Wait, we're missing mask.

Yes.

This is a dead point.

Thank you.

Can you please roll the video?

Thank you for attending today's city council meeting.

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.

Good morning, Wichita, and good morning to all of you.

Welcome to City Hall.

I will call this meeting to order.

With us this morning is Pastor Amy Lippold with Wichita First United Methodist Church to provide our invitation.

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

Good morning, Mayor.

Good morning, Council, good morning, everyone.

Will you pray with me?

Holy God, whose name is love, whose presence is love, whose purpose is love.

God whose will is love, whose way is love, center us in your love this morning.

Remind us that you are here working for good in the world.

Remind us that we are yours, beloved and blessed by you, our creator and our God.

We trust in you, God, and we pray this morning for the work of this city council for the decisions they'll make today.

We pray for their wisdom as they steward resources.

We pray for their boldness as they make decisions for our common good.

We pray for their understanding, their patience, their problem solving, their persistence, their hopefulness.

God preserve and protect them in their work.

Bless their families and their homes.

Give them peace as they work to serve this city.

God, we pray this morning for our neighbors, those whose names we know and those whose names we don't.

We ask for your intervening grace, especially for those in our city who face problems they don't know how to solve.

Send them help, God, from our hands or for the hands of others.

As decisions are made here, remind us all of our neighbors, the rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, the lifelong resident and the newcomer.

Wichitans like us and one so different from us, all brought together in this beautiful city we call home.

God, we thank you today for Wichita and all the blessings we find here.

Thank you for the work you've given us to do today and help us do it with grace.

Amen.

Liberty and justice for all.

I move to approve the minutes of regular meeting July 7th, 2026.

Second.

Motion second discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Awards and proclamations.

Today's proclamation is Park and Recreation Month.

May please ask Park and Recreation to come forward at this time.

Whereas parks and recreation are an integral part of the Wichita community, promoting health and wellness by improving physical and mental health, encouraging active lifestyles and providing accessible spaces for recreation, social connection, and overall well-being.

Whereas parks and recreation programs support youth development and lifelong learning through out-of-school programming, youth sports, nutrition services, and educational opportunities that strengthen families, children, and communities.

Whereas parks and recreation contribute to Wichita's economic vitality through increased property values, tourism, business attraction and retention, and safer, more vibrant neighborhoods.

Whereas Wichita's Park and Natural Recreation Areas preserve the ecological beauty of our community, provide opportunities for residents and visitors to connect with nature and recreate outdoors, and serves as an essential infrastructure that supports environmental stewardship, community resilience, and quality of life.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month.

Park and Recreation Director, Reggie Davidson.

Thanks, Mayor Wuhan Council.

Just want to take an opportunity to say that we appreciate the proclamation today and to thank all of the team that's behind us here that does all of the hard work every day behind the scenes.

And oftentimes we only hear when there's things not going well, but there are a lot of things that are taking place in our community that are gathering spaces and creating opportunity for us to have a better quality of life to make Wichita a better place to work, play, and to live.

So thanks again today, and we're appreciated and look forward to continue to provide spaces for our community to enjoy this for you.

So thank you again for showing our community these wonderful events.

With that, I would like to invite the Wichita United FC 2012 Blaze Academy, the newest champions of the U.S.

Youth Soccer 2026 President's Cup U-14 Girls National Championships.

So first I would like to say thank you to Visit Wichita and Striker Sports Complex for hosting the national championship this past week.

The city had the opportunity to bid for this championship game, the President's Cup, and we were able to secure this for three years this year, next year, and 2028.

And it was so wonderful to be able to go and support our visit Wichita team, our Wichita community, our sports community, and then be able to witness these young ladies win the national championship.

So congratulations to our young athletes, our coaches, their family members and supporters on this wonderful accomplishment, won through a lot of hard work and perseverance.

So I'm going to ask the coach to come say a few words.

But these girls had a goal set in mind, and they went out and set it by winning state, by winning regionals, and fortunate enough to come back here and win nationals in front of Wichita and the community and bring that trophy home for the first time.

It's a very proud moment for me being raised in Wichita, being a local player, playing college here, playing pro here.

It's a great honor for this for this group and this club that is uh excuse me.

Started by a George here.

Uh George, I'd like you to come up and say a few words because you you've started all this, and I want a little bit of recognition for George as well.

Jamie, I I definitely didn't have anything prepared either, but I don't want to take away from the accomplishment of these girls have.

And uh we are a Wichita United Football Club started as a five or six girls 12-15 or 12 to 14 years ago, and now we're about 600 families strong.

And to be able to showcase our talent in front of a national audience uh this weekend at the tournament, what an incredible accomplishment and what our roots and and our leaders and our families, and we really truly make Wichita United what it is to Wichita United.

Thank you.

This is the girl.

No, this is yours.

Oh my god.

Can we get a quick picture?

You should be in the middle of the girls or in the middle of the book.

You're I did not exist.

Great job.

Again, congratulations to the Wichita United FC 2012 Blaze Academy champions for the United States President's Cup U 14.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

From the city's recently adopted civility pledge, the city council is committed to promote promoting civility.

They stand united, they lead with respect and dignity, and they honor every resident and all communities.

They are working to create an environment that values shared goals with increased empathy and genuine dialogue.

We now come to public agenda.

The public agenda allows 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 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 is necessary.

Speakers will please speak into the microphone.

Please state their name and address for the record.

A time clock will display the speaker's remaining time to speak.

Order and rules of decorum will be observed.

The first speaker is Nancy Brown.

Local campaign funding.

And I'm here today as a representative of the League of Women Voters of Wichita Metro to bring attention to the potential harm of big money in local elections.

The Wichita Metro League has conducted an extensive study on the sources of funding for local campaigns, and all of you have received a copy of this report.

We looked at whether some donors were making donations through multiple corporations in which they had a major interest in order to contribute beyond the allowed limit.

We found this to be the case, though none of the donating corporations were founded specifically for the purpose of making those donations.

We also attempted to identify whether those donors received benefits from the city after their candidates were elected, which might suggest a return on their investments.

We found no evidence of this in publicly available sources.

On the basis of our findings, the Wichita Metro League once again expresses concurrence with the position of the League of Women Voters of the United States, which reads at LWV, we are committed to creating a more transparent and equitable small dollar funding system for elections.

So all voters are valued no matter how much they can contribute to the candidate of their choice.

Doing this makes sure that candidates are elected on their positions instead of their funds, and that communities are empowered over organizations.

Additionally, we have developed a local league position approved by our membership.

We advocate for a tightening of the current Wichita ordinance number 52-355 to eliminate bundling of corporations or reinstatement of ordinance number 52-316 banning donations by corporations and public action committees.

Given that some candidates in the last city council election were unaware of the local ordinance, we wanted to make sure that the current and future candidates are made aware of this existing local ordinance 52-355, which was adopted in March of 2024.

That ordinance requires candidates for Wichita City Council and Mayor to submit to the city clerk a copy of the state mandated financial reports with the addition of a column noting at least one owner of each corporation from which a donation was received.

This requirement will help campaign treasurers identify when corporations are being bundled so a single donor can covertly contribute more than the limit set by local ordinance.

So why does this matter?

The National League position makes several points regarding campaign funding methods, including that they should protect representative democracy from being distorted by big spending in election campaigns and ensure transparency and the public's right to know who is using money to influence elections.

Money influences whose story gets told.

It shapes both where voters and counter candidate information and how widely that information is distributed, since access depends on how much each campaign can spend across different platforms.

While big money does not guarantee a successful campaign, as seen in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race involving donations from Elon Musk, it does by a level of visibility across all media for some candidates that many other perhaps more qualified candidates are unable to match.

Whether when a campaign relies on large donations, it inevitably raises doubts, fairly or not, about whether the successful candidate will prioritize the concerns of corporate donors over those of constituents.

That perception alone erodes public trust.

We see this dynamic at every level of government, including here in Wichita.

Democracy works best when voters believe their voices matter as much as the largest campaign donate donation.

Continuing and enforcing for the current local ordinances to enhance election integrity will help level the playing field for all candidates and help citizens begin to regain trust in their elected officials.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual?

Andrew Crean, sidewalks and APS systems app.

Good morning, City Council and City Manager.

ICT supporting the blind and uh low vision community at uh 300 uh West Douglas Avenue, suite number 405.

Um my question, and I was at a uh NFB National Federation of the Blind uh conference, and uh we were talking to one of the reps and uh about traffic lights, and uh there was a app that uh would be convenient, and the rep is actually here in Wichita, and the company is actually here in Wichita.

And my question to you is why haven't we got with that rep and pushed for uh the push buttons and getting it more accessible to the blind and low vision and the disability community and pushing for that and getting that rep to uh you know help us out and getting getting all of the push buttons to where it needs to be up to ADA standards and getting it rocking and rolling.

And I I would like to see the city council push for that.

And the city manager too.

Because it's gonna help out a lot of people here in Wichita.

And help out the disability community and the downtown core area too.

So that's uh that that is my question, and uh if somebody can get back with me, that would be great.

Thank you, Andrew.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the next individual?

Sarah Cowling, homelessness.

Good morning.

My name is Sarah Cowling.

I am um District 2.

My address is 2116 South Seneca, apartment 302.

Um, I've been here a couple times now.

I think we speak on the same thing.

I just want to like to say thank you for always providing a place where I'm able to continually learn and exercise my right as a witch tongue to be heard and acknowledged.

I feel that in the last year there has been an amazing attitude of growth on both sides.

I get excited when I look through my storylines, not only here but across the nation, showing this is not just a me problem but an us challenge.

When I first came here, I was late and never spoke.

I talked to people on the way here who I knew would be affected by the changing of the ordinance, but I had no idea how many people outside of us would be interviewed into future solutions in twin and future solutions.

15 minutes before I spoke, I lost a friend of mine.

His well, he passed away earlier that morning, but his mother came to call to notify he was unhoused.

So many times I would talk to people and they would nod and say that those were great ideas, but you'll never get anyone to change anything.

Several meetings later, and many outreaching calendars, things have changed.

Unfortunately, I'm speaking right after another and then unhoused friend of mine passed away.

Um I have talked to you about Shapin.

I have talked to you about the tree lines on South Seneca.

My friend Steve Schultz lived on the tree lines for over a year and a half.

I moved into my apartment, and my landlord introduced me to somebody that he came in and he would help around the property.

He had no identification, but he was always helpful.

Um she asked me to see if we could maybe help him get services, and we'd started to get his identification.

Although he just kind of never thought he was like the forefront and he stepped back.

Um we had some hangups and we see the organization have learned to making alternate routes.

Through the winter, he shoveled snow.

He didn't have a job, but he daily cleaned the lots in exchange for meals and cool air.

When the anti-camping enforcement officer started going up and down Seneca, he had a spot where he'd been there for over a year.

He had property, he had permission from the property owner adjacent to where he was, and even the scrapyard where he was also next to my boyfriend works there, and the foreman introduced came over to the side where he was at and introduced him and said, Hey, he's not a problem.

But when people started moving them, more people congregated to the area that he was at.

And there's probably 11 people that were just pushed out there again.

His camp was bulldozed last week, and he passed away this week, this weekend.

He was one of the two people that they found under the bridge at Pontium McLean.

Um they speak about root causes of homelessness, drugs, and mental health.

They are co-occurring, but rarely are they the identifying cause.

Imagine being in a place where you work so hard to keep and you lose everything.

I mean, the mental health isn't something that is biological, it is something that is situational.

Depending on what you believe, our life experience will put us on a path that we may not know completely why we work so hard, only to find ourselves with nothing left.

But every event in our life is a life lesson to build our personal story.

We have addressed Chapin Park and Tent City or Narnia.

Um I was down there when the uh police chief came and they had a walkthrough, and they said that about 24th of next month is their lookout date to have those people cleared out.

99% of the people there, we have signed up for services, but as far as case management and getting them housing.

Sorry.

The case management, we don't have enough case managers to get the people that were vouchered.

So we are leaving probably 70% of them still unhoused, that we'll have to find somewhere else to go.

You put that in effect with the people that are along the tree lines and just where like Pepsi, um we've gone down there to help move them, and then where they've moved, they've got moved again.

I understand that the anti-camping policy, I understand that, but camping to me infers that this is recreational.

These people are just survival.

I'd like to come forth with more solutions because we've closed Shapin.

We are gonna have so many people out on the street, and we can't just keep moving them around.

People are dying, people are going to jail, and we're wasting a lot of taxpayers' money just on trespassing tickets and warrants for people missing court.

Um I know I actually ran my time through, but second light opened up following the emergency realtor shelter with 130 beds set aside as program beds, and the fear was that if we opened up those beds for just the overnight beds, nobody would utilize those services.

We have people that need services and they need to get in there before they can utilize their services.

I think if they have that option, they're going to use them.

I just asked that we have continuing talks about Chapin and all these other places before we go full force closing them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

Madam Clerk, please call the next individual.

Roger Dorping House zoning and other cities and duplexes.

Thank you, Mayor, Council members.

I appreciate your service to the community.

It's very important to me, important to everybody's here.

I did uh get a handout for you guys that uh showed a newspaper article uh that was going on in uh other communities around us.

I think there's three Goddard, Derby, and another one might have been Mays, I forget now.

Um I'd like for you guys to maybe set up a group to uh look into controls and systems for duplex development.

Um most of those things are due with major developments are going on.

Um I think the real thing is to uh look at what is available for the communities are involved.

I do appreciate the whole system where we can talk to the uh district advisor board and how that we can also come and uh talk to the planning department.

They've been very, very helpful.

Uh planning department is wonderful here.

Um I I do disagree with them at times and stuff, but but they're good folks.

Um, and I don't see my clock, so I apologize.

But thank you.

But um anyway, uh I think the system you have is is wonderful.

I I do like the uh uh planning commission that we have, and that we're allowed to talk before them and and how that in the process it allows for uh supermajority for the vote, and that that's also a wonderful aspect of this, so that each council member can look at the situation for the community and not just rely on one organization, one department.

I think it's a wonderful thing we have in our system, and I and I uh I like that.

What I would want to uh specifically talk about on these things were where they had um uh tornado shelters and and in large developments that would be part of it, that uh every home that's on a slab that it be have a tornado shelter built on it.

If it has basement necessary, that's part of it.

Uh the styles for the front of the buildings would be not cookies stuttered or uh uh oligarch Russian styling, uh, where they're all the same.

Also where the percentages of the front of the buildings are, uh, not just all garage, but have a frontal appearance for the property.

Um how that also fits in the community.

I think that's the biggest thing because we are a wichita community, and in my neighborhoods, we have two HOAs that are uh very active as communities and we're blessed to have them, and they have uh their own real restrictions on stuff.

But um, and I think the real thing is that when we're looking at these items, we want to concentrate on the community's prosperity and existence and not the profit and prosperity of a single developer.

When we go and do something and we're always concerned about everybody wants to have more housing, that's great.

We like to be homeowner housing, it's our preference, but but uh people have to rent and and get involved with it.

Our uh community is is very active in helping people when they when they have problems or snow removal stuff like that, it's all there.

Um but I but I do uh I do appreciate the time you guys gave me and uh I do I do thank you for your service.

And if if if uh I have an item on the agenda that I'm personally attached to, so if it comes up and you have any questions, I would love to talk to them.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Roger.

Madam Clerk, please call the next individual.

Max Timsaw, Mayor's Youth Council in the budget.

Good morning, council, and thank you for your continued support.

I'm Max Timsaw, this year's Wichita Youth Mayor, and a senior at Wichita Collegiate School, residing at 8805 East Bradford Circle in the amazing District 2.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Alina Lee Wynn, this year's Wichita Mayor's Youth Council Vice Mayor, and a senior at Wichita East High School.

Today I am here with a few members of the NYC executive team.

Clerk of Council Alina Guo, Public Information Officer Audrey Wynn, and Special Events Coordinator Allegra Fazio, along with this year's Youth Mayor.

We are standing here to ask the City Council to include the Wichita Mayor's Youth Council in its fund appropriations for the city's coming fiscal year budget.

Starting in 2008 with by Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, the city itself defines us as a council created to give Wichita High School students a voice in local government and community issues.

But to the nearly 400 NYC alumni this program has produced, it means so much more than that.

In my four years on the council, NYC has brought me lifelong friends, priceless resume experience, and personal fulfillment beyond my imagination.

But while I could spend hours recounting what MYC has given me, I'd rather spend this time today speaking about what we've provided for the people of the City of Wichita in asking it to reciprocate support for us.

Holding meetings right here in City Hall, we are more than familiar with the priorities of our local government.

Crime, streets, economic development, and housing.

Crime.

In holding unity in the community events to share resources on drug abuse and domestic violence prevention, incubating fight fentanyl projects, serving on the mayor's violence prevention roundtable, meeting with WPD and more.

Streets, in consulting with parks and recreation and outside urban planners to provide insight into how youth are using city infrastructure, advocating for appropriate public transportation, posting road safety content far as far back as 2010 and more.

Economic development.

And in the National League of Cities Conference, where we represent Wichita Well fellow while fellow American cities exchange ideas for cost-effective, sustainable solutions to municipal problems, which leads to real savings in our city.

Lastly, housing.

A conservative guest puts our members together, contributing around 12,000 total hours per year of NYC work.

At a national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, it would cost the city $87,000 annually just to retain our members, much less to pay for the clothing and food we donate, the filming equipment we purchase and maintain, the gas prices for commutes, and the dinners eaten in our cars after sports practice, extracurriculars, and six to eight p.m.

meetings with no provided food.

All of these costs are shouldered by working teens who expect nothing in return but the chance to be heard by our local government.

We think it's time that the city hears us in a different way.

For years, we've been relying on a dwindling fund donated by Spirit in 2008, continuously subjected to the generosity of the amazing parks and recreation department to give us money that wasn't appropriated for our group.

And in this last year, we've already lost meeting food, council conference travel, and expendable project funds.

Today we are asking for the $87,000 to be compensated for our work.

We know that our public service doesn't come with a salary, but we will ask for this.

To send six of our members of our executive council to the DC National League of Cities Congressional Conference with hundreds of other mayors youth councils, like we have done since 2008, at a price of 2500 per person and a total of $15,000, to provide $500 per issue group and a thousand dollars for a councilwide project initiatives totaling $3,000, to provide NYC year to all of the members for city-sponsored events totaling $1,500, and lastly to provide pizzas at meeting at a price of $18.99 per pizza for the year totaling $2,000.

We are asking for $25,000 in appropriated funds for the coming year of NYC operations as a trial for the public funding mechanism we know we need to excel impartially.

We're taking active steps to cut costs by introducing fees for gear, maintaining a down payment for the NLC trip, and we plan to revise our funding requests in coming years to maintain fiscal responsibility.

Council, this program catapults students every year to make real change in our Wichita community, attend top colleges like Yale, UCLA, Howard, Johns Hopkins, and more, and return to enrich Wichita in the future.

We urge that this funding request continue to be considered in further appropriations.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Max and Alina.

All five spots have now been taken for public agenda.

Council members will now have comments, beginning with Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you to Mayor's Youth Council.

Thank you for your presentation.

That's the first time that I've heard a request from Mayor's Youth Council.

And I know that I didn't make a request when I was in the organization.

And so I'm glad that you guys had the boldness to be able to do it today as well.

I would be interested if you could provide some additional data, everything that you provided then.

Also provide maybe what comparable cities that have mayor's youth councils also fund, and then maybe some plans for private funding that you guys would also be happy to attend any of those meetings as well to help leverage that.

So if you could buy a follow-up to that, uh that would be really helpful.

And then maybe obviously we have limited um assets in the city, and so uh where those funds should come from and ideas and suggestions that you have as well, I think would be helpful to that.

Um I'm glad that you guys did all this number calculation, and I think we should invest in young talent.

Um, often we have a lot of programs to invest in at-risk youth, which is very needed, but we should also be keeping our young talent in Wichita as well.

And I've noticed um over the last decade, a lot of the programs to keep young town in the community have dwindled in funds, and um I think that's a detriment to see people move outside of our community.

So thank you for your comments today.

Councilmember Shepard.

Thank you, Mayor.

I want to echo the sentiments of my colleague, Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Um, I I think it's really important to invest in the future of our city, and that's exactly why Vice Mayor Glasscock and I worked to ensure that you all had a voice on the district advisory board and fully supported by the mayor's youth council through the ordinance change.

I would like to ask that you all come back with an actual budget.

Um, and then also to Vice Mayor Glock Glasscock's point, um, very similar to what we ask other departments, right?

If how are you going to sustain this?

So, what are you going to do to ensure that you are building your reserves and also uh when there is a rainy day in City Hall and we can't allocate as much as we may give you this first go around?

How are you going to make sure that there are reserves in your budget to offset that deficit?

Um, and then finally, I would love to see more data on the outcomes that you already mentioned.

I love that you talked about the success from HB from your members going to HBCUs to Ivy League colleges, maybe even talking about some of the success stories of how many of them are now utilizing some of the experiences that they have through the Mayor's Youth Council to get back to the city.

We see many of them doing that now, uh, right here on the bench.

And so would love to hear that, but please know that I'm very supportive.

And uh, for everyone watching, this is how you do it.

Uh, I tell people all the time that you have to make the ask, even if the ask is no.

Um, my father would tell me a closed mouth doesn't get fed.

So thanks for speaking up and saying I'm hungry, I have a happen an appetite, and I want to get it done.

Um, city manager, in regards to the homelessness at Chapin Park, um, Sarah, thank you for always coming and for sharing.

Uh, Donna, we got your email today.

I feel very strongly about this as well.

Um, are we housing everyone who is in the encampment at Chapin Park?

Presently, meaning we've done um resource awareness with the current residents who are there.

We do have time, we've ramped this up since May to start this conversation, um, but we cannot say that everyone there has housing, which is why we still have uh about a month or so that we're talking about before we do the full encampment um review.

And so we are working on housing for those who are willing and offering different services.

Thank you, City Manager.

I would request that at some point we have a larger conversation about how we are being effective and clearing out the park and ensuring every resident is being guided and guided into the resources that they need.

Um, I shared this with you privately, I'll share it publicly, that I'm not going to be supportive of anything that comes before the bench that has a price tag on it related to the encampment if we are not effectively able to use whatever resources that might be available to ensure everyone is guided into the resources with humanity and dignity.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh appreciate the little presentation uh from the mayor's youth council.

Always appreciate seeing you all how hard you work and actually participate in some of the things that we do.

Um, and also I just wanted to give a little shout out to Alexa back in the back row.

She is a senior at Cape Inn and she is part of the Way to Work Youth uh Program stationed at Evergreen the library.

It's a city program that hires youth through uh uh the summer, and her sister is also employed through the program.

So um I hope you have a great summer and enjoy participating in the city's events.

And lastly, city manager, I have a couple of things from our public agenda.

Number one, um, regarding the guiding pause requests.

Can someone please uh connect uh bids Board of Bids and Contracts so purchasing with the individuals that do the push button to speak out loud that um the signal is on the other regarding Sarah?

Um, can you please um I know that there was a request regarding signs, um, illegal camping signs.

Can you give us an update regarding those signs?

Um, and how many total encampments have been cleaned up so far this year?

And can you share the costs?

I think that is on the dashboard, and I think Reggie has that.

Um I would like the community to know just how many requests actually have come to the city, which then parks and recreation has to go in clean.

Uh, if that number could be available, that would be helpful.

And then to the request regarding um some of our duplexes.

Can you please connect the gentleman uh with MABC and all the other entities to see if there are any reasonable and common uh a common ground regarding some of the requests and lastly regarding MYC?

