HomeMy WebLinkAbout2005-01-06 TranscriptionJanuary 6, 2005 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 1 of 101
January 6, 2005
City Council Special Budget Work Session
8:45 AM
Council: Bailey, Champion, Elliott, Lehman, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn
Staff'.' Atkins, Helling, Herring, Karr, Lewis, Mansfield, O'Malley, Rocca
TAPES: 05-01 (Side Two)
Atkins: In front of you at your place, just completed is our comprehensive annual
financial report. It doesn't have a direct bearing on this budget, but we
have you here and we wanted to get it distributed to you. Secondly, as
I've done in the past, just a packet of overheads that you'll be seeing
during the course of the presentations. This is just to help you take notes
if you'd like. In the capital improvement portion of the budget and the
staff has been informed to be here about 9:30 to start that. Hopefully we'll
be done with the general overview by that time. This is just a summary of
projects, as you're working through them, and then we have two sort of
pictorials. One is a map showing capital projects, one is the overheads.
Again, just something you can work from. You don't have to use these
documents. Hopefully they'll just make the review process a little bit
easier for you.
Vanderhoef: What's the difference between the two?
Atkins: There shouldn't be any.
Kart: I passed out the one that has the 6 on the front.
Atkins: Those are going to be overheads that you're going to see. Okay. I'm
going to walk you through. You've got the handouts, you've got the
overheads, we gave you...I think you'll notice there were only a few
minor change. Just to give you a quickie on the schedule. We have this
room scheduled from 8:30-3:30 for you today. What I'd like to do for my
introductory process and revenues and some other general budget issues.
We'll review the capital projects. Assuming how fast we move through
that and how much time you want to devote to other budget issues that can
be done today. Monday the l0th at 6:30pm is your Board and
Commissions. The current schedule for review by Boards and
Commissions has you scheduled until about 7:30pm so you would have
some time on Monday as well. And then the 11th is open. So that's the
schedule that we have for you right now. Just too kind of remind us of the
ground rules. We may certainly have some individual disagreements with
respect to certain issues. I learned a long time ago to count to four and so
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have you. The issues count. I may say at some time, 'No we can't do
that.' Please, as a reminder, don't take offense, as it may be illegal. If I
say you shouldn't do that, I will give you an explanation of my judgment
on those sorts of issues. During the review process, if you have question,
the flip chart is there. If we don't answer it immediately, or the answer is
unsatisfactory or you wish to have some more discussion, we'll record it
and come back to it. Are we okay? We adopt a three-year operating
budget, as you all know. We balance the budget for three years. This is
always done some trepidation because you have three legislatures, often
you get a new president, and we usually get a new governor in a period of
time, and of course, two council elections can occur during a three year
budget. Just remember that the budget is just an estimate. We have
balanced budget with accordance with the State law and we're never quite
sure what's next with the respect to the State law. We have assumed in
this budget that the State aid of approximately one million dollars a year is
gone and will not come back. The fiscal policies that influehce the
preparation of the budget are shown on your budget document on pages 5-
11. The intent of those is to carry over from council to council. There is
one element in this budget that is a little different and that is that we apply
new accounting procedures and policies that are part of the generally
accepted accounting standards board. Cash reserves are shown
differently. Assignment of categories is by expense. If something looks
funny, please raise your hand. Kevin, is there anything real specific that
you need to give them on that?
O'Malley: No. Really it's not...the expenses, for all intense purposes, it's pretty
much the same.., we just had to re-categorize some of the programs.
Instead of going from a simple four program, we had to go to a nine
program and we had to also change some syntax to be consistent with the
generally accepted accounting principles for cities.
Atkins: So there are some changes. We don't believe there are any particular
profound. It's just a matter of showing the same information you've
received in the past in a different fashion. We'll try to flag those as we
move through, but again if something looks a little strange, please holler
and we'll take her from there. The budget has been balanced and these
are, in a summary fashion, the major budget issues. Each point up there
we'll give further explanation for you, but just in quick summary. General
Fund Cash Reserves. Under our new accounting system we have to split
out what we call restricted and unrestricted reserves. The aggregate dollar
figure as we have projected remains substantially the same but we have to
show that separately and you'll see that a little later on in the budget. We
have a 25% local policy, with respect to debt. This budget is balanced and
returns us to 25 or less. We are assuming that the state financial aid will
not return. We are assuming there will be a continued declined in the
residential roll-back. I'll show you a summary of that later on. The major
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operating expenses, outside of which you know of is 810 levy and those
other general support levy's and the employee benefit levy. We will give
you a brief history of that but there has been substantial increases in health
insurance and the cost of employee pensions.., notably when you track
them over the last five years. We did something a little differently this
year because the Road Use Tax Fund is healthy...is that we had
traditionally charged our street employees benefits to the benefit levy, in
an effort to keep the benefit levy down. We will be charging their benefits
directly to Road Use Tax. This reduces available Road Use Tax but our
analysis is that the fund remains healthy and you'll see that. Again, in an
attempt to pull the tax rate down, that's what we've done. We prepare the
budget with the understanding that we wish to continue our AAA credit
rating. It is the goal. The reserve component is very important. Our
approved credit rating is important to us over the long pull. Capital
projects. We have our 25% debt policy which we have returned to. We
have a project...the projects that we have selected and are
recommending...and again the Planning staff will be here again a little
later this morning to go over...one of the things we did in balancing our
capital projects - and this is not dollar for dollar - but we have
substantially taken a position that as we retire debt, and we retire in the
neighborhood of 4.5 to 5.5 million a year, we will recommend new debt of
a similar amount. That simply allows us to improve our debt position over
the long pull. The Waste Water Fund. This is going to be a future issue. I
sent you a memo, oh gosh, eight to ten months ago, you recall, that P&G
was making a number of internal changes and that does have a substantial
effect on the financing of our waste water. The current position is that we
really can not afford to expand the debt on the waste water system until we
have some experience with respect to the reduction of income. I'll take
you through that. Parking Funds. Somewhat of the same thing in that we
have a declining cash balance but in year '09 we will be paying off some
debt which will begin freeing up some income. You don't see it in the
budget, but you'll see it decline. If we projected it out it would begin to
slide back up and I'll show you that. The Storm Water Fund is the newest.
We are using some Storm Water money for one project - our Meadow
Street Bridge project. Otherwise we are allowing that to accumulate and
we'll show you a worksheet on that. Those are the kind of basic issues in
budget balancing.
Champion: You forgot number 11.
Atkins: Oh, I'm sorry. Refuse Collection. We made a recommendation for a three
percent adjustment in the Refuse Collection Rate and we'll have an
explanation for you on that as well.
Vanderhoef: On the Waste Water. You said no new initiatives; however, with the
changes in P&G it increases our capacity for...
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Atkins: Yes. There is an upside to it, that is, we have the capacity to deal with
new business and industry. The downside is that it was somewhat of a
sure thing coming in from P&G.
Vanderhoef: Otherwise we were pretty much as max capacity which would have meant
building more...
Atkins: ...more capacity and the plant would have had more capital expense and
we'll show you that.
Vanderhoef: Okay.
