Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout1997-11-13 TranscriptionNovember 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 1 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session 7:30 PM Council: Norton, Lehman, Vanderhoef, Thomberry, Kubby, Novick. Absent: Baker. Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Dilkes. State Legislators: Doderer, Dvorsky, Mascher, Myers, Neuhauser. Tapes: 97-155, all Nov/Okay everybody. We're going to start. You hear me okay? This is the, I didn't bring a gavel. Thank you. This is the Iowa League of Cities organized City Hall Day. It's being done through the entire state of Iowa in various regions. The people here are in the region covered by two senate districts, Mary Neuhauser's district and Bob Dvorsky's district. We've invited all six of the representatives and senators who are in our area. They haven't all come yet. We expect all of them, but for now we have Mary Neuhauser. We have Minette Doderer, Mary Mascher, and Dick Myers. We also have representatives here from the city councils in Iowa City and University Heights and North Liberty and Oxford. Have I left anyone out? Okay. We're going to go through a list of legislative objectives that were adopted by the Iowa League of Cities in September and these are the objectives for 1998 legislative session. As I go through these, I'm sure most of us have heard all about it, but I'm going to sort of interject and see if anybody here would like to come to the microphone and comment on any of these issues as they relate to a particular city locally. We're going to try and wind this up by 9:00 and we also hope that after we've gone through all of these issues, we will get to the point of issues that are not on this list but are also of concern to cities and the issues that we want the legislature to worry about in January of 1998. This first on the list is to work with the general assembly to facilitate thoughtful reform of Iowa's tax system by designating the tax study committee a priority through the allocation of adequate resources and time and effort. We have Dick Myers here who was part of that thoughtful reform on Iowa's tax system. Do you want to give us an idea of what's happening so far? Dick Myers/Now do you mean as far as roll back and things of that concern? Nov/Whatever has been happening with the study committee? Myers/Okay. First of all the committee consists of several legislators, both from the senate and the house, and I believe three from each body, and members of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 2 private sector, from business and industry, from organized labor, from the utilities, and from cities and towns, and I think school boards. They are non- voting members but never the less they're there and their input is very important of course. So far, we've met I believe four times. And we really have not done much more than take testimony from various groups seeking all kinds of comment or input into what our committee's doing. We've heard from the League of Cities. We've heard from the Association of Counties. We've heard from the City of Des Moines. We've heard from Chambers of Commerce, Farm Bureau, Utility Associations, all that sort of thing. We have as of yesterday, in a meeting all day yesterday on this subject and we broke into three committees dealing with sales taxes and miscellaneous taxes, dealing with income taxes, and the third committee is dealing with property taxes, subcommittee I should say. I serve on the subcommittee that deals with property taxes, and the rollback issue is something that first of all it took a long time to get into this situation. That's the first thing that I want to tell you. It started in 1978 when we decided, the state decided, to regulate the taxes on farm property based on productivity among other things and tied the residential growth to that. So this year you're going to have farm property tax at approximately 46% of its value, its assessed value, and you're going to have residential property taxed at 54.9% of its assessed value. And commercial property will be taxed at 100% of its value. I frankly do not like that system at all. Let's say we decide to stop it. First thing that will happen is we'll see a very quick rapid rise in residential property taxes. You can count on the fact that we will not do that. I can tell you right now, we won't do that. It's not politically feasible. It's not going to happen. We're not going to do away with the rollback formula that deals with farm productivity because the results on farm property would be too horrendous for anyone to stand politically. That's just- I can't put it any more bluntly than that. That's a realistic way to look at it. Whatever we do is going to be done slowly and it's going to be done in an evolutionary sense. If we're going to correct this system, we've got to do it over I think a great deal of time. We also looking at things that, in the property tax area, that are called fee for services. For example the City of Iowa City has a deal with the University of Iowa to provide fire protection. That is, I found out, somewhat unique in this state. We have been asked to change the law dealing with home rule to give cities like Des Moines for example more latitude in charging tax exempt property a fee for service figure for things like fire and police protection, things that they actually receive. If we do that, it will be done where it'll be a local option issue, that is to say, cities will vote to do it if that's what they want to do. We will change the home rule statute to allow that. Okay? It allows it now, but it's kind of a complicated process. They want it clarified. They want it strengthened. I think I've talked long enough on that issue right now. I might just stop there at that point. So regardless of- what I'd like to say is, we're considering the issues that talk about decoupling from This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 3 farm land. We want to find out what the numbers are. We don't know what the ramifications of that are, but I would not expect anything radical as far as a rollback is concerned. I think that one of the things that we need to do is to work more toward the area of taking things away from the property tax that it's now paying for. That was the issue with mental health. That really was a fundamental change. That didn't affect cities. But it certainly did affect county government and- but the roll back issue was something that we're going to wallow around in. We're going to beat it up and when you get it right down and the dust clears, there probably will not be much precipitous change. It will be a slow change. Nov/Is there anyone from the city who'd like to make a comment or ask a question on tax issues? Norton/Is any consideration- Nov/You have to come to the microphone. We have to record this. Norton/Dee Norton from the Iowa City Council. You're on the subcommittee dealing with property tax, but on the issue of income tax, is there anything like a surcharge on income tax analogous to what school districts have? Has that ever been considered? Myers/That hasn't been discussed yet, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we don't at least talk about it. The legislature's going to be very careful I think to not put itself in any kind of tax increasing mode, all right. I mean let's face it, it's an election year, okay. Don't want to be too practical about it, but never the less, that's a fact. We've been bleeding all over the landscape for about four or five years now about cutting property taxes. We're going to be very careful about doing anything that might cause a property tax increase. And if we're going to deal with these issues of changing this disparity in property valuation, it's going to be done slowly. I don't know of any talk like that yet now. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear it come up. Fee for services in a way is kind of what you're talking about. That's probably as close as we'll come. How much tax exempt property do you have in some of these communities here that are getting a fee. I mean besides the University now. You're- you know. Besides that. Dvorsky/That's not a new idea either. Myers/No it isn't. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 4 Dvorsky/I remember we had meetings in about 1988 with the big, Ken Hanie the big attorney. Myers/Yeah. Dvorsky/Bonding attorney out of Des Moines and their concern in Des Moines was with all the tax exempt property, Vet's, hospitals, and all sorts of other things they were trying to come up with something. And it's very complicated, very complex. And they had kind of an idea and Representative Beraninga was around at the time with the Ways and Means. I don't think he was the chair of that, anyway. Doderer/I was. Dvorsky/You were. Okay. They actually come up with a bill out of that? Doderer/Yeah. We passed it in the House. Didn't have the authority. As Mary says, we have the 20-80 agreement, too, with the city or the government that we could do. Myers/Yeah. Doderer/So we can do a lot under present law. Myers/See what Des Moines wants you to do is to say if the city decides to do it, they will compel. That's not what the statute says now. Compel the non-profit group to pay this fee. Not enter into a mutually acceptable contract. Those are two different things. Doderer/Yeah. that's traditional though. Myers/Yeah. Doderer/I have found in my years in government that Boards of Supervisors and some City Councils, and I want to congratulate your association, because usually you don't want the power to do those things where you have to raise the taxes. But this would help them now, but they don't want to make some decisions. They'd rather have us make them at the state level if they're not popular. This might be popular, but it wouldn't be if you went to non-profits. It wouldn't be popular at all. Myers/I don't know how popular it is because the ink was hardly dry on the conversation with the City of Des Moines and the Iowa Hospital Association was there saying, and they gave us- I got a copy of their flyer here, what do you want to call it. We This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 5 absolutely do not want cities and towns to have any authority to negotiate with non-profits, including hospitals. And they were adamant about that. Doderer/And they didn't want us to do it either. Myers/No. They did not want us to even give you the permission to do it. Okay, so. Doderer/The cities would like to have us do it. Myers/So the line start getting drawn fairly quickly on these things and one of the reasons why our tax code is so complicated and you like to say it's going to be simplified and so on, but there's a constituency for absolutely every complexity in that code. And you have to realize that when you start dealing with it. Nov/And it's also true that we have a contract for fire protection with the University because it's a government entity. Myers/By the way- Nov/20-80 agreement. We don't have anything for Mercy Hospital or VA Hospital because they're not part of the government. Myers/Can you tell me what, I was asked this question today, can you tell me what is the size of the contract you have with the University of Iowa? Nov/Numbers? Myers/Yes. Nov/I don't remember. Myers/Steve? Do you know what the number is? Doderer/Well over a million. Nov/$750,000. Myers/And does that also include the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics? Nov/Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 6 Myers/Okay, good. I was asked that question today and I couldn't, I thought it included the hospital but I couldn't give them the number. 