Good evening, Witchah and good evening to all of you. Thank you for
City Council meeting. We'll call this meeting to order. With us this evening
is Reverend Ben Staley of Chapel Hill United Methodist Church invocation.
Following the invocation, we will have the pledge of allegiance and ask you to
please stand for both.
Let's pray together. Oh Lord, we give you thanks for the
freedom that is ours to participate in a process that determines
the direction for our community. And we thank you for our good mayor and the
council members. And we ask that you would give them wisdom as they lead us
and give us all wisdom to make good choices
that helps us as a community to live according to values that should guide us
all. ways that are committed to helping one
another and give us the grace
and patience to be able to step back as needed, the courage to step forward.
Help us to know how to act in ways that are in keeping with uh the values that
we care about. We pray Lord that decisions made here
tonight will remember that. Help us to remember that every voice should be
heard and every life matters and that no one gets left out or behind.
» For all that you do, Lord, we'll give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen.
I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
» Thank you, Reverend Staley. Before we continue, I just want to
recognize that we have a new Witchah fire chief. Chief Michael Mir is in
attendance.
[applause]
I also want to give a quick shout out to building services and public works for
cleaning. There was a little bit safety issue and
we got that all clean. So, thank you so very much to the building services
staff. With that, Madame Clerk, can you please call the first item? Approve the
minutes of the regular meeting, August 18th, 2026.
» Council members, are there any items to be edited from the minutes?
I see none. With that, I will move to approve the minutes for the regular
meeting of August 18th, 20. >> Second.
» Motion second. Discussion. See none. Madame clerk, please open the role.
Motion passes 70. Before we continue, I also want to
recognize that the mayor's youth council is hosting their first
and they just came into the chambers. So, we welcome our youth leaders into
the council chambers.
Madame clerk, please call the next item. >> Public agenda. Uh, from the city's
recently adopted civility pledge. The CI the city
they stand united. They lead with respect and dignity and they honor every
resident in all communities. They are working to create an environment that
values shared goals with increased empathy and genuine dialogue. We now
come to public agenda. The public agenda allows for up to five speakers to have
five minutes each to address the council. Please bear in mind that this
is not a period of dialogue with city council or question.
This is your opportunity to address the city council with your concerns. I ask
that you address your remarks to the city council as a body and not to any
individual council member. No action will be taken relative to items on the
public agenda other than referral to the city.
Speakers will please speak into the microphone. Please state their name and
address for the record. A time clock will display the speaker's remaining
time to speak. Order and rules of decorum will be observed. The first
speaker is William Glander, Storm Drains.
» Good evening, council members and fellow I'm William Glander. I live at 235 North
Elizabeth. I'm speaking to you tonight because our
city's infrastructure is failing to keep up with and it is directly causing the
flooding that we are seeing in our streets. I have over 15 years hands-on
experience in earthwork, grading, water management. I know how water moves and
more importantly I know why it's backing up in our city. The problem is
overdevelopment, bottlenecks. The core issue is simple. We are covering up
ground with concrete faster than the drainage system can handle. Loss of
green space. Water cannot soak into concrete. It needs soil and root system
when large developments like new like the new Lo's gas station
or massive apartment complexes take over acres of dirt. that rainwater has
nowhere to go except to our storm systems all at once.
System overload. The massive volume of runoff is overt taxing the main canal.
We need the river and and the river rises at at the outlets. Incoming runoff
collides with rising water creating a tidal wave effect. This pressure forces
flap gates stuck close, sending water straight back up through the structures
and out into our streets. Internal blockages inside the drainage network
have design flaws where flowing water hits crossing pipes forcing water to
spill over instead of flowing freely. That creates immediately immediate back
flooding. the solution. We cannot just keep building bigger concrete boxes and
hoping for the best. We need smart natural structures fixes. Establish a
secondary blowoff. We need an overflow mechanism for the canals so pressure
doesn't forgate shut during restore and maintain our ditches and
canals. Decades of neglect means parts of our canal system are near collap. We
must reestablish and destyle all dirt ditches, especially when paving dirt
roads so runoff doesn't pull on the pavement. Integrate smart green
infrastructure requires developments to pre functional dirt and tree space for
natural absorbent. When old driveways are removed, don't just leave the
concrete. Fill them in with curb and trees to capture street runoff. Our
growth is great for this city, but if we do not fix the water where the water
goes, we are setting our residents up for costly flood damage. I care deeply
about making this city the best, safest place it can be. I have the hands-on
experience and the practical knowledge to help fix these drainage bottlenecks
before the system collapse. I urge the council to review these drainage points
and reach out so we can get to work on real solutions to add to this. Someone
brought up drainage ditch in West Witchah on the news.
We do not need that brought up at all. We need to be able to
it makes our city look bad when we get brought up on the news and people say
that hey this is a problem. We got standing water. Thank you.
» Thank you very much, William.
» We will continue with our next speaker, >> Barbara Meyers. Waiver of fee 25
military veteran cemetery marker.
Hello. Well, I came to you tonight originally
to ask for a waiver. of permit fees. However,
I was informed last night at 4:45 that those had been waved.
So, first of all, I want to thank Reggie for doing that. We appreciate you very
much. We appreciate the city for paying attention to this need. And I want to
point out that this is for Highland Cemetery, the oldest cemeter.
and
uh it's for 25 veterans of five different wars. It has been said that we
die twice. Once when our bodies give up and once when it's the last time anyone
says our name. So on behalf of Charles Adams, Jesse
Anderson, Is Baker, Eli Benton, Armstead Bradford, Warren Busel, Samuel Card, Eli
Carter, Edward Cook, Roger Davis, RD Still, Eugene Estill,
Elmer Foris, Francis Fox, Charles Harrington, William Hincher, Zachariah
Lure, Steuart Logan, Walter Marchale, Marcelus McGriff, Henry
Molenik, Manford Miler, William Norris, Homer Osborne, and Eugene Whitted
and my my team of volunteers. We thank you very much and we appreciate
everything that you're allowing us to do with that cemetery and we hope that
you'll come to our event on November 14th which is one of the America 250
events that's being held acad
clerk please call the next individual >> Oswald called Witchaw Public Library.
» Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Kurt Oswald and I'm the vice
president of the Witchaw Public Library, chairperson of the library advocacy
committee and district 3 advisory board member. Concerned citizen, I appreciate
the opportunity to speak with you. Last Tuesday, a proposal was made to
[clears throat] delay the requested increase in funding for the Witchaw
Public Library. Tonight, I want to ask you to think about what the decision
really means. So, I want you to imagine imagine if a child needed help learning
to read. The child needed access to books, literacy programs, a computer, or
a librarian who could help them find exactly what they needed. Now, imagine
there aren't enough staff members available when the family need.
Imagine if you're looking for a job, you need a computer, internet access, help
completing an online application, creating a resume, or uploading
documents. The library can provide those sources, but imagine needing assistance
and not having a staff member available because the library doesn't have enough
people to maintain the hours and service our community needs. Imagine if you're a
senior citizen, you need help accessing an online government service, completing
a form, or simply learning how to use a computer, tablet, or a smartphone. The
library isn't just a building where you check out books. It's a place where
people get help. And library service requires people. That's what the funding
request is really about. Imagine if the libraries had the staffing they need.
Imagine more hours when families can walk through the doors, more librarians
available to help children, more technology assistance for seniors, more
program for our neighborhoods, more opportunities for people looking for
jobs, learning new skills, or simply trying to improve their lives. That's
what this additional funding could help make possible. The Witchaw Public
Library serves nearly 401,000 through seven locations and a book bus.
Last year, our libraries had more than 650,000 visits. Nearly 2 million items
were circulated. More than 54,000 people participated in library programs. And
staff provided approximately 46,000 technology.
Those aren't just numbers. Those are people, Witchah residents, walking
through our doors because they need something from their library and the
demand continues to grow. Witchah has grown. Library use has grown, but
library staffing has been kept at the current level. So when we talk about
delaying the library's funding increase, we need to be honest about what we are
actually delaying. We aren't delaying the need. The need is
already here. We are delaying our ability to adequately respond to it. We
are asking library staff to continue doing more with resources that they
already have and ultimately the residents who depend on those services
are the ones who feel the impact. I understand you have difficult choices to
make and other important pri priorities competing for our funding. But I'm
asking you to dig deeper into this budget.
Look at what can be re reduced, what can be delayed, what can be re reallocated.
Ask whether there are dollars that can be rededicated to the library
because tonight you have a choice. You can delay this investment and hope the
need somehow becomes less or you can recognize that Witchah has already told
us what it needs. More access, more staff, more hours and more programs. And
we want to leave you with one final imagine if. Imagine a parent finding a
job because the library provided a computer, internet, resources, and
assistance they needed. Imagine a senior gaining confidence with technology
because someone at the library took the time to help. Imagine an unhoused
resident building trust and connections because the library staff helped them
connect with housing resources, employment assistance, and opportunities
to engage with their community. And imagine if the number of Witchah third
graders reading at grade level increased because we invested in literacy,
learning, and access to information. Imagine if we invested in making those
opportunities more avail. You aren't simply voting on a budget.
You're voting on what Witchaw will be able to provide with its to its
residents in 2027. I respectfully ask you, don't delay the library investment.
Dig deeper. find the resources, fund the staffing, protect and expand library
hours, invest in programs, and most importantly, invest in the people of
Witchaw who depend on their public life. Thank you.
» Thank you, Kurt. From district number three, Council Member Mike Hohheisle.
Madame Clerk, can you please call the next individual?
» David Bradock, Witchah Non-Discrimination Ordinance.
Good evening, Mayor Woo and city council members. If you don't know, my name is
David Bradock. I live in Riverside, so Maggie's district, District 4. I've
addressed you multiple times on this, but tonight I just want to remind people
who don't know I was the first person ever to file a complaint that was
actually adjudicated through Utah non-discrimination ordinance. It was
actually a religious discrimination against me.
The company I alleged discriminate against me admitted in writing before it
was even office of the law to review that they made a mistake. They already
admitted guilt. Our own director of law found my case had merit and initiated
mediation and paid funds from the city to do so. Because it was done in the
executive branch, not the judicial, the person I was suing or complaining
against walked out because there was no force of law behind what we were doing.
Unfortunately, I then had my case then reviewed by a subordinate of the
director of law who found that my case had no merit at all despite her his boss
saying it did and that was done without ever interviewing me once.
My case was then buried and trying to get records out and I couldn't. So, I
had to pull multiple Kansas open record acts just to find my own data. I thank
Maggie Ballard for helping me getting that released under the former may was
quite an interesting challenge. I think Becky who was
much for allowing that break. We return from that break at 7:01 p.m. Uh, thank
you to the communications department. They have been working diligently to try
to get sound on YouTube. It is now on YouTube. Uh they also have informed me
that any of the sound prior to 7:01 p.m. will be married with the team's sound
that has been recording this entire time. But it does take a little bit of
time. So it will take until tomorrow before you will have the sound before
7:01 p.m. Um but again, we are now back full sound. Um I do want to recognize
that Senator Oltha FaDau is in the audience this evening.
» [applause] >> Madame clerk, please call the next item.
» Revenue neutral rate self-supported municipal improvement district 2027
budget.
» Well, good evening, mayor, members of the city council. I'm Mark Manning with
the Department of Finance. Well, today's the day that uh we've been uh working
towards since January. Today's the day that you will adopt the city's budget.
But before we do that, uh we have a couple other public hearings that we
need to take care of and those are associated with the revenue neutral
rate. So we'll do one for the self-supporting municipal improvement
district or what we call the Schmid and then we'll do one for the city of
Witchaw and after we conduct those hearings uh then we can get on with the
uh budget process. Uh so statutoily we have to set the
public hearing date uh for the revenue neutral rate hearing that was set on
July 14th for tonight. So that's why we're here tonight. The revenue neutral
rate uh is a tax lid created by the state legislature in 2021 and basically
uh it determines the level of property tax funding available to taxing
districts. So the Schmid is a taxing district for
which you do set the uh mill levy rate. Uh typically we set that uh based on the
request of the Witsto Downtown Development Corporation uh which makes a
formal request to you based on the work plan and the objectives and outcomes
that they want to achieve. And then based on that again we will adopt their
budget here in a little bit. So they did request a budget for 2027 uh with a mill
levy rate of 10 mills. Again, that 10 mills is just within their taxing
district, which is essentially the downtown area.
That 10 mill levy would be identical to the mill levy rate assessed in 2026 or
the previous year. So, this slide shows you the impact of
the revenue neutral rate. Last year, uh we levied $1,396,000
on behalf of the Schmid. Based on the state statute, we cannot levy $1 more
than that unless we exceed the revenue neutral rate. So whether we levy $10
more or $38,000 more, in this case, we will exceed the revenue neutral rate if
that's the desire of the governing body. So to exceed the revenue neutral rate,
uh we have to take a few steps. Again, these are prescribed by statute. Uh we
have to provide notification, which we have done. we have to hold the hearing
prior to consideration of the budget, which is why we're holding this hearing
right now. And then finally, if it is your desire to exceed the revenue
neutral rate, uh you need to do that based on state statute by a individual
roll call vote uh to exceed the RNR. Last thing I would note is even if you
do vote to exceed the RNR, you will set the level of taxes levied later in our
budget uh discussion. So you're not are not committing to a tax levy by
exceeding RNR with this activity. You're just allowing yourself to determine a
tax levy during the budget hearing that is higher than the tax levy of last
year. Uh so based on the proposed budget
proposed by the city manager in concurrence with that staff would
recommend that you do approve a resolution to exceed the RNR for the
self-supporting municipal improvement district and that is the recommended
action. Uh Heather, I believe from Witto Downtown Development Corporation is
here. If you have any questions about their work plan or the outcomes that
they have proposed based on the tax levy, I'm sure she'd be happy to address
those and I'd be happy to address any questions if you have any.
» Thank you, Mark. I would like to ask Heather to come forward and share
highlevel executive summary what the $1.4 million would fund.
Thank you, mayor, council members. Uh the $ 1.4 million budget proposed for
2027 uh would continue the daily operations
of our um downtown stewardship. So downtown Witchdaw is responsible for um
maintaining 103 blocks that comprise the Smid. Um that entails making sure that
our development community has the resources that they need. Our business
community um is supported both in terms of retention and recruitment. Uh we are
marketing the district proactively um both internal events that we put on and
everything else that's happening uh in the Smid. We have a big year coming up
with NCAA returning downtown. So that'll get quite a bit of our attention in the
springtime. And uh of course my favorite um focus area that we have is enhancing
vibrancy. Um that's everything from our downtown clean team that provides uh
maintenance services six days a week in the core. Um to our uh public art
initiatives to programs like our free yoga in the park which starts up again
on Wednesday, September 9th. Um, so really just making sure that uh downtown
is a uh clean, welcoming, vibrant place to be um for stakeholders and business
owners. >> Thank you, Heather. Um, do you have any
data so that the audience that maybe is just now joining us regarding the
downtown clean team? It was initially a pilot and it looks like that pilot has
been successful and has continued on as a full-time operation and the 10 mills
would help in portion support the downtown clean team.
