For spinning for the cloud.

Kyle, the fixer of everything.

One really long thing up.

Yeah, yeah.

Who was that guy?

Thank you so much for the other.

Please take a moment to silence your mobile device.

If you wish to speak on an agenda item after the mayor invites public comment, proceed to the podium, state your name and address, and you will be given five minutes to speak.

A timer can be viewed on the podium screen.

You may speak one time per agenda item.

Please refrain from clapping after other speakers.

Thank you again for joining us today.

Let's pause a moment for our television audience to join us.

Well, good morning.

Great to see everybody.

Well, Father Heaven, I just uh thank you so much, God, for the place, the people of Wichita.

God, what a great place you've given us, Lord, to be able to live and to work and to be able to raise our families.

And Father, we thank you yesterday just for the opportunity.

We had to remember Dr.

Martin Luther King and how he reminded us that hate can't drive out hate, only love can.

And help us, Father, just to continue to love others always.

And Father, I want to especially pray today as we come together for our mayor and our city commissioners.

I know what it means to carry the weight of leadership.

And I pray that you just would lighten their load and that you would give them wisdom and discernment as they discuss the matters at hand today.

And Father, I just uh thank you as well that you say that we can come to you and we're your we are weary and burdened, and you'll give us rest.

And Father, I pray as well, just uh today for all of our first responders and the things they do to serve our city.

God keep them safe, watch over them.

Thank you for their example of sacrificial service.

Uh we love you, God, and we just pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And to the republic, which is stands, under God, indivisible for liberty, and justice are all.

Thank you, Pastor Carter.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the first item?

Approve the minutes of changing of the guard, January twelfth, two thousand twenty-six.

Regular meeting, January thirteenth, two thousand twenty-six, and special meeting January fourteenth, two thousand twenty-six.

Council members, any items to be edited.

I see none.

I move to approve the minutes of the changing of the guard, January twelfth, twenty twenty-six, regular meeting, January thirteenth, twenty twenty-six, and special meeting January fourteenth, twenty twenty-six.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Aye.

Motion passes seven zero.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Awards and proclamations.

Mayor, we only have one award today for Friends University Football.

May I please invite Dr.

Amy Bragg Carey of Friends University and her entire uh team that she brought with her, along with council member for District Four, Vice Mayor Dalton Glasscock to the front.

We wanted to give a special recognition to the Friends University Falcons football team.

This recognition reads in recognition of an extraordinary and historic football season.

The Friends University Falcons achieved a program record 12 wins, earned a number four national ranking and advanced to the NAIA football championship series quarterfinals for the first time in program history.

Competing with determination and resilience, the Falcons concluded their postseason run following a hard-fought quarterfinal matchup against Benedictine College on December 6th at Adair Austin Stadium.

Throughout the season, the Falcons established themselves among the nation's elite by setting a new NAIA single season rushing record with fifty-nine seventy-nine, five thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine rushing yards, leading the NAAIA in points scored per game at fifty-four point two and ranking third nationally in points allowed per game at 13.8.

Under the leadership of head coach Terry Harrison, the student athletes of Friends University demonstrated exceptional teamwork, discipline, and sportsmanship, bringing pride to the university and the Wichita community while securing a place in program and NAIA history.

Congratulations.

And we have which to all these young men are which to all are your kids.

They're here today, and man really do a great job of having a program that honors God based on biblical principles.

We thank you guys for having us today.

So it's really exciting to see them excel in many different ways.

And they're just wonderful young men of character.

If you're on our campus and you see one of these young men, they'll probably open the door for you.

They'll say hello, they'll shake your hand.

So bringing lots of people to Wichita, and we hope to do it again next season.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Again, congratulations to the Friends University football team and thank you for being here at today's city council meeting.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Public agenda.

We now come to public agenda.

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

Please bear in mind that this is not a period of dialogue with council or a question and answer period.

This is your opportunity to address the city council with your concerns.

I ask that you address your remarks to the city council as a body and not to any individual council member.

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 speak into the microphone.

Please state their name and address for the record.

At time a time clock will display the speakers' remaining time to speak.

Order and rules of decorum will be observed.

The first speaker.

Oh, I'm sorry, we don't have any speakers today.

We have five spots for five individuals to speak to the council.

Please state your name and your address.

Address 1703 North Rome.

Just wanted to address some road improvements to the city of Wichita.

I know they're dealing, I've seen you on TV about the sidewalks on Webb Road and not the necessity of it.

I have a necessity where the area I live in.

It's 13th Street, between a little bit east of West Street and Ambedon.

I've grown up there my most of my life.

And there's a lot of wrecks at St.

Paul and Meridian due to no left turn lanes.

I think that needs to be addressed now.

It needs to be widened.

That's all I have.

So like that presented.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you so much for coming.

If you could leave your contact information with the clerk, um, I'll follow with you after the meeting.

Thank you.

I see no one else from the community who would like to speak.

We will now move to the next item.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Consent agenda items one through 19.

Council members, are there any items from the consent agenda that you would like to pull?

I see none.

I will go ahead and move to approve consent agenda items one through 19.

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.

Good morning, Mayor City Council members Paul Gonzelman, public works and utilities for the record.

I have a few petitions for your consideration this morning.

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

The project will provide sidewalk improvements for a new residential development.

Great Plains Business Park addition located in district one.

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

Monarch Landing Commercial Edition located in District 2.

The project will provide water improvements required for a new commercial development.

And tall grass East Commercial Second Edition located in District 2 on September 2nd, 2025.

The developer has submitted a revised water petition with revised budget to reflect current market conditions.

Thank you, Paul.

Questions for staff.

I see none.

I move to approve the petitions for public improvements.

Again, still getting used to that.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Expansion of resolution authorizing possession and consumption of alcoholic liquor in Delano area, districts four and six.

Good morning, Mayor and City Council Isaac Gunner Haskins, Department of Park and Recreation.

Today we'll be presenting the proposed expansion of the Delano Common Consumption Area.

For some background, on August 19th, 2025, the Wichita City Council approved a resolution creating a common consumption area in the Delano district to be active on Fridays and Saturdays only from 10 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

After reviewing the current operating hours, discussing potential safety concerns with the Wichita Police Department and considering feedback received by one of the council members from the Delano district.

An expansion of the program is now being requested.

So here's the map of the current common consumption area.

The map itself will not be changing.

We'll just be expanding it from two days to seven days a week.

Financial consideration, staff time will be required to update some of the signage, but there is no anticipated financial impact to the city's budget outside of potential legal liability.

And with that, we recommend to close the public hearing, adopt the resolution allowing the daily consumption of alcoholic liquor from 10 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

in the Delano area on property not otherwise subject to a license issued persuadant to the Kansas Liquor Control Act or the Club and Drinking Establishment Act.

If approved, this will go into effect on February 1st.

And with that, I'll stand for questions.

Thank you.

Isaac questions for staff.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, does this do anything to the ballpark?

Ballpark's not part of this, right?

Ballpark is actually included.

They are one of these eight uh liquor providers within the footprint.

Oh, so you'll be able to carry into the ballpark.

Uh I don't think the ballpark is allowing liquor to come in from other establishments.

They are allowing theirs to go out, and that seems to be pretty typical for most of the participating establishments.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I noticed that uh we couldn't find an insurance policy to ensure this.

Is that correct?

Correct.

So it'll go to our self-insured.

So we could be at risk for half a million dollars.

Potentially, I'd rather have legal speak to that, but yes.

Okay.

That's correct.

That's correct, council member.

Okay.

When this is presented to us, it was only going to be a few thousand dollars for insurance.

So we haven't been able to find a carrier that would approve it to cover the liability.

Okay.

That that concerns me.

So thank you.

Vice Mayor Glascock.

Thank you.

Could legal speak to that?

I know when we were looking at other municipalities across the state, that's common for every municipality that has this type of program.

Morning, Vice Mayor.

Um, I believe other cities also um absorb this liability if they choose to be the holder of the permit that comes with the territory.

We are legally responsible for any claims that arise as a result of holding this.

I believe that's how other cities handle it.

I'm not aware of insurance policies held by other cities.

Maybe Isaac knows if risk management looked at that.

I I'm just not aware.

Thank you.

Um to my knowledge, there hasn't been the majority of cities don't have insurance.

In fact, I'm not sure if we identified a single city that in Kansas that has general liability insurance.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Isaac.

Has there been any issues to that you know of with none reported?

We did consult with the chief police, and they haven't had any concerns or I don't think they've even issued a single citation.

And thank you.

And do you know how many of the businesses are participating?

Total of eight.

Thank you.

Follow-up question to that.

Which eight providers are currently part of this program.

The Monarch, Wichita Brewing Company, Rubens Mexican Girl, the Vagabond, Manhattan Brewing Company, Picasso's Pizzeria, Good Taps and Spirits, and then the ballpark.

And so just so that you can explain the program for individuals that may just be tuning in.

You have to have one of these providers.

Correct.

So you can't just be your own alcoholic.

You can't be YOB or anything by that means.

That is the follow-up question I had.

I know that Delano likes to put on this annual celebration during St.

Patrick's Day.

These eight providers will be in addition to the liquor providers that day.

That's accurate, yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any further questions for staff?

Councilmember Ballard.

Sorry, I just thought of something else.

Um I know this was originally a pilot, so will this just continue on from when it first started?

It's not starting over.

Correct.

Yeah, so we're not starting it over.

This uh I'll just have the final addendum with the state.

Um, and it'll still expire on September 4th.

We'll have to renew ahead of that time.

Okay, thank you.

I see no further questions for staff.

Thank you, Isaac.

Thank you.

We will now open it up for public comment.

I see no one from the public.

We'll bring it back to the bench.

This resides in Council Member Ballard and Vice Mayor Glasscock's districts.

Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor, and thanking my colleagues for initiating this pilot.

This has been successful in the area.

What I've heard from businesses is uh confusion for what days are uh that common consumption is available.

And so this was a result of talking with businesses in the community.

I've talked to the neighbor association and also the Delano Business Association, and I've yet to got or yet to get um negative feedback from this.

I look forward to this expansion, especially as we lead up to the baseball season and how Delano can continue to be a uniquely vibrant part of our community and offer uh different amenities than other areas of our community.

I'm also looking at further ways to create and enhance walkability in the area, um, encouraging and working with the Delano Business Association for some potential lighting options to illuminate Delano differently.

Um also working on some traffic coming measures with public works to make sure that we continue to encourage um a unique type of experience in Wichita.

And so seeing there's nobody else on the board, and as a resident of Delano, not just as the council person for this area.

I move that the city council close the public hearing, adopt the resolution authorizing the designation of a common consumption area and allowing the call the consumption of alcoholic liquor sales on the dates at the location during the time set forth therein and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second, or sorry, council member ballard, second motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes, seven zero.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

2026 city and joint state legislative agendas.

Good morning, Mayor, Council, Mr.

Shepard, good to have you.

Uh I'm here, uh Jim Joan is here with the city manager's office to present on the uh city's uh legislative agenda and the joint state legislative agenda.

Uh I was gonna have Josh Swatti here, but he's got called into uh uh hearing this morning.

But we do have Captain Uh Regraw is here if you have questions about uh WPD and some of their legislative uh priorities.

Uh as a bit of background, working with the mayor, council, city leadership, and department heads, the city's lobbyists in Topeka, uh promote legislative strategies that see positive outcomes for the city's priorities and monitor issues of potential concern to the city's objectives as we have done in previous years, the city of Wichita will focus on legislative items that fit within the four key uh policy priorities that were identified as the top items of residents' concern in our yearly community surveys, which uh you all know our public safety and crime prevention, economic development, affordable housing and homelessness, infrastructure, and street repair.

Uh this approach allows both the legislative agenda and our lobbyists to be nimble in serving the city's best interest.

City leadership will work with the city's lobbyists on both proactive and defensive items that fall within the key policy areas.

Having this broader focus also allows flexibility as the city works with statehouse leaders and partners during the session to ensure that key areas of policy are addressed.

And our lobbyists will provide weekly summaries of activity in Topeka, which you all received this morning, which were uh quite helpful on uh helping to understand where we are in session.

And those summaries will include a calendar of upcoming legislation that we can consider, comment, and provide testimony if uh it's needed.

Now, uh those may be the the big buckets of of policy priorities, but there are some very specific things that we need to pay attention to, and as you all know, uh uh we're gonna work to exempt a Wichita food sales tax.

That's especially uh important given what uh uh the ballot questioned in March 3rd, uh, but but also for uh longer term uh benefit.

Uh we're gonna monitor legislation that would change the utility right-of-way standards or franchise fees, which is becoming a hot issue in Topeka this session.

Uh we'll encourage uh I'm sorry, we'll uh pursue legislative opportunities to encourage state support for water reuse, uh, which you know has been uh in the news and is moving forward, and Gary's gonna be presenting uh next week uh to uh committee.

Uh we're also seeking uh legislative and regulatory solutions that can address the need for increased affordable housing, which is very important to all of us.

Uh but I also want to make clear that uh these are just a few of the items.

There have been a number of folks have approached me, have approached you, uh, wanted us to pay attention and make sure that we don't miss anything.

Uh so we'll we'll have uh opportunities to discuss things like uh uh opportunity zones.

It's important to Mike that he's pointed out, uh film tax credits that that uh continue to come back, Sunflower Summer, which are important to a number of folks.

So we we'll keep an eye on all these things and provide weekly updates as we go.

Uh now turning to the joint legislative agenda.

Uh this is our opportunity to partner with like-minded South Central Kansas leaders to leverage our collective strength in voice in Topeka.

Uh these agenda items are first discussed and approved by the City of Wichita, which is what we're going to do today.

Sedgwick County and the Wichita Chamber of Commerce.

Uh WSU, REAP, and the Greater Wichita Partnership will then be invited to endorse this joint agenda and participate in promoting it to their members and to the delegation.

Uh the buckets uh for the joint legislative agenda include economic development, which support education, child care, and workforce development policies that spur job creation and talent recruitment and retention in South Central Kansas.

Uh, supports policies that enhance economic expansion to boost the economy, catalyze local and regional economic development and job opportunities, and enhance the quality of life for everyone in South Central Kansas.

