District 2 Advisory Board

District 2 Advisory Board Minutes Monday, August 10, 2020 • 6:30 p.m. Virtual meeting via Zoom Attendance Members Present Staff Present Steve Lebeda Battalion Chief Peter Ridder, Wichita Fire Sam Lindeman Department Nancy Loosle Jon Sidwell, Park and Recreation Dee Nighswonger Jennea Noel, Park and Recreation Chris Broadrick Savannah Ball, Rockwell Branch Library Junetta Everett Cory Buchta, Community Services Tracee Adams Representative, City Manager’s Office Nazir Jesri Council Member Becky Tuttle Members Absent Faith Martin Alicia Sanchez • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Order of Business Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Becky Tuttle. Approval of August 10, 2020 Agenda: Motion PASSED 8-0-0 Approval of Minutes from July 13, 2020: Motion PASSED 8-0-0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Public Agenda DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 1 1. Scheduled Items None 2. Off-Agenda Items None Action Taken: Received and filed. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Board Agenda 3. Updates, Issues, and Reports None • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Staff Reports 4. Wichita Fire Department Report Lt. P Ridder, Wichita Fire Department, reported: No July numbers – June 2020 – 401 incidents – 336 medical alarms – 47 service alarms – 18 fire alarms No structure fires in D2 for month of July. We had additional crews out on the street for 4th of July educating rather than just handing out citations. 5. Wichita Police Department Report CM Tuttle – Talked about budget issues and defunding police and the protest rallies with our police chief. Keeping things deescalated is their top priority. Kudos to them for making sure in our city we have had rallies and not riots. Cory Buchta reported on behalf of Officer Ryan Snyder: Larcenies to Auto - Unfortunately this will always be one of the major incidents for this area. I have received several complaints of vehicle owners having their vehicles rummaged through. The trend seems to be that all of these vehicles were locked. Normally, I could write it off as someone just forgot to lock the vehicle. However, the volume of reports indicates otherwise. It is believed that a group of criminals is using either a lockout kit or a code grabber to make entry into vehicles. For those that are unfamiliar with either, a lockout kit are tools used to pry open doors to gain access to interior door panels to unlock them. Code grabbers are devices that obtain and mimic the signal of a vehicle’s key FOB. I have provided photos for reference. DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 2 Please feel free to post this information to any HOA site or Neighborhood app that I have not already contacted. Also, advise your residents to be on the lookout for any suspicious activity including any occupied vehicles not belonging in the area. If there is an incident in your neighborhood I would encourage the victim to make a report. They can be made by phone through Case Desk at (316) 268- 4221. Have them communicate with the other surrounding residents to see if additional camera footage is available. Parking / Traffic Issues - Willowbend area has had some concerns regarding speeding around the residential areas, especially near the golf course crossing areas. Officers have conducted enforcement in the area I have been in contact with Willowbend HOA to see if we can address the issues with additional signage or other means. Companies along 3700 – 3800 N. Cypress were concerned with a large amount of commercial trucks on the street. This was causing visual obstructions and traffic concerns. Contact was made with the Traffic Engineering Department and “NO PARKING” signs are going up to reduce the amount of vehicles on the street. Juvenile Concerns - Recently, we have had several juveniles at the Wichita Children’s Home (WCH) that are habitually running away from the facility. These juveniles would not make any efforts to participate in any programs and would leave the property to commit criminal acts such as drug use, vandalism, auto thefts, and burglary. Contact was made with the WCH and after some discussion the juveniles causing a majority of the issues were removed from the facility and transferred to St. Francis Ministries for placement elsewhere in the state. Another facility, Lif Inc., also houses juvenile offenders in the area. I have received similar complaints on the juveniles. Contact has been made with DCF and St. Francis Ministries to tighten restrictions and reform policies so that the juveniles are better monitored. Protest Events - There is still a significant amount of protests going on during August. Please understand that many of the Community Policing units throughout the city have adjusted their work schedules to accommodate these events. This allows us to keep a majority of patrol officers free to continue to make 911 calls. Some of our regular duties have been delayed because of this. If you have an issue, please be patient and we will try to resolve it as soon as we can. Please contact me if you have any questions. Cory Buchta reported on behalf of Officer John Maier: Burglaries are down 13% compared to last month at this time. They dropped from 23 to 20. Larceny (theft) is down 7%. They dropped to 215 from 230. Auto theft saw no changes with 28. The year to year comparison shows that burglaries are down 20% overall, but