HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002-07-01 Transcription July 1, 2002 Special Work Session Page 1
July 1, 2002 Special Work Session 5:10 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'DormeI1, Vanderhoef, Wilburn, Pfab, Kanner
Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Dilkes, Dulek, Lewis, Sproule, O'Malley, Henries, Franklin,
O'Neil, Boothroy, Mollenhauer, Fosse, Klingaman, Rocca, Jensen, Cate
TAPES: 02-48 SIDE TWO; 02-53 BOTH SIDES; 02-56 SIDE ONE
Deer Management (IP l of 6/27 info. packet)
Lisa Mollenhauer/Last year when you passed the resolution establishing the Deer Task
Force, a piece of that was that each Spring you would affirm the long term plan so
the group would know, they will first affirm it which they have done and then it's
sent to you for an informal nod of head that we are going the direction you want
us to so that they don't spend the whole summer working on a plan that your not
interested in. So that's all what I'm here for tonight is just to make sure that you
all agree with the City's long term Deer Management Plan.
Champion/I agree.
Lehman/Are there questions for Lisa?
Kanner/Lisa, I had a few questions for you.
Mollenhauer/Okay.
Kanner/We're suppose to get an annual, or someone's suppose to get an annual report on
the effectiveness of reflectors, what did the report say this year?
Mollenhauer/Actually we will be conducting that, Kevin Doyle does an analysis of that
for us and he has not done that this spring. The reflectors, last year did not look
like they were being.
Pfab/Observed.
Mollenhauer/Maintained, well they were observed, the maintenance is a big issue with
them, all of the construction that we have the segments of the highway where we
the reflectors we were having deer vehicle accidents when the reflectors were
maintained and in place, those accidents were occurring at night after dark so
we're still feeling out whether those are working for us. He will be looking at
those numbers from 2001.
Karmer/And so that report will also look at if they've been maintained properly, and put
in place.
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Mollenhauer/Well, we do have an issue with maintenance, as you know labor and issues
and that kind of thing, that kind of labor with the city we don't have a lot of extra
money for people to go out and Windex those off once a week which is what
really needs to occur, so maintenance is always going to be an issue with them.
Right now we're just trying to keep them upright and facing the right direction
and go from there. We're not planning on putting any additional reflectors in at
this time.
Karmer/Not planning for what?
Mollenhauer/Put any additional reflectors in at this time.
Kanner/Well is there some thought that more would be more effective?
Mollenhauer/No, no there wouldn't, they would not be more effective, they cover the
small area between reflector to reflector and so adding another mile of them in
town is not going to make them any more affective. We have noticed a decrease
in the deer vehicle accidents in the areas where we have the reflector systems but
those are also areas that we've done significant kill and so the try to balance,
which is causing the decrease in the accidents in those areas is difficult to tell, we
have fewer deer.
Kanner/Is the plan to rrm some of the data by Tony and White Buffalo?
Mollenhauer/Well actually Kevin Doyle does the analysis of the reflector systems, when
the accidents occurred, what the lighting was sun wise, when they happened, but
Tony does take a look at our plan each year of course, he's very involved in that,
in analyzing how we're doing with all aspects of our plan, just because he does
have a great knowledge of urban wildlife issues we do have him look things over
just to give us an opinion about various aspects of the plan.
Vanderhoef/And wasn't his report that he felt probably he would have a difficult time
taking out very many deer this year?
Mollenhauer/He has recommended that we do not sharp shoot this year.
Kanner/Algo in the plan is thoughtful consideration of deer migratory paths as
transportation approving projects are approved by the City Council. In particular I
remember I think it was Dee Norton and some others bringing up the idea of when
Dodge Street was being talked about a few years ago making a path for deer,
specifically has that construction project been looked at in terms of deer
management and have others in general been looked at?
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Mollenhauer/Yes, that particular project has been, there was an outside consultant
brought in to do an assessment of the impact, I don't believe it was just with deer,
but on wildlife in general. And they did make some recommendations and one of
those was to maintain one of the underpasses that is now there, I can't remember
if it as a natural or a some kind ora drainage system. And then in addition there
was another one that they said that there might be one that you might want to keep
and so yes there was a professional analysis done of that particular project.
Kanner/And are there other projects getting run by the Deer Management Conm~ittee?
Mollenhauer/The Deer Management Task Force is not qualified to make those kinds of
assessments on transportation projects, and so it would be the CIP folks, the
engineering folks, the transportation people at the city that would need to do that
and they are aware of the resolution that was passed by Council. Again it's
whether or not we have projects we have going on in the areas where I think it's,
is it where killing is taking, or where we have significant numbers of deer over 35
per square mile, there was some kind of a boundary set on when we would, we're
not going to spend the money to analyze a project on the southeast side of town
where we don't have deer. But I think there was some kind of a guideline put in if
it's an area where we have a significant number of deer and right now we do not
show over 35 per square mile, I don't think in any part of town, which was the
threshold we had for killing anyway.
Kanner/Well I don't think they have to, the deer castrode has to be experts but I do like
the idea that projects go to them so that there's a strong connection that the Deer
Commission comments on it and says what are you doing in regards to deer
migration? Is this going to affect deer migration? And to make sure that there's
some group that's continually looking at it as the plan says and it doesn't sound
like it's quite there the way your describing it.
Mollenhauer/Right once the project's been approved, I mean the Deer Task Force does
not analyze those, and again I don't believe they're qualified, nor do they feel they
are, you know just putting an underpass in or an overpass you can create more
problems with that than you solve so you really do need to have people learn it in
this kind of knowledge, analyze those, you shouldn't just have a task force, I mean
it would be nice to have an awareness of the projects that are going on and if
that's happening or not but I don't believe, I know in past discussions they do not
they are qualified to assess that because again you can create more problems than
you solve.
Kanner/Well again I don't think it's a matter of them necessarily assessing it per say but
reviewing it like anything else, one could say they don't have expertise in
anything deer management but we have White Buffalo but we have the
committee of lay people to with some supposed experts on it actually to get
professional input whether from our staff or White Buffalo, I don't think it's
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necessary that they be experts in traffic engineering. But I think like us they could
have things explained to them and make recommendations based on that.
Mollenhauer/Right, it's all very specific circumstances though in the amount of green
space that you are maintaining, and where the deer currently, I mean it is
something that really does need to have, if we're going to do it right it needs to be
done professionally or your getting just anecdotal kinds of analysis, that's the way
that they have put their opinion forth in the past. They're certainly interested in
the development, transportation projects come up all the time with the task force
and so they certainly have an interest in that, whether or not they should be the
group analyzing it I don't believe they feel they should be~ And again it all comes
down to money with projects and Steve could certainly talk to this but you know
if that's to be included in but again I can't recall the threshold of when that kicks
in but then if Council passes that resolution then it should be done.
Lehman/Well the North Dodge project obviously was.
Mollenhauer/It was done.
Lehman/Right and I think that was a significant problem in that area.
Mollenhauer/It was a good report that came out of that also.
Lehman/Any other questions for Lisa?
Kanner/I have another concern with the way that members are being picked for the task
force to fill vacancies.
Lehman/Yea but I think that's another issue Steven, this is, we're talking about the
management plan, when we come up with, the next time we need to make an
appointment I think that's the time to discuss that.
Karmer/Perhaps but I don't think we get this opportunity too often and.
Lehman/Well I think your right but.
Kanner/I would beg your indulgence to ask about this.
Lehman/I don't mind your asking a question but I really don't care to get involved in
discussion of how we make those appointments when we're suppose to be talking
about the management plan. But if you have a comment please go ahead.
Pfab/I have a comment, it may as nature takes it's course and the different diseases
coming from different direction may drift down this way and deer may not be a
big problem after a while.
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Mollenhauer/Let's hope not, that's not a good thing.
Lehman/Let's hope not is right.
P fab/I know I mean it's kind of frightening.
Karmer/Two things which I guess your going to continue to discuss in the next month or
two. One of your members said that even though the population is under 35 with
the growth they expect it to, he would expect it to go up and in the past Deer Task
force is always figured in birth rate, the expected birth rate in their projection
figures of deer per square mile and in a sense he's saying that the deer task force
this year is not considering not figuring that in.
Mollenhauer/Actually we have not taken in the birth rate, we have always taken the
count that was taken, typically they're done between January and March and the
birth is right around Memorial Day and we have not used those figures. We've
always been concerned about the number of deer that were born since the count
was taken but we have not based any action on a projected number, it's always
been on the number that were counted.
Kanner/And so that member was incorrect.
Mollenhauer/That was a quote that was probably inaccurate in the paper because the task
force discussed that several times in the last couple of meetings.
Kanner/Okay.
Mollenhauer/We do always base our recommendation on the count that was taken not on
what we project was the birth rate in between so.
Kanner/Okay. And then the final thing was about filling vacancies. There's been vocal
critic of perhaps of the kill, Florence Booth and another person who I'm not that
familiar with who the deer task force said was not acceptable for a replacement
and I'll give an analogy that I hope works. It used to be lawyers could exclude
people ~vho were against the death penalty from serving on a jury because if it was
a murder case, the Supreme Court said that's illegal. And in the same sense just
to take someone off because they have stated they're against killing the deer I
think does a disservice and I hope that the deer task force would enlarge their
view and say that, especially someone like Florence Booth who I see as a lot of
intellect and compassion and willingness to compromise who would be a valuable
member of the task force just because she stated her position whereas maybe
others haven't overtly stated their position but maybe they have an opposite
position I think it does a disservice to our deer task force and I hope that the.
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Mollenhauer/I'll be glad to pass that along to them.
Kanner/Folks consider that.
Lehman/Lisa I would like to thank you folks, I think you folks have done, you know,
how long has the Deer Task Force been in existence now?
Mollenhauer/Is it five years now?
Lehman/Five years, you've really, really had some time fled in the first couple, three
years but I mean you folks have done a tremendous job and you know I think on
the behalf of the people of Iowa City we would like to thank you for your efforts.
Mollenhauer/They put a lot of work into it, they're, they're very devoted to this issue
which is helpful.
Lehman/Is there consensus on the Council to accept the long term management plan?
O'Donnell/Sure.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Lehman/You got it.
Mollenhauer/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you.
Airport Commission (1]72, IP3, & 1]74 of 6/17 Info. Packet)
Lehman/Okay if the Airport Commission would like to join us. We've got two items, or
at least we've got this meeting comprised of two items, one the commercial park
and the other one the airport review. Mark you'd written to us about the
possibility of marketing, selling the Commerce Park which I understand is
possible to do from the FFA's perspective.
Mark Anderson/Yea that's correct we have Tracy Overton here with us today in case we
got anymore technical or detail questions that any of you would like to us but I'll
try to summarize what we've been doing and thinking about. We've been
marketing this property now for 5 or 6 months now Tracy, and what we've been
finding is that the market in this part of the midwest is really not interested in
leasing property and then putting a building on it, it's just something that's
tmconventional to our neck of the woods but we have had very many (can't hear),
we've had numerous inquiries as to could we purchase the property as to leasing
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the property, and so we met oh gosh a month and a half ago now the Conmqission
and with some advice and input from Steve and talked about so what if we sold
this property instead of leasing it. In an essence if we lease the property we've
given up any use of it as an airport anyway so we've really bought into the idea of
that not, that land not being useable for airport functions. And so with that as a
concept we discussed the, there's a lot of things that we need to look into to see if
we can make sure make that happen. Our preliminary discussion that we've had
with both FAA and others seems to think that it should be possible to do.
Lehman/Yea I think that's the only issue because at the time we talked about putting the
infrastructure in the north commercial park we were told by the Commission that
you could not sell that property.
Anderson/Right.
Lehman/That the FAA would not allow it to be sold.
Anderson/Right and we went right on that fact and but what the FAA did say that if we
do sell that property that that money has to go back into, for airport functions and
things.
Lehman/We understand that.
Anderson/And so our thought is that as we sell those properties the amount that we
would obtain from those sales would be used to pay offthe different debt services
that the airport has through the city and in fact having all of the pieces of property
sell for our estimated, what we have estimated right now for sales prices would
basically cover all of the outstanding debt service that we have plus would leave
some a fairly good size of money in the bank to work off of for future projects.
The, in the short term that's a pretty good thing, but what the FAA says though
that as long as we have money in the bank that is dedicated for airport use when a
grant comes along we would have to spend that money first. And so in the long
term as projects come along we would not have that money to spend and so we'd
be back basically to where we're at with projects coming to the City Council and
SO on.
Lehman/What your saying is that if you had money in the bank and you had a grant from
the FAA on a 90/10 basis your 10 money would come out of your money instead
of ours. No.
Mascari/No, no, if, say for instance there's a say a million dollars in the bank stay and
we end up with a million dollar project our million would have to be used first
and then the FAA would begin, in other words.
(Can't hear).
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Anderson/Okay I'm in error.
Ron O'Neil/70/30 split or they may have to, locally you may have to kick in more than
the normal 10 percent.
Lehman/If you have money.
O'Neil/If you have money.
Mascari/If we have the money.
Vanderhoef/Okay now am I correct that if we were to approve selling the land and the
lots that that is something that is under the purview of City Council not uuder the
purview of the Commission?
Anderson/Correct.
Vanderhoef/So we write the contract and then sell it off.
Anderson/But the one thing that we've talked about because it is adjacent to the airport
and important that ~ve still protect you so the airport there would be covenants,
design covenants for example that would govern what kinds of things could be
built and how close and some of those kinds of things. And so that would really
protect the interest of the, at that point. And so what we're really looking for at
this point is not actual say yes you can sell the land, we're looking for basically
census of the concept. Because what we need to do next is come back to do with
all the details, you know for example we've got things like, we're going to have to
do a reassessment of the property costs, of the sales costs, we need to confirm
everything again with the FAA, we need to look into what's the actual financial
mechanism. We would have between the City and the Commission how that all
works out. There were other things, there were a number of things that we needed
to do to get details on.
Vanderhoef/Okay for me though what I was, part of that earlier question was that if we
have it in writing from the FAA that we can sell it then I think some of those
details can come back to the City as.
Anderson/Oh they certainly could.
Vanderhoef/Far as moving forward with that. Am I correct on that Steve that as long as
we have the written permission?
Atkins/I'm having trouble hearing you Dee, I'm sorry.
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Vanderhoef/Are these not on?
Atkins/Should be, okay go ahead.
Vanderhoef/As long as we have the written permission from the FAA to sell the lots.
Atkins/Okay.
Vanderhoef/Then in terms of selling it and writing contracts and all of that and getting
new appraisals and whether, how we want to market it would come back to the
City, not to the Commission.
Atkins/As I understand all along there's sort of an underlying policy that the Airport
Commission has broad powers but can not sell the land, only the City Council can
sell the land. Now so if you take that.
Vanderhoef/So we should be setting the policy that goes with selling it.
Atkins/If your going to sell the land then I would make the assumption that the policy
and the sell rest with you all.
Champion/I also, I mean what are the disadvantages to selling this land? I mean it
sounds like a real quick fix for the trouble your in now, but what are the long term
disadvantages of selling this land?
Michelle Robnett/Actually what we were coming to ask for was permission to research
the possibility and sale of the land, because we have to have that permission first,
collect some of the information to be able to make a recommendation to the City
Council and until you approve it we can go forward. And so we're really asking
for permission to do the research that.
???man/They really don't want to answer that.
Allan Ellis/There's a laundry list of information that the FAA wants, their default
position is "no you can't sell land", it's only that after you press them a little bit
that they'll acknowledge that there is a way to sell it, and they'll send you a list of
things that they want filled out first. And the first thing is we have to have
permission from the land owner (can't hear). But once we have your permission
we can start going through that laundry list and make the determination. But as
far as long term, the long term if we leased all the land we would have steady
income.
Champion/Right.
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Ellis/And so the long term is if we sell all the land, once the money's in it's gone, and
that would be the down side. And so we're really, we'll probably come back and
ask, not.~ust can we sell all the land but can we give our broker the option when
people come to him to press for lease but if we can't lease it maybe we can sell it.
There wouldn't be a, there's the whole parcel, there's the whole 54 acres let's sell
it, it would be a lot by lot and we would still be trying hard to lease some of those
land so we get that income. But we have to have some options and it would give
our broker some options, and the way we sort of envisioned it was still we would
use our broker to market it and get it out there and then when he brought forth
someone who wanted to buy versus lease then we would bring it to the City. And
that give us, allows us through the Commission to still control it from the
respective of booking going on there as it affects an Airport because all of that
would be done before it gets brought to you.
Anderson/And so we have some more research to do to answer that question in dept.
Champion/And so you haven't decided it's a good idea to sell the land, your asking for
permission to look into the possibility?
Ellis/Right.
Karmer/And it looks like it would tie in though with other issues of the total budget of
the airport.
Anderson/Oh certainly.
Kanner/This is certainly a key component of how much the airport user should be
subsidized by either general funds or other things like this.
Anderson/Yea as we started this venture out there, the listing agents have always told us,
it's not a one year deal, it's three, four, five or six years or more, I mean the area
that we're in out in the Northgate development, and the only building out there for
a long time and all of a sudden it's going real quick so, it's always hard to say but
given the situation where we are we need to find something fairly quickly I think.
Mascari/Just to clarify for Ernie, it's true, FAA's default position always has been not to
be able to sell the property. Once they gave us the okay to go ahead and lease that
property then that property was pretty much written off for aviation purposes.
Then when the idea came up to the possibility of selling it we reapproached the
FAA and asked them if there's any chance that we can do that, FAA looked at the
fact that that property is no longer being used for aviation purposes, and gave us a
nod.
Lehman/But that was also true when we were talking about leasing it.
