Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009-01-15 TranscriptionJanuary 15, 2009 City Council Page 1 January 15, 2009 City Council CIP Budget Work Session 1:30 P.M. Council Present: Bailey, Correia (arrived 2:45), Hayek, O'Donnell, Wilburn (left 3:00, refd 4:40), Wright Council Absent: Champion Staff: Lombardo, Helling, Karr, Dilkes, Fosse, Knoche, Tharp, Rocca, O'Brien, O'Malley, Lewis, Mansfield, Moran, Davidson, Miklo, Hargadine Others Present: UISG Representative, Gunn CIP: Bailey/ Okay, let's get started on our favorite show of the year. Fosse/ Good! Want me to just take it away? Bailey/ Yes, please. Fosse/ Okay. Uh, Saturday you talked about the operating budget, and what we're going to visit about today is...is the Capital Budget, and that is the...the budget for those tangible things that are necessary to make those operations happen and...and provide the services to our community. Um, to help to get your arms around it, because it really is a lot of material to cover and we've split things up into categories, very similar to the categories that we all looked at last year, and...those categories will be the, uh, Airport, and do we want to drop the lights down? Can (mumbled)...Airport, uh, Landfill, uh, Parking, Parks and Recreation and that'll include trails; Public Safety, uh, Streets, Bridges, Traffic Engineering; and uh, miscellaneous other projects. That's...that's agroup of projects that each...by themselves didn't have enough to justify their own category, uh, and then recurring projects is another one and...that is a topic of projects that, uh, we spend money on year in, year out and that's really to accommodate two different things. One is the incremental growth of our city, and then also for maintenance, preventative maintenance type things. Um, this is a new topic for this year and that's flood recovery, uh, there's...there's afew major projects that we'll be doing as part of our recovery from the flood, just fixing things, and those don't show up in your Capital Plan, and the reason they do not is because we'll be getting reimbursed from FEMA for that, but the reason it's important for you all to be familiar with what they are is because they're going to take a fair amount of staff time and we're going to need upfront the money for those, until we're reimbursed from FEMA. So for the next year or two, these projects will be competing with our resources to do other things. That's why I wanted to fill you in on them. Then we have a, uh, a section called "On the Radar," and those are projects that, um, are not in a funded year, but there's enough level of interest in the community on those that you should be aware of them and we'll give you some background on them, and for instance, last year, you pulled a project out of here and that was the, uh, the restroom facility for This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 2 Napoleon Park, and that was implemented and built last year. So that's just an example of...of the value of this section right here. And we'll...and this is also where we'll talk about potential economic stimulus projects, and we'll go into more detail on that as we get to it. And then a subset on...in the "On the Radar" section is...is those that are specifically related to flood recovery and flood protection. Uh, and then if we have time we'll talk a...just a little bit about projects scheduled for completed...completion in 2009 and then we'll have questions and discussion, and what we'd like to do...(noise on mic)...excuse me. To facilitate things today, if...if you have questions along the way about any projects, please ask about'em...right while we're talking about it, but as far as discussion about adding and removing projects, uh, let's...let's do that at the end, once we've seen the entire group, because they're all a part of a single financial package. So in a sense they're all intertwined in that way, and that's really what we want to get at today is...is, your...your consensus on what you want the Capital Program to consist of. So, um, any questions about that background? Okay. Um...our presentation is...is, uh, designed today...it's going to follow the, uh, the financial summary that you got distributed to you earlier this week, looks like this, and it starts off with just an overview of the different categories and their funding sources. If you're a spatial thinker, the pie graph, uh, makes more sense in that you can see relatively how much we're spending, uh, in different categories. Um, but do you all have that with you today or...okay. Let me know if you'd like copies and (mumbled). And with that lead-off, we'll begin our first category, and that will be Airport, and before you start, Mike, I do want to add one other thing, is that we've got a lot more material than we can endure in any...in any one setting this afternoon. So any time you all would like to take a break, just let us know and we'll do that, and we'll get through it all. Go ahead, Mike. Airport: Tharp/ All right. Good afternoon, um, starting off with the Airport, and I think it's uh, a good thing to note that a couple of things that were done last fall, and that is the, uh, runway extension, uh, is officially completed -runway 7/25 is now 5,004 feet long and 100 feet wide, and we were also able to complete Phase 1 of the rehab of the existing pavements. Uh, what we're looking at going forward in this, uh, CIP is the continuation of...of that set of projects. Uh, Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the runway system rehabilitation, Phase 2 covers the remainder of...of 7/25, and Phase 3 would be, uh, 12/30. Um, among the other things in the Airport category are the runway 7 parallel taxiway. That's split up over two years to cover the, uh...grading work and then the paving and lighting. Uh, that breaks it up enough that the FAA is able to fund it over the (mumbled) with their grant proceeds. Corporate hangar L, um, we do have space constraints as far as, uh, large aircraft being able to, uh, be housed at the, uh, Airport. That's corporate business jets and traffic of that nature. Uh, with the runway extension we have seen an increase use of the corporate business jets, so we've got a couple new Leers and Premieres from, uh, a concrete company that's, uh, is currently utilizing the Airport that haven't been. So I'd say the extension is immediately, uh, doing what it was set out to, uh, to do originally. Uh, corporate hangar L, uh, that's a project that, uh, actually is...is funded, um, in the CIP plan as a...a 50/50 split between State grants and local, uh, funding. Um, at this point it looks like we may not be able to get all of the, uh, the...State grant funding we were This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 3 hoping for, so we're looking to...to, uh, supply that with proceeds from the Commerce Park sales or, um, other revenues that we might be able to tap into in a couple of years, between now and...and when, uh, that project's...up to construct. Um, the other thing we're looking at is, um, space, expansion in nature, and that is the, uh, apron reconstruction and... and taxiway. Um, as you can see by the picture, uh, on occasion with football weekends and other events, we do get quite a lot of aircraft at the Airport, and uh, this apron uh, expansion, uh, would tie into the parallel taxi-way for 7/25, as well as provide more tie-down and... and pavement space for the aircraft utilizing the Airport. Fosse/ Want to talk about Aviation Commerce (mumbled) Tharp/ Uh, the Aviation Commerce Park South, um, the uh, the planning study with the FAA, uh, last time we checked with the Engineering consultants that was submitted to FAA, looking for a response probably, uh, February, and that'll be a final approval response, so that, um, plans can proceed for development and Airport usage of...of that area, as well. Davidson/ What we'll do when we get the, uh, the study back from the FAA, uh, of course you're all aware of Aviation Commerce Park North. We've also been planning this one. Um, the important thing here is that a previous City Council made the policy decision some time ago that the Airport would not expand beyond its existing boundaries. So it's very important that we be able to accommodate what the Master Plan calls for. In terms of future Airport expansion, we want to try and do that in this area and that's what the study will show you, and then basically it will outline the area that'll remain for Aviation Commerce Park South, and we'll work then to get that...I guess the buzz term nowadays that we all hear is "shovel ready." Get the infrastructure extended to that so that we can begin marketing it. Landfill: Fosse/ Any questions on Airport, before we move on to Landfill? None? Okay. On to the Landfill. Uh, our first project is the Eastside Recycling Center, and we've talked quite a bit about this project in the last couple years and, uh, actually got so far as to get it out for bid last summer. Uh, we took bids. The bids came in considerably high. I shouldn't say bids. The single bid that we got, um, so that bid was rejected and uh, we went back to find out...try and figure out whether it was market conditions, was it the LEED certification, you know, what were the contributors to the high prices, and what we've done is, uh, repackage this, uh, that's so that there's actually two components to the bid package and it's ready to go back out again. Uh, there's...these improvements over here, which are the unheated warehouse space, and that will no longer be LEED certified. Because it's unheated space there's not a lot to be gained by going with the LEED certification there. Uh, that will be one component of the bid package, and then this education center over here will continue to be LEED certified, and that'll be the second component of the bid package. So the contractors can bid one or both, and uh, we'll talk about this more later, but this might be a good candidate for the Economic Stimulus package, if we can find the right funding source for it, because it is...it's all ready to go. We've got the land, and we've got the plans. It's all ready to go out for bid. It's a great This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 4 project. Um, there's just another view of it. Here's the education center that will be bid as a separate package from the other stuff that you see in the background. LTh, the second Landfill project that we have is...is our next landfill cell, uh, for garbage, and it begins to go out onto the piece of property that we acquired last year, and when we visited about this last year, we were looking at building one very large cell as our next one, and it turned out that the technical and regulatory challenges to doing that were...were not worth the effort there. Um, the advantage of a single large cell is that it makes the best use of the space that's available, uh, but we're not going to be able to pull that off, but the cell that we are going to build will be this one right here, and for comparison size, uh, this is the last cell that we built FY06, and that's what it looked like shortly after it was done. So...it...it'll bepretty sizable, in among itself. Any questions about Landfill, before we move on? Okay, we'll turn it over to Chris for parking. Parkin: Davidson/ Actually the first project that you have is a joint project that, uh, that Chris' division and Planning is undertaking together, and that's the near Southside multi-use parking facility and realistically we're probably six months behind where we'd hoped to be on this project because of the flood recovery efforts that...that uh, Planning has been involved in. Uh, the project remains the same and just too quickly, um, if you'll quickly recall, uh, there's three elements to it. It'll be a 500 to 600-space parking facility to continue addressing the growth in downtown, south of Burlington Street. We have purchased the property, the former St. Pat's School site, which we're currently leasing, uh, both for parking and to St. Pat's for their use while the new St. Patrick's Church is being built in east Iowa City. Um, the other elements then are, uh, commercial condominium spaces, similar to what we have at Tower Place. That'll be designed into the ground floor and second floor spaces. Uh, I will tell you that we've had... some fairly good incidental interest in that. I've actually had a couple of people who called wanted to put, uh, deposits down on spaces already, so there is some interest in those spaces. I think for someone to own a small commercial space downtown, they can't afford a whole building, um, it's considered quite desirable. Uh, the other element then is the, uh, the housing element, uh, which will consist of some workforce, uh, type housing with price points that are appropriate for the workforce type housing, and likely a mix with some market- rate housing, as well. We hope to hire a private developer to work with and essentially sell the air rights for the project. You can see there's $200,000 budgeted in FY10 for this. This gets us into some of the preliminary planning and design work, uh, we are currently involved in a small study to scope out some of the housing elements a little bit further. We'll be wrapping that up and then, uh, presumably putting an RFP together for some additional assistance to...to move this, uh, project along. Bailey/ So once we have the concept, the planning and preliminary design, in the out years we'll see the costs of the (both talking) Davidson/ In the out years you'll see the likely FY11 and FY12 be a...a two-month...a two-year construction project, and basically what we'll be doing is putting a financing package This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 5 together. There'll be different financing elements to the three elements of the project, and we'll present that to you separately for your consideration. Bailey/ Thanks. Hayek/ Does the $200,000 represent monies used internally as some sort of reimbursement, or those are external? Davidson/ No, those would all be external, uh, architectural and engineering type fees. Bailey/ Other questions? Okay. O'Brien/ Uh, the other project that we have...have on here is a continuation of a project that we funded in the FY09 CIP and that's parking elevator upgrades, uh, the Capitol Street, Dubuque Street garages, both uh, built roughly around 1980, um, have the original elevators intact, uh, that's 30 years. Useful life usually is 20 to 25, um, 25 years on that. We're to the point now where, uh, it's time to, uh, replace the cars, replace the machine, uh, machine rooms, um, cables. It's two different styles of elevators, um, attraction elevator, um, as well as a hydraulic. They would have to replace one...or two at Capitol Street and two at Dubuque Street. Uh, we budgeted $300,000 for Capitol Street last year, uh, $300,000 for Dubuque Street is what we're proposing for, uh, FY10. Uh, we haven't done anything with those FY09 monies yet, hoping that if this is approved we can combine it into one project, thus probably saving money on mobilization, uh, bid package, planning, uh, the design fees, things like that, to make it one big project, rather than...than two small projects. Um... Wilburn/ (mumbled) happens to elevator cars, metal salvaged or... Bailey/ Do you have your mic on? Wilburn/ Of course it slid all the way down. Bailey/ I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. O'Brien/ Yeah, I'm not sure this is the first one of these we've done. We haven't even started the designing portion of it yet, um, the first...first thing we would do is working with Kumi, try to find an elevator, uh, type consultant that can come in, uh, do an analysis on all four elevators, decide what needs to be replaced, what doesn't, um, cab things to be salvaged, um, yeah, I think then salvage rights usually go to, uh, the company that's pulling things out (mumbled) doesn't go to the City. Those are things we'd have to consider as we went through that project. Wilburn/ Okay. My question was, what happens to an old elevator? O'Brien/ Um, I assume salvage it. There's no use for... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 6 Wilburn/ No, no, no! I didn't have my mic on so (mumbled) O'Brien/ ...any useful...(both talking). Any questions on... Champion/ And this is paid for with parking fees? O'Brien/ That's correct. Fosse/ We're going to move on to Parks. Parks Recreation & Trails: Bailey/ We're going pretty fast! It's making me nervous. Moran/ I think Terry loaded up the CIP project and then took off and decided to get sick, so he threw the rest of it on me. So, we'll go through this and...and uh, see if you have any questions, but the first, uh, project, the Butler Bridge trail, pedestrian trail -there's a schematic of that on the left and then where the, where it's at, that'll provide two purposes. Tie into our trail system at Waterworks Park and then try...tie into the trail system on the other side, and they'll both be bicycle and pedestrian access. So it'll be, uh, joined into the parking lot that currently exists at Waterworks, and then take that all the way across and then tie into the trail system, uh, that semi-formally exists on the other side of the, of the bridge. Davidson/ Yeah, the nice thing about this project is that I think most of you are aware. Those of you on JCCOG certainly are aware that Coralville is planning...Coralville and the County, I should say, are planning to extend this to the north where you can see in the...in the photograph there, extend that Oakdale Boulevard over to Dubuque Street. That'll have an 8-foot sidewalk on one side of it. Si it'll be a nice connection to Coralville, as well, or between Coralville and Iowa City. Hayek/ Are any of the State grants...in jeopardy, in any respect? Davidson/ No, those are through JCCOG and those are in place and in the, in the uh CIP...J000G CIP. Moran/ Uh, City Park Old Shop repairs -there were two buildings that were damaged pretty heavily by the flood, and so what our intent to do in that is...is go in and make 'em usable again, uh, replace some of the rafter systems and then some of that also, uh, behind the shop, up back here in the tree line, there was a retaining wall, uh, so that we didn't get any stuff sliding down that...that steep embankment from Upper Park to Lower Park, and we have to replace and retile some of that, uh, retainage wall that's...that runs across the line here. If you turn around from where this picture's at, uh, that used to be our Park Administrative building, and we'll re...uh, renovate that a little bit and we'll turn that into a park shelter that we can use for rentals and uh, rent out to the public, uh, right by the small pond and by the tennis courts, uh, in Lower City Park. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 7 Bailey/ So we're not getting any funds for this? Even though it was impacted by the flood? Moran/ This is above and beyond what we're getting from FEMA on, uh, to repair some of this stuff. Some of it's extra what they won't pay for.. . Bailey/ Okay. Moran/ ... so we can make it usable. Bailey/ Thank you. Champion/ Do you still keep a lot of equipment there? Moran/ Yeah. We try to, uh, because it saves down transportation time, so we don't have to drive all the way from our existing park shop, so it'll still heavily used, has all our tractors (mumbled). City Park trail lighting -this has been in the system for a while and it's finally coming to fruition, but we're just going to take the existing trail system, uh, in City Park, and this is mostly Lower City Park, from the...from Hancher, uh, and then all the way around, uh, the river system, uh, in Lower City Park. Uh, the only challenge that we'll have, we have two challenges now. One, we have to find out how the lights in the...the, uh, Shakespeare Theater came out with the flood. We're going through that and evaluating those to see what we have to do different, in case we get water again, uh, we want to make sure that they're...they're stabilized pretty well, and then we want to match 'em up to that system that's already in there at Shakespeare Theater. So, if you've been out there, the lighting system from the theater out to the parking lot, we'll try to match up with that as much as possible and follow the trail system through Lower City Park. Bailey/ This isn't...can you see this in this list? I'm not seeing this. So what's the dollar amount and what year is it in? Moran/ Uh, it's in FY10 and it's, uh, $240,000. Bailey/ Oh, trail lighting, thank you. Thanks, Matt. I'm sorry. Moran/ Frauenholz-Miller Park development -this is a parcel of land that was, uh, obtained, oh, probably three or four years ago and uh, it's adjacent to the new St. Pat's Church site on Lower West Branch Road, and uh, this is just finally getting some opportunity to go in and do some development with it. Right now it's just a vacant piece of land, as you can see in the picture down below, and uh, we'll take that and work with the neighborhood association groups and see what they want, and then try to at least start some sort of development in there, and see what the neighborhood wants to put in there. Soccer Park improvements, there's uh, two or three things that we want to do, uh, down at the Soccer Park, now that we've been down there for a while. One of'em is the development of a pond, and uh, that will help, uh, not eliminate but it'll help uh, our irrigation system down there, so that if we have our own pond we can use that water. Uh, we still use affluent This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 8 from the waste water treatment site down there, as well. Uh, we also want to add some additional park shelters and make it more of a park structure so people will go there and use it for something other than soccer. We've got a lot of land to the north of the fields, uh, that we can utilize for that. And then the...the other thing that we want to do in there is we want to help develop that trail system that comes in to the north of the sewer treatment plant, and uh, pick those all up, as well. Sycamore, uh, wetlands and try to maintain that trail system, and get that tied in to, uh, the Soccer Park. Bailey/ Is this the area that had...has a fence around it and gates are locked at night? And...thus cutting off the trail at certain times? Moran/ Yeah, we've been trying to work through that. The trail has a separate gate, and then the...the road has the gate, and the road gate usually stays locked more than the trail gate does, but we've had some issues with that, where we're trying to work out how we can maintain that to keep that open without encouraging a lot of vandalism that goes down there as well. Bailey/ Right. Okay. Moran/ Uh, Mercer Park Pool, uh, that facility is...we just celebrated it's 20th birthday, uh, hard to believe that it's that old. Seems like we just opened it up, but the solarium there on the south end is all aluminum, and we're having a few issues, mostly along the bottom (noise on mic) where the doors are, uh, we're getting a lot of sinking between the concrete, uh, porch and patio area, and so what's happening is the doors then are not shutting right and they're not as cost-efficient as they could be, and energy-efficient as they could be, so what we'd like to do is take this out and redo it, and uh, hopefully redo it with better, uh, tempered glass and more energy-efficient glass, and uh, put in a better door system and...and look at the footing system underneath the solarium so it doesn't sink so much. So, on the other side of that we have the floor, so between the tile, the aluminum threshold, and the concrete on the outside, uh, we're having issues with those three contrasting a lot, and mainly because of its age, so we just want to upgrade it. Bailey/ And the School District pays support for the (both talking) Moran/ 25%. Bailey/ Okay, and but they're not part of this project because... Moran/ I believe they would be. Bailey/ Okay. At the same percentage rate, you think? Moran/ Yeah. They've participated in capital improvement projects before. Bailey/ So, it might be helpful to have that breakout if...once we have it secured. (noise on mic) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 9 Wright/ Do you have any estimates on what kind of energy saving you might be talking about? Moran/ Uh, I don't, but we'll find that out before we...we redo it, to see what we can save. Wright/ Be a nice figure to have. Moran/ Uh, Hickory Hill Park, uh, this is in south Hickory Hill, uh, a few yeas ago there was a restroom facility, uh, down there that was built in 1982, uh, we ended up having to take it down because it was nonfunctional. It got vandalized a lot, and uh, we removed it probably about eight years ago. Uh, what we, uh, proposed to do here is to put up another restroom facility in that area. It will not be attached to the shelter. It'll be a standalone building. It'll be right next to the shelter area so it'll be in the similar area where it was before, uh, but we need to put a shelter down there. We've had a bigger demand from the neighborhood, for neighborhood association events and for our own Parks and Recreation events in there, as well, so I think it'll be a great asset to that area, and they were used to having one a long time ago, and we took it down and we haven't, uh, replaced it yet, so that'll be, uh, the first half of that project, and then the second half of that project will be replacing, uh, the oldest, uh, bridge that we have in the park system. We've been replacing the bridges as we get funding for it, and this one will be, uh, one that we'll have to replace as well. If you remember the last time we did that, we had a big Hewie helicopter come in and drop it in, into the park and hopefully we don't have to be that exclusive this time, but, uh, it's in a little bit more open area than the first one was that we replaced. So it'll be a two-phase project, one for bathrooms and then one, uh, one for the bridge replacement. Uh, same thing with this. This'll be, uh, new applications of restrooms, both in Kiwanis Park and Court Hill Park. In Kiwanis Park we redid that park, uh, about six years ago. It didn't include a bathroom facility. We've had a huge demand for that. This is the one that's just south of...of Willow Creek Park, uh, to get your bearings straight. Uh, and this'll be a standalone building, uh, hopefully what we can do with these bathroom projects is we can get the same design and same architect so that we can put all three of 'em up the same, similar to what we've been doing with the concession stands at Napoleon and at Mercer Park, and at the Soccer, uh, complex, and then Court Hill is a result of, um, the trail system that we put in there, uh, we just opened this spring. It was a very popular trail system and now everybody's screaming for bathrooms, cause they use the system and then have nowhere to go. So, uh, Court Hill is also a very active park, off of Friendship Drive, uh, so that'll be a standalone building right next to the new trail system that we put in, uh, with that, as well. Bailey/ And how do we prevent a lot of extensive vandalism to these restrooms? What have you thought about? Moran/ Well, a lot of things you just do a lot of stuff with concrete. In some systems I'm seeing 'em paint everything black and put in 20-watt bulbs, but I don't think we're going to do that. Uh, no, you just use a lot of concrete and a lot of stuff that they can't destroy. You know, don't put in the porcelain and don't put in glass mirrors. Put in something else or no mirrors at all, and try (both talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 10 Bailey/ Or those metal mirrors that they use in (both talking) Moran/ Try to keep it down as much as we can. That's why the same architect and the same design would be good for all three facilities. These two, and then the one at, uh, Hickory Hill, if we can keep that down. And they won't be real...real big either. So it won't be a huge target for vandalism, at least we're hoping not. And neighborhood watch always helps too. Bailey/ Okay, thank you. Moran/ North Market Square has had a resurgence of families in that area, and what we'd like to do is similar to what we've done at Benton Hill is involve the neighborhood association and that...bring them in here and say, this is what...we see that this area needs to be redone. Talk to Horace Marie School and get the neighborhoods together and then see if we can't come up with a design for this that would, uh, please the neighborhood association. It seemed to work pretty good on...on Benton Hill bridge, uh, and the Benton Street project and we're hoping that we can use the same kind of approach with that, so that the neighborhood has buy-in and the school has buy-in. There's a lot of factions there that can help redesign that park. Bailey/ And will the School District literally have buy-in, in the way that would really make an impact? Moran/ We don't know yet. That's yet to be seen. Bailey/ Okay. Moran/ But we're going to ask! Bailey/ Yes, good! (several talking) They do use it as their playground. Wright/ The PTO is going to try and do some fundraising, although I think that'll be minimal. Bailey/ Yeah. Because they faced a huge challenge for a lot of their.. . Wright/ Yeah. Moran/ They do have a little bit of a playground there that they use, but they do expand into our park, a lot, to do that. Bailey/ Right. Every recess! Moran/ Yep! Wright/ There was planning that went on last year, starting about this time. Where did that end up, for North Market Square? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 Ciry Council Page 11 Moran/ I don't know that. Um, I've had a little bit of a hard time getting caught up with these, and so I can't answer that question, but I can let you know. Champion/ There are grants out there for school playgrounds too. And the School District is contributing some money now. Bailey/ Right. Wright/ Although this is not their playground. It is separate from the school playground. Champion/ I understand that. Bailey/ Well, and how it falls on their facilities plan too will impact their participation. But, yeah, I agree. We need to talk to them. Moran/ Uh, outdoor ice rink. This has been in the works for quite a while and it's, uh, still out there a little bit on the radar in FY13, uh, but the thought process was, is the ponds have been a great icon to Iowa City over the years, but they've always been controlled by the river. So whenever the river goes up or down that affects the pond level in City Park and it doesn't make for a very productive ice skating rink. Uh, especially with the way the Corps is playing with the level of the river all the time. So, what would...this project would be is...is some sort of an outdoor rink, uh, that would be floodable and then we could turn it around in the summer and either use a skate rink or skate park concept with it, or we could multi-use it a little bit, so that it just doesn't sit there in the summer, that it would have dual functions with it. Uh, we don't...we haven't really looked into it a lot. We've had a lot of requests for it, and we'd like to provide more, a better outdoor ice rink surface than what we can now, and so I think this would fit both means of...of skate park and ice rink at the same time. Bailey/ I know it's still very far out. Last year we talked about this and sort of the south of Burlington Street area, is that still the general concept or... Moran/ That's what was talked about, and we haven't revisited it since then. Davidson/ Yeah, the genesis of this project came out of the Near Southside Design Plan, where the notion at that time was that the intersection of Harrison...I believe it's Harrison, um, and uh, Clinton is basically controlled all four corners of it by public entities in that you'd have some kind of a civic plaza that in the, uh, maybe in the summer it could be used for the Farmer's Market. In the wintertime could be used as an ice skating rink. That was the general notion, but as Mike's pointed out, this project's still out in FY13. It's much less developed than most of the projects we bring you. It's just kind of a concept that's going to have to be more fully developed. Moran/ Yeah, the skate...this is an example of what would have to happen to skate. It wouldn't be as intensive as the skate park that we have now, where we have built-in features. We'd This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 12 have to buy features and then bring 'em in and set 'em down, uh, because it'd be a mobile type of thing and then we'd clear it off for the summer, or for the winter. Hayek/ Could you, with respect to the City Park ponds, I mean could you fill them and do essentially the same thing on...on those two spots? Moran/ You mean fill 'em in so that they aren't influenced by the river? That's an option we could do. And we almost considered that with all the sand we had down there after the flood. Just filling them in and starting all over again, but yeah, that certainly could be done. I don't know what the geographics of that would be, because there is actually a tube that goes from the bigger pond out to the river, so we'd have to look at getting that plugged up somehow, or make sure that that wouldn't affect it in any way. Hayek/ You'd probably have to pay relocation assistance to the frogs down there. (several talking) Yeah. Anyway, it's so far out it's not even worth spending time to rant. Champion/ Have we ever thought, I mean, we used to when my kids were little, which was a long time ago. We used to flood the parking lot at Mercer Park. Moran/ There was a system that...we had about three of those around town. We had one at Mercer Park, and then we had one at Court Hill Park, and then we had one at I...I'm not sure, but I think was Oak Hill that we had one of those at, and we abandoned those because, uh, we lost too much water and couldn't get 'em frozen. The drainage system cracked over the settling of time, but we still use the one at Mercer as a parking lot. It's on the other side of the old, uh, bathhouse. Yeah. And that would be along this concept, only little bit bigger. Those were fairly small. Champion/ Yeah, they were small, but they really...they were thin enough. They froze more quickly than the ponds. Moran/ Right. Davidson/ I'll cover this item. John Yapp is convalescing after some knee surgery so he asked me to speak to this. Uh, this is a project that has been moved out two years, uh, in this year's CIP. It was scheduled for FY10 last year. It's now been moved out to FY12, uh, it's to construct a pedestrian bridge that would link, uh, the Rocky Shore Drive area to the, uh, Peninsula Park area and the trail system there. I think we've got a couple slides here. There...shows you kind of a loop system that would be created, um, with this. We think it has a number of benefits, in terms of, um, obviously providing this looped trail system, providing means for pedestrians and bicyclists, and hopefully folks that would access the dog park, uh, to have an option available to them, other than driving their car into the park. I know there are some concerns with the Peninsula neighborhood about that. We've recently installed traffic calming features, you'll recall, on Foster Road because of the dog park traffic specifically. So, I think this would do a number of things. We haven't pinned down the exact location. We have probably at least three locations that are possible along Rocky Shore Drive, uh, each have implications on the pedestrian This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 Ciry Council Page 13 side. So that would have to be more fully developed as well, but uh, the significant difference from last year to this year is in the moving out, uh, two years to FY12. Bailey/ Why? I mean, we've moved this a lot of different places, a lot of different years. Why was it moved out? Davidson/ Uh, it's just a matter of being able to get a balanced CIP that had the bonding capacity in each year, uh, and certainly this is an item that can be discussed when we discuss the whole program. Lombardo/ And I think from my perspective, I pushed it out largely because the other projects, um, that were larger and...and would require...they're more some flood mitigation type projects and other projects we deemed to be a little bit more pressing...that, and with the work of...of, uh, you know, the prospects of elevating Dubuque Street and Park Road bridge, some of those larger scale projects (noise on mic) fair amount of effort (noise on mic) and so pushed it out to be able to accommodate some of those other projects. Bailey/ Which is understandable, um, have you...I'm sure you've talked about, I mean, in view of the flood and then one access to this neighborhood, creating this bridge in such a way that it can be used for emergency...I mean, is there a way to do that? Davidson/ We discussed the notion of it being a vehicular bridge, uh, either a standard vehicular bridge or for emergency type use, and that's something that we'll obviously have discussions when we go through the design development of it. I mean, that makes it a much more expensive project to do that, but it's certainly something you want to consider when we're evaluating it. Bailey/ Well, it also seems to address some of the challenges we saw last summer, so, just a thought. Moran/ This project was also the number one priority of the Parks and Recreation Commission... Bailey/ Well, which is what I got, I mean, last year, when it got moved closer. Matt? Moran/ Yeah. Hayek/ No, I would have raised the same question as, um, in light of last summer's floods, and the fact that we've got one point of ingress, egress. We're going to be shelling out dollars for a structure across the river, whether it makes sense to consider making that vehicular as well. Davidson/ (several talking) I think you're also aware though that as part of the flood mitigation strategies we are considering the improvement to Foster Road. It's just a small piece, relatively small piece of Foster Road and if that had been elevated, would have kept the whole Peninsula open and so that'll be part of our flood mitigation strategies that we'll address that issue specifically. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 14 Bailey/ Good. (mumbled) Champion/ No, I was wondering about the bridge (mumbled) how much of that road did flood, but you answered the question (mumbled) Moran/ We have a couple other, uh, we have another project in there that's sort of an ongoing project. What we'd like to do is, uh, down below where we've done the disc golf and the golf park in here in this area, we need to return that to its natural state as much as possible, planting wildflowers and...and prairie grasses and get that back in here, and it serves a secondary purpose - to protect the City wellheads that are down in this area, as well, and so we just need to be a little bit more intentional in getting that back into the natural area in there, uh, the disc golf people did a nice job going in and putting that course in, and did a lot of clearing and stuff for us, and so we just need to go back in there and make sure that it's got the same kind of things that it had, uh, before, uh.. . Bailey/ Can you give me a sense of why something like that would be...would cost $300,000? mean, what does that entail? I mean... Wright/ I was just thinking the same thing! (laughter) Bailey/ You know, I know that I don't know a thing about natural parks so I might as well learn. Moran/ Most of it is clearing and grubbing, getting rid of some of the old stuff that's in there to...to create some of that, and...in a park like this, we can't go in and do a prairie burn like we would somewhere else, just because of the trees and the largeness of the area. So, you pretty much have to go in and do that, uh, machine-made and clear some of that stuff out, so it's a little bit more labor intensive than like going to Waterworks Park and throwing some prairie grass seed around and hoping it comes up. Bailey/ Right. Moran/ And then doing a burn every year. So it's mainly because of the...of the denseness of the...of the wood and every, all the materials from basically Iowa Light and Power, the restaurant here in this picture, all the way around that big corner until we get over to the Elks' property. So it's a pretty vast, extensive area that we want to take care of and bring that back to a natural area. Bailey/ Okay. That helped, thanks! Other questions? Moran/ Uh, the Recreation Center is...is, uh, entering its 45th year of existence, and we've done some major renovations to it. One of the projects we're just now getting done is...is the roof project from the tornado two years ago, and we just finished the window project, which was, uh, really enhanced the building a lot, but we have three, uh, what I call little projects that we'd like to do to the Recreation Center. One of'em is this back, uh, east entrance to the Center, uh, we'd like to sort of tear that out and redo it and make it a more This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 15 viable ADA entrance. Uh, we have a small ramp over in here, but you can see the footings down below that we've had to patch and keep up, and that's mostly from cars backing into it and not being protected very well, and then in the east entrance doors, this metal piece here was put in as a... so it would be ADA accessible, cause when the building was built, we had a lot of ADA issues that we had to bring up to snuff when that came into play in the 90's. So we'd like to take this and redo this whole east entrance, uh, and put in a better ramp system, a better entryway for that. That's the first project. The second project is upstairs in the social hall, uh, over here you can see the way that they had this designed to break this room into two is you had to move these panels and these panels are only about three and a half or four foot wide, and there's about 21 of 'em, which means that we have to take those all out if we want to drop this and turn this into a multi-functional room, and we think there's a lot better ways we could take that out. I mean, that was designed 45 years ago. I know there's a lot easier ways to do that, and uh, make that easier for us to use and make it more multi-use. Right now it's so cumbersome we just don't do it, and I think it would give us some more options. And then this, uh, area in here in the pool that was built, people used to be able to go out into there and watch the pool, watch their kids swim and all that stuff. Well, because of the danger to that, and the liability, we just basically locked that off. So what we'd like to do is we'd like to take this glass front out and push it out, and make that part of the front lobby and then bring the glass to where that railing is, so that people could come upstairs to the front lobby. They can go all the way out so that they look like they're looking out over the pool and we don't have to worry about kids jumping off or throwing their...something over the edge and doing all those kinds of things that they want to do. So...it's a three- fold project to just sort of bring that up a little bit, uh, for that building. And then a separate project is just an elevator replacement, uh, similar to what Parking's going through, uh, I have an ongoing battle with the Johnson County Auditor's office, because they won't let us do voting on the upstairs booth, or the upstairs meeting rooms because they say the elevator's not ADA accessible, and we've battled back and forth because they're using one set of codes. I'm using another set of codes, and what I'd like to do...we have an exemption under the ADA guidelines to use that, and so what I'd like to do is just eliminate all that problem and redo our elevator so that it meets ADA accessibility and we don't have those issues any more. And I don't know whether that, uh, it's pushed out just a little bit into 11, and I don't know whether that's uh, going to involve the shell or just the car itself. Uh, river bank stabilization project is, uh, along the south Park Road bridge, uh, and it's all the river front, uh, to go in and make sure that it doesn't erode away, uh, any more than it already has. Try to protect what we have, and the reason we want to do that obviously is we've got the boat, uh, the University of Iowa boathouse project that's going on up there, and then depending on what happens with the Park Road bridge and that project, uh, we may have to look and wait until that project gets over before we come in and do something like this. We don't want to do that and then have 'em go in and have to redo the bridge and then go back and redo that as well. So, we're going to have to wait and see how that whole, uh, flood repair issue goes first before we do that, but we want to keep this on the books because it's important enough so we don't lose any more of our shoreline than we already have. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 16 Hayek/ If you assume more frequent flooding in that area, is there any element of this that is throwing good money after bad, in terms of repairing something with knowledge that it'll be destroyed within a matter of years again, or is it something we just need to do? Fosse/ Our observation along here is that, uh, erosion occurs during the annual spring flows, and not necessarily in association with the big floods like we just had. Uh, we did some erosion control after the flood in 93, and that weathered this year's flood pretty well. So it...we don't view that as throw away money there. Hayek/ Okay. Champion/ I think we've all learned we can't (mumbled) water. Bailey/ ...through a water plant and out the faucet. Moran/ Sand Lake Recreation Area is...is our biggest project and...and our newest project, uh, it's forecasted out to FY13, uh, we've been going after Vision Iowa monies, uh, as well as Regenia knows, and the Governor has been gracious enough to put some money back into that project for this year, uh, so we're going to make another presentation to the Vision Iowa Board on February 11 for, uh, monies with that. Uh, the Parks and Recreation Foundation is also been on a fund... fundraising effort over the last three or four months, and uh, we're currently at $51,000 of, uh, raised money, which I think is pretty good considering the economic climate and what's happening to the...to the area over the last, uh, year. So we've got a couple of efforts that are going on with that, uh, we've done just a little bit of development down in this corner, and that's only because there was an existing parking lot. Uh, we've cut down a little bit of the brush in there so that we have access to this little bit of the river, and we've already run some fishing derbies and done some stuff down there in the summer and the spring to introduce that to folks, and then as this develops and if the grant money comes forward with this, or at least some grant monies, we'll be able to uh, put some parts of this together, but it is going to be a project that's going to take us five or six years to get done, and then of course with that said, the other thing that...the issue is with this is that to go along with this is we're going to need maintenance...we're going to have a lot of maintenance requests with this, and it's going to be harder to maintain areas with fewer...fewer people and fewer resources. So it'll be a balancing act as to what we can develop and then what we can afford to keep up after we get it developed. Bailey/ Have we thought about, um, in our fundraising, and this is something that Vision Iowa has asked for a lot of CAT projects is developing an endowment for ongoing maintenance? Moran/ Yeah, I think that'll be their next effort. The Foundation has talked about developing one of those, after they did their initial fundraising, but they want to make sure that the project gets off the ground before they jump into something like that, and that it's actually going to be developed. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Bailey/ Okay. Page 17 Moran/ We've had several requests, and we have a lot of people that, uh, use our facilities for gym walkers, uh, similar to mall walkers at Sycamore and Old Capitol Mall and so what we'd like to do is...is go in and put a walking, running trail, uh, in Scanlon Gym, existing now that would go up above where this yellow stripe is, right there, and would surround the entire gym areas. It's similar to what the Fieldhouse has over at the University, so that people can come in and walk all the time. Right now when we have activities in the building, we have to kick 'em out and say, you know, you're going to have to come back later, you're going to have to do something different. So we thought it would be probably a good idea to encourage people to continue walking instead of chase 'em out of the building, so we'd like to provide 'em an opportunity to do that. Bailey/ How long would that be? How long will the trail, or the track, be? Moran/ It'd be just a little over a quarter of a mile. Wright/ About how wide do you think? Moran/ Well, it depends on...on what the roof will...roof will support. We haven't talked to the engineers on what...what that could be. Uh, but I would say at least two lanes, because I think we'd have to put something up that would be a minimum of two lanes. Scott Park development, uh, we've got a couple of issues that we'd like to look into with that. That's becoming more and more of a busier park, and with the addition of the new dog park that's going on in there, that we're going to open up this spring. We're going to see more and more, uh, with that. So what we'd like to do is along in here, uh, where the trail system comes out, uh, I've got another picture after this. The trail system will follow this tree line, and then connect up here so we can get the...some trail connections up into this newer area here, uh, so what ifll do is ifll serve two purposes. One to tie into the existing trail system here. This is the end of the current Court Hill, uh, Park trail, go across, and then follow this tree line in here, uh, the dog park, um, goes in right in here. It follows that boundary line in there. It's sort of like a long trailer, the fence is already up for that. We've got to go in and put some, uh, a waste disposal tank and a little bit of a park shelter in there, in order to get that open for this spring. Uh, then the rest of the Scott Park development, uh, what we'd like to do is go in and excavate some of the detention basin, uh, Rick's folks will probably take more of a charge in that, to get some of that cleaned up in here, and then further develop some of this parking area in here, so that we can accommodate more cars which we anticipate will happen, uh, with the onset of the dog park. Wilburn/ Rick, what do you have to do to take...you've taken the silt out, right, so it...this hunk stays in the functioning...storm water retention... Fosse/ That facility, as well as the one at Hickory Hill Park have been there for about 30 years now, and what we want to do is just make sure that we have that same ability to store flood water that we had...for what it was designed to do. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 18 Hayek/ Is that "J" shaped piece that you see to the south and east of...of the park slated for anything? Davidson/ That's in private ownership right now, I mean, occasionally the developer will talk about doing something. Nothing immediate. Hayek/ Okay. Bailey/ What's that area zoned? Davidson/ Pardon? Bailey/ So the park, but what's that area zoned over...is that all... Davidson/ Bob, do you recall is that...(unable to hear response) Bailey/ Oh, it's County? Davidson/ Bob says that that is in the County. (several responding) Moran/ And then there's the tree line, I'm sorry...there's the tree line where the trail will catch up to, uh, in there that I talked about earlier. Uh, Waterworks Park hospice memorial, uh, will be scheduled right along the trail system here. Here's the parking lot from the Butler Bridge project that we've started out with, and then this'll be a little bit different than the hospice memorial that's in Willow Creek right now, because the hospice memorial Willow Creek recognizes all the volunteers through the Hospice Association. This'll be more of a hospice memorial for persons that have actually passed on, uh, so it'll be something that, uh, will last for, uh, money for memorials and uh, hopefully that the hospice folks will maintain it as well, and we've got a good relationship with them at the Willow Creek facility, as well. So when they talked about a hospice memorial, this'll actually be a true hospice memorial where the other one in Willow Creek is...is mostly for volunteers in the hospice system. Bailey/ And they're going to contribute $25,000? Moran/ That's what they're slated to do right now, and they don't have any problem with that. They've sort of committed (both talking) Bailey/ Well, they do great fundraising. Maybe we could get a little bit more. Moran/ Yeah. That's it. Fosse/ Andy and Sam, you guys want to come on up. Public Safety: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 19 Rocca/ You all ready to go? Okay, we'll continue on with the, uh, excuse me...(several talking)...okay, now we'll continue on with the public safety segment of, uh, the presentation today. We'll start with Fire Station 4, and I know we've had, uh, recent dialogue about this and you've had ongoing discussion and debate about this, but uh, maybe just for the viewing public's sake, talk a little bit about this fire station, uh, located on, uh, North Dodge Street and Scott Boulevard area, uh, approximately a 10,000 square foot facility, single level fire station. Uh, three apparatus bays that are drive-through, uh, designed clearly for the future. There is a small, uh, basement portion designed under the facility, um, astate-of--the-art fire facility, and uh, we hope to have this constructed and opened in, uh, FY12 I believe it is. Questions? Lombardo/ I'll make a note that the dollar amount in the CIP doesn't reflect current pro~echons, um, if...the estimate for...based on current market is $2.6 million, um, with an alternate bid for snow melt, which we believe will be a couple hundred thousand. So, upward end of $2.8 million, um, certainly if...if through our budgetary discussions we...we agree on the mechanism and timing for that, we'll update the figures and...and do a little bit more refinement on how we (coughing, unable to hear) for...for that. Bailey/ Right, because you had some other ideas about...you and Kevin had some other ideas about the funding. So we'll talk about that...okay. Rocca/ Any questions about the facility? Hayek/ ...LEED (mumbled) Rocca/ Excuse me? Bailey/ LEED certified. Rocca/ Yes, it will be aLEED-certified facility. That is correct. (several talking) Any other questions about Fire Station 4? Champion/ Just tell me what kind of apparatus you will have in there. Rocca/ Well, what we will have, as you can kind of see, the apparatus bay here, uh, right now what we have designed for is a lead pumper, which would be this one, as well as a reserve pumper, which likely would be stored in the middle here, and then there's some expansion and room for auxiliary equipment, but as well, as place for aerial ladder. Champion/ Right! Rocca/ You know, because we are really confined to Central Station at this point. It gives us an option, uh, should something happen with Gilbert Street, a resurfacing or, uh, repaving project. It gives us some flexibility with apparatus. But right now it would be for two...two pumpers, front line and reserve, and some ancillary equipment. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 20 Champion/ If you decide to move the ladder truck, it's probably not (mumbled) but if you decide to move it...you would still have room for what you needed up there. Rocca/ Exactly. Champion/ Okay. Rocca/ The primary equipment coming out of there would be the pumper. It would be staffed with three persons, three personnel. Hayek/ This maybe more a question of Public Works, but to what extent can we expect capital expenses in...on top of this, as they relate to the roads or traffic control measures, things like that. Davidson/ I think the road's in pretty good shapeup here, Matt, and Rick and Ron, jump in if need be, um, there was extensive grading and earth work done in conjunction with the Dodge Street project, um, and in terms of turning lanes and that sort of thing. Now, the project that's looming out there, um, that at some point we're going to need to deal with, but not this year, is, uh, going to four lanes for the portion of Scott Boulevard between Dodge Street and First Avenue. Um, during peak periods, uh, there's a necessity for that capacity already. There was a very significant political issue when that road was constructed and it was just not possible at that time. But, that's the only thing that's really looming in terms of a great need, Matt, that is out there in the future, but not immediately. Hayek/ Okay. Rocca/ From a traffic control standpoint, there will be the need to capture any signaling devices out there, as pointed out, significant traffic at rush-hour times, and so we'll have to clear the intersection with some sort of traffic control device that would allow for a green light and allow fire apparatus either go north or south, or whatever the response (both talking) Davidson/ And...and we do that...that's nothing that's terribly exotic. Andy's exactly right. We'll have to do that. We do that out here at Gilbert and, uh, Washington Street. We also do it at First Avenue and Lower Muscatine Road. Hayek/ But we would use existing equipment, uh, for that purpose... Davidson/ Well, no, it's something that has to be added to the signal system, but it's just something that will be part of the station going in here. Hayek/ Right. I'm just trying to get a sense of what capital costs... Bailey/ How this escalates? