HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002-08-19 Transcription August 19, 2002 Special Work Session Page 1
August 19, 2002 Special Work Session 5:05 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Dormell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn, Pfab, Kanner
Staff: Atkins, Helling, O'Neil, Jackson, Dilkes, Karr, Rocca, Jensen, Klingaman, Boothroy,
Franklin, Stutsman, Dulek, Winkelhake, Fowler, Logsden, Cate, O'Malley, Johnson
TAPES: 02-61, SIDE TWO; 02-65, 02-66, 02-67,BOTH S1DES.
Neighborhood Housing Relations Task Force Recommendations (IP1 of 8/15 info. packet)
Lehman/Get it started, and we'll go from there.
City Manager Steve Atkins/The memorandum was intended to respond to, I believe, it's 25, 26
items that task fome had presented to you, I think it was at your last meeting about a
month ago. And I'll just try to summarize rather than just kind of take you through point
by point, assuming you've read through the thing. A couple issues that I want you to keep
in mind as you consider what actions you might take in support and sending back and
directing us, is that anything we do now needs to be fitted within the current
responsibilities of the Department of Housing and Inspection Services. Many of the ideas
put forth we believe we can accomplish and can be fitted within those work
responsibilities. I would point out to you and remind you that we, in some instances, are
being asked to support additional staff. I think that's something you want to separate and
take your time to think through considering the budget process that we just went through,
and whether there is a priority with respect to the services that we did reduce last time
around, do you want to restore them, I think you, again, when it comes to budget matters
I'd really like for you to take your time. In general, the response to the proposals, and
again I'll just summarize for you, a good bit will require action on your part. One is an
increase in our fines. That can be accomplished by an ordinance. All you need do is direct
and that can be prepared. The establishment of citizens' committee seems to be
worthwhile to us, particularly with respect to the communication process. We didn't have
any magic with respect to who should be on there. We would recommend that some task
force members be appointed, as well as landlord and tenant representatives. I did indicate
that I believe it should rest with you, your responsibility, to appoint this committee. I'm
just a little uncomfortable in a management position appointing the committee, so you
need to decide on who you might like to have. Another proposal is the verbal notification
process. That will require an ordinance amendment. We do need to do a little more staff
work on that. One of the major items is the expansion of the web page as it relates to the
information that is being requested by representatives of the task force, and ultimately
HIS is going to need this information. We'd like to think that we can design and use a
web page easy to use for folks. There will be some concerns and not everyone has
accessibility to a computer. We'd like to take a run at the web page and then consider the
printed materials that appears that the committee's interested in seeing provided.
Vanderhoef/How much staff input?
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Atkins/Well, I'm not so sure it's going to take a mountain of staff time. We have an internal
committee, in fact they're scheduled to meet this Wednesday for the very purpose of
beginning some of the design elements for this. You know them; Lisa and Alana and
Gary and Kevin. What it's going to take I really don't know right now, Dee, but we
didn't intend to ... we don't see it as a big expense in the form of an additional budget
appropriation, just the staff time to devote to it. We have met with, and I think a number
of you are aware of this now, with very very favorable response to our new police web
page and that a lot of folks are interested in the information that's there, and I think, you
know, sort of the natural curiosity, but I think this thing is going to be something that I
think could be very productive for the community as well as responding to the task fome
concerns. The policy ... a policy question that I believe you need to give some very
serious thought to is the zero tolerance policy. I call it zero tolerance. We do need to have
an information system in place to make sure that if we are going to cite on first instance
that it's done with satisfactory information to support why we would choose to do that.
Trash amnesty has met with some interesting responses internally. There are those that
believe that it's a great idea, and there are those that think it's a terrible idea. We did
check with Cedar Rapids to ask how they did on their last one, and it took the five weeks
to get everything picked up. We do have an amnesty, as you know, that four or five day
when have in move-out in August, that's worked fairly successfully, but we want to bring
some proposals back to you on that issue. The information packet for students, well we
do need to meet with the University on some of these. Dee and Steven have the outline of
an information page that they're working on as your committee that's assigned to the
student government. And the residential permit is also something that we are designing.
In fact, I think we met today, or the folks met today, I haven't had the results of that
meeting. It seems that a number of the issues for discussion purposes, particularly things
like designing information packets for landlords and tenants, might be good for this
committee to take on as a responsibility. We can provide them drafts, make sure it
supports what they're interested in. And then, finally, the municipal infraction, having the
police enforce that, that's a training question and we have ... we don't have an answer for
you yet on that but we will plan to do so. Bottom line is that, in summary, there's many
of the activities that are underway; unless you tell us otherwise we will continue to
proceed down that path. If you're going to name the committee, I think you need to think
about it, schedule it maybe for your next meeting where we can actually bring ... bring
some folks together, and that will allow us to ... and we would like to get back with you
again in about 30 days to let you know where we are. That's it.
Lehman/I have a question, probably for Eleanor.
Atkins/Okay.
Lehman/If the Council appoints this committee, is that committee subject to open meetings
laws?
City Attorney Eleanor Dilkes/Yes.
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Lehman/Is the same true if it's appointed administratively?
Dilkes/No.
Lehman/Thank you. I mean, I do think there's been some concern that some of the issues that
this committee may deal with
Atkins/Yeah.
Lehman/they may like to deal with those without being a public meeting.
Atkins/Yeah. It's your call. I mean, I'm expressing a philosophical position, Emie, that I think
... citizens' committees are the responsibility of the City Council to appoint those, so ... I
mean, if you want me to do it, of course I will, and you know where I'm going to go. I'm
going to go to the tenants and the landlord association and the task force and pick some
names.
Lehman/Right. Does Davenport, or Bettendorf has this citizens' committee, is that ... ?
Kanner/Davenport.
Lehman/Davenport does?
Dilkes/Davenport uses a staff committee to evaluate the situations before they decide to
proceed. I don't think it's a ... appointed by the City Council.
Lehman/Okay.
Dilkes/And it's a more limited committee.
Pfab/My question would be
Dilkes/I mean, you certainly could get some ... Steve could get some direction from the City
Council as to who they'd like to see on that committee, but the issue is, is it a policy
making committee or is it a committee that's designed to ... to aid in the enforcement and
the coordination of the enforcement and that kind of thing. And I think there has been
some concern about having that be an open meeting because there'll be less candid
dialog.
Lehman/Okay.
Pfab/Okay. I guess my question was, what ... what would be the issues that would not be
appropriate at an open meeting ... open public meeting?
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Lehman/I don't have any idea but I can imagine, for example, we ... my ... from reading
through Steve's report I believe that at some point there may be a list of nuisance
properties.
Atkins/We will name names. I don't think there's any doubt about that.
Lehman/That's correct. But I also think
Atkins/To make this effective we have to name names.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/Yeah.
Lehman/Right but them may be discussions relative to nuisance properties about what sort of
action that should take place or could take place, or maybe mediation even. That may
very well be better done privately than publicly.
Pfab/We have ... we have nuisance properties now in various forms and I don't see where that
causes a big problem. And if we have to, we can call ... we can call an executive
Lehman/I don't think you can do that.
Dilkes/Some ... some of... many of these matters are going to head towards litigation. I mean,
ifI sit down and talk to a staffmember about the pros and cons of proceeding to litigation
should that be an open meeting?
Lehman/Um hmm.
Dilkes/That's kind of
Wilburn/It should be
Lehman/Well, it's just something to consider. I don't know what the pros and cons are, I just
think that we may find a situation where those ... those meetings might best be non-
public.
Pfab/Well, if that ... if that was the case, is that something that could be turned over to the City
Council to handle in an executive meeting?
LehmanJ No.
Atkins/No.
Pfab/There's only a couple reasons that we can go in executive session, this isn't one of them.
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Pfab/But if you're talking about litigation...
Atkins/Well, there's the possibility of it. I mean, we're hoping that the effect of the committee
will be, you know, once we've satisfactorily defined nuisance, we've got our information
systems in place, you've given us some clarification on your tolerance policy for calls,
we're going to name names and say, hey, these ten folks are not playing by the rules and
we're gonna have to do what we have to do. Now, ultimately they can respond by
litigation. I think that's what Eleanor's concerned about.
Dilkes/Irvin, the Council can go into an executive session for litigation, of course, as you often
do, but first of all, decisions about whether to file a municipal infraction often aren't ...
typically aren't brought to the Council. And what we're talking about is whether the staff
discussions preceding the decision to litigation are open to the public or not.
Pfab/Are we talking about ... are we talking about a staff committee or are we talking about a
citizen committee?
Atkins/You're talking about a citizens' committee made up of various interest groups, tenants,
landlords, task force members, and the question is do you want a staff person, me, to
appoint that committee or is it a committee that should be appointed by the City Council?
If you do that, you understand the implications on either of the appointment processes.
Champion/I would like to see the meetings open, but on the other hand I do think it'd be a
problem for citizens to talk about nuisance properties in public, whereas some of us
might not be so unwilling to do that. I think they would feel very much on the spot, so I
think the Council should decide the makeup of the committee, but I think you should
appoint it.
Atkins/That's okay with me, I mean, I ...
Kanner/Can I respond?
Pfab/I would not support that.
Kanner/Connie, I think that
Pfab/Watching the committees at work, I
Kanner/I think that the staff currently under Steve, they do these things, they ... they discuss
these things and I think they do a good job. I ... I would like to make use of a citizen
committee to continue the good start that Ms. Sale and her committee got going. I think
that's what I see the role as - a citizen committee that's going to look at policy issues, it's
going to help us keep on track for discussing these issues and implementing the ones that
Council wants implemented and look at further ones. I think we're a small percentage of
the way there. We have to look at other issues, I'd like to see, for instance, more issues on
how we can work on empowerment of people in the neighborhood for the long term so
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that we can cut back on police calls, lets say, and some of these other nuisance calls, and
so that's where a citizen committee comes in. We've got a lot of resource, use some of
the people that are already on the committee, talk about who else we want to do it, and let
Steve and the administration continue to do the work that they are already doing and then
have the citizens' committee that can do feedback in a public way, if they feel Council or
administration is going too far, they'll talk about it in a public way. If they feel they're
not going far enough, Council or administration, they'll have that feedback. I think it's a
much healthier process and it allows us to have public input about appointing people. I
think the public wants to be involved in a very public way.
Pfab/I ... I will ... if this is not a citizens' committee that goes forward, I certainly am going to
be ... I'm going to have a lot of questions that I don't have answers for right now.
Wilburn/Steve, can you walk me through, you'd mentioned that there was a prior housing plan
advisory committee? Was that a policy (can't hear) or was that more
Atkins/It was a staff committee, yeah, and we came together to work with those folks and I ...
the charge to this, the ... housing relations is the name I have hung on the committee, I
believe is going to be a lot broader, and I think there's an expectation on the part of the
task force that our enforcement is also going to become more aggressive with certain
selected nuisance properties. And I want to make sure that we're talking with folks about
that. The other was pretty much a communications process. And it worked ... it worked
well for what it was designed. This committee, I think, is going to be, probably within the
organization, a little more higher profile because I suspect there'll be meetings that we
will bring the police ... the police will be there, HIS will be there, they're gonna want to
question folks, I mean ... I have an internal group that we're going to work out, but I
suspect that that kind of information will be exchanged with the committee, and I think
that's what the task force expectation is.
Champion/And I think it's important that this is a recommendation of the task force that I think
it really has clout, really, begin there, and I think we've talked about this for years and
now I think it's time to do something. I think it needs to be done privately.
Pfab/Well, do we ... we had the most results we ever had because we had a public ... we had a
public discussion.
Lehman/Would it be reasonable to ask the chair of that committee to come back and give us
what they expect that committee to do and let us at that point decide? What is your
expectation of that committee, what sorts of issue do you see them dealing, or are you
comfortable in discussing that without meeting with your committee?
Hillary Sale/Well, let me say first of all that the task force recommended that it be private and
not public, and we did that for the very reasons that the City Attorney has mentioned,
which is that there are conversations to be had which are very hard to have in public
meetings. It wasn't that anybody was intimidated by public meetings - we had more than
enough of those. It was more that there are certain types of conversations, for example,
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Doug pointed out to us one of the things the City's had to deal with in the past has been
people who don't pay taxes and how do you deal with the property with somebody who's
not paying their taxes. And although that's not the exact kind of conversation we would
expect this group to have, that's a conversation better held in private because it's the
precursor to litigation, which nobody wants to expose staff viewpoints on those issues to
the public until you've had a chance to consult with Council and have other
conversations. So our initial suggestion was, in fact, that this be a private group appointed
by the City Manager, and while I'm standing here on this subject, I actually have a
response for you and the mayor indicated there'd be a time for that, so maybe I'll just put
my two cents in on the committee and leave the other things for a minute. The staff, the
task force specifically asked that this committee be run through the City Manager's
office. And there was a reason for that. Obviously, you will choose what is the best
mechanism, but that's because the problems that the task force dealt with far exceed
housing problems. They involve the police; they involve Planning & Zoning; and they
involve the legal department. The legal department actually was invaluable to the task
force, both in terms of building an understanding of the issues and the rights of the City
and the rights of tenants and the rights of landlords, and coming up with solutions that fit
within all of those mechanics. And so when we envisioned an ongoing committee both to
continue the dialog and to help implement proposals, we envisioned one that would be
more centrally located and not just focused on housing issues. I realize you're not saying
it would just be focused on housing issues, but just to be clear. And one other thing I just
want to say on this subject, which is that we specifically included in our list of potential
committee members a representative from the Affordable Housing Committee, and I
realize Steve didn't intend to be inclusive in his response about exactly how that
committee would be made up because he was leaving that to a further conversation with
you; I didn't want to leave this subject without reiterating that we think that's important
because the interests and the items that we learned about from people that came to those
meetings even though they weren't on the task force were very important to us in making
decisions about what some of the repercussions might be of some of the items that we
discussed.
Wilburn/Well, it's helpful to know that you envision this to be more nitty gritty work in terms of
some of the ramifications, talking with specific property owners, specific issues, possible
legal ramifications. If this committee were to, I guess it goes back to the description
whether it were a policy recommendation group or not, if this group were to, throughout
the course of interactions with the different groups and issues that come in front if it, if
that were to have that group in the end suggesting a policy, then there should be full
expectation by this group that it's going to come in front of Council and there would be,
you know, the public process come in play then and that it would not be a blank
acceptance of whatever policy the Council sees.
Atkins/Ross, I never doubted that what we come out with the committee, I mean, in some ... is
going to end up here anyone. I don't think there's any doubt that ... particularly when
you get into, we could have a discussion over proposal to expand or reshape an ordinance
- it's going to find its way here anyway. But your staff does that routinely anyway.
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Wilburn/Right, right. And I would see
Atkins/I don't mean to throw a wrench in the works, but it's sort of my concern that these
committees are best appointed by City councils. If you would prefer the other way, I'm
not arguing with Hillary over that - that's not at issue.
Wilburn/Yeah. And I would ... and if this type of committee's going to be helpful in
neighborhood relations, then it might be more productive to have those frank, nitty gritty
discussions, and that's just my take on this.
Pfab/Well, my point would be, this ... this problem has been going on for, at a minimum of 20
years, and it was until it got public ... until the public got so
Champion/Fed up?
Pfab/Discouraged, or yeah, I have another word but it's not used in polite company. That
something finally happened, so I don't think we want to go back to what was there. There
was nothing to stop what all ... all the City staff, all the different departments from
solving this a long time ago. And that ...that's not saying that they ... that they can't, but
if we don't keep ... if we don't keep this out in front of the public, it's gonna ...we're
gonna go right back to it. One of the ... one of the big problems here, there isn't enough
money to do the inspections and that keeps getting buried and buried. There's not enough
money to go out and do community policing where that's necessary, and I think burying
this in a staff position is absolutely the wrong way. If services are needed, the public has
a right to know this and because they're the ones who are going to the bills.
Wilburn/I would disagree with the premise there, in fact I disagree because ... about nothing
coming forth before, because before I was on Council, I believe a keg ordinance proposal
came up in the full public process and I don't believe it was adopted, was it?
Lehman/Right, was not.
Wilburn/So I think
Pfab/But this is a lot more than a keg (can't hear)
Lehman/This is not a staffcommittee, either.
Champion/No, it's a City marriage
Lehman/We're talking about a citizens' committee, not a staff committee. It would include staff
people.
Atkins/If you direct me to a point, I would intend to look at tenants, landlords, affordable
housing, task force members, you know, five to seven folks, that's what I'm assuming
you want.
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Wilburn/As a matter of fact, I would see this possibly getting going dealing with some possible
day to day issues that come to fruition and the Council continuing on with the
recommendations here, because we have some policy recommendations that we're not
gonna accept at face value; we're going to debate and deliberate those. But I would see
this committee as getting going dealing with some day to day issues.
Lehman/How do we want to handle this tonight? Are we? No, no, what sort of direction are you
looking from ... looking for at Council?
Atkins/I would like on the citizens' committee to be able at the next ... your next Council
meeting, have some sort of a memorandum prepared to just kind of frame generally what
the issues are, list groups to be represented, and I would hope that you would come up
with some names. Now, if you're choosing not to do that and want to kick it back to me,
at the next meeting I will present to you a proposed citizens' committee with the groups
and I'll put names next to them. If that's what you want.
Lehman/Alright, how many would you
Atkins/That's not what I prefer but if that's what you want, then I'll do that.
Pfab/Before we go on to that, I'd like to make another proposal. I would say that if this
committee is ... how it's going to be put together, I think a public hearing would be a
good idea of where to go forward at this point. We went through the recommendations,
we know that there's interest out here, and we know that things have to be done. But I
think that this is something that ... this is going to work with public participation.
Champion/You know, Irvin, you're right, but you know what? We are the public. We are the
public.
Pfab/Well, then, if we the public then we should be responsible and we should be more active in
it, I do believe.
O'Donnell/ I think we're acting very responsible. Ernie, I ... I'm prepared to make a task force
recommendation on this. We're gonna to have to use your favorite word and tweak some
of these. Because I'm not ... I'm not buying the zero tolerance.
Lehman/Well, let's deal with the committee first.
O'Donnell/But I'm ready to move forward with a task force recommendation, Ernie.
Atkins/Remember, folks, any action you take on here ... the fact that we've taken this body in
this form on a Tuesday night, is public to subject to public discussion and debate. I mean,
we've traditionally
O'Donnell/Well
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Atkins/And if there are items that you prefer calling a specific public hearing, I think that's
something you just need to talk amongst yourselves about.
Lehman/These recommendations
Champion/But weren't there two public hearings already held?
Lehman/Public meetings, yes.
Atkins/Yeah. I mean ...
Champion/By the committee.
Lehman/Right. Several.
Atkins/Oh, the task force did a big time job in getting the word out of that. If you want to get
each and every little element of this thing and have a public hearing on it, I think we're
spending a lot of time having hearings and not a whole lot of action.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/I'm assuming we're at an action stage now, you want certain things done. Started.
Lehman/Alright, let's deal with the citizens' committee. How many wish to pursue the
recommendation of the task force which indicates the City Manager will make the
recommendations of the folks to serve on the committee?
Atkins/I would caution ... I wouldn't say recommendations.
Champion/Appointments.
Atkins/I think to satisfy
Lehman/Appointment, I'm sorry.
Atkins/Okay. If that's what you're telling me to do
Lehman/Alright.
Atkins/I'm gonna name names, if you want a list.
Lehman/Alright, what's next.
Atkins/That's done?
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Lehman/That's done.
Atkins/Alright, so the next meeting you expect to have
Dilkes/I'm sorry, for the record, what do we have on that one?
Lehman/We have five ... how many do not favor the appointment by the City Manager? Vote is
5-2, Kanner and Pfab voting against.
Dilkes/The direction?
Lehman/The direction. The direction is ... anyway. What else would you like from us?
Wilburn/We maybe should go through these points one by one. Steve's given his
recommendation and we should give our feedback to him.
Atkins/I think Hillary wanted to comment on it, too, didn't you? On some of these things?
Sale/On some of them.
Atkins/Okay.
Lehman/Well, why don't we take your comments, and then if we have specific questions we'll
go to those.
Atkins/I would like to know, for example, while Hillary's passing out the information, if you're
interested in seeing the fines increased, all you got to do is just say go, we'll go to work
and prepare it for you.
Lehman/But I also
Atkins/If you're okay on verbal notification, we'll prepare the ordinance. I'm assuming you're
telling me not to do the web page.
Vanderhoef/Oh, no.
Atkins/But there are some differences in opinion on how that public information can be put out
and I think the committee can also help do that.
Vanderhoef/I think several 0fthese things on the ordinances that a proposal ... that a draft
should be presented and at that time then we will discuss the proposal and either accept or
modify.
Atkins/Yeah, at our upcoming, our agenda meetings when we get together as a staffto prepare
that information. But I haven't heard you tell me don't increase the fines. I mean, you
may choose to go against it, but
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Vanderhoef/Well, increasing fines is one of them I'd say go ahead and do it if everyone else is
interested in that.
Kanner/Well, I think that fines are okay where they're at right now for the time being. I think
they're sufficient deterrent and that people ... what's gonna stop 'em ... I think if they do
get a fine, that's deterrent enough at the $100 mark, it's not ... they're not going to say,
think to themselves, the fine is so much higher now. I think $100 is reasonable deterrent
for some of these things. They're not murder cases, and $100 for over occupancy or
accumulation of junk, $100's quite a pinch on their pocketbooks.
Lehman/Except that if I'm able to stick three or four extra people in a rooming house at $300 a
month, $100 doesn't amount to much of anything.
Kanner/I think we have to go after the landlords and put some pressure on them. And we heard
some possible explanations of why that happens, and I think we have to work on the
greater housing scene to alleviate some of those pressures and ...
Lehman/I don't disagree with you, but I'm just saying ifI can put two extra tenants in there at
$250 a month, that's $500 a month, hey that's worth the gamble on a $100 fine. If they
don't catch me, they don't catch me and I collect the $500. I'm not saying I support
Kanner/I think there's some (can't hear) defining system that will be more efficient, that's what
I'd like to get from a citizens' task force, actually, to find something that's more efficient
than a reactionary fine. We know it's not as efficient as other positive means and we have
to find some of those. I'd like to find some examples in other cities that go beyond just
fines. Again, and it hurts people of lower income more than it does of higher income. It's
not going to be as big ora sock. It's like a
Pfab/Maybe use the Swedish fine system.
Kanner/That would be a good start. A progressive fining system based on income.
Vanderhoef/Okay. One thing that we have done frequently when we have set fees within the
City is to try and make it neutral in the case of staff time, and the more staff time that we
put into these kinds of things, then to me, the cost of enforcement is going way up and we
are not recouping anywhere near the cost of enforcing our municipal fines. So I'm in
favor of moving the fines up.
O'Donnell/I agree with that.
Champion/I'd agree.
Lehman/The ultimate decision will be made by the judge anyway. Is that not correct?
Atkins/Yes.
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Lehman/We may have a $250 first offense and the judge may decide it's $75. Is that correct?
Dilkes/No, the judge may decide between alternatives, fine, injunctive relief, you know,
ordering them to clean up and assessing the cost, etc., etc., but if the judge assesses a fine
for a municipal infraction, it will be the fine that we set by Code.
Lehman/Now, if we change the fines for municipal infractions and raise them, is that the case
for all municipal infractions?
Dilkes/Yes.
Lehman/So it's a much larger issue.
Dilkes/I mean, you could take a particular municipal infraction and give it a specific fine. We
have a Code provision that gives you a fine if there's none specifically provided, and that
applies to many and most of our municipal infractions. But you certainly could pick some
out and give them their own specific fine~
Pfab/And are you saying that these might be good candidates for that type of treatment?
Dilkes/That'd be a policy decision for you all.
Pfab/No, no, no, I'm not saying ... no, no, I'm just asking, is this a place where it would be
maybe appropriate to do that.
Lehman/That's really our call.
Dilkes/If you think so.
Wilburn/I would feel more comfortable seeing a list of the municipal infractions that would be
affected.
Pfab/I mean, I didn't mean not to talk away from (can't hear)
Lehman/Right. I agree.
Vanderhoef/I agree, I'd like that too.
Lehman/Steve, could we have that list of sorts of things that we're going to impact if we change
the fines?
Atkins/Okay.
Dilkes/Could ... if I could just interject one thing. In the initial packet that the task force
provided to Council where we had draft ordinances for you to get a sense of where we
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were headed, that actually had a selected list of municipal infractions. It was not an
across the board increase in fines for municipal infractions. You may agree or not agree
with all of those, and Steve probably hasn't had the opportunity yet to look at those in
detail, but we did in fact have a selected list for you.
Champion/Well, I just don't remember reading exactly that, but if you could retrieve that?
Wilburn/I'd like to see a complete list of the municipal infractions that would be affected by us
changing.
Lehman/Alright, but I think that's something we can ... we can move forward with. Alright,
next item?
Kanner/#3, three feet from the driveways, parking.
Pfab/I have ...
Lehman/Well, let's deal with that one.
Pfab/That's what ... I'm responding to that.
Lehman/Steve, you're saying that this needs more study. My question on this is how are we
going to let people know that they can't park closer than three feet?
Atkins/Our concern was the information process, what the consequences are, and we thought,
again, this committee would be a perfect group to say, tenant tell me what's your
perspective, landlord what's your perspective, task force what's yours, staff, that's why
we bring all those folks together, and we can give you something specific.
Champion/Do you remember in the old days when they used to paint yellow lines on the curbs?
Pfab/Right.
(Can't hear)/We still do it (can't hear)
Atkins/Those are the old days.
O'Donnell/How far back was that?
Pfab/Yesterday.
Atkins/I probably wouldn't remember.
Champion/I mean, you know, because it is very difficult to assess parking fines when there is no
clear cut margin, and for instance my pet peeve is cars parking so close to stoplights that
you can't see if somebody's coming by them, and yet it still happens all the time even
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though I complained about it, we don't have ... the police can't go out and ticket, you
know, look at where cars are parked all the time. I'm not saying that, but because we
don't have a clear cut way of people to know where to park, and I don't think we have the
money to paint every curb in the City yellow that you can't park at.
Atkins/We can paint all the curbs want yellow, but the difficulty in the winter time - nature has
a way of taking care of what that curb is all about.
Champion/Okay, we could ban snow on the curbs.
Atkins/There you go.
Kanner/And also, what's the staff time.
Champion/I mean, you know, it used to be ... in the old days, seriously, when they did that but I
don't know ... I mean, I don't have any positive request.
Atkins/I don't know how much detail you want. I mean, when we say it needs more analysis ...
Champion/That's exactly it.
Atkins/I was not prepared to give you a recommendation one way or another.
Kanner/I want to know how many spaces approximately we'd lose.
Atkins/How many spaces do you lose, yeah, there's a whole variety
Kanner/And how much staff time would it take if we painted something.
Atkins/Lots of things. I just didn't get to that one. And I assume it's a lower priority.
Lehman/I think that one is probably ride for the time being.
Vanderhoef/Put that on the hold list.
Lehman/Alright?
Atkins/We'll do ... we promised the task force to deal with each and every point, and didn't
spend any item on it, I wanted you to know that.
Lehman/Eleanor?
Dilkes/Can we go through these in some kind of order? We're having a hard time on the record
up here, and ...
Lehman/I think we are.
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Kanner/About #3?
Lehman/That's #3.
Dilkes/Ah hah. Okay. I think my list should match Steve's. I don't make any guarantees because
... This was kind of a frantic morning typing it up, but it should in terms of numbers
match Steve's.
Lehman/The next one is the resolution to move all single family duplex rental units to a two
year permit review cycle.
Dilkes/Hold.
Atkins/That's a budget item. You're going to have to take your time to think about that one. We
also have the ability to increase the fees to help generate additional income. Adding that
to the new units that we've ... we believe we're going to need another staff inspector just
to keep current.
Lehman/Okay.
