HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-03-19 Transcription
March 19,2007
March 19,2007
Council:
UISG:
Staff:
City Council Work Session
Page 1
City Council Work Session
6:30 PM
Bailey, Correia, Elliott, Vanderhoef, Wilburn
Baeth
Atkins, Davidson, Dilkes, Fowler, Franklin, Helling, Karr, Knocke, Long, O'Brien,
Panos, Rackis, Westberg, Yapp
TAPES: 07-23, Side 1; 07-26, Both Sides; 07-27, Side 1.
Wilburn:
Franklin:
Wilburn:
. . . . this evening. He's gonna be out oftown here. And Connie, we'll just have to catch
up. 1 haven't heard from Connie. 1 am having a severe allergy problem and am having
difficulty hearing, so.
So we'll speak up.
Yes, please.
Planninl! & Zoninl!
Franklin:
Ok. The items for Planning and Zoning tonight are items e and f.
e) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE PRELIMINARY PLAT
FOR MOUNT PROSPECT ADDITION PART IX, IOWA CITY, IOWA.
(SUB07- 00001)
Franklin: Item e is a resolution approving the preliminary plat for Mount Prospect addition Part IX.
This is off of Lakeside Drive in southeast Iowa City, and it is a relatively simple
subdivision of 16 single-family lots. The open space dedication is on the east side of the
property, and it covers the area that encompasses an outlot where there is an existing trail.
Vanderhoef: Where's the?
Franklin: 1 know this is a very -
Elliott: That does not look simple.
(laughter)
Franklin:
Bailey:
Correia:
Franklin:
Well that's 'cause it's got the tapa lines on it. This is where the trail is.
How large is that? How wide is that outlot? So what, it's?
Can you go back to the first one? No, not that one.
That one?
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Correia: That one, that one's good.
Bailey: It's right across the street from Grant Wood.
Vanderhoef: Grant Wood.
Correia: Across the street from Grant Wood?
Franklin: Just south of Grant Wood.
Bailey: If you take that - think of where that trail starts.
Correia: Oh. Oh.
Franklin: It was a property that was going to be developed as a church. That all kind of fell
through. It was then purchased by the current owners, and they're proposing this single-
family subdivision. That's why I say it's relatively simple.
Vanderhoef: Ok. That arrow is sitting right on that line for the trail, basically.
Franklin: Mmm hmm.
Correia: So that's where you -
Vanderhoef: And then it comes south.
Franklin: Mmm hmm.
Vanderhoef: And where does it connect with the, the trail? Does it go, does it continue on south from
this property?
Correia: Can I see the photo again?
Franklin: You can see the photo - just a second. The, our trail, the Greenway comes through, uhhh.
Bailey: Do you want the pointer?
Franklin: I do want the pointer.
Wilburn: That being the technical term for it.
Bailey: Thank you.
(laughter)
Bailey:
Spell it with an ie.
Franklin:
Our trail- let's see. Our trail comes through here, and then the one that. Ah, this is
already built. It's in -
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Correia:
Franklin:
Bailey:
Franklin:
Bailey:
Franklin:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Correia: .
Wilburn:
Franklin:
Correia:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Correia:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Correia:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Correia:
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It's like a sidewalk there.
Right. It comes right down, straight down, ok? And as far as this subdivision is concerned
that's going to be the open spaces, the property that encompasses that trail.
How wide is that outlot? How much, I mean how much buffering between the backyard
and the trail?
You know, I don't have the plat right in front of me and obviously it's very difficult to
read this one, but I'd say it's probably, it's at least 15 feet if not 20 feet wide.
Ok. So you still have a sense of -
But I'll check that, Regenia.
Ok. Yeah.
There's also-
Can we get the photo back up?
Either at the, either at the, this is coming off of Lakeside right here.
There's the trail.
That's Lakeside. Ok.
And as you get down a little bit further towards the end of the property, there's also a
segment of trail that goes to the west to join up over there.
You have to drive up to Sycamore.
Yeah, Sycamore.
Sycamore Street.
Right.
Right, right.
So you look back there.
That's some public art in there. At the curb.
Yes.
That, well it looks like a cornfield or a field. On the other side of that tree
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Franklin: Yeah?
Correia: Is that the area?
Bailey: That's the outlot, right?
Franklin: This is the property that's being developed, all of this stuff here.
Correia: Right. That's the property.
Franklin: The outlot would be along here, along the trail.
Elliott: Does it go -
Correia: Where's the road that would, I mean, on the other side of those there's.
Franklin: Over there.
Correia: Ok. Ok.
Franklin: There's a house, an existing house right there, ok. So the trail we were just looking at,
that picture, is coming in here. There's the backyard of that house, the house and then the
new road would come in here.
Bailey: Ok.
Correia: Mmm hmm.
Franklin: This used to be a stubbed road and we're just reestablishing that.
Vanderhoef: Ok. It's, from the map it sort of looks like it's a boulevard going back in there. But
evidently it's-
Franklin: Here?
Vanderhoef: Yeah.
Franklin: No. That's just because it's - this is a preliminary plat and it has the grading lines on it.
Vanderhoef: Ok.
Franklin: And that's what you're seeing this is.
Vanderhoef: And then there's another auditor's, the auditor's parcel down below is the Greenway, I
take it. That part?
Franklin: Yes. Yes.
Vanderhoef: Ok. And then there is another auditor's parcel that's up in there someplace.
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Franklin: Right. And that's kind of a gap between where the private property is and the street right
of way. There's something like ten feet or so in there that is a remnant.
Vanderhoef: Ok. From building the stub street, maybe?
Franklin: Well, I can't recall exactly, but I think it occurred then, yeah, when that was Gable and
then this house was built and I think we vacated that and it was just gonna be a private
drive down to the church, but then that whole deal fell through so we're going back and
it's going to be a development.
Vanderhoef: Ok. Well, I was looking at this whole thing and if that trail is on the east side of the whole
subdivision, is there another connection off of the circle down to the trail?
Franklin: Yes. Right there.
Bailey: Between lots 9 and 10.
Vanderhoef: Ok.
Bailey: Is that like a what, 4-foot sidewalk? 8-foot sidewalk?
Franklin: It would probably be a 5-foot sidewalk. Yeah.
Vanderhoef: It's not the full 8.
Franklin: Usually they're just 5 feet between two lots like that.
Bailey: Ok.
Vanderhoef: Which is fine, because it serves that neighborhood as long as there's the other entrance
for the 8-foot. Ok.
Elliott: Could you put the photo back up please?
Franklin: Mmm hmm.
Elliott: Where - now this, right behind the side, you said that's what is going to be developed.
Does that go clear back to where that east-west trail runs? There is a trail that comes right
off of -
Franklin: Yeah I think - Ok. This line right here -
Elliott: Ah hah.
Franklin: Those trees right there.
Elliott: Ok, ok. Yeah. And there's some beyond there.
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March 19, 2007
Correia:
Elliott:
Franklin:
Correia:
Elliott:
Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Bailey:
Correia:
(laughter)
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And actually there's a whole part back here-
Yeah. Because I walk that quite a bit.
The Sycamore trail is back behind those trees.
Behind there.
Yep.
This is, we had a petition from young people.
Yes, that was from the 6th grade class at Grant Wood.
Ok. That was good to see, just in terms of their sending it.
I think it was a class project.
Class project. I wonder ifthere's any opportunity for some of us or some staff just to sit
down and talk with the students about their concerns. I mean, it seems like some
concerns, education -
It probably would be more meaningful for them to have you talk to them than for staff.
Right. Right.
Or staff and a councilperson?
Correia: To answer technical questions. Exactly.
Bailey: Oh, teenagers ask very technical questions.
Correia: Yeah.
Franklin: Whatever. If you want to set something up fine, just give us a call.
Wilburn: It's been done before.
Correia: Is there anybody interested in doing that?
Bailey: I would love to.
Correia: I would too, actually.
Vanderhoef: I'm going to be out of town in the next week.
Bailey: We can set something up.
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Correia: Ok. Do you know which class? We don't have the teacher's name.
Franklin: We can find out.
Correia: Ok. Because then I'd also, we have a, there's a Youth Advisory Commission meeting on
Wednesday, and I can see if there may be one of them that might be interested in going
along too, just to see.
Franklin: So are you going to set that up, Amy?
Correia: Yeah, if you can, if I can just, the teacher's name, I can.
Franklin: Ok.
Correia: Does it say here?
Franklin: I don't think it did.
Bailey: I didn't see it.
Elliott: I didn't see it in there. But I think that'd be good.
Bailey: Yeah.
Vanderhoef: Unless.
Correia: I'll call the Principal tomorrow, Karin. She probably knows. I can follow up on that.
Franklin: Ok. I'm pretty sure Bob knows, because he's been having conversations with them.
Correia: He knows? Ok.
Elliott: Not this Bob.
Franklin: No. Bob Miklo. I'm sorry.
Elliott: This Bob knows very little.
Franklin: Ok. As long as that's clear.
Correia: And you said it.
Franklin: And you said it, yeah. Ok. Enough on that one?
Bailey: And the discrepancies, deficiencies have all been cleared up?
Franklin: Yes.
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Bailey: Ok.
1) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING A FINAL PLAT OF FIRST
AMERICAN BANK ADDITION, A RESUBDIVISION OF LOT 2 OF
RUPPERT HILLS, IOWA CITY, IOWA. (SUB06-00021) (DEFERRED
FROM 3/5)
Franklin:
Item f, there's a request again to defer this to April3'd. There's something with the legal
papers that is being ironed out. So we'll just pass on that.
Wilburn:
I'm sorry. Defer until?
Franklin:
April 3'd
Bailey:
Out next meeting.
Franklin:
['m done.
Council Annointments
Wilburn: Ok. Council appointments? Planning & Zoning we have four applicants.
Bailey: I'd like to see Beth continue to serve. I think she's done a good job.
Elliott: I called Reid McDonald and talked with him and explained the situation and that we have
had a continuing informal agreement that if someone has served a term and she has
served barely more than a term that we have agreed that they will be reappointed.
Bailey: Well, and we need to get, we need to encourage other women to apply for this
commISSIOn, so.
Wilburn: There's also gender, yeah.
Elliott: Except we really need some businesspeople on there more than anything.
Bailey: Well, there are businesspeople who are women. Fancy that.
Elliott: Fancy.
Vanderhoef: Ok. I was looking at their minutes and their attendance record and the next two that are
coming up is Shannon, which I know he's in his second term, and Freerks I think is in her
second term. I'm not positive of that.
Bailey: I think we should encourage application, I mean, from some other, from some women to
get some balance, but also if you're interested in seeing additional businesspeople, I think
that would be good.
Vanderhoef: Well a year from now Shannon's term would be up.
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Wilburn: So are there four willing to?
Bailey: Mmm hmm.
Vanderhoef: Yes.
Wilburn: Yes, yes, yes. Ok.
Complete Streets
Wilburn:
Yapp:
Elliott:
Yapp:
Elliott:
Yapp:
Complete Streets.
Thank you, Mayor Wilburn and Council. Complete Streets is a, is a term that has come
out in the last several years from bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups to describe a
street that is complete for all users. In the memo in your packet we gave you the JCCOG
Complete Streets policy, which was recently adopted. And it's a very straightforward
policy, and is meant to be, as far as the policy of wanting Complete Streets. All of the
design details come later and are typically worked out on a case by case basis, project by
project, depending on many different factors. The JCCOG policy, I'll just reiterate it and
see if you have any questions, and then I have some specific questions I have of you if
you want to proceed with adopting such a policy. It states that all roadway projects or
major reconstruction projects (so this would not include maintenance projects) under this
policy shall accommodate travel by pedestrians and bicyclists except, and there are some
exceptions, where bicyclists and pedestrians are prohibited, like interstate highways. Or
the cost would be disproportionate to the need. And the cost that JCCOG adopted is 20%.
This is a pretty typical percentage around the country for the communities that have
adopted this policy.
20% of?
Of the overall project costs. So if.
You're talking about the overall development, the overall street, the?
The overall street project cost. For example, with a bridge construction. If adding a
pedestrian bridge to that bridge exceeded 20% of the overall cost, Council would have
the opportunity to exclude that pedestrian facility. Otherwise it would be required, under
this policy. You could still include it, if it was over 20%, but you have the opportunity to
exclude it, based on cost. In thinking about this, Iowa City has been following a
Complete Streets policy. We do require sidewalks on all subdivision streets. Sidewalks
are included in arterial street projects as well as a wider lane for on-street bicyclists.
Pedestrian facilities have been included in all the recent bridge construction projects. So
in practice we don't feel this would change Iowa City's practice. The one area where it
might change that we could think of recently were in industrial park streets. Some
sidewalks in industrial park public streets have waived in the last ten years. Under this
policy sidewalks would always be required, regardless of the type of land use.
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Vanderhoef: In regard to that particular point, I think we have recognized the healthy Iowan kind of
approach and how many people will get out of their place of employment in the industrial
park during -
Yapp: Lunch hour.
Vanderhoef: Lunch hours and break.
Yapp: I would agree.
Vanderhoef: If they have a sidewalk. So I would be looking favorably on putting them into the
industrial areas.
Correia: Well there's also getting to work too. I mean, not everyone gets to work in cars, and
they'd be able to get to work.
Wilburn: So transportation as well as, some, several people like to jog or whatever during the-
Yapp: Wellness issues.
Wilburn: Yeah.
Elliott: Now this includes the 8-foot, 4-foot differentials also.
Yapp: This, adopting this policy would not require certain design standards. The city already
has design standards.
Elliott: That would be separate from this.
Yapp: Mmmhmm.
Elliott: Ok.
Yapp: This is just the policy. Looking at the bottom of the memo, number one, my first question
would be is the 20% threshold appropriate for Iowa City? If you were to pursue such a
policy. And that would be the threshold at which you could exclude that facility from the
proj ect.
Wilburn: You mentioned that it's, excuse me, consistent with other communities. Any idea of any
communities that are quote unquote, recognized as pedestrian friendly or transportation
alternative, walkability?
Yapp: I have not done that specific research. Doing research on this online, the majority of
communities that have this policy are in the range of 20 to 25%.
Bailey: I'd be interested in going up to 25%. Just to send a stronger message.
Vanderhoef: Well there isn't anything that would exclude us from going up to 25% ifit was a project
that we really wanted, so I guess where I would come down right now is let's put the
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20% in right now and see how close we hit on that on projects. And certainly flag
anything that's going to be slightly over that amount and we'll make a decision.
Yapp: Most of the time sidewalk construction is a, is a small percentage of the overall cost. It's
when it's a structure, like a bridge, perhaps a tunnel that might be needed. That's where
you, the cost really jumps up and then staff would bring that back to you to make a
determination to spend the money or not.
Elliott: But the Council, the project would have to meet one of these criteria for the Council to
waive the Complete Street?
Yapp: That's correct. Otherwise it would be required under this policy.
Elliott: If one of those criteria does not emerge, then there is no debate or discussion.
Yapp: That's correct.
Elliott: Ok.
Yapp: With this policy being adopted.
Elliott: Another thing this does is, it has always been aggravating to many property owners when
they are required to repair their sidewalks and other property owners don't have to have
sidewalks.
Yapp: That's your next topic.
Vanderhoef: Mmm hmm.
Bailey: Mmm hmm.
Elliott: That's one of the unfaimesses that has continued.
Bailey: I'd still rather have our loophole at 25%.
Correia: I'd be willing to go to 25%.
Bailey: Because it's bridges and those kinds ofthings that cause the barriers.
Elliott: I like 20 for just consistency for right now, since we're just looking into it.
Vanderhoef: That's true. It is consistent with the JCCOG policy.
Bailey: JCCOG, right.
Yapp: Is there four votes for 20% at this point?
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Wilburn: I'd be willing to go 25, but I also would still over the course of the next year, I would
like, again, some ofthose communities that are acknowledged as being more pedestrian
friendly or -
Bailey: Any that have won awards.
Correia: Livable community.
Wilburn: Awards or recognized livable communities in terms of transportation alternatives. I
would over the course of next year like to hear what some of their, if they have this
policy and what some of the percentages are? Right now we're stuck at 3, so.
Bailey: 'Cause we have 2 people missing.
Elliott: Well, the quorum of who's here. The majority of the people here.
Vanderhoef: But when it comes up for a vote at Council, then we'll find out.
Bailey: Mmm hmm. Yeah.
Yapp: So I'll prepare as 20%?
(laughter)
Wilburn: Why don't you, why don't you-
Bailey: Prepare two resolutions.
Elliott: Let's try to be flexible.
Dilkes: Leave a blank.
Wilburn: When are you looking for, when were you aiming for adoption of this?
Yapp: The, it sounds like there's interest in at least proceeding with staff preparing an actual
resolution for you to vote on. In the next month or so, Eleanor, we would work it? Should
be a pretty straightforward resolution of intent.
Elliott: The only change would be changing a zero to a five.
Yapp: Eleanor suggested we leave it blank for now. Is that?
Bailey: We can iron it out at that work session.
