[0:00] No issues are found around the plumbing or fixtures. Test the home's water pressure. Ensure there is no water use inside your home. Locate your front water spigot. Place a water pressure gauge on the spigot.

[0:20] An ideal water pressure for your home is 40-80 psi. Contact water utilities about the water pressure issue before adjusting. To adjust your water pressure, locate your home's pressure reducing valve or PRV.

[0:34] Loosen the lock nut on the PRV with a wrench,

[0:42] loosen or tighten depending if you want more or less water pressure.

[0:50] Tighten the lock nut once you have your desired water pressure.

[0:54] Thank you for watching.

[0:55] For more information and questions, go to lswater.net

[1:11] The olden village project situated near Highway 50 and Missouri 291 is underway with several developments slated for mixed use developments.

[1:18] So, why did the chicken cross the road?

[1:21] To get to the other side of Lee Summit, Chick-fil-A is coming to the north end of Olden Village with

[1:26] chicken sandwiches, strips, nuggets, and more in 2026.

[1:31] Small sliders, the Cheeseburger Slider fast-food franchise, will drop the can in the center

[1:36] of Olden Village.

[1:37] The restaurant operates out of a shipping container set up with a streamed line drive-through and

[1:41] walk-up window.

[1:43] Award-winning Kansas City-style barbecue Q39 is coming to Olden Village.

[1:47] BBQ ribs, burnt ends, brisket, sandwiches, salads, and many more menu items will be available

[1:53] in Lee's Summit in 2026.

[1:55] Club car wash is bringing quality experience to Oldham Village.

[1:58] The modern express-style wash will feature an efficient drive-through tunnel designed for

[2:02] quick quality service.

[2:15] The best place to work.

[2:18] I love working here.

[2:20] I feel very blessed.

[2:20] I love it here.

[2:21] I look forward to coming to work every day, being a part of this team.

[2:24] Like a family away from home.

[2:25] where everyone feels like everybody knows their name.

[2:29] The city that supports you, we see that with our benefits.

[2:33] A pension, vacation days, job security.

[2:35] Being able to be heard, we feel valued, we feel respected.

[2:40] At least some it is a very progressive city.

[2:41] It's growing, it's thriving.

[2:43] We have this drive towards not just doing a job, but doing it with a spirit of excellence.

[2:47] I had the opportunity to continue to grow regardless of 30 plus years doing this kind of work.

[2:53] It's more than just a dollars and cents.

[2:55] We're here really to give back.

[2:57] Providing a service to better a community.

[3:00] To go out and serve people.

[3:01] To be a part of something bigger than yourself.

[3:04] If I would have known what I know now, years ago,

[3:08] I would have been here much sooner.

[3:21] My name is Armstrong.

[3:23] We

[4:31] make the difference in somebody else's life.

[4:34] If you're trying to get in the fire and eat in that service,

[4:36] at least some of it is probably the top name.

[4:39] On the daily basis, we are tasked with an incredible task.

[4:42] So we're trying to keep it a relaxed environment as a new person. You are constantly on edge learning

[4:47] Morning, we're a little typical coming in getting a report from the ship that's going off. We get our truck checks done

[4:54] Our citizens trust us and believe in us by providing them in these like our gear our stations

[5:00] They build it to accommodate getting to a call but also having a home state of the art weight of present in the virtual

[5:06] We're going to go up on crams, downtime dinners, back brothers and dinners together, cook together, get to know one another.

[5:11] Train together, like a brother knows a brother and a sister knows a brother.

[5:15] Banchor back in fourth club.

[5:16] When the tones go off, they go to work.

[5:23] We're here for 48 hours so it can happen at any time.

[5:28] You can be in the gym, you can be in the middle of night, you can be cooking.

[5:36] Stop what you're doing and listen.

[5:43] We are in the station.

[5:44] People will stop what they're doing and listen.

[5:45] finding out which station it is. What is the nature of the call? What is it in my

[5:50] district? It's in the highway. It's been in the expectation of the lives involved,

[5:59] that adrenaline dumps, hands on, coats on, getting in the truck, we're mentally

[6:03] focused here to hang in to see what we're doing.

[6:09] And we have a game plan that

[6:10] happens in the truck. The officer can give directions. The dispatcher will update

[6:13] you. The officer will listen to driver listen. We can get all the same pay

[6:16] they will get to the call. We can go to work.

[6:20] So many degrees of severity,

[6:22] structure fire, swift water rescue, RMS, R-Accident, Technical Rescue,

[6:28] Tathmetic Team.

[6:30] The equipment the fire department offers us is top notch, from rain cutters to

[6:34] extrication equipment. The state-of-the-art stuff, rate trucks,

[6:37] tablets, Lucas device, battery, power pot. The ride tools, the ride training.

[6:42] The learning does not stop an academy. Building blocks continue call after call.

[6:47] Opportunity is usually broke. Sardalza Fire Fire Paramedic moves to the rank of

[6:51] engineer paramedic, most recently at the qualification of acting captain.

[6:55] Fire fighter, engineer, recently promoted to captain.

[6:58] I'm headed to paramedic since I've been here.

[7:04] I'll be honest, it's scary sometimes.

[7:06] You're the one back there, that person is having a bad day and that count on you.

[7:10] We practice these scenarios over and over, so when someone has an emergency

[7:14] we can channel those energies and minimize it any more injury.

[7:20] And then when it's over, we'll say, hey, how did we do how is everyone doing?

[7:25] And while Frank conversations back at the station,

[7:31] the station assignment for us is a 48 on 96 off.

[7:35] The 4 days off is probably one of the greatest things ever.

[7:39] The help is improve our sleep patterns, wellness, mental health.

[7:43] He gives you many many options.

[7:44] I have a small little 15 acres that we like to hobby farm a backpacking in the spring and in the fall.

[7:50] Mountain biking when the weather is good.

[7:52] I have a 21-month-old at home, so I feel like I get to work full-time job, and then on the four days off, be a stay-at-home mom as well.

[8:03] I spent a little more time with my kids, travel around the world. I was able to take my oldest daughter in a trip of a lifetime. We went to Europe for 22 days.

[8:13] I got hired to help others helping others also helped me see my children grow

[8:18] see my family grow see my career grow and me grow as a person people that are

[8:24] in the industry know the name of the assembly fire department every fire

[8:30] academy knows it every other fire department knows it if you're looking for a

[8:35] job in the fire service at least some it's a place to be that's who you want to

[8:42] be somebody who can make positive change in all the human being's life.

[9:03] Quickly Summit, I'm Jordan. Here's your flash briefing for the week of March 2nd. This

[9:08] week is severe weather preparedness week. Everyone is encouraged to participate in a statewide

[9:13] tornado drill Wednesday March 4th at 11 a.m. It is important to have a plan in case of

[9:19] a severe weather incident such as a tornado. Shake off the winter blues and jump in the

[9:24] Just bring this weekend in downtown Lee Summit for the Spring Open House Friday and Saturday.

[9:29] Shop new home decor, plants, apparel, gifts, and more.

[9:34] City Council will meet for a regular session Tuesday night at 6 in Council Chambers in

[9:38] City Hall.

[9:39] Meetings are open to the public or watch live on the city's YouTube channel.

[9:43] If you can't watch, catch the recorded meeting on demand on the YouTube channel, or by subscribing

[9:48] to the council debrief newsletter, which breaks down three to four key agenda items.

[9:52] subscribe at cityofls.net. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

[10:04] Lee Summit has lots of local destinations, but where do you start?

[10:09] Green Street, a vibrant community space in the heart of downtown, is where Lee Summit comes together.

[10:17] Its three dynamic areas have something for everyone.

[10:21] Green Street Market is a modern event venue and home to the downtown Lee Summit Farmers Market.

[10:26] Green Street Law is a covered performance space, hosting live music, family activities and more.

[10:33] Green Street Grove is a mixture of gathering spaces and immersive playground and bold architectural features.

[10:39] In all three areas, post community events year-round.

[10:44] So the next time you set out to enjoy the city you love, remember, meet at Green Street.

[10:59] The City of Lee Summit has hundreds of traffic lights across its more than 1,000 lane miles,

[11:04] All managed by the city's public works traffic technicians.

[11:09] The work happens inside those metal boxes on the side of each intersection.

[11:13] Inside, technicians program a device called the controller.

[11:16] The controller communicates directly with each signal head via underground wires, telling

[11:21] each light when it turns on and off, based on a program cycle.

[11:25] City traffic engineers designed this cycle to allow traffic to flow as efficiently as possible

[11:29] for that particular intersection.

[11:30] In order to best match current traffic patterns, they install something called a detection system.

[11:36] Detection systems have taken many forms over the years, from sensors in the pavement to radar boxes.

[11:42] But in Lee's Summit, they primarily consist of cameras which work

[33:49] For the delay, we had a closed session that took longer than we expected, so I apologize. Would you please rise for the invocation and stay standing for the Pledge of Allegiance?

[34:01] Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of this day and the chance to serve. Hope us appreciate the small moments that matter and we're being grateful for the trust our community has placed in us. Give us wisdom and humble hearts as we lead, and in your name we pray. Amen.

[34:33] Okay, again, welcome everyone, I'm calling to order the City of Lee Summit amended regular session number 65.

[34:40] Can I get a roll call please?

[34:42] Council member Carlisle.

[34:44] Present.

[34:45] Council member shields.

[34:46] Here.

[34:47] Council member Hodges.

[34:48] Here.

[34:49] Council member Raider.

[34:51] Present.

[34:52] Council member Pryor.

[34:53] Council member Funk.

[34:55] Present.

[34:56] Council member Lovell.

[34:57] Here.

[34:58] Mayor Porton Lopez.

[34:59] Here.

[35:00] Mayor Baird.

[35:01] here. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. I have a motion

[35:09] to it out the agenda by Council Member Funk, seconded by a Council Member Carlisle.

[35:14] Discussion?

[35:17] Seeing none, please cast your vote.

[35:21] Mayor, I'm in aye.

[35:23] Okay.

[35:25] Thank you all. Our votes are in. Please record the vote.

[35:30] Passes 8-0. Thank you. Next is the approval of the consent agenda. The first one was the

[35:35] agenda. This is the consent agenda. I have a motion to approve the consent agenda by

[35:40] councilmember Carlisle, seconded by a councilmember waiter. Discussion?

[35:47] Seeing none,

[35:48] please cast your vote.

[35:55] All votes are in. Please record the vote. Passes unanimously. Thank

[35:58] you. Next item on the agenda is the council roundtable. Items of general interest. Things

[36:04] going on in the community.

[36:13] Councilmember shields. Thank you, Mayor. We have downtown the spring

[36:17] I'm looking open house in the Emerald Isle pub crawl this weekend, I'm looking downtown to make sure I'm getting those dates right and they're giving me the thumbs up so hopefully we'll see folks out there to support local and enjoy hopefully some good weather for this cross thank you very

[36:37] good no other comments and we will go to public comments this time is set aside for on the agenda for citizens to address the man council on items and the agenda or items related to the operations of the city

[36:53] speakers will be restricted to three minutes. Minutes may not be transferred from one speaker to another. The mayor may declare a speaker out of order if it's not related to an item on the agenda. It's not related to the operations of the city.

[37:04] If it has to do with the public hearing that we're having, if it's disruptive of an orderly and fair discussion, no profanity or threats of violence and no attacks on private citizens.

[37:14] We have, I think, about four speakers here, so we'll start with Mr. Al-Shawish.

[37:26] A couple of days ago, I received a troubling letter from a Lisa McFirefighter,

[37:31] and he asked me to share it, and it caught my attention immediately,

[37:34] and I believe it demands your immediate attention and action as well.

[37:38] I'll read portions of it here and post a full letter to my page.

[37:41] He writes that in just the last two years, two of our firefighters have tragically taken their own lives,

[37:46] and two more have been forced to medically retire due to the effects of PTSD and unfortunately

[37:53] these aren't isolated incidents they reflected deeper crisis for first responders all over

[37:58] the world. Now Missouri took meaningful step forward with Senate Bill 24, which recognizes

[38:04] PTSD as an occupational disease for first responders and it was meant to ensure access to treatment

[38:10] without any barriers yet he says and leaves some it the opposite is happening. Instead of embracing

[38:16] this law, the HR department has required firefighters to burn through their own sick

[38:19] time for mental health care, and has routinely denied claims for PDSD treatment.

[38:25] He said the problem does is stop at HR, inside the department, the culture of silence and

[38:30] shame persists, and the firefighters fear ridicule for management if they openly ask for help.

[38:35] And the pair of support team they have is unfortunately under-resourced and under-supported.

[38:40] Now officially the department encourages documenting all injuries, but in reality, when someone reports

[38:45] Even a physical injury like a hurt knee, the captain's question, are you really hurt and this is necessary and people are shamed and

[38:52] Distain quiet. He said that that's how physical injuries are handled. Imagine the barriers when someone admits that they need help with their mental health, which is one of the hardest things for anyone to acknowledge.

[39:03] Now the neglect extends further. The city also denied a firefighter's work in comp claim when he battled was battling cancer, forcing him to use his own sick time and denying him basic accommodations.

[39:14] And I've actually heard a similar story from a former city employee with cancer who was so

[39:19] mistreated that they felt forced to resign just so they could focus on their cancer treatment.

[39:24] And you know, this toxic culture is no accident.

[39:27] You know, for too long, the city has failed to prioritize people.

[39:30] And it's not just the residents they fail to prioritize.

[39:33] It's the first responders and employees, too.

[39:35] Instead, you prioritize institutions and focus on placating to unions, developers, and special interests.

[39:42] Our first responders and city employees deserve better than a system that turns its back

[39:46] on them when they need to help the most, and our residents deserve better than leadership

[39:50] that prioritize a special interest over the needs of the people.

[39:55] But in regards to the firefighters claim, I do want to call on the City Council, HR Department

[39:59] and Department leadership to implement Senate Bill 24 fully, strengthen peer support in the

[40:06] a big-month PTSD and lease summit and provide real accommodations and fair claims processing for first responders and employees that serve lease summit.

[40:14] Thank you.

[40:16] Thank you.

[40:20] Ms. Kaufman.

[40:34] The community is so important to have people that care about this community and up on this diet and taking care of the people and the community is to the best of their ability.

[40:45] Every meaningful change in our community starts with someone willing to step up, get involved and together.

[40:50] study the issues and turned ideas into action. In 2008 I was invited to join

[40:57] Lee Summit 360 Strategic Planning Commission, a 20-year vision project that

[41:02] included over 100 community volunteers. Through that process we crafted key

[41:07] performance areas and collective vision that reflected the city's values

[41:12] inclusivity and highest standards. Later I became chair and then co-chair of

[41:17] Human Services Advisory Board from 2010 to 2016.

[41:22] During that time, we united nonprofits together in the community.

[41:36] We united nonprofits at once operated in silos, allowing them to collaborate on fundraisers.

[41:41] This not only strengthened each organization, but also made it easier for

[41:46] the community to give to multiple causes at once.

[41:49] After six years, I stepped down knowing the board was ready for new leadership and

[41:53] continued success. If you see if you wish to see positive change in our community it's completely

[41:59] possible by getting involved. There are numerous focus groups, city boards and committees or you can

[42:08] make a real difference. These forms are designed to empower citizens involvement and whether through

[42:17] school district committees or city boards. If you want to make a change all you need to do is step in

[42:23] and become part of a community's future.

[42:28] All right.

[42:29] Thank you.

[42:31] Mr. Good.

[42:44] I'm here to address the misinformation that has been shared by one particular council member,

[42:48] Senator.

[42:48] She represents me and more than 20,000 other residents in the third district.

[42:53] She had said the schools are in decline.

[42:55] They are not.

[42:56] As she heard from Dr. Buck last week, the schools are not in decline.

[42:59] She has claimed that crime is rising in the summit.

[43:02] It is not as if we've heard, as we're about to hear from the police chief, that crime rates are down.

[43:06] She said that she wants to freeze all incentives and new developments yet last Wednesday.

[43:12] She proposed incentives for affordable and attainable residential housing.

[43:16] At that forum, she agreed with her political opponent like any other organization.

[43:22] From time to time, you must re-evaluate goals and plans as situations change or goals have

[43:26] been met.

[43:27] However, this weekend, she posted on social media that we are way past any sort of re-evaluation

[43:33] process and that the city should freeze all due commercial development.

[43:38] She has no plan on how to pay for her to find housing incentives, unless following her suggested

[43:44] freeze on commercial development, she plans to raise taxes on lease on home owners through

[43:48] sales, use or property tax.

[43:52] She has also said she wanted the market to decide on development, which is it, market or incentives.

[43:58] Eight years ago, we did let the market decide, and as a result, nearly 80% of the tax burden

[44:03] and fell on the residential property owners.

[44:05] That's not balanced.

[44:06] A healthy residential to commercial tax base

[44:08] should be close to a 40-60 split

[44:11] to ease the tax burden on lease-eminent homeowners.

[44:14] I say it again, she has no plan.

[44:16] In the recent years, our city has turned the corner.

[44:18] Developers are now coming to us

[44:20] instead of avoiding us as they did in the past.

[44:23] Every new commercial development

[44:24] helps broaden the tax base

[44:25] and reduce the pressure on homeowners.

[44:28] She continually talks about transparency.

[44:30] yet she was the only one as a self-described black sheep of the City Council against letting the voters vote on trash service.

[44:37] She claimed that overwhelmingly opposition to the single hauler system.

[44:43] She told me that 50 people had called her an opposition.

[44:46] 50 people do not constitute overwhelming consensus.

[44:49] She was elected to represent the entire district and the entire city, not just the loudest voices.

[44:55] This also speaks to her leadership skills and her ability or lack thereof to bring people together.

[44:59] other.

[45:00] She has repeatedly promoted misinformation and never denounced the divisive personal attacks against her political opposition or federal council member. This kind of rhetoric does not build trust, it erodes it. She has also publicly aligned herself with Zach, a city council candidate. Despite his repeated tax on council members, city officials, developers, and our dedicated police and fire personnel. Leadership requires discernment, accountability, and the commitment to elevating, not undermining those who serve our community.

[45:28] In my opinion, Councilmember Raider has demonstrated a lack of transparency, integrity, and ethical leadership expected a something serving on this dius.

[45:39] Following the April election, I believe her actions weren't further review, and the residents should consider whether she should continue on this dius to represent the interest of the third district and all of Lisa.

[45:50] Thank you.

[45:58] misspelling wider this

[47:17] is a

[47:45] Teresa Vollen wider 5201 north east

[47:49] Maverick Road this

[47:53] is from 1122

[47:57] 2022 I can see what's up is that.

[48:03] So would you have a right like that roadway

[48:07] where that road comes through over there

[48:09] probably even going over to wherever that

[48:11] a little pin is that over there. That roadway, I mean, that's on her property. But of course

[48:18] the city has a right-of-way on it for public use. So the public can use it, right?

[48:24] Oh, that makes sense. So she can't have stuff that's in that right-of-way that's for public use.

[48:31] And the city is probably asserted their authority on it and said, no, we're not going to allow stuff to be here.

[48:36] That's

[48:41] really sad too, and I mean, completely, is that I said to this city a new community

[48:47] goal.

[48:48] So we missed all, because I said, you definitely should not drive her a few go there,

[48:54] because if it isn't supposed to be there, she is going to need to be paralyzed and miserable.

[48:59] And I said.

[49:00] So that was Officer Eisberg and Stephanie Mullins.

[49:06] Stephanie Mullins and Derek Collins are my neighbors.

[49:09] If

[49:12] we could stop the clock so I can get the other video up, I'd appreciate it.

[49:17] Ms. Fallon Reiter, we waited quite a while while you got the one going, so we've

[49:28] seen these before as well.

[49:51] Property right now.

[49:53] You're trespassed.

[49:57] Just that it takes a while.

[50:00] I don't care.

[50:03] Get off of their property right now.

[50:09] I said, do you want me to go get the survey so you can look at it?

[50:16] It was that survey right there.

[50:23] Her response was, I don't care, how

[50:31] can that be?

[50:33] How can that be that a police officer doesn't care to look at a survey?

[50:40] they would rather escalate the situation and

[50:47] they've already said that they

[50:49] use the parcel viewer. They've already said that and there is a disclaimer on

[50:56] parcel viewers. I don't care if it's the city's parcel viewer or if it's the

[51:02] county's parcel viewer. There's a disclaimer on that that those are not survey

[51:08] accurate.

[51:14] Thank you, Ms. Longlar.

[51:17] Okay, we've got quite a few people here tonight that are going to be part of different presentations.

[51:29] So we're on agenda item 5A, and these are updates from all of our public service agreements, the recipients that is.

[51:39] So we have different partners that the city works with and it's able to work with these partners and do things that the city really shouldn't be doing on its own.

[51:50] They should be doing with the collaboration of our stakeholders and a great example of that is the very first one downtown Lee Summit Main Street.

