily the exceptions. There's a few others that I didn't bother to list. Frankly, there's some in city code that some of us can't even remember the last time we used. But these are the key exemptions. So what are the recommendations for changing our exemptions? I would recommend that we eliminate the high technology exemption. It's really not very well defined on what high technology is. Now we have a custom on how and when we use it, but it's probably not the best worded exemptions. We would recommend eliminating high technology as an exemption from the competitive process. Kind of in place of it and to supplement it, what we would recommend is an exemption for single source of supply. So this would provide us flexibilities in which technically there might be other suppliers available. In other words, it's not a sole source. But based on our investment and our assets or our systems, even though conceptually another vendor might be available, operationally they would be incredibly disruptive if we selected another vendor. I'll give you an example. Think about our computer systems here. We've invested millions of dollars in our computers. But think about the computer in front of you there. We have an operating system on that. We use Microsoft. Are there other operating systems? Yes. So Microsoft is not a sole source. Would it be incredibly disruptive if the city tried to implement a different operating system? Yes, it would. So I would suggest to you that Microsoft, for example, would be an example of a single source of supply that we would probably use on this exemption. A lot of the high technology things we used to characterize as high technology will probably fall into single source of supply, but single source of supply is a much more accurate way to identify those types of purchases. Finally, we would recommend an additional exemption as for legal services. This would provide us flexibility, and these exemptions are all about flexibility in the right circumstances. This would provide us flexibility for expedient procurement of legal services if circumstances required it. Again, that wouldn't preclude us from from negotiating for those services, but it would just make it a lot easier if something comes up and we need to procure legal services. Probably wouldn't be used very often. Wouldn't be used certainly on all legal services. Again, just another tool in the tool belt that would help staff. So in summary, I thought I would Read something from you that was written earlier from an earlier report. It says that we want to emphasize that raising the bid limit will not reduce competition or bidding. Using the informal bid process is more expeditious and permits better service to the operating departments without delays incidental to advertising bids. Now that was written on November 30th, 1978 when we increased the purchasing limit from $3,000 to $10,000. So my point there is this is not a new concept. This happens periodically. throughout the city and I would also suggest to you that what was said in 1978 is 100% accurate today in 2026. What we are seeking to do is not going to impact competitive bidding. It's basically to improve the efficiency of city staff in procurement areas where Maybe all the extra due diligence of a legal bid isn't required and it's also intended to help our vendor community, particularly our small and local businesses, be able to be more responsive to city bids. I guess I should point out one last thing. Even if the limit is higher, that does not preclude us from doing a legal bid. If we determine it's in our best interest to do a legal bid, we'll do a legal bid today for $30,000 if we think that's in our best interest. Now, that doesn't happen very often, but the point is it's not a hard dollar amount that we will not do a legal bid below. It's a higher dollar amount that provides us basically the flexibility to use the legal bid process when we believe it is appropriate. So, again, we would recommend our consideration of increasing staff authorization for purchases up to $100,000 and the level at which legal bids are required up to $100,000. We would recommend eliminating the competitive exemption for high technology for the reasons I noted, but adding exemptions for legal services and single source of supply. That will kind of tighten up our exemptions a little bit, we think. And finally, we would recommend increasing the change order limit and the engineer's estimate limit, which are both kind of embedded together, to $100,000. So that's a lot of information I threw at you, but I wanted to give you a comprehensive view on what we're trying to accomplish here today. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. And I think legal counsel is available, too, if there are any really complicated legal questions.

Council Member Ballard?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mark, thank you so much. A couple questions. Is this something that staff is suggesting, or did someone else bring this forward?

Staff is recommending this, yes. We don't like to ask for additional staff, but I would just tell you that our workload is increasing significantly, and that puts us in the position of trying to make tradeoffs on what we should allocate our time to, and we don't like to do that because that increases risk. So it is generated by staff. Yes, ma'am.

um the other thing is i think the the perception could potentially be that we're taking a step back in transparency so i worry about that a little bit from the public perception we don't know what we don't know and so um i know that it sounds like the last time you guys made a change was i don't know years and years ago so i know that inflation is an opportunity to elevate this, but just for what that comment is worth. And then the last question that I have is, is this just for change orders or does this include expenses as well? I just want to make sure that It's just on like change orders for projects.

Yeah, this would increase the change order limit, the engineer's estimate requirement limit, the staff authority for purchasing, and the process, the limitation under which we are required to do a legal bid.

Councilmember Hoheisel. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just one question. Mark, can you talk a little bit about any oversight or protections that we have on the informal bid process already? And I assume that will be expanded up to 100,000.