Vanderhoef: I think you've got five who want a policy, so-
Bailey: Yeah.
Wilburn: Yeah. Ok.
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Yapp: That's clear. Number two, in the memo, is there a desire to include public transit in the
policy? This would be stating that any street reconstruction or construction project will
include public transit facilities such as bus shelters and bus pull-offs. Bus pull-offs are
not always popular with transit drivers because you do, once you pull off, you do have to
pull back in. And if it's a congested corridor that can be difficult, and many drivers will
not let the bus pull back in. I have a suggestion that the policy state that sidewalk routes
to bus stops be part of the street reconstruction or construction project. There are some
bus stops out there that still do not have good sidewalk connections. So that would be my
suggestion.
Wilburn: State that again? I'm sorry.
Yapp: That sidewalk connections to bus routes or bus stops be required as part of any street
reconstruction or construction project.
Elliott: So a route was just changed off of Scott Boulevard, for instance. So we have a stop out
there. If there had not been, 1 don't know if there are, but if there were not sidewalks
there, this would require the -
Bailey: Sidewalks of course.
Elliott: Installation of sidewalks.
Yapp: To, for, to allow people to walk to the bus stop on a sidewalk.
Elliott: I guess that calls into question from where?
Yapp: From another public sidewalk.
Elliott: Yeah, I mean-
Yapp: But that's a good question.
Elliott: So you're down there a mile, does it go a mile down? Does it go a block down?
Yapp: That's a good-
Elliott: How far would you require? That to me would be the question.
Yapp: Well I would suggest that it connect to a public sidewalk.
Vanderhoef: How many bus stops do we actually have that are not on a sidewalk?
Yapp: Currently not that many.
Vanderhoef: That's my thinking.
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Yapp: There's a few. But I guess I, what I'm suggesting is that bus pull-offs not always be
required.
Correia: Now, the North Dodge, there's a bus pull-off in that-
Yapp: Ah, with the new construction? Yes.
Elliott: Really?
Correia: Isn't that? Yeah. Isn't there? Who's here that? Yeah, ok. So drivers don't like it, but what
do other transportation planners say about it? I mean, what's the, doesn't Coralville?
Bailey: Coralville has a lot.
Yapp: Well, if it, if it becomes, if it becomes an issue where the driver, the bus driver does have
difficulty pulling back into traffic and that creates a lot of delay on the route, that, you
know.
Correia: Well, I understand that -
Bailey: But it seems that it would create less delay on the route, because they actually pull off,
traffic can continue to move. I don't know.
Correia: But if the other traffic -
Yapp: But delay for the bus passengers.
Bailey: Yeah, right, I get that. But it seems to work well on the strip in Coralville.
Elliott: It certainly is, for it, I have seen up to, oh, at least a half dozen to more cars backed up
after a bus stops, with people frightened to pull out and go around. I don't know why, but
they seem to not want to do that.
Bailey: Is it a school bus? Does it have the same rules?
Elliott: Yeah. They don't.
Bailey: Right.
Elliott: But one of the things against would be if you do that, that's an added expense, and with
the City going the way it is, we may well change bus routes from time to time. And then
you have put up the shelter and/or this expensive curb and pull-off. It, it hinders the
flexibility.
Vanderhoef: One ofthe things -
Bailey: Could we, but could we limit where we have bus pull-offs?
Vanderhoef: I think you're right Bob.
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Bailey: Because, I mean, because it does work well on Highway 6 in Coralville, and the buses
don't seem to have a problem getting back in.
Elliott: Oh yes.
Bailey: And it seems to keep traffic moving.
Elliott: I think where it looks like there are going to be buses just permanently I would be very
much in favor of that Regenia.
Wilburn: Do you have a comment?
Bailey: So can we make an, craft some kind of an exception?
Wilburn: Do you have a comment Dee?
Vanderhoef: Yeah. I'm trying to picture this on the arterials and one of the observations that I made
after we re-striped Rochester into a 3-lane, because there had always been tie-ups with
that bus, the Rochester bus corning out there and people stacking up. And once there was
the center lane there the bus will hesitate and let some people get around using the turn
lane, the center lane. But it also keeps the oncoming traffic in their own lane, which
didn't happen before the 3-striping. So I'm thinking any arterial that has 3 lanes doesn't
need a pull-off. You see what I'm saying? Because there is, when that bus is stopped,
there is a full lane available for the passengers.
Elliott: They still don't pass. Muscatine, they back up all the time.
Correia: That's because they don't have a 3'd lane.
Vanderhoef: They don't have it striped for 3 lanes.
Elliott: Yeah. Yes, there's a 3"' lane on Muscatine,just east of I" Avenue, and they still don't
pass.
Correia: Oh, there.
Elliott: They just stop behind the bus.
Vanderhoef: East of I " Avenue. Ok. I'm not aware of that part of it. But they certainly do -
Yapp: So at this point is there a desire to include public transit in the policy?
Elliott: We're having a nice talk.
Bailey: I have a desire to include public transit in the policy. I'm not sure that, how we would
want to craft it. I want some sort of common sense approaches, you know, whether it's 3
lanes or bus pull-offs.
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Yapp: And that's where we don't want to prescribe specific designs in this policy.
Correia: Right.
Bailey: Right.
Yapp: Because it really is a case by case -
Bailey: Right. But I would like to include public transit, because it doesn't seem very complete.
Correia: Consideration for public transit.
Elliott: Yes. Good.
Wilburn: Bob, any, you know?
Vanderhoef: Case by case -
Correia: Considerations made.
Vanderhoef: Acknowledging -
Yapp: Improvements to public transit facilities will be part ofthe project.
Correia: Because certainly sidewalks to bus stops, you know -
Yapp: Mmmhmm.
Bailey: Bus shelters.
Correia: Having bus shelters, that sort of thing.
Vanderhoef: Those shelters can be moved.
Correia: Right.
Bailey: Bus pull-offs on particular arterials.
Correia: And it doesn't just mean, yeah-
Bailey: Accommodation for 3-lanes, I mean it just seems to make sense.
Yapp: The third point that I have in the memo is really more for your next item on the agenda,
just noting that local residential streets typically are lower speed, lower volume,
neighborhood bicyclists typically ride on street, kids will tend to ride on the sidewalk.
Children and inexperienced bicyclists. Some older streets do not have sidewalks, and
that's been the issue with some of the older local residential streets. And then sidewalk
in-fill policy, which is now funded, and the criteria for that you'll be discussing in your
next agenda item. Number four, what I wanted to point out here is that we have a typical
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arterial street design standard, which includes sidewalks, including an 8-foot sidewalk on
one side, a wider travel lane for on-street bicyclists. Some newer construction in new
areas we can even do more, such as Camp Cardinal Boulevard, which has a paved
shoulder, which functions like a bike lane. Some of our older streets, like Gilbert Street
and Burlington Street do have some right of way constraints, and commercial buildings
that are very close to the right of way, which make it difficult to contemplate widening
sidewalks or widening the street for bike lanes. And I thin what I'd like to suggest here is
that with a street reconstruction project I think it's important to evaluate a few alternative
concept designs to make those streets more complete within the constraints that you have
in the property. And I don't know that I need any input, but just see if you have any
questions on that.
Wilburn: Anyone?
Bailey: How do we, on those designs, of older streets, particularly, how do we involve bicyclists
and pedestrians of all abilities in the planning?
Yapp: Well, with development of alternative designs, and I think you would develop a few
different concept designs and then it would be appropriate to have public input on those,
whether through - with meetings to get input often people self-select into who shows up
at those meetings. But there's a variety of methods to get input on alternative designs,
putting them on the websites, posting them in different locations and asking people to
write their input in. There's several different ways.
Bailey: But do we contact the bicyclist groups? I mean, that's an identifiable group. I mean,
that's an identifiable group. I'm assuming that there's some proactivity going on when
we're looking at alternative designs for older arterials. Is that correct?
Yapp: Well, this would be a new, having alternative designs would be a-
Bailey: Well, that's what I'd like to see is more proactivity involving pedestrians and bicyclists in
those designs, at the design stage rather than when we're looking at one or two, actually
getting some input that goes in too. Especially bicyclists of varying, I mean, not, on
Burlington and Gilbert you know you're not going to get your kids, but bicyclists with
different comfort levels of riding in traffic.
Wilburn: I know there's, just for the Council's information, there's a couple groups that are
working together with Neighborhood Council folks and they're, I've got a meeting with
them Wednesday. And I think theY're, I'm going to make them aware of this, and [mean
several of them, I know John and I've spoken with John and staff. [think they may be
requesting some type oftask force or something like that, so I'll report back to you when
I hear from them. I'll probably recommend that they, if they have some meetings, that
they just invite staff or Council to it rather than forming some sort of formal task group,
but ['11 report back to the Council, so that you're aware of what they're requesting.
Vanderhoef: The task is?
Wilburn: We shouldn't get into the details on that, but they, as soon as I hear in fact what it is
they're -
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March 19, 2007
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Yapp:
Wilburn:
Yapp:
Wilburn:
Elliott:
Wilburn:
Franklin:
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The focus is streets, right?
Their focus is pedestrian, bicycle -
Ok.
Safety.
Well then it would be, 1 don't know if it is?
We shouldn't get into detail.
I'm, yeah, I'm not, but 1 don't know if the City does this, but why couldn't wejust have
people opt in for sending me information, like an email blast, I'm interested in this issue,
you hit a button, you send them. This is what we're looking at, this is when the meeting
is. 1 mean, why couldn't we do something like that to get input. 1 know it limits itselfto
people that are on email, but other groups use that technology.
Well some of those groups too are aware of whenever we do put out press releases on
those topics, that they can sign-up to receive those emails.
Right. Some are. But even if we're just doing our standard press releases that go on that
list, I think that that would be a good thing to do with some of this design stuff or this
Complete Streets stuff.
Well, the next step is we'll draft a resolution summarizing the policy and bring it to you
for your consideration.
Very good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You look very stem.
I lost myself again.
I'm waiting for my cue from the Mayor.
Sidewalk Intill Policv
Wilburn:
Franklin:
Ok. Sidewalk Infill Policy.
This is a component of the Complete Streets that John was just talking about, and the
reason for this policy is to give the staff some guidance as to how to set priorities within
the $100,000.00 that's allocated annually for sidewalk infill. This is based on some
assumptions, which I reiterated in the memo that I sent to you. The most important -
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March 19, 2007
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Elliott:
Wilburn:
Elliott:
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well, maybe not the most important, but a very important one is that the City Council
does not wish to fund this all by assessments and where gonna do this as a public project,
and I think that's demonstrated by the fact that you adopted your capital projects budget
with a $100,000.00 allocation for this. Sidewalks will be required to be installed by
developers or property owners with any new development. What we're talking about with
this policy is infill in those areas of the City that are already developed and there are gaps
in the system. That large sidewalk projects, such as Highway I, and I'm talking about
Highway I West from Riverside Drive out, similar to Highway 6 was a capital project in
and of itself. It's not a gap; it's a whole big project, ok, so those are not included in
looking at pieces of those even for this $100,000.00. 'Cause that would go pretty quickly.
Ok? Is there agreement on all of that?
Yes.
Yes.
Ok. Ok! Cool.
Well, let's just say, can 1- so large sidewalk projects, is there a parameter, it's large if
it's a mile, it's large if it's two, you know, anything less than three blocks as infill?
It's probably large if it's over a $100,000.00.
Ok. What if it's $75,000.00?
I think even then we would look at, seriously, as to whether we wanted to put all of the
eggs in that basket for that year.
Ok.
You know, it's possible, but it would be unlikely that; well, I don't know. I won't say
that.
Ok. So if, if it's a project that's large it would be separate, not infill.
Right. We would propose it to you during our capital projects planning, when we put that
together in the fall it would be what came to you for your budget in January.
Ok.
And the infill, the reason I didn't say anything when you said how many are in favor-
I saw you rubbing your chin, but -
I'mjust, it just irritates me that the City is having to pay all of this when the owner ofthe
property doesn't pay anything. I'm also aware that there's a can of worms involved in to
do otherwise. But it is irritating to me that there are those who have to maintain their
sidewalks and others who don't have to have sidewalks and the City says "oh, we'll.put
yours in for you,"
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Franklin: Well this comes, first of all, from a basic premise that we want sidewalks everywhere to
make this a pedestrian-oriented community. So not having a sidewalk is not necessarily a
given, to get at your first issue of some people have sidewalks and have to maintain them.
Elliott: That was more venting than anything. !t's, I understand the reason for it.
Franklin: Ok. Feel better?
Elliott: It irritates me.
Vanderhoef: I, I am equally irritated.
Correia: Ok, but I have a question. So, a couple of infill sidewalk, potential projects that have
come before us or we've had communication about. One is some infill along Rochester;
another is infill along Dubuque, in that -
Franklin: Dubuque Road.
Correia: Yeah, Dubuque Road. So those are in residential areas, they're going by someone's
house. So once, if that was a project that we entered into as part of this infill policy, once
they're in, those property owners, are they?
Franklin: They maintain them.
Correia: They're responsible for maintaining them from that part forward just like I have to
maintain but, you know, when I bought my house I didn't necessarily think I was buying
the sidewalk. But I was.
Franklin: And you had that bonus.
Correia: Right.
Bailey: On a comer lot.
Franklin: On a comer lot, yeah.
Correia: So they would be responsible forward to maintain it like everyone else.
Vanderhoef: Future.
Franklin: Yeah.
Elliott: Interestingly, in that area west of North Dubuque there were some calls a couple years
ago I think - people wanted sidewalks.
Correia: I think it was last year.
Bailey: Yeah, it was last year.
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Elliott: And then after that I got some other calls. Those same people decided they didn't want
sidewalks.
Correia: Because they didn't want to maintain them.
Elliott: And it had to do with school bus pickups and things like that.
Correia: Oh.
Franklin: Well, and assessment too, because we talked about doing an assessment project there.
Elliott: Yeah. I forget what it was.
Correia: What would the school bus pickup?
Elliott: But I, there are just a lot of things involved with these.
Franklin: Sure, sure.
Vanderhoef: Here's an off-the-wall question.
Franklin: Ok.
Vanderhoef: Ok. When you talk about maintain and so forth, all at once insurance pops up for me. Is
there a difference in homeowner policies when you do or don't have sidewalks?
Franklin: I can't answer that. I don't know.
Vanderhoef: Well that's a liability that comes with having a sidewalk.
Franklin: Oh I know.
Vanderhoef: Because you have to pay for slip and fall and those kinds of things.
Franklin: Well, do you?
Vanderhoef: You may.
Franklin: Because they usually go after us; I mean, the City.
Dilkes: Ah, the homeowner has liability for failure to remove natural accumulations of snow. Not
unnatural, like snowplow accumulations. When there is a slip and fall on a sidewalk due
to an unevenness or a crack or something like that the City gets sued. And the City, we
have not yet tried the case where we have sought contribution from the property owner.
We, we will that claim. But that, that has not been resolved yet.
Vanderhoef: But that's a potential then.
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Oilkes: Mmm hmm.
Correia: Ok.
Vanderhoef: Just curious.
Franklin: And that really goes to the whole issue of whether you have sidewalks or not.
Vanderhoef: Mmmm hmmm.
Bailey: Mmm hmm.
Oilkes: I mean, I don't have sidewalks in front of my house and 1 don't recall that being an issue
when I got my homeowners' insurance.
Franklin: That you got a break?
Elliott: We go after her.
Oilkes: I know I didn't get a break because I didn't have them.
Vanderhoef: No, Ijust thought liability, that.
Oilkes: It's hard for me to believe it would be a huge issue, but I don't know.
Franklin: Rather than go over each of the criteria that are listed I'm going to assume that you have
read them.
Vanderhoef: Mmm hmm.
Franklin: 00 you want to go over them? Ijust thought in the interest of time, they're there. If you
have anything that you want to add we can, we can add.
Correia: So I have a question.
Franklin: Mmm hmm?
Correia: Is this, I'm trying to see if! see this in here, although maybe we talked about it before.
Franklin: That's ok.
Correia: Will this be a type of program like the, or do we envision it like the traffic calming where
it's initiated by the neighborhood or could it be initiated by -
Bailey: Or we choose.
Correia: Or us, or anybody who travels in the area. I mean -
Franklin: It wasn't, it wasn't contemplated to be like the traffic-calming program.
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Correia:
Franklin:
Correia:
Franklin:
Elliott:
Franklin:
Elliott:
(laughter)
City Council Work Session
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Ok, in that sense.
In which it is initiated and voted on by the block.
Right. Ok.
We've looked at this in terms of achieving a conununity goal of pedestrian orientation,
and that's why there is the commitment of public funds to it, that's the larger public good
that justifies that. We've looked at where the gaps are in the system, at least in a cursory
way. That is, looked to see where there are gaps, and then we've also gotten information
from various people. I mean there's neighborhood associations that lobby for it. You all
have brought gaps to our attention. And so, what this is about is just how we take that
information and prioritize it.