Uh we'll support policies that ensure Kansas remains competitive with other states and attracting and developing national defense work.

That's a new item on our agenda this year.

Uh housing will support the adoption of solutions, resources, and policies that recognize homelessness as a growing statewide issue.

Support policies and tax credit options that can encourage access and inventory, and the development of housing options for all South Central residents, including investment in housing affordability.

And finally, in under the infrastructure column, support water policies that promote responsible stewardship, conservation, contamination solutions, and an abundant and healthy water supply.

We'll support policies that encourage the expansion of commercial air service at Eisenhower National Airport.

What that's a new item this year, uh feasible passenger rail expansion, and proportional Ike transportation program funding that benefits the region.

So with that, I'm uh uh recommending that council approve the 2026 city and uh joint legislative agendas, and I'll stand for questions.

Thank you, Jim.

Questions for staff.

I have one.

You mentioned there were a couple of new items on the joint state legislative agenda.

Can you just highlight again the reason why those two new additional items in economic development and infrastructure were added?

Yes, uh we are, as you know, uh such important to being the air capital of the world that uh we have a lot of opportunity with uh national defense work, and it's a competitive space nationally.

There's a lot of folks going for this work, so it's something that we as uh uh individually and with our partners, we need to make sure that we're reaching out as hard as uh as much as we can to attract that work.

Uh as far as uh uh national uh Eisenhower National Airport, uh that's something, Mayor, that you and I have talked about, and it's so so important to this region to have quality and abundant air service.

It gives us the opportunity as a group to really go out there and make sure that we're supporting all those efforts to bring more and better service to uh uh to Eisenhower.

Thank you.

And last, I'm just gonna ask for an emphasis one more time on um our Wichita agenda regarding the sales tax exemption on groceries.

Yes.

Um what have you heard so far regarding uh this proposal?

And if I remember correctly, on Friday, Councilmember Hoheisel mentioned his brother, representative Hoheisel, um, bringing up this bill.

He did, and we we thank uh we thank uh Nick Hoheisel for doing that.

Uh this is important uh legislation.

Uh it's not easy legislation, it's something that is uh very important and has broad support, uh, but it's just not going to be acted on quickly, and we're gonna try to speed that clock up as best we can.

But there's a multi-state compact that uh slows us down from being able to pass it this year.

Uh, but we're gonna push ahead.

Uh council member uh Glasscock has been uh very uh loud in his support for moving this forward, and it's something that we're gonna look for every avenue to try to uh increase that speed so we can make that happen quickly.

Thank you, Jim.

I see no further questions for you.

We will now open it up for public comment.

I see no one from the public who would like to speak on this item.

We'll bring it back to the bench.

Uh with that, council member Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I want to point out that I have also been very loud on this too.

Uh not having sales tax on food.

Um, it affects the poor directly, and I don't think it should be on the county sales tax either.

So I'll go on record saying that.

So uh very important issue.

I think the state should act on it.

I hope they do, and uh we'll just hope and pray they do.

Thank you.

Councilmember Toddle.

Thank you.

Um, Jim, I just want to thank you for all your work on this.

I know it's hard to get seven individuals to agree on something.

So I know you've gone through some um robust efforts to try and make that happen.

I just want to point out a few things that I'm excited about on here.

Um I fought really hard several years ago to get child care added to our legislative agenda, but also to get it put in the economic development bucket, and I'll just make a shameless plug again that child care is not a woman's issue, it's not a family issue, it's an economic development and workforce issue.

And thank you to um Senate Majority Leader Chase Blazey, who's been kind of my ally on this and trying to get things changed at the state for not only regulation but also legislation.

Um and then I just also want to highlight water reuse.

I'm serve with Council Member Hullheisel and the water use task force.

Um I have charged staff with being the first city in the state of Kansas to obtain direct potable water reuse.

I think we're doing all the right things and making the right strides, and again, working on not only the legislation but also the regulation.

So just thank you to staff who provided input on this and and thank you, Jim, for your leadership.

And I think it's gonna be uh really intense and fast legislative session, and look forward to being a part of it.

Vice Mayor Glascock.

Thank you, Mayor.

The two things that really excite me on this are preservation of our water supply and also food security and releasing uh the sales tax on food.

I also want to say there's again a few times that this bench agrees 7 to 0, and 7 to 0 on sales tax of vote is uh the primary objective of this council, and I think it should be for residents.

It's a 95-5 issue when I talk to residents that they believe that we should move forward on this.

I think it's good policy, and so for everybody listening, whoever's listening today, HB 2456 is the state house bill that's being presented from the committee on taxation.

I want to thank representative Nick Hoheisel for leading on this.

And I think what can be really unique about this conversation is that this wasn't in the forefront of state legislators' minds until the Wichita City Council was bringing it forward and have asked for state legislators to look at it.

And so this is something that we can lead that will not only benefit the citizens of Wichita, but can benefit the citizens of the entire state of Kansas.

And so I look forward to more discussions.

I look forward to being in Topeka next week to lobby for this, and then when this comes before any committee also reappearing and um look forward to my colleagues coming up there and testifying in favor of this as well.

So thank you, Jim, for all your work on it.

With that, um next week on Wednesday, this entire council will be attending the legislative day in Topeka.

Um, and really appreciate uh Jim for coordinating that, and we look forward to again advocating for not just the Wichita legislative agenda but the joint legislative agenda.

So, with that, I will go ahead and move that the city council approve the 2026 city and joint legislative agendas.

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.

Owner site representative OSR.

Phase three contract amendment for the Wichita Waterworks WWW project.

Good morning, Mayor and Council members Gary Jansen, public works and utilities.

Uh, the item before you this morning is an extension of the contract for the owner site representative for Wichita Waterworks.

Uh this is primarily due to a delays that we've pre previously discussed related to the clarifiers as part of the overall facility.

Um, some quick background on this contract.

The phase one contract uh for the owner site representative, just under $800,000 was approved in April of 2019.

Uh and that was intended to work through some of the initial phases of the project, uh, phase one, and the design build again, the design build phase one project.

And the phase two amendment in December of 2019 was just over 16.3 million dollars for a collection of services related to administrative and general coordinated services review and evaluation, construction management, project representative, code inspection, uh, amongst other things for a total contract of just over 17 million dollars.

Um as we talked before, we've had some issues with the solid contact clarifiers.

Uh, in particular, we had mechanical failures uh starting with one one clarifier in November of 2025.

Started to see similar issues through November.

Um testing at the time was halted.

Uh we have stopped any work on the plant for now until the further analysis could be done.

Uh, we had a workshop on December 18th, I think it was one of those days, it's 19th.

Uh, then Vice Mayor Johnston was gracious enough to join us and spent that whole time with us.

Councilmember Todd was there for a period of time too.

It's good to have them both.

Um work walked through with the contractor and their subs, uh, what the root cause analysis was and what the uh proposed correction may be.

And while we don't know a timeline just yet, um, what this will do with this extension will allow us to have Garver continue to support us through all of the efforts that come forward from this.

I won't spend a lot of time on this.

This is a uh cut section of the clarifier.

Um, the root cause analysis report shows that the mechanical failures can likely be traced back to a design issue.

Um, all six clarifiers um have the same issues, uh, and there's parts that need to be removed and replaced here.

That's part of the next efforts moving forward to design, get to fabrication, um, get the necessary parts replaced of the internal mechanism of the clarifier, uh, and so that we can move forward.

And I might just clarify real quick the concrete tanks are fine, there's no issues with those.

Um, that's not part of the discussion.

Um, as we move forward and and and have a more thorough evaluation of everything that's happening within them.

That will include taking a look at the concrete, other associated uh features, and that is actively happening now.

Uh Garver will extend their uh representative uh representation and provide oversight for additional work stemming from repairs that includes repairs for the solid contacts clarifiers, functional testing, and performance and acceptance testing.

Uh their contract extension uh includes extended PAT and representative oversight.

The performance testing is the PAT extended project administration for a total of just under 770,000 dollars, which would bring their um aggregate contract to just over 17.9 million dollars.

All of this currently with costs that is available within the current budget.

City staff are negotiating a settlement claim with the design bill contractor that includes recovering extended costs for this contract.

It was recommended the city council approve the OSR phase three amendment amendment and authorize the necessary signatures.

And mayor, before you take action, I might let you know that representatives of Wichita Water Partners are here.

Uh they would like to make a presentation and provide an update on the project.

So if you would like, we could do that now.

Um, and then I could come back to formalize this action if that sounds okay.

I would like that presentation, please.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thank you for having us.

My name's Ron Coger.

I'm uh senior vice president with Burns McDonald, also the project executive for Wichita Water Partners.

Uh, Wichita Water Partners is a joint venture between Burns and McDonald and Albert EC constructors.

Uh we were the design builder on the project.

So I'm gonna give you a brief update.

I know there's lots of questions related to change order four in particular and costs, so we'll just jump right into that to start.

We I'll just uh remind you we are in a claim situation, so I won't be able to answer probably every question you have, but I'll do my best to uh I'll do my best to uh answer what I can and we'll walk through these issues to help you better understand it.

So thank you again for the time and we'll get started.

Uh so this is a picture of the plant, not the whole plant, but the front end of the plant.

I just want to to make sure everybody was uh looking at the same things and thinking about the same things.

Those six big basins that you see in the foreground of that picture are your solid contacts, uh solids contact clarifiers.

So that's what we're talking about here.

They'll often be abbreviated, so you hear them called SCCs or just clarifiers, right?

But that's uh that's really the first process in the plant.

And what you're doing in that process is you're adding chemicals and you're adding lime, uh, and you're trying to uh flocculate out in uh solids, right?

You're trying to build up solids and then pull a lot of those solids out before that water then passes on to your filters, disinfection basins, and then ultimately on out into distribution.

Uh so these uh these clarifiers, as you know, this is a big project.

Uh, these clarifiers were the design engineer for these clarifiers were HDR.

Um the the manufacturers West Tech, so these aren't designed maybe like you would think about typical design because these are proprietary uh pieces of equipment, it's a performance specification that HDR puts together.

In other words, these solids contact clarifiers have to do this, this or this.

Uh, then manufacturers propose uh their design back to do just those things.

So uh HDR was the design engineer, but really a lot of the design and then the manufacturing of these uh pieces of equipment were done by WestTech.

Uh and then uh UCI was the installer of these clarifier mechanisms.

Uh and then there were two sets of repairs that we're talking about one now, but there was a previous set of repairs where Wichita Water Partners did the repair work uh for WestAC or on these uh under the under uh uh in conjunction with West Tech to make sure those repairs were done correctly.

So I guess first question to you all is everybody understand which part piece of the plant we're talking about, or do you have any questions related to that before we jump into cost?

I have several council members on the board.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Okay.

Uh this is more for the contract for later.

Okay.

Councilmember Johnston.

Both of them will wait.

We'll continue.

Okay, we'll get into that change order.

Maybe that'll be part of that discussion.

Okay, so here is the the budget and the cost to date.

So this project was budgeted as part of a WIFIA uh application or loan application.

Uh the original budget was 524 million dollars.

That's not the total project budget, that was just the capital portion of the total project budget.

There was about 10 million dollar placeholder in that number for a new substation.

Uh so for just kind of big number purposes, you can think about the capital budget was around 514 million dollars uh for construction of this project.

Uh our pricing with both phase one, remember this is the design build contract, so there were two contracts a phase one contract where the design and pricing were developed, and then a phase two contract to finish design and finish construction combined, those contracts were 500 just over 500 million dollars.

Uh so about uh so about 14 million dollars under budget.

But to be fair, there was an element of that design and that construction that wasn't in that 500 million dollars, and it related to refurbishing one of the the 64-inch pipelines that run from the Northwest facility to town.

Uh, and and there were a few other things as well that just weren't known what KDHE would require at the time of the contracting.

So, some of this change order mechanism uh really is relating to things that could have been in the original pricing had we known what that was gonna be at the original time as part of that.

And I'll try and point that out uh as we go forward.

So there's been four change orders to date.

Uh the first one relatively small, dealt with the additional bathrooms in the administration facility.

Change order two was about a million seven.

It related to things like additional chem feed systems.

This was part of the KDHE review process where they requested some of these things.

It dealt with test water disposal, piping and declorination systems.

So when we test the water, we test it all the way through chlorination, but to discharge the water back into the river, we have to declare it as part of that.

And then some a little bit of work on allowances and the 64 inch conversion.

Change order three, the 1.2 million dollar number, really dealt a lot with the piping around the Hess pump station or your your existing plant and how the that piping will be reconfigured when you bring that plant offline and also the configuration of how you get local well filled water back to the new plant as part of that.

And then change order four, which is I think where a lot of the questions will lie.

Change order four, which extended which extended the contract, and we'll talk about that in more detail as we come.

You probably have two change orders left on this contract, just my estimation.

You still have some work in the system.

It's about four and a half million dollars on the piping conversions to do that.

You've also got allowances that you've not spent on this project that are about two and a half million dollars, if I remember, those will excuse me, those will offset.

And then any settlement, if we reach settlement before you get to a change order, would come off that number too.

So I don't expect that you'll see uh any significant additions to this contract.

Uh pretty, um, I'm not I know there's lots of questions related to it, but if you just look at the the delivery of the project and the finances of the project, um, a project of this scale, and remember this project was constructed through COVID through the greatest probably construction escalation period of our time, uh, and then still into a pretty high inflationary period uh that we're experiencing now.

So the project budget's done really well, uh the project delivery's done really well with respect to budget as part of it, and the delivery mechanism or the design build mechanism really was a key to that because that put all the risk back on us to deliver and not ask for escalation versus if you were in a traditional method uh or a bid method, you likely would have been exposed to escalation through that process.

Okay, change order four.

Um, and feel free to stop me at any point.

Uh so let me give you a little background of what was happening before we got to change order four that really set up the reason for change order four in this contract.

Uh construction was substantially complete.

Um not the the contract term substantially complete, just the majority of construction was complete uh at the project, but there was no test water available to test the project.