Your primary oversight, I would tell you, is the purchasing division. I'm trying to think about how to say this as complimentary as possible, but they are hyper-tuned into risk. I'll just put it that way. They are very attuned to risk. They are extraordinarily risk-averse, which is a really good thing in this area. They are your gatekeeper, but you just heard from our auditor 30, 40 minutes ago, they audit all our purchasing activity each year as well. Now, they do it on a sample basis, but that is very important to us too because, again, we want to clean on it. That's the two gatekeepers I would tell you. We have the purchasing division, that's their profession and they take it very seriously. And we have the external auditor who is always the final stop on making sure that everything we do is materially accurate.

Thank you. Council Member Shepherd. Thank you so much, Mark. I'm curious, in the green sheet that we have, it mentions in cases where economic or operational needs are better served by utilizing a familiar vendor, service contracts, high technology, as you mentioned, or extending purchases at competitively bid unit prices, what impact, if any, would this have on small businesses who want to do business with the City of Wichita?

That particular section, I would tell you probably zero. These are typically large purchases. I mentioned Microsoft early. I don't think any local small businesses are probably gonna be competing with Microsoft, for example, so I would suggest you zero.

Okay, that's good to know. Definitely wanna look out for our small businesses. So council member Ballard asked this question. You already gave an answer, but I'm going to ask if you can break it down even further for me. You know, this is particularly for change orders, but you also mentioned purchasing and a couple other things. Are those all the same thing or?

Well, again, city code provides us parameters on several things. One is the authorizational level of staff to approve purchases, which is generally the purchasing manager. That's 50. We want to raise it to 100. Another is the process that we use in our competitive bidding process, which if it's above 50, we have to use a legal bid process. We would raise that to 100. And then the other two that you mentioned are the change order process, which is in a different section of the city code. That's 50 currently. We would recommend raising that to 100. And finally is the engineer's estimate, which again is 50 and we recommend raising. We like to keep them all uniform. They traditionally are uniform. So that's our rationale there.

And so the, help me understand, who has the discretionary power within City Hall to approve the purchase within a department? Is it the director of the department that gets to sign off and say, this is below the $50,000 limit, I'm approving this without it having to go to the CMO's office and then the City Council?

Actually, department directors currently are only delegated with $5,000 of approval. So a department director can buy something up to $5,000. Again, we have oversight. It's less diligent than other oversight, but we do have a process that we ask them to follow. But anything above $5,000, the department will submit a requisition, and purchasing will process it and approve it and check it for due diligence or a variety of other things, just a matter of what that process looks like. 50, 5,000 to 50, we do the informal process, which is much quicker. If it's over 50, we do the legal bid process. But yeah, department director authority, $5,000.

And anything over 50,000, the city manager has to bring forward to the council for approval, is that correct?

Those are the items you're seeing on board of bids every week.

Okay, and you're wanting, or the staff is recommending that we increase that to 100,000. Yes, sir, that's correct. how much less would come to the bank? And first of all, I want to acknowledge staff time and efficiencies. As I said last week, I have heard overwhelmingly from at least constituents in my district that they want efficiency and accountability in looking at where we can reduce expenses and maybe operationalize better some processes. I'm just trying to really, I'm struggling with this one here. So help me understand how this would impact how much would come to us and how much less would come to the bench.

I would estimate you'd probably see a 10%, maybe 15% reduction in the number of items on your board of bids that you see each week. You know, I could look at the numbers a little bit more carefully. Sometimes that's a little bit of a challenge. But in the past when we've looked at it, essentially what you're asking is what is in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. And that's generally somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% or so of all our requisitions. So that would be my estimate for you.

Thank you, and thank you for breaking down the process of how the operations work within City Hall. I don't know if the public necessarily understands that or would need to, right? They're constituents, and so I just wanted to make sure I understood it as well as when I'm out in the community, I'm able to accurately explain that to the people who I represent.

Council Member Johnston. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mark, so the city manager would have to approve anything over $50,000 to $100,000, is that correct?

The way that we would recommend amending the ordinance is that the purchasing manager would have that authority, which is actually consistent with the current city code. That power is actually vested in the purchasing manager on the purchasing side.

Okay, but right now the city manager can do it on an emergency basis.

Yes, sir, and that would not change. That would not change. The ordinance currently and as proposed I think has three areas in which the manager can approve, and one of those is emergencies. And again, you'll see an example of that here in seven days. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Tuttle.

Thank you. And Council Member Shepherd sparked something about small businesses, all businesses, we want to make sure that we protect the process. There's always unintended consequences of everything good and bad. And so one of the things when I was talking with a department director regarding this and just kind of trying to solicit some input, Could this actually benefit smaller contractors trying to navigate through a complicated process that we have? We're big and clunky and chunky and we know it, but those provide safeguards for us. So can you maybe talk about how the unintended consequence of this could be a benefit also for smaller contractors while we're still maintaining the same level of dignity, for lack of a better word, and transparency for the process?

