Good evening and welcome to all of you here at City Hall.

We'll call this meeting to order.

With us this evening is Minister Jared Kimig of Arc Church to provide our invocation.

Following that invocation, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance, and we ask that you please stand for both.

Good evening.

It is an honor and a privilege to be here this evening to open up and pray with all you guys.

Let's pray.

Father, I come before you with thanksgiving and gratitude tonight.

We just I honor your name, Lord, and I pray for divine wisdom and guidance for everything that happens in this room tonight.

Every council member, every decision, Lord God, that your guidance is in it, Lord.

I pray for your protection, your peace over everybody in this room, every council member, God, over their families, Lord God, your blessing, Lord God, in this place.

I pray for that, Lord.

I bring our first responders, Lord God, our police officers, our city workers, Lord God, before you.

I pray for their protection and your blessing upon their lives and their families.

And lastly, Father, I bring this city before you.

I've also invited Councilmember Tuttle to come forward, she's one of the mentors for the W.

The proclamation reads the City of Wichita, Kansas founded in 1870, whereas W, a community of young professionals, formerly known as Young Professionals of Wichita, was established in 2005 in response to the urgent need to attract, retain, and empower the next generation of leaders in a competitive talent marketplace.

Whereas for 20 years, W has fulfilled its mission to create opportunities where young professionals are challenged to grow, lead, and build a thriving Wichita through purposeful networking, community engagement, and innovative programming.

Whereas W envisions a Wichita that is recognized as a city of choice for diverse young professionals and forward thinking organizations alike.

Whereas the voices, talents, and dedication of young professionals are essential to the strength and future of Wichita, and W's enduring commitment to diversity, connection, leadership, and innovation has fostered a generation of change makers across our community.

This 20th anniversary is not just a celebration of years, it's a recognition of progress made, lives impacted, and the ongoing work to build a city where all young professionals can thrive.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim the week of August 3rd, 2025 as young professionals week in the City of Wichita and commends W, a community of young professionals, for its ongoing contributions to our city's progress and vitality.

Good evening, City Council and members of the public.

My name is Julie Collier, and I'm chair of the impact team with W.

As members of W and as young professionals across Wichita, we are proud to receive this proclamation on behalf of our city.

In the early 2000s, the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce recognized the need to compete for and retain young professionals.

And in 2005, the chamber launched Young Professionals of Wichita or YPW.

Over the years, it provided opportunities for young talent to build their networks and skill sets for professional development.

In 2019, YPW rebranded to become what is now known as W.

This update signifies a modern and inclusive investment in Wichita's young professionals.

Today, W has four diverse action teams that provide opportunities for over 1,700 members to grow their network through social activities, professional development, and civic engagement.

Young professionals are the future of Wichita.

We are proud to celebrate 20 years and are grateful for the chamber and the city's continued investment in young talent.

Thank you to every WNYPW member, past and present, for your investment in propelling young professionals in Wichita forward.

Thank you to all of our volunteers and mentors who have helped develop YPs through our programs.

We recognize the importance in helping build the next generation of Wichita and hope you join us in our ongoing work to build a city where diverse young professionals can thrive personally and professionally.

Thank you.

It's not too late, Gentry.

Gentry.

I'm good.

I'm back here.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you once again to the W for coming here to City Hall and also providing a reception for the community to engage with young professionals.

May I please ask anyone who is a supporter of national health centers to come forward, including Vice Mayor J.

V.

Johnston.

The proclamation reads, the City of Wichita, Kansas founded in 1870.

Whereas for nearly 60 years, community health centers have provided high-quality, affordable, comprehensive primary and preventative health care in our nation's medically underserved communities, delivering value to and having a significant impact on America's health care system.

Whereas community health centers develop new approaches to integrating a wide range of services beyond primary care, including oral health, vision, behavioral health, nutrition, and pharmacy services to provide comprehensive care, allowing each patient to thrive.

Health centers have more than doubled their behavioral health and workforce in the last decade to meet America's growing need for behavioral health services.

Whereas community health centers are locally operated nonprofit organizations that serve as critical economic engines, helping to power local economies by generating 118 billion dollars in economic activity and supporting more than 650,000 direct and indirect jobs nationally.

Whereas the community health center model continues to prove an effective means of overcoming barriers to health care access, including geography, income, and insurance status, improving health outcomes and reducing health care system costs.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim August 3rd through 9th, 2025 as National Health Center Week.

Thank you.

On behalf of the community health centers, I'd like to thank Mayor Lily Wu as well as the City Council members for this proclamation during National Health Center Week.

Since the nation's first community health center was founded in 1965, community health centers have understood that where we live, work, worship, and play impacts our health.

With roots in the civil rights movement, the visionaries who founded the earliest community health centers believe that we could fight poverty, empower communities with health and opportunity.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Diego, and I'm here on behalf of Grace Med, and I just want to thank you.

Today, community health centers play a vital role in enhancing access to essential primary care nationwide.

We increase access to crucial primary care by reducing barriers such as cost, lack of insurance, distance, and language.

In Wichita, the federally qualified health centers have been instrumental in serving over 80,000 individuals annually, providing a comprehensive array of services, including primary care, dental, behavioral health, vision and pharmacy services.

Every August, we seek to increase the awareness of the nearly 1,500 500 community health centers nationwide.

And I'm Davna Gold from Healthcore Clinic.

This year, the theme of National Health Center Week is celebrating 60 years of progress.

Community health centers in every state, U.S.

territory, and the District of Columbia serve as a beacon of strength, service, and care in our communities by serving all regardless of their ability to pay.

As we celebrate our employees, board members, and supporters, we want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to Mayor Lily Wu and the Wichita City Council for their recognition and support of the significant contributions made by community health centers in Wichita.

Thank you.

May I please invite Councilmember Becky Tuttle.

Thank you to my colleagues for allowing me to take a moment and recognize some of our wonder wonderful early learning advocates.

If I could have representatives from Child Start and then also folks who attended our care operation care connect early learning educators, please join us.

Is there just one?

Oh, here's another one.

All right, thank you.

This is a really unique opportunity.

Um, child care challenges don't stop at our city limits, they impact every corner of our community, including our military families, which sometimes we forget.

Child care is not a woman's issue, it's not a family issue, it's a workforce and economic development issue, and it's a military issue.

We often find that when our servicemen and women need to have training, especially in the evenings or weekends, it's extremely hard for them to be able to find child care, meaning that then it impacts our national security.

So on July 19th, airmen from McConnell Air Force Base, the City of Wichita Child Care Licensing Team, the Wichita Chamber of Commerce, Child Start, and 30 early learning child educators convened on a Saturday morning for a powerful conversation of how we can better support those who serve in our U.S.

Armed Sources Armed Services.

Operation Care Connect provides a unique opportunity to inform early learning providers on the need and process of how to care for military families.

There's special requirements, there's special paperwork.

You can imagine anything with the federal government.

Sometimes being an early learning provider means, as I mentioned, they have to work for military families, they're gonna have to work in the evenings and weekends, which is a burden for them, and it takes away from their own families.

So tonight we're taking the opportunity to thank a few of the 30 early learning providers who attended the app Operation Care Connect, and the certificate, and everyone will receive a certificate.

We'll get the others to them.

But the certificate reads the City of Wichita in recognition of, and I'll provide these to each of the providers, issues this certificate for the dedication and commitment to serving military families in our community.

Their work as licensed early care and education providers ensures that the children of those who serve our country receive the support, stability, and care they deserve, leaving a lasting impact that honors both service and sacrifice.

So thank you again to our providers.

The first one who's gonna receive a certificate tonight is Gigi's Child Care Home, and I've been there.

It's a fantastic facility.

And the next one is for some of our folks couldn't make it this evening, so let me grab it real quick.

Kids World.

The next one is Kids World Child Care Early Learning Center.

Thank you.

And I'm gonna ask Mandy with Child Start just to come up and uh say a few words and then we'll get a photo.

So thank you again to my colleagues for letting us make some special recognitions this evening.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Mandy Waugh.

I am the early childhood connections program director at Child Start.

On behalf of Child Start and the child care community, I want to sincerest sincerely thank you for recognizing the critical role child care providers play in supporting military families.

Your acknowledgement means so much, not only to the providers who offer stability and care during times of deployment or transition, but also to the families who rely on that support every day.

This kind of recognition lifts up our providers and reinforces the importance of their work and strengthening both our military and our community.

Thank you for your continued support and commitment to those who care for our youngest heroes.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Public agenda.

No action will be taken relative to items on the public agenda other than referral to the city manager for information as necessary.

Speakers will please state their name and address for the record.

A time clock will display the speakers' remaining time to speak.

Order and rules of decorum will be observed.

The first speaker for today is Mary Dean Delays.

Good evening.

My name is Mary Dean.

I've been here before many times.

In May 2025, the City of Wichita's own diversity inclusion and civil rights advisory board voted decisively to advance the reparation ordinance to the city council for public discussion and full and a full vote.

And yet today, black residents remain in limbo.

No agenda, no response, no vote.

City leadership has chosen silence.

City government has offered no clarity on when this measure designed to address systemic harm endured by black residents will be brought forward.

What we have heard, though quietly and cautiously, is that political fear now guides public decisions.

City officials are afraid, afraid of losing federal and state funding under mounting pressure from the Trump administration, which is aggressively pushing to eliminate any connections to a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

This fear now overrides justice.

And it worked because the mayor and three other council members voted to eliminate the city's DCAB board.

Business deals have been struck with just a handshake.

Hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars continue to be spent on corporate ventures, some of which have failed to deliver promised results or community benefit.

Projects aligned with developer interests face no delays, but proposals centered on racial equity, repair, and truth are shelved.

Grassroots organizations doing real work on the ground or overlooked.

While politically connected entities, those with long-standing relationships and access are reportedly awarded city, state, and federal grants.

This is not equity.

This is an exclusion.

The reparations ordinance calls for the creation of a formal commission to study the long-standing documented harms of systemic racism in Wichita, including racial wealth gaps and economic marginalization, discrimination in housing and employment, environmental injustice targeting black communities, educational inequalities within USD 259, structural disparities in health care access and outcomes.

This is not a race radical request.

It is a civic necessity.

As president of Kansas Justice Advocate Inc., I demand that Mayor Lily Wu, the City Council, City Manager Robert Leighton, and City Attorney Jennifer Maglin answer a question that can no longer be ignored.

When will this ordinance endorsed by your own advisory board and vetted by the city attorney's office be placed on the agenda?

Delay is a decision.

Silence is complicity.

Justice with Black Red Wichita cannot hinge on campaign seasons, leadership transitions, or the political purposes of distant administrations.

Put the ordinance on the agenda.

Let the public speak.

Let the truth be heard.

Wichita's legacy will be defined not by what is avoids, but by what it is willing to confront.

That's my statement.

Any questions?

Any comments?

No questions, no comments.

So just let me say this.

I have uh jumped loops and hoops and everything else to comply with what I was supposed to do when it came to this ordinance.

I've talked to the city manager.

Am I not right?

I've talked to council people.

Am I not right?

I've talked to senators and representatives, held uh uh town halls, did podcasts and and everything under the sun.

Talk to the governor, visited other states that are more progressive than Wichita.

Just had a visit with Tulsa, Oklahoma's mayor.

Very progressive and very supportive of reparations.

Kansas City, Missouri.

Another, these are just two states that surrounds or our neighbors.

So you leave me no choice.

My next steps, because it doesn't appear that you're interested when it comes to the harms that have been subjected to black people in this city for decades, is to file a complaint with the UN Human Rights Commission for the harms that have been subjected by black people in this city.

So the next people you will be here from will be them.

And I have a letter of support from Chums Youth that supports this.

Yes, I'm saying my time.

That's on your time, but you have taken a lot of my time for two years and not done anything.

Two years, Miss Dean.

You have delayed distracted.

It's out of respect for everyone else, also.

I am respecting everybody.

Thank you, Miss Dean.

I have a letter of support.

Miss Dean, can you please?

I have a letter of support for what we're trying to do when it comes to the reparations ordinance in Wichita from the year, Miss Dean.

Of the College Hill.

I will have to ask Message Church.

On behalf of this community, please be responsible for the city.

I'm speaking for the community.

Yes, ma'am.

Ma'am, can you please have a seat?

I'm speaking for the community.

I don't there's a council member that would like to speak, but you have to sit down.

Thank you in order for a council.

I'm a stand.

I'm gonna stand right here because I'd like to hear what the council person has to say.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

I was just gonna say I appreciate your continued fight for this issue.

It's one that's important.

It's one that I support, and it's one that I think should be addressed.

Um given some decisions that have been made, it probably won't be something that's considered by this body, um at least through December 31st.

But it is something that I think is should be supported if we look at the history of the R city, third most redline city in America, what that meant and the impact that it's had.

It's a worthy thing to do.

So I just wanted to say I appreciate you continuing to fight for it.

And I appreciate those words, uh, councilman, because it would appear that some of the members on this council, including the mayor, does not take in account on what and who paid the way for you to sit where you are right now.

Ma'am, can you please sit?

I will sit.

You want if you want me to sit, please have somebody escorting me out.

I don't care.

Because I can't I feel like I have I feel like I have been delayed for uh a long time when it comes to what I was supposed to do in making sure that this reparation issue is before this city, and you chose to delay it.

Why?

You mandated this council mandated me to go to the diversity inclusion and the civil rights advisory board.

I did everything that I was supposed to do.

City manager can address that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, no doubt this has been um we've worked with Ms.

Dean for a period of time on this.

I don't think it's news to anyone that um things have changed in Washington in terms of the federal uh rules, regulations, and laws became even more clear last week uh when we received notice from the U.S.

Attorney General's office that uh using race, sex, or other protected characteristics for employment, program participation, resource allocation, or simple or similar activities, opportunities, or benefits is unlawful.

It's never been made that clear to us by the administration.

We're dealing with a lot of gray area previously, but right now that is clear that this council would, if they were to do something with the reparation ordinance as being asked, that would be in conflict with federal law.

You know, it's really kind of funny how you try to use that as a way to uh continue to distract and delay this ordinance.

Because you have to very much you have attorneys on the city.

What do they fight?

What are they fighting?

I'll ask the city attorney to address uh this situation right here.

As far as the speaker and the time, there is an ordinance that provides five minutes per speaker, and it's to be enforced consistently.

Thank you very much, city attorney.

Miss Dean.

Out of respect for everyone who is your job.

What do you fight for?

You're not fighting for the citizens'.

May the police security to assist with the situation.

Carl.

Security, I don't care.

I really don't.

Because you have violated my rights when I filed a complaint against you, Mayor Wu.

Securities here.

You may also thank me.

Thank the people who are more progressive around the country.

Michael Austin, citizen led review of Wichita's budget and efficiency opportunities.

Thank you very much.

Not really.

Michael Austin, may you please come.

Who do I give this to?

Mayor Wu.

To who?