I'm very proud of these young leaders to ask respectfully and justify an ask in front of an adult council takes a lot of courage, and I want to say thank you first and foremost because you guys have done a lot of community service work over the last years uh since it started in 2008.

And so I would love to see um a list of alumni, just like council member Shepard said, Um, where they're at now, what they're doing with the experiences that they um received by being a mayor's youth council student.

But my request to the city manager is actually regarding civic engagement academy.

Uh, that is very in tandem with mayor's youth council.

I'd like to know the cost of putting uh together the civic engagement academy.

Um, and if there is some possibility between having someone that can lead both Civic Engagement Academy and Mayor's Youth Council within City Hall, I think that makes a lot of sense.

What these youth are doing is civic engagement at its finest, and I just think that there should be some sort of efficiency if there's uh an individual that can lead both of those um aspects of the program.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Todd.

Thank you.

Um, Mr.

Roger, I'm scared to say your last name, but um, I just wanted to let you know a couple years ago we started a guidance document on multifamily housing and guidelines so that um more people kind of like what you provided in other communities, more people um would see consistency.

Um I met with the Metropolitan Area Planning Director Scott Waidel yesterday, and thank you for the kind words about MAPD.

My friends in the back, I couldn't agree more, they do a wonderful job, and that's something that we're gonna revisit again.

So thank you for coming and spending your time and to the mayor's use camp.

Also, thank you for being here looking forward to next steps.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Consent agenda items one through 14.

Council members, are good there any items to be pulled from the consent.

Councilmember Johnston.

Mayor, thank you.

I would just note that I will be abstaining from this vote because I do not want to uh vote for the second motion for the CID for Margaritas.

I still do not believe in that, and uh so I will be abstaining from the vote.

I see no further items to be pulled.

With that, I will move to approve consent agenda items one through 14.

Second.

Motion second discussion, see none, madam clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 6-0 with one abstention.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

2027 annual operating budget and 2027 to 2036 capital improvement programs.

Good morning, Mayor and City Council.

It's a pleasure and honor be before you today to present the 2027 proposed budget and what I call the city manager's recommended budget.

I will walk through some of the details that I have for you.

Um, for those in the audience, you'll see part of the work today is by state statute.

For those in the audience, you'll see part of the work today is by state statute, we have to have a budget adopted by the end of August for a start in January 1st, 2027.

So we have a long lead time based upon state statute.

But as we approach this, I want to highlight first the work of all the departments.

And clearly our finance and budget team.

We're gonna do a two-part presentation today.

I'm gonna open up the beginning here and then ask Mark Manning, our director of finance to come forward and go through a little bit of the detail.

But certainly want to recognize Elizabeth Goldtree and our entire budget team.

You can imagine the countless hours that have been spent, certainly within the departments by the department directors and their staff, but clearly by our budget and finance team.

What the public may not know or see is that you all were delivered the uh line item details, so again, very transparent.

Um we have the proposed budget available, and it is online, and this is part of the process.

What you're also gonna get for next week is part of the budget process is the annual comprehensive financial report or the CAFE.

And so you're gonna kind of see how we did last year.

We're operating with this year's current budget, and then today we're looking ahead to the 2027 budget.

So we got a rolling financial picture going for everyone that we can see again in different documents and be very transparent.

But I want you to know is um certainly this is my first opportunity to get deep into the weeds of the city of Wichita budget as we go through and as I approach this.

Certainly looking at the budget principles that we talked about soon after I got here and back to March, where we talked as a city council with the retreat, thinking about how does the budget align to core functions, what priorities are we looking to achieve and address, what discipline do we have and looking at other funding sources?

What is our service delivery model?

What is the need for these services?

Also, how do we work with our partners, the county, the state, federal government, certainly, and other jurisdictions for jurisdictions for regional cooperation, and then certainly what is our community engagement as we put together the budget.

Looking at that, I want to highlight and certainly uh really boldly say it is a balanced budget.

Um, I will not submit to you an unbalanced budget.

Um, we do have healthy fund balances that are maintained, but you'll see that we are proposing to use some of our savings or some of our fund balance.

Key for everyone to hear is that this does support our triple A bond rating, which means that we're able to borrow at a lower expense because we have sound fiscal policies and a strong budget.

You'll see in this my proposal is that we do maintain the current mill levy from last year, which was decreased from the year before.

Um, so not an increase, not a decrease, but maintain the current mill levy, and then thinking about the future.

Our impacts today will impact how we think about the budget of 2028 and the budget of 2029.

So there's some funding concerns on the horizon that um as we talk about bringing on more staff, as we talk about getting some grants, and that could have some long-term impact on how we do our uh service delivery.

So, again, engagement.

I want folks to know that certainly the uh budget and the capital improvement program or CIP are based on engagement, community priorities, and our city strategic plan.

Um, from March to June, we had four city council workshops and one retreat.

We talked certainly about different budget items there, and then as you all participated in, we had seven community town halls that were held in May and June, and the report out from those town halls are on our transparency portal on the webpage, and we have summary meeting from all those seven community town halls.

So, the proposed budget and proposed CIP.

Um, certainly as we put together the operating budget, we are looking at an $800 million budget to run the operations for the city of Wichita.

And the budget is simply that an operations plan, how we run all of our departments, how we fund our future challenges and opportunities, but also how we communicate and articulate our priorities and our focus.

We have our capital improvement program or the CIP.

What you'll see is the first three years is what I call the action plan of community improvements that will either be designed, constructed, and hopefully a lot of cases completed, but also we have a seven-year concept plan because we're thinking 10 years out.

Clearly, prices change, project scopes change, needs change, and so we have a bit more wiggle room as we say for the last seven years.

But again, we have projects identified on the horizon so we can start planning.

And this budget development, we certainly looked at the department requests.

They all submitted a request from staffing, operations, contracts, equipment, technology, everything you can think about that it takes to run a major city in the United States.

Certainly, we try to distinguish between wants and needs.

We also reviewed the core priorities of city government.

What is our true function and what have we done in the past?

Doesn't always mean what we have to do in the future.

That is where I'll turn to you to help set those priorities as well.

And so as we evaluated those needs and functions, we came up with my proposed budget.

To give you a little bit of detail on some of the things I'm specifically recommending for the 2027 fiscal year, public safety.

When we talk about priority, all of you say it, I certainly say it that public safety is our top issue, a priority issue.

We can demonstrate that by 67% of the general fund portion.

$237 million is allocated to police and fire services.

That is a little bit of an increase, certainly from last year.

You'll see some proposals for new to support five positions and software support, excuse me, for our crime prevention tech using technology.

You'll also see that we want to start a process where we have cameras within police vehicles.

We do have body worn cameras for our police department, but also as another step to demonstrate enhanced transparency, safety, and accountability.

I am going to propose the implementation of in vehicle cameras for 50 police vehicles.

Thinking about public safety, also certainly we've all had the conversations around the online or coming online fire station number 23.

But we also now have to staff that within this fiscal year.

So we've got money identified for staffing, and then as well as a local partner, the Child Advocacy Center, increasing their funding.

They had a building expansion, but also supporting some of their efforts to serve and protect the children of our community.

Infrastructure has clearly been a conversation that we've had among the dias and with the community.

How do we invest in our roads, our streets, certainly our utilities, public works?

The budget includes 34.3 million to support our maintenance staff when we talk about different things, particularly how our parks look, what recreation programs are able to support, and then using some of our additional CIP money to maintain our facilities.

And that is 13 new positions to expand the facility.

So again, we are keeping up with our CIP or where we've done expansions.

Now we have to have the staffing to support those expansions.

Looking at some of the other things about growing our economy, one of our focuses is focused is to uh continue to enhance downtown.

We have uh continued support through millage for that, generates about 1.4 million dollars.

We certainly work with the Greater Woodshaw Partnership as they promote economic development and job growth within the community.

And then, as you see, we do make general fund contributions to our transit system.

And one of the new expansions of services is what we're calling the circulator, looking to now that we've moved the hub to the Delano, but thinking about the WSU KU Biomed Center coming online, planning for that and how we move people around downtown.

We'll have an extra bus service just for downtown.

Um, looking at livability, certainly we've talked about quality of life, and part of that goes to parks and recreation.

We've expanded or enhanced some of our community centers.

We've got great programming going on, and so we need some more staff support that I'm recommending for two of our community centers.

Also, there's certainly been a lot of interest in how we've addressed our urban tree canopy, talking about the number of tree plantings or actually even on the other side, removing stumps and dead trees.

You'll see overall our forestry funding is 4.6 million.

That does fund 34 positions, but we also use contractors.

You know, our mowing schedule in different areas that supports some of that, but we also have enhanced money, 225,000 for tree planting.

And then, as we've been talking about even today, encampments and how we address some of our camping ordinance.

We've had contractual funding, and that will remain as part of my proposed budget.

Um, talking about livable communities some more, library funding's been a big conversation.

I know that a lot of folks have advocated for library.

We've invested in our libraries over the last five plus years.

Um, this does add 375,000 to support our efforts to maintain service hours and address literacy, and so we have that included in the budget proposal for you, as well as animal control.

Thinking about our staffing and how we maintain our animal shelter.

There's 180,000 additional dollars included there to help supplement the shelter operations.

And then certainly about efficiency and accountability, our budget structured with a new focus on centralization.

How can we take some of the um work being done in the departments and have it all consolidated or centralized within our finance department?

Thinking about paying our bills, administering our contracts.

That actually is efficiency where we expect to see some financial gains in terms of reductions and some staff support in departments that we can absorb within the finance department.

So again, I want to make sure our citizens and you here that this isn't just a budget and departments aren't just asking for more money.

It is thinking about efficiency, thinking about service delivery.

What role does innovation creativity have?

What can we do for partnerships?

Certainly a lot of conversation around this dias and bench about consolidation or how can we work with our partners?

Those continue to be top of mind conversations throughout the organization.

So looking at the budget, we have again I said the millage rate, 32.340 would be maintained into 2027.

We show how the millage is broken down.

We do what we call dedicate debt service fund millage, so that we and part of you'll hear in a minute how we structure our capital improvement program is we pay half cash and we debt fund or mortgage the other half.

And so that will continue, but that's supported by the debt service fund millage.

Certainly a large um budget item is employee compensation.

So staffing costs are 72% of the general fund expenditures.

But we certainly want to have a well-trained and professional workforce to deliver the services for the citizens of Wichita.

What you'll see here is a 2.5% merit adjustment and a 2.5% pay adjustment.

These are the markers, meaning for 2027.

So everyone understands we do have contracts with our labor unions and our work groups, and so those have been factored, whatever the different contracts we have over seven labor groups that we're working with, that we have those program.

But thinking ahead, we are thinking that on average we want to keep it in the 2.5 pay range so we can control our costs going forward.

Um we also do make a significant generous contribution for group health insurance where the city provides about 80%.

Um, and then we certainly do fund our pension system fully funded, and then I am offering um in this budget a new employee benefit for a tuition reimbursement program.

That's a set aside 300,000 first come, first serve basically with a maximum of 3,000 per employee to use to advance their education pursuits that tie to their job function.

Certainly, we've had a conversation about homelessness over the last six months and beyond.

Um, this has been identified through our town halls as a priority by residents.

The uh proposed budget does include shifting some general fund dollars that we had set aside in there for homelessness, but relying more now on our stabilization fund or one of our reserve funds or savings accounts, um, and that would be one million dollars still to allocate in 2026, and then earmark or reserve four million dollars to fund our future contributions for homeless solutions going forward based upon some priority priorities and parameters established by council related to bed space or service hours or homeless served or services provided.

Um, so again, that would be shifted to our stabilization reserve fund, and we'll outline that a little bit more here.

Um I do want to ask uh Mark Manning to come forward, he'll go through some more of the detail.

But here you see the total proposed budget.

I said it's over 800 million dollars.

Um, it's 825 when you look at that for the all funds, and then when you look at where they go, again, the salaries and benefits make up a large portion of that going forward.

I will come back up at the end here, but want to invite Mark Manning to come forward to continue the presentation, and then we'll be glad to take questions.

Mr.

Manning.

Thank you, manager.

Good morning.

I'm Mark Manning with the Department of Finance.

Well, it wouldn't be a budget presentation if we didn't have a few pie charts, so I'll go through a couple of those real quick and then we'll get back to the uh regular slides.

As the manager mentioned, our total budget is roughly in the neighborhood of $800 million as shown here, and you can see that salaries is a significant portion of that.

But let's dive into the general fund.

The general fund is our primary fund that provides uh services that most residents are familiar with, police and fire and libraries and parts and things of that nature, so we tend to focus a little bit more on it.

You can see the property tax is a very significant revenue for our general fund.

That's also true of our debt service fund, which I'll talk about a little bit later.

We get a portion of the countywide sales tax, as you know, the city of Wichita does not have a sales tax, but we do receive a portion of the countywide tax, and that's about 13% of our revenue portfolio.

Finally, I'll focus on the interest earnings slice.

That's roughly 9% of our revenue portfolio.

Uh that is uh very uh good for us now, and it's financing a lot of needed services.

But as I'll get to in a little bit, we have some concerns that that pie slice might be shrinking in the future.

Let's look on the expenditure side.

The manager mentioned that about 72% or roughly three-fourths of all our expenditures are for salaries and benefits.

We are a people-intensive organization, particularly when we provide direct services to our residents, police, fire, maintenance staff, park staff, things of that nature.

Uh we also spend a significant amount on contractuals, a lot of that's things like utilities, and in some cases we use outsourced contractors, like the manager mentioned a couple examples in the forestry division.

Uh on the left-hand side there, you can see about 67% of our budget, or roughly two-thirds of every dollar is spent on police and fire.

And if you add public works and park, you get to about 84 cents of every dollar spent in those priority areas.

So, as the major noted, the budget is balanced in 2027 with expenditure growth in the neighborhood of about 1.4% or 1.8%, sorry, over the 2026 revised budget.

If you compare that to the adopted budget, uh, it's actually about 2.8%, which is to say that we've revised up a little bit in the current year based on uh some additional uh revenue that we have received and some additional needs that we wanted to address.

Uh 2028 we'll talk about a little bit later, but you can see that we expect to have some challenges in 2028.

I want to spend a few minutes on property tax because again, property tax is the most significant revenue source for both the general fund and the debt service fund.

And it's probably the one that also gets the most attention.

But not only is it our most exigant revenue source, it's also the primary driver of growth in the general fund and the debt service fund.

It's our one revenue stream that tends to grow consistently, or some of our others do not particularly interest earnings.

Uh reminder, we've kept the mill levy flat for over 30 years.

I think we were at 35 years if I remember correctly, and in fact, we reduced the mill levy last year.

So our mill levy has been very, very stable over the time period and actually has gone down over that time period.

So, how much do we expect to generate in property tax revenue in 2027?

We would expect to generate about 12.4 million dollars in additional property tax revenue, and you can see the split of that between the general fund and the debt service fund.

Uh I would point out uh that uh a lot of this is all of this is based on assessed valuation growth with a steady mill levy rate.

So I've shown you some of the components of our assessed valuation growth and what is driving that growth in property taxes, and you can see about two-thirds of it is driven by just normal inflation and new construction or expansion of the tax base.

But another uh roughly one-third or the 3.3 million dollars in the general fund is driven by reappraisal.

Reappraisal is done by the county, of course, based on state statute, and uh that means that they look at the property values of all the parcels in Wichita, which I think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 160,000 of those, and that 3.3 million is based on reappraisal efforts by the uh county appraiser, which they're required to do by statute.

So just a reminder, each mill generates somewhere in the neighborhood of five and a half million dollars.

Uh, we split that between the general fund and the debt service fund.

Uh each one percent of the valuation base generates roughly 1.6 million dollars or so.

And finally, uh, if you own a house, uh if you take your home value and break it into 100,000 dollar increments, each 100,000 increment of your house costs about 11 and a half dollars per mill.

Just uh use that kind of a little calculator if you want to figure out what you pay.

I've uh made it simple here on this slide for you though.

Uh first of all, recognize that the city of Wichita is only a small share of the property tax bill for most of our residents here in Wichita.

It's about 29% of the property tax bill that uh that a Wichita resident will get.

Uh, schools are a pretty significant uh share of that, roughly 50%.

Uh the county is uh somewhere in the neighborhood of 23%, and then there's very small levies both to support Wichita State University and for the state of Kansas.

So if you own a $200,000 home in Wichita, you would pay roughly about $744 a year to the city which dollar, roughly $2 a day.

That's based on the mill levy rate that the manager has proposed for 2027.

I would also tell you that when you get your notice from the county, each percentage that your home increases in value as determined by the county.

Uh each percentage would increase your tax bill about seven and a half dollars.

So if your house went up in value by two percent, for example, your tax bill would go up about $15.

Again, that's uh determined based on the county appraiser and based on state statute.

The manager mentioned the stabilization reserve.

We're very fortunate, and uh, due to decisions city council made several years ago, we have a very robust stabilization reserve fund, which is very important to our financial well-being.

We are coming into the year with roughly 45 million dollars in that reserve fund.

We do expect to uh spend it down strategically for a couple purposes.

We've long had three million dollars a year coming out into the general fund to stabilize the general fund over the next several years.

But as the manager noted, uh in his recommendation, he's recommending utilizing the stabilization reserve as a source for some funding for uh homelessless homelessness solutions, and you can see that coming out.

So, based on his recommendation, uh we would have a balance uh north of 30 million dollars at the end of the planning period, which is still a very healthy balance.

I noted the future challenge that we challenges that we have, and a lot of these are because we are a growing and vibrant city.

Uh sometimes that causes uh future challenges.

Uh one thing that we've uh done better this year is identify operating costs of the capital improvement program and what those future impacts could be on the operating budget.

You can see this uh slide reflects that.

Uh basically what this tells you in the general fund is uh we have uh two additional fire stations planned during the planning period, and those will have significant operating costs that will impact the general fund, particularly depending on the timing of the stations, of course.

But where we're at now, that would be expected primarily in 2030 and 2031.

I mentioned interest earnings, and you've seen this chart about 50 times, so I won't dwell on it, but suffice to say that this is another challenge that we have.

We do expect interest earnings to drop at some point, just a matter of when.

I can't tell you when uh because I've told you when in the past and I've been wrong, so I'm not going to tell you when now, but suffice to say that when interest earnings declines, that's going to be a drag on the general fund, and likely that will be sometime in the 2028 uh time period.

Uh I won't belabor star bonds.

We've talked about it a lot.

We do have some challenges there, probably in 2028 when phase one expires on the east side of the river.

Uh we have some options.

Uh, again, reminder anything that we uh spend uh to cover any debt service if we're required to would be uh something that we could recover from the star district fund at the end of the fund.

The fund life is will extend past the debt service schedule, so we have some flexibility there, or uh stabilization reserve might be an option we will review.

Again, we're a little far off from uh being too concerned about this now, other than to recognize that it is certainly something that we should be aware of and uh keep on the radar screen.

So I'll summarize the operating budget briefly.

Uh the proposed budget as the manager noted, reflects community priorities.

Uh funding is allocated to core functions.

Mill levy is consistent with last year, which is to say it maintains the tax reduction that was approved last year, and we do have some future challenges, which is uh reflective of our community, which is growing and vibrant.

Uh mayor, I have uh more slides to talk about, uh, particularly on the CIP.

If you like, I would be happy to have a pause point if you have any specific questions up to this date, or I can keep going, whichever is your pleasure.

See questions, so you can keep going.

Okay, thank you.

Uh let me shift to the CIP and then I'll finish up with just uh explaining to you the actions that we would request that you take today.

So the CIP is a 10-year plan for community improvements.

Uh it's aligned directly to the community investments plan, which used to be called the Comp Plan.

It's also directly aligned to the city's pillars, goals, and strategic plan.

Uh and it's also designed to be financially viable.

Those are the guidelines under which we design the CIP for you.

Maintenance is the priority, just like public safety is the primary priority in the general fund.

Maintenance is the primary priority of the capital improvement program.

Over half the total CIP is dedicated to maintenance.

But if you just look at local funds, which is geo debt, local sales tax, and transient gas tax, that number is about 61%.

So 61% of our local resources are dedicated to maintenance in this CIP.

The community investments plan also designates the type of project as high or very high priority.

They have lower priorities too, but approximately 71% of the capital improvement program presented to you today for consideration is in categories.

The community investments plan has as high or very high.

Those are public safety, water supply, streets, and bridges.

So it's aligned to both the community investments plan and to our city strategic plans.

The CIP is structured on a mill levy rate of 6.835.

That's it's also financed with water utility revenues.

Those do have programmed increases, but those are provided to us by the public works department, and they are consistent with forecasts.

I think that you have seen in the past.

So what are our debt guidelines?

We try as a manager noted to finance 50% of our projects with cash and 50% to with debt.

That doesn't mean that a single project is 50-50.

It means we identify projects that are more applicable for debt and we finance those with debt, and we identify projects that are better suited for cash funding, and we cash fund those.

Having said that, again, we have a very aggressive street program.

So we may wind up increasing our debt levels in the local sales tax fund.

Again, nothing it can't handle.

It would be within metrics, but it would not surprise me to see some debt in the local sales tax fund increase over the planning period.

Finally, the transient gas tax fund.

The reason I'm highlighting these funds, these are our local funds, essentially, our local funds that receive tax revenue one way or another.

Local, the transient gas tax fund we use for cultural facilities.

Its capacity is a little bit constrained right now.

We've typically cash funded projects from local from the transient gas tax fund.

You may see us contemplate issuing debt in a few years in order to expand the capacity because we do have many needs in this area, and our resources are a little bit tight right now.

So you may see us issue some debt a year or two or three down the road in the transient gas tax fund.

So as a manager noted, the CIP is really two plans.

It's a three-year action plan of things that we have very specific plans for, things that you'll be asked to approve in the not too distant future, things that you will see designed, purchased, construction beginning, and possibly even completed during the next couple years.

Let me go over just a few highlights from that.

There's many projects, and I won't go into all them specifically.

We've got about 32 million over the next three years for heavy equipment.

This is fire trucks, dump trucks, police equipment, heavy equipment that they've needed recently, things of that nature.

32 million dollars.

We're also partnering with the state of Kansas on the expansion of K96 that will be initiated soon.

I'm pretty sure that one will not be completed within the three-year planning period, but it will be commenced, and that's about 300 million in total funding.

Most of that's the state funding, but the city and county are both uh contributing uh portions to that.

We also have the construction of uh three additional fire stations and an additional police station in the three-year period.

Uh of course, we opened a police station recently.

We have another one in uh the construction phase in West Wichita.

This would be the third one, and then there's another one that's planned more in the conceptual period that I'll talk about in a second.

I just identified a few of the streets in the next three years, 127th Street, 21st Street West, 2nd Street downtown, Maple Street, Webb Road from Central 13th, the Broadway Corridor.

We have a lot of money allocated to the Broadway Corridor from Pawnee to 37th Street.

Again, just highlighted a few.

There's there's many other street projects.

I just uh picked a few to highlight there.

We've got about six million for park projects.

Uh the main one is uh a new walkway system at Chisholm Creek Park.

It's got a lot of walkways, and a lot of those are aging.

So this would rebuild those walkways, but we also have funding in parks for security, lighting, path parking lot improvements, and a variety of other improvements.

And again, this is only what's in the next three years.

I mentioned cultural facilities.

We've got about $8 million primarily for the project at the Aviation Museum and also Century 2.

We also have some other facility money that we allocate to the other cultural facilities based on the needs identified by the public works department.