We think it'd be a huge benefit for small local businesses. I'll give you a few examples. As Josh tells you every time on Board of Bids, we spend a lot of time on outreach. A lot of that outreach is helping our small businesses navigate our legal bid process, which is complicated, particularly for a small business. I mean, it's easy for large businesses. They do it all the time. Small businesses, not so much. So by raising the limit, we reduce a lot of hurdles to small businesses on on purchases under $100,000. I'll give you a few examples. We're going to require certain insurance requirements. We're going to require certain bonds if it's a legal bid. Our specifications are, as I noted, very lengthy, 30, 40 pages in some cases. We're going to expect them to submit a bid that aligns to all of those, which takes a lot of time. Again, that's not bad. We want exactly what we want, but I'm not sure that level is as necessary for smaller purchases. Again, under this model, as in today, under $50,000, if I'm a small business and the city wants to buy something, the department is going to reach out to me. Purchasing is going to reach out to you and ask you, what would this cost? It's relatively easy for you to provide. You don't have to provide us 50 pages of documentation, and we're going to select fairly quickly the most appropriate bid, the lowest bid that meets what we want. Much faster timeframe, much less complicated for a small business to do.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And as we're looking at changing our model, you know, from departments doing their financials, or I'm not saying it right, but moving centralization to finance, this just seems like it would fit perfectly. well with the efficiencies that we're trying to utilize within the city system. Is that correct as well?

I would agree with that. It'll help us allocate our time a little bit differently, perhaps more productively on some of the tasks that we're going to absorb when we centralize. It would also free up department staff. I mean, it's a lot of work for departments to prepare 50 pages worth of specs, too, in a lot of cases. And again, I can't reiterate enough, we're not going to abandon that process. It has its place. We just think that place is at a higher dollar threshold. But yes, it'll make, I would argue, make departments more efficient. It'll make purchasing staff more efficient, which will allow us to reallocate staff to other tasks, which is basically the core premise of our centralization initiative.

One last question for me, Mark. You are a fantastic director of finance. We couldn't ask for anyone better. I trust you. I rely on you. How many years have you been doing work in this field, for example? 31. 31 years? Okay. So in your 31 years of experience, what's your level of confidence with approving this, I guess I'm asking? Like, you know, you brought up the great, and thank you for being Nancy Drew and finding the quote from 1978. That's phenomenal. But do you have any level of discomfort if this were to pass today?

Well, in my world, everything is about risk. And I would tell you I would not have brought this proposal to you if I thought the risk to the city was unacceptable. Okay, thank you. That's the best way I can answer your question.

Perfect, thank you.

Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you so much. So, Mark, I guess if we know that small businesses lack the infrastructure or staffing capacity to deal with 50-page application process, Isn't there a way that we can minimize that without doing this? Even if this doesn't get approved today, why haven't we looked at how do we reduce that? I liken it to organizations who would love federal grants. I used to work for a non-profit. Federal grants were always an option for us. But when you talk about the compliance that has to go along with the federal grant, a lot of our smaller organizations often opt out because they just don't have the staffing capacity to manage that compliance. So if we recognize that gap with small businesses doing business with the city being a barrier because of the bureaucracy or paperwork, which is not a hit on you all, what have we done to reduce that?

I guess I'd answer you this way, Council Member. We like standardization. For a legal bid, we are going to have a standardized process, standardized specifications, standardized legal requirements, standardized bonding, insurance requirements. I understand what you're saying. could we have different specifications from fifty to sixty or fifty to seventy five or whatever arbitrary in theory yes we could that would go against our our guidance on standardization and also i think would create risk i mean it's been well documented in the past we've had some challenges on some contractual issues, most of which did not originate in the finance department. A lot of times that was because they did not use a standardized format. In fact, we didn't even know about it, so we couldn't have used our standardized format in any event. But I think those are the kind of one-offs you get if you don't have a single standardized methodology for your legal bid process. And again, that's a level of risk we really don't want to absorb. But your point is well taken. We do do everything we can to make our process easier for small businesses, but I think the legal bid process really needs to be standardized.

I would say yes and. I completely appreciate that we have a consistent standard. My mind goes to equity, and so I think that if we have small businesses who would be remarkable to do business with the city of Wichita and provide a quality service, but we also recognize that there are staffing capacity gaps, and even access to the resources that some of our larger companies, over 500 employees have access to. I think we, I just hope that we are accounting for that. I want the city to do business with as many small businesses and especially local businesses as possible because from an economic standpoint, as we probably all know, like that is where we're gonna feel the most benefit from an economic standpoint. But I want us to be, consistent with looking after taxpayer dollars, that's the standard part, while also recognizing that it might be an equity issue if we're asking for the same thing consistently across the board.

