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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-11-26 Transcription November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page I November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session 6:55 P.M. Council Present: Bailey, Champion, Correia, Elliott, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn Council Elect: Hayek Staff: Karr, Helling, Dilkes, Davidson, Fowler, O'Malley, O'Brien, Fosse, Ford Other: Volland, Quellhorst PlaDDiD!! aDd ZODiD!! Items: c) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE FINAL PLAT OF CARDINAL POINTE SOUTH PART ONE AND PART TWO, IOWA CITY, IOWA. (SUB07-00009) d) CONSIDER SENDING A LETTER TO THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF ADJUSTMENT RECOMMENDING APPROVAL OF A CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT FOR AN ELECTRICAL UTILITY SUBSTATION ON A 3.18- ACRE PROPERTY LOCATED IN THE FRINGE AREA AT 4872 340TH STREET NE (CZ07-00003) Davidson! Shall we proceed, Mr. Mayor? Wilburn! Yeah, go ahead. Davidson! Uh, couple of Planning and Zoning items. Uh, we have a couple of rezonings, which we'll discuss tomorrow. Beginning then with Item c, uh, the.. .this is subdivision final plat for Cardinal Pointe South. You can see that the subdivision, since the preliminary plat, has been split into two, part one and part two. There you see part one. Uh, this subdivision, just real quickly to refresh your memories, a mix of housing types, as well as a parcel for future commercial development here. We will require rezoning for that. Uh, there are then three outlots in part one, which you see before you. Outlot B here will be a public park, dedicated to the City for public park, and Parks and Recreation Commission has fully endorsed that. Outlot A will be private open space. Outlot C is being reserved for future development. Uh, proceeding then to part two, urn, there is also Outlot D which will be private owner, private open space maintained by the homeowner's association. Uh, the only change, and it's a minor change, is with respect to lots 22, 23, and 24, uh, in the preliminary plat, those were proposed to be a duplex and a single-family dwelling. Uh, they are now a three-plex, uh, which the developer has determined fits better, uh, in the area. Urn, this is the location of that, right down here, and you can see that's a rendering of what the three-plex will look like. You can see they've turned the garages on their side, on the ends, oops. Urn, turn the garages on their sides, which we feel is consistent with our design guidelines. These are the garage doors for the middle unit then. Urn, the environmentally sensitive areas are pretty much contained in the outlots. Uh, we have some, urn, conditions that were part of the rezoning, you'll recall, for getting This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 2 Kennedy Parkway extension constructed, uh, that is the part from where it terminates right now over in here, over to Camp Cardinal, uh, Boulevard here, and I can review those with you if you'd like. Urn, anybody want to review those? You'll recall we've had some steps in place for getting that done. Uh, any questions about this final plat? Correia! Jeff, with the three-plex does that.. .do those homes then need to comply with the ADA requirements? Davidson! Uh, well, they obviously have to comply with all the Building Code requirements, including, uh, any ADA requirements necessary to get a certificate of occupancy. That would not have changed. Any other comments about Cardinal Pointe South? Uh, the final item then is authorizing the Mayor to send a letter to the, uh, Members of the Board of Supervisors, urn, pertaining to an Alliant Energy utility substation and communications tower, which is proposed for Rosehill Subdivision. Urn, this is, just to kind of orient you, this is Interstate 80. This is the old, uh, road, urn, the extension of Scott Boulevard, the old road, uh, I've heard it called Seven Sisters Road. I don't know that that's actually the official name. There's a...it exists as a public street to a.. .to an existing utility substation that's in this vicinity right here. The rest of it was vacated and it's part of ACT's property. So that orients you. Uh, you can see this dash line right here, uh, that is a significant dash line in that it is the City's growth area boundary, so you can see this property is in the two-mile extraterritorial area, but not in the City's growth area. Urn, the, uh, the County, this by the way was approved by the County Board of Adjustment, uh, if you, urn, excuse me. It will be approved by the County Board of Adjustment, if. . .if you, 00, recommend against this going forward, it would require a super majority of the County to approve this, but we are recommending approval, 00, based on it.. .basically complying with our requirements for these types of installations. The County does not have requirements that must be met for this, but in terms of the setbacks that the City would require, 00, and the, urn, 00, the setbacks and the, 00, screening, we feel that it's in order for both. There are, yeah, you can see the existing residential lots here, uh, but it does require a 200- foot setback and then also the screening, as well as.. . and then the communications tower which is up I believe.. . sorry. Up in this comer of the property, uh, does meet the requirement for a setback that's equal to at least the height of the tower, and this has significantly greater setback than that. Bailey/ Is there an opportunity for us to do something with the Joint Emergency Communications, urn, system with this communications tower? Davidson! There's always the possibility. Urn, how.. .how our consultant for that project is going to look at tower locations and possibly co-locating on a private tower. We'll have to ask them. We'll have the opportunity to do that tomorrow. Urn, but certainly it would be a possibility of co-location on a private tower with something they felt was a good idea. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26,2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 3 Bailey/ Okay, thanks. Davidson! Any other questions about this? Vanderhoef/ The only comment I had was if the letter that's in the packet is going to go out, there's a couple of typos. Davidson! Uh, I did not draft that letter, Dee, but if you'd like to give me those, or forward those to Karen Howard, urn, either way we'll make sure those get corrected. Vanderhoef/ Okay, let me.. . find the right page here. Davidson! I guess this proves that I did not read the letter carefully. (laughter) Although I will notice that the rest of your Councilors also did not note any typos. Vanderhoef/ If I can just get to the right page.. . after that, after that. Davidson! Right before the staff report, Dee. Vanderhoef/ No, I've got a.. ..I've got to get past all ofthe other. . . there it is. Urn, third paragraph, first line, 'Use permit is consistent.' Davidson! Okay, I got that one. Vanderhoef/ And policies. Davidson! Got that one. Vanderhoef/ Those are the two. Davidson! What was the first one, Dee? Vanderhoef/ First one is in that same line, 'Use permit is consistent with the policies,' rather than inconsistent. Davidson! Oh, that it? Got both ofthose, thank you. Any other comments about this? Wilburn! I would have just said Post hoc ergo propter hoc in response to your, uh, observation about the typos. Anyway, thank you. Davidson! Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26,2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 4 Council Appointments: Wilburn! We've got one applicant for the Board of Appeals, Stephen Buckman, and one applicant for Historic Preservation Commission, 00, Lindsay Bunting Eubanks. That okay with everybody? Champion! That's fine. Elliott! I think the...I noticed the three months in Iowa City, and I thought at first, 'That's kind of odd,' and then I thought, 'Well, gee, somebody from Glouchester, Virginia here three months, would be kind of nice to get an outsider's view,' so, yeah, looks good. Correia! Well, and she has experience with historic preservation. . . Elliott/ Right, sounds good to me. O'Donnell/ Yeah, that's fine. (several talking) Wilburn! Okay. Vanderhoef/ ... get involved in the City. A2:enda Items: ITEM 8. AMENDING THE FY2008 OPERATING BUDGET. Correia! I have a couple questions on the budget amendment. Wilburn! Item 8. Correia! Item 8. Is Kevin...I had a question on the, urn, City Attorney remodel and lower level remodel. O'Malley/ Yes. Correia! I don't.. .that wasn't in our CIP. O'Malley/ No, that's why there are amendments to this, FY08 plan. Correia! Right. We haven't talked about that. It's not on our unfunded list. I guess I was... Bailey/ But we talked about the housing remodel. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 5 O'Malley/ We had the, we had, urn, what was it, two years ago? The, uh, Civil Rights wanted to remodel up here, and at that time they were going to go downstairs into City Attorney's re.. . and remodel the City Attorney's area, and I believe the Mayor's office was going to move upstairs again and there's going to be a small conference room. That might have been about two years ago, and it got pushed back for another area got remodeled. It's more or less, we put $50,000 in the budget as a placeholder for anything in the City Hall remodeling, and then as people come up with needs, we specify the project. Correia! Uh-huh, well, I guess it seems like...it looked like $225,000 ofthat remodel is coming out ofthe General Fund? O'Malley/ Yes. Correia! I mean, that seems like a pretty big expense.. .talked about before the budget amendment, especially when.. . during our.. .as a General Fund expense, during our budget considerations when we were talking about trying to stagger in or slowly build in fire department personnel. We talked about two in that first year.. . O'Malley/ Right. Correia! .. . and we said there wasn't any money in the General Fund, and then for there to be $225,000 in General Fund dollars now, 1.. .that kind of caught me off guard. O'Malley/ We were looking at either taking it out of cash balance, or the FY08 GO issue, which we saved, well, we didn't save. We decided not to spend a million and a half on Highway 6, so just a. . . Correia! I thought we moved some of that. . .we talked about moving some of that into that Senior Center remodel because I thought we had. . . O'Malley/ Right, some of that's in there... Correia! Right... O'Malley/ .. .some more capacity. Correia! .. .but in this budget amendment, it wasn't.. .had $225,000 from General Fund for the City Attorney remodel, not that I don't think we need remodeling... O'Malley/ Right, it's just the funding source. Correia! Well, the funding source, and that we had long conversations in our budget process.. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 6 O'Malley/ Right, about one time occurring versus recurring expenses. Correia! Well, and just about our CIP and the. . . what's on the funded, what's on the unfunded, and... O'Malley/ Well, now's the time, we can change it to FY08. That's fine with us. We have capacity for...1 think we scheduled $10.. .$10,250,000 for the FY08 issue, and I think we're at $9.7 so we can easily transfer it out of General Fund financing. Helling! It's just one of those.. .those projects that we look at it, there's sufficient money in the reserve, or in the General Fund balance to cover that and still not go below your 30%. We do try to fund some ofthose with current cash, rather than go into debt. Urn, but again, this is, you know, we've talked about that issue before, what's.. .what's available for ongoing versus one-time expenses. Correia! Okay. So in the presentation ofthis though it says that the $225,000 is coming out of the General Fund. Is that coming out of General Fund Reserve, or is that. . . O'Malley/ Yes, reserves. Correia! .. .that wasn't clear to me. O'Malley/ Yes. It's all out of the cash balance, but it can easily be switched to.. . and this is the time to do that, to switch it to... Correia! I'm not necessarily wanting to switch it because 1.. .if we don't need to borrow money to do something I don't want to borrow money to do it, but with.. .the question, or the.. .the, as I was looking at it and recalling conversations we had about whether we have money in the General Fund to work on some of the goals we have, like starting to increase staffing at the fire stations so we aren't hit with a one-time jolt. O'Malley/ Right. Correia! Urn... Bailey/ But this is a one-time expense (unable to hear) different. Champion! But recurring, and we have a lot of (unable to hear) is that $50,000 a year? O'Malley/ Right. Bailey/ Does that not make a difference... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 7 Correia! Well, I guess...it wasn't clear to me that it was out of the cash reserve, or if we've realized, oh, we have money in the General Fund that may continue to reoccur. O'Malley/ No, this comes out of the. . . the, uh, what's in our cash balance, which was the excess of revenues over expenses each year. So it's coming out of cash balance, and it's.. .we just chose it because it was past practice. We, usually if it's over $500,000, then we start looking at putting it in a debt issue. So, these are smaller projects; we thought we'd just pay them out of cash. But it's not problematic to switch it. Correia! ... switching it, I was just wondering. . . Champion! Pay cash. Correia! I had questions.. .there was carryover for, urn, it says $75,000 for Parks and Rec, Admin and $75,000 for, urn, Senior Center operations? Urn, four... O'Malley/ Right, page four. Correia! What is that? O'Malley/ Well, Parks and Rec Admin - I think part of that might be coming from their Master Plan. They didn't have it completed in FY07 so that's my guess is a large part of it's 75. Senior Center operations, can't remember exactly.. .oh, that would probably be the culture and recreation.. .that's probably the engineering fees on the, uh, was it the roof? Helling/ Oh, for the, uh, chiller and. . . O'Malley/ The roof and the chiller? Helling! Chiller, yeah. O'Malley/ That's what that would be. Yeah, the heater, the chiller. Dilkes/ I want to go back to the City Attorney remodel for just a minute. I just want it perfectly clear since there are press here that the City Attorney remodel funds are not funds that would be available for firefighters or police officers, because this is a one-time expense as opposed to a recurring expense. I just don't want it reported in the paper that that's the case. O'Malley/ Any other questions? Correia! So, can you explain the increase... the ending fund balance increases by $5 million? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 8 O'Malley/ Yeah, that's the, uh, when we submit the budget these are all estimates, and then as the fiscal year, the first column ended, we have an actual, and this is all funds - General Fund, Enterprise Funds, and 00, some projects don't happen, but we still need budget authority, so we have to, as you change the revenues and expenditures, that'll increase your cash balances either way, and I believe it was $5,000 to the good.. .$5 million to the good. So... Correia! Right. You have any...I mean, can you break that up? O'Malley/ As far as funds, I think it was $2 million in the General Fund and $3 million throughout the other funds. Vanderhoef! Over $4 million of that was. ..was just carryover for projects so it's... O'Malley/ Yeah, most of it's CIP. Vanderhoef! ...it' s all expended anyway. It is not going to stay in the reserves. Champion! It hasn't been spent. O'Malley/ What's that? Champion! It hasn't been spent. O'Malley/ Right, it hasn't been spent. It was supposed to... Vanderhoef! But it's all encumbered. O'Malley/ Yeah, it should have been spent last year, but we don't try to pressure people to spend money in finance, so we don't mind doing carryovers, and so sometimes they're quite large. And that's one of the reasons we tell people about carryovers. Don't try to rush out and spend your budget by the end of June. We'll gladly carry it over, as you need it. Wilburn! Other agenda items? ITEM 14. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO SIGN AND THE CITY CLERK TO ATTEST A CHAPTER 28E AGREEMENT AMONG THE CITY OF IOWA CITY, JOHNSON COUNTY, THE CITY OF CORALVILLE, JOHNSON COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COMMISSION, AND THE CIT OF NORTH LIBERTY FOR JOINT EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES FOR JOHNSON COUNTY. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 9 Elliott! Yeah, 14. One of.. .part of the information that we didn't get is what this means in increased taxes, this, 00, supplement that's the Emergency Levy. Throughout the County, how does that impact the average taxpayer in Iowa City? Davidson! A lot of that depends on what is done with the existing budget authority that pays for the existing communication centers, Bob. Urn, the operating expense of the new Joint Communications Center, and the operating expense of the two existing communication centers - one operated with City of Iowa City taxes by the Iowa City Police Department; one operated by County taxes by the Johnson County Sheriff's Department, urn, are.. . are anticipated to be about the same. There's going to be some new expenses with the joint facility, but there are some old expenses with the existing facilities that we aren't going to have to do, so the consultant work that's been done so far shows those being about a wash. Elliott! Reasonably offsetting? Davidson! Reasonably offsetting, yeah. Now, the proposed funding mechanism for the Joint Center is a new tax. It will be a new tax. So depending on what Johnson County Board of Supervisors and the Iowa City City Council do with the authority that levies the current taxes, that will answer your question. Elliott/ Yeah, I think it's something that people need to know, that this isn't just, 'Oh, gee, this is going to be a savings for Iowa City.' Okay. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ People will see it as paying twice for the same service, unless the tax is cut from the budget here. Bailey/ Some people may see it as paying twice. The nice thing about it is that it spreads the cost throughout the entire county and improves the safety for all the citizens in the county, and all the volunteer firefighters. I mean, I think that they are really excited about it, as well as for our public safety personnel. So I don't think we can overlook that, and what cost do you put on that. Champion! Do we have any idea, well, how much the levy will be? Bailey/ Still estimating. Correia! Isn't the max... Davidson! Yeah, we have an idea, Connie, but as we do more and more design work, and everything we do from here on out will hone down on that. Uh, we anticipate right now between, uh, .43 and .61. We're hoping to keep it in that range. (several talking) Wilburn! Other agenda items? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 10 ITEM 4. CONSIDER ADOPTION OF THE CONSENT CALENDAR AS PRESENTED OR AMENDED. g) Correspondence 6. Steve Goetzelman: Snow on Downtown Bike Racks Vanderhoef/ There was a. . . the snow on downtown bike racks. There was a notice in there from a bicyclist who has contacted us before. Uh, and the reply that's in there about it's the responsibility of the business owner whose business the bike rack is in front of. Uh, I asked a couple of business owners if they were aware that that was their responsibility to clear bike racks, and they have never been notified of that, uh, part of clearing the sidewalks, and uh, certainly, one of them relayed to me that, uh, they didn't ask for the bicycle rack there in the first place; therefore, why... why have it there and then make us, 00, clean up around it. So somehow or another through the City or the DT A, there needs to be information sent out to everyone about, 00, clearing of bicycle racks. O'DonnelV Well, don't.. . they clean the sidewalk to the street, don't they? V anderhoef/ Yeah. O'DonnelV And the bicycle rack is on part of the sidewalk. I think that would be a natural thing to do. Push it through the bicycle rack to the street. Vanderhoef/ ... stating what was told to me. Elliott! Check the sidewalks sometimes. You'll find they aren't cleared off very well. Vanderhoef/ And sometimes I've watched.. .I've watched people clear the street, and the only place to stack it is sort of out of their work way, and it seems like maybe they do more stacking by the bicycle racks, thinking that they aren't being used. Helling! Snow winds up there for two sources. One would be the property owner who doesn't clean around it and maybe pushes the snow up to it, but the other one would be when we do snow removal on the streets, sometimes we push it up and that's what we have to be a little more attentive to. I'm not saying we can keep all the bike racks totally clear, but what we try, what we will be trying to do is to minimize it as much as possible, urn, so I think it's ajoint thing between the City and the property owners to try to keep enough bike racks open. Now the other thing that we have done is we have tried to put more bicycle racks and storage in the parking ramps where they're protected, but sometimes those aren't very close to their destination, and so, uh, it's a problem a lot oftimes, even though there's a demand for the ones on the street, the ones in the parking ramps aren't being used, so we'll try to make people more aware that those exist too, even if they might be a block or two from where they're going. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page II Wilburn! Kind oflike on-street parking, not all of us can park in front ofthe store. (several talking) Champion! Well, a lot of bicyclists do use the meters. The flat thing that comes off the meters, so it is on-street parking. Wilburn! Other agenda items? Downtown Market Niche Analvsis: Davidson! While Wendy walks up, uh, just want to make a couple of quick introductory remarks here. We're really pleased to be able to present this evening to you, uh, the results of the Downtown Market Niche Study, and I want to emphasize the word results, because that's what we're going to focus on tonight. You've got a long agenda, in fact you've been going quite a while already. We're not going to take a lot of time tonight to elaborate on a lot of details. In fact, we're not going to elaborate on any details. So if there's any details you want clarified, by all means, raise your hand and.. . and have Wendy or myself do that. We also have Mary Bosch in the audience and.. . and Mary represents the consultant, Marketek, who, uh, very ably completed the study, uh, with us, and we're real pleased with the information contained in the study, and think it's a good road map for us, 00, to continue the initiatives that.. .that are ongoing, and, urn, you know, I think a couple of significant things before we get into the details of the study. I mean, first off was the collaborative effort here between the City of Iowa City, the Chamber, and the Downtown Association, and we.. .we appreciate everyone that did participate in, and in addition, the members of those organizations that assisted us, members of the public that assisted us with the.. .the study, as well. Urn, Wendy is going to briefly go through what the study says, and.. . and if you take a look at the details, there are a lot of details, and we're not going to elaborate on anything with much detail this evening. Urn, what we do want to focus on are the results, the recommendations, and then finally at the very end of Wendy's presentation, where to next, and we're going to need some input from you, uh, in terms of that, and 1...I think it's significant to mention, you know, we've all seen this change that downtown has been undergoing. Urn, you know, this started probably as early with the original urban renewal project in the 70's, which the City was a major participant in. That led to things like, uh, City Plaza, the Pedestrian Mall, uh, the Sheraton Hotel, uh, Old Capitol Center, our first two parking ramps, which were the Dubuque Street and Capitol Street parking ramps, the downtown transit interchange. Urn, and then in the 90's, and even into the 2000's here, uh, you know, the Iowa Avenue streetscape, the redo of City Plaza, the public art program, much of which has been oriented to downtown, urn, the Tower Place multi-use parking facility, the Library renovation, the City has been involved directly in a lot of initiatives that have steered the direction that downtown has gone, urn, downtown is changing direction. It has been changing direction, particularly since 1998. It had started changing direction prior to that time, but in 1998 Coral Ridge Mall, the last major retail left downtown, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 12 something that I personally believe was going to happen anyway, uh, nonetheless, that transformation that all downtowns in this state, and beyond, have been undergoing, uh, our downtown remained relatively speaking quite healthy even with that. It started remaking itself almost immediately. Started getting more of a niche type retail. Arts, entertainment, and significantly residential, uh, that seems to be the direction that downtown is taking off on, and all of us, all of us, all three of these entities, all right - where we going, and.. . and it's nice now to have some empirical data, some of which answers some of our preconceived notions, confirms some of our preconceived notions, nevertheless, it's nice to have those confirmed with some empirical data, and really I think gives us some direction, and.. . and one of the things, and you're going to hear Wendy say it, and I'm going to say it right up front is downtown can no longer be everything to all people. It's.. .it's got to have some specific direction and some specific niches that.. .that we think are laid out here for us, and how the City assists in taking off with that direction, that's what this presentation is all about. So, Wendy, you want to take over here. Ford! Thanks, Jeff. Well, what did our consultants do? They asked a lot of questions. They held up a mirror to Iowa City, and they said, 'Who are we? Who works here? Who shops here, and what do they think about it?' They focused getting their information in two different ways. Really in pulling information from, uh, hard data, and from pulling information from people, and by pulling information from people. Urn, the retail target markets told them who we were, and where we are, where we shop, where we come from, and the opinion research told them pretty much what we all think about that. What did the numbers say? Well, they dug deeper into four different areas and did detailed analysis on retail, housing, office, and lodging markets, and we'll see.. .1'11 just give you a couple of highlights of each of those. Urn, but to help answer, uh, the questions about what we can capitalize on, they looked first at the target markets, and that was who shops here and where do they come from, and to do that, they broke down our population in the area to, urn, you'll see the, uh, local retail area market in the center of the slide, and the greater retail market area outside ofthat, that area that extends in many cases beyond the borders of Johnson County into the others. Urn, and.. . and looked at which parts of those markets, uh, can support downtown. Urn, among other things, they found.. .or I guess let me detail a little bit more about that center area there. That's an area that a person could travel, uh, to