receive for not violating City policies under the proposed new fop contract police will receive the additional pay whether they violate the city policies or not the the code of conduct standard pay provision has been stricken from the contract that we asking you to approve so that process the code of conduct process and language will no longer exist within the contract so this is not true blue of the suspension that process will no longer exist okay because my concern is the way that it reads is we're still rewarding people for potentially doing something bad or or whatever is the way that I read it and I've already received a few messages this morning so I wanted to try to clear that up I know WPD along with City leadership has worked really hard to try to change some of the culture and I certainly don't want it to appear that we're going backwards yeah I would say um the the feedback we've received from the membership is that Chief Sullivan is taking uh Swift action related to violations of our policies consistent action related to violation of our policies and regulations and fair action related to our VI violations of our policies and regulations um consistent feedback we've heard from the members of our department is that when Chief Sullivan says if you don't meet the standards that's going to be addressed that that is happening uh and while uh people have been disciplined because of violating policies and regulations uh the general membership of our organization has seen that we have written standards and we have standards for a reason and if you're not meeting those it's going to be addressed either through education or through discipline um we don't enjoy disciplining employees I don't think any manager does we understand that it's a part of doing business um but the code of conduct standard pay provision within the contract will cease to exist so there will no longer be the opportunity for someone who is going to be disciplined to give up or forfeit this additional compensation in lie of some sort of discipline okay I appreciate that I don't know how many people watch our Council meetings or just read the headlines of of papers that I wanted to give an opportunity to explain that um so I think that's all my questions for now thank you I appreciate the opportunity for clarification there's many other things that uh should be clarified as well so thank you council member John stun thank you mayor question for director Hood slide 33 that slide okay fincial consideration yeah um maybe that's not the right slide but there there is an an additional 10 hours in in 26 an additional 10 hours of pay I think it was vacation hour 32 vacation yes thank you thank you in in 2026 m is is the amount 1.8 million is that included additional cost of having the staff those vacation hours maybe I'm not saying it clearly but is is that is that benefit which will require you to have someone to cover that shift since on vacation is that included in the mil May me um council member it is not uh department does not Trad back fill into vacation spots they try to control Staffing on the street based on the schedules and so they try not to get to a point where they're understaffed on the street okay which gets more difficult when they're vacant positions right okay thank you council member Johnson thank you mayor um either Jason or Captain Moses for those who don't know in the public what does me and confir mean and can you EXP explain that that process um that might be better answered by legal good morning uh city council Mike finger Labor Relations attorney so the meet and confer process is mandated by state law with regard to uh municipalities that adhere to the Public Employee employer Relations Act um uh we cannot move unilaterally on conditions that affect employment without first meeting and conferring with uh our unions so if we want to make a change we can't do so unilaterally we got to meet and confer with an open mind try to reach consensus with workers before we take action now if through the meet and confer process we can't reach consensus then there is an impass process that we can take place take part in uh that would involve State oversight and mandatory mediation stuff like that okay thank you council member hoisel thank you mayor um yeah I just want to follow through real quick on some other uh Jensen Hughes um implementations here uh specifically the Cod of conduct section uh if we could just get like a little brief where we're at with it um kind of next steps as far as um excessive force yes so we I I spoke to this a little bit last week you know culturally we brought on training for the entire department related to uh duty to intervene uh through able uh which I misspoke last week is not a perf uh init initiative it's actually a National Organization of black law enforcement initiative uh but it spoke to the entire agency the chief all the way down to recruit officers about the duty to intervene when you see misconduct occurring Additionally you know we're seeking accreditation uh at the state level for the first time in our agency's history and there are accreditation standards related to duty to intervene um so we are we're working on language through the meet and confer process that meets the objectives of the community of of executive staff and is clear enough to membership uh because when we talk about regulations and policy these are things that conceivably if someone doesn't do what we're saying they need to do it could result in discipline so we want to make sure it's very clear the expectations to everybody uh we've built a culture of that and we've seen it we've seen where officers are reporting perceived misconduct uh reporting concerns to their supervision uh and we have to work through the meet and confer process to to get all of those things in place we are doing a line item review of our regulations um line by line myself uh the lieutenant and Professional Standards Lieutenant Hutchin and the Fraternal Order police leadership are sitting in a room and going line by line through every regulation that we have in our regulation manual um which is a lot to ensure that they're clear add any more specific language as recommended by Jensen Hughes and then determine what an appropriate level of discipline would be for a first offense for that item after we do that we're going to go through and we're going to look at our discipline Matrix based on that conversation look at the discipline Matrix and figure out a way that we can uh make the discipline Matrix more streamlined which is also a Jensen Hughes recommendation so they kind of we have a plan and we're following that plan but we've got to do things uh in the right order Okay so so excessive force and discipline Matrix are both meet and confer right now and you're meeting with fop and others to to handle that one um is that the same with the conduct Unbecoming yes and immediate reporting as well that's duty to intervene Y and then um use of force yes okay so those are all going through meet and confer current yes okay thank you any further questions for staff I just have one uh slide number 31 was about maternity and paternity leave uh maybe it's HR result of this kind of issue would be able to use FMLA which is unpaid protection um but a we do not have a Citywide maternity and paternity leave policy thank you Jason you're welcome I see no further questions for staff we will now open it up for public comment please state your name name your address and you will have 5 minutes to address the council hello Faith Martin uh Vice chair wiar Rachel profiling board um we've spoken many times and I believe last night our chair uh mailed you a document so I'm not going to go through all of the things in that document um but before I do that I kind of just want to give some comments about what was already said um practice is not policy um so for example uh someone was trying to make a complaint and they asked me to be their Advocate and the detective wouldn't allow me in so yes we got the commander of that department to finally let that detective have us come in so that they could have an advocate but I think it's important to codify those policies not just have practice uh another example of that would be uh the racial profiling board worked with a previous commander of Professional Standards to create letters of disposition because the community was complaining they didn't understand what happened after they made a complaint they didn't know how to follow up on it they didn't know who was if it would what had happened with it so we drafted four separate letters to increase the communication process um that did not become codified and that practice is not followed followed now so I think it's important that we codify things that we say are important and not just say that practice um I'm also concerned about the 10 hours of vacation because we didn't change uh the recommendation that suspension not be used in lie of or a vacation not be used in lie of suspension so now we're increasing vacation hours and since they're allowed to use vacation instead of get suspended they have 10 more hours to use for that um so that's concerning as well uh we appreciate and respect the collective bargaining process and again we try to not get in the middle of that process but we're concerned that there are so many things that for two years have been discussed and are still in the meet and confer process yet we're willing to approve a contract I please ask that you delay approving the contract until we're able to get some more of the recommendations implemented uh as taxpayers the amount of money that's being um put into this uh contract is concerning and all we ask is more accountability more transparency and more truth when citizens have that information it helps us build those relationships between uh WPD in the city and the community and that's one of our major goals in the racial profiling board is to strengthen those relationships thank you I stand for any questions council member hoisel we will continue with public comment Twilight Purity I live in district one in the Polo Club I know you guys are probably tired of hearing from me and frankly I'm tired of coming up here I keep coming because people in the community are watching and paying attention I I have been stopped at Sam's Club I've been stopped in would youal wine and more people thanking me for what I do these are people of color so people are paying attention I'm frustrated that we're going into this process fop and to my knowledge none of you have asked like to meet with the racial profiling advisory Bo board they've been studying this and I know you can't all meet with us or maybe just three of you but five five minutes up here from two or three people is not enough for you to understand the depth of our concerns the other thing that happens is the last person who gets the word is usually the one who wins right so we walk out of here we've set our piece and then you may follow up with somebody in WPD they get the last word they're going to refute things maybe you could get us together and have a meaningful conversation what's going on in the police department maybe it's getting better maybe it isn't I haven't seen measures a lot of time when concerns are brought up about the police department kind of the blanket statement is oh well we have a Citizens review board I'm here to tell you the citizens review board is not providing the oversight that I think you probably imagine and I can say this with a little bit of authority since January of 2021 nobody in the community has attended more crb meetings than I have and that includes the current chairman of that board he has because of many outside things that he has gone on in his life for two years he missed half or nearly half of the board meetings I attended the crb for a year and a half before I was appointed my appointment was less than two years which is fine I still go to the meetings but many times now since the new board has come on place um there's not a quorum I explained last week how um data the amount of data that the crb receives now is minimal compared to what it was when I started uh attending meetings two and a half I have two and a half more minutes it's not enough to explain everything that's going on I do want to refute I have a lot of respect for Captain Aaron Moses a lot of respect for him but I want to refute a couple of things that he said last week when I talked about Jensen Hughes and asked about over oversight who provides the authority that it's okay to not meet a recommendation oh and by the way I think there's three recommendations that are not on the dashboard but who who's Authority and the first one on the dashboard is about um an assistant chief and Captain Moses said that well the chief can decide his own Staffing well I take exception with that the chief didn't um pay for the Jensen Hughes report the city did the city in myew has a responsibility to make sure that everything is being done according to Jensen Hughes and there's not I what I feel like is happening with the dashboard is it's the student grading the papers where's the teacher where's the oversight here um the other thing that um the department is really proud of and that's this training that everybody had on the duty to intervene intervene where's the data is that training making difference I don't know but they're they're proud that they've done it but is it effective I don't know do you know are you getting what you pay for um another issue that I've seen on the crb is and this is um for the last two and a half years now when a crb member would ask something of the um officer who's in charge charge of you know doing the presentations and running the meetings a lot of times they would say I don't know I'd get back to you and the followup was rarely rarely there it's frustrating I think you need to KN do more or know more I would I strongly recommend that you ask to meet with some of us so we can provide a little more context from the community's standpoint and um some of these things lack of data lack of follow through ask yourself who is that serving is it serving the community or is it serving the fop thanks for your time council member tutle thank you and I'm not sure if this question is for Bob or maybe um Jason and HR but I'm looking at the dashboard right now and there's seven different categories and one of the things that the speaker spoke on um thank you Miss perody was um under first operations Creed an assistant chief position and it provides the the information of You Know Chief Sullivan's decision in 2023 to promote two Deputy Chiefs the speaker made a comment that and and I'm probably not going to use the exact word she did that you know from Jensen Hughes they were mandates my interpretation and also the word that's used on the website is their recommendations is that correct I just want to make sure that the speaker and then also anybody who's listening in the audience or if we got you two back up understands that we I appreciate very much the Jensen Hughes report I think it's been incredibly important and effective but it's a recommendation and not a mandate can someone just confirm that I'm correct you yes council member that is correct they are series of recommendations and there may be different ways to accomplish the objectives that are behind the recommendations and a good example of that is the the item that you mentioned and that was just mentioned uh a few minutes ago and that is the creating creating the position of Chief Deputy Chief Sullivan uh looked at the respons posibilities of that position and instead elevated Aaron Moses into a position to help with the administrative duties for the chief and that includes the implementation of Jensen Hughes report so we're getting we're accomplishing everything that Jensen Hughes recommended just but through a different title and I might just take a second in case anybody's watching and wants to find out what we're talking about if you go to wi.gov and at the top of the page you go to departments and then you go to police and when you get to the police page you can scroll down on the left side and you see Jensen Hugh's report and it gives just a really great background about it and then um at the very bottom it says viewer progress you actually have to leave the city website but it gives all of the recommendations and then where we are in terms of progress with them and I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of them all of them I think except for one have been addressed most of them are complete and some are still in progress so in case anybody in the community where wants to see it firstand that's how they can do it thank you council member hoisel thank you mayor um first I I've been looking I don't have any emails sometimes people get my emails mixed up it's MH hoisel um so I haven't received anything from Miss officer here in the LA or Mrs Officer here in the last week or so so um just putting that out there that's I'm always eager to meet with people I'm that would be uh perfectly fine with me to reach out and have some discussions there um I did have two questions one is um the three recommendations not on the dashboard is that uh what are these recommendations are they not on there or are they on there and maybe different language it's the first I've heard that concern so I have a note to go back and take a look at it I will say after feedback from last week about the access ability of the dashboard we did say make some modifications uh so we took the tiny dashboard that people were having trouble scrolling with on their phone took that off made a link that pulls it up in a full page that everybody should be able to use easier uh so we do listen to to community feedback and make adjustments and that was one of the adjustments we made uh last week so I'll take a look at what three recommendations may or may not be on the dashboard uh and if there are some missing we will happily add them to the dashboard okay Twila do you want to just let me know what your so um the reason I knew was I took the Jensen Hughes report and then compared it side by side to the dashboard it's a little difficult because they don't you know the top one in a category is not the top one on the dashboard but the one that I remember that was missing is that um there would be a paid uh paid position for the crb for somebody to do the work at the crb and windfall on the department that was one of them of course that was the one I was paying attention to but if you count them there are three that are missing I don't have my Jensen Hughes notebook with me so I can't I don't remember the other two okay thanks council member one specifically mentioned is on the dashboard and it does say implemented based on the addition of the part-time staff in the city clerk's office earlier this year okay that that was just here in the last two months or so two or three yes okay um the other question that came up from Mrs Martin was a vacation and Lis suspension I think we are working on that as well is that correct vacation in Li of suspension uh does exist it is essentially a day a day without pay but it is also capped so contractually it's capped at how much vacation time you can give up and L suspension so the addition of 10 vacation hours does not mean that that cap is also increased what is the cap C I believe it's four days I'll have to I'd have to look back at the contract okay thank you lastly I just wanted to clarify uh Chief Sullivan and I both attended the May 16th racial profiling meeting and did take questions from the racial profiling board and again when an invitation is sent out to any of the council members or leadership um more often than not we try to make time we will continue with public comment good morning City Council Members I am oneita Ridge um Millennium moms founder Millennium moms empowerment Network I am also a member of the Witch racio profiling Advisory Board I am also the president of the a price Ward neighborhood association I have a lengthy experience um serving the community I'm one of America's thousand points of light number 541 I am looking at a process right now with the fop that is in progress but it's incomplete and so at this time I am in agreement with uh recommendations from the witchar racial profiling board that we uh table this until we get all the facts concerning what is uh going to impact the witto police department and the city at large um it has been stated that the fop deserves an independent assessment of their uh implementation I second that motion and I hope that you all will do the same as our uh representatives for the city of Witchita is important that we have Independence and transparency in this process we cannot continue to do what we've done in the past we must move forward and be great have a great day good morning uh coach Tracy uh C Mason senior CHD Boxing Club a youth Advocate um so um [Music] addressing um this um so-called contract I'm I'm uh doubling tripling down a quadrupling down on on being patient and waiting and being more transparent and giving more time for the public such as me uh opportunity to be able to look at it and engage with um this situation um the fop for years and years and years um I've never understood I don't say that in a bad way I say it in a way of ignorance um and I should be able to understand that's why I'm standing here is because um this contract just um for me for a person that's on the ground just the average uh Joe Blow it just came out of nowhere now I'm sure it didn't I'm sure there's been a lot of emails communication and things like that but this is a serious matter um when you talk about a raise and you're talking about giving someone some more money um you have to earn it I feel I feel you have to earn the right to be able to receive more money to receive money you have to earn money to receive money that's the way I feel um with that being said I don't see any earning and the reason why I say that not from the top to top level of earning you know all the data and all this type of stuff but from the ground level I don't see officers engag enging with civilians I see events so when I want to say officers deserve more money anyone deserves more money I want to see action I haven't seen it I I me personally I have not seen action in The District I'm in I haven't seen engagement I'm in I haven't seen them earning a raise I just haven't seen it uh what what do I mean by that well what do we say officers are for Public Safety right they're not in they're not in for prevention they're in Intervention when something's already happened several things has happened within the last just year that I just cannot um believe that officers the WPD in particular on the ground has made enough addressable issues um steps and one is dealing with people that on the Grassroots that are on the boots on the ground that are there in the environments that we are trying to have what is considered public safety a a productive environment an environment that youth can grow up in and feel safe in and Etc I don't see that so I know um my voice is is small and it's Singler but I just I double and triple and quadruple down with what these um citizens review board has um come up with I don't know enough um be honest with you I don't trust the for the fop and I should trust him I should trust him I should trust him I should be able to trust the the WPD but at this stage and at this moment I don't have that trust because I don't engage with them I don't see them I don't hear from them things happen all around areas that I'm in and in the area that I'm in and an engagement with someone that is there not to be um an informant or a snitch or anything like that I'm a little different I speak a little different but I speak raw and truthfully and honest um so with that being said this contract uh should be placed on hold it should be evaluated by the public when people say the public pay taxpayers pay for this I believe the tax dollars do pay for this right so as the tax dollars are going to pay for it I believe someone like me that is paying taxes should be reached out to as an individual if not me many others like me and that's all I got to say thank you vice mayor Ballard thank you mayor Mr Mason thank you so much for being here I just have a question what does it look like or mean to you to rebuild trust with WPD you say you don't see them you don't hear from them what does that look like to you so I just came from a west side of the community and it just that's a beautiful question because it I just came from the west side right and come from coming from that West Side I watched and paid attention to an officer that was just engaging talking having accum communication with a coffee in his hand that stopping in the areas right so I have a business on Ninth Street and there's like four or five different businesses there I don't see officers stopping there to get coffee to get a Sneakers Bar to get anything from these businesses there these high crime businesses they don't stop they don't stop to engage they don't stop to get coffee they don't stop to get a piece of gum that disrupts High crimes when officers are known to show up at at these places that are the West crime is not going to be keep being occurred there it's not going to keep occurring there when someone is knowing that an officer is going to come get a piece of gum this officer always come get a piece of gum there we can't do crime there so that type of Engagement following up someone said the key thing I didn't talk to two officers not going to put them on blast and they don't follow up the followup is very important when you say I deal with youth and I tell youth I told some youth hey we we F to get go to a horse for WPD guy and want no followup I got two text messages coach when we going to ride the horses when we going to see the horses so those type of engagements right there are preventative that's all that you know just simple communication simple treating the the the civilians like humans simply treating them like their constituents You Care thank you thank you I will just uh encourage everyone to take a look at the July 16th Workshop um this was during the budget season and it specifically calls on crime reduction strategies and on that uh you will note that the city of Witchita utilizes um a large majority of um investments into crime prevention which include um the police department and I just want to make note that on there it does say to prevent occurrence of crime um the police department is working on datadriven policing implementing best practices Community engagement such as axon my 9s citizen survey um so there are multiple ways that the police department uh we learned during the July 16th um meeting so I just encourage Community to take a look at that slideshow on July 16th we will continue with public comment good morning Dave and clar uh Turnal order Poli 477 cynica I'm going to bring Hans as M up here with me uh to discuss and talk about the code of conduct and how that was negotiated I think he's the only one that's up here that was was there when it was actually negotiated so you guys get some information on that all Hans asmon past president of the fop current Senior Chief LOD Stewart and I've been negotiating contracts with the city since about 2006 so I was definitely there for the one where the code of conduct got placed in there's a lot of confusion about that so when we negotiate we talk about General pay adjustments and general pay adjustments are going to be a percentage increase of Base rate of pay which will then have a compounding effect in the future when other General pay adjustments happen right it's going to cause a quote ballooning of the budget in the future kind of deal so we will come up with ideas sometimes to increase pay that will not have that compounding effect their differentials so one of them was we were thinking of ways to do an increase that would would be basically like a base rate pay but would not compound itself into the future and we originally called it uh like ballistic armor differential because all of our members have to wear ballistic armor even our crime scene investigators at the time who we used to bargain for they did too the city didn't like that the negotiators and so we looked at Honolulu and they had this code of conduct pay and the whole reason for it is that a police department in a government body is held to a higher standard than typically other departments our policy and procedure manual is massive we have this large regulation uh book that has penalties all over the place and if you were to compare on a per capita of employee basis I guarantee you that the police department hands out more discipline than any other department and so that was a reason why trying to find this differential uh to give an increase into pay without it then compounding into the future because to increase that pay in a future contract you have to increase that hard dollar amount right management said well okay we like that idea but we would if it's if it's for you know following the policies and procedures we would like to have it to where if you get disciplined that you don't get this paid for a period of time so then through the negotiation process fop acques to that we came up with the the formula that there was that if you then had discipline of a certain level um it would then be withheld out of pay for a certain amount of time and there was this calculation of how much the pay equaled basically the discipline uh amount of without pay days for um you know X level of officers basically how that formula came up and that's how that was placed in there it is confusing Jensen Hughes obviously in their report they said it was confusing problem is they never talked to the fop about it when we met with Jensen Hughes all they wanted to talk about was morale and about the current chief at the time they never asked us about any of these issues they came up with that they thought were confusing if they would have we would have explained all this to them and so then when it was brought forward SN management decided okay this is how we'll take care of this there is this confusing aspect and that's how we have the negotiation process that ended up how it is to vacation and forfeiture for uh discipline that is in City policy that's just not our contract the city policy caps the occurrence each time the cap per year is the same in our contract we just don't have a cap per occurrence that's the only difference in it uh so if it's not in the contract it's still City policy and I'll stand for any questions if I need to clarify anything else thank you council member hoisel thank you um just one Qui question here um moving forward and kind of negotiating our way through the Jensen Hughes recommendations is there anything that stands out to you guys as particularly problematic that we're going to have issues with moving forward issues with between the fop and and the department yeah in terms of uh the only one I would say um and I don't want to preempt anything here but we we've already discussed this before in talks and it has to do with with the promotion process and having a minimum passing score of the initial test the written test uh Jensen Hughes said they recommend it at 70% U because that's what other people do is basically what they're thing is the problem is their analysis does not back that up when you look at their analysis what they find through their analysis is we have an issue with the written test itself too few of people are ma are are getting a score of 80% or higher and when you have a huge pool of officers trying to fight for a small set of detective positions uh they're they're not trying to sandbag you know they're not trying to make deals with each other hey we'll just all try to not you know study and we'll just all get low scores who cares will move on through the process uh that is where the lowest high average high score comes from that tells you there's a problem with the test so we have been in discussions instead of looking at the test itself