District 2 Advisory Board

Page |1 District 2 Advisory Board Minutes June 8, 2019 www.wichita.gov The District 2 Advisory Board meeting was held at 6:30 p.m. virtually via GoToMeeting. ATTENDANCE Members Present Staff Present Nancy Loosle Battalion Chief Peter Ridder, Wichita Fire Dept. Faith Martin Dave Yearout, MAPD Sam Lindeman Elizabeth Goltry Wadle, Office of Budget and Research Nazir Jesri Jamie Buster, Deputy City Clerk Dee Nighswonger Cory Buchta, Community Services Representative Chris Broadrick Junetta Everett Guests Steve Lebeda Lonny Wright Council Member Becky Tuttle Bob Potter Members Absent Tracee Adams Alicia Sanchez Keith Lane ORDER OF BUSINESS Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Becky Tuttle Deputy City Clerk, Jamie Buster, conducted the swearing in for DAB members. Approval of Jiune 10, 2020 Agenda: Motion PASSED 8-0-0 Approval of Minutes from February 10, 2020: Motion PASSED 4-0-0 PUBLIC AGENDA This portion of the agenda provides an opportunity for citizens to present issues that are not part of the regular agenda for the meeting. There is a five minute time limit for each speaker. 1. Scheduled Items None 2. Off-agenda Items None Recommended Action: Receive and file BOARD AGENDA 3. Updates, Issues and Reports None. STAFF REPORTS 4. Fire Department Report Battalion Chief Peter Ridder, Wichita Fire Department reported:  May 15, structure fire, 1400 block of south Shiloh – lightning strike. Attack caught fire. 1  Page |2  11 fire alarms, 29 service, 224 medical alarms in May in D2. 5. Community Police Report From 46 beat, which is located around Rock and 29th area. Due to COVID-19 larcenies and shoplifts have been down for the last few months since most of the businesses have been closed. We are currently dealing with some issues involving Lif Inc., a juvenile transitional home for troubled youth. One of the Life Inc. home of focus has been at 45th and Webb. Several of the youths are consistently runaways and cause disruptions to the nearby neighborhood. One of the main issues was that the staff was not calling the juveniles as runaways until several hours after they had left. I have contacted DCF and St. Francis Community Services to ensure that better standards are placed on the program to mitigate some of the issues. During early May there was a suspect at Broadmoor @ Chelsea, 7600 E. 21st that was breaking into unlocked apartments at night and burglarizing them while the occupants slept. Several officers, including myself set up a undercover operation to apprehend the suspect. Over the course of a several day operation he was eventually arrested. Willowbend Neighborhood is dealing with several traffic issues. This mainly revolves around traffic speeding in the neighborhood and several close calls near the golf cart paths. I have been coordinating with their HOA and city resources to resolve some of the issues. Traffic engineering finally placed “no parking” signs at 3000 N. Penstemon, which was behind Walmart at 29th and Rock. This has alleviated the semi-truck parking on the street in this area and complaints have gone down significantly. Q (DAB): Guns being stolen out of cars? A: Only 1 gun taken from last month to this month. I think there are more happening. Amazing the amount of people storing their guns in their cars. Probably not what they are, but that’s what the numbers are. C (CM Tuttle): We’ve also been promoting Save-A-Casing. A: Expended casing is exactly like a fingerprint. Unique to that gun. C (DAB): Saturday night across from Towne East. High number of police cars raced into town east parking lot. Early evening. Mall was still open. A: I wasn’t working Saturday but nothing in the briefs. Someone could have called in a disturbance. By the time we get there, mall security could have gotten it handled. Q (DAB): Around tax times, how does that affect crime rates? A: I’ve never noticed anything. Tax fraud is an issue though. 6. Park & Recreation Department Report None 7. Wichita Public Library Report Wichita Public Library locations are open with limited in-person services. The Library is following guidance from the City, County, State and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention regarding best safety practices for customers and staff. The following services are currently offered: Holds pickup (curbside, drive-up window, and inside Library locations with staff assistance) 2  Page |3 Public computing and Wi-Fi access with limited seating capacity Print, copy and fax services (curbside, drive-up window, and inside Library locations with staff assistance) More information about the library's safety protocols and offered services can be found at https://www.wichitalibrary.org/covid-19 Action Taken: Motion made by Dee Nighswonger to receive and file all Staff Reports. Seconded by Nancy Loosle. Motion PASSED 8-0-0. NEW BUSINESS 8. Preliminary Budget Overview: 2021-2022 Operating Budget Elizabeth Goltry Wadle, Finance Department, presented a preliminary budget overview for the 2021-2022 Operating Budget. She explained the current economic conditions in the city and why there is a projected shortfall. Budget Process - June 1-8 DAB Presentations, June 11-30 Online Budget Simulator, June 23 Social Media Town Hall, Week of July 13 Proposed Budget presented, first public hearing, setting of maximum taxes levied, authorization of publication of notice, August 4 Second public hearing, August 11 Final public hearing and adoption of budget. Public Hearings – Two required by State Statute, but three are scheduled. Budget Simulator – Will start with a deficit and require participants to decrease services to balance. Social Media Town Hall – Present topics from the list of options. The economy is in uncharted waters. Revenue trends in a downturn are known; the unknowns are the severity and duration. Expenditure impact, and potential for federal support are not clear. General Fund 2020 Adopted Budget is $254,617,892. Property Tax is 35% of budget, should stay the same until 2022. Franchise Fees 20% expecting softness. Sales Tax is 12% of budget, will go down. Motor Fuel usually goes up but people don’t have places to go. Motor Vehicle Tax is expected to be down as people are putting off buying vehicles. Other sources such as fines, penalties, and charges for services impacted by having courts closed. Initial net loss projection for 2021 was $17 million. Departmental staff developed options to align General Fund revenues and expenditures. The options were guided by the City mission and goals as well as City values. Tier 0 – Technical adjustments. Tier 1 - Savings from material impacts on staffing, expenditures or contracts. Tier 2 - Savings associated with significant service reductions. Tier 3 – Savings from significant wage and benefit changes, service reductions and reserve reductions. Have to dig in more to Tier 2 and 3 to balance after a few years. Some of the services being reviewed: Code Enforcement, Library Materials, Tree Planting, Street Expansion, Tree Removals, Street Maintenance, Planting Beds. Which reductions should be pursued? What services should be prioritized? Q (DAB): Is the City responding to the Notice of Funding Opportunity posted by the County or is there a separate process for municipalities? A: Yes, we’ve been in contact with the County and we’ve been tracking our spending. 