within seven minutes drive of the comer of Washington Street and Dubuque Street, so that gives you the local market area or the local to downtown market specifically. In the greater area, you'll see, 00, that many parts of our target markets, uh, include, urn, area employees, and a very important captive market, uh, of which within a mile radius of downtown, there are 33,000 employees working at more than a thousand businesses or so. So when people think about our downtown as being only populated by students, we know they're not quite right on that one. Uh, while there are 30,000 students in the downtown, or the local market area, those 20 to 24 year olds only make up about 20% of our population, which was surprising to me, and another very strong market we have This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 13 are our visitors to the area. Because of many kids who live in, uh, and go to school in Iowa City, we have many parents who come to visit and many travelers who come in for special events, and because of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, we can probably attribute about one-third, says the Convention and Visitors Bureau, of.. . are area visits to health care visits specifically. So, uh, we are supported by many different populations, in both the greater and specifically the local market downtown. So that's who we are. Uh, and we also looked at the target market place. In other words, downtown, and I won't go into many details, but we have within the report, uh, specifics on the strengths and the opportunities of downtown, and also some ofthe challenges that both our consumers and our businesses have found in doing business downtown. One of each from the strengths, uh, we have significant public and private investments in our downtown. That is significantly greater than many, and most, downtowns across the nation. From the opportunities category, all of our target markets are growing. That is all those populations that you saw on both of those maps out there. In fact, the local, or that center ring of population, is beginning to grow at a faster rate than the greater area, the larger area outside that ring. Challenges within the downtown area, uh, there's limited property available for downtown retail right now. Rents are high, and uh, something you'll hear a little bit more of, there is, uh, the lack of a brand identity for downtown. While we all may think of our, uh, quaint brick buildings and our Ped Mall, uh, we don't have that as a branded identity yet, and.. . and the rest of the report goes into the.. .into detail about how with an identity like that, we could optimize some of the business mix that we have downtown. Market.. .Marketek then reached out to hear from the community in all aspects. They did a public meeting. They had seven focus groups, to which many of you attended. Uh, they conducted resident surveys. We actually had more than 1,100 people respond to an online survey. Uh, we collected surveys from business owners. That is a separate survey from business owners, and, uh, Marketek made thirty in-store visits downtown, so they were really able to penetrate and pull out the opinions of, not only our consumers who by the way felt that our top shopping needs.. .our gaps are in casual apparel, household goods and accessories, and movie theaters. Urn, the thing they really liked, our consumers really like about downtown is that it's treasured as cosmopolitan and exciting. Now of the business surveys and the focus groups in particular, primarily business people, 00, they noted a couple of things that I think are very. . . uh, very interesting. Most effecting success in their business, that is people who had business, was foot traffic and access to their stores, and qualified labor. Now you hear that qualified labor argument all over the corridor actually. In fact, all over the United States, but the foot traffic and access was particularly important. Things like snow removal and litter removal, and removing such barriers and loiterers who, uh, sometimes can create a barrier that other people don't like to walk around. The three greatest obstacles to starting a business, folks who haven't been here yet, are parking, rent costs, and insufficient customer traffic. These people are looking at what it's like to do business downtown, and there is empirical data that show that these things are their obstacles for starting a business. Urn, I'm going to skip, uh, a little bit more of some of the detail I have This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 14 and move on to my next slide, to, uh, some of the hard data that Marketek came up with, moving along from opinion research to, uh, the research that can be gained by, uh, in a number of data base resources that Marketek uses in their research. Uh, today's downtown mix includes 158 ground-floor businesses, comprised of restaurants, bars and nightlife, which make up almost half of those 158 ground-floor businesses, and shoppers goods, meaning apparel and that sort of thing, which make up about a quarter of those retail businesses, and then finally, personal services, such services as hair and nail saloons, gyms and the like. Another almost quarter of all those 158 businesses. Uh, then Marketek looked at the coming, at the demand in the coming decade, and here's where they are, why they are good at what they do. They applied the spending potential by the type of merchandise to the local and greater retail areas that we talked about, and were able to extrapolate the number of square feet in all the kinds of shopping categories that you and I use, and come up with an estimated potential that downtown Iowa City could support, and they do that by looking at the entire area, and then taking a fraction, approximately 25% in most cases in the corridor, of what downtown could support. And among other things, shoppers goods, uh, could be, is the.. .we could support more square feet in retail of shoppers goods than in any of our other categories, and to give you an idea of the numbers, shoppers goods, apparel and that sort of thing, uh, over the next ten years could be supported to the tune of 82,000 more square feet, and there's one critical element that, um, you'll see, uh, here.. .pop up again and again. That is, downtown Iowa City could support 82,000 more square feet of retail, ifthere was somebody out there marketing those empty retail spaces and was somebody with a finger on the pulse of what leases were going to be up, so that they could be out there, a step or two ahead of the game and inviting retailers from other areas, or from the nation, or other local, uh, Iowa communities to come in and try downtown Iowa City for their businesses, as opposed to, just letting the chips fall where they may. Other potential opportunities noted in the retail market analysis include, urn, the physical appearance is very important to downtown Iowa City. Some buildings are in need of investment. Some areas of the Ped Mall need specific attention, such as, uh, the availability of natural light to come through our now mature trees, and for the feeling of, uh, walking around a dark comer to be really paid attention to very carefully, especially in some particular areas. Urn, and it's also, uh, there's also a real opportunity for us to do, uh, business development. In other words, sing the praises of doing business in downtown Iowa City to other businesses. We've gotten fairly good at marketing ourselves to our visitors and our students and the residents who live here, but we haven't done a very good job in marketing ourselves, marketing our community as a place to do business for other businesses. Urn, along with the retail market analysis, I mentioned that Marketek also went in to looking at the housing market opportunities and, uh, as a lot of us know, there's limited non-student housing, and there's very low vacancy in the downtown area particularly. What I think is interesting is, and the study goes into detail here, is that the demand in the coming decade for the greater area now, outside that central circle, for housing is going to be, over the next ten years, twelve times as great as it is now, and sorry, that's the greater area that extends all This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 15 the way through the corridor, up to Cedar Rapids, and including our greater area. So, a large area, a lot of potential housing units, and downtown could absorb as many as, according to our analysis here, a thousand units for sale, and two thousand plus units for rent. That is, a little more than a thousand units for sale, a little more than.. . and two thousand units for rent. If you think about the ten year implications of that, that's significant. How do we want to mold that? Who do we want to come in here? What kind of housing do we want? How can we influence that? They noted that we should put a special focus on affordability for area work force, and I know you've all heard that, but our community may not understand that affordable work force housing means housing that the teachers and the nurses and. . . uh, the policemen and those workers among us can afford. It's not necessarily the high end. Well, that's good to have some of, but we are, uh, showing a little bit of a lack of having affordable work force housing, and another area of particularly. . .ofparticular focus, if we wanted to guide, uh, best optimum use, highest and best use of downtown for housing, is to pay special attention on affordability in housing for the young professional, or sometimes you've heard them referred to as the "creative culture." Urn, so moving along, to our office market, uh, opportunities. Marketek took a look at our office market opportunities, and by the way, office market. . . the office market includes such businesses as insurance, uh, companies, professional services such as architects, engineers, attorneys, etc. Those kinds of businesses who.. .more often than not will find themselves, uh, on the second floor levels of downtown buildings. Uh, we found that in today's office mix, urn, there are, there's not enough larger office space, and by that, that means with 5,000 square feet or more, and that there's a waiting market for small office for sale space, so there's not enough condo space out there for the small office person to, uh, buy into in downtown Iowa City. The demand in the coming years was calculated using a really interesting method. They took, Marketek took the numbers of potential jobs in the corridor, again. That's the entire area, up to Cedar Rapids. Urn, which is estimated to be annually 3,500 new jobs a year, urn, and took a portion of those jobs, and using the wizardry that they do, were able to figure out because every employee needs an industry standard 245 square feet or so per office space each, that in the coming ten years downtown could potentially support 353,000 new square feet of office space, up to and through 2014. That's a significant amount of space, as well, and that's not just going to fill in by some _ deciding they want to come in downtown Iowa City and put up an office space; in order to fill that space and to have it as economically, uh, healthy as possible, somebody's going to be needing to be out there, luring those folks into those new downtown spaces. Marketek also took a, oops, I don't have a slide on that one, but bear with me. They also took a cursory look at the, uh, local lodging market, and found that, uh, in hotels there's a healthy study, hotel occupancy in the entire area with approximately a 4 to 5% increase each year. The major market driver as I had mentioned before is healthcare. Urn, and because there wasn't quite enough information to, Urn, come to a hard and fast conclusion, uh, on hotel availability, it was confusing because the hotels have a great rate, or sorry. The hotels have a great occupancy rate, or pretty good. They're lodging rates are increasing, which is a good sign. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 16 Revenues are increasing coming into the community. Uh, and.. .but downtown still reports significant occupancies, sorry, vacancies, uh, during non-peak times. I guess in my estimation, one could suggest there might be a gap in the quality of hotel rooms, but I won't go there, I guess. Uh, but one thing we certainly ought to pay attention to, why is it healthy everywhere else, but downtown is seeming to have some of these, uh, low, uh, low occupancy times when everybody else is holding steady. As I mentioned, one other aspect that Marketek took a look at, uh, for us was the study of the young professionals and the creative culture, um, a couple of years ago, you'll remember, maybe even longer than that ago, Richard Florida talked about the, urn, the boon created by communities who can keep or lure young creative professionals in their community. The goal is to attract and keep them, because of their earning potential, their spending potential, and the vitality that they bring to a community, and happily I can say - I don't know if this will be news to anybody - but Iowa City has a lot of the qualities that it takes to do just that. And what are those qualities? Jobs, a lively downtown, a decent cost ofliving, transportation options, and cultural capital, of which we are in great stead. But, nevertheless, we can't rest on our laurels. We have to be continually vigilant in improving those aspects because it is a competitive, uh, market place out there, and the folks with the.. .the folks with the loudest horn, or the cities with the loudest horn tooting are the ones that are going to be most attractive to that very nomadic bunch. So what were the recommendations from Marketek? Uh, primarily they were to build on the strong foundation that we have, by doing three things: develop a set of guiding principles, influence the business mix that we have downtown, and.. . and target desired businesses. As far as the guiding principles, uh, how do you do that? What does that mean? Well, to capitalize on the things that we do and have best, and make them better. Be different. Pay attention to aesthetics. Enhance, cluster, and focus, and let me just touch on what cluster and focus is. Cluster is when a couple of stores, couple of retail stores or more, are in close proximity to each other, such as, uh, the three jewelry stores who are either on Washington or the comer of Washington and Gilbert. When you have a jewelry customer who knows, just like a car customer for example, that they have the option of going to three different retail locations for their choice in jewelry purchase, you're going to draw more people down into the area for that market. So Marketek is suggesting that we enhance our cluster, and ensure that we can put more clothing stores together, or more jewelry stores together, or more book stores or more athletic apparel stores together, home furnishings, etc. That's not going to happen on its own either. See where I'm going with this? They're talking about and suggesting that the way to get the highest and best use out of downtown is to put somebody on it, and get somebody.. . somebody, uh, checking off a to-do list, so that we can have the maximum amount of downtown. How do you influence the business mix? That's tough in this town, with spaces as tight as they are. Marketek suggests that we target three to six business priorities, and these are niche examples here. Small apparel shops would fit nicely in clusters that have already begun. We have a few really wonderful women's apparel shops, and adding a few more to that mix would only enhance, and I think Connie would agree with us, that.. .that, um, would only enhance the appeal for, uh, the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 17 women's apparel market. Same with home accessories, home furnishings, especially with the new residential markets developing as they are. What else to influence the business mix? Develop some recruitment materials, uh, the student and visitor spending that we can account for in this community is very appealing, and all we need to do is tell these prospective businesses that we've got a visitor spending dollar as strong as it is, and a student dollar as strong as it is - not to mention, uh, the 30,000 workers working within a mile of downtown. What else? Promote existing clusters, and toot our horn, just continually, toot our horn to, uh, businesses considering relocation. And, um, finally marketing and communication is, uh, a key in getting all ofthis done. Urn, we have to be organized and planful about going out and sending the messages, and sending the message to potential businesses. Well, how does this all happen? First of all, groups, uh, such as the dispirit Iowa City and the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Association need to continue working as they have to write up these questions, and get answers to, uh, problems like the one, or questions like the ones that we've had. The same core group could be, uh, the.. .uh, key, uh, generators of interest in pulling more stakeholders to the table for, uh, considering implementing a plan. Uh, we don't even need to consider implementing a plan though until we really digest the results that we have here in the study. Finally, after putting the Steering Committee together then, it would decide what to do with this information and indeed perhaps capitalize on it. Uh, we would need to hire a downtown business development manager, and as Mary Bosch had indicated to us in an early.. . earlier meeting, think of, uh, how far a place like Coral Ridge Mall would be without a general manager for Coral Ridge Mall. It's, uh, there's a lot of parallels, probably more parallels than not, uh, but this.. .this downtown business manager could use the study, identify and target those business development prospects, maintain an inventory of the downtown spaces so that they knew what they were talking about with the, uh, potential businesses, and build relationships with the entire business community, and be a liaison for those businesses to, uh, to use essentially. Exampled measures of success could be the numbers of businesses recruited or retained, the dollars invested or reinvested in downtown, and jobs generated downtown. And, um, the study goes on with many different activities for business development that could help us, uh, enhance our downtown, and really maximize, 00, the use of it. Urn, in the coming...in the coming years, and I've just skimmed the surface of the, the downtown market niche analysis. Obviously, there's a lot of great information in here. Urn, we'll have it online tomorrow for, uh, folks who are interested in downloading a copy of it, but I'd first like to answer your questions about it, and if I can I'd like to call on Mary for that, and then secondly, I'd like to entertain a discussion about where you'd like to go with this, and what would be next. In my mind, to move forward with this plan, uh, as outlined in the document, we'd want to first make sure that you all accepted and concurred with this, and if that was the case, urn, the next steps would be to form the Steering Committee, urn, and discuss possible, uh, financing options for how do you get some of this work done here. So, so, let me open the floor to questions first of all. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 18 Elliott/ Do we have any.. . any, 00, listing of the properties in the downtown area, who owns them, where are they. I'm.. .I've been thinking about this for a long time because one of the difficulties is, especially the absentee property owners, who are interested and need the money coming in, and they could give a hang what goes on, as long as the money is there, and I think it would be good to know, where the property owners are and what do they think about this. Ford! Well, Bob, the answer is, we do have a list, and the... the bad side of it, the down side of it is it's a. . .it's in Excel, and it's an older list, and it's a huge internship job, every single year, to keep that updated. It's not as good as it could be. We certainly need to have that in a more robust data base. Urn, we could do a lot better with that inventory, but we've got a lot of it, just not all of it, updated. Nancy? Quellhorst/ I think the County may have that available, through their GIS system. You. . . you can make an inquiry about the parameters, the property parameters that you want, and continually, uh, extract that information from them. I think we would have to manipulate what we wanted to put into our database, but it is available for download too. And were you wanting to know, Bob, what property is available at anyone time for rent? Or just what are... Elliott! Well, I think that the idea is that a vibrant, viable downtown association is just almost mandatory for the things that we want to accomplish, and that is somewhere between a third and two-thirds of the situation, because if the people who own the properties are not interested in cooperating, and sharing a part of the vision, 00, that gives us a lot of hurdles to overcome. Ford/ As outlined in the.. .that's true, and as outlined in the study, the.. .the, 00, the key stakeholders are probably the key to making, 00, the activities of a.. .of a downtown business manager come to fruition. Plain and simple. Vanderhoef/ Seems to me, that, uh, carrying on with this discussion is you need to market this new plan to the property owners, no matter where they live. And keep them updated of what this vision is, and how we're moving along with it, and what the kind of results are, so that they will slowly buy into it, hopefully. If they don't jump in to start with. Ford! Great idea. Want me to do that? (laughter) I'd be happy to. Other questions? Elliott! One...andjust, and then I'll shut up, but one of the things that I've found in just this last summer, we visited the museum in Springfield, Illinois. Uh, let's see, Friday night I went to a music event at the Blue Strawberry, and my God, our downtown is fantastic compared to many, many downtowns. What this does is confirm the fact it could be much better, and it will ensure that it will stay at least this well, if not better in the future. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 19 Ford! I think that's the key from the study, is that we've got a great thing going. Ifwe want it to be better, here's what we can do. Uh, 1...I want to remind you of one thing and then I want to give Nancy a minute, 00, or so at the podium. There will be a public meeting tomorrow night at the Public Library, Room A, where I'll be presenting the findings again, maybe not in quite such a fast motion, but to the public. So, you are all invited to come, or better yet, send your friends so we can begin to get the word out about.. . about the downtown study. Nancy, would you like a couple words? (several talking) Quellhorst/ Wendy really did a good job. I don't have much to add, other than to say, she did reference the knowledge worker and the importance of a vibrant downtown to a knowledge worker. In the same way, it is among the highest priorities to businesses, entertaining moving to this area. They often see the, uh, the downtown, the vibrancy of downtown as a measure for economic prosperity, so we hear that as a question from potential employers, so I think it's important in that way, and it's of course, obviously, very important to the Chamber, the. . .increasing the tax base, providing jobs downtown, 00, possibility for more businesses and potential members, so it's important, uh, to the Chamber as well as the community at large. Great job, Wendy! Elliott! Thank you! Davidson! I guess the final thing, unless there's any other questions, is just that we will probably bring.. . bring to you in the next few months then some decision steps, in terms of going forward, 00, with the notion of forming this coalition, and discussing the notion of a business manager. I mean, that's a key concept for doing anything. Is there, are you alright with us proceeding in that fashion? (several responding) Great. Real quickly, while Joe comes forward for the next item. Shall we proceed, Mr. Mayor? Wilburn! Yeah. Davidson! Uh, Eleanor suggested, and I think it's a good idea, although we will be considering, we will be considering rezoning items tomorrow evening, I did want to mention that the Big Ten Rentals item for the, the location of the former St. Pat's Church, has been withdrawn. So if there's anyone listening or anyone in the audience that has commented on that project, uh, we believe what the developer's doing is preparing a building proposal for which the current zoning is adequate. So, they haven't gone away, but the proposal that you received information about in the Council Packet has gone away, and has been officially withdrawn. (several talking) Wilburn! Thank you.. .thank you all for the work on the market analysis, and, Joe, I'm sorry I'm going to do this to you again; we're going to take give. (laughter) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 20 Downtown Parkin!!: Wilburn! Okay, Mr. Fowler. (several talking) Davidson! It is...it is not, by coincidence, that, 00, we put this item after your last item, in spite of the break. Just.. .Joe and I have been working on this for some time, and waiting for the right time to bring it to you, and we thought the downtown market niche study, uh, conveniently for us brought out a couple of the items we're going to talk about tonight, and we thought we would put this back to back. Urn, you know, essentially what you're going to hear tonight is, uh, an update of the last parking demand study we did, which was in 1997. Urn, and one of the.. .noting all of the development that is occurring, and projected to occur in downtown, 00, had Joe and I, and I think you all know Chris O'Brien, the Parking Director who's in the audience, as well. Had us a little bit nervous about planning for our next parking facilities. Urn, we.. .we are showing here on the first slide, uh, what we consider to be two very successful examples of a new model that we introduced beginning with the Tower Place facility and the Court Street Transportation Center, of a multi-use facility, and Joe's going to talk a little bit about kinda where we're at right now. Fowler/ As Jeff said, our last study was in 1997, and out of that study basically these two facilities were, uh, located, based on our demands from that, um, and at the same time, we decided to change our.. .our approach to parking facilities, in that, 00, we no longer just wanted a stand-alone parking building, and we wanted to expand a little bit, and Tower Place was our first one, 00, where we went with commercial condominiums. Uh, those were very successful. We've seen some turnover, urn, one tenant that started there has moved to a larger space. Another tenant has increased their size, and.. . and everything to the best of our knowledge has been very successful that's occurred there. Then in the Court Street Transportation Center we went with rental units, as opposed to condominium units, and uh, reason was the federal funding that was involved in that facility, and uh, the income stream from the rental units then went into our transit system and had we sold them as condominiums, we would have returned that money to the federal government. So, we were able to increase our, 00, our income stream by going with rental units. Urn, what we've gotten to at this point is that Tower Place is, uh, up, it's running, it's successful. Court Street is currently.. .has all the permit spaces in it sold. Uh, there are no more available to