District 2 Advisory Board

District 2 Advisory Board Minutes Monday, April 12, 2021 • 6:30 p.m. Virtual meeting via Zoom Attendance Members Present Staff Present Chris Broadrick Officer John Maier, Wichita Police Department Nancy Loosle Battalion Chief Terry Gresham, Wichita Fire Faith Martin Department Sam Lindeman Jon Sidwell, Park and Recreation Department Tim Johnson Savannah Ball, Wichita Public Library Tracee Adams Matt Williams, MAPD Nazir Jesri Cory Buchta, Community Services Steve Lebeda Representative, City Manager’s Office Alicia Sanchez Tyler York Guests Council Member Becky Tuttle Brian Lindebak Bruce Gass Members Absent Dee Nighswonger • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Order of Business Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Becky Tuttle. Approval of April 12, 2021 Agenda: Motion PASSED 10-0-0 Approval of Minutes from March 08, 2021: Motion PASSED 8-0-2 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 1  Public Agenda 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 Terry Gresham Shared Close Before You Doze fact sheet. Shared alarm data breakdown and descriptions for Fire Alarms, Medical Alarms, Service Alarms, and Other Alarms. For March 2021 – D2 had 16 fire alarms, 369 medical alarms, 78 service alarms, and 117 other alarms. Shared data breaking down calls by station and response area. CM Tuttle mentioned involvement in Citizen Fire Academy and Fire Ops 101 C (DAB): I really appreciate the data. I think it really helps inform decision making. 5. Wichita Police Department Report Officer John Maier reported: Shared Easter event at Hilltop Shared new motorcycle gang is in Wichita. The Mongols. 5 or 6 local members. Will continue to keep a close eye on them. Not really on the east side of town. Several members visiting from out of state. No major incidents and they spent a fair amount of money here while in town. Patrol East station seems to be moving forward. Looking at old Southeast High School. Doing a fundraiser for socks, shoes, underwear. Homicide over the weekend. At Air BNB. DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 2 6. Wichita Park and Recreation Report Jon Sidwell reported: Naftzger Park shine dance fitness class. Concert by Wichita Children’s Choir. Youth orchestra performance. Chapin Park come fly a kite event May 1. Will have professional demonstrations and instructions. Pools and Splash pads will be opening. Boston splash pad about ready. Seasons passes for the pool available. Pools available for rentals for parties up to 50 people. Watson Park is open with all amenities. Check out Botanica and Tennis Center. Spring classes are going and are still open. Check out Evolve magazine at rec centers, online, grocery store, and neighborhood city hall. Summer camps running but only at 50%, so register before they fill up. Specialty camps and activity camps. Some scholarships available. Summer discovery program. Registration is open. Contact rec centers. Some park restrooms won’t be open at every park, due to short staff. Call local rec center and park department to see if restrooms are open at the park of your event before the event. C (CM Tuttle): The D2 appointee to the Park Board, Eddie Fahnestock, won an award from the state. 7. Wichita Public Library Report Savannah Ball reported: Reopened on March 8 to in-building services. Not full services. People over 5 needs face covering. Can browse selection, but can’t read in library. Computers open for use and tables for people needing Wi-Fi, but people can’t sit in the lounge areas and read bets quite yet. Full COVID procedures listed on website. April Zoom programs: Senior Wednesday Music Theatre Wichita – explained details and how to register. Tuesday Topics – Police Reform. Cooperation between Library and League of Women Voters. Present two sides of challenging topics – explained details. Some test taking resources available for people preparing for ACT/SAT/PSAT/AP Exams. Physical resources and databases. Can take virtual tests online. Go to library website for access. Resources tools portion. Gearing up for summer reading. Encourage children to read during the summer. Explained the different levels. Early registration is Monday, May 17. Program starts Tuesday, June 1 st. Action Taken: Received and filed. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • New Business 8. PUD2021-00002 Matt Williams, Metropolitan Area Planning Department, presented an application on behalf of Buffalo Grove Development Group, LLC (Owner/Applicant) MKEC Engineering, Brian Lindebak (Agent). The DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 3 applicant is requesting a zone change from SF-5 Single Family Residential and LC Limited Commercial to PUD Planned Unit Development to create the Buffalo Grove Planned Unit Development (PUD #83). The site is 19.32 acres in size and is generally located on the northeast corner of East Pawnee Road and South 127th Street East. The purpose of the PUD is to create a custom zoning classification to permit a mixture of residential development. The PUD provides flexibility, including the size of various setbacks. The intent is to create a unique, medium density development surrounding greenspaces. Q (DAB): This is an interesting plat. I really like this plat. Are these to be rentals or owner-occupied units? A (Brian Lindebak – MKEC): These are intended to be rental units. We’ve set t it up so in the future if someone wanted to sell off some of them, they have the ability to do that, but the intention is to hold them all together as one product, like an apartment complex. A different kind of product. These alley developments. We think this is a trend that will be very popular. Popular in other parts of the country. This is the first one in Wichita. The 4-plexes in the alleys, have very short driveways and keeps people from parking in alleys. Don’t want people storing stuff in garages, so we want people to park in garage and not in