and that's how to fix that issue if we're still going to try to come up with there has to be this like minimum passing score um 70% is not the one that's the only one we'll have contention with because what we don't want as the fop is to have the chief not have a large enough pool to promote from and now we've got all these vacancies and in a in a promotion cycle year you've exhausted a list and you still have all these vacancies so the only one I I see could be an issue the rest of them just like Captain Moses said we're sitting down and we're doing the the hard work of looking at everything and trying to come up with uh the best solution for every individual item yeah I appreciate that um yeah there's still quite a bit of work to do on promotions here that and cod of conduct are the two biggest ones we see here but I appreciate that information sir thank you you're welcome thank you for the question question vice mayor Ballard you mayor I'm not sure if this question is may be for um Captain Moses or maybe the chief I'm not sure um can we talk about the number of vacancies that we have like actual positions that have been filled before I'd love to talk about that uh one thing we looked at coming into this conversation was attrition rate uh attrition is currently at the lowest level it's been in 3 years we've had 39 employees in 2024 that voluntarily terminated employment uh or retired uh last 2023 was 63 at the same time and 2022 was 48 at the same time additionally if you look at the slides actually in this presentation it answers that question for you um it says that this contract covers 657 employees somewhere right there 657 employees so if we had a 100 openings that would mean we be we would be authorized to have 757 fop represented employees uh we are only authorized 707 commissioned officers on the entire department that math doesn't math so we can't have a 100 openings on our department uh otherwise this agreement would not be able to cover 657 employees uh when we look at our openings we look at the number of recruits we have in seats in the academy the number of pre hires that we have on board and the number of recruits we have in field training we have to look at it that way um if we didn't we would be saying okay we tomorrow tomorrow I can hire 99 people if 99 people showed up at my door tomorrow and they were qualified I could hire them and find a position for them that is not the case that is not accurate uh we have today about 50 55 openings that we could fill tomorrow if we had qualified applicants that came in to fill those positions how many recruits do you have right now in the academy at the moment uh right around 30 and we're about to start another Academy class in January that'll be around the same number so they we would assuming that all of them passed and stayed in and all that we would be over we would be well yes so that 30 the 30 that are in the academy right now and anybody who's been prehired for the January class are counted into that number of 55 is so if we get another Academy of 30 that starts in January that would put us around 25 openings that we could fill tomorrow if we had qualified applicants that came through the door my last question um for now unless I come up with something else is um um for a city our size and I assume that you you mentioned the 707 commissioned officers um it also commented in the paper that we need about a thousand officers for a city R size yeah I mean I'm not uh probably qualified to be the expert to stand up here and tell me tell you exactly how many police officers we need for a city R size uh you can certainly look at other agencies across the country uh based on population and number of officers but really the analysis should probably be a little bit deeper than that it should include crime rate it should include uh calls for service so on and so forth so probably not something that I'm going to opine on from this Podium and would need some uh additional true expert analysis I think we as in leadership up here and WPD has been working hard um especially since Chief San got here to work on Recruitment and all of that and to know that we're working towards the 707 but then to hear that we need a th000 is probably scary to the public I mean it definitely caught me off guard so that's why I was just asking um if there was you know a lot of Truth to that if we're really that far behind I like the 55 better than 300 so anyway appreciate it thank you thank you for the opportunity to clarify some of those statements before e e e so when it comes to this conversation about uh the the increases uh we on the other side of this capitalist conversation uh would like for these uh reductions because we need to reduce the amount of violence that our government uses to secure peace in our streets there's a lot of sociopolitical uh turmoil that is coming around uh that needs to be addressed in the sense of talking about what sanction violence is because if we don't really talk about sanction violence and the Bedrock of the capitalist regime we're going to continue to get poor people we're going to continue to make criminals because that's a big point right there we are making criminals we are criminalizing poverty and then throwing money at violence to secure and stop it but we all know one of the main factors of criminality is indeed poverty so if you're unwilling to address the material circum ances in which people are living and if you just keep throwing money at violence of course you're going to have a bad feedback relationship with the community and when I say community I mean neighborhoods and various people and not this imaginary unified Witchita all for Witchita that is a fetish we need to stop fetishizing Community we need to start talking differently about the police the capitalist regime and its relationship between the working class because that is not a conversation we're having every single person I've heard I've been watching online on my way here every single person has not addressed the actual system that is causing our poverty so a lot of what happens with the police is that we are uh putting a Band-Aid on the symptoms of a system and so we are trying to address the system that is breaking people and you are spending way too much money and time on attempting to relieve these symptoms where we could address the system sys the capitalist regime the charity and the cops if we don't address those systems as a mechanism of violence against a regular person we're going to continue to have uh unsavory relationships between the capitalist regime and the masses of the working class so if if if you want to move forward in a healthy way where I am not making my demands as I do where I am not coming to possibly your house to protest you if you actually want to have a conversation about dismantling violence I'm here for that conversation but the codes that you're using are deferring and ignoring the conversation about systemic violence so unless we actually sit down and talk about the capitalist regime and what they're doing as slavers because when we have this debt economy and this renter economy we don't have choice we need to remove the duress and I tell people get your scoop get your money we're all forced to play to play in this capitalist regime but if we want to play capitalist regime we need to make sure people aren iness we need to make sure people actually have choice and right now the way the current system is and the way the current policing system is we don't have a choice so as everyone knows I'm a very big advocate of our constitutional rights our first amendment rights were seized by this city in 2020 our Second Amendment rights are constantly being seized by this city by the over bloating of the police I encourage you to come to my protest I encourage you to start thinking about systemic violence beyond your scope of application because the way you're applying it now is going to cause more po poverty and more antagonization against the working class I stand for question thank you we'll continue with public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench council member Johnson thanks mayor this question I think is for Jason uh we've had a number of speakers ask us to delay this what happens if that were to happen today if you delayed the vote I guess would depend on why you delay it if you delay it because you don't want to um approve the contract you have some specific issues that you think we need to go back to the table on then that's what we would have to do I guess and we would have to go back to the table to try to address whatever reasons you're not going to approve the contract okay um I guess it would depend on the reason and and coming back we had some folks um recommend deferral until meet and confer was complete how long do you think that would take I have no idea but it I can't imagine it would be quick but but I I don't I really don't know okay I just wanted to ask since it was as publicly I actually um in this contract I really like the maternity and paternity leave that's something I hope to see more of um but I think that's great I've actually heard some concerns from some officers former officers about the maternity leave Fe so I'm glad to see that in there I'm always glad to see um bilingual pay getting more support as well just given the way our city is changed so much so I like to see those two things in there some of the other questions I had were answered earlier by Captain Moses I think council member hois will asked those so those are my and just so you know the the bilingual pay will be across the across the organization oh okay even better good news council member Tuttle thank you and I don't have any questions I was just going to make a few comments um I want to thank first of all um it was on YouTube why um Chief is saying why Wonder why Chief Sullivan isn't here thank you Chief Sullivan for being in the back um and then also I completely agree with some of the comments that Captain Moses made about you changing the culture within the witch Police Department so your efforts have been exemplary and we are so glad that you are a witon now so thank you for your service um a question also on YouTube was asked about the paternity leave um I did ask um city manager Bob Leighton if we could consider this a pilot so that if we um find that it is what I hope to be wildly successful we could consider it even across the entire um organization so um you know somebody asked why is it just the police department this is just a first place for us to start and to be able to measure success so that we can determine the efficacy of the program I wanted to thank the witcha police department the Fraternal Order of Police human resources and city manager Bob Leighton for getting us to this point um I know it's I can't even imagine how Challen in it is going through the negotiations and I appreciate everybody come coming and thinking of wit it off first and how can we continue to make wiah the best city in the nation our mission is to be an exceptionally well-run City and one of the four pillars of that is to keep Witchita safe and the witch Police Department is certainly one of the major entities of our organization that does that um when we were going through our community Sur survey and determining our budget our prioritization of our time and treasure one of the top three things that the community members said was important to them was Public Safety and crime prevention one of the speakers mentioned that police aren't crime prevention I completely disagree I think that not only are they addressing incidents when they occur but they're also ensuring in in strategic ways that future incidents don't happen so again just thank you to everyone who has been involved in this process and I will be supportive today thank you I'm sorry sir it's not public comment at this time it is um I don't have a comment I just want a statement peace uh be with you mayor council members I'm Chief es Lewis of the Holy Kingdom of Judah it seems if our our slot was missed um I am so sorry I'm told by legal that you cannot speak at this time we will have another public comment we will we will we will reschedule for another Council thank you very much peace be with you peace be with you council member hoisel thank you mayor uh chief chief Lewis sir um if you guys stick around after this item maybe we can open it up for um public comment again in between just public agenda I realized they were late if that's okay with the rest of the body after this item would you like to make a motion regarding that with now be an appropriate time okay I make a motion that after this item we open up public agenda again to um allow Chief Lewis to have five minutes to speak second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 we'll continue with staff sorry council member comments and then we will come to public comment and after this after we'll continue with public com uh sorry with council member comments council member hoisel all right thank you mayor um I I'm going to be supportive of this I we still got to fight through this process we still got to get through all the Jensen Hugh's recommendations I appreciate the the ground that we've made so far on it um that's a pretty big chunk that we took out today with the current contract um I still have some some angst I I appreciate Chief Sullivan I think he's done a great job of bringing discipline and stability to the department um I hope he sticks around for a while a little bit of angst about what comes after chief solivan though so there is a little bit of concern there about just solidifying some of the policies we have um I would encourage um both Jason and uh WPD and the fop to continue to keep our foot on the gas with Jensen Hughes coming up with these recommendations uh this was nearly three qus of the police department also was interviewed for Jensen Hughes so these policies are I think vital for morale within a department and the expectations of the city outside of the department so if we can just keep our foot on the gas come back um and continue to implement some of these I do think there is um to the speaker's points um some room as far as better communication with the public maybe if we can get this done a couple of weeks ahead of time next next time and allow the public to come forward and kind of express some of their reservations with this as well um I do see some issues that we still need to iron out with the crb um so those points are well taken as well um and that's really all I have to say here council member Johnson thanks mayor I said I was going to do my part to shorten these meetings but I had something else to say I agree with council member uh hoisel about the crb and think we should continue to work on that also I think with the Jensen Hughes dashboard it's good to report out on implementation um but I'm also interested to see how uh officers feel about that as well I remember back when we um when I wasn't a council member when we were advocating for body cameras and there were a number of officers that had personally said they didn't want them and then once we got them I think there probably 100% approval rate on body cameras now um so I would like to know in time um how the gensen Hughes policies that are implemented how they receive from Department if that's possible um additionally one of the speakers earlier um had talked about wanting to see more Community engagement from officers that's something I agree with but I also recognize that we also were not fully staffed and that's been a struggle for um officers that have to go to call to call to call to get out and actually enjoy engaging with community and I'm supportive of this because I believe that we need to continue to get closer to full Staffing to allow for that that's been something I've wanted to see in this community for quite some time seeing officers being able to get out of vehicles see some kids playing basketball go shoot some hoops with them or uh go to a convenience store so I know that we need to have more officers um I may not be on the council for that other number that that we talked about over the 707 but um I think the more officers we have the more Community engagement we'll see and I'm looking forward to supporting this there are some good things in here we have more work to do but I know the meet and confer process may take some time supportive of that and looking forward to those report outs but I am supportive today uh We've continued to do better in recruitment which is something that we've needed for some time so I hopefully this will continue to help those efforts for us to get to the Community Police and model that I would like to see before we go to a motion I simply wanted to say thank you to the fop um I was the only one that started the question about maternity and paternity leave uh during The Question portion because I have heard from community about that added um benefit to police officers but also to All City of witch employees for you to have taken your platform which is the opportunity to bargain on the behalf of police officers to bring that topic to the Forefront um says a lot about what you care about and you care about the individuals who are mothers and fathers um in the department and I want to just say thank you for being at the Forefront of this conversation um so I will be supportive of this fop contract and just want to say thank you to Jason Hood as well because I know it took multiple months to get to this position um it's a lot of negotiating um and it's a lot of making sure that the employee is treated fairly but also understanding that there are limited dollars and everyone came to the table with some sort of compromise and I just want to say thank you to both the bargaining unit and the city of wiah Staff uh to get us to this point in time in December vice mayor Ballard thank you mayor um I also want to thank um the fop and the police department the chief um and all of the city staff uh that has worked hard on this um I did have a question is there um a way that we could get some type of update in I don't know if 6 months is long enough but or in a year to make sure that everything is completed on here get any type of updates um just so we can kind of keep our foot on the gas as well and making sure that we're making sure everything is implemented um to the community for people that might not know about the dashboard maybe we could um it looks like we've made significant progress but I would like to get some report in whatever you think is an acceptable amount of time vice mayor I think it's a great idea we could actually devote one of our um Council agenda review items to an update maybe six months uh into the year and we will keep the uh dashboard updated as well but I think it'd be good it's a good idea to maybe talk about it publicly with the mayor and counsel I would just say the only other thing um is the citizens review board we all know has a lot of potential um with the text me text message Scandal and all of that and we haven't it doesn't appear that we have gotten a whole lot accomplished I think a lot of that might be due to Quorum and different um reasons so I would encourage anybody that doesn't have their appointments made um I just made mine a couple weeks ago to fill up that board so that we can move forward and um Let It Be the productive board that we know that it can be so thank you with that um I will move to approve the proposed 2025 2026 memorandum of agreement between the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 and the City of Witchita and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 thank you we will now before we go to the next item have the public agenda item that was scheduled at the beginning of the council meeting um Madame Clerk can you please invite the individuals Chief Edward S Lewis Holy Kingdom of Judah tribal Community Center peace again to everyone peace be with you all I am chief es Lewis the Holy Kingdom of Judah it is an honor and a pleasure to stand before this Council once again to begin the Holy Kingdom of Judah would like to extend gratitude to Mayor Lily woo councilman Johnson the witch city council the city manager the Witchita police department and the great people of the city of witto for the respect civility support and cooperation which has been extended to our tribe during our time of renewal and restoration thank you it seems if our slot was uh missed today the Holy Kingdom of Judah will return next council meeting to submit the 500 plus uh signature petition to inaugurate a tribal Community Center the the community voice needs to be heard so we will be in return the status in another day okay thank you peace be all people we will now continue with the next item Madame clerk please call the next item public hearings considering adoption of a tiff project plan establishment of a community improvement district approval of letter intent for irbs for sales tax exemption and a development agreement for 333 East English uh before we go to that I think we're missing number two unfinished business uh that vote on it yes that's correct may can you please call that item Downtown parking plan implementation strategy to be deferred to December 17th 2024 mayor the council had established uh today as another uh discussion time for the Downtown parking plan implementation strategy uh staff's been working diligently on trying to get uh all of the uh analysis complete uh we're almost there but we would like one more week to be able to make that presentation to you and allow for public discussion of the options so we're asking you to defer this item till December 17th uh we one of the questions I asked during the last council meeting regarding uh the Downtown parking was the current contracts uh that are supposed to be implemented but have not been implemented to their full extent can we have a full analysis regarding the Oldtown contracts of how much they're paying and how much they should be paying as of 2024 mayor we uh have uh completed the financial analysis we've also done some additional background checks um and we'll have a report regarding the all of the the history of the down Oldtown parking U contracts any further questions uh one more uh can we also have a brief presentation regarding the the smid during that conversation as well um the self supported Municipal improvement district thank you any further questions I see none I moved to defer the Downtown parking plan implementation strategy to the December 17th 2024 meeting second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the rle I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next item public hearings considering adoption of a tiff project plan establishment of a community improvement district approval of letter of intent for irbs for sales tax exemption and a development agreement for 333 East English good morning mayor members of city council Mark Elder with the development services um that before you today there are a lot of public hearings but it really boils down to uh consideration for requests for assistance on a Redevelopment project in downtown um the project itself is a seven approximately $7 million investment um they'll be converted in underutilized building I I use that kind of kindly the the roof is in poor shape the fourth floor isn't usable right now but um it's it's not occupied right now and this is a conversion that will provide 42 new apartment units um in the building as well as approximately 5,000 square feet of ground floor retail um with that there will also be some infrastructure improvements within the the Tiff project area um the city's working with the two-way conversions um the construction timeline for the 333 English project is approximately about 12 months um I'll go through these um requested programs uh that include cludes their public hearing kind of one by one so they have requested three um ways for providing assistance for the project um the first will be tax increment financing um $425,000 uh in pay you go Tiff assistance um followed by a community improvement district um which is um $530,000 and that does include the 125% um within the city's policy so they're projecting they' be closer to about $425,000 but then the third is a request for industrial revenue bonds solely for a sales tax exemption um first off just a little more on the tax inment financing again this is a tool it's used for revitalization of designated areas um with Tiff the existing tax Bas is preserved only the new portion that's created by that Redevelopment is considered the increment that's used for paying eligible eligible Redevelopment cost it does not increase the sales tax or property tax rates on those properties um real quick this is the the project we're talking about today is within the center city Redevelopment District um it is Project area 7 within that district and that's the one highlighted here in red um so project area 7 does include um two city blocks the primary project here the 333 English um it's not highlighted but it's basically that project on the northwest corner of project area 7 at the intersection Broadway and English the request for tax the project plan for the tax increment Finance which includes a portion that uh this project is requesting include side preparation infrastructure and a portion of acquisition costs um but with that I also want to make sure that when it comes to 333 English this is a page youo Tiff so the city is not at risk the developer is taking on the risk on that the increment is only there if the project is uh complete and providing uh and generating that increment the second request is a community improvement district um it's another project or program that primarily the city uses to facilitate private investment Redevelopment projects this is an additional sales tax on uh this the parcel but it's not part of the state and County traditional sales tax again this is another one where the developer must achieve their own financing and the city's tax dollars are not at risk for that um the the eligible expenses that the 333 English would be requesting include de Demolition and some abatement of uh some Asus lead based paint within the project uh roof repairs as well as facade improvements and tenant improvements um and again this is CID as well will be a pay you go where it does not have any risk on the taxpayers um the third one industrial revenue bonds those are primarily used for one of two or a combination of uh achieving either sales sales tax exemption and or property tax abatement for uh projects uh that are expanding and hire new companies it can also be used for redevelopment projects solely for a sales tax exemption which is what is being uh requested today and this is sales tax exemption for the uh cost of materials related to the Redevelopment of the project the city again does not lend any money and does not bear any risk for that the developers required to achieve their own financing for it um just a few renderings of uh the proposed uh project as complete um here you can see the uh building from kind of looking at the uh northwest corner um and then this is kind of looking from the uh Northeast uh along the building uh and then running of kind of like one of the apartments what it might look like inside um with that we do have representatives of the development team uh here if you have any questions for them I'll stand for any questions and I just want to make sure I kind of highlight with this action today um adoption of a tiff project plan does require two-third majority of approval of the governing body when it comes to that action questions for staff I have one um so it looks like the C has no taxpayer dollars at risk the IRB also does not have taxpayer dollars at risk what is the risk to taxpayers on the Tiff um again because this is pay you go there is no risk to taxpayers uh with that um it's the only the increment that's generated within their parcel would go back to reimburse those any other um taxes within that project area go back to the district to help pay the city um for the project other improvements within project area 7 but um there is no risk because we are not financing this it's only as this revenue is generated would go to reimburse the developer this is considered the center City Tiff is that correct correct this is Center City South Redevelopment District according to this document uh that we received uh this says as of September 30th 2024 the center city Tiff was approximately $448,000 in specifically what is this dollar amount behind on covering scheduled Debt Service payments is that according to a finance department report okay yes maam mayor excellent question uh that information is from the third quarter financial report uh which uh includes a variety of information about the Tiff districts and that is a page we produce that shows how the tiffs are performing relative to the city debt that has been issued on their behalf and mayor you're exactly correct as of the third quarter uh the Center City District did uh have a deficit of about 443,000 that it owed The Debt Service fund uh however I would tell you mayor that most of the transfers Into The Debt Service fund for the tiffs occur in the fourth quarter uh so if you look at the column right next to that you'll see the 2024 revised budget we would expect at year end that that number would uh turn to a surplus of about 115,000 so it was a surplus of what was the amount again uh 115,000 is what the projection is and just quick question I know that this is specific to cental City Tiff yes ma'am um are most of our most of the city tiffs performing in the positive or in the negative well it really depends on how you define success of a tiff we typically Define the success of a tiff of if it reimburses The Debt Service fund prior to the expiration of the Tiff and using that metric uh we've been very successful we've had a lot of tiffs that have met that criteria the Oldtown Tiff Tiff the Oldtown Cinema Tiff the 21st and Grove Tiff Central and Hillside Tiff uh those have all been successful now tiffs will show deficits as they mature sometimes with the amount they owe The Debt Service fund that's expected the increment typically grows at a slower Pace early on the real question is will it uh generate enough in the last few years of the Tiff to offset the amount owed The Debt Service fund and again as I mentioned with the five tiffs previously that has occurred so okay thank you very much much more vice mayor Valor thank you mayor um I'm not sure who this might be a question for Troy or Bob um I was at a meeting yesterday and there were um some business owners from Oldtown we were actually talking about parking and they commented about um this some of the money from this Tiff would help fund the potential parking garage for biomed I just wanted to answer that yes that is correct uh more specifically not necessarily as it relates to uh perhaps the item that's in front of you today but yes if you'll recall as we've gone through this process uh there's two parts right there's the overall District rules and regulations and then there's the specific project plan area sort of rules and regulations and yes overall as the district um by recapturing 100% of the of the increase and expanding the eligible expenses to include all of those eligible expenses set forth in state law yes we have positioned oursel that uh in the near future as uh the city contemplates those types of Investments particularly in the center city south District we position oursel to uh utilize tax income and financing to offset some of that debt obligation thank you yep council member tutle sorry thank you not a question but just a very quick comment um regarding the Tiff performance and the dashboard just I I'm want to make sure people know if you go to witch to.gov um it's a you can go through economic development but the easiest way is to just in the what are you looking for the search bar put in Tiff and it takes you right to the um tax agreement financing page and then it gives you all of the tiffs that are in the city of wiah um you know a