Good evening.

Welcome to the City Commission work session.

Tuesday, January 27th.

Would you please call a rule, Jeremy?

Commissioner McCullough.

Yes.

Commissioner Fox.

Here.

Commissioner Morrison.

Here.

Commissioner Monlinel.

Here.

We have four commissioners present.

The quorum of three is met.

Thank you.

Would you please join me in the legal agents?

I pledge a legend to the flag.

One nation, under God, indivisible, liberty, and justice for all.

Thank you.

We have two things on our agenda.

We'll start with the first, please.

And that is to discuss Samsara solutions fleet management software.

There's a fleet manager.

Yeah.

Among other hats that I wear, yes.

Good evening, Mayor Commissioner Brian Johnson, Director of Public Works, City Engineer.

This item is a fleet in operations software system from Samsara.

Public Works currently has a Ryzen system that has been underperforming for several years now, and we're looking to get rid of that item and transfer to this.

The Samsarum product is a turnkey product that helps public works reach three of its main goals.

One is transparency, two is fiscal responsibility, and three is safety.

For transparency, this product allows public works to share in live time the deployment of its resources and personnel as it manages operations.

Our fleet is also aging.

And as in the last three snow events, we've had several breakdowns.

This product allows our fleet staff the ability to review and diagnose vehicle errors in real time with only 13 large plow vehicles.

If we're down two, that's 20% of our force.

This system will allow us to do real-time diagnosis in the field and make decisions whether or not we need to pull that piece of equipment or whether it can stay in the field.

Pulling a driver and a piece of equipment out of an event for diagnosis diagnosis is obviously counterproductive and quite costly.

It also allows our leadership team and management to be able to quickly determine where to put our limited resources, such as during a natural disaster or event, which part of the city has the most damage and what resources we can deploy at a moment's notice.

By knowing where our resources are, we can zero in on the areas that need the most help.

Last and most importantly, is safety.

We can see and know driver behavior and reactions.

We can review traffic control, barricades, signs, and cones in real time as they are being driven through, and drivers that are not performing to our standards can get the training that they need, or we can move to termination before bad habits become a liability.

And with that, I'm going to introduce the Sam Sarah team.

We have Matt and Tom.

They're going to go through our trial system that we used last year and kind of give you some recaps.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brian.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Matt Lima from Sam Sarah.

Tom Burns, great to meet all of you.

Tonight we have a presentation.

I want to go through about 25 to 30 minutes, but also want to welcome any questions throughout as well.

What we're going to go through is the PowerPoint presentation that you guys have in front of you.

Little recap before we jump in.

I was joking before, it feels like planes trains and automobiles the way I got here.

And starting off back in February of last year, I had a meeting in this office with Dan Tyson with Wyatt, Thompson, with the street superintendent, with the entire fleet team.

And we first assessed what the day-to-day of the fleet management looked like from the entire assets.

So keep that in mind today when we're just talking about vehicles.

We're actually talking about total assets as well.

So that's equipment, that's trailers, that's everything that encompasses the city covers.

From that meeting, we actually launched a free pilot.

So the city's had our equipment for the past 10 months.

So we're going to show you some of that data today.

Going back to the meeting, and Brian had mentioned your current kind of software for the telematics piece.

Right now, you guys just have GPS telematics for the fleet.

So what that encompasses is just a GPS location.

What we're going to show you today is where you want to take that with Samsara.

What we kind of identified was more of a reactive versus proactive approach.

So some names on the left hand side, myself, Tom Burns, and then engineer there.

On the right hand side, the six names there, but there's actually a lot more involved in the process.

And it goes all the way up to there was a meeting today with Jason, Katie from Legal.

So with this project, it's not just fleet, it's the entire city.

It goes back to the transparency.

It's going back to your citizens who's gonna be able to log on and see, hey, where has the street been plowed?

Right?

Can I plan my day?

Can I see that this street has been plowed?

So I can go about and maybe go to the pharmacy.

So we're excited to show you how we can do that.

Starting off with Samsar itself, just to give you a little brief overview.

Samsara, we're a 10 year old company publicly traded.

I think just to show you the mission statement, just to show you those three words.

I mean, Brian kicked it off there safety.

Safety of the vehicles, safety of the employees, safety of your citizens, safety of the entire entire city.

Efficiency, sustainability.

How can we take data, use that data to be more fiscally responsible?

When we're approached and looked at a new vehicle, a purchase of a new vehicle, vehicles are pretty expensive.

Can we look at, hey, maybe there's another vehicle in a different department that's being underutilized.

We should run reports on that.

So now we can see, hey, maybe there's a vehicle in a parks and rec department that we can rotate in the fleet before we purchase a new vehicle.

So we can do that with the system.

A little more in Samsara.

I like to show this slide here, just the research and development.

Something that we came away from the first meeting with Dan and the team, just talking about the day to day and the current system.

I kind of asked, what have you seen from improvement?

I think you guys have had the same system for for over eight years.

And I just kind of asked, hey, have you seen any new features, right?

We heard we hear the word AI, we're embracing AI with technology.

What have you seen?

And it kind of brought the room to a halt.

Hey, we haven't seen really any new features.

Something that I love about SAMSAR is we spend a billion dollars in research development on new features.

So what I mean by that, what you get today is gonna be different from tomorrow in a month.

During this trial, this lengthy trial that we did for 10 months, Dan and the team actually saw that.

We've added adoptions to our dashboard.

We've added a lot with AI, we've had a lot with weather, with public alerts.

So Dan and his team currently, and timing-wise, you guys just had a snowstorm.

Dan and his team was using our system to address those concerns.

They're going online with our cameras to see the streets in real time with the cameras.

So what we learned was before implementing SAMSAR on the trial, we had a supervisor that would get in the vehicle, go out, and kind of address the road conditions.

Hey, do I have to call in extra staff because of the storm?

Now with the system, we can pull that up right at home.

The users can pull that up, they're in the office, safety.

We don't have to send a driver in a vehicle during a storm to go address those road conditions.

Here's a snapshot of that.

So you can see kind of where we've taken it before.

You talk about telematics, you talk about cameras, you know, they're in some vehicles, they're not in some vehicles, tracking trailers, expensive equipment with fire department.

You talk about jaws of life.

Um, commissioners, last week, I think I saw that there was new uh I want to say lawnmowers that were purchased.

And we talk about they're not manned by a person.

Well, what happens if theft?

That gets stolen.

How can we track that?

Well, we can track that with our devices.

We can put a GPS device on it, $8 a month for an investment there for a device, I think it was like $20,000.

So that's where we can take it with physical operations.

Slides here.

Um, the day-to-day fleet management, seeing where your vehicles are at, seeing the cameras, seeing the alerts, how we can coach the staff.

It goes more.

It goes into extreme weather.

It goes into the spring cleanup that you guys do.

Um, you look at this past weather event, and we talk about how we can better the roads, how we can improve our routes.

Um the team was able to use our system to address that.

We can put a public facing map, like I said, for your folks to log on and see snow conditions in real time.

Next door, Geary County has their snow public facing map open, City of Lawrence, and what we've seen, the transparency, a data-driven city for transparency, you see depositive recognition.

It takes off on Facebook, it takes off on Reddit.

So now these features for you guys, you can do more projects with all the departments.

Over two million units in the United States, six of the top 10 private trucking industries.

And on the bottom there is a couple cities and counties that you guys are familiar with.

Lawrence, Bonner Springs, Tobeko.

Or with K Dot as well.

And this slide, I love this slide because we we had a trial recap presentation about mid summer.

And we had a with all the department heads, and we talked about what this plan is.

What is the ultimate goal?

And at the top of the pyramid here, it's improve the citizen experience.

The day to day, the trust, right?

That transparency, that snow map, disaster readiness.

Power.

If we lose power, how do we know?

Can we tap into our generators?

Make sure the generators are properly working.

We look at, we talk about the vehicles, the vehicle health, having a vehicle on the road that shouldn't be on the road, fault codes.

I mean, that's a severe liability.

Cameras.

Can we improve our employees, our drivers from fatalities, accidents, near collisions, cell phone usage, mobile uh seatbelts, claims that come into the city.

We kind of looked at the numbers and how many claims of a he said she said scenario, and we we kind of asked Katie today, how is video going to improve that?