Street maintenance.

Street maintenance is very, very important.

We hear that continually.

Continued emphasis on public safety.

We have a new police headquarters, new police training facility, and additional police and fire stations.

There's several drainage projects in stormwater utility, none the size of the current one that we're taking care of on Bleckley, but I think there's four smaller neighborhood drainage projects included in the out years.

Park master plans currently being developed, and I think will be presented to you at some point this year.

So we have not identified any specific projects for parks, obviously, since we don't have the master plan completed, but we have set aside funding in the CIP on a generic basis to begin funding any master plan improvements that may be contemplated.

I mentioned street maintenance early.

We have another 170 million dollars in the last seven years of the CIP.

So that's 170 plus 65 million dollars in the total CIP period.

We have some improvements to wastewater plant number three.

We also have a couple, I just picked a couple very sizable street projects in the out years.

One is Maple from McLean to West Street, another is uh Mays from MacArthur to Pawnee.

Again, those are very, very sizable projects that have a significant amount of money attached to them.

So that's my overview of the CIP.

Again, I would remind you it's financially viable.

It's uh maintains our debt ratio of roughly 50% cash and 50% uh debt, it's aligned to our strategic plan, it's aligned to our comprehensive investments plan.

So I want to spend my remaining time today and pivot to decisions that we need you to consider today.

And again, these are guided by state statute.

Our entire budget process is actually guided by state statute.

First thing I want to bring up is the revenue neutral rate, or what we refer to as the RR.

Based on state statute, if we levy taxes this year that are one dollar higher than what we levied last year, we will exceed the R.

The only way you cannot exceed the RR is if we finance our operations, which are extensive, based on the exact same tax levy that we uh levied last year.

I noted on a previous slide that number uh would result in a revenue loss to the general fund debt service fund of roughly 12.4 million dollars.

Now, you don't have to make the decision today on what level of taxes you want to levy.

The only decision you need to make today is whether you intend to exceed the revenue neutral rate, a decision it will actually make later, or whether you are satisfied with the revenue neutral rate.

The reason it's critical to do today is because we are required by statute to notify the county clerk on July 20th of your decision.

Again, if we do not provide that notification to the county clerk on July 20th, we are locked in to the current uh level of taxes levied.

There's no alternative when you consider the actual budget approval.

Another thing that we need you to do today, again, based on state statute, is we need you to set the maximum tax levy amount and the maximum expenditure authority.

You are not approving any tax levy today, nor are you approving any expenditure level.

All you're doing is setting the maximum level of expenditures and and tax levies that uh that you wish to contemplate when you formulate the final adoption of the budget later in August.

So again, all this is driven by state statute.

We prepare a notice that we're required to prepare, and it has that information on it.

It is aligned to the city manager's recommendation, which is to keep the mill levy flat.

Again, you are not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with that recommendation today.

However, if you do approve the certificate as it's presented, you are providing yourself flexibility to make that decision on August 25th rather than today.

Again, that's based on statute as the manager mentioned.

That date is scheduled for August 25th, and again, that will be in the official uh notice that we prepare with the other information.

So those are the three key things that we uh would ask you to do today so we can continue on with our process.

Uh here's the calendar.

Again, I noted the July 12th date when we have to notify the county of your decision on the revenue neutral rate.

Uh we'll have a couple extra public hearings on August 4th, August 18th.

I would encourage the public uh to come out on those days and provide us feedback.

Uh as the manager noted, the budget is available online.

Uh at those two hearings, again, those will just be receive and file comments hearings, but they should provide a very good opportunity for discussion and for uh uh the ability to answer any additional questions.

Our big day will be on August 25th.

Again, that's the date that we will set in the publication notice.

Uh you'll take several actions that day.

First, we will hold again by statute a revenue neutral rate hearing.

That's when you will decide uh whether you actually want to exceed the revenue neutral rate.

Again, you won't set the tax levy at that hearing, but you will decide whether you in fact will exceed the revenue neutral rate.

By the way, I didn't mention it because uh PowerPoint's already uh 47 slides long, uh, but you actually do that for the uh downtown improvement district.

The manager noted that earlier.

There's actually two RR hearings, one for the Schmidt and one for the city of Wichita, so just be aware of that.

Uh and then finally, after those hearings, by statute, we are allowed to hold our budget hearing in which we will ask you to adopt uh the city budget and the capital improvement program.

Again, you'll need to adopt those within the parameters of the publication notice that you approve today.

Uh certainly you can go down on the tax levy and expenditure level from what you uh authorize today.

Uh, you simply cannot increase the tax levy by fund or in total.

So we have a rather uh lengthy uh recommended action today, unfortunately.

Again, I apologize.

Uh we want to be compliant with state statute.

I've summarized it on this screen.

We need you to approve the public hearings for the revenue neutral rate, which will be held on August 25th.

We need you to approve the maximum amount to be levied, which consistent with the manager's recommended budget is 188 million dollars and some change.

We need you to authorize the maximum expenditure level, which is a little over a billion dollars.

Uh, you may wonder why this slide shows a little over a billion when the manager and I both told you that our budget was 800 million earlier.

Uh that's a great question.

Uh, it's again driven by state statute.

The state has a uh some rules.

Uh I'll leave the adjective out.

They have some rules about how we have to certify the budget.

In some cases, they require us to certify reserves, reserves that we know we're never going to spend, but based on state statute, we have to certify those.

And they have some other rules we need to comply with.

So, in order for us to implement the budget that the manager recommended, which does in fact total $800 million the way we measure it based on the way we fill out the state of Kansas forms, that budget is 1.1 billion dollars.

We'll ask you to authorize us to uh publish the official hearing notice, which we do in our legal newspaper and also online.

There's a variety of ordinances which set the tax levies for our various tax increment financing funds and the general fund debt service fund.

Again, this is the first reading.

We will not have the second reading on those ordinances until August 25th, which is to say that there's flexibility to amend those ordinances on your action on the 25th, and we will publish them on second reading with any amendments you choose.

In other words, we are not locking you into anything with those ordinances, they're merely the first reading of the ordinances necessary to complete the budget process.

We also need you to authorize if it is your desire today to authorize us to notify the county clerk of an attempt to exceed the RR, which we will do expeditiously to make sure that we meet the July 20th deadline.

Sometimes we run into some technical adjustments, so we ask for your authorization to to make those if we run into any challenges as we complete the state forms.

And finally, the CIP is the easy part.

All you need to do today on the CIP is simply to receive and file the CIP.

So Mayor, I apologize for the length.

But with that, uh certainly I'd be happy to answer any questions.

If you have any really hard ones, I'll ask the manager to answer those.

Thank you, Mark and Dennis.

We'll start with Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, two questions here.

One, the 180, or I guess there are questions, the 188 million, that is the maximum allowed to take in with our current mill levy.

That is correct.

Uh it's all driven by statute.

We have to use the estimated assessed valuation the county provides us, which by the way is probably gonna be different than the final evaluation in November.

We have to use that.

Uh, and based on the estimated mill levy rate uh that is consistent last year, that math uh comes up to 188 million dollars, yes, sir.

Okay, and the proposed budget is that taking into account all the 188 million, or we still have a little bit of room to uh maneuver with the budget as recommended uh uses the entire 188 million dollars in both the debt service fund and the general fund.

That's not to say that you don't have room to maneuver.

Uh obviously we can realign things in his recommendation, but his the entire uh tax levy is required to fund the items that he has recommended in his proposed budget as he has proposed it.

Okay, um, I would like to continue to see, I don't believe it's in here.

We got the budget yesterday, so I haven't been able to parse through everything yet, but um the homestead tax rebate.

Yeah, um, that is something I I do believe we should focus on.

Um the number of homeless um seniors has already doubled.

It was supposed to be a decade and really it happened in one year, so providing direct relief to senior citizens and people who have disabilities, I think would be a high priority.

So I would like to see that worked into our budget moving for several questions that I actually asked um Mark, and I want them on the record.

Let's start off with um let's go back in the slides uh regarding the 2.5 percent um merit adjustment for employees.

That's slide number 18.

Yep, there it is.

Can you please address um how many staff members and percentage actually received the 2.5% merit because it looks like it's really a 5% increase for employees?

Yeah.

Uh that number varies, it's gonna vary by bargaining unit, it's gonna vary based on our employee demographics.

Uh, literally, it will vary each payroll period.

But I can tell you uh I actually pulled some data from one of our most recent payroll periods, and based on that payroll period, uh, somewhere in the neighborhood of uh make sure I told you to tell you the right number from yesterday, Mayor.

I uh I uh yeah, approximately 70 uh five percent of our employee uh base would be eligible for a merit raise.

Now that's just based on their demographics, which means they're not at top wage.

In addition to that, obviously they have to provide meritorious service to the city in order to receive the uh merit raise, which fortunately most of them do.

What is the average percentage for just cost of living and inflation?

Well, uh that's a great question.

Uh, that is a significant challenge for us because the inflation rate general uh actually changes monthly.

I mean, uh, when you asked me the inflation rate, uh, I think in May uh for some material I was doing.

I think at that time that I told you it was 4.2 percent, which is accurate.

I just saw this morning that a revised inflation came uh rate came out, and based on fuel prices declining, I I would tell you today the inflation rate's 3.6%.

Uh personally, I would expect fuel prices to increase, so I would I would expect to tell you that it's higher than that next month.

So my point is that inflation uh does bounce around, but right now it's somewhere in the high three percent, I think, uh depending on how you want to measure it.

I have asked this question every single budget cycle.

Um, and so based off of the current proposed city manager's budget.

What is the growth that we're wanting to capture?

Can you go to the slide that shows that?

Yes, ma'am.

Versus what I have been asking, which is can you only capture new construction and new properties going on to the tax roll instead of this assessed valuation that for some has been in the double digits, and they are raising frustration on our end, even though the city is only one portion of the property tax.

Uh yes, ma'am.

Mayor, that's shown on this slide right here.

Uh the additional growth line, uh, you could see that the city under the manager's proposal would capture about 4.2 million dollars between the debt service fund and the general fund.

That is growth in the tax base based on reappraisal that exceeds the inflation rate.

Again, we've identified new construction uh as a source, which is expansion of the tax base.

Uh we've used uh inflation, uh, just regular inflation and the amount that would generate uh the additional growth would be based on growth in reappraisal that exceeded uh the inflation rate.

Again, that's determined by the county appraiser.

I would say that that doesn't mean that every home in which all grows by the same amount because they don't, some very easily could decline in value, but on the whole, uh it would be 4.2 million from properties that increased in in valuation.

Yes, ma'am.

And so while this R, if we even captured one dollar more, it would exceed revenue neutral.

Um, my question then goes back to this growth is at 7.49%, so 7.5 percent.

Yeah, if we only captured again, just new builds construction and that inflation, there would have to be a reduction in the proposed budget by 4.2 million.

Is that accurate?

Yes, ma'am, spread between the general fund and the debt service fund.

Yes.

Um, city manager, can you address what the 4.2 million um high level could pay for with that additional growth again?

Because a lot of residents, homeowners especially, are upset that some of their growth assessed valuations have grown in the double digits.

Um, can you address what the 4.2 million would high-level address?

Well, a couple things, and I want to make sure we also highlight that is the picture.

Actually, I'll come to the podium.

I actually also remember that we said on the proposal that we're you looking to utilize stabilization reserve funds.

So for this, we use some this current year, next year and the next two years.

So we're already talking about taking money from our savings account for some of our operating dollars, and it happens to be three million dollars.

So when you're talking about the 4.2 million, you could look at it a couple different ways.

You could say, let's not take money from our savings account to use for our general operating that we've got programmed out.

But otherwise, if you look at this, I mean, all the requests we have over 15 million dollars in new requests from all the departments combined.

When you look at what libraries have asked for, when you look at what parks and recreation wants to do with some of our community centers, when you look at even our police needs, if you want to do, as I said, um do the initial step of car cameras on 50 patrol cars.

If you want to go to the whole fleet of police vehicles, if you think about that, even thinking about some requests on equipment for fire and different things, you can continue.

There are definitely asks out there from the department directors, but then of course, even looking at public works when you talk about forestry and what people want with trees, um plantings and different things, and how we maintain our parks.

So I could help find 4.2 million dollars to spend on more, or if you want to reduce it, then we do think about not doing the car cameras because that's a new feature that we're talking about for in-car for the police cameras.

Um, so you can back some of those things out.

If you think about the departments that have scheduled for an increase under my proposal, you think about libraries certainly.

Um, so there are different ways that you can look at this based upon their requests.

Um, but I would start with looking at whether or not you want to pull money from our savings account or the stabilization account and how that falls into the conversation.

But more importantly, this is a conversation too about as I said, this budget proposal and keeping the millet rate level also takes into account future budgets.

We don't know what's going to happen at the state level.

We do know what some of the proposals were this year from the state level that would cap or max the local assessed value for property tax if that moves forward in the general assembly this year, the legislature this year, that can definitely have an impact on us.

So, again, how we think about maintaining the millage rate actually will help us as we think about what state action might be coming in the future.

I see no further questions from this bench.

Oh, council member Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm sorry, I really have appreciated listening and learning.

This is my first time going through this.

So I just have a few questions, and maybe you can explain the details.

You mentioned that the transient guest sales tax, it funds the cultural facilities.

Could you maybe provide a high-level overview of what you mean by that?

Yes, the expenditures from the transit guest tax fund are based on charter ordinance 243.

And there's actually six priorities, but uh the simple version of how we use that money is, and I'll just use round dollars.

Uh it's roughly 10 and a half, 11 million dollars in annual revenue.

Uh we fund tourism and convention promotion from that fund, uh, which is to say we have a contract with Visit Witchdall, and that's somewhere in the neighborhood of three and a half million dollars in change.

Second thing we do is we subsidize some city operations, uh some city operational costs for cultural facilities.

That's somewhere in the neighborhood of three and a half to four million dollars.

Are those positions?

Uh it could include positions too, utilities and other operating costs associated with those buildings.

And then finally, that remains a remaining piece of again in the neighborhood of three and a half to four million dollars.

That's the portion that we use to fund uh primarily maintenance expenditures on our cultural facilities and our cultural facilities are primarily Century 2, which we invest heavily in.

And then I think there's other seven, there's seven other city-owned facilities, the Aviation Museum, Cowtown, Wichita Art Museum.

Uh I know I'm gonna forget a couple, uh World Treasures, and there's a couple other.

I'm sure Lindsay could tell you what they are, but I can't remember off the top of my head.

And the definition of what we define as cultural centers is what?

How does one get embedded into that?

Well, I'm not an attorney, and that could be a better question for your attorney.

Uh we have interpreted it in the past, I mean cultural facilities that the city which all supports with operating dollars, which is the ones that I mentioned to you previously.

Perfect.

And that eight million dollars set aside for Kansas Aviation Museum in Century Two.

Now, does that come from the same fund or is that a different fund?

Yes, sir.

Same fund.

And the bulk of that is for century two, by the way.

I lumped them together, but the bulk of that's for century two.

The Kansas Aviation piece is a little smaller, but yes, sir, the same fund.

Perfect.

Um, I'm really excited to hear that we have dollars set aside for efficiency and accountability.

Put a message out to my district last night, and overwhelmingly folks want efficiency and accountability.

And I'm curious what does that look like in practice when we uh utilize those dollars to go to looking for efficiencies and accountability.

Uh council member, are you referring to our centralization initiative for financial services?

Yes, I believe it was listed at 800,000.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh the best way I can describe it to describe the plan is now we have 20 or 25 separate business units that have their own financial staff that is paying bills, collecting revenue, purchasing things.

Uh the challenge there is we don't have systematic training, we don't have systematic qualifications, and that's not to say these people are not good people, but then they also in some cases have other duties assigned to them.

They are not dedicated 100% finance professionals.

Again, I don't mean that in a bad sense.

I'm being realistic.

They get diverted in other directions.

That a lot of that work comes to us, and then we wind up correcting mistakes that people make.

We have a little bit higher standards, again, because of our uh background.

Uh, so we can avoid risks that maybe people in the field may not necessarily be aware of.

All those efficiencies and risks will diminish significantly when we just take that workload and dump it directly in the finance department rather than first send it to the departments and then send it to us.

We we really accomplish nothing by our current system of routing it to departments and back to us.

It's just inefficient, it increases our risks, and uh we're we don't get too excited in the finance department, but believe it or not, this is actually something we're very excited about.

I'm excited to I've heard overwhelmingly from constituents that that's one of the ways in which they believe that local government can rebuild trust is by highlighting that we are looking at ways to be more efficient and more accountable, and I appreciate that we're taking the steps to do that.

That's all we do.

Uh I used an analogy earlier about in and out.

They do three things really well.

Uh, we do three or four things really well.

Uh we have hopefully integrity in our financial reporting.

Uh, we're a trusted provider, and we're really good at uh collecting and paying and accounting for money.

Uh so we're we're looking forward to utilizing those skills for the benefit of the organization.

Perfect.

Mark, I have one more question for you, and maybe another question for you and our city manager.

But um $300,000 for the encampment funding, very similarly to what that looks like in practice.

What are what are those dollars going towards?

Uh who are they supporting and what does that work look like in practice?

Yeah, and I should mention we also have additional funding in part for some of the staff and ancillary costs, but we do have 300,000 in the park department for contractual services.

Uh Reggie could probably provide you a lot more detail than I could, uh, but I know that we uh did a lot of work on encampments earlier this year, and a lot of that was funded with contractors from that $300,000 allocation.

So that's what that's reserved for contractors to supplement the good work that Reggie and his uh staff are doing.

Perfect, thank you so much.

Mark, final question for you.

I'm curious if we were to what are the implications if we weren't to capture the full valuation.

I believe the recommended budget being presented to us today is uh capturing that, keeping the mill levy flat, capturing 7.5.

I'm wondering what happens if we don't capture the full 7.5 and keep the mill levy flat, or if we reduce the mill levy and not take the full 7.5.

I'm I'm wondering if you can just put in layman's terms, like what what are some of the things that we would have to discuss as it pertains to uh balancing the budget?

I think the manager addressed that pretty well, so I'll just uh kind of uh summarize what he said.

Uh I think you would be faced with several choices.

Uh, you could uh maintain the budget as is, as recommended by a city manager, and you could utilize your reserves.

Uh that probably would not be the recommendation staff would advise for a variety of reasons, but certainly that would be a choice.

Uh another choice would be to uh peel back some of the additional items the manager has included, as he noted, uh library funding, police car cameras, funding for the real-time crime information center, things of that nature.

Uh, certainly uh you could look at those.

Uh, or probably a third choice would be uh simply to look at the prioritization in the uh budget as recommended, and and if there are areas in which that prioritization doesn't align to your collective prioritization, you know, perhaps those are areas that we could uh reduce funding in.

Although I would tell you, as a manager told you that the budget is aligned, at least in our sense, with the strategic plan approved by the city council and the and the priorities therein.

So those would probably be your choices.

Thank you.

And and I don't know if this is a directive for the city manager, if comms can help us out with that.

I really think what you just said should be laid out in plain language on a graphic or some sort of communication.

The average person, I don't believe, has time to go through this very, by the way, very well-detailed book.

Um, and to you all's credit, you do a remarkable job of having details.

Look forward to diving in more.

But I think what residents want to know is what are the basic options we have.

If we cut, what what does that mean?

If we raise, what does that mean?

If we keep it flat, what does that mean?

And I think uh being able to lay that out in in layman's terms really uh helps them tell us what they would like to see and do as it relates to this conversation.

Um and finally, I just I just I'm curious to learn from our city manager.

You know, when we look at our strategic plan, particularly as we look at I'm really having a hard time with how much money we have allocated for our libraries and um looking at goal 5.3 of how much we we uh put into emphasizing the importance of childhood red reading readiness.

I want to echo the sentiments of one of my colleagues who often reminds us that third grade literacy is often an indicator of where a child will go, whether or not they will touch the criminal justice system and their economic outputs in life and not investing in that fully on the front end costs us significantly on the back end.

So I know that I've said this before.

I'm really happy to see that it went from zero to 375.

I'm going to push a little bit more and say, is there any way we can get a little bit more than 375 for that when we look at the cost of not investing in libraries and um the implications that it has on the back end?

So thank you so much for your time, Mark.

And I did want to address thank you, uh, Councilmember Shepherd.

I think you're right about what is citizens want to know on the bottom line, and that's where we had the graphic about what the proposed millage rate being the same would affect on a 200,000 right there on the 200,000 dollar home.

So if they look at their tax bill this year and look at their tax bill last year, but what's proposed?

I think that they can make that evaluation.

And so I think that's helpful information that we tried to have on the website for everyone with our budget information.

And so we'll have some of this stuff.

Certainly, this is on the website with the entire detail.

Um, but I think that's one I'd direct people to is that people can make their own understanding.

Yes, as we talked about.

I think one of the key conversations we're having is that yes, we've had growth.

We're a growing community.

We're our growth rate is faster than the state of Kansas.

Not as fast or as significant as maybe some of the other major cities around us.

Um, but as a growing community, we've made some of these investments.

Now we're seeing the return on that investment in our economic development.

We are seeing businesses locate here.

We are seeing property values go up.

Um, and so that has resulted in some new revenue, which has been helpful as we've had inflation and we've had union contracts and wage increases and different things to help support that.

But overall service delivery, we can do some new things.

Um, but clearly we'll continue to look into the conversation related to libraries is one that uh many of you have shared with me.

Um, but we'll continue to put as much information as we can on the website to let them know what the proposal is.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I did I appreciate my colleagues' comments on the libraries and trying to squeeze out as much as we can for them.

Um I did have uh a couple of questions here.

Um looking at the authorized positions, and in the proposed budget, it still stays static at 115 and a half.

Um I am just curious on that because I thought we were adding a few new positions to at least maintain um hours at many of our locations, and then also seeing the bumps in funding here.

Um, it seems like contractuals gets nearly a million, uh almost uh well, three quarters of a million.

Um most of that goes into technology, and then also other, which is a million dollars.

So can we parse into that one a little bit?

You're referring to uh specifically to library budget, council member.

Yes, sir.

Uh let me address the position count.

Uh the the funding that the manager recommended, uh, we basically put in a contingency line item.

And uh I know the library staff and board have considered uh staffing models in which they can achieve their objectives.

Uh we did not include the detail of those models yet, uh, pending further discussions with them and your adoption of the budget for that matter.

Uh so that's the reason that additional staffing is not specifically included in the recommendation.

Okay, and it's 350,000 that we're looking to increase for libraries.

375.

375.

Uh Jamie, could you come up here real quick and just talk about what you'd be able to do with that funding?

And as the library director's coming up, I want to uh maybe highlight to keep us at the higher level to not have a whole department review with every department director.

Um so if we can keep a few broad questions and then uh we can follow up with um direct departmental questions.

I just don't want this to become a full-on departmental review with different department directors.

Right, yeah, I I understand that today is more just about setting the um the hearing dates and whatnot.

But um how many positions would you be able to add with 375,000?

It's approximately 4.5 FTE when we've mapped that we need 22.5 FTE.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Make sure I'm clear that some of those can be um two part-time combined because she does utilize a lot of part-time positions, as we said, the equivalent, so we can talk with her on the funding plan when we know where we're headed specifically in the dollar amount, but as she said, roughly 4.5, four and a half.

So she does a great job of utilizing part-time employees and matching them together.

Yeah, she does.

I agree.

Um quality director.

Um, so I just want to emphasize again.

I agree with my colleague on trying to utilize any funding towards library that we can share.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, Ditto on all of the library conversations.

