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CITY COUNCIL MINUTES
August 12, 2013
Journal Page #15162
CITY OF SHAWNEE
CITY COUNCIL MEETING
MINUTES
August 12, 2013
7:30 P.M.
Jeff Meyers – Mayor
Councilmembers Present
Councilmember Pflumm
Councilmember Neighbor
Councilmember Sawyer
Councilmember Kemmling
Councilmember Kuhn
Councilmember Vaught
Councilmember Sandifer
Councilmember Distler
Staff Present
City Manager Gonzales
Deputy City Manager Charlesworth
City Attorney Rainey
City Engineer Wesselschmidt
Fire Chief Mattox
Police Chief Larimore
Public Works Director Freyermuth
Planning Director Chaffee
Finance Director Rogers
Parks and Recreation Director Holman
Assistant City Manager Killen
City Clerk Campbell
Municipal Court Administrator Powell
(City Council Meeting Called to Order at 7:30 p.m.)
A.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE AND MOMENT OF SILENCE
B.
ROLL CALL
MAYOR MEYERS: Good evening and welcome to tonight’s meeting of the Shawnee
City Council. I would ask that you please silence your electronic devices at this time. I
am Mayor Jeff Meyers and I will be chairing this meeting. And at this time I’d like to do
a roll call. Councilmember Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Present.
MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Pflumm?
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Present.
MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Kemmling?
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: Present.
MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Sawyer?
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Here.
MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Kuhn?
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COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Present.
MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Here.
MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Sandifer?
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Present.
MAYOR MEYERS: And, Councilmember Distler?
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Present.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. And if everybody would please rise and join us with the
Pledge of Allegiance followed by a brief moment of silence.
Thank you.
C.
CONSENT AGENDA
MAYOR MEYERS: Before we begin our agenda tonight, I’d like to explain our
procedures for public input to the audience. At numerous times during the meeting I will
offer the opportunity for public input. If you would like to speak to the Council at any of
those times, please come forward to the microphone. I will ask you to state your name
and address for the record and then you may offer your comments. After you are
finished, please sign the form to the left of the podium to ensure that we have an
accurate record of your name and address.
And so the first item tonight is the Consent Agenda. But before we vote, we had
Councilmember Kemmling that had some questions and wanted to discuss one item.
And so I’m going to turn that over to Councilmember Kemmling.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: First of all, I’d like to thank both Neil and Carol for
getting me this information today. And some of it I’d just like to ask in the public just
before we approve this contract. Where did you come up with the $50,000 for the fee
for the soccer association?
MR. HOLMAN: That started back in the mid-90s when we first started doing the
contracts. We look at the water usage, the seed and fertilization for those fields at
those three parks.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: And it didn’t include labor costs for mowing and
maintenance?
MR. HOLMAN: No, it did not, because we would have to be there anyway either
mowing or doing activities out there anyway.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: And the soccer -- this soccer agreement is roughly
for six months of the year, is that correct?
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MR. HOLMAN: The soccer agreement is for a year long. But it covers the spring
season, which is roughly a little under three months and then the fall season which is
roughly under three months.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: Right. And are citizens able to use these fields
during the season or during the off season?
MR. HOLMAN: Not during those seasons. Not during the three and three. Now, you
can come for clinics and for tournaments if they want to use the other fields.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: Okay. And the City -MR. HOLMAN: We also, I mean, we have sports fields that are open year round for the
soccer or football, lacrosse, any of those.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: Okay. And the City generates revenue outside of
what’s being paid by the soccer association?
MR. HOLMAN: I didn’t hear what you -COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: Does the City generate revenue outside of what’s
being paid by the soccer association?
MR. HOLMAN: Yes. We have, at those three fields just this weekend, we’ve got a 178
team tournament coming, a challenger cup. Last August, we had 230 teams. Not last
August, last April. Excuse me. We had 230 teams that were there. And these are
teams that come from Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri side, kind of
farther away, St. Louis, Columbia. So, what’s nice about Stump Park is these are seven
fields that are high school sized. They are sized where -- just under college. So, that’s
what’s nice about these fields. None of the other fields are that big. So, it’s nice to
have -- you can do a wide range of tournaments at those -- from lacrosse to soccer.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: And individuals can rent these fields when they’re
available as well, is that correct?
MR. HOLMAN: After -- during the summer, like I said. It’s in the policy statement, they
can. The soccer club has first right for their items at those three parks again. But
people can and do. We had a Nigerian tournament. We’ve had lacrosse. We’ve had
other users on those.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: And then the City generates revenue from
concessions as well?
MR. HOLMAN: Yes. Last year we have -- we did contract it, just testing the water, we
did contract. For the whole year we made $1,500. We’re already at $1,500 right now.
And it’s been kind of a rough spring. It’s been wet, snow. So, but, yeah. We have
whole other season to go.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: Okay. Thank you.
MR. HOLMAN: The fall season.
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MAYOR MEYERS: Councilmember Distler?
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Actually I didn’t even have a question until something
you said just made me think of one. But when the fields aren’t in use, if some
neighborhood kids just want to go play for an hour and there’s nobody using the fields -MR. HOLMAN: Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. Yeah, you can do that.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Oh, okay.
MR. HOLMAN: If mom and dad want to go with the boy and kick, or the girl, you know,
want to kick around, that’s fine.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Okay.
MR. HOLMAN: But these are scheduled practices or games -COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Right.
MR. HOLMAN: -- that are not allowed.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Right. Right. Yeah. I understood that.
MR. HOLMAN: Okay.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: I wanted to make sure that, yeah.
MR. HOLMAN: Yes. No, no, no.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: If it wasn’t being used -MR. HOLMAN: I get calls all the time.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: -- that the residents can -MR. HOLMAN: I get calls all the time.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Okay.
MR. HOLMAN: Dad wants to come over with the -- and, you know, kick the ball and,
you know, do some stuff. They’re not going to tear the field out.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Okay. That’s all I needed to know. Thank you very
much.
MAYOR MEYERS: Very good. Any other questions or comments from the Council? If
not, we can have a vote on the Consent Agenda.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Move -COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Move to approve.
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COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded to approve the Consent
Agenda. All in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0)
D.
MAYOR’S ITEMS
MAYOR MEYERS: At this time I’d like to go to Mayor’s Items. I know we have a
special visitor this evening that I want to turn over to Councilmember Vaught so he
could introduce him to the audience and a lot of us up here on the dais know this
person. So, Mr. Vaught.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: When we were in Boston for the National League of
Cities we visited Mansfield, Massachusetts. And my brother-in-law who is Kevin Moran.
If you want to raise your hand real quick, Kevin. He’s sitting back there. Kevin is
actually a Selectman with the city or the Town of Mansfield, which is kind of like an
alderman, similar to our councilmembers. A little bit different form of government, but a
lot of similarities. But Kevin is here visiting with his family and took him on a little tour of
City Hall and the Justice Center today and he was rather impressed with that. And feels
like we have pretty beautiful facilities here. And it’s just really nice having him here and
getting him the opportunity to see kind of how we do things in Shawnee.
MAYOR MEYERS: We want to say welcome and thank you for attending.
(Applause)
MAYOR MEYERS: I know for myself and many of the Councilmembers, when we
visited Mansfield, a lot of things in common with what we do here in the City of
Shawnee, but some really big differences. And it was very educational to see how
Mansfield did things as compared to the City of Shawnee. And again, very appreciative
of your hospitality and we again thank you for being here tonight.
1.
Presentation of the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve 2013
Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award Finalist
MAYOR MEYERS: At this time under Mayor’s Items, I have one other Mayor’s Item.
We have what tonight is called the Presentation of the Employer Support of the Guard
and Reserve 2013 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award Finalist.
Earlier this year Firefighter Doug Simms nominated the City for a Freedom Award. The
Freedom Award is the Department of Defense’s highest recognition given to employers
for exceptional support of employees serving in the National Guard and Reserve.
Firefighter Simms has been in the Reserves since 1990. In June 2012, he returned to
the Fire Department after serving a 20-month tour of duty for the United States Army
Reserves. Firefighter Simms was stationed at Stuttgart, Germany and Afghanistan
during his tour. In May, the City received notification from the Board of Military and
Civilian Leaders that Shawnee was selected as a finalist for the 2013 Secretary of
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Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. Tonight we have Retired Colonel Michael
“Mick” Allen, the Kansas State Employer Support of the Guard and Reserves State
Chairman and Alan Barrett, Assistant State Chairman and Diane Boeger, Area Five
Chairperson to present the City with the finalist’s award. I believe we also have Chris
Pfister, the Shawnee Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander and Lynn Rolf, III, the
State of Kansas VFW Commander. I would like to invite them to come forward at this
time along with Firefighter Simms and Firefighter Lopez and any other of our City
employees who are also reservists and are here tonight. Please come forward.
MR. ALLEN: Mr. Mayor, if I may while they are coming up here. I’m Mick Allen. I’m the
state chair for the SGR. You know, we taking about the Freedom Award, but I think it
deserves a little more, would you put that on there, please? A little more explanation as
to how you got here and how difficult it was.
The Freedom Award is the ultimate award presented by the Secretary of Defense.
Three thousand employers from across the United States were nominated for the
Freedom Award by service members such as the Sgt. First Class here. Fifty-three
committee chairs from across the nation reviewed those for each of their states. In
Kansas, there were 33 employers nominated for the Freedom Award. I meticulously go
through those. There are about 12 questions that have to be answered about what you
do here. And most of that comes from the narrative that the sergeant took time to write.
I will tell you that this is the most competitive award given by the Secretary of Defense.
Of the 33 employers that were nominated in Kansas, only 3 went forward. And that’s all
I’m allowed to say. And this three, a large employer, 500 employees or more, 500 a
small employer and then a governmental agency. I forwarded Garmin International and
the City of Shawnee. A small -- we didn’t have anyone that met the other criteria. So,
they go forward and they go into a committee of leaders from across the nation. And
they spend quite a bit of time going through each one. And of those, they come out with
30 from across the nation. And then from there they pick 15, five from each category.
So, next month at the end of September, I will go to Washington, D.C. and go to the
Freedom Award ceremony of the Secretary of Defense, and all the other dignitaries that
can get into the Reagan Center. And it’s one of the most prestigious events in
Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately you got to the 30, but you didn’t get to the 15. So, I would say this. Don’t
give up. We’ve had some companies that have gone -- one of the winners here was in
Sprint in 2004, I believe it was. This will be my last event for ESGR. Actually the
Secretary of Defense says you can only do this six years and then we have to push you
away somewhere else to do something else, which evidentially -- that’s fine. I mean,
everybody knows that. So, it’s been a great time to do this for six years. And I’ve seen
a lot of great employers from the State of Kansas. And I have to tell you this is one of
the best. You guys do a great job. And you have some people that have been
deployed many, many times. We have ESGR members here from Birmingham,
Topeka, here in Overland Park, and I actually live in Russell and spent ten years on that
city council. So anyway, congratulations.
And the other thing we want to do is we’ll ask the Mayor after we present the award
here, well, let’s go ahead and talk about it and then we’ll do them both. One of the
things we ask employers to do is sign a statement of support. And what it just basically
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says is that you will support the Guard, Reserve and veterans. We conduct seven or
eight job fairs a year across the State of Kansas, and it’s only for veterans, guardsmen
and reservists. And then the last hour usually is open to the public. We have found that
now we do them in armories where the -- actually where the unit is at, the high
deployment units, and it’s been very successful. But this just shows that, you can
display this in a prominent place, and it shows that you support the Guard and the
Reserve and veterans. And this is a group of volunteers. Nobody has made them go
do this. You’ve been deployed three times?
MR. SIMMS: Yes, sir.
MR. ALLEN: Wow. My son has been deployed eight times. So, it’s a great day that we
have a free country and thank you very much.
(Applause)
MAYOR MEYERS: Well, Colonel, let me say that I am proud to sign this statement of
support. We appreciate the recognition given tonight. We really appreciate all our
employees. This City has a long history of supporting our employees that are in the
Armed Forces and all veterans. And, of course, we think it’s nothing but the highest
honor to have them be part of the City of Shawnee and we honor them tonight with this
award. Even though it seems to be an honor for this City as a whole, which I’m sure it’s
intended to be, we are so proud of our employees and their service in the Armed
Forces. So, thank you very much.
MR. ALLEN: Thank you for your support.
MAYOR MEYERS: One more round of applause.
(Applause)
E.