Um in addition to that, the original uh Starbon testing plan really uh conceived that we would test 30 and uh 30 MGD or million gallons a day in the plant.

Three scenarios uh groundwater, surface water, and blended water in that.

As uh as that testing protocol developed, the city wanted to test additional um scenarios and additional flow rate.

So the uh the city really wanted to increase and do some testing at 60 million gallons a day, not just 30 million gallons a day, so more test water would be needed to do that.

There's also a very uh I'll say extensive uh testing protocol on how the city wanted to test different clarifiers and different filters.

In addition, they wanted to test at low flow conditions and high flow conditions on all three influent water sources.

So it extended the testing duration as well, which also then increases the amount of test water that you would have to have related to that.

Uh so test water would have been required.

I said spring 2004, I actually think it was June 2004 through 2000, uh sorry, 2024 through fall of 24.

Uh, and if you remember, the city was in a drought at that period of time.

Really hard to start up uh a large water plant in a drought because it takes a lot of water to test.

Uh the bigger the plant, the more water it takes, uh, which really then just exasperates a lot of the conditions the public is feeling when you're in the middle of a drought.

So change order four, then tried to resolve this unavailability of water.

Um the the risk to the city in that scenario was if there would if the city would have been unable to provide test water in relation to the contract, then not only would there have been a delay claim because we the design builder would have been extended, but it really would have opened the city up to declare delay claims from all subcontractors and all vendors that were tied to that schedule.

There were 135 approximately that were tied to that.

So a delay claim would have been fairly significant uh in that scenario.

So a lot of this change order was geared towards and focused on let's get let's get the city and wichita water partners out of that delay claim uh position so that you don't expose yourself to those costs as part of it.

So these are the parts of what happened in change order four.

So PTAs uh the PTAs or the the uh the testing components were moved from prior to substantial completion to prior to final completion.

Uh it established optional allowances for extended warranties.

I was at that uh council meeting when you talked about that.

I know Councilman Johnson talked about that a lot uh at that.

You didn't end up spending any of that money related to those.

Uh it allowed substantial completion to be achieved on September 17th, and then test water was provided or would be provided in November of 2024, and then finally set the final completion date from January 20th, it moved it to April 1st.

That's the gist of it.

Now, part of what's been talked about, I know just recently is well that relieved the contractor of liquidated damages.

That move from substantial to final, then alleviated that damage clause out of the contract.

That's true.

Um liquidated damages were to apply to the substantial completion, uh, they didn't apply to final completion.

But it doesn't mean that uh oops, yeah.

Uh that doesn't mean that the city that exposed the city to five million dollars of risk as part of it.

It it might have it might have, I suppose, depending on the contractor you were working with, but um really the because of the focus had been on not alleviating those damages but trying to minimize delay damages to the city, um it's gonna play, I think, to the city's benefit as we go forward, and I'll try and explain that.

So the city filed a claim, didn't just because you lost the ability to use liquidated damages, didn't mean you don't have ability to collect damages uh as part of the contract.

City filed a claim on June 27th, Wichita Water Partners subsequently filed a claim as well uh to West Tech for non-conforming work, um and then we entered into settlement discussions.

So I can't tell you the details of settlement discussions, but what I can tell you is this the settlement discussions that were had in the fall of 2025 and the offered resolutions that that Wichita Water Partners has made to date have been in excess of the liquidated damage schedule.

So I'll give you an example of that.

Uh if you took the liquidated damages up to today, let's just say they were still in place, you took them up to today from April 2nd to uh January 20th, they would be about 2.78 million dollars.

The offers that uh the city's received so far have been in excess of that, and really I think from our perspective, we don't see any scenario where the the settlement offers related to the claim will be less than the liquidated damages schedule.

So while you might have been exposed to that five million dollars, the reality is you're not gonna realize that the loss of that five million dollars as you go forward, and uh while I can't get into the details of that or what's included in that, um I think from our perspective, and I know it's maybe it's uh maybe it's unusual or it's hard to um trust a contractor uh in what you're doing, but I can tell you uh from Burns and McDonald's perspective, Wichita's been a client of Burns McDonald's from for 115 years since 1910.

Um and for Alberisi, I'm sure for over a quarter of a century as well, and there's no benefit for us to have a project that you're not happy with, and it is not successful.

And that's really been our approach.

We we notified the city shortly after we had the the first delay um related to clarifier saying don't worry, we'll pay for the uh we'll pay for the chemicals and the power as part of that, and then we've escalated that as we've gone forward.

So I'm gonna stop there.

That's what I have to talk about from a cost standpoint, and maybe these are some of your questions related to the contract, the costs.

Councilmember Hellheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so when we did the substantially complete back in when we did the the fourth change order, yeah, September September 24.

Yeah, but did that how does that affect um any of the the WiFiA funds or any of the other funds that we have that we actually move that to substantially complete?

Did that kick off any timeline as far as payments go?

No, I might I'd like to address that.

Thank you for the question.

So we have been in very close contact with with you uh EPA and KDHE on the SRF from day one.

Uh and when we issued substantial completion in September of 2024, they knew what terms it was under.

They know exactly what the status of the plant is now.

They realize where we're at with the delays.

Um I had a good discussion with uh EPA headquarters, in fact, the director of water for EPA just in the last two weeks about status of the project.

We also had a discussion with the water director for KDAT at that same period of time.

I have absolute confidence that we're in a great place with both, and this has no impact on effectively all the loans are in place.

None of this that we're talking about is going to impact our ability to pay those loans back.

Yeah, so we're not in any trouble or disagreement or where we're not.

There are no issues with it.

Uh, we continue to provide them updates on where we were at moving forward uh with repair plan and bringing the plan online, but I feel very confident about where we are with both.

Okay, understanding that we can't necessarily get into uh all the details of the settlement language.

Um are we talking about extending warranties as well being part of that?

We are, and it's one of the things that Ron's gonna talk about, especially related to the um clarifiers themselves.

But as we move forward uh with the claims negotiations that Ron has referenced, that is a part of it.

Do we have any idea what the timeline is when that settlement language will be done?

It's gonna depend on when the project wraps up, but uh I'll be having a further discussion with the council um later after this meeting is over.

Ron's gonna talk here uh um soon about their projected schedule.

We will continue those discussions through that period of time, but until we know when things wrap up, um, it will take probably through that period of time, and that's something that would be brought to council before we wrap any of that up.

Uh well, that cost also are we talking in the settlement claim about um this additional cost that we have today on the item before us?

Correct, and that's what I had mentioned with my item.

We are expectation is to recover these additional costs.

Okay, yeah, I think um I might have some more questions on on this actual item here in a little bit.

Thank you.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Ron, a couple questions for you.

Um I'll just tell you the background of this.

Okay.

Is a friend of mine's father-in-law works for one of your subs.

Okay.

I won't say which one.

Okay.

He said the spec'd concrete was in short supply during building those clarifiers because of a couple other projects, large projects in the city, including Amazon warehouse.

That spec concrete was not available.

You wanted to keep them going, the plant being built, so you're not late, and you substituted a lesser grade of quant uh concrete to build those clarifiers.

Yeah, it's I might like Kevin talk about uh concrete more specifically, but uh what I'll tell you is there were multiple concrete mixes throughout the duration of the plant.

Uh there was a change at one point because of the ash shortage, right?

Fly ash is the material that comes from coal-fired uh power plants, and which is becoming in shorter and shorter supplies.

You have fewer and fewer of those, but I don't believe that affected the clarifier concrete.

I think we held that uh separate from uh before that change occurred.

Um there's nothing in the concrete that um you should recognize that that uh all concrete cracks, even in even in water-bearing structures, concrete cracks.

Uh, I know there has been some cracks identified in the clarifier and the concrete portions of the clarifiers uh that will be part of a warranty item, but they can't be repaired until the basins are back full of water.

So we paused that repair uh because the the fix requires the the moisture to be present uh as part of that.

So yeah, I Kevin, you want to add any more to that?

So this is Kevin Williams with Alvarisi uh as well.

Okay, thanks, Ron.

And um as far as the uh the mixed designs, yeah.

I think we had six different concrete mixed designs on the project.

Um early on in the project, we were notified by the supplier that there was an industry shortage on the type of fly ash that we had used in the original mixed design.

Um so we did do a revised mixed design to account if we would have to switch the um from type C to type F fly ash.

We did use both mixed designs, but knowing that um the performance of the mix that we started with, we had our supplier actually set aside some of the original type C fly ash for the clarifier specifically.

And we went through some records just recently, and we believe I can't don't quote me on this, but I believe that both or the clarifiers were using the original type C fly ash because we were able to set aside enough supply to make that happen, regardless any of the fly ash mix designs that we submitted perform at the level needed to provide you know the water bearing structure strength and other characteristics for those um facilities.

So I don't think there'd be any question, and that there's plenty of testing for all of the concrete that we used on the project that would that would back that up.

But is it it is a good question?

I think you're kind of factually correct on the change in mixed designs for um industry shortage reasons, but I don't think ultimately the clarifiers were affected in any way.

Okay.

I'm gonna push back on that because our Garver representative told me differently.

Told me that it was used in the clarifiers.

The other concrete mix was used in clarifiers.

So you're telling me that it the correct number C or whatever was used.

Councilmember Johnson, if you don't mind, I'd like to jump in here and help with this.

I this question came to me from the manager, and so I started taking a look at this through Garver.

I'm confident from what I've heard, and I haven't had a chance to talk to you.

I think there was probably a misunderstanding when you talk to Garver.

But but regardless, what I had them do and our staff uh was to look up back at correspondence.

And so I don't think we need to get caught up in talking about the the types of fly ash.

When I started with the city over 30 years ago, and I worked in our materials testing lab and worked at overseeing construction projects, got to know a lot about concrete mixes.

Back then we didn't even use fly ash.

Um it's something that's been used over time and implemented more uh to offset some cost savings.

Uh but there's various different uh concrete mixed designs.

Here's what makes this work.

Uh I was able to verify through Garvers or Owner's Rep and our staff, correspondents uh that approved the revised mixed designs, regardless of what the type of fly ash is.

I'm confident it wasn't lesser, and here's why.

Uh it meets all of the specifications.

These include national specifications, American Concrete Institute, ASTM standards we talk a lot about is the American Society of Testing and Materials.

These are recognized standards across the industry nationwide that are used on projects everywhere.

Uh the revised mixed design meet all those specifications, and the tests that were done on the concrete also meet all the strength requirements.

So I am absolutely confident that there's no issues.

I think there's been some confusion in the messaging because I also talked to Garver myself.

Uh whatever came across in the messaging to you, I think probably was it was just a misunderstanding.

I feel very comfortable in what we have looked back on that, that we've got no issues with the concrete mixed designs.

Okay, I might disagree with you.

I I was very direct in my question to Garvey.

Well, and with all due respect, Councilmember Johnston, I think I would have to say that there had to be a misunderstanding.

We have proof that shows the mixed designs are approved.

We've got testing criteria to be met.

All of the tests met those criteria, regardless of what was set.

Well, there's major cracks in that first clarifier for sure.

And it was excuse me.

And and it happened within the first year because I took a tour of that and I said, What's that crack?

They said, Oh, that's normal.

Okay.

I took that as being normal.

Um what I understand now is maybe that is not normal.

I would contend that it is.

To the point that concrete cracks, I would tell you, um, this when we build bridges, and we the day we pull the forms off of concrete bridges, there's cracks in the concrete.

It's not ideal, it's the world we live in.

The I can tell you some of the cracks in the clarifiers have been addressed.

Um I we see this on all projects that we built, whether it's structural concrete, whether it's flat work, whether it's curve and gutter, we see cracks, even though we go in and purposely joint concrete to try to make it crack itself.

It's the nature of concrete.

We are continuing to look at any concerns we might have with cracks.

We've seen them, my staff has seen them, Garver has seen.

There's nothing out of the ordinary.

If there's anything that we feel is out of the ordinary, it is being addressed, and some of those have already been addressed.

I have no reason to believe, based on all of the information we have, the process that's in place.

We have ways to verify methods that are in place that the concrete mix that was used meets all of the specifications.

I stand behind that.

I'm comfortable with that.

We will continue to monitor just like we do anything.

I'm not going to stand here and just say concrete cracks, so we're going to walk away.

That's not the point.

We're still keeping an eye on these things.

I've got absolutely nothing to point to that shows there was any issues with the concrete mix designs.

Okay.

You know, the west side is mostly sand.

My house is built on sand in the west side.

I have no cracks in my foundation.

That is built on sand.

Um I just really questioned whether that is true or not.

And 10 years down the line from now.

Who if there is a crack, who who pays for it?

Just real quick, it's not a very fair comparison for a foundation that's buried.

It's different, it's different environments, there's different things happening.

It's not the best comparison to structures like this.

Um I would tell you that we've I've seen cracks in concrete.

One of the things that just by nature that I do as an engineer, and what I've done through the course of my career, everywhere I walk, everywhere I run, I see cracks in concrete.

I've seen cracks in some concrete that we've done that's been there for 20 years, and nothing has happened with it.

It is something we will keep an eye on to the point that council member Hoheisel talked about.

We're working through a uh warranty coverage looks like uh, but you know, we can go out to our current water treatment plant and see cracks in different areas of the concrete.

So we're gonna keep a very close eye on it.

Uh keep in mind that this plant and facility is still under the ownership of Wichita Water Partners.

We have not taken over the facility.

These things are all considered part of the defect list, the punch list, uh, and would be covered under warranties as we move forward.

But we're not walking away from this.

We haven't stopped looking at this.

Uh I've got no reason to believe that anything was compromised by a change in the concrete mix design.

We'll keep a very close eye on it going forward.

Okay.

Have you pulled core samples to test the concrete?

We haven't yet.

Uh, if we felt the need to, if if any issues progress, that is an option.

That is something that we could do.

Um, our third-party analysis of the clarifiers suggested that same thing that we just want to watch what's happening, um, especially on the slab.

They noticed some delamination there that we're taking a look at through the course of this evaluation of the work to be done to to repair the clarifiers.

And if so, that's something we can certainly do uh to have an understanding that's there.

