Good morning, Wichita, and welcome to all of you here to City Hall.

We'll call the meeting to order.

With us this morning is Reverend Ben Staley of Chapel Hill United Methodist Church to provide our incation.

Following that invocation, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance.

I invite you to stand for both.

Let's pray together.

We thank you for allowing us freedom and peace to be able to come here today and to move about freely.

And we pray for those living with fear in the midst of oppression and war, especially in the Middle East, and we pray for peace.

We give you thanks for all that you provide for us, all that we have, food and shelters, social services, and all the help that's needed.

Help us to be responsive to the needs of the poor and homeless and those in need of care.

With thanks, we give you thanks for our teachers and our school administrators.

We pray for them and our parents and children as school begins this week.

We give you thanks for our safety and pray for those who protect us, and we pray that you would guide our police and firemen.

First responders, and thank you for our city leaders, our mayor and city council members.

We ask that you would give them a heart for the city and the mind of Christ in order to lead us with integrity and courage and wisdom and love for our people.

Help us all to give to others with love and generosity as you have given to us, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the reporting for which it stands.

Thank you, Pastor Staley.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the first item?

Yes, Mayor, I was just made aware of a proclamation this morning.

Uh the proclamation for today is Women in Sports Broadcasting Day.

Using their voices and leadership to elevate athletics and inspire audiences in Wichita has been home to pioneering women in sports media, including Mikhail Adia, the first female sports director for CAKETV.

Kendra Douglas, a former Wichita sports anchor and current NBA sideline reporter.

Simone Smith, a Wichita-based anchor and founder of Girls Talk Game mentorship program.

Whereas based on an analysis of the most recent staff directories from Wichita's major television stations, CAKE, KWCH, and KSNW, women occupy approximately 37.5% of sports broadcasting roles, highlighting a persistent gender imbalance and the need to support and amplify women's voices in local sports media.

Whereas increased visibility of women in sports media challenges outdated norms and encourages girls to pursue careers in journalism and athletics, fostering a more inclusive and equitable future for Wichita.

Whereas while women in Kansas earn approximately 84 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to U.S.

Census data reported by the Kansas Reflector, continued efforts to close the pay gap are essential to ensuring that women in sports broadcasting in Wichita are valued, respected, and given equal opportunity to thrive.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim August 18th, 2025 as women in sports broadcasting day.

I want to say thank you to Mayor Wu and the rest of the council for recognizing Women in Sports Broadcasting Day.

This day will be more than just any old day on the calendar.

It's a celebration for the women who have used their voices in the past and their present for their passion and their leadership to tell stories of our teams, our area athletes, and our community.

I'm so proud to stand here as Ms.

Kansas USA and as a women in sports broadcasting here in Wichita, but more importantly, to be with other women who are in sports broadcasting and the broadcast industry who have made their mark in the field.

I'm honored to stand alongside these incredible women, Ananda Smith, Rachel Holland, and Michaela Day, and they all continue to break barriers and set an example for what is possible.

This day is a reminder that visibility matters, mentorship matters, and representation matters as well.

And when young girls see us on their screens covering sports with authority and with excellence, they see what's possible for themselves.

So thank you for helping us continue to push for equity, opportunity, and the future of women's voices in sports media to show that it's not an exception, it's the norm.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Public agenda.

The public agenda allows for up to five speakers to have five minutes each to address the council.

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 speaker's remaining time to speak.

Order and rules of decorum will be observed.

The first speaker for today is Crystal Dozier.

Presentation on the City Archaeologist Office for Wichita, Kansas Good Morning.

As I've stated, my name is Dr.

Crystal Dozier, and I wear many hats.

I am an assistant profess or associate professor and chair in the Department of Anthropology at Wichita State.

There, I direct the Archaeology of Food Lab.

And the reason why I'm here today is I serve as city archaeologist from Wichita, Kansas.

You all may not know, but this city archaeologist office was originated in 1977 as a collaboration between Wichita State and the City of Wichita to promote the protection of the archaeological and cultural resources of our area.

The cultural resources of our area would be the many archaeological sites and historical resources that document the over 14,000 year history of Wichita.

To date, the city archaeologist office has identified more than 65 archaeological sites in the municipal area and hundreds of archaeological sites in southern Kansas.

It is one of the earliest collaborations of this kind of an archaeological office situated for and in support of municipal government.

And it has gone through many iterations.

Since COVID and when I took over as city archaeologist, I was really interested in ensuring that the modern version of this office would be able to support the needs of our city and our many residents.

In this preliminary study, he talked to members of municipal, city and county government, as well as indigenous tribal leaders, who identified that the use of this office is best to promote the legal requirements of cultural resource management, such as Section 106 and the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires that all federal funds that are used in development do consider their development impacts on archaeological resources, and as a centralized place to support the knowledge of our thousands of year history here in Kansas.

This is needs to be done through open and clear communication, which is why I'm here today to let you all know that we exist as a resource, both for programmatic development as well as for public outreach and knowledge.

And that is pretty much it.

I am here to take questions if you have any.

Thank you, Ms.

Dozier.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate all the work that you are doing.

So one question how is your office supporter?

You work at Wichita State.

Is that a part of the mill levy that we give to Wichita State or so?

When the office was first created in the in the late 70s, it did support a graduate student in the role of city archaeologist.

Since then, the needs of uh review require a qualified, federally qualified archaeologist, which is something that only a faculty member can support.

Uh currently our department doesn't receive any part of the mill levy funds.

Uh so this is something I do out of the goodness of my heart uh in support of the really important needs uh to make sure our history is known.

Awesome.

So if we I guess uh questions about different parts of the city, we would come to you and look at any archaeological I cannot say that archaeological significance.

Right.

So uh there's two different things that I think uh might be of interest to this committee.

Uh the first thing is if you need advice in regards to compliance needs, uh particularly for cultural resource management.

Um my office can provide archaeological review to satisfy those reviews.

Uh we employ students, which provides hands-on applied learning opportunities at a highly reduced cost.

So to date the office is provided under my tenure, five or six archaeological reviews, saving local, municipal, and county governments thousands of dollars from going to a third party outside.

At the same time, we're supporting our local students by providing them the opportunity for to learn how to work in the industry.

The second thing that might come up is say you find archaeological materials on your property and you want to learn more.

The Archaeological Association of South Central Kansas.

Um we welcome all to attend and learn more.

Awesome.

One more question, and this may be a dumb one.

No.

Um, so we have to do environmental studies sometime.

Is that a part of what your office does, or is that separate?

It's a very similar process, right?

So an environmental impact review follows a very similar permitting process as archaeological review.

So we don't we can't do the environmental impact components, but we can do cultural impact components.

Very often the permitting process is aligned.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yep.

Councilmember Glascock.

Doctor, I will keep my remarks very quick or very short.

I didn't know that we had city archaeologists, so thank you for um educating us from the bench today and educating the public.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just want to say thank you for your work on behalf of the city.

I know we worked with you on the um looking for the plain view project.

Um, some interesting finds out there.

I never knew how particular we can get with uh some of the findings that we have.

So I just want to express my gratitude for the work you've done and the work that you will continue to do with us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual?

Jim Underwood, multimodal, the inherent inherent liability.

Mayor, members of council, I thank you for allowing me to address you today.

I did make a slight error when I applied on the uh petition.

It should be multimodal as used in Wichita.

Uh Kansas totally lacks a geographical feature for one form of transportation.

With a lack of concentration of people, we also eliminate another one and greatly restrict the third.

So it's not quite multimodal.

It's variety of wheeled transportation is used in Wichita.

Um as the fourth tier of government, we're all subject to federal, state, local, and city.

You will know that for 250 years, it's been standard that a lower tier of government cannot override an upper tier of government.

Therefore, when we look at things that are passed, we look at their jurisdictional boundaries.

When it comes to sidewalks, they actually end at the curb.

They have a crossing on them, outlined by the state.

It is required that under the law of the land in the last 40 years, ADA, we now put ramps in at those sidewalk interconnections with streets and highways.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are using those wheeled vehicles to go up and down those ramps.

The liability incurs if you encourage them to do this.

On the sidewalks, you can encourage them to do whatever you want.

But at the highways and streets, you can't make a non-licable vehicle legal.

It's that simple.

That's the first liability.

The second liability would come if somebody rolled down one of those under power or gravity and had an accident.

The driver that hit them could have litigation against the city and you.

I also found a knockedover marker for an Ida Romig right next to them, who died in 1892 at age 24.

And while the wind might have knocked over a tree that then knocked over her stone, the wind nor the tree caused the tire tracks in or the dirt pile.

And while it is possible that it was a new burial, an upturned stone would not have been left.

Also, unrelated to the storm, the mausoleum now has a broken window, a broken door.

And in section five, there's a broken fence due to a tree that I can confirm fell months ago.

That tree has been removed, but the underbrush is still covering several stones.

There are roads all over the cemetery that are bottomed out, including uh right in front of Governor Stanley's.

And the only ones without current damage were paid for by a private donor so that she could get to her own family.

The list of damages out there goes on and on.

We know that the city has confirmed that there is a trust fund that has adequate liquidity to repair the roads, install a timed gate, and possibly put in cameras.

So we thank you for that, sincerely.

We're also in agreement that the state and federal laws prohibit anyone who is not family to touch what is private property without their approval, which of course is what we do.

We get a hold of families, we work with families, and with their written consent, we take care of their gravestones.

So what I'm asking for today is that the city consider funding a cemetery department.

Not only to monitor the cemeteries, because there are four, but also to communicate those needs to the city's various departments in a timely manner, and then to verify that the work, such as the removal and grinding of trees, road repairs, and mausoleum work has been done correctly and to the family's satisfaction.

We know there's no money, there's no people, there's no time.

But please don't rely solely on a volunteer entity such as ours with limited funding to be the only ones finding major damages needing necessary repairs at Highland.

Please, for once in this 156-year-old cemetery's existence, let's show the city exactly how much respect Highland Cemetery deserves by hiring dedicated staff for that purpose.

I look forward to working with you in the future, as I intend to do with the MOU that is pending currently.

And I thank you for that opportunity.

Thank you, Barb.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Barb, for bringing this up into our attention.

Um Reggie, I don't know if you're the person to ask, or maybe Bob.

What all are eligible expenses for our cemetery fund?

I'm gonna ask and ask Reggie to come up.

We've had some discussions since Barb last spoke to the council and done some additional work and looking at our trust fund as well as the eligible expenses.

Okay.

So we did look into what some of those options are with the trust fund to be able to cover expenses for improvements there at the park, and anything that's related to the actual infrastructure, the roadway, the looking at cameras, access to the park, or things that will be eligible expenses, uh would be anything that's related to the actual grave sites or anything of that nature because they're private property.

Okay, so there's so if you have a fundamental when you guys are working on some of the issues you're working on.

Do you work to do to work with the private property there?

The gravestones.

Typically, when we work uh through the MOU that we have with Barb and her group, we normally coordinate with any repairs that they need to make to the actual private property itself.

Uh they actually reach out to them to see to get permission before they can actually be done, and then we support them on those efforts.

And one of the things that we've done now is working real closely with public works that we're looking at how we can uh look at the facility itself and see where we can make improvements and then scheduling work days each year that we're going out to make some of those things that are identified by Barb or either any other uh family members who have uh people who are there at that location.

Okay, do we have any staff?

I don't think we would have any staff totally dedicated to Leanne Sack, who is our person attire and supervisor that maintained that supervises the cleanup for the crew.

We have contractors that go in and does the mowing, and then Barb has worked real closely with Lee Ann.

Uh we're reporting things that come uh that needs to be addressed or even uh directly with me.

Okay, I appreciate it.

Thanks for giving a little bit of background there and what steps are we taking now?

Is it just more communication?

Getting these things ready, the work orders ready.

Yes, just more communication working with Bob.

We put something in place where we're meeting quarterly to go through look at things that she needs to get addressed.

We're also looking at options now for security as well as a potential gates on site.

And one of the things that we're doing as we move out putting new security on in place, we reach out to PD to have a subtext done to make sure that we're putting cameras and things in the correct place to make sure that we get the best uses for when we make an investments.

Okay, and how many cemeteries are we that we oversee with the trust fund?

Uh this particular one is just for Highland.

Uh there are uh three other ones that are in the uh city preview that we are responsible for maintaining as well.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Barbara, I just wanted to say um thank you for all of your hard work.

Um I did go meet Barb um out at the cemetery on Sunday morning, and it was um a little overwhelming to see some of the um damage that had been done.

So um I also want to say thank you for coming a couple months ago to bring all of this to our attention.

Um, since my time on council, I had never had anybody um come talk to me about it.

So it's been something that we have all um been able to kind of look into and learn more about and see where there's some gaps that uh we can work together to fill.

So I just appreciate all of your advocacy, and I know that the families do as well.

Um, and we'll continue to keep working on it.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilmember Glasgow.

Thank you, Mayor.

I don't want to um repeat a lot of what council uh member Ballard said, but just thank you for preserving Wichita's history and caring about our history.

I learned a lot from the trip, and I would encourage residents to uh maybe take you up on an offer to go out there and learn a little bit about Wichita's history because I think it was incredibly impactful.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you again, Barb.

And I know that um Dr.

Dozier just spoke as the very first individual of you guys can connect or have already connected, continue that collaboration as a lot of the things that uh we want in our community require more than just one individual or one organization.

So thank you again for your hard work and your volunteers.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual?

Jan Kanabe, zoning case 2025-30.

My name is Jan Kanabi.

I live on 8303 South Cypress Street.

Good morning, and thank you for allowing me to address my concerns with you about zone change 2025-30.

If I share information with you that you already know, please bear with me.

I want to give you a full picture of the concerns of my neighborhood and the development of a residential area to the west of our homes.

In the minutes of the MAPC from July 10th, there is a statement that the subject site will have access to East 39th Street South, a paved two-lane arterial.

This is the crux of our neighborhood's concern.

Although that is identified as a paved road, the reality is it was a dirt road with asphalt lifts placed on top of it a few years ago.

There are no shoulders, and in the eight years I have lived in the neighborhood, it was resurfaced once about three years ago, and is already deteriorating on the edges with the current traffic use.

I believe this is a code composition asphalt that is not designed for permanent roads.

There is no information about whether there would be an upgrade to this street, and if so, who would be responsible for that upgrade and the maintenance that the use of heavy construction equipment and trucks required to build the subdivision would cause.

However, he also said, and I quote the details of the access points will be on the development drawings that are a part of the plat that will be solely approved by Wichita, end quote.

In addition, in the minutes of the District 2 advisory board with Rocky Ford LLC on July 14th, Councilperson Johnson asked if 39th Street was in the city limits, and the answer given was this property is in the city limits.

It does not speak to the street itself.

And in the annexation map, it looks as if the street was not annexed by Wichita.

Currently, 39th Street South is the access road for those of us who live north of it in the Prairie Breeze Estate subdivision and south of it in five-acre lots.

Every day I see people walking and riding their bikes on this road.

With the amount of traffic the subdivision will produce, that will become a hazardous thing to do.

In fact, there was a fatality on the northeast corner of Rockin' 39th Street a few years ago that is currently marked by a cross.

Many of the people who would be most impacted by this change were not able to have a voice in protesting it because of the 1,000 feet limit of their residences to the proposed subdivision.

And if that restriction applies to the zoning change notifications, they would not have been aware of the application.

And because we do not live in the city of Wichita and have no councilperson for our area, we have little say in what decisions Wichita's government will make.

Yet this has strong potential to become a hardship.

We will have to bear daily.

Additional possibilities of harm for pedestrians and quite possibly increased taxes for us to maintain this road.

My strongest request is that the subdivision does not have access to 39th Street South, but instead would be routed through the newly zoned commercial property, also owned by Rocky Ford LLC that faces Rock Road.

In the event this is not the decision made, then I would instead request that the zone change for zone 2025-30 of single family homes to two family residential homes be denied by this council to help reduce traffic on our road.

Further, I would ask that some stipulation would be made that Rocky Ford LLC would be responsible to upgrade 39th Street South, as they are the ones who would be profiting financially from it and will be causing the damage due to their construction equipment and the number of residents who live there.

I am seeking the answers for two questions.

Will the decision be made?

When will the decision be made about whether 39th Street South will be the access point for that subdivision?

And who will be in control of maintenance and traffic control adjacent to the property of 39th seat strout, excuse me, 39th Street South.

Is this a responsibility of Wichita?

Thank you.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

And we'll get with you on the other two questions you have.

Okay.

I did just want one point of clarification.

Um I guess 39th Street would be a main arterial.

Is that paid for by specials, or is that something that would be written into our CIP?

Paul Guns on Councilman Public Works and Utilities.

Uh Councilmember Hohousell, 39th Street between Rock and Webb, as she stated, is paved already.

Um and we have not uh annexed that roadway yet within the city of Wichita.

Um as she mentioned, there are five-acre lots on the south side of 39th Street.

Um so I don't know.

Typically, we wouldn't annex roadway until we the city has both sides annex both you know the north properties and the south properties.

So I'm not saying that forthcoming anytime soon.

So we would not program that in the CIP at this time.

Okay, and if in the future we do annex it, it would be um in the CIP and not specials.

Correct.

Yes, since it's already paved.

Okay, and that would look at maybe doing uh uh concrete road there potentially or urban gutter anyway.

Most likely curb and gutter, whether it's asphalt or concrete, we wouldn't know.

But right now is it ditches?

It is open ditches, yes.

Okay, thank you for that.

Yes.

Paul, since you're at the microphone, she had two specific questions that I think she actually referenced Councilmember Tuttle, not Councilmember Johnson.

Um could you address the two questions she asked?

Regarding the access points on the 39th Street, I think was one of the questions.

One of them was uh I thought it was Councilperson Johnson from the notes about that um that meeting that he asked if that was City of Wichita, which I've already answered that.

Right, it is not, and I don't question yeah, the access points.

It seems like I had seen a sketch plat of that proposed subdivision, but I do not recall um where the access points were on 39th Street and or if they had access points onto Rock Road.

Um, I have talked to the developer of um Rocky Ford LLC because when Rocky Ford went in, Rock Road was not improved for a southbound left turn lane, um, but he has inquired about that to, you know, if this development uh moved forward um whether um we would ask for us or and or the Cedric County would ask for a southbound left turn to serve this residential development.

So I think he is open to that when I have had discussions with him.

And what was the second question?

When will the that I don't know?

That might be a question for Mr.

Waidel with the planning director as to when that uh platform moving forward.

Sorry.

Yeah, in terms of the uh application to plat the property, we do not um looking at GIS on our records, we do not have an application at this time to plat the property.

So that will be as part of the plating process, and that process uh will go through the planning commission, and then ultimately any reserves uh will be dedicated and be asked that the city council dedicate those.

But uh planning is different than zoning, the final action is taken by the MAPC except for the dedications, which is done at the governing body.

Thank you very much.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual?

Jeanette Peterson, Wichita Animal Shelter.

Uh Jeanette Peterson, uh 3522 North Lake Ridge Court, and I'm just a regular citizen, the one to come today.

Um, six months ago, I began looking into the animal crisis in Wichita.

The more I learned about what was going on at WAS, the more my concerns grew.

When I met with Emily Hearst, one of the first questions I asked was if she believed in and wanted to see changes made at the shelter.

She said one of the reasons she was hired was to make some of the positive changes needed.

Emily and I have met a couple of times and communicated through email and text many times.

She has been very willing to respond to my questions and has listened to and openly discussed my concerns.

However, on June 24th, in a public meeting, Chief Sullivan stated that he thought we should get rid of the shelter and animal control altogether.

To everyday citizens and voters like me, this brings into question whether there is really an interest by our leadership in making changes at all and leaves us with little confidence that changes to a broken system will even be considered much less enacted.

The second big concern is the euthanization rate and treatment of the animals.

In June, 26% of the animals entering WAS were euthanized.

That would be an equivalent of two council members.

Those that are left will sit in a concrete floor caged with no walks, no toys or enrichment, nowhere but their cage to use as a bathroom, and no understanding of why they are treated this way.

Then they will be judged for being scared, nervous, and not reacting perfectly to this foreign world they have just been thrown into and then put on the euthanization list because of their reaction.

I see several posts a day where people are keeping stray animals in their homes while they look for the owners themselves or advise others to just let the animals go if they can't help, because it is it will not survive more than three days at the shelter before they are euthanized.

More times than I can count, I have heard our shelter referred to as the death chamber.

As a tax-funded entity, this is an organization that we should be to be be able to be proud of and to be able to participate in.

We have no volunteer program to help with, no foster program available, no programs to promote and advertise available animals for adoption.

In the end, it impairs euthanization is the preferred method rather than taking advantage of these other options that seem to work very well for other municipalities and surrounding cities and states.

I'm aware of the agreement we have with KHS for years, and I'm aware of the financial ties we have with them, and we pay a lot of it a lot every month for services.

However, times have changed and they appear to no longer be able to or willing or able to provide the level of service required.

We need to consider a new system that better suits our needs and has been proven to work in communities around us.

We want to have programs like the city of Tulsa, where faced with a hoarding case, the community worked together to save animals rather than our current method of simply euthanizing enough animals to make room for the new incoming ones.

My third concern is the budget for the shelter.

On Thursday, I repeatedly heard about the 461 people that answered their survey used as the basis for our budget simulator.

That is one-tenth of one percent of the people in Wichita.

I have yet to talk to anyone that even knows about this survey.

Two weeks ago, I started a petition to gauge people's interest in reform.

It's titled Implement Humane Reform at Wichita Animal Shelter.

Well, there is no time to share details of this.

You can find it at change.org backslash Wichita Animal Shelter.

After only posting it a couple of places so far and without any promotional efforts yet, there have already been over 340 signatures.

Is expected to receive many more once the promotional efforts are enacted.

