[0:01] Tuesday, August 25th, 2026, Derby City Council meeting. Restart the meeting on the flight with the flight salute led by Council President Ginny Webster and the invocation by Pastor Kim Dickerson-Ord from Whitlow, United Methodist Church. Could everybody please stand?

[0:15] One

[0:26] nation under our individual liberty and justice for all.

[0:34] Gracious and loving God, we gather tonight thankful for your guidance and for the opportunity

[0:39] to serve the city.

[0:40] We lift up our hearts in a special prayer of comfort for the families and our community who

[0:45] are carrying the heavy burden of loss and injury this past week.

[0:49] We pray for your peace which passes all understanding, rapidly, your peace around every family whose

[0:56] lives that have been forever altered by these tragedies, guard our road crews, our first responders,

[1:03] and citizens keeping them safe as they move through our city.

[1:07] As this council approaches its work tonight, we pray that you would give them wisdom and

[1:11] discernment, let all decisions made reflect a commitment to the peace, safety, and prosperity

[1:17] of all of our residents.

[1:19] In your holy name, we pray.

[1:20] Amen.

[1:25] Thank you, Pastor.

[1:26] Roll call, please.

[1:28] Mr. McEver.

[1:29] Mr. McEver.

[1:30] Mr. Truitt is absent this evening.

[1:32] Mr. Neal.

[1:33] Mr. Engel.

[1:35] Mayor Stats.

[1:36] Mr. Webster.

[1:38] Mr. Malt.

[1:40] Mr. Ryan.

[1:41] Mr. Brown is also absent.

[1:43] Mayor that leaves us with a quorum.

[1:46] We do have a quorum with six voting members present.

[1:49] Thank you.

[1:50] Council Member Webster.

[1:52] May I make a motion to accept the median agenda as presented?

[1:57] I have a motion this second. All in favor say aye.

[2:00] Those same sign. Motion carries 6-0.

[2:03] It brings us to presentations. This is going to be our 20-26 smoke on the planes.

[2:08] Derby barbecue and music fest report.

[2:12] And you're over there. Come on up, Andrea.

[2:17] Thank you.

[2:22] Thank you so much, Mayor Stats, Council Members, and City Manager Mangus.

[2:27] Tonight, before I do the presentation on our 15th annual, we are always donate to an

[2:33] amazing group at McConnell Air Force Base, the McConnell Air Force Base Military and Family

[2:40] Readiness Center.

[2:41] We give back to that, and tonight we have Anna Hill here representing the group, and I'm

[2:46] going to let her say a little bit about the Family Readiness Program, just to give you a

[2:50] a little bit of an overview of what they do.

[2:52] You can come on up and then we are gonna present her

[2:54] with a check from the city of Derby

[2:56] and the Derby Lions Club.

[2:58] I have Sean Smith here, the president.

[3:00] We're gonna present them with a check

[3:01] after you tell us a little bit about it.

[3:02] Wonderful.

[3:03] Thank you, Andrea.

[3:05] And thank you for having us tonight

[3:07] and for your generous donations every year.

[3:11] I just wanted to share with everyone

[3:13] what we have been able to do,

[3:15] how we've been able to serve families

[3:17] with the money that we get donated

[3:19] from smoke on the plains and from the Lions Club.

[3:22] So over the last year, we have been able to have over 200 families come

[3:28] to our events for deployed family members.

[3:31] So we do things like go bowling, we take them to a pumpkin patch.

[3:35] We have a Christmas party every year and we get personalized gifts for each one

[3:39] of the children and the spouses of those deployed members.

[3:44] next month we'll be going to Tanganika and actually Saturday we'll be hosting our family mobility

[3:51] line where families can come out and they get to go through the deployment line process just

[3:58] like their active duty military member does so we're really excited about that and we serve lunch

[4:04] and have just lots of base agencies out. We've also we were able this year to provide school supplies

[4:13] is to over 350 families at McConnell Air Force Base.

[4:18] Things are expensive right now.

[4:20] So we're always really happy to be able to do that.

[4:22] And we've been able to give commentary gift cards

[4:25] to military families and also our single military members

[4:30] who find themselves in an emergency

[4:32] and maybe don't have enough money to buy food.

[4:34] So we're always happy to make sure that we can do that.

[4:37] So again, thank you very much.

[4:38] And thank you for letting me share.

[4:50] It's just me and Elyan too, but I don't know what I want to do.

[4:55] This is Sean Smith, a bit of an audience.

[4:57] Hi, Anna Hill, nice to meet you as well.

[5:00] Yeah, thank you for being here.

[5:06] That's me.

[5:08] You're perfect.

[5:10] You're perfect.

[5:11] You're perfect.

[5:12] Let's get it back to you.

[5:13] We love each other.

[5:15] Okay.

[5:18] Everybody see Kelly's lines?

[5:48] All

[6:02] right, soak on the planes. Derby barbecue music fest. It was our 15th annual and this

[6:10] was personally my third that I attended and I will say this was probably by far my favorite

[6:15] not that I'm partial or anything. It was held on June 12th and 13th at High Park. You can see the

[6:21] crowd. These are all photos from this year, which is pretty fun to see the change over the years.

[6:27] On Friday night, we had people's choice tasting event is one of the highlights. We sold over 700

[6:33] plus tasting kits. That is 34 teams compete for people's choice favorite pulled pork. It was

[6:40] another fantastic we sold out of course again I mean when you sell that many

[6:45] tickets in 30 minutes or less it's pretty awesome so we had a huge line again

[6:49] playing in with McConnell Air Force Base we have also plugged into them in

[6:53] different ways the Air Force Base Sergeant's Association chapter 972

[6:59] volunteered and came to the barbecue they actually served up the barbecue which

[7:03] this is their second year they've done that for us and it's really great to get

[7:07] them involved in everything, so you can see a couple of them in the picture.

[7:11] Followed by the People Choice event, we had our main stage, the local nail biders, and

[7:18] paramount.

[7:19] And you can see in the pictures the turnout that we had, it was huge.

[7:25] And it was awesome to see in High Park.

[7:27] With the renovations that have now happened in High Park, it was a very lively place anyway.

[7:31] But then you throw in everybody that came out to support the barbecue this event, it was

[7:35] fantastic.

[7:36] They put on a great show.

[7:39] We also had the Kansas City Barbecue Society barbecue competition.

[7:43] This year we had 39 master series teams, 23 backyard teams competing, 12 kids competed

[7:50] on Friday night in kids' queue, 10 different states were represented.

[7:55] We had people all over from Alaska and Florida where I think are too farthest.

[8:00] We had two new competitions, the Pi Anceleri,

[8:04] that was open to the public, and then cookie contests

[8:07] that was specifically for children.

[8:09] So we had four of those competitors in 11 Pi entries.

[8:13] You can also see in the bottom right photo the teams move this year.

[8:17] We used the parking lot over by the chip side and the ball fields.

[8:21] And it worked out great.

[8:22] It was not floodable like last year.

[8:25] So it was really good.

[8:27] We got great feedback from all the teams about it.

[8:29] so probably going to be returning to that space again next year, it was really great and it was

[8:33] close enough to the rest of the festivities they were able to come over and participate. So it was

[8:37] great. This was a fun guest on Saturday. We had representative Ron Estes came and presented

[8:45] a congressional record to us, recognizing our 15th annual and that was really cool. He presented it

[8:51] during the award ceremony so all the barbecue teams were there. Really fun and he had a really great

[8:58] thing I thought in the middle of his presentation and he said I imagine our

[9:02] founding fathers would be pleased to see the patriotism and community pride that

[9:06] is taking place here in Derby. So in honor of the 15th annual Smoke on the

[9:10] Plains and 250th anniversary for this country it was a pretty cool visit and

[9:15] really happy to have him with us. Additional events that happened during the

[9:20] barbecue the Smoke in 5K hosted by the DRC they had 234 registered runners on

[9:26] Saturday morning and 36

[9:28] volunteers. They had toss like a

[9:30] boss. That happened on Friday

[9:32] evening. Nine teams competed

[9:34] and it was a new location at

[9:36] High Park. Just outside of

[9:38] Zimmerman is a new, I like to call it a little grassy

[9:40] knoll and that's where the cornhole

[9:42] sat up set up and it was perfect little space for

[9:44] them. So it was really cool because the

[9:46] sidewalk goes all the way around and people

[9:48] could stand around and watch the actual cornhole

[9:50] tournaments. It was great. And the first

[9:52] pickleball tournament at the new High Park

[9:54] Courts, we had 13 teams competing, and it was a very lively place.

[9:59] Even after the tournament, if you've not been by High Park, the Pickleball Courts are very, very popular.

[10:05] Day and night, they are usually full.

[10:09] And then Smoke & Sampler on Saturday evening hosted by the Derby Chamber of Commerce.

[10:14] I would say it was successful.

[10:15] 301 tickets were sold, and 11 different businesses participated, and I do believe they are coming back next year to do it again.

[10:23] I think they had fun. Saturday morning, we host Kids Corner. This year it was really awesome

[10:30] having the new splash pad and playground added to High Park. It tied in perfectly with the inflatables

[10:35] that we brought in, princesses, face painting, Derby Fire Department was there and really did a fantastic

[10:41] job interacting with the kids. They got to spray the water hose and just get to meet different firemen.

[10:48] they also had their firepuck was there and he got to meet T-Dog from the Wichita Thunder team.

[10:55] That mascot came down and had a nice little encounter with the two dogs.

[10:58] It was pretty fun.

[11:00] And then it was just, it was a great turnout.

[11:03] Again, High Park was never quiet the entire weekend. We'll put that.

[11:09] Saturday threw us a little bit of curveballs again, as you would say,

[11:13] whether in Kansas is always a little bit bumpy.

[11:16] We had storms that were forecasted to come in instead of cancelling, which a lot of people

[11:22] of course were wanting to know, are you cancelling or are you cancelling.

[11:25] Thankfully we had connections.

[11:26] You can see in the top left photo is actually our team sitting with Fire Marshall, Jonathan

[11:32] Marr and a couple of fire, and we're able to speak with the National Service, National

[11:37] Weather Service as well as Sedgwick County Emergency Management.

[11:40] And they were advising us on when they thought that the storm was going to hit and all kinds

[11:44] of things.

[11:44] So instead of canceling, we were able to move up the start time about an hour and a half with Matthew Eberwine on the stage, followed by Jalen Johnston.

[11:53] We were able to get a good hour, a little bit hour 10 out of Jalen before the weather hit, and everyone was able to safely get out of the park before we had heavy rains, heavy lightning, heavy all the things.

[12:04] So between the two days of June 12th and 13th in High Park, we had 14,000 attendees in

[12:13] High Park.

[12:15] That's amazing.

[12:16] That's a lot of people that came out.

[12:18] 17 different businesses and sponsors were part of the event.

[12:22] We had 30 plus city volunteers that were able to come out and help us.

[12:26] And then seven of the council members actually volunteered, which I am very thankful for

[12:30] all the golf cart drive in and having a good time at barbecue.

[12:35] Here is a showing of some of our, or pretty much, most of our sponsors this year, without

[12:40] sponsors coming alongside of us, it's really hard to do it.

[12:43] It's not cheap to do a large event like this that's free to the community and public.

[12:48] So thankful for our top ones, our Don Hatten Derby, Evergy, Security First, Smile Safari

[12:54] and Derby Orthodonics, along with BRG Precision, really big ones that helped us a lot.

[12:59] and pulled us off with us, so we're thankful for them.

[13:03] We don't talk about our team very often.

[13:05] We have added a new member to our team.

[13:09] I'm the event organizer, along with the rest of us

[13:12] in communications.

[13:13] Christy Justin and now Kayla has come along.

[13:15] She experienced her first barbecue, and I think survived.

[13:19] It did get a little warm for her at times,

[13:21] and I think she was a little bit of shock

[13:23] of all the things that we actually do.

[13:24] But it's pretty amazing that we're able to pull off

[13:29] such a large event with our team.

[13:31] I'm going to say this year, a big thank you

[13:33] to our new Parks Director, Eric Newell.

[13:36] He stepped in and immediately asked what our team needed

[13:39] and was physically their president,

[13:42] making sure that we had all the help we could need

[13:44] during the event and I'm very thankful for that.

[13:46] It was incredibly nice.

[13:48] So that is the barbecue in a nutshell.

[13:52] And I am open to any comments or questions that you may have.

[13:59] Council member Webster.

[14:00] Thank you, Mayor.

[14:00] Thank you again, Andrew. I am so sad that I missed it. Unfortunately, I had vacation already planned, so unfortunately I did have to miss it this year, but it looks like I missed a great time, which makes me super sad.

[14:13] So hopefully, next year, it won't coincide, but we did have some plans. But thank you for all of your efforts and your team's efforts to make this. I heard many stories about it, so yes, you touched a lot of lives.