I agree with you and I will tell you this, We don't get too emotional in the finance department, generally speaking. But I would tell you, it really hits you right here when we see a lot of the stuff that we do for small local businesses. I'll give you an example. When we outsourced park mowing, what, in 2010, I think, we got a lot of small businesses that bid on a lot of our mowing projects. And that really made you feel good. The downside of that was that bidding process was cumbersome because it was a legal bid. And we also saw some small businesses that we would have loved to have done business with, but that were challenged by the bonding requirements or the insurance requirements or filling out all the paperwork. And we really didn't have any flexibility. But having said that, I will also tell you this. I don't want to be very specific. We have some ways that we can manage our anticipated risk in a way that can provide lesser standards to some of our small businesses. Again, we don't do it because they're small businesses, but we do recognize that smaller purchases, purchases that small businesses are more likely to pursue, could have lower risk standards than others, and so there are some levers that we can tweak to make that a little bit more palatable or pliable for them to apply. But I would tell you, like I said, I can't tell you this empirically, but I can tell you anecdotally, we love it when we can award locally for the reasons that you noted. We just want to do it within our parameters. We want standardized parameters.

Absolutely, and I appreciate the work that you all have been doing, specifically with small businesses in District 1. You all send someone every single year to the Create Campaign, Spark Graduation, to get those entrepreneurs signed up as vendors to do business with the city of Wichita. I think that's a testament. I would encourage us, and I'm happy to be a supporter of this in figuring out how do we reasonably look at that bureaucracy or regulation that prevents small businesses from wanting to come and do business with the city of Wichita. but you all are moving in the right direction and have done some phenomenal work and I see that. Thank you.

Your point's well taken and even if you approve this today, that won't stop our efforts to do exactly what you're suggesting.

Seeing no other questions from the bench, we'll take it out to public comment. Is there anybody from the public that would like to speak on this agenda item? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the bench. Do any of my colleagues have any remarks? Seeing none, I will make the motion that we approve the ordinance and charter ordinance amendments and authorize the necessary signatures. Second. The motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes four to two with one absent. Madam Clerk, can you call the next item?

Funding for 2024 and 2026 pedestrian crossing enhancements.

Vice Mayor, I think it needs a two-thirds to pass. Is that correct?

Charter ordinance requires a two-thirds majority.

So motion fails on four to two with four approval, two deny, and one absent. Motion fails. Jennifer, when a motion fails, there can't be a subsequent motion.

Not to take up the same motion.

Could there be a motion for deferral? And so I'll make the motion to defer that item until August 4th.

We really can't defer it. It's already been voted on. We can look at obviously there is a procedure under the rules to suspend voting policies. We can talk about that. The simple ordinance did pass by a majority. The ordinances were not charter ordinances. did, but we need to revisit it in its entirety.

So the ordinance approved, the charter ordinance did not because it required two-thirds, is that correct? Correct. Okay. Yes, could you elaborate on that?

Well, I need to read these in concert, but it may be that none of this passed if the charter ordinance didn't pass, and I think Steve just left, but Mark's here. I think we probably are under the charter ordinance for some of this, but not all of this. I need to look into it to see which portion the codes could have passed that weren't affected by the charter. If we could revisit this.

Thank you. I'm sorry for jumping ahead. I just have a procedural question who would be on the Prevailing side here and then could somebody from the prevailing side bring it back up for a revote and make a motion to delay until The August meeting let me get back get into the rules we have under Robert's Rules Act Can we come back to this item?

We can come back to it.

And in the same meeting, I believe that. We can. Yes, you can. We will maybe have further discussion on this item. Madam Clerk, can you call the next item?

Funding for 2024 and 2026 pedestrian crossing enhancements.

Morning, Vice Mayor, City Council Members, Paul Gunselman, Public Works, and Utilities. For the record, the item before you is funding for 2024 and 2026 pedestrian crossing enhancements. Capital Improvement Program includes funding every other year for design and construction of pedestrian and bicycle street crossing improvements. Projects will be prioritized based on feedback from the Wichita Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Board and citizens along with staff recommendations. The type of improvements funded by this CIP line item include pedestrian signals, median refuges, enhancements to existing crossings. The projects identified for the design and possible implementation in 2026 include McLean Boulevard adjacent to Exploration Place, the 1st and 2nd Street at the I-135 or canal route, and pedestrian crosswalk on Tyler North or 13th Street. As you may recall, we have a project to expand the parking lot near Exploration Place. That project also included a crossing across McLean Boulevard. So we would add some funding to complete that to the project budget. The I-135, this is a picture of I-135 at Second Street Crossing. You may have recognized this before, I've presented it before for some of this funding. We have, as part of the 2024 bicycle master plan update, tool design had developed some further concepts for these two locations. as shown on your screen at second and I-135. We would further revise these or take these a step further into more detailed design to make those crossings safer at those interchange locations. And finally, the crosswalk on Tyler north of 13th Street, we had a citizen present this to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board to provide additional crossing there north of 13th Street on Tyler. through the bike plan shows some on-street bicycle network that would connect over to the Woodchuck Bicycle Boulevard that is in yellow, that crosses over to Sedgwick County Park. So with part of this funding, we would evaluate that, evaluate the traffic as well as the number of people crossing Tyler Road to see if it is warranted to have a crosswalk there. Financial considerations, the 2026 through 2035 Adopted Capital Improvement Program includes $300,000 in the ongoing projects in 2024, as well as $300,000 in 2026 for pedestrian crossing enhancements. These are funded by general obligation funds, and staff recommends initiating both amounts at this time. It is recommended the City Council approve the budget, adopt the resolution, and authorize necessary signatures, and I will stand for questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions from the bench? I see none. Are there any questions or comments from the general public? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the bench for discussion. Councilman Johnson.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Paul, thank you very much. I remember when the resident brought this forward in our district advisory board meeting probably a year ago. And looking at it, it makes sense to me for Tyler, but his study would be nice to see if it is justified. My wife and I ride Central County Park a lot, and we use the crossing at 13th and Ridge. And it is dangerous because people turn and they don't even look for bikes. And same can be said for 21st. So I think, to me, this would be important to get in the middle section of there, which is a lot safer. So I appreciate you including a study in this program. If there's enough money, hopefully there is. So thank you.