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Mascari/That's correct. But they gave us a written authorization to lease the property
which is from my understanding is actually unheard of on FAA's part to go ahead
and give us anything in writing, and in case they did, they gave us a written
approval to go out and lease the property. And since they gave us that approval
we approached them again here and asked them if there's any chance we can sell
it, they gave us a laundry list of things that we'd have to do in order to make that
happen.
Ellis/And the reason approached them for selling is because our broker's coming to us
saying people want to buy, they don't want to lease and so we're, so let's find
another way maybe we can market it though.
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/Another concern I have especially in light of saying that perhaps the FAA can be
pushed on certain issues is the matter of using some of this money that we're
expecting to get from either from a sale or lease to retire debt service. We've
gone back and forth and there were some initial reports by some of you that
perhaps it can't be used, but I'd like to see if you could press that and we were
told in our report from our City Manager that debt service in fiscal year 03 is
going to be $175,000 from our general fund, from our capital payments, and then
it goes up to $181,000 in 04 and then slightly down $180,000 in 05 if we don't
add anymore debt. And I'd like you to push the FAA to see if we can use some of
that money for paying off our debt service.
Ellis/Oh yea, that's the plan.
Lehman/That's the whole idea.
Vanderhoeff That's the whole point.
Karmer/No, people were saying that it wasn't going to be used for debt.
Mascari/Oh yes.
Kanner/Payments.
Lehman/No that was the reason for it.
Vanderhoef/It was.
Mascari/We hoped to be able to realize enough funds.
Anderson/Retire the.
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Mascari/To retire the whole $1.6 million infrastructure, the $700,000 large hanger
building and the three remaining T-hanger building.
Anderson/And anything outstanding.
Mascari/And there is one other plus thing too that we have to keep in mind is that after
all these are paid off then the incomes that we're getting from the rent of all these
T-hangers and such can go towards the day to day operations of the airport.
Kanner/Okay I'm glad to hear that because I'd heard something different before that, you
weren't interested in paying off previous debt.
Champion/I don't know where you heard that at Steven.
Mascari/No, never said that.
Lehman/Okay well let's, I think Commerce Park frankly is going to be also part ofltem
2 which is the Airport Review, and now you have all received as has the Council
copies of City Manager's Airport Review, I guess at this time I'd be willing to
listen to comments by Council or by Airport Commission Members.
Wilbum/Can I ask one question for the last item before we move on?
Lehman/Yes.
Wilburn/Who makes the final decision about at the FAA? Is it Commissioner? Is it a
Regional Director about the sale? Who does that come from?
O'Neil/It comes from, actually what your asking for is a waiver for your assurance.
Wilburn/Okay.
O'Neil/The assurance's that are attached to all the grants but what we're really asking for
is a waiver because they look at the entire airport when you sign assurance
whether that land was involved in one of the grants or not, and that waiver would
come from our local, or our Kansas City office.
Wilburn/So the regional director would give a waiver to allow us to sell the property for
that portion based on it being non aviation use is that what your saying?
O'Neil/That's correct.
Wilburn/And is that laundry list from that same person of things that you have to? Okay
is, it would be at least get that in writing yet or?
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Mascari/We just got the list.
Wilburn/Okay, all right, that's it, I just wanted to know.
Kanner/Actually I wanted to clarify something else. We recently sold one of our
condominium properties for less than market value, I know that the Science
Center and perhaps other non profits are looking for some property there. If the
City decided they wanted to sell something to a non profit for less than market
value for the good of the community would be that be allowed by the FAA?
Anderson/I don't believe so.
Vanderhoef/No.
Anderson/They've always told us it has to be (can't hear).
Lehman/Yea I think it has to be market value.
Vanderhoef/That, when I went to FAA with you in Kansas City a couple years ago they
were real clear about that it had to be market value.
Mascari/And too Steve if for some reason we were able to do that that would not help us
retire the debt we have to the city.
Lehman/Okay relative to this airport review memo, the floor is open.
Champion/I'd like to hear some comments from the Commission before I, I don't know
how anybody else feels but I'd like to heard their comments to Mr. Atkins's
comments, rather than reaction to, I think they're the ones that need to react to Mr.
Atkins's memo.
Anderson/Well we just received this I guess Thursday and had a chance to read it Friday
and got together Saturday morning and met for a couple of hours to try to
formulate a response and I think what we kind of concluded was that there's
enough issues or things in here that would require some attention as far as getting,
make sure we getting the right information out. And I think we'd be most
comfortable in providing back, I think a written response, I think we owe you that
as opposed to just kind of talking offthe cuff here and do a little bit of research
here and make sure that we give you back information that we feel is accurate and
whether the two match or not I guess that's what we have to do is get together
and.
Champion/I did read some of the things you discussed in the paper Sunday, was that or?
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Anderson/Let's see.
Lehman/Gazette had an article.
Champion/From your meeting, but I tend not to believe every word I (can't hear).
Lehman/What ever thoughts are that?
Anderson/(Can't hear) Taken out of context before but. Some of things that we
discussed, well things that I know of first hand that didn't quite match what was in
here and I thought it was important that we, like I said we get the correct
information so that you had the best (can't hear) to act on as opposed to something
(can't hear).
Champion/Well you know some things I'd like to see you address and some things that
concerns me is when their rental income isn't sufficient to pay the loan, I mean
most of us, if we own property we rent it for to cover our expenses at least, I mean
I'd like to see that addressed in your response.
Anderson/I can just briefly respond to it I guess, you know it kind of caught us by
surprise too because we were always under the understanding that we were
covering those on the T-hangers, for example on the southwest-hanger which is
the newest one I know we worked with Kevin O'Malley, we had bids, we had the
price of each unit, and we said here's the financial plan is this doable? And of
course that came to you as the Council who saw that same plan and they said yea
it was, and so this kind of caught us off guard to say that it wasn't working.
Champion/Well it might not be working, I don't have exact details.
Anderson/Well I think the other thing too as you look at the dollars what might not have
been taken into account is when we assume the income from the older hangers on
the north side of the airport, some of those dollars are being used to offset the debt
then of those other hangers and make those cash flow.
Champion/I see.
Anderson/And I think there's some shuffling of dollars that maybe don't appear in here
that we need to make sure we understand first of all that we weren't under the
misunderstanding, and secondly that you understand it is in fact right or wrong. A
number of the things we certainly agree with, in fact we've been working on them
for a couple of months, and we've had a lot of, like we all do we~ve had a lot of
stuff on our plates and this north commercial area getting it up and going was first
and foremost important. The, with regards to leases for the north T-hangers,
we've been working on a lease for a couple months now, we've had some
meetings with the tenants for them to review the leases before we just kind of
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sprung them on them. We got some very good comments back from them on the
leases, we've had a number of meetings with Insurance Council, the leases that
were put together on the southwest T-hangers the first leases where we've had to
leave, we've required that (can't hear) and be named insured, we've got some
issues with originally the lease asked for something that wasn't insurable, I mean
we couldn't, I mean there wasn't any insurance company that would write what
we were asking for and so we went back and forth and I think we're now finally to
a point where we can, the insurance companies will give us what we're asking for
as a city and I believe that's been incorporated in the southwest. But a number of
the things we're working on, you know we talked about a couple of the, or one of
the hangers that had some things in there that basically was not aviation related,
in fact it wasn't an airplane, we've been working on that for a couple of months,
in fact that-hanger is being cleaned out this weekend so.
Champion/And, I know being on an Airport Commission is not a full time job, and I
think you, I mean you probably know that too, but I mean I think as a Council
Member I have some real concerns about what's going on at the airport, the lack
of leases, for instance, and the lack of insurance if that's true, and I feel like I
know nothing about airport's okay and I may be in charge of this airport basically,
legally, I know nothing about airport's, I know how to get on a plane and go
somewhere. And I consider myselfa strong supporter of the airport and have
supported it totally, but now I'm really concerned rather the Commission maybe
needs some help to get all this straightened out or some kind of over sight from
somebody, I'm just throwing this out there not because I don't think your doing a
good job, I think your doing the best job you know how to do. But I'm concerned
when I get these crinks in my budget, and I don't even mind subsidizing the
airport, I mean we subsidize transportation, we subsidize cars with roads, we
subsidize buses, we subsidize all transportation basically. But I think we got a
little frightened by all this when it came this year because whole goal is to try to
get you self supporting, and we thought we were really getting there. I'd like to
know how you think you feel about that? Do you need some help? Do we need
us to assign a staff person to help you out with this stuff?. I mean what do you
need to get this done properly?
Anderson/I think everything was really going well until we lost our FBO.
Champion/(Can't hear)
Anderson/Had to lose that, and that, boy that was a big chink in the system. And when
we assumed that, trying to find a new person, and when that person came on board
you know for example, you know they don't lease near as much space as the
original FBO lease and all of a sudden we had more buildings under our control
which we've got leases on all of those buildings and it's only been six months and
you know, we are working on those things, and so personally I don't think things
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are being mismanaged or mishandled, we're moving as fast as city government
can move in some cases and.
Champion/What role does Ron play on the Commission?
Anderson/Oh Ron's basically our consultant and advisor as to, we much like Steve is to
you, we give Ron direction on go work with Sue on leases for this thing and come
back to us with recommendations and then we (can't hear) okay let's do this, and
do this and get back to Ron and then get back to Sue and like I say month after
month it takes time to work through some of these things. We've tried to expedite
things and sometimes having weekend meetings and that kind of thing and so we
understand the sense of emergency because we have it as well, you know
especially in these times of budget problems and being hit with what we were hit
with it kind of didn't help so.
Vanderhoef/Mark I guess one of the things that Connie's sort of alluding to and I
understand the urgency of the FBO but when I keep looking at theses unleased
spots in the hangers and that that-hangers aren't paying off on their own. Now are
you getting financial advice every time you lose a tenant, are you getting advice
from Ron that says you know guys your not going to meet your payment to the
city for the bonding for this hanger if you don't increase rents or get it rented, I
mean we sold bonds under the impression that you had full tenancy that you had
the waiting list to fill it out and now we're finding out that there are these empty
spaces and nothing has been done to notify us number one in falling behind in
collecting of dollars to pay this off and somehow or another this information
needs to be coming right through to City Council right along the line, you know
we're down this much and unless we increase the rents we're not going to be able
to pay this off to you, so this communication piece is.
Anderson/That's where it's confusing because we've always been under the opinion of
those are, with the exception of the big hanger that left that is the one that we
know is not (can't hear) and at one time we asked if we could refinance that or
refinance it at a longer term and we were told that no because the way the bonds
were sold we could not do that so, trying to figure out a way to make that one
(can't hear). But as far as the other ones go our understanding is they have been
paying off, and as I look at the (can't hear) monthly paymem need of $10,419, it
shows the income for rent of $13,704 and so I guess we're a little confused as to
why that is why there's a shortage.
Mascari/The very last page Dee.
Robnett/Well while you turn I was going to ask if I could make a comment. Sort of some
of the things that we found and we've dealt with too are we realize there needs to
be joint strategic plan and one of the things we talked about and we're actually
going to move forward by ourselves. We need to include the community in
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relative businesses people who might be able to have an impact such as the DOT,
FAA, and so I did send a memo Dee back and talked to Emie and recommended
that we do do that strategic plan because it would deal with some of the issues, the
communication, the how do you want information reported (can't hear) capital
projects and like that. And I think Steve or Ernie indicated that it would get a
copy of that letter which was a preliminary, sort of an example of a scope of
service.
Champion/We must have it because I remember reading (can't hear).
Lehman/It's in the packet.
Robnett/Because some of the issues are a function the way we interact together now that
could be changed and probably for the better based on how things have grown
(can't hear).
Anderson/Sort of same old same old every year.
Vanderhoef/The letter didn't get in the packet.
Champion/Yea.
Ellis/And you need to make a difference between an aircraft T-hanger that doesn't have a
lease and one that doesn't have an airplane in it and somebody paying it. The
three T-hanger's A, B, and C which have 10 units in each one, those were part of
the $9,000 a month that the FBO used to, when he paid $9,000 a month he leased
those three buildings and so most of the rent for the hangers went to him. Part of
that $9,000 that he was paying was those three T-hangers which are old and
they're paid off, we don't have any debt on them, plus the maintenance hanger,
plus the terminal, plus the big hanger, plus two or three I'm not sure how many
more bays and other T-hanger that he used for storage of his own aircraft. When
that FBO went away we inherited those three T-hangers with 10 units each and
there were no leases written on any of those units, now all of those people are still
there, I think there are four units I'm not certain that the airport manager takes
care of that. But there are three or four units that are not rented right now but the
rest of them are rented and we get income from them and some of that income
was suppose to offset the payments for the newest-hanger that we built but my
other, the other two hangers that was built, one of them was suppose to be paid off
in two years, it's on track to be paid off in two years and the other one is going to
be paid off in five years, but it's on track, it's on schedule, and so it came quite a
surprise to us to be told that we weren't producing enough income to pay those off
and we're already being told by the finance people that it is on track to be paid off,
we picked up extra income when we inherited the three sets of hangers and that
money is being used to offset the rental price that we're getting in the newest-
hanger that we built but those things, all those things we do an annual review of
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T-hanger (can't hear) and we are at the top of the market for rental. If we were in
California we could double but for right now we're about right where we can be
and still keep them ranted.
Champion/So some of the space that's not being rented by the new what do you call it?
Vanderhoef/FBO.
Champion/FBO, that person.
Ellis/Fixed Base Operator, the business, the major business on the air.
Champion/He's not renting as much space as the last one did but your now renting part
of that space that he's not renting.
Mascari/That's correct.
Andersm~/That money is coming to us.
Champion/Okay.
Ellis/Yes.
Anderson/And we have just decide to increase rents, was it last month on a number of
hangers, so that's been in our.
Champion/And so you are trying to address all these things?
Ellis/Well and actually last month we decided to institute a utility surcharge basically to
those hangers that do not have separate meters and we're reviewing the same
things that your reviewing and will go into an annual basis on that to try to figure
out what's a fair and justifiable amount.
Anderson/And you know as I mentioned on the outside I think there's a number of things
in here that we agree with and are working on, annual inspections and those.
O'Dormell/When do you plan on responding to this letter?
Anderson/I think, you know we thought we could give a couple of weeks, Ron's out and
still on a couple days of vacation and when he gets back he'll do all the digging
for us and.
Lehman/Well let me say this, you know the airport is a public facility just as our parks
and recreation and all other parts of the city are public facilities, and I understand
some of the problems that have arose because of the leases. I'm not sure I agree
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with the way the leases were handled, I think ifI were going to incur an additional
$50,000 worth of debt to the city I would communicate that with the city before I
signed a lease to that effect, I don't agree with that way of doing business. But I
do not understand why there are not leases, certificates of insurance's, capital
improvements being exchanged for rent, I don't understand why this information
isn't available. This is a public facility, there isn't any department in the city that
I can't ask the City Manager where we are and he can tell us, and your talking to
some real novices here, I mean we don't know the first thing about an airport, just
as we don't know about sewer plants and water plants and whatever, but we do
have some pretty good folks working for us that have the expertise. I think you
folks, I mean you work your tails off, that's a huge enterprise, I mean it's a big,
big operation down there, and I think it's very important now, in fact I think it's
critical to the city, I think the Council, you enjoy a very strong level of support
from the Council, but I do think it's part of the city. I would like to be able, when
I need to know something about the airport not to have to sit down and have you
folks explain to a group of novices what your doing, I'd like to call the City
Manager and say Steve, or have Steve report to us, look we have a shortfall in
T-hanger rents and it's because of this. This happened, this happened, this
happened, we understand all that, and explain to the Council precisely what
happened and we know where we are all the time. In the many respects I really
would like to see the airport function much as other departments of the city do so
that there is accountability, there's the ease of getting information, it's all a matter
of public information. It's all here in the Civic Center.
Anderson/See I don't understand that either Emie because, here's my (can't hear).
Lehman/Well see no, no, and that is one of the things that bothers me.
Anderson/Where is it?
Lehman/Thank you. Where is it?
Anderson/Yea I don't know. I've got a note saying that it was in Welt Ambrisco's
office, why it's over there, I don't know.
Lehman/I don't know either it just seems to me that if there are.
Anderson/Ron took it downtown and what they did with it.
Lehman/But if there are leases required and Certificates of Insurance and all of those sort
of things, God I have to think there's some place that should be accessible to staff
or the Council, I don't want as a Council person to run an airport, believe me I
want no interest in it, I don't know anything about it, I believe it's a very
important asset to this community, I want to see it be as good an airport as it can
possibly be, but I also think that we need responsibility on the airport that I don't
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feel is fair to ask the five of you to do. What I would really like to see is some
sort of an arrangement with Ron and Steve and so that we run the airport in much
the same fashion as we run the Parks and Recreation, the sewer, ! mean the.
(END OF 02-48 SIDE TWO)
Lehman/Right there, everything is neat and clean, and everybody knows where it's at.
Anderson/Maybe that's what we should do, instead of bringing everything downtown we
get downtown maybe we should just keep all the leases and insurance at the
airport.
Lehman/I think that's part of the problem is what I'm telling you.
Anderson/The filing system that works.
Lehman/No, I mean if this is a part of the City then my guess would be that that
information should be right available right here in this building, the leases should
be here, the Certificates of Insurance should be here.
Ellis/They've all been sent here.
Dilkes/Yea they do (can't hear).
Ellis/They're all sent here, we make copies of them there and Ron brings them here.
This investigation, this entire investigation was done in records in the City offices,
there was nobody called our airport manager and got any information from him
whatsoever.
Atkins/What, what?
Ellis/Other than opening up the hangers so they could be looked at he was not asked to
provide any of the certificates, he wasn't asked where they were, nobody went to
him and said I can't find these downtown, are they out in your office.
Atkins/Ron I expect you to correct that.
O'Neil/All of the leases I provided all of the leases, we didn't discuss Certificates of
Insurance as an item, that goes with the, that would go with the leasing, part of the
problem there is, and again it looks like a huge number of hangers that don't have
leases and that's true they don't.
