KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers neighborhoods in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Share your story idea with Rachel.

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Wednesday’s joint meeting between the Joint Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, and the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities was the first of its kind since news of the $1,000 PILOT fee broke. will not be removed From customer invoices as promised by October 1st.

A special UG meeting was held on October 17 to discuss the PILOT fee, but no BPU board members were invited to attend the meeting.

Wednesday’s meeting was well attended; More than half of the audience seats in the fifth-floor meeting room were occupied.

All UG commissioners and BPU board members were present in the meeting.

The meeting started with the opening speech of our Minister. KCK mayor Tyrone Garner then gave an overview of the concerns.

During this presentation, former Kansas state senator Chris Steineger will review the Regional Electric Rae Comparison.

Steineger also gave a presentation on potential cost-saving proposals at the UG commission meeting on Sept. 5.

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Garner asked the question he’s asked before: Is BPU a benefit or a burden?

He explained that UG did not accurately disclose how much it expected BPU to recoup, rather than the $37-38 million used to describe how much of the PILOT wage costs.

Garner says the cost is much lower because the UG voted to separate the residential PILOT from the commercial and business PILOT.

UG’s Chief Financial Officer announced that the 2024 PILOT is 13.1 million, but with a future decline of 11.9% to 10.9% in 2025, the residential PILOT will be $12 million.

“These are difficult conversations to have, but necessary conversations,” Garner said.

Next was a presentation by Kerry McCarthy, a former BPU employee and cost analyst with a public service background.

Garner invited McCarthy to make a presentation to the BPU board with questions and suggestions.

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In addition to looking at the Days of Cash on Hand account, he also offered suggestions to address the PILOT pay issue, such as a BPU budget audit or a review of Chief Executive Officer positions at BPU.

“We elected all of you to represent us in different ways,” McCarthy said. “We all still want you all to represent us in different ways. But that will require communication between the two groups. The state is tired of running from meeting to meeting, and I’m exhausted and was just doing this for two months.”

McCarthy concluded his presentation by proposing a detailed look at the soft consolidation of UG and BPU.

But BPU board members responded to the presentation with confusion.

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“I was disappointed that the meeting did not go as planned,” BPU president Tom Groneman said.

He and other board members shared that they were not informed in advance about McCarthy’s presentation and felt like they were being attacked rather than having a collaborative conversation.

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“We are past the ‘caught out moments,’” Andrew Davis, the Unified Government’s District 8 commissioner, said of the BPU being caught off guard.

Davis suggested including public works in future talks between the two groups about cost-saving measures, with overlap on issues such as infrastructure.

“I think we need to have some codified structure in the charter that mandates these joint meetings with a set agenda,” Davis said.

Other commissioners echoed the idea of ​​taking actionable steps rather than just discussing.

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“I joke and say we have meetings about meetings,” said District 3 UG commissioner Christian Ramirez.

The issue of bill separation also came up.

BPU board member Rose Mulvany Henry said this is an issue that comes up in 2023. The boards went so far as to form a working group to discuss the issue.

He said he last received a meeting invitation in May 2023, which was eventually cancelled.

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“When you talk about ‘We want to solve problems,’ we want a subset of our elected officials to come together and try to do that,” Mulvany Henry said.

District 1 General Commissioner Melissa Bynum offered insight into why talk of bill separation was paused by the UG.

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“It would be very expensive for us to develop a system to collect the fees we currently collect from your bill,” Bynum said. “Millions of dollars.”

District 7 commissioner Chuck Stites asked a question leading up to the separation bill’s discussion.

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“If we’re here to solve problems, let’s solve them,” Stites said. “Why is it on the bill now?”

According to Groneman, “It was easier to have one billing system than to have two.”

Commissioners and board members agree that shutting off power to customers who can’t pay the joint UG and BPU bill is a problem they want to solve. However, this issue also brought concerns.

Bynum asked about UG’s role in separate billing: “What do we do when stormwater, sewer and trash aren’t paid?”

Another notable discussion that emerged from Wednesday’s meeting was about the statute the UG cited when directing the BPU to remove the PILOT fee from customer invoices.

According to common counsel present on Wednesday, the UG complies with the following provisions: CO-3-02 (charter) By collecting the PILOT as it is.

By this point, Garner says he was under a different impression.

“I have zero confidence right now,” Garner said. “And I’m being honest with you because I was told two things.”

This raised the issue of utilizing third-party legal counsel to review the statute regulations, as well as the issue of updating the wording of the statute.

District Administrator And BPU General Manager They were scheduled to talk about workable solutions, but they ran out of time at the meeting.

With Watch the meeting, which lasted approximately 2 hours, in fullYou can visit the United Government’s YouTube channel.

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