» Absolutely. So, uh, with the additional support that we had by raising the
downtown mill levy last year, um, again only on downtown properties, we were
able to hire a full-time clean team, which is, um, a fourperson crew, uh,
that is working from, well, in the summer hours, 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. 6
days a week. Uh, the only day they have off is Sunday. Um, so they are out there
making sure that we're picking up litter. um since the program was started
on February 1st of 2026 um through its uh you know first 5
months of operation ending June 30th of 2026 uh we measured more than two tons
of litter that they had collectively removed from our public realm. Um so
that's sidewalks, streets, um anything that's a public space. Um, you know, we
assist our our city departments by providing that extra layer of services.
» Thank you, Heather. Uh, one more question. What is the biggest challenge
in downtown Witchah right now? >> Oh, goodness. I don't know that I I
don't know that I could say. Um, implementing our newly adopted action
plan. Um, we have we have a host of
challenges, mayor. Um, you know, we we have a housing shortage. Um, so making
sure that we're both building enough housing and also taking care of our
unhoused neighbors um who reside in and around the downtown district. Um, making
sure that we have a full range of amenities uh for our, you know, daytime
and evening populations of employees and residents. Um, transportation is a huge
challenge. Um, so we're we're tackling all of these and and more.
» Sorry, I'm asking a lot of questions. There's no one on the board, but I do
have one more. And you just talked about unhoused neighbors. Uh would there be a
possibility to utilize some of the budget to help with funding homeless
services in the downtown area? >> So, the increase that we're anticipating
this year is not sufficient to hire that additional position, but it's something
that we're looking at in the future. >> Thank you, Heather.
» Thank you. >> I see no further questions. Um I do know
are there three members who are part of the downtown Witchaw board? Is that two?
» There's just uh council member Maggie Ballard and
three members. So, council members for district 1, four, and six are
represented as part of downtown Witchah. Thank you very much.
» Thank you. >> With that, we will open it up for public
comment.
I see no one from the >> I'm sorry.
Thank you, mayor and city council members and uh city manager. I'm Eugene
Snyder. I live at 515 South Maine. And I came tonight to respectfully
request that the city of Witchita identify the specific legal authority
that supports the inclusion of the residential condominiums at 515 South
Maine being part of the downtown self-supporting municipal improvement
district. Kansas law establishes specific zoning criteria for properties
eligible for inclusion in a SMID district limiting participation to those
designated for commercial or industrial use as
reflected by the requirement in the statute that says none of which property
is zoned for any use other than commercial or residential. In contrast
with that, 515 South Main residential condominiums are classified under a PUD
zoning designation. Given the zoning and the state statute, we are requiring the
Kansas statutory basis which these residential condominium properties have
been included in the district and subjected to this 10 mill tax
assessment. It was 10 mills last year. Before that, it was about 6.6 six and it
has been raised and that's what brought all this to our attention. It's one
thing to contribute six mills but all of a sudden to be paying practically 10% of
your total tax bill to live downtown based on and we are residential not
commercial not industrial but it doesn't matter because our zoning does not meet
the requirements of the Kansas statute. So therefore, based on the Kansas
statute and the zoning code, these properties have been incorrectly
included and assessed. And accordingly, we respectfully request that the Smid
budget be reduced by 25,000 until this matter is fully reviewed and resolved.
And that is based on the fact that we have 46 residential units at the
Waterwalk. And I went through the tax sheets for every residential property
and I added it up and it comes to $22,238.99.
So I think to be safe I would set $25,000 aside. [gasps]
And just to assure you that we will still be contributing the commercial
part of Waterwalk pays in $8,19
a year. The Fairfield Inn contributes $19,822.
The realator's building pays in $5,819. And the King of Freight puts in
$19,3625.
Approximately $55,000 would be collected by the other four buildings.
I thank you for your time and I look forward to working with the city on this
statutory issue. Thank you. Thank you, Lugene.
Good evening, Celeste, Witchaw native. At the last city council meeting, August
18th, a comment was made that no one had spoken about the Schmid last year. So,
I'm here to correct you on that. I spoke. In fact, I'm going to read my
comments from August 26, 2025 about the Schmid.
Today, I want to speak about the proposed self-supporting municipal
improvements district's budget, what you all call Schmid. This downtown Schmid
was approved by the city council in 2000. Special taxpayer property tax
funds are given to a Witchaw downtown corporation for improvements in downtown
Witchaw, Washington to our Kansas, central to Kellogg. However, condo
owners and private residences in this area may not know they have to pay this
extra mill levy. So, if any property tax increase, there needs to be
justification for them to pay this expense. Why is this budget increasing
to 1,400,000? Last year, that was a 55% increase. The
city of Witchaw is supposed to provide downtown cleanup and park maintenance.
So, why is the city giving up what it does to this private entity, downtown
Witchaw? Is the city not able to take care of downtown parks? Is the city not
able to maintain downtown flower beds? How would we request spending records?
How would we see what the dollars go for? Can I file a Kansas open records
request to request the travel expenses or the meeting expenses? How would I
request the salaries? Now, remember this is last year. I find this interesting.
Is this a way to hide taxpayer money? Would a slush fund be created? And how
would I know? Taxpayers can't look inside downtown Witchaw finances to see
individual salary, travel expenses, and marketing costs. Once you give up
control, taxpayers are count cut out of the picture. So, I would suggest, and I
still suggest this year, we use the nearly $500,000 budget increase to hire
more parks department staff. Employees have dropped from 158 employees to
barely a hundred. The And this is still true. This is so ironic. I was just
there today. The graffiti on the West Riverbank has been there for over two
weeks and no one has responded to the request I made to clean it up. Hire more
maintenance public staff. The irrigation system for the flower beds and a Price
Witter Park has been broken for months and here a year later, I'm here to tell
you it is still broken. It has still not been fixed.
Um, we worked really hard with Lowe's Home Improvement Store Heroes Project to
plant a thousand flowers. The flowers have not been watered the entire summer.
So, now we're going on year two. They have still not been watered now for over
a year. This is still true, too. There are weeds, trash, graffiti. Several
trees have been cut down, leaving bare stumps. The broken branches are still
lying in the streets around Century 2. Hire more maintenance staff, please. So,
here we are a year later. You did raise the budget. Downtown Witchaw supposedly
is doing the cleanup, and everything I talked about last year, I'm horrified,
is still there today. In fact, I was there today with someone who's going to
give us Save Century 2 and Witchah area sister cities a grant to help us with
watering. And I was so proud of the work we did. I took them down there, two of
them today, to see the work we did at a price park, a park that was created in
honor of the first black mayor of Witchaw. He was a wonderful man. Um, I
won't go into detail, but my father knew him. And here I was disgraced and
embarrassed to see the state of that park. So, we've given him more money.
Something's not working. I say bring this back in house with city employees.
And I know part of the problem is you're not offering enough salaries. Not any
more than someone can make in a fast food restaurant. And I can't even turn
the irrigation on because I was told I don't have a backflow certification. So
I have to water by hand or with hoses around Jon of Arc. This is ridiculous.
Please hire people. Give them a decent salary. Fill those positions. Fix the
irrigation. And this is the riverbank that downtown Witchah was. so critical
to expanding the vision of Witchah to our visitors. And today I saw a visitor
with a name badge around her. Headed down there to look at Price Woodard. You
know what she did? She beat a hasty retreat because of how awful it looked.
You can see my pictures on Facebook. I posted them on my Save Century 2
Facebook page and you'll see what it looks like. But I will give kudos where
kudos are due. So Maggie, you joined us when we planted those thousand flowers
and you were the only one who did. So, hats off to you. But if you look at what
it looks like now, you'll think we didn't do a dang thing. Thank you.
» Thank you, Celeste. [applause]
» Council member Shepard. >> Thank you. Uh, city manager uh or
Reggie, I I know that there is a plan in the works for a price. Can you please
update the public on that plan?
And also can you add the caveat of how long that plan has been in place and how
have we communicated that that plan is moving forward?
» So we're in the process right now of looking at doing renovations to a price
woodard. Uh we put a selection committee in place to look at uh respondents to
the RFP. Uh we had approximately 60 uh companies that applied for that. Uh we
reviewed that and narrowed it down and we're beginning discussions again this
week to start looking at next steps with that project. As part of that, it will
get community engagement to see what that space looks like moving forward,
which include addressing some of the issues that's with the irrigation that
they're talking about there, as well as seeing some of the artwork that'll be
incorporated into that project as well. So, we're actually scheduled to meet
this week to discuss the next steps in that project.
» Thank you, Reggie. What has been done to communicate with those interested in a
price winter park and those who are contributing to the vitality and
vibrancy of the area surrounding the park? Okay. So, we have uh have
opportunities to get information out so once we move forward with it that we'll
have community engagement for them to see what that space looks like moving
forward. So, as part of that, once we have the consultant on board to do that,
we will have uh listening sessions and information for the community, provide
feedback on what the envision for the space once we start moving forward with
the project. >> Thank you, Reggie. And I know that we've
met about this and one of the things that I've stressed is that the community
must be engaged to include the volunteers who have contributed so much
to the park. And then when we also talk about the irrigation system, can you
also talk about what discussions are happening from the city lens uh in
regards to that irrigation system? >> Sure. So, one of the challenges that we
have with that, I know that we were in the the the point where we had the
drought previously where we didn't do any improvements to that fountain during
that time frame and we discussed getting those back on board again this year and
the cost to be able to get that functioning and then the work that's
going to be taking place with the master plan. We didn't want to spend dollars
for something that may be replaced in the long run once we do the additional
development. So, that's why it's been a delay with the sprinkler system there
and moving forward. I hear a commitment from you that we will engage the
community about the future of a price winter park. They will be involved, not
just a subset. Everyone will be welcome to the table to share their thoughts on
that and that we actually have funds allocated to invest in that area of the
park. >> That is correct. We will have community
engagement for everyone to have an opportunity to participate in it and
there are dedicated dollars in the CIP for those improvements.
» Thank you. I just hope the public heard that. Council member Johnston Sten.
» Thank you, Mayor. Uh Jennifer Legal, um regards to the uh first speaker, the
Waterwalk Condos. I know several council members reached out to you for a legal
opinion on on that. Uh would you either mind sharing a summary or meet with them
later and share it with them? >> Happy to. Yes.
» Thank you. >> Is is [clears throat]
» would be able to visit with council members or however you'd like to arrange
that. I've asked attorney Magna to share that privately with Waterwalk, but she
shared a memo with us, Lugene, to uh we met this morning. We got the legal memo
back this afternoon, and I've asked our attorney to meet with you privately so
that way we can have those discussions like we've discussed. Thank you so much
for being here. >> Thank you.
» We'll continue with public comment on the Smid.
Well, unfortunat
[clears throat] I'm looking at the ordinance. It says,
"Ordinance number 53-080
published in the Witchah Eagle on August 28th, 2026."
Is that right?
Is it going to be published in three days?
» Sorry, this is five minutes for you to speak. We will ask staff or else it will
count against your time. So >> that's just a a question that I look at
this and it says it's going to be this is this is what you have on your
website. Uh the other thing is uh this is listed as item six. The item before
was listed as item seven. So whoever does the uh numbering should pay
attention.
» City manager, can you please address both items?
Mayor the first item was seven because it was u moved to the agenda out of
order. So it was taken up. It's usually in that category of seven on your
agenda. That's why. And as to the ordinance, um this hearing has a we're
in has is is a strict hearing right now on just the RNR for the SMID. The
ordinance I think he's referencing is part of the budget item. So we're not
there yet. >> Thank you. We will continue with the
public comment. I see none. We will close public comment
on the RNR for the SMID. We'll bring it back to the bench.
» Council member Shepard. >> Thank you. I would recommend that we
close the public hearing record, approve the resolution to exceed the revenue
neutral rate for the self-supported municipal improvement district SMID,
conclude the public hearing, and authorize the necessary signatures.
» I will second that um with comments as well. I know that I've talked to Lugene,
members of the Waterwalk, and this conversation won't end. I think you
brought up really good questions that we should get answers from the state and I
think I've expressed to both of you that this is not going to be solved by today,
but I think you brought up questions that we should look at um regarding
what's in the Smid, what's not in the Smid. Um and I will be happy to go over
the uh legal opinion with um Jennifer as well to figure out a way that we can
make sure that you're represented. But I think you also brought up a really good
point that there's not a a representative um that lives downtown on
the Smid and I think that has to change next time we do appointments. I believe
that's in April of every year um that will do appointments and so that's
something that we'll take in consideration when it comes because you
should have a representative um on that as well. So much more to come and I'm
sure that we will continue conversations.
» We have a motion and a second discussion. I will just add a couple of
points. I will be in favor of this because this is specific to the downtown
area. Uh for many of the residents who are present this evening, um you're not
being taxed this extra levy. However, those in the downtown area to provide a
lot of resources for everyone else in various parts of our community. Uh this
specific tax is to provide added opportunities for downtown Witchaw
including a clean team and I am in favor of that clean team. Uh that is because
the city manager has informed us that again public works and parks do a lot in
our community and this specific area, the downtown area needs extra attention.
Therefore, the downtown Witchaw board has been thoughtful about adding a clean
team specific to the downtown area and I am in favor of that um as I was in favor
of that last year. However, also taken into account what Lugene and various
other property owners who came before us last week to share their feedback about
being a property owner uh a residential property owner. I am looking forward to
the leadership of council member Shepard who represents uh water walk that area
and look forward to them following up with you and moving that uh forward for
the next round. So again um I am also in favor of adding someone from the
residential area into the downtown witch board. With that we have a motion
second. Any further discussion? See none. Madame clerk please open the role.
» Mayor we have to do a verbal vote on this. So, Mayor Woo, what is your vote?
» I, >> Vice Mayor,
» I. >> Uh, Council Member Shepard,
» I. >> Council member Tuttle,
» I. >> Council member Hohisel,
» I. >> Council member Johnston,
» I. >> Council member Ballard,
» I. >> Motion passes seven to zero.
» Madame clerk, please call the next item.
» Revenue neutral rate. City of Witchah 2027 proposed budget.
» Good evening again. Mark Manning with the Department of Finance. Uh to our
next item that we need to discuss is the revenue neutral rate for the city of
Witchaw. Again, we have to have this hearing prior to our discussion on the
budget. So, some of this will be repetitive. Again, the revenue neutral
rate or what we call the RNR is concept approved by the legislature in 2021.
