City Council - Regular Meeting

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

So council members, I believe we have Mayor Wu online. We also have Council Member Tuttle online. And I believe Council Member Glasscock will not be able to join us for this meeting. And Council Member Ballard, I believe, will be joining us here in a little bit. So I wanted to acknowledge those online. And then we have in person certainly Council Members Hohheisel, Shepherd, and Johnston. To go through the agenda with you all for the review, we've got a couple things to first highlight for everyone. I'm very pleased to announce that we are looking to do the Station 23 fire station groundbreaking. We will get that on your calendars, but we are looking for the morning of Thursday, August 20th. So we have to finalize the time still, but we do have the morning identified on August 20th. Fire Chief Snow's last day will be August 21st. And then incoming Chief Michael Muir will be on Monday, August 24th. We do have, we completed interviews for the assistant city manager position. So we hopefully will have a decision on that next week that I may be able to announce. And then we also have underway what we call the corporate challenge. And so we have some fun activities across the community with different departments from the city being represented and even have some council members doing some fun events as a part of that. So I want to thank them. We do have in front of you at your places here, council members, the whole list is scheduled for National Night Out. Very exciting time. So for next Tuesday, August 11th, we are celebrating National Night Out and very pleased to highlight that we have over 50 neighborhood events scheduled throughout the city and in every district. And I know council members are making plans to see where they can jump in. I know police and fire will be engaged in many of the neighborhoods as well. And then I will certainly be out at a couple events as well. So I look forward to joining council members where I can at those events. So good news. Looking to the agenda, we actually have a fairly short agenda to make sure that you all can get out for the national night out events on the 11th. But looking ahead at the agenda items for the 11th, we have the reconfiguration of the Access Advisory Board. We just talked last week as part of the review of advisory boards, kind of still where we are in transition on some of these. So pleased to bring forward to you some adjustments or reconfiguration of the Access Advisory Board. So that will be on your agenda. We also have, talking about how we can do, talk about homelessness, we have three grant applications on the agenda for you next week. One of those is a SAMHSA grant, which is focusing on street outreach, case management from our housing department. You'll also see we have two FTA grants, and then we also have a school violence prevention grant. So we are trying to address council priorities with different partnerships and with federal funding. So we'll see where those go. We won't hear back for a couple months on these, but we are seeking your approval to submit. I do want to highlight today that you'll note with a couple of these is that we had to submit these before bringing them to you. Usually we like to have council review them first and approval before we submit. But the federal government's changed some of their grant turnaround times. And so particularly on the SAMHSA grant, we only had basically 40 days from notice, 45 days from notice to submittal. And so to put together the partnerships, develop the program scope, and determine the funding amount, quite a little tight turnaround, then get it to y'all. So just to make sure I acknowledge that up front. Looking ahead then, any questions or anything people need more information on for the 11th?

Yeah, the ordinance with the Access Advisory Board, have they heard that?

Have what?

Has the Access Advisory Board heard that or offered any input on it?

I'll ask our Director of Public Works and Utilities, Kerry Jantz, and he's been working with that.

Mayor and Councilmember, we did not take this proposal directly to the Access Advisory Board. We've talked to them for some time now about what we saw as a need to restructure. Law had offered to develop some bylaws to help maybe move things in a different direction. The board wanted to do it themselves. So far nothing's happened there. This board is very vital for our ability to provide an accessible community. And we need to continue our collaboration with them. It has just gotten to a point that it is so big. There's over 30 members. It is hard to recruit new members. It's hard to get anybody to volunteer to be a chair and actually run meetings. The last two meetings I went to, they were just about as ineffective as they could be. So I thought it was prudent for us to look at a structure to discuss with you that we think can provide efficiency, effectiveness, and provide what all of us need to be able to collaborate and work together. And I'm not trying to give you a circular answer to that. I sent information to all the board members yesterday, and I don't doubt that probably all of you may have heard Responses to that once they saw that information where we talked about the specifics But we have not had this specific discussion with the board as a whole it's hard to do any one meeting to the next Half of the boards there the next meeting the other half is there I don't even know how we would have effectively done that how about County what's County's input been on this I?

Because it's a shared board with the county, am I correct?

