Presentations

Kansas City Area Historical Trails Association award presentation

In celebration of the work Prairie Village has done with the Kansas City Historic Trails Association, led by volunteer and Tree Board member, Mark Morgan, and Public Works Director, Keith Bredehoeft, for the work they’ve done recognizing and identifying three miles of trails with informative signage throughout the city.

National Public Works Week proclamation

Designating the week of May 21–27, 2023 as National Public Works Week in the City of Prairie Village, Kansas, and urge all citizens to join with representatives of the American Public Works Association and government agencies in activities, events and ceremonies designed to pay tribute to our public works professionals, engineers, managers, and employees and to recognize the substantial contributions they make to protect our national health, safety, and quality of life.

National Police Week proclamation

Designating the week of May 14 through May 20, 2023 as “National Police Week” in the City of Prairie Village, Kansas, and publicly salute the service of law enforcement officers in our community and in communities across the nation.

Legislative update – Little Government Relations

Dr. Stuart Little with Little Government Relations (LGR) shared that no tax significant legislation was ultimately passed this year. The school budget passed with the basic education budget, but includes some bad policy inclusions. Governor Kelly has until this Thursday to veto that if she chooses to (Update: Gov. Kelly vetoed a few line items from the bill, but signed the remaining budget).

SB 8, which would have exempted some commercial entities from property tax on the argument that the government is competing with them, was vetoed, but make no mistake, it will come back next year. So will “dark store theory“, appraisal percentage increase caps, a flat tax proposal, and more.

Councilmember Herring asked if there was anything current happening in the legislature around common sense gun control. Dr. Little noted that bills around that topic this session were noticeably few (except for the defeated NRA program that has no record of being effective in deterring gun deaths). Dr. Little thought that absence was significant.

Public Participation

During public participation, Mayor Mikkelson always calls residents to the podium one-by-one to speak for three minutes. There was only 1 resident who spoke at this meeting.

• Shannon Healy – referenced the UCS housing study, inferred that the Mayor should be ashamed to serve on the UCS board, and erroneously said that even UCS says in their study that PV has has no room for development. (See screenshot below for full text from the UCS housing study.)

Mayor Mikkelson addressed inaccuracies about the UCS study and his service on the UCS board. He does serve on the UCS board, and is proud to serve. UCS is a valid and valuable resource to cities and the county. Also, UCS states that PV has no areas suitable for NEW development; “therefore redevelopment possibilities are the only option” for future accommodations, which Councilmember Graves clarified directly from the study.

Councilmember Cole Robinson alerted Council and residents that he has personally been ejected and blocked from the Stop group Facebook page for responding to resident concerns that meetings would no longer be available for livestreaming. On a recent post, he provided valid information and links to the City webpage for live viewing and recorded videos to residents, and he was then blocked from the group for providing accurate information. Councilmember Robinson shares this to let residents know that if something seems hard to believe, reach out to your councilmember for accurate information and an open two-way conversation.

Mayor Mikkelson also reminded residents that all of the elected leaders on the dais are unpaid volunteers who spend a lot of personal time and energy working FOR the residents of PV doing the business of the city alongside staff. And having to respond to smears and lies takes us and staff all away from doing the business of the city.

Councilmember McFadden thanked Councilmember Herring for his measured and kind responses online. She said that just because someone puts a title and company under their name, that doesn’t mean they’re being honest or have the true information. (Must be something she’s specifically seen.) She also said that our public City website has true and accurate information. If you have questions, don’t go to a random site that purports to be the expert on the topic; go to the City website.

Committee Reports

Environmental Committee: Sustainability management program presentation

Representatives from Keramida, Nick and Amber, presented their work to date on creating a municipal greenhouse gas inventory and an interim target reduction strategy for the City of Prairie Village. They are currently meeting with PV city staff to better understand how the city works, looking at benchmark aspirational peers, and plan to hand over their deliverables in July 2023. Thank you to the work of the Environmental Committee for starting us on this project.

JoCo Drug & Alcohol Council

DAC Representative Councilmember Reimer met last week and received a presentation from an organization that provides support to veterans and youth moving through the court system. This program is available to our residents and intended to help people find the resources they need. The annual DAC grant review process will begin in September for the 2024 cycle.

Tree Board

Committee Chair Councilmember Ian Graves shared that the Tree Board is looking at their programs for streamlining and saving costs when sourcing trees and more. They would like to look at a partnership with the Environmental Committee and encourage residents to plant native trees on their personal property too.

Finance Committee

Committee Chair Councilmember Ian Graves said that the committee had their first meeting of the 2024 budget planning season with an overview of projections for 2024, and this week they will get deeper into the details of the budget.

Arts Council

The Prairie Village Arts Council installed its latest exhibition, the Art of Photography. Check it out now in the City Hall gallery space. See the Award Winning photos HERE.

Planning Commission

Committee Chair Councilmember Shelton shared that there was no agenda for the next Planning Commission meeting, so it has been cancelled, but we do still have the June & July Planning Commission Housing Forums coming up this summer, so mark your calendars if you haven’t already:

Parks & Recreation Committee

Committee Chair Councilmember Terrence Gallagher shared that the P&R committee is partnering on a new endeavor with the Diversity Committee, so watch for more information coming on that soon. P&R also made a recommendation that all of the courts at Windsor Park will be converted to Pickleball Courts! Taliaferro and McCrum will remain tennis courts.

The Prairie Village Pool opens May 27th!!

Mayor’s Report

• A mixed grouping of various types of medical practices are now open on the 2nd floor of the U.S. Bank building in the PV Shops if you’re looking for a new physician.
• Friday June 2nd will be the second annual Meadowbrook Park Festival at Meadowbrook Park.
• The Prairie Village Art Show is coming up on the weekend of June 2nd as well.