You may provide that to the city clerk.

City Clerk.

Thank you.

Here you go.

Thank you for your time, your wasted time, my wasted time for coming to this body for over two years to do the right thing.

Especially the black residents of Wichita, Kansas.

And thank you, Council members, for having me.

Um I will do my best to stay within the five minutes.

Yeah, do that.

My name is Michael Austin.

I'm a resident of Lawrence, Kansas, and I am here on behalf of the Wichita Organization for Government Efficiency Exchange, or simply known as this The Exchange.

We're a group of citizens, accountants, business owners, public uh public figures, policy analysts, and more who have come together unpaid, uh, because we deeply care about this city and we want to help Wichita succeed.

Tonight we share with you our final report called Finding a Better Way, a citizen-led review of Wichita's budget and efficiency opportunities.

It's the result of months of analysis, interviews, public record interviews, and community outreach.

We also conducted a citywide survey, Wichita Resident Survey on city budgets and efficiencies, which received roughly 300 responses from residents representing every city district.

The core of our report is built on a triple track review.

One, an economic peer benchmarking review where we compare Wichita to cities of similar size and demographics to highlight potential areas of efficiency.

Two, a vendor snapshot audit where we scan vendor payments and contracts for either inconsistencies, duplications, or potential savings.

And three, uh, an economic development and contract over uh oversight review where we uh look at the city's incentives, development deals, including those that we think fall short of performance standards.

But we didn't just crunch numbers, we also asked residents for their input as well.

Uh about 300 Wichitans participated in our survey, and the first three questions we thought were very telling.

We asked, where should the city look to find efficiencies to show up the general fund shortfall?

Most said consultant contracts, feasibility studies, or administrative overhead.

We asked, should the city's automatic 2% annual increase to uh to arts funding continue if the city faces a shortfall?

Over 60% said it should either be eliminated, reduced, or temporarily paused.

We asked, should Wichita solve its budget shortfall by raising taxes?

Over 88% said efficiency measures should come first or concurrent with any tax increases.

We don't believe that's ideology.

We think residents are generally open to reform, just not at the expense of higher taxes.

From arts funding to vendor oversight to economic development and downtown priorities, we learned a lot about what Wichita values and what it's ready to re-evaluate.

So what can we do?

Well, the last section of our report outlines nine specific recommendations from eliminating duplicate services to auditing vendor contracts to just rethinking incentive structures and prioritizing core city services.

You'll find nowhere in our list of recommendations uh an advocate for cutting jobs or cutting programs.

All of our recommendations are either a change in the processes or an enforcement of current current processes.

And we know that some of these ideas may spark debate, but that's the point.

We hope that this effort inspires uh conversations and constructive conversations between city leaders and the people that they serve.

In a moment, Celeste Rosette will come behind me and she'll talk through the findings on economic development projects, including missed collections, incentive deals gone sideways, and areas where the city has taken on unnecessary risk.

We will also, if we're willing, uh go through our vendor analysis and share why better contract enforcement and procurement practices could save the city millions.

Um we'll of course talk about how these reforms could avoid future tax hikes.

We love Wichita, and that's exactly why we did this.

We're not asking the city to do everything, but we are asking the city to do what it can so that we can never again have to choose between broken budgets and broken promises.

Thank you so much for this time.

Thank you so much for your service to the city.

And I would love to leave my remaining time and any other time you would allow for questions.

Thank you, Michael.

And I know that there are several individuals that are gonna come forward to speak regarding your findings.

And again, this was not paid for by the city of Wichita.

These are volunteers who decided that they wanted to help out with seeing some efficiencies in this community.

Um, and the community wide survey was publicized on your social media outlets as well as through other individuals.

Is that correct?

Uh that's correct.

We since we're all uh diverse uh group of individuals, some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some are progressive, some are conservative.

We all work through our own respective networks to uh get as many folks as we could to respond on this survey.

If there is any selection bias, I would probably guess that the selection bias is that we have a lot of people who care about Wichita.

Um, because you'll see from the reports and our conversations that there are a lot of passionate opinions out there.

And then, yes, uh, Madam Mayor, you are exactly right.

We are sadly unpaid.

Thank you for your volunteer service.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Appreciate you.

Um, Mr.

Austin.

Just a quick question, just so everyone else who may not have seen the report uh knows how many people took that survey.

Uh we had roughly 300 respondents.

Okay, and then um the one question I asked you, because I've had it asked to me a couple times, so you've already told me the answer.

But can someone take the survey maybe like 70 times or so?

Uh technically, yes.

So, one thing that we did was we looked at our uh IP addresses of respondents.

Um, IP addresses, while there are specific, they're not necessarily individual to a person, they're individual to a network.

So our thought process was we would allow two IP addresses, uh, thinking that it could be a husband and wife on their Wi-Fi.

But if there was uh if but if it was over two IP addresses and we saw that um maybe they only took 30 seconds to fill out this five minute quiz, um then we removed it because we uh expected that that that was spurious.

So we did what we can to try to make it as unique individuals responding to the survey as possible.

Cool.

Thank you.

Councilmember Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Michael, thank you for your work on this.

And I know that I had asked the public and to invite community members to engage in our budget process.

Often we have very little engagement, and I'm glad a group of citizens independent from me uh selected themselves, organized this group in a bipartisan way, and I'm very thankful for your report.

If even one percent of your recommendations are true, this could save the city $720,000 annually or $720,000, even if one percent of your report is true.

So I'm thankful for the work that you did and the bipartisan group um did as well.

And I specifically did not involve myself in this process because I want to be held accountable from this group and this organization as well.

So thank you for caring about our community.

I want to just highlight um two different things in the report that as you can tell, I have plenty of sticky notes that haven't tried to engage.

And if anybody in the community wants an update, I have um PDF version that uh had just been sent out that I would be happy to share as well.

There's a quote on page 26 uh that I think is very important.

Wichita residents expect transparency and measurable efficiency improvements before any increase in the financial burden on taxpayers is considered.

And I appreciate this line.

For policymakers, this provides both a mandate and a roadmap.

Reform first justifies second.

And I'm thankful for the none of your recommendations were cut of services to our community because uh we have a lot of things that are offered in our community.

I also want to go to page 30 so when people look at this later, these are some of the recommendations offered by the group that I don't think are controversial, and I don't think are political.

And there may be some debate about which reforms should be made and which shouldn't, but some that I want to highlight include implement central centralized purchasing accounts payable and receivable controls through the finance department.

I bet with the manager earlier today, and because of the budget savings that we did from this bench last year, we're gonna be looking at proposals of that in the near future as well.

Um, require competitive bidding for purchases over $50,000, no exceptions.

I don't think that's controversial.

Consolidate PCARD and one-time vendors in a formal contracts reduce duplication.

I don't think that's controversial.

Conduct quarterly reviews of contract utilization to flag over budgeting or over or underuse.

I don't think that's controversial.

And these are things we can debate from the bench one-on-one in the future as well.

Enforce clawbacks within six months for underprogramming developers.

I think every single one of us from the bench has said that we need more clawbacks for underperforming developers, require developer debts over 50,000 to be disclosed in public finance reports, prohibit deals with vendors or developers who are in litigation with the city, publish an annual efficiency audit highlighting contract utilization, clawback enforcement or compliance.

I can continue to go on, but I'm thankful for those recommendations that I don't think are controversial to republic.

And um I appreciate your time and your effort in this, and I look forward to hearing from a couple other members of the committee as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Glasscock.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um I I too am always appreciative when folks get together to look into things for the city, whether it's budget or programs, what whatever it might be.

But I also want to highlight while these were some uh some of these were some really good suggestions.

We also were already doing some of this work as well.

And I won't go down that list, but I will say centralizing some of the finance work is something that the manager proposed two years ago.

So as it's good that this is happening, and it's good that people have made recommendations, but we also have been talking about some of these things as well, and it's great to see when those things align with groups that are doing that.

But um, some of these things were also already being worked on by this body.

So it's good to highlight all of that and not just um it being led by this, because this has been talked about some of these things for some time now.

Thank you, Councilman Johnson.

That was our thought process as well, and having conversations with the uh uh with the finance department.

We wanted to prov we want to provide um either guideposts or recommendations that hopefully we thought were not going to be political or controversial.

Now, of course, we can't affect every opinion.

You know, that's not necessarily our job.

Our job is to present the report, and hopefully you take something from it and can act on it.

But our thought process was what are certain process changes can we make that you guys could politically easily adopt?

Um, so we wanted to keep that in mind.

We didn't want to make it necessarily difficult for you.

We wanted to give you low-hanging fruit.

Um, and fortunately, the budget, the general fund shortfall, while of course it is present, it is manageable that I think with these process changes you can shore it up.

Again, Michael, thank you very much.

And I know that this PDF can be available to anyone who would like to see.

Um, and we have fiscal copies here after uh after I head back to my seat, I'll be back.

And if anyone wants a physical copy, just find me and hopefully I'll have some left.

And again, thank you, Michael.

Um, I know that when people come to public agenda, oftentimes they have one specific thing that they want to talk about.

And these are multiple recommendations, and so it would take uh again multiple uh conversations to get to some sort of uh conclusion or a step forward.

But I appreciate again that a group of volunteers decided to spend time, look at our budget, and see what else could be improved so that it could be a more efficient government, and that's exactly what I see here in this room.

More people attending a city council meeting, being engaged in caring.

So thank you again for caring along with the other volunteers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual Celeste Rassett, which top 2026 budget savings efficiency study?

Good evening, Mayor Wu and City Council members Celeste Rosset.

Thank you, Councilman Glasscock for initiating this citizen-led review of Witch Ta's budget.

I am actually very proud of the work this bipartisan Democrats, Republicans did.

My focus in particular was on economic development, which is part six of the report.

The hardest part of evaluating finances is lack of transparency.

I have a bachelor's of science in accounting, was an FDIC bank examiner, and won awards for my fraud investigations.

But getting answers from the city tested my ability.

It is really hard drilling down on city finances.

When I found a $23,000 past due water bill for the striker sports complex, I tried to search on the city's website for the signed contract, but couldn't find it.

I had to file a CORA, a Kansas Open Records Act, and pay a fee to get a copy of the signed agreement.

Contract documents should be searchable on the city's website.

And when a problem is found instead of cooperations, sometimes pushback occurs.

When I discovered these past due water bills for the Stryker Sports Complex, no one in City Hall checked to see if there were more.

I had to file more cores and pay more core fees to find six years of water bills that had been erroneously paid for by the parks department.

Tax increment financing districts TIFFs have been misused.

Kenmar developers received two and a half million in taxpayer loans.

When the loans became past due in 2020, seven more taxpayer funded projects were approved for these men, including the Riverside TIFF, which gave $700,000 in taxpayer funds for a luxury patio home development.

These developers, Dave Wells and Dave Burke, were also involved in the balls stadium deals.

Please continue the lawsuit to recover 1.9 million and don't renew the old town Wichita police department lease.

Community improvement district CIDs are also a mess.

Spot checks in Junes revealed missing CID tax notices and uncollected taxes in multiple areas.

Delano Catalyst, downtown Wichita, K96 and Grinwich, K96 Star, and Spaghetti Work CID, indicating a weak revenue management system.

Some retailers are collecting the tax, some are not.

Some post the required CID tax notice, some don't.

There is no accountability.

Private management of public property is another area of lost revenue.

Stryker Sports Complex is privately managed by the Wichita Sports Forum.

Collect for those utility bills that were erroneously paid for by the Parks Department.

Wichita Ice Rink Center was privately managed by Genesis Jim's Rodney Stephen.

The city collected only one payment on a 10-year loan.

Please continue fighting the lawsuit to recover $1 million.

Tourism business needs to be competitively bid and offices moved into a public building.

Tighten up funding to realize $2 million in potential savings.

Visit Wichita Chairman Jim Korick was given taxpayer funding for his Fairfield Inn hotel.

This debt was erroneously labeled as stormwater utility and debt payments were falsely labeled as being for convention center project.

Pay this callable debt early and save $640,000 in interest.

Taxpayers lost $13 million in old town parking garage revenue.

Continue this contract review by internal audit.

They're doing a great job.

Taxpayers cannot afford upkeep for a no city park for a developer, Jay Russell.

He should pick up the tab for the planned $9.5 million Crystal Prairie Lake Park as part of his own housing subdivision costs.

When irrigation is turned off in our downtown park, A price woodard, and flower beds are overrun with weeds, then it is apparent parks resources are stretched too thin.

We cannot afford a $9 million new park on the northwest side of Wichita.

Weak oversight has allowed developers to profit without repayment of debt.

Public resources have been diverted in no bid private management agreements, leaving taxpayers with infrastructure burdens.

You can save two million next year just by ensuring compliance with agreements.

You can save another two million by bidding out tourism service services and putting tourism offices in a public building.

If lawsuits are successful, another four million will be realized.

Thank you for initiating this effort to improve city operations.

This is a step in the right direction to restore trust in City Hall.

I hope our hard will hard work will inspire you to speak up and take action to implement best practices in the city.

I will stand for questions.

Thank you again.

I loved working with this group of folks.

Thank you again, Celeste, and again, thank you to all the volunteers who helped with this report.

Councilmember Glascock.

Thank you, Celeste.

I know there's a lot in this, so I'm not going to go over everything.

There is one in particular that stands out that I just have a quick question about processes for the manager regarding CID tax compliance.

Compliance is handled by the state, correct?

That is correct.

What happens if we are aware of somebody being out of compliance?

For example, I was at a business today that I know is out of compliance.

How can citizens or how does staff let the state know they're out of compliance?

We have to report it to the Department of Revenue and they indicated to us they will do a follow-up with the business then.

Do we have somebody on staff that makes sure that individuals are on compliance, or is that just if somebody approaches us, then we go and we report to the state, or can individuals also report to the state if they see a business out of compliance?

At one point we had a person who did uh occasional checks.

That person is no longer with us, and we are training a new person to be able to do that.

Signage is the first thing to look at.

More difficult part is collection.

And again, we have to rely on the Department of Revenue to get someone to actually collect.

There is a monthly report that the finance department receives that has a list of all retailers.

It wouldn't be that hard to compare the retailers that we're collecting tax from and the retailers in a CID and have someone on your internal audit staff go after them and work with the State Department to start collecting.

We'll need to visit with staff.

I'm not quite sure the level of information that the Department of Revenue is what it shares with us, but I'll we'll work on that.

Well, thank you.

Uh Celeste, thank you for the time that you spent on this.

I know we met for an hour and a half or two hours talking about this report.

Um I do want to particularly thank staff uh and the staff um that have uh corresponded with community members and sent them information and sent them requests.

Um and I also want to give a special shout out to our auditor for the city, uh Christina Rose has an amazing job.

Um, and I'm very thankful for her work.

So thank you.

I know this is the start of the conversation.

Um do you know if the group has sent the recommendations to the manager, the assistant city manager of finance?