It is. And I'll spend more time on that Tuesday. So it's happened over time. It has been. And the county has been very gracious to facilitate the meetings. They've provided space. They've provided staff. When the reality is that 99% of the issues we deal with have nothing to do with the county. And so as we put together the proposal that was in your packet, and I'll talk about Tuesday, I reached out through City Manager Marstal and County Manager Stoltz. County Manager Stoltz had a discussion, I think, with the Board of County Commissioners and others on his staff about and he is in support of this plan that you have to move forward. The county will still be represented with an ex-officio non-voting member, which is their ADA coordinator from the county, and they feel comfortable with that approach.

OK. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of good discussion around this one.

There will be.

Yeah.

Anything else for the 11th meeting? City Manager, you mentioned that there was something regarding homelessness. It's a grant. It's a grant. A grant. OK, it's a grant. Yeah, that's it. Perfect. Thank you.

Yep. Then looking ahead to the 18th agenda, I wanted to highlight we will have another public hearing on the budget. And so if you have budget questions, I know we noted questions at the last public hearing, and we're doing some follow-up to send out some budget responses. to the entire council. I know some have individually sent budget questions to me and the finance director. We're working on those, but if you have some more that you want specifically addressed questions related to the budget, send those and we'll get those back to you before the 18th meeting. And then the only other thing for the 18th I wanted to highlight for all the council members is we do have on there the Downtown Wichita Action Plan. And so that will be coming before you, as well as the county, Central County. And so that will be your opportunity to weigh in on that as well. So we wanted to make sure if you need something. We've got a couple of weeks here, but wanted to highlight that for you. So those were the agenda item of notes coming up on the council business or action agendas. We have two presentations lined up for you today. But one again, take a pause if there's anything for the 18th that anyone needs or again between now and then. Otherwise, we'll move on to the agenda item we have for what we call departmental review. But I'll ask Dante Martin, Assistant City Manager, to come forward. We have a presentation for you on Century 2. There's a hard copy here at council members' places. And we'll do a presentation on the screen. But Mr. Martin will open this up for us. So Assistant City Manager, take it away.

Good morning, Mayor, members of Wichita City Council. Each year we ask ASM Global, now Legends, to come in and make a presentation regarding what it is experiencing at Century 2. As you may recall, we outsourced the management of Century 2 in 2020 going into 2021, so we're five years into the current agreement. ASM Legends has been an outstanding partner, has been able to address not only the business needs as it relates to Century 2 and Bob Brown, but also as it relates to recruiting shows and helping us understand where there's opportunities given some of the challenges we face with Century 2 as well as the exposition.

Bob Brown.

So General Manager John Hill is here to make a presentation. He'll primarily focus on 2025, but he may highlight some issues, some challenges, 2026 going into 2027. We have started early conversations around potentially renewing the agreement with Legends. For those of you that were on the bench five years ago, you may recall we initially looked at a 10-year agreement. The thought was, let's do a five-year agreement to see where we are and see if we want to continue down this path. And so we're having some early conversations with Legends around that. In addition to that, Legends is having conversations with American Theater Guild about its traveling shows that come through Wichita. Also having conversations with the tenants of Century 2, Music Theater Wichita, Century 2, and others. So greatly appreciate the work that John Hale, A.J. Bileski, and the team at Legends does. Without further ado, John, I'll ask you to come up. I'm sorry, Mr. Manager, did you say there's a presentation today? I hope that ain't it. I'm going to get away and figure it out.

I'm going to turn it. That's great. Thanks.