brief background and then also when they were established you know what their terms are what the projects are um in the financial report so if anybody wants information to learn more please go to witch to.gov and put Tiff in the search bar thank you any further questions for staff uh just a couple questions for the developer um hi Bruce righ 143 North Rock Island I'm representing Arena South management were the developer on this project Bruce um I had exp parte communication with you um and got to learn about this project I wanted to hear um you guys are most of you which attends uh for a long time tell me about why you decided to make an investment in this particular building um what will these 42 Apartments mean for the community and how are you going to deal with parking sure uh Miss mayor those are lovely questions um all of them things that we've considered along the way um this building was being used as as office um it was originally built in 1920 um and had been used as office until then when we uh looked at this project we've been um developing in this area particularly of downtown for several years and have made quite a number of Investments down there so this was a natural property for us to look at um when the bioscience campus was announced um and we already had this property under contract we then discussed with members of WSU kuu um witto Downtown Development and the City of witta um development um Department to to get an understanding of what would be the best use for this project understanding um that what we're trying to do is is create a more vibrant downtown where the uses of the buildings actually fit the needs of the community um and what we heard pretty much unanimously was that there was a need for for apartments or multif family um in that area and that became even more obvious when the school was announced next door so the decision then was to make it into multif family there's lots of different kinds of multif family um there's big luxury multif family there's condo multif family um we went for something that we believe is targeting more the students that are downtown not just in the bioscience campus but obviously what's happening with the D school and and what WSU Tech is doing uh in the The Old Henry's building there um so th that that's why we made that use we then looked at wanting to make sure that the the ground floor was used for retail um again specifically because that's a need downtown particularly as we bring thousands of more people downtown the need for retail down there will become more and more important and that that's what led to our use of the building and and the types of incentives that we're trying to apply to this um I do want to note it's much more expensive to develop uh multif family than to just update it into new office um and that's really part of what led to um the need for applying these types of incentives to this project to make um this kind of use pencil out does that answer all of your questions does I have two spefic specific the parking right and then also how much would these 42 Apartments roughly be sure so um we have first of all we have an ongoing lease with the city of witto for for parking spaces I can't remember exactly what is I think it's 22 parking spaces um and we have that lease currently it's been we we had it in the lot where the bioscience campus is is is now a giant hole in the ground um but they've been moved to uh one of the parking garages adjacent to that and we'll continue to have that that lease when we open we've also um made arrangements with another private lot owner just adjacent to our building where we have the opportunity to lease spaces uh there we've discussed with other developers of of multif family downtown um to try and and get a better understanding as well of the kind of ratio of spaces to units because certainly um when we're talking about these downtown students 100% of them don't have vehicles that they're parking down there and that's what we've uh been validated from our discussions with other folks so we think um we certainly have parking uh we have enough parking to support uh the people that we expect to to be in there we have limited amount of parking on the south side of the building which will support the retailers on the on the ground Fuller and obviously street parking um will support the retail businesses there as well and um I'm sorry what was the last one price price so we we also looked at um the price of Apartments adjacent to WSU campus here to get try and get an understanding of what um that looks like and and so our prices are uh looking between 900 and 1200 uh depending on the size of the unit and that um is really in line with what we see in private uh student or student oriented housing um adjacent to the WSU campus uh up off Hillside thank you very much Bruce any further questions for staff or the developer I see none thank you very much we will now open it up for public comment I see none I'll bring it back to the bench any comments from Cal oh we do have Doug Ballard excuse me I live in district 6 I saw on uh the one of the slides where you were talking about uh oneway uh it looked like making a oneway street into a two-way street is that correct um I haven't spoke to all of the others but I I'm opposed to that I think when most of these streets were made one way uh Vehicles were much smaller they didn't allow you to drive the size of trucks that we go downtown with now and if you're trying to get people out of their cars and to walk and ride bicycles and stuff like that when you have from a safety standpoint some of these streets are that you've already done they're too narrow to have cars going in opposite directions because the danger is the speed differential you know and so anyway I I don't like that part of it so the rest of it's okay with me so thank you I see no further public comment I'll bring it back to the bench council member comments this resides in council member Johnson's District thank you mayor I would move that the city council um hold and close the public hearings for the project area 7 project plan 333 English Community improvement district and industrial revenue bonds for a sales tax exemption place the ordinances on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion before the vote I will simply say this I believe that we need more housing I think you heard it from multiple individuals here uh even when we were talking about other topics that housing is what witan needs most um so I will be supportive because we need more housing at all levels uh whether it's affordable housing or housing at market value we need more housing in Witchita and Witchita welcomes those that want to make an investment into Witchita um and renovate buildings that um could have been cheaper to uh just renovate as a office building but instead you saw a need that this community really needed more housing and you decided to make an investment so thank you um and I will be again supportive Motion in a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the rooll I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next item public hearing and tax exemption request for CE machine Incorporated good morning mayor and council members I'm Tim good past here with the city manager's development services office the item before you today is a request for a tax abatement from C Machine C Machine was founded in 1975 as a manufacturer of mediumsized precision parts and assemblies for the Aerospace Industries uh some of its customers include Bell Helicopter Textron Aviation Boeing Gulfstream and Embraer they are located at 1741 South Hoover court near Harry and Hoover streets on this areal here you can see Harry Street running from left to right along the top of the aerial and Hoover running top to bottom a little bit right of Center the area outlined in red is where C Machine is located you can see on the very left side of the aerial part of uh Dwight di isenhower National Airport these are a couple of photos from inside the existing C Machine facilities the company is requesting an economic development exemption tax abatement or an edx tax abatement Ed DX is a state of Kansas program to qualify a company has to be in one of three uh uh areas in terms of what they are doing they have to be in manufacturing warehousing and distribution or research and development of products used in Interstate com Commerce to qualify the company is proposing to uh build two additions that would be approximately a total of 97,000 square ft at a cost of $6.5 million in addition the company is projecting it will invest an an additional $6 million in new machinery and equipment the company currently has base employment of 115 and projects over the next five years that it will add five new jobs with annual wages in excess of $46,000 a year uh based on the job creation the company qualifies for a 30% abatement on top of that based on the capital investment the company qual qualifies for an additional 60% and being in a regional growth plan sector manufacturing they qualify for an additional 10% for a total abatement of 100% the estimated value of a 100% tax abatement for one year is approximately $173,000 with the city's share being a little over 53,000 a cost benefit analysis was conducted by the center for economic development and business research at witto State University which shows an overall ratio of benefit to costs of 1.89 to1 for the city 1.85 to1 for the city's general fund and 1.98 to one for the city's Debt Service fund therefore it is staff's recommendation that the city council close the public hearing and approve the first reading of the ordinance granting C Machine a 100% tax exemption on the identified real property improvements for a 5-year term plus a 100% tax exemption for a second 5-year term subject to City Council review I would be happy to answer any questions questions for staff I see none we will open it up for public comment I see none I will bring it back to the bench this resides in council member Dalton glasscock's District mayor with a motion to approve as presented second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the rooll I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next item funding for the 2025 dirt street Paving program Paul gunsman Public Works and utilities for the record the item before you is funding for 2025 dirt street Paving program uh the the streets are located in District 3 4 and six which tods approximately 160 Lane miles of dirt streets many of which are in established neighborhoods that opted not to pave the streets at the time of development the historical approach has been to pave these streets following a valid petition which finances improvements with special assessments during the 2022 City Council budget deliberations resulted in funding for dirt street Paving and set two priorities for determining the order of when streets are paved dirt streets near schools was a first priority streets within one block of schools that receive Des suppression treatment will be paved first and that was anticipated to be completed within the first four years of the program 2025 will be the third year of the program dirt streets and disadvantaged businesses was a second priority and the PRI priority of those would be assigned based on areas within the highest percentage of individuals below the poverty line according to the US Census Block Level data the adopted 2025 through 2034 Capital Improvement program includes $2 million in 2025 to pave dirt streets the 202 funding is expected to pave approximately 1.5 miles of dirt streets all Street segments proposed for 20 Paving in 2025 are located within approximately one block of schools the type of improvements will be a 5 in thick fabric reinforced Crush Rock base asphalt 5 in will be laid on top of that curb Gutter and sub surface drainage are not included Within in the project as I mentioned before the dirt streets are located in District 3 um near the area of Cheyenne or Cheyenne Street uh near Glenn Oaks and El Rancho District 4 there's there are a couple street segments located on Glen Street near 31st and the remainder of the the blocks of streets to be paved are within District Six within the area Northwest of Douglas and West Street it is recommended that the city council approve the 2025 dirt street Paving program adopt the bonding resolution and authorize the necessary signatures and I will stand for questions questions for staff I just have one I wanted to know of the 160 Lane miles of dirt streets for next year in 2 how many Lane miles will be covered no longer in dirt streets there will be I want to understand your question there be we'll PVE about 1.5 miles in 2025. five miles yes and that's only for districts three four and six correct those were on the list yes correct thank you any further questions for staff I see none we'll open it up for public comment I see none I'll bring it back to the bench council member Johnson thanks mayor um PA on this I know that the council during the budget session um recommended 80% approval is that going to cause any issue 2026 there will be approximately three blocks that are not within um one block of a school that we will need to address um as you mentioned the the city council had um Tak an action in the budget deliberations that uh staff reach out to Residents along those blocks to see if they would be supportive of Paving of those streets it was 80% I've looked ahead at those a little bit um most of those blocks have three to four residents or four residents on that so all four would have to sign their petition to be be above the 80% um that's most of the cases one block I think had five residents so it take four of the eight so yes it would most would be our our plan would be to reach out to those residents um probably July 1st of 2025 in preparation of the 2026 budget um to um provide them the petition information and have them get back with us to circulate the petition if they approve it okay so thinking about the block with four houses if we were to potentially change the 80% to 50% or more that would help if at least two of the houses were to say yes it would yeah based on numbers or and/or square foot yes it would get us closer um with the 80% you have to have all you know all of them if it was above 50% it'd be three out of the four okay yeah I know another street that I think has three houses I don't think it's on the list but that could potentially come up to and then even two of the three wouldn't be enough so correct 50% or more would be better thank you council member ho Heisel thank you mayor um I just want to give staff um props for this program um this has a lot to do with Equity but especially uh what we're attacking here the first couple of years uh safety around schools uh health for kids around schools so I really appreciate the work that staff has put in on this um this this is a great program I know down South we have plenty of schools like over the past couple years we've been Paving plenty of dird streets around schools so thank you guys for your work on this vice mayor Ballard a large majority of these reside in your District thank you um I'd like to take the recommended action approve the project and budget adopt the resolution and authorize the necessary signatures council member Johnson thanks mayor I'll second it I would like to offer a friendly amendment to reduce the approval from 80% to 50% I'd like uh staff to address that cost what would that cost to the city if it went from 80% to 50% um because then you would be eligible for the dirt street program and if I remember correctly during the budget the idea was to uh any cost savings from the dirt street program then go to the general population in terms of op3 um so can you please address that uh ultimately mayor the the cost is the same it's just a matter of how is a portioned and how much goes to dirt street and how much would go to op3 but the budget the final budget number would not change it's just the distribution of those funds I don't remember uh Paul do you know how much those three streets would cost in 26 if they were approved as I recall total would be 168,000 to pay those three streets those three streets would be in which area again that I don't remember off the top of my head mayor I I can get those blocks to you if we can have that back and I don't know Council doesn't have to make that decision until next year because that those are 2026 improvements council member Johnson council member tutle thank you Council M Johnson I'm just trying to understand so with your uh a substitute motion it wouldn't impact this agenda item it would be for next year is that correct or would it imp would can I I'm not sure I completely understand what your motion was yeah the the only um change is that for the streets of like what Paul mentioned with the four houses if three wanted them and the fourth one either didn't respond or didn't that's only 75% and the council had a 80% approval which in that case means you have to have 100% for the paving of that to happen so the three houses that may want the street paved are now punished because the other one doesn't it's still a majority of the block that would want okay so this isn't touching any money or anything it's just the approval of the street from the petition but it could potentially impact the budget right if the they voted for it then we would pave their street and that costs money yeah so I mean the flip side is if all four or all three said yes we'd still be paying the same money mayor again clarification your op3 budget is estab I is established in your dirt Street budget is established so if the council if the way the the past motion was made it requires 80% and if then 80% or more um are do not uh submit a petition then that money goes back into the op3 program and it actually expands that budget but we will continue to have that money set aside as our part of our total Street Maintenance outsourced Street maintenance program okay so my next question was going to be then the next agenda item we have is op3 will that have any impact on the next agenda item it will not because we're dealing with 2025 council member Johnson's Amendment doesn't even take doesn't kick in until 2026 okay okay thank you for the clarification I'm sorry I just wanted to make sure I understood so thank you council member John stun so as I hear it this your Amendment would be du both approve this and lower from 80 to 50% for 2026 yes I I would I would really like to vote for this one but I would like to keep it at 80% I think I remember council member Glascock can he speak for himself but I think he's talked to some neighbors that don't want their streets paved so U it'll force me to vote against it but actually I'm for it but I just want to keep it at 80% council member hoisel thank you mayor uh um one of the people that council member Glascock referenced did reach out and say that she thought there was a miscommunication in that that she did in fact support that so I I was just throwing it out there she did reach out to email afterwards and I'd be glad to shoot that email to anybody else so again just I think there was a miscommunication on some of that there council member tutle I'm just kind of thinking out loud but Jennifer for legal we could make an amendment to go back to pass this and then go to 50 to 80% and then have a separate motion to change the percent is that correct right now we have a friendly amendment that has not yet been seconded if it's if it's made as a friendly Amendment we the voluntary agreement of the motion and the second that that's kind of where we're at on a second um to answer your question can you vote just on the amendment not on the underlying um agenda item I think that's possible and and the reason the reason I'm asking is I I understand and I appreciate where council member Johnson's going but I think there are two separate issues one is a very tactical we're going to PVE you know 1.5 miles in 2025 closest to schools the other is more of a policy decision regarding what the percentage is and so that's why um it almost seems like a separate vote to me seems and then also to have the opportunity to see financially what the implications are um because it will adjust things in op3 and take money out of you know other districts so that's that's why I'm just curious if there would be any appetite for voting for them separately because one is more of a policy decision rather than the business of the city is presented in this item vice mayor ballor sorry council member glov thank you mayor um I I want to Echo councilman John sten's comments um and everything he said I also don't know who councilman hais will speaking to and if that's the same person I spoke to or it's other individuals so if he could forward me that email I would appreciate that but I will be voting against uh councilman Johnson's Amendment Vice mayor Ballard for me personally this is something that we worked on um before the new Council got here and it was a um a a promise you know that we made to the community to um pave the unpaved streets and a big majority of them um actually the majority of them are in um district 6 40% of the unpaved roads are in district 6 so um council member Johnson has a substitute motion on the table right now that has not yet been seconded thank you mayor it was a friendly Amendment but I'm happy to make a substitute motion because the vice mayor's motion was just to approve it so to separate everything my motion would be to um approve the project and budget adopt the resolution and authorize the necessary signatures and remove the petition percentage from 80% to 50% second okay we have a motion a substitute motion and a second any further discussion council member tutle I just have a question because I want to make sure I know exactly what's happening so now with your substitute motion it is truly what's on the Green Sheet and then no what is it was what I asked for the friendly so this would approve approve this and reduce um petition from 50% okay if it fails we go back to just okay I I just want to go on record we did make a promise we put in the budget that we would pave dirt roads with the prioritization around schools um I'm okay with that and I would be supportive of that but I do think that it would be easier for staff it would be easier for us um we could have additional conversations to me that is a policy decision that should not be lumped in with something that's a a business item so um if I vote in the negative it's not because I'm not supportive of Paving these 1.5 miles of dirt streets in 2025 it's because I feel that it's it's just not appropriate to lump in a policy decision without further discussion thank you council member John stun so again for legal Jennifer if if this does happen to get voted down we could then go back to the original that's correct and vote for it that is correct okay thank you so event so actually we're what we're voting on is that change from 80% to 50% okay thank you remember Tuttle did you I did and I just want to make one more comment I'm sorry I don't want to delay but um and I may be supportive of going from 80 to 50 I just would like to have more discussion I don't have this issue in my district so I just don't know enough about it so I would like to learn more before I make a decision so again if I vote in the negative it's not that I'm not interested in the conversation I just need to learn more and and talk to more people who this impacts thank you so we have a substitute motion by council member Johnson and a second by uh council member hoisel any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role no motion fails 4 to three we're back to the original motion that was motioned by vice mayor Ballard and I will second that so we have a motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next item proposed 2025 outsourced pavement reservation program good morning mayor members of the city council I'm Ain Henning with public works and utilities and today I have the privilege of presenting staff's proposed 2025 Outsource pavement preservation program for your consideration and approval as a reminder the city manages and owns and maintains more than 5,000 th000 actually more than 5,200 Lane miles of pave streets uh to put that in perspective I like to know that note that that's roughly equivalent to a 24 foot wide two-lane road stretching from Los Angeles to New York City as the crow flies in order to maintain that vast network of paved assets the city has for many years allocated funds to leverage the resources and expertise of private contractors each Year's corresponding Outsource pavement preservation program or op3 as we like to call it supplements but does not replace the critical and highly reactive work performed by City Crews while the op3 has been around for decades under various different names about 13 years ago we made a very concerted effort to evaluate and improve the way the program is managed the resulting changes have proven very successful and we've achieved very good results one of the most significant things we did was we moved away from a pavement condition uh driven approach to one that's more focused on returns on investments along the way in uh in 2013 we began extensive piloting to make sure that the sorts of alternative treat treatments we contemplated using were going to be feasible and effective for witcha we also uh early in the process identified thermal crack repair as being probably the single most effective action we could take at that time to very rapidly improve conditions across the entire city Network thermal crack repairs are those very wide bone jarring cracks that span the full width of uh some of our older asphalt streets so uh in addition to the pilots we also very aggressively targeted those thermal cracks over a 4-year period and those efforts were limited to just repair of the crack itself we did not cover those up with any kind of a surface treatment but we uh we did make a lot of ground by doing that as a side note I'll mention that fortunately those thermal cracks are only newly a concern uh uh sorry are really only a concern for the city's asphalt streets that were constructed before the mid1 1990s or so uh prior to the mid 1990s asphalt streets were constructed on a cement or lime treated subgrade and that tended to perpetuate those thermal cracks but in the mid 1990s a change was made made in the city's standard we began using a more flexible Aggregate subgrade and we've not seen a recurrence of those thermal crack repairs in streets constructed that way so we do have to continue to deal with it on the older ones but fortunately it's no longer an issue on the newer ones uh in late in late 2013 staff also be developing and refining a computerized decision support tool it's one that we discussed earlier this year in a workshop uh to help guide future uh investment decisions next year's 2025 program and all programs since 2018 have been uh compiled using that decision support tool or DST to further explain our transition from a pavement condition driven approach to one that's based more on returns on investments this on the slide is a typical idealized pavement degradation curve on the Y AIS is the pavement condition index or PCI which is a rating we give uh streets that uh is on a scale from 0o to 100 with 100 being a street in perfect condition and zero representing a street that has completely failed on the x-axis is time and years and with curve we can see that as a street degrades over time we have opportunities to ENT intervene using different types of treatments uh depending on its condition at the top of the curve those treatments tend to be very low cost and very high yield in terms of the life that you gain but as a street degrades over time uh the treatment options get uh sometimes exponentially more expensive and the life extension that you gain with those treatments is much less per the dollar that you spend so when you're focused on condition and your program is driven by pavement condition you tend to focus on your worst streets uh streets there at the bottom of the curve and uh and what you often miss are the needs along the curve toward the top of the curve curve and the opportunity to make really good Investments when uh when roads are in better condition and that's that's what our model has focused on over the years we've made some Tre some some changes to uh to how that works we're presently at a 6040 split with 60% of the funds uh allocated to preservation or treatments that are at the top of this curve and 40% of funds allocated to allocated to mitigating uh our streets in the poorest condition that are toward the bottom of this curve some of the highlights for next year's 25 op3 program uh funding totals 15.5 million in the adopted CIP it includes uh 2 million in newly added funding for supplemental Concrete Street pavement mitigation and uh in total it represents a $3.5 million increase over last year's op3 budget we'll be continuing to emphasize prevention and preservation with 60% of the funding and that's we calculate that Citywide uh also includes the 40% for Mitigation Of many of our streets and the poorest condition and then in addition to that we're we're also do doing a limited piloting of uh treatment that we we had some demonstration projects that we did last last year some vendors came in and and did those for free we had one product that performed pretty well it's a it's a gray colored crack seal color match to to better match concrete Pavements uh so we're we're going to try that out a little bit it's very limited uh and it's going to be limited to just concrete streets and we'll we'll see how that goes and kind of proceed from there this is a summary of uh proposed expenditures by District it's a little bit different this year in that we have kind of two components of the op3 the top half which is our traditional Street pavement maintenance and clink Street re Street Rehabilitation items in the CIP those we've always had uh it's important to note that those are allocated uh proportionally in each district in proportion to the percentage of all paved streets within each district the newly added Concrete Street pavement mitigation we're doing just a little bit differently in that we're allocating it again proportionally but just based on the proportion of concrete streets in each district uh in 2025 we be touching about 366 Lane miles of the city's Network that's uh far from the highest numbers on this chart but it's still more than five times the amount we were touching back in 2011 before we began implementing the changes just discussed this is a map showing the locations uh and treatments proposed for 2025 pending your approval of the proposal or or program this map will be posted online as a Dynam Dynamic map that will be searchable by customers we'll also Post online The Proposal that was included in your packet toward the end of that proposal there's a street by Street location listing for each district uh so that'll also be available so that customers can really dial in and see what might be happening in their neighborhood I'll talk a little bit about the treatments that we're using in the 2025 program they're by and large the same as we used in 2024 because they've proven so effective uh kind of proceed from preservative preservative treatments to the more mitigative treatments or invasive to uh less invasive we'll start with preservative seal which is probably the least invasive treatment we employ it's performed on Street surfaces about a year after they're constructed there's a component of asphalt called the maltene fraction that imparts the flexibility and adhesion properties of asphalt or to Asphalt it actually begins to diminish uh right when a road is constructed and as it diminishes over time the pavement becomes more brittle and you start to lose fines from the surface and you start to see cracks uh develop with this seal though we're able to restore that molten fraction and keep the surface nice and and uh flexible for longer so we like to get in as early as we can and get that done