Seeing no further discussion, I'll make the motion to approve the budget, adopt the resolution, and authorize the necessary signatures. Second. Motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Passes 6-0 with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

Funding for stormwater utility pump station improvements.

Good morning, Vice Mayor, Wichita City Council. For the record, Don Henry, Public Works and Utilities. The item before you is a funding request for improvements to critical stormwater utility infrastructure. Particularly for this project, it's for pump station number seven that serves an area that keeps high levels of stormwater off of Kellogg Drive. In all, the utility operates and maintains 15 pump stations. These promote quality of life and protect property and public safety from rising stormwaters. Eight of the pump stations serve the stormwater utility itself. Seven are associated with the Big Ditch, the MS Mitchell Floodway, and are funded jointly by Wichita and Sedgwick County. The slide before you just shows the eight pump stations that serve the stormwater utility. their numbers, their locations, and the year that they were constructed. Work for these stations are ongoing each year, funded from the CIP program, and work is prioritized based upon age of the assets, ongoing condition assessments, and the criticality of failure. Today's item will address Pump Station Number 7, located at 420 South Ridgecrest. This proposed project includes replacement of the existing backup power generator and the associated electrical equipment within the pump station. This is one of the critical pump stations. I think I mentioned before it keeps water off of Kellogg Drive without service to this pump station should it fail and no backup power, then Kellogg, a big stretch of Kellogg would quickly become inundated as well as Edgemore in the area of Cypress Park. The capital improvement program that has been approved by council includes $100,000 in each of the years 2025, 26, and 27 for a total amount of $300,000. This amount has been included in the pro forma and this project's included and therefore approval of this project will in no way impact stormwater utility rates. At this time, staff recommends that city council approve the budget for the project adopt the resolution, and authorize the necessary signatures. And I'm available for any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Are there any questions from the bench? Seeing none, we'll open it up to the general public. Is there anybody from the public that would like to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the bench. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, I would make the motion that we approve the budget, authorize, or adopt the resolution, authorize the necessary signatures.

Second. There is a motion and second.

Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes 6-0 with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

Wichita Transit Software Purchases.

Good morning, Vice Mayor, City Council, Penny Feist, Wichita Transit. Here for the third and final time to talk to you about software. As you know, Wichita Transit uses multiple software solutions in our day-to-day operations. And we have five listed there, and we're going to talk today about the first three. So fixed route planning and bus scheduling, dispatching and vehicle location for the buses, and then fare payment collection and financial reporting. Many of these contracts reached another contract term in 2025. Extensions have been put in place. One RFP was issued so that we could determine the best vendor for the job. That was issued on October 28th. We received 16 proposals. The Staff Screening and Selection Committee shortlisted vendors on December 30th, and interviews were held between January 12th and 16th. Three firms were interviewed for group one, three for group two, and three for group three. Based on the RFP evaluation criteria, the staff screening and selection committee recommends the following. Group one, avail technologies. Group two, avail technologies. Group three, mode shift. Group four and group five have previously been awarded. Avail technologies is recommended due to demonstrated past performance, reasonable cost proposal, and experience serving transit agencies our size. And mode shift is recommended due to providing a quality fare box solution, the acceptance of multiple payment types, and the ability to integrate into a single application and a reasonable cost. Hardware and software expenses are eligible for grant funding at 80% and 20% local match. Grants will be utilized for these costs and will require local match amount of $734,011. Local match will be budgeted within the 2026 through 2028 budget, and the five-year contracts represent a total investment of $3,670,056. This is just breaking that cost down into Group 1, which you'll see the five-year contract is $347,637, with the city's total portion being $69,537. Group 2 also avail the total five-year cost is $1,379,879, with the city's portion at $275,000. $975. And group three for mode shift, the total cost of the five-year contract is $1,942,493 with the city's total portion at $388,499. All that summarized for you one more time. And it is recommended that the city council approve of the contracts, authorize the necessary signatures, and authorize necessary budget adjustments. And I'll stand for any questions.

