KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers neighborhoods in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Share your story idea with Rachel.
—
Wednesday’s joint meeting between the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas and the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities was the first of its kind since news broke that the PILOT fee was not going to be removed from customer bills as promised by Oct. 1.
There was a special UG meeting Oct. 17 to discuss the PILOT fee, but no BPU board members were invited to participate in the meeting.
Wednesday’s meeting had a sizable turnout, with more than half of the seats for audience in the fifth floor meeting room full.
All UG commissioners and BPU board members were present for the meeting.
The meeting began with opening remarks from KCK mayor Tyrone Garner, and he then gave an overview of concerns.
During this presentation, Chris Steineger, former Kansas state senator, to go over the Regional Electric Rae Comparison.
Steineger also gave a presentation Sept. 5 about potential cost-saving recommendations at the UG commission meeting.
Garner posed a question he’s posed before: is the BPU a benefit or a burden?
He clarified that instead of the $37-38 million that’s been used to describe how much the PILOT fee costs does not accurately describe how much the UG expects the BPU to make up for.
Garner says because the UG voted to separate the residential PILOT from the commercial and business PILOT, the cost is much lower.
The UG’s Chief Financial officer explained that the 2024 PILOT is 13.1 million, but with the 11.9% to 10.9% reduction to come in 2025, the residential PILOT would be $12 million.
"These are hard conversations to have, but they’re necessary conversations," Garner said.
There was then a presentation from Kerry McCarthy, a former BPU employee and cost analyst with a utility background.
Garner invited McCarthy to give a presentation with questions and recommendations for the BPU board.
In addition to looking at the Days of Cash on Hand account, she also offered recommendations for solving the PILOT fee issue like a BPU budget audit or reviewing Chief Executive positions at BPU.
"We elected all of you to represent us in different ways," McCarthy said. "We still all want all of you to represent us in different ways. But that’s going to take communication between the two groups. The County's tired of running from meeting to meeting, I’m worn out, and I’ve only been doing it for two months."
McCarthy ended her presentation suggesting a hard look at a soft consolidation of the UG and BPU.
But BPU board members responded to the presentation with confusion.
"I'm disappointed the meeting is not what I thought it was intended to be," said Tom Groneman, the BPU president.
He and other board members shared they had not been briefed on McCarthy’s presentation ahead of time and that it felt like they were being attacked rather than having a collaborative conversation.
"The 'gotcha moments,' we're past done," said Andrew Davis, the District 8 commissioner for the Unified Government in reference to the BPU being caught off guard.
Davis suggested including public works in future conversations about cost-saving measures between the two groups with the overlap in things like infrastructure.
"I do think we should have some codified structure in the charter that does mandate these joint meetings that does have a set agenda," Davis said.
Other commissioners echoed the sentiment of taking actionable steps rather than simply having discussions.
"I keep joking and saying we’re having meetings about meetings about meetings," said Christian Ramirez, District 3 UG commissioner.
The topic of bill separation also came up.
BPU board member Rose Mulvany Henry said this was a topic that arose back in 2023. The boards had gone as far as creating a task force to discuss the topic.
She says last she heard of it was May 2023, when she got a meeting invite that was eventually rescinded.
“When you talk about, 'We want to problem-solve,' we want a subset of our elected officials have tried to come together and do this,” Mulvany Henry said.
Melissa Bynum, Commissioner at Large for District 1, offered insight into why the conversation about bill separation took a pause from the UG side.
"For us to develop a system to collect the fees that we’re currently collecting on your bill was going to be very expensive," Bynum said. "Millions of dollars."
District 7 commissioner Chuck Stites posed a question that spearheaded the bill separation discussion.
"If we’re here to problem-solve, let’s problem solve," Stites said. "Why is it on the bill now?"
According to Groneman, "It was on there so that it was just easier to have one billing system than to have two."
Commissioners and board members agreed having customers with their electricity shut off for not being able to pay the joint UG and BPU bill is a problem they want to address. But this issue also raised concerns.
"What do we do when stormwater, sewage and trash go unpaid," Bynum asked about the UG’s role in separate billing.
Another noteworthy discussion to come out of Wednesday’s meeting was about the charter the UG referenced when directing the BPU to remove the PILOT fee from customer bills.
According to the joint legal counsel present Wednesday, the UG is in compliance with CO-3-02 (charter) by collecting the PILOT the way it is.
Up until this point, Garner says he was under a different impression.
"Right now, I have zero confidence," Garner said. "And I’m just being honest with you because I’ve been told two things."
This raised a topic of utilizing a third-party legal counsel to review the charter ordinance, as well as a consideration about updating the charter’s verbiage.
The County Administrator and BPU General Manager were slated to speak about actionable solutions, but they ran out of time in the meeting.
To watch the nearly 2-hour meeting in full, you can visit the Unified Government’s YouTube channel.
—