Atkins: Again, we're...please understand...we're not upset with P&G...they made
a business decision regarding the products that they produce...they feel
that they can do this on site cheaper. The concern we have is that if it
doesn't work for them and they come back to us and say 'Oh, by the way,
we need that capacity in your plant' and we've used it up for, say, some
other new business or industry, I don't know how you resolve that...so
that's always a risk. Waste water treatment for industry is a big deal. It's
highly regulated and it's important to them, particularly when it comes to
expansion. You try to keep some sort of margin there. I don't have an
answer for that other than we'll just have to track it. Okay. Just a quick
review of taxable values...page 16 in your...page 16 and 17...an
important number there is that our overall assessed value...if you look
down at fiscal year '04 and read across under 100% assessment...where it
says $2,960,000,000...then in the next fiscal year it jumps rather
dramatically to $3,193,000,000... and then you have a little more modest
increase in proposed fiscal year of'06 of $3,296,000,000. That's the
every other year assessment. You'll get a little more growth every other
year. We plan for that in our budgeting. This year, our growth has not
been as substantial as it has been in the past in the neighborhood of about
3%. Of course, then you have the application of all the state regulations
and you can see that in the state roll-back...the state roll-back alone takes
1.1 billion dollars worth of taxable value off the rolls. Our growth
remains solid and we're very comfortable with it. The difficulties are that
while the State spends a good bit of its time growing its revenue base - or
attempting to grow its revenue base - they're shrinking ours. It's nothing
unusual...it's simply their continued practice. I'm not going to spend a lot
of time on that...you're familiar with that chart. When we grow at a rate
of about 2.5 to say 3.0 to 3.5 percent each year, this can have a profound
affect upon us. I did this more for my own information to track how
things have been going over the past years. The average decline in the
roll-back factor on residential properties is 2.6%, which virtually is 'we
grow, the State takes it away' and 'we grow, the State takes it away'.
Historically, (unclear)...what it used to be...almost 80%...and by our
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standards we were here twelve years ago...and we don't see any change
coming. This year's decline is a little less than in the past, but with all
I've read about the increase in agricultural values, which is a big part of
the formula, I was surprised it even changed at all...but if you apply all of
the other growth factors that the State uses, there you go. Okay. Those
are some of the things that are more beyond our control. Here's a little bit
more .... and I'm reading from page 18 in your book...
Champion: Steve, I don't think you've answered this and this is not about Iowa City,
but what do towns do that aren't growing?
Atkins: They're in trouble. Most of Iowa communities have now, I mean the
larger cities, and then thereby almost the metropolitan areas have gone to
the sales tax. They just simply...and we don't do that. When you drive
over to Davenport and you pay the 7% sales tax. Here you pay a 5% sales
tax. That's where...most of them simply say 'We give up. We can't do
this any more.' We based our system strictly on property taxes. Important
numbers to look at. These are the tax rates and levies that we do have
some say over. If you look at under the general fund tax levies reading
down.., subtotal.., if you look at the history.., that's our operating budget.
That's got the general levy, transit, tort liability, and the library in there.
As you will see in '05, '06, '07, and '08...that remains substantially
unchanged. We are at the max. Tort liability allows us a little
flexibility...but that's where we clearly live on growth. We have to be
growing our tax base so that the virtually fixed levies generate more
income for us. You will note under employee benefits in '05, you see the
3 4 2 3, reading across at our budget proposal is 3 4 2 9. The question
might pop to you, 'Well, didn't you just say that one of our big cost
increases is pension and health insurance?' and the answer to that is 'Yes.'
But what we did do is that we took a big portion of pension costs and
charged it against Road Use Tax for those selected employees. That's
how we're able to pull that down.
Vanderhoef: How big of a jump would we have taken in employee benefits had we...
Atkins: I don't know. Do we have that number Deb? It's about $450,000 that
came out of there. Would you make a note Deb and we'll calculate that
rate?
Vanderhoef: I think it's something that citizens much recognize.
Atkins: Then...you'll note that it starts back in '07 it's 3.8, 3.9 and starts to creep
back up again.
Vanderhoefi And that's still using Road Use Tax.
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Atkins: Well, I don't have a chart on this...but let me give you some numbers.
Champion: It's about half of the levy.
Atkins: Oh yeah. Hang on a sec...the cost of health insurance...
Dilkes: The cost for the Streets and Traffic that went to Road Use Tax was about
twenty-five cents on the property tax levy... $520,000.
Atkins: $520,000?
Dilkes: Yes.
Atkins: Okay, so...3429 would become 3.7 thereabouts so it would have gone up
by about thirty cents if you didn't do the road use tax thing. Health
insurance...j ust to kind of give you what we're sort of up against...in July
of'01 we made an adjustment of 36.1%. We have made adjustments
every year thereafter of 10, 13, 13, and 10%. Health insurance in five
years has gone up 83%. Those are big numbers. Again, our tax base is
growing at somewhat of the same time and helps offset some of that. But,
if you do a history on our employee benefit rate you'll (unclear). Police
and Fire pensions. It used to be 17% of wages. This fiscal year we've
been notified that it's 28.2%.
Elliott: Steve, do you mean taking the total compensation package...that
represents 17%?
Atkins: 17% is a factor...yeah...
Vanderhoef: That's what the law...
Atkins: Just to give you an example...in '01, Police pension costs was $571,000.
In '06, it's 1.1 million. So it's about a ninety percent increase in five
years. Now, there are things that I don't like about the system. The
employees don't pay any more. I think it's unfair to the AFSCME
employees who do have to pay more, but the thing I think that's most
disconcerting was the explanation by the pension board of the State. I'm
going to read it to you.
"The cumulative effect of extended downturn in the perJbrmance of
investment portfolio relative to investment return assumption of 7.5%
percent is the single most important factor in causing the contribution rate
to increase."
Atkins: So, because the State didn't make 7.5% on their investments, the local
taxpayer makes up the difference. I would have been delighted with 7.5%
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on own personal account last year. I'm just troubled by the whole pension
management. My beef isn't with the employees. My beef is because we
have to make up the difference.
Vanderhoef: What year did you base that 90% percent on?
Atkins: It would have been fiscal year actual '01 to projected '06 budget. Fire has
similar numbers. Okay?
Vanderhoef: Thank you.
Wilburn: Is there a wellness program that's...
Atkins: Yeah, Andy is sitting in the audience. Andy started one...oh, it's been
about a year or so now...and it's sort of official part of operation policy
now. There are certain...what's the term that's used...for example the
heart and lung assumption? If someone has a heart and lung disease and
it's assumed to have been employment related so they get up to two-thirds
pension? Does that sound about right? Sixty percent.
Champion: Are we talking about Fire only?
Atkins: I think it's Police too.
Champion: Even if they smoke?
Atkins: Yes, even if they smoke.
Vanderhoef: That's been kicked around in the state legislature and we can't get that one
changed.
Helling: There have been proposed bills to include Cancer in that as well, but that's
been defeated so far.
Atkins: Okay, another thing about tax rates and I'm trying to point out those that
you have some control that clearly your policies effect...if you look at the
debt service rate in '05 of 3.954. That year it was down because we made
a one-time $500,000 payment for the library...remember that? We
deliberately made that decision because the tax rate last year went down.
So that's gone because that was a one-time payment. It's now back up to
4.3 but you will note in '07 and '08 it begins to level off at 4.5 and that's
financing our capital plan. Okay...anything else about tax rates? Okay.
What I did was to try to translate that tax base, tax rates into something
gives you a feel of consequences. There is an abbreviated version of this
in your budget document. The important thing to note here... Fiscal '02,
using that $100,000 value that we use on a regular basis just as a
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measurement.., we've kept tax burden reasonably balanced. If you look at
that number '02 was 835 and in '03 it went to 868, in '04 it went to 904,
dropped again in '05, and is back up by seven dollars in '06. There is
about a one-percent variation over those five years, so from your tax
policy standpoint of what it cost someone for $100,000 of property value
it's been pretty flat over the years. A good bit of that is that you can see
the roll-back rate...even though our levies go up, tax base changes. Okay?
The next one up is page 23 in your budget book. Page 23 is a summary of
the general fund. Page 24 opposite is under the new accounting system.
Bottom line is the same. What I did and what I'd like to work from 23
because that's the one you're most familiar with. So, what we did was we
took 24 and sort of reshaped it and put it back so that you're more
accustomed to seeing some of these numbers. Over time, again
adjustments will be made. General Fund Revenue. As you can see the
zeros are the loss of state aid. That amounts to about one million dollars a
year. Certain assumptions we've made. We assume that the County will
continue to support the Senior Center. I'm just highlighting this. It's
$75,000. We have a new revenue. Commercial Rent from the Library
will be transferred to the debt service. It's small, but it's a factor in
keeping that debt levy down. We have inserted in the middle of the page.