Atkins/Thank you.
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O'Neil/Because we took over those hangers, they started probably a month after the
Commission took over those, we started putting leases together, as Mark said we
had some public meetings whatever, but the leases, all of the leases that I have I
came down to the Finance Department.
Anderson/All of the leases also require the same kind of insurance and some leases that
didn't require that any certificate ail be provided unless asked for.
Lehman/Well is this right though, there are no formal leases describing terms and
conditions for hanger usage for 26 0£30 hanger units presently rented in A, B, and
C?
Ellis/Those are the ones we inherited from the FBO.
Lehman/30 hangers.
Vanderhoef/30 hangers.
Lehman/Building J has 10 hanger units and are rented, and no leases could be found.
Atkins/That's correct, it's.
Lehman/And hanger 33 in Building G does not have a current lease.
Champion/I don't want to go through these.
Robnett/That's actually why we asked that we defer until we can respond.
Anderson/Respond and try to answer off the cuff so that we.
Lehman/No I don't disagree with that but on the other hand.
Vanderhoeff In the meantime what's our liability as a city? I mean that's time and time
and time and it's.
Anderson/30 years, it's not that these people don't have insurance because they all have
insurance, their hanger, their aircraft insurance has an aimraft insurance, has
liability, and so they have liability it's just that you don't have copies of it or
(can't hear) in most cases the City isn't insured because it's never been a
requirement until just the last unit that we did.
Ellis/And many of them were on leases, the leases expired and there's, there is a
provision in there to go month to month until a new lease is provided and they
have to comply with the same responsibilities they had under the lease. It was our
decision once we got those three new hangers to look at our old lease and say you
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July 1, 2002 Special Work Session Page 22
know it's time to reword this 20 year old document and bring it tip to date, and
bring it to some things that weren't brought in it 20 years ago. We started doing
that and then the insurance issue came up, each one of these things it slows us
down, and we only meet once a month and we try to get this through, and as a
subcommittee it just took time.
Lehman/No but you have a manager for your airport, why can't your manager be taking
care of your leases for you?
Anderson/And they are working on the.
Ellis/He is working on it.
Lehman/Yea I really, your lay people and I really appreciate you volunteer incredible
amounts of time, you do, you work hard on that but I think some of the things that
you may be doing are things that your manager should be doing.
Anderson/We're not doing with them, I mean Ron and legal are doing the leases, all we
do is review them, you know at the meetings say maybe we ought to be looking at
this.
Vanderhoeff And how long is this now that you inherited the three?
Anderson/The take over was it is January, February?
O'Neil/March.
Anderson/March, and so it's just been since March that we've taken over.
Vanderhoef/Four months and.
Lehman/When did PS Air leave?
O'Neil/A year.
Anderson/It's been a year, I'm sorry.
Lehman/Yea so it's been a year.
Mascari/And an ironic twist of events happened though regarding the insurance thing,
Allen keeps eluding to that, and that is when the, and I'm not sure whether there's,
is there an insurance department, the department from downtown came to our
meeting, or gave us a pretty much a shopping list of what they want us to include
in the leases, and one of the things was a $2 million insurance policy that quite
frankly we couldn't get. As a matter of fact I contacted the same insurance
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July 1, 2002 Special Work Session Page 23
agency that the city has who has my insurance, and I called them and told them
what I needed and he just couldn't provide that for us. And so that was another
real big obstacle that we encountered regarding getting leases on these hangers.
We couldn't provide the insurance that the Insurance Department wanted us to
get, even though we had the same agency, couldn't do it.
Ellis/It was December when we finally got it worked out that the numbers, the City had
originally asked for were not necessary, and then they reduced the amount to the
$1 million and then in January we actually got started on the trying to rewrite the
new lease. Because whatever lease we're using now is going to last a long time
once you sign it and so we wanted to try to include everything in it that was mom
modem and up to date and it takes time to research that, get templates from
industry standards, organizations, and we actually have a draft copy out with they
are a City Attorney representative, her view, I mean I can't make excuses that it
takes time and it does through Ron and he does do these things and then we sit
and review them and say well what about this, how about this, and all that stuff
has to go back and forth.
Mascari/After the reduction and the request from downtown I contacted my airplane's
insurance company and they were able to do a rider for me, it was $150 a year, no
big deal but as it turned out doing more research that rider only applied to owner
owned hangers, in other words ifI owned my own hanger then I'd have to spend
an extra $150, if the hangers are just being rented as are all of ours then that
insurance is actually covered in the aircraft's insurance.
Lehman/Just a matter of waiver.
Mascari/Exactly.
Lehman/To show a certificate of insurance, proof of insurance.
Mascari/Exactly.
Anderson/One exception is they do charge a little extra for adding the City as (can't
hear).
Kanner/And actually I remember going to that meeting that was brought up at that
meeting that a number of them were.
Mascari/Exactly, thanks for (can't hear) by the way.
Kanner/But we do need the written documentation of that.
Mascari/Basically a Xerox of the insurance policy I mean.
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Anderson/Actually the company sends.
Champion/I was going to say your company usually will send.
Lehman/Right a Certificate of Insurance.
Anderson/Here's a company (can't hear) too Ron.
Champion/I mean every time when I had a mortgage, I.don't have one anymore but.
Lehman/Well what's the Council's pleasure? Obviously there are some.
Wilburn/I have another question.
Lehman/Go ahead.
Wilburn/Walk me through, a statement was made about documents being, having been
provided to the City down here, which departments, can you tel1 me which
departments in this building where documents were provided to?
Anderson/(Can't hear) Where would this have come?
O'Neil/When I get certificates of Insurance whether it be from a T-hanger tenant or
cleaning people or whoever I usually take them, I take them to Finance.
Wilburn/Finance Department, do you receive some type of receipt or acknowledgment
that that happens?
O'Neit/No.
Wilburn/I'm at an impasse, this was a simple review done by the City Manager at our
request and it was not a, it was not a more detailed investigation or review or
whatever you want to call it. And it just appears on the surface that some
information or documents that should not have been that difficult to obtain
weren't seen by the City Manager so I mean to me.
Anderson/I mean we can go back to the tenants and ask for another copy.
Wilbum/Okay.
Anderson/You know, I mean.
Wilburn/If it needs to be cleaned up.
Anderson/Can't resurrect it here.
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Wilburn/Yea, if it needs to be cleaned up then it needs to be cleaned out but it just jumps
out at me and you've all been working hard and your going to continue to work
hard that if I'm going to vote to give future subsidy to the airport which I'm
willing to do I'm not willing to do without oversight. I just have to, we can sit
here and we can dance around you know the issue what happened to this, or which
department, it just has to be done in order to get my support, it's no poor
reflection on you, for whatever reason whether it's just the logistics of having
volunteer commission trying to track things down or work through Ron or even
oversight if at all cleaning up how information's provided here whether it needs to
be stamped as information provided to the City Clerk's office, whatever it's going
to take it's just a matter of oversight in order to be able to with confidence give
that vote to support future subsidy. You know so I'm not going to try and put our
personalities into it.
Anderson/(Can't hear) start our own copy file down there so that if there is a question
there's a copy as well.
Robnett/Mark, I concur with your statement Ross, actually having not had time to check
we're surprised by some of these findings. We got this in our mail Thursday
evening and had Friday to read it, Saturday to decide that there's no way, it took
three months for this report to be done, there's no way we can pull a response
together and to not make any inaccurate statements the conclusion we came to
Saturday was that we need to check the process as well so that we don't make any
incorrect statements. In the newspaper or any place else we wanted to simply ask
to give us a chance to respond, look at the same files, how are things handled, we
were under the same impression the leases were down here on file in the Finance
office. Thursday night we found out just like you there weren't leases, so what
was the glitch here? And those are good questions, we'd like the answers just as
much as the city but a good response, not off the cuff, not (can't hear).
Wilburn/Sure, and I'm willing to wait for that but I'm just letting you know for my vote
for future public funds for the airport there needs to be some internal oversight
from here.
Ellis/Your asking for there needs to be some internal oversight from here.
Vanderhoef/From City Hall.
Wilburn/From City Hall. I, as Ernie said if somebody comes to twist my ear, or beat me
up about something about the airport, I expect to be able to call Steve Atkins and
say find out some information and the information needs to be more easily
retrievable, bottom line.
Lehman/Steven.
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Kanner/Yea I would echo those sentiments also, I think that we need to set up a system
that operates under standard financial operating procedures, and it appears to me
it's not quite operating under that in some regards. And the reporting, there's
some sort of glitch, and regards to that and also Michelle your suggestion for
strategic planning, I think we need to start off with a full operational extensive
historical audit which Steve said he did not do. Now he didn't recommend that
that's necessarily needed but I think we need to explore that and I think that would
be a good starting point to see exactly where we're at, what has been the condition
in the past. And then we can start with a good clean slate and go from there, and
set up a system that works. And if we do strategic planning especially because
this is a public entity that's subsidized by the general funds, I think we need to
make sure we involve a number of non airplane operators as part of that. There's
people, there's a number of people that feel this is a great asset, some people say
maybe this isn't, and we need to hear both bfthese voices as we move forward.
And we have the master plan that's out there and we can use that as something to
bounce ideas off of, and so I would agree with you and I would like as part of the
beginning of that strategic planning to do a financial audit to see what it might
cost and explore whether it's worth it from both our ends to do that. So that's
what I would recommend that we take care of some of the immediate problems
that you brought up but we also start talking about the strategic planning in a
more.
Lehman/I think that strategic planning is a good idea, Irvin.
Pfab/Is there somewhat ora problem, I'm listening to Ross, I'm listening to Ernie, and
I'm seeing somewhat of a problem that you say like if I had a question about the
Parks and Rec. I would expect Steve to have, or to call Steve and have the answer.
But is this, the airport operation the same type of a legal entity as the Parks and
Recreation/s?
Lehman/No it is not, but we do fund it with public funds and I think there probably needs
to be some sort, and I'm sure the Commission feels the say way, they want good
records.
Pfab/Right and it appears, it appears that the record problem isn't with the Airport
Commission right now it's, the records seem to be disappearing in a little hole
some place in City Hall.
Lehman/I don't think there's just a little hole in City Hall some place.
Pfab/But at the same time I think we have to respect the fact that these are, the airport is
a somewhat different entity. Now do they have work to do? Absolutely. And I'm
thinking, the question that I could have them here how many people ever show up
at your airport?
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Kanner/Well we have city staff that they make use of?.
Pfab/How many? Legal anybody else?
Anderson/Well Ron.
Lehman/Well Ron right.
Pfab/Okay so now at this point your meetings are not televised.
Anderson/No.
Pfab/Would that help?
O'Donnell/Are you volunteering Irvin?
Robnett/The transcripts are available.
(All talking, can't hear)
Pfab/Well the transcripts come in so late you know, you know we're reading about
cutting the grass when the snow is flying.
Robnett/Actually another point is Ron does attend if I'm correct, you have a Monday
morning meeting.
Atkins/Wednesday.
Lehman/Wednesday staff meeting.
Robnett/That he attends on a weekly basis.
Atkins/Yes.
Vanderhoef/The staff meeting.
Pfab/Okay so are you available for questions at that meeting if anybody has any
questions you answer them? Okay what about you have a meeting, I know there
are different organizations from the city that come to City Council and make a
five or ten minute presentation, I guess it's five minutes isn't that the legal time
they can speak about whatever's going on.
Anderson/I think we did (can't hear) several times.
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Pfab/No I mean I think there's a number of different ways here, but I think the fact, I
think it's sitting back and listening to everyone here looks like instead of one
point there was somebody was taking care of all the leases and all of a sudden just
kind of fell, disappeared out of the thing and while your putting the pieces back
together. But I don't think there's any change in continuity as to what was
actually happening, money was being paid by these people and accept the
insurance thing, and of course the insurance companies running for cover now
after 911 and everybody, that whole thing is in a state of turmoil.
Mascari/I think we'd just like to have an opportunity to do our research and to come back
to a formal written response back to you.
Lehman/I think that's fine but I think at the same time from my, and I can only speak
from myself but I really, really like the idea of there being a certain amount of
accountability to the City Manager so that we. I mean Ron reports to Steve if
Steve's got a question from Ron but I do think there needs to be some
accountability to, and there is none now and legally there does not need to be so I
think in the process of your discussing and your doing a written response here
personally I would love to see the airport run much the same as our other revenue
funds are, sewer plant, water plant whatever so there is a direct line. Ultimately
it's through the Council but just in the case of the Airport Commission just as in
the Sewer and Water Plant we don't know the first darn thing about treating
sewage or pumping water and we don't know anything about flying airplanes.
But I do think that the business practices exhibited by the City Administration are
very good practices which could be really a benefit to you folks as well. And so I
mean I think that's something you might want to talk about while your responding
to this, and I don't know that we're going to get any further with.
Robnett/Can I as one question? I did forward that letter to Steve and it didn't get in your
packet's from (can't hear) but I heard about the strategic planning and that is an
item that I was told Ernie that you said that would be included so it's just a
document that I think would be helpful to the City Council.
Atkins/I thought there was something.
Kanner/We got the reply from Steve but we didn't.
Vanderhoef/We got the reply from.
Champion/(can't hear) the letter.
Vanderhoef/From Steve to you.
Robnett/Yea but my letter is supposed to be include in the packet.
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Lehman/But it's probably an oversight, we'll see to it we all get it.
O'Donnell/Emie should we set another meeting in a couple weeks and maybe get a
response to the letter? Let them respond to it.
Lehman/What sort of time frame would you folks envision would be appropriate?
Kanner/Well I think a couple of weeks sounds good, I think there's some pieces that
need attention.
O'Donnell/Well yea but let's see what they can do.
Pfab/Well I have a little different approach, is if your going to write a letter give us a
little time to look it over and then at that point but I mean it's so that.
Ellis/You mean like we got?
Lehman/Well look.
Pfab/A little bit longer.
Vanderhoef/We got the same one.
Lehman/There's no urgency as far as time goes, what are you comfortable with?
Vanderhoef/There's urgency on leases and insurance.
Lehman/There's urgency on leases and insurance that hasn't been addressed for months
and so another week or two isn't going to make a difference.
Robnett/I'm going to actually correct you and it has been being dealt with and if you go
back and look at the public record which consists of our meeting minutes it has
been being dealt with and there is a month to month extension just because the
way the letter, the report was concluded that's not clear and we don't want to, and
that's why we've asked for a time period to respond appropriately so it doesn't
look like that it isn't, that it's incorrect, we don't want them to speak.
O'Donnell/What is, what is an appropriate time period for you folks?
Mascari/Thirty days.
Anderson/Well is our next meeting going to be?
Mascari/18th is the next.
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Anderson/That's July.
Lehman/Well the first Council meeting after that is August 19, which was.
Vanderhoef/Well then get it back to us by the 14th.
Lehman/Yea could you get a letter to us by say the 10th of August or so which is about a
month, we would have then a week or ten days to digest it?
Champion/Does that give you enough time?
Mascari/I think so.
Lehman/And we will then plan on meeting on August 19th at 5:00 again, right.
(Can't hear, a few talking)
Atkins/Ernie what do you expect of me?
Lehman/I think we're going to have to wait until we get a response from them.
Atkins/Okay, you want no other further work on my office or finance?
Lehman/Well that's up to Council, I do think there are issues here, but I think there are
issues more than just, for me there are management issues that I really feel would
feel more comfortable and I think ifI were an Airport Commissioner I would feel
more comfortable.
Anderson/Ron just mentioned to me to so that you have, so to leave you any concern of
your group that we're running bare on some things, we're aren't, because we do
have, the Airport Commission does have a separate liability policy for the Airport.
Champion/Oh okay.
Lehman/Oh no I don't doubt that.
Anderson/We're not bare on anything.
Lehman/I don't doubt that. But I do think you need to address.
Champion/The oversight.
Lehman/The oversight issue and also these things and then we'll meet again on the 19th.
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Mascari/I mean keep in mind, in all due respect to Steve and his staff this is just one side
of the other story, you need to hear the other side as well and I think we'd like to
have that opportunity to present that to you, (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/You were talking about policy also for what was stored in the hanger and so
forth I would like that addressed in the letter whether it's your new policies that
goes along with your lease or whatever but if you could put that in there I would
appreciate it.
O'Donnell/And I'm interested in leases, you know Emie said that the when the FBO left
that you inherited some and then we have another batch of 10 with no leases.
(can't hear).
O'Donnei1/But I mean I'd like to know how many leases we have in place.
Anderson/Sure, yea, definitely.
Lehman/But I also think you need to address management philosophy and oversight and
whatever and we'll see you on the 19th.
Anderson/Ron and I will have already started having some conversations.
Champion/Good.
Lehman/All right.
Vanderhoef/And if you have.
Lehman/Is there anything you want from Steve as a Commission or Council between
now and the 19th?
Kanner/Well just thank you for your investigation into that.
Champion/Yea I think he's done what we wanted him to do that, I may want something
more from him after we meet again.
Pfab/Does Steve have anything else that he's asking of these people?
Anderson/I don't know.
Atkins/I, my instructions were to stay out of it for the time being, that's what I just asked
you.
Lehman/Well do you have anything you want to add at this point?
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Atkins/No I don't think so.
Anderson/And I would hope as we're doing our do diligence that we couldn't rely on city
staff to help us find stuff we need.
Lehman/But you do understand I hope, I mean this is a governmental body of which we
can't reconstruct what happened down there, that is unacceptable for the public.
Anderson/Oh I'd (can't hear).
Lehman/I mean we absolutely, in fact it's unacceptable in the private sector, but I also
think it's unfair to ask five of you folks obviously your terribly deeply involved in
operating the airport because your answering all the questions tonight and Ron
isn't. Now in the city every department head when we sit down and talk to them
the department head answers the question not the employees or the Commission
that hims them. I find that somewhat, frankly a little disturbing, not that your not
able to do it because I think your are.