APPOINTMENTS
1.
Consider Appointment to the Planning Commission.
Appoint Jason Sheahan to the Planning Commission with a Term Expiring
on June 30, 2016.
MAYOR MEYERS: At this time I will go to Item E which is Appointments. Item Number
1 is to Consider Appointment to the Planning Commission. I am recommending the
appointment of Jason Sheahan to the Planning Commission with a term expiring on
June 30th, 2016.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that would like to
speak to this item? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
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COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion approved. (Motion passes 8-0). And I know
Jason is in the audience tonight. Please stand up and be recognized and thank you for
your service.
(Applause)
2.
Consider Appointment to the Shawnee Downtown Partnership.
Appoint Steven Wise to the Downtown Partnership as the Planning
Commission Standing Member.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item Number 2 is to Consider Appointment to the Shawnee
Downtown Partnership. I am recommending the appointment of Steven Wise to the
Shawnee Downtown Partnership as the Planning Commission standing member.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Mr. Kemmling?
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: I don’t see a résumé. Do we have one?
MAYOR MEYERS: A resident that’s on the -COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: A résumé.
MAYOR MEYERS: Oh, résumé?
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Mr. Wise is a current Planning Commissioner. So,
when he was originally appointed to the Planning Commission, we would have received
a résumé. But because he is the Planning Commissioner representative, we didn’t
include it in the packet tonight.
MAYOR MEYERS: Anything else, Mr. Kemmling, on that?
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: That’s it.
MAYOR MEYERS: Are there any other questions or concerns from the Council? Is
there anyone from the audience that would like to speak to this item? Seeing none, all
in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0)
3.
Consider Appointment to the Civil Service Commission.
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Appoint Anthony Lang to the Civil Service Commission with a Term
Expiring on June 30, 2016.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item Number 3 is to Consider Appointment to the Civil Service
Commission. I am recommending the appointment of Anthony (Tony) Lang to the Civil
Service Commission with a term expiring on June 30th, 2016.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that would like to
speak to this item? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0). And I know
Tony is in the audience. Mr. Lang, would you please stand and be recognized. Thank
you for your service.
MR. LANG: Thank you.
(Applause)
F.
PUBLIC ITEMS
1.
Conduct a Public Hearing to Consider an Ordinance Adopting the Prairie
Pines Tax Increment Financing Project Plan and Approving the Execution
of a Redevelopment Agreement.
A) Conduct a Public Hearing Concerning the Prairie Pines Redevelopment
TIF Project Plan
MAYOR MEYERS: And now we’ll move to Item F, which is Public Items. The first item
is to Conduct a Public Hearing to Consider an Ordinance Adopting the Prairie Pines Tax
Increment Financing Project Plan and Approving the Execution of a Redevelopment
Agreement.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Move to conduct a public hearing concerning Prairie Pines
redevelopment and TIF project plan.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded to conduct a public
hearing. Any further discussion from the Council? Seeing none, all in favor signify by
saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
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MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. (Motion passes 8-0). We are now in a public hearing.
This is a formal public hearing required by law. The hearing will begin with a
presentation by Finance Director Maureen Rogers. After Ms. Rogers’ presentation, I
will ask Councilmembers if they have any questions specifically related to the
presentation. I will then ask if there are any comments from the public. Following public
comments, I will ask for a motion to close the public hearing. If anyone from the
audience would like to speak during the public hearing, please raise your hand and I will
recognize you to come forward. As I stated earlier, in order to have an accurate record
of the meeting, when you come forward to speak, please state your name and address.
Following your comments, please sign the sheet to the left of the podium. In order to
have an orderly hearing, all comments must be made at the microphone and are limited
to five minutes. No person shall speak more than twice on any one issue. Ms. Rogers.
MS. ROGERS: The item for consideration tonight, as Mayor Meyers mentioned, is
approval of an ordinance adopting a TIF project plan. By statute, the focus areas are
the project boundaries, a detailed description of the project and the feasibility study.
Also included within that ordinance is approval of a redevelopment agreement which
spells out the terms, all of the terms of the agreement between the developer and the
City. And then I will just take a look at the next steps in the process.
The boundaries for both the TIF district and the TIF project plan are depicted in this
map. The projected is located at 55th Street and K-7 Highway in the northwest corner.
And this area here is scheduled to be 222 units of townhomes and 56 buildings. This
corner down here currently contains an empty convenience store and car wash and
would be redeveloped into 30,000 square feet of commercial space. The project also
includes public improvements such as stormwater structures and streets. A summary of
the public participation, just at a high level, includes a pay-as-you-go TIF, property tax
only, no debt included. There is also an IRB for sales tax exemption only, no property
tax abatement, and excise tax abatement agreement.
Earlier in the process Springsted, the City’s financial advisor, conducted a feasibility
study. The purpose of the study is determine whether the projected property tax
increment will support the requested public participation. Just briefly summarizing,
Springsted examined the developer’s assumptions for revenue and expenditure and
found them to be reasonable and concluded that the project is feasible.
Just a high level summary of the redevelopment agreement. It includes pay-as-you-go
TIF up to $3,810,131 in eligible costs. The costs are for public improvements only for
the residential portion, land acquisition for the commercial portion. There is a small
portion of site work in the commercial portion, but it’s primarily land acquisition. It also
provides for interest, a repayment of interest for the developer’s borrowing cost to the
lesser of the developer’s borrowing rate or six percent. The agreement also defines the
process for inspections and approval of payments for the public improvements. It
provides that design and land use will conform to the project plan as it was approved by
the Planning Commission. Defines a development schedule and the process where
expenditures will be certified and the project itself would be certified as completed. The
developer will provide periodic progress reports. And there’s also a provision in this
agreement for an annual payment of $15,566 that goes back to the operating cost study
that Springsted completed earlier. And this represents the annual costs or cost to
provide service in this area in excess of the projected revenues. And this is a payment
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that the developer would pay each -- twice a year, half at two different times of the year
in order -- it’s outside of the reimbursement of the TIF increment.
The next steps in the process tonight is the public hearing and the ordinance. And then
also on another item on this agenda is a revised letter of intent for sales tax exemption,
IRB. We have a tentative date of 9/23 for approval of the final plat. And at that time
there would be approval of an excise tax abatement agreement. It’s not completely final
what that date would be, but those two items would go together at whatever date that it
turns out to be.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Mr. Sawyer?
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Yeah. Maureen, go back to this annual payment of
15,566 to the City. Compensate for additional service costs. What costs? What do
those costs consist of?
MS. ROGERS: What Springsted did was that it was to take a look at things like street
maintenance, snow removal, different services that would be performed, maybe mowing
out there. I don’t think there would be too much out there, it’s mostly private. But any
services like that. It was the net of revenues that might be brought in by the residents
out there that would not be part of the TIF, which is property tax, items like sales tax,
franchise fees, classes they might take through Parks and Rec. And so the costs in
excess of revenues, the average cost was this $15,566. And the idea of this study was
not to be specific to this particular piece of property, not necessarily calculating the
particular street or -- it took a look at the number of the residents that were projected to
be out there and it kind of based off of last year’s CAFR and looked at revenues and
expenditures and divided them out into residential and workers and kind of a bigger
picture than this specific project.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: I’m still not clear, because I’ve asked this question for
several years. What does it cost us to maintain streets, and I’ve never gotten an
answer. So, now this is the answer? Or is this more -- it’s got to be more than that. I
mean, what -- I don’t understand. This is a payment we’re going to get every year?
MS. ROGERS: Yes.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: For what, 15 years?
MS. ROGERS: During the entire term of the TIF, the 20 years.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Which could be 20 years or 22.
MS. ROGERS: It begins at the time -- actually it begins at the time that the project is
built out. The first payment I believe is in 2015. Because at that time the idea would be
we’re beginning to provide those services, because the residents are there.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: So, this doesn’t happen till they get all the units built
out?
MS. ROGERS: It would be substantially built out at that time.
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COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Okay. Well, and still -- so, I’m trying to wrap my arms
around this. This is -- there’s two streets in here basically that -- and all of a sudden we
know what the cost to maintain those are, and I have never been able to get that
answer on any others. Every time we talk about a tax abatement or whatever, I say,
okay, you know, guys, we’re giving away all our revenues and it costs us money and
nobody can seem to tell me. But now we’ve got a number on -- so, is this a number we
could use elsewhere? I mean, our -MS. ROGERS: The concept can be used elsewhere.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Well, I mean, street maintenance and snow removal
and the like should be pretty consistent. I mean, I know I’m frustrating everybody by
asking that question. But, you know, I’ve been asking this question for years. What is
that cost? And all of a sudden I see it here. I wish I’d seen this earlier today. So, I
would have asked some questions prior to the meeting. But I mean I’m amazed and I’m
glad. If that’s the cost, that’s the cost.
MS. ROGERS: Well, this came out of the study that, I believe it was Tom Kaleko came
and gave a presentation from Springsted. And it’s not specifically the costs of that
particular stretch of road in the Prairie Pines project, it’s more of a conceptual number
with using -- starting with our CAFR and allocating costs. So, it’s not an exact number
for per lane mile of street or per hours that it would take to remove snow on those
particular streets. It’s an attempt and kind of a conceptual study that the idea could be
used in other projects. It was used with Cobblestone. But the idea is that there is a
cost in excess of the revenues for this residential project if the Council should choose to
approve for a residential project.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: And we’ve worked this number out with the developer?
MS. ROGERS: Yes.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: And they’re happy with it?
MS. ROGERS: Yes, they’re very happy.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: And don’t get me wrong. I’m not against it. I’m just
amazed that all of a sudden we’ve got a number. I think that’s amazing. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Any other questions or comments from the Council at this time?
Seeing none, is there anyone from the audience that would like to speak to this item?
Please come forward. Good evening. If you’ll state your name and address for the
record, please.
MR. CHAPMAN: My name is Mike Chapman. Address is (Address Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. CHAPMAN: And it’s me again. I have two points I would like to make on this. And
as you know from my past presentations before the Council, I’m pretty much universally
opposed to tax incentives for development. But the first point I’d like to make is there
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really has been no explanation of how these incentives benefit the residents of
Shawnee. And as a resident of Shawnee that’s what I’m concerned about. When I talk
to the different proponents of these incentive projects, I get different answers. I feel like
a cat that’s chasing its tail, because they’re circular arguments. And when we talked
about Shawnee Plaza, the answer was, well, we need more retail to lessen the tax
burden on the residents. When you talk about industrial development, you know, you
get a different answer. Well, now apparently we need more residential, because that’s
primarily what this is. So, I keep getting different answers. And what concerns me is
nobody can really explain how this benefits me as a resident of Shawnee. I’ve lived
here for 20-something years. I don’t like the idea of just giving away taxpayer money to
people. And that’s what this is. This is taxpayer money. This isn’t just free money that
walked in off the street. But there seems to be no study. I mean, the feasibility study
only covers the show that this is feasible for the developer. It doesn’t show why it’s
feasible or practical for a resident of Shawnee. And I think as guardians of tax money
that’s your job to know what it is or what’s the benefit to the taxpayer. And, you know, I
would challenge you to give me an answer to that, not at this point. But, you know, if I
talked to you one-on-one can you give me an answer? And I don’t want to, you know,
I’m not against development. I realize development is the key to the economic future of
everybody. I’m just against taxpayer incentives. And second of all, incentives are not
fair to everyone else as we have to support the benefit. Going to do a little quick math
here on that $15,500 payment. If you take like 2.2 persons per unit, that’s like $30 a
person. You’re telling me that it only costs $30 for all the City services. You know, I
find that really hard to believe. I’m the president of my homeowners’ association.
There’s about five percent of the homes that don’t pay their fee. No matter what I do to
try to get them to pay, they don’t pay. And the rest of us are paying for their trash
service, the common area maintenance. And that’s what’s going to happen here.
We’re going to have all these people move in and they’re going to use our streets.
They’re going to go to our schools. They’re going to call the police. They’re going to go
to the parks and recreation. And all they’re -- a lot of this tax money that they’re paying
just goes to the developer. I don’t get it. And as a resident of Shawnee, I’m going to
help pay for them. My wife and I moved into Western Shawnee like 17 years ago, right
before my second daughter was born. There was nobody out there. There was
Frenchman’s Creek and there was Woodsonia. You go out there today and take a look
at what’s out there, there’s a lot of development out there. That all occurred without
incentives. It occurred because people like me realized that that’s a great place to live.
