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Home My WebLink About2007-01-16 Transcription January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 1 January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session 8:00 A.M. Council: Bailey, Champion, Correia, Elliott, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn Staff: Atkins, Helling, Rocca, Hargadine, Karr, Fosse, Cohn, Fowler, Knoche, Tharp, Davidson, Franklin, Lewis, Trueblood, O'Malley, Mansfield Tapes: 07-05, Sides I and 2; 07-06, Sides I and 2; 07-07, Sides I and 2; 07-08, Sides I and 2; 07-09, Sides I and 2 PARKING: Wilburn! Good morning everyone, and a cold one it is. I think the ideas for this to be a working lunch today, we'll just kind of keep plugging ahead. All right? And then we can meet Regenia's goal of not staying here... Atkins/ Okay, just a couple heads up. We will be working from the budget book. Projects will be presented in the same order substantially that they're in the book. So, as you're moving through them... what we'd like to do is present each project, take the time, discuss it, debate it, and there appears to be a strong consensus that it's a project that does not have significant support, record it and we'll come back to it, figure out if that's something that you wish to change. In your budget book there are.. .you're familiar with this chart. That is just simply a summary of our Capital projects, dollar summary. Oops.. .this is for Fiscal 08. Again, nothing that you have to take any action on immediately. It'sjust done for your information purposes. We do plan a working lunch, take a good morning break, we'll bring lunch in, get a bite to eat and we'd like to get back to work.. .and [ really think that's about it. We're going to go through the Capital projects, the recurring projects, those that are scheduled for completion in 07, and then we'll go through the unfunded list. Again, substantially as you have it in your budget book. Are there any questions? Wilburn/ Rick, I think you're first up. F osse/ Jump back to the front end here.. . urn, as Steve mentioned, what our goals are for today are three-fold. First is to familiarize you with the projects, and then the second then is to answer your questions the best we can today, and then the third is to get your input and desires on the projects. So, those are the three things that we want to get out of it. We've got three documents that we're going to work from today. He first one Steve mentioned is the budget book and we're going to stick right to the order that's in there, and then the PowerPoint is simply a visual aid to provide some pictures to go along with what's in the budget book and I've given you a copy of the PowerPoint in case that's the way you want to keep notes. You can write things next to it on that, and then the third document is another handout, and that is simply to orient you within the City on the location of projects. So there's a small project map for each of the projects there. So with that, let me just give you a preview of where we're headed this morning. We're going to go through it by category of project. You're going to have Parking; Landfill; Airport; Streets, Bridges, Traffic, Engineering and Public Utilities; Parks and Recreation - and during each of these, we'll have a number of different people coming up and speaking to you about the projects. Public Safety; Miscellaneous Other Projects - that really didn't This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 2 have a category to fall into; and Reoccurring Projects - those that we do annually. We'll talk more about why we do those in that format later. And then what... we'll talk just briefly about projects that are scheduled for completion in 07 because it's sometimes good to have an idea of what's in the shoot before we start talking about what are. . . going to be planning in the future. We'll spend as much, or as little time, on this section as you'd like, and then we're going to wrap up with some questions and discussion, and please, ask questions along the way. What we'd like to do, though, is to reserve the discussion as far as the relative worth and priorities of projects until the end, and then also, if you would like to bring up any of the projects that are on the unfunded list, we could do that, as well... prepared to do that. So, any questions before we kick off? That's it? Okay. Steve's already given you just a little background there and we'll let Joe get started in Parking. Elevator VOlITades: Fowler/ Am I supposed to do anything with these slides? (laughter) Because I can't. Start off first of all on our parking projects. The first one is our elevator upgrades. This is in the Capitol and Dubuque Street parking facilities. These elevators are original to the buildings when they were built. Both opened approximately 1980,1981. We took partial occupancy of Capitol Street, and then Capitol and Dubuque were both accepted the same year. Capitol Street is an old, urn, electric controlled elevator, and Dubuque is a hydraulic elevator that was built for four floors and then expanded to six when we put the expansion on the facility. Both of these have held up well, considering that they're almost, they'll be almost thirty years old by the time they're replaced. The cars have had a lot of wear. The control equipment is very much outdated, and we would like to go ahead and do the upgrade and replacement of these before we have a failure. If we end up with a failure in one of these facilities, as far as one elevator goes down and Dubuque Street, you've got the two different ends so we want to not end up in a position where we'd end up with an elevator down for an extended time while we go through a replacement. We'd like to schedule it and be able to put it in during our down time, rather than during a high occupancy time. Same in Capitol. The increased usage that we're having, again, we'd like to be able to coordinate our down time when the facility is not as busy. So.. .that's the reason we have these in. They're old, they're outdated, and just ready for replacement after about 30 years. Correia! How these.. .so you're spacing them out in 09 and 11, is that... Fowler/ Yes, uh-huh. Correia! That seems kind offar out, if you're seeing that they... Fowler/ We haven't had any major problems yet. What we're anticipating is to get ahead of the curve and replace them before we do have. Elliott! When you say upgrades, what does that include? Everything that goes in the vertical tunnel? Cables, cars.. . okay. Fowler/ Everything. Vh-huh, all new controls. O'Donnell/ What's a life span, Joe, normally? This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 3 Fowler! You know, I don't know, Mike. I think the hydraulics probably have a little bit longer life span, that's why we have Dubuque Street out in II, but basically, our elevator controls for the Capitol Street are probably half the size ofthis bottom part, where in Tower Place they fit in a closet. So, you know, our technology is way behind. O'Donnell! Do we have them inspected like yearly? Fowler! Yes, they're inspected yearly. We have regular maintenance that's done and then we have to do the State inspection also, yes. Elliott! And this will include communication devices for emergency... Fowler! Yes. Elliott! ... within.. .good. Garage Access Controls (CapitoL Dubuque & Tower Place): Fowler! Urn, the second one is to begin replacing our control equipment, which is the ticket spitters, the card readers, the cash registers. This equipment at the entrances, a lot of it is still the original equipment when the facilities opened. We've kind of pieced them together and kept them going, but one of the main pushes to update this equipment is to be able to go to the credit card that has long been a wish by Council to go to a credit card system. With the equipment that we currently have, we cannot put that technology to work. So, we would begin by replacing the equipment in Capitol Street, and then move to the other facilities. We'd take the Capitol Street equipment and use it as spare parts for the other facilities, and then we'd be able to go ahead and complete it. The most, the biggest expense would be in the first year, which would be the operating equipment, the computer equipment that controls everything. So, that's the reason that 08 looks like a larger number than 09, where we're replacing two facilities. Champion! And that would include credit cards, debit cards? Fowler! Yes, yes. Champion! That's great! Fowler! Yes. Correia! Actually, 08 isn't a larger number. Fowler! Well, I meant since that's one facility in 08, and then two facilities in 09. Correia! Got it, got it! Fowler! Sorry, I didn't... Vanderhoef! Will it be operational at the end of each of these budget, at the end of 08, what is the public going to see? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 4 Fowler/ They would see the credit card usage in the Capitol Street, and then 09, we'd be able to expand that into the other facilities. Bailey/ Why didn't we have credit card machines when we built Tower Place? Were they just, J mean, that's not that old. Fowler! We.. .continued the technology that we had in the other facilities to make it easier to go back and forth between equipment, and have less spare parts. Garage Maintenance & Repair: Fowler/ And our third project is our garage maintenance and repair. This number has gone up quite a bit in the last few years because we've done some major restoration. We have gone in and removed the old concrete that has balled out and replaced that. We are anticipating that this will basically double the life of the facilities by getting the old concrete out and keeping the repairs up. One of the things about this is we get a call from Moody's about every year or two, wanting to know what restoration work we're doing in our facilities, and they use our maintenance records as a way to help rate our bonds, that we're keeping our facilities up to date. So, in addition to expanding the life, we're also insuring our continued good bond rating on our parking ramps, so... Correia! This may be a silly question, but what's the difference between a parking fees and parking revenues? The source of the funding? For two of them it says "fees" and the other says "revenues." Fowler! Oh... what page is that one? Oh, right here. Yep... Correia!...for pots of money, or...same thing? Fowler/ They're the same thing. Correia! Okay, that's what J thought, but I thought...okay. Wilburn! Ends with an F and the other with an R. (laughter) Correia! Okay, thank you. Vanderhoef/ Okay, and the cash flow on these projects, along with paying off the newer facilities.. .they will be paid back out from what? Fowler/ They'll be paid from parking funds. For the garage maintenance and repair, we have done an internal loan that we pay back over about ten years. The other two projects, we think we can pay for out of our operating funds. Correia! And these are fees from those parking structures, because the Court Street, all those revenues go to Transit. All of the Court Street parking fees are...go to Transit... F owler/ Right, they go into a different fund totally. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ---~-~---~---- -- -_.__.__.~------.- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 5 Champion! How is that garage being used? Fowler/ Court Street? Urn, our hourly parking is increasing, as more activity occurs there and as more people become familiar with it. Our parking permits, we have sold 100% of the ones we have available. So.. .as you go into the bottom it might not appear to be as heavily used, but as you go up, it is because we make the permit parkers park in the upper levels. O'Donnell/ Is there still a waiting list for permits, Joe? Fowler/ Very short. We've pretty much with Court Street been able to take care of it. It's mostly for people who want a specific facility. LANDFILL: Fosse/ One of the neat things about Joe's projects and the maintenance on the garages is it goes after not only the big stuff, like you've seen here, but staying after the little... when you stay on top of those things and keep the water from intruding and getting down inside, you avoid some of those larger repairs later, and that's what helps us to maintain a good bond rating for our garages. That's a very good management practice. Nice work. Eastside Recvcling Center: Fosse/ On the Landfill, we've got two projects under the Landfill. We've got the East Side Recycling and then the next cell to the Landfill. We'll lead off with East Side Recycling. This is a picture that you've seen before with a lot of the different uses that are on out there, bringing that up out of the ground just a little bit, getting a feel for how it's going to look is this slide right here. Where we're at in this process is, is what's called the programming phase of an architectural project, and that's where the architect will sit down with all the different parties involved, talk with them about their operations, so that they have a good understanding of it and then they can meld that together into a good plan, overall plan, for the site and for the buildings that's going to serve us well, and then we'll proceed with construction drawings and then get a phased approach to getting this thing built. Questions on this? Wilburn! I think there was interest expressed, I don't remember if it was Connie or Regenia, maybe both, about once we, once the architect finishes this and we know exactly what could go out there, possibly moving it up sooner and getting it, just getting it done to encourage people to use it, as opposed to, you know, your first visit out there - only phase one is done, and you get a mental picture of what's out there, and then you may not view something that's going to be coming on line. Fosse/ Okay. Wilburn/ Urn, I...maybe that's something for discussion later on, or maybe, Council, you can chime in now, but I guess also we would need to know, once you have that, that picture of what it's going to look like and what we can actually fit out there, what... how would that effect the other part of that capital improvement budget. So, I don't know if that's this year we're talking about doing that or when would... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 6 Fosse/ We should have that later this year. Wilburn! Okay. Fosse/ What I'm hearing is that when we get further on in the design process, come back to you to get your opinion on whether or not we want to phase it or just do the whole works at once. Champion/ I think it's important to get it done. I think phasing is good, but there's money in the landfill to do it all at once? Fosse/ Yes, there are sufficient funds there. One of the reasons that we were contemplating phasing it is because of the uses may be evolving still and if they are, then we'll get one up and running, see if that morphs, and before we move on to the next, but if we feel good at the end of the design process that we have a good handle on uses, then we can feel more comfortable about moving forward with all of it. Correia! And so that... so you're saying phase one in 08, phase two in 09, and phase three in 10- is that kind of how that is? Fosse/ Yes. Correia! Okay. So, with the furniture project and the salvage barn in phase three, I mean, right now the furniture project is in the, is it in the Airport Commerce or is it still at the Landfill? Where is the furniture project? Fosse/ It is in the north Airport Commerce Park, and it's actually going to be moving, because that lot is sold. Correia! Right, exactly. Fosse/ So, we're taking one of the buildings that's down at the S&G, Sand Lake site that we just bought, and... Correia! And we're continuing to move the furniture? F osse/ Yeah. Correia! I mean, it would just be nice to kind of get a home for... Wilburn/ I think that's part of the concern about if people know their first visit out there is going to be a mental picture of what's there. Correia! Right. Wilburn/ And it can lead to confusion if things were changing or moving...I mean... Fosse/ Plus the site is easier to use if construction isn't constantly going on. There's a lot to be said for that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 7 Vanderhoef/ When you talk about the furniture project, and we aren't even sure where it is, I would suggest that we put some signage out at the recycle center that says "this is where furniture goes," but when we get it moved down to, to the new site for it right now, let's use our opportunity to tell people where it is. Fosse/ Yep. Well, our new site, or interim site if we'll call it that, down at Sand Lake, will not be configured for customer drop-off. Successful Living will go out and pick up furniture, or meet people down there, but it won't be staffed such that people can stop by and drop off a couch or something. It's just too remote. Vanderhoef/ So then that tells me we need the telephone number there, where to call. Fosse/ We can do that. (several talking at once) Correia! ... being underutilized, both for donating.. . (several talking at once)... Bailey/ Well, and it's inconvenient. People are not going to use, particularly a recycling, they're not going to use something that's inconvenient. Recycling really is motivated by convenience, and if you're not going to have drop-off ability, you know, I'm on my way out of town -1 want to leave this sofa here, I think that's going to be frustrating to people, as well. Champion/ Requires so much planning. Bailey/ Yeah, and the easiest thing, put it on the curb and leave town. Champion/ Somebody always picks it up. Bailey/ Well...well, why not? There's not a... Fosse/ So we'll be back to you later in the year on that, and in the meantime, some signage would be good. I think that's a good idea, Dee. Landfill Cell- FY09: Fosse/ On to the Landfill Cell. The FY09 Landfill Cell will finish out the base for the west side of the landfill. You've seen a number of cells in relatively quick succession, about four years apart, and that builds the base of that whole west side, and the reason for doing them one after the other is it's the most efficient use of the space. We've built that broad base down, and we'll start going up with that, but we still need to move forward on.. .on preserving our ability to serve in the long-term out there. So this is the next cell that you'll see ~ this is actually an old one, but it looks just like the next one you'll see. Elliott/ Is this the third and final, to that location? Or just the third? Fosse/ It's more than the third, it's probably the sixth on the west side of the landfill. Elliott/ Oh, but it is, is this the final? Fosse/ Yeah, for that part, uh-huh, and we're still working with the Hebels on their property. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ___,,_"_...._...".._..._m'___ _.~.__.~_.._"_.____._.....__w.___._____~_"..~._._._..._ - - - -----.--" -.--- -.--.-- - -.-----~-_._._- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page S Elliott! Good. AIRPORT: Fosse/ Airport projects. Let me lead off by just explaining to you how Airport projects are managed because it's a little different animal than most of our capital projects. We've got the Airport Commission that operates out there, with Mike Tharp, and they work directly with consultants to plan, design, construct, and do the construction management and inspection of their projects, and the Engineering Division serves occasionally on an advisory role, per request of theirs. They have legal consul from Sue Dulek down in the City Attorney's office, and another role that the Engineering Division plays is the interface between Airport projects and other City projects. So with that background, I'll invite Mike up here, and Mike will visit with you about some of the projects going on and then Karin will talk about the South Airport Commercial Park. AIRPORT: Tharp/ And good morning. Mike Tharp, Operations Specialist out at the Airport. Runwav 7-25 Rehabilitation & Runwav 7 Parallel Taxiwav: Tharp/ The big projects going on right now - we're continuing the Runway 7 extension. That's the main focus. We've got the initiation letter from the FAA to get the planning and specs set up as soon as Congress passes the Appropriation Bills for the budget year. We're hopefully going to get the money released and get that project finished up. Runwav 12-30 Rehabilitation: Tharp/ Other issues going on, the FYOS projects that we have listed, we're going to do some preventative maintenance to Runway 12-30, that's the northwest-southeast runway, and we want to do an overlay to the rest of7-25. Basically what we've got, we've got runway pavements that haven't really had major rehabilitations, nearly since they've been down, and we're getting to the status now where there's enough segments of the pavement that need to be rehabbed that an overlay is called for. Terminal Apron: Tharp/ We've also got some terminal apron rehabilitation plans. We've got a piece ofland that with the FAA guidelines, funds from that sale is earmarked for the terminal apron rehab. And, that's the immediate plans. As we continue down the road, we've got some phased in approaches for our operational budget for the access roads into the Airport and some perimeter fencing, and those will be, you know, phased in in small blocks like we've currently got planned over the next few years. Elliott! How long are those runways... about? Tharp/ The 7-25 ultimately will be 5,015 feet when the extension is finished. 12-30 is, I don't remember off the top of my head. I want to say. . . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 9 Elliott! The new one be about a mile? Tharp! Yep. Elliott! And the other's somewhat similar in length? Tharp! I want to say about 3,500 feet. Elliott! Okay. Tharp! I don't remember the specific measurement off the top of my head but... Elliott! Thanks. Tharp! What we've got... 7-25 will be the primary runway, and then 12-30 would be the crosswind, so when weather's an issue. Aviation Commerce Park South: Franklin! Aviation Commerce Park South is the project that we've talked about before with the Airport Commission. This is a potential development site for the City and the Airport Commission. The culvert project that is part of the Mormon Trek Boulevard extension and that road are finished. As you know, the runway - the north-south runway - has been closed, so this is kind of at the point now where we can do some further work on what's going to happen here in the future. What's in the Capital Improvements Program is kind of a placeholder. What that would pay for potentially is fill, if we get a fill opportunity within this next fiscal year, which we may have. There will still need to be discussions between the Council and the Airport Commission as to the future of this site and how you want to use it. That's it. Elliott! Our last meeting, Karin, there... the Airport Commission voiced some concern about too much development and we were interested in more development... is that kind of your understanding where we are now? Franklin! That's where we are now. We have to have more conversations between the Council and Commission as to whether it's leased, sold, what the use is going to be of that property. Okay? Wilburn! How long has it been since any of those runways have had an overlay? Ever? Fosse! None of the runways have been overlaid. There's been various maintenance projects on them over the years, but it's been some time. They're due. And one of the concerns is loose material that kicks up when.. . Wilburn! .. .right, right. STREETS. BRIDGES. TRAFFIC ENGINEERING: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ---~,_-~._,_._------~'---'--"---"-"'----'------ .,".,---..--.--.--.--- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 10 Fosse! This next category, Streets, Bridges, Traffic Engineering is our largest this morning, and we're going to have a whole bunch of different people visiting with you on it, so bear with us as we shuffle back and forth. American Legion Road: Davidson! First project that we have is American Legion Road, between Scott Boulevard and Taft Avenue. This is a project that is, as you all know, on the edge of town in a developing area and so we feel the need to get it programmed. Weare also, as development occurs, attempting to exact some fees from developers for the eventual upgrade of American Legion Road. If you look at the corridor - grab my notes here - as I mentioned, we have Windsor West is the most recent development project that has... we have received an exaction from. Design of this reconstruction - we won't actually design it until we're ready to rebuild it, and you can see it's in the far-out years of the Plan there in FYI!. That's necessary for us to do the exactions. We will do an assessment of it when we're ready to reconstruct it in terms of what capacity we would rebuild it to. It would be a reconstruction similar to Dodge Street, in that we would be taking a rural country road and making it into a city street. We would be adding sidewalks - an 8-foot sidewalk on one side, a 4-foot sidewalk on the other side. In terms of the actual width of the street, we wi II assess that at the time we're getting ready to reconstruct it, in terms of does it need to be...l mean, at the minimum, you would have a 2-lane street with turn lanes at the major intersections. We might go to a 3-lane section. 1 think it's unlikely we would have four lanes with turn lanes. I don't think we'll need that kind of capacity out here, but again, we'll make that assessment when we're ready to reconstruct it. In terms of the intersections, the intersection with American Legion and Scott currently does, just barely, warrant traffic signals, but there are not any safety issues out there and we usually consider it a more immediate type issue when we have a safety issue, in terms of the installation of a traffic signal. So, eventually within three to five years, and when we get down to the annual projects, you'll see that we basically budget one traffic signal a year and so we could use those funds for when a traffic signal was needed, but we don't believe that is an immediate concern. Taft Avenue will be set up, again, as an arterial street intersection, with turn lanes we may try and improve the site distance there. The site distance isn't real good at that intersection, but again, that's something that we would do at the time ofa reconstruction. The south side of this road is still primarily in the county. You will hear about a project later that, in terms of sort of an economic development project between this road and 420'h Street to the south and again, that's kind of part of the overall planning for this area, as well. Any questions about this? Vanderhoef! Will this speed up the time that we'll be looking at doing Taft Boulevard? Davidson! Again, Taft A venue, Dee, is sort of up to the City Council. That'll be the next north- south arterial to the, you know, paralleling Scott Boulevard to the east. Again, that could be done independent of this project. We would certainly do the intersection, you know, so that it could eventually be tied in, but no, that could be a separate consideration by Council, Dee. Correia! So.. .I'm sorry, do you have a question? So, we have estimated that we're going to use 100% of GO Bonds for this? Is there any opportunity for other grants or road use tax or the... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -,,-,,-,--~,--,---,,-,---'-'-----'-------'--'"'-'---- ---_._..__.._,-_._-_.----_.~-,_.__._-~"'--,------- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page II Davidson! Yeah, I did note that the exactions we have received so far, and maybe it's a case of we haven't actually received them. I don't know exactly when those come on line, but we would anticipate some exactions from developers here. Correia! Okay. Davidson! And, then ultimately, Amy, the funding of this is like any major project. GO is shown, unless there's something else that we might use. There's always the possibility of getting funds through JCCOG, STP Funds, or Enhancement money for the sidewalks, so those are possibilities, but since we don't have anything locked in now, it's shown the way it is. Correia! Okay. Burlington Street Median: Franklin! The Burlington Street Median is a project which you have seen before. We've gone through the conceptual planning phase of this with some of the stakeholders, the Downtown Association, the Iowa DOT, Parks and Rec, and Public Works and Planning were all involved in this. The projection now is that this would be a proj ectthat would occur in Fiscal Year 10. We'll be keeping an eye on this because it is something that will be important to coordinate this effort with the University of Iowa Rec Center construction, Hieronymus Square construction, to make sure that we - whenever this is happening - it's going to be quite a bit of confusion in the corridor, frankly. The other aspect of this that we have to be cognizant of is a sewer in Burlington Street right-of-way, which is an old one and look at the condition ofthat sewer, or the potential for its having to be replaced concurrent with, prior to this project. So that would be part of the discussion. The other thing I would point out is that part of the funding of this, we anticipate, would come from participation by the University ofIowa. We have had conversations with them. They were also part of the planning process, and they're very interested in seeing this project occur, particularly in that area between Madison and the river. Any questions on this? ElIion! I have a question about dimensions. Franklin! Uh-huh. Elliott! The current dimensions width-wise will not change. Is that correct? Franklin! The right-of-way? Elliott! The curbing. Franklin! No. Elliott! Curbing, sidewalks will remain there. Franklin! Right. We're kind of fixed there in that there's development that has already occurred, obviously. This is an older corridor, right up to the right-of-way line in the downtown, and at this point, we have not projected, and this does not anticipate, acquisition of any right-of-way. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16,2007. ~.. ... ..._______'m____.~__,__,._..,_.~_.___.,__.________"____._____________,..____+_.___um. -.._____.________._ January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 12 Elliott/ Good, good. Bailey/ Have we talked, and I know we've talked about this before, this project about... talked with bicyclists about will this median help to create better usability of Burlington as a bicycle commuter street, or... Franklin! There has been a lot of conversation about bicycle routes through here. The median will not make it any better, nor will it make it any worse. If we're to have a bicycle lane through this area, either a vehicular lane or pedestrian way, would have to be a trade-off. Or there would have to be sharing, however that might occur. I don't know that... .and probably Jeff could speak to this better than I in terms of how successful that is. Obviously, there's sharing now that can occur with a vehicular lane if you are a brave bicyclist. Bailey/ Well, you and I have talked a little bit about...I think Burlington is used primarily by serious bicyclists. That is to say, the braver of them, but I think at the same time we're looking at doing this, because it's not going to make it any better, we need to find a route through downtown Iowa City for bicyclists to get to the other side of the river. And that's what I've heard from them. Ifnot Burlington, where? And that makes a lot of sense. Frankl in/ And I mean, ifthere's a majority of you that want us to do this, we will, obviously, do it. Look at that, and I'm seeing at least three heads nodding. Okay, I got four heads. Four nodding heads. Vanderhoef/ This was part of that request that I've been making for the last two or three years, to get that designated connection to the river from the Creekside, the older section, and to be sure that we get it finished up on Rochester down to the river, that it's real apparent, and it's got the wide sidewalk, or some sort of way that we know we can get the bicyclists down to the river to connect with the river trail. Franklin! My understanding that there is an interest on a majority of the Council to find a bicycle route through downtown that would be convenient for commuters, commuting traffic.. .as well as recreational? Because there often are different kinds of, obviously, bicyclists. I'm...I don't think it would be realistic to think that we are going to be able to find a route through downtown without spending a lot of money, that would be one that small children would use, for instance. O'Donnell/ I also don't think it's realistic to think that a bicyclist is not going to take the most direct route. Franklin! That would be the trick, is to find that happy medium that felt safe and was as direct as possible. Wilburn! I think you're, I think you're really talking about. ..more on the recreational end, because the bicyclists who are going to ride wherever they're going to ride are going to do that, and so. . . but for the rest of us, if we have a general idea of where I need to go to get through, then I really think that should be targeted. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 13 Bailey/ ...1 won't ride Burlington, and so, 1 mean, so I think we need something for bicyclists like me who are just barely competent, but willing to sort of brave streets like Gilbert. Wilburn! That's what I was referring to. Bailey/ Yeah. Correia! I don't think for serious bicyclists that are trying to commute through the downtown wanting something that it feels like it's marked, drivers know that this is a bicycle commuting street, I mean, I don't know. ..I'm sure there are ways beyond making sidewalks or designated bike lanes, of having a street that the parking is such that it feels safe. I mean, I've talked to commuter bicyclists who don't feel like the way that the parking is on Iowa Ave when they're coming out, they don't see, you know, so it doesn't feel as safe commuting as on streets where it's maybe parallel parking. 1 think those types of things. Bailey/I just think it's really important, in view of our complete streets policy, that we have.. . that we look for something here, and one of the suggestions, but I think it would probably take a lane, are uphill bike lanes, because that's when you cannot keep - even the best commuter bicyclist - can rarely keep pace with traffic uphill. Franklin! And 1 guess 1 would just stress that this particular project, and 1 think we're talking about two separate things here, although this raises the issue, but if the median project were not to happen, you still would not have a bike lane there, unless you were going to get rid ofthe left turn lanes, in which you would then have a center bike lane, but the left turn lanes are necessary there for the downtown function, and so the median, the left turn lane is one issue. The bike lane through downtown is another issue. Okay? Elliott! Karin, the median, is there a safety island concept at the crosswalks? Franklin! Yes. One of the, one ofthe concepts here, or one of the things that was discussed a lot with the Committee, was the pedestrian safety. One, trying to direct pedestrians to the comers, as opposed to the middle, or allowing the middle to be easily crossed, and the other was that ability to stop mid-stream if you needed to, and although it is not a. . . it is not a large pedestrian refuge, you would stop at this median if you were caught in the middle. The goal would be to get people across with our timing and crosswalk system. Elliott! But 1 do think that's important, because no matter what happens, there are always going to be some people who start across late in the light and don't make it all the way across, and there is a place for them to find reasonable refuge in the middle. Franklin/ You couldn't have a crowd there. Elliott! Right. Franklin/ We've got a set right-of-way in which we've got four travel lanes and a left-turn lane, and so we're really constrained in the corridor. Elliott! Yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 14 Franklin! Okay. Anything else? Knoche/ With Gilbert, or with the Burlington Street project, there will be a little bit of widening that will occur in the first block, from the river up to Madison, and that's in conjunction with the University and moving the sidewalk away from the street and being able to put a little bit wider median in there to help deter that pedestrian traffic across the street, especially when the Rec Center goes in. Elliott! Can bicyclists use the sidewalk on the south side of Burlington? 1 think they're constrained on the north side, is that correct? Knoche/ I believe there, the signage is up for the north side. I'm not aware of the south side. Davidson/ .. . according to the City Code in the Central Business District... Elliott/ Uh-huh. Davidson/ It's a CB-IO zone and you're not supposed to have a bicycle on the sidewalk. That would be the north side, although there has been some discussion, and I think actually some enacted, hasn't there been, Karin, of bringing the CB-IO zone to the south, south side of Burlington, so that'll be an issue, more as the CB-IO goes to the south side of Burlington. Elliott! Uh-huh. Vanderhoef/ You said something about University... working with University to get that additional space for the sidewalk and so forth. I wondered ifthere was any funding coming from the University to look at the changes that this Rec Center is creating need for changes there. Knoche/ We're having discussions with them now, and later this month we'll have another discussion with them, to kind of find out whattheir plans are, and I... we'll see what they come to the table with. Vanderhoef/ The stoplight is one thing that I would think... that's not a high-pedestrian crossing area. Bailey/ Which stoplight? Vanderhoef/ The...isn't there one that doesn't have a stoplight there? Knoche/ Yeah, Madison has a stop...yeah, and, yeah, and in that firs block, we would only encourage pedestrian crossings at, you know, either at Riverside Drive crossing, or at the Madison crossing. You know, there wouldn't be at the railroad crossing or anything in between there. College Street Streetscape: Knoche/ The next project is the College Street Streetscape project. Now, this is in the block between Gilbert and Linn. This is an area that the amenities were put in with one of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of Jannary 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 15 downtown streetscape projects, as far as the lighting, and at that time, I think the thought was that maybe the grass would establish itself and unfortunately it hasn't. So with this project we'll come in and put some brick pavers in and also put in some raised planters for around the trees, and also look at some sidewalk enhancements in front of the church on the north side. Bailey/ And we're also doing the south side, right? Knoche/ That's correct, on both sides. Correia! The thing about this street is you've got a lot of people coming in to that to put their money in the meter and stuff, so I mean... Knoche/ It's two-fold. I think it's a matter of the use, and then it's also a matter ofthe overstory trees that are there and it blocks the sunlight and keeps the grass from getting any light. Correia! Right, so I mean we would have to have something that people will be walking in. Knoche/ Correct, and so we'll have, we'll have the brick pavers and we'll use one of the colors that we have in the Iowa Avenue streetscape so we don't have to maintain a multiple supply of bricks. Correia! It's all going to be brick? Knoche/ It'll all be brick. Correct, yeah, except for around the trees. Bailey/ That will be the way we maintain those streets, though... because it's such a nice... Knoche/ Vh-huh. Vanderhoef/ It would seem to me that we're stopping a block short on this whole project, that we need to get on down and get the old bus station taken out and some pavers along that area too. That is so ugly and so nasty right now that...(several talking at once, laughter). Bailey/ I don't think it has high cuteness potential! Vanderhoef/ Cuteness and serviceability is a problem. Dubuque & Church Streets Left Turn: Knoche/ The next project is the Dubuque & Church Street left turn lanes. This is a capacity project that we're looking at. There's some federal money involved in it. We're looking at putting in left turn lanes on Dubuque Street, and we're also currently looking at the needs for left turn lanes on Church Street also. You can see from the picture here, when we have a left turner that wants to turn.. . if they're southbound on Dubuque Street and they want to turn left on Church, and we have a bus trying to turn right on Church, it pretty much shuts down this intersection. So this is a capacity increase to this intersection. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ---- _.._---------~_..~._".^--._._- - - _."-~--".-_._~._-----.-.._----~-------,,-"~._-'_._-_..,-_.---,.__._---,_._._--_..__.._.~.~--,._----~--------_...---------------- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 16 Elliott! Is there anything being done about the amount of space needed by the bus turning right off of Dubuque onto Church, because that's where the holdup... Knoche/ Right, we're looking at increasing those radiuses a little bit (several talking at once) so that they can make the swing in. O'Donnell/ You're not talking about widening the road though. Knoche/ We will be widening Dubuque Street, so we will be adding a left turn lane.. . correct, center left turn lane. Champion/ Will it be arrowed? You know, lighted? Knoche/ Yep. O'Donnell/ I wonder if.. .just putting in a left turn signal wouldn't work there. Because I don't see any stacking problems there with cars turning left. I think if you, if you give that bus more of an angle to turn there, I think that would eliminate it. I, I drive that street an awful lot and I don't see a stacking problem there. Knoche/ During the peak times, this.. .it's been identified as one of the areas that we do need to increase the capacity to make our arterial street system work better. O'Donnell/ I must be going there at the wrong time! Knoche/ Must be! (laughter) Bailey/ I've never seen a problem at this intersection, and I live on Church Street and turn left. Elliott! You're saying, if that right lane frees up. Bailey/ No. I've never had a problem at this intersection, because I'm a patient woman, probably. But, the most I've ever waited through, I've always been able to turn on the second light. Elliott! I find it very difficult coming up there. I usually figure I don't turn on Church Street because there's usually one or two cars stacked up, and you're going to have to sit through a couple stop lights, but if the right lane frees up with the bus being able to turn right, even if there are cars there, that would, I would think, free up a great deal of that intersection. Bailey/ Part of the problem with the bus turning right is not only the radius, but the pedestrian traffic. So often you will sit there and have people crossing, and the bus could, even if the bus had space, couldn't turn because there's traffic that has the right-of-way. Correia/ I had asked Jeff about this (unable to understand) could you do that same thing that we did on (TAPE ENDS). Davidson/ Yeah, we have specifically looked at, that's called split-phasing, because you alternately phase each side rather than simultaneously, and we have looked at that, and as happens...I just saw a report from Iowa DOT that just came out, and in almost all cases, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 17 you just introduce too much delay into a major intersection when you do that. In the case of Kirkwood, we had a special situation where we just couldn't figure out how to make it work otherwise, because ofthe location of the rental place and stuff, wejust couldn't fit turn lanes in or anything. So there, it works, but here, it would just introduce way too much delay and as Ron alluded, we're kind of looking at this whole corridor - Dubuque Street - and the critical intersections are Foster, which we fixed, Park Road, which you're going to hear about a little bit later, and this one, and we really feel like if we can get these intersections functioning well, and I don't dispute what some of you said about they function okay or adequately, but we're also trying to look 20 years down the road and they're not going to keep functioning adequately unless we do a project like this to improve them. So I really think for the sake of this corridor, it's necessary that those three intersections be taken a good hard look at and I think this is a worthy project in that respect. (several talking at once) Bailey/ How much space and how far back, I mean, one of the things I think we also have to keep in mind is this is an entry way, and the one nice thing about coming in is it's very green, in other seasons of course, and so how much space are we taking, for a lane, and how far back would we need to take... Knoche/ We're still looking at, you know, as far as the design of this. The initial proposal was to do equal widening on each side, so basically six feet each side of the back of the curb, would be widening of pavement and then the sidewalks would move back with that. And as far as length from the intersection, probably be 300 feet. Bailey/ But there's an alley back there, pretty close actually. Davidson! I just noticed Regenia is turning left in this picture. Bailey/ I am. Davidson/ Isn't that your car right there? Bailey/ See, I have no problem turning left! O'Donnell/ I notice your race tires up on the curb there. (laughter and several talking at once) Vanderhoef/ Jeff, are these federal dollars, are they STP Funds? Davidson/ They're STP Funds through JCCOG. Vanderhoef/ Okay, so this was a choice of where we spent our STP Funds. Elliott/ The thing that concerns me about what you said. You mentioned three intersections, not one of those is the Riverside DriveIHighway 6 intersection, which to me is the worst intersection in town. Davidson! I was just talking about the Dubuque Street corridor. Elliott/ Oh, okay, okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ...'"-~--------,-_._,-'_.._-_...."-- ---_..__._._.--_._-,,--,_.__._-~---_._.. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 18 Champion! I have a question. Um. ..(several talking).. .how far back is that left turn lane going to be? Because the problem I have with the First Avenue left turn lane, which I use all the time because I go to the grocery store every day, you can't get to the turn lane because it's not long enough, I mean, so even if there is an arrow, you can't use it until the next lighting sequence, which is fine. I'm like Regenia, I'm patient about getting from one point A to point B, but to me, the left turn lane is useless if people can't get to it. It's the same thing at Riverside Drive and Park Road. You can't get to the left turn lane, until the next light, which...