FIRST OF ALL, IT’S PRIMARY ELECTION DAY IN JOHNSON COUNTY. DON’T FORGET TO VOTE! PRAIRIE VILLAGE HAS THE JOHNSON COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES ON THE BALLOT, AND IT’S AN IMPORTANT ONE.

LOOKUP YOUR SAMPLE BALLOT AND VOTE BEFORE 7:00 P.M..

*This is the Prairie Village City Council recap for Monday, August 5th, 2019. You can see the full agenda and board packet HERE.

Council members present at roll call: J. Nelson, Schermoly, R. Nelson, Wang, Myers, Morehead, Runion, McFadden, Odell, and Gallagher.

Long time no see! I’ve been absent from my updates for awhile, because I’ve been busy canvassing our Ward 3 neighborhoods and talking with many of you in person! 😉

Canvassing has been a great experience! Everyone so far in Prairie Village has been welcoming and pleasant, and I can’t wait to have the honor of earning your votes and representing and advocating for you on Council. Now on to the recap…

Here are some highlights from this meeting:

Presentation

KCP&L representative Rebecca Galati, liaison to most of the Johnson County municipalities, gave an overall presentation on the KCP&L Tree Trimming Program, causes of outages, prioritization for restoring power, the schedule for Reliability Proactive Inspections (RPI), and undergrounding costs. Here is some data:

Causes of Outages

• Weather (more than 70% of outages are due to weather)
• Vegetation
• Animals
• Vehicle Accidents
• Human Error
• Planned Outages

Restoring Power Prioritization

• Critical infrastructure first: hospitals, police and fire stations, and water treatment plants
• Substations and primary lines that often serve thousands of customers
• Lateral lines that usually serve customer groups in the hundreds
• Secondary lines that affect a dozen or more customers
• Individual homes and businesses whose service connection have been damaged

Did You Know: PV has over TRIPLE the number of trees per mile of power poles as the average KC metro city?!?! 😮

Undergrounding…

Burying the power lines, or “undergrounding”, is expensive.

The Kansas Corporate Commission says this cost must be paid by cities and/or property owners, not the utility! Why? I’m pretty sure Councilperson Ron Nelson, Ward 2, is looking into this as he had a couple questions on it. Stay tuned…

In the meantime, according to KCP&L, the approximate cost to bury the line from the pole to your house is $2,000.00, and the cost to bury the lines from pole to pole (the secondary lines?) is about $27,000.00 for every 5 houses! And even then there’s no guarantee you won’t lose power because circuits are being fed from all over the county and through other cities, so if they lose power, you still lose power.

Reliability Proactive Inspections (RPI)

These four circuits have been categorized as the most unreliable in Prairie Village, so KCP&L crews were out starting two weeks ago assessing them. Circuit #5052 is the only one in Ward 3. See the map below, but it’s along Belinder Ave., Springfield, and Booth, and some lengths of 75th and 71st (both St. and Ter.). The crews are identifying areas of concerns that could create an outage, and their teams will communicate what is found in the next month.

City	PV	Ward 3	PV	PV
Circuit	#5081	#5052	#5042	#5083
Customers in PV	1,671	805	661	395
Total Customers	1,929	1,136	731	693
RANK (of 1242)	407	228	107	848

Public Participation

Charles Schollenberger, Ward 6, spoke about the reliable power issue. He commended the Mayor in his address of the issue so far and the responsiveness of the Ward 6 council people, but reiterated the seriousness of the problem and that we should be able to keep the power on in Prairie Village, Kansas in 2019.

Molly Logan, Ward 2, both wrote to Council and presented live to bring their awareness to The Borgen Project, a nonprofit that is working to make poverty a focus of U.S. foreign policy, and asked them to contact their representatives in Congress to advocate support and invoke action.

HOW THE BORGEN PROJECT OPERATES:

• Advocate: They meet with U.S. Congressional leaders to secure support for crucial poverty-reducing legislation.
• Mobilize: They mobilize people across the globe behind efforts to make poverty a political priority.
• Educate: They teach basic advocacy skills that allow citizens to communicate with their government.
• Issue Message: They build awareness of global issues and innovations in poverty-reduction through our online and community presence.

Committee Reports

Environmental Committee

Jori Nelson, Ward 2, and the Environmental Committee met with City staff, Compost Collective KC, and Glass Bandit to discuss opportunities to do curbside glass and compost recycling in Prairie Village. Both companies have been invited for a presentation to Council at the beginning of September. They will do a beta test of about 100 people/homes where the amount of food waste and glass kept out of our landfills will be tracked, and then they will present on what the proposed landfill deferral could be if we took it on as a whole city.

Teen Council

Applications for the 2019-2020 Teen Council are available now. Flyers will go out to all public and private schools in Prairie Village. Any questions, contact Jori Nelson, Ward 1, or Ron Nelson, Ward 2.

JazzFest

Save the Date for JazzFest: September 7th. They need Volunteers!

