LYONS, Kan. — The Lyons City Council Monday approved multiple resolutions and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) connected with a Community Development Block Grant for renovations of the building at 210 West Commercial that was the long-time home of the Lyons News and its predecessor Lyons Daily News. Former Mayor Dustin Schultz and Craig Zwick are proposing to renovate the building into two commercial spaces.
Crystal Hammon with Ranson Financial, which is writing the grant and will administer it is awarded, said the city’s role in this is to sponsor the application, as these grants can only be awarded to cities or counties. A public hearing on the grant application was held September 18th and some citizens did attend.
In addition to the MOU, the Council also approved resolutions designating the property as blighted, certifying the city’s legal authority to apply for the grant, and an operation and maintenance resolution.
Public Works Director Jared Jones presented a proposal to use FEMA reimbursement funds to construct a new public works building. The existing building was damaged in a July 2013 windstorm, and Jones provided bids from three contractors for this project, the low bid coming from Cheatham Construction of McPherson at $179,640, which will be covered by reimbursement funds including debris removal money.
The new building would be a 4,000 square feet red iron building that would enable Public Works to have inside storage for their vehicles, some of which can’t be accommodated in the current structure due to size.
Some Council members and City Administrator Troy Houtman expressed a desire to look at the site prior to making any final decisions. With that, the Council agreed to schedule a special meeting for Tuesday, October 14th at 6 PM at which time action on the project is expected.
Related to Public Works, the Council approved a resolution authorizing purchase of a power washer. This would replace an old wash bay south of the street shop that is not operable. Currently city employees are expending their own funds to wash equipment with that cost reimbursed by the city, and Houtman said this purchase could save the city money in the long run. This is being funded through capital outlay funds.
A $37,804.70 purchase of radio equipment through Motorola was approved for the Police Department, also from FEMA reimbursement. This involves purchase of two portable radios, which will allow them to have one in each patrol vehicle. This also ties into new encryption requirements mandated on the federal level that will take effect in the middle of 2026.
Approval was given to contracts with the Kansas Municipal Gas Agency for bulk purchase of winter natural gas requirements. This covers anticipated gas usage for the November through March period, and also includes delivery of gas through Southern Star Pipeline.
Council members were informed the city has been awarded a $58,216 grant from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks for a walking path project west of the cemetery.. Assistant City Administrator Elizabeth Ramsey said this grant had been written by former Assistant City Administrator Tanner Faust. The total project cost is around 74 thousand dollars, with the remainder to be an in-kind match for work done by staff.
There was an extended discussion on the potential of replacing the city’s current financial and record-keeping software, something Houtman has heard complaints about since he arrived and staff for longer than that. Highly summarized, there have been numerous issues with the G-Works system now in place, along with a lack of support from the vendor.
City Clerk Bailey Saylor said the city has dealt with numerous issues since G-Works was adopted, with some staff not able to utilize the system at all. There have also been repeated errors in running reports, which has taken a lot of staff time to work around impacting customer service. Personnel record-keeping jas also been a major problem along with issues with vendors and perhaps most importantly with utility billing.
The annual cost of the system has also increased significantly over the past three years. Sayler said she knows of over 100 cities that have moved away from G-Works due to the same issues Lyons is facing. She has reached out to other software vendors and provided a comparison of what three of them offer versus what G-Works is supposed to be doing.
An operational policy related to anonymous communications was adopted. Houtman brought this policy to the council in the wake of what he called some “really strange” emails and anonymous letters the city has received of late, which he said were really vague and in many cases allegations being raised or information they are asking for is actually misinformation or otherwise off base.
The Council approved dissolution of a pass-through funding agreement involving the Rice County Child Advocacy Center. This agreement was related to grant funding it had received on the federal level which had been stopped. Houtman said if these funds were to again become available or other funding options become available this could be revisited.
Amendments were approved to the city’s fee schedule related to changes on the state level. One of these involves a $25 tax stamp for Cereal Malt Beverage licenses, which licensees will now purchase directly from the state’s Alcohol Beverage Control Division rather than through the city. The other change is elimination of per-page charges on record requests under the Kansas Open Records Act, this due to a change in state law.