[14:23] and I love that we have 14,000 people in our community

[14:26] seeing how great we are and what a fun event we could do

[14:29] for free for them. So thank you.

[14:32] June 11th and 12th, 2027.

[14:35] So you can put it on your calendar.

[14:36] Yep. Council member Neal.

[14:38] Same thing. Thanks, Andrea. It was awesome.

[14:41] I love doing it every year.

[14:43] Jenny, thanks for... I was going to ask who's the one.

[14:46] So, vacation is...

[14:48] You're good.

[14:50] Oh, you too?

[14:51] Yeah, I guess so.

[14:52] So it was it was awesome and yeah, good job. Thank you

[15:00] I always want to echo what they said. I mean, the event seems to get better every year. You know, it's hard to, you know, measure that. But, I mean, just the feel of it. And I think keeping it fresh, changing things every year. I like the way you guys reacted to the weather this year, because it was a little dicey. And, you know, and it, it show went on. And it was, it was great. But the Friday night, I could not believe the amount of people out there. It was just, and they were all having fun.

[15:27] And you know, it's my heart to walk around and just see people having fun in the community coming together and people from outside our community coming together with us.

[15:37] So thank you and the team for everybody's hard work.

[15:40] And I know you're probably already planning next year's.

[15:43] So thank you very much.

[15:45] We got one more light council member.

[15:47] Thank you, Ms. Mayor.

[15:48] So yeah, I would just say excellent job.

[15:50] I heard a lot of good feedback for it.

[15:51] I was not able to attend either.

[15:52] It's the same week in his valley on the park and a bit as a dance daughter that knows that that's that's a bigger priority

[15:58] So anyway great job. I entered to you in the whole team.

[16:04] Thank you

[16:06] Next we have public form and announcements. We've been we send up for public form

[16:11] Okay, anybody from the bench have anything

[16:14] Councilmember mole. Thank you, miss mayor. So

[16:16] Just third third day was awesome this past week

[16:19] So just wanted to say the buzz there was just amazing the energy was really awesome

[16:24] and we were a little late getting there,

[16:25] but it was just really fun, a great atmosphere.

[16:29] The second thing is more for my peers.

[16:33] The police chief has an offer out for some presentations

[16:38] around our flock system.

[16:39] I know all of us have been getting messages and calls

[16:42] and emails about that.

[16:43] I would strongly encourage all of us

[16:45] to take that hour of time.

[16:47] It's very enlightening because 99.999%

[16:50] of the stuff you read online and you see online

[16:52] is not true, and so I think it was very eye-opening for me and a great opportunity, especially since next session we have them presenting on it, so I would just say to the tens of tens watching, please come next next meeting so you can hear that presentation as well.

[17:10] Thank you, and the team that put together the Barbecue Festival, let's leave you in right now. They do their Thursdays as well, so they stay busy year round, so thank you guys and enjoy your evening. Council member Neal.

[17:21] Yeah, just real quick Derby Knight lights is this Thursday, which is a pretty cool event at Panther Stadium for all fall sports and then some junior sports.

[17:30] It's pretty cool. I think it starts about five o'clock and ends with the high school like scrimmaging themselves and probably wraps up about nine.

[17:39] So Derby Knight lights this Thursday at Panther Stadium.

[17:43] Okay.

[17:46] Anybody else on the bench? Staff, do you have anything?

[17:49] No, sir. Okay, that brings us to the consent agenda. Does anyone from the bench have any

[17:53] items to wish to remove from consent or which thing you to abstain from?

[17:58] Seeing none, Mr. Mangus. Thank you, Mayor. Council, three items on consent agenda tonight.

[18:02] First item is consideration of the minutes from our August 11th, 2026 meeting. Second item

[18:08] is assessment ordinance for nuisance evapment. This is actually on. We've had one person pay,

[18:12] So it's on 25 properties in the amount of $11,820.

[18:17] Third item is to appoint city manager Kyle Mangus as the voting delegate to the League of Candice municipalities meeting October 8th through 10th in Wichita.

[18:27] That is your consent agenda.

[18:30] Council Member left, sir.

[18:31] Mayor, I make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

[18:35] We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

[18:38] Opposed? Same sign. Motion carries 6-0. That brings us to a new business. First item, please.

[18:45] Our first item this evening is 2027 Budget Revenue Neutral Rate Hearing.

[18:52] Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Megan Pader, your finance director.

[19:01] In connection with tonight's budget presentation, there are two hearings that are required per state statute.

[19:07] The first one I'm going to present is the Revenue Neutral Rate, and then after that

[19:11] Kyle will present the budget, and there's also a public hearing associated with that.

[19:19] Okay, so Revenue Neutral Rate was passed in 2021, it's called the Truth in Taxation

[19:24] Law, and this statute requires us to hold a public hearing in order to exceed the Revenue

[19:30] Neutral Rate for property tax dollars.

[19:32] So the Revenue Neutral Rate is the tax rate in mills that would generate the same property

[19:38] tax revenue in dollars as our budget last year. So in 2026 budget, the property tax was

[19:45] 16,311,326 dollars. So in order to exceed that by a dollar, we have to hold the public

[19:54] hearing for R&R and then also it calls for a role call vote from council.

[20:02] So to calculate R&R, the county takes last year's property tax in dollars and divides

[20:08] it by this year's total assess valuation, which we received the estimated assess valuation

[20:14] around June 15th of each year. Our valuation did increase by just over 6% this year, which

[20:21] then causes the Revenue and Chul Rate Mill levy to be lower than what we assessed last year.

[20:31] So following this public hearing for R&R, the Council will then consider a budget that

[20:36] exceeds the R&R.

[20:38] So part of the reason that it exceeds the R&R is because R&R doesn't take into account

[20:43] and cost increases that the city incurs for utilities, pay raises for their employees,

[20:49] contract costs, or software costs go up.

[20:52] We also have new items that we're proposing for the 2027 budget year and we have several

[20:58] positions which Kyle will discuss in more detail later, but that does include PD, fire

[21:03] utilities and IT and then we have long-term projects, new software or software

[21:08] increases, equipment purchases, but Derby is growing and we do have

[21:14] infrastructure needs coming up along with maintenance on existing infrastructure

[21:18] and those do require additional costs and we see the same inflation as

[21:24] everyone else.

[21:27] So this chart shows in the green is the Mill Levy that was actually

[21:31] assessed each year. It has gone down since 2021, and then the R&R is the calculated mill

[21:41] levy that the county does based on our property taxes from the prior year. So you can see

[21:45] we did exceed R&R every year, but with our growth and inflation it's hard not to. It's

[21:52] also very uncommon for cities to hold our or stay below R&R because they just can't give

[21:58] any pay increases or software increases, anything like that.

[22:04] So we have a very specific process, we have to follow for R&R and there are several dates

[22:09] you have to meet in different requirements.

[22:11] The first one is to notify the county clerk that you intend to exceed R&R by July 20th.

[22:18] So in prior to that, in July we bring the manager's recommended budget to council and at that time

[22:24] is when you vote whether we're going to propose exceeding or not.

[22:28] So we did submit that prior to July 20th to the county, and then we have to place notices

[22:34] in the newspaper and on our website at least 10 days prior to this hearing tonight.

[22:40] You can hold your public hearing for R&R between August 20th and September 20th, which

[22:45] is what this is, and then tonight you will adopt or consider adopting the resolution to exceed

[22:51] R&R with a roll call vote, and then after that closes, then you'll have the budget presentation

[22:57] and hold that hearing and then finance staff by October 1st has to certify the budget

[23:03] to the county clerk who then forwards the information to the state.

[23:11] Okay, the public hearing for R&R is a little bit different than most public hearings and

[23:16] so mayor will open the public hearing.

[23:18] We will hear citizens, anybody that signed up to talk, council discussion, then you will

[23:24] hold the roll call vote and then close the hearing so that's a little bit different than

[23:28] normal.

[23:30] And with that, I would stand for any questions.

[23:35] Councillor Bauer-Neil.

[23:37] Thank you, Mayor.

[23:38] Could you go back to the slide that had the graph on it?

[23:42] I just want to see so the, so what you're saying is our mill last year was the 42.416.

[23:49] No, the 42.416 is what we would have to levy in order to meet our and our thinking.

[23:54] Okay, so it's just about two mills and one mill right now is equal to about

[23:59] 380. Yeah, 380. 385. 382. 384. 385, yeah. Okay, that's all. Thank you.

[24:08] Anybody else from the bench have any questions? Comments before I open up

[24:12] the public hearing? Seeing none at this time I am going to officially open up

[24:18] the public hearing for the revenue neutral rate piece of this. We do have two

[24:25] people that are signed up at this time. I'm going to come up to the podium here. You've

[24:31] got five minutes to speak. Kim, Neff, please come up.

[24:44] So if you would state your name

[24:45] for the record and your address, please.

[24:47] Kimberly Neff, 424 South, Georgie Avenue and Derby. I'm here in regards to my property

[24:55] taxes. I own two homes in the Derby area, one of which went up 12% and I'm okay with

[25:02] that. The other one went up 62% my you know Derby taxes for the the city of Derby and

[25:11] the school and I mean 62% is a huge jump. I don't understand how they come up with this

[25:19] other than they say my house is now worth $69,000 more than it was last year which I live in

[25:28] the South Partiturbia. It's not a new addition. It's the original part of Derby. So I'm very

[25:36] concerned about this. I'm also on a fixed income. I'm retired. I don't, you know, that's

[25:41] more than double. I don't understand. And I appealed it. And they're like, well, I'm

[25:48] sorry, but all the other houses in your area are selling for that. I don't believe that

[25:52] to be true, but they take two or three, look at it and say, oh, everybody on this

[25:58] area is a zap. I don't know if there's anything you can do to help, but I just

[26:04] think it's ridiculous.

[26:07] Thank you for your time. Thank you, ma'am. Okay, Miller.

[26:24] Thank you for coming. You have five minutes to meet your name and your address, please.

[26:27] Okay, Miller 925 Mockingbird Lane Derby, Kansas, been here for almost 40 years, and we have a house, we have a couple of few rental houses, and the, you know, people think that just because you have rentals, you have a lot of money, but there's a lot of expenses involved with them, and the taxes on them, the two of them went up 8%.

[26:55] but you can't raise the rent, you can't raise the rent 8%, so there's just little, you know,

[27:03] I learned my whole life that we have to live in a budget.

[27:07] And I believe the Constitution really said we weren't supposed to have to pay taxes

[27:12] and that people were supposed to work together to make the community work.

[27:16] And now we're at a point where we're being abused in taxes.

[27:20] And it just doesn't make sense to me.

[27:22] we're getting into, I don't know, it seems almost like communist socialism where we have to

[27:27] take care of people and entertain them and I know the fun stuff we do is great. I work

[27:32] so I don't get a chance to do much of it. But I think budget is the key issue and this

[27:40] actually works with budget and revenue neutral rate. I mean they work together. If we don't

[27:46] live in a budget then we can't keep the taxes low and the taxes are supposed to be, that's

[27:51] supposed to be the effort of government is to keep taxes low for its citizens.

[27:56] And we don't get raises, you know, at the job I work, I don't get a raise every year.

[28:03] I don't get a raise in five years, many times.

[28:06] I taught for 22 years in Kansas and two years somewhere else.

[28:11] I worked for five years without a raise, but government keeps raising taxes.

[28:19] So it just doesn't make sense. It's wrong. It's actually, I think it's morally wrong.

[28:28] And there's a lot of people in the community that are concerned about it.

[28:32] And also, when it comes to the property taxes, I think ours are probably quadrupled

[28:38] over the 30 plus years we've lived in our home. And yet, the first 15 to 18 years,

[28:48] they didn't raise that much, something happened, something happened after what, 2010, 2012, I don't know what it was, but then they jumped, they jumped, I mean the property values jumped, so our taxes jumped, and schools don't live on a budget, part of our property taxes go to schools, I mean being retired, our kids are raised, and you know, a lot of people complain that retired people have to pay for that, but I don't, I don't really mind.

[29:16] And except I feel like the schools are not held accountable for what they spend.

[29:22] And so they think that we're just a pool of money that they can pull from anytime they

[29:26] want to have some extra little project.

[29:29] And as a teacher I learned a long time ago that we started public education for academic

[29:34] subjects.

[29:35] I lived in France ten years.

[29:37] They focus on academic subjects in their schools.

[29:41] They don't give me wrong, but they don't have music, except for just general music education.

[29:47] Just enough for people to have music appreciation and know that they want to go to a school,

[29:53] to a special school for music, to learn music.

[30:00] They have sports clubs. They don't have sports in school. And then, you know, I disagree with sex education in school. I feel like that if you look at the statistics, there's more illicit childbirth under 18 years old, since we started sex education then afterwards. But yet we have to pay for it. And there's a whole list of other things I could mention. School should be held accountable. The administration is super top heavy.

