Well, I don't know.

Is that your too late?

Well, I guess all right.

I don't know if that's remote buttons.

Yeah, I can't.

No, it's not the turn on our list.

So thankfully.

Yeah, the tables are on you.

I'm not even saying that.

Oh, here we go.

Let's see.

Yeah, two of them at least.

Okay, kind of.

Good morning, Wichita, and good morning to all of you here in the City Hall chambers.

I call this meeting to order.

With us this morning is Father David Lee of Catholic Diocese of Wichita to provide our invocation.

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

We ask God for blessings upon all of those special needs that will be represented for peace upon our city, for an end to violence and strife, for wholeness in our families, for strong marriages.

Ask your blessing upon all those that we are aware of who need prayers, those who have come to us seeking our prayerful support for them at this time, especially those for who are sick and struggling with health.

Lord bless them and give them the strength to endure their tribulations.

Father, you sent your son Jesus to save us and your Holy Spirit to sanctify us.

You are God living and reigning forever and ever.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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

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

Thank you, Father Lee.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the first item?

Approve the minutes of the regular meeting, August 12th, 2025.

Are there any changes to the August 12th meeting minutes?

I see none.

I move to approve the meeting minutes for August 12th, 2025.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, can you please open the roll?

Just to clarify mayor was that motion for the 12th and the 19th.

I am my motion.

The motion is to approve the meeting minutes for August 12th and August 19th.

Second.

Motion and a second.

All those you can vote by machine.

Motion passes 7-0.

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 speakers' remaining time to speak.

Order and rules of decorum will be observed.

We do not have any pre-scheduled speakers this morning.

Would anyone from the audience like to address the council at this moment?

Good morning, Diana Tedlock and Maggie's district.

A year ago in October, the city and WPD announced a new structure promising betterments at the Wichita Animal Shelter.

Those promises are not reflected in the proposed 2026 budget before you.

New positions were announced as well as a review of a K-State report with the promise, recommendations will be added and prioritized and then implemented in the city's capital improvements and budget.

The 2026 proposed budget just does reflect an increase in the overall total dollars from the 2025 adopted budget of 12.7%, as some of you have pointed out to your constituents.

However, the breakdown between labor and non-labor dollars is critical.

Labor dollars increased by almost 22% with no increase in heads.

Non-labor dollars decreased by 9.2%.

The largest contributing factor for the labor dollar increase is the 225,000 dollars associated with the transfer of the wages and benefits for the non-dedicated captain position into the animal services budget.

The original the orchestructure since 2023 has had 31 full-time equivalent heads in the animal services budget, with one non-dedicated captain accounted for in a separate bucket for a total of 32 heads, 31 plus one.

You've taken this head and you've put it in this bucket, and you've combined it.

That is a reduction in head count.

That is a reduction in resources.

And that's without accounting for the new positions announced, such as the shelter rescue coordinator, the administrative assistance, and the city fellow, which were all absorbed in the head count of 31 or that just no longer exist.

I know all of you are aware of the report from K State, as it has been mentioned numerous times, but in the spirit of non-transparency, the city and WPD have denied public access to that report per CORA 24-3109.

I therefore I've not seen the report.

However, for the public's knowledge, I'm going to share what Aaron Walker, the CEO of Kansas Humane Society's thoughts were about the report in an email from August of 2024.

When they, KSU, visited WAS, they noted severe deficiencies in the level of care provided, noting that in many ways the level does not meet minimal standards for humane care that is required to have an animal sheltering license.

We know that this is because they aren't fully staffed.

Not only vacancies and the staffing they should have, but because they are staffed so far below what would be considered minimally compliant just for cleaning and providing for the animals' basic needs.

And yet the council has effectively reduced heads as well as non-labour dollars.

And there are no CIP projects in the current cycle.

In addition, where are the initiatives asked for at the City Council meeting on August 12th from Emily Hearst?

Are those going to be pushed off a year?

And then once again not be included in the budget cycle.

How long must the community wait for the city to honor their words and reflect support at the animal shelter in the budget process?

How many lives are lost while we wait?

1,029 animals have been killed at the Wichita Animal Shelter through July of this year.

That's what broken promises looks like.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and perhaps if I could get staff to help with this.

Um I look at our budget, and we have 31 positions last year and 31 this year as well.

Um last year we had um or in 2024 we had the police lieutenant, which in the 2025 budget had bumped up to police captain.

So I don't think the entire increase there is just simply from one position.

Um it has been spread out a little bit as well.

Um points taken on some of the other stuff.

I know uh Captain Moses did give us a response to your email yesterday.

Um, Captain, if you do you want to come down and uh respond to some of what uh Ms.

Tedlock is saying.

Thank you, Captain Moses.

We'll ask our speaker to sit down so that there's only one speaker at the microphone.

I'll be happy to answer some of the uh more procedural high-level questions, and of course, Emily Hearst, the director, is here and she can speak more on the shelter function.

Regarding the non-labor funds, that's an important one to hit on.

Um, there's not been a reduction in non-labor funds.

What we did at the police department holistically uh after Captain Cooley took over administrative services is we looked at those non-labor funds organization wide and we moved them.

So they're not gone.

What we did is we moved them into a different pool so that we had better flexibility as an age as an agency to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, as we saw needs arise in other areas within the department.

Having all of those funds in one place allows us to be more agile and allocate funds as needed to to certain projects.

Uh so the movement of those funds does not mean that animal services is not going to receive the support and the funding that they need when there are improvements that need to be made.

And Emily can speak to some of the improvements that are currently underway.

I think it's also important that Emily can talk about what our what our shelter is designed to do with the service that our shelter is designed to serve versus a shelter like the Humane Society.

I think that's important for people to understand.

I'll let Emily speak about that.

Uh, on the topic of the captain, uh, what's being portrayed is not accurate.

Uh, there was a captain in the chain of command for animal services always.

That captain was the administrative services captain.

That captain had other duties, we all do.

Um there are 14 captains on the Wichita Police Department.

We all do multiple things.

Uh, I know many of you interact with me, and you know that I have many different jobs that I do.

That's no different for this position.

What Chief Sullivan did is he elevated what was a lieutenant position and changed it to a captain position.

That captain worked at the facility full time, and that allowed that captain at the facility to make those may those large administrative decisions without having to come talk to a captain who worked at City Hall, who wasn't in the building at Animal Services, who didn't have a poll some what was happening every day.

So there was no dedicated captain to animal services.

There was a captain over administrative services that oversaw through the chain of command animal services.

Additionally, creating a dedicated captain for animal services allowed us to onboard someone like Emily and assist with that transition as she got her feet under her and learned how our shelter operated.

Uh, and she's made some incredible improvements at the shelter along with that captain.

So I'll let her speak to those.

But I wanted to answer those two sort of uh high-level budgetary questions first.

Hi guys.

Did you have any specific questions regarding that before I move on to other things?

Okay.

Um I just want to talk about we the changes um internally within the shelter operations that I don't think uh the public gets to see quite as much just in relation.

They talk about budget shifts and changes.

And as you guys know, the uh Wichita Animal Shelter has undergone um a lot of changes in leadership after being transferred to the Wichita Police Department as they look to navigate operating a place like that, and they built the new shelter in campus with Kansas Humane Society.

I think they started back in 2009.

Um so a lot have changes happened actually under Captain Purcell, which were part of long-term plans.

Thankfully, Captain Purcell and I did get a work with each other.

He was um the lieutenant at the time when I was at the Kansas Humane Society, and that's what actually spurred a lot of these projects.

Um he was very receptive to what I had to say working at the Kansas Humane Society and talking about some of the potential changes that we could have had um at Wichita Animal Services.

So just so we know he worked on moving all of our shelter documents and operations and forms from paper files to electronic.

That was a huge undertaking.

Not only did it require lots of specific changes within our software, um, but a massive change with staff training over seven days a week, 24 hour shifts, right?

Um he installed new cleaning hardware so that we could provide the proper disinfectants to the shelter, which effectively reduced disease because animal uh diseases are a lot more complicated and you just can't use any cleaner, and we had to have a way to apply those.

Um he also worked really diligently on cleaning up our data.

Uh so over the years with different leaders, the data changed a lot, and that doesn't allow you to have very transparent or accurate data.

And so he began that process of implementing that system so that now we know that the numbers what we are looking at are correct and they're clear, and we know the income the intake types and the outcome types of what's happening with our animals in the shelter, which makes a huge difference.

We just got Wi-Fi in the shelter last year.

I know that's like crazy, but it's a big concrete building, and that has made a huge impact on overall operations and being able to work with the animals.

That was step one of like a seven-year project so that we can implement other items in the actual care of our animals.

Um, and as you guys know, uh the internet and Wi-Fi and concrete buildings aren't always agreeable, so we're still having challenges, but we're working through it thanks to the IT department.

Uh the K-States visit and report that was referenced.

That was actually I when I was at the Kansas Humane Society, um, I had my vets had recommended the K-State shelter medicine program.

They have an entire program dedicated just to shelter veterinarians, which is a very specialized uh group.

And so I was working with them and some other national shelter organizations.

I invited them into the shelter at the Kansas Humane Society to be able to go to uh an overview of us.

When Derek arrived, I shared with him what I learned, um, what they provided, and Derek took it upon his own initiative.

He started attending um the shelter medicine classes at K-State, working with their program.

He invited them to come and do an audit of the shelter so he could build build his master plan of exactly what was being done.

And so we have a lot of background projects and things that we've begun.

And then, of course, my onboarding along with um uh the administrative assistant that started four months ago has allowed us to better prioritize, decide exactly what projects we're going to undertake, which is a lot, and it is a mini multi-year plan that we can talk about in our workshop a bit more.

But I feel like we've been able to make a lot of progress.

We've held several um staff training days.

The staff are hungry and excited for change, and we're looking to sit forward to the progress that we can make.

Any questions?

Uh yeah, just um a couple.

I mean, I'm reading the email here.

It looks like we're currently collecting quotes for pressure washers and currently collecting quotes for um new blankets of toys, being trained on the radios.

Um I am curious whenever the workshop does come up.

Yeah, you you talk about long-term projects.

Yeah.

So those will be presented at the workshop.

Yeah, sure can't.

Um anything that can possibly get into the CIP to help save the lives of animals and um what we can do to make sure that they have just uh good quality of life while they are in the shelter.

Um, so any of that, please make sure to include that in uh the workshop coming up.

Okay.

You talk a little bit about the volunteer program that's something we do have to eventually get to.

There's some other stuff in the air right now that we're trying to clear before we get that.

Could you give a little update on that one?

Right.

So I I always like to uh not assume that I know what's best for an organization right when I hop in.

I want to understand it a little bit more.

Um I've run volunteer programs for the last 15 years of my career, so I do have a lot of experience with it, um, as well as in the animal shelter volunteers, which is just a different breed because you're dealing with live animals.

Um in my analysis of the current operations at the Wichita Animal Services, volunteers is something that we want to explore.

But I don't believe bringing volunteers into a system that is systematically changing drastically is going to be good for the animals or for the staff because it creates room for errors and not taking care of the animals first.

Um so I want to, I really want to make sure that we have a solid foundation so we can bring volunteers in so that they get properly trained.

Thank you.

Um also last question here.

Um what's the employment status out there?

You have I think we talked last time and you said that you were just about full as far as maybe the animal control officer.

I'm sorry, my memory.

I am fully staffed as of this week for the first time in forever.

So it's very exciting.

Um our Kenneth Techs uh were fully staffed about a month ago, and so they're currently in training.

Um they're still of great help, and it's gonna be really exciting to see the things we can do with that fully staffed, and then my last uh ACO position started last week.

And so hopefully everybody sticks around and works out well, and we can keep going from there.

Do you think combining the kennel tech positions of full time was effective as far as keeping Kenneltechs around?

Absolutely.

I don't uh think that that those positions they were never able to hold on to anybody for very long, and the people people that they were able to attract um just it wasn't a lot of consistency, so having full-time staff there that are able to fully be a part of the team seems to make a difference both in attracting quality employees and retaining them.

Okay, do we have a date for the workshop yet?

October.

Okay.

All right.

Um I think there's a couple more questions up here.

Absolutely.

And just to clarify, you mentioned um the radios.

The staff have all always been trained on radios.

Um I requested cell phones for the staff members, which the WPD granted, and we just completed uh cell phone training on those.

That's part of a multifold project to make improvements with our software photos of the animals and contacts with getting a hold of owners in the field.

Yeah.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

My question is for Captain Moses.

You mentioned a little bit about um, and I'm sorry if I just missed this.

I just need you to explain it a little bit more.

Transferring money from what bucket to what bucket, and what was that for, and who made those decisions and why?

Yeah, so what we did is we looked at our agency as a whole, and um a lot of those non-labor funds, I think training, infrastructure, things like that, uh, equipment.

We pooled all of that money in one place under the administrative services captain.

Uh he he oversees sort of our budget process and our budget implementation process for the chief.

So he has his pulse on where funds need to be allocated, including animal services.

So those those funds were not cut.

What we did is we looked at a way to be more efficient and be better stewards of taxpayer dollars because what we found is we would have you know a one-off purchase here for something that someone somewhere else in the department also was looking to purchase, and we can obviously purchase more things at once.

Same thing, typically you can get lower costs.