Thank you, Penny. Are there any questions from the bench? Seeing none, are there any discussion from the general public? Okay, we'll bring it back to the bench. Is there any discussion from my colleagues? Seeing none, I will make the motion to approve the contracts, authorize the necessary signatures, and authorize the necessary budget adjustments. Second. The motion is second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes six with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

Public Housing Recovery Agreement Status Report.

I do not see the Director of Housing present. So we will go back to agenda item four. I know that there would have to be a motion to reconsider. It would have to be made from the prevailing party, which would be either Councilmember Ballard or Shepherd, would be my understanding. Is that correct, Jennifer?

Yes, that's correct. It is our opinion that the ordinance modification of 2.64.020 passed and the charter ordinance did not. So staff authority was approved to 100,000. Change order modification was not. Reconsideration, we would need to make a reconsideration vote only for the charter ordinance. That motion needs to be done in this meeting. It could be a motion to reconsider. If that's approved, you could defer the discussion to another meeting. of charter ordinance. I believe that as long as that motion is made today, that's one option.

Okay. I would ask either of my colleagues if they would be interested in a motion to reconsider to then postpone the discussion so we can have the discussion with the city manager present. So the city manager also is the one recommending this with finance to offer additional clarification. I know I have two colleagues on the board, Council Member Tuttle.

I'm willing to step back. I was just going to ask legal. So the $100,000, that was moved from $50,000 to $100,000. Is that correct? That's correct. So that part passed. That did pass. The change order portion is what did not pass.

That's correct, because that's within the charter ordinance, which requires the super majority of five votes.

So part of it passed, part of it didn't. Right, and I just wasn't- And then if either of my colleagues want to have further discussion, then that's what's next.

Yeah, there is a provision in the code that says the body can reconsider a motion that was previously passed in the meeting. Prevailing party needs to make that motion. Anybody can second it. There is no debate on the motion to reconsider, however. That motion can't get debate. But the motion, if it's gonna be made, needs to be made in this meeting. And I think at the same time, then the motion could be made to defer the discussion or further reconsideration to the later meeting.

So we have to take the motion to reconsider first, if that were to be considered by either Council Member Shepherd, Council Member Ballard, there would be no discussion on it, but then we could vote on deferral of the item for further discussion for the August 4th meeting, is that correct? That's correct. Should we choose subsequent motions?

That's what I see.

Okay. Council Member Johnson.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Jennifer, question for you. The two-thirds, I presumed, was off of seven council members?

It's always out of seven. It's not of the number present.

Even though we got two-thirds today, it doesn't count.

It's always the total number of seven, so it has to be five.

Thank you. I thought that was correct.

Yeah, good question.

Council Member Shepard? Thank you, Mayor. And just so we're clear, this would be about particularly removing those exemptions that were the high technology? Is that what we...

This one, the charter ordinance is about the change order, just the change order.

Just the change order. Okay. And... I want to make sure I have this correct, and I can explain why. But it has already passed increasing $50,000 to $100,000. That's already passed.

The staff authorization for purchasing to $100,000, not change order.

My concern was that one, and seeing that the will of the body was to approve that, even though I disagree, I don't want to hold anything up. And I just want to explain, like, i i really struggle with a lot of the commentary that i have heard i think people have seen even as of last week about trust coming forward and so this voting to not approve that was not a reflection on staff but just more so a reflection on i struggle with less items coming before the bench there was some some answers that I didn't necessarily feel most comfortable with today, but with that, I would motion to reconsider because I feel comfortable with the changes that are being requested. Second.

Okay, and for the clarification, your motion to reconsider is for the changes to charter ordinance. The motion to reconsider is for the change to the charter ordinance.

Which refers to?

The change order limits.

I just want to make sure I'm extra careful. I do not want to have a Steve Harvey moment.

Your motion to consider for the Charter Ordinance Amendment.

And that one refers to?

That's for the change order increase.

OK. Yep. Motion to consider.

Second. Reconsider, sorry. Second. There is a motion and a second to reconsider. Council Member Hohasel, do you want to speak to that?

Just one additional question, because I don't believe we can have dialogue. So this means just the reconsider. The other part will not be voted on in a future meeting. That one's already solidified in our ordinances.

The other part, you mean the staff authority? Yes.

I just want a clarification.

Thank you. There's a motion and there's a second. And so we will, Madam Clerk, can you call the roll on the motion to reconsider? This passes six to O with one absent. Now there's, I will make the motion that we defer discussion on the charter ordinance amendments to the August 4th regular meeting.

