2-14-2022 City Council Precap—The Devil is in the Details
Welcome to the second installment of my deep dive into everything Shawnee government. The next meeting of the Shawnee City Council will be held on February 14th at 6pm. The full agenda can be found here: https://cityofshawnee.civicweb.net/Portal/MeetingInformation.aspx?Org=Cal&Id=734
As a reminder, I am a former member of the governing body. I will do my best to provide insights and clear explanations on complex topics. But, in the end, unless I am quoting someone else, any opinions expressed are my own. I welcome your feedback and questions at llb4shawnee@gmail.com
Here are a few of the topics that will be of interest to our residents. I’m sorry, it’s another long one. You may want to consider submitting a public comment or two. Instructions for doing so appear at the end of this post.
—Update from Johnson County Developmental Supports
As a council member, updates from our non-profit partners always provided important insights into lesser known parts of our community. I believe strongly that our elected officials should be engaged members of their community. That also means learning about our community through different lenses in order to make more informed decisions. My hope is this presentation will provide illuminating information about our community members with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the services that are (and are not) available to them.
—Summit Ranch Wellness Center rezoning
This is an interesting project to keep an eye on. Tonight’s agenda requests that this item be tabled until February 28th. I will wait to provide commentary until that time.
—Policy Statement 45–community amenity fees
The biggest proposed change is to expand the availability of military discounts for the municipal pools to retired members of the Military as well as members of the National Guard or Reservists (not just those who are “activated”). I support these changes. There was initial discussion about changing the definition of “family” for family memberships, but no changes to that affect are proposed in the packet. I would not be surprised if it came up again anyway.
—Screen fence for Re-Imagine 75th street
I spoke about the 75th Street improvements in my last blog. I am very much in favor of high quality opaque screening between the road and the Southern Star utility station. The original bids included a cement wall with four total sections. Cement is not cheap, and the proposed wall was tall and wide. Based on the original proposed design, Southern Star agreed to pitch in $200k of the $600k total construction price. However, their donation was predicated on the fact that the wall would be used for public art. A new proposal is coming to the council that includes an 8 ft tall wooden privacy fence and 1 concrete panel that can be used for public art (which can take many forms, not just a mural). The new proposed fence will cost $400k with no guarantee that Southern Star will agree to chip in the $200k.
People who know me know that I am a big proponent of public art. I also sit on the City’s Public Arts Task Force as the delegate from the Monticello Historical Society. I am very excited by what we could do with a large wall. But, as a Council member, I was much more concerned about the general beautification that the wall could bring. The 75th Street corridor did have substantial public input before the design phase. It was clear that the public wanted beautification in the form of appropriate screening of the Southern Star area.
Southern Star currently has a 6ft wooden privacy fence that is subject to all the aesthetic challenges of wood. Over time, the wood requires re-staining and other maintenance to keep it looking nice. I appreciate Southern Star as a community partner, but their fence is not what I would call aesthetically pleasing. It could use a good paint or stain. It also is not tall enough to cover the barbed wire behind it.
My concern is that in going with the cheaper, wooden option, the city is opening itself up to significant maintenance in the future that would not occur with concrete walls.
This is a fundamental concern I have with our current governing body. I am not sure their attempts to save a buck now fully consider the potential downstream costs. Also, there is still an option to ditch the wall in its entirety. I think that would be disastrous for the future success of this project, as described in my January 2022 blog.
—Ordinance renewing public Downtown Shawnee Common consumption area
I whole heartedly support renewing this ordinance that was passed last year. This allows event attendees to have open containers of alcohol within a well-defined common consumption area. If you attended any of the Moonlight Market community events last year, you saw this ordinance in action. The Shawnee Police reported that there were no major incidents related to the common consumption area, and I do not foresee this being a controversial topic.
COUNCIL COMMITTEE
—ARPA Funds Briefly, the city is getting extra money from the federal government through the Economic Recovery Act. The money is paid in two installments, one of which we received in 2021. I am very excited about some of the projects suggested for the additional funds. Personal highlights include enhanced connectivity between eastern and western Shawnee via a new sidewalk (a campaign focus of mine), funding for Mental Health Co-responders (they’re amazing and will absolutely be a topic for a future blog), Gleason Bridge repairs, and money for land banking/ downtown development fund. A quick note, I only support land banking if the program is not limited to downtown.
—Policy Statement 07, 45, and 47
Policy Statement 07 provides the framework for how public meetings are conducted. This includes items such as what will be on every agenda, how long community members have to speak during public comments, and how council members should act during meetings. This document is FREQUENTLY tinkered with. Some changes, such as expanding options for public comment, have been very welcome. Others, have been more controversial.
Charter Ordinances 45 and 47 deal with issues such as council and mayoral vacancies, and the official start and stop dates of council terms. These are not changed as often as PS-07, and the changes tend to have a longer impact.
On January 13, 2020, after serving on the council for more than a year, I was nominated as Council President. Councilmember Jenkins was also nominated. At the time, the Council President chaired the Council Committee meetings, and was also next in line to fill the mayor’s spot if there was a vacancy. The Council split the vote on both my and Councilmember Jenkins’s nominations. The vote was 4-4 for both of us with the Mayor declining to break the tie.
