The Wichita City Council met in regular session on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, at 9:00 a.m., with all seven members present: Mayor Lily Wu, Vice Mayor Dalton Glasscock, and council members Joseph Shepard, Becky Tuttle, Mike Hoheisel, JV Johnston, and Maggie Ballard. City Manager Dennis Marstall, Deputy City Attorney Sharon Dickgrafe, and Deputy City Clerk Jo Hensley represented staff.
It was a routine meeting by Wichita standards — no public speakers signed up, the consent agenda moved as a block, and the only real back-and-forth came during a review of city purchasing. But a few items are worth walking through, both for what they authorize and for what residents should know is happening with their money and their property. Assistance from Claude AI.
The Consent Agenda: 19 Items, One Vote
Wichita, like most cities, bundles routine business into a “consent agenda” that gets approved with a single motion unless a council member pulls an item out for separate discussion. Nobody did that this time. All 19 items passed 7-0 as a group. That’s worth pausing on, because a consent agenda vote often includes things that would draw more attention if considered individually. Here’s what was in this batch:
- Property and easement acquisitions. The city acquired several easements along South Bleckley Drive for a drainage improvement project, plus land near North Hoover Road, East Willowbrook Street, East Lincoln, and North 135th Street for various road and sewer projects. These are the routine mechanics of infrastructure work — the city needs a strip of someone’s yard to build a drainage line or widen a road, and it negotiates (or in one case, later in the meeting, condemns) the needed land.
- An eminent domain ordinance. Buried in the second-reading ordinances (see below) is Ordinance No. 53-062, which authorizes the city to use eminent domain — the government’s power to take private property for public use, with compensation — to acquire land for widening South 143rd Street East between East Harry Street and U.S. Highway 54. This directs the City Attorney to file a condemnation petition in Sedgwick County District Court. Eminent domain is one of the more consequential powers a city government exercises, since it overrides a property owner’s choice not to sell, and it’s worth noting whenever it appears on an agenda, even when it passes without comment, as it did here.
- Nuisance abatement assessments. Three separate items authorized the city to assess property owners for the cost of “lot clean-ups” and boarding up dangerous or unsafe structures. When the city cleans a neglected lot or secures a condemned building, it bills the property owner — and if unpaid, that bill becomes a special assessment on the property tax bill. This is standard code-enforcement practice, but it’s also where city government most directly intersects with what a property owner is allowed to do, or not do, with their own land.
- Debt financing notice for the airport. The council gave notice of intent to use debt financing for a paging system upgrade at Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. Kansas law requires this kind of public notice before a city borrows money, giving residents a formal (if often overlooked) opportunity to object.
- Street funding resolutions for Maple Street (West Street to McLean Boulevard) and William Street (Topeka to Emporia), an agreement with the Kansas Department of Transportation for the Mt. Vernon and Hydraulic intersection project, a contract for embankment repairs on the Oliver Bridge over Gypsum Creek, and a street-lighting agreement with Evergy for the 1st Street bridge over the Arkansas River.
- Two house sales in the 1600 block of East Del Mar and the 1500 block of East Catalina, both District III — likely properties the city acquired through its land bank or housing program and is now returning to private ownership.
- Routine housekeeping: minutes from the Board of Park Commissioners, the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board; two subdivision plats; and two easement dedications for utility and drainage purposes.
Second-Reading Ordinances: Sixteen Code Changes at Once
Item 13 listed sixteen ordinances receiving their second reading (having first been read June 16), covering a wide range of municipal code changes: domestic battery, petit theft, criminal trespass, interference with law enforcement, harassing and aggressive contact, and the repeal of the section of city code prohibiting “buying sexual relations.” Also included were new rules on texting in construction zones, golf cart operation, and eight separate zoning classification changes for parcels around the city, plus the eminent domain ordinance discussed above.
The minutes don’t record any council discussion of these ordinances — they moved as part of the same 7-0 consent vote. When a city repeals or rewrites sections of its own criminal code, the practical reason is often that the conduct is already covered by Kansas state law and the city is cleaning up overlapping or outdated municipal ordinances, but the minutes as provided don’t state that rationale explicitly. Residents interested in exactly what changed in the text of these sections would need to pull the actual ordinance language, since a title alone (“amending the code regarding domestic battery”) doesn’t tell you what got stricter, looser, or simply relocated into a different section number.