because it serves to greatly extend the life of the pavement there isn't a visual difference before or immediately after this is applied but there is a no noticeable difference years down the road between these surfaces and surfaces that do not receive that treatment next is pavement joint and crack seal this is arguably the single uh best and most cost effective tool that we have in our toolbox it goes down quick it has limited impact on traffic and it's highly effective at Cost effectively keeping water out which is the number one enemy of of our Pavements especially here in Witchita where we can have more than one free thaw cycle it seems in a day so uh the only downside of this is it's not the most aesthetically pleasing we have some safeguards in place to try to ensure that you know what we're doing is reasonable couple have slipped through over the years but we've we've mitigated those um and then we're going to perform this pilot on concrete streps that uh might serve to mitigate that further in the future we've not really made a lot of effort to uh through the Outsource payment pres preservation program to this point seal concrete streets because the difference uh between the color of the crack seal and the color of the concrete is so significant we just didn't think it would be acceptable we've done some of that with our in-house staff because we're able really dial in and limit the width of the crack seal but uh this will give us an opportunity hopefully to start doing that with on concrete streets via this program as well and uh depending on the cost maybe expand it in the future uh next is micros surfacing seal this treatment is used uh both on the preservation and on the mitigation side it's a thin lift asphalt surface treatment about 38 in thick it can be stacked in multiple lifts if we need to years ago we did pilot this on arterials and uh lower volume streets but it did not perform very well on those high volume roads uh so since then we've limited it to just low volume residentials and and collectors where it's performing quite well I want to emphasize that applying this micros surfacing is a two-step process uh the first thing that we do is come in and uh make structural repairs to the existing Road that's evident in the during picture on this slide uh those patches or where some structural repairs have been made uh that process is usually done you know with local contractors it's pretty routine does take a long time to get done uh so we start those early in the spring and in the early summer uh the micros surfacing uh seal on the other hand is very quick process uh it's often done by contract by contractors that come in from elsewhere and so they like to have a lot of locations lined up when they get here uh so there's usually a Gap a couple of months between that during photo those structural repairs and when the seal coat finally does go down but once the seal coat does go down you have a very aesthetically pleasing uh solution ultra thin bonded asphalt surface is uh another thin lift uh asphalt treatment similar to micros surfacing but more robust it's uh about 3/4 of an inch thick as opposed to 38 it also goes on top of a special asphalt membrane brain that provides a superior bond to the underlying pavement so we use this treatment on arterials and uh high volume collectors because it it does perform well under those heavier traffic loads it uh also involves the very same two-step process also evident in the during picture here we'll go in make the structural repairs early uh in the spring summer we'll come back later late summer and fall to put the seal code on localized repair is a it's a very small but important component of our program it can really be any number of things but essentially what we're targeting here are uh localized areas of streets that are otherwise in pretty good shape but for whatever reason have this you know isolated spot that's just uh problematic often times the those spots are commanding an inordinate amount of uh attention from our in-house resources to just keep things safe keep things traversable but the area that they span isn't enough to really bring the that entire Street into the mix as far as far as the decision support tool is concerned so we're able to go out with the with this program and strategically make permanent repairs there that benefit the entire stretch of the road and kind of brings every everything up together brick crosswalk improvements we started this a few years ago as a as a pilot when we started we had some very poor conditioned brick cross crosswalks around town to the point that it made sense to go in and fully replace them with stamped colored concrete uh the concrete is much more durable the treatment's still aesthetically pleasing you can you still achieve the same distinction and the look of brick but you have greater longevity with with the concrete as we've progress we're getting to the point that we kind of have a mix of uh crosswalks that might require full replacement but others that really aren't quite to that level yet uh so we we have a mix of full replacement and partial repair still using brick right now uh finally concrete repair this is full depth concrete repair it's the most expensive thing we do really it's on the order of four or five times times the cost of our most expensive asphalt mitigation many of the con concrete streets in town are more than 50 years old or portions of them are anyway so there are more and more of those concrete streets becoming a bigger uh subset of our poorest conditioned streets but because they're so very expensive to repair it takes us a long time to to get to them and and to get through them to ensure that we're at least getting some of the way there we've been committing half of our mitigation funds or about 20% of the overall budget to addressing poor conditioned concrete streets concrete streets make up uh about 20 to 25% of the city's Network so that that 20% seems to align pretty well the new supplemental concrete mitigation uh funding that you approved in the CIP will add an additional two million so it'll not quite double the amount that we'll be able to invest in a concrete streets about 75% more than we other based on the adopted CIP uh the way it stands we did last year we had slides similar to this uh we were still projecting uh a gradu an increase but the curve was a little bit flatter we weren't gaining quite as much ground as we show here but uh in terms of asset value we're projecting uh the upward Trend to continue and uh by 2031 we anticipate our asset value will be about 133% greater than it is today and uh very close to1 billion we also track remaining acceptable service life uh that also continues to be on an upward Trend uh and we expect it to increase by about 8% over the next several years and finally we track the number of Lane miles we have with remaining acceptable service life above zero and that also continues to be on an upward Trend not quite as rapid though but we're expecting about a 1.4% increase over the next several years uh again the adopted CIP includes uh $15.5 million for 2025 in local sales tax funds that's spread out over three line items or projects within the CIP uh Street pavement maintenance supplemental Concrete Street pavement mitigation and clink Street Rehabilitation staff has recommending that those three project budgets be combined into the 2025 op3 and that the full amount be initiated at this time so with that staff recommends that the city council approve the 2025 op3 adopt the resolution and authorize the necessary signatures and I will gladly stand for any questions Erin before we get into questions mayor if it's okay could you go back to slide 83 I think that's the right one 82 I mean 84 excuse me um as you know citizen survey done over a number of years has shown that Street Maintenance is one of our highest priorities for our residents and um you also know that as a result of that Council has consistently increase the capital Improvement allocation for streets I think the thing I wanted to highlight here is that when we drill down on the information supplied in this year's survey we went out with a supplement uh supplement survey and heard that the residents were most concerned not about arterials but about their own residential streets if you look here at the what Aaron had described as the treatments that are primarily in residential you'll see that we have a significant amount of resources that are going towards the micros surfacing seal which are slanted towards the residential streets plus we have the concrete um uh repairs and the supplemental concrete mitigation which I think are also uh oriented towards uh residential streets so we're now to the point where we've done a lot of significant work on the materials and are able to move into the residentials which I think is even a greater response to what citizen uh requests have been so I just wanted to highlight that if if you look at it in almost every District you're over around or over a half million dollars and some of those are as high as almost $850,000 in district 6 just for Microsoft uh surface mic surfacing seal so anyway I I just wanted to emphasize that point Thank you Erin thank you we will now open it up for questions for staff beginning with council member Johnson thanks mayor I see my tele telepathy works it's right there so I appreciate the presentation uh my question was around the supplemental concrete mitigation so residential streets is probably the number one thing I hear about um and mostly to people with the concrete streets cuz that's more expensive to fix but on here I know you mentioned it was proportional to um how many l miles of concrete streets are in each district but has there been any more consideration or conversation around dealing with the worst first just knocking out the worst streets no matter where that is and moving up from there rather than just proportional sure what well for what it's worth once we once we allocate to each district we are doing worse first with in the district and for what it's worth it it didn't shake out a whole lot different than what we were doing anyway which was more worst first across the city um there are in districts five and two don't have a there's some separation before you get to their worst concrete streets I think they're in the lower 50s upper 40s maybe compared to I think we still have a few in the high 30s left uh to low 4S in the in the other districts but but the spending the proportional spending is very low in two and 5 5.7% 1.3% and then the you know you can look at it from the whole street perspective you could also look at it from just the a more concentrated perspective too that you know the only things that we're really addressing in any of the districts are failed sections of those concrete streets so whereas in in the other districts you might be seeing some that are virtually 100% replaced in districts two and five you're you're probably going to be looking at something much less than that like a you know mightbe a 50% or a 40% replacement something like that so there are some differences there uh but in terms of exploring or modeling worst first uh Citywide versus what we're doing here we haven't really looked into that any further we were pretty fairly comfortable with this approach I guess yeah I just historically I'd love to see the worst things getting addressed first and just kind of knocking that off no matter where it was that was where I was at with my support of dirt streets district one I think was number four on that list as far as dirt streets go and other districts had more I just I understand you all are looking at worst first in each district proportionally but I think you'd have a a larger impact knocking off those bad streets if we just went what was the number one and went down we're doing that with flooding with leley project I would love to see us do that on concrete Street and start getting those knocked out just wherever it's at the top one and just start knocking them off and not really regardless of District just getting those done but just my thought on it but I appre appreciate the presentation council member Tuttle thank you just a quick comment and then a quick question um Aon thank you so much and Bob stole my notes um I was going to say the community survey had this one of the top three priorities also when we look at the mission of the city which thought to be an exceptionally well run City safe and reliable infrastructure is one of those pillars so what you're doing is really essential for our community um the other quick comment I have is thank you for the we are not done signs when we're doing road projects because otherwise I get a lot of questions of really you're done and it's like no we're not so brilliant idea and I like that so here's my question I think uh it's the joke within public works I've been asking begging for gray crack seal for quite a few years and I heard you say gray crack seal and I said yay and then I heard you say only on concrete streets yeah which we don't have any in District 2 so can you explain that and you don't have to get into a great level of detail but um you know and again I think crail is great I've had you know residents tell me that it's been successful in their Community for a decade which is what we want to see it's reliable like you said it's very inexpensive easy to apply but it's kind of unsightly and there have been situations in my district where we had to go back and put a surface on because it was so unsightly any thought of piloting great crack seal not just on concrete streets well I I wouldn't rule it out uh for sure uh we do want to uh we don't want to jump all in at this point we had a demonstration project that went pretty well we want to see how it works uh uh on more streets uh so we're kind of just dipping our toe into it right now uh we and we do have a desire for sure to you know start doing start crack sealing concrete streets which we really haven't done uh before just because we had reason to believe it would not be well re received uh so the I I wouldn't rule out expanding from there right now we're anticipating that it's going to be about twice the cost of our asphalt crack seal the traditional crack seal so that if we were to do that you know we have one point I think we're one at 1.2 million or so in this year's program in uh traditional crack ceiling that would make that 2.4 theoretically which is going to it's just going to erode a lot of the other things that we' do if we did that great answer thank you council member John stun thank you mayor I will point out District 5 we only have 1.3% 1% uh concrete streets um but they all tend to be close to our new dog park so maybe eventually we can we can get to those too it's also where I ride to Cedric County Park so I bump over it eventually we can get to those thank you kin can you just go to slide number 94 uh you mentioned that previously it was flat um but can you address what changed uh to have this type of projection where it will be about a billion dollars in 2031 sure sure and I I it was it would it was flatter Earth before there was still an Inc increase but it was flat tur this uh this projection was made using uh what's currently in the adopted CIP which shows uh the funding for uh dirt streets coming back into the program uh so so whatever happens there that you know this might change a bit going forward but but this is based on the assumption that all of that funding would be available for these treatments so this was a policy decision um by this Council um to again respond to community um back in the budget season regarding moving some dollars into op3 that then equitably gives it to all six districts um more again equitably is that correct well so I don't my decision was to use what was in the adopted CIP which is the IP that city council approved yeah okay well thank you very much Aaron we don't have any further questions for staff we will open it up for public comment hello my name is Pat Styers I live at 701 Trotter ma Kansas while I'm not a resident of witcha I have been in the pavement maintenance industry for 25 years and I just want to say that I concur with what Aaron and the public works department are doing with regard to Pavement maintenance as we all know um infrastructure is probably our most important uh commodity uh once a road goes the price to repair it or replace it is phenomenal and so um I would concur with them and I would would uh strongly suggest that this be passed and that's basically what I have to say thank you hi Faith Martin I'm proud to represent Easter idge neighborhood association on the District Two Advisory Board and for years I don't think people understood how road maintenance was done and there was a lot of angry feelings and and just people didn't understand and I would really like to say thank you to Public Works and specifically Mike armor the traffic engineer for spending time in our neighborhood we've had a it was like 11 or 12 years since Lincoln which is the main street in our neighborhood to be worked on and we've not only gotten on the op3 but we got on it for next year to finish up armor and Lincoln so I would just encourage neighborhood associations or HOA that are frustrated that they don't see their street on this plan please uh get your community they're very responsive to Community feedback please let them know to just let Public Works know you may be put on the next year so we we were upset for a couple years then we figured out how the plan worked Public Works came to our neighborhood association meeting uh everybody was very receptive to the information and now that we know how it works instead of just grumbling uh we know who to go to get information thank you any further public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench tell member hoisel thank you mayor um thank you staff for working on this uh we've said From the Bench plenty of times how frustrating it can be to have concrete streets and to repair those and how expensive it is so I just want to say I I appreciate all your work on this um I do support council member Johnson and uh trying to address worst first um that's uh something Council will be talking about in the next year like we have the past couple of years as well um so I just wanted to again give um just give a shout out to staff for working on this and um bringing more funding to the streets that are grumbling in the residential neighborhoods that's I think going to be one of the big things as far as what residents see you can have great arterial streets but if you drive down a crummy Street every day to get to those that's going to warp your views of um the overall condition of our streets um and just one other point I just want to clarify um the email I was referring to either with council member Johnson or Dalton um Glascock um that wasn't somebody from within his district so I'm unclear if they actually had a conversation with him the email kind of makes it sound that way but um it's something that it's not one of his residents who he had regular dialogue with so I just wanted to provide a little bit of clarity on that upon further examination so thank you guys council member Johnson thanks mayor um again I appreciate the presentation I am supportive based on the conversation on the last item uh I'll be voting for this but I do want to have a policy discussion on worst first um I think that's a better approach personally just to get everything knocked off I understand that each District's funding that they're getting is going to their worst streets but I think as a city we could just knock off the worst streets in general again wherever that might be so I'll support this item I'm glad to see neighborhood um streets getting addressed um a few one of those I've actually heard from somebody so be happy to see that one happening but I would love to see that um policy discussion in the future it is a perfect time to ask uh city manager if this can be part of a workshop uh item again um seeing that streets are obviously the second most important uh Community survey result uh can we please have a discussion from worse first in all of wit versus worse first in each of the six districts and just for clarification we're talking about the concrete Street program not the entire program right op only concrete streets yes more than happy to Workshop that yes I mean if you want to do everything yeah uh our 6040 is working pretty well and that would you undermine the model pretty pretty badly with that I will motion to approve the 2025 op3 adopt the resol olution and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next item an ordinance amending chapter 17 section 17.8.17 good afternoon mayor members of witto city council for the record Don Henry Public Works and utilities the item before you at the moment um proposes to put in would amend an ordinance to put in place administrative penalties for water customers who are chronically non-compliant with requirements to maintain backflow prevention devices uh backflow preventers is protect the public water system by preventing harmful contaminants and stagnant water things like that from back siphoning or back flowing into the public water supply system uh we consider two different categories of devices one we call large devices which are applied to commercial industrial applications this also includes um fire prevention devices and then the smaller applications for lawn irrigation systems um each of these devices are or types of devices are designed to keep uh the contaminants out that are associated with each of the systems that applied to backflow preventers have to be um tended to and um tested and rebuilt on a routine basis in order to prevent unnecessary risks to the public water supply um when a back flow preventor fails the effects of that can be um kind of minimal located to to only the property that it's associated with or for some of these larger industrial um devices um an entire water distribution system could be affected the water utility currently tracks about 26,000 backflow devices that are connected to the water distribution system uh devices are required by city code to be tested annually and rebuilt every five years to ensure that the proper safeguards are in place um each year roughly 5 to 10% of of the devices remain out of compliance and so the purpose of today's proposal osed ordinances to affect increased compliance and enhanced consumer safety uh the chart in front of you shows um kind of a condensed history of compliance over the last several years dating back to 2018 when we had a baseline compliance rate of about 50% at best um since that time a number of program improvements and efficiencies have been put in place including um a more efficient and consistent customer notification process um more focused and increased public Outreach and education and stepped up enforcement um since 2021 um compliance rate has uh plateaued or leveled off at about 90 to 95% um we've been kind of varying in that range since 2021 and while 95% is is an excellent compliance rate in any regulatory program if you look at the kind of the the population of the devices the number that we have um year toe that's that's 1300 or more non-compliant devices that remain connected to the city's water system so the proposed amendment to create section 17.8.17 have in our box now um after proper proper notification to terminate Water Service until the corrections are made or to write a citation and um prosecute um the uh the violators through Municipal Court Um this can be problema those two tools can be problematic in a couple of ways um one it's not always practical to turn the water off to a facility for instance medical care hospitals um large manufactur ing facilities that rely on a constant um supply of water to get their business done may not be practical to turn their water off and leave it off until the repairs are made and then if you look at the number of non-compliant devices each year at 1300 trying to handle those through Municipal Court would be problematic and so um assessing an administrative penalty as as a step in front of those two tools is is a reasonable step to compel compliance the ordinance also um includes oh I'm sorry um the notification process if the administrative penalties um go into effect it it will not deviate from the process that we have now um prior to shutting water off um after um a courtesy notification uh to a customer 60 days in advance of the due date uh that would be followed up with a notice of non-compliance after 30 days pass due and and all customers all 26,000 customers would get the courtesy notification after 30 days being non-compliant the first notice of non-compliance will be issued um after 60 days a second notice would be issued if we have not heard back from the customer at that point in time with a with a plan to get their device serviced or with information proving that their device has been serviced then after 10 days from that um notice a certified letter would go out warning of the pending um administrative penalty and then in 10 additional days if we hadn't heard back on the 80th day of non-compliance the penalty would be assessed to the water bill the ability to serve further notice and turn off the water would remain in effect as well as the ability to issue citations and prosecute violators through Court the dollar amounts of the proposed um penalties have been established according to risk um It's associated with the size of the pipe that the device Services um the volume of water that flows is is POS the higher the volume of water the larger the pipe the greater the risk for a failed device and these penalties are also in alignment with with other administrative penalties for the sewer utility and the storm water utility the proposed ordinance also includes an appeal process to ensure um fair and consistent application of the rules and it would allow for um an grieved customer to request a hearing with the uh director within 10 days and then the director his or her appointee would conduct a hearing where the customer would show cause as to why the decision should be modified or made not to comply if the customer did not agree with the hearing administrator's decision the final appeal would be to city council and this is consistent with other appeals um processes and similar ordinances at this time I'd like to make uh staff's recommendation that the city council place the ordinance Amendment on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures and I'll stand for any questions that you have thank you Don questions for staff beginning with council member hoisel thank you mayor uh thank you Don I appreciate it um couple quick questions is this our own regulations that are pushing this or is there a state or federal regulations that we're trying to comply with there are there are federal and state regulations um the can Department of Health and environment has um the administrative authority over the public water supply in Kansas and so we are obligated to um conduct a um an effective back backflow and cross-contamination program so improving those compliance rates is something that we always strive to do okay um are most of the people who are out of compliance are they residential customers or commercial or um it it's both uh right now we're looking at um 62% of the of the non-compliant um portion is residential irrigation devices and 38% would be your Comm commercial industrial and Fire Protection applications okay residential irrigation pardon me residential irrigation yes sir okay and that's those are irrigation systems that are connected to city water doesn't apply to well owners okay thank you appreciate it Don I had one question can you go to slide number 111 these are the fees I just was curious are we achieving cost recovery when it comes to these penalties and the staff time it would require um we we would we would have to run that analysis to see um rather than taking a cost recovery approach what we looked to do here is to compel compliance um rather than um collect a fee or or or or the penalty the desire is to have them comply and so um these fees are in alignment with what it would cost to get a relatively sized device serviced and so with um with due warning and enough time to do that our hope is that that compliance rate comes down and hopefully we get no fees you Don I see no further questions for staff we'll open it up for public comment I see none I'll bring it back to the bench with that I will motion to approve um that the city council place the ordinance on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role motion passes 60 Madame Clark please call the next item amendments to sections 1196 010 11962 and 11966 regarding speed limits oneway streets and truck traffic Paul gunzelman Public Works and utilities for the record um there are some amendments to chapter 11 of the M municipal code for um within the traffic code uh the city of witta code section 1196 schedules provides specific information regarding stop intersections parking zones Frontage roads arterial Street designations speed limits oneway streets and trucks periodically this section needs to be updated to reflect current conditions regarding speed limits numerous arterial Street speed limit segments need updated due to annexations development patterns roadway improvements or changes in traffic patterns some of the locations identified to be updated are Hillside north of 37th Street North Hoover Road MA Road South of Pony as well as some sections along web road a few maps of the locations um the top area is Hillside um from 45th needs to be adjusted down to 37th Street and we will be um due to some annexations we will be um adjusting to that speed limit from 50 to 45 miles per hour um the bottom section is Hoover Road um some of the adjustments needed on it are between um Hoover or 45th Street down to 29th Street we'll make that consistent and then the other item I'll bring highlight to is U Maze Road from Pony to k42 some of those limits need to be adjusted Street segments as well as the speed limit and we propos du to some of the development from um adjusting that from 55 miles to 45 miles per hour in that section of roadway regarding section 11 96020 oneway streets the proposed changes are needed to accommodate the one uh the two-way street convergence downtown locations identified are Main Street from Douglas to Murdoch Market from Kellogg to Murdoch toeka street from Waterman to Murdoch as well as Emporia street from central to Murdoch and English street from Main Street to Emporia and then section 11 96060 truck traffic that is needed to be updated due to the trucks utilizing Lincoln Street between green witch and 127th Street staff recommends adding this segment of roadway to section 11 96060 prohibiting trucks within this area um staff police trucks are while they're on the frage road traveling eastbound they believe they can get on to um i135 to go north as well however they are that is southbound only off the frage road Southbound access I went to I35 Turnpike so um trucks are utilizing Lincoln Street to return back to uh go north um and and and so this would push them down to uh 127th Street in Harry to go back around trucks still could utilize this roadway um to make deliveries to residential areas if needed be there is limited uh minimum Financial cost for these uh changes we'll need a little bit of money for to replace the signage um however most of the signage for the oneway streets downtown are included in the downtown streets project so these will be speed limit as well as uh no truck signs with that is recommended that the city council Place amending ordinance on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures and I will stand for questions thank you we will have questions beginning with council member hoisel thank you mayor uh just two quick questions uh what is our policy regarding trucks going through uh residential areas so um large trucks I can we have a few streets in the in the schedules identified to prohibit trucks utilizing