Uh, it's also allowed us to work very diligently on Chief Sullivan's uh initiative to make sure we're a very well-trained department.

That was a big push for that too, is to pool those funds and make sure we're equitably allocating training funds as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Captain Moses, and thank you, Emily.

We have four more spots if anyone would like to speak during public agenda.

Good morning, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Janice Thacker, and I live at 1537 North Yale Boulevard.

And I'm here today to speak for our organization Art That Touches Your Heart.

I brought my graduation gown because with school started graduation is always the prime goal.

We've incorporated this gown with family pictures to connect students to who helped them get there.

Sometimes they think they made it there by themselves.

Now, as you know, art has changed.

It used to be in the museum or in homes, and now it's on buildings, grain elevators, and thanks to Go Create.

Now I have pictures on my gown.

So this is warranted graduation, but it's only we use black thread for the top, and we use um a tan thread for the inside, so that my parents are on here, my friends, people that have helped me along the way, the sorority, so all of it ties together to not only help them have a connection to the family, but have them connection to Wichita.

Art can, in fact, help stop violence, have students build self-esteem, create a family understanding because art is a teacher without words.

Are there any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Would any other three individuals like to speak?

If not, we will close public agenda.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Consent agenda items one through twelve.

Are there any items to be pulled?

I see none.

I move to approve the consent agenda items one through twelve.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Board of Bids and Contracts dated August 18th, 2025.

Morning.

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

Board of Bids and Contracts convened yesterday, August 25th for the following items for engineering.

We have Mount Vernon from Southeast Boulevard to Oliver for Preto Construction LLC in the amount of $4,321,749 and 50 cents.

Awarding the subject to your approval new engineers estimate in a budget authorization on September 2nd.

I don't know it.

There we go.

For purchasing, we have the valves, angle ball valves, and brass curb stop ball valves change order for Mountain Land Supply Company LLC for an amended amount of $95,687.50 cents.

This is how to become a vendor with the city.

This is our purchasing calendar of small resource partner events we're hosting or participating in as a city.

And this is our open public opportunities out on the street today.

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

Questions for staff.

I see none.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Petitions for public improvements.

Paul Gunsman Public Works and Utilities.

The signatures on the petitions represent 100% of the improvement district.

And the petitions are valid per Kansas statute.

Young second edition, located in District 2.

The project will provide water, sewer, drainage, and paving improvements required for a new residential development.

And it is recommended that the city council approve the new petitions and budgets, adopt the new resolutions and authorize the necessary signatures, and I will stand for questions.

And Paul, just as a reminder, this is 100% special.

Yes, that is correct.

Thank you.

I see no questions.

I move to approve the petitions for public improvements.

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.

Revenue neutral rate, self-supported municipal improvement district 2026 budget.

Well, good morning, Mayor, members of the City Council.

I'm Mark Manning with the Department of Finance.

Well, uh, today's a big day.

Today is a day that we will uh present to you the 2026 budget and the CIP for adoption.

Uh this is a day we've been working towards basically since January of this year.

But before we can get to that agenda item, there are two other pieces of business that we need to take care of, and that's consideration of the revenue neutral rate.

Again, state statute dictates that we consider those prior to our uh being able to consider the proposed budget.

So we have two of those this morning.

Uh for one is for the self-supporting municipal improvement district, or what we like to call the Schmidt, and then after this hearing, we'll have another hearing for the actual city as a whole.

So just a reminder on July 15th, when the manager presented his proposed budget as he statutorily required to do, and at that date, we set the public hearing for the R hearing and the budget for today, August 26th.

Now the R is very important in determining the level of property tax funding available in this case uh to the uh Schmid, which then uh passes it through to the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation.

And again, this hearing is required by statute and it's required to occur prior to your consideration of the Schmidt budget.

So the downtown uh Wichita Schmidt Advisory Board uh typically each year requests a budget from the city council.

The city council's function is actually to levy the taxes on behalf of the Schmidt Advisory Board.

Uh you have the discretion to set that level, whatever you choose, uh, but typically it's uh influenced by the recommendations of the Schmidt Advisory Board.

Uh this year the Schmidt Advisory Board has recommended a budget funded with 10 mills.

10 mills, by the way, is the uh limit in city uh code that can be levied for this uh improvement district.

Uh primarily that uh recommendation is based on the uh desire of downtown Wichita to implement what they call the clean and safe program.

I think they've done some pilot uh work on this, and uh they would like to expand that uh to our entire downtown area.

And I should point out this tax only impacts the district, which is primarily the central business district uh in downtown Wichita.

Uh so again, this would uh levy 10 mils in this area.

Uh by contrast, the levy last year was 6.8 mils.

Uh this chart here just kind of shows some metrics.

Uh if the revenue neutral rate was maintained uh for 2026, that means taxes levied would stay exactly the same as last year at about $880,000.

If the levy was increased consistent to what was levied in 2025, uh that would increase the property taxes for the Schmid by about 60 some thousand dollars to 950,000.

They have requested a levy of 10 mils, which as you can see here would generate approximately 400,000, which would allow them to implement again the clean and safe program.

So with that, uh I think uh Heather uh Schroeder is here from downtown Wichita.

I'd like to invite her up to uh provide some information to you about their clean and safe program.

Thank you, Mark.

Good morning, council and Mayor Wu.

So just by way of background information, um we downtown Wichita do contract with the City of Wichita to provide development services in the city's core, and that is funded through the SMID.

Uh property owners within the SMID pay a self-imposed downtown special assessment in addition to their regular property taxes, and that SMID area is designated as the geographic area bounded by Washington Street, Central Ave, Kellogg Av, and the Arkansas River.

Oops.

Let's see.

Does this advance?

There we go.

Um so this spring, we instituted a pilot program uh for our downtown clean team, as we've called it this spring.

This was funded by a grant from Fidelity Bank, and the purpose of the pilot program is to supplement the city services that are provided in the core.

Recognizing that the city of Wichita is a vast geographic area and that our city departments can't pay close attention to downtown every day.

We wanted to provide some extra eyes and extra services within the core.

Um that being said, we've been coordinating very closely with city departments, including uh WPD uh parks and public works.

Uh for example, um, before engaging in tree trimming activities, we called forestry and said, you know, what are what are our parameters?

And they said anything less than one inch in diameter, you can do with your with your loppers and in your and your trimmers.

Anything bigger than that, call in the big guns, call in the experts at forestry.

Similarly, we coordinated with the Department of Public Works to get the exact materials that they use during our annual downtown volunteer cleanup for graffiti removal wipes and spray paint to cover up stickers and graffiti that are a little too stubborn.

So we've been making sure to have that close level of coordination.

We've also worked with the hot team to report homeless encampments and make sure that we're connecting individuals to services.

So I wanted to clarify that this is by no means a replacement for city services in the core.

This is an augmentation that's actually I believe resulted in greater city services provided in the core this spring.

We've seen great response to our teams reporting through the City of Wichita C Click Fix app.

And again, it's those larger issues that our staff can't handle, such as heaving pavement that poses a tripping hazard, or you know, addressing homeless encampments or trimming large trees or taking care of kind of those those large swaths of graffiti that are on public property.

So to give you a sense of the success of the program in the first eight weeks, we have we have one part-time staff member who's worked for 28 hours a week.

And in the first eight weeks, he covered 458 blocks.

There are only 100 blocks downtown, so that indicates the level of circulation that we've been able to achieve.

And then we also keep data on all those individual metrics of graffiti tags, weed killer applied.

So no concerns there for public health.

Tree trimming, uh, trash, gallons of trash picked up, and of course, those reports to city departments through the City of Wichita app.

So in sharing this program with with some members of council this spring, we were encouraged to expand the program.

Um when asked what what it would take to make that expansion, um, you know, we realized that you know, in in not taking the full mill levy, we were missing out on an opportunity to provide these additional services to the property owners who who pay for those services.

So with that, let's see if I can advance this.

So you can see here what our budget was in our current fiscal year, 2025.

And then we had proposed for 2026 at the 7% increase in assessed value would have yielded this budget of $1,019,000 196.

And then at a mill levy of 10 mils, uh, we would fully capture that increase to support a full-time clean and safe program.

Um so what does a clean and safe program do?

A lot of our peer cities throughout North America, so both US and Canadian uh downtowns are avid users of clean and safe programs.

Um we're providing again those additional services.

So the vast majority will go towards employment of local people to do the work.

Uh we also have a you know smaller portion of the budget to store equipment, to acquire equipment, um, and to administer the program.

Whoops, and those services are vast, as you can see here.

Um, extending the program to full time allows us to really focus on you know, some of the the more regular cleaning of sidewalks.

For example, there's there's a piece of equipment called a Billy Goat that has a vacuum attached that can do this much more efficiently.

Um, you know, we'd be looking at sweeping our our whole sidewalk system downtown on a weekly basis through this program.

In addition, our ambassador services would be able to expand, um, including engagement with business owners, making sure that we're checking in to find out well, what challenges are you experiencing?

You know, are there are there loitering issues?

Are there potholes in front of your business?

Um, let's see, uh safety escorts.

So just as it as, you know, when you when you go shopping at the Ace Hardware and they say do you need help finding something and they walk you to to the you know um to the fixtures aisle, uh, that's what our ambassadors will do.

They'll make sure that you have a friendly face helping you find what you're looking for downtown, whether that's where you left your car in the parking lot or finding that that business where you're gonna find the perfect gift.

To give you some examples of our peer cities that have already implemented these programs, um, here's that Billy Goat machine uh at work in downtown Tulsa.

Downtown Tulsa adopted an ambassador program about three years ago.

They've been very pleased with their success.

And also down the street, Kansas City has an ambassador program.

There's quite extensive, 60 ambassadors.

We're not going to have the budget to provide that level, but we're we're confident that with the FTEs we've budgeted, we'll be able to make a significant visible impact in our downtown.

And Oklahoma City also adopted a clean team about a year and a half ago.

I've spoken extensively with our peers there about lessons learned and guidance going forward, you know, appropriate appropriate budgeting and feel confident that we have great partners down the road to help us as we implement this.

And so with that, I'm happy to entertain any questions.

Thank you, Heather.

I have multiple questions regarding this program, but I'll let my uh fellow council members ask first.

Councilmember Ho Heisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, have you had any property owners within the SMID reach out, um, hesitant to have the the increase in the mill levy?

No, we've had conversations with um all of our um I guess uh properties with significant holdings in the district who would see the biggest impact of the mill levy increase and walked through what additional services they'll receive and what impact it'll have on their on their finances, and we have not received any um opposition.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Tuttle.

Uh Councilmember Hull Isle still my question.

I was gonna see what type of community engagement you've had and what interaction with community members.

I also did just want to make a comment.

Thank you for being here, Heather, and thank you for all you're doing.

You're just a delight and just a true, true um blessing, not only to downtown Wichita, but also to our community.

It's been a pleasure to get to know you.

I'm gonna put in a shameless plug for you.

I participated in the cleanup this spring.

Um it was a great opportunity, and uh Jennifer in Legal and I ran around with scrapers and got off stickers and painted things.

Um and you're having another one September 12th from 9 to noon if anyone wants to sign up.

It was just a great opportunity not only to put in some sweat equity for our downtown, but to interact with people who were downtown on a Saturday morning while we were doing it and you know got questions of hey, what's going on?

So just a great idea, and I think this is a really interesting and exciting program.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

And we did plan this fall cleanup for a Friday to help engage with members of our business community who may not have an opportunity to come downtown on the weekend.

Thank you, Heather.

Here are multiple questions I have for you.

I wanted to know how the ambassadors will be selected in this program.

Sure.

So in the pilot program, you know, we've been uh we we hired in-house for the um for the full-time program.

We've talked with national providers who work in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and found that they can provide services much more efficiently.

Um so we would contract with one of these third-party groups.

Um there are a couple national providers, and um they kind of handle all the administrative components of the program.

Um so they would they would handle posting the position, uh, we would write the job description in partnership with them to meet the needs of our community, and then we would sit in on interviews and make sure that we're hiring um you know the best people available for the job.

So, what types of uh skills and talents does this individual have to have and how will they be compensated?

They have to love downtown.

Um, you know, one of the questions that we ask in every interview is um what are your favorite places downtown and why, and where do you take your friends and family downtown?

If they don't have answers to that question, they're not a fit.

Um, we want to make sure that people already you know have an appreciation for and passion for the core of our city.

Um in terms of uh compensation, you know, this is about a 45,000 dollar a year position uh with full benefits.

How many FTEs do you expect to have?

Four FTEs um at the staff level and then at the management level one.

I would highly encourage um maybe an idea that I saw helping some of our individuals who are um staying at second light, our individuals facing homelessness have opportunities to also help clean.

I know that there are other cities that have done that.

What have you guys found in terms of engaging our uh population that is homeless?

One thing that we've made sure to do is uh post on every job description uh the people with a criminal record are welcome to apply.

Um we have had applications with people who meet that criteria or that criterion.

Um it's important to us to um you know help build skills and also provide second chances uh for people who may have faced challenges earlier in their career.

Um so if if we have um residents of second light who would be um interested in the position, we would certainly encourage them to apply regardless of their criminal background.

Have the ambassadors connected individuals facing homelessness with second light, or are you just simply reporting homeless encampments?