But all of the test data supports that the concrete mix that was used and how it was put in there met all the specifications and meets our needs.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have a question for Ron again.

Um, we ever gotten clean water out of this plant when you did the testing.

Oh, yeah, we have.

I'll I've I've got slides that'll show you.

That meet that KDHE standard, yes.

Okay, okay.

It was told to me differently.

Um about eight months ago.

So well, if eight months ago was prior to the second round of PTA testing, then that was probably true.

So when was the last testing you got clean water other?

Um November of this past year.

November of the past year.

Yeah, I'll I'll show you that whole schedule.

Okay, yeah, I'll show you that.

Good to hear that.

And I'm happy to jump forward now, but it unless you're still questions related to this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and I just want to be clear.

Uh at the end of that meeting, I do appreciate that meeting.

I I you're talking about the meeting where West Tech presented.

With West, yeah, I do appreciate it.

Got a lot better understanding of the whole process and and and what went on and mistakes were made.

Mistakes do get made.

Yeah, I can appreciate that.

Um, but in the that meeting I asked, and I just want to be clear that we've been staffing two plants more than we longer than we should be.

And it will be another for another year or whenever the plant is ready.

So the cost of that should be taken into account.

Uh we hired a consulting firm to look over the fixes.

You hired two.

We hired one.

Um, so that incurred cost there.

Uh, we extended Garbage contract, that's what we're doing now.

Um, and also we have depreciation on that plant of two plus years, probably, and that that should be taken into account.

So will all those things be taken into account when the final reconciliation?

So I won't be able to answer that directly, obviously, because that's part of the claim.

You asked that same question, I believe, at that meeting related to depreciation.

I can't tell you depreciation is not typically taken into account often in construction projects, but all of those things you mentioned, I'm assuming are things that you will convey to city staff, and that city staff will look at the contract and you all will have a strategy that relates what is pushed to us as part of a revised claim.

Okay, thank you.

I will push back on depreciation because that plant only has X number of years life.

And some of those years are taken off in the front, that should be taken into account.

I will direct staff to take that into account.

So thank you.

Yes, absolutely.

That's it for now, Mayor.

Councilmember Shepard.

Thank you, Mayor and Ron or Gary, one of you can answer this.

It's more a technical question.

Um, one of the things that I've been able to learn from my colleague, Councilmember Tuttle is there are people who are often listening and they don't understand some of the language that we throw around.

Um I'm curious if you can describe in layman's terms what is the change order?

Sure, it's simply a change to the contract, right?

We signed a contract uh that on this project, there was a contract between the city of Wichita and Wichita Water Partners that established a scope related to the work that would be done and a price associated with that scope of work.

We're doing that work.

Uh and a change order is simply a change to that contract of right that both parties agree to uh and then modify the contract.

It can modify scope up or down, it can modify cost up or down uh that relates to it.

Does that answer that well enough?

It does.

And if the city has a better answer, I think that was a great great way to describe it.

Thank you.

I have a follow-up to that though.

Yes, um, so given your definition, you uh on the slide it described the cost.

Uh it it kind of described what's changing.

Um I'm curious, can you maybe uh share how it affects the schedule and then in addition to that, um, who's responsible for the change in cost if there's an inflation in cost due to the change.

Okay, so I may have to break that component up right.

So when the contract was established, the original contract amount, any inflationary cost were at the risk of Wichita Water Partners.

That's why when we went through that big cost escalation for uh construction right after uh right after the pandemic, uh, there was no request back to the city for cost escalation charges.

So that was a huge risk shift to the design builder.

And uh it right, if you think about that, in a typical design bid build contract, you would have still been designing likely at that period of time.

So that escalation in cost then would have either been caught later when you bid it, or you would have had it, depending on what the contract said, the contractor may have then come back and asked for more cost as escalation as part of it.

So in this scenario, uh any cost escalation that occurred that was part of the original scope was was covered by Wichita Water Partners.

All right, now ask the second part of your question again if you would.

You answered it.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

I have multiple questions.

Yes, Mayor.

Um you had a quote from just your presentation where you said it's hard to trust a contractor.

So I I'm gonna ask you directly.

I want to know who exactly took the liquidated damages verbiage out of the contract.

Who took that out?

Yeah, I don't here.

Do you want to answer that?

Yeah, if you don't mind.

Uh Mayor, I think I'll give you just a basic answer on that, but I'd I'd like to ask to reserve this for our discussion later uh for a variety of reasons, especially because we have ongoing settlement discussions.

Nothing was removed from the contract.

Uh what Ron discussed about earlier from the very beginning when the phase two uh amendment was put in place in 2019, liquidated damages applied to substantial completion only.

When we issued substantial completion in September of 2024, the liquid data damages did not carry forward from that point.

That's consistent on projects of this size.

Uh substantial construction was complete.

What we were moving forward was the testing.

Uh our risk was more limited at that point.

The original terms of the contract were in place, nothing was removed, nothing was changed, but because of where that was, liquidated damages did not extend past that.

I am very um upset because I'm looking at the agenda report from September 17, 2024, and nowhere does it say anything regarding liquidated damages.

So that was not pointed out to this council.

It was not pointed out to the community.

That is a problem that I would like to know who exactly failed to put that into this report.

Well, Mayor, you're looking at him.

I was the one that made that presentation.

Ultimately, it was my responsibility to put that together.

Our focus was on trying to limit the cost going forward.

Our focus was on like so change order number four total cost was five million dollars and something.

That's where our focus was to try to limit those costs.

Throughout the discussions and our we negotiated for almost 18 months with Wichita Water Partners what this would look like to extend the testing past substantial completion.

I know from my experience in working with the in the industry so long, and to what Ron talked about and trying to minimize the risk and balance the costs, that it just wasn't even a discussion we were going to have.

If we had contemplated moving those liquidated damages to the final completion date, that change order number four, the cost would have escalated to I don't know how much.

Trying to deal with the issue of moving forward on reduction of retainage and limiting uh the cost for extension of warranties.

Had we moved the full project forward, just as a reminder, and I think that might be in there, but if not, if we had looked at a full delay of moving everything forward, including the testing, we would have added 3.7 million dollars to that change order at a minimum.

And I remember during our last discussions, I think that number continued to escalate.

Um we've always had the ability uh to recover costs through the claims process, which is exactly what we're working on now.

To Ron's point, the city's in a better place, going to be in a better place.

I'm confident, as opposed to the liquidated damages would have stayed in place.

There's a lot of things that go with liquidated damages.

Um they can be challenged.

Uh, I've seen that over the course of time.

It's not automatic.

There's so many factors that can impact the discussions related to liquidated damages.

It's just not something that rose to the top with that report.

That's on me.

And I appreciate you taking ownership of that because this council has now been blamed for something that was not highlighted to any of us, and a contract that was missing, I guess, verbiage that again, many of us on the council did not even have to compare to.

And so I just want to make sure that this is transparent and clear that this council did not get any information regarding liquidated damages.

So I would like to know what we will be doing moving forward to ensure that we have transparency and clarity when major amounts are being changed in contracts.

Well, I'm happy to discuss that.

Um it would like to have more discussion about that here after council's over, and we talk about this a bit more.

Um, I was kind of thinking and looking at other projects.

This is not unique to the project.

This situation with this project is obviously unique.

Um, the many of our other major projects, um, our four mile creek server treatment plan, our first street bridge, um, you know, the the baseball stadium, any of these big projects have very similar uh clauses related liquidated damages and dispute and claims clauses with them, and it can be a variety of things that happen depending on, but most of those are tied to the substantial completion date.

Anyway, to that point, um, that's not that's not anything I've ever discussed from the podium.

Not trying to hide anything, not trying to keep it out.

I guess we need to talk about what makes sense.

Um, I out of respect to your time.

Um, I could stand up here for hours and talk about uh contract terms and stipulations.

I guess we needed to figure out what makes sense.

This is again a very unique situation.

No intent to hide anything.

Um really limiting the cost related to extending the warranties, reducing the retainage, those things that go with that.

I did not appreciate getting an email from our local newspaper making us aware that something was missing from the agenda report and from a contract that we couldn't verify with a previous uh version of it.

And so I just want to know moving forward, what standard operating procedures we will have regarding major red flags that I believe the council should be made aware and the community should be made aware.

So maybe that question is more for the city manager, because at the end of the day, yes, um Gary, you are the lead for public works and utilities, but it really is the city manager's office that the buck stops there.

So I'd like to know what standard operating procedures we will have moving forward when there are major financial uh considerations that they will be highlighted to this council and to the community.

Thank you for the question, Mayor and Council.

Um I think a couple things need to happen.

One is maybe in the workshop is as was just referenced by the director is that we have standard boiler boilerplate language in all of our contracts, whether they're roads, water sewer, airport, whatever it may be.

So I think it would be helpful for you to know those key criteria where we have out clauses, where we have um like we said, standard for liquidated damages or whatever.

So I think understanding what I call the basic components of our contracts, and if we highlight for you all, every contract that we do has 10 standard areas, and so we I highlight that.

Then when we get to the actual specific projects, we can highlight if there's some other in addition or whatever, because through contract negotiations, some of those are expanded or changed or whatever.

But I think we'll go back and uh make sure you understand our fundamental clauses within a contract, and then we can talk about deviations as the uh process going forward now.

This question is for Ron.

I know you talked about the claim, and that will be something again with attorneys uh being present uh to discuss, but I would like to know, especially since we have something in front of us that you want us, sorry, today's agenda item that you want us to approve, um, given that we've had this lack of trust about what happened on September of 2024.

I want to know that in writing, you will say that at the very least, whatever gets approved or disapproved, hopefully approved because you need to move forward, that we will recoup those costs.

The city of Wichita and its taxpayers will be able to recoup the costs that are currently being considered the 700,000 plus.

Yeah, so Kerry, you the contract with Garver is a city contract, not something that that we're asking for approval related to.

Um so the approval piece would be with the city.

Uh, and really all I can tell you because of the claim situation is um that we're gonna work together with the city to reach a mutually agreeable um settlement in the end, and that and that we expect that settlement to be in excess of what the city would be owed from liquidated damages if they were applicable here.

Um the details of the cost, the details of what the city has Garber do are things that I'm not privy to in total, so I can't make that statement today, but I certainly believe that that there will be relevant costs that are part of that that will be taken into account uh into in the settlement process.

Well, I don't feel comfortable approving 769,446 dollars without knowing that those specific costs will be recovered.

So is there a clause turn that back to Gary Wade?

Yes.

Mayor, I do appreciate that, but I would tell you know the value that Garver brings to us in our process.

The reason why we have an owner's rep, we have owners' reps on all of our major projects.

Uh we've got engineering staff, we've got project support staff, project delivery staff that oversee the majority of our projects from design perspective, construction management.

These projects are too large.

This is consistent across the industry that agencies like ours would hire owners' representatives.

Um we will be in a very challenging situation and not even sure what we would do to be able to move forward and monitor the project, oversee progress, uh, analyze plans, approve plans, um, uh be a part of the report performance testing without Garver in place.

I don't have the staff.

Uh we've already made enough shifts uh to try to make this work and save as much cost as possible, even before these issues, just the whole idea of bringing on a new plan.

So we really need uh the Garver services.

We really need to move forward with this contract amendment, and and I would we're gonna do everything that we can working through the settlement agreement process to make sure that we recover these costs.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Ron, I appreciate the fact that that you uh really want to get this right.

Um, and are going to get it right.

So it largest project in Wichita's history.

So I I do appreciate that.

So and uh thank you.

Hope we can verify all the things need to be verified to get.

I do have a question for you, or it might be for Gary.

Um exactly how much have we paid Wichita Water Partners to today.

Well, Gary, I don't have the number.

Do you have that number?

We have to know it because there's a checkbook somewhere that's keeping track of it.

Oh, sure, but we have what I can tell you is uh on the original contract, uh what's still outstanding is around three million dollars.

Um that does not include uh what Ron mentioned.

There's about four and a half million dollars in outstanding change orders uh that we've expected through time.

Again, Ron talked about these types of things that we could not have a firm understanding and clarification on with the original contract development, those will all be reconciled with final costs.

Uh but from the original contract, we still have about three million dollars that we have not paid how much have we held back as reserve from that contract?

Well, that that is that's that's the what's still effectively if you want to look at it a retainings, but we also with uh a lot of the work related the four and a half million dollars and change orders has already been done.

We're holding all of that until we can work through this.

So we've got uh collectively right now about seven and a half million dollars that we owe which tall water partners that we're holding.

We owe seven and a half million, so the contract was did I was it correct five hundred and fourteen million?

No, it's the contract was four hundred and ninety-four million to begin with.

Was 494 million, and we we still owe them seven and a half, seven and a half.

So, you know, we can do some quick math here.

You know, so we've paid them 400 and 87,000, something like that.

Ish.

Sure.

Okay.

I just people keep asking that question.

How much will we pay them?

How much do we owe them?

So I think I think the public should know that.

So thank you.

Councilmember Toddle.

Thank you.

I am sorry, Ron.

Um, I'm gonna ask Gary in legal a question.

So sorry about the musical chairs here today.

So Jennifer Legal, I'm gonna ask you, I I know pending litigation, all the things, so I don't want to ask anything wrong, and I'm not an attorney, right?

Gary, I'm not a public works professional.

Uh what I want to know is I heard something on Friday.

I'm hearing the narrative again today.

Got lots of questions from friends and grocery store meetings over the weekend.

Was something removed from the contract?

Nothing was removed from the contract.

The nothing was removed from the contract.

The terms of the contract uh related to liquidated damage being applied to substantial completion only were the same term that remained in the contract.

So once we issued substantial completion on September 17th, 2024, the liquidated damages did not carry forward from there.

So because it wasn't highlighted in a meeting doesn't mean it was removed, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

I just want to make sure that that's perfectly clear because something being removed from a contract sounds nefarious.

And from what I'm hearing, nothing nefarious happened.

Jennifer, can you just confirm to make sure that I'm understanding this?

And if I'm not understanding it correctly, please feel free to provide the context so I can understand it better.

Councilmember, that's correct.

I confirm.

Okay.