I also just wanted to make a broad um comment to my colleagues.

I appreciate that we're looking at um when we're looking at maybe shifting money year round, that we're looking at what the consequences could be later on, like the library.

If we're not investing early, then we pay for the consequences later.

Much like um, it was a short shortcut of like 150,000, which doesn't really seem like that much a year or two ago to cut street sweepers to only go once a year.

Well, if you don't keep the streets clean, because a lot of people don't clean their gutters, it they clog up a lot faster, and then the water sets in your streets, and then it just turns into this whole you know, ripple effect.

So I just wanted to make it that comment to my colleagues.

I appreciate we're looking at the consequences, um, trying to be more forward thinking so that we don't we're not always on the cleanup crew.

So thank you.

Thanks, Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor.

To everyone in the audience right now, we received this yesterday.

This is what the budget, this is what the CIP looks like.

So there's a lot of reading and a lot of discussion that's gonna happen over the next month, specifically about a lot of the details in this plan.

I echo my colleagues and the support for the library, but my request is to them is if we fund additional parts of the library where we redirecting those resources from.

We have to have a balanced budget, and so if you want more library, I could be in, but tell me where you want to take it from, and we have to have that part of the conversation.

And so there has to be the give take, and I can get to more funding for the library.

I think last year I made was the one that made the motion to uh not cut from the library and an increase funding to the library, and so I'm supportive of that, but I want ideas of where that's to come from, and that's what the next month is about reading this.

And um, while it's the manager's proposed budget, thank you, uh, manager Marcel, we can change it in whatever way.

And so if there are things we don't like, we can adjust and we can move and we can fund more for the library, but it has to come from somewhere.

So let me know of the where it's supposed to come from.

And then, secondly, to that, uh, the manager mentioned something that right now would be very tough to have as departmental reviews.

Uh, when I served on the county commission, we did have departmental reviews, um, and I found it as a helpful uh process and there to hear directly from department directors.

Um, often I know that the manager hears from those directors, and then the directors present us.

There's usually maybe a loss and information that could be directed of maybe asks that uh weren't made.

I know the managers let us know what those asks are, but I'd be interested in another meeting, a special meeting uh to hear directly from directors that we can ask specific questions of each one of their needs and uh what their wants are beyond what we're just seeing in this as well.

And so I don't know if there's appetite for my colleagues on that or not.

I found that very helpful on the commission level, and I think it uh contributes to a better process and to the count come out council member Shepherd's point, then the public can hear what are the give gives and takes.

What are we foregoing?

Because there are things in this budget that were foregoing already because they don't even make it to this bench as well.

And so I'm really appreciative of uh the staff time in the budget.

I think the budget is incredibly comprehensive, but this is the most important decision we'll make, and uh we should be able to make as many substantive changes as we see as needs in our community as well.

I will answer your question and allow any of the other council members to do the same thing.

I think that again, it's very uh telling about this council.

We're very thorough and thoughtful council.

We do ask questions that again go beyond just making a decision, but what are the consequences as council member ballard mentioned going forward?

Um, a lot of the decisions we make uh will affect another individual who will be in these seats a few years down the road, and so it is thoughtful uh consideration, and again, at the same time, we have to be thoughtful of our residents as they also have increasing costs themselves.

And if we can be one part of that piece that is not a burden to them, because they understand that there are certain services that local government provides, and among them the most essential services are police, fire, public works, and so those to me are the most essential services of local government, and I see that the budget reflects some of that.

However, as we talk about other wants, we have to really discuss if we want to fund the wants, where are we gonna substitute from from the needs?

And so, again, um the thoughtful conversations could be had even sooner if we have more departmental level uh discussion.

So I am in favor of Vice Mayor Glasscock's idea of mimicking a lot of what the Sedgwick County Commission does hearing from department uh leaders themselves, and then while it is the city manager's proposed budget, this council can make some changes, and again, I think thoughtful conversations before we get to this point in July would be even more um opportune moving forward.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, on this slide 27 here, each one percent uh the city tax gets city gets 750.

So a 200,000 dollar home is really their taxes increasing 26 dollars per 1% if you take everything, the schools and everything involved.

Well, obviously, depending on what those other jurisdictions did with their mill levy rates.

Yes, I understand.

So I just point out that some people's homes like mine has gone up over 40 percent in the last two years, and so I am paying well over a thousand dollars more uh just in two years.

So I think it may be cognizant of that too.

Um my home value is pretty close to this, maybe slightly more, but uh it's a big big increase.

So I think we need to be aware of that too.

Councilmember Shepard.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

And I know that we've already talked about a lot of the uh healthy conversations we're having having today.

I always appreciate the diversity and philosophy and ideology that we have here.

I think it makes for stronger policy, and um I just want to add a thought to to contribute to that is as we talk about wants and needs, understanding that that's gonna look very different depending on the districts that we represent and and the makeup and the demographics of that district and and where they're at in terms of socioeconomic status and even by geographic location of where they live.

One of the reasons why I feel strongly in investing in our libraries is even when you go back and look at our Northeast Wichita plan that was done about nearly 20 years ago.

When you go back and look at uh the library plan that was done overwhelmingly, folks needed access to the library, not necessarily because they were picking up a book to read, but they needed access to technology to be able to fill out their job applications.

They needed to be able to have access to that technology for rental applications or home applications, and so when we think about wants and needs, um, you know, I I just want to be very methodical in how we think about that.

A lot of people might argue that um art is is not necessarily a one, it's a nice to have.

But when you're living in a community, when you don't leave the radius of your block, having that art or that mural in your neighborhood in your community does something to enhance the quality of life in your neighborhood, it does something to enhance the value and the property values even around in your neighborhood.

And so I just want us to be very methodical about that, and then as it relates to uh the the departments coming forward.

I'm not I'm not sure.

I I'm for it in the future.

I'm not sure if I would be supportive of it now.

Um I I wonder how much work that would create for staff and and getting that together, but again, I'm I'm always going to be supportive of whatever the will of the body is, even when I disagree, and I will be meaningfully engaging if that's what we choose to do as a body.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you.

I would like to speak on the library.

I do support the libraries.

Uh my family used them growing up, and it it did pay off.

Um, the four sons are doing it well.

Um, so I do support them.

I think the city manager has a and maybe you can speak to this city manager, uh, a plan to increase the library over the next three years in that 350 to 400,000 range, uh, get them where a lot of us think would they need to be.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Yes, looking at the budget, as I said, looking ahead, even to 2028-2029.

What are the um future implications?

Even thinking about our labor contracts and what we have to program in.

Knowing what I'd say libraries have asked for, even thinking about this plan for police for um car cameras, thinking ahead for the staffing of the fire station.

Yes, I can see that we need to start thinking about more for the libraries, but also keeping that in context with the other departmental needs.

And so, yeah, I've already got a list going for 2028, and how we think about that to bring that up when um we will hopefully have another city council retreat in January of 2028.

So tentatively is it libraries included in that plan?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I mean, when I think about future expenditures to start out the budget process of 2028, I don't know what level that is right now.

I'll say it's more than 375.

Um, I know some of their requests has gotten up to four million.

I don't know if it's at the four million level, but the same thing with other departments.

I mean, you think about parks and recreation.

If we do want to do more in forestry or whatever, those are on the list to start getting priorities from council at our retreat in January 2028.

Okay, I appreciate it.

The long as we have a plan to get them where I think a lot of us think they need to be.

Uh, we almost double the size of Lewis Nick Library, and we did not increase any funding.

So I think it is important that we do increase the funding for them.

I'm gonna throw um a curveball on that one then, because I do believe in the value of libraries and have never said otherwise.

I'm a recipient of services from the library, being a first-generation immigrant utilizing the library system to learn English.

However, I also hear from our community talking about one of their highest needs is as they travel to go to work to go to these libraries to go to school, that the streets need to be a much more major priority.

And I see that streets is in our CIP.

Can you please address how streets are being looked at as Councilmember Ballard also mentioned street sweeping because we want to maintain our streets so that they're utilized well, but at the same time, when they're only swept one time, that could eventually erode the street, it could have other detrimental consequences.

Can you talk about how we're thinking about streets holistically, as that is truly back to public works that falls under them a major priority of local government?

Yes, thank you for that question.

Under the CIP, where we highlighted our pavement.

Yeah, we look at one high and very high, not certainly looking at utilities, but with streets and bridges doing the assessments of streets and bridges.

But we have the number of the percentage that we're spending on pavement versus concrete.

Um 60.

Thank you.

What was that number?

Anyhow, to speak to it is that we do have with their rankings in high very high, is how we think about it.

But holistically, we do look at the full depth replacement reclamation.

We also think about in traffic volumes.

As we're talking about the growing city, particularly on the um outlying areas, where are those two lanes that need to go to three lanes or four lanes?

And so a lot of that is the assessment that our public works department is doing.

Um really it's based upon utilization growth for traffic counts and traffic counts are a big part of that.

Um but then when you think about the street maintenance, where we do the crack repair versus pothole repair versus full replacement, um, those are all the factors, and I think you're right about what role is street uh street cleaning have on it, but even think about how much money we spend on crosswalks, um, dividing lines, striping, all that goes to the type of maintenance that we do for our roadways as well.

Um we still have in Wichita a lot of dirt roads, and so we have our dirt roads plan too as a separate focus.

And so we are really doing multiple projects in different buckets all at once with our street program, and so some people can see movement on dirt roads, some people can see expansion of intersections, some can see expansion or widenings in some of the outlying areas, but then even if you look in downtown, one of our plans is for second street.

How do we um redo all of second street for full what we call reclamation?

Um, so we've got an all-in strategy, and it goes from it even just repaving to full concrete, full depth, but it all is based upon ratings, utilization, and traffic counts.

Thank you, City Manager.

I see no further questions from this bench.

With that, we will now open it up for public comment regarding the proposed budget by the city manager.

You can come up to the microphone, please state your name and which district you reside or your address, and you'll have up to five minutes to speak.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak this morning.

My name is Susie Ternis.

I live at 148 South Bay Country Court in District 5.

I also happen to sit on the board of the Wichita Public Library.

I so appreciate all of your support.

Um, and to our city manager, thank you for the increase in funding in our budget.

It is it is needed and necessary.

Many of you I feel like I'm preaching to the choir a little bit because you are already supporters of the library.

But for those who are wondering what the library can add to our city, I wanted to just touch on a few things here.

I feel that the library is not a nice to have, it's not a want.

I feel it's a need because it's one of the highest return investments which talk can make.

I'd like to just focus on three things literacy, language access, and public safety.

These three items align with stated goals and objectives of city leadership specifically, meeting goals under pillar five, living well, and pillar two, keeping Wichita safe.

Regarding literacy, reading, as you all know, is the foundation for everything else.

School success, job prospects, and even health outcomes.

Among Wichita students, 75% of third graders are reading below grade level.

Our library runs early literacy programs, partners with schools and early intervention providers, and offers summer reading initiatives that reach kids who might not otherwise get that support.

But these programs are stretched thin.

More funding means more staffing for storytime sessions, more one-on-one help with research projects, and more hours when working families can actually get in the door.

It is worth mentioning that the areas of Wichita with some of the lowest literacy rates have library branches with the lowest number of weekly operating hours.

The Maya Angelo branch near WSU is open just 31 hours per week.

And the Walters branch on Harry is open just 42 hours per week.

Every additional hour we can staff libraries improves early literacy and saves us money later.

Much to council member Ballard's point.

We save money in remedial education, social services, and loss potential.

Next, I would like to focus on how the library helps non-English speakers learn English.

Our library offers essential resources for new residents trying to build a life here.

I noted in the morning invocation this morning a call to serve both lifelong Wichita's and newcomers.

Our Wichita Public Library answers this call.

Library partners offer ESL classes, GED classes, and citizenship classes.

The library also offers physical language learning materials and free digital resources for ESL support.

These programs help people learn English so they can get better jobs, help their kids with homework, and participate fully in their communities.

Lastly, I'd like to speak a little bit to crime prevention, which is obviously in focus area two, pillar two, keeping Wichita safe.

This might surprise you, but libraries are a genuine crime prevention tool.

A 2023 study published in the Journal of Cultural Economics looked at a new library branch opening in Kansas City and found a substantial drop in nearby burglaries, vandalism, robberies, fraud, and assaults after it opened.

Researchers believe that libraries work as a deterrent because they bring more foot traffic, more lighting, more security cameras, and more eyes on the street.

The kinds of prevention that are relatively low cost.

Libraries also give young people a safe supervised place to go after school instead of unsupervised time that sometimes turns into trouble.

And they offer job search help, resume building help, and services for people who are unhoused.

A well-funded library is quiet, unglamorous crime prevention.

It's cheaper than policing, and it addresses root causes instead of just consequences.

In closing, I want to make clear increasing library funding isn't a luxury line item.

It's an investment in literacy, in inclusion, and in public safety.

Three things specifically outlined in the city's strategic plan.

I'm asking you to fund the library at a level that matches what our community actually needs.

Thank you so much for your time and your consideration.

Thank you, Susie.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Susie, thank you to you and Andrew Scarpelli, who represent District 5 on the library board.

You both are very active on the board and very good members of the board, and I appreciate that.

So thank you.

Would anyone else from the public like to address the council?

I see none.

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

With that, I see no one on the bench who would like to address this item.

So I will actually share a couple of thoughts.

First and foremost, I know it took many months to get here.

And from this conversation that Vice Mayor Glasscock brought to brought forward, we need more conversations about department leaders providing their requests in front of the council ahead of time.

So I hope that that will happen moving forward in the new budget.

And I'm very grateful because Mark Manning and his entire team have been working tirelessly since the last budget was passed to get us to this point.

If you have seen in the community these public engagement opportunities, whether it was listening sessions, going to district advisory board meetings, there have been a lot of opportunity for individuals to provide their feedback in person via email and interactions one-on-one.

So I want to say thank you again to Mark and thank you to City Manager Dennis.

As I raised questions earlier, this these questions have been the same ones I've raised two years ago, and that is we need to be thoughtful of the growth of government and the growth of government allows us to capture fully not just new construction, inflation, but also assess valuation growth.

And with that, I believe that having council member Johnson just reiterate that his property has increased in the double digits in just the last two years, and his home is roughly the value of what we have shared as an example.

It causes me to again re-evaluate where local government should be continuing to be more responsible, more efficient, and more responsive to helping understand how it actually works in city government.

And so with that, I will stay consistent in saying that the only increase I would support is one that captures inflation and the value of any new property being added to the tax role.

The city manager's proposed budget goes beyond that, and I understand that today's vote is simply to notify residents of the city's intent to exceed revenue neutral.

However, out of principle, I will be voting no, and I would ask that if any other council member would like to make the motion to do so at this moment.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I would um Jennifer, I have to read this whole thing off, right?

Okay, and and I might remind everybody.

This is simply to set the hearing.

It could be one dollar more, it could be the new growth more.

This does not lock in this as the actual rate, although I do support it, but it also allows us to continue the debate over the next month until we get to the final vote.

So with that, I'm gonna take a couple of breaths here.

Um I move that we set the public hearing on the revenue neutral rate in the proposed 2027 budget, including the TIFF and a Schmidt and read and the recertification for the century two and affordable housing funds on August 25th, 2026.

Authorized publication of the formal public hearing notices, approve first reading of the ordinances for the general tax levy for the city of Wichita, TIFF districts, and Schmidt authorized staff to make any technical adjustments required to comply with state statutes, set a maximum amount of taxes levied for the city of Wichita at 188 million, 757,769 dollars based on anticipated mill levy of 32.340 mills and an estimated assessed valuation of 5,836 million six hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-five thousand six hundred and ninety-six dollars.

Set the maximum amount of taxes levied for the Schmidt at one million four hundred and twenty-eight thousand two hundred and eight dollars based on an estimated levy of 10 mils and an estimated assessed valuation of 142 million eight hundred nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-one authorized staff to notify the Sedget County Clerk of the intent to exceed the revenue neutral rate for the city of Wichita Taxing Funds and a Schmidt taxing fund and receive and file the 2027 to 2036 proposed capital improvement program.

Second motion, second discussion, Vice Mayor Glascock.

Yeah, I have further comments.

I mean, I guess a question I would have for the mayor is do you have a list of 12.4 million dollars in cuts that you'd be presenting today to get that amount and then have me change my vote.

City manager, um, he actually addressed this in slide number 25.

4.2 million dollars is what would be the additional growth, and so it would be 4.2 million to be accurate.

And so if there was a will of this council to actually reduce it to that level, then the city manager would get direction on where else he could cut from the city budget.

Okay, so we could do a vote if you would like, but right now there is a motion, and you did second it, so there is a live motion at the current moment, but we could take a vote on that.

Yeah, we're still in discussion.

I guess my second question then, okay.

So, not the 12.4 million.

What about the seven million dollars?

Then do you have a list of projects to cut out of the seven million dollars that would have to be done today?

That again would have to be the will of a council for those that are watching right now.

It requires four votes for anything to pass or fail.

Just because the mayor would like something, it does not work that way.

This is a weak mayor system, therefore, the mayor can set a uh directive that then would need three other individuals who would have to fall and ask that they would fall with that uh directive that the mayor would like.

But unfortunately, I would love to have that vote.

If you'd like to have that vote, we can do that though.

Well, I'm asking for specifics.

So, yeah, what's the plan?

If we're cutting seven million, I want to know what we're cutting.

4.2 million.

How is that accurate?

City manager.

What you're trying to get to.

So if you are just doing the full capture, that's the nearly 11 million, 12 million.

But if she is um proposing the new growth, that would be about the 4.2 million.

Inflation and new growth.

Total.

Okay, so well, what is the plan for that amount?

Where are we cutting that from?

Because when I'm looking at the budget, the entire operating expense for um so let's say we were to do that.

Uh, I know your priorities and all of our priorities are public safety, public works.

So when I'm looking at the budget right now, um, municipal court seven million dollars.

We could eliminate all municipal court um to be able to cover that.

I don't think that's probably the will of the public.

We could eliminate all of the metropolitan building and construction at 1.6 million, laws 3.8 million.

We could let Jennifer and all of her attorneys go.

Uh 2.2 million for HR services, housing um, and all the work they're doing at 387,000, we could eliminate as well.

Finance is at 7,697,000, and so Mark could go and try to find a new job as well, um, or eliminate the entire city council budget, which is about 1 million as well.

So, in knowing that the priorities are public works and police and fire, which is the priority of everybody else, and is in this budget at 136 million dollars.

Where is your plan to cut the 4.4?

If there's a will of four individuals on this council who would like that, then the city manager would have to go to his staff because again, this staff belongs to the city manager, not the council members.

We belong to the people of Wichita.

That's what the council needs to be cognizant of, and so I know that it requires four votes, and right now I'm only one.

And so my ask is that we only capture new construction and inflation.

If there is a will of three additional people who would like to just capture new construction and inflation, then yes, the city manager would then have to figure out four point two million dollars.

Well, the last question is the city manager doesn't have to find it out.

We just talked about this is our budget to be able to prove two years ago.

I proposed three million dollars of cuts, of which 800,000 was unanimous and was able to reduce the Malevi result of that.

And so I was able to make and present the cuts previously, which this body can do, and so yes, the manager could present another recommendation to be able to do that, or this body can also present a recommendation.

And so I'm with you when it comes to inflation and new growth.

We've had this conversation, and I I can get there in August as well when we actually have this final vote of how do we make sure we're only capturing inflation and new growth, but I just need specifics.

Like what are the specifics we want to do?

And today it doesn't seem that we have specific, so we don't have specifics, we can have this discussion in August.

I remember push the rest of the telephone.

Councilmember Tuttle.

Thank you.

I was gonna have a similar sentiment, so thank you, Vice Mayor.

We've been doing this since January, and we have engaged community partners, we've engaged the staff, we've asked the staff to do everything.

I made recommendations of something that I wanted added.

I know other colleagues have.

I know other colleagues are gonna have recommendations of things to potentially be cut.

So if there's something that you want to be have cut, then make a recommendation.

We can't just say 4.2 million and then ask me to vote on it.

I would want to know what I was voting on.

I think that's incredibly fair.

But when we have been working on this since January and it's July, to come to the last minute again for the third time and say I can't do it, but I don't have any recommendations, just doesn't seem fair to the community who have been giving us their input and telling us what they think is important.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um again, just to remind everybody if it's just strictly new new evaluation and growth, we still would exceed the revenue neutral rate, and that's what we're doing today.

Um, I do plan on looking through and giving some suggestions uh to potentially increase some funding for the libraries.

Is if people want things moved around, you want cuts, anything like that.

Let's have that debate.

Let's have that discussion.

I think we owe it to the public to let them know what all is on the line as far as uh moving forward with our budget suggestions.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Glasscock.

So, mayor, do you have a motion prepared with specifics amount amount regarding the amount of taxes levied and around the mill levy?

Have you calculated what that amount would be for inflation plus new growth?

Again, I am not setting a motion today.

So I already told exact exactly what I will be doing today, which is staying consistent with the last two years that I've been doing this.

And I could again again, I will only be voting for something that is new construction and inflation.

And I've shared this with the city manager since the very beginning.

So it's nothing new.

This was new, I think, for our colleagues at the bench today, and so I think that's why we're just asking what the plan is.

Um again, I can get there.

If there's a motion for inflation plus new growth, you at least have one other vote.

And so I can't speak to my colleagues, but I would need specific language of what that is, and I don't think we have that today.

Is that correct?

Is that what I'm hearing?

Right.

Right number time.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would just echo the sentiments of my colleagues.

The reality is there's not a lot of fat to trim.

And so I would be interested in having a conversation in public about areas that potentially any of my colleagues would unfortunately have to cut.

I think everything is incredibly important.

Everything is extremely expensive, but we also have I know we have to be responsible with taxpayer dollars, but I also think there's uh I would just be curious where some departments or program, I mean, that's what it's gonna come down to is departments, programs.

Um I think everything we do is incredibly important, and I would just like to have that conversation in public.

Councilmember Shepard.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I just I just want to echo the sentiments of Councilmember Ballard.

As I mentioned earlier, I put a message out to uh district one community and overwhelmingly heard from folks that they want to see where efficiency can take place, where accountability can take place.

So I won't discount that the desire is out there to see where we, if at all, can cut.

I worry that we don't always articulate well what that means.

And I say that because I think oftentimes we make decisions from the bench that to the public eye don't feel good, but it feels good when they can have their stormwater drainage working efficiently and effectively.

It feels good when they can ride on a road that doesn't have a lot of potholes.

It feels good when they may not have access to technology or may not know where to go for family services, but they can walk into a public library and they can get that support when they may not have access to a grocery store within their neighborhood, but there's a community garden within close proximity of their neighborhood, uh, and and they can get fresh fruits and vegetables.

And I know that again, this goes back to the conversation of how are we defining what's a nice to have versus something that is necessary.

I think our world is evolving every single day.

I think Wichita is growing, which is an exciting time, but also as our city continues to grow, as our community continues to diversify, as we saw yesterday, Mayor, from going to the multilingual enrollment at USD 259, they served a thousand families in two days, a hundred and ten different languages spoken in our schools.

Our community is growing and it's diversifying, and we have to ensure that as we are growing and evolving, that we are doing our best to keep up with the needs.

Can government do everything?

Absolutely not.

I actually don't believe we should be doing everything, but we should be living by our mission as the city of Wichita.

And that last line is something that I hold true to every single day I go to bed, is making sure that we are providing conditions for every family to live well.

I feel very passionate about that.