We are engaging directly with the hot team and encouraging uh those connections with our experts.

Councilmember Hohaisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh when you're talking about some of the cleanup projects and whatnot, have you engaged um members of the community who are active in certain areas to maybe collaborate and cooperate and schedule some times to do the cleanups of some of our public places around downtown by members of the community, which I'm not sure which groups you're volunteer groups at water along Douglas, for example, water the flowers.

Um we have some groups that do park cleanups, um just groups like that.

Yes, we've we've engaged with the United Wave through their volunteer platform as well as with members of Wichita Clean Streams.

Okay, thank you.

A couple more questions.

Do you foresee using some of the SMID dollars to assist with the efforts at Second Light?

Um Second Light is located outside of the geographic boundary of the SMID.

Um so unfortunately, these dollars are not eligible for direct application north of Central App.

Uh Open Door is within the SMI.

Oh, I'm sorry, open door.

No, I did ask about second light.

So my second question following up to that is what about open door, which is within the SMID.

Again, we're happy to collaborate with organizations that have referrals of staff members or um to you know refer individuals who may be in need of services to our local providers.

And this is a follow-up question to Councilmember Hoheisel.

Um I know that in your budget you do talk about flowers on Douglas.

However, there are volunteer groups that are not doing this with any taxpayer dollars, including a group with Celeste Rassette and the sister cities.

I wanted to know how will you be engaging with those nonprofits or those groups?

We're we're always happy to work with community partners.

Um flowers on Douglas, what's represented in our budget is half the cost of that program.

Uh the remaining cost is fully fundraised by community members.

I know that this is an increase just specific to the property owners in the downtown area, so it will not be other uh districts in the community.

Can you um again explain the boundaries so that people understand this is simply one area um that these property owners are asking also for clean and safe um streets?

Sure.

So um when the when the SMID was instituted in 2002, the geographic boundaries that were defined for that area were the Arkansas River on the west, uh Kellogg Street to the south, Washington to the east, and Central Ave to the north.

Um I do have one request.

Um I know that this is an increase again in the SMID and it is for a clean and safe program.

So my request um is that there are two reports a year about the progress of clean and safe.

I think uh the public deserves to know uh how those dollars are being spent and what just like you gave uh in the pilot program, I'd like to see progress reports um twice a year.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I see no further questions from the bench.

We will now open it up for public comment.

Thank you.

Okay.

I appreciate the comments that were made.

Uh Councilmember Hoheisel, we have not been contacted about this.

Mayor Woo, you're correct.

Wichita Sister Cities and Save Century 2 adopted a large section of deserted flower beds around the Joan of Arc statue.

We also adopted the circular flower beds going up to Century 2 along Talapantha Drive, which is named after our Mexico sister city.

And Heroes, uh we received the Lowe's Home Improvement Heroes Project about three years ago, which was $15,000, and we had 60 volunteers and a thousand flowers, and we spent countless hours planting flowers and mulching a price Woodard Park.

To my dismay, all of this work we did, there has been no irrigation all summer.

None.

So the flowers that we planted in A Price Woodard Park, which as you know is named after our first black mayor of Wichita.

He was a great man.

My father knew him.

That park has trash, graffiti.

It looks appalling.

And we've had meetings with uh Reggie Davidson and Gary Ferris to find out why.

Trees have been cut down, tree stumps are left, trash in all the flower beds, and we're supposed to have a follow-up meeting.

So even graffiti, as we went to music theater of Wichita on Saturday, was still prominent on the back side of the restrooms down there at Price Witter, does you come across the Douglas Bridge?

It's appalling.

And so as we do what little we can with none of the funding that this group receives, we were working Saturday to plant flowers, and here came visitors to Wichita and saw me and my husband, though we also had um volunteers from sister cities planting flowers too.

And they commented on the beauty of the flower beds in front of 223 South Main, where the Joan of Arc statue is, and I let them know we do this on our own.

The city doesn't give us funds, we don't get help, we don't even get irrigation turned on, and what we do sometimes turns into disaster.

And so, Councilman Johnston, they're in your district.

Um, some of them were in your district, you're gonna be getting an email where they're gonna say thank you to us for the work we do.

But back to this Schmidt.

So I appreciate your questions because the problem when we give money to private entities is I can't core them.

I can't core to find out what was truly spent on irrigation, what was truly spent on flowers?

It's like visit Wichita.

It's impossible to core a private entity.

So my question to you is do all of the homeowners in this Schmidt and the boundaries were defined, like at Waterwalk.

Do these people of these condos realize they're gonna pay this increased levee, property tax levee?

That's my first question.

Two, I hope that these biannual reports you've requested, Mayor Wu have details so that we don't get into a situation like we have with Visit Wichita where salaries are exorbitant, or we don't RFP the workout, we get stuck time and time again using the same entity over and over again.

That's my second question.

I want to see the detail in that biannual report.

And three, why have we cut park staff when we used to have 158 people to barely a hundred when we still have 5,000 acres of park space to take care of?

Parks are the gateway to this great city, and it is so horrifying to go to Music Theater of Wichita to support the symphony to go to concerts, and the first thing I see is gang graffiti that's been there over two weeks.

Yes, I did go to the website.

Yes, I did file a request to clean up the graffiti.

Yes, I was told, oh, file a report, we'll fix it right away.

And here we are two weeks later, and that's what I see when I go to Music Theater of Wichita crossing the Douglas Bridge.

So I while I applaud their efforts because I do think the baskets are beautiful.

Cindy Carnahan started that, and I've always given her kudos.

There's a lot of us that work hard with no money, endless hours, and we see our work destroyed by lack of care and upkeep by the city of Wichita.

So I ask you, could this 500 million dollar increase be spent on more staff for parks, more staff for street maintenance, or more staff for people who actually care about our city?

That's my question, and I'll put back to you today.

But thank you for your thoughtful comments.

I'll stand for questions.

Thank you, Celeste.

Uh, first question before I go on to the board.

Uh City Manager Leighton, I think Reggie responded specifically to A Price Woodard.

Can you uh give any updates regarding A-Price Water?

So that's the last mention.

We met her and her team out at uh the park to look at some of the concerns that they had that were there, and one of them was the sprinkler system being turned back on there.

And we looked into that and found that there were some issues with some of the piping.

They were on site, so we're working with public works to have that repaired.

Uh, one of the challenges we ran into is that the sprinkler system there is attached to the fountain, uh, which was one of the one the items that were turned off during the stage two drought uh restrictions.

So we're working with them to do that, as well as working with volunteer groups to restore the spaces there, address some of the trash concerns that you mentioned those with the graffiti.

Yes.

So the graffiti is typically covered within 48 hours.

Not sure why that particular one wasn't, but we have a team member out today checking.

So graffiti is often removed within 48 hours.

That is correct.

That's typically our window time frame that we have someone out that uh address graffiti when it's reported.

So this was reported two weeks ago and today this will be resolved.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Reggie, just a couple questions.

Um I know the irrigation, or I assume the irrigation and fountains have not been working and operating due to the drought.

Is that something that the fountains will be on turn on this year with changes that are possibly coming as far as water restrictions, or will it be next year?

So we uh actually uh Gary uh Jansen and I spoke yesterday to look at what our next steps will be with fountains.

Uh they actually manage the fountains to public works and we do the irrigation systems to park.

So as the restrictions are being removed, we'll look at what the options are with moving forward with getting the fountains back on board.

Uh one of the challenges is that we're getting towards the time of the year where we would start doing the uh winterization.

Right.

So if we put the efforts into them now and then turn them off, we may end up planning to make sure they're prepared for next season.

Okay, great.

That was one of my questions.

Um could you speak to the um the stumps, just how you guys usually plant during one season and address stumps at another?

Sure.

So typically what we do is we a lot of those are handled through our contractors that comes out and does the uh stump removals.

So once they're actually uh cut down, then we coordinate with the uh contractors that goes to and doing the particular zones when we have it done.

So we normally do it in the October time frame and start looking at doing those stump removals.

Okay, and last question is could you address some of Celeste's questions about park staffing?

So we have some challenges with uh being able to fill some of our positions, it's gotten a whole lot better than what we have in the last few years, and we leverage the resources that we have currently along with working with volunteer groups like Celeste.

And one of the things we're putting a big effort towards now is uh our adopter park program.

And we're looking at working at neighborhood associations and neighborhood groups to be able to get them connected with our park resources as well as volunteer support to help with some of the things that we need to have done at our parks.

Do you think one of the main hurdles is um wages or salary, or is there just not a lot of people applying because it's 300 degrees outside, or I mean, is there is there a thing that can be helped with out, you know, maybe that we could help with?

I think it's a combination of both.

Uh one of the challenges we have is that uh uh sometimes we get in staff that gets in and get the experience and then they're able to go to the private sector that they may be to get paid more.

So we're looking at ways that uh how we can transition some of our seasonal employees that we have to come in and then hire them on to be able to work.

Uh we have one young man that I spoke with this week when I was out and about in the park that uh did a uh internship program in Haysville, and we were able to hire him on as a full-time staff.

So we're looking at ways we're doing that.

We're working with the school district and then other uh entities in the community that may not have full-time positions that we can transition to work with us.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Glascock.

Thank you.

Reggie have a few questions for you, and then I might have a few questions for Bob as well.

So I'm looking at probably all the parks within this area.

It looks like Maple Grove or the Mayor's Maple Grove, Heritage Square, NASCAR, A Price Woodard, Finley Ross, and Chester Lewis.

Would there be any other ones the top of your head?

Those are the main ones that I can think of as well, and anything else can take off.

Um regarding the bathrooms by uh A price watered park.

Um I know that I was doing an art installation walk on the West Bank from all the areas that we're looking at establishing some of the art installations in the future on the West Bank.

You could see the dilapidated bathroom.

When was the last time that was open?

Now that there is the uh Portland Loo that's nearer that facility too.

Do we have plans to just demolish that building?

And when was the last time that it was used?

It hasn't been open.

I would say probably within uh I don't know specifically because public works normally managed with uh open and closed in those particular ones, but I would say within the last year.

Uh one of the challenges we have with that particular location, a lot of the utilities that operate the electrical components in that area is located in that same site.

So we've been exploring options and seeing how we can put a separate structure to protect that area and then look at whether we demolish that since it's not something that's being currently used since we have another option in the park.

Okay, the last two questions I really have for you regarding, and this is more of a comment.

The graffiti that's covered, I often see it really doesn't match the building, and why we just paint over it with white, and it doesn't necessarily look any better.

We might remove the graffiti tags, but it doesn't look better.

So I don't know how we curb that in the future if we use more graffiti resistant paint instead of just going over, but that's more of a comment, um, less of a question.

And then this morning I was out running um and noticed two of the water fountains.

I haven't reported this via app, so this is what you're just saying now.

Two of the water fountains weren't working, and just want to make sure that all the amenities in our parks are actively working.

One was at NASCAR Park wasn't on this morning, and there is another one right by the keeper that wasn't on as well.

Um and I know that seems to be a regular occurrence, but if we have these amenities, people count on these amenities.

I was counting on them when running uh based on my breaks, and they weren't working, and so just wanted to make note of that as well.

Sure.

And just comment on that, typically the way that we are aware when those items aren't working is do see click and fix.

So we entirely encourage the communities to reported there, and that gives us uh a time to be able to time dates now once we receive it so that we can hold our county members accountable once we address it.

Okay.

Um these would be questions more for uh Bob or for someone with a SMID as well.

Um, regarding the money uh that the SMID levies, that money has to be smitten within the SMID as well.

Yes, that's my understanding.

And then regarding communication with residents, just like we communicate regarding the revenue neutral for the larger exceeding of neutral to say will you submit it to the clerk, the clerk sends out notices to uh owners has to be published in the eagle twice, correct?

Plus everyone in the area should have received a written notice, all the property owners.

So any property owner in the SMID would have received a written notice that they could have brought today to also express interest.

Okay, thank you.

Council member Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Bob or Mark.

Um, is there a different level of oversight on something like this compared to visit Wichita?

Um seeing how this is uh taxes directly coming out of a certain location and going to an organization.

Mark help me.

Um you have to approve the SMID budget every year.

So yes, there is I I would say a higher level of accountability to the council because of that.

So do we get a line item breakdown of how they utilize the funding?

I'm not sure to what kind of detail level, but it's uh Mark.

Uh yes, council member, they do not submit that uh level of line item detail to this to us.

Uh I don't know that we've asked for it.

Uh they typically, you know, they they have a relationship with the council where they present uh their requests each year and they present outcomes to you in the letter that they present to you typically in May, and if that's the time that they provide you their detailed budget for the prior year, which uh which Heather uh showed uh on the screen today.

Uh again, I don't know that we have asked them for any financial reports specifically related to that.

We treat them uh like we would any other contractor.

We provide them uh uh the amount that we've agreed to, and we expect them to produce the outcomes based on that contractual relationship.

Okay, I appreciate that.

That might be something that we look into here in the next year or so just to give extra transparency to the taxpayers.

So appreciate that.

I will follow up to Councilmember Hoheisel's uh comment.

I don't want to just look at it, I want to ask for it.

So I'm going to ask staff to directly ask for more detail um regarding the SMID.