You'll see Court Street Transportation Center. Those are new funds. We
anticipate generating income of about $470. The expense side is about,
round numbers, $250. We have got to use any income from the Court
Street Transportation Center to support our transit program, so what we
have proposed in the Capital Budget is that we will use those monies as
our match to match other federal money for the purpose of purchasing four
new busses and thereby we will not have to borrow. Remember several
years ago we said that we would borrow for our busses. These monies can
then keep debt service levy down used to purchase transit equipment and
nets out to our advantage. Yes, Ernie?
Lehman: Does that $250,000 almual cost of operating the transit center include the
debt service?
Atkins: No it does not. Any income...you can not retire your match money for the
Court Street Transportation Center. The net effect of this is that it does
just that.
Lehman: I understand that, but even the interest cost is not included?
Atkins: You can not use these monies to retire that debt.
Lehman: No, I understand you couldn't pay off the principal. I would assume that
the interest cost is an operating expense.
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Atkins: No, it's our match and the interest cost to provide that match...if we had
done it in cash...which I couldn't have recommended. You could
substitute that at some time in the future. The net effect of what I propose
to do is that. Okay. What that means is every year you will have about
$200-$250 thousand dollars of income from Court Street that you will
have to make a decision on what you want to use it for transit services.
That does include SEATS as well.
Champion: We could use it to replace part of our general fund money?
Atkins: You can not replace general fund monies.
Champion: No.
Atkins: Debt service monies?
Champion: No.
Lehman: No. What she's saying is that the subsidy that the City puts into the bus
system...
Atkins: Yes you could. You could reduce the levy, that's correct. You could
supplant that, that's correct. Sorry. Really, there is nothing dramatically
different in the general fund revenues. We are usually very accurate with
respect to our tax projections. I don't know what the State could take
away from us again unless they asked us to pay some of their bills...such
as like Homestead Exemption....they provide a Homestead Exemption...if
they choose to require the exemption and not pay it...that could end up in
our lap. Other than that, there are really not too many changes.
Champion: Is the County charging the military exemption to the City now?
Atkins: I don't think so.
Champion: They talked about doing that.
Atkins: They talked about it doing that but I thought...that...the military
exemption is really, really small and I think that they talked about doing it
but decided that no, they are not going to do it.
Champion: What is this military credit. Tell me what that is?
Atkins: That's what that is. Isn't it, Deb? That's what you were just talking
about. It's called a Military Credit. That's the same thing. It's $11,000.
Champion: Okay.
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Atkins: Okay. Moving on. Page 28. This is just to summarize for you our cash
position. This is the full balance...you would have to subtract out of that
the restricted funds, which would lower the percentages of restricted
numbers. If you look at page 24 at the bottom line, that will show you the
difference. Page 23, the ending balance '06 is 15.9. The new accounting
system would require us to pull out almost two million dollars of restricted
reserves but there are replacement reserves and things of that nature. You
could change the definitions and we could end up finding it in unrestricted
but there's a number of things, by State law, you have to keep restricted.
What it is...this now requires Cities to be far more accurate in a
demonstration of what their financial position is. I think it's healthy. For
us it's not a problem. There were cities, in fact some in Iowa, that were
dumping water and sewer and other kind of reserves in to the general fund
reserve, boosted, and then transferred it out later on and that's no way to
do business. Okay. Our position is...we are very sound with respect to
our cash position.
Lehman: The restricted funds apparently increased over the period of '05, '06, '07,
and '08 where they're up to 2.6 million as opposed to 1.7.
Atkins: Money gets paid in to some of those...for example, one of the biggest
ones are the escrow accounts we maintain for developers is like
$800,000...and we have to keep that cash on hand, show it on our
books...but you couldn't spend from it. We would spend from it to meet
an escrow requirement. We're just projecting that that will likely continue
to grow.
Elliott: On page 28 when it says 'ending balance' and then you go back to 24
'unreserved balance' - you could really have that right at the ending
balance is like for FY '04 is $16,187. The unreserved would then be
$14,500.
Atkins: What we will do in the future is that the new chart will show just what you
are suggesting. We will split that out. These percentages then as a
percentage of an expenditure will decline a tad bit, but that is a more
accurate reflection of what the accounting system requires. Again, I'm
trying to sort of ease our way into it...so we show the aggregate; we know
the money is there, we'll put it out later on. So our cash balance position
folks is sound. I feel good about it. We show overall general fund
expenses up about 3.5%. Traditionally, we will end the year on the
expense side at about 98.67% of actual...where we actually spent that.
That causes that reserve position to grow a tad bit every year. I think I've
said to you in the past that I don't think we're in the position to make any
major long term operational commitments but if you had some one-time
projects, we could use our reserve position to do that. For example, we
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bought the Peninsula. That's what we did and we have to repay ourselves.
You'll see a line item where we repay ourselves. We can do one-time
expenses within reason. That's also our working capital. Remember, we
only get paid twice a year. As you read '05 across, it shows our allowable
debt margin. We are at 53% and we show with our projections a slight
decline. We peaked back there in '03 and that's when we sold the Library
bonds and our own general all at once and it was almost a thirty million
dollar issue. With our...again our policy position of...what we're doing is
that as we pay it off we can add debt...it's new debt...but we're paying off
old debt at the same time to keep it balanced. Our debt position is very
good.
Vanderhoef: Okay, this does not take into consideration the 25%...
Atkins: Yes, it does.
Vanderhoef: Oh, it does.
Atkins: You'll see that in just a second. Hold that question for me. That's next
up. If you look on page 30 and how it all translates. To give you on point
numbers...where it says 23%, that's actually 22.8% and where is says
25%, it's 24.5%. The point is that we wanted to get down...because we
were asked in our review by Moody's about how we were going to take
care of that...and we said that we would and we would stage it over a
couple of years. They accepted that and when they evaluate us, they'll see
that as being finished.
Vanderhoef: So, when you talk about the 25, you're talking that whole period between
'06 and '08?
Atkins: Yes. It's going down, right. We have new debt planned, and you'll see
that in the capital plan, if you'll look at...we have debt issues...page
28...debt service issuance...row 5 includes 7.8% and then we have 8.3%
and 5.8%. So this 24.5% finances the planned debt for the capital
improvement program that you're going to hear about later this morning.
Wilburn: So when the bond rating time we should get an 'at a boy' because you did
what you said we were going to do? In terms of bond rating?
Atkins: If we don't get an 'at a boy', we will be very perturbed. We did
everything we were asked. Moody's...they gave us triple A last time and
one of the things that we gave a lot of attention to is our cash
position...we improved our cash position at the same time that we were
making a number of reductions...we cut twelve jobs and all of those
things that we did...and our cash position - because we tightened it down
internally - and at the same time when we're planning to sell some
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additional debt, they like the self-imposed 25% policy because it
demonstrates discipline on our part. They recognize the electorate
approved a project - that being the Library - so what are you going to do
to get back? Well, this is the capital plan that we have. So, I would ask
you, when you go through the capital program, if there are projects that
you want to add. Two things. Tax rate and the implications on 25%.
We'll ask you those questions so you understand that when we go to
calculate it. Okay. Next up is...and jump way ahead to 105. I have a
number of issues. This... okay.., if you look at Waste Water Treatment,
Waste Water charges for services. '04 actual is $12,900,000. '05 estimate
is $11,800,000. '06 is $12,300,000.
Vanderhoef: Waste water or water?