The RNR, if we choose not to exceed it, does not allow any growth in property
tax revenue. Not $1 of additional growth from the prior year. No growth from new
construction, no growth from annexation, no growth from expire expiring tax
abatements, no growth from anything if you uh do not exceed the RNR.
Now, property tax revenue is very important to the financing of the city
of Witchaw. It is the largest revenue source in the general fund. And I would
remind you that the general fund funds mostly public safety. 67% of the general
fund funds public safety. And again, the property tax is a very significant
revenue to the general fund uh which funds that public safety. It's also the
uh primary revenue source to the debt service fund. The debt service fund pays
for the infrastructure costs of public safety, fire stations, police stations,
things like that. and it also funds a significant portion of our maintenance
activities primarily on our building maintenance side. So, property tax
revenues are important uh to our operating and capital improvement
budget. So, this slide shows you the taxes levied last year uh just a little
bit north of $175 million. Uh if we do not exceed the revenue
neutral rate in 2027, that means that the city budget would be built around
the exact same 175,61,325
with no increase. Now, the budget as proposed by the city
manager does keep the mill levy flat on an estimated basis. uh but it would
result in additional property tax revenue between both the debt service
fund and the general fund of approximately $13.1 million.
Again, with a flat mill levy, that means that most of that or all of that revenue
is generated by changes in our assessed valuation. Assessed valuation changes
due to reappraisal. It also changes due to new construction and annexation or a
variety of other factors. But again, the budget is based on an increase in
property tax revenue, but a flat mill levy aligned with last year's mill levy.
Let's look at what other communities do uh with the revenue neutral rate. I just
picked three of our larger counties in Kansas as the example. Seduit County and
Shauny County, Topeka, and Johnson County. Uh you can see that all three of
those counties have voted to exceed the revenue neutral rate each of the last
three years. All the school districts in those
counties have voted to exceed the revenue neutral rate in each of the last
three years. And in Seduit County, uh you can see last year that 17 cities,
including the city of Witchaw, exceeded the RNR. Two cities did not. Uh you may
be interested to know those two cities were Andale, which has a population of
924, and Clearwater, Kansas, which has a
population of 2,682. In other words, some of our smaller
neighbors are able to uh fund their operations apparently without exceeding
the RNR, but uh the vast majority of other municipalities in our area have
and do exceed the RNR. Again, same checklist. We'd need to pro
provide notification, which we have done. We have to hold a hearing prior to
talking about the budget, which is what we're doing right now. And if you choose
to exceed the RNR, you must do so with a roll call vote. Again, final reminder,
your vote on this does not commit you to a level of taxes levied. We'll determine
that when we talk about the operating budget, but it does allow you to
consider a level of taxes levied that is greater [music] than the taxes levied in
2026. So, with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions and the recommended
action is to approve the resolution by roll call vote to exceed the RNR for the
city of Witchaw. >> Thank you, Mark. Questions for staff? I
will start. Um, can you go back to slide number 25?
» Sorry, 28. >> 28.
» Yes, ma'am. >> So, it appears right here that the
budget will increase by 13.156 million. That is a 7.49%
increase. >> Yes, ma'am. Um I have previously asked
um I would be in favor of exceeding revenue neutral if it only captured
inflation which is roughly 3% and new growth uh new construction that is
» can you tell me what that total would have been if it was just inflation and
that new construction? Yeah, we estimated that uh those two uh would
mean growth of about $9 million. U
» and the percentage would be what percent?
» Uh [sighs] 3.8
I believe it was somewhere in the neighborhood just north of 5% if I
remember correctly. You're testing my memory, mayor, but uh I believe it was
somewhere around 5.1 or 5.2%. >> It was 4.5% total. This is from previous
meetings ago. Um I'm just asking this because several people here were not
present during that time. Um and I am still um in that same mindset as I was
last year that the city should only take in inflation and new construction versus
additional assessed valuation growth. I've heard from many residents that have
said you have increased you meaning the counties but not necessarily the county
but the treasurer um the register of deeds rather is really encouraging
people to look at their tax bill and see how much assessed valuation growth has
happened in their homes and people are frustrated seeing that their homes have
increased by double digits but they can't really sell those properties at
those amounts right now. Can you explain the difference between the city, county,
and state levels when it comes to assessed valuations?
» Yeah, each of uh each of those taxing districts have different areas. Now, our
evaluation tends to be very close to Seduit County. I mean, after all, we are
76% of the assessed valuation in Seduit County, but they have some more uh
suburban areas than we do. So, sometimes their assessed valuation will grow a
little bit higher than ours. Sometimes it'll grow a little bit lower than ours,
but it tends to be relatively in line. Of course, USD 259, which is the largest
school district in the Witchaw area, uh, also has a little bit different
characteristics at ours than the city of Witchaw. So, their valuation will grow a
little bit differently than ours. Uh, but all of us generally grow about the
same amount each year other than a few percentage points here and there. So,
» thank you, Mark. >> I see no questions from the bench. We
will now open it up for public comment specifically to the RNR for the city's
budget.
Good evening, Mayor Woo Celestat, Witchaw native, former chief internal
auditor, former bank examiner. IRBs cost the city about the same amount you're
looking for to keep the budget at revenue neutral. It's about 10 million a
year in city funds. It's about 11 million a year in school funds.
Commercial tax incentives like IRBs you hand out are broken. I am suggesting a
one-year moratorum until the commercial tax incentive process gets fixed. When
commercial taxes are not collected, the county loses out, the city loses out,
and the school district loses out. Residential homeowners are then asked to
make up the difference like we're hearing today. We are the ones paying
for tax giveaways given to developers for industrial revenue bonds. And until
the broken given ways are fixed, the city of Witchaw has got to stop posting
misleading statements about how these incentives are not costing taxpayers
because taxpayers do pay for incentives either through a broken IRB process or
because starbond debt agreements require it. The state of Kansas recently
completed an audit on industrial revenue bonds and the results were not good.
Here's what the audit stated. The Sedick County Appraisers Office didn't submit
many IRBX applications to BOD for approval over the past 30 years as
required by state law. 112 were not filed properly. Poor segregation of
duties at the Sedick County Appraisers Office, unclear timelines, and a lack of
state agency oversight allowed this situation to happen. This issue could
affect some Sedick County business property taxes and the quality of BOD's
IRBX data. When I read this audit, I became concerned. Concerned because
residential homeowners just got a huge increase in their property tax bills.
concerned because you are not keeping the budget at revenue neutral, but are
asking for an increase in spending. Hardworking families and seniors
struggle to keep the roof over their head, yet commercial businesses are
getting a free ride because you approved it. I specifically asked a Seduit County
Commissioner and I spoke in several Witchaw City Council meetings if anyone
was concerned about this broken incentive process and I asked if there
was an impact to taxpayers. I was told no, there was no impact to taxpayers. I
was told in emails and phone calls there was no impact to taxpayers. I was told
there was no missed revenue. So I decided to find out for myself. Here's
the list of taxexempt properties for Witchaw. These are the businesses who
pay no property tax or pay reduced property taxes because you have given
them tax perks. I looked at four properties. One of them, Poet Ethanol
Products, has been receiving IRB tax perks since 2004.
They have 24 million in appraised values that are taxexempt. They also received
sales tax exemption on all the furniture and equipment that went into their new
offices at 39th and Web. You gave them nearly everything in tax incentives. I
found unusual fluctuations in property valuations. Every single time I asked
someone in authority if this fluctuation was a mistake, I was told no. There was
nothing unusual about the fluctuations in assessed value. I was told all of the
112 exceptions in the state audit had no problems and I quote to wrongly reduce
the county tax base. But I'm stubborn and I persisted and I asked for a
meeting to discuss the results I found. Last Thursday in a meeting, I was told I
was right. There was a problem. And contrary to what I had been told in
emails and over the phone, there was a fiscal impact to taxpayers. Ethanol
Products LLC owes $119,000 in back taxes. They have 45 days to pay.
I was told, and I quote, "The appraiser made a calculation error in the 2025
value." who will apologize to me for the false statements I was given about this
problem, for the push back I received when I tried to explain the dramatic
swings in oppressed value that I saw. And more importantly, here's the key
that I hope you work with the county on. And I think Mayor Woo, you probably will
reach out to Ryan Batty. I hope so anyway, because I wanted to know what
systems were being put in place to prevent calculation errors in the
future. How do we know there aren't more of the 112 that were put on the system
at a lower assessed value than they should have been? If I wasn't stubborn,
I wouldn't have found this. Property tax exemptions cost the city roughly $6
million per year. Property tax exemptions cost the USD 259 almost 11
million per year. My recommendation is to put a one-year moratorum on any new
tax incentives until this system is fixed. My second recommendation is to
set up a fraud abuse whistleblower hotline with finder fees to encourage
this type of citizen reporting. Thank you.
[applause] Thank you, Celeste. I do have a follow-up question to Mark
Manning. Um, I did send an email to you and the city manager on Saturday
regarding uh what Celeste has posted regarding the poet ethanol owing
$100,000. Can you please uh share where the city um is at in terms of recouping
some of those dollars and how many more of these have not been checked?
» Sure. Uh first of all, let me uh kind of expand on the city's relationship
regarding everything Celeste talked about. Uh the city has virtually nothing
to do with the processes she talked about. Everything she talked about is
done by our our partners over at the county. the city has absolutely nothing
to do with the appraisal of property or with the entry into the system of those
appraised values. I I understand the same thing she did. I understand it was
a data entry error on behalf of a county staff. That's I'm sure regrettable on
their behalf. Uh we're humans. That happens occasionally. But again, the
city has absolutely nothing to do with that. Uh there are about 180,000 parcels
in Seduit County in the city of Witchaw. the city really doesn't have the ability
to audit the valuation of those 180,000 properties. It's really not our
function. Again, it's regrettable. Uh it does impact the city. Uh but that
function is entirely on the county and I'm going to assume all the
correspondence that she mentioned was with county representatives as well. I
wanted to make that clear. Having said that, our understanding is that the
county appraiser has corrected the valuation. Uh our understanding is that
they have uh adjusted the taxes payable uh for this entity and uh they are
coordinating with us to ensure that that entity is aware of that and presumably
pays their taxes and and uh they will take care of the problem that way.
» Do you know how much the city will be owed from that $100,000 that was
mentioned? >> Uh I don't know off top of my head. I
would guess it's somewhere around 29% of the 112 or 118,000 whatever the number
is. I have not seen it specifically but you know based on our mill levy split
probably about 29% of it. So what $35,000 maybe?
» So that money will go into the general fund when it is accepted.
» Uh it'll go to the general fund and the debt service fund. Yes ma'am.
» Thank you Mark. Uh Vice Mayor Glasco. >> Thank you Mark. I know we have a
workshop regarding city incentives at the end of September and so this will
likely be brought up. Could we try to work and maybe this is a question for
the manager to get somebody from the county to be able to answer some of
those questions to make sure that perhaps this problem doesn't happen
again on the county side and how maybe we can be proactive in making sure that
we're also catching it as well if that's a function that we're able to take. But
I think that should be maybe part of the conversation in September.
Council member Shepard.
» Thank you. And I want to echo the sentiments of Vice Mayor Mark. Thank you
for apologizing on behalf of the county, but this is the city. I don't think you
need to take ownership for a mistake that our neighbors uh made and certainly
understand that human error is a situation that occurs often. The
difference is whether or not you take ownership for it. So, I hope that they
do take ownership for it and that they can meet the moment with the previous
speaker who asked for an apology. that to in my opinion is not your apology to
render. Um, and with that being said, city manager, I know that we've
discussed this, but as I've been out engaging the community, not only does
the county need to be at the table, but the board of education needs to be at
the table when we talk about these incentives, as well as um I think we
need to lean on the expertise of our business community. And I would also
like to see before we make a decision on what that economic incentives package
looks like, which I know will be a long-term process, it should go to every
single DAB board so we can get community input as well, so that way we make sure
all factions and stakeholders are a part of that conversation. Thank you.
» Thank you, Mark. We will continue with public comment.
» Hello, Faith Martin. Uh, I've been through this process with county and uh,
I think a lot of people don't realize it's either exceeded or don't. We can't
do percentages or inflation or some of those things. So, I imagine that you
will vote to exceed today, but uh on this I do agree with the mayor that uh
as a as a taxpayer, as a private property owner, you know, I get
appraised 25% higher year-over-year and I don't see any I don't see any benefit
from that personally, and usually I'm here speaking on other people's behalf,
but you know, when we get over year over year exceeding exceeding exceeding to
the point where our budget is so bloated that if we don't exceed, we can't even
pay for basic things that we need. And so I would like to see a plan moving
forward if we know it's going to be specifically 13 million or 12 million or
20 million that we're going over. What is the plan for those specific dollars?
Is it to invest in infrastructure? Is it to pay off debt? I think people get
upset when they don't see what that's, you know, if we're going to take the
full appraised value and go over revenue neutral, just show us what you're using
it for. I think that's what people want to see. I I would hope that you don't,
but I know that it's going to exceed because you budgeted for that 13
million, but I think if we can see what you're doing with that 13 million, um
maybe it wouldn't be as painful. I know it wouldn't be as painful to me. Um if I
know that it's paying for things that I care about. Um so that's what I'd leave
you with. Thank you. >> Thank you, Faith. We'll continue with
public comment.
Uh, Michael Girkin, 1818 Harbor Light, District 6. Um, I guess, you know, I I
agree, Mayor Will, we can't just say, "Oh, good. We get this much money
because we didn't raise the mill levy." Um, I've seen my values go up 21% in two
years. Okay. Um, and what I really don't understand is it's this attitude that we
have to spend, spend, spend. Where is the attitude to get more efficient and
reduce cost? I never see it. We pat ourselves on the back. We didn't raise a
mill levy, but we raising$ 13 more million dollars. Okay? There's no I
don't see an effort to reduce cost. I I was a business owner before I retired.
Every day we were cutting cost. We had to to survive. You know, we didn't raise
our budget every year. We tried to cut it. And I just think that we need to get
more fiscally responsible and figure out how to reduce cost rather than just say,
"Oh, good. We didn't raise a mill levy."
[applause] Thank you, Michael. We'll continue with public comment.
» Hello. Good evening. Zoe Chittik, 13521 East Rose Street. I believe I'm in
District 2. Um, you mentioned that there's a public safety fund within
this. So, I wanted to ask what percentile of this budget with our
public safety fund is spent on flock cameras? How much of that increase is
spent on those? And where is our money going when it goes to public safety?