Atkins/If we want to begin doing some of these things we're going to have to add another one.
And we need to spend some time running the numbers for you on that one. I know this is
a very important one on the part of the task force (can't hear)
Lehman/Right. Well, I think it's important for our inspectors, too.
Pfab/I think ... I think the amount of staff we put on them is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy
because if you don't put enough staff on, you're going to end up with a lot more
problems. And whether it has to come out of the general budget or whether it should
come out of the fees that are generated from this, that's what ... but what it does, the
landlords that are following everything according to the way they should, they get
penalized and the ones that are schlepping around, they can ... that (can't hear) them.
Atkins/Well, that's the importance. I think there's two things. That's the importance of the
committee. That's the importance of identifying where those nuisance properties actually
are and go after those.
Vanderhoef/We're presently on a three year, is that it?
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/Three single family duplex. Yes.
Kanner/Steve, are there any ways to, let's say if we do this, to reward landlords that pass their
inspections without any problems. Are there any things that might be an incentive? That's
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something that I would look for ... I say this in the context of, if we're going to get
another inspector, how can we raise the money to do that. Now, if we do that from ...
from rental permit fees that gets passed directly to, just about the time, to the tenants.
And that hurts them.
Atkins/Sure.
Karmer/Already we have some high rents. And I'm trying to figure, is there other way to raise
that money ...
Atkins/The one way that I've seen it done is that, after a period of successful inspections and
there's been no difficulties, you skip it; you don't have to be inspected that year. And
then
Lehman/Those are
Atkins/Now, there's no guarantee that is going to get applied to the rents. That's a business
decision. But that's a way of rewarding someone is that, you've been very good on the
inspection process, we just skip it.
Kanner/But that ... that's the kind of thing I would want some more brainstorming also, some
input from you, I think it would be helpful to see
Atkins/I'd be happy to do that, no, I ...
Kanner/I'd intended ...
Atkins/This is only the first crack at this. There's a lot more work that has to be done. Because I
haven't answered all of the task force questions. But we are putting in motion a lots of
things.
Lehman/Alright. But this is something, obviously, that's going to ... it's a budget item. The next
item is posting rental permits on rental properties.
Wilburn/This would include duplex ...
Lehman/Any rental property, I presume.
Wilburn/Housing rentals? I guess maybe Hillary could comment on this if... what information
are ... I'm assuming who, the owner of the rental permit and phone number, what
information are you ...
Sale/Well, there's ... it's ... there's a two part piece here, or three parts, depending on how you
look at it. And this one addresses only the posting of the rental permits. So for any
property for which there's a rental permit, we would ask, sorry, housing property for
which there's a rental permit, we would ask that the permit be posted. The reason for this
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was because it's very, actually surprisingly hard, for people in the neighborhoods to
understand who's in charge of a particular piece of property, and especially at midnight
when there's noise or some other problem, if they want to be able to contact the landlord
web access isn't all that practical, nor is it always a good approach. So this was one of the
suggestions that we thought would be part of a multi pronged approach. Permits under
our other suggestions would also now, for example, include occupancy limits. And once
the occupancy limit is on the permit and it's posted, it creates yet another form of notice
and occupancy, obviously, is one of the issues that the task force discussed in details, and
over occupancy, which as you well know, leads both to a depletion of affordable housing
stock and problems in the neighborhoods, is one of the things the task force worked to
come at in several directions.
Kanner/Now, I don't think I'm so much opposed to this, but I've lived in a few rental places
here and it always seemed fairly easy to reach the owner. Are there places where they
have difficulty, or the owner or the manager, it's always pretty clear on your lease or
wherever who you're gonna rent from?
Sale/In fact the reason we talked about this ... we talked about this issue, the reason we came up
with this as one of the solutions is because there are people who, in fact, have had the
experience of going to a property, not being able to figure out who's in charge, asking the
tenants, have the tenants saying they don't know who their landlord is, they don't know
how to reach their landlord. Again, perhaps we're talking about the minority of properties
but it seems to me the answer to that is, it's not so burdensome on the majority of
properties who do a good job of complying to post these when there are, in fact, to post
these when there are, in fact, people out there who appear not to know who to contact.
And for me, I have to say, ifI go out in my neighborhood in the middle of the night about
noise, this would be a very easy way for me to figure out who's in charge of the
particular piece of property, and there's no way I'm gonna log on to the web in the
middle of the night, in fact, I'm embarrassed to say I don't personally have web access at
home. So ...
Kanner/So you would put this on the outside, or ... because some apartments would be locked.
Sale/Right.
Kanner/You would require this on the outside?
Sale/I think it would depend on the nature of the unit. Clearly staffwould have to work out the
best way for this to be implemented. I realize there's wrinkles to it.
Pfab/But it's a public permit, so it should be available to the public.
Vanderhoef/The occupancy limit, I think, would be real helpful to neighborhoods because what
we have here is neighborhood complaints, so they are the ones who are there and observe
who comes in, who goes out and how many cars are there on a regular basis, that helps
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them with identifying the occupancy numbers. And this ... this could be real helpful
(can't hear)
Atkins/It's not something difficult to do, I think of the City's, it's quite frankly a little, sits right
outside the door and you put ... not that big a deal. You change it every year.
Lehman/Is the ... if this were on the website and I wanted to know, there's a rental property
across the street or down the street and I don't ... there's nothing posted, can I call the
Civic Center and find out who owns the property?
Atkins/I suspect you can.
Lehman/If it's on the web that
Atkins/The problem is, if it's late at night.
Lehman/No, no, I realize that. If it's late at night and there's a problem going on, we always
have the availability of the police department.
Atkins/That's correct.
Lehman/But that information would be available at the Civic Center for any rental property if
property appears on the website?
Atkins/Yes. We intended to use as much technology as we can to get out as much information as
we can.
Wilburn/It would see to me, I have a problem with this one, if you can call down here, if you
can send a letter complaint, if a future suggestion we're looking at, at least down the list,
accepting verbal complaints, it doesn't appear to be me to be necessary. Someone can
comment, I think there are too many people living in this place, can someone check this
out. Some of those smaller plexes and duplexes, there are people living with children, it
takes someone to walk up to the building to read this information off. And the children
side apart, if it's a smaller plex and you have to walk up there to see the permit anyway, I
could see this potentially leading to some confrontations that could be some other
problems. And if you're gonna take the step of walking up that way and the person can
see you looking at it that close anyway, you might as well talk to the person in the first
place. I personally ... this is a personal problem I have with this one.
Pfab/Maybe that's the way to get to know your neighbor. When you walk up to see what's on
the permit.
Wilburn/Well, there are other ways that I get to know my neighbors.
Pfab/I know. I just say, I mean that is, you make a point, but I don't think it's ... it's ... and it's
a valid point but I don't think it's the whole picture.
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Lehman/Other comments?
Vanderhoef/I'll have to think about it.
Lehman/I don't have a problem. As long as that information is available at the Civic Center, in
the middle of the night if we got a problem, I think the smartest thing to do is call the
police and then next day that person can be identified as to who they are and if I wish to
contact them, I can. ! can see, I think, almost more problems associated with that posting,
although I see the value of it at the same time, I almost see more problems than I see
value. Because the information is available anyway except at night.
Pfab/Well, it's not ... is it much different than another form of business? Almost every business
place you go to has a who to contact at night or what, something like that.
Letunan/I've never seen that in a business. Tell me where you see this.
Pfab/I've seen it many many times. I haven't observed it recently, but ...
Lehman/I haven't seen it in any business.
Pfab/Well, I will try to get you an example.
Lehman/Well, where do we want to go? Do you want to send this to the task force when we get
the committee, or do we want to do that, or do we want to just ... what do we wish to do?
Atkins/Unless you say flat out no, don't do that, it's my intent to take a number of these issues
such as that one, such as three feet, to this committee to get you more information on it.
Wilburn/I'm not interested in #5.
Lehman/I'm not really either. Speak folks.
Pfab/I'm interested in it. I think it was one way of... it's a public permit, it's issued by a public
entity and it affects neighborhoods, I think that's information that should be available.
Lehman/How many interested in pursuing #5 with ... either with the task force or otherwise?
How many not interested?
Atkins/We're not precluded from the web page?
Lehman/Oh, no. No. We're not going to proceed with it. I saw Champion, O'Donnell, myself,
Steven Kanner, Ross Wilbum
Vanderhoef/I'm on the fence on this one, I can go either way.
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Lehman/We've got an abstention here, but those were, we're not in favor of pursuing it.
Champion/I'm not saying I won't eventually consider it, (can't hear)
Lehman/Alright, but at this point we're not pursuing. Alright, the next item is mandatory lease
addenda specifying occupancy limits and other terms. I think this is also a budget issue
and something that will require staff
TAPE CHANGE
Sale/... to the task force. And the way I read the City Manager's response, I read it to be
supportive, in fact, of implementing this item, so ifI read that wrong be sure and tell me,
but I read it to be supportive and that's why I drafted the response the way I did. To be
clear, we don't think that this is redundant with specifying occupancy limits on permits,
and we don't think it has much to do with staff time. This is about communication
between landlords and tenants. Once the mandatory lease addendum is drafted, it's up to
landlords to implement it with their tenants. This is something that the tenants wanted,
the landlords wanted it, in fact most of the landlords in this group are already doing
everything in that mandatory lease addendum.
Lehman/This would be
Sale/And the neighborhoods want it.
Lehman/We would require this as a part of every lease that's signed?
Sale/That's right.
Lehman/I don't ... anybody have any problem with that?
Champion/No, I think it's a good idea.
Lehman/Alright. Next item.
Sale/Just to be clear, we support not having to have all these filed with the City. There's no way
the City could maintain that paperwork. We suggest that whatever ordinance or however
this is drafted, make it available to housing inspection staff upon their request should they
need it.
Lehman/Okay. The next one is revise the housing code notification requirements to allow verbal
notification
Dilkes/So #6 we're proceeding with?
Lehman/Yes. #7. Verbal notification. Do you want to continue looking at that and see what
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Atkins/I have no trouble but we'd like to give you an ordinance allowing us to do that.
Lehman/We have
Sale/The task force strongly (can't hear) that. It'll make housing inspection much more efficient.
Lehman/We okay with that folks? Alright, that's an okay. #8.
Kanner/We ... I'm sorry, Ernie. Are we talking verbal notification for staff in regards to a
problem? As opposed to a neighbor or some other anonymous complaint?
Lehman/I assume we're talking
Dilkes/We're talking about notification by the City.
Lehman/Right.
Kanner/By City and its staff.
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/Okay, hopefully we'll make that clear. I assume we'll make that clear.
Lehman/Well, I think it says
Dilkes/Notices of violation are sent by the City. They proceed the filing of a municipal
infraction so that will be very clear.
Lehman/And it also in the last sentence refers to staff time, so .... Direct City Manager to
initiate promotional and education efforts to detail initiatives, emphasizing City Council's
support and need for cooperation by the City, County and court officials. I ...
Atkins/we're saying yes, we're doing all those things and we'll probably add more to the list.
Lehman/Alright.
Vanderhoef/Which one are we talking about?
Lehman/#8. #9, Direct City Manager to direct police to issue citations in disorderly house
occurrences more frequently and, where appropriate, on the first call. That's not a zero
tolerance item, but that ... that does leave discretion to the officers, which I think we
have to, but I think it also says we're going to have to be a little tougher than we've been.
Atkins/And we also need a satisfactory enforcement history so that we know the officer can call
up the information when he or she arrives at a particular call that this is their third time
this month or something, 'cause ... that's ... I want to have that information readily
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available so that discretion is a little quicker making the decision. This is the third time
this month, here's the record on it. That could give an officer (can't hear)
Lehman/But I could also assume that a party could be so egregious that there is no warning.
Atkins/Oh, that's fine. An officer can do that now.
Lehman/This is a citation.
Kanner/The discretion is there.
Atkins/And I sense that the task force wants a more aggressive enforcement of this particular
component of the Code.
Lehman/And I don't sense any disagreement with that.
Atkins/And I just want to have good information for our officers so that they know when they're
making a judgment it's based on this. And we're gonna fix that, we're going to take care
of that.
Vanderhoef/Okay. So you're saying that you will keep by address or some such manner.
Atkins/I'll defer to the computer folks to figure that out, but the bottom line is that when they
take an address and they call it up, they'll look for a history that will influence the
decision on the spot. As you know, they're in cars now, computers are in the cars so we
can get that information.
Vanderhoef/I know, it's great.
Atkins/What's that?
Vanderhoef/I think it's great those computers are in there.
Pfab/I would like to make a point here. I think, yes, I think we're ... I think we're making a
statement that we are intending to back up the police if they need to write a citation the
first time, and we're still not taking the discretion away from them, I mean, we'll support
is, I think is the idea.
Lehman/I think that's what it says.
Pfab/It's an essential purpose, and I think it's great, yeah, I'm very support of that.
Lehman/Alright. Item 10, I think
Sale/I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, could I just interject one thing on that one?
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Lehman/Yes. Please.
Sale/I just wanted to say, one note I made in there, that this is a perfect time of year to be
addressing this particular policy and setting the tone for as everybody retums to town and
the task force really asks for that support of the Council and the police, and I know
they've been working on it. And this was sort of a two pronged item; the second prong
was a question about landlord notification. The task rome had several conversations
about how best to deal with this, and the task force including the landlords supported a
proposal that when the police are called and make a determination that there is, in fact, a
violation of the Code or have to break up a party that they call the landlords then, not the
next day, not later, and the reason for that was because the neighbors felt strongly that if
they were living with the problems, the landowners who don't live in the neighborhood
should also live with the problems and know about the problems at the time that they're
causing the disturbance. And this is clearly a policy issue, it's not something that requires
an ordinance, but there was unanimous support in the task force for this and I get a little
nervous about a lot of stuff being turned back to a committee when the task force has
been meeting for a year and has actually built support on these issues. So, as I said in
here, the neighbors were thrilled when they heard the response of the landlords. And in
fact, some of the landlords in that group fine their tenants for police calls. They have
provisions in the lease to say when the police are called to this property we will fine you,
because they want, in fact, tenants not to be having big parties and they want to know
when they're happening.
Pfab/I think this was ... this was ... these two are connected about having the rental permit on
the building because this made it easier both for the police and the neighbors if they have
a problem, they know who to contact.
Lehman/I think #10, Hillary, I think this one also, I believe we are trying to make our computers
compatible so at least we'll have access to these. Right now, I sense that there may be ...
we have a call to a party, or disorderly house, we don't have the ability and the police
right now to determine who the landlord is, but we're hoping ...
Atkins/Yeah. What Hillary just said, we're okay with. We want to write a policy, and that's why
I thought the committee would write the policy, which also when it gets into our standard
orders and operating procedures within the department. Not saying we're not going to do
it.
Lehman/No, no I understand.
Atkins/Just want to be sure it's an issue that's clearly understood (can't hear) landlord.
Lehman/But isn't that also part of#10?
Atkins/Sort of. Yeah. #10 has a lot to do with the whole enforcement process.
Lehman/Right. And that one ...
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Atkins/We can fix that, we're going to fix that.
Vanderhoef/Well, beyond giving you direction on policy for calling the landlords, I think we
could move forward with that tonight.
Atkins/We can. I just want to get a policy written so there's no misunderstanding. I could have
10 landlords say it's great and one guy says, nobody told me. Well, we want to make sure
that, yes we did. There it is.
Lehman/But 9 and 10 are moving. #11, increase patrols, I think that also is a question of...
that's a give and take.
Atkins/(can't hear)patrol is advanced by the task force, staff, police feels we can accomplish the
same thing and still assure reasonable mobility by the bicycle patrol, and that's what
we're gonna be working on. We can respond almost as quickly as a marked unit. The
important thing is that bicycle and foot patrol do not have that computer and the
information available to them. So there will be a down side. Police presence is what, I
believe, they wanted to achieve, and I think we can achieve that.
Lehman/Okay.
Pfab/And that's again my support for the permit on the door.
Lehman/We already got rid of that, Irvin, okay? #127 Direct the City
Sale/The task force appreciates your support.
Lehman/Direct the City Manager to direct police to utilize the municipal infraction process to
cite properties in violation of zoning and housing codes.
Atkins/That's an additional duty for the police, it requires some training. We want to make sure
we understand it all. If we can work it out, there's no reason why we can't do it.
Lehman/Alright.
Kanner/Just getting back to #11, in Columbus, Ohio, our neighborhood association had a group
that went out in a car, support with radios and just to offer assistance late at night as
you're coming up High Street, the main drag into the neighborhoods, there was some
concern with crime. Maybe that's one area we ought to start looking at. To ... Mike, I
think you were involved in some sort of citizen police scene initiative of sorts, and maybe
we can use that in a positive way to encourage people to get out there and either in a car
or walking with other people, to be out there late at night and offer some support in terms
of radio, two way radio or cellular phones, and some training. I think it might be a good
way to get neighbors involved in making it safer, because this #I 1, if we go with more
foot patrol, it does perhaps take more from our budget in that way. Maybe increase the
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neighborhood watch to a certain extent and try to get some of these folks out there. And
work ... and work with student government, I think, Dee correct me if I'm wrong, but I
think they might be gung ho in encouraging students to be involved more in this way, if
they were part of some sort of plan.
Vanderhoef/Good idea.
Lehman/Okay. It seems to me that 13 and 14 are something you are able to address now, Steve,
at least in part?
Atkins/Yes. We'll get you that.
Lehman/#15, I don't have a ... I mean, I suspect perhaps that the committee that we approach
can ... I don't sense that this has had any tremendous attention at this point. I don't know
exactly what we're looking for.
Atkins/No, I'm not real sure how to approach it just yet.
Lehman/Because I think that's also something that ... and I don't know that that's a huge
priority, but it is something we can look at. And 16, I don't ... don't know exactly what
we're dealing with there.
Pfab/I think this is ... I think that this is a relatively important in the sense that the ... when
something is so bad that the police have the right to move immediately, and I think that
the entire public has to understand it. The landlords, the tenants, and everyone else. The
public, that while you have to give so much notice, but if there's a real problem, the
police have the right and obligation to move immediately whether everything else is legal
or not. Niceties when there is a clear and present danger, you have to move on it.
Sale/The provision being talked about at #16 is the clear and present danger provision of the
Uniform Tenant/Landlord Act which allows the landlord to proceed against the tenant
and seek eviction in cases of clear and present danger, and that's defined in the state
Code. This provision, as I understand it, recommends that information about that
provision be provided to landlords.
Lehman/Okay.
Sale/But it would be the landlord who would pursue that.
Lehman/That's their ... that's a landlord's move. Okay.
Dilkes/So 16 is a go?
Lehman/Well, we can provide that information to landlords, that's no problem.
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Champion/Well, won't we be having ... continue to have some sort of a handout booklet on
housing codes and so forth, that this would be one place where we could put that in this
particular ...
Atkins/Yes, we could incorporate that into it, sure.
Vanderhoef/I think it's fine to put it in. I have a hard time believing that there's a landlord out
there that doesn't know it already.
Atkins/We're here to remind them.
Lehman/Alright #
Kanner/Ernie, can I go back to the question on #137 Let's see, not 13, where is it where you're
saying that police would, #13, no, no, where police would also cite for housing code
violations and rental ...
Sale/127
Atkins/Yeah, that's municipal infraction?
Kanner/Is that 127
Atkins/Yeah.
Kanner/Okay. Could you tell me, Steve, why that's not happening now and then I'll say why I
think that perhaps we ought to leave it the way it is~
Atkins/You answer ... would you answer first, and then I'll ...
Sale/Well, I'll tell you what I learned on the task force. Which is, I think actually this was an
education issue for all of us. The task force had some discussion about things they wanted
the police to do; it because apparent that police couldn't do certain things through their
police powers, but that there were things they could do that would be very helpful in
alleviating neighborhood problems through the municipal infraction process. For
example, it's a municipal infraction ifa car is improperly parked on the lawn, I think.
Lehman/Right.
Sale/The police can't put a criminal ... a police ticket on that but they could put a municipal
infraction on it. And that usually happens at night when there's no one in the housing
inspection office. So the reason why it's not happening currently, I think, is because I'm
not sure anybody had thought through whether this was a possible solution and it requires
the police to carry two books, but there are various instances in which they could cite
under a municipal infraction and can't under their police powers. So that was what the
recommendation was about.
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Atkins/Okay, now Doug ... Doug will answer, I think, your question.
HIS Director Doug Boothroy/This is just, maybe, a little broadly stated. We're talking about
things that are visible on the outside of the property like parking. The police department
would not be doing housing inspections so they wouldn't be citing anything under the
house code. What we just talked about is not a housing code violation, it would be more
like some obvious nuisance that was on the exterior of the property. Something that
would be easy to identify, easy to know about, wouldn't take a lot of expertise or
knowledge in terms of training. In other words, there are a number of housing code
violations where you're dealing with exiting and fire code requirements and all that kind
of stuff, and I don't see that the police department would be trained to do those kinds of
inspections.
Lehman/No, but things like parked cars and blocking driveways, blocking sidewalks.
Boothroy/Right. I'm just saying that this is a very broad statement. This is zoning and housing
codes and really, it would only apply to very small number of different issues.
Sale/And really, specifically intended to address those things that come up in the hours when
Doug and his staff are not here and able to address them but which still cause significant
concern in the neighborhood.
Kanner/A couple of things. One, I would want a specific list of what they're addressing. Park ...
blocking driveways, that's something that they can issue a ticket now, actually, it
Sale/They can tow now for that, just to put in my two cents as a neighbor of towing.
Lehman/They can't block any sidewalks, I think we can ticket for that.
Kanner/But I like the idea of separating. The police have special ordinary powers in our state
and our city and our country, and I think it's good to leave some of these civil matters
into the hands of the building inspection, and if we're gonna cross that line more, I think
then we need to be very specific about what are the things that they're gonna start citing
municipal infractions for. And so, Doug you say there are only a few things, I'd like to
have those things spelled out. Are they ... what five things are they going to be looking
for?
Boothroy/I think that's possible.
Kanner/Another possible solution is if we're going to have another staff person down the road,
maybe we want to have someone that's ... on one day a week is doing later hours,
perhaps. Arrange staff time to do that. To go out there.
Lehman/I don't think it'd be a problem to come up with a list. That's no problem. No, no.
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Atkins/We'll do it.
Champion/Sidewalks, snow removal, weeds, garbage,
Lehman/Right. Those are pretty.
Sale/(can't hear) an obvious weekend issue, no housing staff, police could site for municipal
infractions.
Pfab/Another things is, it's amazing if you walk through some of the neighborhoods, to observe
the number of security lights that are burned out. And that is one of the things that helps
keep neighborhoods safe. And most housing inspectors aren't around at 11:00, 12:00,
1:00, 2:00. Police are. And that might be something. If the lights are out,
Lehman/Well, we'll get a list of those things.
Atkins/It's easy enough to do.
Lehman/#17, I think, is the issue of blowing trash and Steve has indicated that we would contact
the papers and ask that those be bundled, and I think that is ...
Atkins/We'll take care of that.
Lehman/And #18
Kanner/Oh, as far as that's concerned, also, we got a letter I think from Nick Herbold and Matt
Blizek as student body president and vice president when these came out, and they asked
that we check with, I believe, the Daily Iowan.
Atkins/You said that, I didn't. One of the newspapers needs to be talked to more than the others.
Lehman/Yeah, bags theirs frequently.
Kanner/Well, but he gave that as an example to talk to the staff there, and they might have some
doable solutions that we could suggest to the other ones like ones that put out the Market
News and things like that, perhaps.
Atkins/Yeah, I saw that. We understand.
Kanner/Okay.
Lehman/18 is an issue dealing with unpaid fines and credit agencies. And you're ... it seemed to
me, Steve, your response was that we are kind of up to ourselves to be able to collect
those bills. Is that kind of what you said?
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Atkins/Yeah. We're in pretty good shape about doing that. The question that came up was the
court system's ability to cause that to occur.
Lehman/Do we report uncollected fines or fees or whatever to a credit agency?
Atkins/Not that I know of.
Lehman/I believe that what I'm hearing is that if those were reported it might make the
collections better.
Atkins/So we're just telling them about it, not employing them to collect it for us?
Lehman/We're telling you ...
Sale/It's just another way to put pressure on the person to pay the fine eventually.
Lehman/Right. Right. And that's something that probably is
Atkins/Yeah, I didn't understand it quite that way, but now I understand.
Vanderhoef/It's just like if you don't pay your mastercard bill that will show up on your credit
report.
Atkins/Steve ....
Lehman/Alright, quit picking on the City Manager.
Wilburn/I have a question about that one. I don't think I'm in favor of municipal (can't hear)
possibly leading to someone beginning or adding to someone's poor credit history. If
there is someone who, and you note you point out that most people are trying to leave, or
trying to get rid of those. If there's someone who has a history of those or has one who
may be of low to moderate, low income who might be trying to participate in one of the
housing programs that we have, am I not mistaken some of our housing programs (can't
hear) to ownership require someone to have good history?
Atkins/That's right.
Wilburn/So it just feels like a competing interest to ...
Pfab/I think ... but there is ... there may be another way to handle that and you're ... you're
point is absolutely vital. That is, unless there's arrangements made to the City or to the ...
in other words, you can work it out. And a lot of creditors ... a lot of people with credit
difficulty don't necessarily have to go onto their credit record, but the person that they
owe the money to sits down and they work something out but the person just ignores it,
and that's I think one of the problems that so many of these are just ignored, and that
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maybe should be notified ... they should be notified that if there's ... whatever the
penalties are, the City will work with them or it will be reported on their credit.
Wilburn/It just seems to me that, not only with this, but you know, folks that are having trouble
paying some of the utility bills, the water, the refuse, they're trying to get some
assistance, the whole thing seems to be counter to what we may be trying to accomplish
with some of our housing programs.
Lehman/But this says unpaid fines. It doesn't talk about utilities. These are fines.
Wilburn/And I understand that, but it's more of a ... I suppose it's more of a philosophical, I
think.
Vanderhoef/Well, yeah, I understand your point but if you get a traffic ticket, a parking ticket, in
New York City you'll not be able to renew your driver's license until it's paid. I'm not
sure they report it to a credit bureau. But if you have a municipal infraction in New York
City, you won't be able to get your driver's license. And several other states ways they
have to make sure those are paid. Or, and I ... obviously, we don't have the resources to
do that because obviously they have a tremendous amount of parking fines and they're
$500 and not $3, but
Lehman/Well, I hear what you're saying, Ross, too, but I guess, Dee, if we're talking about
fines, fines generally represent inappropriate behavior, breaking a City ordinance, and I
don't really have a problem if those fines are not paid that they be reported to a credit
agency. I would have a real problem with water bills, sewer bills, this sort of thing. I do
think that's different, but I don't know ... what's the
Pfab/I think you're right.
Champion/That's a really good point.
Pfab/And I think at the same time, if whoever the billing agency is, yes, that these will be
reported to the credit agency unless arrangements have been made. And that's not taking
away your point. I mean, you have a good point there.
Vanderhoef/What is our collection policy presently when we turn over unpaid things to the
collection agency?
Lehman/We turn them over as a lien on property.
Atkins/We rarely ... we don't use collection agencies because we can lien the property.
Vanderhoef/We used the ... we used it for parking fines at some point in time.
Atkins/That was, yeah, I don't think we've used it in a long time.
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Vanderhoef/And we hired an outside credit agency to collect for us.
Atkins/We tried some ... yeah, I remember when we tried that. I don't remember doing it. Dee,
it could be going on now and I'm just not familiar with it. I don't think we do that now.
Vanderhoeff Let's check into that because if we have a policy of some description that says, 60
days, 90 days, something like that that is printed right on the infraction when they receive
it, that this must be paid in this length of time or we will turn it over to the collection
agency.
Pfab/And then with the idea that unless arrangements have been made.
Champion/Of course, that's how all (can't hear)
Pfab/In other words, we don't extend a hand but say we mean business but we will work with
you.