street. Street parking will be set up for visitors and delivery trucks. Believe this will be a more aesthetically pleasing multifamily unit than others. Q (DAB): With it being so close to the high school, are we going to take into account walking students? Is that part of this? A (Lindebak): There are a lot of designs and ideas on how to improve traffic flow. As this place develops it will warrant those improvements. This is one next step to warrant some of the improvements to be made. That will be a city project that will come along, probably behind this project. Q (DAB): Do you have sidewalks in this development? A: Yes, we will have sidewalks in our development but we won’t do sidewalks on the arterial streets in the area. Those will come along when the roads get widened and rebuilt here. A (CM Tuttle): This is on our monthly agenda with Public Works. I have a monthly meeting with our City Engineer and Director of Public Works, and 127th and Pawnee is a standing agenda item. We had a very robust roundabout discussion at DAB and approved it, and then we put everything on hold because we want to be able to have an accurate traffic count and to be able to look at the situation when it’s a real scenario of what it’s going to be with traffic, so more to come. It’s something we’re really monitoring closely especially when kiddos are back in school full time. Q (DAB): To the south the map shows Sedgwick County. What is that there? A: That is unincorporated section of Sedgwick County. It may be annexed someday, but right now it is unincorporated. Q (DAB): CM Tuttle, did you have any comments or concerns from citizens? A (Williams): No, I have heard nothing, no comments or questions or anything from the public. Matt, when does this go to MAPC? A: It went to MAPC last week and was approved. Q (DAB): How does Wichita transit fit into this particular intersection and this part of town? A (CM Tuttle): We had a meeting in 2019 when Southeast was really opening up and gearing up. The City of Wichita Transit Department does have a partnership with USD259 so we actually help kiddos get to school with City Transit. Mike Tann was involved with those conversations. When discussing the roundabout here, one of the questions we had and made sure of was could a City Transit bus be able to navigate through that roundabout. We found out that it could. So City Transit has been involved in looking at this area. A (Lindebak): Route 22 does go by this location on Pawnee and 127th. If you want to get downtown, you can get to and from downtown from here. Q (Public) Bruce Gass: 28 Maverick Drive: It’s a thrill to have an applicant with a representative at one of these meetings. The public has not been notified yet so there’s no feedback? Have they heard about this? DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 4  A (CM Tuttle): The public has been notified. The questions was if I have received any feedback and Cory and I have not had any community members reach out to me. A (Williams): This has definitely been notified to the public through letters and signage and all of our usual tactics. This was not my case, this was Philips; so I can’t speak for him, but I have not received any feedback from the public. Brian, you were at Planning Commission, did anybody speak at Planning Commission (MAPC)? A (Lindebak): There were some email presentations. Most of the folks were not in support of it. They did not want more multi-family properties. But this property is zoned limited commercial. Could have over 620 dwelling units and this is a significant reduction. We think this will fit better with the character of the neighborhood. C (DAB): I live in Sierra Hills just to the north of this and I can confirm that our Homeowners Association did try to do a little extra work and let folks in our neighborhood know. Brian, thank you for that accounting of the meeting. I’m satisfied with this presentation and the explanation that it is being downzoned from limited commercial. Action Taken: Motion to APPROVE the application as presented made by Nazir Jesri. Seconded by Tim Johnson. MOTION PASSED 10-0-0 9. Ethics Policy The City of Wichita, with input from National League of Cities and through discussions with the City Council, has put together a proposed ethics policy in order to establish consistent and transparent ethical standards for city leaders and appointed boards. The policy would help promote public confidence in elected and appointed leaders, and assist officials with ethical decision making. Staff is soliciting comment regarding the proposed policy. After public feedback is sourced, the policy will return to Council for an ethics workshop in April 2021, with the adoption slated for May 2021. The policy would be reviewed by Council annually thereafter. C (DAB): Not anything I would expect to see, but what I didn’t see. A lot of trust that has been lost. Mistrust so a lot of people paying close attention and picking at every decision. A lot of extra attention where before we took what people said at face value. Because of that a lot of people have lost their faith and trust in their council and mayor. Because it looked like someone was behaving without ethics it all has blown up. I would expect to not see all of that. People would have a lot more faith and trust in their city council. We wouldn’t see everyone under the microscope so much. C (DAB): I would say I would expect full transparency when it comes to spending, associations, contracts, bidding process. Full transparency in every aspect. Bid went out and these are companies and associations. People with a conflict of interest they would recuse themselves. C (DAB): What they are calling friends, Wichita is a big small town. Job of council is to be out and about in the community and you can’t turn around without bumping into someone you could consider a friend. I think that gets some really bad press. I don’t really have an answer, just more of a