on the list today. Mayor, are there any speakers who would like to address the council? >> Do we have any speakers that would like to address the council? A one. Okay. Okay. We will move uh from public agenda. Madame clerk, can you please call the next item? >> The next item is consent agenda items 1 through nine. >> Council members, are there any items to be pulled? I see none. I move to approve consent agenda items 1 through nine. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. Any further discussion? I see none. Madame clerk, uh actually we'll just do a roll call. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. All those opposed, same sign. Mot motion passes. Uh 70. Madame clerk, please call the next item. >> Next item is board of bids and contracts dated October 27th, 2025. Morning mayor, city council, Josh lover, department of finance. The board of bids and contracts convened yesterday, October 27th, 2025 for the following items. We have for engineering the street improvements phase 1A and phase 1B to serve Prairie Glenn edition tide for conspectc incorporated doing business as Kansas paving for an aggregate bid total of $88,77.25. We have the building automation control upgrades for fire regional training center for Sander Engineering and Controls Incorporated for 72,831. We have the LinkedIn Learning subscription for library annual subscription for LinkedIn Corporation for a three-year total of $60,000. We have the NEOGV human resource and application tracking system annual subscription renewal for government jobs.com incorporated for $53,83347. We have the public safety mobile devices for Apple Incorporated for an estimated annual spend of $450,000 requesting your authorization to participate in the state of Kansas contract 5520 expiring June 30th, 2026 with options to renew and to sign the Apple Direct customer agreement. We have the translation interpreter services change order for CJS translation services LLC. We have the amended rates listed for this renewal period. We have the Pebble quick line change order. We're just asking for your authorization to extend the contract 62 days while we put this out for bid and bring it back to you. This is our website for how to become a vendor with the city. This is our purchasing calendar of small business uh resource partner events. The city will be hosting November 13th a how to do business workshop. And this is our open public opportunities out on the street today. and I'd be happy to try to answer your questions and I recommend your approval. >> Thank you, Josh. Questions for staff. >> Uh Josh, I just have a question. Could you speak to a couple of the slides that only show one bid? I think two of them are change orders, but maybe four and six. >> Sure. So, this is a competitive exemption city code 2.642B for sole source um building automation control services. This is a calculation or decision where you have to have required integration with other services for a security system to communicate and have um system compatibility. Uh the other one is um soul source instance where no other firm can provide a LinkedIn license or LinkedIn service. So we did not solicit bids for the LinkedIn subscription. Um we are providing that competitive exemption to you today to either ratify, reject or bring back. um within our city code, uh city departments will request these items of the purchasing manager and with the purchasing office will review them. Um we'll review if there's merit to those requests and then we present those for your ratification. Um this item is for the service of uh our application software for NEOGV. There is no other provider for NEOGV. So that brings us to a sole source request. And this is a competitive exemption where we're doing what's called a piggyback. We are participating in a another um agency's procurement in this instance, the state of Kansas, which allows a Kansas sub uh political entity to participate in instances where you can get greater volumes, economies of scale, and better contract pricing and terms. Um I'm happy to try to answer any others. >> Thank you. I just hadn't noticed that. And sometimes I get questions when there's only um one bid. So appreciate the explanation. >> Yeah, anytime. It it it's difficult um within public procurement in general. Um every single item cannot possibly be bidded. Um so that's for our purposes. It's important for purchasing that we have that transparency for the governing body where we say this is the code section. This is the rationale. Um, and for the public's interest as well, we have in the agenda packet the narrative, a paragraph narrative explaining from the department why they're requesting and seeking your approval. Um, and hopefully we get your approval. >> Any other questions for staff? I see none. I move to approve the board of bids and contracts dated October 27th, 2025. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. Any further discussion? I see none. All those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 70. Madame clerk, please call the next item. >> Mayor, the next item on the agenda is petitions for public improvements. We have none. Moving on, the next item is the council member agenda. >> Council members, are there any appointments? I have one. I move I would like to appoint council member for district 6 Maggie Ballard and mayor of Witchah Lily Woo to the second light board. >> Second >> motion and a second. Any further discussion? I see none. All those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 70. Council members, any comments? I just wanted to bring to the community's attention that today is National First Responders Day. Um it's an annual event on October 28th. They cheer. So a big shout out to police, fire within the city, also with the county, EMS. Um if you see anyone today who's a first responder, pardon me, please take the opportunity to thank them for their service. I'll piggy back on that and say that the Witchaw Police and Fire Foundation is providing a free lunch to first responders uh this afternoon. So uh if you're a first responder, you already know the information. Uh so we want to say again, thank you for your service. I see no other comments. We will now actually go to executive session before we can adjourn the official business. So, I move that the city council recess into >> I thought the executive session was at the end of the workshop. My mistake. I thought that was when we're having >> Is that correct? So, we we'll go into workshop at this time and then executive session. Mayor, we'll do it when when you get back if that's okay. I think that's when the other folks are expecting to be here. Well, so I'm supposed to be at an event at 10 o'clock, uh, a big military announcement here in Witchah. So, I believe they were planning at 11:00 for the executive session. >> Okay. Okay. So, from this moment forward, Vice Mayor Johnston will take over. >> Okay. Thank you. we can move on to uh workshop 10. >> Good morning, mayor and councel. Morning, mayor and council. Uh we have three items prepared for you for today's uh workshop. Uh starting with director Gary Jansen presenting on water and sewer rate adjustments proposed for 2026. >> Good morning, mayor, [clears throat] council members. Gary Jansen, public works and utilities. Uh the first item before you this morning is our annual discussion of proposed water and sewer rate increases. Um after I'll talk at the end of this presentation uh about what comes next as far as a formal recommendation in early December. Keep going. Okay. So uh on the agenda today, I've got a lot of information to cover. this all pushed through here. Certainly happy to answer any questions as we go along. Uh going to start by talking about rate drivers including O andM factors uh for our system. We talk about this on an annual basis is something we keep a close eye on and evaluate as we go. Uh factors are related to what happens with the capital improvement program, how that impacts everything that we do within the utility. Uh there are two parts of this this year that are a little bit new. uh we talked about last year uh but not quite as normal as some of the things we usually discuss. That's a future loss of wholesale revenue. We have two of our wholesale customers uh that are going to go on their own water source soon as well as being our staffing needs which we've talked about some before but now we're at a point of having a better understanding of what we need. Uh then we'll talk about the recommended rate adjustment resulting debt coverage which is very critical um to making [clears throat] sure we stay in a good place long term. financially with utility. Uh the resulting customer impacts, we always like to look at Witchaw rates versus peer cities. Uh we and then I want to make sure everybody understands our affordability and assistance programs. Then looking ahead to long-term water conservation and then far as the next steps. We try to project rates uh generally out over the next three or five three to five years as best as we can. But with a utility our size, there's things that can change. Uh there's things that change with the economy that are not what we expected. Um as we discussed last year, it's always good to have this discussion annually to talk about the specifics of the things that impact us. Again, we are a large utility. There's a lot of things happening. Um we've got a lot of assets that we need to maintain and so it's important to have this discussion every every year. So to start talking about some of the rate drivers, um this probably looks a bit familiar. We talk about this often is O andM expenses certainly uh on O andM expenses and I'll talk about some specifics on the next slide as to why we've seen some changes in operations and maintenance of our assets that have been different than they were in the past. And this is not uh dissimilar to our facilities and other asset classes that we have uh across the department. Our average on&m annual onm cost increases in the past three years have been 12% in water and 10% in sewer. So what this shows is you can see that climb uh starting back in 2021 past 2025 obviously going into next year is a projection that we look at to try to uh cover basically 10 years so we can see where we're headed, what the rates might look like. So hoping that things continue to stabilize a little bit. Uh some of this is impacted by what's happening with the new water treatment plant and with BNR. Once we get into uh a place with full operations of those facilities, we may see some steading of the O andM cost, but this is more impacted by what's happening in the economy than anything. >> Gary, um I have a question regarding this. So it now jumps to triple digits in 2029. Can you address that? Because again, I know that there have been predictions of how much rate increases will be. However, $12.95. >> So, just so you know, this is our on andm expenses, that's $102 million. That's not a rate. >> So, if you look at 2021 on the water side, >> our on&m operations and maintenance expenses were just under 47 million. We're projecting our operations and maintenance expenses to be just under 103 million in 2029. >> And this was all predicted, correct? This has all been um we have been talking about this because I know that a we just got these slides yesterday afternoon and I had questions from media regarding these numbers. >> Um and I didn't have those numbers. So I wanted to know um obviously this has been talked about for multiple years. It has. >> And so this is not new for individuals who may be seeing this today for the first time. >> It's not these numbers are hard to compare to the actual rates, which I'll get to in a little bit. Um, as I mentioned before, anything beyond 2025 is a projection only, but looking at the last five years, we feel pretty comfortable where this is headed. Hopefully we see uh some things change within the economy once we get to a point again on our on our major projects. We may see some steadying of the O andM cost but right now this is our projections based on where we've been prior to 2019 prior to 2020 in particular and what happened with CO I don't think we would have necessarily projected where this is at but now since we've had this uh what we've seen from the last five years this is certainly where we're headed this doesn't look much different than what we looked at last year uh so I think we're still projecting along the same trends Looking at a couple of specifics that are impacting operations and maintenance costs. We talked about chemicals. Uh on the left hand side after holding steady for years, chemical prices have more than doubled in recent years. Uh blue being water, green being sewer. You see some fluctuation there. But again, our projections show hopefully that that's going to steady in the coming years. This is where we've seen as much volatility as anything in the market is on chemical prices. Energy is about the same. That's been a little bit more predictable. I don't think we thought energy or chemical costs would be like this. If you look back at 2020 uh and see that we've more than doubled our costs. This has a really big impact on our operations and what we do for the needed chemicals to meet regulatory requirements for treatment. The uh on the right side then is the challenges we're still facing with staffing. This is partic in particular to our water distribution group is a good example. The red line shows salaries and benefits and the black shows service contracts and the two coming together. We're still struggling to hire folks and when we do we're struggling to keep them. So we're paying more for service contracts to get the same work done than we would if we had our own people. So, we're continuing to do everything we can for recruiting and retention. Um, we've made some strides. We've got some people hired. Hopefully, we can hang on to them and we may start to see that gap increase hopefully as we see less service contracts going forward, but right now it's one of the things that's impacting rates. >> Do we have exit interviews with the people who are leaving? Do we understand why? Is it a salary thing? Is it >> We do and that Thank you. That's a good question. We do it ends up being so a lot of our what I would call service level positions, equipment operators, laborers, things like that. They generally can go work for contractors and make more per hour and that seems to be enticing. Um we provide uh within our program and just to be frank uh nearly all these positions require having a CDL for the work that they do plus for snow and ice operations. A lot of these positions are critical to snow and ice operations, which makes it even harder on us. Uh, but we've seen a lot of people over the years get their CDL and then they can go work for a contractor and make $2 more an hour. We've tried to do everything we can to talk to them about the benefit side of the city, but these are generally younger folks that are just looking to make more money per hour. It's been a challenge for many years. Uh, I don't think we're the only municipality facing this. I know Kat deals with this same some too and even Cedric County, but we're continuing to look for ways uh to make sure everybody understands the values and benefits of the city and and and working on trying to get positions where we can maybe find a better spot to keep them on board. >> Yeah, thank you. >> So, [clears throat] public utilities are capital intensive business. So what this slide shows uh is is what we need to program within the capital within the CIP the capital improvement program over a 10-year period uh especially for maintenance of our facilities. This is does not go towards a lot of expansion. This is more towards trying to maintain what we've got. We I'll give you some numbers again um just so everybody understands the size of our utility. We maintain over 4,000 miles of water and sewer pipes, over 60 sewer lift stations, eight treatment plants of various types, 160,000 metered connections. We've got 14,000 fire hydrants. We've got 50,000 water valves, almost 60,000 manholes. Um, we've got a lot going on. We've got a big system. We've got a lot to maintain, a lot of fixed cost. So, the CIP is very important to that. Um if you look at annual revenue, the chart on the left is primarily an annual revenue increases are primarily for infrastructure. 77% of that is in the CI the CIP is for infrastructure. 