Atkins: Waste water, 105, Dee. We're projecting that our revenues are going to
level off in that $12,300,000 dollar range. This is no rate increases. This
is current rate structure. The P&G loss is projected to be about $700,000
per year. Of course, we'll have some other growth, but again the
important thing is that we're leveling off at $12,300,000 which is down
substantially from the 12.9 in '04. What this means is that when you
look...you have to look at this in aggregate...that is the income and then
there is a ratio of the debt that we're permitted, because you have certain
bond covenant bond requirements that have to be met. Our calculations
are that we are okay with respect to our current debt load and it's
financing by our current Waste Water Treatment fund, even with the
reduction from P&G. But it does not allow us the margin to issue any new
substantial waste water debt. Am I okay on that Kevin? Alright. So there
is a debt value/current revenue current ratio that we have to meet...as well
as maintain a number of reserves. Our Waste Water Treatment Fund is
not in trouble but it does show some of the dynamics that can occur.
We're assuming that P&G is going to proceed but the most recent
correspondence is that they're not quite ready to do that. But as it has
been pointed out, this does expand our ability to serve other industries so
we have to work with these folks just to make sure we know...because
they changed their product line...when they change their product line it's
a different batch of bugs that have to be in the system. Unpleasant as it is,
that's how it works. Okay?
Elliott: Steve, in addition to expanding the capacity for future growth, is there any
lowering of our costs?
Atkins: Yes, we did go through and we've made a number of reductions, but the
problem is overall, it's about a five percent swing in our revenue and we
can't make a five percent adjustment...it's just such a small number that
it's difficult for us to say Rick and his folks have made reductions in the
operations of the waster water treatment plant but we can't make a
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dramatic reduction in order to absorb this kind of...the motors to run, the
electricity bill is going to be the same regardless of whether P&G is or
isn't around. Okay? So, what we have to think about is under our waste
water projects, we may have to sell GO debt, particularly if you have some
sort of project that comes along, if you want to respond to a development
proposal. Now, we also have set aside, on our budget, an economic
development fund GO debt. You could draw upon that amount of monies
to help support a business that is coming to down, such is that, particularly
if they need waste water treatment. Okay, Regenia, you're looking at me.
Bailey: No.
Atkins: Waste water is okay, but we're going to have to watch it real close over
the next couple of years. Expansion of debt appears to be out of the
question, at least for the short term. Next up is page 107. I raise this one
with you simply because of your interest in it. The operating subsidy is
down. It's still over $100,000. We were able to pull down, particularly on
the services side - 107 folks, in the book, it's in your book as 107.
Lehman: That's not in your hand out.
Kart: Yes it is, farther back.
Atkins: It's in your budget book as 107 but I apparently put it in the wrong spot in
the overheads. (Laughter) Okay. What the Airport Commission has done
in this budget recommendation is (tape ends)
(TAPE 05-04)
Atkins: ...by approximately $10,000. That was one savings. Secondly, we had a
loss reserve requirement for them, that after review, we felt was
overstating what their exposure was to us or causing us and that has been
reduced by about $30,000. So, through some of our actions and some of
the actions of Commission, that's down. ! have not seen any proposals
from them. I know they're finishing up their Strategic Plan. They have
apparently entered into some agreements with Jet Air.
Bailey: Will we hear from them next week?
Atkins: I encourage you that they will be here next week. Randy is going to be
here so think about your airport questions. I'm not trying to dodge this
one, I just don't have a whole heck of a lot. Okay. Moving on...next up
should be Refuse Collection. Am I back on track?
Lehman: 1097
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Atkins: Yes, 109. I have a chart on the history of your refuse collection rates.
Generally speaking, we're experiencing a decline in the cash balance.
There's a lot of issues here. We currently have about twenty five hundred
of the carts, if you're familiar with those, and we're up to a little over
14,000 customers and we still have the same number of routes. We still
have the same general crew size. We are purchasing a one-person packer
unit and we're going to try some experiments with that. One person
means the guy drives, picks it up, dumps. We expect that in the near term
we're going to experience a need for a review of all of our routes and
likely have to make some changes just because of the development
pattern. I don't think we've done a route study in least twenty years so it's
time to do that. The rate increase, which I think is modest, is proposed
substantially to improve that ending balance somewhat and buy us some
time financially. As you can see, our rates have really not dramatically
changed over the years. We actually went down that one year in 1999 and
then we had to go back up again so the recommendation is for a 3%
increase. Next up...is page 112...and that is just simply to show you how
that fund is performing. We anticipate within three years, we've only got
one project assigned to it that we will have close a million dollar balance.
The project we are proposing to fund, and you'll see that in a little bit, is
the Meadow Street Bridge and its repair. It seems to be working. One of
the things that we will have to think about is that in the near term, as the
regulations become more onerous, more onerous in the sense of our
responsibility to fulfill them, that's truly an unfunded mandate by the feds,
we will likely have to begin giving it full-time engineering attention. So,
we're going to have to someone on staff who can track storm water
regulations.
Champion: That's not a bad thing.
Atkins: No, it is not. It's an environmental issue. It's an important issue for us.
The difficulty is the feds do these things, often have the State administer
it. So, the feds pass the law, give it to the State to administer, who
promptly takes a piece of it and kicks it to us to pay for it. That's how that
works.
Lehman: Steve, when we talked about those StormWater Management fees, part of
the formula for coming up with the cost was the cost of sweeping streets.
Is that cost in here?
Atkins: No. We're charging those...pretty much, Ernie, everything we were doing
and supporting with Road Use Tax in general fund monies, we continue to
do that. We do not charge that against this fund. Could we do that some
time in the future? The answer is yes.
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Lehman: But wasn't that part of the rational in setting the fees? Because we had set
up how you came up with the fees.
Atkins: We had all of those and we did not charge those. I'm telling you that I
believe that this fund is going to need to grow and you're going to have to
this for capital monies and not operational monies.
Lehman: I don't disagree with you.
Atkins: No, I understand your point.
Lehman: We use those fees, those costs in computing our charges.
Atkins: That's correct and we're continuing to pay for those out of the other
operating funds. If you have want to lower the fee, that's fine.
Lehman: No.
Vanderhoef: But we can certainly pay for this FTE out of this and that's a direct cost.
Atkins: Yes. Yes we can. Yes we can. Absolutely. There's no problem with
that. Rick has proposed it, I've put it on hold for the time being as we see
how this funds is performing and when you go through capital projects
you may see some storm water projects that you're interested in, then we
have to figure out what we're going to do. We're trying to avoid selling
debt for storm water like we used to do because we just pay it out of
pocket. For example, we've got the Sandusky project, which is a half a
million dollars, we're doing the engineering work.., and how we're going
to pay for it, I don't know just yet. We'll need to...
Vanderhoefi But you could charge that engineering right now to this fund if we needed
to do that.
Atkins: Yes. When Ron assigns it to his folks, he needs an account to charge the
time against. He could charge it against this.
Champion: Except, do we want to do that yet? That's still a pretty small fund.
Atkins: It is. That's what I'm saying. This is brand new and that's why I'm kind
of showing you.., but the point is that it's growing reasonably
comfortably, looks like a good number... I think the decision you made
was a good one. Okay. Parking Fund. Page 113. This is intended as a
heads up. You'll notice under the ending balance a steady decline. We
don't have it in our projections, but in '09 we will see some debt going off
and that amounts to about $300,000 a year. So we should see those
balances returning to something a little healthier than they are right now.
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If they don't, we'd have to deal with parking rates and that's always a
good time. So, and then finally, this is not in your packet. This is page
65. I thought of it at the last minute...so forgive me for that. This is the
Road Use Tax Fund. We're able to fund a number of projects, we're able
to charge the benefits against it, and still keep approximately a million
dollar reserve, which has been a long standing policy, which allows us to
react to any projects that might come along. The fund is healthy and I
think I mentioned to you, we're able to fund the McCollister and some of
those of those other projects because of that and we made the decision to
charge the benefits against it. But the fund is still in good shape.
Champion: Go back to parking.
Atkins: Parking, okay.
Champion: I don't know if this is the time that you want questions. Is there some
reason why we have a minimmn on the 24-hour parking?
Atkins: A minimum?
Champion: I'm sorry, maximum.