Second.

There's a second, there's a motion, a second. Council Member Shakburn.

Thank you. Something that really struck me that I want more information on is when we talked about the emergency clause, I was going to ask during the discussion what constitutes an emergency, but I would like to know in seven days it was mentioned that we will see that. What is coming forward in seven days that would be a reflection of what constitutes an emergency?

Good morning, Vice Mayor, members of the council. And Mark's working his way down to the chamber. So there is a public XNG request that was filed at the airport. There was an emergency project that needed to be completed in real time at the airport. The city manager has the authority to approve a public XNG with the understanding it's going to come to council soon after. That will be presented next week. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Okay, is there any further discussion? Seeing none, the motion that is on the table is to defer discussion of the charter ordinance to the August 4th regular meeting. Madam Clerk, can you call that vote? on a vote of five to one, that motion passes, and with one absent as well. Madam Clerk, can you call the next item?

Public Housing Recovery Agreement Status Report.

Well, good morning, members of council. Sally Stang with the Housing and Community Services Department for the record. The item I have for you is our standard monthly update to the Public Housing Recovery Agreement with HUD. Background in January of 25, the Wichita Housing Authority Board executed a recovery agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development due to the FAS score of 58 related to the disposition and occupancy of its public housing properties. That agreement requires that this report be presented to the Housing Authority Board monthly. The agreement included actions related to the physical condition of the occupied units, repositioning the remaining public housing properties, and providing an update on the capital fund projects. So concerning improving the physical condition of occupied units, all those requirements were met some time ago. Repositioning public housing, all remaining units are vacant. Approval of the last disposition application was in June of 25. To date, or actually I should say as of July 6th, we had sold 282 properties and 42 were pending sale. That number changes actually daily between receiving offers and closings on properties. As of today, we only have 25 properties that we do not have offers on, which is fabulous. Of those 282 properties sold, we can see on this report that that actually resulted with in 428 affordable housing properties. So between deed restrictions, unrestricted rentals, things that are still available as homeownership or rentals on the market for people earning less than 80% AMI. So this has been a very powerful way to expand the number of affordable housing units, particularly for families, because we're talking single family homes. Strategies for those remaining units, the affordable housing fund plan was updated in August of last year to provide the revolved funding in that affordable housing fund to those units. There's 13 within the floodplain or that have environmental mitigation needs or other market challenges. that RFP was originally to be issued previously in June or July. We've run into some very complicated code issues related to units in the floodplain and we are working on those diligently with MABCD. Had those units resurveyed to determine whether or not they still resided within the floodplain and are working with MABCD in identifying the health and safety aspects of those that are allowed as exemptions to the code. Repairs are underway or continuing on the one friar that had a unit. Those repairs should be complete by the end of the month. And then that one will hit the open market. All other remaining units will be sold on the open market. As far as capital fund is concerned, that one fire unit is our only capital fund project that remains open. There's no impact to the general fund. This monthly update is required under that recovery plan, and it's recommended that the Wichita Housing Authority Board receive and file the recovery plan status report update report for July of 2026, and I stand for any questions.

Fantastic. Are there any questions from my colleagues? Seeing none, is there anybody that would like to speak on this item from the public? Seeing none, bring it back to the bench. Is there any discussion for my colleagues? Also seeing none, I'll make the motion to receive and file the HUD Recovery Status Update and Public Housing Disposition Update Report.

Second.

With a motion, a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the item? Motion passes 6-0 with one absent. Madam Clerk, next item.

Councilmember Appointments and Comments.

First, are there any appointments for my colleagues? Council Member Tuttle.

Thank you. I would like to appoint Markey Jonas to the Wichita Area Sister Cities Board.

Thank you. Council Member Johnston. Thank you. I'd like to appoint Blaine to the District 5 Advisory Board. As a youth member, he's been a member. Just formally appoint him so he can vote. Fantastic. Council Member Shepard.

Thank you. Following in my colleague's footsteps, we've had a youth member for quite some time, officially appointing Katelyn Jackson as our youth member to the District 1 Advisory Board.

Awesome. I would like to appoint Susan Decker to the District 4 Advisory Board. In addition, the following golf courses would like to submit for approval to the City Council. The following appointments to the Golf Board of Governors. For Tex Consolver, Jesse Ramos. For Auburn Hills, Randy Bloom. For Arthur B. Sims, Marcia Alderman. For McDonald, Robert Alexander. The Director of Golf would also like to submit for approval to the City Council the following appointment to the Golf Board of Governors for the position of Financial Specialist, Evan Skelton. With a motion to approve the appointments.

Council Member Tuttle? May I ask a quick question? I'm asking to make sure. Did you say Jesse Romo?

Ramos?

Oh, Ramos. Okay, I thought you were thinking of her. At first I thought it was Romo. And I was like, can we appoint a staff person? Okay, thank you for the clarification.