Um again, I want to see line item uh information regarding salaries, um, and then I still want to see a public twice a year um open report about the clean and safe program because again 364,656 dollars will go to a new clean and safe program that is supposed to help with downtown, which uh become that destination location that we want.

And so I want to see those results, and so those are two requests one on a more detailed level that the city uh staff will receive, and then one that is public regarding the results of clean and safe uh twice a year.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Just just to add to that, there are three council members that serve on the partnership board downtown.

So we actually see those district one, district six, and I believe district four or the third the third district rotates, but we actually see those numbers, so that might be something we can also just share with the council and we get those regularly uh at the meetings again.

I would like uh finance to receive that information so that that is again core bold um if individuals in the community want to see greater detail with that.

With that, uh we'll continue with public comment.

Jan Manlove.

Uh I just wanted to comment you were talking about the maintenance of parks, and I don't know if anybody's driven by down Maple by the equity ballpark stadium.

The all the beds around that ballpark are horrendously overgrown with weeds.

Um it's embarrassing to me as a citizen of Sedgwick County to have our tourist attractions look like the city doesn't care.

I don't know whether that's a ballpark.

I try to I left a message with the ballpark.

I've contacted Equity Bank and commented that the building that they have their name on doesn't look very nice to um visitors to that facility.

So I just wanted to bring Equity Ballpark Stadium up if that's a city responsibility.

I never got an answer from the ballpark to see if it was theirs.

Thank you.

Councilmember Glasscom.

Thank you.

Quick question, Jan.

Did you say it was on the Maple Street portion?

Correct, like around the equity sign at Central and Sycamore and then down Maple, uh along the parking lot and along the building in the tree plannings.

Okay.

I think you all have a few questions for staff.

Uh Mr.

Manager, would that be with our would we be in charge of the maintenance for that?

Would that be Equity Bank Park?

My recollection is they're responsible for it, but we'll work through it with them.

Okay.

Well, Jan, we'll make sure uh that we reach out to Equity Bank Park.

I'll do that as well.

I know that I had messaged uh the manager earlier last week about the maintenance of the beds down Douglas, um, and that those are not being maintained right now, and I know that we have a plan to get those um spruced up in the next month.

So uh hopefully Douglas will also be maintained uh from McLean to Meridian.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Jan, I went to the game Friday night, and I walked by that and I took pictures of it to turn it in, and it's two to three feet tall.

Um it's just ridiculous, and all the way down the sidewalk.

So yeah, I I did take pictures and I will turn those in.

So we'll find out.

Thank you.

We'll continue with public comment.

Janice Thacker back with my graduation robe.

I wanted to talk, speak about art and supporting the arts.

Um right now we're trying to do Ruby's Culture Campus, and they're shipping containers at 14th, 13th and green.

And uh, we've been having uh events for the community.

We have a Halloween event, we have student exhibits, student art there, and then at 3th and Erie, we have a VP.

There are two letters, and it's a free photo op for the city.

You stand in the middle and you become the I in the VIP.

So yesterday we had a memorial service for Anthony Gunther, who was hit by a car trying to cross the street.

This was in 2017, but it's taken that long to pull ahead first find the mom, which took seven years, and then to have uh county dams constructed the sculpture, Wichita State University did the drawings so the city could approve insulation, and we had bought the land.

So my point is when we all work together as a community, and the arts I had said before is an instant teacher, then we all have better results.

My other comment is about painting the buildings dark colors.

The dark colors draw the sun in and makes the buildings hotter.

So if you want a clue uh cool the climate for Wichita, you need to paint on white.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you.

We'll continue with public comment.

I see none.

I close public comment and bring it back to the bench.

Um council number Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um, just want to say I am in support of the uh increase.

This pilot has been a good one.

I remember receiving a phone call when this got started about uh pure cities and doing the same type of thing and seeing the type of work that's happened downtown has been great.

Um hearing the report out at our meeting also was great, but I think this is a really good thing.

Some of the criticisms that we've heard today, this program actually would help with addressing some of those sooner.

This actually part of it was talked about some years ago, 2018 or so, 18 or 19, when the Douglas Design District had talked about doing some of the same work to clean up Douglas and to address some of these issues.

So it's something that has been talked about for a while.

This pilot, I think, was successful and looking forward to seeing this enacted in perpetuity downtown.

So I'll be supportive today.

I see no one else on the board, so I'll just add a couple of comments.

First, I would like to thank uh downtown Wichita for coming up with the Clean and Safe program.

Um more specifically, I want to thank Dean, who is part of the Clean and Safe Pilot Program.

I know that Dean is retired from the city of Wichita and chose to come back to work and help connect people in the downtown area with a friendly face and also clean up downtown.

And I see the results, and I think that that is exactly what we need.

We need a clean and safe downtown so that the investments that have been made downtown will continue.

Um, as a matter of fact, 30 minutes ago, the last beam of the 300 million dollar biomedical campus was just raised.

And so it is a signal that this community is making investments in the core, which is everyone's backyard.

It has been mentioned multiple times.

Um, but I want to make sure that we're good partners.

And that includes um when there are community members who care, like Cindy Carnahan, who started uh with those flowers with Celeste and her team at Safe Century 2 and Sister Cities.

We want to be good partners.

So I would highly encourage uh the open communication between uh the nonprofits or groups that are very active in helping beautify downtown because again, this is a they're doing a clean and safe program out of the kindness of their heart.

Um so I want them to be able to be part of the clean and safe program together.

Um I know that this investment is in a $364,000 investment.

So I want to make sure that again those dollars are being spent on clean and safe uh initiatives in the downtown SMID core.

Um, and again, it's the property owners of just that area.

Um so I am gonna be supportive of this, and I hope that we will get the next report in six months when uh it is up and running, and we get good results of uh people uh seeing that their parks and the flower beds, especially in the SMID are looking beautiful, and uh people are invited to come downtown.

So, with that, I see no one else on the board, so I will move that the city council close the public hearing record, approve the resolution to exceed the revenue neutral rate for the self-supported municipal improvement district or SMID, conclude the public hearing and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Mayor or we have to do a uh voice vote.

Uh do we just ask each council members?

It's a roll call vote by council members.

A roll call vote starting with council member Hoheisel.

Aye.

Councilmember Ballard.

Aye.

Councilmember Glascock.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Aye.

Councilmember Johnson.

Aye.

Councilmember Tuttle.

Aye.

Mayor Wu.

Aye.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Revenue neutral rate, City of Wichita 2026 proposed budget.

Uh good morning, Mayor, members of the city council.

I'm Mark Manning with the Department of Finance.

Uh, today is our second revenue neutral rate hearing.

Uh this time this hearing is on our city of Wichita budget.

Uh as I noted before, we set this hearing date on July 15th, is when you approve today as the hearing date.

RR is very important.

It's going to determine the level of funding that we have available to finance community priorities that are included in the proposed budget.

Uh and it's also important that we have this hearing prior to your consideration of the budget.

So uh let's talk a little bit about what the RR does, what the limitations in the R statute are.

The RR allows zero growth in property tax revenue.

Uh our property tax revenue, if we complied with the RNR, would be exactly the same as last year.

That means there's no allowance for expansions to the tax base due to new construction or due to annexation or due to uh expiring uh tax abatements or things of that nature.

Uh the R does not allow us to capture any of that growth.

It also doesn't have a mechanism for us to consider uh taxes levied for any community priorities or to address inflation or anything like that.

So essentially our tax levied would be exactly the same as last year if we complied with the R.

Property tax revenue is important uh to particularly two funds, the general fund and the debt service fund.

Uh both of those funds obviously fund our priorities, uh, predominantly public safety.

It's a majority of the property tax expenditures in both of those funds is for public safety.

Debt service fund also, of course, has a tilt towards maintenance uh as well that's funded with our property tax revenues.

Uh incidentally, in the general fund, I think property tax revenue is about 38 percent of our revenue stream, and in the debt service fund, I believe it's closer to about 45 percent.

Uh this uh chart shows you what I spoke about earlier.

Our levy last year was somewhere in the neighborhood of 164 million.

Uh, if we choose to uh comply with the R statute, we would levy 164 million dollars in 2026.

Now, the 26 proposed budget that the manager presented to you several weeks ago has a levy of 175 million dollars or approximately 11,500,000 or so higher than what we levied last year.

Uh however, I think it's important to point out uh that that levy is based on a mill levy reduction in 2026.

We would reduce our mill levy uh by one approximately a half a mill uh based on the proposed budget.

But again, if uh we chose not to exceed the revenue neutral rate, essentially we would need to reduce our general fund budget and debt service fund budget by a cumulative of 11 and a half or so million dollars.

Uh so I thought it might be interesting to look at what some of our other uh peer counties in the state of Kansas do.

So I chose the three largest counties in the state.

Uh you can see universally the counties in the state have all voted to exceed the R, same is true of school districts.

Uh generally what we found is that the primary entities that have complied with the R very small municipalities across the state.

Uh for example, in Sedjuick County uh last year, I believe it was Malvane, Clearwater, and Viola.

Malvane has about 8,000 residents, for example, to give you a little frame of reference.

Uh same story in Shawnee County, uh very uh small towns.

Uh no disrespect to the smaller towns.

Some of these towns I've never even heard of, and I lived in Shawnee County for five years.

Willard, Kansas, for example, was one of them Shawnee County, Silver Lake.

Uh so anyway, basically it's smaller, very, very small taxing jurisdictions are the ones uh that are not exceeding the R generally across the state of Kansas.

Uh again, uh everything we're doing is driven by state statute.

We needed to provide certain notifications.

We met that requirement on July 5th, provided notification to the county clerk in a time manner, and we provided notice of today's public hearing.

We have to hold that public hearing, which obviously we're doing right now, and then the last step that we need to uh accomplish in our R checklist is to approve a resolution by roll call vote again to exceed the R.

And uh after the action on this, we will proceed to the actual city budget.

Thank you, Mark.

Councilmember Glascott.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mark, one quick question.

You briefly hit on it that the manager's proposed budget reduces the mill levy by 0.5, confirming that this is the first time in more than three decades that is the case.

Well, actually, I was going to talk about that in the next PowerPoint, but yes, sir.

Uh I did some uh research on that, and the short version is for the last 31 years, we have adopted budgets with the mill levy exactly the same as the prior year.

So this will be the first time we've deviated from that policy and actually adopted a budget with a reduced mill levy rate.

Now, if you really want the background, the last time that the mill levy rate actually decreased based on policy action in the city, uh aside from reappraisal 35 years ago, which kind of messed with our mill levy a little bit, was actually in 1986.

And you may recall that is the year after the city uh supported the countywide sales tax.

We used our half of our portion of the countywide sales tax to reduce our city mill levy.

That was in 1986.

So for context, uh everybody listening.

I was not born yet the last time the city reduced to the mill levy.

Um and we codified that on July 15th, that guaranteed the reduction of the point five because that is what we sent to the state, correct?

Uh yes, yes.

You do not have the flexibility to increase the mill levy over what we set as the maximum amount, and that maximum amount is a reduction of one-half.

You could go even lower, I suppose, but you could not go any higher.

Thank you for your work on this.

Thank uh to the manager for proposing um the budget with a reduction as well.

So appreciate all the answers to the questions.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Appreciate the um presentation, Mark.

Just a quick question.

Since 1986, off the top, do you think our population has increased?

Uh yes, sir.

I would guess that it has increased quite a bit.

Okay.

Just wondering.

I mean, we're reducing the mill levy.

We have a lot of needs in the city, and our population has increased, and some investments need to be made, but just wanted to ask that.

Mark, one last question.

Uh this is something I brought up last year, and it still is a concern.

Uh, if you go to slide back to slide number 42, um, even if you levied one dollar more, you would be exceeding revenue neutral.

Um, and we all know that at the very least, even inflation would bring that number up.

Yes, we are can you explain the challenge of a budget that one that I wanted, which is one that only took into account new construction and inflation.

Uh roughly what's that percentage versus this one?

What's that percentage?

Uh yes, ma'am.

We looked at that earlier.

Uh if you consider an inflation rate of around three percent, new construction varies in the city somewhere between one and two percent.

Uh so we would probably use an average of about one and a half percent, which is to say that we would capture about four and a half percent of assessed valuation growth uh if we chose to go with uh that uh methodology.

Uh so the uh the proposed budget actually uh our total assessed valuation from Sedwick County that we received in July, our valuation increased about 8.7 percent.

Again, we did not capture all of that growth by reducing the mill levy by one half.

Uh the equivalent amount of growth that we would be capturing by reducing the mill levy by one half is approximately seven percent of that growth.

Uh again, if we went with proposal to only capture inflation and new construction, uh, you'd be closer to about four and a half percent growth, and that would be taxes levied of somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and seventy one and a half million dollars or so, uh, which would be what about uh four about uh four million dollars less than what's in the proposed budget.

And that would have been an even greater challenge, uh the four million dollars to find in reducing services, so therefore it was very difficult to come up with a budget that did that.

Can I ask the city manager um what are steps though that we are as a city taking to try to still keep services but also be more efficient?

Um great question, and that I actually is gonna be addressed in the next um PowerPoint, but uh quickly.

Um recognizing the concerns about um the what we were facing for 26 and 27 and to the future.

Council asked us to start um some initiatives early, and so in 25 we had a a number of uh projects and uh program changes that we analyzed and then have implemented uh or in the process of implementing one of the larger ones is the centralization of our financial services, and that will lead to uh significant uh administrative savings.

