States of America and to the republic for  which it stands. One nation under God,   indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Okay, Mr. Vice Mayor, thank you. Um, we have  a number of council members and uh I think the   mayor that are all traveling. So, we're going  to change our schedule just a little bit. Uh,   we'll do the uh agenda review for the  14th and then the 21st and then we'll   do the background information on the EOC and  then we'll actually save the tabletop exercise   for when we get everybody in the room. I  think everybody will benefit from that.   We're okay with that. We'll Okay. Um on to the  14th. Excuse on the You've got one person so far   on the public agenda. Three proclamations. Um  on page two, number one, new council business   uh would approve the funding for design of this  uh two street and one bridge improvement project.   Page three. Number two would approve final design  build contract amounts for improvements to the   Hess reservoir. Number three would approve the  funding for art installations at uh the Alforded   and Walters Branch Libraries. Number four would  approve the public art conservation program for   2025 2026. And number five would approve the  contract renewal with visit witchah for 2026.   On the next page, number one, um on non-conent  planning agenda would approve a zoning change in   district 2. Uh this applicant is appealing  a condition that was included in the MAPC   recommendation. I think that's right, Scott.  They actually would like to have a a condition   added that was not included and it would limit  the occupancy. Yep. Thank you. Okay. Um, next   page number two would approve a zoning change in  district 3. Um, this item had been referred by you   back to the DAB uh on September 2nd. Uh, DAB's now  uh reviewed it again and bringing recommendation   for approval. Nothing left on that page and  nothing on the following page. Um on uh with   the item number five would approve the donation  of a bronze uh sculpture for the Alford Library   Story Walk. Number six would approve a revised  budget for the installation of a fitness court   in O Park. You approve the acquisition of the  of the park of the court, excuse me, previously. Mr. Vice Mayor, that's all I have for the 14th.  Uh on the 21st, um bring your dinner. Might as   well plan early. A lot of items on that agenda.  Um number, uh new council business. Number one,   second page would approve a project to  purchase replacement police equipment in 2026.   Number two would approve a project to  purchase a SWAT critical incident vehicle,   a bomb unit vehicle, a mobile command vehicle  uh and mobile operations vehicles, all for the   police department. Number three would approve a  letter of intent uh with Lang uh Gen Y for an IRB   issue to remodel an 88,000 foot office building.  Number four would approve a letter of intent for   issuance of healthc care facilities revenue bonds  in an amount not to exceed $60 million as for the   Larksfield Place retirement communities. Next  page number five would approve the issuance of   revenue bonds to fund up to $60 million in capital  improvements for Ascension Via Christi hospitals   uh in Witchah. Number six would approve an  amendment to the development agreement with EPC   for the development of the West Bank. Number seven  would approve contracts for competency evaluations   for municipal court. Number eight would reduce the  number of members on the animal services advisory   board from 8 to 7. Number nine has a number of  items in it. First of all, consider the adoption   of the I the international property maintenance  code, the elimination of environmental court,   the creation of a new adjudication process for  property mainta maintenance cases, the adoption   of a source of income discrimination ordinance,  and the adoption of a rental registry ordinance.   You've workshopped all of those items before.  Number 10 would approve a project to remodel a   portion of the former central library to uh serve  as an event venue. Number 11 would approve the   phase 2 agreement and guaranteed maximum price  for the four mile creek digtor expansion project.   Number 12 would approve two agreements with the  Union Pacific Railroad for groundwater treatment   uh operations in the 29th and  Grove Environmental Remediation   Area. Number 13 would approve the 2026 funding  allocations for arts and cultural organizations. Nothing on the next page. Following  page 3A would extend existing lease   agreements with Flex Bus, excuse  me, Flick Bus and Greyhound for   six months until the hub is open. They  currently are using the transit center. Next page number seven would approve a revised  budget for Patrol West uh to reflect building   modifications. Number eight would approve budget  for phase one of the Crystal Prairie Lake Park   project. Next page 12 and 13 to public housing  authority homes. Number 14 would approve a land   lease to allow the construction of an 18,000 foot  hanger at Jabara. And number 15 would approve   security a security arrangement for the financing  of WSU tax and CAD expansion project at Jabar. That's all I have. Okay. Thank you. Any  comments from council members having this   weekend? Uh just a reminder, district breakfast  tomorrow 9:30 at the child advocacy center.   