The community's greater good - years and years ago I interviewed for ajob in
Worcester, Mass., and when through a significant section of the town that did not have
sidewalks. And it was a very negative impression. Very negative.
Yeah. Having grown up on the East Coast, yeah, they still don't have sidewalks there.
They're backward in that regard.
Don't tell them that.
Franklin: I think I can say that, because I'm from there.
Vanderhoef: Then they'll talk about the hicks in Iowa.
Franklin: Ok?
Wilburn: Any questions on the sidewalk infill?
Franklin: The idea is next meeting, April 3", like the Complete Streets policy; I mean, I'm hoping
we can get them both together, because I think it's important to adopt the Complete
Streets policy first. This is a subset of it. That you'll have a resolution with the policies
on your agenda. Ok?
Trails MaD
Wilburn: Ok. Trails Map.
Yapp: I heard you're calling this the Yapp map.
Elliot: Good idea.
Vanderhoef: Yap yap.
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March 19,2007
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Elliott: There you go.
Vanderhoef: Just like the DOT: one every year. Because we keep adding to it.
Yapp: Yes, it does, it has required updating every year. This is the 5th year, 1 believe, that
JCCOG has coordinated production of the Trails Map. I wrote a memo for your packet
just giving an overview of what we have done with the trails system. As the different
community trails have grown together we have recognized the need to provide more
signs, directional signs identifying the names of the trails and providing sign maps, which
have been going up on the Iowa City, Coralville, and North Liberty trails. Some of this
has been prompted by the bicycle and pedestrian groups that we work with. Some of it
has been prompted by the emergency service providers, specifically, naming each trail so
that people know the name of the trail that they are located on. For example, if you fall
and have a leg injury and you call in: "I'm on a trail."
Elliott: Yeah.
Yapp: They don't know how to find you. So they, so we have all the trails over 2 miles in length
we have named and we intend to continue that policy. The JCCOG map is the
metropolitan trails map for the area, including all the larger trails that connect to each
other or will connect to each other as the trails are completed. It does not include smaller
park trails, such as Wetherby Park, such as College Green Park, if you could call that a
trail, the sidewalks that go through College Green Park, and several other neighborhood
parks. We've tried to focus on just the larger metropolitan trails system. We do update
the map every year; Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty and Tiffin more and more are all
funding trails. We're including Johnson County trails that, right now there's just the
North Dubuque Street Trail, but the County has just started a Trails Advisory Committee
for the entire county, so as the county constructs trails we'll include those facilities also if
they connect to the urbanized area. Any questions about this?
Vanderhoef: I still have a concern. We have verbiage over here on the left-hand side about the trail,
the named. But barring that, if you're just looking at this map, it's like I don't know
which, which trail is which. And for an out-of-towner that doesn't have any idea what
they are, it's like we need a color for each.
Wilburn: Like the bus routes.
Vanderhoef: For Clear Creek Trail, and a different color for the Iowa River Corridor Trail.
Bailey: Yeah.
Correia: Yeah.
Elliott: This map color-codes the surface of the trail.
Bailey: Right.
Elliott: And you say it might be more important to color code the ill of the trail.
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(cut off - end of tape)
Wilburn: 1 presume the next Yapp map will say the actual name of the future junior high that
currently exists now out there in North Liberty?
Yapp: Yes. Yes it will.
Wilburn: Ok. You know, you never really think that you're gonna have to call anyone for help on a
trail, but I had to call and report, a group had done a prairie burn when I was on a trail
and it had been done a couple days before and there were a couple of big logs that had
reignited, so I had to call the Coralville Fire Dept. to tell them where I was at. So it's a
good feature to have. You never really think about those things until it happens.
Vanderhoef: And some trails also not only have names but they have like a mile marker.
Yapp; We do, yeah, we've been doing stencils, mile marker stencils on the trails every quarter-
mile.
Vanderhoef: Ok.
Yapp: We've used stencils because as we add, keep adding to them, sometimes we have to
change where the mileage starts and ends, so once a particular trail, we know that's it for
that trail, then I think we would look at doing something more permanent.
Elliott: My problem with that, and I don't have any solution for it, but I walk a canine friend of
mine on that Sycamore Trail quite frequently, and when you go from west to east and
then come down the trail, there's, I think a 2 there. And for the longest time I went 2
what? And if it' s 2 miles, 2 miles from where? 2 miles to the next one? 2 miles from the
last I? Where was the last one?
Yapp; Is that a 2 without a mile?
Elliott; I don't remember what number, but I know, I see the number on there and I think-
Yapp: Oh, ok. It should say mile.
Elliott; But from where and too where.
Yapp: We mark the main, the main route. We do not attempt to mark all the offshoots, because
that gets confusing.
Elliott: Yeah. Ijust didn't know.
Correia; Where's the beginning, where's the end?
Elliott: To or from? And ifit is to or from, from where to where? And I don't, I don't have any
way to answer that, but it is frustrating.
Yapp: It depends on the direction you're going.
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March 19,2007
Elliott:
Yapp:
Bailey:
Yapp:
Bailey:
Yapp:
Bailey:
Yapp:
Correia:
Bailey:
Correia:
Bailey:
Yapp:
City Council Work Session
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Yeah.
Any other questions?
One of the things that - ok, this is kind of, I don't know - that I've been interested in
seeing with our trails is something like the transit does with their trip maker. It would be
interesting for commuters: I need to get from here to there. What's the best - I mean,
besides looking at the map, because sometimes you're gonna have to be on surface
streets. If you were new to town and used to biking to work or walking to work, but
mostly biking, I suppose, it would be helpful if we had some kind of way to help people
do that. Like a trip maker but on your surface trails; does that make sense?
You mean with like online? With software?
Online, or, or, I think transit you send an email to somebody and they respond.
Oh, I get, I get emails like that. I do. Or phone calls.
You do. Ok. But I mean, it would be kind of nice if we put that out there a little bit more,
that, you know, are you interested in commuting? We can help you do that.
We can do that. We can do that.
Well, another thing is, is for recreational purposes, is you know in different travel books,
you know, there's a two-hour walk and you can do this and see these things. Or you want
to, however, miles or something. I think that would be also, because I've not really, I've
done some of the trails, but I haven't had a good sense of-
How far?
Besides the main ones, you know, ok, the Iowa River Corridor Trail, but where can I get,
how long will it take, what's coming along.
Well I was talking to the pre-medical clinic when we were talking about our Aid to
Agencies funding about some of their chronic clients and what else we could do from a
recreational point of view to help support the work they are doing with people with
chronic illnesses, and one of the things they said was exercise and having something like
that here. If there's a trail in your neighborhood, you know, here's a I-mile track, here's a
2-mile track, and getting some more of that kind of information. It wouldn't be the whole
comprehensive trail map, it would be, you know, you live on the east side, here's a place
you could walk. I mean, they could go, I suppose, to tracks, but it would make it - I don't
know, it could be used.
The Parks Department is in the process of posting map signs on these trails that do have
scales on them and mileage and more detailed information on each trail than we can
attempt to do at this metropolitan map.
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Bailey:
Wilburn:
Yapp:
Correia:
Bailey:
Correia:
Elliott:
Correia:
Elliott:
Correia:
Bailey:
Vanderhoef:
Bailey:
Vanderhoef:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Atkins:
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Well and I'm not sure it would be a comprehensive map. It would have to be maps by
area of town, even if we just had it on the web page and people could download it for
clients. I don't know. I mean, if you were in training for some kind of walk you, you
could use that.
Thank you.
Thank you. Oh -
Oh, I'm sorry. Because we have, so part of our capital improvement plan was that we set
aside money for trails and at some point we were going to have a conversation to
determine, you know, where we, what would we like to prioritize over the next year
related to what our, were their easy connections that if we just did, you know, spend
some -
So are you going to come with recommendations, are we, how are we gonna proceed
with that discussion?
When are we?
Yeah, I think that that -
We see a lot of these proposed, you know, do we want to, is this one first, is this one
first?
In that discussion, Amy, as I recall, there was at least one person who wanted to
concentrate on the trails in the developments and see that those, and there were some
other people who said they'd like to see a highest priority on getting from north to south
and east to west, and I don't think we've had that discussion yet and I would look
forward to having it.
So when are we gonna do it?
Does that dovetail with our sidewalk priority?
Well there's two pieces in the budget. There's the set-asides for the gap sidewalks and
then there's the reserve funding for recreation projects and they sort of overlap because
we're talking trails and recreation, and I think that's all corning in the same conversation.
I'm looking at a place where-
Ijust don't know how soon it's on the agenda.
And when are we, do we have that scheduled?
We don't have that scheduled, but-
Give me the name ofthat item again?
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Wilburn: It was more like a prioritization ofthe trails.
Bailey: Trail gaps.
Atkins: Priority recommendations on trail locations - is that what you?
Wilburn: Mmm hmm.
Atkins: Ok.
Bailey: But we should also have the sidewalks prioritized.
Vanderhoef: Well the recreation projects also, because we withheld that placeholder of about a million
dollars.
Atkins: For trails, yes we did.
Correia: For trails.
Vanderhoef: Well, that wasn't just for trails.
Correia: I thought it was.
Vanderhoef: No.
Wilburn: There could be a couple, I mean, I was just, a couple ways to proceed. One that
immediately comes to mind rather than, you know, Council bantering back and forth
about that, and since there's interest in the, on a larger scale, the users. If Parks and Rec.
is going to be doing master planning within that, I mean, and public hearings and
discussion is going to be part of that, within that can there be a prioritization of which,
what are the next, what is the sequence of trails from the public's input in design. That
may be one way.
Bailey: What's their time frame.
Atkins: The sequence is substantially the policy issue.
Correia: What did you say?
Atkins: The sequence is substantially what the issue is. When are we gonna do these, and here is
the order in which I'd like to see them done, and then you set a policy.
Wilburn: Yeah.
Atkins: Yeah. Well we'll get, I'll put that on our list of work session items and I'll get with Terry.
Wilburn: Ok, great.
Correia: What is the time frame for the Parks and Rec. master plan?
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Bailey: For their master plan?
Atkins: I don't know. They're still interviewing.
Bailey: Oh.
Correia: Because we put a million dollars in, 1 mean, I thought it was for trails.
Bailey: I did too.
Correia: If it was for other rec. things I guess I didn't understand that.
Vanderhoef: Well there were several things, there were several trails that I had mentioned that there
were some other things in recreation, projects off of the capital improvement plan project.
Since we were taking the bridge out that was set aside for recreation.
Correia: That was a trail. But this is, that money is set aside, you know, for '08, right?
Atkins: Yes.
Vanderhoef: Yeah, it's in the budget.
Correia: So I guess I'm just wondering time frame, because we have a list of trails in our un-
funded capital improvement plan. I mean, I want to take, put them on, programmed in.
Bailey: Well and I want to see if there are gaps, shorter gaps that we can do -
Correia: Yeah.
Bailey: Fill in more gaps with the money we have rather than, and does that make sense.
Correia: Right.
Yapp: And I, I've-
Wilburn: Isn't that the sequencing that we were just talking about?
Bailey: Right.
Vanderhoef: Mmm hmmm.
Yapp: Yeah, and I think as far as JCCOG's role and my role in that would be to assess the
potential for various trail segments that the Iowa City Parks and Rec. Commission has
interest in.
Bailey: Ok.
Yapp: Thank you.
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CDBG/Home Policv
Wilburn: CDBGlHome Policy. Am lout on this one?
Dilkes: I think you were last time.
Wilburn: Then I'm out this time. I will not be participating in this discussion due to a contlict of
interest with CDBG and HOME funding.
Bailey: Go ahead.
Vanderhoef: Have a nice break.
Bailey: All right. Yes, we're ready.
Long: I'm here tonight to set a policy for the use of our fiscal year '08 COBG and HOME funds
for affordable owner and rental occupied housing. You might remember at the February
20th meeting we talked about the use of fiscal year' 07 funds for owner occupied and
rental, and you determined that or clarified the policy that for owner occupied funds the
houses can be placed anywhere in Iowa City, and for rental, go ahead and continue to use
the map that was approved in 2005, and you have that with you tonight.
So currently we're, well, the Housing and Community Development Commission is,
they're reviewing all the recommendations and on Thursday night they're going to
recommend proposals to you for your May I" meeting. So we're kind of at a point where
we need to start thinking about where we can place these homes. There were a couple of
questions that came up last time about tenure of homes, and the Housing Fellowship,
since 1988 has constructed 14 homes, and only one family has moved. So tenure of
residence in owner occupied, not the homes themselves.
Vanderhoef: That's neat. That's really neat.
Long: Only one family has moved since then. And Habitat has constructed 44 homes, 17 of
which are in Iowa City, and only one family has moved as well.
Correia: Wow.
Bailey: Above the average population.
Vanderhoef: I think that's stability in the max.
Long: So for '08 funds we're recommending that affordable assisted homes of COBG, well at
least assisted with CDBG and HOME funds be placed anywhere in Iowa City.
Elliott: Or home ownership.
Long: Or home ownership. So 1 guess I'd like to get some direction. On rental, we're
recommending, until we get a clear idea of the market, and we're hoping that the
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March 19, 2007
Elliott:
Correia:
Elliott:
Correia:
Elliott:
Correia:
Elliott:
Correia:
Vanderhoef:
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upcoming Housing Market Analysis will give us that idea, that we use - we still use this
map, basically, for rental projects until we have a clear sense of the market.
I, I'm more concerned about the school district than the shaded particular neighborhood
areas.
You know, one of the things that, I mean, I've talked with folks at the school district, and
one of the issues that they're seeing is the mobility. That they have a lot of kids moving
around, not just moving in, moving around. Going from one neighborhood school to
another neighborhood school as their family is trying to stabilize in rental housing. So I
think that there's ample evidence to suggest that housing stability, whether it's in rental
or home ownership, is what helps, and classroom stability helps kids. And I think that, in
many communities when there's a distressed neighborhood, you know, a city uses its
resources to help that neighborhood stabilize rather than pulling resources out and
creating more instability. And I think that, you know, we're seeing that, you know, one of
the school district representatives said is that it feels like it's getting worse. The mobility
and the classroom instability all across, not injust anyone particular school. So I don't
know, I have a problem with saying categorically we don't want to assist any project that
may be beneficial for a neighborhood with these funds that are designed to help
neighborhoods. But that's my-
I think your - I can't argue with your point. That could be one of the considerations. And
one of the components that causes the problems. But I think there are a number of other
considerations. And at this time with some of the problems, and significant problems that
we have had in our schools, I think that we have schools that are overloaded with
children, with students who have some significant problems.
Well I think some of those concerns have become over-inflated and the teachers that I
talk to, in some of the schools, the issue is kids moving in and out. They start a year with
24 kids. Halfway through the year half of those kids are gone that have started the school
year, and they have an additional half new kids-
Oh, oh yeah.
And it's not necessarily coming from outside the community. They're moving around the
community and teachers want kids to just stay put, and families can't stay put when
there's instability in their housing situations. And so we've seen even just in the last year
a lot of instability in 18 because we're losing affordable homes. We lost affordable
homes, over a hundred units of affordable homes, and so those kids and families are
moving around. And that's not beneficial for their educational situation, for their family
stability, so.
I don't, I don't agree that moving more rental assisted housing into that area would,
would be positive in addressing that problem.
I disagree.
I agree on the rental.
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Correia: So you're saying if, if a project, let's say a project comes in and they want to scatter
rental homes around the city, duplexes. And they're going to do a total of24 and they
want to put one of those duplexes in 18. There's a great spot, or they're purchasing and
rehabbing a unit or home. They can't do that? Two homes?
Vanderhoef: What we have 'seen over the years is that when a developer comes in and has money for
six units - 1 can remember a couple of times that they've stood up in front of us and said
"Well, I can build six units if! can build all of them side by side. But I can't build you
six, I can only build you four with this amount of money if! scatter them." And I think
this is where the problem comes in in the minds of the community. That when you put
too many side by side that are dedicated to the rental, that that leads to more instability
than if there were only two. So ifthere's a way that you say two here, two there, two
someplace else in a six unit project - three duplexes in three different locations, that's
one thing.
Correia: That's what ('m - ok.
Bailey: Well, we have a problem here. We have two - two. We need more people. I have a
problem with not building rental in 18 because we're operating with old information. I
mean, the, 18 is, if I'm thinking correctly of the area, has changed dramatically, and the
availability of rental, affordable rental housing has changed. I mean, the market is
changing faster than our policies are. So -
Vanderhoef: I've heard that it's changing and we don't have that, those figures yet.
Bailey: Right, and we don't; you see, we're still operating with 2005 mindset and data and that
seems inappropriate for our community. And I've really never had, I really never agreed
with this premise, so it's hard for me to say that we, ifthere's opportunity to build
affordable rental housing in these sections on the map that we don't do it. Because it's,
it's hard to get the number of units.
Vanderhoef: We know we're under-
Bailey: The land is available on the southeast side, and that's part of our challenge.
Correia: And there's a high homeownership-
Vanderhoef: We know that we're underserved in some areas of the community for rental housing.