Have you received all the recommendations yet?

I didn't receive them directly, but uh council members have sent me the most recent version, which I think came out yesterday, maybe, if I remember correctly.

Thank you.

And I I know that we'll be working with staff on a lot of the recommendations and maybe getting some more information about particular um items and doing a deeper dive.

We'd love to share information at any time with staff.

We're it's been a very collaborative effort, and that's the first time I've seen this, so I'm very excited about this effort.

Awesome.

Thanks, Celeste.

Yep.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, just a quick question for Bob.

Um many people in the community probably don't know what CID is, or um certainly what um areas of town might have those.

So besides a tiny sticker that they might not see, is there any without going to the Wichita website?

You know, um, I mean, how how would someone know to turn it in unless you're Celeste and know where they are or something like that?

I mean there is a uh in the ordinance there's a requirement that uh it be posted that notice be posted, I believe, by the cash register, and or it can be at the doorway, one or the other.

Uh so that's probably the simplest way for someone to learn.

Um you said not going to our website, but our website does include information on all the districts.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you, Celeste.

Thank you guys for coming up here today.

Um I I hear you when you guys talk about a lot of deals that have gone wrong in the past.

Um the last couple of years, at least as long as I've been on council, we have been uh giving more scrutiny to it.

We have hired an internal auditor.

We've pivoted away from taking on debt, making sure a lot more of these incentives are pay as you go.

So we're gonna continue to look at this, um, continue to look at ways to guard the taxpayers in the future.

Um so I do appreciate that.

And um, yeah, just we're we're gonna keep working.

I have a couple questions for the city manager since uh a couple of things were specifically pointed out.

Uh can you address the striker 23,000 past due bill.

Yes, Mayor, the um actually that's not a correct number.

Um there was uh delinquency uh there was concerns about whether there was a leak in the system, and so the uh uh current pro the excuse me, the operator of the facility, which sports forum, uh delayed payment until we could check the system, make sure it operated uh appropriately.

The that is there, that was been paid, and they are um current on their account.

Uh there was an issue, there has been there have been long standing issues with the irrigation system that was installed in 2020, I believe, 2019-2020.

Uh during the period of time when we were working to get the issues uh resolved with the contractor, we did take the bills because it was unfair to turn over a system to the provider that wasn't fully operational that we're having problems with.

Same time we switched the turf from fescue to warm water uh warm weather turf.

And uh during that process, that was our decision, and we paid for those expenses.

Once that was done and we turned the system over to them, uh the one thing that Celeste talked about that is accurate is that they we were delayed in getting the billings to the operator for the period of time there was a one year about a one-year period of time.

There's about $8,500 uh in expenses that they will owe us as a result of that.

And now they are current.

Current.

When was the last payment then?

Um I think we they were I they resolved it last 30 or 60 days, if I remember correctly.

So I want to just point out thank you, Celeste.

She did point that out to us about 30 days ago, and we started asking questions, and I wanted to make sure that there was a resolution.

Um again, this is how uh the community knows about issues.

Uh, council members can point them out, community members can point it out, and then the city manager uh usually is the one that we funnel those questions to, and he gets the bottom of it.

So thank you, City Manager, for that.

One last one that I wanted to also address uh is the old town police lease.

Can you please address um where we're at with that lease and also where we're headed?

Uh Mayor, you and I have had multiple discussions about this.

Uh technically, the lease is still in effect for about another year until next summer if I remember correctly.

However, we have put the uh landlord on notice that we wish to move from that facility and do it before the end of the lease period.

Um, and we're working on uh making that happen.

Now that we have control of the building that our traffic bureau is in, we have space for those employees.

They that's not meant to be a storefront location as we used to have when they were located in uh old town parking garage space.

Now it's really just an office, and we can locate that almost anywhere downtown.

And so we are in the process of uh working with the landlord get out of the lease obligation.

Thank you again, city manager, and again, Celeste brought this up uh to us multiple times, and we did follow through and asked uh this body actually uh decided to move forward with buying the central um building, central police station building, and so now there is space, so those individuals will now move from Old Town to the space that has been bought by the City of Wichita.

So thank you again.

Um we appreciate again when you bring up issues we want to follow through and provide resolutions.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual?

Mayor, I was made aware right before the meeting that Dev and Pat Lucia are not available tonight, so we have two available spots.

Would anyone from the community like to come forward?

You have up to five minutes, and you can address you can move.

Good evening, honorable mayor Liliwoo, members of Wichita City Council, and citizens of Wichita.

I'm Denise Morowski of Southeast Wichita, and I'm speaking on behalf of Deb and Pat Lucia, who also worked on the Wichita budget team.

Pat Lucius spent over 30 years in the chemical industry, 15 of them leading lean manufacturing initiatives.

Deb Lucius spent 22 years working for the automotive industry as an industrial engineer, focusing on process improvement and lien manufacturing.

The key to excellence in manufacturing any industry or government is standard processes, parts, procedures, and best practices.

You've already heard from Michael Austin, who covered the overall report, and from Celeste Rossette.

Pat and Deb's focus was on vendor data.

The City of Wichita's website lists 21 different departments.

Multiple departments have additional divisions within them.

When we looked at vendor data for the City of Wichita, we found there are no standardized procedures.

There is no standardized sequence of events to follow for completion of projects.

For example, departments have their own accounts payable, which could be in could be a part-time or full-time role, and how invoices are handled varies by department.

We could not find a consistent project management process.

There are projects with change order after change order, and these requests are just accepted by the city, and we pay the additional costs.

We could not identify who is responsible for making sure projects stayed within the awarded amount or pushed vendors to stay within the quote.

Projects running over estimated bids in a significant part of the city's expenses.

There is consistent overspending in the millions on awarded projects.

Additionally, the city spent over $13.5 million on P cards, employee credit cards for small or last minute expenses.

Some of these expenses should have been purchased through current bundled contracts at lower costs.

Government should always be looking to be better, be more efficient and more effective to improve the quality of life for Wichitans.

We believe the City of Wichita needs standardization.

Standardization is the basis for continuous improvement.

Standardization of processes eliminates redundant work and makes identifying refinement opportunities much easier and makes it easy to see when things are out of order or line.

We do not mean eliminating redundancy and efficient inefficiencies equates to eliminating people.

People resources can be trained or moved to address other immediate issues, such as ensuring projects are delivering promised results.

Costs are managed and contained, and vendors are held accountable for providing acceptables acceptable service on time and within budget.

While standardization and reallocating resources requires change that can be challenging, doing so would address shortfalls uncovered by our study.

The city also needs to hold vendors and employees accountable.

Someone has to be responsible and accountable for watching the processes and financial outlays to make sure our tax dollars are are being spent wisely and on the services we need and expect.

Implementing standardization will address contract inefficiencies, procurement inconsistencies, vendor consolidation opportunities, and areas lacking competitive bidding.

Finally, providing the much needed accountability and oversight.

We are optimistic that the city of Wichita can improve its processes, and we believe Wichita can be a leader in the state at becoming an efficient and effective city government that others will want to emulate.

Thank you.

Deb and Pat Lucia.

Thank you.

Councilmember Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor.

Specifically to Councilman Johnson's point, just a quick question for the manager.

Can you talk about the council receivable accounts payable, what we did last year to set ourselves up for uh trying to centralize those services?

Yes, thank you, Councilmember.

Um we recognize that we had an opportunity to tighten up our procedures and also put potentially save money by uh consolidating or centralizing our accounts payable and accounts receivable.

I think we'll be uh in a better position when that uh is taken when we implement that uh new process.

The council had us look at that last year at the end of the after the budget process is over.

We did that work over the winter and made that recommendation of the council.

And in fact, next week we'll bring to the council a contract for assistance in have having us implement that in terms of what the reorganization will look like, not just in finance, but throughout our organization, to make sure that we have properly proper financial oversight in every department.

And so you'll see that uh next week.

City manager.

Uh in this recommendations uh portion, it's specific to procurement and vendor oversight.

Uh, one of those areas that was mentioned was require competitive bidding for all purchases over $50,000, no exceptions.

Can you address that?

Actually, I'm gonna ask Mark Manning to talk about that.

Good evening, Mayor.

Members of the City Council, Mark Manning of the Department of Finance.

Uh our city code right now, uh, Section 2.64, I believe, uh, does uh basically require competitive uh processes for any purchase over $50,000.

Now there are exceptions in city code in certain areas, for example, if it's a sole source provider, if it's a security concern, so there are a few exceptions, but generally speaking, procurement in the city of Wichita over $50,000 is competitive.

And it's competitive under $50,000 for that matter, it's just a slightly different process.

And I will note that those exceptions that Mark's referencing, that has to go through an approval process.

Uh department cannot unilaterally say that they have an exception and follow a process that's not competitive that has to be approved by at least by the finance department.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next?

The council.

Good evening, John Whitmer.

I live in District 4, uh, Councilman Glasscock's my council member.

Um I know a number of you.

I've disagreed over the years with a number of you.

Um surprisingly, I've disagreed with a number of the people on this very committee.

I'm a registered Republican, I'm the chairman of the Sedgwick County Republican Party and a conservative talk radio host.

And yet, Henry Halgerson, who's a Democrat, and Celeste, who's a Democrat, and I came to common ground on many issues on this report.

And I'll tell you why.

When when we look to build this report, we came to a consensus, and it came from something rather interesting that we found since 1997.

Property tax revenue has increased by two City Wichita property tax revenue has increased by 228%.

That's more than double the combined rate of inflation and population growth.

Just since 2019, property tax collections are up 41% or nearly 48 million dollars.

And so when we came together to kind of present this to you, we wanted you, and we I know you all know this.

I know everyone up here has knocked doors like I have.

You know people are suffering.

You know people are struggling to make ends meet.

We just wanted to provide you a resource.

I've been an elected official.

I know it's hard sometimes to find cuts.

And so we wanted to try and provide you some cuts.

Some of these are hard.

Some of these I wouldn't make.

And you know I would make a lot of cuts.

There are some here that I probably wouldn't even do.

You don't have to do them all, but there are some that are low-hanging fruit.

There are some that might be easy.

There are opportunities here that you could find that we hope you might be able to find to make cuts to the budget so that you don't have to raise taxes again.

And I think that was our goal in all of this was to provide you a resource, something that you could look at and say, hey, here are some ways that we can cut our budget and cut our spending and not have to go back to the Wichita taxpayers who are frankly taxed enough already.

And that was our goal.

That was the only thing we were hoping to do.

We are we wanted to present this to you as a resource.

Uh whether or not, and I love what Dalton said earlier, even if one percent of this is accurate, then that's $720,000 that you can find in cuts.

I hope we've been able to provide you a little bit of resource information and for that.

I I'll stand for questions.

Uh Michael's the expert here.

I'm more of a policy guy, but thank you for your time.

And that's the other thing I wanted to tell you.

I wasn't able to sit down with uh with a few of you, but I want to thank the staff for their willingness to work with us and for every one of you for willing to being able to sit down and willing to meet with every one of us.

We appreciate that.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, John.

I see no further comments.

Um I'll just close out by simply saying thank you again to people who care, people who care about our community, um, people who donated their time to research, donated their time to put together a report and donated their time to come here today and make a decision to speak during the five minutes and then have council members ask questions of you.

Uh we appreciate that.

That is what public agenda can be used for, and we appreciate again the volunteerism that people in our community choose to make, and it's really to invest in our community and make sure that we are a great community and a local government that can be held accountable and is transparent.

And so I do encourage people to look at the Wichita.gov website on multiple departments.

You can see a tab that talks about transparency, whether it's the Wichita Police Department's transparency portal to even the city council and the transparency of our travel.

There are more transparent ways that we're trying to communicate with the community about what how government works, and again, we work for you, the people, and so we appreciate when the people bring suggestions and recommendations, and um I'm really grateful that council member um Glasscock uh just called out individuals and said who would like to create something, and he just put it out to the community and to see the individuals come together as you have mentioned from that microphone bipartisan.

Um really grateful that you wanted to just look at the numbers and provide some recommendations.

So again, thank you for your volunteerism.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Consent agenda items one through 14 Are there items to be pulled?

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to pull item uh two four B.

And uh delay that until the August 19th regular meeting.

I just want to make sure that all council members have time to get all pertinent information regarding this item.

Item number two for B to be delayed with no comment or with comment.

On this particular item.

Uh we'll ask city attorney McGanya if we pull an item for delay.

Do we just pull the item without comment, public comment?

If the intent is to defer it to a second meeting or later meeting, it needs to be voted on as a deferral.

If that was the intent.

We'll need a motion.

Second.

Motion from Councilmember Hoheisel.

Yep.

Move.

And a second from Councilmember Johnson.

And then I see uh we can vote on just that item, number two four B-point of clarification.

Are we still opening it up to public comment or are you just motion your defer from the start?

It looks like the intention was just to delay it, so no public comment.

Quick question for the attorney.

If I were to vote, no, just because there could be public comment on this motion.

And if somebody's here in an evening meeting, I'm interested in hearing what they have to say.

Would that fail?

So if it comes back, would we have to take it up or down vote on it this evening, or could there be a motion to table after that subsequently?

Let me make sure I understand.

If if it fails to get enough votes to be deferred, correct.

And so if it fails to get enough votes to be deterred, we open it to public comment.

Would we have to vote on it tonight or would we be able to motion to defer following public comment?

No, I think you've already made that motion and it's failed, so I think it has to be voted on tonight.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember uh Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh legal could Jennifer.

Could we uh if we vote on this, could we make another motion to allow public comment after it is delayed for public comment tonight?

If it's not an agenda item before you, there won't be public comment that's not really provided for in the ordinance if you're not taking it up for consideration tonight.

Okay, can I make a substitute motion to allow public comment?

On the motion to defer.

On the motion to defer.

Yes.

Okay, I'll make the motion to allow public comment before we vote on the motion.

Second.

Second by council member Glascock.

So we have a substitute motion which takes the precedent.

So uh councilmember Vice Mayor Johnston and Councilmember Glascock.

We can put that to vote.

Yeah, that's fine.

Let's do that.

I think we still have to vote on it.

So what council member Johnson?

Sorry.

Yeah, just a point of clarification.

So the motion is to defer, but the substitute motion is to allow public comment.

To defer and allow public comment.

Okay.

Motion passes 7-0, which now allows the opportunity for public comment on item number four two fourb.

Would anyone from the community like to speak on this item?

I see none.

No one wants to speak on this item.

Okay.

Okay, we will move on.

Um I move to approve the consent agenda without item two four big excuse me.

Ms.

Excuse me, Mayor, the underlying motion, it goes back to the motion to defer now.

My apologies.

We're now back to the original motion from Councilmember Hoheisel, seconded by council member Johnson to defer this item to this August 19th meeting.

Motion and a second.

No, nobody else.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion is now deferred to the August 2nd meeting, passing 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Actually, sorry.