So nothing was removed from the contract.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Now, um, pertaining to the item that we have in front of us today.

Um, when does their current contract end?

Well, the reason why we're here, um, and that we're continuing to work through the the settlement agreement.

The per contract, the completion date was April 1st of 2025, which obviously we've gone past.

Um it's it before we finish here, Ron's got more of his presentation.

I'd like for you to see, uh, and he's gonna talk about projected completion dates at some point in time uh as we get closer to the end, and we will make for these repairs and we will take ownership of this plant and we will bring it online.

There's no doubt about that.

Uh, but as we get further along and have a better understanding of the timeline, um, that's all part of the agreement.

That would be part of the next change order where we're gonna reconcile costs within that change order.

We will have a final completion date, but we don't know what that is right now, and that's gonna be tied to also when we take over the plan and some other things that go along with that, but right now we don't know.

Ron will share with you what their projected schedule looks like here shortly.

So their contract ended in last April.

Well, the contract as it is, they have missed the completion date of April 1st, 2025.

That is why we issued a notice of claim uh relative to cost and other things associated with that contract date being missed.

I I'm speaking of GARVER, their contract.

Oh, I'm sorry, Garver.

No, Garver's sorry, I missed that.

I thought we were still talking about this one.

Garbage contract um is still open uh because we contemplated even after we had brought the plan online if there would be some services needed.

So what this will do, uh, we'll extend it to a point as needed.

But I couldn't tell you that exact date, original date.

Okay, um originally did we go out for an RFP for this, or was this part of the we did go out with an RFP for the owner's rep services, yes, sir.

Okay, can you just give us a background as to what they do in this process?

Uh I can.

Um if I go back to my PowerPoint or Ark Dolic with Garver is here, if you wouldn't mind.

I might ask Mark, he can probably do a better job of explaining.

I could give you a good head start, but I might ask Mark to talk about specifics of what this contract does for us.

Uh good morning.

Uh Mark Dole check with Garber.

Uh, we are serving as the over owner's representative.

Um, been in that role since 2019.

Um primarily our role is both administrative and technical.

Um, we are providing technical reviews, plan specs, observation during construction.

Um, we've also provided an administrative role helping with some of the paperwork associated with uh the funding AIS, um, which is a federal requirement, uh Davis Bacon wage requirements.

Um we've also supported in things like uh uh special inspections for structural reviews um for all the structures.

Um so we're the extension of city staff, you know.

Your staff you guys do not have electrical, structural process, mechanical, all the different engineers, and with a design build project, um the designer and the contractor are one entity working together, and so it's industry standard to have an owner's representative working for the city being your eyes and ears throughout this whole process.

Um, and so that is uh high-level overview of our role.

Um, I'd be happy to answer any more questions though, if you have any more specifics as to our role.

Yeah, have you guys found so you you help with oversight administratively and with inspections, and then also looking at the plans as we come up with them.

Correct.

Okay, have you guys seen anything, any red flags here?

Have you reported that and what is the process if you do see something that you're uncomfortable with or that you have concerns about as um this process goes along?

Yeah, so if there's anything red flags, it just depends on what type of concern it would be.

Is it something minor technical that we have dozens and thousands of memos back and forth between us and city staff and the design built during design that provided comments um on things that we're noted of concern during design?

Um if there were items issued during construction, um, we would note those, try to work those out.

Um, if there was something that we thought was you know in place but wasn't done per spec, there was a formal process called a notice of non-conformance that we'd work with the design builder on to make sure that those were notified, documented, and um addressed accordingly.

Um there's still several punch list items um maintaining a punch list of items to be complete um as we you know move to final construction.

So it depends on the type of issue or the type of red flag as you uh mentioned that on how we would address it.

Okay, did you um did you guys have anything on your radar with the malfunctions that we have with the clarifiers?

Do you recall if that was ever a concern brought to light by you guys?

Uh no, it was not.

Um that malfunction is uh Mr.

Coke to rep uh indicated earlier that is a proprietary um equipment, and so standard design process you would you know develop the structure, spec the equipment, um, and make sure that the manufacturer uh agrees that they can meet that specification, um, those details, you know, maybe like simplify it to a pump.

You know, we'd make sure that the manufacturer certifies that it's got these materials, it's got you can pump this pressure bump this uh flow.

Um, but we don't necessarily look at how the pump is built.

So take that and apply it to the clarifier, it's a similar application.

Okay, um, that's all I got for now.

I might have another question or two here later.

Okay.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, this question's probably for Gary.

Sorry.

And I'm sorry if you are already addressed this, but Councilmember Johnston asked how much money we still have to pay, correct?

Correct.

That isn't paid until everything is done.

Is there like do you wait like a year or do you just pay it when we finally take it over?

I'm just curious.

At the point of final acceptance, whenever we whenever we determine that that date is through continued discussions, uh, and again, we'll we'll bring that by way.

Ultimately, we're gonna have kind of several things going on here, but with the agreement itself and reconciliation of costs will be through the next change order.

Um, within that, we'll also have a final completion date.

That'll be the point in time uh that we will take over the plant, take ownership of the plant.

Um, and except for some outstanding items, Ron mentioned a couple change orders.

So, just so you know what happens when we take over the plant.

Um, we're gonna get into full operations with our staff fully operating this plant, uh, working it through its paces, getting a better understanding of how we're gonna operate the plant from a process standpoint, the chemicals that we're gonna use.

It's gonna take us a little bit of time before we actually go into the system.

Uh, once that's done, we have to make some final tie-ins, conversions uh to so that we can start taking water at Hess Bomb station.

So there'll still be a few outstanding costs there that would be in one final change order, most likely, but to your point, the majority of remaining costs will be released at that point of final acceptance when we take over the facility.

Thank you.

Follow-up question to that.

So just for clarification, 7.5 million is still owed to Wichita Water partners, and we are holding those funds.

Correct.

That is roughly about 1.5% of the total 500 million dollar contract.

Is that standard?

It's not.

I uh provide a reminder um that or I'll just come back to it.

I don't want to sound like you should be able to remember all that.

It's part of change order number four.

Um at issuing of substantial completion, also included a reduction of some of the retainage.

Uh, and and I apologize, I wouldn't be able to quote what the retainage was at that point, but in the same uh comparison of carrying forward extended warranties and the costs associated with that, uh, that 3.7 million dollars that we could have taken on, which I think was going to grow, that included additional financing on the the what we still owed them.

So it's part of the agreement, and this is included in the I think it is in that agenda item.

It talks about reduction of retainage.

Uh, and and I don't sorry, don't quote me on that.

Whether it is or not, we we did reduce the retainage at that time to limit our risk to limit to the cost to the change order in the overall project.

So, Mayor, to your point, at this point in time, that would not be uh standard retainage, but that's also part of what we negotiated with change order number four, so we could lessen the overall total cost and the risk to us.

I have a direct question.

So, can the city still recoup damages from which Shaw water partners?

That is what we're working on now through the settlement agreement.

Yes, ma'am.

So the answer is yes, is that accurate?

Okay, in addition to recovering additional costs, I wanted to make sure that because liquidated damages that is not part of this current uh conversation.

I want to make sure that again the amount that we've been uh increasing since September of 2024, that we will be able to uh justify that we can recoup those costs.

Maybe that's a law question.

I might clarify one part of that real quick, Mayor.

Sorry, and I didn't mean to butt in on Jennifer, but just so we're clear, we're we're starting our starting point is April 2nd.

Uh substantial completion was at September 17th.

What was supposed to happen between then and the new final completion date of April 1st was all of this testing, uh, which they were not successful with miss that date.

So everything we're talking about recovery of cost starts at April 2nd.

And I know Councilmember Johnston asked part of that claim.

I think Ron mentioned chemicals and power, that's gonna be part of it.

The other one that I asked was today's uh item, which is the Garver contract, this additional costs that we're having to bear because the plant is not ready.

In addition, Councilmember Johnston asked about staff, about consultants, and depreciation.

I just want to know are all those items going to be discussed with our attorneys.

Uh Mayor, we'll we are in the process of gathering all actual damages to present as part of the claim and the amended claim.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

What happens?

I'm gonna give you if if scenario, if damages are more than seven and a half million dollars.

Do they write us a check?

Or how that's why you have retaining is in case there are damages, you can just not not pay them that.

Well, it's possible that's not an entire reason for retainings, but sure.

But I'll I'll remind you of uh of a recent claim that we had that we did recover damages on a previous project uh related to some diet design issues, and we got direct payment on that, so it can happen.

The mechanisms there.

Thank you.

Currently, there are no council members that have further questions, so we'll continue with Ron's presentation.

Okay.

So let's talk about uh what's occurred since that date, since that substantial completion date, and and Councilman Johnson, I think this will get into some of what you were asking previously.

There's there's essentially been four periods of time since then, and uh we've not been in front of council uh that whole period of time.

So one thing I would encourage going forward, if you ever would like us to present, please ask.

We'll come in at any time uh to present.

Um plant commissioning and PTA testing uh started in November when test water was supplied uh and and then went through May.

We had uh we had a clarifier issue then, which we'll talk about here in detail.

We did repairs to the gear boxes between June and July of 25.

We restarted testing, we added confidence testing into that to make sure that the plant would perform uh the way we needed it.

That carried through November, and really we were preparing to hand over the plant to the city in December.

That's part of the reason all the claims negotiations were going on uh as we were wrapping up uh testing and we had a clarifier uh structural issue uh uh be identified in November.

So I'll get into all of that, but I'm gonna go through these four sections.

Um, I wanted to go through uh maybe maybe along the lines of Councilman Shepherd's question earlier.

What is a PTA?

Uh, because we're gonna talk a lot about PTAs.

So these are performance tests and acceptance, right?

And the the purpose of a PTA is to demonstrate the treatment process works and meets acceptance criteria.

Um this project has an extensive PTA schedule, probably the most testing that we've ever seen on a treatment plant uh prior to the owner taking it over.

Um that's good and bad, uh right.

It's good you've you've done a lot of testing, you can see a lot of uh uh the results.

You you have uh a plant that's very broad in its nature, right?

What while I think the majority of time you'll be operating off a blend, there will be periods of time where you may need to go all to all surface or to all groundwater.

So testing uh was taken into account for all of that.

Uh there's there's testing requirements as I mentioned earlier that try and simulate min flows, max flows, different clarifier combinations, different filter combinations, different runtimes, uh flow rates, all of these kinds of things.

So that's all good.

The the bad side of that is that's probably not the way you're gonna operate the plant, right?

Water plants, you don't often make a lot of changes or radical changes to your operation.

They they operate in a long duration.

So you set your your strategy, your chemical uh optimization strategy, and your your influence source, and you run that that treatment plant for a long period of time and you make minor changes because you're watching that change occur over time after you make it, uh, and you get used to how you're gonna operate the plant, and then you determine okay, now what happens if we're gonna move from our standard blend to all ground, right?

What will change in the chemicals, what will change in the dosing, what will change uh in the expected results.

And usually even those kinds of changes are made over time or slower.

There can be uh abrupt changes if you have a failure occur in a pipeline or something that might uh result in an abrupt change.

Uh, but you need that practice, and that's the one thing this project has missed is the city having the opportunity to practice running this plant and developing the way they're gonna run the plant.

Your operators are gonna run this plant, and that's gonna be really important to the long-term success of the project.

So uh so just recognize while while we've done a lot of PTAs and uh and and they're they provide some benefit, there's a lot of benefit from your operator setting in the seats and running the plant, and that's where we're trying to get you so that you can uh so that you can do that.

Okay, so here's what a PTA is.

Uh you transition to a water source.

There's eight defined PTAs.

Uh, you transition to the raw water source that's being tested.

Uh, you have to build solids in the clarifiers, right?

You're trying to simulate just like I said, ongoing operations, not starting from scratch.

Uh, you make appropriate feed changes and you stabilize the operation of the plant, and you begin the PTA.

And all the PTAs are either 48 or 72 hours uh and time duration.

Uh there's what happens if a piece of equipment breaks in the middle of the PTA.

There's guidelines for that, right?

What happens if a test comes back erroneously?

There's guidelines for that in how you do the PTAs as part of it.

There's 48 samples taken each day.

Um just make sure I don't tell you wrong, oh I didn't write it down.

I think I believe that's uh 24 uh on-site samples, 12 of those samples are sent off-site to off-site labs for testing.

I think 12 are online uh as part of it.

And the off-site testing then takes two to three weeks.

So we can run a PTA, we can finish a PTA, we can think we've passed a PTA, but we don't know we've passed it until we get that off-site testing back two to three weeks later.

Right, and some of those things they're testing off-site, we have no idea why we're in the middle of the PTA.

So you you have to run it the way you're gonna run it, and then see the results come back to make sure that you met it.

And if they don't, then you have to make adjustments, run it again, wait for the results to come back.

This part of it really drags out the duration of testing uh as part of it.

Okay, so this first period, and this is I think what Councilman Johnston was referring to.

When we started the plant up in November, uh, we had a variety of issues going on.

We had uh it for one, it took much longer to get uh stable operations in this plant.

This is a big plant, and even though we're not using the full plant during testing, uh, these clarifiers are big, they're 130 plus feet in diameter, they hold a lot of water.

Uh it takes every change takes a long time to work its way through the plant.

Uh so I can tell you that I think we would have had trouble knowing what we know now, if we knew it back then, uh the April 1st date was probably too aggressive to begin with uh to try and get all the PTAs done between November and April 1st.

That's neither here nor there.

That's what we signed up for.

That's our responsibility to deliver, right?

Uh, but it but we did have a lot of challenges.

We also had some raw water challenges, right?

Raw deviations in the raw water coming into the plant, that affects what comes out of the plant.

Uh and we in general were having clarifier performance that was not to our expectations of what the clarifiers should be performing too.

So, what does that mean?

It means you're not getting um solids out of the water the way we would expect from those clarifiers.

And we were in daily communications uh with West Tech through that process to try and understand what was going on with these clarifiers, and what we became aware of in March wasn't really a design defect, but that West Tech had installed the wrong gearbox with these clarifiers.

So I'm gonna show you what a gearbox looks like here in just a second.