Bailey: Affordable rental housing, absolutely.
Vanderhoef: Right. So that's why for this year I would consider putting ownership in 18 but not rental
in 18, for this year.
Bailey: I heard you. Yeah, that's what I heard. I don't have a problem putting either.
Correia: I heard - I don't either. And the other, the other thing is that there are many parts of our
community that are shaded where we could; where we want to encourage, where there are
some who want to encourage, that there may not be land there. There are neighborhoods
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March 19, 2007
Bailey:
Correia:
Bailey:
Long:
Bailey:
Long:
Correia:
Long:
(can't hear)
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that are built out. You might have one lot, you know, on North 7'h Avenue, that you're
not gonna put rental- it's not.
And typically how we approach this is not to buy current units and rehab.
I mean there might be one lot in infill, one empty lot.
But, right, or there might be houses available for sale, but that's not our typical approach
because of the lead abatement and the other challenges, so.
Just to give you an idea, we do have being proposed right now 31 units that are being
proposed. 19 rental and 13 owner for FY '08. Some of these will not, they may be
proposed right now or approved, but they may not be developed for a couple years. We
may have more information available soon.
Well we hope.
We're hoping.
And are they proposing, do they have land, are they proposing site, are they site-specific?
There's a variety. 6 units they already, they have the site secured.
Long: And it isn't-
Correia: I'm sorry, there's side conversation so I can't.
Long: Oh, ok.
Vanderhoef: Keep going.
Correia: Oh - it's distracting. I'm sorry.
Elliott: Well I'm very much in favor of keeping the policy, the rather temporary policy that we
have at this time. I would be more concerned about the school districts than the particular
neighborhood. But I'm interested in a combination of each. I can tell you that when I was
on the Housing Commission what, 10 years ago perhaps? That it made a lot of sense to
me that when the developers came in and wanted to put housing for assisted rentals in
one area that the cost of constructing the housing, the cost of providing services for the
people in those housing, it made sense that they were in more of a centralized area. But
I've also seen what has happened as a result ofthat.
Bailey: Amy, did you have a comment?
Correia: But I think - I just want to respond. I think, when I was on the Housing Commission,
there were two times where there were sites, there were sites that were proposed and the
Commission was very excited. They were in, they were scattered, it was different school
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district and all of the outside, this was way before we had any of this. And there was
incredible neighborhood opposition. We had the not in my backyard syndrome, and
those, and, then there was a landowner that sold land out from under, you know, an
affordable developer. I think there are incredible barriers, and I think having a policy that
encourages something, which is what I thought the policy said, is different than saying
that we will not consider. I mean I think that there are a lot of things to consider. One is
scope, another is does it help neighborhood stability, does it help family stability and I
think those are things you look at you don't just look at oh, you know, there have some
mistakes. I think you know developers are proposing different types of sites. You know,
it's not all does it look like what we think it looks like. It blends into the community and
it creates incredible opportunities for families and individuals.
Elliott: Well, we have to give Steve some guidance.
Bailey: I don't hear - no, I don't hear that anybody's going to move on this. I think we're going
to have to defer because we've got even numbers here.
Franklin: Could I, could Ijust-
Bailey: Yeah well, I'm sorry but-
Franklin: Could I?
Bailey: Yeah.
Correia: Mike and Connie's fault.
Bailey: Yeah, it is.
Franklin: The suggestion is that we continue in the vein that we have been in.
Bailey: Right.
Franklin: Which is that these projects are brought to you for your approval when they are in a
discouraged, discouraged area.
Vanderhoef: I know what you mean.
Elliott: Mmm hmm.
Franklin: So that would mean each time the situation came up you could have this discussion again.
Correia: And can we say all right. In areas that are, I mean. I guess, well, it's just a difference of
opinion. I don't want to discourage. I could see prioritizing, we want, I mean people want
to have choice of neighborhoods. I mean anybody wants to have a choice to live where
they want to live, but I wouldn't.
Bailey: See, I think our current policy has created some challenges with the Commission and
with developers, because you bring it and you know, they may even have a lot, and it
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doesn't go because of these discussions. So that's why I'm not particularly willing to
continue the same policy.
Vanderhoef: I think it will be interesting to find out-
Bailey: Are you, Amy?
Vanderhoef: As that whole south area develops, we've had several new, including one that we have on
our packet for tomorrow night, more housing. And the size of the school that's south of
Highway 6, and what the school district is going to do about the number of students that
are down there and how they're going to handle those. Right now they're only talking
new schools out in the North Liberty area. But they're going-
Long: They've had 153 new lots approved in the past 3 years in census tract 18. The market
rate.
Vanderhoef: Right, and that's -
Bailey: Right.
Vanderhoef: That's definitely sitting up there and so it's either going to be a busing situation for
people out of that neighborhood to a different school or school district's going to be
looking at a new school. So I truly would like to get on top of that in terms of -
Bailey: So you're interested in continuing the same policy or?
Correia: Well Ijust, yeah, case by case.
Long: For rental.
Vanderhoef: Case by case for right now until we get the new numbers.
Bailey: Ok. So that's your direction, because there are 3.
Elliott: Home ownership anywhere.
Bailey: Anywhere.
Correia: Ok. Can I, so can you just say that last thing? How many new market rate homes have
gone in? 18? In the last year?
Long: 153.
Correia: 153.
Long: In the last 3 years. That's lots approved, that's not-
Correia: Oh. Ok. Lots approved. And there are 13, what did you say, that the Commission is
seeing proposals for how many rental?
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Long: In 18 in the last 3 years? 0 in 18 in the past 3 years.
Correia: No, no, no. How many, in the proposals that they're considering, just total like, that the
community will receive what's proposed.
Long: 31. 18 rental.
Correia: 18 rental that might go anywhere.
Long: Anywhere.
Correia: And so in just this one, like a drop in the can of homes, anywhere.
Vanderhoef: How many owner?
Bailey: And so we'll continue the same policy, and we'll, ok?
Correia: How many owner occupied? I'm sorry.
Bailey: Keep (can't hear) this discussion up. Let's just wrap this up-
Long: So it's for 13.
Bailey: Because Steve has what he needs.
Correia: Ok.
Bailey: I'm sure we'll have ample opportunity to talk about housing again sometime this year.
Elliott: Yes.
Bailey: I'm sure it'll come up.
Elliott: Good idea.
Bailey: Thank you.
Correia: Thank you Steve.
Long: Thanks.
Vanderhoef: 1 need a break.
Wilburn: Let's take a 10 minute break, be back at 5 'til.
Elliott: Oh.
Bailey: Geez. Sorry!
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March 19,2007
(laughter)
Wilburn:
Correia:
City Council Work Session
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Dee, we're gonna get going here.
Now you see this morning I was walking by at like 6:15.
Dubuque/Church Intersection
ITEM 10.
Wilburn:
Panos:
Bailey:
Panos:
Elliott:
Panos:
CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO SIGN AND THE
CITY CLERK TO ATTEST AN IOWA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
FUNDING AGREEMENT FOR THE DUBUQUE STREET & CHURCH STREET
INTERSECTION IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT STP-U-3715(632)--70-52.
Ok. Dubuque/Church Intersection. Reference Agenda item 10.
Ok. Good evening everyone. I'm here to talk a little about Dubuque Street and Church
Street intersection improvement projects. This presentation tonight is kind of prefacing,
prefacing the agenda item tomorrow night, which includes a DOT funding agreement.
This basically is to provide some opportunity to give some background to the project and
what we're doing or looking at doing here. This, this photo is looking, is basically
situated on the southwest quadrant of the intersection here. The project location map
gives a general overview of where the project is located, just south of Ronalds, north of
Fairchild, and between Linn Street and Clinton Street, generally limits shown as a dark
highlighted bar there. The operational issues that we're looking at with this intersection
are mainly two major issues. One of them is a bus movement at the intersection. I'll flip
ahead one. While I was out there looking at the project site a little bit this photo shows a
Cambus pulling south on Dubuque Street and turning into the intersection. Turning onto
Church. Bring my arrow down here. As you can see the bumper is pretty much right in
line with the center line of the street, which I'm told is what Cambus needs to do to make
this turn, because of the length of the wheel base and the sharp radius on this intersection,
these need to be cut wide. In an attempt to keep people back from the intersection we
place a stop bar here to keep people back.. However, there's issues with maintaining that
clearance when they cross through there.
Doesn't really.
No.
That's almost nonexistent.
I'm told that in general the bus has to stop and let Church clear before they can pull into
Church as some times. This is the next step, the slide shows it progressing on through. To
back up a little bit, this intersection movement is a high priority with the University. They
want to approach this and get it taken care of. It also as I said, this movement creates a
gridlock issue on Dubuque Street; when the bus is trying to turn on Church it creates a
backup in traffic for the southbound Dubuque traffic. Also we have capacity issues at the
intersection. The tight geometry, the tight lanes and the narrow lanes and the capacity, the
volume of the traffic through there has created issues with capacity. And JCCOG has
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March 19, 2007
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looked at re-timing this to try to identify some of those issues and try to alleviate that.
However, that has not shown any improvement. Flip ahead here. Project overview: what
we're looking at doing here and in general what we're trying to do to attack these
problems and attack these issues. First of all, we're looking at installing a wider radius at
the northwest quadrant of the intersection. It's the quadrant of Dubuque and Church
there, northwest quadrant, and basically we're looking at widening that out so that those
bus turning lanes, bus traffic can take that turn better. We're also looking at widening
Dubuque Street, approximately 300-foot north and south of Church Street. And this also
allows for a left turn lane north and south. The second thing we'd look at doing is
possibly widening Church Street approximately 200 feet east and west of Dubuque
Street. Essentially, widening Church Street would consist of adding a curb section to
either side. The street itself right now is approximately 30 foot wide and adding curb
sections to either side would allow us to actually add a center turn lane on Church Street.
Also we'd look at with this project installing a new traffic signal system at the
intersection and installing new sidewalks and curb ramp course at each leg of the
intersection. And one thing to keep in mind too is this is a 30-year improvement. This is a
major long-term improvement that we'd like to make at this intersection. It's not looked
upon as a minor fix, minor solution.
This is a general overview of the project limits. See, Ronalds is down here, Fairchild is
on this end. The dark shaded areas are the widening areas that we're looking at doing,
specifically in the northwest quadrant. Here is the intersection, this is University
property. So this widening of this radius would take care of that turning movement of the
buses. The next slide is zoomed in, a little zoomed in view of that intersection. The
widening itself would consist of equal widening of both sides of Dubuque. We would, we
would be able to do the widening on the east side generally within the right of way on the
east side and basically we'd be placing the sidewalk along the right of way line. We may
have to take some slivers of right of way depending on how the geometry for the
sidewalks work out. On the west side adjacent to the University property here we, the
widening would include removal of this wall, existing wall in this location and relocation
of that wall would be approximately 8 foot to the west. The University has also talked
about doing some work here on this wall as well if this project were to go through. The
widening on Church really as you can see here is very narrow. We're looking at basically
just adding a curb section on either side, which would of course give us that capacity that
we need to add the second, to add the middle turn lane.
Vanderhoef: You say a curb section.
Panos: Curb section, right here. This is kind of a view of what I'm looking at. The existing
Church Street is on your left, this is how it looks right now. Basically it's a standing curb,
eight-inch tall standing curb. What we would do is essentially add a curb section as you
can see here. This is a comparable example at the Iowa River Landing entrance. It just
shows you an example of what it would look like to add just a curb section onto that
adjoining, existing curb.
Bailey: All the way to Clinton?
Panos: Excuse me?
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Bailey:
Panos:
Bailey:
Panos:
Elliott:
Panos:
Elliott:
Panos:
Elliott:
Panos:
Bailey:
Panos:
Correia:
Bailey:
Correia:
Bailey:
Correia:
Bailey:
Correia:
City Council Work Session
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Which goes into Clinton, so that's, you would have it all the way to Clinton.
Right. Exactly. Clinton.
That would be the 200 feet.
Clinton is to the west here, right.
How much, how much wider?
Ah, 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 feet on either side.
7.
5 feet.
5 to 7 feet total.
Right. Exactly.
Brick or concrete? Would it remain brick?
Ah, it would remain, the road would remain brick, right. And I let this example, this Iowa
River Landing entrance as an example of what it would look like. Essentially the brick
would remain and we would add the curb and gutter.
Why would we need the middle turn lane on Church? I mean, it seems like most of the,
most, at least from my experience on that intersection is that the issue is people coming
south? Is that south? You know, from the park up and they get stuck, people are trying to
turn left, it's hard to turn left, and then they have to try and go around. I mean, I don't see
a lot of, you know, some of the other intersections that we're dealing with in the capital
improvement like (can't hear) Gilbert, there's a lot of traffic on all four corners. But this
really to me seems like it's mostly the coming from the south, not so much on the Church
Street.
You can miss a left -
We have some sometimes.
You can miss a left turn in if you're going east on Church you can miss one light if
you're going straight. But it doesn't really back up. It's never really backed up to Clinton.
At 5 o'clock.
Right.
I'm talking about-
Oh, like if you're on Church Street.
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Bailey: Yeah.
Panos: The design manuals recommend anytime your volume exceeds 100 vehicles per hour,
they would recommend putting in a left turn lane. I believe Church is close to 100 in
terms of traffic counts.
Elliott: And how many of those cars do not turn either way? How many of them go straight?
Panos: That, that, the numbers that I'm recalling are accounting for the left-bound, so it would be
the eastbound left.
Elliott: No - not turning. I, at that intersection I rarely see cars that on Church go straight either
way.
Panos: Ok.
Elliott: Usually they're coming off either side and turning onto Dubuque, whether they're turning
right or turning left. I don't see many cars that go straight on Church through that
intersection. So I'm just wondering does your traffic count show you how many, how
many vehicles per hour or per day or per week travel Church and who straight through
the intersection, as opposed to how many of them turn one way or the other.
Panos: Right. When they look at the traffic counts for the intersection they'll look at all the
movements. They'll look at the through traffic, the right turning traffic, and the left
turning traffic.
Elliott: So you don't have a count of how many go straight?
Panos: We would. I don't have it on me personally. I don't have it with me personally, no.
Elliott: Oh you have it. Ok. Because I'm wondering, that's why the question was a turn, do you
need a turning lane, because my thought, maybe almost everybody turns.
Panos: And that's, the numbers that we are seeing state that we are close to that volume,
reaching the capacity for that street, and the thought is why not take care of this issue
now while we're doing the project.
Correia: Is there, would we, so the cars that are, I mean, because you kind of. I mean, as I'm
thinking about the future in terms ofthe likelihood of there's going to be more cars
coming down Church. There's not a lot of, I suppose there are some more apartments
going up, or maybe there weren't apartments before. Although I guess those are down
farther, not necessarily there. There's not, we're not going to have increased density of
people living in this area that are going to be traveling these streets. I mean, it's about the
people that live there now, will be replaced. I mean, it's a turnover kind of neighborhood,
at least on the west side of Dubuque Street up to, you know, Clinton, in terms of student
rentals. Not so much on the other more long-term. But there's not going to be a lot of new
population living in this area over time. I mean, how is it increased?
Vanderhoef: The, ah-
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Correia:
Bailey:
Davidson:
Correia:
Davidson:
Correia:
Davidson:
Correia:
Davidson:
Correia:
Davidson:
Correia:
Davidson:
City Council Work Session
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I don't know - is that a valid question or not a valid question? Because I don't know.
It's a 30-year project, I mean it's gonna take -
No that's a perfectly valid question. I think the significant issue there Amy is that these
are not neighborhood streets. You're right. The neighborhood is relatively static in terms
of, I think there's a conservation zone I believe on the (can't hear) neighborhood has
conservation zone. And I don't think there are significant -
Right, right.
I don't think there are significant redevelopment plans in terms of what the University is
going to do that would increase the intensity of use in the area. So you're right on that
point. The significant change that we forecast; well significant - certainly a change that
we forecast is the volume and intensity of traffic coming in and out ofIowa City via
Dubuque Street.
Right.
We're trying to look at this whole corridor, we've got Foster Road fixed, there is the
possibility of some improvements at Taft Speedway, depending on what the Parkview
Church plans are. You've got a project in your capital improvements program for Park
Road and then Church Street. Those are the critical intersections. If we can get those
intersections working well, then the corridor will work well. As Dave has pointed out,
we're trying to, we don't want to have to come back and do this again.
Right.
We're trying to put something in, and I understand that from, from your perspective,
that's not always the most popular thing to do. Do something that will let a City Council
10 years from now off the hook. But that is kind of what we're planning to do here.
Right. Well the other thing I'm wondering though is that when people are coming, using
Dubuque Street to come into town, are we wanting them to come in and use Jefferson
Street as then to get them wherever they're going, because that's more the arterial than,
you know, encouraging Church Street.
There's a number of ways to look at that, Amy.
Ok.