We have about 190 cameras in Witchah that WPD says they have on their
website. And I'm not sure how familiar folks are, but the subs subscription
cost is about $2,000 to $3,000 per flock camera. So, some quick math there is
that's about half a million. Now, I know there's some active litigation ongoing
and we've had different cities in Kansas, including um Wellsville, decide
to remove their flock cameras. So, that offers a lot of cost savings. Now, do we
have any data on if these cameras are actually helping our city or are they
just skimming daily information from us? The last updates on the transparency
flock safety website on benefits on how they were for the community were in
June. So, what happened in July and August? Did it actually do anything for
the town of Witchah? If Wellsville, Kansas is removing their flock cameras,
when will we? And how much money would we get back to pour into humans in our
public safety resources instead of AI? and would that create overall cost
savings in Witchah that taxpayers would see coming back to us? Thank you. Thank
you, Zoe. We'll continue with public comment.
first time here. Let's see here. My name Good evening, mayor and members of city
council. My name is Jamie Kissinger and I live in district 5. I'm standing here
tonight because I'm deeply discouraged and frankly angry about how this city
treats the workers who actually keep it running. My husband has worked n 39
faithful years for the city and public works as a surveyor laying out the very
roads we drive on. He doesn't stay because he lacks options. Contractors
try to recruit him constantly for far more money. I tell him all the time he
should go, but he stays because he takes pride in serving our community. He goes
out in 100°ree heat and freezing snow, routinely catching and correcting
engineering, designing errors right on the job site so our streets actually lay
out and drain correctly. Yet over the last eight years, workers in the
division has seen only a 20% pay increase, while other city sectors
receive over 29 to 39%. Tell me there isn't something deeply broken in the
system. Our son Oh, here we go. Sorry,
I lost my place.
Um,
our son recently hired on in a different city department and within one year he
is making more money than his father ever nearly for four decades of service.
I'm not asking for pity, but it stings. As Esau Freeman pointed out in last
week's meeting, for every nine new hires, you lose five within 180 days.
Because this isn't a livable wage, the city saves massive amounts using
internal staff over outside contractors. To make matters worse, the money that
was supposed to go towards essential workers was pulled back during COVID
ARPA funds with only a fraction paid out while the rest was redirected into
nonprofit grants. Now, you are proposing to cut merit raises for the frontline
employees making well under $60,000. While this city remains widely topheavy,
let's look at the math. A 3% raise for an employee making $60,000 is $1,800 a
year, barely $100 a month after taxes. A 3% raise for an administrator making
$200,000 is an extra $6,000 a year of taxpayers pockets. Does someone earning
2 thou $200,000 really need another $500 a month while road crews can't keep up
with inflation? Taking raises from essential work workers who keep this
city functioning is unacceptable. This city needs to be audited from top to
bottom. Pay our essential workers what they deserve and stop cutting the bottom
to protect the top. Thank you. >> Thank you, Jamie.
Council member Hoheiser. >> Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Jamie,
for coming up for your first time. It was uh really good job. You did a good
job there. Um I do want to say thank you to all our workers. Um I'm a big
advocate for unions and a lot of that pay discrepancy you see has to do with
uh certain employees in our organization being unionized, but I do I do want to
say that we I do think we have ground to make up with uh non-unized workers in
our in our city. um we need to treat everybody and give them the give them
what they're worth essentially. So I do appreciate you and your husband and
that's something I think we're going to be working on over this next year. So
thank you for coming up and speaking. >> Council member Tuttle.
» Thank you. Um thank you Miss Kissinger for being here. Really appreciate it.
Appreciate your comments. I do just want to clarify that not everyone in this
body has asked for merit uh cuts. Only specific members have. Um, and we also
did an employee survey and we heard loud and clear that that is not something
that employees are interested in. I've said now during two of these meetings
that there will be no way that I am supportive of cutting merit raises for
employees. All of us who who work in our community know that it costs more to
hire and train an employee than it does to retain an employee. and cutting merit
ra merit raises for our city employees who work so hard every day to provide
effective and efficient service will mean that we will lose good employees.
They will do exactly as your husband could and go to another another
opportunity. So, um I think I've stated from this bench twice, but I'll say it
three times. I would be in no way supportive of cutting merit raises for
City of Witchah team members. Thank you. [applause]
Thank you, Jamie, for attending the meeting. We had a conversation this
afternoon, and I really appreciate not just your son's service, but your
husband's service to the city, as well as the 3,100 employees for the city of
Witchah. For context, I gave her that information as well. The top 25 earners
at the city of Witchah get paid between $298,000
to $181,120.
Those are the top 25 earners. Last week, 627 of the city's 818
nonUN employees responded to an employee survey. rate of pay was their highest
priority, followed by merit pay. Tuition reimbursement ranked last.
I appreciate their feedback in the service of all $3,100 city employees. To
be clear, the proposal I was considering for tonight would not have affected
employees earning less than $60,000 a year. After hearing concerns about the
broader idea, I narrowed it to pausing merit increases for one year for
eligible non-union employees earning more than $60,000
in light of the city's difficult budget condition, which includes $8 million in
budget shortfalls for 2028 to 2030. It would not have reduced existing
salaries or affected the separate general pay increase. Staff estimated
that the one-year pause could have saved approximately $600,000.
I have listened to those concerns and the proposal does not have council
support, so I will not pursue it. For context, Cedric County's proposal is 3%
general pay adjustment plus a 1% scale bump, whereas the city's proposal is a
2.5% general pay adjustment plus an additional 2.5% merit raise. The US rate
of inflation last year was 2.7%. That does not resolve the larger
structural challenge. More than 75% of the general fund supports employee pay
and benefits. The proposed budget relies on reserves, $3 million to be exact, and
an additional shortfall is projected for the following year. The city manager and
human resources must comprehensively examine compensation,
wage compression, frontline retention, staffing, vacancies, and management
structure. The council must then be willing to make responsible budget
choices that value essential employees and protect taxpayers.
I am reading this because I shared that before coming to this council meeting.
And so again, Jamie, thank you for your thoughtful conversation. Um, and again,
thank you to the 3,100 employees and those who are not represented by unions.
We do appreciate your service and there should be pay that is commeasurate to
the value that you do create for the city. And so I can see that pay is the
most important thing that individuals value. But the lowest priority was a new
program that the city manager proposed, which is a new tuition reimbursement
program at $300,000. So I will be um asking for the delay of
creating a new program for tuition reimbursement in the following vote.
Council member Shepard. Thank you, mayor, and thank you to the speaker who
spoke courageously about the importance of paying people what they're worth,
especially in this economy where people are worried about how they're going to
put gas in their tank, food on the table, and be able to provide for their
family. I want to also uh say that, and I said this last week, that when we even
look at the data, 627 employees, non-UN employees out of 800, 76.7 response
rates statistically significant. As the mayor mentioned, uh not only rate of pay
but followed immediately by merit pay, insurance coverage and retirement was a
top priority. But again, as we keep spitting out these data points, we also
need to disagregate the data. Uh for example, we keep saying that tuition
reimbursement ranked the lowest amongst the poll. But we also need to
disagregate that data to figure out why that is. meaning does majority of our
workforce already have an education that they don't feel the need to go back to
college for or what is the average salary of that particular household
that's working for the city of Witchah. I know that the mayor did make the
recommendation to potentially freeze salaries for anybody making 60,000 and
above. I would argue that that is still very hard on a lot of Americans in
Witchens today who are making $60,000. Uh we hear from the United Way all the
time about the Alice report and that there is a such thing as the working
poor and that people are relying on that next paycheck and they're one emergency
away from ending up in one of our homeless facilities. And so I feel very
passionate about this. I think it's one thing to say we value our employees.
It's another thing to ensure that the policies and the actions align with
that. I'm not sure if we've done a good job. Um, I know that our city manager
from the moment that he has walked in has been very clear that he wants to
enhance the culture and morale in the space. And I think that that does
include not only employee benefits, but also making sure that we are honoring
our employees in a way that respects the dignity, value of not just them, but
their whole family. It's why I want paid family leave because when a person is
experiencing a loss in their family, uh being an elderly parent or bringing a
child into this world, they should be able to step away to spend their time
with that family and have pay associated with that to uh recognize the value of
the whole person. And there's so many more things that we can do. U my
commitment is to make sure that we get there. I think tonight you're going to
hear some conversations about the start of that for our employees, but to me
that is not even the the surface to be completely honest. We got to do much
more. Thank you for speaking up for your husband. Thank you for speaking up for
all the employees who don't feel that they have both the ability to speak
publicly because the the culture of fear is real sometimes. And also thank you
for speaking up for the people who are currently out on the streets right now
working for the city of Witchaw and cannot be here.
» C Vice Mayor Glasco. >> Thank you, Mayor Jamie. I'll keep it
very simple. I agree with you and I said that from the bench last week and for
any employee listening right now, you're valued. We want you here. We want to
hear your concerns and you can come directly and also express those as well.
And we want to know that this wants this place is where we want you to work and
show your talents as well. So did not support a cut to merit pay and I thank
you for standing up for a lot of the employees who I've heard similar
sentiments for as well. >> We'll continue with public comment.
Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's good to see each of you. I know you as
individuals with high integrity, and the things you're working with this evening
are not easy. This revenue neutral vote is going to be a train already out the
station. I know you're going to make that hard decision and vote yes. So, I'm
not going to belver the issue a whole lot about can we lower property taxes.
That is obviously not going to happen. Each of our government agencies
continues to add to their budget and I'm not sure what to possibly do to stop it.
But uh I do have a proposal today that I've worked on for the last couple of
years and shared with you by email to help some of the people in our community
that are homeless. They have no place to go to the
restroom. And it's a very difficult decision for every single one of them.
Do I talk to the business that I go into? Do I get them to use, you know,
allow me to use the restroom? This is something that we all need to take care
of obviously in our own lives, but for our homeless, there are about 700 of
them in our community that are in a very tough bind. Now, this isn't my first
time to talk about this. I actually brought this proposal two years ago.
I've sent a number of emails. I've sent you links to other cities, parts of the
world that this is common. I've traveled much of the world. I've been in India.
I've been in Russia. been in in Europe. They have public facilities for people
who are visiting. They have homeless just like we do, but
they also have places for people to take care of their daily needs with having to
be shephered around and and and end up going to the restroom out there on the
public street. This is embarrassing. It's a tragedy. We need to pe treat our
our friends with dignity and respect. So I ask you to please do this rather than
raise the whole issue of okay this is an additional expense. Let's talk about
putting it under the second light budget that you have a million dollars for.
I've done budgeting for 50 years. I know that money is funible. You have an
opportunity to take the funds you already are going to appropriate for
that facility and say all right let's put that $50,000 that I'm requesting in
that budget. Make sure that happens. Make sure that the uh public works
people pick up the containers every day or two whenever they need to have them
recycled. But the actual equipment, I've sent you an email. It's only $5,000
for three toilets. Those toilets can serve as a major major opportunity for
people to feel like they're respected in our community and we don't have to worry
about them being chased around, put in jail for public indecency or having the
uh businesses having to continually say no, you can't use my facility. This is
something that can stop. Now, I want to take a second opportunity
while I'm here at the at the microphone to mention we have a major problem with
diseased trees in our city. The drought and disease is killing many of our trees
on private property as well as public. And I don't know if it's already in your
budget someplace, but somehow we need to work with homeowners and businesses and
be able to say, "All right, if you've got a tree down, let's find a way to get
that wood off of that property rather than just have it lay out there for
years and years and accumulate. This is something that we can do as a
public private combination that will help all of us clean up our city and
make sure that these disease trees are actually removed and we can get on to
taking care of our own. If you have any questions about that, I'd be glad to
talk to you more about it. On my own property, I have four trees down. I'm
cutting them up with chainsaws. That's really uh something I'm able to do, but
a lot of other people aren't. So, I ask you to find a way to make sure that the
city is involved in helping us remove that wood and get it out of the
community. I thank you for your time. God bless you.
» Thank you, Walt. We'll continue with public comment.
Good evening. My name is Zach Wehan and I live in District 1.
City Council, Mayor, City Manager, thank you for the work that you've done on
this budget. It's much appreciated. Property taxes seems to be one of the
hot topic issues in the state of Kansas that's generating frustration. It spans
generations. Young people, retirees on fixed incomes are all looking for
solutions. So, your vote with this budget matters
beyond Witchah. I believe how we handle property taxes here can show the rest of
Kansas what a better path forward can look like. Because regardless of what
other cities are doing, I don't think Kansas has solved its property tax
issue. So, here's my ask. I'm asking city, excuse me, I'm asking the city
council and mayor and the city manager to cap property taxes at inflation and
new construction, no matter how far appraisals rise or whether the levy ends
up getting set. That way, every citizen knows that there's a ceiling on how far
taxes can go up. In Witchaw, we have firsttime homeowners who save for years
to afford their house, and now their tax bill climbs a little higher
year-over-year. On the other end, we have retirees who
have paid off their homes, who raised their whole family in that house, and
are watching the same bill climb year after year. This creates a tension for
our people and a cap at inflation and new construction fixes this tension. It
hands our people predictability and predictability is the ground that growth
is built on. When a family or a business can count on what next year's bill looks
like, they can plan, they can invest, and they can stay. Because evaluations
here climb this year, that same rate pulls in 13 million more than it did
last year without a single vote to raise anyone's rate. That's unpredictable
growth. How much will it be next year? Now, a cap at inflation and new
construction raises a fair question. What happens to the essential services
we count on? I believe a cap does not starve their work. It disciplines it.
And discipline is what protects protects predictability itself. A cap means our
budget is built on discipline. And a disciplined budget is one that taxpayers
can put their trust in and it holds up when the next hard year comes.
And here is why I believe Witchaw specifically is the right place to lead
on this. When the state finally picks this up in the next legislative session,
they have a very difficult version of this job. They have to create one rule
that fits every city in Kansas. And that tends to work better on paper than in
practice. A cap at inflation and new construction
says in writing that growth is our strategy. that as a city, growth is how
we continue to get to the next level, not another year of squeezing the same
taxpayers just a little bit harder. And this city council and mayor has worked
hard for the city to grow. Thank you. The businesses you've welcomed, the
development you've championed, I'm asking you to keep going and cheering
you on along the way. When growth is the front and center
strategy of the city, it's what turns a cap from a one-year gesture into an
actual promise that we pass forward of keeping our taxes low. And finally, my
last ask is for the people in this room and every Witchaw citizen, for the
people online, if you guys can finally hear, if we as citizens are serious
about wanting growth in our city, it doesn't just happen because of the team
sitting in front of this chamber. A city grows because of one thing. It's people.