I like how he turns over the technology to me. Great. There we go. Well, good morning, Mayor, City Council, Mr. Manager. Please let me introduce myself. John Hale, General Manager, Centre 2 Performing Arts Convention Center. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you guys this morning. But I'd like to start out by thanking my staff. Particularly, I'd like to thank my operations and engineering staff, led by Christy Jones and Mike Piland for the work that they do in the building, making sure that everything is operational and they are really the backbone of everything that happens in that building. As Dante mentioned, in the fall of 2024, ASM Global was purchased by Legends, and in 2025, a new name was announced, and that company's name is Legends Global. So here we are with Legends Global. Let me see if I can advance these slides. There we go. This acquisition created a strong company. focused on enhancing the customer experience and finding ways to leverage the size of our network to help our clients, you the city of Wichita, and our patrons, the citizens of this community, to have the best managed venue that we can. One of the first initiatives that we put through was a portfolio-wide security assessment undertaken to ensure that all of our facilities were being evaluated on a regular basis concerning procedures, regulations, and planning for any events that might have a security or safety concern. Future planned assessments by our company are the sustainability assessment and an overall facility assessment. We also began using our extended network to reach out to our promoters that have not worked in the building recently or who have never worked in the building to try to find ways to have them come and do more shows in the building. This slide will illustrate that we are a busy building. In 2025, we had 151 separate events in the building, ranging from single-day performances of comedians up to multi-day conferences and sporting events. On a single day in March, you might have been able to attend an educational event with the Society for Women Engineers, go to the Wichita flea market and buy something fun, and then that evening enjoy yourself at a production of Beetlejuice. In July, something along the presentation of Music Theater of Wichita. The grand opera, the sports commission putting on an event, presentation of musicals in concert hall, as well as some sporting dance events in expo hall. So there's a lot of events that go on in the building simultaneously. I know there's been talk about the fact that you can't do multiple events in the building at the same time. But we have multiple days where we do more than two or three events in the building. I can go on, but I think I've made that point. You'll notice that as our event count has actually increased, the number of event days has decreased and the number of rental days has increased. Part of this has been reported to us by our clients is that they're feeling some attendance pressure. So there's something in the market that's affecting their attendance on their events, so they're starting to pull back on the length of some of their events. Here you can see the diverse mixture of events that we have in the building. Of the 151 events that we have in the building, they're not all performing arts events. 54 of them are performing arts events, Broadway concerts or symphonies or music theater of Wichita. But the rest of those events that fall into our portfolio happen to be events like banquets, consumer shows, conventions. So a lot of diverse activity happens in the building and this illustrates that. Currently, we see our greatest opportunities for growth in our comedy family show area as well as in our banquets. We're seeing a growth in all of those, bringing those people in. It helps because those are smaller events that only need one day or two days to load in and out rather than these long events that we have with some of our other clients. So we've been able to work with them and try to fill our calendar even more. Overall attendance in 2025 actually decreased 1.7% from 2024. But our ticket sales for ticketed events went up by 3%, so we're pretty happy with that. We've been working to increase our content count and try to bring in more patrons by offering more diverse shows. And with that, we've been attending meetings in LA and Nashville, meeting with the producers and with promoters of shows. Some of the shows to note in 2025 were Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, and Jerry Seinfeld, who all came to Concert Hall and performed during 2025. We've also started reaching out to other conferences within the region. Last year, we were able to talk with the HOSA, which is a health care organization that specifically targets high school kids for health occupations. And we actually went to their conference in Overland Park and talked to them and convinced them that they had grown large enough that they could move down to Century 2. So last year we were lucky enough to host them, and they are coming back next year as well. Our partnership with VisitWichita has been great over the last few years. Last year we were not able to garner any big sporting events with USA like we did the previous year in 2024. But because of the work that we did and the communications that we've had with VisitWichita, We were actually able in 2025 to secure three events in 2026. And going into 2027, we already have two events confirmed with VisitWichita and USA Sports. So we're seeing a good growth in our sporting market as well. Our friends with performing arts continue to be a real significant factor in the building. You can see that by the number of dates. ATG, American Theater Guild, is a great partner. Their Broadway series in 2025 brought in the performances of Beetlejuice and Book of Mormon, and crowds were really excited about those. Unfortunately, they were not able to route any shows through the venue in the fall, and we had actually booked, we had estimated that they would be bringing two shows on