statement. I have relationships with people all over the city and in the city. Really tough play in Wichita. Distasteful in a way when everybody is supposed to be working together and with the council and they’re supposed to be out and about in the community and then all of a sudden there’s bad press about them doing what they’re supposed to be doing. C (DAB): Agree, friends can be servant as well and there is nothing wrong with that. But there has to be boundaries. DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 5 C (DAB): Something city could be would be to publicize what are those gifts or meals people have received. Start the ledger and show, it gets rid of some of that distrust. I would also say difference between friend and business associate is sometimes a blurred line. Makes it tough for elected officials to become knowledgeable and go out for a meal or something. Policy mentions if you are requesting someone’s attendance at something, it doesn’t specify how that has to go. If the request comes through a text message can seem more friendly than formal. C (DAB): Knowledge that public officials are undergoing periodic training. Having knowledge that is happening and it’s being publicized in community would address this (increase trust that Council and appointed boards are acting with high ethical standards). C (DAB): I agree. Board development is really critical and that transparency that the board is working towards that would go a long way C (DAB): Don’t think it has to be a friend. Acquaintance. Someone wants something for something. Friend isn’t necessarily the word we are looking for. C (DAB): Looks like way we are defining it could be anyone with close social interaction. Neighbor, coworker. Friend is kind of misleading. C (DAB): Can’t legislate morals. Either electing ethical leaders or you’re not. If unethical, won’t pay attention to it anyway. Blurred lines in Wichita. It is tough. C (DAB): If they have an ethics policy and have it posted so vendors and everyone can see it, it helps. Transparency is everything. C (DAB): Policy is just a piece of paper without accountability. Accountability comes from something happening if you violate that policy. A lot of policies are just statements and nothing happens if you violate them. C (DAB): I work in federal government I have to undergo ethics training periodically. I have to think about that a lot in terms of gifts people wanting to buy me lunch or ticket to a game. People I have known before I took this job. It would be ok if I had my friend buy my meal, because I was friends with him long before I took this job. He’s not trying to influence me. That’s how I have defined friendship with my career past 10 years. C (DAB): Tricky. Don’t want to speak for any council person. I see how busy Becky is. I can’t imagine all the things they get invited to. If they get invited to 15 events, does that blow out of the water what their amount is? At the 11th one does she pay out of pocket? I struggle with this one. How do we decide where to draw the line? Is it different if she gets invited by someone she doesn’t know or someone she knows? This is where the friend comes in. What if it’s a friend that owns a non-profit? C (DAB): I don’t think paying for dinner is a problem. All having lunch all having dinner. But paying for round of golf is a different problem. Not going to get someone something for buying them dinner. C (DAB): I believe they should be able to accept those and make proposed amounts in policy need adjusted. Overall important to make sure policy creates accountability but doesn’t hamstring role. Q (DAB): Does food and drink include alcohol? Better to say limits based per company or individual instead of overall limit? Is there some ethical concern there? Person based per diem other than total limit? C (DAB): Food and drink most difficult aspect because of frequency with which it can occur. Could be 3 or 4 times per day. Have much less of an issue with meals and beverages than I do with tickets, trips, rooms, and items. I’ve been in government over 30 years and it’s tough to manage on receiving end. Unless you say I’m not accepting anything. DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 6 C (DAB): I’ve been on both ends as a vendor and vendee. Some of the easiest ones I worked with are those who say sorry I can’t accept any of this. There’s a definite line easy to follow. C (CM Tuttle): I’ve never accepted a single thing since I was appointed. Q (DAB): Will the City reimburse your meals and drinks? A: I’ve never asked them to. But I understand I am extremely blessed to be able to afford that. Last year before COVID, I was asked to present at the Mental Health Association annual gala. Questions about if I should buy my ticket to attend or take the meal everyone else was given. If every time that happened I couldn’t go to things. I couldn’t represent and go to some things. It’s really challenging. C (DAB): I think that’s a great idea, but I don’t think we could get everyone to adopt integrity of no gift giving. Nancy’s idea of measuring how often and who and the amounts. That kind of transparency would lend it to – you can’t legislate morality – but if everyone can see what you’re doing all the time. Q (DAB): Devil’s advocate – if you make a rule or limit it too much, then who runs for these positions? Just those who are in a position to afford this? C (DAB): I look at broader community I don’t know what penalty would be. I guess I would like to see what the penalties are? Some citizens wouldn’t be able to afford it. This one is hard. C (DAB): Already penalty for staff. If it’s a citizen I would think. Is it anonymous? I didn’t see anything saying it’s anonymous? If the same person complains 5 times then the 6 th time. C (DAB): The way I read it, this was like an internal policy. Didn’t see it as a citizens making accusations. Don’t know if you can punish citizens for saying anything. If intent is to have a