Atkins: You're losing me. What do you mean a maximum?
Champion: If you park eight hours, you pay...
Lehman: The same as if you park 24 in some places.
Atkins: Oh yeah. I don't remember why we did that. There is something to
do... something to do with the Library.
Champion: No, it has nothing to do with the Library.
Atkins: No...I thought on Dubuque Street...
Champion: All the parking ramps have a maximum. That wouldn't affect the library.
Lehman: Because we were magnanimous.
Champion: What does that word mean?
Lehman: We were just being nice.
Vanderhoef: They want the change over and some of the ramps it's no overnight
parking.
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Champion: That's not true. You can park 24 hours in those ramps.
Lehman: You can park overnight.
Atkins: Connie, I'll find out for you.
Vanderhoef: Okay, I guess it's what the students want is free parking overnight to leave
their car and walk home.
Atkins: Okay, folks. That's the summary of most of the operations. Staff is
beginning to assemble for capital. If you want to take a quick break right
now and let us get set up.
(BREAK)
Atkins: All set to go? Okay, the Capital Improvement Program, beginning on
page C1 in your budget document. It is in alphabetical order. So, staff
people are responsible for various projects. We do carry over some from
05 for accounting and budgeting purposes. So you may have heard some
of these, for example, the very first one. Terry is going to update you on
that. And then staff people will be coming up. We have overheads, we
have that you can work from. I think I gave you a thumbnail sketch on
how we financed it. We can spend some time with that. Right now, the
most important thing for us is are these the projects you're interested in
seeing done over the next couple of years.
Trueblood: This is my maiden voyage with a PowerPoint presentation. I didn't put it
together, exactly. First project up is Benton Hill Park and as you know
that's a project that's been ongoing and actually it's nearly completed and
will hopefully all be wrapped up this fiscal year. With regard to the
pictures here, right in here is what one of our maintenance workers, I
think, aptly named our little Stonehenge area of Benton Hill Park. That's
one of the old foundations that we're keeping there, for effect. We had to
stabilize them a bit and put some large limestone's going down in for a
walkway into and out of that. This is probably one of the more interesting
features of the park, our tree house. We have a platform back here with a
bridge across. Of course, this area down here is playground equipment
and a shelter over looking towards Benton Street. Am I doing okay so
far? Okay. To be done next Spring, there is some landscaping. We need
to do a little bit of work finishing up a trail...a nature trail portion of it.
Some fence modifications will be necessary and the major thing will be
the entryway signage which is a joint project with the Public Art Advisory
Committee. We'll hopefully get that done next May. Actually installed
next May. So, at any rate, as I said, this is actually an FY '05 project.
$200,000 worth. We'll be wrapped up in the Spring or very early summer.
Any questions?
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Champion: On the tree house in that picture, what's the pipe-looking thing below it?
Trueblood: We have several play features, right now that one is not installed yet. We
have several unique play features, shall we say. So that's just a large pipe
for a little tunnel crawl-through area.
Vanderhoef: I'm heard from some really happy people about this project. They're so
grateful that we waited until we bought the extra land. It's a good park
and they're really pleased.
Trueblood: Since you didn't have your microphone on in the beginning, do you want
to say that again? (Laughter) I failed to call your attention to the concept
plan, which you have seen before and the project...we ran into a few little
problems here and there, because it's a unique little project, but essentially
being completed very much like the concept plan showed.
Davidson: The next project is the Camp Cardinal Road, which I think you're
familiar with. Rick, how does the mouse work here? Oh, there it goes. I
think you're fairly familiar with the this project. Many of you were
involved at the JCCOG Urbanized Area Policy Board when this was
originally added to the (unclear) Street Plan. This is a project that got
accelerated because of the interest of a private developer in the area,
Southgate Development company. We moved this ahead of what, a few
years ago, we thought would the priority for it, but a fairly large-scale
project that is being done as a joint project between the City of Coralville,
City of Iowa City, and Southgate Development company. The financing
of it is divided three ways. This is the Coralville end of it up here. This is
the existing bridge over Clear Creek. At that point it takes off on a
slightly different alignment to the West, follows approximately this
alignment.., at this point ties in with the Deer Creek Road, the existing
Deer Creek Road gravel road will tie into it and have a T-intersection at
this point. And then it will proceed south to Melrose Avenue and there
will be a signalized intersection right here. Because of the adjacency to
the interchange, it will work a lot like the interchange with Highway 1
where Mormon Trek Boulevard comes in there and you have the
signalized intersection quite close to the interchange. We think it will
work fine and in fact the volumes will be lower out here than they are in
the commercial area at the other interchange.
Elliott: The signal will be at the entrance for Camp Cardinal Road.
Davidson: The signal will be right at that intersection right there. You could
eventually end up with signalized ramp approaches but we don't believe
that's needed at this time. Another thing that is part of this project, that
you will be seeing shortly is in the works, is a annexation and
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severance.., a ridgeline right through here...the area to the north...there
are parcels there that are in Iowa City currently that, according to an
existing agreement between Iowa City and Coralville, will be severed by
Iowa City and annexed by Coralville. Basically that line right through
here is a sewer service area line, where the area to the North drains to
Coralville's sewage treatment plant and the area to the South to Iowa
City's. It makes a lot of sense infrastructure wise to have the corporate
limits between the two communities be at that location. This is a mix of
commercial and residential development. I think you've seen the
development plans for that. The residential portion is what we will be
starting initially, but eventually there is commercial development that we
intend to see here as well. Kennedy Parkway through here will come in an
eventually...it's not a straight shot type intersection but it will intersect
with Camp Cardinal at some point. We're trying to build some features
into that so there is not cut-through traffic in the residential areas and
they're not disrupted by that. Any questions about this?
Vanderhoef: You still will keep the old pieces maintained for Camp Cardinal Road?
Davidson: Right, this piece...I think in Coralville they call it 22nd Avenue...I don't
know if this is Camp Cardinal or 22nd Avenue, but regardless I think four
residences that need to have access so that will be maintained for their
local access.
Vanderhoef: Then what about to the South?
Davidson: This point right here?
Vanderhoef: There's not connection between those two pieces?
Davidson: The connection through here? There is not currently. I suppose it's
possible through the development process that at some point those two
could be connected. We would be concerned about the cut-through aspect
of that and we would review that as part of evaluating a subdivision.
There is nothing right now that would indicate those two will be
connected. I guess at one time they were connected but that's been years
and years ago. Any other questions on this?
Vanderhoef: And otherwise we are annexed all the way out to 2187
Davidson: No, not yet.
Vanderhoef: So what do we have to...the new alignment, is that in our annexed are or
not?
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Davidson: Is all that area annexed yet, Karin? I know it will be. That line that I drew
before, Dee, that kind of comes through here and then over the interstate.
That's the sewer service area. That's the eventual corporate limits
according to the comprehensive plan.
Franklin: There is a small amount of acreage just to the West of the corporate limits,
which is West of this area, that we will be bringing an annexation to you
probably within the next three or four months. Both Coralville and Iowa
City will be annexing some properties in the County to take us out to the
full growth area that the Clear Creek Property owns and that would take us
to 218.
Davidson: Just one other thing that I wanted to add about this project. This does not,
although it probably delays it somewhat, it does not keep the 965
extension from occurring eventually. Probably because of this project it
will be a little further out than we thought it would be, but eventually the
965 extension will also occur.
Vanderhoef: But we're on the list for the fly-over?
Davidson: Well, at the present time, Dee, that's not the highest priority. Iowa City
has identified a higher priority project for an earmark, being McCollister
Boulevard which we're going to talk about a little later, and Coralville has
identified their Intermodal Center as being their number one priority. I
know that Coralville has had some discussions with our congressional
delegations about the bridge, the 965 bridge over, and I think the
development pressure is occurring from the Coralville end initially for that
project, but they would like to get their Intermodal Center funded first
before that project.
