HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-02-18 TranscriptionIowa City City Council Work Session of February 18, 2025
(audio and video recordings can be found at https:./.Icitychannel4.com/city-council.html)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based
Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting
recordings.
[00:00:00]
[MUSIC].
[00:00:21]
It is 4:00 PM on February 18th, and this is the City of Iowa City Work session. Welcome to everyone that
is present in city hall. Hello, colleagues and staff. And hello everybody out there virtually. We're gonna
move on to Item Number 1, which is clarification of agenda items.
[00:00:40]
Um, on the consent agenda Item 6(c), Mercer Park, I will need to recuse myself, so we'll have to pull that
out.
[00:00:55]
Anything else? We're -gonna move on to Item Number 2, information packets, February 6th.
[00:01:04]
Regarding the scheduled work'sessions, um, four of us had the opportunity to participate in the USG
forum and it was really wonderful. And one topic I think that came up a couple of times was the
relationship between City Council and the university. And I think that it might be nice to have a
university update as a work session item and perhaps it's more specifically focused on some of our
strategic plan action items. There's a handful in there that I think have really close interactions with the
university. And so I- I don't know if you guys have an a- attitude of having someone from university
leadership coming in and talking about either student housing or transportation -related issues or the
Riverfront Master Plan, those are all on our strategic plan 1-1 action items and they all have- um, I think,
it'd be great to, um, have a- more discussions at the Council level with university leadership if they're
willing.
[00:02:051
1 think we had that. Was it two years ago when we had? [OVERLAPPING]
[00:02:081
1 think it was last year.
[00:02:091
Was it just last year?
[00:02:10]
Yes.
[00:02:111
Which feels like five years ago.
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Iowa City City Council Work Session of February 18, 2025
(audio and video recordings can be found at https:1.1citychannel4.com/city-council.html)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based
Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting
recordings.
[00:02:12]
Yes.
[00:02:121
So, um,
[00:02:13]
You were there.
[00:02:14]
But yeah, facilities plan with us?
[00:02:17] -
We just last year. Yes.
[00:02:18]
Yeah. I mean, that would be I'd be okay with uh, setting something like that. I don't have any strong
sense of, like, immediacy, but without a whole lot of delay.
[00:02:27]
I imagine that something we do after budget is done, but I makes sense. Yeah, I think it might be nice if
we could tie it to our strategic plan, though, to sort of knock some of those things off the list. And I think
regional transportation is clearly involves the Riverfront. Plan involves them, and I think housing issues
involves them.
[00:02:48]
Yeah.
[00:02:48]
Yeah.
[00:02:52]
Seeing some heads, we'll just add it to the penning list for now.
[00:02:55]
[OVERLAPPING] Yes.
[00:02:58]
Anything else from February 6? Moving on to February 13th. Hearing none. We are going to move on to
item Number 3, University of Iowa Student Government Updates. Welcome -welcome. Your sweater
looks warm.
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Iowa City City Council Work Session of February 18, 2025
(audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based
Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting
recordings.
[00:03:31]
It is. Thank [LAUGHTER] you. So I'm going to keep it pretty short tonight. Thank you for everyone uh, for
coming to Town Hall. Mayor America time we missed you, but you're very busy, so it's okay. The
students really liked it. They got a lot of good insight from some of you on your conversations from your
one on ones. We were all just very, very happy with how it went, and I will be hosting Town Hall again
next year. I've already got a long list of things I would like to do better or change. But if any of you have
any feedback, I would love to hear it. Second, our Senate has recently passed a resolution promoting the
restoration of native prairies and native prairie plants, stuff like that on uh, university campuses- on the
University campus. Our acreage, I guess. And every year, our sustainability committee likes to plant a
tree. Just something nice, get a tree planted. But this year, some members of the administration want us
to really up that number by quite a bit. So we're currently in talks of where we might plant maybe 100 or
so trees. We don't know yet, so that should be pretty exciting. Um, also, a couple weekends ago, dance
marathon happened, which is the big fundraising event the University does every year, and we raised
around $37 million for pediatric cancer.
[00:04:38]
Well.
[00:04:39]
So that was really exciting. I think USG gave them $20,000 from our reserves. So that's all I have for you
guys tonight.
[00:04:46]
Great. -Thank you. We're gonna move on to item Number 4, fiscal year 2026 budget discussion. Is there
any follow up needed from our last meeting and adding that uh, affordable housing piece back in?
[00:05:12]
No, so I think where we left that was the staff is going to come back maybe at your March meeting, but
could be April with a recommendation on how to reallocate that $200,000 within our um, distribution
model and seek your approval of that redistribution. It's probably- our recommendation probably won't
be to continue to use that for LI Tech. We'll think of a different way to prioritize that, but certainly you
could go back to LI Tech or choose any other alternative, but nothing needed at this point from me.
[00:05:48]
Has there been any advocacy from um, the different groups who've come to speak with you, Affordable
Housing Coalition, Housing Fellowship, about um, their sense of how that money might be best?
[00:05:59]
1 have not had any of those conversations, now.
[00:06:08]
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Iowa City City Council Work Session of February 18, 2025
(audio and video recordings can be found at https://citychannel4.com/city-council.html)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based
Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting
recordings.
Here in no other comments? We're gonna move on to item Number 5, counsel updates on assigned
boards, commissions, and committees.
[00:06:23]
1 guess, forward looking. There's a seats meeting on February 25th, and a comp plan. The next comp
plan meeting is March 10th before our next meeting.
[00:06:36]
Awesome. Other than that, we are done with our work session.
[00:06:411
What? [LAUGHTER].
[00:06:421
[MUSIC]
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