In closing, we need to do more to make the shelter one that our citizens can be proud of and be given the opportunity to participate in to work harder to improve the conditions and treatment of the animals and to make every effort to save every life we can rather than using euthanization as a quick and convenient means of dealing with the problem and to give Emily the resources and support needed to enact the changes she was hired for.

If we do, our community, our citizens, and our moral values will be strengthened.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Bowler.

Thank you, Mayor.

Emily, I see you back there.

Can I ask you a couple questions?

Hi guys.

Hi, thank you for being here.

Um can you address some of her concerns?

I know you guys seem to have had good conversation, but um I know you have a very tough job, but um, yeah, if you could just address any of her concerns that she mentioned, or how can we help you?

I mean, I personally in District Six, I'm sure my colleagues do too hear a lot about the animal shelter, and you know, I want it to be successful, um, and I think you're doing a great job.

Um, how can we help it be better, I guess?

Sure, absolutely.

Um, so I think that it can be our shelter dynamics are a bit unique in the way that our city was is operating.

So the Kansas Humane Society was a rescue first and then a shelter, and they lobbied the city of Wichita, oh, 15 or 20 years ago for this shared campus in order to for us to be able to save more lives.

And um I really appreciate Jeanette's advocacy for pets as well as um all of those that help us care for animals in our community.

Um and so, not to discount any of the things that you're saying, but it sometimes the confusion between the types of shelters and the operations between them leads people to believe that they should support one versus the other when really when we support them together.

It that is what makes that the purpose of how that agreement should work.

And so, for example, um, we were created as a stray facility, so that so animals should only be in our facility for a short period of time.

That's the way the building was designed.

We have um, and then the Kansas Humane Society's building, for example, is designed very differently than ours, while they have both have runs.

Um, they just have different resources, and so animals shouldn't be with us for an extended period of time without significant modifications to both the facilities or the staffing.

Not to say that we can't make improvements with what we have, but there are limitations within that, and it's not a long-term facility.

Whereas the Kansas Humane Society has different um amenities where animals can stay there for a month or more and risk and have basically what is considered humane treatment, regular exercise access to different things.

They have different laundry facilities for toys and blankets and things like that.

Um, and so effectively, when somebody supports the Kansas Humane Society or even one of our local rescue groups, um, they are really supporting the animals that are within our shelter.

So one of the reasons we don't have a foster program is because of our partnership with the Kansas Humane Society and with our rescue groups.

So Wichita Animal Action League, there's a lot of things like uh pug rescues and Pyrenees Rescues and SPALs and all of these different places that have wonderful um foster programs, and they are all in need of foster animal fosters right now.

And so every time a foster family opens up at one of our partners, that effectively takes an ant can take an animal from Wichita Animal Services.

And uh it's not it doesn't work quite the same with volunteers, but the more support those nonprofits have, the more we can get the animals in our shelter networked and out.

And so that's really where that public partnership comes.

Um we are still exploring a volunteer program within Wichita Animal Services.

Um again, our our building wasn't designed for that, and we have a little bit of uh like um issues around like monitoring the public and keeping it safe and things like that, but it's not off of the table.

We also have a lot of other projects that we're working on that we want to get short up before bringing that one out just because that could cause the volunteers could call issue could cause problems if we don't make sure that we are get cleaned up in some other areas.

I'm trying to think what are some uh what were some enrichment of the animals.

Oh, enrichment of the animals.

That is one of the things that we um we're in need of, but it you guys as our city council have a huge uh task in front of you to make sure that all of our cities needs and amenities are are taken care of.

So um I I it's it's just something that is it's a budgetary um staffing issue and supplies and having those kinds of things to um to be able to access and again we we'll do the best that we can with what we have.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Townshend member Hohysel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um thank you, Emily.

Uh first um Jeanette, uh the change.org.

Um that comes up with recommendations as well.

Or is it just a survey?

Um no, it well, it's it's mainly just saying what is um it's just a petition saying this is the things that like the would like to be seen changed.

Yeah, so I guess it does, yeah, that's what you're saying.

It it uh it was like saying that you know what goes on at the animal shelter and what people would like to see change.

The biggest thing is is you get on social media and anybody in the public, like we all everybody is saying don't take it to the shelter.

It's just a kill place, keep it in your home, let it go.

This is the way the community sees it.

And we um I just wanted to see how many other people out there were interested.

So I wrote this petition just to say um, you know, there are a lot of deaths at the shelter, um some things that I had seen online that people had what their concerns were.

And a lot of people online, like I've maybe read five good things online about the shelter, maybe.

There is n and I granted people usually tend to I get people tend to say the negative before they say the positive.

So it was just written mainly to see are there more people interested out there, and a lot of people will not come talk.

Like this scares me to death.

I don't like talking in public.

This scares me to death.

And so uh normal citizens will not usually come talk, but it was a way for citizens.

I heard a lot of people saying, is there a petition we can sign?

Is there something we can sign?

So it was a way just to kind of gauge like how interested the can the community is in a change, and it is, and I understand why Emily's saying that it wasn't designed for that, but since COVID and since things have happened, we have a lot more animals now.

And so what has worked for 10, 15, 20 years isn't gonna work now.

And we have very strict rules on which rescues we use.

Fine, I'm not gonna get into that, don't care about that.

But if we're not gonna work with certain rescues, then we better be contacting every rescue in this nation trying to get our animals out.

But I don't believe that's happening.

Um so it's just wanting the community wanting more for to be done to save these animals.

Well, I I appreciate that.

Um you're doing fine, so thank you for coming and exercising your first amendment rights to tell us off and the negative before the positive.

Yeah, it's government.

So that's what we hear.

Um Emily.

Yes.

Um how long is the contract with KHS?

When does that come up?

Um it's not we don't okay.

So um there's a couple layers to that.

So um when we built the two facilities next to each other for the campus, um, that was a memorandum of understanding of operations.

It's not a contract, um, nobody's really bound or required by it.

It's more of this was the original concept and design of what we wanted to do, and these were our goals of what to do with it.

Obviously, some things have changed as the animal needs of our community have changed, as the veterinary community has changed and so forth.

Um and so that isn't really it's not it's just indefinite, um, it's not really up for renewal.

We also do have um contracts with them uh specifically for veterinary care.

And so that can be with anybody.

It the idea was is because we do have our animals are essentially their animals in most cases, and so it it behooves them to be our veterinary of uh purchase essentially because when we used to have uh a different clinic do it, the clinic um would have to come and drive to our facility, do exams that day, provide whatever things that they provided and then leave.

Whereas we do have um better access to veterinary care and they understand shelter medicine, which is a specialized um area of medicine in veterinary care.

So that um I believe uh is up for renewal next year.

Um I think that they did renew the op they have the forgive my unknown options, yeah.

Yeah, the option to renew and did that this year, and then it's up again next year.

Okay.

Um could we get a list of possible improvements that you might have your eye on down at the shelter?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, um, and then um you guys had a big hoarding case here recently, did you not?

Um no, we didn't.

I don't know.

That was kind of um rumor, I guess.

Okay.

I'm not sure.

There um we regular really pretty regularly deal with uh hoarding cases.

I would say under maybe 30 animals.

Um, and that can be cats or dogs or a mixture of the two, and it can be anything from police confiscations that's unrelated to the animals, but there happen to be animals at the property, or something uh around neglect or hoarding of the animals.

Like I said, we have we actually do have a really um great network of people and rescues who who come to that.

For example, I think that WALL um just handled a pretty large hoarding case for cats, and they were able with they contacted us, we reached out to some of our other partners, and instead of bringing, I think it was 30 some cats to the shelter, they were able to find fosters, network, and triage, and I think they ended up bringing two.

And that one was a couple weeks ago.

I don't know what this what this other one was, but I did see that in social media also.

Um, and so we we we have a strong network.

It that doesn't mean that it can't have improvement and that we can't invite more people to participate it because we are facing a really um intense overpopulation across the country, and the more people we can get to be a part of it, the better.

Okay, and what's the employment status down there?

Are you guys having easier time filling some of these positions?

Yes, um, I should have all of my uh full staff, all my employ well, excuse me.

All of I should be fully staffed um by next week is with what the last hire.

Okay, um just the last point I'd just like to make is you know, we're up here to make long-term decisions, uh decisions that can help further down the road, and one thing I do like to encourage is spay and neuter.

Absolutely.

Um spay and neuter with the community, um, especially a lot of these neighborhoods.

I think we have something coming up where um from my district with high-up funds, we're going to um put it be putting some money out there in the community for spaying and neutering as well, and that's a long-term solution.

So that's something I do think that we need to focus on here because it will pay dividends further down the road.

If we had more of this seven or eight years ago, we would not be in this situation that we're in right now.

So that is something that I think we need to keep in mind.

So thank you guys.

Absolutely.

And I would just add that we do have a lot of affordable um and low cost and income qualifying spay neuter um resources for the community, just so people know that they can access that.

I'm working on building a resource center at the um shelter as well that will have it online, but a lot of those places have open and put constant open appointments, they're not over full or have um a lot of no-shows.

So again, the more we can get people out spaying neutering the pets, the sooner we can deal with our overpopulation.

City manager Layton.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I just want to say we're very fortunate that Emily is with us and she has made some exceptional changes at the uh animal shelter since she's arrived.

It's a she's running a complex business subject to a lot of regulation, and if it would be okay with the council, we could schedule a workshop presentation about animal control.

So I know that many of you receive uh concerns from residents, and maybe you hear one perspective but don't understand all the restrictions and limitations that Emily and her staff are operating under.

I'd like her also talk about what she's done to enhance the the qualifications or the work of the staff.

It's uh I think it's a great success story to date, and I know there are still critics out there, but I'd like to be able to give you a status report of where we stand and what Emily sees as a future if that would be all right with you.

I would like to see that.

Um I know that I have visited the animal shelter.

I'm actually looking at the budget right now, and it appears that the budget does continue to increase for the animal shelter piece.

Um, and so it would be uh important for the community to understand where those resources are going, which include uh animal techs that has been instrumental in helping with um the care of these animals.

So again, I would like to see the workshop.

Any other council members?

If you could put that for an upcoming workshop, that would be great.

Thank you, City Manager.

Thank you.

Thanks, Emily.

Thanks, Jeanette.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Consent agenda items one through 31.

Council members, any items to be pulled.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

I'd like to pull item 16.

Any other items, council members.

I see none.

I move to approve consent agenda items one through 31 without item number 16.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Item number 16.

Thanks, Mayor.

Due to a personal conflict of interest, I have to abstain from this vote.

May I ask uh would this be Sally regarding this item?

I'm gonna start asking uh department heads if an item is pulled to just explain this item so that folks who are watching understand why the item was pulled or what that item entailed.

Can you explain this item for the audience?

Sure.

The item is a uh funding agreement amendment with Jacobs Ladder.

Um they are a Cho community housing development organization that was awarded home funds in 2023 for the build of a single family home.

Um this item has been pulled because as there's a conflict of interest with council member Johnson.

Um the the item itself is an increase in the amount of funding from $80,520 to our project maximum of $90,000, and and uh the ability for the developer to increase the sales cost to meet uh today's demands on the price increases that have occurred since 2023.

So Sally, can you also address um I did have a concern with this item?

It was not because of a uh personal problem, but it says vandalism and theft is the reason why this item has now increased in cost.

Can you address uh this problem, which is a challenge not just to this property, but we have seen that in other properties as well.

Sure, vandalism and theft is one component of the increased cost.

There are many others.

We've seen great increase increases in costs related to labor and supplies, but vandalism happens a lot in our community, especially when properties either new construction or under renovation.

Oftentimes uh we have squatters that will get in, or the owner will see uh you know, air conditioning condensers stolen for the copper, things like that can happen, and that's why it's really important that these projects turn very quickly when we can so that they're not left vacant for very long.

Thank you very much, Sally.

Any further questions for staff?

I see none.

Um I will open it up for public comment regarding this specific item, consent agenda number 16.

I see none.

I'll bring it back to the bench and before the motion.

I just want to quickly mention that the Wichita Police Department just received a property crimes reduction task force award uh for the amount of uh stolen property that was recovered, as well as uh investigations that they've been able to close, and that's regarding property crime, which includes these types of um problems that we just addressed.

So I just wanted to say that again when it comes to property, whether it's your property or public property that the city um has the opportunity to share with the rest of the community.

Vandalism and theft just continues to be an increased costs, not just to those who own that property, but also for the public to not be able to utilize those items.

So I am grateful that the Wichita Police Department does focus on that type of task force because those are crimes that we do not want to see in the city of Wichita.

I move to approve consent agenda item number sixteen.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes six zero with one abstention.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Board of bids and contracts dated August 11th, 2025.

Morning.

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

Uh, the Board of Bids and Contracts convene yesterday, August 11th, 2025, for the following items for engineering.

For engineering, this item should look familiar.

The Arkansas River East Bank Restoration.

This was withdrew last week.

We are bringing it back to formally reject all the bids.

Awarded within the engineers estimate of 286,000 from the original bid at 280,001.

We have the 2025 outsourced pavement preservation program, CIP crosswalk improvements for PPJ Construction Incorporated, awarded within the engineers' estimate of 155,000 from the original bid of 149,625.

For purchasing, we have the 9,000 gross vehicle weight, two-wheel drive, regular cab, eight foot bed pickup truck for Rusty Eck Ford for an aggregate bid total with options selected for $51,639.

We have the interior and exterior modifications for 12 single family homes for the vendors listed for aggregate bid total of $875,7.

This is how to become a vendor with the city.

This is our purchasing calendar of events with small resource partners that we're hosting or participating in.

And this is our listing of open public opportunities out on the street today for our departments.

Questions for staff beginning with council member Ballard.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mayor.

Josh, could you back go back to page eight, please?

Sure.

Or slide.

Can you just explain the no their bids received?

Sure.

So in part this is a policy issue in that if you're hitting the cap of 50,000, you're starting to hit new procurement requirements.

So historically before COVID, if you had an informal procurement, that meant three quotes.

We would very typically see department requests for pickup trucks or vehicle purchases where we would get three quotes and we move forward.

This is an item where it hit that trigger that threshold of 50,000.

So we're doing a formal publication.

We're publishing it in the paper.

We're contracting it.

It can be a cooling effect if you have businesses that are responding to items of a certain threshold that historically they don't need to in the private sector.

Thank you.

Second.

Motion on 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 morning, Mayor.

City Council members, Paul Gunzelman, Public Works and Utilities for the record.

I have some new and revised petitions for your consideration this morning.

Per Kansas statute.

The projects will provide water and sanitary sewer improvements required for a new residential and commercial developments.

Walnut Grove edition located in District 6.

The project will provide sanitary sewer improvements for exit for an existing commercial development.

Budgets remain as previously approved.

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 I will stand for questions.

Questions for Paul.

Motion to approve petitions for public improvements.

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.

Development agreement.

Sorry, public hearing considering approval of a development agreement with Union Development Holdings LLC and issuance of multifamily residential revenue bonds.

Honorable Mayor, members of council, Troy Anderson, Assistant City Manager.

Stand before you today with a request for approval of a development agreement that includes some terms and conditions associated with residential, uh, affordable housing project located in the waterwalk redevelopment area.

So a little bit of background history.

Back in September 2002, City Witch Dot introduced into a development agreement to redevelop at that point in time, the East Bank Redevelopment District, and more specifically what later became known as the waterwalk development.

There's a 20-year history involving the waterwalk development.

But bringing that to today, Union Development Holdings LLC, you'll uh hear me refer to them as union throughout.

Now proposes developing on city-owned land within the waterwalk development, a hundred and eighty-six unit multifamily affordable housing project.

As part of the project, unions requesting issuance of multifamily residential revenue bonds and an amount not to exceed 50 million dollars to finance the project.

Union estimates the total investment for the project to be just under 50 million and will include one, two, and three bedroom unit options along with amenities for the tenants.

The project qualifies for a property tax abatement.

In addition to the request for property tax abatement, union has agreed to a 10-year pilot payment in lieu of taxes.

The estimated value of abatement for the first full year is approximately 107,000.

With that being said, less the pilot of approximately $62,000.

The net value of an abatement applicable to each of the jurisdictions is provided here on the screen in front of you.

I won't read through those.

Project is also eligible for a sales tax exemption.

The approximate value of that sales tax exemption is about 1.8 million dollars, with the city share being approximately 141,000.

A cost benefit analysis was uh performed, and um the following ratio of benefits uh have been provided as a result of that cost benefit analysis.

Again, I won't read through those, but those are available to you in the report.

So let's talk about the development agreement just a little bit.

Um approval of the development agreement will allow union to proceed with number one applying to the Kansas Housing Resource Corporation for low-income housing tax credits to assist with funding the project.

Number two, obtaining the development rights to the subject property.

Number three, pursuing all other due diligence in commencing construction on the project.

However, it withholds execution of the ground lease until such time as all of these preconditions are satisfied.

Um execution is conditioned upon adequate financing commitment, tax credit approvals, obtaining those development rights, and then successfully removing the property from the waterwalk redevelopment project area in order to achieve the property tax abatement that's being requested.

This is uh a snapshot of the history of public versus private investment in the water walk development.

Um answer any questions you might have on that down at the subtotal there shows kind of where we're at today and then what this might look like if council approves the development agreement today.

Kind of a standard disclaimer, revenue bonds are a mechanism for achieving a sales tax exemption and a property tax abatement.

City's not lending any money.

Owner developer is required to achieve all of its own financing, no taxpayer dollars are at risk.

All costs are borne by the company requesting the use of the bonds.

That being said, if approved, union agrees to pay all costs of issuing the bonds and agrees to pay the city's $2,500 annual origination fee.

Law departments reviewed the development agreement, has approved it as to form.

Any of the bond documents that require are required for the issuance of the bonds will be prepared by outside council, but ultimately law department will review and approve all of those in final form.

The recommendation uh for today is to kind of hold a public hearing but ultimately close a public hearing, approve the development agreement, authorize the necessary signatures.

And with that being said, we do have representatives here from the applicant that uh would like to introduce themselves and they have a few slides to share with you.

Good morning, Mayor Wu.

Vice Mayor Johnston, Councilmember's title, Councilmember Johnson, Councilmember Glasscock, Councilmember Ballard, and Councilmember O'Heisel.

Good morning.

My name is Jim Korok.

I am the co-trustee of the estate of the late Jack Debor.

I am also president of Consolidated Development, a subsidiary of the estate, leading the waterwalk development moving forward.

As Troy mentioned, in September of 2002, Mayor Knight and the entire city council, filled with iconic leaders and names you would recognize for sure, Brewer, Schlap, Fury, Gray, Martz, and Lampke approved a 99-year development agreement for the East Bank with local entrepreneur Jack Debore and his Riverwalk LLC, granting the exclusive rights to develop approximately 20 acres, now known as Waterwalk.

As Troy mentioned, we're 23 years into that agreement, with 76 years remaining.

The vision for Waterwalk was big.

A vibrant, mixed-use retail development office, entertainment, residential retail district revitalizing the Arkansas River East Bank, imagined as a central gathering place for Wichita, much like one may experience at Kansas City's Zona Rosa or Lewoods Town Center.

The city invested significantly in infrastructure, parking, utilities, art, all laying the ground for something very special.

But I think we can agree the reality after 23 years is less than what was hoped.

Waterwalk features today include luxury condominiums, the Marriott Fairfield Inn and Suites, Realtors of South Central Kansas, and the offices of King of Freight, where sporting goods retailer Gander Mountain once stood.

Significant efforts have been made throughout the years to develop a corporate headquarters, a luxury apartment building, an office building, and yes, even a casino, though none of those were ever realized.

Looking back, Mayor, it's clear that Waterwalk has fallen painfully short of Jack's original vision.

It would be easy to cast blame on external economic forces like the Great Recession or the pandemic.

However, internal missteps and shifting priorities all played a role in the slow growth of waterwalk.

Perhaps the original vision focused too much on nice to haves like fine dining and upscale retail before establishing a critical mass of residents to support such a demand.

But regardless, on behalf of the state, I sincerely apologize to the council, to the citizens of Wichita for falling short of that original vision.

We could and should have collaborated better, asked for help, and been more transparent.

There's nothing we can do about the past.

It's time to move forward.

Today's proposed single development represents a level of investment almost equal to all private investment in water walk since 2002.

We all see the great things happening in downtown Wichita.

Major investments like the Wichita Biomedical Campus, the Kansas College of Medicine, WSU Tech, and potentially Kansas's first dental school.

Proper housing for those who work at our universities, hospitals, and keep the city running is essential.

Wichita needs affordable housing for its workforce, its teachers, its technicians, its maintenance workers, and entry-level first responders, certified nurses, and more.

Affordable quality place to call home that doesn't consume the lion's share of one's paycheck.

This project, this place, this time is where critical needs begin.

Today should not be so much about airing grievances of the past, although we're ready to hear those, but more about dreaming about Waterwalk's future and the opportunity we have to dream and start fresh.

My experience with the Annex group for the past year has been outstanding.

With 43 communities and over 6300 units nationwide, Annex brings professionalism and attention to detail and experience.

For example, when I insisted right from the get-go that the condo owners' river views remain protected, they listened and they adapted their design.

I think city staff can attest to their responsiveness and high level of collaboration.

After this development, what's next for Waterwalk?

With over 300 potential new residents calling Waterwalk home, we begin to approach a critical mass needed to think seriously about restaurants, perhaps a grocery store, and even destination shopping, as this project takes up one-third of the remaining significant two-thirds of the waterwalk development remaining.

But first things must come first.

A place the community can be proud of.

Thank you for your time.

I can stand for questions, or if you would like to hear from the developer first, up to you, Mayor.

Thanks, Jim.

I actually have lots of questions, and I know that Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson also has some slides that go along with what you've just said, which you alluded to.

Airing grievances is not this time, but I believe it is this time.

We have never aired these grievances, and these grievances is the reason why this community has said they don't want to see sweetheart deals.

This is the ultimate sweetheart deal.

And I do want the community to know exactly what happened so that we can then move forward, but we cannot move forward without addressing what has been promised and not fulfilled.