Atkins/Okay.
Lehman/Okay.
Boothroy/I know you've worked through this, but you need to understand that this is not a City
bill. This is the district court bill. We do not specifically collect any fines. So keep that in
mind. We're not billing and we're not collecting.
Lehman/Okay. And that may be a very big distinction.
Boothroy/So you can keep that in mind when we talk about.
Sale/The discussion has moved from reporting to a credit agency, which is one thing, to
collecting. The subject matter o£this, the task force recommendation is report to a credit
agency. That's different than sending a bill to a collection agency.
Lehman/I agree, but Eleanor, is it appropriate for us to report an unpaid fine to a collection
agency when we are not the recipient of the collection, if this is a fine owed to a district
court?
Dilkes/It's a fine owed to the City, it may go through the district court but it ... the fine, if
collected, will come to the City.
Lehman/Okay. So it is an obligation owed to the City.
Dilkes/Yes. The fine doesn't stay at the district court.
Lehman/Alright. Alright. Okay.
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Dilkes/So yes or now to reporting to credit agencies?
Champion/Yes.
Lehman/It sounds like a yes. The amnesty for disposable appliances is something I think you're
working on.
Atkins/Yes, we'll prepare a proposal for you.
Lehman/It's coming back to us.
Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/Good neighbor policy being mandatory seems somehow to be an oxymoron, but maybe
I'm reading it wrong.
Sale/Perhaps it's a bad name for a good idea, right, which is mandated communication.
Lehman/Yeah, maybe that's right.
Sale/To be distinguished from mandated behavior. And our understanding is that the zoning
code is now under discussion for revision and you will be receiving a proposal and our
understanding, on the task force end, is that this will be part of that proposal, that the
planning and zoning staff in consultation with their consultants supports this idea. So ...
Lehman/Okay. That's addressed then.
Kanner/Wait. How is this addressed, Emie?
Lehman/Through the zoning code revisions that we'll be receiving when the ... as part of the
total code revision.
Kanner/But I think we should ... we can give direction to that staff as well. I mean, that's ...
Lehman/Steve's
Kanner/Steve to Karin Franklin, and they're going to be coming up with recommendations. I
think it makes sense. Why not just say we like this and we'd like this to come back to us
when they come up with their recommendation, instead of them bringing us something
that might have it, and might not. Let's give direction to them.
Sale/I think it's our understanding that it will.
Atkins/I think you said yes.
Lehman/Alright, then I think it is. We are giving direction that it be included.
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Kanner/Alright.
Lehman/Okay. Information packets for landlords and property managers. And I think that is
something that we're working on.
Atkins/We will.
Lehman/Okay. 22, direct staff to work with University administration, and I think that's
something else we're working with. I would think that's a good place for us to work with
the University on.
Atkins/It's a little frustrating. The University administration sometimes doesn't like to fool with
these things.
Lehman/Well, but it's something we' re working towards.
Atkins/Oh yea.
Kanner/What number are you talking about, Emie?
Lehman/22.
Kanner/Well, in a sense we're working with that, Dee and I, and with the students, and with the
info page, I think that's part of the ...
Atkins/We'll get there.
Kanner/We're looking at that kind of info.
Lehman/Direct City Manager to direct Housing Inspection staff to revise rental permits to
include occupancy limits, name/contact information, permit posting requirements.
Wiburn/I'm okay if we (can't hear) there. Posting on the building.
Lehman/Yeah, I think that's probably right.
Champion/But occupancy limits certainly ought to be on there.
Lehman/Well, I think that's a matter of being able to work that into the system, and that's gonna
take some time. Obviously it's a goal I think that's worth doing.
Sale/And just ... I put in writing that the task force understands it will take time but it's really
important to combat over occupancy (can't hear) distraction.
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Lehman/Okay, 24. Direct Planning and Zoning staff to develop pilot residential permit parking
program, of three to five years in length. Issuance of permits, blah blah blah.
Atkins/Being prepared.
Whisper/Without posting.
Lehman/That's something we can work on. That's something we've talked about in the past
from time to time.
Atkins/Yeah. We've had them up in front of the neighborhoods in the past and it blows up and
comes back.
Lehman/It will come back to us. We're pursuing it. We'll see.
Champion/Make sure that it's a neighborhood that's willing to do it for the trial period. You
know, that it doesn't become an inconvenience for them.
Sale/And the northside has volunteered.
Vanderhoef/They have volunteered already?
Sale/They volunteered in writing to you in a formal letter.
Lehman/Right. The northside was ... in previous times the northside was an area where we
talked about this and when push came to shove they decided they didn't want to.
Vanderhoef/Okay.
Lehman/There's all kinds of issues. But that'll come up to us. The last is develop a code
enforcement web page designed specifically for neighborhood and tenant questions and
issues, and I suspect that's not a big deal.
Atkins/It's underway.
Lehman/Alright.
Kanner/Can I ask a question about the previous one. The University has a remote parking lot,
don't they, for people to put their cars?
Atkins/A couple of them, yes.
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Kanner/A couple of them? Do we ... we don't have anything like that, do we work with them on
that, is there a way ... how do we work with them in regards to that?
Atkins/Other than they share with us and often they tell us what they're about to do, and we
accept it.
Wilburn/We listen.
Atkins/We listen politely.
Kauner/Is there ... as part of 24, if we're going to start doing some permit, I think we need to be
more proactive and creative in ways to work with students and other shorter term rental
people.
Boothroy/Perhaps.
Kanner/People with cards in general of how they can store their car, could we do a bus out
maybe once in a while, once a day or something, that makes it easier? I'm sure we can
think of other things that would help facilitate getting people to leave their cars there.
Champion/But if there was an occupancy limit of a rental building, they would have a permit to
park. That's the whole idea. If you're ... if you can live there legally, you can have a
parking permit. The idea is
Atkins/It's not an easy one to resolve. The task force knows that. Yeah.
Lehman/Okay, guys. We are ... oh, I'm sorry. Hillary, do you have any other comments that
you'd like to make.
Sale/I was just going to say thank you.
Lehman/No, no. Thank you folks.
Sale/For your time. We appreciate it and we appreciate your support, and we'll just sort of stand
in abeyance until further need. And I will say, I've said this to Steve, the members of the
task force have obviously spent a huge amount of time educating themselves, and it
seems to me, and Steve said this tonight, that it makes sense for those people, if Steve
wants them to shift over onto this committee rather than having to start at square one, at
least for a period of time. None of us wants a life sentence on the citizens' committee, but
certainly I and the others are willing to work at least in the short run to sort of keep things
consistent and keep the information flowing so that nobody has to start all over again.
Atkins/Right.
Lehman/And Steve, I'm assuming that you will be prepared to have that committee appointed in
two weeks.
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Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/Alright. Thank you.
Sale/Thank you very much.
Vanderhoef/Thank you everybody.
Lehman/Okay, we're going to take five minutes before we
Addition to Agenda
Kan'/Mr. Mayor? Just one quick thing.
Lehman/I'm sorry. Yes.
Karr/Because of the time on this, I want to post an addition to the consent calendar. I just
wanted it noted for the record. We're going to be adding a resolution approving the
public housing assessment system management operation certification, which is a HUD
requirement that it be certified by the end of the month, and this is something you
previously looked at, we've taken public comment on, and it'll be handed out tomorrow
evening.
Lehman/Okay.
Karr/Actually, I think it's in your packet tonight.
Lehman/Alright.
Kart/But we're going to add it to the consent calendar, okay?
Lehman/Thank you. Alright guys.
BREAK
Joint Meeting with Airport Commission (IP2 of 8/15 info. packet)
Present: Rick Mascari, Michelle Robnett, Alan Ellis, Ron O'Neil
Kanner/Oh, wait a minute, we don't have everybody.
Lehman/Irvin's ... where's Irvin?
Wilburn/Where's Irvin? I'll go look for him in the lobby.
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Vanderhoef/He went home for dinner.
Lehman/Well, we need to get started, so. This meeting with the Airport Commission obviously
is in response to the last meeting which we held about six weeks ago, and we have
received a memo from the Commission. Mark, you're chair of the commission. I guess
we'll start with you and anybody that's got any comments, just feel free.
Mark Anderson/(can't hear)
Karr/Mark, you'll have to turn the mic
Lehman/towards you, yes.
Anderson/I hope everyone's had a chance to review it. I guess really my mission here tonight is
just to answer any questions or things that you have in your mind that are still unresolved
that we need to be talking about, or help you with.
Lehman/We're here to discuss, Council.
Vanderhoef/Okay, I guess I'll just start in with, we just received your minutes from the June
meeting in this packet, so today was the first that I had the opportunity to call and find
out about anything. I was real concerned when I read the minutes about the fuel site and
its operation and there apparently wasn't any plan for responsibility for the fuel site for
emergency kinds of things. There wasn't any operational manual. There was no
understanding ora valve to the contamination tank. No signage; no person in charge of it.
So it really concerned me when I read all of this to recognize that this fuel site was open
and that the City's insurance is responsible for the airport and its equipment. So that was
a number one concern. Then I read about lighting, and I didn't see anything in the
minutes that spoke about checking what the City ordinance was on lighting or any
follow-up with the FAA in case there was rules for lighting on an airport in a certain
location or area near a runway. So I felt it didn't have good oversight on that particular
piece. Then when I read about the possibility of real estate sign to be put into the fringe
area, and no conversation about checking on sign ordinances for City or County, that
concerned me. No signed lease with the school district for the bus parking and the
liability that we might have for that equipment on that leased land and their property,
meaning the buses. And then when I read about the lease for this property that goes to the
Army Reserve and at 8.7 cents per square foot, somehow or another, evidently the
message that I had intended to send to the Commission when we talked about the airport
commercial park and in lease and/or selling it had to do with, as I understood it from the
FAA and also from the City's perspective, that we would be looking at fair market value
and ! don't find that there was any conversation about researching fair market value on
this. It just still leaves me thinking that we need better oversight on the airport property. I
liked what Ross had put out that we just couldn't continue under this scenario of a airport
commission without better oversight, and how we accomplish that, I think we need to talk
about.
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Anderson/Do you want a response or discussion or...
Lehman/Oh yeah. Any ...
Anderson/Well, the first 18 items on that list, they aren't germane to what we had in our memo.
If you've got a larger point you'd make, let's make that instead of beating around the
bush.
Vanderhoef/My larger point is that no matter what I get in memos is the fact that I don't see it in
action and the action that I'm talking about should be reflected in the minutes that gives
me confidence that the commission is truly on top of things and that the airport manager
is being directed to take care of these things and to bring information back to you if that's
what you need and give direction to the commission about these things in terms of fair
market value, in terms of insurance ...
Anderson/And how do you know that we haven't researched the fair market value?
Vanderhoef/All I can go by is what is in your minutes.
Anderson/No one's ever been to any of our meetings.
Vanderhoef/And it's apparent that you had a
Anderson/Right, and so you're not there for the benefit of the discussion at our meetings.
Vanderhoef/And it's apparent that it's not in the minutes and that certain things have gone
forward without that research. And so,
Anderson/Well, you're incorrect at that point..
Vanderhoef/So, you know, all I can do is go with what I read and try to keep track of what's
happening.
Anderson/Today is the first day that someone has called me and asked me a question about
something in our meeting minutes. And I've been on the commission for almost six
years. Doesn't that seem a little odd? That anybody in six years, this is the first time
somebody's actually cared to ask a question?
Kauner/Well, that's not true about talking to the commission. I talk to Rick
Anderson/I said me personally.
Kanner/Right, but your implication, I thought, was that no one has talked at all so you ... in six
years. I talk to the commissioner, which I think is appropriate to talk ... I mean to the
chair of the commission, which is appropriate.
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Rick Mascah/If I could just interject. First of all, Dee in some of the things that you talked
about, realistically they were incorrect. Things like fair market value, for instance. If you
compare it to a north area, the north area is improved land. This is just bare ground that
you're talking about right now, that they're using for parking and parking only. It has a
different value than what the north area has. And we did do research to find out what the
fair market value is. We're mandated by the FAA to make sure that we do charge fair
market value for all the airport property. We have done that. Regarding the fuel thing, the
masons why that was brought up in the first place was because the brand new fuel system
that we put in just months ago wasn't functioning correctly, and the company that put
them in was not giving us the type of response that we've been asking for to see if we can
get the thing working. And so we ... the manual we got with the system was not the
correct one and we're trying to get the correct one, trying to get things working so we can
get the thing operational, because each gallon of gas that's sold is 8 cents a gallon to the
airport, so we're concerned about the income. And that's the reasons why that was
brought up. You see, the Airport Commission, you know, this is regarding aviation, and
so I'd like to somehow relate it to aviation. The Airport Commission is like a pilot. The
Airport Manager is like our wings. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to go
ahead and direct the airport so that it's beneficial for everybody in the community. Now,
what we don't have is we don't have a navigator. We don't have somebody whose got the
ideas, the expertise, the knowledge, and inside information that our City Manager has.
We could surely use his input, and if we had his input that would help us dramatically. I
mean, we'd be able to address things that you're just ... that you just brought up. It would
also keep us informed of what the Council's wishes are, so that we know exactly what the
Council would like to see happen. And it would be a direct liaison to the Council so that
they know exactly what's happening at the airport. What I would like to see us do, and I
think this would be a win-win situation, would be for the Council to address the airport
... or the City Manager to attend the Airport Commission meetings on a regular basis. If
that happened, then we can look to the City Manager and ask him for advice, and tell us
what do you think about this, and give us direction, give us some navigation. Because
that way we can steer the airplane the way it has to go. But you see, you named it awhile
back, we are laymen. We're doing this on a volunteer basis. We're trying to do the best
job that we can, and if you look at the airport and see how good of a job we've done in
the past, you can see that we're doing a pretty decent job on our own. But we don't have
the expertise that comes along with a paid employee like the City Manager is. Somebody
of that caliber. We don't have that expertise. So what we're asking is for the Council to
direct the City Manager to, not to come to every meeting, I know he's a busy person, but
to come to many meetings of the Airport Commission, to be there so that we can ask
questions, so we can get direction from him. And if that happens, then all of a sudden,
when you need to know what's going on at the airport you can ask the City Manager.
You can say, what's going on with this? He'll know instantly. If you wanted to have
something happen or if you want us to go right instead of left, tell the City Manager, he'll
tell us and we'll get the job done. We work for you. You hired us. We work for you.
You're our boss. If you want us to go right, we go right. If you want us to go left, we go
left. But we don't have that line of communication between your viewpoints are and what
ours are. We all have a common goal, and that is what's best for the airport. Because the
airport is a huge economic boon to this community. We all know that.
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Kanner/Well, there's a question on that, that's not quite tree of how much of an economic boon
it is. The economists that you quote will refute your claims that were made in the paper,
so that's another issue, so I wish you wouldn't bring that in in that sense. We could
discuss it but I don't think it would do us ... it would help us right now. But I just want to
go on the record to refute that.
Anderson/How many surgeons do you think are at University Hospital that do heart transplants,
liver transplants, organ transplants that utilize these services for bringing in organs that
need to be here in an instant? How many donor teams do you think fly out of here from
Iowa Organ Procurement that go places in private jets to recover organs to bring back to
this hospital? How much do you think those surgeons spend in this town on a daily basis?
Kanner/I think that
Lehman/No, just a minute. You know, I don't think that we're here to discuss the importance of
the airport. If the airport ... if we didn't feel it were important none of us would be sitting
here, I don't think, I mean. I think it's a very important ... the issue seems to be, and I
think it isn't an issue of appraising ground or fair market value or any of those things, and
I think Rick, you alluded to some of this. The issue is concern on the part of the Council
because we are the group that, whether or not we mn the airport, we have the unique
ability to be responsible for it to the public. If the public sees something they like or don't
like, it's the Council that they talk to. It's the Council who answers for the money that we
put into the airport. It's the Council who basically answers for the operation of the airport
even though they are not responsible for, nor do they have any particular
END TAPE
Lehman/input into the operation of the airport. The issue, I believe, that we're really here for is,
we know how the airport has functioned in the past. We know where we are now. The
question is where will we be going (can't hear) or are we going to continue operating the
airport as we have in the past, or are we going to try to operate the airport with, I think,
your comment, Ross, you made it very clear, that there needed to be, you were not
willing to fund the airport without responsibility. Accountability, I'm sorry.
Wilburn/Yeah. IfI can follow up. That's not a slam on you folks, I know you put in some time
in that. It's not ... it's not a question about that. It's ... it's about our ability, you know,
you alluded to in your memo, and I appreciate the memo, about, you know, have more
involvement with the DOT and FAA and all the other funky acronyms we can come up
with. But we ... in terms of money from the general fund we have to answer to the rest of
Iowa City, and so I guess I'm the prototype, I'm not as eloquent with the metaphors as
you are, Rick, but the prototype that I'm looking at, or at least the day to day, month to
month activity to compare this to is the Library and the Library trustees, and they're
trying ... that's kind of what I'm basing some of my thinking on, if we can move
however it takes closer to that. Which leaves a question maybe staff, I'm not sure if Steve
or if Kevin would be more appropriate at answering, 'cause in your letter you talked
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about the ... you agreed that, you know, the Airport Manager, some time would be freed
up, not having to do accounting and billing, but you had questions about the ability to
timely retrieve information. So I guess, I don't know if it involves a comparison to how
the Library handles accounting, billing, receipt of money, and its ability to instantly
retrieve money from the Finance Department. Would one of you comment on how it
differs maybe compared to the Library?
Atkins/I'm not so sure I can answer specifics about the Library, Kevin may, but we have within
our intemet web page system the ability to do daily reporting. So you can find out
Wilburn/On a daily basis?
Atkins/Daily. Yes, and of course we put out a monthly report anyway. So it's not difficult to call
up budget status, and that's available to all our operating departments.
Kanner/But the library and the airport operate as quasi independent entities and so they're
similar and maybe Kevin could speak to that. We don't seem to have these kind of
problems with the library.
Michelte Robnett/Can I step in before Kevin? I met with Kevin.
Wilburn/No, why don't you wait for Kevin. Kevin?
Robnett/Okay, I was going to say I met with Kevin and they don't have the problem with the
library that we do with you, I agree. And, you know, I spent time ... and I actually was
impressed with what the library's doing. So I can say that, you know, I've looked into it
and I think you're right.
Wilburn/Yeah. And again, that's not a knock on you folks, I've just ...
Robnett/Sure. Sure.
Wilbum/Go ahead, Kevin.
Pfab/You had ... you had made a comment and
(all talking)
Wilbum/It was Kevin, Kevin was going to
Lehman/Kevin's gonna be talking.
Wilburn/Talk about the library's (can't hear)
Lehman/Sorry Irvin.
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Finance Director Kevin O'Malley/Just responding to Ross's comment, and Steve put it ... put it
accurately. We do have daily information on all receipts and expenditures on our web site
for all activities. And so the comment that was in the response of the airport was incorrect
about waiting a month for information. Nobody in our organization can wait a month for
information.
Kanner/Kevin ... Kevin, wait, is there ... could you tell us the difference between the model of
the library, and Michelle, too, I think also commented on this. What's ... what's ... what
are they doing right that we might want to implement with the airport? Can you tell us
some accounting procedures that might we'd want to do to follow that model?
O'Malley/They use all our ... all our financial resources. They use our cash receipting systems,
they use our lockbox systems, they use our credit card systems, they use our check
writing systems, they have daily deposits that come over. Very close relationship, and I
do know Ron comes over with receipts also. Most of the stuff that the library does is,
we've kind of facilitated electronically.
Robnett/I can say that I ... and Kevin was very gracious. I walked in to get the annual report and
to do research for the follow-up for the response, and he graciously, the secretary's out on
vacation, spent over and hour and a half going through how things are set up and why the
things they work, and part of it is that they do incorporate all the library handling of
money and reporting into their central system, and I actually was able to come back and I
think these gentlemen, my other commissioners, agreed that that actually could be a great
system knowing if it could report on a daily basis what are some things we talked about.
But one of the things as an airport commissioner, I haven't seen and I'm from corporate
America, so I'm like many of you, I don't see like a monthly revenue and expense
statement. I'm lost. I don't have volume statistics, and those are things that we don't have
and those are some of the things we knew that would need to be adjusted. It's part of why
I was opposed to planning so strongly, without a plan you can't have some of those. Like
you need an executive sununary, those meeting minutes. Because I read through six
months of them, and I'd hate for you to have to read through (can't hear). I'm sure you
have standard info you'd love to get on a very frequent basis that can probably be
produced electronically so that you get it quickly, right off information that's in (can't
hear) because I've set up computer systems and I'd do anything in a business that needs
to be done. S o's Rick. And actually that's the fun part of my j ob is learning that there's
always an easier way to do it. I think the broader question you asked, and I'm gonna hop
in if you don't mind, Ross, is the Fire Department reports ... the head of that reports to
Steve. The library has made it work without somebody reporting to him. Did we wait too
long? Well, we probably did, you know, make systems, make it. And so it is your option
to look at how you want to structure reporting. And I will volunteer that I've spent an
enormous amount of time, just because we only have one employee and one maintenance
person, every other commission is doing a lot of the work that you almost need another
employee. And if the role has grown for the Airport Manager so much that you need
somebody to take care of the day to day thing, but you also need somebody that takes
care of the marketing, the business plan, interact with the liaisoning with other people,
and ... because that's not the kind of person you wrote a job description for. That's part
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of it, but you also have ... make sure it's plowed, make sure the snow's plowed within ...
it's grown beyond what it currently has and we're sort of filling that gap as
commissioners, being your unpaid other manager by doing market research, finding
attorneys that know aviation, getting leases off line from other airports and from the
national associations, and I haven't shared that view with the other commissioners, but
it's part of... I used to have a job, I was the director of operational efficiency for the
hospital. So my job was always to make things simpler and smoother and less work for
everybody, and it seems like you've grown to the point where you almost need another
person. And we actually have job descriptions we've polled, what they're doing for
airport managers now, and I actually talked with the attorney's office in Cedar Rapids
and looked at the structure for their airport and what's being done nationally, and
surprisingly, nationally people have airport commissions, volunteer groups that run
airports, which seems a little ... but they do more policy and broad regulations as
opposed to the things I've been spending my time on, and so, that's me as the insider and
the new view, and my job is to help you make decisions, so. And so, (can't hear). That's
my basic opinion, I ... everything Kevin told me I pretty much agreed with.
Pfab/I had a ... you brought up something, and I'm trying to understand what you're saying. I
made it to a number of airport meetings. I've never seen any other city council other than
any other city employees except the City Attorney. What kind of communications have
gone on when I'm not there?
Wilburn/Well
Pfab/Does the City Manager get there? Does the ... anybody else get there? How does that
information get back and forth?
Mascari/Well, we really haven't seen any participation from any City staff person at the airport
commission meetings. The only way that I think the Council and staff gets the
information would be through the minutes, I imagine.
Kanner/Well, through the weekly meetings. Weekly staff meetings.
Mascari/That's right, that's a weekly staff meeting. Sure.
Pfab/Okay, also you are now taping your ... your
Mascari/Meetings.
Pfab/Meetings. That's a good word. I like that one. I'll keep that one. So, it is ... if the facilities
that the City has are available to the library, why are they ... those bookkeeping systems
not available to the airport, or are they available, or what is going on there?
Atkins/Of course they're available.
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Kanner/Well, I think that's the question. One of the key points, and I thought you brought this
out in your memo, is that you don't want some of the charge backs, and perhaps that's
where there's room for some negotiation. I would like to see those charge backs
implemented, and I'd like to know ... I assume the library does full charge backs on ...
for accounting and for attorney ...
O'Malley/For audit work we charge them back. And for other services, like telephones, and
those administrative services we charge them back for.
Karmer/So, of course, that increases your costs and what I would say is that then the airport has
to find other source of revenue. That means you might have to charge higher hangar
rents, might have to charge higher fuel costs, might have to even look at implementing a
landing fee. I think you have ... we have to get the charge backs for our budget and we
can't increase the amount of general ... general fund money that's going to the airport.
That's where I would start the negotiation, from my point of view. I don't know how the
rest of the Council feels about that. But I think we need to implement that oversight. It
comes with that full integration, similar to the library model.
Lehman/Wait, you know, Rick, you made ... you said you'd like to see the City Manager at
Airport Commission meetings. With, I believe, and I don't know this so you'll have to
correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that most departments of the City, the department
heads go to the meetings and report to the City Manager. I don't think the City Manager
goes to Parks & Recreation Commission meetings; I don't think he attends meetings with
most departments because he has a department head that keeps him informed and a
department head that keeps those commissions and whatever informed as to what, you
know, what needs to go on, and we don't, you know, in most any case, I shouldn't say
almost, in no case that I'm aware of, with the exception of the library board, do we have a
situation where commission members are expected to have, nor do I think we should
expect them, to have the expertise to run those departments because there are department
heads that are hired who are experts and they do report to the City Manager; in fact their
responsible to the City Manager and if things don't run well in those departments, the
City Manager finds out why. The airport is the exception.
Pfab/Okay, what questions have been brought up as to problems ... okay, you brought up the
City Manager wants to know. What questions have you been asked?
Lehman/I'm not sure. I think we're asking ... I think the Council has ... we're sitting here
because the Council had some concerns about a number of things. And I don't know that
City Manager expressed concerns other than what we asked him to do. It seems to be the
Council is concerned about the management of the airport, and I don't say we're saying
that personally about anybody. I think it's a matter of style and whatever. The question
we have, really, is, is the Council willing to continue with the airport operations the way
it has been or are we going to require some sort of accountability? And I think that is the
issue, not ... really, we need to address that issue before we can address anything else.
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Mascari/Emie, typically in years past the operational budget to run the airport has been ranging
between $110,000, $120,000 per year, about that, and last year, due to the default of the
FBO, it went up $78,200. Now, that's what I think started this whole thing.
Vanderhoef/It is.
Mascari/Isn't it?
Vanderhoef/Exactly.
Mascari/I don't know how you can think this would not affect ... how could you think this
wouldn't affect the City's budget? I mean, this
Lehman/I don't think anybody's saying that.
Mascari/Well, but you see, that's what started this whole thing. What started it all is the fact that
we increased the ... it took an additional $78,000 to run the airport last year, and I think
it's as clear as can be as to why that happened. Now, sure, we need to do some
housekeeping. No question. But like I said earlier, we don't have the expertise on doing
the day to day operation things that it comes to running a City department, which is in
fact what the airport is. It's a City ... it's a department of the City.
Lehman/I think we view it the same.
Mascari/Well, it is, and you know, I've heard in the past where folks have talked about
subsidizing the airport and not willing to spend money at the airport any more, and things
like that, well, you see, it's not being subsidized. The airport is a department of the City
just like P&Z is and just like Streets is and all that, it's a department of the City that has
to be financed, it has to ... to keep it running every year.
Wilburn/Maybe it's a matter of semantics, but we subsidize transportation.
Mascari/Maybe it is a matter of semantics.
Wilburn/Because fees cover a certain amount and them are certain expenses, you know, and I
mean...
Mascari/But the airport has been always been regarded as an enterprise. And so they've been
trying to ... we've been trying, it hasn't been our main goal, and understand this, not just
by City but by FAA. FAA mandates airports to try to become as self-sufficient as
possible. But they realize that in most cases that's nearly impossible to do. So we're
doing our best to try to make that happen. And unfortunately, this happened. And when
this happened, that just threw a whole wrench in the whole mechanism. So instead of
being $110,000, $120,000, it went up $78,000. But, you know, we've been trying our
hardest to try to figure out a way out of that, and you all know about our ideas about the
north area, and you know, this is one way we think we might be able to get that turned
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around. Maybe what we should have done, this is our mistake. What we probably should
have done, is we probably should have said, as soon as this came out, we probably should
have said, geez guys, we gave you our budget, this is what it is, thinking that's it's going
to cost an additional $120,000, but now this happened, we've gotta change things. We
probably should have stopped spending. But then again, we're required by the FAA to
keep that airport as an operational, fully functional airport. We have to for the next 20
years, so how much can we cut? This is a facility.