the public. The hourly parking is beginning to increase. Uh, we're probably, um, in the 10 to 20% ahead of our financial projections on the hourly parking in that facility so far, and that's without any development that's occurring, uh, immediately to the west of it. Urn, we have a very conservative estimate is between 260 and 300 people on our waiting list right now to get permits. So, we do have an unmet demand right now for permit parking, and that's before any future development in the southside. One thing that. . . that I guess I would like to point out is that in several instances the City has led in the development of the downtown, and when we built the Capitol Street parking ramp, we built it next to an empty lot in the hope that there This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 21 would be a shopping mall next to it. We built the Dubuque Street facility before there was a hotel, uh, and before the hotel could get built, we had to add two stories to it. Urn, the other facilities, we have filled in around the downtown, uh, Chauncey Swan and Tower Place, to meet the demand that's continued to grow, and now our Court Street Transportation Center - we're seeing development there much faster than we had anticipated when we began that proj ect. So when we were building Court Street, Jeff and I had a discussion, was it time to go ahead and do our next parking study, and we decided that we should wait until Court Street was complete, and we could see the impact that Court Street had on the parking, urn, supply before we went ahead and did our next study, and then when we saw the development that's beginning to go on, and the fact that we are out of permit space and we have a waiting list for permit space, that we have, uh, parking agreements for the new buildings that are going to go up around Court Street, that it was time to go ahead and do our next parking study. So, urn, like Jeff said, he and I, Chris and then, uh, John Yapp and JCCOG went ahead and proceeded with the parking study and uh, found that we have a demand that we need to meet. Davidson! I'll just run through a couple of other slides here, and then we have some specific questions for you at the end of the presentation. Urn, in terms of the, uh, we've glossed over some of these already, but basically, uh, last spring you passed a comprehensive plan amendment, related to the Hieronymus Square project and the upzoning of that property from CB-5 to CB-10. Uh, one thing to point out, Joe was talking about the relationships that these facilities have had, 00, he highlighted several of those. The Iowa Avenue, uh, Tower Place facility here was related to the removal of parking in the center of Iowa Avenue, and the re- streetscaping ofthat project. There was a loss of parking there that we made up for in that facility, and the Court Street Transportation Center, one of the prime.. .primary things we were trying to do there is provide a catalyst for the redevelopment of this area, and that has happened, as Joe said, faster than we anticipated. Uh, the remainder of block 102 will be filling up very shortly, uh, with.. .with the most significant project probably in the history of downtown Iowa City, certainly in terms of dollar value, uh, $50 million project - Hieronymus Square - that would not occur if the Court Street Transportation Center had not been there, because 75% of the parking for that facility will be provided by that. So, Comp Plan amendment, the CB-5 to CB-10 rezonings, in addition to, 00, Hieronymus Square, the Big Ten Rentals, uh, property is under consideration for rezoning, and then, uh, the 301 South Dubuque where the Mod Pod is. That has been withdrawn temporarily, but we anticipate that coming back shortly, again, as an upzoning to CB-10, and then the ongoing CB-5 projects, quite frankly, those have been all the.. . the, uh, apartments down, uh, along Burlington Street, and particularly Gilbert Street down to Prentiss. The two projects that are occurring at the intersection of Court and Clinton, uh, those are, have been of a size and intensity that was beyond what we did anticipate when we had done the former, uh, analysis of downtown parking. This shows the locations that we took into consideration when we were updating the demand numbers, which as you can see, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 22 resulted in over a thousand spaces that we are in deficit. Uh, those two spaces, those two facilities rather that were on the first slide, uh, total 1,100 spaces in those two facilities. So we're talking about a deficit here, uh, that is something we need to pay attention to. Urn, just real quickly because there may be various levels of familiarity with how parking's provided in the downtown. In the. . .in the downtown zone, in the CB-IO zone, there is no parking requirement, and in fact, a private development is not allowed to have private parking facilities - some do exist - but by and large, the City provides parking in downtown, and that is so we can get downtown development projects the way we want to see a downtown developed. We don't want surface lots, urn, making big gaps in downtown. We want downtown developed very.. .high density, intense fashion and so the City provides the parking in downtown. Now, in the CB-5 zone, it's a little bit of a hybrid, where we ask developers to provide some of the parking on site, 25% of their residential parking demand is provided on site. The other 75%, they pay a parking impact fee. Uh, the parking impact fee right now is, uh, $6,112 per space. This is an ordinance that we put into effect when we established the CB-5 zone, the downtown support zone, specifically so that parking could be provided in the manner in which we wanted to see that area develop. Urn, again, it's.. .there's no parking requirement for commercial development, office development. For residential, uh, you have to provide 25% on site and, quite frankly, in a manner. . .in a. . .in a, by a means that is very expensive for developers, basically it's gotta be subterranean underground parking. Okay? Urn, there have been some exceptions with the Plaza Towers project. There was a small area for the grocery store, but.. .but that's the exception to the rule. By and large, it has to be subterranean parking, and that is why the impact fee has been very non- controversial, as impact fees go, because developers are able to provide parking through the impact fee at about half to a third of what it would cost them to build it on site, and we deliberately set it up that way to have it be defensible, certainly, but have it be something we wouldn't get a lot of argument about, but what that does, is it puts the onus on the City to provide parking, and in fact, if we do not commit to providing parking, we have to turn the money back after five years. You can see the current balance is $275,000, but what we anticipate is that we could have upwards of a million and a half dollars in a couple of years in parking impact fees, and that's what we need to be thinking about, what we're going to do with those funds. Urn, the policy, excuse me? Vanderhoef/ Have those impact fees been changed over the years, or do they have a. . . Davidson! The impact fee is adjusted every year. Uh, I think it's roughly 3%, I think, something like that, that's built right into the ordinance. So that's how that works. Urn, the policy questions then, uh, we believe there is not a banker or a developer in this town that will not tell you how critical parking is to any future downtown development, urn, project, 00, and that it is a critical, critical need that comes out of the Marketek study that you just heard the presentation on, uh, as a key issue in terms of the remaining development, uh, for downtown. Urn, we have at least a three-year timeline, in terms of planning, uh, property acquisition, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 23 design, engineering, and completion of a facility. Weare talking about, we are suggesting to you, that we need to be thinking about the next, uh, multi-use parking facility along a similar model that we have been using for the last two, 00, facilities. Urn, obviously, it is within your purview to say, 'No, we do not believe we should be planning for the next, uh, multi-use parking facility.' In that case, our recommendation to you is to suspend the CB-5, CB-10 rezonings, because we're simply not going to be able to accommodate, uh, the needed parking for those, and in fact, the expansion of the downtown has to be, we think, rethought, if we're not going to, 00, begin this next planning project. Uh, and Joe and I were talking about it, 'All right, what if they say no and they decide this isn't the direction you want to go.' We still believe that there will be, although less of one, uh, somewhat of a crisis, in terms of the CB-5 projects that are, that are in the process of coming online, and that will be coming online, uh, in the next couple of years, in terms of how parking's going to be provided with those, and what we're going to do with the parking facility impact fees. Uh, if you decide that you do want to go ahead, uh, we have a couple of specific decision points for you, but the thing that would be very exciting about that is that it gives us the opportunity to incorporate some other City priorities into, 00, this project, and there are three specific initiatives we'd like you to consider. These are things that come right out of the downtown market analysis, and they are things that are cited as "needs" that the private sector is either unwilling, or cannot afford to provide on its own, and that's why the City needs to be involved in those initiatives. The first one is work force housing. Uh, and you heard Wendy say a few remarks about that. Urn, this is an example, one close by that I went and took this photograph, and spoke to the person who manages this project for the city of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where you can see the municipality has a 500-space parking facility. It's kind of an interesting area, I don't know if any of you have been up to LaCrosse, but this area over here is a farmer's market type area, uh, that apparently goes back to the 19th century, being a farmer's market, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, but that they redid, as part of this project, City provided parking facility. These are retail spaces on the first floor, which are in the process of converting from rentals to condominium commercial spaces, and then the housing facility up here was a. . . was a proj ect that they sold to a private developer and was done as a public/private partnership, uh, and provides, I think it's 164 apartments up here, and these are in the process of converting from rentals to condominium units, because there's such a demand for them. Urn, it was very, very interesting talking to the person who managed this project. A lot ofthings we can learn from them, in terms of their experience, uh, but something that is certainly feasible for us to do, ifthat's a direction you would like to proceed. Again, this is for the workforce housing. Our price points that we would anticipate is between $150,000 per unit, up to maybe $275,000 per unit. There are initiatives on going, particularly the city of Des Moines. If you read the article in the paper a couple weeks ago, they...I think City Council established a goal of 8,000 workforce housing units by some year in the future. I think they've got 5,500 of them done so far. City has been involved with things like, uh, aggregating parcels of property, downpayment assistance, uh, property tax abatement for a duration of time, in order to make these affordable, and then This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 24 that's the kind of thing we would have to consider, but.. .but, again, a perfect example of something that the City is going to need to be involved in, if this is something you want to be part of downtown Iowa City. Artist live-work units, I have to confess, this was an idea that came out of my discussion with the people up in LaCrosse. They are working with an organization called Art Space, which establishes live-work units in downtown locations, primarily in the Midwest, but they are expanding to the.. .to the two coasts. They originally went into downtowns into old warehouse-type facilities, and.. . and worked with establishing live-work units, uh, for artists. Obviously, this is a way to support artists as part of the downtown economy. There are a lot of spin-off benefits that they cite, including additional pedestrian traffic, additional streetscape activity from the artists who live in the area, and then spin-off businesses that occur, as well. This is something that could be built in to the housing element of the, uh, project, and obviously, you can built anything into the housing element of the project. Up in LaCrosse, they required, uh, a certain number of affordable units to be maintained, uh, and then the rest could be market rate. Uh, and that was a stipulation put on the developer. Obviously effected the amount that the developer was able to work with, in terms of monetary compensation to the City, but we can do anything like that, that's desired. Uh, the final thing then is commercial condos. You told, you heard Joe say how successful the ones in, uh, Tower Place were. This is also cited in the downtown market study, as an unmet need. There are people who would like to own their own businesses, cannot afford downtown buildings. As Wendy pointed out, the market is not huge right now, in terms of who controls the property for these types of things. Uh, we believe additional commercial condominiums on the first and possibly second floor for office type uses, uh, would be very successful, and provide us with the