One of the ways that I look at it is that the intensity of pedestrian movements at the
Jefferson Street and Market Street intersections, where there are a lot of pedestrians, that
the traffic that instead uses Church Street to get to Dodge and Governor, or principally
Dodge, to go into town is, are vehicles that we're taking away from the high pedestrian
intersections at Market and Jefferson. Now, is it doing, is it doing the Church intersection
good? No. I mean, it's adding, it's adding turning movements there which are movements
where you have conflicts. But it, it is buying us some benefit at those other intersections
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where there are a lot more pedestrian movements. It's taking some vehicles out of that
area.
Correia: We have, we have countdown at those?
Bailey: No.
Correia: The Jefferson - countdown lights?
Davidson: I don't think so.
Bailey: No.
Davidson: But it is a pre-timed system that automatically comes on and allows pedestrian
movements every cycle of the signal. You don't have to call it up.
Correia: Right, right - you don't have to press the button.
Davidson: Right.
Elliott: On, on Dubuque north south, the turning lanes - that right now is 4 lanes. Now, will a
turning lane be in addition to that, or is one of those lanes going to be a turning lane?
Davidson: In addition.
Elliott: So you'll have at the intersection north south, there'll be 5 lanes.
Wilburn: As proposed, by what you see here.
Panos: Ok. I'll move along.
Vanderhoef: How long is the stacking lane in the turn lanes? Particularly the north leg of Dubuque
Street for left turn onto Church?
Elliott: Church.
Panos: On Church. We're setting these up for a ISO-foot storage lanes. So, I can't recall the
numbers exactly, but I'm assuming they're less than that. Usually we look at the stacking
numbers and then we design accordingly.
Vanderhoef: So how many do we stack in ISO? How many cars? 6?
Elliott: 6.
Vanderhoef: My experience using that intersection coming south on Dubuque, if it's stacked up at
Church they go on down to Jefferson.
Elliott: Yes.
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Panos: And they cut through.
Vanderhoef: And would we be wise to make that stacking lane longer on that side of the intersection
just so that we relieve and get more cars off that choose to get off at that point rather than
going on down to Jefferson?
Bailey: Why do we want them going through a neighborhood is my fundamental question, when
the arterials are not through a neighborhood. I mean granted, I live on this street -
Vanderhoef: Well, Church is an arterial. It functions like an arterial.
Bailey: It functions like an arterial without very much enforcement for speed or driving, and it's
lined with houses on both sides of the street. And typically what people are doing is
cutting over and going to Gilbert on its most congested section rather than going down to
Jefferson and catching over on Gilbert, where it's wider. Which seems like a more logical
way that we would want to have people traveling south through our community. Less
through the neighborhood and the narrower parts of Gilbert, where there's parking on one
side of the street and more where Gilbert is wide, at Jefferson, where it's two lanes.
Elliott: That's because it's difficult, especially southbound on Dubuque coming into town. I - my
usual plan is to turn left on Church and head over to Dodge and take Dodge south. And if
that's, if there are too many people in the left turn lane then I switch over, go through,
and almost any place further south it's just difficult. You run into a mess the further south
you go on that.
Correia: A lot of -
Bailey: I've always hated this project because it puts more traffic in my neighborhood. I'll just be
right out front with that and, and I don't think it's a smart way to do it because it is a
house-lined street. It's not-
Elliott: So is Dubuque.
Bailey: Dubuque is wider. I mean, Dubuque has four lanes. Church has two lanes.
Elliott: But, just to say it's a house-lined street doesn't mean you should keep traffic off of it.
Bailey: Right, but that's the arterial. Dubuque is the arterial. I mean, that's what we planned.
Elliott: But the best way to go from here to there is go down Church.
Vanderhoef: And Church Street, tell me if I'm wrong, but it's an overwide as far as a collector, if
that's what we're calling it. It's one of those that could easily accommodate a 3-lane.
Bailey: People aren't turning though.
Davidson: Ah, you could, but you'd have to remove a parking lane. I mean Dubuque's set up, if you
look at the center line on, excuse me, on Church Street, it's offset to allow the parking.
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Vanderhoef: On one side.
Bailey: On south.
Elliott: Yeah.
Davidson: Yeah, and in terms of the functional class, just to clarify, actually both of you are correct.
Originally Church was designated a collector street. However, policy decisions over the
last 10-15 years have allowed it to evolve, realistically, into an arterial street. When the
two signalized intersections were put at either end of that at Dodge and at Dubuque, it
basically made it part of the arterial system. It has the volume of traffic that would justify
its designation as an arterial. But that is because of the succession of policy decisions.
The basket weave stop signs that were put into the northside neighborhood while Church
was left clear. Again, those were policy decisions that led to the evolution of Church
Street into an arterial.
Elliott: What's a basket weave stoplight?
Davidson: A Council that preceded you Bob, probably about 10 years ago in the Longfellow
neighborhood, the Creekside neighborhood and the Northside neighborhood. It was not a
popular policy with staff, I will tell you, but it was something that they wanted to do at
that time and they were a system put in so that you couldn't really, in those
neighborhoods, go more than two blocks without having to come to a stop at a stop sign.
Elliott: Oh geez.
Davidson: And those are for the most part-
Vanderhoef: Still there.
Davidson: Still in place in those three neighborhoods.
Panos: Ok. Progress to date. Just to let you know where we are at right now. What we've done is
submitted a concept plan to the DOT in November, and to do that concept plan we
needed to get some right of ways completed, just shoot some property pins in and utilities
surveys and topographic survey, and this gives you an idea of progressive - where we are
at to date in percentage complete of each of those items. Ok. So what's the next step? The
next step is that to proceed with the planning and development of plans and specs we
need to, we need authorization by the Council to proceed with mOT agreement.
Wilburn: And that's the item that we have, item 10 on tomorrow night's agenda.
Elliott: And that's a half mil. Half a million dollars.
Panos: Correct. The project estimate, we have $400,000.00 in the SDP funds through JCCOG.
(cut off - end of tape)
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Panos:
Correia:
Panos:
Correia:
Panos:
Correia:
Panos:
Correia:
Panos:
Correia:
Bailey:
Panos:
Correia:
Panos:
Bailey:
Panos:
Correia:
Dilkes:
Panos:
Correia:
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. . . we would complete acquisition and easement plats and complete the preliminary
design. August 21" we would complete a check set, which would be reviewed by the
DOT. In December we would complete final plans and project development, and this
time frame allows for the 6-months time frame we require for acquisitions. And we
would, in March 18, March 18th we would let the project, March 18th, 2008, and then we
would construct in the summer of 2008.
So, the condemnation you're saying, the Dubuque, some of the Dubuque Street is right of
way.
Some of it is, right.
That's ours already.
Right.
Right of way. And then another big piece is on the University side.
Right. Mmm hmm.
We would have to pay for that?
That's something we'll have to work through.
And they want this.
They want this project. Why would we have to pay for the land?
They want this project.
I mean I don't want to pay for public land. They want it, they're not participating in
paying for it.
I'm not saying that we're-
And they're causing a lot of the challenge at the intersection in the first place, otherwise.
This is, and I say this just as a procedural thing, just so you can see the guidelines, see the
timeframe, what we're looking at. I'm not saying that we would do that.
Ok.
Well that's not the only possible acquisition.
Right. We do have some, like I said, we do have some comer pieces and we have some
acquisition possibly on the west side as well when we extend.
Right, but I'mjust, that - is that, part of that because of having the middle lane on
Church Street? Or all of it?
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Panos: No. It has to do more with the widening on Dubuque.
Correia: And is there general obligation debt in this project?
Bailey: A capital project.
Vanderhoef: This is, they can get STP.
Bailey: You can get so much out of capital.
Atkins: The thing that's overwhelming is-
Bailey: So there's also going to be a 3'd lane east, on East Church?
Panos: Correct. For about 200 feet.
Bailey: Yeah, for about 5 years.
Panos: And then we taper it in.
Bailey: Yeah.
Atkins: Ah, federal grant, STP 400, road use tax 100. No bonds.
Vanderhoef: No bonds.
Elliott: And, 400, 100 - that's the total cost for this?
Atkins: Yep. 500.
Correia: Even with the land acquisition?
Elliott: We're talking about everything you said up there is going to cost a half million dollars?
Atkins: Yeah. We're assuming the University is not going to charge us for land. Yeah.
Elliott: I guess I'm kind of surprised. Pleasantly.
Panos: Well, it's not a full reconstruction. It's widening on existing pavement, so it minimizes
disturbance.
Elliott: Good.
Wilburn: Ok. Thank you.
Taxi Stands
Wilburn:
Taxi stands.
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March 19, 2007
Davidson:
Fowler:
Karr:
Davidson:
Wilburn:
(laughter)
Davidson:
Fowler:
Davidson:
Karr:
Elliott:
Davidson:
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We'll do a tag-team here since Joe and I have both kind of been involved in this. I guess
originally you got the call from the cab company?
Marian. Marian received the call.
I did.
Oh, Marian did.
Of course she did.
And so Joe called me and said do we still have our same policy? I mean, unofficial policy
on cab stands in the central business district. And this goes back a couple years ago when
we had a cab, a couple of cab stands down kind of near the Englert, weren't they down in
there?
Around the comer.
Around the comer from the Englert. And there were some issues with enforcement and
the expense to the cab companies and the fact that one had them and at that time there
might have been three or four cab companies. Now there are -
Eleven today.
Eleven.
Eleven. And so Joe and I decided that we really needed a more comprehensive (drop out
_ can't hear) we really didn't feel that it was, or at least would not be our
recommendation to have cab stands for eleven taxi companies, potentially, in an area of
such extremely high demand for parking and so we thought about what a comprehensive
thing might be for you to do that would benefit all of the cab companies. Certainly we
want to encourage the operation of cabs in the central business district, folks that may
need a way to get home in the evening. So we came up with the idea of using some
loading zones (drop out - can't hear) - one commercial and one that is just a non-
specified loading zone. Which are enforced right now by Chris's folks until 5 o'clock,
after which they just become (drop out - can't hear). What we thought we'd do is start
with four of these locations, three of them on Iowa Avenue (drop out - can't hear)
Clinton. And Joe and I thought that these would do a fairly good job of, with the high
demand, a lot of the bars and that sort of thing are. Obviously it would make them very
close to be dispatched anywhere in the central business district. You know, it would
minimize some spaces that are currently used for parking, just because it's not enforced
after 5 o'clock. This seemed like a rather benign way of doing that (drop out - can't
hear). And Joe and I struggled with the issue of how many spaces to go with, and what,
rather than break some of the zones into half and then have to enforce them differently,
we thought well let's start with 13 spaces (drop out - can't hear).
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March 19,2007
Elliot:
Davidson:
Elliott:
Fowler:
Elliott:
Fowler:
Elliott:
Bailey:
Davidson:
Bailey:
Fowler:
Bailey:
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How many locations? For, 13 spaces, so about 3 to a space, something like that?
Yeah, they vary in size a little bit.
Did, did that seem to be preferable to one location and have them just line up single file,
up like in front of what used to be the First National Bank?
What we, the original request was to take two metered spaces in front of the Sports
Column, take them out of the parking system, make them a cab stand all of the time. And
we didn't want to remove two parking places in a highly desirable area. We initially
chose commercial vehicle loading zones because they are restricted as to who can use
them until 5 o'clock, and so we thought it would be an easier transition to go from
commercial vehicle to a taxi stand because there would be less confusion. But then when
we started looking, that pretty much limited us to Iowa Avenue, and so then we went over
to Washington Street and took another loading zone by Pancheros. And our thought was
that if we had centralized places that people knew they could go to, they were out of the
travel lane, they were on wider sidewalks where people could wait, that it would be
preferable to having the cabs in the street. In conversations that we've had with various
cab people in the past where that the police department didn't want to let them park in the
middle of the street as a commercial vehicle because by definition they are not a
commercial vehicle. They are a vehicle for hire. And then we had heard concerns from
Council that didn't like cabs in the middle of the street with people running from the bars
out to the middle of the street to get a cab, so we were trying to get them off to the side.
So that was kind of the reasoning that we followed on picking zones and we kind of
looked at where we thought the foot traffic might flow and we thought this would meet
our needs. If it needed to be expanded we could go down on Clinton Street and put some
at the end ofthe pedestrian mall, if it was successful. If it's not successful, we can pull
the signs and let it revert back to what it is now.
That's the cool part of this proposal, is the only expense is installing signs, right?
Right.
So if in a few months we don't like it -
So, 1-
Regulatory signs that would be enforced by the police department (drop out - can't hear).
The area that Joe referred to by Pancheros, although we would take the entire one side on
the other side of the street there's also (drop out - can't hear).
So do we have the capacity to do increased enforcement to make sure that people aren't,
don't continue to use the middle of the street?
Well, that would fall to the police department. I haven't heard anything negative from
them since this proposal's been in the packet.
And then how much does a taxi stand cost?
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Fowler: Our proposal on this, usually what we do is we charge per space the cost of a parking
permit yearly. So it varies. And then it's designated for one company.
Bailey: Mmm hmm.
Fowler: Our thought on this was that there would be no charge for these spaces, they would be
open to all cab companies, so there's no revenue generated to the City off ofthis
proposal.
Vanderhoef: I like the idea ofthis and I think it will work, but I question starting it at 5 o'clock
versus 6 o'clock. My experience certainly along Iowa Avenue is that as people leave
work, both the University people coming out of the buildings and so forth, they meet
their ride in those loading zones. And the people are still sitting in the car waiting for
somebody to pop out and jump in, so the turnover is pretty rapid during that, at least 30
minutes after the 5 o'clock hour. If you can't use that for pickup of passengers, they're
going to be out in the street and we're gonna congest that 5 o'clock traffic along Clinton
Street and, well, along Iowa Avenue. And the same thing happens over on Washington
Street.
Fowler: Then we would need to extend the time on the loading zone until 6.
Vanderhoef: That's what I'm thinking.
Fowler: And then start, if you wanted to do that, and then start at 6, because we wouldn't want a
one hour open period where somebody would park, come in and say oh, 1 can park here
and then park and then come 6 o'clock they're tied up, whatever, and they get a ticket.
Vanderhoef: That's why I think maybe 5:30 would take care of that.
Fowler: We would need to change the other.
Baeth: Though,
Davidson: And the way to do that, excuse me Austin, a way to approach that before we go to the
expense of changing out all the loading zone signs as you've indicated, is we could start
it at 5 o'clock. My observation is that's not a real heavy taxicab usage time downtown.
Vanderhoef: Right.
Davidson: That typically the taxis are there later in the evening and so there's still probably gonna
be plenty of open spaces for what you're saying. If somebody is double-parked in a car
with the motor running they won't be cited.
Vanderhoef: If they're in a taxi zone.
DavidSon: I mean the, the worst thing might be that the police would ask them to move.
Correia: If they're sitting there.
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March 19, 2007
Davidson:
Bailey:
Fowler:
Bailey:
Fowler:
Davidson:
Karr:
Davidson:
Bailey:
Karr:
Elliott:
Karr:
Elliott:
Karr:
Elliott:
Karr:
Elliott:
Davidson:
Elliott:
Correia:
City Council Work Session
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It seems like something that we could see how it worked and ifthere was a problem as
you indicated and it was congesting streets with people waiting for pickups, we could
make the adjustments then.
So taxi stands by the Court Street Transportation Center cost, right? And these would be
free. And we would still continue to charge for those down by the bus?
Well, because we would be taking a meter.
Right.
And so what we do, basically, is charge for renting a space just like if it was on Court
Street.
And I think there are fewer of those than when we initially.
There are no - no one gets a cab stand anymore.
There are none. No cab stands?
Well, that's because it's a horrible location.
None.
Do we have an agreement or understanding with the taxi companies? What did you say,
we have eleven?
Eleven.
55 vehicles.
58 now.
58 - we proliferate.
And we'll have more by the end of the week.
I think they do strange things at night maybe. Do we have an agreement? If they line up
single file alongside the sidewalk as they do in hotels and cities, that they're directed to
the first one in line? Or are people gonna get -
No such formality at this time Bob. But I also don't think there's that kind of demand
either.
Just let it run. So just let it run.
Someone would have to do that.
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Davidson: Joe notified the company that applied for the designated space that we were going to
propose this, and we didn't hear anything one way or another.
Karr: I did.
Bailey: What did you hear?
Vanderhoef: If there was a charge, could it be just a per vehicle charge for loading zone use and a
sticker?
Correia: Do we charge our commercial, people that use our commercial loading zones, for parking
and loading and unloading? Ok.
Vanderhoef: I don't know, if-
Elliott: [fyou charge the, if you charge the taxicabs to sit there then they're going to opt not to
pay the money and they're just going to scoot the loop instead.
Vanderhoef: I don't know. Regenia was concerned about-
Bailey: Well ['mjust trying to think of worst case scenario. What would you do? [fyou owned a
taxi company and [ had 13 cars, where would they be? They'd be in all of the spots.
Correia: I mean that's one thing that we find out if we get complaints.
Bailey: Yeah that's, I mean I'm trying to think of what is the worst case scenario.
Karr: I think, I think that will be the only complaint. In the past, when you purchased a spot and
the purchase price was based on what the meter, the annual meter revenue was, it had, the
space was reserved for your company.