We also have uh tried to right size uh some of our activities in street maintenance.

Um Mark helped me.

I think we had some we uh also trimmed park maintenance court and uh that's right, made significant changes in court to recognize changes in activity levels in the court system.

So those are some of the bigger projects that we took on in order again to be able to get us to the point where we had a balanced budget for 26.

It still gives me concern um knowing that we heard from individuals regarding the 8.7 percent increase, and while this one is a reduction, it's still an increase.

Um, and so I will just challenge staff uh to again next year during the next budget cycle to also consider these um more conservative uh increases that are responsible and in line with simply inflation and new construction as another challenge for next year I see no further comments from the board.

I see no further comments from the board.

We will now open it up for public comment.

I see no public comment.

We'll bring it back to the bench.

No comments from the bench.

This one gave me a little bit uh pause.

Um again, because I am the one who asked for a budget that only captured construction new construction and inflation, and that would have been about four point five percent versus the seven percent that we're capturing.

So with that, I will not be able to move this motion.

So I will see if there are other council members who would like to do that.

I will move it.

Uh a move we do the recommended action, close the public hearing, approve the resolution to exceed the revenue neutral rate for the city of Wichita, and conclude the public hearing and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I will add one more comment.

Um thank you, Vice Mayor Johnston, for moving that item.

Um I am very glad to see that under the uh leadership of Mark Manning and several others on this bench.

This is a mill levy reduction, but still an increase for the rest of our community.

So it's historic that we are reducing the mill levy, and we are headed in the right direction, but we still need to continue in that direction because we will be facing a budget deficit in the coming years.

So again, um with that, council member Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Just to add to the conversation for everyone, the average Widgeton is seeing a benefit of 14 dollars, and government will have to try to find a way to maintain or improve services going forward, and that is a reduction of millions of dollars while you get a benefit of 14 for the average widgetin'.

So continue to keep that in mind as this goes forward and you engage with the council in future years on the budget.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd also say that we are investing heavily in public safety.

Um both fire department, we've retained a 42 positions that were grant funded and that they'll be paid for in this budget.

Uh we've also invested in police salaries, which has led to full police recruiting classes uh and fire recruiting classes too.

So we're invested that the citizens have also made it known that they want uh better streets, and we're putting more money in the streets.

So that's that's where this increase is going as to public safety and streets.

So this is what people said they wanted.

Uh until they change their mind, uh, we will fund that.

Councilmember Glascott.

The number one thing I hear from residents when I go and talk to people is that property taxes are quite literally taxing people out of their homes.

And this savings is a savings in their property taxes.

I think everybody at this bench needs to realize this is not our money.

This is not the city of Wichita's institution's money.

This is the taxpayer dollars.

And I am very supportive of the historic property tax decrease that we're looking at today.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Uh I definitely agree we should um recognize that our own property.

I pay property tax as well.

Um, but again, those of us in the core who look to these services to help them when we had our windstorm and these branches, all of these things that we could be providing, we're gonna see a reduction in governmental service because at large um impact to the budget.

And again, $14 something a month versus what you get out of investing in government, I think is it's a big deal.

Libraries, parks, all of these things that we can make these strategic investments in that the community asked us for.

And while some of us here cut, cut, cut.

I've not heard that.

Most of the people I've talked to in my district and even out of my district are supportive of maintaining or increasing our mill levy.

So there are opposing views out there.

We all have our own views, but again, as I continue to talk about the impact to service levels, could be drastic in future years if we continue to go down this path.

We cannot cut our way into having a great city.

What we can do is make strategic investments in the things that provide the best services for folks in our community.

And that's what I think we should do.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um let me uh th this is a difficult one because I do hear from a lot of people about the need for additional services.

There are better ways than if we move forward in the future at looking at any other tax reductions to make it targeted and to make it more impactful for people.

Again, I bring up the homestead tax relief.

Imagine the state program on that, and that could result in up to 250 dollars by our finance department's estimations for seniors who need this.

So let's be smart and strategic about aiming any future tax decreases to people who really need it, and the people who it could really help, and in a way that is meaningful.

Again, it's it's difficult to govern.

This is definitely something I've learned over the last four years, uh, just how difficult it is because you have to balance a lot of different interests up here.

But again, let's let's be smart about it in the future about how we can meaningfully impact people's lives.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

You know, district five has the least amount of crime in the city.

We also have probably had the least amount of police officers in the city.

We should have a good core area.

We should spend money on core area.

But District Five, we are supporting the core area.

Um the taxes we pay.

So Councilman Johnson, you mentioned that the population is less.

I will I will uh challenge that and say as the city spreads out, we have more tax revenue with more people that do support the core area.

So it's important that we don't end up like uh a St.

Louis or somewhere where they haven't captured that growth in the area to support the core.

So I I'm for that, but we've also got to find a different way to fund the city other than relying primarily on property taxes.

Um that's why we need to have discussion about possibly a city wise sales tax and cash fund some of our public safety infrastructure, like fire and police stations, and directly reduce the mill levy.

So I think that would accomplish a lot, uh reduce our debt load for the city, and would also uh reduce the burden of tax uh of homeowners on the on the uh property tax.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um just uh clarify, I mentioned to Mark my question was about if our population had increased since 86, so I'm 39, that was the year I was born in.

So in the last 39 years, has our population increased, and he indicated it did.

I know that we've gone through a um period of time where our city spread farther east and west.

Um it's always easier to develop green field than in the core.

Um with that, any time we talk about how much a district pays in property tax, it gets a little odd to me because of course wealthier areas are gonna pay more, and if some of that's concentrated in certain parts of the city, you'll see those numbers higher than anywhere else.

Um I personally don't give a lot of weight to that because everyone who owns property will pay a property tax.

One of the things that was very interesting to me as we talk about this investment of the people's money.

Um when we did city to city San Antonio 2019, the council member that represented the wealthiest district in San Antonio began to talk to us about the importance of investing back into the lower income areas.

And although his district was taxed more, they felt, I mean, it was equal rate, but they paid more because they owned more.

They saw benefits in the community because of those strategic investments.

Is it a tough conversation to have?

Yes.

No one wants to pay more in taxes, but is it something that benefits people when you put more money into public works, when you put more money in the arts, when you put more money in the parks, your city transforms, and it really makes a real impact.

And that investment is for the people of that community, not for outside folks.

And you can see that in these different spaces.

Even here in Wichita, again, the investments we've made over the years, we're seeing crime rates go down.

There may be a trend of things that we see in the news, but overall that's down.

It's because of all the working parts of the investments from public safety as far as law enforcement, but also public safety and parks and arts and everything else we're doing.

All the things that we continue to talk about that are important are impacted by these investments.

And as we continue to say we're gonna cut the budget, then we have to start prioritizing things a little differently, and we'll get to a point.

And I'll always bring this up about the 90s when the federal government funded weed and seed.

A lot of great things were happening.

People were empowered, young people had opportunities, these programs were funded, and then they pulled that away.

And municipalities throughout the country didn't all keep up those programs and support the private sector didn't fund that.

So then you see crime trends start to change and shift back to what they were.

Right now we are making some really good investments in these different things.

The things that we all care about, we hear public safety from this bench.

Everyone talks about public safety.

Some people talk about that only fire and police.

Again, it's more than that.

But if we begin to say we're just gonna start cutting, then we start pitting fire, police, public works versus parks versus arts, and that's gonna be something that I think future councils are gonna struggle with.

But again, in these different cities, San Antonio, other spaces where the council members of these wealthy areas also understand that these investments benefit everyone.

It may not be that when it comes to the point you made about law enforcement.

There's parts of District One where people have told the chief they never see an officer.

They're out there, they're riding around, um going from call to call to call.

You may not see them sitting there, but they really police this community about the same.

There's probably a few more in the core because population is a little denser, but those officers are out there.

And if people only feel safe when they see that, then again, we're gonna have these different budget discussions going forward about this one department get so much more than these others that all contribute to public safety as a whole.

So the point I've just continued to make today, and I'll probably say it again on the next item is as we look at these historic decisions, one that gives you another 14 in your pocket, um, it's gonna impact future investment in the things that you care about as a taxpayer.

So my opinion doesn't matter up here after a few months, but the things that you care about that you want to see invested in that are important to you, it's gonna come up in a few years as this budget continues to get cut.

So that $14 may become 20 at some point, and that's great, half a tank of gas, one drink at Starbucks, or if you go to another business, you might get two drinks, but your benefit and the services that you may receive from the city of Wichita might be impacted more greatly.

And I think that's something that people just need to consider.

It's not just one side that we're hearing from that just wants to cut and cut and cut.

Some people who say that don't understand 80% of our budget is salaries, so we're talking about cutting people.

And when we begin to have those different conversations and we talk about the service lows, the people who continue to say they want their streets swept, but it hasn't happened in a while.

When people say they want new playground equipment, but it hasn't happened in a while.

We can start looking at the budget, and as we continue to cut, yeah, we feel good, and governments reducing our tax burden, but also where are those investments happening?

And those investments don't always happen in the areas we want them to, they happen in different areas.

So just want to continue to highlight and make that point, and I hope the public continues to have this um conversation around our budget.

I see no further discussion.

We have a motion and a second.

It requires another roll call.

Madam Clerk, can you do the roll call?

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Councilmember Johnson.

Yes.

Aye.

Councilmember Tuttle?

Aye.

Councilmember Hoheisel?

Aye.

Councilmember Glasscock?

Aye.

Councilmember Ballard?

Aye.

Mayor Wu?

Nay.

Vote passes six to one.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

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

Well, good morning again.

Mayor, members of the city council.

I'm still Mark Manning with the Department of Finance.

So today, uh now we actually can have our budget hearing on the proposed 2026 budget and the proposed 2026-35 capital improvement program.

So today basically marks the pinnacle of our long annual journey to develop a city budget.

Uh our process to do that is designed based on community priorities.

It's guided by the strategic plan that the city council developed during this budget process, and it funds a variety of tactics, which basically serves as a work plan guide for departments.

We've been at this, as I mentioned, for about eight months.

Is the day that we will ask you to consider and adopt uh the proposed budget.

So I mentioned the importance of community priorities.

We typically use the citizen survey as a baseline to determine those priorities.

We do the survey approximately once a year.

We ask residents fundamentally two questions.

What how do you rank the importance of the services we provide and how do you rank the quality of the services that we provide?

We produce this matrix, and you've seen this numerous times throughout the budget process.

It's got importance level on the X axis and it has uh quality on the Y axis.

We've typically focused on the magenta quadrant, which is over in the lower right hand corner.

Those are services that our residents tell us are really important to them, but maybe we have some room for improvement.

So we tend to focus a lot of our energy there, and uh also in the quadrant directly above that of higher importance items that we do that we perform higher quality work on.

So again, let's uh drill down on this quadrant.

You see things like street repair, economic development, uh homeless support, affordable housing, crime prevention.

Again, those are the areas uh which uh receive a lot of focus in our proposed budget, and the reason is is because our residents tell us that they're of high importance and that we have some opportunities there.

We normally use a lot of other mechanisms to gain feedback as well.

We go present the budget to the all the district advisory boards each year, gather feedback there.

We have a number of workshops.

I think we have four workshops this year.

All of those are available on YouTube, and all of the material that we provide at those workshops is also available on our city website.

But over the last couple years, we've also used another mechanism to gather community feedback, and that is our online budget simulator.

This year we had over 1,000 budgets created during the time period in which the simulator was active.

And basically, we asked people here's a service.

Would you like us to increase the level of funding or decrease the level funding or leave it alone?

Now, a few things about the budget simulator.

Uh, yes, it's a useful tool to gather uh feedback, uh, but it does have a few uh issues that we're aware of.

It is not statistically valid.

The citizen survey is statistically valid.

The budget uh simulator is not.

That's primarily because it's a voluntary uh platform, it's not a sampling platform.

So again, you have to take the results with a little bit of grain of salt there.

So it's not statistically valid.

We also do not block IP addresses, which means that you can submit multiple surveys from the same IP address.

We do that intentionally because it's available at our neighborhood city halls and a variety of other public facilities, so we don't want to block the IP address for those locations, but that does uh provide perhaps some opportunity for maybe uh multiple responses from the same individuals.

So, again, for that reason, yes, it's provides feedback, uh, but uh you have to understand it does have some limitations there.

So uh let me go through the slides real quick.

I think I have three slides that basically summarize areas that residents told us they would like to increase funding and areas in which they recommended decreasing funding.

And now it's no surprise to me that the area in which was number one on increased funding is street repair.

I just mentioned that's in the magenta quadrant, and it's one that we spend a lot of time talking about, one that we hear a lot about when we go out to the district advisory boards, and I know all of you do too.

So that's very consistent with the results we get from the community survey.

You can see the other areas here that uh were recommended for higher funding.

By the way, we put the base expenditures there to give you a little bit of order of magnitude, and that's relevant here on the next slide.

I'm gonna show you.

Now we've transitioned to areas where residents uh suggested reduced funding.

We would not expect to see a lot of these in the higher area of importance.

That's a little bit different than the community survey results, and you start to see a few of those creep in, particularly on this page.

Again, our mechanism forces you to balance a budget.