Vanderhoefi And any development anticipated on the West side that would start
building the 965 on the West side even though the fly-over isn't there?
Davidson: I think what's likely to happen there, Dee, is that you'll see it start getting
built down from Highway 6 on the Coralville end, up from Melrose
Avenue on the Iowa City end, the bridge will probably be the last piece.
Vanderhoef: But we don't have anything anticipated right now on the West side in
Iowa City?
Davidson: No, that's correct. Anything else on Camp Cardinal Road. Let's move on
to the Transportation Center. Once again a project that I think you're
fairly familiar with. Six level facility and if you go out there now, that's
the size of it. We finished the super-structure that you see here. We're
starting to hang the pre-cast panels. In fact, this picture shows the very
first ones right there. That's eventually what the rest of the exterior will
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look like. Very attractive if you go by. They look just great. Child Care
Center in this area, Greyhound Bus Station around the comer in back, two
small commercial spaces, covered bicycle parking - it's a facility we're
very excited about. It is funded, we've received all the federal money and
so we're in good shape. Completion in July.
Champion: Completion in July?
Davidson: Yes, this July.
Wilbum: Will this be .... the covered bicycle parking...is that just parking or will
there be a locker system?
Davidson: We'll have both, Ross. We're going to have a pilot project with some
lockers. We actually have room for more if that's successful.
Vanderhoef: That appears that the Child Care Center is incorporated into the main
structure rather than a free-stand building that we saw at one point in
time?
Davidson: No, it's always been incorporated into the structure, Dee. There is a
portion that extends out into this area that is the exterior area that is the
play area outside. It's always been built into the structure into this area
here.
Lehman: But there's a courtyard that comes out...
Davidson: Yes, a play area outside, right. That's why...and I don't know if you
notice here...you can see the cables right here only go up to about this
high, but in the area over the Child Care Center they go way high, so
nobody would ever be tempted to throw anything out into the play
area...what's why we've done that that way.
Lehman: Well, then this side of the building will not get the same treatment with
the...
Davidson: Yes it will. It will still get the same treatment that you see over here.
Lehman: Why would we have the cables as well as the...
Davidson: Because there are openings. We didn't want to have to ventilate the
ramps, so left openings. Anything else on this?
Knoche: The next project on the list is the Dodge Street Reconstruction project.
It will take Dodge Street from Governor out to Interstate 80. The project
came in a 7.3 million dollars and we awarded it Tuesday night - or made a
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recommendation to the DOT to award it Tuesday night. The DOT will do
all the administration of the project. We will have an inspector on site
doing the Utility inspections.
Wilbum: Hit the lights please. Thank you.
Knoche: The utility inspection of the water and sanitary sewer that is going to be
going in. The project is basically split into three phases. The first phase
will take it from Governor out to approximately the Hy-Vee and the
Dubuque Road intersection. That piece of the project will have to be built
in the first construction season, so it will have to be open to traffic by the
end of this year. The second phase and third phase takes it from Dubuque
Road out to Scott and then from Scott out the Interstate. They will be able
to do grading work in this area. But as far as affected traffic...the traffic
will be maintained but during the winter months they won't be able to be
doing construction on the roadways. The water main will go from
Governor Street all the way out to ACT Circle and a little bit beyond. The
sanitary sewer will start at ACT Circle and tie into the trunk line that
comes down along the Scott Boulevard alignment. Currently, that sewer
runs through ACT's campus and we're going to build this so that we're
not putting flow through them any more. We've had some troubles with a
little bit of that sewer in the past. The intersections of Prairie Du Chien
will be signalized and also the interchange will be signalized for the
Eastbound on ramp and Eastbound off ramp.
Vanderhoef: What construction year are we talking about to get that ramp reconstructed
and the interchange?
Knoche: The ramp work will be probably be... I don't know what the schedule will
be for the contractors. Metro Pavers is the contractor by the way. I'm not
sure of their scheduling for getting the actual improvements done at the
interchange. A temporary signal will go up and it will be operating. The
issue that we have there is that the traffic actually backs up on to Interstate
80 at certain times. With the signal, it will actually clear out that ramp so
that it doesn't happen.
Lehman: What part of that reconstruction of those ramps occur...or will it coincide
with the widening of Interstate 80 or is this totally unrelated?
Knoche: It will be totally unrelated. This will happen prior to the six lane.
Bailey: What side of the street is the sidewalk going to be one?
Knoche: We have an eight foot walk that runs from Governor on the...this is
actually the way it lies out there in the...so it will be on the North side of
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Dodge Street all of the way out. And then we also have a walk that runs
on the South side and that walk will end at Scott Boulevard.
Elliott: The traffic lights are only on the East bound, correct?
Knoche: Correct. During construction there will be a temporary signal on the
North side of the interstate controlling that because at this point as this is
resconstructed, traffic will be put on one ramp or the other ramp during
construction.
Elliott: There is no change in traffic control at ACT Circle, is that correct?
Knoche: Correct. There is no change in the way the traffic control is today. What
does happen is that the sight distance is improved by the grading work that
is done and profile change. We'll monitor that after the project is
complete to see what improvements are made. It will be four-lane here
and also a left turn lane going into ACT Circle, so it will help traffic flow
in and out of there.
Elliott: It is my understanding previously the DOT didn't want signals there
because of the sight distance. Is that you're understanding?
Knoche: I am not aware of that.
Elliott: But that should help that, the grade?
Knoche: Yes, the grading should help. Right now the crest of the hill is right in
here and it's tough, sight distance wise, and so we'll be lowering that.
We'll actually be lowering it at ACT Circle. It's right around three or four
fee that we'll be taking out of that hill and then we're taking about five to
six feet out to the North of that intersection.
Davidson: Bob, we have checked the traffic signal warrants out there and it is
not...the signal is not warranted. The DOT wouldn't allow it to go in
unless -
Elliott: And that wasn't an understanding that the DOT thought that the vision to
the North was such that a traffic signal there might even be more
dangerous than not having one.
Davidson: I don't think their motivation has been the sight distance, Bob. I think that
it just doesn't meet one of the warrants for signalization.
Vanderhoefi If we're starting some grading on Phase Two and Three this coming
construction season, are they anticipating finishing all the paving part of it
in the '06 Summer?
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Knoche: Yes. They have two years to complete the project, according to the
contract documents, so we would have completion of the project by Fall of
'06.
O'Donnell: Are we're going to have a sidewalk on the Southside from Hy-Vee to
Scott Boulevard... is that what this shows here?
Knoche: Yes, there will be a sidewalk on both sides of the street up to Scott
Boulevard. When you get to the East of Scott Boulevard, there will just be
a sidewalk on the North side of the street. The next project is the
Dubuque Street and Foster Road project. This project is about a 2.5
million dollar project. It will be let in March of this year. We will be
signalizing the Foster Road intersection and doing pavement
improvements. It ends up being about 1600 feet of pavement that we are
replacing here...making the intersection a little bit better as far as this
section, putting in sidewalk all the way along Dubuque Street to tie into
the Iowa River Corridor Trail. To make that connection we'll have to
extend a box culvert. One that thing will help is, at some rate, it will help
with the little bit of flooding that we have on Dubuque Street right now.
The outlet of the storm sewer that is there now is that it goes into about the
middle of sanitary sewer line that's in there. The sanitary sewer is going
to be lowered so it will give it a free-flow outlet. Of course the fiver
causes some problems there too.
Lehman: Will there be turn lanes there?
Knoche: Yes. At the intersection there will be a five lane cross section. The
through lanes and then the left turn lanes.
Lehman: Good, we need that.
Vanderhoef: In the out years we've listed even some more raising of the paving in that
area.
Champion: Probably never. I think that's way too expensive.
Knoche: One of the issues we have with raising...on the current alignment that
Dubuque Street is on, is the house fight here and there is a garage there. If
we were to raise the roadway, it would pretty much make that
garage...you wouldn't be able to access the garage so...depending upon
what happens...if that becomes a priority in the out years then that' s one
thing we'll have to look at as far as the effect on that home.