23% is for O andM. So the revenue increases utility needs again are for infrastructure. If you look at the pie charts on the right, uh blue is renewal and replacement, orange is expansion. And I'll show you some specific projects in just a moment of what this looks like. So, our focus is maintaining what we've got compared to expansion. There are necessary uh extensions of utility services. There's necessary expansions of our treatment facilities as the community grows. We are not incentivizing that by extending utilities. We are responding to growth. So again, our focus is on renewal and replacement of what we have. So you can really see by these charts u and we've got some additional information on that if need be that's showing what uh these projects look like in the CIP. >> Gary, I have one quick question. All the stats that you mentioned regarding our CIP infrastructure, the manholes or the manholes fire hydrants, could you send that just in a quick recap email? >> Sure, >> everybody. Thank you. I was trying to write them down. I wasn't writing down. >> Sorry, that's a lot of information. I'd be happy to do that. It's good information to have. Um, this is a lot of information. I won't spend a lot of time here, but looking again at rate drivers within the capital improvement program, this is where our rates go to. Um, and I I talk a lot in the public. I talk to a lot of people about different things about water reuse, uh, about water supply planning for the future. And I'm always interested to to hear questions from the public because I don't think everybody fully understands when they pay their water and sewer bill what it is going to much of it contributes to what is in our capital improvement program to be able to maintain operate and maintain what we have. So within the current CIP uh there's almost $900 million for water and sewer improvements. In addition to that, uh overall including our debt service, uh the rate drivers include expenses for Witchaw Waterworks, our new water treatment plant, the BNR improvements, and $229 million in ongoing projects. Overall, all in debt service on the utility side is just over $2 billion. I think that's very fairly consistent. Has been. It's more so obviously with these two major projects on board, but it's a big number. It's always been a big number. We've got a lot to maintain. I don't want to belabor that, but we've got a big system. We've got to be able to have funding within the CIP to maintain what we've got. On the right shows a breakout of water and sewer projects. Again, I'll maybe I'll just hit a few highlights. The first item on water uh distribution mains replacement that is replacing our existing infrastructure. our pipes that are getting old, those that have shown a leak history where we see some of the breaks, we need to replace those um so we can continue to provide proper service. the phased water supply plan, even though that shows an expansion for $32 million. Uh, a good portion of that is um building new recharge basins in the equest beds so that we can optimize the impact of our ASR project so that we can keep the aquis beds healthy so we can continue to have uh long-term water supply on our groundwater side. So, that's very important. That's effectively renewal and replacement of also of infrastructure within the equis beds. On the sewer side, that first item collection mains replacement is again replacing old infrastructure. Those are a lot of backyard sewers uh so that we can hopefully not have any issues with uh being able to get waste water out of homes into our treatment facilities. The second item, our plant three is our northwest wastewater treatment facility. because of growth in the northwest area of the uh of the county within the city and out even into the county, we are looking that we may need expansion of that facility in the future. That's necessary to provide proper service, proper wastewater treatment and to be able to allow growth to continue, but again that's something that's driven by others, not by us expanding our facilities first and foremost. There's other projects in here. There's a lot of information. Uh if you ever want any specifics about any areas, we can talk about that, but I won't hit on any more of those right now. So, one of the real drivers that's impacting uh our recommended rate increase for 2026, this is the first of two, is the future loss of wholesale revenue. So, if you'll recall, I've talked before about we have 11 wholesale customers. Uh we provide water to 17% of all canons. One in every six canons gets water from Witchaw. So that includes our 11 wholesale customers. Two of our wholesale customers, Derby and Valley Center, are working towards building treatment facilities. They're going to utilize untapped water, groundwater rights that they have. In fact, Valley Cent's water treatment plant is already under construction. Derby expects to get moving on there soon. So, that's a good thing from a conservation standpoint. They're going to use lot utilize water sources that were previously unused. And so we're going to be uh we're going to be treating, producing, and distributing less water than we were in the past. That does have impact on revenue. And so we have to look to the future to be able to balance that because again, I'll just mention again, we have a lot of infrastructure. We have a lot of fixed cost. We still have to provide water to the same places even if it's not as much water as it was previously. They're going to have their own water treatment facilities beginning in 2027. As I mentioned, estimated annual revenue loss is a two $2.5 million beginning in 2027. And the estimated annual reduction is 400 million gallons, which does support long-term water conservation goals. So, the chart that you're looking at, the blue, shows uh what previously we had uh for contracts with Valley Center and Derby was about 1.4 4 billion gallons a year. Now it'll be about 1 billion gallons a year. So what we're looking at today and our recommendation in December will include our need to offset that lost revenue um because of what these two are doing in the future. This is going to balance out well. It's going to work well for us for conservation. This really provides um help for us to drought proof our community and to support growth along with what we're talking about for reuse for the future. >> Now, when I talked to the Derby mayor about it, he says it's only their water plant's only going to cover around half, maybe a little more than half of their water usage. They will still be drawing from us. Is that >> they they will and I thank you. I should have probably covered that. Both of them will still be getting water. What we showed was the net difference uh based on the information we've received from them. Neither uh Valley Center uh has more water compared to what they need than Derby does, but you are correct, I think. And they're going to slowly Derby is going to slowly work into it. We're still going to be providing water to both communities and that is reflected here. We're not coming completely off of our water supply. And are is it going to be mostly drawing from the well supply or what are their water sourc? >> Both of them is groundwater supply. >> Groundwater supply. Okay. So is that more tolerant to drought or do we foresee if we enter another drought like we did that they would be drawing more water from Witchah because of that? >> Uh it's likely more tolerant to drought. uh you know in this region as we've talked about for a long time our challenges with our surface water supply at Cheni Reservoir which is impacted much more by drought. Um our equis beds is more naturally recharging. Our ASR project has helped to keep that full. Uh Valley Cent's groundwater supply is near the equis beds and will probably eb and flow as the equis beds do. I can't speak for uh the water rights that Derby has, but I suspect um with it being more of an alivial uh um aquafer that they're pulling from along the river, generally in that area, the flow of the Ark River, I think, will keep the water where they need it to be. So, they're it's it's a lot better situation than them trying to pull from the surface water supply for sure. >> Okay. Thank you. >> But they're still going to have a connection. It's a little bit unknown what happens in the future, but they should be in a lot better place. So, the other uh impact to rates uh is staffing for a biological nutrient removal project. So, we've been talking about this project for a long time. We're obviously well under construction. We're halfway through the project, more or less. We're about two years in, still uh working through 2027 completion. We've known all along we would need additional staffing. We've talked about this in the past what our projections were. It really made sense to get to this point to have a better understanding of what we really need from an operations perspective on the staffing that we'll need. This is needed to meet regulatory compliance. We've got a lot more equipment in place, a lot more processes in place for odor control. Uh we've got a lot more basins that we've got to maintain. Right now, uh, at this facility and our other wastewater treatment facilities, we generally have a few operators only that are on 24/7. As we've moved forward with these improvements, once we're done to meet regulatory requirements for the monitoring that's needed, uh, for the on&m that's needed, uh, for the preventive maintenance that's needed, we're going to need more staffing 247 and that's primarily where this comes from. So the expanded operations of BNR again require additional positions to meet regulatory compliance. To meet these needs, uh we need additional 13 positions and we're going to phase these in to help with uh to smooth the rates over the next few years. It'll include a process engineer, plant manager, supervisor, lab staff, u IEC instrumentation and controls, and then and then operators in particular. This is a new process. It's new technology. It's more intensive than we've got now. It's necessary to do that. Um there's just a lot more stuff out here. If you'll recall, this picture on the right is the primary BNR structure. Some of you have been able to get out and see this. This is bigger than two football fields. It's a massive facility. There's a lot of stuff happening in there. It's going to require more operational support. The financial impact you can see on the bottom uh is reflected in what our our uh recommended rate increase is going to be. Uh so again we talked about this last year during the workshop and uh during a recommendation to the council for voting. So this is not anything new. We just now have the specifics that we need and we need to be able to move forward. So the rate recommend the recommended rate increase we're looking at does include this additional staffing. So start looking at the proposed rate adjustment. This is our recommended rate adjustment. What we call option number one. So, I'll walk you through what you're looking at here because it's quite a bit of stuff. The orange line was the projection for 2026 this time last year. So, in 2024 when we were projecting for 2026, we do the best we can to look several years out, but there's a lot of factors that can change these things. We were projecting a combined rate increase of 6.17% in 2026. We are now because of all the factors we just looked at looking at a projected rate increase a little higher at 6.23%. Looking at 2027 which come December and when we have this discussion again we're only going to be asking for a recommended rate increase for next year 2026 only. But we want to continue looking to the future to make sure we have an eye on what's happening because of the impact of the two wholesale customers coming starting to come off in 2027 and the staffing for BNR coming online in 26 and 27. You see more of a spike in 2027 projected as of now from 6.34 to 7.04. So this is our recommendation, but I want to show you another option and we'll compare some numbers. So I I'll come back to this if need be. This does include the cost impact of additional BNR staffing, future loss of wholesale revenues as I talked about. What this does not include is funding for changes in lead and copper or PAS regulations. The first item there, the lead and copper, is one that we're keeping a very close eye on. We're working on right now. Had a meeting with staff yesterday. That is a federal requirement to meet. We we are moving forward with that. Trying to figure out what the cost impacts are. We'll know more soon, but that could impact future rates depending on what we have to do with private service replacements. We're trying to see what other communities are doing. We're looking to see what outside funding is there. I don't know what that looks like yet. We'll come back to that soon. This does not include revenue losses or operating cost increases due to the new watering schedules, which I'll also talk about in a little bit. I think we're going to see a lesser impact on that than we had thought as a result of what's happened over the last year. This also does not include additional bond coverage contingencies. So, in a minute, I'm going to look at what our bond coverage looks like as a result of the recommended rate increases. It's very critical to our long-term bond rating that we meet a certain bond coverage. We historically have tried to keep some contingency in there. Uh our requirement is 120%. We like to keep it at 125 because we've got aging infrastructure. We have unknown things happen. We have eroded that. We're basically at 120%. So just wanted you to keep that in mind. I'll show you something on that in a minute. Uh that we're we're just meeting 120% only just so you know. >> So I'll come back to this if need be. I know this was a lot to look at. the 6.23 would be the only recommendation in December, but I wanted you to see that 7.04. When I saw that kind of spike in there, we said, "Well, let's look and see what could we do to try to smooth that out." So, looking at an option two, it didn't change it a lot. We thought, what if we bumped 2026 a little bit more to bring 2027 down? You end up at 6.53 and 6.88 88 compared to 6.23 and 7.04. I'll show you real numbers what those look like in just a minute because it makes like a 5 cent difference is all that it does. This will make more sense on another chart here if you if you'll bear with me in just a second. But we wanted to look at a way to try to smooth this out. Maybe not have as much of a jump in 2027 if everything else holds true. This has got everything the same that is included not included. But it's just a larger increase in 2026 to offset the increase needed in 2027 due to the wholesale revenue loss and the additional BNR staffing. I can happily come back to that resulting debt coverage. This is what it looks like to meet our 120%. So to maintain the utilities doubleA credit rating, a debt coverage level of 120% or above is required. The rate option plan number one and two provide only enough coverage to meet the minimum requirement. It does not provide a safety net for unforeseen negative circumstances. I'll just say again, historically we have tried uh on our side to be closer to 125% because of the size of our utility because of uh so many assets to operate and maintain. that has helped us over the years to basically have some contingency in there in order to keep the rates uh what we feel like at a more manageable place uh to try to keep the rates as low as we can and lessen the impact to the rate payers. We have eroded that basically down to 120%. As you get to 2031, you can start to see that come up some. That is based on future projections. That's not likely to hold. What's more reliable is where you see that black and red line coming together. That's not just new for this year, but that's a trend that's continuing based on where we're trying to be at with the rates. So, what are the customer impacts look like? I would call your attention to the low residential low volume line. Majority of our customers, 90% of our customers are residential customers. Most of those fall in this low volume uh where they average 3,750 gallons per month. current bill in 2025 is $6244. The projection for the rate increase again this time last year for 2026 was $342. That was based on the 6.17%. Sorry to throw a lot of numbers at you. The option number one uh would be would bump that 25. Uh so it' be an increase of $3.67. Option number two, which tried to flatten that line out, would be another 13 cents on top of that. I'm going to compare these two in just a minute. But our recommended option is option number one, uh, which would be an increase to most of our customers of $3.67 per month. All things considered, everything we're looking at, I think we're in a pretty good place with that. U kind of glad to see that that's where we were at. It's fairly consistent where we've been in past years. Not a big change from where we thought we were going to be, especially considering the loss of the wholesale customers. This is a lot of stuff. Focus on the red boxes. If you go back to that chart where we showed trying to bring that peak down between options one and two. So, if you look at the red boxes, and I'm sorry, I meant to have two different colors here to make these match. You can see the two option ones, $367, $4.33. That's our recommended option. We're not approving 2027 rates at this time, but a projection is $3.67 would be 2026. A projection for 2027 would be $4.33. If we went with that other option to try to smooth that out, right, we bump 2026 to 380, which is a 13 cent increase per month, and it only brings 2027 down 4 cents per month. I was kind of surprised to see that. Uh, but let me just go back to this real quick. What that is is trying to bring that peak down in 2027, raising 2026, flatten that out a little bit. This is the result. 