I think we probably have a bias towards people going to the highest dollar amount area in order to balance their budget in order to complete it.

But again, uh take it for what it's worth, just additional community feedback.

So, another uh big initiative of this budget was the development of our strategic plan.

Uh, we started that in January, and we talked about that in three workshops, and basically those workshops developed a strategic plan based on pillars, goals, strategies, and tactics.

This was instrumental in the development of the budget in the CIP, as you'll see in a few slides, but it was very important to uh to guide our work product on our departmental level and to guide the development of the budget.

So you've seen this slide several times, so I won't go into a whole lot of detail, but just simplicity simplistically.

A pillar really represents things that we want to achieve.

For example, we want to be a well-run city.

I'll use examples familiar to me in the finance department.

A goal is really an area that is kind of a specific area of focus within a pillar.

For example, uh in the finance department, one that's relevant does is we want to manage our city in a financially viable practice manner based on best practices.

A strategy is a more concrete plan that allows us to progress towards that goal.

For example, the manager mentioned a little bit earlier.

One of the strategies included in our strategic plan is uh centralization of financial services.

And then a tactic is something we develop at the departmental level.

It's kind of our actionable work plan of what we expect to get accomplished based on the funding levels in the adopted budget and based on the strategic plan and specifically to the finance department.

My example, uh, that manifestation of that would be the item that you approved a couple weeks ago, where we launched our centralization effort with our electronic timekeeping software purchase and our with our uh engagement of a consultant to help us study our structure.

So that's basically how our strategic plan works.

Very powerful tool, very, very instrumental in the development of our budget this year.

And you'll hear that probably three or four more times in the presentation this morning.

So let's look at our city uh budget here by pie chart.

Now, out of deference to the city manager, if by my count, I believe this is the 17th budget that he has presented for the city council, if my count is correct, and I know he likes pie charts, so I've included a few.

Now I'm not gonna make any promises on how many pie charts will be next year when we present the budget, but again, out of deference to him, we do have a few pie charts this morning to show.

So our budget is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70, 776 million dollars or thereabouts.

You can see the pie chart on the left shows our various revenue streams.

I'll focus on two.

We run some very large business units.

Think of our water and sewer utility.

Those generate charges for services.

That's why you see that 39% of our revenues are charges for services.

Property tax is also an important revenue stream.

I mentioned previously for the debt service fund and the general fund, that's about 23% of our revenue portfolio.

And you can see the other sources listed there.

Now, on the expenditure side, uh salaries and benefits is the largest expenditure for the entire city, and as was noted earlier, you're gonna see it's an even larger percentage when we get to the general fund.

Another large portion that you can see on this chart is debt service.

Our major business units, water and sewer are also very, very capital intensive.

So we do a lot of capital improvement investment, and we also issue a lot of debt for our water and sewer utility.

Most of that debt service is coming out of that.

And you'll see that here on the CIP slides in a few slides from now.

So let's drill down on the general fund revenue sources.

You see, I mentioned earlier, property taxes is approximately 38% of our revenue stream, and we get material amounts from franchise fees and a pretty good portion from the uh our portion of the local one cent sales tax at Sedgwick County levies.

Uh this shows our expenditures.

On the right, again, you can see the relevance of salaries and wages.

Uh that's because while the CIP, as we'll see, is tilted more towards uh capital expenditures, uh tangible assets.

The operating budget is focused more on operating expenditures, which generally means people, police officers, firefighters, park maintenance staff, things of that nature.

So we are labor-intensive on the general fund, and that's why it represents about 76% of our expenditures.

On the left-hand side, I think this was alluded to earlier.

Approximately 64% of our expenditures are for public safety.

Public safety being defined here as the police and fire department.

If you add in public works and park, uh you're getting into the mid-80s percent of those four large operating departments.

That basically leaves 17% for everything else, which is things like our cultural facilities budget, our library, our court, our finance department, law department, sea manager's office, jail fees, planning department, transit, all of those make up the remainder of the 17% out of the general fund.

We talked about this a little bit earlier.

This chart shows you the proposed mill levy that is included in this proposed budget.

Recognize we have two taxing funds, the debt service fund and the general fund, but the important takeaway is bolded down there at the bottom, the mill levy rate would go to an estimated 32.316, which is a one-half mil less than what the mill levy rate was in 2025.

So it's also really important.

We tend to focus on 2026 because that's the legal budget we have to prepare, but it's really important for us to focus long term for a variety of reasons.

So that's what this chart here shows you.

We expect to be balanced in 2026 and 2027.

But we do have some potential challenges on the horizon.

It's not uncommon for us to present forecasts like this, basically for two fundamental reasons.

When you get outside the cone of certainty, it's more challenging to project.

That's particularly true on our revenue side because there are many, many variables that affect a lot of our revenue streams.

Expenditures are a little bit more predictable since it's people and we can kind of project what those costs are going to be.

So we probably take a little bit of a conservative tilt, particularly on the revenue side.

The second factor that influences this is generally speaking, organically, our revenue growth is typically less than our expenditure growth because expenditures is driven by salaries and wages.

So both of those generally give us a tilt towards a structurally imbalanced position in the out years, and you can see that reflected here.

Most likely not.

We have a very long history, as was alluded to earlier this morning, of taking actions necessary in order to balance our budget.

And as a manager mentioned, we also have a very long history of continuously improving our organizational performance and seeking additional efficiencies, and they gave you several examples of that.

So again, just take this for what it is.

It's a very preliminary forecast of what our future could look like if no policy direction is implemented.

We do exactly what we're doing now, and our forecasts are is correct.

So that's the purpose of this slide.

So we talked about this previously, so I won't uh reiterate too much about this, but generally we came into this year with a deficit position projected.

And I'll show you that slide in just a couple minutes.

But to the mayor's point, how did we cover that deficit?

Fundamentally, we did three things.

We conducted a lot of research on some of the topics that were presented last year as process improvements, and I think we presented that to you in February if I remember recall correctly, and a lot of those process improvements are incorporated in the proposed budget, and that helped us shrink our expenditure base a little bit.

We also came with a second round of adjustments proposed at the May 27th workshop.

A lot of those were focused more on efficiency improvements and uh non-public safety, non-public facing adjustments, and adjustments in areas that were of lower strategic significance based on our strategic plan.

But basically, those two areas are what allowed us to get to a balanced budget.

Here's the two categories.

The manager mentioned these earlier, about two and a half million from process improvements and about another million eight from just general budget reductions in areas where activity levels or processes dictated that we could uh reduce our budget.

Here's what it looks like.

The top line is where we started out initially back in January, and again, that forecast was based on one year ago, August of 2025, when you adopted the 2025 budget.

Again, a fairly significant uh deficit position.

Uh a lot of things change.

Again, the budget process improvements were uh items presented by staff that were uh included in the proposed budget based on the feedback we received.

That alone was the bulk of what allowed us to balance this year your direction and action on those items.

And then we also obviously throughout that we look at a variety of technical uh areas of the budget and are constantly tweaking our assumptions based on new information.

That's basically what the base adjustments are.

So this slide shows you how we got to zero essentially.

So I mentioned the strategic plan and the powerful uh nature of the strategic plan.

It's gonna basically guide our work over the next uh year or so.

Uh you've seen a lot of these.

I think this is probably at least the fourth or fifth time that you've seen them, so I won't touch on every one of them, but I just wanted to highlight a few areas of of the work plan that will guide uh city staff in this proposed budget.

We'll look at our cost recovery.

Uh, you know, we use uh what we call the cost pyramid.

Generally, the concept is broad public benefit items should have little or no cost recovery.

Items we produce that are have a very narrow customer base, probably should have higher cost recovery.

We'll examine our fee structure and try to adhere to that model.

We mentioned uh centralization of financial services, which has a huge potential to uh transfer our organization, I think, and make us a lot more efficient.

We'll also look at our employee benefit uh design right now.

We've got a lot of legacy benefit programs, and our rhetorical question is is are those programs relevant for our 21st century workforce going forward?

Is that what our employees want for the future to help us attract and retain employees?

A lot of these involve technology in the police department, which is really exciting.

The drone is first responder, the real-time information center, even the risk-trained modeling tactic, all very powerful ways to use technology, hopefully, to enhance our responsiveness and to gain efficiency there.

A few examples here in the grow our economy.

We'll look at our cultural funding program and see what revisions we need to make there.

We'll look at our transit network, and of course, we'll continue to focus on affordable housing.

Infrastructure, we'll look at reuse options for water, which will help us on the conservation side, perhaps, and we'll see about expanding our DST or decision support methodology that we utilize in public works into the park department to help us maintain and replace our park infrastructure perhaps more efficiently.

And finally, on living well, again, we've talked about most of these a lot.

We've talked about the importance of childhood reading, childhood literacy, and the importance that has on future outcomes.

So we'll focus on that.

And again, we'll build on our past successes in the area of shelter and support services and supportive housing.

So again, that's a uh hopefully a relatively quick rundown of our 2026 proposed budget, particularly in the general fund.

Uh next, I'm gonna pivot to the Schmidt.

I only have one slide on the Schmidt because we talked about it a lot previously, and then we'll transition into the capital improvement program.

And I promise you the pace will pick up a little bit from here.

So apologize for the length of the presentation this morning.

We talked about the Schmidt the budget as has been presented to you is based on a mill levy rate of 10 mills.

You have the ability to do that since we have exceeded the RR.

That would increase the mill levy from 6.8 to 10.

And again, it would be funded, it would fund the clean and safe program that Heather outlined to you a few moments ago.

So let's transition to the capital improvement program.

Now, the capital improvement program is a 10-year plan for improvements in our community, and these are physical assets, buildings, roads, uh, water plants, uh, things of that nature, large uh capital assets.

This plan's about three billion dollars over the next 10 years, so it's very sizable.

You can see the revenue stream on this slide.

Our water utilities I mentioned were capital intensive, so they are the bulk of CIP funding, approximately a third, somewhere in the neighborhood of $850 million.

Our portion of the local sales tax, which we pledged to highways, bridges, and roads in 1986 is a significant portion of our funding.

Let me refer you to the two o'clock position here, geo at large.

What you're seeing there is basically the seven mills that we levy in property tax revenue.

That's basically funding the GO at large pie slice there.

Let's flip to the expenditure side.

As you would expect, water and sewer, again, about a third of our capital improvement program.

Streets is a very significant portion, about 500 million dollars north of that.

Again, most of that's funded with local sales tax.

You'll see we have pretty aggressive freeway amount here.

A lot of that's key 96, most of that is funded with uh state resources.

And I mentioned the importance of geo funding.

Uh, that primarily funds public safety, which is roughly 200 million dollars.

I mentioned the GO portion is 380, so you can see there, public safety consumes a little over half of our entire geo at large portion of our CIP.

Other large components of GO funding are heavy equipment, which is things that we buy for street maintenance crews and also park and recreation.

So the capital improvement program uh has a levy of seven mills, as I noted in 2026.

It also is guided by the strategic plan, uh, as I'll show you in a couple minutes.

It's also influenced very heavily by the community investments plan, which is an even longer term plan, 20 and 30 years.

That basically has two areas of prioritization.

They categorize the type of expenditure and they categorize maintenance as priority number one.

You'll see that influence in our capital improvement program.

Maintenance is priority number one in our capital improvement program.

Represents a little less than half of all our expenditures.

The community investments plan also categorizes expenditures by category, and over 63% of our capital improvement program is in the high and very high categories of the community investment plan.

Those categories are things like water supply, streets, bridges, and public safety.

Our CIP has debt maintained at levels that are consistent with our guidelines.

Generally speaking, we like to target about 50% debt, 50% cash.

They're consistent with our guidelines, and our fund balances are maintained at the appropriate level.

Again, the CIP is designed to be fiscally sustainable.

You'll recognize some of these is coming out of our strategic plan.

It's designed to help us maintain timely emergency responses and a few other things shown on this slide here.

Some of the specifics we will continue our police station building program.

As you know, we have two, one that's completed and one that's uh I think under construction now uh out west, Patrol West.

Uh we have a very aggressive fire apparatus replacement program.

We invest millions of dollars in apparatus for our firefighters.

I think that's somewhere north of 45 million dollars.

And then we have a police uh training facility budgeted in the out years.

Um we invest heavily in maintenance.

We've got large allocations for maintenance for our city facilities and for city hall for a variety of other uh areas.

Uh we also mentioned K96 expansion, and we've got numerous street projects, three prominent ones which are listed on this slide.

And then the living well category.

Again, we spend a lot of maintenance money on our cultural facilities.

As you can see here, we also have allocations for Century 2 specifically and for some of our city owned cultural facilities specifically.

And a new project we included this year, uh which is pretty exciting is the Dr.

Glenn Dye Sports Complex.

Uh largely that's funded with other funding donations, but we do have a GO component in that for uh planning, and so that is uh new to our CIP this year.

Well, uh we're almost done.

Uh so I'm just gonna finish up here with a few uh housekeeping things on what we need to do to approve our budget and CIP.

A lot of what we do is dictated by state statute, and uh so that's a lot of the steps that I'll outline for you uh the reason that we do what we do.

Uh it's necessary for you to approve the second reading of some ordinances that you approved a week or so ago.

Those ordinances again basically are required by the state, and they set the taxes levied for our taxing funds, and they also deal with our TIFFs and set the estimated increment levels in our tax increment financing funds.