those however if they need to make a delivery or they have you know construction vehicles to work on that house they can still go down those roadways but um if we get a lot of complaints and if it does make sense to prohibit the trucks down those then we would look at that and sign them appropriately okay what what does that process look like uh reaching out to the traffic engineer and we'll evaluate it um we'll you know see verify if trucks are utilizing it where there shouldn't be and we'll um take appropriate action okay thank you slide 124 just a quick question will what type of s signage will be on Lincoln Street till so not an Amazon mini uh truck driver but these larger trucks we typically put up no through truck traffic thank you I see no further questions we will now open it up for public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench I motion to place the ordinance on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures second Motion in a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the roll motion passes 60 Madam clerk please call the next item funding for 2025 walking paths here council member tutle thank you turn wrong way apparently Ina a break I was going to ask that either I was going to ask I was trying to get the attention before this item or immediately after this item if we could take a break I don't know about anyone else but I think my mind needs a little refresh and some of the topics all of the topics that we have coming up are still incredibly important and deserve our full attention so um I would request either now or after this item we take a break thank you I believe we can take this item and then we'll take a break um a 15minute break thank you hello mayor city council Tim kellums Public Works and utilities here to talk to you about a a fun project and personally one of my favorite uh amenities that we have in the park systems and that is walking paths uh so a little bit of background walking paths are one of the most used amenties that we have in the park system they can be used by most of our citizens all different ages um and different abilities now that we are making sure all the pathways are Ada accessible uh so that provides a lot of opportunity for people to improve their mental health uh and physical health as well uh just getting out in the Parks is usually beneficial to to everyone uh and by increasing the quantity and quality of our Park of our walking paths and the park system uh we have more uh individuals we're reaching out to more of them and providing more access to them um to provide Healthy Lifestyles so they are pretty important part uh of our Park systems and and do make a difference in uh 2022 a survey was conducted for residents who live near Sycamore Park which is in district 6 uh to gain feedback on potential improvements um through I guess one of the later items talking about athletic courts um we had a pair of tennis courts that were uh in disrepair and they um they just need to come out um they we had uh tennis courts nearby and we felt that um going to the public to ask ask to see what other improvements they feel may be more beneficial to Sycamore Park would be beneficial overwhelmingly um they felt that walking path was desired it's a is a really perfect Park to do walking paths and it's even better that a um uh I believe it's a 55 and older community is is nearby so they get a lot of use uh of the park and providing a walking path would be beneficial not only to them but also the neighborhood adjacent to the park uh in early 2023 city council accepted a National Park Service land wire conservation fund lwcf Grant um that provides to improve um a trail and uh provide some pave parking as well as an ADA Compliant fishing dock to chisen Creek Park north um honestly it's a park that people not very many people know about uh it's a very is a beautiful Park um I think most of the people go to chisen Creek Park South but the north part is also very beautiful uh doesn't get probably as much attention as it probably deserves so we felt that putting in a walking trail here a paved pathway would get a lot of use and and a lot of benefit um to the residents especially knowing that um with k96 right there we know that um these uh arterial roads and in and uh highways they can tend to divide communities so providing something on the North side would be beneficial uh for the community North of uh k96 this does require 50% match for improvements um we plan to utilize the walking fund 2025 walking funds uh to help make that 50% that minimum 50% match for improvements uh funds will be used to as I mentioned um will be used to match the lwcf Grant and then uh other funds the remaining funds will be used to and put in a walking path at sore Park any additional funding beyond that would be used to improve existing walking paths throughout the park system um there are some repairs that need to be made U throughout the park system luckily most of them are in kind of smaller spots that we can kind of strategically uh identify uh through we get we usually hear about them C click fix has been a great option to hear and learn about different walking pads and also just walking around the parks uh Park staff will notify us so we'll Target those uh as funny remains so Financial considerations um the 2025 CIP includes um a little over $650,000 uh for walking paths in 2025 and recommend that city council initiate the project adopt the bonding resolution and authorizing and authorizing necessary signatures and Havey to stand for any questions questions for staff I just had one um this is more I just wanted to make sure that this is on the record I did ask the city manager to take take a look at um the improvements and break it down by District just like we had during the cultural arts presentation a few weeks ago I'd like to see the breakdown of Investments by District uh regarding investments in parks and wreck over the last five years by District um and I know this cannot be provided this rapidly um but again maybe for a workshop um and I also would like to see the breakdown of investment by District regarding libraries just like Cultural Arts did council member Johnson thanks mayor um Tim always good to see you great presentation um question on the breakdown you mean above and beyond what's in the budget book because that is broken down by District like a smaller one over the last five years okay so more a workshop item okay um I was just going to say I'm disappointed because that was a secret Park and now you've talked about how great it is and put those pictures up and I could go there to get away and how everybody's going to see it well I'm sorry well at least now it's uh more accessible for everyone so it is uh yeah thank you thank you we will uh we don't have any further questions for staff we'll open it up for public comment I see none I'll bring it back to the bench this res Ides and council member Johnson and The Green Sheet actually says District number four but I believe this is in District number six so vice mayor ballards thank you mayor I am very excited to get The Walking path in Sycamore um Park we removed the tennis court that I could probably stick my whole foot in uh the crack of earlier this year or late last year so I'm really excited it was worth the wait to to get The Walking path back in that Park so um or add them I should say uh so I'd like to take the recommended action and initiate the project adopt the resolution and authorize un necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role motion passes 5 to one madame clerk we are going to take a break right now I remember council member Tuttle um it is 12:22 at this time I ask that we take a break until 12:40 and return at 12:40 that gives everyone enough time correct okay 12:40 thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e clerk can you please call the next item funding for 2025 Capital Improvement program Park and Recreation projects hello mayor city council Tim kellums uh Public Works and utilities uh here again to present another item uh this is a combination of items uh before uh for this agenda item here um in the 2020 five uh CIP it contains light ons for athletic fields athletic courts and playgrounds within the park system uh it maintains the city maintains over two thou or excuse me 200 athletic fields over 130 athletic courts and 88 playgrounds uh sprinkled across the park system I will say that district one and six do have uh the most amount of parks in our Park system um given kind of the age and you know smaller block sizes and the different developments they do have um a number number of more um different parks in those uh so you'll see some of these improvements are a little bit heavily leaned to district one and six but we do try to keep in mind how to spread them out uh and we utilize a decision support tool um to help manage and understand uh which projects are next and which ones uh are in the I guess kind of the the theme the worst first um for some of our uh improvements I'll get into that as we get a little bit further along um I guess you know one of the main that we do focus on is quality and safety and then public need and and usage um so for example uh if there a lot more approve a lot more activities done at let's say um like let's say last year for example there's a lot of improvements or a lot of events that are done at uh Robert Thurman Field in McAdams Park we take into consideration how much usage who's using the park uh into consideration on what we uh prioritize we also uh taken cont takeen to um consideration uh different safety um inspections when we go out there we do um take a look at for example for athletic courts um look at the quality of the backboards look at the quality of the surfacing are there cracks within the system is the is a Surface um coming apart do we need to just resurface it things along those lines and again the the main thing that we're trying to do here is is sustain the conditions and extend the useful life uh when we can we do uh make repairs instead of doing fall replacement but um as we'll kind of get into it and a few photos here you'll see that some of the improvements specifically athletic courts U many of them are um asphalt and they just don't stand up to to time as much as a a concrete quarts that we that we're doing now uh the post tension courts that we use now are a vast Improvement we're seeing a lot longer lifespan for them but again we're trying to kind of backfill in kind of the worst first and trying to get those uh addressed rest knowing that we are now using uh tools to extend the life of the of the uh assets so at like field R Lake field renovation uh C staff recommends constructing new bleachers um and renovating existing ones throughout the park system uh the one that we're planning on starting with first is Barry Sanders football field that one gets a lot of use uh right now um it is one of our larger bleachers uh throughout the park system given its high usage so we felt that this would be a good um good one to tackle first we do have smaller um bleachers throughout the park system um sometime uh there's different Ada compliances that we need to meet based on the number of roads that they have for example uh five row systems uh require rails around the size three rows do not uh so we're looking at uh strategically implementing um or converting from five rail or five row systems down to three to just kind of get get a little bit more bang for our buck and try to address as many as we can knowing that maybe a five leacher system is not needed or f r system is not needed and again we're the main thing we're trying to do here is um upgrade to our current standards for for safety and accessibility for athletic courts as I kind of mentioned um some of them are U not in such great shape as you can see here U Murdoch Park um the main three that we are planning on targeting uh for this this year is Cessna kaanas and Murdoch Cessna is in uh District uh let's see District uh three kaanas is in District Six and Murdoch is in District One um again we're utilizing the decision support tool um to go out there and analyze uh the conditions of the courts um and ranking how much usage they get and then that kind of comes up with the next round that we need to work on uh right now we're kind of in a basketball heavy uh replacement um kind of period right now we' kind of focused on uh tennis um and pickle ball and things along those lines uh earlier uh kind of as we started using the decision support tools so right now we're kind of focusing on basketball they don't have as much uh program where they do get a high use um more for drop in play but we not seen you know basketball tournaments out there per se as maybe we would see at tennis courts or um different pickle balls um if funding remains we will plan to utilize uh funding for replacing the surface the last remaining surface over at Charles G starty T facility we utilize uh 2024 funding to make improvements there including um replacement of a tennis court and then resurfacing of one funding from 2025 would then repair and do a new servicing over the um the last one there are six total out there so if we can out those last two that'd be great we'd also like to explore putting in a small shelter knowing that there's a lot of programming that happens over there uh at McAdams and it it gets a lot of use it's also used as a overflow space for the uh for the tennis facility uh so when there are heavy tournaments they do utilize um the courts over there at McAdams and next would be the 2025 uh playground uh right now we're suggesting and w move forward with replacing the surface at Evergreen Park that's in District Six that one's right next to the rec center and it gets a lot of use out there uh it's right next to the uh basketball court and I believe that may be a footall court over there uh there's a lot of lot of folks that go over there with all the programming at Evergreen uh it does get a high volume of use uh so reserving that we feel would be a great use of the funds we would also I guess a second approach that we have for playgrounds is um going through and taking all our sand playgrounds and try and getting them up to Ada standards um right now um we have quite a bit of sand most of them are upwards of 20 to 30 years old I believe Riverside Park uh just had it for the 2020 excuse me for the two to fivey old uh s playground I think it just hit 30 years old so we feel that this would be a good um good use of our funds to replace that one knowing how much use uh Central Riverside gets um that would be a a big Improvement for that Park uh we feel if funding remains we'll take a look at other playgrounds um sometimes we can do uh different patch repairs or surfacing with the funding that remains so um again that we do over 2,000 um inspections playground in inspections a year um so that that's a lot that takes a quite a bit of time for our staff to go out sure and make sure go out there and make sure everything is accessible and and safe for everyone um so we do utilize all the feedback that we get through those inspections to uh prioritize improvements through the playgrounds for the financial considerations there's um a little less than 300,000 for athl field Renovations 225,000 for athletic Court improvements and 450 uh in 2025 for playground Rehabilitation and development all of which are uh go bonds and staff recommends initiating all uh all funding at this time as recommend that city council approve U yeah approve the initiation of the project adopt the bonding resolutions and authorize necessary signatures stand for any questions questions for staff beginning with council member Tuttle thank you Tim thank you for the presentations Larry we slowed you down a little bit from getting out of here um great job as always always appreciate what you do I've mentioned many times that some of our most vulnerable residents in our community um our parks and recck department is what they how they have their quality of life right low cost no cost options um you said that you do approximately 2,000 playground inspections per year I wasn't aware of that that's amazing and we talked about the 200 athletic fields and 130 courts and the 88 playgrounds when we do these playground and you know the other inspections do we find situations where things are not safe and and that's part of the rationale that we have to invest in this to make sure that any deferred maintenance is taken care for safety issues yes yeah the main thing is safety that's kind of the the number one thing with playgrounds is trying to make sure they're all safe um one of the things that the inspections help with are if something's broken so if something uh let's say a rope is is missing that may create um a safety issue that we want to address there's um different safety inspections there's a whole course and can be certified just through safety inspections they take all these cool different gadgets and gizmos out there to test the playgrounds and that's kind of what the uh the inspections do to help make sure that we are up to standards with our playgrounds and they are safe and I was thinking especially with bleachers right there would be a tragedy if we weren't inspecting them and then repairing them and we had an you know an accident happen having forbidden one of our Parker Wreck um facilities so thank you very much for the presentation thank you Tim I see no questions for staff we will now open it up for public comment I see no public comment we'll bring it back to the bench and I will make um a comment I voted against the walking paths because it was a new item it was a construction of a new Walking path versus this item which is maintenance of what we have and as council member Tuttle alluded anything that addresses safety concern should be our number one priority and I appreciate that this does address a lot of the public safety concerns to these public assets that have already been invested on uh so I will be supportive with this item so I will motion to approve the initiation of the projects adopt the bonding resolutions and authorize necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please council member talk um please open the roll motion passes 60 Madame clerk please call the next item 2025 Arts Thrive Grant recommendations hello good afternoon mayor council Lindsay Baka with the city manager's Office Division of Arts and Cultural Services um I'm pleased here today to to make recommendations from the cultural funding committee about the 2025 Arts Thrive grants a little bit of an overview is that the city is a a long standing cultural funding grant program that includes uh three Grant categories including the operational grants for arts and culture nonprofits who serve witw residents artist access grants and this new Grant category that we're presenting today uh the Arts Thrive grants I do want to I'll say it a few times throughout this uh presentation that this is a one-time subgrant award funded by the national endom Arts so the city is acting as a pass through because we have a cultural funding program already we are able to utilize that as match funding for this grant program so uh the grants that we're discussing today in particular are funded directly by the Nea uh the artist access grants I do want to take a moment to talk about because we currently have applications open uh these are uh grants for individual artists uh serving witcha residents and living within uh city limits to apply for funding uh for professional development opportunities uh applications are currently open and close on January 6th uh 2025 uh applicants are encouraged to learn more about the the the program and apply online directly at witch to.sub itable docomo on the city's web website uh wi.gov back slarts um this grant is designed to support professional development opportunities for individual artists directly so it's not for the creation of artwork per se but for a professional development um so some examples of what could be funded but not limited to conferences trainings website development artist residencies and Professional Services I always like to shout out that this is a great opportunity for legal service so if an artist is uh curious about um how to copyright their artwork or navigate the the legal system this is a grant that could support that um it could also support things like professional photography or website development head shots uh Etc anything that could help Advance the professional uh capacity of an individual artist and Art Award amounts range from 100 to $1,000 so moving on uh a little bit all of our our grant programs uh follow our new strategic plan that was adopted in May of this year here um just as a reminder our mission is to ensure that everyone has Equitable access to Cultural Arts opportunities by activating the creative potential of our community and our vision is that Witch is recognized as a community where artistic expression is an integral part of the city success where Arts Thrive hence the name of the grant program and where cultural heritage is preserved and celebrated a little bit of background on our cultural funding program uh we provide funding to local Arts and Cultural organizations and individual artists the program is overseen by the cultural fun funding committee uh there are 11 committee members seven appointed by mayor and city council and four appointed by the Arts Council the cultural funding committee makes recommendations to the city council which is why we're here today uh for local artists and Arts and Cultural organizations to receive grants uh and the committee oversees the funding program and ensures that it aligns the grant applications with the cultural arts strategic plan which is really new um and further developed in this year's well this year's funding cycle for 2025 funding so and and think about the Arts Thrive grants in particular this is a new program funded by a one-time fund from the National Endowment of Arts uh because the city of witw has a local Arts agency which is the division that I oversee uh because we have that local Arts agencies we we can be a subg granter of Nea funding uh this is a onetime fund that we are eligible to reapply for every other year uh we have a different Grant out uh right now for for review at the Nea but we anticipate we'll be applying for this every other year in the future now that we kind of are in uh and understand the program uh but it's not guaranteed so we do want to remind any applicants that we will not have this application or this program next fiscal year but we hope to see it return or Revisited in fiscal year 2026 or 27 uh under the the guidance of the cultural funding committee uh we decided to offer three $225,000 grants for a total of $75,000 uh for projects specifically that align with the cultural art strategic plan uh the committee advised us to have special consideration uh for projects that are women Le lgbtq plus Le bipac Alana Le or projects that will serve those same communities and the committee also advis that special consideration will be given towards projects where the grant funds represent at least 50% of the project as one of the goals of the program uh that was developed through our Thrive is to fund projects that would not otherwise occur without this funding so although they're $25,000 grants the committee saw the $50,000 project and Below uh to be uh kind of The Sweet Spot for the type of projects that they're looking to find um keeping in mind that um we'll talk about requirements here in a little bit that this is not a match grant that it could be a full fully funded project but really is the Nuance of the individual projects as they are uh as they applied for and looking at eligibility uh we open this grant up to all individuals groups and organizations that serve the residents of witchta uh except those directly employed by the city of witto or city departments or city- owned operations we really wanted to um um showcase that we weren't paying ourselves for for projects that we already had in in the pipeline uh so we really wanted to open this up to the community at large uh nonprofit status is required for organizational applicants for this program individual artists could apply but they and they do not need a business or nonprofit status to apply if a business or for-profit entity was interested in applying they must have a partner with a nonprofit or individual artist so really anyone could apply um depending on the type of program that they were looking for um and then as a federal requirement applicants cannot be barred from doing business with the federal government there are a few more points of Eligibility but this is kind of the the big highlight examples of projects that could be funded through Arts Thrive uh could could include but are not limited to special events lectures artist residencies public art film Productions performances anything that's program in nature is something that could be could have been funded uh projects that could not be funded or include include but not limited to projects that are capital in nature that do not serve the residents of witchta and projects involving historical or archaeological sites that do not follow National Historic preservation act and that's a requirement of the federal government the funding cycle in particular uh we had 49 applications uh for three available grants making this a highly competitive Grant opportunity which we were really Blown Away by and quite frankly quite frankly very overwhelmed in reviewing and uh kudos to our cultural funding committee for sifting through all the applications and spending hours in deliberation to to make the final recommendations the cultural funding committee did review the applications and met uh to deliberate and they ultimately selected the recommendations uh that have moved forward for a recommended approval today and three Grant uh three award recipients were were selected so the exciting news here is the cultural funding committee recommends awarding grants to the following projects one to Arts partners and stem music for the project generation steam uh two Michael Davenport threads of Pride and three ballet witto for their project breaking boundaries and these are in no particular order but these are are the three projects that the committee recommends and and I'd like to take a moment to just kind of talk through a high level overview of these three projects so the first project with Arts Partners in stem music uh for Generation steam uh their project proposal was uh very exciting and um really stood out to the committee uh their project includes bipac artists who will develop new work while mentoring middle school and high school students through a summer apprenticeship program uh called Generations team the program will create a will include a variety of teaching artists and Community Partners that will entail the creation of an album a musical album for for and by young people which will promote careers in science technology engineering and math the project will uh include a summer a kids summer camp where in participants will help develop the album uh they'll work with recordings duy per Studio professionals here in witta they'll even design the cover artwork and learn about uh career opportunities in aviation in witta uh the project Partners include Roy myy III of stem music and the Northwest area string Association of witcha vibe wit T and mixed down Studios they also have a larger list of Partners and teaching artists that they would work with but these are the primary Partners um I don't have a video for all the different projects but this one in particular I think they have some great visuals that I think if anyone's not familiar with estem music uh there's an abundance of energy behind it so I'd like to Showcase a sample of his work maybe do we have sound available [Music] no well you can even visually just see the high quality video that's presented uh Roy is an amazing um musician and performer and he's also an aviation engineer who has now turned his career into education so I encourage everyone to look him up online and and find find out more information about him I'm sure once this project is approved and and in in process uh we'll see more about his project so moving on to the second project uh artist Michael Davenport with the project threads of Pride uh Michael is a local artist and he will curate an exhibition celebrating the diversity of lgbtq plus IIA uh experiences in Kansas the artists will work with mid middle and high school gay straight Alliance uh programs are gsas and pride clubs across the state uh to create 3x5 foot quilt panels uh reflecting their experiences this project is inspired by the AIDS Memorial quilt uh and the panels will offer a visual Narrative of what it means to grow up uh within the community today the panels will be displayed throughout the witch talk Community during pride month in June of 2025 in particular but I believe that there's a tour of of those of the project planned uh as well and then the final project with ballet witchta is breaking boundaries uh in which ballet witchta is proposed to confront past social bias by engaging two nationally renowned choreographers Molly Sanson and yusa Marie s sorzano in 2025 to produce the spring ballet in entitled breaking B uh boundaries the ballet will be uh presented in a non-traditional performance location and will Elevate Bley which TOS commitment to equity and inclusion uh the performance will feature original choreography inspired by Doc sidan and witto aviation's uh history while challenging the stereotypes of ballet and the art forms history of body gender and racial bias and I I do want to reiterate on this project in particular that this is a site specific work of art that's being created by nationally acclaimed artists in which to for wi TS so those are the three projects that the the committee recommends uh for financial consideration the Arts Thrive grants are funded uh through a subgrant for the national Nom of Arts so there's no City funds uh associated with this project the recommendation is to approve the 2025 Arts Thrive Grant recommendations from the cultural funding committee and authorize the necessary signatures and with that I stand for any questions and our committee chair might still be in the room domic Ghana if there's any questions for the committee thank you Lindsay questions for staff I see none I will just ask for our slide number 148 uh you mentioned the number of applicants which is really really wonderful which also meant a lot more work for the cultural funding committee that already did uh one round of a lot of that uh Grand funding so I wanted to say thank you to the committee for then reviewing an additional 49 applications um what were the major reasons some of the other uh applicants did not get selected um I would say that the committee identified I would say a top 25 and then just slowly narrowed it down um really the focus was to uh pick projects that best align with the project prompt of serving uh historically underserved populations and really matching with the city's Cultural Arts plan uh but on a personal and professional note any of the top 25 applicants would have been wonderful projects to see through so uh anecdotally we are looking at other opportunities and working with private funders to see if there's other projects that we can find a way to figure out we're excited to have like shovel ready projects that if we find funding available through other partners that we could potentially make them happen I just also wanted to say thank you to you Lindsay I know that um you mentioned that this is a one-time grant that doesn't require any local match so you had to go search for this and I appreciate that you were able to find something that benefits our community while at the same time uh did not have a local match but you're encouraging the private sector to step up because there are also wonderful projects that could use some private funding thank you I do want to just make it uh maybe one clarification that we do have