Atkins: You can leave the lights on. You have in your Capital Improvement Plan,
$250,000 that is shown every other year. We have currently a non-
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cumulative policy. Now, what we do .... we use the term...this is
somewhat of a placeholder...that is, we've identified that this is a policy
issue that you're willing to use some of your own local resources to
encourage Economic Development. While we figure it in to our overall
debt plan, if we don't have a project, we do not sell the debt. It in effect,
goes away. If you were interested in accumulation policy and
accumulating that to some number, in principal it would work the same
way by aggregating those annual placeholders, but again unless we have a
project, we would not be selling that debt. What specific purpose?
Remember, you left that open when we talked about it. I mentioned it, for
example, as a possibility for a waste water project.
Vanderhoef: I'd like to talk about the accumulation. I think this is our fourth year that
we have had a place holder in there but one of the things that interests me
and has for a number of years on economic development is a spec building
and without that placeholder of accumulating, $250,000 does not go far in
creating a spec building.
Atkins: No it wouldn't. You'd need close a million to do a good job.
Vanderhoef: I think we have all sort of looked at the idea of a spec building but starting
out with $250,000 doesn't do it. So, I would like to look at accumulating.
Bailey: I agree...just in a policy matter for accumulation. I think that we should
consider that $250,000 is not a lot of money. Without accumulation what
we kind of impact can we really have?
Vanderhoef: We can still use a place holder.
Atkins: Kevin wanted to comment.
O'Malley: I do want to comment. There is a constraint on an accumulation policy. If
you issue debt, you have to spend it for that purpose within two years.
Atkins: We can have a policy of accumulation, as long as we don't actually sell
the debt instrument.
O'Malley: That's correct.
Atkins: Okay, that would accomplish what you want.
Lehman: Could we also accomplish the same thing by showing it...we're showing
$250,000 in '06...if we don't sell the debt then we show the $500,000 in
'07, $750,000 in '08 and so on.
Atkins: That's what's being suggestion.
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Lehman: We don't sell or incur the debt, but we do create the ability to do it.
Vanderhoef: And put people on notice that these dollars are...or the GO debt is
reserved to do this kind of thing. In fact, I'd love it retrospective.
Elliott: My question, Steve, is what seems to be the greatest need for economic
development? Is it brick and mortar, is it time...
Atkins: Time? You'll have to -
Elliott: Time. People's time. Do we need...what do we have...a half-time person
now?
Atkins: I'm not recommending any additional staff right now.
Elliott: No...but before doing this...what is the biggest need?
Atkins: We used to have an Economic Development planner...that position was
eliminated and Steve Nasby was reassigned those duties. We still have
that attention and then of course we have ICAD. I would think that a
Capital Improvement Project...one is you want to be reasonably flexible
but it would seem to me .... two things that come to immediate mind is
some sort of transportation improvement and or a water or waster water
project. Karin?
Franklin: I think land. Land is the thing that we're looking for most often when we
have a call from somebody that's looking for a site in Iowa City. So, one
of the things that you might talk about is whether the Council becomes
assertive in that area in terms of acquiring land that would then be
available for industrial development.
Elliott: That was my thought. I'd like to look at what is the greatest need.
Atkins: Good point. Thank you.
Champion: I'd hate to save money or have it spent.
Vanderhoef: Why not? This is GO debt.
Champion: I know it's debt. That's my problem with it.
Atkins: You don't sell it unless you have a debt.
Champion: But it's included in the budget, in a sense, as part of that 25%. So is that
preventing us from doing something else?
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Atkins: No, because we calculate that into our overall debt and if you don't
exercise it or approve some project. If we were going to sell $5,250,000
and then we decide that there is no economic development then decide to
sell $5,000,000. Anything else with that one? See ifI can do this right.
We're in the process of putting together the final stuff to go out for request
for proposal to have a consultant to advise us on an Emereency
Communication Radio System. We need to do something internally for
our system. It's becoming outdated. We've included in the RFP a
component that allows us to either go on our own or to go with a joint
communications center. I think one of the things we will have to do in
the very near term is to meet with the Sheriff. I know that Andy and R.J.
have already talked to him. We feel pretty comfortable that he has an
interest in this project. Beyond that, it's again also something of a
placeholder because it's a project of about a million dollars that we could
easily invest in this thing. If you went to a joint communications center it
could be even more expensive because you probably have to build a
building with it. But, the long pull, it could be significantly advantageous
to us. Did I miss anything, Andy?
Vanderhoef: One of the things that I'm interested in having investigated in
communication is a relatively new program that is called 'Reverse 911'.
Atkins: I think you're aware of that, Andy? Yes. Andy is nodding his head yes
that he is aware of 'Reverse 911 '.
Vanderhoef: I was in discussion at convention with the people from 'Reverse 911' and
I think it has some real possibilities for the City and creating a service
for...
Atkins: Do you want to let folks know what it is?
Vanderhoef: It allows the communication center, via a computer, to connect or grab
additional phone lines, above and beyond the ones that are usually used
within the City to notify the citizens of things that are happening in the
community. For instance, a lost child. It might be used for road closings.
It might be used for fugitive at large. There are lots of kinds of things that
you might want to get the word out quickly. And when I say quickly there
are some capabilities of notifying hundreds of callers in a matter of a few
minutes.
Lehman: Steve, we are talking to the Sheriff's department. Are we anticipating that
this might be some sort of joint venture with the University and the
County?
Atkins: I would certainly hope that it would be.
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Lehman: There could be some federal money, I think, if we have a project that
really does show a lot of cooperation of local entities. Coralville?
Atkins: I'm sure Coralville...
Lehman: Okay, we're on target for it.
Atkins: That agenda is going to grow and shrink depending upon how some of the
numbers get crunched. Until Andy can get a preliminary report on
someone advising us. It's really tough to say who might apply.
Elliott: The Joint JCCOG...we will do nothing that is no complementary to that
endeavor at this point.
Atkins: I would hope so...because JCCOG will play an important role in all of
this. I mean, Jeff's folks did the preliminary study work. Okay on that.
Fire Apparatus and Fire Station #4. Our apparatus is what it is. It's
time to replace the aerial ladder truck. The truck is twenty years
old...which I found hard because that was one of the first major pieces of
equipment I was involved in the purchase. It takes about a year to get one
of those by the time you spec them. I remember paying for it - excuse for
a moment of nostalgia- we paid $500,000 for it. We expect this one to be
1.5 million. You've got to have one. The other equipment is more
traditional replacement.
Vanderhoef: Get Coralville to buy the old one.
Atkins: Coralville used our specs the last time around to buy their own unit. There
is a law that if whenever we go over $50,000, we have to put notification.
We've been doing it for years, long before that law was involved.
Vanderhoef: Maybe a mutual aid group would like to buy it?
Champion: Would we keep the old one?
Atkins: Probably not. I think one because of it's expense, we would use Coralville
at back up. Andy has a reserve unit. Eventually they...where do they go?
Franklin: Guatemala.
Atkins: Yes, Karin takes them to Guatemala for the Rotary. (Laughter)
Lehman: Is there any market for that old one? I mean besides giving it to
Guatemala?
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Atkins: Besides giving it to Guatemala, I would suspect, particularly some smaller
communities, particularly a rural community.
Champion: How many miles does something like that get on it?
Lehman: It's hours, not miles.
Atkins: I think it's hours more than miles. Andy, I'm sure, could provide...
Rocca: The aerial has had the motor rebuilt, the lift cylinders have been redone on
it and I think it's somewhere around the 80,000 to 90,000 miles
comparable. It's on the road a lot.
Atkins: Okay. Fire Station #4. We are in the final stages of land acquisition for
that parcel. I think we have a condemnation discussion for late January or
thereabouts. So we are moving from that perspective.