So I would like to ask assistant city manager Troy Anderson to provide the next set of slides because I believe we need to address this portion before we can address future housing or development that continues to happen in that area.

So I'm going to ask Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson to provide the next set of slides.

Okay, so as I indicated a little while ago, uh there's about 20 years of history here.

Um in all, I probably have about 50 slides.

Um this is going to be in-depth.

There's a lot here to unpack.

Um so again, if at any point in time there's questions, don't hesitate to interrupt.

I'll try to go through this as quickly as possible.

But with that being said, this really started even before 2002, started back in March of 1995.

There was an agreement regarding development and operations of the East Bank Hyatt Regency Hotel and related improvements.

In October, that set the public hearing for December of 1995, and in December of 1995, there was a public hearing, and ultimately there was established the waterwalk tax increment financing redevelopment project plan.

Eventually that was deferred to March 25th.

Um this is an illustration of the original East Bank Redevelopment District.

You'll see how later this is revised.

So then in September of 2001, City issues a request for proposals to develop the area south of Century 2 Convention Center, now known as the East Bank Redevelopment Project Area.

At the time, there was only one proposal received.

At that time, that group was known as Riverwalk LLC.

The proposal submitted by the group was for a development of mixed-use project that included apartments, condominiums, a multi-story office building, retail shops and restaurants, all to be built around a public waterway.

And in June of 2002, there was ultimately a reduction in those East Bank redevelopment district boundaries.

As you can see, it was reduced to sort of Douglas, Maine, Kellogg, and McLean.

So then in July of 2002, there was an MOU memorandum understanding designating Riverwalk LLC as the preferred developer for the East Bank Redevelopment District.

In August of 2002, there was a contract with a group, Gosson Livingston Associates for preparation of the East Bank Master Plan.

At that time, the proposal included about $65,000 in design fees, about $3,600 in reimbursable expenses.

At the time costs were supposed to be shared equally between Riverwalk LLC and the city.

Month later, in September of 2002, a development agreement with Riverwalk LLC was drafted, presented to City Council and approved, approved as part of a master plan.

That key, the key elements of that initial development agreement included the following.

There were public improvements that included acquisition of land, construction of a parking garage, a waterway, riverbank improvements, and at the time of Wichita Street turnaround.

Private investment was supposed to include development of four office buildings, over 250 units of high-end residential housing, retail, entertainment, and restaurants.

The time it set forth a 99-year lease structure for the use of the land with lease payments based on profit share with based on a profit sharing formula.

And additionally, there was a phased project approach to reduce public risk.

Built in private sector guarantees of $24 million as a condition of starting phase 1A public improvements and $9.6 million for phase 1B.

The developer was ultimately responsible for all outdoor maintenance, and that the city shared profits with the developer after the minimum rates of return were achieved.

So I've taken that original sort of East Bank or the revised reduced East Bank Redevelopment District, zoomed in a little bit to the real the subject area, and as you can see here, former Maple Street kind of bisected the development.

You can see there to the south, phase 1A, to the north, phase 1B.

You can see the water feature that connects phase 1A and 1B and all of the proposed developments surrounding those water features.

That water feature.

At the time, private improvements were estimated at about 61 million for phase 1A, and about 24, 25 million for phase 1B for a combined total of about 86 million dollars.

Some parking revenue estimated at about 3 million dollars.

At the time, there was an idea to submit an application for an EDA grant for about 1.5 million, and then ultimately programming within the capital improvement plan funds totaling about $8.9 million.

So in February of 2003, there was a resolution considering adoption of the redevelopment project plan, set the public hearing for March 18th, 2003.

In March of 2003, there was also an award and an agreement for the East Bank Redevelopment Design Services.

That was that Gosson and Associates again.

So to design the redevelopment project plan was about a 1.46 million dollar lump sum payment to that group.

So then at the March 2003 public hearing, establishing the waterwalk redevelopment project plan.

The financial feasibility study examined the pro the projected change and assessed valuation from the base year of 1995, which is when the redevelopment district was created, and that based on assumptions of full completion in 2009, the value at the base 1995 was about 4.5, 4.6 million dollars.

Again, with the assumed capital investment on the private side, the appraised value in 2009 was supposed to achieve about 86, 87 million dollars.

And with that being said, the analysis of that time said that there would have been sufficient property tax income and revenues together with parking revenues sufficient to retire the principal and interest on about $22 million general obligation bond issuance.

Additionally, the balance of the project costs were again to be financed by general obligation bonds from general property tax revenues programmed within the capital improvement program.

Additionally, the plan authorized about $31 million in TIFF eligible expenses.

At that time, the vote was to defer to March 25th, but ultimately on March 25th, 2003, there was a motion and a second to close the public hearing and approve the project plan, and that motion failed by a vote of four to three.

At the time, there was an alternative funding source idea to use star bonds.

So on March 25th, 2003, there was a resolution that a resolution be drafted in support of star bond for the water walk redevelopment project plan.

That motion carried 7.0.

Additionally, on March 25th, 2003, there was another action item regarding the East Bank Development Agreement, and that was to divert Lewis Street traffic to Waterman and vacate Lewis Street.

At the time, there was an indication that there was quote unquote no change to the development budget.

So this kind of illustrates at that point in time, maybe one of the first revisions to the master plan.

As you can see there, the idea was to vacate or abandon that section of Lewis Street illustrated there in red, and to redirect traffic from Maple up to Waterman.

So in April of 2003, again now the actual resolution is put in front of City Council and voted on to support the use of star bonds for the water walk plan.

And later on in September of 2003, there's an approval of sort of the first comprehensive revised waterwalk master plan and star bond area.

The revised master plan incorporated a major destination retail facility based on the use of star bond financing and other changes.

Subsequently, approval of the revised master plan was conditioned on subsequent approval by city council of necessary changes to the development agreement.

So just to kind of continue to paint the picture.

So this was the revised master plan that was put forward.

Again, I've kind of overlaid that over the subject property.

You can kind of see how the plan has shifted and changed.

You see that large retail destination that was the impetus for pursuing starbond financing and funding at the time.

Just a better perspective is kind of easier to see like this rather than overlaid.

But some early illustrations of what that development was supposed to look like.

This is known as the first amendment to the waterwalk development agreement.

The amendments to the development agreement incorporated the details of the revised master plan that I just showed.

Since the development agreement was first approved, the developer entity changed its name from Riverwalk LLC to Waterwalk LLC.

The use of star bonds to finance public improvements related to the destination retail store added a new element not contemplated by the original development agreement.

These new improvements add approximately $24 million to the cost to be paid by the city with the sole source of funding identified as star bond proceeds.

As you can see here, there was a revised table in that first amendment that talks about the public improvements, the private improvements, and those eligible expenses, the star bond funding would be able to support.

The revised cost of the East Bank public improvements are now estimated at about 28.8 million, excluding construction financing for a revised total of about $30.9 or 31 31 million dollars.

There was about a $2 million reduction in public improvements.

The way that it was suggested in the context of that conversation at the time was redirecting the waterway and making alternative waterway improvements was going to save the city about $2 million in public improvements.

At that time, private improvements were additionally reduced from $86 million to about $82.26.

So then in December of 2003, there was a resolution considering adoption of a redevelopment TIFF project plan.

Remember the previous plan failed.

So this is now returning because in order to capture tax increment financing and the use of the STAR bonds, you have to have a project plan in place.

So this is the resolution considering adoption of a redevelopment TIFF project plan.

That set the public hearing for January 27th, 2004.

In the meantime, in December of 2003, there's an action item captured generally around the river corridor project.

The reason why we start introducing this into the conversation is because this is where the river corridor project and the water walk redevelopment begin to sort of blend sources and uses.

Um for the use of the star bonds.

Interestingly, within one of the uh staff reports for that December 30, 2003, it talks about how 1.9 million dollars of that river corridor project was going to be transferred to the East Bank Waterwalk Development Project.

Okay, so then comes the public hearing.

Excuse me, not yet.

January 2004, there is an amendment to the design service agreement with Goss and Livingston increasing the contribution by another 71,000 dollars.

This was for some survey geotechnical and topographical work.

And then we get to the public hearing.

January 27, 2004, there's the public hearing establishing the water walk tax increment financing redevelopment project plan.

The financial feasibility study is revised and examines again the original 1995 base year, but pushes out the pro forma from 2009 to 2011.

Again, assumed base year still maintains the 4.6 million dollars of value, but based on a 2011 completion date, the appraised value is reduced from about 87 million to about 81 million dollars.

At the time, the analysis still showed that the stream of projected tax increment revenues together with parking revenues would be sufficient to retire the principal and interest on at that point in time now a $23 million general obligation tax increment bond over that same 15-year period.

The balance of the project costs again would be financed by general obligation bonds from property tax revenues as identified in the capital improvement program, and the plan at that point in time again, seeing that $2 million capital investment savings on the city side, only authorized $28.8 million in TIFF eligible expenses.

So then on February 3rd, there's a second reading adopting the waterwalk redevelopment project plan, and in addition to that, approving an EDA grant application.

So as part of the waterwalk redevelopment project financing, the budget included a $1.5 million EDA grant.

Staff prepared a pre-application for the EDA funds totaling $3 million.

So at that time, staff submitted an application for $3 million in actual EDA grant.

The EDA funding will be used to pay a portion of the cost for constructing the waterway andor street improvements within the project area for what it's worth, and I think I hit on this later on, but that grant is not received.

That grant is not awarded.

So then in March of 2004, acquisition by eminent domain of tracks required for the waterwalk project.

So early on in the process, there's a suggestion that the city owns, operates, controls about 75% of the land within the redevelopment plan area, but an additional 25% of the land still needed to be acquired.

So this is an action item by city council at the time to exercise or potentially exercise eminent domain to acquire the remaining tracks.

In June 2004, there's then a memorandum of agreement with the State Historic Preservation Office.

Because of the use of star bonds and some other things, there's environmental and state historical studies and analyses that had to be conducted, and so that's part of that contract agreement.

In September of 2004, star bonds for the waterwalk project are beginning to introduce, beginning to be introduced into the conversation with city council.

That point in time, there is a an LOI letter of intent with a destination retailer, specifically Gander Mountain.

At the time, the letter of intent calls for construction of about an 88,000 square foot multi-level mixed-use commercial building, including a lodge-style conference center, a mezzanine restaurant, a deck overlooking the river, a pedestrian bridge, and surface parking together with other amenities.

At the time, the estimated total development costs is a little more than 14 million dollars.

The request of the time was that the city contribute $7 million plus up to a million dollars for additional public art with about $7.1 million funded by Waterwalk LLC.

However, and this is where I suggested earlier why the river corridor project started to get introduced in the conversation.

State law does not permit the use of star bonds to finance construction costs of privately owned or leased buildings.

Under the developer's proposal, a portion of the building costs will be paid from the city's contribution.

And then using its home rule powers, the city may, however, finance its contributions with general obligation bonds, general obligation fundings included in the approved capital improvement program for a nearby project that could be then used for this project.

Upon approval of all of those statutory steps, star bonds would then be used to finance the eligible costs to finance costs in that nearby CIP project.

Again, staff identified the river corridor project as those project eligible expenses eligible for star bond financing and compatible with the public improvements in the waterwalk project.

In order to facilitate the arrangement, it was going to be necessary to amend the star bond area to include that river corridor project.

Staff plan to return to council on October 2004 with development agreement revisions and an ordinance exempting the project from the city's bid law.

It was recommended at the time that on November 2004 be set as the public hearing on the expansion of the East Bank Redevelopment District to include the provised star bond area.

You can see that expansion here on this illustration.

So then in September 2004, another council action item for a waterwalk area phase two environmental assessment.

More specifically on December 2004, waterwalk development agreement amendment is introduced.

This is known as the second amendment to the development agreement.

Again, now the retail the destination retail store has been introduced, and so that needed to be constructed.

The suggestion at the time was that that be constructed on a design build basis using key construction as the design build contractor.

Key construction was chosen as the design build contractor in part because one of the owners is a partner in waterwalk LLC.

The budget for the star bond funding is being replaced by general obligation bond budget for the destination retail improvements totaling 14.1 million dollars.

The destination retail store being constructed on a design build basis.

Did I just duplicate that?

Oh my fault.

That was a duplicate slide.

I apologize.

Okay, so then on October 2004, there's a second reading of that waterwalk development agreement amendment.

We also amend the definitions of parking facilities in surface in place of surface parking.

So originally the retail destination required all of this sort of free on surface parking, but because the site constraints wouldn't allow it, they had to go vertical with parking garage, and hence the amendment to the definition of parking facilities.

December 2004, there's a memorandum agreement with State Historic Preservation Office.

Again, continued efforts around compliance with those measures.

December 2004, approval of a water walk ground lease number one and related agreements.

This is the first ground lease.

So again, remember the original development agreement and proposal talked about a 99-year lease.

And so the first project that really came up out of the ground, the destination retail now needing its first sort of ground lease.

This is referred to as ground lease number one.

Later on in January of 2005, there's a council action to approve a non-disturbance agreement.

This is just in regards to some sort of legal ease around depending on who defaults, right?

That doesn't necessarily impact the tenant.

And so there's a non-disturbance agreement that they would be allowed to continue to operate if for whatever reason the other party defaults.

These are the public improvements.

Additionally, in May, there's a change order for those construction improvements.

This is the first amendment to that, adds about another $38,000 to that street and utility work.

In October of 2005, there is an art consultant that is hired.

Remember, there's a previous commitment to spend approximately a million dollars on art, and so an art consultant is hired in October of 2005.

In December of 2005, there is yet another revise site plan and supplemental agreement with Goss and Livingston for another 175,000.

Really, this takes into consideration a lot of the previous conversations regarding Gander Mountain regarding the parking facilities, the revised street layouts, replacing the water walk canal with water features that include programmable elements such as moving water, music lights, fire lasers, and deleting the footbridge over the river.

This is the first time that that water concept sort of evolves into more of a sort of theatrical water feature.

And you begin to see that here in this illustration.

So notice the previous water feature is now gone.

This is really more replicates that amphitheater and water you see there in front of Building C, the reorientation of some of the streets and the building pad sites, and then the again the retail destination there in the southwest.

Okay, so then in June 2006, there is a HUD EDI special purpose grant that is applied for for about 247,000.

Again, the previous $3 million EDA grant was was denied, was not approved.

And so this is coming back to perhaps other grant opportunities available at the time and the pursuit of those.

Amendments to coincide with the revised master plan, deletes the waterway improvements, deletes the bridge, and updates the public improvement budget.

So here's the public and private improvement budget that is included in the Third Amendment.

The revised cost of the public improvements are now estimated at about 29.8 or 30 million dollars, excluding construction financing.

Again, now we start to introduce the $7 million towards the destination retail improvements, the million dollars towards the art.

So now the public improvements uh are in a ballpark of about 39.9 or 40 million dollars.

Private improvements are again reduced, uh, this time from about 82.25 to about 80 million dollars.

So then in August 2006, uh there's a waterwalk capital contribution and construction fund agreement.

Council action on June of 2006 to approve the Third Amendment, allowed for the commitment of funds to construct the amphitheater and the parking garage.

However, it didn't include the actual agreement documents, so that had to get brought back.

It was just kind of a formality at that point in time to finalize that and uh authorize the necessary signatures.

In September 2006, there's a plat of the water walk phase two edition.

So then we get into December 2006, is where we introduce ground lease number two.

Um this is with Waterwalk LLC to construct the four-story mixed-use building, which will include retail commercial and residential condominiums and a structured parking.

So this is that building C there on the far east side of the of the redevelopment area.

December approval of a water walk ground lease number three and related documents.

So at the same time, there's also conversation commitments uh to build the Wichita Area Association of Realtors building.

It's about a 12,000 square foot office building, so we now have ground leases number two and three.

Additionally, in February of 07, uh that EDI grant is approved, and so there's a council action item to accept that EDI grant for about 247,000.

Okay, so then in May of 2007, um, there's a star bond for river district redevelopment project.

This is a resolution setting the public hearing for July 10th on July 10th is now the public hearing.

The total not to exceed amount of improvements that can be funded with star bonds has been revised to now be sort of capped out at $13 million based on the feasibility study in the project plan.

The total cost of the entire river district redevelopment project is about $155.8 million dollars with $87 from private and 68.8 from public, which now includes the star bond funded improvements.

Again, that includes that $1.9 million transfer from the River Corridor project to the East Bank Waterwalk Development Project.

So then it was suggested at the time that within the condominium owners and owners uh that they were some users that were unable to obtain financing in the state of Kansas, and so there was a suggestion that title of that land needed to be transferred to Waterwalk LLC in order for those condominium owners to obtain financing on the condominium units.

So building C, which includes a 490 car parking structure, 48 residential condominium units, and 12,000 square feet of office space, 16,000 square feet of retail space, is transferred in title.

There's a number of residential condo units that have been contracted for.

Again, there's no residential condominiums in the state of Kansas that can serve as comps.

Uh they say the reason why is the residential condo properties in Kansas are located on land owned by a condo association, not on leased land.

Bank's been unwilling.

Developers asked the city to replace the ground lease with the first right of refusal to repurchase the property for a dollar, and the property is transferred.

Okay, can we go back to 84 mayor?

Is that okay?

Right here?

Yeah, 84.

84.

Yes, sir.

Yep.

Okay.

Um so does this mean that the city no longer owns this plot of land?

That's correct.

So it was a plot of land we leased out for a dollar.

And then now they outright own it.

That's correct.

Did they purchase it or did we just give it to them?

It was transfull, it was transferred based on the first right of refusal to repurchase.

If the uses ever change, then the city has the right to repurchase it for a dollar.

But so long as it continues to function as it was constructed, then the transfer was approved.

Okay.

Now I have some plans pertaining to that in this current contract, I'll save before when we get to that part.

Sure.

I have one follow-up question to this very specific topic.

I did not understand that 99-year lease did not apply to this, the water walk condominiums.

However, there's public parking on there right now.

So how does that work?

So let me answer the first part of that just to kind of frame the conversation.

In 2002, right, that original development agreement set forth a 99-year development structure, right?

It wasn't until the land was leased as part of a ground lease.

Did the actual tenant gain the rights to occupy that specific ground?

So you've heard me talk about the various ground leases.

Right now where we've included ground lease one, two, and three.

Any of the land that isn't under a ground lease is still owned, operated, and controlled sort of by the city, even to today.

Okay.

What that original development agreement gave the developers were the development rights.

So once the developers wanted to exercise their rights and develop on that city-owned land, then that's why all of these sort of amended plans and amendments to the development agreements to then now include those ground leases for what should have been at the time the remaining term of that 99-year lease.

Does that make sense?

So that's the first part of your question.

The second part of your question is so the garage was built.

The garage is a private parking garage as part of some of the original agreements, perhaps amendments there too.

There's a requirement that a percentage of those spaces within that parking garage be made available to the public.

That's how they were able to use sort of public dollars to finance construction of the project by making sure that a certain percentage of that parking was sort of continually made available to the public.

But it is a private garage, sort of owned, operated, controlled by private entity, right?

It's only a percentage of that parking that has to be made available to the public.

Okay.

And we do not maintain that parking garage then?

That's correct.

And one more question because I know we have we've been talking about parking downtown.

Will this be considered at all as part of there are spaces that are public spaces that are available and what's that percentage from the I don't even remember how many stalls there are, but what's the actual percentage of public stalls?

I want to say the number that stands out in my mind is they have to make 250 spaces of what I believe is about a 450 to 500 space garage.

They have to make 250 spaces available to the public.

So about half.

But I can get you that exact information.

I don't have that information available with me today, but we have closely monitored.

Will that be accounted for when we talk about public parking as we're talking about downtown parking separate conversation?

But this is one of those lots that has public stalls.

Yeah, so it has been included in some of our illustrations on the Park Wichita website.

We have a couple of illustrations on that.

It is identified as one of those, and there's a couple of others that there are private parking garages or there are agreements that those private property owners must provide a certain number or certain percentage of public parking.

This is one of those, and it is included in the illustration on the Park Wichita website.

Okay, so um so then in January of 08.

Just making sure I didn't miss any January of 08.

Um City Council authorizes a construction contract for some pavement and sidewalk work out in front of uh building C.

It's about 500,000.

Then there is uh a change order to that sort of pavement sidewalk work in August of 08, just under 20,000.

Um then comes December of 2008, and there is yet another water walk master plan funding and document amendment.

This is referred to as the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment proposes yet another revision of the master plan.

This time now we're simply eliminating the amphitheater and replacing it with a landscape area with a water feature and a gazebo, which can then serve as the focus of an outdoor entertainment venue, and move the waltzing waters fountain to a new location.

As a result, the Fourth Amendment revises the city budget for public improvements, increasing the contribution for the parking structure by about 1.5 million to a total of 8.5 million, and increases the public improvements generally by about 2.6 million to a total of 6.1 million, just in those two uh changes to the master plan.

So then in December of 2008, there's a contract amendment for architectural and engineering services again with Gostan Livingston.

Uh estimated at about $643,000 at the time.

Again, December of 08, there's a contract amendment for an art consultant with Greteman Group.

They were the respondents to that RFP for uh an art broker.

In September of 2009, uh there's a waterwalk revised master plan funding and document amendments.

This one really uh uh revolves around the boat house and the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, although there are revisions to site improvement areas one, two, and three, and you can really kind of see those in sort of this revised master plan.

Area one being that area between Main Street and Water Street, area two being those improvements between Water Street and I think that's called Wichita Street now.

Um and then area three is those improvements between which straw street and the river.

Again, water walk revised master plan funding document amendments from September 1.

The total budget for the water walk public improvements is now north of 41 million dollars, consists of general obligation bond dollars of a little more than 19 million, tax increment financing of about 17.6 million, special obligation star bonds about 4.3 million, and a federal EDA EDI grant of about 247,000.

In October 2009, there is a uh boat house lease.