[30:29] and that's, oh, I got another minute, so I don't know how we get there. I don't know how we get

[30:38] school to lower their budget and cut out some of the programs that they don't need. I mean,

[30:44] there's clubs in the schools that a lot of people don't even agree with. And, you know, there's things

[30:49] that are good like the ROTC and things like that that are wholesome and great activities, but there's

[30:56] And also things, I guess I'll say it, I'm not judging, so don't think I am, but the

[31:03] transgender thing in the yearbook was a travesty.

[31:06] I mean, yet there's conservative groups that weren't even in the yearbook.

[31:10] And yet taxpayers are paying for that.

[31:13] And those are just examples, though.

[31:15] I mean, there's probably a whole list of others of how taxpayer money is spent without even

[31:20] Any regard to the common beliefs of anyone or what is morally wholesome and good?

[31:27] Thank you.

[31:31] Thank you, Miss Miller.

[31:33] Anybody else from the public have out here to stand when I come up and speak speak now

[31:38] We're going to keep this open for a few minutes

[31:40] Right now. Does there anybody from the bench that has any thing they want to say?

[31:46] Staff

[31:48] I'll just say with R&R obviously that we had the

[31:53] Truth and Taxation Bill like our finance director Megan said came to effect in 2021

[31:58] Before that we had the tax lid that was put into place in 2015 or 16

[32:04] R&R replaced the tax lid

[32:07] R&R

[32:09] We've talked about this a lot during our budget process last few years

[32:11] It we've always and and this year's a great example because one of the things council Marineville since you've been on

[32:17] We've always talked about R&R plus some sort of inflation factor

[32:20] the fallacy in R&R is just that, you know, the cost to pay the road in 2020 versus now,

[32:27] thanks to COVID, has gone up 60%. You know, costs have gone up, but R&R doesn't take that

[32:35] new account. It's a flat number. So this year, with 6% valuation, if everybody paid their taxes,

[32:41] we would get to keep 6%, but one and a half to 2%, probably closer to two,

[32:48] Delinquent taxes, so really we capture about 4%, which inflation was around 4% over the

[32:55] last 12 months, so we're right in the ballpark of where the goal we had kind of talked

[32:59] about prior with some sort of R&R plus inflation, and really what's helping us with that

[33:05] is our Derby Different sales tax.

[33:06] I mean, and that was kind of what we told people when we did Derby Difference was some of

[33:10] those property tax items would move over to the sales tax side, on our public safety equipment,

[33:15] on our street maintenance on some of our parks. That way it's off the property tax side so

[33:22] there's some inherent what I feel are some inherent flaws with R&R they've been talking about

[33:26] it at the state level and we'll continue to have those conversations with them but that is part

[33:32] of the challenge that we all face you know and you all face in the budget decision making process

[33:38] is crafting that at a at a dollar level. I always use the thousand dollar example of a thousand

[33:43] $1,000 last year, you got to do $1,000 this year, and so that's really the challenge

[33:48] with R&R.

[33:51] Council member Engel?

[33:52] Thank you, Mayor.

[33:53] Yeah, echo a bit of that and I'll do my annual complaining about the R&R formula.

[33:58] That yeah, doesn't account for any level of inflation, which of course, as a city we experience,

[34:03] but it's about two-thirds of our budget is staffing.

[34:07] Yeah, you'll see in our, probably about 70% of our general fund.

[34:11] Yeah.

[34:12] Yeah.

[34:13] So that's always challenged because our police officers and our firefighters and our

[34:16] parts of the department, and everybody deserves to get there.

[34:20] They're bumped to offset the inflation they experienced in their own homes.

[34:23] Of course, I also think that there's a level of inflation that we experience as a municipality

[34:28] that is different from your regular household inflation because things like road work, paving,

[34:34] have increased at a much higher rate than groceries have.

[34:38] So that continues to be a challenge as well.

[34:40] and so I'll make my annual comment to you that I mean I think we've left a

[34:46] lot of fat off of the budget we're paying for things we have to pay for it's

[34:49] people it's infrastructure and unfortunately that does cost more but yeah

[34:54] the formula itself not accounting for inflation and not accounting for any

[34:58] new property that's been annexed into the city by request of the property owners

[35:03] or new commercial development so all that sort of stuff doesn't get included in

[35:07] R&R formula either. So this gets to be really confusing in muddy process where we're trying

[35:13] to explain what the numbers are like. If we want to go one penny over last year's budget

[35:19] then we're breaking R&R, which is a challenge. So yeah, it's not a perfect system. I'm sure

[35:24] there will be a lot of discussion in the next legislative session about what the property

[35:29] tax animal really looks like and how we can adapt and change and improve and hopefully

[35:37] those are very productive conversations between all the municipalities across the state

[35:40] and our legislature and Topeka. But for now, yeah, I mean I think I think it's worth saying

[35:46] to the public we do kind of work backwards, right? What are the things that we know that

[35:49] we have to pay for in the next year? What are those things going to cost and what is the

[35:53] minimum amount that we can bring in via taxes, whether that's Derby different sales tax

[35:57] or add Vlorum taxes or whatever other fees and stuff we plan to have in the budget so that we can just cover the expenses of all these things that the community has said that they want to happen.

[36:08] So that's my annual die drive. Thank you for your time.

[36:13] Council Member Webster.

[36:15] Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Kyle, for your feedback on that and showing how this has changed and this has not been something that we can control.

[36:23] I wouldn't 100% don't like to pay taxes either and I don't like when I get my assessment either and that it's

[36:29] over or more expensive than what it's been and I also own rental properties and that's a pain also, so I have that same of

[36:37] some of our citizens. Megan, can you tell me, do you know how many

[36:43] people go over revenue neutral?

[36:47] I don't know exactly how many, no, definitely the majority, there's usually only a couple

[36:52] that maintain it.

[36:53] If I'm not mistaken, those are the ones that aren't growing, don't have vibrant things

[36:58] going on in their community, maybe not paved roads sometimes either.

[37:04] Actually, I think several of the, and you can see in the R&R notice from Sedgwick County,

[37:09] which ones don't go over R&R, because you have things like townships, you know,

[37:15] know our cemetery went over R&R that's on some cities property that's the

[37:21] cemetery that's a levying association. I just had an area managers meeting

[37:26] earlier this week which which is most of the cities in South Central Kansas and

[37:31] every one of them is exceeding R&R. The few cities I've seen in the past I

[37:35] know Salina in the past one or two once or twice since 2021 has remained at the

[37:42] revenue neutral rate. They have a 2% sales tax. So we have a 1% sales tax. So part of that

[37:48] comes down to really a not an expenditure problem. It's a revenue problem. Where are you

[37:54] pulling revenues from? They're pulling them from sales tax. They have a 2% sales tax.

[37:58] We have a 1%. So I think they were able to do that before. But in some ways, those cities

[38:05] that are what I would call dying, which is, which is a lot of Kansas. There's a lot

[38:09] cities are experiencing growth. I'll use the example I had a conversation with

[38:14] the city manager of Neo2Shay who was having some issues with something going on

[38:18] there. The value of a mill in Neo2Shay Kansas is $8,000. You know, the value of the

[38:23] mill in Derby's $380,000. So if they want to hire a police officer in Neo2Shay

[38:27] they're gonna have to raise the mill of you about 10 or 11 mills, you know,

[38:31] beyond the revenue neutral rate just to pay for a police officer. So some of

[38:35] Those towns just don't have the commercial base to help offset some of that cost.

[38:39] So it's really a challenge for them to remain at revenue control because they don't really have a base.

[38:43] And that's partially why they struggle with that.

[38:47] Thank you.

[38:47] And I know that we have done our due diligence in trying to lower the millivie every time on our side.

[38:53] It doesn't look like a lot just because of everything that all goes into account.

[38:57] But we don't have control over those.

[38:58] We only have control over what we do as a city.

[39:00] So I'm going to go ahead and make a recommendation to adopt a resolution of the city of Derby Kansas to love the property tax exceeding the revenue neutral rate for the 2027 proposed budget.

[39:16] Just to clarify, that's a motion, Ms. Webster.

[39:21] Yes, that is a motion.

[39:24] Let me have a motion in a second.

[39:28] I'm managing the public hearing soup, and so if somebody has a handker in to come up

[39:32] here, Mr. Albert.

[39:34] Come on up.

[39:35] You have five minutes.

[39:36] So your name?

[39:38] About 30%.

[39:39] Okay.

[39:44] They went up way too much, just like everybody said.

[39:46] But I do have one question, and I think the city itself could help state your name in

[39:52] here.

[39:53] My name is Chris Albert.

[39:54] That's CRIS.

[39:55] No H in it.

[39:56] Okay. Only four letters. I live on a place down south here at one of the old new residents.

[40:04] We need your, she needs to address for the record. A1A, Cedarbrook, Derby Kansas, 67037.

[40:12] Okay. You're moved to Derby and well, it was a 96. Yeah. It's a good town, good town.

[40:20] But I think there's something that you could do as a leadership team that would help you.

[40:25] And that's it. In business, you have to show what you're doing to cut costs, okay?

[40:31] And what you're doing for improvements, and how you're getting out of more people.

[40:35] And you know, in your forced every year or every two or three years that you've got to cut

[40:40] some costs. And they want to see what those things are. So we go do things like zero-based costs,

[40:47] you know, on that's where it is. And you make improvements. And you show what it's saved.

[40:50] But I've never seen anything on the backside of one of these pages that says, here's what

[40:57] we did to improve things.

[40:58] Sure, we want to add police officers, for example.

[41:01] I think it's great we have a good police force, but did we get better?

[41:05] I mean, did we get better when we bought new computers?

[41:10] Did we become more efficient?

[41:12] Instead of having eight people doing things, did we get to seven?

[41:16] You know, should we expect to get to seven if we spend the money for improvements?

[41:19] that's all I got to say. I think we could do ourselves better by showing people what

[41:27] we do to get improvements versus saying that's just why it's got to be anyway. That's all

[41:33] I got. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Albert. Council Member Webster.

[41:38] Thank you, Mr. Abbot, for those comments. I 100% agree. I think that we try our hardest,

[41:43] but not everybody wants to tune into every city council meeting to watch what we discuss.

[41:48] And we do have budget hearings and budget meetings that the citizens are more than welcome to come to to be able to be in that discussion for us.

[41:55] So I would encourage you and along with anybody else that you hear to come to some of those because you do.

[42:01] You will literally see us go back and forth and make some tough decisions on some things and not just most people say rubber stamp.

[42:09] We don't rubber stamp anything. It is very much a thought.

[42:13] they work extremely hard, making it in her team to come to put up for a budget

[42:17] in that aspect, but we also share what we've had to cut or not being able to

[42:23] do in that, and I would love to, but I believe that is a paper that we don't get

[42:28] to send out. That is told by us that we have to send that out. We get to pay for

[42:32] the poster, I believe, for those to go out also in my correct file.

[42:41] Okay, I can't have you speaking from back there.

[42:43] No.

[42:45] Well, let's just not get into an argument right here.

[42:47] Yeah, no, I'm not trying to argue.

[42:48] I just want you to know that that is mandated

[42:50] and how that is put out is what we have to put out.

[42:53] We can't add anything or do anything else.

[42:55] I just want you to understand our side of it.

[42:57] Now, maybe we add something, that's a question for Jackie.

[43:00] If we can add an additional paper with that

[43:02] or if it has to be just that.

[43:04] But I know that that is not an art control.

[43:07] Yeah, we don't manage the mailing of those those are put out by the it is a state mandated form

[43:12] It's mailed by the county treasurer or the county clerk's office, and so we don't have any control over that

[43:18] that particular mailing the R&R notice but you know

[43:24] I think you know other maillains that we do internally in the city obviously we have more control over I

[43:32] I would just add the, I would encourage Mr. Albert and like I appreciate all the speakers

[43:37] that came out getting people to engage in the budget process is hard to do.

[43:41] We don't get a lot of people that come up and engage and it's confusing between valuations

[43:46] and appraisals, you know, which is done by the county and the state versus what we levies

[43:52] taxes at the local level but from a performance-based perspective I would encourage you to check

[43:57] out the budget book.

[43:58] We have performance measures in our budget book. We're required by the Kansas GFOA Government Finance Office Association.

[44:05] We put those performance measures in there. We also do annual reports where we present, you know, on things that have been accomplished throughout the years.

[44:13] So we do do performance measures that we track and take care of and, you know, and we can always do better and get information out of the people, but getting people to engage with that, I think is important.

[44:24] The budget book is several hundred pages, so it's a fun read if you get the opportunity,

[44:29] but it does have a lot of good information in there.

[44:34] Council Member Moulton.

[44:36] Thank you, Ms. Mayor.

[44:37] Just one thing I would just like to add, and I think Kyle kind of hit it on through the

[44:40] year, we have presentations especially early in the year from police, fire, and a lot of

[44:45] those metrics that folks will be looking for.

