Kansas bill to require notification if city tries to give away your street on hold until next year

A bill that would require local governments to tell you whether they’re planning to abandon your street for a development project won’t make it through the state Legislature this year, but key stakeholders have agreed to ongoing talks, and it will come back next year, the lawmaker who introduced the measure says.

House Bill 2642 would require notice to neighbors when a city or county gives up, or “vacates,” a section of street. That would allow neighbors to have input before the decision is made.

Under current law, local government doesn’t have to give notice if a street vacation is part of “replatting,” in which a development is spread across several parcels that are combined into a single site.

Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, who introduced the bill in response to a Wichita case, said it deals with one narrow aspect of what he has found to be a larger problem and that it might be wiser for the Legislature to return to the issue next session for a more comprehensive review.

“We need to establish some type of uniformity so that a land surveyor, for example, who is working (in Wichita) on a replat deals with the same set of rules that he may deal with in Derby five or ten miles to the south,” he said.

Sean Miller, a lobbyist who represents the Kansas Building Industry Association, pledged to work with lawmakers “to come up with what the right process is” on these projects.

The Kansas Bar Association, League of Municipalities and Association of Counties have also agreed to participate in talks, Carmichael said.

Rep. Steve Huebert, R-Valley Center, the committee’s chairman, said he was committed to thoroughly addressing the issue next year.

“Who knows if any of us will be back next year?” he joked, noting the upcoming election. “I still have to convince my wife.”

Carmichael’s bill spun off Eagle reporting on a property-acquisition and development dispute between the Yarbrough family of northeast Wichita and the neighboring Holy Savior Catholic Church.

Holy Savior is working toward building a new church and school at the site of its current church grounds on Chautauqua Avenue, between North 13th and 14th streets.

The church sought to buy the Yarbroughs’ home, but negotiations broke down.

The Catholic Diocese of Wichita asked for and got City Hall approval to wrap the development around the Yarbroughs’ home.

The Planning Commission and City Council approved the church’s project using a process that – intentionally or unintentionally – kept the Yarbroughs in the dark until after the land around them was resubdivided for construction and the city gave the south half-block of Chautauqua to the church.

John and Cecial Yarbrough, who had lived in their house since 1964 and built a large addition in 1979, are elderly and disabled.

John Yarbrough has had two open-heart surgeries and a pacemaker implant, is on dialysis for kidney failure and has to use supplemental oxygen when he sleeps, and his family worried he might not survive a major construction project wrapped around the house.

But the couple were also concerned they couldn’t replace their home for the church’s initial offer.

The immediate dispute was settled when the church came up with additional funding from a donor and the Yarbroughs agreed to sell and move.

But the issue of street vacation remains unsettled.

In an ordinary street abandonment case, the city requires notices to every property owner on the street segment being vacated. Where vacation creates a dead end, all property owners on the remainder of the street must be notified.

But planning director Dale Miller said that rule doesn’t apply when a street vacation is part of a replatting.

In that case, neither state law nor city code requires individual notice to homeowners outside the plat boundary line.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 6:42 AM with the headline "Kansas bill to require notification if city tries to give away your street on hold until next year."