(several talking at once). So, I don't know, it seems logical to me to make the left turn come after the through traffic, but if it's not... then I'm not willing to take six feet all the way down to the bridge. They have a long turn lane, so how you going to handle that? Davidson! There are a lot of instances in town, and you've identified some of them, where we don't have the, we don't have an intersection designed to handle the peak traffic load. We design it to handle the 70% or the 80% or even sometimes lower than that, and that's just a matter of what we can afford to do and the amount of disruption that occurs at the intersection. I think...! can't remember ifany of you were here when we reconstructed the First A venue corridor, but it was clearly identified by the Council at that time is that we were not going to do the capacity expansion that was really called for by the planning documents. We did something that was an interim measure that would help us during 80, 85% of the day, but during 15% of the day, exactly what you're talking about occurs, and you cannot get through on a single cycle of the traffic signal. The turn lane backs up into the through lane, which is something that we never like to see, but realities being what they are, that does happen. Correia! Glad we're not in Chicago trying to get (unable to hear). Champion! Well, they have three turn lanes. (laughter and several talking) Davidson! Anything else about Dubuque-Church before Ron leaves? Okay. First Avenue!IAIS Railroad Crossing: Davidson! The next.. . Rick showed me how to do this... there we go. The next project is one I think you're familiar with - the railroad overpass at First Avenue. We did apply for Iowa Clean Air Attainment Program funds last year, and we're actually pretty high up the ranking list, but not quite high enough to be funded last year. Iowa DOT did encourage us to reapply, which we've done. This project has also been identified as a project for Congressionally designated funding when the corridor delegation goes to Washington here shortly, so that is another good possibility for this project. The project is currently programmed in FYIO. I think that may move - well, it probably won't move too much closer, but it could possibly move out depending exactly on when we do get funding made available to us. The railroad is not participating in the funding of this project, but they are cooperating with us, which is actually a big deal, and we're going to have them as a partner, as well. Elliott! Have they.. .have you checked.. .excuse me, have you checked why they have to creep so slowly through that intersection? (laughter) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 19 Davidson/ I'm sure some of that is a matter of their switching track just to the west ofthis location. Elliott! I guess I've never seen a train go through but what it's going about 5 or 10 m.p.h. Davidson/ Yeah, I think some of that's a function of both the speed limit, obviously, the speed limit isn't quite that slow, but it's fairly modest through here. !t's probably 20 or 25, and then that combined with the switching that goes on both to the industries to the east and then the parallel track to the west. Correia! Is there any way for them to not go through that intersection around the time that school starts? (laughter) I'm serious! Davidson/ If you can figure that one out. No, they have the right-of-way and (several talking at once). Champion! Maybe suggest changing the time that school starts. Correia! Yes! O'DonneJl! Jeff, the bridge going across, where's it going? Champion! The railroad tracks. O'Donnell! WeJl, yeah, it's going across the railroad tracks, but... Davidson! No, the railroad tracks are going across the road. (several talking) That's the railroad going across the top, yeah. (several talking) Double track across the top. Wilburn/ We're just talking about slightly lowering the road... Davidson! Right. We will slightly raise the railroad and slightly lower the road. We did look at doing the reverse and you would end up with such a big, getting the road over, that this is clearly the best design. O'Donnell! Isn't that similar to what we did out there on Mormon Trek? Davidson! Similar, although I don't believe that involved quite as much of raising and lowering. That was an existing underpass. So.. .any questions about this? Correia! So then, during the time of that construction, that... those tracks wouldn't be operational? Davidson! No, the, at least preliminary way, we need to keep the road open and the railroad open during construction. That will necessarily lengthen the time of construction. !t'JI be a two-year project for sure, but that's necessitated by the fact that, you know, if you close First Avenue, you've got Scott Boulevard and Summit Street, and through neighborhoods, and we want to keep First Avenue open during construction. Correia! Okay. Wow. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007, January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 20 Davidson! And the railroad operating. Champion/ So what year did you say possibly? Davidson/ It's currently in FYIO. Champion! But you think it could be 9? Davidson! Just depends, you know, quite frankly we wouldn't begin construction until FYIO. We could possibly get a design, spend some design money, in FY09, if funding was made available. We should find out shortly. Gilbert Street. Bowery. Prentiss: Knoche/ Gilbert, Bowery, Prentiss intersection is one that's currently under design. We have Anderson-Bogart from Cedar Rapids doing the design for us. The original concept of this project was to try to line up Bowery and Prentiss to not have an offset intersection, and when we started looking at that, we were starting to lose turn lanes and it just wasn't working out very well for us. So, the final design that we're working on now does have an offset intersection. The primary reason for this project is to add left turn lanes on Gilbert Street, on both legs ofthe intersection, and then along with that, we'll be doing storm sewer improvement down Prentiss Street to the creek, and then also adding a water main leg down Prentiss to the creek. Currently there's no water main in that block of Prentiss, so we're going to put that in and do new services on that. In front of the Mansion there will be a retaining wall, similar to what we've been doing around town with the limestone veneer on it, and the widening on this one pretty much, primarily happens to the east, just due to the proximity of the buildings on the left side of the road. Vanderhoef/ Can we do that? I thought we had to take equal amount from either side. Knoche/ On this one we have the ability to do that. When, when the apartments were being built there on the east side, there was dedication of right-of-way with that development, and so that pretty much allowed us to do that widening to the east. Elliott! This is just an unfortunate situation we're going to have to live with, this... streets? Yeah. O'Donnell/ It's one that really works though. It's offset and (several talking). I don't know why... Elliott/ I'm always surprised that there are not more accidents there though. It's... it is confusing. Bailey/ Well, it's just different enough that I think people pay a little bit more attention. Davidson/ Actually, it's because all the crashes, Bob, is why we're doing this. (laughter) It's actually, the generation of this project is because of the high (unable to hear). Ijust wanted to.. . before we leave the split phasing of the signal because I know you'll keep bringing it up, well, you split the signal here and it works fine. That's because the volume on Prentiss and Bowery is so much lower than the intersection of two arterials. Bowery, well Bowery is technically a very minor arterial, but Prentiss is a collector and the volume is so much lower that those split green phases can run, you know, they run This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 21 really quickly, and so consequently, it works okay here. I just don't want you to think we can do it everywhere around. (laughter) Correia! And this would be a place where we could use that paint that lasts forever, or.. .just so people know? Wilburn! Like Twinkies? Correia/ Marked on the pavement, the turning and all that. Knoche/ We'll use a...unfortunately there's not a permanent pavement marking, but it's one that's more permanent than other, than other materials. (several talking) Questions on this one? All right. Gilbert Street/Hil!hwav 6: Knoche/ Obviously, a project that we've been discussing quite a bit. The thing that amazes me about this intersection is the volume of traffic. I know that we've talked about that multiple times here the last couple weeks, but if you take everybody in Iowa City and you stick them in a car, that's how many people use this intersection every day. I mean, that's just, it's amazing to me the number of vehicles. Correia! And Ijust have...I am a Hills Bank customer and I will not go to that branch at certain times of the time, because of, I mean, I just won't go to the bank or chose a different branch, because it's hard to figure out "will I be able to get out," "will it be a hassle." O'Donnell/ I must drive at the wrong times (laughter and several talking). I bank down there and I never have trouble! Correia! Really? Ohi There's...it's... Wilburn! I do, but I don't worry about it because on Fridays they have cookies. So.. . (laughter and several talking). Knoche/ Obviously the project is dual left turn lanes on Gilbert Street. We're also currently discussing with the DOT the possibility of doing dual left turn lanes on Highway 6. We're, I think we're at a point where we've convinced them of that, and we're trying to work out some funding agreements with them. With this project, obviously, the idea behind doing the dual lefts on Highway 6 now is to be in here and get it done and not have to come back in two or three years and have another project in this area. With this, as we're getting a little bit closer, obviously we have the, let me see if I can get this, and we have the raised medians to separate the dual left turn lanes. With that, that would reduce the left tumability into Waterfront Drive. Also would reduce the ability for left turners to get to the gas station at Highland A venue, and also left turners to get to the existing Pleasant Valley. With the way that the intersection is configured currently, there would be a break for the Third Street intersection and be able to get in there, although we've looked at some concerns there and we're evaluating that design now, to make sure that that can be there. We'll have an 8-foot walk that'll go down the west side ofthe road, all the way down through. Currently the sidewalk stops just past Nagle Lumber, so This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 22 there'll be a crossing, a new pedestrian crossing, on that west side of the intersection, and then we'll maintain the 4-foot walk down along the east side of the corridor. O'Donnell! Why does the median have to be that long? Knoche! As far as? O'Donnell! I'm talking north and south on Gilbert Street, why do we have to take the median down that long? Elliott! 1 think we're going to have some problems with that, really. Knoche! It's for the ability to basically eliminate potential conflict points. 'fwe don't have the median, the raised median all the way along these areas, we'll have turning traffic that'll try to get through here and there'll be conflicts with those people trying to get into that left turn lane, those left turn lanes. Champion! , have an idea. 'don't know if it'll work...' know you traffic planners don't like it at all, but (laughter) because of Pleasant Valley and Hills Bank and the Mexican restaurant, why can't we do what some towns do, is leave those open and not allow left turns during peak hours. I mean, that's pretty common, like no left turn between 5 and 6 or 4:30 and 6, and the rest of the day when it's not a problem, why not allow it? Knoche! , don't know how you enforce that. Champion! Well, most people are basically honest. (laughter) Knoche!L.yeah, I would agree, but... Champion! I tell you, the drivers behind him would enforce it. (laughter) O'Donnell! You know,' drive...' turn on Rocky Shore Drive about every day, and if you turn from Highway 6 onto Rocky Shore Drive, the stacking lane to turn left is about a quarter of that, and it's a single lane turning left and it also is on a highway that's got to have more traffic than Gilbert. Knoche! But the difference is the number of vehicles making the movement. You know, the left turn onto Rocky Shore's going to have a lot less people using that, a lot less volume than what we actually have for these movements, both left turners going onto Highway 6 eastbound and westbound. And'.. .just talking with people, and obviously MMS Consultants is a firm down the road here so we deal with them quite a bit, and what they actually have people do currently is they'll go north through the intersection and do a u- turn and come back down to get westbound, rather than waiting in that queue to make that left-hand movement. O'Donnelll I have a real problem with a median on this and I have for several years. [just don't know how we can cut off traffic from going into businesses that have been on that road for years. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 23 Elliott/ That's the same way I feel. We've cutting off almost half the traffic that's accessible to a business, and it's.. .Ijust, there's got to be some other way of doing that, or even, I'd even go for traffic lights at an intersection down there. Correia! Is there a.. . because Pleasant Valley is...! wish we could have some different type of modeling pictures, but... Bailey/ Pleasant Valley gets a turn though. Correia! Not a left, not if you're traveling south? Elliott! Northbound. (several talking at once) Bailey/ There's a gap for that particular business, I mean, that's... ElIiott/ From the street. Correia! Right, okay, so you can get into Pleasant Valley. Oh, then why are we worried about Pleasant Valley? O'Donnell/ Well, you'd have to make a u-turn to get to it. (several talking) Elliott! It's the area south of the intersection that causes the problem, I believe. Knoche/ With the project, the parking that's current in front of Pleasant Valley will be removed. So we're either looking at having parking, you know, adding parking to the back of their building, or potentially a parking lot at the intersection, close to the intersection. Correia! I'm sorry. That little pointer light. O'Donnell/ Laser. Correia! Laser, whatever. So I'm traveling from the side of the road where Hills Bank is, down Gilbert, I want to go to Pleasant Valley. Vanderhoef/ You're going north on Gilbert. Correia! Right. I want to go, I turn in there. I can go to Pleasant Valley. Davidson! Uh-huh, uh-huh. Correia! So how are we.. .how can we not get to Pleasant Valley any other way? Elliott! No, that's what I said. It's not on the north of the intersection that causes problems. Correia! On the Panchero side.. .not Panchero.. . (several talking). But we're going to do a frontage road there? Knoche/ So if we're southbound on Gilbert Street to go to Los Portales, you'd have to turn (unable to hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ,,___,__,__~__'____'_~___'___'____'__'_'__' ___.__n.___~_______"'________~~__'__'_'__'_________"-----"---~--_.-.~----."...---.-.---- January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 24 Correia! Go on the frontage road and get there. I think we're creating (unable to hear). Davidson! Yeah, and the philosophy of what we've doing here.. .I just want to stick my 2-cents in, there gets to be a point at the intersection of two major arterials, because the design that we have here is a typical design, is a modem typical design. You know, if you go to the intersection of Brady and Kimberly in the Quad Cities, or Collins Road and C Avenue in Cedar Rapids, this is a very, very common design. There's nothing exotic about it. It's just that we have a situation where, similar to with what Coralville is dealing with on Highway 6, there are so many access points here that you reach a critical mass of traffic volume and it's nO longer safe. Waterfront Drive intersection here is in the top-ten high crash locations. Now, they're not super-severe type crashes because the speeds are so slow, but they're, in terms of the sheer number and the rate, that is a top-ten in Iowa City right nOW. We're trying to reduce that. It gets to where some many access points, you know, for the Gasby's property, we're talking about going from five access points to three. You know, in my opinion that is still an adequate number of access points for that business to function. We have businesses like that all over town, functioning with that number of access points, or fewer. 1... in the discussions I have had, for example, with Hills Bank, is that they truly believe that they've gotten to that point of where there needs to be better organization of access points in this area. You've heard them say they would like, they feel a traffic signal is necessary at this neW intersection that's being built that will basically take all these access points and conglomerate them at one point, and that's something we're going to look into specifically and see if... we're going to try and make that assessment in the next couple months, but just in tenms of... the question keeps coming up, "Why the medians, why the medians," as Ron has said, it just gets to be an unsafe situation with people trying to cross that queue of traffic, and we've all been in that situation, where somebody yields for you, you pull in and you don't see the guy in the next lane over coming and you end up with a right-angle type crash, and that's what's happening on Waterfront Drive. You know, you may agree or disagree, but that's at least what we're trying to do here. (several talking) Wilburn! I was just going to say a couple things here. Will it be a change and will it be different - yes. But I believe it's a change that people will eventually get used to, in addition to the intersections that Jeff pointed out, I mean, I still go back to, you know, just a little ways up the road, when people go to Taco Bell there, they come in, they have to circle all the way around the building, and... to come through the drive up there. When people go into the Iowa State Bank entrance there, they come in, they're not pulling directly into either one of those places. They have to essentially what are probably like mini-frontage roads, they have to maneuver their way around there. If we're not.. .you know, just to make sure that we keep moving through this, maybe this is one we should put up on the board and decide before we leave today, is this One that we're willing to, ifthere's a majority of us that want to fund, then...the arguments and the discussion is very similar to what we did the other night, and I don't see us making progress on that. Elliott! The only thing with the safety aspect, I don't know how much safer it is to have people to go the southbound traffic to go clear around and then do a u-ey at the end of the median and come back up. That doesn't seem very safe to me either, and that's, you know that's going to happen. (several talking) Because you want to get back to the business that's there. If! want to go to Carlos O'Kelley's...l do a u-ey and come back this way. No, I'd do a u-ey. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 25 Knoche/ With Carlos O'Kelley's, the access points that go right out onto Gilbert will be closed, and that access point will be moved to the frontage road. Elliott! Ijust...1 don't see how we can do that to a business. It doesn't make sense to me, that you cut off access to an existing business. (several talking) Bailey/ I've often wondered why we don't use more frontage roads in this community. Well, that's what we're trying to do here. It makes a lot of sense. Correia! The problem...I was traveling somewhere where there was a lot of frontage roads and the one problem I had was when there was too much landscaping, you couldn't really see where the business was, but 1... we're seeing the business, we know where it is, we'll have signs. I mean. . . Vanderhoef/ And people will be more apt to go in there when they know they can get out and go either direction. So having that stoplight there, rather than sitting at "the business exit" and have somebody trying to do a left turn across traffic on them, and the guy wants to pull right, it just makes common sense that everybody will get their turn with that light and we'll move everybody. Bailey/ I do think people avoid going to businesses where it's busy, it's a hassle. They want to get dinner and they see all the traffic. Let's not go to Los Portales or whatever it is. Let's go down the street to Ranchero where I know I can just go boom. O'Donnell/ I know we need to do something for the intersection, but Ijust I disagree with the length of the median. I keep going back to, you know, with football traffic, you come off of242 in Coralville and First Avenue, then you turn left on Highway 6. There's a double turn lane there and also median, and the median is once again about a quarter of the size of this thing. Bailey/ Because it's not trying to control access, because along, along Highway 6 in Coralville, there are multiple access points and they have not tried to control it, rather they put left- hand turn lanes to access it. O'Donnelll Oh, I don't know (unable to hear). Wilburn/ We've got this written down. We'll make a decision on this before we leave today. Let's move on to the other projects. Lower Muscatine-Kirkwood to First: Davidson! Next project is Lower Muscatine Avenue, between Kirkwood and First A venue. What we hope to do here is to take the existing two lane section between Kirkwood Avenue and up, in the vicinity of Deforest Street. When it gets into the commercial area, it goes to four lanes, and what we are looking at is then taking the two-lane and the four-lane section, and our preliminary capacity analysis of this looks like a three-lane section throughout the entire corridor will be suitable for this, which it would allow us to minimize the amount of pavement and disruption to adjacent businesses, and end up with enough capacity in the corridor. What's happening in the four-lane section right now is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 26 that the center lanes are basically de facto turn lanes. I mean, occasionally they have through vehicles in them, but not very often because there's so much turning traffic at Mall Drive and the entrance to the mall that they essentially function as left turn lanes. So having a center left turn lane and a through lane in each direction looks at the present time like something that will be a design that is suitable. Obviously, a critical need through here. You can see it perfectly in the back picture there, is where the sidewalk ends. We need to have much better sidewalk facilities through this area, and that will be a goal of this project. We will attempt to have an 8-foot sidewalk on one side, 4-foot sidewalk on the other, like our design standard is for arterial streets. We are going to have to work with property owners. Certainly, the Mall, you can see the constraints we're dealing with there, but having that four-lane street converted to a three-lane street may actually allow us to bring the curb out further and allow us to put a sidewalk in, without taking the trees out there. So that's a design element that we'll have to look at, but that's kind of where we're going conceptually with this project. Certainly... Vanderhoef/ Are you talking about removing the right hand turn in there? Davidson! What we are looking at, Dee, is taking it from a four-lane street to a three-lane street. Yeah, that's not a separated right hand turn lane. That's a through lane there. Champion! I think that sounds like a great idea. Davidson/ It would give some consistency to the whole corridor. Again, we haven't done a precise design of this yet, so this is just conceptually what we have in mind. Elliott! And this provides a left turn lane for the eastbound traffic, turning into Kirkwood? That's where the bottleneck is. Davidson! Yep, it would.. .and I wanted to specifically talk a little bit about the Kirkwood situation. We've been in regular contact with Kirkwood and unfortunately, they don't have their plans totally firmed up in the area here, and they have a number of things that are going on, which at the time we designed this, we will have to go with what is currently their existing plan for what they hope to do there, and hopefully that'll get firmed up a little bit more than it is now. Now, the issue with getting in and out of Kirkwood is one that we need to deal with, and I don't want anybody to think that this project is going to make everything perfect, because it will not. (laughter) The problem there is similar to other places, they have one way in and out, and everybody coming and going at the same time, with class changes. They are looking at some other, they are exploring some other ideas, which we have encouraged them to do, through the back of the Oral-B property over to Mall Drive with an access driveway, through the MidAmerican property, possibly, to their access driveway that would be opposite Sycamore Street. Elliott! Don't they have two entrances? Davidson/ One way in and out. Elliott! It seemed to me that there was one between the buildings and one for a parking lot. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ~....__._.._._~--_._--_.__._.__._--~-'-""""-"-'--._---~_._---_._-----~-----"'.-- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 27 Davidson/ They have a small parking lot that also has an additional access point, but their main rear parking lot is served off of one access point on Kirkwood, and that is a problem. Not only is it a problem vehicularly, but that's their main pedestrian, you know, that's where all the pedestrians walk to, have to cross that driveway. So, that's a situation that we've told them, as long as it's a single way in and out and everybody coming and going at the same time, there are limitations of what you can achieve, and they realize that and they're trying to get another access location onto Kirkwood. Elliott! We talked about that back drive over to the Mall Drive, oh, a couple of years ago, and that seems to be realistic from a property acquisition standpoint? Davidson/ Well, it certainly is realistic conceptually, Bob, but they have not been able, with the private property owner, to achieve that. There's been some changes in who controls that property. I believe Gillette was bought out by Proctor and Gamble. We're still trying to get that done, because that would, that would be a tremendous improvement in terms of being able to spread the traffic, to get traffic onto Mall Drive which then has two signalized intersections. Vanderhoef/ And see, that's the piece though that ifthat happens, then we have a constraint on Mall Drive to get to First Avenue, and that needs to be taken into effect with the raising of the railroad tracks. Davidson/ That's a great point, Dee, and one I had meant to mention when we talked about the First Avenue project is we would look at that intersection and try to get a turn lane on First A venue at that time. Vanderhoef/ Yes, and if we're going to be handling traffic out of the back there, then Mall Drive is going to be needing full updates. So it might be better, actually, to send them over to Sycamore and straight out to the highway. Davidson/ Yeah, if they could get out through MidAmerican, that would be another option, as well. To answer Bob's question though, this will get the left turning traffic into Kirkwood out of the through lanes, which would be a good thing. If you've been there during class time, that does get clogged up. We will, at the time we actually design this, take a look at, we've been kind of monitoring the Sycamore, the Sycamore intersection. It does not warrant a traffic signal right now, but we don't like the geometry of it, where it comes in askew and you have to crane your neck and look back to see if anybody's, coming. We'll try and fix that at the time we do that, to the degree that we can, and check it for a traffic signal warrant again at that time. Bailey/ So, I want to understand this better, because I'm not following. I mean, there's going to be a whole bunch of residential impact here. Davidson! Depending, there will be some. Bailey/ Right. Davidson/ There will be, you know, essentially another 12 feet of right-of-way we need for that center turn lane, through the two-lane section, and... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 28 Bailey! That's how far? Davidson/ To Kirkwood. Bailey! All the way? Davidson/ Well, we will probably...l take that back, Regenia. We will transition from two-lanes to three-lanes at the Sycamore intersection. So depending on how far back we took that transition from the Sycamore intersection. The Sycamore intersection is where the MidAmerican driveway comes in, essentially a four-way intersection there. We will transition that back, and then through the residential area there's so little turning traffic into the residences that you would not have to have the center turn lane through that area. But in the residential portion between Sycamore and where the commercial area starts, up to approximately Deforest, that area, there would be additional right-of-way needed. Bailey/ Yeah, I just wanted to point out that we're talking about really two different, I mean, businesses may be excited, but residents are going to be less excited. I mean, I've been hearing from residents in this area, oh, since I got on Council about their concerns about traffic and the potential for widening Lower Muscatine. So... Vanderhoef/ Well, it would seem though, if we're doing the project, that we've been talking about, this little section, we need to just add in that section of Sycamore to Highway 6, because that. . . Bailey/ That has a huge residential impact! Vanderhoef/ Well, that's the street that's needing upgrading as far as pavement. Correia! It doesn't need expansion though. You mean you want to add a turn lane? Vanderhoef/ Got a turn lane... (several talking) Davidson! Yeah, that area, between, on Sycamore Street between Lower Muscatine up to the Mall driveway is an area that, you know, we occasionally have people come in, you know, the Mall or Kirkwood, "Hey, we're thinking about, what do you think," and they just kind of run ideas by us. It's never gotten past that stage, and in terms of any redevelopment of that area and what might happen. It is not called for in our Comprehensive Plan currently. ElIiott/ I drive that almost daily and I certainly don't see a problem there. Vanderhoef/ Well, w hat I'm thinking of though is it depends on what Kirkwood School does, as far as which way they get another access in and out of their parking lot, and if it goes to the west, then lots more traffic is going to come out of Kirkwood and go Sycamore versus. . . Bailey! And those residents would suggest that that's the tail wagging the dog, that they were there before Kirkwood and we need to balance the interests in that area, and I would... Vanderhoef! We would! This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. '"~_'____'."___ ~_____'"___"'__"'_'_'_____'_~____'~_'_"_'___.__" _ _._ ___ _.._....._____.._....____.__~______..m__._.______._____.____._..___.__.....__._____ January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 29 Bailey/ Well, widening a residential street does not balance interest. Taking people's property, I would dare to say, would not be seen as a balanced approach. Vanderhoef/ All I'm saying is, we need that information to know how Kirkwood College is going to do (several talking). Davidson/ We're in regular contact with them. Vanderhoef/ .. .one way, then that's a public conversation to be had with the residents in that area. Davidson/ We are in regular contact. A group of us went out this past fall and met with their brain trust, and yeah, they're kind of as frustrated as we are in terms of they know that we need to have specific information about what they're going to be doing, and we'll stay in contact with them and hopefully we'll have that by the time we... this is an FY09 project. So, there won't be a lot of activity immediately, but it is one that's out there that we feel IS necessary. Correia! And these contributions that you have in there, is that... thinking that those will be Kirkwood contributions? Davidson/ I think we're hoping to get some money from Kirkwood. They're very supportive of the project. They want to improve their intersection, and improve the pedestrian access. You know, they have a lot of kids parking at the Mall right now and walking over. So we want to try and make that better. Wilburn/ We've been through 18 projects, so we have eight more. Why don't we take a ten- minute break. (TAPE OFF) (MEETING RESUMES) McCollister Blvd.: Knoche/ This is one of our Congressionally designated fund.. .or, this is our Congressionally designated fund project. It's actually, it actually comes in two different projects. One project is for the bridge and the other project is for the roadway. We currently have built up to the driveway of the, of the Mossman Building and with this project, we will continue the roadway across the, an old sand pit, north of the old Landfill, build a bridge across the river and continue over to the piece of McCollister Boulevard that we've built with the Sand Road project this year. Elliott! What's the Mossman, because that. .. is that what used to be the printing service out there? On old 218? Knoche/ Yeah, it's actually further south from the printing building, but it's their central services building. Elliott! Oh, okay, okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ,.____,._.___________...__.____.__.___~.~._~_.__.__~_ .. ,_ ~.,_"__ ____.__.__._._________________N___.___.,_~_,._________.---..---,-- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 30 Knoche/ And so with this, we'll have an 8-foot walk that'll be along the north side of the road, and that'll continue all the way over to Sand Road, and the bridge itself... we have two consultants working on the project, Earth Tech consultants is doing the roadway project, and Howard R. Green Company is doing the engineering for the bridge. The bridge will be, the footings will be sized such that we can expand on them in the future. So, currently the bridge would be two lanes with 8-foot trails on each side. In the future, we would be able to move the barrier rail out and widen the bridge if it'd be needed for a capacity increase in the corridor. With the project there will be the need to remove three of the, three of the trailers down in the mobile home park, and then there'll also be the removal of one of the cabins on the east side of the river. This one is currently under design now. It would be construction FY08. Correia/ So, will there be entryway into that mobile home park, off this? Knoche/ There won't be access to the mobile home park from McCollister Boulevard. There will be access to the Showers Addition on the east side of the river, from McCollister. Yeah. Correia! The what addition? Knoche/ Yeah, it'd be... the Showers Addition. With the bridge, there won't, the height... the bridge won't be high enough to allow for the vehicular traffic underneath it, along the river, so we would have a new roadway, driveway, that'll be built.. .just off in this area, and then come down into the Showers Addition. Correia! And is there a reason why there wouldn't be access to the mobile home park off McCollister? Knoche/ It's a....to limit access points on an arterial street. Correia! Okay. Vanderhoef/ Okay. The dotted lines I'm presuming are the purchased areas. Knoche/ The dash lines that are on this were the areas that were looked at during the environmental assessment for the project, so that's just, that's kind ofthe project corridor. It doesn't show any of the purchase limits for the project. Correia! The green right now is the proposed. Knoche/ Correct, the green would be the... Correia! So will there be then screening, or sound barrier for the mobile home park? Knoche/ We would look at some type of planting plant along the mobile home park. Vanderhoefi' Okay, and are we buying right-of-way for four lanes on that side? Knoche/ We will be buying enough property to allow for the future expansion of the road. What we're looking at is what our typical arterial, the corridor width is, and I think part of this will be a lOa-foot right-of-way, and part of it will be an 80-foot right-of-way, and we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ..._...~.~-_.~._-----._. -- _._--_..._..__..,-_.__.~,,~..-,_..._--~--"._---_.._-_._.._-~"--. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 31 have all the property to the south, because of the Mesquaki Park, so we'll be able to widen it as needed. V anderhoef/ Well, what I'm looking at is the mobile home park, whether we have to have more out of the mobile home park. Correia! You're saying we own all to the south, but any... Knoche/ We own all to the south, so we could get.. .exactly...and we'll make sure that we have enough property and do the proper screening along there to make sure that we, you know, won't have any future impacts on the mobile home park. Correia! But the folks, they would have access to the sidewalk? Knoche/ Correct. Correia! I mean, that would... Vanderhoef/ Where is this sidewalk you're talking about? Knoche/ It would be an 8-foot walk on the north side of McCollister Boulevard. Vanderhoef/ On the north side? Knoche/ Correct. Correia! On both sides. Knoche/ Yeah, it'd be... typically it will be an 8-foot walk on the north side and a 4-foot walk on the south side, but on the bridge itself, we would have a wide enough for an 8-foot walk on both sides. Correia! There'll be pedestrian or bicycle access, like to our future Sand Lake... Knoche/ Correct. Correia! Okay. Elliott/ And the answer was yes, there is room in the right-of-way for four lanes in the future. Yeah. Knoche/ Correct. Right. Vanderhoef/ I think there will be... Davidson! Actually, just one more comment about McCollister, we do want to make sure that we have a good interchange basically between the Iowa River Corridor Trail and the Willow Creek Trail at this location because we've got a plan for bringing the Iowa River Corridor Trail down. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 32 Mormon Trek Left Turn: Davidson/ Mormon Trek Boulevard left turn lanes - we want to kind of ratchet up the attention to this corridor because this is now the number one high crash corridor in Iowa City. Our recent JCCOG high crash location report did show that and so for that reason.. .you know, we always like to direct your attention to safety-related improvement projects. You know, this has kind of been hanging around in the out years for some time, and we do think it is now time to pay a little more attention to it. We would focus on the corridor here between Melrose A venue and essentially transitioning out beyond, kind of in the vicinity of Abbey, Abbey Lane, past the railroad intersection. The intersections are what we need to focus on in this corridor. The intersection, well, two intersections that you see here with Walden Square and Benton Street, and then also the Rohret-Cae intersection, as well. As you heard me say earlier, you get your intersections functioning well and you, corridor generally works well, as well. We don't know exactly how we would propose designing this project. It could be just turn lanes at the major intersections. By the time that we get done with that though it may be better just to put a fifth.. . continuous center turn lane through here. That's something, as we get into concept design, that we would take a look at, but essentially getting the turning traffic out of the main line is what the goal of this project is, reducing the number of rear-end crashes is what we're trying to do here. A couple of other things about this. At the Benton Street intersection that you see here, it would allow us to have protected left turns. Again, there's that darn 'why don't you' run a protected left turn here and (unable to understand, laughter). We have looked at that, I guarantee you, because we get a lot of comments from the public about that, so we've tried to keep a handle on that. It just simply introduces too much delay. I mean, essentially what we're doing is sacrificing the delay of those, talking about the southbound to eastbound left turners, we're saying 'sorry folks, but you have to have more delay here' because the rest of the intersection works better if we do that. But with the separate turn lanes, that would allow us to put in protected lefts. So, essentially safety-related improvement. While we were on this intersection right here I did want to mention to you something - an innovative project that we're trying to increase pedestrian safety here, that we just put in about a week ago for this crosswalk.. .see, I don't know how to.. .yeah, this crosswalk right here, okay, we've had complaints from people of vehicles not obeying, giving pedestrians right-of-way. You can see we've got the signs up there that vehicles must yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk right there. What we were trying is, when you press the walk light now to get the longer walk phase, it's going to give the pedestrian three seconds of all red protection to get them out into the intersection where they're visible. We don't want to give them any more than that because the delay just really gets bad during peak periods on the street, but we're going to give them three seconds of all red to get them out and visible and in the middle of the intersection. The walk light'll still be on, but basically lag three seconds, the vehicles getting the green. . . we're going to see how that works and see if it reduces the number of complaints we get. So anyway, back to this project then. This is currently scheduled in FYIO. We might start design in FY09, according to what's proposed here. $3 million project - it has been suggested by Rick and Ron that this would be a good project to go after STP Funds for through JCCOG. We will have another go-round of funding this fall and so this is, I think, a project they think should be a high priority for that, should you decide to keep it in the plan. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ._-,-,..~.--_.__...,._-"---^--_.__."....- ~- ._~_._--_.-~--~---------,,,-_.._---_.._.,.,._+-_.__.,_..,_.._-,~--_.._.._--.. . January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 33 Bailey! So, a couple of years ago, the residents who lived on the east side were really... we got that stoplight for them so they could access the commercial area. Are those countdown pedestrian timers, or just the regular.. . Davidson! Not countdown currently. Bailey! Do we have any, I mean, I have a concern as you widen roads, it makes it less attractive to cross and you know, go get a coffee with your family, or whatever, and we do want those residents accessing this commercial. Would countdown timers help? Davidson! We have not had the complaints in this corridor from pedestrians related to not knowing how much time they have (TAPE ENDS) Bailey! .. . seemed to like the countdown timers. I think they also get a sense of how long, and so it can create that...a better...I don't know. Vanderhoef! What's the... Davidson! Yeah, we've... Vanderhoef! .. .the cost for the difference between a countdown? Davidson! Urn, they're coming down in price to redo an entire intersection was about $17,000 when we did Burlington Street, but I think they are coming down in price. (several talking) What we have tried to do is limit their use to higher speed, multi-lane, high pedestrian crossing points, not put them everywhere all over town, but limit them to those three. You know, probably this isn't really high pedestrian here, according to how we would classity it, like on Burlington Street, but it's probably close enough that there was a desire for them we could put them here. Elliott! Jeff, are you familiar on the west side where the Med Labs is and right across that street is the large parking ramp? I don't even know what the name of it... is that Newton Road? Is that it? Do you have any theories on why the vehicles on Newton Road just naturally really slow down, always stop for that crosswalk, and, yeah, but it's no different than any other part of town, but it's so good right there. Bailey! Signs on the street as opposed to up above. Davidson! Yeah, the University spend a lot of money there putting in a raised crosswalk, putting in all kinds of signage. Now, I got to tell you, Bob, I run through there all the time and they don't always stop. Elliott! Well, I go over there....I presume once or twice a week I'm going between that parking ramp and the Med Labs building, and I'm just amazed that's the safest... Davidson! Yeah, during peak periods that actually does pretty well, when you get that critical mass of pedestrians does cause.. .but if you go through there at 9:00 at night and you're by yourself, they don't always stop - I can tell ya! (laughter) Vanderhoef! After the ball games, they roll. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. _~___.__w_._._._______~___m_~_____'______~________._"---'---'--'-'-'---'~'---~~-~--~-------'--'-~"--'~-~"--...-- January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 34 Davidson/ That was actually a very expensive crossing treatment that they put in there. Elliott/ Is that right? Well, it sure works. Davidson! Works better than it did. Any other questions about Mormon Trek? Ron, you were going to do Park Road, weren't you? Park Road Bridge & Intersection: Knoche/ The Park Road bridge and intersection improvements - this would be adding a right turn lane from southbound Dubuque Street to westbound Park Road. Also, looking at reconfiguring the bridge deck to, remove the center median and allow some more traffic lanes. We would be looking at potentially dual left turns from eastbound Park Road to northbound Dubuque Street, right turn lane, and then obviously the one lane going westbound on Park Road. This one, to be able to remove the median, obviously, would be a bridge deck replacement. Over the last few years, the bridge deck is starting to deteriorate a little bit, so it's one that's probably about due for a bridge deck replacement on it. And it may even turn into more than that, it just depends on how deteriorated the concrete itself is. And so with that, we would maintain the existing configuration as far as the wide sidewalks on each side and also maintain the improvements that we've done as far as the esthetic treatments on the east side of the bridge with the bench sets there and the brick work, and then also the landscaping that was done by Project GREEN a few years ago. Bailey/ And we'll be improving the sidewalks on the bridge, as well, right? Knoche/ Yes. Elliott! Just curious. How does the amount of traffic at this intersection compare with Gilbert Street-Highway 6? Considerably less? Davidson/ Yeah, there's a real peaking phenomenon here, in that when the University's Hancher lot lets out in the afternoon or when people are going to it in the morning, it's just totally overloaded with traffic, but then during the rest of the day it works much better, because there's not nearly the traffic... Elliott! ljust think so many people commuting from Solon, Mt. Vernon and that sort of thing. Okay. Davidson/ I wanted to add too, to Ron's comments, there's also another element of this project that I think we're going to want you to consider. There's great interest from the University in, at the western limit of this project, taking the four-lane transition all the way up to Riverside Drive and having turn lanes at that intersection, being able to improve the Hancher driveway intersections. We've run that by the higher ups at the University. They're very interested in this project, so that when we go ahead with this- we haven't talked specifically with them about money or anything - but it's a fairly good idea in that the City owns one side of the road, the University owns the other side of the road, and so in terms of right-of-way and that would be much simplified. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. --_...._----_._-----"----"._--_.._._------"---~---~-_.~--' - ------~--~-------_._--~-"-_.- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 35 Bailey/ We get to take all University property and no City Park property? (laughter) Just a thought! Davidson/ It's something that we would like to continue to pursue with the University if you concur that that's a good idea. Vanderhoef/ Show me with the pointer how, or where, you've got the additional space to make that right hand turn lane. Are you totally widening the bridge? Knoche/ No, for the right hand turn lane, from southbound Dubuque onto Park Road would be right, about right where that car's turning in that picture. So, there's enough room there to widen it. The sidewalk in that area would end up probably being right on the back of the curb, but we'd be able to do some brick treatment in there so that it'd have a visual delineation between those two. Correia! Wouldn't that bridge have to be closed during this.. .all... Knoche/ We would have to look at that during the design. There would be the possibility that you could maintain it, do half at a time. Obviously, it would decrease the capacity of that corridor during construction. (several talking) Champion! How safe is that to have the sidewalk that close to the road? That really would be close. Elliott! Like the Burlington Street bridge. That frightens me every time I'm in that right hand lane, that somebody's going to trip and fall in front of me. Bailey/ ... talking about on the street, yeah, I mean, the sidewalk is really close... Elliott! Any time you have the sidewalk just abutting the street, it's... it's dangerous, I think. Knoche/ And this.. .as Jeff just mentioned to me, this is the Iowa River Corridor Trail along here, so it is a little bit wider sidewalk than what we'd typically have in an arterial corridor. Bailey/ There's a sidewalk that ends on the east side of Dubuque Street that ends about at that stoplight. Thoughts? Is there anything we can do? Knoche/ The sidewalk itself, it doesn't. .. the sidewalk is just kind of from that parking lot to the intersection. There really isn't much, you know there's not a sidewalk further to the south on that side of the street due to the embankment that's there. So it really just kind of serves that house. Bailey/ That would help with the pedestrian...1 mean, there's a lot of pedestrian crossing down by, and it kind of help if they could get up part way to town on the east side, without having to cross. Vanderhoef/ Ridge Road people. Bailey/ Is that who... This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 36 Vanderhoef/ ." come down and they've got the light, and so putting that sidewalk in a few years ago has helped immensely to get it just to the light, because there didn't used to be a sidewalk there. Knoche/ Yeah, and with the bluff that' s kind of along there, it would be tough to take a sidewalk from this intersection all the way down to Mayflower. (several talking) Champion/ Where do Mayflower people cross? Knoche/ They cross right out the front door of Mayflower, they go across to the River Corridor Trail. (several talking) Davidson! We have periodically, but with some regularity, tried to encourage the University to consider a grade separation there out of Mayflower. I mean, right now the Mayflower kids come out and they have to go down to the street. You could very logically take something over the top of the road and get them over to the west side without them having to cross that grade, which we think would be a great idea, but so far the University hasn't... Elliott/ Pedestrian bridge you're talking about? Yeah. Davidson! Bridge out of Mayflower over to the other side. Champion/ How could they do that though? How would they be able to do that? Davidson/ Well, grade wise it would work well coming out of Mayflower, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Champion/ Oh, I see what you're saying. Davidson/ You'd have to get them back down once you got over to the other side. Vanderhoefj' Handicap accessibility may be the biggest problem. (several talking) Elliott! I remember when they put the circular walks on Burlington Street. For a time, every year Daily Iowan would run students taking pictures of those circular walks, but it sure made it safer for the kids to cross Riverside Drive. Knoche/ And the circular walks today wouldn't meet the ADA accessibility. You'd have to have a bridge similar to what's along Highway 6. Vanderhoef/ That's the problem, and the added distance. Rochester Avenue Bridge: Knoche/ The next project is the Rochester Avenue bridge. This one is starting to creep it's way up the State Bridge Funds list for us, and so we're looking at when this one is programmed we'd be looking at using some either federal funds or State bridge funds, whichever it would qualify for. With the project, we would obviously build sidewalks, either along with a bridge like we did at Meadow Street bridge, or just build a box This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -~,-----_._~._,-,--~-~,----,-'-'--"'~'-"""-'----"---~- "-",--~--"",-,,~,,,-,-,--~~,--------'-'-'----'-"---~'_.'-"-----"'-"----"-~-"-'--'----------"--- ~-' --- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 37 culvert, and then have the sidewalks on each side of that. Just kind of depends on what the structure size would have to be. Vanderhoef/ And this will be four lane, right-of-way and bridge? Knoche/ Correct. We would have the ability to widen that in the future, and what we would do is if we did a box culvert, then you could have it be wide enough to accommodate a four lane cross section in the future, but you wouldn't have to put that four lane cross section on it now. Champion/ But why would you, I mean, you could never put, Rochester, you could never make it four lanes. Look how many houses you'd effect! So why go to that expense? Vanderhoef/ Actually, four lanes right now, but it has parking on it. Bailey/ Where is it four lanes? Correia! There's not a third lane down at the part where you can park. Vanderhoef/ Pardon me? Correia! There's not a middle turn lane at the part of Rochester where there's parking on the street. Knoche/ The middle turn lane stops at 7th Avenue. (several talking) Correia! .. . stops at 7th Avenue. You can't park on that side of Rochester. Vanderhoef/ Well, they do. Correia! I've never seen anybody parking on that part of Rochester. Champion! Where do they park at, Dee? Vanderhoef/ They park where 7th Avenue, and it's usually when there's an activity in the neighborhood. It isn't permanent kind of parking. It's overload parking, when there's something in the neighborhood down there. Correia! Maybe on the other side of the bridge, but... Elliott! From 7"' east, no parking is that what you're saying? Correia! No parking. Elliott/7th west, parking? Correia! Well, after the bridge. Vanderhoef/ Since we put in the center turn lane on the east side of the bridge, I haven't seen parking there, but they used to do parking right along there. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -,~~-,,-----~,--~--'-'-~'-'-"---"---------"-~-'-+~---._-----~-_.,...._-_...._---------~_._"._^---++ -- .-,-,--+-----.--.,--.-,.--- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 38 Champion/ But why, I mean, my question is, I can't see this becoming four lanes without totally disrupting a tremendous amount of people. So why would you go to the expense to make the possibility? Knoche/ We'll definitely look at that during the design process, and the one thing that if we go to the, allow for the full widening, we'd be able to maintain the sidewalks in the alignment that they should be, where if we built a bridge, then we'd obviously bring the sidewalks in to match up, but that's just one thing we'll look at during the design. All right, thank you. Fosse/ A configuration you might think of that we're considering here is I" Avenue next to the Hy-Vee, that's where we put in a box culvert and the sidewalks go straight through, so from the road it looks pretty much like a regular roadway section - you just see some railings along the back of the sidewalk, and where that's a good thing in this location is when you get off to the south end, there's quite a high bank on the west side and the further we can extend that box culvert, the more stable it'll be in that area. So, more than likely we'll end up with a configuration something like that. That's where we're leaning. Salt Storage: Fosse/ Salt storage building - we talked about that a couple weeks ago and we've got the replacement of that in the Capital Program. It's simply something that we've outgrown and structurally it's got some problems and you notice we don't have good site drainage there, as well. Keep in mind, it's part of a bigger project, excuse me, where we're consolidating Public Works' functions.. .sorry...that are at a number of different locations and bringing them together at that one location on Sand Road. Ron. Scott Boulevard Pavement Overlav: Knoche/ Scott Boulevard pavement overlay - this is a project to overlay Scott Boulevard from . Rochester down to Court Street. This is a section of road that we've had a few complaints from the neighbors with the truck traffic that's there and the faulting, as you can kind of see, they're starting to get some settlement at the joints, which can cause a little bit louder noises from the truck traffic as it goes through here. This is one that we've had some studies done by Iowa State to kind of look at what's going on here, what are the issues, because we're starting to see some materials starting to fail and they're just saying that it was.. .as the concrete went down, there was some air in the concrete which is causing it to deteriorate. The base that the road is on is a soil base versus a granular sub-base like we use today, and so what we're going, what their recommendation was was to rubblize the whole road and put new concrete road on top of it. The expense of that is great, and I don't think we've got the useful life out of the pavement itself yet. So, we would come in and we do a crack and seat, which is a little bit smaller hammer; fractures the pavement and seats it down to take care of the faulting that's there, and then we put an asphalt overlay on top of it, and then after we get the life out of that, 10, 15,20 years, then we come back and look at some type of replacement, whether it be widening at that time because ofthe volume that's there or just go back to the existing width that's there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 39 Correia/ How come this is programmed out in Fiscal Year II, is that something that waits that long, given what we're seeing now? Knoche/ Urn, it's one that we.. . it's kind of just a placemark right now, If we need, if we need to act on it a little bit sooner, I don't know how soon the pavement's going to deteriorate, but it is something we'll see, you know, in this program that we have now that it will start to have some potholes that may start to occur at the joints. Vanderhoefi' How old is this pavement? Knoche/ This pavement is just at 20 years, I believe. Elliott! Is Taft the road that goes pretty much straight north-south, just a little ways east? Is that the name of that road? Knoche/ Taft Avenue, yes it is. ElIiott/ Have we looked at that much for... it always seemed to me like it's a pity we did Scott Boulevard, when we could have gone over to Taft and made it four lane and straight, instead of two-lane and curvy and what have you. Knoche/ That's one that I'm not aware of that we've looked at it recently. One ofthe reasons for this pavement being in the condition that it is in is because of the Scott Six Industrial Park and the high truck use that's down there now with the warehousing that's occurred. I don't think that was something that was ever anticipated during the design of this project, but I'm not aware of Taft Avenue being looked at, you know, during the programming of this one. Vanderhoef/ I would say this is lesson learned. If it is a straight shot to an industrial park and so when we start looking at Taft Avenue, that the build on that particular street is going to... we know it's going to end up in a lot of industrial, certainly as we are starting to by- pass Scott, but we still have a lot of trucks that are going to use that area. My question, I guess, is whether we're fooling ourselves in doing a patchwork on this one. You say you don't know how much longer this is going to hold up, and whether we should be programming for rebuild on this street right now. Knoche/ I've called other communities that do similar types of projects and Waterloo is one. They do a lot ofprojects with asphalt overlays, and kind of explained the situation that we're in and this would be a prime candidate for them to do an asphalt overlay on, and they would expect to be able to overlay it a couple times before they would have to, you know, actually do a complete tearout. You know, so if we had the ability to overlay it more than once, you know, then we're pushing it out 40 years, versus 20 or 15. Correia! How much is a complete overhaul or rebuild? Knoche/ A complete overhaul on this, it would be over a million. Yeah. Wilburn! With the effect that you're talking about doing, instead of busting up the entire life, you're talking about doing it at the joists, at the stress points where the (unable to hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007, January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 40 Knoche! It would, it micro-fractures the whole pavement so... but it doesn't actually make it into stuff that you can pull out and, you know, as far as actual material as it breaks down, and then the other thing that we would do with this is do sub-drains along this, along the pavement edges, and that should help alleviate the faulting that we do see occurring, and that's just a matter of not having good drainage undemeath the substructure of the pavement. Thank you. Unfunded #30 - Taft Avenue: Davidson! It's come up a couple times and it will probably come up in the next project that Karin is going to present to you. Taft Avenue, the first portion of that, is project #30 on the Unfunded list. So it is in the plan, but it's not in a funded year ofthe Plan. The first portion of Scott Boulevard that was built in the late 70's, mid to late 70's, was the portion between Highway 6 and American Legion Road, and likely that would be the first section we do of Taft Avenue, as well, and that's what's in the Unfunded list. Elliott! Yeah, Ijust hope that when we look at those things, just make them as straight as possible and four lanes, instead of this two-lane business. Davidson! I would imagine, Bob, that 30 years ago probably the Council had the same discussion on building Scott Boulevard to alleviate pressure off I" Avenue because, you know, it's just kind of the logical buildout of the community in that direction. Svcamore Street - Bums to City Limits: Davidson! The next project is Sycamore Street, between Bums and the city limits. The city limits are approximately at Langenberg Avenue, just slightly to the south, so that's what we're talking about in terms of this project. If during the break you want to look at the board you can see exactly what the delineation is. If you remember what I said earlier this morning about American Legion Road? Pretty much a repeat right here. Our community is growing in this direction. We have received, and will continue to receive, exactions from developers to pay for a portion of this reconstruction. In addition, you see the city street in the background there, right there, so from that point down to just south of Langenberg is where we would be reconstructing this. You know, we will look at the capacity at the time that we do the reconstruction, in terms of likely being south of Lakeside being either a two-lane with turn lanes or a three-lane continuous section through here. We would add sidewalks, 8-foot sidewalk on one side, 4-foot sidewalk on the other side. So, pretty much just the standard type arterial street design of the. .. Elliott! Is this looking north? Davidson! This is looking north, yeah. In fact, you're probably at Langenberg or slightly to the north of Langenberg, looking north. Correia! Tell me how far down. Davidson! Almost to where this picture was taken from. Correia! Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 41 Davidson/ I think slightly to the south, further, but pretty much this stretch. Correia! And how much farther is it to... Davidson! This gets you about half way down to the Soccer Park road. Correia/ And why not all the way to the Soccer Park? Davidson/ It is in the county currently, although it's within the growth area of the City and likely to be annexed, I think, probably within the next year. So, that is something that you could decide to do. This project is in...let's see, 09, so... Elliott/ I presume the County is saying, "let's not do anything now; wait til it's the City's problem." Davidson/ Yeah, in fact, I think the City's doing a lot ofthe maintenance. I know we do all of the traffic control devices in that corridor already, just through an agreement with the County. Elliott! And this... Correia! There's a lot of development on the left side? (several talking at once) Davidson/ Actually, both east and... there are subdivisions on both sides, the one General Quarters on the east side is just starting so there's no houses there yet, but there are subdivisions...yeah, everything north of Langenberg is in the City. There are subdivisions on both sides and we have had discussions with the property owner. There's pretty much one property owner that owns all the property south down to the Soccer Park road, and they're ready to come into the City. They've been showing us some concept plans. Bailey/ Could we get a sense of what it would cost us to go farther south? Correia/ Yeah, I mean, because there's a lot of... Davidson/ Is that even in an unfunded year already, Rick? Yeah, I think if you look at the unfunded years, let's see. ..yeah, there it is. Project 28 on page C20. The one thing though, just in terms oftiming, we.. .once the road is built, then we don't get exactions anymore. Champion! Right. Bailey/ Right. Davidson/ Because you basically can't say to Mr. or Mrs. Developer, there's a need for this money to reconstruct the road when the road's already been reconstructed. So, timing wise that may be something... Elliott! If you do it in phases, then the developers can share in the costs. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 42 Davidson! Right. And it's not a huge, I mean, you can see I believe it's shown here...you know, the development fees are a relatively modest amount, but they do help. Elliott! Now, will this, will this street then become concrete with curbs and gutters and... Davidson! Yes, right. Elliott! Okay. Vanderhoef! Tell me, if we were looking at the big overall transportation plan and how this street goes south, then turns west, goes over to Gilbert, which then we're going to have the bridge across the river and get onto the 218 south to go south. So why would we not with a high traffic area, as far as the Soccer Park is going, with that being our growth area that's happening pretty systematically now to the south. Davidson! Once you get down to the Soccer Park, that's pretty much the edge of the growth area boundary down there. Vanderhoef! Right now, and my thinking is that this is going to be an alternative way to get onto the highway and that we're going to need the four lanes going all the way down to the Soccer Park. Davidson! And that'll be something that we take a look at, Dee. There are two river crossings here, just to clarify, and I wish we had a better map to look at, but there are two river crossings here. The bridge that you heard Ron speak about that's under design right now, that will not be the extension of Sycamore Street. That arterial will come through - in fact, a proportion of it's built through Sand Hill subdivision right now. And if you go out to here, from where this picture is from this location, right... right about here, just over your shoulder there's a big farmhouse at the top of the hill and the arterial will come through just north of that farmhouse. That's the bridge, that's McCollister Boulevard. The bridge that's under construction right now. Now, we also have planned, for the longer-range future, another bridge crossing, which will be that extension of Sycamore Street. When you just purchased the S&G quarry for the park, we reserved a right-of- way across the south edge of that for that arterial street. That's much further in the future and hasn't been designed or that, but that's the one that you're talking about, and we will try, Dee, and get an assessment of how soon we think that will occur. That's in our traffic analysis model, in terms of the amount of traffic it's going to generate, but once you get down into that area, the development potential- it's kind of a marshy area down there and there's a lot of land that probably will not develop in any significant intensity, and so that'll be something we'll have to take into consideration when we're looking at the capacity of this link here. Elliott! So, about half way down Sycamore, being halfWay before you get to the.. . yeah, the deadend almost... there's going to be a major intersection. Will that be a t-intersection or will it go, continue to go through? Davidson! As far as we're concerned at the present time, it would be at-intersection. Elliott! Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 43 Davidson! But.. .now, you know, you get into the golf course... Elliott! Vh-huh. Davidson! ..once you get much further south and that, depending on what the development potential of that ground is down there and what a private entity might want to do, you could eventually have that be a four-way intersection, but it would be a T for the time being. Correial...talking four lanes? This is two lanes. (several talking) Vanderhoef! And we own the right-of-way for four, correct? Davidson! Right. You can see the part up here... .the part up here is four lanes, currently. Vanderhoef! I think what would be a mistake not to continue that as a four lane, down to the L. (severa] talking) Davidson! What we've been looking at is bringing the four-lane, which could potentially...we're going to be looking at... well, what we're starting to see is that if you have a four-lane street with a lot ofturning movement, what you end up with is essentially the capacity of a two-lane street with a lot of rear-end crashes. And that a three-lane section with a center turn lane is safer and virtually carries the same amount of traffic in a smaller area. I mean, the research coming out just shows time and time again that this is the case. So, we're looking at this portion of Sycamore Street down to Lakeside as potentially a three- lane section. I haven't that study yet, but JCCOG's looking at this this year, and we'll do the same thing further south in trying this, but four-lane streets in areas where you have a lot of turning movements are just not a very effective kind of street. They end up being a high crash area and you just don't get much capacity out of it, beyond a two-lane street with turn lanes. Anything else? Vanderhoef! I have a problem with that. Champion! We know that, Dee, you love four lane streets. Elliott! Most of our streets are too narrow. Vanderhoef! I just.. . (several talking).. .the more commercia] it is for an area, the more] dislike the three lanes. In residentia]s, I'm more comfortable with four. Bailey! Residentia]s you're more comfortable with four? Vanderhoef! No, the residential I'm more comfortable with three, but... in the commercial area I hate three lanes. Those are huge, nasty things. (severa] talking) I dislike. Elliott! There you go! Vanderhoef! Highly dislike! Elliott! That's a family value! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ,___,~,____._~,_____,_,____________'_'_'____'_____'___''^_____w_.__ .____.______.________._.__..__..,_.~~._______..________.--.------.------.--.-----~--. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 44 420lh Street ImDrovements - Highwav 6 to Taft: Franklin! 420.' Street improvements. This is from Highway 6 to Taft A venue, and the idea here is to serve the existing Scott Six Industrial Park, as well as enable and act as a catalyst to the extension of that industrial park to Taft. Elliott! Is that the street that turns off towards Fareway? Franklin! Yes. Elliott/ 4201h? Franklin/ Yes. And it's a rather curious, as you can see from this slide, intersection between 420lh and Highway 6 that we'd like to get that rectified. There have been incidences of trucks not quite making that turn and kind of falling into the ditch there. This would also include a sewer project that would extend sewer from the trunk line, which is just south of Highway 6, and along that property south of 4201h, and then up to a point north of 420." and would open up that area for more industrial development. We would anticipate possibly being able to access RISE Funds for this project. We would certainly make that effort. So, any questions about it? Elliott! Is the intersection going to move at all? Because now, I think, as I recall, you turn left and then you turn right again? Franklin! Since we haven't done design on it yet, it would probably move a bit, but not appreciably. So that you wouldn't, you would be able to tell the difference, but over time it wouldn't seem like it was anything different. Okay? Vanderhoef/ And this is, once again... Franklin/ The idea here with FY09 is that we've kind of given it a little bit higher priority in our proposal to you, because it is an area in which we could get some potential economic development and commercial. ..er, more industrial development off of it. Vanderhoef/ And there's nothing here that, in making it redesign and so forth, we're in the County at that point. Franklin! This is a road which is half in the county and half in the city. So it will present some challenges, in terms of working with the property owners on the south side of the road, but we just need to do that. Vanderhoef/ But there's no partnering with the county to... Franklin! The County, urn, I think will probably not be interested in investing in this road, since in the future that area on the south side of 420th Street is in our growth area, and with sewer would be proj ected to be part ofIowa City at some time in the future, and generally, the County's position has been not to invest in those roads that are going to be in municipalities in the future. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 45 Bailey! Funded in 09 means we wouldn't even start designing it until 09? Are there... Franklin! No. We would start probably designing it next fiscal year, which, you know, starts in July. Bailey! Right, but we don't have any funding program for that. 08. Franklin! Right, and then that's a matter of whether we do it in-house or out of house, or... Bailey! Got it. Franklin! Since Rick is waiting in the wings, he might be able to answer that question. Vanderhoef! ... .okay for design, or are they only for construction? Franklin! You can use them for both, Jeff says. Yeah, and this would be a RISE project that would not necessarily be connected to a user, but a speculative RISE. I can't remember what the terminology is, but it would be in anticipation of further development. Okay? Fosse! Before we move on to Parks projects, I just want to take a moment to point out the differences in our arterial street design today versus 20 years ago, when we did this project. Three main differences - one is we use a thicker slab of concrete, and how thick that slab is depends on the soils reports for that specific area. Secondly, we use steel reinforcing dowels that are 12 inches on center at the joints to have better load transfer from one panel to the next, and faulting is less of a problem then. And the third difference is the roads are built on a six-inch aggregate base, and that base is drained into tiles and what we found is with the soils that we have here in Iowa City that six-inch aggregate base is a good idea, whether it's an arterial street or a residential street. So you'll probably see more and more of that integrated into our design standards. So, with that, we'll move on to Parks, and Jeff will lead off. PARKS, RECREATION & TRAILS: Butler Bridge!Pedestrian Trail: Davidson! The first project that we have here is a major element of the Iowa River Corridor Trail system, and you can kind of see on the two slides here. I guess, to orient you first - this is Dubuque Street, Iowa River obviously. This is the parking area down at Waterworks Prairie Park. What we have the situation right now where you come through this area of the Waterworks Prairie Park and to get across the bridge onto the portion of the trail that the County built up to West Overlook Road, and eventually out to the dam, you. . . the situation right now is that you are on the shoulder of the southbound lanes, and there's no kind of any barrier or anything between you and the traffic lanes. That shoulder area right through here gets full of debris on a regular basis. Any of you who have ridden it, I don't need to provide any more evidence because it'sjust...the County occasionally goes out and sweeps it, but it is routinely full of debris, in addition to having the oncoming traffic at a relatively high rate of speed coming towards you. So, we took a look at our options here and found that what we can do, as you can kind of see from arrow right here, is essentially cantilever from the existing structure, because the weights are so modest, that we can cantilever 8-foot trail over the side, and that's what's proposed here in order This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 46 to then provide a barrier between the oncoming traffic, and essentially have a facility just for pedestrians and bicyclists. We did go after some State Recreational Trails Funding and did not receive that a year ago. What we've decided is that this is a nice logical project for Congressionally designated funding. It's a very modest project, in terms of the scope of some of the ones that we do request. It is a joint, a project jointly supported by the County, Coralville, and Iowa City. Coralville has indicated they will participate in one-fourth of the local match. The annexation agreement between Iowa City and Coralville basically calls for eventually this to be in Iowa City, this to be in Iowa City, this is already in Iowa City, and this to be in Coralville. So that's the reason for one- quarter of the local match, and Coralville has committed to that. This project is in the program for next year, but will obviously be one that is contingent on when we receive funding, unless you decide to accelerate it using another funding source. Any questions? Correia! You said we applied... the City applied for State funds for 07. Are we reapplying for that? Davidson! Right. We have not reapplied. It's based on where we were in the ranking and the competition for those funds, and the amount offunds available. It just didn't look like a good fit for us. We think the Congressionally designated... we have, JCCOG has prepared materials for the delegation to take to Washington, and because this is such a modest project, just slightly under a half a million, it might be a good candidate. Wilburn! Kind of weird to see you leading off with something about a cemetery, Terry, but.. .1'11 just stop right there I guess. Cemetery Resurfacing: Trueblood! I am getting old. First one on my list here is cemetery resurfacing. As you can see, it's a $50,000 project scheduled for FYIO. At this time, actually I would say that most of our roadways in the cemetery are in pretty good shape. This is an example of where it isn't in good shape, because we put about $50,000 into the road system just a couple years ago. This is the entryway, actually this is one that we'd probably like to do before FYIO and see if we can float a loan of a couple thousand dollars maybe from Rick's bi- annual asphalt program to get this one done a little bit sooner. Before I go any further, I would like to say that this morning I distributed at your desks the Commission's Top Ten Priority List, which we try to do every year, just so you're aware of that. If you want to refer to it at any time, that would be just fine. Any questions about cemetery before we move on? Okay, this next one actually, Ron Knoche was going to talk about. You see, I'm coasting into retirement so I have to have a little help from Jeff and a little help form Ron to help talk about these projects. Court Hill Trail: Knochel This project is currently under design. Shive-Hattery consultants is doing the design for us. This will take a trail from Court Hill Park to Creekside Park, along the Ralston Creek, and the crossing at Meadows Street is already was built and replaced with the bridge project last year. We'll also have a crossing at I " Avenue and a crossing at Muscatine Avenue. One of the cone ems that came out of the neighborhood meetings was the crossings and how do we get people across the street and we've looked at a couple different options. One of them was to use the box culvert at, underneath I" A venue and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ---_.__.._-"---,_.__._".,~-~--,---------~-------_...-_.----_._.._-_._---,.~--- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 47 try to accommodate pedestrian traffic there. Unfortunately, the box culvert isn't large enough to accommodate that, so we'll need to have an (can't hear) crossing at I" Avenue. One of the design ideas that's out there right now is to actually have a raised median in the center there, because that's where the three-lane section begins for the left turns into Hy-Vee and left turn into Walgreen's. So do a raised median, or median nose, and have a pedestrian refuge in the middle. That way they can hit the gaps as needed. Muscatine Avenue, when they did the gap study of that, it didn't pose as big of an issue as far as the gaps go, and so there may be, as far as.. .also signage will be incorporated into those, but actually the I" Avenue crossing is one that seems to be a bigger issue right now. We already have all of the property acquired for this project, through developments that have occurred and some Park projects that have occurred. So it's basically just a matter of getting the design done and bidding it. This one will be bid this coming fall and for construction in 2008, and there is some Enhancement Funds for this project so there's some federal aid money that's going to be used in this project. Mercer Ball Diamond Uograde: Trueblood! Okay, the next project for Parks and Recreation is the Mercer Park ball diamond upgrade. It's scheduled for $100,000 in FY08. This is actually the third year of a three- year phased project. We've been carrying over most of the funds for a couple of years now, so that we can get to the main part of this project, which is not the picture that you see here. This would fall under some of the miscellaneous projects. You can see that backstop on field number four, as we call it, is in pretty bad shape. So we would tackle some things like that, as well. It's primarily to replace lighting on fields two, three, and four, and in case you're not acclimated to which field is which, field number one, the one on the left, the first one on the left as you enter the complex is the one that we've been working with with City High School. That's the City High School home field now, as well as Babe Ruth's primary field and it is a premiere diamond right now, especially when you compare it to the others. This would relight two, three and four, as I said, plus some outfield renovation to number three where the field sunk after a major sewer line project. One of Rick's projects. He made the field sink, so now we have to fix it. (laughter) As well as some other odds and ends. These lights, lights on fields two, three and four are all a minimum of25 years old. Some of the poles are more than 30 years old. So it is in need of an upgrade. Elliott! Does four still have a short fence? Trueblood! Yes, that's really the only true softball field out there. Elliott! Because most of the other fields in town, it seems to me, had a longer.. .or I guess, when we were playing in Coralville, the fence on that number four was shorter than most of the other fields we played on. Trueblood! Well, that's why Steve hit a homerun there a number of years ago. Elliott! I wondered if that wasn't behind that. Trueblood! He ordered that it not be moved back. (laughter) Bailey/ And the lighting is appropriately shielded for the neighborhood... This represents only a reasonably accurate trauscriptiou of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of Jauuary 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 48 Trueblood! As a matter of fact I'm glad you bring that up because there have been tremendous advances in sports' lighting over the years. With the new sports' lighting, we can put fewer light to get out more input, and have it more directed, so that there's less spillover. And cost less for the energy. Vanderhoef! Wow! Four in one. Elliott! Yep. Trueblood! Doesn't cost less to put in though. Aquatics Center Pool & Lobbv Roof Reulacement: Trueblood! The next project is the Aquatic Center pool and lobby roof replacement, $425,000 project scheduled for 08, at this time. This roof, now, I have to emphasize this, it's just the roof over the Aquatic Center, or over the pool portion, pool and lobby of the building. It doesn't replace what's over Scanlon Gym. That's substantially newer, about II or 12 years newer, but you can see here on this shot, we've done a lot of patching over the years of this large, flat roof. The rubber membrane tends to stretch and shrink, you know, during temperature changes, that kind of thing, so we've had quite a few leaks over the years. Now, you might say what does it matter - it's just going into the pool, but actually, it goes into other places too, like the lobby, the locker rooms, the restrooms and so forth. Elliott! Is it the pool that gets the significant amount of use out there? I see many times when the parking lot is full, and it's not softball. Is it the pool that's attracting the people? With swim clubs? Trueblood! Actually, depends on the time of the day, the day of the week. Sometimes it'd be the pool, sometimes it would be the Scanlon Gym facility portion of it. Elliott! So there's quite a bit of use in the gym too? Trueblood! Oh yeah! Elliott! Okay. Correia! Think of all the junior high kids that aren't driving, and (unable to hear). Wilburn! .. .school district has, well, junior high basketball, spills over into the space over there and.. . (several talking at once). Trueblood! And you know, we have some, for example, we have a major indoor soccer tournament that's played there every year. That traditionally attracts plus or minus a 100 teams from probably ten to fifteen cities around the state. You know, you'll see the parking lot very full at a time like that, as well. This shows the portion over the lobby that's what I refer to as the "translucent portion" of the roof. You can't really see it from the picture, but we're starting to experience quite a lot offtaking, or scaling, as they call it, and we could put a few thousand dollars into some repairs for that, but the contractor is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -~----"'------------'-~---'--~--"--'-"' ,,~,,-,---'------'----'-~ January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 49 telling us they've made a lot of advances in that, as well, and the best thing to do (TAPE ENDS) ...no, we haven't talked about that. Correia! Okay, yeah, is that a possibility to add that later, or do you have to do that initially when you build the building? Elliott! That would eliminate the translucent effect, obviously. Trueblood/ Right, it wouldn't do any good to put it on top of the building where it can't be seen. So the only portion where it can be seen would be the translucent portion of it probably, and in answer to your question, yes, it does cost quite a bit more. Elliott! The place in Door County, I think it's a restaurant up there, that has goats up on the roof that attend to the grass on the roof. Trueblood! It's tough to get the mowers up there! (laughter and several talking) Pedestrian Bridge - Rockv Shore/Peninsula: Trueblood! This next project, Jeff and I are going to do a little tag-team on it, but it's the pedestrian bridge, Rocky Shore to Peninsula Park, a $1.3 million project scheduled at this time for FY08. This is a large project by Parks and Recreation standards, of course. This shows an aerial view of the Peninsula. The bridge could go anywhere from right down in this area, this is Crandic Park peaking out there, anywhere between there and up to here, which is the part where Park Road changes into Rocky Shore. We haven't really pinpointed which would be the best location at this time. Tend to feel down closer to Crandic Park would be better. One of the things that I wanted to remind you of is that in your most recent information packet this last week, there was a memo to you from the Parks and Recreation Commission that outlined why they feel that this is their number one priority of all their projects. It's been a high priority for a number of years and now it's their number one priority. This aerial, of course, shows Peninsula Park area all around down through here. One thing I'd like to flip-flop on the priorities, or on the memo, just a little bit was the part where it would provide a very nice connection to the Iowa River Corridor Trail. We're still hopeful that some day in future years we will be able to acquire, through donation, all of the land along the river here, clear up to 1-80, which at that time then would make a very nice connection to Waterworks Prairie Park, down all along the river, and in the existing trails in Peninsula Park, and then to bridge over and connect on to Rocky Shores, through City Park, all the way down to Napoleon Park and eventually further south. One of the primary reasons that the Commission feels that this is a very high priority is because of the development in the Peninsula neighborhood. You know, it's a rather, what I would call condensed design, if you will, with narrow roads and since we have, you know, we have a disc golf course on there, which just opened up this last November, but it really hadn't officially opened yet, and once it does, we think it's really going to take off and it's going to attract thousands of rounds per year. We also have, of course, the new dog park, which has been beyond our expectations, frankly, as far as popularity. I can't give you an attendance figure, but I can tell you that we've sold over 2,000 annual passes to that. So, anyway, the traffic issues through Peninsula Park are a concern to us and the Commission feels that we're obligated to do whatever we can to help with those traffic issues, and of course, a better entrance from the Iowa City side of the river would certainly help with that, particularly, and we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ______._.~~_"____..____._.___._ __ ._,,_________~__._._m____.._._.______..._._."_..,____~'____._..,,__,________+__...___.__...__.,~__.__.__.,__. ---.--------.--...~-- . .----...~----,-...- January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 50 hope that it would encourage more pedestrians or more bicyclists, as opposed to cars being able to do that, but it would also provide a small parking area in Crandic Park, where ifthey did drive there, they can park there and then go across. This is taken from Crandic Park, looking over to the Peninsula area, on the left. Just shows going up river, a bridge could go anywhere along that area. I guess I'll turn it over to you for a minute, Jeff. Elliott! But you're.. .when you're talking about that as another entnSe to the dog park, so you would plan to put a significant parking area on the other side of the river, and then the pedestrian bridge. They would walk from the parking lot, over the pedestrian bridge, to the dog park? Davidson! Yeah, I think the parking lot issue, as Terry said, if the bridge were oriented in the vicinity of Crandic Park, you have an existing parking lot there. It's not very big. It could be made a little bigger. I think it's a combination, Bob, of we feel like, in terms of both of this golf course and the dog park, that there are some people from the immediate area who would walk across the bridge, not drive and park, but walk across the bridge, ride their bikes - in the case of the disc golf. Just try and encourage as much of that as possible, possibly get a few people to park at Crandic Park and walk across. Again, we're just trying to minimize the impact on the Peninsula neighborhood, because quite frankly, the original, the original Peninsula plan did include this bridge, if you look at that, but it did not include the intensity of the use in the Peninsula Park area that we're now seeing. Elliott! But a million three seems like an awfully steep amount of money for cost per person who would use that bridge. Just an unbelievably expensive... Davidson! Sure. It is an expensive project. It is similar in expense to the pedestrian bridge across Highway 6 on the Westlawn curve. Similar expense to that. The handicap accessibility would have to be worked out. That's now a significant cost element of any type of a pedestrian bridge structure, such as it was on the one on... Elliott! My friends on Parks and Recs won't... but I can't imagine spending that kind of money for a pedestrian bridge. Davidson! There is the possibility, again, of receiving some STP or Enhancement Funds through JCCOG, again, that gets to be a priority of what you want and what you want to use it for, but a project like this would be eligible potentially for those types of funds, 'although I don't believe it is requested, or reflected, in the plan. Let's see... no, it is reflected as 100% GO funding. So, again, it's something that because of what's occurred to the Peninsula Park area, in terms of the higher intensity uses, the traffic issues that we are now having on, in the Peninsula neighborhood. This is a project that the new Fosters Crossing consortium of developers from the Peninsula is very much in support of. Correia! Go back to the aerial photo for a second. Yeah, so, that's on old photo, right? You don't see the dog park or the disc, or even.. . even the... Davidson! Right, no, you see.. . right in there, and the dog park's right in here, right, Terry? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 51 Correia! So how far would it be to walk from, to cross the pedestrian bridge if it's at Crandic Park, and then there's a, there would be a sidewalk, a trail? Davidson/ Yeah, you would probably connect to the well head that's right there, like the one on Rocky Shore, you'd connect right here. If you crossed at River Street, you would have to figure out how to get a trail over to one of those existing trails. (several talking) Yeah, there you go. Those show how they would connect. The connection would be provided there or there, whichever... Correia! I can't see in there... where is the dog park? Where's the disc golf? (several talking) How far ofa walk...so I'm... Elliott! Quarter of a mile, half mile. (several talking) Bailey/ And do we, are we seeing people using the Coralville side of the pedestrian bridge, to come across and, I mean, that works pretty well, I would assume. Davidson/ Yeah, I can't remember.. .do you remember at JCCOG did we present any (unable to hear)? I can't remember if we've done counts in that area or not, but we clearly can. I think most of you are aware that Coralville's long-term plan is to bring a trail then up this side of the river. You're probably just seeing the very south portion (unable to hear). They want to bring a trail all along here and then tie across a pedestrian bridge right here to the point where the Iowa River Corridor Trail goes underneath the interstate. So, there is an...pardon? (several talking) Right, it'd actually connect on the Peninsula side, take you over to (several talking), and then as Terry mentioned, Karin...don't we have some of the property? We got it with the... what's the name of those (unable to hear). Elk Run, we did get, 1 think that's up in this area here. We did get the property, and as Terry mentioned, we hope to be able to extend something up this side of the river, as well, to that same point, and get a real interconnected system here. Champion/ It would seem to me that the Crandic Park location is the least accessible. I mean, it's small residential in that area, where if it was on the kind of, by City Park or this. ..huge residential areas that people might use it more, instead of having to go to Crandic Park to get to it. What's your consideration in that location? Davidson/ We just put them all out there as alternatives right now, Connie. Anyone of the three along here. Ron, did you even have a fourth one on that one slide? Anyone of the four along here, makes it greatly more accessible than getting to it currently. I think there's a feeling by a lot of people that having to go clear around to Foster Road is relatively inaccessible to the rest of Iowa City, and this would, for pedestrians and bicyclists, make it anyone of those locations much, much more accessible. VanderhoeV But when we talk about that accessibility, the Coralville folk certainly will connect through their town and you mentioned, I think, in your memo about too many cars parking at the restaurant, rather than some place else, that that. . . that's a concern, but I don't see that residential. I'm like the others. The residential to the south, at Crandic, and what? Five cars max, do you think, in Crandic? Davidson/ Oh, no, it's probably more like 20, I would say there, currently. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 52 Vanderhoef/ You think you can get that many in there, and still keep the picnic table and all that stuff? Knoche/ That all depends on football Saturdays or basketball (several talking at once). O'Donnell! Is that the most heavily used trail of all of our trails? It's got to be close. Davidson/ Probably... it is definitely heavily used, Mike. Probably the River Corridor trail through the University is probably the most heavily used. I'd have to think on the counts we've taken. Bailey/ Well, it seems like we're talking about two different things here. Bike and pedestrian access, which wouldn't matter how many parking spots we have at Crandic, and actually, you know, Coralville, that bridge is not that much farther on the trail. I mean, it's not from Crandic Park, it's not that far of a bike ride across that, to use that pedestrian bridge, and if we're talking about car access, then have a bridge...park at Crandic and then let's say you're going to the dog park, walk your dog to the park, that's quite a....I mean, in dog owner language if that's quite a walk or not, but it doesn't seem to be that much more accessible. So, what are we really trying to achieve here? Urn, it doesn't seem that much more accessible. Trueblood! Actually, the problem with riding a bike or walking right now, you mentioned like from Crandic over to the Iowa River Power bridge. There's not a good way to get there. Bailey/ Yeah, you have to go in the street for a short period oftime. But you just cross at that taco place and corne out on the street, and it's not horrible. Trueblood! Well, one of the primary things that we're trying to achieve with this is to reduce motor vehicle traffic through the Peninsula neighborhood, and we think that this will help. You know, Rick didn't put that picture up here because he wasn't sure I should mention this, but we have a beautiful pedestrian bridge for Coralville residents to use that bridge, but.. . for an Iowa city park, but for the Iowa City residents, unless they want to go over and use the Coralville side, alls they have is that rather long trip across Foster Road through the Peninsula neighborhood, down to the park. Bailey/ Well, and what I understand about, or what I think I understand about people who drive cars and parking in this community, is that people who want to drive somewhere, want to park as conveniently and as close as possible. So the idea that we would actually get, that we would stop a lot of traffic going through that neighborhood by putting in a pedestrian bridge, where people would actually have to walk...1 mean, people won't walk a block downtown to go shopping. It just seems it's not creating the access. Trueblood! Ifwe don't do this, I think our only other choice is going to be to probably double, if not triple, the size of the parking lot within Peninsula Park, because the parking area that's there now just is not going to accommodate busy days for both the dog park and Peninsula...or disc golf. O'Donnell/ You know, the dog park's a large part of it, but I think for accessibility to the Peninsula in general is really important. You know, I live in that area, and I watch that trail - people walking dogs, bicycles, or just walking all summer and all winter long. So This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 53 I think it's, I justthink it's a great idea. And.. . both for accessibility to the Peninsula itself. Champion/ Oh, I do too. I agree with you, Mike. Trueblood! A few weeks ago, when I was out there, a couple walking through the trail, they had come across the Iowa River Power bridge and they were walking through there and they stopped me as they were going around the dog park, they stopped me to say where does this go? And I said "no place" right now. You can walk down around through the park, but then you don't have any alternative but to come back this route. And, you know, I said to them, though, we're trying to get a pedestrian bridge built across there, and the lady of the couple said, "who do I need to talk to?" So... Bailey/ Well, how about, who do I need to write a check to. I mean, this could be a privately funded. I'mjust having a hard time supporting this project. I mean, I see that it's top on the Parks and Rec, but it's not clearly defined for me who we're creating an access to. I understand that it was in the original Peninsula plan. I wasn't around then so I probably, you know, I don't know. I would have a hard time supporting this. Wilburn! I will say that in terms ofthis, the distance whether you are a biker/walker, or a dog, the distance, I mean, I see people coming from Waterworks Park, walking their dogs, down underneath the interstate and all the way to the dog park. Maybe with a robust dog, I don't know, but (several talking at once) that can't be as far from one of these sites across the river up to the dog park. You know what I mean? Bailey/ I think it's a nice project. I'mjust hard pressed to support it. Wilburn/ Well, I'mjust.. .some of the things you were saying about it... Bailey/ Right, how far will people walk, I think, is an interesting question. Wilburn! And I think they would, given that the other distance that I mentioned. Correia! One ofthe options of, because right now if we get.. .is one of the options for the bridge in City Park? No, that's not close at all? Vanderhoef/ Well, it's close, but.. . but parking there, again, is a potential. Bailey/ So we're trying to provide access for people with cars. I'm just... Vanderhoef/ That's what it seems like... Bailey/ I'mjust trying to clarify who... Franklin! There's another direction here that hasn't been talked about, and that is the connection that is made then between the Peninsula and the rest of the City, and that the input that I've been getting, and that's why Jeff mentioned the Foster Crossing people, those who represent the Peninsula neighborhood, Mackinaw Village, Elk Run, Oakmont Estates- less so the Idyllwild development - is that looking for connections to the rest of the city, because the area is somewhat isolated, and they have been trying to get transit out there, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 54 but that is problematic in terms of cost also, on an ongoing basis, and what they're looking for is that pedestrian and bicycle access from this development area, to University Hospitals, to the University campus, because they've got people moving in there that are asking about that as they look at buying those properties. There are people who are used to living in an urban situation, a fairly dense situation, that's why they chose that area, and they expect to have to use something other than an automobile to get to where they're going, and they are University connected. So that's just another aspect of this that I wanted to interject. Correia! .. . connectivity with a neighborhood, the Peninsula neighborhood out. Franklin! Yes. It's also people from that development area going out, as well as people going in to use the park facilities. (several talking) I think probably some representatives will be at your budge hearing and you can ask them. Correia! But what you're talking about is that it's providing recreational connectivity, but it's also providing an opportunity for the commuter (several talking). Elliott! I think Regenia's point was that if you do this, then what you're doing it is for bicyclists and pedestrians, because anybody that gets in a car with a dog is probably not going to go to some point and then walk with the dog for a halfmile....they're going to drive around and park right there by the dog park. (several talking) Bailey! ...disagreed with that. He's saying they're parking in Waterworks and coming up. Correia! And my dog gets so excited as soon as he sees the parking lot, I'd rather go to a hidden location and walk him there. (laughter) He wouldn't see it! Wilburn! That latter point, too, Bob, though was people living in the Peninsula wanting to come... Elliott! And I think the City has already spent too much money on the Peninsula, and I don't think we need to spend a million three, because we've put some money into a place that's relatively inaccessible. Wilburn! But that's a different... Bailey! I've always considered, I mean, those comments surprise me because I always considered it rather accessible. If you buzz down Foster Road hill, you're there at a trail and you can, you know, you're at Hancher in a matter of minutes, on a bike. Okay, going home wouldn't be so much fun, but I'm sure bike commuters are in better shape. Correia! Well, it would be (unable to hear, several talking) This was, this was on the Unfunded list last year? And do we think.. .do we have this as a placeholder on that? Do we think it will cost a million three? Davidson! This is just a rough ballpark estimate of where, I mean, we thought the 800 was low when we saw the final cost figures for the one across Highway 6. Correia! Okay. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 55 Vanderhoef! Then it's also a trade-off if we're looking to put a million plus into Parks and Recreation project and advance some of our outcomes that we have been looking at, and! looked down there at Sand Lake recreation area, and how that fits into oIU total budget for Parks and Recreation, and the number of people served, and I tend to lean towards the south recreation area for maximum use of our dollars to help or provide recreation in and activities for the most people, (several talking) O'Donnell! ,.. parking lot down there, because that's pretty far down the road. Bailey! Well, have we explored with this pedestrian bridge a public-private partnership? ! mean, I would, I could...! couldn't support a million three, but I could support some kind of innovative funding approach, which would involve the developers. ! mean, I know it takes longer and it's not a model the government typically uses, but if we want to do these kinds of things, I think we have to look for different ftmding models. Vanderhoe1l Well, and if these are truly commuters to the University, and University is trying to "provide" parking in and around the west campus, why would they not provide some assistance? Bailey! Yeah, I don't know who exactly, and ifit comes back that that's not feasible, but I think this is an area where that might be more feasible than in other areas for park development in the commtmity. Champion! I agree! O'Donnell! Would this be part of the trail system? You know, building trails is incredibly expensive. We.. .I've forgotten what we paid for the land between Burlington... but I think that was at a million dollars for that portion of that trail, and the accessibility to something that.. ..already have a great deal of time and money invested in, I think it's fairly important, if you've never been over there, you should just walk over there and walk around. It's really neat, and I don't think it is generated for somebody with an automobile only, because you're going into a parking lot that I think 20 cars, Jeff, would be a maximum in that parking lot. These are going to be a great... a great deal of these folks are going to be walkers, and if you've been outto the dog park, I see people walking down Foster Road with their dogs all the time. Bailey! Right, when we look at oIU Unftmded trail projects, we have unfunded trails, and we could knock off quite a few of them for a million three, in more densely populated areas of our community that aren't so well served with Parks and Rec. I mean, one thing about the Foster Road development area, is it's very well served by parks. I mean, so... Wilburn! Why don't we put this up on the board and we can come back and talk about that? O'DonnelllIt's a matter of usage. If you build the trail. ..half the trails that you see, are not well used. Elliott! That's why I'd like to see a way for people who use the biking and hiking trails to find a way for them to help pay for them. This represents only a reasonahly accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 56 Bailey/ Or developers who believe that it's a big selling point for the neighborhood, there's nothing...1 mean... O'Donnell/ Maybe we can put up a little toll bridge and charge the walkers. (several talking) Elliott! Because we pay taxes on our license fees, and on our gasoline. The bicyclists don't buy licenses. They don't buy gasoline. Wilburn! But the more they use their bikes, they save on the environment. Elliott! Yeah, but we're building this for them. I'd like for them to have a financial stake. Bailey/ We're building this for citizens. I'm not suggesting that it's a, I mean, that we need to look at a more innovative funding. Elliott/ Absolutely! Bailey/ I mean, I'm not, I think it's a nice idea, but... Champion! Well, we have a lot of bikers and walkers in Iowa City, and I personally do support this. Thanks for pointing out how much we spent on that trail behind those businesses. That was a fortune, and a lot of people supported that. I think this has some real potential for connecting trails, and connect communities, Coralville, Peninsula, and Iowa City could be one connection, and North Liberty also. It's a great connector! Vanderhoef/ No doubt about that! (several talking) Bailey/ And I think that's a good question. I mean, I like what this pedestrian bridge could potentially do, but I would like to see if there are ways to, if developers are wanting this trail, if it makes it more attractive to them, I think that certainly is... we should be talking with them, ifthere are other ways of privately helping, privately funding... we've got 2,000 people with dog park licenses, I mean, that's an appeal letter right there. Elliott! You bet! Wilburn/ We've got it on the list to come back to. Let's take a ten-minute break. Trueblood! You should keep in mind that the dog park folks have already donated, raised, $200,000. I don't think they'd be inclined to raise more for this. (TAPE OFF) (TAPE RESUMES) Peninsula Park: Wilburn/ Terry, you're on. Trueblood! Before we leave the subject of Peninsula Park, we also have $250,000 tentatively programmed for FYIO and the primary use of this money would be to do as much development as possible in accordance with the original concept plan. Natural area development and some landscaping of the park area. You may recall that when we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 57 originally put this together, it was going to be virtually all-natural area. Very similar to Waterworks Prairie Park, but plans changed over the years, but anyway, there's - at least right now - there's some area right in through here that could be prairie grasses and just natural development, as well as some down around through here, around a couple of disc golf holes that are now in there, maybe a little bit over in here, as well. Bailey/ ... parking lot, by the way. Trueblood/ Parking lot is.. . right through here. Bailey/ And then I'm assuming that expansion would have an impact on this, as well. Trueblood/ About the only place to expand the parking lot, and we've already done a little bit of it in-house, bringing that further to the south, down through this area. About the only place to expand it, frankly, is in this area over here. Bailey/ Yeah, it's just natural.. ..what is that? Trueblood! Right now, part of it is a basin and part of it is a big mound, of dirt, that was brought in there from the dog park development, mostly for the pond that was dug. Elliott! What kind of protection is provided for the wellheads? I mean, what... protecting against what? Trueblood! Right now the only protection that we have, as far as our development for the well heads, is to, is that we, well, the dog park is located where it was.. .one of the main reasons was to keep it as far away from the well heads as we could. Other than that, the natural area plantings would obviously help with the water supply and indirectly... Elliott! So, sanitation, you're talking about, as opposed to terrorists, or flooding, or... Trueblood! We have taken no action against terrorists! (laughter) Elliott! You haven't seen Mike yet then. Trueblood! Unless you count the pit bulls and Doberman pinchers that we allow in the dog park. Okay? Sand Lake Recreational Area: Trueblood! Next project, I mentioned before that the pedestrian bridge is a large project by Parks and Recreation standards. Well, this is a really big project by Parks and Recreation standards. This is the Sand Lake recreation area. Right now it shows in your budget $2 million budgeted over the next four years, but according to the preliminary cost estimates to develop this plan as it shows right here, is going to cost $5 million plus. We are currently in the process of pursuing a CAT Grant, Community Action Tourism Grant. We're going to pursue a $2 million grant from them. We're also looking at other funding sources, including the Congressionally designated funds that Jeff had mentioned before. Again, this plan, you have seen this plan before. It hasn't changed. So, we're still looking at a water-oriented park obviously, with both recreational and conservation This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -~-,---,~-,---"-"-'-'---~----'--_'_"'_-- ----_._-----------_._~----- ..-...-.'",,--'--'--'-- -_-::.....-.--_._---~---_._..__._--_.."-----_._._.._-----------.--..-- January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 58 components included in it. Gave you a presentation on this not too long ago. Have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. Bailey/ So it still continues to be a concept of low-impact recreation, right? Canoes and... Trueblood/ Right, we're not talking about any ball fields or soccer fields or jet skis, water skiing, that kind of thing. Although we have had an inquiry about water skiing down there. We've also had an inquiry about another dog park down there. But it's not in the concept plan. Champion/ I would, I love the idea of this park, and I certainly was in favor of purchasing the land. I guess I'm, I'd like some discussion about it, when we should do this, because it is a major expense. I mean, you can get grants, fine. I think that'd be wonderful, but I would like to see us...1 personally would like to see us make sure all the current recreation facilities we have are updated, and also our trail connections are done, like Peninsula Park done, upgrades done to restrooms in parks, before we tackle this major project, because I'd like to see things done completely, that's just my nature. If you're going to do it, do it, like ifthere's going to be trails - connect them. If we're going to have Parks put in restrooms, that kind of thing done before we tackle this major project. That's just my personal feeling. I'm totally in favor of it, but I'd like to see other things completed first. Elliott! I would second that. I had been wanting this for so long. To be very truthful, the morning after we voted on this, I woke up and said, "Bob, you made a mistake." I should not have, to me, I should not have voted to spend a million dollars to buy this property. I, I just, my understanding was we were going to buy it, and that we would kind of get the land and let it sit there for a number of years, until we had sufficient funds to do something with it. I guess I'm just not in favor of spending this amount of money this soon. Champion/ To me, if we get grants that's a whole different ball game, but I'm trying to think of ways that we don't have a lot more bonding going to the taxpayers. I'd like to keep our property tax in some perspective. So, I guess my decision would be based on whether you get some of these grants you're applying for. Trueblood/ If that's Council decision, that's one that we will have to know sooner rather than later. We're in the process right now of working with a consultant to apply for a $2 million CAT Grant, as I mentioned, and.. .CAT Grant requires a local match. Bailey/ It requires a local match, it requires a county match, it requires some private investment, as well, as governmental investment. Correia! What's the.. . the requirements? Bailey/ There's no breakdown requirements. Correia/ In terms of maximum percents? Bailey/ Vh-uh, and I'd be surprised if they funded at $2 million. I think you would be surprised, as well. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of Jauuary 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 59 Elliott! When you say match, you don't mean an even match, just matching funds. Bailey/ No, they look at the capacity of the county and the area, and so one would imagine with our county's farming capacity, that they would look for some, you know, some money brought in by the county, and probably before we go before that board, we should have some level of commitment from the county. That's generally preferred and will move a project along faster. 1 would...I mean, 1 think, 1 would like to see this project move more quickly. There was a lot of public excitement about it. It's a million dollar investment. I think the public would like to see more quickly what's going to happen down there, rather than sitting on it, and if we can make that happen in innovative funding ways, I think that that's all the better. I think this is a more important project than the previous one we discussed. Vanderhoeti' Well, that was what was crossing my mind when we were looking for public investment into a project. I think this is a project that definitely has a lot of people excited and would be more willing to add these new kinds of activities that aren't presently available in the community, and this is where I think a fundraising effort is very, very important to push the project along. Just as a side, I also would like to hear back from Parks and Rec in response to the letter that was received, and was in our packet, about the potential for a ski site for show purposes, and I'm familiar with some of these ski show teams and so forth and how they are run and what kind of participation they get from their community as a community activity for shows on the water skiing, and I think we have a large enough pond here that certainly there would be times that could be designated for this kind of activity, and I'd like to see it explored. Bailey/ The people I've talked to about this project want low-impact recreational use. They're not interested in motorized... Vanderhoef/ Right, but that doesn't mean that it's any different than a swimming pool where there are certain hours that are designated for swim team versus public swimming, and for years we used only the Rec Center and we had all the activities going there, but there were scheduled times for it to happen. Bailey/ But it's still swimming - it's not motorized swimming. I mean, that's completely different. Vanderhoef/ No, I don't call this swimming. Bailey/ No, no, what I'm saying is swimming is still swimming if you're using a pool for swimming, but if you're using an area for low-impact, and then all of a sudden you're bringing in motorized sounds and vehicles and those sorts of things, it completely changes the use and the ambiance, and the feel of the park. If I want to go out there and use the trails, I have the expectation of a low-impact sort of naturalish area, rather than (buzzing sounds), you know, the buzzing of motors. (laughter) I can't do the ski jump sound! Elliott! As a matter of fact, I wish they didn't allow motors on the lake on McBride. We've got the reservoir, which has plenty of room for that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16,2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 60 Vanderhoef/ Well, I'm not talking about you and I taking our boats down there, at all. I'm talking about a very specific sports-oriented activity that I think our sports group would like to bring into the area. I think it has real potential, and face it, if you want low impact, no sound and so forth, we have the Peninsula Park. We also have the Waterworks Park that are definitely those kinds of places. Correia! But that's not water. ..what we're talking about is...(several talking at once) I like the concept that we have, with the low impact, but at Kent Park you can go out and there's no motorized vehicles on the lake at Kent Park, and but in order to access that type of ambiance, you have to go quite a ways. It offers a really nice park that we don't have in southeast Iowa City that we're going to be able to benefit from for a hundred years. I mean, this is for thinking about the benefit. Yes, there's an investment up front and I think there are (unable to understand) for private fundraising here, a sponsorship - name the park after a donor or business that wants to donate - something of that order, but I really like the concept that has been developed. A destination point (unable to understand), it creates... O'Donnell/ You know you could do, after the initial investment, you could do nothing down there and not spend, spend very little money and set this thing up as a recreation area, a natural...keep it as "natural as possible, but I can see people canoeing in their own canoes or picnic spots. Ijust don't see building a grandstand and shooting boats up and down that pond. I first.. .don't think it's that big. And, yeah, that wasn't what I had visualized for this down there at all. Trueblood! Are we ready for the next picture? Wilburn! I think we're ready for the next picture. Bailey/ You can give it a try. (laughter) Soccer Park Improvements: Trueblood! The last of the Parks and Recreation projects, for now anyway, is Soccer Park improvements. We have $250,000 scheduled for FY09. This would be primarily to accommodate better accessibility/trails through the soccer complex. Currently, of course we provide accessible parking. We provide one accessible pathway, so forth, and we provide accessible restrooms and that sort ofthing, but not, not accessibility throughout the park, to the various fields. It would also, hopefully some of it could be used on that north end of the Soccer Park, this right over here, and some of it's out of the picture, to develop into a more traditional park setting. You know, if they have a big soccer tournaments down there, one of the things that we could really use for example are large shelters, that kind of thing, to accommodate people. You know, when teams come in from out of town and then they stay there, then shelters give them a place to eat their lunch, you know, that kind of thing, but also maybe make it, in some ways, more of a destination park for people to actually just. ..go down there and (unable to hear). Picture down here by the bottom is Rick Fosse's son. He looks just like him, doesn't he? Correia! This is not exactly related, but I'm going to bring it up since it's the Soccer Park and this is something we talked about off and on about getting recycling at the youth sports' parks. Is that, are we set for.. .especially just the plastic. There's a lot of plastic This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 61 consumed, athletic water bottles, Gatorade bottles, Power Ade, pop, all that stuff, and it just ends up going in the garbage, and I know that a lot of young people are interested in recycling anyway, and so I think you've got a lot of young people both who that are interested and then starting those types of habits as well, and just all ofthat plastic... it's mind boggling... Trueblood! .. .some of what somewhere. I was thinking that we had some down at Soccer, but maybe not. Can't swear to it. One of our problems from a park perspective, for example, is wherever we have those, as you know, when people throw regular trash in with it, then it doesn't do any good. Correia! No, I understand, and I think we need to figure out how to do that, both signage... different looking, you can only put a bottle in. I mean, we have that on the Ped Mall, and then the education and I think we can work with the teams, the kids, at the coach level, and... Davidson! Some of the teams, individually, do recycling. You hear the coaches yelling at them that you've got to go in this container because we're going to recycle. You might recall when we set up the CBD recycling program downtown, we put in four or five. I think it's been expanded to five containers. Terry's people service those. About a year ago, I think you got a report from Brad just letting you know the status and it was kind of mixed, you know, we're not collecting a lot but we're collecting some and it sends a good message. There is a contamination issue, varies a lot depending on where they're located. The contamination is always an issue, and sometimes it's so contaminated the whole load goes to the landfill. Correia! Sure. Davidson! Plan A was to start in the Central Business District. Plan B was, okay, maybe we've got some park locations. We've never proceeded to Plan B. There's an issue with, I mean, the issues are the usual issues and having, basically paying somebody to pick up stuff and take it to the recycler, if that's something that Council decided was a priority and the majority of you wanted to do that, it's something that certainly can be implemented. The containers we use are exactly what you're talking about, Amy, where there's a hole like that, you can only put in a container. Correia! Ijust wonder how much, I mean, there are quite a lot of young people interested in recycling. I just wonder if you would have different source of outcomes at youth sports' parks with recycling, in terms of contamination, than we would just slapping them in the Central Business District. But I don't know. Davidson! The contamination pattern that we see is that if it's located in an area that's got a lot of people and good visibility, the contamination is reduced. If it's a remote location, then the contamination goes way up. Correia! If it's right next to a garbage container, as well, people... Davidson! Actually, that helps. If you have a (several talking at once). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 62 Bailey! So I think, I agree with you, and we're spending a fair amount of money on this eastside recycling facility. We have a value in this community about recycling. I think we should be promoting it particularly our young people, who are really pretty excited. Champion! I think it has to go next to garbage cans. Bailey! Right. You know, I was going to say it'd be nice to have them along trails, but you're comment about there's more contamination when they're in remote locations. Well, perhaps that wouldn't be as effective, but I definitely think that they should be in all of our sports' parks because there's a lot of.... Wilburn! Well, I think there's enough interest to move to Plan B. Elliott! And I think working after the ultimate Frisbee tournament, last summer, and moved on to the city parks, I know we picked up a whale of a lot of trash, and it would have been helpful if those coaches had met beforehand and we stressed the importance of recycling. So, yeah, good idea. Bailey! I think we stress it by having containers available. Trueblood! We could have even helped them out with that, had we known that that event was going to occur at that park. Elliott! Right. Hopefully the (laughter) moved from the University fields. PUBLIC SAFETY: Trueblood! Ah, public safety. That's not me! I think Andy and Sam are going to talk to you about how much a pedestrian bridge would enhance the public safety. (laughter) (TAPE ENDS) Emergencv Communications Radio Svstems Uograde: Correia! ... the only question I have really to that is that when we met at JCCOG was the, for each municipality to set aside money for the planning phase, the design, in 08, and so is that for our purposes in this budget - is that $600,000, or is that... Rocca! ...a portion of it could be. It's been very difficult for us, I mean, it's more of a placeholder, because we're foraging ahead as you all know with the idea that the Joint Communication Project will come together. Correia! Right. Rocca! If it doesn't, we still have our own situation that we have to deal with. And so, it is a placeholder; yes, we would probably use that money to fund our portion. Bailey! The estimated amount for design ranges from $168,000 to $300,000. We talked to a couple of different firms for this next funding year. Correia! See, I thought there was a $700,000, but when we were talking to JCCOG... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 63 Bailey! $750,000 was the top end of what we're looking at for programming schematic design and final design, which would be sort of 08 work. It's split. We determined, the sub- committee determined that it would be Iowa City 40% of that, Johnson County 40%, Coralville 15%, and North Liberty 5%. Correia! So, with what we have, holding amounts, we're in good shape. Hargadine! This would certainly be our share of that, going forward, but I think the other I think is important that we have a contingency in place. We may lose everything today and the radio communications may not be feasible for another two years, so I think until that happens, we need to have a contingency in place to replace things quickly. It may be the same equipment that the direct communications entity would have bought, and then can guy from us, but we're still bandaiding things. Elliott! One ofthe nice things I think under the sub-committee that Regenia mentioned is the talk is starting to turn into movement, so I...Regenia, we are.. .I'mjust pleased about... Bailey! .. .and we've been talking to our neighbors to the north. Elliott! Something's starting to happen now. Hargadine! Any questions on emergency dispatch? Champion! This would be consistent though with the putting everything together, the stuff you want to do? And how is that determined? Rocca! Well, I think what we would do is look at the core, the backbone of the system, and then really the part, beyond that, that would be shared would be tower placement. So we'd need to put in a tower somewhere where it would fully serve only our own needs, but it could be placed in such a way that the rest of the county could take advantage of it, as well. Champion! But you're talking about radio replacement, aren't you, and this is a specific radio that you know would already be used in this joint system? Rocca! We'd have to sort of shift our way through that. There'd probably be an RFP that's put out to help us identity that system, that radio, but I think that's what the Chief is referring to. That process needs to be ongoing right now, so when the time comes to purchase, we're ready - whether it's for our own immediate needs or the longer term needs. Champion! No, I understand. Yeah. Elliott! You're looking for whatever is done would be compatible with what, hopefully, will be done. Rocca! Absolutely. Anything else on that one? Fire Apparatus: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ,._~----~-~-------_.._-_.,---~----~~_.,--_._----_._-----,.__...,._.--~-------"-_.'----_._----"-~------ January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 64 Rocca/ Fire apparatus - this is one I believe that exclusively has me on here by name, but I am pleased to report that...I think it was FY02, 03, we came to Council recommending a change in the replacement schedule. We were running our fire apparatus ten years front line, ten years reserve, and they were going into reserve status with approximately 90,000 miles, or well past their useful life, and so we're about to turn a corner where when we replace this Engine 2 as you see it here, this will go into reserve status with I believe about 55,000 or 60,000 miles on it, and then it kind of bumps everything down in the fleet. We get rid of the oldest one with the most miles, and we'll be in a position where our fleet will probably be in the best shape it has been in, probably in the last ten or even fifteen years, due to this accelerated replacement schedule. So that's certainly good news. The other thing that's important to mention is that the replacement pumper that we will take delivery on for Engine I, we were able to get the same price in FY08 for the Engine 2 replacement and so that saved a considerable amount of money, as well the excellent proposal that we accepted on the replacement of our aerial ladder, put us in a position to be able to purchase these two units at considerable savings. So that is certainly good news, and I believe we also have in FY09, another pumper programmed and some new standards will come into play with the emissions and safety features and the like, so we will be going back to an RFP for FY09 on that replacement pumper. Other things that probably just bare mentioning just ever so briefly, in the Unfunded years of the strategic plan have to do with the Firestation I relocation and Fire Stations 4, 5 and 6, and as you know, Station 4, we've talked about in some length in previous sessions. Five and six, we are looking at parcels ofland as the city continues to grow and develop and annex. So at least we can set the stage for future fire station coverage down the road. Those are, as well, called out in our strategic plan, which is available for you on line, and perhaps you have a copy, but Ijust wanted to remind you of those projects that are still out there. Elliott/ Andy, what kind ofluck do you have in selling the equipment that is at the bottom of that progression for replacement? Rocca! You know, it's not worth much, particularly these last pumpers that we've gotten rid of with such high mileage. If we see a trade-in value of $5,000, we've done really well. I think, I'm trying to recall what the aerial ladder was sold for, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000, which is probably half of what we thought it was worth. Elliott! That's not equipment that small towns would be looking for to purchase then. Rocca! They're kind of money pits, frankly, Bob, by the time we've run them that long, that hard, is we try to maintain them, but metal fatigue, with the chassis, the drivetrain, and the engine, everything associated with it. Elliott! Vb-huh. Rocca! We've pretty much used them up at 90,000 miles. Any other questions? Champion/ How's the demolition going? On the... Rocca! We're still living there! We're still providing services! (laughter) I didn't see the wrecking ball this morning, and I haven't heard much the same, but what we'd like to do at a later date is to bring Firestation 2 back by way of an update on the project for you, at This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. _._-_.,'_._--,----"'.-------,--_..._~--~"<_._--~-,._,.------,-._-+-~._... January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 65 some time in the near future, and we think that. . . we've taken some of the input you gave us on the front end, incorporated those into the design, and now it's time to bring it back to you for another look. Okay? Thank you. Police Records & Computer Aided Dispatch: Hargadine/ One of the things we've identified as a need is our records management system, or RMS, and the next two topics tend to get pretty complicated pretty quick, so we've got Gary in the back if we need to have him answer any questions, but there's a number of weaknesses in our present computer system. Our records are basically our work product, something that we do, day in, day out, as opposed to shooting bank robbers. So, one of the things that, there's just a number of weaknesses. Now, I'll start off with a record access audit trail. Our present system does not do that. It's similar...a police record is somewhat like a hospital record. When someone looks at it, it needs to log that, and any screen that's looked up in those sensitive systems, it needs to log that you've actually been in it. Very rarely is it used, but should something get out that doesn't need to get out, we need to know who looked at it. That's also a pretty important investigative tool. If I were to look up a burglar, and someone last week looked up the same individual and someone the week before looked up the same individual, if you look at the audit trail and 50 people have brought that person up and they're all interested in, by having an audit trail, that helps you, that's an investigative tool within itself, because why is this person coming and being run so often. So, that's a fairly important piece, or ability that this system needs to have. Presently, we're not doing that at all. What we do have, we're handwriting most of our reports and we scan those in. That is one way to address computerization. Unfortunately, when you print this record out in 20 years, it looks just as bad, ifnot worse, than what it did when somebody wrote it out. One of the things that we've identified in our strategic plan is doing away with handwritten documents. So, narratives and the actual incident itself would be stored indefinitely. What we do have is, Sid Jackson is our Investigative Commander. He bought a software package that fits on his PC and it does everything that he needs it to do to run the Investigative Unit, but if one of you were to call me and ask me, "Whose working this particular case?" I'd have to walk upstairs and look at his computer, because I can't access that from my desk. Likewise, with.. .we've, I think already had in the budget the need to do bar coding for our evidence unit. He's got a software package on his desk that will do everything for him, but no one else in the department can access that particular record, and so that's one ofthe needs, specifically for patrol cars out in the street. They've got laptops out there. If someone, for instance an investigator has a case on an individual, they need to, when they run that through the laptop, it needs, they need to be able to get at that information that Investigative is also working on, that particular case. And those kind of dialogues don't occur because nobody knows what other people are doing. Everyone has software packages that kind of help them run their localized unit, but it.. . nobody talks to one another. The, urn, Internal Affairs is another one. Presently, we're just using Microsoft Word for Internal Affairs. There's no computerized tracking of it. If someone is in our system numerous times, there's no correlation there as to how many times they show up in Internal Affairs. Where a centralized system, all of these modules are built around one common master main frame, and if you pull up one name, you can see how many dogs they have registered, how many bikes they have registered, how many times they've been in accidents, how many parking tickets - you need to be able to see that from one screen, and that's what we're not doing. One of the things, there are hundreds of vendors that supply software. They all say that they're the best at this, but when you throw in we want This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 66 to be able to customize these records ourselves, in-house, because we're constantly being asked to track new things. Alcohol's somewhat of a topic in this community. People are always wanting to track how many alcohol incidents did we have at this particular, how many were juvenile related, how many times did you pick up a juvenile and alcohol was related, domestic violence - these are all things that are unique that people are tracking for a variety of reasons. We want to be able to add these things in-house and not have to go back to a vendor and they charge us every time we call to modify something. We want that vendor to train our people to do it, and that's where that eliminates about nine- tenths of the software vendors. They want you to call and they want to charge you for the programming time to modifY something, and so we do... there are a few that do exactly as I'm proposing, that they will train our people to add these things as people are different.. . are tracking. As I said, handwritten reports - that's probably one of my biggest pet peeves. It just looks unprofessional, and our written word is our product and that's one of our goals is to.. .and it's going to take a paradigm shift, but at some point, all of our reports need to be typed and stored indefinitely. Any questions as to the RMS system? Elliott/ Got no question... what you're looking at, management information system, and I've always looked at that as like a stream of water where as it goes by every person, each person has the ability and the capacity to dip in, and you want it also so that you know the identification of each dip that takes place within that, and the written reports, it is so crucial when I's look like E, and A's look like anything. Ijust think this is mandatory. Correia! So there aren't any hardware requirements? This isjust a software requirement. We have the current hardware... Hargadine/ We're already a Window-based, um, shop, and so what we're looking at is using our existing hardware, and it already is on a schedule for upgrades and replacements. So, you're correct, software is... Bailey/ Is your department on a server then? Hargadine/ Yes. Bailey/ Everybody's connected so this would create that access - just because the software would be...okay, I got it. Hargadine/ Correct. Correia! So it would be purchasing a software package that the City is able to modify. Is that what you're saying? Hargadine/ Our in-house IT guys would be able to add things and modify things, based on modules that are canned. Most of the canned programs, you can't modifY at all. Correia! Is this also something that wanting that linkability when we have a Joint Communication System, or this is separate... Hargadine/ It's separate, as is the next topic. It dovetails with it. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 67 Correia! Okay. Hargadine! But it's really independent, and it's our share of what we need to do. Wilburn! However, just the... being able to manage the, and simplify the access, if someone in Coralville or the Sheriff's Department needed to know something, has this person come across you, then it's more easily accessible by an investigator or a particular officer, so... Hargadine! Absolutely! Any more questions on RMS? Metro Area Wireless Broadband: Hargadine! Now, the.. . really a potential of getting over my head pretty quick (laughter). Let me talk a little bit about the problems we're having and the history of what we're doing. As you know, we all have laptops in the cars; NOTs, MCTs, they call them a variety of things, but it's basically a laptop. They communicate back to the station through the radio system. We contract with Raycom for data transmission between the station and the mobile computers in the police cars. This is done on a 9600-baud modem, which if you still have, if you have high-speed broadband or dial-up internet, 9600 baud was state of the art back in probably the late 80's. If all you're doing is transmitting text back and forth, it's okay, but we're getting into a video world now. Definitely still photos back and forth, driver's licenses, that ability to get that down to the car. There's a lot more need for modern ways to get that information to the patrol car. There are problems that exist that we're causing on the Raycom network. When there's a packet that goes through from one end, from the car to the station, or vice versa, if it's worked well, it takes less than a second to transmit that piece of data. It's actually .76 seconds, but when it doesn't work well, it takes 5.1 seconds, and what.. .and that's called a "bad call." A bad call is when one side is sending and the other side is not ready to receive it, so it keeps sending that 5.1 seconds, until the other end gets it. But if it worked well, it takes less than a second. In one week's time, we caused 45 hours of continuous duty good calls. That's at that .76 seconds. It's 45 hours of good stuff, but in one week's time we also caused 54 hours of continuous duty bad calls, when that, when one end is not ready to receive it, we're tying up the system quite a bit. Our CIS software package is outdated and the vendor will not support any more programmer time on this, and keep this.. .CIS software also dovetails with the, that's the vendor of our present system. Any questions as to the problems with what we're doing now? Urn, so, why public safety broadband? We know that we're going to replace the radio system soon, hopefully, right? Okay. We know we don't want to continue to feed the dinosaur. It never was an efficient way to send data back and forth. A broadband system will be forward compatible and is independent of the need for ajoint communication system. It's really our problem. It's not Johnson County's or Coralville's. Coralville's got a similar problem, but not like we do. It will allow for faster transmissions to and from the police car, to include live video feeds. Likely partners are Iowa City Fire, Iowa City Public Works, Iowa City Transit, Library, any governmental agency that needs to remotely secure, and securely communicate, via the internet. Coralville would be a likely partner, because they send their cars over here, through the jailor for whatever reason, and it would make sense that their laptops still work. Johnson County Sheriff would not be a likely partner because they operate more in a rural environment, and this is really an urban technology. However, there may be other County departments that could be a likely partner, other than the Sheriff. If they operate... if their operations are in this jurisdiction. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 68 Elliott! Sam, I was just thinking, when we had the tornado in what, was it April? As an example, how could this have benefitted that? How could this have made that much better for our residents? Or is this an area where this doesn't apply that much. ['djust like some example, an example. Hargadine! One example would be if you had a camera, well, let me give you a day-to-day operation. For instance, in the parking garages where they have security cameras. You can put those cameras on an IP address where instead of the video cable coming back, it's broadcasting to the internet, and anybody with that access can then be, we could do that from the station. You could do it from Transit headquarters. Schools are doing that now, their playgrounds are on IP cameras. If you have security guards that work out of separate locations, they're bringing up that IP address and looking at the video right from their desktops. You could look anywhere in the world, as long as you've got the security and the address. So, back to your question on the tornado. Nighttime, probably wouldn't help a whole lot, because you can't see anything anyone. During the daytime though if you had an incident like that, you can put a camera on it and be looking at it. If any of you were traveling at the time, you could look at it remotely from the internet. Bailey! So essentially this is a secure wireless network that doesn't go across the radio lines. Hargadine! Correct. They would be using a separate technology, but not going through the radio. Bailey! Similar to any of our wireless networks that we're familiar with, but it would be secured for these users. Hargadine! Correct. Cellular is another way to do this, however, this is a better... it's better. Wilburn! Another example, there may be a fire out somewhere and you have either fire apparatus or a squad car put the camera on it, some decision may need to happen down here, as opposed to out there. You reduce time that.. . response, is that correct? Rocca! It would be correct in that, you know, a typical we're taking two engines, an aerial, and a chief officer to a structure fire. We have simultaneous alarms, have a unit there - be it a squad car or whatever - and can see what's going on. Probably would facilitate mutual aid or call-backs of additional personnel. Hargadine! By other governmental partners, anybody who needs, for instance - meter readers. Instead of having a device that keeps that stored until you back...it could upload that immediately as you're walking through a neighborhood. A library mobile vehicle type thing, where you were utilizing immediate access to the card catalog. I don't see it as public internet access, but more of a means to facilitate the business that you need to conduct. Bailey! And so the expense is for the software, and the hardware? Hargadine! Because it's likely.. .there's no need, it doesn't make good sense to do this through the new radio system, given that the present one doesn't work very well. It's causing a lot of problems. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 69 Bailey/ I don't want to complain, but the cost seems low. Hargadine/ And... Bettendorf, for instance, did that cheaper than the figure that, I think both Gary and Jim Baker have gone to Bettendorf and they didn't? You're supposed to! Okay. (laughter) But they actually did it cheaper than what we originally were quoted for. Bailey/ Okay. Elliott! This $1.5 mill for both these projects, and you said, I think, Regenia, you asked, this is a secure system? Hargadine/ Secure, government owned, it's easy to think of this as a Wi-Fi, but it's not. Elliott! So, ifI'm out there wanting to do something devious... Hargadine/ You probably won't be able to see it on a normal laptop. Bailey/ So it wouldn't stand up on a Wi-Fi... Hargadine/ Correct. Bailey/ Reduce devious motivation. Hargadine/ Well, that's a valid concern, especially in this day and age. Bailey/ ...quite competent... Hargadine/ One of the questions I kind of anticipated - are we going to need more towers? Most of this technology hooks onto either to a side of the building, or to a light post. I'll probably have to sweettalk Rick into letting me park onto his lights because it's.. .oh yeah, nothing's free. So it would not be one tower. It...every couple blocks one of these would probably be hooked up somewhere, hopefully fairly discreetly. Questions? Correia! There've been discussions in the Telecommunications Commission about wireless broadband, sort of (unable to understand) I mean is this, having this, is there a way to piggyback that on to these, I mean, would some of these things that you're attaching to the lights, whatever they do, be able to be used for citizens accessible, or it's just two totally separate animals that can't be... Bailey/ So could it be used for two networks - one antennae? Correia! I'mjust wondering ifthere's a way, you know, we're essentially going to be creating a wireless cloud within the city limits for police services... Hargadine/ ...address that one? Cohn/ What a citizen. . . Wilburn! Can you wait until you get up to the mic... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. __ _______~~_.._._"._.___.._~"__.____~__"'__._.__.~.__~__._._,_,,_.____~..__._M_.___.__.___.__~_________.._~...,_.._.."..___.__.___....__..__._______ January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 70 Cohn! I sure will. What a citizen would want to access from home would be more of the Wi-Fi type signal, which this would not have. This is a proprietary system. They're out there, but it's not Wi-Fi. It's in a different frequency range. Has a different capacity, as well. It's not, doesn't have as much capacity as Wi-Fi, but the tradeoff that you get is that maybe we need ten to fifteen of these around town, versus hundreds ofWi-Fi AP's that you would need to do with millions of dollars to build that. Correia! Okay, okay. Thank you. MISCELLANEOUS: Citv Hall Emergencv Generator: Rocca! Okay, if you think back to April 13th and the tornado, and I can speak to the post-issues that we had with the City Hall complex, to include the Fire Station and Police Station. They were less than functional. We made the best we could with what we had available, but from an emergency power standpoint, it was woefully inadequate, and so what we've done is while we've been able to maintain this and identifY some key circuits to power up in these critical emergency type situations, this certainly needs to be upgraded to make City Hall a much more functional complex during the height of situations such as the tornado conditions we experienced. Wilburn! Excuse me, Andy, I'm sorry. We're going to need to stop just for a minute so folks can get food. I won't be able to hear what you say. My stomach's talking. Let's take a few minutes for folks to get their food. Come on back and sit down and then we can continue. Rocca! Fine. (TAPE OFF) (TAPE RESUMES) Okay, I thought you were going on about everything I had to say, but it was your stomach growling. That's okay. At any rate, I'll just restate quickly, you know, April 13th brought to light several conditions within City Hall that were not adequately powered, and in order to do that, we had a critique and identified this as a priority to resolve in order to make City Hall much more functional, regardless of what office area you want to talk about. And so an upgrade to the generator is needed, and I'll turn over to Kevin and he can speak to the rest of the story. O'Malley! Okay. As Andy said, we had this need, so then we determined how do we fulfill this need. So Dale, myself, and Gary went and looked at vendors and we hired a consultant, see who does this kind of work, and we looked at four options. The first option was where the old tree that blew down on the northeast comer of Gilbert and Washington, and we thought that'd be a perfect site because there was some power already going in, there was already a pigtail sitting up there, and it was only going to be about $160,000, $170,000, but we found outthe noise and some of the other things it's just not going to work in that spot. So the second spot was the current location ofthe generator, and that required the Fire Department to moving their balcony, and also having quite a bit of noise. The third place was across the street in the park, and we didn't want to disturb the park, and the fourth place was in the parking lot, and that's where it got to be the more expensive, going from $250,000 to about $375,000, $400,000 and that's the number we put in the budget. Essentially, we're going to build a, buy this new generator, and build a brick structure around it so, for access, so there'll be no access from individuals, and plus provide us access to work on this. We currently test our generators once a week and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 71 that's what we would probably still do at this. The whole purpose is that this building was quite a, was quite busy that night. We had about 200 and some people in the building, and they all were sweating and looking for some fresh air, and we decided that we should have kept, should have done this project back in 98 when the wind storm came through, this concept first came up, but we never followed through on it and we decided that we'd follow through on this one. We also started thinking maybe we should start looking at this at other buildings that are used for shelters, to make sure that they have generators. So, this will be our first foray, more or less, into providing a generator. Any questions? O'Donnell/ How big is it? O'Malley/ Size wise, I think it was 400 KBA. O'Donnell/ And how big's our, is our old one? O'Malley/ About 30 KBA. 40 KBA. Champion/ What powers a generator? O'Malley/ What's that? Champion! What powers a generator? O'Malley/ Gasoline, because we also have a fuel tank nearby, and then we have to bury the power lines into the building. Elliott/ Kevin, you mentioned the, I think, four possible locations, and then I got all tangled up with a piece of cheese here. Did you identify the location? O'Malley/ Yes, the first one was where the old tree was. Elliott! No, did you identify which one of those locations you're going to... O'Malley/ Dale and J and Gary walked them out, and we figured that we're going to take up two parking spaces, right out on the north side here, and build a little fence around it so it'll be self-contained. Elliott! Good, good. Thank you. Sorry. O'Malley/ Any other questions? Thank you. Old Bus Deuot: Atkins/ Can we tear down the old bus dept and make a parking lot? Vanderhoef/ Absolutely! Tear it down though. We've got to clean it up. That is...oh, look at that. Bailey/ I'm wondering... This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 72 Atkins! That's one of the more flattering pictures we've got. Correia! Do we, at some point, and we need to decide, we need to decide what we're going to do with that land, whether we sell it or put something on it. Atkins! Yes. Land that.. . currently, the land is there now that is being used by the bus depot. Many years ago, we have a long-standing policy of owing all three of these blocks, and now we own everything but Unitarian Church, and then the location for.. .what's it called, Rick? A transformer sub...MidAmerican substation...which they intend to move at some time in the future, and we have that commitment. So the land was intended to be for some public use. You know, unless you decide to change the policy. And that includes, Wilson Building coming down, you smash.. .clearing the whole corner. This particular issue is the building's an eyesore and we can'tjustify... Wilburn! And because this is being filmed, we are not planning on moving the Unitarian Church out. Atkins! No! I've spoken with Unitarian Church over the years, and there's certainly where if ever they decide to make the move to contact us. That was ten years ago. Correia! Why do we need to purchase it from the parking fund? Atkins! Because the parking fund owns it, and it's a, and parking fund is run based on any assets, revenues, generated by that fund. It was purchased with parking monies, so therefore, if we're going to remove it, convert it to a parking use or some other use. Ifwe left it at parking fund, we could tear it down and make a parking lot out of it, and then you wouldn't have to do this. Because we're... Correia! Should, should...! mean, we don't have a plan to do anything with it in the near future. Should we pare it down and have permanent parking there? Or some sort of parking there? Metered parking? Atkins! That's what I'm suggesting. Correia! Let's do that! And then...(several talking at once)...! don't care, whatever. (several talking) Well, or.. . (several talking)... Bailey! Nothing uglier than surface parking. Atkins! We would try to, you know, put some planters or something. The site is irregular, and then there's some work that would have to be done to make a reasonable parking surface out of it. (several talking) Correia! I'm sorry. Ifwe fund this with GO bonds, we're just asking the taxpayer to buy that, and to have it just be that. Atkins! And then the General Fund controls it. For example, if you were.. .one ofthe options is putting the Communication Center there. Well, that's a General Fund expense. Not a water expense, and so you would have to go through in effect the purchasing process. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 73 Elliott! But this does leave open all alternatives for it's future.. .this does not confine any of those? Atkins/ No it does not, does not. Bailey/ But you're also asking taxpayers to spend money on something before there's any indicated use. Is there a mathematical, or an economic equation, that calculates opportunity costs for spots like this. I mean, it's a commercial corner. What is it costing us in property tax to own... Atkins/ I would suspect... Bailey/ ... three city blocks. Atkins/ I would expect it would appraise out rather well, and for a commercial use, I don't know the arithmetic formulas that you use on that, but I think I know where you're going with your question, and yeah, it does have the value. But, again, it's contrary to what our long-standing policy, is to own all three blocks. Bailey/ Probably the long-standing policy was made at a maybe more nicer financial time? Atkins/ Could be. Vanderhoef/ Tell me, do we have electricity and water still going to this property? Atkins/ To my knowledge it still functions, yeah. Vanderhoef/ To me, it still might be cheaper to clear this building off of there right now. Even if we did nothing else, but we would get out from under the insurance on the building - whatever that might be - or liability. It might be more liability than anything. We would be shutting off the electricity, the sewer, the water, and taking care of all of that, besides cleaning up the corridor. Ifwe're going to spend money to go down College Street to enhance our sidewalk appeal and our drive-by appeal, to end that right at this point and look at that, while I walk past it to go into the parking ramp, doesn't make any sense to leave it there. Bailey/ But a vacant lot is no more attractive than this! Vanderhoef/ Yes it is! Bailey/ No! A vacant concreted lot, that's not being used for anything, and it looks like blight and depression. Elliott/ How much.. .if it's a vacant lot, how much would it cost just to plant grass on it. Put a bench on it. Atkins/ Well, I'm not sure exactly what's.. .oh, I mean, we can clean it up. Elliott! lfthat's all you're going to... why do we need to purchase it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 74 Atkins/ We don't. Elliott! So we could just not spend any money, except what it would cost to demolish the building. Both buildings, or just... Atkins/ No, just the bus depot. We still need the Wilson Building. Elliott! And then, grass it over? Put a bench on it? Atkins/ I don't know if you can grass it over because of what's underneath it, and you'd have to jackhammer all the concrete out and part of the structure of this building, if! recall, has some support for the Wilson Building. Be nice to get rid of both of them, but we just simply can't... Bailey/ I don't want just the concrete cracked up slabs sitting there. That just. .. Correia! Well, it'd be interesting if there was something we could do with. . . interesting concrete. We could get some artist murals, some sort of. . . Atkins/ Do you want to spend a lot of money on it? (several talking at once) Bailey/ But I don't want it to look blighted. Champion! If we left it in the parking funds, then we could use parking funds to fix it up. Atkins/ Yes you can! (laughter) Vanderhoef/ Absolutely! Atkins/ The asset itself is owned by the parking fund, just like other parking lots that are directly owned by the fund. Champion/ I'm not willing to bond people to buy something like that from ourselves. Bailey/ Not when we don't have any idea what we're going to use it for. Champion! Right. Bailey/ And when we can pitch a plan, that's one thing, but when you say, I don't know... Atkins/ Almost taking...almost have to take it down to see what we've got left. Then you can decide on the use. Just seemed, metered parking was easy. Champion/ No, if you did parking permits, you wouldn't have to put meters down there. Atkins/ True. Bailey/ And it's such a visual comer. Is that where we want surface parking? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. --,._--_._---,--,_.----_._,--_.,----'"---------"-~_..----.-- January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 75 Champion! No. VanderhoeV How about staff parking? Atkins/ $30,000 to $40,000 is the investment to bring it up to code. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ Staff parking, but I'm saying if we want to free up and continue to raise revenue, then Chauncey Swan would have more opportunities for use on a daily basis, and certainly when we want to do Farmer's Market and so forth, get the staff... Bailey/ Well, this would be a nice location for Farmer's Market, or in addition to the Rec Center, to do something like they did this November with an indoor Farmer's Market. I mean, there are cities across, even in Iowa, who are doing year-round markets spaces. I mean, they're building an outdoor market space in Waterloo for similar, or at least they have a proposal to do this. I mean, I think we could do something. I mean, if we're determined to own this, I think we should do something that's innovative and public use. (several talking) Atkins/ The parking fund could own it, and you could put a Farmer's Market on it, and the revenue would go to the parking fund. Vanderhoef/ You can put Farmer's Market on it, or if we talked about, you know, the street Farmer's Market, some coming down Washington Street to get more excitement out onto the street. Then it's a matter of if the market people want to be inside and have more covered space for themselves, then they will want additional parking. Atkins/ My concern was the eyesore. It should come.. . (several talking at once). Elliott/ But it's almost a half million to acquire it. Atkins/ If you wanted to acquire it, yes. And I'm not suggesting you do that. I just want the.. .I'm recommending take the building down. Elliott! I would rather not. .. I' d just leave it. I don't want to spend a half million dollars. Bailey/ I think a blank corner is as much an eyesore. I don't know, I've been in too many cities where they just look like dying when you see lots like that. Vanderhoef/ What would it cost to just tear it down and clean up the lot? Atkins/ Don't know. Not until the building is torn down and some of the implications of the thing, because it's irregular. There's some poured concrete slabs that are on top of the, of the surface, what you would think of as the surface. Now can they be jack hammered out. I don't know. Elliott! What you're looking at is something akin to the comer of I" Avenue and Muscatine. Champion! Right! Bailey/ Except we own this one. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 76 Elliott! I mean, if you just tore things down and left it like that though. Champion/ What about not tearing it down? Making sure it's sealed up for safety reasons, and kind of fixing up the outside, and putting some benches around it. (several talking) Atkins/ We can fix it up anyway you want to. What am I fixing it up for? Champion! So the comer looks better! Atkins/Oh! Champion/ It'd be a cute dress shop. I don't know! (laughter) I mean, I do agree with Regenia that, you know, do we want a comer that looks like I" Avenue and Muscatine. (unable to hear) Atkins/ Well, you know, you could take it down. Wilburn! There are more voices saying take the building down. Bailey/ So what are you... so fine, what's your plan? What're you going to do with it? I mean, it's just going to sit there like a blight of concrete abandoned lot? Atkins/ We'll bring you back.. .ifwe tear it down, here's what...yeah, we'll give you some options. Wilbum! ['m not opposed to any of the suggestions you had about like possible Farmer's Market, or rotating some things in, but in my opinion, [ rarely notice when I go by First Avenue and Muscatine. (several talking) Bailey/ I have always agreed with Connie that the architectural structure of that old style gas station has always been really interesting. I mean, mid-20th century industrial architecture style, but, I guess it goes. Correia! Well, I mean, if there's an option of rehabbing it, I would... Champion/ Was it determined that it can't be rehabbed, and what was the price of rehab? Correia! I haven't heard that. Elliott! Here we go. Atkins/ $30,000 to $40,000. Champion/ Oh, that's a lot cheaper than $400,000. Atkins/ That's just, assuming the property. Bailey/ What about bicycle commuter showers? Bicycle parking? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 77 Atkins/ Property is owned by the parking fund. Anything you do, any interest income that would accrue on that site, whether the building's there or not, is the parking fund's. Parking fund, the initial proposal was to have the General Fund purchase it, in keeping with the long-standing tradition of owning all of those comers, but if you want to keep it a parking fund asset, you can do that. Then, whatever you want. Correia! If it was a parking fund asset, is it transit? Could it be directed towards transit? Atkins/ We have a history of transferring monies from the parking fund to transit, and we stopped doing that many years ago. If you would choose to do that, you would just simply authorize a parking revenue to the transit fund. Yeah, that can be done. Champion/ Can we write this on the thing? (several talking) (TAPE ENDS) ... make a usable building out of it, instead of... until we know, I'm not saying it will never be torn down, but I'm saying, do we just want to tear it down and have that awful looking lot there? Bailey/ Well, and yeah, the bike library is next door, which has been kind ofa successful, I don't know... O'Malley/ I think the odd thing about that last slide is that because it's a parking asset, have bonds outstanding until, I think, 2020. You can never sell a piece of property for less than fair market value. So as a covenant that we've agreed to so that's one of the hang ups that we have with that property. Pavroll & Human Resources Software: O'Malley/ This next slide represents kind of our internal process, for hiring and providing payroll and retirement. This software came about, oh, the reason why we're looking at it now, it came about back in 2000. We were looking at a complete ERP program, which is an enterprise resource planning product, and that was like $3 or $4 million plus we'd have to add a lot of staff so we decided to cut back and look at a smaller project. The smaller project ended up being a general ledger system for about $100,000, and part of that was to increase, redo our payroll system and our HR/PR administration. Since that time, we've seen a lot of graphical interface systems and a lot of web type systems, so the character based system that we currently have are not as functional going forward, and we wanted to add these other processes such as time and labor and benefit's administration and HR management. What we currently have is one payroll data base, that has been around since about 1982, and all these HR management pieces are about four or five flat file data bases that the people who have written them have come and gone, some have come back again, but anyway, they're not integrated. So there is a lot of handing off that is done, and at this point, we're looking at trying to go further into this, into providing complete integrated solution. This is more or less, the $500,000 is more or less the placeholder. I've also been investigating, instead of buying software and maintaining it ourselves, going on the web and going through a web service provider and just renting the software over time. Like I said, this software, some of it was done in 1982 and some of the people that wrote that software and the tools that they wrote it with are antiquated - not the people so much. They're retiring, but the tools that they wrote it with are antiquated, and kids coming out of school today, they don't invest their time learning these old fourth generation languages. Any questions on this? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 78 Elliott! Yeah, this, this would then be a continuous stream, that every one of those needs would be able to tap into, add to, delete, that sort of thing. Good. 0' Malley/ That's correct. A stream we want to try and capture it, we're hoping to try and capture it on the web because a lot of people look for jobs on the web, through the whole process, time and labor - we have thirteen or fourteen departments throughout the City, we're hoping that electronically catch their time sheets, so there's no paper involved in the timesheets. Also, the...getting rid of punch clocks. They'd be logging in somewhere. Elliott! Yep, because virtually everything that you input at the hiring process is what the payroll needs and what HR needs? O'Malley/ Right, and now they're, we've got two different departments doing that function, so there's going to be some changed management, things we have to address between Personnel and Accounting. Bailey/ I would say this would create efficiencies, time efficiencies... O'Malley/ Yes, that's correct. And, there's something, like in the time and labor management, we don't have very good reporting statistics. We're looking in that module, which is one of the more expensive pieces of this, to getting some more management data out, management information. So we can determine, you know, best use of resources, labor resources. Champion! This is a half a million dollars? O'Malley/ That's just a placeholder. I've...the ones that I had my controller go out and price this out. The time and labor piece is about $275,000, the payroll is about $100,000, and the HR is about $100,000, but I've seen them.. .I've also looked to see if you can rent these, and you can rent the whole thing for about $80,000 a year. Now, the $500,000 is initial investment. We still have licensing fees each year about 10 to 20%, plus staffing needs. Utility Billing Software: O'Malley/ Utility billing software is a revenue system, and this system was also built in 1982, and two of the people who wrote this system have retired, and two more of them are going to be retiring in a couple years. This system was, all we really currently have is billing and collection, and we've added some modules on the web site, and there is some reporting. We don't have work orders integrated, or meter reading. We do have a meter reading process and we can take the information and dump it into our system, but it's not an integrated system. We have interfaces between each one of those spheres, more or less, and we take that information, bring it in, and process it. Because of the retirements, the system is currently working pretty well. We don't have the work orders, so there is some efficiency that could be gained if we had that system. And the web site is a continual upgrade, new challenges come up all the time. So, I think we'll always have with how quickly the web and the technology changes out there and the way of tendering payment, and providing information. I think we're always going to have some updates through there, but this system, we have looked around. This is about in the middle, the $560,000. We've seen some as high as a million, and some as low as $200,000, but this... I wanted to put one in the middle because this also is a placeholder because I'm not quite sure we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ~,-~.__.__._._-----~._-_._-.-_._._---- '--'--'.--"-'---'- -_..._"..~----_.,._-_.._.- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 79 really want to go out and buy this today. So we're looking at getting some more information on this, but ifthose two people retire, and something goes wrong, we'd be, have quite a bit of a problem, especially from a revenue generation side. These, this product was built, and it's 25.. . not just at one point in time, but along that time horizon, and as it was built, little modules went on, and it's kind of like whack-a-mole- something pops up one place, you got to fix it! Something else pops up in another place, and so since the people who wrote it are retiring, we're not sure how well we're going to be able to win at whack-a-mole. Elliott! What's the ratio between the cost of this, a little over a half million, and the income that it brings in? O'Malley/ We generate... Elliott/ That it facilitates bringing in. O'Malley/ Yeah, we generate $24 million in our water, sewer, and refuge billing, storm water billing, per year. So it's important to keep that revenue stream... Elliott! This is a relatively small percentage of the monies involved. Vanderhoef/ Kevin? O'Malley/ Yes. Vanderhoef/ Every so often we get informational, or somebody says, do you privatize these kinds of systems. O'Malley/ Well, how do you mean privatize? Vanderhoef/ In that it goes to a billing service and the City doesn't do any of this. O'Malley/ We have, part of the functions we have privatized, that's correct, and that's what I look at when I say I want to rent it. We still have, we still have a lot of the people calling us, I mean, customer service is here. So, we can't get away from that aspect of privatization. The web site we can privatize. In fact, we privatized the payment option on the web site. The work orders, we couldn't privatize it. That's the physical plant. Reporting, we need that reporting internally. But, we do privatize aspects. We used to do our own printing of bills here. We electronically send the file to Des Moines and they print the bills and stuff them and everything else. So, we've gone away from some of, we use some of that privatizing action or abilities. Vanderhoef/ And, I guess I don't have a good handle on how much there is there. What the total cost is to provide the billing service, and those kinds of things. And is there any other part that could be privatized that would be a cost-saving for the City? O'Malley/ Well, we haven't looked into outsourcing it to India or something like that. V anderhoef/ Yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16,2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 80 O'Malley/ But, you know, we sense that people still want to come in the door. Sometimes they want to come in and argue the bill. Obviously, they come in when we shut them off. So, and then we're, a lot of people come in, you know, we have a high turnover in this community of students. They come in and we have a pretty good relationship with the landlords association about getting deposits in. I sometimes think that privatizing works well when you just have a task, but if you have a human to human interface, privatizing doesn't work, and customer information management just by it's good old words means face to face interface. So, I think we've done a pretty good job of privatizing the task- oriented things, like the printing the bills and the stufflike that, but I don't, you know, we have certain collection things by statute. If we were to give collections to an outside agency, you know, who would they call? Who would they go to? They'd come in here, we'd say, you know, go to Davenport or some place like that. So we don't really, we haven't really looked at privatizing those human to human interfaces. Champion! I agree with you. I think it's good that people can talk to the City when they have a problem, or what they perceive as a City service. And I also, the other thing I have with the privatizing issue to an outside source (unable to hear) an employee of ours, or whatever. I like keeping the money here. Elliott! Plus, if! have a question, I don't want to talk to somebody in Guam. I want to be able to come in the door. Vanderhoef/ No, I was asking for information. I'm not promoting this at all. But, I guess I'm curious now, when you say we have done some functions that we have privatized, have we seen cost savings to the City? O'Malley/ Yes we have. The other part, or the other reason that we did that was we only have a certain amount of space in this building, and to continue to print and do those services, we had to give up that in order to have a sufficient number of people to, you know, have the quality space for their workspace. You know, years ago when I first came here, we had people sitting on top of each other in this noisy building system, knocking out the bills, and you'd be trying to talk to a customer and they'd, there'd be ajam in the printer, and so you'd run over there. So we ended up saying, 'Okay, what can we take out of this building, without losing much control of.' And the first thing was printing the bills and that's gone through a couple generations. I think that was back in 19... well, we did lockbox first, back in 1988, which was, if you wanted to pay your bills through the mail instead of coming in, you could have that deposit. Otherwise, you had somebody that's just opening things up, opening envelopes up, stamping them, giving them to the cashier, and just people punching in. That all goes through a lockbox service, I think, for like 20 cents an item. We've gone to SurePay, which comes out of your account automatically. That's only, I think, a nickel an item. So we've found ways to use privatization for cost savings. Vanderhoef/ You know, I don't think our public recognizes some ofthese things that you do for us, Kevin, that keep us in the upper echelon of good management and fiscal accountability. O'Malley/ Well, it's not as flashy as a new street, or (laughter).. . and I enjoy... Vanderhoef/ Maybe that's why it takes this many years to find out how much has been privatized. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 81 O'Malley! Right, but I enjoy every new street and I enjoy.... Elliott! Rick gets all the glamour, you mean. O'Malley! Well, he also has solid waste. (laughter) RECURRING PROJECTS: Fosse! Well, now we're on to recurring projects, projects that appear in each and every capital program, and those are primarily for two purposes. One is for maintenance and preventative maintenance of our facilities, such as our parks and roads, and those are some of the best dollars spent because you're taking care of things, rather than allowing them to degrade to the point where expensive repairs are necessary, and the other aspect of it is for incremental growth of our facilities as our city grows, and an example of that might be new traffic signals that are required once in a while. So, with that introduction I'll turn it over to Terry and we'll get started on this. Parks - Bike Trails: Trueblood! I get the honor of leading this section off. Excuse me.. .with bike trails. We budget $50,000 annually for this, and frankly, it's a cooperative effort between our department, Public Works, and Planning with various bike trails, intra-city bike trail projects. This particular picture just denotes one of many possible uses of this, and that's for curb cuts where the bike trails cross the street or enter a street, but other uses that we've made of this, building short stretches of new trails such as the one that we did over on Aber Avenue to connect in with the Willow Creek Trail. Rehabbing short stretches of older trails. Trail signage, we're currently working with John Yapp and some of the other bicycling committee members, City of Coralville, City of North Liberty, City of Tipton, on a trail signage project, and because we had this sort of funds readily available to us, I was able to say yes we can kick in for that project. That's just another example. It could even be park benches alongside of trails. Bike racks, we've used quite a bit over the years for bike racks out of this fund, particularly downtown. So, basically anything to do with intra-city bike trails. Elliott! I think Connie brought up a little earlier that I don't like to see things that are going into disrepair. I'd rather see blank space than something in disrepair. I wasn't talking about you personally! Wilburn! It's also important to remember that it's not just bicycles, it's people on skateboards and rollerblades and wheelchairs, and it's that multi-purpose. Trueblood! Other questions? Brick Street ReDair: Knoche! We currently budget $20,000 a year for the bridge street repairs. These tend to be a little bit more costly to do, just due to the labor intensity that goes into them. This is a picture that was taken from a piece of Bowery that we did a couple years ago, and what we do with these is just try and level them up so they ride better than what they did before, and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 82 so we can patch them out and do various small patches on some streets. One of the issues that we have come across here recently is not having lot of brick that matches the existing streets that we have, and so one of the things that we did in particular for this project, with the north Dodge Street project, the brick streets that were in the segment from Governor up to Prairie Du Chien, we actually salvaged that brick and we're going to stockpile that down at the Public Works site and be able to use it on these projects. Elliott! How many people want to continue this? Bailey/ Absolutely! Elliott! How much more does it cost to resurface a brick street with brick than a regular street? (several talking at once) No, you want to fix this street that's brick and have it remain brick. Knoche/ It's about $25 a square yard to replace a brick street, versus $3 to $5 a square yard to pave it. Champion! Except the street's been here for over 100 years, and we're just doing small patches. Bailey/ Well, and it's natural traffic calming. Elliott! Yeah, but if somebody wants their... Correia! .. .you salvage bricks from another part, that'll be able to be used in the future. So, that brings the cost down... Knoche/ And salvage the brick that's in place too, because not all the bricks are ruined, you know, you can use bricks as you take them out. Yep. Elliott! Why don't the people who live on that street pay for the extra cost then? Champion! But there isn't an extra cost. Elliott! It costs a lot more! Champion! They're doing small sections. They're not doing the whole street. Elliott! No, but it costs a lot more to do it with brick. (several talking) It just doesn't make any sense! Champion! It's a square foot, but I bet over.. . (several talking at once) Bailey/ How does not maintaining our City's history not make any sense? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 83 Elliott/ How far back do you want to go? Bailey/ Me? 1846. Elliott! Then, take away all the houses. This used to be prairie. If you want to go back that far. Bailey/ We have a community value of historic preservation... Elliott! Yeah, but the cost effectiveness is just, I mean, it's just so much more expensive to do that, and why in the world would you rather have brick than asphalt? Bailey/ Well, people are building brick streets again, Bob. I mean... Elliott! Well, then let them pay for it. Bailey/ Well, look at the Coralville Marriott, that entire street coming into it. Elliott! I don't want to pay for because somebody on Brown Street wants to have bricks in front of their house - why should I pay for that? Bailey/ Well, why should I pay for your dog-gone four-lane roads? Elliott! Because you drive on them! Bailey/ No, not usually. I mean... Champion! .. . driving on a two-lane road anywhere. Bailey/ Yeah, absolutely! I mean, that's what it takes for a... Elliott/ Roads are built to move motor vehicle traffic, and accommodate pedestrians and bicycles, and there's no reason on God's earth that we should keep making brick roads. They did that in Roman times. Champion! They're still there! And they're still there! Elliott/ Yeah, but it costs us, I don't know, ten times more to do that than to lay asphalt over it. (several talking) Champion! ... over the cost of years. If you took a hundred years on a brick road and a hundred years of concrete, or even 200 years, it would be cheaper. Correia! We're not making brick roads; we're just maintaining the ones that we have. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 84 Champion! You approved putting brick in downtown. Elliott! Yeah, I could see a brick sidewalk for decoration, but I can remember, used to drive down Muscatine and Burlington and that was a brick street. I was happy when they poured asphalt over it. You didn't have to rumble, rumble, rumble all over it. Bailey/ Right. People don't tend to speed, speed, speed on brick streets. Wilburn! Well, at this point there are four Council Members that... Elliott! So we'll do it. Wilburn! We also have a public hearing, not only for this particular item, but also for the ones we have up there and I mean, we will have discussions about those, but this has been put out, as a proposal for us and the public, to give an indication or an opportunity for anyone who feels oflike mind on either side can come forward at the public hearing. Elliott/ Good, I had an opportunity to give my indication. Bridge Maintenance: Fosse/ On to bridges. (laughter) Bridges are somewhat of a high-maintenance item. They just, normal wear and tear on them, aging, once in a while they get clobbered by an errant vehicle. Often times we're able to recover, from their insurance companies, the cost of rebuilding railings. We got one that we're rebuilding out on Mormon Trek right now that's down, but in addition to that, the concrete bridge decks don't last as long as streets, and they have a tendency to delaminate like we're seeing here. This is a picture on a Park Road bridge. Sometimes you can come in and patch these, other times you need to strip the entire bridge deck and do an overlay. The Park Road bridge is one of the first bridges in the State to get an overlay, a concrete overlay on it, and that now, well, it was put down in the 70's and just now is getting to the point where it's going to need to be redone. So, that's it on bridges. Let's move on to ... Vanderhoef/ 30 years on a bridge overlay? Fosse/ Yeah, that one lasted very well. What we'll find underneath it we don't know yet. As Ron talked about earlier, we'll see what kind of condition the deck is in. Vanderhoef/ Don't find rust! Citv Hall & Other Proiects: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 85 Trueblood! Recurring projects of City Hall maintenance, or City Hall other projects, I should say. This tends to be used often for like electrical and plumbing projects that are needed during the course of the year. HV AC projects, as well, but it can be used for other projects too, for which we need to issue a contract, generally small contracts like, such as paving projects, carpentry projects, flooring, either carpet or otherwise. Could be windows. Could be some exterior concrete work, or even some landscaping, but, again, it's a $50,000 per year, and those are the types of projects that it, that it's used for. Questions? Okay. Ron, I think you're up next. Curb Ramps: Knoche! Let's see here. The next project is the curb ramp program. We have $100,000 budgeted in FY07 and then after that we'll budget $50,000 in FY09, and then again in FYI!. What we've found is that as we've done these, this program over the years, we're catching up on the number of curb ramps that need to be done. So it's kind of, we've decreased the dollar amount that's there, but we've also found that if we spread out a $25,000 project over multiple years, we don't tend to get people that want to bid on these projects. So that's why we try and lump them together. So we identify locations where curb ramps are needed from residential, people who call in and say I know a handicap person in our neighborhood, you know, can you come and put them in, from transit, and also with our sidewalk repair program, we'll inventory where curb ramps are needed, and so that's what this goes into. As you can see, this is the current design with the truncated dome panel in red, and that's kind of what the ADA requires now for the ramps. Champion! When we do new sidewalks now, are they all barrier free? Like in residential neighborhoods? Knoche! We try to. The way the law reads is if the lay of the land prohibits you from putting in an ADA accessible sidewalk, so if there's a steep hill, obviously then you wouldn't have to be ADA accessible there, but for the most part the sidewalks that do go in are ADA accessible. Economic Development: Franklin! The next one is not in the slide show, but it's on your list in your book and it's economic development. This is a fund where we have put a certain amount of money in every other year. In the past, one ofthe projects that we used this money for was the Mormon Trek extension. We took some of the money that was in this, this set aside and just put it into the, that Mormon Trek project. So it's for, obviously, capital projects, any infrastructure that we might want to do as part of an economic development effort, which could be either City effort or private, if you chose. Open Space Land Acquisition: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 86 Trueblood! This is open space land acquisition, which does have a time limit on it. We've got 189.4 in the budget over the next four years. This particular picture happens to represent open space acquired through the neighborhood open space ordinance, as opposed to some that we bought, and this particular one actually shows a trail that we were able to get paid for by this developer, as well. But, the open space land acquisition is intended for when unexpected circumstances come up, that we can actually purchase some open space, that's not acquired through the neighborhood open space ordinance. And just some recent examples would include, the most recent example would include the area from the McCollister family, down by the sand prairie across from Napoleon Park. But over the years, various ones - the Benton Hill Park, the Old Orchard neighborhood, the Aber Avenue lot that I mentioned the trail on earlier, actually the lot was purchased from open space funds, but the trail was built with trail funds. The Hickory Hill- 1 5t Avenue addition and Wetherby Park expansion, just a few examples. Questions? Vanderhoef! And how much, that's coming from the 2% of the hotel-motel tax monies to.. . replenish this. Trueblood! It's more than 2%, but uh... Vanderhoef! I thought it was. . . Trueblood! .. . distinction between park land acquisition fund and the open space land acquisition. Steve or Kevin, could you help me a little bit with that? Pardon me? As I said, I'm coasting into retirement. I can't hear you. (laughter) Atkins! They're just, they're distinct funding sources. One of them is, the park land acquisition fund, its source of income is hotel-motel tax, and then we have another, and that's what this is. Vanderhoef! This is a different one? Elliott! This is a portion of the General Fund then? Okay. Overwidth Paving & Sidewalks: Knoche! The overwidth paving and sidewalks - this is a placeholder of $30,000, and what the dollar amount is there for is as a developer comes in and the City requires a local street to be a collector street or even larger, the City pays for that overwidth. So, let's say the local street is 28 feet and we go to 31 for a collector, we pay for the additional 3 feet. We also use the money to pay for upgrade in sidewalks. So if a 4- foot walk is what the typical is and an 8- foot is being built, we pay for the additional4-foot of that sidewalk, and an example of the oversized This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 87 sidewalk is in Old Towne Village. There's an 8-foot walk that goes up into the commercial area and we're reimbursing the developer for 4-foot of that sidewalk. Parks Recurring - Maintenance & Improvements: Trueblood/ Now we're on to Park maintenance and improvements. We get $200,000 budgeted in annually for this. This is a source offunding that we make wide, wide use of. This particular picture shows new playground equipment at Oak Grove Park. Our Park Superintendent, Terry Robinson, worked with a neighborhood group to come up with what it was they wanted to see and this budget paid for that. Here's another example. This is the walkway to the tennis courts out at Mercer Park that was deteriorating pretty badly, and this last summer we replaced that sidewalk, using this budget. Here's one that's kind of unique. This, we constructed what I would call a little nature trail and put this bridge in, over the pond, out at Windsor Ridge. It's a recycled bridge. In other words, we didn't buy it for this project. It was used for a street project sometime, I can't remember which one, but something that needed to provide temporary pedestrian access over a, well, while another bridge was being built and we've got several of these around through our park system, where we've recycled those into park use. Some other examples that we don't have pictures of is parking lot overlays. All of the new parking lot surfaces you see in parks came out of this budget. Accessibility projects; building rehabs - we do shelters and park restrooms; the bocce courts came out of this funding, except for the few hundred that was donated; the horseshoe courts in City Park that were rebuilt came out of this fund. We've used it for backstop replacements on ball fields. We've even used it for PIN Grant matches. If a neighborhood wants a PIN grant for new playground equipment or something like that in their park, then we use funding sources and match to provide more trail lighting. The trail out at the park, across from Mayflower, when the University wanted to light the park road down to the crossover to Mayflower, we used this towards the funding, and said let's take it on out to Taft Speedway while we're doing it. We've used it for creek bank rehab projects, landscaping projects, any number of them. It really comes in handy. It won't pay for a pedestrian bridge, but we do a lot of other things with it. Vanderhoef! You have a waiting list of things to use it on each year. Trueblood! Well, that waiting list continually changes, yeah. We do have a waiting list, but it just kind of depends on what comes up that needs to be done. Questions? Pavement Rehab: Fosse/ Our next project is pavement rehabilitation and that comes in two flavors. We've got the asphalt resurfacing that we've used for decades that's been very effective and then something that we developed in the 1990' s was, is diamond grinding, and we were one of the first communities in the state to use this process for restoration of our concrete streets, and it's a very good way to take care of streets This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 88 that are a good candidates for it. All this pavement restoration work is integrated with the work that onr Streets Department does, as well, so we take a holistic look at the management of onr pavements. Much of the work is done in-house. Other stuff is contracted out, such as these bigger projects that you see here, the diamond grinding or the asphalt resnrfacing. And I should mention that every time we overlay a street that's already been overlaid, we mill up the asphalt and we do reuse that, and that's something that we've been doing since the 1980's. It's a very, very good product for us. Karin? Public Art: Franklin! The public art program is a program that's been around since 1995. The annual allocation for it is $50,000. We started out with mainly projects in the downtown area, but have moved out into neighborhoods. We're working with neighborhood associations on various public art projects. The ones that are in the offing right now - there's a Melrose Avenue Neighborhood Association and then the roundabout, although the roundabout may be evolving into a non-public art project, in which case the Committee will reconsider use of the funds that are in the pot right now. Questions? Elliott! What on this year caused it to be twice as much? Franklin! That is, it carries over, Bob, every single year, that is, ifit's not spent in a year, it's carried over to the next year. Elliott! Carried over, good, good. Thanks. Railroad Crossings: Knoche! For the railroad crossings, we have a $25,000 placeholder in this, and this is a federally funded projects of the DOT, and we work with the railroad companies as they want to upgrade a crossing, whether it be a surface improvement, a crossbox signalization. We work with them and it's a, the $25,000 is onr match. It's a, I think it's an 80120 - 80% DOT, 10% railroad, and then 10% municipality. And currently, this program that the DOT has is, it's booked up. We received notice this last week that, I think we have Capitol and Clinton crossings for the Crandic and for signalization, and both of those are bumped until the next funding year. So, I don't know if we'll see anything as far as railroad crossing project that'll come up in this next fiscal year. Sewer Main Replacement: Fosse! Although we didn't have a waste water plant until the late 1930's, onr sewers started going in in the mid-1800's, so we've got some very old sewers out there, and they occasionally fail. Rarely as dramatic as this, where you see it at the surface. More than likely, it'll manifest itself with backup into yonr basement. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. _._...._,--~-~---------_.,-----------_._---_._._-.-._-~'-----,._- -----_..._------,----_._--~.._-_.._-"-,-----_.__._--_. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 89 So when that occurs, we need to get out and get that fixed, and it happens just on an unpredictable basis - two or three years - so we need to get out and get that done. What we're trying to do is be more pro-active in the maintenance of our sewers, where we go out and you've seen the television, or the cameras on our traffic signals, well, we go into sewers too. That's the non-glamorous part of the job Kevin's talking about, and we try and find problems and fix them before they turn into backups, and sometimes we're able to do that with no-dig methods, where we go in and use a cured and placed liner, and correct problems, before they cave in and cause problems. That's what we spend our money on there. Sidewalk Infill: Fosse/ A new project this year is sidewalk infill, and Karin's going to distribute to you a policy that staff has developed regarding this. A little bit of history, we stalled out about 15 years ago on filling in the gaps in our sidewalk system, and what happened 15 years ago was the assessment projects really became unpalatable for citizens and for our Council to do, and as I said, we've been somewhat stalled since then. So, we think that the best way to go about this is just to put a modest amount in the budget each year and begin to prioritize and fill in these gaps. So at your leisure, look over this policy that we've put together. If you have comments on how we should prioritize those things, just give us a call. Get ahold of Karin or myself and share with us your thoughts on that, and we can even talk about it at a subsequent work session if you please. Street Pavement Markings: Fosse/ Pavement markings - we do paint some of the markings ourselves with latex paint, and there are other markings on arterial streets and crosswalks that we use a more durable pavement marking product out there. Epoxy is one of the products that we use, and we have a rotating schedule to keep those fresh on our streets. They're done anywhere in the neighborhood of three to five year frequency. Interesting to note in a community like ours, where we have a strong commitment to pedestrian use, we do spend more on crosswalks than we do on center-line paint, so that's an interesting fact. One of the things that we'll know in a few years, as I explained to you earlier this year, we've changed the way that we treat our streets in the winter time. We're using less sand and that sand was abrasive. It's like taking sandpaper to this stuff. Well, hopefully we're going to get additional life out of our pavement markings from that. Davidson! Quick note about the previous slide, that does include the you as a Council enacted an enhanced pedestrian crossing on a three-year cycle. We're going to do all the marked crosswalks in town. We did the first year last year and that'll continue the next two years. That's why that number is higher than it has been in the previous years. As Rick pointed out, more for pedestrian crosswalks than for center-line markings. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 90 Traffic Calming: Davidson! The traffic calming program is a Council-enacted program that we've had for, gosh, going on 10 or 12 years now, kind of a model project for the state. As you know, last year was a record year for us. We actually exceeded the budget, which is, I forgot to bring my budget. (several talking) In a typical year, that has been actually much in excess to what we've required. Typical year's been $5,000 or $6,000, but we did go over the budget last year, you know. Kennedy Parkway had a lot to do with that. (laughter) Yeah, there were only a couple out by City High, Dee. There are, I believe, 18 all together on Kennedy Parkway, and you pay per speed hump, so the speed humps are typically what we spend our money on, although we did in past years, the traffic circles at College Street and Summit, mid-block there to the east, and then also at Washington and Summit, so we have a couple different things we spend money on, but this is. . . the budget enables us to be able to fund projects then for neighborhoods, and I think you're aware that it is a neighborhood-initiated program. Traffic Signals: Davidson! Traffic signals then, as I mentioned earlier, we do try and budget for installation of a traffic signal every year. Most of the time, we're able to incorporate these into other CIP projects and we would continue to do that, to the degree that we can, but periodically we have a stand-alone signal. You know, I just jotted down here, there are five intersections next year that we'll do warrant studies again. We think we're getting kind of close. ACT Circle and Dodge, once that gets opened up and traffic patterns kind of stabilize, we will check that out; Melrose and the southbound 218 ramps, and then actually, three along Scott Boulevard - Scott and Rochester, Scott and American Legion, and Scott and US 6. We'll keep an eye on those and these would be, this would be funding to enable an intersection to be done, if warranted. (unable to hear someone talking) No, this should be more like $100,000. Vanderhoef! $120,000 is what you have in. (several talking at once) Davidson! ... we had been budgeting $75,000, but $120,000 is more... Correia! I mean, how much does it cost for a signal at one intersection? Bailey! $120,000 for one. Correia! Dh. Davidson! If you have to add a turn lane, which a lot of times we do, then that gets you more into the half million dollar type range. So this is just for the signal system with the camera equipment on the mast arms. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 91 Vanderhoef! No count-downs. Add another $17,000. Fosse/ Part of that cost, Amy, is the camera, and then also the hardware that goes with that, and in what.. . Jeff is working with our Traffic Engineering folks at putting in place is a better system for the signals to talk to each other so that we can do a better job of tuning vehicles. Less delay and better fuel economy. Water Main Replacement: Fosse/ Our last recurring project here is the water mains, and our water mains are a little newer. They started going in in the 1880's and (laughter) they get old, as well, and here you can see the source of a water main break, right there, and as the mains get older, they begin to break more often. Dug this one up, and you can see that a repair was just done right next to that, and that begins to tell us that, gee, it's about time to replace this water main. So, it's tracking the break frequency that determines when some of our water mains are replaced, and we've been doing a lot of those lately. Part of the god news is, we used to average around 100 to 110 of these a year prior to the new water plant going on line, and when we put the new water plant on line, we have steadier pressures out there and our number of water mains, so far is reduced down in the 60 range. So that's good news there. Vanderhoef/ And you think it's just due to the pressure? Fosse/ Well, pressure and we use less surface water, and so we have less temperature swings in our water that hits the system, and that makes a difference as well. Elliott! Rick, before you leave, we've been talking a lot about streets and everything, when are they going to be done with north Dodge? Champion! I thought it was done. Elliott/ It's been going on since the Civil War, it seems like. (laughter) Fosse/ Yes. We're targeting next year for that. It'll be finished up next year. Ron, how far into the year do you.. . calendar. .. well, we're in 2007 now. It'll be... O'Donnell/ An interesting question is how far are they behind schedule? Knoche/ The contract that was put in place for Dodge Street was a working day contract. They have not exceeded their working days yet. So, they're not beyond their contract, but the original schedule that they had in place for the project, they are beyond that. They originally had scheduled to be done this last fall, and due to some weather and due to some other things, they didn't get that completed. So, what's left is the southbound lanes from ACT Circle to the interchange and the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 92 interchange work itself, and there's some side.. .some trail work that's going to go on... Elliott! Some time next summer? Knoche/ It should be done...1 would say late spring, early summer they should be done. Of 08, yeah. (several talking at once) This coming.. . yeah, this year. Next construction season, so, yeah, 07 they will be done. Elliott! Good, thank you. (several talking) Fosse/ Anything else before we move on there? PROJECTS SCHEDULED FOR COMPLETION 2007: Fosse/ This is our last category for the day, and we don't have a lot of slides here. We'll spend as much time on this section as you like, as you have questions for. It's just projects that are already in the shoot and moving along. Ijust have copies of the pages that are in your book there. There's no reason to go over those. If you have questions about any of them, we can go into that. Just a quick picture of the Airport grading that is wrapping up. Terry, you've got some pictures in here. Would you like to come up and go over those. Rec Center Window Replacement: Trueblood! Well, this probably looks familiar to all of you. Recreational Center window replacement project - this project, according to the original schedule, was completed last month, but it's not. The revised schedule says it'll be completed by this Friday, and it won't be, but it will be completed some time this winter. Actually, you know, I can't fault the company too much. They've been working every day, they've been working hard, they've just run into a lot of unanticipated glitches that have happened along the way, but I think you'll all agree that it is going to improve the appearance greatly, both indoors and out. It really brightens up the office. Makes it harder for me to sleep! Brookland Park Redevelopment: Trueblood/ Next on the list is the Brookland Park redevelopment project. You saw this concept plan before we ever started with the project, and with this one, the contract portion is completed, okay? Project showing the rehab of the creek running through the park. They say the park looked better prior to the rehab, but it'll look better again here in the near future. The reason I emphasize that it's the contracted portion is we did several things with this project in order to help reduce the cost. We're buying the playground equipment. We've actually purchased that and it has arrived, but it hasn't been installed yet. Directly from the vendor- same thing with the park shelter and, well, the park benches and trash receptacles, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 93 that sort of thing, that we're purchasing straight from vendors and in some cases, along with other orders to save some money, and then we install it ourselves. Did that with the light, the new light fixtures as well. We didn't install them, but we purchased them directly in order to save some money. Any questions on any of these? (TAPE ENDS) Lower West Branch Road Reconstruction: Fosse! This project's got two fairly significant culverts on it, as well as, there's a square in the center. The road doesn't go straight through. It's like a town square is in there, and one of the things that we've done to help... Champion! Where is it? Fosse! Lower West Branch Road - it is, well, if you look over to the map over here... .do this so I don't blind Amy.. .it goes from Scott Boulevard out to Taft Avenue, right there, and there are two drainage features on that. One right about there and one there. They'll be box culverts, and what we've done unique on this project is we've hired a local artist to help us as a consultant in the design and then he will also manufacture and install some aesthetic components to this. So the head walls for the culverts, the railings, are going to be limestone and they'll incorporate brass panels here and here, in this area will be the center, and it's basically going to help create a sense of place for that corridor, and these are things that can be reused in that square, when that's developed at a later date in there, and then also out here at the sides, will be a panel that'll go in looking like that. So, we're just trying to incorporate some aesthetic features into the project, which is typical for our bridges and that sort of thing. What is untypical here is that we've hired an artist to help us, whereas we've either done it in-house or worked with an architect in the past, and you'll see the contract for that work on the next Council meeting, and it comprises less than 1 % of the project cost. Vanderhoef! Okay, and then the street portion of it gets done next construction season, is that right? Fosse! Yes. Ron, am I hitting the schedule right on that? When are we looked to begin construction on this.. .April? Okay. So, with that, we'll open it up for questions and discussions on projects in general. O&A: Correia! I just have a quick on the schedule for completion, that skateboard park restrooms? We did that.. . something we put on hold with the University, proposed University partnership? Elliott! Boathouse? Correia! For the boathouse, ,that we weren't going to do a separate restrooms? Or we are doing... Trueblood! It mayor may not be separate, but we're doing it in conjunction with that boathouse project, assuming that that gets off the ground at some point in the near future. And, so, this funding has been placed on hold. This represents only a reasonably accurate trauscription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 94 Correia! Oh, I guess my understanding was that we wouldn't expend money on the restrooms, if the University was putting in a boathouse with restrooms, that then the public could use. Trueblood/ That's correct. Correia! But...but we're expending the money? Elliott! He said it's on hold though. Correia! Oh, it's just on hold. Okay, I thought you put it on hold to use with that. Okay, I see. Trueblood! In case the other thing falls through. Correia! If it falls through, I see, okay, but you were not going to expend any money if it doesn't. ..if it goes forward. Trueblood/ That's correct. Champion/ When are we going to know about that? We don't know? Trueblood! We have a meeting this Friday, two meetings this Friday actually. So things are moving along. And I presume at some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll be back before you to let you know how things are going. Wilburn/ We take another ten.. .come back and dig in to (several talking). (TAPE OFF) (TAPE RESUMES) Wilburn! What we're going to do now is run through other few slides on some unfunded projects. Council mayor may not have something that they want to go on and propose, exchanging, or at least getting more information about unfunded, and then coming back to this list here. So, Rick, if you. .. UNFUNDED PROJECTS: Fosse/ Thanks, Ross. What we did is, staff put together just five slides of unfunded projects and we anticipated that there might be some discussion on, and Karin will lead off with two and then Terry will follow with three after that. Wilburn! If I knew Terry was coming back up, I would have changed that! (laughter) Svcamore Street to "L" (#28): Franklin! Actually, this one we had a little bit of discussion about when you were talking about Sycamore Street from Burns to the city limits. What this contemplates is the city limits moving farther south, all the way to the "L". We're currently having discussions with property owners ofthe two farms on either side of Sycamore Street, and as Jeff said, we would anticipate that we might have an annexation request within a year, and so what this does is it just means that we will have more demand building in this area for the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 95 improvement of Sycamore down to the "L", possibly within the time frame of this plan. We're not recommending at this point that it be put in to the Capital Plan, but we may be coming back with that next year. Correia! And why aren't you recommending now? Just because it's not in the Plan... Franklin/ Just because it doesn't seem that immediate, and it's kind ofa...it's a little bit of a crap shoot because we've been having, we have these discussions with people, with landowners, and sometimes they go on for a long time. This one's been years long. So whether this is the year when they're going to pull the trigger or not, I don't know, but this will be coming. Elliott! So, the work you described thus far, I think you had said that will be done with the anticipation, at least, that it would continue on out. Franklin! Oh, absolutely! Yeah. Bailey/ Not even programming it in 2011 is your recommendation. Franklin! Not at this point. No. But, if it gets... by the time you vote on this, something changes (laughter) you may hear from me! Highwav I & Sidewalk & Trail (#34): Franklin! The next one then is the Highway I sidewalk and trail, and the reason that I brought this one forward is because as more things are going on out here, we've got a couple, well, a bank project that's on Hawk Ridge Road, which is up to the Lodge and the Highway. As things start progressing in Aviation Commerce Park North, which we're always optimistic that they're going to continue in the vain they've been going in the last few weeks, that we're going to get more demand for pedestrian walkways out here and, I mean, you had the input from Janelle Rettig last week about it. This was one of the pieces she was talking about, but also south to Ruppert Road, as it comeS through to 921. So, it's just pedestrian access in this area as we have more going on here. Project that the demand for the sidewalk is going to increase. Elliott! What percentage of that will the City be paying? Franklin! All of it! Elliott! All of it? Franklin/ I think that's what we did on Highway 6. Elliott/ So, those property owners don't have to pay anything. Franklin! No, no. It's... well, part of it is that, approaching this as we did with the Highway 6 end of it, it is a... it's like an arterial in the sidewalk system, in that it will be overwidth, it'll be an 8-foot sidewalk. It's purpose is for circulation in that area for pedestrians and bicyclists. This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 96 Elliott! We're legally constrained from requiring them to... Franklin! No! No, we're not legally contrained...contrained? Or constrained. In fact, if you recall on the Menard's, which is way out, down the highway, when that was coming through Council we had suggested that we have an exaction for that subdivision, that zoning and subdivision, for a sidewalk. Because of the timing and the fact that it was a piece, as opposed to continuity, the Council opted not to have that. So, yeah, usually we get it when we're doing a zoning action or we're doing a subdivision. This is all existing development here. A lot of it. Elliott! But because there was an exaction, you call it, we can't now say "hey, you need to put a sidewalk in?" Champion! We could. Franklin! You could do an assessment project. Those have not been Council's favorite exercises. Vanderhoef! There hasn't been one tried since I've been on Council. So it's a long time. Franklin! The last one I recall was Ventura. Karr! Tanglewood and Ventura. Franklin! Tanglewood and Ventura, yeah. That's the last one I remember. Elliott! It just always irritates me when they say "you have to repair your sidewalk" and, but you say, over there there's no sidewalk - well, they don't have to have a sidewalk. But I have to repair mine. Franklin! That's another issue. (laughter) Bailey! A 10-foot sidewalk... Franklin! Pardon me? Bailey! If this was a 10- foot sidewalk, so is that anticipating pedestrian, as well as bike access? Franklin! Vh-huh. I think 10 is the new 8, like you know (laughter and several talking). Vanderhoef! Ten has been out there for a long time. It'sjust that we chose to go with 8. Davidson! Ten's considered the standard for an urban area, two-way, mix of pedestrians and bicycles. Ten-foot's considered the minimum. If you're out in a less-populated area, then 8 feet's okay. Willow Creek Trail (#49): Trueblood! Or if you ride a bicycle like I do, you need 12 feet! (laughter) Elliott! Do you have training wheels? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 97 Trueblood! Well, they're going to come off any day. Vanderhoef/ You know you're in your second childhood! (laughter) Trueblood/ Let me preface my comments by saying that I'm not suggesting with these projects to move them up from the unfunded list to take the place of anything that's currently recommended (several talking at once), but... well, that's purely by coincidence. But, sometime when we go through this next year, these are projects that you might want to consider to move up on the funding list, somewhere as opposed to just appearing on the Unfunded list. The first one we call Willow Creek Trail West. This is the trail that runs behind West High School. Here's West High School, right in through here. The football stadium, trail's running right around through... there, and then you get over onto Shannon, I believe it is, onto a wide sidewalk, running up here to Rohret Road, and then you have to go use the wide sidewalks to get back down around in through here. The reason that we think this is moving up on the priority list, and what we'd like to do by the way, is to continue the trail on over, under Highway 218, running into Hunter's Run Park and eventually beyond. The neighborhood to the west of 218 continues to grow, as you know, and I wouldn't say that we're flooded with comments or requests, but we do hear them on a fairly routine basis of people wondering when this project might become a reality. Sand Prairie (#69): Trueblood! This next one is the sand prairie enhancement. This is that area across from Napoleon Park, down on Sand Road. It's almost 40 acres in size. 17 are... we got through the neighborhood open space plan, and then almost about another 21, I think it was, we actually purchased from the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, just a year or two ago. This, the picture in the upper left hand portion, kind of shows just a little bit of a hint of what we would like it to start looking like a little bit, but again, it's just a hint of that, and then the one in the lower right there, unfortunately, is the way much of it looks right now. We've actually started at the staff level, removing trees from this site. The vast majority of these trees are honeysuckles, which have thorns on them about that long. Kinds of trees that they're basically a big thorny weed, you know, it's not the kinds ofthings we want in a park setting. So, we're trying to get a handle on it a little bit, just in-house, and then this funding would be to enhance it, re-establish Sand Prairie, and small parking area, nature trail - that kind of thing. Correia! W asn 't there a Sand Box turtle or something? Trueblood! It's where they used to be. Correia! Oh. There aren't any... Trueblood! Not supposed to be any more. Yeah, ornate box turtle. Champion! Did anybody ever try and transplant them? Trueblood! We did. That's what was done. Similar to (several talking at once). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 98 Vanderhoef! But I understand that was not terribly successful. (several talking) Bailey/ Well, then why aren't they here? (several talking) Trueblood! I'm really not sure if it was successful or not, but we've had a number of people out there, naturalists and such, going through the area and to my knowledge, since we've acquired this property, there have been none seen out there. Vanderhoef/ Sandy Roads is the one who said, that that was one of those things that people tried to do over the years, in different parts of the country, not necessarily here, and that they didn't, didn't stick, it didn't work. Trueblood! They appear to be gone. Napoleon Park Restroom (#65): Trueblood! The last one on my list is the restroom/concession building down at Napoleon Park, which is the home to Iowa City Girls' Softball. This building was originally put up, just this far south portion right here, the restroom, as a Mayor's Youth project over 20 years ago. It's lasted about 18 years longer than we thought it would, but girls' softball folks, in cooperation, in conjunction with our staff, have added on to the building. See, it's kind of a piece-meal thing with things like this little overhang here and a new concession door added and that sort of thing. It's really inadequate, in terms of both concession sales, the restroom space, and the storage space. But perhaps more importantly, the Iowa City Kickers have two nice new concession/restroom facilities, that's boys and girls, Babe Ruth has a nice new facility, that's boys, Iowa City Boys' Baseball has a nice new facility, that's boys. So it's the girls' turn to have something nice and new. Correia! When we do that, there'll be more girls' stalls. There's only two! (several talking at once) .. . and you've got girls' softball tournament going on, all those girls. Wilburn! It gets to be a problem. (several talking, laughter) Trueblood/ We do host at least a couple of big girls' softball tournaments down there every year. Big enough that we don't have enough parking for them, so I can only imagine what the restroom problems are like. Vanderhoef/ Do you take port-a-potties down for... Correia! We rent port-a-potties. Trueblood! I think we do. Yeah, or they do, the sponsoring organization. Questions? What's next, Rick? Wilburn! Does anyone have any other questions on any other item on the Unfunded list? Foster Road (#13): This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 99 Correia! I have a question on the Foster Road, Dubuque to Prairie Du Chien. #13. That's been, I've had some folks and members of the public ask me about when that was, what the plans were for that. They were supportive of that. Fosse! That's a project where the grading is complete. Some of the drainage structures are in place. It'd be a relatively simple project to pave it, but at this point we're waiting for it to be development-driven, rather than the City leading the way on that, unless we change direction. Did I say that accurately, Karin? Okay. Vanderhoef! Was it my understanding that there really wasn't a whole lot of space to do new development, just because ofthe topography? Fosse! I' II let Karin speak to that. Franklin! It has stayed undeveloped, because it's rough. It's a very difficult police...piece to develop. We get inquiries every once in a while. It is zoned RS- 12, which would, if you did a planned development, you could do a debt-city transfer on those kinds of fingers ofland that come down. You know, if it was something in which the Council wanted to facilitate development, I don't know how much the road costs acts as a deterrent to developers to look at it, because obviously it would be part of the equation that they would have to put together and what it was going to cost for development to occur there. It is residential development, and so our return on that is not what it is on commercial and industrial, so just generally, as a staff, we have not guided you toward doing projects that are for residential areas, figuring that those will take care of themselves. So that would be, you know, kind of something for you to think about, whether you wanted to try to facilitate development of that in-fill area, by having that road paved. Another aspect to it is that there's two property owners there - the Alberhasky's kind of own half of it and the Glasco estate owns the other half of it. So generally speaking, when we talk to people, or when I talk to them, I tell them, you know, we're going to want to get that whole road done when a development project comes in there, and that we've talked with Councils in the past about if there's a project that comes in and they do half the road, that we would do the remaining half. And that's to get that connectivity between Prairie Du Chien and Dubuque, before you establish a population that says "don't put the road through." But, it's still.. .there's two, three difficulties, I guess. One is the topography. The second is the land ownership, and the ability to get both of those pieces ofland, and then the third is actually putting the paving ofthe road in, but it's ready to go, but for the paving. Elliott! Karin, where would that empty out onto Prairie Du Chien? Would it be after, as you're leaving town on Prairie Du Chien where you can turn off to go to the east overlook, would it be after that curve? Franklin! Oh, no, no, it's before the 180 bridge. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -,_..__._._.._---".."--"--..-~-~,----_._-~._-----'-----..-.._---~----_..._.,---~_. - ------_._--,----,,-_._._-"~_.._"..,_._-.--_.__._-'_.---~-_.,._- January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 100 Vanderhoef/ Use your pointer over here. Elliott! Oh, really? Franklin! Look out, Rick. (laughter) Right there. So, it's not anything apparent. You know where 8t. Ann's drive is? Elliott! Oh, yeah, yeah. Franklin! It's about two lots north of there, on the left. Elliott! So the only reason for that road would be to encourage development, because it certainly isn't needed for traffic now. Franklin! Well, no. Elliott! Prairie Du Chien cuts right straight out. Franklin! With Prairie Du Chien and the Dodge Street project coming to fruition and the signal there, there's a signal there, isn't there? That's improved it a lot, but there's still people that cut through Kimball, which is not a good road to cut through on. Kimball, Whiting Ridge, you know, that area. So, it probably would take some traffic from the north corridor that's coming in Prairie Du Chien that's trying to get to the University and they would come over Foster to Dubuque and, you know, be right there. So I think it has, it has traffic circulation aspects to it. Elliott! I was thinking of Dodge Street, I'm sorry. Franklin! Oh, no. Correia! That was going to be my question. Are there benefits to traffic circulation? And could it be opening up opportunities for development if the road was there? Even though don't get as much bang.. . (several talking) O'Donnell/ How many acres is that there? Do you know? Franklin! I want to say about 80, I'm thinking, maybe short of that. I mean, there's some redevelopment that would be taking place too in that the duplexes that are there, Bjaysville, probably anybody who bought that would see those as having limited asset for the whole project. O'Donnell/ Okay. Vanderhoef/ But it does parallel 180, as far as traffic circulation, if you want. Franklin! It does, but you can't access 180 at Prairie Du Chien, and so for any of that traffic that's corning in Prairie Du Chien from the, well, you know where they had that big road This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. -.----.,.-.-------.-. - - -.---..--.,.--.-- -- -----_._.._.--_._._------------------_..__._..._.~~'".._-_.._--_._.~-_._-,------_...._---------~---' January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 101 controversy? The Newport Road area... the first one.. . that those folks would still be coming in Prairie Du Chien because they either have to go over to Dodge or over to Dubuque Street to get in. Okay? Elliott! That's one of the few controversies Iowa City doesn't have. (laughter and several talking) Leisure Pool (#63): Correia! I have a question on the leisure pool, Terry. Last... Trueblood! Which number is that? (several talking) 63... Correia! I don't want a leisure, I don't want water slides and spray fountains, but last year at this time you, and I didn't actually ever get to City Park Pool last summer. There was a proposal moving the fencing out to incorporate grassy area. Did that happen last year? Trueblood! Yes it did. Correia! We did, okay. Did that, what do you think that did for just the enjoyment of the pool? Did you get comments from the public about that? Are there... Trueblood! Yeah, we got a number of good comments, primarily moms with smaller kids. Correia! Exactly! Trueblood! You know, they could find that area that they could relax in without having to be on the concrete deck. Correia! Right, right. So, are there.. .do we have chairs and things like that? Trueblood! Yes. Correia! We do, we've got chairs. Okay. Great, that's all I wanted. Elliott! I also like, I think we've expressed that before, that we kind of like City Park Pool to be the way it is, as opposed to being a water park. Champion/ It's the only really wonderful family pool that we have. Correia! I'm glad we incorporated the grassy area into that... Trueblood! If it ever came to a situation where you wanted to seriously discuss a water park, leisure pool, that's one of the issues that would have to be discussed. Okay, do we look at retrofitting City Park Pool and making it a water park, leisure pool, or do we want to look into a new one in some other location. That's a topic for future discussion, I hope. Elliott/ People have a nice one in Coralville. Bailey/ Has the Parks and Rec Commission talked about adding sort of splash pads to some of our parks. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 102 Trueblood! Yes. Yeah, a while back there was a proposal, I think came from here, about looking into like water slides, maybe a couple water slides for City Park Pool, to incorporate into it. If! remember correctly, I think the City, it's either in their minutes or they sent back a response, the Commission did, due to the fact that we're still hoping to get a Master Plan done sometime in the near future, and we don't want to incur a major expense of retrofitting one of the pools, without that Master Plan in hand. That's on the horizon. Bailey/ I guess what I was talking about though are those, kind of like our fountain downtown though. They're flat. Wilburn! They have a few in Cedar Rapids. Bailey/ What are they called? Splash...theyare called splash pads. Trueblood! We actually do have a couple of those. Bailey/ In the different parks, or... where at? Trueblood! Mercer Park, for sure, I know they've incorporated it into some of their programs out there. I knew I should have incorporated that slide into our (unable to hear, several talking) Champion! Where is there a splash pad at Mercer Park? Trueblood! Oh, yeah, they're portable. They don't just stay there all the time. Put out there like for playground programs. Elliott! I was going to say, I've never seen it there and I live there! (several talking) Bailey/ .. .could be an interesting enhancement to some of our parks, I don't know. Trueblood! Well, you put permanent ones in and they're a whole lot more expensive. The portable ones are relatively inexpensive. They require to be put away at night and that sort of thing. Elliott! But they can be run on grass. You put it on the grass? Trueblood! Right. Elliott! I always thought, geez, I'd have been...to see kids running on that one downtown, and there's concrete, it just. . . always gives me the shivers. Champion/ Well, it's not as bad as the fountain we used to walk up and down on. (laughter) Elliott! That was dastardly! Trueblood! Can I go back to my nap, or...(laughter) Wilburn/ Any other unfunded... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 103 Maier Avenue (#19): Vanderhoef/ Ijust have some questions. Maier Avenue, which is #19, I couldn't find it on my... Elliott! Never heard of it! Vanderhoef/ That's why I want to know about it, if you please. Knoche/ Over in west Iowa City (unable to hear). Vanderhoef/ Okay, now step back and show me where it is. O'Donnell/ Where does it go to? Knoche/ Connects Highway 1 to Rohret Road. Vanderhoef/ Oh, okay, so you had to have the county map out to find it. Davidson! Most of that is.. . (unable to hear Knoche)...yeah, the rest is out of the city limits, and I think even gets out of the growth area boundary eventually, but I think that was something that... there was somebody making some noise about it at one time and it got put in as an unfunded project. Vanderhoejj' That was the one that there was the talk about making that the connection from Highway 6 to Highway 1, and then it got moved further east. Davidson/ Vh, yeah, I don't know the minor alignment. I think we were, all of our alternatives for 965 coming down were further west ofthat, Dee. Don't forget that we do intend, eventually, to connect Kitty Lee Road, let's see.. . pardon? Burned a hole in my... where the Menard's site is right here. Am I in the right place? I don't have my glasses on. Here we are, right here! Okay. (several talking) .. .at this side where the Menard's is, at some point when a sewer gets put through right here, in fact, is that in as an unfunded project, Rick? That sewer.. . okay. The sewer that goes in here that allows this whole area to redevelop, eventually there will be a collector street off of Kitty Lee that then connects through to Rohret, so there will be a connection through to Rohret Road. Elliott! We talked about Kitty Lee, did we not? Some... Vanderhoef/ That's with the new Menard's. (several talking) Davidson/ Naples Avenue is the main access into Menard's - that's here, and then Kitty Lee is kind of the back side. Elliott! Just be glad you weren't running a bulldozer when you were a few... Davidson! Dee, did you have anything else? Myrtle-Riverside Intersection (#22): This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 104 Vanderhoef/ Well, I've got the...Myrtle-Riverside intersection. Davidson/ Right. That's probably one I should have added to that... Vanderhoef/ I think so! Davidson/ ... traffic signal warrant study list. We are scheduled to look at that this spring. Iowa DOT has asked us to look at that. Now, that is one I was alluding to to Amy that will, we know from the studies that we've done so far, will require a left-turn lane on Riverside, which puts it into that half million dollar category. Elliott! Which one is Myrtle? Davidson/ It's where the convenience store is there, and then the, where the University used to park cars during football games. Elliott! Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's Benton, Myrtle. Okay. Vanderhoef/ And there's a bunch of apartments there, and then University property up on top. Davidson/ It's been two, or possibly even...I think it's been two years since we checked that and it did not meet warrants. Wait a minute. I take that back. It either, I think it just barely met warrants, but we made the determination that it would not, you would not want to do that without the turn lane, because ofthe tremendous delay there would be on Riverside Drive, otherwise. So, that was one of those that we just felt like we were just buying time on a little bit. Vanderhoef! Okay. So you say this 550 is with turn lanes? Davidson/ Turn lane.. .you'd only need one. (several talking at once) Riverside Drive StreetscaDe (#25): Vanderhoef! Okay, and then this is a combination Jeff and Karin, I presume, but #25, the Riverside Drive streetscape, and that means continuous sidewalk kind of thing, which then goes down to Highway I and that. . . Davidson/ Yeah, the model there, Dee, would probably be similar, not exactly, but similar to what Coralville's doing out on Highway 6, where you would try and reduce the number of driveway access points, you try and enhance the sidewalks. You perhaps have pedestrian lighting. Plantings. Essentially what Coralville's doing out there. Now, we don't have as much room to deal with as Coralville. This is a much more constrained corridor, but sort of trying to get all of those elements into the project, possibly extending the center turn lane a little bit further to the east, through the commercial area. Possibly to Myrtle. We haven't really thought this through much more than that, only knowing that that would be a nice corridor to introduce some of those enhancements with. Some of the redevelopments of the properties further to the west, down where the Tobacco Bowl and Panchero's is down there, I think have kind of wet people's appetite a little, that it could be a little nicer looking area. This project would do that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 105 Bailey/ Well, what would be the implications of putting that in an out funded year. I mean, I'm really interested in seeing that happen. I don't know if others are. Vanderhoef/ That, and the Highway I piece. Bailey/ What Highway I piece? The sidewalk? Vanderhoef/ Just around the corner. Davidson/ Sidewalk piece that Karin.. . (several talking). Vanderhoef/ ...1 think that whole area needs to be... we've had a storm now. We've had some changes in there. Nothing else seems to be pending. One of the large property owners chose to rebuild right in that location, which if there was ever going to be a time that might have chosen to move, it chose not to, so I think what we've got there is pretty much what's going to be there. Davidson/ Well, the one point I would make is that if a majority of you do get interested in putting this project into a funded year, we are probably talking about the same order of magnitude of impacts to adjacent property as we are talking about with this project. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ ...old parts of town, unfortunately, you know, this was designed 40 or 50 years ago, and at some point in time, it has to be redone, and it doesn't look the nicest right now and it needs some upgrading. (several talking) Davidson! Anything else, Dee? Vanderhoef/ I' II let somebody else have a turn and then I'll find the next little grouping that I had. Wilburn! Anyone else? Linn Street Pedestrian Improvement (#39): Bailey/ Ifwe, on #39, the Linn Street pedestrian improvements, would that be a partnership with the University project, Karin - I'm sure this is yours. Linn Street pedestrian improvements, installation of pedestrian and streetscape improvements, next to Van Allen. Vanderhoef/ What number is that? Bailey/39. Franklin! Urn, yeah, that's just kind of waiting on the University to get it scheduled. We were pretty close on design on that a few years ago. They've put it off. I haven't checked with them again recently, which I can do, to see if they have it in their Capital Plan at all, because it was going to be joint funding. Bailey/ So this is our portion of the project, is that...