Um, because I don't believe that every neighborhood in our district feels that we care about them and that we're providing those conditions for them to live well.

And so um, if there are ways in which mayor, you think we can cut, I'm happy to have that conversation privately.

I don't think uh you know me by now.

I won't say yes because it's something you bring forth, but I'm open to conversation.

And with that, um, I just thank Vice Mayor Glasscock for the conversation.

I thank my colleagues for what I perceive to be healthy discourse.

We don't always have to agree up here.

Um, in fact, I'd be concerned if we did.

So with that, Vice Mayor Glasscock, I see you're on the board.

Yeah, I just have one final comment to the public, anybody listening.

Um today, the city council.

If we let's say put one more gallon of gasoline in our car, that's one more in one of our police cars.

That's one more dollar that we're gonna be spending this year than last year, which means that we have to exceed the revenue neutral as codified by state law.

It's not that we are even increasing our amounts.

If we could just put one more gallon of gasoline, and that would increase the amount that we have to capture today.

And so I think in terms of leadership and turn in terms of policy from this bench, um, the city is going to be capturing more.

We have just as many inflationary pressures uh when it comes to uh things happening our roads or commodities that we're gonna have to be able to take in consideration as well.

Just in a few minutes, we're gonna be hearing a grant from the Wichita Police Department that is going to require spending for a downtown patrol and a downtown bureau in the amount of more than six million dollars, of which 25% of it has to come from municipal funds at about 1.25 million.

And so to the mayor's point, I can get behind inflation and new growth when we have this conversation in August.

But I would ask the mayor to provide specifics.

I will provide specifics as I did two years ago to make sure that we're making cuts to this budget and making sure that we're living in it means as well.

Um, but that's not what today's vote is about.

That's what August's vote is about, and we can have that conversation in August.

Councilmember Tottle.

Thank you.

Again, Vice Mayor, we're I think you took my notes.

I was gonna say the exact same thing.

If there are cuts that are proposed or suggested, instead of just saying let's cut 4.2 million, if there was a detailed outline, do the work.

Um, when I said that I wanted to make reform to child care, I just didn't say I want to make reform to child care.

Will everybody vote with me?

I brought together plans.

There's other examples of my colleagues doing the same thing.

So there needs to be a plan for us to be able to vote on.

Again, I'm gonna say it one more time.

We've been doing this since July.

The next five, six weeks are the most critical, so there's still time.

Today we're just voting on exceeding R by even a dollar.

So if if anybody has great suggestions of what to cut, instead of just voting no for the budget, bring together what you want and let us all have an opportunity to vote on those suggestions.

So I I hope I'm hopeful that in August we can all have a product that we're proud of, right?

And all show support for this great city.

And I'll just add a couple of more comments before um I do have something for the city manager because it's 4.2 million dollars.

I would like to see what the city manager could propose in cutting in 4.2 million dollars from the his proposed budget.

Uh, and again, I don't like the way revenue neutral is currently defined, and that has been a concern, I think, from this bench for quite some time, which is why we go to Topeka to talk about revenue neutral and what does that actually mean?

Because you're right, any time we take more than one dollar from last year's allocation, that exceeds revenue neutral.

And that is not fair because there is inflation, and there are new projects and homes that come onto the property tax roll.

And so that should be captured.

Um, and that is again, it would exceed what last year's amount would be.

But being reasonable and being consistent with what I've said from the beginning, and that is new construction and inflation should be how much the city grows, its budget is what I've said from the beginning.

So I'm gonna stay true to my principle on that.

And again, I hope that this council will come together once we have options uh to see how that budget can get to that 4.2 million dollar reduction.

Councilmember Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Call the question.

With that, we have a motion and a second further discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 6-1.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

2026 cops hiring grant.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

Captain Aaron Moses with the Wichita Police Department for the record, here to talk about the community-oriented policing services or cops hiring program and our desire to submit an application for the fiscal year 2026.

The Wichita Police Department is requesting authorization to apply for the FY26 Cops Hiring Program Grant to secure 50 entry-level patrol positions designated for service in downtown Wichita, encompassing areas such as the Delano area, the Broadway Corridor, both north and south, midtown NAFSCRA Park area, and Old Town.

The Wichita Police Department, Wichita Police Department serves a population of 400,000 plus individuals.

For Cedric County, you're looking based on the latest census is about 539,000.

I include that because obviously in our downtown area, we see every day people come into the downtown area that don't actually reside in the city of Wichita.

We cover 166 square miles, and we are currently authorized 710 commissioned law enforcement officers.

That covers every rank from the chief of police to police officer.

We're responsible for responding to 911 calls, enforcement of city, state, and federal law, follow-up investigations, collaborating with the appropriate prosecutors for successful prosecution of crime, and proactive community engagement.

In 2025, we saw an 8% increase in calls for service compared to 2024.

Year-to-date calls for service are 5% higher than the same time period for the last two-year average.

For the downtown area specifically, calls this year are 5% over 2025 so far, year to date.

It's broken down into five patrol bureaus: Patrol East, Patrol West, Patrol North, Patrol South, and then our Central Bureau.

The three bureaus that really split patrolling the downtown area currently are Patrol West, Patrol North, and Patrol South.

But like I always say, my badge says Wichita and our police cars say Wichita.

They go anywhere in the city.

So Patrol East often is pulled into the downtown core area to cover calls for service that occur in the downtown area if there are no officers available who are allocated to those areas.

For example, this building is in the Patrol South Bureau.

Patrol South covers from here, Central, all the way down to the city of Haysville in a cone shape.

So it's a very large area.

Patrol North, similarly, if you cross the street and go to the county courthouse, you're on the Patrol North Bureau boundaries.

So they cover central to the south, all the way up to Park City, Valley Center, Bel Air, as far east as Webb Road.

So our bureaus cover very large areas.

We also have our Central Bureau, which houses our traffic section, our accent follow-up unit, our community support specialists, and our homeless outreach team.

These bureaus do divide patrol of the downtown core based on the current boundaries and often pull resources from outlying areas of the city into the core to handle emergency calls for service, and that does impact our overall response times across the city.

If we're pulling officers from the outlying areas to respond to calls for service downtown, they are not available to respond to calls for service in those outlying areas where we have obviously a lot of residences and other commercial areas.

Delano Common Consumption is something new.

Construction of the biomedical campus and announcement of other construction projects in the downtown area.

We've seen consistent activation of the old town area, NAFSCA park activation like FIFA 2026 and other community events that are hosted in NAFSCRA Park.

And we see significant investment in the Broadway corridor.

As I drive down South Broadway, just south of Kellogg, I see new businesses.

We see investment in parks like Lincoln Park and also investment occurring in North Broadway.

Every morning on my way into work, I see the same individual walking to work, and I think that's great.

That we have people who are able to live downtown and work downtown.

We believe additional patrol resources are necessary.

Again, there's been an up to uptick in the use of downtown area for large-scale special events over the last two years.

I use that as an example just based on my current position.

I've had some visibility into those large-scale events.

Those include River Festival, Automobilia has moved down to be hosted at Century 2.

The last two years we've had Somewhere Fest and Anywhere Fest.

We see marathons that begin and end in the downtown area, especially at the ballpark in the last couple years.

Exciting news that the NCAA tournament will be back for 2027 and 2028, hosting 12 games across two days.

We had Banana Ball this last year that had 12,000 people down at the ballpark.

NASCAR Park was activated for FIFA, and we see it activated for other events as well.

It's a popular place to host community events, which is quite the change from the way it used to be.

We also see increased convention and concert activity in the downtown area that requires police presence to keep those events safe.

We talk about data, and I wanted to provide some data from the 2025 Polco Community Survey, which showed that 73% of Wichita respondents felt safe or somewhat safe, which was about a 10% decrease from our high in 2016.

So we have seen a decrease in the feeling of safety in the downtown area.

When asked what would make people feel more safe in the downtown area, 77% of respondents said more police or security presence would make them feel more safe in the downtown area and more likely to visit the downtown area.

I'll also call out that 83% of people said that reduced presence of unhoused individuals would uh would make them feel more safe in the downtown area.

There's also other things there like more events and attractions, which means more events, special events for us to staff, better lighting in streets and parking lots, we agree, fewer vacant buildings, we agree, and cleaner streets.

So what brought us here today is that the U.S.

Department of Justice oversees this COPS hiring grant, which aims to boost public safety through community policing by supporting the staffing needs of state, local, tribal, territory, and territorial law enforcement agencies nationwide.

The grant lists some things that they favor based on applicants who want to focus on community-based solutions for certain issues.

Those include violent crime, squatting and encampment enforcement, and nuisance abatement and quality of life issues.

The grant allows for 20 an application for 20% of your authorized staffing or 50 entry level positions, whichever is fewer.

For us, that would be 50 entry level positions.

So we would like to apply for 50 entry-level officer positions to establish what we're calling the downtown area response team, which would be housed out of our Central Bureau and focus in downtown and Broadway corridor.

One thing I want to call out this is not a fully functional patrol bureau.

Each of our patrol bureaus in the city is about 100 employees, so this is about half of that.

So we're looking at two shifts of officers that we would deploy based on data when we're seeing the most amount of calls in the downtown area, uh, and when we need those officers the most.

That means we're pulling two officers from a bureau to respond to that call for service in the core.

If we have these teams of officers, the default would be if they are available, they would respond to that call, leaving those two officers in the outlying bureaus available for other calls for service that occur further out in the city.

That doesn't mean that these officers are restricted to only responding to calls in the downtown area.

Like I said, our badge says Wichita, our car says Wichita.

These officers would be available to respond outside of that area if necessary.

These awards provide funding for three years of entry-level salary for each position awarded.

Uh, and the city must retain each funded position for 12 months following that three years of funding.

Something I want to call out for all of you is the award period of performance is actually five years.

So cops contemplates that the whole point of this is increasing your staffing, which takes time.

So you do not have to hire all 50 positions at the same time.

You can do what I'm calling staggered hiring.

Um the funding is position specific, so it's when you hire that specific position.

So if in year one we believe that we can hire 25 positions, that would trigger that funding, that three years of funding for those 25 positions, which would then bring the four the fourth year of full funding.

But then we wouldn't have the full financial obligation of 6.5 million for all 50 positions at one time.

We could spread that out by staggering the staffing.

Financial considerations.

The grant covers 75% of entry-level officers' salaries and benefits for three years.

While the city provides the remaining 25% during the first three-year period and then funds the additional 12 months of retention.

Annual salary increases are estimated at 2.5%.

The grant permits indirect costs protected at 3% each year.

That's administrative cost for administering the grant.

What I have here is a table that shows the maximum possible financial impact for each year.

So this does not reflect what I just spoke about with staggered hiring.

This is if in year one we hired 50 officers and allocated them to this grant and triggered the funding for for all of the positions at one time.

It shows the amount per year, the city cost per year, the grant cost per year, and then of course the fourth year of 6.5 million if all 50 are triggered in that fourth year at the same time.

But we are not proposing that that is what we do.

Our preference would be actually to start with a smaller number and stagger that hiring so we can kind of get our feet underneath ourselves and establish this downtown team and also spread the cost to the city to limit the impact to the general fund.

I do want to call out that your year four required retention period is estimated to cost if you do all 50 at one time, 6.5 million, which is currently unfunded.

But again, staggered hiring can spread this cost over multiple years, which is our intention.

Just so you all are aware, in the 2027 budget process, we did submit a request to fully fund additional commissioned police officer positions.

I believe it was 30 through the general operating budget.

That included detectives and positions other than entry-level positions.

This grant only funds entry-level positions.

While reviewing grant opportunities and knowing the position of the city and the city council as far as this budget, we identified the COPS hiring program as an alternative method to fund entry-level commission positions, which results in a lower impact to the general fund and allows us to spread that impact across multiple years.

Grant funds, these grant funds cannot be used to cover equipment or vehicles.

If the grant is awarded, additional local funding could be needed to identify required equipment and vehicle costs.

I will say we've already started conversations internally about how we could move some resources around to assist with equipment cost and vehicles.

Again, we anticipate, especially the daytime officers for this, would be using alternative methods of patrol to include bicycle, foot patrol.

We already have ATVs within our fleet that we could move and potentially allocate to this to limit that equipment cost as much as we possibly could.

The dedicated team would also serve to support major special events and facilitate old town closing.

So for those of you that don't know, we hire overtime officers every weekend to assist with closing of old town.

We see a lot of people come out of our establishments in Old Town who have been drinking and need some encouragement to get to where they need to go safely.

And right now that is all funded through overtime.

And when we don't have people who volunteer to work that overtime, we are pulling resources from patrol to go down to old town to cover old town closing, which means calls for service around the city are holding at that time for officers to clear old town, become available, and then go work those calls out in the outlying areas of the city.

Part of the reason we're proposing a two shift team is to have one of those teams focused specifically on closing of old town so that we can eliminate those overtime positions, have consistently the same people down in old town closing it on the weekends.

It's a unique activity for anybody who hasn't been on a ride along with our officers and seen the closing of old town.

I suggest that you do.

It is certainly a unique experience.

So having consistent staff to do that would also allow us to uh reduce or eliminate that overtime costs because we would have on-duty personnel scheduled to be down there.

I just wanted to provide an example of overtime expenses associated with special events.

Uh, overtime expenses associated with just three events River Festival, Old Town, and NCAA tournaments.

So obviously not all those things happened this year, but looking at them from when they did happen, collectively totaled nearly 700,000 in overtime for our department.

Having a downtown area response team that the way we envision it and what we've spoken about with uh the fraternal order of police as well is utilizing this team to cover a majority of those large special events.

So we know NCAA is coming in two days for two days in March.

We would be able to activate this group of officers to cover uh the NCAA tournament and provide safety and security services around the outside of interest bank arena since that's our responsibility through the city, uh, and limit the amount of overtime or eliminate the amount of overtime that we pay to cover that event.

The same thing for River Festival and Old Town.

There are major there there are many other uh special events that we cover in the downtown area that this team could also be responsible for.

Legal consideration, uh, this grant opportunity has been reviewed by the law department, and our recommendation is that the city council approve us to apply for this grant.

Again, uh today we were just asking for permission to submit an application.

Uh that application is due uh the the first part of that application is due on July 29th.

So we are here asking for your permission to do that.

Uh I am happy to stand for any questions.

Chief Sullivan is also here if you have any questions for him.

Thank you, Captain Moses.

Vice Mayor Glasscott.

Thank you, Captain.

I sent a couple of these questions via email.

It seems that some details need flushed out in terms of how many officers were accepting the first year, because that could substantially change the total city share uh right now at 25%.

So let's say we hire 50 officers, and then that the 25% share is 1.5 million.

I don't believe that's budgeted currently, is it?

It is not.

Okay.

So when we're talking about also uh the last conversation comes to the budget of a 4.2 difference, add 1.5 million to that.

We're looking at additional probably gap of 5.7 million.

And so would that come internally from the department budget, or would you be making a request outside of what your current uh allocations are uh to come back to us?

We would come back.

So the way we envisioned this today is we would submit our application asking for 50 officers.

That doesn't mean that the uh cops program is going to award us 50 officers.

Um the way this works is we come to you, we ask for permission to submit the application.

Uh we expect that award notifications will happen September, October sometime.

We would come back to you, and uh we we have to come back to you and ask for permission then to receive that award to actually uh say yes, we're gonna take that award of funding from the federal government.

So we you you do have the opportunity in September or October to say this just doesn't work, we're not gonna do this if we receive notice that we're gonna get the award.

Um at that time, we will also know if we get the award, what they will be awarding us.

They may not give us 50, they may give us 25.

And that would uh change sort of our deployment plan.

So when we come back to say we'd like to receive this funding, we'll have a much better picture of what they're actually funding for us, what the city portion would cost, uh, and how we plan on actually implementing it.

Okay.

So what we would plan on doing is sort of a 2027 revised budget conversation to fund the positions.

Uh the funding is available from the federal government January 1st, 2027, but that doesn't mean that you actually have to hire the positions on January 1st, 2027.

So we do have uh some flexibility to make sure that what we intend to do works with what what Mark has going on as far as the overall budget and ensure that you all have clarity on what our plans are and what the cost will be.

I think it's a good thing to compete for, and I would probably have more questions this September and October of whether or not we can fulfill the obligations in year four.

I mean, when you're looking at six million year four, that's an that's more than a mill that we would have to increase or cut an entire mill from other departments, and so I know that's substantial, or looking at other revenue streams, and so I'm open to going out there to look at accepting this, um, but I would have questions of whether we actually accept it, whether we can meet those obligations and those out years as well.

I know that we've talked especially a lot with the Fraternal Order of Police about a staffing study uh to look at how many officers are needed.

I haven't had a chance to review the full manager's budget as we got it yesterday.

Is that included as a request in the budget, or do you guys have a uh request of what that would uh cost?

What's the monetary value of a staffing study would cost?

A staffing study is not included in the budget.

Okay.

Do you have an amount of what that would cost if you were to add that to the budget?

I don't.

Okay.

I'd be interested in getting that information as we have budget conversations as well as what it would take to have a staffing study.

Um I think you answer that question.

Uh, how many open positions do we currently have?

43.

We currently have 30.

43.

33.

I hear whisper.

It's we we pulled the numbers again this morning.

So I have very updated numbers for you.

So 33.

Let me let me uh make sure I'm telling you for sure.

It's 38 openings at the rank of police officer.

That does not include some of the people that would be starting the academy.

So one of the things we've done recently is we've started pre-hiring folks.

We found that what happened is like I'll use myself for example.

I applied for the academy in June, and I was told we'll see you in September.

And we found we were losing people in that gap where we weren't actually providing them employment.

So one of the things the chief did is he worked with the fraternal order of police and our training academy to develop what's called a pre-hire uh program.

So now when we offer you a job, we're able to say, hey, we have a place, we're gonna put you to start learning our policies, our culture, uh, our procedures, and we're able to start paying those people to actually uh do some work, administrative work for us when we offer them the job.

So the numbers are somewhat more complicated than they used to be.

Everything in this job is more complicated.

Yes.

So it's it's currently 38 police officer openings.

Again, that doesn't include that does not include all of the academy class that comes in in the next couple weeks.

So add 50.

Does that mean we're reducing 88, or will this use be used to fund the open positions, or this considered an additional?

So it comes out to 88.

COPS requires us to add these positions to our authorized strength.

Just like the safer grant.

So our authorized strength would go from 710 to 760.

The benefit we see with using this grant to for those 50 positions is uh, as I often say, I think to many of you, we can do two things at one time.

Uh we we our recent academy classes have been anywhere from 30 to 40 people.

So we could realistically put an academy class of 33 people and say some of those positions are gonna be allocated to filling these 50 spots for the downtown area.

Some of those are just gonna go to patrol where we have where we have vacancies now.

Uh and the five-year program for this grant allows us that flexibility.

Um we would not essentially what we're doing is we're injecting 50 patrol officers that do not exist today into our patrol uh workforce, which will we hope uh drastically reduce overtime for those special events in old town and reduce response times across the city because our officers from the other bureaus aren't being pulled to the downtown area to cover calls for service.

Well, that's my last question.

And so in this presentation, it looks like we spend about 700,000 on um overtime.

I believe that's more than a 500,000 increase from last year, if I remember correctly.

So that's just for those three events.

That doesn't include other overtime related to the downtown area.

So do you think all 700,000 of this goes away as a result of this?

I think a majority of it goes away.

I'm not gonna commit to all of it going away because I want to commit because you never know what unforeseen circumstances may occur, but I think a majority of that overtime can go away by implementing these 50 positions to be used strategically to cover those large special events because that is a huge hit to to our our staff.

Um this year we weren't able to put fill all of our river festival positions, so we actually had to uh mandate some people to work outside of the normal work hours, working with the fraternal order of police to get that done.

Um but we don't want to do that.

We would prefer not to do that, uh, and this allows us more flexibility to reduce that overtime cost and have a dedicated group to work those events without impacting staffing in the rest of the city.

Well, thank you.

I feel comfortable applying.

I just want to see a plan before acceptance to make sure that we don't have to increase by one mil or have to go out to another sales tax referendum to be able to cover that amount, or just if that's part of the plan, what is the plan to be able to cover the full obligation?

So thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Vice Mayor stole everybody's questions, but it's fine.

Um you covered covered a couple of these, but um, as far as equipment, do you foresee having to come for us for?

I know you're not gonna ask for 50 cars, or I hope you don't.

Um but do you foresee?

I know you can utilize some of the things that you have, but do you foresee an additional ask coming for equipment?

Uh at this point, no.

Uh I've spoken with Captain Cooley and I believe that we can work within our current budget for large things like vehicles.

Obviously, we have a certain amount of equipment that we issue to every officer that uh uh when they get hired, and that's about $13,000 a piece.

Uh so that's about $650,000 if you added times 50.

Uh and that is like bulletproof vests, uh tasers, equipment that we wear on our belt, radios.

There is a possibility that we would have to come back to ask for more funding for some equipment, but we're working diligently to make that number as small as possible.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Have has Woodshaw ever applied for this grant before?

Not in the last three years, I know.

Um I I believe we have applied and received funding through the cops grant in the distant past, but not any time recently.

And I appreciate that question because one thing I wanted to mention is historically, we have applied uh other leadership teams with the Witchtop Police Department have applied for grants that focus on it on assets that are not patrol focused.

That's something we've heard from our officers is that um when we create these teams with grant funding, we're pulling resources from patrol.

But can you give an example?

Um so when we created the domestic intervention violence reduction team, we created grant-funded officer positions that are not focused on 911 calls for service, which is our primary function.

So the difference here is that this grant is specifically focused on 911 driven calls for service.

This is an injection into our patrol workforce, not something outside of patrol.

So these will be the officers getting speeding tickets, running red lights, like all the things that we hear about.

Uh they would very likely, especially the the evening team be doing uh traffic enforcement related to loud noise for dragging Douglas and those east-west streets.

That's certainly something that we could see these officers um being responsible for without impacting the rest of our city.

Thank you.

You also mentioned that potentially these officers um would be on bikes, maybe going places that a car can't go.

Um you speak to that?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we know we have issues along uh the river and especially under bridges uh related to unlawful camping and unlawful encampments uh and protection of city infrastructure.

Having foot patrol and bike patrol and even ATVs to get to areas in the downtown area that vehicles cannot would be very advantageous.

So we do anticipate using alternative methods of patrol for these officers.

One of the other things, you know, this is called the community-oriented policing services program.

We believe that removing that barrier of a patrol vehicle is very important, especially for the downtown area.

Like I said, I see a gentleman walking to work every day.

I think it'd be great if while he's walking to work, he could have a conversation with a police officer just to say good morning and see that officer out and about.

Uh alternative methods of patrol, I think also increase visibility of those officers, uh, which is helpful.

Okay, last question.

Um would you measure success of the grant?

So the two major ways I think we could measure success is reduction and overtime, especially related to those special events in the downtown area, and then reduction of call holding time across the city.

Uh if we inject these officers into our patrol workforce, we anticipate that we will see a reduction in call holding time because we have more officers available to respond to the calls we're receiving.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate it.

Um thank you, Captain.

Appreciate you too and all your work on this.

Uh, this grant, it's available every year.

It has been historically, yes.

Okay, and you indicated we have applied in the past, but not in the last three years.

Certainly not since I've been in my position, we have not applied.

Since the chief has been here, we have not applied.

Okay.

Um, we talked about the equipment already.

Um, what's the estimated cost per officer?

They cap it at 125,000, but what is it that our our total cost would be per officer?

Salary and benefits is 118,000 for an entry-level officer.