Uh there's also four funds that we're making slight revisions to that you approved last year, generally because of activity levels, generally increases our expenditures and revenues to offset them.

Uh things like Century 2, for example, is one of them.

Again, that'll just help ensure that we have the legal budget authority in order to accommodate all the expenditures there if our if our activity levels increase.

There's also a number of steps that we take in order to implement your budget.

A lot of those again dictated by state statute.

We have to fill out a lot of state forms, uh, and they have a lot of nuances in completing those forms, so we uh take our time and uh complete those forms.

We'll also ask you to adopt the proposed uh CIP.

Now, we would recommend that after you approve those items that you have a separate motion uh to approve the WSU mill levy.

Uh now the county actually levies the one and a half mills.

Uh they levy that on behalf of the city which doll.

We expanded it to the entire county, I think in 1989 to expand the tax base for Witchdaw State, but the city still retains the approval authority for the portion of WSU's mill levy requests that is reflected in our assessed valuation proportion, which is basically 75%.

Uh I'm sure you've noticed in the back of our budget book we present to you the WSU budget request, and uh it's uh uh requested that you approve uh their request uh that they made so that they can allocate those uh taxing funds uh based on what they presented to you to us.

Uh so before I wrap up now, I think it'd be appropriate to acknowledge a lot of people that uh have contributed to the development of our budget process here.

Uh obviously this wouldn't be possible without the city manager's office and some key support personnel there.

Recognize that in finance, our role is to support the city manager who has the statutory obligation to create your proposed budget for you.

Our job is to support him in that quest.

A lot of staff help us, a lot of departmental staff help help us do that.

Uh but primarily that obligation falls on our budget office and our budget officer Elizabeth Goltry, uh, who does an excellent job and works tirelessly to make sure that we support the manager in the development of his budget.

So I would like to acknowledge her this morning.

Uh Mayor, that's the end of my presentation.

Uh sorry I was so uh long-winded this morning, uh, but I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, and thank you to your entire team.

Um I know that this process started immediately after last year's budget was approved.

So uh your team has been working hard at this and we appreciate it.

We'll begin with council member Toddle.

Thank you, Mark, and thank you for the presentation.

And I'll have lots more kudos and and comments later.

But you highlighted it, and I just wanted to mention again um and as I'm sure this will be lots of discussion.

But if we take the recommended actions, whoever makes the motion if we could take the recommended actions one through four and have a vote, and then if we can take five separately, um, and I will be abstaining from number five due to a conflict of interest.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Mark, for your work.

Um question from Mark, maybe City Manager too.

Is we get the did we get the Proc Wetlands project put in the CIP down the line?

Sorry, which project this the Proc to wetlands.

I think we have uh no, Mayor, if I could.

We decided to wait until we have the results back from the update of the park master plan to see how that priority fit with other recommendations cut in that report.

Okay, I would like to see that in future years.

And the second question is do we get five thousand dollars transferred to the Northwest Expressway?

Yes, yes, we did.

We did, okay, thank you.

Mark, I have a couple of questions.

Can you go back to slide number sixty two?

There we go.

Thank you.

Um obviously this concerns me.

Um, and I think you mentioned that in 2027 0.17 mills will be shifted to the general fund.

Is that to make sure that we are balanced in 27?

Uh no, that's reflective of the discussion we had about reducing the cultural arts funding percentage in the capital improvement program.

That one percent is approximately 900,000.

So to move that to the general fund, we would reduce the debt service fund and increase the general fund levy.

Perfect.

Thank you very much.

And then uh slide number 60.

Can you address the other city services?

Um, I know that a lot of folks may not know how many departments the city has, but uh can you address what other city services uh pertains to 11 percent of the operating budget?

Uh yes, ma'am.

Uh I believe we have 16 operating departments.

Uh other is areas like city council has a small budget, city manager, finance department, HR, law, uh and then as I mentioned, we have separate allocations uh not specific to departments, but we spend money on jail fees at Sedgwick County.

We spend an allocation to support the planning department, which we operate jointly with the county, flood control.

Uh we also provide an allocation to Wichita Transit.

All of those uh things are in the other category there.

Thank you very much.

And then can we go to slide number 80?

80.

Yes, sir.

Cultural facilities maintenance uh in particular.

Um in March, I had my state of the city address at the former central library, and that is one of the cultural facilities that again I just threw out an idea, which was to renovate it to um have a police station there.

However, there was no interest amongst many folks.

So I still believe that that is an asset that the community has invested in, but it's been shuttered for multiple years.

And so um I did ask the city manager to come up with some ideas of how to activate that space so that it can um become an asset again for the community.

City manager, can you address that?

I can mayor, thank you.

Um in reviewing this issue with staff.

Um we we too share the concern about having an empty public building um, and um that our thought was energizing that building, reutilizing it would be in the benefit of not just the city but the community as a whole.

And it seemed to make sense to activate that space with uh in partnership with ASM, who manages Century 2 for us.

Um I think they've done a uh uh wonderful job in terms of turning our facility, our facility around in terms of not just C2, but Bob Brown.

And we asked them to start working on a proposal on what it would take to activate um the building from a business standpoint.

Uh they put together a proposal and frankly just finished uh gave us the a final copy of uh concept uh last week, and so I apologize for the late um uh presentation of this, but they believe that we could activate the first floor, uh create two primary event spaces, each of about 6,500 square feet.

Um you could call those ballrooms if you'd like, and then also utilize the central library or excuse me, the central lobby for uh uh some uh purposes.

Um, and that there's a target market for this amount of space, primarily in the wedding uh banquet and corporate meeting um areas.

In order to do that, it would take about two million dollars uh in improvements so that the space could be utilized for that purpose.

And so recognizing we don't have a final proposal or negotiated arrangement, um it seemed appropriate to suggest that we modify the CIP to allow for two million dollars to be utilized in 2026 to be able to uh activate this space and make it a productive use.

The two million dollars that uh is shared.

Can you just address some of the improvements that would be made so that only the first floor would be activated and rentable for the community?

Yes, Mayor, thank you.

Um probably one of the most significant expenses would to uh construct main floor restrooms that are accessible and can accommodate uh meetings of this size.

We also um would have some work to do wall repairs, uh window repairs, um new uh uh carp carpets, um, and then a number of others, some outside work that needs to be done, including um activating the patio space and um many other things that you've heard before when we talked about this building, some improvements to HVAC, some things we have to do in plumbing.

We would not put a full kitchen in, we would cater so all the events would have to be catered, but there would be a functional space uh for the caterer.

Um I think that's pretty much it, Mayor, in terms of what the major um issues are.

Also, we would uh have uh FF and E expenses that would allow us then to have tables, chairs, and what we need to activate that space and city manager.

I know that the rest of the council doesn't have this information, so um, would it be possible, by the way?

Full disclosure, the city manager sent this to me last night at 6.07 p.m.

Um, so this is very new to me, too.

And so I just wanted to share that improvements to just the first floor itself are approximately 1.5 million, and then the patio repairs would be about 800,000.

So number one, I want to know could it come under the two million versus setting it at two million and then people thinking that that is our actual budget.

I just want to make sure that we're responsible with taxpayer dollars.

In addition, I want to know where could those dollars come from.

Mayor, I'm probably most comfortable having a placeholder at two million.

First of all, we're dealing with an old building, and I have no idea what will happen when we get into some of that space.

Um I think the patio space is optional, that's $300,000.

That would get us to the butt of $1.8 million estimate.

This doesn't include any architectural fees, so we'd want to uh include that in there.

So again, this is very preliminary, and I'd like to have a placeholder that is adequate, and we don't fall short when we get into the remodel.

Um I'm glad you called up this slide.

Um we have 16 million dollars budgeted over the 10 years for cultural facilities maintenance, and that would be funded through the transient guest tax.

And our thought is that the first year of that ex of those expenditures, we would put two million dollars in transient guest tax into this building, leaving 14 million for cultural facility maintenance going forward.

And then you also have the ability next year when you're going through the CIP to adjust priorities and determine how you want to spend uh transient guest tax going forward.

Right now, there aren't any specific projects designated.

We just have a lump sum in each year, recognizing that our cultural facilities are aging and need uh maintenance work.

Can you also um as a side note update us on the promenade?

The C2 promenade is Lindsay here.

I'm gonna ask Lindsay to talk about the progress on that project.

Good morning, Mayor Council Lindsay Banaka with the city manager's office.

I'm not sure if there's a specific question about the promenade, but I can give kind of an overview if that's what you're looking for.

Uh so it is uh funded out of 2025 and 2026.

I believe there's partial funding in both years for this project.

Uh but it's in partnership with Hyatt, so we do have a contract with Hyatt that uh the conditions of the promenade, which the city currently owns, has to be the same aesthetic standard as the hotel.

So as the hotel goes under uh rebranding of its rooms and ballrooms, we want to make sure that the promenade fits that.

So we're working with the Hyatt as well as ASM, who are our property managers of the space, uh, to make um kind of a plan in term in terms of rolling out what those aesthetic modifications are.

So it is budgeted.

We're working with both parties on a timeline.

Kind of that's our big kind of holdup right now is because the space is used constantly.

When can we carve out time in order to make those um accommodations or those renovations needed?

But uh it's really aesthetic.

It's it's uh flooring, wall covering, um, some tech updates.

We're simultaneously working on HVAC updates uh through SA ASM, uh, but primarily it's aesthetic upgrades uh that we're working with both parties on.

Does that answer your question?

It does.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Councilmember Tunnel.

Thank you.

This is on a different topic in uh Vice Mayor Johnston brought up about the Northwest Bypass, and then somebody just texted me and asked.

So when last year's recommendation it was five thousand dollars over the 10-year CIP.

So was that five thousand dollars?

Is that what you were asking for the five thousand dollars was allocated?

It it moved it for we moved it from one project in my district to five thousand dollars to fund it for this year, coming year.

For this year, because it was just five thousand dollars over the ten year CIP is what was last year's recommendation.

Not five thousand dollars annually.

Well, it moved five thousand dollars in the first year.

Okay, and then they just wanted to know too, where did the check go?

Is it did it go to the county for um acquisition of right-of-way or no?

We have not spent that five thousand dollars.

The five thousand dollars was a placeholder in the capital improvement program last year, and now it's moving to the operating budget in engineering.

Uh, but we haven't spent that, and it's there's no earmark for it at this time.

It's simply a placeholder.

Thank you very much.

Just wanted to be responsive.

And last question is for Mark.

Um, I know we're talking about some improvement districts, and um a local television station brought up an issue uh regarding sales taxes in a specific area.

Can you address how those uh because that taxing jurisdiction was supposed to end um October 1st of 2022?

Can you just address what has happened since learning about this issue?

Uh yes, ma'am.

Uh Mayor, you're talking about the uh K96 uh star uh community improvement district or SID that was created as part of our development out there.

Uh basically it was a CID that helped fund a portion of the interchange project there at uh K96 in Greenwich.

Uh the city is obviously responsible for uh approving and implementing a CID, which we did uh several years ago.

Uh the CID was very successful, as is everything out in that area, and so that we had collected enough revenue in order to uh service the remaining debt uh throughout the term of the debt.

Uh so actually the developer came to us and recommended that we terminate the CID, uh which we presented to the city council, I believe, on June 14th of 2022.

Uh it was approved by the city council.

Uh I think it's important to recognize that uh the city's responsibility is to create the CID and to terminate the SID.

Uh we have absolutely zero responsibility for collecting the CID, and that's based on the state statute.

There's really one entity who's responsible for collecting sales tax in the state of Kansas, and that is our partners at the Kansas Department of Revenue.

We work very closely with them, and they are excellent partners to us, but it is their responsibility to collect the CID.

So after that was terminated by the city council, uh you have to provide revenue 90 days notice, and they typically uh want that quarterly.

So in order to have the tax terminate on September 30th of 2022 or October 1st the next day, we needed to provide them notification prior to July 1st, which we did, and they did in fact uh terminate uh the tax.

In fact, I believe they sent taxpayers in that district a notification of the tax rate change, which is common for them to do.

They typically post that online as well.

Again, that is their responsibility to notify taxpayers.

And uh, I can tell you that incremental SID revenues to the City of Wichita did cease there shortly after.

Now there's always a tail on sales tax collections, they tend to lag.

So we did receive a little bit in October and a little bit in November, and then just a very small amount in December, and that's normal.

Uh but effectively the City of Wichita has received no revenues into our K96 star bond SID fund since uh the fall of uh 2022.

Uh so that's what we know about it.

Again, the count the state administers the sales tax.

Uh, you know, whether or not Academy was collecting it, how they were remitting it to the state is far beyond the purview of me to know.

Uh I think those questions would be better directed to the Department of Revenue, but I can tell you, and I have spoken with them a little bit.

Uh I can tell you that the city has received virtually no revenues from the K-96 star bond SID since the fourth quarter of 2022.

Thank you, Mark, for addressing that.

Um behalf of citizens of Wichita, uh, knowing that that SID continued at one specific retailer.

Um, and while the City of Wichita did not receive any of those proceeds, I'd like to know where those proceeds went then.

Um so if there's a follow-up with again, those are the state individuals.

I'd like to know what happened to those dollars that were collected and did not come to the city of Wichita or benefit it, the citizens of Wichita.