And it’s still a great place to live. At one point I was going to get transferred out to
Independence, the Grain Valley area. We drove around out there. There’s nothing that
compares to Western Shawnee as far as the amenities that are out there, the proximity
of services, the parks, the schools and everything else. You know, we don’t need big
incentives to keep development going out there. I mean, yes, the country has gone
through a little economic downturn. But we don’t need these incentives to keep it -- to
spur development. We don’t have to be like Lenexa. We don’t have to be Zona Rosa.
We don’t have to be Wyandotte County. We can be Shawnee and do what’s best for
Shawnee. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Chapman. Okay. And I would ask is there anyone
else in the audience that would like to come and speak to this item? Good evening. If
you’ll state your name and address for the record, please.
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MR. POWERS: Sure. Good evening. My name is Mitch Powers. I live at (Address
Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. POWERS: I am in the spirit of complete transparency. I am the President of the
Board of Education for USD 232, the DeSoto School District, of which I have been a
patron, I’m not now. My kids are all gone, but have been out there. And I’m here
tonight not speaking on behalf of the Board of Education. I have not vetted this with
them. I’m just here speaking as a resident of Western Shawnee. I did speak with the
leadership of the district this afternoon and they -- I explained to them what I was going
to be talking about this evening. And they said it would be okay for me to mention that
it, in fact, is their -- very similar to their position, if not exactly their position what I’m
going to be talking about this evening. So, the two kind of key things that I wanted to
talk about was first -- well, they both touch on costs associated with this, in terms of the
school district, USD 232. And as best I can figure, and I haven’t seen anything from the
City yet on this, but as best as we can figure, this is going to impact -- pull
approximately $4.1 million out of the USD 232 budget for the 20-year period term of the
TIF project. In addition to that, adding about 200, was it 222 units, residential units?
Our district consultant that looks at boundaries and volume of students and such
estimates that’s going to add approximately 50 new students to the district’s
educationary load, which at about $10,000 a student is what it costs the district to
educate a student every year, that’s going to be about half a million dollars. And so
simple, quick math, you know, no inflationary. That’s going to cost the school district
approximately $10 million over the period of the TIF. And I just, again, as a resident, as
someone who is a taxpayer in the district, as someone who obviously has a very -- has
a vested interest in the success of the district, I’m just not comfortable at all with pulling
basically -- or adding $14 million budgetary load on the USD 232 School District at this
time. So, I just wanted to make that point.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Powers.
MR. POWERS: Uh-huh.
MAYOR MEYERS: Is there anyone else from the audience that would like to speak to
this item? Good evening. If you’ll state your name and address for the record, please.
MR. LAUER: Good evening. Tony Lauer, (Address Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. LAUER: I have some documents to share. I don’t know what the best way to do
that is. Can I pass them forward?
MAYOR MEYERS: You can do that.
MR. LAUER: Sure.
MAYOR MEYERS: Or we can put them on the screen, too.
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MR. LAUER: I have copies.
(Off the Record Talking)
MR. LAUER: I don’t know if you can read that on the screen or not, that’s why I printed
out copies for you. But I just wanted to clarify a couple things. In using the information
that is provided by staff, I added some additional figures, which are figures that I have
always wanted to see. Figures that I’ve always wanted to multiply out to determine
what the true impact is. And as I calculate this, and the detail is the second page, which
would be much smaller for you to see, the total TIF dollars to the developer over the 20year period is about $7.3 million. So, when we look at the TIF, and I often see that $3
million number. But the amount of property tax that’s being taken from the various
taxing jurisdictions totals $7.3 million. Of the Shawnee portion of that is $1.5 million.
So, it’s okay for you to give away, well, I suppose our own money. But my primary
concerns are what’s taken from the school districts, USD 232 and Johnson County
Community College. And that total that I’ve come up with is $4.3 million. When it’s all
said and done, if we look at the other -- well, it’s going to be impossible for you guys to
see it back there. So, at the end of the 20-year period what I’ve calculated out is a total
of $92,811. And this is based on property tax alone. So, at the end of 20 years,
$92,811.38 is what the City income is. So, the question I have for you to ponder is, is
that sufficient to pay for the $70 per street light per year? Is that sufficient for the
$100,000 per lane mile maintenance that’s required? I think it’s 12 or 14 years. So, at
the end of 20 years, how often will we have to take care of those roads? And if we have
to take care of those roads once, I think that’s going -- I don’t think $92,000 is going to
cover our expenses at all. So, that burden will fall on the rest of the citizens.
Additionally, I think my primary concern is back to the number that’s being taken away
from schools. I feel that USD 232 is presently very burdened just like all the taxing
jurisdictions are. And we oftentimes talk about the state and how the state makes
decisions that impact our budgets. I would ask you to put yourself in -- to consider that
when you reflect on your decision this evening with -- your decision is going to
adversely affect or could adversely affect USD 232 and the students within the district.
Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there anybody else from the audience that would like
to speak to this item?
MR. NAVE: Andrew Nave, (Address Omitted), with the Economic Development
Council. I appreciate your all’s consideration for this project tonight. Wanted to just
remind of a couple of things from the Economic Development Council’s perspective.
Certainly economic development projects like this and public incentives are always
controversial and there’s always a difficult decision to be weighed. A couple things to
remember, long term, is what does this project get us. We’re talking about a site in
Western Shawnee which has a lot of growth and has seen a lot of potential and a lot of
development. But this specific site has been challenged for a number of years.
Topography is working against this site. You see the numbers when it comes to the
stormwater, some of the infrastructure investment that is required by this developer to
fill this site to make it marketable. You all received a number of weeks back an e-mail
from a developer across the highway, Mr. Rogers, who has looked at this site on a
number of occasions and considered buying and developing the site and couldn’t make
the numbers work. The site, the topography and the investment is just too much. So, it
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is difficult to weigh each economic development project and the use of public funds for
each project. But you have to take each project on a case-by-case basis and see what
are the challenges and what is the highest and best use that we can help drive for this
particular project. In this case I would argue that the site is challenged. I would also
argue that what this brings, 222 townhome units, over 500 residents, brings a lot of new
customers to that whole area. It’s not just the shopping center adjacent to the south,
but to that whole area, to all the shopping centers in that quadrant. So, those are two
really important things to remember. Lastly, I’ll mention is, the EDC, obviously we’re
supportive and a part of leading a lot of these projects forward. We’ve talked with a
number of people about this project. We’ve talked with folks in the real estate
community that see a huge benefit to having new residents and new bodies at this
intersection. We’ve talked with folks in the business community here locally with the
Chamber board, our EDC board. And we even specifically reached out to the school
district and have had a sit-down meeting with Dr. Sumner of the school district to talk
about this project. So, I’m a little surprised that there’s a perspective that the school
district is against this, because we’ve been led to believe up until this point that the
school district was certainly supportive of the project and understood the merits of the
project. So, just wanted to mention that. And we did reach out to the school district and
definitely made them aware and brought them up to speed on the benefits of the
project. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Nave. Is there anyone else from the audience that
would like to speak to this item?
MR. PETERSEN: Thank you, Mayor. Just briefly.
MAYOR MEYERS: Good evening.
MR. PETERSEN: Curt Petersen with Polsinelli, 6201 College Boulevard, here on behalf
of the applicant, Shawnee Associates. Just wanted to speak, Mayor, to a couple of
points that have been raised by the public. Probably break it into three. First, I’d like to
start with the highest level when we talk about incentives. Every time, this is my, and
just being in the business, my recipe that you look at. You look at developer, you look
at project and you look at site. Those are all extremely relevant on whether this body
decides in any given case whether or not you use a tool the state is giving for economic
development. Here you have a developer that is -- has proven himself. Not just in the
Kansas City area, and I’m speaking to a developer that’s really proven himself in this
community with Pinegate West and also Pine Meadows. Very quality, quality
development. And I think that, you know, we are proud of. So, we have a developer
that we know what we’re getting. We also have a project, which we’ll talk about in a
second that I think for many reasons is compelling for taxpayers, for citizens, for the
governing body. And lastly, as Mr. Nave said, you can’t underestimate or you can’t
overly -- it’s impossible to overstate the importance of focusing on the site here in this
equation in this situation. The experts have said, the City’s consultants have said this
site is undevelopable -- undevelopable without something to the tune of the $4 million to
$5 million in costs that it takes just to get it back to what a normal site -- where it
normally is. Right. The infrastructure it needs to make it developable. So again, the
highest level. You have a developer we can trust. You know what you’re going to get.
You have a project which we’re going to talk about. I would suggest to you is extremely
compelling for this City. And you have a site that absolutely will do nothing for the City,
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for the taxpayers, for the citizens, for the businesses around it, nothing unless this body
acts to help with this public incentive.
The first speaker that came up said, well, you know, why is this good for me as a
taxpayer? It’s a wonderful, wonderful question to ask. It’s right. It’s the question we
should all be asking. And I think in summary, not belaboring the point, because I know
this is not new. We’ve been working on this project for six months, five months,
something like that. So, I believe a lot of you have thought through this a lot. But one,
as Mr. Nave pointed out is the rooftop question. I think it is absolutely something that
deserves -- has a lot of merit to it. We have that overall intersection there that we all
hope for -- is on its way up in terms of a commercial site. You talk to these business
owners. Several of them sent letters back when we talked -- when we were working on
establishing a district and said how important it was to have more rooftops nearby. A lot
of that would be considered neighborhood-commercial. You’ve got to have more
rooftops. This, taking the site that otherwise will do nothing for any of us helps towards
that goal of getting more people to shop at those businesses nearby. Not only that,
from the City perspective, again, let’s go to taxpayers. There’s a budget. You need a
certain amount of revenue to do the things that we all want you to do for all of us every
year. By having more people there in our city, some of these people will be new to the
City that come to live at these wonderful townhomes. They’ll spend money in the City.
When they spend money in the City, they pay sales tax. They help us out on the
revenue side. Those are all both very compelling things I think for us as a city. And if
you have your taxpayer hat on specifically. On the commercial side no one would
dispute that. You know, we joke sometimes there’s Webster’s blight or statutory blight.
Literally what the statute says is blight and that’s what you work with when you decide
whether they’re a TIF-eligible site. We didn’t even have to talk about Webster’s blight.
I’m sorry, statutory blight. We can go straight to Webster’s blight on the corner. It looks
awful. We all know that. We all want it gone. But what’s wonderful is this developer
has come forward and acquired both these sites. A little bit at his own risk as we’ve
gone through this process. And is just waiting to take care of that problem. The
moment we get through this process to go wipe the slate clean, re-grate, take care of
the access that will, in my opinion, I think a lot of you will agree if we don’t do that, we’re
never going to get good commercial back there, it’s going to sit. He takes care of that
problem. So, another way I think that helps us as a city. It helps taxpayers. It helps us,
just the citizens living in a community having -- removing that blight. That’s number
one. In summary on that, developer, site, project, good for taxpayers, good for the City.
A lot of reasons we -- ways we can support that.
Second of three points to make, Mr. Mayor, is just let’s go to the schools, because
there’s been a lot of time spent on that in the last 20 minutes. Schools. Mr. Nave did a
very good job. But this is an important enough point. I want a little repetition for
emphasis here. We intentionally, because we’re not new to this concept of incentives
and when there’s property tax involved, what do you do first? Almost one of the first
things we did was go and we presented our plan to the superintendent and his
leadership team. We went out to the school district offices and laid it all out and said
here is what we think, and we said what do you think. And as you all know, the statute
is set up, rightly so, to give the school district and the county, right, because they have a
lot of mills at stake on the property tax side. It says you can stop this. We all -- the City
actually gives the official notices. Again, we’ve been in conversations with them. And
the leadership of the school district, which is sophisticated, right. It’s not that they’ve
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seen this before, because they have and they’ve taken action before in the past as a lot
of you know, right? They decided as they weighed all this out that this is what’s best for
the school district. And I can, I mean, I don’t pretend to speak for them. But I’m telling
you with sophisticated people and notice and meetings, they decided they did not want
to stop this project. Which I think it’s fair for me to say right now that while Mr. Powers
has, I’m glad he gets to stand up here and give his opinion, and he should always be
able to do that. But in terms of the school district itself and them looking at their
revenues and their costs, they’re not opposed to this development. So, I think that is a
critical point to remember, notwithstanding Mr. Powers’ ability to stand up here and give
his opinion which I -- it’s a great country. Also a little more on the school district. When
we met with the superintendent, I will just say there is a feeling in general that the
school district doesn’t want to shrink. The school district doesn’t want to stay the same
size. I think it’s fair, and I think Mr. Nave having more contact could speak to this even
more, it’s fair to say, they are a pro-growth school district. That’s a good thing for a lot
of reasons. One of the reasons is you even get more help from the state when you’re in
a percentage growth and all that. So, just conceptually high level growth like this with
rooftops in our city for this school district is something that, generally speaking, I can
say right now I know the school district is in favor of it. And at the end of the day when I
walked away from our last meeting with the school district on was these are folks, while
you can put up numbers, and again, it’s fair to do. It’s good to have the discussion.