You and your family make up our communities, businesses, schools. And
when you also choose to invest in your neighborhood, your place of work, your
home, invest in Witchah, that is what makes a city thrive and grow. So I'm
asking you to make the same commitment that I'm asking this council to make
tonight. A commitment to grow together. And as a proud Witchaw resident, I'm
asking you to put a cap at inflation and new new construction in place to show
the rest of Kansas what property tax leadership looks like. Thank you.
» Thank you, Zach. We'll continue with public comments.
» I see no one else from the public who would like to speak. Thank you to the
seven. Oh, we have one more.
Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I did not come tonight with anything
prepared. I just wanted to come and hear what all is being said, but after seeing
the proposal of what my taxes are going to be being retired now and how much
they're going to raise them, I have deep concern for that as well as many other
people around this city. And I don't know what it's going to take
out of the council, out of the mayor, out of the whole
body of people that control and are overseeing our budget and those kind of
things. But I look at our streets, how terrible they are, all and I look and I
see the commercial buildings and the residential and the taxes that are
coming from all the people. and I see the the poor uh condition of lots of
things and I I ask where are all of our tax dollars going
where that's a lot of money
and so I am begging the council I'm begging all city officials if you are in
a position to be able to look into
where our dollars are going and I think all of this should be transparent to me
as a taxpayer and every other citizen of the of the city here. We should all know
exactly where those dollars are going. You all have to have accountability to
me, the taxpayer, and all of us where our money's going. And to hide things or
do anything like that is totally out of line. It should not be happening. And
you all need to humble yourselves and treat everybody the way they should and
need to be treated and make sure that you guys are taking
care of us. We rely upon all of you that are in these positions to take care of
us and to do the right thing. And I'm not seeing that happen here. I haven't
seen it for a long time. I've been in Witchah all my life,
67 years. And the things that I'm seeing here, the last five to six, they appall
me. Where are the dollars going, guys?
There's got to be accountability to me and to the whole city. There's got to
be. I'm retired now. I'm on a limited budget
and I expect for you guys to help me maintain things to I I mean, I'm much
more well off than a lot of the citizens here in Witchah. I don't know how these
people on minimum wage are making it as we see these tax dollars keep going up.
So I say again, humble yourselves, do the right thing, and look into where
these dollars are going and give me and every other Witchah resident
some answers on where they are. You guys have accountability and you you owe it
to us. you took your oath to come in and do what you're supposed to do and that
oath should be taken very seriously because it is affecting a lot of people
a lot. So, I'm asking you guys to not approve
raising the what is DN the RNR? Is that what it is?
To leave it alone. Take a look at things. Get a good get a
good grip on what's going on and show some accountability and win the support
from the Witchah people. I think you talk about this wanting the the citizens
to work with you, then do the right thing and make it right and we'll all
work with you. Okay. So, thank you very much. Thank you, mayor, for what you're
doing and thank you council members for what you're doing. Let's do the right
thing. Okay. >> Can you please share your name and your
district? >> Yes. Grant Delmar, District 4. I'm a
former District 4 advisory council member.
» Thank you very much, Grant. >> Thank you very much, guys.
We'll continue with public comment.
I see no one else from the public who would like to speak on the revenue
neutral rate for the city's budget. Thank you to the eight speakers who
spoke before the council this evening. We will now bring it back to the bench.
Um as my intention is not to vote in favor of revenue neutral, um I will not
be making that motion today. Vice Mayor Glascop.
» Mayor with a motion to close the public hearing record, approve the resolution
to exceed the revenue neutral rate for the city of Witchaw and conclude the
public hearing and authorize the necessary signatures. Um, with the
understanding that again from Mark Manning's uh comments earlier, if
we take one additional dollar, we have to exceed this. And I haven't heard a
proposal from anybody at this bench on how to cut $13 million from the budget.
Um I think there is legitimate concerns about the amount that we bring in but
that is not uh for this discussion. That's for the budget discussion to
happen in a second. So with that motion >> second and I agree with everything you
said. >> Motion second. Discussion. See none.
Madame clerk can you please open the role by voice?
» Yes. Mayor Woo. What is your vote? >> Nay.
» Vice Mayor Glasco. >> I.
» Council member Shepard. >> I.
» Council member Tuttle. I. >> Council member Hohheisel.
» I. >> Council member Johnson.
» I. >> Council member Ballard.
» I. >> Motion passes 6 to one.
» Madame Clerk, please call the next item.
» 2027 annual operating budget and 2027 to 2036 capital improvement program.
Good evening, Mayor and Council. Dennis Marsall, city manager. It's a pleasure
to be before you again tonight on budget adoption night. We've had several
meetings where we've talked about the budget. Um we have here what's on the uh
proposed budget tonight. We're going to walk through how when we put this budget
together. Uh, one I want to highlight the department directors certainly their
work and the finance team and so putting together a city budget one that's really
around the hund 825 million range is certainly got a lot of complex um facets
to it when you talk about debt service talk about revenue neutral there's a lot
of parts to help bring the community along to understand how a municipal
budget comes together we have certainly tried to be transparent um all past
budgets and this proposed budget budget's been online. Um, and so we have
put this out there so people can see line by line what departments are
funded, excuse me, funded in what manner and what line item. But as we put this
budget together, I first presented this in July 14th of this summer. And it was
a reflection of many factors certainly with meetings with department directors
and a review of the many budget requests that they submitted. As I went through
it from my review, we looked at wants and needs. We certainly looked at
service delivery levels, inflation impacts, current staff workloads, and
past staffing and efficiency adjustments among others. Um, what you've seen in
this budget is recommendations for more staffing, particularly when you look at
the fire department, but it's been a judicious request in some of the other
areas that have been noted in the budget presentation
as we looked at this. Also, when you start out with a budget and you look at
what's ahead in the coming year, we've got to honor our labor agreements. And
so, when you talk about revenue neutral, part of that is impacted by the more
than five labor agreements that we have to manage and if they have cost
escalations for increase in pay, salary, wages, and merit. Those all were factors
as we put this budget together. Um certainly as we looked at that again as
we said what are the priorities of the city council we looked at such things as
preventive maintenance. We've heard about tree care. When you think about
running everything from animal shelter to zoning services in a 400,000 top 50
city there's a lot of wants and needs. But we also looked at our existing labor
and commodity contracts. And certainly my focus in my first eight months is
looking at our workforce and employee morale. So given all that, this has been
some of the thoughts and some of the inputs that go into putting together the
budget recommendation that I've put since July 14th. Um, as we've
highlighted on here, we're aligned with the city's strategic plan and it's
funded with a stable mill levy rate. Um, we do have engagement as we've talked
about. We even did community town halls, seven specifically. This is again our
last budget hearing. We've had one on July 14th, August 4th, August 18th, and
August 25th. So, council and I could hear from the citizens as this budget
was presented on July 14th. And as we highlighted, this budget is available
presently at witchaw.gov/budget.
So, we do talk about it being balanced. We do have healthy fund balances or
savings that are associated with it. Um, but we do recognize future funding
concerns. part of the conversation that you're having now and that we've looked
at in 2027, 2028, and 2029. How are we sustaining our labor contracts? How are
we sustaining just like families around the kitchen table, the cost of
inflation? Whether you think about your own insurance costs when you see things
go up, the cost of gas, when you look at what a road mile cost 5 years ago versus
what the city's paying today. All these are different factors that continue to
impact the city's budget going forward. But more importantly,
we've said it before, what the state does impacts us here at the local level.
There are certainly last year during the last legislative session were several
proposals in the state legislature about capping property taxes.
That again seems to be a conversation that will be entertained come January at
the new legislative session. that will clearly have an impact as we go forward.
So, how do we think about that? How do we plan for that based upon the variety
of proposals that were presented last year and might be re um presented again
in the upcoming legislative session. Um but again, our focus on our core
priorities as I talk about, yes, we do talk about wants and needs, but what are
the core functions and priorities that this community wants for a service level
that witchens want to have? thinking about our tree canopy and different
things that we've heard about. Thinking about our parks and recreation and
services and programs and the condition of our parks um and plantings and
different things that we've heard from. As we put this together, I want to kind
of wrap up my section and invite our director of finance, Mark Manning, up.
As I said, this is roughly $825 million budget. Um you'll see here where the
city dollars come from. Property taxes as was highlighted earlier and then
sales taxes and other sources are highlighted in that graph. And then
where the dollars go. As we talk about being a municipality, we are staff
heavy. It takes people to provide services. It takes people to do our road
work engineering to run our parks and recreation to maintain our trees to
maintain our utility system. It takes staff intensive and certainly public
safety. As we said or I said earlier, this budget has a proposal for new
firefighters to staff a new fire station. I've also got some limited
requests or recommendations in there for our police department. Um, we've also,
as you take into account, we do have some vacancies. The good news is is
we've been filling the positions in our police department. We have been filling
some of our positions that were vacant in the last year or two. That again has
a full cost effect that we've got to account for in our funding and our
wages. And certainly I can't leave this podium without recognizing the
employees. You've heard certainly from the survey that we've done this week. Um
you've heard from my focus that I do have a recommendation in here for a new
uh benefit. It is called the tuition assistance program. Understanding not
everyone will be interested in that, but I do think it's something to help invest
in our employees. We're also looking at our health program in terms of thinking
about short-term disability being offered. There's a way to help address
some people's interests and needs for family leave time and how we might get
at that at a different way. So, there's a whole bunch of strategies that we can
put together that not not nearly full cost on the taxpayer. And so, we do look
for these efficiencies, but also recognizing the value of our employees
certainly from public safety on down. As I said, when you go from A to Z in city
services, that's 3,100 people who are providing for the 400,000 people in the
city of Witchah. Um, then when you look where the dollars go, certainly salary
and benefits, as we've highlighted, contractuals to do some of our work with
support, but a lot of it's debt service. We have that mentioned here on the pie
chart, how we do pay for our bills and for our debt service. Um, as you look,
we say it is balanced. Um certainly we said planned that we would take $3
million from the stabilization fund. So again that is incorporated into this.
It's been planned from our savings account um as we think about going
forward for some contract um negotiations with our unions to honor
those pay increases to think about how we address the pay for those who are not
in unions. Um and then you also see here we break it out by general fund. As I
said, we probably have nearly 30 different funds when you look at the
airport fund, the general fund, the transit fund, the uh utilities fund. So,
the general fund is what funds most of general government when you think about
public safety. And so, we focus on this one the most and a lot. And you see it's
352 million of our full budget, 825 million. So, here's the recommendations.
This is again as I said I met with department directors reviewed the wants
and needs looked at the goals of the council and put together my view and the
priorities going forward. These are some of the um big items that um we've uh
evaluated and included going forward knowing that the list is much much
longer for requests but this is again what I thought was fiscally responsible
based upon citizen input and department input as well for service delivery
levels. I will say there are things on here that do have increases that we
didn't call out. Um for instance, supporting um our transit with some new
transit route support. Um you'll see in here we have again limited uh positions
for a community service representative and a cultural service development
specialist. So some limited positions that I felt were meritorious to be
included in my recommendation. And then certainly as we talked about the fire
station 23 staffing is included in here and some other support as we talked
about the tuition reimbursement as well. So that kind of gives the overview of
what I looked at when I put this budget together. And so certainly council
members, this is one of the key issues that you get a vote on every year and
how you set the policy and what we communicate as priorities is all
reflected in this budget. And I take that very seriously as I put my
recommendation forward. And I I know I've been asked and even people in the
community have said, "Well, how would you help the mayor and council reduce
the use of the stabilization fund?" Or, "I know there's other priorities about
having property tax relief. There's priorities in having millage reduction.
There are different things about different programs or more benefits that
people want. What I have said from the very beginning on July 14th is if you
want to make some cuts or reductions, I would start from what I added as new.
And so these two pages that I just highlighted are what I consider the new
things added to the budget. And so that's been my recommendation. I even
highlighted um in a memo to council this week about we do have funds for $300,000
is what we've called contingency that we've used in different manners over
previous years. That is again some more opportunity if you want to reprogram
that, eliminate that, whatever it may be. But I believe that my recommendation
is fiscally responsible, but certainly understand there are different competing
priorities. And so as you continue tonight for your deliberations, you'll
certainly hear from citizens and Mr. Manning in a second, but I think that um
the information you have in front of you gives you enough framework to work with
to meet your policy goals and objectives so we can come to an adopted [snorts]
budget tonight. I will now ask Mr. Manning to come forward as our director
of finance.
[snorts]
Hello again. Uh I want to go a few other items in a
little bit more detail. some of the recommendations in the budget. Uh, one
of the priority areas that we're trying to address in this budget is
homelessness. Uh, we've talked about this a lot in the past, so I won't
belabor it. Uh, but the budget would set aside an estimated $5 million from the
permanent reserve to address homelessness solutions. Again, what we
would envision is setting that money aside so that it could be allocated
based on the prioritization of the city council. uh but this recommendation
would provide a amount of money uh to address those challenges that we face.
Let's talk about employee compensation and I want to use this slide to address
some of the comments we heard earlier. I think I can wrap up a couple of those
with this slide here. Uh we noted that the general fund uh would receive about
13 million additional property tax revenue. Uh this slide here shows you
that we have about $9 million budgeted for employee compensation. that is
increases in employee pay for those that uh do not have union contracts passed
this year, which is most employees. Uh we do have a pay structure that provides
cost of living raises and merit adjustments for those that are eligible.
Those eligible employees are the ones that are not at top wage and who uh
perform within certain standards. So $9 million basically of that 13 million is
to address some of our challenges in employees which was spoken about
earlier. We also have health insurance and
pension contributions that we need to make. Uh those are pretty sizable. We
talked about those last week, so I won't belabor that point. Uh but this city has
a or this uh budget has a lot of money invested in our employees.
I talked about the mill levy rate a little bit during the RNR presentation,
but I wanted to show this slide again. Again, this proposed budget is based on
an estimated mill levy that would be exactly equal to the mill levy for 2026.
that is 32.340 mills. Now reminder, uh we do not set
the mill levy rate. Seduit County sets that and they don't set it until
November. Uh it's based on finalization of assessed valuations again of which we
have no control. Uh so I am telling you what the estimated mill levy rate would
be based on the city manager's proposed budget. uh it's likely it would be up or
down very slightly from that amount, but just recognize that the final mill levy
rate probably will be slightly different than what we're proposing here today.
But again, we are proposing a budget with a estimated flat mill levy rate.
So, what's that mean to a taxpayer? Uh if you own a home in Witchaw valued at
$200,000 just uh to pick a a point uh about 29% of the property taxes that you
pay are going to come to the city of Witchaw. Uh you also have to pay
property taxes to the county which is roughly 24% and to the school district.
