Arts Council, Budget, civic/community center, Construction Projects (City), Legislative

Council Meeting Recap – 02/18/20

February 19, 2020February 21, 2020

This week Council approved LEED Platinum certification design features for the upcoming new Public Works facility! And a few other things… Read on!

This is the Prairie Village City Council meeting recap for Monday, February 18, 2020. You can see the full agenda and board packet HERE.

Council members present at roll call: Herring, J. Nelson, Selders, R. Nelson, Limbird, Myers, Reimer, Runion, McFadden, Graves, and Gallagher.

Here are the highlights of this meeting:

Presentations

Little Government Relations Report

Dr. Stuart J. Little gave an update on active Senate and House bills in Topeka right now relative to issues important to Prairie Village. Issues such as the “tax lid” and “local control”. Here is the general overview from his 8-page report:

The coming week is the last week of regular committee meetings for the first half of the 2020 legislative session. Following hearings next week, bills will be advanced to the House and Senate floor for consideration. All non-exempt bills, which is most bills, must pass out of their chamber of origin before the mid-point, or “turnaround.”
The week of February 24th will be spent debating bills before Thursday the 27th which is the end of the first half of the session.
The Legislature will take a brief break on the 27th and return to work on March 3rd.
There was a flurry of new bills introduced this week as the bill introduction deadline came and went. Most bills are non-exempt and will not receive a hearing.

Consent Agenda

Under the Consent Agenda, the yearly City committee appointments were made or renewed. Here is a list of all new and renewed appointments for 2020:

The annual committee volunteer application process runs from November through December, but committee openings sometimes pop up throughout the year, so if you’re interested, go ahead and fill out the PDF form HERE and email it to our City Clerk for the file!

Committee Reports

Arts Committee

I presented our Arts Committee update:

The Arts Committee voted to approve the final 2020 Exhibit Schedule of monthly exhibits including:
- The Art of Photography in April,
- Art of the Special Olympics, a new show, in May,
- the State of the Seniors show returning for the 2nd year in July, and
- State of the Arts in October.
The Arts Committee is excited to welcome new members Nancy Kalikow Maxwell and Sherrod Taylor.
The February Artists Reception was last Friday, Valentine’s Day, and featured photographers Wendy Delzeit, Ken Sabatini, and Lauran Jackson. The show will be up through March 6th. Last Friday’s event also included a Chamber in the Chamber quintet performance by the Westwood Ensemble

VillageFest Committee

Courtney McFadden, Ward 5, shared that the VillageFest committee has been approached by VanTrust, the developers at Meadowbrook Park, to co-sponsor a fireworks display on July 3rd at the park using funds from the transient guest tax that will start accruing once the hotel at the park opens in April. More info to follow. I’m super-excited by this idea!

Mayor’s Report

Text in italics are my personal comments to these report items.

Coffee with the Community, hosted by our local Consolidated Fire District #2 firefighters at Village Cup (located inside Village Presbyterian Church, 6641 Mission Rd.) is (was) Wednesday morning at 8 am. Watch for more of these in the future on their Instagram page (@jococfd2).
Mayor will attend the upcoming D.A.R.E. graduation for sixth-graders at Belinder, one of the local SMSD elementary schools where the program is facilitated by the Prairie Village Police Department.
Mayor and City Administrator, Wes Jordan, met with First Washington Realty on Wednesday, February 5th to hear early ideas on the Macy’s property, but no concrete ideas or specifics were given yet, despite the rumors you may be hearing.
Council and Staff had a work session Saturday, February 15th at Meadowbrook Park Clubhouse, where we discussed the Climate Action KC Playbook and Village Vision 2.0 and exercised our creative skills painting the snow-covered Meadowbrook Park landscape. Look for these masterpieces to be hung in City Hall sometime soon. 😉
Mayor, Wes, and the Finance Committee Chair, Chad Herring of Ward 1, will meet with the new JoCo Appraiser next week to get a feel for how appraisals may go this year. ** At the JoCo Academy last week, I heard from one of our speakers that they expect that this next year will not be as high as the last few years, but she didn’t know details yet. Fingers crossed!
The March 16th City Council meeting is canceled (we voted real quick to make it official) due to Spring Break and many expected absences.