And talk about how much it will cost to school 40 or 50 kids and where does that really
come from and how will the school district do it. At the end of the day, I was actually
impressed with the superintendent and the leadership team, because I got the sense
that they cared or he had the bigger picture in mind. His job is, you know, he has this
duty to look out for the school district. But he understands that the school district isn’t
on an island. It’s in a broader community. And specifically, large part in the City. And
he gets that and he knows this is right for the City. Now, I’m being careful. I don’t want
to put words in his mouth. But I walked away, and I know our whole team did, that
that’s something he saw, the big picture.
Finally, the third and then I’ll stand for any questions or let others speak. But this idea,
and it’s confusing. Councilman Sawyer, if I can even -- I think the operating cost
analysis that the City of Shawnee does, I have to say at first it baffled me a bit. Now,
I’m coming around to something positive. Because doing, you know, doing what I do for
a living I see a lot of different governing bodies in a lot of different cities in those states,
a lot. And no other city does that. And it’s a cost to the developer. So, you can
imagine people, you know, on the developer’s side you’re not thrilled about it. But we
dug in and we worked with the City’s consultant, which by the way is excellent,
Springsted. And there’s pages and pages on this analysis. And I, even as a financial
guy, I mean, Carol will attest to this, was asking a lot of questions. Like, okay, now tell
me how you do this and Maureen is jumping in and Springsted. It’s a big process. But
it’s sophisticated and I think the biggest point that, and Maureen made this point, but I
just wanted -- I think it’s a great question, it’s on a net basis. So, when the question is
asked, will it cost $15,000 a year to maintain the streets, this analysis that’s pages and
pages thick that has all these assumptions is digging into on net. So, it’s not just the
cost, but it nets out all of the various direct and indirect benefits of the citizens
(inaudible). So, if that helps at all, it possibly doesn’t, but that’s what’s going on with
that number. With that said, I’d be happy if there’s anything from the developer’s side,
Mayor, that we can shed more light on. But with that, we just thank staff and the City for
taking us through this process over the last six months. And we hope we’re giving the
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opportunity with this incentive package to bring a really great product to the City.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Petersen. Let me ask if there’s anyone else from
the audience that would like to speak to this item. Please come forward.
MR. SNELL: Greg Snell, (Address Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. SNELL: Since you asked, I’ll ask a question that perhaps the developer can shed
light on. I’m wondering if at a high level when the discussion is going on with the school
district leadership about the benefits, I wonder if they were presented with the negative
impact figure of four million on the budget. If they were never presented with that
negative impact figure, were they presented with any figure at all? That would be a
great question I’d like to have answered by the developer.
MAYOR MEYERS: And you can make your statements and then -MR. SNELL: Well, yeah. Thanks.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there anyone else from the audience that would like
to speak to this item?
MR. POWERS: My name and address again?
MAYOR MEYERS: Yes, please. Yes.
MR. POWERS: Okay. Mitch Powers, (Address Omitted). Just to clarify a couple
things. First off, with respect to the growth, the district being a pro-growth district,
absolutely. My example of 50 additional students was meant as illustrative only in terms
of providing additional budgetary burden, which it is a budgetary burden on the school
district. It wasn’t meant to be indicative of not being a pro-growth district, because that’s
simply not accurate. In terms of Mr. Sumner, Dr. Sumner and such and whether he
supported it or not, the only thing I can say is this evening at 5:30 when I was visiting
with Dr. Sumner, he said that they did not provide their support. Okay. They didn’t
oppose it, but they did not provide their backing and support of the proposal and that it
should not come as a surprise to the individuals here. So, I just wanted to clarify those
two points.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. POWERS: Okay. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Is there anyone else from the audience that would like to speak to
this item? Please come forward.
MR. LANG: My name is A.J. Lang, (Address Omitted). How are you today?
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Good.
MR. LANG: Thank you, Councilman. In the past I’ve been a supporter of the tax
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increments. I guess I didn’t understand them until tonight. I want to thank you for
inviting me to this meeting. Twenty years for $15,000. Let’s take a moment and say
let’s go back 20 years. That puts us, what, about 1993, somewhere as that. What was
a dollar worth in 1993? How much was the police department -- how much of the police
-- Chief, how much were policeman making in 1993? Do you know?
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Lang, we’re -MR. LANG: It would be a lot less than they’re making today. How come we need tax
increments for 20 years? Isn’t really that the incentive to get a business going? Is that
the idea of it? Mr. Sawyer made some good points there. I hope you all listen to it. If
we need the business, fine. If they don’t think it’s going to take them 20 years to make
it, then why are they going to business? Why we can’t have the tax increments every
five years? They come and -- or maybe based on -- that includes the school districts
too, does it? Park districts. Everything. Fifteen thousand, twenty years. We’re going
to be paying them more money. Why can’t we have some kind of a -- and, Dawn,
you’re good at this. Why can’t they come back in in five years and renegotiate this
$15,000 based on what the taxes are, the percentage of taxes or something. I don’t
know. I don’t (inaudible). I’m (inaudible) for tax increments if everything is 20 years.
Thanks for having me.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there anyone else from the audience that would like
to speak to this item?
MR. CHAPMAN: Do I need to state my name?
MAYOR MEYERS: Yes.
MR. CHAPMAN: Okay. Mike Chapman, (Address Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. CHAPMAN: Just real quick. I forgot the attorney’s name for the developer, but he
actually proved my point of what I was saying earlier is that there’s no economic
analysis that justifies the benefits to me as a resident. His whole pretense was this high
level more rooftops, more people, you know, feel good. You know, that was his
economic analysis was high level. I’d like to see it down here in the weeds, something
that really proves that it’s beneficial to the residents of Shawnee. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there anyone else from the audience that would like
to speak to this item?
MR. LAUER: I forgot we get two turns. Tony Lauer, (Address Omitted). If the property
is undevelopable, then consideration should be given to not developing there since it’s
becoming a burden on the people within Shawnee, USD 232 for the next 20 years. The
prior property was fine. I used to get my gas at that gas station. I used to wash my
vehicles at that car wash. It was fine. It was okay. So, if we could get back to that preblighted position or condition, then I think you’ll have a suitable commercial property.
Well, in all that I had my laundry service done, the Pride Cleaner there too. So, the
three businesses there I supported. When they disappeared, well, obviously I had to go
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somewhere else. Just to add on, the apartment complex, just to be clear, the
construction of it creates a negative impact to the Clean Water Act, which I’m pretty
familiar with. And the requirement for them to get mitigation is because of an offense to
the Clean Water Act. The mitigation that they’re buying into is mitigation elsewhere. It
doesn’t address me and my property which is downstream from this development.
Finally, I’ll just leave it at this. When during this last election I did some informal exit
interviews and I asked two simple questions of people. One question was what, if
anything, motivated you to vote today. And overwhelmingly the response was, because
there was a ballot issue for USD 232, the response was to support our school district.
So, I would just suggest that overwhelmingly the people will choose to support our
school district and I would ask that you do the same. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there anybody else from the audience that would like
to speak to this item?
MR. WATERS: Good evening one and all.
MAYOR MEYERS: Good evening.
MR. WATERS: My name is John Waters. I live at (Address Omitted), which is back in
town. We own the property straight to the south of it as you might know. But we need
this project. We’re really lucky that they’re bringing us a quality project like this. We
could be dropping some apartment complex in there. That ground is tough to
development. We sold them the Shop N Go building for a very reasonable price to
support this project, because we felt that some nice townhomes would be a lot better
than another apartment complex. And let’s face it, it’s going to be tough to get to,
because of the roundabout situation we got going on out there. And I just -- I really feel
like this is a great project and we’d be lucky to have it.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there anyone else from the audience that would like
to speak to this item? Seeing none, I’ll ask the Council if they have any further
questions or comments. Ms. Kuhn.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: I really appreciate folks taking the opportunity to speak.
And, you know, Tony mentioning that I do look a lot at these particular items and setting
them up. And I guess I’m bothered by the consistent theme that I’ve heard tonight
which is this is a burden on the people. A clear understanding of what a TIF is would
alleviate most of that burden idea. And I think that’s what bothers me. Because a TIF is
not a tax that we’re giving to somebody. It’s not money that our other taxpayers have
paid to our City and we’re handing them in a check to do the development. TIF is a tax
increment financing. So, if nothing develops, there is no more money. This isn’t
something where what they’re paying us right now goes away. This isn’t something
where, I think when the school district said we’re pulling $4 million out of their budget,
because if this doesn’t happen, there is no $4 million period. We sat there, you know,
as Tony stood up and told us about how he went to these dry cleaners, how he went to
that gas station. So did I. Lived right there. Tried to go to them. But they’re out of
business now. We have a different way of being able to access those grounds now.
The area behind that never developed contrary to all of the projects that were brought
forward to us. So, this particular piece of ground that we’re speaking to is not going to
develop unless we do something to give it a helping hand. But that helping hand is not
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the taxpayers’ money that they’ve already gave to us and we’re handing back in the
form of a check. It’s a project that if it is built brings additional tax revenue on the tax
commercial valuation side, that we take that piece that it’s went back up and we bring
that back to paid back portions of what they invested to make this piece of ground
developable. But if we don’t go there, then we’ll keep collecting exactly what we’re
collecting now. It is highly unlikely, as we’ve seen for the last 3½ years, I believe, where
we’ve had nothing on that corner and that area has consistently just continued to
decrease in the amount of commercial that we have available to us. So, taking money
out of a budget implies that that money is going to be there somehow or someway if we
don’t do a TIF. It’s not. These people are not doing this development and we’re not
going to get a development like this if we don’t allow that piece to go back to make it
affordable to do it. So, I’m bothered by the burden of the people analogy, because it’s
not a continuing burden on the people. It’s a continuing use of additional dollars we
wouldn’t otherwise have to bring the people things that we’ve been asked for. I think
Jeff and I could both speak to the question about what’s in it for the taxpayer. Nine
years in serving, and if I hear more than anything else what people want it is new
restaurant choices, new retail options, better places to shop and more opportunities for
their families in that area. I go to ICSC, which is a shopping center conference, where
we talk to retailers, we talk to restaurants and beg them to come to our community. We
shop and talk to them about everything that we have to offer. And consistently one of
the answers we get in Western Shawnee, which is why when we talked about Shawnee
Plaza you might have got a different answer as to what was good for the taxpayers and
why we would offer incentives than you would in Western Shawnee where are rooftops
are so low compared to what the standards that national retailers, national restaurants
and retail restaurants and retailers want to have that they won’t come here. So, in case
you hadn’t noticed that corner has not exactly been a great big draw for the kind of
restaurants we’ve been wanting and people have been asking us for. But adding 225
additional houses, 500 additional people, makes us a little bit closer to those target
markets they’re looking for and brings us another opportunity to get some of this stuff
that people in Western Shawnee want. And we can’t get it another way. As for the
school district, I have always been a huge proponent of the school district. In fact, I
actively worked on two of the bond campaigns that Tony was talking about. I am big
supporter in believing we should support our school districts and we need to be
financially responsible for that amount. But our school district is not shy when we talk
about tax incentives. In fact, at 435, the Hodgson property, the school district initially
came back to us with strong opposition. So, we were told that they said at 5:30 tonight
that they may not be showing opposition, but they’re not showing support either and we
wouldn’t be surprised. No. I’m not surprised at all, because the school district is not
going to come forward and actively support something that is going to impact a potential
future revenue for them, because it’s not a good place for them to be. But I promise you
they’re not shy about giving opposition if they think that it’s going to be a problem for
them or an undue concern or an excessive cost to them that they wouldn’t be able to
afford. Those additional retailers that we can potentially bring forward bring additional
tax dollars. Those additional restaurants bring other people who buy the other houses
in that area and want to move here. And those people also continue to support the
additional costs of running that school district. We’ve talked forever about needing to
diversify our tax base. And individual residents are not what we’re trying to diversify it
with. We’re trying to diversify it with additional businesses. But those businesses need
people to work there and they need people to shop there and they need people to go
there. And we need them to come here and they’re not right now. Western Shawnee is
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not getting those things. And this is one shot for us to bring it forward. I can’t imagine
why I wouldn’t be in favor of this. It’s got a high quality development. Townhouses that
bring in good solid rents. A quality development with a proven track record. I know I
have a reputation of somebody who consistently supports tax incentives or developer
benefits to it. But I also voted no on the first TIF that was brought forward to this
Council, because I didn’t believe that it would actually be able to go forward. And I
didn’t believe that it would have the wherewithal to actually come to fruition and bring us
the things in Shawnee that come from that benefit. But I believe this one can. I believe
that we have a developer who has the cash to do it. And that’s where we’re going to
have to roll the dice sometime. You know, Tony, when you asked the question about
why we would do it for 20 years, that $15,000 is not what we gain from it. That $15,000
is an additional payment on top of the other benefits that we gain from it, because that
$15,000 helps assume some of the additional costs for things like snow removal after
the benefits of sales tax being spent, additional properties being bought, people using
our Parks and Rec and paying the fees to do our programs so that we can offer
additional programs to other community folks. What the benefit to us is, is having it built
without any additional costs to our community. We get what we’re getting now and in
20 years we get a whole more. And while that 20 years is coming by, we get additional
sales tax revenue, additional community assets, the potential for additional retail and
commercial development and the potential for reduced taxes to our Western Shawnee
folks, because we can add additional commercial assets to diversify that base. To me,
it’s a no-brainer. There is no reason why we would not as a Council support this. And I
would be so derelict in my duty to Ward III that it wouldn’t even be funny if we didn’t
support this kind of stuff.