Champion/I have another question, because I know your all feeling put on the spot and
you should be. But I got a letter from somebody from the Airport Commission
and I don't think it's important who that, I don't support the airport, well I guess I
really resent that I think I've been a very strong supporter of the airport. I also
heard somebody tonight attack Steve Atkins for doing a job that we asked him to
do. I mean he would of just as soon not have done that job but I think you need to
keep in mind we all support the airport and even though we might be saying
negative things about what's going on down there we want to help you get
through that and I guess I feel like you shouldn't be paranoid about it. There are
some problems, you have to admit there are problems and they have to be dealt
with.
Anderson/Yea and I don't doubt the support at all.
Lehman/All right guys, look for it, go for it. We're going to break until 6:30, that's
about 8 minutes.
BREAK
Lehman/If any of you folks would like to stand up them or sit up there your more than
welcome to, we just need to maintain a fire lane by the doors.
Additions to Agenda
Marion Karr/Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor if we could add.
Lehman/Oh I'm sorry we have one item to do first.
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Kan'/We have some additions to the agenda before 7:00 for tomorrow evening and one of
them is the addition of a Class C liquor license. George would you like to step to
the podium and just identify yourself and your establishment.
George Etre/My name is George Etre and I'm purchasing Etc. and I'd like to be added to
the City Council meeting tomorrow night for my liquor license.
Lehman/Okay.
Champion/Your not going to light any fires are you?
Etre/No, no, no, no.
Lehman/That didn't take long. Now does that mean you won't ask that question
tomorrow night. Okay your already.
(All talking)
Wilbum/Has everything been?
Lehman/Everything's in order I presume or he wouldn't.
Karr/Yes everything's in order.
Lehman/Okay, thank you.
Karr/And Mr. Mayor just to note we'll asking be adding a resolution for a dancing permit
for the establishment as well and a resolution of intent for a lease agreement with
Nextel setting a public hearing for your next meeting and all of that will be in the
packet of material an addition we're doing a Council appointment to the jail space
and services task force for tomorrow evening as well.
Lehman/Okey doke.
Kanner/That's in our current material you just passed out.
Karr/It's in the material that I just passed out to add to the agenda for action tomorrow
evening, I'll be posting that.
Vanderhoef/Envelopes tonight.
Neighborhood Housing Relations Task Force Recommendation
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Hillary Sale/Good evening.
Lehman/Good evening.
Sale/For those of you that I haven't met my name is Hillary Sale and I was appointed to
be the Chair of the Neighborhood Housing Relations Task Force. I want to thank
the members of the Council for the opportunity to be here tonight and to speak on
behalf of the Task Force, most of our members are here tonight except for one
who had a building burn down yesterday and another who's getting married and is -
apparently out shopping for his tuxedo. I also want to thank the Task Force
members publicly, this Task Force has worked incredibly hard meeting almost
weekly since it was appointed and we have spent a lot of time talking about what
people on the Task Force perceive what the problems in this community to be as
well as talking about potential solutions to those problems. The staff members
from the City have also met with us and have worked very hard and we're
tremendously grateful not only for their hard work but for the education they've
provided to the Task Force. We had to learn an awful lot of law in order to
understand what some of these problems were as well as Ieaming a lot about city
policy and we're grateful for all the time that they took with us. As you all know
the Task Force came up with a long list of what I would describe as creative
solutions to the tensions in the neighborhood and we provided that list of
solutions to the public and then held a public forum. At the public forum we
heard comments which that I would describe fell into three major categories, we
heard a lot of people discuss the couches, keg's and party ordinance proposals,
most of whom were opposed. We also heard a lot of concerns expressed about
enforcement, general enforcement issues in the neighborhoods. And we heard
serious concerns expressed about over occupancy. Although there was some press
coverage from the forum I thought I would just take a minute that the press did
not cover. There were people at the forum who talked to us about being afraid of
their neighbors, people who call the police to ask for enforcement of the
disorderly house ordinance and who are afraid to talk to their neighbors about it
because of the vandalism that they've experienced when they've called the police.
We heard people talk about the deterioration of their neighborhoods, we heard
people who live in the dorms talk about the fact that they're afraid of their
neighbors in the dorms and the problems with drinking and other issues. Most of
that was not covered by the media, what the media covered most intensively was
the couch, keg and party ordinances. The Task Force has met several times since
the public forum and I'm sure as you noticed those items are no longer on the
Task Force list of proposals. I would say however that when I looked through the
mail that you all received today I was pleased to see that there were two letters in
support of the couch ordinance wondering what the reck happened to it so you
need not feel constrained by the Task Force's recommendations feel free to add to
the list. I would say my experience on the Task Force has been one of learning
about bad behavior in the City and learning about problems that the
neighborhoods face and learning about how interested the landlords have been and
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the tenant representatives in working with their neighbors to try to resolve the
problems. The neighbors of course had a lot of ideas, the neighborhood
representatives but the landlords have been tremendously supportive, cooperative,
and have provided us with many good solutions to the problems as well. The
problem in general is one of bad behavior to be distinguished from bad people,
bad landlords or bad tenants or bad neighbors. The problem really is one about
specific types of bad behavior, but there doesn't seem to be any shortage of that
bad behavior at least from the perspective of the people that live in the
neighborhoods. The bad behavior comes in the more garden variety, throwing
trash on the lawn type and it also comes in the much more serious criminal type.
And resolving these issues will require the Council to make some very clear
statements to City staff about enforcement and it will require prioritization on the
part of City staff with respect to issues and it may also require staffing. What I
wanted to do is take a couple of minutes to walk you through the proposals, I
don't intend to do that in detail because I respect that you all received them and I
assume have had the opportunity to read them but what I thought I might do is
clarify them in walking through them, we have essentially a two page list of
proposals, they fall largely into two categories, one is enforcement and the other is
over occupancy, they're intended to be directly responsive both to the problems
that the people on the Task Force understood and to those that we either heard
about either in the public forum or that we've heard about from other people. And
within those categories the proposals are of two types, one is the policy type, the
direct City staff to do X and the other is a set of things that would require you
actually to pass ordinances in order to achieve the outcome. These proposals and
the Task Force in general came out of a consensus dialogue, the Task Force
worked very hard to achieve consensus and I believe you'll find very good support
from the Task Force members for all the proposals on this list. There are a few at
the top, those are the implementation type proposals, one is a suggestion that you
direct the City Manager to appoint a Citizen's Committee. The purpose of this
proposal is to maintain the dialogue that's been established with the
Neighborhood's Housing Relation's Task Force but to sort of take it out of the
sort of outside official realm and create a different vehicle for an ongoing
dialogue. The only difference between this Committee, or the makeup of this
Committee and the Task Force is that we've included among the people to be
included or parties to be represented, excuse me, an affordable housing
representative. We've been fortunate actually to have very good guidance from
MaryAnn Dennis who's attended all of our meetings and spent a lot of time with
us on the phone but not as an official member of our Task Force. And we've also
asked that whatever you decide to adopt you direct the City Manager to initiate
promotional and educational efforts to detail the initiatives, both to educate the
public also quite frankly to speak to other members of the public who are
necessary to make this work like the Court system and other people because you
can adopt all the ordinances but if when you go to Court you can't get
enforcement from the Judge's we have a problem. And then of course to adopt all
the ordinances and the resolutions on the laundry list and so under enforcement
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we've asked that you provide a clear statement to the City Manager to direct the
police to issue citations in disorderly house occurrences more frequently. The
Task Force has spent a lot of time heating from staff about the importance of
discretion. I would say it's been a hard won battle and the Task Force where
many members started out wanting no discretion, they just wanted citations in the
first instance, in part that's because they don't want to be wakened more than once
in the night by a party, they want more action taken and the belief is that citations
rather than warnings will help to achieve. And to provide information to
landlords about the violations, the landlords have indicated that they in fact want
to know what's going on and the neighbors want them to know what's going on
and they want them to know when it's happening. This is nothing new, there's
already a disorderly house ordinance, but your public statement about the
importance of enforcing it is extremely important to making it effective in this
community. The second one is asking you to direct the City Manager to direct
police, housing inspection and legal staff to enforce the codes proactively. What
that means is the Task Force has spent a lot of time heating from people about
their frustration about how many complaints it takes to get action on a particular
bad piece of property or other problem that neighbors would like more proactive
enforcement of the code rather than waiting for a complaint response. And in fact
the Task Force would support assessment of fines when the situations warrants it,
after all all of these services cost money and we might as well ask those people
who are breaking the law in the context of a disorderly house ordinance or the
disorderly house violation, excuse me to help pay for those. The third item on the
list is a request to ask you to direct the City Manager to develop a procedure for
police and housing inspection to keep their complaint records up to date and to
keep each other apprised of activities related to properties particularly these
violations that may occur in concert on various pieces of property. The idea
behind this one and we understand from City staff that there is work in this area
already but idea is to increase communication, if the same house that has lots of
municipal infraction violations is one in which there are repeat disorderly house
violations that's an important fact for city staff to know and be aware of and pay
attention and attempt to enforce the code at that address or that location. The
fourth item on the list is to direct the City Manager to direct the police to consider
enforced patrols to neighborhoods experiencing numerous disorderly house and
criminal complaints including for example foot patrols in neighborhoods between
2:00 and 3:00 AM, again the idea here is to be proactive. The next item on the list
is a request to direct the City Manager to direct police to utilize the municipal
infraction process to site properties in violation of zoning and housing codes. One
of the things that the people on the Task Force learned is that the police have
power that they're not using, if in fact they carry both with them a criminal
citation book and a municipal infraction citation book they could deal with some
of the problems that occur at night and not during the day when our Housing
Inspections staffis here. For example cars parked on the lawn, the police are not
now allowed to go onto someone's property to ticket a car with a criminal
infraction but they could do it with a municipal infraction. Lots of other
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violations of this of sort that occur at night could easily be ticketed through the
municipal infraction process and save the problem for the next day. Our
understanding and again we're not experts in this area is that all that entails is
both education and two different citation books. The next item on the list is ask
you to adopt a resolution to move all single family and duplex rental units to a two
year permit review cycle. It's our understanding that currently the permit cycle is
set by resolution so that's why that's framed as a request for you to adopt a
resolution, the idea and we realize that this would take time and would have to be
phased in but the idea is to get the household so to speak to be distinguished from
multi unit buildings in neighborhoods inspected more regularly so that we can try
to keep them in compliance with the code. The next item on the list is a request to
direct the City Manager to direct housing inspection to develop a process to
identify and address properties that are subject to numerous or serious complaints.
Again this is a staff driven proposal, one in which we are asking that you ask the
staff to develop a process so that particular properties those, if you can call a
property something that exhibits bad behavior the idea here is bad behavior comes
in lost of flavors and one way to address that is to look at the ones where we have
lots of complaints and try to get those into compliance and site those and make the
process run more efficiently so that those types of properties become in better
compliance with city code. The next item is one requesting that you adopt an
ordinance expanding the relevant portions of the code in which permit issuance is
conditioned. Currently when one tries to get a permit either renewed or a new
permit for a rental property there are various types of ordinances with which one
much comply. This is an ordinance and we've given you a draft ordinance so that
you can see what we were looking at that would expand the categories of things
necessary for one to be in compliance with before one can actually have one's
permit either issued or renewed. The next item asks you to direct the city legal
staffto work with the County Attorney or U. S. Attorney for forfeiture actions in
appropriate drug related cases. This is one of the proposals that is targeted at
crime, there are Federal and State statutes which allow landlords to lose their
rental permits in certain circumstances or allow for the eviction of tenants in
certain circumstances in which the code might not otherwise permit it. It is not a
power that the city government has, it's a power that the State and Federal
government has and we're asking for greater communication on problems so that
those can be resolved appropriately in those systems. We've also asked that you
direct the City Manager direct legal staff to urge property owners to make use of
the clear and present danger provisions of the state code and appropriate cases.
Again there are provisions in the state code which landlords to use to deal with
bad and criminal behavior on their property and we'd like to see greater
coordination so that the landlords are empowered, one of the things that we heard
from the landlords is that this is an incredibly difficult process for them, and they
need some education and assistance in trying to enact these types of actions. The
next one is to direct Housing Inspection to develop a policy to deal with blowing
trash problems, one potential solution to that would be requiring newspaper
deliveries to be made to porches or to multi-family units and to be bound and
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bagged. The next item is to direct the City Manager to consider a process for
reporting on paid fines to credit agencies and attempt again to find a better way to
enforce and to help the city collect on revenues if they're unpaid. The next item
asks you to direct the City Manager to establish an amnesty day for proposal of
large appliance and furniture perhaps twice a year. This item is started as directly
responsive to neighbors who expressed a concern about how large items would
just appear in their back yard by the alley, couches, refrigerators, other items and
then they end up becoming responsible for the disposal of these items. The next
item on the list asks you to adopt an ordinance increasing fines for municipal
infractions involving nuisance violations. Right now believe it or not we're not
charging as much as state code permits, and we're urging you to up the fines to
improve enforcement. The next item asks you to adopt an ordinance amending
the parking ordinance to require that cars be parked at least three feet from
driveways. This one again you have a sample in your packet, this is a pretty
straight forward one, it's just a request that there be some breathing room on
either side of the driveway, apparently a relatively common ordinance to allow
people to be able to get in and out of their driveways and to decrease any concern
that the police have about when it's appropriate to ticket or tow, we heard a lot of
comments about this particular issue. The next item on the list asks you to direct
the City Manager to direct the Planning & Zoning staff to include mandatory
participation in the Good Neighbor Policy which provides a process for
developers to communicate with neighbors about proposed land use changes in
the zoning code revisions. My understanding is that the Planning & Zoning staff
is in fact working on a comprehensive revision proposal of the zoning code and
we think this would be an excellent matter for inclusion in the code, it improves
communication in the process which is extremely important. And then we have a
series of items directed more specifically at over occupancy, I want to be clear
some of the other items I've already mentioned would help with over occupancy,
enforcement in general of all of the provisions of the code would help with it. But
these are more specifically designed to deal with over occupancy and I won't
reiterate for you here what people said at the heating in detail but I do want to
stress that over occupancy to use the word of Barbie Buss who spoke at the
hearing is "pernicious" it's dangerous to this city, it causes lots of problems that
go beyond just noise and trash. It causes a decrease in our affordable housing
stock, something the member of the Task Force are very concerned about. When
a unit is over let for more than the appropriate rental price in fact it can no longer
be a single family or a reasonably priced duplex home because nobody can afford
it once the price sky rockets. Over letting is an extremely serious problem and
one about we not only need more education but better enforcement and so we
have some proposals here to reach those problems. The first one is one
requesting that the City Manager direct city staff to develop a pilot program for
landlords, this is a voluntary suggestion, one in which some landlords could work
with city staff to do mailbox tags on the inside of mailboxes. This is most
appropriate and has worked effectively as I understand it on some of the multi unit
properties in the Wetherby neighborhood where the landlords have put tags on the
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inside of the mail boxes, the post office will not deliver mail except to the person
who's name is on the inside of the mailbox and there it's been used to cut down
on people using the address who are not actually tenants in the unit. The next
item asks you to direct the City Manager to direct city staff to development
information packets for landlords and property managers that cover all of these
important details. Our understanding from city staff now is that most of this
information is already available though not in one sort of neat down loadable
package on the web and we'd like to see it be available in that format. The next
one requests that you direct the City Manager to direct city staff to work with the
University of Iowa Administration to create a rental information packet for
students and tenants. This was a proposal that was part of the Task Force
recommendations at the public forum and about which we heard students
comment at the public forum asking for more help in this area, many of whom
feel that they're not getting a fair shake in their rental property. The next and this,
by the way there's a sample brochure I think in your packet on this one and
Marcia Klingaman has a lot of information on these items, this is the kind of thing
that's already enforced.
(END OF 02-53 SIDE ONE)
Hillary Sale/Down on these problems. The next item asks you to adopt an ordinance
requiring that rental permits be posted on rental properties. We heard from people
that when they go to the property, they can't figure out who the landlord is, who
the property manager is, that some tenants say they don't know how to reach their
landlord or their property manager and in the other proposals here we also ask you
to put occupancy limits on the permits and then if you post them or require them
to be posted we think that will help enforcement of these issues even stronger.
The next item asks you to direct the City Manager to direct Housing Inspection
staff to revise rental permits to include occupancy limits, name of and contact
information for landlord and/or property owners and language indicating that
there's a requirement to post permits. This proposal improves information sharing
and thereby enforcement, I will say that it's very clear for example that if you
were to adopt this it would take a considerable amount of time for it to roll in
because in fact we don't now know what the occupancy limits are on lots of
properties in Iowa City and it's not as we learned in the Task Force all that
straight forward. There are all sorts of things that come into play, not just the size
of the unit but the number of parking available, whether the area was down zoned,
whether the person who owns it stopped using it in a way that got rid of their
grandfathering when it was down zoned so we understand that this would take
time to put into effect but we think it would be extremely effective in both making
clear what the occupancy limits are and through the posting requirement making it
clear to everybody. The next item asks you to adopt an ordinance with a
mandatory lease addendum specifying occupancy limits and other items. This
mandatory lease addendum there's a draft ordinance included in the packet so you
could understand better what it was the Task Force was attempting to achieve.
