Kansas City Council Business Session - March 9, 2023: Budget Presentations and UNESCO Update
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Kansas City Council Business Session - March 9, 2023: Budget Presentations and UNESCO Update
The Kansas City Council held a business session on March 9, 2023, beginning at 8:15 PM UTC. The meeting included approval of previous minutes, budget presentations from the General Services, Law, and Finance departments, an update on the UNESCO Creative Cities of Music designation, and a motion to enter closed session.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of Minutes (March 2, 2023): A motion was moved, seconded, and passed unanimously by voice vote.
Discussion Items
- General Services Department Budget (FY2024): Director Jolanda McKenzie presented a $40.7 million budget, a $5 million decrease from FY2023 due to the expiration of one-time ARPA-funded decision packages. Key metrics included 94% cybersecurity training completion (goal 99%), 94% fleet availability (goal 95%), and a 26.27% vacancy rate across 218 positions. Workforce challenges included high turnover (28% due to retirement) and a 10-day window to hire top candidates. Councilwoman Robinson questioned about real estate surplus staffing ($70,000 increase), a $1 million HVAC investment at 18th & Vine, and the need for approximately $3 million in additional capital improvements. She also asked about the compressed natural gas station and department safety officers—both unfunded in the current budget. McKenzie noted no safety officers in every department and will provide cost estimates.
- Law Department Budget (FY2024): City Attorney (unnamed) and Fiscal Officer Stacy Perry (41-year veteran) presented a $7.1 million budget, primarily personnel-driven. The department has a 27% vacancy rate. Key performance indicators included claims resolution (fell short at 83% through Q3) and tax collection litigation ($6.2 million revenue). A $25,000 training decision package was funded. Councilman Allen questioned the scope of municipal prosecutions (assault cases, not robbery or rape) and requested data on special prosecutor costs over five years. Councilman Fowler praised a trial attorney’s performance.
- Finance Department Budget (FY2024): Director Tammy Queen presented a $21.3 million budget, a 15% ($2.8 million) increase. Vacancy rate was 18% (102 positions). Key metrics included $9 million collected in FY2022 via tax gap data mining (goal $6.5 million for FY2024), 91% budget transfers processed within two days, and quarterly expenditure forecasts within 3%. A $1 million decision package for payroll system improvements was approved. Councilwoman Robinson asked about priority-based budgeting resources; Queen confirmed existing FY2023 funds will cover it (ETA FY2026-27). Councilman Bunch commended the low vacancy rate compared to other departments.
- UNESCO Creative Cities of Music Update: Dr. Jake Wagner presented on Kansas City’s designation as the only U.S. UNESCO City of Music (since 2017). He highlighted international collaborations: a 2018 trip to Poland, a 2019 presentation in Italy, virtual Voyage of the Drum project during COVID, a 2022 conference in Brazil (Santos), and recent visits to Chile (Frutillar) and Sweden (Norrköping). Upcoming local events include the Jazz Draft (April 27, 2023) at the Blue Room and an International Jazz Day relay (April 30). Councilman Barnes noted a resolution to increase funding for the program and mentioned potential to host the UNESCO music cities conference in 2027.
Key Outcomes
- Closed Session: Councilwoman Parkshaw moved to enter closed session under RSMo 610.021(1) and (9). The motion was seconded and approved unanimously by roll call vote (all ayes).
- No other binding votes were taken; budget presentations were informational. Follow-up items include: cost estimates for safety officers and CNG station (General Services), five-year special prosecutor spending data (Law), and continued support for UNESCO programming.
Meeting Transcript
Welcome to business session. Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of March 2nd, 2023. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. We're moved and seconded. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. Motion passes. Budget presentations. Our final budget presentations. We'll start with you instead of UNESCO. So come on up. Oh, okay. Good morning, Mayor. Um, good morning, members of the council. My name is Jolanda McKenzie. I'm director of General Services, and I will be talking to you today about our budget as submitted for fiscal year 24. To the right of me is my finance manager. Jeremy Jackson. And as we go through the presentation, we will kind of be paring off back and forth, and he'll help us help me in some of the information that we'll be sharing. I just want to say that the General Services Department assists city departments in achieving their public service missions by providing essential support services in areas of capital projects management, fleet services, facility operations, purchasing, technology, real estate safety and risk management. The organizational culture of General Service Department centers on customer service, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Through the combined efforts of professional and dedicated staff, general services strives to provide creative, innovative, and sensible solutions to effectively support city departments and the public that we serve. Our budget is currently 40.7 million as submitted. Before you are five of our key metrics, we have several for the department, but I thought that these would be good metrics to share with you today. An undertaking that we've started up again is the cybersecurity training. We're at about 94%. Our goal is to get 99%. That will be a continual training program that we'll roll out every year. In fleet, we've made quite a few changes. One of them is our electric vehicles, which I'm excited about. But we still have a mix of C and G in our fossil fuel vehicles. So our goal is to make sure that they are available to each of the departments so that they can continue their work. At this point, we are at about 94% of our fleet is available for our departments to use to complete their work. Our goal is 95%. Last year we're at about 64%. We've improved. We're at 70%. Our goal is 80%. We plan to reach the 80% by submitting a request in the new fiscal year to discuss what our lifecycle plan and program looks like and what those means are in order to replace our vehicles. General Services Department has about 218 positions in totality. That includes our internal service fund as well as our general service fund supported positions. We average 26.27% vacancy rate for our department. We are facing some unprecedented challenges in the workplace and workforce as our vacancy is almost one out of every three positions reaching that level that are vacant. Some of the challenges that we run into, we've run into is high turnover rate with our tenured employees. Um, about 28% of that turnover is due to retirement, and we're averaging about 20% turnover with new hires within two years. Other challenges are residency requirements, sometimes acts as a barrier to attracting our experienced candidates, um, budgeted vacancies in order to create salary savings and timeliness.
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