Uh firefighters will be cooking breakfast  and we will be discussing improvements to   the firefighter memorial fallen firefighter  memorial park. Uh so I'd love to have anybody   um even if you're not in South Witchah um please  come on down. It's a great breakfast. Are you   having the potatoes? I'm not sure potatoes  are on the agenda this time. They're the best. Okay. Uh, one reminder that there's also the  dedication of the Holocaust Memorial tomorrow   at 3:30. Okay, good. That vice mayor, um, as I  said, we we have a presentation for you. Talk   a little bit about the uh, EOC and your role  when it's activated. And, um, the, uh, we'll   actually do the hands-on exercise later. Turn it  over to Chief Snow. As the city manager said, uh,   can everybody hear me? Okay. Yes. Um, so as the  city manager said, um, today what we're going to   concentrate on is just basically the function of  EOC. kind of giving you a big general overview of   the function of EOC and then what our roles and  responsibilities are and then how we take care of   what we need for resource management, what we need  for when we identify uh our responses and then how   do we coordinate together as a community locally  both city and county and any other surrounding jur   jurisdictions to um get our community back to a  place of restoration. So, um, with me today I have   Julie Steinson, who is the director of emergency  management. Um, and then she has two of her   training instructors, Ken Kenji and, uh, Jonathan  are both here today. So, um, game plan for today   is each of you have a book, uh, a little pamphlet.  It will follow the slide presentation. So, you're   you can make some notes in it, ask some questions.  Today will just be the overview and then we'll   come back at a later date and we'll actually do  a tabletop exercise. So, uh, today we'll kind of   prep you for things you need to be thinking about  when we do the tabletop exercise. So, with that,   then I will turn it over to Julie and you can  use the prompt there. All right. Thank you,   Chief Snow. Good morning, everyone. As Chief  said, I am Julie Stimson, the Cedric County   Emergency Management Director. I'm going to be  very conscious of your time today, so I'm going   to kind of go through some of this quickly. Um,  this is meant to be an overview to generate some   thoughts and then down the road, we're going to  do more training. We're going to do more exercises   that Chief Snow alluded to. So, without further  ado, um we were kind of going to go through an   exercise today, but we're going to table that um  into a later time. So, I'm going to kind of get   through these exercise objectives. Um what we  want to make sure is people understand senior   elected officials at each level of government are  charged with the responsibility of protecting and   promoting public health and welfare for their  citizens. major responsibilities of elected   officials is policym setting priorities and we'll  talk a little bit about declaration of emergencies   and declarations of disasters and what that  actually means. Um as we do know we always hear   disasters start and end at the local level and a  lot of folks will think that that means county. It   is actually at the city the municipality level is  what that is intended for when we say local level.   I'm not going to read all of this, but just know  that there are Kansas statutes that dictate what   we do as a state and as a county for emergency  management. It does establish that the state   and county emergency operations plan has presence  over local ordinances during a declared disaster.   So although I said disaster start and end  at the local level, the state will only   coordinate resources through the county emergency  management. Um, several cities in Kansas have   emergency manager or some sort of person called  emergency planner, emergency coordinator. Uh, but   if there needs to be resources requested from the  state that will always go through the county. Um,   all political subdivisions within the state are  automatically part of a Kansas mutual aid system   unless they provide a resolution opting out and  no one has done that to my knowledge. In the EOC,   which is emergency operations center, we actually  have three different levels. Um, level three is   monitoring. And especially with weather being  our largest risk, we are monitoring almost all   the time. Even if it's not thunderstorms, we're  looking at winds. We're looking at dry drought.   We're looking at wildfire conditions. Um, in  the winter time, we're looking at ice, snow,   wind chills, extreme temperatures, that kind  of thing. Partial activation means we need some   partners in the room to coordinate and collaborate  together that we have some things that need to be   taken care of even proactively or reactively. and  full activation is when something big is impacting   our communities and I need all hands on deck  one to get situational assessment and then two   to also help coordinate those resources. So just  kind of be aware although we don't have a lot of   full activations thankfully um we are still very  active behind the scenes and making sure that our   communities are prepared and ready to respond. Uh  kind of like I mentioned level three activation   monitoring normal activities. Um, I have a duty  officer on call 24/7 that we're monitoring uh 911   calls. So, that's kind of our first indication of  something's happening. We prepare for all hazards,   so not just weather. If we hear that there's  a hazardous material release, if we hear that   there's civil unrest, those type of things are  also when emergency management is prepared to   come and coordinate resources for us to make sure  our responders especially have what they need to   respond and that our community have the resources  to recover whatever incident may have occurred.   Like I mentioned with level two partial  activation, um that means I don't need to   have every single person in the EOC. In your  packet is actually a map of our EOCC layout,   which we'll get to here in a moment. Um but if I  don't need to have my first responders in the EOC,   I just need to have some other services, I'm  not going to bring people in if I don't have   to. And like I mentioned, level one means I  need to have every organization that has a   desk in the EOC to send that representative uh  that has policy and decision making authority.   