On this episode of the Post Podcast, Hays Post reporter Becky Kiser recaps this week's Hays city commission meeting with vice-mayor Michael Burgess and city manager Toby Dougherty.
Transcript
James Bell
Infrastructure in Hays was on the agenda during this week's City Commission meeting. Hays Post reporter Becky Kiser speaks with Vice Mayor Michael Burgess as well as city manager Toby Doherty, about that on this episode of the Post Podcast.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
Congratulations, Michael, on being the vice mayor. What are your duties as Vice Mayor? People want to know.
Michael Burgess
To pick on Mason to make sure he's at all the meetings so that way he can run them? Because if he's not at the meeting that I go to the gavel, and I'm not sure I prepared to do that. Oh, I'm sure there. Other than that, it's kind of just succession, you just kind of take your tournament in the seat next to you.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
Well, we're glad to have you in that seat. Let's talk a little bit about some of the agenda items at last night's meeting several of them regarding development in Hays and one of the big ones. And we'll I'm going to ask Toby a question about this too. But first of all, let's talk about a pre annexation agreement with property owner of four tracts of land Michael, just north of I 70. Near the exit 157. There's a lot of stuff that's already happened up there. And this will help with continued growth.
Michael Burgess
That's the same exit that on the west side of that property that we annexed last night is where the the truckstop and hopefully hotels, restaurants and truck washes going in the counties already. We've already done some road repair in that area. Now the county is also doing their their bypass construction out there. So this kind of fits with that whole puzzle of developing that area, hopefully more industry to track more trucks and kind of grow that area.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And Toby, you talked last night and also the week before about this is a little bit different type of pre annexation agreement between the property owner BBj and the city of Hays, How's it different.
Toby Dougherty
It's a little bit different, because development typically happens, likes what's happening on the west side there, we have an undeveloped piece of property. developer comes in in and the city gave some financial incentives in order to help subsidize the water and sewer and road infrastructure to serve the development and then stuff is built. Well, this is a little different, because the Peterbilt dealership located out there before there was any infrastructure at all. So they were on real water, they are on a septic system. And they existed in the in the unincorporated area in the county outside the city. And so at that time, it was cost prohibitive for the infrastructure to be extended for a Peterbilt dealership. But with the infrastructure being pushed on to the north side of the interstate, the intersection being rebuilt, essentially, the fronted a lot of this property. That's when we took the opportunity entered into negotiations with the property owner and said, You know, it's just a couple short extensions, if you're willing to call share a couple short extensions of infrastructure, we can get your property's ready to develop, and then we could annex the dealership into the city and get the property tax and sales tax off of that. So that's how we resulted in the in the agreement last night. So it was a little bit atypical, but I think it was advantageous for everybody.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And there's one other thing that you pointed out a couple of scenarios that might delay the annexation of at least one of those tracks. There is actually a CID out there that the county has imposed.
Toby Dougherty
Yeah, the property owner asked the county to institute a CID which the Community Improvement District and they're charging an extra two cents. And that's to help offset some of the development costs initially when the Peterbilt dealership was put there. So the property owner has no problem coming into the city. But wanted a little bit of time to collect that Tucson Cid before asking the city to consider lowering it to make sure they're they're competitive. So that's why we we settled on three years after the the infrastructures put in to annex. But then there was a couple a couple ways in which the developer could push that back a year or two, if other properties are developed, or if the infrastructure cost comes in lower than we planned.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And how soon might this infrastructure get underway? Is there more steps? Yeah, this is kind of just the start.
Toby Dougherty
So according to the agreement that was adopted last night by the Commission, we have 12 months from the date of adoption, before we issue the no later than 12 months where we issue the request for proposals to put the infrastructure in. And then we give some, the developer the actual property owner some latitude to tell us go ahead and issue the RFP. So if the developer wants to do it tomorrow, then we'll get it out as soon as possible. So Nobel Prize says let's wait 10 months and then get it out, then we're going to show some deference to them.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
Alright, Michael, let's talk about another area actually down at South Hayes. We had some interest for a relocation of a metal recycling facility which has not been in Hays all that long, but they're looking at growth and they want to go down to the south part of Hays doing that has enabled has required a rezoning request in the area from egg to head heavy industrial and then also the final plat that the commissioner approved last night.
Michael Burgess
Yeah, this is another development, as you said that hadn't been in haze too long, but they're looking to expand their operation. And that's kind of the exciting thing about being on the commission and seeing these things. That's what we talked about for years is to try to attract businesses, and that will grow and add employment. So this made a lot of sense. It's, it's in the industrial part of town already. So yes, it's, from our standpoint, a fairly simple just change from AG. I don't know what was out there. We fields in hay and whatnot to do allow them to build onto and build buildings for recycling. And I think they have some plans to put in a rail routes, spikes, so that way they can ship out and allow and that was kind of the nice thing, the last meeting, and they did talk about allowing other businesses to use that railroad spike to help their operations. So this is going to be a very symbiotic relationship. I think of the community.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
Yes. And now we're talking about property on estab. 16 At ease 10th With Langar, industrials solutions, I think, is the proper name. And they've been there for the past two meetings, told me what that seems like a really big deal to have a new railroad spur, and then actually they're willing to have other people utilize that. Does the city get involved with that?
