City Manager Layton on May 13 previewed items on the Wichita City Council agenda, outlining a set of proposed actions and hearings for the council’s consideration and clarifying that these were agenda previews rather than final council decisions.

Layton said unfinished business would include a proposed $5,000,000 industrial revenue bond (IRB) tied to renovation of about 40,000 square feet of warehouse and manufacturing space on West Harry. He said the project had been amended from an earlier version and that the revised plan did not use the previously considered spec-warehouse program.

Layton listed other items that the council would consider: receipt and filing of actuarial reports for the city’s two pension systems; approval of the sale of 47 single-family homes formerly owned by the public housing authority and an allocation of $1,800,000 from the affordable housing fund to assist with rehabilitation of those homes; approval of $425,000 for improvements to O.J. Watson Park; and approval of a water reuse alternatives study contract and budget.

He said the agenda would include a 10% increase in planning-department application fees and scheduling of a public hearing for a community improvement district (CID) for a redevelopment project at Lincoln and Broadway; a council member noted that the CID’s 10% set-aside for public benefits was earmarked for the State Firefighter Memorial at Lincoln Park. The city manager described airport-related items including a proposed 85,000-square-foot hangar and educational facility lease with WSU Tech at Jabara Field and lease agreements to build two hangars at Jabara with Clemens Aviation.

Layton also previewed proposed contracts for on-call engineering services at the airport, approval of continued grant funding for an overdose-analyst position in the police department, funding for the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, and an amendment to a Continuum of Care agreement to reflect HUD funding for homelessness services. He said managers were finalizing names for several appointments that would be forwarded to the mayor and county chair for consideration.

Layton repeatedly framed these items as the council agenda for the May 13 meeting; the remarks were a preview and did not record formal motions or votes on the items. One council member announced during the meeting that they would abstain from a future vote on an item on the airport agenda, and another said they would still vote despite being on the board because they had not voted at the board level.

Separately during the meeting the mayor shared a video produced by the nonprofit Heartland Forward that named Wichita as one of three “secret sauce” cities. The mayor said no taxpayer dollars funded the production and that the designation highlighted Wichita’s entrepreneurship, aviation legacy and local innovations. The video included statements about Wichita’s biomedical campus and other economic-development points; those statements were presented in the video and attributed to the video’s interviewees rather than adopted by the council as findings.

No formal council votes on the items previewed by the city manager were recorded in the meeting transcript provided; Layton’s remarks should be understood as an agenda summary and staff briefing rather than final council action.