Robnett/I can actually ... the first time we came to the City Council we were at 64% of our
spending on expenses when the ... we were supposed to be at 75%, so Ron actually did
cut expenses to deal with this. I think this is a bigger question than some of the details,
and Ross, you brought it out, the airport is the ... like the library, and it ... the library
from what I can find, does not directly report to Steve Atkins. But, you know, I didn't
spend a lot of time. I found they had a similar structure but have managed the process and
their relationships well enough that they have a good ... and they knew there were
capabilities to take advantage of downtown, they took advantage of them. We have not
done that. So, contrary to what you (can't hear), I'm not trying to contradict you but I do
my research and that is the ... those are the two entities, and Steve, you said it yourself,
that those are the two entities that sort of have an independent structure. Now if we can
work together to make a bigger plan for how to take care of it, I think no matter what you
do, if you decide you need another employee, you need to change relationships, I think
you ... we need to do the research to figure out and do a business plan, or strategic plan,
to figure out where you do want to go because, and we've investigated that, too, because
part of it is, you would need research and data to make a decision, so would we, and we
anticipated that those things might be so, I think it is a bigger question than each of the
little details in this report, and that was one of the things that we talked about as far as
crafting a response, is the issue really oversight or is it, you know, some of the details.
And some of the details are taken care of when you set up the right structure, and that's
one of the things it sounds like you're trying to figure out, is do you want to change the
reporting structure, do you not?
Wilburn/You know, I can see us changing the reporting structure, similar to what the library
does now. I think that that would be an excellent idea. It would free him up, give him
some more time so we don't have to look for another employee, it could be an excellent
idea and maybe that would accomplish what everybody wants to see happen.
Kanner/What about your ... you're saying that you don't want to be charged back for some of
these services?
Wilburn/We're trying to cut costs, Steve, that's ail.
Kanner/Well
Wilburn/Trying to keep our costs down.
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Kanner/But I think that's a major sticking point in my mind, and that's something that we have
to implement, just like we have with the library and with our other departments.
Wilburn/Just one question. Ron, how much additional charges would there be? Do you have any
idea? Over what you do right now?
Airport Manager Ron O'Neil/Well, what you're talking right now, and I don't know the library
structure, right now we use the City's accounting. You know, when receipts are received
they are brought in and documented and put in in their report, and as Kevin had told you,
those reports are on line available daily. I mean, when the money comes in, if you want to
be on line, you could see how much money we have left in the budget, what line items
have been spent. I don't know if they charge back accounting if they're doing more
accounting for the library than they do for the airport.
Wilburn/Kevin, do you know?
O'Malley/Just based on volume, there's much more activity at the library daily than at the
airport.
Wilbum/Thanks.
O'Neil/Right, but I mean, do they charge the library back for ...
O'Malley/There are no accounting charge backs. Just
(All talking)
Wilburn/Okay.
Mascari/So them really wouldn't be that much (can't hear)
O'Neil/So those things are just the same now anyway.
Mascari/There wouldn't be that much of a charge then.
Pfab/Okay, how ... how much of a problem was it when you had to go to the market for an
FBO? Is that the right? And at the time of our (can't hear).
Mascari/Well, yes, exactly. That was the whole issue. I don't know if you all remember, but we
had at least six applicants to become the FBO, six people that were interested, high
quality people, and then after September 11th happened, why, it was very difficult. We
were very fortunate to get a great quality, high quality FBO and I think a lot of it had to
do with Ernie's help. We got ... we have a very good FBO, and, but because of this
situation, because of the circumstances, you know, aviation's been affected. They got it
right on the chin. I mean, aviation took it right on the chin after September 11th. Keep in
mind, you know, we all seen in the papers about US Airways and United Airlines and all
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that. It's not just the big guys. The little guys are hurting too. Can't think for a minute
that our little airport didn't get affected by September 11th. Of course it did.
Pfab/Did ... were you ... were you put at a disadvantage when you went to negotiate with your
new applicant?
Mascari/Oh sure, absolutely, because, you know, we built that building with a pretense that the
flying service is going to pay it offthrough their lease over 20 years, and so because of
that it was structured to be paid off at $5,400 a month. Well, you know, you get a new
business coming in there, brand new, starting fresh, they just simply can't afford that
large overhead at the very beginning. We understood that, so what we did is we tried to
do as best as we can again for the best interests of the airport, and that is to ramp them up.
We start them off low and then after a period of time it would go up a little higher and up
a little higher, until finally we would get to where it's close to what it used to be. Now, if
I'm not mistaken, Ron you can help me here, I think we actually talked to somebody
about extending it from a 20 year lease, or 20 year payback rather, to a 25, isn't that
correct? Did we talk to somebody downtown about that?
O'Neil/On what's that?
Mascari/On paying off that large building?
O'Neil/Oh, that building? Yeah, and I don't recall whether
Mascari/But we couldn't do that.
O'Neil/I talked to Kevin or Deb or someone in ... and generally, the policy, I believe, the
Finance or Council, I'm not sure who's policy is, is we don't finance for longer than 20
years. On any capital improvement, and I think they try to structure it to go 10 on a lot of
stuff just to keep interest down.
Atkins/Correct.
Mascari/So we tried. We knew that there was an issue, but we tried.
Kanner/What was the legal settlement you reached with the old FBO?
Mascari/Oh, man, I can't tell you. Maybe Ron can help me there.
O'Neil/We ended up getting the majority of the back rent that they owed us and we also made
them escrow a dollar amount to remove the 60 year old underground storage tanks. That
was a very important issue for us.
Kanner/And you felt that if you went to court you wouldn't get much in the way of future lease
money that you're losing? Was that your feeling?
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Mascari/We got the ...
O'Neil/The company that's ... most of the assets from Iowa City Flying Service, it was about ...
it had been sold about two years before that and they pretty methodically had been selling
off the assets. I don't believe there were maybe one or two planes left actually for Iowa
City Flying Service by the time they went out, and from what the City Attorney's Office
had looked at, it looked like the company that is still in business in Cedar Rapids, PS Air
and Iowa City Flying Service, had really done a pretty good job separating itself so there
was no way to go back against the parent company and do anything. Iowa City Flying
Service was an entity in name only by the time that the bailed out. You know, I suppose
you could have taken them to court, they would have gone into bankruptcy and half of
nothing or four times nothing is, well ...
Kanner/I'm just wondering if there were any indications in the previous years that if anything
could be changed for the future for perhaps this same company, how we would see
indications that they might do the same thing. What might change with a new system?
That's what I would be interested in exploring along the lines of what Michelle was
saying about an over ... what type of oversight would it take so that we don't ... won't
get in that same bind? I know at the airport, I have limited knowledge of the history but
there were some, I understand there were some bad sweetheart deals that were in place
before as far as the previous manager and the operator at that time had a great deal and
that was like long, decades long deal that was in place. And finally, we're out of that I
think, and now we have this company that went under, and so I'm wondering what is the
oversight that would perhaps help us avoid that thing in the future?
Allan Ellis/They got the sweetheart contract when they bought the company. The sweetheart
contract was when the FBO was the airport manager, and when they changed it over to a
separate airport manager, they wrote their own contract and they became their own
sweetheart deal. That company, Iowa City Flying Service, sold to the company that
eventually went bankrupt, and so when that company was bought they bought that same
deal. They were ... it was just the ownership change, they got the sweetheart deal. So
there isn't anything we could have done about it, we had to wait until the time ran out on
the 20 year deal before we could even implement any changes. And they went bankrupt
before the end of the 20 year deal.
Robnett/I think some of the oversight that you're asking is about, because I actually went back
and I actually talked to the guy who wrote up the deal for, I had a focus group and ran
into a bunch of old pilots at HyVee on First Avenue with, just walked in, knew there was
a coffee klatch and said, tell me about what you think about the airport. Turned out they
were former commissioners and the guy who did the deal for PK Air when they left, he
was telling me, and this is where I think some kind of strategic business planning, we'll
need to bring somebody in from outside to help us with that that are aviation experts
because that particular gentleman said that there are certain things that work for making
money in an FBO and there are certain things that don't. Aircraft sales used to carry the
deal, that's why, and I strongly believe that's why it's such a big part of what Ron does,
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but to get that expertise we're going to have to hire some people that know aviation, like
aviation consultants, and there are groups that do do that.
Anderson/Maybe ! can answer Ross's question a little bit, too, but before I do, just let me
apologize for kind of losing my cool there.
Lehman/You're okay. It's alright.
Anderson/I feel a little like ... feel a little like a raccoon on the interstate. I think the ... I think
the, you know, how do you monitor somebody's business because you really don't have
access to their books. And I know that PS Air, you know, you hear the rumor mill going
and that's sometimes how you can kind of know what's going on, I mean even if they're
paying their rent, you know, the rumors, you kind of listen to things, but that's about the
only kind ora feel you have for how a business is doing.
Champion/You have no guarantees.
Anderson/We have no guarantees.
Champion/None of us have any guarantees with ... where business is concerned.
Anderson/Yeah. You know, are they paying their bills on time? Yep. Are they paying the
utilities? Yep.
Robnett/And the w9y the big companies do it, US Air, United, who all went bankrupt. You
know, they have filings with the FCC. We're not that big. It's just one of those ... you
know, even Enron had filings with the FCC, and look what happened. So oversight is not
an easy question, even when you have legal access to all the documents, which with
private business you don't.
Ellis/But now, in this lease with this business, in their lease we do have the ability every year to
do an annual evaluation. It's pretty limited, but it is an evaluation and we added that
because of the problem that we had with Iowa City Flying. We didn't ... it's an
evolutionary process but that's exactly what we did.
Kanner/Do you have the ability to get out of the lease?
Ellis/We have the ability to look into their economics and ensure that they aren't going bankrupt
and not telling us. That's what we asked in the lease. So now we, in the past on the old
lease we had no legal right to do that, and we had to be careful as representative of the
City, even we had to be cautious about even what we said to them because it could be
construed as being discriminatory or as to causing a problem because we're representing
the City. We couldn't even in open meetings discuss the possibility that they were going
bankrupt because what if that was the one that set them offand they wanted to sue us for
being that way, for defaming them. We were very careful and had to be careful about
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what we said. Now in the new lease, we have the ability to every year get some kind of
report from them as far as their economic ability.
Karmer/Is it an audit?
Ellis/It's not a total audit because a lot of those things are, and I have to go back in the lease,
pull it out and show it to you to give you all the specifics, and I don't need to do that.
You can ask the airport ... but it isn't like we didn't learn something. We definitely
learned. And to go back from the beginning, when we started looking for people to go in
as FBO's we got 14 initial replies and a bunch of them were turned away first of all by
the fact that we wanted them to carry a $5,400 a month lease payment on that building.
And they didn't want it. Because they looked at the total, entire package at the time was
over $9,000 and they just thought that was too big of a deal. And even Jet Air, the
current, they backed away from it initially. It wasn't like it was an easy thing to get
somebody in there, we did have to tailor it, bring it down, pare it down, do the best we
could and that's what we got. But that is the sum total of the issue here as far as the
monetary side, is that the operational side of the budget, operational budget of the airport,
has gone down, not up. The non operational side, which is primarily debt servicing, is
what's going up and what we're having trouble making payments. Part of that you knew
from the ... the infrastructure improvements to produce the air commerce park, and that
was ... we talked to the, it was at the end of the subcommittee on economic development
on the Council, where you talked to us about the lease payments, how are you gonna pay
back this money when you don't have any lease coming in. And we ... we discussed it
then. It's just gonna keep rolling over and getting bigger and bigger every year until we
start leasing that land. At that time, we were willing to sit, 5-10 years was what we were
told, it's gorma be a 5-10 year project because (can't hear). We're willing to accept that.
The reason we're going back into and hoping for sales is to try to get out and because of
the new economic downturn problems. As far as oversight, all these issues that Ms.
Vanderhoefjust brought up, what you're reading in the June minutes, it's been in the
minutes of three or four months before that. We've directed the airport manager to go get
that information. We've asked him to produce that, we said, we can't just lease this, what
is the current going rate for those things. We don't just operate in a vacuum there, we try
to find out the best we can, we try to deter things that aren't the right thing for the City.
We're very aware of the cost that we're spending come from City money. Absolutely. It's
our money too. So, it's ... if you read one month's report, to me you're not getting the
full picture. And it's like the fuel farm, we've been on that fuel farm for months. We
withheld money from them for months because we're having trouble with them. And
there's two separate issues on the fuel farm. A fuel farm where they actually store the
fuel and then a separate remote unit where we can self-serve self. And that's where the
disparity - who is responsible for what and that's why we're breaking those things. And
as far as what Michelle was saying, bringing in outside sourced aviation specialists. We
have not done that in the past because we were so conscious of spending the money we
didn't want to spend the money. We tried to do it on our own. We tried to do the research
on our own instead of paying the money.
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Robnett/We don't even put any of our expenses through the airport to keep it down. People have
parking expenses, buy books, go online, buy things, we don't even submit it to keep the
budget down, so that's a volunteer group, it's also an indication that it's grown beyond
what it's had as far as staffing.
Ellis/Exactly right. And that's what leads to, over a year ago we started talking about a business
plan. We looked at ... I've been on the commission now over two years. When I first
came on, it was, you know, this was an airport that evolved from primarily a general
aviation type of operation. It's becoming more business-like. The airport manager was
hired to plow the snow, drive the tractor, mow the lawns, and do the administrative work.
Time has changed. It's now a much more business-like airport. The airport administrator
spends much more of his time in the office and that's why we're re-looking at first, I
came up with we need a business. We need to decide where we're taking it. Michelle
came on board and said, you know, but first we need the strategic. So we'll get the
strategic plan, develop a business plan, write airport rules, and we were certainly on the
right track, but it is evolutionary process. It's not gonna happen overnight. We do have
about one employee that we can direct to do things, and he does run the day to day
operation of that airport as well as plow the snow. You don't see him very often on the
tractor anymore, but definitely on the plowing of the snow. So, if we were having ... if
we had our absolute rights we'd have consultants and we'd have an assistant airport
manager out there also, to handle the public relations work, to get out there and sell
airport and aviation studies to the high schools, to be doing experiments with people and
bringing people on the airport. It's a public facility, it needs to be used by more people.
What I want him to do. But we have to do that in some way that makes sense and that's
why we're developing a long term plan, taking it from the small, general aviation airport,
to what should be a much more, I'd say probably 65% to 75% business oriented airport
where the people that own planes for recreation primarily are there to subsidize the (can't
hear). That's their job. They paid for that space and that helps keep the income flowing
for that airport. And of course, the more airplanes out there, the more fuel they use, the
more employees work at the businesses on the airfield, the more money you make, the
more money we make. That's the long term plan. The short term plan is selling off land
to pay off general obligation debt. Because once it's sold off we don't have anywhere
else to go. The long term plan would be to lease, and that's why we're willing to go 5-10
years on a lease. Having to sell the land now is sort of a panic deal in order to respond to
the current budget crisis.
Lehman/Alright any other, Council what
O'Donnell/I think Irvin had a question.
Pfab/I didn't ... I can't remember, it was ... I was talking about, do you have enough assets to
cover your debts?
Ellis/Assets, sure.
Lehman/Airport's worth a awful lot of money.
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Wilburn/Oh yeah.
Pfab/Okay, but do you have assets that you can sell? Where does that land (can't hear).
Mascari/Well, just the north commercial area alone is more than we would need to cover the ...
Anderson/Oh, yes.
RobneW We've actually looked at eliminating car contracts that are a standard for the City as a
way to cut costs. We went through that budget item by item, if you say you're taped, I
would, to see how to cut costs. Ron's doing a dam good job of keeping them down now.
Alright? And the Airport Commission has as well by not investing in the billing service,
things like that, but that's a very short term kind of vision. You need to figure out where
you want to go in the big ... if that's the ... if that's where you want to go in the big
picture, then that's fine. But no conscious decision has been made that that kind of
holding paid on the budget reigns is really going to help much.
Pfab/My point was, we talked ... one of the problems I always had when I wasn't able to get to
the meetings was that the minutes came in kind of late. While I was watching the City
channel I noticed that you were working with somebody, viewing the video on the City
channel of your meeting where you were working with somebody who has some kind of
a trainer? What's that all about?
Mascari/I'll let Mark explain that.
Anderson/Um,
Lehman/Well, look, that's not relevant.
Anderson/No, no, it is because
Lehman/No, it's not.
Anderson/No,
Ellis/It's a business that we've been trying to incur. To bring onto the airport.
Lehman/But I don't think that's why we're here tonight. What is the Council's pleasure. This
meeting was precipitated by a report from the City Manager and it noted some oddities,
unusual sorts of things. We have a report that addresses those things. We need at this
point, and I don't ... we're not going to run the airport as a Council. The airport
commission does that. What is our pleasure? How do we wish to proceed? We can talk
all night and never get anywhere.
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Pfab/What I hear is, I think that there is certainly a lot of progress being made and I would say,
I'd stand back and let 'em have at it.
Mascari/Emie, ifI could just say one thing. This is so healthy. This is for once, for once the
Council is getting a small picture as to what really goes on down there. You know, a long
time ago I had made the reference to, like a duck in water, and that's what we are. You
know, when he's in the water he looks just so graceful, not doing a thing. But, Emie, he's
paddling like hell. That's us.
Lehman/Well, no, and I think you guys really do work, but the kind of information that's gone
back and forth here tonight is the kind of information that we're able to get from
department heads any day of the week that we need it. And it's not
Mascari/And Ron meets with the, with the department heads every week.
Lehman/Anyway.
Kanner/Just, sort of as an aside, but I think it is important. Michelle you mentioned about the
minutes perhaps being mom concise. Actually, I get a very good sense from the minutes.
I think perhaps Dee does too, and hopefully other Council Members. So I like that in
depth. It might be worthwhile for you to do an executive summary to give to your
manager to pass on at the weekly meetings, that can be something in writing, but I hope
that you keep the minutes ... keep them timely and that gives ... that gives me a good
insight as to what's happening at the (can't hear). I think it's on par with our other
commissions. They go into that kind of depth, and I depend on that to have oversight.
Pfab/I think there also the fact that they are now taping their meetings, they're available on the
City channel and if you can't get to the meeting you can check, call up the City channel,
they'll tell you when they run their tapes.
Champion/Well, I've got a few other concerns. I'm not going to tell your commission I'm sorry.
That doesn't mean that I'm not interested or that I don't support the airport, but I have
problems with the fact that I'm expected to be your navigator, and you know, when I fly,
I have had three glasses of wine and two tranquilizers. I don't know how
Mascari/You won't be the navigator then. What kind of talk is that?
Champion/Well, you'd be in big trouble. I can't even stay awake to walk up the stairs. So, I'm
just totally convinced that we need to get you really under the City. I'm a little more
flexible on that; I think you're working on it, and we do forget that September 11th, it did
have a devastating effect on aviation. And it's still having a devastating effect. But I'm
concerned about where taxpayers' money is going, and you are, you are a public facility
and maybe (can't hear).
Mascari/It is 1/10th of 1% of the budget.
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Champion/But, I don't know, what can you do to tell me how can you communicate more with
my managerial skills, not aviation skills. I consider myself actually a pretty good
manager.
Mascari/I've heard that.
Champion/But I don't have the expertise to even understand if you're managing the airport
okay. Because I don't know anything about airports, that's not ... that's not what I meant.
So you've gotta help me find some way that, if the Council's gonna remain your
reporting body, so to speak, that we have some concept of what's going on. Because, I
mean, you come to us, you want money for runways, and we (can't hear). What if we
handle that through the FAA or however that happens, those kind ... the renovation of the
building, those kind of things I can handle, but the day to day operations and where the
money comes from and what it costs the taxpayers, I don't ... personally, I just don't
have the expertise to do that, so I need somehow for the City to have that control over
you, like they have
Mascari/Understanding of where you are.
Champion/Understanding of where you are. So, I mean, this is a real problem for me. And I do
support the airport, so don't ... don't think that I don't. But I do have problems when I'm
supposed to be the navigator.
Mascari/So do we.
Anderson/Especially with wine and pills.
Kanner/Sounds like I heard from a couple of the commissioners and perhaps the airport folks
that there's agreement that there needs to be, I don't know if oversight's the word, but
more looking after and more financial controls that we use similar to the library. And I
think we need to move in that direction of, use the library as a model and say, Kevin,
work with Ron and set up a system. And then tell us what that system is when you're
ready, in a month. I don't think it's that complicated, and other budget issues, that's what
we'll talk about at the budget. We have different philosophies, but that comes at the
budget.
Wilburn/Absolutely. I agree.
Ellis/I believe we go through the same budgeting process as all the other departments in the
City. As far as the development of it and the submission of accounts.
Lehman/I think that's right.
Ellis/So there's no surprises in that. And certainly in our response we offered that. In order to
make ... to bring it more into the City, we could certainly turn this over to the City
accounting system. It's not that difficult. We thought there might be problems and we
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addressed those, but if there aren't, then it's not ... that's not a show stopper by any
means. That helps us too.
Robnett/I do think that part of what we've found though, is there is a group out there, the
Library, like Bob's found it, I found it, and we stumbled on it by ourselves and Steve
knows about it, that's doing it "better". That means there's opportunity for us to "help it
do better" and those are some of the things that we need to look at as potential structures,
ways of interacting.
Anderson/Yeah, maybe we benchmark those folks and find out what they're doing and try to
emulate.
Kanner/This ... and I understand how the fixed lease operator leaving would affect your budget.
Anderson/Sure.
Kanner/To the extremes that it did. But my concern was, we had hangars that were leased
without a lease, inconsistency in rent, that was my concern and I think that's legitimate
when I'm asked to allocate money to the airport.
Mascari/Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kanner/And, I guess, to my ... I need to know. Has that been rectified.
Anderson/Yes.
Karmer/Are we in the process of rectifying?
Anderson/As a matter of fact
Kanner/I'm losing my voice here. I'd love to say some more.
Anderson/That's okay.
Lehman/Write it down.
Anderson/Actually, item #7 of our report really addresses the insurance and the leases and, in
fact, everybody gave me a lease here starting next month, all new rents. We've added
some utility charges.
Kanner/That's starting next month?
Anderson/Yeah.
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Ellis/We decided to make it a ... instead of every hangar space becomes leased and whatever,
becomes available, we're making all will terminate on the same dates. Every year there
will be a new lease for a year for everybody. That's ... we took
Kanner/But see, this shouldn't be new. This should be something that's happened all the way
along.
Ellis/30 hangar spaces, we inherited when Iowa City Flying Service went away, had no leases
whatsoever because they were underneath Iowa City Flying Service. And the other leases
were all kind of a hodgepodge of what was developed when that person first leased that
hangar. So some of the older leases were 20 years old, didn't even require a certificate of
insurance to be presented, and some of them did. So there was a mishmash. When we
said we need to make one standardized one, now that we own all the hangars, we made
one standardized annual lease
TAPE CHANGE
Ellis/it took a lot of time because we're diverted by a lot of other issues. And we subcommitteed
it. And one of the members of the subcomJnittee initially was Howard Horan. And he
was not reselected to be on it. So it slowed us down. I mean, that's not an excuse, it's just
... it takes time, again it's an evolutionary process with volunteers and we worked on it
as we could, and we've come up with what we think is a very good new lease. And we
put into it, again, another process where it's an annual evaluation, we looked at it and
we're trying to bring the commission into where it's supposed to be, not where it was 20,
30 years ago, but where it should be now as more of a guiding, governing authority rather
than being as involved as we are in some of this day to day stuff. And that's our job as
we've taken forward.
Robnett/And the nice thing is, the leases that did exist were on a month-to-month extension
which we did, and you'll see a great cash inflow in October because we're now requiring
deposits for all of them. So we should be getting
Ellis/We just brought in current standards.
Robnett/extra, double the amount of... and we've given it the opportunity to have increased
rents, increased deposits, there ...
Anderson/Let me try to help bring ... help Ernie bring this to a close here.
Lehman/Thank you.
Anderson/Again, my apologies to Dee and the Council. As you can tell, we're all pretty
passionate about what we do and we really love the airport, and we all have a keen
interest in safety and making sure that Iowa City has one of the best airports in the state,
so we appreciate your input, your direction, and we'll work hard to try to put a system
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together that can help you understand what's going on on a monthly basis, or weekly or
daily, if you'd like, so thank you.
Robnett/Emie, could I make just one comment while you're all sitting here?
Lehman/Yes.
Robnett/You're talking about accountability and oversight and that can take a lot of forms. It
sounds like where you're kind of headed now is increasing, you know, better
communication, tapping into the financial resources, making sure the financial controls
that we have in place in the City are ... are in place at the airport. Those kind of things
are all fine for the current structure, but it needs to be very clear that operational control
resides with the airport. For instance, the ultimate decision to ... whether or not to have
entered into that agreement with the current FBO resided with the airport and it will
continue to reside with the airport. There may be increased ... there may be ways that
you implement so the airport commission gets more input from the Council or more
thoughts from the Council, before those decision are made, and that's all fine. But those
decisions, pursuant to the state code and our ordinances, are made by the airport
commission under the current system.
Lehman/Well, from my own perspective, I really believe that there is no question we've got a
commission with very, very dedicated folks. I think we've got a very good airport. I think
these folks work very, very hard. I do believe it's unfair to ask volunteers to do the kinds
of things that you guys have been asked to do. I think they need to be done
professionally. I believe that your interests, as well as the City's interests, and the City
Council's interests, will be best served if the airport has some degree of accountability to
the City Manager. I'm not interested in trying to run an airport. I don't know anything
about it. You guys do. I don't think the Council should have to worry about running an
airport. We don't worry about a bus system, a police department, a fire department, a
parks and recreation department, we leave that to our hired administrators and that's
precisely where I'd like to see the airport be. But I don't question for a heartbeat the
sincerity or the amount of work and the hard work you folks put in. I do think that there's
a certain amount of expertise that we have available within our City administration that
could be of a tremendous benefit to you folks. I think I'm hearing, and I don't know what
I'm hearing because Council's kind of sat here pretty quiet. Well, we're gonna say
something pretty quick, we're either gonna continue, let things move on as they have
been moving or we're going to do something different. What's the pleasure of the
Council?
Pfab/I'd say leave things go as they are now.
Wilburn/The finance stuff has to run through the City Finance Department.
Lehman/Alright.
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Wilbum/Now, Eleanor, if I need some more guidance from you as to what is allowable by state
code and our own ordinances because following Emie's comments about things that you
all are doing, and are gladly and are passionately doing, I'm needing some more guidance
on what Council is, under our structure, with the City Manager in terms of responding to,
supervision of, with the airport manager, and/or possibly any future staff because I ...
you know, you had said that you all recognize that you are taxpayers and the, you know,
blah blah blah blah. But it's not universal in the community that the airport is something
that people support, and support with their tax dollars. And that's what we hear, and some
of... in fact, on the old ... our current Council, some have said they don't support the
airport and what they're doing. I do support it being a municipal airport and I'm willing
to look at, if these are the costs of what it costs to run municipal airport, so be it, just like
transportation and things like that. But what am I allowed as a City Council to say the
direct line of supervision between our staff and the airport staff?.
Dilkes/I think for instance that you could ask the City Manager to communicate with Ron on a
daily basis, to review all the paper that comes out of the Airport Commission and review
the finances daily and for the purposes of reporting that information to you, there is no
problem with that. Primarily, I mean it's public record. There's no problem with those
efforts to increase communication. But the airport manager reports to the Airport
Commission, and he is directed by the Airport Commission. To have, I don't think you
can say, for instance, we want the airport manager to report to the City Manager and the
City Manager to direct the activity of the airport manager because then, ultimately, it's
the Council that's directing the airport manager and that is not the system we have.