MAYOR MEYERS: Any other questions or comments from the Council? Mr. Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: I just, you know, I don’t need to rehash everything
Dawn just said. But, yeah, I think one of the things we need to consider is the big part
of a TIF, it is called the “but for” and that means would it develop but for a TIF. And
that’s really key to everything we’re talking about, because reality is without TIF-ing this
property, it’s not going to develop. And that’s proven by the feasibility study done by
Springsted. You know, Springsted is an independent company. They don’t work for us,
they’re a consultant. They don’t have any skin in the game. They don’t work for the
developer. And, you know, they go and run the numbers and they provide a feasibility
study. And I’m sure Springsted has provided feasibility studies that have said you don’t
need to incentivize this for it to work. But in this case this is a very large, very
professional, very capable company that has said without a TIF this will never happen.
And it’s been reiterated by other people and by the developer. This is an extremely
tough piece of ground and hasn’t been looked at for three years. This ground has been,
I believe the developer has owned this ground for 10 years or 12 years, looked at
various projects over the years and has tried selling the property. The property was on
the market for years. I don’t know if you ever drove by there, we saw for sale signs on it
for many years. Nobody could make anything work on it. So, the question is, do we
want to look at a field on the corner of one of our main thoroughfares, look at a field of
weeds, grass, wildflowers, whatever it is, you know, wildflowers would be great, but
weeds and grass, do we want to look at that field that produces -- the only revenue it
produces us is whatever it’s, you know, it would be appraised it as agricultural ground.
So, it would make us probably $700 a year as Ag property versus we do this. And, you
know, back to this assumption that we’re taking money out of the budget, we’re not. It’s
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the increment that he would pay. So, put in that perspective if we did have an incentive
and he did the project, then we’d be collecting those additional property taxes. But
without the incentive he’s not going to do it. So, we’re going to take those additional
property taxes and that pays the bond. So, that’s how we make this a feasible project.
So, we’re not taking any money away from anybody. We’re just diverting his payment
into paying the bonds. In return, the City gets a body of residents that are going to go
spend their money in Gary Rogers’ center across the highway and John Waters’ center
to the south and the new Walmart center caddy-corner to it and all the businesses on
Monticello and Shawnee Mission Parkway that do struggle from rooftops. When we
look at Western Shawnee, and a lot of people think there’s a sea of rooftops out there,
why do we need more, one of the things you hear from developers when they look at an
aerial of our City is, you have a 1,000-acre landfill here and you have about a 1,000acre park here and they’re really close to each other, and that’s Shawnee Mission Park.
When you take those two masses into consideration when we look at density, there’s
nowhere else in the City that’s affected like that. When we look at South Johnson
County, we go, oh, my god, look at the retail, look at what’s happening out there, their
density is off the charts compared to what we are. Do we want that? You know, I don’t
necessarily want the traffic. I don’t think I want the density of South Johnson County. I
don’t think you ever will have that, because that’s not the kind of community we are and
that’s not what we’re trying to be. But we’re never going to have any retail successes or
draw any major tenants and give people what they’re asking for if we don’t create the
density. So, this is an opportunity to add, to me, this is an opportunity to add rooftops.
You know, I would say to the school district if they were truly concerned about it and
they really were truly concerned this was going to cost them, you know, $4 million in
their budget or whatever it is, then they would be exercising their veto rights and they’re
not. And they’re not doing it, because I’m sure they understand the merits and the
values of this project. The City has always been very supportive of the school district.
You know, it’s a great district. I live out there. It’s a growing district. You know, all
districts have their challenges. That one has had numerous challenges over the years,
because it is a very high growth area. But, you know, the notion that we shouldn’t do
this, because we don’t need the growth, that’s really an interesting statement. I mean,
where -- when we start actually saying we shouldn’t do this, because we don’t want the
growth, then where are we as a community? Do we just stop doing projects altogether,
because we’ve decided that growth isn’t good and let’s stop doing it? One of the
numbers that came up, and I believe Mike alluded to it that how do we know that $30 a
person or whatever, where do you have that number? We’ve done that. You have the
number. We showed each -- for per capita in Shawnee, wasn’t it going to cost us like
$37 for services? For all the services we get, $37 -- or is that month? It’s $37 a month.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: $75.
MAYOR MEYERS: $72
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Or $75. No, it wasn’t -- was it -CITY MANAGER GONZALES: We do a household kind of analysis that’s pretty
simplistic.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: It’s vague.
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CITY MANAGER GONZALES: But it’s a per household about $72 a month, $79 a
month -COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: $72 per house. Yeah.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: -- per household. And that’s purely based on a property
tax and the franchise fee.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Which is like involves every single service the City did.
Basically takes our budget and looks at everything we do and breaks it down into, you
know, Parks and Public Works and services. So, I mean, those numbers are out there.
But we have to grow. And the other thing to that, there was something that was said
that really does kind of bother me is this idea that will this neighborhood pay for itself or
will it generate enough money to pay for what we’re doing. And, you know, that’s a
slippery slope, because we have neighborhoods down here, we have Goddard Heights,
we have, you know, we have a few neighbors down here that need curbs and gutters
and a lot of road repair. You know, I think any one of us could make that argument, if
we’re going to use that analysis, then every one of us could sit here and ask do the
property taxes of those neighborhoods pay for what we need to do there. And the
question is, no, they don’t. It’s going to take the taxes of this entire community to curb
and gutter these neighborhoods down here. And there’s people that probably aren’t
going to like it if we ever do it. But what’s good for them is good for the community. No
different than if we build that. It’s good for the community. It brings new people into our
City and it does -- it produces sales tax dollars and it produces growth. So, that’s a
slippery slope. When we really start to analyze down to the point where we’re going to
ask is there enough money generated from this residential community to pay for what
we have to pay on those streets or, you know, it’s tough on them. I mean, we’re a
community. You don’t -- we’re not segregated by neighborhood, we don’t pick and
choose. We’re the community. We’re the City of Shawnee. What’s good for Western
Shawnee is good for Eastern Shawnee and vice versa. We’re all in it together. So, I
don’t want to go down that slope. I support it obviously. I know most all the business
owners in that area. I’ve had tremendous positive feedback from every one of them.
They all support it. Also there’s an incredible need for rooftops and for additional
revenue. Some of the businesses have been struggling for a long time. And, you know,
when we talk about residents, businesses or tax paying entities as well. And while they
don’t get to vote, you know, I’ve got to listen to businesses as well, because they’re
directly affected by what we do. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Is there any other comments or questions from the
Council at this time? Mr. Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Yeah. I’ll just throw in that I think Dawn and Jeff and
everyone has made excellent points tonight. One of the things that, you know, 20 years
ago people sitting up here made some decisions and they, I’m not going to say rolled
the dice, but they said we need to do this for the betterment of the City of Shawnee.
And we are growing and better. Ten years ago the same thing happened. Tonight we
are being -- this group in the last two years have been asked to do a lot of things to
make and help Shawnee be better. Now, is it going to be better tomorrow? Yes,
because we did it. But 10 or 15 years down the road, because of the vision and the
strategic planning and the vision of the governing body and the vision of the City, yes.
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The second point about this is when you look at Western Shawnee and you look north
of 55th Street probably from Lake Quivira, the 435 corridor and all that, we are
developmentally challenged simply by topography. And I believe that unless the
governing body or we figure out a mechanism -- we need to figure out a mechanism to
help get some of this open ground developed and start to getting it produced to meet
the needs of the City and rooftops and things. And this is merely one of the steps
involved. Thank you.
B) Conclude the Public Hearing.
MAYOR MEYERS: Any other questions or comments from the Council? Seeing none,
I’ll accept a motion to conclude the public hearing.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: So moved.
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded to conclude the public
hearing. All in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. (Motion passes 8-0)
C) Approve an Ordinance Adopting the Prairie Pines Redevelopment
Project Plan, and Approve the Execution of a Redevelopment Agreement.
MAYOR MEYERS: And Item C would be a Motion to Approve an Ordinance.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Motion to Approve the Ordinance Adopting Prairie Pines
Redevelopment Project Plan and Approving the Execution of Redevelopment
Agreement, a charter, I’m sorry, an ordinance number would be assigned if approved.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS PFLUMM, NEIGHBOR, SAWYER, KUHN, VAUGHT, SANDIFER:
Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no.
COUNCILMEMBERS KEMMLING, DISTLER: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: I’ll do a roll call vote. Mr. Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Pflumm?
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COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Kemmling?
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sawyer?
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Ms. Kuhn?
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sandifer?
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: And, Ms. Distler?
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: Motion passes 6-2. (Motion passes 6-2). Thank you to all that
came tonight for this item.
Having passed Ordinance number 3071 was assigned.
2.
Consider a Resolution Repealing Resolution No. 1703 and Declaring the
Intent to Issue Private Activity Revenue Bonds for the Prairie Pines Project
for the Purpose of Construction, Equipping and Furnishing of a Mixed Use
Commercial Development Within the City.
MAYOR MEYERS: And now we will move on to Item Number 2. Item Number 2 is to
Consider a Resolution Repealing Resolution No. 1703 and Declaring the Intent to Issue
Private Activity Revenue Bonds for the Prairie Pines Project for the Purpose of
Construction, Equipping and Furnishing of a Mixed Use Commercial Development
Within the City.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Move to adopt a resolution repealing Resolution 1703 and
declare the City’s intent to issue federally taxable private activity revenue bonds in an
amount not to exceed $20 million.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second. Oops.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Sorry. Didn’t know if I had to read the rest of it.
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COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that wanted to speak
to this item? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS PFLUMM, NEIGHBOR, SAWYER, KUHN, VAUGHT, SANDIFER:
Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no.
COUNCILMEMBERS KEMMLING, DISTLER: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: I’ll do a roll call vote. Mr. Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Pflumm?
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Kemmling?
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sawyer?
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Ms. Kuhn?
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sandifer?
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: And, Ms. Distler?
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: Motion carries 6-2. (Motion passes 6-2).
Having passed Resolution number 1708 was assigned.
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3.
August 12, 2013
Journal Page #15134
Consider Application for a License for the Sale of Cereal Malt Beverages in
the Original and Unopened Containers and not for Consumption on the
Premises at Walmart, Located at 5701 Silverheel Street.
MAYOR MEYERS: Now, we’ll move to Item 3, Consider Application for a License for
the Sale of Cereal Malt Beverages in the Original and Unopened Containers and Not for
Consumption on the Premises at Walmart Located at 5701 Silverheel Street.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that would like to
speak to this item? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Oppose no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0).
4.