We need the person that's going to help make  decisions and communicate um any policy changes   or updates that we need to do. Um it's not just  having a person sit in the seat and answering   phone calls. It's somebody who really can  represent the the department or organization and   make those decision-making authorities. So during  a disaster, elected officials have responsibility   for the safety and security of the jurisdiction.  Uh it demonstrates extraordinary leadership   and decision making. elected officials make a  significant impact on the response and I highlight   and recovery. We're really good with training  and testing and exercising our first response,   our life safety measures. We're not so good and  I'm saying we as a county even aren't so good of   going into that recovery, especially long-term  recovery. Our tornado in 2022 um was the most   recent example of it took almost three years  for us to fully recover our community in Andover   um from that tornado impact. So, we're going to  do a lot more teaching, training, and exercising   on that long-term recovery because that is really  what our senior and elected officials are going   to guide and lead our communities through. Uh, we  also want to avoid elected officials showing up   um to the disaster scene. I know our hearts  want to go out there right away and and and   hug our constituents and support them. Um, but  we need to make sure it's safe. Uh, we need our   first responder agencies to have everything they  need to respond. We don't need distractions. Um   and we don't need to have even the public kind  of following to to jam up highways and roadways   and that stuff. Um ideally an escorted tour  of the disaster area will be arranged either   through emergency management or those incident  commanders um that are out there on the scene.   So we will get our elected officials out there as  soon as possible. But we want to make sure safety   comes first and that our first responders  are not having to deal with distractions. How do we elected officials provide leadership?  Delegating authority to the onseene responders.   instilling confidence in the public that the  incident is being managed. Anytime there's a   crisis, our public is going to look for that  right away of um and what policy decisions,   what resources can be secured. Um one of the  things that we could look at through relief and   recovery is, you know, is there certain things  um that can be waved, permit fees, for example,   on rebuilding, can we wave some of those fees to  help our public? Um extending payment due dates.   Those are the type of things that elected and  senior officials can make to help our communities.   uh recover from disasters, building partnerships  and alliances. The last place we want to exchange   business cards is in the middle of a disaster.  Um and that's something again we're going to   work really hard on with all the departments  and cities and jurisdictions to make sure that   people know what we are doing behind the scenes  and know who we are, how to get a hold of us so   when something happens, we know and we can build  trust into each other. And then we also want to   uh work on risk mitigation and resilience. So  it's not just about rebuilding our community,   but how do we rebuild stronger? So, we're not as  vulnerable as we were the first time. Um, and that   that is a very strong challenge because that cost  money, of course, and money is always a challenge.   But if we're working together, we usually come up  with some creative solutions without breaking them   breaking the bank. Uh, multi- agency coordination.  We call these MAT groups, sometimes policy groups,   and this is my senior officials and elected  officials um fall into um executive executives or   design um have a clear understanding of the roles  and responsibil successful emergency management   and incident response and we talk about NIMS and  sorry for the acronym that's the national incident   management system. How does even as a nation  how do we all work together and stay on focus   and work towards a common good for the greatest  amount of people. Um we do have several training   opportunities that we'll talk about and it's also  in your workshop to kind of help facilitate what   does that mean and how do we get you guys ready  to go. Uh we have a class that's called a G402.   We actually had this, oh gosh, I came up for it  was earlier this year or if it was last year.   Time's a funny thing. Um, highly encouraged to  attend this class. We bring it locally for a   purpose is to get folks in the room to have these  conversations about how as a local community,   how ready are my senior and elected officials.  I know my first responder agencies are ready. A   lot of times they're doing what they do every day  just on a larger scope. But a disaster management,   disaster response and recovery from senior  and elected officials, things get prioritized   different and there's different expectations from  the public and from the media and from uh state   and federal government. And then we have what we  call community lifelines. So community lifelines   uh is something I'm I'm favorable. We're going  to this model because it talks about your   transportation, it talks about your utility grids,  it talks about your health care system. Literally   doing red, yellow, green. what is the status  as a community of those critical resources? Um,   and that helps senior elected officials also  know where to prioritize um, decision-m uh,   capabilities. Then there's a whole bunch of other  training here on the right with the gray. Those   are all independent study courses that you can  take at any time and those instructions are also   in the packet of how to sign up for those classes.  