A Rare Moment of Actual Questioning: The Board of Bids and Contracts
The one part of the meeting with genuine give-and-take was the Board of Bids and Contracts report, presented by Purchasing Manager Josh Lauber.
Mayor Wu asked why the city didn’t take the lowest bid on a four-wheel-drive articulated tree care handler. Lauber explained that one vendor, US Equipment Sales and Rental, only bid on one of several requested options (a $77,575 configuration), while another bidder priced multiple options. Because the bid documents specified upfront that the winning bid would be judged on the total package of options actually requested by the using department — not the lowest single-line price — the vendor offering the full set of requested options at the lowest combined total won, even though it wasn’t the lowest number on any single line. It’s a reasonable process on its face, but it’s also a good illustration of why “lowest bid” doesn’t always mean what a casual reader of a budget line might assume; the mayor’s question, and the answer, are useful public information for anyone who wants to understand how the city actually awards contracts.
Mayor Wu also asked Lauber to highlight currently open bids, using the moment to note that the city is soliciting contractors for a new fire station in southwest Wichita, and that all open solicitations are posted at wichita.gov’s procurement portal. She mentioned the city’s Small and Emerging Business Enterprise program, which gives smaller or newer local businesses ten extra evaluation points when competing for city contracts.
Council Member Johnston asked which parking garage was getting stair and beam repairs. City Engineer Paul Gunzelman said it was the employee parking garage, not — as Council Member Ballard initially guessed — the Old Town Garage. A small exchange, but a reminder that even council members don’t always know precisely which piece of city infrastructure a line item refers to until they ask.
The board’s report, along with the contracts it recommended, was received, filed, and approved 7-0.
Council Comments and Community Events
In the appointments and comments portion of the meeting, Mayor Wu thanked City Manager Marstall and two fire officials, Chief Sullivan and Chief Snow, and noted that the council had visited a fundraiser that morning at Jimmy’s Diner in District One — the tenth annual “Hot Cakes for Hope” event, held in memory of Joe Davidson and benefiting Grace Med Health Clinic.
Council Member Hoheisel used the moment to wish Chief Snow a happy birthday. Council members Ballard and Shepard announced they’d be at Naftzger Park the following day for a Mexico World Cup viewing event with food trucks, crediting Parks and Recreation and the Wichita Police Department for organizing it in response to what they described as strong constituent demand to bring the event back. Shepard also thanked Vice Mayor Glasscock for participating in the Juneteenth parade and Council Member Hoheisel for attending the Juneteenth event.
Executive Session: An EEOC Case
Before adjourning, the council voted 7-0 to recess into a 20-minute executive (closed-door) session to receive information on an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case. The stated legal basis was K.S.A. 75-4319(b)(2), the Kansas Open Meetings Act exception that allows closed sessions for attorney-client privileged legal consultation regarding pending litigation. The session ran from 4:32 p.m. to 4:52 p.m. in the First Floor Boardroom.
Executive sessions are a legal and common tool for cities to discuss litigation strategy without waiving attorney-client privilege, but they’re also, by design, the one part of a council meeting the public and press cannot observe. The minutes record only that the session happened, its legal justification, and its duration — not, of course, its substance, which is exactly the point of the exemption. No action was reported as having been taken as a result of the session; the council adjourned the regular meeting at 4:52 p.m., immediately following.
The Bottom Line
This was a light meeting procedurally — nineteen consent items and sixteen ordinances passed without a single item pulled for separate debate, and the only sustained discussion concerned a single equipment bid. That pattern is itself informative: on a week with an eminent domain authorization, several nuisance-abatement assessments against property owners, and new debt for the airport all bundled into a single 7-0 consent vote, the meeting’s real content lived almost entirely in the paperwork, not in the public discussion. For residents who want to know what their city government is actually doing, reading the consent agenda attachments — not just watching the vote — remains the more reliable source.
Minutes reviewed: City Council Proceedings, City of Wichita, June 23, 2026, submitted by City Clerk Shinita Rice.