What happened next was that Kemmling and Zimmerman were both nominated for Council President with the same outcome each time. We ended the meeting with no President and no way to break the tie. This set off a long list of changes to PS-45 and 47. Specifically, the rules were changed so the Mayor would chair the Council Committee meetings, and the Council and Committee meetings were combined to accommodate schedules. In addition, the rules were changed to create a new tie breaking mechanism (a coin flip). Finally, the old rules permitted the Council President to serve out the remainder of the Mayor’s term in the event of a vacancy. The new rules provide for the Council President to serve in the role only temporarily and for a special election to automatically be triggered.
This is important history to have in order to fully consider the changes that are being proposed by council members Jenkins and Kemmling, our longest serving members and both from Ward 2. Some of their requests are as follows:
Separate City Council and Council Committee meetings
Council President will return to chairing Council Committee meetings
Change the method for breaking a tie for Council President (probably will go to most senior member)
General changes to Charter Ordinances 45 and 47
Here are my general thoughts on these changes:
First, a brief reminder that Council Committee (a committee of the whole) is where agenda items are discussed in a more informal setting. No formal action can come from Council Committee. The only thing that can happen is the Committee can vote to have an item forwarded to the City Council.
Separate City Council and Council Committee meetings. At the time, the combined meetings worked better from a scheduling perspective. It also reduced the total number of meetings council members needed to attend per month from 3 to 2. This may not seem significant, but not having that third meeting had a significant impact on work-life balance. HOWEVER, our decision to move in this direction was predicated on the fact that “most council meetings took less than an hour.” So, combining them would lead to longer meetings, but not outrageously longer. The reality is that meetings typically last four or more hours and are overwhelming and exhausting.
I was not a big fan of this change at the time. I did not believe that most of our meetings took less than an hour (even if it was true, it definitely did not feel like it). I also am someone who would read every page of the council packets. When we had both meetings on one night, I found it incredibly difficult to do in-depth preparation on every topic, and we often had several controversial topics in a single evening and we never knew how long public comments would take. On the whole, I support having separate meetings, but recognize that this can probably only happen if the Mayor is no longer chair of the Committee meetings….which I have mixed feelings about as described below.
Council President to Chair the Meeting-This request can be viewed through two lenses. First, this may NEED to happen in order to separate the City Council and Council Committee meetings into separate nights. If this is the case, this is a reasonable request. However, it can also be seen as a power-grab of sorts. Even at the Committee level, the Chair can exert substantial power over what gets on the agenda and the proceedings themselves. Chairing a meeting is a significant role. … one which can be used, for instance, to bring visibility to someone who may be seeking to hold higher office.
Change the method to break a tie for Council President—We had significant discussions on this topic in 2020. I specifically remember being chided by a fellow council member for taking too much time discussing this issue. I explained that it was important for our Council to think through these issues carefully. Ultimately, I believe that the coin toss tiebreaker had precedence because that is how tied elections are decided at both the state and county levels. We saw this new tiebreaker put into practice the very next year. In 2021, Lindsay Constance won a tie breaker coin flip against Mike Kemmling. I am reluctant to support longevity as the best tiebreaker. But I understand the uneasy feeling of a decision that comes down to a coin toss.
I will be interested to see if the proposed changes to Charter Ordinances 45 and 47 involve the line of succession in the event of a mayoral vacancy. I would watch this one closely.
Other Proposed Changes—Other proposed changes relate to Business From the Floor and Public Comment. I am a fierce advocate of having Business from the Floor available to our community and protecting public comment. But, I understand that in order to do these things, we have to set limits to protect all community member. I think it is reasonable to have Business From the Floor-where any community member can bring any issue that is important to them, but isn’t on the agenda- at the end of the meeting. This allows the agenda items to proceed as planned and makes clear that items that come up during Business from the Floor will not be voted on during that meeting. Some council members want BFTF to return to the beginning of the meeting. I lived through both models and much prefer the end for the reasons stated above.
There are also council members who insist on having the Council packet a week or more before the Council meeting. While this would be nice for council members, I understand the realities of what this would mean in practice. Because of the way that Planning Commission meetings fall, asking for packets much further in advance will slow the rate at which business can flow through the city. It also puts added pressure on an already taxed City Staff to produce high quality reports on a much shorter timeline. We receive our packets now on the Wednesday before the following Monday’s meeting. I think this is a reasonable amount of time to review a packet.
Reviews of Policy Statements and City Ordinances are enjoyed by very few among us… including our elected officials. But, details matter.
I am a regulatory attorney, and this is my jam. Ultimately, we all must take the time to understand how small changes in these policies and ordinances can have big effects.
If you have opinions about any of the above, I encourage you to share with the Council. You may contact the entire governing body by e-mail, an individual council member by e-mail, or make a written or oral public comment. Public comments must be received by Monday morning and become part of the public record. If you want to speak in person, you should sign up ahead of time. To make a written public comment or sign up to speak, click on this link:
You may e-mail the full governing body at governingbody@cityofshawnee.org. E-mails do not become part of the public record.