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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2004-01-15 TranscriptionJanuary 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 1 Council: Bailey, Champion, Elliott, Lehman, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn Staff': Atkins, Hefting, Knoche, Lewis, O'Malley, Trueblood, Mansfield, Davidson, Karr, Fosse, Franklin, Rocca, Winkelhake TAPES: 04-08, SIDE 2; 04-10, BOTH SIDES; 04-11, SIDE 1. WORK SESSION - BUDGET Atkins/Today's budget session involves capital improvement projects. As you can see, there's whole rash of staff here and they will be coming up here to present the projects. It is in the back of your book, C1, 2, 3. Got that? Before we start...yes? Champion/I have one question from the last meeting. When we talk about the 25%, debt, does that include the revenue bonds that we have in there? Atkins/No, it's general obligation debt. Okay. I take that....wait a minute now. Does it include the revenue bonds, or the revenue payments? Champion/Revenue payment, the abatements. Atkins/It does. It's the face values, yes. So it does. Let Kevin answer that. O'Malley/That 25% is net of any abatements. Champion/Oh, okay. Atkins/Okay, good, that's what I thought. That's what you wanted. Champion/Sorry. Atkins/Nope, no apologies. Capital improvement projects, before we launch into the presentations about each and every one, a couple things to keep in mind. This is a recommended plan. It is (can't hear) over a number of years, that there are projects that may be initiated in 07 or something such as that. Capital improvement projects usually take a year to propose, a year to plan, and a year to build. About three years on almost any capital project. Ifyou haven't noticed that, that overlaps Council elections. And so it's important that we go through this on an annual basis because of our new faces, new (can't hear), new interests on the part of the Council. We can amend the plan accordingly. Capital improvement projects often involve a lot of sunk costs. You give us the go-ahead to build a bridge, Rick may go out and write a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of contracts, doing design, going through whatever, so there are earlier commitments. Generally speaking we can answer those questions for you on what the level of commitment may have been on a particular project. This project plan, this is a little bit of a Johnny-come-lately issue, but I feel compelled to point it out to you because I think it could influence your thinking. After we'd This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 2 submitted the budget to you, we are sort of constantly evaluating and I'd like for you to look on page 68 of your budget document. Got it? Road use tax is monies that are paid in the form of gasoline taxes to the State. Then the State has a formula, please don't ask me....20% goes to the cities, and 10% goes to the counties, and 10% goes to the highway patrol. I mean, they have a formula. Well it ends up being a per capita number, that's how it's distributed to us. So they will say to us, they being the State, you get $83 next year on a per capita basis. Well $83 times 62,200, that's the amount of money. We are then permitted to make certain charges against that, and they virtually always, always must be related to right-of-way and/or roadway improvements. You can plow snow with it, anything associated with roadways. That's the purpose of the road use tax. In the proposed budget, and this assumes the current formula. The legislature is intending to look at that this year, and they could make some changes. But assuming the current formula, we have a rather healthy reserve position over the next three years. That is, our income is greater than the expenses that we have assigned to this, to it. Now, the reason we maintain a reserve, I think I mentioned a little bit of this the other evening, respond to an opportunity, some sort of a crisis occurs, it's simply the smart thing to do --- to have some flexibility within your planning. State could change its mind at any time, but if we maintain a reserve, if they do change their mind, we buy ourselves a little time to work through whatever particular financial conditions, financial circumstances, they may have handed to us. All of that, yes? Is that a question? Lehman/Well, ! find it interesting, why is it that we're keeping a reserve? It's almost equal to the expenditures. In fact, it's ..... Atkins/If you'll give me 30 seconds. Lehman/I'm sorry, I... Atkins/That's exactly where I'm going. (laughter) We evaluated this, looked at the capital improvement projects, and would ask that you sort of just put it in your pocket as you're thinking about these. We believe we can use about $1.5 million of this reserve for other street related projects. With me? Lehman/So in other words, we're not... Atkins/We want to draw that reserve down. It's more than we really need to accomplish the goals that we have. It's just accumulating it for the sake of it. Therefore, when you're thinking about projects, and you'll see those that are financed road projects, financed with G.O. debt, and that's the most likely ones we'll call your attention to. If you assume the formula will not change, we believe we can use $1.5 million. This is in effect like new money. You do not have this handout. It must be for road or right-of-way related projects. If you choose to go along with this, one, it can be used for another road project, the $1.5 million, or, two, you can substitute. Something, a road project we're using G.O. debt, make it financed This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 3 with road-use tax, thereby opening up the debt position. You can reduce the debt service levy by doing that, or you can do nothing and leave it alone. What we'll be asking you to do, is after we finish the presentation, we have a list of projects that are sort of"hot". We'll go over those with you, later, at the end of our session, or the unfunded list. For new Council members, that unfunded list is not a precise science. It's, this project has occurred at some time or some interest has been. We like to keep a list. It is not funded. There's no money appropriated, but if you were to see something on there that you were really interested in, you can pull that out separately for debate, but we like to keep the unfunded current. As you can see, it's a huge number, probably $150 million worth of projects that are not going to happen. So, okay you with me? Bottom line -- $i .5 mil available to you in road-use tax monies. Elliott/Steve, quick question. It says inter-city trails transfer to? Does that exclude intra- city trails, or is it just... Atkins/Generally speaking, if you're going to build a trail, it has to be associated with the right-of-way. Once it leaves the right-of-way, its ability to be financed with road-use tax is out. So you can have a trail system, a piece of it on the right-of- way, financed by road-use tax. As it veers off into a park or something, it has to be financed by another means. Elliott/Okay. Atkins/Staff?. We okay on all that? That's sort of what we talked about. Okay. We can put the lights back on, please. With that, we have staff assignments on each and every project. I'm going to ask the staff person, and remind them, that use this mic, speak into it. We're just going to step through those projects. I know the first up is Kevin, and financing the TIFs downtown. There were no other questions, were there? Okay. O'Malley/Okay, good morning. Normally I don't present projects. Normally I sit in the background the do the financing but this project, if you want particulars about the benefit to the City, Karin Franklin would be better apt to address those issues. My part of it is in the financing because this is a different project than our normal financing. Normally we issue G.O. Bonds for several purposes. We aggregate them together, and go through a process of marketing the bonds, and sizing the issue. I want to show you the particulars of this bond. I can use a computer but this is too old for me. (laughter) As you may notice right offthe bat, the size of the issue is 7.3, is different than the 7.4 that's in the book. This is a taxable issue, and it's very difficult to assess the total quantity of this bond issue. So we have some fudge factors, but when we did this project two years ago, when we did the financing for it, it was 7.1. The market moved up so we changed that book to 7.4. I had it resized, revalued about a week ago, and it's now 7.3. What we're obligated to do here is give $6 million, that's item 7, to the developer, and to do that, we need to capitalize the interest, which is not normally done in a regular This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 4 bond issue. We're doing that so that the rest of the taxpayers do not have to pay for this issue. This issue will be bom by the developer and his properties. This is a G.O. issue. It's ultimately, as the credit holders look at it, or the bond holders, who buy this issue, they don't look at how it's going to be financed. They look at that it's going to be a G.O. issue, meaning that the whole city is on the hook for repayment of these bonds. And, in reality, we, because it's a taxable issue, we size this so that only the developer and that TIF district, will pay for these bonds, so that the rest of the citizens won't have to bear this burden. The second issue is normally when we sell debt we have an aggressive method of trying to size it for ten years. Moody's likes the idea of cities paying back their debt quickly, and to keep our triple "A" rating, we normally do ten to twelve years, unless it's the library or a swimming pool which has a longer life span. In this project, we need to do twenty years in order for the assessed area to pay off the bonds. Does anybody have any questions on it? Lehman/It's a twenty year repayment period... O'Malley/That' s correct. Lehman/Starting March 1, 2004, and the payments will start... O'Malley/December 1st. Lehman/December lSt? Of....9 O'Malley/2004. Lehman/Okay. O'Malley/That's the issue of capitalized interest. We don't have the money on hand so we have to issue more than the $6 million. Lehman/No, no, I'm aware of that. O'Malley/Okay. I'll show you....any other questions in regard to the composition of this sale? Elliott/Excuse me. I'm not clear, and maybe I'll get brought up to speed when I talk with you further, but, how, who is paying this back? How is it getting paid back? How does this differ from what you did with ACT, that sort of thing. O'Malley/Yeah, most of the other TIF related projects have been rebate, where we, essentially, a TIF district is created. A new layer of valuation occurs, so in this area here, it's in the central business district, there's about $100 million of valuation there. Okay, that's frozen now. Everything above that, all the new valuation added to that, will pay off these bonds. So, the $26 million of this This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 5 project, and I think we also have $3 or $6 million in the Vogel house, was pledged through a minimum assessment agreement to pay off these bonds, and because it's a private purpose, they became taxable, versus our normal tax exemption. Okay? Lehman/Bottom line is that that property, those two properties, must repay all of the debt incurred by the City, including the upfront interest which is, what, $1.6? O'Malley/That's correct. Lehman/Right. The cost to the taxpayers is zero, but the revenue from those two properties is also zero for twenty years, for the City. O'Malley/That's correct. Yes? Vanderhoef/Kevin? When does the tax come on-line for the Vogel house? I thought... O'Malley/That'll be captured next year. We ....... Vanderhoef/By December we'll have our first payment from Vogel house? O'Malley/They do that every year. They do an assessment. I think they went on-line last year, the valuations. So it'll be available for FY05's tax revenue, but we'll capture that and keep it in a debt service fund to pay that. Vanderhoef/I just thought it would be coming on-line a year earlier. O'Malley/It probably will be coming on-line a year sooner. The other thing I'd like to show you is the debt service. Champion/So is this really...it really is kind of a rebate in a sense that that tax will be used to pay off this bond. O'Malley/Well, not, it's not like the Menard's rebate. (laughter) No, this is, there is a risk. The property may not happen, or something could occur, and we would have to find a way to finance these bonds. Besides those two properties, the rest of the district, has, and we already noticed there's a $5 million increase in that TIF district. Champion/So the baseline is going to stay the same for actual revenue, and anything above that is going to pay off this bond. O'Malley/That's correct, and if that area grows to what we hope it grows, that the bonds will be paid offprior to the twenty years because opportunities to recall the debt, if we have an opportunity. That's part of the structure of it. The only other thing I wanted to show you was the debt service schedule to show you that the annual This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 6 debt service roughly is about $700,000 a year, and if you do your math, $26 million divided by a thousand times about $30 is about $780,000. And, numbers people can do it but description-type people can't. (laughter) And anyway, so that's sufficient to pay that debt, and if there's any other questions. The odd thing about this is that it is one purpose, it is taxable, and even though it is a G.O. debt, it will be paid for through abatements from TIF revenues. Any questions? Thank you. Atkins/You might recall...(not talking at mic) Knoche/The next project we're going to talk about is the Burlington Street bridge at Ralston Creek. This is a joint project with the DOT. The bridge will be widened to allow for a left turn lane, and will have 8-foot sidewalks on both sides of the bridge. Champion/I'm sorry, what bridge is this? Knoche/The. Burlington Street bridge at Ralston Creek, right over here by Hanson Automotive. The road~vay will also be widened there. There's kind of two things going on here. One is the reconstruction of the bridge, and we also have traffic safety funds to add the left turn lane at Van Buren Street. So, the bridge funds pay for the reconstruction of the existing bridge. The traffic safety funds pays for the addition of the left turn lane on the bridge, and also the addition of the left turn lanes at Van Buren, so it extends from, basically, the Rec Center parking lot up to, past the gas station, on Burlington Street. Lehman/This was a project that we had actually intended to complete at the same time that we did the intersection at Gilbert and Burlington, but because of the difficulties with, go ahead... Knoche/I'm not aware, oh, the environmental stuff. What we have here is on the comer is, was the iowa Illinois Manor. That's a coal gasification plant. Mid-American owns. Formerly was Iowa Illinois. At that location there is coal tar contamination that has been found. The way this project wiI1 work, if we have any contamination within the right-of-way, we'll be doing some extension of water main in the right-of-way, and also we'll have some storm sewer that goes in along there. If any contamination is found, Mid-American will be there to clean it up for us. So, it really gives us a minor risk there for us. Right now they're, according to the studies, it's very, very small chance that we'll run into anything in the right-of-way. O'Dormell/Where's this tank that they found buried? Knoche/The tank is right back here on the comer, on the east side of the property, south side of the road, they had it kind of tented off there for a couple days, and that's the tank they found that had sewage in it. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 7 Elliott/Mike, that's not a Sherman tank by the way. (laughter) O'Dormell/We just have to clear it up, Bob. Knoche/ Okay? Davidson/The next project is the Camp Cardinal Road extension. Those of you who have participated in JCCOG, this is a familiar project to you, I'm sure. It's indicated by the green line here. Just to give you a little bit of perspective on this issue, this is a more close up version of it. The existing Duck Creek Road which was relocated when U.S. 218 came in, is shown right here. What's proposed is 2 h ...... from 5 Avenue n Coralwlle, which is the intersection on Highway 6 where Payless Cash Ways used to be. There's still a lumber yard there. Just to orient you. The Coralville Sewage Treatment Plant is right here. Essentially the road is constructed to, well, it actually goes all the way up the hill to a couple of residences that are here, but at the point just across the bridge here is where it would take off on a new alignment, and come through this area. Open this area up for development. Come down, the old gravel Deer Creek Road would "t" into it and basically Deer Creek Road would terminate at this point, and then the new road would proceed down to an intersection with Melrose Avenue. This is a project that the developer, Southgate Development Company, brought forth as a joint project between themselves, City of Coralville, and the City of Iowa City. Just to give you a little bit of perspective, because I think it's important for understanding this issue. Originally what was in the JCCOG arterial street plan as the major north/south arterial street in this area, was the extension of Highway 965. Some of you were here when we conducted a very elaborate alternatives analysis of where that road should be located. Basically landed on something that will come across the interstate here and then come down to an intersection with, I'm sorry I was off there slightly, with Hurt Road which, this is Slothower Road, so Hurt Road must be...I'm not sure it's on here actually. Yeah, 1 don't see the landfill. In any rate, it comes across and then goes down the east side of the landfill. And Camp Cardinal Road was always going to come up and "t" into that road because that's what the developer had proposed it doing. Developer had some other ideas then about Camp Cardinal, a decision was made to actually extend it down through and connect Melrose Avenue and Highway 6. The JCCOG arterial street plan was amended to reflect that, so we now have this basically new north/south arterial street. We thought it made a lot of sense because it will allow development to occur in a kind of contiguous fashion from east to west, and eventually then, 965 will be extended down as it was originally intended, but probably realistic to say that this will forestall that for a few years because Camp Cardinal will be the street that allows development to occur in this area. There is a mix of residential, office, and commercial development that is proposed in the concept plan. There will be a series of severances and annexations in this area based on who can provide sewer service to the area. Much of this area has been in, within the corporate boundaries of Iowa City since 'the 60's but it's actually in the Clear Creek watershed which is a watershed that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 8 the City of Coralville provides sewer service to, so there have already been some severances and annexations when the Coral Ridge Mall project was done, and there will be a few more of those, which will basically leave us with a line on the ridge here, future corporate boundaries of Iowa City, future corporate boundaries of Coralville. The realignment of Deer Creek Road, that's a road that currently has much, much, much higher traffic volume than we like to see on a gravel road. The City of Iowa City, Johnson County, and Coralville had a joint committee to determine the future of that road through JCCOG, and it was determined that that's going to, because of the quarry and some other issues out there, that will remain a gravel road, unimproved, for probably quiet some time, especially because of the quarry. The quarry owns extensive property in that ama, and that Camp Cardinal and 965 will be the two paved roads through the area. The funding arrangement on this is a little bit unique, and I can give you just sort of the general basics of it. If you have any detailed questions I'm going to throw those over to Kevin. Essentially the project will be financed jointly by Coralville, Iowa City, and Southgate Development Company, with Coralville and Iowa City essentially up-fronting most of the expense initially, with Southgate then paying back Coralville and Iowa City, I believe over a pehod often years, at which at the end of that time they'll be, it will be required to have the portions paid back to Iowa City and Coralville by Southgate. The City of Coralville is the lead agency on the design project which is on-going right now. There is a joint committee, in fact we're meeting Friday to discuss some of the design issues in the area. Elliot/Jeff, 965, is that old 2187 Davidson/Yes. Coral Ridge Avenue in Coralville is... Lehman/On this the financing of this project shows a million bucks from G.O. and from road-use tax in 05. Are those monies that will be repaid? Well, let me rephrase it. What's the net cost to the City of Iowa City on this project after it's done? Percentage or whatever. This $2 million in 05, are those monies that we will be getting back from Southgate, or are these monies that we will, that we're just... Davidson/I believe, Ernie, that the net result when the project is all said and done, is that Coralville and Iowa City each pay approximately 15% of the project, and Southgate pays 70% of the project. Lehman/So these nLanbers are up-front numbers. These are not net numbers. We don't know... Davidson/Is that correct, Kevin? Lehn~an/Okay, so then the G.O. debt, as compared to the Moen project for example, where all of that debt is going to be repaid by the property taxes off of those two properties. Are...is this G.O. debt added to the property tax bills of the tax payers, or is this abated by the payments made by Southgate? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 9 Davidson/Okay, Ernie, on that page there's two dates for G.O. debt. The first one in 05 is our cost to build segment "a" which is from Melrose up to the property line of the developer. Lehman/So that's our bill. Davidson/That's our bill. The other one is supposed, we're going to up-front that also, and that's taxable because it's private development, and that one the schedule is a ten-year abatement from the developer, and if he doesn't develop, then we get a lien on the property. So, there is some more risk. It's not as sure-deal as the Moen project. Lehman/Yeah but bottom line is... Davidson/Bottom line is it's supposed to pay for itself. Lehman/Thank you. O'Donnell/Is Southgate's participation over a ten-year period, or at the end of the ten- year period? Davidson/Over the ten-year period. Every year they will be required to pay the interest on the debt. Any other questions on this project? Atkins/The next project is mine. It's a capital outlay. It's simply to, for new Council members, we annually budget a general obligation debt amount for the purchase of certain capital outlay items. This year we were able to fund most of those items that we normally would have funded as debt by way of (can't hear) condition of the general fund budget. We show this, these numbers will vary rather dramatically during the course of the year. We used to do it annually, and now we're going to do it every other year. Some of the heavier equipment, heavy rolling stock that has, you know, fifteen to twenty year life. That's the kind of thing. Fire apparatus --- I'll show you that later on. Next up is Jeff; Court Street. Davidson/Yeah, Court Street Transportation Center. I think most of you are aware it's coming up out of the ground as we speak. This is a project that the Federal Transit Administration is working on with us, and they're providing 80% of the expense to construct the facility. Let's see, the project includes a child care facility, and a new Greyhound bus station. That will, of course, mean that the City will be able to use the old Greyhound bus station for whatever it chooses. It does free up that property. We will have a 500-space parking facility. There is still some speculation and I think you're aware of, we are waiting for $2 million in additional funding to hopefully complete the full project. Because of the redevelopment in the area, including you know the Plaza Tower project, there is developers speculating about the north half basically the other half of the block of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 10 this project. We're fairly certain that that is going to redevelop shortly, after our project is completed. The developer of Old Capitol Center Mall has been speaking with us about parking. There's a lot of things happening down there. We hope to build the complete project, get the additional $2 million. We may have some contingency plans if that doesn't happen with the additional $2 million with respect to how we would finance that. Worst case scenario, we would build a four-level facility with the ability to add two levels in the future, each of those two levels could be added, would be approximately 100 spaces. We will also have covered bicycle parking in the facility, and it's truly a multi-modal type project. We're very excited about the child care facility, to allow people to use iowa City transit and Cambus to take a child to child care center which is right now very, very difficult to do. I mean, if you have two hours you can do it, but it's very, very difficult to do and this will facilitate that. We are getting very, very close to having our childcare operator signed on the dotted line. Those negotiations are going very well. Greyhound similarly is very much looking forward to relocating. Any questions? Oh, you'll also be able to connect on the City's web site very shortly, to a web cam, that's updated every 30 minutes and you'll be able to see how the project is going. Any other questions? Knoche/The North Dodge Street reconstruction project is also a joint project with the DOT. We will reconstruct North Dodge Street, from the one-way split at Governor and Dodge, north, to the interstate, overpass bridges, the southern interstate overpass bridges. This will put in a three-lane cross section from Governor up to the Scott Boulevard intersection, and then it'll be a four-lane cross section from there up to the interstate. We will build, or put in a traffic signal at Prairie de Chen. We've also had plans to put in a traffic signal on the south ramp of the, the south ramp intersection, interchange. The project will rebuild the water main from Governor out to the interstate. That's due to the pavement being widened, it ends up putting the water main underneath the street, and for future maintenance we want to prevent from having to tear the street up, and we'll also rebuild sanitary sewer from the existing point where the Highlander lift station dumps into the sewer, that currently runs through ACT. We're going to run it along Dodge Street, and tie into a part of a trunk sewer that runs down the Ralston Creek watershed. Project will also have an 8-foot sidewalk on the north and ~vest side from Dodge out to the ACT Circle, and will have a 5-foot walk on the south and east side, from Dodge out to the Scott Boulevard intersection. Atkins/Ron, when we were reviewing this, we also indicated that it looked like we were going to have to push this off to 06. Okay, I think we should explain that, those numbers, let's go... Knoche/Yes. The DOT currently, the DOT was having trouble finding enough money to put the project in (can't hear). After a number of meetings, the decision was to move it out to FY06 which would be July 1 of next year, and start the project at that time. At that time they would be able to get ail their funding into one construction project rather than having to break it up into two. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 11 Lehman/So this is not going to start until a year from this summer? Knoche/A year from this summer. Atkins/There is a lot of ongoing work, Ernie. We bought property... Lehman/Oh, I'm aware of that. Bailey/And this three-lane is just turn lane along there from Governor out? Knoche/Correct. It's to a left turn lane. Elliott/I have a pedestrian question. The 8-foot sidewalks. So many of those wide sidewalks that I've seen, they crack in the middle, vertically with the sidewalk. What are we doing with those kinds of things? Knoche/In the past, where you see they're breaking in the middle, those are probably not a 6-inch pavement. It's probably a 4-inch pavement, so we're going to a thicker pavement. Elliott/That's being taken care of... Knoche/So we're going to a thicker pavement to take care of that. Atkins/Is there anything we need to comment about cormecting trails and so forth, that might be part of this? Davidson/Yeah, some of the 8-foot sidewalks that run, laid out for you, are part of the overall trails plan that we have. They connect up the trails with the wide sidewalks. You end up with a real nice network that's continuous for pedestrians and bicycles. Bailey/So those are trails so bicyclists can use those to get out... Davidson/Because it's integral to the roadway, we don't consider it a trail really. We consider it a wide sidewalk. Trails typically are in a right-of-way that's removed from a road, that's the major... Bailey/But we hope bicyclists will use it? Davidson/Oh by ail means. It's intended for two-way bicycle and pedestrian traffic. That's why the wider width. Lehman/We just don't call it a trail but it's a trail. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 12 Vanderhoef/It's legal to ride your bike on it. Atkins/Anything else? Champion/You know, we haven't had an update on, I think (can't hear) JCCOG about trails, because it seems to me we have a lot of them, I know 8-foot sidewalks not trails, but... Davidson/That's on the agenda that you're supposed to review. (laughter) Champion/I'll be up this afternoon. (laughter) Atkins/Anything else on Dodge? Okay, Dubuque/Foster. Knoche/This project is one that we just received STP funds for. It's the intersection obviously at Foster Road and Dubuque Street. We're looking at reconstructing that, both to basically future problems that we see with the Peninsula development, at this intersection. Also with existing conditions that we have with the church being there at that intersection, so it'll go to a 5-lane cross section, with a left turn lane, and... Lehman/That would be built next construction season? Knoche/That would be, our goal right now is to have a July letting for that project, so hopefully get started on it this fall. Lehman/When we put the water main in from North Dubuque to Prairie de Chen, I think we kind of done a little rough grade on that one. Is there, are there any economies involved in paving that section at the same time that we do that intersection? Knoche/I suppose with the larger projects you'll find some economies to scale, but right now since there's not a big drive to open up that area, I mean, people aren't coming and really pushing for us to open that up. I don't see a need to put that road in yet. Lehman/The wheel isn't squeaking, so we're not going to oil it. Okay. No, no, I... Atkins/This does not include the Prairie de Chen connection. What was the price on that? Lehman/Right, I know it does not...$900,000. Knoche/About a million. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 13 Lehman/That was in the back of my mind, but on the other hand, there are probably other projects, and I think your point is well taken, that people are screaming for that probably... Franklin/I have had development inquiries about that property to, between Dubuque and Prairie de Chen, but I think one of the ways we can get that road in there is with development as it occurs, with the City paying any kind of overwidth. Vanderhoef/Much better plan. Atkins/Is there anything we need to give Council heads-up on on that interchange improvements that are pending out there? Davidson/We know the interchange reconstruction has been delayed with the whole 1-80 widening project. I mean, Des Moines is using up most of the State's funds for those types of things right now with the 1-235 project in Des Moines. So we're going to be pushed out a few years. It'll be in the latter half of the decade, but we'll make sure that anything we do here at the Foster Road intersection that we're coordinated to where we know it'll be able to fit in with the eventual interstate improvements. That interchange will eventually be urbanized like, for example, the Coralville ist Avenue interchanges with signalized intersections. Knoche/The other goal that goes along with this is to get that intersection taken care of before Dodge Street starts. That way we don't have both entrances to our city from the interstate torn up at the same time. Atkins/Anything else on that one? Economic Development (can't hear) earmarking of general obligation debt for the purposes of, quite frankly whatever the Council determines the purpose to be, some sort of economic development initiative. We show it every other year. We don't sell the debt unless we actually have a project, but for planning purposes, particularly in our debt planning purposes, we have to indicate that that is out there. We have not used that G.O. debt, change, took, somebody from staff'? Didn't we use economic development, and transferred it over to Mormon Trek... Lehman/Right. Vanderhoef/Yes. Atkins/I knew we had done something, we just sort of changed the name, but this is sort ora place-holder, what we call it, is that it is there. It is not sold unless there's a specific initiative, (can't hear) part of the Council for that. Vanderhoef/But this... Elliott/Excuse me, Dee, go ahead. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 14 Vanderhoef/I'm just looking at this and looking at some of the highlights, and this is money then that could be used for debt service, not debt service, but debt incurred for a spec building. Elliott/That was my question. Atkins/Yes, (can't hear) Lehman/If I remember correctly though, your reference to the spec building was that we probably could borrow the money from a revenue fund so we wouldn't have to sell debt to do it. Atkins/I was proposing under the spec bill we do an internal borrowing, and then, worse case I figured is that even if we have to turn around and lease it, we could pay ourselves back with lease payments, reference it, build it, get it sold, pay our selves back, and turn it, and move on to another project, but yes, this could.., emergency communication radio system whatever. Chief and chief? Winkelhake/Steve told us we got about five minutes and as most of you know, it takes me that long to introduce Chief Rocca. (laughter) But, we will try to do this. What Andy is passing out is a little outline of what we're going to try to do. I'm going to give you a little bit of history of how we got to where we are today. In 1991, we had a different radio system, and one of the things that drove us to where we are today, for instance, if you were west of Mormon Trek, you'd have a hard time getting in on a portable radio. It just didn't work very well. So we took a look at the entire radio system. At that time there was some discussion about a joint dispatch center between Johnson County and Iowa City and all the communities, and that didn't work out at that time. So we went back to doing a communication center just for Iowa City, and that occurred in 1991, and Kevin O'Malley tells me we spent about $1.8 million doing that at that time. That put everybody in the City on the same system. It was an 800-tmnking system. We had five main channels that we could talk on, and that has since been added one more in 1999. We ~vent to six channels. Out of that, we have the capacity for one more channel. We, you can use about i00 radios for every channel that we have, so we're able to utilize about 600 radios. That's mobiles, and hand-held radios right now, within the system, and that system is probably somewhere in the 500's, mid-500's to upper-500's, on usage right now with everybody in the City using it. In addition to that, we have the, what do you call it, the Cambus people from the University are on our system, as well as the University Police Department is on the system, and then just recently last July, we took on University Heights onto that system. That one channel we talked about, the 7th channel, if we don't utilize that shortly, we may have an opportunity of loosing that because we were given additional channels for slow growth so we really need to take a look at that one, but that's a little bit of the history of where we are. We'll go back later if you have questions. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 15 Vanderhoef/What's the cost to add another channel? Winkelhake/That should be somewhere around $20,000 to $30,000. We've gotten two different costs, and we'll get into the upgrade and what it will cost us. Elliott/One of the things a lot of people are interested in, what does the future look like for, you said Iowa City, U Heights, University - what's the future for North Liberty, Coralville coming in on something like this? Winkelhake/That's part of what we want to talk about. Lehman/Good. Rocca/Okay, we'll get into a little bit about the system as it presently exists right now. As R.J. mentioned, it's over ten years old, and there are controllers, or repeaters, and basically these devices are channels that allow the radio users to talk, on a given frequency. We have six of those controllers. Four of them currently are obsolete, no parts available. They're not supported. So, we do have some things to do in the short-term here in terms of upgrades to the system. Probably the bright news on that, if we take those four controllers down, we can use them at a back-up site in Coralville. So, you know, certainly they would still have some useful life, but if one of them goes down now, we can't get parts, it can't be repaired. Communication engineering company indicated that new controllers would be in the $20,000 to $30,000 range. So the short-term could be close to $100,000, maybe $125,000, should we opt to add those to the additional controller, as well as repair the obsoletes. Some of the radios that we're currently using, the hand-held, the portables, are obsolete as well. They're not, they're currently not supported by Motorola. Parts are unavailable. We've been forced to cannibalize from one radio to the other to make some of them work. Between the police and fire departments, we have been able to purchase additional radios over the last two or three budget years, to try to phase out that first generation of the 800 MHz radio. The other thing that we've tried to do in anticipation of a radio system upgrade (tape ends) reasons as well. (can't hear) communication center we've done about just under $200,000 worth of upgrades there as well. $28,000 of that were City funds, another $25,000 came from the 9I 1 Board and those funds, and the balance was from law enforcement grants that R.J. was successful with. So we have done some things recently to maintain its functionality but we do have some immediate decisions to make. Atkins/Does everyone know what the 911 Board is? Rocca/The 911 Board exists, when we went to enhanced 911 probably back in the late 80's, early 90's, there's a surcharge on your hard-wire phone as well as your wireless phones now, and those funds are channeled to each local 911 Board and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 16 then disbursed for emergency communication needs. With that, we'll talk about the future of our system. Winkelhake/What Andy just talked about, the 911, the surcharge, the monies that the County gets for the 911 Board are on the hard line. The cell phones do not come back to the County at this time. They're collected by the State and I doubt very much that we're ever going to see those, but (laughter) that's just one thing. Let's see, right now, as far as the four controllers we have, we were originally given a cost of about $20,000. Regardless of whether we are going to look at a larger system for the entire county, br just stay with Iowa City, we need to do something in the near future for this. So the four controllers are going, at minimum, going to cost about $20,000 a piece. At maximum, I should never say maximum, but it could be as much as $30,000, but there's something that we have to take a look at. We need to really take a look at that additional controller, that 7th chaimel, that we could use to be able to put that in there. That would also provide us with the opportunity for some additional growth or if there's another agency that would want to come onboard, if we didn't do a county-wide. One of the things we find with the infrastructure that we have, is there's a built-in obsolescence if you will, by the people that make the equipment. Many years ago when I first started in this business, we could buy a radio and expect to have it for fifteen to twenty years. Now if we buy a radio, we can expect to see a life expectancy of somewhere maybe five to seven, and if we really stretch it, some of the things that we've done to be able to use the radios we have, we're getting ten to twelve years out of the original radios. When we first bought the hand-helds we had, those were state-of-the-art. We're on about the third, possibly even the fourth, generation, and what ~ve're seeing now is a migration towards digital, and I would think probably in about five years, we're going to have to go with emergency communication in a digital mode rather than analog, so there'll be some transition. CAD upgrades, we have to continually do CAD upgrades, and that's the basic thing you have sitting in the dispatch thing, across the way over here, and that is soft-ware driven and is continually being upgrades. There's cost there almost ali the time. Atkins/R.J., would you explain computer-aided dispatch real quick? Winkelhake/Computer-aided dispatch, it's a 911 call comes in, it tells you the address it's coming from as long as it's a land line. If it's a cell phone, it may not tell you where that's coming from. That was supposed to happen so you could get emergency vehicles to it right away. The address comes up, and with the address comes up with the computer-aided dispatch, it automatically tells you what beat the call is in, who the police officer or the officer who should be assigned to it. If it's a fire call it tells you what fire station should go. It tells you the type of call, it'll tell you what kind of equipment you should be dispatching. We also have emergency medical information there that is originally in a book. Now it's on a computer as well. That if you have somebody calls and somebody's suffering a heart attack, the dispatcher can go to that and tell them these are the things you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 17 need to do right now, until somebody arrives at the scene to take over. So there's a lot of things over there. There's annual maintenance fees that we have. We do collect money, by the way, from those users that are on it. University Heights and Cambus, and Public Safety. So there is a fee there, but we do work on that. One of the things we think would work well here would be if we went to a county- wide system. Both Andy and I think that's a good idea. When we looked at it before, there were reasons, political reasons I believe, that that didn't happen. Whether the interest is really there to take, to do it, I don't know, but it's something I'd certainly encourage you people to take a look at and see once if it's possible that we could do that. It seems to make sense, but saying that also, even with our own system, if we don't look at a county-wide, if we only look at our own system, ~vhat our encouragement is that we have a consultant come in and take a look at what we need. There are so many issues. The technology continually changes, and I can guarantee you, Chief Rocca and I do not know enough about it. I go a little bit beyond pushing a button and hopefully someone will hear me. I think you know just a little bit, but not a whole lot more, than that. (laughter) The inoperability issues are out there. Right now if we want to talk to County or Coralville we can put a patch in, but what that does is ties up one of controllers, one of those channels, that's tied up as long as that patch is in there. Communication can happen, but it's not very easy to do, and it's cumbersome once you have it in place. The complexity of all the radio system, even what we have, is far beyond the things that we understand, and how to do it, but we simply don't have that ability, and I think it really will take a consultant to do it. And, the main thing we would look for from a consultant's standpoint, would be that we would be able to express the needs of whatever this system is, and they would be able to put together a plan, a design, that will get us there, and then when we interact with the vendors that need to sell this stuff, we have somebody who really understands the system and the language, which at this time we don't. Rocca/With all that being said, certainly we feel that we want to point out to you there is no imminent problem with our system. It's not going to collapse tomorrow. We have maintained it. It will continue to allow us to do our jobs and do them very well. But on the horizon we have some decisions to make in the short-term. We need to upgrade our existing system to allow for some time buffer, if you will, before we actually do an extensive replacement, so those controllers do need to be replaced, and we'd like to do that in the coming fiscal year. As well, while that is going on in the background, we do need to plan for the greater system upgrade, and as R.J. mentioned, we believe, and it would be in our best interest, to have a consultant on board due to the complexity, the technology, the multiple users, multiple jurisdictions that we're trying to bring together here, to get a good overall picture of that. Somebody who is familiar with the technology and looked at other examples that are working and working very well, across the nation. So certainly we would recommend a consultant, and as well, we want to underscore the importance of the county-wide or regional communication center. We believe there are good examples here in Iowa with Dubuque County, Blackhawk County, and probably others, but those are some of the early pioneers in county-wide This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 18 communications. We believe strongly in that and we certainly recommend that you look at that and urge support for county-wide communications. Champion/Andy, has there been any communication with other jurisdictions about the possibility of a county-~vide system? Rocca/You know, probably at the user level. I don't know that many of the directors have gotten together to talk much about this. Again, as R.J. mentioned early on in the 90's when it was discussed, one of the key players was not very interested in it at that time. Since then with University Heights Police Department coming onboard, with some of the rural fire problems and their communication system, there is clearly an interest to broaden this out to correct some of the deficiencies. Right now you have with the rural fire departments, or county fire departments, there are eleven agencies, twelve if you count the ambulance, all sharing one or two frequencies. So it doesn't take much ora storm or large fire incident or emergency to really tie up that system. And as somebody we rely on, as you well know with our 28E agreement for backups, so it's really imperative that we look at the greater picture on county-wide. Dee? Vanderhoef/The upgrades that ~ve need to do now, do you anticipate that equipment to be used in a new system, or is it... Rocca/As I understand it, there are Quantar controllers, which is the upgrade. I believe those can be used in a digital system. I believe they can, but again it depends on what the new system would look like, act like, work like, walk like, talk like. Vanderhoef/Okay, and then following up, the time frame - you say it isn't critical right now, but where do you see in the time line the critical hitting the fan? Rocca/Well, I think, again, day to day we're comfortable with the system. If we would have one of the old MSF5000 controllers go down, probably what we would have to do is remove one from the backup site to get it operational, at least minimally, and then order a new Quantar controller which could take, you know, two to four, maybe six weeks, to have it functional. I would like to see, again, short-term in the next fiscal year, we add the additional controller, replace the old controllers, and that buys us a period of time. I don't know, if it would say, two years, maybe three years, to have the consultant come in, to look at the system, to look at our needs, to budget accordingly, to replace the whole system, as well as coordinate with other agencies. R.J., do you have a comment on that one? Winkelhake/I think time frame would be pretty much what Andy had said here. At the present time it works. We do have backup systems in place if something happens to one of these. Vanderhoef/Okay, so... I understand that you are taking care of us very well, and I thank you for that. My real thought is we need to have this put in place to get it This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 19 activated in the next say, starting in three years from now, if we were to try and put something together, we'd want it done in three years so we could start putting in all new. Winkelhake/Generally speaking I think that would be a good time frame to shoot for. Vanderhoef/Okay. O'Donnell/Have we brought this up at the Emergency Management Commission? Winkelhake/Not to my knowledge. It's a new issue, really, for us. I mean, we recognized just recently that we had our own issues to take care of, irrespective of what happens with the regional approach, so that would be the next logical step, I think, to have discussion there. O'Donnell/Because we have shown that we work together well as a county, with the new hazmat truck. Winkelhake/Certainly we have demonstrated that. O'Donnell/Okay. Wilburn/It's real easy to see how quickly the equipment gets outdated, or resources unavailable. I mean, I bought a cordless phone, not quite two years ago, at an area retailer, and I think it was 8 months later I needed to get a battery for it, and that retailer didn't carry the battery for it anymore. They moved on to the, you know, this was like 1.2 or 8 gigahertz phone so it really kind of.....the availability gets out of control. O'Donneli/That's what happens when you buy those close-out items. (laughter) Winkelhake/There is one other thing we've done with the communications as far as our users. Andy has, on the (can't hear), there are certain fire departments that are at the top of that. They have been given portable radios so that when they are called in they're able to communicate with our agencies a lot easier. We've also done the same thing with the ambulance service, where they have 800 radios so that when they're in our city, we can communicate. We have a frequency that we use called fire/police/ambulance so that when there's an ambulance call, they all go to that one so they all can communicate at the same time. Bailey/When you say regional or county, are you talking regional smaller than the county, the county being the widest parameter that we would consider, or are there reasons to consider like northeast Washington, something like that? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 20 Winkelhake/I think generally when we talk about it we're talking about county wide, although when you get to the fire, you're talking about response that's really beyond the county, such as West Branch. Bailey/Right. So we would look at the county as our widest parameter probably? Rocca/For the most part, with some minor exceptions probably on the perimeter. Wilburn/You know what would be helpful for us, in talking to some of your counterparts, that you, I mean if you would start that conversation at least as to get a picture of what their, where they're at ~vith their technology needs, because there have been some issues when we've tried to talk to some of our counterparts, and it doesn't seem to be as if they're unaware or not that they're not interested, but they, I don't sense that they're aware as you're making us aware of some of those needs. So it would be helpful for us to start those regional conversations if a bug has been put in their ear. Lehman/You know, my expertise rivals that of you, R.J., when it comes to electronics, but the one thing that it seems is pretty much universally tree is almost this planned obsolescence. You put in a new system today, and five or six years from now you're looking at difficulties. But that same difficulty exists in every department in the county, whether it's the sheriff's department, the police department, fire, and in every community, so I mean we're looking at a situation where every system in the county is becoming obsolete, and you're asking us to do some minor upgrades which I think we have to do. There isn't any question about that. Well, and with my great expertise in electronics, (laughter) I really think a consultant is a tremendous idea, but I really think before we engage a consultant for Iowa City, we need to engage a consultant that will look at the sheriff's department, Coralville, North Liberty, Tiffin, I mean, look at the whole picture, because we are looking at replacing county-wide all of this stuff within, I mean, the turnover is rather quick when you look at the total scheme of things. So these folks are also going to have to do the same sort of thing in upgrades, changes, and whatever, and if a consultant can sit down with us and we define us, you, find some mutual ground where there really is interest in doing this together. We're not talking about somebody throwing out a system that's perfectly good because these systems all become antiquated. But I really think a consultant would love to see us contact the sherif?s department and Barry Bedford, and North Liberty, and get a consultant who will look at the big picture so it'll benefit us all. I don't know, but I think that's something we kind of throw the ball into your lap and just see. Elliott/I'm not sure it's fair to throw the ball in their lap. That seems like our job. Lehman/Well we can certainly communicate with the Board of Supervisors, and letters to the councils encouraging them to, this is something - the time is right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 21 Vanderhoef/Yeah, the hiring of the consultant, in my mind, should be a collaboration of all the entities in the county that have emergency radio capabilities, and then they can do what they want with that information. Lehman/Steve, let's move forward with that. Atkins/We'll talk about it. Just wanted to make sure you were on board... Rocca/There was one, that did it for the county and the city. We were at a joint study at that time, when a decision was made to have two of them, and we had somebody separate for here. There's one other issue in here, and that's inoperability. There has been a $5 million grant given to Woodbury County and Sioux City to try to find a prototype that could be replicated across the state to take care of inoperability, and part of that would be so you don't have to have just an 800- tmnking or 154 low-band, or whatever, but they would be able to communicate without the difficulty that we have at the present time, so there's another issue there. That would become even more important to be aware of that for a consultant to be able to... Lehman/But I think we're all on the same sheet of music when it comes to trying to do something that will benefit everybody. Atkins/It's also one of those issues we've just got to continue talking about it and... Lehman/I agree but this is an issue because of the constant replacement, the constant obsolescence, this is opportunity here that I think is greater than the opportunities in many other places to cooperate. Elliott/I would hope that the state legislature could provide some financial encouragement, and/or discouragement. (laughter) O'Donnell/Well, I think with Homeland Security that's a very viable opportunity. Bailey/I think we understand the issues of the not being able to communicate. It's such a public, a basic public safety issue, that I think that everybody understands at a fundamental level. Atkins/Okay on that one? While Andy is here, the fire apparatus. That's just...that's just. (laughter) It's expensive, but (can't hear) replacement of our aerial ladder truck in 06. It'll be twenty years old. And then a replacement ora pumper in 07. Under Fire Station #4, while we have not proposed funding staffing, we do wish to continue to proceed with the planned acquisition design. When it is better we'll be ready to go. Anything you want to add to that? Rocca/Basically what the apparatus schedule is, it used to be ten years front line service and ten years backup. And what we found, is that when they went into reserve or This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 22 backup status they were going in there with 90,000 miles plus on them and they were virtually worn out. And so we worked with the City Manager and one our former battalion chiefs to move that schedule up just a little bit. We're going seven years front line, and seven years reserve. So at least there's a little bit more useful life out of them, but call volumes continue to go up and largely due to EMS, Emergency Medical Service, duties, in order to keep them on the road and serviceable, we had to shorten the useful life here within the City. But yes, as the Manager pointed out, we're looking at a pumper in 07 and the aerial ladder, which is approaching sixteen years old, I believe. We've had to rebuild the motor on it, rebuild the lifl cylinders on it. It's out there quite a bit, and so it's in need of replacement. Lehman/Is the new ladder vehicle, is that a significantly technologically advanced vehicle over what we have now? Rocca/Yeah, the last one... Lehman/Because you can do a lot of replacing engines and transmissions and wheel bearings and tires and all those sorts of things for a million and a half dollars. Rocca/Granted you can, but this one, again, it's is on the road with every structure call that we get, and it's starting to show its age. We have the Underwriters Laboratory in every year to test the ladder, and so far this 102' aerial platform has tested, and passed its test with some minor repairs, some welds, some bolts that need replaced and the like, but it's starting to have a little fatigue. Lehman/Is there a residual value on that thing for somebody else? Rocca/There could be. Likely what they would do is refurbish it. Atkins/Playground equipment? O'Dormell/Ernie wants to buy it. Lehman/No, no....yeah. (laughter) Refurbish it and then... Rocca/Most of the pumpers, when we I guess trade them in or sell them, we've done some bidding, ~ve're lucky to get $5,000 out of them. I mean, they've gone over the road a lot. We maintain them to the best of our ability, but if use something for twenty years like that and you use it hard, it's subject to wear and tear. In terms of the aerial ladder itself though, from the upgrade, I think it was a 1968 American Lafranz t the current 1988 Grommund Aerial Cat, I think we spent what, about $500,000, $450,000, on it at that time. Something comparable with the technology that they put into that is going to exceed a million dollars I'm sure. Elliott/There are safety concerns, obviously then. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 23 Rocca/Oh yeah, and if you look at the equipment and ho~v it's evolved, you know, you used to have the open cabs and then the open jump seats where the firefighters would ride. Now they're all enclosed cabs, doors, seatbelts, much safer, you know, for a fire person now as well. And ail those are speced out according to the National Fire Protection Association's standards for fire equipment, which ties back into our insurance service organization having certified pumpers and ladders, for insurance purposes. Atkins/I can remember buying that aerial ladder truck. One of the first things I was involved with... Elliott/You personally? (laughter) Atkins/Not personally, but it's interesting how things...~vhat goes around comes around. We bought that aerial ladder truck with federal revenue sharing. I mean, that was one of the last available uses of federal revenue sharing. It was after that (can't hear), so now it's our turn to pay. Okay, anything else for that? Vanderhoef/One question. The Fire Station #4, in 04, this year, we've got $200,000 for land purchase, and yet if we go back on page 19 of capital improvements, there's a figure of Fire Station and that was included with land purchase, yeah. Atkins/That is intended to purchase the equipment. This $200,000 gets us design and land acquisition. We had built in a time to pumhase (several talking at once) The intent was at that time to build the building and to buy a pumper. We were assuming that the building was going to be in the $400,000 range, the pumper was going to be in the $250,000. Those are now... Lehman/So this 02 in the unfunded really is not for the pumhase of land. It is for the purchase of equipment and building? Atkins/The plan you have in front of you buys land, designs a building. Lehman/Right, so 02, the unfunded on 19, where it says for the acquisition of land, really means building and equipment. Atkins/That's right, and we have, we have a correction, we try to upgrade these numbers all the time. It's just it takes a lot of(can't hear). Lehman/Okay. Atkins/So you know, you will likely during the course of your (can't hear) You'll see in front of you a recommendation to purchase the land, and to enter into a design contract. I want to be ready to go... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 24 Champion/Is it the land we talked about that one time, when you had a...? Atkins/Probably so. It's the one up off of Scott and Dodge. Rocca/Scott and Dodge. Yeah, I think there are six different property o~vners, and there were discrepancies in earlier plats so they had to go back and redraw them, and we're getting very close to having those completed, and then the appraisal can be done on the corrected plat. So hopefully we'll get that to you in the very near future. Atkins/Okay. We're going to take a break at 10:00 so if you want to keep moving on. Gilbert Street, Highway 6, Jeff?. Davidson/We have three intersections in this community that are by far our highest volume intersections. Three that stand out. This is one of them, the intersection of Gilbert Street and Highway 6. The others are Burlington/Riverside and First Avenue/Highway 6 in Coralville. And this intersection of Gilbert Street and Highway 6 has by far the most constrained capacity. That is just literally pavement that's out there for vehicles to move across, of those three intersections. We are at over 60,000 vehicles entering that intersection from all approaches, per day, which is a very high volume for this community. The other thing that is a very significant factor about this intersection, is the amount of growth that's going to be occurring in this area to the south. I mean, we're all aware of Sandhill Subdivision because that's been in the news recently. But this area has, is set up very well with respect in municipal infrastructure, which of course then means, development to occur subsequent to that. So what I'm trying to emphasize here is that xve're just buying time right now. The issues that are being experienced at this intersection right now with respect to traffic service, are going to get much worse in the coming years. Now a few years ago, Ernie might be the only one who's still here that was on the Council at the time. We took a look at a pretty good size quarter study through here, of Gilbert Street, essentially from the railroad tracks on the north, down to Stevens Drive on the south. It was a very extensive study. We looked at some pretty significant alternatives for improving traffic service, and we wanted to get both the Kirkwood/Gilbert intersection and the Highway 6/Gilbert intersection, and then the areas on either side of that. Came up with some pretty significant capital improvements, and of course, we tried working with the businesses in this area throughout that project, and I think it's probably fair to say that what evolved in that study was people being, the business owners in that area, being quite excited about that project, and that sort of evolved into "listen I'm really in favor of the project unless it affects me, then I'm not in favor of it'. (laughter) And when that started to happen, Council walked away from the project, and quite frankly (several Council members talking at once). Okay, were all four of you...? Lehman/It popped up two or three or four times in the last... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council *vork session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 25 Davidson/Yeah, and since that time, I think the City Cotmcil has been looking for their, to be some of the folks down there, kind of initiate some of the energy for this project, or for that longer corridor project. What we have tried to do in the subsequent years is we did get the Kirkwood/Gilbert intersection working a little bit better with some traffic signal improvements. Though it's certainly far from perfect because we don't have turn lanes in there, but it works a lot better than it did. The other thing we want to focus on then is this project. This intersection is really the most critical portion of this corridor now, and the reason of course is obvious, it's a very significant traffic corridor both in the north/south direction and east/west direction. We have, the project that you see before you that's proposed for FY07, has improvements. The actual pavement improvements are the addition of dual left turn Ianes on the north and south approaches of Gilbert Street. However, that has a tremendous impact to the highway, because it creates more capacity, what ~ve're trying to do with the traffic signal system down here is keep most of the green time on the highway because that's where most of the volume is. For that reason, much to the chagrin of the businesses down here, we don't want to introduce additional green time on Gilbert Street because that takes it away from the highway, and it makes the highway operate not nearly as well as it does right now. By putting the dual left turn lanes in, you can get not quite twice as many, but virtually twice as many of the left turners through there on the same amount of green time, and that's why it's such a good improvement for the highway, as well as for Gilbert Street. We ~vould try and design that project so that for any subsequent improvements either on the highway or on Gilbert Street, this would tie right into those. In other words, we'd try and give enough forethought to the planning of those improvements that we would have something that would tie right in. We think that we can improve access to the businesses because the access is quite poor, depending on where you're located, for some of those businesses down there. It would involve some looking at where access points are located and some issues like that, but hopefully to get things working better, improve traffic safety. Clearly there will be some disruption to the businesses in this area. I wish that were not the case, but I think anything we do down here is going to have some impacts. There are a number of alternative courses of action, which we would want to explore, of course involving the businesses in the area, as to how you might make the improvements, but clearly with respect to what's going to be happening in south Iowa City, we need to be thinking about those issues now. Lehman/Jeff, what will the impacts be when Mormon Trek extends across the river, and eventually all the way over to Highway 6. How will that impact this? Davidson/That will, having, this is the last river crossing until you get down to Hills. Lehman/Right, yes... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 26 Davidson/And that creates a lot of the traffic through this area. This segment fight here is the highest volume traffic corridor in the community. It's over 30,000 vehicles a day. Lehman/Okay, but... Davidson/Clearly having another fiver crossing down here will help, but our traffic model shows it won't help quite as much as we thought it would, and that is because there are so many destinations in this Highway 6 corridor. The commercial businesses in this corridor, this will not be, this may have some commercial businesses at an intersection perhaps, but generally this is going to be residential down here, and for that reason, there's still going to be a tremendous amount of traffic, Emie, on the Highway 6/Highway 1 corridor, so it won't help quite as much as we hoped it would. Champion/So you want to put double left turn lanes on both sides of the highway? Davidson/Yes. Champion/Okay. Elliott/I like that especially. I think we get tied up so many times with left turn lanes backing up into the regular left lane. It stalls traffic and so I think that's good. The other thing is I certainly would like to see us looking down the road, and building bigger and better roads. To me it seems a pity that Scott isn't a 4-lane or right of way. I think we need to look at things like that. I was just in Des Moines, and they build 4-lane highways out in the country because they know it's going to be developed, and they're going to be needed. Champion/They have a lot more money. Atkins/...Connie started laughing, oh how times change. (laughter) Davidson/Any other questions about the Gilbert Street project? Vanderhoef/Well, yeah, a couple things are in my mind. These dual turn lanes are even going to make it more and more difficult, and I'm a little concerned about a safety of Highland Drive coming out where it does, and trying to get to go west, shall we say. To get across an additional lane, and is there any way that it can only be a right hand turn. Davidson/In fact that'll be the case, Dee. With the dual left turn lanes, it will require a median for the duration of that dual left turn lane for the exact reason you say, crossing two lanes of traffic, so from Highland you would just be essentially a right turn there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 27 Vanderhoef/Okay. Then the question is, is there going to be any other street, other than Kirkwood, that goes across the railroad track...? Davidson/ That's all part ofwhat we consider as part ofthe project. Sure. Youcould potentially do something like cul-de-sac Highland there, not even have it go through, and then have one of the other 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Streets go across the tracks. Those are all things that we will explore. Vanderhoef/You know, I was on Council when we looked at the alternative of one-way coupling, down there, and I think I'd like the new people to take a look at that because we're getting into a position on the south side of Highway 6, on Gilbert Street, that is going to be nothing but increased traffic and it's flowing in towards town, and I think we need to get everybody a picture of what the whole Gilbert Street corridor from say the railroad bridge at the north, down to... Davidson/If there are a majority of Council that would like us to unearth that study that looked at all the one-way pairs and all that, I mean, some of those were fairly disruptive projects, but we can schedule a work session and go through those. Lehman/Well I think a lot of those issues are engineering issues, and traffic, traffic/engineering issues, which obviously engineers are far better able to address than political people. Davidson/(laughter) Right, and a lot of the engineering questions, Ernie, we have information about the various alternatives. If Council is interested, let me, if Council is interested in exploring some of those other options, we would need to get that settled before we pursue this project. Bailey/I have a Gilbert Street/Highway 6...there is also a fair amount...I worked on this area, a fair amount of pedestrian traffic down there, which I don't fully understand. But how is this going to impact that, and what are we going to do with that? Davidson/Well, we have been able to improve the situation for pedestrians down there some with the sidewalk along Highway 6, and with that we formalized the crossings and put in the countdown timers and that sort of thing. There hasn't been anything beyond what we have down there now that's been considered, and I guess, i haven't been aware, Regina, that there was a huge problem that needed to be solved. Bailey/Well I don't think there is a problem, but obviously, I mean, this will have an impact, and so maintaining as it is with the countdown timers, and then there's sidewalks, I mean, it always suiprises me to see people walking along there, but if people are walking along there, we have to be sure they're safe. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 28 Davidson/Yeah, you know we have found that anywhere we put a wide sidewalk in, people will use it. I mean, we've never put a wide sidewalk in and people don't use it, I mean, they're all used, including that one. Lehman/I would suggest that before we spend a whole lot of time and effort and money designing this project, which obviously it's in the CIP, that preliminarily you show the Council what it's going to look like, so if there are some strong problems with it, that comes up before we spend... Davidson/Maybe some time in the next few months we can have a work session, and look at the range of... Lehman/Just lay it out and show it. Yeah. Davidson/This is an 07 project so it's not a huge... Atkins/What you need to do, is that it is an 07 project. It does represent a major part of our borrowing in 07. I was going to have us draft for you how (can't hear) and then have you (can't hear). Then we've got for the record somewhere, this is the direction we're going to be taking, knowing full well that as I pointed out to you, it takes a lot of lead time, particularly a project like this. You need lots of lead time. I also was going to do the same thing with emergency communication, like write a policy position, discuss it, debate it, amend it, vote it up. As soon as you vote something up, that's our direction on that particular project. We'll be bringing you those. I intend to do that in the next several months. (can't hear) Champion/Well I think the thing you have to keep in mind is that in city streets, like Gilbert which has been there a long, long time, it's kind of like schools. It's so disruptive you don't like to do anything about it until you have the absolute need to do it. I mean, when we talked about the widening of Gilbert Street, and we all put our thumbs down eventually because politically it's a terrible idea, so... Elliott/Politically it was a terrible idea? (laughter) Champion/A very terrible idea. Lehman/No, Connie, you're right. The other thing I think sometimes, people get frustrated because they have to wait through two lights. In the total scheme of things, waiting for two lights probably is not earth-shaking to the extent that we're going to put a half dozen people out of business so you don't have to wait an extra two minutes at an intersection. Champion/Exactly, I never could understand it. Lehman/No, 1 couldn't either. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 29 Champion/They complain about two minutes out of their day. Lehman/Right. One of the reasons that probably hasn't been done up to this point, is I don't think the disruption to those folks down there has been perceived as being worse, for the convenience of saving a couple minutes at a light. Now we may be passing that point now. O'Donnell/Was the big point of contention last time, if I remember right, was it not the median in the center, because if you were going south...? Davidson/The median was an issue, Mike, but I think the bigger issue was at what side you would make the improvements. (several talking at once) Davidson/I do want to emphasize, however, that there are some businesses in that area that are wanting this project. I mean, the bank is one in particular that's very, very interested. But clearly there's going to be a range of how folks feel about this project down there. Atkins/Shall we break now? Vanderhoef/I'm talking off the top of my head now, this is an area just in general the south Gilbert area, that needs to be taken a look at as far as economic development, and revitalization and all of those things. It's a very, very old area and there are people moving out to bigger spaces and so forth. Davidson/Did you extend the TIF over this far? Does the TIF extend out this far? Vanderhoef/No. It's not there. Davidson/This Gilbert Street area? (several talking at once) Vanderhoeff ...the south side of Highway 6 so there isn't anything there, and that could be something to kick around and look at. Atkins/Okay. (TAPE OFF - BREAK) Fosse/...and again, we build the next one like that so there's still space available back here when we're building two cells out. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 30 Lehman/Why do we put, looking at it from this side, why do we have the left hand, why are we putting the...this part up there? Fosse/That? Lehman/Yeah. Fosse/At some point that's going to be the far north end of it. Lehman/i know at some point, but why are we building, why don't we wait until we reach the far end before we build that part of it? Fosse/Oh, that slopes that goes up here? Lehman/Yeah. Fosse/That does not have a liner or (can't hear) collection system on it. Lehman/Thank you, very good, okay. Fosse/Yup, because we know that's coming out of there again. Lehman/This is an engineering issue that we just have to do it, right? Fosse/Yeah, yeah. Lehman/So I mean why are we talking about it? Atkins/I thought you'd find it interesting, and I'm trying to drag this out a little bit. For Bob and Regenia, we run the landfill. It's owned and operated by the City. It's made available to all communities in Johnson County. Kalona and Riverside in Washington County. Just to give you a feel for the waste volumes and there are residential refuge programs, about 15% of the volume. The other 85% comes from other users. Elliott/And they pay 85% of the cost? Atkins/They pay, well, we charge ourselves just like we do any other user. The landfill is completely self-supporting. No tax money. Vanderhoef/Could we have an update memo on the possible uses of closed landfill uses, and an update on use of the Willow trees in and around, Poplar excuse me, the Poplar trees? Atkins/Okay, didn't think I'd do that, did ya? (laughter) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 31 Vanderhoef/Those questions keep coming up from citizens as they see more and more use of the Poplar trees. Fosse/Something else we're going to update as well is our 25-year plan. The volumes coming into the landfill have gone up in recent years because there's not as much leaving the state and going to other landfills. It's coming to our place. So we need to update our 25-year plan. And, I wanted to point out quickly, one neat thing that xve're going out there, just started this year, is at the end of each day you need to cover the garbage before you go home at night, and you normally do that with dirt. We're doing that with a spray-on cover now-, and what that does is conserve a lot of space in the landfill that normally would be wasted on dirt, and just does it with a very thin layer of spray-on. Champion/What is it, a plastic or? Fosse/It's made of shredded newspapers, and it's kind of a sticky goo, and you just think of the Spiderman movie, with the...