[52:00] Good

[52:08] evening.

[52:17] Good evening. Thank you for allowing us to come speak tonight. My name is Donnie Rogers. I'm the executive director of Downtown Lee Summit Main Street.

[52:24] Tonight with me, from my board of directors, I have been wine, our board president, Corey Norris, secretary, Clint Haynes, and Hillary Graves.

[52:33] And I want to thank our liaisons as well, assistant fire chief Jim Eden, assistant city manager, Crystal Weber, and council member shields for their service to our board.

[52:41] So

[52:45] what is downtown Lee Summit Main Street?

[52:48] From day one, we have been focused on creating a welcoming and inviting atmosphere to draw members of our community and region to downtown to support our local businesses.

[52:58] We were founded in 1989 as a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

[53:04] Organizationally, we work closely with Missouri Main Street Connection and Main Street America.

[53:09] Since the beginning, those organizations have helped with vital resources for us for trainings, leadership, development, networking and best practices.

[53:18] We're proud next Tuesday, we'll actually be hosting the quarterly training for Missouri Main Street Connection, right here in downtown Lee Summit at Green Street.

[53:26] We are annually accredited by these organizations and consistently achieve full accreditation.

[53:32] I want to also make note that we are only one of only nine communities in the state of Missouri

[53:38] to achieve this level designation and this annual accreditation process, the on-site process

[53:44] for accreditation happens biennually and looks at all levels of the organization.

[53:49] From the very beginning, we were volunteer driven.

[53:54] This is those group of heroes that came together in 1989 and rolled up their sleeves to do

[53:58] something impossible.

[53:59] And I'm proud of the work we've done over the last 36 years to transform downtown Lee

[54:05] Summit.

[54:06] Of course, everything we do is not possible without an amazing support of volunteers as a

[54:12] nonprofit.

[54:14] Our volunteers this year really stepped up and answered the call.

[54:18] We saw a 34% increase in volunteer hours this year.

[54:23] From the year prior, our volunteers logged 2,960 hours in service to downtown at a value

[54:30] of over 103,000 dollars.

[54:35] Of course, part of those volunteer services is volunteer opportunities are part of hosting

[54:41] over 100 free activities in events downtown.

[54:45] Almost every event and activity we plan downtown is free to attend and is family friendly.

[54:50] We hear from a lot of people how our events have become part of their family traditions.

[54:57] This last year alone, we welcomed 3.2 million visitors to downtown.

[55:02] On average, someone visiting downtown spends 95 minutes in downtown Lee Summit.

[55:07] So that means they're shopping, they're dining, they're doing multiple things.

[55:15] I like to highlight this, you know, there's no question downtown has truly become the place

[55:19] to be in Lee Summit.

[55:20] it. These are the top five Saturdays to be downtown in 2025. Our top visit day, of course,

[55:28] was June 7th, downtown days, 43,800 visitors. Number two, September 27th, October

[55:36] fest, 3,700 visitors. You see December 6th, holiday season, fog in progress, 12 bars of

[55:45] Christmas pub crawl, 22,000 visitors. August 16th, the opening day of Green Street, that was

[55:50] or fourth busiest day downtown in 2025, and that was 21,500 visitors, and then the

[55:57] Emerald Owl pub crawl rounds out that last busiest Saturday in 19,200.

[56:07] Of course, with

[56:07] over 100 free activities and events, here's some of the other ones that don't get as

[56:13] much visitation, I think, or just as important in building community in our downtown.

[56:17] Our art walk or 430 art walk that runs April through August featured over 137 artists

[56:24] over those five months and gave opportunities for those artists to set up in our downtown

[56:29] businesses and on the sidewalks to display their local art.

[56:34] Activities like Wadiff puppets that we hosted in sponsorship with a grant from the Cultural

[56:42] our arts department at equity bank.

[56:45] Chamrock the block, which is one of our events.

[56:47] Coming up, it'll be moved to Green Street,

[56:49] but coming up on March 14th, you can see there.

[56:52] Last year, we hosted that on Southwest Maine and Southeast Maine

[56:55] and filled the street with bubbles and vendors

[56:57] and all the fun activities.

[56:59] My favorite event though, of course, is Boos Parks and Badges.

[57:03] That is a that we partner with police and fire

[57:06] to turn downtown over to the cutest goblins

[57:10] and four-legged creatures that you've ever seen.

[57:13] And so, this is a great opportunity to kind of celebrate

[57:16] the holiday season in a safe and fun way.

[57:19] And of course, even in the rain this year,

[57:21] the mayor's true lighting, we drew over 8,400 people

[57:25] to downtown to see the twinkling lights come on

[57:28] across all downtown.

[57:33] A big thing of what we do is reminding people

[57:36] to come downtown.

[57:37] Marketing promotion is a major part of what we do

[57:41] and getting the word out. Our social media reach for 2025, we reached 4.7 million

[57:48] posts on our post-reach on meta-platforms, although that's Facebook and

[57:53] Instagram, and specifically looking at just the downtown lease on that

[57:57] Facebook page. We have over 35,000 Facebook fans, over 11,000 Instagram followers.

[58:03] Our website serves as the destination for all downtown information. We saw 14%

[58:10] increase of web traffic over this last year. Our top five pages give an idea of what people

[58:16] are looking for when they come to our website. Number one is business directory. They're looking

[58:20] for local businesses. Number two, farmers market. Three events. Four is available space.

[58:26] And squeaking out Green Street was October fest at number five. We also work to sell downtown

[58:33] gift cards in 2025. We kept $85,000 here locally in our downtown economy. We also do postcard

[58:41] mailings to over 12,000 households during the spring and holiday seasons. Of course,

[58:49] the support I have for my staff is just amazing. Those three ladies in that photo are Julie Cook,

[58:56] our event director, Jenny Gail, our assistant director

[59:00] and Rachel Finch, our creative content and communications person.

[59:07] The long Jeviti of my staff is something I'm quite proud of.

[59:12] I've been with the organization now for 12 years.

[59:14] Julie just celebrated 10 years this month.

[59:19] Jenny's been with us for four years

[59:20] and Rachel's been with us almost 10.

[59:22] So that means out of the four of us,

[59:23] We have an average of eight and a half years serving our community here in downtown Lee summit and

[59:33] some of the favorite headlines of this past year

[59:35] I mentioned the my three staff members there, but we also got the ability to add in a part time position this year

[59:43] Um, these are three that my favorite headlines. This is we posted hiring a farmers market assistant manager

[59:49] We hired Chris Spangler. She's been an amazing addition. She's the face you see most Wednesdays and Saturdays

[59:54] at the farmers market

[59:56] that we submitted two awards to our Missouri Main Street.

[1:00:01] We were honored for Dave Eames' past board chair to receive the Spirit and the User Award for his, not only, volunteerism and commitment to our downtown, but many downtowns across the state. We also were recognized for the best new promotion for our Mary Swift mis-event in 2024 that celebrated our 35th anniversary in the same time I believe Miss Taylor Swift turned 35 as well. And then, of course,

[1:00:31] We were featured on Main Street America's website in early January and we were honored to be able to share our story about the development of Green Street and what it means to this community.

[1:00:41] So a network of downtowns across the nation.

[1:00:46] And of course, I can't not talk about Green Street, it has been the culmination of so much work and I'm so appreciative of council support in making this happen.

[1:00:56] And the corner photo up there is from our farmers market in 1995 and then you see the farmers market this last season.

[1:01:05] Just the transformation has been astounding and I'll kind of go through some statistics with the farmers market.

[1:01:11] But it's been a great season we're looking forward for the market returning on April 4th.

[1:01:19] So I love all numbers.

[1:01:21] This is taken from Placer AI.

[1:01:23] the red line is the farmers market from Saturdays of the farmers market from

[1:01:29] 2000 and 24. The blue line is Green Street starting with the move over the

[1:01:37] farmers market moving over there. These numbers are taken from 8 to noon. You

[1:01:42] can see the opening day spike when we moved to Green Street. We welcome nearly 6,000

[1:01:47] shoppers to Green Street, the farmers market that morning. We welcome nearly 50,000

[1:01:53] shoppers for the 2025 season, and I anticipate this year we'll see attendance spike over 100,000.

[1:02:00] You can see how huge those attendance numbers are over the previous year in coming to Greenstreet.

[1:02:11] We saw the increase of attendance over 300%.

[1:02:15] We had over 72 farmers market vendors join us.

[1:02:17] The average length of state the farmers market went from 31 minutes in 2024 to we saw people joining us for 52 minutes at Green Street.

[1:02:27] So almost 21 minute, almost doubling with that average household income for farmers market shoppers, 118,000.

[1:02:37] And on the average Saturday, we see about 2,500 shoppers that's up from about 865 shoppers at the previous location there on the parking lot next to at least some of the elementary.

[1:02:47] We also were able to expand our holiday market offerings from one market, with about 20 vendors inside City Hall to four markets featuring upwards of 50 vendors per market, and that's on average attendance of about 1600 shoppers each to 100 day

[1:03:06] highlighting the work we've done since 2009 or volunteers have logged 61,871 hours.

[1:03:15] We've welcomed over 109 net new businesses downtown.

[1:03:18] on creating over 833 and a half net new jobs and almost 80 million in renovations in these private development downtown since 2009.

[1:03:32] This past year in 2025, we saw our taxable retail and restaurant sales hit 57 million, doubling in 10 years.

[1:03:44] We saw eight new businesses open, creating 53 new jobs,

[1:03:51] 20 building permits,

[1:03:53] representing $6.2 million in private investment downtown,

[1:03:56] and 26 new housing units opening at Ellis Glen.

[1:04:03] Of course, we're excited for what this year holds.

[1:04:06] We are so looking forward to welcoming the world

[1:04:11] to the Lee Summit in June for the World Cup.

[1:04:13] We're proud of our partners, Alice Gole,

[1:04:16] Explorally Summit, LSCDC in the chamber

[1:04:18] for working together to really transform our place

[1:04:23] in the Metro.

[1:04:24] Some of the things that have been possible,

[1:04:26] the direct connections to FanFest,

[1:04:28] planning for the five football Fridays,

[1:04:31] working with tourism,

[1:04:33] on pedestrian way, finding downtown,

[1:04:35] we'll add community banners and everything.

[1:04:37] So the highlight of we are exactly 100 days away today.

[1:04:41] So from the World Cup,

[1:04:43] It seems like it goes forever ago.

[1:04:46] We were like three years out.

[1:04:48] So with that, that's really all I have.

[1:04:51] I'll just leave you with a fun fact.

[1:04:52] This is one of my favorite things to see this last year is a new Christmas tree,

[1:04:58] the new mayor's tree at Green Street.

[1:05:00] Fun fact, I know exactly how many light bulbs are on there.

[1:05:02] We had 5,280 light bulbs.

[1:05:05] I know this because our volunteers screwed in each and every one of those light bulbs

[1:05:10] And we'll have to each one of those branches, so we're looking forward to that be a long

[1:05:15] standing and how the tradition moving forward, so that is it for me if there's any questions.

[1:05:23] Yeah, I'll open up to the council questions or comments, councilmember Breyer.

[1:05:28] Thank you.

[1:05:29] So this is kind of just generic, but I hear so often that people are excited to have the

[1:05:39] So I was wondering if you could maybe like give your plans on that, and I hear so many

[1:05:45] people asking if we can extend hours, and I always tell them to reach out to you, but

[1:05:49] extend Saturday hours on the farmer's market, are there any plans for that?

[1:05:54] So two questions.

[1:05:55] So yes, we do want to go year round, and so we have our new vendor, returning vendor meeting

[1:06:01] next week, and part of that research surveying them to make sure that we can get enough vendors

[1:06:05] for that January February and March time.

[1:06:08] If we do anything, we want to make sure we do it right and we have the number of vendors

[1:06:12] and quality of vendors the customers expect.

[1:06:16] So yes, we are hoping in 2027 to go, at least with some Saturdays in those three months.

[1:06:24] With the extending hours and everything, the struggle there is our vendors work so hard and

[1:06:30] pull together everything they have and so extending hours I think sometimes could be a challenge

[1:06:34] for us to making sure they have the product because a lot of our farmer's market vendors

[1:06:39] will, all of them, they're raising crops, animals, you know, they're preparing baked goods,

[1:06:48] jelly sheet, all that takes time and a lot of them return to their farms afterwards and then

[1:06:53] take care of livestock, take care of the crop. You know, they're getting up at, the market opens

[1:06:58] at eight. Some of them are getting up at three a.m. to load up for the farmer's market and so

[1:07:03] So I think that's the struggle we always face is just like we'd love to have longer hours

[1:07:08] but from a sales point from the farmers market it's just we don't have the capacity I think

[1:07:13] for them to be longer.

[1:07:16] Yeah I know they work hard but and then selfishly since I'm a soccer mom and I have a soccer

[1:07:21] all day on Saturdays I would like to see it open later too but I think council member Hodges

[1:07:26] and I have to go Wednesday. Yeah, I know. Yeah, Wednesday and we are adding a number of

[1:07:34] vendors to Wednesday. So yeah, Wednesday is something to check out. I like I like the

[1:07:40] Wednesday one, but the Saturday just has so much more and there's that really good Saturday

[1:07:43] one Saturdays, but they run out really early.

[1:07:50] Thank you, Councilmember Shields.

[1:07:53] Don't really have questions. I just really appreciate what you guys could do and I want to say that.

[1:07:57] But I appreciate when you come and speak to us, you know, as you mentioned earlier, I'm

[1:08:01] the liaison at your board meeting, so I see how hard all your volunteers are working.

[1:08:05] And I just really appreciate it.

[1:08:07] Like I live downtown, Councilmember prior lives downtown and it, it's great seeing the data,

[1:08:13] it's great seeing, you know, the increase in sales and tax revenue and new businesses and

[1:08:17] all that.

[1:08:18] But it's, you can't quantify the level of community building that it is.

[1:08:23] It makes Lee summit more than just a town like it's a community and I really appreciate all the work that goes into making that happen so thank you.

[1:08:32] Definitely thank you so much.

[1:08:34] Thank you.

[1:08:35] Council Member Funk.

[1:08:37] Thank you Mayor.

[1:08:38] Just echo what Council Member Shield said.

[1:08:40] Thank you to you and all the volunteers that put on all these events and do all these things but you mentioned fun fact about number of light bulbs on the Christmas tree.

[1:08:50] If you can answer a fun fact, there was a viral video of maybe the president of downtown

[1:08:56] main street during this process.

[1:08:59] How many hits did that video get?

[1:09:01] He asked if we were going to share that tonight, so he's quite proud of that viral video.

[1:09:06] Over 100,000 on Facebook, I'm pretty sure.

[1:09:10] It didn't do so well on TikTok.

[1:09:11] Now, Davies, our passport chair, had the bigger TikTok hit last year.

[1:09:16] I have over 164,000 views on social media, and so, yeah, we're thankful for our volunteers.

[1:09:24] I mean, we come up with some crazy ideas, and they just nod their head, and, yeah, like,

[1:09:30] I mean, and that was, I will be fully honest, that Ben's video with the Christmas tree was

[1:09:35] something when I was at the office, so sometimes my staff does even amazing things when I get the

[1:09:40] heck out of the way.

[1:09:41] Okay, so thank you guys, thank you Mayor.

[1:09:45] Thank you, Council member Raider.

[1:09:47] Thank you Mayor, Donnie, I just want to tell you thank you in your team.

[1:09:51] For everything that you do, you've made our downtown beautiful all the events.

[1:09:55] I try to make them all.

[1:09:56] I love your quarterly meetings because I learned a lot at those meetings.

[1:10:00] So I just say good job, keep going, so glad that you're here and you're doing what you're doing.

[1:10:06] Thank you so much.

[1:10:07] Welcome, thanks Mayor.

[1:10:08] Thank you.

[1:10:11] Okay.

[1:10:14] I'll throw some kudos at you too, I mean, because the staff, you mentioned your staff,

[1:10:21] the stability, the consistency, the longevity, the welcoming crew that you have, just thank

[1:10:30] you for them and for keeping them happy and not overworking them, but yet pushing them as

[1:10:35] hard as you can at the same time, getting the most out of them.

[1:10:40] But numbers, you always share numbers when you do this presentation, which is really what this is supposed to be kind of about as well.

[1:10:48] It's return on investment. And I think you showed some really great numbers tonight that I'm pretty proud of as far as people in our spending more time in our downtown.

[1:10:57] I mean, that's what we're looking for. And they must be having a good time if there's been that much time in our downtown.

[1:11:04] town, so that's a great thing.

[1:11:07] And then thank you for putting up with crazy board members that probably you have to

[1:11:15] reel in sometimes, and then lastly, you're doing a great job, so thanks for the relationship

[1:11:21] here.

[1:11:22] That's what we want, we want a relationship with our community partners, so thanks for facilitating

[1:11:28] that.

[1:11:29] Thank you so much, and we are so appreciative of your support.

[1:11:31] and having the support council makes our jobs so much easier.

[1:11:35] And so it's great to have you in our corner.

[1:11:39] I mean, and city staff as well.

[1:11:41] I mean, everyone is very supportive of everything we do.

[1:11:43] I mean, I think that's what sets us apart

[1:11:45] from any of our competitors in the metro or even the nation.

[1:11:49] Yep.

[1:11:50] All right, thank you, sir.

[1:11:51] Thank you.

[1:11:55] All right, he set the bar off the high.

[1:12:01] Yeah, he's got some experience.

[1:12:04] You know is what we like to hear, so now we'll bring the new girl up.

[1:12:11] The next is, I thought it was interesting that you put Explore L.S., which, that's great,

[1:12:16] you're trying to brand right on our agenda like that, but it's the Visitors Bureau.

[1:12:20] Are you going by the, at least I'm at Visitors Bureau, is that what you call, or do you sometimes

[1:12:26] There's inter, you know, intermingle tourism and what's the official status and what's your name?

[1:12:33] So, good evening, Mayor and members of Council, my name is Corey Day and I have the privilege of serving as tourism director for Explorally Summit.

[1:12:41] Our doing business as name is Explorally Summit and our official name is Lee Sermon, that's Mr. Spiro.

[1:12:47] All right, thank you.

[1:12:48] So I am joined tonight by a few board members, so I'd like to say thank you to Crystal

[1:12:56] Raymond, Tina Rockhold, and Donnie Rogers for joining me tonight.

[1:13:00] So we are here to talk with you a little bit about what's been going on with Explorally

[1:13:06] Summit, and I will get to get to that and how we got to that point.

[1:13:11] So, since we've last spoke, we've been busy implementing our strategic plan by creating

[1:13:18] new operating procedures and continuing to ensure the organization is being good stewards

[1:13:22] of the resources that you have entrusted to us.

[1:13:26] Some of these include establishing new financial and budget policies, including our reserve

[1:13:30] amounts.

[1:13:31] As we just mentioned, we accepted Explorally Summit as our doing business as name for the DMO

[1:13:37] or the Lee Summit Visitors Bureau.

[1:13:39] We applied for a fictitious name registration with Missouri Secretary of State, which is something you have to do whenever you have a DBA, like Explorely Summit, and then we were also able to establish an agreement with the City of Lee Summit Finance Department to provide financial services to us, which has been very, very beneficial, and we're very appreciative of all of the city services that we are able to use because we couldn't do it on our own.

[1:14:05] And most of 2025 was spent cultivating a plan to tell the story of our amazing community,

[1:14:14] not only to those outside of Lee Summit but also our own community members.

[1:14:18] Not because they didn't know how great we were but just as a way to remind them of all

[1:14:22] the amazing things we have to offer and get them on board to help us spread the word.

[1:14:27] Building a loyal group of community investors was, and is, a huge goal as we set out to create

[1:14:32] this new marketing campaign.

[1:14:34] It took a lot of prep work to make sure we were doing it justice and telling the story

[1:14:38] in an authentic and genuine way.

[1:14:40] So after all the work that is listed here on the screen, we were able to bring you the

[1:14:44] completed project in January during the presentation that you saw regarding the marketing campaign.

[1:14:51] The official launch of the campaign happened in early February and we now have some analytics

[1:14:56] on how it has performed the first 30 days.

[1:14:58] So, I wanted to bring those...

[1:15:00] Welcome to you tonight, just as a way to kind of give you your return on investment and what we've been doing with the funds that you've trusted to us. So just as a recap, we did talk a little bit about this on my presentation in January, but just as a recap on what media we've invested in and what key performance indicators we're using to gauge return on investment. In the upper funnel is where you will see media that is in the market to create awareness. So just TV radio billboards print and others that grab the attention

[1:15:29] of a large pool of people. The middle funnel is a little more targeted with paid search

[1:15:34] and paid socials, so it will reach people that are on those platforms and are searching

[1:15:39] using certain key words. The lower funnel is where we hope to drive our conversion, and

[1:15:44] we'll target those people that have shown interest in Lee Summit and orch have shown interest

[1:15:49] through their related searches. The results we hope to see through all of these media outlets

[1:15:55] are the number of impressions we see, an increase in website traffic, and those that search

[1:16:01] release some of it specifically after seeing an ad or being served up something on their

[1:16:05] social media feeds. And I'll explain a little bit more in detail of some of that as we go

[1:16:09] on.