And we showed in 30 seconds to a minute, how can she pull the video footage to kind of show the he said she said doesn't exist in this scenario?

All right, let's have some fun here with the trial.

So in March, we had about 16 units that we plugged into with the city.

Um we talked with Dan because of the spring cleanup, it was great timing.

And what we noticed was in talking to Dan about the previous times of the spring cleanup is a lot of calls come in.

Hey, my waste wasn't picked up, or from the city side point, hey, your waste was out, but it was the wrong waste.

So what we were noticing is a lot of calls coming into maybe the mayor, maybe the commissioners to the fleet.

Now we're circling vehicles back and forth picking it up.

Idling cost.

I think I have a number here, and I want to pull it up correctly.

Idling is a big deal.

Now it's 10 degrees out, the vehicles are gonna idle.

When you're talking about 300 vehicles under the city, and we're idling for maybe 45 minutes when it's 75 degrees out, you want to improve those.

You want to track those.

Um I think here, and I want to get this number right.

Looking at the trial data, I mean, we identified $2,100 wasted in a single week.

And again, that's with 16 vehicles.

Now we'll dive more into that idling too, is that when we're picking up that spring cleanup, but you want to take that number just in half, right?

And that's 16 vehicles times that by the amount of vehicles and assets under the city.

We also equipped every vehicle with our dual-facing dash camera.

So that gives a perspective outside the vehicle and also inside the vehicle.

There is some customization with our dual-facing dash cameras.

Um, audio is turned off or turned on, and you can blur the face and block out the image as well.

Additionally, we have a device called an event button.

So, what we instructed was the drivers to push that button, it'll capture that video for them, send it to the staff at the office who's receiving these calls, they now have that video saying, I know before the phone call comes in, your waste wasn't out in time.

And I'm gonna go back to that slide because it kind of goes back and forth here.

Here's just the the pilot numbers, we've been running it for the past 10 months, but I want to jump to what the data showed us.

So here's that spring cleanup data.

So here's that panic button pushed.

So we had 26 recorded panic button presses, um, and that was for waste that wasn't out or the wrong waste was out at that time.

And I you know, I included this quote from Krista because it was a pretty powerful, we had numerous trial recaps, meetings going through what worked and what didn't work.

Um, and I'll read it out for the for the room here.

Chris has said I would estimate with the calls and messages I took from City Hall, we probably received somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 calls, emails, online reports during the peak days of spring cleanup.

So 50 calls a day going to Krista, Chris is meshing in that too, Dan.

Dan's messing that out to a driver.

If we can just nix that with the power of cameras, that's gonna reduce I don't know, seven minutes per call.

And then we looked at a step further too.

If we don't continue this, if we continue to take the calls and the emails, you may end up may end up hiring another staff member because Krista probably can't do her normal day-to-day operations answering those calls.

And that's just a week of the spring cleanup with 16 vehicles.

Time on site report, another feature that we looked at again, just with that spring cleanup.

Where do we spend the most time during a specific location?

And this kind of goes into some of Fleet's objectives, time on site reports, the utilization reports.

I go back to seeing how many vehicles are not being used, are they underutilized?

Let's rotate that vehicle out.

We can see how long we're spending at a certain location, how long it's taking us to get to the transfer.

I think the goal was to do the spring cleanup.

I think it was in trying to do it in one week, and it went a little extra long.

So what we're gonna look at next year with the improvements is look at hey, are we taking the most efficient route?

Are we circling back?

What's the best way to hit every section of the neighborhoods?

A little more data here and what I was talking about with some uh some concrete numbers.

Um with the the overlay with the maps.

Um, you know, we worked with going back to the beginning there, Eli with the the IT department, and we can create overlays, you can create different geospatial locations.

That's gonna be great for the public facing maps, but also within too, the geofences.

You can see different times, different transfer zones, um, and just a little more numbers on the side there, kind of going back to you know, factoring in overtime costs, right?

If we're circling back, not the most efficient routes, now it's overtime costs adding into the bottom line.

Absolutely.

You the last um bullet point there is what is the driver's sentiment?

How do you measure that?

Yeah, great question.

So, what we love to do, especially with these trials, that's where you you put the cameras in and the drivers get into their vehicle, and then they say, Oh, great, we have a camera in our face now.

Um, I think we like to check in and we check in with Dan right away.

Hey, what's the sediment towards the the drivers, right?

Are they receptive?

Are they walking out?

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think anybody quit since the trial began with the cameras.

Um, and then we show Dan the features that we can do.

So I go back to you can blur the driver's face, um, you can black out the entire screen.

So what we can do is black out the drivers, but we can still receive the alerts.

We'll still know if they're on their phone or seat belt, but you're gonna black out that entire screen.

So it's features that you can roll out with.

Um that's really part of the coaching too that they're gonna do with the um with the platform.

Um I alluded to before in a meeting today.

You know, that the goal is proactive, right?

It it's and I'll show a video in a little bit here.

You know, cell phone usage, mobile seat belt, drowsy driving, snowplows, these emergency road you know, situations, drivers might be out there for eight hours to 12 hours.

We want to be aware of that before they get in the vehicle or get into it real time with the live streaming feature.

Um coaching in our system, kind of a reward system.

So something that we can do within our system that you guys can do is hey, who's had the most safe speed, right?

Who hasn't been speeding?

Who's been harsh breaking?

Who hasn't been idling?

We kind of have that in our system.

So Dan and his team just can just go in and you can do some cities do like a um kind of reward benefit, kind of like a gift card.

You've been the top driver for the month.

Some cities use it when they're looking at promotions.

They've been one of our top drivers, you know, reducing fuel waste.

Um, so allowing your driver, especially during what we've done for the 10 months or in our child, they get comfortable with the system.

Um, and I think it's been really positive from the city.

A little more numbers here.

I talked about before that that dollar spent on the fuel, and that's broken down the idling time there.

Um, you know, that's just a small part of it when it comes to cost.

Um, that kind of gets looked past.

But idling, gas fuel, we all see the gas prices go up and go up sometimes.

Um, you know, it can add up, and again, this is just 16 vehicles we looked at in, I think the data up there is two weeks.

And I'll let me go back to this one here to show you a little bit more during our play of video here.

So here's an example of showing you when a driver pushed that panic button.

Um actually, Commissioner, this is a good back to your driver sediment here with the panic button.

Drivers love the panic button, the event button is what we call it.

Um, because A, they don't have to take out their cell phone, they don't have to pull over, take a picture with their cell phone or call it in, they just push that button while they're driving and they continue on their route.

The supervisor admin has that video.

Take it a step further.

We talked about today.

If you guys need video for legal purposes and they're not on the dashboard, you can easily download our videos and we'll, you know, to a quick file, and then you have that video proof for any of those claims.

A little bit more about the AI with the coaching here, and it just shows you a little more features with our video.

Um, and this is something that I'm thrilled to do with cities because it just goes to that positive, positive reinforcement with the drivers.

And what does that lead to?

A safer, healthier city.

And I'm gonna play a video here.

So here's we did a compilation here of some of the trial data.

And ignore the glare here.

We did we installed it with a glare there.

So you can see the drivers just angled it.

We can see our bobcat that we were tracking up here.

And so these are examples of those missed dickups.

So that's the entire driver's workflow.

So that call that was fielded by either Jackie or Krista later on, if the resident called, I guess, when they're going through and pulling that address up because the driver had already hit that event button, that video clip is already downloaded.

So whoever's back in the office isn't actually going in and asking for the address and downloading video, they're just asking for that residence address.

And then if our guys on the ground already kind of leaned forward, said, hey, something's weird, there's um, you know, car batteries is one that we have a lot.

People try to hire car batteries and sticks uh and yard waste.

So you know, you guys already have that evidence, or maybe not evidence is the right word, but you have proof, right?

You know why something wasn't collected.

Um we talked about the driver sentiment is really just to make the actual operators' lives easier.

Um, everyone in the back office is obviously a huge focus for us too, but our product really is just to let the people that are actually out on the streets focus on their job.

I'll pause it there before we jump into this.

Um, you know, it just it shows the exoneration.

You're gonna need to talk into that.

Oh, the mic.

Oh, people at home just can't hear you.

Oh, everybody.

Sorry, I don't know.

Everybody here is fine.

Yep, you're good.

Thank you.