They're self-paced. Um, again, we're going to be   hitting hard and heavy the next coming years on  these kind of trainings. So this is what we feel   and you guys feel that you are prepared and ready  to go. These are the lifelines that I kind of   talked about and I know the font is kind of hard  to read but the categories up on top is safety and   security. Again we're going to do the red light,  yellow light, green light. What's the status as a   whole? What are we working on? Food, hydration and  shelter, health and medical energy which includes   power and fuel. Communications. Communications  is achilles heel. Communications is identified in   every disaster, every training and exercise as a  challenge and we can just keep working together to   try to improve as much as we can. Transportation,  hazardous materials and water systems. So again,   we're going to use a simple green means minimal  impact, yellow means moderate, red means   significant impact or no service at all, and gray  means unknown. We may be still assessing it. So   you're going to hear about this in the next coming  years. I just want you guys to be familiar with   what we're talking about. So we We're going to go  through a scenario of a tornado um actually coming   through downtown Metro and doing some significant  damage to the buildings that we have downtown. We   have been fortunate and I don't want to jinx us.  Um but a lot of our storms have done some damage,   but it has not really had a significant impact  on the heart of downtown. And my concern is   if we do have that and we've got debris,  we've got people injured or people trapped,   um it's it's a scenario we need to walk through  and talk through. We don't have to jump into a   full scale and bring resources. let's just have  conversations on the table and start kind of   building and having those discussions. You know,  what kind of plans do we have in place already   that we can train and exercise on? Um those are  type of the things that we want to talk about.   Um but for like a top we're going to this scenario  will get drawn out at a later time. So go through   that one of the you guys have these packets  to take with you. Um there is a page called a   thyro and it's kind of towards the back that means  threat hazard identification risk assessment. This   is a scenario that kind of has some statistics  through here with numbers in your population.   If you've got 15 or 150,000 people impacted.  Um if you've got 10,500 people with limited   English proficiency, how are we preparing? How  are we responding to? And how are we helping our   population recover from disasters? So, just kind  of some numbers to think about for the city of   Witchah and kind of what we're going to be talking  about in the next year or so about how we are   planning and how we are preparing for a disaster  that would impact um the Witchah metro area. Get the community lifelines in there, how  to create a trading account. There is also   a checklist and I know some of our elected folks  came through our emergency operations center and   kind of had some one-on-one time with us to talk  about this checklist. But all of this training   that we're doing, there is a quick and easy  checklist to always keep handy to remind you   of when we do have a disaster. What are the things  you should be thinking about beforehand, during,   and after. So, it's kind of your cheat sheet  of just, oh my gosh, something has happened,   where am I starting? Um and then also the map  of the emergency operations center which is   just a couple blocks down to our north. Um  we have highlighted the yellow stations are   actually city network workstations where we have  hooked up to the city network. We have trained   um EOC representatives from those departments. Uh  but we want to make sure that we are aware of what   that room can be used for. And again, I'd rather  have you guys report to a room like an EOC than   the incident scene until we get reassurance that  it's safe and that we're not going to get in the   way of our first responders. So, kind of a tease.  More to come. I appreciate you letting me get in   front of you. Um, you know, we have to plan and  prepare for things we hope never happen, but it's   to make us better when these things do happen. And  we've had plenty of reminders from flash floods to   windtorms to tornadoes and everything in between  that things do happen in our community. We want to   be as prepared as we can. So, any questions? Um,  what kind of training do you have with community   partners and nonprofits to get into these areas?  Is it sufficient? Do you feel good about where   we are in working with them? Yes. Um, we do a lot  of training and exercises, tabletop discussions,   um, with our first responder, our human  services in our EOC. We do drills. Um,   we do full scale exercises and everything in  between. We got a really good relationship with   folks like our Red Cross, United Way, Salvation  Army. They actually have a seat in the EOC. So,   anytime we're doing training and exercises,  we're bringing them into the room to have   those discussions. Do you feel good about um are  there any gaps that we do need to concentrate on?   For example, if there is a large-scale  tornado getting people into housing, um,   is it just like we have an ability up to a certain  point or do we feel confident that we would be   able to get 10,000 people into housing or 5,000?  