Second. Second with a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes 6-0 with one absent. Now we'll move on to Councilmember comments. Councilmember Shepherd.

Thank you so much, Vice Mayor. I have been working with sharing information, particularly about a paid family leave policy that I want to ensure that we adopt within City Hall for our staff within City Hall that are not a part of a bargaining association. Because I think it's really important and I know the city manager has spoken to that. But in addition, I would like for the city manager's office to look into Sedgwick County's Infants at Work program. That program allows an individual to bring their newborn to work when appropriate under certain specifications for 180 days after birth. I want to commend my colleague, Councilmember Becky Tuttle, who has been a champion for childcare and understanding that it's not a women's issue, it is an economic issue. But also there are things that we can put in place to ensure that we're creating a culture where we value the family and the whole person while also reducing barriers that families encounter with child care and so if we can please look into the infants at work program for the city of wichita which is already in place at sedgwick county i'd be really grateful and i look forward to hearing that come forward to the bench thank you councilmember ballard

Thank you. Vice mayor. I just had a question about one of the items that was on the agenda that is not on the agenda anymore, which is about the campaign finance. There's just been a lot of questions about it and I didn't know, I feel like in the past when something has been moved or pulled, it says per city manager and it's been moved to this day. But I don't see it on there at all. And I'm sorry if I missed it. I did just get back in town last night. So I apologize for that. But I've had lots of questions about it. I think we probably all have. And so I just wanted to ask what happened.

Thank you, Council Member Ballard, for the question. Manager Marstall, sometime last week, given some of the concerns that have been expressed by council as well as the public regarding the item, asked that it be deferred to August 4th so that he could be present for the discussion as well as the mayor. In terms of your second part of your question, whether it typically appears on the actual agenda showing that it had been deferred, I think it's a matter of timing. If we've printed hard copies of the agenda, we'll go back and correct that. I believe at the point the deferral was made, hard copies hadn't been printed.

Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much for that. And also, I always want to invite my colleagues out to my District 6 breakfast at Evergreen at 9 a.m. this Saturday. So I hope to see some of you there.

Council Member Hoheisel. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just another reminder, NBC World Series starts Thursday. If you show up Thursday, you can get a Ozzie Smith bobblehead where he's actually doing backflips. So those of you baseball fans, that's pretty neat. Also tomorrow, any of my colleagues want to come down to Colvin? We will be doing our yearly cookout for the summer camp kids. You'll get to see Mike working behind the grill, so I can guarantee you that it's good cooking. So come on down and enjoy the time with the kids.

Excuse me, Vice Mayor, if I may. We inadvertently skipped the Councilmember's agenda. I think Councilmember Shepherd has scheduled travel for Topeka. We could revisit that. I'd appreciate it.

We'll do that.

Noon.

And then Councilmember Tuttle. Yeah.

Just real quick to add on to Councilmember Holheisel, NBC used to be on the board, great organization. Thank you for representing so well. I did see Katie, the director on the local news station this morning and showed the bobbleheads and they were super cute. The other thing that I just wanted to mention on Friday at 5.30, this will be the second year that the Miracle League will be playing during the NBC. I'm a proud volunteer as Councilmember Ballard has been in the past of the Miracle League. If you're looking for something to warm your heart and to be a part of the community, go to our park and recreation page and learn more about being a volunteer for Miracle League. You don't have to have any athletic or sports ability. Trust me, I don't. But it just is an opportunity to help some of our most vulnerable youth. but also to give some reprieve to their caregivers while they're getting to engage in some of our park and recreation activities at the beautiful Orchard Recreation Center. So I wish all the kiddos the best of luck in the Miracle League during the NBC on Friday at 5.30.

Thank you, Councilmember. Given the Assistant Manager's recommendation, we'll go back to Councilmember agenda items. Madam Clerk.

I apologize for that. I approve that pursuant to Section 204-090, Councilmember Shepard's travel expenses as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend a proclamation signing for Black Bookstore Day in Topeka, Kansas, July 31, 2026, for the purpose of support and participating in the community proclamation signing consistent with AR 3.1 be approved. Upon return from travel, actual expenses shall be reported to the Comptroller's Office.

Motion to approve. Second. There's a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes six to O with one absent. Unfortunately, we cannot adjourn this meeting because we have an executive session. And so I move that the city council recess into executive session for 25 minutes to receive information on four civil lawsuits pursuant to KSA 754319B2 for legal consultation with the city attorney, which we deemed privileged in the attorney client relationship pending litigation and legal advice. This executive session is required to protect attorney-client privilege and the public interest. The executive session will begin at 11.55 a.m. and end at 12.20 p.m. The meeting orders room and council chambers following. Second. There is a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Motion passes 6-0 with one absent. We will reconvene in here at 12.20 p.m.