Wilburn/Okay, so if, if things aren't tightened up here and if the strategic planning, business
planning, if all of these things aren't going as we see fit, then I, as an individual Council
member, or City Council can talk to the Airport Commission as (talking at same time)
Dilkes/You can talk to them as much as you want. You can direct the City Manager to talk to
them as much as you want. But you cannot ... and that's why I use the FBO as a, as an
example. You may in hindsight look back at what the Airport Commission decided to do
in terms of entering into the contract with the new FBO and say, well, I might not have
done it that way. Well, you didn't sit through that process; that wasn't your decision to
make. It continue ... if it came up again it still wouldn't be your decision to make. Not
that you couldn't provide input.
Wilburn/But I still have the power ... we still have the power of the first collectively to say,
Dilkes/Of course.
Wilburn/You're not going to want, no this year.
Dilkes/Of course, but if you want operational control of the airport that requires a referendum
and a change in our current structure.
Wilburn/Okay.
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Kanner/But as you were saying, I think somewhat contrary to what you said in the beginning,
Emie, we do have that ultimate control,
Lehman/Oh, that's true.
Kanner/that's our ultimate control, is we give a global budget, we can increase it or decrease it,
and that's part of what, perhaps in a sense, brings us to the table to negotiate and say
we'd like this, they say we want this, and hopefully reach agreement but if we disagree,
ultimately we can say, we're gonna cut your budget or do this.
Lehman/That's always
Pfab/Or the other thing is, who do you appoint to the commission. You have that power.
Lehman/Right.
Kanner/That's true, and that's something we're gonna discuss later. But so again, I would
suggest, I think they're moving in a positive direction and they answered some of the
concerns, I think, seemed reasonable. But we need more control from the finance and I
would ask Kevin and Steve to work with Ron and give us how they're gonna tighten that
finance. That would be the first step.
Lehman/But don't miss ... don't confuse control with information.
Pfab/Right, and assistance. They assistance. I think when you use control I think we have a
valuable
Kanner/I mean it in the terms of financial controls that we have, auditing, standard principles
that we use as a City, in that sense.
Lehman/Oh. Alright.
Dilkes/I think that's ... there's no doubt when the money runs through us, that we can impose
those controls, make sure they're in place.
Pfab/That's ... I don't think there's ever been any objection to them doing it. Right?
Kanner/Well, we need to be specific and I think we've heard the people that have spoken have
said they agree to it, now we need to see if Council wants to agree to that.
Anderson/As an excellent example, today Dee called me about a question or issue on some
current leases
Dilkes/We can't hear you.
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Anderson/A good example of how this could be working better, I got a call from Dee today,
who had some questions about some leases that, you know, it's kind of last minute but we
did put them on hold, or tabled them until we got further input from her on her thoughts
on why, because I still ... it was a pretty short conversation so I didn't understand exactly
what all the implications were, but so we've tabled those and we're going to ask her to
come to our, we're going to have a special meeting so that we can hear from her directly
so we can hear from her directly what it is that her concerns are. I mean, that's, we can,
that's very easy to do. You know, we can get direct input that way.
Mascari/We work for you. You hired us. We work for you. You're our boss, you tell us what to
do, we do it.
Lehman/Okay. We know where you are, Irvin. Mike?
O'Donnell/You know, I think it's clear that there has to be better communication, and with the
present system we have now, that's optional by the Commission. You can, you may or
may not accept advice, ask for it, I really don't know ... I guess I'm going to reserve my
opinion until I hear everybody else.
Pfab/I can make a statement.
Lehman/You already made yours. Connie?
Champion/Well, I ... I would like to see the airport under, more under City control. A
department of the City, but I'm kind of relenting on that a little bit since I see some
progress being made. So, I think you do need another employee. I don't know where
you're gouna get it. But, are we doing ... I don't know, maybe we're doing all of you a
disservice by not putting it under City control, even though it would take a rough ride to
do it.
Pfab/My question is, how can you?
Champion/I've eased up on that a little bit.
Anderson/You know, it'll take our wings away.
Champion/I know.
Lehman/Dee?
VanderhoefJ Well, I came in here thinking it was probably headed for a referendum.
Champion/Me, too.
Vanderhoef/And I'm not sure with the budget being what it is that you can accomplish what you
want without more expertise. Which leads me to think, how can we better use the
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expertise that we may have and hire some more? I'm not sure that it can happen. I did
appreciate the response. I think you are becoming a lot more thoughtful and recognizing
what our concerns are and why we've questioned some of the things the way we have. I
would go with a referendum if that was the majority of Council's wishes. I would work
with the commission for a bit longer, but I think they've got to ask for some more outside
help. I don't think ... your heart's in the right place but I don't think you can possibly get
us to where we need to be to be a professional airport manager in a total situation. So it
really tears me both directions, because I know your intentions are good. I'll bow to
Council.
Wilburn/I don't see a problem. Let's see. I've already said, finances have to go through. I think
that's my primary concern right now. And, you know, I'm not in on the conversations at
the staff meetings between Ron and Steve. I'm gonna leave it up to you two to make that
work. If it's not working, let me see, Council and/or the public can initiate referendum?
Dilkes/By Council or by petition.
Wilburn/That would be to change the structure so that the airport manager or the airport itself
would be under ...
Dilkes/It's to eliminate the Airport Commission as it now exists, and presumably it would then
become an advisory body to the City Council.
Wilbum/Okay. I see. And possibly like a current commission?
Dilkes/Yeah.
Wilbum/Yeah?
Dilkes/Yeah.
Wilburn/So I'd do that or I'd be the first to go ahead and say here, Ernie.
Vanderhoef/Just a legal question real quick. By law, how and when can we
Wilburn/Initiate that?
Vanderhoef/Initiate a referendum?
Dilkes/Well, if it's done, you the Council? As opposed to by petition?
Vanderhoef/Either.
Dilkes/By petition I think the Code section says you have to within 72 days act on that to get it
on the ballot. I think the Commission, or the Council putting it on the ballot would
require that we just meet the election deadlines of the auditor, which I think for example
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for November, this November would be the end of the month, but you can do a special
election and then we just have to meet those timelines, so
Vanderhoef/And can it be incorporated with any other election, you know, if there were a bond
issue or any of those kinds of things?
Dilkes/Yeah.
Lehman/School bond issue, doesn't that have to ... can that ...
Dilkes/Well, school stuff has to be separate.
Lehman/I think that has to be separate. Steven?
Kanner/I think right now there's two things that I see that need to be done which we've talked
about. One, I think we have to systemize the communication reporting. We certainly have
that weekly conversation but we have to, perhaps, I'd like to see something in writing of
how that communication is going to happen, whether it's daily, weekly or monthly and
back and forth. So that needs to be tightened up. And then the greater financial oversight
are the main things that I would ask for right now.
Lehman/Well, I guess the question ... it sounds to me like I hear the Council saying, sharpen up.
Champion/We're not taping your (can't hear)
Lehman/But let me say this, in all honesty, as much as I appreciate the Commission and as much
as I appreciate the airport and as great an asset as I feel it is for the community, the job of
the Council is to look at the total picture of the community and how everything, how all
the pieces fit. And as much as I respect and thank you folks for the work that you're
doing, I believe that it's unfair for a City to ask volunteers to do what you're trying to do.
I really do. I think the amount of work you're putting in is astronomical. I think it's unfair
to do that. I think that there's a lot of assets within this building that could be used to help
you. I personally would feel more comfortable if we did have a certain level of oversight
on the airport, but I'm willing to go along with ... obviously, I'm willing, I'm in the
minority. I'll go along with the Council, but I will say this, that ifa year from now this
Council ... if I'm not
Vanderhoef/Or sooner.
Lehman/Well, no, no, I do think in all honesty and fairness that this is something that the
Commission, if we're gonna have the Commission proceed they need the time to do their
work plan, their strategic plan, these sort of things and I'd be more than happy to give
them the time to do it. But if... the next time that we come up with difficulties like we
have visited with the last six or eight weeks, I don't think that I'm going to be willing to
proceed the way we have been proceeding.
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Kanner/And I think that's exactly right, Emie. I think there's a deadline on this. I came in
tonight with, with a certain direction that I thought we were going to go and you guys are
such an incredible group of people, and the dedication level here is, has convinced me
that we should extend this. But there is a timeline on that. I certainly like what's
happening.
Lehman/The thing I really wanted to do is something we can't do legally. I wanted the
Commission to stay autonomous and have your City, your Airport Manager be an
employee of our City Manager, which I felt would have given us the best of everything.
You'd of had the oversight, we would have ... together, I think that would have been the
best but that's not a legal possibility at all. Thank you very much. We have another
question.
Vanderhoef/I have one question to ask the Commission because I didn't want to get off on
another tangent. You had indicated earlier that you were going down to the FAA and I
have not heard a response yet as to whether we can or cannot sell the aviation commercial
park?
Mascari/I think you might be mistaken on that, but I'm going to defer it Ron.
O'Neil/What we have do, and we have a whole list of things and different type of reports,
whatever, that we have to put together to request a waiver, and we've started on that. I
think the first thing was to get a general consensus from the Council that if that was the
route that they wanted to go, we wanted to go to sell it, that that would happen and got
that direction and I think we're now moving to the next step.
Vanderhoef/Okay, what's the timeline?
O'Neil/Well, as soon as we can get going on it, because
Vanderhoef/No.
Wilbum/You can ask the FAA.
O'Neil/Oh, as soon as we get ... as soon as we get a report together and I don't have the list in
front of me of what all those things are to, so, if we ... if it's just something that I need to
generate and don't have to go to too many other sources, I'll just make it a priority. If it's
something that I depend on
Anderson/One of the items was the appraisal, that we had to have that updated appraisal. I think
we've got Casey Cook ... when did he say that would he ready?
O'Neil/We met with Casey to make sure that we still are looking at the appraisal that was done
as fair market value, and I think we're supposed to have that report in another week and a
half, two weeks. So that will be one of the pieces, we'll just put that together and get it
down there. The response time, I wouldn't begin to tell you.
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Lehman/Go for it.
Kanner/Ernie, for my use and for the staff, could you summarize what we're directing, if
anything, to our staff to do in regards to this situation.
Lehman/I don't believe that there's anything that we can direct our staff. We can ... we have, I
think we have discussed this, the commission is well aware of the availability of our
accounting services, of various things that the library takes advantage of within this
building. But I don't think that we can direct our staff to tell the airport conunission to do
anything.
Kanner/Not to tell them, but
Lehman/We have
Kanner/But this is what we prefer, and are we telling our staff
Dilkes/Can we summarize what the understanding is of the majority of Council and the Airport
Commission? I think Steven has a point, that we need to be clear about that. As I
understand it, 1) you have an understanding that our finance department and the Airport
Manager will work together to make sure that the airport commission's finances are
tapped directly into the City's financial system and that all controls that are applied to
other City money are applicable to the airport money. Is that correct?
Lehman/I think that's a fair statement.
Mascari/Yeah, does that include billing, I hope?
Dilkes/I'm assuming that's everything.
Mascari/Okay.
Dilkes/Kind of like the library.
Karmer/And using the library as a model.
Dilkes/Using the library as a model. Okay, so we're getting a yes on that. 2) You've talked
about, but kind of broadly, about wanting, or to somehow be some increased
communication, either more frequent or more substantive, between the airport manager
and the City Manager. Is there some specifics to that that, or do we just want to leave it
at, do you want them to give you a proposal? What?
Pfab/I think we also want a correspondence between the Council and the City Manager if that
meets and the City and the Airport Manager. We have no idea what goes on there now.
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And I don't know what questions the City Manager's asking the Airport Manager, so I've
nothing to go on.
Dilkes/Are you wanting a more frequent report from Steve about what his understanding ...
what, do you want to give any more definition to that or do you just want to increase
communications?
Pfab/Say every Council meeting they should issue a brief report of what happened since the last
Council meeting.
Lehman/I don't care for those at Council meetings, but I do think it's very important that Steve
and Ron have a, and I would assume that the Airport Commission could direct Ron to
keep Steve
Mascari/Yes.
Anderson/Absolutely.
Lehman/... up to date as to what's happening with issues such as the ones that we've discussed.
Atkins/Ernie?
Lehman/Yes.
Atkins/Ron and I'll design something. We'll get it back to you.
Lehman/I think that's proper. Alright.
(All talking)
Vanderhoef/I'd appreciate from the Airport Commission a timeline on putting together your
business plan, your vision plan, whatever, and let us know and sooner rather than later
would be my request, and I still recognize your volunteers.
Wilburn/Right. That would be my choice, too.
Kanner/And I'd like to see if there's agreement that it's gonna be a broad based group that's part
of that, that perhaps the City Council has the opportunity to appoint a couple people,
whether it's a member of Council or a citizen form at large, to be part of that strategic
planning.
Robnett/I'd sent a memo to Steve Atkins that you never got with attachments that was supposed
to be cc'd to you. You just got his letter. Did you ever get that letter?
Kanner/We did get that, yes.
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Robnett/Okay. Because it does recommend a very big broad base, and I agree. But that, because,
you know, maybe the citizens want to close the airport and you're the minority of who
wants to keep it open.
Wilburn/Michelle, we gotta talk.
Lehman/We can still make that decision.
Wilburn/We have to talk.
Robnett/I'm sorry.
(all talking)
Kanner/But is that an understanding about the strategical planning? Is that an understanding
about the strategic planning, it will
Wilburn/I think that's by definition what strategic planning is, the broad based community ...
Kanner/Not necessarily, but I'm glad to hear you say that.
Wilburn/That is what they sent.
Pfab/Okay, but getting back to what you said, Steve. What, how do we relate that to what
Eleanor's trying to, what's ... what's, how do we word that?
Kanner/Well, I think there's an understanding here that that ... that that's gonna happen down
the road and that we'll get further information on that when the planning happens.
Atkins/Ernie? Would you allow Ron and I to put together a proposal on the strategic plan?
Lehman/Absolutely. In fact I think that's very good. Alright?
(commission all talking: thanks, thank you guys.)
Lehman/I really appreciate you being on the commission.
Robnett/I know, and I've really enjoyed it, but thanks for recognizing the volunteers.
(all talking)
Karr/Are we adjourned? Are we breaking?
Lehman/Oh, it's mealtime. We're taking a break. We will return in a very few minutes and
proceed while we eat.
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DINNER BREAK
ITEM NO. 5 PLANNING AND ZONING MATTERS
a. CONSIDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARiNG FOR SEPTEMBER 10 ON AN
ORDiNANCE AMENDiNG THE PRELIMINARY PLANNED DEVELOPMENT
HOUSiNG OVERLAY (OPDH-12) PLAN FOR LOT 259 OF WINDSOR RIDGE, PART
15, GLEN BROOK CONDOMINIUMS, A 46-UNIT RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT AT
THE INTERSECTION OF COURT STREET AND CAMDEN ROAD. (REZ02-00011)
Franklin/The first item is to set a public hearing for September l0th on a zoning amendment for
Windsor Ridge part 15.
b. CONSIDER A MOTION SETTiNG A PUBLIC HEARING FOR SEPTEMBER 10 ON AN
ORDiNANCE AMENDiNG THE ZONING CODE, SECTION 14-6H-1, GENERAL
INDUSTRIAL ZONE, TO ALLOW REPAIR OF COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL
TRUCKS AS A PROVISIONAL USE.
Franklin/The second item is setting a public hearing for September l0th on an ordinance
amendment to allow the repair of commercial and industrial trucks in the I(1) zone.
c. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGiNG THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM
MEDIUM DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, RS-8, TO PLANNED
DEVELOPMENT HOUSiNG OVERLAY, OPDH-8, FOR W1NDSOR RIDGE, PART 16, A
31.1-ACRE, 10-LOT SUBDIVISION LOCATED NORTH OF CAMDEN ROAD AND
SOUTH OF LOWER WEST BRANCH ROAD. (REZ02-00006)
Franklin/Item number three is a carry over from your last meeting. We continue the public
heating on Windsor Ridge part 16 to allow us time to put the conditional zoning
agreement together. It is together. It is signed and you can proceed with this item
tomorrow night to close the hearing and vote on the first consideration. Yes.
Lehman/Close the hearing and vote. Okay.
d. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGiNG THE ZONiNG DESIGNATION FROM
GENERAL iNDUSTRIAL, I- 1, TO iNTENSIVE COMMERCIAL, CI- 1, FOR 1.14-ACRES
LOCATED WEST OF RIVERSIDE DRIVE SOUTH OF COMMERCIAL DRIVE. (REZ02-
00007) (FIRST CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item d is first consideration on the rezoning of the Gringer property on Riverside Drive
from I(1) to CI(1).
O'Donnell/Has there been any comments on this, Karin?
Franklin/There is a letter from Mr. Baculis in your packet.
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O'Donnell/I read that.
Franklin/There's one errouneous piece there. His property is zoned I(1) it is not zoned
industrial.
Lehman/Okay.
e. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM LOW
DENSITY S1NGLE FAMILY, RS-5, TO PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING
OVERLAY, OPDH-5, TO ALLOW 23 SiNGLE-FAMILY LOTS AND 13 TOWNHOUSE-
STYLE UNITS IN VILLAGE GREEN, PART XXII, A 9.31-ACRE 24-LOT
RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION LOCATED WEST OF SCOTT BOULEVARD AND
NORTH OF WELLINGTON DRiVE. (REZ02-00008) (FIRST CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item e is first consideration on rezoning for a portion of Village Green.
f. CONSIDER AN ORDiNANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM
MED1UM DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY, RS-8, TO HISTORIC PRESERVATION
OVERLAY-MEDIUM DENSITY SiNGLE FAMILY, OHP-RS-8, DESIGNATING 3
ACRES OF PROPERTY LOCATED AT 747 WEST BENTON STREET A HISTORIC
LANDMARK. (REZ02-00005) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/F is the second consideration on the designation of the bus property on Benton Street as
an historic landmark.
g. CONSIDER AN ORDiNANCE AMENDING THE PLANNED DEVELOPMENT
HOUSiNG (OPDH-12) PRELIMINARY PLAN FOR SILVERCREST TO ALLOW FOUR
4-UNIT TOWNHOUSE STYLE BUILDiNGS AND FOUR 24-UNIT INDEPENDENT
LiViNG BUILDiNGS FOR ELDERLY RESIDENTS ON 12.18 ACRES LOCATED EAST
OF SCOTT BOULEVARD AND SOUTH OF AMERICAN LEGION ROAD. (REZ02-
00002) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/G is second consideration on Silver Crest for the townhouse and independent living
buildings.
h. CONSIDER AN ORDiNANCE VACATiNG 32,710 SQUARE FEET OF FRONTAGE
ROAD RIGHT-OF-WAY ALONG THE FRONT OF THE PROPERTY AT 801 HIGHWAY
1 WEST. (VAC02-00001) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item h is pass and adopt on the vacation for Carousel Motors. In regard to this item we
have received correspondence which you have a copy of you received tonight from Tom
Hobart the attorney for Carousel Motors and the Williamsons presenting their case for the
disposition of this property. We believe this can proceed that you can go ahead with your
third consideration on the vacation and address the conveyance item with the public
hearing with this in hand that's later on in the agenda. I don't know if you want to talk
about that at all tonight at all or just discuss it tomorrow during the public hearing or...
Vanderhoef/What about the cost on the...
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Franklin/Okay that is the issue is establishing the fair market value and as you may recall there
has been some discussion on how we actually acquired this property. When we went
back and looked at the history of it in fact what happened was that the City acquired the
right-of-way from DOT. We then sold a portion of that right-of-way to Marv Hartwig in
1984 or '85. We did not sell the frontage road property to Hartwig that then became
Williamson Carousel Motors. When Ken Williamson was subdividing the property
developing it for Carousel Motors he was required to build the frontage road, but it was
on City owned property. So the City...either the State or the City has owned this
property ever since the State has required it for the Highway 1 right-of-way. So it was
never actually owned and dedicated by the Williamsons which I believe is information
we gave you before which was erroneous. Okay so with all of that history straight the
question now is the relative value of the property - the 32,000 square feet of right-of-way
where the frontage road is the request is the convey that to Diane Williamson of Carousel
Motors for usage of the Carousel Motors property and the new Nissan dealership that
they will have. That value versus the value of us and it's a less qualifiable value of
moving that access point to the south. What you have from Tom Hobart is an argument
about that value such that there is no monetary exchange at this point in time. That it
is...the public benefit of moving the access point to the south and they argue the
investment that they will put into the property I think where we agree is that public value
of moving that to the south and clarifying the status of this property in terms of it being
used as private property, being private property, being taxed as private property as
opposed to public property because there is no real need for us to have this property any
longer. So that is for you to then judge whether you agree with that and you agree that's
fair market value. And you do that through your public hearing process tomorrow night.
Okay. Do you want to add anything Eleanor?
Champion/This is a bid for doing them.
Franklin/That's a bid for actual construction to not only move the access point, but to do some
improvements to their property for the benefits of their property.
Champion/Oh, okay.
Franklin/And so what...even though they are making the argument that this is what they're
going to spend and this is what the property is valued, that's one argument that they are
making. What Eleanor and I have talked about in terms of the law that says that we
cannot give away public property that has to be for fair market value that the way we're
getting that exchange is through the public benefit of moving that access point to the
south, the fact that we no longer need that public right-of-way.
Dilkes/But the assessment of what that fair value is from the seller's perspective lies with you.
Franklin/Yes.
Pfab/Why don't we sell them the property and then bid out the (can't hear)?
Franklin/There is no public works per say.
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Pfab/Well, they're going to spend...if they're going to spend $100,000 why don't we bid that
out?
Dilkes/Well, we don't have...I mean correct me if I'm wrong Karin, but we don't have the right
to require them to move their access point at this juncture.
Franklin/No. We have nothing that can require that.
Dilkes/If they...if they agree to that and you agree to that as compensation you get two things
arguably. You get the fact that the road moves or the access point moves which from a
plarming perspective Karin is telling you is a good thing and number two you get their
investment in making that change - the money they spend to make that change.
Pfab/Why don't we make it open and above board sell them the land for the appraised value and
(can't hear).
Dilkes/If that's what you choose to do and that's the condition you place on the vacation and
disposition that's fine.
Lehman/You can do that. It's our call.
Pfab/Pardon?
Lehman/It's our call.
Kanner/And have we appraised...
Pfab/That's the only way we should.
Kanner/Have we appraised the land value?
Franklin/No, the analysis that is in the letter from Tom Hobart is using a method which we often
use to determine a value for property and that is taking the abutting property its assessed
value and extrapolating it on a per square foot cost to the adjacent right~of-way. And...
Dilkes/He does two things with that. He talks first about yes using the abutting property the
assessed value of the abutting property and then he extrapolates from the Oaknoll
appraisal. I'm not sure all those conclusions are appropriate and that's an argument that
he's making. I'm not an appraiser of property so I can't tell you that, you know, the
Oaknoll property is a comparable property to that which we're appraising. I think there is
a similarity in terms of it's not buildable because of the blanket...because of the utility
easement. But no we do not have a formal appraisal. We know what the abutting land is
assessed for.
Pfab/I believe this is the attorney's opening (can't hear).
Franklin/That's their proposal which you can accept or reject.
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Pfab/I think that...
Champion/(Can't hear) the land is totally worthless to us. I mean we can't sell it if somebody
going to build on it. And their willing to move the road to where we think would have
been a better place for it.
Pfab/I would say buy the land at fair market value whatever the value is and then if they want
this we'll bid it out.
Dilkes/I think you need to focus on what they're giving you in exchange. It's not cash, but it is
something. And you need to evaluate whether that's fair value. I don't think you should
approach it in terms of well it's not worth anything to us and it's a hassle. I mean that
may often be the case with fight-of-way, but we still have an obligation to get fair value.
Pfab/We have an obligation to the citizens that own it.
Dilkes/Right.
Champion/Right.
Dilkes/And certainly that plays a part. The fact that there is a blanket utility.
Champion/Kind of like the lot next to my house. I have to pay for it, but I can't build on it.
Dilkes/I mean if Council wants to direct that an appraisal be done, that's...we can do that.
Lehman/We'll decide tomorrow night.
Vanderhoef/Okay then on the third reading vacating. Typically we do the vacating at the same
time that we are setting price and because of the way you have in the agenda the vacating
comes before this public hearing.
Franklin/The vacation has to happen before the conveyance. I mean it's really difficult.
Dilkes/I think what typically happens...
Franklin/If you talk really fast and do them at the same time.
Vanderhoef/Thank you Karin.
Dilkes/We do the vacation with Council already having essentially bought into the disposition.
Franklin/Conveyance, yeah.
Dilkes/If that's not the case then I think we'll probably want to do the disposition and hold on
the vacation.., on the third reading of the vacation.
Vanderhoef/Hold up the vacation.
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Dilkes/Because we can do the disposition, you know, subject to the final reading of the vacation
or something. Let me think about that, but I don't think we want to vacate if you all
aren't pretty clear about what you're going to do on the disposition.
Franklin/Right, because the outcome may be that we need it to get to the other dealership in the
end.
Vanderhoef/So, it may be that we should defer.
Franklin/Could they defer item h in their agenda tomorrow night to be after item whatever it is.
Lehman/Yeah, we can do that.
Franklin/Why don't we do that?
Lehman/Okay.
i. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONiNG DESIGNATION FROM
MEDIUM DENSITY SINGLE-FAMILY, RS-8 AND LOW DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY,
RM-12 TO PLANNED DEVELOPMENT OVERLAY, OPDH-20 TO ALLOW 43 ELDER
CONGREGATE HOUSING UNITS ON 2.12 ACRES OF PROPERTY LOCATED NORTH
OF BENTON STREET AND EAST OF GEORGE STREET. (REZ02-00009) (PASS AND
ADOPT)
Franklin/Okay, Item i - just pretend you're not here Ernie -
Lehman/I'm not here.
Franklin/It's pass and adopt on Oaknoll.
j. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM
NEIGHBORHOOD CONSERVATION, RNC-20, TO SENSITIVE AREAS OVERLAY-
NEIGHBORHOOD CONSERVATION, SAO-RNC-20, FOR A 0.41-ACRE PROPERTY
LOCATED AT 341 N. RIVERSIDE DRIVE. (REZ02-00004) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item j is pass and adopt on the Ape House - 341 North Riverside Drive rezoning.
k. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGiNG THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM LOW
DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, RM-12, TO SENSITIVE AREAS
OVERLAY-LOW DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, SAO-RM-12, FOR LOT 2
OF FIRST AND ROCHESTER SUBDIVISION, PART 1, A 38,041 SQUARE-FOOT
PROPERTY LOCATED WEST OF FIRST AVENUE, NORTH OF ROCHESTER
STREET. (REZ02-00003) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item k is pass and adopt on the 12 unit multi-family building on First Avenue.
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1. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROViNG THE AMENDED PRELIMiNARY PLAT AND FINAL PLAT OF WILD PRAIR1E ESTATES, PART FOUR, A 35.86-ACRE, 24-
LOT RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION LOCATED NORTH OF GOLDENROD DRIVE
AND WEST OF DUCK CREEK DRIVE. (SUB02-0005)
Franklin/Item 1 is an item you haven't seen before...well you haven't seen this version before
Wild Prairie Estates, Part Four, a 24-1ot subdivision on Goldenrod Drive west of...or
north of Goldenrod Drive and west of Duck Creek Drive. This is a recommendation for
approval from Planning and Zoning and from the Staff. The thing that has held this up
has been getting all of the legal papers and construction drawings done because this is a
preliminary and a final.
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Vanderhoef/And this is the one they added one lot to?
Franklin/They added one lot to. Yeah.
Vanderhoef/But, nothing else really changed?
Franklin/The open space that we'll be getting in this is a dry bottom detention basin which will
eventually will connect via a trail underneath 218 to the trail system that is just east of
here that comes along the creek - Willow Creek.
Pfab/At what point in planning and implementation is the pass...or the continuance of the trail
undemeath the Highway?