like a normal season, but no shows were available to come through the region. So they were not able to provide any shows in the season, and that really affected our bottom line. Our tenant organizations, Music Theater and Wichita Symphony, still attract lively audiences. They're the centerpieces of our organization. And the sheer volume of days, you can see the number of days that they occupy the building, shows the importance of these legacy art organizations for the building. And the city's continued support and subsidization of these organizations is imperative for their success. Another major source of our revenue in the building would be our food and beverage sales. In 2025, we did see a decrease in overall attendance. And just like that, because of that, we had a decrease in our food and beverage sales. We believe that the decrease on both of these is economic uncertainty. People are just not sure where their discretionary funds are going to be going. So they will come to an event, and they might not buy the two drinks. And they might not buy the extra popcorn or something. But they still come to the shows. We continue to operate well below the historic budget subsidy trend. In 2025, we were not able actually to reach our budgetary goals. The original budget proposal to council was $1,095,000. We incorporated a council request to reduce the budget by $100,000 and we created a budget to reflect that. That number did not work. We actually came up with a negative variance of $163,000. And this is in due in part to the request to reduce the budget by $100,000, as well as market forces affecting our wages, our benefits, utility costs, and the lack of shows presented by ATG, losing two shows of their season affected our bottom line as well. As always, we are really excited about new shows that we bring into the building. Two startups that we have had in the building, one is the Air Capital Showdown. It's a robotics, high school robotics show that USD 259 worked with us to bring in. And they brought in contestants from all over the USA, came into Convention Hall, sat down there for three days, and had robotics events. Very special moment for those kids. And then the other one is a festival of trains. Both of these events we're trying to turn into annual events so that we can keep bringing these folks into town. And we seem to have, we've already contracted with the air capital show and festival of trains as the negotiations with us at this time. We're also continue to be proud of our annual conferences, our trade shows, our consumer shows that bring visitors to Wichita from across the region and create economic opportunities for a lot of our local vendors, the junior league, Wichita Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill Industries, and Ability Point all host events in the building that are part of the area's charitable networks, and we are lucky to be able to continue to support community events such as River Festival and Automobilia, who we hosted for the first time in 2025 and just closed their show down a couple weeks ago this year. So that's a very new experience for us, having all those cars and the plaza activated that way. In closing, I can't pretend to understand the pressures that you guys are going through trying to find a path forward for the arts and convention business in this town. But I can tell you that Legends Global, my team, are here to work with you, with our clients, with our patrons, to try to have a century or two that you can all be proud of. This journey, however, is going to have some challenges. Century 2 is an aging venue, and in some ways it does not meet modern patron expectations. We have a lack of aisles in the theaters, the small to non-existent pre-function spaces in the convention areas, restrooms and HVAC systems that are in need of updating. There is money in the CIP to work on these. And we are working on them. But we need to understand that large projects require us to work very carefully with the existing clientele that we have so that we do not shut them down while we do a project. Case in point would be the 2025 elevator project. All the elevators in Century 2 needed to have the internal jack systems that raise the elevators up and down replaced. Normally, this would be a two-month project. Elevator company would come in. Fix the jacks, get out. But we can't shut down all the elevators in the building while music theater is running or while symphony is running or something. So we have to schedule and work around that. So we have to be very careful about how we schedule our processes in there. And sometimes projects will be delayed or extended beyond a normal time frame. for folks. Another challenge that we have with the building is we have some, our current rate structure has some discounts built into it and some legacy agreements that really affect the ability of the venue to increase its revenue versus any kind of inflationary force. City Council will set our rates. We currently have a rate structure where we increase our rental by 1.2% every year. We are falling behind inflation every year as we go. So there's a discussion to be had about how we can catch up, maintain that so that we are not falling behind inflationary pressures every year. We continue to struggle against a negative perception of the building, as well as a general misunderstanding of how many events actually take place in the building and what the local economic impact is of the activity that happens in the building. So we need to work with that. And like many downtown locations, we continue to struggle with some issues with our unhoused population, people feeling safe in the region. And like you have heard many, many times while you've been on the bench, we've had some issues with people complaining about the parking. We believe the parking system will work itself out. It always does. And everyone will be fine with that. But I want to let you know that we have had some complaints about that and we're working through that. I stand for questions.