Now I can go to my motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda without item 24B.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Board of Bids and Contracts dated August 4th, 2025.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, Josh Lauber, Department of Finance.

The Board of Bids and Contracts convened August 4th, 2025 for the following recommendations.

Before I start off, I need to resend this recommendation.

This item had a low bid that was withdrawn by the bidder.

So I was not able to catch this before I presented it to the advisory board.

We'll be rescinding this to bring it back to you for a full rejection because none of the bids are within the engineer's estimate.

So this item will be uh polled.

For engineering, we have the stormwater system number 808, 2025 stormwater ditch grading and culvert cleaning program for Dutton Construction Services LLC for an aggregate bid total of 184,343.

We have the 2025 outsource pavement preservation program CIP Concrete Street Refairs Phase 6 for PPJ Construction Incorporated for an bid awarded within the engineers estimate of 330,000 from the original bid of 299,754.

We have the 2025 outsourced pavement preservation program CIP Concrete Street Repairs Phase 7 for PPJ Construction Incorporated for a bid within the engineers estimate of 365,000 from the original bid of 315,754.

For purchasing, we have the snowplow blades, nuts, and bolts for the vendors listed at the estimated annual usage.

We have the kitchen remodel for Fire Station 14 for multicon incorporated for an aggregate bid total of 129,481 dollars.

We have sodium hypochlorite for LAF T Williams and Associates Incorporated for an estimated annual usage of $522,808.55 cents for one year with two one-year options to renew.

We have Liquid Ferric Sulfate for PENCO Incorporated for an estimated annual usage of 215,070 for one year with two one-year options to renew.

We have the kitchen equipment for Brewer Community Center for AAA Restaurant Supply LLC for 229,780.

We have the 16,000 gross vehicle weight cabin chassis with mini dump bed for Rusty Eck Ford for an aggregate bid total of 254,422.

We have the video surveillance systems with TANECO parking lots for Sandifer Engineering and Controls Incorporated for $78,333.

The exemption to competitive bidding under a sole source of supply.

We have the Laserfish Annual Software Renewal for Government Frameworks.com Incorporated for $130,608 and 25 cents under the exemption for competitive bidding under high technology.

We have the multi-band portable radios for Holman Electronics LLC for $63,909.59 cents under the competitive exemption to competitive bidding of high technology.

We have the NeoGov Human Resource and Application Tracking System Annual Software Renewal for Government Jobs Incorporated for $77,551.23 cents under competitive exemption for bidding under sole source of supply.

We have bore line flexibiser hoses for hose solutions incorporated for $73,009 and 39 cents exemption to competitive bidding under sole source of supply.

And we have the trash recycling containers and collection contract change order for the change of estimated 1,974.48 cents per month for an per year estimated annual cost.

We have the pre-employment physical examinations and substance abuse screenings for contract change order of work safe physical therapy incorporated requesting the accept authorization to accept additional rates.

And for airport, we have the airport multitasking snow removal vehicles M-B companies for an aggregate bid total of $2,034,883.72 cents.

We have the airport terminal modifications for McCown Gordon for $5,501,483.

We have the window cleaning services for EH Technical Solutions Incorporated for an estimated annual usage of $25,205 for one year with two one-year options to renew.

This is how to become a vendor with the city of Wichita.

This is our purchasing calendar of events with our small business resource partners that the city will be hosting or participating in.

This is our calendar of open public opportunities out on the street today for projects.

And I'd be happy to try to answer any of your questions and I recommend your approval of the recommended.

Thank you, Josh.

Any questions for staff?

I see none.

I move to approve the board of bids.

Dated August 4th, 2025.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Petitions for public improvements.

Good evening, Mayor.

City Council members, Paul Gunsleman, Public Works and Utilities for the Record.

I have a few new petitions as well as one revised petition for your consideration tonight.

The signatures on the petitions represent 100% of the improvement districts, and the petitions are valid per Kansas statute.

Turkey Creek fourth edition located in district four.

The project will provide water improvements, sanitary sewer improvements, and paving improvements for a new residential development for multiple phases.

Schulty Johnson second edition again located in district four.

The project will provide drainage improvements required for a new residential development and to cover the cost of a private bid.

And revised petitions, Shalty Johnson second edition, located in District 4 on September 22nd, 2020, and February 25th, 2025.

The city council approved water improvements, stormwater improvements, drainage improvements, and paving improvements required for a new residential development and to cover the cost of a private bid.

The developer has submitted revised petitions with revised budgets to rec to reflect current market conditions.

And it is recommended that the city council approve the new and revised petitions and budgets adopt the new and amending resolutions and authorize the necessary signatures.

And mayor, I might remind folks that these will be paid by special assessments.

Thank you, Paul.

Questions for staff.

I see none.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Contract for executive search services for city manager.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Pam Pennington Human Resources.

So I'm here this evening to present the contract for the firm to conduct the city manager search and want to just go through a couple of slides with you.

So that has been wonderful.

And we are in the process of, we've done our chair nominations and selection, and Jennifer McDonald has been selected by this committee to be the chair.

So she is here with me to this this evening, and I'll have her come up in a few minutes.

We are currently trying to do vice chair, so but some of them are on vacation, so we will get that uh finished as soon as possible.

So we have been busy as a group, um, and this is just a quick rundown of the timeline so far.

Um 20 RFPs were received by the city for firms wanting to have uh an option to do this search for us.

Um I think that's kind of unprecedented, um, and it was quite great to have that many uh that were interested.

Uh June 27, uh the selection advisory committee did receive those 20 and started their review of every one of them on July 9th, um, and I've abbreviated it as SAC, so excuse me for that.

Shortlisted those firms down to three that we would conduct interviews uh with on July 21st is we held the interviews, and the committee unanimously selected um CPSHR consulting.

July 22 through 30th was spent uh preparing the contract and having legal review uh of the contract, and then we are here this evening um to bring this contract to you for approval.

And then we are here this evening to bring this contract to you for approval.

So why CPSHR consulting?

So I'm not going to do this part of the presentation.

I've asked Jennifer McDonald to come tonight, and she is here.

So I'm gonna let her as the new chair give her comments.

Thank you, Pam, and good evening, Mayor and City Council.

So I'm Jennifer McDonald, the newly elected chair for the selection committee.

And I just wanted to share some comments around why we selected CPS HR consulting.

So after thorough evaluation of the proposals and interviews, we did select CPSHR consulting as the most qualified firm for the city search of a new city manager.

And I kind of narrowed it down to five key reasons.

So the first one is just their proven experience and expertise.

So they bring over 40 years of experience in the recruitment field, including 25 years specializing in public service agency searches, which I thought was really key.

Their team is led by a former city manager, which I thought was important for them to really understand that deep understanding for the unique challenges faced by city governments.

The second reason is their strong track record of success.

So they have high success rates within city manager searches with a 95% retention rate, which I thought was really strong.

Their strategic approach ensures that candidates not only meet the technical requirements, but also aligned to the culture and values of the city, which I thought was very important.

The firm has demonstrated consistent success in placing candidates who stay in the role for five to seven years, which we also thought was key for that retention and longevity.

So the third reason is their comprehensive and transparent process.

So the firm's recruitment process is robust and transparent, emphasizing thorough citizen and stakeholder engagement.

So we thought the citizen engagement piece is gonna be really important.

And their approach includes information gathering, a detailed candidate profile, and pre-screening process to ensure that only the most qualified candidates are considered, which we thought was key.

And then the fourth reason would be kind of client satisfaction and ongoing support.

So CPSHR consulting's committed commitment to client satisfaction is evident through their ongoing evaluation process, which includes check-ins with clients six months after placement to ensure satisfaction.

So this continued support is critical in maintaining a positive working relationship and ensuring that the city's needs are fully met for the long term.

And then lastly, they have a competitive cost structure.

So their fee structure was very competitive, and it also guaranteed a one-year guarantee.

So just making sure that we have the right candidate and the right placement, and it was competitive compared to the other firms that we interviewed.

So in conclusion, CPSHR consulting pre proven experience and comprehensive transparent process makes them the most qualified firm to conduct the city manager search, their track record of success combined with their ability to engage stakeholders and citizens, and providing ongoing support will assure that the city's needs will be met, and the best candidate will be presented to you all for consideration.

So therefore, our selection committee highly recommends CPS HR consulting.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you, Pam.

Can we ask the city clerk to please clear the board?

I don't have any way to clear the board.

I don't show that there is any speakers.

We'll start with councilmember Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor.

Pam, I just have a few quick questions for you.

I'm gonna be supportive of this, and I'm gonna thank uh Jennifer.

Thank you.

Uh congratulations on your leadership rule now, and appreciate all the work that you've done.

I've spoken with um my appointee about this, Josh Shorter.

Uh he was also um very much in favor of this.

So our green sheet said that they have the ability to meet this by the December uh first uh deadline.

Um I went back just on the document on page 19 of their proposal, it lists like month one, month two, month three, and month four, and it lists the appointment at the end of month four, which would be November.

And we're already what seven days into August.

And so are you still confident about the timeline of December first being met, or should that be revised so far?

They are confident.

Um we will meet with them tomorrow, hopefully, uh, if this goes well this evening, um, to confirm that.

Okay, but they are very confident.

Okay, so a continuation of that question too on page two of the contract, it talks about the term, it says the term of the contract should be effective from the execution of the agreement for one year.

And the green sheet also talked about uh that if for some reason a candidate had to resign in the first year, then they would still be on call.

Does that term length cover it beginning on December 1st, 2025 when they select a candidate, or does it begin on August when they've started the process?

When is that one year term of this contract?

From date of hire.

From date of hire.

So August 1st, so through August 1st next year.

No, it would be the date the candidate is hired.

Oh, the date the candidates hired.

So through December, whatever.

Okay.

Correct.

Um, I think there's one small thing I just had to, and you're answering all my questions very well.

So thank you for that.

Um on page 20, they had listed um a five thousand dollar budget for reimbursement for candidate travel.

I know on the first page we had talked about lists as an estimated 2500 per candidate, but in the proposal it said that we want them to give us six to ten candidates.

So can you just explain that?

Sure.

Six to ten candidates for the first semifinalist group, and then we would select those that would come on site from the six to ten.

Correct.

So in in our proposal, it was we pay for the travel.

Um we would not ask the firm to do it.

That's a little steeper than what we would uh usually do.

So we've estimated four.

Okay that at the high end it would be four candidates that would come on site just from an estimate.

Thanks for answering all my questions.

I appreciate it.

Sure.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, if I could just a second.

I think if you push on the floor on your panels, that'll get you back to where you need to be.

That's not up at this time.

I don't have it.

You don't have that on yours.

No, it just says voting in progress.

Okay.

Sorry.

Okay.

Uh yeah, thanks.

Um, thank you.

Um just one quick question, more it's on process under the scope of services that has interview participation and public form.

At what point will we be giving um kind of our desires?

I I know we want robust public engagement, especially with neighborhood people and people who have vested interest in seeing uh you know the access advisory board or people like that as well.

So what point in the process will we uh be getting that?

Or having that input?

So the first meeting we will have with them, um, they will go through all of that with us, and then I think their very first call is to meet with all of you.

Okay.

And then does that have to be a majority of council in order to direct for a certain amount of public meetings or a certain um designated group that we want to we want to necessarily attract to those meetings?

I think what the vendor will do is give us multiple options because they have multiple ways of doing citizen engagement, and we can identify which way we want to go for certain groups or how we want to do that as a whole, whether it's a public forum, uh survey, uh stakeholder meetings, however, we want to do it, we get to decide, but they're gonna tell us their best practice and what works the best, and then we can decide what works best for us.

All right, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Tuttle, thank you.

Um thank you, Pam, for your work on this.

Really appreciate it.

I also want to thank Jennifer so much um for being my appointment.

You served on my dab.

I knew you were a fantastic representative, and so appointed to this, and now you're chair.

So congratulations.

I also just want to thank the committee in advance.

I know that we have a timeline that we have to meet, right, to be able to have someone hired by the end of the year.

So um I wish you all the best and and looking forward to being involved in the process.

So congratulations, Jennifer.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just have a few questions.

Uh you said 95% retention, right?

What period of time is that 95%?

I believe it was over a two to three year period.

Two.

So far.

They've got 95% retention.

Okay.

Follow up on Councilman Glasscock's question.

You stated that it was a date of hire.

I presume if it's in a sitting city manager, they'll have to give X number of days notice.

So would it be the date of hire or the start date?

That the year would begin.

Those are the same thing for us.

Same thing.

Okay.

Yes, the day that they are sitting in the office chair.

The office.

Okay, not the date that you announced.

No, not that we we presented a contract.

No, it would be the actual date that start the higher.

Okay, thank you.

And last question is you said if the candidate resigns within the first year.

I don't think it'll happen, but what if the council doesn't want the services of that person within the first year?

Does that count too?

Yes.

One year guarantee.

One year guarantee both on both sides.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

That was another benefit.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have one question for Jennifer again.

Congratulations on becoming the spokesperson and chair of this committee.

Can you give us a little insight in in regards to the interviews?

But more specifically, the question would be this firm obviously got unanimous approval by the committee.

And one of the things I looked at on pages five and six are the roles that they have hired, helped hire.

They have helped with the two assistant city managers of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

And one of the reasons why you mentioned this firm was selected among the five reasons was their familiarity with the region, meaning the Midwest uh heartland.

Can you address maybe some of those questions that were asked during uh that process that helped them become the actual um recommendation?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we did ask about um their experience working with cities, our size and within our region, and so they actually helped fill the Arvado Colorado city manager position, which we thought was um impactful.

A little bit farther to our west was Sacramento, but that was gonna be somewhat similar size or a little bit bigger than Wichita.

But they felt like they had ties to the Kansas and Wichita kind of community and were familiar with the culture and the values that we have as a city, so they felt really good about finding a candidate that aligns to those values.

Thank you, Jennifer.

I see no further questions for Jennifer or Pam.

Okay, we have a couple more slides if you're okay with that.

Um, because I think we do want to address the city size issue because I know that was something uh Brandon Johnson brought up when we were doing the RFP.

Um, and so this was a big piece for us because um a lot of the firms had city manager roles, but they were in much smaller populations, and so we felt very good about their experience in at least our size or at least bigger.

So I think they understood the role of city manager very well.

So I just wanted to point that out for you as well.

And then they have a really interesting approach.

Um, it's a very good approach, and what really stood out, I think, from the interviews was their they very much understand your role in this process.

And so they were very excited uh about getting to work with all of you, but they they very much understood that.

So uh that was a big um piece for them on the mayor and council um stakeholder involvement.

Um and then the city's needs.

Um, they have a unique process, they wouldn't divulge all of it to us about helping us define what does this look like.

And so I think that's gonna be something when we um uh did reference checks, um, we did get a reference check from uh Phoenix, Aurora Colorado, and Oklahoma City.

And what was very interesting was they all talked about this process, and in fact, all of them have now hired at least five additional positions using the same firm.