In January of 2010, there's now a letter of intent relating to development of Waterwalk Hotel.

There's a tentative agreement with uh 4G LLC, wholly owned by Jim Korick to include one a cash contribution, which was um in the form of uh issuance of general obligation bonds that were intended to be repaid by transient gas tax revenues that totaled about 2.5 million dollars.

At the time, there was also approval of a community improvement district, CID 2% sales tax.

Uh the value of that's undetermined.

There was no information available in the staff report.

Additionally, there was an issuance of a letter of intent to issue industrial revenue bonds for a sales tax exemption valued at about $328,000, and an approval of a 99-year ground lease for a dollar a year plus additional rent and approve a parking agreement.

True.

I want to stay on that slide.

Yes, I think we have a couple questions.

So how much was this hotel and the city paid $2.5 million for this development?

This specific hotel.

Can you explain that?

The staff report of the time suggests it's about a $12 million project, and yes, uh the agreement would have and did contribute $2.5 million.

The city sold general obligation bonds to help finance the project, and then they have since been using transient gas tax revenues to sort of reimburse that bond debt.

Maybe I'll ask that question is to city manager.

Can you explain that?

How did the city get into giving a cash contribution to a private development project specifically that already at this point?

I think slide number 92 had hundreds of or tens of millions of dollars that had already been invested by the public.

Right.

I'd like to know because this was January of 2010.

You were city manager at that time.

Right.

Um at that time, Mr.

Quark came forward and said that uh had proposed the hotel, and the council wanted to see some development because there hadn't been much development other than the condos and Gander Mountain at the time.

And so the uh problem was that we were at the depth of the recession and uh there was a significant project gap.

So uh it he I believe Mr.

Korok proposed that there be a repayment of debt for the project through transient guest tax, which is allowed under state code, subject to a reverse referendum.

So if a petition is filed by residents, then that um would go up for election before it could be ratified.

Um so the council agreed, recognized that we were in unique circumstances and they wanted to move forward with the project, and so they agreed to the 2.5 million dollar contribution.

The you use specific language when you were talking that you said that it was intended to be repaid.

Is the full amount has it been repaid?

Or is just the intent still 15 years later?

I don't know.

And the art and that's why I I didn't have a chance in in sort of just gathering all of this information.

I haven't had a chance to really sit down with our finance department and figure out exactly where we're at.

So if you go back to kind of this slide, right?

All of those general obligation bonds, where are we at on the tax income financing, where are we at on the star bonds, etc.

I haven't had a chance to sit down with our finance director and figure out exactly where we're at on all of these.

This is really just kind of painting the history of the council action items as they relate to water walk.

Only being here three years, you've done a great job of going back 20 plus years with all this research.

Thank you.

I have a quick question.

Um sorry.

Yeah.

Do we have any other 99 year leases anywhere in the city?

I took I I don't know for certain.

I'm gonna guess we probably do.

It's not uncommon, it's not uncommon, right?

Cities do these 99 year leases for a host of reasons.

So whether we actually do or not, I'd have to go do some due diligence.

But if we had one, it wouldn't surprise me.

It's it's somewhat it's not incredibly common, but it is done within the Bob.

Do you know if we have any?

I I can't think of any, and I can't think of any since I've been here other than what was approved here.

Thank you.

I have one quick question here as well.

Um, at the very beginning, like 40 slides ago, don't have to go there.

Um, but it talks about the 24 million uh guaranteed in private spending in on this whole project as well.

Yep.

Uh was that 24 million realized in the way that we had anticipated at the beginning?

I have a slide kind of one of the last slides I have shows that kind of where we're and uh we showed it a little bit earlier in my previous slide deck that showed the public and private investment up to date, kind of subtotals that and then um so maybe that uh answers your question about the original 24 million because it I'd have to go kind of go back and kind of say we know exactly what was realized, but just being able to compare that to the original uses.

I'd have to kind of go back and just make sure I I know some of the things like the condominiums were realized, the apartments were realized, um trying to think there's not really any retail out there.

Um there is some office that was part of some of the original, so some of it?

I don't know if that answered.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

I'm gonna try and save all my other questions to the end, but just going back to the intended to be repaid.

I know that you don't have that answer.

Yes, Mr.

Quark, do you have that answer?

I imagine that you may be aware of it if our finance department hasn't pulled that information yet.

Has that been repaid back and has the city been made whole?

I don't have the specific answer on that, council member.

Uh there's a lot more to the story.

I would say just was doing it the simple math.

So this is a hotel that again, but for the development of the hotel was zero percent to a zero property tax being paid since uh it opened in 2010, 2011.

It's paid over three million dollars in property tax again, would have been a goose egg zero.

If you do the basic math, and by the way, it's it's the transient um uh guest tax, not the transient gas tax as uh been represented so far.

If you do the basic mass math, which I think is it six percent is the transient guest tax, who would know?

Roughly yes.

Okay.

So do the basic math on that, uh, 15 years of operation, roughly three to four million dollars a year in revenue.

Um that would again back a napkin, roughly 45 million dollars is generated in that time.

Take six percent.

I the way I do that is I take ten percent because I'm not real smart, so that's four point five million dollars.

Um uh uh over that 45 million dollars, so half of that is about that, you know, since that amount of time.

Again, that is very rudimentary, very back napkin.

There's a lot more to the story than you know what you've heard so far, certainly.

Uh but that's that's how I would generally answer your question, Councilman.

Thank you.

Yes, and thanks for bringing that up.

Uh yes, the slide says transient, it is transient guest tax.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay, so for whatever it's worth, at the January 2010 meeting, that's deferred to February 2nd.

Ultimately, February 2nd, that letter of intent relating to the development of waterwalk hotel is approved by City Council.

Um in April of 2010, there are ordinances authorizing the use of transient guest tax revenues to finance the waterwalk hotel project.

In uh June of 2010, there's an extension of that IRB letter of intent and approval of the hotel development agreement, subsequent ground lease and related documents.

Ultimately, then in August of 2010, there are amendments to the waterwalk development agreement.

Uh at this point in time known as the Fifth Amendment.

These are now the water walk apartments on the other side of the river.

Um, and the acquisition of a floating stage to serve as the future amphitheater.

And in May of 2013, there's the ultimate approval of the floating stage on the Arkansas River.

That was that EDI grant for about 247,000.

There were some additional funds that were contributed out of the budget for a canopy on that floating stage, but that's where that EDI grant went.

In May of 2019, there was an uh approving an amendment to the waterwalk ground lease number one with King of Freight.

So at this point in time, Gander Mountain is not sorry, Troy.

I think Councilmember Hoheisel had a question for the previous slide.

No, after just after.

So at this point in time, there's now sort of this transition.

Gander Mountain is, and I don't know exactly when Gander Mountain sort of goes out of business, but there's this transition to uh king of freight LLC.

Uh and so there's a separation in that initial ground lease number one to now be sort of ground lease one A and one B.

Ultimately, that was deferred to May 21st of 2019.

Ultimately in 2019, there's an approval of the amendment to that ground lease, and that is approved.

We have a question regarding that specific slide.

So does that mean, well, I guess we're talking about King of Freight?

Yes.

Do they have also are they under the 99-year lease agreement?

They basically assumed uh the previous terms and conditions of the ground lease.

So the amendment, there's some area adjacent to the building that was part of the original ground lease number one.

So this kind of separated that out into ground lease one A and one B.

But it for all intents and purposes, King of Freight assumed the balance or all of the remaining terms and conditions of the initial ground lease number one.

Do we have an amount of what was paid for by King of Freight to purchase this?

I I do not have that information, no.

I can get it.

Okay.

We'll continue.

So then in November of 2019, uh there's a public hearing considering a reduction in the East Bank Redevelopment District and an expansion of the West Bank Redevelopment District.

Uh there's a resolution setting a public hearing.

Ultimately in December, there is a public hearing.

More specifically, we start transitioning uh across the river, so we're getting sort of away from water walk.

We're now talking about the ballpark and some of the west bank development, right?

So you see the area highlighted there in yellow, or excuse me, highlighted there in red.

Uh the area between McLean and the river was originally included in the East Bank Redevelopment District, so it had to be removed from the East Bank Redevelopment District and added to the West Bank Redevelopment District.

Um, and so that's what this these council action items are about here, sort of December 2019.

So this kind of goes back to Councilman Holheisel's uh question, right?

So we went back and we kind of looked kind of built upon the information that was provided really from about uh that 2010 where we identified the 41 million dollars in public investment, and based on information provided to us by um the water walk trustee.

We haven't had a chance to go do a deep dive into the private sector investments, but just high-level snapshot at this point in time.

The public has invested a total of about 43.8 million dollars, and the private sector investment has invested about 36 and a half million dollars.

And with that being said, I will stand for questions.

Thank you, Troy.

Um, and I do want to just make mention you just got into your role how long ago.

Uh I got here in 22, so I've been here for about three years now.

As council member Glasscock said, thank you for digging up a lot of this information that again has spanned over 20 years, and I appreciate that we now have it on the record, and I wanted it on the record because I believe that's what the public deserves.

And so um I appreciate that it was detailed, and I know that there are multiple items that you still have more information to provide.

Um I know some people have mentioned that there were some uh clerical errors, including whether it was transient versus gas or 2003 versus 2023.

Um just wanted to make mention that you tried to pull this all together in the last week, and I asked for this specific information.

I've been asking actually this very information since I got into office last year, because I believe that the public deserves to know what has happened and why they believe that there are things that don't currently happen on this council.

We scrutinize, we question, because we are trying to do our best in speaking on the behalf of the public.

And so I'm not gonna speak on the behalf of individuals prior to me.

I can only speak for myself, and I just want to say thank you for being transparent on the information.

It is very sad seeing the very last slide before this questions in showing how much public dollars have has been invested into this property, um, and how much in private dollars have been invested into this, and still there are many promises that were made that were not fulfilled, and so to me it was important to have the community see all this information, and it is on record, it's in the minutes, it's also in this video uh through YouTube.

So I appreciate uh all this information from the past.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um plenty of questions.

I'm gonna jump all around here.

Uh was this property ever part of a CID.

We indicate that there were a number of them kind of around there, and there's not.

The only property that's included in a CID is the hotel.

The hotel.

The rest of the land was not included in a CID.

Okay, so and just this general over our overall question.

You indicated if this LITEC application fails and then all of this goes away.

Correct.

Okay.

Um what happens if the pilot isn't paid.

Then the pilot funding.

Yeah, arguably they'd be in default of the ground lease at that point in time, because that really sort of won't get addressed until we get into the ground lease, uh, which there's been some questions about the ground lease.

Um, and we've had these conversations with the applicant, right?

That there are a number of revisions that are going to need to be made to the ground lease, and so that ground lease is going to have to come back in front of city council at some point if council approves it today, if they obtain the tax credits, if they obtain the development rights, because we don't know who the lender is going to be or lien holder is going to be, we don't know who the investors are gonna be.

And so, in order to fill in those blanks, ultimately that ground lease will most likely have to come back to city council anyway.

And at that point in time, we can sort of talk about some of the other terms and conditions associated with that ground lease.

Would you anticipate any major provisions to the ground lease?

So, in some of our conversations, uh some of the back and forth with uh some of the attorneys representing uh the developer, there are there was some language that they wanted added to that ground lease based on some assumptions or some presumptions of what the lien holder would want as far as kind of mitigating their risk and sort of their liability, and so uh in conversation with them, we've said we're gonna sort of reject your revisions to the ground lease at this point in time, um, because the suggestion was even they didn't necessarily know what terms and conditions the lien holder, the lender, the investors might want to see in that ground lease, and so we said, well, until such time as sort of you get to that point where you know who an investor might be, you know who a lienholder might be, and they want to make revisions to that ground lease.

Does it really make sense for us to kind of so we rejected all of their revisions in order to continue to try to protect the interest and and risk and liability of the city?

So what would happen if there's a ground lease that comes before council and we reject it?

Then the project would die.

The project would die.

Okay.

Um if we can go to the contract, I don't know if you have a copy with you under exhibit D, um, section two Bhit D.

The estoppel.

D.

D is in dog?

Dog, yes, sir.

I'm looking at the form of lease or estoppel certificate?

Uh form of IRB letter of intent.

Oh, the other section two B.

Yeah, the provision regarding the tenants option to purchase the project that states a firm option price and the obligation of the tenant to provide for payment of all other expenses related to the exercise of such option to purchase.

Um what all would be eligible for the tenant to purchase for the project?

Is it simply the infrastructure or is that include the building?

The building, that's it.

Correct.

So does that so that does not include the ground as well?

I'm sorry, I like the and the parking lot.

There, yes, there would be some private improvements that they would be able to buy the the parking lot, but generally the building and the parking lot, those improvements that they made to the ground would be eligible for the tenant to purchase.

But not the actual grounded subject.

Correct.

The night the underlying ground lease is that 99, well, at this point in time, 76 year ground lease on the remaining ground.

Is there anything in here that um gives them an option to purchase the ground?

No.

No?

Okay.

Um go to exhibit D 15E.

And this talks about the event the tenant moves business operations or ceases operation within Wichita within five years, that the city will be made whole for the property taxes abated.

Is that all that that pertains to is just that they cease operation?

Right.

So um yes, because in this pro there's no jobs that are required, they're not using job creation, right?

As a tax.

So if we did do a five-year review, right?

For all anticipate, they would have made the initial capital investment.

We'll know that when the bonds are issued, we'll know that they satisfied their sort of capital investment.

We would only really do the five-year review.

We'll do the five year, but the five-year review is really only if are they there, are they continuing to exist there and operate?

Did they satisfy the jobs?

But in this case, there's no job requirements.

So it's pretty standard language that we put into all of our letter of intents, just depending on whether or not the commitments that were made, whether they include job creation or whether they're still in operation, et cetera.

And if they so if they decide to sell to somebody else, that will transfer the contract transfers over.

Yeah, there's a whole host of uh rules and regulations because it's a low-income housing tax credit project, right?

There's a whole host of requirements that uh there's sort of 15-year obligations on the property and on the use of the property.

They might change operators, right?

But for all intents and purposes, if they obtain the light tech credits and if they build the project, there's a pretty long-standing runway that they'll continue to operate for at least the 15 years.

Okay.

Um I have another question about foreclosure.

Um what happens if there is a foreclosure on here?

Did I look at section 1003?

Um yeah, it's a little further out.

So if there is a foreclosure, it goes to the bank essentially.

Correct.

Um, and they would be held to the same standards that we're laying out here.

Correct.

So all it would be was simply the bank owns the property now, but they are still obligated to stick to the same contract.

Absolutely.

And again, because it would be a low-income housing tax credit project, right?

The continued performance of that now I have tenants and I I'm dealing with sort of state and federal government.

There's going to be a whole host of oversight on this project.

Okay.

Are there any personal guarantees on this project?

There are no personal guarantees.

Again, we're kind of coming at this from the perspective of it's entirely performance-based, right?

The property tax papers short of the pilot, but we'll address that pilot payment as part of the ground lease, right?

And then as part of the ground lease, then there will be default provisions that will be addressed as part of the ground lease for if that payment in lieu of taxes is not paid.

Could you talk about some of those clawbacks, I guess you would call them?

Really, it's a default of sort of the ground lease, right?

And so the default provisions generally start talking about things like termination of the ground lease, so on and so forth, which lane holders at that point in time get get involved pretty quickly.

We send them a letter and then they got 30 days to cure.

Yep.

Okay.

Um parking.

I I know there's some consternation around parking.

Yep.

Um, how many spots are they planning on having out there?

So they are providing about 70 spaces on site.

Um, and then ultimately at that point in time, tenants would then if tenants are unable to secure parking within the 70 spaces that are planned for construction by the developer tenant, then they would need to seek parking elsewhere, uh, whether that be in a public parking garage lot on street or in a private sort of condominium owners association parking structure.

At that point in time, anybody else beyond those 70 would need to find some other parking solution.

Okay.

Um two questions for the developer, real quick.

Yeah, Ryan Clark, Senior Vice President of Development with the Annex Group.

Hi, thanks, Ryan.

Um have any other projects been brought to you for this plot of land here recently?

Any other projects?

Um, you mean somebody else trying to develop on this site?

Yes.

No.

That's actually a question from Mr.

Okay, I apologize.

Mr.

Korak, yeah.

Yeah, the feed.

Council member, uh no nothing specific of again the three what I would call significant lots remaining at waterwalk.

This is um, of course, we've already negotiated our deal, but the most the least desirable uh of the three.

We have had uh interest in the other two uh lots uh in particular, but wanted to hold off on any further discussion with that until we had the opportunity to to fully present this project and bet this project.

Okay.

Um yeah, that's actually it for now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll have a follow-up question since the two of you are already up here.

Um I apologize, council members, but I know that you still have some slides to provide regarding the project itself.

I know that this was very lengthy.

We talked about water walk, and I think a lot of council members have some questions regarding water walk in general, and I know that we're currently speaking about the project, the new affordable housing project.

However, since you're already up here, I do want to ask one specific question.

Um, according to the documents we received, and Jim, you could stay up here too.

Uh the total is 49 million dollars.

Is that correct?

The project?

That's correct, yes.

The hard costs is 32 million, is that correct?

Yeah, that should be correct.

So there's a 17 million dollar gap.

So I would assume soft costs are about three to five million dollars or so.

What's the gap of 12 to 14 million?

Where does that money go?

Yeah, I mean that's it's all included in soft cost financing fees, um, all the other different items that are pertail to a development.

It's it's typical for a project like this to have about 30% be in in soft cost.

The reason why I asked is I want to know what is waterwalk getting out of this, then do they got get a development fee?

If so, what is that number?

Sure.

Mayor, again, back to the the basics of how this uh development agreement was uh initially um ratified in 2002.

The way that this land works is that the the board estate has the development rights as been has been explained to all of this land, they also have the right to sell the development rights uh to the land as well, too.

So that is what happened here.

That's what's happened in other um developments as well, too, is the development rights of this, the leasehold rights specifically are being sold to the annex group.

What is the dollar amount?

Um I am not gonna share that.

That's a private transaction, and I shouldn't share that.

The reason why I asked even more specifically that number is because I'm looking at the slide right now that is up on the screen, which shows 43 million dollars in public dollars invested into this property.

So I want to know specifically what is Waterlock getting out of this in terms of dollars.

Again, Waterwalk is receiving, as I explained, the leasehold the transferring the leasehold rights, and they are being paid a fee to transfer those leasehold rights.

You will not disclose that fee, correct?

Uh I won't today.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Councilmember Glasgow.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have a lot of questions.

I walked in with a few, and I walked out with a lot more.

Um first, I'm uh also engaging probably more um upset on behalf of taxpayers over the past 20 years and all the failures uh that this development project has put on taxpayers.

We talk a lot about the city, the public investment is taxpayer investment in this.

It isn't just city tax dollars, it is tax dollars from citizens that have been invested in this project, and I think everybody should be mad about it.

So, going back to some of the specifics of this, Troy question for you.

How do we get out of a 99-year lease?

So I think what you're ultimately asking is the terms and conditions associated with the development agreement, right?

Um there's probably a couple of different scenarios, right?

Um one scenario man, I I don't even know if I want to throw this out there, right?

But one scenario might be to buy them out, right?

Um one option would be to buy out the developer and buy out the development rights.

I would hate to even suggest that, right, given the investment that's already been, but that could be an option.

Um there's not really we've we've done through our law department is Mayor Mayor.

Um at the request of the mayor, I've had some conversations with Mr.

Karak on behalf of the uh uh estate or and we have contemplated the possibility of a uh uh fee simple title for a defined period of time.

So they would there no longer be a lease, they would own the property for a defined period of time, and if they don't develop during that period of time, the property would then would revert back to the city.

So we would then have full control of the property.

Okay.

So it's a concept that we've talked about.

We've um frankly waiting for this project to determine where it's going before we decide how we go forward.

So are there no clawbacks?

I don't know if the mayor wants to talk more about that.

We've yeah, yeah.

It's so the very question that has been raised is this deal was cut 20 plus years ago.

And the question that I think Councilmember Glasscock wanted to ask next is the very question I've asked from the very get-go.

Were there no clawbacks in that agreement back 20 plus years ago?

No, we we've spent a lot of time law departments scouring through the development agreements and the amendments to the development agreements.

Um a really lengthy, and again, not even sure what the successors might be, right?

Of a lawsuit to there might be some, we've suggested maybe there's some opportunity to kind of daylight some other things about some performance of having to bring back redevelopment plans and those things, periodic studies and those kind of things.

Really, really probably low success rate options for all intents and purposes, it is what it is.

I mean, there's short of renegotiating the terms and conditions um of the development agreement.

It unfortunately we're kind of bound by the terms and conditions that exist today.

Which is what I have been upset about since the get-go.

So again, this was 20 plus years ago.

None of these individuals on this council were then there during that time.

And when this deal was cut, which is the reason why the community says sweetheart deals in particular, is because of this very thing.

And so there are no outs, there were no great ways to negotiate on the behalf of the citizens of Wichita, we just let the developers deal and say, this is what we're gonna give you, and we said yes back then.

That is not how we play here in the city of Wichita now.

So my question then to the city manager has been what can we do now moving forward?

This has already been an agreement, it's been signed, it's had 20 plus years elapsed, but it still has 70 plus years remaining.

What can we do to cut that amount of time so that something does get developed there without further public investment?

Um so that's when I asked the city manager what are other opportunities to move forward.

So can you explain the fee simple title and what could be negotiated to reduce that from 70 plus years to something more reasonable and that we can move forward with actual development?

Well, the concept would be that the title would be conveyed to the developer.

We'd have to determine the terms for that.

And then what we had just originally talked about and uh not been committed to at all by the uh developer is that it could be possibly a 15-year period.

And if that's the case, that if nothing is developed or it's not fully developed in 15 years, then it would come back to us.

But that was an initial concept, not bringing something to you today to review, but that's the giving just a context or an idea of how we could restructure this.