[44:48] It's an opportunity to understand some of the good things that some of that money is going

[44:51] towards as well.

[44:51] So we love having people in the audience so come to our meetings and watch them online and see the information is put out there because a lot of that

[45:00] That information is sprinkled through the entire year as well, so just wanted to plant that seat as well. Come get involved with this and come to our meetings and watch some of that stuff because you'll get some of those nuggets as well that will help feed some of that information you're looking for. But I do appreciate feedback from others too.

[45:16] And when

[45:19] you're time, technically, give me, we're going to hear of you still open.

[45:23] I might be able to exercise some grace here in just a second, okay, we'll see here.

[45:27] And I don't want to just get into back and forth because that's, but Mr. Mold just said,

[45:32] I think everybody who's ever sat up here on the city council will tell you one thing.

[45:37] You know, you come up here with an ideology.

[45:40] I'm very physically conservative.

[45:41] And I think once you sit here and you live it, especially once you live a second

[45:46] cycle, third cycle. And you start to see how the budget starts working. I mean, as we move into next, the next meeting, I mean, even though we're going to 20's, 27,

[45:57] their city staff started looking at 2028. They'll start working on the budget of 2028, probably December and January, this coming up right now.

[46:06] So they're thinking that far out and as Mr. Moults said as a city, you know council

[46:11] We're getting information. It's trickled throughout the year to your point. I agree with you 100 percent

[46:16] I mean if you're running a business sometimes you have to cut things and how does that look and you know

[46:23] And I as a fiscal conservative to me. It's like okay

[46:26] We have to do the taxes. We have a government to run and it's the fluff. It's the programs. I think you alluded to

[46:33] It's those things.

[46:34] Now, luckily in Derby, we really, the closest we might have to program is the senior center.

[46:38] That's it.

[46:39] We don't do programming here.

[46:41] We are the nuts and bolts of government.

[46:43] I mean, police fire, public safety is a big chunk of it.

[46:46] Our public works department, sewer and water.

[46:51] You want those to work when you wake up in the morning for sure.

[46:53] You know, while you've slept, you've had the police, you've had police and fire protection,

[46:57] then you leave your house, you've got roads and sidewalks.

[47:00] And so there's a lot of things that touch our lives day to day that nobody thinks about

[47:04] until you have a pothole in front of your house, your sewer backs up, your water's not

[47:09] working properly, or you are a victim of a crime.

[47:14] Our God forbid your house catches on fire.

[47:16] And so, you know, those are a lot of things that happen in government that, you know, we

[47:21] get the data trickled to us throughout the year.

[47:24] Sometimes we get it all at once.

[47:26] the budget process for us, and these are very public things, started in May of two workshops.

[47:33] In fact, you know, we do two workshops on this, and it's, it is, that somebody set up here,

[47:38] a lot of bantering, I'll use that word to be nice of what we want, because we all have different

[47:45] value structures, which makes the city council great. And, you know, the city staff come in,

[47:50] And I'll be honest, I've been around a while, and this was probably the lightest, it's

[47:55] called the Supplements.

[47:56] They say, the directors in the city is their wish list.

[48:00] These are the things we want.

[48:02] And I think they know things are tight, so they definitely tamped it down, but still there

[48:08] was some nose.

[48:10] Council, same manager meets with every council member individually.

[48:13] What did you like?

[48:14] And a lot of times everybody's on the same page.

[48:16] So there were some nose, you're not going to hear about those tonight.

[48:19] You're just going to hear about what the budget is, and that's a whole different item after this, and I would encourage you to stick around and watch the budget after this, because with that budget, you know, you're going to see how we compared other cities, and it's very favorable.

[48:35] Everybody thinks Derby has high taxes, and you know, I hate paying taxes. I hate seeing my valuation go up every year.

[48:41] I can't have, sorry, I don't agree with you, but I need people out in the audience here

[48:51] to, you know, maintain until we get going here because I don't want to lose control.

[48:56] But nobody wants to pay taxes, I mean, and I, you know, so we all want to make sure

[49:02] that we're doing a good job into your point, though, and I was going to be able to address

[49:06] that, Miss Neff, is, you know, the appraisal process.

[49:10] I think that's a frustration for a lot of people.

[49:12] I know it's a frustration for, I think everybody up here, probably for city staff, I know it's a frustration for commission or how?

[49:19] It's a frustration for a lot of people because it's a state appraisal process and I might screw this up so I may need a correction.

[49:25] The state does the appraisal, the county kind of runs the off. It's a weird dynamic and we are stuck with an arbitrary number and you do have that right to appeal and

[49:35] And sometimes you know you win and sometimes you don't and you know and I wish there was a I don't know if there's an appeal to the appeal

[49:42] I don't know I don't know if you can take a district court. I'm not sure

[49:47] But sometimes it just beats beats the Dickens out of you. You don't want to you know go through all that and I can totally relate to that and so

[49:54] You know as a city we try to take all of that in consideration

[49:58] We've and I said this last year. I probably said it two years ago. I get it sometimes a lot of this is we're dropping the mill

[50:04] point two five percent last year or point two five mills or other last year we dropped

[50:08] at a half mill so we're dropping the mill but yet we are pulling more taxes because

[50:12] valuations and we do have more growth that helps us as well and sometimes that could

[50:16] be a little bit smoking mirrors my bill's gone up not tremendously but it has gone up and

[50:22] I think all we can ask the citizens is okay are they spending our money wisely because I hate

[50:29] When people can pair city to the federal government because we're not the federal government

[50:35] We are spitting your dollars as wisely. I mean and I the city manager mentioned

[50:40] Budget book is one sitting right out there. It's online. I would encourage anybody just to start going through it and looking

[50:45] You know and finding things that maybe you know you don't say true

[50:50] Right, well, and I get that but we still have a city to operate and and so that's I can't be getting in this argument right here

[50:58] Ma'am, this is against protocol right now.

[51:01] I am leaving the public hearing open.

[51:06] Mr. Albert, if you wanted to finish your time, you're more welcome to come up here.

[51:09] But I cannot be interacted with people from the audience here.

[51:13] Ma'am, if you want to come back up front, I'll let you come back up front.

[51:19] Mayor, I know you touched on this.

[51:21] Kyle still has to present the actual budget, so we will have that and there will be a public hearing during that as well.

[51:26] Right.

[51:26] People want to talk to it.

[51:27] So, Mr. Alba, if you had to finish, you left here for about 45 seconds, so I will give you that a little bit here.

[51:32] I'll try to keep it to 15.

[51:34] Okay, I still think and you missed part of what I was trying to say is that you can communicate things to the general public for the good things

[51:47] that you do and the reductions that you get and it doesn't have to be everything specific, every little thing,

[51:53] But do some of that so people see it because it's not the type of thing that's typically shared

[51:58] That's that's half of what I was trying to say

[52:02] Okay, is share it so people see it

[52:06] And maybe we need to do a better job of that so and find a way to do it where it doesn't cost you a lot

[52:11] Well, I appreciate that and I think you know, I think transparency

[52:14] I've had a conversation with somebody today about transparency and I think that that's all we can try to be and you know

[52:20] So sometimes we could agree to disagree on maybe one dollar should be spent, but that's

[52:27] life.

[52:27] I jokingly say you can't get a husband and wife to agree on where to have dinner sometimes.

[52:30] That's how simple life is.

[52:32] So I appreciate your feedback, you know, and it is important to us as a city to listen to

[52:39] people.

[52:40] We are going to, after this item, we're going to go into the budget if you want to sit

[52:43] out here and something, you know, we're going to have, open up another hearing just like

[52:46] this one.

[52:47] So you would have another five minutes if you wanted to come out.

[52:49] I don't even want all my time for this one.

[52:51] Okay, but if you heard what it was I was trying to say is share it, communicate it, let people see it.

[52:57] You do good things, but once in a while it's good to be able to say, yeah, we did this, and this did, this did allow us to be, this more efficient with something.

[53:05] That's all I'm trying to say.

[53:06] Absolutely. Thank you, sir.

[53:07] Thank you.

[53:09] Okay.

[53:11] Anybody else in the public want to come up?

[53:14] Alrighty, we do have a motion.

[53:15] We have a second, a roll call vote please.

[53:19] Mr. McKeever.

[53:21] Aye.

[53:23] Mr. Niel.

[53:25] Aye.

[53:26] Mr. Engel.

[53:27] Aye.

[53:28] Ms. Webster.

[53:30] Aye.

[53:31] Mr. Molt.

[53:32] Aye.

[53:34] And Ms. Reijn.

[53:35] Aye.

[53:38] May we do have a vote of 6-0?

[53:41] Do I vote on this?

[53:42] According to my note I just got.

[53:45] No.

[53:45] Okay.

[53:46] I didn't think so.

[53:48] I just need to close the public hearing.

[53:51] Motion carries 6-0.

[53:54] Next item, please.

[53:55] I need you to close the public hearing.

[53:57] Please.

[53:59] At this time, I am closing the public hearing on revenue neutral.

[54:03] Next item, please.

[54:08] I'm sorry.

[54:09] The next item is the 2027 budget and 2027 through 31 capital improvement plan.

[54:16] So for this one, I'll go through this presentation.

[54:18] take a little longer than R&R and then this is more traditional.

[54:23] I think they wrote the R&R legislation a little awkwardly. Traditionally, you open a public hearing.

[54:28] You have comment, you close a public hearing and then you vote.

[54:32] So that's what we'll do with the budget. It's more of a traditional public hearing than the R&R process.

[54:37] But you know, what is our budget?

[54:40] So we talk about this a lot. It's policy documents and guidance tool.

[54:44] It's our plan. How do we provide those services to our residents? How do we provide a framework for how we allocate our resources to make sure Derby continues to be a community of excellence, right?

[54:55] And so the budget each year and really for the last several years really invests an infrastructure people and equipment necessary to meet the needs of our community. Derby's 26,000 people in change now. Within that, we are a big small town.

[55:12] We are an organization now of 237 full-time, 53-part-time positions.

[55:17] That includes the library. The library is a subsidiary of us.

[55:20] You know, they have a mill, a mill levy that is associated with that.

[55:25] So that includes their part-time staff.

[55:29] So our total budget, we'll talk a lot about 2026R and 2027 budget.

[55:35] So the 2026R is our 26 revised budget.

[55:38] So that's our current year budget we're in right now.

[55:41] and then the 2027 budget we are a calendar year budget so you talk a little bit

[55:45] different with school districts there you know July 1 to June 30 we're Jan 1

[55:51] to December 31 so we're on a calendar year so we'll talk about both of those

[55:57] and you'll kind of see how money flows between a revised budget and in our

[56:02] next year's budget and really in the last few years our revised budget to our

[56:06] next year budget has fluctuated greatly thanks mostly due to our large capital improvement projects.

[56:13] So wastewater water projects, that's what's caused a lot of fluctuation. So you can see our

[56:19] 2027 budget is about $30 million less than our 26 revised budget, what we're in this current year.

[56:26] And you're like, how are you saving $30 million? Well, that's just how we're the money's allocated

[56:30] timing-wise. So that has to do with wastewater treatment plant phase one. We've started construction.

[56:35] DeKarski Park Phase 2 nearly done. Water treatment plant Phase 1. So those major capital projects

[56:43] cost a lot of money and from an accounting perspective they're put in the year where you have

[56:48] to spend that money. So our 27 budget total budget of 94 million that is include cash reserves

[56:53] and transfers or bond proceeds. That's about 30 million less than our 27 budget because of those

[56:59] capital projects. So that's associated with the middle-ever rate that Megan, our finance director

[57:04] on our 44.359 mills. That's about 0.637 mills lower than our 26 budget.

[57:13] So when we talked about this in July at the manager's wreck, each year since I've been city manager,

[57:19] we've had some accounting errors we've found, or some slight tweaks.

[57:23] We have no changes this year from the manager's wreck budget. So that was good,

[57:27] or we didn't find anything that was either a county issue that came up.

[57:32] So that's a positive. We have no changes from that budget book. We all went through then as well.

[57:40] When you talk about debt, we'll kind of get into that a little bit later on this presentation,

[57:45] but really you have our General Fund, which is the meat and potatoes of everything we do.

[57:50] We have our Bond and Interest Fund, which is a smaller middle-eville associated with projects that you don't want to pay for upfront.

[57:56] So we want to pay cash for things we can, but like a water treatment plant.

[58:00] We don't want a big cash for a water treatment plan that's going to be there for 50 years and used by people for the next 50 years.

[58:06] We want those future generations to help pay for that water treatment plan as well.

[58:09] We shouldn't put it all on the burden of those people today.

[58:13] So when you talk about debt, our policy is 20% as we want direct debt as a percentage of our assess valuation.

[58:20] The state law is 30%.

[58:22] So City Council has said a policy to say we want to be tighter than the state law.