Uh this represents USD 259 which is the bulk of the city of Witchaw. That's
about 46% of your property tax bill. In other words, City Witchaw is a fraction
of your property tax bill. Uh that homeowner of a $200,000 home would pay
approximately $744 a year in city property taxes uh to the city. Uh
so let's look at the proposed budget just on a uh kind of big big picture
basis here. Uh the proposed budget was somewhere in the neighborhood of 352
million. That expenditure growth in 2027 is shown on this slide at 1.8 8%.
However, in the interest of transparency, I did want to point out uh
that with centralization, we're moving some costs off the general fund. Uh so
if you unwind that, uh the net effect would be a general fund increase in 2027
of somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.6% or relatively consistent what the
inflation rate is. But again, nominally, it's increasing at 1.8. But again, uh to
be fully transparent, the impact of of centralization actually reduces what uh
in reality would be a growth rate of somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.6%.
Uh also note the asterk on this slide. As the manager noted, uh we are
balanced. Uh we are balanced because this budget is based on using $3 million
from our stabilization reserve in 26 and 27.
Let's look at that real quick. We're going to come into the year somewhere
around $45 million in round numbers. Uh based on the proposed budget, we would
use about 5 million of that to set aside for homelessness solutions. And we would
use about 9 million of that over the next three years to stabilize the city
budget, which would mean we would come out in 2028 with somewhere around 31
million in stabilization reserve funds. Now, reminder, uh this is our
stabilization reserve. Our general fund also has a reserve which is more
relevant for us in a few areas. Uh that reserve would remain somewhere in the
neighborhood of $52 million. Reserves of course are very important.
Uh we would still remain well reserved. Uh but we would utilize a little bit of
our stabilization reserve over the next few years.
Let me talk about the CIP very briefly. We've talked about it a lot in the past.
I won't take up much your time on the CIP. CIP is a 10-year plan for community
improvements. you actually will be asked to adopt that today as well. We like to
do them in tandem because they are uh very integrated. Uh the CIP is aligned
to the community investments plan. Uh by the way, statutoily the planning
commission is required to find that our CIP is in conformance with that plan and
I'm happy to report to you that they have made that finding in a meeting last
week. So we are good to go there. CIP is designed to be financially viable. Think
of the CIP as a three-year action plan and maybe a seven-year conceptual plan.
So, the first three years are things that will come to you for uh project
approval for. We have relatively specific plans. The seven years uh past
that are more conceptual ideas, issues that departments see that we might need
to invest capital uh improvement funds on. Maybe the plans aren't fully fleshed
out, but that's kind of the way to look at the CIP. We tend to focus more on the
first three years. Here's the pie charts for the CIP. It's about a $2.9 billion
plan. Vast majority of that money comes from our water and sewer utility.
They're very capital intensive. You can see the geo at large slice. That is the
property tax funded slice. That is somewhere in the neighborhood of uh
380ome million dollars I believe. I want to talk about property tax relief
program briefly. We have talked about that in the past. Uh so I will go over
that again. Uh uh we did use a program like this in 2024 and we're certainly
able to replicate that type of program if that's the will of the body. Uh we
would uh recommend designing it around the state of Kansas's homestead property
tax exemption program. That makes it much easier for our applicants. It makes
it much easier for us to administer. Uh as I mentioned last week, uh we don't
know exactly what the cost would be, but we would guess that somewhere around
$100,000 would probably fund the program. Uh we would suggest you that if
this is something of interest to you uh that you approve the allocation of the
funding and direct staff to come back with a more detailed plan. We'd be happy
to do that and then we would present a plan to you for formal approval at a
later date. That'll give us a little bit of time to make sure we can structure it
based on the prioritization and the and the desired outcomes.
So our recommended action tonight again tonight is the hearing in which we will
ask you to adopt the budget. Uh so let me go through some of the recommended
actions and explain the actions we need you to take. Before I do that though, I
wanted to take a brief second and talk about uh some of the statutory
requirements. We set today is our hearing date. Uh today ends at 11:59
p.m. which is relatively rapidly approaching. Uh we would recommend to
you as soon as I'm done presenting that you open the public hearing. We would
also recommend to you that when the public comment period is over that you
formally close the public hearing before you engage in your discussion. Uh that I
think would make us more statutoily compliant because again we are required
to hold the public hearing today on August uh 25th. So you know who knows
how late we'll go tonight. Uh, but I think we would maybe reduce some of our
legal liability if you would have the public hearing as soon as I'm done and
then at after the last speaker close the public hearing and then we can stay well
past midnight if that's your desire and take all the questions that you want.
Uh, I'm sorry, mayor, I forgot to address one other question I was going
to talk about on I'm going to back up to this slide right here. Uh, I talked
about the growth right here. Uh I I was upstairs earlier and I understand there
was a speaker that asked about growth in our library system. So I thought I would
address that briefly because I understand that question came up. Uh the
library budget in 2027 uh does grow about 14% actually. Uh but there's a
couple reasons for that uh which are really not reflective of the financial
commitment to the library. Again, we have a contingency that the city manager
recommended 375,000, but we also as part of our centralization effort, we are
allocating our cost to the general fund departments. Uh those two are really
more technical adjustments. Uh so if you take those out, the library budget in
2027 to answer the uh public comment question earlier tonight is closer to
about 5 a.5%. Uh library has some challenges. uh they have a lot of
technology a lot of their software costs did increase over the last uh year or
so. Uh they also have a very beautiful and large building which we have to
ensure and building insurance rates have gone up uh materially. So both of those
had an impact on the library budget but in answer to the question library budget
did go up approximately 5 and a half% or is expected to go up about 5 and a half%
in 2027. So, back to your recommended actions
today. Again, we need you to adopt the proposed budget as amended if you choose
to amend it, but we need you to adopt the budget. We also have some ordinances
uh that you read for the first time on July 14th. Tonight is the night in which
you will read those uh for the second time. And uh we need you to take care of
that. Uh there's a couple of funds that we are projecting we might spend a
little bit more than what we suggested last year. The reason on both those are
they're activity based. Sometimes activity is higher. That means revenue
is higher and expenditures higher. Uh and that's essentially two in the
affordable housing fund. Kind of more of a technical adjustment. Finally, uh we
would ask you to authorize us to take the necessary steps to implement your
recommendations. Uh implementing the budget is based on state statutes and a
variety of state forms that are very complicated and difficult to fill out
sometimes. So, uh, sometimes it's necessary for us to make adjustments to
make sure we can complete those forms correctly and in in in adherence with
the budget that you choose to adopt. Uh, we would also ask you to adopt the
proposed CIP. And then finally, and we need to have
this done in a separate motion, uh, we would ask you to approve the use of
local funds uh, derived from property taxes within our corporate limits that's
allocated to Witto State University. Uh you may remember that the county levies
a mill and a half for Witchaw State University. We do not. The county does.
Uh but the city uh has a say in how they spend 75% of that funding. And uh so
it's it's just kind of a formality that we approve their expenditure of funds.
Uh since we have a role in in the funding of WSU through the countywide
mill levy. That's all I have. Uh that's the end of
our presentation. So, mayor, I would recommend that you open the public
hearing and take public comment and then close the public hearing.
» Thank you, Mark, and thank you, city manager. Uh, to be in compliance, to
have public hearing first instead of council members asking questions and
then public hearing and then um motions, we will open it up for public comment
first.
Kevin Mcuarter, District 5. Good evening, Mayor Woo and city council
members. I'm Kevin McQuarter, current president of the Witchah Library
Foundation Board and past president of the Witchah Library Board. I am here on
behalf of the foundation this evening regarding the 2027 city budget and how
your decisions will affect the operations of the Witchah Library branch
system. The foundation has been watching this budget process since the beginning.
We feel we are partners with the city since we both provide support to the
library. Our goal is the same as yours. Support the effort to provide and
operate a worldclass library system for all witchans. The foundation is here
this evening to offer its assistance to the council to ensure that the goals of
the steering committee of the master plan for the city of Witchah's branch
library system adopted by the library board of directors and endorsed by the
Witchah City Council on June 11th, 2019 are accomplished. But first, I'd like to
take a moment to provide some history as to how we got here. Because back in
2013, none of you were on the bench. I was appointed to the library board in
2013 when the central library was located on Main Street. There had been
years of community discussion regarding renovations to address the extension
extensive functional and ADA issues or to build a new one. In 2015, as
president of the library board, I was appointed to the foundation board. And
it was then that a member of the city council approached me and foundation
member Don Barry with the idea that if the foundation would commit to raise
$2.5 million, he believed he could secure four votes to get the new library
built. The city had set aside in previous CIPs 40 million for a new
library. We agreed and said that if he could get the votes, the foundation
would commit not only to the 2.5 million, but we would double it to 5
million. A few months later, the votes were secured, but the commitment by the
city was reduced to 30 million, resulting in a facility that would be
about 20% smaller than originally planned. The foundation was
disappointed, but kept working. But we eventually raised $8.8 8 million for
what is now the Advanced Learning Library. It opened in June of 2018 and
was 29% funded by the foundation through the generosity of hundreds of Witchans
and businesses who all believed in a strong Witchita's public library system.
Soon thereafter, our previous city manager suggested we needed a new master
plan for the branch libraries as the quality of resources in each of the six
districts was nowhere near equal. And in fact, district number three had no
library branch at all. The manager put together a dedicated committee and after
two years of hard work, the branch master plan was created. The result is
that district 3 now has a strong strong branch presence with the Walters branch
and all other branches were renovated and extensively expanded. The master
plan was completed in 2025. The foundation is proud to have worked
with you by contributing another $2 million in our most recent capital
campaign to see that through. That is the history. But here is the challenge
facing this council. The branch master plan increased our overall square
footage by over 40,000 square feet. Now that all the upgraded facilities are
available for our residents, it will take additional funding to properly
staff. The city council and the library board both knew this would be the case
when the plan was adopted. And let's be clear, one of the goals of the plan was
to provide additional hours of service to the public because most of the
branches were wolffully understaffed and not open to our residents for enough
hours a week to fill the the library's mission. That mission is the same as
yours. The foundation is concerned that the council may not allocate all the
necessary funding to at a minimum maintain current levels of service and
will not provide the additional staffing needed for the increased square footage
the branch master plan agreement provided. Therefore, as the foundation
desires to be part of the solution, we propose the following. In addition to
our annual support, the foundation will donate $300,000
to the 2027 library materials budget if the city agrees to invest an additional
1.4 million to fund 22 and a half additional positions representing the
minimum staffing infusion necessary to sustain current library
operations.
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin.
We'll continue with public comment.
Sorry. Good evening everyone. I'm Lwanda Duchaer, District 1. Um,
I'm just up here once again to advocate for organizations that work with our
youth and to advocate for a bigger, not pool of money, but a distribution of
the money and that we really take a look at grassroots uh, organizations that
work with our young people. You know, um, for those that really know me know
how much I love football, right? And it broke my heart this year when the uh
announcement was made that the city is not doing little league tackle football
this year. Um [snorts] I love Reggie. We have a great relationship, but I love
football, too. And I know what it means to little kids to to be able to play
football. My son played uh little league football with the city. My son played
football at Heights. My son went to uh Coffeeville. Then he ended up at
McFersonen football scholarship and academic scholarship. My son now works
for the Houston Texans. He gets a check from the NFL, not on the field, but in
the back office because we instill not just football, right? We instill pride
and community. And we always the ones that really care, we let our kids know
that you won't advance if you don't do well in school. And so again, it broke
my heart when I heard that little league football has been cut. So as we think
about our youth, we think about how do we um prevent crime in our older kids,
always say let's prevent it from even happening and let's work with our
younger uh citizens in Witchah, especially in the district I live in.
Sports is important. Um, it opens doors to scholarships, like I said, to jobs.
And so, again, I'm just here advocating for our young people. Um, although the
city of Witchah is not doing youth football due to a lack of numbers,
people didn't sign up. They actually signed up for another organization and
they're full. So, it's not that kids don't want to play. It's not that we
don't have the numbers. I think just like everything else, we have to sit
down and regroup and really think about what can we do for our young people. And
it's not just football, even though I love football. It's really about our
kids and trying to prevent something down the road from happening. So again,
I'm Lewanda Deaser. I'm here advocating on behalf of our young people and I'm
hoping that there is a pool of money that we can distribute to lots of
organizations so we all can do the work to prevent all this stuff that happens
down the road. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lwanda. We'll continue with
public comment.
» Hello. Okay. Uh hi. Hi, my name is Xavier Dyelbis. Miss Tuttle, you are my
representative. I'm going to have to I'm going to have to talk a bit fast here.
So, uh, today I'll be speaking on behalf of myself and many other citizens. In
the interest of seeing our local communities flourish, I seek to address
the excessive share of city funds that are directed towards our local police
department. Specifically, I will address the following points in brief to be
mindful of time. How effective or otherwise increased policing funding is
with regard to reducing crime. Solutions for reducing crime through the lens of
root cause analysis. and the city's priorities as expressed through the lens
of the 2027 proposed budget. To begin, I will expand on the notion that increased
police expenditures improve crime rates. Supporters of this kind of spending will
often use a common sense approach in an equation that boils down to rate of
crime equals number of criminals minus law enforcement capacity. Basically, if
you have enough cops, crime simply won't happen. But as we are tasked with
guiding the city not towards the common sense solution to issues, but instead
the best solution to issues, we must question and examine that common sense.
To do this, it is prudent to research the effect that more officers have on
the rate of crime. Historically, or so far as I could find, that has typically
been done within spec specific regions or jurisdictions. This means that there
is not a single comprehensive study on the matter. Instead, we may select
criminology research that focuses on what I quote, large enough populations.
For this purpose, I have selected a 2024 report from the Center on Juvenile Crime
and Criminal Justice titled More Law Enforcement Spending Accompanies worse,
not improved crimeolving. The report outlines that even though we often
perceive crime rates as ever increasing, they've actually been on a very steady
decline since 1990 in which the entire nation's homicide rate declined from 9.8
per 100,000 to just 5.5 per 100,000 in 2000. As of 2020, the earliest data I
could easily locate, that rate is at roughly four per 100,000. Notably, this
does not include property crime, but I hope it is illustrative of the trend.