(laughter)...yup. (several talking at once) Atkins/Karin, you're up. Franklin/The next project is Lower West Branch Road, and we have this at the end of your capital improvements program in FY08, and what this is is the reconstruction of Lower West Branch from Scott Boulevard, out to Taft Avenue. As development occurs in this area, as we've had annexations and zonings to bring property into the City, because right now our corporate boundaries roughly go along the south side of Lower West Branch. Champion/Karin, where is Taft Road? I can't place it out there. Franklin/Taft Avenue is this north/south road, it's at the very edge of Windsor Ridge, and it's the very edge of our corporate boundaries right now. As it stands right now, this portion of Lower West Branch Road is in the city limits, and there are portions along here in which half of it's within the city limits. As this property to the north comes in, it ~vill all become ~vithin the city limits. And as those annexations and zonings are taking place, we negotiate with the developers to share in the cost of the improvement of Lower West Branch Road, but one of the stipulations is that the road needs to be in our capital improvements program before they can get any kind of final plat approval. So they agree with the annexation and the zoning that they will participate in the cost of the road, and that they can not get final plat approval until that road is in the capital improvements program, and then they pay into a fund, based on the number of acres that's coming in. Bob? Elliott/Does the church that's looking to going in out there, is that in city property or beyond? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 32 Franklin/It's in the county. Elliott/It's in the county? Franklin/ It's at this corner right here. I think there's about 40 acres that they're looking at right there. Lehman/Karin, if we put this in the CIP, and we start collecting money from developers, are we obligated to build it in the time-frame that we show? Franklin/You're obligated to build it and to keep it in the CIP, but it doesn't necessarily have to be FY08. Lehman/Okay. Franklin/For instance, Lower West Branch Road we had in FY07, and now our capital improvement program is moving out. We move it out accordingly, but, as development happens in this area, they're going to be greater and greater pressures to build it. i don't want to diminish the obligation that we have to d that improvement at some point in time. We can' just continually keep pushing it out. Lehman/No I understand that, but what I'm saying is that, this is not a definitive time- frame? But obviously, let's say whatever reason, development doesn't happen. And this might be built, for example, in 09 or 10 or whatever, or it might have to go to 07, depending on development. Franklin/Yes, conceivably it could. Yes, and you may be getting input from developers in this area. Windsor Ridge particularly is going quite well. Stonebridge Estates and north, and I know there's a lot of interest on their part. Plum Grove Acres, the Lindemann Subdivision, which is going quite well, and Windsor Ridge, are all interested in this road being improved, and both, well Lindemarm has not contributed yet, and Windsor Ridge is just on the cusp. Atkins/And, my biggest concern on this project, if you did move it up, because we would have to redo all of our debt planning. Lehman/Oh, I have absolutely no....no, no, no. My... Atkins/...the projects up, that changes all that arithmetic that we have to do... extraordinary debt issue in the year 07 because.., yes....just need to go... so heads up if I were to say to you, we're moving it up. It's going to change a whole lot of plans. Franklin/As we talk to you each year about capital projects like now, ~ve will let you kno~v if we think it needs to be moved up. (tape ends) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 33 Lehman/...no, I'm sure of that. (several talking at once) Atkins/And while you're looking at this one, Ron, this is another one we want to move from 04 to 05. Okay, so in your book, financing in 04 moves to 05. Knoche/The Meadow Street bridge, it's between Friendship and Brookside Drive, over Ralston Creek. The bridge currently was posted down to 6-tons so it has a weight limit on it. With that posting it made it available for state bridge funds, and those funds will become available in October of this year, so we're planning on doing a fall letting on this project. The project, not only will it reconstruct a bridge, but it also will allow for a means of the corridor trail to come through the property. There's some, once the bridge is built, the trail won't be built with the project, but some retaining walls will be built on the north side of the creek. There's one or two more properties on each side before we get to the park to the east, and to get to an existing easement that we have coming along the creek to the west. We just received a new estimate on it. The estimate now is $500,000 for the bridge, so 80% of that would be state bridge funds, and the 20% match would be from the City. Also along with that, when, go ahead... Atkins/...we're going to move this up to 05 let's make sure I understand this. The road- use tax, or our 20% share, is now $100,0007 Knoche/$100,000. And the state bridge is $400,000. Atkins/And the state bridge is $400,000? Knoche/Yup. Elliott/Is there any encroachment onto existing private property? Knoche/We will have to buy some right-of-way on three sides. We have the property already on the southeast comer. We will need to buy property on the north side, both sides, and also a little bit down there. The property that's on the southwest side is kind of unique because they own all the way across the creek, where normally they wouldn't own on the other side of the creek, so we have three properties that we'll have to get property from. Vanderhoef/Can we get an update -- in the unfunded projects out there, we've got a whole list of bridges, and I know we wait as much as possible for bridge money. Is there any way to rank those as far as moving toward the critical on the bridges, and then start working with state legislature basically that maybe more bridge dollars need to be allocated. Knoche/Sure, we could look at that. Pretty much the critical thing on, at least on Iowa City's bridges, we've done a pretty good job of maintaining our system, but when This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 34 the bridges get posted, that brings them up a lot higher in the rankings for the state, for city bridge funds. Vanderhoef/And the posted weight is what? Knoche/It's 6-tons. Champion/How much does a car weigh? Lehman/3,000 pounds. Knoche/Yeah, so it'd be about one and a half, two tons. Champion/So we could put both of our cars with you in it on that bridge. (laughter) Vanderhoef/Whoa! Knoche/One other thing that we want to add to this project, when you go down Dover Street and come up, there's a detention basin on Dover Street that currently when, if it has problems and floods, it ends up going through a couple properties. We would like to extend a storm sewer from the bridge, along the street, and tie it into that detention basin. Basically getting rid of the detention basin. That additional work is about $180,000. Atkins/Separate project though so we have to ...... Knoche/Yeah, that would be a separate project. We could stub, initially we could start the work by stubbing out and doing the preliminary work, and then we could tie up into that. Vanderhoef/Okay... Elliott/You said Dover Street. Dover Street is quite a ways from there...from this bridge. Knoche/Dover Street would be right here. It's not too far. It's about 300 feet of storm sewer is what it would be. Lehman/Steve, this project for the stormwater detention would be a great place to spend stormwater, yeah... Vanderhoef/Okay, isn't this the critical link that we need also for the trail system, and we need land to get the trail along that same bridge, or creek line? Knoche/Correct. There will be about two or three properties that we'll have to get additional easements from to be able to have the whole alignment for the trail. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 35 Vanderhoef/And you're planning to get that additional land? Knoche/That's not in the current plans right now. We'll get the property that we need offofthe three properties that we're buying property from for the bridge project. Vanderhoef/But only for the bridge project? Knoche/Just for the bridge project, and the trail easements that would go along with that. Vanderhoef/My concern would be that if we don't get the land for the trail right now, and design it with this bridge project, that we may never get that critical link. Knoche/We can look at that. Atkins/...we'lI get you an answer. Vanderhoef/Okay, because that's been a sticky point for a long time. Atkins/Melrose and Grand Avenue intersection. Davidson/This project is actually a little bit more than that intersection. What it would do, this project came out of a study committee that was formed at your insistence over the Grand Avenue Court. The controversy that was generated by the Grand Avenue Court (laughter) vacation, from that came a direction to put together a study committee with the University and the Melrose Avenue Neighborhood Association, which we did, to look at traffic in general in this area. From that study, which by the way I guess we're going to make a presentation at an upcoming work session and just kind of fill you in on the results of that whole study. It was a very, very good process. I was very pleased with how it went given the dispirit points of view. It really came to a good conclusion. The number one capital project to come out of that is this project. It will add lanes to south Grand Avenue, between Grand Avenue and Melrose Avenue. This is the stretch, for those of us who remember south quad and it's right in that stretch that connects those two. The important, well them are a couple of important things. Obviously the City's interest is in maintaining through traffic through this area. The University interest is in the access to the adjacent businesses. They are going to be expanding the parking ramp 4, that's along Melrose Avenue right now. They are going to be expanding that down to south Grand with an access point there. We'll have turn lanes both for left tums and right turns into that. Two through lanes, and we will also provide then for an additional turn lane between Melrose Court and south Grand, so there'll be kind of a "L" there that'll all be improved with this project. Elliott/Jeff; excuse me. This, is this, when you talk about this intersection, is that the one up by the fieldhouse or is it halfway down Grand? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 36 Davidson/Yes, no, fight by the fieldhouse. Elliott/Oh, okay, fine, thanks. Davidson/Right by the fieldhouse, yeah. The other thing we will do right by the fieldhouse, but basically between the fieldhouse and Slater Hall, there will be a median refuge island there, and a formal pedestrian crosswalk because there are a lot of pedestrians through there. We want to try and improve it for pedestrians, while acknowledging it's a major traffic corridor. University's not interested in doing any grade separation or anything like that for the pedestrians, so this will make it better than it is currently, and oh, the other thing that's nice about this project, is there's for all intents and purposes, no City money on it. Iowa City has obtained $320,000 from JCCOG in STP funds. The University has then agreed to provide the local match, so there won't be any Iowa City money in it, other than you are the recipient of the STP funds. At the JCCOG meeting in March we will be accelerating both this project and the Dubuque/Foster Road project. Accelerating it from 05 to 04 so that those projects can be let in July, is it, Ron? And hopefully get cranking on those both this year then. Lehman/Are these one-way? Will Grand Avenue be one-way then? Davidson/Not with this project. With this project, essentially it just widens it. Now there are some subsequent improvements we're going to talk with you about when we go through the whole thing, that gets into some of the things you're talking about. Vanderhoef/Yeah, I'm anxious to see this whole plan. Davidson/But this is the number one priority project from that study. Lehman/All right. Atkins/Miller Orchard Park, Terry? While he's getting set up, we do intend to bring it back to a work session - Melrose and Grand...it's going to be probably (several people talking at once). Trueblood/Okay, now that you're all awake we'll get to the real important stuff here. (laughter) Just a real quick refresher and maybe a little history for the two newest Council members. As hard as it may be to believe, it's been over ten years ago now that the neighborhood open space plan was adopted by Council. Early on in that process, after adoption, it was determined by our neighborhood open space task force that the number one priority as far as obtaining land for a neighborhood park was Miller Orchard Park. That land a couple of years later was acquired about half from park land acquisition fund, or two acres was acquired, about half from park land acquisition funds, matched by Community Development Block This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 37 Grant funds. So we had two acres of park land in one of the areas that was identified as what we did want to acquire. Then we had a planning session with the neighborhood. They were reluctant to start development plans even though the money had been budgeted because we were pursuing as much as two more acres adjacent to it to have a four-acre neighborhood park. And with the previous owners of that property, we kept running into a brick wall, is what it amounted to. But the neighborhood kind of wanted to delay plans until such time that maybe we could acquire more land, and then just all of a sudden last year, it was there. When the land was sold, and then through the neighborhood open space process, another acre and a half was given, if you will, to the City, so ~ve now have a three and a half acre parcel. Even though funding isn't there until next fiscal year, we have begun the neighborhood planning process. We've had two meetings with the neighborhood. We sent out a survey. Got survey results back. The most recent meeting was just two days ago, and the neighborhood group adopted this concept plan, this conceptual plan, pretty much in its entirety. So the next step is to finalize it with some flexibility, bring it to the Parks and Recreation Commission next month for their stamp of approval. Have an open house with the neighborhood for kind of final approval, because we'd really like to begin construction this summer, when the money does become available. Just briefly to acclimate you, here's Ben Street right here, Miller Street right down here. By'the way, the group did vote and it'll come forth as a recommendation to the Commission next month, and then ultimately City Council, that the park be named Benton Hill Park. We've always known it as Miller Orchard, but they'd like to see it named Benton Hill. And essentially what they want on this three and a half acres is for a lot of it to be kind of a mini natural park, if you will. In other words, a lot of the trees and the wildflowers and stuffthat are in there to remain with some nature trails. There's, a big issue was fence along Benton Street. Some concern for kids from the school across the street, Roosevelt, mrming across to get to the park. Actually it's more of a concern from us to prevent kids in the park from running out into the street. So what we would plan is a fence along here, probably only four feet high, and softened, if you will, with plantings along there because we don't ~vant the fence to be a prominent feature of the park. It would be back out of the right-of-way so that if there ever is a street widening there, hopefully it won't require removal ora fence and landscaping to do it. You know, there will be an open field area that's not for softball or soccer or anything like that, but big enough area for throwing a Frisbee around or something of that nature. The neighborhood also selected, and we agree with it, that any playground equipment that goes in it should be geared towards pre-school children because they have a school right across the street that's got quite a bit of playground equipment to accommodate the school-age children. One of the key things is the main entrance to the park would be on Miller Street. That's where the topography will allow it most. Well topography along here will too but we don't want the main entrance on Benton Street. There's also a future trail connection at some point in the future, to hopefully connect this park up with the Harlock Weeber mini-park over there, which has been in the plans for long time, m~d this development that's going on down below has allowed an easement for This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 38 that purpose. There will be some topography issues to overcome, but then there generally are. There's just one note of interest, there's an old foundation for an old, an old brick foundation in there, and what the consultants and the neighborhood residents who took part would like to see is to the extent possible, leave that in there and actually kind of make it a feature, you know. So, you know, something like a wall that kids can fall off of, you know, fun things like that. (laughter) But, no, it would need some solidification, and some acceptable surface, false surface below, that kind of thing. That's not a final thing yet but kind of an interesting tidbit. So anyway, we do have the three and a half acres now, or soon to have the three and a half acres, and the planning process, as far as preliminary plans, is virtually complete. Questions? Lehman/Are there any issues, I feel that once the student housing project is completed, there's already some traffic issues on Miller Street. Are, the entrance location and traffic, and with the street and parking and all that sort of thing, works with Jeff, and traffic folks? Trueblood/That's one thing I forgot to mention is that we are not plamfing a parking lot in this park. Lehman/I see that. Trueblood/...as many of our neighborhood parks don't have parking lots, so the only real parking adjacent to it will be along Miller Street, where there's already parking allowed on one side of the street. Lehman/And