The Wichita City Council met on March 24, 2026, for a regular meeting that included updates on the water treatment plant clarifier repairs, a comprehensive presentation on 21st century policing technology, a detailed report on downtown paid parking implementation, a review of the 2025 Polco community survey results, and an initial budget forecast for fiscal year 2027. The meeting also addressed ongoing legal discussions regarding plant delays and included citizen-facing data on crime prevention and parking enforcement.
To provide an update on which how water works where we're out on repair of the clarifiers in particular, which hot water partners is here. He'll provide details here in just a moment. So we have May with Saltwater Partners made some temporary repairs to one of the six clarifiers so that we could uh bring the plant back online. Simulate what the permanent repair will do. So that clarifier has been operational. One of the things that's done by us is to start getting our staff accustomed to operating the plant. So they've been able to be at the controls more than in the past, which is real value to us. We can start seeing what how this new how the repair clarifier is going to work. So we do have water running through the plant. Um permanent repairs are underway. Ron will talk about details. That's all that's starting moving forward a lot more here in the coming months. Um, and hopefully sometime by this summer, and you can talk about that timeline too sometime this summer. We expect to have all of our permanent repairs done. Um start looking at uh performance testing again and see what we can do get to the point of having the plant fully online. As of now, as I mentioned before, the plan is still a responsibility of Wichita Water Partners until it says time that we get through all these repairs, all of the testing, agree that it's time for the city to take it over. So, with that, I'm gonna return it over to Ron. Thank you, Gary. Uh Mayor, members of the council, uh, Ron Coker with Burnson McDonald and Wichita Water Partners, project executive for Wichita Water Partners. I'm gonna give you a quick update again. Uh just like last month, we'll uh we'll walk you through uh the status of each of the clarifiers. Uh easier to do it by clarifier now than by activities. So uh you're gonna see a lot of slides that that work through this same progression uh as we go forward in the next couple of months. Uh for the first uh for SEC one. Uh we've completed wash down activities on that clarifier, uh wash the old lime scale out from previous activities. Uh mixer inspection is complete. Uh no required repairs required. Let me make a clarification on that. There's a we have a standard repair procedure uh from WestTech, the clarifier vendor that uh when looking at the that uh the mixers remember when we talked about the failure, uh part of it was interference of the mixer with the upper draft tube. So there was concern that had we done any damage to the bottom of the mixer uh where that interference occurred. We got a repair uh process and uh observation process or determination process from West Tech that indicates if there's uh any more than a sixteenth of an inch of material loss, it requires a repair. Uh that process is still being considered by the city uh as to whether that's adequate or not, uh, or that amount of material loss is adequate or not. So when I say on these slides, no repairs required. I'm simply saying that there is not any uh there's not any material loss greater than a sixteenth of an inch in line with the repair procedure that uh we've been given by the vendor. Uh city will continue to look at that, uh, and I'm sure if there's changes, we'll uh next month when that occurs. Uh coding identifications are complete, coatings repairs are ongoing. I will also just uh uh for a point of clarification on the coatings. There are a lot of individual coating repairs uh on some of these clarifiers. Uh the team continues to look at are there better ways to handle the coating uh to speed the process up. Uh very weather dependent, uh, as you might uh imagine trying to do coatings uh in place. Uh so uh so if we have any optimization on that, likewise we'll give you an update next month uh on that process as it occurs. Uh SEC number two, washdown is is ongoing. Uh the mixture inspections are complete again. No uh requires identified uh encoding identifications uh will start after washdown. SEC number three. Uh we've completed the washdown. This will be the first SEC put back in the actual operation uh for uh testing, uh, which should uh repairs uh I'll give you an update on on that here on the last slide related to the upper draft too. Uh coding identification identifications are complete, and we're ongoing with coding repairs, and then we're also looking at the rate round modifications on this clarifier right now, since it's the first to uh or will be the first to complete. Here we are with SEC four. Uh again, wash down's complete, no requires uh repairs required on the mixture inspection.