We can explore that with the state.

Again, they are responsible for the collection of the tax.

Uh and you know, understandably so.

Sometimes they're a little reluctant to overshare information because a lot of information about taxpayers is very confidential and which we respect.

But uh, yeah, we'll visit with the state and see what we can find out.

Thank you very much, Mike.

I see no further questions regarding the budget from the bench.

We will now open it up for public comment.

I see no public comment.

I'll bring it back to the bench.

Oh, I thought there was gonna be a rush.

Sorry.

One public comment.

Unbelievable.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, City Manager, City Legal.

I come before you for budget concerns.

We were losing one to two million dollars per year at the animal services for because we weren't collecting well, the city was for not collecting dog license fees.

Uh, we're making baby steps towards getting some of that money, so I appreciate that.

Um our animal services work eight hours.

So let's just say eight to four, eight hours.

Um, but they get a paid lunch because they go home after those eight hours.

They tell me they they eat at their desks as they work.

I'm from Missouri.

They show me state.

We need an audit because I if you leave there to go eat anywhere, it's more than more than whatever they're saying.

So, anyhow.

We need to I don't think they should be getting paid for their lunch.

Um that same realm of thinking, my wife and I, we go to Freddy's three to four times, one on Rock Road.

And um, we've noticed two officers eating their two out of those three or four times we went.

And although it's in their contract that they are on the radio and good to go for an emergency.

All I'm asking, if they don't go anywhere for a call any time during that hour, that they stay stay over an hour to help Wichita, because we're short offices.

So if they got their lunch paid for, and they didn't have to go anywhere, but they were under radio, so they're legal.

But I think that would go a long way for us thinking well of the police when they don't take their on a call on their lunch.

All right.

Um I have honeydew lists, and I tell my wife that she doesn't have to keep reminding me every six months.

So thinking about future savings.

Two weeks ago, a citizen wouldn't leave the podium area, and security had to escort her away.

One city councilman said he appreciated her and was in favor of reparations, and another council person said he was willing to have the conversation.

Could we ask that person that disrespected our mayor and our city council by not sitting down?

How much she is requesting so we can plan for that in payment for future budgets.

And then city manager, to you, in your honor, I will push to have the city keep marks pie charts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Just for clarification, Elder Dean wasn't asking for a dollar amount.

The ordinance she was requesting would uh create a commission on reparations, which the council would appoint to, and then they would look at how to address reparations.

There wasn't a dollar amount.

We'll continue with public comment.

I see none.

We will close public comment for the budget and multiple action items.

So I will officially close public comment.

Bringing it back to the bench.

We'll start with discussion.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks, Mayor.

Mark, team, Bob, appreciate your work on the budget.

Bob reminded me before the meeting, this is my last budget to vote on, so it's my eighth budget.

There's a lot of good things in this budget, so I'll be supportive.

Um a lot of good work.

Many remember I did vote against the mill levy decrease, but that wasn't a reflection of the budget.

It was just about that.

But there's a lot of good things in here, a lot of good investments that I think um will set us up really well in the future.

Um I do just want to again highlight that as on the citizen survey, as you saw crime prevention being so high.

Crime prevention is not just law enforcement, and they would tell you that same thing.

Oftentimes when they're out in the community and dealing with the situation, they call partners to help out.

Those partners could be city facilities, libraries, or parks, or it could be nonprofit organizations that they work with.

So we're not trying to arrest our way out of everything, but really trying to partner.

With that being said, there are some really good investments again in libraries, parks, arts, all of the things that matter.

And my encouragement, because I did hear that there was an item that highlights in 27 a reduction in arts funding, is that this council not do that.

I hope in the future the council fully funds the two percent and not drops to one percent.

Again, all of these things are connected.

And the more investments we continue to make in quality parks, quality libraries, arts, things like that, uh, it's gonna be better as we look at value in the team Wichita, our employees paying them living wages, not surviving wages, and we continue to pay our staff more, but we're good, it's gonna get more competitive in the future.

So again, just looking at making the right investments, not only into team Wichita, but also our city with your tax dollars and what that's gonna look like, and investing in these different areas, whether it's affordable housing, all of these things play a role in making our community better.

And I will say, as people debate what crime prevention really is, crime prevention truly outside of law enforcement is a young person or young adult having an opportunity to go fall in love with reading at a library or going to fall in love with astronomy, like I did going to the library, being able to go to a quality park in their neighborhood, and because we have over a hundred parks throughout our city, that means parks are accessible, and we should keep those up.

We shouldn't reduce those.

That means someone like me who could go walk the streets in other areas, maybe going to Red Bud Park to play 5,000, if you know what that is, get a football, throw it into a group, see who can catch it.

It's those types of things that really keep young people out of trouble.

It gives them something to do.

It's these community centers with cultural, um, not cultural, culinary arts opportunities to maybe learn how to cook something differently or healthy.

It's providing these opportunities for many people in our community to make different choices rather than some that might be detrimental to their present and future.

So I'm supportive of this because we are making a lot a lot of those investments, and my encouragement is as we go forward, we think about making more of those investments because if we don't, we will see trends change back, and some will ask what happened, and I'll always be able to point to it's in the budget.

So I'm hoping that going forward we continue some of the good work that we have been doing and increase.

Uh but I will be supportive today on my final budget because there are some good things and always appreciate the work that the management manager and finance team do to present the best budget possible.

Councilmember Tuttle.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And this is my seventh budget that I've had the opportunity to be engaged in.

I liked the way I was gonna say loved.

I could probably go with loved.

I loved the way that we tied everything to the mission and the four pillars.

Um that was really important to me.

I heard lots of good comments from staff that they also appreciated that it just kept everything grounded of why we do what we do every day at the city of Wichita.

Um I just want to give a shout out to staff.

This has been, as someone mentioned, nine months.

Um, you know, we'll give you maybe like a few weeks, um, Mark and Elizabeth, and then we're gonna start this all over again and getting ready for the next year.

But I know this is the labor of love, and certainly um something that you're quite proud of, and you should be quite proud of as well.

Um I also want to thank the community for providing input.

Again, I think we had over 20 different opportunities for the community to be involved in some level, of course, always just reaching out to us, but we have district advisory board meetings and the budget simulator and you know all the different things that we had.

And so for the community members that took their time, we are grateful, and we heard you and we listened to you.

Um also want to thank Bob.

It's your 17th year uh with a budget in the city of Wichita, but your 47th budget within a municipality.

So that certainly deserves kudos and recognition.

Thank you for being a true public servant.

You are appreciated and respected.

Um I've said this every year.

This is I mentioned my seventh year.

Where you allocate your time in treasure is a reflection of your values.

And I think that this budget is a true reflection of the city of Wichita and what we think the community wants us to do.

So I will be supportive of this budget today, and just a friendly reminder if we can take the four first four actions in one bundle and take the the fifth one separately.

Thank you.

Councilmember Glascock.

Thank you, May.

We're about to deliver the first property tax cut, um, cutting the mill levy by half a mil since 1986.

And I think that's something we should all be proud of while we're still protecting the core services that people count on.

This proves that I think government can live within its means, stay focused on safety streets, while also maintaining our shared spaces and amenities.

Some people think that City Hall may be here to solve every problem, but leadership is not just about government responsibility, but making sure that we can't, we don't make promises that we can't keep to individuals.

Um, continue reducing costs, costs and taxes in the future with no plan, and that's just irresponsible.

And I think that's why we must look at revenue replacements, where and when it makes sense to property taxes.

I think this budget shows that we can chart a better course and we can respect property tax owners, and while not part of this budget process, an independent group of citizens presented efficiencies to city hall.

I want to thank them for their work on this as well.

And I hope, well, I'm not going to be doing it today, that over the course of the year we look at some of these recommendations and we examine each in their own merit.

Just some of them that I look forward to having future discussions about, require competitive bidding for all purchases over 50,000, consolidate PCARD and one-time vendors into formal contracts, conduct quarterly reviews of contract utilization, enforce clawbacks within six months for underperforming developers, require developers with debts over 50,000 to be disclosed in public financial reports, prohibit deals with vendors or developers who are in litigation with the city, publish an annual efficiency audit highlighting contractual utilization, claw back enforcement and vendor compliance, post major development agreements and disclosures online in a searchable format, reexamine feasibility studies, consulting contracts, and I can continue to go on.

But I believe that we're called from this bench to deliver essential services efficiently, spend responsibly and build public trust.

And I want to thank Mark Manning.

I want to thank Bob.

I believe this budget does just that.

And uh congratulations, I think, on uh presenting a well-rounded document to this body to consider.

Thank you.

I also uh would like to echo some of those same um sentiments, and because of that, uh I mentioned it during the previous vote.

What concerns me was the slide regarding a budget deficit, and it will always concern me because again, while every year we have to pass a balanced budget, that is a requirement.

We do pass a balanced budget, but what I think about our future years, and those are the ones that concern me.

Um, and with that, that's part of the reason why I will not be voting in favor of this budget because I want to make sure that we are always cognizant that there are not unlimited dollars that we can collect from taxpayers, especially as council member Glasscock has said, um, and individuals that have come up to us and shared their concerns about living in their homes and being over taxed or feeling like they're being taxed out of their homes.

For me, um I've asked and was not um approved by this council to look at a budget that was just at inflation and new construction, which would have been 4.5 percent and a major reduction in the budget of $4 million, and I know that that was hard, but because that was not um the proposal that's in front of me, I cannot pass this budget with my yay vote.

Um, and so I will not be moving item number one, but I will be able to move other items, and so I I see that there are other council members that want to speak, um, but I would like to move other items before moving the budget.

Councilmember Glascom.

Thank you, Mayor.

It's a question for you.

Are you going to be proposing any cuts to the budget?

I actually will make an adjustment to uh not the budget but the CIP.

So you will be proposing those?

I will be making a change to the CIP only.

But no changes to the budget.

Changes to the budget.

So with that, um, I will start with the CIP, so out of order, but um I would like to close public comment, adopt the 2026-2035 proposed capital improvement program with an amendment to the CIP to include two million dollars in transit transient guest tax funding in the 2026 cultural facilities maintenance project for the renovation of the downtown library building.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

I will close public.

I move to close the public hearing and approve the use of local funds derived from property within the corporate limits for the Wichita State University Board of Trustees interlocal agreement between city and county.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Councilmember Todd.

I was just gonna make the statement.

I know I said it again, but just to be redundant, due to personal conflict of interest, I will be abstaining from this vote.

Thank you.

Motion passes 6-0 with one abstention.

And with that, uh, the next three items can be part of one motion if um someone would like to read it.

I'll I'll make that, please.

Uh I will uh motion we make the recommended action adopt the 2026 proposed budget, approve the second reading of the necessary budget ordinances, including those for the tax incremental financing districts and the SMID.

Approve the amending 2025 budget for the ICE rank Century 2, sewer and affordable housing funds, authorize the staff to take the necessary steps to implement the budget, including the budget adjustments, expenditure control levels, budget administration procedures, and adjustments outlined in the agenda report, and to make any technical adjustments necessary to complete and submit the state certification forms.

Second motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

I simply want to say again, thank you to the staff for getting us to this position where there is going to be a mill levy reduction in over 30 years.

This is of note for our city, and I'm very grateful that this council had lots of open conversation with the community regarding the budget.

Again, I just want to give a warning that right now it's projected that we will have a $3.9 million dollar budget deficit in 28 and a $7.1 million dollar budget deficit in 2029.

Um so with that, we have a motion and a second and no further discussion.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 6-1.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Councilmember Hoheisel's travel expenses as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend the Altus Lackland Civic Leader Tour in San Antonio, Texas, September 16th through 18th, 2025 for the purpose of representing the city of Wichita consistent with AR 3.1 be approved.

Upon return from travel, actual expenses shall be reported to the controller's office.

Second.

Motion and a second, any discussion.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Approve that pursuant to section 204090.

Vice Mayor Johnston's travel expense as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend Smokey Hill Air National Guard range tour in Salina, Kansas, October 22nd, 2025, for the purpose of representing the city of Wichita, Kansas.

Consistent with AR 3.1 be approved.

Upon return from travel, actual expenses shall be reported to the controller's office.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

Approved to exceed the gift limit established by the ethics ordinance for Mayor Wu to accept traveling expenses to attend the 2025 Hunt Mayor's Leadership Fellowship October 23rd through 24th, 2025 in Fort Worth, Texas, for the purpose of representing the city.

The mayor fellowship is hosted by a nonprofit, the Hunt Institute, for the purpose of education, collaboration, professional development.

The estimated gift amount or for travel, hotel, and meals is sixteen hundred dollars.

Estimated costs covered by the city for Mayor Wu is zero dollars.

I will just add a comment.

Um I'm very grateful that I got asked to participate in the Hunt Mayor's Leadership Fellowship, and I have accepted that uh invitation with the vote if approved for this gift exceeding limit.

I move that we approve it.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Council member appointments and comments council members.

Any appointments?

I have one appointment that I sent via email.

Um I move to or I would like to appoint and move to a point.

Teresa Ortega for the Wichita Airport Advisory Board on behalf of Cedric County District 3.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please.

Oh, sorry.

Council members, any comments.

I see no comments.

I will move to adjourn our meeting.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you very much.