So that was a great bonus for me to know that they keep being reused at the same cities over and over.

So I think that's gonna be very good for us in the process.

Uh they are very high communicators, so that was the number one thing that came through on the reference checks as well.

Um, and they really talked about their robust uh recruitment process.

So that's why I I think they can feel comfortable meeting the deadline.

And then community stakeholder engagement was a big part of the conversation in the interviews because that is very important to us.

And they were very excited to get to do that.

So there are three phases, which I think you've seen in the in the proposal, but just for uh purposes of this evening.

Phase one was when we start the key stakeholder process.

Phase two, um, they will then tailor the process to fit us and to meet our deadline, and then phase three, they will continue to work with Mayor and Council for customized interview and selection process.

So it's gonna be fast once it begins, but um it's very well defined process.

And then kind of at the the last is the the timeline and the cost is it is a 14 to 16 week process.

So if we started effective Monday, um that would get us to November 24 if all goes well.

Um it is a flat fee of $30,000 and um it includes everything, um, with the exception of possibly if we decided we wanted to do additional paid advertising somewhere else, that would be on us, but they've already got what they would like to do, and they'll get us that for review.

Um, but it will, you know, that would be an additional cost.

And then we put in four people coming on site at 2500 for a total estimated cost of 42,000 dollars.

So our recommendation is um to have council approve and execute the necessary signatures for CPSHR consulting as the selected vendor to conduct the city manager search.

Thank you, Pam.

And again, thank you, Jennifer.

I see no further questions from this bench.

We will now open it up for public comment regarding this topic.

I see none.

I'll bring it back to the bench.

I will move to approve the contract with CPS HR consulting for executive search services for the city manager position and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Osage Park improvements.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Reggie Davidson with uh Parks and Rec.

Here today to talk with you about uh Osage Park improvements.

Want to give a little bit of history on the background on this.

Uh the National Fitness Council NFC is a wellness uh consultant firm that provides the uh fitness court and outdoor fitness facility enclosed within a small footprint on November the 7th of 2023.

City Council approved the funding and installation of a fitness court at Pat Garcia Veterans Memorial Park in District 6.

Uh data acquired from that MSC and indicates that Pat Garcia Fitness Court was well received in the community and uses level or above national average.

So Blue Cross Bruce Shield of Kansas is the sponsor of the Kansas uh fitness court network and offered a 40,000 grant uh 40,000 grant for NFC towards the second fitness court here in Wichita.

Uh Department of Parks and Recreation uh recommend a uh discounted price for uh NFC and Park and Record has selected OSA Park as a location for the second fitness court.

Uh OSA's Park is uh is 18.45 acres uh neighborhood park with a variety of amenities which include a softball field, basketball court, tennis and pickleball court, a splash pad, a playground, and has a former rec center that's currently being operated by catch for programming for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Add a little fitness court to this part would add to the hub of amenities available to South Wichita residents and for the financial considerations for this, the price for the fitness court is 170,000, which will be offset by a 40,000 discount provided through NFC grant from Blue Crossroads Shield of Kansas and staff recommended approval of the agreement with NFC in the amount of 130,000.

Funding is available in the Pawnee Prairie Park Improvement Project Account, which was initiated from the 2024 to 2033 capital improvement program and legal considerations uh and recommended action.

The law department has reviewed and approved the purchase agreement as to form.

And it is recommended that the city council approve the purchase and ordered agreement and authorize the next area signatures.

And I'll stand for any questions.

Thank you, Reggie.

We'll begin with Councilmember Glasscock.

Thank you.

Only a few questions, Reggie, and thank you for this presentation.

Um regarding the Pawnee Prairie budget, it was 800,000.

To start, correct?

That is correct.

For security enhancements, and we've been under budget on one of the projects, which is demolition of the pavilion.

Do you remember how much that was sure?

So we initiated 400,000 that was in the budget for uh 2024, and there's currently $300,000 that's left over from that particular budget, and that's portion of the 130 for this particular project will come from that, which will leave an additional 170,000 in that budget, and then an additional 400,000 will be initiated for the upcoming this current year that will be available as well.

And then additional funds we use to repair the flooring at the um Osage Center as well.

That is correct.

So part of the funding that was initiated in 2024 was used for a flooring project at OSAG Work Center because it was in uh dish repair and a safety concern, and then the demolition cost was the other cost that we're using as part of that funding source.

Well, thank you for being a good steward of the dollars and now because of um the enhancements we made up Honey Prairie, we were able to do enhancements at other parks in South Wichita as well.

Um specifically, I know uh councilman Hoheisel's on the board as well, but given that this is a former recreation center.

I think this is another amenity in the South Side, and I know I was at the opening of Councilmember Ballard of the Pac Garcia Park, and it's been today.

I drove by and there are people using it today.

And I've driven by multiple times, and every time I drive by, somebody's using it.

So I think it's a um needed amenity in this area, especially with the aging population in the neighborhood.

So thank you for the time on this, and thank you for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas for also stepping up to help and partner with us.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you, Reggie.

Uh, just quick couple of quick questions.

Uh, first, I love Osage Park.

It's uh I used to go swimming there all the time, play baseball there all the time.

So I'm uh really happy to see this going in over there, another amenity down there.

Um has there been any issues as far as equipment maintenance or anything at the Pat Garcia Park over the last year or so?

They haven't.

We actually looked into that.

It was part of one of the requests that the mayor had previously as well, and we had two incidents that was there.

One was graffiti that we addressed, and then the other one was a piece of equipment, and we found that it was there on site and was reinstalled.

So the location has been really well reused.

Uh the it exceeds the national average of the number of participants that are there on a daily basis.

It uh goes at 500 is the national average, and we're at 630.

So we're exceeding what the average is for uses at that particular location.

Sounds good.

And if you guys need a name, I'm obviously the picture of fitness.

So the Michael Heisel Fitness Center would be fine as well.

Thank you, Reggie.

Reggie, I actually asked those questions also regarding the number of visitors, and you just uh answered that.

Uh can you also address the two questions I asked, which were um what was the cost of investment by the nonprofit versus the city of Wichita regarding Pat Garcia?

So uh with that particular project, uh the project is uh it's 170,000 is what we're uh paying for the fitness court itself.

Forty thousand of it is coming through uh the uh the funding that we're actually getting from Blue Cross Blue Shield, so it leaves a balance of 130,000 that we're paying towards the project.

And for the Pat Garcia one, the PAC Garcia one was 155 and for the fitness court itself, and we actually got $50,000 for uh towards that particular one for the previous project.

Thank you.

And last question was um are there any future locations for a possible next fitness center?

We now will have one in district six, and this is a proposal for district four.

Um are there any future plans?

Sure.

Part of what we did with the uh Net National Fitness Council is looked at other locations throughout the city that we can look at in each of the districts, and we've identified some other areas that will be considered in the future from their uh research that they did.

So in district one, we're looking at potentially at uh Dr.

Glenn Dye Park as a location.

Uh District 2 is Harrison Park, District 3, uh Plainview Park or Human Hill Park, uh District 4, South Lake as a potential second location uh in District 5, Buffalo Park, Sunset Park, or Harvest Park, and then for a second location potentially in District 6 will be uh Minnesota Park or either at the keeper or the plains.

So part of their analysis was looking at other locations that we can have throughout the city in each district.

Thank you very much, Reggie.

I see no further questions for staff.

We'll open it up for public comment.

I see none.

We'll bring it back to the bench.

This resides in Councilmember Glasscock's district, but I think Councilmember Ballard would like to speak first.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just to um add a little food for thought for your question about other areas of town that might be looking at a fitness court.

As soon as we open up the PAC Garcia Park, McConnell Air Force Base had reached out to me and was interested.

So I think they're having conversations with the National Fitness Group to potentially add some of the courts and some of their facilities.

Councilmember Glascock.

Thank you, Mayor Reggie.

Thanks for encouraging healthy living in the community.

And with that, I move that the city council approve the purchase order agreement and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

2026 annual operating budget and 2026 to 2035 capital improvement programs.

Good evening.

My name is Elizabeth Goldtree.

I'm the budget officer for the City of Wichita, and I am presenting the item on the budget in the CIP.

This is the second of four public hearings about the budget in CIP.

This and it's the only, but it's the only one that's in the evening.

The development of the proposed budget in the CIP was guided by contributions from residents, the city council, and employees.

Resident involvement in the budget included responding to the community survey last fall, dab meetings that were held in May, and creating budgets in the online simulator.

The city council has been engaged in the budget process in monthly workshops since January, which resulted in the strategic plan that guided budget recommendations.

And finally, employees were involved in developing developing tactics that will result in implementation of the strategic plan.

Between the workshop in late May and mid-June, the budget office collaborated with each department to connect the strategic plan to the budget document that you have today, which is evident in the department section of the budget book.

The community survey is now conducted annually, and top line results are summarized on this matrix, which plots quality on the Y or the left axis, and then importance on the X-axis at the bottom.

The visualization has guided strategic planning as well as the budget and CIP document preparation.

And to zoom in, this quadrant is the lower left quadrant of this community survey results.

And these are services that residents have rated as being of high importance but of lower quality than other services.

Strategies and tactics in the strategic plan really focus on these service areas and on addressing items like homelessness, affordable housing, economic development, street repair, and crime prevention.

In most cases, in most cases, these tactics capture cross-departmental efforts that pre that build on previous service delivery approaches.

The online budget simulator was launched when the dab meetings started in early May, and it's available through August 19th.

And we could strike the around because when I last looked, there were exactly 800 responses to date.

As a reminder, participants can increase or decrease the higher priority services on the right side of the matrix, but only can they can only decrease lower priority services in the budget simulator.

So in this survey, for example, residents were asked about services without regard to the budgeted cost of them.

But the added challenge of the budget simulator is that some services like police and fire, as we'll see in a later pie chart, cost considerably more than other services.

At this point, the largest increase in higher priority services are to street repair, parks, and libraries, and in the lower priority services, which you can only one could only reduce, the smallest decreases are in municipal court and sidewalk maintenance.

So we'll provide you with an update once it closes.

So the budget workshops this year were heavily focused on strategic planning.

As a reminder, the strategic plan is available as its own tab in the budget document.

It's also in the appendix of the CIP.

The strategic plan was built in layers, and everybody moved rather quickly so that the tactics were affirmed in late May at that workshop, and then those could be included in the budget and CIP.

I think that this table is a helpful illustration of the different layers of the strategic plan.

Each of the pillars, the goals, the strategies, and the tactics.

So each pillar outlines a desired outcome for the city of Wichita through its programs and services, and so that was the first step was to develop statements for each of those pillars.

Then goals in turn were developed, and then finally strategies and tactics at the were the last layer to be developed in this hierarchy.

So I guess it wouldn't be a budget without the numbers.

So here are the all funds summary charts.

And these funds are each included in the financial plan section of the document.

These two all funds pie charts summarize all revenues and expenditures across the organization.

One thing that's unique about these pie charts, you'll notice is that charges for services is the largest revenue source for all funds, and that's largely due to utility, the utility funds that the city of Wichita operates.

Compared to the all fund summary, the general fund revenue summary shows that property tax is the largest source, the largest slice on the pie chart, followed by franchise fees and then sales tax.

And then there are two pie charts for the general fund on the expenditure side of the budget.

The general fund pie chart by department demonstrates that about three-fourths of general fund expenditures are for services that residents rate is a high priority in the community survey.

Those are many cases very high priority.

Police, fire, and public works.

And then likewise, salaries and benefits are also 75%, 6% of the budget when you look at the general fund budget by type of expenditure.

And that being the case, it's always important to keep in mind that changes to salaries and benefits have a greater impact on the general fund budget than they do for budgets and some other funds.

And there are two funds that receive property tax, general property taxes, those are the general fund and the debt service fund.

Overall, the overall mill levy for the city of Wichita will be one half mill lower in 2026 than 2025.

And as a reminder, with regard to the mill levy, the action at the meeting on July 15th set the maximum taxes to be levied for each of these two funds in 2026.

Oh my gosh, it happened again.

I thought I tried everything to make this work.

I'm so sorry.

So just to this are the general fund long-term financial plan, which thankfully is in the budget document with the correct titles at the top.

It's 2025 revised on the left, 2026 proposed, 27 projected, and then 28 and 29 projected.

The general fund is expected to be balanced in 2026 and 2027 as a result of adjustments to the budget, which I will describe in a little bit.

Due to uncertainty in the remainder of the planning period, so that's the two on the right side.

A deficit is projected in 28 and 29.

The fundamental reason for this imbalance is that growth in wages and benefits is expected to outpace revenue growth.

As we talked about quite a bit during the workshops, one of the headwinds on revenue growth is expected decreasing interest earnings during the planning period.

Again, we continue to update projections as more information is made available.

And typically at budget workshops early in the year, we start with this projection that was in the budget the prior year, and then we make updates to that and continue through the budget process.

So concurrent with the development of the strategic plan and providing updates on the financial projections at workshops.

There was also a considerable amount of discussion about efficiency and process improvement.

So in February, the focus of the workshop was on research topics.

There were an extension of the budget adoption in the previous year in August.

So the city council considered a number of options and then provided feedback to staff.

And then in May, there was another round of options that were considered, and an updated list was provided in June.

So some examples of the types of things that are included in the budget.

Some of the accelerated process improvements are related to street maintenance, park maintenance, court, and the equitable management model.

And one thing a lot of those services in the first bullet point have in common is that they're areas in which there have been a high amount of vacancies.

And then the budget reduction options in the second bullet point are ones that are expected to have limited impact on residents and or improve efficiency.

I'm holding my breath.

So in this table, this summarizes the impact of those adjustments, which is in the third row, what that impact on the adjustments was on the budget.

So the first row here is what the general fund financial plan was and the budget that was adopted last August.

And then the third row is ideas, concepts that were discussed during workshops and have been included in the budget document.

And with that, we are balanced in 2026 and 2027.

And the slight surplus in 2025 as the budget grows, the slight surplus is used to meet the fund balance reserve policy.

So transitioning into what is what are the things that are in the budget.

There's a lot in the budget.

So I just have some quick highlights of items that really connect back to the strategic plan because we talked so much about that.

One of them is a cost recovery study.

We've already started working on that.

Additionally, implementation implementation of a comprehensive supervisory development program will be kicked off next year, and then a review of employee benefits.

So those are all items that you could find in the strategic plan that connect with the well-run city goal.

Implementing the drone as first responder program, leveraging real-time information center data for the city of Wichita, but also collaborating with others using that data for collaboration.

Using risk terrain modeling to address causes of crime, and then seeking to establish a behavioral response partnership and collaboration with municipal court and housing and community services.

So the cultural funding program will be updated, and that was identified in the cultural arts strategy plan that was presented to the city council in the past.

The transit network upgrade will expand transportation options that connect residential areas to employers and educational institutions.