it's all also almost completely full without the park. Trueblood/One of the issues that might come up, is that you might notice it right there, is the possibility, because it was just brought up, a question of the possibility of designating one space along there for handicap parking. Don't even know if that's possible, but that's one of the issues. But keep in mind, this is a small neighborhood park that's designed to accommodate the neighborhood. So it's not designed as a park that people are expected to drive to from any distance away. Mostly it'll be people walking to it or bicycling to it. Elliott/Two quick ones. Along Benton Street, the entrance there, that says maintenance? So that would only be for maintenance, right? Trueblood/Right, right, that's, the fence would have to be gated right there to allow for our mowers and pickups. Elliott/The second one is, this is a relatively low-maintenance park, is that correct? Trueblood/Relatively low maintenance, right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 39 Elliott/And that's what we're, that's what they wanted, and my understanding is, we have sufficient amount of park land, that maintenance is becoming, appropriate maintenance, is becoming a problem? Trueblood/That's almost true. It has become a problem. (laughter) Elliott/So, you like this from the City's standpoint, and the neighborhood likes this, so it's kind of win/win in that respect. Trueblood/Yeah, I think so. Vanderhoef/The open field though is the pfimary mowed area? Trueblood/That would be the primary mowed area, yeah, but again, even that is not going to need to be mowed like the soccer fields and baseball fields and that kind of thing, yeah. Bailey/Where is the primary pedestrian access and how do you envision, or how do the neighbors envision, kids, because kids certainly will come from Roosevelt to go to the park. How do you envision that happening? Trueblood/Well, again, the primary entrance is going to be fight down there, on Miller Street. Bailey/Okay, so it'~ kind of in the middle of... Trueblood/Be on Miller Street, near Benton... Lehman/Right at the comer. Trueblood/Right, well yeah, just down from the comer a bit. This will be fenced all along there, so now are we going to be able to completely keep kids from running across from the school to this side, and then walking down there to the entrance? No, we won't be able to prevent that. Bailey/It seems to me, that there's a crosswalk at the top of the hill that is a safer sort of crossing area. Is there any possibility of...I mean, I don't know how much farther up that is but... Trueblood/There's no sidewalk up this way on the south side of Benton. Bailey/And the neighbors were not, I mean, seems like a huge concern to me. Trueblood/Well, there was concerns mentioned about that from some of the neighbors and from their perspective, that's why they like to see this fence along there. The number one reason they like to see it. We've also talked about, one of them This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 40 brought up the other night at... down here, if we can, and Jeff can answer this better than I, to have a designated crosswalk down there, which would help to encourage pedestrian traffic to cross at that point. Bailey/Right, because I drive this a fair amount, and there are two schools (can't hear) Benton Street, and let me just say, very few people observe a school zone, let alone a designated crosswalk. I think that would be very concerning. Lehman/As you go up Benton Street hill, the end of the park, the westerly edge of the park, is probably what, close to the entrance to Roosevelt? (several people answering) Can kids enter that park from, I mean, my gut feeling is they're going to walk across the street from Benton and come in from the westerly edge of the park instead of walking down to Miller Street. Can they get in there? No, no, the fence goes along the street, but the fence doesn't go along the other side, does it? So you could cross the street, go around the fence, and enter the park from the westerly portion. Champion/They will make an entrance. Lehman/No, they will. Exactly. (several talking at once) Bailey/...than coming down that hill... Trueblood/In order to do that they will have to cut across, through, somebody's front yard to do it, because the fence will run right up to the property line and then there... (several people talking at once) Vanderhoef/And their wildlife area then is going to end up with a trail through it. Lehman/Or it's just the way it'll be. Champion/It's going to be a path. Lehman/Yeah. Champion/It'll be like the Rec Center. Vanderhoef/Uh-huh. Champion/The path that's been cut by the corner that we should pave. (several talking at once) Trueblood/If that happens, the adjacent property owner, who has been attending these meetings by the way, may be encouraged to put up their own fence. Lehman/Okay, but I just think that's... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 41 Champion/Or maybe they'll be like the Longfellow neighborhood where people have deliberately left holes in their fence so kids can cut through. Elliott/The only thing is, I think Regenia's point is correct, for safety and for convenience, for everything, it would be nice to have an entrance at the west end. Trueblood/Well, that's one of the things that the neighborhood doesn't want. And the school kind of prefers that too. Now one other thing too, as I mentioned before, that's another reason for the playground equipment being geared towards pre- schoolers so that it's not real attractive playground equipment for school-age kids to come running across the street to use it. So that's a litter deterrent there as well. Vanderhoef/Where are the envisioning playground equipment if it gets put in? Champion/Right there (can't hear). Vanderhoef/I can't read that. Lehman/Kids Discovery. Trueblood/Well, no, actually i'm sorry. Kids Discovery area is more of a little nature area. Play equipment is right over in this area. Champion/You know the other thing, I hate to be kind of sarcastic about it, but you've got to remember that kids that go to Roosevelt are used to Benton. It's like growing up on a busy street. You can trust a pretty young child not to go into that street, because they've grown up knowing it. It isn't like you're moving a kid off a dead-end street and putting them across the street on Benton. I mean it does make, my kids a street was never a problem, because they grew up on a busy street. Elliott/I think that one of the things that no matter what the neighbors say and what xve plan for, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade kids are going to be in that park, and they're going to find a way to get there, and I think we need to be flexible. Soon as ~ve see a pattern develop, to try to organize the pattern. Trueblood/Absolutely. Davidson/A couple of quick things about the traffic safety issues that you have raised. As Terry has pointed out, from this point up to Greenwood Drive, there's no sidewalk on the south side of Benton Street, and so what the school has established, school together with the Iowa City Police Department, is in their safe walk system for getting kids to school. There's two crosswalks at Benton. One's here at Miller, which is actually where the visibility is the best, okay? And then This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 42 the second one for the kids that are on that side of the school is at Greenwood where we put in the lighted crosswalk. I believe both of those, I know the Greenwood Drive one has a school crossing guard. I think this one does too during school times as well, so I think having that entrance here fits in well with those crosswalks being there. Of course you're going to occasionally have somebody who does come across, in the middle of the park. That's bound to happen. When we, at the time a few years ago when we discussed the reconstruction of Benton Street with the neighborhood, we had discussed the possibility of a above-grade crossing from the school to the park, and I think when the, if and when the Benton Street reconstruction issue gets raised again, we can still consider that. It's kind of a nice situation in that you're at grade on the school side of it because of the big hill, you would actually come right out of the school and onto the pedestrian bridge, and then you'd have to have some kind of a ramp system down on this side. That's not out of the question, but along with the sidewalk on this side of the street, those will be issues for when the street gets reconstructed. Atkins/All set? Missing Link Trail. Elliott/Can anybody find it? (laughter) Atkins/Well Terry's going to show you how to find it. Tmeblood/And I do want to emphasize this up front that this was given that name because of the trail, not because of me. (laughter) Although that might have had something to do with it. Just to acclimate you a little bit, here's Interstate 80, Dubuque Street, here's the water plant and Waterworks Park. Down here is the Peninsula Parkland, City Park over here. This would be a part of, as a matter of fact the missing link, to the thirteen-mile, excuse me, the thirteen-mile Iowa River Corridor Trail. The Missing Link portion would be right here. We already have the trails/service roads because they do double duty in Waterworks Park. That, there's one of them, one of the main trails, that ends just a couple hundred feet short of the interstate, so the plan would be to continue that trail under the interstate, and on down to connect up to Foster Road. There is plenty of room under the interstate to get this done. As a matter of fact, the initial thoughts were it be a very, very expensive proposition for that segment of it, but as it tums out it's not. Not much more than what the trail construction itself is because there's plenty of room under there. It does require permission from the State DOT which we would have to get. The trail, although in some ways it would be nice to run the trail down along the river bank and into the Peninsula Park, and that might be a possibility for another future trail, but right now there's a lot of problems with bluffs and ravines in there for one thing. The other thing we have to be careful of, if we put it too close to the river there, it's in the flood-way so there might be a lot of times when it wouldn't be very usable. So there's a couple of alternatives. This just shows one right in through here, but there's a couple alternative plans in there, one of which would follow existing gas pipeline, I believe it is gas, yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 43 And another one that would hug closer to the ridge line and the trees. Right now it connects to Foster Road, and as you can see right here, that blue line represents that that trail segment is completed with an 8-foot sidewalk on the south side of Foster Road. Now where it shows right here, is a future trail, that's that little cut- across street, I think people call it No Name, and then down into Taft Speedway. Although it shows a future trail there, they're very low traffic and it's considered good enough to serve bicycle traffic right now with the lack of vehicular volume there. And then the trail goes all the way down and right now ends at the south edge of Napoleon Park. Also goes all the way up. The county a couple of years ago improved the trail along north Dubuque Street, and it goes all the way up to the reservoir. So that would be the missing link right there, and also I might mention that that 8-foot sidewalk on Foster Road also continues down towards the neighborhood development on the Peninsula, and it ends part way in there, but I know it's going to continue as the houses get built, and so they'd be able to come here and either go this way, or they can come here and go down into the park land. Vanderhoef/And the new bridge across... Trueblood/The new bridge, right there, that's being constructed right now, and should be finished some time this summer. And that's dam and bridge, and will be that connection between Coralville and Iowa City for a bike trail or pedestrians. Lehman/When you cross the Iowa River Power Dam which is being built as you say, and go onto the Peninsula property, is that trail already built? Trueblood/A lot of it is. The trail is not right now not constructed right up to the dam and the bridge, but it's pretty close. Lehman/No, no, no, but it does go up the hill? Trueblood/Yeah. Well, there, the trail, there's a rather narrow hard-surface road, part of it's hard surface, part of it's still gravel and dirt. Lehman/Right. Trueblood/...going up the hill, right. Elliott/Missing Link Trail, is this a trend? (several talking and laughing) What are the City's safety concerns on these trails in areas like that? Trueblood/I forgot to mention one thing to you here too that right now, you know, like the trail is up there, the trail is down here. This is a very dangerous area for bicyclists and pedestrians. There's really nothing right in through there for them to use, and going over the interstate's very dangerous situation. Now I know This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 44 that's not what you're referring to but it, you know, as far as, are you referring to danger on trails where there are secluded areas? Elliott/I was just wondering are we going to maybe have police on bicyclists on these trails? Atkins/We already do. Elliott/Good, that was my concern, but you pointed out another very serious concern. Lehman/I doubt that we have plans to have police on bicyclists riding these trails. Atkins/The police use the trail system now during summertime and our bicycle patrol. Would you find a police officer out there on a regular basis? Unlikely, but a police officer can, and in fact we (can't hear) and respond to a call on a bicycle trail (can't hear). Elliott/It just seems to me that's not out of the question, and there might be some problems arise on those...(several talking at once) Atkins/I think I can speak to this. We have not experienced, I mean if somebody blows a tire, they're going to walk their bike. I mean, that's just the way it is. We have not experienced, at least R.J. has not brought it to my attention, concerns about our ability to police and assure public safety on our trail system. Trueblood/It's a valid point and we may have to have serious discussions about at some time. The University recently put one in along the trail, right here by Skateland Park, but they didn't put it in because of the trail. They put it in because a lot of the users, University students, use it and it's right across from Mayflower dorms SO... Champion/You know, the other thing is, we don't have a lot of problems, we don't have a lot of problems in our parks. And there are times when you're in a park and you're the only person there for a long, long time, and some are more remote parks. Look like Hickory Hill. I mean, you could be lost in there for days. (laughter) People are, I mean...(several talking at once). I shouldn't have said that. Atkins/And I understand there's always a little debate about trails, but when you think about the real bottom line, it's a very inexpensive way to allow people to recreate. We don't have to supervise it. We don't really have to do much of anything, saying "there it is", and (can't hear). Trueblood/The Bicyclists of Iowa City organization came to the Parks and Recreation Commission to discuss this, and requested that the Commission rank it as a high priority, which they did. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 45 Elliott/To get under the interstate, how much is that? Trueblood/Well it adds, according to our current cost estimate, it adds only about $15,000 to the cost of the trail. Elliott/To get under the interstate? Lehman/The bridge is already there. (several talking at once) Trueblood/The original cost estimate that I put together, going under the bridge was based on one that we had for going under Highway 6 if we ever continue Willow Creek Trail down that way, ~vhich was like $400,000, something like that, but under the interstate, I mean, even though it's wider, the area is all there. Elliott/Oh, that's at the end of the existing bridge, is that what you're talking about? Trueblood/Yeah. Elliott/See I was thinking about having to dig a tunnel... Trueblood/No, no, it's there, just go under the bridge. Atkins/Two things I want the staffto comment on. One is that we are, we've shown this to be funded by a federal grant, a piece of that, we would pursue that. if we're unsuccessful, we'll get back to you after we (can't hear). Secondly, I think you need a heads-up on, if we need to secure the property, which we will need to secure the property, it may require condemnation, but under the state law because it's agricultural land, explain that to me? Trueblood/Well there could be an issue with that in that i always (can't hear) zoned agricultural, or if it's in agricultural use, then agricultural use you're not allowed to condemn, the state legislature decreed that a trail was not a public purpose and so if there's not arm's length transaction, we could have difficulty condemning that because it has been in agricultural use. Lehman/Could this be secondary access to the water treatment sites, which makes it...oh it is. Sure, right. Atkins/I think you should demand a secondary access to the water treatment... Lehman/We just did, okay. (laughter) Vanderhoef/What part is in aghcultural still? Lehman/That pasture, that's agricultural. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 46 Champion/Well the deer? Lehman/The deer are gone. We shot them. (laughter) Atkins/Okay. Mormon Trek. Knoche/The, currently under contract, we have Mormon Trek extension down to the airport property, basically Willow Creek. They have constructed up to Dane Road. They'll pave this next summer. The next phase ofthe project would be building the culverts for Willow Creek and also building a culvert underneath old Highway 218, which was formerly Iowa 921. And then also paving out to old, or 921, we'll just call it that. That will end up being basically a two-phase project. We'll let the culverts as one project, and then we'll do the paving and grading in the second project. Currently the problem that we've run into, and it's our understanding that Council has a policy with the Airport Commission, that the north/south runway won't be closed until the extension of the east/west runway is completed. For us to be able to complete the road segment through here, the north/south runway will have to be closed. Our current schedule will allow us to complete our project summer of 2006. The ~vay it's looking for the runway extension for the Airport, they may not be able to start their project until that time, so it'll push us basically, as long, basically a year behind, if we have that hang-up. Atkins/This will be coming back to you at a work session, very shortly. Lehman/ We'll deal with that. Atkins/But the real bottom line, is that there's standing policy of north/south runway, as Ron pointed out. Given the speed with which that other runway can be extended, constructed, that will hold us up at least a year on the Mormon Trek project, so you have a decision that you'll have to make. Champion/Is the year a long time? Atkins/For this project, given the experience we've had, yeah, I do believe it's a long time, Counie, because it's doing exactly what we expected it to do. I mean, the economic interest is there. Certainly for transportation planning, it's been very positive, and the airport decision, airport policy position, has got to be dealt with, or we're not going to get it done in a timely fashion. Lehman/Is the delay on the extension of the runway relative to federal funding? Atkins/Yes. Lehman/Okay, now I really do believe that this may very well be worth our time to visit with Dan Monroe in Kansas City because I believe that we could make a very This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 47 good argument, which is truth, and reliance on what the FAA has proposed for that airport, in reliance on that, we planned a road, and we're investing millions of dollars in road that we can't use because you didn't get the runway extended on time. Now, let's get it extended on time. I mean, I think they're fairly reasonable folks and... Atkins/And ! think they are too but... Lehman/We have to do that. Atkins/It's just I have another agency that we have to rely on their goodwill and their, to get one of our projects done. It still doesn't change...you're going to have to deal...soon. Lehman/Well I think right away. Atkins/Yes. Knoche/One of the big advantages we have here is the Airport Commission hired Earthtech who is also doing the design for Mormon Trek so we have the same consultant doing both construction projects as far as the design. Atkins/Okay. Vanderhoef/Oh, the FAA funding for the Dane Road relocation - was that used in Phase I? Or have we received that money? Atkins/Say that again. Vanderhoef/The FAA money for the Dane Road relocation. Irmoche/No, that first Phase money for the design of the extension, and the relocation have not come in yet. They're figuring February/March that money will come. Vanderhoef/So is that showing up in these figures? Knoche/I believe where you see that money showing up actually is back on the runway extension. O'Malley/On page C9. Atkins/Page 9, got it, Dee? Right there. Vanderhoef/Okay. So this is the Dane Road. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 48 Atkins/That ~vould affect Dane Road, yeah. Okay. Keep moving along. The old bus depot land acquisition. This is somewhat up to you. The old bus depot, you know where it is, is ultimately going to move. Well that bus depot was purchased with parking funds. It is an asset to our parking fund. Sometime when they move out and you make a decision on what you want to see done with that property. You don't have to do this, but if we're, the parking fund did purchase it so it'd have to be bought back for general purposes. Champion/But there wouldn't be any hurry to do that? Atkins/ No, just how fast you want to see, you know, what kind...there's some interest in the property (can't hear). I just wanted to give you a heads-up that that (can't hear) but... Elliott/...planning on doing something as quickly as possible, so as not to have vacant property... Atkins/No, it's really very much your call, Bob. It depends on the use. Karin's done a little work on that, trying to figure out what might be... Elliott/I'd sure hate to see it vacant for very long, even though it's not a... (several talking at once) Atkins/You can clear it if you want...yeah...property right next store also which ultimately is going to have to (can't hear). The long-term thinking had always been, the three blocks that, Chauncey Swan Parking Ramp, Rec Center this block, all those three blocks put together would become somewhat of a municipal campus. The only property that we now do not own is the church, Universal Church, and Mid-American's transformer. We own everything else, so what do you want it to be, that's a question I'll pose. Vanderhoef/We don't have a formal policy at this point. We had informal with what you just said about that bus station property and I would suggest that we put a formal policy together that says we're going to do exactly what Steve said that this is govermnent campus and it's not up for sale for private investment. Atkins/There are a fe~v claiming it's historic property. Lehman/We can always rent the property, i mean, you're right, it doesn't need to be vacant. Somebody could... Elliott/Yeah. Atkins/It would be nice if cleared it, got it all fixed up, and it beComes part of our campus. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 49 Lehman/That's another discussion. Atkins/Parking garage maintenance is a bi-annual process. We've included it in capital plan and as I'm looking at it, I don't know why. Because every other year we go through an expensive maintenance at our garage. I think it should be incorporated into the operating budget as required debt, it's cash. Riparian Restoration. Elliott/What happened to No Name and Missing Link? (laughter) Lehman/We just changed it to Riparian. Franklin/This is Steve's favorite project. (laughter) Okay, this is a project that ~ve were given the opportunity to be part of it by the City of Coralville. They gave us a call and they had been working with the Corps of Engineers on their aspect of it. The City of Coralville, the University, the Corps of Engineers, and Iowa City are at this point involved in it, and it encompasses a lot of different parts. I'm just going to hit the two parts that are pertinent to Iowa City. And that is to look at Riparian Restoration in both the Waterworks Park, Waterworks Prairie Park, and the Peninsula Park, and we have plans that have been put together through Parks and Recreation for both of those areas. What this particular project does is it enables us to do a small part of those plans with 80% federal money, and we thought should kind of jump on that if that was a possibility. It is a project that is evolving over time as we work with the Corps, and it's been at least two years that we've been working on this now, and things progress rather slowly, but at this point what it involves is Riparian Restoration of the forested and non-forested wetlands and waterworks, and in the Peninsula Park, and what that means is, in the forested area, we would go in, clear out some of the understory to reestablish the habitat that was there historically, and it is then feeded with wetland species of seeding. In the Waterworks Park there would also be an area that would be part of the Prairie Restoration, which is kind of right in this area here, between two wetland areas and that would be seeded with prairie seeding after a prescribed burn. On the Peninsula, there's similar kinds of things with a forested, non- forested wetland, the non-forested wetland being either excavated or burned, and then seeded. Our share of it at this point in the figures that we have from the Corps, is $70,000 and we're going to move that out to at least FY05 from what's in your book. That may change again. As I say, this has gone rather slowly. Also to correct something that's in your book, the trail is no longer a part of it in Waterworks Park, and the restoration of the bank near Park Road is no longer part of it. As more and more work on this has been done, and the costs have changed in terms of the estimates that we have gotten from the Corps, we have cut back on the benefit that it was going to accrue for us, and what we wanted to put into it, and so xve're kind of whittling this down to what we think is a manageable project, where it still makes sense for us in achieving our goals of our txvo park plans, and allowing us to use some of the federal money to do that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 50 Vanderhoef/Are there additional costs then in stabilizing the banks along the river there that don't fit into this project? Franklin/No, the only place we were looking at was an identified place that was just south of Park Road, and some of it's on University property, and some of it was privately owned, and some publicly owned. We have a bit of the Dubuque Street right-of-way there at the bridge that we may be doing some work on as part of other projects in the future, but then the decision was that to try to acquire the right-of-way to work on the private property was just not going to be, the benefit of doing it was not going to outweigh the cost of trying to acquire that. And so we decided to drop that. It's not, it's not a critical point for us, and as far as we were concerned too, was not part of this goal of trying to get parts of these two park projects done. Vanderhoef/Oh, that was the area I was thinking. What do we have between those two wetland, forested areas that ~ve need to do in the way of bank stabilization, and... Franklin/Nothing. Vanderhoeff There's nothing left for us to do on our own? Franklin/No, no. Lehman/Good. (tape ends) Franklin/...no, I've heard it used mostly in terms of the law. Riparian rights are those rights of use of the water or of the land that is along the waterway, up to the high ~vater mark. Atkins/The rivers in Iowa are owned by the State of Iowa. Franklin/Uh-huh. Atkins/And if you want to do something, discharge into it, whatever, you have to get a permit, and those permits are referred to certain riparian rights and they can regulate, that's what I always... Franklin/But the riparian area is generallyjust that area right along a waterway. Vanderhoef/Then why don't we see a (can't hear; laughter) Atkins/Hey... Franklin/That's ~vhy it's Dee's favorite subject. (laughter) Lehman/ None of us knew. Why didn't you share? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 51 Bailey/Well I didn't think you would know. (laughter) Lehman/You need to know who you're associated with. (laughter) Bailey/Apparently so. My eyes are open. (laughter) Atkins/Okay, we've talked about the runway extension. Next up is Sand Road. Knoche/This is a joint project with Johnson County. The project that they're doing is bringing Sand Road from 480th Street up to, at one point it was going to be Sycamore Street, widening out to a 38-foot wide cross section with 24-foot travel way, and I believe it's 8-foot, or 7-foot paved shoulders. Similar to what they've done south, so just continuing that out. Between Sycamore Street and the county/city limits, we're looking at doing a three-lane cross section, curb and gutter. Be 4I-foot, or 43-foot back to back, and then at the city limits, we'll go with a, where the east/west arterial comes through, the Mormon Trek extension would come across. We would go frorri a three-lane cross section to a four-lane cross section. So that four-lane cross section would run up to where the Public Works and then Napoleon Lane is, and tie into that existing four-lane street. It's a, the county kind of approached us with the idea. The City, the way it works out funding wise, the City pays for all the costs up to the city limits. We pay for the pavement overwidth, and anything that goes along with pavement overwidth, and the storm sewer down to Sycamore Street, and then the County has 100% of the cost south of Sycamore, so by doing it as a joint project, we save about a million dollars. Lehman/Oh! Elliott/And this takes it straight from the, what is it, Highway 6 and Gilbert intersection and it will be improved clear to where it is improved now by the County? Knoche/Yes, correct. Elliott/And this will provide for greater safety for the multitude of bicyclists that traverse there too. Knoche/Yes, yes. Vanderhoef/So right away ali the way down there will be at least four-lane possibilities with utilities outside of that area? Knoche/Yes. Working with the County, we're looking at 100 foot right of way down to where Sycamore Street would be at. Also, one of the highIines comes through here so that'll also have to be moved out. So it'll be taken care of. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 52 Vanderhoef/Put it under ground. Lehman/Yeah, right. Vanderhoef/Seriously. Atkins/Okay, while you're looking at that, that's also the sand pit that we (can't hear), just to give you the heads-up on that. So you can... Vanderhoef/And the road goes...the red line is the road way, the bridge across the river... Atkins/The parking lot, and then across the street is our new publics works building, and we own the land down....to the road. Knoche/And it has been decided that the homeless shelter will not be built in that area, is that correct? Lehman/That was quite a ways north of here. Knoche/Yeah, and it was further north, and they simply couldn't justify...(can't hear) Atkins/Anything else on Sand Road? Staff did a good j ob on that, they put that one together...(can't hear) Storm water permits, Rick is here to give you the abbreviated version but bottom line, this is a place holder also from the capital projects. Until you make the call on (can't hear). Fosse/The budget in front of you assumes that there's no storm water utility income, and the $130,000 a year pays for...ya'll remember this handout, that lists all of our storm water expenses? There's program management, engineering and administration, inspection and enforcement, and operations and maintenance. This $130,000 a year covers most of this part on program management, and that covers those six control measures that we're required to do by the EPA, and it covers a portion of the engineering administration costs, but as far as inspection, operations, and capital projects, those are all funded by other means. So that's what's in front of you. Franklin/These are the areas of the Targeted Area Rehab program districts, and that program is about rehab which is funded locally, because we have rehab that is funded through the federal government too from CDBG funds. This is rehab that is funded locally, and it's for people who are between 80 and I think 110% of median income. It's that income category, and these areas were identified based upon census data and condition of housing, and if you recall, that the rehab programs that we have, there's a couple of purposes. One is to retain the housing stock that is in place, and the other is to retain affordable housing, because most often these are in areas in which that housing stock is more affordable. So it's This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 53 fairly simple. This program is a revolving fund, that is when the individuals who get loans for the rehab of their dwellings, that money comes back to us and we keep plowing it back into the program. Lehman/Karin, is this only for people between 80 and 110%? Franklin/Yes. Lehman/And this is the median as established by HUD? Franklin/That's correct. Lehman/Which puts us about two or three times what that same number is in Muscatine County? Franklin/Probably. Lehman/Well I have a real problem with us making low-interest loans to people making $40,000 and $50,000 a year. I mean, I really think that if we want to have a significant impact, we do it for people that are making less than 80. Champion/The idea of this program though, Emie, is that it's made to people who can afford to pay back the loan. Lehman/It's made to people who don't need us to get the loan. Franklin/I debate that. There is a reason why our income levels are different than Muscatine, which has to do with the cost of living and the cost of housing in Iowa City. Lehman/I'm aware of that. Right. And I can also, I had a discussion with some folks from HUD from Des Moines saying we may very well, and they may very well, agree to lowering the pementage of median income because we are so skewed in this city with median income. Champion/You know, I disagree with you. I think this is a group of people who get neglected at both ends. They don't qualify for low-income loans or forgivable grants, and because they really are at the median income, if they have a couple kids and then maybe a couple other obligations, they don't qualify very well for a bank loan so they tend not to rehab their houses because they simply don't have the bucks to do it. I think you're really wrong about that. I think this is a group of people who are left out. They're like they drop through the cracks. Lehman/Well, I'm not saying that this isn't a good program. I just question that the, the income levels. I think folks under 80% would be far, far less able... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 54 Champion/Under 80% they qualify for rehab grants. Franklin/We have, that's for the rehab grants, under the CDBG program. Lehman/But I think, if I'm not correct, is 60%, or pardon me, 80% of a median income for a family of four is like $60,000 bucks a year? Champion/For a person of one it's not. Lehman/No, no, no, I know that. But what I'm saying is I don't think people making $50,000 or $60,000 a year should be coming to the City for Iow-interest rate Franklin/It may be $50,000, Ernie, but I don't think it's $60,000. Wilburn] I think it's closer to $50,000, I don't have my chart with me. Franklin/Yeah, I should have brought mine too. Vanderhoef/$54,000 sticks in my mind. Lehman/Well whatever, it just seems this is a targeted group that could afford... Bailey/! agree with Connie. Working in the not-for-private sector, I see a lot of these people who probably fall in this category. They oxvn their homes. They're raising their family. And they're paying their mortgage, everything is good, but rehab or to do some major rehab in an older neighborhood, it's tough, and... Franklin/I'm sorry. This is an investment in sustaining our property tax base too. That's the other aspect of it, and that income group is a fair size one. Champion/You know, I can tell you that my daughter's in that income group with their family, they cannot afford to rehab their house. The only reason it gets done is because her husband can do it himself. But if he didn't have those skills, there is no way they'd... Lehman/I'm the only one who has...let's move on, move on. Vanderhoef/I have a little concern, but my question is how many dollars do we already have in this revolving fund, and what kind of waiting list, shall we say, if we're putting in an additional $200,000, which is into bonding which, yeah, that's the part that bothers me. Atkins/Well we borrowed the money (can't hear) if we borrow at 3% we loan it out at 3 ~A%...that's part of the thinking behind...capitalizing this project. You could This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January ! 5, 2004 Council Work Session Page 55 capitalize this project from your reserves if you wanted, if you're real careful about it. I'd have to look at the schedule of repayment to make sure... Franklin/Why don't we put together a report for you on the financing of this project, and how it's occurred over the last couple of years. Atkins/Abated money? Yeah, it does, it is abated money. Very good. Elliott/One of the things on this is I've often thought for a long time, it's a pity that there are some residential property owners, quite a few of them, who put off improving their property because all it does is raise their taxes, and I've always thought that the City needs to make some financial encouragement for people to upkeep their property, modernize and upkeep, because some of them think "why should I do it? Ali it's going to count is more property taxes. I'll leave it the way it is." So, I think this is one way of getting at that problem at least for a segment of the population. Vanderhoef/I think there's a lot of housing in the same area that turns over in that four to five years, and people come in and buy, go to school, do professional schools, then sell it and move back out, and so they've stretched themselves to purchase at the time and have no intention of upgrading, and it even with inflation of the property, that property still, to make it affordable for the next person who is doing a similar kind of"I'm going to be here four year, five years", so I'm not sure the success of some of this. Champion/I think you're really naive about that. Atkins/You'll certainly have a crack at it. (can't hear) difference of opinion on that. Transit capital outlay. Davidson/Just bring you up to speed on a couple of things that are different from what's in your book here. This is a situation with our transit capital funding that Iowa City Transit competes with all the other transit systems in the state for the federal money. There's various splits. You see here, 83/17 is typically what the split ends up being for the major bus purchases, and that has to be with the handicap accessibility that's built into them, and that changes it from 80/20 to 83/17. We are not likely to get the three full-size buses in FY05. We need to leave them there for programming purposes. We could definitely use them but it's not likely we're going to get those. We have three more that we were hoping to get in 06, and chances are that in 06 we'll get somewhere between three and six, in 06. The cameras, the safety cameras on the buses, we should be able to take care of that in 05. A couple of additional things, there should be, it's looking pretty good right now for four paratransit vehicles in FY05. There will no Iowa City money in those because SEATS pays the local share, even though those are technically owned by Iowa City, since SEATS operates them, they've agreed to pay the local share. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 56 Elliott/Jeff, how many cameras on each bus? Davidson/I believe there's four on each bus. (several people talking at once) Elliott/Because I think there are a number of bus routes for which there is no need for cameras, is that correct? Davidson/Yeah, what Iowa City Transit wants to be able to do, Bob, is leave the flexibility. They rotate the buses on various routes, and they want to make sure all t~venty-one buses have the capability, you know, to be put on any route. And that's actually something the feds like to see. The feds come through and check periodically that you're not taking your oldest, crappiest buses and putting them in the low-income areas. For example, they want to make sure that you're mixing the buses up in all the routes and so they all need to have the cameras for that reason. Elliott/Our understanding is those cameras have been very productive. Davidson/That's my understanding too. Atkins/We were having some unruly individuals, and mom and dad were brought in and shown the tape (laughter and several talking at once) It took care of a couple of problems. Davidson/We should be able to get those this year so we're looking pretty good. Any questions about transit equipment? Atkins/Okay, last pro.~ect is the water distribution building. Whether you all know it or not, down on Gilbert Street we own what is the old bus barn. It's a blue, metal building, got it? And I asked Rick to put together his priorities on the need for new public's work building. This is not his highest priority, but there are other issues and I wanted to flag this for you. We would be proposing that that property be sold, and that the income from that property and the use of some water monies, a new water distribution building, and for lack of a better description, it's a big barn that's full of valves and pipes, and big stuff. It's storage stuff: (several talking at once) But I think you need a heads-up on this. The local EHP folks have looked at this site, and they're looking for a location, but there's also interest on the part of the businesses in the area. If we were to sell this property, and we need to sell this property, and we need to sell this property in order to finance this project, the heads-up for you is that you're likely to get interest on the part of the local businesses to buy it. It is sort ora business neighborhood. EHP is very interested in buying it, which would remove the building and build their new emergency housing project there. Your policy position is going to be in what type of restrictions might you place on the sale, not to sell it, and I have to take this This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 57 through Eleanor because you are disposing of public property, but I understand you can restrict it. Elliott/Where on Gilbert Street is this? Lehman/Gilbert Court. Vanderhoef/Next to the Crisis Center, isn't it? Wilburn/It's on the same side as La Casa. (several talking at once) Atkins/Well anyway, where the motorcycle shop is. What we'll likely do is have to bring this back to you because I think you're going to have to have a policy discussion about, not only building a new water distribution building which I think we can justify, not a top priority, but it's something we're ultimately going to have to do, and then the implications of the sale, because the folks from the EHP have looked at the old bus depot site and this site, and I believe they feel very strongly that that's the one they'd be most interested in. So (can't hear) decide not to sell it, we'd just leave everything the way it is. Vanderhoef/How would the sale of this property be different perhaps than when we sell a right-of-way in that if there are three property owners around it, they have to... Atkins/This is not remnant parcels, Dee. This is a marketable, buildable lot that ABC Construction could build a building and move in just as easy as someone else. Karin? Franklin/I think an analogy to 64-1A might be appropriate in that when we've owned a piece of land and we wanted something specifically to happen on it, that we outline what it is that we want the conditions of sale to be, and I have had some discussions with Eleanor about this. We can do that. You could set that up from the get-go. With the right-of-way, it's been City policy that we offer that vacated right-of-way to abutting property owners, but that has been only for right-of-way. That is not something that is set by law that we have to do, and it's not been our practice on pieces other than right-of-way. Atkins/And before you would reach a policy position, and then ultimately, because there will have to be a public hearing on the thing (can't hear) There's a couple business that want to expand and they've looked at this site as a possibility for expansion. At the same time, we have the EHP folks ..... Vanderhoef/Another question I'd like answered, because I have no idea. I know we get appraisals, but if there's that much interest, is there any way to auction, or to price it at a higher than the appraisal value? I just don't know. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 58 Atkins/I would suspect you could put it up for proposal and say whoever's willing to pay the most, we'll sell itto you. I can't... O'Donnell/Sealed bid kind of thing. (several talking at once) Atkins/If you were just going to sell it as raw land, and saying it's zoned CI-1, put it up for sale, see what happens. Lehman/We could have done that with 64-1A and had a dormitory sitting there. Atkins/ .... and just simply... Bailey/Is this only one of two auctions that EHP has come up with? Atkins/The only two....I've had some informal discussions with EHP. The old depot site is very expensive to tear that site and prepare it. That would be one, and we may have some environmental issues there. That being (can't hear) I think those are all resolvable, but it adds to the price. They're in effect trying to purchase a piece of money, quite frankly, with the money that we granted to them through CDBG. I think that's their major source of income on the thing. They're using those monies to buy the site, and they're going to do a fund raiser to build the building. Lehman/All of this, none of this will be relevant if we don't sell this property. Atkins/If you were to say, leave it the way it is. Tell Rick to make do with his water distribution, then (can't hear) because they are looking for us, the City, to see what we can do to help them out on sites. We've already been through a number of gyrations with them, trying to identify other sites, and this is just a tough call. Champion/What about the land by the j ail? Atkins/That's all University....oh, that didn't work. Karin? We looked at those sites next to (several talking at once). Lehman/I think if Eleanor were here she wouldn't let us talk about it. Champion/Oh I didn't think so, that's why I brought it up. (laughter) Atkins/Well, water distribution building is a budgeted item, and I'm pointing out to you the implications if you choose to do this project, what's going to happen. Now, we were going to, one of the other options was the sale of property. Okay. What happened on that? Franklin/That was relative to the parking facility impact fee bond, and there's certain constraints on those properties because of what we bought them with. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 59 Atkins/We will get you a memo on that, but I do remember there was some...I'm not so sure it can be resolved because of the way they were purchased. I understand your look because I have the same look. Let me just get you something specific. The water distribution building has other policy implications for you and your budget. Lehman/Where would we build this building if we built it? Fosse/There's two spots we're looking at. One is putting it just immediately north of the water plant, and the other place is down by the other public work's facilities. (several talking at once) Atkins/But we do need to sell it to come up with the money, and that's all for capital projects. Now, let me go to my other list and we can wrap up... (TAPE OFF BREAK) Atkins/We've finished our review. The general overview is Tuesday evening. We've finished our review of capital projects. Hopefully we've presented to you the budget plan as we've assembled it. Again, I have some errata sheets, it's some very minor things we need to correct, the unfunded by giving you some new numbers. Please don't be overly concerned about that. I will begin preparing, and hopefully have it available to you on the 22nd, I can't imagine ~vhy not, is a list of, at least here's a series of decisions you're going to have to begin thinking about and making, but I'd intended on the 22nd that it would be an open meeting. Open in the sense of, Ernie, ! don't know how you want to do this, just go around and say "what are your questions". If you can achieve some consensus on some of them, that's fine. I'm not asking for you to vote on it, but, and then the meeting, yes, Bob? Elliott/Steve, will you have that sheet available for us, the sheet which lists those items on which decisions are required? Atkins/I want to try and ~vork on that over the weekend, and I might have to hand it to you at your next Council meeting on the, on Tuesday, but I will try to do that. What I like to do, Bob, is give you a checklist so you know you're knocking off the decisions you have to make, and you may, I may miss some things and you may need to toss them on that list. Champion/Do we have a time for that meeting yet? Atkins/We have the meeting on the 22nd is from 1:00 to 4:00. You mean the budget hearing? Champion/No, the work session on Tuesday. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 60 Atkins/What you have now is there is no meeting on Monday the 19th. The agenda we've prepared for you, has you starting on Tuesday at 6:15. It's a very abbreviated work session, and then a regular Council meeting at 7:00, so 6:15 and 7:00. Then on Tuesday, or Thursday the 22nd from 1 to 4 is a budget session. Again, hopefully we'll have some decision lists for you, and then it's open for you to "I like this", "I don't like this", "tell me more about this", "tell me more about that". Lehman/But I think we should be prepared that that meeting could run longer than 4:00. Atkins/Well that's up to you, yeah, because you do have available, you marked the 27th at 6:30 to keep open for the budget, and this is where we're going to bring up Parks and Recreation, and the Library for sure said they want to come and talk to you. If you want to do that, and I'm sure they prefer the evenings. Yes, Dee? Vanderhoef/I would like some update from the parking division about the use of ramps and what has happened since we did some changes on...no, since we did some changes on parking permits and income coming in to parking, and... Atkins/Okay, all the changes you made in June in response to State reduction, all of those are tracking like we had projected. We're fine with those. I mean, when you went from the $5 to the $10, and from....those are all tracking satisfactorily. Vanderhoef/What I'm interested in is the list is growing, as I understand it, for permit requests, and usage within each of the ramps, and how our decision to take offa cap on... Atkins/Okay. Vanderhoef/...and an hourly rate, or a daily rate excuse me. We took that daily rate off of Dubuque Street parking ramp, and the implications there, and I'd like that before we get into discussion with the Library. Atkins/Okay, I'll try to get that to you as quickly as I can. Kevin, Deb, Chris keeps that, Chris O'Brien our parking manager keeps those. I think I know what you want and we'll get that prepared for you. Vanderhoef/I think Joe knows what I want too. Champion/I think the other thing we need, maybe as a Council which might help Joe and the Library, and maybe people don't know yet, but my feeling is we have an $18 million library, and we better find some way for parking accessibility, and if all of us feel that way, maybe (can't hear) I feel very strongly that we need to provide some access to that library. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 61 Atkins/Okay. Parking accessibility library pretty much in responding to the note we received from Shaner. Champion/...received from Joe which was discouraging anything. Atkins/Yeah. Joe, you need to understand, Joe looks at it from the financial implications. The more you take away, you understand. Okay, I think those are two things we can get for you fairly easily. Okay, back to I think we're all set for the 4th, or the 22nd. Now on the 27th, would you like me to invite boards and commissions? All of them, or just the Library? How do you want to do this? We're on a real short time frame now to get this done. Elliott/So the 27th is no longer "if needed", it's scheduled? Atkins/If you're going to meet with those folks, I think you have....prefer the evening, it would be 6:30. Because often we've got to get on the phone with them. Right now the only two requests, I mean, airport also probably but they're handling it a little differently. (several talking at once) Parks and Rec and the Library are the two who have expressed interest in seeing you. Vanderhoef/Well, I want time for all of us to discuss so what, after we've talked to the boards and commissions, so what all is scheduled for the 22nd? Atkins/The 22'~a is open. The 22nd you can do anything you want. That's your four hours...we'll get those things prepared for you. Vanderhoeff Is it possible to do Joe's report and some of those things on that day? Atkins/Sure, if that's what you want to do. Lehman/Well I think that's good, it'd be nice to have Joe's report, but I think Joe's report is going to be more important when we look at it in conjunction with the meeting with the library. Atkins/But I'm saying I think Dee wants this information ahead of time, going into the meeting. I understand what you're saying. I need to get to these people right away to get these reports prepared because we only have a couple days. Elliott/The meeting with the boards and commissions has to do with their suggestions for our budget decisions? Atkins/Yes, yes. Elliott/Yes, so then it seems to me that why would we need an open session before...we'd better meet with them and then have an open session, where we can discuss... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 62 Lehman/You mean reverse the two? Elliott/Yes. Lehman/Except that one of them is in the afternoon, and they can't...but I think the open meeting, that is the time when we look through unfunded projects and say "look, we think this is more important than one that's funded", or we look at one that's funded and say "we don't want it", or we say "we want road-use funds used here or there". Atkins/This capital thing that I've proposed to you, is perfect for your open session on the 22nd. Lehman/And if we have any particular difficulties with anything in the budget, that's the open meeting where we talk about it. Elliott/I just think after we meet with the boards and commissions on the 27th, if that's when we do, then there will, may need another meeting for us to get together to discuss "hey they brought up something we hadn't thought about". (several talking at once) Atkins/You might have time yet that evening. Vanderhoef/But I'd still like to have...it's almost like we need a split meeting. Some open time on the 2... Atkins/You know, folks, a lot of it, you're winging it. Lehman/Folks, if we meet on the 27th with the Library Board and the Parks and Recreation folks, and they use twenty or thirty minutes a piece, we're now at 7:30. Atkins/They won't need that much time. Lehman/All right, fine. Now that should be enough time to discuss the issues brought up by those two boards relative to the budget, so we shouldn't have to have another... Champion/We know what they want to discuss with us. Lehman/Right, and if it changes our perspective of the budget, we have time to deal with it that night. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 63 Elliott/If it will be limited to that, that's fine. I just thought the other night on one simple matter we spent quite a bit of time discussing, and...talking about the garage door thing, yeah. Lehman/But this is our time. Elliot/That's fine. Just so we have... O'Donnell/I think it can be done on the 27th. There's plenty of time. Lehman/If we don't have time, that night we will reschedule something Sunday afternoon, whatever. Atkins/Okay. Now we'd like to suggest to you a hearing schedule that of the meeting of February 3''°, you would set a public hearing for the budget for Monday, March the 1st, at your work session. We'd have, we convert the work session to a budget hearing. That's it, depending on how many folks show up it could be ten minutes, it could be whatever, and we'd move into a regular work session agenda like you traditionally do. You ~vould not vote on the 1st. You would vote on the 2~,d. You'd have a day. I know that you're, I know for appearance sake you prefer not doing it on the same evening. We're not real sure what else we can do. Dee's going to be gone and I really believe you should have everyone here when you vote on your budgets. Lehman/Steve, if we, if after the public hearing there are issues that we are just plain not comfortable with and voting on on Tuesday the 2nd, then we'll just have to set a different date, a special meeting to vote on it. Atkins/And, Emie, remember, if there's something that comes up in the hearing that you're compelled to deal with, you cannot increase the budget. You can send it back to us and say "we want some proposals on how to deal with this" particular issue. That doesn't mean you cannot adopt a budget. (several talking at once) You can go down, you can't go up. Lehman/We can make any changes we want, as long as they're not increases? Atkins/Yeah, but my reading of you is your preference is "I don't want to vote the same night I do my hearing", and this allows you to do your hearing, move into your work session, go home, come back the next night for your regular meeting, and there would be a resolution of adoption on for that evening. Is that okay? Okay. That's what we'll set up for you. Lehman/Steve, you had said the other night that you and I were requested to meet with the Airport Commission? The 12th...thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004. January 15, 2004 Council Work Session Page 64 Atkins/And just one more heads-up, Wednesday the 21 st at 4:00 is your joint meeting, just to remind you of that. O'Donnell/That's at the County? Atkins/Yes, and I'm done. We have our assignments. First thing we have to do is round up Joe. (laughter) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of January 15, 2004.