[1:16:12] So this is just a quick snapshot of what the campaign has seen so far. Some of these

[1:16:17] have been in the market longer than others. So some of the paid search has been in the market

[1:16:23] that a little bit longer than connected TV has,

[1:16:26] but as an overall, everything is within the last 90 days.

[1:16:30] So from December through February.

[1:16:31] So I won't read all of these to you,

[1:16:33] but there are some very impressive numbers on here.

[1:16:35] And just as a point of clarification,

[1:16:37] I just wanted to clarify a couple things on the slide.

[1:16:41] CTV refers to connected TV.

[1:16:44] So that is internet, that is a television

[1:16:46] that is connected to the internet.

[1:16:47] So smart TVs, streaming devices such as Roku

[1:16:50] to an Amazon fire and then even gaming consoles

[1:16:53] like your PlayStation or Xbox.

[1:16:56] The other one that I wanted to draw attention to

[1:16:57] was PMAX, which is a Google product

[1:17:00] and it uses a person's search history

[1:17:03] to determine their interests and then uses AI

[1:17:06] to configure the messaging that is served up

[1:17:08] to them about Lee Summit.

[1:17:09] So that's where they start following people around

[1:17:11] based on what their interests are on the internet.

[1:17:14] So if you show interest in Lee Summit

[1:17:16] we're gonna live in your feed

[1:17:17] for probably three to six months.

[1:17:19] So that's that's what good marketing does, but that's that's kind of the the the back the background of some of that stuff

[1:17:25] So I just wanted to show you kind of a snapshot of what we were seeing so far

[1:17:30] We're really proud of these numbers and I think it's really exciting that we're reaching so many people

[1:17:37] So as far as geography just so that you can kind of see who we're who we're talking to right now and who is showing high engagement

[1:17:44] We're seeing a very high engagement in our connected TV and our streaming audio

[1:17:49] 10 to 30 miles out for day trips.

[1:17:52] So the top performers, not overly surprising,

[1:17:55] are Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas,

[1:17:57] and Overland Park, Kansas.

[1:17:58] The one that is really interesting

[1:18:00] is a little town east of here

[1:18:03] that is Smithton, Missouri.

[1:18:05] It's a location that we are monitoring

[1:18:07] because we've seen a spike in traffic.

[1:18:10] And more than likely, it's because it sits

[1:18:13] at the perfect intersection of three counties.

[1:18:15] So we believe that it's contributing to the added traffic.

[1:18:19] This is the perfect example of why we say we are in the learning phase of our campaign.

[1:18:23] We have only been in the market for 30 to 90 days depending on the media outlets.

[1:18:28] So we will continue to monitor things like this so that we can continue to invest our resources

[1:18:32] strategically and gain the most ROI.

[1:18:37] So Facebook, again, I won't take you through all of these, but this was the 15th second spot

[1:18:42] that I hope some of you saw on your Facebook feeds.

[1:18:44] And we saw over 400,000 impressions, so that means that then

[1:19:25] in the bottom left-hand corner,

[1:19:26] you'll see trips

[1:19:30] to Kansas City or activities to do.

[1:19:32] We pay to be at the top of that results.

[1:19:34] And so they are seemingly summoned, and they're clicking on it.

[1:19:37] So you can see the top clicks by city, and then also what our top demographics are on the right.

[1:19:44] PMAX, which I mentioned a little bit earlier, this is another

[1:19:56] example of a way that we

[1:19:59] We are reaching folks, you can see the top keywords down in the bottom left hand corner.

[1:20:04] And then the people that we are reaching, their interests, when they are searching the

[1:20:08] Internet, are travel lifestyle and hobby student drinks.

[1:20:11] So not overly surprising that we would be following those people around considering we want

[1:20:16] them to come and do those things here.

[1:20:18] So the click-through rate on this one, good is considered 0.5%, so the good news is in all

[1:20:25] of these examples, we are exceeding expectations, which is very exciting.

[1:20:32] It's also important, I think, on this to talk about demographics.

[1:20:36] As you can see, the top demographics are different in the three slides that I showed you.

[1:20:41] So we're definitely, that's the reason that we diversify all of our media outlets.

[1:20:47] In order to reach everyone that we want to engage, we have to be in many different outlets

[1:20:52] until we figure out which ones are giving the best return on investment.

[1:20:54] So, we will continue to move our dollars around where we're seeing the highest return on

[1:21:01] investment.

[1:21:02] And this just shows a little bit about our website traffic.

[1:21:04] Driving people to the website is the goal in all of our media outlets.

[1:21:09] We've seen an incredible response when comparing last February, when we didn't have much marketing

[1:21:13] beyond some social media posts to now when we have a complete marketing campaign running.

[1:21:18] So, you can see the increases, and this is February of 25 versus February of 26.

[1:21:27] And this is just another way to see the really great website traffic that we are seeing over

[1:21:33] the past three months.

[1:21:34] This graph compares December of 24 through February of 25 to December 25 through February

[1:21:39] of 26.

[1:21:41] It does take in the holiday campaign that we had in some various media outlets as well as when

[1:21:48] the campaign went live.

[1:21:49] So as you can see, we have seen an incredible traffic to the website over the past three months

[1:21:53] and certainly a major increase over last year.

[1:21:59] And again, this is just a year-over-year snapshot.

[1:22:03] So sessions are people that get on the website

[1:22:05] and actually click through to another part of the website.

[1:22:09] Views are people that see our landing page.

[1:22:11] And so you can see that from February of 25th through February 26th,

[1:22:15] we've seen an incredible climb, which is very exciting again,

[1:22:19] because our goal is to get our story out

[1:22:21] and we feel like we're doing that.

[1:22:24] So from a PR and communications standpoint,

[1:22:26] point. We've been very active. We've had the opportunity and the good fortune to be asked

[1:22:32] to do a lot of speaking engagements over the past year at a variety of community events,

[1:22:38] rotary chamber luncheon, Optimus Club, many of that, rotary, so that. Many of them that

[1:22:46] we were able to tell our story and what our goals are as far as tourism is concerned.

[1:22:52] Another engagement and another partnership that we're really proud of is the work that we've

[1:22:56] we've been able to do with the hospitality restaurant

[1:22:57] and tourism management program through LSR7.

[1:23:00] I have had the privilege of going over and working

[1:23:03] with the students a lot this year through client

[1:23:07] centered programs, they worked on some itineraries for us.

[1:23:10] We currently have two interns that are working with us

[1:23:13] that are helping us with an exciting new thing

[1:23:17] that we wanna roll out in summer

[1:23:19] that I'll hopefully be telling you about soon.

[1:23:21] And so we're really fortunate that we get to work

[1:23:24] with the students that are wanting to become hospitality professionals and I feel really

[1:23:30] privileged to be able to help them through that and it's just been a lot of fun. We've done

[1:23:34] some mock interviews and different things that has been a lot of fun. One of the other things

[1:23:39] that we were able to work on this year and partner with was the Green Street Grand Opening which

[1:23:44] we all know as an extremely successful and exciting four days. But one of the things that we did

[1:23:50] from a tourism perspective was we invited four influencers to come and cover those four

[1:23:57] days and so we asked four people to come and these are just a little bit of what we saw

[1:24:03] from that engagement. They posted on their stories. Most of this wasn't, they were all on Instagram.

[1:24:10] I think there were a few on TikTok. So there were 32 posts and that total reach of almost

[1:24:16] to 100,000 people.

[1:24:17] What EMV means has earned media value, so we invested 4,600, but we got back over 9,000.

[1:24:24] So we like to show that as a way to, again, the return on investment that we have of the

[1:24:30] dollars that you've trusted to us.

[1:24:33] One of the other fun things that came out of Green Street was a feature in KC Parent

[1:24:37] magazine.

[1:24:38] This was a full page six stop tour of Lee Summit.

[1:24:42] their editor came out in tour Green Street and after that tour this this appeared in their October

[1:24:49] magazine and this was completely earned media just by showing them Lee Summit and getting them

[1:24:55] excited about what we had to offer so that

[1:25:31] 800 people and it was an excellent.

[1:25:39] One of the events

[1:25:40] that we have coming up and we've been doing a lot of work with Ellis Gold I have the privilege of

[1:25:44] serving on that board and one of the things that we are planning and I know that you're aware of

[1:25:49] this, but football Fridays are coming this summer.

[1:26:00] June 12th through July 10th. So you

[1:26:02] can see on here, and we did leave those rat cards for you at your up on the dius as

[1:26:07] well. But each one of our phrase has a really fun theme. And our amazing group of volunteers

[1:26:12] is already busy planning all of the family, friendly activities that we'll be doing each

[1:26:16] of those days. So I'm really excited for our community to get to come down to Green Street

[1:26:22] and have fun with us during our summer follow-up soccer.

[1:26:28] And last but certainly not least, and just a way to wrap it all up, we updated our visitor

[1:26:31] guide in 2025.

[1:26:33] It is currently in the works to be updated again in 2026.

[1:26:36] We'll actually have two different versions this year.

[1:26:39] We are doing one that includes a World Cup spread and then in the last half of the year,

[1:26:43] that will come out and

[1:26:50] something else will go in its place.

[1:26:52] But we are trying to make sure that we're serving those visitors that are coming to our community

[1:26:56] and happen to get a visitor guide so that they know what's going on and how we're celebrating that event this summer.

[1:27:03] In addition, we continued to supplier hotel partners with our tariff maps of the city.

[1:27:07] And we also participated with Amtrak and the Missouri River Renner team to promote train services here in Lee Summit.

[1:27:15] So with that, I am happy to take any questions that you might have.

[1:27:18] Thank you so much.

[1:27:19] All right, thank you.

[1:27:21] All right, open up for discussion.

[1:27:24] Yes, Councilmember Reader.

[1:27:25] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:27:26] here. So I had some copies of the Visitors Guide and I need more. Okay. I can help you

[1:27:33] again. You're going to get to some great new ones. Okay. Great. Because I passed your

[1:27:36] amount of clients in there. Perfect. Thank you. They're great. Of course. Thank you.

[1:27:39] Thanks, Mayor. Thank you.

[1:27:44] Before we go around, I just want to clarify something. You were

[1:27:47] talking about influencers and then you weren't like double dipping in using the board downtown

[1:28:06] I just want to say thank you also for this. I appreciate their presentation gave to us not too long ago about the marketing campaign. It's great to see some fall with additional data and I just think it's really clear that that you're very serious about being good stewards of taxpayer money and the dollars that you're going to be able to do.

[1:28:24] you're receiving through the PSA to try to do a great job

[1:28:26] marketing our community and really focused on that ROI

[1:28:30] that we're concerned with.

[1:28:31] So thank you and all the materials look beautiful

[1:28:34] and just love seeing this rolled out.

[1:28:37] So thanks.

[1:28:37] Thank you so much.

[1:28:38] And thank you for your support.

[1:28:39] It's very much appreciated.

[1:28:40] Obviously, we couldn't do it without you.

[1:28:43] All right.

[1:28:43] Thank you.

[1:28:44] Council member Lowell.

[1:28:45] I'm interested in Smith and Missouri.

[1:28:48] I know.

[1:28:48] Me too, right?

[1:28:49] The data simulator are.

[1:28:51] I never until they until we started getting numbers back I had I hope I don't offend anybody

[1:28:57] I've never heard of Smith that was I've been researching it's not about 500 people

[1:29:02] The only thing honestly the only thing we can determine is that it sits right at the intersection of three counties and so

[1:29:09] I don't know but we're gonna watch it

[1:29:11] I mean if they're coming to lease them and then they're interested in this company have any data

[1:29:15] That's when that's all they can target on it right now, and so that's why it just we saw a huge spike

[1:29:21] recently like the last couple weeks and so I just I wanted to bring it to you

[1:29:25] tonight just because it's it's things like that that we see and we we may not

[1:29:29] know exactly why so we have to watch it and kind of see aren't there billboards

[1:29:34] there are there's one in Sidelia I was wondering you see that billboard maybe you

[1:29:39] do something there but well anyway maybe it encourages further

[1:29:44] exploration I'd be careful spending a ton of money yeah yeah I'm not sure how

[1:29:51] I think this is something, I know the mayor brought this, I don't remember, I was early

[1:29:55] on in my tenure here and really kind of championing a DMO or whatever.

[1:30:00] You know, whatever we call it. And it has been very nice seeing our name and brand out there. I think you've done a great job with the branding and communication. And, you know, I mean, we, anybody we talk to outside of the summit, everybody talks about our downtown summit and just our city in general. So I just think it's great what you guys are doing and keep up the good work. Thanks.

[1:30:24] Thank you. Thank you. I'll put them up those. Thanks, Mayor. Just kind of with the party.

[1:30:29] He said, thank you for what you've done.

[1:30:33] I'm so, we're so fortunate

[1:30:39] that the board selected you.

[1:30:42] I know you're all over the place as well.

[1:30:44] And like Councilmember Lovell said,

[1:30:46] I know just a few years ago when this whole idea

[1:30:48] was just a thought for it to come to reality.

[1:30:52] And be where we are today.

[1:30:54] It's just super exciting for our community.

[1:30:56] And the fact that all of our community partners,

[1:30:58] you all are working in tandem,

[1:31:00] especially with the upcoming activities this summer.

[1:31:03] I think both well and just is further proof that there's good things going on with our community partners.

[1:31:10] And you all are very transparent and we're seeing metrics.

[1:31:13] We're seeing every turn on investment, which is critical for us as we make these decisions.

[1:31:17] So thank you all for that.

[1:31:19] Small smiths and smiths and though, people like from Kansas City are they coming in on the rail line?

[1:31:26] The amtrak or do we track any of that?

[1:31:30] We do. I don't have that data for you, but I am more than happy to get that from our friends at Amtrak, but I mean, I certainly can.

[1:31:38] But that Smithson doesn't, obviously, Sidelia sits on the Missouri Ribbon Runner line, and so there's always that possibility that that's also another reason why they're recognizing Lee Summit.

[1:31:47] Someone was telling me that people from Kansas City are coming from downtown Indian Station coming out here for the day.

[1:31:54] I don't know what the hours are for the different trains that come through here, but maybe that's something to capitalize on.

[1:31:59] Absolutely. So thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[1:32:07] Okay, Ms. Quarry Day. A few things.

[1:32:13] We've always talked about up here for years and years. We just, we wanted the DML destination,

[1:32:20] marketing, organization, tourism, whatever convention bureau to tell our story. And so we're super excited.

[1:32:28] it's just been a really fun year in so many ways. And you were thrown right into the fire with

[1:32:35] Green Street and you can blame Mr. Brennan for throwing that all on you and you took on so much

[1:32:43] and then right into the the World Cup and working with community partners and of course

[1:32:52] Main Street, you're working with great, and you guys have a great relationship.

[1:32:57] And then, seeing you on a panel recently with the EDC, I mean, it's exactly what we want from tourism,

[1:33:04] from this community partners bringing everybody together and collaborating.

[1:33:11] And, you know, thank you for being so, you know, so easy to work with on their part

[1:33:19] and putting up with other people and I think I'll echo the expertise that you have, I think that you can, you've really brought up the,

[1:34:06] at least summit, economic,

[1:34:11] what a year of change.

[1:34:12] When did you start Miss Day?

[1:34:17] All right, and when did you start, sir? What's your name?

[1:34:19] April 1st,

[1:34:22] April 1st, so you're really the new guy.

[1:34:25] You're even newer than she is.

[1:34:29] So that's what's going on in the last year, year and a few months.

[1:34:35] Mr. Van Busskirk.

[1:34:37] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:34:39] Mayor Baird and members of the City Council, Mike Van Bussk here, Kirk, here tonight in my role as chair of the LSEEDC.

[1:34:49] It's always great to follow our community partners in the presentation that's going to come after this as well.

[1:34:58] because we are out all doing the same thing when you really get down to it.

[1:35:01] We're all selling lease on it in our own special way.

[1:35:03] So the collaboration that we have is really unbelievable.

[1:35:11] So who we are, the lease on EDC is a not profit public private partnership.

[1:35:19] We foster our mission of sustainable economic growth and prosperity in lease on it.

[1:35:25] Our funding, as you know, comes from the city through our PSA,

[1:35:29] as well as our partnership with at least some of our seven, the Blue Spring School District,

[1:35:33] our other community partners, and our over 75 private investors that we'll touch on later.

[1:35:39] This slide, you've seen this before, when I was in front of you last time,

[1:35:44] but I think this summarizes economic development pretty quickly in one slide.

[1:35:49] And this is literally what we do.

[1:35:51] Attraction of new business, retention and expansion of existing business,

[1:35:54] work force development and then marketing communication that we do in all

[1:35:58] interrelates with the other things that you've heard this evening. Last year we

[1:36:03] celebrated the 40th anniversary of the LSEDC and as you all know we went

[1:36:07] through a full organizational reset that we completed with our community

[1:36:11] partners, some of you on the Dias as well and really it has been a year of

[1:36:17] change. Our organization at the end of the day is focused as what you see on

[1:36:22] this slide.

[1:36:25] I'll touch on briefly, the current officers. One thing I will mention is that,

[1:36:33] you know, this group plus the board that you're going to see in a minute, and I know you

[1:36:36] heard this earlier about the boards, but we have so many great folks in this community

[1:36:40] who volunteer so much at their time to do these things. And I think that's something that

[1:36:44] sometimes gets lost of how many hours are spent doing, participating in these organizations.

[1:36:50] And I've got to say that this group is really stepped up as well.

[1:36:54] You'll notice that one thing is vacant on here by shareperson.

[1:36:57] I'll explain that to you.

[1:36:59] As many of you know, or may know, Bobby Olm Shipman with St. Luke's East was promoted.

[1:37:05] And he's still here in Kansas City, but now he's over the whole St. Luke system.

[1:37:09] So Bobby, because of this additional responsibility, resigned from our board

[1:37:14] at the first of the year, and we've kept that space open.

[1:37:17] John Ellis who's here with us this evening is our secretary and Jackie McCormick in you treasurer.

[1:37:23] We have a standing finance committee for our bylaws that Jackie is treasurer runs council member shields is on that as well as Doug Bates.

[1:37:31] And then this year we started their programs and events committee that John Ellis chairs along with Megan Lickty and Eric Miller with the Ellis R7 Board of Education.

[1:37:44] That's our board as it currently sets.

[1:37:47] What you see on here is a real cross section of governmental representatives, education

[1:37:52] partners, community partners, all of our community groups have leadership, are represented

[1:37:58] on our board as well as our private investors.

[1:38:02] Two other things I'll mention, well, two openings are coming up.

[1:38:06] In addition to Bobby, we have a member of the board who's terming out at the end of our fiscal

[1:38:11] year.

[1:38:12] So, we've actually already started the process of filling those two open seats that will start with our new fiscal year this summer.

[1:38:20] So, the nominated committee has been formed and over the next 60 days will be taken applications from our investors and then the board will select those two members to be introduced at our July annual meeting.

[1:38:35] I've shared this with you before, but last year our board approved our new vision statement

[1:38:39] of core values.

[1:38:40] I'm not going to read them.

[1:38:41] I know you've seen them, but I will say this in addition to that, one of the things that

[1:38:47] we spent a lot of time on over the last year is policies and procedures with an organization

[1:38:52] has been around 40 years.

[1:38:53] There was some policies and procedures, but we're reviewing all of those.

[1:38:57] Part of that was we actually created a code of ethics that we didn't have before and all

[1:39:03] all these policies and procedures, we use these core values as part of our review process.

[1:39:10] Another thing is part of our PSA, one of the deliverables was a new strategic plan.

[1:39:18] And I have to highlight Jackie McCormick in you and Council Member Shields for really

[1:39:23] their leadership and leading that process because they really advanced it, took the ball and

[1:39:29] ran with it, and I really appreciate that.

[1:39:32] So that board, our board approved, actually I should back up, our board shared with you all city staff and city council at the beginning of the year, the draft of the strategic plan, then we informally adopted it as our board and then submitted it as an approved strategic plan, January 31st of this year.

[1:39:50] What you see in front of you, those six goals, they align with the City's Ignite Comprehensive Plan and other policies that we reviewed as part of implementing our plan.

[1:40:04] And similar to some of the other documents I've mentioned already, including the bylaws.

[1:40:08] One of the things that the board has decided is that these aren't static.

[1:40:13] I mean, we review these things on a regular basis.

[1:40:15] And that, of course, incorporates this plan as well.

[1:40:20] So with that, I'm going to introduce Joe Perry, who has been here since April 1st of last year.

[1:40:28] And then I'll be available to answer questions at the end.