367 and 433 or 380 and 429. With that projection for 27 cents being only 4 cents less per month, our recommendation is to stick with option number one. Um, which would be the 367. I'll just tell you real quick that 2027 rate is not locked in. We don't know what changes between now and next year. will come back and have the same conversation. That's just our projection at this point. >> So, Gary, in two years, people are going to see their bill go up about a hundred bucks, $96. >> If if for 20 26 and 27 combined, >> no, we're No, for 26 and 27 combined, they're going to see it go up $8 >> time 12. >> Yeah, $8 per month. Sorry. If you're talking about the annual bill. Sure. Yeah. >> 100 bucks a month. >> Yes. Sorry, I was slow there. Yes. >> Yeah. >> A year. Yeah. I'm sorry. >> Yeah. $100 a year. Okay. Yeah. It's getting to be a lot. >> Quick question before we go on too far. If we just quickly go back to slide 26. I just want to make sure I'm reading this graph right. Are we project is it just when it steadies out closer to 4.5%. Is that an actual future projection or is that just we're not projecting it so we're just putting a lower graph line? >> It's the best we can project at this point. Historically what we've looked at past about five years is inflationary impact only. >> So >> and that's why we have this conversation. >> So it's what we can project out. It's not that we're expecting rates to decrease to 4.5% like this graph would show right now. >> Correct. or >> we are we are we are sorry we are projecting that out at the 4.5% every year. Yes. >> Okay. So we're actually projecting a decrease in the rate adjustment later on based on this graph. >> We are but if you went back five or 10 years every time we looked at this once you get out past five years they've looked like that every time. That's the best we can do for projections at this point is just an inflationary impact not knowing what what the things we're discussing today. They can vary each year and that's why we have this conversation annually. >> Have we when's the last time that we actually did 4.5? >> Okay. So, we're looking a few years back now. >> Yeah, it it would be prior to uh Thank you for that, Joanie. But I don't I'd have to look back and see then even if we did then I I would I think that the recommended rate increase was still higher than what the PCI with the what generally what the inflationary impact [snorts] was at that time. >> Okay. And then one quick question maybe go back to the slide you were on and I don't know if this is the right time. I was trying to look through here if maybe the right time to ask this question but maybe here. So when we're judging rates we're using average winter consumption. Correct. >> Correct. >> Correct. So are is that per is that per unit the individual house's average winter consumption or community winter consumption as a whole >> or the sorry what was the second part of that >> is it per unit or the average winter consumption as a community or we judging the rates based off of >> so single family home it's based off of my rates the previous >> it's based on the tier one rates at that volume at that 3750 >> correct is it for that singular home their rates or their usage or is for the average usage of the community as a >> it's that single it's that single home. >> Okay. So that was my understanding. So what is what would be the incentive for someone to conserve in the water? So let's say somebody's trying to manipulate the system. They're using more water in the winter because in their summer so then their average winter consumption is at a higher volume that then would allow further usage in the summer. So let's say somebody uses a water barrel to conserve. Well then their average water consumption is less. they're judged the next year or the next summer based on their average owner consumption. Have we seen people take advantage of the system? I don't know if we're able to track that. >> I don't know if we'd be able to tell. Uh there is a there's a point there where you're not saving a lot. Um it's possible I suppose for somebody to try to game the system on our tiered rates. Uh but you're spending a lot of money on water that you're not using during those four months. And there is a tipping point where I don't think there's a lot of value to you staying out of an extended tier during the summer months. There's uh we see a lot of water usage during the summer months due to discretionary irrigation. You'd have to use a lot of water during those winter months to to make to really offset that. >> Very negligible. >> Yes. >> For somebody to do it. Okay. >> So, it's a lot of information. Uh but I I want to make sure you understood. We looked at a couple of options to kind of try to smooth that out. It doesn't make a lot of difference especially in that second month. What and that's only our projection only at this point. So I want to talk about the things that we do uh to our efforts to try to suppress rate increases because we're always looking at ways to keep our rates manageable. Um and so so I'll kind of go through some things here and and then we'll we'll talk about uh what's happening with future water supply too. So the utilities routinely seek additional operational savings. So for example, I talked about with the BNR staffing uh we're using a phased approach to reduce the initial impact and also the additional staffing. This is not unlike we talked about with water distribution. It's expected to result in $100,000 in contractual savings. So, right now, we're doing a lot of work at that plant under contract where we wouldn't be with additional staff. It ends up being cheaper in the long run. Uh we had a uh combined our call center and business operations into an account services division. It's expected to result in annual savings of almost $85,000. It's providing more efficiencies and I think it's doing a lot for responsiveness. Uh not that we haven't always done a good job uh because the number of calls that our call center receives is is just amazing to me uh especially what they deal with on the customer side. Another example is large water meter replacements have increased the accuracy of readings. Uh meters that are 6 in size and above have seen readings increase by an estimated 13 to 15%. So what that means before on the older meters we were losing 13 15% of the volume going through the meter that was not being read. So that's very important. That's a good payoff to invest through our CIP replacing those meters uh so that we're getting an accurate reading and and realizing the revenue we should. Operational savings are not enough to overcome cost increases and other challenges. One other thing that we've done is we've reduced and redistributed over $40 million in CIP expenses over the next 10 years. It's not ideal, but what we've tried to do and we meet on a very regular basis to look at our capital improvement program. You know, I talked about the utility being capital intensive on what we need for renewal and replacement. We are really trying to put things as far out as we can without creating too much more risk so that we can keep the rate impact down. I mentioned the reduced bond coverage contingency levels and the financial model. Same thing I talked about before. Ideally, we would be at 125%. We're going to be right at 120% based on these rates. And as you know, over time, we've pursued favorable financing opportunities for Whiffy and SRF. As we look to the future, uh we've talked a lot about reuse, and I won't spend much time on that today, but but it's a big cost in the future to look at water reuse and what we need for a future water supply. We have started to look at how we might be able to utilize whiffy and SRF assuming that there's funding available there, how that plays into the future rates so we can start smoothing out as much as possible. None of that is considered here. >> Uh, >> one of the things that we've been doing since Sorry, go ahead. >> Sorry, real quick, Gary. Um, now we had had a discussions about and I'm curious where we are with this. Um, the reusing the gas out at the BNR sewage treatment plant. um put scrubbing it, firing a plant with it, and then putting it back into the pipeline and potentially selling it to the gas company. Um where are we with that project? And I think we've spoken before about possibly using the funding from that to help offset some cost or maybe do some sort of rebate for the rise in sewer rates in the future, >> among other things we could possibly do with it. >> Correct. um we had a request for information and received some [snorts] a lot more significant interest in that project than we thought. So our goal is through a public private partnership and many other communities have done this because the upfront capital cost is significant. [clears throat] I think uh one of our re last estimates was 14 to$15 million. we can partner um with someone who would come in and provide all the capital, build the equipment and be able to capture that methane, that bio gas, and they are they utilize it for other purposes. A lot of times it's jet fuel and things like that. So, because right now we're just flaring that off uh into the air. Anyway, just kind of a quick reminder what that was. We are working on the actual RFP now uh that we hope to have out on the street probably early next year. Um because of the interest we saw, I think we are going to get folks that want to do this. Um ideally there's going to be no upfront capital cost for the city and we would realize revenue on the back end from that. That will be part of the RFP process of selecting um a partner on what that financial model looks like. They can't guarantee any numbers, but we should uh see some benefit from this and additional revenue. Where that goes, I don't know that we've made a decision. Ultimately, uh it goes into the entire picture here and ideally would help us smooth out rates in the future. >> Okay. I keep telling people eat their wedies, eat their Cheerios, make sure to make some good clean bio gas for Right. I think that's good for Witchah. Thank you for asking that question. So, I'll mention I'm getting close here. Sorry. Thank you for bearing with me. I've got a few more slides. Um, I've talked before about a utility optimizations effort that's been in place since 2018. We've have staff specifically dedicated to looking at actual savings and modeled savings. So actual thing savings is things like the large water meter replacement I talked about program renewable energy program that we worked with through EverGy thing things like [clears throat] LED replacement of lighting through all of our facilities modeled savings looks more at uh focuses on preventive maintenance over corrective so trying to get ahead of things more so than we did in the past and what that value is for the future. We we have realized an annual savings of uh almost $6.7 million since 2018 because of our optimization efforts. Um we've looked at overtime reductions uh chemical and energy savings in spite of the cost increases we've seen. We've done everything we could to optimize those. So there's a lot of things happening to keep the rates lower than they would need to be. Um, so I I think we've done a good job to really minimize what our rate increases need to be in spite of the size of our utility. It's important that we keep an eye on our peer cities comparisons. So I we talked about the lower level user being around the 62 to $65. So I just keep that in mind because I don't want to throw you off here. This compares the midlevel user at 7,500 gallons. The reason why we do that is because that's the data that's available from other communities. So when you see that $98, that's not the same as that lowlevel user we saw. Looking at our peer cities on the I35 corridor, which we've consistently done, we still uh remain the best best deal, if you will, uh from a monthly water and sewer bill compared to other communities, Kansas City, Omaha, Clint City, De Moines, Tulsa, and Fort Worth. A lot of factors there. Um but we're glad to still be in this same spot. We're doing everything we can to keep it there. [snorts] >> Gary, may I ask a quick question? I'm so sorry. >> Yeah. >> So, what I hear you saying, and I just want to make sure I can articulate it if asked. If we do the recommend the staff's recommended rate increases for 2026, we will still be the lowest. >> Yes. Sorry, I should have done a better job. This does include the recommended rate increase. So lower than Kansas City, Omaha, any of our peer cities with the increase will still be the lowest. >> We will. This is what it would look like with the proposed increase. Thank you. >> I should have clarified that. So thank you for asking, >> Gary. Where is Kansas City, Kansas, Shaunie? >> Do you know where they're at? >> Uh pro I I can get that data for you. There's so many cities in that area. Last year we looked at uh regional comparisons. Manhattan, Lawrence, Salina, Emporia, uh, and some of the others. I think we looked at probably 8 to 10 communities and we were still either at the bottom or second from the bottom as far as rates because there was questions asked about comparable cities. But even when we looked regional across other Kansas communities, it still looks like this. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. I wanted to talk about I won't spend a lot of time on this uh because I I want to keep moving this forward. Again, this is a lot of information and thank you for bearing with me. We do have assistance programs in place. We have have had for some time um between so this shows all the way back to 2016 where we started our H2O care fund. In 2019 we started the rate relief program uh which is through the center for hope. There was some extended rate relief in 2023 which was approved by the council as a temporary postcoid measure. That's what the purple is. But if you look at those bigger numbers between 2021 and 2023, approximately $4 million in state and federal funds were used to help customers with utility expenses in the wake of COVID. uh assistance funds typically come from customer donations and primarily from a 100th of 1% of water and sewer rate revenues as earmarked by the city council back in 2016. The customer donations to the H2O program have more than doubled after introducing online giving options in 2024. So that's provided some real value. But as you can see 2025 projected assistance is just over $60,000. The H2O care fund again is administered by center of hope uh that provides $100 a year up to the rate relief assistance program is managed by us. It requires an application that are accepted generally throughout the year. The eligibility requires receipt of low-income energy assistant program uh benefits within a year that provides $50 to eligible customers. So eligible customers between those two programs could see a benefit of up to $150 per year. >> [snorts] >> I can get you any more information you want on that, but I also want to talk about just one more part of that. We've had we have considerable outreach efforts from our staff throughout the year. We have direct customer contact by city staff. We have signage [clears throat] and flyers in city halls, community centers, and libraries. The libraries were added last year as part of our rates discussion. We have an annual contact with assistance agencies where we provide flyers there too. promotion at EverG's uh events and website uh promotion at the DCF's events for the same and then in 2025 staff attended new outreach events at Calvin Evergreen and Atwater Community Centers. So, we're doing everything we can to get the word out there. Anytime um our customer service staff hear from folks about uh concerns with bills, setting up payment plans and make sure that they understand what the assistant programs are there. So, I think we've done a great job of making sure everybody understands what is there for support. So, wrapping this up, I've got a couple more slides. Long-term water conservation. Uh, I wanted to talk a little bit about this and where we've been. So, what this chart shows, uh, the blue is 2024 water usage. You can see we hit a high in July of 2024, right before we went into stage two watering restrictions in August of 2024, which went for almost an entire year. So, you can see a definite difference, generally a difference during the summer months in 2025 while we were under stage two restrictions in the orange. Year-to- date water consumption is down approximately 7% from 2024, mostly attributable to stage 2 restrictions. Water sales have declined by $2.7 million from 2024. That is not impacting the rate recommendation we're making. We did have with what we talked about in our bond coverage and some contingency build in, we were able to absorb, I think, a good portion of that, but that's about all. And so fortunately, we're not seeing or recommending any rate increase because of that, and we hope not to in the future. Permanent watering restrictions will limit all sprinkler and spray irrigation devices to a three-day per week watering schedule, which you approved on September 15th, is in place. Now, we have not really been able to see what that impact is yet. Uh we're getting into the fall months. We've still been seeing rain, but we'll keep a very close eye on that going forward based on what we saw uh and the reduction in consumption and revenue uh during the previous year during stage two drought restrictions. We think we can manage going forward. We're definitely going to see uh good conservation and hopefully on the revenue side, we'll still be able to manage. these rate uh recommended rate increases do not reflect less water usage because of conservation. So we'll continue to monitor that going forward and see where we are next year. Next steps is to refine recommendations for 2026 based on feedback from the city council today and up until um we bring this to the city council likely in early December. Thank you for uh going through that with me. I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> I just had a quick question, Gary. You talked about that 120 million versus 125 >> on the um >> 120%. >> Yeah. >> And 125% on our debt coverage ratio. >> Yes. That um for the rate increase, the bullets kind of said that we'd stay at 120%. Are there options to maybe go back to the one? like are you concerned about staying at 120% versus 125? >> It's not ideal. Uh it's a it's a risk we've got to balance. Uh again, we've got the thanks to the city council and the actions that they've taken over the years with annual rate increases. We've done a lot uh to try to make sure uh that we're keeping our assets in the conditions we need to, but ideally we're not where we need to be. We still have a lot of preWorld War II era infrastructure like a lot of communities our size. And I think we've done a really good job with the funding that we have. Uh but we can we still see on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, we have failures of of equipment and assets that we weren't inspect uh expecting. So there's some risk there not knowing at some point in time if we see a bigger issue and we don't have that contingency built in. You know, I talked about the fact that we moved