So that's what we would be obligated to pay the 25% on is the 118,000.

We're obligated, I believe, to pay 25% of the awarded cost per officer, if that makes sense.

So if we don't get to the full 50, if we are awarded 50, but we do not get to the 50, are we only on the hook for the officers that we did hire, we're able to hire?

Uh I believe so because the funding is initiated based on its position specific.

So we initiate the funding when we actually hire the position and create the position.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Um they talk about additional considerations that would um enhance our opportunities for this grant.

That's on not the last page, but the next last page of the packet we got here.

Um could you go through on the ones that we are looking to highlight?

And then, for example, if we go for um Homeland Security Task Force participation, how does that lock us into those particular goals?

So Homeland Security Force coordination and participation is one that we would highlight.

Um that is not immigration task force.

I just want to call that out.

I know that can be scary.

Homeland Security is a scary phrase sometimes, but that is not an immigration task force.

What that is is uh violent crime task force similar to uh what they used to call FBI Safe Streets task force.

Uh so we do we do plan to coordinate to participate in Homeland Security Task Force in the future.

Uh we would highlight that we were unfunded in the previous year because we were.

We would highlight uh hiring veterans because we routinely hire hire veterans, so that's an easy uh benchmark for us to meet.

National incident-based reporting system data accuracy.

Uh we have significantly improved our NIBER's accuracy with some changes that Chief Sullivan made.

We now have a quality assurance bureau within our records area.

Uh and our NIBER's data this year, I'll say Kyber's data.

Uh not to get too in the weeds, but we submit our data to the state, the state submits our data to the to the national system.

And our uh data was the closest to the Kansas reporting that it has been as long as our crime anal crime analysis supervisor has been here.

It was within, I believe, three percent across all crime categories, uh, difference between what we had internally and what the state had.

Um so we believe we qualify for that, and then community-based hires, which is applicants that commit to recruiting officers from the community in which they serve, which we believe is extremely important.

Okay, and those are the only ones that we're going to um put in with the application.

Correct.

And then how does uh is there a look back that do they go two years, two years out?

Do the feds go back and look at how how we are sticking to those points.

Um I'm sure they're included in the reporting requirements for the grant, um, just to provide updates, like if we do hire a veteran, we would be able to say this employee was a veteran and met that uh commitment.

Okay, and then you you touched on it earlier, but I just want to make sure that I'm clear on this.

Um is there going to be a preference as far as the open positions we have and then filling this as far as the recruits go?

Is it gonna be one for one?

Um more reliant on how many we would get rewarded through this grant?

I think we have to know how many we actually get awarded first.

Uh but we have the flexibility based on the way the grant is structured over five years with three years of funding to make those decisions.

Our intention is to is to inject additional officers into our patrol workforce without reducing the number of officers already assigned to our patrol bureaus across the city.

Uh so we would balance that.

That if we if we had gaps that we needed to fill to keep our current patrol north bureau staffed at the level that it's at today, uh we would obviously put officers there while also filling these these positions, and we're comfortable that we can do both of those at the same time.

Okay, you so if we get this grant next year is year one?

Correct.

So next year you're year one of the of the five years.

So in next year's budget, we would have to find um not potentially, or I mean potentially a million and a half, but we don't think it'll be there because that would be if we fill all 50 positions at once.

Correct.

I wanted to include the maximum financial impact.

I think that's the most responsible and transparent thing to do for you all and the community.

Uh, but we do not anticipate, even if we're awarded 50 officers, we absolutely do not anticipate actually triggering the funding for 50 officers in year one.

Okay, last question real quick.

Um what do you think the chances are that we will win this grant in some form?

And what like what are how many communities out there in our position end up receiving some funding from a grant like this?

I wish I could answer that question, but I simply cannot.

Um we'll put our best foot forward, but uh federal grants, especially right now are kind of a wild place to be, so we just have no idea what what would or could be actually awarded.

The maximum we can apply for is 50, and that's that's our intention.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Tottle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Doing a great job.

I appreciate all your work on this.

Um, I've been a grant maker and a grant seeker for 32 years, so I understand.

I I have a few questions, and if you answered them, I'm sorry.

Um lots lots of information today.

Like going on.

So it was my understanding from you said 38, but I had heard there's 43 openings right now.

Okay.

So just for fun, can we say 43?

Sure.

Okay.

And then there's a recruit class next week with 20 starting.

19.

19.

Okay, let's do my math just for fun.

43 and 20, just so I don't mess up my notes.

So we still need 23, right?

According to my math.

So is this the 23 total math and 50?

So it'd be 73 more that we would need.

We would be looking to hire if we receive this grant over the next how many years.

Is that correct?

Okay.

So it's current staffing, like what we have plus 50 more, correct?

Correct.

Okay, I want to just make sure I understand that.

So what if by chance we cannot fill the positions that we have and the positions that the grant is funded?

So let's say amazingly we are funded, and they say you're funded for 50, but things change in the community.

That's a lot of bodies to hire.

Unfortunately, we just can't hire them.

Do we have to give the money back to the feds at the end of the grant, or can we ask for a no cost extension?

Do you know what the stipulation will be?

Because my fear is if we have to put the match up no matter what, and then we don't fill the positions and we have to return the money, then we are out the money, but then we also have lost our match.

But sometimes grants will let you ask for a no cost extension where you know I just need a little bit more time to get the work done, and they'll say we'll do that, but we won't penalize you for that.

Do you know which this would fall into?

I don't today, but I made a note to get that answer for you.

Yeah, and I can help you if you want to maybe figure out like navigating, you know, grant world and the sustainability they're looking for.

But that's really important because if you have to give the money back to the feds, they don't let you give back your match money.

So just something to think about.

Um, I was gonna ask the question too about additional cost for equipment, and I was thinking cameras, computers, radios.

When you said the $13,000 per officer, is that computer technology, everything, or just that what they actually wear?

That's what they wear.

The $13,000 is what they wear.

Okay.

And then my other thought question, concern, and it's way too far in the weeds, but it just my mind works this way is where are these bodies going to be put, right?

I mean, we're already in I I remember before we built patrol east.

If I would have walked in and we would have had people working hanging from the ceilings, I wouldn't have been surprised we were so overcrowded.

Um, and and I anticipate east will be that way, and I know south is full.

And so, where will these extra because we're 23 down with my math, and then 50 more?

That's 73 more humans.

I mean, that's more than we fit in a bureau now.

Where will they go?

Uh so last year you all purchased for us the Riverview building for the Central Bureau, and we anticipate putting the this personnel there.

Okay, so that'll need FFE then furniture fixtures and equipment.

Not necessarily because these officers, while they work out of that building, they will not be there all the time.

They'll be out on the street just like our patrol officers uh now.

So is there any furniture or anything there now?

Okay, there it is.

Okay, great.

Um, and then um I was gonna ask about the 700,000 dollars of potential savings, hopeful savings from overtime, if that would be enough to cover the 13 grand per officer, and then just a comment from me if that's okay.

Um, Vice Mayor brought up the staffing study part, and I've talked to Chief about this, I've talked to the FOP.

I'm in support of a staffing study if it's done with a strategic plan.

Because if we do a staffing study, which we've done in the past with other departments, and then it kind of sits on a shelf and we say, okay, this is how many we should have.

But if you would do a staffing study either in conjunction or immediately followed by a strategic plan, then the viability of the staffing study really comes to life instead of it just you know giving you a number that you may or not be able to obtain.

So just point of reference for the future of supportive of a staffing study with a strategic plan and preferably a 10-year or further out strategic plan to incorporate all the AI and wonderful technologies that Chief is incorporating.

So thank you very much for answering my questions.

Councilmember Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'll have some commentary that is more appropriate for discussion, but particularly for questions.

Um, you've kind of already mentioned this, Captain Moses, but I'm wondering again if we are awarded this grant, this would or would not come with the 287G agreement.

It would not, it would not.

Can you explain for the public what a 287G agreement is?

A 287G agreement is uh an agreement between local law enforcement and the federal government that empowers essentially local law enforcement to uh enforce immigration laws with civil immigration laws, uh, which we have no intention at this point of applying for, or that has not changed.

Uh our policy on how we interact with foreign nationals has not changed, and this grant would not change that position.

And I'll just add the caveat.

Um I'll say this and not and not ask you to.

It doesn't mean that we've not been given the opportunity to take opportunities that would force us into that arena, and I really appreciate uh WPD being methodical in asking questions and answering questions from the council as it relates to that.

Particularly would love to know as we look at this grant and what it's supposed to do to serve areas of downtown.

What happened to the old town substation?

So we had a it was essentially an office, um, kind of a one-room office that our community policing officers had access to.

Our general patrol officers didn't actually have access to that that building.

Um I forget what street it was on, but it was kind of off to the side and back behind some trees, and it had the Wichita police name on it.

But generally there were not officers there, it was not open to the public.

That lease has ended.

So we we moved out and that lease ended this month.

Thank you so much, Captain.

And particularly as it pertains to the green sheet that we received, one of the things that caught my eye that maybe raised a little bit of concern for me was um when we talk about squatting and encampment ordinance.

We do have an ordinance in effect, it is no secret.

Um I have concerns about that ordinance.

And so I'm curious when you all mention that this is kind of one of the focus areas.

What are you referring to in regards to what that looks like in practice?

Because I also see the homeless outreach team would be a part of this as well.

Um, so what we see is this these officers doing a lot of the work that the homeless outreach team currently does in the core and allow the homeless outreach team to sort of broaden their focus to other areas of the city where we know there are also uh homeless encampments and unlawful encampments.

I appreciate the question because we have also been in discussion with Director Stang, hopefully she's still here, and Steve about a grant that they are planning to apply for that focuses on street outreach and increasing the amount of street outreach the city can do.

And we think this dovetails perfectly with that.

If we have additional officers in the core area that can work directly with those street outreach workers, go out, make contact with individuals who are unhoused and immediately connect them with a street outreach worker.

Uh, we actually provided them a letter of support support for their grant, and we uh plan on receiving one from them for this grant.

Right on.

I'm really excited to hear about that collaboration happening, and I think that's the direction that we need to go.

Case management is the way.

Um, and it reduces the strain off of our police officers and allows you all to focus on what you do best, crime prevention and holding people accountable who violate the law.

Um, the last question that I have for you is um you you talked about multiple calls at once, emergency calls.

We know that um unfortunately you all don't have the capacity to go to every single call, and so you are managing prioritizing, right?

If someone gets in a wreck, you're asking, well, how urgent is it?

Is somebody in an injured to really assess where you should focus your time?

What patrols or beats do you send officers from to focus in on the central area where there's not the capacity right now?

Uh yeah, anywhere, right?

So any officer can be dispatched to the downtown area.

Uh in the last year or two, we actually transitioned to uh location-based dispatching for our highest priority calls for service, which gets very complicated down here in the core, because what we were seeing was we would have a call at third and Maine, which is on Patrol South, uh, a priority call for service, right?

For example, it's uh a report of someone being cut with a knife.

Not saying that as a specific example, but that's like the highest priority call we can have, right?

Uh and the closest available officer may have been on the north side of Central assigned to Patrol North.

But the way that we had worked with Cedric County in the past for dispatching was that a patrol south officer would be dispatched to that call, meaning they could be coming from Hayesville.

Uh we the chief identified that as a huge concern for him, and we actually switched to location-based dispatching for those highest priority calls for service, which means that is not based on rank.

It's not based on where you're assigned as a as a bureau.

If I'm logged into the computer-aided dispatch system on my phone and available, and I'm the closest available officer, I will be dispatched to that call because we want to get to those calls as quickly as possible.

But right now in the core, an officer could come from anywhere.

Uh when we go deal with uh hot spots related to unlawful camping, we're polling officers potentially, community policing officers, homeless outreach team, uh, and patrol officers sometimes to deal with those calls for service from other areas of the city.

Thank you, Captain.

I'll have more comments and discussion.

Councilmember Hulheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Sorry, more questions popped up.

Not a problem.

Um, first, I do agree with council member Shepard.

I think one thing to avoid is this just being a street sweeping team downtown, but definitely want to enforce some of the safety measures that we have around Old Town and whatnot.

So the uh the two ships you would you talk about there's two ships that this would be covering.

Um could you talk what two ships those would be?

I mean, second shift and yeah, we actually anticipate looking at our calls for service data and building those shifts off of that data.

So a little history for you.

In 2019, I actually did a deep dive into this as a police officer before I was promoted to detective and wrote up a whole report about this based on 2019 data and what calls when we had the most calls for service.

We would do something similar.

We would look at when are we the busiest in the downtown area and how can we maximize this these personnel?

That means they may not, we may not use the traditional structure of our current four shifts, right?

We might do something different.

We might look at a 10 a.m.

to 8 p.m.

uh shift instead of a typical second shift from 11 to 9.

Um so we would look at all of that data before we decide what the actual shift times are.

Okay, I appreciate that.

And last question, one of the main concerns I have, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it is the potential for six million dollars coming into the budget here in a couple of years, and I think some of my colleagues share that as well.

Um so if we get awarded 50 positions, and that number's too big for us, does that mean we have the ability to say, okay, we're not going for all 50?

We go for 35 because of budget issues.

That's something we can work out along the plan.

Uh I will make a note to have the answer to that question in September or October if we're awarded the grant uh and follow up with you.

Uh with I'll discuss with our grant guy uh and follow up with you to make sure I give you the correct answer.

Okay, yeah, because we're squeezing two Buffalo Nickels together to squeeze out every drop we can uh fund libraries and parks, and I do have that concern coming up in the future.

Um how much exactly are we allocating across all our departments and the value that we find in that?

So I do appreciate that.

And I actually our grant guy is watching this meeting right now, and he has some answers for you.

So uh for Councilmember Tuttle's question, the cops grants typically allow up to two one year no cost extensions.

Uh and the grant is structured where we only draw down after the expenses made to answer your question, so there shouldn't be any payback to the federal government.

If we're unable to have hire everyone, it's simply unused federal funds that were never drawn down.

So we can modify the grant downward if necessary through a grant award modification.

Okay, thank you.

So thank you, Bill, wherever you are.

I had a couple of questions, and I saw that Mark just left, so maybe if we can have Mark Manning back, um specifically a couple of questions about um the annual salaries.

So it says on our green sheet annual salary increases are estimated at 2.5%.

What have they been traditionally in the last couple of years?

The last couple of years for a salary increase are sort of an anomaly.

Um so in 2023, I'm looking at Jeremy and Dave.

In 2023, I believe we reopened the fraternal order of police contract, which is something we hadn't done before.

Um, and in the last few years, the FOP has received significant increases in salary.

Uh the manager presented his budget to you just a few minutes ago, which included the two and a half percent increase in in salary, so that's what we used for this presentation.

Thank you.

Um, and the question was maybe you can answer it, uh, but regarding old town and the office there, that has terminated since.

Is that accurate?

Because uh the city of Wichita was still paying uh old town for that space.

Uh now the city of Wichita's police department has Central Bureau, the actual building.

Yeah, so we weren't paying Old Town, we were paying the owner of the building uh a lease to be in that space that has terminated, it terminated this month.

Uh we moved out some time ago and told them uh basically the agreement was we will move out if you're able to lease this space to someone else before July, uh, that our payments would cease, but if not, then they would continue and and our lease ended in in this month or near this month.

Thank you.

So those officers are now actually working out of the Patrol South Bureau, maybe the Central Bureau, depending on where they're at.

Thank you.

Um, the other question you were mentioning um, even if the ask is 50 officers, maybe they would only grant 25 per se.

Could you give us an understanding of what um 50 is ideal?

What could be um a reduction of that?

So even if the government said you only get 25, you'll have to make do with 25.

What would you do with 25?

Could this enforcement still happen at a reduction of 50 percent?

Yes, it could.

I I will just call out that like at Riverfest each night we had anywhere from 40 to 70 officers scheduled to work.

Uh so 25 obviously would not meet that threshold, so we wouldn't see as significant of a reduction in overtime uh potentially.

But yes, we would if the federal government came to us and said we're giving you 25, we would absolutely come up with a plan for all of you on how those 25 would be allocated uh when we come back for permission to receive the grant.

I would um I know that we have not received this grant.

This is just to apply for the grant.

Um having a more detailed plan of what that could look like as has been mentioned from this bench, the $700,000 in overtime is a concern.

Um, but we also want safety in these major events, and we have talked about how they are great for our community, not just for residents but even visitors that come in, and by the way, then they use our restaurants and they buy things, and it does have an economic impact onto our community.

So we appreciate all of this, but we also know that we're in 2026, and unfortunately, the cost of safety has increased.

Um, and so this focused area is not just for the downtown specific core, but even from Delano all the way to Old Town and Broadway, which has uh a lot of different uh council members are affected by this.

Can you just address how this can affect uh maybe districts three, six, four, and one with this more uh focused area, but at the same time, I'll ask a question to Mark after that.

Yeah, so what I would say is this will affect all districts, um, not just those that you've mentioned.

Certainly, the the patrol would be majority in those districts.

Uh, just geographically, the way district two and district five are laid out, they don't touch the downtown core.

But what we believe will happen, and what we see is if we if we inject these patrol resources in the downtown area, um, the officer assigned to the beat that touches Andover will not necessarily be polled to the downtown area to cover a call for service.

So we see the positive impact for all city council districts by injecting this staff where we have hot spots for crime uh and other other issues where our officers are busy.

Thank you, Captain Moses.

I saw, did Mark come back?

He did not.

Um maybe city manager, I'll ask a follow-up question to you.

Um the SMID uh only focuses on a specific area of downtown Wichita.

Um, are there opportunities for the SMID to pay for this?

Um what would need to happen in order for that to be a focus area?

Because the SMID doesn't cover necessarily all of the areas you mentioned because Delano is not in the SMID, but when people think of downtown, they think from anywhere from Delano to Old Town and South Broadway to even Midtown.

So I guess my question is what are other funding sources that can help?

Because again, the SMID is a completely different uh taxing jurisdiction.

Can you address SMID?

Yeah, mayor, I would be glad to.

Um the municipal improvement district or SMID for just the downtown geographic area.

Yes, some funding could be used for public safety purposes, just like they have hired the clean team and other things.

I would not probably see this a large source of funding given their budget, but there are other priorities that they've already got budget commitments for.

Um, but there could be, and again, they can also do uh private security and different things that they can support as well.

So I think public safety overall there could be, but I would see it be limited.

Councilmember Shepard.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

As someone who serves on the downtown Wichita board, I would not be in favor of us uh doing that unless there is a separate agreement in which we would want to pay additional costs to support that work.

Um, in addition to that, I believe that we would need to consult with the separate uh board of advisors for the SMID.

There are business owners in that particular area who have chosen to invest in that particular corridor and radius, and I think that those conversations would need to happen with downtown Wichita.

Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor.

I also said on the SMID board, so I was just gonna give some um rationale as well.

The SMID is capped at, and Mark can correct me if I'm wrong, capped at 10 mils, and I know we do full evaluation of the SMID right now, so we wouldn't be able to increase it.

Their total uh budget in terms of SMID revenue that uh they get from the city of Wichita, this was in 2024, so it's a little bit higher now, was 822,000, and so it wouldn't cover the full obligations, it could be a percent of it, but the total SMID revenues 822,000, and then that's capped.

And I don't know if that includes where we went to the 10 mil or not, because this is the 2024 budget end of your date, so it should be a little bit more than that, but I don't know how much it would cover.

So that's just context of the cap of the SMID revenues.

I would love to see how that can be funded with a d other resources, because again, I see this as a need, especially as we want to activate NAFSCAR Park.

We love seeing Riverfest.

We now have had the opportunity to bring NCAA for the next two years to prove whether or not we can continue having this.

And so I think that there is a concentrated effort in trying to activate the heart of the city, and so if there could be other resources, funding resources, which is why I'm very grateful that you guys looked at a COPS grant that has not been utilized the last three years to apply for these federal dollars that do have a match from the local uh side, but I appreciate that you were looking beyond just asking for more from just the general budget, but asking how can we also ask the federal government to help us?

So, city manager, if you can think of any other funding sources that could be a helpful with this city share or city match, um, and then beyond that again absorbing six point five million in uh the fourth year that has not been taken into account, and again, we know that the government or the grant um awardees have not been given the actual number of officers, so 50 is the maximum and that is being asked.

But what is the most um reasonable in terms of can you absorb even at the maximum 1.5 if ideally everything happened how it should, which is getting everything that is being asked, can the city absorb 1.5 million, or is there something more reasonable that then the city can absorb even starting next year?

And two things, thank you, Mayor.

Um, I do want to highlight from the budget presentation today on page 11 of the slide deck or presentation, we did hire uh did highlight that the 10 mils currently equals 1.4 million.

And so, as the uh two council members spoke who serve on the downtown board, I do think that there'd be limited um available funding, even if the board members wanted to do that.

But that is the current number we have is 1.4 million.

As to the city being able to absorb, I think as the captain referenced, is there cost avoidance and overtime and some other areas that would be where we would look first?

Um, but certainly to your point about finding other funding partners or other folks who could help um with this cost defrayance of um our match, we'll continue to explore that.

And certainly, as we said, I mean, one of the beauties of this grant, and I know there's been pros and cons as to why the city is not applied for this in the past, and the big reason is is because someone has to pay the full amount at the end, and what do you do with those positions once a grant runs out?

But I think to um the point many of you have made, I do think it's better for the city to apply, and we may be able to get 20, 30, 40, whatever it may be, and for a short period of time, I think that's helpful.

Um, so we will continue to look.

Um, and we do have three or four budget cycles to continue to focus on this.

So when we talked about how we prepare for the next year's budget, what are the priorities, thinking about public safety libraries, whatever else, we'll just have to start factoring this in when we first start the budget development process.

Thank you, City Manager Captain Moses.

Again, what I know the maximum is 50 and the current ass is 50, but what would be the bare minimum in order to get at least this started?

Because even if the federal government comes back and says you can only get 10, um, will we take the 10 or will we say that's also not acceptable?

Um, what is the bare minimum that would help with a downtown focused uh enforcement?

Yeah, I has I hesitate to put a number on bare minimum.

I think that we're there.

Uh I think that we're at bare minimum right now.

I think that you all hear from constituents.

I hear from citizens that say I waited too long.

I was answering emails in the back of the room uh before this with a constituent that said, why did this call hold so long?

And and at some point we have to say because we're maxed out.

Um so we would absolutely not decline an award just because it was not 50.

If the award was 10, then we would come to you with a plan on how we would maximize those 10.

Uh I've made some notes here of what you'd like to see if the award is given and a presentation when we come back.

Uh we are not in a position that that we would say no to any additional positions to our authorized staffing.

Uh and just so you know, I did check the last award for a cops grant was in 2020, and it was for seven officers for the divert team for domestic intervention violence and reduction team.

Was that the ask for the grant?

And it was fully granted then.

Yes.

I know that Councilmember Hoheisel asked this question, and you can't predict um how the grant uh board will decide who gets how many, but what is the best position?

Because it looks like in 2020 the ask was under 10, and they fully said, absolutely, here are your seven.

Because our ask is the maximum, and if the government or if the grantees say, well, they really just get 10 or 30, and then you will have to make do.

Is there an actual and I know I'm putting you in a very difficult position asking you what is that number that if the if we could be lobbying and saying that is the number we need, and I know 50 is what we would love, but if every application asks for 50, they're not gonna get 50.

Um what is that number to help really I guess unpack this because not every community will get their full ask, maybe none.

Yeah, so I would just call out our maximum is 50.