Toby Dougherty
At all? No, not No. Actually, the city's involvements done. Now, once the Platina zoning was adopted, the city's involvement is done. It's not in the city, right. So this will take place outside of the city limits in the in the, in the, in the county as as the the other entities along there are not in the city limits either. So it's maintaining consistency with the development that's there. The railroad spur is a big deal. And it's it's fairly costly to construct. And so I think, you know, Mr. Langer wants to generate some revenue with the construction by letting other people utilize it. But you also need a big piece of property adjacent to railroad tracks. So you're very limited of how you can put a spring in this property actually worked out perfect for it. So we're we're pretty happy for him and we think it's going to be a good asset.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And this is actually a Hays. Hays Post reporter Christina Janney did a story with Mr. Langer when it when they first opened up their facility much closer to I 70. East 37th Street near the intersection up there. And this is not really a they're more I guess, more of a storage of big metal pieces that will get shipped out
Toby Dougherty
They are commercial recycler. But I mean, if you're old enough to remember the year gave you the words junkyard or scrap yards, you know, that's not what they are. They are commercial recycler. But they get product in and out very quickly, they collect different types of metals. And then they they process them, they get them out very quickly. That's how they make their monies, they turn those, they get them to the the to the venues where they sell them. And so the property haven't been 37th it just isn't big enough for the scale they want. And so ever since I located on 37th, they've been looking for a larger property because they want to operate at a at a much larger scale than they are now.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
Exciting. Let's talk a little bit about the airport we had some information and actually approval Michael have more land has that the city purchase the opportunity came up to do that it's just east of the airport. And this is fitting in extremely, perfectly I should have to say with the airport growth plan. Tell us a little bit about it.
Michael Burgess
It'ss a piece that the property owner approached us. It is a piece that makes a lot of sense because on three, three of the four sides already it it already abuts airport property. So this just squares it off another 20 acres, that at this point, there's certainly no plans on what to do with it. But again, it squares it off with the property that we purchased last year. For future development the airport I know there's going to be some talk about expanding hangars or adding hangars and fuel farm and some of those. So this just allows allows the airport and the city to to continue to build on those ideas.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And then Toby last night some good news was shared about the number of employments passengers we had out at the airport last year maybe a little surprising.
Toby Dougherty
It was the rebound came, came back fairly quickly and fairly steady throughout the year. We flew a little over 11,000 passengers in 2021. And that was slightly higher than I thought we would we would get but our employments have have remained steady and steadily grown throughout 2021 So we see no sign of that slacking off in 22.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And there is a benchmark that pays tries to reach and has over the years with at least 10,000 boardings. Why is that important to us?
Toby Dougherty
It's it's a part of the FA entitlement program. Your your entitlement monies, which is your grant Is that you you have entitled us to and they can't give them to somebody else, are based off of boardings and so 10,000 boardings, we receive an a guaranteed million dollars in FAA grant funds every year. And we have to match that at 10%. And so we spend, we spent $100,000, to get a million dollars worth of benefit from FAA for and it's for FAA authorized projects, so airfield, things that have to do with the planes actually taking off and landing and the safety of it. And then like snow equipment and RF stuff and things like that. So, it's really important for us to get that 10,000 boardings otherwise, we are completely subject to the whim of FAA for funding. And am I like, yeah, we're competing with everybody else's projects. And we may not, you know, be able to align the projects up the way we want them to.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And airport director, Jamie Salter, was neat to see a picture of the new snow removal equipment that was approved by the commission a while back. And it apparently made a huge difference in the amount of time they have to spend working out there.
Toby Dougherty
Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things FAA does call Cherian is a lot of that snow removal equipment. And, you know, it did, it's expected by our airlines, you know, you don't have to go back too far where we had I'm not gonna say sketchy but very non consistent service in the wintertime, if there were snow events, and that's part of that is because we didn't have adequate snow removal equipment to address things like we needed to. But the expectation of like, the current care we have right now is you're going to have a ready to go, we're we're gonna come in, we're gonna land we're gonna let our people off, get our people and we're gonna, we're gonna take off. And so we have to have adequate equipment to do that. And, and I think we have it now.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
And Michael, finally, we wanted to touch base and let people know that the wealth rehabilitation program continues, Jeff Crispin has been working on this started back in 2019. This is the fourth consecutive year and water wills are very important. But at some point, they become a little bit more than city workers than our can handle as far as rehab and keeping it clean, got to call them the professional.
Michael Burgess
Professionals, we've done six to eight, I think every for every year for the last 40 years, I think that'll continue. And that's, that's part of it just getting deep clean, to keep our water flowing efficiently, which then, you know, we just pass those efficiencies on throughout the system. So it makes a lot of sense, it's easier to budget as well, you don't have to wait for wells to go down and then repair it. So
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
Is less expensive planning ahead.
Michael Burgess
So get the deep cleaning and work on the wells and and then that does allow our city staff between, you know, four or five years to go in there and do regular routine maintenance.
Hays Post Reporter Becky Kiser
It's been working out well for us. And real quickly, Toby, we're gonna have
Toby Dougherty
Can I add one thing to that do that? I really want to stress the importance of this because those people that around the 1991 may remember the drought that caused us to get into the water conservation world, that we've been pretty much leading in Kansas ever since. That, well, that was a drought, it wasn't a severe drought. The issue upon upon reflection, the issue was, we weren't taking care of our wells the way we needed to. They weren't as efficient as they should be. We weren't doing stuff like this to have them either rehabbing in the house or professionally rehabbing them. And so it wasn't so much the drought but more of the fact that our wells were only producing at you know, 30 40% capacity. And so then when the drought hit it compounded that. So it's extremely important to do stuff like this because when we do hit a drought, we want those wells as efficient as possible. We don't want to have any self inflicted wounds.