I would like to know from Jim what is Waterwalk willing to give up to make this project happen, which is affordable housing.

Yeah, I'm delighted to have this conversation, Mayor.

Thank you.

Um I would maybe look at it a little differently and uh give you a little more context.

As Troy mentioned in his uh one of his slides several uh slides ago, even the condo owners, who many of them are here today, back when they were uh buying their condos, you remember that conversation that they had trouble getting financing?

Uh and so therefore the building ultimately wandered up under fee simple essentially uh ownership.

Because what happens in that situation is just like we have our own homes, what if you went to the bank and as part of your collateral, all you had was the improvements above the ground, and the ground wasn't part of that, okay?

So besides just some laws that took significant collateral away from the financial institutions to finance those projects, which was a big reason that went to fee simple on this particular project.

That same thing holds true, and to be very direct and honest with you, the clock is ticking.

So 99 years originally, 76 years left right now, we will, without again being very honest, significant public economic help on this project, it will be difficult to continue to move forward in uh a structure, financial structures like the annex group is agreeing to do today.

And what I mean by that is at some point, whoever's loaning the money to a significant development is gonna get left holding the bag on the lease, right?

And so at that point, they know that that lease it's not collateral today, and at some point, I believe the way that this is all written is all the improvements.

So, as an example, the fairfield, we've talked a lot about that today, at the end of that 99-year lease, all of the improvements above ground on that ground that the city owns reverts back to the city.

So it became it becomes very difficult to get financing and have those financing conversations.

And it's very complicated for the banks to go through.

We have had developers come to us, and when they realize, oh, this is a land lease deal, never mind.

We've got other places that we can we can go fee simple.

So what this potential proposal allows, frankly, is it is allows us as a developer to have a lot more opportunities to be able to seek development on this ground.

It opens up the possibility, just possibility of single family homes as an example.

I mean, imagine going and trying to get a mortgage on a single-family town home, row home, something like that that you own and you don't own the ground underneath it.

It's a very difficult conversation with the bank, and then the bank says, Oh, I'm happy to learn more.

Um, tell me about this land lease situation.

And guess what?

Troy's got to come up with 50 slides.

I mean, it's just it's very complicated, and the bank will say there are other people we'd rather be working with or do something else.

So to answer your question, partially, anyways, we are open to that conversation of moving into a fee simple environment where we believe we can more aggressively markets and develop the water walk area and significantly bring that time frame down.

And at the end of the day, if we don't get it done, then it reverts back to the city.

We're open to that conversation.

A lot of details involved in that, but we're absolutely open to that conversation.

I have one quick question to the city manager.

If we did this in contingent and be it contingent upon an actual deal that would reduce the 76-year land lease right now, because I feel like these are two separate conversations.

We have a housing development that is asking for approval, and then we also have this land lease that the city entered into 20 plus years ago, and I'm concerned about this portion, making sure that this gets negotiated prior to saying yes or no to a housing development.

So I'd like to know what type of time frame do we have.

I know that the developers that are wanting to develop affordable housing also have a deadline, and I'd like to know what that deadline is in order to apply for LITEC credit from the state.

So I know that this is all rushed, which I don't like, but I want to know what are our options when it comes to what he's saying.

Well, we're open to it.

Well, we also have another opportunity right now, which is affordable housing.

So can you explain to us what truly are our options where we're not where we do get the better deal for the citizens of Wichita, but not get time blocked because of an application deadline?

I think you're right to say that there's two separate actions that are involved.

I'll let the developer talk about the time frame, but I think they have a very tight deadline.

I think it's this week they have to file their LITECAC application.

And so when I've had my preliminary conversations with Jim, we have talked about for the remaining two-thirds of property.

They've already built in a 76-year lease into their project.

And it's how we go forward on the remaining properties and making sure that you're also comfortable with the land lease if they do get the land the uh credits that you're comfortable with the land lease provisions before we finalize those and they conclude their uh project.

Yeah, so the uh the project with uh KHRC in terms of the deadline, so they have two application rounds every year.

Um so one was in February and another one is in August.

Um so why it's significant is those are the only two times you can apply, but Candace has the uh Kansas housing state tax credit, which was just been sunset.

So this is the last round that they'll ever have this.

So the financial feasibility totally you know relies on on getting that additional state credit that KHRC provides, and this is the past round.

This was the same uh award that we received for the the Purple Heart Trail project on the uh east side of town.

So, yeah, without being in on this application, it would the feasibility would uh go away.

Ryan, I know you still have some slides to provide.

Um, what I'd like I still see some questions from council members.

I believe it's regarding the water walk agreement.

Do you mind holding on a little bit longer?

Yep.

Well, because there are two separate conversations happening right now and water walk.

I think there's still more questions.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Troy, thank you very much for doing all this work.

Um, I have a history on the front end of this before this happened, and it kind of brings up an old wound that I am long over, but I would like to say it just for maybe lessons in the future.

Um in the spring of 2001, I went to Council District One's uh representative.

I think it was Councilmember Feary, I think.

Downtown.

Six.

I don't know who it was, it was a lady.

Went with her, went to lunch with her, and told her of some plans that I had uh for moving Johnstons.

I'd bought Johnston's in 1995, had a 10-year payout to my father, trying to make plans for the future.

Um so I went to her and I said, Listen, I'd like to move the store into more of a central location because our business came from about a third out west, two-thirds out east.

I thought a central location would be good.

So went to her, told her our plans.

Also interested in the area.

Wanted to move his store from Maine down to more of a central area.

And uh she was told by me that they wanted to the city council wanted to create a district similar to San Antonio's river walk.

They want to have a river walk like San Antonio has, and they have a developer that will do that.

Would not tell me the name of the developer.

I learned later it was Jack Deboer.

Would not tell me that information.

So I said, well, okay, they won't work with me.

All as I asked for was street and utility improvements.

Because I look and there's lots of utilities underneath that ground.

A lot.

And street improvements.

That's all I wanted.

Um would not do that.

So when I heard it was Jack DeBoard, I said, well, that's you know, understandable.

He had a track record, good guy.

Um eight months, nine months later, maybe a year later, I'm talking to John Clevinger, who was president of Commerce Bank.

And I told him my frustration of that area.

I said, I'd like to move there.

Had Tim Johnson better Brooklyn wanted to move there too.

He said, you know what?

He said, I wanted to move there.

I wanted Commerce Bank to be the land essentially where the parking lot is now the city's parking lot.

And they want he wanted to walk away to the garage that is there.

And he said, We would we would use that garage during the day.

The hotel would use it at night, or Center 2 use it at night.

It'd be a perfect marriage.

And he said the city would not talk to me.

I said, Really?

I said, same conversation I'm having, same time.

He said, they never connected us.

He says, yeah.

He said, that's amazing.

Why would they not do that?

So I just want a little bit of history there.

Maybe maybe in future, let's try to bring people together instead of just get put all the eggs in one basket.

Um I'm over it.

Things worked out fine.

Uh it's fine.

But uh I will tell you that I do have well also I'll save that for later.

So that's it.

Councilmember Ballard.

Sorry, I didn't remove my name.

Council memberscock.

Sorry.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I believe both of these conversations are tied.

It's the same developer asking for uh this requirement that's been involved in the project from the start.

So I do think the application before us and the conversation about the water arc are tied in tandem together.

I take some offense to one comment that a project won't happen without significant public help.

That is significant public help.

43 million dollars that have been spent on this property of public funds, I believe is already significant public health help, far more than the private investment that's up here.

And I also take offense to if you're asking for public funds, private transactions should be made public.

So I know I'm not gonna get an answer to this question based on that question too, but how much did Goss and Development get paid, Waterwalk LLC, Riverfront LLC, 4G LLC?

Because in 50 slides, we saw multiple transactions where they had development fees.

Do we know how much the city paid each one of those entities during the course of this project that have already been paid out, and a lot of the same faces are still part of the development deal today?

So based on our just cursory review of all of this, all of those soft costs, right?

The design fees, all those were inclusive of these fees that you see in front of you today.

So they're included in the 43 million dollars that we spent, all the money was spent to Gossin, Waterwalk, Riverfront, and 4G.

More specifically, when you kind of go back to uh sort of this slide from back in kind of late 2009, early 2010, right?

That the general objected that 41.3 million dollars went towards paying all of those.

That again cursory view, that's what we found, right?

Um again, we still need to, if necessary, go and sit down with finance and work through old sort of um archives of who got paid what where when why and how, etc.

But our st our understanding at this point was that all of those contract, the broker fees for the R the design fees for Goes and were all included in this sort of 41.3 million dollar number.

Okay.

Two more quick questions.

The I think it was on page or slide 83, maybe.

Go back to that.

See, we wrote it down.

Oh, nope, I did not write the right one.

Maybe 93.

Story 93.

Nope, there's not one.

Okay.

Um regarding the public investment was 41 million, or we spent 43 million.

The original promised public investment was 41 million based on one of the last slides that I had seen.

The original promise development was 80 million for the private investment, and up to this date they had paid 36 million, correct?

Yeah, if you look back at the original development agreement.

Uh 86 point or 86 million dollars of private improvements and about 30 to 33 million dollars of private improvements, so kind of three to one ish.

So two more questions, and then um I would love to hear comments from the public too.

Uh regarding this is part of the East Bank TIFF, correct?

Yes.

And so the East Bank TIFF currently has about 4.6 million outstanding.

Is that correct?

That sounds about right.

We I know that in our recent conversations, we anticipate that the East Bank TIFF district debt will be retired about 2627.

2627.

Two or three years from now, yes.

So when you and I, I think you and I talked or Bob and I had discussed this during our meeting this week regarding why isn't the applicant using maybe TIF eligible expenses.

Can you explain that more?

Yeah, so um under the state tax increment financing laws, you have a 20-year window in which you can create a project plan.

So if the district was created in 1995, in 2015, you can no longer create any new project plans.

Subsequently, the plan for this specific area within the district.

That 20-year plan has already run its course.

And when did it run its course?

Uh 2023.

Yeah.

So 2324.

So project just retired.

So a project just happens to be coming up asking for more incentives after a previous incentive expired just a year prior with little development over the last 20 years on the project, but then it's brought up a year after the TIFF eligible project expired.

Is that correct?

The prod the redevelopment plan would have expired in 2023, 2024, yes.

So shortly right after.

We couldn't amend that exit.

So I can't create any new plans, and the existing plan can't be amended.

So TIFF was not an option.

Okay.

Thank you.

I think it's all the questions I have right now.

At this time, may I please have Ryan uh provide the following the slides regarding this project that is being considered good afternoon?

Um Ryan Clark, uh senior vice president of development with the Annex group.

And I swear I won't have 55 slides, so we should be should be good.

Um so yeah, as mentioned with the Annex group, we're out of uh Indianapolis, Indiana.

Um we are a Midwest based developer, primarily focusing on uh pretty exclusively uh workforce housing.

Um, you know, as mentioned, we have about 43 communities uh today.

Um and really a heavy focus of uh amount of our project is is really in Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, as well as uh Indiana, Michigan, and kind of of those areas.

Um in terms of Kansas, as as mentioned, um we have an existing project that is under construction right now, uh, Union at Purple Heart, that's 250 units.

Um also a uh workforce housing project on the east side of town that should be opening up here in probably the next month or so and on the first building.

Um, and you know, that is doing really well so far.

We have almost the the whole first building is already pre-leased.

Um, and so the the uh demand has been really through the roof over over 900 inquiries uh so far on that project.

Also wanted to mention uh we do have a sister nonprofit called Impact Housing, where we provide services for um our residents, kind of meeting the demand of what the need is um in that location.

Um want to show kind of some some recent infill projects that are currently under construction kind of regionally.

Um you'll see on the left-hand side union at Intel Valley.

Um that one just opened up in in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska, so and another urban infill project in a uh you know, kind of a pier uh city, uh River's Edge, which is in downtown Des Moines, that's located right along the river that will open up in October of this year.

That's about 220 units or so.

Uh another example in in downtown Lincoln, small urban infill site utilizing a city parking garage as well on that project.

That's that's currently under construction, and then another example is a 250 unit project in Ann Arbor, Michigan for workforce housing, which was their uh first one in about 50 years.

Uh, do also want to mention utilizing the program that we kind of had previously discussed, uh, we just program in in downtown Topeka for 250 units as well, and and then have a project in in Lawrence, um, Kansas, also.

Um, you know, as as you'll hear, and obviously you've seen a lot of the different studies that that you guys have done as a city um in terms of the workforce housing demand, it's it's really through the roof here.

Um, you know, a typical capture rate for us from our lenders, we need to be at about 10% of the available um you know residents that would be coming in.

Uh the capture rate for this project would be at uh 2.1%.

So the the need is is really um you know pretty pretty through the roof.

Um as mentioned, it's you know, it we're in a unique opportunity here with with uh KHRC, which is Kansas housing, and kind of this this last round of of funding that makes uh you know a project like this feasible kind of with some of the other things that that we're talking about.

Um so getting into the site specifically.

Um if you'll see kind of in that that black and white uh image there, um that kind of shows the uh in blue kind of the massing of of where the uh proposed uh site would be.

So you know, right now we're proposing it's a 186 units.

It would be um a five-story uh elevator building, uh would have about 60 or so parking spaces.

Um as Troy mentioned, we utilize some of the existing parking around for for the remaining.

Um, you know, all of our units that come with you know clubhouse, office area, on-site uh staff and and management, um, fitness area.

We'll have a you know a green uh kind of central lawn out there with playgrounds and things in in the middle of the uh of the building there uh in the green area, it's kind of a U-shaped.

Um, and then we'll be proposing uh on the fifth story closest to the riverside would be uh like a rooftop kind of uh outside area that is covered for for residents to enjoy and kind of the view.

Um we specifically spent a lot of time on on trying to design this to absolutely minimize um you know any disruptions from the existing water walk up uh condominium complex that's uh to the east to preserve their their viewsheds into the river and being cognizant of that.

You know, as a as a company, I would say we're we're uh kind of our niche is really focusing on urban infill housing and some of the examples that that I showed.

So, you know, obviously we just went through the the long history of of this site and why, and and that's what you know excites us as a developer and why we think this project will be you know very um successful.

It's you know it's the it's the trails, it's the access to all the men that is kind of in the area, and you know, hopefully with the the history that's kind of been laid out in general.

We're we're excited to have you know an arrangement that can bring uh a development like this to to fruition.

Um next slide here.

So this is more the the rendering.

So we did a uh a night view and a uh a daytime view to kind of show what that looks like as long as the top right kind of shows the massing again uh you know, next to the parking garage and in the condo building and uh the old Gander Mountain site.

Um so you know, all high quality materials, brick and um you know hardy siding.

You can see in the in the uh middle there where the uh kind of rooftop deck area is you know, units have balconies really you know, construction cost and and what code is today is you know it's pretty indistinguishable from from any you know higher end market rate building for for how it has to be designed in the energy efficiency of of such units.

Um really you know, as mentioned, we are our own property manager as well.

Um we got our start uh kind of back in the day doing really student housing plays.

It's a very intensive property management structure, and as we pivoted um, you know, more into workforce housing, we brought that you know management aspect with us to to be more you know higher touch um on these properties and and and be the manager of of all our assets as as these are long-term holds for us.

Um at that time, I can take any questions.

Thank you, Ryan.

Um, I do maybe just have one question, really.

It's for the city manager.

Is this the highest and best use for that property?

That's a great question, and I I that's probably somewhat subjective.

If you consider the original master plan, it's not consistent with that, so it doesn't have a retail or office component.

If you look at today's market, you look at what's happening downtown, the need for housing, the need for affordable housing.

Um, it's I think it is an appropriate use on the site.

Um is it the highest and best use?

That's that's really gonna be hard to indicate.

If if we were to hold out longer, the Ida can't judge the market in terms of what it would take in order for uh something closer to the master plan to be developed.

Um, but given the conversation, the history of this development, uh, we're not gonna be in for a significant dollar amount to assist with anything like that.

So I do think, and I do believe the master plan anticipated and previous discussions anticipated on an apartment use on a portion of the property.

So in that regard, I'd say it is consistent with discussions that we've had, at least in the 16 years I've been here.

Jim, uh sorry, Ryan, one question for you.

Um I remember this project, the Union at Purple Heart, which is in district number two, Councilmember Tuttle's district, and I think I um may have asked the question we would like to see more workforce housing in the city of Wichita.

We've all talked about the need for housing all across the six districts.

Um my question really is have you considered other plots of land, or is this the only one that you considered because you were approached, or did you approach Water Walk?

Um, yeah, I I considered many, many different opportunities.

There's a lot of different things at play in locations of what's called qualified census tracts and difficult development areas that has to do with how the funding comes into play.

Um but yeah, search long and hard for for potential opportunities.

Um as I mentioned, we really like doing urban infill type of housing.

Um so I I sought this out.

So as I did in a lot of the different cities, a lot of times, you know, it's not even land that's available for sale.

I just think hey, this is from what I'm seeing what the city is talking about, from what I'm doing, kind of on my own independent research of what I think could be a great play.

Um, it's ultimately a lot of where I end up uh you know, selecting the locations.

So you know, the downtown Topeka one, for example, is not a listed site.

That was me kind of you know, proactively talking with uh the owner and and finding that opportunity and matching it up with the city's goals.

Um so this was all my doing of being like, hey, this area makes a ton of sense.

Look at the you know, amenities and some of the things that we've just got done talking about and and and knowing there's a competitive scoring aspect all this and having won several of these you know competitive applications before and and knowing what works and what doesn't was how I ended up uh at this location.

And you also mentioned that the application process or the application deadline is this week.

Right.

Um, and this is the last round of this type of tax credits that uh you could be eligible for.

Right.

My question to you then is if you don't get these tax credits, will you move forward with this project?

No, there would be a fairly significant gap.

Yeah, it wouldn't wouldn't entertain it.

Thank you, Ryan.

I see no further questions from the council.

We will now open it up for public comment.

All individuals are allowed five minutes per person, and you simply come forward, state your name and your address, and then the five-minute clock will begin.

Celeste Reset, Wichita, Kansas.

I wasn't meaning to come here today, but I was watching this at home and got so upset at where we're at that here I am.

Again, I applaud you all for the thoughtful questions.

Thank you so much, and for talking about a failed development deal that has cost taxpayers 40 million dollars with minimal private investment by the investors.

It's just it's a prime example of why we worked so hard on that bipartisan committee to try to come to you last Thursday and explain.

Stop these sweetheart deals, stop these no-bid contracts, stop these handouts of taxpayer incentives.

And this is one of the prime examples of what has cost taxpayers in the city of Wichita.

Here's what I want to say about it.

And this is off the cuff, so excuse me if it's not a polished speech.

Jack Debore took advantage of the city's naivety.

He used a high power law firm and an uninformed mayor, city council, city manager, and city law department to push through state and city funds into this 22 acre development.

It was prime riverfront real estate.

He got numerous incentives and economic development dollars, and there were various revisions as you saw, and I've got all the copies of these deals in my office.

They're about this thick.

Jim Corick also took advantage of the city's naivety, and he pushed through a change to one of our city's charter ordinance to get the funding for the Fairfield Inn in Waterwalk.

And it's more than two million dollars.

It was two and a half for the hotel, and we're also being paid or we're paying one and a half million in interest.

In fact, we've paid so little on that interest and that principle that we could almost save $700,000 next year if we just got rid of that debt for Jim Cork.

In fact, when it was booked on our books, they called it stormwater utilities, and the entries to pay off these payments was falsely labeled convention center project.

And I believe there's no convention center in the Fairfield Hotel.

So all of this was misguided, mislabeled, and misappropriated funds.

And that was a charter ordinance, the hotel guest tax was created to take care of our tourism attractions, our public buildings, and Century 2.

So for him to push through a charter ordinance change shows the influence these developers had on city council at that time.

And it's so interesting now to see the names that signed this contract, including, and I'm not I'm gonna call them out.

They signed this deal.

So for 20 years, we've been dealing with these same people, year after year after year, and they were given a no-bid contract to build water walk.

A no-bid contract, and that was one of the recommendations our bipartisan efficiency group made was stop these no bid contracts.

They're called design build construction, and that means the contract is handed to who they think the best builder is.

So Key Construction got this contract, even though Dave Wells signed off on this agreement for water walk.

So this is so many convoluted influences in a contract that ends up costing the taxpayers so much so much money.

I know it's a difficult situation because you're facing a deadline, but I would not do this.

I'm sorry, I'll stand up here, I'll take the heat for saying this because I know we need affordable housing.

But you have got to do whatever you can to get out of this bungled development deal, fee simple, great suggestion.

Whatever we need to do, and you know what?

If I was Jack De Boer, or if I was Jim Korick and knew that I was getting this kind of publicity about having taken advantage of honest, hardworking Wichita taxpayers, I would work with the city to make this happen.

So I challenge them.

Jack DeBoer's estate, Jim Korick, the developer, Dave Burke, Dave Wells, any influence they have.

Let's get out of this deal.

Let's do fee simple so that if we want to do development, we actually benefit from it without any developer or any buyer or any residential condo owner having to negotiate through a stack of contracts involving CIDs, TIFs, star bonds, and all of the legal agreements.

So please deny the application.

Thank you.

Thank you, Celeste.

I'm going to ask the city manager to address two things she mentioned.

Uh, getting rid of that debt, specifically the 700,000 dollars she mentioned.

Can you address that?

And then also regarding no-bid contracts design builds.

What is the current policy from this bench?

Uh, first question.

Uh we have been looking at the retiring that debt.

Uh, actually, our finance department looked at it earlier this year.

It's not quite as simple as just simply retiring the debt and reclaiming all that money because we do have to also look at what the time value of money is, what we would get for our investment of idle funds during that period of time.

So then you take that and offset the debt service that you would uh avoid, and then you come up with an estimate.

We think you still may have a savings, could be about a hundred thousand dollars.

