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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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?
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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,
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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-
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/ (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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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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.
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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)
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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