Bailey: Right.
Karr: This is a general taxicab space.
Elliott: Right.
Karr: So it is fair for all of the companies, but for those companies that have the most cars, one
could make an argument that they could use all the spaces. Or there are some of the other
companies that might say I'm willing to pay the money to have my spot. So I think it's,
again, I think trying it makes perfect sense, but I don't think it is what - the request was
for a reserved spot for them and they were willing to pay for it.
Baeth: Now currently with the process of purchasing spaces is there anything to keep a company
from buying all of them or is there a -
Karr: There is no set amount. You pay, you make a request for a space, it is reviewed by staff,
and then you are charged the annual fee that meter has. We do not have a set number of
spaces available. In the, many years ago we used to have some companies purchase
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multiple spaces. In recent years we have not had that happen. Because the cost was high
enough, quite frankly, that it wasn't warranted multiple spots and secondly, again,
depending on enforcement, they chose to cruise the area rather than have a stand and
stop.
Baeth: Ok.
Bailey: So besides feedback that you will naturally get from the cab companies because most of
your workers won't be out and about, how are we gonna get feedback about the
effectiveness and how well this policy is working?
Elliott: Marian, you get it, don't you?
Bailey: She'll get it from the cab companies. That's not the only perspective we'll need to judge
effectiveness.
Karr: I think you may hear from the citizens. I think you will.
Bailey: Ok.
Elliott: Yeah. I'd be in favor of moving forward, because there's little expense with this. Go with
it for -
Davidson: Is there 4 of you who'd like to do that?
Correia: You do like signs - you don't like signs!
Davidson: If there's 4 of you that want to go ahead, this'll go, this would be just like all of our
traffic engineering things. It will be on your consent calendar.
Wilburn: Anyone not wanting this to go forward? Ok.
Davidson: Ok. We'll go ahead. Thank you.
Vanderhoef: How, how can we just alert our police enforcement down there to-
Davidson: We'll send a copy ofthe Council action to the police so they know this is coming.
Vanderhoef: Because it might take a couple warnings for people who are used to parking there.
Davidson: Yeah, and it may be also Dee that it will be on a complaint type basis to the degree that
the police are down there and enforce it when they go by I'm sure they will, but if
somebody, if a cab operator calls and complains it can be enforced that way too.
Bailey: I'll just leave my car wherever.
Davidson: Just like a lot of traffic in neighborhoods are.
Vanderhoef: And tow a car or two?
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Davidson: Well, I assume they have a policy for ticketing and then towing eventually.
Bailey: Taxis usually have somebody in there - it's harder to tow.
Davidson: I'm talking about ticketing a car that's not supposed to be there because it's a cab stand.
Bailey: Oh, ok. I thought you meant the people in the middle.
Vanderhoef: It's using the cab stand area.
Correia: Don't tow my - no, I'mjust kidding - don't tow my car, I'll tell you that.
PAULA Deferred Prosecution
Wilburn:
Baeth:
Wilburn:
Mulronney:
Nakhasi:
Wilburn:
Mulronney:
Nakhasi:
Mulronney:
The next item is the PAULA Deferred Prosecution, rehabilitation for second offenses. I
believe this was put on, in honor of your request, Austin.
Sure. Well here to speak for it is Atul Nakhasi and John Mulronney.
There's a remote contro\.
Ah, got you.
Looks like our presentation might not work here. We'll just do without it.
We did receive in our information packet a copy of your proposal, just so you're aware of
that.
Sure.
All right. Once again, my name is Atul Nakhasi. I'm a student here at the University of
Iowa with the Governmental Relations Committee, part of Student Government. And this
is my good friend John Mulronney.
Before I begin I guess I'd like to start off with a brief statement about why we're here.
And what we are here to present to you is a solution to help us. As two students of the
University of Iowa currently under the legal drinking age, we recognize that drinking
plagues our community currently. The view we receive comes from a multitude of
angles, such as my personal experience as a UIHC Emergency Department nursing
assistant, Atu['s seat on the Student Health Advisory Committee, and just from our
experiences going to sporting events, bars, and just general life around campus and off-
campus housing and life. It is not hard for us to take these experiences and correlate them
to the fact that we are currently enrolled to a school noted by the Princeton Review in its
top rankings as number 9 in party schools, number 12 in lots of hard liquor, and number
15 in lots of beer. All rankings without a single positive connotation. This problem that
we see in our community is hardly resolved by many current City and school initiatives
of which take little to no advantage of co-existing programs that are all beneficial to the
same cause.
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Nakhasi:
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Together Atul and I worked on a potential solution encompassing numerous programs to
tackle the issue of underage drinking in a truly innovative fashion. Through the input and
work of many community and school1eaders we have solidified a strategy we finally feel
deemable to take to the next level by discussing it with you tonight. We hope to provoke
any questions, support, criticism, and skepticism that all of you may have after hearing
our strategy so that it can be further built upon to a level of implementation fit for
everyone's utmost approval. So here's a look at what we've come up with.
So in summary, the problem being underage drinking of course, what we're proposing
here is the use of community service programs and a reflection process in order to
reintegrate students within the community and rehabilitate them. What we've seen is a
more enduring penalty which requires a serious time commitment, improves the student
at heart while benefiting the community can provide a greater alternative than what we
have currently in place. And so to summarize some of the people we've talked with to
gain opinion, because as we said, this is a tentative strategy, this is something we're
looking to build on. You know, we've spoken with Austin Baeth, the City Council
liaison; the County Attorney, Janet Lyness; City Attorney, Eleanor Dilkes; the Police
Chief, Sam Hargadine; Mary Matthew Wilson, the head of the Civic Engagement
Committee; Bill Nelson, the head of the Office of Student Life with the University of
Iowa; Angie Reams, the head of the Stepping Up Committee; and Sarah Hansen, the head
of Health Iowa; as well as Vice-President of Student Services, Philip Jones. And so,
that's one of the, you know, definite benefits of what we're trying to do, is take
everyone's opinions into consideration, which is one reason we are here today to present
to you as well.
So the issues meant to be solved in this text are gonna be definitely varied in context.
And so for the underage drinker, what does this provide? This provides a more profound
reflection on the consequences of his or her unlawful decision. A non-monetary, thus
equally consequential punishment for the financially advantaged. An opportunity to leam
from their once youthful mistake without bearing its burden in later years, with special
exemplifications, such as competitive careers and acceptance into professional or
graduate colleges. A greater connection and appreciation for the surrounding community.
So once again, that would be for the underage drinker.
Benefits for the community would involve free labor: services that oftentimes would not
be available to the community because of funding restrictions. An opportunity to change
negative perceptions about offenders, a quick accumulating group of laborers able to
respond after periods of natural disaster. Manual resources for the entire City at various
levels of organization. That would be with the City. Then, with the University, faculty,
staff, and student body, a decrease in the rising status of the institution as a party school
and a correlating rise in academic integrity, as well as an oversight of volunteer
opportunities to benefit certain aspects such as University grounds, student organizations
and departments, a correlating decrease of alcohol related physical abuse and violence as
well as a correlating decrease of sexual harassment, abuse and rape, just contributing to
the ongoing campaign for a safer campus.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council meeting of
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March 19, 2007
Mulronney:
Nakhasi:
Mulronney:
Nakhasi:
Mulronney:
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Going through some of the numbers we put together as you can see in the proposal at
hand, the number of PAUL As for 2006 is 1,286. The cost of the first offense for the
PAULA is $2000 -
$200.00
$264.00 - not that big of a risk. Number of community service hours per year that would
be generated from such a strategy as this one would be 7000, 7038, which would be the
rough number that we would accumulate from this.
And that would be assuming 25% acceptance rate of this proposal by offenders at a rate
of 25 hours of community service. And once again, these numbers are tentative as well.
And so just a quick run through of what this would exactly entail- how would this work?
The offender would sign an agreement stating he or she is guilty of the charge and will
give up the right to have trial on the charges. For six months the prosecution of the
defense would be deferred. The offender would then be required to obtain a substance
abuse evaluation, complete any recommended treatment with a screening, then directed
towards an alcohol.edu program or an alcohol classroom or workshop setting, so show
proof of completion. Secondly, complete 25 to 35 hours of community service and show
proof of such completion. And finally, defendant will be required to complete a 2-page
essay showing what they have learned from the experience, because this is, once again, a
reflective process, trying to reintegrate students within the community. Finally, upon
completion of such three requirements, the offender will be responsible for the costs
accumulated in such an action and any administrative fees to cover the cost of the
program. Once that's completed, and without offenses for six months what would be
hopeful to happen would be fine and conviction ofthe offense deferred.
Going on with that, there was - going on, just going through the proposal as it is, and so
after that, the conditions phases, people we would like to see approve of this plan are
listed right there, and this was misconstrued slightly. This is not a list of people who have
approved this plan. This is a list of people we would like to see approve this. And that's
one reason we are here today, because we feel that your approval is very pertinent to his
idea. And we've talked with a lot of these people and they've given us their thoughts
which is why we've come up with this passage here today. But, once again, we still are
seeking approval from many officials and this is a tentative plan we're looking to put in
place.
So the creation of, or at least how we potentially see its implementation, would be that
the University ofIowa Student Government would create a new committee with the
authorization to lead, manage, organize and administrate the proposal effectively within
the Stepping Up Project. Now the way as we've talked about it before is it would have a
special oversight by the Dean of Students. The University staff will have to be integrated
into the committee and the participation of the City officials and liaisons would be ideal.
Students will be a major component as well. This will take a large burden off of the City
government and will encourage University students to help their peers and community.
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March 19, 2007
Nakhasi:
Wilburn:
Nakhasi:
Wilburn:
Nakhasi:
Wilburn:
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So finally, in summary, how this would work then once again, what we'd like to see is
eventually a passage of the proposal by the City Council, the formal creation and
authorization of the committee, staff and its students by a committee of the University.
An appointtnent of a committee city liaison by the City of Iowa City to make sure all
three parts, the City, University, and the students are working together. Training of any
committee staff and students by student government. Financial support by student
government and the University, the setup of the alcohol program by the University, and
review and finalizing the program infrastructure. Essentially, the goal is here students
helping students helping the community. It's a program we want the University and the
students to take action with, because it is benefiting them at core, but it's also benefiting
the City, which is one reason we're here today to present to you as well.
Nothing else I guess. Now we can just open this up to questions?
We, true - there are a couple other sheets besides the proposal that were attached that
would definitely be very beneficial to look at. This isn't a unique proposal. It's unique to
the City, but it's not unique in its entirety. This is actually in place at the University of
Minnesota and working very successfully, and that's one of the notes I did attach to this
proposal, a restorative justice proposal with the phone conversation with Dana Farley, the
Health Promotion Director at the University of Minnesota. And just a few things I want
to highlight from her notes on how it's working there. They found that with underage
consumption, students just paid the fine. No reflection and moved on. They wanted to
find ways to help students reflect more on how their behavior impacts them and impacts
the community. And that's the goal of this program as well. And this is being done, like I
said, at the University of Minnesota. And it's been going on since several years now. Just
the latest numbers since 1997: they've had 984 cases, 814 conferenced, 875 - 87%
compliance rate, 4500 services of hours, $6,000.00 in donations, 371 apologies, 582
personal development plans. You know, this is obviously the depth of such a program to
impact students. It isn't you write a fine, you go out the next night and you don't reflect
on the process. This is a long enduring process, a six-month period where you cannot
have any other offense, otherwise it won't work. And there's multiple steps like I said;
the essay, the volunteer hours, the substance abuse evaluation. And it's shown itself to
work at other universities with similar issues. And so that was one of the additional
sheets. And the third additional sheet is "Can Restorative Justice Programs Influence
Offender Recidivism?" And this is from the Canadian Department of Emergency
Preparation, where they have shown that Restorative Justice is in fact influential in
reducing rates of criminal activity for first time offenders. And so this was just important
to quantitatively defend the proposal for usage of community service hours in place of
punishment.
What is it that you're looking to hear from Council tonight?
Ah, gauge interest in the proposal, essentially, because we understand, this is still a
developing project, but we wanted to keep you up to date. We've been working on it
personally since August, but we felt it's reached a deemable stage such that we can
present it to you to gauge direction, essentially, direction and concerns, suggestions,
issues, whatever feedback you'd like to give us.
Ok, so you're interested in general feedback too.
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Nakhasi: Correct.
Wilburn: Yeah, Ok.
Correia: 1, I have some questions.
Nakhasi: Sure.
Vanderhoef: So do 1.
Correia: Ok. I really appreciate all the work and I'm very interested in exploring the possibilities,
so I'll just start with that. Just, a couple of things. One is it's very focused on University
students, and I understand, you're from the University. But I, I guess, if such a policy
were to move forward I would just consider that underage offender program, I don't
know how we would word it, 1 don't know how, but it's not just University students who
are effected by -
Dilkes: It would have to be offered to everyone.
Correia: It would, so just, I mean, obviously just the way we talked about the policy I would want
to see it encompass all persons who may receive possession of alcohol under the legal
age.
Nakhasi: Sure.
Correia: So then also just wondering about the involvement of Kirkwood Community College in
exploring some of the organizational infrastructure setup and other folks, I don't know
who, but that was sort of what I was wondering about. And then, Ijust had a question on
the conditions, #6. It says upon completion that, the charge - and then, he or she will only
be responsible for the costs already accumulated in the action and an additional
administrative fee to cover the costs of the deferred prosecution program. How much
would that be? Would it be?
Bailey: $264.00?
Correia: Yeah. Would it be what they pay? I mean -
Nakhasi: No. That would be - the main cost arises from the substance abuse evaluation program,
and that would be less than the cost of the PAULA. And in talking with Sarah Hanson,
the head of Health Iowa, there, what would happen is there would be a screening, an
initial screening, and if you were a light offender you would be geared towards an
alcoho1.edu program, which is an online program and would not require any fees.
However, if you are a more heavy offender-
Correia: I understand that -
Nakhasi: Which the fee is around $150.00 I believe.
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Correia: 1 mean, I guess, if we're trying to, if what you're gonna, if what you're potentially might
end up paying being involved with this program is close to what you might pay for the
PAULA-
Bailey: Why would you do it?
Correia: If you were financially advantaged, what would be the incentive? You would just pay it,
you would. And, if you're not financially advantaged you would not, you would try and
do this, and then I guess.
Nakhasi: I guess - the point is that yeah, you might be financially advantaged, you might be
inclined to pay it, but the incentive is a clean record. So even if you are financially
advantaged, you may reconsider and take advantage of this program because it is offering
you a clean record.
Correia: Ok. Ok. Did you have something?
Dilkes: I was gonna say that. The impetus is the avoiding -
Nakhasi: The clean record, yeah.
Vanderhoef: This is very intensive with what I am presuming to be volunteers who oversee all of these
various steps and the coordination and training of those volunteers. And I guess I'm
asking you, #1, where are all those volunteers coming from? And if you're looking to the
City for instance, are you looking for a City staff person, or are you looking for a City
Councilor? Or who are you looking for in that group?
Nakhasi: Sure. And one possible idea is to involve the Stepping Up Project with this. And in talks
with Angie Reams they still need to approve it, they still need to discuss it, so by no
means is this finalized or this for sure, but one possible idea is to involve ourselves with
the Stepping Up Committee, because their goals are very similar to ours. Ours is to
decrease underage drinking; theirs is to decrease high risk drinking. And by
encompassing the program within them, within their program, they have the
infrastructure already and integration of the University, the City and students. And so, the
volunteers would be largely student-based, through student government, to run a lot of
the bare necessities of the program. But we would like to have staff personnel hired by
the University. And in talks with Phillip Jones the Vice-President, who is also funding the
Stepping Up Committee, he said that he would be willing to fund it if we showed him it
can work.
Vanderhoef: Ok. So that, that's one of the people.
Dilkes: My office is gonna have to be pretty intensely involved in it.
Wilburn: Administrative fees.
Vanderhoef: This is what I'm looking at. So there is a cost for attorneys' fees, and how that impacts
our staffing and our costs for all of that. That part is worrisome to me, given that we've
not been able to add any staffing for quite some time and we have large needs for staffing
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council meeting of
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March 19, 2007
Dilkes:
Wilburn:
Dilkes:
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other than in the Attorney's office, so to add onto the workload at the Attorney's office is
problematic.
Can 1, maybe - I, I have had a number of conversations with Mr. Nakhasi and I've
appreciated the information he has given me and have tried to kind of share my concerns
with him as we've gone along. I didn't want to respond in writing until I saw the written
proposal but, and I will do that, but Ijust want to give you a little bit of framework here
and give you my kind of initial comments, ifthat's ok?