Yes, sir.

Uh how how were how did you become aware that they had supplied the case?

Uh WestTech made us aware of that.

So Westec supplied it, and then they also let you know after I had been installed that it was the wrong one.

Yeah, that it was undersized in the gearboxes.

And this this is this is gonna be a bad analogy, I know, but um as big as these clarifiers are, and when you talk about mixing and creating mixing energy in these clarifiers, um I'll show you a picture of the mixer in a minute.

It it rotates, but it it rotates maybe a little over three revolutions per minute, right?

It's not fast, it's not like a blender.

So how did we miss that the wrong gear?

I'll show you.

It's not something, it's not something we would have seen uh as as part of it, right?

The West Tech should have put should have supplied a clarifier that met the mixing energy criteria.

Uh, because they ordered the wrong gearbox, that gearbox didn't allow it to turn fast enough to create the mixing energy.

I uh the example I'll give you, not a good one again, is a 10-speed bicycle.

It's been a long time since I've ridden a 10-speed bicycle.

But but if you remember a 10-speed bicycle, as you change gears, there are some gears where it's really easy to pedal, but you go really slow.

And there are some gears where you it's really hard to pedal, but you go really fast as part of it.

That's what I'm talking about in this gearboxes.

It's just taking the the energy from the motor into a gearbox that changes the settings, and then it it rotates this mixture around.

Um this was after you had started the testing that's yeah, this was uh test four months into testing.

So did their reps come out and take a look at it.

You alerted the Yeah, I don't uh but we had the reps out, certainly, to look at stuff.

I don't know that that's I don't know to tell you the truth uh personally how they determined that they had the wrong size gearbox, but it was them that determined it.

Here's let me just advance the slide.

There's the there's the gearbox.

I mean it's of these gigantic clarifiers.

This is really a small component of these gigantic clarifiers, and it's and it's not something that you would be able to tell whether the gearing mechanisms were correct to generate the right amount of right of energy in the mixing.

And this probably become a little more clear when I show you the picture here coming up that Gary showed you previously.

So these all need to be replaced.

So that's part of what we did in June and July.

Remember, because we're not in an operating plant.

If this would have occurred and you were in production, we wouldn't have shut the plant down and replaced all six gearboxes.

You would have done one at a time, you would have kept the plant operational.

But because you had the you had the benefit of an existing plant, and because you were still worried about using test water because you were in a drought, um, the decision was made let's just shut it down, not waste any more water, and and uh and change out these test box uh these gearboxes before we start the plant up and begin testing again.

So that's what occurred.

West tech was on site um during that clarifier work.

Uh we also did a little more work.

We added turnbuckles to the launderers or cross bracing, the launderers are where the water exits the clarifier.

Uh we were seeing a little bit of uh twisting or or flexing in those.

It has nothing to do with the later failure, uh, but it tightened those up.

Again, that not necessarily a design error.

Some West Tech clarifiers have it, some West Tech clarifiers don't have it.

Um we believed it was necessary because they need to be stiffer as part of it.

But at this period of time, West Tech was on site, GARBAR was on site, Bernzomac was on site, or Wichita Water Partners was on site.

We had no indication that we had any further clarifier issues related to it.

We simply thought it was a gearbox and a process change, uh and we would start backup testing to work our way through testing, and that's what we did.

So we started the second round of testing.

We added confidence testing to it, and really what we were trying to do with confidence testing.

This was not a contract requirement, but we were trying to run the plant to build confidence that the plant uh that the plant would deliver uh on the treatment side before we got into the PTAs.

So we were in essence extending, oh, excuse me, extending the time before the PTA started every time we change a water source.

That's part of it.

So uh we also there was a big uh drive to try and use the test water.

So uh we were able to start sending test water to the east plant uh for polishing and pushed into production in August.

So what that means is we fully treated the water at the Northwest plant, uh, including chlorinated the water.

Um we declorinated the water at the back end of the plant and then pushed it to your east plant, and your east plant then ran that same treated water through their filters, reclorinated it, and pushed it out to system.

So you've been drinking water from this plant since August of last year when it's up in operational and we're pushing to that uh pushing to the east plant.

Um because you're running it through a secondary treatment plant, you don't have to worry about any test water challenges or problems, but even then the water was uh was drinking water standard uh as part of it.

So that was a good way, I think, to alleviate some of the concerns related to water usage, uh particularly in a drought, so that you weren't pushing these big amounts of water out into the into the uh to the river uh and allowed you to do that.

So we finished uh all eight PTAs, uh all met KDHE drinking water standards.

Uh in total, there were a thousand, just over a thousand samples taken on 21 days of testing.

That's PTA days of testing.

Um we agreed to rerun three PTAs at the end of the eight for two reasons.

Uh we had 11 samples that were non-compliant with the project standards, not KDHE drinking water standards.

Your project standards on this project are about three times more aggressive than KDHE standards.

Uh so we can miss a project standard and still be well within the drinking water limits.

Does that make sense?

So we had 11 samples, they were both on PTAs three and four.

Uh they related to TTHMs or trialomethanes or disinfection byproducts.

It's a constituent we can't even see when we're testing.

We have to send it off to a lab, we get results back three weeks later.

Uh it's it's not an issue.

Uh it relates to uh how the chlorine reacts with some of the organics in the surface water.

Uh we ran a second uh third PTA on surface water, that's PTA 7.

We had no issue with TTHM.

So we don't expect any issue uh when we reach uh when we retest three and four.

Um and then PTA 7, we agreed to rerun because we had that clarifier failure in the middle of the PTA, and it was one of the clarifiers that was being tested.

Uh and it had one uh non-compliant sample, I think that related to pH uh as part of that.

So ran all eight, all eight met drinking water standards.

Um you can see the percentages.

Twelve samples that were non-compliant out of out of over a thousand samples taken.

The plant makes good water.

Um it's it's safe to drink, right?

You're drinking it or you drank it uh this past uh fall as part of it.

And it's something I think that's often lost, right?

When we talk about these issues, and nobody likes these issues, right?

These are challenging, it's emotional.

Um you paid a lot of money for this, there's a lot of eyeballs on this project, it's important.

Probably no piece of infrastructure that's more important to you as a community as you go forward than having abundant and clean water uh available to your residents and your rate payers.

Uh so we understand that, right?

It's it's hard when you have issues like this, uh, but often I think in this process, we've lost track of that the plant has been up and operational.

It's not just sitting there idle and you have no use of it.

Uh every day that plant's running, you're learning from it, you're starting to understand how the city's gonna operate it, and you're gaining benefit from those uh from those days of testing.

So as we were running PTA 7, um, we had an issue in clarifier 3.

We heard a knocking for lack of a better term, right?

Clarifiers started making noise.

Um full of water, these are big clarifiers.

That picture gives you a good example.

That's a person in the bottom of that clarifier, and that's not the whole clarifier, that's the mixing zone of the clarifier, so it's even bigger than that.

Um we could see some things that didn't look quite right.

Remember, it's full of water, so a lot of this stuff isn't visible as part of it.

So we shut that clarifier down.

We switched clarifiers, we continued PTA testing.

Um we were finishing PTA 7, I believe that's correct when clarifier 3, same issue, excuse me, uh clarifier one, same issue.

Started hearing a knocking, went and looked, it looked like you could see something wrong in the structure internal to the uh the clarifier.

So again, because you have an existing operating plant, it allowed us just to shut down the plant to drain the clarifiers.

It takes two or three days to drain these clarifiers and then start doing inspections.

Gary showed this picture, I showed it to you again, where that blue arrow is.

Um, again, I wouldn't call this a design error, um, um, and I'll tell you why in a second, but that's that C channel that you see bent right there.

The purpose of that C channel is to hold uh the upper draft tube in place.

The upper draft tube is this kind of the middle section of what you see on the left.

You see a couple of cables extending to it.

Um so you have a mixer on top that spins, you have an upper draft tube in the middle that stays still, um, but it's only connected from the outside, holding it still, and then you have a lower draft tube that turns slowly the other way, that's raking the solids out of the clarifier.

So if we look at that same picture that Geary gave you, uh you see there in the kind of the tannish color, I'll say that's the mixer.

That's what's turning about three and a half revolutions per minute or so.

Um the blue, the light blue, is the upper draft tube.

That's what we're worried about in this scenario.

That stays still, and then the green, which is only you're only seeing half the green, it's round as well, is the lower draft tube that turns with the rake.

So it turns opposite the mixer really slow.

So I'll tell you in a clarifier design, that upper draft tube doesn't have to be non-moving.

The reason it's non-moving is often you have water that enters the clarifier sideways.

For these clarifiers, the water enters from the bottom.

So there's absolutely no reason that upper draft tube has to stay still.

That's just part of their typical design.

So that's the way they designed this as well.

They hold that upper draft tube still with those yellow C channels that extend out to the mixing zone, and then they have cables that connect it.

Um the function of that upper draft tube is for one and one thing only.

It's to convey water from the lower draft tube to the mixer.

Think of that mixer as a big pump turning.

It's pulling water up, pushing it out, it mixes with other solids, you get collisions, you're adding chemicals, you get collisions, those particles get bigger, they start to settle down.

The process picks some of them back up because you always want solids or a sludge bed in that mixer to cause more collisions, but the heavy, the heaviest solids go to the center and come out.

Then the clean water ultimately goes outside of that reaction well and into the launderers, which you can see uh the radial launders, it's pointing to one on the left side of that uh of that image.

They're just troughs.

It goes into troughs, clear water goes into troughs and exit the clarifiers and goes on to the filters.

So the reason I say it's in my opinion, it's not really a design issue.

That's and this is up for debate, right?

The design, what the the cause uh of the failure, we believe, uh WestTech believes every uh everybody we've had looked at believes to date is that upper draft tube, that light blue, was designed to have a stiffener on the bottom of it, or a stiffening ring around the bottom of it.

It's just a hollow piece of metal, right?

It's big in diameter, but it's just a hollow piece of metal.

Um so think of uh if you would, and the example that was used in the meeting was think of a think of a five-gallon bucket, right?

The top of that bucket is open, but if you push on it, it's very stiff, you can't deform it because it has a stiffening ring around that top.

If you cut the top of the bucket off and just put the center, it's really flexible, right?

Without that stiffening ring, it's really flexible.

So, what happened here?

Um, according to West Tech, that stiffening ring was in that design.

You can see it, that bottom blue arrow, it's really hard to see.

We've tried to blow it up on the left, but it's still really hard to see there.

There's a little red circle.

That's that's showing you where that stiffening ring was in the design, but that that ring didn't get transferred to the drawings that went to the to the um to the manufacturer.

So they manufactured it without that stiffing ring on the bottom of it, right?

Um, and then there was a second issue, the top blue arrow, the clearance between the mixer that's turning and that those yellow C channels was too close.

Typical is six plus inches for them.

For some reason, they had what they gave to the manufacturer was inch and a half, or it may have even been less than that when the when it lifted up as part of it.

So, what was happening was they believe, as the mixer was turning, which interfere with that C channel.

I'm sorry, I keep feeling that it would interfere with that C channel and cause that to have forces that started to twist.

Because that upper draft tube didn't have a stiffening ring on the bottom, it allowed that twist to occur, and and over time it just became looser and looser and looser until at some point the C channel failed.

So it didn't really affect the process necessarily.

And it right, it has nothing to do with the concrete in it.

It's really related to just how they hold that upper draft tube in place as part of it.

That's that's this is really hard to do just in a drawing, and I know without being able to see it, it's hard to understand.

Does that make sense?

Anybody have any questions on that piece of it?

Yes.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Um's job was it to catch that?

Well, it's that's a that's a good question.

Really, I don't think it was anybody's job to catch it.

It was it was West Tech's job, if if you want to know the truth, they manufactured, they should have caught that as it was being installed, and and before they signed off on it.

Remember, they signed off on all the installation of this equipment, as that it was in that it was in line with what they had spec and designed uh as part of it, and and they just missed it.

And they admitted that in the meetings that both we've had and the meetings that they they uh presented to the city related to that.

And so then, whenever we're we're building this project, whose job was it to catch that the specs weren't making follow up.

Yeah, again, because it was uh because it was a performance spec, there wasn't really a defined design that you were comparing to.

I think Mark mentioned uh earlier.

A lot of things that are designed, you're comparing the part of what we do as an inspection, and then what the owner, owner's inspector does as well is you're comparing drawings to in place, making sure everything was put in place.

But but this didn't really have that kind of design because of the nature of the proprietary uh equipment, was part of it.

Their design, um, they transferred their design to manufacturing drawings.

They, West Tech transferred their design to manufacturing drawings, they sent those drawings to a manufacturer to be built.

That equipment showed back up on site, they then came and certified that that equipment matched their design.

And that's what we also based ours off of.

So when we're looking at like Garver, for example, and they're coming in looking, they're looking at uh West design.

I don't know what you had to look at for West Tech's design.

My guess is not much, but I don't know that Mark, that's probably more of a question for Garver related to that.

But but in the end, it's right, the the fault, if you want to if right, if you want to determine fault, the fault lies with West tech.

And West Tech's admitted that fault in that they didn't do it.

And it's and it's not something that was I think readily apparent that it was an issue because when you install these things and you you put them in and you connect in those C channels and you tighten all the cables, they're stiff, right?

They don't move as part of it.

But what happened because that stiffening ring wasn't there, and because they had that clearance issue, when it's once it was filled with water and they were turning, it was creating things inside that clarifier that shouldn't have been occurring, but nobody could see it because it was submerged as part of it until you had the failure.

Um it's it's the reason when the first one failed, we didn't stop everything, right?

Because we didn't have any indication there was any problem with any of the other with any of the other uh five clarifiers at that point.

It was only that when we had a second one fail and it looked like a similar issue that we were worried that well, maybe this is a repetitive issue and we need to look at it because we didn't know at that point whether we were creating further damage if we kept running uh or where we were could do something to to fix or repair those uh before further damage was done.

So Westech is aware of the specs changed specs changed.

Yeah, for the to where what you were saying they removed the stiffener essentially.

Oh, yeah, West Tech is aware that they they did not WestTAC didn't send manufactured drawings to the manufacturer with that stiffening ring included.