a match for this grant but because we already have a cultural funding program no new monies had to be um sought out we already have this program we've had it for 20 years we can now just use it to match this new opportunity you Lindsay I see no further questions for staff we will now open it up for public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench council member Johnson thanks mayor um thank you Lindsay great presentation I'm excited to support this I just wanted to volunteer council member ho Heisel to finish Roy's song Roy's song go ahead and sing it the song you want it to sing go ahead and sing whatever song was on the video I'm not sure I can parue what he was saying there but um I'm eager to see the video or hear the video later on if you want some more um saying and we can wait until council member comments and I'll I'll Bel out div Versa to of taking some requests from the audience but until then I I'll just uh respectfully decline member Tuttle thank you thank you Lindsay for the presentation thank you to the cultural arts committee that um reviewed all these thanks to Jesse I see in the back as well um I'm so glad to have this opportunity to support this it really just aligns perfectly I think with our Cultural Arts plan that we approved not too long ago so um thank you for all you do to support the Arts and promote the Arts we know that it just increases the Vitality of our community it helps attract entertain business and talent so I'm going to be incred incredibly supportive today thank you would you like to motion council member Tuttle absolutely thank you for the opportunity um I would en enthusiastically move that the city council approve the subgrant recipient recommendations and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role motion passes 60 Madame clerk please call the next item Arts Council operating partnership agreement all right mayor council I'm back Lindsay Baka with the city manager's Office Division of Arts and Cultural Service uh to talk about the Arts council's operating uh partnership Grant agreement uh a little bit of background the witcha Arts Council was established in 1966 to strengthen and support the local Arts Community the organization's mission is to advance and promote arts and culture in witas SED County uh Community through through advocacy leadership and collaboration uh the city of witta division of Arts and Cultural Services provides some administrative support and operational funding support to the nonprofit but the Arts Council operates independently under the direction of its Board of director ctors some additional background is that the city has had a long history of partnering with operations of cultural organizations and our new strategic plan reaffirmed the city's commitment to collaborate with various arts and culture organizations including the Arts Council the existing operating agreement with Arts Council expires at the end of this calendar year and negotiations for an updated agreement that continue to Define City's expectations performance measures and annual reporting and anticipated funding for the organization have been completed and just a an anecdote about the timeline uh two years ago when we we approved a new operating agreement uh we anticipated a new strategic plan being developed and so we had an expiration date of uh of this year knowing that we would have the new plan that we could any future agreements would align with the new strategic plan so hence the timing we are here today in the new agreement the respon responsibilities of the Arts Council are further outlined uh first to support the the new strategic plan uh to support the cultural funding uh program itself uh to seek private funding through individual and corporate giving opportunities for Arts initiatives in in in the community uh to serve as a Fiscal Agent and assist in the fundraising efforts for local Arts and Cultural programs and offerings and perform other duties and recommend recommendations as may be requested by the city from time to time and establish and maintain in art Articles of Incorporation and bylaws and again just an anecdote about um the city's relationship with Arts Council is perhaps comparative to some of our foundations that we work with in other departments like the library Foundation or Parks Foundation the Arts council is kind of our fiscal uh Steward to support things that the city can't do there are nonprofit partner in in executing opportunities as they may arise the responsibilities of the city in in this new agreement are uh the responsibility of the implementation of the new plan uh rest with the division Arts and Cultural Services as it is a city plan uh versus the Arts Council is responsible for supporting it uh the city's responsible for having a cultural funding program and responsible for seeking additional Public Funding opportunities through state and federal programs uh provide meeting space for the Arts Council um and staff support not to distract from our our uh existing job duties to but as we're available we provide some staff support and and operational funding support for the organization agreement updates uh for for this next one are the responsibilities of each party have been uh detailed um which is new to the the agreement and updated performance measures that connect directly to the 2024 2028 Cultural Arts strategic plan for financial consideration that through this agreement the city will provide the Arts Council a direct payment of funds that may be used for Council by the council for its operations uh the funding is tied to a fraction of the cultural arts Mill Levy that is allotted by city council uh by the to the council by the city council uh the absolute dollar amount provided to the Arts Council May fluctuate from year to year as do the revenues uh obtained by the applicable tax Mill Levy and this is a comparative to what we have with all of our cultural institutions and their current agreements um for comparison you see the past uh hand full of years breakdown of what that amount has been and the recommend action is to approve the operating agreement and authorize the necessary signatures and with that I'm available for questions and I believe I think Matthew bradrick had to step out unfortunately he was here all morning um if if appropriate I do have a statement uh from him that I can address to Council on on the Arts council's behalf if you'd like to wait till public comment for that or um I do have a statement from Matthew no okay um bear with me because I'll read it um a statement to the witta city council from the witchta Arts Council Council honorable mayor and city council members on behalf of the witta Arts Council I extend our sincere appreciation to the con for the continued support and Partnership of the city of witchta together we have made significant strides in advancing the Arts and cultural landscape in our city and we are grateful for your dedication to fostering an environment where creativity and culture Thrive over the past year we have remained active in fulfilling our mission to promote the Arts enriching our community through engaging cultural programs and initiatives our collaboration with the city's division of arts and culture has been incredibly fruitful and we have worked hard hand inand to meet shared goals in fostering a dynamic and inclusive art scene through our growing and engaged social media following we've been able to effectively promote programs like our Arts mixers and cultural funding grants efforts that have been greatly enhanced uh by our direct collaboration with the city the Arts are not only a Cornerstone of our community's identity uh but also a key economic driver it's important to recognize that the arts and culture sector uh contributes over $180 million uh in qualif quantifiable value to the city of wiah impacting our local economy in significant ways this impact touches every corner of our community from tourism and Hospitality uh to local businesses and employment providing an immense value and immen providing proving that the immense value of arts and culture bring to our shared Prosperity as we look ahead we are excited uh to continue our work in identifying opportunities to celebrate recognize the vibrant arts and cultural landscape that witw is so special the recent success of our 54th annual art Awards was a testament to the creativity talent and diversity that thrive in our city in 2025 and Beyond we are committed to delivering even more impactful programs and initiatives bringing more recognition visibility and economic Vitality uh to the witcha Arts scene once again thank you for your support and collaboration we look forward to continue continuing our successful partnership and to working together to W to make witcha even more vibrant creative and culturally enriched City for generations to come sincerely Matthew brck president of the witw Arts Council and with that I would stand for questions thank you Lindsay questions for staff I see none we'll now open it up for public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench council member Tuttle thank you lindsy for the presentation thank you so much for the Arts Council and all that you do I'm a proud member of the Arts Council and always incredibly supportive Matthew's comments were were perfect and I couldn't say it better myself so um just excited to have this partnership with the Arts Council in the city of Witchita thank you would you like to move the item sure thank you so much I'm excited to U I would move that the city council approve the op ating partnership agreement with the Arts Council Inc and authorize the necessary signatures should a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role motion passes 60 Madam clerk please call the next item acts on records and acts on standards good afternoon mayor and Council Captain a Moses back to discuss the police records management system for background uh the police records management system serves as an initiation point for many processes within city government our cases are used by prosecutors Municipal Court District Court external partners and to inform the public through data analytics the WTOP Police Department currently utilizes three separate systems to manage incident reports use of force reports complaint tracking internal investigations and digital evidence management those three systems are Niche records RMS uh blue team IIA Pro which is a versa term product and axon evidence.com uh in April of 2021 the witch toop Police Department went live with Niche RMS um which was a transition from ejustice records management system which we had add for a very long time um prior to that time we were a uh we were not a field data entry agency so anytime an officer made a report they typed or handw wrote that report and then they would physically call our case desk personnel and enter that report over the phone or they would scan that report to be entered by case desk Personnel uh the biggest change for us transitioning to Niche RMS is that it is a u electronic system where officers were now the data entry Personnel for all of our cases uh which did relieve some of the workload on case desk Personnel uh allowing them to focus on citizen calls uh and cases being made by citizens over the phone blue team IIA Pro is a product that we've had at least since I've been on the department in 2012 but before that um and that is used to document all of our use of force complaints investigations and traffic Pursuits um and it is currently supported by one it Department employee axon evidence is uh where all of our bodyw warn camera video goes additionally we utilize uh issued cell phones to our officers where they can take photos on scenes and upload those photos and other evidence to evidence.com it has become the primary place where we store digital evidence we still use some other uh Avenues to store digital evidence but we are moving to store all digital evidence within evidence.com uh in 2023 we partnered with the Bureau of Justice assistance through our uh involvement in the public safety partnership and asked a subject matter expert to come review our uh Records management system and uh support that we had in place for the system uh and they issued a report uh that showed that we needed permanent staff uh to support the RMS uh and that's something we've been working towards additionally it identified some uh weaknesses in our current system one it called out specifically was uh traffic citations taking officers about 20 to 40 minutes to issue uh which relied us to revert back to using paper citations and not using uh e citation program um specifically the report called out the need for a permanent RMS support team uh for those functions listed um Administration configuration issue resolution vendor management liaison enduser training that's a big one initial and and refresher training uh reporting and Analysis quality assurance end user support and continuous system Improvement we have made some strides when it comes to Quality Assurance under Chief soliven leadership we've sort of uh retooled some of our records employees into a real-time case review so in order to uh increase our accuracy with our reporting to the state and the federal government regarding crime data uh we now have or we're moving towards a 247 quality assurance group that will review these cases uh for those Federal coding essentially uh and send those reports back to officers as they make them in real time uh based on all of this and information uh that we also learned from talking with our employees which included overwhelming indication that our current structure was not meeting the needs of our officers on their their daily needs uh we began having discussions with the city manager office and other external stakeholders including it and the court system and the pro and the city prosecutor's office to review the potential of transaction transitioning to axon records and axon standards as a solution based on the inclusion of those products within the uster safety 10 Premium plan uh I'll take you back to November of 2023 when many of you uh some of you uh were on Council some of you were not yet uh the new axon body War camera contract approved in November of 2023 moved us into the officer safety 10 Premium plan and that plan does include licenses for our commissioned officers for axon records which is the RMS system and axon standards which would replace use of force complaint tracking and pursuit tracking um axon offers a much more integrated solution mitigating challenges faced uh using current approach of multiple systems and most importantly it's familiar to our staff uh we ex we engage an extensive vetting of this program we had a vetting team of over 40 employees from all different departments within the city of witchta that included um witto Police Department staff it Municipal Court uh City prosecutor's office and so on uh to review the product and and provide us feedback additionally we leverage relationships that we have through the major City Chiefs Association the wito police department is a member of the major City Chiefs Association uh and we spoke with two other partner agencies who utilize the axon product Oklahoma City Oklahoma and Virginia Beach um to conduct onsite and virtual evaluations of the product offered with axon we actually sent employees on four trips to Oklahoma City uh property and evidence were the first group to go and then we sent a group of Patrol officers and supervisors to actually ride with Oklahoma City police officers in the field and get their honest feedback about the product and actually witness the product in action uh one of the key elements of feedback we got from that trip was from a sergeant uh who's very well-versed in technology she actually worked down in our uh internet internet crimes against children section before she was promoted to a supervisor and her feedback was the search function alone the robust nature of the search function alone within a axon RMS was enough for her to see of the product to know that it would suit our needs uh extremely well and the results of this were overwhelming support additionally we did send detectives a group of investigators down to sit with Oklahoma City Police Department detectives and we also sent the Fraternal Order of Police uh leadership team down there to get feedback from their fop in Oklahoma City uh again that that review included property and evidence record staff uh kybers which is incident-based reporting staff and our crime analysis sections as well as Patrol officers crime scene investigators detectives and we have had discussions as a Command Staff with the command staffs of these other agencies as well to get honest feedback about the product um moving forward axon would certainly streamline our operations improve data quality and provide staff with a single sign on for all case and evidence management processes uh at axon records and axon standards are both accessed through evidence.com which is where we store all of our digital evidence so officers are already familiar with logging on to evidence.com uh if we transition to this product officers would continue to log on to evidence.com and within that website platform they would have they would have access to our records management system and uh axon standards so it would be a One-Stop shop for our employees to access all that information additionally it is a um web based product so the need for on-site servers here is is no longer needed axon standards is the use of force reporting complaint tracking and internal internal investigation system again it is webbased it's also Incorporated within evidence.com um and it follows a similar structure to entering cases into the RMS so officers will will get into a routine of entering cases and entering this use of force information in the same way additionally um our taser 10 product uh for officers we currently through blue team team I Pro when there's a taser deployed the officer has to go in and enter some information uh like how many times it was deployed what the serial number of the taser was how many seconds it was it was used for uh by transitioning to axon standards all of that information would be automatically uploaded for the officer into the use of force report this does a couple of things number one it improves accuracy uh Because the actual device knows exactly what happened and when it happened uh and it streamlines the work of our officers uh within axon records investigators will be able to create structured case files to streamline the discovery process all of you were at the uh City County onbon and heard the district attorneys speak about the mountain of the process that it is that we go through for Discovery um keeping everything within one system structured in the same way will improve that process we already share information with the District Attorney's Office the city prosecutor's office and the US attorney's office utilizing evidence.com uh they all have accounts and we can share all of our body warn camera video or digital evidence with them through that platform uh and moving forward if we transition to axon records that entire Discovery process will now be handled through that share function within evidence.com uh through the case management uh through through records our officers or our detectives currently walk over to the to the courthouse see some of Da Bennett's staff in person uh provide them with the evidence that they need to provide for Discovery uh and sometimes there is stuff that's missed and then other times we have detectives that have to go back and forth multiple times uh this is another way to streamline our operation a big change is the way that axon records looks at UCR and niers based reporting uh they call it Turbo Tax for police that's a easy way for me to describe it to people uh when I've seen it that is what it is so when the officer goes in to enter let's say a burglary report the system knows okay for a burglary for UCR and ners standards you have to fill out these boxes uh and it won't let the officer move forward until those boxes are filled out additionally within the system we can provide our officers with with information and guidance so the little ey that's with the circle around it the officer can hover over it and it can say this is what Forest entry is this is what Forest entry isn't on a box that's asking do you have Forest entry all of this is done at the officer level at the initial report hopefully uh alleviating some of the workload of our quality assurance team to catch some of the these minor things at the officer entry level and it will also uh help us speed up our reporting to the state and make sure that our reporting is more accurate uh they actually have a team that will come out through implementation and work with our team uh on kybers uh we would be the first agency in Kansas to switch to this system so they would build kyber's uh the kyber's validations as we move through implementation with our team um I think I covered everything else on here already uh now I want to talk about staff so the recommendations we already talked about was that we needed a permanent team to support this uh we agree with that uh we we definitely see the value of having a permanent team currently operations with our with our current RMS are supported by three staff members that were loaned to uh that section back in 2018 is in order to work on the implementation of our current system and those three loaner positions have stayed what we're going to do uh is create a team of five employees by looking at open positions uh and utilizing open positions within our department uh to uh fill that team of five that team of five would be a unit administrator kind of a supervisor for the team an application analyst a kybers expert an instant based Reporting System expert a program specialist a trainer that's something that is key for us to have a full-time trainer on the system and then two support Specialists one for the record side and one for the standard side uh in addition to our staff we've included in this agreement uh what axon calls a technical account manager for 36 months one thing that was key that we worked through axon with and they were uh willing to uh to come on board with us on was getting that person in place six months prior to go live so that person that employee is actually an employee of axon but they're embedded here in Witchita in city hall with us four days out of the week uh and that's included for 36 months in this agreement that is our first line of support so we have a physical person in our building that when we have an issue with the system or needs something modified or have a question we can go to that person essentially making our our team of five a team of six for that first 36 months uh as we work through uh any challenges or identify any uh deficiencies with training that was the big thing is that's why we wanted them involved in the agency training is to identify where people were struggling and things that we can continue to roll out after we go live after that initial 36-month period we do have the option to include the technical account manager moving forward but it's a cost of $200,000 annually so it is only included for the 36 months we will re-evaluate that after the 36-month period and make a decision about whether we'd like to continue having that employee through axon uh or move away from the technical account manager being included for financial consideration I have a um table on the next slide that makes this a little bit easier to understand um the total cost uh before you take off the uh the licenses that are already included in our plan is around $6 million this includes estimated interface costs of 384,000 and data conversion of 95,000 I do want to call that out uh part of our vetting process was to identify any interfaces we thought we were going to need for this product so an interface would be our RMS needs to speak to the jail RMS when we book people in jail we have to be able to send those reports back and forth um with Niche RMS we've spent about $100,000 with a company called Blue Skies to build that interface and it's still not complete uh we're still we're still working on that um so we included that in the scope of work with axon additionally having an interface between the Municipal Court RMS and our RMS is something that we heard from multiple people on that vetting group including Municipal Court staff as a way to streamline our operations uh so we included a two-way interface with the Benchmark RMS that axon will be responsible in their scope of work of building through the implementation process uh addition Ally we have to have an interface with the c the computerated dispatch system through the county so that is also included uh and then obviously we have to convert our old data we have to clean and convert the data in our current RMS to move over to the new one because we utilize the officer safety Premium plan we are saving about $2.4 million in licensing costs over the life of this contract uh this is an amendment to that contract approved in November of 2023 that contract went through 2033 so this is about an 8-year contract act and we receive a savings over that time of $2.4 million in licensing costs that we don't need to pay for our commissioned officers based on the officer safety plan uh so that reduces the total down to 3.5 million over eight years uh after that you have to factor in the fact that we still pay for Niche RMS on an annual basis we also pay for blue team and IIA Pro on an annual basis and the blue skies interface that I was just speaking of uh elimination of those brings the total cost of this project down to about 1 .3 million in between 1.3 and $ 1.5 million through 2033 this is uh just a graph that kind of shows what I just spoke about and the net cost of this project being anywhere between 1.3 and 1.5 million through 2033 I know that can be complicated so hopefully I explained it uh well if not I'm sure I'll get questions um again we're contracted with axon through 2033 uh through the officer safety plan um I did fail to mention in here uh we are also bringing on axon's um preferred vendor for E citation so Lexus Nexus ethos is a uh separate product that is going to be implemented through this process by axon through a subcontract agreement um they will also be brought on through 2033 and this total cost includes that e citation product uh again we vetted that product with the same team the same way including Municipal Court staff uh to make sure it would meet their needs since most of that information is going to go directly to municipal court for uh Municipal Court purposes for legal consideration city code section 2.64 point0 20 b g and K permit the city to negotiate directly with a vendor when services procured are only available from a sole source Andor involve security matters or high technology the axon RMS system is currently familiar too and used by WPD and will result in a total Savings of about $2.5 million in license fees additionally at the core of this system is our bodyw warn camera video our digital evidence um from beginning to end our officers will now be working in one system for everything that they do in the field uh in addition the axon RMS system has been fully vetted by staff uh we consulted with Pier cities and those reviews resulted in unanimous staff recommendation to utilize axon the law department has also reviewed and approved the propos proposed contractual documents the recommendation is that the city C approve the contract Amendment with axon and authorize the necessary signatures and also just want to make sure I includ it um authorize the conversion of the five positions for our full-time team happy to stand for questions thank you Erin uh I will also call out will Alexander from axon is with us for on teams uh if you have any questions for axon directly thank you Aaron uh questions for staff beginning with council member John St thank you very much appreciate the presentation and your work on this how how soon can you terminate the contracts with n and blue team yes so we will there will be an overlap and that's captured here you'll see that the cost elimination we haven't Capt we haven't calculated that in until 2027 um there will be an overlap where we're working on implementation of a new system but maintaining the old system uh and then we anticipate in 2027 the elimination of the cost for the old systems okay thank you Aaron just a couple questions were you guys able to uh work with sedu County Sheriff's office and ask them how this would if it uh was compatible or is that more the jail system that you consulted with uh so the key interfaces to the jail system we discussed an interface with the uh Cedric County Sheriff RMS as a whole that was cost prohibitive the the the cost for us to build a two-way interface between two complete interfaces where we could see all of their case information and they could see all of ours uh would not have been financially beneficial uh so the jail and the computerated dispatch system interfaces are the key interfaces that we need to function um the good news is axon is actually working with other agencies right now through implementation building interfaces with Tyler computerated dispatch and Tyler jail management so they will have experience building those interfaces when they get to us and it should make that process much smoother I guess this is more a comment but also um just a this is why I'm going to be supportive on this um report it says that there will be dashboards available for the public uh so that there will be more information and increased transparency um can you address a little bit more about the dashboard yeah thank you for calling that out I left that out of my presentation but it's a huge piece piece of this um so axon records and axon standards include dashboards internal facing to us essentially any box on the form is a searchable box where we can go in and run a report create dashboards uh we think of this as being huge for us not necessarily on the crime data but crime data will certainly be more accessible um we look at some other agencies that utilize this system and they have some public facing dashboards uh but for us the analytics around complaints Pursuits use of for effectiveness of use of force are huge um and to have those built into the system in a way that we can access and then a way that we can publish for the community was a huge selling point for us on this product we Al also had discussions about ways to um streamline the citizens review review board functionality uh for the staff that are involved in preparing information for the citizens review board uh we've talked about ways once this is implemented to streamline those efforts uh and bu in like automated reports to to create the information that's provided to Citizens review board and to enhance our public facing uh Professional Standards dashboard that we already have thank you aarin October 23rd Aon shared quote there's a reporting server issue that it is working on they've not provided us a time frame for a fix we will publish future reports when they're available to us weeks and now months later those reports have never been published earlier today Faith asked for WPD accountability transparency and truth I agree the Kansas criminal Jus criminal justice information system known as KES has policies that require member agencies like the WPD to conduct a weekly audit review and Analysis of their information systems audit records for indications of inappropriate or unusual activity on May 17th of this year I asked for a log of the dates on which that Weekly audit has taken place as well as when the last w PD is audits were conducted by the khp Andor the FBI the complete lack of a response leaves me seriously concerned that the required audits are not even being conducted leaving us vulnerable for future cyber security incidents I've seen city-owned computers with sticky notes urging their operators not to use removable USB storage drives if we have a security policy