And then finally, another one being highlighted is that there's a lot of affordable housing strategies across the different pillars, but in this pillar, affordable housing strategies are related to planning, zoning, and permitting.

Independable infrastructure, the water reuse study will is being pursued to continue strategies related to water conservation, and a decision support tool for park infrastructure, similar to the decision support tools for other types of assets will be developed.

And then finally, in living well, which these include goals related to activating a sense of belonging and well-being, early childhood reading readiness activities will be provided with early learning partners, emergency sheltering, wraparound services, and supportive housing will include staff training, data collection, visualization, and workforce developments, very comprehensive.

And then the comprehensive plan funding was included in the budget, the 2025 adopted budget to update the comprehensive plan.

There have been a lot of changes in the last 10 years.

So these tactics from across the pillars, well, they're funded by the general fund, other city of Wichita funds or grants are integrated into the operating budget.

Linkage to goals can be found throughout the department in the division pages.

So it is I it's remarkable we've made it to this point.

It's great that we have it in the budget.

So I'm just grateful that all the support of the city council to get to this point.

So quickly on the self-supported municipal improvement district, which is also called the Schmidt, it's located downtown.

Each year, the Wichita Downtown Wichita Schmid Advisory Board requests a budget, makes a budget request to the city of Wichita.

This year they have requested 10 mills to implement implement their clean and safe program.

So notices related to the formal RR meeting hearing for this district have been published online and submitted to the Wichita Eagle.

Property owners will receive notice of this impact in the budget hearing date and time by the Sedgwick County Clerk.

So just some technical information about that.

And on to the capital improvement program or CIP, which is a 10-year program for capital assets.

Very quickly, the CIP receives projects in the CIP are funded by a variety of sources of revenue, the largest being water utilities.

On the expenditure side of the CIP, the projects that when we're discussing the development of the CIP and capacity for the CIP, most of the focus is on the general obligation at large projects, which it should be on this slide.

Well, so geo at large is over here, but then the geo art large funds, those are the projects that receive the most discussion.

That would be public facilities, public safety, park and rack, and heavy equipment.17% will be shifted to the general fund starting in 2027.

In addition to a lot of financial considerations, of course, the CIP is guided by the community investments plan, which is the comp plan for Wichita and Sedgwick County, which I just mentioned will be updated soon, as well as the City of Wichita strategic plan.

Just like the operating budget, the strategic plan guided the development of the CIP.

For example, the CIP includes funding for public safety facilities, which that links to police and fire being in the community survey is being very high priorities.

Maintenance of cultural facilities as well as a variety of different asset groups.

Police and fire station replacements, replacement of fire apparatus, and then the addition of a police training facility and a new facility.

Lots of maintenance for city facilities, bridge repair and rehabilitation, the local portion of K96 expansion, which will be a partnership project, and then a number of a variety of street improvements, and a few are highlighted here.

In the living well pillar, there's actually a highlight issue in the CIP if you're interested on cultural facilities maintenance, as well as I know there's a lot of activity and regarding the Dr.

Glindy Sports Complex at that park.

So those are some things if you're there's a lot of projects in the CIP, so maybe they'll get people excited about checking out more of them.

So the budget process and calendar.

So August is the month that the budget and CIP will be adopted.

In addition to the hearing this evening, there will be two more hearings.

On August 19th, there will be a hearing during the city council meeting at 9 a.m.

And on that day, the budget simulator will close.

August 26th, the final and official public hearing is determined by action at the meeting on July 15th.

So that's the one that's published in the public notices.

At that meeting, there will be three separate hearings just to prepare everyone.

I guess there'll be three separate hearings for the Schmidt revenue neutral rate, the Wichita Revenue Neutral Rate, and the adoption of the budget in the CIP is the last one.

That meeting is also a 9 a.m.

meeting.

So I thank you so much for your attention and just your participation in the budget process this year.

It's been really interesting journey and um it's a great budget.

And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much.

Questions for staff, beginning with Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um thank you, Elizabeth.

Uh I SSA every time I'm just always wanted to make sure.

Um we'll see a projected assessment increases for our future budgets.

Oh goodness, I have it's in the budget document.

Someone, I think it's a round, I think it it the plan is for it to level off in the future.

Um you can find that on page 76 of the budget if anyone were interested.

Um for 2027, we're expecting 5.6%, 28 4.4, and then 29 3.9.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

Well, future presentations have pie charts or how we decided to remove those.

The pie charts.

Yeah.

I my goal right now is just to get rid of the jumbly jumbling number.

That was for Bob.

Oh any further questions for staff?

I have several.

Uh can we go back to slide number 70?

Okay.

Here we are.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Can you um so that community members that may not have the booklet, um, which by the way, you can also uh look at these documents on Wichita.gov slash budget, and it is the printed for or the PDF version of this printed um document.

Um can you talk about how much in property taxes is actually collected because it does not cover the entire general fund budget?

Is that correct?

Yes, the so if I if I may go back a slide.

Um so property tax, um, it is the largest revenue source in the general fund, but the general fund, all things being said, is relatively well diversified.

So property taxes about 38% of general fund revenue.

So if you were to, it's you know, about 132 million for property tax.

And if you were to look, for example, at the fire department, property tax revenue is less than um expenditures for the police department, and that's our largest department.

So we do receive other sources of revenue, such as sales tax, franchise fees, um charges for services, what have you.

And also, if I may add, the budget's available as a printed copy at all of our library locations.

So sorry, but thank you, Elizabeth.

And then can we go to slide number 82, please?

Okay.

I just want to um address the clean and safe program.

Um, I really am very appreciative of now retired airport's uh employee dean, who is part of this current pilot program for clean and safe, and it is a clean and safe program for the downtown Wichita area.

Uh this is an individual that connects with uh community members that may have questions, also helps clean up, collects trash.

Um, and so I'm looking forward to this clean and safe program expanding beyond uh just Dean himself, and so I I do support this uh in particular, but I wanted to highlight that Dean is the one who currently is wearing a yellow uh vest, and he's around downtown Wichita.

I have one more question, and that is the CIP didn't appear to have any dollars allocated for the renovation or the maintenance maintenance of the former central library.

Can you address that?

Yes.

So there are there's some city facilities projects that have general titles for city facilities maintenance.

It's one of the one of the many things that's in my job, is I do approve requisitions as they go through workflow.

So for example, the roof at the library, I think is being replaced or repaired at this time, and so that was charged to one of those city facility projects.

So are there any other dollars that will be allocated to the former central library?

There's not there's not an itemized central library project, but those that general city facilities project has been used for major maintenance.

Like I think more, not improvements, but maintenance type activities.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

I see no further questions.

We will now open it up for public comment.

Each member of the public can have up to five minutes to speak on the budget.

Madam Mayor, members of the Wichita City Council, Mr.

Manager.

Sometimes I think it is a it's a good thing to kind of step away from the nitty-gritty and the details and kind of take a longer perspective look at what's happening in our city and what we need.

My name is Harold Schlechtweg, and I live in the district in the Delano district at 351 North Fern Street.

I am the chairman of the board of the directors of ICT trees.

We are dedicated to the preservation and expansion of Wichita's urban tree canopy.

Our vision is a greener, healthier, and more sustainable future for Wichita.

I am here to encourage and to urge you to adopt a budget that initiates a vigorous program of tree planting, maintenance, and removal on our streets and in our parks and public places.

Wichita's shade trees are not an amenity.

They are a necessity.

They are not a want, they are in need.

ICT trees is in its terrible twos.

We were founded in March 2023.

Or to use another metaphor, perhaps more suitable for the air capital, we are in the process of building the airplane while flying it.

We have benefited during the process from the tremendous outpouring of support we've received from citizens.

Their support has enabled our all-volunteer organization to make substantial progress over the past two years.

Our purpose is to educate citizens and policymakers as to the value of the urban forest to plant trees in available spaces and to assist residential and other property owners to plant and maintain trees.

To accomplish this purpose, we have sponsored educational tree walks, distributed educational materials, and weighed in on policy issues directly affecting the health of our tree canopy.

With supportive grants and individual donors, we've sponsored free tree distribution events for homeowners, churches, and businesses, distributing more than 100 trees.

This spring will do it again, and because of the need, increase the number of trees we distribute.

These free tree distributions are strategically targeted to neighborhoods most at risk from rising temperatures.

In 2023, the City of Wichita published a joint study with NASA identifying 12 17 census tracts, most at risk from rising temperatures.

These neighborhoods are located within or near what are called urban heat islands.

Dense infrastructure, concrete roads, and buildings cause temperature to be significantly higher in some neighborhoods than others.

The outside temperatures difference between neighborhoods with lots of trees and those that lack them can be as much as 10 degrees.

These neighborhoods often lack tree cover and green spaces, compounding the heat stress, and reducing residents' ability to cool their homes affordably.

Our temperatures, which are increasing and projected to increase over the next three decades, can be daily, deadly.

We got a preview of this July 2024, when 115 people were treated for heat-related illnesses at the McConnell Air Show.

We need to act now to make sure our children and their children don't suffer from our short-sightedness.

YCT Trees, its donors, and volunteers will continue to do our part.

The city needs a vigorous urban forestry program addressing our street trees, parks, and public property.

It is a need, not a want, a necessity, not an amenity.

Thank you.

And if you have any questions.

Thank you, Harold.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Harold, I just want to say thank you for continuing to advocate for our community.

And I think we're making the right taking the right steps to try to repair some of our tree canopy.

And I appreciate you and Elizabeth and all the other members of ICT Trees to help us make that possible.

So I appreciate you continuing to come forward and make sure that we know it's still a priority to the community as well.

And we've had excellent support from the city, and we've heard good things from everybody in the community in the neighborhoods.

So we very much appreciate that.

Thank you, Harold.

You can just step forward if you would like to speak.

So this is a bit of a continuation of Harold's presentation, but I would kind of like to focus on the drought and the need for water and the health of trees.

So I have a handout.

I'll get my agenda back from you later, Councilmember Hoheisel.

One of the things that is true in Wichita is that we're losing more trees than we're replacing.

This in 2023 or 2024, 2020, we finally, the city's forestry division of the park department, along with a lot of volunteers, including ICT Trees, planted more trees than we removed.

First time in decades.

This year, it has been because of the drought, but very disappointing.

That as far as I know, and if I'm wrong, please correct me, I would be delighted to be wrong.

There have been no trees or shrubs planted in parks or public spaces, and there will not be for the rest of the year.

Yeah, planting season coming up as the uh the weather cools towards the end of September and on into well, it can go all the way through January.

It's a good time to plant trees.

So we would like to encourage the planting in trees, and in that regard to focus on the city's approach in terms of being a model for private citizens.

With using a five-gallon bucket, and address it to the tree twice.

This is a five-gallon bucket with a hole, not in the bottom, but towards the bottom of the bucket.

Not in the bottom, but towards the bottom of the bucket.

And if you take this bucket, fill it with water, or take it and place it where you want it, and then fill it with water, which is what I have to do, or otherwise I would slosh it all out on my way to the tree.

If you do that twice, once on either side of a tree, a young tree, that's good for the next week.

That's true even when the weather is hot.

And that what many professionals will tell you is that more most people overwater a newly planted tree and will kill it from having too much water because root rot sets in.

We are a tree city USA.

We're very proud of that.

We've had that distinction for 40 some years.

And I hate to see one year when we do not plant a single tree.

Thank you.

If anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to hold forth some more.

Thank you very much, Elizabeth.

Councilmember Tuttle.

I was just gonna thank you for being here.

I appreciate it.

Um I know that on July 8th, the city manager sent an email to some other constituents about planting, and I know you're talking about this year specifically, but um city manager, could you maybe address um 26 and 27 regarding that?

Yeah, thank you.

Um yes, council member, um, good question.

Actually, I'm gonna address 25, 26, and 27.

Um the original budget uh uh presented to the council during workshops uh uh did not have uh uh funding for trees in 2627 based on feedback from the council during workshops that money was restored.

So there's about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, I think, for the purchase of trees um uh in both of each of those years.

Yeah, in 2025, we had not anticipated that we would be out of the drought and that we'd be planting trees.

However, um, not to give you too much of a preview, but um on the 19th, August 19th, we're gonna be bringing to you uh ordinance change related to um permanent conservation measures.

Um we also will have an estimate for you on when we think that we will be able to implement that and actually go back to stage one.

Um that may mean that we will have a fall planting season.

Um that will depend on how you talk about it and also on the input that you get from staff.

So there is a possibility that we'll be planting some city trees in 2025 as well.

Thank you, City Manager, Councilmember Glask Glascock.

Thank you, Mayor uh representative.

I just want to say thank you for being here.

Thank you for your advocacy.

I agree with you.

We should be planting trees.

I'm encouraged by the hopeful news of the manager and uh thankful for the budget recommendations uh moving forward that tree planting was included.

Uh I am so happy to know we we will not have a zero planning year.

Amen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you.

Bob, what will those uh qualifications will say be or how will they decide if we are able to plant the trees that we have um purchased already?

Well, the the first thing is to be able to get to a point where we can allow sufficient watering um of the new trees and other plant material, and that's what we're gonna talk about on the 19th.

Um what we are comfortable with in terms of what moves us from stage two to stage one, and again, part of that will be you adopting an ordinance on um every uh uh every other day uh watering or three-day a week watering.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I I'm very excited that we will plant trees in Wichita uh next year.

I appreciate that.

I really excited about that, but also private citizens planting trees.

I think it's a great thing.

So uh very much as tree supporters so thanks for your work.

When we give away trees, every recipient gets the bucket lecture.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, representative uh my former representative.

So always a pleasure to see you up here, ma'am.

Um what is the deadline to really get the trees on the ground?

Is it mid-November before it starts getting to where it's just not a good idea for the year or if it must have an R in it?

It's a pretty decent plan.

All right.

Well I appreciate that.

All right, thank you.

I would like to thank echo what Harold had to say and thank the park department, especially the forestry division.

They've just been marvelous.

Thank you very much.

Hello.

Holly Danley, I participate in ICT Trees.

And I got involved because I moved to a neighborhood that zip code that is the heat island.

And so I started receiving the trees, and I'm just so thrilled to be a part of it and their hard work, Harold and Elizabeth, and everyone involved.

And I enjoy my new trees.

And I want to play a part in beautifying Wichita.

I think it's very important.

I walk at the park every day.

I walk my dogs and I look at the canopy of the park.

Hi, Reggie.

And I just last night I was observing how beautiful the canopy of the trees are at this park.

Um how widespread it is.

And these are the older elm streets on the street or in the neighborhoods that have seen their lifetime, you know.

Um I'm looking forward to helping be involved, beautifying city of Wichita.

Thank you.

Thanks, Colleen.

Good evening, Diana Tedlock.

The community survey that was done last November, December is the matrix was shown earlier where it's the low and high priority items are shown in a matrix of four quadrants.

Um I'm sure that many people, and that and that is used repeatedly, has been as the basis and justification for the direction of the council.