The report expands on this, finding that in California and despite unprecedented
levels of funding, the clearance rates, i.e. the sheriff crimes solved by making
an arrest, experienced a 41% decline from 22.3% in 1990 to just 13.7% in
2023. This is in spite in spite of a 46% increase in total law enforcement
budget. and the fact that the number of sworn officers per 10,000 crimes
reported has risen 129%. With total law enforcement staff per
10,000 crimes reported having risen 144%. I believe at the last meeting a
speaker at a previous meeting expanded on how this dynamic is playing out
within our own police department. To be clear, I do not seek to blame our
dedicated law enforcement officers for this gross misallocation of resources
being done by many cities across our nation. Instead, I lay much of the blame
with various media providers who seek to fill their 24-hour news cycle with any
and everything that will keep people's keep people tuning in, which inevitably
leads people to believe crime is much worse than it actually is. Indeed, there
is actual crime to be solved. But it is made clear to me through engaging with
the existing literature on the subject that simply hiring more officers or
giving them toys like robot dogs or dragnet surveillance networks is
unlikely to improve crime rates in our city. Instead, we may take a root cause
approach to crime reduction. This involves analyzing the specific factors
that contribute to people to our people deciding to commit a crime. These are
often things like these are often things like housing and food insecurity, mental
disorders, access to affordable healthcare, or freedom from
environmental toxins. While I feel our city excels uh while I feel our city
excels compared to others in some of these regards, such as mental health
support, thanks mostly to county programs like Comare, we fall quite
short in other areas. Modern research into this subject often finds that
expanded social safety net is far far more reliable in reducing crime rates
than simply increasing the share of budget going towards law enforcement.
This is theorized to be due to an improved social safety net lessening or
outright removing the conditions that often lead up to criminality. Finally, I
want to take a brief look at how the city's priorities are expressed viewed
through the lens of our proposed budget. In a budget, we can see an expression of
a person's or in this case a city's priorities. For instance, in my budget,
I spend far too much eating out. This indicates to me that while I may not
want to admit it, I actually really like food. Additionally, I spend quite
generously on charity and donations. This indicates to me that while I may
not always feel it about myself, I am a caring individual who wants to help
others. So, when I look at our city's proposed general fund, I see something
quite stark. Our biggest priority is not putting out fires or fixing potholes in
streets or educating with our libraries or providing child care to our parents
or providing green energy to our environment. No, our biggest priority is
to make sure that there's plenty of men and women with guns and body armor in
our communities. That is all. Thank you for your time.
[applause] >> City manager, I do have a question for
you. Um, I'm looking at the proposed budget and it does not look like there
are additional police officers as part of this budget. Is that accurate?
tree, our budget director, give you that breakdown.
» Yeah. So, in the 2026 revised budget, there are four additional police
positions in the police department. None of those are police officer positions.
One is a sergeant and which is a commission position and then four are
community service officers and those are non-commission positions.
And can you also address how many new firefighter positions do we also have?
So in the 2027 proposed budget, we did not add new firefighter positions um for
the new station. We didn't itemize out new positions. There is a line item in
the general fund mo that's probably around page 67 that's for fire station
23. Um it's a lump sum for anticipated staffing costs at the station. I know
that the fire department has applied for a safer grant, but that's in place in
case that grant isn't successful. There is one position that's added to the fire
department um and that is a position an inspection position and it's fully
reimbursed by MABCD. Thank you. We'll continue with public
comment.
Hello, Faith Martin, District 2. I know you've heard a lot from me lately, but I
have a lot to say and I only get five minutes at a time. So, um, this time, as
you can see, I'm here in support of public libraries. I feel like when I
talk about public safety, and I try to say this very often, public safety is a
lot of things. And as someone that lives in a district that doesn't have any
libraries, I go to the libraries outside of district 2. So I spend time at
Walters. I spend a lot of time over at 9inth Street. You know, uh it it's
important to me and my family uh that we have access to these resources. The one
thing that hasn't been talked about is the impact to the public if places like
the Advanced Learning Library and other libraries do not have the staffing they
need to keep ours. You may not know this, but I can't say no to
volunteering. And I'm on a lot of boards, and those boards meet at the
Witchaw Public Libraries. Even our city boards meet at the Witchaw Public
Library. So, if staffing makes it to where we can't have board meetings
there, we are back to pegging to find spaces for nonprofits or community
boards that have no budgets for meeting spaces because we have graciously worked
with the city of Witchah. nonprofits don't have to pay to use the library.
And there are going to be a lot of community groups and nonprofit boards
that no longer have spaces to meet. As it is, we're there till 8:00 p.m. on the
dot until the man uh in the booth starts yelling at us to check out our books and
finish up because it's time to go. And I hear that message two to three times a
week because there's so many boards that use the library. $1.4 $4 million is a
drop in the bucket to some of the budgets that we're talking about
tonight. Witchaw public libraries aren't even 4% of the general fund. That is a
tiny amount for the number of public safety things that could be addressed
through libraries. Look at the heat, the terrible, terrible heat that we've had
recently. It was not just homeless people that went to the library. There
are many people in my neighborhood that do not have air conditioning that were
going to these public spaces because there was nowhere else to go. I I think
we we think about public safety in too narrowly and not funding public library
staffing uh and existing hours of operation is going to impact the
community in a bigger way than you have even anticipated because you think about
uh there's a quote that I love because people think the library is just books
and that's not actually the case. Uh oh gosh I hope I have it here. Here it is.
They say you can't judge a book by its cover. Increasingly, you also can't
judge a library's value to its community by simply looking at books. And what the
Witchaw Public Library does for the city of Witchah is something that I don't see
in a lot of other communities. I'm usually advocating to minimize budgets.
But I think you need to fully fund this 1.4 million or it's going to hurt
Witchah very negatively. And since I'm talking about staffing, I would also
like to uh talk a little bit about the CIP. Um
I would like the fire to be staffed more. Obviously, station 15 is my local
station, and I am heartbroken sometimes to see that that station has is the only
one that's able to be on call right at that moment because we don't have the
staffing levels we need to have multiple fire uh to uh respond to calls. We live
in a very, very dense neighborhood and we're very proud of Station 15 and I
would hate to see any other neighborhoods that call in and they
don't have the staffing they need to send people out to handle the things
that need to be done. Um, but the CIP, I mentioned that uh I voted no on the
sales tax because I felt like we weren't spending our money wisely. And when I
look at the CIP, it's more like a wish list that we kind of write down and then
we put it somewhere and it may or may not happen depending on who sits in
these seats next year or 5 years from now. I would like to see community
oversight over the CIP, some sort of advisory board that is not people that
are going to benefit from the CIP, but the actual community that holds this
body and the city accountable to the things that they say they're going to
spend their money on. If we say that we care about public safety, I would love
to see every >> Sorry about that. I would love to see
every um that's nine o'clock by the way. I would love to see every fire station
that we said we were going to build built. I would love to see the all the
projects that we have in there. We all have different projects that we care
about, but the CIP seems to just be very willy-nilly. And I would ask this body,
dabs don't really cost that much and neither do advisory boards because we do
all the work out of our and we volunteer to do that. I think there will be people
in the community that will happily step up to give oversight to the CIP to make
sure that the things that we care about in this community are funded properly.
Thank you. >> Thank you, Faith. [applause] We'll
continue with public comment.
Good evening, Mayor and city council members. My name is Jonathan Winkler. I
live in district 6. >> I have also had the honor of serving on
the library board >> for 10 years now.
» I want to say upfront >> that we are thankful
» for any funding you do give us. But
» at the same time,
» just if you just as you have had to make difficult decisions regarding this
budget,
» we are going to have to make difficult choices
» once you approve it. Since 375 >> Since $375,000
» for staffing
» is not enough >> to maintain our current hours.
» The previous speaker mentioned
» staying at the library until closing at 8.
» We've been looking at a plan that calls for closing at 7.
» No weekend openings at all >> except at the advanced learning library
» and for Saturdays only there.
» So I just want to make it very clear >> to all of you
» that this is a choice you have in front of you.
So, >> please do what you can to find more.
» Thank you. >> Thank you, Jonathan. And thank you for
interpreting.
[applause]
» We'll continue with public comment.
Good evening, Mayor Woo and council members. My name is Brock Booker and I
am a resident of District 2. I want to speak briefly on tonight's
adoption of the 2027 budget and the 10-year capital improvement program.
First, thank you for holding the mill levy flat again this year. That matters
to families who are already feeling the pressure of rising property valuations.
That said, city staff have been clear that while this budget is balanced,
projections show inspixes outpacing revenue in the years ahead. And I'd
encourage the council to start planning for that now rather than waiting until
it becomes a crisis. Second, on infrastructure,
I'm glad to see the 235 million committed over the next decade for our
streets, and I'd ask that the project prioritization stay transparent and that
older workingclass neighborhoods aren't left waiting at the back of the line.
Thirdly, on housing, the $500 million Second Light is a real and needed
investment in emergency shelter capacity, but shelter beds alone don't
solve housing instability. I'd encourage the council to pair this investment with
a broader strategy that helps people move from emergency shelter towards
stable, permanent housing and housing options for every stage of life.
Finally, public safety funding for fire station 23 and additional firefighters
is good news for the entire city. I'd only ask that response time equity
across districts remain part of that conversation,
not just total station count. This is a well-built budget.
And may my ask tonight is simple. Keep an eye on long-term fiscal
sustainability. Prioritize infrastructure equity across
neighborhoods and treat homelessness as a housing problem, not just a shelter
one. Thank you for your time and your service to the city of Witchaw.
» Thank you, Brock. We'll continue with public comment.
I see no one from the public. That means we will close public comment. Thank you
to the >> If I may, mayor, before we close, could
we actually have a formal motion to close the public hearing? Thank you.
» Thank you to the six speakers um who shared their public comment regarding
the proposed 2027 budget. I move to close the public hearing.
» Second. >> Motion. Second. discussion. See none.
Madame clerk, please open the role.
Motion passes 70. We are now closed with public comment and we'll bring it back
to the bench. Uh first and foremost, I wanted to say uh thank you again to the
six individuals. All six of you um have shared a portion of um additions.
Unfortunately, no reductions and that is my biggest concern. I think one of the
individuals said you will have difficult choices and these are difficult choices.
We have a budget shortfall right now. We're taking $3 million from the savings
account. We'll be taking 3 million additionally
next year because there's another budget shortfall.
So, it is difficult decisions we have to make. And as the city manager said, he
has proposed multiple items and I'm going to ask for those slides to be
shown. Slides 40 and 41 are new additional programs or individuals. Um,
and I think we I'm going to ask for specific ones. So I know that we will
have lots of comments and questions. Um, so I will start with um slide number 40.
Um, I wanted to know uh regarding the current staffing at the library. Sorry,
this is not the library one 41. Regarding staffing for the library, uh,
is there a plan for what $375,000 additional dollars will help cover
regarding staffing. >> Mayor, thank you for asking that. what
was communicated to me, I believe the finance team is that that can be
structured either for increase in staffing for part-time
um nine positions or four and a half positions full-time I believe is the uh
equivalent of how that money can be used and then they would use that staffing
level to determine what libraries based upon need and usage those staff would be
assigned to. But they're saying it would be for backfilling and supporting
existing staff and to help relieve some of our existing staff.
» Um with that, um I have a specific uh comment regarding this and I don't think
there's enough on this council that want to do this and I hear your plea from the
individuals who are asking for $1.4 million.
Um, and I want to say thank you to Kevin who has served as your president of the
Witchaw Library Foundation. Um, I I did want to ask and I will ask offline. Uh,
you did mention a member of the council approached you about building this new
all um advanced learning library. So, I'm going to ask who that was uh who was
able to secure the four votes. Um this has been something that this council has
said we don't want to tie the hands of future council members and that is the
responsible thing to do. Um and while the branch master plan was adopted by
the council in 2019, none of us well maybe one of us was on that council. And
so I cannot um in good faith right now uh give you $1.4 4 million from what
currently looks like 3.962 million in new additional items. Um so I
I want to share with you that I do value libraries and I don't think there's
anyone on this council that doesn't value libraries.
Um but now given that even with 375,000 additional dollars um it would only
allow for uh either nine part-time individuals or 4 and a half uh full-time
positions and there would still be a reduction in hours. Um, this seems like
right now we need to have a deeper conversation about how we're going to uh
move forward with branch hours because even if we gave you the full um ask that
the city manager currently is um asking of us of 375,
you have all shared that there will be a reduction in hours. Um, so I am I cannot
in good faith uh move forward with um having the city manager's proposal of uh
adding 375,000 if it's still going to reduce library
hours. Uh council member Hohheisle.
» Thank you, Mayor. Um I don't really have a question. I just want to go ahead and
get this moving along. Uh, so I will make a motion to adopt the 2027 proposed
budget. Approve the second reading of the necessary budget ordinances for the
tax increment financing districts in the Smid. Um, adopt the second reading of
the budget ordinance for the city taxing funds, including a technical adjustment
to align the estimated mill levy in the ordinance to 32.340.
Approve amending the 2026 budget for the Century 2 and affordable housing funds.
authorize staff to take the necessary steps to implement the budget, including
budget adjustments, expenditure control levels, budget administration
procedures, and adjustments outlined in the agenda report, and to make any
technical adjustments necessary to compete, complete and submit the state
certification forms, adopt the 27 2027 to 2036 proposed capital improvement
program, and approve the use of local funds derived from property within the
corporate limits for Witchah State University Board of
Trustees interlocal agreement between the city and the county.
» Second, >> mayor with a substitute motion. I move
that the city council adopt the 2027 proposed budget with amendments to be
proposed in a second. Approve the second reading of the necessary budget
ordinances for the tax increment financing to districts and the the SMID.
Adopt the second reading of the budget ordinance for the city taxing funds
including a technical adjustment to the aligned estimated mill levying the
ordinance to 32.340. Approve amending the 2026 budget for
Century 2 and affordable housing funds. Authorize authorized staff to take the
necessary steps to implement the budget, including budget adjustments,
expenditure control levels, budget administration procedures, and
adjustments outlined in the agenda report and to make any technical
adjustments necessary to complete and submit the state certification forms,
and adopt the 2027 20 through 2036 proposed capital improvement district
with these changes. that all general fund savings resulting from budget
amendments adopted today after accounting for any new general fund
appropriations adopted as part of this package be used
dollar for dollar to reduce the plan 2027 transfer or draw from the
stabilization reserves into the general fund. That would also eliminate 250,000
from the employee tuition program appropriation from the 2027 general fund
and reduce the 2027 general fund expenditures by 250,000. That leaves
50,000 in the tuition program. That we would also reduce the 2027 general fund
line item tited titled unallocated administrative cost from 1,447,332
to947,332
for a general fund reduction of 500,000. That we would establish a $400,000
process and administrative efficient saving target in the 2027 general fund.
And that staff are should report to council during 2027 where that savings
was achieved. That the 2020 stabilization fund mean for second light
multi- agency center be conditioned on them working to increase emergency or
low barrier shelter bed capacity based on space and staffing. That we would
appropriate 15,000 in one-time 2027 general fund support for the mayor's
youth council funded from an equal reduction in the council travel budget.
that 100,000 in one-time 2027 general funding for a Witchaw property tax
relief program pilot to be developed by staff and approved by mayor and council.