Ah, can I interject? Along the same lines, just to set the framework, and I'm sure it'll spur
some more questions and comments. I feel compelled to inform the Council, I've had
some conversations with some of the folks that have been cited tonight, and I appreciate,
you know, the work that you've done, but my conversation with Phil Jones, the Dean of
Students, is that he is not in support of this, this proposal. My conversation with Angela
Reams from Stepping Up is that Stepping Up is not supportive of this. That doesn't mean
that however you may decide to involve yourself with them, but Stepping Up is not in
support of this proposal. My conversation with Sarah Hansen is that Health Iowa is not in
support of this proposal. There's a lot of conversation about, in the proposal that you
have, about the, the free work and labor. My conversation, this brings up a slightly
different issue, with the local Volunteer Administrators' Network is that they just don't
have the capacity to handle, it's a challenge for them to handle just from the 10,000
Hours Show the number of volunteers that they're getting, and those are people who want
to volunteer. They expressed a concern about capacity to handle essentially non-
voluntary people doing community service work. And ifit involved, if their case or
situation involved the background of physical violence, assault, a sexual assault, physical
or sexual assault, that they simply, these nonprofits simply could not take those
volunteers, so the question is where are these volunteers going to be doing this work? But
I, I felt compelled to make sure the Council knew the information that I had that at least
as of today, some of the folks on here are not supportive of this. But Eleanor, if you could
go ahead with your.
Just, just to remind you. PAULA fines are set by the State, and our local ordinance tracks
those. A first offense PAULA is $200.00. A second offense is $500.00, plus a substance
abuse evaluation or a suspension of driver's license up to one year at the choice of the
offender. The third PAULA is $500.00 and suspension ofthe driver's license for up to a
year. There's been considerable emphasis put on substituting community service for the
fine. That is already an available option. The magistrate who hears the case can impose
community service in lieu of a fine. So that is already an option. And they do that. Some
of them do it more than others. I don't know how often it's requested. We usually leave
that up to the magistrate. What is not available, and what this proposal would add is the
opportunity to avoid a conviction. What we call a deferred judgement is not available for
PAULA, a first offense PAULA, because it is what we call a scheduled offense; it's got a
fine, that's it, you've gotta impose the fine or impose community service. So you can't do
a deferred judgement. What a deferred judgement is is a judge finds you guilty and if, in
a period oftime, let's say a year, you don't have any problems, there's, that conviction
goes - there's no record of that judgement. Ok. So we can't do that, and actually, your
request to the legislature in the last couple of years was to make it a scheduled offense so
that we would avoid warrants being issued when people didn't appear. And so prior to
that change that the legislature made at our request, deferred judgements were available.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council meeting of
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March 19, 2007
Wilburn:
Oilkes:
Wilburn:
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They are no longer. So the only option is to do, to avoid the conviction, is to do the
deferred prosecution.
I have a lot of concern about the amount of community service that we're talking about
and that's gonna have to be, while we may get many volunteers from a variety of places,
that's gonna have to be managed through my office, because we're the ones who are
going to be doing the paperwork with the Court, we're going to be responsible to the
Court to make sure that these things are done and that at the end of 6 months either
there's a conviction entered or we report to the Court that things are fine. 25 hours of
community service per offense is not going to be enough. Community service by code is
charged at, is calculated based on the minimum wage rate. Now that's what happens
when ajudge says ok, I'm going to impose community service in lieu of the fine. We
wouldn't be bound by that, with the deferred prosecution, but in my mind, if someone
who's convicted is having to serve community service at the minimum wage rate it
wouldn't make any sense to give a lesser rate for someone who's avoiding the conviction.
So for a $264.00 fine plus surcharge, we're talking about 37 hours of community service
per person. And that's assuming the 25% deferral rate that you all have assumed, and I
don't know what number of deferrals we would be looking at. The only experience I can
report to you about that is that when deferred judgements were available, and presumably
at least defense attorneys knew that, we didn't get a lot of requests for deferred
judgements. We've also had some preliminary conversations with both the Law School
and the Medical School about what effect they would see one PAULA conviction as
having, and I have some concern that those concerns have been over, overrated. So that,
that's kind of it for my, and I can put that in a summary memo for you if you want it.
Can you do that for us? That would be helpful.
Yeah.
I do have a question about, you do present, ah, part of the underlying philosophy, and
correct me if I'm wrong, is a restorative justice approach and I haven't done any research
on this, but the idea being that the victim or survivor of whatever it is, not just this but
other restorative justice approaches is that you are somehow providing some type of
compensation or remedy to support the victim or survivor. I can eyeball or common sense
or gut feeling, someone has a - they're intoxicated, they throw a brick through the
window of a downtown business. I can, I can see a connection that could be created in
that, the offender having to, you know, do some work to help compensate or hours or
clean or whatever, in that case. But it seems one step removed to me-
(cut off - end of tape)
Nakhasi:
Elliott:
Nakhasi:
Elliott:
So that's the main goal ofthe program, underage drinking.
And I think you're talking about the offender is recognized also as the victim.
The offender recog -
Because you, you are assuming that the offender drinking underage, that that individual is
breaking the law but is also doing something detrimental to himself or herself, so it meets
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both of those categories. Would people have the opportunity to opt in or opt out of your
program, or is it mandatory?
Mulronney: Oh, it's optional.
Nakhasi: Yeah.
Elliott: So, if you've got the money forget it.
Mulronney: Well, that's the point Amy brought up as well, in terms of the incentive, once again, as
the City Attorney brought up would be the clean record, where -
Elliott: I guess one of the things that I would like to see is the University simply doing more
about this, looking at academic probation, looking at letters, especially when PAULA is
concerned. And I think working with the University, working with Kirkwood, working
with the high schools and seeing what those people can do on their end, because these are
students, and it is assuming that their education has some relative importance to them. If
there is something that makes their education suffer, it might make them suffer so.
Mulronney: You can see it on that level but on a much smaller scale than what we're proposing. One
of the highlights that I appreciate most about this program is that although necessarily,
med. schools and law schools might not necessarily view this as the worst case scenario
in the world, they'll accept the student into the college, but freshmen students might not
realize that. This gives us an opportunity to reach to them. It might not be everyone and it
won't be everyone, but it does give us an opportunity to reach those people. We were
joking about telling a dramatic story, but the person who thought of this program
coincidentally last year he came up to us drunk after a night at the bars, had gotten his
PAULA and told us about, you know, he's going to pay it off and he's going to go out
and do it again. And he went out and he did it again and now he is nowhere here to talk to
us because he developed drug problems and is gone from the University. Now he is
someone who would have benefited from this, because he was premed with us, which is
how we knew him and he is someone who would have taken this to try and get it off his
record. And this program could have potentially reached out to him, through a, which
will hopefully reach out to these students. Now like I said it isn't necessarily large
numbers and it isn't the University taking into full accountability of all the actions of our
students in the campus, but it is a small step that we feel, if it is recognized by the
community and the school it is something that will hopefully grow into further things.
Dilkes: I, I forgot one very important thing that I wanted to pass onto you and that I had shared
with Mr. Nakhasi. There is a potential legislative fix. For public intoxication, the State
code allow the conviction to be expunged after, I believe it's 2 years if there haven't been
any problems. And that's just a matter of going to the judge and getting that conviction
taken off your record. There could be a very similar thing done at the State level for
PAULA convictions, and that would certainly be a much easier way to accomplish this
objective.
Bailey: I want to respond to something you said, Ross, and maybe I read too much into this about
restorative justice. I didn't do any research on it either, but it seems to me one of the
objectives with restorative justice is community building and I think the connection to
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council meeting of
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March 19, 2007
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
Wilburn:
Bailey:
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PAULA offense, besides the difficulty it might cause to the students is the difficulty it is
causing to our community and the downtown, the neighborhoods, but our community as a
whole. I mean, this is an ongoing discussion that we can't seem to come up with, you
mow, any answers, and I think this kind of connection about doing community service
and community building makes a little bit of sense. And the, one of the reasons, despite
all of the challenges with this proposal, one of the things I really like about it is it actually
comes from people who are dramatically effected and very close to this. I mean, I'm
pretty distant, I can drink whenever I choose and afford pretty much whatever I choose to
drink and I think that's one of the real benefits of this proposal. I think it has a lot of
challenges, but I think that community building aspect is something that we as leaders in
our community shouldn't overlook, and ifthere's some aspect to this that we can help
implement or move forward on or continue this discussion, I think it would move us in
the direction that we need to go with this issue.
I guess I'm just having trouble seeing the connection in terms of PAULA with that
community building, especially in light of some of the challenges. Not just for the City,
but in terms of the capacity of - I mean -
I understand those barriers, I do understand those barriers.
I mean, I, there's a certain time of year where as a nonprofit you get flooded with, I'm
not talking students, you get flooded with, just from the juvenile court or adult
corrections, with people, non-voluntary volunteers.
I mow. Right.
And it, it can appear and feel as a burden and so I'm just, I'm having trouble getting
where that community building comes when.
Well just take it out of the capacity and the practical and just look at it from creating
connections into the community. Even if, even if we don't have the capacity to do that at
this time, this creating connections into the community is, I think, an admirable and better
approach than some that we have discussed. And I understand the barriers.
And also I'mjust having trouble, given PAULA, I'm having trouble with I'm under age,
Austin's of age, I get busted for PAULA - I'mjust having, philosophically, I'm having
trouble seeing a connection to -
Well or think of it, and my comment, on the l"page, was couldn't we apply this to all- I
mean, we have a challenge in this community with irresponsible drinking, P AULAs or
whatever it is. I mean, frame it with irresponsible drinking that has a huge impact on our
community. And the huge impact on economic development downtown. Livability in our
neighborhoods close to downtown. Even if we don't have the capacity to build those
connections right now, if we begin to look at this issue from this perspective, I think we
will get more done with this issue than some of the other approaches that we've tried to
take.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council meeting of
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March 19, 2007
Dilkes:
Bailey:
Dilkes:
Baeth:
Elliott:
Baeth:
Wilburn:
Elliott:
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Well and I think Janet Lyness, the County Attorney, is very receptive to that when it
comes to issues that her office prosecutes. We don't prosecute for the most part those
cnmes.
Right.
So, but I think Mr. Nakhasi has had conversations with Janet and she philosophically I
think is very receptive to those kinds of things. But that would have to be worked through
her office.
You know Ross -
Excuse me. Go ahead.
You know, I understand your concerns and, you know, one of them being the connection
between a PAULA offense and the reparations to the committee - to the community,
directly, you know, repaying the community for that offense. And secondly the lack of
volunteer opportunities. And so when I started to think about it I envisioned something
that may alleviate those concerns, is that we can create volunteer opportunities. We can
have service days; the main thing I'm picturing is where we have some of these offenders
go downtown after those, those crazy nights at the bar, the next morning, picking up all
that trash that's downtown. I think if you're doing that, by someone going out there and
picking up all the cups and all the trash they see what their drunken peers are doing at
night, they're going to second guess, they're going to think twice about what they do next
time that they're downtown. And so they're helping the community for these sort of
irresponsible drinking practices and also it's a new volunteer opportunity, so we're not
taxing those volunteer organizations that are already set in place.
And I guess this, I mean prior to the plan it talks about some of the lack of research and
methodological constraints and that connection with the effectiveness of that community
building and restorative justice that you're talking about. 1 just, if it's something that the
Council and the City, at least on the City's point, wants to do and explore and is willing
to commit the resources, the budgetary resources and staff time to do so, that's fine, but
let's really be honest and clear about what it is we're, we're saying it's doing and what
the effect is. That's all.
I'm not nearly as concerned with the philosophy of restorative justice as I am concerned
with if you can make it work. And that's a big if. Because Austin what you said, it takes
significant supervisory and really experienced or trained supervisory to keep track of
these people who are non-voluntary volunteers. But if we could do it, if we could do it,
whether it's restorative or not, 1 don't give a hang about that. It's helping the offenders to
assist in the remedy of some of the situations they have created. And I don't know if we
have enough supervisor, for instance, if someone told Steve hey, can you take 10
volunteers today, Steve's going to say I, we don't have anybody to supervise. I've sat in
some meetings where some people who adjudicated these things and indicate that I just
don't have the people. That 1 usually call and say can you use them? They say no. So
their hands are tied. They can't do that, there's no way for them. But 1 would like to at
least look into the possibility of this. But I would like the education institutions to buy
into it a little more.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council meeting of
March 19,2007.
March 19,2007
Baeth:
Elliott:
Baeth:
Nakhasi:
Wilburn:
Elliott:
Nakhasi:
Wilburn:
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I think these guys would fully admit that this is in its pure infancy.
Yes.
What I think they're looking for is just some interest, because they don't want to go
through all this time and effort to developing something that will work and hear that you
aren't philosophically on board with it. So I think what they need now is just a tentative
go ahead that if you research this further and find something that could work that you
would consider it.
And quickly, just to address like some of your questions and concerns as well, like you
said there are, the people we talked to are just people we talked to, whether they're in
support of it or not to gain their ideas, because we need to talk to these people and need to
talk to you as well to gain your feedback to make this work. And, you know Vice
President Jones told me show me it can work and I'll fund it. So.
And that is the philosophical thing. And this'll be my final thought and I'll go and let you
go ahead. There's some question about did folks really get it? I mean, I used to do
substance abuse prevention work and ajail alternative or detention center alternative for
young people, but we didn't talk about in terms of that about it. In that case the goal was
until they were adjudicated they were still in school, if they were working a part time job
then they could do that. Ifthey weren't working a part time job than they're at home as
opposed to sitting in a detention center and at least not learning or doing while they're
there. We didn't talk about it in the context of them necessarily trying to learn a lesson
from that, and if folks can, if it will work and we find that we're able to manage the
resources to do that then that's fine. I'mjust saying let's be open-eyed. Because, you
know.
Oh yeah.
And the biggest question with if it can work is the philosophical one as well as the
volunteer utilization. There's a lot of hours, a lot of PAUL As and it's hard to predict how
many students would take advantage of this. But as Austin is expanding on his points, we
have, I talked with Mary Matthew Wilson who's an organizer of the VAN administrative
network as well as the head of the Civic Engagement Committee and she gave me a full
page of volunteer organizations who need volunteers. Because it's the large organizations
at V AN, it's the larger ones who dominate volunteers, who everyone knows. United
Way, you know, IOK, those are the organizations who do have sufficient volunteer
resources with students, but there are a lot of ones we don't hear of that can benefit, and
not only that but there are opportunities we can create with fixing the downtown scene
after hours, with creating our own large group projects through Habitat Humanity,
building our own projects to help spur community development. We're creative. We can
come up with ideas as a way to encompass large numbers of volunteers besides going to
organizations as well, and that was one of the main areas to utilize these volunteers, as
they would be a large number.
Any other comments or questions about this Council?
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Elliott: I'mjust pleased that you've worked on this and 1 certainly would not be in favor of
saying hey stop, forget it. I'd like to see you move on. But I think we don't want to give
you the idea that hey, we're buying into it, whatever you do is fine. But I'm interested in
seeing further. I think there are some serious, Ross pointed out some serious questions
and concerns.
Wilburn: Anyone else?
Bailey: I'm interested. I think, I think we lack solutions and we always have questions and if
we've got something here that is moving us in the direction ofa solution. I don't know
what working means. I mean, are we gonna hit 100%? I don't know, I don't think so, but
ifit addresses some of the issues I think that we should continue to explore it.
Vanderhoef: I kind oflike what Bob is talking about in getting a lot bigger buy in from the University.
And certainly I think he number 2 is the County Attorney and how they can work with it
and Amy sort of has a little idea about volunteering, the organizations that might be
different than the ones the City usually supports. But I think there's a real, real problem
when we get down to the City level and trying how to utilize that many volunteers. So
work on it, see what you can work out, see what, maybe you have to limit the number of
people that you allow into the program.
Dilkes: That, that's not gonna work.
Correia: No, and I think-
V anderhoef: You can't do that?
Dilkes: That's not, I can't do that ethically.
Bailey: No we can't do that legally.
Correia: And I think -
Vanderhoef: Well, well-
Correia: Can I just, I mean-
Wilburn: Go ahead, yeah.
Correia: I'm very interested in continuing to explore the possibility. And I, so I think we need to
figure out, there needs to be a way of how do we move forward. I mean, it seems like
there's two different options. One is you all go off and talk to all these separate people
and get different perspectives and try and put it together. Or you help facilitate all of the
people that need to be at the table talking about these are the concerns, this is what we
don't like, this is what we do like, these are the resources that would need to be involved.
And really hash out and get a sense of you know, if we don't have the County Attorney
then it crumbles.
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Dilkes:
Correia:
Dilkes:
Mulronney:
Correia:
Bailey:
Nakhasi:
Bailey:
Nakhasi:
Dilkes:
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Wait a minute, wait a minute. With respect to the talk of the County Attorney. We're
talking about P AULAs here, so that is a City issue.
No, 1 know, but we need to have all of, the University, I mean, we need to have Phil
Jones on board. We need to have -
Ok. I just want to be clear because Dee mentioned the County Attorney as well. When I
was talking about the County Attorney I was responding to Regenia's bigger issue.
P AULAs are mostly City offenses.
90%.