[1:40:33] Thank you Mike, delighted to be here again this year.

[1:40:37] When I spoke to you last year, it was about three weeks before I started the position.

[1:40:42] And so it's delightful to be here this many months later.

[1:40:47] The, what we're showing you here is basically a funnel of the projects that have come in the door,

[1:40:55] and the ones we've looked at as a project.

[1:40:59] Almost all of the 30 projects that were presented to the Lee Summit EDC have been in one way or

[1:41:07] another brought to the city staff for acknowledgement or review of those 31 of

[1:41:13] those came from the KC ADC or the Missouri partnership and or the Missouri

[1:41:18] partnership. Nine of those were more organically brought to us by stakeholders in

[1:41:22] the community business owners, real estate brokers and or other stakeholders in

[1:41:29] the community. Of those 30 projects that came here in the last 11 months, we

[1:41:34] We submitted on 18 of those, 12 of those just weren't good fits.

[1:41:40] I would send them to the city staff and saying, I don't think we want this kind of heavy industrial.

[1:41:44] Or, I don't think we want this kind of animal rendering plan in Lee Summit.

[1:41:49] And it was easy to say no to those that just don't fit with the strategic plan for the city.

[1:41:55] Of those 18, they were split.

[1:41:58] Nine, nine, what organically brought through to the community, to the Lee Summit at EC and

[1:42:02] and nine came from our statewide and local partners.

[1:42:07] Of those 18, we're still in the running on 12 of those.

[1:42:10] Six of those, either they said we're not gonna

[1:42:12] move into Kansas City period,

[1:42:15] or we've been eliminated for consideration.

[1:42:18] Of those 12, three of them have already made their way

[1:42:21] to some level of adjudication by application

[1:42:25] or request for some action at the city level.

[1:42:29] A good example of one of those would be

[1:42:31] the mid-states expansion. That's one of those three that's in the process of becoming a real

[1:42:37] project. Those three projects have a net worth of about $125 million. One of the ways I was able

[1:42:46] this 11 months to really hone the messaging and the narratives of how to sell Lee Summit was

[1:42:53] talking about Lee Summit from month one. Here's a list of about 17 or 18 projects about

[1:43:01] About a little more than one and a half per month, we've had the opportunity to go out and talk to regional wide forums of people.

[1:43:11] Some of these are as few as 25 people and one of them that Mayor Baird and I talked to my first month on the job was several hundred people.

[1:43:20] One of the ones in the last fall was about 400 people.

[1:43:23] So we've gotten to hone the message of what the least some advantages are by these opportunities to talk to people that know about real estate that want to invest in either businesses or into vertical development.

[1:43:42] One of the messages that it comes down to, and we talked about it at our last City,

[1:43:50] LSEDC, luncheon, is the word certainty.

[1:43:53] It really often comes down to certainty.

[1:43:55] We often hear with people making big investment that certainty is as important as cost.

[1:44:01] And there is certainty of process.

[1:44:04] That's the city staff.

[1:44:05] They bring certainty to that process.

[1:44:07] They're efficient.

[1:44:08] There's very little friction in the pipe.

[1:44:10] They adjudicate projects according to the good plans and procedures and policies of the city.

[1:44:17] No one does it better in the metro.

[1:44:20] There's certainty of outcome. Really, that's largely you. You're the elected body.

[1:44:25] You're the one who listen to these. You measure them against your stated plans and policies.

[1:44:31] And what's good about Lee Summon, and it's been good for a long time, but I would suggest that it's never been better than right now,

[1:44:38] is that when you get a project that is consistent with your policies and your

[1:44:44] procedures and your incentive policies and all those things that are

[1:44:48] important to a city, you look at those favorably and you give them a fair

[1:44:54] shot. There is certainty of service provision. This is good

[1:45:00] This is delivering on good services and good parks and clean streets and a vibrant downtown and good social services. These are the things that so many places you don't have the certainty that these things are going to be good for you once you've made those investments. The final one that I think maybe is underrated too often is the certainty of the financial stability of the city that you're making the investment in.

[1:45:26] With a Moody's triple A bond rating, there's no higher bond rating.

[1:45:32] You deliver that with excellent reserves that the city has.

[1:45:39] Very few people could give you certainty that you can make it through an economic cycle.

[1:45:46] So these are things that I've been able to hone and I give a lot of credit to city staff.

[1:45:52] when we met for our last presentation,

[1:45:58] Tracy Albers helped me hone in on the words

[1:46:01] to better articulate those last two, by the way.

[1:46:05] So with that, I'm gonna talk about investor engagement

[1:46:11] and really just start with how we engage

[1:46:15] with our investors and stakeholders.

[1:46:16] We have four lunchens a year

[1:46:19] And in our spring quarterly investment meeting, we talked about collaboration.

[1:46:24] We had the Chamber, the Lee Summit EDC, and the downtown Lee Summit Main Street.

[1:46:31] And then we also had Explorer, Lee Summit.

[1:46:38] And the four of us talked about how we could create a better economic development ecosystem

[1:46:45] in Lee Summit.

[1:46:46] And we have worked together in so many ways since then.

[1:46:49] In the fall meeting, we were, that was our annual meeting and we were able to have Missouri

[1:46:54] Department, the Economic Development Director, Michelle Hadaway, VR Speaker, and we had lots

[1:47:01] of our 40 years of Lee Summit EDC board chairs and presidents there, and we also were delighted

[1:47:12] to have Speaker of the House, John Patterson there.

[1:47:15] In our spring quarterly meeting, we were able to have an emphasis on work force.

[1:47:27] And then in our last one, I just mentioned those four points that we really honed in on

[1:47:32] how to talk about the certainty of investing in the least summit.

[1:47:39] With that, I'm going to ask our board secretary to talk about further engagement.

[1:47:44] All right, thank you, Jackie.

[1:47:48] Good evening, Mayor City Council.

[1:47:49] Thank you for having us, Jackie McCormick.

[1:47:51] And you are in the current board treasurer

[1:47:52] of Lisa Meneconoct Development Council.

[1:47:54] And I am here to kind of talk with you,

[1:47:56] not only about the finances,

[1:47:57] but a little bit more about our investor engagement

[1:47:59] to make sure that we're communicating

[1:48:01] about all of the different opportunities that we have

[1:48:03] for our investors within the community.

[1:48:05] As Joe mentioned, we not only have

[1:48:07] all of the quarterly meetings, which include luncheons

[1:48:11] and our annual meeting.

[1:48:12] We also have receptions on the off-months

[1:48:15] that we're not having those quarterly meetings.

[1:48:18] Those have ranged in design from just an informal reception,

[1:48:23] where we're up on the Stanley rooftop,

[1:48:26] socializing and talking with one another

[1:48:27] to a little bit more formal environments,

[1:48:31] kind of like the Evergie seminar

[1:48:33] that we had on January 28th held in downtown Lee Summit.

[1:48:37] It was entitled Powering the Future,

[1:48:39] Evergie's energy demand approach.

[1:48:41] And we had a speaker from Evergie talking about the energy programs that, energy, like electric resiliency seminars that are available.

[1:48:52] And in fact, that seminar is now posted on the YouTube page for the LeSemitic Economic Development Council.

[1:48:59] So if you're interested and you didn't have the opportunity to participate, you can certainly go out and watch that.

[1:49:04] One of the other really great things that they mentioned in the earlier parts of our presentation

[1:49:08] is the new events and programs committee that is chaired by John Ellis, our current secretary,

[1:49:16] and is supported by Eric Miller and Megan Latekki, who are both on our board.

[1:49:21] They are working very hard to plan the remainder of those events for our investor

[1:49:25] receptions this year, and we're really excited about the opportunities for community engagement

[1:49:29] that we're going to participate in.

[1:49:33] We also engaged professional services earlier in 2025

[1:49:38] five for assistance with our website, social media, marketing, all of those opportunities,

[1:49:44] treasure advertising was very helpful with all of those endeavors.

[1:49:48] And our office manager, Ella Phillips, has been taking on the lead role of all of our

[1:49:54] social media since that time.

[1:49:56] She has also worked very hard to get our YouTube channel up and running, make sure that all

[1:50:01] of the communications are getting out to our investors and the community about the opportunities

[1:50:04] that we have.

[1:50:05] So we thank her for all of her hard work on that.

[1:50:09] So now we're going to talk a little bit about finances.

[1:50:13] As you can see, our top line budget for 2025-2026,

[1:50:17] which we are a July 1 fiscal year,

[1:50:19] is right at $555,000.

[1:50:21] We worked very intentionally when we were establishing

[1:50:24] that budget last year to be mindful of our current situation,

[1:50:28] which is one of regrowth, right?

[1:50:30] We're trying to make sure that we are being good stewards

[1:50:32] of all of the funds that we receive, a little bit, right about half of our funds come from

[1:50:37] City of Lee Summit U, City Council and the Lee Summit R7 School District, the remainder

[1:50:42] of our funds are generated from our investors. So we try very hard to make sure that we

[1:50:49] were being responsible with those funds and the expenditures associated therewith.

[1:50:55] But we, in fact, in establishing the budget for the year, set aside almost a third in

[1:51:02] what we would call kind of contingent expenses, where the Finance Committee actually undertakes

[1:51:08] a review of the proposed expense before it is finally approved for expenditure.

[1:51:13] So, it's been working very well and I can tell you that at this point in time, we do expect

[1:51:18] to be well within positive net revenues at the end of our fiscal year this year.

[1:51:23] so we're very proud of that.

[1:51:25] And we recognize that we still have great reserves

[1:51:28] from previous leadership in the Economic Development Council,

[1:51:32] but we want to make sure that that continues.

[1:51:34] So one of the other policies, as Mike was mentioning earlier,

[1:51:38] that we established is a reserve policy to ensure

[1:51:41] that we do have funding to carry on the operations

[1:51:44] of the organization and the event

[1:51:46] that unforeseen circumstances occur.

[1:51:48] So another policy that we established

[1:51:50] is what we call an in-kind policy.

[1:51:52] It allows some of our private investors who may not otherwise have the opportunity to invest

[1:51:57] at a higher level to make in-kind investments in conjunction with their financial investments

[1:52:03] to not only advance the cause of the Leesamadec Economic Development Council but also provide

[1:52:09] resources and opportunities for those investors.

[1:52:11] So examples of that include providing space for our events and receptions, providing catering

[1:52:20] or beverage services, those sorts of things.

[1:52:23] Finally, we also increased our investor levels,

[1:52:26] so the levels at which you could invest in the lease

[1:52:29] on economic development council had not changed

[1:52:31] for quite some time as we all know inflation

[1:52:34] and those things occurred,

[1:52:35] so we made some adjustments to those investor levels

[1:52:38] to better reflect the benefits that are being conveyed

[1:52:42] as a result of that.

[1:52:46] This slide provides you with kind of an overview

[1:52:51] of all of those investors that we were speaking

[1:52:53] of earlier. Mike mentioned that we have both public and private investors. Currently,

[1:52:57] the public partners, as we mentioned, are at the top or grand champions. The city and

[1:53:00] the two school districts do make up about 50% of our funding. The remainder of the funding

[1:53:05] comes through not only financial investments, but also some of those in-kind contributions

[1:53:10] that our pay centers leadership partners, benefactors, and patrons provide.

[1:53:18] So coming back to the strategic plan that we discussed, we do believe that the KPIs and

[1:53:24] And the short mid and long range goals that we established in the strategic plan are of

[1:53:29] the utmost importance.

[1:53:31] And we are working very hard to ensure that we are accountable to those responsibilities

[1:53:35] and that we are delivering on them and to make sure that we are clearly defining what

[1:53:40] those objectives are for all of our investors, including the City of Lee Summit.

[1:53:44] We realize that those are fluid, moving documents, goals, objectives and that we have a lot of work

[1:53:51] to do in continuing to make sure that we are achieving those things, one of those things

[1:53:55] is ensuring that we have adequate staffing and support to make sure that that happens.

[1:54:00] So one of the things that we are working on very diligently is trying to identify opportunities

[1:54:06] for that.

[1:54:07] We are of limited funds, however, we do have a lot of resources within our community.

[1:54:11] We have strategic partners in the education sector.

[1:54:15] We have opportunities with respect to some part-time staff.

[1:54:18] And we are looking at some of those creative opportunities to secure the talent that we need in order to make sure that we're able to deliver all of those promises that we have for you.

[1:54:27] So with that, I believe we are ready to answer any questions that you have.

[1:54:33] Okay. Thank you.

[1:54:37] I'll open up for discussion, Councilmember Hodges.

[1:54:39] Thank you. So I was wondering, so on one of your slides, you said three city submissions on that I was curious you mentioned one was that

[1:54:50] the mid-stage expansion, but what were the other two?

[1:54:53] One of the other two is protected by a non-disclosure agreement, so I wouldn't be able to answer

[1:54:59] on that one.

[1:55:01] And the other one is a project that is also an industrial type expansion.

[1:55:07] Okay.

[1:55:08] And then in regard to, I know your other, what we do page on retention.

[1:55:14] So what can you just kind of explain what that looks like?

[1:55:16] I mean, because I think of mid-sates I'm thinking, my first thought would be, oh, they're just

[1:55:20] It's coming to us because they're already here, so why wouldn't they come and ask to expand?

[1:55:24] So what does that look like from LSEC standpoint?

[1:55:27] It's my favorite part because the job creation is the super majority of job creation or the businesses you already have.

[1:55:35] So keeping them really important, that's the retention part.

[1:55:39] The expansion part is like mid-states, when they come to us before they bring that to the city,

[1:55:45] We can talk to them about what other companies have done to make that happen well, and what the processes are.

[1:55:53] So I immediately will always call the city staff, and the exciting part looking forward on how to do more and better is we're just getting our new contact management software put in place this very month.

[1:56:08] And when we have that, we're going to be able to poll and work with, I believe it's 85% of all the businesses in Lee Summit hold a business license with the city.

[1:56:20] And there are gaps in the data and we believe with working with Mike Weisenborn and others in development services who have control of that data that we can contact all of those using our new systems, fill in some gaps and also identify needs.

[1:56:35] There are state jobs programs.

[1:56:37] There are local other types of programs through the full employment counts on others.

[1:56:42] And that's just in workforce development.

[1:56:44] There's also ways to get people into tax credits at the state.

[1:56:48] And we'll be able to answer or ask questions by using that database and

[1:56:53] bringing that data back in that used to require about 1.5 full time employees at the lease

[1:57:01] some at EDC that we think we can do a lot of that work

[1:57:04] by using tools.

[1:57:06] And that's really, I'm very excited in that.

[1:57:10] I just think that's something that is

[1:57:14] how we use the tools that technology has given us.

[1:57:18] Okay, that's awesome.

[1:57:19] I was gonna ask that how you know who to reach out to

[1:57:22] and making sure that you're staying on top of everybody

[1:57:24] that's here.

[1:57:26] What was my other question?

[1:57:30] So I'm thinking back to previous LSDDC, and I know one of the issues was we've constantly

[1:57:35] asked, what are they bringing?

[1:57:37] What are you, you know, other than this slide show that's, you know, you present to us,

[1:57:41] but is there a way or is it on your website?

[1:57:43] Like, once it's secured and it's through, is that way you can be like, what have they brought

[1:57:47] to us in case, you know, just for updates and there's like a list of like, here's what we brought

[1:57:51] and here's what we're, you know, you can't say necessarily what you're working on, but things

[1:57:55] that have been completed.

[1:57:55] And it just so, it's like, we can be reminded, like, hey, this is actually working.

[1:58:00] Totally agree.

[1:58:01] Yes, exactly, thank you, Council member for bringing that up.

[1:58:05] That was something that was definitely missing in the past.

[1:58:08] And as Joe said, I mean, there's projects that we're working on that we can't disclose.

[1:58:13] City staff knows who they are, Joe knows, I don't know who they are.

[1:58:16] I just know it's a project name, because of the confidential audits agreements.

[1:58:20] But at the appropriate times, yes, we all need to do a greater,

[1:58:25] a better job of really publicizing the winds for sure.

[1:58:30] Okay, thank you so much.

[1:58:31] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:58:32] Thank you.

[1:58:43] Could you all pause the video?

[1:58:46] It's too much for me.

[1:58:47] Sorry.

[1:58:48] It's good.

[1:58:49] It's good.

[1:58:50] I can't focus.

[1:58:52] Yeah.

[1:58:53] I had stopped the one on the right, but the others are.

[1:58:56] Thank you.

[1:58:57] Councilmember Raider.

[1:58:59] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:59:00] So, I just wanted to tell you that one of the favorite things that I have seen come out

[1:59:04] from the EDC is the average.

[1:59:08] I learned a lot from that, and I'm gonna tell you,

[1:59:10] there's a lot of negative stuff going on

[1:59:12] about data centers, and it opened up my perspective,

[1:59:18] my mind as to wait a minute.

[1:59:21] We shouldn't be negative about that.

[1:59:22] We should be exploring if that could work here.

[1:59:26] It sounds like they have done a lot of work around that space

[1:59:29] to try to take that negativity away,

[1:59:33] and then make it work so that people don't feel

[1:59:35] like they're burdened by the electricity in the water, but anyway, I would love more

[1:59:40] of those kind of educational things, Joe and everybody.

[1:59:45] That was really great.

[1:59:46] I mean, it just, again, I think these are things that are important to take to our community

[1:59:50] so that they are aware of the opportunities that could be out there for us.

[1:59:56] Thank you.

[1:59:57] Yeah.

[1:59:58] Thanks, Mayor.

[1:59:59] Thank you.

[2:00:00] Councilmember Shields. Thank you, Mayor. Well, first of all, thank you, especially to the board. It's a it's very much a working volunteer board, and I appreciate the service, especially the folks who've been speaking with us tonight. I know they put a lot of hours behind the scenes. I think Councilmember Hodges brought up some really good points about wanting to know about, especially the successes when when a project comes to fruition. So I do appreciate kind of hearing some of that and seeing the slide about

[2:00:29] kind of the project funnel. I know there's been some discussion about how the EDC may going forward

[2:00:36] kind of endorse specific projects that may come before council. Do you want to talk a little bit

[2:00:41] about that and what you guys are thinking there? Sure, I'll be happy to. And thank you for bringing

[2:00:45] that up, Council Member Shields. Yes, we actually have a draft policy, another policy, by the way,

[2:00:52] that someone behind me helped draft that we are bringing forward for consideration in our next

[2:00:59] board meeting, we introduced the topic at our last board meeting, but amazingly, the

[2:01:03] previous CDC iteration didn't have a policy to this effect.

[2:01:08] So what this will do is lay out when a project comes forward, if the LSEDC board would like

[2:01:14] to support that project and then let you all know that they are in support of that project,

[2:01:20] we'll have a policy how that will be done.

[2:01:22] I will say that does take a lot of communication, and Joe and staff have a great communication

[2:01:27] going on.

[2:01:27] But sometimes, you know, things line up with your meetings that we need to know that there, and there is sometimes, as I said earlier,

[2:01:35] projects that are confidential that we need to make sure that we're all in the same page on that.

[2:01:39] So, yes, we are laying out that policy because I want to make sure that it was very clear when we do come forward and support

[2:01:45] of something that the board has considered it and voted on it to be in support, or not, whatever the case may be.

[2:01:50] So those could be the things that a project that EDC was actually instrumental in bringing if it's something that's been

[2:01:56] Worked on or something that you look at that's coming and you say that that puts him with our strategic plan of these are the kind of businesses that we know

[2:02:02] The EDC wants to promote that the city wants to promote and then kind of to

[2:02:07] Be able to to give us some voice to that. I just think it'd be helpful for us to see

[2:02:11] Especially if it's a project the EDC's been involved in like oh, this this is one that

[2:02:15] That investment that we've made has brought a return on investment to us. I think it's great to see that

[2:02:20] So thank you.

[2:02:21] Thank you.

[2:02:22] All right.

[2:02:23] Thank you.

[2:02:23] Council member level.

[2:02:25] Thank you, Mayor.

[2:02:26] Well, look how far we've come.

[2:02:28] I feel like as I'm coming close to the end of my tenure here that this has been something

[2:02:33] I've been working on for a better part of the four years.

[2:02:38] You know, I think it's a great testament to what can come out of extreme difficulty, right?

[2:02:45] You know, sometimes you gotta tear something down to rebuild it.

[2:02:48] I mean, you know, maybe it wasn't as easy as it could have been, but I know we're in a better place now.

[2:02:57] I really feel like the organization has a chance to really elevate.

[2:03:02] And a couple of things that I heard tonight that I think are important.

[2:03:05] And I know this is something that Mayor and I talked about early on because we're kind of sales, you know, when you mention the CRM, right?

[2:03:13] I mean, just one of the lowest-hanging fruit things that we could have been doing.

[2:03:17] And what that does, and maybe I think you may have undersoldered, so I'm going to oversell it.