3  Page |4 Q (DAB): Is there a separate process for cities? A: I don’t know the answer to that. I can get you that. Q (DAB): How much of the CARES act funding would help close that gap? A: It’s all been additional things. The only thing in our general fund that could be included is custodial work. Q (DAB): Would reserves be considered before service reduction? A: We have a number of internal service funds and we have been looking at some of those reserves for rate holidays but we are not over-reserved in the general fund balance. A: We also talked about we don’t want to dip into our reserves too much because that affects the credit rating. Want a balance with that. Q (DAB): Under what circumstances would an increase in the mill levy rate be considered? A: We’ve not increased the Mil Levy in a really long time. That would be up to the Mayor and the Council to make that decision. Q (DAB): Regarding the budget for property taxes, does the passing of the waiver of late fee penalties impact the budget at all? Has this already been taken in account? A: We have a delinquency calculation in our property tax budgets. I would expect delinquencies will be higher. Hopefully it won’t be higher than our calculations, but it’s a possibility. A: Last week the County Financial Officer said she understood that the Fed and State would not provide funding for Cities. So the County is having a two week request for needs from the Cities and other organizations. Q (Public): This afternoon Troy Houtman said the decision had been made not to open the swimming pools this summer. Are you aware? A: That was discussed the May 26 retreat. I think there was a lot of discussion about it takes a lot to open the swimming pools and hiring staff. It was a hard decision to make. Manhattan made the same decision and a lot of bigger cities. Q (DAB): Will any of this affect capitol project such as the water treatment plant, etc.? A: No impact on projects already initiated. Does have impact on projects not yet initiated, especially ones without outside funding. A: The water plan has WIFIA funding already secured which is why we went to DC in March and why we are able to move forward with that project. 9. ZON2020-00009 and CUP2020-00010 Dave Yearout, Metropolitan Area Planning Department, presented an application on behalf of NewSpring Church, Inc. (Brian Peltier), Owner/Baughman Company, P.A. (Russ Ewy), Agent. The applicant has submitted a request to rezone approximately 11.6 acres located north of East 21st Street North and immediately east of K-96 Highway from SF-5 Single-Family Residential (SF-5) to LC Limited Commercial (LC) and establish the NewSpring Commercial Community Unit Plan (CUP DP-354). The subject property is part of the larger NewSpring Church property at this location, mostly located north and east of the subject property. The applicant and agent indicated at the time of application the intention to provide parcels to develop commercially. Planning Commission held public hearing was on May 21st. Recommended approval. Vote was 12-1. Between K-96 and 127th Street. The CUP has a lot of restrictions. This project was discussed at the planning commission meeting, if the parking lot north of church has residential access to the north, but this commercial development will not have access to that. Not a lot of issues raised at public hearing. This will be a rezoning that will also require City Council approval. Set for June 23rd. C (CM Tuttle): I have not had any community members reach out to me about this. No petitions filed. 4  Page |5 A: I had a couple calls from neighbors to the north. They just didn’t know what was going on. They thought the church was being rezoned to go away. That went away when I explained it. They asked about traffic flow but I explained that too. Q (DAB): What will traffic do? There can be a ton in that area on Sundays. A: On Sundays there’s a lot of WPD presence. We could check with City Engineering at the lights if there’s traffic backup. Q (DAB): When these parcels of land are being rezoned, how does that work from tax perspective? Is commercial land tax free for the church? A: Kansas is a use value appraisal system. Church land is classified as exempt from property tax but specials. When they sell the land off, it will be taxable property depending on how it’s used. When it gets developed commercially, it will get taxed commercially. Q (DAB): Do they have to sell it to develop it? A: They could, if they wanted to pursue that. If they get into that business, that changes them from a church that’s tax exempt to a commercial property. Q (DAB): What is the size of the notification area to the neighbors? A: Statue says it’s only 200 ft radius to property being rezoned. Wichita City Code says it’s a sliding scale. In this instance it was 1,000 ft. Most of the property being rezoned is owned by the church and most of the property going to the north and east is also owned by the church. They essentially just notified themselves. They posted signs and word got out. Q (DAB): With the budget concerns, is there plan to do some development on specials? Any talk on bonding projects out and putting them on specials? Just curious or if that’s some other bucket. A: Goes beyond where we are. After the zoning goes through, the church or future buyer will come in with a re-plat. That could come with a benefit district that could have special assessments. Action Taken: Motion to APPROVE the application with conditions as presented made by Nazir Jesri. Seconded by Dee Nighswonger. MOTION PASSED 8-0-0 Meeting was adjourned at 7:45 p.m. The next DAB 2 meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m., Monday, July 13, 2020, virtually. 5