Franklin/We don't have a capital project for the underneath the Highway yet, but we'll be
talking about capital improvements as you go through your budget in January. Given the
fact that this area is starting to develop I think that's probably one that the Staff will put
on list and make some recommendation as to whether it's in the unfunded or what year it
goes in.
Pfab/Is there any inhibition of making that culvert, I think is the right term, a part of trail? How
long is...how long will the underground tunnel be?
Franklin/I don't know. I mean we haven't gotten into the detail of that design yet.
Pfab/And also I think there's a problem there I think this is somewhat similar to what's a north
of Coral Ridge, but I think this has more problem because I don't this there's enough
height in it for a landing place in case water comes up suddenly.
Franklin/Well, when we get into the engineering of that we'll have to talk about all of those.
Pfab/! think we want to talk about that if this is all going to fit together.
Franklin/Right. And also whether we want it to be a deer passage. Lisa was in the audience. I
had to say that. I'm done.
Lehman/Thank you, Kadn.
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AGENDA ITEMS
ITEM NO. 16 CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE 2002-2003 DEER
MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR IOWA CITY.
Atkins/Ernie, Lisa is...can't be here tomorrow night, but if there's any questions on deer
management. I don't think there's anything extraordinary about...you've seen it before,
heard about it.
Lehman/Any questions for Lisa while she's here. We'll wait till she leaves and then we'll have
a question.
O'Donnell/We'll call you.
Vanderhoef/I guess I wanted to know a little bit more on the management plan...and I don't
have my notes unfortunately, but how we're addressing keeping the herd down other than
the education pieces is there anything else we're doing?
Mollenhauer/No. Because right now the only other options available are lethal and they chose
not to kill this year. That's what they're recommending.
Lehman/Wasn't that probably based a little bit on the count that we have as well?
Mollenhauer/Yes. We have a guideline that the task force follows. If it's under 35...between
30 and 35 it's questionable. And we were well below that in most areas especially where
killing had taken place. So...
Lehman/Harvesting.
Mollenhauer/Money was also an issue because they knew it wasn't funded next year and Tony
DeNicola of White Buffalo did recommend...he felt that it would not be an effective use
of funds this year to attempt to sharp shoot with the low numbers of deer - that it
wouldn't be cost effective.
Vanderhoef/The other thing that I was reading was partly from Tony's report to us about the
poaching out in the Clear Creek area where it's mixed ownership and I did notice the
numbers - they seem to be down in the Clear Creek area throughout the University and
the Coralville section. So I wondered if there was any conversation about expanding into
the idea that Coralville and University could...they are seemingly getting benefit from
Iowa City's program and if they would like to join us in helping in that particular area.
How about that. Got that one.
Lehman/Ranks right up there with one of the silliest questions.
Vanderhoef/But should we pursue talking to them about it.
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Mollenhauer/Well, we can always talk to them. I know we have approached University
Facilities Planning Department about it in the past. It's not something that they choose to
pursue right now. Coralville is probably assisting us in that area.
Atkins/Right.
Mollenhauer/Tony was out there for the first time this last winter. He had a very difficult time
because the deer are so scared because of both legal and illegal hunting that's going on.
Coralville, of course, has a legal bow-hunting program on the north edge of that section.
So it's a mixture. They're certainly not very people friendly. I mean they're afraid. And
it's really just a difficult situation. We do still have complaints coming in from that area
of town. We have an increased number of deer/vehicle accidents along that section of
218 and Melrose, but we're not really sure how to address that because sharp shooting is
apparently not going to be effective out there as long as we have bow hunting activity.
Vanderhoef/Is it appropriate for the committee to send a report to the University and to
Coralville about that particular area and appraise them of what Tony said and what we're
seeing in numbers and also in accidents. Just see if we get any reaction from them.
Mollenhauer/Sure. I think Coralville feels their program has been fairly successful. They've
increased the number of deer that have been taken every year. It's my understanding they
haven't had problems - at least severe - with citizens complaints. I think they've had I
think what they would consider to be a very successful program there. So I'm not sure
there's a real move to change anything out there particularly to spend the kind of money
that sharp shooting would encounter for them. But, we can certainly send them our
report. And we'd be glad to inform the University it's something the Task Force always
likes to keep that communication line open.
Vanderhoef/I would encourage you to send a report to both just for our respective and whatever
Coralville would choose I'd like to hear back from them what their program is doing and
is there anyplace where we need to be helping each other.
Mollenhauer/Sounds good. Okay?
Lehman/Thank you dear.
Pfab/Deer, that's d-e-e-r.
Lehman/Any other agenda items?
Vanderhoef/Consent calendar.
Kanner/I...did you have something Dee?
Vanderhoef/Well, go ahead and I'll find it on the list.
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ITEM NO. 3b Minutes of Boards and Commissions.
(14) Senior Center Commission: June 13
Kanner/Steven, Senior Center notes from 6/13 the minutes - there was some concern about not
having insurance - some of the instructors having to so with Kirkwood programs and not
adequate insurance and independent contractors. Have we worked that out? Come up
with an alternative to requiring instructors to having that insurance?
Atkins/I offered to them when they came over to see me about it that if it was pretty much and
incidental expense which it seemed to be that the City could cover it. And I know they
took it back and I have not heard back from them yet. Because it was not a big expense it
was just the fact that they did not have the insurance. That's where I left it.
Kanner/So it will be easy...continue to be easy for independent contractors that teach courses...
Atkins/That was the intent to be able to do that. I'll check back and give you a definite answer
tomorrow.
(1) Historic Preservation Commission: May 23
Kanner/Thanks. And I don't know if you'll have the answer for this...
(End of side 1; Tape 02-66, beginning of side 2)
Kanner/...and it's of 5/23. They're talking about a proposed College Hill historic district. And
I wasn't quite clear on some of the difference between the National versus the local that
was brought up as the concern that I saw in the minutes.
Atkins/That one I can't help you on.
Kanner/And (can't hear) designate it.
Atkins/We can find out. These are the minutes of the 23rd?
Kanner/Basically yeah - 5/23.
Atkins/Okay.
Kanner/It's item number B(1) in our packet.
Atkins/Let me see what we can find out for you. I should be able to check that first thing
tomorrow. Okay.
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ITEM NO. 17 CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE APPLICATION
FOR TRAFFIC SAFETY IMPROVEMENT GRANT FUNDS FROM
THE IOWA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION FOR THE
ADDITION OF A TWO-WAY LEFT-TURN LANE BETWEEN
GILBERT STREET AND JUST WEST OF JOHNSON STREET AND
THE WIDENING OF THE BRIDGE NEAR VAN BUREN STREET
FROM FOUR TO FIVE LANES ON BURLINGTON STREET.
Kanner/I had another one Dee, but if you wanted to go ahead.
Vanderhoef/Go ahead.
Kanner/I had a question about number 17. JeffDavidson has waited here for many an hour.
This is the safety improvement grant that's on our agenda. Tell me the safety needs of
why we need to go from 4 to 5 lanes on the bridge on Burlington near Van Buren.
JeffDavidson/As you all know we have been working for literally years with Iowa DOT with
trying to get the issue with the contaminated soil and the desire to reconstruct the bridge
behind as you heard Rick speak to you many times on that and we appear to have that
resolved. At...we meet monthly or every six weeks or so with the Iowa DOT and just sit
down and go through a bunch of issues and at one of those meetings I pointed out that we
had been analyzing some collision data and noted that that was a higher than average
collision location from Gilbert Street to the east because of...well we were speculating
that it was because of the turning movements in and out of the Rec Center and the AUR
Apartment and the fact that there's no turn lane there that the center turn lane which goes
from Riverside Drive terminates at Gilbert Street. And so the director of the DOT
District 6 Office suggested that we file a traffic safety application since we're going to be
doing the work down there anyway there's the higher than average collision rate, he
actually recommended to us that we apply for the traffic safety fimds. The traffic safety
funds are awarded based on collision rate and then they do a benefit/cost ratio off of that
and so we thought what the heck give it a shot and that's basically why you see the
application.
Vanderhoef/Okay, following up on that then if the traffic safety funds don~t come through?
Davidson/Then we won't build the turn lane. Unless, I suppose, you would always have the
option of deciding it's approximately 200...the additional expense from what we're
going to be doing anyway to added a center turn lane which would actually go through
the Van Buren Street intersection and then taper back almost to Johnson Street is about
$200,000. You could always decide that you wanted to do it with local funds, but
otherwise we would suggest just not doing it - leaving it the way it is.
Vanderhoef/And what's the condition of the bridge at this point? I know we've been putting
this off for quite awhile.
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Davidson/Well, it obviously needs to be replaced, but it hasn't gotten to the point of
deterioration where we've had to embargo it. Typically, when a bridge starts
deteriorating to the point where we need to put some restrictions on it that's when you see
the embargo signs. Summit Street Bridge was embargoed prior to being reconstructed.
Champion/For years.
Vanderhoef/Has there ever been any conversation in the community about rtmning Highway 1
on, for instance, Market Street over to (can't hear) or Governor actually?
Davidson/We periodically, Dee, suggested or talked about redesignating Highway 1 thru Iowa
City not that exact rome that you just outlined, but we...Scott Boulevard has been
suggested and some other things. The decision has always been that there's a great deal
of benefit to the City in having it designated where it is because of the maintenance
money that we get for Riverside Drive, Burlington Street, Dodge and Governor and then
Dodge Street. For example the 6 million dollars that we're going to get for the Dodge
Street reconstruction is related to it being on the National Highway system and
designated Iowa Highway 101. So we'd need to think about those issues real carefully
before you decide to redesignate it. You know we pointed out to preceding Council that
designating Scott Boulevard - Scott Boulevard at least most of it is fairly new street so
that's not nearly the maintenance concerns that you have on the older streets like
Governor and Dodge and Burlington. Irvin?
Pfab/At some time after Highway 1 is upgraded would anyone ever consider the suggestion that
Highway 1 go down Interstate 80 once (can't hear) the additional?
Davidson/As I said we can always discuss that with Iowa DOT, bm there is a great deal of
maintenance expense that DOT pays for in our town because it being (can't hear)
Highway 1.
Pfab/Okay would...is the maintenance...is that a paying proposition if we didn't have that much
traffic.
Davidson/Well it's...yes it's quite a bit of money on an annual basis. I can't tell you just
exactly.
Pfab/But what I'm saying if when you weigh out the less...
Davidson/The real advantage though lrvin is when we get a major reconstruction project like
Dodge Street that's when, you know, that's a 6 million dollar project.
Pfab/Did you hear what I said?
Davidson/Hmnun?
Pfab/Did you hear what I said?
Davidson/No.
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Pfab/After we finish.
Davidson/Oh, after we finish Dodge Street. Well there are additional portions of that
designation thru town that has not had the benefit of the reconstruction project.
Pfab/Oh, we're not finished yet. Okay.
Davidson/And there are bridges over Ralston Creek and those types of things that are pretty
significant.
O'Donnell/We should move off these bridges.
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/And in regards to this (can't hear) bridge problem can I get a summary of the accidents
that you have in regards to that area?
Davidson/Yeah. That's attached to the...did you get the full application in your...in your
packet?
Kanner/I guess I didn't see it there.
Davidson/If you did it's the...I believe it's the last three pages of that.
Kanner/That has the...
Davidson/It has all the collisions. There were 51. I can't remember just exactly if that was...it
was either annually or over three years there were 51 collisions in that stretch.
Pfab/I think that in Iowa City that's one of the most dangerous spots.
Davidson/A lot of turning movements.
Pfab/And it's all tight and coming up on Van Buren. Are they going to be able to idea to widen
that?
Davidson/12 feet to allow...
Pfab/I think that...I would...I would certainly recommend that if we do the bridge we do
whatever we can to get those turning lanes.
Davidson/Yeah, it's...would you like us to let you know how the...how our request tums out if
we don't get the funds do you want to...
Pfab/Yes.
Vanderhoef/I think that...
Lehman/I think we should do it one way or the other.
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Karmer/Jeff we didn't get those figures.
Davidson/Do you want me to get you a copy of that?
Kanner/Yeah for tomorrow's can I get that?
Davidson/We should be able to. Do we just leave it with Marian or...?
Kanner/Yeah. Yeah.
Vanderhoef/And if we get turned down if you would also then investigate why we were turned
down whether it was just a shortage of funds this year and whether putting it off one
year...
Davidson/We'll also ask them how close we were to getting funded. That always helps for
redoing the application.
Vanderhoef/I would appreciate that.
Lehman/Thank you Jeff.
Vanderhoef/Okay on the consent calendar we have before us to consider a motion approving the
fire strategic plan.
Lehman/That's the next thing on the work session.
Vanderhoef/That one I think maybe we better.
Lehman/It's the next item.
Vanderhoef/Yeah. Okay.
Lehman/After...
Vanderhoef/I'll wait.
O'Donnell/Do you want to wait then?
ITEM NO. 19 CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AWARDING THE VEHICLE TOWING
AND STORAGE SERVICES CONTRACT TO BIG 10 UNIVERSITY
TOWING, INC.
Lehman/Any other agenda items?
Kanner/The towing contract that's a pass through fee basically.
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Atkins/Every three years we go out for a contract and there's a series of charges - let's say the
basic tow charge is $40 - every three years we go back out and we allow towing
companies to bid. And what they do is give us a schedule of rates and the low bidder -
let's say the low bidder is $35 - that's what we traditionally have recommended to you
because we passed that correctly on to any individual that might have the unfortunate
experience of being towed. We had Holiday Wrecker and then this contract is proposed
for Big 10. They do our again...and they also do any business that we have as a City.
That...R.J. kind of summarize it? Yeah.
Kanner/Did it go down? The amount.
Atkins/Yeah. A couple of them went down.
Kanner/So what was it this year and what's it going to next year? It's going to $35.
Atkins/There's a whole variety of charges - Steven, hold on one second maybe I can give you
some more specifics.
Dilkes/I think the successful proposal was in the packet wasn't it?
Kanner/It doesn't say what it was before. Here's the summary.
Atkins/Yeah. Hang on a second.
Dilkes/Oh, yeah. Okay.
Kanner/It said an average of $35 dollars.
Atkins/Standard tow is $35.
Dilkes/There's a whole bunch of different.
Atkins/Standard tow for Big 10 in their proposal is $35. Standard tow for Holiday Recker is
$40 and the current rate is $35. So in effect Holiday had proposed to increase it by $5.
Kanner/So I guess my point is that it seems like it's a significant savings. Sometimes though
one would weigh that against someone with experience - a company with experience.
Have we had a good experience with them?
Atkins/Yes. It's a very reputable company.
Kanner/But, it seems it's worth the switch for that savings.
Atkins/For $5 - there's a couple other notable ones...oh on a certain class of equipment for
example I'm not so sure what Class C happens to be - it seems to be trucks, trailers,
heavier duty equipment. Holiday was $75 and Big 10 was $50. So there are some
noticeable ones. This is also to our advantage because occasionally we have to use the
towing company for our own vehicles.
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Pfab/And this is the same fee they charge the City?
Atkins/Yes.
Pfab/So we're basically negotiating for the public?
Atkins/Yes. That's almost exactly how it works. Yeah. We had two proposals.
Vanderhoef/So this in history is an every other contract because last time...
Atkins/Our experience has been somebody gets it then the next guy...yeah they...our
experience has been all the people who used to work for the one company go to work for
the new company who gets the bid and then they just kind of move back and forth.
Vanderhoef/Well I remember when we hired the new one.
Atkins/And then they have this painter who paints the trucks.
Champion/Yeah, that's right.
Vanderhoef/And then I got towed.
Atkins/Oh. Sorry about that.
Champion/That's probably right.
ITEM NO. 15 CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING A CALL TO ARTISTS
FOR A SCULPTURE AT TItE IOWA CITY WATER PLANT SITE.
Lehman/Other agenda items?
Vanderhoef/Item 15. The sculpture at the water plant the Council, I thought, had given direction
that any art that went out on the water plant site would be paid for from the public art
fund and not from water plant bonding. And apparently there's been some mix-up on all
of this and it was reported to the public art committee that there was $50,000 available
from the water plant bonding dollars and I choose not to use water money to buy art. Our
rates are high enough and if we have additional $50,000 that's left over when the plant is
accepted I think we need to put that toward retirement of bonds. I would like to send this
project back to public art committee and have them schedule it as their next public art
project with the City with their allocation of $50,000 a year.
Atkins/Just a quick follow up. It is not a time critical matter. I mean if you do choose to send it
back. And Dee and I chatted about it; I do believe there was some misunderstanding
about how it was to be paid for. Those are certainly your choices. I can almost assure
you the Public Art Advisory Committee is willing to do the work but they did not wish to
use any money from their general obligation monies for this particular project.
Pfab/Is there a way to go back in the minutes? I can't remember that that's before my term.
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Atkins/Irvin, I think this precedes you.
Lehman/It preceded you.
Vanderhoef/This precedes you.
Atkins/...on the Council. This is several years ago.
Pfab/Okay that's fine. I'm not objecting to it. But I just couldn't remember.
Atkins/No, it was before you.
Pfab/Okay that's why I couldn't remember.
Franklin/The Public Art Committee has no feelings one way or the other at least have not
discussed one way or the 6ther using public art funds versus water funds. The direction
that was given was to come up with a project with the understanding that it was paid out
of the water funds. The $50,000 for this year for public art is already allocated to other
projects and so this means that this particular project would have to go for fiscal year '04.
Lehman/Karin you and I visited about this very briefly. I...water plant is probably...it's state of
the art. It's probably the finest water plant in the State of Iowa. People in this
community are paying for it big time. I really would like to see us defer this guy and ask
the public art committee to do a little bit of a public project and find out just what sort of
thing the public would like to see out there. I mean that's a huge...it's going to be a very,
very large park. We've got an amphitheater. We've got trails. We've got a pond.
Conceivable down the road that could be a very, very heavily used City facility and I
think it would be kind of fun if the Public Art Committee would solicit public input as to
what sort of art feature they'd like to see out there. And as you say it's not time sensitive
so if we spent a little time. And if we don't we can always go back and have public art
put out a call to art. But the problem I have with putting out a call to art is if we do have
folks in the community who have a definite idea and the community has a feeling that
there should be a certain type of art then to me it's more appropriate to send out a call to
artists with the theme already in place then it is to just to send out a blanket call and then
take whatever shows up. But, that's obviously Council's call.
O'Donnell/What a wonderful idea Emie. Brilliant.
Lehman/Alright anyway. They'll deal with it tomorrow night.
Vanderhoef/The extra piece on this because this is a budget item then I think probably we can
get into discussion of whether we spend $50,000 for public art or whether we spend it
someplace in trails connections that we're still trying to complete.
Champion/I think we've already had this discussion Dee.
Lehman/Anyway...
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Champion/And art prevailed.
Lehman/Art is through for now. Is there any other? Are there any other agenda items that we'd
like to discuss?
COUNCIL APPOINTMENTS
Lehman/The next items are City Council appointments, the Airport Commission. We have had
three people apply for that commission. Do we have a nomination? One of these Baron
Thrower is a...I believe he's a commercial pilot which might give a little different
perspective to...
O'Dormell/That's the one that I liked. I'll nominate him.
Champion/I'll second him.
Kanner/I had another perspective to that especially after what we heard earlier we would want to
get someone who is not a pilot in there to have some more oversight. Certainly these
people are doing the best jobs they can but they have a vested interest in the sense of I
think most of them have planes or are pilots. I'd like to see a non-pilot be there from the
community that has a slightly different point of view. In the past we had a couple and I
think we could encourage those people to apply again. I think that's one way to keep the
airport and the commission on track.
Champion/Did we have an account apply?
Kanner/I think we might want to...you know can in our commissions we can look for those
kinds of things. We can say we want someone with a financial background and that
would be a help to them perhaps.
Lehman/Are all three of these applicants pilots?
Vanderhoef/Baron also has 22 years of corporate general aviation and business experience.
O'Donnell/He just seems like a really good guy.
Vanderhoef/That hits some of the things that I think would be very useful right now with
strategic planning and business plans. So I'm very comfortable with Baron Thrower.
Lehman/Are there a majority?
Pfab/What were the other two names I was trying to recall?
Lehman/Brian Sponcil and Brian Rohr.
Pfab/Okay. What were their last names again?
Lehman/Rohr, R-O-H-R. Sponcil S-P-O-N-C-I-L. and Thrower as in a ballgame.
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Pfab/Sponcil was the one I was...
O'Donnell/What was that?
Lehman/Do we have a majority who would like to Throw it to Baron?
Champion/I (can't hear) to throw Baron.
Lehman/Alright. Baron Thrower will be...alright. The Airport Zoning Board there were no
applications. Zoning Commission no applications. Historic Preservation Commission
we have Mark McCallum is applied.
Champion/He's fine. I nominate him.
O'Donnell/I second him.
Lehman/Do we have consensus with Mark?
Vanderhoef/He fits the district.
Kanner/Yeah he just bought that those apartments right?
Lehman/Okay. Housing Community Development Commission we have one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight applicants. We have one vacancy for three years and I think
unexpired term don't we.
Champion/Yeah. Unexpired term.
Kanner/We have five different people for two different positions.
Lehman/Right.
Vanderhoef/I'd like to nominate Mark Edwards for the three year term. I've known this
gentleman for three years through business - Workfome Development and he has quite a
history of working with both numbers and persons of low-income and...
O'Donnell/I second that.
Vanderhoef/Thank you.
Lehman/This is for the full term. Are there other nominations for the full term?
O'Donnell/Three year term.
Karmer/Well I think we should consider them both together since three are applying for both
positions.
Lehman/That's fine.
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Kanner/In that sense I'd like to have Kathleen back. I think she's done a good job. For the one
year term.
Lehman/And Kathleen.
Vanderhoel7 And I would...go ahead and then I'11...
Kanner/No, no I think she's got good qualifications and she's done a good job in the past.
Champion/But she has served two full terms. And try to get...
Vanderhoef/Some new blood.
Champion/Try to get some new blood on these commissions and that's been seven years...no
six years.
Vanderhoef/Steven Noack.
Dilkes/Dee, that's a problem. You note in his application he notes a potential conflict of
interest. We have talked to him about that and believe that's a problem given his
preparation of contracts with the City.
Champion/Oh. Okay.
Lehman/So Noack is not one that we will consider.
Dilkes/That settle 362.5 issue of board and commission members (can't hear).
Lehman/Right I believe you.
Kanner/If he said he was willing not to do contracts is that allowed?
Dilkes/I think it's a pretty integral part of his job. That wasn't a possibility.
Kanner/Not an option. Okay.
Vanderhoef/Then I would like to look at Morgan.
Champion/Can we do the first three year term first? I get confused when we try to do two at
once.
Vanderhoef/Okay. Mark Edwards.
Lehman/Well we have Mark Edwards and Kathleen Renquist. How many folks would prefer
Mark Edwards for the three year term? Okay.
Kanner/That's fine. I guess I prefer Kathleen for the other one would be my...
Pfab/I think that's what I...
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Lehman/Alright the unexpired term Kathleen is nominated. Who else?
Vanderhoef/Morgan Hoosman.
Lehman/Morgan Hoosman. Is there any other nominations?
Wilbum/I would support her.
O'Donnell/I would support Morgan.
Champion/I would definitely would.
Lehman/Alright those who would support Morgan indicate by raising your hands - 1,2,3,4. And
Kathleen - two. And I think Kathleen has done a magnificent job but she's been there two
full terms. Morgan Hoosman will be the second one.
FIRE STRATEGIC PLAN
Lehman/Okay folks Fire Strategic Plan. That's in our consent calendar and I believe the
wording is approving the fire strategic plan. And we got a copy of that, I think, June 26th
and I had another copy made.
Wilbum/June 27th.
Lehman/27th.
Wilburn/June 27th in that info packet.
Andy Rocca/Ready?
Lehman/Yes.
Champion/Ready.
Rocca/Okay. Well I'm pleased to be hem for you tonight to discuss the Fire Department's 10-
year strategic plan. And as you pointed out you do have a copy. I think it was in the
June 27th info packet. And hopefully you've had an opportunity to review that document.
I think it's an excellent piece of work. It represents a vision for the future of the Iowa
City Fire Department. And ifI might ever so briefly - I know you've been here awhile.
I wanted to go over some background information that lead up to the plan, some of the
priorities within the plan, and then certainly answer your questions along the way. With
that Iowa City Fire Department is probably like just about any other department in the
nation from 1950 to 1980 - pretty traditional. And we were that a Fire Department. But
in the late '70's and early '80's OSHA came along with some regulations that regulated
how we dealt with hazardous material spills. Emergency medical services also came to
play within the fire service. And so the profile of the nation's fire service began to
change. With the increase scope of the Fire Department responsibilities and locally an
increase in our call volume we find ourselves dealing with fire suppression emergencies,
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emergency medical situations, hazardous material spills, technical rescue which might be
ice rescue, water rescue, trench rescue, building collapse, vehicle rescue and the list goes
on and on. As you well know the threat of terrorism is ever present with us today. And
so we need to look at that being a reality here locally. Weapons of mass destruction are
issues that we have to prepare for. We look at fire prevention .and education. Fire
investigations and code enforcement. All these things are in the menu of services that the
Fire Department is responsible for and services that we provide. With some of these
thoughts in mind I believe not to have a plan for the future into the 21st century would be
irresponsible. It's incumbent upon us to plan. I think that's what you look to me for is
direction as the Department Director and as one of the strategic planners one of our
committee members so eloquently put it, "if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time."
And you'need to really stop and reflect on that statement, because if we don't have a plan
where are we going to go and how will we know when we've ever arrived? The process,
I'm pleased to say, was supported and a strong commitment by Steve Atkins our City
Manager. And at this time I'd like to publicly thank our City Manager for that
commitment and support to this process. Back in 1997 we worked with the Iowa Institute
of Public Affairs and we were able to retool the mission, vision and values for the
Department. That was Phase I. An organizational self-assessment took place in 2000
and 2001 and that was through the Commission on Fire Accreditation International. And
basically we took our Department and matched it up against national standards and
criteria and performance indicators. We found some things we do very well and we
found some things we don't do at all and everything in between. But it gave us at least
that yardstick to begin to measure the organization and its effectiveness. In 2001 and thru
2002 we were able to work with Professor Emeritus Jude West. Jude recently retired
from the College of Business. He's done a lot of work in business and industry with
strategic planning. And so we were blessed to have him with us. As well we had a
number of other community participants. Ann Rhodes who most of you will recall is
with the University of Iowa, Jim Berry a local retired realtor, our own Jeff Davidson from
Planning and Community Development offered his own expertise within the planning,
the entire administrative command staff of the Fire Department, my Battalion Chiefs Ron
Stutzman, Roger Jensen, Jim Humston, Dan Smith, and retired Elmer Breddeman. So it's
with those folks that we were able to put together a class document - an excellent in-
product. I believe this document represents the vision for the future of the Iowa City Fire
Department. As well I think you can look at this document as an extension of your goals
of May 2000 related to the Fire Department and public safety and also an extension of the
Comp Plan where it specifically calls out public safety goals and strategies. I think some
of the vision that this document provides is for us to become the first department in the
State to receive accreditation through the Commission - a National Fire Service
Accreditation. It also challenges us to look at community needs and to learn from the
experiences from 1970 to 2002. But yet it pushes us beyond that. It also calls us out to
be a leader in fire prevention and emergency services which is probably not a foreign
arena to us, but it clearly calls us out in a leadership role and will push us to the next
level. We're looking at cost effective emergency service delivery and we'll talk about
that in a little more detail in short order here. We also have looked at traditionally in
recent years past community risk reduction - looking beyond the confines of fire safety
and burn prevention, but to look at areas - all areas - to make this community a safer
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place to live and to work. Finally, the last vision within the plan calls out a strong labor
management partnership. It's much easier for an entire department to pull in the safe
direction than to constantly to be at loggerheads over small minutia of day to day
operations. With that I'd like to call out some of the priorities ever so briefly.
