The Wichita City Council held a regular meeting on Tuesday, November 19, 2024, at 6:00 PM in the City Council Chambers. The meeting lasted until 12:54 AM on November 20, 2024, covering a wide range of topics including a major downtown parking plan, a Holocaust memorial agreement, budget adjustments, and a controversial public restroom project. The council deferred the parking plan decision to December 10, 2024, after failing to reach consensus on options A and E.
Welcome to City Hall and good evening, Wichita. We'll call this meeting to order at this time. With us this evening is Reverend Ben Staley of Chapel Hill United Methodist Church to provide our invocation. Following that invocation, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance, and we ask that you please stand for both. Family and friends and neighbors who give it themselves and support one another. We're thankful that in our community we have people who serve us through the schools, colleges, churches, hospitals, community leaders with servant hearts. And for the future, we know, Lord, that to whom much is given, much shall be required. So help us to share what you've given us with wisdom and kindness, to be good stewards and generous in our give giving and also in our demands. As we strive to follow Christ's example of sacrifice and love, in whose name we pray. Amen. I see none. I move to approve the minutes of the regular meeting of November fifth, twenty twenty-four. Second. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? I see none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Sorry, I'm recognizing that Vice Mayor Maggie Ballard is joining us virtually today, so her voice is what just came through. Motion passes seven zero. Madam Clerk, please call the next item. Awards and proclamations. May I please invite Councilmember Becky Tuttle to the front and the recipients and organizations that will be receiving the best tasting award. So one of the one of the events we have a backhoe rodeo, uh, you know, test operator skills, you know, on a backhoe. We have a meter madness, see how fast people can uh assemble a meter and make sure it works. Uh you know, once it's done. We do that with hydrants also, hydro hysteria. We also have a thing called Top Ops. So we have the water water operators, it's kind of a like a high queue competition, and and they answer the questions and and we award award a winner that way. Uh all our different awards, you know, they they're you know pick chosen, you know, one won that award at the section level, but every one of them they're able to go on to our national conference. Uh this next year it'll be in Denver. Uh, one of the awards that's it's always been one of my favorites is is the water taste test award. With the water taste test award, it's not just you know one or two people, it's usually a whole team of people, you know, that that work to make that water what it is. Uh with that, you know, there's a select panel. Uh, you know, we'll just pick different people throughout. Uh usually we have some of our dignitaries from AWWA from the national level that come in. Uh there are some of them. So usually it's people that don't be not normally drinking the water in Kansas. But with that, you know, they're they're gone through and they they keep selecting, they score, and uh at the end we we make that determination of who had the highest score, uh, and and they are the winners. Uh and this year it was the city of Wichita, and I'd like to present them with with their award tonight. Thank you, Jim. My name is Michael Jacobs. I'm the water production senior division manager, and with me are representatives of the water production staff. The water production division is responsible for all raw water, water treatment, and water quality delivered to our customers. We work with a treatment plant that was originally constructed in the 1940s, a well field that was originally developed in the 50s, Chini Reservoir, which was developed in the 60s. These facilities have changed over the decades, both physically and how we operate them. We operate these facilities 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We have a philosophy. But we can make something better today. It's not one big thing that results in high quality water. It's many, many small things and paying attention and trying to improve, trying new things.