Uh it's 20% of your authorized staffing or 50, whichever is lower.

Uh so there may be a smaller agency somewhere else that is only asking for one officer.

Uh not everybody is going to be asking for the maximum of 50.

So I'll just call that out.

Uh and I would say, you know, I wrote this up in 2019, and my number in 2019 was 45.

So I think 50 is really uh sort of the minimum we're comfortable asking for, and we're happy to see what the federal government comes back with and come up with a plan on what that number is, and certainly what you all as a as a council say this is the maximum we're comfortable with.

Uh but our intention is to certainly come up with a plan to accept the full funding offered by the federal government if that's what happens.

Again, today we're just asking for permission to submit the application, and we will come back to you with a with a full plan based on what the award would be when that time is appropriate.

Thank you, Captain Moses.

I see no further questions from this bench.

With that, we will now open it up for public comment on this item.

Good morning, Mayor, City Council, Vince Hancock from Delano, speaking on behalf of myself.

I'm generally in favor of this proposal, but I do have some significant questions.

I also want to take a slide aside into our process.

These slides that we saw earlier were not published anywhere until we saw them here live.

And I respect the fact that our agenda gets published on Fridays.

I think it'd be a very reasonable request to say for presentations that will be coming up ahead of council.

Can those be published the night before, let's say by 5 p.m.

I think that would allow me to be a little bit more appropriate in the comments that I'm about to make to you.

Based on the staff report, not on the slides, it says growth in Delano, Broadway Corridor, Medtown, Nasker Park, and Old Town has resulted in a higher demand for police services for a department that prides itself on being data-driven and using data-driven policing.

That statement claims facts not in evidence.

Where is a year-over-year geographical heat map that verifies these claims?

Yesterday, we learned that WPD requested Delano be excluded from Open Streets ICT with common consumption given as a contributing factor.

Where is the service called data that proves that this ordinance has increased call load?

We deserve representative leaders that will trust but verify.

Probably so.

We've been talking about an increased patrol central for 15 years.

They did that to you.

Do you want to do that to the next council?

Just asking questions.

Do you have any questions for me?

Thank you.

Thank you, Vince.

Councilmember Glasscock.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um there is one thing it's not entirely relevant to the discussion, but it is brought up in there, and maybe there is some relevancy regarding common consumption.

I don't know if uh Captain Moses can answer this or someone else.

Last update that I got, there have been zero reported violations as a result of common consumption.

Is that still the status?

As far as I know, yes.

So was it the police department or parks and recreation that made the decision to remove Delano from open streets?

Because I have heard from a lot of businesses and residents that have been upset by that decision because I have also heard that it's referenced to common consumption, but if the facts don't support that, then I would also like to know that.

I do not know an answer to that question, but I will get you an answer to that question.

That would be great.

Um, and so for the manager for parks and rec, whoever is here as well.

Um, I would probably like an answer if it's not just the if the police department uh wasn't a contributing factor of that decision.

I want to know why that decision was made without police evidence that there have been violations of common consumption because from what I've heard from businesses that hasn't been a challenge in the area, and from residents that hasn't been a challenge as well.

So I just want to make sure we're not using excuses to change plans.

And I know council member Ballard and I have talked about this as well, um, and it's brought up a lot more this past week.

And just to be clear, there are no plans of a redistricting a redistricted map because we don't plan to redistrict.

Uh, we see this as a supplemental workforce to the boundaries that already exist within our patrol bureaus.

So that's why that uh plan is not presented.

Thank you.

We will continue with public comment on this item.

Good afternoon.

Jeremy Diaz, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 President.

Um today I'm here to support the Wichita Police Department applying for and if awarded, accepting the cops hiring program grant for 50 additional police officers.

This grant exists to help law enforcement agencies increase their sworn staffing and strengthen the public safety.

Wichita currently has authorized strength of 710 commissioned officers.

While we're close to filling our existing patrol vacancies, that doesn't mean we have enough officers.

It simply means we're nearly staffed to positions that were budgeted years ago.

While our city has continued to grow, the size of our department has not kept up.

The reality is our department remains understaffed at the current fully authorized strength.

On certain nights and weekends, there are more firefighters on duty than police officers.

That's not meant to diminish their vital role, it's just to simply highlight the staffing imbalance.

Police officers respond to and document hundreds of thousands of calls for service each year, often handling multiple calls at once.

This leads to longer response response times and leaves little opportunity for proactive policing and addressing ongoing neighborhood concerns.

Riverfest is a prime example.

Each year, this event requires more officers to provide the level of public safety our community expects.

Instead of having enough personnel, the city is now discussing mandatory overtime to fill those staffing gaps.

Force overtime is not a long-term solution.

It increases burnout, hurts morale, and further demonstrates the need to increase the size of our police department.

This grant could assist with those the lack of staffing and assisting with those special events.

The good news is we we have made tremendous progress.

Last July, we had 95 officer vacancies.

As Captain Moses stated, they pulled today, and that's down to 38 with 19 new recruits starting next week.

That's a remarkable improvement and shows that our recruiting and retention efforts are working.

If we continue down this path, we'll soon be able to position fill positions we were filling newly with newly authorized positions instead of simply replacing vacancies.

These 50 additional officers would be significant a significant step towards providing the level of public safety our community deserves.

They would improve response times, reduce officer workload and overtime, strengthen community policing, and improve officer wellness and morale.

When you compare Witchdaw to similar cities, the staffing gap becomes even more apparent.

Toll Tulsa is also authorized 941 officers.

Omaha, 906, Louisville, 1330, Kansas City, Missouri, 1258, and Oklahoma City, uh 1235, and Fort Worth, 1896.

We are far behind our comparable cities.

We need to be able to staff them appropriately.

This grant will help significantly.

Support the men and women who serve this community, and position Wichtaw to meet the needs of this growing city.

You have any questions?

Thank you, Jeremy.

See none.

We'll continue with public comment.

I see no one else from the public who would like to address this item.

We will now close public comment and bring it back to the bench.

Councilmember Shepard.

Thank you, Mayor.

I will be very supportive of this grant, uh, particularly as the council member that has part of downtown.

I have heard consistently about the challenges related to many of which we heard from Captain Moses today.

Um I also serve on the downtown Wichita board, and we have heard from hotels who have complaints about the loud engines at night and the perception of safety as well as uh old town adjacent murders, which is not in my district, but impacts when folks want to either be in downtown and and engage in the way that we see fit.

Captain Moses also mentioned that how uh the security and overtime is is a hit to the budget for them.

I would also argue that it's a hit to our small business owners.

Vice Mayor Glasscock and I have had the opportunity to engage with many small businesses who want to produce events in downtown Wichita, and yet um the cost is becoming increasingly difficult for them to be able to do that.

And I see supporting this grant as a way to work with Wichita Police Department to figure out how we can meet in the middle to ensure we're not pricing folks who want to bring quality of life downtown out while also recognizing the importance of the support of uh our Wichita police department.

Finally, when we look at my district overall, because I don't want to just focus on downtown.

I have a very geographically diverse district, so I try to be methodical and when I make decisions, ensuring their entire voices are heard to the best of my ability.

My number one charge is to make data-informed decisions and to ensure that the decisions that I make are reflective of the community.

Um, when we look at the Polco community survey results, which every single district uh has respondents uh whose thoughts are reflected in that survey.

Uh, when we ask them to please rate the quality of each of the following uh police services, my district rated that 57%, and it has a letter below it, which indicates that there's a significant difference in how they are how they feel that they are experiencing services as it relates to other districts.

But if we go even further into this, when we ask them to please rate how, if at all, you think it is important for the Wichita community to focus on each of the following areas.

When you look at the police services category, they believe 86% of the respondents from district one believe that we need to focus in on police services.

And then finally, uh, when asking them if they believe that what would make it more safer as it relates to police and security, they talk about the presence 76%.

Now, I could dispute much of this.

Uh the police chief knows I have my thoughts on things, um, and I don't believe more police means less crime.

I do not, but I also believe that we have an obligation to ensure that every community feels safe.

We have an obligation to ensure that we're reducing costs for small business owners owners while recognizing the cost it takes for WPD to patrol and staff certain events, and my district has been very clear that they are tired of those loud engines, and so having some of these specialized operations is meeting the moment for a lot of those concerns, and so I will be very supportive of the grant, and if awarded, I'd be supportive of when it comes forth for approval.

Council Member Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I'm gonna be honest, I am struggling here.

Um, one of the issues I have, this is this isn't just a police issue, this is a budgeting issue.

This is also asking what our priorities are going to be in the future.

Um, this is pretty quick timeline as far as us seeing this and asking for the application.

Um not a lot of public input on it.

But I also like that we are looking at um splitting it up a little more and keeping patrol south down south.

That's one of the things we see is Patrol South has to go out to Old Town.

Patrol South has to go downtown.

Um, and that does affect response time and police presence in my district.

Um, I do have concerns about sweeps, encampment sweeps.

I do not want this to be focused on that.

I want it to be focused on safety, and I do appreciate working with housing to um try and get housing first down there, and again police isn't policing is not the solution to our the issue that we have with our homeless population.

Um the main concerns I have is and I've addressed it, is the funding that we'll have to creep into the budget further down the line.

So you know, potentially six million dollars a year when we're already looking at deficits at that time.

So I understand deficits are a moving target, whatever the projections are.

That's not always a projection, but again, we have separate departments within our city that do need investments as well.

We do need to increase with parks, we do need to increase with library to keep up with the services that we have.

We do need to increase with library to keep up with the services that we have.

Um I would like to see if this passes and if we do get the grant that um that we work and make it as budget neutral as much as possible within the police department.

Um I will be supportive of applying, but I want to make sure that I'm on the record of saying that does not mean I will be in support of acceptance.

I do need to see the plan.

I want to see options, that's why I will support this now, the application, because I do want to see the options and how we can strategically move our forces around with what resources we might have.

So the plan I again I will support it here today.

We will have to have ongoing discussions depending on if we are granted any of this and how much we are granted as to how we work that into our budget into the future.

So uh just want to clarify my vote coming up here.

Councilmember Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, I concur with Councilmember Hoheisel.

Uh, maybe from some different reasons.

Um very much a budget person, so I I look at the budget.

Uh, public safety is 60 will be 67% of our budget.

It's increased dramatically over the last four or five years, and with good reason, they need to be paid better.

There's no doubt.

Um I also want to thank the chief and Captain Moses for meeting with me yesterday, answer a lot of questions.

Um looked at the meeting and went a lot longer than I thought it would.

So thank you.

Um I also hear from district five residents that they never see a police officer.

And I I concur with that.

If you go out district five, and maybe with good reason because our crime is so much less than any other district.

That's true, but they'd also like to see a police officer present in in district five.

So uh I think there is a need for more police officers so we can get that service.

So response times.

Uh my wife got hit twice.

Being in a stop sign, she got hit twice.

I don't know, it's just bad luck, I guess, but both times it took an hour and a half to two hours to get an officer there for that, and it's because they are busy and pulled in different directions.

So I see the need there.

So that being said, uh, I I will support um applying for this, and uh I would like to like Councilmember Hohe Heisel, see what that detailed plan is.

So thank you.

Councilmember Shepherd.

Thank you so much.

I I really appreciate the comments, and I really appreciate hearing the concern as well.

Um again, we just approved permission for a safer grant not too long ago.

Um, I think the precedent has been set there as it relates to the operations.

Um, I fielded a lot of calls last night from folks who were concerned about the homelessness piece, which is why I asked today.

And I'll and I'll just say out loud what what I have said privately.

I have I know perception is reality for a lot of people, but I've been grateful for the ways in which Wichita Police Department has approached our unhoused neighbors.

I have heard the chief come forward on I don't know how many occasions at workshops, council meetings, and saying verbatim, we we can't arrest away homeless.

That is really not our job, and working with case management to get folks the support that they need to guide them into the right resources.

So I I want to I just want to take the opportunity to just repeat what has been said at least a hundred times since I've been here.

Specialized approach, every department should have a specialized approach for some of the issues that we are are handling, which is why I asked at our Ombonque for us to create a clear distinction between when to call 988 and when to call 911, and thank you to the city manager for putting that out.

I think that's at least gonna help alleviate some of the concern.

We don't want 911 being called to every call.

Um, but we also know that if 911 is called, I want them to have the hot team officers who are trained to work with our unhoused neighbors to be there to build trust to build relationship and to guide them into the resources.

So I want my district to hear clearly.

Um I have no problem with pushing back on when any department comes and asks for things, and I don't believe that there is a direct benefit.

I've done that with WPD a time or two, but I do believe this is critically important as both someone who serves on the downtown Wichita board, as someone who represents a part of downtown and as someone who lives in the heart of downtown.

I see it every single day.

This is needed.

And I and I appreciate the commentary, but I also do believe that this is going to support other districts.

I don't think it's fair that other districts have to miss out on having law enforcement capacity because we don't have adequate staffing in other places.

No district should have to experience that.

And so I see this as a way to support our entire city and all of my colleagues in the districts that they represent.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor.

Great, great comments, uh, Councilmember Shepard.

I agree.

I know that Old Town, uh, downtown, the whole core pulls a lot of resources, and it is unfair to all of the other districts that you know are equally as important, but uh unfortunately the downtown area, you know, takes a lot of the officers that we have.

So I'm hoping also that I will be supportive of this grant to see if we get it, how many officers we could potentially get.

But I'm also hoping that the ripple effect of it is um prevention.

You know, maybe if we're not always having to be so reactive everywhere we turn and chasing to the next call, and you know, all of the things that come with that, I'm really hoping that we have the opportunity for our community policing officers to be community policing officers and you know, go to all of the neighborhood meetings and be able to stick around for a second and not run to the next one and really build a community that they do the absolute best that they possibly can, and I'm so grateful for that.

But I really do think that a key piece of um what we're missing is prevention, and it's just because I know that you all don't have time, and uh so yeah, I will be supportive of this, curious um how it all shakes out, and um really appreciate all of the comments uh for my colleagues.

I am so happy to hear um our council um being very thoughtful again.

Um I think that what you get from this council is thoughtful discussion, thoughtful questions, and I hope we give you enough time to give us back that feedback in terms of the answers that we'd like to get.

And I think I can echo the same sentiments from several of our council members that we would like to see a more detailed plan, and I know we won't know whether or not we get this, but even having a strategic plan moving forward regarding how can we best serve this growing need for uh activating our downtown core because even if we get nothing from this grant, I think we should still get a plan together of what can it look like because I don't want to see burnout from our officers and that mandatory uh requirement to serve our community and in these large events, it should be something that we should all want to do, uh, but I don't want to see that burnout.

And so if we can have maybe a strategic plan of something that if this doesn't uh get awarded, what can happen even moving forward?

Um, I think this community wants to see again thoughtful investment into the services that we want in our community, and so I'm gonna still throw it back to the city manager, and I'm gonna say that I know two council members serve on the downtown board, but the self-supported municipal improvement district, known as the SMID, does focus primarily in the downtown core, and with this uh with a strategic plan, I would like to see even a portion of their current budget show safety as part of it because the clean team is requesting 386,700, and their personnel costs are 545,000.

So if there is even a portion that we could ask, I think it shows good faith that a large majority is that downtown, and it's kind of the whole matching grant um idea.

Everyone that has some skin in the game, even the local government is if we get this grant would have some skin in the game, and then moving forward full skin in the game.

And so I would ask if maybe the SMID could have just a little portion, it's just an ask.

You can't ask you you should be able to just ask if that's even feasible.

Um, and so I still will throw it back to the city manager and asking once a strategic plan also comes forward, and we don't have this grant.

What can we still do moving forward?

Because I think it's still needed, um, knowing that we will have these events moving forward, like NCAA and others.

So I am very supportive of applying for this grant and getting some resources from outside of our community coming into the city of Wichita.

So, with that, I see no one else on the board, so I will move that we approve WPD to apply for the 2026 COPS hiring program grant.

Second.

Motion second, any discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call them.

Uh, sorry, I know that uh we should get a small break.

Could we get a 15 minute break?

Come back here at 115.

Uh we do return at 122 p.m.

We will resume with the council meeting with agenda item number three.

Madam Clerk, can you please call that item?

Data edge contract mass storage.

Well, good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

Uh Mike Nader for the IT department.

I have the pleasure of speaking to you about mass storage, which I'm sure you all are very interested in.

Um so as we kind of talked about last week and again on Friday, um, the idea of uh storage, how we're able to bring that uh storage uh up and running again.

Um this is really pretty simple.

The background will just tell you we have something that's end of life, we need to replace it.

Um as stewards of city tax dollars, and and um it is really important to us that we look at all the options.

Uh, we look at cr uh cloud options for these types of things.

Uh the difference is cloud options are going to be uh use operational funds, i.e.

you're gonna spend on that on an annual basis.

Uh what we do is we capitalize this, so it's a one-time spend suggesting we'll at least get five years of service out of this enclosure.

So these are fairly complex storage arrays.

Um they will provide flexibility for us to expand, reduce, probably expand as the city continues to uh store data.

Um, in terms of analysis, uh, it's a modern storage again.

Our storage array is end of life, we have to replace it.

So that's why I'm in front of you.

This is not really an IT thing, this is a city of Wichita thing.

The door the storage arrays for us collect data from across the organization, a lot of it, um sieges data, uh criminal justice data.

So these enclosures are also meet all of those standards so we can move forward with those without any um problems.

Supports future growth, so it's on premise.

We can grow these as we need.

Um data protection and predictable support.

So part of this also includes support.

These are very complex, as you can imagine.

Um, they're not just servers, uh, they are truly uh network attached storage, so fairly complex systems, that's why we put them on support.

Financial considerations again.

Um we think of this from a capital sense, one time spend of 216,000.

Then we do have additional support just on the software side, that's much less than that.

Um after the first year, so uh this is budgeted.

We have an equipment replacement fund that we budget for these types of of activities when because we know technology is gonna age.

Um, so on these types of capital equipment, we we have that funded.

Um I would recommend that the council approve the data edge contract and authorize the necessary signatures.

I'm sure you'll have tons of questions for me about data storage.

Thank you, Mike.

Uh, appreciate you and the staff in the IT department.

We all obviously utilize that technology and uh the 3100 employees within the city at some point touch IT in some way.

Can I just ask, since this is about storage, um, and we just had WPD here before you can you talk about the need for the storage has increased so much?

Even emails that come to us with major attachments, and again, not every email even comes through to our email accounts because I really appreciate that there's um anti uh spam wear and all the other measures so that we're not infecting the system.

Can you just talk about just the need for storage that has derived from lore um data that we yeah?

So as you can imagine, for example, I I use this example quite a bit.

Um 20 years ago, and I have to be careful of the analogies I use.

I once used Gilligan's Island, and my students looked at me like they had no clue what I was talking about, which was sad.

Um if you think about when you had a camera, you had 24 shots on that camera, and then you come back and develop it.

So at one point you had those 24, and that's it.

Now with digital cameras, you'll have as many as you want, and so oftentimes they'll take a lot more.

Those are even though kilobytes, right?

Small data sets, but as you store more and more of those, you start getting larger data sets.

We do a lot more of video, we have camera systems all over body camps.

Now, a lot of that for the police department is in the cloud, uh, so we don't touch that stuff, but as it comes back for evidence, then it is on premise and we keep it.

So a lot of the a lot of video, they're more high def.

Um, so just the what we're storing now is larger, and then as you're all aware, we've all gone digital, right?

Especially through COVID.

So that that migration to digital then has prompted not just larger individual pieces of data, but more of it.

So, for example, we're talking about uh with this array, we're talking about petabytes of data, which is significant as we we talked about on Friday.

Did that answer your question?

Um, my other question.

And it wasn't too no, no, no.

Okay.

I actually have a couple of things because after your presentation on Friday, I've been thinking about this.

Number one, when it comes to storage, all of us have obviously digital devices where, like you said, you used to develop 24 uh images and that's it.

Whereas now one instant is 24 of that same image.

Um, what are we doing within the city of Wichita to make sure that we are purging some of the unnecessary things?

Um, and I understand we have to keep certain things for quite some time, but there are probably either duplicates or things that are clogging up the system because I don't want to keep paying for storage that it's literally the same image, just 24 different times.

Um, and then my second question is are we doing random testings uh within the 3100 employees where you're kind of just randomly testing the system an email that should not have been open, but it was produced within IT that you do know the parameters so that again you're doing some checks and balances, not just sharing with us every month you need to watch this video, but actually testing the system and keeping everyone on alert.

Like we said, don't open these types of emails.

How many people actually do open them?

Uh, because they do that in the private sector.

Right.

So that those are two questions from the private sector that I wanted to see if it could be implemented within local government.

Yeah, so um, I'm going to start with your second question, and then I'll go back to the first one.

So we have done phishing before here.

Um we have reduced from a cost perspective, we've reduced that down to just videos, and all of you get those.

Um short video training on phishing.

We're going to go back to uh fishing our employees again.

Uh, one thing that we want to be cognizant of is not pinpointing who those folks were and make it punitive.

Uh we wanted to make it a learning experience.

So we're working with our vendor to get us there.

So we'll be doing that again.

Uh so it won't be just the video training, it will be phishing as well.

So there's that.

Um your first question.

There's that actually is a very complex um question because we cannot force people to remove data.

We have systems and we've asked for systems in the budget, new systems that will automate some of that that will help us in terms of when it finds redundancy, it will automatically delete it.

Um, some of our contractual systems, we're working on those now to do the same thing where AI can tell us this is a redundant, so we can keep the most recent one of those.

So we'll use technology to to help get us there.

Um what we face is really more of a cultural thing within the city from uh I have to keep it, right?

And I have to keep it forever, and that's not true.

So we have worked with the clerk's office and the city manager's office to arrive at what do you really need to keep and how long do you need to keep it?

And then so we will start automating those processes so we can reduce some of that uh technical debt is what it is.

I appreciate learning about that because again, as you said, it's a culture change of keeping everything, and then you just need to build more storage, more capacity.

Um, but there are certain things I've been asking for history, for instance, of Mayor's Youth Council.

Tell me who has been part of it, who has been part of Civic Engagement Academy, and not everything has been collected all in one place, and so it's in multiple different places.

That those are just tangible examples of that's important data that should be collected in one space rather than in storage units all over the place.

And we're looking at that as well, right?

So for you for you to get the data that this council is really asked for on a regular basis.

Um, it's inherent on us to make sure it's good data.

Uh, we want to make sure that the decisions you're making is on valid right data.

Um, and so there's a lot of how do you clean it, how do you make sure it's valid, and then for us to apply some of the AI things that we want to do in the background also requires that that uh same thing, right?

We have to have clean data to point it at.

So we are we are working on those things on the back in the background.

Thank you, Mike.

I see no questions from the bench.

We will now open it up for public comment.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Vince Hancock.

For those of you who were not aware, I have a long history of experience background in mass communications and information technology.

I've been a persistent advocate for best practices for decades.

It is a matter of public record that when KWCH TV 12 needed a computer expert to do a red team exercise on a local nonprofit, they look to me.

And to the mayor's question, 50% of the employees at that nonprofit clicked on that email.

Red teaming is something we have to do with our employees, and it cannot be audited from internally, it has to be done by an external company because they will look they will find holes that we didn't know to look for.

It's just best practices within the industry.

A network-attached storage device is known as a NAS.

Drives are usually configured in a redundant array or sometimes as a JBOD.

Yes, that means just a bunch of disks.

I've personally been maintaining these types of systems for decades.

Questions that you should be asking Will the primary and secondary units both or will they be located in geographically diverse locations?

