July 3, 2025
The Jetmore City Council met in regular session on July 3rd, 2025. Mayor Bill Goebel called the meeting to order and led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. Roll wall was answered by Councilmen Cole Buffo, Jeff Channell, Charles Leet, & Mike Thornburg. Also attending were City Administrator Michael Ort, City Clerk Casey Dansel, City Attorney Clayton Kerbs, Sharon & Amy Rudzik, Kevin Sherrill & John Chavez.
Councilman Channell made a motion to approve the consent agenda containing the June minutes & Appropriation Ordinance #2025-06. Councilman Buffo seconded the motion; vote unanimous.
CITIZEN COMMENTS:
Kevin Sherrill addressed the council with concerns about the drainage issues adjacent to his rental property on Kenyon Street. Council discussed different options and decided it would be best to have an engineer take a look at it and give us advice on a solution.
BUSINESS ITEMS:
Sharon Rudzik addressed the council regarding her recent water leak. She asked the city to consider forgiving the charges as she didn’t know she had a leak. Councilman Channell made a motion to reduce her water charges to $25. Councilman Thornburg seconded the motion; vote unanimous.
Library Board Opening-Mayor Bill Goebel appointed Lorna Ford to fill the unexpired term of Heather Gibson on the library board. Councilman Buffo made a motion to approve Mayor Goebel’s appointment of Lorna Ford to the library board. Councilman Channell seconded the motion; vote unanimous.
CITY ADMINISTRATOR REPORT:
*City Administrator Michael Ort presented his travel/training/meeting schedule for the month.
*Mr. Ort presented the council with the staff birthdays and anniversaries for the month.
*Memorial Day Weekend Storm-Mr. Ort told the council that the ground finally having dried up enough to drive trucks onto it, the remainder of the poles that were downed in the Memorial Day weekend storm have
been restored. Left to do is to put in some cutouts where the new line was put up east of the landfill so that power can be run from the other end of the loop that was created there while allowing the end affected by a future storm to be worked on without power from the live portion backfeeding onto it. KMEA has been busy with other projects in Dighton, and they have recently lost one of their two linemen, so that project is on hold for now.
*2026 Budget-Mr. Ort informed the council that he has completed work on the 2026 budget up to and including the Electric fund. Left are Water, Sewer, the reserve funds, and the non-budgeted funds. He anticipates that work being wrapped up by the middle of next week.
*City Shop Roof-Mr. Ort told the council that the city shop roof project was finished Monday and Tuesday of this week.
*Airport Project-Mr. Ort told the council that the agreement between the city and state was received via email on Monday, 6/30 and that it had been forwarded to our engineer, Cory Gaston, who noticed an error on one page suggesting a 50% grant portion, which he noted in his response to KDOT-Aviation. As soon as the corrected agreement is received, it can get signed. After that it will go to the Secretary for his signature. At that point we will be permitted to proceed with the project.
*GWorks Cloud Onboarding Process-Mr. Ort informed the council that we have been receiving communication from GWorks over the last several weeks that we are nearing the onboarding for the cloud service we will be transitioning to. There will be a presentation and a question and answer session in Lindsborg on September 30 for customers in Kansas and Oklahoma that Mr. Ort will attend. A big part of that presentation will be a hands-on demonstration of the cloud solution, so it seems that would be valuable to attend. It is understood that we will be completely transitioned by the end of 2025.
*Main St. Project-The council was informed that there was a request from KDOT early last month for an anticipated design schedule from Lochner that Mr. Ort was copied on. In his response Chad told her that they would push back the Field Check from 9/1/25 to 10/1/25. After that the project would return to the original timeline with an Office Check occurring on 1/28/26.
*K-156 Project-There were several emails between KDHE and the engineers for the waterline portion of
the project this month. KDHE asked for various revisions, which the engineers made and resubmitted. On June 24 KDHE sent an approval to construct letter to the engineers and to Mr. Ort. Letting that project for bid will be happening soon.
*KDHE Lab Courier Service-We were recently notified by email that KDHE will no longer provide courier service to every county health department. We use this service to send various samples to the KDHE labs in Topeka. The stated reason is a lack of some specific funding they used to get from the federal government that has been discontinued. Because of this they are reducing the number of stops the courier service makes. Ford County Health Department is still one of their stops, so it will still be convenient for us to use this service, and
our samples will be able to be shipped to the KDHE labs in a timely fashion as some samples we send have hold times that require them to be received within a set number of hours after they are pulled.
*Utility poles-Mr. Ort received a call from Bell Lumber letting him know that the poles that were ordered last month will be shipped today and will be received tomorrow morning.
GOVERNING BODY COMMENTS:
Council discussed that there is still an opening for economic development position and their concerns about it not being filled.
Councilman Channell made a motion to adjourn. Councilman Buffo seconded the motion; vote unanimous. Meeting adjourned at 8:09 p.m.
July 14, 2025
The Jetmore City Council met in special session on July 14th, 2025. Mayor Bill Goebel called the meeting to order and led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. Roll wall was answered by Councilmen Cole Buffo, Jeff Channell, Charles Leet, & Mike Thornburg. Also attending were City Administrator Michael Ort and City Clerk Casey Dansel.
Administrator Ort reviewed the process of building the budget and presented the 2026 budget to the council. Mr. Ort shared with the council the challenges in building the budget this year. Of particular concern was the level of transfers required from the Electric Fund to the General Operating Fund and Employee Benefits in order to maintain a reasonable level of property taxes. The result of these changes will leave Electric with a much lower level of reserve funds, or days of cash on hand, than is advised by Mr. Ort and budget advisors. Mr. Ort also noted that the Water Fund will end the year with a low fund balance and that the city will begin to dip into the funds that have been being accumulated since January 1, 2017 for payment of the debt service for the water tower project. Mr. Ort advised the council to consider raising utility rates at least modestly to help correct the projected shortfall.
Councilman Channell made a motion to send notice of exceeding the revenue neutral rate to the Hodgeman County Clerk. Councilman Leet seconded; vote unanimous.
Councilman Channell made a motion to adjourn. Councilman Buffo seconded; vote unanimous.
Meeting was adjourned at 6:55 p.m.