Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Joplin City Council work session for Monday, January 12th, 2026.

Before we get started, I'm going to ask everyone in attendance here and everyone on this dais to join me in singing happy birthday to our city clerk.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday, dear Holly.

Happy birthday to you.

Somebody told me, and I'm not telling who did.

Yeah.

Somebody told me.

All right.

This is an informal work session for the Johnson City Council.

We have four items on the agenda this evening.

So why don't we dive right on in and get started with right-of-way program update?

Mr.

Johnson, welcome.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

So the right-of-way program or the right-of-way team.

So the right-of-way, uh the public works right-of-way team, uh, it consists of a ride of way manager, two right-of-way technicians, and a property negotiator.

Um I would point out that uh that's the main right of way team, but they are supported by uh several other staff uh and uh uh they work a lot with other departments as well.

Um the right-of-way staff, well, one of the things the right-of-way staff are tasked with is overseeing utility activities occurring in the city right-of-way or on city-owned property.

And uh of course that can be uh uh commercial utilities, uh that can also be uh a plumber who's working on a uh a sewer lateral for a resident.

That's also a utility uh that's uh going on in the right of way.

Um they can uh uh they review uh applications uh uh for and they they approve excavation permits uh for utility installations uh maintenance activities, uh they monitor the work zones uh to ensure the uh traffic control and safety standards.

That's one of the things we do quite a bit of.

Um they inspect uh the restorations to ensure the work's completed, uh then it complies with the city standards, uh documenting uh materials uh uh utilized for repairs uh for payment uh to utility repair uh contractors, uh and invoicing to the different utility companies.

So when we use our contractor to make repairs, um you have to uh keep track of the uh the quantities and uh figure out what the building is and then put that together in an invoice format, uh, give that to the uh finance department, and then they send that invoice to the uh proper utility company.

Um construction inspections of driveways, sidewalks, uh curbs and gutters, uh, and then uh review and approve right-of-way uh use agreement uh application.

That's that's just some of the stuff that they do.

Uh permitting activity, uh permits are issued for uh activity in the city right-of-way.

Uh the majority of the permits are entered by utility companies into the engineering permit portal.

Um that's the electronic uh portal, so they have uh the ability to go into this portal and enter these uh permits.

In the old days, all the utilities that did the most of the cutting uh utility the work in the ride-of-way, we would give them a big book of uh of permits.

So we give them a whole book, they would come in and periodically and get books filled with permits.

And these were blank permits that they would fill out and then they would bring them to us uh once a week or every other week.

Um so the permits uh in individual permit can uh there could be as many as three separate parts to it, three three separate excavations.

Uh you can have one permit that cuts through the street, the sidewalk, and the curb and gutter.

Uh in addition, in addition to our ongoing utility repairs and maintenance.

Uh we have four separate fiber companies uh have approved right-of-way uh use agreements right now.

And uh the three of the providers are actively adding to their uh fiber networks.

Um this is just to show you how the permit totals if you feel like gosh, there's way more utility work going on now than there used to be.

If you get that nagging feeling, you are correct.

Uh there is way more.

Um the uh yeah, the number of permits has really risen a lot.

Um and um uh gosh, when we expanded our we got two new staff members to help us deal with this.

Um there's believe me, um, I'm wishing that I I had more.

I mean, the just the amount to keep up with it.

We're starting to shift uh other staff on to tackling uh the just the sheer volume of it.

Um I can I you can see here that uh 936 so far uh uh in 25.

Um you can see 671 and 24 or 558 and 23.

If you kept going backwards, you'd get down to the old days.

Now I've been here for a long time and I've I've dealt with this stuff for a long time.

I can tell you used to we were between 250 and 300 annually.

Um it's it's just really really went up.

And uh and when we when we were down at that level, we were able to um to keep up with it a lot better, but it it has just really gotten more and more and more.

Uh this is just a picture of the permit portal.

This is what our staff sees, this is what they go to and they use.

Uh, this is also available for the utility uh uh companies and several of their contractors, they use this as well.

Uh so the utility companies are assigned user uh credentials uh by the city's IT department.

Um the uh permit uh that way when they get in and they use those credentials, you can tell it's hard to see on that, but we use different uh symbols uh for the water company versus the gas company versus the uh uh telephone and so forth.