penalty for complaint process then it’s not any whistleblower protection at all. Then the new board becomes judge jury and determiner. Slippery slope if you put penalty on whistleblower process. C (DAB): If there are penalties for abuse those need to be clearly defined so ethics advisory board doesn’t have to make that determinations themselves. C (DAB): To elaborate I think overall, you have to be careful in this whole thing you don’t all of a sudden move your opportunity for corruption from elected official to now all the power is in the ethics advisory board. So now you have to scrutinize who these people are and who’s picking them. They get to decide if something is wrong. I think you could shift the point of contention from elected officials to appointed officials. C (DAB): It’s a knee jerk reaction, the pendulum swings from one side to other. There are already things in place. There are ways to remove elected officials. Now this is putting power in appointed people. Perception and reality of things that happened that now has everyone being way conservative or the pendulum has swung so far to other side. I don’t know how you structure this to then take care of every scenario. You just pile more bureaucracy on top of more bureaucracy. You’re going to make a policy but you can’t make an unethical person not be unethical. C (DAB): Not there and not perfect, and not everyone agrees. The pendulum swung that far for a reason. There’s a knee jerk reaction for a reason. A lot of people don’t trust their elected officials right now. I think this is an olive branch. Everyone would admit this is part of Wichita’s values. It’s not perfect. Probably a lot of work that needs to be done. Closest thing I’ve seen as a dab member that I would follow. Might need more workshopping, but there’s a need to have something more than what we had. C (DAB): I echo that thought. Might caution against getting too deep in the weeds with the policy. Typically, a policy isn’t something you can’t change when you need to change it in the future. You can always change the policy. You can throw out an ordinance and replace it. Looking at ethics is timely because of what we have been through. It ‘demonstrates a lot of good things and it’s a commitment. DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 7 Probably the right thing to do. I would caution against getting too detailed and restrictive, then find out you have to walk it back and the optics of doing that could be worse. At the end of the day it isn’t going to be the ethics policy, it’s going to be the quality of decisions and appearance of transparency and the values. The trust has got to come back. It’s going to be in the actual behavior. I think doing this now is part of that larger exercise. I would just ask to think about, if we have a code of ethics that we‘ve got to change because it doesn’t work, what it looks like to the community. C (DAB): I completely agree. You can’t get too far in the weeds. I spent 25 years in the military. It’s their rules and all you gotta do is change them. Clearly understand what we’re trying to get through. The intent is in the right direction. We all take an oath to uphold the constitution of the state, I’m going to guess 90% of scenarios are covered by interpretation of the state constitution. I think it’s probably a little redundant. C (DAB): I appreciate NLC was brought on board to help develop this to address the situation that we have in Wichita. Out of any organization, they would have a grasp of how to achieve those goals. So I think that’s going in right direction. Q (DAB): Listening to the workshop video and discussion with city council, they talk about the challenge of social media and how do you regulate something like that, and how does that work out? Whether it’s guidance or truly understanding what that means- parameters around KORA and KOMA. How do you regulate and still allow people to do their job? C (DAB): Positions on boards and other things should specify if acting in the intent of the city or personal life. Pretty overarching document that is really going to restrict some people from doing other aspects of their life it was held to the way it is currently written. C (Public) Bruce Gass: Penalty for abuse of complaint process. Suppose you have a character that likes to put their face in the limelight. They bring off 3 or 4 false complaints. At some point we have to trust the ethics board to use their good judgment. Suppose we censor that person and they find something legitimate? Then we’ve shot ourselves in the foot. Trust the ethics board. As a citizen I have hated when boards go into executive session. That really bothers me. I would like to propose that we give this committee the freedom to assign a person to attend any meeting A (CM Tuttle): Just to clarify, any time we go into executive session, we suspend the meeting temporarily, but it’s either a legal case or pending litigation, or it’s a human resources issue where an employee could potentially have their personal information disclosed. C (Public) Bruce Gass: I believe I have seen some misuse of executive session in my time in Wichita under the guise of privacy. It would make me feel better as a citizen if someone could observe that and would also be under regulations of the policy. Q (DAB): When this goes into workshop next, will it be taking feedback from all of DABs? A: My understanding is that all comments from DAB will be presented to us in the form of a document for us to review ahead of time. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 8:27 p.m. The next District 2 Advisory Board meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, May 10, 2021. It will take place virtually via Zoom. DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 8 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Respectfully submitted, Cory Buchta, Community Services Representative, District 2 DAB 2 • April 12, 2021 • Minutes • Page 9