Consider Approval of a Massage Establishment License for Embody Me
Located at 11015 W. 75th Street.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item Number 4 is to Consider Approval of a Massage
Establishment License for Embody Me Located at 11015 W. 75th Street. MeShelle
Taylor is requesting approval of a massage establishment license for Embody Me
located at 11015 West 75th Street.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that would like to
speak to this item? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0)
G.
ITEMS FROM THE PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING OF JULY 15, 2013.
1.
Consider Approval of Sup-03-13-07; a Special Use Permit for Renee Kelly's,
to Allow a Restaurant with Live Music in the Commercial Neighborhood
Zoning District, Located at 12401 Johnson Drive.
MAYOR MEYERS: We’ll move to Item G which is Items from the Planning Commission
Meeting of July 15th, 2013. Item Number 1 is to Consider Approval of SUP-03-13-07; a
Special Use Permit for Renee Kelly's, to Allow a Restaurant with Live Music in the
Commercial Neighborhood Zoning District, Located at 12401 Johnson Drive.
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COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Second.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that would like to
speak to this item? Please come forward. Good evening.
MR. MANN: Good evening.
MAYOR MEYERS: If you’ll state your name and address for the record, please.
MR. MANN: Howard Mann, (Address Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. MANN: I also own the duplex located at (Address Omitted), which is just to the
east and directly behind the Park Maintenance garage just for reference there so you
understand this proximity to the project. I spoke at the Planning Commission meeting
as well. I guess where I’m coming to on this and what I’d like the Council to consider is
it kind of goes back to Renee Kelly’s, how did they become a restaurant? They were
originally approved, and I see some familiar faces up there back when this was all first
discussed and when they first developed, as a catering and banquet facility. And that’s
what they were -- the City actually created a designation that then allowed them to be a
catering and banquet facility. And that allowed them to be that facility with the limited
number of parking spaces they had. Now, they’re a restaurant which puts them in a
completely different classification for parking and they haven’t increased any parking
over there. Nothing has changed since they were first operating as a catering and
banquet facility. The issue I have with Renee Kelly’s, I think they’ve done a beautiful job
over there. I’m not going to complain with what they’ve done over there as far as
developing a project. I’m a little confused though as to how they were able to switch
from being a catering and banquet facility to now a restaurant which is the reason
they’re having to come before you all now and ask for a special use permit to have live
music at a restaurant. They shouldn’t ever be a restaurant. I don’t understand how that
happened. Irrespective of that, I’m actually, you know, acting and protecting my own
business interest as far as wanting to make sure that my property is not devalued.
That’s one of the reasons I was kind of vehemently opposed to allowing them to operate
as a restaurant or creating this special designation so they could operate. It doesn’t
happen a lot, but when it does happen they park up and down the street and it creates
issues for tenants and my rental property there. And it’s an ongoing issue with my
tenants as far as sometimes complaining about that and people turning around in
driveways, parking in front of their residence, things like that. So, I guess what I’m
asking the Council to do is look at denying this until we can understand how they were
able to switch from being a catering and banquet facility, which they were in compliance
with parking to now a restaurant which they’re completely out of compliance with their
parking. So, I guess that’s my main concern. And, you know, obviously one of the
reasons I’m kind of wondering how this has all come about.
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MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Mr. Pflumm.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Yeah. Probably a question for Carol. I mean, it’s been
a long time since this one came up. But I can’t remember what we did, and maybe you
know off the top of your head about the parking, because we, you know, we’ve got City
parking right across the street.
MR. MANN: Sure.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: And I think it was a shared parking.
MR. MANN: Even with those additional 12 spots, as a restaurant they still do not have
enough spots to meet the designation in your own ordinances as a restaurant.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Well, I don’t know that.
MR. MANN: Even if they owned them and they don’t.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: I don’t necessarily think they have to own those though.
I mean, this guy across the street doesn’t own any parking.
MR. MANN: Uh-huh.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: I mean, so -MR. MANN: Well, I’ve got a copy of your own ordinance here.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Right.
MR. MANN: And, I mean, that’s what I’m referencing is what your own ordinances say
and that’s what I’m basing that on.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Okay. No problem.
MR. MANN: Unless somebody can speak differently to that, that’s my understanding of,
you know, you have to have so many spots for -- in this case it’s two spots for each car
basically if you’re serving alcohol in addition to all your spots for employees. And that’s
based upon the occupancy of the in-hall part of the building. I don’t think anybody has
ever calculated now that they’ve added the exterior patio, the additional load for that as
well. I mean, I hope they do well. That’s what a business is supposed to do. That’s
what a business plan is all about. But as they do better, it creates burdens upon then
neighborhood which is where I’m at. That’s the whole reason you have these
ordinances in the first place for parking for restaurants. I mean, if we allow them, a
leopard to change its spots so to speak, if we allow them to do that, what prevents any
other business from doing that in the city, which brings up other issues. I don’t
understand. I guess that’s where I’m coming from. I don’t understand how this all
happened. And if somebody can explain it to me, I’ll feel and sleep a lot better at night.
But right now, I just don’t see how that works. So, my request of the Council would be
to deny this. Let’s send it back to the Planning Commission. Let’s figure out what’s
going on, how they became a restaurant when they should only be what they were
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originally approved to be which is a catering and banquet facility. So, anyway.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Mann. I’m assuming, Ms. Gonzales, we went
through, again, we went through the proper procedures to allow Renee Kelly’s, as a
council through a voting process, of allowing them to have the designation that they are
currently at. But is there or was there anything as far as what we agreed to as far as
them not complying with what we’ve asked them to do as far as parking and those types
of situations.
MR. CHAFFEE: Yeah. Paul Chaffee, Planning Director. The governing body doesn’t
approve a use for a particular building. What the zoning regulations do is they list a
whole variety of uses within a zoning district and then if that use is one that is a
permitted use in that zoning district, they’re fine. If they’re a use that requires a special
use permit like you see the daycare facilities, quite often in this case the issue at hand is
whether or not to allow Renee Kelly’s on a limited basis to provide the live
entertainment. So, restaurants, some commercial neighborhood restaurants aren’t
allowed use. In commercial neighborhood, no one needed to give specific approval to
that. The City in the years past has allowed Renee Kelly’s to use the parking that’s
directly across the street from them for their parking. One of the things that’s happened
since the last meeting, because staff also was concerned about parking on the street.
We took a look at the CSR and had one complaint in the last year regarding parking.
The other complaint regarding the facility was shoveling snow along Johnson Drive and
not getting that done in a timely manner. So, we visited a little bit with the applicant and
they’ve indicated that they’ll place an additional sign at the exit to their parking to advise
clients who may need to park elsewhere that there’s parking available across the street
at the Park, the recreation facility. And hopefully that -- the client will realize that and
not park up on the street. But as far as getting a lot of calls or complaints regarding the
parking, we haven’t been getting them nor any need to go up there in the evenings and
drive down the street and see what the situation is. Also as with all special use permits,
the first time we hear them is it’ll be up for review in a year. So, if we have issues that
we need to get taken care of hopefully, and they happen before the year, we can get
them taken care of in a year. If we don’t, then the applicant is well aware that the
special use permit may not be extended for a period of time. But to say that the use of
Caenen Castle was only for a catering facility isn’t correct. Commercial neighborhood
zoning, any use that’s allowed in commercial neighborhood zoning would be a use that
could locate at that facility or in that location.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Ms. Distler?
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Do we have an ordinance requiring number of parking
spaces per?
MR. CHAFFEE: We do. And I don’t know what their seated capacity is. But we, you
know, the number of stalls at the park facility and then the number of stalls at a provided
on-site, and certainly Doug can go back through and add those up and go inside the
facility and see what it’s posted. And it shouldn’t be posted for more than what would
necessarily be available.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Okay. So, we don’t know right now whether or not
they’re meeting our requirements?
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MR. CHAFFEE: I personally don’t know.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Okay.
MR. CHAFFEE: I know that we’re not getting complaints of overcrowding, of too many
people, persons at the facility. So, there hasn’t been any need for us to look at that,
except since the Planning Commission meeting we tried to visit with the current owner
of the property to say is there something maybe you can do to help signage-wise to
encourage folks not to park up and down Caenen.
COUNCILMEMBER DISTLER: Okay. Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Any other questions or comments from the Council? Mr. Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Paul, I’m sorry. When we talk about the parking
requirement, then how do we do -- doesn’t -- what’s the name of this little Mexican
restaurant we have, Fogone’s?
MR. CHAFFEE: Fogone’s.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: I mean, they have three stalls.
MR. CHAFFEE: Correct.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Which obviously isn’t enough. So, is that because it’s a
downtown district? Is it different?
MR. CHAFFEE: It’s in downtown. And we do allow -COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Shared parking.
MR. CHAFFEE: -- businesses to share parking in public -COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Okay.
MR. CHAFFEE: -- in public parking lots.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Okay. So, obviously Caenen is not on. Was Caenen
re-zoned too? Was it re-zoned to commercial neighborhood when they did the project
or was it already zoned that?
MR. CHAFFEE: I believe it was already zoned commercial neighborhood.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Okay.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: It used to be a bar. It’s been several things.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Yeah. So, if it’s already zoned commercial, and that’s
why I just wanted clarification on this, because I think the implied was a bait and switch.
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MR. CHAFFEE: Right.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: But it was already zoned commercial. So, they could
have went in and did a restaurant at any time.
MR. CHAFFEE: Right.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: So, what it sounds like, did you -- did we have to add
catering businesses to the zoning code to make that work at the time?
MR. CHAFFEE: We did, because catering businesses weren’t really anywhere -COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Well, and that would make sense.
MR. CHAFFEE: -- anywhere in the district.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: And so to comply you kind of look at it and go do we
want a catering business in this?
MR. CHAFFEE: Right.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: So, we added catering to the zoning code.
MR. CHAFFEE: Right.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: But the zoning code they have, they could have done
the restaurant in the first place. They just did catering and now decided to be a
restaurant?
MR. CHAFFEE: Correct. And it’s been a -- off and on it’s been -COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Okay.
MR. CHAFFEE: -- a single family home and restaurant and then a single family home
again and -COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: A haunted house.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Yeah.
MR. CHAFFEE: Just all sorts of different uses over the years.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Thank you.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: It’s haunted right now. No, I’m just kidding.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: I do remember it was a haunted house.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sawyer.
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COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: And I’ll add to it. I mean, Renee Kelly’s, they added
parking. I mean, before it never had parking. It was parking on the street or wherever
you could find it. I don’t know whether all of you have ever been there, but it’s a very
nice facility. And I believe they try very hard to fit in the neighborhood. And I think we
should be proud that they have chosen to spend their money here.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Pflumm?
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: I think as a restaurant they would have less parking,
because when you have a banquet there is, you know, a dinner when 30 to 60 people
are coming, they all come at the same time and they all park there at the same time.
When it’s a restaurant, people come and go, you know, at different times. But anyway.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the Council?
MR. MANN: I’d like another opportunity to address a couple issues here if I could.
MAYOR MEYERS: Very good. State your name and address for the record, please.
MR. MANN: I’m sorry. Howard Mann, (Address Omitted).
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you.
MR. MANN: This is a screen shot of their current Internet. Highlighted there in red
you’ll see that they show 20 to 100 people is what they currently advertise as being able
to accommodate. So, using that 100 figure, they would have to have parking under
your current ordinances of 84 spots. They have 35 onsite. And if you want to count the
12 that are over at the City’s lot, which really shouldn’t be counted, but you’re going to
count them, you can see they’re still woefully short of what your own ordinances require
a restaurant to have. The catering and banquet designation which was created was
based on square footage. And, you know, I kind of resent that I was somehow calling
this a bait and switch. I’m calling it for what I’m seeing it as, and that is that they were
originally approved as a catering and banquet facility with parking based on square
footage. Now, all of a sudden starting last year they’ve switched to this restaurant
designation. And the restaurant designation requires a minimum of 84 parking spaces
based on their own, what it says right there on their own website. So again, I don’t
understand how that happened or what caused that to happen. You know, to say that
anything in a commercial neighborhood could have been developed there, no. That
was what -- back, and I’m sure many of you weren’t on the Council at the time this was
all brought up, that was what the big controversy was over at that time. And from our
perspective was that it wasn’t just us, it was other property owners that owned property
around there as well was the fact that they were trying to come in there and operate as
a restaurant and not meeting your own established guidelines. And then a new
designation was created, because you had catering and banquet facilities in the City at
that time. You had the Governor’s Mansion. You had some other places as well. And
a new designation was created for, dare I say for Renee Kelly’s. In fact, the sidewalk
was constructed so that they could use City property. And I now I notice a driveway
approach has been put in. You know, again, I’m not complaining from the standpoint of
I think it’s great that effort is being made to help with parking in the neighborhood. But it
doesn’t change the fact that they are not in compliance with your own ordinances as
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they are now. And I think this opens a door for other businesses to do the same thing
down the road. I mean, why couldn’t I be located in the little strip shopping mall as you
alluded to in the town center district, which has different requirements. But let’s say I’m
outside the town center district. And as long as I am bidding the commercial
neighborhood designation within that commercial neighborhood designation though a
business when it opens has to be in compliance with your ordinance or it’s not allowed
to open. You wouldn’t allow a restaurant to open in a commercial neighborhood unless
it had adequate parking. That was the whole reason we had that discussion initially
back in 2005 and ‘06. Now, all of a sudden they’ve changed into a restaurant and they
kind of, to use another term, snuck in under the door and basically now have a
restaurant designation without their 84 parking spots and it’s going to negatively, as
they grow, which I hope their business plan, any smart business person would have a
business plan that says, hey, I’m going to grow and be successful. As they grow and
become more successful at having these events and things like that, it’s going to impact
negatively the neighborhood. It’s going to impact my investment in the neighborhood.