Accreditation that will virtually touch every comer of the Fire Department - every
program, all services that we provide, and allow us to measure our self against the
national standard. Staffing - while clearly our organization structure hasn't changed a lot
in recent years it's time to evaluate that. Battalion Chiefs clearly are doing much more
administrative duties than they are emergency response duties and they're somewhat tom
between those duties. But it's time to look at the whole organization. Look how the
workload is distributed and then try to make some recommendations to improve the
efficiency. As well look at our emergency response personnel. You yourselves have
identified Station 4 as a priority to complete the construction, staffing and ultimately
operating out of that. And we look forward to that in the near future. Our facilities are
dated. Some ofthem date back to the '60's and early '70's. There's been some ongoing
effort to keep them as reasonably current and functionable as possible, but the location in
some cases is not desirable and in fact it might be unsafe the way our apparatus come and
go from some of those locations. Again we're looking at Fire Station 4 and we see a lot
of merit in that - taking some of the burden off the current emergency response system.
But the other thing that's important to note about this document - this strategic plan - is
how it will link up with the Comp Plan and the Districts Plans and financial planning
including the Capital Improvement Plan. All those plans need to work together so the
Fire Department isn't off in one direction trying to implement new programs or services,
yet land use doesn't allow for that or arterial road connections the whole network of
roadways don't support that delivery system. So you can see how important it is for all
those documents - all those plans - to be in coordination. I guess the other thing you
have to keep in mind is that we can only do these things as our resources allow. In a
perfect world I'd like to see 100% of these items completed in 10 years. I'm realistic. I
know that we've got some other priority issues. I know that I'm competing with other
departments, but that gives the Fire Department the direction that we clearly need to
provide quality services in the future. Another item of priority will jump out at you I
believe if it hasn't already is the consolidation of some City services. We believe that
there are areas where we can reduce some of the duplication and increase efficiencies.
Some of these just to consider would be emergency medical services. You know we are
EMT - emergency medical technicians at a basic level. You also know that Johnson
County Ambulance Service provides a paramedic service. Should we look at combining
these two roles and making fire fighters medics and thereby increasing staffing and
utilizing those folks in dual roles? Regional communication center - we nm a
communication center here in Iowa City. I believe that Coralville has one, the County
has one, Department...or University Police has one and those are the ones that quickly
come to mind. So a lot of duplication there. Why not look to a regional conununication
center. There's a lot of merit in that and it's done all across the nation and as well in the
State of Iowa. County fire protection again one of your goals to look at the
regionalizati0n of the delivery of fire protection services. Building inspections - fire
department does commercial inspections. We're an extension of the State for daycare
and liquor licensing inspections. But as well Housing Inspection Services is in
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apartments, new construction. Shouldn't we look at the overlap or the inconsistencies in
our ability to provide those services and perhaps make some changes there to streamline
the process? Again in short amount of time I tried to hit the priorities and give you some
of the history related to the making of this document - our 10 year strategic plan. And at
this time answer you questions.
Pfab/I would make one comment. I think it's a very good document. I was impressed. I went
through it again this afternoon. (Can't hear) what I would change ifI was in your
position (can't hear). I was quite impressed. I think a couple of things stood out to me
and one small question. That was the idea of a regional control and regional
communications. I had a question as I went through that. That was...does that...when
we look at in times like these are regional communications center more susceptible to
damage or attacks (can't hear) and is that a problem?
Rocca/Well I think you would look at the design components of that facility - its location, who
administers it - you know third party as opposed to somebody controlling it.
Pfab/No, I meant...
Rocca/The physical location?
Pfab/No not the physical location I was just saying if I was...let's say I was a terrorist would I
rather go after one that's regional.
Karmer/Perhaps centralized versus right now it's somewhat decentralized in a County...
Rocca/ Truly it is, but if you look at how all that should come together with a primary
communication center some form of redundancy as a backup site. And of course an
emergency operation center when things really get tough locally.
Pfab/Okay. I like the idea of looking at combining the emergency management service. (Can't
hear) ambulance. I don't know how (can't hear) itself, but I think the concept is great.
The only other one little question I had was the idea of the location here of the Fire
Department the pros and cons of why you would want to move that. In other words
because of traffic. Are you going to go anyplace...where can you go and make it as
efficient as the location...?
Rocca/Clearly it has to be located either in or adjacent to the central business district. That's
where the majority of our calls take place downtown here. So we have to look at that.
But in terms of the size of the apparatus, ease of response, traffic patterns, pedestrian
traffic in the area. All those things really complicate this. There's not much of an
approach as you well know. About all that gets on the apron before they have to make
the road is the cab of the truck. So line of sight is a little difficult. Rush hour traffic is
also problematic in the current location.
Pfab/But, I would say it's a terrific report. An awful lot of work went into it.
Rocca/ Thank you.
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Pfab/I certainly admire you for what you did with it.
Rocca/ Thank you.
Lehman/Andy, I think this is obviously a result of tremendous amount of work. I only have one
reservation. I am perfectly happy to thank the committee and accept the report, but I'm
not...I have a little problem with accepting the specifics of the report. I think
fundamentally it makes a lot of sense. There are things, for example, I'm just going to
give you a couple things...
Rocca/ Sure.
Lehman/...that may very well come to pass, but a public information officer should be
established. Perhaps maybe that's a public service information...or public safety
information officer which could be police and fire. My concern if it is a valid concern
and I'm not sure it is, when we pass or when we accept and adopt a report like this it is
then frequently referred to later as you know the Council in 2002 said them was going to
be a new fire station number 2 built west of Iowa City. In the meantime we work out
some arrangement with the City of Coralville where we can provide service west of 380
and the present fire station works okay. But this happens to be in a plan that we've
adopted. And I see a couple...I mean all of this stuff may very well come to pass and be
exactly the right things to do. I think the philosophy is absolutely fantastic, but the
specifics I guess I'm a little reluctant to say okay.
Rocca/Mr. Mayor clearly there are fiscal implications.
Lehman/And we haven't, you know, the Council has never looked at any of these things in a
timeframe. Two years, four years, five years from now things obviously are different
than they are now. But...and that's why I'm a little reluctant to say well we accept this
plan in total that calls for a fire station here and one there and moving the present fire
station when five years from now things could be so different with a maybe regional fire
authority. What does acceptance of this plan do?
Champion/Nothing.
Rocca/I think nothing.
Champion/It's a strategic plan. (Can't hear) together and thought over things and discussed
things as I went over things and I said this is what would be ideal. A strategic plan is an
ideal thing. Now the next step is they have to go through their plan and decide how
they're going to meet that goal and if they can meet that goal. So I think all you're doing
by accepting this plan is accepting the fact that this is the ideal situation.
O'Donnell/Concept.
Champion/ It's a concept. But it doesn't obligate any future Council to move the fire station.
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Lehman/No. But for example to reduce confusion and increase organization (can't hear) Iowa
City Fire Department will explore various alternative for consolidation for all City
inspection services. Why wouldn't that be Housing and Inspection Services doing that?
Pfab/ They can talk together.
O'Donnell/Clearly they have roles and...
Champion/(Can't hear) their strategic plan too.
Lehman/I don't have...I really, really appreciate this. I think it's a wonderful document and
depending on what sort of authority this has over future Council I don't have any
problem with it.
Rocca/Thank you.
Lehman/I just don't want to be locked into... (can't hear) for example a new west side fire
station. Wouldn't it be neat if Iowa City and Coralville reached an agreement where the
City of Coralville would provide the service west of 380 or 218 so that we can function
with this fire station? Now that certainly wouldn't preclude us from...
Rocca/But see the problem is that I have encountered in 24 years of experience with providing
fire protection services here is we talk about those kinds of ideas. Here we have them
written down. And it's a guide. It's a set of parameters that legitimizes discussions like
that with other political entities to make those realities whether it's communications,
whether it's consolidation within the City, or regionalization of services. What I need as
a Department Director is some direction. I've tried to look at your goals, your Comp
Plan and say I need direction in order to make these things a reality.
Champion/You got it.
Pfab/ I would just make one comment piggybacking on what Connie said like you said it's an
ideal statement for an ideal we get everything. But that's only at this time.
Champion/Right.
Pfab/ A year from now that might change because of circumstances.
Champion/It has to evolve.
Rocca/It's a fluid document.
Champion/Absolutely.
Rocca/If Council determines that a regional communication center needs to happen in two years
rather than 10 years well then that's something we need to look at and incorporate. But it
gives us, as a Department, direction that sorely needed in my opinion.
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Champion/It's not uncommon to do a second strategic planning a year later or two years later to
alter (can't hear) what has changed.
Pfab/ I think it's dated. Is it updated yearly?
Rocca/Uh-huh. Oh, certainly it would be review document annually.
Lehman/You really covered the (can't hear).
Rocca/Well, thank you.
Champion/Good thank you.
Lehman/Steven?
Kanner/Well I have a couple questions, but first in regards to what you said - I was thinking
about that in terms of other departments. Do we have departments that do strategic
planning that Council really doesn't sign off on? And it appears that we probably do sign
off on just about everything in some sense. Transportation we sign off as JCCOGS and
through other means and so I think actually if there are some things that we're
uncomfortable with we do have an obligation to speak now and say we'd like to change it
if the majority wants to go in that direction because this is the blueprint and we're
agreeing to a blueprint for our future the next 10 years and if there are some things that
you philosophically disagree with I think we should have that debate. And if we need to
we can postpone approving this for a couple meetings until we have that debate among
Council and maybe the public.
Wilburn/We did strategic plan at work three years ago and on an annual basis review progress
and change our direction and you know there. And clearly we've made some progress on
our strategic plan, but there a couple items that some folks had philosophical questions
about whether or not something that they think a direction that the agency should go. I'm
thinking about one particular item we left it on our strategic plan because we didn't know
what in the future might send us one way or the other and depending on what happens
with some of our funding bodies and what happens to the community. And so there are, I
mean, them are just some items as the year comes up we have discussed...that creates the
conversation and then we look at okay are we still in agreement with this now? Or are
we going to budget this? When are we going to budget this? When is it going to come
into more of our capital improvement time project? And so that way is the fluid
document, but it still allows for some differences of opinion where there was not
consensus as to what we wanted to happen in the strategic plan.
Rocca/Sure.
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Wilburn/And we try to look at the strategic plan just more as strategic directions that we would
like to go given the parameters of constraints. So, I mean, I thought about that in
particular at that particular item, but I thought at this point I don't know...I don't know
what factors might be influencing one way or the other about for example the location of
fire station 1, but I don't know and based on conversations about some of the
regionalization stuff that you mentioned that may or may not influence that. So I guess
I'm comfortable with it as the plan. And would look to you to look at our capital budget
as we do that (can't hear).
Rocca/Sure. Make the appropriate recommendations.
Wilburn/Yeah.
Rocca/Certainly.
Lehman/Or to change your own plan if...
Rocca/Of course.
Lehman/...for example...see I'm not comfortable telling you to change anthing in here. I mean
everything in here may be as in today's...as I look at it today I see absolutely nothing
wrong with it in what I know now. l just am concerned about what will happened if this
gets reviewed annually and changes are made as they go along. I don't have any
problem, but I would have a real problem trying to change your plan right now knowing
what we know.
Rocca/Sure.
O'Donnell/Fine. Great job.
Rocca/Thank you. Steven?
Kanner/Yeah, basically I don't disagree with the overall philosophical intent. I wanted to ask
you a couple of questions about some items. Andy I appreciate the job that you did on
this.
Rocca/Thank you.
Kanner/And the job that the Department does. You put together a group that looked at this and
you had one "citizen" Ann Rhodes and I think it would be helpful to have more input
especially in looking at items such as funding alternatives. That's one of your goals for
fiscal year '03 - '05.
Rocca/We also had Jim Berry. I don't know if you ever looked him.
Kanner/Jim, okay.
Rocca/So there were a couple community participants if you will.
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Kanner/That's good. I think it should be even more. And also I have a question about why
there weren't more low-level employees that were there.
Rocca/There actually were, Steven, and I should have probably touched on that, but when we
did the organization self-assessment every level of the organization was represented to
tell us what we did good, what we did bad and everything in between. We had nearly
half of the Department - in fact it was over half the Department at the time. I think in
excess of 26 of our employees participated in that self-assessment. And they were
comfortable. The Department was comfortable with the administrative command staff
taking that information forward and using it as a framework for the strategic plan.
Kanner/Even so I think it behooves us to ask some of those people from the rank and file or
from the union representative.
(End of Tape 02-66, Beginning of Tape 02-67)
Karmer/It makes it a stronger thing. I don't think they would disagree with you, but I like to
hear that voice.
Rocca/I understand that and I will tell you that the document as you saw it was reviewed by
Local 610. And while I'm not going speak for them they endorsed the concept of the
plan. I would encourage you to follow up to check that out for yourself if you would like.
Kanner/Well that's good to know. And so putting that all together for instance the funding
alternatives I think those are some good ideas to kick around. They're some big ideas
that the whole philosophy of fire protection in our country is basically been "free" for the
most part. But you're talking about perhaps moving us a little bit away from that in some
regards in looking at some alternatives. Do we look at it as fire insurance or do we look
at it as free? And I think we need to...I personally need to have broad community input
into that. And hopefully as you move on to that part in the next year or so that you'll try
to get broader representation of the community to take part in that. Is that part of your...?
Rocca/To the best of our ability I think what we ran into is trying to keep a group to a size where
it was manageable and meaningful, you know, final product or end result. Certainly I
would open it and be welcome to public debate about certain issues, but to try to keep the
group small enough and manageable enough so that we move forward and actually had
recommendations to make. That was what we were trying to balance.
Lehman/Dee?
Vanderhoef/I'll not reiterate all the compliments. Just accept them from me. A couple of things
that strike me as more miniscule maybe but might be thought about in implementation
right now. And one of them is the task force on the emergency medical services and fire
services and EMT services I think within Homeland Security and within budget restraints
both in the County and in Iowa City that this might be more acceptable sooner rather than
later even because there might well be some opportunities to save on both of our budgets.
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Rocca/Sure.
Vanderhoef/So that's for you to think about.
Rocca/Okay.
Vanderhoef/The other piece was that at a recent State legislative policy meeting of League of
Cities Doug Wagner spoke about also regional training center for fire and I had
mentioned that eastern Iowa needed one and our report had shown that a lot of fire
departments throughout the State had a problem with travel time and getting volunteers
into Ames for training and so forth. So this all came up and looked for funding number
one and number two to support regionalization. But the concept that Cedar Rapids was
looking at was to put a training center at Kirkwood that would be a wider range regional
than what is suggested in your goal plan of just for Johnson County for a training facility.
And having worked with Kirkwood on many training programs I'd like that idea to be
explored at least.
Rocca/I'm quite familiar with it with professional affiliations but knowing our own local needs
and the ability to train day-to-day we really see what we're doing locally as an extension
ofwhat would happen regionally. So there would be a tie-back to the State. Certalnlya
good point.
Vanderhoeff Thank you.
Pfab/ One of the things that I thought was kind of neat in the report was the idea of the efforts
and resources that you're using to prevention rather than suppression and I think that you
tied in the idea that this public service officer...public information officer - ! think that
idea is kind of a neat idea and (can't hear) as time goes on it'll take shape in some form.
I think I like it.
Rocca/Thank you. Thank you. Steven?
Kanner/Couple other things. One is as far as regionalization. Talked to one of the health
inspectors for the County who does our restaurant inspections. I think there can be some
coming together there too. Have you thought about that in some way better coordination
to coordinate that as far as...what's the word I'm looking for? Perhaps save time in some
way or being able to catch some violations that might not be caught.
Rocca/I'm not exactly sure I'm following your question, but, you know, looking at the total
spectrum of inspection services I think we would want to evaluate everything that's going
on out there and if there's some ways to compliment each organization or agency's
inspection services we would certainly look at that as a possibility.
Kanner/Just so yeah you'll talk to them and see if there's any way that you can compliment each
other.
Rocca/Sure.
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Kanner/And then the last one was your projection for emergency response. You gave 1992,
2000, and 2010 figures here and does that take into account your projections,
regionalization efforts? I'm wondering if they seem to go up pretty high at the same rates
or greater rates in many ways. For instance actual fires which have gone down you're
projecting to go up.
Rocca/To a degree.
Kanner/So does it take into account that because we're regionalizing there's going to be more of
everything?
Rocca/The potential is certainly there, but with infield development things of that nature yeah
certainly we'll think there will be somewhat of an increase, but not a large spike.
Kanner/Because the response time you're saying...you're projecting, I think, to go up
significantly. I'm just wondering from a strategic planning point of view if you would
say well we want to cut the rate of increase by a certain percentage so it gets to a certain
figure and that's a way to approach it. Did you look at it from that point of view?
Rocca/Well, to be perfectly honest with you, some of our problems is we look at our response
times until recently has been our inability to measure them accurately. And with
cooperation with the Police Department and the communication center the update to the
computer dispatch we're able to track times in seconds to the nearest second and so we
think we'll be able to have a better handle on issues like that as we develop more data to
analyze.
Kanner/But in terms of planning would it be feasible for you to say this is our goal we want to
cut back we expect that the growth rate of our city will be at 3% a year and we want our
number of incidences to go down and then go backwards from there and say how can we
cut our incidences. What our methods. Do we want to put in more automatic
defibrillators? Will that help us more? More fire...more smoke alarms?
Rocca/I think you have to back up further than that and you have to go to prevention and
education efforts.
Katmer/Right.
Rocca/And change lifestyles if you will. You know there's a real culture there that you have to
get into. Probably the classroom at an early age. But education prevention those types of
initiatives ultimately are going to have the reduction on the response. Response is failure.
Proactive actions obviously are what we would like to be involved with hence
community risk reduction.
Kanner/Right. Thanks. Questions?
Lehman/Thank you.
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Rocca/Let me just wrap up ever so briefly by saying that the plan as we've discussed it tonight
has been based on multiple community facets and as such it focuses on agreed upon
community goals. But we do believe this is an excellent guide for future decisions and
we're ever so mindful of the fiscal realities and our ability to move forward as our
resources allow. Again let me reiterate my thanks to you, the City Council, the City
Manager, and members of the strategic planning committee. I do respectfully encourage
you, the City Council, to approve the Fire Department's 10-Year Strategic Plan. And
again I thank you.
Lehman/Thank you.
Kanner/Thanks Andy. Emie?
Lehman/Yes.
Kanner/I have a proposal. I know people have been waiting a long time, but I'm getting pretty
burnt out and I was wondering if it's possible to move the traffic stop discussion to
another time - another date?
Lehman/I think the person is here.
Kanner/I know there's here and I know you've waited a long time, but I don't know if we can
give it our best attention right now.
Atkins/Angela's here, but Angela has to go back to Louisville, Kentucky in a couple days.
Lehman/Louisville, Kentucky so we're going to have to do it. But we are going to wander
around for about three or four minutes and get the blood circulating and then we'll come
back and do that.
1CPD TRAFFIC STOP PRACTICES
Lehman/Mr. R.J. Sir.
R.J. Winkelhake/ We're sorry to keep you here this late.
Lehman/You aren't keeping us. We have kept you and we apologize for that, but this is the
people's republic.
Winkelhake/! live here. I wouldn't mind staying.
Lehman/You take a month off too many things on the agenda.
Champion/But we've had a month off.
Lehman/Okay.
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Winkelhake/What you're going to hear tonight is a report about traffic stop practices for the
Iowa City Police Department. Just give you a little bit of reminder we started doing data
collection quite a number of years ago. We were the only police department in the State
that was doing that. We began doing this particular type of data collection. We're the
only police department in the State doing it. The reason we started doing it was because
we wanted to know how we were interacting within our traffic stops and the results of
those. We had the opporttmity to send the Supervisors to an extension administrative
officer's course at the University of Louisville and Lieutenant Jackson who is in the back
here when we was there he was asked to do a research project which I get to pick the
topic and it was profiling. And he did quite an extensive research paper on that. I don't
know if you've ever seen that or not.
Vanderhoef/I have.
Winkelhake/However, he made a lot of recommendations in there and the recommendations that
were made were also some that we got from different national symposiums where the
same kind of recommendations for the data to be collected and the way to collect it. So
that was done. We choose to send data from April 1st thru the December 31st of 2001 to
the University of Louisville to be able to do a traffic analyzation of what we were doing.
And what you have is a report - I think you got it about a week and a half ago - and we
have Dr. Angela West from the University of Louisville here tonight to give you the
report on the data that we have collected. And when she's done with it and you're done
with answers I got just a couple little things that we're going to continue on to leave you
know about after you're done with the report. So this is Dr. Angela West.
Lehman/Thank you.
Angela West/Well thank you for having me here. I'm having a little trouble with my voice this
evening so I'm going to try to be brief. What I'm going to do is basically just kind of
give you an overview of what we've done and you have the report and hopefully you've
read the report and have had access to the report. This is just a summary really of what
the full report says. We looked at - because I anticipate several questions so I'm just
going to fly thru this - we looked at 38 variables - driver demographics, stop
information, officer badge number and we can also put more information in later on the
individual officer as that need arises based on the badge number we can obviously get the
race, the sex, the age of the officer time and service and that type of thing if that becomes
a need of the Department. We looked at two different types of analysis. We had
descriptive analysis which is basically just percentages. Everybody's familiar with
percentages. That's a very superficial look at what's going on. It's only used to describe
events and representations. We also looked at multi-varied analysis to try to provide
inferential ability to look in the why. Why things are happening. Why things are the way
they are. And also predictive abilities to help us predict future outcomes based on what
we see currently. These types of analysis also help us to understand relationships and
interactions among all the various events that occur during a stop. A stop does not
happen in a vacuum. When someone is stopped there's several different things going on
at the same time that impact what happens...that may impact the actual stop itself- the
weather, the location, any events that are going on in the community, the officer's mood
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at the time even though...and the reason that happens is because officer's are given a
great deal of discretion primarily because they can't fully enforce every single law. So
they have to pick and choose the most severe infractions. Excuse me. So and along with
the officer and the time of day and the environment and the weather there's driver
characteristics and auto characteristics that are going on at the same time. And the type
of multi-varied analysis that we used is called CHAID or Chi-Square Automatic
Interaction Detector and I attached a printout from one of those processes looking at the
variable citation whether or not a citation was issues in the stop. And I'll get to that in
just a second, but that's just a printout form the CHAID. And what the CHAID analysis
does is it looks at each point, each decision point...now it can't look at the initial decision
point because that's something that we will never know exactly why the officer stopped
the person initially. We have the reason they put on the form, but they may, in some
cases, have put that reason just to put down a reason. So the initial traffic stop we will
never know whether an officer is discriminating on that very first contact because we
have what the officer puts on the form so we cannot analyze the reason for the initial stop
as far as whether there's racial discrimination going on there. So we look at each
decision point after that and the reason that the officer gives for the stop - whether it was
a moving violation or an equipment registration violation. And what CHAID does is it
looks at each of those decision points and throws that decision point into a big pot with
all the other things that are going on in that stop at that time - the demographics of the
driver, the age, sex, race of the driver and any other events and characteristics that we can
say might predict any outcome. And it results in the decision tree which you can see why
it's called the decision tree on your printout there arranged in a tree-shaped format.
Excuse me. And that tree orders these predictors in order of their strength or their
importance in predicting whatever event we're looking at. In this case it's a citation.
Okay. Excuse me. We looked at five outcomes of interest, the reason for the stop that
the officer gave, moving violation, equipment registration violation were the two most
prevalent, whether there was a search conducted, the type of search if there was a search
conducted, property seized, and the outcome of the stop. And there were three potential
outcomes/ warning, citation, or arrest. Our results - you've read those - basically
nothing predicted equipment registration violation. There were no significant factors that
came to the surface when you threw all that stuff into a pot. Age was the most significant
predictor of receiving a moving violation, but it had significant interactions with sex and
residency. So... Excuse me. The base rate for moving violations was 68.6% meaning
that out of all the stops 68.6% were because of a moving violation. So what the CHAID
does is it takes that base rate - 68.6% - and compares the rate for other groups in other
situations to that base rate. It should be fairly similar okay across characteristics. It was
not in certain cases. Most likely to be stopped for equipment...or moving violation were
those over 40 with non-Iowa registrations. So they had a rate of 84.5%. So 84.5% of all
the people over 40 with non-Iowa registrations received a stop for a moving violation
compared to that 68.6% it's significantly higher. That's why the CHAID says it's a
predictor. Okay? The next most likely were those under 18 who were female - almost
82% of those were stopped. Whether there was a search conducted had no significant
predictors. The type of search conducted there were no significant predictors. Whether
there was property seized there were no significant predictors meaning that no particular
group or characteristic was higher than the base rate for the entire overall group. For
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outcome of stop there were no factors that predicted arrest, but receiving a warning and
receiving a citation did have significant predictors. Receiving a warning...you were
more likely to get a warning if you were not searched which kind of makes sense from a
practical standpoint. You're not going to get a warning if you're searched hopefully.
And equipment registration violation. So most likely to be warned were those who were
not searched who had equipment registration violations and who had non-Iowa
registrations and that might be an out-of-towner phenomenon. We're going to give you a
warning sense you're out of town, sense you're from out of town. Thank you. Whether a
driver was stopped for equipment registration violation was the most significant predictor
of getting a ticket or a citation. Again age and residency came up as related to that. The
base rate was 38.7%. Those most likely to receive a citation were those not stopped for
an equipment registration violation. So you go again with you're not going to receive a
ticket just for equipment registration violation. Who are over 30 years old and who had
Iowa registrations. Excuse me. Race was never the factor that was the most influential in
any of the outcomes of the stop. Excuse me again. The next page outlines what we call
the baseline dilemma. And what that refers to is that in prior studies of this issue the
tendency is for the percentage of stopped drivers - the racial distribution of stopped
drivers to be compared to the racial distribution in the community. That's the tendency.
There are several problems with that that I outline here and I'll get to that in just a
second. But the whole issue revolves around comparing what is to what should be and
that's a problem. To determine what should be one has to get a measure of the racial
distribution of drivers who are doing something that would make them eligible to be
stopped. You have to know who's out there driving in a way that will make them eligible
to be stopped. And I call these people the violators. And your proportion - you're racial
distribution of stops should mirror the racial distribution of people doing something
wrong. Does that make sense? So that's what the baseline should be. Actually
measuring that is...nobody's been able to do that yet - to find out who's driving in a way
that will make them eligible to be stopped. There've been attempts to measure this, but
mostly that consists of posting observers either by the side of the road or driving on the
road and counting the number of speeders going by and trying to document their race.
Okay? So that's the way it's been tried...attempts have been made to measure that. One
of the biggest problems I see with that is speeding is the only behavior that they're
looking at in those types of studies. Well speeding is a minority reason for a stop. Okay?
We did a study in Louisville, Kentucky and only 37% of all the stops were for speeding.
So you're missing 63% of the reasons why somebody might be stopped just sitting there
looking at speeders going by. And not to mention the difficulty of measuring races of
drivers as they're driving past - speeding past. Excuse me. Comparisons to the
population - the census data- are invalid for the reasons that are outlined here. Census
figures include the entire population. The population of drivers to be stopped is generally
over the age of 15. Driving populations and police stop practices fluctuate depending on
several factors. It ignores the fact that a significant proportion of drivers stopped are not
city residents. That's my biggest point. It's hard to compare a population is a city
when...with the population of driver stopped when 38% of the drivers stopped aren't
from the city. And there's also no theory to back the belief that the population of drivers
stopped should reflect any resident population. Any there's no theory to back the belief
that driving characteristics or events should be equally distributed among populations.