Okay.

It's Westex ordered that, yeah.

So West Tech did that.

Thank you.

It's all indications that the manufacturer built it to what West Tech sent them, but we don't know that for sure.

I think where he's council Mawise was going is West Tech did admit it.

Uh I think their explanation was they designed it in 3D.

The construction documents got transferred to construction document, it's in 2D.

Yeah, the manufacturing, the shop drawings to the shop drawings to the manufacturing.

So the construction documents that West Tech presented and Garver would have looked at were missing those pieces.

That stiffener.

So Garver couldn't have caught it because it was missing from the from the beginning.

And they admit it that that did they did not get those to the construction documents.

Yeah.

Is that correct?

Yeah, well, I I I can't I don't know that for sure.

But they admitted it wasn't on those drawings.

I don't know if Garver saw those drawings or not.

I don't want to speak for Garver uh as part of that.

But that's the point here, right?

The the people that the the entity that was responsible for checking to make sure what showed up on site in this case was WestTech because they're the ones that created the the manufacturing drawings, had it manufactured, brought that material on site.

They were on site through installation, they were on site as we ran those clarifiers in the dry to balance them to make sure they were working the way they should be.

Uh, and then they were back on site when we changed the gearbox, right?

We ran.

Remember, we ran those clarifiers for about six months before we shut them down to change the gearboxes.

Um so they were back on site, those clarifiers were rebalanced as part of that effort, uh, and it wasn't noticed at that point either.

Nor to my knowledge was any indication that there was an issue at that point noticed uh as part of that repair issue.

So it's that's super frustrating, right?

It's not just frustrating to you.

I think that's super frustrating to us as well.

Uh, because the rest of your plants really performing very well.

Your filters, uh, I think your filters are performing uh even better than expected, and and the rest of the plants uh uh there's there's lots of elements of a new water treatment plant that uh that you want to incorporate that this plant has, and the redundancy uh is one thing too that this plant has a lot more of than most plants uh have, and the flexibility on how you operate it has a lot more of that, but we can't get the focus on that because we keep having problems with the very first thing in the process, which are these clarifiers.

Okay, so just in this essence of time, let me show you the repair.

So this is the preferred repair.

So what WestTeg came back with was um the realization that gosh, they really didn't have to hold that upper draft tube still in this case because water came through the bottom.

So rather than have these pieces of structure sticking out in the middle of all this mixing and churning of water, instead they're just gonna bolt it to the interior truss that runs right through that upper draft tube, so it's fixed and has no chance to move uh as part of that.

Probably a better design, um, truthfully, um, than the other.

So I think we're fairly comfortable with the fix, but we've had people checking their design, checking their calculations to make sure that fix all looks uh appropriate uh as part of it.

And uh they would uh we're not gonna let them repair those draft tubes.

We feel like there's been too much damage done to those upper draft tubes, so we're making them remanufacture those upper draft tubes.

Uh so they'll come to site, they'll come to the site.

Probably the only difference really, other than you're supporting it from the inside is because everything else is in place, those draft tubes originally came in four pieces.

Dan, how big are those draft tubes?

Uh 20 foot diameter.

Yeah, 20 foot in diameter and 4,000 pounds.

Yeah, so originally they came in four pieces, but there wasn't anything above them.

So you could drop those in and put them in.

Now you have stuff above them and around them.

So they're gonna come in 16 pieces and be fit together as well.

That'll just make them more stiff.

I didn't I don't think that does anything other than make it more stiff as you go forward.

Uh so we'll demo the upper draft tube.

We're still elements of the mixer and the lower draft tube that we haven't seen because it's inside the draft tube.

So we'll inspect that as soon as that's done.

We'll complete the repairs wherever that's necessary.

Uh we'll install the new upper draft tube, and then we're talking to West Tech right now about extending the warranty uh on these clarifiers.

So we don't have that firmed up with West Tech, but uh my guess is the city's not going to be happy with anything other than a two-year extension on that warranty, and we probably won't be happy uh with anything less than that as well.

That that has not been firmed up yet.

Um the go for it.

And again, this is gonna differ a little bit from maybe what you've heard or what you've read or what you've seen.

Um Gary had mentioned that uh gosh, we may not have it's gonna be sometime in the next year or this year now before we get those clarifiers, it may be all the way through the year.

Uh we actually believe we can do this much faster than that, but but totally understand the city's position here.

The city's position is you guys have missed two dates.

We're not gonna set the public's expectation on another date and have you miss it again as part of it.

So I think that's where that that kind of long date came forward.

Uh but this is our current plan, and we're developing this.

This will be submitted to the city for uh for review here quickly as we get uh firm dates from West Tech related to manufacturing of that upper draft tube.

Um our current plan if we can make this work is to do temporary repairs on just one of the clarifiers and to restart the plant.

And we want to do that for a couple of reasons.

Um, the first reason is it's better for that plant to be running than to setting idle, right?

It's just better for the for a water treatment plant to be operational than not.

Uh and the second is we believe that's a great opportunity for city staff to train running the plant.

We'll still be in control of the plant, we'll still be in the operations room with them.

Uh, but this lets city staff now have uh up to you know two or three months in the chair operating the plant.

It won't have full functionality because you'll only have one clarifier uh operational, but it gives them it it takes time that you would have spent anyway later in the project and moves that forward.

So we're trying to take advantage of some of this time uh that's being lost while we're waiting on the manufacturing of the upper draft tubes.

Uh we expect the upper draft tubes right now to come in pairs.

So the first pair would be here as early as April, second pair, May, third pair June.

Uh we'll start PTA testing again as soon as the first two are repaired, so as early as May.

Uh, and that PTA testing would take I don't know, uh probably four to six weeks.

So our hope is that we're that we're got you in a position to come back up now.

The city has not agreed to only retesting just three PTAs.

That's something we're in discussion with the cities about the city about.

Uh it's our position that the draft tube's not part of the the process, it's just conveying water.

So if it tests out on the three PTAs we have, there's no reason to think it's not gonna test out on the others, and it's more and it's more beneficial to get you in the chair running it the way you're gonna run it uh as part of it.

We can always see how that performs once you're running it.

Um but the city may say no, we want you to retest all the PTAs before.

So in that scenario, it would be probably further than uh June as part of it, just because of the time associated with that.

But that's but that's more realistic.

Again, just like the gearboxes, if you were in an operational plant right now, if you were using this plant, you would not shut it down for six months and wait for six clarifier upper draft tubes to be remanufactured and pushed to the site, right?

You would do whatever temporary fix you needed to do on the first one.

You would be pulling them down one at a time, doing what fixes you needed, getting them back into operation so that you could keep operating.

So recognize that this feels really long, but it's likely not what you would see if you were in an operational facility as part of it.

Part of this part of this duration is because you're not yet in an operational facility as part of it.

And in essence, it's the city and us wanting to make sure that the fixes are done right because you got to have confidence in this plant to produce water, and we have to have confidence in this plant that it can produce water for you as part of it.

So there's probably a little extra caution being applied through this process since this is the second issue we've had with these clarifiers as part of it.

So that's my presentation.

Happy to answer any questions you have.

I don't know if this was uh a surprise or not that we were gonna present, but but I would also offer happy to do this again if if you want uh time to think about it or you need a different audience uh to hear it.

Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you.

I have one question.

So we're at January 20th.

We have 11 days until the end of January.

There were temporary repairs on one clarifier, says January to February.

Do we have any expectation that that work will be completed by the end of the month, or is it?

I think it'll be February.

Okay, yeah.

What we're trying to do with those temporary repairs.

We've held off on releasing West Tech on the repair until all the third party reports came in.

We just got the city's third party report late last week.

Uh but in that report, uh I I've not even read the whole report yet.

But uh in what I understand of that report so far is that there's no adversion to the repair.

So the same occurred with our third party folks looking at it.

So we're working with West Tech right now.

In fact, I think they're on site today with the proposed installation contractor on what that repair looks like, and and then we'll release them on the repair and they'll start.

They've already started at risk on the drawings and the design components of that uh to try and speed that up.

Um, the temporary repair, because I I want you all to know the temporary repair will not stay in service long term.

So when we're talking about a temporary repair, we're talking about a temporary fix of one that mimics what's gonna happen in the permanent repairs and lets us get it back up and running.

But at some point, either in April, May or June, that temporary repair will come out and the permanent repair will come into that clarifier, right?

It's it's purely just to operate the facility uh as part of it.

Has Westuck experienced any similar problem at any of the other development projects across the country.

Well, I won't I I can't speak for West Tag.

West tech has not conveyed to me that they've experienced any similar um issue, nor has HDR conveyed that they are aware of issues uh similar to this.

Uh but but I would I can't speak definitively because I just don't know as part of it.

This is certainly time we've experienced this, and and listen, I don't want you to think West Tech is just some firm that just came up, you know, they started a year ago and working.

West Tech's an old firm, they've been established in the water business a long time.

They they do a lot of clarifiers.

Um so that you know, I I is it 80 years?

Is that what I remember?

They've been in business for 80 years.

So it's something like that, right?

Uh, they've been in business for a long time.

So um, why of all the projects this project had those two issues occur on it?

I don't know.

I can't explain that to you.

It's but it but it's very frustrating for sure uh as part of it.

Um can I guarantee that there's never gonna be another issue with these West Tech Clarifies?

No, I can't guarantee that.

Uh but we're doing everything we can to try and look at all scenarios to minimize that risk to the city uh as part of it because it's got to be dependable for you all.

Thank you.

I'm looking at the West website.

They were founded in 1973 out of Salt Lake Utah.

So sorry, I was off just a bit then.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, these are relatively new designs, right?

As far as how these clarifiers operate, you know, indicated.

No, they're not.

This is a pretty this is pretty standard water treatment technology.

It's kind of proven water treatment technology.

The difference is each manufacturer, their mixer, how their mixer mixes, I think's more the proprietary focus of each one of those than not, but no, this is about as uh standard of water treatment design as you could have.

As far as the clarifiers go and how the work.

Uh, who did the city's third party report?

Uh uh West Janey and Associates, I believe.

Okay.

Is that something we can get a copy of, Gary?

Okay.

Um then a couple questions pertaining to the contract, if you would, Gary.

Now we don't have uh completed date or a target date here.

So this contract, does this extend all through uh December 2026?

Well, we don't have a contract uh that says anything more beyond the final completion date of April 1st, 2025.

Uh, and that's what we're working through.

If we try to put anything in place or motion right now to put a final contract date to it, we just end up amending it again.

It's part of our discussions, it's part of what's allowed within the claims uh settlement agreement and discussion.

Um there's some things we do along the way.

Uh, I think Ron mentioned some work change directives uh to keep us on track and in place that we're moving forward, but we'll try to get to that as soon as we can.

But until we see the end in site, we really just can't put a final date on it.

So what we're being billed for here will be hours.

We're just allowing a certain amount of hours for it will be.

And I to I'm sure Garber's estimate is conservative, not knowing how far out we're gonna be, but uh we keep very close track of their submittals based on invoices, and it's it's on actual hours only.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Ron, thank you for presenting.

Um I know it's not your your best morning, probably what you didn't want to do this morning.

Well, but but thank you for the necessary morning, right?

This is yeah, uh, as big a challenge as this is, this is our challenge to solve for the city.

And uh that was what one of the reasons we offer to come because there was a lot of discussion about an issue that was part of our contract.

So we always want to try and address that directly when we can.

So this is just part of it, unfortunately.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

I know I've learned a lot during that three hour meeting and even more today.

So I I appreciate that.

Still not an expert at all.

But uh, it's nice to at least have a general understanding of it.

Um I think good thing about this is the clarifiers are being scrutinized to a level they probably would not be if it went normally.

Uh well, I think that's certainly true.

So I think we'll we may end up getting better clarifiers than we ever expected.

So let's hope so.

Let's hope so.

Yeah, let's hope so.

So again, I appreciate it.

I will say that uh just so the public knows our staff um that public works and Gary Hired is very, very good.

Um they're very, very knowledgeable, obviously, by the questions they asked of you and of West Tech during that meeting.

And uh I I'm really impressed with them, and I think that uh you'll work well with them and get Wichita Goodwater.

So thank you.

Yeah, I do as well, and I think we said this at the meeting, Councilman Johnson.

I do appreciate West Tech coming as well.

It would have really been it would have been easy for West Tech not to come and do that meeting uh with the city, and and that meeting for those of you who weren't in attendance really was just to let Westtech talk directly to the city rather than through us uh or through another intermediary as part of it so that the city could ask questions directly of West Tech.

And I thought they did a good job.

I think they've uh we asked them to look at everything, don't just look at the problem, go back and look at your full design uh and make sure there's nothing else that needs to be fixed while these clarifiers are down.

Uh and they did that, and they did find a couple of other areas they want to uh fix.

There's some additional structure they want to put on the rake, uh the rake arm, I believe, and maybe one other place uh in the clarifiers as part of it.

So uh I thought they did a good job of explaining that.

Uh, but likewise, it's still something you would prefer not to have to do.

It might be noted that it was a different team than the original team that came.

Yeah, essentially West Tech so uh it when this repair occurred, pulled together a team of all their leadership, all their department managers uh to to go back and look at every element of uh of uh the the design process.

At least that's the way they explained it to us.

Yeah, it it appeared they they brought the A team to uh to the game, so thank you.

Absolutely thank you for coming.

That day I see no further questions from this bench.

We'll continue with Gary's presentation.

Can I go back to the other PowerPoint?

Well, mayor and council, thank you.

Which uh I want to thank which all water partners for being here.

Thank you for bearing with us on that.

I appreciate the questions.

Um I heard some things that maybe we can talk about further.

Um here going forward because they're all very good questions.

Uh Council Member Hall Heisel to good questions.

I appreciate that.

You're not the only one that asked those, and so um we can help clarify, and I think to the manager's point, uh, if we have the opportunity through workshop to talk about uh contract terms and stipulations, I think I can kind of hit on some of those things you talked about as far as responsibilities also.

One of the things I might mention, uh, just real quick, uh, and then I'll come back to this.