750, yeah? Nov/Yeah. Myers/Thank you. Neuhauser/I'd just like to make one comment. I would not hold your breathe waiting for tax reform. Politically, the only way you get tax reform is to buy tax reform. We missed a big opportunity last year when we lowered taxes and didn't try and do tax reform. We were told, next year we'll do tax reform. You can't do it because as Dick said, they're too many constituencies out there. And you've got to buy them out in order to have meaningful tax reform. That means you lowered your rates so much that people are willing to take the changes in tax reform because when you reform, there are winners and there are losers. And you've got to- Myers/You've got to make it where it's all winners. Neuhauser/That's right. You've got to get as many winners as you can. And it's not easy and I don't think it's going to happen. Could I just ask a question of Dick, which really leads into something else you're going to be asking about, but what is the talk in that committee about the Stanley Amendment? Because in the senate, I have heard that discussed as tax reform. Myers/I haven't heard it discussed at all. I do not believe the votes are there to pass it in the house. You know people can change too. And again- Audience/(Can't hear) Myers/Yeah, that's right. The Stanley Amendment for those of you who are not aware of it is a tax reform, or local controlled tax amendment. I am sure some of you have heard of it. Been around for, we now are considering Stanley 14 and it is an interesting document, six pages long, to amend the Iowa Constitution. One of the things that it calls for you, as cities, to do, and counties as well, is to base your increase in expenditures on an index put out be the Department Commerce in the federal government that no longer exists. That no longer exists. It asks you to use a statistic that is not there and they want to put that in the Constitution of the state and it makes no sense whatsoever. They also have a provision in that amendment and I have had this checked out by Professor Randy Bezanson, I am carrying around his letter, that says if the Legislature decides to control local spending in any way or form, either let it go up, let it go down, whatever the issue is. Decides This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 7 to let it go up, for example, and passes it with a 100 votes in the House and 50 votes in the Senate because it has to have a 2/3's majority. But it says that the Governor can approve or disapprove. There is no provision in that amendment for the Legislature to override the Governor's decision if he decides to veto it. And you think about that for a moment. That is not unconstitutional because after all we are amending the Constitution. But it is clearly against our form of government. It clearly is against our form of government. We don't have one man rule in this country and we never have had. But that is exactly what that is and I am not a lawyer. Doderer/It is more than that, Dick. It is a fund-raiser for the Stanley- Who lobbies on a lot of other things that you wouldn't want either. Myers/Even if you thought it was a good idea to put these kind of controls. We have local spending limits in county and city government which work. They are in the Statute and they ought to be there. And if we wanted to change the statutory controls on spending by local government, that is the place to do it, in the law books. And I believe in those controls. I really do. I have worked on them as a county person. I have worked on them as a city person. It makes sense to me. But they are not in the Constitution and they don't belong there. And I realize it is an easy slogan for somebody to think about and run on but those two factors alone, one man rule and basing your increases in government spending on a statistic that no longer exists makes no sense to me whatsoever. And I would also tell you one more thing about that. This is Stanley 14. You cannot change that amendment with a comma. You couldn't change it at all in the floor of the House or Senate if you wanted to. I have been there. I know what. All of these people have been there. They have tried. What would have happened if we would have passed Stanley 2 or 3 or 4? And yet we have had all of these re-additions because we got it better each time. You see what I am getting at. It is not the way to set public policy in this state and by the way, if you want to know why local government spending has gone up, there is a book of amendments or policies that is about an inch thick that contains all of the federal and state governmental mandate on local government since 1972. Do you want to know why your spending has gone up, look at that book. Nov/And that is one of the other priorities. The cities don't want the Stanley Amendment. I don't know yet of anyone who does. Doderer/It is pretty much 100% against it. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 8 Myers/It is an attractive tool to use for someone to talk about in their campaign. Dvorsky/It is real easy for us to sit in this room and say we are against the Stanley Amendment. When Stanley starts dumping $25,000 in against us, then it is a little tough and that is not a bunch ofbaloney. They have spent enormous-enormous amounts of money in campaigns to defeat people who don't support them. And, you know, we think we are insulated here or something from that sort of thing but that is not true. Anytime Stanley wants to, he can put a lot of money into people who support some of the things the cities want, enormous amounts of money and enormous amounts of mailings and everything else. And it is not just David Stanley. There is three different entities involved in the Stanley Amendment. There is the Institute for what you call Public- Institute for Public Service, Public Institute or something. Public Policy Institute or something. Anyway, it is sort of the Stanley propaganda machine out of Iowa Wesleyan and Mount Pleasant. They crank out white papers on all sorts of issues. For example, voluntary social security, things like that. They crank out these things and endless information. That is one tier of it. The other is the Stanley Amendment and Iowans for Tax Relief which is the non-profit company-corporation that just promotes supposedly tax relief. So there are allowed to do a lot of things there. Then the PAC is separate. So if you go to one of the Stanley dinners, they talk about the lowan For Tax Relief and then you just have the opportunity to turn over the card and donate to the PAC. And we have been to a dinner here in Iowa City, Iowa at the Highlander where several of our good bankers in town signed up and put money to the Stanley PAC so they can use it against people who are really- I don't think you can overemphasize what a disaster this would be for cities, counties, the University of Iowa. It would be a tremendous disaster. It would shut down school districts. It would shut the University of Iowa as a research institution because every time you have X amount of dollars to start with and the only way you can increase it is with this inflator or deflator that doesn't exist anymore. So if you wanted to get a research grant in of $100,000 you would have to cut it somewhere else in the University of Iowa's budget. So the whole thing is ridiculous and a terrible thing for this area and I think it would be useful if people have more information on what disastrous affects there are because he runs ads every time in the election about saying you are not for the Stanley Amendment, that means you want to raise taxes and they are very simplistic ads that most people would read them and not have any idea what it is because it is called the Tax Payers Rights Amendment. Myers/One thing I would like to leave is, without getting into too much of a diatribe about Stanley. But the whole idea of local control is important. It really is. And This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 9 you folks are sitting right there on the firing line everyday, dealing with your constituents and you know exactly what that means. You know, if you don't get the dogs off the street or pave the streets or shovel the snow or whatever it is, you're going to hear about it and it means that you have got to decide what spending decision you want to make and back them up and mean it and work hard to get it done. That is what local control is all about. I believe very strongly in local control. I think it is something that people in the legislature need to remember all of the time and amendments like this abrogate local control. They take it right away from you and I don't think it is what you want. Doderer/Thank you. What's-her-name would say we are unanimous on that. Nov/Yes, we are. We are also at the point where we sort of led into another topic and it is the unfunded mandates. What do you think our chances are of eliminating unfunded mandates? And if there is anybody here who would like to give a specific example, I would be glad to share the microphone. Neuhauser/Start of with some recent examples. Nov/Okay, I will give you one example. How about the solid waste control? Neuhauser/No, that is an old one. I mean a new one because we passed this so called bill saying we weren't going to do any mandates any more. So what have we been doing since then? Has it worked or not? Nov/I don't know if we have had anything recently but we are still dealing with the ones that have been there for a number of years such as solid waste. Doderer/Right. Neuhauser/We're not going to repeal ones that we've already done, I think. But I was just wondering if we are still doing this, because the cities are complaining about it, and I'm just interested to know what in the last couple of years we've done. Doderer/Which one did you mention? I couldn't hear you. Nov/I mentioned solid waste. Doderer/You think all the cities would've done it without that? Or enough of them? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WS111397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 10 Nov/We would've preferred to have some local choice on how to get to the goals. We started out- Doderer/How long would it have taken, many of the cities in Eastern Iowa, to do it? Neuhauser/This is the recycling you're talking about? Nov/Well, it's not just recycling. It basic- you must reduce your solid waste by 50% by this particular year. We got to 25 without great difficulty, but 50 is going to take a great deal of money and a great deal of effort. Doderer/Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Nov/I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm saying there's no state money for it. Doderer/The only reason we do some of those is, a lot of people who get elected to office do not want to do the tough things. Now I do think this community and the surrounding counties are better than much of the state, but every law we pass is a mandate on someone when we pass laws. Nov/Um-huh. Doderer/You guys pass laws. You put mandates on the citizens everyday when you pass a bill, pass an ordinance. Myers/We did have a- Doderer/To say no, we'll never ask you to do anything, force you to do anything, unless we pay for it. I mean, we're there for the citizens of Iowa too and Iowa City is full of citizens. So I would hate to say we would never do it. Neuhauser/Let me say, for instance, it's harder to not pass mandates than you might think, because one was brought to my attention. Now this was not a city mandate, but it was a bill that we passed that said that anybody who owes state debt cannot get their vehicle reregistered. Now when this went through, I remember I was on Ways and Means at the time and said, you're going to have a lot of people out their very mad. And they didn't care. They passed it, and I talked to, not this county but another county, who has had to add two new security people at the court house because people are so mad about this. And they have to pay for it, and nobody thought of that at the state. Now it isn't actually a mandate, but in passing that legislation, it resulted in increased cost for that. So it's very difficult to say, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 11 we won't have any mandates, because some of these things inadvertently do cost, do cause increased cost. Myers/I want to address the solid waste issue for just a minute, too, because we did have an amendment last year that dealt with, not necessarily getting these targets, getting away from these targets, but in trying to work with the amount of money that was passed on to the state. You know there's a certain amount of that fee that goes to the state. We were trying to deal with that and trying to cut that down a little bit, because there's a lot of places in the state that are having trouble dealing with that. And they are simply not meeting those goals at all. You don't see that case here, but there's a lot of people, a lot of little towns and stuff like that, that got landfills that simply can't deal with it. Now we weren't able to get that done. And one of the reasons is, those fees go to fund some very good recycling programs and some training programs for small business. I had many small business people call me. I was on the committee that dealt with this. And this is what this thing did. We can't get rid of this. The University of Northern Iowa runs a program up there to train people to do that and it's a good program. So- Doderer/So does Kirkwood. Myers/Huh? Kirkwood did? Well anyway like a lot of things, like everything, it comes down to money and what we would've had to in the legislature was to appropriate the change that it would take, appropriate that money that it would take for this change, and we couldn't get that done that year. But that may happen. That is a possibility. It was a rather modest sum of money that we would have to appropriate. I was going to say somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000 tO $500,000. And so we'll see whether or not that can get done, but that is on the table. That is being discussed, because there's a lot of people running into this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of your running out, you're literally putting yourself out of business by meeting those goals which I think is a good idea, but at the same time you have to have revenue to support the landfill operation. It's sort of a Catch-22 situation all the time. Doderer/Every time we increase a penalty for a misdemeanor and that's all the way up, we put a cost on county jails, city jails. And I don't know that we should increase those penalties but it seems to be a mood in this country to make everything tougher and stiffer and longer in jail. And they don't think of that as a mandate, but the cost goes on the local government, unless it's the penalty is more than a year and then they go in the state penitentiary and we've kind of overloaded those also. So what is a mandate? Anything that costs the city and the county and- This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 12 / (Can't hear) Doderer/$100,000 or more. That's what we decided. Dvorsky/That's the way (can't hear). Doderer/So in other words, if it's $100,000, we can do it? No? Dvorsky/(Can't hear) hundred thousand. Doderer/Less than $100,000. That doesn't make any sense, because you don't want, if you can't bear the cost, you can't bear it. So we also allowed you to charge for people you put in jail. You can charge them board and room. I don't know if that covers it. Myers/You want to remember. Doderer/Now remember the Des Moines jail is charging them Holiday Inn rates for putting, for going to jail. And I think that's kind of ridiculous, but- / (Can't hear) Doderer/Well, not often but we question. Fortunately our constitution doesn't allow us to have a debtors prison, so if they don't pay, we can't keep them in because they didn't pay. Mascher/I'm just thinking of another mandate that we passed was House File 519 which was the hog lot confinement bill, and there were lots of mandates in that regarding we wanted clean air and clean water, and it's unfortunate that people couldn't do that locally but we know what a disaster that has been in counties that are in Central Iowa where they have felt like they have had no local control. And I looked and that's one of your solution 7's in terms of us protecting those things. So we're trying to balance against that too. On one hand, we're saying as a state we have a responsibility to assure people good water, clean air, those kinds of things that you're also demanding, and at the same time we're hearing but we want local control to be able to do that too, so we get mixed messages a lot of times when it comes to those kind of issues. Doderer/I'm with Mary. Would you give us some examples of mandates we passed in the last 5-10 years, that you would rather have had us not done? I know you want the money to go with it. And I'm sure we didn't do that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 13 Nov/Yeah, it's the unfunded mandates that- Doderer/I know. What have we done to you? We have- tell us. So that the public knows what you don't want. You've had the list. Atkins/(Can't hear) are making the list. I think the issue of the mandate is, and I will be quite candid, in the last couple of years, you've really behaved yourself. Dvorsky/We were following the law. I hate to say that. Atkins/I understand that, Bob. Dvorsky/We might be following our own law. Atkins/But there has not been as many. But I think the thing and I find the most difficult is there are occasions when, for example, you don't take certain actions. For example, and this was a rather fractious debate here in town over the pesticide local ordinance. Myers/Preemption. Atkins/Yeah, preemption. Preemption is tantamount to mandate. You don't let us pass our own laws. Now our debate devolved into a debate over whether you were going to use lawn chemicals. Well, quite frankly if you consider the use of lawn chemicals an environmental policy, a local pesticide regulation makes all the sense in the world. But you took that away from us. Mascher/Steve it was the thing with the smoking issue. Doderer/No, no, no. Atkins/I'm not here to criticize. I'm just simply here to offer you some of those observations. Machinery and equipment. Atkins/I mean we continue to reduce the tax base. Now that, the average taxpayer, Joe Citizen, doesn't see that, but with the rollback notification the other day, machinery and equipment tax base keeps going out the window. And therefore that just simply forces us to a position of making some rather difficult financial decisions. If that's what you want us to do, then we'll certainly do that. Archeological Work, the State Historic Preservation Office, don't mind doing the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 14 work, but we're doing it on behalf of the state because we're told along these are issues of statewide significance, now local government, you pay for it. We had to build a sewer to meet a DNR requirement that goes through a park that has some historical significance. We didn't win really anywhere. I think those to me are tantamount to it's not legislating. It's allowing the regulatory process to get us in the bind that we're in. Recycling, I think we've done very well as a community, and I think that we can speak very proudly of that. The guidelines, the 25% and 50%, are all well and good, but at the same time you have a statewide economic development policy that says we want to grow business and grow industry which creates more waste, but at the same time we're not going to accommodate the reduction numbers. I guess my problem, I see all these conflicts going on. Doderer/We fine you if don't get to the 50%? Atkins/No, that is not- Doderer/It's just a guideline, in other words. Atkins/I'm not sure what's going to happen, Minnette, because- Doderer/You called it a guideline and I just wondered if it was a mandate or guideline? Atkins/It is also, well I think it's a very responsible goal, but I think it's also tied in to the federal waste control legislation. The state kind of just mirrors that. Doderer/Right. Dvorsky/Not just the state. Doderer/Better us than them. Atkins/We're spending tens of millions dollars on our water and sewer plant and the state refuses to legislate agricultural runoff. I mean. Doderer/Tell us about that. Atkins/Well, I know. I'm not telling you, and that's what I'm saying is when we hear the mandate, and you said to us lately, by law you must. And the answer was no. You have not done that labeling. But it's the regulatory process that's sneaking up. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 15 Neuhauser/I think when you're formulating your policies, you need to get, refine this a little more rather than no mandates. Atkins/Um-huh. Neuhauser/Because what you're really talking about is the impact of regulation. Atkins/Yes. I don't think there's any- And one of those and regardless of how you feel about it, we had a very responsible citizens' committee who did everything they thought by the numbers and the regulatory process slapped them in the face. Neuhauser/Yeah. Atkins/On deer. Dvorsky/Right. Atkins/Yeah. Dvorsky/I just received a copy of your information today. I appreciate it. I think I'm going. Myers/We may be able to get that changed. Atkins/Well. Dvorsky/We're working on that. Atkins/If there are those you're going to change, you know you can spend a little time on that, but archeological was $400,000 of work I think is a direct to the State of Iowa that we should be reimbursed for. Neuhauser/Archeological. Atkins/Archeological. Myers/Yeah. Down at Napoleon Park. Dvorsky/Steve, the solid waste, they are looking at that. The tipping fees at maybe giving more back to the originating operation that provides the program. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 16 Atkins/And that's all well and good, but I think we have, we are on the road I think to satisfying those goals. Dvorsky/Frankly I think one of the things, and Iowa City doing a little bit better on that is you haven't been taking advantage of a lot of the landfill alternative grants and things like that where some other communities have been. Atkins/We do apply. Dvorsky/Well, I know. But some other communities are doing a lot better in this area. I don't know what the reason is, but landfill alternative grants are there. They're looking at that. They're looking at a lot of different things in this whole realm. Atkins/I will tell you the landfill alternative, in fact we're going to do a sort on the seventeenth where we have a grant to find out where all of our waste is coming from. But there's other issues associated with regulations. For example, I think the state needs to look very strongly at allowing these transfer stations and shipping the waste out of state. Dvorsky/I've been talking to people about getting a- as you know there's a transfer station gong into Cedar Rapids possibly. Atkins/Well, yeah. Dvorsky/It's almost in my district so I'm looking into some legislation to regulate transfer stations. Atkins/And my concern is out on the transfer station is that it's a quick fix. It's going to undo a lot of the very good things that we've done in recycling because they don't have the same responsibilities. They can charge less because they aren't taxed at the same rate that someone operating a landfill. Dvorsky/Well they should. Solid waste is solid waste. It still ought to have the same tipping fee as the other ones. Atkins/Yeah, and also the bottom line is I think shipping it out of state, while it may be a convenient solution, I think it should be, we created it. We should deal with our own problems. I support that. Myers/Is there support on the city councils for transfer stations around here? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 17 Dvorsky/Maybe you should ask Mr. Yutsky, I don't know. Audience/(Can't hear) Dvorsky/Huh? Audience / (Can't hear) Dvorsky/What do small towns say? Audience / (Can't hear) Dvorsky/They're taken care off Myers/Huh? Neuhauser/Well one of the problems- Dvorsky/In fact I think that small towns, some small towns, have been a lot better with the solid waste than some bigger cities. Neuhauser/Don, what do you think? Could you come and tell us how it's affecting your city? Neuhauser/No. Just the recycling and the landfill. All of that Don Saxton/Well, we contract with the Iowa City Cleanup and it comes into the Iowa City landfill and of course whatever your tipping fees are come back through us and passed on to our consumers. As far as the transfer stations and so forth and going out of sate, we really haven't as a council haven't addressed that issue. We're hitting recycling harder the first of the year because on a voluntary basis it's not measuring up where we're about 16% and the average probably around the county is around 25-30. and we're creating a situation where it's going to reach that, so mandate from us I guess to our consumers. While I'm here, take advantage of this situation here as far as administrative law and so forth, DNR's and that sort of thing in our city in the last seven years or so, we have put in a half million dollar treatment water treatment plant and improvements because of radium and the level bounced around a little bit and I think the truth is known after we're told to do something about it, which we did. Fortunately we got a quarter million dollar grant. The level came down. We might have been in compliance. I don't know. But never the less we have a better water system as a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 18 result of it, but we're still in debt probably $250,000 on that over and above what the grant was. Same way with sewer as far as discharge permit into local streams. Ammonia standards come around the comer. And so we get notice we're not going to renew your permit unless you submit your plan and fortunately we again we're recipients of a grant and work through the state revolving fund for the balance of financing for about $266,000 or so. Along the way we've had the highest priced sewer and water rates, but as these hit other people, they're catching up and passing us. It's not easy. Doderer/And a lot of people are buying bottled water which is even higher and not complaining about the price. Saxtord Oh there's no comparison in price. Dvorsky/This is a minor thing, but are you still working on that little cemetery thing that I tried to look at last session? Saxton/Yes. As a matter of fact I have a copy of '97 Code of Iowa addressing the issue that I would like for you to address. Dvorsky/The rest of the legislature, I mean it's not a big issue, but might do something. Saxton/Like me to address that right now? Dvorsky/Sure. They want to work together I think with the township on it with the cemetery. I don't know it it'd fly right now with the code. Don Saxton / For the record, Don Saxton, Mayor of Oxford. Anyhow in the Code of Iowa 1997, maybe I'll find it here. It's 359.33. We came into a unique situation and I'm not going to bore you with the problem and the time as to why this evolved. But anyhow, townships may levy a tax not to exceed 6 and 3/4 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value of the taxable property to improve and maintain any cemetery not owned by the township provided the same is devoted to general public use. And a couple of years discovered that there's kind of a violation of the law in giving too much to a non-township cemetery which was pretty much the main one that was used by the township, and so the amount that the township was giving in this case to the Oxford Cemetery was cut back to oh less than half as a result of this restriction. And so and we had some meetings with the township trustees jointly with city and them and suggesting why don't we have a joint take over of it and so forth which would get around this. Of course neither wants it. And due to the organization of it, the way it's set up, everybody thought it was This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session actually public cemetery and it's not. They refer to it as the Oxford Public Cemetery but it really isn't. Myers/You mean it belongs to a family? Saxton/No. It's a unique situation. They've got their own board and I don't know how it actually started or evolved. And. Doderer/Write us a letter, will you? Saxton/Yeah. Okay. But anyhow. Myers/They don't have taxing authority do they? Saxton/No. Myers/Okay. Saxton/No, they do not. And so anyhow, we were told, oh we met with John Balkley out of the County Attorney's Office and so forth in the past. The last time this was changed in 1974 and I would like to see the amount where it is taxed not to exceed 6 and 3/4 cents per thousand dollars either significantly raised or eliminated because as the code interpreted to us a city for example can make a contribution to one of these that is not restricted by an amount. And I'd like, to see that done with township. Thank you. Doderer/We'll do our best. Dvorsky/Thanks, Don. Saxton/Pardon. Doderer/We'll do our best. Neuhauser/These cemetery bills get a lot more debate than you would imagine. (Can't hear) Dvorsky/(Can't hear) cemetery bills and I looked (Can't hear) for that but it didn't fit. Doderer/We not only had bills and debates on the lots and the land and who owns it, but on the price of the urns and where you put the headstones and we always get into This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 page 19 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 20 everybody has an opinion on it. Yeah I know. But getting back to where I said that there was not a restriction on the smoking. Senator Hammond and I asked for an Attorney General's opinion and you can pass laws more restrictive than the state law, but you will be sued. But we do not have a strict mandate on smoking. The person that wrote the law made it. Dvorsky/(Can't hear) Doderer/Well the Attorney General gave me an opinion saying. Dvorsky/Sergei Garrison said. Doderer/I got an Attorney General's opinion. Sergei is a lobbyist. Tom Miller is the- and it is an informal opinion because he didn't want to get into too big a soup, but he said that cities can. Cities may. Mascher/But they'll be sued. Doderer/They'll be sued. And he'll help you with your suit. Dvorsky/I think that the anti-smoking people were hoping that Iowa City would test this if there's any interest here. They really are. Sergei Garrison is a lobbyist for that group but he used to be the head of the legislative service bureau and he's an attorney and has a lot of background in code so- Doderer/I'll share my opinion. Dvorsky/Yeah. I think I've got that one, but somebody needs to try. Doderer/Have you got it? It just came out a week ago. Dvorsky/No. I don't have that one. Doderer/I wanted to withhold it until after the city council election. Dvorsky/I think they were hoping somebody would test it though like Iowa City. Neuhauser/There is, as an aside to this, there is a bipartisan group looking at the whole tobacco issue, particularly tobacco and youth, and one of the issues we are going to be looking at is to allow local governments to be able to adopt their own laws as far as youth are concerned. Because the tobacco companies say oh no no no, we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 21 don't want any kids smoking so it's a little hard for them to argue that it should be under state control if they don't really want them to smoke any way. Vanderhoef/Has there been any thought about changing the way that you put forward the license and the cost of the license for the businesses that sell cigarettes, and by the way? I'm Dee Vanderhoef. I'm on the Iowa City Council. The licensing for sale of tobacco products. Doderer/Oh. Okay. Vanderhoef/Has there been any thought in increasing the cost of that? Doderer/Do we have a lid on this? Vanderhoef/Yeah. Doderer/We set the- Vanderhoef/You set it. And if it were raised, then would that create a fund that could come back to the community for public education? Doderer/You get the money now, don't you? Dvorsky/Yeah. Senator Hammond had an amendment to do that, and the amendment actually, I can't remember specifically what happened. I actually had the amendment did away with preemption. And it actually passed our committee, and the tobacco lobby really cranked up and killed it. Doderer/Yeah. Preemption. Dvorsky/But or actually the bill never came up again, never saw the light of day. Myers/I ran a preemption legislation in the House. Dvorsky/Yeah and that didn't. Myers/We lost on a rules vote. Doderer/Back up this year? Dvorsky/But there was also. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 22 Myers/It was not germane. Dvorsky/An amendment I think on the same bill or similar bill. There were two bills that big anti teen smoking bills out of Human Resources that Senator Hammond put an amendment on that did that, that raised the fee and then they were going to put it into a fund. But I think they avoided that one too. They went around us on both of those. I mean when you're not in control it's hard to get some things done. So I think the mood has changed a lot now though, and I think the anti-smoking forces are better organized. I think we're going to get something done this year in some of those areas. Myers/I really don't think it's a partisan issue, frankly. It's a lobby issue. Dvorsky/No, it's not. But there once again, special interest, an enormous amounts of money and enormous amounts of lobbyists out there for Philip MOlTiS and all the cigarette companies, like Casey's for example. The lobbyist for Casey's out there because they sell a lot of cigarettes. Doderer/Yeah, they say they'll go out of business if they can't sell cigarettes. Dvorsky/Yeah right. He told me that too and I laughed. Mascher/See we even tried to do some things with just getting it behind the counters so it was more difficult. That would be one of the home rule kinds of things that I would like to see. And we worked on that too but we got nowhere with that. Doderer/So that's another issue we're looking at. Mascher/Oh, I know. Myers/Let me give you a- Doderer/It's a bipartisan group working on that. I don't know whether we're going to get anywhere. Vanderhoef/There's some interest as I- CHANGE TO TAPE 155 SIDE 2 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 23 Vanderhoef/And a long association with the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Society that are working cooperatively towards doing these kinds of things and of course they don't have the lobbying power that- Doderer/They don't have a full time lobbyist. Dvorsky/They had Sergei Garrison who was just a multi-client lobbyist who did a little bit. And actually the best advocate we've had is the Attorney General and his office was really promoting that. He was the one when we were negotiating with the smoking people but we lost most of those. We won a couple of fights, but- Neuhauser/Well, keep going. Myers/I'm going to bring up another- Doderer/The Senate is worse than the House because- Dvorsky/Yeah, they are. We are. Neuhauser/The majority leader of the House- Dvorsky/(Can't hear) Neuhauser/Yeah, the majority leader's going to kill everything. Mascher/Never mind. Dvorsky/The majority leader in the senate smokes in his office. No one else can smoke, but he can smoke in his office. Mascher/ And they would not pass joint rules last year that basically prevented them from smoking in that chamber. We tried that too and didn't get anywhere so- Neuhauser/And the majority leader- Myers/And the building is smoke free, but not that place. Dvorsky/Well they used to sell cigarettes in back by the senate, there used to be this cigarette and then they finally- Doderer/That was a Joe Coleman. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 24 Dvorsky/Yeah, they finally had some problems with some kids from East High were coming over and buying cigarettes out of the cigarette machine. Doderer/Because they were cheap too. Dvorsky/Yeah, I think they finally- Are the cigarettes out of there? Neuhauser/Oh, yes. The machine's gone. They're gone. Dvorsky/I think they're gone. Myers/ I want to address an issue about this licensing that I just thought of that did pass the house and I believe is it's got some, I don't know whether it has any future in the senate or not, but it has to do with licensing of liquor establishments, beer taverns and so on. I don't know how much some of you experienced it, but one of the things that used to gall me when I was on the board of supervisors and the city council was that we would decide and it's always a tough decision to make to deny someone a renewal of a liquor license. And I'm sure some of you have had that problem. And it's a tough thing to do because you're talking about somebody's livelihood when you're doing it but if you do that locally, that person appeals to the state liquor commission, it's almost always granted unless the guy shot his mother in cold blood or something. I mean honest to God, I really, I don't know what kind of offense somebody has to commit in order to lose that license, but it just doesn't happen very often. And when they do get a punishment of some kind, it's usually sort of a convenience to them and so on. It is an overriding of local control. Once you folks have decided that that's what you want to do, then the state arbitrarily steps in and overrules you. We've got to a change in the law now that we've proposed, it's passed the house. It has been proposed for 17 years that I know about, if you can imagine. And that's something that I think we would like to hear, we have heard from your lobbyist, but something she might want to comment on, so that you have the right to do that yourself. And it has an override in it so that cities and towns can in effect after review make their decisions stick. And I personally think you need that to make those decisions yourself. That's a local control issue. I don't know how many, how you think about that, but- Neuhauser/I don't know how often the local decision is overridden. Myers/I tell you, I- Nov/On a regular basis. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 25 Myers/I can think of one establishment in this county that I'm not going to mention that the Board of Supervisors regularly disallowed this office. And I'm not going to tell you where it is. Dvorsky/That was one of my best things that I- Myers/Nevertheless, anyway- Dvorsky/Local governments- Myers/Anyway. we always got overridden on that, And dam it. We shouldn't have been. Their were good reasons for shutting that down. And now of course the good things that happen is it's got good management and things have changed. But you know, you like to be able to discipline a person who was clearly breaking the law. That's all there is to it and causing all kinds of law enforcement problems. Dvorsky/Also they were annexed into the city, I mean all the islands were annexed into the city. Myers/Now we're beginning to talk about specifics and ! wasn't going to do that. Neuhauser/The problem is though that you can't get support from the League of Municipalities on this issue or the League of Cities. They just will not make it a priority and I don't know whether it's because other cities don't find it a problem or whether they just, they'd rather have the state handle these problems. Myers/Well they supported it in committee this time though. Doderer/Urn-huh. Neuhauser/Did they? Myers/Yes. In the local government committee. Doderer/I haven't heard them ever push it at all. Myers/They probably didn't in the senate, I don't know, but they did in the house. I don't know. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 26 Mascher/Didn't that situation happen though at one point where a business actually closed down and was re-bought by somebody and then reopened under another name? Nov/Under another name and a new license. Mascher/I mean obviously they can get around the law that way all the time. Nov/They can- Mascher/Is there a way to prevent that? Nov/I don't know. I also would like to see some local control on the state sanctions. They will tell a bar they have violated some law. It's a state law. It's the state liquor control that says you're going to be suspended. We're going to take away your license for two weeks. Then they let the local folks choose which two weeks. And I say if they're going to let the local folks choose it, let the city council choose it, not the bar owner. Doderer/Right. That's right. Myers/How much feedback have you heard about the new penalties on serving minors? Huh? Mascher/From businesses here? Myers/Has anybody pinched for that $1500? Have they? Doderer/I've heard some complaints about the time it takes to get another license after you've been caught one, twice, three times. Myers/These are pretty severe penalties. I mean they're really draconian in many ways. I'm not- We really went overboard. I don't want to say overboard. I don't know. We really increase penalties a great deal and I'm not sure what the effect's going to be, you know long term. Norton/In that regard, is liquor tax rebated in anyway on basis of consumption? Doderer/No. Population. Norton/Like gasoline? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 27 Doderer/Population, I think. Norton/Why not base it on consumption? Doderer/It's on population. Norton/(Can't hear). Myers/On the number of licensees, I think, too. Norton/Isn't that the way gas comes back, on the basis of sales? Doderer/Yeah, but it's not for human consumption. Norton/Yeah, but I mean, the gasoline tax based on the- Myers/The gasoline tax is on the basis of a formula. Yeah, and it- Neuhauser/I think quite, to be fair about this, the idea is not to reward consumption, so- Norton/No, I understand that, but the problems that are entailed with alcohol are obviously related to consumption. Right here in River City is a fair example. Neuhauser/That's right. Myers/(Can't hear) no fun. Norton/(Can't hear) Mascher/Naomi, are there some of the other small towns, I'm just curious about if their issues are different or if they have things they'd like to say. Doderer/Other than cemeteries. Neuhauser/Yeah, let's hear from North Liberty. Mascher/Yeah. Neuhauser/Who's from North Liberty? Here they are. Yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 28 Nov/(Can't hear) North Liberty. Do you want to say something? Neuhauser/Yeah. Everything's cool there. North Liberty rep/Everything's cool. Myers/I would like to ask you a question. Nov/How about University Heights? Audience/Everything's cool. Myers/ I'd like to ask a question about TIF's. One of the things I forgot to tell you about in talking about what this committee is discussing is the issue of TIF's, Tax Incremental Financing. I don't want to get too insider oriented here, but Tax Incremental Financing. That is an issue and with all the tax abatements that's going to be looked at, there are many people on this committee who'd like to do away with all kinds of exemptions. Now that's not going to happen politically. There are 28 specific property tax exemptions in the Iowa Code for one reason or another, veterans, homestead, and family farm credit never been funded, but there are 28 of them in the books. There's many, there's a feeling in the legislature, some members of the legislature and on this committee and I'm not talking about democrats or republicans. I'm talking about across the board by some members, that these exemptions need to be looked at. And the subject of Tax Incremental Financing has come up quite a bit. And I'll never forget when Tax Incremental Financing came to Johnson County. The first year the number was $3,000,000. The next year it was 30. It was an exponential increase as far as I'm concerned. And I have seen whole communities decide that they want to be TIFed, which I believe went outside of the original intent of the law, but regardless, I'm not saying they did something illegal. I'm just saying that wasn't why the program was really designed in the first place and many people are concerned about the effect of TIF's on the taxpayers that exist now. And I think it's something that you need to think about and how you're using them and whether they're paying off for you and you ought to be able to document and back that up if the Tax Incremental Financing is working in your community. Another thing I'm concerned about is how long they're in effect. Whether they're being renewed or not. And for what purpose are they being renewed. Because your fellow taxpayers that are there now are picking up the tab to send those kids to school for the local portion, the portion the state doesn't cover and you're picking up the tab for any kind of things that the county would ordinarily pay for, like if there's a social service problem of some sort, you're picking up that tab and for fire protection This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 29 and so forth. And I'm a person who's always voted for tax abatements. I thought they were a good idea, and incentive for economic development, but sometimes I think we've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous here on some of these things, we've gone too far. Neuhauser/Dick, about three ago we really tried to work on TIF's and I want to tell you that we were stopped dead in our tracks. The developers would not even discuss this. They did not let it go. Myers/I think there are people in the development business that are also concerned about this. Neuhauser/Well, these particularly developers in the Des Moines area. Myers/Oh. Okay. Doderer/Remember when we passed that bill. It was to be for the building, now I've forgotten the name of it. The one Jean Lloyd Jones-(can't hear) had bought it, right downtown in Des Moines. Those were to be condos sold for at the highest $50,000. Mascher/Plaza 1. Doderer/Plaza 1, yeah. And they are now selling for over $300,000 and I think that TIF is off because it was a ten year deal and I think those original ones, but probably the new ones get it. And they're just not that money goes to the city. Just- Myers/I'd like you to think about that. Doderer/The whole city of Waterloo downtown has been TIFed, and if you go through Waterloo and you live there as I did years ago, it looks like a desert, but it's TIFed because they don't get enough money out of it to rebuild it. Neuhauser/The problem really with that was where it was directed originally, at slums and blight in downtowns. And then they changed it to allow anywhere to be a TIF and it is just sucked out the tax base while not really improving the downtown that much. Waterloo is a perfect example, because they still have to compete all those cities around them that have this. Myers/You need Tax Incremental Financing. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 30 Neuhauser/You are supposed to get them a marginal advantage. Doderer/Just about everything we do changes when it, by the time it goes into effect. Myers/Tax Incremental Financing was used in a community called Glen Oaks in Des Moines. Dvorsky/Right. That was the- Neuhauser/It was welfare. It was welfare, but we didn't call it that. Myers/I mean that, there's some- I don't think there's a shack in that place under half a million dollars, you know. Kubby/That kind of accountability you're talking about is something that maybe the state could coordinate communities gathering that kind of information to see how effective those kinds of programs really are in the long run, and something the state could do in that same line of accountability is with machinery and equipment because the theory is that if you don't charge those taxes, those companies reinvest and create jobs and have long term effects. But is that really happening? I mean we're losing $700,000 a year from our general fund which is the most restricted. It's where everything comes to, and everything is taken from. Myers/You're not losing that in the first year. Kubby/That leaves us very little room to maneuver for initiatives, because everything is demanded from the General Fund, and so I would like the state to say when you're going from 30% to 0%, what is our community gaining over time and that's again we can help provide that long term information. We need to see on a state wide basis, is it really doing what you're intent is and if not, you need to look at what the negatives are for the community. And maybe change some of the strategies. Say what is working with economic development and what isn't. And you only do that by getting statistics and information over a long period of time and being willing to say we're going to change it back or we're going to do something different. Neuhauser/You're going to have to get a new state government, I'll tell you before that's going to happen. It absolutely should happen. It should happen with all the programs that we do. We should be monitoring them to see if in fact they are having the same kind of effects that we had intended, but it isn't being done. Just like we pass all these laws and then we don't pass any money to enforce them. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 31 (Can't hear) would be done at the state. We're not going to be evaluating programs that are going to be helping people save their tax money. We're not going to evaluate them. Mascher/We just said, Dick's on another tax committee that we said isn't going to do anything. Neuhauser/No. They're not going to do anything. Myers/I didn't say that. Okay. Mascher/You can't. Myers/Oh, I'm not going to say that either. But what I'm trying to tell you about that tax committee it's not going to do revolutionary things. There just is no light switch solutions to this stuff. That's all there is to it. Doderer/You should've seen the makeup of the committee when we first got the bill. Myers/I remember that. Doderer/It was composed of all the- I think it was four people represented a special interest. And I got it changed. Dwight Dinkla who is chair of Ways and Means in the house, agreed with me. We had a little trouble with his sister who chairs Ways and Means in the senate and she put some of it back in, but it is a better committee now than before we amended it. It was purely special interests. Write a tax bill for us. And you know it would've been more of a waste of money than they usually are. Myers/This tax committee by the way is going to make a report here pretty quickly as to progress which won't amount to a heck of a lot but it is a two year thing and I got an idea it may be extended. I'm not surprised. I won't be surprised if it is. Doderer/You see they wanted the report after the next election. Myers/That's right. Doderer/They did not want all this bad news to come before and be debated in the election. Like it doesn't make a lot of sense to go in debt and give tax money back, which we've been doing. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 32 Myers/Well there's nothing new in that. I used to do that myself. Nov/Let's get to another issue. Dvorsky/Before we go too far, I've got to mention this. Representative Ro Foege called me at home and he's ill tonight. He wanted to be here but he's ill so he sent his regrets along. Nov/Thank you. Doderer/He was feeling terrible last night. Dvorsky/Yeah, he didn't sound very well last night either and it sounds worse tonight. Nov/I think we're going to get something to limit some telecommunications and electricity use of the city right of way. We've some city control of people who are using the city r.o.w. Neuhauser/Well they're sure going to push that, whether it will go through, I don't know. I mean I certainly would fight that. But they, the utilities, will definitely be pushing that. Nov/Yeah, the utilities are pushing that. And we're in a city that had telephone service 100 years ago and therefore they're grandfathered in. We cannot charge for telephone. We can and we do charge for cable television. Well if they're going to start overlapping, we're going to get questions like why am I being charged and that person is not. The telephone company- Neuhauser/It may be a new telephone company though. Nov/May be. But they're talking about doing cable television lines and the cable television people are talking about doing telephone lines. So the, just, how should I say, the distinctions are being blurred. Doderer/A lady called me tonight wanting all of you to protest taking the Spanish speaking station off, or not the station, but- Nov/Yes. Doderer/And I told her to come down and tell all the rest of you so you could complain, but evidently she isn't here. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 33 Nov/Well we- Doderer/And she said you said couldn't do anything about it. So the only thing you can do about it is what Des Moines did about it. Same TV station or same company. In Des Moines they were taking something off. I can't remember what it was. Myers/Cubs games. Doderer/Which one was it? Myers/WGN. Doderer/Yeah. They were taking WGN. And they people just rose up and they changed their mind. Dvorsky/David Oman saved everybody there so you might want to contact him on it. Nov/That happened here also. WGN created a community wide, state wide protest, but our sending a letter to TCI asking them to follow through on a commitment that they've made to restore 24 Univision service when they finish the upgrade. And I don't know that they can find another place to cut in order to put in this must carry channel, but we've said that please seek another place. Doderer/Well, I think that they could do without 98 or 99 and that's the Spanish speaking. There's a big gap between 36 and maybe it's 99. Which one is it? Nov/The problem is they can only handle exactly this number of channels. So if they have to add another on, they have to move something. Doderer/It's there. Mascher/Two cartoon channels, I don't know, Naomi. Nov/Well, they claim to have dome a survey. Doderer/No one asked me. Nov/That's true. No one asked me either. Audience/(Can't hear) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 34 Doderer/There you go. Doderer/They use it for teaching Spanish as well as for Spanish people to learn English. Nov/It's really widely used. Doderer/And if you're listening to surveys, we want to keep that channel on. / Not just the cartoons. Myers/Don't let them take off (can't hear). Dvorsky/No. Don't take off the cartoons. Doderer/Good for you. Nov/I'm going to move to another issue and please, anyone who wants to comment on any of these things, step forward and come to the microphone. Dvorsky/The r.o.w. You mentioned the r.o.w. I just heard it from IES utilities. Obviously they don't want to go along with that, but I could sure see if there's going to be enormous changes in electrical if they go into retail (can't hear) and wholesale (can't hear) and all that sort of thing. There's going to be enormous changes so plus if you talked about cable and the phone companies becoming blurred. I don't know if people noticed the City of Haywarden in Iowa now has allowed to get into the phone business, so they're going into the phone business, which is a revolutionary step for Iowa. / There you go. Dvorsky/You know, Iowa City could go into the phone business. Although they did require the city of Haywarden, they had about half the amount of people the equal amount of people lived in the county, they had to serve them also, because that is what the local telephone company served. So it's not without some strings, but there are going to be a lot of changes, and I think you'll see some cities that have municipal utilities really getting that sort of thing, Cedar Falls and Muscatine and others, really getting into that sort of a program. The other thing is, you know, I wouldn't, it might be time for cities to renew their efforts to get hooked to the ICN again. I don't know. That's going to be debated again on all sorts of things. It could be an opportunity. Plus there may be some available slots near he end of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 35 last year of hooking up ICN for libraries, other libraries to get hooked up, because some aren't going to be hooked up. And so for example, the Solon library, which is going to build a new library's interested in having an ICN. So maybe there's some interest in some other libraries to do that. Nov/The legislature's going to get some lobbyists from Mid-American and other utilities that want to change the property tax system for utilities. Myers/I've already been there. Nov/They're doing lots of public meetings locally. They're assuring us they're going to put in a plan that will not inhibit local revenue in terms of bond issues, because we're dependent on that kind of thing. We'll see. Dvorsky/They've been meeting with the League of Cities and counties and everyone else. They're trying to work out some sort of thing. Myers/One of the things that's going to happen with this utility thing is that, in fact the bill was published today that they're proposing. And they had a draft of it Monday and they've been working on it and so on. But they've got the municipal utilities in the state of Iowa and the rural cooperatives in the state of Iowa as well as the investor owned utilities. Dvorsky/Both of them. Meyer/All of three of those. All three groups. In agreement on this issue of how to deal with wholesale wheeling of electricity and the kilowatt hour fee as opposed to a property tax. No the bill that I have seen and it's a fairly lengthy document, about 29-30 pages. I read it but not thoroughly, says that county treasurers will receive money in the same method as which they do now and it will be their responsibility to distribute that money just like they do now. I don't know quite who would be opposed to this idea yet except that the people that I think would be opposed to this may be some major industrial players in the state. Dvorsky/Well that's another piece of the puzzle. You talk about going to wholesale and retail wheeling. There's an organization now of the major, John Deere and others, that are going together and they want to go to wholesale wheeling this year, '98. Myers/What the issue is say for Mid-America Energy where we get our energy from, what I call Iowa-Illinois. Let's say the John Deere plant down here at Bettendorf decides to buy their electricity from Con-Ed. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 36 Dvorsky/Out of Chicago. Myers/All of a sudden there's a big hole in Mid-America's revenue stream. Well they've got their capital cost. They've got their base cost and all of this. Who picks up that loss? Well obviously the consumers who are still there. And this is going to have to be dealt with, yet the people who are coming and selling that electricity in the state of Iowa are paying no property taxes or no taxes of any kind on that except the transmission tax, the pole tax if you will, that it takes to put this stuff over the line. And frankly, on the face of it, this looks like a solution to me that I'm for, but it will be long time coming whether we do it or not. Neuhauser/You're talking about you're in favor of wholesale wheeling? Myers/No. I'm not in favor at all. Wholesale wheeling is coming whether I'm in favor of it or not. It's nothing to do with it. It's here. Electricity is going to be deregulated. Neuhauser/The utilities have for a long time been fighting this centralized property tax assessment. Myers/Yeah. Well this is going to be centralized though. Neuhauser/It is unique in Iowa and this is an area that very frankly we're going to have to look at. I don't know how it's going to come out, but we're going to have to address that problem, because- Myers/This bill is still centralized. Dvorsky/Yeah. But they'll determine a certain amount on how much a kilowatt, what the charge will be on a kilowatt of electricity no matter who produces it. That will be the same charge. If it's produced out of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago or produced out of IES or Mid-America or even- there's some in California that's enormous and one in Houston, Texas, too that both of them are going to be nation-wide almost providers. It's really scary. Myers/Right now I think Iowa would be a net exporter of electricity because we have about a 25% excess in our generating capacity. Dvorsky/Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 37 Myers/At the present time. But of course with some growth that would begin to disappear. It is going to be virtually impossible to build new electrical plants in the state of Iowa under the present laws. Very difficult to do. That's what I understand. And so and they'll probably be reluctant to export electricity in any permanent way because they have to have some there to take up for expansion, I mean growth in the state itself. But right now, Iowa could theoretically be a net exporter of electricity. Dvorsky/It's amazing how these sort of, and the same thing happens in the legislature, these sort of bills dealing with utilities and telecommunications, enormous amounts of money comes through this. One's eyes glaze over and you know it's only 20 people understand the whole thing and it's going to be done and nobody will know the difference. Atkins/I understand the principal of what you just said, I think. Doesn't that somewhat fly in the face of the intended federal deregulation? I mean we're regulating in the state boundaries now? Myers/No. Atkins/You're losing me on that. Doderer/Just whether we're ready to deregulate. Atkins/I know we were not ready as a state to do that, but in researching the law concerning retail wheeling and so forth, we were not ready. Myers/ We're not ready for retail wheeling yet. That's for sure. But we're going to see it. It's gong to have these guys calling you up at 10:00 at night when you're getting ready to go to bed or something trying to sell you electricity from Eastlove Jesus Electric Company somewhere. It'll happen. And I just can hardly wait. Lord. But it's something that we're going to have to deal with. Doderer/You know in the legislature, we hear a lot from legislators who represent small towns, that they've just got to have this or they can't have that. And I don't hear from the small towns here. So I don't know if those- Dvorsky/I do. Maybe not here, but (can't hear). Doderer/Coralville is no longer a small town. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 38 Dvorsky/No, but I've got like eleven cities in my district. Doderer/You do hear from them. Dvorsky/Sure. Doderer/Are they all here telling us something? Dvorsky/North Liberty's here and Don's here from Oxford. Doderer/And we heard from Oxford. Dvorsky/Coralville's not even here tonight. I think they're getting awards at the Chamber. Myers/Yeah, that's the reason why. Doderer/They deserve an award. Well anyhow, we hear that a lot and we hear it on small schools and tonight we don't have, cities. Dvorsky/But I think our small- our areas real fortunate there's a lot of growth in here. And all the communities in my area are growing and all the school districts have advanced enrollment and our problems are really a lot different than a lot of other districts around the state. it's a different situation. Myers/(Can't hear). Dvorsky/Yeah. We're an urban county. There are rural parts, but it's an urban county. Myers/That having the growth is an important thing, but you mentioned unfunded mandates a minute ago and one of the reasons why you hadn't seen any for awhile. State's had money. Wait until they don't have money and they start looking for it. Then you'll have unfunded mandates. Dvorsky/Do you know there's five new subdivisions in Tiffin and one in Ely and one in Fairfax. Doderer/How many in Oxford? Aren't there a couple in Oxford? / A couple in Oxford. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 39 Myers/Look at North Liberty. Dvorsky/Oh yeah. That's- North Liberty and Coralville. Mascher/Three, that's us. Nov/Is there anyone who would like to bring up any issue that concerns them whether it's a city issue or non-city issue? Doderer/Do you all have problems with the deer or just Iowa City? Nov/Well we can talk about deer. Doderer/Here's comes Ernie. Dvorsky/They're doing close order drill on Dubuque Street aren't they? / (Can't hear) Lehman/Six abreast. I'm not here to talk about deer. Ernie Lehman, Iowa City Council. I've been hearing where the state has a $20,000,000 surplus. We don't. I really really, you know the last time that we cut taxes, and I know you all agree. That was I think a really dumb thing to do. Roads need repair and bridges need repair and the University of Iowa Library roof leaked for how many years until we finally fixed it. I really really hate to see that $20,000,000 refunded like it was back in the '80's. Cities need it. I mean there are so many places that need that money and it's so much easier to use money you have than it is to try and raise new money. I don't see the real problem with putting that money to good use nearly as much as I would refunding that cash and then having to come up next year and saying we don't have enough and trying to raise more of it. I really would like to see that money put to good use. It is money that is going to be collected or has been collected. Myers/Are you talking about the change in federal law? Lehman/Yes I am. Myers/That's actually $40 some million the first year and $20,000,000 three years out. But the first year it's a little more than that. Lehman/Well I just heard it on the radio. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 40 Neuhauser/Ernie, we have a lot of debt at the state level and we don't admit that. Lehman/Okay, I'm just saying- Neuhauser/And we should have paid some of that off too. / Be prudent, don't give the money back. Doderer/Well I think, Ernie- It isn't up to us. I think you have to talk to the Republican leadership because they think, and they may be right, and I hope they aren't, this is their way of keeping control of the house and Senate is to promise giving tax money back. You heard the line, it's your money. Dvorsky/I understand they're going to give is a capital gains break and that wouldn't be giving my money back because if I'd never seen a capital gains break. Doderer/If they'd give my capital loss back, I'd get some. Mascher/Ernie, I don't think you're ever going to see your refund like we did during Ray's administration. I think that was an absolute mistake and I think people saw that. / That was not any different than this. Doderer/Refund was better. (all talking) Mascher/I don't think that's ever going to happen, but it's going to be a reduction in some taxes. They've already promised it. Doderer/Reduction of taxes is worse because / (Can't hear) Doderer/And I don't think Bob Ray did that. Neuhauser/Reduces the base. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 41 Lehman/Minnette, You and I talked about this a couple of times, but the thing that just amazes me and I realize that it's a characteristic of the Iowa Legislature, but you look around the legislature on both sides of the aisle, I would have to believe that probably 2/3 or 3/4 of all the people in that legislature live in cities. Doderer/Well and it's also made of something like 80% of the committee chairs in the house are farmers. Something like 90%. Lehman/Okay. My point is though that most of the folks sitting there are from cities who experience the kinds of problems that we experience and the ways we're able to spend money, to tax, to raise money, whatever. Mascher/Ernie, that's true but think about it. Mary, Bob, I, Dick, all represent rural area too. Lehman/I know that. Mascher/And that happened in redistricting if you remember back when they did it from, not the cities out but did it from the country in. Doderer/So everyone- So everybody has rural in their area. Neuhauser/Except Minnette. Mascher/And they're influenced by that. And that's the only one who is all city. Lehman/I'm well aware of that, except that the vast majority 80-90% of the people in the state live in cities. Doderer/And Ernie- Mascher/But we don't represent cities only. Lehman/No, I don't expect that. Mascher/No, but- Doderer/Every issue is not a city or county issue or a town issue. I mean a rural issue. But Ernie you're right. We hear much more from rural legislators, or not rural legislators because they hear more from their constituents. For them I think politics is Saturday night at the poker game. And in Iowa City we're doing This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 42 something else. We don't sit around and say we've got to call our legislator tomorrow where they do out their in the country. And they hear a lot. Myers/Get any e-mail lately? Doderer/Besides that, rural folk believe if they get two phone calls, there's an overwhelming mandate to do something. Neuhauser/That's exactly right. Dvorsky/And we get ten phone calls and we weigh them. Neuhauser/To say nothing of the fact that the Farm Bureau is an extremely active both in campaigns and all year long, Dvorsky/The Farm Bureau still the number one probably special interest in the Iowa Legislature. It fights reapportionment at two different times they've been through it's and still there even though everyone theoretically lives in a city and all that. They just ignore. Neuhauser/They have a great (can't hear). Dvorsky/They get away with it because nobody holds them accountable. Myers/One of the things that might be done with this surplus is to use it to do some reform issues that we talked about earlier. That may be a way to deal with that. I don't know. Norton/Is there any chance that it's time to rethink the rules on investment of reserve funds and so forth. We have pretty restrictive rules as I understand it on how, I understand there were some catastrophes in recent years about that, but isn't it time to rethink that and perhaps modernize our investment guidelines or policies? Neuhauser/I hadn't heard this discussed at all, but it probably is something that we need. Myers/What are you suggesting? Norton/As I understood it, there were restrictions on how you could invest city reserves and when you look at the returns we're getting on the investments, they're not what you'd think you might get with other arrangements. I'm not talking about heavily risky ones. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 43 Myers/Yeah, you're talking about who makes the judgment now you know, and I'm kind of concerned about that frankly. Neuhauser/No. We over reacted on the Iowa Trust thing. That was what it was. Dvorsky/But I don't think you cut back. You've always been reactionary on that. I don't think we cut back after that. Neuhauser/Oh, yeah. Dvorsky/Did we? Myers/I don't think that the Iowa Trust happened- Dvorsky/You weren't doing stocks and things like that then. Neuhauser/No. Well, I can't even remember all the details about the Iowa Trust, but it was very very loose, and they lost, a lot of cities lost a lot of money and some never did get it back. Dvorsky/Most of them did. Myers/Most of them got it back. But what they probably lost was their investment credit. Neuhauser/They tightened up and they really tightened up probably more than is necessary. Dvorsky/Why don't you supply us with the information and what you would like to have it expanded to. Because I'm sure you're pretty conservative too. Nov/At the moment I think we're allowed to buy a CD from a bank in Johnson County. Dvorsky/That's what we're allowed to do now? Nov/That's what we're allowed to do. Myers/Or surrounding counties. Nov/Our surrounding counties, right. But if there's a good CD in Chicago you cannot buy it. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 44 Dvorsky/The bank is going to have the legislators come on down next week, isn't it? (can't hear) Nov/And we're not talking about stocks. Dvorsky/No the bankers got that done. Myers/Look, let me- Dvorsky/You have a home town bank in Iowa City. Talk to them. What day are they coming? Dvorsky/20th. Dvorsky/Come on down to the Holiday Inn at 5:00 and help us get them to loosen it up a little bit. Neuhauser/Well they- Myers/Wait. Before we beat up on somebody who's not here, the business with the Iowa Trust happened in my judgment when you look at that because there were people frankly who were not corrupt or venal or lazy, but maybe they just a little bit over their heads in handling that money. Okay? I want you to remember something. We elect county treasurers in this state. We got a lot of good ones. But a lot of them don't have experience at handling huge sums of money. And I'm going to be very careful before I go to relaxing laws that deal with that. And I kind of like the idea of keeping the money in the county. I do. Or around areas. Dvorsky/I like to pay an interest that- Myers/I don't want to take risks. I think you can jawbone that interest rate. I really do. Because we did it. We've done it before. But regardless this is the publics money you're dealing with and I think you need to be very careful about it. Dvorsky/One advantage around here though is that most of the banks have been real good about reinvesting into the community. Myers/Yeah, they have. Dvorsky/In rural banks, that's not the case at all. They keep it in T-Bills to whatever and they don't put squat back in the community and here they do that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 45 Myers/I'm impressed with the loan to deposit ratios in this area. And I'm familiar with that. Dvorsky/As well as the credit union even though the bankers want to see (can't hear). Dvorsky/Let us know what interest you are drawing and we can make a better judgment. Myers/Yeah. Dvorsky/Because if they're paying me more interest on my CD's than they're paying the city, then something's wrong. / (Can't hear). Dvorsky/Same low rate. Dvorsky/(Can't hear) I'm not asking for (can't hear). No just pay normal. Dvorsky/Yeah. Okay. Myers/Well, okay. Nov/Okay. Any other questions? Dvorsky/That is one problem, a good problem I have a lot is that a lot of things work in my district and they don't work in the rest of the state. People are always saying, this doesn't work at all and you look at what goes on in here and it works. So we're kind of immune to some of those things. I know we have other problems, but it's a good problem to have. / There's one. / Please come to the microphone. / (Can't hear) Nov/We're taping. Don Saxton/Just give us some of that surplus back in the form of municipal assistance and we'll cut property taxes and we'll both look good. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397 November 13, 1997 Council Work Session page 46 Dvorsky/Good idea. Myers/We all done? / That's enough. Dvorsky/Who's your legislator? / Ro. Dvorsky/Well he's good. Neuhauser/That it? Nov/I think that's it. thank you all for coming. For the local city council people, the Iowa League [end of taping] This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of November 13, 1997 WSl11397