Jumping off what Tom mentioned there, just the exoneration piece, and you can see how our system is an entire physical operations, starting with the operator in the vehicle, and that's gonna work its way all the way up to.

I know there was calls that went all the way up to the mayor.

Um so now leaving that of the exoneration piece, same thing on the panic button too.

Well, you were talking, Tom.

I thought of an example, the snow events.

If there's a parking ban in the city, the plow can't get down the road.

Hey, why wasn't this road plowed?

Okay, because there's a parking ban your vehicle was out on the road.

So a couple different ways different departments use that panic button.

Um fire departments, the live streaming feature.

Um a lot of departments will use that live streaming feature.

Battalion chief doesn't need to report to the scene right away, they can jump on with the dash camera.

Um, kind of a game film review afterwards, too, with the video cameras there.

So there's so many ways that you can use you know the cameras and the power of eliminating, you know, just having concrete evidence.

Safety.

And and again, we'll play a couple examples.

No, we won't.

A couple safety events that we picked up.

And again, these are automatic detections that is gonna be filtered into you know the certain admins or users.

You can see here a little delayed stop.

Yeah.

This one.

So I I you know, I heard some comments, some some a wow, I think in the back here, and when I play that video again, I I think the scenario came up, and you can see what that event could have led to.

That could have been fatalities, that could have been a major major news, fatalities, crash, accident, um, near collision here.

And I think this, you know, being here the last 10 months, I actually did like a lot of my marathon training here in the city, and I see this is a big cyclist running community.

And if we can coach our drivers in this scenario, you know, you're on a back road here on a curved road, you're in a big vehicle driving those big vehicles.

But that almost resulted in I think four four casualties.

That's what we want to avoid, and that's what we want to keep off your desks.

I'm gonna go to this one here, just quickly talking about the physical operations outside of the vehicles, going back to um you know, the lawn mowers.

In this example here, Dan uh and his team, they have a trailer.

Now a trailer is hooked up back to the vehicle, and we kind of went through it.

Sometimes the trailer can be left on on the street that we forget it's on the street while we're busy doing the spring cleanup.

Street signs, message boards on the side, maybe on the city limits or county limits.

Those message board street signs are about $20,000.

And maybe sometimes we forget they're on the side of the road there, and then maybe someone takes it or theft or anything like that.

Now we have devices with our system here that we can track.

And that little AT11 here, and I just have it in my hand here.

Something like this is where you can see your return on investment.

Something like this for the price on a piece of equipment that's worth you know a thousand dollars or more.

Um now we can have that GPS location for you guys.

We go back to transparency, transparency with the city.

Um, a couple examples here, the material usage, and this is really one of the highlights that the team is excited for that we can tap into, you know, not just tracking the plows, tracking how much we're putting out, tracking how much salt, how much brine, how much we're putting out on certain locations, right?

We're gonna be heavier at certain intersections.

That's a cost.

That's a huge cost.

You're running those year-end snow reports.

How can we do that now with the data?

So we tap into those snow plows, those controllers to see how much you're spreading all over the uh the city.

Community impact.

I talked about before, Facebook, and and you know, I was talking to someone earlier, and they were saying that there's they saw you know, this past weekend, hey, why don't we have a snow map here?

Or you know, it's been on Facebook, and they maybe see Lawrence, and like I said, Geary County, K Dot down in Wichita.

Um, and I pulled some examples here just so you can see the value of transparency, um, putting that information out there.

Now there is some some delays with the map and everything like that, so we're not just giving you you know live maybe footage right there of a plow.

Um, but just just just having a map online for folks is something that we're excited for.

And just to clarify that the operations team will have a live view into everything.

We don't want the citizens to have a one-for-one.

This is exactly where the truck is in that moment.

So, because of that, we do implement a slight 15 minute delay in between what you all would see if you were to log in Sam Sarah and then what the public's able to see if you were to share uh a snow operations map.

And and something, I mean, as we keep evolving too.

I talk about that that billion dollars in regional development and the growing.

We were talking with Brian earlier, and he he was really looking at hey, can we have screenshots, right?

We currently have screenshots around the city of cameras.

Maybe we could do that with with your cameras, and that's something we can do with our our open API.

We have the largest ecosystem of partners in the space.

So that's something as we grow with this city too, where you guys have problems, you have these needs come in, you can grow with Samsara.

Here's a little bit more just about the system.

I know we're really focused right now on the telematic side, maintenance side, um, camera side as well, but just showing you a little bit more.

Um, you know, off of what Brian said earlier with the maintenance, that fault code piece is a really big piece.

Having those live diagnostics.

A vehicle's on the road, let's say it's a Friday, a code pops up, right?

Something on the dashboard, maybe that operator doesn't call it in.

A different driver gets in that vehicle Monday.

If there's something really severe wrong with that problem, we have an accident on the road.

On the flip side, Jason and his team is gonna have live view into that.

They know exactly what's wrong with that vehicle, they can tell that operator, hey, we got to see that vehicle in right now, or we can organize that.

Hey, we'll see that vehicle next week.

Um, engine hours.

And on the side for for you know, for supervisors, commissioners looking at the bottom line.

Now we know exactly how much we're spending on certain vehicles when we're being approached to purchase new vehicles.

I'm gonna go back to what we looked at based off our child data with some of the investment and some of the numbers.

And we kind of kept it conservative, you know, with the three small accidents there.

Um, you know, if we dive into that a little bit more and the claims that have come in, um, we can see the the cost, what our cost we looked at just from the initial investment would be a 3x return.

And we uh we compared these numbers with the team on that spring cleanup, and I think we were actually a little bit lower.

Um we were about, I want to say 8,000 lower than we had projected for the the spring cleanup cost.

I do have a little bit more in the appendix, and I know commissioners, you have that in that PDF file.

I'm happy to go into a little bit more into that appendix there, um, but I'll first turn it over to any questions or comments at this time.

So I should have asked the timeline that's in this presentation actually started.

It's his initial contact February.

That was last year, right?

For us newbies that are Yes, yes.

So all this has gone on during this this last year.

I've had a few questions here.

First one I direct to Brian.

So the current Verizon system, what's the purpose of it?

Just the track reveal.

Well, we purchased that about 10 years ago.

At the time, we interviewed about four or five different firms.

Verizon was the one that was closest to turnkey at that time, but Verizon has done nothing as far as increasing their presence.

It's just physically a tracking system.

We can't show that on the web.

We can't do any public interface.

All we know is that that truck or that vehicle, that piece of equipment is that location X.

That's all we know.

Okay.

Another question.

So we get all this technology going and good for a couple of years.

We've talked about our traffic control systems on Anderson that were supposed to talk to each other for and suddenly they're not working anymore and they can't be replaced, and we have no support, so now we have to buy a whole new system.

Well, yeah, the Anderson system was a grant and got it for free, and we were the trial run for the state.

And we knew the day we got that grant that at some point we're either gonna have to put money in it or we're gonna have to back out of it.

Well, I just my point is this technology we get always evolving.

Stuck with one company and then suddenly they're gone, and now what do we do?

Um finally, probably my biggest concern that just really jumps out at me is your cost.

You know, if we sit here tonight and say, yeah, we're let's go with this, you know, it's it's 166,000 a year, but if we delay till next week or next month, it it's increased 46 and a half percent.

It's now 243,000 a month.

Um that almost feels like we're being held hostage for one, but what's that tell us three years from now?

What's is our cost gonna be at least 45 percent higher?

Is it gonna be 100% higher three years from now?

Sure.

We originally were gonna come to the commission back in November, December and have that discussion.

Once the election happened, we didn't want lame duck representatives making those decisions.

We wanted you guys to be able to, so we held them off until after the first of the year.

They've been nice enough to give us last year's pricing through this month, and so that's why we're back to you before now.

In three years, if their prices go up 50 percent, I'm gonna call Dan and we're gonna invite five of their competitors in, and we're gonna see who's got the best deal.

Well, my point is it went up almost 50 percent in one year from last year to this year.

And so you kicked it away from the lame ducks to the newbies.

Well, we didn't think that uh making that decision was looking at the is the estimated cost today if we did it starting now is 550,000 a year?

Is that what your chart says at the bottom?

Total estimate costs.

Yeah, go ahead.

That's what we're estimating right now yearly, annually, between idling, safety concerns, yeah, is the savings.