Um, but we're looking at that with our financial consultant and bond council, and that may be rolled into uh upcoming bond issue if that's the case.

Um second item, council has a policy that's been adopted regarding um uh design build projects, and there's a specific process that we have to fall follow.

Um bring it to the council, it has to be awarded on a competitive basis, a maximum price is uh adopted.

Um I'm sure there's some other provisions and protections that we've built in there.

I can't recall off the top of my head.

But those are our projects.

Um it's a again, Troy can correct me.

I think the use of a contractor on water walk was directed by the developer.

Not quite sure what approval process was involved in all that.

I don't believe that we were doing the selection.

Um, but uh when we use this tool, I think we have a pretty well-defined process that protects the city.

So since 20 years ago, do we no longer do things, especially when it comes to developer agreements where all the rights go to that developer and the city has no clawbacks?

Can you just address what has changed in 20 plus years and what what steps are now being taken that won't get us into this same type of situation?

From an economic development standpoint, our policy has evolved significantly over the last 10 years, especially.

Uh we're to the point now where almost every project that comes to the council has very little or no risk.

We do a lot of pay as you go.

When we put TIFF in front of the council, we do CID.

The protections are that those are pay as you go, and that the developer absorbs that risk, not the city.

And I think you all ask from the bench almost every project for us to affirm that because that's this current policy that we have.

Um if we look at a large project and compare this to another project the city was involved in.

If you look at the K96 and Greenwich project, uh again, significant development.

Uh in that case, uh, we have CID and star bonds used, and the CID.

Um, the first one that was put in place was with Cabellas, and that was to help finance interchange improvements that were needed to open up that development.

Um the star bonds were used to pay for some basic infrastructure, the main roads into the development.

And I think we may have had some general obligation bonds involved in the construction of the interchange as well, but then all of the support roads and the support network was put in by the developer.

So I think that was a good example of another way to do the project and one that's much more you know more recent and one that has been extremely successful to the point where we've retired our star bond debt early and our CI the CID debt early.

And that's a great example of leveraging private investment in order to be able to meet and actually exceed the city's obligation.

In fact, um I think we paid off the star bond debt eight years early, and that will free up about a half million dollars a year in sales tax revenue for the city annually as a result of that.

Thanks, City Manager.

We'll continue with public comment.

Hello, I'm Kyle Rickcliffs.

I'm here to represent King of Freight.

I'm an operations manager for King of Freight.

King of Freight is the tenant in the old Gander Mountain building.

We've been there since 2019.

It's owned by a related entity, always holding LLC.

I just wanted to give the city our perspective on things.

Um I don't know if this is the right time for that or if this is something that needs to come later.

I don't really know how any of this works.

I saw the article yesterday.

Um relayed the info to my older brother Mike.

He's the 90% owner of King of Freight.

We just wanted to make sure that the city was aware of our current situation.

Um our headquarters is in the water walk.

We employ over 650 employees.

Right now, 475 of them are in the water walk building.

Um I think next week we'll have over 500 with our new training class.

We're adding over a hundred jobs next week across the U.S.

We've got locations in Dallas, Little Rock, and Tampa, Florida, but Wichita will always be our home.

We currently lease over 400 parking spaces from the city.

This costs our employees and King of Freight 70 to 75,000 a year.

I'm here because the proposed 186 unit development, at least according to the drawings in the article, shows around 70 parking spaces.

So that means um hundreds of additional cars competing for the same limited shared parking our employees rely on every day.

We also employ two full-time security guards to patrol the area in addition to the city and the water walk security.

We're not here to oppose growth.

We just want to make sure that this is the planned responsibly because existing businesses don't want to foot the bill or lose access to the resources that we already pay for.

So water walk parking is already shared with the public.

Adding potentially hundreds of additional vehicles will overwhelm the system.

King of Freight already leases 405 of these spaces, average about 6250 a month, 6,250.

This is a significant investment.

It'll reduce availability, it harms our employees and our operations.

We're urging the council to require adequate on-site parking proportional to the units to avoid burning uh burdening the existing tenants and businesses.

According to the article, the developer is being offered a 76-year lease, a dollar a year, full property tax exemption, sales tax breaks, while the existing waterwalk businesses pay full freight parking fees, property taxes, HOA dues without comparable incentives.

This creates an uneven playing field and sets a precedent for future developments to rely on existing businesses resources without fair contribution.

The 186 apartments will increase traffic congestion in and out of the water walk area.

More residents and visitors with insufficient parking will increase street congestion and illegal parking.

Increased density without proportional security measures, risks uh higher crime rates, especially in shared garages and common areas.

We've already been dealing with that quite a bit.

The uh waterwalk owners association, um, the resources, landscaping, maintenance, lighting, security will inevitably be strained without proportionate contributions from this project, costs will shift to existing owners and tenants.

The water walk was originally envisioned as a high quality, mixed-use destination.

I really appreciate all the history you provided that helped open my eyes to a lot of things that I wasn't aware of.

Um we just think that a poorly planned high density project with inadequate parking risks, eroding the district's brand, discouraging future business investment.

We would like to urge the council to require a development plan that protects the value safety and functionality of the entire district.

I didn't even know much about this until a week ago.

It would have been better to talk directly with the water walk, but here we are now.

Um we were just hoping that maybe we could get more info, postpone this and figure out what we need to do about the parking situation, the safety, and hopefully, this won't come at the expense of all the businesses that are already investing in downtown Wichita and creating jobs now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kyle.

And I think you spoke up uh in the middle of the presentation saying that you knew how much uh was paid for that property.

I didn't know if you wanted to speak to that.

So I believe we inherited the lease for one dollar.

We can't they inher they inherited the lease for one dollar is what it is.

He will have to confirm through his legal team, he said.

Thank you very much.

We will continue with public comment.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Dev Thoth.

I live at Unit 503 at Waterwalk, and my husband is Kent Voath.

And I know yesterday, and he's been quoted, has we were not opposing it.

We like Jim.

We we like working with him, but this is not mean that we support this project.

There's a difference between not objecting and supporting it.

We ourselves as residents have had to sue the developer.

We did that in 1920.

I mean, did that in 2020?

And so we know how hard it is to fight for the quality of our area, and that we had to do that to protect our own residents in our own parking area.

And I would applaud what Celeste said, and I can imagine King of Freight's concern that there is not enough parking.

And when we were first told about this, it was a hundred parking spaces, and now it's 70 or 60.

And you know that 186 apartments are gonna bring a lot more people than parking available.

So we need development, and to be honest with you, it's the most convoluted relationship that we have with the developer, the residents, and the city.

And it's the most complicated system to work towards when there is an issue or a problem, and we've expressed some of those concerns before.

So I would urge the council to look at ways that this can be gotten out of that somehow.

The city has some more control over what happens in that area.

Um because the route that we're on, it's not going to leave a good result.

And as my husband said, the devil's in the details, the devil's who you know, and the devil who you don't know.

And so a developer could come in and purchase that whole area and put up a family store or a dollar store or something that will not help attract the high quality of people that we want to come downtown and spend their dollars in Wichita.

And frankly, we're at the forefront of entry into the city of Wichita.

And I would hope that the city would want to invest the dollars in the time in addition to all that you've done.

I'm not minimizing that to continue the quality development of the downtown riverfront area.

Thank you.

Thanks, Deb.

We will continue with public comment.

I mailed you all on email last night if you've had time to look at it or read it here, but I'll highlight part of that.

I'm in 302 waterwalk place.

We had to move.

Anyway, somebody said, Well, finally, as we looked all over town, try that place downtown.

They got uh you know a big building, and you can park right in front of your door.

And I said, What?

So anyway, we looked at it and moved in.

And I just wanted to I read uh I quoted just out of visit Wichita.com.

So even in your one of your city websites that I emailed you says water walk is a premier unit, multi-use development located in the heart of downtown Wichita, luxury condos, offices in the Marriott Hotel anchor the development visitors and tenants can enjoy the tranquility offered in our beautiful courtyard complete with walking paths, ponds, and the gazebo all located within steps of Century 2 and uh concerts and shows over in Trust Bank is a short walk away.

And I agree with that thing said about our place.

But I also said do not let this low-income building happen.

Century two is only a block and a half away.

The Hyatt Regency is just across the parking lot.

Fairfield is only about a hundred yards away.

The King Afraid is less than that, and they pay big money to park right across the street, as he just gave the details.

The building will only have a well, I have worked down a hundred, like you said, and they just got through saying it's only gonna be sixty or seventy.

And I told you if they'd have to, if they're gonna only have that many parking spots, the people that live there are gonna have to get out and drive a block and a half up to on Water Street to Waterman, hang on right and get into the main street, another block, and then down another half a block to use what city spaces are in our water walk place, which not gonna be very convenient.

So if you're gonna build 186 units and you're only gonna build put 60 spots, that is insane.

That's obviously not gonna work, even if it was not not with King Afraid being short of spaces already.

And so anywhere else is when I look out the window, we only the only view we have in water walkways, if you haven't been in it, is west to the east of us is the garage.

And I'm if you're on the end, north or south, and you got some side views.

But the only thing I can see is out west for the sunshine and sunrise, and now I'm gonna be looking at a six foot six story tall end of a building there hanging right in front of my deal.

So I'm oh that's a lot maybe able to see the sky.

But we invested big money, and now we can see if that happens, then my property value, I would assume if somebody's gonna once we buy it after this thing is built.

I'm gonna be down 1200,000, which means you're gonna be down the property tax.

It's gonna have to go down to match the value if our property goes down, the city is gonna be losing money.

So anyway, as I've said in my memo, please vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Harold.

We'll continue with public comment.

Hello, uh, my name is April Brooks.

Um I work at King of Freight, been with the been with them since 2017.

Um, and the move into the waterwalk building.

Um I kind of want to touch on some things that Kyle has already said, but I also want to bring uh to the forefront really how much the we're paying the city for this parking.

Um, and also highlight the fact that um whenever this developer was up here talking, he was asked about parking questions.

Um they said that they're gonna have what, 75 parking for the 186 units.

He kind of brushed it off, and it was like, oh, they're gonna find parking around around the area.

Um that parking around the area is um the parking that our employees are utilizing currently and paying for.

Uh to date, we have paid uh $238,000 for the parking in and around that area.

And as Kyle had mentioned, I believe our monthly invoice is about $6,500.

Um, as you can imagine, we also get uh get complaints from our employees.

They're not happy about their 15 uh for their $15, which is also increased two times over the last year.

Um, and I think actually it's like sixteen dollars and thirty-eight cents.

Um I would like the city to take that into consideration.

Well, we're not opposed to the growth of the area.

I think that it should be properly planned, and um the the residents that are are currently there and utilizing the area uh to bring in 186 houses and to expect only 75 people to park there.

Um that math is not mathing, as I would say.

Uh and really that that's all.

I want to bring in light how much we're paying, and um understand King of Rate wasn't really mentioned in any of these uh presentations.

If we were briefly mentioned, and it was the old Ganner Mountain building, we're not the old Gainer Mountain building, we are King of Freight.

Um I think we've paid over a million dollars in property taxes on that building, and we pay substantial amount to the city each month for parking.

Uh so really just want that that noticed.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ms.

Brooks.

We'll continue with public comment.

Good afternoon, Heather Schroeder, executive director of downtown Wichita.

And um, I'm not here to speak on the merits of any projects today.

I just wanted to share our latest market research with you in regard to demand for housing downtown.

Uh, as part of our ongoing effort to update the downtown master plan.

We're calling it our downtown Wichita Action Plan.

Uh it's the 10-year vision for uh how we want to see downtown grow as a community over the next uh decade.

We commissioned an independent market research uh firm to um give us updated uh data for our market in fall 2024.

Um what they provided was that our market potential um is to build up to 750 new housing units each year over the next five years for a total of up to 3,750 new units over that five-year period.

Um they looked at the population of people most likely to move downtown based on demographics, and they found that uh 43.4% of those potential downtown market movers earn 60% or less of the area median income annually.

Um so our our AMIs, um, our area median incomes at those levels would be $19,250 a year uh for a one-person household.

At 50% AMI, it's $32,050 for a one-person household, and at 60% AMI, it's $38,450.

If you were to work um at our minimum wage of $725 an hour, you would only earn $15,080 annually.

So you you could not afford those units at 30% AMI, um, which I believe was the low threshold of this particular LITEC project.

Um I'm uncertain on on what their percentage affordability rate is.

Um so I just wanted to provide you with that information.

We have strong demand at all income levels for housing downtown.

Where that how housing is sited and how it integrates into our urban fabric is a question to be determined by the community with our ongoing work on the downtown Wish Action Plan and with your input.

Thank you.

Heather, I'll have one question for you.

I asked this of the city manager, what's the highest and best use of this property according to the action plan so far?

That's a great question.

The this site abuts the river, and with all of our or I guess the larger water walk site abuts the river.

Um with every kind of topic area where we've surveyed the public at our our community meetings, um, whether it's uh housing, working, entertainment, how people get around, um daily amenities.

Everybody wants to see the river more active, more densely developed, um, kind of incorporating all the all of those various uses.

Um so there is, you know, there is demand for housing along the river, there's demand for dining, um, making sure that people can, you know, enjoy the river view.

The river is um unanimously stated to be our best asset um, you know, and very unique for a city of our size to have that amenity in our core.

Thank you, Heather.

We'll continue with public comment.

I see no one else from the public.

Um before we move on from public comment, thank you to the six speakers.

Uh city manager, actually, Jim, can you answer a specific question a resident had, which was um condos and the views of their condos.

In your in the water walk agreement, does it say anything about what can or cannot be built in front of their condos?

Mayor, which agreement are you referring to?

Um with the water walk uh condos.

So are there any restrictions of what can be built in front of them in their agreement that I guess water walk had with the condos?

Thank you for the clarification.

To my knowledge, there are no written agreements that that uh talk about obstruction of view.

Thank you, Jim.

We will close public comment and now bring it back to the bench, and we have a full board.

We'll begin with council member Glascock.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have a question for Troy before I have any comments.

So we have the proposal.

A lot of what we talked about is history of it, but we have the green sheet which talks about the specific proposal.

When we look at what's before us today, what is the minimum that we have to include in the development agreement so they can attempt to get tax credits through the state?

Uh so the way that the development agreement is constructed again today, right?

Um, because they need to know sort of what some of their um what some of the city commitments are, particularly in regards to the things like the property tax abatements and the sales tax exemptions, that that letter of intent, that's why that's an exhibit in there.

Um they need to know and understand that stuff.

But what they need to be able to do is submit to the state the development agreement.

So the reason why we drafted it the way we did was because we can continue to sort of hold the ground lease until such time as all of those preconditions are satisfied, that allows them to go do all of their due diligence, put their financing together, so on and so forth.

If we don't have that contingency in place, and we sort of just approve the development agreement and the ground lease, if for whatever reason the they don't obtain the Litech tax credit award or they don't obtain the development rights or whatever that all then there's really no way to unwind it, so to speak.

So we'll we put that contingency out there that all the preconditions have to be met, and then we'll execute the ground lease to make sure that if whatever reason they don't they don't satisfy those preconditions that that this can get sort of unwound.

Probably not the exact answer I was looking for.

So do we have to offer the sales tax exemption, the property tax exemption?

Right now they request uh that they wanted to do a pilot to be able to pay for a portion of the property tax, and they want to not pay the property tax or they want to fully pay the school district property tax.

So, what do we have to offer in a agreement to the state as part of a development agreement that the state would consider to to award them lie tech credits?

I'm gonna answer that in a way of deferring to the developer because they'll explain more of the point structure.

Yeah, so it has to do with project feasibility, right?

So you know we talked about the TIFF prior, that kind of expiring, you know, we would approve wanted to go that route, right?

That would have been more simple.

Um so this is a way to say, hey, we're still paying a certain amount of those taxes.

This hurts hits a certain uh debt coverage ratio.

This hurts hits a certain uh debt coverage ratio, and so that's what our investors need to see that that is maintained throughout the uh lifecycle of the project.

And so there'll be underwriting standards that KHRC goes through.

So this development agreement and kind of what we're talking about, you know, with sales tax exemption um with a pilot, that is for the underwriting of the project because our rents are fixed, right?

We're straight across the board, you have tax credits coming in.

Um and then so limiting knowing what exactly our our taxes are is what allows you to hit that debt coverage ratio.

And that's that's the point of of doing that, as well as having showing the the land control um is is another requirement.

So let's say this body chose to do sales tax exemption versus property tax exemption instead of doing both.

Would you not be submitting the application if we chose to go one path over the other, or do you require both to move forward?

For project feasibility, correct.

It would be both, right.

And then question for Troy Because the requesting four percent, how many have been awarded uh LITEC credits uh in Wichita at the four percent rate?

Yeah, yeah, I don't have that information available too.

So I can add one one item on that.

Um just just knowing so you know we we do what's called four percent projects, so these are the large ones.

I believe she can speak to the nine percents, but um, outside of our purple heart deal.

Um I think there's been one other four percent project, but okay.

In the first round of four percent applications, there were no awards here in Wachita.

There's been about eight award four percent awards here in the past seven years.

Um, one of them is a stall project that isn't moving forward, the rest have actually moved forward.

But as said um previously, this will be the last round that includes the layering of the state tax credit on top of it.

So eight out of how many.

Um, you know, because they do urban and rural set asides, that amount can vary.

The first round, there were only four um urban projects awarded, all in northeastern uh Kansas, and uh obviously none of those were ours.

So chances of even being awarded the four percent tax credits pretty slim.

It is very very, very competitive, and that's why hitting the maximum amount of points that you can on a project is pivotal.

And so one of the scoring criteria in the QAP is your uh either uh below market uh loans and investments from this from your local government into the project.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ballard, Councilmember Tuttle.

Thank you.

Um I just wanted to make a few comments, and I had lots of questions, but people got on the board before me, and that's okay.

Um I just want to say thanks, Troy, for all of your work on this.

I wanted to say thank you to all the speakers who are here today.

Um I have had expertise communication with the applicant, I've had expertise communication with the residents, and then also with the businesses surroundings.

So just want to make sure that's for the public record.

I I this is a challenging one for me.

It truly is, because we need workforce housing, and we know we need it downtown.

These are the people who work in our restaurants, they you know, help with all of the new flourishing hotels that we have.

Um, you know, they work in all of the new amenities that we're super excited about.

And we know that we need all housing, and we need all housing, not just in the downtown core, but all through the city.

But I just keep asking myself if this is the right project at this time.

Um, there's lots of questions that need to be answered, obviously about the whole development, but specifically even about this project.

Um I it's as it mentioned, it's not consistent with any of the I think five master plans for this area.

And I think this really highlights that we need to look at this area and you know, not just focus on the past.

You need to keep you know, one eye in the rear view mirror, but most of your attention on the windshield.

And and I hope that you know we've had a highlight today of what's happened in the past, but really be thinking as a community about our city's core and how we can continue to make it vibrant and address the growth and new additions that are coming in in a really intentional and consistent way.

Um some of my concerns I mentioned are about parking.

This is one of the lower return on investments that I've seen.

I know it's one to one point one, and you know, it meets the criteria, but it's razor thin and with as many questions as we have, that's just something that worries me a little bit.

Um I I do want to thank all of the residents for sharing your thoughts.

I received multiple emails, as I'm sure that my colleagues did.

I had several phone calls as well.

And it it always is encouraging to me.

I I had my district advisory board last night, and we had a contentious zoning case, and 18 people came and spoke.

And I said I'm glad that people were here, and I'd be more worried if they weren't.

So in this case as well, thank you to the residents who took their time to let us know how they feel.

Um I I just think there's too many unattended and unidentified consequences at this time.

So this is going to be a really challenging vote for me.

But thank you for Troy and for all your hard work on this.

Appreciate hearing the other comments from my colleagues.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I I agree with Councilmember Tuttle.

This is there's definitely a need for affordable housing in this community, um, including downtown.

It's got to be all over the place.

Um the unfortunate part of this is that this was so rushed to try and get this in under the deadline.

I wish we would have had a little more time to kind of work this and understand the ins and outs of not only the history here, but also with the project, uh the parking issues, that is a concern as well.

Um, we gotta make sure that we have adequate parking, uh downtown, college hill, all over the place.

Um I I just I wish we did have a little more time to kind of go back and forth and understand the scope of this project.

And um, yeah, this is a difficult one.

So thank you.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I want to say manager present this to me, I don't know, 10 days ago or whatever.

Um initial reaction was is this the right place for affordable housing?

And I still still struggle with that, question that I'm I'm all for affordable housing, working on it in many different facets, but I'm I'm not sure this is the right place for it.

Um I do appreciate the presentation Troy gave.

I appreciate the history.

Interesting, good to know.

So it's a it's a it's a tough vote.

There's no doubt.

So thank you.

Councilmember Glascock.

Thank you, Mayor Jim.

I want to thank you for taking responsibility.

We have to trust for a lot of the conversations.

There are a lot of people who come before this body that don't take responsibility for previous things, and so I want to say thank you genuinely for that.

I want to find a path forward to support and housing, whether that's affordable housing or housing, just housing in this area.

Um, but I don't know if I can support incentives on this location based on the history of incentives here previously.

Not opposed to development of land, please do it.

Not opposed to housing, please do it.

Not affordable opposed to the affordable housing unit, please do it.

I know that's tougher economically to make feasible.

Um, and I want to see development, I just don't see comfortable or I'm not comfortable with it in this location.

Um Bob said something um that stood out to me a second ago.

He said that many of these deals happened because the council wanted to see development, and I don't want to because the clock is ticking, or because we want to see development move forward with something that may not be the best use of taxpayer dollars.

And so um I won't be supportive of that, but I do hope, Jim, that we can maybe move forward um with an agreement to have a new day on this development project in the future.

And I think that that's something that this council supports.

How can we move forward and how can we press the restart button on water walks?