Staff Reports

PVPD

Chief Byron Roberson shared the fun time they had at Coffee with a Crossing Guard last week, addressed the current crime stats, and shared that 4 new PVPD officers will be starting on Monday, and they’ve also officially hired a fifth as well.

Please lock your cars and hide your valuables to deter car break-ins and thefts!

Public Works

Keith Bredehoeft, Public Works Director, highlighted our 8-foot wide sidewalk program gap along 67th street from there on Mission to the Village Shops, so that will be the next area to be addressed. Look for invitations to nearby residents along that corridor to a public meeting to give feedback on that sidewalk.

At the Touch-a-Truck event, look for the artist-painted snow plow blades and the opportunity for kids to make their artistic mark as well.

Councilmember Piper Reimer told Keith and Council that the NE corner of 75th and Nall looks SO amazing, so shout out to James Carney and the crews making that happen. Keith said that their staff takes a lot of pride in what they do and go above and beyond to make things look better. 😊

Administration

Ashley Freburg, Public Information Officer, said we are now streaming directly to BoxCast, and she thanked Council for making her typical day-after-Council-meetings SO much easier.

Ashley also went into a little bit more detail on the history of streaming, how it worked, and how things have changed because of recent FB policy/process changes. Now we are only using platforms that we pay for, so if we have problems, we have a help desk that we can go to. The recorded meetings will now be available on the city website almost immediately after the meeting – so much faster than before. Terrence reported that the sound and stream is running great as he’s double watching from the beautiful state of New Jersey. See www.pvkansas.com/livestreaming for recorded and future live council and planning commission meetings.

Councilmember Cole Robinson thanked staff for describing the process and the change, and shared his thoughts that it’s so much better to send residents directly to our website for this viewing since that’s where all of the other city information is and that City staff don’t have to use their personal FB accounts to manage this aspect anymore. Ashley shared, anecdotally, that a week or so ago FB decided she was no longer a real person, and they revoked her access. It took awhile to get reinstated with FB and could have curbed the live streaming service then too.

Councilmember Reimer asked Ashley to describe the process to find the stream, which she did. Here is a snapshot of the mobile view again, and you can find the direct link for your desktop two paragraphs above:

Council considered five items relating to several upcoming projects

• Interlocal agreement with Johnson County Wastewater for the reimbursement of sanitary sewer construction costs associated with Project MIRD0007: Mission Road near 68th Street flood control project
• Interlocal agreement with Johnson County for the reimbursement of project construction costs for Project MIRDOOO7: Mission Road near 68th Street flood control project
• Construction contract with VF Anderson Builders, LLC, for Project MIRD0007: Mission Road near 68th Street flood control project
• Construction administration agreement with Trekk Design Group for Project MIRD0007: Mission Road near 68th Street flood control project
• Change order for construction contract of Mission Road CARS project (adding the mill/overlay of Mission Rd from 83rd Street to 95th Street, and include 90th Terrace, Mission to Roe. Look for separately-approved work for 79th to 83rd mill/overlay coming soon too.)

All 5 items were approved unanimously one-by-one.

Note: the final completion/restoration of the Mission-Road-near-68th-Street-flood-control-project is anticipated to be completed by spring of 2024. So look forward to a newly refreshed Schliffke Park at that time! 🙂

Next steps in neighborhood design guidelines (NDG) update process

A reminder of our top two items to look at in this R1 housing review process: Neighborhood Design Guidelines and Short Term Rentals.

Staff is proposing the following Plan of Action to update the guidelines:

• Objectives:
  • Focus on R-1B zoning districts
  • Reduce the scale of buildings further than current development standards and design guidelines
  • Review / update design standards
    
• Process:
  • Staff Review and Discussion – internal options and strategies based on construction that’s been approved since the last iteration of the NDG.
  • Planning Commission Work Session – options direction because they’ve also seen all of the exceptions to the NDGs that they’ve reviewed since 2019
  • City Council status update
  • Public open house / comment – with a draft of what we think the changes might be
• Planning Commission – Public Hearing early Fall 2023
  • City Council – Review / Decisions late Fall / early Winter 2023
    
• R-1B Issues to consider addressing:
  • Height / Stories
  • Foundation / First floor Elevation
  • How height is measured
  • Lot coverage (building coverage; impervious surface coverage)
  • Lot size & frontage (maximum / lot merger limits)
  • Massing standards / Wall Plane Limits – simplification and improvement for outcomes and objectives; clean-up and “lessons learned” from implementation

Councilmember McFadden shared that she trusts the process, but to be aware that the process outlined will probably need to be (and probably should need to be) revisited several times. (Much like the previous two versions of the NDG.)

Chris Brewster, city planner, pointed out that we can’t regulate affordability (or attainability): the regulations have to work in concert with several other policies in play.

Councilmember Inga Selders asked if a maximum square footage of a new build could be applied to the NDGs, and staff shared that will be part of the considerations.

Councilmember Ian Graves said that he is very interested in R-1b as that’s about 40% of Ward 6, and probably all of the current “attainable” homes in Ward 6 are zoned R-1b. Also, R-1b is a more efficient use of lot space compared to other zones. Lastly, if two R1-b lots are purchased and merged, they need to be downzoned into R1-a so they then have to comply with R1-a guidelines.

Agenda Packet for your reference

Closing

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to share this newsletter/post with your PV neighbors! Again, I’m happy to chat live if you have any questions.

Please be well and have a great week!

🙂

P.S. If you haven’t heard, I’m running for re-election, and I need your support to win the upcoming election. More info, including ways to volunteer, will be forthcoming! Thank you in advance! ❤❤❤