And what are we paying now for not a very whippy system out there?

Uh Verizon's about 60,000 a year.

So 10 times.

Nine times more.

No, no, no.

No, the 545 is a savings that they've calculated by having our fleet on this system.

Not the cost of the system.

The cost is 160 per year for three years.

So there'll be no increases for three years because we're signing a three-year deal.

And so the real cost for this next year would be how much?

Three-year deal, 160, 160k each.

A year?

Yes.

Um, was there any talk of like maybe a five-year deal or any other sort of time?

Do you guys sell that sort of package?

Would we get a lower rate if we did five years?

Yeah, so the benefit, and I know Katie's not here.

Um, so doing five years, obviously, is that your price would be locked in for longer.

To explain first, we don't want you guys to feel like you're being held hostage.

Um, so the the price increase.

We have a state contract, but for this, we're referencing our source well agreement, and in our source wall agreement, we negotiate that cost, I believe, every three years.

So we negotiate with Source Well, the cost increase is what you're seeing with what our new source wheel agreement cost would be.

And even then, in your contract, there are still price limitations on your renewal.

We can't come back to you and just say we're giving you 30% or 30% increase rather.

And then just like Brian had mentioned, we have a non-appropriation of funds clause in there.

So not even at that renewal.

You could every year come back and say we understand or Samsar understands that your funds are subject to you all's approval.

And so because of that, as the project's not funded, you can get out of that contract.

So we have a few terms that we include anytime we deal with a municipal government.

Obviously, you don't want to have to find someone new and evaluate a bunch of competitors because replacing things is not easy.

But our intention is by no means to try to lock you guys down into something and definitely don't want you to feel like you're being held hostage.

So on equipment that you're going to track, I assume it's a dollar value that we say is what we want.

I assume we don't track a pipe wrench.

No, yeah.

And I assume we the lawnmowers we're gonna have at maybe 38.

Are you gonna be able to track every one of them on a day?

Can you see it going round and round the circle if it screws up?

You certainly can, yeah.

Yeah, and the serious question is if you have a picture of the truck driving out to the landfill that wipes out four people, are you gonna fire that guy?

Is there s employee standards that you're going to enforce from human resources?

It would certainly be uh a termination offense, yes.

And this would allow us to have those conversations, and that employee couldn't say that wasn't me, that was a different truck, that was something else.

That's the beauty of this system.

And in your question about what do the employees think about it, the ones that get exonerated because we get phone calls every day about somebody ran a red light, somebody ran a stop sign.

The ones that get exonerated love this system.

The ones that are driving like they should be love this system because they have video evidence.

How many people are we gonna have to have the monitor all of this stuff daily?

So it only sends you an email or a link if the system goes off.

So if nobody's driving aggressively or or running lights or stop signs, it'll never go off.

It only goes off if there's an issue.

And just one more thing.

I preparing for this, I did call the local largest three trucking companies.

They all use this system, they've been using it for a decade.

So we're uh what we're coming to you with is not cutting edge technology, it's already out there and it's been used for quite a while.

They use it because they have accidents, they have insurance claims, that's why they use it.

We're gonna use it for the same thing, but we're also gonna use it for efficiency.

I think to me that the advantages are twofold.

One is every year we talk about the the have the CIP list, and it's always a question of whether you should do maintenance on an item or whether you should buy a new item.

And it's hard for commissioners to really um decide that that dump truck needs to be you know retired and we need a new dump truck.

And sometimes things get pushed down and down and down in the list, and then they use more maintenance, which costs us more money, which you know.

The other thing is I really like the fact that we can give constituents a cost.

The curb side pickup is something I hear about a lot.

And you know, some people say why can't we do it twice a year?

And I could explain to them what it costs to do it.

And some people think they shouldn't do it at all, and then I could tell them you know how efficient it is, and and that kind of thing.

I think you know, um, we're we're on the edge of a lot of AI um information, and the safety is a major thing, and of course, one bad accident could land you in court for quite a while.

Yeah.

Just myself, I was deposed three times last year for accidents.

Three times, just for me.

On that camera system, the rear view one lets the driver and everyone know what's going on behind a truck, say if somebody's trying to pass or or whatever, it lets it lets you know what's going on behind the truck.

Yeah, so we do have the capabilities of what we call 360 visibility, and that's something we're gonna look to down the road in this first deployment.

This is just for the the dash cameras and the telematics piece.

Um, but we do, yeah, blind spot detection.

Right now, the dash cameras pedestrian, you know, in a crosswalk, it's gonna warn the driver in real time.

Um the cameras itself, we were showing examples earlier.

We have what we call nudges, so actually alert the drive in real time.

Put phone down, put seat belt on.

Um so again, going back to you know, not adding more to everyone's day because nobody has enough time in the day to sit here and watch cameras or anything like that.

It's it's setting up these alerts to keep the efficiency and streamline between every department on one page.

And again, this is we're approaching it as public works because fleet is in our division.

This is for code, you know, emergency park and wreck, code enforcement, they go up to our house, there's a bunch of trash out in the front yard, they can take a picture of it.

There's no questions about the state of that property.

For for me, I think this is a go.

I would just maybe think about maybe a five-year deal instead of a three-year deal if we can get a cheaper rate on it.

Um that's my take.

But I mean, if you guys like it.

And you guys had had plenty of time to test it.

So I think it's good.

What really sold us for us is when we talked to the private sector and they said, Brian, you're 10 years behind.

We've had this for 10 years.

And that's when it was okay.

We need to start looking at this.

So this covers vehicles in all departments of the city.

Anything that we maintain.

So we maintain about 400 different pieces, cars, trucks, fire trucks, anything we maintain through fleet.

Trailers, bobcats, skid loaders.

We even put them on our skid loaders so that we can see what the skid loader driver is saying.

So if they hit a car, there's no questions or mailboxes, those sorts of things.

Any more questions?

I just my comment, I guess personally, I think it it's it's a great great program.

Um I can understand that we're probably behind uh uh this technology's been out there, so I I'd go for it.

Is this in your preliminary proposal for the budget for the coming year?

Um this request.

No, it's actually budgeted last year, and we didn't spend the dollars, so we're asking you if we can spend them this year.

It's budgeted for this year.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um we'll bring back a formal contract in February.

Is that I think you're getting that feedback.

Yeah.

Um, I do want to see if we want to allow comments from the audience.

Oh, sorry.

We have to vote that that's okay, but I don't see anybody hopping up, so I think we're you know.

Okay.

There's good also go ahead and just take that vote for the next item as well, Mayor.

Pro Tim.

Right.

Are we willing to have public comment?

Um I move we have public comment.

Second, call a roll.

Commissioner Fox.

Yes.

Commissioner Morrison?

Yes.

Commissioner Von Lennel.

Yes.

Commissioner McCollow?

Yes.

Motion passes.

So there's no uh action required on this, but I do hear pretty positive feedback coming from everybody.

Right?

Okay.

Item B is to discuss home rehabilitation and repair assistance program, our REP and the 2026 Home Exterior Improvement Grant.

Thanks.

Oh, thank you.

Good evening, Stephanie Peterson, Director of Planning and Development.

Uh, we have two items that we're kind of bundling for you this evening because they are somewhat related.

The first is the home rehabilitation and repair assistance program.

We refer to that as the RAP.

Um, and then the other is would be a new program, uh, the home exterior improvement grant.

I wanted to first start, since we haven't had an opportunity to talk about all of the ways that the workforce housing sales tax can be used per our policy.

Just quickly um to provide this for you for context.

The first four bullets, those we'll get into in more detail at your retreat next week.

Um, but the last bullet there we added to the policy that is for that RAP program.

And so that would allow for ownered occupied housing um rehab projects and any sort of services or programs that go with those to be funded with this workforce housing sales tax.

The goal of the wrap uh was to really maintain a safe and habitable housing stock in our community.

Um, and that was uh we kind of a little bit of history.

We used to provide a similar program.

We did that with a federal grant.

There was a lot of administrative work and oversight and red tape.

Um, and so we found a more efficient and responsive way to provide that same service, um, just using a different source of funding and to outsource it to somebody who uh does housing every day.

A little bit of the program overview.

So this program first started just in 2025.

It's brand new.

We just completed our first year of it.

Um it is a reimbursement program for what we consider uh or what we call critical home repairs uh and rehabilitation.