I think that we need to restart.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I'd just like to echo my colleagues and thank staff and and Bob and um everyone else that's been involved with this long and lengthy uh history, but I'll be voting no today because right now it's clear to me we need to have a lot more conversations with the parties that will be impacted.

I'm not against the affordable housing project, but we need to look at the waterwalk development overall and see what makes sense to fix this mistake.

It's definitely not selling the land, but we can't keep doing the same thing because it's not working.

I'd like to see us find a way to look at our riverfront property on how to make all of these areas work together as an exciting public asset along our river and not a developer's playground.

There's no one else on the board, and um with that, I will add my final comments from the very get-go.

When I became mayor last year, I've asked about history being told to this community so we can have that conversation, but it's taken a year and a half for that conversation, and now with a deadline, in order for us to have the conversation.

And so I'm very grateful to assistant uh city manager Troy, who dug up a lot of this history.

I know it was not easy.

There were a lot of development agreements, there were a lot of contracts, amendments, and I think one of the speakers, one of the residents actually said it best.

I mean, it's so difficult to even just get an answer for a simple question because there are so many layers to it.

So I also want to say thank you to Jim for again saying you apologize on the behalf of the estate.

However, there are a lot of promises.

It was not hopes, it was actually promises that were not kept.

They were not fulfilled.

And this community has been lied to many times.

And that's why we cannot move forward until we've actually addressed all the ills.

It's difficult for a new development to want to do good for our community to move forward with that idea.

So I hope that in good faith, the state will come and speak with the city manager and the law team on how to move forward with not keeping us hostage on a 99-year deal.

And I understand that that agreement was signed by individuals, again, who are not on this council, and by staff who's mostly not in the city of Wichita right now.

So I'm asking in good faith.

Can we come back to the table?

Because I know that this would require an agreement to be dissolved and a new one to come forward.

So I'm asking in good faith.

We need something to move forward.

And I don't want the city to bear the brunt of what has happened in the last 20 plus years to happen again.

And I would like to see development happen responsibly.

I I do believe that there is an opportunity with a 300 million dollar investment in downtown Wichita through a new Wichita biomedical campus, there will be a need.

There will be a need for housing, there will be a need for other amenities.

But I ask that since you know there's gonna be a need, can we come back to the table and do something that is right for this community?

It really is difficult because Ryan, I know Annex Group is making a major investment in district number two with affordable housing, workforce housing, especially for seniors, and I like that type of housing.

I think it's important to have all types of housing in the city of Wichita, but I don't believe this is the right location.

And so I ask, I know you're under the gun when it comes to time, but there are other plots of land, even in downtown Wichita right now, that would want to have that type of housing without the cloud, the negative cloud that currently sits on this specific property.

So with that, I cannot move this motion forward.

So I I would move to deny uh this application.

Excuse me, Mayor, but I can recommend that the motion also include uh close the public hearing.

I move council member Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um I'll take the minority position today.

Um, when we look at housing, all of us have talked about the importance of housing.

And I understand the cloud that continues to be referenced here over this development.

Mr.

Karak was very um brave and did the right thing in acknowledging that, apologizing, which we didn't ask him to do.

Appreciate that.

But that cloud is now potentially uh harming an opportunity for workforce housing.

We've heard affordable housing, and I think there's even some type of connotation that has been alluded to with that.

If we continue to say downtown is everybody's backyard, why not build housing for everyone?

And just because workforce housing happens to be close to the river, I don't think that's a bad thing.

That's a space where someone who makes what we make, six of us, another mayor makes double what we make, but someone who makes what we make could afford to live there.

It's not paying 1,800, 2,000, however many dollars per month.

This would be something that workforce folks can live in, the people who may work at the biomed space, the other people who may work downtown.

It's not a bad thing to be there, and as the riverfront continues to develop, man, what a great space to have some affordable housing where people can live by these great amenities.

And it's not just folks who are on the higher end of the wealth spectrum.

So I am supportive of that.

I think that everyone deserves to have an opportunity to live downtown, and as we continue to look at the numbers of necessary spaces, this puts more folks there as we've talked to large chain grocery stores.

We need more people downtown.

We're still not there yet.

This takes us one step further to get there.

I understand the cloud.

Um, it's been apparent to me over my eight years being on this body that we've learned a lot of lessons from deals that may not have been everyone's favorite back in the early 2000s.

We do things differently.

This is one of those opportunities to also do things differently.

I do agree that we need to have a conversation on those other North II parcels to look at what can we do about this extended lease.

But this opportunity right now, with this being the last year that the state is offering one of those opportunities to make this workforce housing happen, I think this is the right time to do so.

You often want your habitable spaces to come online as something like biomed comes online.

This would actually come online around that same time frame.

And again, if downtown's everyone's backyard, we continue to say that, and many of us have, and we continue to have other leaders in the city say it, then we have to act like it.

When we have affordable housing opportunities, if the deal's not terrible, and I didn't hear that it was, and from what I've read, it's not terrible, then we should be trying to do what we can to make sure that there's affordable spaces for people.

We know we're in a housing shortage.

So for me, I know that there is a motion on the table.

Um, if it is seconded, I do have a substitute motion because I do think that this deal should happen.

It was not seconded yet.

I did.

I seconded.

Okay, so we have a motion and a second.

So you have an amended motion that you would like to propose, Councilmember Johnson.

Yes, Mayor would like to offer a substitute motion to close close the public hearing, approve the development agreement, and authorize the necessary signatures.

You have a substitute motion with no second.

So that substitute motion fails.

We're back to the original notion of denying or closing the public hearing and denying this project with a second by Vice Mayor Johnston.

Any further comments?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes for the denial at 621.

It is 12 50 at this moment.

We will take a break.

Um, I will ask for a recess of 15 minutes, and we will return at 105.

Mayor, City Council, uh Tim Kelms, Public Works and Utilities here talking about trails, paths, and sidewalks.

This is a um newer CIP item, so we haven't had this uh totally locked in as some of our other projects that we've had uh in that in the CIP for decades or so, uh, such as the athletic courts and athletic fields.

So this one's a little bit new for us.

Um so in uh again, this is for trails, paths, and sidewalks.

Um the damage to a lot of our trails is primarily due to heavy heavy usage, poor drainage, and then just weather events.

Um almost guarantee that sidewalk or concrete's gonna crack, uh, asphalt will eventually run through its lifespan.

Um, and uh soft surface trails again through through drainage and things like that and erosion, they just need to be maintained over time.

Um, one example uh main focus uh for this year would be at Pawnee uh Pawne Prairie Park, uh the trail there.

Uh, you can see that some of the gravel that exists now today, it's is quite large uh and isn't really um conducive for for usage.

Um, you know, I think uh I think it was really intended to be a bike trail there, and I think there are some hikers and people that do use it.

Um you can get away with a little bit uh larger rock size with some of the bikes, but uh not this this large, and we've seen some of this just due to erosion and just some of the fine settlements just washing away.

Uh and again, this can create a uh safety risk, uh, tripping hazards and things like that.

So, again, we don't want our our uh citizens getting uh hurt in our parks, uh, so making sure that we have uh proper trail systems uh and pathways uh uh is important.

Uh as I mentioned, the primary focus for this should be at Pawnee Prairie Park.

Um, as I kind of mentioned, uh, we are having issues there, uh, especially when those fines do walk away.

We do have some of those shopper rocks that are out there.

Uh and you'll see in a couple later and some later slides here that we have done some smaller repairs, just not in these big lark section sections that we're hoping to do.

Uh, you can see the difference between them.

It's pretty much like a nine-and-day difference, and it's kind of you don't really think that gravel size matters too much, especially when you get down to a quarter of an inch uh differences, but that does make it a huge difference and uh is important for uh compaction and and just maintaining the longevity of those trails.

Um with funding, funding does remain.

Uh, we'll be looking at continuing using uh or making improvements to trails, paths, and sidewalks with similar concerns uh as funding allows.

So financial considerations, the 2025-2029 uh adopted capital improvement program contains 300,000 for uh in 2025 for trail paths and sidewalk repairs.

You can see over there on the right for that image.

The that was one of the conditions before repairs were made in 2022.

Um you can see kind of the the clump there in the bottom right of all those large rocks.

Uh, when we get large storm events, these uh if it's not done correctly, a lot of uh sediment and these rocks tend to move.

Uh so proper trail uh construction is important uh regardless of if it's uh a soft surface uh such as this or uh concrete or asphalt, uh making sure the grades and change is addressed uh is a is a huge concern and uh can help prevent issues long term.

This is uh a little bit further down, but this is what it looked like after we made those repairs in 2022, and this is uh what we're planning to do over at uh throughout the system over at Pawnee Prairie Park.

Um if you've been out there that's nice and compacted that the rocks that we choose uh kind of bind together so they're not as loose.

There are some uh areas where they do have these loose rocks, they can shift, but having the right rock selection is really important for these things, and we think we found a good uh good solution, especially here at Pawnee Prairie Park.

Uh so the recommended action is that the city initiate the project, adopt the resolution and authorize the necessary signatures.

And happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you, Tim.

Any questions for staff?

I just had one question.

This is obviously going to focus on district four.

Um, and I'm really glad that that park is getting some improvements.

Um the other parks in the other uh five districts, are they also kind of programmed the same way when it comes to the trail path and sidewalk repair?

Yes, yep.

So we work closely between park and uh public works to try to identify my goal and my hope is is that um the funds for this project will have enough to start tackling it, especially the those high problematic areas that we see click fix is great because that helps us identify problematic spots where we get repeat uh issues.

Uh so we'll continue to work with them.

You know, I think in many of these cases, uh I think this CIP is really good for specific uh sections versus you know doing like a giant, you know, new one.

So like uh red bud trail, for example, that would be completely separate CIP item.

Uh but this is really great specifically for those repairs, and I think that um with the specific CIP item when we have funds that do remain, we can uh strategically target in different areas across the park system or in just in general.

I'm glad to hear that.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you.

I see no further questions for staff.

We'll open it up for public comment.

I see no one from the public.

We'll bring it back to the bench.

Council member Glascock.

Mayor, with the motion, the city council approve the project, adopt the bonding resolution, 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.

Centralization of financial services initiative, contract approvals.

Morning, Mayor, members of the city council, Mark Manning with the Department of Finance.

Today I want to talk to you about centralization of financial services.

And uh, I know that may not sound like the most exciting topic, so I'll try to give you the high-level version of it, uh, but I'd be happy to answer any more detailed questions if you have them.

Uh so as you may know, the city has a very decentralized process in financial transactions.

And when I say financial transactions, I'm talking generally about accounts payable, which is when we pay vendors.

I'm talking about accounts receivable, which is when we seek to collect money from uh entities that owe us money.

Even contractual management has some aspects of decentralization, and finally payroll is largely decentralized.

So those are the four general areas that we're looking at.

Now, ultra simplistically, what I mean by decentralization is there's a lot of steps and a lot of documents to process to get to the end result.

And the way our model is now, maybe the first half or so of those steps and processes occur at the departmental level.

And then those documents and transactions are uh submitted to the finance department, and we do a lot of work on the back end to making sure that everything is appropriate to uh final posts and final transacts.

So that's the challenge.

Some of our work is done at departments, some of it is at the finance department.

Essentially, with centralization, we believe that there's a lot of advantages to consolidating all of that work in the finance department.

And I'll go over some of those real quick.

Now, this is not to say that our departments do a bad job now because they generally do a very good job.

It's just basically to say that our model is inherently inefficient in a few ways.

I'll give you some examples.

We have a lot of small departments.

They may have one person who's only uses a fraction of their time to do a lot of this work.

So that inherently means that they may not have the level of training or the level of understanding of our processes that we would like.

Again, not a reflection of our staff, just that it's a small portion in some cases of the total work that they do.

We have other departments that are very large, and we have an opposite problem.

They're so large, sometimes they have multiple people doing similar work, and it becomes kind of a maze to try to understand where the documents are within their bureaucracy and within their organization.

And if that's a challenge for the finance department when we do that, I have no doubt it's a challenge for our customers when they try to communicate with people in departments too.

And we've had instances like that.

So we believe centralization would provide more of a singular point of contact, and that I think is particularly beneficial to our to our customers, particularly the people that we pay to uh funds too.

I think they would definitely appreciate that.

Now we have a variety of policies and procedures, as you can imagine, and everything we do in the finance world.

And again, uh we our departments do a pretty good job of adhering to those.

Uh but you know, let's be candid.

We have 17 different departments, and sometimes we have 17 different ways that they interpret our policies and procedures.

Uh usually good, but sometimes maybe not quite as good as we would like.

Uh that creates risk for us.

We do not like risk.

So we think we could avoid a lot of risk if we consolidated a lot of those functions into the finance department.

And finally, uh, I think bullet number four may be the most important reason.

Uh finance department, it's in our mission statement.

Our mission is to process financial transactions, essentially.

That's what we do.

That's what we're trained to do.

We have a lot of staff to do it.

Uh, you know, it's not the police department's core function to process financial transactions to state the obvious.

Uh it detracts them, I would argue, from their core mission.

It's what we would call a non-core function.

And I would argue that anything that you can take off an operating department that distracts them from their core function is probably a good thing.

So that's why uh we believe centralization uh would be uh an appropriate idea.

So we've been talking about centralization now for a couple years.

Uh we suggested the concept, I think, in 2024.

Uh it was talked about last year, if you recall during the budget process, we initially estimated saving some of the neighborhood of 200,000.

Again, when the council adopted the budget last year, uh, there was actually discussion about accelerating the process, which was done, and it was incorporated in the 2025 adopted budget along with some uh one-time funding for some of the capital expenditures, which is putting us in a really good position right now to do it that we're gonna suggest doing here in a few slides.

So this year in the budget process, as you know, we accompanied the proposed budget with a strategic plan.

And one of those strategies in the strategic plan, and this was aligned to the pillar of well-run city, was uh strategy 1.1.2, which is to seek opportunities to accelerate and implement centralization of organizational financial services.

So that is in our strategic plan.

So, in response, as you know, departments were tasked to develop tactics to implement these strategic plan.

And again, that's why I'm here today, because one of the tactics we developed in finance was to evaluate our current AP and AR functions within departments and develop a more efficient and effective model.

So that's a that's something that we're gonna propose to you in just a few minutes and provide you with the opportunity to give us tools to do that.

Now, we in finance have done some preliminary work.

We know that they're somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 city positions that operate in our space.

That's not 160 full-time positions.

Uh, some of them, as I mentioned, you know, 10%, 20% of their job may be in our space.

But there are a lot of full-time positions embedded, particularly in some of our larger departments.

And incidentally, probably about 40 of those 160 are in the finance department.

But we've looked at all those positions.

We have a variety of ways to do that empirically.

You know, obviously we operate a computer system, so we know who touches our system, when they touch it, we know how accurately they touch it.

So we have pretty good idea who does a lot of work in this space, uh, who has high air rates, and who does uh lesser work in this space.

And I think that'll be very helpful later on.

So to help us, we developed an RFP because we wanted to find a consultant that could uh look at our staffing levels and provide some recommendations for a centralized approach.

So we issued an RFP in March of this year, and the project scope was relatively simple.

We told them we have about 160 positions related to financial processes.

We wanted them to evaluate the duties of those positions, and I think that uh work is going to involve a lot of interviews with our staff because we definitely want to involve departments and departmental staff.

That's very important to us.

Uh they're also going to study our workflows and our processes.

Again, because not only do we want to figure out how we can shift staff, but we also want to look at our processes and see if there's any opportunities to make our processes more efficient or take out any steps or anything like that.

Perhaps most importantly, uh they will develop models for us and identify potential savings from staffing realignments, from perhaps the use of additional technology or perhaps uh different procedures.

So those are the basically three things we wanted to have done.

We formed a committee.

We had uh outside participation from other departments, law, airport, and transit helped us out a lot.

We conducted interviews with four firms, and the committee recommended McConnell and James LLP.

Now, why did the committee recommend uh McConnell and Jones?

They have a lot of experience doing this exact kind of work.

Uh and in fact, that experience is with cities similarly sized to Wichita.

I think they worked in Montgomery, Alabama, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Little Rock, Arkansas are the three that come to mind.

But in addition to that, they have a lot of experience in the government space.

They also demonstrated a very clear understanding of what we want.

This firm is actually a large CPA firm, and uh that's what we wanted.

We wanted to tilt not only towards organizational structure, but we also wanted somebody that understood our processes from an accounting standpoint, could provide recommendations on us on how we could improve those processes if there's opportunities to do that.

So that's one piece of the uh one piece of what I'm presenting today.

Again, we want to hire consultant to help us examine our structure and figure out how we can restructure better going into next year and look at our processes.

The second piece that I'm gonna talk to you about today is payroll processing.

Now, we mentioned that, we actually mentioned that last year, and we mentioned the manualness of our payroll processes and the incredible inefficiency that we have in a lot of our processes.

And we talked about moving to like an electronic timekeeping system.

Uh so uh again, that's an extension of our efforts to uh centralized services.

We think there's a lot of uh opportunities there, and again, we want to enhance our timekeeping processes, but we also think there are opportunities to uh maybe find some ways to realign staff in that process of automating our timekeeping.

And again, I use electronic timekeeping kind of generically.

That may not be the best title, but uh that's generically what I use to talk about automating our payroll process.

So we actually started on this even earlier.

Uh any time you do software, you know, it takes a lot longer, it seems like.

So we actually issued the RP back in January.

Our project scope was again fairly simple.

We wanted uh something that was uh could implement consistent business processes and best practices in our payroll processing.

We wanted it to be easy to use, not only for the staff that processed payroll in finance, but also for our employees when they enter in time.

That was very important to us.

We didn't want to buy a system that was too complicated that nobody could figure out how to use.

We recognized we had a lot of varying departmental needs, and I'll talk about that in a second, but we didn't want a we wanted a system that could accommodate all of the various needs of our departments.

And finally, we wanted a system that had scheduling.

We do scheduling in a really disjointed fashion right now.

A lot of departments have various different software solutions to try to schedule their employees.

So we wanted a payroll system that had uh scheduling built into it.

So that's what we wanted.

So we formed a staff screening selection committee.

Now it was very important when we formed this committee that we have representatives from every department.

So our committee was huge, probably the biggest one I've served on in the time that I've been with the city.

But we did that intentionally because we wanted representatives from every single department, and we really appreciate their feedback.

They spent a lot of time asking a lot of questions, particularly larger departments, that's exactly what we wanted.

So we conducted interviews with three firms, and then we narrowed it down to two firms, and we had even more exhaustive interviews, and they provided demos.

And when I say meetings, I think these are like two and three-hour meetings.

So we spent a lot of time evaluating uh respondents.

Ultimately, the committee recommended time clock plus, or also referred to as TCP.

So, what did we like about time clock plus?

It was extraordinarily adaptable.

You know, we told them, well, here's how we do things in police, here's how we do things in fire, here's how we do things in public works in park.

Those are by far our most complicated departments.

And police and fire particularly are very complicated, a lot of nuances in their payroll processing.

We spent a lot of time talking to the vendors about that.

And again, I had representatives from both departments on our committee, and uh they uh both uh were in concurrence at Time Clock Plus would adapt to their needs.

Uh time clock plus has a lot of uh work in the public sector space that was important to us.

They're also very familiar with our ERP system, Munis, which also was very important to us as well.

Now their name Time Clock Plus, I would argue is a little bit of a misnomer.

Uh really the plus part is one thing that really attracted us to them, and the plus part includes a very, very robust scheduling capability.

And I mentioned how that's very important to us, particularly in fire and in police, and even in park to a degree, and even in other departments, they have a very robust scheduling package that we think uh will be very advantageous to us and actually will facilitate enhanced management decision making.

So for that reason, the committee selected time clock plus.

So as far as uh financial considerations, again, the city council included money in the 2025 adopted budget uh for capital expenditures, which was fortuitous, so we do have that funding available to us.

Uh we may try to allocate some underexpenditures in finance this year to provide us some supplemental funds to ensure that we can take care of this appropriately.

But the funding for this is essentially already appropriated.

I mentioned earlier last year we thought we might save 200,000.

We've done a lot of uh examination.

Uh we think we may save as much as half a million dollars by doing this again.

It would depend on how we implement it and what positions we're able to identify for realignment, uh, but we think the the potential is uh fairly considerable.

The time clock plus as a software program, as you can imagine, has maintenance fees associated with that.

We think those could be as much as a quarter million dollars a year.

I can't give you an exact number because it'll depend on a couple things.

It'll depend on how many licenses we buy, which will of course will depend on what our structure ultimately looks like, and it also depend on how we choose to implement the uh time clock technology because there's unit charges on that.

250 is probably a maximum, probably too high, maybe closer to 200,000.

Point is we will have a fairly sizable annual uh cost to implement this program.

Again, we think we can offset a lot of that by getting rid of some legacy software we have in the scheduling area, software that has maintenance fees associated with it now.

And again, we think we will try to identify some efficiencies in staffing and probably through realignment uh or through uh not filling positions when they become vacant, try to identify additional savings to offset the uh cost of the maintenance on this uh project.

So uh I know I threw a lot at you.

I apologize.

Uh I could I could speak for hours on it if you wanted me to, but you probably don't want me to.

Uh but the recommendation of the two separate committees is one to approve the McConnell and Jones LLP contract uh for consulting services, and the other is to approve the time clock plus contract uh for electronic timekeeping sign uh system, approve the contracts and authorize necessary signatures, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention before I finished.

Uh Nikki Babcock of my office is serving as the project manager for the electronic timekeeping software implementation, which will be a significant job.

She spent a ton of time on that, and I really appreciate her efforts along with the other staff in the finance department that have worked a lot in the past helping her, and we really appreciate the help of the operating departments, particularly on the selection of our of time clock plus, because that was a lot of time for them, but their contributions were invaluable to us as we try to move forward.

So that's in my presentation.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them.

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Nikki.

Councilmember Halizel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you, Mark.

It sounds like you've been working on this for quite a while.

And quite an undertaking, so I appreciate you and all those staff's work on this.

