Oct 23, 2023

SHAWNEE CITY COUNCIL MEETING

October 23, 2023


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. Please note that I am taking a brief hiatus and this will be my last meeting recap until March. If anyone else writes meeting recaps, we will make sure these are posted to www.sayyesshawnee.com and our Say YES Shawnee Facebook page, so be sure to follow along so you don’t miss them!


One of the items up for discussion tonight was that the council was slated to hold a public hearing for and vote on a Community Improvement District (CID) for the Monticello Village shopping center. This would levy an additional sales tax on sales in that shopping center that the developer would then use to improve the space. Three members of the public spoke against the CID in the public hearing, feeling the city should not add an additional tax when they see improving this area as the developer’s financial responsibility. The developer requested to continue  the public hearing to November 27 so they could present the council and the public with their full development agreement to show their vision for the area. City Manager Doug Gerber also recommended November 27 as the new date since otherwise it would have to be pushed out to January due to the holidays. Everyone on the council was in favor of extending the public hearing to have all the information, but Councilmember Kemmling led the charge to postpone until January when the new council is seated. Councilmembers Gillette and Thomas echoed this sentiment. Mayor Distler and Councilmembers Stiens and Knappen felt that January was too long and that it didn’t make sense to throw a brand-new council into this issue that the current council started. Ultimately, the motion to postpone to November 27 passed 4-4 with Thomas, Gillette, Kemmling, and Walters in dissent, and Mayor Distler breaking the tie. It’s important to note that Kemmling is running for mayor in the upcoming election, so he has a vested personal interest in postponing to January. If the vote is postponed further and he wins, he would be presiding over that vote as the mayor and not just as a councilmember. I’m glad that 4 of his fellow councilmembers saw through this and pushed back on his power grab.


The governing body also received an update from Tammy Butterfield on the study her firm conducted on the feasibility of a campaign study for Shawnee Town 1929 improvements. As a reminder, a while back Shawnee Town approached governing body to use the $1.2 million already earmarked in the CIP for a new visitor center. The governing body asked them to do a capital campaign instead of having the city pay for it, so they started with the study for the capital campaign. Butterfield found that she believed Shawnee Town could raise $5 million from private donors if the city invested $6 million of their own money. Not surprisingly, several councilmembers balked at the cost including Councilmembers Thomas, Jenkins, Gillette, and Councilmember Gillette, who initially pushed for the capital campaign, asked if the capital campaign could be completed with only the $5 million from private donors and not the $6 million from the city, but Butterfield found the potential donors interviewed stated that they needed to see an investment from the city in the project before they would be willing to donate. This item was purely informational so there was no vote; the item should come back before the council sometime in early 2024.


Additionally, the Council considered the following:


At Council Committee, the committee heard an informational presentation on the city’s Property & Casualty insurance rates for next year. This item will come before them in December with finalized rates, but they were told to expect rate increases of about 20% due to various market factors. Last year the council asked staff to look into taking on more liability to save on premiums, but staff found the savings would be much smaller than the risk the city would take on.


The council committee also discussed short-term rentals for the fourth time. The goal tonight was to nail down whether they wanted to move forward with regulations or an outright ban. Multiple residents from a neighborhood in ward 4 came to speak about a short-term rental and its impact on their community. After hearing this resident feedback, the council decided to move forward with an outright ban on short-term rentals in single-family residential zoning and will deal with other zones in the future. There was no vote tonight but once the ban is drafted it will come back before the council for a formal vote.


City Council Meeting: 

https://cityofshawnee.civicweb.net/document/184595/?splitscreen=true&media=true 

 

Council Committee Meeting: 

https://cityofshawnee.civicweb.net/document/227770/?splitscreen=true&media=true 


Recap by: Alex Welch Blattner