projects out in the CIP that was done to try to keep these rates as low as we can. There could come a point in time where we've got to do something. Hopefully not as an emergency rate increase, but unfortunately that becomes an option when we cut all of that extra contingency out. And I know that's not a very clear answer, but it really depends on what might happen going forward. >> It's um that's a little concerning. I mean, if if we added I know we want to keep things low, like one or two cent or a nickel to a bill, like does that build up enough to where you would feel more comfortable? I would rather have the money being taken out now to keep a contingency than later. We need something that's an emergency and we're pulling from somewhere else rather than having that. >> We did look at what 125% looks like. Um, and I don't have that information with me today, but I could get that to you. Um, and I don't remember what the uh average monthly increase is. Um, it's all depending on your perspective. It wasn't a lot, but we did look at that and I can get you that information. >> Okay. Yeah, I would I would like that or maybe whenever this comes to council, I just think that's something we should consider to be able to have that contingency. I think it's important to have the contingency. >> We have tried to be there in the past. It's been a while. uh just because of, you know, the discussions we've had with the council, the discussions we've had with the public, everything costs more, right? Uh so we're trying to do the best we can to keep these rates as low as possible. That's one of the places we take potentially the biggest hit. Um is not having on the sewer side of our CRP, it's pretty it's pretty bare. We've moved a lot of projects out based on our best estimate of when we need to uh replace or repair infrastructure. It's not an ideal situation by any means. >> Thank you. >> Gary, can you talk about the uh repairs to the Cheni Dam? Where you at on that? >> So, we probably got overall about 50% of the repairs done. We got the first two rows done. uh as the water started coming up, we started working from the top down. Um you know, the reservoir is still above normal pool because we haven't been given the go-ahad to start releasing water because there's nowhere to take it. But we're for now there's we won't be able to do any more repair work until we're not going to lower the reservoir to make repair work at any point in time. The [clears throat] we're going to move on from that contract. Uh we had a clause in there that we could close out the contract. There there's a certain contingent contingency cost with it that overall was a small percentage. Uh but the funding is still there. The remaining funding we're going to leave in place and we even have funding for a phase two. We're just going to have to see what the timing looks like. Uh if we happen to see in the future that we start to see a drop in the reservoir, we'll start keeping an eye on when we have another opportunity. Based on what we saw though, I feel pretty good about where we are structurally. Um, we made the repairs starting from the the bottom up. I think we we fixed uh what we thought were some of the worst areas and I don't know that we're concerned that we're going to have any issues. >> Okay. Thank you. I know it's about a foot and a half above normal. Now, how far below normal would you have to get to finish the repairs? >> We'd probably have to go back to five to six feet below normal to be able to finish the repairs. Let's not do that. >> I'm confident that we won't recommend lowering that or letting that much water out to make that happen. I the again we were able to take a a look at the dam and see where we are and and I think things were we had done a lot of of work while the reservoir was up um you know some underwater analysis and we were able to see that it's it's about what we thought it was but I I think we're in a good place. >> Okay. What's that picture over there? >> Oh, that picture is one of our uh basins at plant 2. Kind of gives you an idea of some of the size of our facilities. That's part of our BNR project of one of our clarifiers that's been uh uh cleaned out and is going to be restored and and brought to a better place for future. So, thank you for asking that. I meant to mention that. >> Yeah, >> Gary, I don't have a question. I just have a comment. Um, thank you to you. Thank you to Don. Thank you to your entire team, Joanie. Great to see you. Um, you know, when we when we have this presentation and we're looking at potentially raising rates, but still being the lowest in the region. The other thing is that we have built the two largest pieces of infrastructure the city has ever built. and any of the communities on this list or probably any community in the nation would be envious to have a billion dollars worth of infrastructure invested in our water and sewer and still have low rates. So kudos to you and your team. I don't know sometimes how you make the magic happen, but I really appreciate all that you do. Most of the time our residents don't always fully appreciate everything we do until there's the absence of it, right? And so, heaven forbid we would never have water or sewer services, but you and your team just do an amazing job. So, thank you for everything and and thank you for the presentation. >> Well, thank you for that, council member. I do think I've been to um a lot of different cities and a few other states recently, especially talking about water reuse. So, I kind of pay attention to where they're at rates wise and what they've done. And I think we're for me, I think we're in a pretty remarkable place. And I don't say that to try to sell anybody on what this rate recommended rate increase is, but I think comparably affordability. I think we're in a great place and I especially appreciate the comment about the two major projects. Um, recently I talked to some different groups about this $900 million improvements and I don't think anybody knew had any idea that that's what we had done and still be where we are at as far as on an affordability scale. So, we have a wonderful staff, tremendous people, a lot of people doing stuff 247 behind the scenes to make all this happen. So, thank you. >> Any other questions for Gary? >> Thank you, Gary. >> So, we'll get the additional information, Council Member Glascock, that you asked for and also provide some context on what 125% uh debt coverage looks like and I think we'll plan to be to the council December 2nd for a formal recommendation. So, thank you. >> Okay. Just for the record, I like I keep rates as low as possible. >> I would say just for the record that this is as low as that we can possibly >> I appreciate that people are struggling with food and rent and yeah, I appreciate that. So, Gary, thanks for the presentation, the information. Um, Vice Mayor, our next item is an update from the Witchaw Police Department, Witchaw Animal Services. Emily Good morning, council. Thanks for having me. I apologize. You have to bear with me. I've been fighting a cold and I've lost my voice a bit. So, I'm trying to trying to make sure I'm understandable. So, I wanted to start today with some clarity around the purpose of Witchaw Animal Services. The makeup of animal control and animal shelters can vary widely based on a community's needs and it can sometimes get confused with other types of animal welfare organizations. Witchaw animal services focuses on creating a safe community for our residents through the enforcement of state statutes and city ordinances. For example, through state statutes, we are managing things like bite reports, rabies quarantines, specimen testing, and ensure compliance with the pet animal act. In title six of our city ordinance um is really our guide book for protecting pe pets and their people regarding licenses, limits, neglect and cruelty, animal and neglect laws. Um that that is really where we follow to make sure as a result that we then have that animal shelter that we manage in compliance with our sheltering regulations. Our facility and operations are designed to provide a safe and clean environment for animals lost and found in our community so they can be reunited with their owners. Our facility is also designed to house domestic animals in need of quarantines and confiscations. The bulk of our employee in the base is going to be animal control officers which we refer to as ACOs. They're going to be cross all crossrained in both shelter and field work. When assigned to the field, our officer's duties often include responding to citizen complaints, which can be picking up a loose animal or a complete investigation. When assigned to the shelter, ACOs are going to be responsible for ensuring kennels and other areas of the shelter are cleaned daily, animals are fed and examined daily, and provide over-the-counter service for animal intakes, animal pickup, and a variety of other community needs. I thought it would be valuable for us to review the priorities that we navigate for incoming calls for service. When someone contacts Witchaw Animal Services, the call will go to an acco who is dispatching the call while also working on other duties. Depending on the call's priority and how many calls of which type come in will determine how fast an acco can get to that call. This chart lays out some of the examples of where call priority can lie, but this of course isn't going to cover the many different varieties that occur. Uh priority one is going to be basically bite, attack, injuries, um aggressive animals running at large uh or severe ne sorry, severe neglect case. A priority two could be an animal who has bitten or attacked someone but is already confined. follow up on an investigation or a compliance check for a dangerous dog and so on. Uh let's see here. I wanted to show you guys we receive about 14,000 calls for service annually and uh it's about 40 a day. It averages pretty well. Uh at least 10 of those each day are going to be a priority one. You'll see these in order by priority and color-coded by type. Most priority ones that you see here in Navy are also going to take a little bit longer to manage. They typically involve something like an aggressive animal, a person with an injury, visits to a hospital or jail. They also require significant paperwork associated with rabies bite reports, evidence and witness collection statements so that we can compile a full investigation. They sometimes entail securing animals um emergency medical care or providing assistance to our police on a criminal case. We're then going that same day going to receive at least another 10 priority two calls. Um those are often going to require just as much to manage. So that's why when we talk about public safety, we want the public to understand that it's not that a nuisance complaint isn't unimportant to our department, but securing an animal who can cause is causing life um threatening damage to someone or something um or has that capability is always going to be our priority in that moment. We typically have about a two acos in the field on any given day from 7:00 a.m. to 900 p.m. and then we have one person that's on standby over each night for other types of emergency calls. >> Are priority one calls still rising? I know they have been the past couple of years. Do we >> still see a steady increase in that? >> That is and that's likely contributed um in correlation with our overpopulation as our population as a city of whole city as a whole, not the human population, but the animal population increases. Um, those priority ones that are going to involve animals running at large that then can turn into like an aggressive a bite or attack. Uh, those are going to increase with that. >> And is it mostly the core that we see that activity still increasing with dilapidated fences and >> Yeah. Um I haven't actually done the study to and data to review exactly where we're going to see the priority of those calls, but that's something that I hope to dig into soon. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah, >> this is going to be a highle view of the flow of animals through the shelter. Animals can be brought in from the field um from an acco like we just talked about. If it's a bite or attack or some type of confiscation, it's likely to remain at the shelter for 10 to 30 days. Uh if a found animal comes in over the counter or from one of our field officers, we're going to hold that animal for three full business days after the intake day. Most of the animals are going to encounter a weekend during their stray hold. So that's going to leave them waiting for their owners about five days a week or five days with in that period. During that time, we're going to have KHS is going to come over and complete an assessment on the animal to see if it seems suitable for their adoptions program. This is a common area of confusion. There are some agencies who choose to publicly misrepresent exactly what this assessment means. So, I'm going to touch a bit more on that in a minute. If KHS is able to take the animal, they communicate with our team and schedule within their internal department's next step. Typically, that's going to be scheduling the animal for surgery. But in other cases, it could be going into their foster program if it has needs before it's ready for adoption. They it could also go into their K9 behavior program or their barncap program. If KHS isn't able to take an animal, they will notate those constraints. It could be due to a lack of space at their shelter, in which case the animals is going to be labeled in our system as resources. That lets our rescue partners know that the animal seems healthy and friendly, but there is no available space at either of our shelters. The animals are listed also as what we call a direct adoption. what a direct adoption means that if somebody from the public wants to adopt an animal, they can still do that through KHS. It's just that KHS isn't able to bring that animal onto their adoption floor because they don't have the space and so they can't provide those visits and such for them. What happens is that the person can call to adopt the animal. KHS can schedule their surgery in getting them ready for that and then the person will pick them up directly that day right from WAS to KHS. that animal. Those direct adopts friendly resource space ones are also available to transfer to any of our rescue partners. Some animals are will be labeled as behavior due to concerns that pose warnings for the open adoptions program or they can be labeled as medical because there's a medical need that their team isn't able to meet. Although KHS does provide behavior programs and extensive special medical treatment for thousands of the animals at Witchaw Animal Services each year, they can't meet all of the needs by themselves. That's where our rescue programs come in. Once the assessment is received from KHS, it's going to be about the average number of animals that come in a day. So about 30. Uh rescue team and internal rescue teams are notified and we post the animal to our rescue networks, which I'm going to go over in a second. Some people get confused about this process, uh, rightfully so. It's very nuanced. Um, it's going to require focused attention on the space that's currently available, that day's intakes, and it's going to require us to look at this outcomes that we're going to expect, the season's averages at each individual shelter, and extensive communications between each facility. It also requires the work of multiple departments and outside agencies. Due to the vigorous pace of each individual day at the shelter and the high number high number of animals process, multiple teams of people have to be flexible in order to save as many lives as possible. For an example, on assessment day, which is normally about 24 hours from an animal coming in the city shelter, KHS has to anticipate the number of kennels that they're going to have open based off of their current population and trends. But I'm I know that you guys probably understand that in dealing with live animals and depending upon multiple departments of humans, guessing how many people are going to come in to adopt each day um and how many of those are actually going to take home an animal is really like a guesswork. We can put a lot of statistics and a lot of thoughts into it, but we can't uh control what is outside of our control. So what that means is that even if KHS tags an animal to be transferred, there's a large number of variables that happen between assessment day and then the first day that the animals actually available to leave Witchaw Animal Services for transfer. It can be anything from the animals return to their owner. They might start to show symptoms of a contagious disease. A test result could come back like heartworm positive. Um and then on the actual day of transfer we have another set of v variables that can happen um for those animals. For example, uh KHS just like was Did you have a question Mike? >> Oh I I'll >> No, sorry. >> Um so KHS just like was designated areas for uh different types of animals like puppies for example. So, while we may have two litters of puppies at Wasps that KHS has said, "Yes, we're going to take and transfer those over, on the day that those puppies are available to be transferred, K, they might have had slow puppy adoptions that week, which means they might already have 25 puppies in their shelter and their puppy loft is full." So, the day that they were anticipating to bring our puppies over, they don't have the space available to do that. And that can happen in so many different varieties of our animals, the situation with that, not to mention other variables that lie within their running a high volume spayneuter clinic at a shelter like KHS does. Basically, what that means is that animals aren't a able to cleanly transfer from to KHS every single day that we need them to. And that again requires that flexibility and paying close attention to the different parts of population. What I'm really trying to get at here is that even though these are nuanced processes, both of our teams are working together seven days a week to make sure that we're finding the best outcome for each animal. People can get confused when trying to compare us to other shelters because we operate two sidebyside facilities. Um, and the makeups of excuse me, the makeups in other organ in other communities are different. While these public private, excuse me, public private partnerships exist all over the country, they exist in so many different ways. Um, and nobody seems to have really found the perfect solution. But our partnership is serving the purpose that it's meant to. We're saving more than double the lives of our old two old separate facilities and we're constantly working towards those improvements. >> Okay. Uh, few questions. >> Yeah. So, what hap what happens if an animal is tagged by uh the Humane Society? Does that mean they're completely taken out of the process or are they still available on your guys' end for things like adoption? >> Good question. Um, so again, that's kind of where things fall into a nuance process and um Erin from KHS is here. Both of our leadership teams and as uh directors, we we have to communicate on that stuff on a regular basis. The intention is is that if KHS tags an animal, it's supposed to be transferring to them for adoption. So their goal is that as soon as it strayold is up, which is, you know, going to be around those 5 days, they want to transfer it that next morning to have surgery and get ready for adoption. But because those nuance processes can happen, it's really unclear. If somebody from the public wants to adopt it, any animal within our facility, they can always call KHS and place what's called an adoption hold. Then what that does is it reserves the animal for them as soon as it's able to have its surgery and be ready to go. Uh if they want to do that through a rescue partner, they can also do that. If an animal has extensive medical needs or behavior or it's not ready for um for that surgery, like they could be emaciated or ill, something like that, or just not safe enough for the surgery team to handle. That's where we work with our rescue partners and try to connect somebody with them that has the resources to transfer that. And they have the vet that comes over and takes a look. >> Is that through AHS as well? >> KHS. Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. KHS. >> No, you're okay. Um the Yeah. So, we separately from our from the joint operations that I'm talking about here with uh transferring animals and everything. We utilize them for a veterinary contract. And the reason being is that we we have to have veterinary services in order to to function. We used to hire a third party vet that was off location. And while that was still serving the need that it need that we needed, it's um they're coming over from wherever their facility is to do a walk through once a day and provide medical care. Whereas having KHS next door who has a team of vets, vettees, and other resources that are available to us are right there next door so that we get we're able to get care faster for the animals that we need. we're able to have a better comprehensive understanding of those animals. And there's also a big difference in shelter medicine versus private practice medicine. Um there it's a whole separate veterinary degree and it can really uh help us make sure that we're living or that we're creating congruity where we need to and disease management for the whole shelter. >> So how often do they come over and inspect the animals? [laughter] >> Um just the veterinarian or staff from the >> veterinarian. Okay. They're going to be there at least once a day. So, um, but just as part of our, excuse me, of regular operations, they have multiple teams of people that have eyes on every animal in our facility several times a day. >> Okay. Um, do we know what the open kennel rates at KHS are? >> Well, do you go ahead? [cough and clears throat] >> Come on. >> Just after the mic. Yeah. Our [snorts] current open kennel rate at KHS is about 20% for both dogs and cats. Um, capacity for care standards, which are outlined by the Association for Shelter Vets, say that all shelters should be maintaining about 25% of their kennel space empty at all times. Um, that's so that you can respond to emergency situations, but also so you can provide adequate and humane care to every animal that's in your shelter. And unfortunately, animal welfare organizations are not um overflowing with staff. So, um, we we all try to stick around that 75% rate, which is sort of the gold standard for where where we want to be. anything beyond that. Um, for instance, I started in 2023, we were at 100% most of the time and we were in a disease outbreak all the time. So, anything beyond that and you're overstressing animals, you're not allowing them to be properly spaced. Um, so we try to maintain between 70 and 80% kennel space um at all times. >> Erin, can you give your title? >> I'm sorry, Aaron Walker. I'm the uh CEO for Kansas Humane Society. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Are you held to the same state guidelines that the animal shelter is? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Have there been any issues with that here in the last couple of years? >> Um last year we had our first failed inspection for a couple of um minor um like paint issues that were in our kennels that needed to be fixed. So, we redid all of our adoption suites um in the fall of 2024 uh to make sure that we came into compliance. We've had two or three inspections since then and have been in compliance completely um just as we were prior. >> And you guys are beholden but to the uh the new standards that they have, the state's p or the state's reinterpretation of some of their policies as far as moving um sick animals. >> Yes, sir. In March 2024, um the Kansas Department of Agriculture reinterpreted um some of their rules around transfer of sick animals. Um most of our rules for companion animals are based on livestock uh regulations and the Kansas Livestock Association is very powerful. Um, and so getting them to change and getting them to create a separate structure of statutes for companion animals has not been something the state of Kansas has been willing to do. Um, because of this new interpretation, any animal that is uh suspected or known to have a contagious or infectious illness cannot transfer from one shelter to another. We can transfer them, as I think Emily will talk about, we can transfer them to a veterinary clinic. Um but they are required to stay at that clinic until they are clear of that infectious or contagious disease which is not something most of our general practice that clinics are able to do. >> Okay. And there's been no movement on that has there? >> Um very little. The the most recent uh regulation that was um they they've proposed about five rounds of regulation revisions um since all this happened in March 2024. The most recent is at the Department of Administration now and it does allow for transfer of sick animals. Um but we don't believe it will be passed for another six to nine months probably through the process. >> Okay. Um you have a number as far as animals that move through dogs, cats, and compared to years past that move through your >> Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. So the um and I'll let I'll let him speak to that as well, but they when you mean are you talking about contagious animals or are you talking about >> just animals period? I mean I know we have such a high number coming through now. I'm just wondering how how many that we've been successful in moving through either working with um KHS, other partners in the community and just in general. Is that number rising? Is it steady? >> It's pretty steady. Um, so the intake at our facility has remained rather steady, right around uh 9,000 animals on our intake side and KHS's transfer of that of animals that they actually place up for adoption is remain right around 4 to 5,000 and then about another 1500 go to rescues which are right about that same amount. It I mean we'll fluctuate a couple hundred here in a year every other a year or so but it's about the same. What we're really noticing is that the overpopulation, especially for people who own their animals and want to uh relinquish them, is consistently raising. Um, and the number of people coming, the thing is is that even though our intake is remaining about the same each year, you have to think that most of those are going to be new animals. And so, I'm going to talk about that here in just a minute as well. It um is our population, how much it fluctuates. And what we're seeing is an overpopulation in our community due to lack of spay and services. >> Yep. Okay. Appreciate that. >> Yeah. I would just I would just add on to that. We definitely were able to transfer fewer um neonate kittens um and other sick animals that would have had a live outcome a year prior to March of 2024. um that number was probably in the 1 to 2,000 range across the entire year um of animals that we would have been able to transfer that under the current system we can't um which is why you've seen euthanasia rates go up both at at WAS and at KHS because um if a cat gets sick for instance we can't place that cat in a foster home. It either gets better in the shelter or um we have to euthanize it for to to maintain humane care for not only that animal but for all the rest of the animals that are around it. So um not not great decisions um that have had to be made um when we know that there were live outcomes that were available. Um but we've been really pushing. We worked with the lobbyists to try to get some traction. Um, we've been working with net uh with statewide groups to try to get traction and we're we're hoping that we're finally getting there, but um but we still got a little bit left. >> Uh could you delve more into puppies and kittens and kind of the challenges around that? >> Tell me what you mean by the challenges specifically like around disease control or what >> disease control moving them through the system. Um he he just referenced kittens for example. >> Yeah. Gotcha. Well, go ahead. >> Yeah. So we have so we have like weight and age standards for cats. So specifically like neonate cats cannot survive without their mother um without 24-hour care. So if a cat comes in and it needs its mother but it does not have a mother, what we are told by the state we have to do is hold that cat in stray hold for three days before we can place it someplace that it could receive 24-hour care. and we don't have the resources at Was to provide 24-hour care for for those basic they have to be bottlefed every hour to two hours depending upon their age. Um and so that accounted for example we had about 150 of those during the summer months each month. Um and so they're just very young. They can't live on their own and uh we used to prior to this and reinterpretation be able to transfer those to one of to KHS or one of the rescue partners for a foster to bottle feed. Are there rescues out there that might be interested in specifically that? >> Yes, but again, it's more about the being able to legally transfer them until the KDA's thing is >> three days, right? >> Uh three three full business days after the day of intake. >> Okay. I mean coming in and assisting at the shelter for those three days. >> Could you speak up? I mean, um, sorry, coming in and assisting at the shelter for those three days >> that it's just not feasible because you you have to feed the like lots of kittens every two hours. And so having volunteers in our shelter 24 hours a day when shelter staff isn't available to monitor and keep those things safe and manageable is just not a feasible option for us. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah, >> Emily, I'm gonna ask you. I'm over here. Sorry. >> I didn't know where question is coming from. >> I get a lot of questions about the no kill shelter and obviously how our rates have gone up significantly. Um, and it kind of speaks to some things that you guys already mentioned, but in until the interpretation changes, that's just kind of >> what interpret Oh, of the KDA. >> Yeah, because that's when it our numbers significantly changed. Correct. I mean, I know we're we're taking um in more animals. Our population is growing, >> but would you say that that is when things kind of changed going, you know, with our euthanasia rates going >> way higher than they were? >> I would say that is definitely an impact of those. Like you said, that was probably affecting at least a thousand animals a year. Um there are other factors that impact that rate. Um and part of that includes just the severe overpopulation that we have. COVID was a big part of that for us. Uh we were already teetering at uh barely managing the overpopulation where we were at a few years ago when we were in that 90% what's called a no kill no kill rate. Um and I think that we should talk about what that what no kill sheltering actually means at some point. Um the uh but so during COVID veterinarian services especially around spay and neuter were surgical services that were essentially shut down. All medical um equipment and supplies were converted to human care. So you think about masks, gloves, equipment, all of the things that veterinarian clinics require needed to require were all transferred over to human care needs because of COVID. So that means while we were already teetering on our our community having more pets than we can adopt out, more pet complete overpopulation. We stopped spaying and neutering everything for about a year and a half completely. And that's across the nation, but we know how it affects Witchah. And so I'm going to talk about the impacts of spayneuter service, excuse me, spayneuter services here shortly, but I think it's like a cat can have two to three litters a year, a dog can have the same, and those are going to continue to populate. We have I mean we're just at a serious brink and it's not until this year that we actually is the first year we have access to affordable spayneuter services. We have several clinics across Witchah, several of our rescue partners that are doing an influx. We had a small amount of that after COVID. Um but this I would say that we're at the first time in our community to have adequate access to those spay and neuter services. And so that is going to have a huge impact on our population regardless of us being able to transfer sick over sick animals which is going to have an uh basically an indication on our youth in Asia rates. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. Other questions? How am I on time? Because it what I Okay [laughter] guys, I tried to fit a lot of information in a short time. [snorts] Pardon me. Okay, let me remember where I was at. Oh, right. So, we right where we were at. Um, this is going to be this is KHS's adoption uh dog adoption page example. So, most of the animals that you are going to see at KHS available for adoption are going to be the animals that have been abandoned at Witchaw Animal Services. Like I said, it's about 4,000 um which is what they took in last year. They do an excellent job of marketing these animals both on their social media channels, uh, websites, at events. What people don't always understand is that KHS offers what's called an open adoptions program. That means that there is no adoption application required. Any adult can come in to adopt any pet they choose for themselves or their family. That means while KHS does try to gather as much information as they can about these animals, they need to show an even temperament. KHS doesn't know the environment that they're going into. For example, if children are present or if there are other animals in the home and more. If a dog or or cat shows that they're not comfortable being handled um or with any type or show warning signs during any type of regular handling, that's a good indicator that that animal is going to need more resources before they're ready for adoption. Because KHS is a high volume open adoptions shelter, an animal with an medical or a behavior need are going to be better suited to our rescue partners where an animal can go into a home with an experienced foster or staff and they based on that animal's breed, behavior or medical need. Animals that KHS cannot transfer over are animals that are posted on our Trello page. These are also sent out in daily emails to our rescue partners, posted in a Facebook group specifically for our rescue partners. That way they have an easy platform for sharing. And they're also posted in a in group Facebook chats that we have with them. A Trell the Trello pages are public sites. They're intended for our rescue partners who help us find positive outcomes for animals that are in need. We have a dog Trello and a cat Trello. As you can see, they feature the different animals photos and they have indicators that let uh rescues know basically at a glance like if it has a microchip, um where the animals located, other important information for them. We also then sorted in columns. So the first column that you see are the animals that are most in need and that essentially means that they are going they are past their deadline that was needs them to be able to leave the facility and they're going to be most at risk. And so that highlights that for our partners and they can click on each of the profiles. They often have different videos, photos, descriptions of the animal, any information that we can provide. They then go they in this column