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The idea here is that there are certain items that ought to be made clear in leases to
tenants and one of them is the occupancy limits, there are others on the list, again
this is modeled after what Michigan State did in Lansing, Michigan and there are
similar types of lease addendum provisions available elsewhere. And the final
one is to direct Planning & Zoning staff to develop pilot residential permit
programs and we framed this one as a pilot program because it's my
understanding from staff that in the past there's been discussion of this and there
was some concern about the sufficiency of neighborhood support, I'll just note
there's a letter in the packet from people on the north side and the Northside
Association wrote supporting the Task Force proposals in general mentioning
some of the specific ones and indicating that they would like to be involved in a
pilot residential parking program on the north side. Obviously the issues in
something like that and the Planning & Zoning Staff would have to be intimately
involved in how something like that would work out. Respectfully then what I'd
like to say to you and of course I'll answer your questions if you have them is that
the members of the Task Force and the members of this community and you
yourselves when you created the Task Force recognized that there are problems
that need to be addressed. The Task Force has worked really hard to come up
with some good solutions for you and what you could do in response to that is
adopt them. You could set to work on the ordinances, again many of which are in
draft form, and some of which are quite straight forward. Sue Dulek from the
legal staff has been intimately involved and I know she's consulted with Eleanor
about them so that's underway for you in terms of models and then moving
forward to make some public statements about the enforcement issues and other
concerns is what you could do to respond now to the Task Force and members of
the community. Thank you for your time.
Champion/Thank you.
Lehman/Questions for Hillary. It's a lot of work, hey thank you for your work, you and
the entire Committee that was a lot of work and I'm sure it wasn't easy.
Champion/It's my understanding that you do want well you've come to a consensus that
there can be discretion from the police on whether they should issue a citation or a
warning, is that correct?
Sale/I would describe that as hard fought consensus and the reason I would say that is
because Captain Johnson who is absolutely one of the most delightful people I've
ever had to deal with was very effective in meeting with us and making us
understand that they get disorderly house calls, or they get lots of them as our
background statement says, in the first nine months of 2001 they had 1,700
disorderly house calls. That indicates to me there's a problem, but of course not
every disorderly house call is a violation of the disorderly house code. Many are
but not all and they get disorderly house calls for people who have a TV on, I
don't want to minimize the problem, but a TV on that you can hear across the
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property line, that is arguably a violation of the code as written but perhaps
doesn't need the same kind of enforcement as some of the other calls they receive.
And some of them are effectively dealt with with a warning, On the other hand
what people don't want is to lose an entire night to sleep on Friday and an entire
night to sleep on Saturday where the police show up, give a warning, leave, show
up, give a warning, and then on the third round finally crack down and that is the
concern and the balance that the Task Force was working to achieve, I think it's
fair to say that there is now clear understanding on the part of the Task Force but
it simply wouldn't be appropriate for staff members to be directed to
automatically issue anything, discretion has to be play a role.
Champion/Right.
Lehman/But you also in your recommendations have which I think is a very good
recommendation that we keep records on infractions and so I mean if we have,
perhaps we do issue a warning, but it keeps the same number keeps coming up
that warning tums into a citation, I mean I do think there's some mechanism in
here to take care of what might have been an, might have been an indiscretion by
not issuing a citation.
Sale/Well that might be, I don't know enough to know the answer to that, but I think in
general this proposal to sort of pay attention to multiple violations of various pans
of the code on a particular piece of a property is very important, it will be more
effective if you appoint the Citizen's Committee to work with staff to share that
information, to raise properties to the attention of staff and have the ongoing
communication that's necessary to make sure that enforcement happens.
Champion/I'm not sure how your ever going to tackle this problem of over occupancy,
that is a terrible problem and it's hard to tell how many people are living in a
house and the idea of the mail box well they can just go to Mailbox Etc. and get a
post office box right for a very few dollars a month but to start, but I think the idea
of the neighborhood parking sticker is a very effective way to help stop part of the
over occupancy, maybe not all of it but I think that's a really bright idea and I
don't know if it works or not. I didn't read the ordinance, but what do you do if
somebody's having a party or having an overnight guest, how do you handle that?
Sale/Well different communities handle it differently, one of the reasons why we felt this
was one that clearly had to be left, not even to our own attempt to put things in
writing to make things more clear is because there are a lot of issues to be ironed
out but I can tell you I lived in the City of Boston and we had neighborhood
permit parking and when my friends came for a party they paid to park in a
parking ramp near to where I lived and then they walked over to my house
because they couldn't park in my neighborhood, there were visitor zones but you
know the odds of finding a visitor spot on any given night were not great so but
they're enforced in different ways in different communities.
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Lehman/Irvin.
Pfab/First of all I want to personally thank you, I had a chance to sit in on a lot of the
sessions and I was just amazed (can't hear) and worked with the members of that
Task Force, also I think you make a very strong point and you said it so nice that I
don't think that people that are going to be the recipient of your suggestion are
going to be able to object (can't hear).
Kanner/lrvin could you speak in the microphone?
Pfab/Wanted them to, you wanted them to, the people who are consuming so many of
our services help contribute to the cause, it was the people who are asking for the
police to visit them very often help pay to support to pay for the police department
or the inspection department, that was (can't hear).
Kanner/Well I didn't follow that Irvin.
Pfab/Well in other words, it costs money to take it, to go to, to make a police call, it costs
money to have an additional housing inspection, or if your trying to hide more
tenants in a house or in an apartment, it takes more effort to do that and I think the
penalties should make, should take that into consideration and be censored with
the problems that they're causing. And the other one, one other last point is how
injurious it is and I guess Ms. Buss pernicious, I wasn't sure what that word meant
when I read it but I guess it's fairly strong, what over occupancy, the damage that
that is doing to our is just unbelievable. And it's one of those things that a very
few people take advantage of a tremendous number of people and everyone, and
so many people are, they're not quite sure how to do it, the good landlords they
just wish it didn't happen. They don't have a way to go and poke the other, the
bad landlord, or the landlord with the bad behavior in the nose, that's against the
law, but the city has to really, really and truly attack that with all the energy that
we have if we're going to maintain a good solid neighborhood.
Kanner/I have a few questions, again, thanks Ms. Sales for your participation and the rest
of your 10 Task Force members and the rest of the community that's been
involved in this process, I appreciate that kind of discussion and I hope we
continue it and that leads to my first point. One of the recommendations you
make is about a Citizen's Committee, and was there talk about working on more
positive approaches dealing with this problem in that continuing committee?
Techifiques that would work to an systematic fashion that would work to
empower residents and landlords and homeowners and general citizens in the
community?
Sale/I'm not sure what you mean by that so perhaps you could give me an example.
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Kanner/Well for instance most of these talk about penalties and I would perhaps could
see the point that penalties are effective but in the long mn we know that positive
reinforcement is the thing that's going to make the most effective change and
probably doing it in a systematic fashion would be a good way to do that so for
instance talking about forming, helping to form a tenants union because in our
state the tenant laws are not as strong as some other states and perhaps
empowering tenants to feel more ownership and responsibility in the long mn will
solve some of these problems that your talking about and so that's just one
example. I would hope that a committee would get together and brainstorm and
think of a lot more and look to other cities for examples like you've you looked at
punitive provisions. So is that something that was talked in your continuing point
number one I believe it was, continuing commission to work on these issues?
Sale/Well I can say that working on a tenants union in particular was not discussed by
the Task Force.
Kanner/Well you asked for an example that's.
Sale/I know.
Kanner/This is just one example I'm hoping the Committee could look towards other
things also.
Sale/I would say in fact that some of these proposals are positive, I in fact don't consider
enforcement to be negative and so that just might be the difference in the way I
view some of these proposals and the way that you do but there are proposals in
the sort that your talking about, for example, the one that's directly responsive to
some of the concerns raised by the tenant members of our group as well as
students who spoke at the heating when they asked for which was already in the
proposals and remains here tonight, better coordination with the student tenant
group and other groups to create people who know more about what their rights
are. It seems to me that educating people about their rights is a big step along the
way, and that's in here, and there are other things in here too, providing the same
kind of information to landlords so we're sure that everybody is on the same page.
So then what would I say about going forward? I would saying going forward the
dialogue that occurs in the citizen's committee does not have to be limited to any
one particular issue, there's plenty of room for discussion of lots of things for any
of you who read the endless meeting minutes of the Task Force you'll see there
was endless discussion of lots of various topics, and these are the ones that
survived, the ones for which there was consensus. And then I would like to say
on the sort of hopeful note, if the City Council tonight were for example to adopt
everything in this package there would be plenty of room for discussion of more
and different items but my guess is until these items go away people on the Task
Force will remain fixated and concerned on these particular items.
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Kanner/And just to clarify consensus on a simple level, your saying that no one voted
against it and was adamant against any of these proposals. Is that what you mean
by consensus because there's different definitions of consensus?
Sale/We didn't take any votes on the Task Force, I don't think we took any ever, I might
be wrong about that so I hesitate to state that in a public meeting. We just didn't
operate that way, we pursued only those things for which there was support, and
when I drafted this document, I'm the one who drafted the condensed version of
the documents so for those of you who want to see more language, the longer
version that's on the web provides more background and more language to you.
When I drafted it I believed there was clear support from all groups on the Task
Force for the items that are on the list.
Kanner/I'll come back in a moment with some more questions.
Pfab/I'd make a slight comment to you, I think there are built in supports for people who
follow the rules, I think you end up with a higher quality of tenant, you end up
with a higher quality of neighborhood and you watch your property values
increase.
Wilburn/Thank you for your work, lots of time and energy I'm sure and then just the
addition of doing something in the public process and I'm seeing that can be a
drain on you I know. I'd like to if you could comment a little bit if you had
conversations about some of the items that you come up with are don't
necessarily, their more logistical type things or sharing of resources and working
with the University, and then just within the department, and I certainly support
those and those wouldn't necessarily involve increased resources, financial
resources money. Did you have any conversations about balancing you know if it
does require for redeployment of resources or more money for staff whether it's
inspector, fire or police, did you have any conversation about a time table in temps
of implementing these? And I mean some of them would have some budget
considerations for us so could you comment on that for me please.
Sale/Yes, we did not discuss budget issues on the Task Force, however, because we
didn't believe that we were charged with doing so, that's not to say we're not
mindful of budgetary concerns. We did talk about the need for prioritizing on the
part of staff and Council and we recognize that in some cases some of these might
require staffing changes. The background document that you received from us
provides some information which we were surprised by. For example, the
Housing Inspection staffhas dealt with an approximate 20 to 30 percent increase
in the number of rental units in Iowa City over the past decade and the staff hasn't
changed at all. The same number of people are inspecting more units and they,
therefore they have less time to do the proactive stuffthat people on this Task
Force care about. We recognize that, and we're actually quite concerned about it,
in fact one of the people who showed up at the forum and who's written Opines
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said that as far I could tell he opposed everything that the Task Force was doing
but he did think City Council should provide more staff to Housing Inspection.
And I think there's a fair concern about that issue, I would also say that the
members of the Task Force recognize that some of these for example a mandatory
lease addendum that requires occupancy units or a permit that would require an
occupancy unit, or occupancy number are going to take a lot of time to implement.
That doesn't mean it can't be enacted, that doesn't mean we can't aspire to
achieve them but I understand quite clearly from staff and I think the other
members of the Task Fome understand that it could take multiple years before we
could be in full compliance with such an ordinance because we don't have the
information readily available, and we can live with that. A step, a step here a step
there would be a lot more than what's happening right now at least with respect to
some of these issues.
Wilburn/You mentioned being aware of information and a consequence and we can live
with that, and that's part of decisions you have to make whether your going to
implement any policy. Other recommendations that you've made, on the st~rface
did you have extensive conversation about the possible consequences, unforeseen
consequences the actions that you've described here? The weight of this is
certainly more extreme and I don't intentionally mean to put the weight of this on
you but the one of the things that law enforcement is dealing with right now is a
result of a decision that the State Legislature made about where registered sex
offenders can or can't live and certainly a well meaning piece of legislation but
logistically what it means is that there's going to be a problem and the
community, how are we going to wrestle with this? Is this okay? Does it need to
be modified? Can you walk me through any discussions that you had about that
with your recommendations about unforeseen consequences, or consequences that
your willing to live with.
Sale/Well we did talk in general about consequences, so I don't want to say that we
didn't do that, we didn't do it in the way that you and I assume other Councilor's
will because we don't make the budget so to the extent that there are budgetary
issues we didn't spend a lot of time on that particular issue. Certainly we talked
about consequences, one of the consequences is over of over occupancy as a
decrease in affordable housing stock in Iowa City and there's a lot of concern
about that in the Task Force. It's not just about wanting peace and quiet in my
neighborhood, the people on there are very persuaded that these issues have to be
dealt with for lots of reasons including protecting affordable housing stock in the
downtown area and so there are good consequences too to many of these
proposals that I think are very important. You know if your asking me ifI want
the police to enforce the sex offender law versus patrolling the downtown
neighborhoods between 2:00 and 3:00 that's a pretty difficult question given the
way the sex offender law affects Iowa City as I understand it at any rate, I was
educated only slightly on that, this is not a comment on them but my lack of
knowledge going in but I did recently attend at their request the local homeless
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coordinating board meeting to talk about the Task Force proposals and while I
was there that was one of the items on their agenda and it appears to me it's
incredibly complex and almost unenforceable at least from what I understood at
that meeting in most of the neighborhoods in Iowa City or would at least eliminate
a lot of transitional housing and other issues. But I'm not really qualified to talk
about the exact balance that makes sense here.
Wilburn/I wasn't necessarily pitting that these against in terms of which would you
prioritize but just in terms of the unforeseen, something that was well intentioned,
gets at the problem that your trying to address but can we live with the other
results of that. For example, I'm glad that you had discussion about discretion for
officer, I'm glad that you had that because I don't know there may be some
circumstances involving a what's initially reported as disorderly house, noise, that
might be a domestic violence situation.
Sale/That's right.
Wilburn/I certainly wouldn't want to deter someone's (can't hear).
Sale/In fact Councilor that's an exact discussion that occurred in the Task Force meeting,
that exact one is one I recall that we actually had. Let me just address one other
question raised there, again a hard fought battle but one I think we've won is
support for discretion on the part of city staff, I'm sure that city staff is thrilled to
hear that and I'll just say it again, really loud, support for discretion on the part of
city staff. Having said that I think the members of the Task Force feel pretty
strongly that greater enforcement will over time decrease city resources that are
currently being aimed at recurrent problems in the neighborhood. If one
disorderly house has a party every Friday night in September, and they get cited
and they go to court and they pay a fine, they're less like to do it. If we enforce
that ordinance as well as we enforce the leash ordinance at Hickory Hill I think
we'll be making progress in Iowa City.
Champion/We have problems there too.
Lehman/There are a few who would argue with you on that but go ahead.
Sale/Yes, yes, there are people that would argue with me on everything on this list and
I've learned that over the last year.
Wilburn/And finally and I apologize I was asking Dee a question when you were talking
about the ordinance requiring that rental permits be posted on rental properties.
Could you talk me through that? What is that addressing?
Sale/Well it's addressing actually several things, one is it's education right, it posts in a
clear place what the occupancy limit is. It makes it harder for people to have
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plausible denial about knowing what the occupancy limit is, so it deals with over
occupancy. It also provides neighbor's and tenants with a phone number 24 hours
a day where they can find a landlord or a property manger when they have a
problem, something that is not necessarily currently available in all instances
because the owner of the property doesn't necessarily manage it and not both of
those as I understand it are on the web, I could be wrong, I've never actually tried
to use the web in the middle of the night so it provides all kinds of specific
information in a public way.
Pfab/I would make one comment, as an observer at these meetings I was just stunned at
the amount of effort that was put into determining, stunned is maybe a little
strong. I was just really surprised at the effort that was put in at looking at
consequences of almost every way, shape or form. I just thought, when I first
started watching it I thought it was, it looked like a waste of time but it was
probably the strongest thing they did, and there was umpteen number of proposals
that went out, some got shot down, some of them didn't but the thing that kept
coming back, what is the final result? What are the consequences? I think you
have a very good question m~d very right on it and I think that if there's one thing
that this Task Force can be complimented on is the effort that they did to look at
what the consequences were and that's why their proposals are driven the way
they were.
Lehman/Other questions for Hillary or comments.
Champion/No I just want to, we'll probably discuss them among ourselves, as I support
your work and I certainly support the ideas in here I can't promise you if we're
going to afford to do all of them, but maybe eventually but some of these have
real strong budget demands which won't happen instantly. I don't find any of
them strongly objectionable, the party ordinance bothered me because I have a
large family.
Sale/The party ordinance bothered a lot of people, and I'll just clear right, it was just a
suggestion for the purposes of public discussion and we certainly had a lot of
public discussion on that item. I happen to have Iowa Supreme Court Justices to
my house every year with 30 students and I too would have been subject to the
party ordinances.
Wilburn/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you.
Sale/Thank you. IfI might just say then what the Task Force intends to do in the absence
of further direction from Council is to suspend operations now until the end of
August, give you some time to look through these, confer with staff, staffknows
how to find me, I talk to them all the time and we can follow up and the Task
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Force will reconvene some time at the end of August to discuss matters further,
provide you with feedback if that's what you need or pressure you more.
Lehman/Okay, thank you.
Sale/Thank you.
Lehman/What does Council, how do you want to proceed with this?
Vanderhoef/Well I've got a couple things that I'd like to just say. I think I'm in
agreement with a lot of the things that you said there Connie about there's nothing
that is strikes me as hugely objectionable but yes we have some cost kinds of
considerations to do. And as I went through the list here real specifically they ask
for five different ordinances to adopt an ordinance and somehow or another I
would like to put those on to a work meeting one or two a night if we can do more
in a night fine and dandy but have our discussion amongst ourselves about each
one of those and at the same time I would like to have staff look through the
recommendations that were directed specifically to the City Manager on through
whatever department whether it be the police, or housing inspection or who to
come back with an idea of if each one of these things were fully implemented
what would their best estimate be of cost to us in either new personnel, in time,
what would be cost effective first perhaps but I'd like them to look at it in terms
of the staffing that's there and how they could proceed with that.