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Different groups can have different driving patterns and behaviors. That's why young,
male insurance rates are a lot higher than anyone else because we know younger people
drive differently and males drive differently. Excuse me. And the conclusions and
recommendations we found no evidence in the data that we had that there was systematic
discriminatory stop practices. Again in the events that happen after the initial stop and in
the reasons that the officers gave for the stop. Again this does not preclude the
possibility that an individual officer could be individually discriminating, but that's
another thing that's almost impossible to measure. You'd have to know exactly what
things were going on in the officer's mind in any situation. The best way to do this type
of thing is to use this type of information along with complaints from citizens and that's
one of the biggest measures of what police are doing wrong or right is to look at have
there been complaints that I was stopped for an unnecessary purpose. And also use of
force reports to go along with this. The age and the sex of the drivers as I just mentioned
young or males typically have the riskiest driving behaviors. And those were the two
things that were most predictive of stop outcomes. We've made recommendations to
ICPD and Chief Winkelhake is taking those to heart and there's been an on-going
renovation process, revision process to the data collection and to improve the quality of
the data. Any questions?
Champion/You brought up a...I just want to ask (can't hear) or not? The percentage of out°of-
towners that were stopped was higher than people with in-town registration, but did you
take account of the fact that we have thousands of students here with out of town cars. Is
that considered at all or that just random?
West/ That would come into play in the analysis. Yes.
Lehman/I think you said 38% were non-residents were they actually non-residents or people
with out of town plates?
West/ Well let's see. We did both looking at vehicle registration Iowa versus non-Iowa and
then looking at city, county other county within Iowa.
Lehman/So ifI were driving a car with an Illinois plate and I was a student at the University of
Iowa I would be considered a resident?
West/ No.
Champion/No. You'd be an out-of-towner.
Lehman/So the 38% many of those could be residents of Iowa City who are here to go to the
University.
Kanner/It doesn't look at address?
West/ But they're really not counted in the census population for the City are they?
Kanner/Yes they are.
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Lehman/Well they are, but they would also certainly included in any measure of profiling
because they are residents of Iowa City even though they may not be permanent resident
- they live here.
West/ Okay. That's one reason that we look at vehicle registration - Iowa versus non-Iowa and
then looked at city resident versus county resident versus...there were two measures of
residency that we used.
Lehman/That probably would have skewed it anyway.
Vanderhoef/And you were talking about, if I'm reading this correctly, over - I'm presuming -
40 when you say that you're talking age.
West/ Yes.
Vanderhoef/So that is not our typical student population.
West/ Right.
Vanderhoef/In the age 40 part of it.
Lehman/No.
Vanderhoef/I have been thinking the same thing that you were Connie about our out-of-town
registrations that the students...
Champion/I think some of my kids have been in school long enough to be 40.
Vanderhoef/Going back for the second time.
Lehman/Questions? Comments?
O'Donnell/I think it's very good.
Wilburn/Can you comment in general just - I realize we're one of the few if not the only
departments in Iowa doing.., collecting this information - but from what you've seen
with some other parts of the country can you compare (can't hear). We don't have or we
haven't...this is our first go at this. We haven't standardized tested the reliability of the
instrument, but can you just in general comment on information that may have appeared
on other...
West/On the data collection instrument?
Wilburn/Yeah on the instrument itself. On other areas that they may have included.
West/ Yes. Well we came in after the fact on this data collection form.
Wilburn/Right.
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West/ But it's fairly comprehensive compared to prior studies into current studies. Many, many
studies only include the basic demographic information of the driver, some officer
information, and maybe the time and location of the stop and the date that type of thing.
This has several other factors on here.
Wilburn/Is there other information that you might include?
West/ Yes. One of the recommendations that we made was to include information on some
other events that happened. Of course that's a departmental issue as far as what the need
is. For example some other departments ask whether a driver was asked to exit the
vehicle. And that might be an indication of discrimination is minority drivers are asked
to exit more frequently than white drivers are. Or whether or not a warrant check was
requested or conducted on the driver - that's also another one that other departments do.
Wilburn/And have you had a chance a conversation with the Department here about perhaps
including those types of things or the benefit? Have you had those conversations yet?
West/ Yes. We've made recommendations.
Wilburn/Okay.
Vanderhoef/And have you looked at these in terms of what standard operation procedures are -
whether all drivers are asked to get out of the car for instance? To put that into the data?
West/ Right. Right. That's a...that's a very specific thing to the department that's doing the
study. For example in Louisville we just finished a whole year of their data analysis.
One of their standard procedures that their policy is to do is to conduct a warrant search
on everybody they pull over just as a matter of practice. That's not standard procedure in
every department. But then we found the rate of doing that was not 100% as the chief
would have liked. It was only around 86% which is still fairly high, but not consistent
enough.
Wilburn/I'm glad you pointed out the limitation in the fact that we given what we're doing and
the way that we're going about it we cannot know...we can't get into the mind of an
individual officer. And I've always been of the belief that one would hope not but any
racism stereotypes in the general population, in my opinion, there's no reason to believe
that they may not be, you know, close to or similar to what's on any city department and,
you know, some folks that I've talked to about the issue and just with racism in general
it's good to know that there's no systemic, you know, given the limitations or the
constraints that we're aware of in the department. There may be anecdotal - and there
will be anecdotal information.
West/ Yes.
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Wilburn/But with folks that I've talked to their concern it's, you know, we know that you can't
get some of those ideas or thoughts out of people's heads, but what you do with that is a
different story. And you can believe what you want to believe, but you're not going to
comb at any act against because of your racist, sexist, etc., etc. beliefs and that's why it's
important to have...I look at this and I think it's important that we continue to take a look
at this because just with our participation in this for any individual officers that may, you
know, may use some type of profile whatever their motivation for stopping someone if
it's something other than legitimate, you know, police business that's it's being watched
and they need to explain their stops, their behavior. I look at it as a tool.
West/ Exactly.
Wilburn/And a piece along with what we have with our, you know, our other complaint process
- our Human Rights Conunission complaint process. I don't know if there's...I don't
know if we have...if our vehicles have video on them. Okay so that's another piece that
adds to the puzzle so I look at this as another bit of information in terms of everything
that we're doing.
West/ And it's meant to be used as a tool - an administrative tool.
Lehman/Since you're negotiating a second contract for a full year of data with Iowa City...
West/ Yes.
Lehman/...are we going to be a little...is it possible to get better or more sophisticated data than
we have now?
West/ Yes. They've already made some changes I believe to the...maybe Chief Winkelhake
can speak more to that as to what they have done.
Pfab/ I have a comment and kind of...
Lehman/Well let R.J. answer first for the data question.
Winkelhake/(Can't hear) what we're doing.
Lehman/Microphone please.
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Winkelhake/The question about what we're doing. At one point we tried to correlate between
traffic stops and the data we were collecting we found like an 89% correlation rate and
that's not good enough. We've taken some steps after talking with the people at
Louisville and Lieutenant Jackson particularly is reviewing all that data and we're
running now at about a 99% to sometimes 100% correlation. And we found a number of
glitches that were computer generated. For instance ifa community service officer went
to a traffic stop to stand by while the car is going to get towed, it would show that that
stop was made by the community service officer which is not the policy of the Police
Department. Lieutenant Jackson's been working with the people that take care of the
computers to make sure that doesn't happen. So our correlation has gone from 89
something to very close to 100 and that's month after month after month. And the
process is going to continue. IfI could just one thing that she talked about the warrant
checks for instance in Louisville they...it was a policy to go ahead and do that. The way
the computer is set up for the State of Iowa anytime an officer runs a license plate or runs
your driver's license it comes back whether there is any warrants on you. So that's an
automatic. So we never have taken it as an issue to put into policy to check everybody
for a warrant because you could do either one of those you're going to get it back
automatically. So that's always being done.
Pfab/ One of the points that I think Ross related to, but there's a possibly another side to that
that is does the officer out there when he knows he's entering his data entry person does
it ever cross his mind that I've stopped a lot of minorities here and maybe I should lay
off. Is that ever...?
West/ I'm not sure I'm...it may, it may not.
Pfab/ So it might work against minorities too if they know they're being tracked just to say
well.
West/ Generally when a behavior like that is being studied when any kind of study is imposed
on a law enforcement agency there's an initial adjustment period right after it goes into
effect but then people revert back to their normal behaviors.
Pfab/ Okay. That's a good point.
Winkelhake/As soon as we started saying we're going to start collecting it obviously that puts a
flag up say somebody's looking at this. We did take a look at the number of traffic stops
that were made last year. We took the eight month data the April till the end. We
decided how many...on average how many and then multiplied it by 12 to get a number
and it came out 14,212 and we did the same thing with the data we've collected so far
year to date and projected that out to the end of December and that number comes out to
14, 050. So we're very close. There isn't really anybody playing games that we can see
just from that number.
Kanner/Dr. West thanks for coming up here. What's your recommendation on having a peer
review of this study that you've done?
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West/ Excuse me.
Kanner/Especially you've been hired by a department and is there a common accepted practice
in the statistical field, scientific field to have in this situation especially to have a peer
review of your results?
West/ Well we were contracted to do this study by the Police Department. It never was meant
to be a research project that was publishable. Of course when we go...
Kanner/I say peer review in a more general sense since I lack of a better word. But you get my
sense of having someone else hired. Do you recommend that someone else be hired to
look over the data to do a second review to see if they come up with the same results?
West/ No. What normally is done is you do the review on the front end to make sure you're
doing the right things in the first place so that that's not necessary on the back end. So
what we did was reviewed every shop practice, publication to the...at the point at which
we started doing this type of work collected a big library full of publications and studies
from across the country and reviewed their practices, reviewed their data collection
forms, reviewed the government publications from the National Institute of Justice
recommendations and created our data collection forms when we had the input to do that.
We didn't have as much input in this situation in the data collection form, but as far as
practices go. And then we've, of course, improved on the methodology that had been
used in prior studies.
Kanner/We got some information tonight - I'I1 give you a copy of this from Dr. Baldus. I don't
know if you have a chance to take a look at that. But there...it did bring some concern to
my mind about you mentioned how hard it was to compare the no stops and...but he's of
the opinion, I believe, that it is doable. That it is essential actually to make that
comparison to the best of our ability. And I would ask the Council that we give Dr.
Professor Baldus a chance tonight and if not tonight then another time set aside to
respond to this. We've gotten some written information.
West/ Did you want me to answer that question?
Kanner/Yeah I do, but I also just wanted to continue with the Council just a second.
West/ Okay.
Kanner/If...since I need some help interpreting this I think it would be good to have Dr.
Baldus...Professor Baldus perhaps tonight respond to some of this since he has gone to a
lot of effort. He has some expertise in this area.
Lehman/Would you...I mean you've received a copy of this. Would you look at it at your
leisure look this over and give us a response to it as well.
West/ Sure. Absolutely.
Kanner/Anyone else like to hear from Professor Baldus tonight?
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Lehman/I think the time is such tonight that it probably...it's almost 10/30.
Pfab/ Is it possible that maybe...that maybe tomorrow night?
Lehman/Certainly during public discussion or if we wish to have it... if the Council wish to have
it...I would like to get your response to this and then make a decision on that.
West/ Would you like a written response?
Lehman/Read it over and see what you think.
West/ Okay.
Kanner/Yeah. Personally I don't know what the Council majority feels I would like a written
response. I think that would be helpful.
Champion/Yeah.
Lehman/Obviously this is something you understand far better than we and so if you would I
would appreciate that for the rest of the Council.
Kanner/And if you could respond I'd appreciate it. Another question I had that was raised by
Professor Baldus is regards to people given, I think they were stopped and warning and
outcome warning and correlation with race on that.
West/ To what are you referring?
Kanner/I think he might have it in a different form and again it would be better if he could
address it to you directly so we could see a little bit of question and answer.
West/ Is that addressed in his?
Kanner/Yeah. I guess you have it.
West/ Then I shall...
Kanner/Figure 1.
West/ ...address that in my written response tomorrow if that's...
Lehman/It doesn't have to be that quick, but...
West/ Oh, okay I meant for your meeting tomorrow.
Lehman/This isn't on our agenda tomorrow.
Champion/No.
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Lehman/We're receiving the report. We appreciate your being here to go through it with us, but
I do think...I have not read Professor Baldus' comments. I will take them home. My
sense is that you will understand them a lot better than we are.
West/ Okay. Sure.
Lehman/So.
Pfab/ A possibility since it's not on the agenda tomorrow Professor Baldus could have five
minutes if he wants...
O'Donnell/Ernie we're not going to get into a debate tonight about this Irvin.
Pfab/ No, no I said tomorrow.
O'Donnell/I'd like to here her response...
West/ I'd like to make a comment to the question that you asked about the people who are not
stopped. I don't know how you measure that. And if someone would come up with a
way to measure the characteristics of the people who are not stopped I'd be more than
happy to do the analysis.
Lehman/They're quicker.
West/ Apparently.
Lehman/Okay. Any other questions.
Wilburn/Just a couple comments in terms of that and we'll certainly hear comments on the
results of your study as we will from anyone and anyone with a research background can
look. One way off the surface is to observe the officers to have someone observe the
officers and you know that depends on how much money and resources you want to put
into that. But, you know, the other point about the peer review thing your point was well
taken about whether or not you're looking at publishing an article something researched
but the methodology is spelled out in the report if someone wants to take a look at it it's
apparently has happened or is going to happen they can send us a response as to want or
come to get their five minutes before us to respond.
West/ Right. One thing that when you send something off for publication consideration or in
this case it's a report for an agency that is not as in-depth as far as the statistical
procedures and numbers and results are. Had it been for publication consideration we
would have included a lot more in-depth on the statistical outcomes and probabilities and
chi-square values and degrees of freedom and all those kinds of things. But it was for the
use of the department, not necessarily for critique for that reason.
Champion/R.J. was there any surprises in the outcomes? Did anything surprise you with the
percentages?
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Winkelhake/The thing that surprised me most was the age - that 41 the likelihood of getting a
ticket. I really didn't have any preconceived notions of what this was going to tell us
other than we started a long time ago. I personally didn't think that we were stopping
people because of race. It's nice to have this to be able to say there's some
documentation about what we do. One of the things you talked about was the Iowa plates
versus non-Iowa and we also looked at other Iowa. So you'd also have Iowa Johnson
County, other counties, and then out of state. And we did that mainly because of student
population. And a lot of the visitors with out of state plates that come in here. There was
also another thing that we put on the form was about the whether use of force - whether
there was any force that was used and whether it was the driver or the passenger. That
was something we wanted to know and we put it in there that way. So there were some
things that were done simply because we wanted to know what we were doing and get a
better handle. When I talk to my colleagues across the State and they say why in the
world are you doing this and my answer is at least why I can tell you what we're doing.
I'm not too sure you can tell us what you're doing. All the time no matter what the data
is going to be you're going to have people that are going to disagree with it. And that
was one of the reasons we choose to find an organization outside of our State.
Wilburn/And I think the other piece to add to that is to people do draw different conclusions
about your methodology and your findings. It's what you do with that and we have other
- again we're continuing to look at this. We have other pieces of data we collect whether
it's looking at complaints filed against individual officers and/or video account and so it's
pieces of the puzzle that we need to have to try and prevent it from happening.
Winkelhake/One of the things we're continuing to use (can't hear) we do look at use of forth.
We do look at citizen complaints. But what we're going to do is continue to gather data.
We will have it analyzed again. We are going to continue to look at it. We're going to
do more so we can get into individual officer's rather than just the Department as a whole
and start looking at it from that standpoint. We're fairly well satisfied at this point that
the data we're gathering is good data. I think the people who are doing the work agree
the data we're collecting now is better than was done before.
(End of Side 1, Tape 02-67, Beginning of Side 2)
Winkelhake/...report you see a sheet. Well that is actually on a computer, you know a laptop in
the car. And the officers can do this very quickly in the car now. And we did make some
adjustments to that. We include a five digit number from the dispatch center so we that
coalition coming almost 100%. Ross you had made reference to whether or not there are
videos in the car, there are. So we have the videos in the car, we have citizen complaints,
we have this data, we have a number of things that we can look at. What we are viewing
it as is kinda of an early warning system to see once what we are doing so that we have
some idea of how we have to respond to changing attitudes if that's necessary. And we
will be doing this, its going to continue. We're looking to getting a contract signed very
shortly and possibly in a year come back to you.
Wilburn/Great.
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Vanderhoef/Then you would make an assessment, I would hope, that this is a good use of public
monies and does not create questions in the community that are not valid?
Winkelhake/I think it's a good use of money simply because of the fact that I think it is a good
thing to do. I think it is something we should be doing. You ask some other Police
Chiefs and Sheriffs across the state they're going to tell you its probably not a good use.
Any time you have data there's going to be different interpretations of it. The one thing I
can do is say "Here this what we do". You're going to interpret it and you may have seven
different opinions right here but least wise I can say this is what we do.
Wilburn/Well not just the data itself but the methodology used. If someone wants to say what
you're doing is flawed...
Lehman/So be it.
Wilburn/and then we can you're right or no we disagree.
Dr. West/I've heard that a lot.
Wilbum/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you.
Vanderhoef/Thank you.
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COUNCIL PARATRANSIT COMMITTEE
Lehman/Okay, guys w¢¥e getting close to the end. Paratransit, Steve. Steve's going to give us a.
little historical background o£paratransit and where we find ourselves now.
Atkins/An abbreviated one Emie.
Lehman/That's good, real good.
Atkins/We're concluding, we are concluding the last year of a five year agreement with the
County. This agreement ends June 30, '03. In the spring we corresponded with and in
effect started the discussions with the County well in anticipation of the conclusion of
this agreement. Council created a two member committee. On June the l0th we received
a proposal from the SEATS folks. On June the 24th we responded accepting in principal
really virtually most every element of thc proposal. We had a four year agreement, we
were continuing Sunday service, and we had a four year inflationary adjustment. On the
23rtl the Committee, the City representatives, met with representatives from the County
committee and they revised their proposal upward by a factor of 51%. There were
notable costs that were identified in this proposal in a little bit more detail than we've
seen in the earlier one. Such things as our share of rent, we had a better identification of
the costs of their management staff. We reviewed their proposal, and the Committee in
correspondence to the County on August the 12th indicated that it would seem to be in the
City's best interest to pursue the design of our own paratransit system. First priority
being in quality of paratransit that is within our operating budget, and with a second
priority incorporating to the fullest extent that we could within our fixed route the
advantages of us owning and operating our own smaller fleet of vehicles. It seems to
work to all of our advantages if we are able to control that fleet. That's where we are
today.
O'Donnell/And Dee and I were on this two person negotiating committee and we did meet with
County. You've heard the results, the 52% increase and I think that we are prepared to
ask tonight that we actively pursue creating our own system.
Lehman/Well I would assume what we are saying that we would ask staff to prepare a blue print
for what we could do and what it would cost us and then we would look at that.
Atkins/It's real important that if it's going to your decision that we go live on July 1 next summer
there's a mountain of work that has to be done. We can not fiddle around with this.
We've got to get at this and get going. There's capital issues, employee issues, just a
whole variety of things that have to be undertaken and...
(can't hear)
Atkins/I think we can do it in anywhere from 4 to 6 months we could have the thing. Of course
there's so many other players and we have a transition process we have to think through.
I'd like to have for sure because of our budget process, our budget process hard to believe
starts next month. I know.
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Lehman/What you are saying you would have something prior to our budget discussion?
Atkins/We will certainly have an outline
Lehman/By the end of the year?
Atkins/and a rough budget for you. Rough in the sense that we want to make it as reliable as we
can but the actual hitting the road with paratransit vehicles staffby city employees its
quite an undertaking folks.
O'Donnell/It's a tremendous amount of work.
Champion/If we decide to do this,
Atkins/Yes
Champion/and I think it is a valid thing like I did four years ago, I thought it was a valid thing. I
think we'll mn a really good system and save money. If we decide to do this then would
you would we as a City hire a SEATS director like in January to put this whole thing
together?
Atkins/The current SEATS operation has a director, operations supervisor, and a system
administrator. And then a group of drivers and a group of schedulers and dispatchers.
They're sort of stacked. We believe that with one full time position, an operational
supervisor, I don't know what to call them just yet. Something such as that, that that
person would be responsible for the day to day activities. It would be assigned to the
Department of Parking and Transit. That's how we would go about it.
Champion/That person could be in place to help..
Atkins/I would like to have that person hired long before July the 1st
Champion/Right
Atkins/Because we would have to have resolved all of those personnel matters long before that
period of time and it would just simply make things a lot easier on us.
Champion/Well we can not afford our contract with SEATS on the County level.
O'Donnell/Not with a 52% increase.
Champion/Can't afford that. We'd have to decrease service quite a bit. I think it's gotta of sad
that the County is gotta getting out of the Senior Center and SEATS. It's too bad.
Lehman/Steve I think I kinda sense that if we decide to put together our own system that that
decision really has to be, you give us a proposal and we have to act on that, really make a
commitment early in the year next year so you can have.
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Atkins/Oh, I'm hoping to have it for you in the fall.
Lehman/Time wise we have to give you
Vanderhoef/Have to have for budget.
Atkins/I need a nod.
Lehman/A go or a no go.
Atkins/We need to talk to lots of people.
Vanderhoef/I would suspect that we need the go or no go prior to setting or getting very far into
the budget process because it is going to have a huge impact on how we go about this and
certainly there would be some start up costs but hopefully the savings in operational costs
for the initial run would help us with some of that and those of you that are on JCCOG
know we put in for the possibility of grants for some of that start up costs on the
possibility that we would be running our own system. But looking at $291,000 increase
that goes a long ways to doing what we need to be doing here and gives us certainly some
opportunities to look at how we provide transit throughout the City and to me that has
real advantages that we may not be able to measure in dollars and cents but certainly
could be offered and measured in customer satisfaction and use of our transit system.
O'Donnell/So all we're looking for tonight is
Lehman/Looking for, Irvin
Pfab/ Have a question. Is the opportunity for considering 28E agreements with City, County or
Coralville?
Atkins/It's all part of it Irvin. We have to do that.
Pfab/ That is not out of the question.
O'Donnell/That's probably what's going to happen.
Lehman/That would be part of the equation by the time we would get through. I guess for
tonight you need to know whether go ahead Steven.
Kanner/Well, I from talking to County folks and some people who use SEATS I have to believe
that the County and the City want the same thing. We want service that is the same or
better, and we want costs that are the same or less. And I don't think the County has that
great of an attachment to it.
(laughter)
Lehman/I think you are right.
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Vanderhoef/I think that's an under statement myself.
O'Donnell/52% increase I don't think they are fighting to keep it.
Kanner/My point would be that (can't hear) some of our staff about some exciting alternatives
that might be able to be done perhaps using semi fixed route to go along with paratransit
and I would say that we I believe that we can still come to an agreement with the County
whether they run it or we run it or whether it is a combination or it's under JCCOG or
perhaps something new and innovative. Whatever works best. So I'm not quite ready to
say let's go it alone all of a sudden. And I'd say let's talk and let's get down and get
serious and say we can't afford the $200,000, that's pretty obvious. We can't afford that
increase but say this is what we want, and how are we going to do it. I think we can still
do that. Mike and Dee you see no hope of doing that of sitting down and saying we want
this service and
O'Donnell/No...
Kanner/we're going to reach an agreement?
Vanderhoef/What I see..
O'Donnell/Excuse me Dee. These figures that were given to us were suppose to be actual costs
and they amounted to such drastic increases it was mentioned at one time that they may
be able to widdle it down and we couldn't find a blade that sharp to come down 52% or
you know I was prepared going into it to maybe 5 or 6% but we would never even
approach that and this is actual costs. County says they are subsidizing the City to the
tune of $200,000 so they ask for a $300,000 increase. So you know no, no, I don't think
there is any hope of reaching an agreement with the County and I think we had better
move on this.
Vanderhoef/What I see Steven, I don't disagree with what Mike said I think he's right on there,
but until we ask our staff to put together a plan just for our own we aren't ever going to
know that number and certainly to give the nod tonight which is what I'm hoping for will
allow us to put together what it costs us or what we anticipate it will cost us. Than
anything that is negotiated later if someone wants to talk with us about joining into the
system we'll have some base numbers that we can look at for what we need to provide
within the City limits of Iowa City. And those numbers are real important for Council to
have as base numbers.
Lehman/Yea, but I also think Steve in all honesty that if we sit down and put together a proposal
and its going to cost us x number of dollars which is, which I think I hear this is going
something that could occur within the next couple or three months, if the County
suddenly comes back and says well hey look we just refigured we made a mistake of
$400,000 and we're going to give you the system for this and is less than we have I don't
think we'd have any compulsion about accepting the County's offer. But we have no
basis upon to which to even negotiate with the County if we don't know what it's going to
cost us to do it ourselves. I think we have to know that.
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Kanner/I can see that. I would also ask that we continue negotiating with them while we are
getting those figures. That we continue to send representatives and see if we can reach an
agreement that's a win win situation.
Vanderhoef/Well negotiating down $291,000 is not going to happen. I'm real clear about that.
That there is no way we can cut that out unless you are willing to look at our regular
transit program and cut back on our trips there because our general fund can't handle this
kind of an increase.
O'Donnell/... services
Kanner/I think there's other ways to negotiate again to look at the end product and then see how
we can cooperatively get to that end product. And part of it might be as you are saying
Ernie and others to get the figures for ourselves..
Lehman/I think we have to have that.
Kanner/..but at the same time we can still do that negotiating with them and working together as
a team because I have to believe especially after talking to those Board of Supervisors
that they want the same thing that we want.
Lehman/The other thing though that I'm not at all sure and we're not going to know until we get
through this process. I'm not at all sure that we don't have the capability to provide this
service in a more economical fashion that they do even. In fact they may find this less
expensive for them to work an arrangement out with us than it is to try and provide the
service themselves. But we're never going to be able to even know until we put together
numbers that tell us what we can do it for. I'm prepared to tell staff to move forward with
that and see
Wilburn/Yea, I am too.
Vanderhoef/I am too.
Champion/I definitely am.
O'Donnell/That's a bunch...
Champion/I could be wrong. You may come back with hundreds of thousands of dollars more
but I think Iowa City because we don't have I mean we already have departments to
handle part of this. We have an overseer, I mean Steve is really the overseer of all of this.
O'Donnell/Navigator.
Champion/Navigator, he's the navigator.
Lehman/Without the wine.
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Champion/I'm convinced we can do a better program, and I was convinced of that four years
ago.
O'Donnell/Equally as good. What we want to do is have the service so its uninterrupted, and we
don't put a lot of stress on people.
Lehman/Are we in agreement that we proceed with developing a cost?
O'Dormell/Absolutely.
Kanner/Well, i£we're not going to, I mean you have the votes, but if we're not going to continue
negotiations I wouldn't be in agreement with that.
Lehman/Well if we aren't going to continue negotiations and we don't provide a system of our
own than we're really in a beck of trouble aren't we.
Kanner/I think we can do both Emie.
Lehman/I'm not sure that we won't but that's kinda...my suspension is that there will be
conversations back and forth from the County but I do think from the interest of time this
needs to start sooner...
Vanderhoef/I think though the negotiations will be talked about after we get some base numbers
for the City.
Lehman/You know it a quarter to eleven to we want to or is there anything under Council time
that is
Vanderhoef/I'm too tired.
Kanner/I had one thing that I wanted to ask.
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/Dale I've heard reports from you and from others about the meeting in Ankeny about the
municipal power and I was wondering what your ideas of the timeframe for Council to
consider proposed requests for proposals.
Helling/Staff is meeting tomorrow to talk about it. I would hope that in the very near future, no
later than next week, we can get you copies of the or the product of that meeting and
some assessment and then recommendation of where we should proceed from here
Kanner/Is there a sense, so then next week we get in our packets, you're saying a week from
Thursday, we get something in our packet and then maybe discuss it at September 9?
Helling/We were intending to put it on your September 9 work session, yea.
Lehman/Good.
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Kanner/Thanks.
Lehman/Okay folks.
Vanderhoef/Good night all.
Adjourned 10:45 p.m.
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