[58:27] currently we're at around just under 18% and we've talked a lot about that that's

[58:33] driven a lot by derby difference in utility debt those have dedicated repayment

[58:37] structures so derby difference sales tax funds or water wastewater funds we

[58:42] don't issue a lot of general obligation property tax debt so we did we do have a

[58:48] strong debt position it helps that we have a tighter debt ratio and that we're

[58:52] pretty frugal with those funds, we got a bump in our debt rating to AA back in

[58:59] 21. We've been able to maintain that because we want to maintain those

[59:03] strong ratios. That debt rating means better interest rates, which means lower

[59:07] cost to taxpayers over the life of the bond.

[59:12] So we talked a little bit about making

[59:13] mention of 6% growth and assessed valuation. We talk about this at the

[59:17] manager's rack and at our workshops. You can see kind of how that splits out

[59:22] about 1% 5% 3 years ago it was 11% so we have seen some large valuation changes we didn't

[59:32] capture all the 11% but this is how the county when they go do their assessments or

[59:40] appraisals of properties our average across every was 6% so I used my own property as

[59:46] an example last year mine went up 32% this year mine went down 8% I don't understand

[59:52] the large swings and why that occurs but within their process so 6% you know

[59:58] unfortunately the lady who is here is

[1:00:10] So, you know, there is a balancing across the entire structure, but we have to look at it from a, can we do the right thing with the property tax dollars we have? Because our average across there was 6%. Our largest revenue sources, when you talk about revenues for the city, property tax is our largest revenue source. Right around 70%.

[1:00:31] $17 million, so when we do a five-year forecast that we all showed you before, we do that

[1:00:37] current assessed valuation increase, and then we do usually we're conservative with

[1:00:42] our forecast.

[1:00:42] So we look at lesser amounts in the out years, so we forecast 3% in the out years.

[1:00:47] Countywide sales tax is our second largest revenue source.

[1:00:50] That is the percentage we get of the 1% countywide sales tax.

[1:00:54] That's just north to 7 million.

[1:00:56] As Derby's commercial base has grown, that number has grown.

[1:00:59] It was pretty flat the last few years this year. It's up four to five percent, which is helpful.

[1:01:05] That means things are healthy. Part of that's probably inflation, as the price of goods has gone up.

[1:01:12] But we've forecasted that at four percent and then two percent in the out years.

[1:01:18] So when I talked about 26 revised budget, this is also the time tonight when we do the budget hearing

[1:01:25] and vote on the budget that we revise the budgets for 26R.

[1:01:30] There's four budget amendments involved with 26R.

[1:01:34] Most of them have to do with large capital improvement projects,

[1:01:36] like I mentioned earlier, in the Derby Different Sales Tax Fund,

[1:01:40] Rock Road Reconstruction to Karsky Park Phase 2, Amber Ridge.

[1:01:43] Some of that, and I'll just be honest with you, is just timing of construction.

[1:01:47] When do we get to construction? When does this occur?

[1:01:50] Our budgets we create and those don't occur for 18 months.

[1:01:54] sometimes construction projects get pushed out, sometimes they get moved up. So we have to amend

[1:01:59] Derby Different Sales Tax Fund by about 1.771 and when we say amend it's not like we're getting

[1:02:05] more money. The money's in the fund but we have to get budget of 40 for money that we were spending

[1:02:10] out of those funds. So the aquatic park fund, very small amount, it's within the general fund,

[1:02:16] just over $6,000. That's just operational fees at Rock River Rapids. The water fund, big

[1:02:21] tank water treatment plant construction hit our books this year so we have to

[1:02:25] amend that and then wastewater fund really phased one a's the driver of that

[1:02:29] because phase one was really hit a lot last year there was a little bit this

[1:02:32] year the phase one a which will be done at the end of this year is the $15

[1:02:35] million budget amendment in that fund so

[1:02:41] we kind of showed the chart that shows

[1:02:44] kind of R&R versus the mill ever we have this is the assess valuation with mill

[1:02:49] levy which I will try and try and show on here you can see assess valuations were pretty flat

[1:02:56] till right around covid time frame and then we started seeing larger assess valuations.

[1:03:02] That was also the time when council started making a conscientious effort to say how can we

[1:03:07] reduce that burden knowing that so that's where you started to see the mill levy drop the mill levy

[1:03:13] was flat for nearly 15 years. It was around 47 to 48 mils. Each year that we lower the

[1:03:21] mill of it, it's the lowest mill of it we've had in 30 years. So in 2016 that was when

[1:03:27] the tax lid hit. The city council at that time decided to raise the mill of it by one mill

[1:03:32] because the impacts of the tax lid and the timing with our budget and with state legislation

[1:03:36] is always not great and they did not know what the impact of that was going to be. So we

[1:03:42] We always like to show this chart because it shows that as that assesses valuations increase,

[1:03:46] if we would have kept that middle levy flat, that would have been increased tax bills

[1:03:50] for residents.

[1:03:51] So we have eight into the elephant.

[1:03:53] It is an elephant.

[1:03:54] To be honest with you, it's an elephant, it's very large.

[1:03:56] It's hard to buy it into, but that effort's been there over since 2021.

[1:04:03] So when we talk about total middle levy, we talk about school district, city, county,

[1:04:10] us, right, and in the state. So when you look at these Wichita area adjacent

[1:04:16] communities, you can see where Derby sits in green, 140 mils. So Wichita, it will

[1:04:24] be tough for us to ever be as close Wichita as scale of 450,000 people. That's

[1:04:28] the reality of the commercial base that they have, but we're right there with

[1:04:36] So that, this chart here at 140 is current middle levy, and this is proposed next year.

[1:04:44] So you can see, I think Park City got added on there, but you can see we're staying.

[1:04:51] We're actually going down from where it was at 140 to 137.

[1:04:57] So that's based on our middle levy lowering.

[1:05:00] that's based on the county lowering their middle levy a little bit the school

[1:05:04] district I believe that's a little bit of lowering so the overall tax levy is

[1:05:08] going down a little bit and just breaking that down a little bit further this

[1:05:12] year I thought I would put this up here because there is a lot of confusion about

[1:05:17] who pays what with property taxes so when you look at the prior year on this chart

[1:05:23] the far right column you can see the middle levy's of the different entities in

[1:05:27] Derby and the proposed column in the middle, that is the proposed mill levy for 2027.

[1:05:34] So you can see the city's about 32% of your property tax bill, the school and DRC because

[1:05:40] the DRC falls under the school are about 47% of your tax bill, the county's about 20% and

[1:05:46] the cemetery's about 1%.

[1:05:48] The state used to have one and a half mills, they had a very small amount, one and a half

[1:05:51] mill levy, it went away after last year.

[1:05:54] So they don't mill. They get most of their money from they have six and a half percent

[1:05:58] state sales tax and income taxes. That's where the state. So it wasn't a whole lot of

[1:06:02] money. That was the one and a half mills, but that did go away. So, so then when you break

[1:06:08] down just city mill levy, this is our current year. So this is it says 2025 city rate. Well

[1:06:14] that's our 20 our current mill levy in 2026. It's based off of 2025 assessments. So we got

[1:06:21] our assessments in 2025, set our mill levy. You can see we're at 44.996. Hutch and

[1:06:29] Andover, we've been kind of right behind them last few years. These ones in pink over

[1:06:35] here on the side, if I can operate this thing,

[1:06:41] there we go. So those in pink, that's

[1:06:44] Seduit County Fire District 1. So in Goddard, you only pay a city rate of 37 mills and then

[1:06:52] you pay 17 mills to set you a county fire disagree on so within our 44 mills that includes

[1:06:57] our fire department we have our own fire department so Valley Center dealing with this right now might

[1:07:03] have a much higher mill levy might do a sales tax trying to figure out because they don't have

[1:07:07] they're either going to go on with said you county fire disagree on or raise their valuation

[1:07:12] amount to add a paid fire department there and Mulvane is a volunteer fire department so we actually

[1:07:19] assist small vein in a lot of their fires. I mean we are we have an auto-aid agreement

[1:07:22] with them. They they come and assist us as well. So when you look at our proposed mill

[1:07:27] levy for this next year so it's based on our 26 valuations 27 levy we are actually now

[1:07:34] dropping below and over. So I was I was happy to see that and over actually advertised that as a

[1:07:44] one and a half middle levy increase, I believe, one and a half or two.

[1:07:47] So we're now below them, slightly above hutch, and just find which toss.

[1:07:52] So I guess the big picture of this that I've heard the mayor say before, if you live

[1:07:57] in a $200,000 house in Derby versus a $200,000 house in anybody in these houses over anybody

[1:08:06] who lives in any of these cities in that same value of house, you pay more taxes than you

[1:08:10] do in Derby.

[1:08:11] I mean, that's the reality and it's a valuable chart for that because I do hear a lot and I know you all hear that Derby has high taxes.

[1:08:19] Well, Derby has high taxes relative to what? I mean, you can all agree that, you know, people don't like property taxes.

[1:08:25] It's a challenging thing based on valuations, but relative to Derby versus the Hayesville or Amaz or a Valley Center or Newton, you have lower taxes here than you do there.

[1:08:37] So, when you look at our city mill levy, what makes up our mill levy of the 44.359?

[1:08:44] So, that's the general fund, debt service fund, library, and library employee benefits.

[1:08:48] So, I kind of put those together there, but you can see, most of our fluctuation and the discussion we have is council

[1:08:56] and staff is about the general fund.

[1:08:58] The general fund pays for our operations, pays for most of our employees, a lot of our contractual items,

[1:09:04] The bought and interest fund doesn't fluctuate a lot because that's our long-term debt obligations.

[1:09:11] So when we're lowering the middle of you, we're probably focusing on lowering things in the general fund.

[1:09:17] The library, we've talked a lot about them. They had a sales tax that helped their operations for 10 years.

[1:09:23] That sales tax went away. They weren't included in the next sales tax. That sales tax did really well for them.

[1:09:29] They're pretty much living off of that reserve from that sales tax and then whatever evaluation changes they have and

[1:09:35] They'll be able to do that for a certain amount of time knowing that in the future. We will hit the point

[1:09:39] We'll have to have the discussion about ongoing library obligations. We'll have to work look at their operations

[1:09:44] Eric does a great job at the library of managing their budget, so

[1:09:48] But that is something that we have a statue a charter ordinance. Excuse me

[1:09:54] uh... here at the city that helps set the mill levy for the library

[1:09:58] uh... and there's certain fluctuation they have to live within those means

[1:10:04] so when you look at our general fund

[1:10:05] it's thirty million dollars

[1:10:07] uh... and when you look at where the general fund dollars go

[1:10:12] uh... you can see seventy percent of the general fund dollars

[1:10:15] go to public safety in public works

[1:10:17] uh... that's essentially what those two things are

[1:10:21] that's your

[1:10:22] street workers

[1:10:23] park park workers

[1:10:24] members, police, fire, court, that's all in those two squares.

[1:10:31] General government includes that's Finance, HR, R Office, City Manager, City Council,

[1:10:37] it's the senior center, it's our public transportation, it's IT, so it's kind of a

[1:10:43] combination of all of those other departments, it's quite a bit general government when

[1:10:47] you look at our department or chart community development as our planning and engineering

[1:10:51] engineering department that's our building inspectors, our project inspectors, our engineers

[1:10:55] on staff, and then transfers that 0.8 percent, those are things like we need to transfer

[1:11:00] out of the general fund to our equipment reserve fund for a piece of equipment.

[1:11:03] So that's a very small amount, especially with Derby Difference.

[1:11:06] We used to transfer more, but with Derby Difference we transferred less out of the general fund.

[1:11:10] That's really where we've been able to see savings.

[1:11:12] So that number's gone down, but that transfers is essentially where we have to send to another

[1:11:17] fund for it, usually for something we're going to purchase.

[1:11:21] This is the five-year plan that's in our budget book that we talk a lot about in our budget meetings with council.

[1:11:27] The thing at highlight, I know it's really hard to read.

[1:11:30] I put it in here because really you look at a couple things.

[1:11:34] You look at 2027, this percentage down here at the bottom.

[1:11:39] You want to be three years out above 15%, you can see we're around 21%.

[1:11:46] And then you see in the out years around 2031, when you're looking at a five-year plan,

[1:11:50] we actually go negative. Will we go negative? Most likely not. I mean, we're very conservative

[1:11:56] with our revenue estimates and more aggressive with our expenditure estimates. Knowing that

[1:12:00] we can't make up money, but we can operationally change from an expenditure side. So,

[1:12:06] these are something that our finance department constantly looks at within our five-year plan

[1:12:10] from a personnel perspective. That's a big driver of this. What is our personnel and benefit

[1:12:16] costs, and then our operating expenses. What are commodities and contractuals?

[1:12:21] You can see, I know we talked about in our budget workshops, our commodities and

[1:12:24] contractuals were flat to almost down this year. There wasn't a lot of growth.