Uh I'll keep saying this kind of throughout the presentation, but really the focus of this is to make sure that we maintain our housing stock.

So if it's structural um stability, if it needs to, if we need to go in and repair um some basic uh like heating, uh, HVAC systems, water lines, that kind of thing to keep that unit uh livable.

So in 2025, the previous commission allocated $100,000 or up to $100,000 of the workforce housing sales tax to the RAP program.

Only state registered nonprofit organizations are eligible to apply for this.

So homeowners aren't applying directly to the city.

We will last year we issued an RFP.

We had one response, that was Habitat for Humanity.

And our recommendation is to issue another RFP this year, but to have uh to allow for up to a three-year agreement, so we're not having to go back through this RFP process every year.

And so as far as the projects that are eligible, uh we focused on owner-occupied units.

Uh they needed to be within the city limits since it's a city sales tax.

And then it was income-based.

Our previous program was income-based, but the definition that locally we've used for workforce housing is up to 120% of area median income.

We're gonna dive into the specifics of the program as well as a few changes that we're recommending since this is our first year.

We've learned a lot.

Um we used to have uh four program categories.

We're suggesting that we limit that back to three.

Uh so that first one there, home rehabilitation and repair, this is a really kind of comprehensive type of program.

This could be a roof, this could be a foundation.

Um, it's really quite broad, and the maximum amount for any project would be $20,000.

The second one there is manufactured home repair.

The current amount or the amount in 2025, the maximum amount was $2,500.

Based on some feedback from Habitat for Humanity, we would recommend going up to $5,000 for a manufactured home.

I mean, we do have a requirement that that manufactured home has to be less than 30 years old.

Um then the last one would be emergency repair.

So this would be if a water line breaks, if a furnace goes out, a water heater, it allows for those repairs to happen quite quickly.

The fourth program category that we had in 2025 that we're recommending not be a category on its own but be an eligible expense is that second bullet there highlighted in blue, which are exterior ADA accessibility improvements.

So previously, when those were a program category, it was capped at $2,500.

We would recommend that that eligible cost be still capped at $2,500, but it would still be an eligible activity.

So as far as eligible costs go, anything that improves or preserves the structural integrity of the home is an allowable expense.

I kind of went over the HVAC component there.

Um if there's a doorway that's needing or door that's needing to be replaced, windows, anything to really keep moisture out of the home or to preserve or to avoid further damage, those are all eligible expenses.

And then there was also allowed was a uh an administrative cost, no more than 15% of the allocation.

That would be an administrative cost for uh in this case habitat for humanity, it wasn't city staff for administration.

And then I have a list down there at the bottom of the non-eligible expenses, which many of those non-eligible expenses we'll talk about with the next program.

So just a quick overview of what those program changes are, the recommendations for 2026, uh, increase the manufactured home assistance up to $5,000.

We used to have a mortgage requirement for those that larger $20,000 type of improvement.

Um Habitat does their own sort of uh kind of monitoring of this, so we would recommend that we remove that.

Uh initially we had that in place under our old program because we wanted to make sure that if someone moved out of that home that we would recapture those funds and put it back into another home.

I would say here that if our focus is truly on maintaining the structural integrity and maintaining our housing stock, whether that individu that specific individual leaves that home or not, we still have that house and it's in better condition than when we found it.

Uh, we would also uh recommend that the costs that are in the agreement that can be incurred run from January 1 to December 31st.

Um that wasn't really clearly outlined in our current program.

And then uh the last one was in the current in the 2025 program, the annual report was due December 1st.

You'll notice that we replaced the original annual report you received because Habitat just updated it, but we would recommend having that report due January 31st that gives Habitat or whoever the next respondent is to the RFP a little bit more time to pull together the previous year's work.

Uh before we move on to the next, uh I will uh Josh Brewer, he's the executive director of Habitat for Humanity, he's here with us this evening.

I think he would probably like to address you all and uh to address the commission and uh provide you a little bit of an overview of their progress in 2025.

And if you had any specific questions, he'd be able to answer those.

Yes.

Well, I would have a question now before we get to Mr.

Brewer and Oh, yeah, absolutely.

If it's 15% cost for management out of 100,000, they got 85,000 active duty dollars for help, is that right?

Correct.

Do you think that's a little steep for property management?

I know it's not the ordinary apartment management kind of situation.

There's a lot more to do with construction and supervision that, but is that an amount that you think is reasonable?

Uh I can say under our previous grant, we could spend no more than 20% on administering, administering that grant.

Um I can let Mr.

Brewer speak to what that 15% goes towards.

I know that there are several, like his cost, he's not out there actually working on the home.

I don't know, maybe sometimes he actually does go out and work on the homes, but it helps for some of that overhead that wouldn't be captured through direct expenses to that project.

So when we we habitat or our requirements, is there any requirement that we have an idea of what the value of the property was when we started it?

If it was in such a poor shape, why spend $20,000 and that's only worth 15 when you get done with.

I mean, is there any concern that that's an issue?

We have not looked into the property value, mostly because that would be delayed an entire year, waiting for the county appraiser to go back out and appraise that property.

Um I will say that a lot of times we see I just have experience with this from some of our private development projects in the workforce housing sales tax grants.

Um some of the developers are really surprised at what their property is uh appraised at, especially the the building itself, um, because they say the outside, you know, it looks okay, the inside, we won't even lease it out because the inside is just it's terrible.

It's inhabitable almost, yet the appraisal of that is higher than what they would they would think is appropriate.

And again, doing away with the mortgage on the $20,000 project.

Is that in your opinion appropriate?

Yeah, I do.

I think that if our focus of this program is truly on maintaining the structural integrity of the home and and maintaining our housing stock, then who lives there is really irrelevant.

It's more about how do we continue to preserve that house and make sure that whether it's that individual or family or the families that come after it, that that house is being maintained and it's being cared for.

And this is a really a new philosophical approach from where we've been with the mortgage.

Is that kind of true?

Uh it is, I would say the the intent of this program is a little bit different than where we were before as well.

And there's another, I'll let I'll let Mr.

Brewer speak to it.

There's another um way that they have kind of this assurance from property owners.

Um he can speak a little bit more to to what that mechanism is to see if that provides a little bit more comfort.

Yeah, let's let's hear from Josh.

I think he'll answer some of your questions.

Real quick, can I finish?

Can I finish this presentation?

Because there's a recommendation at the end, unless you would like to uh okay.

So we the program that we just talked about, uh, that's really focused on this, like I said, the structural integrity, keeping that home around for for families continue to live in.

Um the next program, this is just an idea that we've been throwing around.

There's several other communities in Kansas that do something similar.

Um, and it's this home exterior improvement grant.

So we are so this program and its mission or its goal would be a little bit different.

This would be to encourage residential property owners to invest in improvements to the exterior of their home to improve the neighborhood aesthetics, neighborhood quality.

Um it's not really focusing on those structural components, it's more about that kind of uh enhancing curb appeal and then contributing to that overall neighborhood quality.

As far as property eligibility, again, we would be looking at um single family detached structures.

We would recommend not getting into kind of a duplex situation just because there can be two different owners.

Uh we would recommend owner-occupied units at least at first.

Um, and then the way that properties would be selected, and this is where we've um looked into other communities.

We would look at a property to see um we'd basically kind of draw a line to say any property and I'm gonna make up some numbers here.

We would need to do we need to do some calculations.

Let's say any property that's valued or appraised at under 215,000, and it has to be older than 1990.

So what we're really focusing on with this with this program are properties that are a lower, kind of the lower percentage of all the appraised properties that we have in Manhattan, as well as the older homes.

This would be property owners coming directly to the city and saying we would like to apply for a grant to make this improvement to our home.

So let's say that a project, a property owner has a thousand dollar project, the city would participate at $500.

If there was a project that was $15,000 for someone to paint their house, the city would only participate up to $5,000 if that's the amount that the commission was interested in.

So there are there are a lot of there are a lot more details if this is something that you're interested in for us to work towards.

But this just provides a different a different opportunity that some homeowners in Manhattan, they wouldn't maybe qualify under the RAP program or their improvement wouldn't qualify under that program, but they would potentially under this one.

And so with that, um if these are programs, you know, either of these are if both of these sound like something you want to do or continue to do, this is kind of our recommendation for funding.

