Prairie Village council considers solutions for dangerous road flood zone

The Prairie Village City Council is moving forward on plans to alleviate flooding in a neighborhood where a car and its driver were swept downstream during torrential rainfall last year.

Council members on Tuesday voted unanimously to ask the Johnson County Stormwater Management Advisory Council to help pay for work to alleviate flooding on Delmar Lane and Fontana Street. The advisory council, also known as SMAC, provides annual grants to local municipalities to offset up to 75 percent of the costs of stormwater projects.

Flooding at the Delmar-Fontana low-water crossings has been a problem since the mid-1980s. Concerns over costs and resistance among neighboring property owners fearful that changing the crossings could affect the character of the neighborhood have stymied past efforts to solve the situation.

At least twice, in October 1998 and again last August, floodwaters in the area have washed vehicles off the road and down a drainage ditch. No one was seriously injured in either case.

Consultant Donald Baker provided three potential solutions.

▪ The first would build cul-de-sacs to prevent traffic on Delmar and Fontana from crossing the drainage ditches and buy seven houses that currently lie partially in the floodplain. At $5.9 million, this is the most expensive solution, and Baker said he would not recommend it.

▪ The second solution, estimated to cost $4.3 million, would also build the cul-de-sacs as well as a new culvert under Somerset Drive and a new channel for water from Somerset to upstream of Fontana.

▪ The third, estimated to cost $4.5 million, would also build a new culvert under Somerset and new culverts under Delmar and Fontana instead of cul-de-sacs.

Council members stressed that by requesting the money from SMAC, they were not committed to approving any of the solutions. Staff said SMAC could award the grant this spring but didn’t expect construction to begin until 2019 to provide enough time to complete designs, get permits and notify residents.

The council also voted to ask SMAC for funding to help improve drainage in the Corinth Meadows neighborhood near 84^th Terrace and Reinhardt Street. The city still must complete an engineering study to request the funds in 2018.

Other business

The council approved a $17,150 study of city employees’ compensation and benefits to see how they measure against market trends and whether they should be changed. Gallagher Inc. was selected out of seven firms to perform the study. The city last completed a compensation and benefits study in 2006.

Council members also approved a slate of priorities for the city during the current session of the Kansas Legislature. Most of the issues were part of a joint platform adopted by Johnson County and many of the county’s municipal governments, such as supporting stable state revenue and opposing attempts to dictate policy to local governments.

But the council added a number of other issues, including regaining control over the timing of local elections, supporting an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program, not just maintaining but increasing funding to northeast Johnson County schools, repealing the state income tax exemption passed in 2012 for LLCs and other businesses, revising legislation that reduced local government’s ability to regulate wireless telecommunication equipment built in public right of way and returning local control over the ability to carry weapons in public buildings or parks.

This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 3:42 PM with the headline "Prairie Village council considers solutions for dangerous road flood zone."