Wilburn/Operational breakdown.
Vanderhoef/Right.
Pfab/I have a question for you Dee. What kind of a time frame are you looking at here?
I mean are you talking about studying these? Are you saying get these
implemented as soon as we can or are you saying let's move them down, keep
kicking the can down the road?
Vanderhoef/No I'm not saying that at all Irvin. I'm saying I need information from my
City Manager about operational kinds of things and what it will take to move
forward on some of these and as soon as we can put these suggestions about
adopted ordinances onto our work meeting so we can kalk and then direct if we
choose to, to do an ordinance, direct staff to write the ordinance for us.
Champion/I think an ordinance is a good route to go.
Pfab/Are you suggesting that we work on them individually or as we get started on them
immediately and work on them (can't hear).
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Vanderhoef/I said as soon as we can put them on and put as many on to a work session as
we can handle on an ordinary evening.
Pfab/I was (can't hear).
Lehman/Steve what kind of time frame would be necessary? Some of these I think you
can respond to rather quickly.
Atkins/I was going to say I got mentioned a lot.
Lehman/Some of them are probably going to be a lot more.
Atkins/I mentioned a lot.
Lehman/Yea I noticed that.
Atkins/Okay.
Vanderhoef/There's work involved.
Lehman/Direct City Manager, direct City Manager, direct City Manager.
Champion/They're worse than we are.
Lehman/Could we get? Some of these I think you can respond to rather quickly. I would
suggest that we read these over ourselves, kind of study these. And Steve I agree
with Dee, some of these I think you can respond to perhaps pretty directly.
Atkins/Yea when they came out and I read through them pretty critically, and I've talked
to a couple staff people about it and I would like to be able to respond to you on
those.
Lehman/Well I think we want that. Do you have an idea what kind of a time? And I
agree with Dee, I don't think you have to do every one of them but if we could
have.
Atkins/I want to set up a little bit of somewhat of a priority in some of the proposals too,
I think some of them may come a lot easier and you may find them ready to just
move right ahead with them. Those that are a little more consequence I think I,
give us a month or so, I mean your not going to reconvene until August anyway,
that gives us a.
Lehman/Okay, Steven.
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Kanner/Concurrent with what Dee and Steve are saying, perhaps one way to prioritize is
for us to come back with the ones that we have strong support with each
individually and see if there's seven of us right off the bat that are pretty non
controversial and we can say those, there's pretty strong agreement and then deal
with the rest to see where there's lesser agreement and have more in depth
discussion about those.
Champion/I think the easiest thing to do would be to tackle the ones that don't have large
budget.
Lehman/Consequences.
Champion/Consequences.
Atkins/But we don't know those, I don't know those things just yet Connie and that's
why I want to take a look at.
Vanderhoef/That's why I want that.
Atkins/Yea, I want to turn this, I'll turn this pretty quickly.
Vanderhoef/But we can go forward on ordinance resolution discussion that is our
purview.
Champion/I mean obviously there's quite a bit of support for quite a few of these but
there's the matter of how we're going to be able to prioritize them and move
forward on them and that's what we're going to work on next month.
Lehman/Could we have something like on the 19th of August?
Atkins/I'11, oh I'll certainly get you something by then sure.
Lehman/You know if we had a week or so ahead of time I think some of these things am
pretty controversial (can't hear).
Atkins/Just grant me some discretion, yea just grant me some discretion in putting,
discretion there we go, just grant me some discretion.
Lehman/She said you have some discretion.
Atkins/In putting together some priorities because there may be some I can't, if they're
easy to come together and I sense that you that your supported of them let's get up
and (can't hear).
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Lehman/My sense from the Council is that there is genuine interest in, I don't hear
anybody saying that we don't like, first of all the concept's acceptable, it's
palatable, we feel it's something that we should do. Individually there may be
some things more important than others. But you could have a.
Atkins/What I need to do is assign some work and that's why I want to go to each of
them and ask the directors to come up with some ideas to.
Lehman/Okay so if we could have that on the 19th we could have an instant replay of
tonight on the 19th. Meet with the Airport Commission at 5:00 and (can't hear).
(All talking)
Lehman/All right is that acceptable?
Vanderhoef/There's a request.
Lehman/What's the request?
VanderhoefJ They want to go first.
man?/Can we (task force) go first?
Lehman/Oh. All right I don't care.
O'Donnell/Hillary you've said that the single and duplexes we're going to put them on a
two year rental permit cycle is that what I'm hearing?
Sale/That's one of the suggestions. And my understanding from housing staff and I've
learned they're happy to correct me when I get it wrong is that that's the direction
they've been moving in anyway, there's a staffing issue there right, if all these
properties are going to be inspected every two years then staff has to get there
more often. Arguably over time if they're inspected more often the problems
won't grow as bad in the interim, but there's a serious time factor involved in all
of these.
O'Dormell/What are they inspected now? What's the cycle now?
Sale/I think they're on a three year cycle now. Yes I'm getting three fingers in the back
from staff that are here.
O'Donnell/Is, you've identified single and duplex, are these where you having your over
occupancy problems do you believe?
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Sale/No they're just on a different, well yes that's part of where the over occupancy
concerns are right because you can have a single family home that has five
bedrooms that's really only eligible to be occupied by three people. It's an
obvious tendency to rent it to five, but in fact the zoning limits it to three if they're
not family, and of course the other units are just on their own inspection cycle.
Lehman/Okay Steve, the balls in your court. Thank you very much. Oh I guess we have
to have another break, all right for 10 minutes.
BREAK
Planning & Zoning Items
A. CONS[DER A MOTION SETTiNG A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM MEDIUM
DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY, RS-8, TO HISTORIC PRESERVATION
OVERLAY-MEDiUM DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY, OHP-RS-8,
DESIGNATING 3 ACRES OF PROPERTY LOCATED AT 747 WEST
BENTON STREET A HISTORIC LANDMARK. (REZ02-00005)
Karin Franklin/RS-8 that's a historic landmark designation, and this is the Buss house on
West Benton Street, just don't pay any attention to what's up on the screen right
now because I'm not at that item yet.
B. CONS[DER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM GENERAL
INDUSTRIAL, I-1, TO INTENSIVE COMMERCIAL, CI-1, FOR 1.34-ACRES
LOCATED WEST OF RIVERSIDE DRIVE SOUTH OF COMMERCIAL
DRIVE. (REZ02-00007)
Franklin/Item B is setting a public hearing for July 16 on an ordinance changing the
zoning designation from I-1 the General Industrial to Intensive Commercial for a
lot on Riverside Drive south of Commercial Drive, this is the Gringer property.
C. CONS[DER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM MEDIUM
DENSITY SiNGLE-FAMILY, RS-8 AND LOW DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY,
RM-12 TO PLANNED DEVELOPMENT OVERLAY, OPDH-20 TO ALLOW
43 ELDER CONGREGATE HOUSING UNITS ON 2.12 ACRES OF
PROPERTY LOCATED NORTH OF BENTON STREET AND EAST OF
GEORGE STREET. (REZ02-00009)
Franklin/Item C is setting a public hearing for July 16 on an ordinance amendment from
RS-8 and RM-12 to OPDH-20 for 43 elder congregate housing units on 2.12
acres, this is an Oaknoll issue so Ernie you'll need to depart.
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Lehman/You'll have to read that one Dee.
D. CONSiDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDINANCE AMENDING AN OPDH-12 PLAN FOR S1LVERCREST TO
ALLOW FOUR 4-UNIT TOWNHOUSE STYLE BUILDINGS AND FOUR 24-
UNIT INDEPENDENT LiVING BUILDINGS FOR ELDERLY RESiDENTS.
(REZ02-00002)
Franklin/Item D again setting a public hearing for the 16th on an ordinance amending an
OPDH plan for Silvercrest, this is the Dial development on American Legion
Road on Scott Boulevard to finish out that project allowing four 4-unit townhouse
style buildings and four 24-unit independent living buildings for the elderly.
Vanderhoef/Is that the one that they're making individual lots and we've had to do some
negotiations on setbacks and stuff?.
Franklin/No, they're not making individual lots, the only issues that have been before the
Planning & Zoning Commission had to do with the storm water detention and
how it affected a neighboring property. They are building smaller units than what
they had originally intended to do, more independent living, it's just that it's kind
of a shift in the market I guess.
E. CONSiDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDNANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM MEDIUM
DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, RS-8, TO PLANNED
DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY, OPDH-8, FOR WINDSOR PdDGE,
PART 16, A 31.1-ACRE, 1 O-LOT SUBDIVISION LOCATED NORTH OF
CAMDEN ROAD AND SOUTH OF LOWER WEST BRANCH ROAD.
(REZ02-00006
Franklin/Item E is setting a public heating for July 16 on an ordinance changing the
zoning from RS-8 to OPDH-8 for 31 acres, 10 lot subdivision located north of
Camden Road and south of Lower West Branch Road. This is the north part of
the Windsor Ridge farm between Court Street and Louver West Branch Road and
it will allow the construction of 182 dwelling units, a mix of housing, we've done
quite a bit of work on it.
F. CONSIDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM LOW
DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY, RS-5, TO PLANNED DEVELOPMENT
HOUSING OVERLAY, OPDH-5, TO ALLOW 23 SINGLE-FAMILY LOTS
AND 13 TOWNHOUSE-STYLE UNITS IN VILLAGE GREEN, PART XXII, A
9.31-ACRE 24-LOT RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION LOCATED WEST OF
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SCOTT BOULEVARD AND NORTH OF WELLINGTON DRIVE. (REZ02-
00008)
Franklin/The Item F is setting a public hearing for July 16 on an additional part of
Village Green at the intersection of Wellington and Scott for single family and
townhouse units.
G. CONSIDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JULY 16 ON AN
ORDINANCE VACATING 32,526 SQUARE FEET OF FRONTAGE ROAD
RIGHT-OF-WAY ALONG THE FRONT OF THE PROPERTY AT 801
HIGHWAY 1 WEST. (VAC02-00001)
Franklin/Item G setting a public heating on an ordinance, July 16 again on an ordinance
to vacate the frontage road in front of Carousel Motors on Highway 1 west.
H. PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING
DESIGNATION FROM NEIGHBORHOOD CONSERVATION, RNC-20, TO
SENSITIVE AREAS OVERLAY-NEIGHBORHOOD CONSERVATION, SAO-
RNC-20, FOR A 0.41-ACRE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 341 N. RIVERSIDE
DRIVE. (REZ02-00004)
Franklin/Item H which is the item on the screen the site location for.
Kanner/We can look now.
Franklin/You can look, you may look now. This is a public hearing on an ordinance
amendment from RNC-20 to SAO-RNC-20 for .41 acre property at 341 Riverside
Drive, this is known as the Ape House, and it is recommended for approval by the
Planning & Zoning Commission by a vote ofT-0. The property is zoned RNC-20,
it is a project for 10 dwelling units which does meet the zoning requirements for
RNC-20, it is before you because of the sensitive areas on the site. And I'll refer
you to the site plan that you have in your packet because the one I have on the
screen is an old one, the drainage has been changed as a consequence of work
through the Planning & Zoning Commission so please look at the site plan in your
packet. There are two variations that are being requested with this, one is a
height variance, to go from 35 feet to 38.5 feet, what the illustration on the screen
shows you is the relationship of this project, the sketched in one to the existing
building in'Lmediat¢ly to the north of the proposal and gives you a sense then of
the relationship of the roof lines of the proposed project at 341 Riverside Drive to
the roof lines of the property which is next door. The reason for allowing height
variances under the Sensitive Areas Ordinance is to enable a building to be built
more compactly to keep it out of the sensitive areas and that is what's occurring in
this particular instance in that if that building were to be built without that height
variance it would be a broader, longer building. There's also a request to reduce
the buffer on the project to no less than 10 feet and again I need to refer you to
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your packet, I don't have the overhead that shows the steep slopes there, or it
shows the slopes them. If you can look in your packet and see where it's
designated for the building and where the slopes are indicated. This particular
request to reduce the buffer meets the requirements of our Sensitive Areas
Ordinance, it's been reviewed by the engineering staff and will not have an
adverse affect on the slopes on the site. I guess that's about all, I would just stress
this is zoned RNC-20 and what your looking at for is the Sensitive Areas
Ordinance Compliance with these two variations. Any questions about that?
Karmer/So will the .41 acres, does that include the sensitive areas?
Franklin/That's the entire, the entire property yes.
Karmer/And so for the density that's allowed would be for the entire .41 but your taking
off some for the sensitive areas part which means you can cram a little more into
the remaining area.
Franklin/Whenever you calculate your density, you take your entire property that is
owned and you calculate the number of units that you can place on that piece of
ground based on a certain square footage per unit. So there isn't a distinction
between where the sensitive areas area or are not in doing your calculation in
density. But what happens often is that you shift it out of the sensitive area and
put it in the area that is not sensitive.
Kanner/So RNC-20 says 20 units per acre, is that correct?
Franklin/Roughly.
Kanner/That's the rough part, I guess I don't because .41 acres wouldn't allow 10 units.
What's the rough part.
Franklin/.41 acres you take .41 times 43,560 square feet which is the number of square
feet in an acre. And that would give you the total number of square feet and then
you divide it by the number of square feet that's allowed for each unit. In RNC-
20, and I don't know that I have this correctly memorized but I think it's 2,725
square feet per unit. Or is it 1,8007 1,800 okay, I'm thinking of 8, or 12, so 1,800
square feet you divide it into the amount that you have obtained by multiplying
.41 times 43,560. That's why it doesn't always come out exactly 20 per acre.
Lehman/It comes out in this case 10.
Franklin/Yes.
Karmer/10 is the limit that they could have I would assume then.
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Franklin/I haven't done this calculation but I'm assuming that that it's 10 or more that
they can have on t his particular piece. There were a number of issues that were
brought up at Planning & Zoning about water, storm water drainage on the site, in
the area. I just want you to be aware that some of these issues that were brought
up relating to storm water, water in the area were independent of this particular
project. There were concerns on the part of the neighborhood that it was going to
be exasperated by this project, it has been looked at very carefully by the
engineering staff, t her will be work done to alleviate some of the ponding that
occurs at the bottom of the hill through the storm water project that we're doing
on River Street right now that's going to take some of that water off. Additionally
with this particular project there will be accommodations made in the storm water
and the drainage such that it's going to catch some of the run off that now is over
land flow and bring it into the storm sewer system, the gutters and storm spouts
from the building will empty into that storm sewer so in fact there should be an
improvement in the water circumstances that now exist in the area.
Kanner/There was some discussion about leaving some of the rubble in there, can you
talk to that issue a bit?
Franklin/I can't, can somebody else here? Rick.
Kanner/Your our rubble man.
Wilburn/He's our rubble man.
(All talking)
Lehman/The rubble rowser.
Rick Fosse/Much of the.
(END OF 02-53 S1DE TWO)
Fosse/There are no plans to go in and remove that rubble or alter that steep slope with the
intent that leave it in place because it's been relatively stable over the years, leave
the vegetation in place. The amount of water going over the slope in the future as
Karin pointed out will be less than it has been recently so it's our opinion that the
slope will not become destabilized by this project.
Pfab/In other words (can't hear) would probably stabilize it a lot more and just leave it
alone.
Franklin/Destabilize it, yea.
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Fosse/Right if you start monkeying with the slope you've got to back and do something
to it and.
Pfab/And again if there's not as much water coming over it some of that vegetation
probably (can't hear).
Fosse/Very well could.
Pfab/(can't hear).
Franklin/Okay, thanks Rick.
I. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE SENSITIVE AREAS
ORDINANCE TO REGULATE ISOLATED WETLANDS. (FIRST
CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item I is to consider an ordinance amending the sensitive areas ordinance to
regulated wetlands, we're going to ask you to defer that to your July 16th meeting
to enable you to have time to have your consultation with the Planning & Zoning
Commission on the 15th.
J. CONSDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM
LOW DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, RM-12, TO SENSITIVE
AREAS OVERLAY-LOW DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY RESDENTIAL, SAO-
RM-12, FOR LOT 2 OF FIRST AND ROCHESTER SUBDIVISION, PART 1, A
38,041 SQUARE FOOT PROPERTY LOCATED WEST OF FIRST AVENUE,
NORTH OF ROCHESTER STREET. (REZ02-00003) (FIRST
CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item J is first consideration of an ordinance to rezone property from RM-12 to
SAO-RM-12, this is for a lot on First Avenue which we had the public hearing on
previously.
K. CONSDER AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND SECTION 14-6K-2 OF THE ZONING
ORDINANCE, FLOOD PLAIN MANAGEMENT, IN ORDER TO REMOVE
THE REQUIREMENT FOR FiLL BEYOND THE AREA OF A STRUCTURE,
UPDATE VARIOUS DEFINITIONS AND REFERENCES, AND TO
ACKNOWLEDGE THE NEW FLOOD INSURANCE RATE MAP (FIRM).
(PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item K is pass and adopt on the flood plain management ordinance change.
L. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING AN AMENDED PRELIMINARY
PLAT AND A FINAL PLAT OF WILD PRAIRIE ESTATES, PART 4, A 35.86
ACRE, 23-LOT RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION LOCATED NORTH OF
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GOLDENROD DRIVE AND WEST OF DUCK CREEK DRIVE. (SUB02-
00oo5)
Franklin/Item L, we will also request that you defer this to your July 16th meeting, at
somewhat the last minute we've had a request from the developer to make some
changes and the ownership of the storm water detention basin and we are
discussing that at this point with them.