So again, the RAP program in 2025, we had $100,000.

Uh Mr.

Brewer did uh expend all $100,000 on homes, so there is a demand there.

Um and then I did the breakdown for you between uh the 15% cap, what that would look like for admin, and then the actual project repairs, and then the home exterior improvement grant, um, we you know a recommendation would be maybe starting at $50,000, again, no more than $5,000 on any one property, um, and that would take our total um housing uh uh support to $125,000 of the workforce housing sales tax.

That's it.

I assume on that the last one, there's the income limits as well.

No, so the the last program, that exterior grant, that's where we would look at the appraised value of the property and the age of the home.

So uh let's say that it has to um as I mentioned, let's say it's 215,000.

I don't know what percentile that would be, maybe 25% of our housing stock is below $215,000, but it also has to be older than say 19, has to be built um later or no earlier than 1990.

So there wouldn't be income limits, we would never be looking at income statements from property owners.

We would pure be purely be looking at that uh property information.

Just right off the bat, I'd have a hard time supporting something that you know we're giving city tax peer support to somebody that could afford to do it themselves.

Okay.

Yeah.

So if there's no income limits, that that's a little concerning.

I I think if I could speak a little bit to that, Commissioner Fox.

Uh, we had experience with this in a community that I served in previously.

Um the idea um behind not necessarily looking at some of those income eligibilities, particularly for this program.

If you're looking at someone who is living in that workforce housing uh range of that property value and looking at that age, it's almost a different way of uh income qualifying.

We wouldn't expect someone who was um making above uh your average media income to be living in some of those lower homes or lower uh appraised values.

Um understand your feedback, but just wanted to give a little bit of a different perspective on that because it is administratively burdensome to have to verify income, and I'm sure Mr.

Brewer can um attest to that.

That's a great point.

Thank you, Danielle.

I would say that for our workforce housing sales tax, the um we do put a price point range for owner-occupied houses, and our workforce housing um price point goes up to $329,000.

So any home that's valued less than $329,000 would be considered within that workforce range, um, just for um just wanted to throw that out there.

Okay.

Out of curiosity in the last one, you said it had to be appraised.

I don't know what appraisals are going for an Larry No, last thing I knew before I retired was about $350 to $450, which seems to me be a substantial waste of money for the people who need the improvement of the property.

Can we use our liability reliable county assessor what the value is?

Is that what you're intending for an appraisal?

Correct.

That's how the other communities do it as well.

They use the county's appraisal on their website.

So it's not a commercial appraisal.

No.

And the next thing, if we wanted to triple that amount of money for part of it, is that going to qualify for the sales tax within the workforce employment funding?

I'm sorry, I can you restate that?

If we wanted to do more, especially for the RAP.

We want to do $300,000.

Would that expense be able to be funded by the sales tax that we have now?

Uh yeah, I would be eligible as long as the property owners under that current program uh the income verification is under 120 or 120 area median income.

I would ask Mr.

Brewer to speak to if they have the capacity to do that level of um of work in one year.

And Mr.

Brewer probably can answer, but do we run out of money before they got through with the application 100,000?

I don't know what their application intake intake looks like right now.

Okay, should we hear from Mr.

Go ahead?

Uh could you remind how much is in the uh the workforce housing account at this point?

We've uh we've collected about 2.4 million dollars, and I have all these numbers for you early next week.

Um, but we I believe it's about 2.4 million that we've collected to date.

Um and there's I would need to go look at the specifics of how much you've actually allocated, uh, how much is kind of pending that's been awarded, and then there is an outstanding request from the October round that's out there waiting for for commission action.

Commissioner Von Lintel, uh while Mr.

Brewer is addressing you all, we will look up those numbers.

So I have those numbers right here.

Uh, through the end of 2025, we've collected 2,299,616.

And through the end of the year, we have either expended or committed 200 2,741, 234 dollars.

So it's in the hole right now, 441,000.

Yeah, so that's I'll pull up where the commitments are in the expenditures.

So some of those are committed, but they're gonna take several years to actually get that money out of the door.

Committed, but yeah, we've we've committed more than we've made so far.

I'm just in pointing that out.

And we're anticipating to collect $8 million for 2026.

No, no, for that.

Over the 10 years.

Well, yeah, I understand that.

Okay.

Josh, would you like to give us your input?

Sure.

Um good evening, Josh Brewer, Habitat for Humanity of the Northern Flo Hills.

Um I do uh I am not typically out on the construction site.

Uh Cody has a really uh good habit of finding something for me to do if he sees me coming out to the construction sites, although periodically I do.

Um I do just want to first say thank you to city staff uh for working with us as we you know got the program off the ground for the first year.

They answered all the questions that we had, um, these program categories at times, you know, you're you're sitting there saying, okay, is this a comprehensive repair, or is this a uh uh does this rise to the level of a comprehensive repair?

So there is some back and forth there to make sure that we don't um uh misrepresent one of the repairs and over overcommit funding.

Um as far as the questions that were asked here, um I want to go through these and uh per my notes.

The first is the idea of a three-year agreement versus a one-year agreement.

Um I think that sounds great.

That gives us a sort of consistency and predictability that we would want right now, our construction team, um, they can flex between the new construction operation and the repair rehab operation.

Um, we have three full-time construction members.

We work with all the students at MATC and the uh soldiers from HBI, community volunteers.

If we know that the repair program is going to grow, that lets us invest in that program.

Um we do I would support the simplification of program categories that Stephanie mentioned there, going from four categories to three.

I'm I'm generally the way I think about these activities is are we working on personal property or are we working on real estate?

Um if it's personal property, it can't be secured.

So there was some discussion about the mortgage.

So any simplification of program categories I'm comfortable with.

One thing I would say just on this uh presentation is I am a little concerned about those caps with cost.

Um if you look in the the annual report, our average uh project cost for an emergency repair is about seven thousand dollars.

So if that you know, if that uh cap is at five thousand dollars, you know, you're going into a project knowing that you're you're gonna eat it a little bit if you can't find an exterior uh uh uh funding match.

Um the same for accessibility improvements, our average accessibility modification, um, wheelchair ramps um or you know, in some cases interior modifications.

Sometimes they're very simple things like a grab bar or or widening a doorway, but a wheelchair ramp, that is something that needs to be done in a code compliant manner, it needs to be safe.

Um, you know, those are fully designed out.

Um those average costs are are just under six thousand dollars.

So, of course, if a $2,500 program cap, you you're eating it pretty pretty uh seriously there.

And if you're looking at an older home that is has multiple steps to get into the home, that's gonna be a really long ramp.

Um so you're gonna really be spending some money on uh on lumber.

Um so that's something that that I you know we are gonna advocate there that we try to uh right size those caps a little bit more.

Um on the conversation about mortgage retention, um I would say we're we're neutral on that.

I mean, ultimately that is that is commission discretion, how you want to um uh if you're comfortable just investing directly into that real estate in the community.

Um if you feel the need to steward those funds, we can do that as robustly as as you need.

Um we can we can write a mortgage, or we could write a simple retention agreement.

I think that is one thing that that I learned pretty late uh kind of later in the process here is in the original RAP contract it says mortgage retention for projects over $10,000.

I'm like, okay, we're writing a mortgage.

We're writing a promissory note and and and filing that mortgage.

And so in five years, you know, me or someone in my shoes is gonna go down to the county and release that mortgage.

Um so that's okay.

Um that's that's something we're comfortable doing.

We do that in our homeownership program.

Um so if that's the level of protection of funds that y'all want, we've got it.

Um in another program uh that we do for Federal Home Loan Bank, Topeka, we just sign a simple retention agreement.

Um one of the reasons for the mortgage was the amount that needs to be repaid back to the city, it does uh it amateurizes and and it does forgive uh at a rate of uh it's a five year, so 20% annually.

Uh a simple retention agreement might not have that same reimbursement.

So it might be an all or nothing if y'all want to say, hey, if someone sells their home before the retention period, they're gonna pay that money back to the city out of the proceeds of the home sale.

And ultimately, we're gonna be neutral on that because that's gonna be that's you know, gonna be your your position on how you want to protect funds.

Um Josh, just to clarify, so there is some kind of a clawback if they sell a property after the repairs are made.

So with a mortgage, there is otherwise there isn't.

Under $10,000, no mortgage is required, and so there is no clawback on on those projects.