[2:03:23] The ability to have in our database all the business owners and the key stakeholders of those business

[2:03:29] and have a constant contact with them is immeasurable.

[2:03:34] You don't have to look, I mean you can go look in the news and see how competitive it is right now to keep businesses.

[2:03:40] And that state line war is going on every day.

[2:03:43] And there are types of businesses that we won't, they don't come here overnight and

[2:03:46] there will be, you know, we've always say class A office, all these things.

[2:03:50] There are so much that goes in to bring these businesses, but I will just say like that step

[2:03:53] right there is critical.

[2:03:55] It also will allow us to create outreach outside of our city.

[2:04:01] And so one of the other things that we always wanted to do, and I think Mr. Perry does a great

[2:04:08] job of this about being out in the city because you are talking to the people that make a lot of

[2:04:14] decisions. And so think of I know sometimes we get hung up on the EDC of like well what did you

[2:04:19] bring us like what wasn't already here and I think that's fair criticism sometimes but understand

[2:04:24] the EDC is a connection to the business world it's connection to developers it's connection to real

[2:04:29] state and business and industry not just in this town but around the country in that that gives us

[2:04:36] That's the ability to have conversations that we may not be able to have otherwise inside the city.

[2:04:41] Through development services or something like that.

[2:04:44] The connections that this group can make with Mr. Butsker, Mr. Perry, and

[2:04:48] other stakeholders, board members around this community and outside of it is immeasurable.

[2:04:53] We've got a rock star team, and we have rock star members.

[2:04:56] The people that are members of the EDC can get, we can get anything done with that group, right?

[2:05:02] And that is what development is all about, is connecting the right people.

[2:05:07] I mean, you've got financing components, you've got developers, you've got users, you've got,

[2:05:11] you know, all these different things. And so I'm just very excited and proud of where we are today

[2:05:17] from where we were, you know, even four years ago. And so that's a testament to, you know, I was,

[2:05:21] you know, I was not, I was maybe not for a lot of the changes, but I just want, I will give props

[2:05:29] still out of my fellow councilmembers here, they're really pushed to see through some

[2:05:33] of these changes and where we are today is really good and so I'm just thankful for the

[2:05:39] direction that we're going and I would just say keep up the good work and and again like I think

[2:05:46] it's important to you know where we can show those wins but like however those deals come in

[2:05:52] like but having that touch point you know is really important and we may not generate it you know

[2:05:58] It's like you didn't we didn't produce it like a salesperson, but it came in and we had the right people there to make the right

[2:06:03] Connections to get the things going in the direction and we haven't had that for a while, right? So we have a center

[2:06:10] Point to go to and know that we've got a group that that can handle it and get it going in the right direction

[2:06:16] So I thank you for the presentation and mr. Bussker just

[2:06:21] What you've given to this organization?

[2:06:23] I mean, seriously, I mean, you deserve a round of applause.

[2:06:26] Like most people would have turned away.

[2:06:28] You're very busy man.

[2:06:29] You've got a lot on your plate.

[2:06:32] You do a lot for this city, not just here with the EDC,

[2:06:35] but all that you do for our development community

[2:06:39] and even more so.

[2:06:41] But I really appreciate you.

[2:06:44] You've done a great service to this city and for the EDC.

[2:06:48] So thank you.

[2:06:48] Thank you, thank you, Mayor.

[2:06:49] here. Thank you. You know, he only got to serve on the EDC board for one year. So we

[2:06:56] got to find a way to keep him involved. That's all I agree. And, you know, I can do it remotely

[2:07:02] from a beach somewhere, be happy. Well, we need, we need this kind of passion and expertise.

[2:07:10] And I love, I love the changes we've made with regard to the board, with regard to, you're

[2:07:15] really super diversified, we've got a pretty big board but he's right, I'll say it a

[2:07:24] different way, he kept saying it measurable with regard to, but I consider your gold

[2:07:29] mine of businesses and people and stakeholders and such. I always call it a good mine because

[2:07:35] you're mining it and you have to constantly take care of it and protect it and so retention

[2:07:40] is really important, I think, a great place to focus and because that's where you're

[2:07:47] going to get your referrals and that's where people are going to tell your stories and

[2:07:50] such and so we are of such a similar mindset when it comes to that but and I love the

[2:07:57] opportunity to recruit businesses to our community and jobs to our community. However, for me, the

[2:08:04] The CDC has always been about, you know, I can live with a lot of things as long as there's a relationship.

[2:08:11] And I've been talking about the, you know, explore LS and the relationship that we have, that they have with everybody.

[2:08:19] And downtown Main Street and the relationship they have with, I mean, they just work so, and then, you know, the EDC is now working collaboratively with all of these organizations and nothing could make me, you know, happier than to see that because I know we're going to be okay.

[2:08:33] And I know that obviously you've already built up some reserves, and I appreciate the dedication and commitment to that.

[2:08:43] The leadership that you have with the board is phenomenal.

[2:08:48] Thank you all, like Michael Van Belskert, yes, we wouldn't be here without you, but you've got some great people that are right beside you helping forge this path.

[2:08:58] So thank you to your to your leadership team and to the board members themselves and

[2:09:04] Yeah, I mean all these kudos and yet I mean my bar is still really going to be high. It's just

[2:09:11] It's who I am and so please continue this path and

[2:09:16] You know keep engaging the council. That's the key is this is a relationship to not just with the other partners

[2:09:22] But with the council talk to us

[2:09:25] Help us, you know, there's going to be a new council

[2:09:31] There's going to be a new council, pretty new council here in 30 days and you got to start

[2:09:36] over.

[2:09:37] You got to build these relationships.

[2:09:38] You got to help them understand what it is you all do because it takes a while to figure

[2:09:44] out what you do, especially if you're not doing it really well, so you're in a much better

[2:09:48] position at this point and I think that I just want to, I don't know, I'm not sure who

[2:09:55] to thank, but with that said, I'm going to just say thanks for the presentation.

[2:09:59] Thank you.

[2:10:00] All right.

[2:10:02] All right.

[2:10:03] Well, we've been forging along.

[2:10:04] Do we need a break?

[2:10:05] Yeah, we need a break.

[2:10:07] So sorry, World Cup.

[2:10:09] We need a break.

[2:10:10] You probably do too, though.

[2:10:12] So you can go out and stretch your legs for a minute, and we'll be back in 15.

[2:10:19] We wondered

[2:10:23] how the city budget works.

[2:10:25] The total 2026 budget is over $380 million,

[2:10:28] which includes funding for daily operations,

[2:10:31] capital improvements, debt service,

[2:10:33] internal service, and enterprise operations.

[2:10:36] For example, the General Fund is the foundation

[2:10:38] for the city's day-to-day services

[2:10:40] and investments like road maintenance, public safety,

[2:10:42] and fire protection.

[2:10:45] The General Fund is supported by property taxes,

[2:10:47] sales taxes generated by local businesses,

[2:10:49] franchise taxes and other sources like licenses permits and fees. For every

[2:10:55] dollar citizens paying property tax the city receives $0.18. This means the city

[2:10:59] receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single-family house. These

[2:11:05] taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure and the best

[2:11:09] services to keep lease them at going and improving. One of the community's top

[2:11:13] priorities is infrastructure investment which is reflected in the capital

[2:11:16] improvement plan. $130 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the

[2:11:21] capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes

[2:11:24] investments like the 2.91 and 50 highway interchange,

[2:11:27] 3rd Street, Water and Purcell's intersection and prior road.

[2:11:31] The budget process includes guidance from the City Council, citizen input,

[2:11:34] and critical success factors from the City's Ignite Strategic Plan.

[2:11:38] To learn more about the city's budget, visit cityofls.net-slash-budget.

[2:11:44] When

[2:11:47] the person called on the phone, she said that there was a dinosaur walking down her

[2:11:51] road.

[2:11:56] Of course, we had to go out and check that out.

[2:12:00] We get out there and it was a big African tortoise, probably 60 pounds, walking down the

[2:12:07] road.

[2:12:08] When they walked, they really stand up tall, so I could see why she thought it was a dinosaur.

[2:12:15] I'm Rodney Wagner.

[2:12:16] I'm the manager of least some animal control.

[2:12:18] As far as you can see, we get all sorts of animals here.

[2:12:20] We got some guinea pigs off to the side.

[2:12:22] All the windows up here are animals that are adoptable right now.

[2:12:26] Everyone of these dogs is ready to go and ready for adoption.

[2:12:34] And the same thing with our cats over here.

[2:12:42] A lot of cool cats in here now.

[2:12:43] So this is our three-acre lot we have out back on.

[2:12:48] This is where we do all the walking of dogs, the exercise.

[2:12:50] We also have a side yard off the side over there so we can let them run loose.

[2:12:54] They can run together and we have what's called playgroups.

[2:12:57] Kind of got a bunch of kids.

[2:13:00] Here's our vet room.

[2:13:02] We have a vet that comes out twice a week.

[2:13:04] This is our Sally Port where we bring the animals into.

[2:13:07] This is one of our animal control trucks.

[2:13:10] And we can hold up to six animals.

[2:13:12] We have a lift on the other side to put big animals in.

[2:13:14] We actually have temperature gauges in here

[2:13:15] and in the truck to tell if I hide this.

[2:13:18] Once it gets to a certain temperature,

[2:13:19] we bring all the animals back immediately.

[2:13:21] This actually has traps in it,

[2:13:22] but we do a lot of wildlife trapping.

[2:13:26] I mean a lot.

[2:13:28] So that's top belly pigs.

[2:13:33] He moves a lot of reptiles.

[2:13:36] We had a system one time the head,

[2:13:39] over 200 reptiles in his basement.

[2:13:43] Cameins and alligators in here that are four or five feet long.

[2:13:46] You can't keep those.

[2:13:47] And people do, and they're surprised when they can't keep them.

[2:13:49] I'm like, really?

[2:13:50] You're surprised you can't have an alligator in your house.

[2:13:58] Our main goal here is public safety

[2:14:01] and also the safety of the animals.

[2:14:03] And we have very dedicated people back there

[2:14:05] and they definitely stay here for the love of the animals,

[2:14:08] which also includes getting them adopted out.

[2:14:11] We'll have about 4,000 impounded animals a year,

[2:14:14] probably about close to 2,000 or dogs and cats.

[2:14:17] The cats and dogs, when they get impounded here,

[2:14:18] they go on a five-day hold,

[2:14:19] and then after the five days, if the owner doesn't show up,

[2:14:22] then we can put them up for adoption.

[2:14:26] Adopt animal here is actually really simple.

[2:14:28] You just come in, look for every animal you're looking for,

[2:14:31] find the right pick.

[2:14:32] You have you go to the adoption room up there

[2:14:34] and see if you get along with them

[2:14:35] as much time as you want to in there.

[2:14:39] From that point on, it's just a matter of making sure

[2:14:41] they're sparing neutered and all their vaccinations

[2:14:43] up the par and they're good to go.

[2:14:46] We have a very high adoption rate because we try

[2:14:49] everything our power to get animals adopted out.

[2:14:52] We have Harvard, America, a humane society

[2:14:54] that we do a lot of adoptions through.

[2:14:56] And then we also have other groups.

[2:14:57] We have some people that literally will just look

[2:14:59] all over the country.

[2:15:00] for somewhere for a dog to go. And we sent dogs up into South Dakota, North Dakota, Washington State. So it's actually, it's a huge United

[2:15:08] effort to get all these animals home.

[2:15:13] And the good thing about the people here is that they get all their friends to get animals too. All of us have

[2:15:23] have probably the limit of all the animals that we can have at home.

[2:15:26] You know, they are huge animal lovers.

[2:15:28] If it was up to the people here, we'd have 15 cats run around in here.

[2:15:37] Did a system one time out there and he was bathing his two,

[2:15:42] nine-foot-long boa constrictors in the front yard.

[2:15:45] Currently, I was at guarding some attention.

[2:15:48] So we went out there and had to talk to him about that.

[2:15:53] Well, I do this job.

[2:15:54] Dude, I love this job.

[2:15:56] I grew up on a farm and taken care of that many animals.

[2:15:59] animals. You can't help but like animals. This is just like fancy farm it. You know you're

[2:16:04] just bringing animals in there taking care of them and and find them homes and uh yeah absolutely

[2:16:09] animal lover.

[2:16:27] This is the best place to work. I love working here. I feel very blessed. I love it here.

[2:16:34] I look forward to coming to work every day being a part of this team. Like a family away from home.

[2:16:38] Where everyone feels like everybody knows their name. A city that supports you. We see that with our

[2:16:45] benefits. A pension, vacation days, jobs security. Being able to be heard, we feel valued, we feel

[2:16:52] respected. At least some it is a very progressive city. It's growing, it's thriving. We have this drive

[2:16:57] towards not just doing a job, but doing it with a spirit of excellence. I had the opportunity to

[2:17:02] continue to grow regardless of 30 plus years doing this kind of work. It's more than just a

[2:17:07] dollars and cents. We're here really to give back. Providing a service to better a community.

[2:17:12] to go out and serve people to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

[2:17:17] If I would have known what I know now, years ago, I would have been here much sooner.

[2:17:30] Traditionally, we think as police officers, those responding to law enforcement needs within the community.

[2:17:35] But honestly, we are there to serve our citizens and our citizens do go into crisis.

[2:17:40] They do have mental health crises and we're being called with those scenes on a regular basis.

[2:17:44] In order to help serve those citizens better, we did initiate the Christ's intervention team program.

[2:17:49] These are officers that are especially trained to de-escalate crisis situations.

[2:17:54] Recently, we brought co-responders under the scene, licensed, qualified mental health professionals,

[2:17:58] housed within our police department, and they respond with those officers directly to those

[2:18:03] scenes where crisis is occurring so they can interact with that citizen and get them the help they

[2:18:07] need right there on that scene. The co-responders are either a bachelor or a master level in a behavioral

[2:18:14] for a health-related field.

[2:18:15] They wear plain clothes.

[2:18:16] They don't carry weapons or anything like that.

[2:18:19] I have a police radio that I listen to all day.

[2:18:22] I listen for, you know, those key words.

[2:18:24] Mental health, behavioral health, crisis.

[2:18:26] There's a lot of officers that just call for me.

[2:18:28] I have my own radio number.

[2:18:29] I also have the ability to self-dispatch to them

[2:18:32] and say, $9.82, they're fraught.

[2:18:34] There's a route, $9.14, $4.13.

[2:18:40] So typically, I arrive after they've made it safe.

[2:18:42] I'll make contact and get kind of the rundown.

[2:18:44] and then I just kind of jump right in.

[2:18:47] My kid, you know, my name's Allison.

[2:18:48] I'm a mental health professional

[2:18:49] and here to help you.

[2:18:51] I'm not here to take you to jail or rest you.

[2:18:54] Sometimes all a person needs is a voice.

[2:18:57] Someone neutral, someone outside that, you know, can listen.

[2:19:01] I do a lot of safety planning,

[2:19:02] including family, their support network, who's close to you?

[2:19:06] If they're home alone, who can come over

[2:19:09] and hang out with you today?

[2:19:10] Can we lock away your sharps?

[2:19:12] Can we put up your meds?

[2:19:13] do you need meds?

[2:19:14] Can we get you over to the urgent care

[2:19:16] to get you assessed for your medications?

[2:19:19] Some of them also are like,

[2:19:20] oh, I'm so glad you came.

[2:19:21] This may mean feel so much better.

[2:19:23] Our main goal as a co-responders is

[2:19:25] to one, get people connected to the services that they need,

[2:19:28] and also divert from emergency rooms and jails.

[2:19:32] And they almost get a different view

[2:19:33] of the police responding.

[2:19:34] That lets me know you care and the officers care.

[2:19:38] You have a police at my out there?

[2:19:40] My husband had.

[2:19:41] In 2020, we had 722 mental health related calls for service.

[2:19:45] 2022 by that time, 1,479.

[2:19:48] These mental health related calls for service

[2:19:50] are increasing.

[2:19:51] How responding to that is increasing

[2:19:52] the number of Christ's intervention team

[2:19:54] officers we have available, as well as the number

[2:19:57] of co-responders we have available to respond on these calls.

[2:20:00] So what I think is important for the community

[2:20:01] to know about the co-responder program

[2:20:03] is that we're here.

[2:20:05] We exist.

[2:20:06] All you have to do when you call 911 is ask for us,

[2:20:09] You know, they had one of co-responder to respond to this crisis and we'll go.

[2:20:16] I was really struggling about eight years ago.

[2:20:18] My personal journey with mental health and I met some amazing social workers and amazing

[2:20:23] programs that have helped me get to where I am today.

[2:20:26] I really couldn't see myself doing anything else.

[2:20:29] We want to help and that's stuff what we love to do.

[2:20:32] So at a client, we got a cautious and suicidal ideations and she really felt that she had

[2:20:36] nobody.

[2:20:37] And you know, I'm getting to know her story and getting to know who comes around and sees you.

[2:20:42] Well, then we found a support person and they responded immediately.

[2:20:47] And we made a plan.

[2:20:48] I called back and checked on her in an hour and then I checked on her on two hours.

[2:20:51] We were able to get her into the additional services to where she talks to someone every week or more.

[2:20:57] I just took a person that really just thought they had nobody and nobody would show up for them and show them you do.

[2:21:02] and you'll be amazed who is in your corner

[2:21:05] if you just simply say I need a little help.

[2:21:07] You

[2:23:57] can make the difference in somebody's life.

[2:24:00] If you're trying to get in the fire and eat in that service,

[2:24:02] Lisa is probably the top name.

[2:24:04] On the daily basis, we are tasked with an incredible task.

[2:24:08] So we try to keep it a relaxed environment.

[2:24:10] As a new person, you are constantly on edge learning.

[2:24:13] Morning willow typical, coming in, getting a report

[2:24:16] from the ship that's going off, get our truck checks done.

[2:24:19] Our citizens trust us and believe in us by providing them

[2:24:22] menus like our gear, our stations. They build it to accommodate it into a

[2:24:28] call, but also having a home state of the art way to present individual

[2:24:31] bond grounds and downtime areas. Back by send dinners together, cook together, get to

[2:24:36] know one another, train together, like a brother knows a brother and a sister knows

[2:24:40] a brother. Banner back and forth. When the tones go off, they go to work.

[2:24:48] We're here

[2:24:49] for 48 hours, so it can happen at any time.

[2:24:54] You can be in the gym, you can be in the middle of night,

[2:24:58] you can be cooking,

[2:25:02] stop what you're doing and listen.

[2:25:09] We are in the station, people will stop what they're doing

[2:25:11] and listen, find out which station it is,

[2:25:13] what is the nature of the call, what app are we going?

[2:25:16] It's in my district.

[2:25:16] It's in the highway.

[2:25:17] We're going to see some of the expectations of the lives involved,

[2:25:24] that adrenaline dumps, pants on, coats on,

[2:25:27] getting in the truck for mentally focused year two and we

[2:25:33] have a game plan that

[2:25:35] happens in the truck. The officer can give directions. The dispatcher will

[2:25:39] update you. The officer will listen to driverless. We can get all the same pay

[2:25:41] they will get to the call. We can go to work.

[2:25:46] So many degrees of severity, structure

[2:25:48] fire, swift water rescue, R-A-X-N-T, technical rescue,

[2:25:53] tachmetic teams. The equipment the fire department offers us is op-notch.

[2:26:01] From

[2:26:01] yard stuff, rate trucks, tablets, Lucas device, battery power pot, the right tools, the right

[2:26:06] training. The learning does not stop an academy. Building blocks continue call after call.

[2:26:13] Opportunity usually broke. Sardar was a firefighter paramedic move to the rank of engineer paramedic,

[2:26:18] most recently at the qualification of acting captain. Fire fighter, engineer, recently promoted

[2:26:23] to captain. I'm headed to paramedic since I've been here.

[2:26:29] I'll be honest, it's scary sometimes.

[2:26:31] You're the one back there that person is having a bad day and that count on you.

[2:26:36] We practice these scenarios over and over it so when someone has an emergency, we can

[2:26:41] channel those energies and minimize any more injury.

[2:26:45] And then when it's over, we'll say, hey, how did we do how is everyone doing?

[2:26:50] And we'll have frank conversations back at the station.

[2:26:57] The station assignment for us is a 48 on 96 off.

[2:27:00] The 40s off is probably one of the greatest things ever.

[2:27:04] Help us improve our sleep patterns, wellness, mental health.

[2:27:08] You use you many, many options.

[2:27:10] I have a small little 15 acres that we like to hobby farm,

[2:27:14] backpacking in the spring and in the fall.

[2:27:16] Mountain biking, when the weather's good.

[2:27:18] I have a 21 month old at home, so I feel like I get to work full-time job

[2:27:23] and then on the four days off, be a stay-at-home mom as well.

[2:27:29] I spend a little more time with my kids, travel around the world.

[2:27:32] I was able to take my oldest daughter in a trip of a lifetime. We went to Europe for 22 days.