[1:12:28] We didn't see a lot of jumps in those areas.

[1:12:33] So, jumping into the budget itself, any questions on general fund or anything

[1:12:37] for I just jumped into a couple of highlights of the budget itself for this year

[1:12:41] and the CIP?

[1:12:44] Obviously, we've talked a lot.

[1:12:45] this is our six-year lowering the middle levy, so it's about 0.637 lower from last year.

[1:12:52] This includes a 1.5% gross pay-adjustment or CPI and a 3% merit pool. That means

[1:12:57] our employees based on their performance of you can get a merit-based raise up to a certain percentage.

[1:13:04] There is nine new positions in this budget. We've talked a lot about this in the budget workshops.

[1:13:09] We are not going to hire them until mid-year 2027, because we know there's been a lot of discussion in the last three years about property tax bills, what does that impact the cities?

[1:13:20] We don't want to hire a bunch of people at the start of 2027 while the legislature is just getting started, and they do a bill that then we would have to lay nine people off or something.

[1:13:29] So we're going to let that play out at the state level, but the focus you can see this year,

[1:13:35] some of these are property tax funds, three firefighters. We try to get grants for those the

[1:13:40] last three years and have been unsuccessful. So we're moving them over to the general fund side,

[1:13:45] a police officer, and an IT person. Those are your general fund. And the groundskeeper, which was a

[1:13:50] carryover from last year, we did not fund it. We funded two for the new Dakarski Park. This is the

[1:13:55] the 3rd one. And then with our new water treatment plant, that's the water production

[1:14:00] operator, the senior water production operator and the two other water productions. So those

[1:14:05] will, the two water production operators won't come on till maybe year, most likely because

[1:14:08] the plant won't be further along. The senior will hire early on because during the construction,

[1:14:12] we want them to be a part of that process as we're bringing that plant off the ground.

[1:14:18] We also had discussions about a paralegal part time fire inspector. We did not fund those

[1:14:23] for 2027.

[1:14:27] So on these are things we've kind of run through before some of the major initiatives

[1:14:31] and equipment. If you see the green DD that's Derby Difference and you know you can see a lot

[1:14:37] of these you'll see are Derby Difference Funded so they're paid for by our sales tax which as you

[1:14:44] all know our 1% sales tax 20 to 30% of that comes from people who don't live in Derby and they help

[1:14:50] carry that burden of that cost. So it helps reduce that property tax burden on our residents

[1:14:55] because we're having outsiders help pay for that. So Court City Hall

[1:15:00] Police remodel. That's a big one that's going on right now. Obviously, we finished the senior center. Courts is now moving into the south end of City Hall. That's underway right now. And when that's done, they'll redo the court building for the police expansion. We talked about that. That was possible through the donation of the church down there for our senior center. Probably saved us anywhere from $5 to $10 million from having to build a new police department, trying to build a stand alone. That was made possible through all of that, which is great.

[1:15:27] So we should be bringing something back to Council in November for the next phase for

[1:15:32] police for a contract to consider for that facility.

[1:15:37] Patriot Avenue is on the list for 2027.

[1:15:40] That will be from Rock to Buckner.

[1:15:42] That will be through the cutler repayment process that we've talked a lot with Councilor Reign about.

[1:15:47] But that is one of our major arterials and is a road that needs to be worked upon.

[1:15:53] The Taltry and Rock Road intersection will also be redone.

[1:15:57] It'll be designed in 27. I believe complete in 28 North Woodlawn is bid right now. It'll be completed in 2027

[1:16:04] It'll start this fall and then the Oak Forest signal the oldest signal we have in Derby out here on Madison will get redone in 2027

[1:16:12] The fire SCBA we've applied for a grant that is a self-contained breathing apparatus

[1:16:18] So that is their tanks when they go into a fire those are pretty critical for what they do and they're pretty expensive

[1:16:24] if I think it gets in the neighborhood of three or four hundred thousand dollars to replace

[1:16:28] those SCBAs over time.

[1:16:30] So we're hopeful for the grant, but if not, we'll work those in over time.

[1:16:35] Fire Brush Truck 81 is planned for 2027, so we had Brush Truck 82 that we got, and we're

[1:16:40] replacing the other squad.

[1:16:42] That was a couple years ago.

[1:16:43] This is the other squad going to more of a Brush Truck model.

[1:16:47] And then on a smaller level, the MyoVision traffic data collection, I know I'm excited

[1:16:51] about it.

[1:16:52] for all of you who get questions about speedy and traffic counts.

[1:16:55] We have old traffic tubes that we got borrowed from Sedgwick County a long time ago.

[1:16:59] With these, these are much smaller. We're able to set them up on existing signs

[1:17:03] or other things, capture speed, capture traffic moving, capture pedestrian data,

[1:17:08] so that we can do those speed studies localized in neighborhoods in different areas,

[1:17:13] which we plan to do over time.

[1:17:16] Some of the other major initiatives and equipment, Amber Ridge, Glen Hills Park, so you're

[1:17:20] going to hear about Glen Hills Park tonight from our park director, Amber Ridge, we talked

[1:17:25] about it our prior council meeting, Amber Ridge will be construction starting this year,

[1:17:30] Glen Hills will be construction started next year, and then the third one when we did the

[1:17:34] design is Duck Creek Park, that's in the out year after that, but we also have some storm

[1:17:40] water work we're doing over on Highlands Street, and then one of the big projects we have the

[1:17:44] large WAMPO grant paying for almost 80% of it is Rock Road from Freedom near the

[1:17:49] hospital of the 55th Street North. That'll be a big project. We're very

[1:17:54] fortunate through WAMPO and federal funds to get nearly seven or eight million

[1:17:58] dollars in grants for that. So that we're very fortunate in that. You'll see

[1:18:03] Market in English Street, Reconstruction, obviously construction of the water

[1:18:07] treatment plant will continue. We are doing currently the Buckner water tower. We're

[1:18:15] and then the prior year after that will do the rock road north water tower.

[1:18:19] We're also starting our utility service center design. We talked a lot about that.

[1:18:22] As we build the new water treatment plant, currently our water and wastewater staff are housed

[1:18:27] out of the wastewater treatment plant, which was a building built for about

[1:18:30] 13 to 14 people and we house about 25 in there.

[1:18:34] So we know when we build the plant, we've got to build some space for those water

[1:18:38] workers. So this is a design process in 27.

[1:18:41] And then wastewater capacity design, the reason I have a question mark on that, because

[1:18:45] we're finishing our Phase 1A project.

[1:18:49] And part of that is flow meters that are planned.

[1:18:51] We talked a lot about that.

[1:18:52] When you hit KDA cheese requirements for 80% of your max capacity flow, then you have a timeframe

[1:18:58] after that to design capacity improvements.

[1:19:02] Those are expensive.

[1:19:03] Those are the big basins that make sure we have enough capacity.

[1:19:06] So we will know before the end of this year where we are capacity-wise and if we have

[1:19:11] to go looking at that next level of design for wastewater as we kind of move forward.

[1:19:19] Really we've talked a lot about different highlight projects equipment so I just kind

[1:19:22] of wanted to touch on a few things but I appreciate Council's questions, comments, feedback

[1:19:27] during this budget process.

[1:19:29] I also wanted to thank City staff, Megan and her staff obviously with finance to a great

[1:19:33] job through the process and really from a management team and from all our departments

[1:19:38] perspective I think the mayor kind of noted it was a very light year and I think part

[1:19:44] of it is part of it we realize the financial reality we're living in and part of it is kind

[1:19:49] of the unknown with the state we're kind of waiting to see what happens with that and hopefully

[1:19:54] work with them on a solution's chemical because the system is confusing you know you have people

[1:19:59] worried about appraisals versus valuations versus taxes levied from different

[1:20:04] indies so we try to do a public kind of a public process this year with a third

[1:20:09] Thursday event we were dragging people in there we couldn't get a lot of

[1:20:13] engagement we've got some ideas on how to do it differently next year but you know

[1:20:18] we want to hear from people on how they think things are going what's going

[1:20:22] well what's not going well so I'll stand for any other questions anybody from

[1:20:30] the bench everything.

[1:20:34] Councilmember Webster. All right. Nobody has any questions? I guess we'll go ahead here.

[1:20:40] Please do the public hearing first.

[1:20:43] Before I open up the public hearing, I would like to say thank you. Thank you to the staff. I mean, like I said earlier,

[1:20:49] long process started in probably December, January and it's continuing. And I'm sure Megan will probably start looking at, you know,

[1:20:58] 28 next week. Maybe not. I hope not. But it is a long process. And I think that these

[1:21:08] are tough. They're always tough. Nobody wants to pay more taxes. I totally understand

[1:21:12] it, but we do have a government to fund and run. And I think that the comparisons, just

[1:21:21] because everybody else is doing something, but when I hear you alluded to Derby has high

[1:21:25] taxes. You look at that chart, I love that chart, because when you see towns around us that

[1:21:31] I don't think compared to us even close, pay a lot more in city property taxes and most

[1:21:37] generally, even overall with school district taxes, and they're overall tax bill. And I

[1:21:43] think we are, by far, a much better city than most of them. And I apologize to my friends

[1:21:50] that live in those cities but we just are. I'm not apologetic about that but we are. I mean I

[1:21:58] look at Newtons 72 mills. I can't imagine what their tax burdens are up there. So the quality

[1:22:06] of life that we have here. So I am apologetic about that because I think we have a great community

[1:22:12] and we've watched the financial ball for a number of decades. Starting about 21, like you said,

[1:22:19] the military started creeping down. And that has helped. And I think we continue to do this.

[1:22:25] You know, we still have to fund things, but we're watching it. So I do have one more light up here

[1:22:30] right now before I open the public hearing. Council member Ryan. Yes, thank you, Mayor. I just wanted

[1:22:37] to say this is my first year on the council. And I did not realize how much work and effort went in

[1:22:44] to this process and I wanted to say thank you to our staff and the work and effort that

[1:22:51] they've put into this so I know you asked if they made any questions and none of us had

[1:22:58] anything we've all been through I mean I feel like we've vetted this pretty well and

[1:23:03] I just wanted to say thank you to our staff and thank you to the other council members

[1:23:07] for you know bouncing ideas off and hearing things and everything like that so this has been

[1:23:13] a very eye opening experience. Thank you. I'll definitely share that with staff. I think

[1:23:19] this is the accumulation of like a lot of questions, a lot of bounce back. I mean, our goal of

[1:23:24] staff is no surprises, right? I mean, we want to make sure you're educated well before we get to

[1:23:29] this point, you know, of what we're going through and the questioning of that. So I definitely will

[1:23:35] share that with all of our staff. And I'll give my caveat I give every year with when it comes to

[1:23:41] property taxes, like somebody in their wisdom years ago decided cities were mainly going

[1:23:48] to be funded by property taxes. You know, the state, they're funded by income taxes

[1:23:52] and state sales tax.

[1:23:56] We are, when I talk to Representative Carpenter and Representative

[1:24:00] Howell and Representative Howerton, we are where the rubber hits the road. I mean, we're

[1:24:07] not running social service programs. We are having police officers work during an eye

[1:24:11] and a firefighter run a 24-hour shift and a park worker mo a park and a street worker

[1:24:18] or a filipot hole. That is where most of your tax dollars are going. You know, we're

[1:24:23] not running a lot of other programs like that so if they don't want us to have property

[1:24:28] taxes at the state level then let's figure out some other way like there isn't a large

[1:24:33] inefficiency like you have at the federal government. I mean that's the reality of how

[1:24:38] we operate here because we're here. We're running those day-to-day services. We're running

[1:24:44] water wastewater. I hope to work with the state. We have been for them to better understand

[1:24:50] how we operate and what we do, but that'll be a continued back and forth. I've said it once about

[1:24:57] whether it's a revenue problem or an expenditure problem. A lot of it's revenue. You balance your

[1:25:03] expenditures, you live on a budget, you try to be tight with it, but where do you want

[1:25:07] to be funded from?

[1:25:08] Because you still have your base you have to pay for.

[1:25:11] Whether that's property tax, sales tax, income tax.

[1:25:14] I tell the state folks, I'll trade for income tax all day.

[1:25:16] You take property taxes.

[1:25:17] They never want to do it.

[1:25:18] None of them want to do it.

[1:25:19] So.

[1:25:22] Thank you, Mr. Mangus.

[1:25:24] At this time, I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing.

[1:25:27] Anybody from the audience wants to come back up and speak, or you have five minutes to talk

[1:25:33] about what Mr. Mangus talked about, begin, this is not the revenue neutral hearing, this

[1:25:38] is over the budget that was presented to the City Council.

[1:25:43] Well, they're thinking about it, I appreciate, again, staff's time that they've put in on

[1:25:50] this and to Miss Ryan, thank you for your comments, and I think somebody else alluded to it too.