Staff Reports

Public Works

Keith Bredehoeft, PW Director, reported that the drainage work at 84th Ter and Reinhardt, in cooperation with the City of Leawood using SMAC funds, will be this summer. Check the project page for updates. And PW staff is preparing to move very soon into the PV Community Center space so their old digs can be demo’ed in April.

*Note that this means the PV Community Center is not available to reserve for the duration of this calendar year or until PW moves into their new facility. For community meeting space, contact City Hall about reserving their Multipurpose Room (MPR).

Administration

Wes Jordan, City Administrator, let us know that he and Jamie Robichaud, Deputy City Administrator, will be giving RDG Planning and Design a tour of typical PV homes in the coming weeks to educate them for the upcoming JoCo Municipal Housing Study that RDG will be designing for United Community Services.

Evergy has confirmed that they have enough JoCo municipalities signed up for their Renewables Direct Program to move forward with their new wind farm. We hope to have more info from them on that soon.

Also, Wes, Jamie, Meghan Buum (Asst. City Administrator), Ashley Freburg (Public Information Officer/Deputy City Clerk), Councilmember Herring, and I, along with several other representatives from Roeland Park, Mission, Fairway, and more, attended the Consolidated Fire District #2 Lunch-n-Learn and all learned something new about the history, finance, governance, and future of our Johnson County fire districts.

Chief Lopez will also be coming to Council soon to give a report on the ‘actual’ improved response times since opening the new station #22 at 77th and Mission Road compared to their ‘projections’ when the project was approved.

New Business

Keith presented the Plan of Action (pg. 64 of the Council Packet) for a second Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between PV, JoCo Library, and the Y for the next two phases of our original MOU, including public engagement and site design.

Council ultimately approved the motion to accept the staff plan of action for this with the added request that we get some general commitments of what each party is bringing to the negotiations in the event this project does come to fruition.

Some information that was shared during the course of the discussion:

While the Library is a partner in this “campus” to share some of the infrastructure, parking, and design costs, they will need to maintain a separate building envelope to prohibit the humidity from an indoor pool getting to the collection.
The Library is required to own their own land (the County), so if they move to the “campus” they will make a purchase of land from the City wherever the building ends up being designed.
The Y’s contribution will include the land that their current building now sits on, their membership base (with an estimated $1-2 million dollar annual revenue), and their operational expertise. They may also do some capital campaign fundraising from their donor base.
The annual membership revenue would be used to cover the operating costs of the civic center, as well as, if feasible, help pay down the debt burden from the construction.
Such a facility requires a public vote, but don’t expect to see it on a ballot, if we get that far, until 2021.

Council Committee of the Whole

2021 Budget Calendar

Wes presented the 2021 Budget Calendar prepared by himself and Lisa Santa Maria, Finance Director. The Calendar was approved unanimously after some discussion about the process now and in years past.

Public Works LEED Certification Direction

Melissa Prenger, Senior Project Manager in Pubic Works, led a very thorough and easy to understand presentation about the levels of LEED certification that the Pubic Works building is eligible for and how much the added features at each level would add to the overall project cost. Councilmembers McFadden and Runion, each in his and her own way, asked Melissa to confirm that none of the options were simply “buying” the credits – that we were actually getting a benefit from the added features and not just for purposes of getting a plaque at the end of the project. Melissa confirmed this, and the Council voted unanimously to go for Platinum certification!

LEED design features will reduce our building operation and maintenance costs while promoting a great working and indoor environment for our city employees in that building. Additional benefits of being LEED-certified are:

Promotes better employee relationships
Reduces energy and water usage
Promotes better indoor air quality
Reduces construction waste during the process
Increases employee performance
Promotes the usage of recycled material.

This still leaves, if my math is accurate, the project 25% under budget while still reducing carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, water usage, light pollution, and more!