Feb 24, 2025

SHAWNEE CITY COUNCIL MEETING

February 24, 2025

You can stream the full City Council meeting at the link below! If you don't have time to watch, here's my quick recap. 

Tonight’s meeting centered around discussion of the upcoming renovations to Garrett Park, with some miscellaneous items at the beginning and end. There wasn’t much debate on the park, mostly just discussions of the plans in place before the council approved them unanimously. Councilmember Burchfield praised that the new playground would be accessible for kids of all ability levels. The council also discussed the pickleball courts being added and the steps that will be taken to mitigate noise for the surrounding homeowners (due to the recent controversy in a neighboring city over pickleball noise.)

During Business from the Floor, two residents complained of short-term rentals near their homes and asked the city to ban AirBnbs/short term rentals. During Miscellaneous Council Items, Councilmember Whitted commented that several residents have expressed their interest in hearing the city’s environmental plans, and asked staff to schedule an exploratory discussion of an environmental/sustainability committee on a future council committee agenda. The council generally agreed to discussing this, but Councilmembers Gillette and Walters attempted to stifle a discussion from even occurring in the future. I’m sharing quotes from them below to demonstrate their complete lack of interest in even discussing sustainability, despite many residents asking for more attention on these issues. If you’re interested in hearing for yourself, you can listen to the live stream around the 1hr 15 minutes - 1hr 20 minutes time frame. 

Councilmember Walters: “I guess my only concern would be allocating any, um, funding/hours that would be dedicated to research if we actually need to continue to do something like this, so, creating something else too much before we find, I guess, once we find out if there’s a need I just want to make sure we’re not creating a whole nother form of, um, need for revenue for that specific department or committee or whatever.” 

Councilmember Gillette: “Yeah, I just…it sounds like this will come back at a later discussion and I’ll just make one little comment. We put together an arts task force that wasn’t supposed to cost the city any dollars which eventually cost the city a lot of dollars, although the art, uh, on Monticello, looks okay, uh, near Mill Valley High School turned out alright, but still cost us…I’m not in favor of this kind of project, it’s not in our budget for the next year, and so, uh, just thought I’d share my thoughts at the moment.”

Additionally, the Council considered the following:

• Passed consent agenda (unanimous)

• Rezoned .55 acres from agricultural to single-family at 59th and Alden (unanimous)

• Approved special use permit for RSP LLC to operate an online auto sales business off 62nd Terrace (unanimous)

• Approved easement for Evergy to serve the new Justice Center Kennel with power (unanimous)

• Approved final change order for the Johnson Drive & Maurer CMP project (unanimous)

• Approved final change order for the Shawnee Town 1929 Chapel Project (7-1, Gillette in dissent)

• Final plans/bid authorization for the Facilities & IT Building Remodel (unanimous)

• Ratified semimonthly claims (unanimous)

At Council Committee, the committee reviewed the benefit renewals for the next year. There wasn’t too much discussion, but this will come back before the full council at their March 24 meeting. The council also held a review of the city’s short-term rental (STR) regulations which they established in February of last year. The main challenges the city faces are code violations from a handful of STR properties, and approximately 60% of Shawnee STRs listed online being unlicensed, yet their listings remain on Airbnb/VRBO sites. Councilmembers Gillette and Kemmling came out strongly in support of a full ban on STRs despite the city attorney and several other councilmembers pointing out that many STRs are still listed in communities with bans, so a ban doesn’t actually stop them. After quite a bit of discussion, the other councilmembers agreed that the path forward is to strengthen enforcement mechanisms for the current regulations, prioritize dealing with the properties with the most code violations, and use whatever resources possible to get the proper licenses in place for unlicensed STRs. This will come before the committee and full council again for further discussion.  

City Council Meeting: 

https://cityofshawnee.civicweb.net/document/307615/?splitscreen=true&media=true 

Council Committee Meeting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA6EGWkSsoU 

Recap by: Alex Welch Blattner