[2:27:38] I got hired to help others. Helping others also helped me see my children grow, see my family

[2:27:45] grow, see my career grow, and me grow as a person. People that are in the industry know the name of

[2:27:52] Lisa McFarber.

[2:27:55] Every fire academy knows it, every other fire department knows it.

[2:27:59] If you're looking for a job in the fire service,

[2:28:03] at least some of it's a place to be.

[2:28:07] That's who you want to be, somebody who can make

[2:28:09] positive change in all the human beings' lives.

[2:28:34] Welcome to the least summit sign department,

[2:28:37] where you're going to walk you through our process

[2:28:39] from start to finish. We make signs as needed here.

[2:28:42] It's not like we just go out into the field

[2:28:44] and place the speed limit sign here, no parking here.

[2:28:48] Our traffic engineers, they go through

[2:28:49] and they'll do field studies. Let's send us down an engineering work order for us to go out,

[2:28:54] place new signs, or remove signs as needed. Coming from the material, our blanks come in and they're

[2:29:01] just aluminum blanks. We can put our white, our red, our, you know, our fluorescent yellow green,

[2:29:07] whatever. And basically what it looks like is just that there. Throw it up into the roller.

[2:29:20] And once we got it covered, take it to our work table here and then we'll cut the corners,

[2:29:26] First cut all the access off where it's lined up right.

[2:29:30] As far as the plotter and the software that we use, there's a straight name sign there

[2:29:33] and he's going to go ahead and print that out on the plotter so you can see the plotter

[2:29:37] and how it operates and runs.

[2:29:38] There's standards for the height even just on letters on the sign block.

[2:29:43] Basically what we have on the computer there is it's pretty much set up to those and it goes

[2:29:48] through, it's got a very small but sharp needle that goes through and cuts everything out,

[2:29:54] Letter by letter. Once that's done cutting our next stage

[2:30:00] We would be bringing it over here, currently picking out the sign letters right now. We call it weeding or picking or however we want to call it. Next, putting it on the transfer tape.

[2:30:17] Then after it's taped, we bring it over to the roller. That's where we apply it to the actual sign blank and we'll roll it through one time just to get the air bubbles out.

[2:30:38] I'm going to bring this meeting back to order, please.

[2:30:42] And we have made it all the way to agenda item

[2:30:46] 5B, which is the presentation for L.S. Goal 26, an updated funding request.

[2:30:54] Oh, I see a miss down the lake is going to start us off.

[2:30:58] Good evening, Mayor and Council, down the lake, Assistant City Manager.

[2:31:02] I'm here to introduce the board members, couple board members for L.S. Goal 26.

[2:31:06] It will speak to you about an updated funding request.

[2:31:09] If you recall, we were here back in January and presented a presentation at that point

[2:31:15] in time we heard your feedback coming back with a little more refinement on the budget for

[2:31:21] LSGL 26 and a couple things I want to note. One, I would say that at that time in January we were

[2:31:29] very unaware of where the licensor for showing games was going to be. We were taking estimates based

[2:31:37] off of a club, World Cup, licensing fees and kind of the things that we were hearing in the community

[2:31:44] about licensing fees. And then absolutely the very next day after our presentation we found out

[2:31:49] that the floor dropped out on the cost of license fees to show games publicly for the soccer event.

[2:31:57] And so that really significantly caused or was actually very, we went from about $25,000 per showing

[2:32:06] to $1,000 for the entire time frame. And so that is a huge drop in what we estimated that we thought

[2:32:14] this event would cost, but as I said, I'm here to introduce the group, LSGOL 26.

[2:32:20] As you can see, many of the people that presented from our partners with the EDC and at least

[2:32:28] some at downtown Lee Summit Main Street and Tourism are part of the board or represented on

[2:32:34] the board of directors as well as over 100 plus volunteers that have come together wanting

[2:32:40] to promote our community and provide a safe venue for showing games and giving visitors

[2:32:49] the opportunity to experience a little bit of Americana and what Lisa-Mont has to offer.

[2:32:55] So with that further ado, I will introduce Laura Maxwell and John Ellis, who will continue

[2:32:59] with the presentation.

[2:33:03] Thank you.

[2:33:03] All

[2:33:07] right.

[2:33:08] Thank you, Donna.

[2:33:08] Thank you, Councilor Mayor, for letting us be here tonight.

[2:33:11] We're super excited to be back.

[2:33:12] And as Donnie shared the number a while ago that we are, as of today, 100 days out from the actual start of World Cup competition,

[2:33:23] we looked up just a moment ago and thought she might be entertained to know that our first World Cup community meeting was 475 days ago.

[2:33:34] So it seems like we've been on this journey for quite some time, and we had the opportunity

[2:33:40] to share with you a conceptual framework in January.

[2:33:43] You asked for some more specificity, so we're here tonight to share some of that.

[2:33:48] As Donna said, many of the community partners that have already either spoken tonight or

[2:33:54] been referenced tonight have played a significant role in bringing this all to fruition.

[2:33:58] And so what you see before you right now are five logos that are thematic elements for each of the five football Fridays that we're hosting in June and July.

[2:34:13] John and I are going to toggle back and forth just speaking a little bit about each of those very quickly.

[2:34:19] So, our first celebration is Champions of the Heartland, and our intention is to celebrate

[2:34:25] not just soccer, but all of the sporting teams that we have in our city and the metropolitan

[2:34:33] area, and we'll encourage things like wearing your favorite jersey that night, and just kind

[2:34:39] of celebrate some traditional American tailgate food and beverages.

[2:34:45] We've shared previously that we want all of our activities to be kid and family friendly.

[2:34:51] So you look at the team and the ideas that they have here.

[2:34:56] We're considering yard games and the pop-up soccer, maybe the inflatable soccer balls,

[2:35:02] where you roll around and it's quite entertaining to watch those take place.

[2:35:08] adult activities, maybe a Tedlaso look-alike, we do have the benefit of having Jason

[2:35:15] Sedacus' high school teacher living right here in Lee Summit and so if we

[2:35:20] wanted to do some Tedlaso trivia, we've got some conversations started with him

[2:35:24] and then our band, each week will be the Crossroads sound, they were with us for

[2:35:29] Draw Day and they have committed to providing us with different styles of

[2:35:34] music each week. So this would be your kind of traditional tailgate party music. And then our decor and

[2:35:41] theme, we would be able to capitalize on all of the local and regional mascots and photo ops and

[2:35:48] things like that.

[2:35:51] Thank you. I'm going to just feature a little bit on the next event which is

[2:35:56] boots on the pitch. And I'm going to start out just with the food and beverage budget item where you

[2:36:01] see a zero, you might be wondering why that is. And that's because we're bringing in people partners

[2:36:05] that will actually supply all of that.

[2:36:08] And like we said before, our goal is to really break even

[2:36:12] on this whole thing and make it to where it's an event

[2:36:15] that we're showing off downtown, especially Green Street Marketplace

[2:36:19] and show all the different things that can be done down there.

[2:36:23] So again, more of a Western theme here on that.

[2:36:26] I will point out with the kids' activities that the acts

[2:36:28] throwing, the acts are not real, they're Velcro.

[2:36:31] So as a safety precaution with it, if you didn't get

[2:36:34] It's a chance to see those at draw day, it was a big hit, and that was also a sponsored

[2:36:40] activity from Parks and Rec, so that was a wonderful thing that they were able to do.

[2:36:44] Other inflatables and things like that, again, more of a Western theme that we'll be doing.

[2:36:50] Line dancing lessons, we fully expect all of you to be at participants in that, and I

[2:36:55] think just having it to where it's a good fun activity for everyone.

[2:36:59] The beauty of having crossroads sound with this, I have them as a consistent partner is going to be.

[2:37:06] They've been involved, Jenny's been on the planning committee.

[2:37:10] She's actually heading up the entertainment committee now and is going to be able to really kind of take it wherever we need it.

[2:37:17] And so we felt like we could be moving around on different bands and

[2:37:22] entertainment people, but we thought it was better to have something that was consistent that could really kind of change with it.

[2:37:28] and they have a lot of different flexibility with that too.

[2:37:31] And then finally, just more of the theme with the decor and all that.

[2:37:36] Being able to have a budget for some of those things to give to the committee to work on is going to be a key with us.

[2:37:43] And you can see a theme of us basically having a $10,000 budget every week.

[2:37:49] So similarly, the budget for the following week is just like the prior and those to come.

[2:37:56] We do look forward to finding additional ways to partner with our organizations like

[2:38:02] Downtown Main Street and the fourth Fridays and so you see the theme of goals, galleries

[2:38:07] and great vibes and the food and beverage will have a little bit of a different flavor

[2:38:13] there doing some fun things with different cultural food types, charcuterie, crepes and so

[2:38:18] on and so forth.

[2:38:19] We look forward to also partnering with organizations like LS Creates and the History Museum

[2:38:26] them to be able to bring in some live art and just really kind of capitalize on the creativity

[2:38:32] that our community likes to showcase and then the Crossroads sound again with their more

[2:38:39] mellow music and our art theme that will be fully developed by that group's organizing

[2:38:47] team.

[2:38:50] Thank you.

[2:38:51] And then obviously it's a big deal this year with 4th of July and we know that there are

[2:38:56] a lot of other activities going on there too but we plan on really participating with that

[2:39:00] of being an all-american celebration as well really kind of taking everything with it from the yard

[2:39:06] games all the way through the red, white, and blue and possibly classic car show. We know that

[2:39:13] But the legacy blast is the day before I believe on the second and we know that there's

[2:39:21] a lot of speculation on great things going on just with the 250th anniversary with it.

[2:39:28] And then last but certainly not least is that Friday, July 10 event kicking it on Route

[2:39:34] 66 and we know that there's a special anniversary there, all kinds of anniversaries this year

[2:39:41] and so being able to capitalize on some of the other events and activities that are happening

[2:39:48] in the community and really trying to engage our partners with doing some fun throwback

[2:39:54] type things, bouncy ball races, maybe a box car race, and just for the record all of these

[2:40:02] ideas that you've seen for each week have been cultivated and pitched to us in the last month

[2:40:10] since we last met with U.S. for that specificity.

[2:40:13] So we brought back with some detail what we're hoping

[2:40:17] to execute each week.

[2:40:20] And so that's one other thing that I did want to say.

[2:40:24] Cory mentioned the rat cards that you each have.

[2:40:27] We were able to share these with about 140 individuals

[2:40:31] who came to Lee Summit, to Green Street,

[2:40:35] at a Casey 2026 meeting just a few days after we last met with you.

[2:40:42] So we're super excited to be able to offer these events for our community members but

[2:40:49] also to really show off our community to some of those regional partners and

[2:40:54] folks even from Smithton that would like to come and join us for these events.

[2:41:00] Thank you so really the total event budget that we're asking for on this to apply towards the five different football Fridays as a rental of $50,000.

[2:41:12] We do have other funds from our first events from sponsorships that we've got that's to help them bring a cushion.

[2:41:18] We do have requests in for a few private partners as well.

[2:41:21] One thing about the private partners is they have to be approved by FIFA and they can't conflict with anyone else.

[2:41:28] So we're hopeful that those are going to come in.

[2:41:31] The big deal with this is that this really solidifies us to the point where we know we can facilitate all of these events with the funding that you would approve.

[2:41:41] And we're very thankful that I did see that you had the ordinance on right after this to for consideration.

[2:41:48] So I think we'd like to go ahead and answer any questions that you've got at this point in time.

[2:41:54] All right, thank you.

[2:41:57] I can't remember how it is.

[2:41:58] Thank you.

[2:41:59] So thank you for this presentation because I know when you came last time I was a little

[2:42:04] skeptical like do we want to spend money on this but having brought back more details

[2:42:08] and just a vision that you guys have has really helped.

[2:42:11] So thank you for doing that and just kind of spelling things out for us because it helped

[2:42:15] me see like man that would be neat to have that man there's so many things for kids.

[2:42:17] It's just very interactive.

[2:42:20] So thank you for presenting that and putting a lot of thought into it.

[2:42:24] I just had a comment about that, so thank you, thank you guys.

[2:42:27] Thank you.

[2:42:28] Kasper and Shields.

[2:42:29] Thank you, Mayor.

[2:42:31] Well, first of all, I appreciate this presentation as well.

[2:42:34] I think this is going to be a really fun series of events.

[2:42:36] A really great way to showcase Green Street, as well as promoting visitors to Lee Summit.

[2:42:41] So I think especially with that space being so new,

[2:42:45] it's really important that we program it fully and show what it's capable of.

[2:42:48] So I think this is going to be a really great partnership.

[2:42:52] I did have a couple of questions, so for the $50,000 potential budget, would that be reimbursables for specific expenses?

[2:43:02] So if your decor comes in lower, then we only reimburse up to the amount that's required, and then would that also be offset by any sponsorships, how's that?

[2:43:10] Yeah, I think we can definitely work on that, well, obviously this is all kind of a guide of where we think we're going to end up on the expenses.

[2:43:17] This is if we come in lower our needs may be much lower and we probably need to talk

[2:43:23] about how to handle that if there's anything left over that we don't use with that.

[2:43:30] I think we've been really efficient.

[2:43:33] I know on the first event that we ended up doing, we had raised over $10,000 I think for

[2:43:39] that and I believe we ended up around $6,500 or something like that.

[2:43:43] I guess in the ordinance language, it says an amount not to exceed $50,000, as opposed to just $50,000.

[2:43:49] So I wasn't really sure, just the mechanics of that.

[2:43:51] I guess the sort of I was curious about.

[2:43:52] I don't know if that's a staff question or.

[2:43:54] So thank you for the question.

[2:43:56] Just in looking through what has been drafted and as the exhibit with the public service agreement,

[2:44:02] there's a provision saying at the conclusion of these activities that there'll be an after-action report

[2:44:07] report and that any funds remaining would be, is there another PSA, because the one that

[2:44:16] was attached to our packet I think has the old $100,000 ask for the licensing fees,

[2:44:20] but I didn't see one that was covered those two things.

[2:44:23] So one that in the PSA it does say that any funds, the expense will be, sorry, the PSA does

[2:44:30] have a Schrivener's error because we pulled it forward, but before it's executed it will

[2:44:33] be reflective of what's in the ordinance, which is not to exceed the 50,000, but what

[2:44:38] it does say is that in any funds that are remaining from the budget would transfer

[2:44:45] to the visitors bureau. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And then, I guess for me, the $50,000

[2:44:54] budget is reasonable, especially if any excess is going to go to the visitors bureau. I sort

[2:44:59] of a soon this would.

[2:45:00] And come out of the business and industry fund it, to me, it makes sense to come out of that fund balance and that those funds are intended for tourism anyway. So. Yeah, yes, that is where we are looking for those funds to come from. Okay, you know, I look at this and I think that's pretty close to what we spent on legacy blast every year. Don't we spend about $50,000 on legacy blast there? They're about. That's what we've been budgeting, but recognizing this is a 250th that's something that we're considering. Okay. But I guess 50,000 as I think about whether it's

[2:45:29] a reasonable expense, I think about where we're willing to spend that much on community

[2:45:35] events to promote our community and serve our residents, and to me this feels similar

[2:45:39] to that, that hopefully will also promote tourism and do lots of great things, but it seems

[2:45:45] like a reasonable amount to spend to celebrate this amazing event, and then hopefully have

[2:45:50] some really great added on benefits of promoting regional visitors and that kind of thing.

[2:45:54] I know we've talked about how we're trying to position ourselves in the Metro is to be the family-friendly destination for people who don't want to drive into FanFest that this is a great place to come if they're coming from Pleasant Hill or Smithin or wherever we're never going to drop that, but that will be like a, I think this really fits that vision of being the family-friendly alternative to trying to go into the more large-scale events in Kansas City.

[2:46:24] Yeah, and we were also trying to figure out ways to, you know, for people to take a break from all of that fan fest and, you know, the hysteria from downtown and, and all of those things and have a place that can, they can bring their kids enjoy the day or evening and then also, you know, wanting to make sure that we're allowing our residents to have that experience as well if they don't want to travel into fan fest or whatever, but they can still feel that excitement about the events.

[2:46:50] Okay. Well, I appreciate that appreciate the presentation and I'd be happy to support

[2:46:57] this and then hopefully once you have kind of a guaranteed budget you can really start

[2:47:00] to drill down on exactly what all those entertainment. I was I was at the brainstorming session

[2:47:05] there were a ton of great ideas and I think once once those groups know how much budget they

[2:47:10] have to work with they can really figure out how much of that they can implement so yeah thank

[2:47:14] you.

[2:47:15] All right. Thank you. Councilmember Funk. Thank you, Mayor. All this echo, what everybody has said, bringing this back and then the detailed presentation, I would be in support of this, and I would also be in support of maybe coming up with some sort of food wager with the city manager.

[2:47:33] If we could convince councilmember level to grow his mustache back and be a part of the lookalike contest.

[2:47:45] Thank you mayor.

[2:47:48] Thank you.

[2:47:49] Thank you.

[2:47:51] I don't know how I can top that.

[2:47:54] Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[2:47:56] I know you put so much time, effort, energy, you all in the whole committee.

[2:48:01] I was early on and I left you guys hanging.

[2:48:04] I had a little preoccupied with other stuff.

[2:48:05] But, you know, everything that was presented today before you all came up and did your second presentation just not fits in very well.

[2:48:16] You know, all the collaboration, we've used that word, I've heard that word like maybe ten times tonight, the all the community partners.

[2:48:24] When I look outside and I have a confession, Mr. Dunning, last week I came in early and was trying to find the light switch and I opened all the blinds.

[2:48:33] And so it's hard not to look outside and look at the neon lights and the signage, but when I look back at when the committee and everyone that was involved in the marketplace, all the surets that were put together, that's exactly what we were looking at, looking for, and this is a perfect opportunity for us as a community to showcase what in a lot of promotional areas or retail centers, that's an anchor.

[2:49:00] It's like a major anchor tenant for the city that will bring people from all over hopefully all of our residents

[2:49:06] But people from all over and come and spend time in our downtown

[2:49:10] That's what it was all about and that's what this is all about. So thank you guys for your efforts

[2:49:16] Definitely, I'd be in support of this. So thank you

[2:49:19] Thank you

[2:49:21] Consumable level

[2:49:23] Did I miss?

[2:49:25] Did we not have to do that licensing thing anymore? What's the deal with that the TV?

[2:49:29] So if we thought it was going to be like $50,000 plus potentially, but it came in at $1,000.

[2:49:35] Okay, great.

[2:49:36] And the reason for that is Fox and

[2:49:38] Telemundo are doing a good thing in today's world.

[2:49:43] You don't hear a lot about positivity, but

[2:49:45] they're taking instead of charging extra 10 amounts,

[2:49:49] they're charging organizations like ours, just $1,000 to show them all.

[2:49:53] And then they're taking all those funds raised and

[2:49:55] distributing it to the boys and girls clubs of America, which is pretty cool.

[2:49:59] Oh, wow, that's great.

[2:50:03] And then I would like to announce that I'm leaving the summit and moving to Smithton

[2:50:07] and we'll be running for mayor in 2027.

[2:50:11] Nice.

[2:50:14] All right.

[2:50:17] Thank you.

[2:50:21] It does have my curiosity up now.

[2:50:24] We're all going to go in there.

[2:50:26] Yeah.

[2:50:27] All right.

[2:50:28] Councilmember Raider.

[2:50:31] Thanks, Mayor.

[2:50:32] I just want to tell you guys, great job.

[2:50:33] and give you a thumbs up. Go. That's it. Thanks.

[2:50:37] All right. Thank you. The events look very fun. I mean,

[2:50:42] I can't wait. I'll be right over there hanging out with you.

[2:50:49] Yard games. I mean, come on.

[2:50:51] That's what that was built for. So it's going to be so fun.

[2:50:55] Nine dancing is for Hillary. Not me.

[2:50:59] Councilmember Fire. Thank you. I actually just thought of something because

[2:51:03] Because somebody asked me just a few days ago, do you guys, and I think you've discussed this before,

[2:51:08] do you have a place where people in the least amount can sign up to volunteer?

[2:51:12] Yeah, yeah.

[2:51:13] Actually, if you go on the website right now, I got to give that committee a lot of accolades

[2:51:20] because they did a great job on getting everything pretty much organized around there.

[2:51:27] So you can go on, you can register.

[2:51:28] Sure, yeah, there's a QR code on there that tends to rate to it.

[2:51:32] And then there's a lot of the information that's on there.

[2:51:35] Not only talks about this, but it has links over to even explore the summit and all the other attractions that are in the area.

[2:51:43] Perfect, is there a link from the city's website to this website?

[2:51:49] I don't think there's a current link right now, but given that we're entering into a PSA,

[2:51:54] similar to our other community partners we can absolutely make that connection.

[2:51:58] Okay, good.

[2:52:00] Thank you.

[2:52:01] All right.