scroll down um and then go side to side. So, I encourage you if you want to visit the site, um it really is a great tool so that our rescue partners can access any information that they want and then be able to ask questions about it. Um anyways, the next one's going to be those direct adoptions we talked about, meaning they're healthy. Um that it's just a matter and and seem friendly. It's just a matter of space and resources. The next is going to be those that show those behavior concerns, warning signs. Those will be considered rescue pool only because we want to make sure that they're going to a safe place for the resources they need. Same with medical. They have a medical needs to go to a rescue. Um and then we have other categories like small puppies, heartworms, etc. Uh the green categories, those that have been tagged by a rescue. And so this information gets updated um several times throughout the day. But that way our rescues have a place that they can go. They know they're getting updated information. They know the status of an animal at any given time. and we can continue to communicate with them through that way. [snorts] So there are many types of different animal welfare organizations. Uh we have shelters, rescues, everybody serves a purpose. All of us have specific niche that we serve and that is truly for the benefit of the greater welfare of animal needs in our community. Rescue groups are an excellent example of this. We have 95 different rescue partners and it's always growing. Rescue group, I'm sorry, rescue groups can vary greatly from a very small nonprofit that manages just a couple dozen animals a year to a few dozen animals, I'm sorry, to large ones who can help thousands a year. They typically depend on foster families to house their animals and they typically have a more indepth adop adoption application. At rescues, they often are asking you for detailed information about your other pets. They require vet references, the makeup of your house, your yard, and oftentimes they even do home inspections. But they also offer things like additional training for their fosters, um training for their adopters, so that that way that matchup between animals and people is set up for success. Our rescue partners also do a lot of other things in Witchah um regarding animal welfare work. For example, Witchaw Animal Services, you guys hear me talk about, they are a huge partner of ours. Not only do they transfer hundreds of animals each year, they operate dozens of programs throughout Witchah. They have neglect and a neglect and abuse investigation team that assists our officers. They provide free spayneuter surgeries, lowcost animal health clinics. They work in neighborhoods. um for hoarding cases, provide free pet food days, pet houses, blankets, you name it. Uh the point being is that each welfare group has their own unique mission. They serve a b um a specific breed, a specific need, um maybe medical needs. And when we work together, that's really what makes us a whole as serving animal welfare in our community. Uh this was when I was referring to just a quick demonstration of how much our daily population in the shelter can fluctuate. On average, we have about 100 cats and 100 dogs in the shelter at any given time. The summer months are always going to be significantly higher and the winters are going to be slower. However, with a hundred new animals brought into the shelter every single week, that population has to turn over quickly. We typically average about 9,000 animals brought into the shelter new each year. The piece I wanted to focus on here was animal re owner I'm sorry owner reclaim rates only 2% of cats unfortunately and 25% of dogs are reclaimed. And although that is the national average across for shelters we can make improvements to our return to owner programs. we can increase those rates even if marginally every life matters. Right? So right now our organization is left with about 85% of the animals brought into the shelter that are abandoned by their owners. >> This is why what >> oh sorry just real quick. >> Um and the slide before as well I I if I remember correctly it was around 14 or 15 animals just a few years ago. Is that correct? Um and do we see this number kind of steadying off? >> Say this one more time. >> Um how okay how does this compare to um right around COVID the year after CO the influx of animals coming through the shelter now and has this steadied off at about 30 new animals a day. >> So there was a de a massive decrease right around COVID. Um lots of things were at play there. I would say uh precoid that this is about the same numbers and then there was a massive decrease and then we've been steadily increasing. >> Okay. So the youth in Asia rate was lower by considerable amount before CO. So is it just we're not seeing people come and take the animals out of the shelter anymore? Is that where >> I think that um as a community as a whole, if you take a look at um how we've evolved with animal welfare kind of nationwide and within our community, it has changed a lot since in the last 20 years and you see a different effect of that. And this is this is why I want to take some time sometime to talk about the the no kill movement and that 10% uh point because that's a major point of attent I'm sorry, excuse me, attention for a lot of organizations and people that don't always understand a lot about um animal sheltering. There is a national organization called Best Friends and their number one um drive, all of their funding, all their lobbying efforts, everything they do is to try to get shelters to be at what's called a no-kill movement. And that kind of started in the '9s. Um and what is really just really drives that attention. And while we needed that at that time because back then shelters were euthanizing about 50% of their animals um it's not necessarily what is what they call um the most compassionate thing in sheltering today. So the intention of you have to think about what the actual needs of the community and those animals are not so much about what that euthanasia rate you need to look at the individual needs of each animal and what's happening in the community overall. So when we built the two shelters or started the idea for those back in 2009, I think that we were euthanizing I know we were euthanizing more than half of all of the animals at both facilities. And the idea for that joint campus was so that we could streamline those activities. We could be focused as individual organizations on our specific missions which helps improve um our ability to complete those missions. And so that's where you started to see that steady increase. And then back when I was at KHS um we were in that 90 percentile rate. But what we also saw in that time was the development of rescue partners um that it was becoming a very popular thing. Rescues had existed before but not like they had before. And so the it was a big community push all over the place where rescue groups were building up, people were starting to foster, adoption was becoming more popular versus it wasn't as popular 10 years prior to that, right? And so we were living in sort of what was a sweet spot is honest honestly what I would say. Um in fact we saw other states that were they were needing animals from us. their populations were so low because some communities have chosen to provide more stricter spayneuter laws um a different type different types of programming and things like that. And so we were in a great place. We were able to transfer animals to Colorado. People were adopting a lot more than they are now. Um, there are only so many people in Witchaw that can take pets and we have been adopting out 5 to 7,000 animal 5,000 to 7,000 animals every year for so many years. Animals don't live that just a short period of time. So, we're looking at a place now now postco where we have a surplus of animals. Too many animals are having puppies and kittens. People don't always want them now that they're adults. And so now we're looking at a very different situation. It's not that we're not just hitting that target mark of that 90%. It's that there are too many animals that are in need in our community that don't have somewhere to go. Does that help explain a little bit? >> It does. So you're saying if we go back 20 years, our euthanasia rate is lower than it was then, but it's higher than it has been in maybe the last 10 years or so because of >> it's it's higher right now in the LA I'd say than it has been in the last 5 years and that it that's really because there's too many animals within our system. Um and there's more initiatives and more programming and things that we need to do to be able to address that. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Emily. have a quick question. Sorry, >> I don't know why your voice keeps coming [laughter] over here to for me. >> Sorry. Um, on the return to owner um rates or situations, >> is any of the non return to their owner, I guess, uh, due to the financial obligation? >> I anticipate. So, um, some of the stuff I'll talk about in our goals is is trying to make improvements to our return to owner programming. Exactly what we're doing to help those owners get, um, take them back. I know that I personally have talked to a lot of people who have stated that they're just not coming back for their animal because they can't afford to feed it or because it gets out too many times and they can't afford their fence. Um, lots of economic reasons are causing people to just not be able to care for their animals or they've lost their house and moved into apartment. That's a common one that I have. >> But I mean like specifically >> our fees. I know. I just wanted to address that. >> I appreciate all of that. [laughter] Yeah. No, I appreciate that. >> And I do think that the fees are associated with that. I um have been working to wave those wherever we can. I've informed our officers that if anyone comes to us and states that they aren't able to afford that to let me know and to let our rescue partners know. We do have um places like Witchaw Animal Action League and some private ladies that work to help these people with the fees if they do truly want to get the animal. So, anytime somebody expresses at the shelter that they would like their animal back, but the fees are specifically what's getting in their way, we try to find a way to help them. >> Okay. Thank you. Mhm. Any more questions before I move on? Pardon me. Okay. Uh, so spayneuter surgeries. I'm always going to be a huge fan of spaying and neutering your pet. I feel like Bob Barker up here. [laughter] The um, so like I said, we're going to have typ a typical amount of 9,000 animals enter the shelter. 90% of those are not going to be spayed and neutered. Like we talked, we've got these great graphics some from some of our partners. Cats can have three litters a year. It does not even in six months can then they start having more kittens on their own. Thousands of puppies and kittens are born in Witchaw every single year. Kansas has hundreds of registered breeders within our state and we have thousands, literally thousands more of backyard breeders that are not registered. So if you add people that are intentionally breeding cats and dogs with more than 50% of pregnancies from cats and dogs being unplanned, we're looking at literally an epidemic, an exponential rate of repopulation, an overpopulation to an already very stressed system. And like I I made a note, but just to cover again, it's it's really we are at a great place to have spay and neuter services and resources available to the public. So I encourage the public. If your pet is not spayed and neutered, absolutely reach out to us. We will connect you with a with re partners. They we have some that will can do it completely free. We have some that can do it as low as $30. And for those that don't income qualify, we have lowcost clinic, mobile clinics that come to our parking lot several times a month and it's like a $100. It's just the responsible thing to do if you're a pet owner [laughter] >> and and on it. >> Sorry. >> Sorry. Um, so they do get spayed or neutered coming out of >> the Kansas Humane Society through our adoption partner. Correct. If somebody chooses to reclaim their pet, we do not spay and neuter it, although I heavily encourage it. So if they get adopted straight out of um Was they get >> that? So KHS is are always our adoption partner. So those direct adopts from Was still go through KHS. Um it's just that they're called direct adoptions. >> How about if they go through rescues? >> The law requires that they spay and neuter them if they're going to adopt them. >> Okay. Thank you. [snorts] >> Okay. So where was I at? Oh yes, [laughter] everybody's been waiting recent projects and changes. So I think that uh when you guys asked for this, it was sparked due to comments due to our more recent progress and changes at WAS. Uh council member Hoisel, I know that you asked that I highlight some of our goals. So first I want to talk about the projects and changes that have recently happened. Um when Captain Purcell was joined was and I was at KHS, I had invited the KState shelter medicine program to review the operations and programs at KHS. Captain Purscell had recently been assigned to WAS and he was eager to make changes. Um so he spent his whole first year learning as much as he could. He even attended shelter medicine classes at Kate. He worked closely with their heads of their veterinarian program and invited students to under their professor's supervision to complete an audit and recommendations for the Witchaw animal shelter. He then worked to implement many of these recommendations um as he could while working on other projects. So, those included getting Wi-Fi installed at the shelter, which I know may seem small, but it's a huge deal because there aren't mobile services in our shelter walls. And having access to internet is and to those devices is critical for many of the other changes that we need to do to improve our efficiency and effectiveness. Um, he also had a dishwasher installed, which saves hours daily from handwashing dishes and improving sanitation. He had a new chemical distribution in system installed that is super important for us killing zudonic diseases specifically. It's uh one of the huge accomplishments that he started was starting vaccinations for animals on intake at WS. This has exponentially reduced disease for animals at both shelters. He also completed massive changes in our record management systems, moving the shelter from time-consuming and error-prone paper processes to utilizing our software in meaningful ways. He spent significant time improving the integrity of our data and reporting system. Over the years at WAS, leadership has changed uh pretty often just due to the nature of how the police department operates. Um but once software changes are made the that the different leadership uh individuals would create um sometimes these changes were made without understanding the subsequent impact of the data streams later on and then how that would report or how that would impact our reports and tracking later. These were things that were always well-intentioned like creating more subcategories but without consistency over the years and a deep understanding of our specific software. Sometimes it made things messy and errorprone. So he began on what was a very long journey and will continue to be for us on improving the use of our software. He and I have continued this work in several areas of software and operations. We've began providing intentional quarterly trainings with staff to improve job knowledge and improve practices. Some of the projects that I've taken on my own include uh requesting cell phones for our ACOs. This will improve or this has improved our picture quality, the speed of our investigations in the field and will improve our return to owner opportunities. I've revised our hiring and hiring, testing, onboarding, and re-implemented weekly staff meetings. We have been onboarding our newer administrative aid that you guys provided for us who has an essential role in our rescue communications. Um she's been addressing a lot of inventory issues which is streamlining our ability to care for animals and assisting in many of my major projects. We have begun field equipment audits and added new tools to our disposal. I completed initial audits on our shelter cleaning procedures, implemented new procedures for um and onboarded our new kennel team. We are still working through changes and finding of course the best way to effectively and efficiently complete these duties um and plan to make additional revisions as they come up. The things that we've accomplished um still require monitoring and adjustments. uh changing operations in a 24-hour facility that works with the public and live animals requires time to see the true outcome um and really requires our ability to adapt and adjust as needed. >> What is your staffing level with available positions right now? [snorts] >> What um I have two open positions currently and um we've completed interviews. They should be hired shortly. >> Is that kennel tech? >> Animal control officers. >> Animal control. Yeah, we the last um animal control officer we hired uh had a personal uh medical issue and um the we had a 30-year retirement celebrated last week. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. [snorts] So, projects I'm actively working on include a mobile application of our software for the accoes that will increase our efficiency and improve the documentation we are able to complete. I'm still in the process of working on communication materials and improving those information systems for the public. A project that Purcell started was a joint venture with the Kansas Humane Society um to speed up our intakes and vaccinations and animal assessments. Our first shot at that new protocol and its imple implementations had some challenges due to the physical constraints at WAS and the high volume of intakes that we have we face. So, uh, Erin and I have been working and our teams on, um, our next set of revisions, which we hope to implement soon. I'm working on an owner resource center in the lobby at Witchaw Animal Services and exploring more return to o owner programs to increase those return to owner rates. We're in early development of a new field training protocol for our ACOs. And this November, we'll be starting on uh training and protocol development for animal abuse and neglect investigations. We're excited for our new pressure washer systems to be installed. I can't tell you how pro well great properly functioning equipment can make in our ability to do our jobs. [laughter] As you can see, we have a lot going on and our priorities remain with the animals that and the people that are in need every single day um in those more emergent situations. I do have to manage my own excitement and my own patience um because I I have to ensure that the pace of these changes are um in com you know in order with normal change management practices I tend to run a little bit faster than what is actually feasible in an organization. Uh so each of these projects are going to take some time to complete but I'm looking forward to the long-term impact that they're going to have for us. Where are we in the um improvements that the state wanted us to make? Are we just about through with that? >> Could you I don't know why I'm having trouble hearing you. Could you say that one more time? >> Sorry. Um where are we with um the changes at the state are >> at the state? >> Yeah. >> You mean the regulations we were just talking about with Aaron? >> Uh no, the ones um the kennels. Yeah. >> Yeah. We're finishing our last set of kennels uh this week actually. So hopefully that will be cured and dried and we'll be operating at normal capacity in about two weeks. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> I'm I'm going to interrupt real quick. >> Absolutely. >> Um we were scheduled till 11:00 today. Running a little long. Um with the councils will go to 11:30. We get a little bit of a people's and places wrap this up and then we can go to people's and places. Would that be all right? >> Yep. The my next slide is my last slide. >> Yeah. If Mike would stop talking so much, >> we had till 11:00 be the exception, but we can go if we go 11:30, I think we so >> I apologize, Vice Mayor. Um, so Shannon's contacted the search committee um for the executive session and so they're aware that we're running a little bit late and they're prepared to go at 11:30. >> Okay. So, would that require a motion? >> No. No. Okay. >> No. No. Okay. So, we we'll kind of plan on 11:30 then. >> Okay. Continue quickly. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. [laughter] >> Pardon me. Um Okay. So, future projects. The a few of the projects I want to focus on in the future include in continued audits and optimization of each department. Some of our greatest opportunities to save more animal lives and help more people are going to be improving the efficiency and effectiveness with the staff and the tools that we do have. We have a tool with our software called QuickKel um that will help us improve the accuracy and speed of a lot of our data entry and manual processes. We're going to be focusing on return to owner rates in the field as well, which is uh a different type of return to owner program. Um, and looking at, like I said, helping people avoid related fees if we can return them in the field versus bringing them back into the shelter. We would like to improve the methods of which people can have access to important information that they need. Researching and addressing our cat overpopulation concerns is a big goal of mine. Implementing an animal enrichment program and of course completing the revision of our standard operating procedures and the development of new training materials. Once we can ensure that our staff are operating with clarity and efficiency, we plan to continue our exploration of a volunteer program to see if there are ways we can amplify um those resources through that. So that's all I've got guys. I appreciate it. Are there any final questions? >> Any final questions, Mike? >> I'm just disappointed that you didn't bring one of the dogs today like we normally get during the press conference. >> Guys, how am I supposed to manage the talking and the dogs? [laughter] >> Oh, I could have I could have taken the dog for us. Thank you for your presentation. >> Next time. >> Thank you for your presentation. I know it's been a big topic, so we appreciate it. And we do appreciate all the questions too. >> Absolutely. Thank you guys. >> Okay. >> Thanks, city manager. Um, Vice Mayor and Council, our last presentation uh of the day is from Director Scott Whittle, MAPD, on places for people. Scott's agreed to cut out the bad joke so we can get there on time. >> Oh, that was the best part. >> All right, good morning everyone. Um, I know time is of the essence, so I'll try and uh keep this ending on by 11:30 if possible. So Scott Wadel from the planning department here to present on the place for people plan. So this is a two-part presentation. We'll cover part one today. Part two will be for a later date. As part of part one, we'll cover the purpose, the background, the return on we'll go over a return on investment for places for people implementation and then we'll also talk about the land bank. And then for part two, we'll cover a whole host of other implementation initiatives. Sound good? >> Okay. because if not I got to make something up that yeah okay so uh the purpose for today we'll provide an update on the implementation status it'll be an opportunity for you all of course to ask questions provide feedback and then it's also a chance to consider next steps okay so we'll start out with the background talk about the comprehensive plan so the community investments plan is the comprehensive plan as you're well aware for Witchaw and Cedric County it has an infrastructure focus it also uh recommends an urban infill strategy and presents the concept of an established central area. So the purpose of the urban infill strategy is really uh to focus and encourage infill in the established central area and especially in areas of opportunity and I'll show you a map that shows where these are located and those are locations with higher than average vacant parcels, nuisance complaints and other items. So here's the map of the established central area. This is really the areas of Witchdaw generally that were constructed about the 1960s or before. So you can see it's pretty expansive. So that was the comprehensive plan. So the comprehensive plan leads to the creation of the places for people plan which is the urban infill strategy. The places for people plan actually consists of multiple documents. So there's the vision book and then there's the investment strategy, zoning recommendations, walkable development book and then even appendices beyond that and you can find all of those on our website. So there's a vision statement that's contained within uh the place for people plan and I think it's something that hopefully would resonate with a lot of folks. It's a place for people provides for movement of people in variety of means. Uh creation of accessible community, strong neighborhoods, vibrant centers and uh rem reimagining of urban areas that advance the economy and revitalize the community. So in order to implement the vision statement, there are six strategies that are identified in the place for people plan and you can see those here. Walkable neighborhoods, improving connectivity, diversity of housing are some of them. In addition, there are a number of targets that are identified in the plan and those are just to measure success at implementing the plan. In addition, the place for people plan also introduces the concept of the neighborhood cycles in Witchaw and these extend from formative to maturing neighborhoods. And the difference is is that in a formative neighborhood, housing prices are pretty affordable. Uh private investment is probably not happening to a large degree. uh sometimes because conditions are challenging. All the way on the other end of the spectrum are maturing neighborhoods. These are where property values are generally high, private investment is occurring without any assistance and those have different implications when we talk about infill and revitalization efforts. In addition, the places for people plan identifies the concept of nodes. And on this map, uh you'll see the areas of stability and areas of opportunity that are also identified. The purple areas being the areas of stability, the pink areas being the areas of opportunity. So, because it's focused on walkable development, the places for people plan has quite a bit of information about how to create and invest in places to make more walkable environments and those include investments and changes in streets, public spaces, buildings, and frontages. When it comes to buildings, there are different recommendations for what types of buildings should be located in what different areas. And so you'll see there's a neighborhood hub, community core, regional center, and each of those have nodes, transition areas, and edges. And what that means in more of a real world scenario is here's an illustration just for illustration purposes. And it shows the nodes, transition, and edges in a particular area. So then if we overlay the streets over this, so we have different types of streets, not just arterials and collectors, but in this case, the plan goes at length to say this is a residential connector. This is a mixeduse main, different residential neighborhood streets. In addition, we overlay the parks and recreation spaces. And then ultimately it provides us a framework for creating and developing a walkable uh community in this location. So you can see where the buildings address the street and where they're located relative to other structures and services. Now the places for people plan uh really emphasizes uh that there are places for both the public and the private sector to work together to create walkable places uh for the public infrastructure and investment for the private sector. Some of that comes down to the way that things are designed and where investment occurs. So that's the background on the plan where the place for people plan came from. So it's from the comprehensive plan. A little bit about what's inside the place for people plan. Now we'll move on to return on investment. So there are lots of benefits from existing uh from investing in existing neighborhoods and creating walkable places. Uh they range from you can see social benefits. Having more neighbors, you can establish more long-term relationships with folks, build community, health benefits in terms of access to healthy foods, more activity. There's efficiency in terms of government services that are provided as well as reducing pressures on outward growth in agricultural lands. But the one that I wanted to focus on today is the financial benefits because I think uh those are not often talked about. So the city has expenses for providing services. um talked about some of those today with infrastructure and water and sewer. Here's a table from the general fund and it shows the top four are about 83% of the general fund expenses. And the reason why I highlighted those is because these are very much provided in a geographic sense. So a fire station can only provide so much coverage for so much area. Likewise, a police beat can only be so large because a patrol can only cover so much space. So in many ways the costs for the city are measured in in an area in terms of square foot or acre. Likewise so is pro property productivity terms of revenues. So one of the most important sources of revenues for the city of which is property tax. You'll see that it's the second largest on this chart next to charges for services which I believe really encompasses water and sewer payments. So property tax is fairly significant for the city of Witchtop. But what does that mean on an individual basis and where do property taxes come from? So this is a Ronald Reagan building. This is county owned. So they I don't believe they pay taxes. But just for illustration, um you'll notice that there are two big factors when it comes to property values and taxes. And those are the land value and the building or improvement value. So in almost every case, the building or improvement value will be much greater than the land value. Much much greater. So, in this case, you can see that the land is valued at approximately $670,000, but the improvement or building value is $5.5 million or I'm so sorry, 5,547. No, it's 5.5. Sorry, I just got to double check just in case. So, what does that mean when we talk about the citywide basis? So, here's an illustration that the planning department created some time ago. It's a little bit long in the tooth now, but it shows property values per acre across the city. And you'll notice that downtown there's some really tall spikes. The darker colors and taller spikes represent greater value. The lighter colors and the lower spikes represent lower values. So, you can see that downtown is particularly valuable when it comes to value per square foot or value per acre. Likewise, there are some places on the edge of town that also have high values. Here's a more recent study that was done by Dr. Guo at WSU. He produced a mapping value in Sedick County which you can find online. Uh this so this map is taken from there. It shows pretty much the same thing which is that there are higher concentrations of property values in certain areas and again value per square foot value per acre >> is then as per property tax dollar. >> Yes sir. >> So does that include the Schmidt? >> Uh yes it is included. Those properties are included. I don't believe that that's factored in because this is just based on how much is it assessed divided by the acreage that it occupies. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So here's an example about the power of infill. So this is uh something that was done I believe around 2021. So the numbers a little bit older but this is an area near Grove. Uh 15th Streets on the north, 14th streets on the south. In this location we've got two blocks. There are 43 parcels. Of the 43 part parcels, 10 of them are vacant. So the total appraised value of this area, these two blocks, is just under $800,000. And that averages out to about $18,000 per property. If we're able to get infill development to take place here, and these are mod if modest homes come in and and infills done with modest homes, it would increase the property values by 97%. And that is not because it raises the taxes of the adjoining properties. It is because you've got new development, housing development that's taken place in this location. What happens is the total appraised value more than doubles to 1.5 million $ 1.5 million and the average appraised value goes up to $35,000. That's the power of infill. The other thing that you should know is that these properties are already served by fire. They're served by police. They're served by infrastructure, so there's not additional costs, but the city is recouping additional property taxes out of them. >> Scott, in this example right here that you have obviously, what was it? 10 vacant lots. These are not city-owned lots though, correct? >> Nope. >> Can you explain that because I think a lot of folks will see uh these vacant lots and they assume that they are city of Witchaw property. Um, we've had several speakers that have spoken about uh downtown Witchah and seeing vacant buildings. Many of those buildings are not owned by the city of Witchah. Therefore, can you explain that to folks because I I think they often see vacancy and then they assume it's ours. >> Yeah. Um, and I I can understand why people might have that assumption, but uh the majority of vacant properties in the city, I would say overwhelming majority are not owned by the city. Those that are owned by the city generally are up for sale. If there's not a department that's going to use them or a city use, they're available. You can observe them on and see them on the uh city's website and they've got information about the properties. What happens sometimes in neighborhoods is that if there's a house uh that's gotten to the point where it's no longer healthy, it's not habitable, maybe a fire took place in there. As you're well aware, sometimes the city uses funding to demolish the home and then there will be uh fees that are assessed to the property. So, I think sometimes people see the property, they know that city action is taken there, they assume that the city owns it, but in this case, the city does not, but there are fees that are attached to that property. So in the future if someone was to purchase it or try to develop it, those fees would be recouped. So hopefully that's helpful. There's a lot more to talk about when it comes to the city and property, but in a nutshell, just an example. So the next example, so the first one there was about infill and really the power of infill. The second one is going to be about uh walkable development and what that can mean for the city. So we've got two areas that we're going to compare and contrast. This is the area over by Wesley, so central and hillside. And there's nothing particular about this location. I just use it as an example. So, it's fairly vibrant, right? You got a McDonald's, Jimmy John's, Chipotle. I think I got dinner from Chipotle last night, actually. But, um, and there's lots of people coming and going, right? And it's very