[1:25:55] This is not the first time we've seen this, we're not just looking at this for the first

[1:25:58] time tonight saying, sure, let's spend a ton of money, the City Council started digesting

[1:26:03] in all of this stuff back in May.

[1:26:05] And it's been a lot of meetings,

[1:26:08] a lot of council meetings, budget workshops,

[1:26:10] one-on-one meetings with the city manager.

[1:26:13] So we arrived to this location

[1:26:15] with a lot of work that's behind the scenes.

[1:26:19] And Mr. Mangus mentioned this is where the rubber meets the road.

[1:26:23] I mean, people, I can't go to Topeca

[1:26:26] and complain about my state income tax, what I pay.

[1:26:29] They definitely can't go to Washington DC and do that, but you know what, people can

[1:26:34] come here and they do.

[1:26:36] They talk to us in person about their issues.

[1:26:40] They run into us at their grocery store, they run into us at school events, they run into

[1:26:44] us all over the place.

[1:26:45] So I think it is important that we're accessible, they can call us, everybody's cell numbers

[1:26:50] listed on our city website, they can email us, we know they do, but we are as transparent

[1:26:57] as I think we can possibly be.

[1:26:59] So anybody want to speak?

[1:27:03] Anybody want to speak?

[1:27:05] Miss Miller, do you want to say anything else?

[1:27:07] Okay.

[1:27:15] Thank you so much, ma'am.

[1:27:17] When we do appreciate the feedback up here, this is how the process works.

[1:27:21] So at this time, I am going to close the public hearing and look for councilmember Neill.

[1:27:28] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:27:30] So I do have some comments.

[1:27:32] First of all, Dan, Kyle, Megan and your staff, thank you so much for all your due diligence.

[1:27:39] It is an extensive process and I'm especially grateful for all the scenarios you give us

[1:27:46] because I like seeing all the scenarios. I think Kyle like seeing the scenarios also.

[1:27:51] One that I was particularly fond of was the 1 mil reduction scenario.

[1:27:56] scenario, I think I've been pretty for

[1:28:02] that through all our meetings and stuff.

[1:28:06] I think lowering it one mill, like we're close, we're not quite there.

[1:28:12] So you know, that said, I believe this is a responsible budget.

[1:28:16] I'm not sure if it's the budget taxpayers deserve.

[1:28:20] You know, I understand the concern of possible state policy changes in 27 and 28.

[1:28:27] That's a legitimate concern, you know, that's another reason why maybe we were a little bit more conservative this year.

[1:28:33] You know, I don't dismiss that, but uncertainty exists every year, you know, to an extent.

[1:28:39] And that alone shouldn't delay us in making meaningful reductions now.

[1:28:45] So voting no, if I decide to vote no on this, isn't a reflection of staff or anybody on the bench.

[1:28:52] I think it's pretty reasonable that we can reach different conclusions.

[1:28:56] I just think that to quote former Mayor White, we're not the biggest dog at the bowl, but

[1:29:04] I think if maybe if we set a trend of being tightening the belt just a little bit more,

[1:29:10] maybe the school district who is would follow in those footsteps and then kind of so trick

[1:29:16] a lot down, so on and so forth.

[1:29:19] So, you know, I think that's kind of where I'm at.

[1:29:26] I appreciate all the hard work.

[1:29:28] I wish we could do it just a little bit more.

[1:29:31] So, you know, respectfully, I might have to vote no.

[1:29:36] That's all.

[1:29:38] Council Member Molt.

[1:29:40] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[1:29:42] First of all, I just appreciate the comments has been made up here.

[1:29:47] Kyle, Megan, the staff, just a great job.

[1:29:50] I do, Mr. Niel, want to ask you a question, so we all agree.

[1:29:55] We all want to work on lower taxes, and I think all of us.

[1:30:00] I just want that. But my question to you is in this budget, where, where, where would you propose we shave off more to get that one mill? I guess I would be my question for you is to, um, it's one thing. Yeah, we would all love that. But there is not much fluff in this budget. Um, and I just don't see with all the scenarios we got. I don't understand where we would get that extra. So I'd put that ball back in your court. Show me where we could get to that.

[1:30:26] Council Member Neal.

[1:30:28] I agree with you.

[1:30:29] There's not a lot of fluff in the budget.

[1:30:31] But since last year's budget, I said we need to look for pushing it for one mill.

[1:30:36] So I'm going to stand ten toes down and say we need to go one mill.

[1:30:40] So, you know, I'm not an expert.

[1:30:42] This is my fifth or sixth budget cycle.

[1:30:46] We're very conservative.

[1:30:47] Megan and her team and the staff do an exemplary job.

[1:30:51] I think we've shown that in what we do.

[1:30:53] but I think we need to give the taxpayers a little relief.

[1:30:58] I don't quite know what that looks like, but that's where I'm at.

[1:31:05] Council member Moll.

[1:31:06] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[1:31:07] So, I appreciate that.

[1:31:09] So, with that, I'll make a motion to approve the 2027 operating budget as proposed

[1:31:14] to fund city services from January 1 to December 31, 2027.

[1:31:18] Approved the 2027, 2031 capital improvement plan

[1:31:24] And and approve the 2026 submitted budgets for the Derby different sales tax aquatic park water and waste water funds.

[1:31:33] We have a motion on second any further discussion roll call vote please.

[1:31:40] Mr. I'm starting with Mr. Neal, Mr.

[1:31:46] Engel, Mr.

[1:31:50] Webster, Mr. Molt, Mr. Ryan, Mr. McEver.

[1:31:57] Chair.

[1:31:58] Aye.

[1:31:59] Mayor the vote is 5-1.

[1:32:04] Thank you.

[1:32:06] Next item, please.

[1:32:09] Our next item is Glen Hills Park Design.

[1:32:19] Greetings.

[1:32:20] Mayor and members of City Council, I am Eric Newell, your park's director.

[1:32:24] I am pleased to be here this evening to introduce the Glen Hills Park Rehabilitation Project.

[1:32:28] As a reminder in 2022, City Council adopted the Derby Master Plan and established the 15-year

[1:32:35] vision for a rehabilitation of parks and specifically neighborhood parks.

[1:32:40] And then in January 2025, the Derby Different Sales Tax went into effect, providing a dedicated

[1:32:45] fund to implement those plans.

[1:32:48] And then obviously in 2026, we did design with a design contract with LK Architecture to design

[1:32:55] our three parks.

[1:32:56] So, Amber Ridge, tonight we'll talk about Glen Hills, and then we will probably the next

[1:33:00] few months bring you Duck Creek as well.

[1:33:04] So to present the night's proposed options, I'm going to turn it over to next day with OK architectures to consider and to just walk you through these fun designs we're doing.

[1:33:13] Nick, turn the presentation. Do you?

[1:33:21] All right. I'm excited to be here tonight. These projects are fun for me. So I love working on park projects with you guys. So appreciate you guys being able to allow me to continue to work with you guys.

[1:33:32] So, this is our second project, the community park.

[1:33:37] Here this is Located in Glenhill's, here's a little map, location map, just kind of

[1:33:40] help you understand where this is at.

[1:33:42] The existing park, we've got a couple of images here.

[1:33:45] The existing park has a small place structure on it, some few trees, and then it's pretty

[1:33:50] open with some lawn.

[1:33:51] So we're doing a lot of improvements to this park.

[1:33:56] Here's a couple of more pictures here so you can kind of see the style of equipment that's

[1:34:01] out there and really it's an open lawn, open lawn at this point.

[1:34:08] This is an aerial view of the park.

[1:34:11] So up in the upper left-hand corner you can kind of see that blob that I mean up there.

[1:34:16] That's the existing playground and then there's a couple of trees that are kind of scattered

[1:34:20] around that.

[1:34:21] But really it's kind of a nice open kind of a square.

[1:34:26] So a lot of room for use in this area.

[1:34:30] We went through a very similar community engagement process that we did with Amber Ridge, and we had really good participation with that as well.

[1:34:40] So we went through two different rounds. So we had a first community cookout. I think we had, what was it about 50 people showed up?

[1:34:47] 50 people showed up to that, had really good participation, and then we had round number two, which was an ice cream social.

[1:34:54] And I'd say we probably had around 30 people that showed up to that.

[1:34:58] Here's some images from that event.

[1:35:02] We had really good weather.

[1:35:03] We've been lucky with all these public outreach doing them on site in the middle of the summer, too.

[1:35:09] So it went really good.

[1:35:15] Here's some images from some of the boards.

[1:35:18] So we had three different stations set up.

[1:35:21] this first station that you see right here we had some amenity boards so we just

[1:35:25] invited people to take a bunch of sticky dots and you know tell us what your

[1:35:29] favorite picture is that you're looking at here you know what are you most

[1:35:33] excited about and you can kind of see you know playground sports courts really

[1:35:38] kind of hit the top and then shade up in the upper left-hand corner shade

[1:35:44] We hear that a ton, so, and then, again, the second station, like we did on

[1:35:51] Amber Ridge, we did kind of a fun one where you design your park, so we got a lot

[1:35:55] of participation with that, you know, break out the markers and let people

[1:35:58] pretend to be a landscape architect for a day. We need more landscape

[1:36:01] architects, so I'm trying to train them up, get them excited to go into the

[1:36:04] profession. But, again, we really seen some fun stuff, you know, like down on the

[1:36:09] bottom that second one from the from the left. You know, there was somebody was

[1:36:14] drawing in some monkey bars in a swing. You know, some of these others, they're

[1:36:18] starting to think about how spaces are laid out. You know, big open spaces, maybe

[1:36:22] the playground in the center, basketball courts, the sports courts, those type of

[1:36:26] uses. We heard very similar responses to Amber Ridge. So it's we're walking to

[1:36:31] the park. Our neighborhood has a lot of different age groups. So it's not really

[1:36:36] defined to young kids, old kids. It's very broad. So we want walking trails, we want shade,

[1:36:42] we want playgrounds, and sport courts. So basketball court, that came up again. That

[1:36:48] was a very popular topic that we kept hearing. This is our third station, so we had somebody

[1:36:56] station there and we were just talking to people. And so these were some of the responses

[1:37:00] that we got. So how do you use the park now? Well, we don't because it's too boring. It's

[1:37:06] program out. Again, we don't want to program this to where it's going to be a community

[1:37:11] or regional type of park. This needs to be a neighborhood park use. We don't want

[1:37:14] to bring people from all over, you know, Sedgwick County into this park because it's, you know,

[1:37:21] got some use that's not normally seen in the playground. We don't want to in a data.

[1:37:26] But if you look at that next column, what would make you visit more often? Swings. We hear

[1:37:30] swings a lot shade in the sports courts. Those were the things that we kept hearing over

[1:37:35] and over.

[1:37:39] Okay, so we'll just kind of walk you through, so that was the first public outreach.

[1:37:44] The second one, so we took all the information that we heard from them, and we created

[1:37:49] two concepts, and we brought these concepts to the public, and just basically talked

[1:37:53] through the different design options with them. And we tried to do two distinct design options.

[1:37:58] These are both based on the same budgets, but we wanted to be creative and just really

[1:38:04] see where people are at and then you know ultimately what pieces and parts do you like from

[1:38:08] those design options so this first option here is I consider this more of a traditional style

[1:38:13] of park it has a very large open lawn space which is that dark green kind of wraps around the

[1:38:19] bottom and then over to the east side we've got a basketball court so we're trying to center the

[1:38:24] basketball court into the middle of the park keep it away from the street so we don't have balls

[1:38:30] you know, accidentally flying out in the street. So that safety aspect. And then the noise,

[1:38:35] you know, making sure that we don't put the basketball court too close to some of the neighbors

[1:38:38] either. Playground. So this one has a fairly large playground. It's probably about 50% larger than

[1:38:47] the playground that's there now. What we heard was that, bless you, is that we, they really are looking

[1:38:57] for a segmented playground option. So we have the two to five-year-old group, we have

[1:39:02] the five to twelve, and then, you know, some intermediate spaces. So that's kind of

[1:39:08] how this design was looking. As you can kind of see in the playground option here too,

[1:39:14] we have berm play, some mounting and stuff like that. So try to really give as much imagination

[1:39:20] and, you know, creativity to this playground as we could. There's also a small steel shelter

[1:39:25] that would have a couple of picnic tables underneath of it.

[1:39:29] We are showing an off-street handicap accessible parking space

[1:39:33] so we can really play up that inclusive fatigue of the space.

[1:39:37] So if somebody needs to drive and they need that wheelchair accessibility

[1:39:39] we have that space off the street form.

[1:39:43] And then just kind of the way that the connection is with the sidewalks.