that prohibits use of those drives why hasn't it used what's called group policy management tools to deny read access to USB drives it can be done I worked for a company here locally where once my boss found out about that setting because I told him about it we deployed it to 5,000 servers Nationwide and all the sudden you could use a USB keyboard but you couldn't use a USB drive to steal some company data and give it to our competitor it works we just have to implement it we will not achieve best practices for cyber hygiene until we establish a culture of accountability through enforcing policies and audits that are already in place on a related footnote in August this Council changed the method I'm using right now the public comment rules that illegally forbade citizens from speaking about matters pertaining to Personnel qualifi judicial cases litigations or violations of laws and ordinances last week you all received notice that your vote in that matter has not resulted in the change on the City website and to that wi not a single one of you has replied shame on you we can do better any questions appreciate your time hi Faith Martin uh Vice chair Rachel profiling Advisory Board um in this case I actually support um updating and streamlining a records man system our board along with the citizens review board along with members of the public um have not been able to get the data we need to make and you have not been able to get the data you need to make the appropriate decisions I mean we knew all the way back in 2021 that what we had wasn't working uh which to Eagle did a great article in 22 talking about it and in 23 this body voted on it and here we are in 24 now we're saying we want a new system so I'm not saying don't implement this new system which sounds like it will be streamlined it would be efficient it'll be effective I would like to see some time bound um report outs to the community based on the number of dollars that we're spending on when we expect to see the transition when we can expect to get those reports citation data uh all of the things that Captain Moses talked about when will the community be able to see those because we know it takes time to do a transition but just saying we're going to do it we've been hearing that for years and years about data and so I just think the community has a right to know when we can expect to start seeing that appropriate data and again I will support um the move to the new system thank you I see no further questions for or no further public comment I will ask Ain to just address um just the timeline of this change um and I do want to remind folks that this happened in 2021 prior to this current new leadership In the Woodshop Police Department is that correct yeah so yes mayor the decision to move to this records management system was actually made in 2017 or 2018 uh and then it was went live in 2021 April of 2021 um Chief Sullivan started here December of 2022 uh that's when he started his time here in at the witch toop Police Department regarding timeline for implementation um depends on when we can get started right now we're anticipating if this is approved today uh and contracts are executed we're anticipating that a team from axon will Begin work no later than April uh to start the implementation process we will also then start the process of identifying the five positions converting those positions opening those positions and hiring those positions for our internal team uh which will take a little bit of time and then we anticipate the work for the transition to take anywhere from a year and a half to two years so we're looking at um fall winter 2026 if not winter early C quarter 1 of 2027 to go live um so we will make enhancements to our current process uh as much as we can one thing I've spoken about is the the Professional Standards dashboard that we put online uh on our website just a couple months ago so people can actually go online and see current Professional Standards cases can see closed Professional Standards cases in real time whenever they want to and we'll continue to look for opportunities like that to continue to share information online we've also added a transparency page to our website where you can see the results of the my9 citizen satisfaction survey which is also an axon product where we reach out to people who have called 911 and ask about the service they received uh and get that feedback about what's important to them what worked for them what didn't work for them that's on our website as well and updated uh and regularly uh so we will continue to look for enhancements we can make in the meantime but the transition work will probably take about two years one last question uh Captain Moses can you address the arrest reports and media reports that are online yes uh that that was fixed so they should have been getting posted again uh I will check and make sure if they are not that they are getting posted uh these are daily reports of incidents that occur in the city of witta and arrests that have occurred in the city of witchta that we Post online uh for five days before they're removed but I I'll check on that make sure that that process has been uh fixed thank you any further comments from Council Members if not I will move to approve the contract Amendment with axon and authorize the necessary signatures second Motion in a second any further discussion I see excuse me may sorry to clarify did we need to add the language to convert the five positions Aly sorry for the interruption but I just wanted to clarify so yes we would recommend that that language be included in the motion to convert the five positions I motion to approve the contract Amendment with axon authorize the necessary signatures and authorize the conversion of the five position positions second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the rle motion passes 60 Madame clerk please call the next item amendment to section 20419 of the code of the city of wiah regarding public comment on consent agenda items at regular Council meetings good afternoon council members Jennifer MC City attorney um this item before you is similar to the item you saw last week um that item dealt with adding a provision to the ordinance for uh Workshop meeting consent agendas this item is for regular meeting consent agenda items um currently the code that sets the order of business for regular Council meetings does not specifically provide uh a provision for public comment on consent items um it does provide um that individual consent items may be pulled for by council members for discussion just like the consent Workshop items um but like I said it is not specifically provided for individual public comment on such pulled items as is provided for regular meeting new business items um last week Council directed us to add a provision last week you did add that provision to consent agendas for Workshop um we were then directed to prepare an amendment adding a public comment provision for consent and agenda items at regular meetings this ordinance Amendment would allow that public comment on those items on the consent agenda that are pulled for discussion during regular City Council meetings the proposed amendment would mirror the public comment provision for new business items it is one sentence that is added to subsection Roman numeral VA of the ordinance and i' recommend that you consider the proposed ordinance Amendment I'm available for questions questions for yeah uh I just had one really quick question it was really in the ordinance itself I know that um item D under opening of regular meetings it talks about attendance of who's present and I know that the county often does this at their County meetings where they say the name of the individual and stay present is there a reason do we need to do that I know that for instance council member glassock was here virtually um so do we need to do that from now on um to do a roll call is not required under their ordinance the way this Council has adopted the order ordinances for meetings if you choose to do so that's certainly something you consider but it's not required thank you any other questions I see none we'll open it up for public comment I see none I'll bring it back to the bench council member Johnson thanks mayor uh much like last week I'll be voting against this there's already a process in place for council members that feel like there is a consent agenda item that may be of public interest to pull from the consent and add to the regular agenda before the council meeting often times consent agenda up until maybe 2024 as just been to highlight some good information about a grant or something going on within the city and then it gets As proved as you usual again if there was something uh provided our process now that is of the public interest we can pull that ourselves and added to the regular agenda for presentation and public comment I think that this again looks at taking away the reason that we have a consent agenda vice mayor Ballard thank you mayor um I share uh similar thoughts as council member Johnson I'd rather have a real discussion about what we want staff putting on consent agenda to give them guidance versus adding public comment for no useful benefit that can't be achieved by reaching out to your council member before Tuesday that way we can pull it so for that I will not be supportive I will add a couple comments uh this would be consistent with what was approved last week which now allows for public comment during the consent agenda during a workshop meeting this would also allowed for regular Council meetings which happen to be three times a month um so number one that's for transpar for consistency but the true cause of this was to increase transparency and engagement and I will bring back um a topic regarding the Downtown parking uh since that discussion was had the meeting right before this new Council took leadership and it was in the consent agenda packet that then was in in it where if again it was passed as a consent agenda in whole we could have pulled an item to really talk about it and then had further public comment but that did not happen so in this situation we could have done that if we pull a consent agenda item now you now will be able to in a workshop meeting um be allowed to speak as the public regarding that specific matter in this um ordinance this again would codify it so that it would happen at a regular meeting like today um so again I'm going to be in favor of this um so I see now council member Johnson and Tuttle would like to speak so I'll start with council member Johnson thanks mayor um and to your point there's also a process for that so during the ndo if many of you remember the city council had approved the first reading I believe four to three of the ndo and then for second reading which would have been on consent it was pulled by the council voted then to come back in 90 days I believe and that came back as a regular Council item so again we still have the power to open this up for public comment if it is of great interest to the public on the consent agenda I just think this is just an additional step that is not necessary because we all can pull items off of the consent agenda and put it on the regular agenda council member Tuttle thank you I just make sure we're on the same page because at any time from now you can pull a consent agent item this is just to have public comment on consent agenda items so back in January a consent agenda item could have been pulled right I just want to make sure everybody we're all on the same page this is just if the public can make comments on consent agenda items that we pull because now we don't allow that to happen am I accurate yep okay just want to make sure thank you and can we have a reflection of last week's vote regarding the consent um agenda public comment for Workshop meetings it did pass correct it it passed I don't remember the vote um tell but I I do know it passed and it was on cons it was on second reading today so correct the reason why I'm asking is I'm making sure that we don't have an odd number on the council at this current moment there are six individuals I just wanted to know if it was a four to three vote I believe last week it was four to three so in this situation um because council member making sure that council member glasa can hear us can staff confirm so in this situation um I would like to move this item um until we have the full Quorum the full seven council members I mean can you do that just because there's an odd number and maybe it wouldn't pass the ordinance is silent the code silent on when whether you can move an item in the midst of the item I don't you know there's just not guidance on that under the code the council does have the ability to defer the item you do you do have the ability to defer at any time and defer means to another date I have two more individuals on the board before I will make a motion council member hoisel thank you mayor um could we take the vote and if it's tied then defer to next week I would advise that you cannot do that unless you've F that's procedurally difficult then it needs to be a motion to reconsider made by somebody in the prevailing vote during the same meeting um if it's a tie would it both be prevailing vot then you're getting into new ground I would say that's just an area that it's a little gray so I I would advise that it's not the best practice to see what you to V to vote and then see what happens and then consider revote procedurally parliamentary wise if if the vote to defer the item until next week is tied what happens then then you're back to having another motion before the board you can do whatever you want motion to defer doesn't invalidate anything so far we're just back to square one the current square one okay thank you council member Tuttle thank you again I'm just I'm making a statement there's no judgment infused in this at all but we have seven more items after this and so if we're going to defer one why would we not defer them all I mean all of them could go to a tie vote it just seems odd to me that we would defer one and not everything else on the agenda if we have an even number I I'm just making that point I don't I don't really have any thoughts other than even for legal I mean does it make sense to just defer one because we're worried it may or may not pass I mean that almost doesn't seem fair because they all could go that way and I'm not suggesting deferring all seven some of these have timeliness issues that we need to address especially with the aridell and things but I mean I just I it brings into question in the community I would imagine why we deferred one and not all of them but that's just my my thought council member hoisel if this is the case I would defer all items then until we have a full seven member Quorum day so I'm going to move to defer this item to next week the December 17th meeting okay is there a second I'll second that motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the RO motion does not carry 4 to2 so now we're back to the back to any other motion that wants that someone wants to make at this time council member hoisel thank you mayor I do support this motion um so I will go ahead and move that the city council consider placing the ordinance on first reading and authoriz ring the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role motion passes I oh there we go council member uh Glascock um motion passes 5 to2 Madame clerk please call the next item arpa project budget adjustments good afternoon mayor and members of city council Mark Manning with the Department of Finance today I want to present to you uh some final uh budget adjustments that we need to uh wrap up our uh arpa Journey here our journey started a little almost four years ago in the spring of 2021 when we received uh an allocation of about $72 million arpa funding uh we got our first trunch in uh June of 2021 uh throughout our arpa journey we've really followed three objectives in utilizing this money uh the first one is that we've utilized it for city council priorities uh the second is that we've tried to do everything that we've done in a manner to minimize compliance risk with the arpa Grant and the third thing that we've done is to try to do everything we can to maximize our use of the entire 72.4 million uh which is why I'm here today uh deadline for obligating this as you're well aware is December 31st of this year so we had a workshop uh a couple months ago September 24th Elizabeth presented to you some ARP information and basically outlined a plan to ensure that we could fully obligate all the money by December 31st uh that plan basically uh included two components one is to reallocate some of our CIP money and the other is to present a few items to the city council uh for approval to obligate additional money that step occurred on November 5th and on December 3rd in which several other obligations were presented by staff and approved by the city council and the last step in that strategy is today in which staff is recommending uh the approval of some reallocation of CIP money again to maximize the use of arpa money and uh prior to the deadline now as we reallocate to the CIP uh We've really followed three or four principles Fair consistently and we actually outlined these I think in August of 2022 and that is we want to use arpa money on CIP projects that were initiated after 2021 that had that were geof funed originally that have no debt and that have completed obligations now those four criteria obviously in place to ensure that they're compliant with the arpa process so that's how we uh select uh CIP projects it really has a lot less to do with the importance or prioritization of the project it's really a financing strategy to uh maximize Geo large savings and to uh maximize the use of arpa uh so to that end we've identified three projects that we don't feel can get obligated in time so we would recommend reallocating arpa funding away from those uh one of those for example is Patrol West and uh we have the design contract for that uh but there is no way they're going to have a Construction contract ready to bid for that in the next week or so that'll probably occur in the spring uh so that's one and then there's a couple fire projects that again are not progressing as rapidly as we initially uh thought so we would recommend reallocating that arpa funding off of those projects the final item is just relatively perun but just to ensure that we're compliant on some little nickel and dime issues we would ask you to authorize us to make uh budget adjustments up to $50,000 if necessary uh that's primarily in case we find something at the absolute last minute uh we would prefer not have to bother you again and so that would give us the authority to fix any challenges we may find at the 11th hour I don't think that's probably going to happen but uh we felt that that would be appropriate to avoid any potential issues in case you're interested here's a slide that basically shows how the 72.4 million will likely be spent I mean there's some rounding going on here but you can see that uh 24 million or so will be spent on specific initiatives to offset the negative economic impact of the p Pandemic those are things like Workforce Development small business affordable housing those things uh you can see the bulk of it is used for infrastructure or CIP projects and then we have a couple other little slices there uh that's the end of my presentation mayor I'd be happy to answer any questions questions for staff I see none thank you Mark we will now open it up for public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench I will go ahead and motion to approve the shift of funding for the patrol West and fire station communication and alert projects from arpa funding to General obligation Bond funding and approve any necessary budget adjustments second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 madam cler please call the next item 2025 salary and classification ordinance good afternoon mayor and City Council Members my name is Jonathan Jones for the record with the HR department I'm presenting to you today for your consideration and approval the 2025 salary and classification ordinances classification ordinances establish the city of witch's job classifications and corresponding pay ranges there are two classification ordinances one for exempt salary positions and one for non-exempt hourly positions for most ranges the pay rates are set by negotiated Union agreements and are reflected in the salary ordinance the proposed revisions to that ordinance are a general pay adjustment of 6% for all Service employee intern National SEIU positions General pay adjustment of 4% for all employees Council and non-represented employees and other exempt management pay ranges General pay adjustment of 2% for all Teamsters Local 795 Transit employees General pay adjustment of of 3% for all Teamsters Local 795 airport employees General pay adjustment of 3% for all iaff local 135 employees General pay adjustment of 4.5 % for all Fraternal Order of Police Lodge number five represented employees General pay adjustment of 7% for police lieutenant and police captain pay ranges and most employees will be eligible for a 2 and a half% merit performance-based increase in 2025 the recommendation it is recommended that the city council Place ordinances on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures stand for questions thank you Jonathan questions for staff I'll begin with this um can you tell us what the the cost of living adjustment typically is um I received this email on Monday at right before 2 p.m. um this is in regards to the non-labor agreement represented um increases and it looks like in 2015 it was 1.25% 2016 1.5% 17 1.25% um all the way to 2020 was 1.25% it did not increase to 4% until 2021 in 2022 also 4% in 2023 4% as well can you explain that to us that might be mayor the changes that you see are reflective of changes that were occurring with our bargaining units as well as we were uh negotiating with uh fire I think originally SEIU there was discussion about uh market and so it was a we have as you know the those that are employee council and those that are other exempt employees are not represented and therefore what we're trying to do is to avoid compression so that and that treat employees fairly there are a number of employees for instance in public works and Parks if I remember correctly that work side by side with CIU employees do similar work although not identical and the we're trying to we were trying to treat them in a manner that was uh uh compatible or Equitable with other employees so that's why you started to see that's why you see the 4% the 1.25 one and a half those early from 2016 through 20 the end of 21 those are consistent with what was happening with our employee unions at the time as well although and then the employee union started to receive much more significant increases after that period of time so has this been accounted for in the 2025 budget that was approved by the council in August of a 4% yes it has so I'm going to go back to the question that was asked last week which was the budget that was approved last in August uh took into account a much lower percentage increase for with the police uh Union contract but in this one it was accounted for at 4% so I'd like to know what the rationale was to keep it at I believe it was 1.5% in the budget versus this one which was 4% the um if I remember correctly the total increase for police uh it was roughly in the 7% range it was a 4 and a half% plus other changes in the pay scale and I if Mark still here not sure markk is here but he's the one that worked through that plus we had overtime emergency overtime expenses that added to that base as well so the increase for police is more than just the four and a half percent which we reported uh in the uh in the this week's report so this 4% one more time on the individuals who are not represented by unions uh this looks like SEIU got a 6% increase um fire got 3% police 4.5% but it looks like there's now a red a smaller um increase for Transit at 2% airport staff at 3% so what was the justification on the number of 4% rather than the other numbers that were uh also shown again it it's a matter of the total package and this is a hard year most of the time our contracts are in general alignment and this case they're not and I think it's because we had we saw significant increases in police and fire over the last three years with that put our non-union employees at a competitive disadvantage SEIU last year when we negotiated recognized that and that's how we got to the 6% for them because they had been left behind under a previous contract and that's so that was the rationale for the 4% for our uh non-union employees this year also there are no addition benefits that are going that will be acred by the non-union employees and if you just look at what you approved for police this time you had emergency overtime you had longevity pay and vacation increase and none of those benefits uh would accur to our employee our non-union employees and that's pretty common with all of our Union contracts the questions are not a reflection of not valuing the staff of the city of Witchita we value them obviously with making sure that a bargaining unit is heard U multiple bargaining units in this situation three of them SEIU the fop and the fire Union um so these are the remaining positions that are not represented by a bargaining unit and again we want to pay fairly um as you mentioned city manager so my next question really is about this city council so where does this city council um fall when it comes to uh this pay increase then sure there is an ordinance uh mayor that uh was approved several years ago that the council would receive the same compensation as the employee council uh employees so the council uh under another ordinance would automatically receive the 4% and then final question how does this um factor into top leadership then is this not factored into uh department head roles it would be the same it would be a 4% okay thank you very much thank you any further questions for staff I see none we will now open it up for public comment I see none we'll bring it back to the bench council member tutle thank you um as I've said twice already I'll say it three times it's a bit redundant but the mission of the city of wiah is to be an exceptionally well-run City we do that through keeping with safe building a safe and reliable infrastructure growing our e economy and provide conditions for living well what that means is at the city of Witchita we don't make things and sell things we provide services we are in the service industry we serve the residents of the city of witw and sometimes we also serve the residents within our region for example we provide 17% of the water in the state of Kansas the majority of our budget is Staff because we provide those Services what that means is for us to meet our mission and to live up to what the community members expect we must have staff and we must have good staff who are content experts and who are dedicated and I believe that's exactly what we have right now within the city of Witchita um I would also like to make mention it over the last couple years the county has made significant pay increases with their staff and oftentimes we compete with the county for police for fire for Public Works team for administration for HR for all the things and so with the economy today I don't know about any of you all but when I go to the grocery store things cost a lot more rent and mortgages are more home insurance is more car repairs are more everything costs more and that means it costs more for our city employees too I say all the time there's not 3,100 city employees there's 3,17 because it is our job to work with staff and to provide them the resources that they need to be successful it would be impossible for me to thank every staff person who is works for the city individually we would be here until tomorrow at this time as I rattle all their names off but I think of Matt in Parks and Recreation I think of Pam in HR Joe who's in our Building Services Department Tyler and Communications Sally and housing Kyle and it Laura in public works and Nikki in finance all of those individuals come to work each and every day to serve the community and serve them well and I want to do everything that we can to make sure they feel appreciated and they stay in their current role and more importantly they encourage their friends and professional colleagues to also come and work at the city of witch talk I will be supportive today thank you council member hoisel thank you mayor um thank you council member Tuttle I Echo many of your sentiments uh to be completely honest I think our employees deserve more than uh what we what we have um I just really want to make sure that they know that they are truly valued we want to continue to make a place here that people want to work because it pays dividends down the line too you have Topline quality Topline talent that means Topline services that we can't provide the city of wiah so um the all the the fellow employees out there every time I walk into this building I I take it upon my I think to myself I am the least qualified person in this building to be doing uh the job I'm doing because we have so many great people here working and um I really appreciate you guys thank you council member Johnson thanks mayor accidentally dropped my remarks over here and council member Tuttle found him um I just want to also Echo that I really appreciate the employees here that dedicate their time and energy to the city of Witchita when I was first elected it was one of the first things I said I always say that the people witchar our strength but the people who work for our local government who day in and day out make things happen the things that we ask for From the Bench to addressing Community needs and responding to folks um definitely appreciate that work um our team is awesome I feel like they are a team and like council member hois I wish we could do more than than the 4% um but I am definitely supportive I I think our team deserves it uh and they work day in and day out to uh make government work for people uh the best way possible and I think they should be compensated for such so I am supportive um glad to see this com in towards us and hopefully we can continue to see that bump up a little bit vice mayor Ballard thank you mayor I just like to Echo um my colleague comments um personally I I feel like our employees are one of the best investments that we can make they're the ones that keep the water running keep our streets um drivable and you know our Parks nice and and all of those different things they really are the worker bees um that keep the city afloat so sometimes when we're not able to be as competitive in our wages and we can offer cheaper really good benefits Healthcare we're able to be more competitive the pension and some of the things in those is so when we are able to um give a tiny increase in their pay um I I think they are more than deserving council member John Sten thank you mayor I also appreciate the city employees very very much and I think this is important to keep our non-un employees close to our Union employees B in uh in pay so I I will be voting for it also thank you is there a motion to approve this item thank you um and I think my many of my colleagues extreme gratitude to the city of witcha staff for all you do you are greatly appreciated you're respected you are content experts you are professionals and we hope that you will stay with us for a long time I would move that the city council place the ordinance on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I will issue I will uh move for a substitute motion so I'm allowed to do this correct the substitute motion is to approve everything in this recommendation except for the pay increase for the mayor of witch council member Tuttle I would like to make amendment to that motion please Jennifer