vibrant. There's lots going on. The second one, and this is back in time a little bit. This is back, this is a block across from East High. This is where Rey is located. They had renovated the area on the west end. I don't think they had expanded quite yet. There's a number of buildings that haven't been renovated. They have today, but at this time they hadn't been renovated. So, I think they were mostly storage. There's not a lot really happening there. There's a music shop on the end of the block. Here's what's so important about this, and this is kind of the leadin of what we've discussed as a leadin to this. So, in terms of value per acre, again, that's what we're using to measure, right? The Revery block has a value of $260,000 per acre. The Wesley kind of fast food areas near Wesley has a value of $220,000 per acre as it is in this example. So the Revery Block again, most of the build some of those buildings used for storage. Not a lot of revitalization that's taken place there. The value is still much higher per acre than it is at the other one. And the reason why I'll tell you the reason why this is generally when I ask a question but I'll tell you why. The reason why is because again when you get property taxes where are the two most compon valuable components? Land and building or improvement value. Even the rey the revery block has more buildings. So it's because they have more building they have more building value which is worth way more than land value. On the opposite side there's more parking lots at the Wesley spot. means less buildings, less value. Okay, so that's return on investment. Now we're going to transition to implementation. So for the places for people plan, there were three initiatives that we focused on when it came to implementation uh right out of the gate and those were zoning, land bank, and the incentives and nodes. So uh this is not comprehensive, but this is to just show illustratively that there are multiple initiatives and there are different stages, right? Some have had a lot of effort in the past. Some are still ongoing and then some are coming up. So land bank is one that we're going to focus on today. This is really started in 2020 is one of the big three. So again back to the vision of place for people plan. It's strong neighborhoods, vibrant centers, strong economy and the land bank helps accomplish that because in the plan this is the page from the plan. There are a number of strategies. It helps to accomplish number four which is creating tools and target incentives to cause infill and redevelopment to occur in desired areas. So what is a land bank? I know you all know but just in a quick recap is that it's an entity focused on the conversion of land for productive use and it's a government entity and often those lands are vacant, they're abandoned, there's tax delinquency. So how is this done? Well, the state of Kansas allows for the creation of a land bank, and it's got a number of unique things that it can do, but most especially the most unique thing is that it can abate back taxes, not just for the city of Witchaw, but for other government entities as well. It can do these other things, but these are things that the city can also do on its own. Really, that abatement of back taxes is is very unique. So, when the land bank, >> can we go back to that abatement of taxes? So, abatement of city taxes. What about county taxes, USD259 taxes, state taxes? Can you address that? >> Yes. So, the answer is yes for all of those. That's my understanding. So, um so that's what's really unique about this tool is that it has that ability. >> Does county abate those taxes anyways, most of them before a tax sale. >> Um I think that the county puts properties up for sale and then they recoup whatever they can, >> but I'll defer to So, so I'll jump in here a minute. So, This is the design structure of land banks, right? Across the nation, properties that go into tax sale. Generally speaking, they set the the tax sale value at the back taxes that are owed. Okay? So if a property has back taxes owed to city county school district, they set the sale price for the back taxes owed so that all the taxing jurisdictions collect those back taxes owed when a property goes into foreclosure goes into tax sale. >> It doesn't include abatements though, right? Necessarily >> in other states and county communities. Yes, it does. So, so when they go to tax sale, the way that they can transfer ownership is by somebody coming in and purchasing the property, retiring or paying off all of those back taxes owed, which includes assessments and everything else. That's the general land bank model. In Kansas, there is a difference of opinion and interpretation of state law. When the county lists the property for tax sale, the county can in essence set the value of whatever they want to start the tax sale out. Could be a dollar, right? And so depending on who purchases the property through tax sale, in essence, those back taxes are are unreovered or cancelled depending on what the property is purchased for. Does that make sense? >> And that's one of the main barriers towards having an effective land bank here. The way it's currently designed. >> Correct. The way the state statute's written, it's left up to interpretation. We think it could be interpreted one way. County interprets it interprets it differently. Um, so in essence, the way under Kansas law, the properties as they're sold at tax sale, those back taxes are being cancelled or may be cancelled today. There are we we've been doing some research. There has been money that has been cancelled. There has been back taxes that have been cancelled as a result of those tax sales and the those properties being sold for less than the back taxes owed. And that's taxes and abatements that we don't recoup. >> That's correct. Yeah. >> Right. Because we just had a property in my district and it had the house had been demoed. Anyways, they owed like the back taxes plus all of the abatements and the demo was like close to $30,000 and I think it actually sold for like 15. So, you know, I don't know. It's hard. And to your point, right, the city's levy is only a fraction of that. County >> as well as the school district is also missing out on some of those back taxes. Okay. So um in terms of the creation of landbank, there were a number of different inputs and information that were used uh to inform how it was created as well as a number of documents that were drafted and created and these were used so that people would understand what the land bank was for and how it would operate. So in terms of policies and procedures, there are a number of them that are in place for the land bank. Its focus is, as you know, on the established central area. Its priorities are affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization. So, it can work on more than just affordable housing, but that certainly is a focus of it. In terms of the process, starting in May of 2021, the city council approved it. Uh then we moved to the first board of trustee meeting later on that year. In 2022, housing community services was really had oversight of the land bank. And then in later that year a focus area was defined. The focus area was determined to be 9inth street to 17th street and uh Grove to hillside and this is in part because of the adjacency and momentum with the rock thetolock development in the area. In terms of funding, the city allocated CDBG funding for that. Uh there were a number of requirements that come with that funding in terms of uh who it benefits. It's got to be low and moderate income persons. Uh prevention, it's got to be for prevention or elimination of blight. And it needs to address community development needs, especially those with particular urgency. In terms of properties, there were two properties that were acquired. These were a pilot project. Uh they had previously been acquired and cleared with CDBG funds and ultimately they were sold to Habitat for Humanity. Likewise, there were two properties that were considered but not acquired. One of these was right adjacent to I135 and there were noise issues. Uh the second one was in plain view and that was uh not acquired because of a lack of developer interest because of course if the land bank acquires a property then it's got carrying costs in terms of maintenance and oversight security. >> So the one in plain view was that also offered to the nonprofits? >> I believe yes it was and I believe it's because those nonprofits didn't show any interest in that property that it was not pursued further. >> Okay. So the land bank has been a uh significant and important learning opportunity. Um you know there hasn't been one here at the city prior nor has there been one in the region is my understanding. So as part of this um some of the challenges that emerged were contacting property owners. These are properties you know that are vacant maybe they're delinquent on taxes. Uh there's substantial challenges with communicating with the property owners. Um also the tax foreclosure sale. uh that item's been discussed but uh that was a challenge as well as well as the funding use constraints uh so the CDBG dollars are very valuable at the same time uh there are constraints that are attached to those uh those include also a limitation on administrative uh funding that can be used and then as well staffing and administrating uh the project has been significant learning curve on that as well and also a challenge because these are some difficult ch uh properties to kind of go through all the property the uh ownership issues and other legal concerns. So in terms of next steps, uh there's a variety of options. These are not mutually exclusive, but just wanted to bring some up for discussion. Our first option is to dissolve the land bank. So many of the functions could be carried out by the city. However, we as pointed out before, forgiveness of non- city taxes could not. Uh the land bank could be reestablished pretty quickly because we've got all the documents and the information. Another option is to diversify the funding source. So this would provide funding other than the CDBG funding and those could be used for the activities that of course the CDBG funding has limitations on. Another option is to maintain the land bank as is uh but consider adjusting the meeting frequency uh for the board. And then uh along with this uh we could continue efforts with Cedric County and the state to see about uh changing or improving the ability of the land bank to acquire properties during the tax sale. So those are just a few options. Just wanted to throw those out there for consideration. Um that really concludes the presentation. [clears throat] Again, next time we'll have an opportunity to go through more of the implementation items. There's a whole host of them. So, should be a good discussion. And with that, I'll stand for any questions. >> Go ahead. >> I've talked enough, but you can go first. [laughter] >> Um, I don't have any questions. I just think, um, I would suggest a blend of diversifying the funding source as well as maintaining the land bank. that way conversations can continue with Cedric County and hopefully get to a point where the land bank can be more effective. Um then also throwing out something controversial. I know when we started this um process, the former land bank, there was some concern from some in the public of the land bank competing at the tax sale with the private sector. um after going to city to city in Detroit and just kind of seeing how their efforts have been working. I think that that should be considered. If the land bank has properties that can be offered to folks building homes, whether it's single family, duplex, triplex, whatever, um I think that makes it more attractive. And right now what it's been doing and and the pilot properties, great area adjacent to Rock the Block, I get it. But if there's not a real bank of properties in there to offer folks who are looking to build homes in community, um you see a few things as an issue. One of them is there's one well-known person who will go to tax sale and buy these properties for $50 or $100 and then on the back end sell them for5 to 10,000 and that's not helping build our community out. That's keeping vacant lots just so that person can make a profit. And I think the land bank should be able to compete in that. We'll see more homes built, more families in these places if they do. >> Quick question, Scott. This would Yes, sir. I think this ties into the places to people. You and I have talked multiple times about bulk zoning, especially in Deleno when we talk about walkability, whether that be central business district bulk zoning along Douglas or even multifamily by right zoning behind there. Are there any updates to our conversations? Yes, sir. And uh I owe you an email on that one, so my apologies. But uh where we're at with that is that we've got uh two maps for you to consider and those will be options for you. One uh is constrained to the u the common consumption area and then the second one is a larger area. Um they're just for illustration purposes and discussion purposes. So we'll bring those to you and then it uh then we'll look to you in terms of next steps. >> Great. I look forward to seeing it. Thank you. >> Sure. All right. >> Um, yeah, just a quick comment. Um, I agree with council member Johnson about wanting to continue it in some form. Have has a land bank came back with any recommendations. >> You know, I am going to defer to folks from housing or >> so I can tell you that as of right now, the land bank is um on sort of a three meeting a year schedule. even that is probably a lot at this point um without changes with county or legislature. There's not a lot of work product um for them to do. And so when we start talking about diversifying funding sources um one of the things we ought to continue to talk about with them and that's what you saw in this of reconsider kind of meeting frequency. Maybe it's one time a year, right? uh if they exist, they need to continue to at least meet once a year to provide an annual report. That annual report may be a one-page document that no progress was made or but that was kind of the intent behind those recommendations that if you want to keep the structure in and organization intact as it ex Okay, fine. We're probably going to have to scale back the meeting frequency, find some alternative funding sources, community development block grant, not necessarily uh the greatest funding source for something like that. May have to look at general fund dollars or otherwise uh to continue to kind of keep them on life support is probably not the the best term, but >> keep them active. >> Keep them active. But we we definitely need to next year re revisit their frequency and kind of how we're going to continue to staff and fund developing an agenda work product and a report those kind of things. So >> okay. Yeah. I just like to hear what their thoughts are and possible changes. I know we're looking at potentially combining some boards here later on too. So that might be another option. >> I think the recommendations reflect their desires. We had talked at one point in time about combining them with the affordable housing. Unfortunately, sort of statutoily the way land banks are structured, they kind of have to remain independent and on their own. And so, we'll continue to explore that in the next couple months. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I am for consolidating some of these boards uh specifically because there's not a lot of activity and I know how much staff time it takes to gather meetings, to gather notes, etc. Um, and so I would be in favor of even consolidation to that affordable housing group or a new name where it could be part of the land bank. So I I don't know what the structure would look like. That would be a legal question. Um, but again, consolidation of some of these boards. I also want to take into account that a lot of these boards are actually 100% volunteer. So these are all people in our community that are spending their time and I want to make sure that their time is um used appropriately and so if really the uh barrier is at the other government level system so county and the legislature should we not have I know that tomorrow we're having an onbunk but no one has brought that up as a topic um for discussion. Um, so I would say that if that's truly the will of some of these council members, then that could be a topic of conversation to be brought up. Um, tomorrow's onbunk is regarding fire training and the second topic is regarding Department of Corrections decrease in funding for our county. And so those are two major topics, but if someone in on the council wants to take that as their lead, more than welcome to have that conversation. But if I don't see that, I would say that it would be uh prudent to consolidate uh boards. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Scott. >> Any further comments, council members? I see none. Thank you for the three workshop items. We will now go into executive session for 30 minutes to receive information from the city manager uh selection committee and the city manager recruitment consultant about candidates for the city manager position pursuant to KSA75-4319B1. Uh this is for legal uh this is to discuss personnel matters of non-elected personnel. The executive session is required to protect the privacy interests of an identifiable individual. The executive session will begin at let's have five minutes >> 11:40 >> 11:40 a.m. and we shall return at 1210 p.m. 30 minutes. >> Okay. >> Motion >> second. >> Second. Uh all those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. All those opposed same sign. Motion passes 70. and mayor and council. I believe this executive session will be held in