[2:52:01] Thank you.

[2:52:03] You know, being out, you know, around the Metro and stuff, I always hear really nice compliments

[2:52:08] about how other communities sometimes want to be likely summit and here's another example

[2:52:15] you guys have really role modeled how to do this, everybody's talking about how well you've

[2:52:19] done this.

[2:52:20] So thank you all.

[2:52:21] All right.

[2:52:22] Okay, we will go ahead and read their ordinance and discuss it and vote on it.

[2:52:29] Thank you.

[2:52:32] This would be Council Member Funk.

[2:52:35] I'd ask you to read bill number 26-035.

[2:52:39] Thank you, Mayor.

[2:52:41] I advance the second reading bill number 26-035 in ordinance approving a public service agreement

[2:52:47] between the City of Lee Summit and LS Goal 26 Inc for the services to be provided to the

[2:52:53] The city in the mouth not to exceed $50,000.

[2:52:58] Thank you.

[2:52:58] We have a motion to move to second reading bill number 26-035 by Council Member Funk.

[2:53:03] Seconded by Council Member Shields.

[2:53:05] Discussion?

[2:53:09] Seeing none, please cast your vote.

[2:53:14] Although it's raining, please record the vote.

[2:53:17] And it passes unanimously.

[2:53:19] So thank you all very much.

[2:53:21] We'll read the second time next week and look forward to the World Cup.

[2:53:32] We're on presentation still, we're on 5C, which is a City of Lee Summit 2025 crime data trends, Chief Travis Forbes is here.

[2:53:44] Hey, sir.

[2:53:44] Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council members.

[2:53:47] This started with a conversation I had a couple of few weeks ago with Mr. Dunning about we got our final crime statistics for the year 2025.

[2:54:02] And I'm losing part of my audience, unfortunately.

[2:54:05] This is a good news, folks, but it was a rather startling to see a significant drop in our crime statistics.

[2:54:14] So I was pretty happy to see that.

[2:54:17] We normally don't present crime statistics every year, but Mr. Dunning thought it's nice to share some good news every once in a while.

[2:54:24] So that is the reason why I'm here.

[2:54:26] And there's, I tell people all the time that there's lots of reasons for crime fluctuations.

[2:54:34] So it's not the police department spiking the ball and saying, look what we did.

[2:54:38] It's much more complicated than that for why crime rises and falls.

[2:54:44] I do believe we play a role and I do.

[2:54:47] I'm super proud of the women and men who work for the at least on the police department who contribute to keeping this community safe, but I also realize there's lots of factors.

[2:54:55] that go into it. So I'll just show some of what occurred over this last year. This was put

[2:55:02] together by my crime analysis team. They do a great job, but they focus quite a bit on what we do

[2:55:12] in the police department and how we try to address crime. We're really focused on using criminal

[2:55:19] intelligence information to drive what we do. We're big on evidence-based practices and using what

[2:55:24] works and really crime analysis has become the engine for our police department and in the future

[2:55:32] it's going to be even bigger engine because we're going to use the real-time crime center that we

[2:55:38] hope to open this summer once we move our dispatch resources to the new joint operation center

[2:55:46] to really increase that to a greater degree. But we use the information that we gain from analysis to

[2:55:53] to target enforcement to certain areas where we notice crime trends occurring,

[2:55:58] working with community members and our partners.

[2:56:02] And we really have leaned in heavily to technology, which has been the council has been a great help to us in helping find resources for us to utilize that technology.

[2:56:14] And in fact, you'll see some more of that coming before council here in the next few weeks with some council packets too.

[2:56:22] crime statistics changed across the country here in the last decade used to be

[2:56:29] uniform crime reporting through the FBI. Now they changed it to national

[2:56:35] incident based reporting systems or neighbors which is a different way of

[2:56:39] reporting crime much more accurate than UCR which had actually been around for

[2:56:43] decades and was a bit dated. This is actually much more accurate but we can only go

[2:56:49] back so far and kind of compare ourselves to ourselves to see how it's

[2:56:53] trended but persons crimes kind of falls into the category of violent crimes

[2:57:00] trended down 2% now where thankfully don't have a significant violent

[2:57:06] crime rate in the summit anyway so a 2% drop was pretty significant but then

[2:57:13] property crime we saw a 17% reduction which kind of floored me.

[2:57:21] We've been pretty flat.

[2:57:23] We did see a slight decrease in a couple areas last year and I attribute a lot of that

[2:57:29] to efforts with community to make them aware of issues with auto thefts and things of that

[2:57:36] nature. We had the Kia Hyundai problem where some of those vehicles were easy to steal through

[2:57:42] widely available electronic means that you can look up a YouTube video on how to do it.

[2:57:48] It was really a big problem across the country, but we worked with our community to get

[2:57:53] that information out there and last year that continued down.

[2:57:57] The one area where we've really been focusing in the last few months, and I'll talk about

[2:58:06] that more here soon, is our retail theft and trying to address that too.

[2:58:10] So I'll talk about that in a little bit.

[2:58:13] And that society crime is an odd sounding category,

[2:58:16] but it's really drug offenses is probably the biggest one here.

[2:58:21] And here's where I'll compare to nationwide crime

[2:58:26] has dropped significantly as well.

[2:58:27] So thankfully, Lisa was not alone in sharing this.

[2:58:31] But the one area where crime did increase in last year

[2:58:35] across the country was in drug offenses.

[2:58:38] Actually, one up 7%.

[2:58:39] And these are still preliminary numbers, they're still collecting data, but this is what

[2:58:44] they're estimating it's going to go up.

[2:58:46] A violent crime was down 9% to 10% and property crime was down 12% they're estimating across

[2:58:52] the United States last year.

[2:58:54] So we kind of beat the trend in property crimes and we beat the trend in drug offenses as

[2:59:00] well.

[2:59:00] So that was refreshing to see, but I do think that there's been a good shift across the

[2:59:07] country, but at least some, thankfully, is included in that.

[2:59:11] So overall crime was down 13 and a half percent.

[2:59:14] So some of the other factors that I believe helped us was our community.

[2:59:19] I mean, people don't hesitate to work with the police department and call us and let us

[2:59:25] know when something's a skew.

[2:59:27] And that's something we try to maintain that relationship, it's very important to us.

[2:59:33] I will do a special call out for the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office.

[2:59:39] Melissa Johnson has been very responsive and has worked with us very well since she's been in office.

[2:59:49] I'll see her Thursday at a meeting and I'll make sure to tell her that but she's done a very good job, too.

[2:59:55] We have great community partnerships, for example with rediscover and our mental health.

[3:00:00] Health co-responders, our safe passage partners with, at least some of our seven and our SROs and our impact program there. So they're a big part of that too. So that's all part of this equation of different factors that impact crime. And so I think each of those has a little bit of slice of what made a difference this year. But looking specific to the police department. Some of the technology that has very much helped us and contributed to some significant

[3:00:29] significant cases, for example, our license plate readers, our FOX system.

[3:00:37] We solved a shooting over the last year, and several other high-profile cases.

[3:00:43] In fact, there's a pretty famous case that's in the news significantly this year.

[3:00:49] And I read up about it, and I did a little bit investigating myself.

[3:00:53] and it sounds like they took down some LPR systems that could have helped there and that's very disappointing.

[3:01:02] I'm thankful that that hasn't happened in our community but if something like that did happen in our community,

[3:01:09] I feel like we'd be better prepared.

[3:01:11] We also have a drone program currently that we're looking to expand in the future.

[3:01:18] we use the heck out of these drones. In fact, one of our drone operators is a canine officer

[3:01:24] and he gets the drone out probably as much as he does his dog. And I think sometimes

[3:01:29] the dog looks for lonely out the window wondering when his turn will be because the drones are

[3:01:34] very effective to get up when somebody runs from the police or we're searching for a missing

[3:01:39] person or something like that. And so we're looking to expand that and you'll probably hear

[3:01:44] about that in the future here too.

[3:01:47] We also have a trailer-matter cameras that we've deployed.

[3:01:50] We deploy them during our festivals downtown, but we also use them out in the community

[3:01:55] in areas where we have been advised that there could be construction theft or other issues

[3:02:00] going on.

[3:02:01] So you'll drive by probably sometimes they'll, there's those trailers that they're talking about.

[3:02:07] And I talked about the retail theft issues and our concentration on that, it was just

[3:02:12] a few months ago that we started our retail theft unit.

[3:02:16] These are right now two uniform officers, we have plans to expand that in the future.

[3:02:21] That work with our loss prevention folks, some bear, some at woods, Wal-Mart's, and they

[3:02:29] formed a great partnership.

[3:02:32] We also have detectives who are part of that effort as well.

[3:02:36] And it's gotten to where loss prevention actually is mirroring the officers' schedules because

[3:02:41] as they know when the officers are working now,

[3:02:43] so they'll put a heavier presence

[3:02:45] of lost prevention officers on those times

[3:02:48] that our officers are working in order to work collaboratively.

[3:02:52] And so it's been a great success,

[3:02:56] and probably is contributed to some

[3:02:58] of those property crime drops that we've seen.

[3:03:00] And just again, a heavily leaning into

[3:03:02] additional investigative tools.

[3:03:06] It's, again, I'm never spiking the ball,

[3:03:10] our jobs never done. We're constantly worried about what's coming next. And there certainly

[3:03:15] are some concerns I've seen and heard through intelligence debriefings with our regional

[3:03:20] partners about terrorism concerns with all the world events that are happening today,

[3:03:25] the fact that the World Cup is getting ready to spin up in this region has our ears perked

[3:03:30] up significantly to that. We have an evolving landscape of synthetic drugs that we're dealing

[3:03:36] with, I know some have been mentioned to try to figure out some sort of legislative

[3:03:41] solution, but I just attended a meeting Friday where I heard about a couple of new substances

[3:03:47] that I've never heard mentioned before that are showing up in our schools and other places

[3:03:51] too, so it's going to be very difficult to keep up with that.

[3:03:55] And as much as we invest in technology, technology is being used to victimize people too, so that's

[3:04:01] a significant issue, including artificial intelligence,

[3:04:05] things of that nature.

[3:04:06] So, as always, our role, I believe, in the police department

[3:04:12] is to make our community as resistant to crime as we can.

[3:04:18] I always say it's like water running downhill.

[3:04:21] It's going to find the path at least resistance.

[3:04:23] So I want to make least summit as a resistant

[3:04:27] to that as possible.

[3:04:29] And sometimes we can be a bit of a nuisance

[3:04:31] because we're always just so safety-focused in the police department and the fire department too

[3:04:36] that we're always looking at things that those men and saying this is why we have to do things

[3:04:41] this way and we want to keep people safe. I just never want this community to be known for

[3:04:47] some sort of significant crime or event and have that label stick to us because it's a great place

[3:04:53] to live, work and play and we take that role very seriously and I'm blessed to work with some good

[3:04:59] officers and so he ends to carry that forward. So any questions you have about that, I'll

[3:05:06] take those now.

[3:05:08] Okay. Thanks. Thank you, Chief. Yes, we've got some questions and comments. Can I smell

[3:05:15] your shields?

[3:05:16] Thank you, Mayor. I mean, first, I thank you. I really appreciate the hard work that

[3:05:21] you guys do.

[3:05:22] The presentation as well. The information is very helpful and I know everybody up here

[3:05:26] really appreciates the worth of you and all your officers are doing.

[3:05:30] I did have just a couple of questions.

[3:05:33] When you had the statistics, are those total number of incidents per year or per capita

[3:05:37] at like, what am I looking at in the different paragraphs?

[3:05:40] That's a great question.

[3:05:41] And they're actually just total raw incidents compared to last year.

[3:05:45] And typically, I will ask our crime analyst unit to do per capita because I think that's

[3:05:52] actually a fairer way to assess things because as you know the city grows every year we

[3:05:58] have more residents moving in but this that's just flat numbers so they actually would

[3:06:03] be better if we applied a per capita formula to it.

[3:06:06] Yeah that's really impressive that we're actually we've got more people and less crimes.

[3:06:10] Yes and our calls for service actually went up too but the crimes didn't follow it was

[3:06:15] just calls.

[3:06:16] Yes.

[3:06:16] Okay.

[3:06:17] Well, hopefully that means that folks are engaged and trust the response.

[3:06:21] Yeah.

[3:06:22] Absolutely.

[3:06:22] I hope so.

[3:06:24] I guess the other thing I want to say won't really question some more comments.

[3:06:27] I appreciate a lot of the proactive work that you guys do.

[3:06:30] I know when I've been like liaison at downtown Main Street, the officer liaison will come in

[3:06:35] and give a little presentation educational stuff about, you know, how to prevent theft out

[3:06:40] of your car and stuff like that.

[3:06:41] I know you guys are kind of deploying that all over the place, which is great, you know,

[3:06:44] an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?

[3:06:47] Absolutely.

[3:06:48] And then I look at things like the retail theft unit that I think that's great is both

[3:06:54] kind of, it's reacting to an issue that you see and responding to it, but also being

[3:06:58] proactive to try to prevent future issues.

[3:07:01] So I think that's a really great thing you guys are deploying and obviously I'm a huge fan

[3:07:04] of the mental health co-responders, so I'm glad that we're able to have those out there helping

[3:07:09] you guys.

[3:07:10] So thank you.

[3:07:11] We really appreciate it.

[3:07:12] Thank you.

[3:07:13] appreciate it. All right, thank you. Councilmember Falker.

[3:07:18] Thank you, Mayor. A couple quick questions, Chief, and a couple comments. In your statistics,

[3:07:26] can you differentiate, like, crimes committed by people that live in Lee Summit or is it crime?

[3:07:32] People coming from other areas into our city and being the retail theft and things like that

[3:07:38] is that something you guys track?

[3:07:41] We can and I don't have those statistics with me we have looked at them in the past though it's it's it's always an interesting breakdown it's usually about 50-50

[3:07:50] and so I don't know what that tells you really but I don't know if I've looked at them per category of crime or crime type to that degree

[3:08:00] but our retail theft officers specifically they are and I may have talked about this with some of you before so I apologize

[3:08:08] But they are really specific looking at these targeted groups that are out there stealing from not only lease-summit stores and businesses but all throughout the Metro.

[3:08:20] People would be kind of surprised at the level of sophistication some of these groups have and how organized they are to both steal and fence and sell goods that they will go to certain businesses and know exactly what the most expensive item.

[3:08:38] they can steal is and easily sell on this. That's what they're looking for. And again,

[3:08:45] working with loss prevention, we've been able to identify those folks. We're not looking for the

[3:08:49] teenagers, you know, who steal a pair of earrings on a dare with their friends or something like that.

[3:08:54] Not that, you know, those folks might encounter some problems with the criminal justice system too,

[3:08:58] but that's not what our retail theft folks are after.

[3:09:00] So the landscape, um, there's been a lot of talk crimes way up and it's all caused by multi-family.

[3:09:09] We're developing too many apartments. Do you see, I mean, obviously, we see the trend that's going down.

[3:09:15] So multi-family is not creating an issue. It's just crime in general.

[3:09:20] We haven't noticed that at all. We work very closely with our, um, apartments and our multi-family areas

[3:09:28] is because we know that just the concentration of people creates a target rich environment

[3:09:33] just like anything, you know, there's more cars, more victims, potential victims who

[3:09:39] live in an apartment complex, so we really encourage our rental property owners and we have

[3:09:44] a good amount of participation in this community in our safe rentals program.

[3:09:48] We think that's key.

[3:09:50] We form partnerships with our property managers throughout the community.

[3:09:54] We let them know when incidents occur.

[3:09:56] We also work collaboratively with them on things like good, strong lease agreements,

[3:10:06] evictions if necessary for problem tenants, so that's a good, strong partnership we're

[3:10:12] pretty proud of, and we'll continue to work at.

[3:10:15] Well, thank you for the presentation, and Happy News is back there.

[3:10:20] Absolutely.

[3:10:20] I learned how somebody told me they always said his name wrong,

[3:10:24] and they said, just remember Dougie Hauser, so they got to do, so that's all I told him how to remember.

[3:10:29] But him and his team and the things they do, educating our youth on these synthetic drugs is just amazing.

[3:10:37] And I'm glad I get to play a part in that and then thank you very much for your presentation tonight.

[3:10:41] Thank you, thank you, Mayor.

[3:10:43] Thank you.

[3:10:48] Chief, you know, these presentations are really great because you're engaging with us.

[3:10:54] and you know that we're a public safety-minded council but it just takes

[3:11:01] continued, continued engagement like this educating us letting us know where

[3:11:04] the numbers are you know it helps us understand that you know hopefully our

[3:11:12] support helps you do your job and you know we want to continue that we want to

[3:11:18] continue that in the future you got a new council coming I'm gonna give you the

[3:11:20] same speech I gave the PSAs which is just keep working with them the same way and we really

[3:11:28] like this brand and we like you know just how much you've made us proud as a council

[3:11:33] and as city and community so thank you sir. Thank you very much very important to us that we have

[3:11:38] your trust as well that I know you've invested a lot in technologies that we've used and pay for

[3:11:44] or I'll affect you have a work agreement that she'll vote on tonight.

[3:11:49] And adding personnel, the public safety sales tax, all of these,

[3:11:53] we really appreciate it from this body.

[3:11:56] And we want to show that we're using the resources that you give us to good effects.

[3:12:01] So hopefully we have done that.

[3:12:03] All right, thank you, sir.

[3:12:04] Thank you.

[3:12:07] Okay, we have one more presentation.

[3:12:12] Excuse me.

[3:12:15] This is a, called a Southway, South Gateway Monument Options.

[3:12:20] This has been in the works to be quite honest years.

[3:12:24] I don't know when it really got serious, but it's been serious for some people for years.

[3:12:30] And so, it's finally here.

[3:12:31] I'm excited to see this presentation, Mr. Elin.

[3:12:34] All right.

[3:12:35] Well, good evening, Ryan Elin, the Assistant City Manager.

[3:12:37] And just like Mayor Barrett said, we're going to talk a little bit about the Lee Summit Gateway

[3:12:41] way projects and particularly the Southern Gateway.

[3:12:45] The goal tonight, what we're looking for tonight is we're looking for feedback on the

[3:12:51] final concept plan to take that final concept to final design and into construction ultimately.

[3:12:58] So tonight with me, you're going to hear from Abby Brown and Lance Johnson from Bartlett and

[3:13:04] West.

[3:13:05] And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention John Persing, who's with our public horse department,

[3:13:09] It's been kind of leading this project, as well as the work that Sean Marshall did, our graduate fellow intern before he left us to go serve at the Jackson County has been working on this project as well.

[3:13:21] So again, tonight, very brief overview and history, the location in the next steps, but again, the primary purpose of tonight is to get the council's feedback in direction on the final concept to move forward to that construction phase.

[3:13:35] So, as Mayor Barrett said, this has been around for a while.

[3:13:38] This is a screenshot from the 2008 Gateway Master Plan.

[3:13:42] So again, yeah, 2008, coming up on 20 years that we've had a plan in order to put monuments

[3:13:47] in place.

[3:13:48] First monument really came on in 2015, and that was this monument here.

[3:13:56] And then we have another monument that came on in 2018 that is in the general area here.

[3:14:01] here, and now we are looking at one down here.

[3:14:07] On the screen here, you can see there's

[3:14:08] the original artistic renderings from 2008, and then as well as the current monuments.

[3:14:15] The one right here is the, I'll call it the original monument, I-470. That is Eastbound

[3:14:21] at View High. That was done in 2015. This monument here is the Southbound Monument, Southbound

[3:14:27] 478 Lakewood Boulevard. That one was completed in 2018.

[3:14:33] So now as we go to the Southern Gateway

[3:14:34] Monument, this will be located northbound on 291. You can see this aerial photo here. This is 291

[3:14:41] in 150. The generalized location of the new monument. There's what it looks like today. And again,

[3:14:48] another image of where this is at. So at this point with that brief background and introduction,

[3:14:55] I'm going to turn it over to Abby Brown and Lance Johnson to talk about the public process that is

[3:15:00] We're going in and then start getting the feedback associated with that. So with that, I'll turn it over.

[3:15:10] Mr. Mayor, Council members, thank you for your time. We'll try to be brief. I know you guys are wanting to get out of here. Lance Johnson, this is my colleague, Abby Brown. She leads the design on this. Appreciate the time. We're with Bartlett and West. We're an engineering architecture and construction company.

[3:15:32] we are celebrating our 75th year in business this year.

[3:15:37] And I just wanted to tell you our passion

[3:15:39] or at least what we enjoy is being your trusted advisor

[3:15:43] and helping people design and build things.

[3:15:46] So we're glad to be here and we're looking forward to this.

[3:15:49] And I found it kind of ironic sitting here

[3:15:52] watching the other digital or the presentations

[3:15:56] in this hub of social media and branding.

[3:15:59] And here we are.

[3:15:59] This started several years ago.