I have two just off the top of my head. You did show the slide where it had the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I did go this year. But that was an Orpheum show. So how many shows did we have at Century 2 last year that were that came over to you guys from the Orpheum, and since the Orpheum is opening back up here shortly, how many shows do we expect to do?

Right, so we took the seven remaining Orpheum film series shows over to our building. Of the other shows, I don't believe that we actually had any shows that were going to be Orpheum shows at all.

Okay, I appreciate that. Now what's the priority on infrastructure? Because I have heard some discussion about like ADA accessibility issues there and whatnot. So what do you see going forward as being the top priorities as far as infrastructure goes?

At this point in time, top priority for infrastructure would be HVAC.

HVAC.

Yeah. we have submitted some information for request for proposals on some concrete repairs around the building because the concrete is falling and we're having some degradation of the concrete. And so we're looking into getting those patched or replaced.

Okay. Is that something we can, did you say, do you have like a priority list that you sent over?

We can't.

Okay. Yeah. I'd be curious to see that.

I'M CURIOUS WHAT CONVERSATIONS, IF ANY, IN REGARDS TO PRIVATE SUPPORT TO HELP WITH SOME OF THESE RENOVATIONS HAVE YOU ALL BEEN HAVING, IF ANY, AT ALL? YOU MENTIONED THAT THERE WAS SOME AIRMARKS IN THE CIP, BUT I THINK JUST BASED ON THINGS THAT YOU'VE NAMED, THERE'S A LOT THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. SO I'M CURIOUS WHAT WORK IS HAPPENING OUTSIDE OF relying particularly maybe even on some of the city funds as we have budget discussions knowing that we already have some tough choices to make. What is being done in the private sector.

So we are reaching out to a couple of folks about possibility of naming rights on the building to help with some of the infrastructure changes particularly things that would be forward facing and things that patrons would really notice. So Not many people think it's sexy to replace an HVAC unit, but if I can find some public, not some public, some private funding to help us with redoing the aisles in Concert Hall, so that one of the concerns at Music Theatre and even we have about the seating in concert hall is that it was designed in 1965, 66, and it was a continental style seating, so there's no rows, there's no aisles. You come in and if you're sitting in seat one or 101, If you want to get out, you're going to bump over 32 people to get out. And so you're not going to go out and go to the restroom. That's a client issue. That's a comfort issue. On my side, you're not, during a comedy show, going to pop out and buy that extra beer, which raises my per cap, and it helps with our revenue stream. So having rows is not only good for the patron, it's also good for the business. And so that's the kind of item that we're looking at with our private funding.

And certainly there are a lot of people you may know who really support Century Two. And so I'm curious what engagement has happened with them to even help maybe even raise some funds privately as well. I mean, I love everything you just said, because I've always been a proponent of if it stays, we need to invest to ensure that the quality of the talent that is performing in this facility, the infrastructure aligns with that quality. And so I would just encourage you to continue those conversations with loud and proud champions of Century 2, because I think that they will also be able to be helpful in increasing that private philanthropy as well.

Absolutely. And at any time, if any of you want to engage with me and have conversations about people you may know that have some opinions or want to be involved in some of this, I'm certainly very, very open to those conversations.

John? Thank you very much, John, for that presentation. And thank you, Dante, for teeing it up for a conversation. This has been something that has been weighing on my mind a lot, given that I served on a nonprofit board that utilizes that space annually. And so, we're appreciative of your staff in providing that space at a very discounted rate for the community. But what causes me pause is what you just said, which is The rate structure only increases by 1.2 percent each year, and inflation is roughly 3 percent. Can you talk about this challenge? Can you give us some perspective of those rates and how discounted they are for the community in order to have these community events? I think a lot of folks may not know how heavily discounted it is, which is incredible.

discounted because public dollars are helping uh with that subsidy thank you mayor for that question i i was worried that that might come up um and so i kind of prepared and we have to be careful about this right because for for 60 years century 2 has been the home to the arts and culture and to convention convention events uh to public events it and it has been not just a performing arts and convention center, but it's also a community center. It needs to be remembered that the building was built for the community as an asset for all community members to be able to have access to, not just to the people who had money and who could bring in a show and had a lot of money. But what has happened in that, I think, and maybe past councils have just continued the low rate of increase in rent with without understanding that if if we're increasing by one point two percent and inflation is going up by three percent we don't fall behind by by two percent every year it compounds over time and just like when you put an investment into a 401k your interest compounds on the money that you have and so the difference between where where we would be if we had just increased rental rates from let's say nineteen sixty nine to now And where we are is enormous. And it's starting to grow at a larger rate every year because the amount is bigger on where we should be rate or where we would be if we had gone with a 3% increase. So for instance, in 1969, Concert Hall would have rented for $789 a night. If you apply just straight 3% to that, In 2026, rental for concert hall would be $6,000 and some change. We currently rent concert hall for $2,000 a night. So we are one-third of what the inflationary rate would be if you had just taken the rate across time. Again, the investment that the council, that the city has in these arts organizations is what has protected them for so long from inflationary measures on the building rent. There's also some other discounts that can be applied that still apply to some of our legacy clients and those are also affecting where the rent lies.

And can you also give perspective? Sorry, I have a follow-up question. Can you also give us perspective of what, you know, because you're not increasing at a rate even equivalent to inflation, why that has put a lot of these maintenance projects behind? Because I'd like to know how much deferred maintenance Century 2 is suffering from right now.