Mayor’s Report

• Audio finally appears (sounds?!?) to be working for the Stream!!!
• Financial Report – beating our budget so far for 2019 in both revenues and expenditures. (Potential rough waters ahead with Dark Store appeals, but we’re prepared.)
• Thanked Chief Schwartzkopf and police staff for crime reduction from 2018 and from 5-year average.
• The Community Center Market Feasibility Study RFP language is awaiting approval by JoCo Library and will be published on Friday. The PV City Council Ad Hoc committee for this effort will be chaired by Sheila Myers, Ward 4, and includes: Tucker Poling, Ward 3; Dan Runion, Ward 5; Chad Herring, Ward 1; Brook Morehead, Ward 4; and one resident member, Randy Knight. Any questions or suggestions, please contact one of those committee members or Wes Jordan, City Administrator.
• The Village Vision 2.0 next step will be community outreach. See more below from Jamie Robichaud.
• Shaffer Park has been officially renamed and there will be a formal dedication September 28th to honor former Mayor Ron Shaffer.
• Chief, Major Roberson and the Mayor will be attending a NAACP chapter meeting this month.
• The Mayor urged all to vote in the Primary, August 6th. (Today!)

Staff Reports

Police Department

Chief Schwartzkopf shared two community engagement events this week:

• August 6th (Tonight!) from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.: National Night Out in The Village at Hen House.
• August 9th from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.: Cone With a Cop. Complimentary Frozen Yogurt for the Kiddos!

Public Works

Melissa Prenger, Senior Project Manager, presented on road closures:

• Roe from 63rd to 67th: Roadway removal with a 12″ drop off. DON’T go around the cones/barriers.
• Somerset south of 83rd will be closed for a couple of months.
• Lots of daytime closures for mill and overlay projects.

See 2019 Construction Projects for a map!

Finance

Lisa Santa Maria, Finance Director, pointed out that the Second Quarter Financial Report is available online. Of note: Sales tax revenues are coming in slower than expected.

Administration

Jamie Robichaud, Deputy City Administrator, noted that information will be coming out soon on the Village Vision 2.0 city input session being held September 9th and September 12th at Meadowbrook Activity Center. Watch for details of how the sessions will be structured. Also, the Corinth South/Quarter plans were moved to this week’s Planning Commission agenda.

David Waters, City Attorney, presented on terms of office and swearing in. Kansas Senate Bill 105 allows Cities to change swearing in dates to better fit the regular meeting dates of Councils. This could mean a possible change for PV, and there will be ample discussion by Council at an upcoming meeting.

Wes Jordan, City Administrator, shared how great Rebecca Galati has been working with the City for KCP&L and his belief that we’ve made a lot of proactive steps. Also, at the next Council meeting, there will be the 3rd draft of the drone ordinance and a JCPRD update on the next phase of Meadowbrook Park.

New Business

Melissa Prenger, Public Works Senior Project Manager, presented:

• 2019 Waste Tire Grant Projects for poured-in place recycled rubber tire surface for additional accessibility in two of our parks (Franklin and Weltner). This is a 50/50 cost share program with KDHE. PV’s portion of the funding will come from the ADA reserve.
• TREKK Design Services contract addendum for ongoing construction inspection. Funding will come from the 2019 Paving budget.

Council voted unanimously on both of these to approve.

Council Committee of the Whole

Revisions to Door-to-Door Solicitor Regulations

Adam Geffert, City Clerk, presented the current process for solicitor permits and research on surrounding municipalities’ processes. Experiences noted by residents have included solicitors without permits, ignoring ‘no soliciting’ signs, overly aggressive tactics, and not leaving when asked. City staff made some recommendations (see below) and are looking for direction from Council, preferably an ordinance.

• Require Kansas Tax ID Number
• Give City Administrator or designee the authority to revoke permits
• Clarify circumstances for revocation
• Clarify duration of revocation
• Addressable on a case-by-case basis
• Establish appeals process
• Consider increase in fees

**Note: Religious organizations, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and politicians are exempted from this process and ‘no soliciting’ signs.

There was no action required by Council at this time.

Actions

The City Council took the following actions:

• Approved the regular City Council meeting minutes – July 15, 2019
• Approved expenditure ordinance #2980
• Approved Boy Scout Troop 98’s short-term special use permit application
• Approved the 2020 Mission Hills contract and the 2020 Mission Hills budget
• Approved school crossing guard agreement with All City Management Services
• Approved request for alcoholic beverage waiver for Harmon Park for the Prairie Village Jazz Festival
• Approved Enterprise fleet management lease program for City vehicles

Upcoming Events

• August 2019 – Gallery Featuring: Joseph Almendarize, Wanda Tyner, Carl D’Amico, Lisa Healy and Susan Kiefer
• August 6th – National Night Out, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
• August 9th – Cone with a Cop, 1:00 -3:00 p.m.
• August 9th – Artist Reception in the R.G. Endres Gallery, 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.
• August 19th – City Council Meeting
• September 7th – 10th Annual Prairie Village Jazz Festival

*These meeting recaps are indicative of how I will update residents twice monthly in my efforts to increase transparency and communication as your Ward 3 Councilwoman so you always know what’s happening at City Hall. I make an effort to pull together references from previous meetings, topics, and issues that are relevant in hopes of making some of the ongoing issues more clear.

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

#ShowUp
#Breathe
#DoYourBest
#BeKind