M. CONSDER A RESOLUTION APPROViNG AN EXTRATERRITORIAL FiNAL
PLAT OF LACiNA MEADOWS, A 79.94 ACRE, 23-LOT RESDENTIAL
SUBDIVISION LOCATED 1N JOHNSON COUNTY iN FRINGE AREA C,
WEST OF DANE ROAD AND NORTH OF OSAGE STREET SW. (SUB02-
0o007)
Franklin/Item M is to consider a resolution approving extraterritorial final plat of Lacina
Meadows, a 23-1ot subdivision located in Johnson County in Fringe Area C.
You've seen this before, it's a fairly simple, I don't think I have it, oh I do, that's
the site location, and then this is the plat, it's between Naples and Dane Road and
it's fairly simple road between the two, it meets all of our requirements of our
fringe agreement with the County. And that was recommended by a vote of 7-0
by the by.
N. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE PRELIMINARY AND FiNAL
PLAT OF HIGHLANDER DEVELOPMENT THIRD ADDITION, A
RESUBD1VISION OF HIGHLANDER FIRST ADDITION, LOTS 8-14, A 21.87
ACRE, 7-LOT SUBDIVISION LOCATED AT THE EASTERN TERMINUS OF
NORTHGATE DRIVE. (SUB01-00026)
Franklin/And then Item N the last one is to consider a resolution approving the
preliminary and final plat of Highland Development third addition. This is
Northgate Corporate Park and it is a plat that we have been obviously working on
for some time, it went through Planning & Zoning in February, it was approved by
a vote of 6-0 and all the legal papers and construction drawings have been
approved and so this is ready to be vote on for your consideration.
Pfab/Karin.
Franklin/Yes.
Pfab/Is this still part of that where there's some changes?
Franklin/Yea what they did was change it such that this road will come over and allow
connection to property to the east at some point in time and then this part of
Northgate Drive was shifted slightly.
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Pfab/Okay.
Kanner/Karin, go back to number H was there enough?
Pfab/H.
Kanner/Is there enough to kick in the super majority requirement?
Franklin/No, no.
Karmer/20 pement so that deadline is passed?
Franklin/Right, well let's see, not until your public hearing is closed but we didn't get
anything more in did we Marian?
Karr/No but until the public hearing closes.
Franklin/Right.
Kanner/What pementage are they at about?
Franklin/10.2 1 think.
Kanner/And is there one owner that owns the rest or is there anyone else considering that
you know of, protesting or not protest?
Franklin/No, I asked Shelley McCafferty about it today, she's the staffperson who's
been working on this and there hasn't been any further movement to bring in
protest petitions that we're aware of. Okay. I'm done.
Lehman/Okay thank you Karin.
Appointments
Lehman/Okay folks appointments to the Housing and Community Development
Commission.
Karmer/Well I talked to one of the applicants and she is moving out of town, Coralville.
Karr/Who is that applicant Steven for the record?
Franklin/Who is that Steven?
Lehman/Okay just a second.
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Kanner/And let me get to my.
Lehman/Yea let me get to mine too.
Vanderhoef/This is Housing and Community Development, well while your doing that I
would like to look at Jayne Sandler for the three year term.
Champion/For Housing.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Karmer/Well Lindsey.
Vanderhoef/Eaves-Johnson.
Kanner/Johnson is moving to Coralville today or the next day and so.
Vanderhoef/And so has she withdrawn her application?
Kanner/Well not officially but she realizes she's not eligible, and just to let you know
Jerry Anthony who applied for to fill out someone's term for a one year position,
he actually would prefer a three year term if we so moved in that direction, he's
happy with the other one too.
Lehman/Do you have to make reapplication if you specifically ask for a three year term
and then say you'll take an expired or vice versa?
Karr/Well I, although I appreciate the update it does call into question the application
being in writing and then.
Lehman/Yea.
Karr/I don't know that we necessarily need the application redone but perhaps something
for the record indicating an interest would be nice.
Dilkes/Yea I think we need to hear something from the applicant if they're changing their
application.
Franklin/We could contact them.
Kanner/No, no, it's Lindsey.
Lehman/Lindsey is the one that's moving.
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Champion/Well I think it's fine if we just end approve him for the one year and then we
have to do one of them anyway.
Vanderhoef/Yea, do it.
Kanner/I think it works I think all three would be good candidates, I'm just saying that it
seems it might be a little harder to fill a three year position and if he's willing to
do that, he's in Urban study, he didn't realize the other one was open and I'm sure
he would come back and write something if we said would you give us some
indication so I would throw that out to the Council.
Kart/Even an e-mail or something if that works for him he wouldn't have to come back
in we accept e-mail's too.
Kanner/And so I think it would be easier to get someone then for the one year term and
so ! recommend all three for the three year terms contingent on Jerry Anthony.
Vanderhoef/Since Nick Klenske put his application for two different Commission's I
would prefer to nominate Nick for the Human Right's Commission.
Champion/Yea I agree with you.
Wilburn/That's work done.
Karmer/Well don't we have an incumbent for Human Rights Mo? Mo Howe has been
on Human Rights.
Vanderhoef/But it's been a while, and I think this, since he put an application for this and
this has a lot of legal to it and he's headed to law school and I have visited with
him I think this would be a real good place for him and then it gives him a little
more flexibility on his time while he's a student so.
Kanner/He's happy with either one, I also talked to him last night. It just seems if we got
four people applying for one position and we've got four other positions where
we're short one, we might as well go with Nick and then we have some other
good candidates for Human Rights.
Lehman/I think one of the people for Human Rights Commission is going to reapply for
Housing and Community Development.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Lehman/But we have to wait to get that application.
Vanderhoef/We have to readvertise anyway for Housing and Community Development.
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Lehman/Right.
Vanderhoef/And I spoke with one of these people and he's going to apply for HCDC and
he would be a very good candidate.
Champion/Well I (can't hear) Human Rights, I like that, or Nick.
Lehman/Do we have four that would support Nick for Human Rights?
O'Donnell/Yes.
Wilburn/Yes.
Lehman/All right, let me write that down. Now we're back to Housing and Community
Development.
Vanderhoeff And Jayne Sandler would be fine for the three year term.
O'Donnell/I'm fine with that.
??Wilburn/Sure.
Champion/Me too.
Lehman/Just a minute. Okay we have Jayne, do we have four of us supporting Jayne for
a th/'ee year term?
O'Dormell/Yes.
Lehman/Okay, so Jayne, and we'll have to readvertise for.
Vanderhoef/The three year terms.
Kanner/Well actually I recommend Jerry Anthony contingent on his approval for the
three year term.
Lehman/I don't know that we can, can we do that?
Karr/Well he's applied for the Commission already, it's simply an adjustment for the
term and I guess that would be up to Eleanor and you folks.
Dilkes/I think you, somebody should contact him, if your interested in him, somebody
should contact him and get him to e-mail us that he's interested in a three year
term.
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Kanner/I can do that yea, and i£he prefers not then just keep him at the one year.
Champion/Yea good.
Vanderhoef/And we still have three, so we're going to be readvertising anyway.
Karr/You might have.
Karmer/No, not if, yea look for the three year.
Kan'/You would have at least one.
Vanderhoef/We would still have one opening.
Lehman/All right so we have agreed on Jayne Sandier and Jerry Anthony for the three
year.
Vanderhoef/If Jerry wants it.
Lehman/And you'll confirm that with him tomorrow.
Karmer/Yea I'll have him e-mail or contact in writing the Clerk's office.
Lehman/And we'll readvertise for the unexpired term and one three year. Is that correct?
Champion/That's right.
Vanderhoef/And then we need to appoint for the County Jail.
Lehman/I don't think we can talk about that until tomorrow night, it's not on our agenda.
Vanderhoef/Oh okay, excuse me.
Agenda Items
Lehman/Okay reviewing Agenda Items.
Atkins/Ernie I've got HIS and Fire Staff here if you have building code stuff, they're
anxiously awaiting for you.
Lehman/You know what Steve it would be helpful if we knew, are there significant
changes taking place with the adoption of these new codes?
Atkins/And the question is significant.
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Lehman/Right that's it.
Atkins/There goes Tim, he's about to take care of that for you.
Champion/I want to know about that fire place business, I didn't understand that because
I.
Lehman/He can tell us.
Tim Hennes/Well I'll have Roger and Andy speak to that.
ITEM NO. 7. PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDiNANCE AMENDING SECTION 14,
CHAPTER 5, ARTICLE A, BUILDING CODE, BY ADOPTING THE
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE, 2000 EDITION, AND THE
INTERNATIONAL RESIDENTIAL BUILDING CODE, INCLUDiNG
APPENDIX F RADON CONTROL METHODS, 2000 EDITION, PUBLISHED
iN COOPERATION WITH THE iNTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF
BUILDiNG OFFICIALS, BUILDING OFFICIALS AND CODE
ADMINISTRATORS iNTERNATIONAL, iNC., AND THE SOUTHERN
BUILDiNG CODE CONGRESS iNTERNATIONAL, iN., AND PROVIDiNG
FOR CERTAiN AMENDMENTS THEREOF; TO PROVIDE FOR THE
PROTECTION OF THE HEALTH, WELFARE, AND SAFETY OF THE
CITIZENS OF IOWA CITY, IOWA.
Tim Hennes/As far as the building code, there was a memo addressed to you a while
back addressing those significant changes. The one thing that I failed to mention
in that that was in discussion along the whole way with everybody present was the
requirement to require Radon Medigation in a home, it's preparing for it for future
installation of a vent fan, it's becoming a bigger issue and it is addressed in the
Appendix of the Code and we are asking that that be adopted. Basically you, it's a
PVC pipe that extends up to this upgrade on up through the roof, in the future if a
fan needs to be put in to exhaust it, it can be put in very easily.
Champion/Your talking about new construction.
Hennes/New construction only, yes.
Lehman/Do we have a radar, radar, a Radon problem?
Hermes/Yea the State of Iowa is.
Lehman/How about Iowa City?
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Hermes/Iowa City, to be quite honest I don't know about any tests that have been done in
Iowa City.
Lehman/Why would we do something like that unless we have a problem?
Hermes/There are some builders out there are being proactive with it and putting them in.
Lehman/I don't question that, but I mean if we don't have a problem why would it
require it to be put in? Maybe we have a problem, I don't know.
Hennes/The State of Iowa is a very high potential for Radon, some reports you read it's
the second leading cause of lung disease, as far as medical results, the chemistry
of it, what it does, I don't know.
Lehman/Do we do Radon tests? I mean we have houses in this town that are 100 years
old, and we have houses that are just opening the front door today.
Hennes/Right.
Lehman/If we don't have a Radon problem it bothers me to require something that
doesn't address the problem.
Vanderhoef/Tell me what the cost might be to put it in new construction?
O'Dormell/Good question.
Hermes/To take it too for new, we're talking about a new construction only.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Hennes/I would say at the most $100.00. But it sure would save a lot if you had to put it
in later.
Pfab/I have a question, I missed this one when I went through it. When, how does it
when you get to the level at which the end of the pipe is, what is there?
Hennes/You have your concrete floor and this pipe extends through that concrete into the
four inch sub base and the Radon evidently comes up through the ground, collects
in that sub base and then it's just vented out through the roof.
Pfab/And so in other words it just, it doesn't necessarily go into the ground, just above
the ground.
Hennes/It's coming from the ground, it's coming up through the ground into the sub
base.
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Pfab/In other words your picking it all up underneath the floor before it works (can't
hear).
Hermes/Exactly, before it works through the cracks and around the seams of the pipe and
all of that.
Pfab/I think, we hate to see, hate to keep adding more things to the Code but I think it's a
relatively.
Doug Boothroy/And wasn't this also brought by the Home Builder's?
Hennes/Yea I don't disagree with adding more things to the Code but it was talked about
at the Board of Appeals to whether we should go this far or not, the Home
Builder's were in support of it.
Lehman/Go for it.
Hennes/The Board was in support of it.
Lehman/The Board of Appeals is in favor of it, your in favor of it, it's got to be good.
Vanderhoef/And $100.00.
Hermes/And it doesn't add that much to the cost of the house.
Vanderhoef/At new construction and trying to retrofit a house that has a problem is.
(All talking)
Lehman/What else (can't hear).
Hermes/I don't have a copy of that memo in front of me.
Lehman/No just, I guess that really isn't.
Hennes/I guess the biggest change is we're going to an International Code, we've got
three code groups coming together to form one which has been, that's been
needed throughout the country forever. Design professionals have been wanting
it, it's finally here, so that's probably the biggest change, and probably the biggest
change and probably the thing that's taken so long is to get to it because they're
just evolving. Another issue is the Universal Design, in residential structures that
use public funds, and I want to emphasize that it's residential structures that use
public funds, it's not the infrastructure or anything like that, it's the actual house
itself to use as public funds to assist the building of it and those will be required to
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be Universally designed. Which again that should not be that cost effective to a
house, your talking about four things, location of outlets and switches, backing for
future grab bars and tubs and showers and the stools. Your talking about zero step
entrance at least one of those which really should be no cost at the design phase.
And the fourth one was.
Boothroy/Wider doors.
Hennes/Wider doors, at least 32 inch clear wide door, that would probably be the most
costly one, and at the time of new construction, a 34 inch versus a 26 door or 30
inch door is peanuts really. And we're talking about just the ground floor, and so
it's not throughout the whole house.
Champion/Wider hallways.
Hennes/Hallways stay, will stay the same, at least the minimum 36 inches.
Lehman/But you can't turn (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/ You back up.
Hermes/I think it's a concept that would be catching on, the Home Builder's are getting
on board with it, they're going to be taking some proactive steps and looking into
it further too and so I think it will be something that's coming.
Lehman/Okay.
O'Doimell/What one was that now?
Hermes/The Universal Design issue and it's specific to single family.
Champion/With public funds right?
Hennes/Publicly funded only, correct.
Kanner/Tim.
Pfab/It's probably something that's going to move over into the ones that are not public
funded too eventually.
Hermes/(can't hear).
Karmer/I think you mentioned in your memo are good, tearing down in a Historic or
Conservation district you have to get a demo for it, that's new.
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Champion/You've always had to.
Hennes/What's new to that one is the language that portions of houses that are located,
getting rid of front porches or architectural features from a historic significant
house is going to require a demolition permit.
Karmer/And you worked out the issue of the licensing for sprinkler and fire alarm
installers?
Hennes/Yes, we've had a number of meetings with both the, well the electricians from
the city, fire sprinkler installers, fire alarm installers, and moving toward the
licensing of these trades as we do with plumbers and electricians now.
Pfab/And it's burglary also?
Hennes/We're not getting into the burglar, it's just fire alarms and sprinklers.
Vanderhoef/Safety.
Hennes/Safety yes.
O'Donnell/What was the answer on that chimney thing?
Champion/We haven't had that.
Lehman/We haven't had the fire people up here yet.
O'Donnell/Okay.
Kanner/Then here's a couple small ones I noticed. Why is the headroom going from 7.6
to 7 feet and why is the Egress windows going smaller from 5.7 square feet to
5.07
Hennes/Yea, the headroom again that's coming from the three code groups getting
together, you may have two of the three code groups that have always had 7 foot
headroom, and the one that we were under, the Uniform Building Code had 7.6,
well they get together and they've had no significant problems with 7 foot
headroom, why not allow it to be reduced to 7 foot. The Egress windows, they
must have found that, that 5.0 is just for the new, the Egress windows on the
ground floor, it's not for the second and third floor, it's only for the ground floor,
and again it must just be through the evolution of the code to where it was found
that it was a five foot square window would be, significant or suffice for escape
and rescue.
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Vanderhoef/If you've seen the retrofit of those windows in houses where they have cut
away and made window wells those are really quite large, I mean you and I can
get out at the same time easily.
O'Donnell/That wouldn't be very big.
Pfab/If I could inject a little bit.
O'Donnell/I'd like to hear more about that later.
Vanderhoef/Oh all right, we can do.
(All talking)
Champion/How about Mike and Steve, can you get out at the same time?
Vanderhoef/Yes.
O'Donnell/IfI was going to try it with anybody it's going to be you.
Lehman/lrvin.
Pfab/IfI can inject just a little bit of humor I think they're making it smaller to keep the
burglars out.
O'Donnell/I'll bet you (can't hear).
Lehman/Your right Irvin that was a little bit.
Kanner/Then my final things were, I noticed that the Board of Appeals did not want to
implement retrofitting certain residences for sprinkler systems.
Hermes/Fraternities and Sororities yes.
Kanner/You had recommended that in and they voted against.
Hermes/I'll let the fire department speak on that.
Kanner/That's a fire department one.
Hermes/If that's okay.
Lehman/Anything else for Tim?
O'Donnell/Thank you.
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Lehman/Thank you.
Hennes/See you tomorrow night.
O'Donnell/I'll bet you that Chinese basketball player would really hate that 7 foot
clearance, until he learns to duck.
Vanderhoef/He gets to live on the first floor, not the attic floor.
O'Donnell/He's 7'5' isn't he?
Champion/Oh yea.
ITEM NO. 8. PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDINANCE AMENDING TITLE 7,
CHAPTER 1, FIRE PREVENTION AND PROTECTION, ADOPTING THE
2000 EDITION OF THE INTERNATIONAL FIRE CODE, REGULATING AND
GOVERNING THE SAFEGUARDING OF LIFE AND PROPERTY FROM
FIRE AND EXPLOSION HAZARDS ARISING FROM THE STORAGE,
HANDLING AND USE OF HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES, MATERIALS AND
DEVICES, AND FROM CONDITIONS HAZARDOUS TO LIFE OR
PROPERTY IN THE OCCUPANCY OF BUILDING AND PREMISES IN THE
CITY OF IOWA CITY; PROVIDING FOR ISSUANCE OF PERMITS FOR
HAZARDOUS USES OR OPERATIONS; REPEALING ORDINANCE NO. 99-
3869 OF THE IOWA CITY CODE AND ALL OTHER ORDINANCES AND
PARTS OF THE ORDINANCES IN CONFLICT THEREWITH.