I’ve owned that property over there or have been involved with that property for over 20
years. And I think it’s unfair that they’re allowed to come in now and switch a
designation and operate as a restaurant without the required 84 parking spaces which is
verified by their own website, 20 to 100, you know, patrons is what they can
accommodate. So, I think that answers the question as to what their accommodation is
over there. They’re advertising a hundred people. So again, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to
get upset. But it’s an issue that I’ve been dealing with since 2005 and 2006, so.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Ms. Kuhn?
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: I think Mr. Mann has some valid points as far as our
ordinances always matching up with what their intention is and how they’re always
implemented. I think there are sometimes gray areas we work between. But tonight, I
know my vote for tonight is about whether or not I’m comfortable allowing them to have
live music during specific times. On that vote I’m comfortable and am inclined to be in
favor of it. That being said, when I go for it that I would probably like to see Mr. Chaffee
look a little more into exactly how that flows, whether there’s some opportunities when
we look at those. You know, it’s not a lot of restaurants, a lot of businesses that are
going to have a parking need that generally end up in a residential area like that.
Renee Kelly’s says it can hold up to a hundred people. There’s probably not a whole lot
more, no matter whether I allow them to have music or not that they’re going to be able
to get in the doors. The parking is not going to change if I say yes to this and they
stayed with what they’re at for a restaurant. So, I don’t see voting no on this having any
impact on our ability to conform or not conform to that parking. So, I’m going to move
forward on that. What I would like to see is if there’s a way that we can see, and if that
isn’t the right ordinance and we need to adjust it, no offense, Mr. Mann, but what you
might have opened is the ability for us to make a change to an ordinance that says we
don’t need that. I personally have always been one who doesn’t like the number of
parking lots we require for the big box stores. It makes me crazy to see that sea of
parking spots just because two times a year they might get full. It makes me insane to
see that big of a parking spot and that much concrete out there for it. Now, that being
said, if we do need to go back and revisit the plan, maybe we need to revisit it on how it
fits in the neighborhood better. Do we need to have no parking on one side of the street
so that when the residents are getting in and out, because they’re parking in their
driveways and they need to be able to back out and not bump into somebody, nobody
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can park on that side of the road and they can only park on the other. I don’t know. But
I guess what I’m saying is as a councilmember tonight, I think Renee Kelly’s is an
important part of our community. But even Mr. Mann and his tenants are an important
part of our community, too, and we need to make sure we can see how those can live
together in harmony. I don’t see how my voting in favor of the music, when we’re
already in the situation that you’re seeing is really going to change more people coming
or less people coming. I think their capacity is their capacity and the cars are their cars.
And I would like to see us just kind of revisit the back end of it after we move forward on
this particular piece.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Mr. Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: I concur with what Dawn said. Now, this is about
music at this place. But I would also request that the City Manager put this idea of
parking and zoning in residential areas on a committee meeting sometime in the near
future to clarify.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Chaffee.
MR. CHAFFEE: Paul Chaffee, Planning Director. Another item, just to remind all of you
that we are the only community in Johnson County where we have the maximum
number of parking stalls that a business can have as opposed to most cities say this is
the minimum number of stalls that you are required to have. In such and such an
instance in Shawnee, it’s kind of the flip side, because we don’t want -- or we had
decided with our design plans and with stormwater and water quality and landscaping
that, you know, perhaps our vision of seas of asphalt, because a business says I want
to have 900 stalls, but over the years we would look at aerial photography when we
were redoing our parking requirements and we found that even the business who told
us we need to have 900 stalls, you look at aerial photography and maybe only on the
best day two-thirds of them are full or staff would go out to the businesses the day after
Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, the week between Christmas and New Year’s to see are
these parking lots really full or not. So, we established that now in the zoning
regulations if you want more than the maximum, you need to request that at the
Planning Commission when you come in with your site plan and the Planning
Commission decides whether or not to allow more parking than the maximum requires.
And then we go in and it triggers a whole lot of other issues then to get the increase.
You’re going to do more stormwater detention facilities. You’re going to perhaps do
some pervious concrete work in your parking lot. You’re going to increase the caliper of
tree that you plant inside the parking lot so it gives you some offsets. So, just a little
reminder. And certainly to let, you know, on residential areas how do we want to handle
those types of situations. But just remind you all that we did do some good hard looking
and determined that we didn’t want to be the city with the minimum and then anything
over the minimum was okay. That we said this is what the maximum is. And if you
want more than that, you do more. If you want less, we’re open to looking at less.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the Council?
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Call the question.
MAYOR MEYERS: We have a motion and a second on this item to approve. All in
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favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS PFLUMM, NEIGHBOR, SAWYER, KUHN, VAUGHT, SANDIFER,
DISTLER: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: Motion passes. (Motion passes 7-1)
H.
BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR
MAYOR MEYERS: Item H, Business from the Floor. Is there anyone from the
audience who wanted to bring Business from the Floor tonight? Seeing none, we’ll
move to Item I, Staff Items.
I.
STAFF ITEMS
1.
Consider a Contract with Pioneer Technology Group for a Case
Management System for the Shawnee Municipal Court.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item Number 1, Consider a Contract with Pioneer Technology
Group for a Case Management System for the Shawnee Municipal Court. The City’s
current Municipal Court software and operating system is being phased out by the
vendor. Staff issued a request for a proposal and is recommending Case Management
System from Pioneer Technology.
MR. POWELL: Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Steven Powell. I’m the
Court Administrator for the City. With me tonight in the audience is Tammy Manthei.
She’s the Legal Assistant in the Prosecutor’s office and she served on our selection
committee for this project. Quickly I’d like to share with you the court’s new mission
statement, because we just finalized it last week and I’m really proud of it. Our mission
statement is to provide a professional, efficient and equitable forum for the
administration of justice for all individuals. And I think it really speaks to what we are
really trying to do through municipal court. And we’re excited about this project,
because it’ll help us achieve some of our goals that we’ve identified in many ways. The
project is funded in the 2013 Revised Budget. There is $200,000 allocated for the
project. And included in your packet is a memo from staff with some information as well
as the contract documents that were negotiated with Pioneer Technology Group.
Just real quick, I’ll give you some background on our current software. It’s called JEMS.
It’s been around since about 1998. There are some issues with it, some ongoing issues
with our software unfortunately. One of the issues is that the server that hosts our data
no longer has a warranty on it. So, that presents a vulnerability for us and that server
would be quite costly to replace given some of the other issues that we’ve had with the
software program. As well, court is currently on Windows XP, which is an older version
of Windows. And we’re not able to upgrade to Windows 7, which many of the other City
departments are doing. So, one of the sort of hinges to that is from what I understand
Microsoft will no longer support Windows XP beginning around April of 2014. So that
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again presents another obstacle for us. As well, there’s no integration with our current
e-payment vendor. So, currently when someone pays a traffic citation online, staff has
to go pull all those files, process each one individually. So, those two systems do not
talk to each other. And finally there’s limited ability to comply with some state-mandated
electronic reporting requirements. Those requirements began several years ago. The
state has pushed back that deadline to next July. They’re working with a vendor to
create the module for courts to send that data to them. So, in order for us to be able to
comply with that, we would need to migrate to a new system.
A little bit of history on the project. It began sometime in 2011. And you may recall that
the budget included $113,000 for a contract with Full Court Enterprises, which is a
product by Justice Systems. That decision by the governing body to approve that was
contingent on the City being able to negotiate a contract with that vendor. We were
unable to negotiate a contract that we could live with. So, we ended those negotiations
and went out for RFP. It took us about three months to arrive to a RFP, really identify
our needs. We really wanted to use the opportunity to look out into the future and say
what -- where do we want to go with the court. We need to get away from paper and
manual entry and manual processes and really move to a more automated workflow
system. So, we wrote the RFP and we issued it in May 2013. And we received three
responses. And a selection committee of five reviewed each response. After that initial
round of scoring the top two vendors moved forward with demonstrations and interviews
and reference checks. The final scoring took place in July and Pioneer Technology had
the highest score. The Assistant City Attorney and myself negotiated various items in
the contracts that are in the packet. And we feel like it would be the best. We were
very pleased with the negotiation that we were able to accomplish with the vendor.
A little bit of history on Pioneer Technology. They are out of Sanford, Florida which is a
suburb of Orlando. They’ve been in business since around 1984 and their company
has evolved over the years and they specialize in a very diverse range of products for
county courts, municipal courts, county clerks. They do a lot of document imaging, a lot
of workflow processing, things of that nature. They currently have dozens of courts,
county courts throughout the state of Florida. They have two courts in the state of
Alabama that are municipal and they have several additional municipal courts that will
be coming online in Ohio this year and in 2014.
Based on the scoring that occurred with the selection committee, the committee felt that
Pioneer was the most qualified vendor. And many of the reasons are in your packet
memo. A few that I would share with you is that after the demonstration that we had
with them, it was very evident that they have a proven ability to take courts into a
paperless world, which is very important I think to the City and to increase that level of
service that we want to provide for the individuals who have to use court. Their ability to
streamline our processes was very apparent. And sometimes we all sat back and was
like, wow, you can really do that. Like we don’t have that in ten steps anymore. So,
some of those things really kind of filtered up to the top as we were looking at the
demonstration. Again, that integration with our current software vendors that we’re
using for other services such as online payments, Lotus Notes, integrating with the
police records management system. Those are all things that they’re highly specialized
in doing and prefer to do. Right if you have a vendor that you have a good relationship
with, we want you to keep that relationship. So, that allows us to leverage those
resources. They can also integrate with e-ticking which is another exciting project that
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was approved in the 2013-Revised Budget. And the system was really designed for
maximum use in the courtroom. So, currently when someone comes into court, there is
limited work that actually occurs in the courtroom on that case in terms of processing.
Most of that is written, handwritten in pieces and then taken around and finished after
court. This system is really designed for all of that to happen in court, real time, so that
people aren’t having to wait on court clerks to enter in data. They’re not having to wait
on the judge to handwrite sentences or fill out forms. It’s all computerized and
automated. And essentially what that does is it just reduces the amount of time that
people have to wait to either see the judge or the prosecutor or pay a ticket or get
information. They also have a very robust imaging system which is a requirement for
municipal court. We generate a lot of documents and it makes no sense to print
something just to turn around and scan it so that we can have an archived copy. And
finally, they have a very robust online component and that allows individuals to look up
information about their cases. Depending on a user’s level of access, for instance, if it
were an attorney, they could log in and actually see some more detailed information
about their defendant’s cases so that they could have a little bit better understanding
maybe of what was going on with that defendant before they came to court.
So, the total project cost is $194,000. We were able to negotiate a discount of $20,000
off of their licensing fee. And the total not to exceed price for the contract is $184,400.
That includes the licensing, the installation, converting all of our data from our existing
system into a new system. That also includes converting all of our images into the new
system. It includes training, installation and all the documentation that we would need
for our specific court functions that would -- that they would create for us. In this budget
we also have $10,000 set aside to get peripheral equipment that we’ll need. We’ll need
some new signature pads so that if a defendant needs to sign something, they can sign
electronically. It’s a function we use today. We’ll also -- we’re phasing out our thermal
receipt printers, which are the little skinny printers and just moving to an 8½ x 11
network printer. It just doesn’t make sense to spend that type of money on a receipt.