No, I understand that part, but I mean, I think that-
Well and clearly we as an organization and probably others are gonna need to see pro
forma resources and the cost. And how many volunteers would it take to work with
volunteers. And are you conceiving of, you know, how many staff positions, how many
hours of a city staffers time at the City Attorney's office would it take and these sorts of
things. So that's a natural next step.
And breaking down some of the numbers, assuming that some of the rates and one way to
limit the number of volunteers that take advantage of this is by raising the number of
hours and by using a level- Minnesota uses 15 hours. That wouldn't work here because
everyone would take advantage of this. By raising the bar you're almost limiting it to the
very serious students who really desire the opportunity for a second chance. And so by
raising this bar to 37 you do limit the number of students taking advantage of that. And
that's one way to, you know, make sure this is in a capacity that we can handle it. And
going by the numbers, it breaks down into about 100-150 hours of volunteer hours that
we need to have supervised or monitored per week. And that's breaking -
That's a lot.
Yeah. It's a significant amount, but there's ways to manage it, and like you said, this
doesn't apply to second defenders, and the City Council recently proposed passage that it
makes, if you get an offense outside ofthe City it's your second one if you get it in here.
And so those people wouldn't, you know, have this opportunity. So there are ways to
restrict it so that it can work. And one quick final note with suggestions is Resident Hall
Services is interested in even piloting this program over the summer with just their
students, because it's the ones in the resident halls who are a large group ofthe underage
drinkers, high density students who often frequent the bars, so that's a limiting population
of 6000 students where you can initially pilot the program, see how it works and expand
it within the City. So that's also another idea that Resident Halls has shown interest
towards.
I, I really have to make clear that we can't have a limited population. When my office
starts offering deferred prosecutions, that offer is somehow gonna have to be made
systematically to everyone.
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Wilburn:
Dilkes:
Wilburn:
Nakbasi:
Mulronney:
Elliott:
Nakbasi:
Mulronney:
Wilburn:
Elliott:
Wilburn:
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Ok. Eleanor is there any way that when you put together the memo outlining the
framework that you had said earlier, is there any way, or is this too preliminary for you to
give us an idea on how many additional staff or hours, is that too, that it would take to-
The problem I have is I don't know how many people are going to take advantage of this
and so it's just - it's really hard, I mean, I certainly wouldn't be proposing additional
staff, I think we would try and absorb it initially anyway. I think one other, the other
thing that you really have to, based on what Mr. Nakbasi: has been saying: remember,
there's nothing preventing someone deciding they don't want to do deferred prosecution
and having a judge impose community service. So we really have to keep - the, the
incentive here is avoiding the conviction. That is what we don't have a system for right
now.
All right. Ok. Well, you've clearly got a majority of Council members that are willing to
take a look at what you're able to further come up with, so thanks again for your time this
evenmg.
Thanks for the opportunity to present.
Yes. Thank you very much.
You've certainly done more than we have so far. We haven't come up with anything.
We've tried our best. We're glad to have this opportunity.
Thank you.
And - excuse me for a minute here Council.
Agenda items.
Agenda items.
PAULA Rehabilitation for Second Offenses
Karr:
Austin, did you have anything on, that you were going to present tonight?
Baeth:
A!!enda items
Wilburn:
No. Eleanor, due to the information she gave me I withdraw that proposal. It was when
we were talking about reevaluating what a second offense is for a PAULA that off the top
of my head I thought about that rehabilitation idea without having spoken with Eleanor.
So the service is already there, which is good news.
Agenda items.
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Item 3(f) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO SIGN
AND THE CITY CLERK TO ATTEST TO THE RELEASE OF LIENS
REGARDING A REHABILITATION AGREEMENT, A PROMISSORY
NOTE, AND FOUR MORTGAGES FOR PROPERTY LOCATED AT
813 RONALDS STREET, IOWA CITY, IOWA.
Correia: Ijust have a question on the penalties for selling cigarettes to underage. We, there's a
process where the police work with young people to?
Atkins: Mmm hmm.
Correia: Ok. So when, and that, is there like a regular schedule that we go into each establishment
once a year type of a thing?
Atkins: Generally speaking, they try and go at least once a year, right.
Correia: Ok. When businesses sell, sells underage, we assess them a penalty, do we go back
sooner than a year later to just make sure.
Atkins: That 1 couldn't tell you. 1 could find that out.
Correia: Because there's, like Hartig Drugs is a drugstore, it's located near, a lot of kids live
around there, I'm sure go in there. You know, I'm just wondering if we do checks sooner
for places that -
Atkins: I'll find out for you - I can get that by tomorrow.
Vanderhoef: Yeah. We've had reports sometimes that places that had problems in the past they do
check them to make sure that they've got it cleaned up and that it isn't reoffense on that.
ITEM 6. AMENDING TITLE 3, ENTITLED "CITY FINANCES, TAXATION AND FEES,"
CHAPTER 4, ENTITLED "SCHEDULE OF FEES, RATES, CHARGES,
BONDS, FINES, AND PENALTIES," SECTION 3-4-5, ENTITLED
"SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL," OF THE CITY CODE TO INCREASE OR
CHANGE CERTAIN SOLID WASTE CHARGES.
Elliott: I've got a question Steve on item 6. The increase. It's an 8% increase.
Atkins: Yes.
Elliott: And tell me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me like we've had a 20% increase I those fees
since '02.
Atkins: Since '93 you've had 27%. It averages about 2% a year.
Elliott: Well, I think it has raised $3.00 when it was $11.00. '02 was the first time.
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Atkins: Because we took on recycling. That was the big jump.
Elliott: Was that, was that the reason?
Atkins: Whole series of new services. Right. That was the big jump.
Elliott: And the quantity has proliferated. And -
Atkins: Yes.
Elliott: Ok. That's the reason for the increased cost.
Atkins: Yes. But on average, between '93 and '08 it's about 2% a year if you took, because one
year we went down.
Elliott: But I was just thinking that $3.00, it's about 20%, but it's-
Atkins: It's all related to recycling.
Elliott: Good, thanks.
Item 3e(2) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING ON
APRIL 3, 2007 ON PLANS, SPECIFICATIONS, FORM OF
CONTRACT, AND ESTIMATE OF COST FOR THE CONSTRUCTION
OF THE 2007 PAVEMENT REPLACEMENT FOR WATER MAIN
PROJECT, DIRECTING CITY CLERK TO PUBLISH NOTICE OF SAID
HEARING, AND DIRECTING THE CITY ENGINEER TO PLACE SAID
PLANS ON FILE FOR PUBLIC INSPECTION.
Vanderhoef: I was curious, and this was actually a consent item, but it just struck me. We are doing
water resources. This is number 2 under public hearings, so when it's in brick streets
they're on Golfview Avenue University Heights. Do we get any kind of capital money
from U Heights?
Atkins: No - they use our water system. They're just like a customer, nothing unusual. And if we
take out brick streets we put brick streets back. And are they a lot more expensive? Yes.
Vanderhoef: Yes. And are these mains are under the streets, they're the old ones? I presume that's why
the street has to come up?
Atkins: I'm assuming so, yeah.
Vanderhoef: That it's not just in the right of way?
Atkins: Yeah.
Vanderhoef: Just something to put on our list of things to think about.
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Atkins: We do their water and wastewater and they're again substantially treated as any other
Iowa City customer. I think we have other minor charges.
Correia: So then the cost comes out of our wastewater water budget. All of it - yeah.
Atkins: You would approve it like any other routine capital, if it was big enough. These are a
series of small ones that we're doing.
Wilburn: Other agenda items?
Vanderhoef: I grabbed my wrong information packet, but we had a letter in an information packet and
it's one of the February ones and I can't tell you which one. They were asking -let me
think now how that was. I'mjust about brain dead. It was the neighborhood council
asking us to respond on the use of the PIN grants asking us to respond on the use of the
PIN grants.
Atkins: No. That letter was sent, if! recall, to the schools and we were copied on it. I think they
were expecting to get a comment back from them before we weighed in. That's how I
read it.
Elliott: They wanted the school to provide more funding for the playground equipment so that
PIN grants would not have to go for the playground equipment.
Atkins: That's, that's what I understanded.
Vanderhoef: Yeah, that's what it was about, but I wondered if we had responded to that or?
Correia: They were ccing us. Letting us know that they had written the school board.
Atkins: Yep. That's the way I read it too.
Correia: Yeah. Just FYI that they were looking into that.
Atkins: Yeah.
Vanderhoef: I missed that. Ok. Enough said. They'll come to us if they want more.
Wilburn: Other agenda items?
Vanderhoef: No.
ITEM 11. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING, AUTHORIZING AND DIRECTING
THE MAYOR TO SIGN AND THE CITY CLERK TO ATTEST AN
AGREEMENT BY AND BETWEEN THE CITY OF lOW A CITY AND NNW,
INC. TO PROVIDE ENGINEERING CONSULTANT SERVICES FOR THE
FIRST AVENUE / IOWA INTERSTATE RAILROAD CROSSING
IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT.
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Wilburn: Were there any questions about agenda item 11 related to the 1" Avenue Iowa Ioterstate
railroad crossing?
Elliott: My only concern on that is - what was that $200,000.00 something?
Atkins: 300.
Elliott: I guess Ijust hate to be spending $100,000.00 here, $50,000.00 there, because I'm
certainly not ready to approve five or six million for that and if it's, how much money do
we have to spend before?
Atkins: Well, this will design that, substantially design that project and this is, and I think Ross
and Regenia can answer better than 1. We were informed that we have the possibility of a
Congressional designated funding and we need to have a project ready to go. And the
choice we make is do we do it and take the risk? You can always roll it up and put it on
the shelf. Please keep in mind that we take it from Road Use Tax Reserves; that's why we
maintain that reserve, for these sort of one-time opportunities. That's the way I viewed
this and that's how I packaged it together for you.
Correia: I think this is a really important project for the southeast side of town. I mean, both for
the environmental, you have people sitting in the congestion and public safety with the
fire trucks being able to access -
Atkins: I'm assuming we'll build it someday. Worst is that you've spent the money, we roll it up
and put it on the shelf.
Bailey: How long is it realistic to leave a plan on a shelf and be able to take it down and use it? I
mean I, what's the shelflife of a plan?
Atkins: Usually what happens, I don't think there's so much the plan issue, Regenia, as the fact
that you have to do some environmental assessments and those you know, you do all that
peripheral work. That goes away, and then you probably have to redo it.
Bailey: So a portion of this is good for a long time.
Vanderhoef: And updating the money.
Atkins: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Bailey: Obviously the budget would change but, so.
Wilburn: The other, just so that you are aware, this was a project that we presented out in
Washington DC to Harkin, Grassley, and Loebsack's staffers, and it was pretty strongly
indicated they, one of Sen. Harkin's staffers and his money guy was, basically his
comment was is this project ready to go? Because there was a point last year where some
money through a fimd came available and they were, he was looking for projects to fund.
Bailey: Designed and ready to go. And he called it a meat and potatoes project and they showed
quite a bit of interest in it.
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Elliott: I'm not, I'm not so much concerned about this amount. I'mjust concerned that we don't
continue over maybe the next 3 years or so, be spending considerable amount of money,
and in poker it would be like trying to fill an inside straight.
Atkins: You don't have the money to do that, so.
Elliott: Ifwe're not willing to spend a considerable amount of money for that, then let's not
spend the increments up to it.
Atkins: Well we have again historically maintained a reserve in Road Use Tax to take advantage
of those one-time opportunities. Now, is this an opportunity? That's the judgement call
you have to make.
Wilburn: There's no guarantee, there's never a guarantee with federal funds, but it was, it was
made pretty clear to us that this would, this could be a project that would have a strong
chance of getting funded.
Elliott: Good.
Atkins: And we'll continue to pursue the Clean Air. We've done that twice and we'll stay after it.
I mean, it's not like-
Elliott: I wasn't even gonna bring it up, but since you mentioned, that was the thought process
that went through my mind.
Wilburn: Ijust wanted to make sure any questions were answered before tomorrow night so that
we, you know.
Elliott: Yep.
Vanderhoef: Ok. And I'll just report to Council that while I was in DC I had two opportunities to
lobby for this project also, when we got with the Iowa delegation, and so made sure that
both Grassley and Harkin's people were aware and re-reminded of this project. And then
I had an opportunity with Secretary Peters and-
Wilburn: Transportation Secretary.
Bailey: Good. Did, did the staff seem to show the same? Did you gauge interest as we did in this
project?
Vanderhoef: With Harkin, yes, when 1-
Bailey: Richard? Were you talking to Richard Bender?
Vanderhoef: But when I talked with Grassley's Lisa, she wasn't as familiar, personally, with the
project and just reiterated that we had to have the name of the project, and as quick as I
got back I talked with Jeff to make sure those things were taken care of. But there
apparently is a separate fund that would be not be quotes designation that has to do with
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railroad crossings and so forth, and actually I was lobbying with the mayor from Flagstaff
and Secretary Peters is from Arizona so we were talking about our two projects and she
said just let her know, because those are the projects that have been funded already. In
other works, they're in the budget. Whereas Jeff still wasn't quite aware of where
Richard thought he had this money, and he was going to track that down, because it's
coming up real fast.
Wilburn:
Any other agenda items? Anyone want Council time tonight, or wait until tomorrow?
Bailey:
Are we going to talk about schedule, pending? I have some questions.
Schedule Peudiu!!
Wilburn: Schedule pending.
Bailey: I didn't want to preempt somebody's Council time though.
Wilburn: Does anyone want Council time?
Elliott: No, not me.
Wilburn: Ok, go ahead.
Bailey: Jen Gordon is going to come talk about recycling?
Atkins: Yes, we're scheduling that. Hopefully, we may even be ready by the next meeting.
Bailey: Ok. And then I'm interested, we talked about this, we talked around this last year a little
bit but we never got it done, of Summer of the Arts buses, and looking at the two primary
festivals, Arts Fest and Jazz Fest and seeing perhaps what we could do for running some
buses, perhaps on Sunday, find out when Children's Day is. Is there, are other people
interested in that?
Vanderhoef: Can we get some preliminary ideas of what it would cost per hour?
Bailey: Joe - I talked to Joe.
Atkins: We're preparing for you kind of an overview of transit funding because of all the things
that have transpired in the last year or so, so your timing is fine.
Bailey: But yeah, if we're gonna pull this off, Arts Fest is the I" weekend of June and so we
would have to get this scheduled pretty quickly if other people are interested in looking at
this. I think it would be, I think it would be a good community thing to do.
Elliott: Yeah. I'd be interested - oh, obviously if we could do it good, I'd be interested in the
cost. I'd be interested, it seems to me there are some of the smaller buses Steve that we
are not able to use for things like that. Is that correct?
Atkins: Yes. That's correct.
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Elliott: That's unfortunate.
Correia: Right. But there's some, there's some different, I mean, is there, are we gonna?
Wilburn: Well, is there interest in, because this is not an item tonight, so is there interest in
bringing back more?
Elliott: Yeah.
Bailey: Yes.
Vanderhoef: Yes.
Atkins: We'll get that, yeah-
Bailey: And I think that we probably should move on it. It's not fair-
Atkins: It seems like I'd forgotten it's sooner rather than later. I'll check with Joe tomorrow.
Bailey: Yeah, it's really not fair to wait too long if we expect to actually implement it.
Elliott: Ifwe're going to do it this summer we need to do it.
Bailey: And then I just had a quick question. Have we talked about scheduling staff reviews, I'd
like to get that on my calendar, because that's usually a daytime meeting. So Ijust toss
that to you.
Wilburn: I'll take a look at that.
Bailey: Thanks.
Correia: And then are we, so, in terms of scheduling pending discussion items, is there a time line
of hearing the process of the Senior CenterIParks and Rec. Commission discussion?
Atkins: We started the work. Linda is going in the hospital and she's going to be laid up for about
4 or 5 weeks. We'll pick it up as soon as she gets back. She'll be able to do some work at
home for us, but she's going to be out for awhile.
Correia: I'm sorry to hear that.
Bailey: Sorry to hear that.
Vanderhoef: I'll just make one announcement. On Thursday afternoon, Thursday noon, I received the
resignation of the Iowa League of Cities (can't hear)
Karr: I'm sorry - I can't, we're not hearing you.
Vanderhoef: Oh.
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Correia: I think she's sad, that's why you didn't hear.
Vanderhoef: I received the resignation from the executive director of the Iowa League of Cities, Tom
Bredeweg. So I've already put into motion hiring a new one.
Bailey: Quite a time to be Chair, eh?
Correia: Another schedule of pending discussion items - when are we gonna have the
conversation with Andy Rocca about the paraprofessionals?
Atkins: He's preparing a report, yeah. I couldn't give you a timetable on that, but I know he's
preparing it. We've talked about that already.
Correia: Ok.
Bailey: So would it be possible for you or somebody to keep, to give us the list so we can keep-
I think we lose track of things.
Atkins: That's a good idea. I'll do that. Yeah. Got enough of them kicking around.
Elliott: What's pending?
Bailey: Yeah - what is exactly pending.
Vanderhoef: Mmm hmm.
Atkins: Ok.
Wilburn: Ok. See you tomorrow night.
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