Is I I wanted to just talk real quick about the value of this being a design build project, um, because ultimately what that does then is it puts the responsibility no matter where the issues are, uh it puts it back on the entire team to work that out.

I can tell you over the course of time, and and not projects this big, but when we have an issue where we traditional design bid build, and you have an issue on a project, and we're not sure if it's design or construction, there's some significant finger pointing that happens, and boy, it becomes really hard to resolve.

Um tremendous value for this being a progressive design build that all of it is under one umbrella, same team, their issue ultimately to work it out.

That's what we hired them for.

So having said all that, I would come back to um where we were.

Um, and based on my the things I discussed with this particular item, staff recommends city council approve the OSR phase three amendment and authorize the necessary signatures, and I'd certainly be happy to stand for any more questions.

Questions for staff.

Um I do have just one.

Uh, this is more direction to the city manager, and since the offer was given by Ron with which Shaw Water Partners, I think it's prudent that we have monthly reports regarding this water treatment plant, given that there will be a temporary fix to the clarifiers between now and February, um, the next report being in February, and then moving forward.

I think the community wants to have clear and consistent uh understanding of where the water treatment is and the process to final completion and in the process of full ownership of it by the citizens of Wichita.

So I would like to have monthly uh if that would be appropriate for our workshop at the beginning of the workshop, having um that report, I think that that would be appropriate.

Council members, Councilmember Ho Heisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so just want to be clear on a few things.

Um as far as working out um who covers what, the cost recovered and whatnot.

Do we have any sort of timeline as far as that settlement language?

Do we think here in a couple months?

Are we waiting until after the project is done?

I'll I'll jump in if I can, and Gary, correct me.

We are in the process of gathering all claims of actual damages.

Uh making a list of every damage we have.

Um, and in submitting that into an amended claim, there is a process then that goes through it.

I don't have a timeline, but I can get you a better timeline on that soon.

I don't know if Gary's heard any more about a timeline, but I think it's gonna be I would say months.

I mean months, and sure the short answer is months.

And the way the process works, which I'll discuss in more detail with you here in just a little bit, is it's kind of hard to predict the time.

We're gonna keep everything moving forward as we can and get the terms in place.

Uh ultimate any final number, we won't know until we're done.

Uh, so there's no way to get to that point.

It's getting the right terms in place and getting those agreed to.

The to we'll protect ourselves the best through the end.

Okay, and it sounds like they're willing to uh take ownership of that.

Um, so well, we are in talks about, and it seems like we're in a pretty good spot with is uh the cost overruns to date.

Um this contract in particular.

Uh, what else did we talk about today that we were wanting to make sure is part of the settlement claims?

Um warranties as well.

Um that's being part of the dis that's part of the discussions as well as warranty extensions.

We are currently identifying all uh costs that we feel are associated with the delay.

Um I've got a little bit more information to share with you.

What we've got some stuff I put together.

Um I think as we get that further developed, uh, especially probably in the next 30 days, be able to provide some more detail to you of what that looks like and specifically what our requests are.

Uh, but so there'd be more to come on that.

I I really I don't know that I can go through the entire list off the top of my head right now, but we'll make sure you're comfortable with what all is rolled into that request before we move forward.

Okay, if this contract doesn't pass today, what happens?

Does that mean we simply don't have any oversight?

Does the project come to a standstill until we do identify one?

Well, and the project will need to move forward.

I've got to figure out another way to fill in the gaps for the services that Garver are providing.

I I don't know how we would do that.

I don't have the staff to do that.

Um because we're trying to effectively manage two treatment plans, you know.

I we've talked about this before.

We've got staff from the very beginning that we have moved from other positions and other parts of our utility to save costs to help manage this uh over a period of time.

We have no way to I don't have staff, we have no way to manage that.

I honestly don't know what we would do.

That's the reason why we hired the owners rep to begin with, and certainly don't want to put any of us, including all of you in a bad spot, but it's necessary that we continue this contract, or we're gonna be in a bad spot as far as making sure everything gets done right going forward.

Okay, and they're gonna be out there checking everything along the way as far as the the stiffeners go, make sure that they're installed.

Um just want to rest assured that they're they're that other set of eyes that's gonna be on.

Um I just want to rest assured that they're they're that other set of eyes that's gonna be on the all the identified issues that we've had with this plant so far.

Correct, and I'll just put a quick finer point on that.

Ultimately, the responsibility is still with the design build team uh and the joint venture.

It's their responsibility to design a repair uh to make the plant operational.

Uh we feel comfortable so far with what we've seen, including in the workshop that we had with them.

Um I feel better knowing what the issue was, as unfortunate as it is that there is a fix going forward.

Ultimately, it's not Garver's responsibility, nor is it our staff to fully certify that that's the right design.

That's their responsibility.

What we can do uh is make sure that they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do.

That's ultimately what it's there for, and that there are no major acceptance.

That exceptions, that's the role of our owners rep, that's the role of our staff.

Um licensed professional engineers, whether it's through West Tech or anybody else as part of the joint venture, it's ultimately their responsibility for that final design and make sure it performs as it's intended to.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Tuttle.

Thank you.

Just to clarify, and thank you to um everyone involved today and for all the great information going back to the purpose of this agenda item.

It was to the for the contract with Garver.

And you mentioned this, I don't know, a long time ago when we started talking about this topic today.

Is it industry standard to have an owner's rep on a project such as this?

It is.

I'm not aware of probably even regardless of the size of municipality.

Um I think you would see this everywhere.

And we have owners' rep on other projects that we have underway right now, too.

Yeah, and we've used Garver before, such as the baseball stadium back in 2019-2020.

They're also the owner's rep for the work that'll eventually move forward with the current water treatment plan.

And when using an owner's rep, have we seen savings on projects?

Um I can't tell you right off the top of my head that we've been able to necessarily um show that specifically, uh, but but sure, I think we could dig in in multiple areas.

Um there's uh, you know, Mark mentioned there's there's thousands of documents more than that over the course of a project like this, where um if we really dug in and and pulled those things out, we could show that there were cost savings as a result of their expertise in being a part of the project and everything that comes with that.

Yeah, and I think a says it savings of time and treasure, right?

Which are both equally important to us.

Thank you, Gary.

Appreciate all your work on this today.

Mayor, I might add one quick clarification just of something you heard.

I want to make sure we're on the same page.

Um the plan is only to fix one clarifier, the temporary fix.

I just want to make sure everybody do it knew that.

Um, as we start getting our folks involved with operations and understanding how the plant works, there will be some value in them uh operating that clarifier, kind of see how some things work with some chemical mixes in the process itself.

And and ideally, what we saw what our partner's goal is is to repair it to simulate what the permanent repairs will be.

So it also gives us all kind of an idea here on a trial basis of how this is gonna work.

So it just I just and I may I just want to make sure everybody is clear, it's just the one one clarifier, keep moving forward to try to get the rest of them you know headed towards repair and replacement.

And can I get clarification that uh Wichita Water Partners can do a monthly update regarding the water treatment plant, with the first one being in February once the temporary uh fix to one clarifier clarifier will be completed?

We got confirmation uh of these monthly reports so that again the council is aware and community is aware where we're at with a new water treatment plant.

Um I do have a question for law regarding this uh proposal before us.

This is regarding Garver.

Um I wanted to know because in our reported specifically states, city staff are negotiating a settlement claim with the design build contractor that includes recovering extended OSR costs, and the OSR costs currently that we're asked to uh consider is 769,446.

In my motion, may I um how can I word it so that the 769,446 is part of the laundry list of damages that we will be seeking from um the design build contractor.

Mayor, that's an interesting question.

I mean, I I would say that today's motion is just to approve the extension of this contract.

I think you can give us direction in other ways at other times that this be included in damages.

Um, just direction from the bench.

I just don't know that that would necessarily tie it to this motion.

That's my thought.

Um, if you want, you can just make a motion or comment to for staff to pursue all damages.

I want to make sure that that is something that is on record, that we want to seek the 769,446, but in the motion, so that the motion, as I mentioned, I want to make sure that this council is being held to account that we will be asking those specific dollars in addition to many other damages, but these in particular, since again, city staff is still negotiating with the contract.

I think then, mayor, you can make a motion that you know follows the recommended motion and say and direct staff to pursue this extended cost as part of the city's claim for damages because I will not be comfortable moving this motion as is unless there is a specific um claw that says that we will specifically be asking for the 769 449 in addition to many other damages.

Yeah, I think you could just add that language into the motion then and direct staff or request staff to add this amount into the city's um claims for damages.

Thank you.

I see no further questions from this bench.

We will now open it up for public comment.

I see no one from the public who would like to address this topic.

We will bring it back to the bench.

With that, I will move that the city council approve the OSR phase three contract amendment and authorize the necessary signatures and direct staff to pursue these specific dollars, which is 769,449 in claim in damages, in addition to others that we will be adding to the claim.

Mayor, can you repeat the motion?

Again, it's the same motion, but the addition of directing staff to pursue the additional 769,449 specifically in the claim.

Clarification before I would second something.

If staff, let's say, cannot add it to the settlement of the claim.

Would this nullify the agreement that we would enter into we come back and visit with you about that council if that's the case?

So you come visit us about the latter part that the mayor added, not the parent contract.

Correct.

Then I would feel comfortable seconding that second.

Motion and a second, Councilmember Tuttle.

Just to clarify, can you vice mayor?

Can you please repeat what you recommended or the action that we're actually voting on?

Because I agree.

I think the contract with Garver is different than seeking the other funds.

My understanding from legal would be that the mayor, the mayor's motion would allow us to continue to enter the agreement with Garber, even if it wasn't added to the motion, it just direct staff to negotiate it.

That's what I was gonna ask.

Is it and I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep up, but is it better to not have it be a part of the motion and just have it be a direction from staff just to keep it clean?

I don't want that.

I want it in the motion.

But the contract with Garver is different than this.

It's kind of adding apples and oranges in one bucket.

We could still direct staff, and it would this is a public meeting, so it absolutely goes on record, and it would be in the minutes, but I think it's just a little unsettling for me for a contract with Garver to have something woven into it that has nothing to do with Garver.

It's completely out of your control, then we'd have to come back here and renegotiate the contract again.

If we did it as two separate items, you'd get the same outcome, but it would be must much less cumbersome.

But tell me if I'm wrong, Jennifer, please.

Well, I mean, you could do it either way.

I think to the vice mayor's question, I think we can come back if there is an issue where we can't or there's some issue to raise.

We'll do we'll just we'll visit with you.

And it wouldn't affect the GARBA contract.

That's my take on this time.

If that's your take, I'll stand with the second.

Okay.

I just want to make completely sure that we're not, like I said, weaving one problem into another.

I want that in particular because I want it to stay in the public sphere for conversation, not in executive session, but rather that this is something we are specifically asking for, as this is something that again would not be happening if we actually had a water treatment plant that we would have ownership over, which would have been back in April 1st of 2025.

So I want to make sure that this remains in the public sphere so that there can be public engagement on it.

So I have a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Approved that pursuant to section 2.04.090, Councilmember Shepherd's travel expenses as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend NLC's Congressional City Conference in Washington DC March 15th through the 18th, 2026 for the purpose of representing the City of Wichita by meeting with federal officials consistent with AR 3.1 be approved.

I move to approve that item.

Second.

Motion and a second, any further discussion.

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Council member appointments and comments.

Council members, I did not send you the email, but I wanted to let you know that I will be appointing someone from Cedric County's motion or appointment.

Cedric County District 4 appointed Sarah Haymaker to the Food and Farm Council.

So I move to approve that.

Motion and a second, any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Council members' comments.

I see none.

Oh, I see Councilmember Todd.

Thank you.

I just wanted to um give a shout out.

I was quite honored on Saturday.

I had the opportunity to treat to travel with Wichita to fire fire department chief snow, and we met um uh Kansas Senator Stephen Owens, and we did a presentation at the Kansas Firefighters Association on our wellness initiatives, specifically the cancer screening initiative.

Um had we went over on time because we were getting so many questions.

Um, just something that um I think many fire departments across the state were interested in learning about, and we have committed to be a resource if anybody wants more information.

Just a reminder to my colleagues and to the community who may be watching.

We received the which city of Wichita Fire Department received 150,000 dollars from the Kansas Health Foundation, and that money is to develop a strict strategic plan to help us sustain this project within the city of Wichita Fire Department, but then also make it replicable across the state.

Um so it was just a really good opportunity for the city of Wichita to be highlighted at state conference, and thank you to Chief Snow and to Senator Owens for letting me be a part of it.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is very trivial trivial.

However, I played golf Sunday afternoon, hats and gloves, and uh I was in a group that had two hole in ones on one hole.

It's only one in 17 million chance that happens.

You have a bet no, I was not.

Although I did birdie it.

I did birdie it and took third on that hole.

But uh, it's extremely rare.

You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than that happening.

So uh probably should have bought a lottery ticket.

But uh congratulations to Leroy Leap and uh and Mike McMillan, who both had a hole in one very nice congratulations to your teammates.

Um, and I just wanted to just say thank you to all who organize MLK events over the past weekend.

Uh several council members were in attendance in these events, and I just wanted to say thank you to community members for organizing those in memory of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

With that, I will move to oh no, uh, we have executive session.

I cannot adjourn this meeting.

I request um I actually sorry, I move that the city council recess into executive session for 40 minutes to receive information on a construction contract pursuant to KSA seventy-five dash forty-three nineteen B two for legal consultation with the city attorney, which would be deemed privileged in the attorney client relationship for legal advice.

The executive session is required to protect attorney client privilege and the public interest.

This executive session will begin at eleven fifty a.m.

Um, and conclude at twelve thirty.

Is that right?

Uh mayor, I might suggest if we're gonna shorten that to thirty minutes given some of the previous conversation.

Shorten it to 30 minutes.

Are you guys okay with 30 minutes instead of 40 minutes?

With that, I will say the executive session will begin at eleven fifty a.m.

and end at 1220 p.m.

The meeting will resume in council chambers.

Second.

Motion second.

Further discussion.

None.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes seven zero.

We'll see you in four minutes.

Thank you.