Because if you have one physical facility die, you're going to lose all your eggs because they were in one basket.

The primary obviously needs to be local, the secondary, there are multiple secure data facilities available within a five to ten minute drive, but that increases the geographic diversity.

Another question was the contract for this equipment and services subject to a competitive bidding process.

There was no evidence of that in the staff report.

What is the initial storage capacity in petabytes?

One, 1.5, 2.

That was not mentioned in this report.

Seems to be a little off there.

And my biggest issue is the staff report claims a desire to comply with K sieges data policies.

These policies require agencies like the Wichita Police Department to conduct a weekly audit review and analysis of the information systems audit records for indications of inappropriate or unusual activity.

In May, I asked for the smallest amount of accountability by requesting a log of the dates of when those weekly audits had taken place.

I asked when the systems were last audited by the FBI, when the systems were last audited by the KHP.

I didn't ask for any data from those reports.

I simply asked for the dates that those audits occurred.

I was asked without evidence to believe all our systems are scanned.

24-7, 365.

We also conduct audits from the FBI, KHP and KBI, with the latter two being more frequent.

They told me verifiable evidence of those audits would never be made public because quoting now, I will not provide threat actors with free information that they can use against us, unquote.

Grandma would call that hogwash.

There is no way that simply knowing the dates that an audit occurred could provide any information to attacker.

What it does prove is that the audit actually occurred.

I'm not convinced that we are doing those audits as required by state and federal law.

Trust us, we've got this, cannot fly in modern cybersecurity.

As my counsel, I'm asking for your continued assistance, ensuring our city staff document and demonstrate best practices.

Any questions?

Thank you, Vince.

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

With that, I will close public comment, bring it back to the bench.

And again, thank you, Mike and your team in IT.

I will go ahead and move to approve the contract with data edge.

Second.

Motion second discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Authorization to submit fiscal year 2026 continuum of care program applications.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, CBER for the record, Department of Housing and Community Services.

Today I present to you two, it's actually one grant, but we're submitting an application for two different projects on this grant.

Some of you have sat on the COC board and understand how some of this works.

If not, sort of the background is that the Continue of Care Program is a federal initiative administered by HUD to fund local projects aimed at ending homelessness.

The City of Wichita first applied to embed COC funds in the long-standing housing first program in 2023, expanding the program now known as housing evolution.

Locally administered by the collaborative applicant on behalf of the coalition to end homelessness in Wichita's Cedric County, the United Way ensures alignment with HUD requirements and local priorities.

HUD released the Notice of Funding Opportunity on 6-1, 2026, and the local coalition reviewed that and published a local competition on 6.9 with that local due date to the COC on 723.

The COC then pulls together all of the local projects and applicants and puts to what puts together a community-wide application to put our best foot forward to HUD in order to spend the allotted funds.

And that one is due by 826, with the vision that homelessness should be rare brief and non-recurring for all residents in our community.

HUD published the local COC's annual renewal demand of $3,059,670, with eligible projects to include permanent supportive housing with priority scoring for renewable projects, transitional housing, which is a new category for HUD to fund in the COC world, housing focused street outreach, which is also new, and I'll come back to that in a minute, but also substance use services and mental health services, employment services, and rapid rehousing.

For the first time, HUD is seeking proposals from communities for the transitional housing, housing focused street outreach and the standalone projects, such as substance abuse, mental health, and employment services.

However, only 60% of the annual renewal demand of 917,000 will fall into non-competitive renewal one tier one.

This is down from 90% in prayer years.

Nearly the entire grant has been PSH in the past, meaning that there may be cuts for less competitive renewals.

Any funding above that amount will fall into a national competition from our community in what is called tier two.

Housing evolution, being that renewal project provides permanent supportive housing with intensive case management for chronically homeless individuals.

The budget for the total program is 1,345,995, 2319s requested from the COC, the remainder from city county, city, county, and housing authority.

It does require 25% match.

However, we've exceeded that with the current expenditures in the program.

We have about this is actually a request for a significant increase.

The outcomes, more than 50% of the adults increase with an income at exit, and we're working on improving that.

And 90% remain housed or move to permanent housing, and less than 10% return to homelessness within 24 months.

The City Wichita is applying on the second project for housing focused street outreach.

Now, if you recall, this question came up last fall, and we put together a budget for housing focused street outreach, and we presented that to the city manager, and that ultimately landed us in a quick trip grant to proof concept that internal to our organization, we could continue to grow and utilize that project hope strategy that we had built through that Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant that ended a few months earlier.

The street outreach project does expand our community's capacity to engage individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness by providing housing focused outreach, employment assistance, substance abuse and behavioral health linkage, transportation and direct-to-housing stabilization services.

The model aligns with the clutch model, as you've heard me talk about over and over and over again.

The budget, the total project budget is 1576, 859 and 41 cents, which includes the COC request of 1,257,830.

The required 25% match is derived from liquor tax dollars that connect individuals to substance abuse treatment and community services block grant dollars that currently support self-sufficiency within our department.

The budget includes three outreach teams that include professional housing specialists, peers, and interns, six housing stabilization caseworkers to assist with the transition, and an employment specialist to connect to connect individuals to income paths.

The project proposes to serve 150 individuals moving in 75 clients per annum and ensuring 80 percent 82 percent do not return to homelessness in 24 months.

If they return to homelessness in month 25, for instance, they are considered newly homeless.

That's why 24 months is the number.

Both projects will be reviewed and ranked by a local committee recruited by the COC staff and board at the United Way.

Based on the priority scoring rubric, housing evolution will likely fall into tier one, which does not make the project subject to national scoring.

Based on the scoring priority rubric, housing focused street outreach will likely fall into tier two, which does make the project subject to national scoring.

The Department of Housing and Community Service will work with WPD, Parks and Rec and Public Works to align resources as appropriate.

There is no impact to the general fund as match funds have been identified internal to the department.

The grant applications have been reviewed and have been approved as to form by the law department, and it is recommended that the city council approve the submission of the city's FY 2026 COC program application, including street out how street outreach and housing stabilization as a new project and housing evolution as a renewal project, authorize the housing department to make any necessary programmatic or budget adjustments following the rank and review process and authorize the mayor to sign all required application documents.

And I stand for questions.

Thank you very much, Steve.

Questions for staff?

I do have a couple because this plays very well with what we've been talking about regarding homelessness and hot team and a new street outreach team.

The frustration from the chief, I think is their role as law enforcement.

It's literally in their name, law enforcement officers.

So what they'd love to see is a street outreach team being the first point of contact with individuals facing homelessness, connect them to resources if they so choose, and help them with transportation to a shelter or to a program.

Um I do see that it is a tier two, so it would be a competitive national scoring.

Um could we could you work collaboratively with police and parks to maybe provide a model that maybe other cities could see as a potential um pilot that is gonna work?

Where again this is a community rich in resources, especially helping our individuals facing homelessness, and a street outreach worker may seem less intimidating, especially not coming in a vehicle marked PD or anything like that, but rather just city of Wichita or call call it the street team, and they can be the ones that transport the individuals that back to that warm handoff that you often talk about.

Could there be again that model where our community sees an individual facing homelessness?

They call a number.

I don't know what that number would be, but then the street outreach team goes and talks to that individual and reminds them our ordinances are XYZ, you cannot camp here, but I can take you to your resources if you want the resources.

Now, if you don't want the resources, law enforcement is coming right behind me and is going to enforce the law.

And so again, they have the first opportunity, which is connection to resources, and then the second portion would be enforcement of law.

And then the third piece would be back to parks of cleaning up encampments.

So could that be is that something that is being talked about with this again, new street outreach team with housing focus because this is new again in this grant.

I have so many answers for you, Mayor.

Um the original model here that dates back to last summer when we invited Mandy Chapman Semple into our community whose community uh home community of Houston reduced unsheltered homelessness in their downtown quarter by 60% by developing this clutch model, which is that it first responders are street outreach folks.

And that's quickly evolved into the conversation that has involved parks and Wichita Police Department and the hot team about how we become the primary resource for folks.

We just simply, as a housing department, nor as a community have that internal resource for street outreach to do that, which is why it has historically fallen on the homeless outreach team at WPD.

So we built this project in line with what we see as a more comprehensive approach.

It would be a seven-day-a-week, seven to seven approach to be able to respond to C click fix to be able to walk alongside the hot team, or they walk alongside us, or we tag team.

That's how we've always seen this.

Because what's really interesting about all of these federal grants right now is that the current administration does value camping ordinances, as we all know.

We value housing first approaches and getting people housed, and our ability to blend the two right now is extraordinary.

So we actually will score pretty well in a national competition because we want to treat every individual with respect to serve them with a housing resource, not just a camping ordinance and treating this as homelessness is illegal in any way.

We want to do both.

We want to serve those who are out there with the respect they deserve that they deserve a home.

So this project is built that way, and that's not even the best part of all of this.

This grant came along as a part of our local COC.

As you know, it originally came out last uh December.

It was supposed to come out the prior June with the current administration's focused on housing focused street outreach.

So I've been building to this for a long time.

And this is the current COC grant that addresses that.

Meanwhile, however, SAMHSA and the grant that Captain Moses spoke of, SAMHSA put out a streets grant.

The streets grant is a substance abuse and mental health services administration grant that is three million per year over the course of four years.

But it's a treatment first approach, which is fine because a lot of the folks in our community also need treatment in order to be successfully and stably housed.

I'm currently working on that now, and that's the one that actually Captain Moses spoke of.

While this still does that, it's on a smaller scale.

This is those three teams clutch model, street outreach, housing navigation, housing stabilization.

So it's doing all of the pieces parts, and it's going to serve a smaller number.

We're still referring to people for treatment, but this other one puts eight more teams on the street, the streets grant.

So at the moment, I'm writing every grant I can.

I'm seeking every resource I can.

I'm doing the development that I can.

And this is intended to develop a sustainable long-term renewing street outreach program that doesn't end.

Our community hasn't done robust street outreach in about 10 years.

And interestingly, some of the people that we meet out in these campments have been there for about 10 years.

They've lost hope that a resource will ever be available to them.

And it's really interesting to go out there and meet them and find how many of them are willing to accept a housing resource when it's always been the common vernacular that they don't want that, they're choosing that or the living off-grid in some way.

We're finding that not exactly to be true, and we're housing as many people as we can on the quick trip grant, but right now that's one team.

We need to scale this and do best practice.

The scaling is coming from the collaboration between the city manager's office, it's coming with the Wichita Police Department, Parks and Rec.

This is what we need to scale, is what we are now.

Proofing of concept is working now.

We just need it to be bigger so we can house more people and bring down the number of people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness through housing.

Thank you, Steve.

I see no questions from this bench.

We will open it up for public comment.

See none.

I will bring it back to the bench.

And with that, I will go ahead and move to approve the submission of the city's uh fiscal year 2026 COC program applications, including street outreach and housing stabilization as a new project and housing first as a renewal project.

Authorize the housing department to make any necessary programmatic or budget adjustments and authorize the mayor to sign all required application documents.

Second.

Motion second discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Thank you.

Thanks, Steve.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Zone 2026-23 zone change requests in the city from single family residential district to two family residential district to build a duplex generally located at the west side of North Young Street within one quarter mile north of West Second Street at 407 North Young Street.

Good afternoon, Mayor City Council Philip Zevenbergen with the planning department.

Zone 2026 23 is a request in the city to rezone a property from single family residential to two family residential on a property located on the west side of North Young and just north of West Third Street.

As indicated in the description, it is intended to build a duplex on the site.

This item is coming before you today because the MAPC and the District Advisory Board had slightly different recommendations.

About the property, as I mentioned before, it's at 407 North Young Street.

It's probably one or 0.16 acres in size.

It consists of one ownership parcel, and it is currently undeveloped.

Our understanding is that a recent single family home was raised on the site.

So it's only recently undeveloped.

In terms of context, everything in white that you see here is properties that are zoned SF5 single family residential.

However, you can notice there are some areas uh along North Young Street, both south and to the north that are already zoned TF3 two family residential and developed with duplexes, approximately 100 feet to the south and approximately 200 feet to the north.

In terms of review, on June 8th, the district six advisory board reviewed the request and recommended approval of the application with a protective overlay that would require the dwelling to be built with a hipper gabled roof, and that was approved uh nine to zero.

There were no public comments at the district advisory board meeting on June 11th.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Commission reviewed the request and recommended approval of the zone change request per the staff recommendations.

So their recommendation did not include the protective overlay.

So we have an MAPC recommendation without a protective overlay.

The DAB recommendation required a protective overlay with a HIPAA-gabled roof, which is why it's coming before you today.

No protests were received against this case, and therefore any approval of this application can be done by a simple majority vote, which is four or seven votes.

So the recommendation before you today is to adopt the findings of the MAPC, approve the requested zone change, authorize the necessary signatures, and instruct the city clerk to publish the ordinance after approval, which again requires four or seven votes.

Alternative to say today are to override the planning commission, adopt alternative findings, approve the plan the application for the DAB recommendation, which includes the protective overlay.

Any change to do any override of the MAPC requires two-thirds majority vote, which is five of seven votes.

Other alternatives are to override the MAPC and deny the application.

Again, that would take five of seven votes.

And as always, you can return it to the planning commission for further consideration, which takes a simple majority vote.

As a reminder, in terms of process, the city council policies that the public hearing happens for planning items at the planning commission, and that according to the policy, the city council does not typically receive additional public comment on zoning items at the city council meeting.

I'll go through the rest of the graphics.

Again, no protest was received.

Here's site pictures of the area.

This is looking west towards the site.

This is looking east away from the site, looking south along Young.

And with that, I can stand for any questions.

Thank you.

I see no questions.

This resides in Council Member Ballard's district.

What happened?

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, I'm waiting for my screen.

Oh, okay.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Uh I move to override MAPC, adopt the findings of the MAPC with modifications, approve the approve the requested zone change with a protective overlay that would require HIPAA gabled roof.

Place the ordinance on first reading, authorize unnecessary signatures, instruct the city clerk to publish the resolution.

And in support of this motion, I offer the following additional findings.

The DAB recommended protection protective overlay that will help ensure the future uses of the property will be more compatible with the neighborhood.

Second.

Motion second discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 70.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Zone change requests in the city from single family residential district to two family residential district with protective overlay number 482 to build duplexes, generally located on the north side of West Maple Street within one half mile west of South Ridge Road.

Again, good afternoon.

Philip Zevenbergen for the record.

Zone 2624 is a zone change request again from single family residential to two family residential.

This property is located on the north side of West Maple, approximately one half mile west of South Ridge Road, is currently developed with a vacant commercial building and a vacant single family home.

The property is about five acres in size, and the intended use is for multiple duplexes.

The property is unplatted and plating would be required for development.

If this application is approved, it would require that a duplex be built on individually platted lots.

It does not allow for multifamily style development with multiple dwellings on one large property.

The applicant indicated that they desire to build multiple duplexes with their application.

They submitted a proposed protective overlay that had some architectural controls with their intention of allowing the uh duplexes to be more compatible with the existing single family homes that are surrounding the property on three sides.

Regarding that con regarding that context, as I mentioned before, properties of the northwest and east are zone single family residential with single family homes.

Property to the south across West Maple is zone limited commercial within a community unit plan and is development with commercial retail, a strip center, a restaurant, and an undeveloped parcel.

This item is coming before you today because the DAB and the MAPC had different recommendations.

In addition, the property or the application was protested.

Little note on the correction of the agenda report that you guys received late last week.

Last week staff was doing review of other cases, found additional protest petitions regarding this application.

Was adding those to the protest map and found that our calculation was incorrect.

The initial uh calculation you guys received was a 41% protest.

That was updated, and it is a 81% protest.

Regardless, it exceeds the 20% threshold set by state statute.

So whether 41% or 81% uh would require a supermajority vote for any approval recommendation or approval motion this morning, which requires sorry, this afternoon, it's been a long day.

Uh this afternoon, which requires six of seven votes.

In terms of review, on June 1st, the district five advisory board reviewed the request and recommended approval per the staff recommended uh protective overlay number 482.

That protective overlay language was part of your packet.

25 people spoke against the zone change with concerns about the character of the area and existing neighborhood in addition to traffic along maple and residential streets nearby.

The district advisory board again recommended approval with a six to three vote on June 11th.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Commission reviewed the application, and they recommended denial of this application by an 8-4 vote.

In support of their motion for denial, the MAPC determined that duplex development would not be compatible with the surrounding single-family development.

In addition, 15 individuals spoke in opposition to the zone change request with similar concerns regarding detrimental impacts to the character of the neighborhood and potential traffic in the area as well.

The recommendation before you is the planning commission recommendation and is recommended that the city council adopt the findings of the MBAPC and deny the zone change request.

That requires a four or seven votes.

The alternatives that you have is to override the MAPC, adopt alternative findings, and approve the request per the DAO recommendation that includes the protective overlay.

Authorize the necessary signatures and instruct the city clerk to publish the ordinance.

You also have the option that would take six of seven votes for any approval because of the protest.

And you also have the option to return the case to planning commission for further consideration.

That requires a simple majority vote of four of seven.

And again, a reminder with the process that the city council policy that the public hearing for planning items occurs at the planning commission.

According to the policy, City Council does not typically receive additional public comment at the city council hearing.

Go through the site pictures.

This is located looking north at the site, looking south across Maple to the commercial development.

This is looking west internal to the site.

I believe that's uh part of the vacant structures that are on property.

East and with that, I can stand for any questions.

Thank you, and thank you for reminding the community that this has not yet public comment.

It has gotten a lot of various public comment.

I know that this council has received various forms of emails, and we still have some residents here in the audience for the council meeting.

So I just want to recognize that they have been here since the morning and are here this afternoon.

This resides in council member JB Johnston's district.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, first of all, thank you to the neighbors for their time and input on this zoning case, including today.

I'm sure many are online too.

Uh I also want to thank the developer who took the time to meet two representatives from each neighborhood uh on my back deck.

Um also just point out I've attended three neighborhood meetings at Ron's home.

Ron is here.

You can wave if you want to, Ron.

There you go.

I see Ron at the Y almost every day.

So I also met with the developer and the neighborhood representative is my home, like I said.

I have heard this at my dev twice.

I respond to many emails, text, and calls, and I have a vested interest in this case because my house is on that map.

Uh, and I want to see Wichita Road too.

I want to thank personally thank staff members, um, including Philip, appreciate you, but especially Scott Waytle and J.R.

Cox for their their hours with me and meetings uh looking at this, exploring options and and getting the language and stuff.

I really appreciate that.

With that, I move to send this case number 2026-0024 back to MAPC within 120 days.

I asked the developer to submit a proposed plat of the five-acre lot and submit color illustrations of the renderings slash elevations of any proposed housing.

In support of this motion, I'd like to offer the following findings.

One, there's already multifamily housing in the area.

Two, this neighborhood hasn't had an empty lot for the last approximately 40 years.

Three, it is in the interest of Wichita taxpayers to have this lot developed, and all the city infrastructure is in place and paid for.

A year ago denied multifamily zoning.

However, this time approved duplexes.

More information is needed, and I'm hopeful that it will come to conclusion that most people will embrace.

Second, I'm sorry.

Second.

That was really long.

I pulled a hoheisel there.

I'm sorry.

Any further discussion?

I see none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

DER 2026-11.

Initiation of process to review and update City Council policy nine.

Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council Justin Constantino with the planning department here to talk about potential changes to City Council policy number nine.

The recommended action this afternoon is to take action as determined necessary by the city council.

A little bit of background on policy number nine.

Um, for those that uh are unaware, um, policy establishes the circumstances for when the city council does not hold a public hearing concerning planning items.

Um the initial policy number nine was adopted in March of 1986, and there has since been um some changes back again in November of 96, and then most recently October 2025.

The existing policy um for council procedures uh states that uh the city council does not hold a public hearing concerning any items on which the MAPC has already held an official public hearing and may call on MAPD staff to clarify items pertaining to the request.

Um specifications, including uh information will be provided to the city council and appeals process and district advisory board review.

Um again, uh uh background on the current practice for the non-consent agenda.

Any valid protest um is located within the official notification area and uh district advisory board and MAPC recommendations are different.

The proposed changes, there's two uh for today.

Uh the first one being clarifying that the city council may call upon city staff and other stakeholders to clarify items pertaining to the request.

Currently, it's just city staff.

The additional language would be for other stakeholders, so I would give um uh additional members uh uh to speak upon uh the request, and uh the second change would be to revise the qualifying reasons for when a case is presented as new business.

Currently, if there is one protest within that protest area, um it would go to new business.

This would change that and make the valid protest represent 20% or more of the protest area.

Again, the recommended action is to take action as determined necessary by the city council.

That concludes my presentation, and I'm available for any questions.

Questions for staff beginning with council member Hohheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

I will be brief.

Uh does any of this apply to our district advisory boards?

Uh no, this would be specifically for city council policy number nine.

So it would be um uh it it it pertains to public hearings and when uh the two changes would be to um basically clarify speakers and to um uh look at the valid protest and when the case would be heard.

Okay, thank you.

I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss up that short.

I see no further questions.

We will open it up for public comment.

No one from the public is here to speak on this item.

We'll bring it back to the bench, and this is initiated by council member Toddle.

Thank you.

Thank you to MAPD for all of your work in this.

I really appreciate it.

Um, I know that I've had two specific cases where there was one petition, but it wasn't 20 percent.

It fell uh the district advisory board approved it unanimously, as did the MAPC, but yet staff had to prepare time for presentation.

It took time from council, all the things.

Um, and so this is just a way I think to streamline and make things more efficient.

So, with so thank you again for all your time and and energy on this.

So, with that, I move that the city council approved the proposed policy updates.

Second.

Motion second discussion.

See none, madam clerk.

Please open the roll.

Motion passes seven zero.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Approved that pursuant to section 204090, Councilmember Joseph Shepherd's travel expenses as estimated on the travel authorization and expense form to attend the 2026 National Economic Mobility and Opportunity Conference in Washington DC, August 19th, 2026, for the purpose of presenting with the Greater Wichita Partnership Team at a national economic development conference and to attend the conference for the opportunity to learn from other community communities consistent with AR 3.1 be approved upon return from travel.

Actual expenses shall be reported to the controller's office.

I move to approve that travel.

Second.

Motion second discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Council member appointments and comments.

Council members, are there any appointments?

Okay, we'll start with appointments first.

Council member Hohheisel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, I would like to appoint Eddie de Herrera to my district advisory board.

And this would mean that I have one single spot open on all my boards.

So my OCD is driving me crazy on that.

So thank you.

Councilmember Ballard.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Um I have several appointments.

Okay, for the Affordable Housing Review Board, I'd like to appoint Margaret Shabaz.

For the library board, I would like to appoint Jameson Price.

Dr.

Howard Chang.

The ICT or Wichita Central County Access Access Advisory Board.

Mary Ware.

Oh.

And that's it.

That's awesome.

Council Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would like to appoint Alan Oliver to my district advisory board.

And I'm not for sure how we're doing the youth members, so I'm just going to appoint Jordy Dornboss as a member of my district advisory board because he was previously just a youth member of the advisory board.

So those are my two appointments.

Council member Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would like to appoint Grant Phillips to the Accessibility Advisory Board.

And then Tony Mai to the Wichita Library Board.

I will go ahead and move to approve all of the appointments by council members.

Motion second discussion.

See none.

Madam Clerk, please open the roll.

Motion passes 7-0.

Before we go to Councilmember Comments, I just want to recognize that former fire chief Blackwell is in the council chambers right now and appreciate his service to our community.