That we would allocate 50,000 to develop and implement a community-based violence
prevention strategy from the manager's contingency fund. that we would also
authorize a cash funded project for urban forestry backlog and restoration
and approve the transfer of 400,000 from the general fund to this project and to
eliminate 400,000 in goat atlarge funding from the CIP allocated for Pony
Prairie Park and to direct staff to close out the inactive CIP project
accounts totaling 400,000 and credit those revenues to the general fund that
we would then reallocate 325,000 towards design and construct
vehicle mitigation improvements including ballards or comparable
protective measures and that would come from the allocation in the CIP towards
uh the police robotic dog and that we would reallocate 150,000 from proposed
dash cams to the library budget as well. >> Second.
» We have a a motion and a second uh further discussion. I see council member
Hoheisel. >> Thank you, mayor. Um, I like what uh
council member do uh Glascock or Vice Mayor Glascock's proposed. I just have
one amendment proposal to transfer 200,000 from the city manager's
contingency fund to fund violence interruption or intervention programs.
» I believe we need a second on the amendment.
» Second >> motion and a second on an amendment.
Madame clerk, please open the role. >> We is there any discussion? Excuse me.
» Any discussion? >> Any discussion? Council member Shepard.
» Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to affirm Vice Mayor GL GlassCox's motion,
which is why I second it. I believe that this is taking a necessary step to get
our libraries where they should be. It's not at the full point of where it needs
to be. I hope that you get a commitment from all of us to eventually get you
there over a reasonable amount of time. This is a start, not a finish. Um, I
also appreciate the um ability for violence prevention. Um, and I also
agree with Vice Mayor Glascock on the efficiencies and savings as well as the
property tax relief. So, I appreciate the colleagues uh for uh moving forward
these motions today and I think that this is taking our community in the
right direction. >> Council member John Stunn.
» Thank you, Mayor. Uh, I also agree. I think this gets the libraries to 525,000
if I'm correct about 40% of their their ask which helps a lot and I agree that
we need to continue to work on that in the future. Library funding I think is
very very important and I also think it rep prioritizes some some funds in our
uh in our budget um to uh more community uh benefits and quality
of life. So, I will be supporting this. >> Council member Tuttle.
» Thank you. Um, I just wanted to make a few comments. Um, this is the eighth
budget that I've worked on since I've been on city council. Um, and I've been
um impressed with how this the majority of
this team has worked together. Um, leadership is about choices and there
are hard choices to be made. We all wish there was money to fund everything. Um,
everybody I think on this council has things that they're passionate about and
want to see funded, but leadership also means working together. Um, I've said
this every year, so I'm going to say it the eighth time. The most important vote
that I make all year is on our budget and where you allocate your treasure is
a reflection of your values. And I think that is true tonight and that's why I
will be supportive. Um, I just wanted to point out something too that um, Gary
Jansen, our director of public works, has stated that since people always want
to know where the money goes, why does it cost more? Why do you why are we
spending more? Since 2020, construction costs for our utility projects within
the city, not just new builds, but if we're doing a road, anything,
construction costs since 2020 for utility projects have increased by 66%.
So what the community members, what you are feeling, what I am feeling, we're
also feeling at the city of Witchah and that's why we're trying to make these
hard decisions. Um I also just wanted to um say that we've been working on this
for 9 months and kudos to us and I'm going to thank a few other people, but
during the nine months anybody at any time could have made any suggestions.
And so it's sometimes disheartening to me when we get to this point and you
know comments are or decisions are being thrown at the last minute, but at this
at this stage so far with what's been proposed, I'm excited and it shows true
collaboration. Um I do want to thank Mark Manning and the finance team. Um
Elizabeth, I hope you go home and get some rest. Much deserved. I know y'all,
like I said, have been working on this for nine months and couldn't be more
proud. also to our new city manager. Um your first budget process um couldn't be
more pleased with your attentiveness. You're willing to dive in deeper. You're
willing to provide us solutions and options and things that we haven't
thought about before. So, thank you for certainly being part of the process. I
also want to thank all the departments within the city of Witchaw. Every
department had to probably give up something, right? and every department
did a good job of fighting fairly for what they think is important for the
work they do as content experts. And then finally, I just want to say thank
you to my colleagues who have been willing to have dialogue and
collaboration. And to me, that represents bold leadership. So, thank
you for everyone for all of your hard work. Looks like we're almost there.
» I have a question for legal before we continue. We have an amendment that has
a motion and a second. Yes. Uh, can another motion be put forward? Uh, an
amendment rather? >> No, we can amend. What we're doing right
now is an amendment of a substitution. That is where this one has to stop. I
think we can. >> So, this one right now is at violence
interruptors getting an additional $200,000
» intervention. It's the strategy, not a program.
» Is that accurate? which would give the city manager the full autonomy and
authority to work with the council to identify a strategy where those dollars
would go. >> Yeah, that's what's on the um item to
vote, I believe. Yes. >> Uh I do have one additional question. uh
last year uh and two years prior uh council member Tuttle had to uh abstain
from voting because she's a she is employed by Witchah State's WSU Tech uh
arm. Will you need to do that? >> Uh that's why his substitute motion did
not include the WSU and WSU Tech and so that will be the next motion that will
be made. >> Thank you very much, Council Member
Ballard. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not going to um
share all of the same I mean I share all the same comments um as my colleagues,
but I also wanted to point out I appreciate um that the city manager
tried to bring back a tuition program while we might not be able to fully fund
it this year. Um I appreciate that you are thinking about uh ways to offer our
employees um additional education and opportunity. So, um I will definitely be
supportive of all of the uh conversations that we have had with this
amendment and excited for whatever employees are able to uh utilize this
new opportunity. I will add my comments. Um I will not be
voting in favor of this as I have not voted in favor the last three years. Um,
and again, more specifically, this budget takes $3 million from the savings
account called the stabilization reserve. Um, while I understand that
many of the programs are important, it's also prudent to not add additional items
that cannot be paid for or will continue to have ongoing expenses moving forward.
And knowing that we have a budget shortfall yet again next year, it is not
prudent again to not go line item by line item going over each of these
proposals that the city manager specifically has said are new items. Uh
so again, I appreciate that there have been reductions. I appreciate that there
has been collaboration amongst this council um through again Vice Mayor
Glascock, thank you for providing those uh comments and that specific um motion.
But again, not in good faith can we continue sustaining this type of budget
where we are outgrowing inflation and we are outgrowing to the point where
we don't have a balanced budget. We're only balanced because we get again $3
million from the savings account. That is not a balanced budget. Um so I will
not be voting in favor of this motion. Um and so I see that there are
additional individuals that want to speak. Vice Mayor Glascock
» call the question on this amendment.
» Okay. >> Motion. Second. Any further discussion?
There's council member Shepard. Let's move forward.
» Uh, madame mayor, madame clerk, can you please open the role?
» Motion passes 6 to one. Madam, actually, we have to come back. Are you going to
propose? >> I just general comments.
» Vice Mayor Glass. >> Thank you. Now we're on the the
substitute motion that's on the floor with the amendment that council
Councilman Shepard has made. Correct. >> Correct.
» Okay. I just want to say thank you to my colleagues uh who did uh meet with me
this week. I hope that the package presented was a compromise of things
that we've heard from residents and knowing that we did hear from people
speaking today as well. We're called to lead and we have a duty to govern and
that's why we are elected and so I'm thankful that we've stepped up um to be
able to offer a solution. Is there everything that all of us agree with in
the budget? No. And we're going to have those votes subsequently throughout the
year on each specific item. But I think this puts us in a direction I think this
puts us in um a place where we also are taking less from the stabilization
reserves and we're keeping more of that in the future. I think that's good
responsible leadership and I'm thankful for my colleagues that were willing to
compromise to get to this place and um just thank you for your hard work on
this. >> Council member Hois.
» Thank you, Mayor. Um to my colleagues, I appreciate the work that you guys have
done on this as well. Um libraries, we're going to try and get there. Um I
know it's not all at once. This is um nobody looks at any budget that's passed
and says, "Oh, this is exactly what I want." But we are trying to get there.
Um we did eliminate um a substantial amount of money coming out of the
stabilization fund. We also looked at some other um investments that we we
wanted across the board. um increasing in dead tree removal as was spoken about
earlier is one of them. Um just a number of other issues as well. So no this
isn't the perfect budget to our employees. Um we are intent to work with
you over the next year. We did see that tuition reimbursement was at the bottom
of um the the wants that you guys had. We we got that survey here in the last
week. So, uh we are dedicated to see what we can do to help um help with your
your lifestyle, help with the challenges that you guys face because if we don't
pay our own people living wages, then um that's a bad look on us definitely. So,
again, this budget's not perfect for anybody, but um I think it's a good
budget. So, I appreciate everybody's work on this.
» Council member Shepard. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I also want to uh
just acknowledge that this took a lot of collaborative effort. And I know I say
that intentionally because I think that often times the narrative gets
misconstrued that we don't work well together. And while we have very
different priorities at times and very different outlooks on how those
priorities should be should be handled. Um I think that we were able to come to
a healthy decision tonight on what does it mean to invest in a witchaw not just
for today but a witchaw for tomorrow and for years down the road. Um yes the
budget is increasing but our our needs are evolving just as our families are
evolving. And so I'm really grateful that we, you know, when we first got
this budget, the libraries had zero and and we said, "City manager, can you do a
little bit more?" And then he got us to a little bit more. And then we decided
to do our part to do a little bit more. But I think that's not a testament to
us. I want to be very clear. It's a testament to Jamie Nicks and her staff
and the incredible work that they do every single day. Um, and the and the
resources that are being provided all across this community. Maya Angelou has
a community garden in the middle of the food desert. Seniors are there all the
time working on their resumes, getting job applications. The dignity and
humanity that you see in every single family, [music]
including our unhoused neighbors, that is to be commended. And we have to quit
asking our staff to do more with less, as if it's a normal expectation.
It's not okay anymore. And we've got to turn a corner. So, thank you for being
the example of what it means to step up to the plate. And tonight, I think we
are showing that when you step up to the plate to do more, we're going to meet
you in the middle. Um, finally, I do want to say thank you to the city
manager. Um, it's no secret I feel passionate about the things I'm
passionate about, and I will fight for the things that I'm willing to fight
for. But the city manager has worked with me to really help meet me in the
middle, especially on paid family leave. We didn't get it this year paid for in
the budget, but we found an alternative and I think that's important as well.
So, to the staff who are listening, um I'm not just going to say you're valued.
I'm going to make a commitment that we're going to continue to work to
figure out how to build a stronger culture in city hall, how to make sure
you are valued, and how to make sure we take care of the whole family. Because
it's not just you that shows up here every single day. Your family deals with
the brunt of the work that you carry back home every day as well. And this
$50,000 is just a pilot to see where we can go from here. With that, thank you
colleagues for your support in making this first year of my budget hearing a
meaningful and pleasurable [clears throat] one. I hope it happens
again. >> Council member Johnston.
» Thank you, Mayor. I will echo that this is not the perfect budget. Uh if I was
doing it myself, this is not what I've come up with. Um I don't like taking
money from our reserve fund, $3 million. I don't think that's prudent. I think it
was planned that there was probably a presumption that the economy would be in
a recession by now and it has not been. I think that's the reason it was planned
for now. Um, next year I hope we do not take that $3 million. Um, unless there
is a severe recession and we need the money. Um, I think one thing we need to
address and it's the elephant in the room is public safety.
Public safety is very important. There's no doubt. Everybody tells us that we
need to fund public safety. I think the question is how much. If you look at our
palm card, which is outside the room there, public safety this year is 64%
of our budget. Next year, it rises to 67% of our budget. So, at what point do
we say public safety? Yes, but we also have to
invest in libraries and parks and and amenities of life that can help reduce
violence and and ed educate people and and really help fund uh some of the
disadvantaged neighborhoods. I think that's important. Um what I hear from my
district is they they want to see more police
officers in the district on the street. um and maybe not so many uh softwares
and programs and things. So, that's what I hear from my district. Um it may be
different tomorrow when I wake up and see emails. Who knows? But uh I'm just
glad we did get a budget approved and it's not 11:59. So, thank you,
» Vice Mayor Glass. >> Thank you. But I will call the question
in a second and there's just one thing I want to highlight and I really want to
thank the work of council member Hohis on that and that's the home the
homeowner property tax relief program. I think that's one of the best things to
come from this budget. We hear often about property tax relief in this
community and this is a very targeted way to provide property tax relief to
those that need it the most. And so I'm thankful for his leadership on this and
his passion for this because if he didn't continue to advocate it for it,
it wouldn't be in this today. But I think the 100,000 is a really good first
step toward that. And hopefully we continue to offer more targeted property
tax relief because that's I guarantee you the number one thing we hear from
residents up here. And so with that, I'll call the question.
We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? I see none. Madame
clerk, please open the role.
Motion passes. 61. Mayor with a motion to approve the use
of local funds derived from property within the corporate limits for the
Witchaw State University Board of Trustees and our local agreement between
the city and the county. >> Council member Tuttle.
» Thank you. Due to a conflict of interest, I will be abstaining from this
vote. >> I will add my comments. Um I'm a board
member of WSU Tech, but I get no financial gain. It is also on my
statement of interest. Uh so therefore I will be taking a vote on this. Madame
cler or we have a motion. >> Second.
» Second. Any further discussion? I see none. Madame clerk please open the role.
Motion passes 60 with one abstension. Madame clerk please call the next item.
Council member appointments and comments.
C. >> Uh, we'll start with appointments. Any
appointments, council members? >> I have one and so does council member
Ballard. We'll start with council member Ballard.
» Thank you, mayor. I would like to appoint Michaela Ramirez to the library
board and uh Jeppi Hammer to the sustainability board.
» Council member Johnston. >> Thank you. I'd like to appoint Josh
Shepus to District 5 Advisory Board and to the Park Board of Commissioners.
» And I would like to appoint John Frederick on behalf of Commissioner Jim
Howell to the Witchaw Airport Advisory Board.
I see no further uh appointments. I move to approve all those appointments.
» Second. >> Motion second. Discussion. See none.
Madame Clerk, please open the role.
Motion passes 70. Madame clerk, actually we can start with
council member comments. Any council member comments?
» Mayor, I just want to say congratulations to our vice mayor. He's
an engaged man now, y'all. So, congratulations on your engagement. I'm
really excited for you. Uh people know that council member or vice mayor
Glascock and I kind of grew up together. Um, and I'm so excited for this next
phase of your life. Maybe I get to be a flower boy.
» I think uh, council Tuttles already called it. It's been a very [laughter]
busy week. Right on. I promise that. >> I see no further comments from the
council members. With that, I will move to adjourn this meeting at 9:35 p.m.
» Motion second. Discussion. See none. Madam clerk, please open the role.
» All those in favor say I. I motion passes