non-residential burglaries are up by 12%. Larcenies are down 15% overall, but auto thefts are up 11% (163 compared to 147 last year). I patrol 38 beat and I’ve seen an drastic increase in auto thefts between Edgemoor and Oliver. The cases all have similarities such as keys being left in the vehicle or the keys being unaccounted for. There is also rarely any glass breakage. I suspect that the suspect(s) are checking door handles in the night and taking whatever they find. Please remind everyone to protect themselves from unnecessary thefts by locking their cars and removing all valuables. DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 3 6. Wichita Public Library Report Jon Sidwell, Park and Recreation, reported: Wrapping up summer camps and programs. Numbers drastically lower due to COVID-19. Fall session will begin in September with restrictions Football practice city wide Just completed playground at Boston Park. Kids are out playing on it Might need some trees out there as well. I will ask for that. Boston Pool torn out. Dirt is down getting ready for new splash pad Special events coming – Halloween events, Night with Santa, others – trying to see what accommodations can be made Jennea Noel, Park and Recreation, reported: Fall guide is available online Edgemoor pool is being filled in to become a splash pad as well Things with summer programming at Edgmoor were the same as what Jon reported at Boston. Q (DAB): Are playgrounds open now? A: Yes they are open. We have social distancing guidelines posted, though kids don’t really understand that. Parents have been helping with that though. Q (DAB): Is the equipment sanitized? A: We are encouraging people to do that on their own. I have my youth workers go out and clean and sanitize the equipment a little more often, but that’s not standard throughout all the parks. 7. Wichita Public Library Report Savannah Ball, Rockwell Branch Library, reported: Fall gardening series will be offered virtually using Zoom. The entire series will be recorded for people to access at a later date. Must register through library website. Big Read has been postponed until January and February. It will be a virtual format. Customers encouraged to place a hold on Circe for Big Read Customers can access library materials multiple ways while browsing is unavailable. Ask staff for assistance, concierge service, reading recommendations and grab bag service through library website, library full catalog online, you can place holds using your library card. Action Taken: Received and filed. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • New Business 8. Food System Master Plan CM Tuttle – I’m the chair of the Health and Wellness Coalition. We completed a food desert study for our community back when no one knew what that was. You can see the study at the HWC website. 25% of our population lives in a food desert that covers 44 square miles. Healthy food also costs more in lower income neighborhoods. Ever since then the Health and Wellness Coalition has been working to address this and it was the genesis of the Food Policy Committee. We worked on other studies since then and that lead to the master food plan. DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 4 Cory Buchta presented: Video was shown. Link for the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rz3n8pXg1Y&feature=youtu.be CM Tuttle – Before I got on Council, I wrote the grant to the Kansas Health Foundation and they are the ones funding the consultants to help lead us through this process. There was a request to have the video emailed to the DAB members. C (DAB): We have talked about this issue a lot at Wichita State and I work with one of the food pantries on campus, we work with a lot of other campus food pantries locally and statewide. We are trying to narrow down what our community feels are the most important aspects of our food system that we really should be focusing on right now. Here are some interesting facts. If we could increase local food purchases by 5% that's $80 million in the local economy each year. We grow very little of the food we consume here. 25% of the population lives in area without access to healthy food and there are 44 square miles of food desert. COVID-19 has adjusted our timeline. That gives us the opportunity to get more community engagement. We are missing some key voices from our feedback and we could use your help. Help us spread the word. Share the survey link with your communities. Share it with your church groups and please take the survey. When you think about our food system, what challenges do you experience or witness? Q (DAB): What is defined as local here? A: We found almost every entity has a different definition of local. It could be 100 miles or it could be within the state. We haven’t limited ourselves to a specific definition, but we are thinking Sedgwick County and the surrounding areas. That’s a good question though. Q (DAB): What is the distance considered to be a food desert? A (CM Tuttle): The FDA has a national standard for that. It is considered a food desert if it’s more than one mile from a full service grocery store and the majority of the residents are low income, not all, but the majority. We followed the FDA guidelines. C (DAB): In low income communities, even the food they have is not the food they need. There might be food at the dollar store, but it’s not the kind of food they need to spend their money on. It’s disappointing to hear