I have concerns. Those are the conversations that   we need to have. Absolutely. I think there's  some planning and preparedness that we need to   do for those type of large scale incidences. I  am not going to say I'm 100% confident that we   could handle this tomorrow. I think there needs  to be some discussion. Okay. Appreciate that. Um,   and there's a difference between sheltering, you  know, for immediate life safety and then long-term   returning them to long-term housing. That  that's kind of the conversation. I'm confident   that we'd have a safe place for people to be in  those initial hours, maybe even couple weeks,   but that long-term recovery, uh, that's something  that it would strain our community and that's what   you were speaking to earlier is just the long  term. How do we address? Okay. Um, another one,   we did have the active shooter drills here  lately. Um I know PD and fire department and   um so many different organizations collaborating  on that. Um I have heard of some gaps that we do   kind of need to work on. Um maybe just equipment  gaps is mostly what I've heard. Um go ahead. Every   incident and every exercise we always have  uh strengths that are identified and areas   for improvement. And that's exactly why we want to  train an exercise is to identify those gaps before   a real world incident happens. um every incident  especially like the active shooter exercise that   we had that was widescale. We have afteraction  reports that kind of ascends some corrective   actions to improve our plans um and then we look  and exercise and train on those during the next   future exercises that we do. Okay. Is there  any way we can get maybe a copy of that or a   breakdown just on for our information as to what  we can do to help with the budgets and whatnot of   um the departments that are involved. I think we  can yeah we can share those uh or even provide   some out brief information for them. Yeah. Okay.  And then and taking the class earlier this year,   um you had mentioned that there's like a certain  level of um property damage that has to be done   in order to be um have access to state and federal  emergency funds. Have those goalposts moved at all   here lately? I know with a lot of the the budget  discussions up there in Washington and in Topeka,   um are there any alterations or concerns that  you have with some of those levels? So, we are   keeping a close eye on that and unfortunately  they're moving in the wrong direction for us to   qualify for federal assistance. Um, it's really  hard for us to qualify as it is now. Our local   county threshold to even apply for assistance  is $2.7 million of uninsured losses. Um,   and they're moving they're talking about moving  that. It's a calculated index and they're talking   about increasing that significantly. uh for the  state of Kansas, it's $5.5 million that they have   to qualify before we're even eligible to apply for  like public assistance, individual assistance. Um   and and it's it's very challenging, unfortunately.  Um those who kind of need the assistance are often   kind of left out because of those formulas. Uh  they're talking about instead of doing a $189   index, they're talking about taking that up to  like $7. And that that the numbers are staggering.   So nothing has been decided. It's just right now  conversations and of course we've got advocates   trying to communicate the what the impacts would  be if it moves into that direction. So that even   relies more on our public and our local community  to come together to help our folks recover. We   saw that with the tornado in 2022. We did not  qualify for assistance, but we were able to   recover from generous donations from community  and community partners that raised the funds   enough for us to distribute and get people back  on their feet. Okay. Thank you. And I appreciate   you going to those classes. That's going to be  what our push is. We need more folks to attend   these classes and have these discussions and  thinking points. Any other questions? I think   this is a good introduction, Julie. Thank you  so much. Look forward to when we actually go   through the exercise. A lot of times you as Julie  said, you learn a lot, both positive and areas   for improvement after you step through it. And um  Chief, anything you want to add? No, just if you   didn't get a book, I have some extra handouts here  when we do the topic, you'll bring those back.   They'll be a good resource for you. And then if  you didn't sign in on the signin sheet, EOC needs   to keep track of. So, appreciate you signing in  on the signin sheet. I I do want to kind of have   a final note, too, is look at your own individual  household preparedness for disasters because, you   know, we're assuming everything is fine and you're  going to be able to come in to work and help lead   the community, but if you're not prepared yourself  as an individual household, that's something we're   here to help you guys with as well. So, just  kind of on that note, it's more than just how   do we keep government running, but looking after  families and households. Appreciate your time.   Thank you. Thank you, Julie. One thing I when we  do the tabletop, I I don't think we talked about   this, but I uh going back to what Julie mentioned  on recovery, we probably ought to throw a recovery   element in there like we did several years ago  when we had city hall wiped out in our scenario.   So, that would be good for the council because I  think there'll be a lot of focus on that recovery   piece. Thank you. Um, one other thing too, if  you have a if you have a desk, and this is just   personal, um, something that we as firefighters,  and I know PD does the same thing, but,   um, there's opportunities once a month to go over  to the EOC. You need to get over to the EOC and   make sure that your city computer has been updated  because it doesn't automatically update. You have   to uh, initiate those things. And the last thing  you want to do is to be in there trying to update   your computer in the middle of a disaster.  So take advantage of those opportunities. Okay. Okay. Thank you very  much. Have a good weekend.