So, those types of items are included in that $10,000 additional.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Powell.
MR. POWELL: You’re welcome.
MAYOR MEYERS: And that was a very thorough report. Mr. Sawyer.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Mr. Powell, I think I learned more than I wanted to.
MAYOR MEYERS: My eyes were starting to cross.
MR. POWELL: It’s (inaudible) of the operation.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: You brought up a couple of points. You know, I know
that we have the problem or we’ve had volunteers having to scan stuff in, because it
wasn’t computerized. I think I heard you say, but I’m not sure so I’m going to ask again.
MR. POWELL: Okay.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Is it going to go back and get the information we
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already have there or are we going to have to recreate the wheel again?
MR. POWELL: With the data conversion, that’s included in that price. They will take all
of the data that we have hand entered off of thousands of little blue tickets and it will be
converted into the new system. The images of those blue tickets right now are not
scanned into our current case management system. They’re scanned into the Image
Now system which is the City-wide.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: And they’re going to pay somebody to do that?
MR. POWELL: Yes.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Okay.
MR. POWELL: Those images will stay in Image Now. Those images won’t migrate.
The images that will migrate would be case history reports, images that we generate out
of our court software.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Then the other -- well, the last thing I think I heard you
say is that it’s so easy to operate that you won’t have to have more help. Now, do you
want to go on record as saying that? So, it’s August the 12th, 2013.
MR. POWELL: I do not.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: I’ll remember it next year at budget time.
MR. POWELL: Well, what we’re hoping, Councilmember, is when we get our e-ticketing
we’ll be flooded with more tickets. I’m kidding.
(Inaudible; talking over one another)
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: You don’t have e-ticket yet.
MR. POWELL: There is plenty of work to be done. So, I think that we are fully capable
-COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: I’m saying -- what I’m saying is we shouldn’t have to be
adding more staff, that at least the staff we have now -MR. POWELL: I would -COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: I’m a little bit leery at government buying -MR. POWELL: Uh-huh.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: -- computer programs, because the State of Kansas did
a wonderful job with the DMV. After a year they finally maybe have it worked out and I
don’t want us to be in that same position.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Pflumm.
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COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Well, that brings up, you know, what about ongoing
maintenance costs?
MR. POWELL: That’s a good question. Ongoing maintenance costs are $25,000 a
year. It would be capped at $25,000 for the first two full years after we sign, after we do
the final acceptance of the product. So, that would be after it’s installed and tested.
There would be a 90-day warranty period. And then on that 91st day we would need to
pay the $25,000 to start our maintenance contract. If that date falls within a year, they’ll
prorate it to get us to the end of the year. And then in January, we would make that first
full payment. We negotiated with them to cap that increase per year to be consistent
with the consumer price index, but to never be more than 3.5 percent. So initially, it was
five percent annual, CPI with a maximum of five percent. So, we reduced that down to
3.5.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: So, what about all the software upgrades and all that
kind of stuff to take care of any new advancements that they have and all that kind of
stuff that could possibly come out?
MR. POWELL: Good question. Any upgrades to that system is included in our
maintenance agreement. So -COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Do they have modules or do they -- is it an overall
software package?
MR. POWELL: Well, I’ll clarify that statement a little bit. Let’s say for instance it’s just
an enhancement to their whole system, we get that for free. If it’s a brand new
component that we don’t need but want, then we would have to pay for that. But what
we’re getting with this system has everything that we would need and want.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: So, the contract is 184 or whatever, 194, and you got it
knocked down. But what’s the actual software cost itself?
MR. POWELL: The license is $65,000. There’s a page in your packet that itemizes the
cost within the contract.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Kind of standard out there is like 15 percent for
maintenance agreements for software. Just throwing it out there. I mean, most of the
rest of the world is 15 percent.
MR. POWELL: Yeah.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: It’s a little high, but anyway.
MR. POWELL: It is budgeted in 2014 to cover that cost.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: I’m not worried about the budget. I’m worried about -MR. POWELL: I understand.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: -- getting charged too much for the budget, so.
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MR. POWELL: Yeah.
MAYOR MEYERS: Any other questions or comments from the Council? Thank you,
Mr. Powell. Oh, Mr. Kemmling?
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: I know our warranty is expiring on the current
software. What were we paying for maintenance on that annually?
MR. POWELL: Our maintenance was about $12,000 a year for our current vendor.
COUNCILMEMBER KEMMLING: And do we have any assurance that this vendor will
not go out of business or cease to support this product in the future?
MR. POWELL: No.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Mayor, I’d move to award and authorize the Mayor to
sign the contract with Pioneer Technology Group for an amount not to exceed $184,400
for case management system for the Shawnee Municipal Court.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: We have a motion and a second to approve this item. I would ask
first, is there anyone from the audience that would like to speak to this item? Seeing
none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Oppose no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0)
MR. POWELL: Thank you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you, Mr. Powell.
2.
Consider Agreement for Engineering Services to Provide a Study of the
Cedar Mill Watershed.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item Number 2 is to Consider Agreement for Engineering Services
to Provide a Study of the Cedar Mill Watershed. A study of the Cedar Mill’s watershed
will provide comprehensive stormwater design information for future development and
proactively identify potential deficiencies in the storm drainage system in the northwest
area of the city. The Johnson County Stormwater Management Program will fund the
majority of the study. Olsson & Associates was selected from seven firms solicited to
conduct the services.
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
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discussion from the Council? Is there anyone from the audience that would like to
speak to this item? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0)
J.
MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS
1.
Ratify Semi-Monthly Claim for August 12, 2013 in the Amount of
$2,679,817.61.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item J is Miscellaneous Items. Item Number 1 is to Ratify the
Semi-Monthly Claim for August 12, 2013, in the Amount of $2,679,817.61.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Move for -COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Move for approval.
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: Second.
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded on this item. Any further
discussion from the Council? Mr. Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Miscellaneous Council Items?
MAYOR MEYERS: Not yet.
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Okay. Sorry.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: We haven’t voted on this.
MAYOR MEYERS: Any other comments? Anyone from the audience that wanted to
speak to this item? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Opposed no. Motion passes. (Motion passes 8-0)
2.
Miscellaneous Council Items.
MAYOR MEYERS: Item Number 2 is Miscellaneous Council Items. Mr. Neighbor?
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: Yes. I had the opportunity today to be out and drove
down Monticello and I was disturbed, concerned. It does not appear that that project is
going to be done as the way it was presented to the Council. There’s blacktop that’s got
to go down. There are curbs are -- there’s no hint of a turn-about or whatever we call
those things.
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COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Roundabout.
COUNCILMEMBER NEIGHBOR: A roundabout. And I just wonder if we could get a
little quick briefing about what the status of that program is and when we can start to
see it, because that area starting next Monday and Tuesday is going to have a huge
amount of traffic and I can see it’s going to be a real conundrum and we’re probably
going to need to take some efforts as far as policing and some traffic people to help
them get through that first week to ten days.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Wesselschmidt?
MR. WESSELSCHMIDT: I would be glad to bring the Council up to status of that
project. We issued a notice to proceed on that project the first part of July. Contract
had 60 days to complete. So, that brings the number of calendar days to the first of
September. Based on the contractor’s schedule that was given to us at that time, we’re
showing that paving would be done by the time school starts. And then the roundabout
would be finished up the last two weeks of this month. That’s basically the schedule
that they’re on. You should see some significant, well, even though there’s been a
significant amount of work done this whole month and a half, the most visible work will
be taking place yet this week. What the contractor has indicated to us as far as the
schedule is tomorrow will be completing the storm sewer and inlet throats along
Monticello and continue to work with the storm sewer at the roundabout. On
Wednesday, they will have completed all the base asphalt in the widened areas of
Monticello Road. On Thursday and Friday, he will be installing the surface on
Monticello Road. That would be everywhere except for the roundabout. And then on
Friday and Saturday installing all the pavement markings on the new asphalt service.
So, by the end of the day Saturday, essentially all the work within Monticello itself, with
the exception of the roundabout would be ready to go. And again, and then the
roundabout while they’d be working on that yet this week, the remaining part of the
roundabout would be done the last portion of the week. And they would be working on
the roundabout in hours of the day that would not -- essentially stay out of those peak
hours, that morning peak and the afternoon peak so that we can try to get everybody to
coexist about there. But the contractor -MAYOR MEYERS: If it rains, Doug, we will blame you.
MR. WESSELSCHMIDT: Yeah. And that’s what I’m here for. But, yeah. Obviously the
contractor is wanting to get as much done before school starts, because he knows he’s
going to have some limited times he can be working after school.
MAYOR MEYERS: When does their school start?
MR. WESSELSCHMIDT: They start on Monday. They start this next Monday. So,
fortunately that was not the Shawnee Mission School District.
MAYOR MEYERS: Or Olathe.
MR. WESSELSCHMIDT: They started today. I guess Olathe was today as well.
MAYOR MEYERS: Well, kids not till Wednesday, but --
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MR. WESSELSCHMIDT: Yeah. So, they start with, it’s what, elementary school and 7 th
grade and 9th grade on that Monday. And then on Tuesday is the 8 th graders and the
rest of the high school.
MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sawyer.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Okay. Doug, you might want to stay here or you might
-- since Mark is not here, I don’t see him. Let’s drag ourselves to the east. I know that
the middle schools go back I believe Wednesday in Shawnee Mission. And I have yet
to hear what kind of plan we really have for bus traffic out of Hocker Grove. I’ve heard
that, you know, I was at a meeting last spring and I was told and left there believing that,
you know, we’re going to -- everybody is going to work to have them come to Nieman
Road and make a left. And then I heard that, no, that wasn’t going to happen. So, I’m
sure I’m going to have some citizens that are going to be not happy if we just go back to
like we were last fall. So, and I know some things are going to change at Hocker Grove,
because last year supposedly the Resource Officer would direct traffic every once in a
while to go left and that was made clear that they’re not going to do that this year ever.
MR. WESSELSCHMIDT: Yeah.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: So, you need an update, because, hey, Wednesday is
going to be here and I know my e-mail will come to life Wednesday and Thursday.
MAYOR MEYERS: Ms. Gonzales.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Mr. Wesselschmidt actually hasn’t been directly
involved in that project, but Mr. Sherfy has. And I will get an update from him. I know
they’ve looked at a number of scenarios and I’ll get an update and get it out to you so
you’ll have that information.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: Well, I mean, the only thing is, is that I know that Mr.
Sherfy indicated to some of the citizens up and down Ballentine that it would be
handled. And we’re here and nobody seems to know what that is.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: I’m sure Mr. Sherfy does so I will get that to you.
MAYOR MEYERS: Thank you. Mr. Vaught?
COUNCILMEMBER VAUGHT: I just want to, you know, we’ve all gotten e-mails, a lot
of e-mails recently about our residential community out west and what has gotten me
kind of wanting to see is on a future committee meeting is maybe a presentation from
Planning on kind of going back over our residential approval process and how we do it
and what we actually can control and what we can’t control once projects are approved.
I think there’s some gray area there. And when asked by residents on certain things, it
would be nice to know specifically what our ability is and isn’t. So, if we could get in the
near future committee meeting I’d like to get a little presentation on the process.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: And actually the Planning Department has been
working on the revisions to the subdivision regs which aren’t -- don’t encompass all of
the residential development, but certainly a good portion of it. So, that piece will be
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going to the Planning Commission soon and coming forward and we can incorporate
some other pieces that aren’t included under that umbrella.
MAYOR MEYERS: Very good. Any other Miscellaneous Council Items? Seeing none
–
K.
ADJOURNMENT
1.
Adjournment
COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Move for adjournment.
MAYOR MEYERS: -- I’ll accept a motion for adjournment.
COUNCILMEMBER SANDIFER: Second.
MAYOR MEYERS: A motion has been made and seconded to adjourn. All in favor
signify by saying aye.
COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
MAYOR MEYERS: Oppose no. (Motion passes 8-0). We are adjourned. Thank you.
(City Council Meeting Adjourned at 9:44 p.m.)
CERTIFICATE
I certify that the foregoing is a correct transcript from the electronic sound
recording of the proceedings in the above-entitled matter.
/das
August 22, 2013
Deborah A. Sweeney, Recording Secretary
APPROVED BY:
_______________________
Keith D. Campbell, City Clerk