Mayor, thank you for the question. Follow up to your original question, then I'll address that. As I mentioned, we are in conversations with Legends, not only about potentially renewing its agreement, but also about how we approach our tenants in terms of our lease agreements. The city code vests the authority to increase rates in our Director of Arts and Cultural Services. However, given what John said and what we all know as an organization, we fully want to engage the manager and the council in that conversation, realizing that there's a balance. As John eloquently put it, any increase that we make to rental rates has an impact to not only our partners that provide shows, but our customers, our residents, and our community. And so what we've talked to ASM about is helping us understand the market pressures. What are you seeing nationally, regionally, and most importantly, what are you seeing locally? And then hopefully that can inform a balanced approach or balanced recommendations going forward. So I fully intend to engage the manager as well as the mayor and council in that conversation going forward. The worst thing we can do is not have these conversations going into the process and then we're deciding it from the bench when we come forward to you with a recommendation. Follow up on your second question. Through our CIP program, the Mayor and Council has made a significant investment in Century 2 and Council Member Hoheisel asked for a prioritized list of what are those investments or what are those improvements that need to be made. In terms of deferred maintenance, and John, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know that we have a list of deferred maintenance items. However, we do know what items require attention. John specifically mentioned HVAC. So along with Council Member Hohheisel's request about a prioritized list, I can ask staff to pull together some information regarding the building condition and the assessments that have recently been done.

Is there a way to split the difference regarding rates like the local nonprofits that we've been working with continue to give them the 1.3%? Or if you make the plans like three years out, five years out, you can get locked in at that rate. But the traveling shows, for example, they have something that's a little closer to the inflation adjustment.

Thank you for the question, Council Member Heisel. Given that this is ultimately a council decision, we're going to present it to you as a recommendation. And then also acknowledging or keeping in mind our cost recovery pyramid and where this fits into our organizational approach to recovering costs and expenditures. there's a way to develop a tiered structure if that's the will of council. And so what I take from this conversation is that as we approach addressing a potential increase to our fees, uh, that we should look at creative approaches that may recognize the value that our nonprofit partners bring to our community. as well as those that may not have a presence, ongoing permanent presence in our community, but still we need to recognize some of the challenges we face as far as legends being able to book shows into the facilities. So glad to bring that information forward.

Appreciate that.

If there are no other questions, from online or in the room, we will move on. Thank you. Thank you. To our second and final presentation is from Reggie Davidson from our Parks and Recreation Department to give an update on some of our happenings in Parks and Rec with some thoughts on our programs and other services. Reggie?