Um regards to the time clock, it's a decent size that we're putting down here.

How long until we start seeing the the return on investment there?

Yeah, that's a great question.

We would anticipate implementation could be anywhere from six to twelve months.

Uh yeah, we'll probably implement implement in phases two.

You know, we'll probably start with smaller departments.

So some of the smaller departments could be a little earlier, but you to your point, yeah, probably this time next year, hopefully we'll be fully implemented.

Hopefully sooner.

Okay.

Um this is coming from the IT Innovation Fund or part of the funding.

Yes, sir.

We set a part of that.

I think we set it actually aside in 2024, knowing that this was coming.

And then last year the council approved additional funding for uh the project as well.

Okay.

Uh do we know how much is left in that innovation fund?

How much do we put in a year?

I'd have to get back to you, Councilmember.

I'm gonna say it's through three or four hundred thousand is remaining, but I I don't know for sure, so I have to check.

Also, it's not an annual allocation.

We do it when we have some funds available and we move that over, but we have been the balance has been coming down over the last few years.

Okay, uh, is that the same fund that we paid for the drone pilot project?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Tunnel.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation, Mark.

Great job as always.

And thank you, Nikki.

I'm a raving fan, you know that, so I appreciate all of your extra effort.

Because your fleet's already full, and we're adding more to it.

If this was infused in your presentation, I'm sorry, I'm still you know trying to recover from this morning.

Um, but in slide one thirty, and you don't need to go back, but in slide one thirteen and one fifteen, um, you mentioned some of the evaluation part of it.

So is my assumption is that like this is an opportunity to maybe gather baseline data right now, and then after the system is implemented, we'll be able to look back and say cost recovery for the 200 and some thousand or whatever.

Is that correct?

I think we'll have a lot of data that will allow us to evaluate the success of the implementation, yes, ma'am.

Yeah, I love that because you know there's an old expression if you can't evaluate it, why are you doing it?

Um, and so this I think is a great opportunity for the you know, 160 people somehow are touching finance out of 17, 18 different departments, and they're not like you said, content experts.

And so I I think this is fantastic, and I really like it.

And I do hope that we will go back then and say, you know, in 2025, between now and the end of the year, or however, this is where we were, but this is what we were able to save or to be more efficient.

I think that's a fantastic story to tell the community, and we don't always tell the community enough when we are doing great things.

So I'm looking forward to maybe a year from now getting the report and saying these are the efficiencies efficiencies and savings we were able to recover.

I'll even go out on a limb and tell you some stuff I would look for a year from now if I were you.

Okay.

I think what you'll find is the average number of transactions per staff will increase significantly, which is efficiency, and I think what you'll probably find is the error rate on transactions entered decreases significantly, which means we're more effective.

But that's probably what we'll be looking for.

Okay.

And can I just ask a follow-up question?

So are there safeguards in the contract if the software system doesn't work as promised?

Uh there are as many safeguards as there are in any software implementation contract.

Sure.

Just always want to make sure we have a backup plan, right?

All right.

Thank you for all you do.

Appreciate it.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mark, good job.

Fully support this.

Um also see you'll find some cases of fraud you'll not have also as far as timekeeping.

That'll be a risk that I think we can reduce, yes.

Yeah, I think so.

Um this really is a payroll service you're buying, right?

Not really you're buying, not buying the whole program and you own it.

It's it's more of a service.

We're we're buying licenses for the service, cloud-based.

Yeah, I believe it is.

Okay.

I think that's good.

It's cloud-based.

Yep.

It's cloud-based.

I think that's good.

Had to check with my expert, sorry.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

The only question I have, Mark, um, on your slide, I believe it's slide number 122.

Um, the expected savings is $500,000 annually.

That's half a million dollars annually.

How will you be able to benchmark uh kind of backtracking with what Councilmember Tuttle asked?

But I know you mentioned a year from now, we'll be able to know that there's gonna be an increase in transactions, but also a decrease in error rate.

How will you be able to track the savings?

Well, I think the way we're gonna generate savings uh for the most part is examine the positions that are currently involved in this process, and I have a feeling that we will determine that if we can operate more efficiently, we will not need as many positions.

Now, we have a long history of doing that through attrition in the organization.

Uh but that would be the primary way that we think we can uh uh create efficiencies is by uh identifying positions that we can consolidate the work in finance.

And I shall also point out there's likely gonna be some position transitions.

There's probably gonna be some positions in the department that will have to transition to the finance department.

I don't think we're gonna be able to absorb all this work without additional staff, but I think on a net basis, you'll find that there's gonna be a fairly significant number of positions that we can transition out of the organization.

Thank you very much, Mark.

I see no further questions from staff.

We'll now open it up for public comment.

I see no one from the public.

I'll bring it back to the bench.

Again, this is a great initiative.

I am so happy to see um that efficiency and just greater awareness of the city resources, knowing that 160 people have a hand in some type of finance within the 16 departments of the city of Wichita reminds me that again, you're the expert, and your team of finance individuals are the experts, and you guys should be the ones that really um focus on that effort.

So, Nikki, thank you very much for leading the effort and continuing to lead the effort.

Um, Mark and entire team.

Uh, again, thank you for getting us to this position where we're talking about greater efficiencies uh in the city of Wichita.

So it is uh my turn to move that the city council approve the contracts with time clock plus and McConnell and Jones LLP authorize the necessary signatures and authorized staff to make the necessary budget adjustments.

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.

Quarterly financial reports for the period ended June 30th, 2025.

Well, hello again.

I'm Mark Manning with the Department of Finance.

Uh I'll be much more brief in this presentation for a couple reasons, but primarily because everything I'm gonna tell you this morning is a rehash of what we've talked about at workshops and buzzard presentations for the last uh couple months.

Uh and that's a good thing because that means my message is very consistent, which means that everything is occurring pretty much the way we expected.

Uh so I'm here today to present the second quarter 2025 financial report.

As you know, it's an audited activity, in this case through June 30th, and we're gonna look at uh what we had budgeted for this year, but even more importantly, we're gonna look at the 2026 proposed budget, which includes some revisions to 2025.

But I'll I'll do that in both contexts.

Now, both of those are very similar, but basically I'll just give you a little context of are we trending similar to what we've been telling you in the budget process for the last uh however many months that's been going on.

Uh the short answer is yes, everything is trending very similarly to what we have expected.

Uh there are a couple of exceptions that I'll go over in just a minute, uh, generally to the good side.

Uh I do want to highlight one other particular area.

Again, my job is to highlight things that are worse than we expected or better than we expected.

Uh I gotta give golf a shout out here.

They continue to excel.

Uh, you may recall last quarter I pointed out that their first quarter was very weak, primarily due to weather, which I obviously can't control.

Uh their results through the second quarter have been extraordinarily good.

So uh we're doing something right in the management of our golf course system, I would tell you, so I need to point that out.

So uh our our uh messaging all along has been court revenues will underperform.

That's what's exactly what's happening.

Uh we are seeing a little bit more growth on sales tax, which is very favorable.

Uh, you know, an order magnitude, it's not a lot, several hundreds of thousands, but it's better to overperform than underperform.

So that's slightly better than what we've told you about during the budget process.

Interest earnings, we've continually mentioned how that is a huge wild card.

Uh we're still waiting for monetary policy changes.

Those have not occurred yet.

The longer those don't occur, aside from the fact whether that's you know good or bad from a policy standpoint, I would tell you it is good from interest earnings standpoint for the city of Wichita.

Uh so we'll probably overcollect a little bit on interest earnings, particularly this year.

It doesn't really change our future outlook because we anticipate declines at some point.

But all I'm telling you is I think that revenues are performing very well this year and probably a little bit better than what we expected.

Let's flip to the expenditure side.

Public safety is where we spend all our money.

We've told you that repeatedly.

Uh 65% of our expenditures through the second quarter were for public safety.

Again, that's consistent with our prioritization.

Now, total salaries and benefits expenditures are increasing.

We've talked a lot about that in the past, how we actually want that to happen because we want to be more successful in filling positions.

Uh there are signs that that is occurring, uh, not everywhere, uh, but there are signs of departments reaching uh higher uh staffing levels, uh which hopefully will impact their uh outcomes.

You may recall in the budget we actually increased shrinkage this year to ensure what happened last year, which was where we way underspent because we didn't fill positions successfully.

Uh we tried to make sure that doesn't occur this year.

Uh so I think we will be a lot tighter at the end of the year, but we should be in good shape again for a balanced budget at year end.

Uh so just to summarize what are the some of the tailwinds.

Uh so when I come present to you there are our results for 2025, what will I likely tell you work good or work bad?

Uh again, sales tax and interest earnings.

If we see positive performance, it'll probably in those two areas.

If we see negative performance, it'll probably be in the area of overtime for public safety, for example, which is hard to predict, or in lower than expected turnover uh savings in non-public safety areas.

In other words, if we just magically are able to fill all our positions in Q3 and Q4, our results probably won't be as positive as what we expect.

So and again, those are just things that we'll look for.

I mentioned the golf fund already, excellent performance in the golf fund.

Uh I don't usually talk about our water and sewer utilities, but I thought I would, particularly given the situation there.

They are actually performing pretty well considering the circumstances.

Uh revenues actually were higher than last year, and our expenditures are consistent with the last year.

So uh both those utilities and actually all our utilities are in very good shape.

Uh I won't spend much time on this other than to tell you it's the exact same theme.

Our actual general obligation debt, which is paid by property taxes, is about five percent of our total.

Uh 75 million dollars, and that'll decline throughout the year because we make most of our principal payments in Q4, and it's unlikely that we'll issue any more GO at large debt this year.

All our growth is on the water and sewer side, which is exactly what we've been expecting for a long time.

I mean, I think next week you'll hear more about that uh when they go for another SRF loan.

Uh but that's where our growth in our debt is on the water and sewer side, which is a completely what we expected as we're financing the uh infrastructure improvements there.

Uh we continue to report on ARPA, uh, hopefully for not too much longer, I would hope, because hopefully we'll have it spent.

Right now we're at about 56 million.

Recall we got about 72 million, so we've got what about uh 16 million to go?

It's all at it's all obligated, it's just a matter of getting it spent.

Uh we're rapidly trying to do that.

We've got about 16 million more to go.

Uh again, that's pretty redundant, but I would tell you everything is tracking pretty much the way we expected.

Uh recommended actions receive and file, and uh happy to answer any questions.

Um Mark, before we we go to questions.

Um you highlighted um some headwinds, and one of those was our position count.

Could you just talk a little bit about what we're seeing?

Because we actually are retaining and seeing fewer vacancies in the organization now.

Yeah, we we track uh we track position count by department.

Uh and you know, we're looking for whether they're increasing or decreasing.

I'll give you an example of the finance department.

For example, uh I think I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of uh 62 general fund positions.

Uh if you look at the finance department throughout the year, we started the year at 55, we went down into the 5253 range, we hired a few people, we got it backed up to 54, and right now I'm at 53.

So I'm not making any progress.

But you know, that's fairly typical, you know, normal fluctuations.

What we would like to see is maybe the course of the library.

The library now is fully staffed at 84 positions basically out of the general fund, and you can see that they made gradual, steady processed progress towards that, which is exactly what uh they would want to do and what we would want them to do.

So it varies throughout the departments, but generally holistically, I would tell you most of our vacancies continue to be in public works and the park department, although those levels are materially improved from where they were a year ago.

I think, for example, public works had about 50 positions not filled in the last point in time that I looked at.

Park was at about 20, most of those I think on the maintenance side, and those are better than what we would have seen in the past.

Police is better too for that matter.

I think police I don't differentiate between commission and civilian.

Uh and this is just in a gross measurement, but police had about 50 vacant positions last time I checked, and I think a year ago they were north of a hundred, so you can definitely see progress there.

Again, it's a good thanks, a bad thing, it's a good thing.

We have more people, we can produce better results.

It also increases our expenditures and lowers our turnover savings, and that we just need to be cognizant of that.

Thank you, Mark.

Questions for staff, beginning with Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, just one quick thing, Mark.

Um, looking at the quarterly financial report on uh CIDs.

When they talk about um other financing transfers to other funds, is that debt or those the CIDs that have debt attached to it?

Yeah, you're probably looking at uh West Bank SID, I think.

Uh that is uh transfers to the debt service fund for the most part.

Now some of them have smaller amounts where we uh peel off portions for maintenance too, and we're gonna transfer that into a maintenance fund.

I think the spaghetti, yeah, the spaghetti works one and maybe the I don't can't remember the names.

The NAFT, however you say the park over there.

I can't pronounce it.

But generally the transfers are either to the debt service fund or their portions that based on the agreement were peeling off so that we can fund maintenance expenditures.

Okay, so the ones without are the ones that are pay as you go, and then the ones that have the larger anyways, uh larger transfers are the ones that we bonded out.

Pretty much, yes, and that is uh primarily just the uh one at the baseball stadium.

Okay.

That's the only SID that actually has debt.

That's the only one that we have debt on.

Okay, and the rest whenever the payments come in, that's all goes back and pays the developers.

Uh the other ones, yes.

Uh, we subtract a small administrative fee, but the remainder of it is uh uh is returned to the developer based on our development agreements.

Okay, thank you.

Any further questions for staff?

I see none.

We'll open it up for public comment.

I see none.

I'll bring it back to the bench.

I will move to receive and file the quarterly financial reports for the period ending June 30th, 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.

Applicant appeal of HPC 2025-60.

Good afternoon, Scott Waidel from the planning department.

So for this item, uh, this is an appeal of a decision by the Wichita Historic Preservation Board to deny a building permit for awnings to be installed on the Abla House at 102 and 104 North Pine Crest.

The board determined that the proposed awnings would damage or destroy the historic building.

The applicant is proposing to install awnings on the second floor of the building in order to keep water off of the flat roof terraces slash patios on the top of the first floor.

And I'll show you some photos of that.

The owner intends for the awnings to help protect the interior spaces below and to allow him to make any necessary repairs.

In terms of process, this item is being presented today because the 2022 agreement between the City of Wichita and the Kansas Historic Preservation Officer.

The agreement allows for a local review of projects that affect historic places instead of sending them to Topeka.

As part of the agreement, the appeal of the local review goes to the City Council.

In terms of the property and the property background, the building at 102 slash 102104 Pinecrest Avenue is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was listed in 2009.

It was listed under criterions B and C, and those are for its association with the original owners, brothers Frank and Harvey Abla, and uh then also for its notable architectural design and construction.

So here are some images from the site and the surrounding area.

So here's the house and different angles of the house.

Looking at some of the neighboring properties.

And then here are some images that were submitted by the applicant as part of their application to the historic preservation board.

So with this one, you'll notice the terrace that's in the middle.

I think it's got like a flower pot kind of design up there.

Uh just underneath that, there's been some water intrusion into the structure, and here's some of the water damage that's resulted from that center portion.

Here's a look at the roof.

Um, and then here's a diagram that was submitted that shows where the proposed awnings would be located.

Here's another terrace that's on there and similar uh photos series, so you can see damage that was on the interior, what the roof of it looks like, and then a drawing that was submitted about what the cover would look like or the awning.

Here's another terrace.

Uh again, the roof, some damage underneath, what it would dimensions of what it would be.

And there's another terrace on the corner.

I think there's just two more.

This one again with some more substantial damage on the interior, what the awning would look like.

And then here's uh the aerial image.

So, in terms of the overview of the process, in June of this year, the applicant submitted for an application to the Wichita Historic Preservation Board for review of the project.

On July 14th, the historic preservation board determined that the proposed project to install the awnings would damage or destroy a historic property and denied issuing uh the city issuing the building permit for the project.

On July 22nd, the applicant submitted an appeal to the city clerk.

Uh and so therefore the items here at the city council.

Now a note about the historic preservation board review.

When they review an application like this, they uh compare it with the Secretary of the Interior standards.

So they have a very constrained window or view that they take on these reviews.

Again, they found that it would damage or destroy a historic place, and the notes from the meetings are attached with the staff report.

So uh this item uh again is not a zoning item, so it is recommended that the city council hear from the applicant and take any public comments on this item.

Uh the council actions uh you've got the option you can deny the building permit as the HPB uh did and adopt their findings, or uh second, you could uh approve the permit.

Both of those votes require just a simple majority, four out of seven for either one.

And then you also have a third option, which is to send it back to the historic preservation board for additional consideration, then that also would require just a simple majority.

So with that, I will stand for any questions.

Thank you, Scott.

Are there any renderings of what this proposal for the awning will look like?

I do not have any.

Questions for staff?

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, was the concern?

I I see in the notes that they were considering uh how the awnings would be attached.

Was that the main concern that they had?

Is just how the awnings might be attached to the to the exterior?

Uh yes.

So there are two things to note on that.

The one first one is that when planning staff reviewed it, there were concerns about obscuring that the awnings might obscure some of the proportions and elements of the structure itself.

So, kind of a visual impact.

Uh, when the historic preservation board reviewed it, they had that staff report, and really what I heard from being at the meeting is that um they were concerned about the attachment and what the impact would be for the structure, also what they would look like, what materials, what design would they be.

Um there were just a lot of questions about what exactly was being proposed.

Okay, would you say that there if you're gonna categorize it?

It's was there a concern more for the overall project, or was it that it just simply did not meet the state standards, or is that it?

I think the overall project, more of uh trying to get an understanding of what exactly was going to take place with the structure.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions for staff?

I see none.

It is an opportunity for the applicant to come forward.

Hello.

My name is Mark.

My name is Mark Marcus Turman, and um I reside at 102-104 North Pinecrest, also known as the Abloh House.

I'm here to add to I'm here to ask the city council to reverse the HPC's denial and allow me to install awnings above terraces at the Ablaw House.

This will protect the interior spaces below while we strip away the many layers of tar and coating down to the studs after the rehab can begin.

There are four second story terraces.

Some have negative grade, all have soft spots underneath the decking, all have leakage, damage from the recent ice storms has intensified the problem.

Decks range in size from 90 square feet to 200 square feet.

At the ABLA house, as noted, the roof is flat.

In other words, our ceiling is our roof.

Terrace decking serves as a roof to the interior spaces below.

Above terraces, open sky, and this makes a significant difference in how repairs happen.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as throwing tarps on a pitched roof where rainwater will naturally shed away.

Instead, imagine a large three-foot deep hole and about 200 square feet of large space where rainwater is collected and can only exit through one small hole the size of a cigar box.

The proposed awnings are designed to be horizontally flat and streamlined to blend with the structure.

Materials for framing is wood covered with a TPO roofing material and built to code.

Framework is framework and trim are to be painted to match the house and emphasize the horizontal lines of the building.

Although through my years of living at the Abla House, I've interviewed many contractors, including a architect who specializes in historical rebuilds about this specific problem.

The takeaway is it needs to be taken apart and reassembled.

One of them has worked on the ABLO house regularly since purchased in 2002.

He has nearly 50 years of construction experience and knowledge in both residential and commercial builds and remodels.

Both have excellent resputations.

Project time is two years.

The Abla House is 86 years old now.

This past spring, family members who grew up there revisited the home as they sometimes do.

They remember by telling stories, one about the fire, and how they help each other escape during the night.

And after the chaos, they had to consider tearing down or to rebuild.

Most importantly, they noted and stated the same problems that I'm having with the terraces now existed then.

I close with a question.

Whether approved for temporary or for permanent use, why not build a streamlined awning that is better in quality, will last longer, cost less, and with dis and with less disruption points to the structure, while at the same time respecting my neighbors from a view of a makeshift crude or temporary shelter while we do this important work.

I asked the city council to stop the rot by voting to allow this project to move forward.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you for the renderings that you provided.

We have several council members who have questions.

We'll begin with Councilmember Glaskar.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate the renderings, but I am not entirely sure what the awning is it this structure and this structure?

So you barely noticed.

Okay.

Yeah.

They are the only lines above the terraces that are not colored.

Okay.

So it is just that and that correct.

And that's only the that's only a view from Douglas Street looking north at the property.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um Councilmember Glasscock asked one of the questions I wanted.

Did you put this together?

Yes, sir.

This rendering.

Did you have these same things when you were at the historical preservation board?

Uh no, I did not.

Okay.

I I learned I learned a lot through that.

So no, I did not.

Did you had you had conversations with those contractors before that meeting?

I've had the conversations many times over the years, but yes, before the meetings.

Okay.

I will be honest with you.

I think it's good to do the work to protect the space.

I don't have an issue with that.

Um reading through the minutes and kind of looking at maybe what that discussion was.

I think more of the concern was about protecting the building throughout this process.

Yes, sir.

And one of the questions I think was around having a professional doing this work, but it sounds like you've talked to someone who could do that for you.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

Do you have any um renderings or plan of what it will look like how you can do this while also protecting that building, putting this on, whether it's temporary or permanent permanent, because I know you said you may have to take some things off.

Was all of that process described through historical preservation board or just kind of hinted at it like today.

Uh you know, I I don't know if I I don't remember talking in the details that I'm talking to you in today.

Um a lot of it was presented through the historical board, a young lady there.

Okay.

So uh my first experience with them.

Um I learned from it.

Okay.

No, I I get that.

We have a lot of different processes.

Um I just wanted to know that piece because that answers some of the questions I had.

Um so I think that's all I have for now.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you.

Question.

These these awnings are flat.

Yeah.

Uh uh blade flat.

Uh, we're trying to get them down to about three and a half inches.

Um we have a design ready.

Um, of course, it's going to need to be to be approved.

Make sure that it's all kosher with coating and where does it drain then?

Um there will be um some gutters like normal around normal houses, and I think they're usually about three, three and a half inches deep, and they will run around the awnings.

And the awnings will, in addition, the the awnings will mimic the curvatures of the terrace itself with about a one-foot hang overhang.

But they'll be totally flat with a TPO roof.

So the awning will go over the roof about one half feet.

I'm sorry.

The awning will extend over the roof line.

Yes, by one foot.

By a foot, okay.