streetscape atmosphere that we want to see, not having parking on the first floor again. So, that's kind of the summary of our presentation. Urn, the next steps, if you want to proceed, would be, uh, for us to undertake a financial analysis and concept design. We would obviously work with you, have that be a public process and get a lot of input, if you want to proceed that way. And then, excuse me, property acquisition as well, and that's something that we would propose discussing with you in closed session. Champion! I'm not. . .I mean, I know we're going to need more parking. I, however, am not real fond of parking ramps, although I think our last two projects are quite beautiful. Have we ever talked about, urn, underground parking for permit users? To try to keep the structure not so huge and massive? Fowler/ We've looked at it, uh, the cost is probably at least double, per space, to go underground. Might even be higher than that now, depending on the, you know, the soil conditions where you are, but it's substantially higher to go underground. Davidson! We.. .we did look at that, Connie, with Court Street Transportation Center, evaluated, I think, one or one and a half subterranean levels. It was just, the options for going up were so much less expensive. You might recall, we added a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 25 hundred spaces, added a sixth level to that facility halfway through the project, urn, we certainly will evaluate subterranean, depending again, as Joe said, on the site layout and how the site puts together, that might make more or less sense. Champion! The other thing I wondered, I mean, I love the idea of the apartments up above, because I just think it makes better use ofthe property, instead of cars and I totally agree with you, I don't like flat parking and I don't want parking lots, so to speak. Urn, but I'm wondering now, with the new, urn, construction that's going to be coming downtown, Hieronymus Square, Moen's building, the one between the Transportation Center and Mod Pod, or whatever, are we going to be competing with these people, urn, that are.. .have these concepts already in mind. Is there enough out there who want to live there, or have an office there? I don't want to hamper what's already in the plans. Davidson! Yeah, in terms of the three elements that we're proposing being part of this, we do not believe that we are competing with the private sector. We would be delighted if the private sector would provide workforce housing, artist spaces, and commercial condominium spaces, but that has not been the case, and that is the only reason why we are proposing that be part of our project, is so... Champion! But the market study, niche study, also showed that there was a great demand for condominiums for young professionals around the $200,000 price range. I'm just saying that it might have been one way or the other. And so, 00, maybe the developers are going to look at that market niche and say, 'Maybe we need to change what we're doing,' I mean, so Ijust don't want to interfere with these great projects that are already underway. (several talking at once) Bailey/ .. .talking about 3,000 units, some for sale and some for, I mean, do we really think the private market would, yeah. Champion! But this would be private you said - it'd be a partnership. Davidson! Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we don't want to get into the housing business. We would put an RFP out for a private developer to, yeah. Correia! The price point seems kind of high though, going up to $275,000. That doesn't seem to be at an affordable price. Davidson! Yeah, and that's something, Amy, that can be worked out by Council. Obviously, having at least some units up at the higher. . . would be perceived easier to market, uh, maybe in exchange for, you know, I have to tell you that Steve Long and I talked about even maybe going down to $130,000, but according to.. .but you haven't received that affordable housing analysis yet, but I've seen a draft of it and that's why I was talking about it with Steve, going down that low will really requite heavy City involvement in terms of subsidies and working with developers, but you might condition, you know, urn, a $150,000 to $275,000 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 26 units, and then require twenty or twenty-five of the lower end units, and that would be a requirement of the developer. It's certainly possible to structure it that way. Champion! (several talking).. .where we would put this? I can't imagine where you're going to get the property. Davidson! We'll discuss that with you in closed session. Champion! Okay! (laughter) Davidson! We've got some ideas. Champion! .. .tear down the Post Office? (laughter) Davidson! We have some ideas, and we have some options. Bailey/ So how is it that you ensure that workforce housing, urn, reaches the market we intend? Because we have such a student population downtown - not that there's anything wrong with that - urn, but we develop at these price points and we're still seeing people purchasing, for students and their families. Davidson! I think we'll certainly have to talk to some of the people who are doing it, and.. . and as you say, they don't have the student market there influencing it. I mean, that's something that we're going to have to explore further. Bailey/ I mean, I know it's.. .part of it's design, the number ofrooms and all those kinds of things, but, I mean, I think that that is the greatest challenge is actually reaching the market we intend to reach. Davidson! Yeah, I was just going to say before you said it, that design is the other thing. Bailey/ Yeah. Elliott/ For instance, what you.. .what you showed was, in Wisconsin, at LaCrosse they have a LaCrosse campus. Davidson! Yeah, it is primarily young people living in those units. Elliott/ Okay. Davidson! Mike, did you have something? O'Donnell! Yeah, did you say on the, on the project for Clinton and Burlington, does the Court Street parking ramp, did I hear you right, is that to provide 75% of the parking for that structure? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 27 Davidson! It has provided impact fees into the impact fee fund, or it will be. I don't think they've paid them yet, but they will be paying into that fund, and yes, part of the parking will be in City facilities. O'Donnell/ And your projection is we are going to have a thousand spot deficit? I don't...I don't see that we have much choice, but to proceed with it. Vanderhoef/ Uh, in your parking study, did you take into consideration any of the parking spaces that the University is, uh, planning to remove over the next five years? Fowler/ We had talked to the University, and informed them that we would be taking the parking spaces out of Court Street. Those parking spaces are committed to Hieronymus, 00, project at this time, and that doesn't include any _ spaces. Vanderhoef/ But what about their surface parking that they may, uh, be developing on, and need replacement spaces? Fowler/ I think... Vanderhoef/ Those are not, those numbers are not in our parking study. Davidson! In answer to your original question, Dee, the.. .those permits are not included in our demand. That's additional demand. It was just that map. . . that's the demand. Those facilities right there are how we got that thousand twenty-eight spaces. Vanderhoef/ Uh-huh. Elliott! That's not an attractive.. .that looks like Berlin after the war. (laughter) Davidson! Uh, it was the available area photo, sorry. (laughter) Next time we'll get a plane and go up and (laughter). Correia! Do we estimate that there is a one-vehicle per bedroom? Is that... Davidson! That's in the information you received. Is that what it was, one per bedroom? I think it goes up to either three or four bedrooms, and then past that I don't think it keeps adding. Urn, I think it goes one per bedroom up to three bedrooms, and then past that I don't think it adds any, or it didn't add at as great a rate. Bailey/ Well, I'm no fan of parking garages. I know that comes as a surprise, but I think (garbled) options, if we could sort of meld them all together, that would be exciting, because it really answers some ofthe downtown study, urn, the direction that that points us, as well, so I think we should (several talking at once) the workforce is really exciting, but the artist.. .I've talked to people about artist live- This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 28 work units downtown and.. . and people are, they see this opportunity in other communities and they wonder why something, why some place like Iowa City doesn't have it. So I think we should move ahead, as quickly as we can. Champion! I like the idea. Vanderhoef/ I like this also, and I would compliment staff for going out and bringing some of these ideas and options to the table for us, because I think they have real possibilities, and will enhance our growth and our downtown. Davidson! Well, it sounds like there's a consensus. Why don't you let us take it a little further and we'll be in touch. Elliott/ One of the things to do would be to talk with some of the employers, especially those that might be impacted by the emergence of these, ofthis type of housing in our downtown area, because uh, increasingly some employers are using, as benefits, the fact that they will provide low-cost or no-interest loans to their employees to recruit them to get them here, so I think don't leave the employers out of this whole concept. Wilburn! I agree with that. I think that's important, and, 00, in particular, if you're talking about trying to bring in the creative class. You've got to have these type of features built in to support them and that lifestyle, and I. . .it gets back to playing that game, SimCity, and, I mean, you've got to look ahead. Ifthis is what we want to have in the downtown area, then that's the support you've got to have. Elliott! If Regenia buys into the parking ramp concept, I figure, you know, we're home free. (laughter) Bailey/ Thank you, Bob! Wilburn! Okay. You've got your direction. Davidson! Thank you. Wilburn! All right. Wetherby House: Wilburn! Wetherby House, Calendar item 4.g.3. Dilkes/ I did give you a memo that you should have in front of you, just to kind of, urn, I'm not quite sure really where we are with that, and I know that, I know what the City Council wants, urn, but...I tried to layout the questions that I think we need to have answered, before we can really negotiate an agreement. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 29 O'Donnell/ We don't have any further information, do we? Dilkes/ As far as I know, we don't have any further information. Bailey/ Well, and this seems like it's going to the people who. . . Dilkes/ Right, and I copied in the people who, Historical Society's having their meeting tomorrow, as I understand it, so hopefully we can get some of these answers from them and get an agreement. Wilburn! Well, I think it will be helpful having it down in writing, too. Helling! And we, they can start the building permit or the demolition. . .moving permit and building permit process any time they want, but I suspect, I really didn't expect anything to happen before tomorrow, after tomorrow. Wilburn! Okay. Cool Cities Initiative Update: Wilburn! Cool Cities Initiative update. (several talking) Helling! ... the Mayor didn't lie. We didn't have this in your packet earlier this evening. (unable to hear) Wilburn! I'm sorry, Dale, that's the item after this one. Helling! You're right. Wilburn! But you can still have this... Helling! Go ahead. Wilburn! Uh, cool cities initiative update, urn, Regenia, I don't know if you had, uh, any, uh, updated information from, urn.. .the County or.. . about this. I know Dale did some looking into the Cool Cities, urn, Initiative stuff. I guess there's a question about some direction. When I signed on to the initial agreement, urn, it was an acknowledgment that, uh, one, Iowa City in, as you look at some of the projects that some of the communities that are signing on, recently signing on, that they are getting into are things that Iowa City has done for some time, and I signed it with the intent that we continue on a daily, project-by-project basis, look at energy savings, uh, environmental initiatives, urn, there was also a component about monitoring and memberships that, 00, on the one hand and on the surface may seem like it involves a small amount of money, but I think we need to frame it for staff, in terms of, uh, staff time and others, where it may go beyond that and I don't know if you want to add to that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 30 Helling/ Just.. .jut having done a little bit of research, sort of familiarize myself with things that are going on. Urn, there are a couple of different initiatives going on. Cool Cities is the one we sort of focused on and that's the, uh, and I don't remember the name of the. . .the agreement that was signed, but it's the one that is promoted by Cool Cities. Urn, that seems to be, uh, the Cool Cities Initiative seems to be kind of a, not a partnership, but is certainly in tandem with the.. . and I'm trying to remember what the acronym is, urn, International, uh, Council for Local Energy Initiatives, or something like that. Anyway, urn, what Cool Cities promotes is that we, that if you're involved with Cool Cities you join ICLEI and I think for us that would be $1,200 a year in dues, and then they make the software and the methodology available to do the initial study, which is an emission study, uh, carbon dioxide, I believe, uh, measurements and so forth. Urn, and then once you complete that, and also the goals for Cool Cities, I believe, is a 7% reduction in C02 admissions, by 2012, over what existed in 1990, urn, the