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 21 Hayek/ What's that? Bailey/ How this... Hayek/ ...yeah, how it escalates. Davidson/ Yeah, frequently that can be done in-house, with in-house staff, and...and maybe some very moderate capital expense. Hayek/ Okay. Bailey/ And you mentioned a basement, as if that's, I mean, what's the significant of have...it having a basement? Is that.. . Rocca/ Well, virtually all of our existing facilities have been very tight on storage and (both talking) Bailey/ Okay, the storage aspect. Rocca/ ...and so this would be, uh, built much like Fire Station 2 with an eye to the future, with an area for an elevator pit, uh, should we decide to occupy the lower level for additional officers or meeting space, uh, but current would be designed for storage. Bailey/ Okay, thank you. O'Donnell/ So we don't have any concern, Andy, about a fire call during a peak period up there? Traffic period...8:00 in the morning... Rocca/ Well, we certainly do. O'Donnell/ Well, but I mean, but we can answer that by controlling traffic signals and so forth? Rocca/ We do it currently very well at First Avenue and Lower Muscatine, which with the P&G traffic, the Kirkwood Community College traffic, the mall traffic, uh, what we have in place there seems to be adequate, and I'm sure that we can design and engineer a... an appropriate system that will do the same in the northeast. O'Donnell/ Okay. I've had that question several times. Hayek/ Yeah, me too. There are a lot ofself-styled traffic experts out there. Bailey/ Everybody's a traffic expert when they're behind the wheel. Hayek/ Convinced that the...engines will be stuck for 10 or 15 minutes. Rocca/ Other questions related to Station 4? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 22 Champion/ Looks great! Rocca/ Thank you. All right. We'll move on, and uh, our fire apparatus, as you know, we do have a fire apparatus replacement schedule, and we retooled it about...I think it was five maybe seven years ago. Uh, front line fire pumpers or the engines run, uh, seven years front line and approximately seven years reserve. We try to turn them over in a 14-year period, due to the mileage they get on them, uh, I think in years past we were seeing reserve engines, uh, or engines going to reserve status with nearly 90,000 miles on them and they are virtually wore out, and we were expecting another five or maybe eight years out of them, and so now they're hitting reserve with much less mileage on them, uh the seven and seven seems to be working very well. Uh, the apparatus on top here is engine 4. It's a 1995 , um, I can't tell you the mileage on it, but uh, that is the one slated to be replaced, and then um, this one, Rescue 1, the lower one here, uh, is a little more unique. It's the only heavy rescue, uh, that Iowa City has and it's running...well, since we're running approximately 60% of our calls, fire and EMS, or EMS and rescue, um, this one, uh, is starting to show some wear and tear. It's used for all kinds of technical rescue, uh, whether it be some confined space, uh, trench, water, heavy industrial rescue, and uh, it's about ten years old now, and we actually moved it up, I think, two years ago in the schedule, just because we're starting to notice some additional wear and tear on it. So, it is Rescue 1. It doesn't carry any water. It doesn't have a fire pump. It's strictly dedicated to technical rescue. And again, all called out in a fire apparatus replacement schedule. Questions? Chief... Champion/ Can we just go back to this Rescue 1 truck again. Rocca/ Yes. Champion/ How often is that used? Do we have any idea? Rocca/ You know, we saw an increase of 3% of our calls over the last year, we ran about 4,200 calls, and we're running probably on the average of 12 calls a year, or 12 calls a day, and then that truck would probably run virtually half of those. So probably six times in a day. Now that can, you know, be plus or minus, but very rough and round numbers. Champion/ Some more than you might think. Rocca/ Anything else? Thank you. (several talking) Hargadine/ Evidence storage - uh, presently we are in the basement of the old Wilson Building, which is, um, deteriorating hourly as we speak, um, and we have, um, a preliminary plans to relocate on a temporary basis in the basement of the, uh, Iowa City water treatment facility. Any questions? Bailey/ Oh yeah! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 23 Champion/ (mumbled) the new water treatment facility? Hargadine/ In the basement. Yes. Bailey/ Um, what's your current square foot, how much do you have...how many square feet? Hargadine/ We have about 7,000 square feet now. Bailey/ Okay. Hargadine/ Uh, and we're...we're at capacity, uh, as well as, um, we're already having storage issues with...with, uh, water, humidity, um, rodents, and then the deterioration of the building. Bailey/ And we don't think this temporary location at the, uh, water treatment plant...it's temporary because...it's just not a good... Lombardo/ (mumbled) go ahead, Chief (mumbled) Hargadine/ Um, both. It's...it doesn't meet our long term needs, but it also doesn't meet the water treatment's, uh, long term needs. I mean, they have, um, they've been gracious to host us for, uh, a period of whether it's five, ten years, we haven't landed on those figures yet. But, um, I don't think it's within their long term plans either to have us out there. Lombardo/ I think if the question is, um, why are we considering interim options, is...is one of timeliness. They need to get that stuff out of there very quickly because of the deterioration of...of evidence. Uh, by interim we mean about five years, uh, plus or minus, uh, and...and the reason it's not in as a permanent solution is because of site selection, uh, where to locate it, and then also cost, um, and we don't think we can act quickly enough to stem some of the deterioration that...that they're realizing. So, this gives us a good five years to...to get them high and dry, get the evidence secured, give them room to expand based on...on uh, the accumulation of evidence that they've seen, but then gives us time to more properly plan for a more permanent solution. Bailey/ So why are we programming something in FY10? What's this expense, if we...if we're, we've got a temporary location potentially for five years. Lombardo/ There's some construction, uh, thafll have to... Bailey/ Is this the water.. . Lombardo/ ...some air handling, um.. . Bailey/ Is this the temp location then? Lombardo/ Yeah (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 24 Bailey/ For 871,000 temp? Lombardo/ We...that's actually high based on a preliminary projection we got. They're going back to the drawing board. We expect that to be considerably less, um, then that number, uh, there were some other improvements that were submitted, uh, as part of the cost proposal that aren't relative to evidence storage that we did not learn until we were well into the process. So that's...that's kind of a placeholder, but we do expect that to be considerably less than that. Bailey/ Okay. So when I read this description...is the construction...this is actually the construction of the temporary location. It won't...it will be the 12,000 square feet that you think you need. Hargadine/ Correct. Bailey/ Okay. And then, when we look for a permanent location, this can be combined with one of our other public buildings, correct? Hargadine/ Yes. Bailey/ And have we, why...okay, why aren't we putting it in Fire Station 4? And expanding their small basement to something, I mean, you guys work well together. So, that would make sense. Hargadine/ Um, long term there's no reason why we couldn't talk about those things. Um... Rocca/ Currently the space, uh, and I don't recall the square footage, but it's significantly smaller.. . Bailey/ Right. Rocca/ ...than the square footage that would be required for any long-term storage. Bailey/ You said 10,000 right? (both talking) Yeah. Rocca/ The basement, I don't think it's 500 square foot. Bailey/ You, yeah, you wouldn't have room to make the basement that large. Lombardo/ I think, you know, it's something we can consider bidding as an alternate on, uh, Fire Station 4 and...and see how the costs shake out. I...you know, it's not something we've contemplated thus far. Hayek/ This facility would...would, uh, after say five years then just revert to water usage? Water facility usage? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 25 Lombardo/ They have needs for that long-term and, um, at that point, you know, any... any walls that we put in, temporary walls, would be deconstructed and they would have access to that again, and it's plus or minus, you know, they don't have a firm plan for five years doing something specific that I'm aware of, do they, Rick? Hayek/ And...but, I don't know what goes into an evidence storage facility, but you know, um, if it's, I think it's one thing to go ahead and build something like this out that can be vacated and taken over with a minimum expense by another department in five years. I think it's another thing to sink a lot of money into it and then lose a portion of its value in only five years because it's...their uses are incompatible or something like that. Lombardo/ Yeah. The challenge really is timing, uh, I'll be candid, you know, this situation is dire, in the existing facility, and...and building something or finding another independent standalone building to...to occupy and renovate it just...a, it's going to be more costly, and then b, it just...the time horizon really is a problem. We need to get them...these are improvements that we can do quickly and get them in there. Um, it's unfortunate that...that the building is deteriorating quickly as it has and we haven't done anything to date with it. We need, we really need to get this solution in place and we've looked at other options, uh, we looked quickly at what's available for lease for...or purchase, and we felt that this was really the best interim solution, uh, because of the timeliness issues. Champion/ What costs that much money? Don't you... Lombardo/ Again, that $800,000 is...is, includes improvements that we do not envision happening. Um, there was some office space...there was some, um, bathroom space that...that, those costs were programmed in that we don't expect to build. I've asked them to go back and pull out just the bare costs for providing a space that...that Chief needs, and I'm told that they will be significantly less than the number you see there. Bailey/ So, given that this will be a need, that we'll have to find a space within the next five years, it seems to me, and I don't know what the possibility is, but as we look at building, other buildings or construction, it seems like combining it with another public building makes a lot of sense. I know we looked at that for the Communication Center and that became very challenging, and...but I thought that was a good idea. Um, I think we just keep, need to keep looking for other options, because you don't need a standalone space. Hargadine/ Uh, best case scenario is you wrap a police department around it. Champion/ Uh-huh. (several commenting) Bailey/ You're not getting a new police department (laughter) now! I don't think so! (laughter) Nicely done, but... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 26 Lombardo/ The other aspect to the water treatment plant that (coughing, unable to hear) is...is the security that's in place out there, um, which we would have to replicate or find another security option in a standalone building. Bailey/ Right. We're talking about the security. We're not talking about museum quality air quality. We're just talking about dry...high, dry, secure...heated... Hargadine/ Correct. Bailey/ Okay. And then how long do you have to keep evidence, until the trial is, I mean... Hargadine/ In, um, in murder and rape cases now we're keeping it indefinitely. Bailey/ Okay. So there will be...okay. So it's not something that turns over. Champion/ And do you have access to recent cases? Closer by than the water company? Hargadine/ Yes. We have our own...we still store evidence down in the basement of this building. It's...it's farmed out all over, but we would put the most remote...the oldest stuff furthest back and...and um, we...uh, ideally if there was a place that you could drive in and pull garage door down so that, you know, you have limited access to the public. Any more questions about evidence? Radio system upgrade and migration - as you're aware, we're in the process of the Joint Communication Center. It's, uh, ground is broken and it's, um, significant strides are underway for that project. We still have our existing system that we're operating off of now, and we will need to maintain this system for, uh, it's anticipated at least 12 to 24 months, after the new Joint Communication system is up and running for non-public safety users that are on the system now. Champion/ What does that mean? Hargadine/ Um, presently Public Works utilizes our radio system. The, uh, Transit, um, Cambus, um, all of those, uh, the system that they're building now for the new radio, it'll have the capability of it, but they won't come over to the new system at the same time Public Safety will. Davidson/ Did you have a question, Connie? And that, by the way, that's been a decision of the Joint Communication Center Policy Board -let's get the emergency response capabilities up and running, smoothly, and then we'll consider the other users. Hayek/ None of these factors have changed over the last 12 months. This is what we talked about last year? Hargadine/ And the intent is to give those users at least one budget cycle, if not two budget cycles, time to...to know what their costs are going to be on the new system. Hayek/ Thanks. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Bailey/ Should we take a little break? Fosse/ I was going to suggest that. Bailey/ Thank you! (BREAD Streets Bridges Traffic En ing eerin~ and Public Utilities: Bailey/ Okay, are we ready to go? Great! Page 27 Fosse/ Ron'll take us through the majority of the next section. So with that I'll turn it over to Ron. Knoche/ The first project in the Streets division is the 420th Street improvements. This is the same project that we had on the agenda for last year. Um, this includes the improvements at 420th Street from Highway 6 to Taft Avenue, um, it also includes the sewer, um, to be placed from the main along Snider Creek up into the area where the (noise on mic) property for the industrial park. It doesn't include the sewer in the industrial park, just up to the property adjacent to that. Um, this one, we are going to pursue a RISE grant on, uh, we're not certain what the status of the RISE grants, uh, in the State budget is going to be, but uh, we will be pursuing a RISE grant from the Department of Transportation for this, for the road portion. The American Legion Road project is, uh, improvements to urban section of American Legion Road from Scott Boulevard to Taft Avenue. Uh, this one is in the out years, uh, based on getting a developer contributions, um, as the, as those areas develop along that roadway. Davidson/ We do have one already from the Windsor West development and I believe we're going to revise this in the final version to include that. It's about $27,000 that we have so far and as...as additional parcels come in on either side of the road, then we'll attempt to get additional exactions to help fund this project. Correia/ Can we go back...can we ask questions as we go? Bailey/ Yes. I'm sorry. I should have told you that. Correia/ That's okay. Can we just go back to the first one? Knoche/ Sure. Correia/ So...this, we're starting this project this fiscal year? (several talking) And so, the remaining funding you have under State grants. What happens if...when would we know if we got those (mumbled), what happens if we wouldn't get those? Davidson/ The RISE program, Amy, is designed to have immediate, fairly, well, for the State, immediate response within like a 30-day cycle they can let us know, um, they take it up This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 28 at the next, once we have a complete application, they take it up at the next DOT meeting. Um, we're hopeful, as Ron said like with all State programs there's some...some notion of things being up in the air, depending on what they ultimately decide on priorities, but we're hopeful that if for some reason the RISE program was to get supplanted, that it would get supplanted with another grant program that we could access for this, but...but we intend for a quick turnaround and to get this going in FY10. Bailey/ Have we checked, um, what we think the future of the RISE grant, I mean, if there are any concerns? Davidson/ Present... at the present time the program's in place, and that's why we're applying. Bailey/ And there are no concerns? Davidson/ There are concerns. Bailey/ There are concerns. Correia/ Right. So I, when you say get this going in 10, so we're, if there's dollars in there in fiscal year 09, so we're planning to start at the end of the fiscal...fiscal year? When are...when are we doing this work? Davidson/ JCCOG's doing the application right now. Correia/ No, not the application, just when is the work starting on this project? Knoche/ The current...the current schedule that we have right now, we'll be bringing it to you, uh, contract for the final design of 420th Street at the next Council meeting, hopefully, if we negotiate that. Um, we would be looking at sewer work starting this fall, so Octo...September, October of this year we would start doing the construction of the sewer, and hopefully the road work would be right there with it. Um, and then um, then be able to continue that work in the spring of next year. Correia/ So we're using fiscal year 9 dollars, this...so... Lombardo/ We're using 09 dollars to get the project started, and we'll know long before fiscal 10 comes in, as to whether or not the RISE grant is going to be coming our way. Based on current information, I have no reason to expect it not to be, um, if...if the application's denied, then certainly we've got to come up with another strategy, um, because the expectation -we're marketing this for spring of 2010 occupancy, and uh, we're getting a lot of interest from wind energy, um, companies. So, um, you know, we haven't even closed on the property yet (laughter) and that's scheduled for, uh, very soon, um, you know, the project is planned to move forward and...and based on what we know right now, I think the funding will be there, but um, plan B is in the works, um, should it not. Champion/ We need to get this done. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 29 Correia/ Right, I was going to say I think this is a high priority. So if we think we're not going to get, or if we know quickly we're not getting the State money, then I mean, do we prioritize what we have planned and have something if we need to fund it otherwise...other ways? Bailey/ I think this is a priority of Council. Correia/ Yeah, that's what I mean! Bailey/ So I think that we will hear if...if we don't get the funding and we will come up with another plan, but as we move through these CIP projects, I mean, that's...this one is our priority. Our top priority. Knoche/ I spoke with John before he left, and uh, they were planning on having the application for, on the Council agenda, for the next Council meeting. So, that...the RISE application will be on the next agenda. Correia/ Oh, great! Davidson/ And when that goes to the DOT Commission, we maybe contacting some of the seven of you, or perhaps all seven of you, to maybe make some calls, uh, or send a letter. It is a discretionary program and it is a highly politicized program at the State level. Bailey/ We should have some pretty good contacts with the Commission. So, that'll help. Correia/ Okay, thank you. Knoche/ Are there any other questions on the American Legion Road project? The Burlington Street pedestrian bridge rehabilitation -this is a joint project with the University and the DOT, and obviously Iowa City. It's a 50% DOT and 25% City and 25% University, um, we're in the process of... of coming up with a plan on this. The current plan, um, as you can see, the bridge is in fairly tough shape. The current plan would be to, um, replace all the bridge deck, completely remove the bridge deck and replace it, um, both for the east- west piece and then also the north-south piece that goes to the Law Building. Um, we are meeting tomorrow with the DOT and the University to discuss it further, but that would be the...the current plan on that project. This one would start construction this spring, and would be done before the fall semester, uh, with the University. Bailey/ Is this bridge ADA compliant with its grade? Knoche/ It is not ADA compliant. Bailey/ Will this rehab make it compliant? Knoche/ It will not, uh... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 30 Bailey/ Okay. Knoche/ With it being a maintenance project, which is what it's been classified as, it...it doesn't have to be brought up to the current ADA standards. Bailey/ Okay. Thank you. Correia/ What would it take for it to be brought up to ADA? Knoche/Abridge similar to what's near the VA Hospital on Highway 6, I mean, ifd be a $2 million project to bring it completely up to...yeah, that crosses Highway 6 there at the parking structure...from the new Public Health Building. (several talking) Because of the grade requirements on it, you know, the slope requirements on it, yeah, so that the curly-Q wouldn't be able to be ADA compliant. Correia/ Hmm...is the Iowa Avenue one, at Iowa Avenue (mumbled) Knoche/ No. It's...yep, correct, they were built in the same generation. First Avenue, uh, railroad crossing improvement -this is one that we're...we've been trying to work with the DOT to get them to classify the project for us and we're struggling there a little bit, uh, you know, this is one we've been trying to get an earmark for and...and uh, it hasn't been working out for us, uh, we are working to final design on this. We're going to work with the DOT and try to get them to classify the project so that we know what requirements we have, both you know, as far as getting environmental clearance, um, and...and working forward. Uh, what you see in the budget is, uh, the...the $192,000 would finish the consultant agreement. The $1.5 million would, with the DOT's blessing, start the process for buying the right-of--way for this project. Um, and then as you see in the out years, we would be looking at going, um, and applying for STP funds through JCCOG, um, to...to supplement the construction, um, funds for this project. So we'd be looking more to...looking more locally to fund this project, versus trying to go the earmark route on this one. Correia/ And is this...would this be classified as being shovel ready? Knoche/ It is not. Bailey/ We talked about it this morning. Correia/ (several talking) could it be shovel ready? Knoche/ It's going to be a long time. The...the way, I just had an email yesterday on what the DOT's going to consider shovel ready projects. Uh, what they're considering shovel ready is basically ready to be able to be bid today. Yeah, so all the right-of--way has to be purchased, all the environmental concurrence (both talking) all that stuff has to be out of the way, and be ready to go before they'll consider it shovel ready. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 31 Bailey/ One of the...do you want to talk about your projects of substance rather than projects of speed? That approach, or... Fosse/ Uh, we will have a section on the economic stimulus projects later. Bailey/ Then we can talk about it then. Fosse/ Yeah, but I did want to share with you that...that in our conversations with the railroad, they've said that business is good and they expect that the traffic on this stretch of line will...will increase substantially in the next couple of years. Correia/ It already feels like it's increased! Either it has, or I just travel on that side of town more than (several talking) Davidson/ No, it has. It's basically the ethanol plants, um.. . Bailey/ Right. Davidson/ ...Summit Street bridge the other night and there was a unit train, the unit ethanol train. You never used to see those through here, and they're indicating it could be eventually Rick's referring to as many as three a day (mumbled) so you know bottom line is, I can't remember what they're...how far out they're projection went, but they indicated that there was going to be a tripling in the amount of traffic through here. Bailey/ Really! Correia/ Well, so is there...I feel like maybe this isn't for here, but it feels like there is some rule somewhere that says a train can't be crossing at that crossing, intersection, around school letting...going in time or whatever? What...it seems like there should be, because it's, I mean, a, it's dangerous, and you know... Lombardo/ We discussed at length the...the uh (several talking) we discussed at length the importance of this project and...and really, um, made the decision that holding out for direct funds to fund this is just, you know, not...not going to work. Um, the timing of it, we need to get this done and so that's the plan before you is roll up our sleeves and let's just get it done with the conventional... Bailey/ Absolutely! Lombardo/ ...approach, and...and I think it's a good one. It's, it needs to get done. Bailey/ Is this the track that the Amtrak would be on, as well? (several responding) So, well, maybe we can explore angles there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 32 Davidson/ The way the rules...the way the rules read for Amtrak service is that the freight trains need to get out of the way of the passenger train. It doesn't always happen that way, but that's the way it's supposed to work, for Amtrak. Amtrak exclusively has that right throughout the country. Bailey/ Right. And so, but as we are also promoting that project and working with, I mean, perhaps there's an angle there, because it's going to create more traffic. Davidson/ To address Amy's issue, you know, the bottom line is, the railroad is no different than any other private business. They have a business to run, and right or wrong, that's how they run their operation. It just happens that their business is set on top of the rest of the world that we also live in and so it causes a lot of disruptions. This is the answer. This grade separation project is the answer to this particular intersection. Correia/ And is it...do we have this spread out this, through 11 because there's no way we can get it done in 10? Just the amount of (mumbled) Knoche/ The next...the next funding cycle for, um, the STP funds won't fall until next fall. So that sets the (both talking) Correia/ ...for fiscal year l l...okay. Fosse/ Our proceeding with the design and property and easement acquisition for this project and it postures us for other funding sources, and we get more towards that shovel ready (mumbled) Lombardo/ And just working through the easements and stuff is going to take time, all that acquisition, so it, you know, we'll end up phasing it regardless of whether we try to fund it in 2010 or not. Correia/ That was my question. Bailey/ And even though we are sort of "giving up" on the earmark concept and that sort of thing, I don't think it hurts for our representatives to continue to hear about the need for this project, and as funding miraculously becomes available as things improve, um, perhaps, I mean, I don't think it's bad to keep it on their radar screen. It's just not...it's been anon-starter, so we need to look for other ways to do it. Knoche/ Gilbert Street streetscape is a project that was...has kind of been a casualty of the flood. Um, it's one that we were going to move forward with this last summer and...and we didn't get things done on it. So, uh, it's in for next year, uh, as we know the piece from Burlington down to, uh, the Bowery-Prentiss area is...is the area that we're looking at, um, doing the streetscaping on, um, obviously the piece in front of the Mansion. This is one that we didn't have this picture last year because the brick veneer wasn't done on...on the limestone wall yet, but uh, that has been completed. So we'd be kind of filling in the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 33 gap between the project that we did at, uh, the intersection and also Burlington Street, uh, with some streetscaping. Bailey/ And trees along there have to be on private property. Are we going to get some trees along there? It's the bleakest, I mean, we changed it so much. It's so bleak. Knoche/ With the work that we did at the intersection.. . Bailey/ Right. Knoche/ ...the intent was that the private owners would be doing some landscaping of their own. Um, that was our understanding that we had with the Mansion. Uh, we are going to look through the streetscaping at trying to bring some type of plantings into the right-of--way, if we can, if there's actually room, you know, from that sidewalk to the back of curb. Bailey/ But the Mansion was going to put some trees in; they just haven't? Knoche/ That was our understanding (mumbled) the design. (several talking) Wright/ ...what do the plans consist of? Knoche/ That's something we'll have to work through, um, on the design. The...with this corridor, there is overhead power along here, so we'd have to look at some more understory versus the overstory trees. Um, depending on which side of the road we were on. Wright/ The existing trees will be left in place or.. . Knoche/ We'll work with Terry Robinson and if the trees are healthy trees, they would be left in place. Fosse/ One of the challenges for us here is that corridor's so cramped and...and what you can't see is all the stuff below ground, that resides between the back of the curb and the edge of the right-of--way line. It compounds the...the question. Knoche/ I-80 aesthetic improvements, this is a project that we, uh, hired a consultant, uh, Iowa City and Coralville hired a consultant to kind of put some preliminary stuff together. Uh, preliminary plans, uh, we've worked with them and we'll be pursuing right grants...or, not right grants, living road trust fund grants, um, to...to help do some landscaping within the corridor, as the I-80 project gets completed. Um, be both some plantings, um, in the interchange areas along the corridor itself, and then we're also, uh, we're looking at some aesthetic treatments of the bridges, um, the overpasses that we have, uh, in the corridor. Correia/ Landscaping that you would see interstate 80? Or on the edge of it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 34 Knoche/ It would be...along the corridor, it would be from interstate 80, um, when we get to the interchange it would both from the...the crossroads and then also on the off-ramps or on- ramps. Correia/ And so we have this (mumbled) Knoche/ Yes. Correia/ And why doesn't State (mumbled) why do we want to do it? Fosse/ We are pursuing a State grant for that. Yeah. (several commenting) Wright/ I'm having trouble hearing you, Amy. Correia/ I'm sorry. I was just wondering why we paid for that. Bailey/ We can't get them to pay for... Correia/ It's not our road, right? Davidson/ (mumbled) localities should have... Correia/ Okay, and so why do we want to do it then? Davidson/ The center median goes away, which is really going to decrease the amount of green that's there along the corridor, and the desire has been to try and replicate that outside of the.. . Correia/ Okay. Well, then what about like the DNR? Don't they do stuff like wildflower (mumbled) Davidson/ Actually DOT has programs specifically for this sort of thing, um, roadside maintenance and that, uh, plantings and that sort of thing. And they really have some nice programs. It's just a matter of (mumbled) Correia/ Okay, cause it doesn't say anything about State grants here. It says about, we would be using our road use tax, which you know, we've talked in other meetings about how that's decreasing. I'm just wondering with other kind of in-city limits...I guess that's in the city limits, but whatever, um, because the aesthetics are really for people passing through, where other improvements to our road system is for, you know, all of us that live here and interact...with our environment on a daily basis. Bailey/ Well, one of the things that you have to think about is as....as "people pass through" is providing that sense of place, and...and you know, that might be considered frosting, but I think people should get a sense of where they are, and in a different.. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 35 Correia/ I guess when I pass through that corridor though, I mean, it's very woody, you see the river, I mean, it doesn't seem like it's...ugly, urban aesthetics, I mean (both talking) Bailey/ ...once the medians gone it's going to be a lot of concrete, or asphalt or whatever (mumbled) Davidson/ When you look at the section, Amy, between 1st Avenue Coralville and...and through (mumbled) Correia/ Right, but that's Coralville. Davidson/ Well, the section will look similar, after two years from now, to Iowa City's section. We are, I will tell you, Rick and I are working with the Public Art Committee to develop a project along I80 that might provide what the Mayor was referring to, sort of an iconic experience as you (mumbled) corridor. Ultimately, that'll come to you for decision making. Correia/ Right. Knoche/ And you're correct, what's not reflected in here is the grant program that we'll be pursuing, um, and I'll double check the numbers, but currently it's $100,000 per community per year you're eligible to get funding for. So that's something that we'll have to get included in here, as far as the potential funding side of things. The next project is the Lower Muscatine project. This is one that we're in design of currently, um, this one we are actually designing in-house. Sarah Oakerlun's doing the design for us. Um, this is one, it's become a very complex project with, uh, the people that are in the corridor, with MidAmerican and Kirkwood and uh, Oral-B and Sycamore Mall. So this is one that we're looking at, uh, being able to get bid this fall, and uh, moving forward with construction next year, and...and get this one done. Bailey/ And, are any of those organizations sharing in the cost of the project? I mean, Kirkwood has a lot to gain. Lombardo/ We're in negotiations. Knoche/ We're in negotiations, yes. Bailey/ Good, because it backs up to the curve...to get into their parking lot, so... Wright/ ...anticipated in the contributions shown there? Knoche/ That's correct. Bailey/ Okay. Just Kirkwood or MidAm and Oral-B, as well? Knoche/ Just Kirkwood is...is who we've started negotiations with currently. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 36 Bailey/ Okay. Knoche/ McCollister Boulevard project -this is, this is a project obviously that's under construction, uh, currently. Um, we have, uh, we had a little bit of a delay this summer with the floods, uh, they have been able to get in. Uh, they have the abutments. Uh, both the piers are built now in the river, and they have to build one pier cap and they hopefully will be able to start setting the beams for the bridge this winter yet, and (mumbled) done for us, uh, next...next summer. We'll probably...so we'd be looking at, uh, October of opening the road currently is the schedule. (several commenting) Uh, Mormon Trek left turn lanes, uh, this is a project, uh, we'd be looking at from Melrose to Abbey Lane, um, looking at left turn lanes, uh, throughout the corridor. Not certain what, uh, the actual design would look like yet, but it would, um, definitely help with this, where we have signalized intersections now, um, when we added the signal at the Cameron Way and the Walden Square, we did see an increase in some traffic accidents there, some collision history. I think that's kind of leveled out now and we're not...what happens is, when you, yeah, the...you go from kind of the sideswipes to the rear-end collisions when you do introduce those signals in there and (mumbled) in this corridor. Uh, this project does hinge on being able to get some STP funds to be able to fund the project. Fosse/ Jeff, did you want to comment where that one ranks and the (mumbled) history in town? Davidson/ Uh, yeah, when we did...when JCCOG did the traffic crash analysis, which I think's been at least three years ago now. At that time, uh, as Ron alluded to, it was the highest crash corridor, uh, in Iowa City, crash-related corridor, and this project was designed to specifically address that, uh, as Ron mentioned it's primarily the failure to yield, uh, a yielding left-turning vehicle being rear-ended. That was the predominant crash type and the, obviously, the turn lanes will get those turners out of the traffic stream and that's what we're trying to do in this corridor. Bailey/ So, we have room for that? Davidson/ No, not within the existing right-of--way. Bailey/ So...that corridor will change quite a bit in its look. Fosse/ Yeah. What you end up getting into is a situation similar to the one we're just talking about along the Gilbert Street corridor, and we...where you have more needs than you have right-of--way, and it gets tough to meet all those needs...without acquiring additional right-of--way. Park Road bridge, uh, this...this is one that's been in the program for a few years, uh, as both a bridge maintenance project and also a capacity improvement, uh for the intersection and then also extending a third lane along Park Road, up to the intersection with Riverside Drive, to get, uh, better event capacity in front of Hancher Auditorium and lower City Park there. Uh, after our experience with the flood last summer, uh, we really need to ask ourselves is if that money might be better spend contributing to a new bridge, rather than working on the old bridge there, uh, what This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 37 you see in the picture here is the bridge flooded and these boil-ups that you see there are where we had drilled the holes in the deck to remove the pressure from between the beams, uh, so that the buoyant portions wouldn't, uh, lift that bridge off its piers. They worked very well. Um, so we'll talk later in the program about combining this with the, uh, Dubuque Street elevation project, um but what we want to do is...is keep this amount of money in our budget, so that as we move forward, hopefully with some federal funding sources, we'll have some local funds that we can match and contribute to this, as well. Bailey/ And the third lane improvement along here...we would lose park? Fosse/ It would probably be split between University and park. Bailey/ They're very interested in this project. Why don't we do... Fosse/ Yes they are! Bailey/ ...can we do more from them? (several talking) Fosse/ They've talked that they're interested. Bailey/ But I want more of their land. I'd want less of our park and more of their land. (several talking) Lombardo/ I think what will drive that is really the...the approach and the best elevation and coming off of Dubuque and how to site that bridge, um... Fosse/ Yeah, and also where we tie in at the...at the west end of the project, we'll be tying in... Bailey/ And their contribution, I'm not over (mumbled) Lombardo/ ...preliminary stages of (mumbled) Fosse/Next we have a few projects that are related to the Public Works facility, and what I wanted to begin with is just a little overview of that and...the Public Works facility is in transition now from our, the old location on the corners of Highways 1 and 6 there by Riverside Drive to the new location down on South Gilbert Street, and we're about ten years into that transition already, um, the Public Works facility is not the highest and best use of that intersection location. There's a lot of commercial interest there and ifll be good to get that back in the tax rolls. It's just a matter of moving things over, and we've been moving them as the budget has allowed, uh, with one of our goals not to make significant reinvestments in the old site, that would be throwaway money when we make the transition to the new one, and uh, salt storage facility is a recent example, and you'll see that on our...on our list of projects completed this year. Uh, couple projects that are in the program is the vehicle wash system and wash rack. Uh, when you're dealing with big vehicles, you've got to keep 'em cleaned up. Otherwise they...they just wear out This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 38 faster. They rust out faster, and you got to clean 'em up at the end of the day, and you need the ability to get from above and...and clean those out. Our existing facility is...is kind of tough to use in cold weather, uh, we do have a building that...that uh, is...is got some wash facilities in it, but it doesn't have the capacity that we need there. Uh, another problem that we're concerned with is...is just the water quality of the run-off from these types of things. LTh, we have moved the...the wash out area for our garbage trucks over to the waste water plant. It's still an outdoor operation, but at least we capture the water from that and we treat it in our waste water facility. Um, this is a shot of the Dubuque facility, uh, where they've also got a automatic wash part of it for the drive-through, and what we envisioned is placing...let me back up a couple slides here...uh, placing the vehicle wash right near where the vehicle fuel facilities will be, and...and we currently share, uh, vehicle fuel facilities with, uh, the school system and uh, many of the Johnson County vehicles in their fleet, except for their secondary roads, and they could also use the vehicle wash system as well. We could set it up where you just punch in (mumbled) and get billed for what you use there. That's part of that Master Plan layout, and this is where the salt storage facility was constructed and the administration building is...is, was the first thing on this site, because that was previously staged out of the last surviving, uh, building from urban renewal downtown, temporary building, and it basically collapsed around itself down there. Um, next is the fuel facility, and as I said, we...we serve not only all of Iowa City but the school system and Johnson County fleet. Uh, we're one of the biggest gas stations in town, and...and one of the challenges that we have is that, especially for diesel, we have a 10,000-gallon fuel tank there and...and the trucks come with 7,400 gallons on it. So you need to wait until it's pretty close to being empty, uh, before you can bring a new truckload in, which worked okay until the last year or so, and...and the problem we're having is...is reliability of regular fuel deliveries is becoming more questionable, and so there were delays in getting fuel, which runs us down to the very bottom of the tank, and...and concerns about running out completely, and uh, yesterday for instance, there was no school, and we used 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel yesterday, in...in one day. That included a lot of snow operations, but that gives you an idea of the amount of fuel we use a day, and we're working out of a 10,000 gallon tank. Uh, this picture shows, uh, one of the problems we experienced when we were drawing off the bottom of that tank, uh, we had some fuel system failures in a couple of our vehicles, because of the goo that comes off the bottom of that tank, uh, we do go in with submersible vacuums and clean that out regularly, but you still...you just don't want to draw off the bottom of your fuel tanks if you can. Any questions on that, before we move on to Rochester? Krtoche/ The next project is the Rochester Avenue bridge, uh, this is right near the...7th Avenue area, uh, this project would replace the bridge and add sidewalks to both sides and make that pedestrian connection there. Uh, this project does hinge on being able to get either federal or state bridge funds to be able to...to help fund the project. Uh, currently the bridge is not gotten to a sufficiency rating where it's...it's high enough on that rating list to be able to qualify for funds. It's...it's just a matter of time as the projects on the top of the list start getting built and come off. We just continue to move higher up on that...on that bridge list. Uh, Scott Boulevard pavement overlay -this is a piece of Scott Boulevard from Rochester, uh, to Court Street, um, that is a very rough piece of roadway, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 39 and uh, we've had a few complaints from residences in this area on the noise, uh, from the semi traffic that...that use this, going down to the Scott Six Industrial Park. Um, a project that we'd be looking at would be an asphalt overlay, this project...uh, this roadway, to help with the...that noise and smooth the roadway out. Um, this project you will see come up on the economic stimulus, uh, project list as we get further into the program. So that's, um, you...we will see this one come up again. You can see that the faulting that's going on...on the roadway and the reason why, uh, there is some noise issues with the traffic there. Um, the Sycamore Street, Highway 6 to city limits -this is a project that, uh, we have a consultant working on for us. Uh, the project would take the existing piece of Sycamore Street, from Highway 6, down to Burns and convert it from a four-lane section to a three-lane section, and then we would continue that three-lane section down to the city limits. LJh, the...the project, we have a majority of the right-of- way is already in place through developments that have occurred in the area. There are a few properties that we will have to buy property from, uh, but we are...where we can we're staying in the constraints of the right-of--way that's existing. Correia/ And...I should know this, but does the city limits all the way to the end, where you turn left to go to the Soccer Park or does it... Knoche/ The city limits is just south of Langenberg Avenue, uh, the Southpoint Subdivision, um, so it's not...it's about halfway between Highway 6 and where the...the "L" is going to the Soccer Park. Davidson/ And we've had discussions with those property owners, Amy, in fact at one time they'd indicated by now that they would have requested annexation into the city, which would then take the city limits all the way down to the Soccer Park road, but it just...with the voluntary (coughing, unable to hear) property, we've just been waiting for them. Correia/ So is there any...wisdom about waiting until that happens or doing this halfway, because for the driver it's going to feel like, you know, you don't necessarily know, I mean, maybe it says you're not in the city limits anymore, but you know, you're going to the Soccer Park and you have new road halfway there and then...old road like this the rest of the way? Davidson/ About like you see here, except (both talking) Correia/ You know what I'm saying? Oh, they did ahalf-baked, you know, they did ahalf--done job. Bailey/ See, I would have just assumed that I moved...went right into the County. (laughter) Correia/ Oh really? Oh! Bailey/ Oh, yeah! Correia/ Oh, I don't. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 40 Bailey/ When a road changes, that's what I assume. Knoche/ And with this project we have, um, we do have some development fees we're already collected on this, and there will be some more as...as development occurs, um, in the corridor. There is...there is an asphalt trail that runs down the left side of Sycamore Street, where that...where that crosses over Sycamore and heads back to the Sycamore greenspace, that's approximately where the city limits is, just to try to orient you. Correia/ Thank you. Knoche/ Yep. The Burlington, uh, Burlington-Madison project. This is a joint project with the University, um, this would build the first piece of the median project, um, from Madison Street down to the river. Uh, we are...we put an RFP out for the project. We are in the process of selecting a consultant now on the project. The goal of this would be to have this project constructed for the opening of the rec...the new recreation building. Um, one of the things that has come out of our discussions with the University on this one is, they...they are willing to fund this project 100%, if there's some type of commitment from the City that we would continue the median project all the way up to Gilbert Street. Bailey/ And they would fund it all the way up to Gilbert Street? (laughter and several talking) Knoche/ They would...they would consider this to be...but they would consider this to be their portion, their contribution to that median project, and then the City would...would fund the remainder of it. Within this project...um, so that...so this would be the...the Madison, uh, intersection. What we'd be looking at, potentially we'd be looking at carrying it all the way up to the Capitol Street intersection, uh, depending on how...how the process works. Um, one of the issues that...that that does bring up is there are...there's an alley there and there's also the QT that, you know, so there'd be some access changes there that...that may cause us some problems. Um, do you want to talk about the Burlington median or.. . Davidson/ I think most of you are aware of this project...Ron's alluded to it. Ifd just be carry the median the rest of the way, uh, the one thing we're kind of waiting on is the status of the Hieronymus Square project. We've got some intersection improvements that we would like to do on the Clinton Street sides of that intersection, uh, we would like, I mean, that would be a good opportunity to complete certainly the median and that portion, uh, and maybe the remainder from Capitol Street to...to Gilbert at that time. But we just...we need to know a little bit more about the status of that project moving ahead. Fosse/ This is certainly a project that if...if you invest in, you want to be sure that you're willing to commit to the maintenance of those median areas, because they'll have plantings and that sort of thing in it, and...and without proper maintenance, they...you're not going to have the effect that you want to achieve there, as far as appearance. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 41 Davidson/ And we've taken that into consideration in our concept planning, but it has been just that -concept planning, and when we do the final design of that is when we'll, uh, well, a - determine which area of the city will have the maintenance responsibility with that and then work with that entity to make sure we get something that is easily maintainable and durable, and but yet, provides the streetscape aesthetics that we hope for. Bailey/ So I want to clarify what you said, Ron. The University is willing to contribute the $1 million for this FY10 aspect of this project, if we are committed to carrying the project forward? Knoche/ That's correct. Bailey/ Okay. Wright/ Do we, um, anticipate using sharrows on the pavement? Once the project is complete? Davidson/ I'm not certain, Michael, if the sharrows are for use on arterial or not, and John's not here to clarify...do you happen to know, Ron? Knoche/ I do not (noise on mic, unable to hear) Davidson/ Yeah, John would have to clarify that. There is certainly a program for sharrows in this area, but it might be on the parallel routes where we're encouraging bicycle traffic, but John can answer that definitively. Wright/ From what I can tell, I think they would actually be allowed on these. If they were allowed, would we use them? Davidson/ Um, again, I'm not sure that that's a policy for arterials, so if we could wait and have John clarify that I'd feel better about that. Champion/ What is a sh...I don't know what you're talking about. Davidson/ It's a...it's a pavement marking, Connie, that's supposed to indicate to motorists that it's a lane intended for both bicycles.. . Champion/ Is it these triangle type things? Davidson/ It stands for shared arrow. Champion/ Okay, I know what they are. Davidson/ ...sharrow, and then it basically is supposed to indicate to motorists that...that bicyclists are going to be present in this lane, as well as motor vehicles. Champion/ I've seen 'em. (mumbled) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 42 Miscellaneous Other Projects: Fosse/ We're on to miscellaneous other projects, and in that category we'll lead off with one for, uh, Kevin and Michael. O'Malley/ Can everybody read that slide? If you can you've got great eyes. Um, but this is in the grocery business the eternal question is paper or plastic. In the IT arena, the eternal question is best of breeds or enterprise resource solutions. So, in the past in the FY09 we had some best of breeds solutions, an HRIS system and a utility billing system, and since then we've rethought the process and have, and are using that monies to develop an ERP solution. An enterprise resources planning solution, which should, uh, provide more decision...more information for decision makers. Lombardo/ In addition to that, you know, many of our systems are homegrown and uh, our programmers are approaching, uh, retirement. Finding programmers to sustain an old system is not advisable. We're looking for something more off-the-shelf that a vendor could service, and that would stay with us for a good long time. That would have ongoing upgrades and...and quite frankly, this is going to expand our capacity and, uh, has big potential for streamlining processes internally, in terms of our accounting and uh, revenue collection and...and the like. So this is a, this is a significant project and it's going to mean a lot of changes, uh, for how we do business internally, uh, the public, you know, may see, uh, that manifest in...in different types of online processes or not, but internally in terms of access to data, uh, the ability to better isolate and...and costs, um, and then just internally in terms of keeping multiple systems and double-entry and uh, the like, is going to be greatly reduced. So, this is going to bring a lot of efficiencies to our internal operations. Knoche/ Uh, the next project is the Geographic Information System, uh, we currently have a few systems in place, uh, both in...Engineering and the storm water utility, and then also the, uh, water utility also has somewhat of a system pulled together. This would be...having one system incorporate everything and have access, both from Public Works, Housing, um, Police and...and have an overall enterprise system. Fosse/ ...interaction with County too. Knoche/ We would be looking, um, to...to use the County as a resource for...for a lot of the data that we would use to populate this...populate this database, and as we do currently, uh, through the building information, um, and the parcel data that we use currently on the mapping that we do in-house. Bailey/ So this could be used throughout the organization, for different departments. Knoche/ Correct. Bailey/ Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 43 Fosse/ We just wanted to be sure and cover that it...won't be a duplication of what the County's doing. It will be able to work together with them. Knoche/ The North Gilbert Street box culvert -this is, uh, a project funded out of the storm water utility. I think that's how it ended up being in miscellaneous projects, but this is a box culvert that's up near Kimball Road, uh, it's in a little bit of tough shape and we'd be looking at replacing this in FY11. Fosse/ Mike? Moran/ Uh, the next project is just a bi-annual resurfacing project. We use the cemetery and we just piggyback on to the City's, uh, asphalt, uh, program. Uh, we do it every other year, and uh, we've just systematically gone through the cemetery and replace roads that are bad or cracked from, uh, the freeze-thaw process more than anything else. And then this would be, yeah, this is our current storage for, uh, salt and sand, wood chips, uh, and what we'd like to do is construct a 20 by 40 cold storage building that's roofed and attic- ed, and that way we can use it for cold storage down below for the same purpose, and then up above in the attic system we can use that for storage, as well. Get some of the equipment out of the elements. And then this would be a 64-space infant columbarium and sculpture that would go in what the current area of the cemetery that's known as "baby land" uh, we've had a lot of requests now, uh, for columbarium since we put the one columbarium right in the front of the picture is where, that's been really popular and this one we'd like to make one just for infants, uh, we've had a lot of requests for that instead of ground burials. They like to do ash burials and then it would also include a sculpture that we would put on top of the columbarium, uh, for aesthetic purposes. Fosse/ If you're following along in the, uh, the funding summary, we're going to transition into a part now that's entitled "recently submitted projects," and uh, this is a section that's unique to this year, uh, because for one reason or another mostly related to flood recovery type things not everything got assembled for the program in November when this all gets entered in initially. So these...these are ones that are not in the original financial program, but projects that we'd like to be a part of it. So...uh, we'll lead right off with 420th Street industrial park. Davidson/ I think you're all aware of this project, since we recently approved the annexation and rezoning of this ground. As City Manager indicated earlier, we're very close to the, uh, getting title to it. We will then proceed with the platting, uh, we...and of course Ron went through the infrastructure, uh, project that will get infrastructure to the...to the site. This basically provides for getting it...there's that term again -shovel ready - um, we are already with...working with ICAD to actively, uh, market it. Uh, there are a couple of other (noise on mic, unable to hear) looming things out there. One...uh, possible relocation of City Carton; possible relocation ofMid-American Energy from their current sites, and taking advantage then of some redevelopment opportunities and possible, uh, opportunities for Kirkwood Community College. Again, this gives us some flexibility, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 44 and some ability to work with those people, as well as marketing it for the (noise on mic, unable to hear) campus, which is something that ICAD is...is doing actively. Fosse/ Mike? Tharp/ We've got two other projects for the Airport that are new to the FAA plan and new to the, uh, CIP...we're actually programming both of these for fiscal year 2011, or we'd like to. Uh, the first one would be an Airport equipment shelter, um, specifically snow equipment. With the removal of the United hangar, uh, we realized we depended on that a little more than we thought we did, and uh, some of our equipment during the off- season is now currently residing outside and exposed to the elements. So we'd like to get those back into a...um, some type of shelter that protects them a little bit more. The, uh, second project is a obstruction mitigation project, uh, we're working with the FAA to establish, uh, enhanced GPS approaches to the Airport, the first approach actually went on line on the 15th, uh, that goes to 2-5. This one would be, uh, set up for 3-0, but the, uh, outstanding issue is there's some of the approach penetrations that occur on both ends of the runway, and there are various, uh, ways of mitigation...of mitigation from, uh, moving the runway ends to, uh, some...other potential items that we were working with the FAA to plan through. Hayek/ What kind of obstructions are you talking about, and how would you cost those? Tharp/ Uh, buildings, trees, uh, one end of...of the hill, uh, northwest of the Airport actually has, the actual physical ground is labeled as a penetration, so the most viable, uh, method to do that would be to relocate, um, threshold, um, on runway 12 back so that the approach slope is such that it...leaves the, um, distance between the aircraft and the actual, uh, ground level such that it doesn't penetrate the, uh, airspace. Hayek/ And the, uh, old Untied hangar - my recollection is that, its demolition was required of us by... Tharp/ Its, uh, demolition was required as part of the 7-25 extension. Um, it was a...obstruction based on FAA standards. O'Donnell/ How big is this, uh, shelter for the, uh, snow removal equipment? Tharp/ I don't have the square footage. Greg might (mumbled) submitted plan, if he can get to it in a couple seconds. (unable to hear person speaking away from mic) Well, I don't have the, uh, the size. I can certainly get that to ya. Cost wise we're looking at for this shelter a total project cost of about $150,000 and with a FAA grant at 95.5, that'd put the local match at about 7,500. So... O'Malley/ My note on that project is that on...on Airport runway 12-30, it's not road use tax. It's local match GO bonds at 23,000. Typographical error there on C-19. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 45 Knoche/ The next project is the Highway 1 pedestrian bridge over I-80. Uh, this is a project that we...we have been pursuing actively earmarks on and uh, thought we, it should be in the budget, uh, this is also one that we are going to see if we can get this one shovel-ready and uh, try to get an economic stimulus package potentially. This...besides the design, it should be fairly straightforward, considering it's all either...well, it's all State right-of- way, uh, that this would be on. And this location was chosen over the Dubuque Street, uh, pedestrian bridge, just from the standpoint that we're connecting to a...an employment center, versus uh, a location that already has the trail going underneath the I- 80 bridge along the river, and that connectivity's already there. Davidson/ Certainly the other bridge is still something we hope to do eventually. It's just we determined this one was a higher priority. Correia/ And so that would link our current 8-foot sidewalk? To the bridge, and then take it to the light or...on the other side of the bridge...how... Davidson/ Probably want to get it up to Northgate Drive, Amy, so that people could then hook up with that sidewalk at that intersection (both talking) and that would all be part of the project. Fosse/ This is one that...that did not make it into our recurring project section, but was added in late and we want to... Davidson/ Yeah, last year we discussed this project with you and you directed us to put a ongoing...a new ongoing project, uh, into the capital plan that would basically be $100,000 that when neighborhoods...you remember the genesis of this project was the Goosetown Neighborhood coming to us and requesting additional pedestrian lighting in their neighborhood. Well, what this would enable us to do would be consider requests like that. Uh, if you approve this, we'll develop a program which you'll approve ultimately, similar to the traffic-calming program where again, our intention is for the neighborhoods to generate these projects, but us to then have some objective criteria to measure the worthiness of those projects. Ultimately they come to you for approval. Knoche/ Uh, the next project is the Rohret Road improvements, from Phoenix Drive to the city limits. Uh, this project would...would upgrade Rohret Road from a current rural section to an urban section. Uh, we do have...have been reviewing a preliminary plat for the next additions of County Club Estates, uh, so this would get it into the capital program so we'd be able to start to kind of get...developer contributions to the improvements of this project. Davidson/ That's in P&Z this week, and we'll come to you according to the regular schedule. The plat that is. Bailey/ Uh-huh. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 46 Fosse/ Okay. The main reason is to have this in our capital program so that we have the capability to get those...those contributions from the developer. Bailey/ Right. Recurring Projects: Fosse/ For future improvements. Okay, our next section is recurring projects. There's really nothing new or unusual here so we'll probably be able to move that fairly quickly, and then perhaps take another break when we hit the end of that, if you'd like. Correia/ I just had a quick question about the sidewalk in-fill. So... Bailey/ Yeah, that's under recurring. Correia/ Oh, I thought...(both talking) Bailey/ I have the same question, I bet. Fosse/ Okay. Mike, you want to... Moran/ Just an ongoing project, uh, for trail head adaption and bike trails, uh, we do it every year, put money into it, and uh, try to bring our trails up to snuff with, uh, bikes and uh, walk trails. So, most of it is trail head and...and trail end development. Davidson/ We also use this project, uh, even though it's technically kind of classified under Parks and Rec Department, we use it for smaller projects, typically ADA related uh, out in the community where somebody comes to us and says, I can't get to the bus stop if only for this one thing and it enables us to go out and make that spot improvement. Frequently we use City crews for that. Knoche/ The brick street repair is, uh, we have 25,000...$20,000 that we set aside annually for that, um, that is similar to what we did...I can't think of what intersection we did it. This is more of a spot improvement. It's not what we did along Church Street this year, um, the...the Church Street just as an FYI, that project, you know, would cost us, on a city block, it's about $250,000 to completely tear up the brick, put a concrete base down underneath it, and then replace the bricks again. So, um, I just wanted to put it into perspective of...of kind of what the recurring allows us to do and...you know, what we would need to do if we were going to expand that program. Hayek/ $250,000 per block? Knoche/ For a block. Bailey/ For a complete reconstruction and concrete bed (both talking) not the... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 47 Hayek/ Are there...are there...yeah. Are there...approaches short of that that would work? Knoche/ We would be doing similar to what we do now. It's just kind of spot repairs where we've pulled the brick out, um, depending on what base is underneath there, whether it's a concrete base or a rock base, put that back in, and, you know, that's what this $20,000 would allow us to do. Hayek/ Do you...last fall I believe some spot work was done on Brown and Johnson maybe? Knoche/ Brown and Johnson, yeah, that's correct. Hayek/ And that was an intersection. Knoche/ Yes. Hayek/ Do we, do you know offhand what that number was? Knoche/ What I recall is that number was about $12,000 to...to repair that. Bailey/ And that would have come out of this street repair (both talking) brick street repair? Knoche/ ...out of this recurring project. Wright/ That really made a huge difference! Fosse/ So this is just focusing on the small spots, but you go up to some place like Dewey Street and it's like where do you stop? And...and that's a better candidate for one of the...one of the larger projects. Hayek/ And North Linn is...is the worst brick street I can think of, in terms of topography, and that's at least one block. (several talking) It does do that! Knoche/ The bridge maintenance -this is where we, every other year we have to do bridge inspections, so that's where this money, that's what this project's used for, and then through those bridge inspections, uh, any deficiencies that are identified, uh, we use this money to do those repairs. Fosse/ Mike, you want to cover that. Moran/ Uh, most of this has to do with renovation and just keeping up with all the maintenance in this building, particularly here. We've had a lot of, uh, add-on projects, and those add- on projects create problems of their own. So, we...we've put on-going money, mostly for, uh, roofing, air conditioning, HVAC systems and trying to keep everybody happy, which is one of the hardest jobs that some of our maintenance folks have, but (laughter) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 48 Fosse/ Certainly when we're dealing with...with bridges and buildings we've got structural systems, and that's where the maintenance and preventative maintenance are so important to make sure you stay on top of those things and don't let them degrade to a point where you've got major expenses later. Knoche/ Curb ramp program is, uh, one that we have budgeted every other year. Um, the $50,000 that we have in here allows us to complete between 30 and 40 intersections in that every other year program. Moran/ This is working with the mandatory park plan dedication money, or the..the land that comes to us, uh, we have to put in money so that we can at least make it either park usable or at least people usable, uh, until we decide what we're going to do with it. Knoche/ Over-width paving and sidewalks -this is, uh, a fund that we have in place if a developer is required to put in a collector street or an arterial street with their development, we...the City pays for the over-width on...on those improvements, uh, so that's what this funding is used for. Moran/ The...this fund mostly has two purposes. One for playgrounds going around and either maintaining or replacing playgrounds in our system, and two, for trail development. Knoche/ Pavement rehabilitation, uh, program is the asphalt overlay or the, uh (mumbled) concrete street grinding that occurs, um, last year we did an overlay program. Uh, this year we would be in line to do a concrete repair, um, depending on where the prices are at for asphalt, we may continue to do another asphalt program this year, and then push off the concrete to next year. Davidson/ Public art, uh, program is funded at $50,000 a year, uh, ongoing program. You have a committee made up of staff and citizens that, uh, develop projects and bring them to you for consideration. This would continue that. They've also recently discussed augmenting, uh, this with, uh, getting contributions and that sort of thing, and they're sort of in the early stages of those types of discussions. Knoche/ Railroad crossings is a program that we do in conjunction with the railroads that own the crossings, uh, it's a...it is a State program, uh, I want to say it's...I don't remember the exact, I think it's 90...90% DOT, 10% City...railroad is 5%, City 5%. It's a program that we haven't used in the last couple years because the crossings that they have been identified by the railroad companies have not climbed up high enough on the list to be able to get, uh, funds for those. Fosse/ The concrete crossings that we put in in recent years really have been successful, compared to some of the past techniques that were used back in the 70's and 80's. So that's promising. They're getting additional life out of those. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 49 Knoche/ And those crossings, that's not only is that surface restoration, but if there's any signalization that needs to be done, cross box arms, you know, that sort...that's where that funding would get used for. Fosse/Um, recurring projects on our sewer mains, we have...we have sewer collapses probably about four a year on the average, and uh, they're not as dramatic as a water main break, because nothing spews out of the ground, but uh, they're there nonetheless, and uh, one of our objectives that we do with our camera truck is we identify problems before they come to the surface like this, so that we can use one or two techniques to...to fix 'em. Either we do an open excavation and uh, repair the sewer, or uh, line it from the inside with a cured in place liner. So this, if you will, is the equivalent of doing an asphalt overlay, uh, but for your sewer system. But it's out of sight and out of mind, unless it gets to the point where it comes to the surface. Knoche/ The sidewalk in-fill program is...is one that we've set aside $100,000 a year for this one. This one was also a casualty of the flood, uh, we do have the design completed for the Rochester, uh, piece so that one we will bid this spring. And, the piece along Dubuque Road is one that we're continually working on. So those are the...that would be the first project that we'd do...(several talking) the Rochester would be the first one that we'd do in regards to this project. Bailey/ Was that your question? Correia/ That was! Bailey/ That was my question too! Yeah, yeah. Knoche/ Uh, street pavement markings, the, obviously this is the where we fund, uh, both long lines, symbols, and then the crosswalks, uh, the repainting of those, uh, and that would be only the contracted improvements. It doesn't include the money that our crews do when they go out and restripe streets. Davidson/ Includes the durable markings at all of the major, the durable pedestrian markings at all of the major intersections, on a three-year rotation. Fosse/ It's interesting is...is we'll typically spend more on pedestrian crossings than on center- line stripes, in a given year. So we do have a heavy emphasis on...on pedestrian safety. Hayek/ Is...uh, Hawkins Drive, is...is any part of that not City street, or is all of it City street? Fosse/ Hawkins is an institutional road, right? (several responding) So that's...that's owned by the University. Hayek/ Okay, so it's...so striping and center lines and things of that nature would be on their nickel? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 50 Fosse/ That's right. We do a maintenance agreement with them so that we take care of the traffic signals, that they do the rest. Hayek/ Okay. Fosse/ Jeff, you want to cover... Davidson/ Oh, I'm sorry. Traffic calming program, uh, $30,000 a year, uh, been pretty active the last couple of years, um, this is certainly one where if you were to make any adjustments to this, I think we would want to meet with the neighborhood council and apprise them, because it's basically a strategy they have to kind of empower neighborhoods to, uh, make some decisions themselves. Well, you make the ultimate decision, but...but to develop some projects I should say to, uh, affect traffic control in their neighborhood. Knoche/ The traffic signal project is, uh, $120,000 a year that we have set aside. The 120,000 would signalize the average intersection. If we have to add turn lanes and...and do some of those improvements, it obviously would be, uh, more than that. Um, in the years where we, when we don't have to signalize intersections, this money's used to purchase cameras and upgrade some of the controller stuff, uh, that...that happens at the intersections that are currently signalized. Fosse/ Then finally we have the, uh, the recurring projects for the maintenance of our water mains, uh, we average somewhere between 60 and 110 water main breaks per year, and usually the...the colder the nastier the weather the more we have these, because that's when the ground is doing unusual things down there. Um, this is a shot of one that occurred up on the Pedestrian Mall just a couple years ago, and you can see that the hole in the water main there and when that was dug up to fix that, you can see, uh, the remnants of the repair that was done not too long ago. So it's the, the frequency of breaks that help us determine where we need to replace water mains and just start over again with a new one. Wright/ Is that ever done proactively? Fosse/ Yes, and...and we're trying to get a better handle on that, and figuring out, uh, where we have, uh, mains that are likely to break and what we're seeing is a trend as...of water mains that were put in in the late 50's and early 60's have a lot of breaks. We don't necessarily know why, but that's a trend that we're seeing and we can use those trends to identify what needs to be proactively fixed. Would you like to take a break before we move on to flood recovery? Or keep plugging away? (several responding) Okay. (BREAD Flood Recovery: Fosse/ Just to refresh where we are in the...in the program. We've got flood recovery. We'll talk about three projects here, and then we'll do the on-the-radar section, quick summary of some of the projects that we'll wrap up during 09, and then we'll get into the part where This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 51 we're talking about what projects...what are your priorities, do they align with what you've seen here today or do you want to move some things around. So with that, let's dive into flood recovery and Ron will lead off there. Knoche/ Uh, the first project in flood recovery is the sewer siphon project. This is one that the project worksheet has been approved by FEMA to do the work, um, this is one that we do have the emergency order on, um, through Council. Uh, one of the issues that we've come across is the contractor that we've been contacting to scope it out are telling us that we can't do it the way that we originally thought we'd be able to, and we're just going to directional bore it, um, the issue here is the...the river bed a, is pretty much been scoured out because of where the coffer dam was and uh, and b, the limestone is too close to the surface on some of the other, um, river bed locations. So, um, we're looking at two alternative, uh, solutions. One would be, um, actually do a...do a bore and jack, so we'd have to actually dig down into the bedrock and...and put a pipe across, or um, doing it the way the pipe was originally constructed and that's just to drag a pipe across the river and then get fill put back on top of it. Um, if we wouldn't have had a coffer dam out in the middle of the river, we probably wouldn't be, uh, looking at this project, but uh, this...that's the reason why we haven't seen any action on our repair (mumbled) in that area. Fosse/ There were three pipes crossing the river there. We have one remaining, and that's what's carrying the sewage right now. We're keeping an eye on that one. We've put in some telemetry that'll let us know if that one breaks. Otherwise it's sometimes hard to tell. Knoche/ In a recent, uh, inspection that was done at the Iowa River Power Dam, there was some damage discovered, um, at the dam itself, and what we found is there's been some Smalling of some of the surface concrete on the...the (mumbled), and then we've had some areas where there was some bits of debris where it's actually damaged the piece that would be repaired, um, over two years ago, and so we're working with FEMA now to get the scope written up on that project worksheet and uh, to move forward with those repairs. Ifll be a tough one to repair, obviously. The...the project originally, when we did the dam, took us three years to get the work completed because of the river's variance in flow, so uh, that one's going to be a tough one to scope out. Fosse/ This was the hot spot in town to watch the flood from, before we closed the bridge. Uh, we got the animal shelter repairs, um, that's a structure that was hit very hard during the flood. Uh, we looked at the possibility of relocating the entire facility to another site, and we just financially can't swing it right now. So what we're going to do is...is, uh, revive the existing structure, using reimbursement from FEMA for that, and...and then think long-term about what our needs are there. Um, again, the reason we showed you these three projects, they're not in the capital program, but they are going to compete for resources on a temporary basis with the other projects in the program. On-The-Radar Flood Recovery: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 52 Fosse/ So now we're moving on to the radar section, on-the-radar, projects that we're thinking about, and...and we'll start out with those that are specifically related to the flood that we had last summer, and the first one is the Dubuque Street and uh, Park Road bridge, and off to the right hand side you can see this overall picture goes from I-80 to downtown and you can see the inundation of Dubuque Street, pretty much from Foster Road to Park Road, and as we saw in...in 93, that's one of the first roads to go under and it goes under for a significant duration. I think it was 32 days this year. It was longer than that in 93. Um, that has a significant impact on our downtown, and our, just our ability to get around within the community, and it has an impact on the University's operations, specifically with Mayflower, uh, dormitory there, that's used for sports' camps in the summer time and of course students during the rest of the year. Um, and as I, we talked about earlier, the Park Road bridge is right here, and...and we believe that that needs to be a component of this project as well, especially since we're considering reinvesting in that bridge anyway, uh, what we observed during the flood is that that bridge contributes about a foot to a foot and a half of backwater, which is kind of what you'd expect for a bridge of that vintage, uh, to the flood waters. Now, the Iowa River's very flat in this region so that backwater is...contributes to the water surface profile upstream, and it probably, uh, extends all the way up to the downstream edge of the...the river, Iowa River corridor dam, and so, uh, one of the concerns that we heard, especially back in 93, that if you elevate Dubuque Street, that's going to constrict the valley and raise the flood levels, and uh, we'll be able to model that and determine exactly what that is, uh, but we looked at that in 93. It does raise it up just a little bit, by making the...the Park Road bridge a part of this, and being able to put in a structure that does not create the backwater that this bridge does, that will more than offset the effects of the...of elevating Dubuque Street. Does that make sense, the way I described that? Hayek/ Do you in essence have a longer bridge? Fosse/ Yes, we'll need a longer bridge with a bigger opening, and...and one of the unique things about this bridge that we didn't even know until this year is that it relies on water going over Park Road west of the bridge for some of its capacity. That's a technique called road-grade overflow. It's used routinely in rural areas, where you... you can make, put in a smaller bridge and then let the water overtop the road and it...it gets the job done for moving water. Uh, in urban areas it's not quite as good of application for that. Um, any questions on that one before we move on? That's one for which we would, uh, make application, that EDA is one of the...the, uh, funding agencies that may contribute to this and we'll need to look to others, as well. That's the Economic Development...is it Agency? (several responding) Administration, excuse me. Wright/ What might that look like, just bringing in fill and literally building a road on top of it, or, I'm just... Fosse/ Yes, yes, we'd raise that up and...and there's all sorts of things that...that would need to be considered when we do that, as you know to what level of protection do we want to build it, uh, when it bifurcates, do we want to have the same level of protection of both sides, or do we want to raise the one to the...to the east higher than the one to the west, so This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 53 it kind of works in the valley there. There's all sorts of things, and this is a...a major entryway to our community, so we want to get community input on...on how this is going to look when we're done. Um (unable to hear person responding) The, uh, we've got two. We've got Kimball and...Ridge, there we go! Couldn't think of the other one. And, well, and Taft. And we'd need to bring those up to meet that new elevation. Yes. And uh, there's that one garage that's near, almost the lowest point right in that area, and that's...we've got to figure that one out as well. So it's a big project, uh, but there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for it within the community, and we think it can do positive things for us for the...for the flood profiles upstream from that area, by putting in a larger bridge. Bailey/ And as you recall, we took this to DC in July, and this is part of the Chamber trip and it's their second priority as we take it up for the Chamber trip in February. Hayek/ What are our short-term funding options for something like this. Do we bond? Do we borrow from General Fund? We're expecting reimbursement for a lot of it. Fosse/ For a project of this magnitude, until we secure outside funding I don't think that we could proceed, and especially in that those outside funding sources typically don't reimburse you for improvements that you made. Um, for recovery type things, like rebuilding a sewer crossing or the animal shelter, that's the type of thing where we up-front and then get reimbursed. Hayek/ Okay. Fosse/ Our second major project and this is a very major project is...is relocating the treatment facilities, our north treatment facilities down to the south plant site, and that's something that's in our long-term future anyway, but it's, uh, the need for that really has been highlighted by the flood that we had. The...this north facility of course is right on the riverbank and what you're seeing here is that...that even if we were able to build a dike around this facility, uh, it would flood from the inside out, because it's hydraulically connected with the river. It's a gravity flow. It's a hydraulic system. Uh, so the trickling filters are sitting full of water. It's...it's all not working and really the only treatment that the sewage was getting here is that it sat for a very brief period in this detention basin before it went out to the river. So, you know, the really large, the heavy solids were able to settle out before it went out there. Um, the reason the south plant is a better location, uh, with respect to flooding is it's about three-quarters of a mile removed from the Iowa River, and it is an elevation that's high enough so that even when the Iowa River is flooding, we still have hydraulic fall out of there, that it can still work. Um, now what...what sets this treatment plant apart from the others in Iowa that flooded during the floods last summer is...is what this one serves, and this serves the University of Iowa Hospitals, the VA Hospital, and the University of Iowa Research Facilities on campus. Uh, so our, you know, our wastes are somewhat unique compared to other communities, and we think it's important that they receive full treatment during situations like this. So this is another project that we'll be pursing outside funding for and it will be included in the trip to Washington, as well. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 54 Correia/ And where would it...do we have an idea of where we want to relocate it to, to the... Fosse/ Yes, it's...the south waste water plant site has space set aside (both talking) for this, and the pipe connecting the two is already in place, so it's just a matter of moving the treatment facilities down there. I say just a matter, but it's about $60 million worth of...of work. Hayek/ Six-zero? (several responding) Fosse/ Yep. (noise on mic) O'Donnell/ How old is this plant? Do you know? Fosse/ Uh, this was our first. It was built in the late 1930's. And these trickling filters are original equipment in this area here, and this...if you have time, come down and look at 'em. We're just figuring out ways to patch the concrete together and hold it together. It's deteriorating on us. Uh, we did an upgrade to this in 1989, at a cost of about $12 million. Bailey/ And this relocation links of course to our Central District Plan of that neighborhood down there and development of down there, so...