[1:39:47] You can kind of see as you're coming from the south down the sidewalk

[1:39:49] it just pulls you right into the heart of the site

[1:39:51] and then if you want to continue on walking around the neighborhood

[1:39:54] it just kind of appeals you off to the east. So really kind of thinking about

[1:39:58] that the travel, the flow of how people would enter an exit and use the site as

[1:40:02] well. So that's the first option. Here's some imagery, some 3D images of the

[1:40:11] site.

[1:40:14] The basketball court, you know, just a nice simple basketball court. We're kind

[1:40:19] of a half court. It's similar in style. The first one we showed you with Amber Ridge.

[1:40:23] so a circular court, nothing too large. On the playground itself, we're looking at using artificial

[1:40:30] turf as the playground surfacing. That seems to be a very nice, you know, long term for maintenance

[1:40:36] and it's just easier to maintain. Okay, design option two. So where we were looking at more of a

[1:40:42] traditional style neighborhood park, this one, we're looking at more of a nature style park. So it's,

[1:40:47] kind of we have more freeform type of shapes going on here and one of the focuses

[1:40:54] of this really was the light green kind of in the center of everything is our

[1:41:00] official turf but really creating more terrain play with it so you know

[1:41:07] thinking about how we could really push and pull that terrain around so like

[1:41:09] Madison Avenue Central Park you know that has so much elevation change something

[1:41:14] similar here. And then we would do more nature play elements. So maybe some log climbers.

[1:41:21] We have a we call it a Fortress climber in the center. It's more of an arch. It's got

[1:41:25] some ropes attached to it, but kind of a nontraditional style of play. We also we have the swings.

[1:41:31] We have to have swings. So we've got the swings covered, but just trying to think outside

[1:41:36] the box, you know, on some of these other styles of play. And one of the the difference

[1:41:41] makers on this one that we really heard that we that everybody liked was the

[1:41:45] shaded option. So over on the east side on the right hand side of the image we're

[1:41:49] using some shade sales instead of a steel shelter. Something different, right?

[1:41:55] And what's nice about the shade sales is dollar for dollar. You can expand the

[1:42:00] area that you cover with the shade. They just cover more square footage than what

[1:42:04] a steel shelter does. And it's also kind of a more of a free form seating area. So

[1:42:09] So we have some fixed tables underneath of there, but it's kind of off to the side, tucked

[1:42:15] in off the side.

[1:42:17] You'll also see some of the trees, so we've added a lot of trees, so the shaded areas

[1:42:21] around there.

[1:42:22] Again, we still have that dark green lawn, so that would be more of a manicured lawn just

[1:42:29] for soccer or whatever you want to play.

[1:42:32] Here's some images of it, so this is kind of shooting back towards that center of the player.

[1:42:37] You can really see the terrain, the Birmingham, how we're kind of envisioning that with this option.

[1:42:42] And we're also showing some native grasses, trying to think through that maintenance.

[1:42:47] You know, I realized native grasses are a pain to get established.

[1:42:51] It takes a long time to get them. But once you get them going, it's a lot less maintenance for staff here.

[1:42:57] So we were showing that option and kind of hugging this whole area.

[1:43:00] So it kind of creates that experience, too.

[1:43:03] You can see the shade shelters in the background there.

[1:43:07] and here's kind of a close-up looking back towards the playground from the shaded

[1:43:11] shade shelters there so

[1:43:16] we listened and what we heard was that most people like

[1:43:24] that freeform space but with the more traditional style of play so and with

[1:43:30] a basketball court. That option too did not have a basketball court and we heard

[1:43:35] basketball court. So we took those comments and created this version. So we have

[1:43:41] more of this nature style with a basketball court and traditional style of

[1:43:45] play. So that's kind of where we've landed. This is this is what I would

[1:43:50] recommend as the option that we move forward with. This seems like this is what

[1:43:54] the community was really after. It'll be unique. I don't know if any you know

[1:43:58] neighborhood parks around here that would be kind of style like this. So and again

[1:44:03] it's within that budget that we've been aiming for.

[1:44:07] Here's an image of the play equipment that we placed in there.

[1:44:10] So this would be the five to twelve style of play.

[1:44:13] So it's got some platforms, it's got some ropes and some slides.

[1:44:16] Get you up in the air a little bit.

[1:44:19] And then this would be the two to five year old play.

[1:44:21] So it's got some play panels against some platforms, not as high up in the air.

[1:44:28] And then, you know, similar imagery to what we've seen with that option number two.

[1:44:33] with shade shelters, fabric shade shelters, and we are with this option, we are reducing the amount of native grasses considerably down from what we were generally showing.

[1:44:47] So that's the options that we put together. You want to wrap up Eric?

[1:44:52] All right.

[1:44:54] Thank you, Nick. Yeah, we really took the two concepts and we blended them.

[1:44:59] And that was...

[1:45:00] The parks and the enforcement board and the community were like, we like this and we like this and then push them together. And that's what we did the best we could. And so we are here before you to say, get your thoughts. And then obviously from there, we'll finalize the design. We'll get the construction documents started. We'll start review plan. And we're still working on the vacation, the easement vacation. Then we'll roll in the bid process and next year we'll start building something. So we're really excited to have this in front of you and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[1:45:29] Council member Neal. Thank you Mayor. Is this location have irrigation wells like the other one did?

[1:45:38] There won't be irrigation on this one. That was an option that was pulled out when we changed the plants.

[1:45:43] Okay. Did that third one? Did it still have a pretty big green area on that one side though?

[1:45:49] Yeah, okay. Now I think that's awesome just combining kind of what they wanted and adding another

[1:45:55] basketball court. I think it looks great and if it's in the budget, I mean, again, just

[1:45:59] like last time, if this is what the community kind of is wanting, I think that's what we

[1:46:04] should give them. So, good job. Councilmember Moul.

[1:46:09] Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, great job. I hear basketball courts time and time again, so I like

[1:46:15] the fact that we've integrated that. The two questions I have is there a water fountain

[1:46:19] with version three? Yes, there is. Okay. I just didn't see it.

[1:46:24] Drinking fountain is actually, let me say, can you do this right?

[1:46:27] Oh, no, hang on.

[1:46:30] I should learn and hang on.

[1:46:32] I saw Kyle do so good, then I failed miserably, so it's right there.

[1:46:36] Okay.

[1:46:37] And then the only other thing is there's no handicap ADA's parking spot with this is that's

[1:46:42] something we need to consider as well.

[1:46:44] As we tighten the plan up, we will see if we have the funds for that.

[1:46:48] But the ADA parking spot costs, if we can fit it into the budget, we're going to try to

[1:46:53] and that's an important feature, I think.

[1:46:55] Or is it something we can come back and do later?

[1:46:57] We can always potentially do it later if we need.

[1:47:00] And then on the one that I saw,

[1:47:01] we only had one spot.

[1:47:02] Is that the recommendation that's normal,

[1:47:04] or would it be, I mean, I think of one spot

[1:47:06] and I was like, well, is that always the wisest?

[1:47:08] Is it better to have two?

[1:47:10] I know it's more money, but just asking the question.

[1:47:12] Yeah, that's a great question.

[1:47:14] And what we found, and what I found in 20 years

[1:47:17] of doing this, is that really if we provide one,

[1:47:19] one. It's rarely used, but when it is used, it's used correctly. Okay. I've not, I've put

[1:47:26] a lot of parks in different places. We've, if we've had to add one, we had one spot

[1:47:31] and I've never had someone come and say, well, you need two more because they just appreciate

[1:47:35] to have the one. And then there's very rarely is there a cross when there's more than one

[1:47:39] there. And just in my years of experience doing this. So I agree. I figured that that would

[1:47:43] be the case of misuse if there's more than one to use it. Well, great job. I mean, this

[1:47:49] This is, I really like the fact I like the opportunity that we're providing.

[1:47:52] I really love the community feedback opportunity that we provide the ice cream social

[1:47:55] act.

[1:47:56] It's a really great job.

[1:47:58] I assume that you saw a lot of people walking to this event like the last one.

[1:48:02] Simply a very similar.

[1:48:03] We could watch them walk down the street to us, and then we watched them all walk home where

[1:48:06] the kids ride their bike to us, and then disappear back behind the houses.

[1:48:09] Nobody mentioned restrooms either, so that's even a bigger bonus too.

[1:48:13] So yeah, I love this.

[1:48:14] So I like option three personally, I don't know what everybody else feels like, but I'll make

[1:48:18] the motion to provide feedback on the Glenhill Park concepts and direct staff to move forward

[1:48:22] with final design and construction bidding documents.

[1:48:26] We have a motion in a second.

[1:48:28] Councilmember Ryan.

[1:48:30] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:48:31] I also really like option three.

[1:48:35] I like the combination of pieces from both of them.

[1:48:39] Just looking at the option one and two, it looks like there was a land like a manicured

[1:48:44] lawn.

[1:48:44] Was that supposed to be?

[1:48:46] option one there was and that was the manicure lawn was actually going to be a

[1:48:50] well with irrigation but because of the price and the keep us within budget we

[1:48:54] either would take that off the. I just wanted to make sure I understood that

[1:48:57] correctly and I do like the addition of the basketball court I think that is

[1:49:04] going to be well used. I know my 14-year-old son loves basketball right now so

[1:49:10] ever changing can he has a basketball in his hand so I'm I'm on board with

[1:49:15] option number three, so thank you.

[1:49:19] Councilmember Webster. Thank you, Mayor. Again, thank

[1:49:23] you guys both Nick and Eric for your guys' work on this. I think this is awesome. Thank

[1:49:27] you for asking about the handicap because that was something I was worried but still accessible

[1:49:32] to those handicap. We just won't have a handicap spot, correct? Absolutely, yes. Just want to make

[1:49:37] sure that that's out there in the public that it will still be able to be played on by those

[1:49:41] with a handicap. So just want to make sure that we're covering that base. And like I said,

[1:49:46] But it is a neighborhood, I think this is cool, I think this is unique.

[1:49:49] Right now you drive by it and you're like, oh, what did we even think about this?

[1:49:53] I know that it's the way that those associations give to us that are plotted for us.

[1:49:58] But this will definitely change that corner and I'm super excited to see that the kids will

[1:50:03] have somewhere in their neighborhood to do.

[1:50:05] So great job.

[1:50:07] I was just going to add on the parking discussion because they did a good job of covering

[1:50:10] it.

[1:50:11] but both Amber Ridge and this park have on-street parking.

[1:50:15] So that'll be the majority of what we use.

[1:50:17] You know, and these are neighborhood parks.

[1:50:19] I think when we have the discussion of our community parks

[1:50:21] and where we provide parking lots, you know,

[1:50:24] and larger parking structures in these neighborhood parks,

[1:50:28] it's more about they'll have an ADA accessible sidewalk

[1:50:31] to be able to get to an ADA accessible place structure.

[1:50:35] But yeah, whether we can fit in a dedicated,

[1:50:37] we can look at that, but I think that's intentional.

[1:50:39] So we don't want to carve out a lot of park land to create parking because most people

[1:50:44] similar to the community meeting will walk there and utilize these.

[1:50:48] So I know it's been a conscious effort of Robert Poghorson now, Eric, when he's there

[1:50:54] of like, we want connectivity and walkability and that's kind of the key with these neighborhood

[1:50:58] parks.

[1:51:04] Okay, we do have a motion in the second.

[1:51:08] Any further discussion?

[1:51:10] Seeing none, all in favor say aye.

[1:51:12] Aye.

[1:51:12] Opposed, same sign.

[1:51:13] Motion carries.

[1:51:14] 6-0.

[1:51:15] Thank you, gentlemen.

[1:51:16] Thank you.

[1:51:18] Councilmember Webster.

[1:51:20] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:51:21] Mayor, I'd like to make a motion for executive session.

[1:51:24] I move to take a five minute break.

[1:51:26] Everybody need a five minute break.

[1:51:29] Okay, perfect.

[1:51:30] We'll take a five minute break to recess and to executive session where city management

[1:51:34] and city attorney for 20 minutes regarding consultation.

[1:51:38] was City Attorney on matters which would be deemed privileged under the attorney client relationship

[1:51:45] pursuits to KSA 75-4319 B2, I think I'm going to have nightmares about that for the proposed

[1:51:55] purpose of discussing wow and

[1:51:57] receiving legal

[1:52:00] advice on potential

[1:52:02] contract relationships in terms the open meeting will convene in the council room and

[1:52:12] 813 18 yes five minutes sorry thank you we have a motion and a second all in

[1:52:21] favor say aye both same sign so it's an executive session let the

[1:52:33] record show

[1:52:34] that the meeting did reconvene at 818 and let the record show that no binding

[1:52:39] Any action was taken in the executive session?

[1:52:43] I make a motion to adjourn.

[1:52:44] Second.

[1:52:45] We have a motion to adjourn in a second.

[1:52:47] All in favor say aye.

[1:52:49] Opposed?

[1:52:49] Same sign.

[1:52:50] Motion carries 6-0 meeting adjourned.

City Council - 25 Aug 2026

Agenda

Transcript