I can do that correct since it was a substitute was there a second on the substitute there was not a second on the substitute is there is there a second to the motion to approve the there was sorry the original motion had a second okay so the substitute motion is uh to place the ordinance on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures without the pay increase to the mayor of Witchita is there a second there is not so council member Tuttle you I was going to amend her motion but you can now make you can now make a substitute motion of your own well no there's only one substitute so make a motion to amend yeah so since hers didn't get a second then I can't amend it correct correct correct go back the original motion is on see the original motion is to pass then 4% as is okay thank you uh can I ask legal a question I would like to exempt the mayor of witch toss pay and cap it without the 4% increase council member Johnston I would like you to reconsider that um I know how hard you work know you go up 7 6 7 o'clock in the morning last night I think you were there till 8:30 maybe 8 so I think I think you work really hard I think you deserve it it's not that much of an increase and I I think it's welld deserved I I know where you're trying to go but I just think you deserve council member tutle thank you and the amendment that I was going to make had the substitute motion would be for the mayor and the council I think that it should either be all staff because we are part of Staff or it should be all seven of us I think the Optics of only one and not seven is not what the the message of unity and Leadership we would want to portray in the community that's just my opinion thank you so I will do a substitute motion to include the entire Council well we're back to just one substitute motion per item so we could now go back to a motion to amend sorry it's just a motion to amend the original motion uh that would include the entire Council council member Johnson thanks mayor uh I will not be supportive of that my kids are very expensive and the 60 to 70 hours a week I work here um with the pay that we receive U I will not be supporting that I've also publicly said I think council members should get paid more than what we get paid pay for Council Members should start off much higher to get more people involved as well as folks like me with three kids one adult um so with that I will not be supportive of that I think council members should get paid more and uh freezing that for this I won't be supportive of council member tutle thank you Jennifer I have a question for legal yes so this is now a motion and a second for I don't know was there a second to this most recent motion to exclude all coun I don't know that there was okay so then we're still on the original motion of all staff well we're waiting on a I don't okay thank you my question is Smo then thank you since my motion did not get a second we have a motion on hand as is to increase the 4% pay for all non-union staff and recommended as in placing it on first reading uh with a second by who was the second from vice mayor vice mayor Ballard so we have a motion and a second any further discussion before the vote I will make it very clear that I will not be voting in favor of this as I have promised this community that I was not going to get a pay increase because I believe that what you voted me to do was represent you and I respect the city of witchta Staff but I am not a witta staff member I am I belong to the citizens of witcha and that is why I have said from this bench that my job is to question staff my job is not to disrespect staff it is to question staff because I know that individuals in our community cannot attend every single council meeting so I have to ask the questions that Community is asking us to ask of Staff um so again I will be voting um not in favor of this item and then I will asked um I guess city manager how I can be exempt um by my myself so that my pay will not increase by 4% vice mayor Ballard thank you uh mayor this is a little uncomfortable I wish that if this was a route that you were considering um just kind of throwing this at us at the bench is a little uncomfortable um I respect how you feel but um as council member um Johnson said um you know everything is is expensive um and just as we com about the employees you know for the for the city as well so um maybe next time if you feel comfortable talking to us prior to um so it doesn't kind of catch us off guard that especially about um an item like this council member tutle sorry thank you um I would also be willing to not um take the increase um but I know not all of us can and this is we are part-time pay so um but I there's no way that I'm not going to vote for this because of staff and so um I just want to go on the record that you know I I would be willing to not take a pay increase but by voting to not take a pay increase I am voting that staff don't get a pay increase and so I will dedicate my my um increase in the community in some meaningful way for me and my family but I will be absolutely supportive of voting this for this today for all of the reasons I've stated to let staff know how much they're appreciated thank you council member John stun thank you mayor this is one time I agree with council member John Sun without a te I I do think that the overall the pay should be increased for council members uh to get more people to be able to run um my view it's not worth the money time and stress we put in not worth it um and I think we need to get some good people to run and I I think the pay should be increased so I'll be voting for this I don't need the money but I know other people here do and uh so I will be voting for it council member hoisel thank you mayor um yeah I I agree with um but of what the other council members say that a couple of thousand is no reason to vote against the pay raise for all the hardworking employees here um there could be better way I I'm not going to judge what anybody does with their own money um you can donate it to charity or whatever council member uh Tuttle has said as well so yeah it's just inflation's gone up so much over the past three years 4% 8% 4% we need to make sure that we pay our employees what they deserve or else they will be leaving us for better opportunities and many of them have the servants heart so we just need to make sure that we support them wherever we can thank you vice mayor Ballard thank you um I was not going to say this but we just voted earlier for the police the fop contract so if you're voting no you're voting for the police to get a raise but not the rest of the employees I just want to make sure that you know what message that's sending and I'm not being disrespectful I I'm just I just don't think that's a good message to the rest of the employees and I respect you if you don't want to take the raise and that's I wish I was in a position to do that honestly but I'm not and I just it's hard enough for us to retain the employees that we have and recruit um yeah I just I'm I'm not I'm not sure how to process that but mayor Ballard I did have a substitute motion anyone could have seconded my substitute Motion in which I would have voted in the affirmative to allow and support the 4% increase without the mayor of Witchita receiving a 4% increase but I had nobody who seconded my motion my my amended motion or substitute motion therefore we're back to the original notion and again I wanted the mayor's pay not to to have a pay increase council member Tuttle thank you um just one last comment um I just didn't want it to be only the mayor because again I think that's an optic that we probably don't want to share in the community as I mentioned and I stated on record and I'll state it again I would have been willing for it to be all seven of us but unfortunately this has taken us down a path that has taken away from the true message of this is a merit increase for employees this should be celebrated as a fantastic thing that is going to I assume happen today that our employees are going to be recognized for what they do with a small cost of living adjustment so I hope that you know the sound bites from this are that we praise and appreciate the city of Witchita staff and that they this is one small way to recognize them the other thing is people in the community are confused they've been texting me saying what are we even voting on we are back now on the original item of 4% cost of living adjustment for All City staff that are not in a in a union so just so the community knows but again it's it's unfortunate that this has taken the path and the conversation it has because the true meaning of this agenda item is to recognize and appreciate staff in in the city of Witchita thank you I will have my um final comments regarding this I made a promise a year ago that I was not going to take a pay increase so I'm just following through with my promise to this community and so that's why I again had a substitute motion that would have approved the 4% increase without the mayor of wias pay and again I'm voting not in the affirmative because this still takes into account the mayor of wiah getting a pay increase which then would mean that I lied and I would not want that to be my record therefore I will be voting not in the affirmative regarding this item we have a motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role motion passes motion passes 6 to 1 Madame clerk please call the next item zone change requests in the city from single family residential district to multif family district with protective overlay generally located on the north side of West Maple Street within onethird of a mile west of North Ridge Road hello and good afternoon Scott wle from the planning department so for this application as you heard the applicant is requesting approval of a zoning change from sf5 to mf18 and a protective overlay this item is being heard today because there have been protests received against the application in terms of the request the applicant has indicated they're requesting the zoning change in order to develop the property with multiple duplex and single family dwelling units in addition to the zoning uh District change the applicant is requesting a protective overlay that would require residential structures to be only single family and duplex dwellings so for instance they could not build an apartment building there in terms of the site as you can see here on the graphic the subject site is generally located on the north side of West Maple Street and within about a third of a mile of West of North Ridge Road the subject site is Pro o imately 5 acres in size and developed with a vacant commercial building and a single family house in terms of context properties to the north east and west are zoned sf5 and developed with single family dwellings you can see on the aial how they're developed here's the zoning map property to the South is owned LC limited commercial district and has a cup and includes a shopping center restaurant in an undevelop undeveloped parcel in terms of the staff report the staff report provides information about the development standards potential dwelling density the requested overlay changes over time to the zoning Quest zoning request by the applicant parking and Landscaping requirements the staff report also includes a review of conformance with Community plans on October 10th the Planning Commission held a public hearing for this item and ultimately deferred their decision to their November 7th meeting at that October meeting 19 members of the public spoke and opposition to the request citing concerns related to compatibility and surrounding neighborhoods traffic drainage and the number of dwelling units proposed to be built on November 7th the Planning Commission heard the item again and recommended denial that vote was 8 to4 the Planning Commission cited that the request did not adhere especially to Golden Factor number three by allowing many non single family residential units in close proximity to the owner occupied single family neighborhood thereby uh potentially adversely affecting the nearby property at that meeting 14 members of the public spoke in opposition the request citing similar concerns that had been expressed at the October 10th Planning Commission meeting on October 7th the district Advisory Board reviewed the request and recommended denial of the zone change request and that vote was 91 approximately 30 members of the public spoke against the request citing concerns related to to traffic drainage compatibility safety of pedestrians and lack of privacy 68 protest petitions were received against the zone change request 32 of those properties were within the protest area and accounted for just under 75% of the total protest area succeeds the state threshold of 20% therefore any approval of a zone change request as part of this application will require six out of seven votes in terms of recommendation it is recommended that the city Council adopt the findings of the Planning Commission and deny the requested zone change that would require four of seven votes because it is a denial Alternatives include the following you can override the Planning Commission adopt alternative findings and approve the zone change request and protective overlay that would require six of seven votes because of the protest petitions or as always you can return the case to the Planning Commission for additional consideration and that requires as always just a simple majority uh in terms of process Council policy is that the public hearing for planning items occurs at the Planning Commission meeting and according to the policy the city council does not typically receive public comments on zoning items so with that I'll take you through some of the illustrations of Graphics so here's the aerial with the subject site outlined in that blue color here's the zoning map which was described earlier here's the map from the comprehensive plan showing that this area is on the edge of the bubble where uh new employment is recommended here's the map from the the protest petitions again that was just under 75% of the protest area was represented a little bit further zoomed out map of protest petitions here are some photos from the subject site and a little bit further in the subject site down the street across the street and next door and with that I'll stand for any questions questions first sta I see none again these items do not get public comment is that correct correct this resides in council member JV Johnson's District thank you mayor I have not had a zoning case to date or has been as passionate as this one uh in full disclosure this is uh close to in my neighborhood it stands between Ashley Park and Glenn Eagles all single family housing and this is not a case where it's commercial and there's empty spot and it goes to housing there's no transition area I think that's what the staff why the staff approved it I I adly disagree with that I got a uh in Ron's backyard neighborhood uh meeting together before this to discuss it to let the uh neighbors talk to the developer 82 people showed up in a backyard 82 um they all got to speak developer got to speak and developer consistently said he wanted to put as many units on that property as possible uh then when it came to our dab five 104 people showed up our dab five a lot of people he said 30 spoke it was at least 30 spoke um very passionately against it uh ma before mapc and 19 people showed up and spoke at MBC which I don't know if that's a record but it's close probably um I just don't think this fits in this area that's why we have zoning that's how we have zoning cases um I just I just don't think it fits and I'm going to make a motion to deny the map I mean deny the zoning case 00004 second and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role Council tuttles no I just have a question these always get me confused so he is voting to deny so a yay vote means we also deny or a yay vote means do you understand what I'm saying the the ones that are in the negative are always confusing for me so I'm tired it's been a very long day I just want to make sure I get it right yay vote means deny the request okay thank you so much motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next [Applause] item thank requests in the city to amend PUD number 101 to permit vehicle repair self storage and warehousing on parcel one generally located on the east side of North Milwood Avenue and within one quarter mile of North uh North on West Douglas Avenue hello and good afternoon again Scott W from the planning department for this request as you heard uh the applicant is applying to amend an existing plan unit development which we call a PUD for short um and it's custom zoning and they're doing that in order to be able to add additional permit additional uses at the site this item is being heard because the district Advisory board and the plan commission recommendations are different in terms of the request the applicant is requesting to amend the Pug's prohibited uses in order to allow vehicle repair both limited and general Self Storage self-service storage and warehousing in terms of the property the subject site is generally located to on the east side of North Milwood Avenue approximately 450 ft north of West Douglas Avenue and the address range is 130 to 200 North Milwood a subject site is made up of approximately seven ownership Parcels is approximately 1.7 acres in size and has a plan unit development as the custom zoning and my understanding is that was because at one time a brew re was proposing to develop the site uh the site is also occupied by multiple vacant industrial buildings constructed around 1930 in terms of context property abing to the North is a Kansas and Oklahoma railroad track north of the railroad tracks is property zoned mf18 multifam and developed with a single family homes property abing to the east is also part of the railroad and further east is Zone GC General commercial and Li the GC zone property is a ballet dance studio the LI zone property is primarily undeveloped except for a parking lot and what appears to be vehicle storage property to the South is Zone GC and developed with where Warehouse Self Storage a cell tower and other commercial uses properties to the west across Milwood are zoned sf5 tf3 GC and Li there are seven single family homes some of them are constructed in the GC and lii Zoning one duplex and one commercial building the commercial building is midblock and separates two series of single family dwellings in terms of the staff report the staff report provides information about the existing PUD and the zoning prior to the Pud also attached to the staff report is the Pud language that's proposed and existing in terms of review on November 7th the Planning Commission held the public hearing for this item and recommended 13 to zero for approval one member of the public spoke on this item with concerns about a lack of follow-through from other developers with projects in deleno including the previous owners of this subject site who requested and received approval for the Customs zoning on November 4th excuse me on November 4th the district Advisory Board recommended denial that vote was 7 to zero the dab members expressed that the requested land uses would detrimentally affect nearby properties the agent for the applicant was present at the meeting and indicated that there were no firm plans for the site at that time one member of the public spoke on this item that speaker also spoke at the mapc meeting and expressed uh similar concerns to what they had expressed earlier no protest petitions were received for this case therefore the zone change request can be approved with a simple majority vote which would again four out of seven votes in terms of council action it is recommended the city council adopt the findings of the Planning Commission and approve the requested zone change that is would require four out of seven votes Alternatives include the following you can override the Planning Commission adopt alternative findings and deny the zone change requests that would require five of seven votes because it's an override as always you can send it back to the plan commission for additional consideration that would require four of seven just a simple majority again just a note about the process and public comments taking place at the Planning Commission meeting with that I'll take you through some of the photos and Graphics so here's the aial showing the subject site here's a zoning map which you saw earlier here's the map from the comprehensive plan here is the existing PUD with the edits uh proposed by the applicant here is the map the protest area again uh no protests were received here are photos from the site in the surrounding area and with that I'll stand for any questions questions for staff I see none e e e year the other two Airlines have provid service or non- signatory Airlines and they operate on um shorter term separate agreements airport staff we actually contracted with the consultant that helps negotiate these types of agreements with airports and Airlines Across the Nation uh we started um negotiating a meeting over a year ago and we have come to a conclusion of a new uniform use and lease agreement in order to continue the business relationship and to establish an agreed upon basis for rentals fees and charges now when we do negotiate these rates and charges a lot of them come with a lot of restrictions of how we do business um some things determined pursuant to US Department of Transportation policy Federal code US Supreme Court rulings and then just the negotiation between the parties under the agreement methodology signatory Airlines will pay a proportionate share of the maintenance operation and Debt Service associated with the Airfield intern buildings so essentially we create cost center accounting and um or accounts and we do Accounting in such a way to um proportionately share some of those costs with the airlines the agreements have a lease term of five years the following Airlines participated in the nearly year-long negotiation Alaska legion American Delta Southwest and United that's all six of them the four of them came back and said they concur with the new agreement and will operate as signatory Airlines and uh with that they get the lowest rates in return for a fixed longer term commitment Alaska and Allegient will continue to operate as non- signatory the estimated initial annual revenue from these agreements is about $6.8 million uh comparatively we anticipate 2024 to be about 6 million so this is a little bit of an increased for us the rates are calculated each calendar year based on forecasted revenues EXP expenses and activity levels with subsequent reconciliation based on actual results so we do this on an annual basis so our projections are all um approximate and the following slides just want to note we're also shared with the airport Advisory Board along with a lot more information regarding the negotiations throughout the year and so they had been kept apprised of the entire process this one here shows a terminal rental rental rate and you will notice a significant increase from 24 to 25 um a lot of this is attributed attributed attributable there end of the day is a lot of this is all blamed on covid you know so um we had actually covid relief funds helped buy down a lot of the rates and kept them artificially low for a long time and now we're seeing our rates are getting back to where they should be now I should also mention that when we uh built the terminal there was also creation of a rate stabilization fund because with a new building there's uncertainty and so the airlines wanted to have some level of assurance that should there be a swing in something that occurs they can buy it down and help stabilize a rate well those rates never or the stabilization fund didn't have to be utilized but now that we're coming out of this postco uh new agreement structure we're utilizing that rate stabilization fund to make sure this softens are blow for them and then you'll see the curve actually Flats out uh over time Landing fee rate uh similarly but this one also uh deals with our cost accounting and we had a couple different cost centers that were merging into one per their request so it makes uh charging them a lot easier and simplified and the cost per Employments um we are within well within the averages of a small hub airport uh across a nation we're very competitive regionally um so we're we're sitting very well fact even some of our numbers uh still reflect kind of 2018 levels so it's a good deal all the way around for us it is recommended that the witcht authority approve the agreements and authorized necessary signatures but I'm happy to stand and ask respond to any questions that you may have to ask thanks Jesse questions for staff I see none thank you we will open it up for public comment I also see none we'll bring it back to the bench and I will go ahead and move to approve the agreements and authorize the necessary signatures second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the final item Amendment to the city council travel expense policy hello again mayor council members Jennifer MC City attorney this item is to amend one of your Council policies um you have policies on a variety of things that are technically administrative in nature um during a recent meeting um Council travel was discussed and we were staff was directed to prepare an amendment that would just codify the language for motions for travel expense either paid for by the city or paid for paid for by Third parties um and how it relates to the um code of ethics um exclusion for gifts so at that time we looked at Council travel Council policy 23 we also identified several Provisions that were in need of updating so we took the opportunity to do that at this time as well um for um the the travel language this is the language for third parties um that can be used in future motions um this item is uh the next item is for Council travel paid by the city those are suggested for for your review and I'm available for questions at the same time on other items um the Agenda Report includes language that was stricken that is out of date replaced with a current term that uses the right Financial uh form for travel authorization and refers Council travel basically to the guidelines of administrative regulation 3.1 so it simplifies the policy updates it and adds those Provisions for um code of ethics um compliance available for questions questions for staff um Jennifer couple of questions the last page in our agenda um packet yes uh says City commission policy well that was a n a term that we need to get corrected thank that was an oversight thank you I thought we did cor that to city council oh that's the header yeah I was just a it's a a document error but it was in in the header we'll get that cleaned up thanks uh then there are two suggestions I have uh for the first one regarding travel paid for by a third party can it say instead of hosted by actually say paid for by so the second paragraph would say the event description is paid for by the third party if that's the will of the council yes and this is a um a policy it won't be voted on in second reading today just next week this is the only vote you'll have on it just for so if there's further reflection today is the only only vote on this one and then uh for the one that is paid for by the city of Witchita um at the end of that statement which says actual expenses shall be reported uh two is is the word two we can add that yes okay actual expenses shall be reported to the controller's office and paid for by the general fund so that it's clear that it is taxpayer dollars that are paying for that travel any other questions I see none I motion I sorry does this require a public comment I think it should okay would anyone from the public like to speak on this matter of council member travel I see none we'll bring it back to the bench so I would motion to approve um the Amendments I made to the two statements regarding city council travel uh under the city council travel expense policy second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 Madame clerk please call the next item council member appointments and comments are there any appointments by council members council member John St thank you mayor I'd like to appoint Celeste reset to the historical preservation board I motion to approve Celeste reset to the historical preservation Board second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the role I motion passes 70 council member comments um I just have one really quick um city manager Leighton sent me an email regarding the parking lot that some members in the community had asked about uh regarding parking during Tuesday meetings as sometimes that parking lot seems to be full and then uh the public has to go find other parking spaces uh city manager can you address that as I can mayor the uh we have taken a look at the parking practices uh on the surface lot that is uh to the located south of our parking garage and um have worked on an involuntary basis I excuse me on a voluntary basis to have um uh employee vehicles and City Vehicles moved off the lot however we're going to go ahead and put that in policy so that that those lot spaces will be available to the public I believe that it's been a little easier in the last uh few weeks for uh the public to park however we it is a little complicated in that uh when the county moved over to the Reagan Building we entered into several agreements for them to provide sufficient parking and they uh lease from us 40 spaces in that surface lot we're working with them to see how many of those could be moved over to the rounds and Porter uh location they have 74 spaces on the lot adjacent to to that to the Reagan Building um on the uh south side of of Third Street and we're not going to touch those but we are going to see if we can't get some of the 40 um moved over to rounds and Porter to free up even additional space for the public in our Lots um they already have 18 spots that they lease from us um on at R and Porter I think that's all I've got in that regard thank you for the update uh that is again for the public that asked regarding the public parking lot um and the need for more spaces thank you for addressing that I hear council member Glascock would like to comment hello mayor Mand dog morning from the Phil you're cutting out council member are you there Sor are you there we can hear you now thank you uh I was at the US Embassy earlier today had a chance to meet with the Secretary of the Interior who's in charge of local governments for the Philippines as well and so very applicable timing um on uh can't join you today because I'm here on a trip from the US state department I'm paid for by the US state department and um all the votes today that we had some technical difficulties but any vote that I would have voted and the minority would not have changed the majority vote today and so I don't feel the need to go back through and um list every vote but I look forward to seeing you when I get back and uh have a good rest of the day thank you council member Glascock council member hoisel hey dton uh safe travel sir I hope you have a good time over there learn a lot of stuff that you can bring back and help us out here in which with so safe travels to to understand the council member's dedication I think it's 502 in Malaysia right now am it is 50:2 so I'm gonna try and get at least an hour of sleep tonight thank you council member Glascock for tuning into this council meeting and voting as well any other comments from Council Members council member Johnson thank you mayor uh Council member John stun the challenge is on council member glasscock is up at 5:02 a.m. not going to happen again thank you all very much um I will motion to adjourn this meeting second motion and a second any further discussion I see none Madame clerk please open the rooll I motion passes 6 to one thank you council member glass cup