you say you have not heard from these people. If you send the survey out to the churches you’re going to get some really good input. Making sure the surveys are intentionally inclusive of the people who use the service as people who need the service and those who can help provide. Q (DAB): Do we have any areas in District 2 that are considered a food desert? A: We do not, it’s mostly in the core of the city and south of Kellogg. C (DAB): The access to affordable healthy food options is a big issue I see in the groups I work with. Even if it’s within a mile, the transportation to get to it and the affordability of healthy food is an issue. Another point, if you wanted to buy fresh local produce where would you go? Do you know where the farmers markets are? DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 5 C (DAB): Not all of them, but even some of the farmers markets get bog box produce that are brought in from other parts of the country and they have those in addition to what they grow to make it sustainable for them to spend the time to sell their products. C (DAB): I’m really intrigued by the idea of promoting community gardens. I think there are a lot of benefits to that, not just with the fresh food, but also the sense of community and relationship building. There is also a lack of information and awareness when you talk about community gardens. Do you know where you can grow a community garden or what you can grow in a community garden? Do you have access to irrigate a community garden? What is that going to take and what is the cost? We have asked local farmers what barriers they face growing. C (DAB): Since I mainly work with younger population, I see education as a big deal. Some of them have never boiled water before. Education on what to cook with and how to cook. How to pick things that are healthier and more nutritious. There is an education aspect when it comes to food itself. Q (DAB): What did the farmers share with you that are the barriers to growing? A: The biggest is that it just doesn’t pay a lot of money. They have to sell at a certain price to make a living and restaurants can just go to a place that mass produces and buy for cheaper. They need restaurants to pay the prices they need to stay in business. There is a clear difference in quality, but it’s getting restaurants to see the importance in value there. That brings up another issue, do you know which restaurants in Wichita are using local produce in their dishes? They’re out there. Q (DAB): In the last few months with grocery stores delivering, does that help eliminate food deserts? This starts diving into a deep society conversation. Community gardens and why are some grocery stores closing and not others. You can try to support local grocers and if they leave the area, there would be a lot of statistics of why that happen, but it seems like grocery store delivery is a good way to bridge the gap on food deserts. A: We have started talking about that in the COVID era. At the end of the day, we have to bring this to City Council and what do they have the capacity to affect. They can tell a grocery store to go to a certain neighborhood. What capacity do they have to support our goals? We have talked about delivery vouchers potentially and how that affects food deserts. Q (DAB): Do opportunity zones apply to any type of development or is that just residential? Is there potential for any other incentives for public private partnership the city could target for local grocers to get into some of these food desert areas? A: Opportunity zones are very complicated. There are guidelines and I don’t know what they are. Incentivizing grocery stores is a potential recommendation and on the list of things to look at. C (DAB): Stacking incentives up could work and make something viable. Seems like there a lot of things out there that people don’t know about. I just wonder because unless someone can figure out how to make the dollars work, a lot of the good ideas just stay as ideas. A: A lot of our recommendations are probably going to be things that are able to be accomplished and not overly expensive. That also brings up another issue that people are facing and that is just a lack of centralized communication. One solution could be a better communication network. DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 6 Q (DAB): The plan is to give access to healthy food for all Wichitans. It almost sounds like the local food system focus is on lower income. How is this meant to be open to all people in Wichita or is it just focused on lower income? A: I think this started with the access issue and then they noticed all of these other issues. This isn’t just a plan to focus on lower income, but that is a major issue we are addressing. If you think of something else you want to add, go to Wichita.gov/foodplan and you can share more thoughts. We are trying to narrow the focus because we can only affect so much. We are asking people to rank their personal goals for the food system and your community goals. Thank you and please take the survey. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 7:34 p.m. The next District 2 Advisory Board meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, September 14, 2020. It will take place virtually via Zoom. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Respectfully submitted, Cory Buchta, Community Services Representative, District 2 DAB 2 • August 10, 2020 • Minutes • Page 7