problem is, I don't think that we have any kind of a benchmark form 1990, so we're probably looking at more current measurements. The... the software for the $1,200 membership.. .the software is available at no additional cost, but the real cost would be in either contracting to have that study done, or hiring staff for a period oftime to take us through that process. Urn, it's suggested that that's one possibility. The other possibility is just to kind of dole it out over existing staff and complete it, you know, as convenient or whatever. Urn, I have a concern with.. .with how long that might drag out, uh, particularly visa-vee the 2012, uh, target. So, and without having looked at that. . . that methodology, without having looked at the software and done any kind of an assessment of what is, uh, you know, what's involved in doing this, urn, and then in addition to doing the study, to.. .to setting up goals and targets, and then monitoring those. It's really hard to say how much staff time that would take, both in, either in the short-term or maybe even longer, where maybe we could do some of the monitoring in-house, but initially, it appears to be a process that would, uh, be, uh, would require some staff time, as I said, either a temporary staff person or.. .or a consultant to do that study, and get us to that.. .at least to that level, that first sort of mile marker. Urn, so if we're going to be able to do this, then I think probably the first step is to.. .we have signed on, maybe go ahead and join ICLE, uh, and be a member, and then start to take a look at what we would have to do. There apparently are, uh, other packages out there for doing this analysis, but I'm not aware what those are at this point, and as I said with Cool Cities, they recommend that we use the, that we be part of ICLEI and use their methodology. Bailey/ And Jim Baker, urn, from the Sierra Club, did suggest that it is substantial staff time. I mean, I think you're right in that, that it would probably involve a substantial commitment of staff time, and so I guess my question, because we're going to bring this up also at JCCOG next week, urn, not all the municipalities have signed on because we're going to talk about it at Joint Task Force potentially, urn, after we get this information from the assessment, the Task Force would come up with ways to do a reduction, urn, was this your intent in moving in This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 31 this particular direction? Is this the best...is this the best way for us to be "green," I guess, is my question? I mean, not that I'm criticizing this program, but.. . Wilburn! I guess for me, and again, when I signed on it was more, you know, I think we're doing some things, and the members from the Sierra Club, they were, 00, they were stepping forward and saying they were willing to educate themselves about what the City's doing. They're willing to assist with educating the community, uh, and getting the community, not just the City, but businesses and individual homes, to, uh, to make changes so that we are, we are reducing our negative impact on the environment. Urn, and I told that group, you know, and they had offered, you know, if there's, there might be some environmental engineering students and things like that could use whatever assistance they had available to monitor that type of thing. Urn, you know, and I was, if we can participate.. .we were asked to put together some type of Task Force to help kind of coordinate those efforts, uh, with community education, that type of thing, I personally am more concerned with trying to reach out and, uh, continuing what we're doing in terms of, you know, engineers watching systems, but to get that community education component going, by participating in a Task Force. Personally, you know, it's.. .Dale and I were talking and in some way it seems like join ICLEI and you've got to do it in the city, you can't do it county-wide. It all seems kind of backwards, and the bigger impact is do we want to, urn, do we want to be focused on the doing, or do we want 0 focus on the measurement, and that... Vanderhoef/ What do we have, uh, already on file? I know every so often, Rick has updated us on some new practices that they are using, and I think, uh, just an assessment of what new practices we have put into place that are moving in this direction, urn, maybe over the last five, seven years. I think that wouldn't take a huge amount of staff time, and an estimate of, uh, what the savings or the benefits are out of what we're doing, and then... Bailey/ They're focused really on emissions, right? I mean, am I.. . okay, good. Correia! Well, and does. . . Bailey/ That's, I think, harder. Helling! The measurement what they're talking about, that first survey is on emissions. I think they look at several different.. . conservation, they look at energy alternatives.. . (several talking). Vanderhoef! And.. .and.. .they're doing the green stuff too, that.. .that is, uh, taking up the C02. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 32 Correia! Because it seems to me that. . . that it'd be nice and, putting aside how much time it would take, it would be nice to know where we are. You have a goal of where you want to be, and then you'd be able to measure that, because it's good to do, I mean, it's important to do education and get people to change other, people to change practices, and even to educate ourselves to change practices, but if we can't, at the end of changing practices, say, 'This is what we were able to impact. We are now emitting less,' I mean, I think then it's harder to a) keep the efforts going; you don't really know, are we having an impact; are we not having an impact; if we're not going to do that benchmark measuring to then have goals to work towards and then be able to report back. Bailey/ Well, so maybe, Dale's approach of joining ICLEI, looking at the software and sort of stepping into this slowly, and then having some level of assessment of what staff time this would really take. Elliott/ I would just be very cautious about what we're letting ourself into. 1...I thought, Ross, your comment was.. .that's what's running through, do we want to spend our time documenting and measuring, or do we want to spend our time doing? And I think we're... Wilburn! I think it's important to have those goals, but if we, if all of these systems work, if the science behind them shows that they're working, then do it. I have, I mean, it would seem to me, go ahead and join, make an assessment, and. . . Helling! I mean, that's the recommendation from me, only if you want to.. .to be involved in, as opposed to just going about how we have been, do our own analysis, our own kind of assessment, but if you want to get involved in a program like this, then. . . then I'm hard pressed to recommend something other than, uh, the Cool Cities Initiative, urn, they all look pretty much alike. They have different criteria. Urban Environmental, of course, has for instance they want you to have three initiatives a year for seven years and they have seven categories and, urn, but at the end of the day, if you boil it down, they all have the same kinds of goals. Champion! They sound like corporate mumble, jumble to me. I like your idea, just.. .maybe it'd be nice if we do county-wide, if we discuss that... Bailey/ Well, that's.. .well, they don't do the, the assessment they want separately, and I agree with Ross. It seems to be defeating a purpose, but you know (unable to hear). O'DonnelV Who all has signed on? Bailey/ The County has, urn, and the Sierra Club has approached Coralville, but I don't think...I talked to John today and he didn't think that they had signed on yet, and we have signed on. So...I don't have any problem joining ICLEI and then This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 33 evaluating the software. It would at least give us a measurement tool, if that's something we want to look at. Urn, but if. . . Wilburn! ... take a lot of staff time, or at least if we can get some type of initial measurement, and... Helling! Well, and that's not the only thing you get for your $1,200. I mean, you get a lot of other information about other communities that are involved, and so that may be very helpful. Bailey/ Yeah, and it's what, an annual membership, so if we, if we're not getting what we need from it. . . Wilbum/ Stop for a couple of years and then join again and get.. . (several talking and laughter). Okay. Everybody okay with that? (several responding) All right. Metropolitan Coalition A2:reement: Wilbum/ Now, metropolitan coalition update. Urn, Dale passed out, this is hot off the press. What's that? No, I'm going to give you a snapshot, urn, a conversation about, amongst the, urn, larger cities, there's been different gyrations over the years about, uh, about trying to work together on, on, uh, I'll say over the last couple years, since I've been Mayor, about working together, or those who have been sitting on the board with the League and putting forth different ideas, issues that.. .that, uh, kind of the, that may not come upon the radar screen or may not be as large a concern by some of those who rule communities, has gone back and forth over the last couple years, but most recently, at the end of September, uh, the City Managers and Mayors ofthe top ten most populous cities were invited to sit down and talk about possibly, uh, working together to include, uh, the hiring of some lobbying services, or a lobbyist, to, 00, to really work with each of the communities, to have that presence with some of the larger communities, to work in partnership with, urn, the League about issues that are going on in Des Moines, and to have that more constant presence. And, urn, it evolved. . . we had maybe two, three different, uh, different meetings about what some type of agreement on how that might go, to the point of actually setting up a...a nonpartisan organization to, urn, to, urn, hire this lobbyist, to provide a structure. It's kind of based on some other organizations, some other coalitions that have occurred throughout the Midwest and Minnesota in particular, I believe. But, urn, the Mayors and City Managers wanted to have an opportunity to just get something down on paper, what it might look like, what this agreement might look like, 00, to discuss this further, urn, lobbying effort, advocacy effort, uh, in working together on issues that are of concern. In particular, 00, the purpose, uh, I would just say for now look at the purpose, nonpartisan, unite larger cities, similar concerns, intended enhanced communication, advanced common interest (unable to hear) legislative matters. Uh, and the intent discussed throughout was to work with the League, and again, we felt it was important, you know, can we talk about This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 34 before we go back to our Councils to present this.. .this idea, because again, you're talking about ten cities, to see where it goes, so this is kind of what the organization would look like, but uh, so the name of the purpose and the first article of organization, urn, if this is something that each of the cities wishes to become a part of and to have this lobbying presence, uh, that, uh, one, we'd have to pass a resolution saying that we would like to be part of this. Two, 00, and this was felt important by several of the members, that each member shall also be a member of Iowa League of Cities, not to, 00, be a, uh, set up the impression that this is an alternative to the League, 00, but also to make sure that, 00, where we can, when we can, that we're trying to emphasize similar issues, and to have, again, have a greater presence at the State House, uh, there would be, there's a.. .there would be a fee involved, 00, because if you're going to hire a lobbyist, urn, the monies got to come from somewhere, and urn, there's a...a per capita portion of the total fee, and there is, urn, something that would just be standard for all of the cities, and, urn, since we're already into, coming up on December, this first year would essentially be half of the, half of the fee, and again, this is directly hot off the press, so I don't have the formula in front of me. Urn, but that was kind of the intent behind this. Some of the cities, uh, currently have lobbyists. Most of the top ten do not. Some of the other cities, uh, well, our neighbor, Coralville, they have their own lobbyist, so, but they are also members of the League, so again, you know, where they can, when they can, they work together, but when they have some particular special interest together, that, uh, that they would go through out joint lobbyist to do so, and this...I felt it was important to take a look, one, you know, we're talking about the ten most populous cities, the.. .the strength of the greater message would come, uh, with us being in a more urban area, uh, and it can, the potential there is to really highlight, emphasize, that, uh, we are the economic engines of the state and to focus on what legislation will impact us, at the state level, impact the economic generators. And then, urn, I think that's really kind of the (garbled). Helling! No, I think you surnmarized it well. Ijust would emphasize.. .the focus seems to be on lobbying and so forth, but I think a.. . another very positive thing is the intense communications among the larger cities. We really don't' do that very well at all now. Champion! I think it sounds like a great idea, and I'm amazed it hasn't happened before. Elliott/ I'm interested in how.. .how this would differ with, it was mentioned earlier, with the Chambers from the large cities, how would you interact with them? How does this differ? What overlaps? What is complimentary? I hope the two units would work