[3:16:01] So we're here the same night and we're talking about branding and signage for your city.

[3:16:07] And I did Google to see if Smithton has a monument sign from what I can tell, according

[3:16:13] to Google, they do not.

[3:16:14] So you're way ahead of the game.

[3:16:16] But we held a public meeting back in the fall to get some input.

[3:16:22] We wanted to, as you can imagine, trying to come up with something and see what the community

[3:16:27] and try to get the community's voice on a gateway monument sign, the challenge, or at

[3:16:34] least the opportunities that that can present us.

[3:16:37] We had a public meeting, had good attendance, and we had six boards, six different design

[3:16:44] concepts, and we asked everybody that attended if they would take sticky notes and essentially

[3:16:50] We vote on the boards and not only just on the concept but just materials and then anonymously

[3:16:59] be able to provide their feedback and their input.

[3:17:02] And we collected those as well as social media comments through Facebook and we're here

[3:17:08] tonight to go through, I'm going to turn it over here to Abby here in a minute, to kind

[3:17:14] of go through some of those comments and then how we culminated really in the two that we've

[3:17:18] got before you tonight.

[3:17:20] We did meet with the industrial development authority

[3:17:24] board last Friday presented the same presentation to them

[3:17:30] and received their feedback as well.

[3:17:32] So I'll go ahead and turn it over to Abby

[3:17:34] and then I'll stick around for any questions you might have.

[3:17:38] Thank you.

[3:17:39] Thank you.

[3:17:41] OK, so right here at the side that we're

[3:17:44] looking at are six different concepts

[3:17:46] that we designed to get feedback on in the fall and we tried to make them all

[3:17:52] different to give a variety to show people and get a feel for what direction we

[3:17:56] should head in for this monument sign. I'm not going to necessarily walk through

[3:18:00] all six of them but I'll just point out a couple of them in particular the one

[3:18:05] on the top left that says Lee summit and it has the peak and the slope. That one had

[3:18:12] the most green votes which were good votes. And a lot of the consensus on that sign was

[3:18:20] that people like the mix of materials and the modern look. And this is actually one

[3:18:25] sign that we will be taking forward to another concept. So keep that in mind. You'll see this

[3:18:31] again soon. The next sign that I'd like to talk about is the one on the bottom left. That

[3:18:37] That is the existing sign and we've been calling this one the replica, so we'll also be keeping

[3:18:44] that one in mind as we move forward and we have taken our own spin on that one.

[3:18:49] So it had 18 green votes, four red votes, and a lot of people liked it for the consistency

[3:18:55] but maybe thought it might be better to modernize it.

[3:18:59] The last one in particular that I'll talk about is the one on the bottom right.

[3:19:03] it was the most fun conversation starter concept that we had. It also had almost the most

[3:19:13] no or red votes but again a lot of people liked it because it was a conversation starter

[3:19:19] but maybe not this design in particular. We did not move forward with this concept

[3:19:24] but it was really great to have people come up and talk about it and get their feedback on it.

[3:19:29] Okay,

[3:19:33] so with the concepts that I had just walked through we are moving forward with two of them and we are calling this one the summit.

[3:19:43] The representation of the summit would be the fact that we summit is the high point between Kansas City and St. Louis and so we tried to depict that in a modern way in this monument sign.

[3:19:55] And so on the top is a day rendering and then on the bottom is a nighttime rendering.

[3:20:01] And we're thinking of making sure that we have good lighting, representative of kind

[3:20:09] of responding to what's existing at some of the monument signs, but upgrading that.

[3:20:14] And then maybe with some more modern material and some plantings.

[3:20:19] The monument sign does have to be 50 feet away from the road.

[3:20:24] That's a requirement that we've been given.

[3:20:30] So this is the second version of this summit.

[3:20:33] It's just a flat top.

[3:20:35] So there was feedback that we should have either option.

[3:20:38] And so this is literally the same concept, but flat top.

[3:20:42] It kind of defeats the purpose of the summit.

[3:20:44] But, you know, for consistency, we're keeping the name.

[3:20:48] We'll move on to the next concept, which is called the replicas.

[3:20:52] You can see we've taken some of the same elements of the existing sign, and there's an image

[3:20:58] of it on the right.

[3:21:00] And we've extorted some of the, I guess, massings in it, but kept the same sign.

[3:21:07] The idea with this one is to potentially maybe have that LS logo be able to be replaced

[3:21:16] as the logo might change in the future if there's any updates along that so

[3:21:21] then the monument sign can stay the same with the option of interchanging the

[3:21:25] logo out. And again you'll see on the top is the daytime rendering and the

[3:21:30] bottom is the nighttime rendering. This is the next version of the replica and we're

[3:21:37] calling this one without the arch so it's literally the same thing but without

[3:21:42] the arch on top.

[3:21:45] Just to note on all of the concepts we do have landscaping around the bottom

[3:21:50] of the monument to kind of protect the lighting from moors, et cetera. So that's something

[3:21:57] that we've been thinking about as well. I guess the next and final slide is this one. You want

[3:22:06] to hit on that one?

[3:22:09] Yeah, so I think at this point, before we start talking about the timeline

[3:22:13] I like to just have brief conversation on any preference for moving forward on these options here and we can put back and forth through this.

[3:22:24] I will say the IDA's comments, the IDA really seemed to, as a whole, prefer the consistency aspects of the replica with the arch.

[3:22:35] There were some comments about making sure that Lee Summit was maybe a little bit bigger,

[3:22:40] so you can, it was really, really important that you could see Lee Summit kind of throughout

[3:22:46] there.

[3:22:47] And then I'll say the second would have been the summit with the peak.

[3:22:51] They really liked the idea that Lee Summit was so bold as well as the way that the lighting

[3:22:55] interacted with it at night because of how it was set back.

[3:22:58] but on a whole I would say that the IDA's feedback was generally consistency was

[3:23:03] important and just one more detail just for we mentioned the IDA and I forgot

[3:23:09] to mention this but the IDA is a funding partner in this back in of gosh I forgot

[3:23:15] the date. Back earlier this year we did enter into a funding agreement with

[3:23:20] the IDA and IDA is funding a quarter of this project.

[3:23:25] Thank you. All right I'll

[3:23:28] We opened up for discussion.

[3:23:30] Council member Carla.

[3:23:32] Thank you mayor.

[3:23:32] So I would say that I have to agree with IDA.

[3:23:35] I do like the replica, the consistency of it.

[3:23:40] My concern is that the Lee Summit with overgrown vegetation

[3:23:51] or what have you might disappear on that.

[3:23:56] the other two are kind of way up high on a hill so it's easy for that

[3:24:00] Lisa to not get covered up but I think you know something that's not so far up

[3:24:07] might have a little more issues so that that would be my only concern with this

[3:24:12] one but out of the rest of everything that you have that that's my favorite

[3:24:18] That's my vote, thank you.

[3:24:22] Thank you.

[3:24:24] Councilmember Shields.

[3:24:26] I agree with Councilmember Carlow.

[3:24:28] I like the replica with the arches.

[3:24:29] Nice to kind of keep consistent with the other ones

[3:24:32] so that we have sort of a consistent brand.

[3:24:36] If they want to tweak it and make the lease on it bigger,

[3:24:38] that's fine.

[3:24:40] Yeah, I like that, nice.

[3:24:43] Thank you, Councilmember Hodges.

[3:24:45] Yeah, I would agree with my fellow council members.

[3:24:47] I think that the replica with the arches

[3:24:50] to pick more of who we are, whereas I feel like the first one is yes more modern but I don't

[3:24:56] feel like that depicts what we look like once you're in our city. I like that we stuck to brick on

[3:25:01] this one which depicts a lot of what our buildings are. So I think it just looks more classy. So that

[3:25:06] that too would be my vote. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

[3:25:12] Council member Reader.

[3:25:13] Thank you, Mayor. On the vegetation, Council member Carlisle brought up a good point that

[3:25:19] But that will have to be maintained.

[3:25:24] So I would say I like the replica a lot, that's my favorite one, but I don't know about

[3:25:31] the vegetation.

[3:25:32] I'd be a little worried about that, because it's just going to be hard, it's one more

[3:25:35] thing we have to take care of.

[3:25:37] So I would say cut that.

[3:25:40] Which one do you prefer?

[3:25:42] That's my word.

[3:25:42] I'm sorry.

[3:25:43] Same one.

[3:25:44] Same one.

[3:25:50] You chose the arch.

[3:25:51] Yes, sir.

[3:25:52] Okay.

[3:25:52] Thank you.

[3:25:53] Mayor Rare.

[3:25:54] Yes. Sorry, since we're on the vegetation discussion, I thought I'd add a little insight.

[3:26:00] So, with the North Monument sign, we have an arrangement through, I want to say it's a license agreement.

[3:26:07] I'm going to look at Michael Park to allow for us as the city to enhance the level of maintenance on Mo.Ride-of-way.

[3:26:16] So, we do take and know that more often than Mo.'s typical is it three times a year, Michael.

[3:26:21] So we'll do that monthly through this arrangement to keep the vegetation down.

[3:26:28] That is something we could do in this instance as well, just working through Modat and the appropriate approvals.

[3:26:33] So I just wanted to mention that.

[3:26:36] And one thing that I will add is that comment with the possible weeds growing up to cover the sign or the text that says we summit has been brought up in previous meetings.

[3:26:48] And we've discussed that we would probably make the text that actually says we summon a

[3:26:54] little bit bigger and off the ground a little bit more to keep in mind the height of some

[3:27:00] weeds that could grow.

[3:27:01] We're thinking of having the minimum up bottom line of those letters be about three feet

[3:27:06] plus off the ground.

[3:27:07] And then if we do put some accent plantings, we can make sure that those don't grow to a

[3:27:13] certain height.

[3:27:15] That is something that we are being very aware of.

[3:27:20] Yeah.

[3:27:23] Thank you.

[3:27:23] Council member level.

[3:27:25] I agree with everybody.

[3:27:28] I do like what you said.

[3:27:29] I do.

[3:27:29] I thought it was cool.

[3:27:31] I didn't like the summit.

[3:27:32] I thought it looked like the Golden Gate Bridge,

[3:27:34] but I did like how that least summit popped there

[3:27:37] like when driving by at night.

[3:27:38] So if there was a.

[3:27:39] Yeah.

[3:27:40] I mean, obviously not that big.

[3:27:41] So I think what you said there if we can make that.

[3:27:44] And then I love the idea that we can replace that logo at some point.

[3:27:47] Good gracious, not my favorite, our logo.

[3:27:55] Yeah, very free up here these days.

[3:27:57] Yeah, yeah.

[3:28:00] Okay, thank you, Council Member Funk.

[3:28:03] The replica with the arch, sir, thank you.

[3:28:07] Thank you, Council Member Prior.

[3:28:09] Thank you. Well, it's kind of pointless that I even say this because I'm the odd man out,

[3:28:13] But I like the first one the best, but I like the arch one is my second favorite, so thanks.

[3:28:21] Okay, thank you.

[3:28:22] Mayor Patimov.

[3:28:23] Just for the record, I'll do the replica with the arch, so I'm good.

[3:28:29] It

[3:28:36] was quite a bit of consensus there.

[3:28:40] I like the peak the summit, but I just think that's symbolic, but I understand the consistency.

[3:28:50] I just think that being a sign person, because my living depends on that kind of stuff, you want to be able to see the name.

[3:29:00] And so even if you don't have the, like, if

[3:29:06] there's not landscape that covers it up or we're grown, but it doesn't, you know, at least some it doesn't.

[3:29:13] It's going to be challenged to see driving 55 to 70 miles an hour.

[3:29:18] But it's a cool sign.

[3:29:20] All

[3:29:23] right. Well, I think the feedback's pretty good. I think that you've probably got

[3:29:28] enough to go on for the final design. And so with that, yeah, I'm just kind of recapping,

[3:29:33] replica with the arch, keep the landscaping trimmed up, and signs going to get a little bigger.

[3:29:40] Letters are going to get a little bit taller, so you can make sure that you can see that moving forward.

[3:29:44] Just a little bit more on the timeline. Tonight we're here at the wrapping up the design process,

[3:29:49] But now the project is going to move really quickly.

[3:29:51] We're going to move essentially, we'll have a GMP price for final approval, and then we'll look to go into construction.

[3:30:00] Coming up here in April, May, in construction over the summer, not anticipating a very long construction time frame, so this will be completed early this summer. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Johnson, Ms. Brown, for your hard work. Okay, please read, bill number 26-037. Thank you, Mayor. I move for second reading, bill number 26-037, in ordinance proving the 2026 labor agreement by between the city of Lisa and Missouri and the fraternal order of police lodge number 50.

[3:30:29] and authorizing city managed to execute the same by and on behalf of the city.

[3:30:34] Thank you.

[3:30:34] We have a motion to move to second reading, bill number 26-037 by Councilmember Shields,

[3:30:39] seconded by Councilmember Carlyle.

[3:30:41] Mr. Dunning, what kind of a big deal, what should we say?

[3:30:47] Well, so this is a renegotiated collective bargaining agreement with the Federal Order of Police,

[3:30:54] and it's a three year agreement, establishes the new wage tables and pay for our represented members.

[3:31:02] And so this is something that occurs as we enter into these agreements as they come up on their expiration

[3:31:09] and we go back into negotiations. So this is a fully negotiated and we understand that the FOP has ratified this,

[3:31:15] so it's all set for approval.

[3:31:17] Okay, and what's the what's the terminology, attraction, retention, and

[3:31:23] attraction, retention, and equipping are public safety folks with the

[3:31:29] this is both the attraction and the retention part.

[3:31:33] It's hugely beneficial in that and if we're going to be a public safety minded council,

[3:31:37] this is this is how you how you do that.

[3:31:40] Yes, all right.

[3:31:42] Thanks sir.

[3:31:43] Any discussion?

[3:31:48] All right.

[3:31:55] All votes are in, please record the vote.

[3:31:58] And it passes unanimously, goes to second reading.

[3:32:02] All right, committee reports, customer shields.

[3:32:08] Thank you, Mayor.

[3:32:08] We had finance and budget committee yesterday.

[3:32:10] We had a really great kind of health insurance 101 presentation, some good discussion just

[3:32:15] generally about how our insurance policies have been working, what kind of loss ratios they've

[3:32:22] been seeing, what some options are going forward.

[3:32:23] And I believe the plan is to bring that to full council for, as we looked at sort of like level setting sort of make sure that we all are starting the same base of knowledge as we kind of go into these discussions and what's probably going to be able to your process to slowly transition towards more of a self ensured style.

[3:32:43] So I think that will come back sometime in April or May maybe to the full council.

[3:32:47] Yeah, there was a discussion I recall about, you know, getting through the elections and

[3:32:53] then kind of starting fresh with where we at and where we headed and what's the plan.

[3:32:59] And to provide the same education to any new council members that we might have.

[3:33:03] That's correct.

[3:33:04] So I'll be coming forward.

[3:33:05] And then we also had an ordinance on the agenda that I guess will be coming to council maybe

[3:33:11] next meeting about the municipal court audit to slightly increase their scope of services

[3:33:16] is that they can present their findings directly to the Council. Am I quoting that correctly?

[3:33:20] That's correct.

[3:33:21] Okay, so I know we've all been interested in that topic and they should be coming the audit

[3:33:27] firm would be coming to present their findings directly to us and help walk us through those

[3:33:30] correct?

[3:33:31] That's correct.

[3:33:32] Okay, so lots of exciting stuff at Finance and Budget as always. Thank you, Mayor.

[3:33:36] Thank you.

[3:33:39] Other committee reports?

[3:33:42] Council comments?

[3:33:49] Staff around table?

[3:33:51] Thank you Mayor, a few items to share.

[3:33:54] So we are proceeding forward with the Douglas Street Improvement Projects on the north side

[3:33:59] between Shipman and Second Street and so as part of that project it involves taking care

[3:34:04] of some trees and if you may recall there are certain times of the year where tree clearing

[3:34:10] shall not occur so that comes upon us sometime in April.

[3:34:14] So this is kind of advanced awareness that there will be some tree clearing that will be

[3:34:19] taking place on that North Douglas project in the coming days and weeks ahead.

[3:34:27] Let's

[3:34:28] see. I'd also see my hand

[3:34:33] lost my trade of thought.

[3:34:37] Just listening intently to the public comments regarding the claims that the city is not

[3:34:46] supporting employees and seeking attention when they need them with regards to health.

[3:34:52] And I would just say that I take that very seriously.

[3:34:55] And I know that our fire department takes that very seriously, even to the extent that we're proud of our peer support groups that we have in place.

[3:35:03] And I know that Chief Snyder represents us very well at the state level in the critical illness pool.

[3:35:09] And then many other areas and we're very, very keen to those needs.

[3:35:12] and so I guess I would just say I don't agree with some of those statements as

[3:35:19] your city manager. With that mayor, that's all I have.

[3:35:24] Thank you. Council Member

[3:35:25] Karla. Thank you mayor. Just real quick Mr. Dunning about the trees on Douglas.

[3:35:34] What are we going to do with those?

[3:35:38] I'm going to find a friend. Thank you.

[3:35:41] That's what the, what takes place with that.

[3:35:49] Yeah, thank you, Michael Park, Director of Public Works.

[3:35:52] I appreciate creating the community awareness, because you will see start to activity, but the project's not starting yet.

[3:35:57] It is because we have a seasonal limitation on when we can take priests down.

[3:36:01] So it's not just happening on Douglas, but you may see tree removals like out at Ward Purcells, or on other development size we're all under the same regulations.

[3:36:10] And what we will do is we will cut them down on Douglas, in this case, we'll cut them down, we'll grind the stomps,

[3:36:14] will remove everything, so it's a cleaned up site.

[3:36:18] And other areas of town where it may not be as visible,

[3:36:21] the requirement is just to literally cut the tree down

[3:36:24] and sometimes it will lie there

[3:36:26] until the construction begins.

[3:36:28] So as long as the tree is not vertical,

[3:36:31] it's cut down, we have eliminated the habitat,

[3:36:33] it's of concern and allows us to then continue work

[3:36:36] during the other seasons when we're not allowed

[3:36:39] to cut down trees.

[3:36:40] Okay, so after we cut them down and either lay them

[3:36:44] or don't lay them, then what happens to them?

[3:36:46] Well, in this case on Douglas, they will be ground up,

[3:36:50] removed from the site, taken to a landfill

[3:36:52] or other acceptable location.

[3:36:54] So we don't, we don't turn them into mulch and sell it

[3:36:57] through our, or let our parks use it

[3:37:00] because mulch is expensive, or some puttin' a landfill somewhere.

[3:37:05] Well, some of the brush we do go through recycling,

[3:37:07] but in this case, our contractor will cut it down.

[3:37:10] It'll grind out the stumps, remove those.

[3:37:12] Wherever they take them, I would not be surprised if they take them to a resource recovery park operation, where it's ground up made into mulch, but okay well you can just if I see them, I will ask them so you can let them know that I will be asking.

[3:37:26] Thank you.

[3:37:27] Yeah, you're welcome.

[3:37:29] Okay, thank you.

[3:37:34] Okay.

[3:37:36] We're going to read in the closed session, so all of you have a thank you for sticking with us tonight.

[3:37:42] Customer shields, would you please?

[3:37:44] Yep, pursuant section 610-211 of the revised statutes, the state of Missouri

[3:37:47] pertain to legal actions causes of action and litigation involving public

[3:37:50] government of body in any confidential and privileged communication

[3:37:52] in a public government of body.

[3:37:53] It's represented in its attorneys of pursuant section 610-219.

[3:37:56] With revised statutes, the state of Missouri pertain to preparation, including any

[3:37:59] discussion of work product on behalf of the public government of body or

[3:38:01] it's representatives from negotiations with employee groups, I moved to enter a

[3:38:04] closed session.

[3:38:06] Second.

[3:38:06] Thank you.

[3:38:07] We have a motion to go in a closed session by Council Member Shields.

[3:38:09] Seconded by Council Member Carlisle.

[3:38:10] Discussion?

[3:38:11] motion.

[3:38:14] Seeing none, could I get a roll call vote, please?

[3:38:16] Council member funk.

[3:38:19] Aye.

[3:38:20] Council member level.

[3:38:22] Aye.

[3:38:23] Council member prior.

[3:38:25] Aye.

[3:38:26] Council member Carlisle.

[3:38:27] Aye.

[3:38:28] Council member Raider.

[3:38:30] Aye.

[3:38:30] Council member Hodges.

[3:38:32] Aye.

[3:38:32] Council member Shields.

[3:38:33] Aye.

[3:38:34] May I put a template?

[3:38:35] May I bear it?

[3:38:36] Aye.

[3:38:37] Everyone have a good night.

City Council - Regular Session No. 65 AMENDED

Agenda

Transcript

City Council - Regular Session No. 65 ***AMENDED***

Agenda

Transcript

City Council - Regular Session No. 65 AMENDED