This is the Prairie Village City Council recap for Monday, April 15th, 2019. You can see the full agenda and board packet HERE.

Council members present at roll call: Herring, J. Nelson, Schermoly, R. Nelson, Poling, Myers, Morehead (by phone), Runion, McFadden, Odell, and Gallagher.

The City Council took the following actions:

• Approved the regular City Council meeting minutes – April 1, 2019
• Approved ordinances authorizing the sale, consumption and possession of alcohol within the barricaded areas of the Prairie Village Art Fair and Clock Tower Concert series by the Prairie Village Merchants Association
• Approved Expenditure Ordinance #2977
• Approved proposed amendments to Chapter XI Ordinance governing Local Traffic Regulations
• Approved a construction contract with VF Anderson Builders, LLC, in the amount of $4,735,847.00 along with change order authority up to $100,000 for Project DELN0001
• Approved the purchase of a Storage Area Network (SAN): a shared storage device, which is a best practice as it ensures redundancy and 99.9999% availability.  

This is the first week in a long time that I haven’t been able to attend the meeting in person, and I can tell you that if you (or a councilperson) isn’t there in person, you’re missing a TON. The audio goes in and out making it impossible to follow closely, but an upgrade should be coming to that tech issue any week now. 🤞 The bigger issue is that a person just isn’t able to interact effectively. If you’re an elected councilperson, it’s definitely not a substitute for being there, and it should be reserved for only when it’s truly necessary and even then less than once a year. If you’re a concerned citizen wanting to stay on top of what’s happening in the city, you’ve got to go in person to get the whole picture. I highly recommend it! 👌

Having said that, here are some highlights from this meeting:

Presentations

Becky Fast, newly elected Johnson County Commissioner representing Prairie Village and other northeast JoCo cities, gave a presentation, but most of it was indecipherable due to the online streaming audio issues.

I did catch the bit about conversations between the County and the City regarding a partnership for the Corinth library. Read more about that HERE and HERE.

I also heard that the Johnson County Household Hazardous Waste is going to be completely reconstructed elsewhere in JoCo to be bigger and more accessible, and that they may even add a second location.

Public Participation

A Ward 1 resident presented about a recent occurrence where a drone was flying over their personal property and made her and her family feel uncomfortable and spied upon. She wanted to know what the City could do to curb that happening. (Later in the meeting, there was a very robust conversation among Council and city attorney, David Waters, about proposed revisions to Ordinance 2403 relating to the regulation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones). Changes are not final, yet.)

Administrator Updates

Jamie Robichaud, Deputy City Administrator, noted that due to the large amount of items at curbs this year, Republic wasn’t able to get everything in the first pick up area (please click HERE for map) on Saturday, so they made another pass Monday. If your items didn’t get picked up even after Monday, please call City Hall so they can submit a report (913-381-6464).

Upcoming Events

• May 2019 Featured Artists: Beth Grillo, Gary Johnson, James Kilmer
• May 6 City Council Meeting
• May 10 Artist Reception in the R.G. Endres Gallery
• May 20 City Council Meeting
• May 2019 Featured Artists: Ted Denton, Hank Hall, P. Ebel, Maegan Kirschner

Take care and reach out if you have any questions or concerns,

#ShowUp
#Breathe
#DoYourBest
#BeKind