quite closely together. (several talking) Wilburn! Excuse me for just. . .in direct answer, just so he knows where we had all come from, urn, we specifically talked about first starting with, urn, trying to work with the League and trying to be in concert there, but when there's an area that is of particular impact or effect with the cities, with the ten most populous cities, uh, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 35 but we also talked about, you know, working with the Chamber Alliance and a couple folks who, Mayors who are actively involved with the Chamber Alliance, said that this would be a particular area where they could work together, with the larger Chambers, members of the Alliance, uh, for that purpose. Go ahead. Bailey/ No, I was just going to say it's politically naive with lobbying that you wouldn't build coalitions on particular issues, with whomever. I mean, you know, even ifit was the Farm Bureau, unlikely enough, for this organization, you know, as the ten most. . . Elliott! It's just that I hadn't heard that, and it seems like whether it would be a partnership or a cooperative relationship, I'd just kind of like to know what the plans are for... Bailey/ .. . around particular issues, or particular bills. Correia! And so would.. .would the, each, in terms of the, but in terms of what each city bring from their City Councils, similar to how we just had our list of priorities that we presented to our Legislators, to the group, and then see, okay, where is there overlap or.. . and then there would be a legislative... Bailey/ .. .agenda for the metropolitan coalition? Wilburn! Yeah, and they're actually with certain items, there'd actually be a vote taken, amongst the members and most items it was a simple majority. Bailey/ So, could we... Dilkes/ That's the Board of Directors of the organization. Correia! Right, right, but that, the City Council would generate, our representative would then bring. . . Bailey/ Our representative would be representing the Council's views, and not his or her own... Correia! Right. Right. So, can we...I mean... Vanderhoef/ I have just a couple of questions too. Bailey/ Well, I just feel so unprepared to talk about this. I think it would be better if we would read this and put it on the next work session. I think that might be time better spent. Elliott! Yep. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 36 Wilburn! And again, it was my intent...it was our intent, all of our intent, that it (several talking) given out last week, but the Des Moines City Attorney was putting some final touches on, and... Bailey/ But I just think we'd be better prepared to have a more rich discussion if. . . Vanderhoef! What I would ask for is, uh, the breakdown on the cost. I've heard figures in the $200,000 range for, uh, this activity, and.. . and how it would be run, and also for presentation from the League, because what hasn't been presented is that the League has been going through similar steps within the League on how we move to this next level, and to accommodate these kinds of things, and what kind of fees do we need to put on large cities, to accommodate what exactly they're talking about here, and in concert with a new Executive Director and what fees to keep the League strong. So, to enhance everybody's, including the ten largest cities, and the League. Bailey/ And to enhance the other 941 cities in Iowa. Vanderhoef! But.. . but if you look at the fee schedules on the per capita, when you talk about 900 and.. . and their citizens are under 500, so the pay that is coming in... Bailey/ But the lobbyist works on priorities. Period. That represents the entire... Vanderhoef/ Right. Bailey/ .. .not just the interests of the ten largest cities. Correia! What's our fee to join, to be a member of the League? Vanderhoef! It's a per capita, plus... Helling! Oh, for the League? Vanderhoef/ I think this is the kind of information we need to have on the work session, exactly what it would be for the stand-alone, uh, coalition agreement, and what it is for the League, and the potential raise in what the League is going to be asking, so that it can move up to the next level. Champion! You know the problem with that, Dee, is the League represents everybody. Bailey/ Right. Champion! And that is a problem. I mean, the School District's done this for years. I mean, there is an urban.. . (several talking).. .whole big organization, but our needs are so different than those other 400 communities, and you do need your own lobbyist for.. .he may be lobbying against, for something that small towns don't This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26,2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 37 want. That was what the School District's gotten into trouble with, because small town needs were so different from the bigger town needs, and they were just interested in surviving. (several talking) .. .so, I think...I think I love this idea of... Wilburn! In direct answer, uh, the, uh, I think Dale figured for Iowa City, for an entire year worth, was.. .what was it? Around... Helling! Preliminarily, somewhere around $19,000 to $20,000 a year. Wilburn! So for this past half year, it would be about $10,000. Helling! Now that's assuming that all the cities (several talking). Wilburn! That's the other thing, is if.. .if there's not enough cities, of the top ten most populous, then that would increase the expense, expenditure, and it may not happen. Bailey/ But we, as a city, we have not done what we need to do in so far as lobbying, and if this is one way to get us there, I mean, short of hiring our own lobbyist, which would be far more than $20,000, I'm assuming. Wilburn! That's the other piece, is that, urn, and we can certainly have some of the information about membership in the Iowa League, you know, gathered and presented, urn, and I would point out that, uh, well, two things, how much we wanted to put in collective efforts related to advocacy and lobbying would be, could be a decision based on that, but as I said, there are several other cities that have, one...in order to be in this, you have to be a member of the League, you have to. It's right, it's the second article, and secondly, that, uh, there are several of the cities that have their own, part-time or full-time, lobbyist. Urn... Bailey/ Could we get. . . Wilburn! What's that? Bailey/ Could we get those figures, as well, what it would cost to hire a part-time lobbyist? I mean. . . Vanderhoef/ A full-time one... Bailey/ Well, not, I mean, if we're going to, you know, do these, I think we should explore all the options that we have, to be advocates for our citizens. Vanderhoefl Upwards of $120,000 to $140,000 for a full-time, so... Bailey/ So we'll just talk about that... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 38 Wilburn! I guess the other piece I would add too is the Legislative session is coming up soon, uh, so what, uh, what... the next meeting conference call is Wednesday, is that correct, Dale? Wednesday morning. The, uh, the group is wanting to hear from each of the cities. Do we have, 00, enough interest, preliminary interest, to consider a resolution. Again, it would take a resolution to become a part of it, urn, but, urn, you know, with the legislative, with the Legislators starting up soon, that, uh, sooner rather than later, would be better in terms of.. .that was the main thing. There was conversation about working together on all this last year, and it fell apart, partially because of some personalities, partially because of concern with, uh, not wanting to, uh, threaten the League and that... Elliott/ How many of, how many of the ten cities are located in the Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Ames corridor? Are there more than four? Bailey/ The list is on the top... Wilburn! City of Des Moines, West Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Sioux City, Waterloo, Council Bluffs, Davenport. (several talking at once) Elliott! I was just thinking, those two corridor areas have, have needs and preferences and priorities that differ from the border state cities, but it seems like we would be well represented. Bailey/ But that's another approach that we could take, is (unable to hear). Elliott/ Because if you talk about the engines in Iowa that make it go, it's Des Moines, Ames, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids. Champion! I think you've got that wrong. I think it's Iowa City, Des Moines, Ames, Cedar Rapids. Elliott/ Hi, Connie. (laughter and several talking) Bailey/ .. . add a resolution for our next meeting, and.. . and with the anticipation of a work session discussing it, and ifpeople.. .we can always vote it down, if people aren't ready to move forward with it. Champion! I'm ready to move forward with it. Dilkes/ There's also, I just note that in looking at this, that withdrawal is fairly simple. I mean, I know you don't want to get into something and then have to back out, but... you just have to give six months notice of withdrawal to get out of the. . . so it's not very... Elliott/ Just quit paying! (laughter and several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 39 Wilburn! Urn, again, it was...it was our intent, so that you would have had this Thanksgiving week so you would have a change to look at it tonight and then I was hoping to have a resolution for discussion at our next work session. Bailey/ I think we can still do that. (several talking) I think that that schedule still works. Elliott/ I think something like this is something that.. .it's over due. Whether it's this or something like it, yeah. Wilburn! Well, take a look at this. Uh, and we'll work with, and like, it may be Wednesday that nobody wants to do it and (several talking and laughter). Bailey/ Well, given that it, a lot of people might be saying the same thing we're saying (several talking). Champion! But I do think that going this route is even better than going with our own lobbyist. Because you are representing more people... Bailey/ Well, yeah, and getting a couple western cities, even if they are border cities (several talking). Vanderhoef/ The question I have is.. .of these ten cities that presently have their own lobbyists, how many of them will be, uh, setting aside those and.. . and working exclusively with this one? (several talking) Well, the question, there's a couple of things that happens. Uh, when you get lobbyists sort of piecemeal, uh, if you have lobbyists for the League, then you have lobbyists for League Members, but a separate group, and then you have lobbyists for individual cities, uh, sometimes the collective voices aren't as positive, or the Legislator gets tired of trying to figure out who's on first. Wilburn! And that. . . that can happen. I think, in my conversation with the few Legislators, urn, the quality of the, urn, lobbyist can also have just an important.. . (several talking). Vanderhoef! It's.. .it's a trial and error some times on what works. Wilburn! I will, Wednesday I will say that there was interest from the Council, that we will have some more information, and try and get that League information, for the next work session and a draft resolution, although it'd be a pretty simple resolution. All right. Council Time: Wilburn! Urn, Council Time? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 40 Elliott/ Quickly, I put a memo in you respective packets tonight, and I would appreciate it if that could be put on an agenda, and secondly, tomorrow night I may be late, or I may not be here. My grandson is coming in to O'Hare, and he's been in Central America for many months, so we'll get, I'll get here in can! Wilburn! Anyone else? Champion! Ijust want everybody to know that I am going to do the sleep-out. (several talking and laughing) I've decorated my box, urn, so there were pledge sheets...I didn't bring one, I don't intend to bring one.. .anybody's interested in giving me a small pledge, just give me a call. Like, anywhere from a thousand to two thousand dollars is (several talking and laughing) Wilburn! I just want to thank... we crunched through a lot of stuff tonight, but it is coming up on the end of the year so we only have x-number of... O'Donnell/ If anybody is getting calls on leaves, the City is once again doing them, and will do them until the weather turns. Helling! We're going to try to make one more pass, east.. .or west to east through the entire city. Urn, the odds are we won't be able to do much more than (several talking). That was the problem this year, they didn't fall! Correia! Quick question about the, uh, housing study presentation. Are we going to schedule a time? Helling! Should be available in January. So.. .that's up to you. I'm not sure at this point...1 don't know exactly when it will be available, but January. (several talking) Vanderhoef! I have a request, uh, just for a letter of support from the Council for, uh, appointment to the State Transportation Commission, uh, a lady from up by Mason City who is a Republican woman, and uh, will be opened, uh, and appointed some time in March. . . Wilburn! Do you have an address for that? Vanderhoef! It goes to the Governor's office, gubernatorial appointments. Wilburn! What was the last thing you said? Oh, I know Paul. Uh, Thursday soon enough? Vanderhoef/ Uh-huh. If you'd just copy Rebecca. Wilburn! Rebecca? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007. November 26, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 41 Vanderhoef/ Rebecca at Iowa City Area. Wilburn! Oh, the Chamber. Okay. Vanderhoef! She's coordinating those, uh, all into one packet, and then send one directly to the Governor's office... Wilburn! Everyone okay. See you tomorrow night. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special work session meeting of November 26, 2007.