Um your definition of mortgage and mine, I guess maybe are a little different, but sorry.

Yeah.

Um you're using that term as a kind of a lien on the property that prevents them from selling it without giving us some of the money back.

Correct, yeah.

And and so when they going them anything.

Well, I guess you're it's a loan.

It's a loan, and the way the that the homeowner pays their loan back is by living in their home for five years.

Yeah.

Um and and we didn't have any any pushback from any of the homeowners with the projects over $10,000.

They get it, and and they all said, Well, I'm not planning on going anywhere in five years.

Um, but you know, again, it does introduce a little bit of um uh you know, administrative burden.

It is it is something that that I need to do.

Um it creates a little bit of legal risk for us.

Um, and in five years we'll have to go back and release the mortgage.

But we're comfortable with that.

If that is something that a commission wants to see is is that level of protection of funds, we can do that.

Uh there was a question about uh administrative cost, um administrative or indirect cost.

Um we did feel that a 15% indirect rate was was appropriate here.

You know, that is that's commission discretion.

I'm sure the city has some averages of you know what it uses for indirect.

I know that one of the uh pushbacks on the previous program, the uh uh HUD program was that the indirect cost rate was just too high.

They that felt like not enough dollars were going to direct cost.

Um so this is lower than that was uh and and what those administrative costs cover, you know, just any of uh the portion of this that is you know, audit, legal, HR, uh accounts receivable and billing, my time, the time that I'm putting on on mortgages, um, that's what that's what pays for that.

Um those sort of indirect costs that are not shared in the construction space.

And uh the point about property values, um, just using the GIS.

Um I went through and identified all the properties that that we worked on this year.

I pulled out the land value, so just the value of the buildings.

Um this $100,000 uh stabilized uh 1.46.

Well, one $1,462,360 in real estate.

Um, and that uh generates about $9,000 a year for the city of Manhattan.

Um and so you know, just direct cost here uh versus return to the city.

Um this is an effective and efficient program.

I think the most important thing is that stabilizes us homeowners.

Um we've got several of the homeowners who've worked with this program here tonight.

Um this is the sort of program that comes in, it gives us the ability because Manhattan is not in a USDA eligible service area.

We don't have a funding source in the city of Manhattan other than uh HUD.

And so without the C D BG program at the city, this fills a really critical gap.

Um so without that, those funds, you know, we're really reliant on on private philanthropy there, and and it's an expensive program.

Um yeah, I think that's my uh feedback on the questions that were raised uh after Stephanie's presentation.

Any question on those?

Questions for Did you spend $100,000 on projects this year?

That and some.

Um yeah, we did uh ultimately um our total repair cost on the 11 projects was 157,569.

Only 99,961 dollars of that is reimbursable um from the city, and so you know, we're on the hook for trying to close the gap of about uh just under $62,000.

And that that's created when when you you know some of these category caps.

Now, of course, $20,000 is the absolute cap.

You know, you you start getting into a project, you find things, and and you know, when we're on site, we don't leave.

Um so if we find things, we're gonna we're gonna address them.

Kind of come up with a money pit circumstance.

We own it.

You know, and and that's what we do.

I mean, when we get on site, like we don't leave a hazard on site.

Um, and so you know, sometimes that happens.

Um, and and it that's just as contractor risk in in a lot of ways.

Um I would say that you know, for the program to be sustainable for for a small organization, um, any way that we can limit that exposure uh the better.

Um obviously, you know, I would love for philanthropic dollars to to match it to some degree as well.

Um and I think if this is something that the commission wants to see going long term, I think that's a conversation is you know, how do we make sure that as we're providing this critical service, you know, this isn't uh you know, this isn't something that burdens uh overly burdens our organization.

Larry, did you have a question?

Um are you are you still looking at that Northview project?

Or we s we are viewed is that's still an idea that's possible.

That's a great dream project.

Uh yeah, I mean, and and that's the sort of project um within our new construction program.

I think that one thing I would say about Habitats model, uh, when you look at an organization like Habitat Kansas City, you know, they demonstrate that the model scales up pretty good.

I mean they got some big developments that they're working on right now, but it also goes all the way down to just an infill project, a repair project.

Um so the Chavez Edition project is one that we've been very vocal about.

That hey, if we were to see something scale up, where would it be?

Well, that's a location it could be.

Um we're also we're piloting a rehabilitation project right now that's a rehab plus infill.

Um so I think housing is an issue that there's not gonna be a silver bullet.

Repairs is kind of like playing defense, rehab, playing some really deep defense, and and new construction is kind of like going on the offense trying to get some more inventory out there.

You gotta play both sides of the ball.

Um and and so Chavies would be like the the hail Mary in this metaphor.

So I I think this is a great program.

I think what you're doing is great, it's needed uh as you say, houses naturally deteriorate and need maintenance.

Um I get into a uh I have a philosophical problem with the the AMI and the eighty to a hundred and twenty percent uh income situations.

I know uh in in your brochures it says habitat serves households earning eighty percent or less, which great.

Um the RAP program allows households up to 120 percent of AMI, and in the your marketing brochure, it says income must be between 54,000 and 108,000 to qualify.

Uh I I have a little heartburn at that upper end, uh, giving city tax dollars to, you know, if people are making 108,000, uh they could probably take care of their own house.

Um do you have any statistics comparing all your projects versus that percentage of AMI that those people were at when you approved it?

Uh are they generally or at the lower end at the 80 percent or a bunch of them at that 120 percent?

We can I could definitely calculate that for you, an average of AMI.

Um what I think we see, um, and if if if there's anything that I could like sink into the public knowledge here is when you hear 120 percent AMI, when you hear 60 percent AMI, when you hear low income, everyone says that's not me, right?

You say even when you put out their up to 108, people say that's not me.

I've seen them, they've sit across from a desk, they say, I know I don't qualify for this program, but can I hire you for this work?

And then I say, Okay, well what where do you work at?

And they tell me I'm like, is that number less than 106, 108?

Yes.

You might qualify for this program, right?

And so most of the time people self disqualify, they disqualify themselves.

The majority of folks who um so we did go out to Habitat International and we got an exception to work above our traditional AMI uh in the city limits of Manhattan, and uh there was some concern about this.

Would we be you know mission creeping into a higher household income?

That's not really what we saw.

Um we saw that you know we're pretty much working with the same people that we always work with.

Um if anything, I think we just gave a little bit more social permission to call habitat.

Um and so we we use the words income qualified instead of low.

That's great.

I think where we have limited taxpayer dollars or sales tax, and I think it it's a good use of the workforce housing funds.

Um, but if there's more people needing it at the 80 percent in word or less that we're using up our money because we're we're giving it to the 120 percent.

I can definitely numb here for that.

So that they're not, I mean, they won't be like personally identifiable information, but it'll we can we can show where those AMIs landed in the projects.

Okay.

Josh, you have three um people on staff to do the work.

Um, but you also use volunteers, am I right?

And so what the city really gets is a lot of bang for their buck.

I mean, we get the people who are experts, but we also get the the students, the people at Mac, the people in the you know, we get a lot of people who volunteer to help.

And I also think it would be good if everyone on the commission would read the housing study that was done in 2023.

Um it's you know, 108 might sound like a lot of money, but what if you have a spouse who is handicapped, or you have children who have special needs.

You know, you're down in the food bank in no time at all.

Um so I do think that that improving our housing stock, however, we may be able to do it, is very, very important.

And allowing people to age in place is very, very important.

Getting them sometimes it's as much as as changing the light bulb on their porch because they can't get up there in a ladder.

They just don't feel safe living, you know, coming in the house after dark.

So I quite frankly would give you more money.

And um, I think the return is excellent on what you do, and um I just hope we can move forward with this.

Thank you.

Now I think there are probably some people in the audience who have one of please come up.

Thank you.

Thanks, Josh.

Take your time.

You're quiet.

Hi there.

I need your name and address.

This is Jerry Hunter.

My name's Kim Baldwin.

And you live at Kathleen Baldwin.

We live in the Northview area.

We don't live together.

Okay.

But we have used the project, and it has been wonderful for both of us.

Jerry lost his leg about a year ago and has been out of commission for quite a while.

Yeah.

Sick.

And it's helped him get back into the house.

He had a hole about the size of the desk and water coming down.

Do you want to tell him everything that they've done?