Thanks, Mayor. Good morning, Mayor and Council. So I want to give an update on just providing some of the programs and delivering accessible and sustainable recreation programs for the city. The question came up about how those are delivered and some of the costs and how we determine what our fees are that we deliver to the community. So I want to give an overview of that and then at the end have an opportunity for any questions that you guys may have as well. So delivering value to every resident is our goal. So our mission is that Wichita Parks and Rec consists to improve quality of life for every resident to accomplish that through parks, recreation programs, athletics, golf, aquatic community centers, trails, special events, and cultural experience. And we have a balanced funding model that allows us to provide free community amenities, subsidized programs, as well as specialized services. I want to give kind of some of the services that are currently available that are free to the community. We have over 120 parks. We have eight recreation centers. We have six pools, 12 splash pads, four golf courses, the tennis center, adult and youth sports, senior programs, art, and then community events that we offer, trails, Watson Park, over 80 rental facility, our city crew, which is a free youth program that we offer as well to the community, Miracle League, which is our inclusive program, the Kansas Wildlife Exhibit, as well as Great Plains Nature Center. Here are some of the other free services that we actually provide to the community that a lot of people may or may not be aware of, that are parks, our playground, our outdoor athletic courts, our trails, our splash paths, the wildlife exhibit, Great Plains Nature Center, as well as our gazebos and open spaces. Our community events that we have are Storytime in the Park, Open Streets, Red, White, and Boom, a concert series, free swim days, as well as recently our Fan Fest in FIBA, as well as our youth activities and opportunities that we have with Candy Crawl, Wonderland Junior to play for free, City Crew again, open gym, after school playground, as well as swim lessons that we offer. So ways that we remove barriers for access is we have scholarships that are available, we do partnerships and collaborations, as well as sponsorships, and then financial assistance, as well as a nonprofit discount that we offer to the community. So some of the things that we do for looking at opportunities for scholarships, we work real closely with Sally and her team through housing that we have CDBG funding that provide free scholarships for young people in the community to take advantage of our summer camp program, which is a big need for a lot of our parents in the community. So that's available for them. We also have partnerships and collaborations with USD 259 that we work with with the summer feeding program that we offer. Another big one that we do that's a safety for the community that we're really proud of is that we collaborate with the American Red Cross where we offer swim lessons for a reduced price, basically for free, for young people to learn to swim and be safe around water. And this summer we had over 200 people that participated in that program. And our normal cost for that is $40 for each person to participate. But we reduced that fee down with that funding to where they only pay $5 towards that. And that's more so for them to have a commitment to come out and participate. And once they complete it, they actually get that $5 reported back to their account to be able to use for other programs that we offer throughout our park system. We also work with sponsorships that we have to help offset some of our programs and offset some of those financial barriers. and then financial assistance and then a non-profit discount. One of the things that we prided ourselves on in making sure that we made our facilities where it's accessible for people and we have a process that we put in place where it's a 25% non-profit discount for anyone that's a 501 that you want to use in our spaces. And that was put in place so that we can make sure that it was consistently being used throughout our system so that when someone comes in, they know exactly what they get and it's not us wandering or getting one thing at one location compared to another location is equally applied across the entire system. So I want to go into a little bit of why some of our programs have fees. So user fees recover a portion of our program costs. Program costs include personnel, facilities, equipment, supplies, and then the resident fee is only a portion of that. So here's an example of our summer activity camp that we offer. Our total cost for that is $140,910. Participant fees pays $74,000 of that. Our city subsidy comes out to $66,910. And it seems to break down here what those costs are that goes along with delivering that program. So it's affordable. The summer activity camp, the parents' commitment for that is $50 if they get a week-long camp from 10 in the morning to 5. They get lunch that comes along with that. They get to go to the swimming pool. They get to go on a field trip during the week. And I'm not sure of anywhere else that you can go for $50 a week for a family member to be able to take advantage of something like that in the community. So our rental facility is another location that we have fees that are associated with it as well. And some of those costs with the facilities, of course, is utilities, HVAC, our roof, our cleaning, floor refinishing, painting, repairs. staff cost, pest control, as well as mowing for those spaces. Rental fees help preserve these facilities so they remain available for the public. So the other thing that we have that we did several years ago that we implement our evolved guide. And that was important for us to make sure that we have one guide that highlighted three departments of something that we have available for everyone. So the three departments are Wichita Parks and Recreation Department. It shows the services that we deliver through there, City Arts, the services that we deliver there, and then the library. And one of the things that we did a few years ago is that we implemented a resident and non-resident fee so that those individuals who are not residents within the the city of Wichita hire a higher rate to help offset because their tax dollars aren't supporting some of the things that we do with maintaining our facilities here for the cost that we have. So it has a breakdown here of some of the examples of programs that we offer that are free, low cost rate, a moderate rate, a premium, and then our facility rental costs. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about why a balanced funding model serves more residents. So if every program was free, we would have fewer classes that could be offered, a longer wait list, reduced quality, higher taxpayer subsidy, less ability to invest in our facilities, and no commitment, no show of wasted program material. So one of the things that we've learned over time, if there isn't some commitment for individuals to sign up and attend our program, they don't show up because it's not anything that they have invested in. And that's one of the examples that I gave with our swim lessons where there's a minimal fee there to make sure they're committed to come out. So charging a reasonable user fee allows taxpayers who will use our service to avoid paying the full cost while keeping programs affordable for those who actually participate. And why outside organizations actually pay fees for using our facilities as well? Generate revenue, the city incurs wear and tear, utilities increase, Staffing is required, additional maintenance requests, reduced availability for individuals, and then duplication of services. Rental fees ensure that private use is direct impact and does not shift those costs to our taxpayers. And participants remain valuable when provided defined benefit for what we actually offer to them as well. And one of the misconceptions now is that our services are not affordable. So we wanted to give some examples of some of those of what we actually throw our charge to our parks and rec and what our private providers. So you'll see that our youth football program, youth flag program is $75. The market for other people in the community are $140 to $200. Swim lessons that we mentioned earlier, $5. Some other competitors in the community are charging up to $200. Our summer camps go from $50 to $135 compared to $165 to $450 with some of the market. Golf lessons are really affordable at $25 compared to $75. Our gym rental at $60 compared to $130 at other locations. And then our wedding venue, which is what we have at Seasons out at Watson, an entire day for rental for that particular space. is $1,375 compared to other, some in the community can be up to $8,500. So our cost recovery pyramid is what we use and that's what has been implemented throughout the city on how we determine what those fees and what category they fall into and what our cost recovery is for that. So we have five service loaders that goes up that shows where we are and how we actually implement those and charge fees and what the benefits are for it. So the lower we are on the pyramid is the less of the cost recovery that we have. And the higher we are on the pyramid shows what we charge to recover our fees for the individual benefit. So key takeaways I wanted to present today and then stand for questions that parks remain free for everyone. Financial assistance remove barriers. User fees reduce taxpayer burden. Affordable pricing allows Parks and Recreation to serve more residents while maintaining quality facilities. And our goal is not to maximize revenue. Our goal is to maximize access by being responsible stewards of public resources. So I'll stand for any questions you guys have on any of the items that we covered on how we model.