I'm sure many people don't realize that only 461 individuals actually answered that community survey out of 400 a population of over 400,000 individuals.

So the input of 461 individuals has led the city council to determine animal welfare is a low priority to our city and community.

The simulator is reflective and restrictive based on that community survey.

It only allows increases and decreases to the high priority items.

The low priority items, you can only make a decrease to the budget.

So this purposely restricts constituents and makes it harder for their voice to be heard that they want to see an increase in those items because they would have to come to a meeting and speak andor call or email their uh representatives.

Per the city goals for 2026 budget process, they it was stated on the simulator wording that the process would continue to focus on the high priority quadrants.

Therefore, the city has made it known they really have no intention of addressing the needs and concerns at the Wichita Animal Shelter, which has become a high kill facility.

In fact, at the June 24th meeting, city council meeting, it was stated there was not one tactic in the budget for animal control animal services.

And as a political ploy, the chief of police even suggested defunding both animal control and animal services.

The city hired Emily Hearst and promise changed.

It is now time to see those promises be made a priority and included in the budget.

We need additional budget for the marketing of animals, volunteer program, a foster program, enrichment of the animals, employee training, outdoor area for the animals, new pressure worshers, and a worship area for blankets and toys.

The 2025 revise revised budget had an increase of almost 205,000, and the 2026 proposed budget had an increase of 3392 increase for animal services.

All these increases were to accommodate wages and benefits with no increase to the equivalent full-time positions.

There has been no increase in the full-time equivalent position since 2023, and it continues to remain at 31.

The Wichita Animal Shelter Management has reported to a captain in the Wichita Police Department literally for years.

That position was not previously reflected in the animal control services budget.

That has changed.

They have now moved the captain position under the animal control services budget while leaving the equivalent full-time heads at 31.

So effectively reducing heads by one.

The accomplishment of the shelter restructure announced in October of 2024 did not increase heads.

In fact, again, it actually reduced by one by the movement.

Don't be fooled by the appearance into thinking the city is actually investing more in animal control services.

They are not.

So I guess that's my time.

But any questions?

Thank you, Diana.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Diana, thank you for continuing to advocate for animal control.

My question is for City Manager.

Can you speak to any of the concerns about I know Councilmember Hoheisel asked for more positions?

I think last year, and they were put in the budget.

And do we know that those have not been filled?

I know there was they were moved to full time instead of part-time.

Do you have any updates or that you can share with that?

See my police representative.

I do so I don't have the exact details.

Um is in the one position that was created for uh management of the facility.

I don't remember the clerical position and how that was handled.

Animal control position was reclassified to the admin position.

And so the lieutenant position basically became I think that's accurate, but I'd want to double check that.

Okay, yeah, if we could get that information, that'd be great.

Thank you.

But the equivalent head count still stayed at 31.

It's been the same since 2023.

So there was no increase in the equivalent head counts.

They did take the kennel tax and transferred those from part-time to full-time, but the equivalent head count has remained at 31.

And that now includes the captain, which it didn't before.

So it's actually a reduction.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so is that the Kenneltechs?

Were they folded into the position or was that an animal officer, control officer into the clerical position?

I think it was an officer, if I remember correctly.

Those I can see it.

Two part-time candle tax are reclassified as four.

There was one animal control officer that was reclassified to administrative aid in this year.

And it was a position that we hadn't been able to fill.

That's it's it was vacant and had been you know consistently vacant.

Okay.

And again, a reminder when we did this reorganization, the idea was to try to get duties away from the candle tax and the animal control officers so they could focus on their work and also we could be more effective in getting back to residents with their complaints, and we could process those quicker.

Good evening, Margaret Wheeler Shabazz.

Um, as I was going through the papers and listening to everything tonight, um, first off, I would like to thank you, Glasscock for initiating the volunteers to audit through the finances.

Um, but I did have a few questions about why did it take the volunteers to uncover over half a million dollars of unresolved issues of the striker complex?

Why weren't CID taxes discrepancies caught or questioned sooner?

Residents have raised these concerns for a while.

I've been reading them in a newspaper for a couple of years now.

Who approved paying the water bill for the facility within leak with leaks, known leaks?

My household had leaks and the city didn't pay my bill.

I just got a discount.

As you plan next year's spending, how can we trust a process without public accountability when no one stood up and said anything until now?

Councilmember Hohysel.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Margaret, for coming up and expressing your concerns.

Um, one of the things I spoke about it earlier that we had done was hire an internal auditor to be able to go through.

And she has been finding a number of these issues with past contracts and whatnot.

Um also I do believe that we do forgive a water bill, a one-time um one time forgiveness if there are water leaks.

So I'm I'm not sure if that's what you're referencing.

Okay.

Okay, yeah.

Well, let's check into that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Tuttle.

Thank you.

And and City Manager, I may ask you to address this just informally, but regarding Stryker, it isn't a $500,000 cost.

Um, the water they have paid their past water bill.

There was a discrepancy of $8,500.

They will be paying that in the future.

The other part of that is there's some misinterpretation of sponsoring rights.

Um, so I'd be happy to sit down and reach out if you would like to reach out and and to anyone and to explain that there isn't $500,000 potential savings from striker or city manager.

Would you like to I think I think without getting a lot of detail, you summarized it accurately.

Councilmember Glascock.

Schwaz, thank you for speaking.

Um, I know that we'll be going over a lot of the items presented.

This was the first time it was released to the public today, and um, I think it shows that when we have community engagement, we'll listen.

And when citizens bring something, we hear them, and you know, we'll investigate what's truth and maybe what needs more research.

And so um I know that this is just the start of many other conversations.

Hello, Faith Martin, uh proud member of District 2.

I'm gonna try to get through all of these.

I have a lot of notes, but uh first I wanted to mention the simulator.

I was actually pretty disappointed with our inability to select certain areas uh of what's important and what's not important.

When I look at the general budget, there's like 14 different line items for budgeting for policing.

So traffic enforcement, uh, administration.

There's a lot of things we were not allowed to give any comment on that on the simulator.

So I'd like to see the simulator either get some more robust public engagement when it's being developed next year or just break it down a little farther.

It may take longer to take it, but I don't mind taking a long survey.

Um the strategic plan, it's always nice to see uh a robust strategic plan.

What I don't understand is why any of these goals that are given here are um smart goals.

I don't see any time bound on any of these goals.

It's great to have goals, but is it gonna be completed Q4 of 2025?

Is it 30 years from now?

It's hard to understand in our strategic plan when there's no goals for or no dates on any of these goals, uh, benchmarks for the community to hold you accountable.

I'd like to see that included because one of them is uh, you know, like infographics are under strategy 2.11.

Well, is the infographic really uh a strategic measurement of that goal?

I don't really think so.

I'd like to see a little more thought um put into those.

Um, the CIP, honestly, I don't really find much wrong with the CIP.

I really appreciate uh the nine fire stations and the equipment, all of that is great.

It's sorely needed.

I'd like to make sure that that doesn't go away and get reallocated somewhere else.

Though that those fire equipment and those stations are really needed.

I would also like the council to re look at the um art set aside for the CIP.

When we're in a budget downturn, it would be nice if there was flexibility for the council to say, hey, maybe this year, if projects are already in place, we keep that rolling.

But since we're gonna have a shortfall, we're gonna pause that amount that we're gonna put into art projects for a year or two, and then when we're back on our feet, then we put the art funds back in there.

I don't think it's that we don't love art.

If we have to tighten belts, I think that that's a good place to look, at least putting the flexibility into that ordinance or something to look into.

The general budget, I made some comments or I made some calls today trying to find out about community policing.

Big fan of community policing.

One of the reasons why I liked choosing the police chief that we have is because he said community policing was so very important to him.

There's 20 uh community policing slots, but it looks like Patrol North didn't answer.

Um Patrol East had three and one rotating, Patrol South had three, Patrol West had four with one that rotates.

For there being a large city, the fact that we have 20 slots that aren't filled and they rotate out.

I don't know how the community is supposed to build any relationships with these policing officers.

My neighborhood has had four different people in the last year, and sometimes they don't come to meetings, they don't come to dab meetings.

I think we need to make sure that if we're budgeting for community policing, they need those resources.

Let's give them the help they need to make community policing as robust as we say it is.

Um my gosh, so many things.

Um I looked at the general budget on complaints, uh, police services and crime prevention, all of those metrics have not met the standard.

And they have the standards listed in the budget.

And yet I see that we keep raising the police budget.

There's things that they need, they need equipment, they need shields, they need all of those things.

But when the Jensen Hughes recommendations, we are two plus years past Jensen Hughes recommendations, still not being uh implemented, and no updates given since the last time I came before this body in December when uh this body gave them raises and bonuses.

I think it would be good transparency for the community to find out before we give more budget to policing.

Have we met those Jensen Hughes recommendations from multiple years ago, multiple administrations ago?

Um TIFFs.

Um, so in the short term, a TIFF can seem like a good idea.

In the long term, uh, we as taxpayers may have to take on uh additional taxes, or the city may have to take on additional debt when those projects aren't viable.

And so I think when we look at the long term, the uncertainty of TIF performances creates too much risk if the projects aren't doing well.

So I'd like the city to have a little more structure uh around when we give out TIFFs because taxpayers already have exorbitant property taxes.

We shouldn't have to also bear the brunt of projects that aren't working well.

Speaking of property taxes, oh gosh, 12 seconds.

Um so we all know that uh assessments have gone up.

We know we have a housing shortage.

I'm looking through the budget, and I am sorely disappointed when people say over and over that homelessness and housing is a huge priority, and we have almost nothing in the budget funded by this community.

We know HUD is gonna potentially have a lot of issues.

Federal funding is almost gone.

This community needs to do more than the MAC when we know we're 70,000 units short of housing, and property taxes are gonna continue to have higher appraisal rates, and we're gonna be priced out of our homes if we don't step up and figure out how to handle this housing shortage.

I didn't get through all of my notes, but I just want to say thank you to all of you and thank you to staff for putting together such good documentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Faith.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Bob, is there an opportunity to get any type of updates on Jensen Hughes in a public setting?

Um we surely can.

Um I believe since Faith talked, she said since last December, I believe there have been updates to the um uh dashboard because we've had we had a series of discussions with the union to resolve some issues, and I know when those were resolved that we changed the dashboard.

So I'll need to go back and take a look at uh where we are.

But a majority of those Jensen Hughes recommendations have been implemented, be more than happy at some point to go through that with the council, maybe at a workshop if that's who we'd like, and we could highlight um everything that's been done and those actions that are still pending.

I think that would be beneficial for everybody just since it's been two years in the works.

I think that would be beneficial, at least.

Um I think so.

Uh, the other thing I wanted to mention, um, Faith mentioned community policing officers.

I can only speak to my conversations that I've had with the chief, and I know um in some of the areas of district six, the community policing officers were absorbing two beats uh while we've been shorthanded um with the officers.

So I know that the um the current classes that have been graduating and the one that's uh working currently to become an officer.

Um, I believe about the first of the year the chief said that we would be able to kind of divide those back out at least some so that they didn't all have two beats.

It's probably very difficult to do one beat, let alone two.

It's uh pretty big area to try to cover and build relationships and community with with one officer.

So I do know that that's a priority.

Um, and I've talked to him about it several times.

So I'm hopeful that after this that next graduating class that we'll be able to um get the um community policing officers back to one beat.

So thank you for asking.

Thank you, Councilmember Ballard.

I do want to point out that on Witchtop Police.com, if you click on transparency, um, there's also a another button that talks about Jensen Hughes.

There have been updates since December, including on in March as well as in April of 2025.

So according to this dashboard, 81% has been implemented of the Jensen Hughes report.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um just a couple points.

Um I think we are serious about getting back filling.

Uh we do have a recruiting class around 40.

So that's going to go a long way towards actually um filling a lot of the vacant positions.

I know some in my district actually got filled here after this last recruiting class.

So we'll continue to work on that one.

Um as far as housing goes, um, I I agree.

I we are looking at some options in order to possibly look at some affordable housing funding.

So it's touch and go as we go.

Um, so we can't overpromise and under deliver, but it is something that we are actively looking at the options that we have.

Thank you.

If I could just address two other issues that Faith brought up, because I do think they're important.

One has to do with measures, and that's really the last piece of our work.

Um, you've approved a strategic plan that has goes all the way down to the tactic level, but what we're now doing is developing performance measures so that you can have a dashboard and track what we're doing on the tactics, the strategies, and the goals.

So the that's uh ongoing work, and she's right that that's the most meaningful when you actually have uh outcomes uh outcome measures.

Uh the other thing I do think is an important point to bring up, and uh, Councilmember Holheisel made a reference to something similar earlier in the meeting regarding TIFFs.

The council's um position on TIFFs is very different than it was 10 years ago.

Right now, uh I believe all, if not a majority, if not all of our TIFS that we've brought forward on our on a pay as you go basis.

So we don't have that liability should there not be enough TIFF generated or enough increment generated to support a project that falls on the backs of the developer, not of the city.

And so I think it's an important distinction to make, and it's been a marked departure or change in our economic development policy over the last few years.

I will follow up with that very comment.

Uh you mentioned it's been a decade since those changes, or because I think a lot of community members still remember some of the past, and I don't believe anyone on this council was in those conversations back then.

My question then is can we have either on the website um those poor performing uh TIFFs or TIFFs that have that didn't have this new criteria for transparency purposes, we need to be transparent of what has happened in the past and that it is different now.

Uh Mayor, our quarterly financial report has information on the financial performance of each TIFF, and we do I believe those are posted online as well.

So that and it that's pretty good detail on each of the TIFS.

Mayor the River Village Trail was just a few years ago for 750,000 TIF.

Ms.

Margaret, you can you can address that um at a different point in time, but I think what the city manager is is saying is the information is available, however, I would like to see it be more accessible uh not just within those quarterly financials.

Um I think that it would be very helpful for community to see again what has been previously done versus what it currently is and how they are different.

And then to just address one more point that Faith mentioned, um she was talking about the art set aside right now.

It's a two percent um per for arts.

Can you address what would need to happen in order for this council to have more flexibility in times when we do have a budget shortfall?

My recollection is it would take an ordinance change.

Um that uh measure or that um action is not recommended in 26.

It's it's shown in the 27 budget, um, and that won't be finalized by this council until next year, but it showed uh one path to get to a balanced budget for 27.

What would be required if we wanted to move it up to 2026?

An ordinance change this year.

So um this I'm just speaking on my behalf.

I would like to see a proposal that uh shows how much would be saved if we did implement that in 26 versus in 27.

Okay.

Hi, I'm Julie Robinson.

Hello, Mayor and Councilmember, City Manager.

Um I'm relatively new to Wichita.

I'm I just looked up, I'm in District One.

Um, and so I'm very anxious about being up here.

It's my first meeting, and so I'm not as familiar with all the budgeting and all the terms that you all are tossing around.