Yeah, I had a roof leak, and then my exterior siding on the front of the house was in really bad shape.

And so they uh she rocked the ceiling in my den because that's where the water damage was, and then fixed my roof and put up new siding and put a wider back door in so I could get in a wheelchair.

Thank you.

Jared, could you bring the sign-in sheet over to Miss Diddle?

We make people sign in.

Go ahead.

What did I had a backdoor as well?

Basically, there are main entrance doors that we use that was widened in order to get the wheelchair or a walker through.

Because I've had hip replacements and have been sick myself for the last year.

And we both just retired.

So the income that you speak of, we definitely understand, but as well, we don't have college degrees, and we have worked and lived in Manhattan all of our life and have started out at I think I started at a dollar seventy-five, but I retired a little bit more than that.

Good.

Um I've been at the same place for 45 and a half years, and Jerry's been at the same place for well.

I was at the college for 26 years.

So we definitely see the benefit of this.

We see the benefit of the exterior as well as the interior, because if you look around some of the older neighborhoods, our houses aren't as expensive as what you were talking about, but it helps the neighborhood look nice.

So those people that do want to come in and buy a smaller house to start out with and then increase to a bigger one, the areas are nice.

To be quite honest.

We have seen other areas living here all of our lives that have not been as well as ours, I guess, so to speak.

And I grew up in the neighborhood.

I lived in Northview ever since I was four years old, five years old.

Um my parents bought a house, new house.

Um in Northview when I was little, and then I went to Northview School, and my granddaughter and grandson went to Northview School.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Uh Jason's got the sign-in sheet for you, so if you just want to go back to him, he will help you.

And then you just view as well.

Um I get I grew up in Northview as well.

My mom lives there, and it's just kind of like a neighborhood family.

You really like come, you stay, everybody knows everybody, and it's it's helpful because um, you know, I I bought my modular home about eight years ago, and it did need some renovations, and so uh staying there, and I don't plan on going anywhere really, but maybe a little bit.

Yeah, can you give me your name and address?

Um Kathleen, I live on Knox.

Okay.

Um if you just turn around and sign in on the sign-in sheet, thank you very much.

Thanks for coming up.

Appreciate it.

Take it easy, we're not in any rush.

Is there anyone else?

Yeah, please come forward.

We appreciate it and help.

First or uh come forward, you can sign in second.

We're being a little informal tonight.

Okay, yeah.

Um my name's Cody.

I'm the construction manager for Habitat.

Um, so I worked with uh Gerald and Kim on their projects.

Um I guess one thing I want to say about Kim's project is um she had a lot more she wanted to get done, uh, but we were limited by the $2,500, so we were only able to do her main entry door.

Um, but she was requesting a walk-in shower and um wider interior doors as well.

So that is one area that I would personally like to see us be able to go to that full $20,000 to be able to do all of that, um, even if it's all a um an accessibility modification.

Um so uh I guess the other thing I'll I'll say on the point of the the 15% um admin fee is uh the difference between sort of a normal contractor that you would hire and they'd take the cost of materials and labor, add a little um extra for overhead and and such.

Um but we're also having to do the admin of taking in the applications, getting it underwritten, all of that, and that does add to the cost.

Um so that's part of that.

Um there was something else I was gonna say, and I can't remember.

Um volunteers.

Oh, yes.

Um so like uh um Commissioner McCullough said, we do a lot of the smaller repairs where it's a lot easier to just do it with one person or a couple people we do with just our staff or the the more technical things, um, but we are able to bring in a lot of volunteers.

Um again, the um HBI program from Fort Riley.

We had um them do the siding for Gerald, um, and that was a huge help to be able to knock that out in just a couple days.

Um we do also hire out certain things, like we had um contractors do the the roofing for us rather than trying to do that ourselves.

Um and uh we had another deck project that we brought in a church group uh led by Ryan Hayden who's one of our board members, so we are able to bring that added value to um what we're doing here.

Thank you.

You can sign in right over here.

Anybody else go in once?

Please come forward.

Don't be shy.

I can't volunteer other people.

Hello.

Hi.

Name and address, please.

Uh Tiffany Bishop, uh red red rock um Red Bud.

Red Bud Estate.

Thank you.

Uh um, so we just bought a trailer back in 2024, and it needed some deck work.

Um we had a city violation because it was not very walkable, and so I um was looking for where I work.

Um, I had them estimate how much it was, and so I said I couldn't afford it, so I looked in some grants, and that's when I talked to Josh and his crew and see if I could get it done through them.

Um they were excellent.

They did our uh door too, which could not lock.

Um we're using a cinder block just to just to keep our door shut at night.

Can you give me your name, please too?

I'm Stephen Bishop, I'm Rosbind.

That's fine.

So um we had excellent, they did an excellent job.

We love it.

Um in April we're gonna stay in it, so we got a bigger bigger deck than we thought.

So and I'll just call them a content with that.

I don't I don't have to.

I'm a heavier guy.

And I had to walk around the back part of the deck.

Now I don't I have more I'm more comfortable knowing that I'm not gonna fall through.

That's rather important.

And he did he rocked out with his crew and he did a phenomenal job, and I recommend them to anyone.

Thank you.

Thank you both very much.

Would you go over here and just sign in?

Super.

Anybody else?

Donna Donna Shank Hamlin, 1922 Leavenworth.

This takes me back to a memory when after I'd been renting for 12 years, I finally got a house.

I don't want to say how much it costs then because it's just ridiculous.

But we had no idea what we were getting into.

We had been renters and we didn't have a tool or a clue.

We knew that the porch was disintegrating.

And we knew that there was the poor lady who was 91 years old, not only could not screw in a light bulb with her little stool that she had over there, but she was putting cleenex in the corners of the windows because she was cold and it was so poorly insulated.

But I don't want to go into that.

Um there was a reason why the workforce sales tax was created.

It was a realization that there are a lot of people working in this town who will never be able to keep up with the high cost, the inflationary costs of housing.

I think there was a French Nobel Prize winner economist, Piketty, who talked in very abstract terms about how worldwide we've got an unending race with housing is investment, properties investment always, always exceeding the increase in labor values.

It's everywhere.

But we also know that a town like ours has certain categories of workers that need to live proximate to the work site.

And those categories that that's why in Columbus is significant.

We know that a lot of frontline workers, emergency workers, um, peras, people who whose income is very modest, won't have a chance to find stable living, uh, whether it's shared equity ownership, 30-year mortgage, they can't get their foot in there.

And with the competition for rental housing, they're really in bad shape.

So I just want us to keep reminding ourselves of what this workforce sales housing tax was for in the first place and use that as a measure.

Um when I first heard about HEIG, I was thinking to myself, hmm, there's no income requirements for this, but what if key anchor institutions or employers would match?

I mean I'm hearing kind of a match formula going on here.

Like we'll give you 5,000, but you have to come up with that's only half the value.

What if a motivated employer would say, Oh, well, I want this person to stay, and I know that the numbers don't work, but maybe I can incentivize this talented person to stay here by matching it.

So I I do think income qualifications are significant, but we gotta remember we want valued employees to stay here.

Thank you, Donna.

Make sure you sign in.

I think I see no other people.

Um basically um we don't have any action tonight.

I think we have provided a lot of feedback.

Anyone want any closing comments?

One question for Josh.

Do you get any help from uh technical college?

Oops.

Yes, uh, we have a great relationship with the construction technology program, HVAC program, and plumbing program.

Um we do have to align with their their uh educational schedule.

Um so like if they're in the framing part of the class, like we got to give them a framing job.

Um so we we are uh building a house uh with them right now in Ogden.

Um so they're coming up on framing uh this semester, the beginning of the semester.

Is that the hemp house?

That's another house.

That's the house.

That's really exciting.

Yeah, yeah.

Um it's the third house right across from Ogden Elementary.

So um, yeah, MATC has been one of our longest educational partnerships.

Okay.

I think we're about ready to adjourn.

Before we adjourn, I just want to make a little announcement to remind people there is a dental um thing coming up.

You if you have dental issues, they they will handle this is a free clinic.

It's at the um armory, and it's on Saturday, and people start lining up at like five in the morning because they can't get assistance, and they do a lot of amazing things there in one day.

One day or two days.

I thought it was one day, but maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Okay.

Do I hear a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.