Um, we've had a lot of interest lately about community schools working with the school district and you implied, you know, just a close partnership with the school district is community schools coming into this and playing any part moving forward at looking what amenities they offer and we offer and how to collaborate on those.

Sure. And we do a lot of that right now. Uh, so we partnered with them with a lot of the services that we have, uh, that we offer, uh, we use here, uh, auditoriums for our swim lessons to be able to have access to provide those services throughout the year. They use our tennis center that they have for offering classes for their state tournaments and things that we have. We collaborate on our baseball fields that we have for their games and things that we have. So we offset each other resources to be able to use where we have a need so that we can collaborate together well.

Okay, have they reached out about any additional hopes as far as as we continue to develop those plans?

So one of the things that we're doing right now, and I'm sure you're involved in with the park master plan is looking at ways that we can continue to leverage those services. And one of the other areas that we're looking at is playgrounds and having access to those where there may not be a parks program in a park in that particular area, but there may be a school district playground there so that we can have access for the community kind of fill in some of those gaps.

okay i appreciate that and yeah one of the benefits of parks like you indicated is it's free so i think that's definitely something to to grow about and to continue to focus on is providing these services for free or as low cost as possible with that just continue to And I know you guys are, but I just continue to emphasize scholarships wherever possible. I know we have that with summer camps. One of my favorite days of the year is doing the cookout at the end of the year for the Plainview summer camp. But also seeing that there are limited scholarships. So oftentimes near the end, we're scrambling to find people who would donate to offer those scholarships. So continue to look at places for that. If there's anything we can do, myself particularly with the summer camps, please let us know. Trying to just backfill some of those scholarships as best as we can.

Sure. And our Park Foundation is currently going to their strategic plan right now in conjunction with what we're doing, our master plan. And one of their focuses as well is seeing how they can find alternative funding sources to help with some of those things with programming and scholarships also. So they did offer scholarship through them this year that young people have an opportunity to participate in. And we're looking at ways to do more fundraising through them to be able to expand that also.

Appreciate that. Reggie, can you give us an update on the park master plan? Sure. Where it's at and the timetable of it?

So all of our information is on the ICT master plan website that you can actually look at where we are. I captured all of the notes from all of our findings that we've gotten. We're at the point now that they should be wrapping up everything in October. So they've gone through and looked at all of our facilities, doing facility assessments of that, looked at our programs, looked at efficiency of what we do every day, and they're going to start looking at making some recommendations on what we should do moving forward and what our park system will look like over the next decade. And part of that is going to be taking some really deep dives into how we're expending dollars, what dollars we have available, and then setting expectations with the community what we have that's actually able to implement what they recommend as well. One of the key things for me in this process, and I think a lot of it, I think Council Member Hoheisel and Mayor Wu was involved in the steering committee as well, is that we wanted a final document that doesn't just sit on the shelf, but something that we can actually take into place and that's actionable. And part of that's gonna be what we do with funding it and what things we need to do to make adjustments that we could be more efficient and effective.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions online or in the room for Director Parks and Rec? If not, those are the... Can I just say thanks? Go ahead, Mayor.

Sorry, city manager. I just want to say thank you to Reggie and his staff. I know that this presentation was to help us understand cost recovery and all the things that are in the parks and rec department, but they do so much more beyond those items that he mentioned, including forestry and our encampment cleanups, our vandalism cleanups, And so I really appreciate that they have a dashboard, again, that anyone in the community can see just the amount of work that Parks and Rec really does. And I just want to say thank you to his staff.

Great. Thank you. Always appreciate that. So certainly appreciate the good work going on. Thank you, Mr. Davidson. And that concludes our meeting for today. Have a good weekend, everybody.