$338,000? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 106 Franklin! I don't know anymore. Bailey/ Are there other people just interested in knowing where the University is on that project? Correia! I'm trying to picture. So, it's between... Franklin! Between Van Allen and Seashore. Correia! Right. So it's that walkway, that you think of as this is University property, but that's (unable to hear). Sidewalk between Iowa and Linn? Franklin! No, the part that we were involved in was the bus stop on Jefferson and there was going to be a pull-off and signage. Correia! That's not a bus stop. They just stop. Franklin! Right, right. So, most of what we were involved in was the Jefferson Street right-of- way. Correia! Okay. Franklin! But I'll check with Bob Brooks and see. Bailey/ I'd be interested injust knowing where it is. Iowa River Trail (#36): Vanderhoef/ I think we talked earlier about how we were bringing that trail through, downtown, and getting down to the river for bicyclists, in particular, and so forth. And I don't know exactly where we ended up, whether we have stafflooking at bringing us some ideas, or something, but... Davidson! Dee, are you talking about the connection from Creekside Park to Iowa River Corridor Trail, and to downtown Iowa City? Sort of it was...you were concerned that the Court Hill Trail, that Terry showed you earlier, terminated at Creekside Park, and so you requested those two programs in our, in JCCOG's work program, for this current year and so John and Kent from the RTBC are looking at those. Vanderhoef/ They are doing it? Davidson/ Yeah, that's in this year's work program to just get a better handle on it. Vanderhoef/ A year from now then we may be looking at it, or Regenia, were you interested in expanding that just a little bit for more, more for downtown, or for the fringe of downtown? Bailey/ What I've heard from bicyclists is a way to get through downtown Iowa City. We have a lot of one-way streets, as they're coming from the east, to the river and to the other side of the river, and our Burlington Street project doesn't facilitate that. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 107 Davidson! The way we kind of concluded it at JCCOG, as you'll recall, is that we were asked to look at the Burlington Street issue, and it was quite ofa "no decision" sort of thing. Everybody just.. .as you heard Karin review earlier, just kind of like, the median project will not make it any worse, doesn't make it any better, and it just sort of landed right there, and I told John after that, I said, "John, we need to have a more formalized half- way.. .", not that it won't be without friction and that sort of thing, but a formalized pathway so somebody from out of town can get across the Central Business District on a bicycle, and so the intention has been for JCCOG to look at that in our FY08 work program. Vanderhoef! I just couldn't remember where we put that! Sorry. O'Donnell! I don't know, if you're going through town on a bicycle why you wouldn't go one block south and just take Court all the way down. Bailey! There's no bridge. O'Donnell! Well, then you can turn (unable to hear). Correia! Court Street? O'Donnell! Take Court Street all the way down to... Bailey! To Madison? O'Donnelll To Madison, and then you... Correia! If you're on the east side, it stops. Champion! Not at Madison.. .you can take (several talking at once) O'Donnell! You can take Court to Madison and then go out to Burlington, and we've got sidewalks to get across the bridge. Correia! See, if you come from the east side, you take Court Street, it ends at Summit. You're not going to go all the way around. But what I've heard is College Street feels like, to the commuters, feels like that's a commuter street, and then it's once you get to Burlington is, I mean, I suppose (several talking). Bailey! It's almost too bad you can't turn down Iowa and go the straight shot down the hill, nice speed there. O'Donnell! That's a tough hill in the winter though. Correia! I mean, Iowa has the angled parking. (several talking) Vanderhoef! Is anyone interested in looking at #36 to go take the trail along the river behind City Carton, instead of out on the streets where everything is, cross traffic, cross purpose? Bailey! I'm interested in that area, but I'm kind of interested in as that area redevelops. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 108 Wilbum! I understand that someone may be negotiating purchase of City Carton area. Davidson/ You're on the other side of the river from City Carton, right Dee? You're like behind McDonald's and Payless and.. .oh, you're on the other side of the river. Oh. Okay, I'm sorry . Vanderhoef/ Yeah, where we're going down through, past the Animal Shelter and all of that stuff, we're out on the streets. Davidson/ Yeah, well, what we'd like to be able to do, and we've sort of informally talked to City Carton about it, is to get the trail away from the front of City Carton and get it behind, along the river, and City Carton would like that too, because they don't like. . . (several talking). Now, the other thing that's been discussed, just her recently and all of you on JCCOG will hear more about it on the 24th is with the passenger rail study that was done with Linn County. We looked at transit oriented neighborhoods, and we feel that this area where City Carton is, and sort of that whole area - City Carton and perhaps the north waste water plant, if a portion of it redevelops, just depending on what happens to it, but it's a long-range plan to establish a higher density transit-oriented neighborhood there. You know, City Carton knows that in the long-term, that's not the best place for them, but on the other hand, they need to have rail access and some other things. Right, but there may be other properties that are better for that that would allow for redevelopment of that. Again, we're talking in the long-term. We would hope to get the trail reoriented prior to any long-term redevelopment of that area, but that is kind of something I think that with the Central District Plan, when that's completed by the Planning Department, you'll hear more about the prospect of that being a potential redevelopment neighborhood for the Central Planning District. Champion! And what about that (several talking at once). Davidson! Rick can speak to the plans for the north waste water plant. Bailey/ So, on this, you're saying that to do the relocation, before the redevelopment, would be... Davidson/ Something we'd have to work out with City Carton, and there may be the possibility...1 know we've had discussions with them, Regenia, but Ijust, I can't tell you exactly how they've concluded. Vanderhoef/ What comes to my mind is this connection, that when we get at Creekside, and whatever we designate, wherever that comes in to the river trail, if you've got your trail connected and it T'd and you could go to the Benton Street bridge, or you could go to Burlington Street bridge, without going into downtown, would give options to that transportation system, and that's the piece that would be missing. Davidson/ I mean, we can ratchet up the discussions with City Carton, you know. The area where the trail would go is not heavily used and it's flood prone. I think they have some derelict equipment sitting down there right now, but I mean, it may be that ifit's something we indicated to them Council was interested in, perhaps we could work something out, because they would like to get, as use of the river corridor trail has grown, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 109 the interactions between peds and bikes and their large trucks is something nobody really likes. Vanderhoef/ On both north and south side of Benton Street, on their property, if we could. Davidson/ South side has been the one that they've identified to us as a bit more of a concern. They formally painted the trail through there so that people weren't cutting through their property and some other things like that. I haven't heard so much about the north side, where they also have a small plant there. Vanderhoef/ I want both sides. Fosse/ There are no immediate plans to the Commission, the north waste water treatment plant. That will be with us for some time yet, and it will be tight to get a trail between that and the river, keep those operations separated. Champion/ Why? Why... do we still need it? Fosse/ Yes. Need it for treatment capacity. Champion/ That big expensive new place isn't big enough? Fosse/ It was built with the asset of the old one in mind. And the old one is very energy efficient. It's a good one. Vanderhoef/ But we could get one through, you say the constraint is... Fosse/ I'd really have to look at that. Vanderhoef/ Okay, why don't you? Fire Station #4 (#75): O'Donnell/ We could always talk about the #4 Fire Department. Anybody interested? Elliott! Always have been! We sat here today talking about millions of dollars in costs, and we need ten or so more firemen, and a dozen more policemen, but we keep talking about things that make the place prettier, not to make the place safer. Champion! Different money. Elliott! Is that what you wanted? (laughter) Vanderhoef/ Different money. Elliott! No, it is all tax money, and the money that's bonded money costs more money, because you have to pay interest on it. Vanderhoef/ But until we get general funds money, how are we going to pay for it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 110 Elliott! It's money, Bailey/ Well, and I've indicated that I'm interested in looking at some changes to the General Fund, but we haven't seen those changes, those proposed changes, to see if there's potential savings. (several talking at once) O'Donnell/ Well, I think what we need to do is be a little bit creative and try and find some funding, and the first thing that comes to my head is $100,000 plus per year in shooting deer, which is unnecessary. There are other options. One idea that's over $100,000. Bailey/ We need about a million though. O'Donnell/ It's every year. Champion! Ijust have a question before I can tackle any of these Capital Improvement projects. Steve (unable to hear person). Let me tell you what I'm thinking and I don'!. "I know in your memo something about if we didn't raise taxes... Atkins/ Tax rate? Champion/ Tax rate" .ifwe didn't raise the tax rate, we would lose over a million dollars? Is that.. . Atkins/ ... reduce expenses by a million, or add a million dollars in new revenue. Champion! Okay. Atkins/ One or the other. Champion/ But, on that increase in rate, oh... because the rollback was greater, is that going to increase people's property taxes, or keep it about the same? Atkins/ Tax rate was projected to increase approximately 2.6%, Simple arithmetic, someone could take the City's share of their property taxes, 102.6, so for each hundred thousand dollars, about (TAPE ENDS) Champion/ ... but the rollback was." Atkins/ Rollback went down just a scoshe. Champion/ Just a scoshe" .so it is going to increase, despite".okay. Atkins/ Yes, despite". Champion/ Okay, then what I'm thinking, since we really can't reduce the General Fund because we simply can't afford to. That any increase in taxes, I want offset by. . . I mean, I personally, I don't mean all of us. I personally want to decrease Capital Expenditures with taxes about the same. This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Conncil Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page III Atkins/ So, what you would be doing is reducing the debt service tax rate, and that's really easy enough to do, you just draw up... Champion/ Yeah, because I'm really concemed about the level of taxes in this community and the fact that North Liberty is one-half? Or is it... Atkins/ What's that? Champion/ Their property taxes. For the same house. Atkins/ Yeah, but before you, but before you go there, they don't provide anywhere close to the same level of services. Champion/ I know that. I'm not, I'm not questioning that. And Coralville's is one-third? Vanderhoef/ Oh, no. Atkins/ Their rate is maybe two-thirds of ours. (several talking at once) Yeah, one-third less. Champion/ ... and one-half less, so and I think that's something we need to think about when we're trying to compete in the same market. I'm not talking about what Iowa City has to offer, what North Liberty has to offer, what Coralville has to offer. I'm concerned that our rate of taxes is making it difficult for people to live here. And that, especially, frankly, I don't care how much my taxes are, I can afford to pay them, but I think people who can't afford it, start looking at "my gosh, if! stay in this house, my taxes are going to be $4,000 a year; if I move to North Liberty, they're going to be $2,000 a year" so I'm just throwing that out as something that I think is important, that if we can't reduce people's taxes, let's at least not increase them. Wilburn! The only thing that I would ask you to consider though, Connie, if you're going to compare what the taxes are, you have to consider the services that are being considered. Champion/ Okay then let's don't compare. Wilburn/ Well, I mean... Champion/ Let's just say "look how much we're paying." Wilburn/ ...if you're going to, I mean, if that's, ('d rather you do that than make the comparison there because nearby communities don't have the fulltime professional firefighter staff and on and on. Champion! Oh, I know, I know! Wilburn/ That's why I think if you're going to make that comparison, you have to consider what other services are being delivered, just like if you're going to compare our tax rate to the Davenports and Dubuques who have the gambling and sales tax revenue, you have to make that comparison. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Sessiou meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 112 Elliott! Well, on one hand, what Connie. ..the comparison Connie made, is truly apples and oranges. On the other hand, if it comes right down to somebody moving here and saying, "What would be my taxes in Iowa City? What would be my taxes in Coralville, North Liberty, or Tiffin," then it's a valid comparison; Ijust wanted to say, Amy brought it up, I was looking this up last night and the year-end cash balance when first estimated for FY07, in (can't hear) we estimated it at $11,000. The next year it was estimated at $15,000. Last year it was proposed at $7,000.. .or not thousandths, millionths. Every year, the amount of money in the cash balance is higher than we anticipated, and significantly higher. It's even, it's a little lower this year because we added something called "unreserved balance" and I think that.. . unreserved, yeah. Unreserved balance, so I think that's something we really need to look at. Vanderhoef/ Well, some of that reserve that shows up more than what we anticipate, we set a policy for what we want it not to go below. Okay, find and dandy. We also set revenues in the general budget, at minimums. We're always pleased if we get more, and this is where we can borrow out occasionally when we have straight line winds or tornados or something like that, that still keeps our reserve in that area where we will continue to get, keep our triple-A bond rating. So we have to budget so that we keep in that corridor of reserve that will make sure that... Elliott! One of the reasons we're having that reserves is because the gap that comes when, between the times the taxes come in. That gap has never exceeded $6 million and our cash reserves have gone 41, 33, 32 million, or 32%. Vanderhoef/ And you saw the bond rating issue within... Elliott! Yes, and as long as we're over, I would assume 20%, there's not.. .ifyou have a cash reserve of20%, that's an extraordinarily good reserve. (several talking at once) Correia! .. . significant, but I also... is that, I mean, we have many other good financial policies, we're not TIF'd to the maximum, we don't bond to the maximum, I mean, isn't all of those things together make up our triple-A bond? Atkins/ Yes. Bailey/ You cited, you cited a recommendation from what source? Correia! From the, I think it was the same organization that we got our award from, the... Atkins/ The FaA? Correia! Government Finance Officers Association. Atkins/ The FaA. Bailey/ And what was their recommendation? Correia! Their recommendation... Elliott! Oh, yeah, but 20% would be more than enough. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 113 Correia! If we compare our unreserved fund balance to expenditures, the recommendation. . . the recommended level is 8% to 17% of regular general fund operating expenditures. Bailey! So, we were well above that Atkins! And remember, that's looking.. . everybody. Elliott! But we... Atkins! I think that's much too small. Elliott! We also have a contingency, in the General Fund, of what? $300,000? Something like that. Atkins! Three-quarters of 1%. Correia! I have a question. Two of the, related to the tax rate, two of the levies that you had recommended, or recommended increase, are the Employee Benefit Levy and the... Atkins! Yes. Correia! My question there was, and I was wondering how that, in your memo about the million dollars in General Fund Expenditures, if we have a balance, a carry-over balance in our Employee Benefits, and we have a 32% reserve fund, can we afford to keep that, that rate at what it was the last year, and if we would have. . . Atkins! You can keep the rate, and then transfer money from your reserve. Correia! If we need it, because what I wanted. . . do we think we absolutely need that? Is that more of a we may, this is... Atkins! Employee Benefits Levy is really not all that difficult to calculate. Number of employees times their health insurance is one thing, number of employees times the pension contributions, total it up and there it is. How do you figure it... Elliott! That's mathematical. Atkins! That's the bill we get from the State. Because we don't really control much that goes on in Employee Benefits. Debt Service you do. You give zero. I'm sure the County doesn't have any Debt Service payments. But they chose not to do the things we chose to do. Bailey! And how do we calculate Torte liability? Atkins! It's a bill. Kevin substantially negotiates our property and casualty and workmen's comp and all those insurance, and that is covered by the Torte liability levy. So as the market changes, so does that number. So does the fact that we're growing also has, and growing in values. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 114 Champion! The other thing I wanted to ask about, I.. . sorry, I haven't bothered looking it up. What subsidy are we planning on giving Transit out of the General Fund? Atkins! None. Not this year. Champion! Okay. Atkins! Transit is well-funded for the next several years. Vanderhoef! So believe it or not, then.. . (several talking at once)... Atkins!...General Fund, that's the 8/10. They're 95 cent levy, plus their other State and federal aids, finances Transit. Champion! Right. Can we reduce the Transit Levy at all, since... Atkins! Yes. Could if you want. Bring it down to 91 cents or 92, you mean something like that? Correia! Would it reduce service? Atkins! Top of my head, no, not right now, but it'd be close. Champion! [' m talking about replacing the funds with the Transit building. Correia! Right, right. Is there enough to be able to reduce the... Atkins! [ don't think it would be too dramatic. Bailey! See, and I've gotten calls from people. They want Sunday service, so there are some citizens who would like us to expand our Transit service. Atkins! Just did, you added two routes. Bailey! Right, but not on Sunday. Atkins! Yeah, but financially your system's healthy. Elliott! The Transit, if I'm not mistaken, misses being self-supporting by something like $3 million. Already? Atkins! ...95 cents, a dollar...what do you think? Champion! When you think about all the federal aid we get for it, it's quite a bit. Atkins! Well, federal aid and you get the revenue of Court Street. Elliott! I think the contracts and the transit fees represent something like $900,000. (several talking at once and laughter) What page is Transit? I'm... Bailey! On...58. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 115 Elliott! 58? Thank you. O'Malley/ Bob, it's always a definition oftenns - what do you mean by self-supporting. It doesn't get enougb out of the fair box to be self-supporting. It has to use the property tax levy to be self-supporting. In fact, as Steve said, you probably could cut that levy by 5 or 6 cents and not impact services. Elliott/ [just, I just, when it was said it's well-funded, [think people need to know how much of that money is not coming from what the Transit earns. It earns very little money, compared to what it costs. Atkins/ Kind of a nice easy rule of thumb on transit. When a person gets on the bus and puts 75 cents in the till, we put a dollar. Elliott! Vh-huh. Vanderhoef/ What was the last? Atkins/ A dollar. So, everybody that rides the bus pays 75 cents... Elliott! Well, I'm just looking... Atkins/ .. .costs $1.75. Elliott! $4,700,000 and fees, and local government 20/80 agreements come to $900,000. Champion/ I'm not against subsidizing transit. I'm just trying to find a way to reduce levies, because public transit has never, ever paid for itself, but it's paid for itself in other ways. Atkins/ You reduced the levy last year by taking some cash out of your General Reserves. Champion! Right. Atkins/ Putting it in as a revenue, and that can be done. The most important thing about our cash position is you have a policy and you stick to it. [mean, that's the most critical element. They want to say, the Moody's folks, say that's what we want to track, and if you were to say "I'd really like to do the girls' concession stand," a one-time expense and want to take it out of Reserve. Okay. It's the recurring operating expenses that we cannot rely on the State, in particular, supporting us. One time expenses, those are explainable, and particularly when you're doing a one-time expense, but you're adding an asset, an inventory to the municipal plant. Something new. Elliott! I think you said... Atkins/ .. . road that you're opening for... Elliott! ... they called you about, what was it - the bonding limit? We have 25%, we went over that a few years ago, we're projecting to go over it again, and they check and they want to know "why, what's your projection" that sort of thing, yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 116 Vanderhoefi' Pay-off time and all that. But, truly with the new funding that we got into our Transit, so that we didn't have to subsidize from General Fund 8/10 monies, we ended up, as I would think, to the good by about $400,000, $500,000. Atkins/ You are. There's no doubt about it, and your... Vanderhoef/ .. . it's paying for the inflation... Atkins/ I would encourage you to get one full year of the income from Court Street under your belt. Once that's done, then we'll be on the tail end of that small cities money. That will begin winding down. Then I think you'd be in the position of saying "okay, here's how we can amend some services." And I still think you'd be in a good position. We also don't have to bond, if you'll notice, there's no bond money for our share of buying new busses, because we're going to use the current cash. (unable to hear someone speaking) No, it would be in your Capital Plan. Supplies is fuel.. . (several talking at once).. .no. Easiest way, easiest way to reduce the tax rate, by the infusion of cash into your General Fund, is simply take it from Reserves. One time. Champion/ We did that, we did that last year. Atkins/ You did that last year, yes you did. Vanderhoef/ And that was... Atkins/ Well, last year was a. . . Vanderhoef/ ... in response to our new assessments and it was going to jump up. This is a non- assessment year so I'm not sure that this is the year that we ought to look at that because we may well end up with that same situation a year from now with new assessments. Atkins/ Last year's spending was a little different, the storm, in particular. For a month there, we were... we thought we were going to get reimbursed. Of course, we didn't get anything. Bailey/ And I also thought using the Reserve last year was an indication that some of us feel that we maintain too high of a Reserve as a percentage, and I would count myself in that group. I think it's just too high. Correia! The other question that I have is we project out and we're doing this three-year plan from 2007 to a projected to our 2010 projection what we're putting into our Reserved and Designated balance. Increase of a million and a half. So... Atkins/ Okay. What's the percentage? Is it 30%? Yeah, the Reserve itself may go up because remember - it's measured against your expenditures. Correia! Not the unreserved. Atkins/ What page you on? Correia! 19. What we put into the ReserveIDesignated. . . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 117 Atkins/ That's a variety of smaller reserves. Correia! Okay. Atkins/ There's a memo I gave you in your packet, lists what those items are. I didn't bring that with me. Vanderhoef/ Are those reserves like computer reserves and. . . Correia! It's not actual cash. Bailey/ Library equipment.. . park land (several talking at once).. . computer. Vanderhoef/ But it's reserved for its special funding purpose. Elliott! I noticed this year was the first year that showed on this graph, on page 24, previously it did not show the reserved and for 06 it was $2 mill, 07 it was $1.7 million. The unreserved, reserved for library computer and equipment reserves, park land acquisition. Atkins/ Right. Elliott/ We never saw that before, did we? Atkins/ Oh, we never split them out, to give you a truer picture of our reserves... Elliott! So, it's always been there. It just hasn't shown. Atkins/ Split it out for you to show you the difference. Elliott! How do you feel about that not showing on there? Taking it out of, scheduling it for the Reserve and not as a part of their budget? Atkins/ Well, indirectly it is a part of their budget. They feel strongly, they the Library, that their technology needs are such that they want to have help from Reserves to replace those computers. Elliott! So this is shown on the Library's budget? Atkins/ Yep, you'll see. . . Elliott/ Okay. Champion/ And that would not also show up like when we say we're going to put the $50,000 a year in like art and we haven't used it, is that shown as a Reserve? Atkins/ No, that's a.. . first thing to remember, this is a budget. These are allocations. Champion! Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. ------,..._--~._--_._----_._._-,_.__..._,~..-._.._."..-'-~-"-"_.'-~-'---------~-~------'---"'~"---------""--,---.-.-...---.-....- January 16,2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 118 Atkins! You identify $50,000 as an expense side item. When we end the year, we may spend $49,212.08 or something, you know. It's a budget. Elliott! I'm looking, I'm looking at the Library budget now, page 61, and looking at the receipts and I don't see, this past year...1 don't know what their reserve funds were, but Ijust don't...which one of those lines would be? (several talking at once) Page 62? Atkins! At the top, computer replacement reserve. Is that what you were asking about? Elliott! Vh-huh. Bailey! But you also see it on their summary sheet and transfers out. They transfer to their reserve. Elliott! 1 guess I'm just looking at 61 and the receipts, and 1... Atkins! Okay, well, go down on the expense side, where it says 42,968 transfers out to Reserves. Correia! So the transfer out isjust transfer out of their total budget. Atkins! In total, yep. Correia! But it's internal in that, so the property tax general levy, but that is all...is that all.. .27 cents. Atkins! Oh, no, no, no. Correia! So we put other General Fund...okay. Atkins! Oh, absolutely, yeah. And 27 cents is about $600,000. Their budget is $4.1 million comes from other sources. Correia! So I guess what my question is, we look from down the road kind of, we look from 08 to 10, where we have from, the different between 07 estimate going into the ReservelDesignated, and 10 - one and a half million dollar increase of transfers, from whatever department is transferring money, that was General Fund money that year, tax dollars, into this reserve that they want for their savings account. Is that policy that we're saying "yes, you can do that" or we're looking down the road and that's a million and a half, do we want to say, if we want to fund the fire station, well, we can't do a million and a half. We can do halfa million, and a million's going to go to...I mean, I think... Atkins! Yep. Correia! ...that's where we make decisions on what we're... Atkins! I always separate Capital from Operating, always... Correia! But, I am. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 119 Atkins/ No, I know you are, no, I'mjust saying it's real important that you, what we talked about today were improvements in fixed assets, substantially one-time expenses, even though we might borrow. Recurring expenses, such as your operating expense for staff, that's the one that I get the most nervous about. Correia! But what I'm saying is is that, just to make sure I understand, the money that goes into the Reserved and Designated is money that's starts as General Fund money. In those departmental budgets they want reserves, they transfer money out of their General Fund allocation into a reserve that then maybe they use on technology or whatever, but... O'Malley/ Amy, you're correct on that, and the reason for the large growth in that Undesignated Reserve is the extra revenue that Transit is getting, that we're transferring out of Transit and putting into a Transit Bus replacement reserve. That's that million and a half. Roughly $400,000 a year. Atkins/ We're projecting, that with the new transit money and with Court Street, you're going to have a very healthy reserve, which means that when we sit here next year, and you want to do some...you could do some of the projects this year, but next year we'd have a full accounting, because remember - this is a budget. Bailey/ So, to piggyback on Amy's question, if we look at these reserve accounts that you wrote us a memo on, urn, bus replacement probably isn't coming from General. It's probably coming from Transit dollars, correct? Atkins/ But it passes through the General Fund. Bailey/ Okay. So, these are all, I take, a department would take from the General Fund. I charge taxpayers, or taxpayers pay in, and I sequester part of my budget to a savings account, in anticipation of equipment needs down the road. Atkins/ Or using it for some other. ..you could just be setting up a savings. I want to set aside $100,000 a year for the next three years because in three years I want to do this. Bailey/ By doing so, however, we take this million dollars, $2 million, out of a General Fund that we could be using for recurring expenses, such as staff. Vanderhoef/ And then we'd be in the position in three years when we want to be able to replace that pumper truck, that... Bailey/ Right, we'd have to find another way to pay for the truck, or the computer equipment, but basically what we're saying, I mean, basically it is coming from General. It could be used for other things. It's being used for a savings account now for anticipated needs. Are there other ways that we could pay for those needs when they come up, is my question. Is there a better way to... is there a better way to do this. Correia! The other way to do that is if in three years we have this one-time expense, we have a 33% unreserved balance. We do a one-time expense out of that 33% unreserved balance, and not have, what... Atkins/ If you're sure that the balance will be there. Something might... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January IG, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 120 Correia! Right, whatever, yeah. Atkins/ Remember what happened three years ago. Bailey/ It seems we have a very high unreserved balance though. Atkins/ Remember, we had to resubmit the budget because of what the State chose to do. (several talking at once) Vanderhoef/ And we had to find $1.4 million. Correia! It's hard for me to say we can't, we can't fund a new fire station, when there is General Fund revenue going into savings, and we have a higher than even recommended by the industry reserve balance, that is our savings account that we could use... we could save all of it and not pay down anything. Keep our tax rate what you recommend. Champion! But it would be paid down a million dollars every year. Once you use a million dollars of that for personnel, you're going to have to have more than a million dollars in next year's to cover that. (several talking at once) Bailey/ .. .and taking a side so you can use the savings. It comes in to General Fund and it's used as savings in this reserve account. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ Okay, but Amy, look at it this way perhaps might make some different to you, that is when you spent it out, rather than putting it in a reserve fund, number one you're not going to have the revenue that comes from reserve funds, because those are invested, so we have that. Then when you get to the third year and you say, "All right, I have to replace $1.4 million of computers for the Library because it's time to roll them out," we go to GO Fund and we pay $1.4 million, plus interest on it, so that interest plus lost interest personally, I think we're much more fiscally responsible to our taxpayers to not bother, borrow GO money. Bailey/ There's a middle ground here. If we've got money going into, money from the General Fund going into a savings account, what's our estimation for staffing, for example, the fire station - I would like to see some police officers myself, but.. . (several talking).. .but, we're talking about a million dollars. You know, we're looking at an estimated balance in 6/30/2007 of $1.7 million. We're not talking about completely decimating this, this reserve fund. So, I've heard priorities here. We could walk a fine line and get to some of these things that would preserve a bond rating, address public safety, get some staffing, I mean, I think we could actually pull this off. Correia! I do too. Elliott! Before... because what you're talking about is before the reserved amount, a million seven was taken out, the year-end cash balance was $18 million. Now, urn, I guess, Dee, I'd have to disagree. I don't think the best use of taxpayer's money is to have what I would considerate an exorbitant savings account. Taxpayer's money should be used to provide services. Now, I think it is only good management to have a safety net, but I think This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 121 something in the neighborhood of 20, at the very most, 25% is plenty for that. Anything over that, I think is exorbitant and not a good use oftaxpayer's money. Bailey! Why don't we try to pull this off? I mean, that would be an amazing thing. Correia! We've been talking about a fire station for a very long time, and... Elliott! And it's the staff that costs the money. Correia! It's the staff and it's recurring, and what I would like to see is.. . our city continues to grow, so unless we want to say we're not, we're only going to do in-fill until we're able to provide these public safety services, and I'm not sure that we want to say that. Bailey! We're not only doing in-fill. Let's look at all of our growth projections. Correia! And then, I don't know... we also have these TIF projects that, at some point, we're going to be getting these. I mean, I'd like to see the projections out there, as well as.. ..you know, these other, even though housing development doesn't give us as much property tax revenue as commercial or industrial, it is increasing, and I'd like to say, you know, that these new property tax revenues are going to help support the public safety that's needed. Atkins! That's a question and you need to have a debate. Is fire service more important than some other...ifwe're going to do this, or try to do this, what is it you want to fund? Is it a fourth fire station, or is it more police officers? Or is it more engineers so we can build more roads? I don't know. (several talking at once) Elliott! But I'll point out again, the year-end cash balance over everything since I looked back to the 05-07 year, and it is always significantly underestimated until we get to that year. In 05-07, it was estimated at $11 million, then it was estimated at $15 million, then it was proposed $17 million. Turned out to be $18 million. (several talking) I'm looking at previous years. From the last four... Correia! ...even though it's estimated that the reserve in 09 will be $15, that's probably conservative (several talking) Elliott! For instance, in FY06, they estimated that the for 8-10 year, this year, would be $12 million. It turns out to be $19 million. (several talking) In... in FY06 the estimate for, in 05 and 07, the estimate was $12.2 million. Atkins! And what did it end up being? Elliott! $19. Atkins! There's something wrong there. We don't have that wide a swing. Elliott! Take a look at the last books. Atkins! I'll be happy to look at the books, but that's...I don't know what you're looking at. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 122 Elliott! You can just count the progression. It's always...(several talking at once) Atkins/ A $7 million swing in one year, no. There's... Elliott! Not in one year! No, when it was first estimated what it would be in 08, in 05 and 07. Atkins! I have to see that. That's something's not right about that. Wilburn! I would just ask council to consider, I understand everyone has their passion about what they'd like to see and we're all doing what we feel is in the best interest of the community, I would ask that we try and respect each other's, be cautious ofthe terminology that we're using. As we go from here, what, Bob, what you might call an exorbitant amount, I look at, I'm going to put this in context for you, I look at, it is a conservative estimate and providing the community with a certain comfort level, not only should another natural disaster occur, it certainly is nice to know that one tornado or straight line winds or flood happens, that this city will continue to operate, and we don't have to worry about, gee, where we're going to get the money for a generator, etc., we just do it, and we make the tweaks to our budgeting later on, and then the other piece to that is...I, Amy you bring up, and it's certainly a guide what an industry recommendation range is, but also consider what's in that range, there are different community standards in terms of expectations of services and ability to respond in crisis, those type of things. We, we have a recommendation from our City staff members, you know, there are recommendations from attorneys all over the state that we get, but I'm going to put my money on Eleanor, as opposed to something from someone in another city or another attorney in the region. I'm looking at it as, you know, we are, I guess the other piece to that in terms of a comfort level with whatever's going to happen is I don't know what's going to happen in Des Moines, and I don't know what is going to be the resuIt of some of these property tax and commercial tax conversations - I just don't know and so, I guess I'm just, I'm comfortable with that recommendation that that's coming up. Now, if you, obviously we have a disagreement on whether we are making investments in the community in an area that we can agree upon, in terms of service levels, including police and fire, but the others that we're doing, but I view that we're making, we're making investments in our infrastructure in a variety of areas that are coming up. So, you know, if.. . if the route that some of you are wanting to take is to go ahead and plan for less of a reserve, I guess I would ask you to, you know, keep in mind some of us are just coming at it from a little bit more cautious of a direction. Elliottll guess I won't call it exorbitant if you won't call it conservative. Champion! Well, the other thing is too that we're one of the few (can't hear) that doesn't have a sales tax and so if you've got this constant revenue coming in from sales tax, then I think your reserve can be a lot less. Wilburn! I would agree with that. Champion! And we don't have that. Ifwe had a sales tax, we could staff our fire station just like that, and police and everything else. And that's the way the State is going to finance city services. We don't know what's going to happen with the rollback in commercial property. I mean, I sat here one year, was it a million point six or was it $600,000, what This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 123 was that budget cut that we had? When the State sent us the bill. (several talking at once) Atkins! That was about $1.3 million, three years ago. Champion! Yeah, and we really don't know what they're going to do this Legislative session. Elliott! But that year we had about $18 million in reserves. Champion! Good thing! (several talking) O'Donnell! You know, I think, I think we set that reserve, and I don't know if it's exorbitant or conservative, but I think it's something that we reached as a safe point, in preparation for these straight line winds or tornado or something like that. Bailey! But we also need public safety personnel in those situations and we are really, I know that this will grow over the years, but initially we're talking a million dollars, and in our budget, I don't know how to characterize that, but it seemed like a small amount. Granted, I'm a little bit more comfortable with risk than some of you, but I think that this is something that we've been talking about, and I don't fully understand why our recommendations don't incorporate it, if we are taxing people to have a reserve to balance in a savings account for these other things, when it seems like we could take care of them, and the more immediate interest and need in the community seems to be for an additional fire station, and it just seems to make sense as we grow. You know, I see a possibility here. I'm disappointed in others of you who won't explore it. We've been talking about this for a really long time, and so have our citizens. We at least owe them running these numbers. Wilburn! Well, and some of us have put forth an alternative way to finance that, local option sales tax, and there were others who are not willing (several talking at once) Bailey! And I, against my personal philosophy, advocated for that sharing so that we could fund some public safety initiatives, and that was not, that became not an option because it wasn't our choice. Now, are we willing to also enact a local option sales tax for the city? Is that what you're suggesting? Wilburn! That's what some of us said we would do to fund police and fire, respectively. Bailey! Seems like a basic service that we should be providing...I mean, I don't know. (unable to hear someone speaking) Correia! ... property taxes would fund a basic fire... VanderhoefJ I think we fund so many other, what our citizens call basic services, whether it be the girls' softball program or the Mercer Park kinds of activities, both indoors and outdoors. We have all of these services and amenities that our citizens have come to expect. We love them. Ilike them. I vote for them. I support them. That's not the point, but those are general fund expenditures. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 124 Bailey/ They also have suggested looking at some of our cultural activities to see if there are savings to be gained there. Nobody will look at it. I mean, what are we willing to do? What are we willing to discuss? What numbers are we willing to look at to get to some basic issues, like the fire station? Vanderhoef/ Okay, if you're going to exclude 70% fthe General Fund dollars, if we say our staff is sacred. Then look at the other 30% and see if you can come up with enough to hire nine more firefighters. Bailey/ But that's what these are. These reserves are not stuff. Vanderhoef/ I'm sorry! I'm not going to entertain reserves that are going to end up in increased taxes at the other end. Correia! They're reserve reserves. We have our unreserved balance, which is at 32%, and then we have our reserved balance, which we are continuing to increase the amount going into that, as well, and so from our General Fund. Vanderhoef/ I understand. Correia/ That we want to still put some in there, but not increase it a million and a half over three years. Bailey/ Think we could get there by balancing everybody's interest.. . (several taking at once)... Correia! ... at a percent that we can use, if we need to in two years, for a one-time expenditure, where that's not going to effect our bond rating or whatever. We're not using it on operational. As we continue to project that our current taxes are going to grow. Maybe not at the rate we would like them to grow, but to at least be able to afford an additional fire station. Wilburn! Are there four Council Members who wish to see the staff come back with a recommended reduction in that unreserved cash balance that would pay for staffing for a 4th fire station? We said unreserved. Okay, then, reserved. I'mjust trying to.. .your.. . (several talking at once) Bailey/ I am understanding they both are. Wilburn! I'mjust trying to formulate a question for you all to respond to. Bailey/ I'm interested, as I think I've made pretty clear. Elliott! I think if you look at any business, if any business were unable to pay a minimum wage and that business had 30 to 40% year-end cash balance, that business is not a good business. I think tax, and especially when we have tax... tax money should be spent for services. Now, there should be a reasonable, and we disagree on what reasonable year- end cash balance is. That's where we disagree. Bailey/ Because we could have this reserve, reserve, and still have the money in our General Fund to do this staffing. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 125 Champion/ I can't see that, because staffing is a recurring expense, and it's going to increase. (several talking at once) You're going to take a million the next year from reserves. Bailey/ No, you're taking a million that] hand to you from my taxes, and you put in your savings account for this reserve, and then next year, from my taxes, you get part of your savings account. That's all ]' m talking about. Weare collecting this money from General Fund, from taxes. It comes into our General Fund. The Library chooses, and] think it's probably smart, because they are very tecbnology based, they have a lot oftecbnology requirements, to put that in an equipment reserve. I'm suggesting that if that equipment reserve were half of what it is, from our General Fund, we would have the money we need to fund the staffing for the fire station. It's not from any other source but tax dollars. General Fund tax dollars. That are being used currently as a savings account for contingency needs down the road. Even if we halved that savings account.. .here's from this memo. Look at those numbers. Wilburn! If it were the case, where we were not making investments in our fire or police, as another example, then] might be willing to do that. However, we are making investments in those. Bailey/ Response.. .you've got to have proximity and that's what they've been saying for years. Elliott! And I think.. .you also mentioned, listening to staff, and our fire chief and police chief have said for years, showed that we are understaffed. Wilburn/ And there are other staffed departments that say the same thing, and we try and... Elliott! But what's most important? ] guess that's why we set priorities, and apparently, if you don't agree that public safety is your highest priority. Bailey/ ]'mjust tired of having the fire station discussion to be perfectly honest, and so we're not going to move forward on it. I don't want to hear it again, and I would like to take fire station #4 off the list. O'Donnell/ No, it's not that at all. It's not not hearing about it, it's whether or not you want to get into your fund to do it. (several talking at once) Correia! It's not about going into the Reserve Fund. It's about not putting as much in every year. From our General Fund. (several talking) .. . and redesignating it yearly. Atkins/ Some of the monies are reserve balances, for example, developer's escrow and some things... Bailey/ But the Library, no. Atkins/ The Library's clearly (several talking at once) Bailey/ Library computer replacement reserve, ] mean, and I'm not saying that this isn't a good idea to have some level of reserve. I'm just saying that perhaps by balancing this, we This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 126 could get two, we could answer a very thorny question that we've had for a very long time. Elliott! What is the largest unexpected cash imbalance we have had in anyone's memory? Does it exceed $2 million? What, what year have you ever come up.. .what's the largest figure that you've ever come up against, where we had a negative ability to meet the expenses? Atkins! (unable to hear) Elliott! Well, the year that we had to redo the budget. You said we came up less a million and a half. Atkins! We could have gone to our reserves. Elliott! Have we ever come up with anything more than a million and a half? Atkins! Probably close to a million dollars in the storm. Elliott! And, that's 1/lSth. Atkins! No, I understand your point, but... Elliott! It has never happened, as far as I know. Atkins! Be cautious about where you're going with this, because I think you're going to take a risk that (unable to hear) Correia! Like modeling, we can't make, you know, when we're deciding on whether to have a street a certain way, we get computer models and, but we're not getting any, for instance, here's a budget that projects out tbree years with a fourth fire station staff. Atkins! That has not been your policy. The policy is something else. If that's what you want, we can do those things. Elliott! This discussion has created strange bedfellows, hasn't it? (several talking, laughter) Champion! Well, you know, I don't see how we can even talk about this until we know if the State is going to roll back commercial tax rates. That is going to be devastating, and they're going to make that decision, I don't know...! know I just, you just never know what you're going to have next year, and staffing is continuous, and it grows. It increases every year. Elliott! If you're not going to change your minds, I don't want to waste my time. (TAPE ENDS) Vanderhoef! ... because if you are making the statement that this is safety versus something else, then we have all sorts of staff that we could say, we could let the parks go to weeds because public safety is the bigger thing. Bailey! I'm not going to be pushed into that extreme argument. It's right here. Look at... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 127 Vanderhoe1l There may be two there. Bailey/ You said it costs a million. Here's a million dollars. Correia! And I also think there's been, we.. .in the last two meetings, or however many, we've had two suggestions to look at numbers on how to get money. We've had, let's look at what our policy is of putting money into this reserved balance, and what, you know, looking at reorganizing how the Senior Center's operated. Can we save efficiency and money by incorporating that into a (can't hear) organization under Parks and Rec? Champion/ We've asked them to look at it. Correia! But what I'm saying is, but I mean, those are two, you know, if we could (severa] talking at once) give us what it will look like, what would we sacrifice, you know, and then we would have informed, be able to make an informed decision, knowing the numbers, knowing the picture. Wilburn! How soon do we anticipate having the (can't hear) about the Senior Center and the Parks and Rec? Atkins/ I'll talk to Terry tomorrow. I'll meet with Terry and Lindajust for a sit down. We can give you a preliminary fairly quickly. O'Donnell/ I don't know what we expect to save there. Elliott! I don't either, but I'm interested in looking at savings anywhere. Vanderhoef/ Well, the FTE's are the places that we have to look the hardest, I would think, because they are 70% of our budget. Elliott/ Yep. Vanderhoef/ And... Elliott! I mean yep to they're 70%. Atkins/ ... asking for more staff. Vanderhoe1l Abso]ute]y! We gave some this past year without a blink of an eye, thinking about fire. (severa] talking at once) That's mincing words, but I'll leave it alone. Bailey/ We didn't give them extra staff. We've been really clear. Wilburn! At this point there was not four Council Members who wanted to consider that proposal. We do have three items up on the board. Stormwater (page C23): Vanderhoef! I would like, if! might, just get some update on these storm water projects that are out there. 56,59,60,61 - they're all of the same kind of nature, and where we see, how This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 128 soon can we address them with storm water funding? It comes in through our, $2 per...these are on C23, they're number 56,59,60 and 61. Wilburn! While the staff members get those, why don't we take a break. (TAPE OFF) (TAPE RESUMES) Dee, what were the questions you had on those three items? Vanderhoef! Okay, we have three projects there that have to do with service existing areas on storm water. Bailey! Project numbers? Vanderhoef! 59, 60, and 61. Elliott! Okay. Vanderhoef! And then there's a new storm water facility that we were shown a nice map of a lake proposal and so forth, and that's number 56, and I just wondered where that was, whether there was anything. Karin may know more about what's happening in that area. Fosse! Would you like me just to address those in numerical order? Vanderhoe1i 59, 60, and 61, yeah. Fosse! Okay. 59,60, and 61 are projects that honestly the neighborhood interest in those varies with the weather. During wet years, you get a lot of people interested in getting it done. During dry years, there's not a lot of interest. So, that will vary, that will swing. Project number 56, Carlson Lake, that for those of you who are not familiar, it is right out in this region here, between Rohret Road and Highway I. It would be a regional storm water basin and that is a project that really is development related. If you would like to encourage development of that area, then the City might take a lead to build that project and like we did for the south Sycamore regional storm water, and then have a tap on fee for that. That particular area needs storm water improvements and sanitary sewer improvements for development to occur. So, if you want to see that area build, think about those two projects - both of them are on the Unfunded list. Vanderhoef/ But sanitary sewer, that budget is pretty dam tight right now, I think. Fosse! Yes it is. Vanderhoef! ... to do any new projects, so that is not the one I'm most concerned about. It's these others that, you know, they sit there and we don't do anything about them and then we get it when, like you say, when it rains, but these are things that we know we need to take care of. Fosse/ Yes. Vanderhoef/ So these are on-going, or some of the on-going maintenance and keeping up with what has to be done to take care of the infrastructure that we have. This represents only a reasonably accurate trauscription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 129 Fosse/ Right. That's the case with 57, 58, and then also number 70 on the next page. Yeah, those are things that we, those are expenses we know we are going to have to endure sooner or later, but the driving factors aren't to the point yet where we're recommending to put those into a funded year, but we keep it out here just so we don't forget about it. That Iowa A venue culvert continues to deteriorate. Sooner or later we're going to need to do something. Same is true for the north and south branch detention basins. They're not deteriorating, but they're slowly sedimenting, the sediments are filling them, which reduces their effectiveness, and at some point we'll need to get some of those sediments back out again. Vanderhoef/ Okay. So, have we put together a plan that says we're going to knock off one of these each year to get them back up to full capacity and so forth? Fosse/ Our plan right now is that Parks is contemplating some improvements to the Scott Park area. Vanderhoef/ Vh-huh. Fosse/ And if those move forward, then we should look at restoring that volume at the same time, because remember, when we're in there we can (can't hear) simultaneously. We don't have a plan like that for the north basin yet. We're going to get additional mapping this spring, the new topos will be available. We can begin to see at what rate that is having problems with sediments. Vanderhoef! Okay. Which brings to mind, once again. I think I brought it up last year and somebody said oh, well, we did overlay, and that is Benton Street, and the old infrastructure that's underneath that street, and how many times we have overlaid it and you had said, well, we had six or seven years left in that old infrastructure that's under the street. The six and seven years have now passed. So, are we fooling ourselves that we're not getting that sewer and water, those old pipes, replaced in that area? Fosse/ Let me look at our water main break history on the hill there and see if we have any televising information on the sanitary. Shape we're in. I can't answer your question off the top of my head. Vanderhoef/ I know it's been at least six or seven years since we looked at it, and then in the meantime we overlaid the street and didn't do any improvements. So, I'm truly concerned that we're delaying maintenance on some of these old things and that's one of the places where the Reserve Fund might get used if all at once we had a couple of those all at once go down on us in a year when we weren't expecting to have to do something. So, I'd rather get on to a continued maintenance of some ofthese very old areas. Just knock them off of the list. Fosse/ Keep in mind that the water projects and waste water projects are Enterprise Funds and we usually do those with funds from the revenues ofthose, and it doesn't effect it. Vanderhoef/ Oh, I understand that, but if we have the break and the money isn't in the Enterprise Fund, it means GO or Reserve, and.. . Correia! There's a lot of money in that Enterprise. ..you're talking about the Landfill? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Sessiou meeting of Jauuary 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 130 Champion/ No. Vanderhoef/ No. Fosse/ No, that's a separate Enterprise Fund. (several talking at once) Correia! We could always borrow from the Landfill though. Champion/ We're always borrowing from Landfill. Vanderhoeti' Short term, payoff. Correia! ... the storm water enterprise, okay. Vanderhoef/ And we're not collecting that much off of storm water, at this point in time, to pay for all these projects. Fosse/ That's right. We're still building up some balance there. Vanderhoef/ Yeah, and it doesn't build up very fast, so the number of storm water projects that we have sitting there that can become a problem in a wet year, we can't take care of all of those just with what we're generating right now in storm water funding. Fosse/ Right. Vanderhoef/ Those are the things that concern me. Wilburn! Why don't we come back to this. Highwav 6 - Gilbert Imorovements: Wilburn! Eleanor, did you have other information, or did you just want to be part of this conversation with Council? Okay. Urn, well, again, folks got into, I mean I cut off discussion a little bit so we can make it through the list. Are there other bits of information that Council wishes to share with each other, or to ask of staff on this particular.. . Elliott/ I think I'll be anxious to hear the comments and observations by the property owners when they come before Council regarding this situation, because right now I have some very serious concerns about the length southward that that median goes, but I'd like to hear what they have to say. Champion/ Well, I think that it's more than just the median to me, too. I mean, I'm wondering, I mean, I know I'm not a big enthusiastic supporter of moving traffic better, I mean, I don't really care, and so my question is are we going to effect, I mean, Pleasant Valley is going to have a cut off, and people can pull in there but they're not going to have any parking, any visible parking. So what are we going to do to that business? Elliott! That would concern me if! were that business. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 131 Champion/ Yes, and then Hills Bank, what they spoke of the other night, the open session, I mean, I don't know how much business we can effect to make roads smoother, or to make people's travel time One minute or two minutes less, and so I have a real concern, just about what we're doing to these long-term businesses. I know traffic congestion, and I know it's a busy road, but I use that intersection a lot. I'm not using it at peak times, but I get through, and I guess I don't like building roads for 15 minutes of rush-hour traffic. Correia! Well, you know, I travel on that road a lot and it, it seems to me I see there's problems there moving traffic, at more than just the peak times. I mean, I've traveled there at different times, urn, during the day, and there's... Champion/ I rarely go through it, but when I do I don't have a problem. Correia! There are, and I'm not talking about just, I'm not.. .you know, not just I have to sit and wait for a left turn necessarily, although that's an issue, but just the trying to turn left, going through at the different hot spots, and the Pleasant Valley, it seems like there would, would there be plans to try and get parking at the rear? I think it's a very hard parking lot right now. When it's full, you can't get in there. I don't necessary...it's hard to get out of. Bailey/ They have a couple... Atkins/ I'd kind of like to set the stage a little bit for this one because there is clearly a variety of opinions amongst the seven of you. Elliott! What else is new? (laughter) Bailey/ You've worked with Councils before. Atkins/ So, live with it, is that it? (laughter) We have tentative public hearing On the budget set for the 20th of February. Karr/ That's in the time schedule. Atkins/ You guys, can you just give us, where are we right now on that design. The one that you're, they're, commenting on right now. Fosse/ We're still in the preliminary stages of this. We've...have the preliminary design drawn up and that's just been overlaid on there. There hasn't been any hard survey done to locate edges of roads, but that's where we stand today, they have had the property owner meetings with the project. Atkins/ Then the question is, do we want to take that proposal to hearing On the 20th because you have to hear what those folks have to say, as well as introduce your own comments, like you're doing right now. I'mjust not convinced we're going to spend a lot of time here. You're going to have...are there four of us who want to (unable to understand). That's going to make us a little crazy. Is it better to just wait and go to public hearing on the 20th? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 132 Correia! I like the design as it is, presented. Elliott! I want to hear what the property owners have to say. Vanderhoef! I think the design looks pretty good. There may be a little tweaking in there, but there's one other point that I want to make on traffic, and in particular this intersection. We're talking specifically about business owners that are having some direct impacts right now. Those I understand. We can disagree or agree, however, on how big and how onerous those impacts are, but no one is talking about all the other businesses in this community that lives with traveling from Point A to Point B and back to Point C and back to Point A because they are the Fed Ex trucks, they are the mail trucks, they are the service businesses that come out to your home, they are the rug layers - all the people who get held up in traffic over the period of their work day. How many hours are they being, are lost in their work time during a 40-hour week, sitting in their car, waiting at traffic lights, traffic signs? Our transportation system is to serve all of our community and all those who pass through our community. And Ijust don't want that lost, that there are whole lot of businesses that are going to say "we've needed that forever; I know, I must spend 30 minutes going through that intersection during my week." O'Donnell! Well, I...I really don't know what to say to that, Dee. It's, you know, it's no different to me than saying people traveling south on Clinton Street can turn into those businesses; people traveling north can't turn into them. You lose half the business. Same on any street in Iowa City. I really, I do travel this quite a bit and I've not seen that problem. I've not seen that problem. I've seen it at the peak times, like I said the other day, but I don't like it that the median's that long. We had Hills Bank, for instance, say that we're going to completely nullify their drive-through service, and I don't want to do that. I could see doing this and understand we have to do something at that intersection, but if the median wasn't as long as we're proposing it, I said that before. It works in other communities, and in this community, when the median isn't 300 feet long. I just think it's ridiculous. Wilburn! I like the plan as is. After the hearing, because I've heard from, and I sat in on a couple of the meetings with some ofthe property owners. For example, I've heard the concerns of Hills Bank, and in general, it seems to me, this is another one of those situations where overall you'll have agreement - yeah, something needs to be done here - then it gets down to, well, how's it going to effect me, and it will be something different. One of the things I know Hills Bank will ask for, they alluded to it the other night, was the traffic signal when you, you know, try and minimize the number of entrances on to south Gilbert there, I can foresee where that eventually, and I'd be willing to say, well, you know we're going to inconvenience you in one way. We'll go ahead...! would support putting a traffic signal there. I hear what they're saying about their, it will increase the distance to enter their drive-up service, but I don't see that distance being any further than down the street, Iowa State Bank's branch over there. It will be different, but I do travel this intersection quite a bit. I work down in the area. I see some of the, I've seen some of the accidents. I've seen a bus get hit down there coming onto, not Highland... urn, where the Gasby station is. Vanderhoef! That's Highland and Gilbert. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 133 Wilburn! Yeah, yeah. Elliott! That's a terrible comer right there to try and (several talking at once). Wilburn! Like I said, I think it will be a change. I think there... but overall I support the concept as it is. Bailey! Yeah, I'd like to move ahead with this. I'm confident that our staff will continue to have discussions and if a long median isn't warranted, we won't have a long median. I don't think that we build things just for the heck of it. So... Atkins! Well, we've not brought Hills in that I know of to go over their letter. Most recent letter, email from Roger. You've not seen that? You haven't met with Hills recently, as in the last ten days. (unable to hear person talking) Well, we need to... Bailey! Well, I would even venture, I mean, didn't you say, Steve, the businesses down there probably also see some kind of need for something being done. The volume warrants something being done. It's when it comes down to, you know, the devil is in the details, but I think we should move ahead with this instead of, you know, making people wonder what we're going to do, or if we're going to improve it for them. Atkins! Well, we're likely to be going to hearing with that. O'Donnell! Sounds to me like four. Atkins! Okay. (unable to understand) Dilkes! I just want to make sure that we're clear, that we've deferred it until January 23'd, the resolution authorizing acquisition. Atkins! Yeah, we're okay on that. Dilkes! Urn, that's not a public hearing. Of course people can speak, but it isn't a public hearing. Atkins! We'll be okay on that. It'll be a little later getting it to you, but sounds like it'll be a better product. Make sure that. . . Vanderhoef! So 23'd in January, then February 20'h is... Atkins! Is the budget public hearing. We need to encourage folks to come and tell you how they feel about this, or submit it in writing. I mean... Correia! This is that we're authorizing the land acquisition. Wouldn't start acquiring any land officially... until afterthe design, which is after the public hearing, which is... Atkins! Right. Dilkes! Yeah, we have to have the plats, and that comes whenever the design's is at a point where we can get those plats. No, I don't think that timing is a problem. Urn, but there won't This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 134 be...just,1 mean, we're not going to be sending letters out to property owners about the budget public hearing, so 1 ... Atkins/ We can send letters to the property owners sending them copies of these documents, explaining when they can come. Champion! Yeah, I think they need to know. Atkins/ Inviting them to come down and visit with staff any time they wanted, of course. But actually, cutting Eleanor loose to go secure property, no, we don't to do that. Elliott! That was my understanding. We were going to send letters to everyone involved. Yeah, good. They'll have their opportunity. Atkins/ They've already been informed at least once. We'll just do it again. Elliott! Can we ask about Peninsula now? Peninsula Park Bridge: Atkins/ Yes, 1 was going to say are you ready for that one? Hang on. Ron got a... Knoche/ So the understanding is that with the, the resolution that's on the agenda for next Tuesday is then, will then be deferred? Or will there be a vote on that? Champion! Already deferred it. Correia! We already deferred it. Knoche/ You deferred it to January 23", so is it.. . are we going to have a vote on the resolution? We will. Okay. Dilkes/ What I'm unclear about is have we notified property owners about that item being on the 23 ,'? That's what I think the expectation of Council is. Correia! I thought the expectation was that they would all be notified of the February 20th budget hearing. That they would be (several talking at once). Dilkes/ Okay, that's why 1 think...I don't think we're all on the same page here. Elliott/ I want them to be informed there is a time that we want them to come down and express how they feel about it. Atkins/ That's public hearing on the 20th Elliott! Because I'm going to vote no until I hear from them. Atkins/ Okay. And I understand you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16,2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 135 Bailey! But it's hard for them to respond until we have some final design, isn't it? You want them to respond to this preliminary... Elliott! No, but we have a general idea of what's going to happen. We're talking about, so that, Pleasant Valley will lose their parking spaces. (several talking) Yeah, yeah. Dilkes! Well, remember, this plan has been shared with them at two different meetings, as I understand it. All I want to be clear about is what is Council's expectation about notice to property owners for what event? Resolution authorizing acquisition? The budge hearing? Or both? Bailey! Both. One letter, both, why not? (several talking at once) Atkins! We have an agenda meeting tomorrow anyway so we'll take care of it... Champion! Yeah, one letter, both dates. Bailey! And then the schedule for the rest of the year. (laughter) Champion! Do we have that already? Wilburn! Urn, again, there was conversation. We got off on a discussion about who would be using it and what's the intent. You can continue the discussion on this. If you need more information from staff. Ifthere's any other points you want to try and raise with (unable to hear). Correiall'm interested, I like.. .I'm interested in the City supporting part of this. I think that both this project that's on the Capital Improvement Plan, and the Sand Lake Recreation Area, are good projects to try and get private support, and investment in, and so I would like, I mean, I would propose that we fund $750,000 of it, and say we need private investment of the rest for this bridge, whether it's the developers that are requesting this, whether it's other grant funds, or other private investment, you know, they want a bridge named after them, I don't know. O'Donnell! Is that going to be our policy from this point forward? Correial I'd like to, not on all trails, but I'd like to identify especially something that's, there's developer interest, it makes it more marketable for them, and with the recreation area, I just think that that's, you see more of that in governmental services in things like culture and recreation, where there's private investment involved in that. Elliott! I'm just, I am very much in favor of the people who mainly benefit from something should be paying for it. I think this foot bridge would mainly benefit the people who live in the Peninsula. Let them pay for it. On the other hand, I like to look for middle ground, and I would therefore be happy to consider some kind of a partnership in paying for it. Correial Well, yeah, and I see, I don't think it's just the Peninsula that benefits from this, or the folks that live there, because I see the potential connectivity to the Iowa River Corridor Trail, and I think as we're looking at trying to connect all our trails, I see that as being as much of a benefit to the bicycling, recreational public as, as to the Peninsula residents. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 136 Elliott! I guess I'd be surprised if 100 bicycles went over there. (several talking at once) Bailey/ I want to ask a process question, because we've seen this project before, and there was no support for it. So, is it the parks out there that's, that have changed the... Champion! I think the whole Peninsula plan has changed dramatically. Bailey/ Well, and I think that that's something that we need to keep in mind on future sorts of projects like this. I think there was some discussion about the dog park and minimal impact, and minimal investment with parking and those sorts of things, and I think we all agreed in that direction and we got the disc golf, and now all of a sudden $1.3 million for a pedestrian bridge. I think we need to keep that in mind when we look at these kinds of projects, that they have, I mean, broader impact. I mean, this project would come so low down on my list of things to fund. You know, I think it's really neat. Elliott! Oh, I do too, but it just, it's not a priority. Bailey/ But there are so many other trail projects that we could bring in. I mean, we could clear the entire Unfunded list almost for $1.3. I guess I'm looking for more impact. Vanderhoef/ I agree with you on that, Regenia, that the number of people that are impacted by this particular project, versus some of the other Parks and Recreation projects, and trails, and connectivities, and so forth. I'm having a real tough time and I'm... Bailey/ I love that neighborhood, don't get me wrong. Vanderhoef/ I love trails and I love Parks and Rec, and I'm having trouble supporting this particular one at this time. O'Donnell/ You know with Parks and Rec people, and bicycle riders not supporting this trail, what am I doing? (laughter and several talking at once) I give up! Wilburn! Well, if it's, I'd like to see, though, ifit's going to come down to either or neither. My, and I understand where Parks and Rec' s is, but my priority would be down further south at the Sand Lake. I would like to see that. I do see it as another extension of Iowa River Corridor Trail and the more people can be on bicycles, even if it's just for a little bit. It's one of those, if everybody does a little bit, it will reduce emissions, car emissions, etc., etc., which does benefit all of us, not just folks who are riding on bikes. Bailey/ I can't get there. O'Donnell/ I think we do need to keep in mind that we may have gone a different direction today on these trails. You know, we've all been very supportive of building this trail system, and now.. . and I agree, it is an extension of the trails, but this is the first one, to my knowledge, and we've never asked anyone else to join us or participate in the cost of this thing. I think that's probably a good policy to carry forward. Bailey/ But we asked developers. I mean... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 137 O'Donnell/ We've never asked them to pay for half of the trails. Wilburn! Well, sometimes we get right-of-ways or trail heads. Bailey/ Well, didn't Terry show us, didn't you say that a developer helped, you showed us a picture. Picture of a trail, and you said the developer put it in. Champion/ ... private trail. Trueblood! We have had a few small, where developers have actually constructed trails that serve as a neighborhood park. O'Donnell/ But their small cases. Elliott/ But developers have provided land for parks, have they not? Isn't that a part of our zoning policy? (several talking) So this is not something new. Bailey/ Well, funding would be. Elliott! No, but developers, when they want to develop, we require them to put so much ofthe land into, into open spaces. This is just another way of saying "hey this is something else that this needs." O'Donnell/ Oh, by the way, put in this $750,000 trail. Or half of it. Correia/ That was just one potential! (several talking at once) Bailey/ There are also probably State grants, right? Trueblood! ... trails to the park land. To me this would be a case of telling a developer, you have to provide, not a neighborhood park, but you have to provide a regional park as part of your development. Bailey/ And this is not... Trueblood! You would be asking them to provide a regional trail. Dilkes/ I don't think we're talking about having to provide. This is a request. Elliott! No. Correia! ...you're saying developers have come to the City, this is what I'm understanding, asking for this trail. Wilburn! Karin intends to, Karin intends to follow up with those folks to find out (several talking) Correia! Right, right, so that would be a requirement, the City would like to fund a portion of this trail, we're not going to be able to fund all of it? Bailey/ And we are taking donations! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 138 Elliott! I'm definitely not in favor of$I.3 million. I said, I'm definitely not in favor of the City paying $1.3 million for the bridge. Vanderhoef/ Not when we have an access to Coralville, and we have an access to Dubuque Street right now. This is an extra one that I don't think is as necessary, and the other thing when we talk about looking for partnerships and so forth, I think the south upgrade on the gravel pit is going to be one of those that's going to be a regional kind of thing. We certainly heard from Regenia this morning of some of the things that are taken into consideration on the CAT Grant funding and how partnerships, and certainly local monies put into these things, is a very, very important piece, and I'm looking to have a big push to enroll county folks, all sorts of folks, into that project down south, and if we want to take one year and just finish up some of these trails with that $1.3 million, I'd be happy to do that too. Champion/ You're not going to ask for private investment in them? O'Donnell/ It's actually $2.6 million. Vanderhoef/ ... investment for the new regional park, yes. O'Donnell/ ... we're going to get 50% from the developers. (several talking at once) Atkins/ I think I counted four. Elliott! $1.3.. . how many are in favor of $1.3 for the foot bridge? Atkins/ Yeah. I don't see four. O'Donnell/ I've lost two. What's the next one? (laughter) Correia! I'm in favor of (unable to hear, several talking) Elliott! I want to look into that. I say move this to the Unfunded. Bailey/ I would even be willing to move it to an out year. I don't know. I mean, it's a great project. I don't know why I can't get my head around it. It's typical, I mean, it would be a typical project I would support, but I'mjust not there. Elliott! I could go with that. O'Donnell/ We all support our Commissions and Parks and Rec's Commission has this as a number one. Champion/ We've never supported a number one before! (laughter and several talking) Wilburn! Do we wish to move this to an out year (several talking), hear back from Karin on any (several talking). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 139 Atkins/ We'll try and move it to an out year, and then whatever the numbers work out. (several talking) Okay, I got that one. Old Bus Depot: Wilbuml Somebody wanted further conversation about the old depot. Bailey/ What kind of flowers we want there, I think. (laughter and several talking) Correia! We talked about this, sort of, before. I mean, I would support renovating the current, $30,000, $40,000, using, I mean, you can see it being a space for Summer of the Arts, as a, Of... Champion/ I mean, I'll just point it out, it'll only cost $40,000 to renovate it. That's not very much money. And what would it cost to demolish it? Atkins/ Less than that. Champion/Oh! (laughter) Bailey/ Actually, I think there's some staff members with sledge hammers at this point. Atkins/ Renovating it into what? Champion! Well, the parking people could rent it. Atkins/ For what? Champion! For (several talking at once) Correia/ There was a request a long time ago, for the arts, an arts organization called the Moving Crew... Atkins/ And they wanted free. Correia! Well, we (several talking at once). O'Donnell/ It costs $40,000 to renovate it and we're eventually going to tear it down anyway, so we're just incurring another... Elliott/ Besides, I would be surprised if you could renovate it into something that would be attractive externally and useful internally. I can't believe $40,000 would do that. Atkins/ Well, that was some time ago. That was just a (several talking at once). You always have the option of let it alone. O'Donnell/ So we're going to tear it down? Bailey/ But what are you going to do with it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 140 O'Donnell/ Tear it down. (several talking) Champion/ Yeah, but even if you're in favor of tearing it down...(several talking) Atkins! Parking lot is what immediately comes to mind. Yeah. O'Donnell/ The most popular thing downtown for a long time was the Library parking. (several talking) Wilburn! There's nothing in what Steve suggested, precluded, if you made it some type of temporary surface parking that, okay, Summer of the Arts, Farmer's Market (several talking) . Champion/ .. .Iosing part of our history by tearing this building down. I mean, is there another gas station in town.. .no, I mean, I think it is historic. (several talking at once) O'Donnell/ Do we have any clean up under that, Steve? Wilburn! There's an old United Hanger down there you can say the same thing about. (several talking) Elliott/ We don't have to make this decision now. We can put it off and have it sit there, at least if half of you, yeah, half of you would be pleased if we just didn't take any action. It'll still be there. The other half can bring it up a year from now and say tear it down. Vanderhoef! Do we have to do anything about clean up underneath that, until such time as we dig into the soil? Knoche/ The storage tanks are still in the ground, so we'd have to remove those. Vanderhoef! Now, or later? Knoche/ At some point we would, yeah. Vanderhoef/ At some point. So we could... undisturbed, we can just leave it (several talking at once). We haven't been successful in getting Brownfield dollars for our Transit Center and all of the clean up on the river. (several talking) Champion! Can we postpone this? Elliott/ We just save $200,000 if we postpone it, right? We don't have to buy it from the whatever we're going to buy it from. Bailey/ I would like to know what's going to go there because you lose something and you don't see what the tradeoff is so it's hard to say, oh, the tradeoff is concrete. Vanderhoef/ Do you know what they're going to end up saying is? Oh, look at that nice view of the park, no, of the park that they can see that's been covered up. (several talking) Atkins/ That's really our parking lot. We lease it to the church. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 141 Bailey/ I know. Because we own the block. Atkins/ Yes we do. Bailey/ That's real important. Atkins/ That's right. Vanderhoef/ But we could surface that just ever so slightly to put cars on top of it, and also use it on Saturdays for Farmer's Market. Elliott/ If we were to tear it down, what I would suggest we do is, even though there's concrete there, put up a little shelter and some bench and some cement flower pots and make it a kind of a nice corner where people could sit or something, but I don't see why don't we just let it stand; talk about it next year. Vanderhoef/ Skip doing anything on College Street, because you might just as well. Champion/ ... if we're not going to renovate it, something nice on that corner besides just leaving it. (several talking at once) Bailey/ Is there a recreational thing we can do there? Some kind of bocce field? (laughter and several talking at once) Oh, you want a bridge to nowhere! Elliott! Mr. Mayor, when did you lose control? Champion/ We've been here way too long. Wilburn/ Well, let's.. .let's leave it alone for right now, and let's.. .there's a couple other things that we need to discuss before we leave here before I lose some of you, physically. We set aside a date for the community events to come. We have... Karr/ Community events and Board and Commissions, we were starting at 6:30 on the 29th, which is your next discussion of the budget, and you're booked until 9:00 and I'm continuing to get phone calls. Do you want me to go beyond 9:00 at 15 minute intervals and add, to finish that one night? Do you wish to start earlier? Do you wish to overflow to the 30th? Champion! Are they only doing 15 minutes? Karr/ Yes. Bailey/ Say one meeting, whatever it takes, that's my preference. Elliott! How many are there? Karr/ I don't have a count. I know that you're booked from 6:30 to 9:00, every 15 minutes, and I'm still getting phone calls. I've got about eight other ones that I haven't heard from that (several talking at once). So, do you, I mean, if they all call. I don't think you've ever had 100%, but before I start scheduling past 9:00, I wanted your understanding if This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 142 that's...(several talking at once). Is there any interest to move it up, you mean, start earlier and slot some earlier appointments? Vanderhoef! If people can come. Wilburn! That was the issue, whether or not they can get there. (several talking at once) Elliott! This is January 29th? Karr! January 29th, Monday, it is just community events, and Boards and Commissions. O'Donnell! I think 6:00 would be the earliest we could start with people getting off work and showing up. Karr! I mean, if you back it up an hour, you'd be able to fit in four more, if they can come. I can't speak to that. I didn't offer them those times. Elliott! Years ago the Council used to go until 10:00, 11:00. Vanderhoef! Or 12:00 or 1:00. Elliott! Thank God that doesn't happen now. Wilburn! How about if we start at 6:00 and allow Marian to go ahead and add. Karr!6:00? That'll allow two more, and then, if they can come, and if not, do you want to go beyond 9:00 or not? Wilburn! Yeah, I think... Karr! So the goal is to do it in one night some way. And then on the 30th, you have your last scheduled budget work session before you set the public hearing on February 6th on the budget. Atkins! That's in the evening, as well? Karr! That's in the evening, as well, right now at 6:30. Atkins! Both nights, 29th and 30"'. Elliott! No, we went to 6:00 on Monday. Atkins! 6:30 on the 30th. Bailey! I have a question about... Atkins! ...and I won't have an agenda for you. It'll be an open ended meeting then. Karr! And then going out in Thursday's packet then will be the resolution setting public hearing then for February 6th. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 143 Bailey! I have a question about community events. Where's my question? We got a lot more applications this year. Did we use some criteria to determine? What we fund? (TAPE ENDS) Atkins! ... I don't recall funding any new ones, did we? Bailey! Last year - I'm talking about this year. We have a lot of new.. . where are they? Well, I mean, in the info pack there were a lot of. . . Vanderhoef! Lot of new requests for.. . Bailey! Right, but do we have criteria? Karr! They're on page 98, the applications were sent to you in December. Bailey! On page 99? Karr! 98, 99. Atkins! What was the question again, under? Bailey! It seems like we're becoming a funding agency, bring all comers, because we've gotten a lot of new applications. By what criteria were we funding the previous? I mean, some, I know what we've discussed. Atkins! (unable to hear) Bailey! But we don't have any, I mean, we don't have any expectations of... Atkins! There are those that are (unable to hear), for example, $8,000. I don't know much about that. Bailey! Right, they have an application in here. Elliott! I think the benefit of the activity is a destination event and the cost effectiveness, the money we spend, what good is it going to do the City? Vanderhoef! Impact our number of people. Bailey! Well, and I mean, is there some alignment with City interest goals, Economic Development, you know, I don't know. Elliott! I agree. That was a good question. Bailey! I know we fund Riverside Theater and that's probably the one, correct me if I'm wrong, the one thing we fund right now that has admissions fees. Everything else is a free event. I mean, has that been something taken into consideration, or...I mean, I assume we fund Riverside because it takes, it's the Shakespeare Festival that takes place in one of our facilities. I don't know. I'mjust trying to get a sense of. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 144 Correia! How, I can't remember from last year, how we did this. There's no proposed 2008, so that's just... Atkins/ Just a lump sum of money, yeah. Correia! But, I mean, who will... Bailey/ Well, it's the request up here, and the applications are in the...(several talking at once). But this has been the longest application year. Okay. I was just wondering if there was some way that you had made decisions.. . okay. Champion! Sports authority, I thought we actually increased our contribution (unable to understand) to help fund that, and now they're... Bailey/ We did a one-time $17,000. Did you want to do more? As Chair of that Board, I'm sure that we would accept it. Champion! No, I thought that we already did something. Right? Bailey! We did that one-time $17,000, right? Wilburn! Marian, was there any other calendar... Karr! Just a confirmation that February 19th is President's Holiday, that's the Monday before your budget, your public hearing and regular formal meeting. I assume there will be no work session, on a holiday. Do you want to start that early the 20th, or do you want.. . February. 5 :00, 6:00, 19, 20, the 19th is a holiday. Champion! And what about... Karr! It'll be a regular formal meeting. Champion! .. .Iike to start early.. .5:30? Karr! Do I tentatively look at 5:30? We'll see what else in on the agenda to see if there's.. .5:30 on the 20th? Okay. On that one, the City Conference Board comes in and they have a set, you have two meetings with the conference board and it's always lined up with the Assessor's Conference Board for the County jurisdiction. Right now, and I'm waiting to get a call back and I may have gotten it today, they're looking at the 5th and the 20th, and they're looking at 6:30 on the 20th, so if you start a work session at 5:30, the conference board would like it at 6:30, and that would be the night, urn, having their public hearing on the budget, and adopting their budget. So the.. . right now it's set for the 5th and the 20th. The conference board. (several talking) I have suggested to them the 5th of February and the 5th of March, but there are other jurisdictions involved, and it's not just us, and it becomes logistically... they're checking right now, we're taking a look at that, but Ijust wanted to give you a heads up. So that would mean if you start at 5:30, you'd have like an hour work session, take care of the main stuff you need to before your formal, but then adjourn, go into your conference board, and then into your formal on the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 145 20th. (several talking) Not without rescheduling the other items to another night, because it's a regular night. Elliott! Well, I'll tell you guys, I got to pick up my wife and I don't want to displeasure her, or my bones will be broken and my muscles will be slashed. So, are we planning to adjourn soon? Bailey/ So, did I miss this? Did we talk about Unfunded projects that we wanted to move up? Wilburn! We have not. I opened up a time for questions. Urn, nobody tried to do any haggling. Bailey/ I have one that I would like to propose moving up. It's #65, Napoleon Park restroom and concession building. Correia! I would like to move that one up too. Bailey/ I think one of the reasons, from what Terry said... Champion! Okay, you can have it. I'll give it to you. O'Donnell/ So would I. Bailey/ Great. (several talking at once) Wilburn! ...a few extra stalls (several talking) with extra stalls. Atkins/ Napoleon Park restroom, extra stalls. Okay. Bailey/ And a nice concession. Wilburn! And recycling out front. Vanderhoef/ Ifwe're going to add, then let's go back to the Parks and Rec Unfunded ones. (several talking) Atkins/ Well, remember you have the 30th. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ Will there be a Parks and Rec meeting before that, because what we really actually said to him, and that's why I'm not willing to just sign off automatically on this restroom. I know it's needed. Is the.. . sending it back to Parks and Rec then to take a look at their list. (several talking) It was mentioned. Yeah, when we said we weren't going to do the bridge...(several talking). Well, I want the little piece in behind City Carton. (several talking) But, no, that one was the one that Jeff told us he wanted to get done before the property was sold and redeveloped. Champion/ He was going to look into that. He was going to get back to us. Vanderhoef/ Because that one is definitely one that I think ought to be looked at. Champion/ I'm not willing to add anything else to this budget year. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007. January 16, 2007 City Council Budget Work Session Page 146 Vanderhoef/ Well, it isn't adding. It's, it's... Champion/ It's adding. Vanderhoef/ We just took 1.3 out. We have to throw a bone to Parks and Rec. (several talking at once) Champion/ Although [ would trade you... for Highway 6 and Gilbert. (laughter and several talking) Wilburn! We do have the (unable to hear). Bailey/ [fyou have things for the 30th, why don't you do a memo and make a list and then we can all review them and come better prepared. Correia! The other thing is if we've taken out and put things on the out year for 08, what, and we've taken out $400,000 so that'll be...(several talking). No, my question would be if we're not going to bond, does that bring down our levy? Don't have to add. We just say we're going to spend less and we're going to levy less. Atkins/ Pedestrian bridge? Bailey/ 09, not this year. Atkins/ Okay. Bailey/ And that was a compromised position. Atkins/ You want to add Napoleon Park concession/restroom. (several talking at once) Vanderhoef/ We could move the depot out this year, and take... no, trade it for the updating of College Street. So we'd get the depot out of there this year and then we do College Street. (several talking) Wilburn/ I think we're done. (TAPE ENDS) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session meeting of January 16, 2007.