But part of why I moved here and have chosen to stay here is the arts and um the things that happen here in the community.

Um I have seasoned tickets to a number of different things.

I participate in museums and art council, festivals, music, theater, um, and it's part of what has drawn me here and keeps me here.

And I would be saddened if that was uh less of a priority.

I know it's not a huge portion of the budget, but I would hate to see it go anywhere but up.

Thank you.

Thank you, Julie.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Julie, welcome to City Hall.

And I'm glad to see you.

So representing District One, I'm glad to have you here, and also glad to hear your support of the arts.

I'm definitely supportive as well.

Uh I wouldn't be supportive of changing the ordinance because I think the arts are important, and um while some see flexibility in it, I see it as a number of things that is opportunity for uh young people, adults, folks who um just continue to make our community better, and you know that's a big part of crime prevention as well.

It's just providing those opportunities.

So welcome, glad to see you here, and I'm definitely uh very supportive of the arts.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Julie, I don't know.

Do you have tickets to music theater of Wichita?

Not yet.

You should.

This year is amazing.

The cast is absolutely amazing.

All three shows have been absolutely fantastic.

So I recommend you go, there's a couple more left.

Uh buy some tickets and go.

And uh all of which does it support it.

It's uh really outstanding cast, director and everything.

So highly recommended.

Thank you.

I will just ask city manager to just address what is the two percent for art.

This is not for all cultural arts, it is a specific set aside.

Can you explain the two percent for art?

Uh yes, ma'am, mayor.

Uh, based on city code, uh, we allocate two percent of local funding sources in the CIP for art, and then each year we meet with the design council and they make recommendations on which projects to allocate that to.

And that total somewhere in the neighborhood varies obviously each year, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.8 million dollars.

And it's again, this is the capital improvement side of our cultural arts program.

Again, this is not from the general budget, but the CIP itself.

So, new projects.

Uh, a good example would be the water treatment plant.

Can you address how much the water treatment plant received in the 2% for art?

And again, this was something that was for a new build.

Uh the water treatment plan, I believe was in excess of a million, but that actually did not come out of the two percent for art.

So 2% for arts is generally uh I think more police stations, fire stations, the bridges, Minnesota Bridge that we've done artwork on, uh the brewer center.

That's typically what that money is used on.

So the water treatment plant did not get any two percent for art funding.

It had arts funding, but that uh part of the funding was incorporated into the plan uh cost of the treatment plant.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ho Heisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Mark.

Sorry, sir.

Yeah.

Um for the two percent for the yards.

Is that cash or is that bonded out?

We have the authority to do either.

Uh it kind of depends.

Uh if it's incorporated with a total project, it's not uncommon for us to bond that.

Uh, but if it's a standalone, we typically would cash fund it.

But flexibility go either way.

So if it's bonded out, it's not savings that we would immediately um realize.

It's it's savings from future debt, essentially.

Probably the most efficient way to uh produce savings initially would be there are projects in the 2026 CIP that are recommendations for the design council for art on a particular projects.

Uh, those some of those have not been initiated yet.

That would probably be the uh route to reduce arts funding in 26 if that was the objective.

Okay, so whatever we have cash or whatever we haven't allocated yet.

And would be paying for in cash.

Probably, yes, sir.

Okay, thank you, Mark.

We'll continue with public comment.

Good evening, man.

Just a quick question.

We went over the budget.

There was some CIP items listed, but not like year or dollar amount.

And I was interested in the Dr.

Glenn Dye Sports Complex.

Like when is that supposed to happen, and what is the price tag for that project?

Thank you.

Thank you, Lawanda.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

The price tag for phase one and two is about 38 million dollars for all uh outdoor football fields and indoor track, and that project would initiate next year upon um having all of the funds collected.

Thank you, Councilmember Johnson.

City Manager Leighton, a follow-up question to that is how much of city dollars will be spent on the Dr.

Glenn Day complex.

Right now it anticipates um $500,000 of city money for the design of the facility, and the CIP shows all private funding at this point for in 2029 for the sports complex.

Thank you.

We'll continue with public comment.

Sorry, you've already spoken once.

But it's on a different subject.

It's the budget.

Anyone else in the audience who would like to speak regarding the budget?

I see none.

We'll bring it back to the bench and thank all eight individuals who spoke during public comment.

Council members.

Councilmember Glascock.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I want to thank staff for working on the budget.

I think there's a lot of great things, and I think with the reduction of the mill levy, we're moving in the right direction to support the community.

We've talked about this at a previous workshop, and I wanted to bring it for consideration and see what the process would be for staff to look at it.

Um, could we go to the budget presentation item number seven at your page number seventy two?

Is that possible?

Um, yep, this is the page I was looking at.

It's um I know that this might be hard to read, uh, but when we're looking in the future, we are sort of looking at projected deficits.

Obviously, that changes, we have higher interest earnings.

There are ways that that can consolidate as a whole.

One of the considerations that the manager had discussed was the creation of a Wichita local sales tax.

Um I'd like to continue that conversation.

We had an executive summary posted on May 27, 2025, and I just want to highlight a few of those things.

The city of Wichita is one of only two first class cities in Kansas without a sales tax.

Um the other one would be Newton, if I remember correctly, and they actually get a higher amount of their county sales tax, so they do have more revenue coming in from sales tax than we do as a municipality.

Um part of that executive summary continues in saying this is largely that Wichita's portfolio is largely dependent on property taxes because of a lack of a city sales tax.

It continues by saying that the general fund revenues have greater annual variation because of a lack of a city sales tax.

Some other points that I have on page three of that document says that this makes a sales tax well suited for capital expenses.

And there is a in this presentation and in the suggestion, um, one of the uh aspects, and this is on page seven, is that one half a percent of a sales tax over the course of five years would bring in 303 um point two million dollars to the city's revenue.

If we look and break that down by 2027, 2028, 2029, 30.

We start with an estimated mill of your reduction if we tie that sales tax to mill reduction by 4.8 mils, that increases by 2023 to 6.9 mils to break that down in terms of monetary value.

That would allow cash funding of infrastructure projects at 22.9 million in 2027.

It would allow for the stabilization of current service delivery, which I think is incredibly important in this as well at 5.9 million and by 2020 or by 2031, and that balloons out to 6.3 million, and that gives us some leverage of being able to stabilizate stabilize the reserves.

And then the most important is that it the reduction in the taxes levied in property taxes is 28.9 million dollars in 2027 for our citizens.

I think every single one of us hears from citizens about the burden of property taxes, but we also heard today that we want continuation of services and we want to make sure that our budget is stabilized in the future.

I am supportive of this proposal.

This would also, if this were to move forward, it would take a vote of the citizens, which I think is also important when we're moving forward with this consideration.

So, quick question for the manager.

Let's say we have a few months to investigate this to see if this makes sense for the body as a whole.

If we were to, let's say they bring this up in October or November regarding us voting on putting this on the ballot.

Could that be on the ballot by spring of 2026, which allow us to have capture by the time we face maybe any challenges, allow stabilization, and be able to reduce the mill levy for citizens.

I believe that's the case based on our preliminary understanding of the the current state law and how and when special elections can be called.

Okay, and another quick question.

I know when we had originally talked about 30% of estimated revenue from sales tax would actually come from outside of their community, correct?

Correct.

So that means right now citizens outside of our community are using Wichita services when they're driving on our infrastructure, our roads, they're using a lot of the amenities in the city and they're not paying anything for it.

Meanwhile, I could go to Goddard, I could go to Andover, I could go to Mays, and I'm gonna pay in a sales tax in those communities.

But if they come to Wichita, they're not paying a sales tax.

I think this would help reduce the burden on Wichita taxpayers, be able to help encourage us to be able to stabilize our reserves.

So I'm supportive of looking at this.

Um and I want to hear from my colleagues if they would be interested because I think this is a win-win for challenges we're facing in the future, reduce property taxes for individuals, and also make sure that we maintain current service levels and be able to preserve that moving forward.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, I would definitely support that also.

Either half percent or one percent.

It would allow us to reduce property taxes, but also cash fund uh public safety, police stations, fire stations, and everyone knows if you pay cash for a house, you don't have that debt over a period of 20-30 years, and that would also help our budget in future years.

So very much in favor of it, and do want to reiterate that up to 30 percent of that come from outside of Wichita.

Um, all the bedroom communities around Wichita are using our streets, our facilities, they drive in here if they have a wreck, our police department responds to it, our fire department is responds to it, and uh they're not they're not paying for that.

So I think it'd be more equitable and it would reduce reduce the burden for Wichita taxpayers.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um I am supportive of keeping the conversation going.

Of course, I would prefer to see investments in quality of life.

Also, everyone who comes to Sedger County does pay an extra one percent tax, and we get half of that for roads and bridges.

So that that part is covered, but the other things I think that would be good.

But happy to have the conversation.

More interested in quality of life things and other projects.

Um because the projects that we are talking about in regard to public safety already in the CIP, but I think we could make more investments in quality of life.

And one great example happened earlier today on a panel when we were talking.

It was a few of us talking to Leadership Wichita, and the superintendent was there, and he talked about how beneficial it was when investments from ARPA were helped used to get the wow, just forgot the name of it.

Future ready center done quicker.

So that was a five-year plan that happened in one year, and now you see that benefit.

So when you make investments like that really quickly, you can really improve things for the community.

And I think there's a lot of strategic investments we can make.

Supportive of this, but again, would love to have the conversation and add in some quality of life amenities as well as a sunset to the sales tax.

Councilmember Ho Heisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

I I agree with Councilmember Johnson on a lot of his points.

Um, I'm interested in continuing the conversation.

Um but you did council member Glasscock mentioned a lot of people are struggling right now.

Um so I think a lot of that is dependent on whether or not we can get the um food sales tax exempted on the state level.

That that's something avoid taxing necessities, avoid taxing the working people and the poor who are just barely making it as it is.

So it's an interesting conversation.

We can continue, but that is something that I definitely would have problems with if again, because um the state did eliminate their uh sales tax on food, but it still held us to it.

So municipalities, all of ours uh food is still being taxed at one percent sales tax.

So uh let's see how that conversation goes with the state.

They've never let us down before, right?

All right, thank you.

Councilmember Glasscock.

Thank you to Councilmember Hoheisel's point.

I would support lobbying the state to make sure that uh food would be excluded from any sales tax.

I see no further comments.

With that, I will move to receive public comment on the 2026 proposed budget and the 2026-2035 proposed capital improvement program.

Repeal existing ordinances and approve first reading of ordinances to implement the budget with second reading set for Tuesday, August 26, 2025.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Approved that pursuant to section 204090, Mayor Woo's travel expenses as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend the Kansas correction.

The League of Kansas Municipalities annual conference in Overland Park, Kansas, October 9th and 10th, 2025 for the purpose of representing the city of Wichita consistent with AR 3.1 be approved upon return from travel.

Actual expenses shall be reported to the controller's office.

This travel again is because I am a board member of the League of Kansas municipalities representing the largest city in the state of Kansas.

I will do that.

I will move to approve uh the travel for Mayor Woo as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend the League of Kansas Municipalities Annual Conference in Overland Park, Kansas, October 9th, 10th, 2025 for the purpose of representing the city of Wichita consistent with AR 3.1 be approved upon return from travel.

Actual expenses shall be reported to controller's office.

Can you read that again?

I can't.

Second motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Council member appointments and comments.

Council members, any appointments?

Councilmember Tuttle.

Thank you.

I would like to appoint Braden McCurdy to the Affordable Housing Review Board.

I would also like to appoint Nick Stabe with for the design council.

And I would like to appoint Larry Burke Sr.

to the Cedric County Community Corrections Advisory Board.

I will move to approve the recommended appointments.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next sorry, council members.

Any comments?

Councilmember Hoheisen.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just a shout out to PD and their work with the um working in collaboration with the sheriff's office and the federal officers as well.

Um some major bust a couple of days ago.

Um we see it all the time on the streets.

This is a major step forward to cutting off the flow of especially meth into our community.

So thank you to the to WPD and everybody who worked on that one.

Uh second point.

Uh we will be having a district breakfast this Saturday.

The best breakfast in the city of Wichita.

9:30 in the morning at the Christian Faith Center.

Uh special guest, Gary Jansen.

He will be talking about uh sewage treatment plant BNR upgrades and odor control.

So love to have a full house out there again.

It's uh great breakfast, 9:30.

I'll be coming from a neighborhood cleanup right before that.

So I'm sure I'll be bringing some of that odor with me.

So council member Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Uh, actually, this Saturday, the best breakfast is gonna be in District One with Chief Snow and Deputy Chief Duff over at Atwater at 9:30.

So that that'll be the best one.

Also want to shout out neighborhood night out next week.

Um, I think district one, when I count it, I think we have 14 parties to go to.

I will try to get there to all of them.

We don't normally make all of them, but we will get there, eat as many hamburgers and hot dogs as possible.

But looking forward to getting out to the community for that.

Um, and then also we're gonna have a WPD town hall on August 19th at the center, which is like 11th in Minneapolis.

So that will be at 6 p.m.

until 8 p.m.

Hope to see you at all of those.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to ask the city manager if we could maybe possibly have a workshop, maybe September, October on second light and how it relates to housing and what's being done all the way from the actual what's being done to uh the marketing and media for it.

I think the meeting this morning was very interesting and enlightening.

I I think that information be good for all of council members and the public.

I will tag along that um request by also asking for an update regarding the ordinance on illegal camping and the amount of um the amount of trash as well as uh orders that have been placed through the report and issue app.

We need to see that data, and I think it would be a good time to see it in full.

Uh it was implemented earlier this year, and so I think that we have at least half a year's worth of information that uh can be shared during that workshop.

And lastly, oh counts uh Vice Mayor Johnston.

Just to tag on to that, too.

I don't think anybody wants to just sweep the streets and throw everybody into the Mac.

Uh there has to be a housing plan and this morning, great plans, pilot plans on getting people directly to housing because everybody doesn't want to go to a shelter.

So I I think there's some good alternatives they're working on.

Uh housing department's doing a great job.

Sally and her team doing a great job.

Um seems to be successful, but we'll have to add more data on it.

But I think an update on that would be really good too.

And uh it interfaces directly with enforcement.

But uh, we have to make sure we're ready for enforcement, and we're just not throwing everybody in the into the Mac.

So I see no further comments.

I'm just gonna say that today was National Purple Heart Day, and the Veterans Memorial Park had its first commemoration at um the park itself.

And so one quick um question I have really, it's for the city manager.

I know that it's a partnership with veterans.

Uh parks helps maintain this park as well.

Um, but I have seen uh that it does still need some love, including uh graffiti removal on some of the plaques.

So I would really like to see that park, the veterans memorial park um really taken care of, especially when it comes to some graffiti on the plaques.

I see no further comments.

With that, I will move to adjourn.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

The two people who would like to stay can stay, but it passes five to two.

Have a nice evening.

I know.