By SALINA POST
From the 2022 budget to the fire department audit to bonds, to a proposed transient guest tax to a citizen-driven petition to a potential annexation, the Salina City Commission has a busy agenda for Monday.
About the meeting
Study sessions and city commission meetings will take place in–person in room 107 of the City-County Building, 300 West Ash Street, and via Zoom until further notice. Meetings also can be viewed at the City of Salina YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/cityofSalinaKansas.
To participate via Zoom, citizens will need to use the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89275984587.
The meeting also can be accessed by phone at 1-346-248-7799. Enter Meeting ID:892 7598 4587 when prompted.
If citizens wish to speak, either during the public forum or when the mayor requests public comment on an item, citizens attending via Zoom must raise their hands so that the meeting host can allow them to speak. Those who attend the in-person meeting will have the opportunity to speak at the podium.
Citizens also can send written comments or questions to city commissioners via email at [email protected].
In order for the commissioners to have an opportunity to review comments in advance of the meeting, please email your comments or questions by 5 p.m. the Sunday prior to the Monday meetings.
Regular meeting
The regular meeting is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. A time for public comment is scheduled near the beginning of the meeting.
Commissioners are scheduled to conduct a public hearing on the proposed 2022 city budget. The proposed budget for 2022 includes total expenditures of $187,525,706, according to information in the commission meeting packet.
"The comparable amount for 2021 was $111,457,319. The 2022 budget includes a $60,000,000 expenditure budgeted for the Former Schilling Air Force Base Clean Up Fund, $6,000,000 in additional transfers from the Sales Tax Capital Fund to create capital reserve funds and a reserve expenditure for the General Fund of $10 million," information from the city noted. "Excluding these exceptions, the overall 2022 budget is less than 1% higher than the adopted 2021 budget."
The final proposed 2022 budget, if approved, would set the mill levy at 30.452 mills.
To see the draft of the 2022 budget book, click here.
A representative of BKD CPAs & Advisors is scheduled to present the findings of the firm's forensics audit of Salina Fire Department leave time. The audit found that some fire department personnel took time off without applying it to their vacation time, which is valued at more than $198,000. Additionally, the audit found $18,000 worth of personal or sick time that was not reported.
READ: Forensic audit of fire department leave time shows misuse
Commissioners also are scheduled to consider a verified petition seeking to limit the commission's ability to enact ordinances that impose restrictions on businesses or citizens in response to public emergencies. The petition was delivered to the city clerk on July 28.
READ: Petition seeking to limit commission authority delivered to city
Commissioners also are scheduled to consider a proposed ordinance to annex the former Signify plant site on S. Ninth Street. On Aug. 6, 2020, the city commission adopted a resolution preliminarily indicating the city's intent to issue $20 million in industrial revenue bonds for what was later announced as Great Plains Manufacturing's expansion into the site, with the understanding that the plant site would be annexed into the city upon Great Plains taking ownership.
Other items on the city agenda for Monday include the following.
●Consider authorizing the city manager to submit a Solid Waste Management Planning Grant Program application to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment's Bureau of Waste Management.
●Consider authorizing the city manager to execute a contract addendum to the purchase agreement with the Janine L. Henry Trust, as successor in interest to KMJJM, L.L.C., for the optioned property located at 125 W. North Street (location of the Salina Drive-thru Recycling Center), which was approved by the city commission on July 12, 2021.
●Consider approving a resolution accepting a conditional grant award for the Emergency Solutions Grant Fiscal Fund Year 2021 from the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation to benefit local recipient agencies, and authorize the city manager and city staff to sign the related grant documents for allocation of grant funds to three Salina agencies: Ashby House, DVACK, and Catholic Charities.
●Receive the report on bids received on sales of general obligation refunding bonds; hear the second reading of an ordinance authorizing the issuance and delivery of $6,500,000 principal amount of general obligation refunding bonds; and consider a resolution prescribing the form and details of and authorizing the delivery of $6,500,000 principal amount of general obligation refunding bonds.
●Hear the second reading of a proposed ordinance levying special assessments against certain lots and pieces of property to pay the cost of abatement of nuisances on certain lots and parts of lots and the parkways abutting them.
●Consider a proposed ordinance levying a transient guest tax on the gross receipts derived from or paid directly or through an accommodation broker by transient guests for sleeping accommodations within the city and repealing the current resolution in place pertaining to transient guest tax.
To see the entire Salina City Commission meeting packet for Monday (305 pages), click here. (You also can open agenda items individually.)