(mumbled) Fosse/ Uh, we're also looking at...at our water source protection, you know, after the flood of 93, uh, we built our new water plant and we put it high on a hill so it's high and dry, but our sources of water are still down in the flood plain, and uh, we built those sources, protected to well above what we experienced in 93, but they...they still were, well, we lost some of'em during the flood this year, and had to work very hard to protect the remaining ones. So what we want to do is put in to place a means that we don't need to go in and do all this sandbagging, um, in order to maintain our water supply. It got kind of iffy there for a while. Bailey/ Price tag? Fosse/ What's that? Bailey/ Price tag? Fosse/ Um, we don't know yet. It's...it's certainly smaller than the other two projects. It's probably in the, just...I don't want to throw anything out there yet. It's much smaller, and we're hoping to use CDBG money for that. That's one of the opportunities that we're exploring there. Uh, we've got three neighborhoods that, uh, have expressed interest in having some flood control put in place, and one is the Idyllwild, Taft neighborhood, and uh, Jeff mentioned earlier Foster Road. We have this portion of Foster Road that was inundated and that's a single means of access for the whole Peninsula area out there, and until a secondary route is...is put into the north, uh, we may want to look at ways to...to um, protect this, either elevate it or...or protect it in some other way, along with this This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 55 neighborhood that desires some protection. All of these homes in this area, except for one, uh, will be offered the buy-out, is that correct? Okay. Davidson/ But on1y...I think four of eleven, five of eleven maybe accepted the buy-out. Fosse/ Yeah. I don't know that there's any feasible way to protect these homes down here that do not want (both talking) Davidson/ ...gone on record as saying they're not...they may be on the wrong side of... Bailey/ Flood protection. Davidson/ ...flood mitigation strategies. Fosse/ Then there's the, uh, Parkview Terrace neighborhood, and you can see that the flooding in that area and uh, a good share of the homes around here have all been offered the buy-out there, but there are a couple in this area that did not qualify, and then there are a few on the...on the land side of the street, if you will, in this area and then also in this area, and I think one here that qualify, and um, one of the things that we'll be talking about, uh, within the staff is...is uh, perhaps examining other funding sources for the acquisition of these homes that are on the land side of...of the street, because uh, one of the restrictions of using the...the , uh, hazard mitigation grant buy-out money for the homes is that it has to be returned to natural flood plain, and that means that...that once these homes are bought out, uh, that land cannot be used to put flood control on, and the land that's bought out cannot be on the dry side of flood control that's put in place. So that if we have homes here for instance that have been bought out, they can't be protected by future flood control. So that...that program, it's a good program for...for getting homes removed from the flood plain, but it is...it complicates solutions for the remaining neighborhood. So, this...this is a second neighborhood. A third one is the South Gilbert Street commercial area, and you can see some of the flooding that occurred down there. And, I found it interesting. This road along here is called Waterfront Drive, uh, so whoever named that was...was thinking ahead. Um, oh, and another thing that...that is inevitable here is it will do some updates to our flood plain maps. The flood estimates for the 100- year and 500-year flows are based in large part on statistics. And we certainly had a statistically significant event last summer, uh, just as we did in 93. In 93, uh, we updated the flows. I think the 100-year prior to 93 was...was estimated at 24,000 and then it was adjusted up to 29,000. There were similar adjustments to the 500-year estimate. Um, to do that is...is...requires afair amount of work, and the University is really working to jumpstart that process. If you look back to 93, we had the flood in 93. The updated flood plain maps were completed in 2002, so it's anine-year process. We really don't want to wait that long this time. So what the University has done is they've...they've offered to pony up the local share - $70,000 - to the Corp of Engineers for them to review and update those...those values for us, and we may have that as soon as the middle of the summer. So we'll know what the new estimates of the 100 and 500-year events are. And then it's a matter of updating the maps, and again, the University is...is doing, uh, something that's going to benefit us all and that is that they're...they've hired a consultant This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 56 to build a hydraulic model of the river corridor all the way through Iowa City and Coralville, and extending upstream, so that once that hydraulic model is in place, uh, we've got the tools that will help us build the new flood plain maps, and another really nice thing about that hydraulic model is that it allows us to see exactly what the effects are of the various flood control options that are being considered. (coughing) Excuse me. And, uh, they've offered to extend the use of that model to Iowa City and Coralville. We'll need to pay for those specific modeling things that we do, you know, by dropping in the different options, but building that base model is the big thing. So that's it for flood related projects on your radar. Uh, now we'll move on and talk a little bit about economic stimulus package projects. On-The-Radar Projects: Fosse/ There's still a lot of talk about economic stimulus, but very few details. And...and that's one of the things it's tough for us to react to. The common thread that we hear in all the different things is they want to move quickly, and I understand the objective of that and that is to get money out in the economy quickly, uh, but the challenge for us is...is to find projects of substance that we can move that quickly on. Um, what we've done here is assembled a list of projects that don't rely on easement acquisition or extensive, uh, environmental or...or other permitting approvals that would stretch that process out. Uh, few of them are on the table, ready to go -Fire Station #4, design is almost complete. East Side Recycling Center, as I said, that can go out the door tomorrow if...if we needed it to. Um, there's the water distribution building. We've got a, right now we use an old building on...on Highland Court, and that's something we'd like to return to the...the private sector, get that back on the tax rolls and move those operations out to our water plant, um, we've got a building down at the south waste water treatment plant that we built in 2001 that is a terrific building. The plans are done for it. We just need to modify it for a different site, so that's one that we could use here for the water...water distribution building, and also for the next one down there, and that's that solid waste building. Then that would help us with our transition off that Riverside Drive intersection, and return that to the tax rolls sooner, as well. Uh, Foster Road paving, that's one where, uh, we've...we've got the road grade is built and the right-of--way is acquired. It's just a matter of designing the pavement and putting it down. The reason that is the way it is is we had to get a water main through there, um, back in...I think it's about 2002...yeah... Davidson/ This is Foster Road between Dubuque Street and (coughing, unable to hear) Fosse/ Yep. Um, we've go the resurfacing of Old Highway 218. That's...that's one. If you recall, that was a, uh, transfer jurisdiction. That used to be a State route and they gave it to us, and it's in terrible condition. It consumes almost as much asphalt patching during an average year as the rest of the town does. It's four-lanes wide and it's long. (several talking) That's, uh, it goes from that intersection on Highways 1 and 6 (several talking) intersection, it goes south past the Fairgrounds (several talking). Yeah. It's a money pit. The State was smart to get rid of it. Um, resurfacing of that portion of Scott Boulevard that we talked about earlier. Course you don't need any easements for that kind of thing. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 57 We can put together plans very quickly. Uh, Emerald Street is one that, uh, is...that's where Fire Station #2 is, and when they leave and...and go south on Emerald, that...that street is...is bumpy, and it's bumpy at a frequency that...that's a problem for the...the wheel base of the fire trucks, and they just get a lot of bucking going as they go south on there. So, if we can smooth that out and extend the life of that pavement, that's another one that we're considering, and then, uh, we've go the Industrial Park development, 420th Street paving and...and sanitary sewer. Questions about these? One thing that's...that's very important on this economic stimulus is that, uh, there maybe opportunities for funds here for projects that aren't necessarily in our capital program. As I mentioned, Fire Station #4, Eastside Recycling, you know, those are in our capital program now, but...but most of these are not. The rest of them are not, the Scott Boulevard is, as well. But, we need to be prepared if...if outside money becomes available, do we want to shuffle our priorities around to take advantage of that money. These, you know, my inkling is, is that that's something, yes, we'd want to think hard about, because this is all stuff that we'll need to do sooner or later, and if we can get outside funding for it, we should take that opportunity. Um, so if those opportunities present themselves, we'll be back to you to talk about it. Davidson/ It sounds like some of this funding might come down through the Johnson County Council of Governments. Just before this meeting, Ken Ralston was (mumbled) looked like there might be, I think, $3.6 million for transportation projects, is that right, Ron? (several talking) come through JCCOG so it would go through some type of a process at JCCOG for determining funding. Knoche/ And that would be the federal highway funds that would be available through the stimulus, and one of the issues with that is because it is a stimulus package, um, you know, it's gotta be those projects that you can basically get out the door today. They...there's a 90-day window and a 180-day window, uh, the plans they hit the first window would be due in Ames at the...if everything were signed in February as far as the funding bill, um, the first set of plans would be due the end of this month and to get the second window, the plans would be due in April (recording has high pitched reverb sound in this part) so it's a...it's a pretty quick turnaround for getting plans put together. Fosse/ When you layer this on top of the flood recovery things that we're working on, it makes for a very busy time. Central District Plan (mumbled) Central District Plan: Davidson/ Yeah, we wanted...Bob and I just wanted to briefly outline for you in the upcoming year, you know, this is not strictly a capital project currently, but we are going to try with some of the restrictions that we're looking in terms of our operating budget, we're going to try and undertake some things in-house, uh, that we had hoped to have consultant assistance for, but we think we...there's been a little bit of a lull in some of the current planning, some of the plats and the rezonings and that, so uh, Bob's going to outline sort of what our intentions are for the upcoming year, and then this planning strategy will lead to capital projects that will have to be considered. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 58 Miklo/ Well, as you know with the Central District Plan that we recently adopted, um, the plan calls for redevelopment of the area north of Highway 6 from the riverfront, basically to Gilbert Street and the east side of...of Gilbert Street. With the, uh, relocation of the north waste water treatment plant, and the introduction of passenger rail, the Amtrak and possibly the commuter rail system in there, uh, we see this as a real catalyst for redevelopment and we do have some private property owners who are interested in doing some higher density residential, perhaps some commercial, um, so our thought would be to, um, look at doing some code work to encourage more of a dense development in that area, and uh, that would include some urban design aspects, which we would need some money to implement. Davidson/ I'd also like Bob just to talk real briefly about, um, the Towncrest redevelopment potential, and then this...this will be an element of the Southeast District planning process, which we'll be undertaking, uh, as well. Miklo/ We've had some interest in an urban renewal and TIF district in this area, uh, so as part of that discussion, we had a neighborhood meeting this fall and had quite a bit of interest from the property owners of the businesses, as well as the residents in the surrounding, uh, neighborhoods, and it was pretty clear from the interest that just cosmetic work to the existing neighborhood or commercial area isn't what's needed, that there's more extensive redevelopment, and possibly some uh, relocation of some of the streets, uh, in the area, to make it more visible, uh, and more accessible are what's needed, so again, uh, we would see the first step of doing, uh, an urban design plan for the area, exploring what the possibilities would be for, uh, re...um, commercial development plus introducing some residential and perhaps a greater density than...than what's there now. Davidson/ So really a lot of opportunity is there, and I would encourage you to look at it from the standpoint of growing the commercial tax base, I mean, that's really what we're trying to do. We've got some, uh, some assessments in this area that I think could really be bolstered by some redevelopment. We've got some property owners that are anxious to do so, and we...and we've got some existing development that I think would be very complimentary, uh, having the Hy-Vee, the Walgreen's, the CVS, having those...you know, the bus lines, the...the, you know, Mercer Park and Scanlon Gym, I mean, the schools. This is a great opportunity to develop, uh, sort of a urban/suburban neighborhood in this area, and take advantage of all the other real positive aspects of this neighborhood, uh, and hopefully with some incentives put in place, we can see the long- term benefits to having the tax assessments raised in this area. Bailey/ This did come up at the local government affairs, um, committee meeting at the Chamber. There's not only neighborhood interest, but there's also community interest in the redevelopment of this area, and so I think...I'm excited to hear that we have the capability of moving ahead. What would this timeline look like...for a plan? Miklo/ Well, we're starting the, uh, we've already started the Southeast District Plan, which not only includes Towncrest, but goes all the way to the east and includes the, uh, the new This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 59 Industrial Park or the land that we, um, annexed. So, we hope to have, uh, neighborhood workshop this spring and have a plan or documents before you within the next 12 to 18 months. Bailey/ Well... Correia/ Are you including, um, affordable housing developers as part of this because there are...there aren't subsidized units here, but I mean, there are low-cost housing units in this community, and I would want to make sure we're... Davidson/ The upgrade of some of the existing housing is clearly something that when we had the neighborhood meeting it was a concern for the neighborhood. So, addressing that specifically and, again, seeing if we can get some incentive programs (both talking) possibly some redevelopment, you know, maybe not exactly the same thing, but similar to what's occurring in the Lakeside area, um, but I think as we've alluded to, some fairly drastic steps are needed, at least with a couple of the properties. Um.. . Correia/ Right, but I guess I just wanted to, you know, I think in some communities when you talk about redevelopment, it can be, you know, a term...it can lead to gentrification, to where we have... Davidson/ Yeah, we're not talking about gentrification here. Correia/ Okay. Davidson/ Um, there's a real nice array of housing stock in this area right now, and I think what we're looking at is, if anything, augmenting that with a...with a type that is not currently there, and that would be apartments or prospectively condominiums, but apartments or condominiums above commercial spaces, um, and I guess I would envision that as being, you know, a range of...of price points from certainly what you would classify as workforce type housing. Whether or not we'll get into some of the, you know, 30% of median income, I'm not sure, but...but certainly a range and a diversity of housing for this neighborhood. Bailey/ When Economic Development Committee talked about this, we acknowledged that there's a lot of single-family affordable housing over there, and we certainly don't want to, um, have a negative impact on the presence of that housing, but when you look at the commercial area, it has, I mean, for those of us who grew up in Iowa City, I mean, it has degraded quite a lot, and there's a lot of opportunity over there, and if not, I mean, this area no longer serves the neighborhood very well, so... Wilburn/ Is that still a (mumbled) tank under there or...(several talking) Miklo/ I believe there is. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 60 Davidson/ (several talking) had to contact that property owner. We tried to contact them, or they were contacted as part of this, but I don't know the status of what their intent with that property. Fosse/ When we rebuilt that intersection, it's been what? Ten years ago now, we tried to buy the lot and they wouldn't sell it, but there are some underground issues there. Davidson/ And the timeline that Bob referenced with the Southeast District Plan, I think...I think you're aware, we can...we can get a lot of things moving forward prior to your final adoption of the plan. I mean the Central District Plan, you know the timeline that that took. I mean, by the time you get some of these initiatives actually in place and acted upon, it takes...it takes quite a bit of time, but clearly, we'll be trying to move forward with some of these redevelopment efforts, uh, as soon as we can. Uh, the Downtown Business Incubator is a project that has come out of our discussions with the EDA, the Economic Development Administration, and it's a project that they're really excited about, and we're really excited about, um, I won't go into great detail, unless you have questions, but the notion here is that there's a niche of students that are coming out of the University with undergraduate and Master's degrees that do not want to continue on with their academic study, don't want to go for Ph.D. for example, but in the engineering area and in the science area that may have ideas that they want to more fully explore, uh, in terms of potential businesses or...or development of things that could then become a business, and a lot of the things that you...you read nowadays is that some of the research shows that you're...you're maybe better off trying to work with these types of businesses, sort of homegrown local businesses, people that are oriented to the community and love the community, rather than trying to attract that Fortune 500 company with 700 jobs that may not have the same commitment to the community, and if you can grow four, five or six or ten of these businesses, you know, you may really accomplish some great things. So that's what we're going to try and do. We considered...the University is working with us in as much as they also acknowledge that there's this niche, students coming out of these academic programs, no longer affiliated with the University, aren't eligible to remain in the University's incubator facility, so that's our niche. We're pursuing some funding immediately for a feasibility study and EDA's been very positive about the notions of that getting, uh, funded. We would then have, Michael, do you recall, was it six or eight months for the, uh, feasibility study? Lombardo/ We think we can get it done in under nine, is what we're shooting for. Davidson/ Yeah, and then we would then go after some operating funds to actually get probably three or four second-floor locations, in the downtown area, and try and get these things started. They'd be interconnected, but we think we'd more successful in getting three or four smaller locations than one gigantic one, um, and so anyway, we're pursuing that in the upcoming year. Lombardo/ Many of you may have read about the recent, uh, well, three years ago, Budcat, which is a software firm, relocated to Iowa City, uh, from Las Vegas, and were recently acquired by Activision Blizzard. They do some of the work on the Guitar Hero games This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 61 and some others, um, they're very excited about Iowa City. There are other firms, they feel, that are...that are like that, that they can create some synergy and...and we want to create the opportunity to incubate and grown some of these businesses, and the thoughts are they'd be an 18 to 24 month stint where they could access services that be in the incubator and then hopefully either graduate out if...if they require some connection with the University, maybe at that point they can graduate up to Oakdale or maybe they're ready to spread their wings and have their own offices downtown, uh, or in the greater Iowa City area, um, so...so it's a very exciting prospect. Um, we had a meeting, uh, Tom has resurrected the, uh, creative economy group and, uh, we are actually going to approach Budcat and talk to them and try to glean some of their ideas that, um, we might, you know, target the focus on this year or some other things, um, to draw community awareness to Iowa City for business expansion of that type. Wilburn/ Budcat's also a nice example of, uh, a company that had someone that had roots here and returned here, and you get into the question of trying to retain or draw people back to the area, um, but it's just a perfect example. Davidson/ The next, uh, few slides that we have, again, fall into the on-the-radar, uh, category, um, we showed you this project last year and there hasn't been, you know, with the flood and everything, there hasn't been really too much discussion of it since then, but it is a regional trail, a continuation L.I should say, of an existing regional trail for which there does seem to be, uh, some high priority by some of the area interest groups. This would pick up the Willow Creek Trail where it terminates, uh, right now, just south of the...what subdivision is it, Bob? Uh...(several talking)...Galway Hills subdivision, take it underneath Highway 218, uh, through the subdivisions that are to the west of 218 and terminate then at the County Home property. That would be a trail head at the old Poor Farm area. That's part of the County's Master Plan for that area. So, again, not...not a...not a project that's developed any more fully than that, but one that we do feel like in the next...certainly over the five years of...of this capital plan is one that we'll probably be bringing you some elements of it as more specific projects (mumbled) Miklo/ Sure, yeah, this is, uh, on the radar for some time. It's in the south, uh, west district, um, the area would require the sewer to be extended under 218 for development, and we do have a concept plan of how that could be developed, with some mixed-use development on Rohret Road and then considerable amount of residential out Rohret Road. Rick, do you have anything else to add? Fosse/ Yeah, if you're not oriented to this, this is Rohret Road, this is Highway 218, so this is just south of the area that we were talking about with the trail and there's been interest in developing this off and on over the years. For that to happen, there's a gap here in sanitary sewer that needs to be filled in, and that would take about $1 to $1.2 million to to fill in that gap and extend it across 218, so that this middle branch of Willow Creek can develop. Davidson/ Again, this is presented to you so that in terms of your discussions, if a majority of Council would feel like we want to encourage a major development project in west Iowa This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 62 City, this sewer project does that. The street infrastructure is largely in place with Rohret Road, uh, being reconstructed a few years ago. You know, you've got an elementary school. You've got, you know, some of the other things that...that create pressure for development, but the sewer is the hang-up right now and if you want to alleviate that hang-up, you'd want to fund this project. Correia/ So the other consideration would be the housing market. I mean, in terms of timing of whether we want to encourage (several talking) Davidson/ Right, and obviously that market is...is depressed right now, and...and we haven't presented this to you as a...you know, you might recall a few years ago we presented infrastructure projects to you, to allow the whole Windsor Ridge area to begin development. The City had to...had to basically fan the flames of that by getting some infrastructure in place so that private development could occur. This would have kind of the same effect on this side of town. Correia/ But we probably wouldn't want to do that during a depressed (mumbled) Bailey/ (mumbled) Wright/Pardon? Bailey/ Nothing! Fosse/ Mike, did you want to come up and talk about Sand Prairie? Moran/ This is a 38-acre parcel, uh, cattywompass from McCollister Boulevard area that we'd like to just return that to a natural sand prairie area. There was some discussion of that south of Napoleon across on Gilbert...when that development was all taking place, and we got caught up with the...with the sand turtles or box turtles or something, I can't remember, and uh, so now... O'Donnell/ Box turtle... Moran/ What's that? O'Donnell/ Ornate box turtles. Moran/ Ornate box turtles, um, and so this would be a little bit further south of that, and then just restoring that area, that 38-acres into a sand prairie. Fosse/ Uh, the redevelopment of the Riverside Drive intersection -that's what I was talking about earlier. This is the, uh, the existing or the old Public Works' operations, our fuel facilities are right in here, and then the Transit operations are right here, uh, one of the economic stimulus projects was for building that would replace this component of it, uh, we still have our, uh, equipment maintenance facility there, and that's...that's arather This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 63 expensive piece to move. We're probably looking at the $5 to $6 million range, uh, to get that moved over to another spot, and that's not something that we can get out and bid rather quickly, but it's in our long-term horizon. Um, and there's...there'sbeen clot of interest in...in commercial redevelopment of this corner. Uh, Jeff, do you want to talk a little bit about Transit and...and what our thoughts are there? Davidson/ Yeah, Chris is here as well, if you have any questions, uh, you know, the...believe it or not, the Iowa City Transit building is 25 years old, which under FTA regulations is pretty much the end of its useful, uh, service life. Um, there...there have been certain design elements of building that building on top of an old garbage dump that have worked successfully. I don't mean to give you the impression that...that nothing has worked. Some of it has (mumbled) for example, sank like the surrounding property has. But there have clearly been some liabilities with that site, and we're at a point of really re- thinking...I think it's a fairly short-term strategy. We will consider getting this facility out of here, uh, we've had some discussions with Coralville and Cambus about some possible joint facilities. Those are kind of on-going, but again, as an on-the-radar item, we don't see Iowa City Transit remaining at this location, as a long-term strategy probably better off just getting them out of there, doing some brown field redevelopment of the site, and then marketing it for redevelopment. Fosse/ As Jeff pointed out, this is an old dump. I wouldn't call it a landfill. It was a dump, and... Davidson/ ...didn't call it a landfill. Fosse/ Yeah! (laughter) Uh, we do have good footings up in this area. These buildings all sit on regular footings and...and they're stable. And...in that extent, so we have kind of an L- shaped area here and one of the options is is that we can...we can redevelop this area with the new commercial buildings and use this area over here for parking, is one of the thoughts. Bailey/ And so, even if we spent, let's see...it's on our unfunded list at like $2.3 million, so we spend that, but we also have...would have to build the new Transit facility. And what are those costing nowadays? Davidson/ Uh, you could easily be into $15, $25 million for that facility. Hopefully we'd be able to get FTA funding for (mumbled) Champion/ What goes into it that would cost (mumbled) Davidson/ Uh, well it has three functional areas -the office area, the storage area, the maintenance area, and I guess the, uh, the...the washing and the cleaning areas (mumbled) so four areas and uh, this one, Connie, my recollection is...was $10 or $12 million I think, uh.. . Champion/ (garbled) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 64 Davidson/ I did the grant application (several talking and laughing) Bailey/ So even if we were interested in redevelopment of this corner, which I...I have been for quite some time. The...it would cost us quite a bit in the long...okay. Davidson/ And I think you also need to bear in mind, you...you have the strategy then of being able to redevelop this property, get it back on the tax rolls and so that is a positive... Bailey/ Yeah, it's very...that's a very attractive prospect (several talking) O'Donnell/ Jeff, is there anything, you know, we have a methane gas problem down there for...is, is that taken care of? Davidson/ It's just a manner of managing that issue. Um, you know, I think you're aware, Mike, being someone who grew up here that to the north, that was all, that area that has commercial development on it to the north was also a garbage dump area, um, and...and so it's just a matter of using strategies, knowing that that situation...using strategies when you redevelopment. It's not unreasonable to think that we could redevelop this area, and as the Mayor alluded, you know, you've got 33,000 vehicles a day going by here. That level of traffic is enough to attract national franchise businesses in being interested in this corridor, and they do contact us occasionally. Fosse/ That whole west bank of the Iowa River was dump over the years, and...and that transition line, uh, the reason this is stable up here is they bermed it as it went in and that got rid of the, you know, a lot of the things that...that degrade later and create the methane and cause the settlement and that sort of thing, so you're left with really a very stable area. Uh, that line where they stopped berming was...was somewhere about in here, and that's...that's where you start to have the...the long-term difficulties, uh, but it...one of the development opportunities that we looked at is perhaps redeveloping this with the Transit facility remaining in place, um, it maybe feasible, but you're going to have a better...better project if we're able to move everything out of there. Hayek/ How far south does City-owned property go there? Fosse/ It goes off the page here, um, you get down in this area. Here's the end of the runway. So you're in an area that's, you can't develop because of the airport runway, and this is...there's our old salt storage facility here, uh, this is the building that, uh, that draws the methane gas out from underneath this building, and then it's filtered before it's released there. Lombardo/ Some of the very preliminary kind of just ideas we were kicking around would be if we can redevelop that area for commercial then to create just a really nice gateway entry to our city as one of the (several talking) um, because we have tight restrictions for the Airport, uh, keeping green space but really make it look really nice and then be kind of a gateway or showcase to, uh, our city and a commercial area that's redeveloped there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 65 Fosse/ Our next project is over at this intersection. Davidson/ And we did want to bring this to your attention again, uh, we won't go into the controversy from a few years ago. You're all well aware of that. This is a project that was mentioned more than anything else during our Central District Plan discussions with the commercial businesses in this area. When are you going to do something with this intersection, and we've explained to them that we don't have any plans to do anything with it, uh right now. I will tell you that at least two of the corners, well, two of the corners here, I've been contacted by the property owners who are interested in redevelopment of the property, and again, wanting to know what our intentions are and I have told them, but you know, it's up to the City Council to basically put the project back on. It is...it is something that there's clearly a need for. There's clearly some interest down here about it, in terms of the redevelopment of this corridor to the north, and...and one that certainly as properties do redevelop to the north, uh, we need to bear in mind what we intend to do here original...uh, eventually. Uh, this is another project that we brought to you last year and I have to be honest with you, it's lost a little bit of traction. We were able to put the continental crosswalks in and I really think that's helped. My own observation is in walking across the street here is it...I think there are more vehicles yielding, uh, than there used to be, with the continental crosswalks there. Um, this is a project that if you were to decide you wanted to, uh, do, uh, some enhancement for the pedestrian crossings here, this is basically the project to do that, um, complicating this a little is that there are some discussions on the part of the new planning co-op board of possibly relocating their facility off and on, and so we would want to make sure we were coordinated with them before we went to the expense of improving. Of course it isn't strictly for, uh, folks going to New Pioneer, but that is a lot of the pedestrian traffic that's generated right now. So, again, on-the-radar. It'd be a great improvement. I don't think there's any imperative to do it immediately. Fosse/ Is Sam still here? Um, one of the projects that...that's being considered is the firing range for the Police Department. Michael, do you know many of the details on that? Lombardo/ They've identified a site outside of Johnson County, um, that they're interested in. Um, one of the...I won't say it's ahold-back. One of the things I'd like to start working through is, uh, to get the contractual agreements by other users, uh, some of the other, uh, police departments and the Sheriffs department and others, and...and a method for funding it in place, um, from my estimation, this is not a...a project that rises to the level of a Dubuque Street-Park Road bridge. There are a lot of other more pressing projects in the City, but this is important to the Police Department and to a lot of area police departments and the Sheriff, so we want to try and encourage it, and I'm told through the use of, uh, drug forfeiture funds and...and through those contracts, we may have a means of, uh, of funding it. The challenge will be to get that, all that...those agreements in place and get the mechanism moving forward so that we can move forward with confidence and know that we can get this project done. Projects to be Completed This Year: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 66 Fosse/ That's it for the radar, uh, we'll take a quick lap through, uh, projects to be completed this year, and then we get into the discussion of what your priorities are. First one is the salt storage building. Uh, good timing on that, to get that complete. Salt prices have tripled this year, and what this facility allows us to do is buy salt in off-season in bulk quantity and get it in there, and hopefully get some better prices. Um, this year's off to dismal start as far as...as snow and the weather, and we've had, uh, December we had six ice storms, uh, versus two ice storms last year, and uh, according to the news this morning, we've had five inches more snow so far this year than we had last year. So (laughter and several commenting) um, but we have purchased a lot more salt this year than we had available to us last year, but we still need to be careful with it, and when we're dealing with temperatures this cold, the salt is...is completely ineffective out there. It's hard to keep the sand on the roads. It just scatters, and doesn't penetrate. Last night we broke three endloaders, cause it was so cold and the ice was so hard! Um, another project is the Weatherby splash pad, Mike? Moran/ This will take place in one format or another. The neighborhood association committed to raising $30,000 for this project, and they're just shy of $8,000 right now. So we may have to adjust that just a little bit down, uh, in some of the features and stuff that we were going to do. So really other than that, uh, that's really the only glitch that we've had so far, because I think they're pretty much done with their fundraising. They may have a little bit more, uh, coming in, but it won't be substantial amounts. Knoche/ Brian Bolke is, uh, working on this project currently. Um, we're still planning for a spring wedding on this project. (mumbled) Sandusky. Fosse/ And... Champion/ What's actually going to be done there now (mumbled) Knoche/ Um, the plan would be...currently the storm sewer, um, comes down, this is...and it comes here, and then it comes in the backyards, and it comes out. The plan would be to intercept the storm sewer, bring it down to Sandusky, keep it in the roadway, and...and then bring it down the road and then bring it out, um, the storm sewer would remain in place in the backyards cause its (mumbled) back there, but it would be...it wouldn't be connected, um, until the very low point down here, to the main line storm sewer. Fosse/ Trouble with going back and retrofitting storm sewer solutions is...you will reduce the frequency of the problem, but it...it's tough to make it go away forever. There will always be something that'll come along that's bigger than what the improvements are able to ... to withstand. Bailey/ And the neighborhood understands that? Fosse/ Yeah, it's been talked about at the neighborhood meetings. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Bailey/ Okay, okay (laughter) Page 67 Davidson/ Sam's not here, so I think Michael and I can cover this. This is a...a new records and computer aided dispatch module for the Police Department, and I believe that the goal with this is to get, uh, our record system in place that would remain in the Police Department. The actual dispatch module, uh, there'll be some working out of an arrangement with the new Joint Communication Center to have that module transferred, have some cost sharing in the purchase of it that will then lead to it being transferred to the new Center when it's up and running. Lombardo/ We're currently in, uh, going through the agreements and contracts, uh, prices are...are largely in place, just some details to work out, but it's a matter of just coming to agreement on the scope of services and the contract and...and then that project will be implemented and we expect by next month to be done with that, well, implementing (mumbled) Fosse/ Well, at this point we'll field any questions that you may have, and...and really turn the discussion over to you all, uh, to talk about the specifics of the projects. uestions: Hayek/ Got a few questions about, um, about our debt service, overall, and I'm trying to read the various, uh, pieces of information here. I...there's a, there appears to be a fairly large bump for FY09 and I forget why that is, but it appears to go back down for FY10 and forward, and I guess my first question is, um, are the increases we see in the debt service amounts, uh, for the next several years, are they consistent with past practice? Is the rate of increase faster or slower than we've been seeing in years past? O'Malley/ Matt, these are consistent. We've had a policy since about, uh, 2002 to spend, uh, in our capital plan, our bond in our capital plan, about as much as we were rolling off, and so we try to roll off about $6 to $7 million a year in, uh, mortgage payments, and we usually try to bond for about $7 or $8...$9 million a year. So it's pretty consistent, uh, with that practice. Correia/ Well, and it looks like the big, if what I'm looking at, the project categories on this first page that shows us the total. Bailey/ Uh-huh. Correia/ That we have a big increase in Landfill costs, which I imagine are not bond...we're not bonding for that because that's not...we don't have to... O'Malley/ That's correct, Amy. We don't bond for that. Correia/ We don't bond for that, so...if we took that out. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 68 Champion/ One of my concerns is that bump, uh, not because I think it's out of hand. I don't, but because I'm looking at our property taxes and what's going to happen with that benefit levy over the next couple years. Then it's going to jump people's taxes (mumbled) any higher than they are. So...(noises on mic) so before I'd want to improve...approve this capital campaign, I'm actually willing to cut some things out of it. I'd also want to take some other things out of the budget to try to keep these property taxes from escalating so high. We're going to have the levy for the...Communication Center. We're going to have a huge jump in our benefit levy. It's going to be huge! In, um, and now another bump in capital improvement levy, and I'm concerned, um, I'm...I'm really concerned about it. Correia/ Well, I had a question, so...related to that, in that, um, or to get at that. On C17, the Burlington Street, we have in here $640,000 of fiscal year 10 GO bonds, but we heard that UI's willing to foot the cost for that, if we're willing to do the rest of the project, right? So that would mean, let's say we were willing to do the rest of the project, the whole cost...the whole cost is here, yeah. Um, in the out years, but that would take off $640,000 from our bonding. What does that do if we didn't add anything, right, we just decided we're going to take that off to a debt service levy over time. Does it bring it down? O'Malley/ Yes, it would bring it down, um, for the next ten years. Uh, let's see... Correia/ Is there a model for that? You know... O'Malley/ Yes there is. I'm trying to...get if off the top of my head. I'd have to probably come back to you with an accurate number. Correia/ So, is that kind of what you're thinking, Connie, like look at, you know, if we take out.. . Champion/ I wanted to look at all kinds of ways to take things out. I don't...I guess the question I need answered is that huge bump in the, um, in levy, the benefit levy. What is that going to cost $100,000 house? Is that difficult to figure out? O'Malley/ The emergency levy, it's going to (several talking) Bailey/ The one that the State controls. Correct? Champion/ Yeah. Correia/ No, not the one that the State controls...our employee benefits levy. Bailey/ Our employee benefits levy, but part of that is... Correia/ Part of it is, yeah. A large part of it. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 69 Champion/ ...the huge jump, because we have to put more money into it. It's...it's a huge jump. It goes... O'Malley/ Oh, in year...in year 2 in the financial plan, we...one of our assumptions is that, uh, the Police and Fire pensions will not stay at 17%. It'll rise dramatically because of the, of 40% loss of investments in the stock market. Champion/ Right. Lombardo/ On the budget as proposed, we talk about a huge increase - we felt the...the overall levy increased to less than 1 %. So I want to put it in perspective that it's not a huge...the budget as proposed is not a huge increase in...in taxes. It's less than 1%. Bailey/ But, we added a fire station and operations costs that'll jump things. But going back to...you know, taking things out. One of the things that I think we...on these recently submitted projects...um, the 420th Street industrial park. That's not in our plan, right? O'Malley/ That's correct. We haven't found financing for that yet. Bailey/ I...I mean, I think that that's an investment that we have to, I mean, move ahead on, personally. Champion/ I agree with you. Bailey/And that's $3.5 million. So, but I...I think that that's something we need to do, and do it soon, um, I think...in developing that industrial park we'll have to be careful and, um, about any kind of incentives we might consider for companies coming to that industrial park, because we've invested so much in the infrastructure in that park, but I...I think that we need to get that ready for people to move in, to expand our tax base. Wright/ Exactly, because the commercial tax base, it's going to pay us back for it. Bailey/ Right. Wright/ Eventually, so... Bailey/ So...I mean, I don't want to contradict what you're saying, taking things out, but that's one I think we need to see. Champion/ No, I'd probably agree with you. I think that needs to be in there, and it's already a priority of ours, and that would not be what I would be taking out. It doesn't do any good to take out (both talking) Bailey/ Investment. Champion/ Investment. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 70 Bailey/ Yeah. Hayek/ Well, if you look at the increases in our overall levy, you know, they...I think they consist of three things, at least under the proposed. One is an increase in our torte liability levy, and that's minor, and I don't really see us having a choice on that matter, uh, the other is employee benefits, and that is a substantial increase, but one outside of our control, and the third is the debt service. Uh, which is in our control. Right? Champion/ Right, totally! Hayek/ And um...that's where we've got some ability to do something. To that we're adding, however, the fire station. Possibly jumpstarting some, uh, some infrastructure with the industrial park, you know, and anything else we want to add to the list. That's the context in which I see this. Champion/ I'm also, and I don't...I'm probably too tired to talk about this a lot more tonight, but I'm also willing...I want t hose priorities in the capital improvement program -the fire station, the investment in the industrial park - to go forward. Um, I'm willing to make other cuts, uh, to try to keep the tax levy down. I just think we're, in these economic times, people do not need a tax increase. Heating bills are high, um, people are not... some people are not getting pay raises. Wright/ Did you have some specifics in mind or you just... Champion/ Well, I'm willing to make a list, but do I have them in mind right now? No. Lombardo/ (several talking) a suggestion to...I don't know that...if we get into a line item discussion about the budget, I think it's going to get counterproductive. Champion/ Right! Lombardo/ If we can spend our time focusing on priority areas, we're happy to go back and find whatever amount you encourage us to find. It's just, you know, giving us the marching orders, the framework, for which we can make those (mumbled) Champion/ I understand that, Michael. Bailey/ Can we slow down on this, um, okay I'm just going to say this -this East Side Recycling Center, are we too far in to slow down on that? That seems, as a building.. . Correia/ What page? Bailey/ Um, C4. I guess you probably weren't here in the discussion...um... Correia/ I have been for others. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 Ciry Council Page 71 Bailey/ Insofar as... Correia/ That project doesn't cost bonds, doesn't... Bailey/ I know it's Landfill user fees, but...I mean, then we can do some internal loaning. I don't know. It's just...it's always been a project that I felt...yeah. Wasn't a priority. Hayek/ That...and any other specific project I think is fair game for discussion, but I think it might be more helpful for us to think about the service amount or levy, as a general number, and make some decisions, uh, about what level is acceptable to us, especially because we're pushing forward with the fire station, and may want to push forward with other things. Do we want to then as a result of those decisions, which are not part of the proposed budget, cut some things out, or push them back, uh, do we want to take on more debt, uh, and include what's in here now, as well as the things that we're going to push forward with, like the fire station? You know...that's a more macro decision that I think we should make. Bailey/ Well, I'm interested (both talking) things that...investment, in economic development. Rick made a point about ongoing maintenance. I don't think that we should...we should short that because we'll end up paying for that or...or future Councils will pay for that in the long run, and I think we see what happens with that, and those would be...and of course the fire station, those would be the, my priorities. Is...things that spur development, particularly commercial development. (several talking) Wilburn/ I have a question...maybe this might, um...it's maybe going along the lines you're pushing a little bit further about what it is you're suggesting. Maybe this will help us have the, frame the conversation, uh, for concerns related to property taxes being too much, or what the levy should be, maybe to target what the levy should be, in terms of if this is too much, if what is presented is too much, which um, according to the...on page 18 of our budget, that comparison of estimated property tax for the City's portion on $100,000 home. As presented it's an extra $34.06, is that correct, Kevin? O'Malley/ Right. Wilburn/ So, when folks are saying it's too much, um, we need to...I want to do something, some type of investment but not too much, are you...can you, are you saying that that change from 09 to 10 should be zero? Should it be $15.00 on top of their, you know, over last year's? Should it be 20? Should it be 25? 30? Maybe that will help us get at the magnitude of the choices within the priority areas that...that, uh, the example that you just rolled out, Regenia, in terms of investment and that type of thing. So, L ..I, the flat statement that it's too much or I don't...I appreciate it, but I don't know if that gets us looking at, um, the range of...reducing the proposed budget, um, to help us develop a common language or a common target, I guess is what I'm getting at. Bailey/ I think that helps. I mean, what is too much, or what's the number. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 72 Wilburn/ So...so as presented, you're saying $34.06 on a $100,000 home increase is too much. So, with the concept of investment, maintaining services, bringing fire station on, what is more acceptable or more palatable? Champion/ Well, I guess I'd like to see it at zero or below. Just because I'm also thinking of the next couple years when we're going to have even more economic problems. Unless Regenia's right, that it's going to take two quarters. Bailey/ That's what I heard yesterday from somebody from the Federal Reserve (several talking) Correia/ ...two quarters. Bailey/ Two quarters. It didn't mean the penny smashing machine, no! Champion/ So, I'm thinking about next year. I mean, I won't be on this Council any more, but I'm thinking about the Councils over the next couple years, and what they're going to have to deal with...with budget cuts, and I...I guess I'd like to start that process now. If our investments are dropping, that's going to be less money, uh, if we're spending into our reserve, that's going to be less money. And I think we have to think about what's going to happen to Iowa City in the next five years, not the next year, and this is the problem with the pay raise for the firemen. I love the firemen, but it...that isn't just this year! That's the base for next year, and it continues and continues and continues. So you can't talk about anything with one year in mind. And I'm just...I just see the handwriting on the walls when I look at this budget, our growth will no longer going to be able to sustain ourselves on our growth. It might happen. It might change in five years. I don't see it happening right now. Wilburn/ So are we saying...zero for the next... Champion/ I'm saying zero. Wilburn/ ...for the next five, ten.. Champion/ Or 1% below. Wilburn/ Okay. Well, that...that helps to kind of, but maybe what others could kind of... Correia/ Well, and I also think some of it is, if we're looking at...looking at priorities...so, um, which I...this point, agree with those priorities as you set those out just a minute ago, the economic development, the public safety, the maintenance of our...of what we have, um, but so as we...um, and I would also agree to the goal of a zero, at this point, increase because of some of the projections along the way, but...and, as we're looking at this, some of...some of what we have are expansion projects. So like the Sand Lake Recreation Area. So that's not only the cost of using the bonding and the debt service levy that we're going to have to pay off over time, is that's going to require more staff to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 73 maintain that park as it's improved. And so, I mean, I love the Sand Lake Recreation Area concept. I think that it is usable space and natural space now. I mean (mumbled) out there and there have been fishing clinics and, um, but I don't know if we can say we can afford it with out bonding and thinking about what that full picture of how much will it cost to maintain it well, over time, and so is that something to push off? Bailey/ Well, one of the things that I was, I think I was talking to Connie about, I mean, that makes sense, but I think one of the things we're going to have to look at in the future, if the future is as grim as you think it will be, is to look at...not doing business as usual. I mean, how do we do maintenance that doesn't look the same. I mean, we build endowments for parks like this, and we...when we support...we support things like this through fundraising. I mean, there are certain things, I mean, it wouldn't maybe get us all the way there, but, um, part of the way we have to change our approach is stop doing business as usual. The park maintenance looks like this. It could look a lot of different ways, a lot of communities do it in different approaches, some for better, some for worse, but what are our options? (several responding) Lombardo/ Just quick calculations to put things in perspective, if we were just to take that....reduce the levy increase to zero, and take that out of operations, we're talking about a $1.9 to $2 million decrease in our budget, on top of the $3.5 million that we've already cut. So getting there is going to require major reductions in services, and I just don't know that we're in a position to have those conversations. Bailey/ But if there is a consensus yet for a zero, I mean, let's, I mean, that was Connie's...opening shot. (several talking) Wilburn/ Actually that, I was just trying to punch that out, just so that, again, as conversation goes on here, just so...we're not sitting and wondering about...so that we had a hard number to look at, the number of cuts (both talking) Correia/ But is that a $1.9 million cut in the overall expenditures, which included expenditures that are capital improvement expenditures, where the revenue are bonds? Or is it General Funds cuts? Lombardo/ In order to look at a balance between the debt service levy, I mean, I can't...we can't do that sitting here right now, um, just to...give you an order of magnitude if it came out of operations, um, so not debt service or...or something other. It's just in terms of hard costs. Champion/ Well, it (mumbled) out of debt service. Lombardo/ Um, we'd have to work, I mean, not necessarily. We'd have to work the numbers and...and tell you where that... Champion/ Well, if you reduce your debt, you reduce property taxes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 74 Correia/ What about the possibility of...of considering a policy...so we pay our, we now have a policy to pay off our debt faster than we are required to, and there's savings to us over time to do that? O'Malley/ Yes, we...the, uh, we have atriple-A bond rating, and then one of the legs of the triple-A bond rating is a faster repayment than most communities do. Correia/ And what's that general repayment? O'Malley/ Our ten years is ours. Correia/ No, I know what ours is. But like the average city repayment. O'Malley/ It depends. I would say more like 15 to 20 years. Correia/ Okay. O'Malley/ Some improvements don't last ten years though. Bailey/ ...you also said reduce our, is zero the number that you're looking at too? I mean, we've got to get a sense of this, because we have gone from fund the fire station, use the emergency levy, do these operations costs to keep it flat, and that's quite a swing in a week? Hayek/ You have to be careful when you're talking about zero, because to be...if you're talking about the net impact to a taxpayer, at least for 09 because we have an increase in the assessed, in taxable value. You'd actually have to reduce the levy for there to be a net zero impact to the taxpayer. If you left the levy... if you had a zero increase in the levy, you would still have a net increase in the ultimate cost to the taxpayer, because you've got a higher taxable, uh, landscape so to speak. So, uh, that's one thing. The other thing is, uh, we...I do think it's important for us to...to bifurcate the capital and the operating discussions, because they have different mechanisms and different impacts. Ultimately they show up on a tax bill, but how do we get there, I think, are two separate things. Bailey/ And today we were going to talk specifically about capital, and we can do that, um, if there are projects in this list that we would move out, or, um, I mean, that probably could be an easier focus of our discussion, if you have concerns about the impact to the debt service levy. Hayek/ I think one thing to decide, you know, let...assume that we're all comfortable with the increase in the debt service levy, as it's proposed, um, and...and that furthermore, now we're going to jam additional capital projects into the mix, i.e., the fire station. How do we do that? Do we cut something out of our capital ledger, or (several talking) do we take on more debt? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 75 Bailey/ Typically, we...trade off capital projects for the, I mean, that has been the practice. It's not a perfect practice by any means, but typically we trade off or move out. Hayek/ So... Bailey/ And I was suggesting that we do do the improvements to the industrial park, which would be, we would have to move some things out if that's going to be our practice. If... if there are others who agree with that approach. Hayek/ We maybe able to make shorter shrift on the capital side. Bailey/ We generally can, yes. So, if we want to...is everybody okay focusing on the capital side, um, for the... Wright/ I think that's good; we're fresh with that right now. Bailey/ Yeah. Wright/ More or less. Bailey/ And we have staff...a broad array of staff who can help us sort of go through that, um, here, so...so we're going to focus a little bit. We're going to focus on capital. So, um... Hayek/ Michael, do you agree that...that this is a good idea for us to focus on capital and look at, uh, assuming we...we don't change the proposed levy, essentially... Lombardo/ Yeah, I think... Bailey/ Is that what you expected, I think that's probably what Kevin expected. Lombardo/ ...for today's discussion, and we're limit on time, um, and to have a broader discussion about operations is going to take a considerable amount of time (mumbled) so I mean, if you focus on capital today would not be (mumbled) if it's a sense of projects, or if you want to achieve something in a broader sense and have us come back with some strategies, we can do that as well (mumbled) Champion/ Well, I think one of my concerns with the capital projects are new parks. I think we have trouble maintaining what we have, and I don't have any problems with natural areas for kids to play in. Um, I don't think every park has to be developed and has to have slides and swings and all that. I...I don't think that's necessary, especially in times of economic problems. Um, there are lots of parks in Iowa City. Wright/ Should we just maybe step through these (mumbled) Champion/ Yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 76 Bailey/ Okay, how would you like to proceed? O'Malley/ I would like to offer a suggestion. LTh, if you turn to page C28... Correia/ In our handout or in our book? O'Malley/ Should be in your proposed budget, which should be (several commenting) should be seeing is, uh, how these, some of these capital projects are funded, and that from 09 bonds... Champion/ Okay. O'Malley/ ...you find that? Okay, that...those...those projects is what calculates your increment on your property...on your debt service levy. Obviously all the bonds we've issued in the past that haven't been paid off have to be charged against the levy, and then these projects that are in the FY09 are actually going to increase, or are going to affect, your FY10 levy amount. So if you're looking to cut your property tax levy in the debt service area, this is where you would start. Any projects beyond FY09 bonding would impact future debt service years. Does that...is that understandable? Champion/ Uh-huh. Correia/ But if we're thinking about in the future... O'Malley/ Yes, because any project here that you fund in 09 would have a debt payment for the next ten years. Correia/ Right. Bailey/ Uh-huh. Hayek/ You know, if we said, look we're going to do the fire station and we're going to fast-track some of those...the industrial park projects, those two items alone would be substantial, and we could tally the total. Correia/ Could you say it again? Hayek/ Well... Lombardo/ Well, we have an allocation for fire station #4 already in here. The question is... Bailey/ At 1.7, right? Lombardo/ ...um, and...and we haven't had time to really discuss whether we should fund it by bond or...or whether we should fund it directly, and I...that's...if you have specific This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 77 guidance or a goal you want to achieve with that, we can do that in pretty short order by our next meeting easily, um, but I...we just haven't had a chance to really... Hayek/ Right. But, I mean, personally, I would be, I mean, I would love to reduce our debt service levy. I don't know how realistic that is, but one thing we could do since we're trying to cram six pounds into afive-pound bag is...is say we want to do these two things. Say it's the fire station and the east side industrial park -staff, please look at ways we could free up other projects, or you know move back other projects, so that we can accommodate that, without a net impact to the levy. Bailey/ Tell...tell us a little bit about the process o£ ..of, I mean, I know some of these projects have been in the works. Tell us about the process that you went through with staff to bring us this list of the funding, the capital projects that you suggest for funding. Lombardo/ The general strategy, I mean, uh, real loosely is to continue the ongoing projects, or programs, um, look at, uh, projects that we think are...are important to get started, and (mumbled) some of the, uh, Lower Muscatine (mumbled) projects. It really comes down to a matter o£ ..of gravity, if you will, of the...of the project, and then an ability to...to fit it in to the funding schema. And so there's some projects that you could argue maybe start next year, that...you know, when you compare to some of the other projects, uh, perhaps Parks' projects and all, um, but we also tried to honor the Parks' Master Plan, which was adopted, and you know, what they're, uh, proposing for funding, as well. So, it's trying to strike a balance between other guidance, uh, between projects of importance, ongoing projects and then fundability, and come up with something that makes sense, because if we...if we push off certain things this year to next, it'll impact our ability to fund in perhaps 2011, 2012, you know, that type thing, so...it's a lot like making sausage in you hope that what you end up with, uh, tastes good when you get it on a bun. Bailey/ Well, and I generally agree with the (several talking) yeah...I generally agree with, um, the projects that are presented. I see the concerns about ongoing Park projects, and I did...and as I said, I think, you know, I am interested in development of that industrial park, so it's good to go, but this list of projects, I mean, your concerns, I hear them, but...in going through this year after year, these seem to make sense and be timely and appropriate and significant projects that we need to consider. So, I mean, part of my challenge here is where do we start? These seem to make sense to me. Hayek/ Sounds like you're making an argument for taking on more debt to pay for our expanded wish list. Is that accurate? Bailey/ Well, I wouldn't call this a wish list, if that was the process of...of things that seemed timely and important, and need to stay on track. For example, I wouldn't suggest that we back off of the Burlington Street median project. That's something that has been...what? (several talking) Correia/ Would or wouldn't....I didn't hear you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 78 Bailey/ Wouldn't...I wouldn't suggest, I mean, that's on the list and I generally support this list that we've been provided, um.. . Champion/ That doesn't mean I don't support the list. Correia/ Right, I mean, I think that...I mean.. . Bailey/ Well, supporting the list actually means being committed to funding it, is my... Champion/ It doesn't mean committing to funding it this year. Correia/ What I wonder is if there's (both talking) Champion/ Five years is a short time in a city's life, a very short time. Correia/ Right, well, and I wonder if at this juncture, if we look at, do we want to say that for certain activities we want to maintain it status quo. So whether let's say Parks is one of those. We just, we don't believe in this economic...climate that we should be growing our parks. Instead we want to maintain the great parks...great Parks and Rec programs that we have, but we in terms of what we projected out growing that park system, just doesn't sound like given these other things that we want to do that have, um, the potential to grow the tax base, so that down the road we will be able to afford to grow our Parks and Rec. Bailey/ So when we look at this pie chart -Parks, Rec and Trails are 15%, that's 15% of our cap, um... Correia/ And some of that is for maintenance, I mean, so I don't think we just go (both talking) Bailey/ Right. Correial ...I think we look at, okay, what do we need to spend to maintain our parks at the level that they're being maintained at. Lombardo/ That...that would be fantastic policy guidance for us to know, and...and we talked about it. I have concerns about Sand Lake, but that ship is largely left the dock, I mean, in terms of say CAT grant and fundraising that we're doing...(several talking) Bailey/ We can pull that. Lombardo/ ...it'd be important for me to know that. Correia/ Right. Bailey/ We can pull that! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 79 Correia/ And then the other thing would be, um, to look at...so the Burlington Street project. If there's the opportunity that $1.14 whatever million is going to be paid for it by another...another entity, I think we go for that, and...and we do commit to that. That's a gateway. I think we need to figure out how to manage the issues with bicycle traffic, but I think we can do that. I think there's been efforts to start to do that, and then the other thing is, is I think we could look at funding the building of Fire Station 4 out of inter-fund loans. And that would take out...(several talking) Bailey/So how do other feel...how do others feel about that general approach of looking at, um, status quo for some of the Parks' projects and then looking at how that configures our capital list? Wrightl I'd like to see something that would reflect that, yeah. Bailey/ Ross, you're a former Parks and Rec Commission Member. Wilburn/ Well, the thing that I would suggest, if that's the route that Council wants to go, I think you need to look deeper into the nature of the park activity. It's not just, uh, not beyond maintenance, but there's some Park activities that, uh, in some ways I believe in my opinion generate more economic activity in the community than...than certain other things. For example, uh, you know, we had the conversation related to the Englert and what that brings to locally, but I could make an argument that, uh, the...the softball tournaments and the soccer tournaments that bring all those, uh, kids and families and grandparents to town, uh, every week, all summer long, generates more economic activity than that because some of those folks are staying in hotels and they're.. . Bailey/ And that's what our Sports Authority would say. (several talking) Correia/ ...that's why we need to maintain what we have. Wilburn/ I was trying to make an example of...of, uh, looking further into the nature of the park activity. That's all. I understand that that's not...that that's just one example I was pulling out of my head. Champion/ Well, maybe I'm the only one that feels this way. (several talking) Bailey/ Actually, I don't. I mean, and our household is probably, well, our household is greatly impacted by taxes, and...and we feel it quite a bit. I'm not saying that the other, that you others don't but...um, I am generally comfortable with this capital improvements program list. I am willing to look at whatever this group, my colleagues want to do. You've heard my priorities. I do tend to agree with Ross about economic activity generated by what some would consider lighter amenities, but we have a Sports Authority in our community that could probably provide us some solid numbers about economic impact of quality facilities in our parks. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 80 Wilburn/ And I...I just think given, there's a couple factors that weigh in to, uh, this one particular area related to debt service. I think there are some other controls that have helped keep that down, in addition to, uh, you know, Michael and staff having whittled down, scaled back (mumbled) some of these projects, uh, because it's afive-year capital program, this is something that naturally over time has occurred, and last year, the year before, we...we've naturally kind of narrowed that list down to the point where there...there's that balance of investment and maintenance, and so I'm comfortable with this particular, with the capital programs as is. I mean, you know, look at the other areas that (mumbled) go ahead. Hayek/ Well, I know, but...you have to take the next step, which is to say, am I also...am I comfortable leaving these as is, and not shaving anything off, and taking on these additional projects that weren't' part of the original proposed budget. And I...I agree with you, that there are certain things that...that, uh, are fall under the rubric of investment and would have some sort of return on investment, e.g., what you're talking about. Uh, there are other things that are clearly just maintenance, you know, if it's road replacement or...or that sort of thing, but there are some things that are...that are more arguably elective, you know, and... Bailey/ Like? Hayek/ Well, the Gilbert Street streetscape. Um, that...that's...that intersection is working very well. Bailey/ $300,000. Hayek/ Uh, there have been complaints about the aesthetics of it, and they maybe well founded, but that's my opinion, a more elective investment (mumbled) Bailey/ Isn't it $300,000? Hayek/ Yeah, it's 310 grand. And I'm not trying to, you know, single that out, but that's an example, to me, of something that, if we were going to try to take on these new projects, but maintain the same proposed levy for debt service, might be things we want to look at. Wright/ Yeah, and I can agree with what you're talking about, Matt. I don't, I'm not sure that I agree with you, Connie, that a zero or 1% below is where we want to go. I think we'll probably going to realistically need to end up a little above that, but I do think we can prioritize some of our choices, and push some things back, um, that I...this is a great list for a normal budget year. I think there is probably more than we can handle in there. Bailey/ So what kind of guidance do we want to provide to staff? Regarding cutting back? I was also going to question project number 86, getting that Public Works that corner on...redeveloped too. That's an unfunded and it's an expensive sort of thing, but once again, I see that as an investment, and I think that that's something we have to consider moving on sooner rather than later. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council ~ Page 81 Wright/ I don't see that one for this year. Bailey/ No, no, I'm not suggesting this year. Riverside Drive redevelopment, I think it's something that we need to...I would love to see us get it in a funded year. And that's not a wish list. I think that's an investment, once again, I mean...getting, that's a 7-acre site back on commercial tax rolls. Correia/ I think that would be following a policy o£ ..if we have a policy of we want to direct...look at those direct investments and economic development... Champion/ Economic development. Bailey/ I mean, the concern of course is the cost of the Transit facility. Correia/ Right. Well, and some of these, so you said that the Transit facility would...could be, or would be or whatever, 80% federal grant. We would pay for 20%? Davidson/ Possibly. I mean, that's a project...I mean, clearly you've heard us say today that there are a number of projects that we presented to you exactly what the Mayor was saying, we're trying to grow the commercial and industrial tax base. That's a specific strategy of the CIP plan. That particular project, the Riverside redevelopment one, is kind on encumbered by the fact that there's an expense in getting the stuff that's there out of there, whether it's Rick's Public Works facilities or Chris' Transit facility, that's an expense that comes with those projects that maybe is a little more severe than some of the other projects that we've given you. Champion/ Well, I think how Amy put it is what I'm mentioning about the parks -maintain the quality of the parks we have now, and not expanding possible...more recreation and maintenance, at this point in time. Doesn't mean I'm against it. Just means that I'm looking at ways to keep us in control. Hayek/ Well, we wouldn't be having this conversation, had we not added the Fire Station to the mix. So I think the decision we need to make is, having made that decision, what do we want to do about the impact to our levy? Are we willing to increase it, or do we want to make some cuts so that it stays the same? Bailey/ The debt service levy. Hayek/ Yeah, did I say something else? Bailey/ No, I was just clarifying. I was clarifying. Hayek/ I think that's the decision for us to make right now. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 82 Lombardo/ To fund Fire Station 4, um, there's different strategies that we can work out that...that wouldn't increase your debt, I mean, there's about a million dollars in additional funding that we would have to find to...to complete the project, because it's (mumbled) CIP currently. Um, we've been discussing a little bit...there's a strategy we can create pretty quickly to get that done without a net effect on the debt service levy. Champion/ Where will the money come from? Lombardo/ Um, either inner-agency loan or...or funded directly, and I'm hedging towards funding it directly, um, or at least a big chunk of it. Hayek/ Out of reserve funds? Bailey/ Because keep in mind $1.7 million of that fire station is already included (several talking) Lombardo/ That's not to say that there aren't some things...I mean, based on your guidance, that we won't want to go back and maybe propose eliminating from this year's debt, um, CIP. I...I, again, this is a lot of information to take in, and it's linked to so many different things and so I guess, you know, I want to look at this list again and maybe, based on your guidance, come back with an alternate strategy. I...I.. . Bailey/ What about industrial park development? That would be a 3....what...3.2 million add- on. Lombardo/ The industrial park? Bailey/ Yeah. The, getting the infrastructure in place. Isn't that 3.2? Lombardo/ Yeah, and the reason that's not in here as a strategy is, um, we really think that, um, we can structure a TIF to pay for that, um.. . Bailey/ Okay. Lombardo/ ...and so no need to borrow the debt against it. We can do it internally through an internal service loan and then pay it off with the TIF proceeds as it develops and as it comes on. But again, that's a...it's a complex strategy that we need time to really... Bailey/But we think we could move ahead on it, that's...I think that's more of our interest, I mean, Matt's interest is not increasing the debt -both not increasing the debt service, but if we can move ahead on it and not see an impact here, I think the direction is to move. So, if we do the, um, the financing structure for the additional million dollars for the fire station in some other configuration, it's already in this debt levy, the 1.7, and if we do the funding for the infrastructure then there's... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 83 Lombardo/ We may need to eliminate some programs here, because keep in mind, the...the industrial park is now city-owned and we don't pay taxes to ourself, and so it would require a strategy for selling that and timing is everything, so...you know, we've got to put together a strategy that makes sense based on the market right now, and it may very well mean that we come back and say, okay, we have to reduce some of these projects here and here's our recommendation for it, um, I...but it's not going to be a $3 million addition to your debt service is what I'm saying. We can structure that so that it makes sense. Bailey/ So that said... Correia/ Well, I also think we need, and maybe this isn't part of this discussion, but with this, I mean, I think we need to talk about the Burlington Street median project. Bailey/ And what do you want to talk about? Correia/ About whether we commit to completing the entire thing and having the University pay for a quarter of it or a third of it or whatever the total cost is. Bailey/ What would they require as far as a commitment? Some kind of paperwork, right? Correia/ Contract? Knoche/ I would assume that they would be looking at some type of funding agreement for the project, and you know, worst case scenario would be if we're not willing to commit to the project as a whole currently, it just would be...the University would still participate in the project and fund a portion of it. It just wouldn't be the full portion of the first project that we're going to do. Wright/ What was the portion they were willing to pay to start with on that? Knoche/ Um, it is...that, whatever that cost was for the Madison (several talking) to the Madison intersection. Bailey/ But there's a State grant of $400,000 which would still come into play, right? Davidson/ That's, no, that's considered University funds. Bailey/ Oh, that's the University, that's the University's. Davidson/ There's no other grant funds on that project. Bailey/ Okay. So 1.1 million...of a total $4.1 million project. Champion/ What would they...would they let us, well, probably doesn't make any difference if you (mumbled) because it's probably more expensive by doing the staging and.. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 84 Bailey/ It is staged. Wright/ Yeah, we've already got it... Davidson/ I mean, we've...we've kind of looked at it, Connie, as phase one being the river to Madison or Capitol. Phase two being the Clinton intersection. Champion/ What I mean is they're a year obligated to that? Davidson/ Um, I mean, it's listed in here in a number of years, but that's...I tried to emphasize to you, depending on what happens with the Hieronymus Square project. That's kind of fluid. Champion/ Right. Right. So...we don't know what's going to happen with that project. Lombardo/ Kevin and I...we're having a little side conversation back here and talking about, uh, timing of debt issuance and how it affects the levy and, really it's the 09 list of projects that would have the most direct impact on your 010 levy, because we're going to issue the bonds and then the debt service on that would come (mumbled) during the fiscal year 010 or 2010. So, um, there's a million dollars in there, um, for Sand Lake, um, you know, that would have a major impact on...on debt service. And...and you can talk about then, you know, um, for other things, that type of thing. So I, I mean, those are the kind of...questions and things that we, you know, if you...if you give us the broad guidance on it, we can come back and say, look, based on the list that's funded currently, here's what we recommend doing or not doing, both in terms of the 09 issuance and then if it effects projects, uh, in 2010, we...we would have a better handle on that. Champion/ Well, I thought Amy made a statement that I totally support on...I don't know who else supports it... O'Donnell/ On what? The parks? Champion/ Yeah, parks. O'Donnell/ I think she's exactly right on that. Did anybody...the...(mumbled) $871,000 for records, for the Police Department. (several talking) Lombardo/ That's going to be significantly less money. O'Donnell/ Well, it is. We've got $500 or 500,000 in the 09, um, on page 28. Champion/ Right. O'Donnell/ There's 500,000 there, and (several talking) is that closer to... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 85 Lombardo/ That's for the...the um, the CAD software and records' management system. They absolutely need that. Hayek/ It's a different thing. Champion/ Right. Different. O'DonnelU Well, it says police records and...(several talking) Lombardo/ It's computer applications and software. O'Donnell/ Okay. Hayek/ Well, maybe Michael's offering, uh, something that would actually have a big impact and that's this Sand Lake issue... Wright/ If you could...I think if you folks could look at the 09 and come back with some recommendations on what could be left unfunded. (several talking) Bailey/ Well, no, I mean, Amy's right. That's (several talking) that's not bonding, so (several talking) the impact... Correia/ We could talk about whether we want to, but it doesn't affect..our levy rate. O'Malley/ The other thing that's funded out of the 09 bonds that's not shown on this page is your $200,000 annual contribution to GRIP, and your $290,000 contribution to the Housing Fellowship. Wilburn/ What was the first one you said, Kevin? I'm sorry. O'Malley/ $200,000 annual contribution for the GRIP program, used to be TARP program. Now it's the GRIP program. Wilburn/ Oh. Correia/ How much of that, I mean, those are loans that are paid back, so I mean we use our capacity to get...to get, you know, low interest rates, to be able to reloan it and then it gets paid back (mumbled) isn't it? O'Malley/ It gets paid back over 20 years versus 10, so there's a timing difference, and some of the $200,000 goes (several talking) for our... Correia/ And a portion of it's paid back. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 86 O'Malley/ I think the wrinkle now is that they want us to issue the Housing Fellowship money as a taxable bond issue, which would be more expensive. Obviously they won't get the tax exempt rate. Hayek/ That one line item alone, I think would...would make a significant impact. Wright/ Just Sand Lake, you mean? Hayek/ Right, and...and in as much as the fire station is at least in part already accounted for, and then the industrial park work, uh, does not at least at this time appear to require bonding (mumbled) planning. Wright/ (several talking)...need to bond the fire station, what Michael was just saying. Hayek/ I thought we already do for a portion of it. But in any event, there may not be that much discussion to have on this, as long as we accept the list, and the (mumbled) so what I've been, um, moaning about may actually not require as much discussion as I thought. Champion/ And then we're going to use the emergency levy to staff it. Another big jump in people's property taxes. Frankly, I can pay whatever. I don't have any problem paying my property taxes. I'm thinking of people who live (several talking) you, or people who live two blocks behind me. I don't really care what my property taxes are. Hayek/ Now, Connie, that's... Champion/ ...worry about other people! Hayek/ No, that's...that's aconversation we've got to have, but I lump that into the personnel side. The operating costs. I mean, we have to have that conversation. And we started into it on Saturday. Bailey/ Right, and we indicated we were committed to the fire station. Champion/ Right. Bailey/ So we know what that means, so...okay. Wright/ We're going to pay for it. We just have to figure out how. Bailey/ So it's 6:00 P.M. We've given some direction to staff. It looks like, um, and I'll be sorry to see the Sand Lake project go because we have never had such a good project in front of a state, in front of the Vision Iowa board, but if we feel that we can't carry it on, there's no reason in doing that, but if that's what...basically a million dollars is what we're looking for. A million dollars out of, I guess, 09. So, if you can make that happen in some way, we'll be interested in seeing what that is. Our next budget meeting is...Marian? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009. January 15, 2009 City Council Page 87 Karr/ Wednesday. Champion/ Next Wednesday? Karr/ 28th. Bailey/ Wednesday the 28th and that's boards and commissions, and we start at what time? (unable to hear Karr) Okay. And we will have food in between JCCOG and the next budget meeting. Wright/ And we meet on the 29th if necessary, is that.. . Bailey/ We meet on the 29th, consider it necessary. (unable to hear Karr) Because we have to give the direction to staff so we can publish the budget, um, for the setting of the public hearing. Question? Hayek/ Well, as we walk out of here, we can't start this conversation about the operation side, but at some point we're going to have to provide...we're going to have to reach consensus on what we want to do with that, and give staff enough direction for them... Bailey/ That's what we'll be doing on the 29th. Hayek/ Okay. So between now and then...that puts them up against the wall, that's my concern. Lombardo/ ...something on CIP next week, early next week sometime, um, so that you have time to mull it over. Bailey/ Okay, thank you so much for the presentations. Very nicely done. Karr/ ...community events, because you're booked solid (several talking) and then (unable to hear) conference board in there as well. Bailey/ Yes. Okay. Thank you. Enjoy the inauguration, those of you who are attending. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 15, 2009.