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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1996-02-27 State of CitySTATE OF THE CITY MESSAGE Naomi J. Novick, Mayor February 27, 1996 The past year in Iowa City, as most recent years, has been one of changes. Because of the many citizen volunteers who participated by donating time and energy to study issues and advise the City Council and the City staff, Council decisions of the past years have been based on good planning. And we believe the governmental decisions made in 1995 will be a positive influence on the future of Iowa City as well. In 1995 several citizen task forces met to form a vision of what Iowa City should be like in the year 2000. The Planning and Zoning Commission reviewed their recommendations, made a few changes and sent their approval to the City Council. The Council members discussed, changed, and adopted the final document. It is called "Iowa City Beyond 2000", and it is now in the hands of our planning staff who are writing an update to our comprehensive plan. This plan will be reviewed by the Planning and Zoning Commission before it comes to the City Council, and we expect public comments at both the Commission and the Council meetings before we adopt it. Also in 1995, the City Council approved the Near Southside Development Plan, in an area adjacent to our downtown and immediately south of Burlington. This area appears ready for redevelopment and is the obvious direction for the central business district to expand. This plan will also be incorporated into our Iowa City Beyond 2000 comprehensive plan. All of this work is intended to provide direction and guidance to the future City Councils as our community's plans to grow and prosper continue. As infil] development occurs and as adjacent areas are urbanizod, it becomes increasingly important that we preserve those natural features and resources which might otherwise be forever altered or destroyed. Last year we adopted the new Sensitive Areas Ordinance, which should enhance our ability as a community to better achieve this preservation goal. This ordinance was written with the help of citizen volunteers representing the interests of both developers and environmentalists. In the interest of preserving historic buildings and neighborhoods, we adopted the Moffitt Cottage Historic District last year. We hope this will result in the ultimate preservation of some of the most unique and creative residential structures in Iowa City. Our Historic Preservation Commission also worked on a system for designating historic structures as landmarks and for designating conservation districts. Housing initiatives remain high on our list of priorities. Thirty-three units of new public housing are nearing completion in the Whispering Meadows area, while ten existing units have recently been purchased throughout the city for public housing. Twenty units will be sold to qualifying current tenants as part of the "Tenant to Occupancy" program. A multi-family residential complex with eighteen units, previously owned and operated by the Housing Authority, was sold to HACAP last year to be operated by that non-profit community service agency. Subsidies for the private development of affordable housing continue as is evidenced by the recent completion of 18 units for elderly or disabled residents in the Citizen Building downtown. This project preserved the character of the Art Deco historic facade even though the interior was completely changed. 2 To integrate our housing initiatives into the overall planning of the community, we haw combined the former Housing Commission and the former Committee on Community Needs into one advisory body, the Housing and Community Development Commission. Because much of our CDBG resources have been committed to housing and housing-related projects to meet our most pressing needs, the merging of these two citizen groups should streamline the process of determining how best to allocate these funds in the future. Another major initiative involves the recent appointment of a citizen task force to review the downtown City Plaza with an eye toward a "facelift." The Plaza is nearly 20 years old and has seen little in the way of renovation beyond normal maintenance and upkeep. This project should be better defined by the task force during the coming months, and hopefully construction of improvements can be undertaken in the near future. Our goal will continue to be keeping the downtown a focal point for iowa City and encouraging participatory activities and uses. We passed an ordinance last year which will result in the use of some of the public space in the downtown area for sidewalk cafes. Preserving a pedestrian friendly and inviting atmosphere downtown is important to our communiW. iowa City retains an excellent array of recreational programs and services available primarily at our two major recreational facilities, downtown and Mercer Park. These are expanded to other outdoor facilities during the summer months. We place a high priority on maintenance of our major parks and expansion of our neighborhood parks system. Our newly adopted neighborhood open space requirements ensure that each new neighborhood will have adequate dedicated open space for nearby residents to enjoy. Planning for development of these spaces is ongoing, and participation by the various neighborhood associations will continue to be a valuable resource as we proceed. The river corridor trail system, which includes parts of The University of Iowa and Coralville, continues to take shape as a major recreational and transportation feature of our park system. Our efforts in developing and maintaining our parks and recreation facilities will include measures to make them more accessible to our citizens who have disabilities. The organization of new neighborhood associations has met with significant progress. We believe there is a strong community interest in these associations and their ability to provide the City Council with citizen input on issues that affect their neighborhoods and issues that concern our community. Our neighborhood associations grew to 21 during 1995. In order to continue our encouragement, the City Council approved a new neighborhood grant program from local funds. The projects in this neighborhood grant program, often called our PIN Grants, received an initial appropriation from the Council of 925,000. Each neighborhood association was afforded an opportunity to apply for these funds. Upon review by the neighborhood council, made up of representatives from all the associations, monies were earmarked for various community projects such as tree planting, recreational improvements, and other projects of interest to citizens in our neighborhoods. Out of the Grant Wood neighborhood association also came an initiative for a new east side bus route. While the ridership numbers were low in the early stages, new ridership statistics indicate a steady interest in this route. The bus operates during morning and evening peak hours only and travels in a loop around the east side schools, residential neighborhoods, and industrial areas. 3 In other transportation issues, neighborhood associations and other citizens were involved in advising our engineering staff on various street and bridge reconstructions, curb ramp placements, street repairs, street trees, etc. The staff has organized meetings with neighbors on Rohret Road, Melrose Avenue, Wooif Avenue, Summit Street, First Avenue, etc. to hear their ideas before the plans were drawn for improvements in these areas. We plan to keep in touch with them as construction proceeds. The Airport Commission received financial participation from the Federal Aviation Agency and hired a consultent to develop the new airport master plan. This master plan will prepare the airport for future runway design, surrounding land use, safety and other related requirements of the FAA in order for us to continue operation of our municipal airport. The designation of land in and around the airport for research and development parks and other commercial uses is an interesting and positive element to our overall economic strategies. In 1995, the Council also adopted a set of general economic development policies for our future. There is now a citizen task force which is working on a set of criteria for use when granting incentives for a business to locate in our community. The Council, along with our Broadband Telecommunications Commission, addressed a community issue which has been ongoing for approximately four years, that being the renewal of the cable franchise. Although severely restricted by many changes in federal regulations, we believe that our new franchise agreement with TCI will be a long-term positive contribution to the cable television system in our community. Additionally, revenues associated with the new franchise will be set aside to support local access channels and enhance programming of community events on local television. This franchise agreement complies with all regulations and includes plans for rebuilding the system and increasing both channel capacity and quality of product through incorporation of fiber optics technology. It would be difficult to discuss the state of Iowa City without discussing water and wastewater. There has been significant progress in 1995 with our water and wastewater projects. Land has been acquired for the new water treatment plant and well fields, and design of that facility continues. In the meantime, we are working on improvements to the water pressure. Similarly, we are about to construct a major trunk sewer to connect the North and South wastewater treatment plants before we proceed with a major upgrade of the South plant. Both water and wastewater projects are scheduled to be completed by 2002, allowing us to conform with all federal treatment and discharge standards. Since the ability of our previous City Councils to make reasonably well-informed, well-planned decisions was aided by the active participation of our citizens, we would like to thank those citizens and to encourage others to participate. In addition to neighborhood associations and task forces, there are nineteen boards and commissions in Iowa City. Descriptions of their duties, length of terms, times of meetings, and number of members are available in our Municipal Directory. Notices of vacancies and dates of new appointments are well publicized. To quote the League of Women Voters, "Democracy is not a spectator sport." And this is especially true in Iowa City.