Roger Jensen/Good evening.
O'Donnell/Good evening.
Jensen/Too many, should we start there?
Lehman/Please.
Jensen/We're interested in seeing the fire code adopted, the 2000 addition of the
International Fire Code with one exception, that would be Section 5 which we
think is a bit regressive. It was about in 1997 the City of Iowa City passed a very
aggressive open burning ordinance that prohibited use of open burning. And at
that time your fire department was responding to between 200 and 300 complaint
calls a year, instances where neighbors were pitted against neighbors for
complaints of open burning. We thought then and we think today that that's a
poor use of your emergency services personnel and apparatus. And we believe
that permitting the use of these outdoor portable fireplaces would take us back to
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that time where neighbors would choose to burn and the next door neighbor
wouldn't like it and would be opposed to the odors and so forth and would be.
Champion/I don't know, what is it though? Is it a fire place?
Jensen/(Can't hear) head fireplace.
Lehman/Yea, ceramic.
Vanderhoef/Very nice, Weber makes a similar outdoor, what they call an outdoor
fireplace and they're wonderful.
O'Dormell/I like.
Jensen/I actually have a photograph I think.
Vanderhoef/You bum either wood or.
Lehman/Wood mainly.
Vanderhoef/Charcoal in them and it's a great thing.
Jensen/Chiminea is one of the brands, and from their web site they have their three most
popular brands, one of them is the ceramic addition, another is a metal
encasement, it has a screen around it but no chimney or no flue??? and the third
one is actually just an open pit. And that pit just contains the wood and but no
screen or chimney or anything like that.
O'Donnell/Doesn't my barbecue grill do that too though? And I can put Hickory, I can
put whatever I want for the flavoring. I just you know if we're going to enact
some type of enforcement against this, I mean how do we address Tiki Torches,
barbecue grills, how do we do that?
Jensen/Well the original ordinance differentiated recreational fires from cooking fires,
and chose to stay away from cooking fires.
O'Donnell/But can I cook on this Chiminea?
Jensen/Actually there is one that you can, there is one model that comes, it's made for
that.
Champion/Why do you want one of these things?
Pfab/Because they're selling them.
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O'Donnell/They're neat, if you've ever seen one you can put one on your new porch.
Champion/I'd burn my 100 year old house down just like that.
Jensen/We also believe it would become an appliance that would be used for getting rid
of yard debris and that sort of thing.
Champion/Okay.
Pfab/It would be awful hard to put yard debris in a (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/Don't we have an ordinance that specifically says that you can't burn that?
Jensen/No actually we do and it has been the fire department's position.
Vanderhoef/And so that's covered.
Jensen/It's been our position that these devices are, would be in violation of the existing
ordinance.
Lehman/But camp fire is not is that correct?
Jensen/That's right.
Lehman/We can have a camp fire but we can't put the fire inside this little.
Vanderhoef/A safe.
Jensen/But the difference is that those are regulated in terms of approving their use and
location.
Lehman/Oh really, I can't just have a camp fire for my kids to roast wieners.
Jensen/Yes, that's correct, that's correct.
Lehman/You'd come out and see me if I did wouldn't you?
Jensen/Yea. But there's quite a difference in temps of approving the appliance and it's
location in terms of distance to nearest building, to trees to things that will bum.
O'Donnell/But you can put down charcoal on your yard, you make a pit, put charcoal,
put Hickory on there and you can cook on that.
Lehman/I don't know if you can.
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O'Donnell/Oh yes you can, you can use charcoal anywhere.
Lehman/Well let me ask you this, realistically because I suspect this isn't going to go
anywhere but how, tell me how much of an enforcement issue is this going to be?
My guess is that folks who have these things aren't going to tell anybody and
folks who go visiting or they have a party and they have one of these aren't going
to tell anybody. It seems to me that it's an impossible enforcement issue.
Jensen/Well enforcement of course would come with the complaints.
Lehman/Right, but nobody, I shouldn't say nobody, my suspicion is very few folks are
going to complain about the thing.
Champion/Well if somebody's putting trash in it your probably going to get some
complaints.
O'Donnell/You can't get a whole lot of trash in those.
(Ail talking)
Vanderhoef/Tell me do you have any statistics on anywhere where fires have been started
by these when they're being properly used?
Jensen/I did check with NFPA, it's a national recording organization and the appliances
are just so new they don't have data yet.
Vanderhoef/Then I'm in favor of allowing them until we see any statistics that.
Lehman/Except I'm sure if I lived in an apartment house I wouldn't want the guy next
door to be using one on his patio.
O'Donnell/Ernie if you've seen them they're meant for your porch or
Lehman/I know what they are.
O'Donnell/They're not meant to be in an apartment Ernie.
Lehman/They are used on wooden porches and whatever, people that have them.
O'Donnell/So is a barbecue grill.
Lehman/Right.
O'Donnell/I mean, give me a break on this.
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Pfab/I, Dee you mentioned, but I think it's not the idea of fires, I think it's the problem
that your stating is it drives complaints or originates complaints within.
Jensen/Clearly it would, and there's a big difference between this appliance and a
fireplace for example, in the winter time a fireplace when the air is cool and the
drafts are such that products of combustion immediately go up into the
atmosphere, where as in the summer time where the air is heavy and these things
don't even have chimney's, many of them, and so the by-products are going to be
distributed right at grade level and so the air currents are going to carry them right
into your neighbors home where the windows are more likely to be open.
Lehman/Could I have a fireplace in my back yard?
Jensen/Yes.
Lehman/And I could burn that anytime?
Jensen/We get to approve it, it's location, so we know it's going to be far enough away,
yes.
O'Dormell/I don't (can't hear) this.
Pfab/Maybe I'm a little bit more sensitive of this because of the neighborhood task force
but what they're saying is you, if you keep continuing these services the fire
department provides eventually there's a cost to that and I think that's really what
your saying is you don't mind going on a fire alarm you just don't want to go put
out a fire between a user and a neighbor.
Jensen/Between two neighbors.
O'Donnell/Are these being anywhere else in the County?
Jensen/Actually they are in the Des Moines and also Cedar Rapids due to DNR
regulations for pollution of the air.
Pfab/I would, your saying you want the code to say.
Vanderhoef/They don't have air quality.
Jensen/We don't have the same, our requirements in Iowa City as we do in the CR metro
area or Des Moines.
O'Dormell/We're not set up the same combustion.
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Lehman/We're going to have this discussion tomorrow night but my suspicion is we
probably are not going to adopt that part of it.
Pfab/I.
Champion/I don't know, I'm wondering about those sparks flying out of my house.
Pfab/I would certainly be supportive of adopting this.
Lehman/Is there other things about the fire code that are?
Jensen/There was a question about Fraternities and Sororities.
Vanderhoef/Sprinklers.
Kanner/Yea it's, in similar with lines with what Irvin was saying the cost benefit analysis
and so that's a lot of what we're doing is the cost of inspecting for these little
chimney outdoor things going to be greater than a potential fire down the road.
Lehman/We don't inspect for them.
Kanner/Well right, well I mean that's for us to decide, if we don't have it in the
ordinance then there's not that cost and then there's the possible risk for a greater
fire, that's.
Lehman/We don't inspect for them anyway, it's only on a complaint basis.
Champion/Inspect for what?
Lehman/The little chimney, the little whatever stove.
O'Donnell/Chiminea's.
Lehman/Chiminea's.
Kanner/Right so that's part of the equation is will we even inspect?
Lehman/No, no.
Kanner/No, on a complaint basis even but I'm leading up to the second point that along
with what Irvin said and you said in your strategic plan, which I appreciate by the
way the strategic plan that you folks came out with. We're going to deal with that
on the 15th.
Atkins/Hopefully.
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Kanner/Hopefully, you do talk about funding, where are the funds going to come for
these things. And is it down the road where the fire department comes out and it
costs so much money and you have to have so many people and are we going to
try to do more preventive things, and this sprinkler system which was voted down
by the Board of Appeals is quite pricey but your figuring it's going to save us
more money in the long run by preventing fire and I was wondering if you could
make more of a case for that to see if we want to put that back in.
Jensen/We intend to actually, that issue is not dead, the Board of Appeals simply wanted
more time to consider and they ask that we go and it was, actually it was a poor
time of year to contact the fraternal organizations and their Boards and so this fall
and this winter we will entertain more discussion and hopefully bring it back
before you again.
Champion/At what capacity are sprinkler systems required in a new residential structure?
Are they ever?
Jensen/Oh certainly, and a new fraternity built today would be.
Champion/Would have.
Lehman/Is a 12 plex where you start? Or 8.
Jensen/Three stories, three occupied levels, 16 units or more.
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/But you also wanted it for new single and doubles, duplexes which Board of
Appeals also at this time said no we don't want that.
Champion/Well it's not like the expense of putting it in, they're very, very expensive, but
also the inspection of them every year is also very expensive and so I don't know
if you could regain that in a duplex. I mean you'd have trouble, you'd have to
charge your tenants a tremendous mount of rent to pay for a sprinkler system and
annual inspection.
O'Doimell/It's about $200.00 a year isn't it?
Champion/The inspection is $200.00 a year, it might have been $250.00, I just had mine
done.
O'Donnell/Commercial probably.
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Pfab/But does that, the type of construction have anything to do with over three stories or
over (can't hear)?
(Can't hear).
Pfab/Is there any? If it's duplex it's.
Jensen/If it's a duplex, it's just two units.
Pfab/Yea but is it required then?
Jensen/No. It would be based on square footage, right.
Kanner/Thank you.
Lehman/Any other questions fellows and ladies?
Jensen/So in conclusion we're encouraging that you pass those International Codes and
the amendments with the exception of Section 5 of the International Fire Code.
Champion/Okay thank you.
O'Donnell/Did you say you have a picture of that Chiminea?
Jensen/I do I'll get it to you.
O'Donnell/Okay.
Karmer/Although Steve did have a beautiful rendition of it.
Vanderhoef/He drew a picture.
Champion/Could you paint it in color?
Jensen/Oh here it is, 1 found it.
Lehman/Is it in color? It is good.
O'Donnell/Now everyone that I've seen has got a screen across the top, evidently some
don't.
Lehman/I don't think all of them do.
Dilkes/So are you all clear that the ordinances as drafted that came out of the Board of
Appeals recommendation?
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Champion/Yes.
Lehman/We would have to change the recommendation tomorrow night to include the
prohibition of these little fellows.
O'Donnell/Which number is that?
Lehman/I don't know.
Kanner/And we're voting on it after the hearing?
Lehman/Yea.
Karr/No, it's public hearing only.
Lehman/(can't hear).
Atkins/No, your not voting on this one.
O'Donnell/What number is it?
Karr/Eight.
Kanner/The 15th.
Atkins/The 15th is first so.
Jensen/Number 8, Item Number 8.
Karr/16th is the actual.
Champion/That isn't an actual fire pit there, this is the Chiminea.
Dilkes/We're just doing the public hearing tomorrow too.
Champion/That's good I'm going to need a while to think about this.
O'Donnell/We can go out and look at one (can't hear).
Lehman/Oh, we've even got prices on these guys. The cute one is $199.99.
Champion/Do you think I could put one in my.
Vanderhoeff Cute one.
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O'Donnell/You know that's an interesting question too what do you do with all these
people that have already purchased it?
Lehman/Fine them.
Champion/No they'd be grandfathered in.
Vanderhoef/Well we'll go quick buy one ha.
O'Donnell/I'm going to run out tomorrow.
Lehman/Okay guys, Council time anybody.
Dilkes/Oh can I? I want to mention a couple things on the liquor license renewals. Just
for you information, because Vito's is on for renewal I just wanted to let you
know that you remember that the administrative law judge made a proposed
decision to the administrator of the Alcohol Beverage Division that there be a
suspension and a fine, that recent decision. The administrator has just issued a
decision saying that he intends to review that, within 30 days it becomes
automatic unless he, one of the parties appeals or he decides to review, he has
decided to review so that decision will, I mean we'll have to wait a while for that
decision. And then as you also know there's, we've got pending criminal charges
that may be followed up by civil sanctions. I'm saying all this just to inform you,
I'm not suggesting that you do the Police Chief, and the County Attorney have
recommended approval of Vito's renewal and any deferral would not stop them
from operating they are allowed to continue to operate despite a delay in a
renewal. So I'm just giving that to you for informational purposes.
Champion/Can we defer it then?
Dilkes/No I'm not suggesting that you defer, I just wanted you to have that information
because you know I think there will be press reports about it. And then secondly
you got a letter from Pat White on the Airliner's renewal raising the issue of their
corporate name. We have discussed this with the state, the state is not concerned
about this, they will make sure all the paperwork is in order when they get their
recommendation.
Kanner/And also are they up to date on their payments? There was a thing about concern
about.
Dilkes/The state's computer records did not show that there was any outstanding
payment due.
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Karr/Just to clarify that, that was in reference to a new corporation, not the existing one,
so that good standing was not the one before you tomorrow night, that's another
corporation, there were two corporations named.
Kanner/It wasn't the Airliner?
Dilkes/I think the bottom line is that the state is concerned and I think the statute is
concerned with the moral character "moral character" of the individuals who are
running the corporation and the state will take of the naming and the paperwork
when it gets to them, so they weren't concerned about the issues.
Lehman/All right it's okay with the state.
Wilbum/I will have a conflict of interest, I will not be participating in the public hearing
on item number 6, or the resolution number 21, I have a conflict with an item
involving a CDBG decisions to be being employed by a CDBG funding agency. I
also have a conflict with item number 20 because I'm employed by one of the
recipient agencies of Aid to Agency funds.
Kanner/What's number 6?
Vanderhoef/6, 20 and 21 is that what your saying?
Wilburn/20 and 21. Item six is a public hearing on an allocation that we call an
amendment that the CDBG HCDC Commission recommends.
Kanner/Okay thanks. Council Time.
Lehman/Yes.
Council Time
Kanner/I have one thing, we got a letter in our packet about talking about height limits
for buildings downtown in our correspondence and I was wondering if we could
talk about that down the road a bit.
Champion/Well I'm not interested.
Lehman/Well are there restrictions? Are there height restrictions?
Champion/Yes.
Atkins/Yes.
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Vanderhoef/Yes.
Lehman/We do have height restrictions downtown?
Kanner/What are they Steve?
Atkins/It's, explain to me how it works, it has a floor area ratio.
Dilkes/There's a ratio to.
Atkins/Which divide something by something, for example the height limitation on the
Moen project was determined because of the zoning question, yea by formula.
And the question, in fact I got the question Friday filling in for Emie on the radio
program someone called about seeing many of the properties downtown knocked
down and high rises in effect put up. And it's clearly a zoning question, I talked
to our planning staff about it, I did, I would remind you that we are doing Historic
Preservation's survey which will be an item for you probably sometime in the fall
before we can get around to getting something to you. Whereby your going to
have to make some decisions about the character of downtown and at least my
impression from many of you is that you want to preserve many of those older
buildings. Well then I think that's going to require some zoning considerations in
the CB-10.
Lehman/Will this be part of the discussion of the Historic?
Atkins/I don't know that, I want to, Steve and I talked about it just briefly the other day
and I think it's a legitimate concern it's sort of determining what the character of
downtown is going to be.
Champion/Well it affect if we go for Historic District for downtown, you'll have to build
a conforming building that would sit, so it will, parts of downtown that can be
designated historic well the height will be affected. On the outskirts of the area
where it's not historic or does not qualify then.
Atkins/This is a pretty simple, why don't I just knock out a short memo to you, it's a
pretty simple item, I'll get a memo to you and then you can decide what you want
to do with it.
Lehman/I guess there is a maximum irregardless of the formula.
Kanner/And also I think it was brought to our attention because there's some potential of
combining of lots together, there's some recent purchases and then you can really
get even taller so if you can (can't hear) that memo some of the potential.
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Atkins/I hear you.
Kanner/Developments and what some of the heights are. I don't know how I stand on
this either.
Champion/No, no, Steve I see what your saying.
Atkins/We'll put something together for you and then you can think about it.
Champion/I see what your saying, I didn't think about that, that would make a difference.
Vanderhoef/I've already heard complaints about the new (can't hear).
(All talking)
Vanderhoef/That's covering up our beautiful buildings.
Atkins/CB-10 zone you can cover the whole lot.
Champion/The only thing I want to bring up I think if we're going to do it, I mean I
brought it up once at Council Time and there seems to be people who are
interested and I think if we're going to do it we need to get it on the agenda soon,
that is setting a day to open First Avenue.
Lehman/May I suggest that we address that issue closer to fall, that's an issue that can be
addressed and done. If we decided tomorrow night to open First Avenue we could
do it the next morning.
Champion/Oh I see.
Lehman/Let's not make liars out of ourselves by saying we're going to open, do
something we said we wouldn't do. If the weather is right this issue will never
come up.
Champion/Your right, okay, all right, I agree.
Lehman/Believe me it wasn't my idea, it was one 0fthe staff f01ks, said why would you
do that.
Champion/No I agree.
Lehman/Now because then we will say hey we lied to you anyway.
Champion/Because it's going to be done anyway.
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Lehman/Because it should be done anyway it's not an issue, but if, I will absolutely agree
that if there's a problem in completion Scott Boulevard is an issue we're going to
have to address.
O'Donnell/Just quickly to tell you and this is going to be in the paper tomorrow so
everybody should be aware of it, in the new Hickory Heights subdivision up there
that was damaged vandalism Sunday night to the tone of about $15,000 to
$16,000, we had equipment that was, hydraulic lines cut and just bringing it to
your attention, it will be in the paper tomorrow.
Kanner/And is Scott Road on schedule for completion? November we were told,
November 1.
Atkins/I'm not going to (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/(can't hear).
Lehman/Anything else Council Time? All right guys.
Adjourned 8:35.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of July 1, 2002.