Elliott: The hold up from that will be the amount of money it takes to staff it?
Atkins: The bottom on line that our position hasn't changed much. Substantially a
half a million dollar addition to the payroll, we simply can not afford. We
want the ground, it will break some day, and I would suggest that we do at
least preliminary architectural so we know how the thing will fit on the
site.
Elliott: What's the best way for planning for having that amount of money
available for staff additions?
Atkins: You have to tell me about it and if it's additional money, I would tell you
it's not there. There's very little additional money. You would have to
make reductions in other parts of the budget and if you wish to discuss
that. I know a number of you have strong feelings about that.
Champion: I'd like to get the land.
Atkins: Well, we're going to get the land, Connie.
Champion: And get it designed.
Bailey: I have a point of curiosity. In the strategic plan of the Fire Department,
they talk about how difficult it is for Fire Station #1 to be on a very busy
street. What is the implication of putting a Fire Station on a State
Highway. Is that going to create...it just seems that that would also once
again a very busy road. I mean, is access going to be out Dubuque Road
and then signal would serve to -
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Rocca: We would have ability to capture that signal and coordinate our
response...but really what it does is line Fire Station #4 up with arterial
streets that we can certainly utilize to maximize our response capabilities.
Vanderhoef: While Andy is here. In the unfunded projects, I'd like just a thumbnail of
what the thinking is on the relocating of the West Side station and the
Southwest station...number 2...
Atkins: What page is it, Dee?
Wilbum: Number five, South planning.
Vanderhoef: It's page C-23.
Atkins: Andy?
Rocca: Fire Station 2 is probably in the neighborhood of 30-32 years old. We try
to maintain it to the best of our abilities but it's it need of some significant
repairs. As well as the location (tape ends)
(Tape 05-04 Side 2)
Rocca: ...so we felt that by relocation station 2, we could serve the far West side
as well as the near West side a little more efficiently. That probably isn't
the highest priority, since we do have a facility out there and it does
deliver service. As well, when you look to the South part of the town, as it
continues to develop, we're just trying to position for Fire Station #5 to be
prepared for service delivery that area.
Vanderhoef: So, if you were to relocate Number 2...no, not number...the one on the
West side.
Rocca: Yes, Emerald and Melrose is Station 2.
Vanderhoef: If you were to relocate that, you're saying that you would want to go
further South or do you want to jump 218?
Rocca: We probably would go to the other side of 218 with that one.
Atkins: Okay, thanks Andy. Anything more with Fire Apparatus. Go to the next
one. Okay, on our way.
Davidson: Gilbert Street and Itighwav 6 is in the CI? for fiscal year 08, which
seems like it's a long ways away, but we're going to need quite a bit of
lead time on this project because of some of the difficulties that we
anticipate with it. This is an interesting project because it's very much
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needed but unfortunately, it is going to be a difficult project to implement
and we all know that. This intersection is one of our...you've heard me
say before...we have three major intersections of which this is one. When
I say major, I mean that there is a ton of traffic value coming at it from all
approaches. Over 60,000 vehicles a day are the total entering volume
currently. We're at a point right now with this intersection where this
intersection has not been working very well during peak traffic period.
This left turn movement that you see right now, this queue of vehicles,
frequently extends back to where is starts disrupting the through lanes, you
have the Waterfront Drive situation where people try to get in and out to
make a turn to go South. It's just a very bad situation. Very bad is
probably an overstatement. It's a situation that doesn't work very well for
us right now. When you factor in the amount of growth that is going to
occurring in South Iowa City, beginning right now, it's a little bit scary
because we're at the point right now where this is transitioning from not
working well during the peak traffic periods starting to extend slightly
beyond. I came through here the other day at 2:30 in the afternoon and
had to wait through three cycles of traffic signals to get through this
intersection. That starts being scary when you think that even during non-
peak traffic periods it's starting to not function well and then you factor in
all the additional growth that is going to be occurring in South Iowa City.
This is one that we really need to be thinking about. We anticipate
needing really two years of lead time. So, if you have other ideas about
this project being implemented in fiscal year 08, we would need to know
those, because otherwise in 06 we will probably start the preliminary
work, we're going to need to have a lot of contacts with the businesses in
this area. There is no way to implement this project without affecting
somebody. There are some options in how we might effect and who we
might effect and those will have be explored. Somebody is going to be
disrupted by this project and hopefully we can work that out. Well, we
can work it out, it's just a matter of working it out. By all means, if you
have other thoughts about this project, let us know because we're going to
need two years to implement this project, working with the businesses in
that area, making sure that we have a good information campaign, getting
it designed, getting the property acquired, etc. That will take two years.
Vanderhoef: In my mind, we need to at least review and update new Council people on
the rest of that Gilbert Street section that basically starts up at the railroad
track at the North down to that Intersection. I think we all work together
and to do just the intersection without having conversation about the other
and maybe doing some implementation of changes along that whole
Gilbert Corridor is in order because it's only going to get worse and the
number of curb cuts that we have along that section, between Keokuk -
wait is that right? - between Kirkwood, excuse me, between Kirkwood
and South, it's just a bad corridor and with growth to the South it's just
going to get worse.
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Davidson: Dee is quite correct in that this corridor, all the way up the Benton Street,
we have some concerns about. Now, you might recall that we did split
phase the traffic signal at Kirkwood and really got that working a lot better
than it used to work. So, what we did is that we determined that this is
really the most critical part and that's why we carved it out as a separate
project. It will be an expensive project. It is one that we anticipate some
cost-sharing with Iowa DOT. They are aware that this intersection needs
to have something done with it. They're aware that it effects the highway,
which is their priority, and so I think that they will work with us on some
cost sharing. If you want to expand it into more a corridor project, we can
certainly do that, but I tell you that I think there are going to be enough
issues with just the intersection project that maybe you want to tackle that
first.
Bailey: Currently the Benton and Gilbert intersection is also, at busy times, very
challenging, and it's not signalized. What are the implications for the
County campus just to the west of that? Will there be more traffic going
east and what will happen with that intersection? I think that's something
we should take in to account.
Davidson: Right, and then you'll recall, Regenia, that we also have the project at
Gilbert, Prentiss, and Bowery - which really you could even extend the
corridor up to that point.
Bailey: It isn't...it's just not a very efficient street for cars or for bikes.
Davidson: As Dee has alluded to, there's a lot of turning movements because of the
proliferation of driveways. We wouldn't typically design a corridor like
that now but we are living with the fact that it is that way.
Bailey: Are you saying that '08 is about the soonest that we can begin to work on
this project?
Davidson: '08 I think realistically is the earliest that the construction that can start
because there will be a lot of planning for this.
Champion: What about our road coming in the South? Is that going to help this
intersection?
Davidson: It will help, Connie. I don't think it's a total (unclear) for it. It is going to
help enable traffic. There is...if you look at the Highway 6 corridor, the
highest traffic volume, as you would expect, is across the river. That's
over 30,000 a day. Having another river crossing will definitely help the
Highway 6 corridor. But in terms of the north/south movements through
this intersection, which is what this project really helps, by putting in dual
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left turn lanes in on both the north and south approaches, I'm not so sure
the new road is going to help that much.
Champion: What are we talking delay time at this intersection at peak times?
Davidson: I'm sorry, would you repeat that?
Champion: What are you taking about delay times at this intersection during peak
times?
Davidson: I'd have to look at the study to give you an actually delay number. You,
very easily, have to wait through multiple cycles of the traffic signal.
Champion: I have to do that at Iowa and Gilbert.
Davidson: In this community, if you have to wait through more than one cycle of
traffic signal, people consider that to be congestion. As I said, I waited
through three cycles at 2:30pm.
Champion: Did it effect your date at 10:00pm that night?
Davidson: Pardon me?
Champion: Did it effect your date at 10:00 o'clock that night?
Davidson: No, I was able to get to my dinner date in time later on in the evening.
Champion: Right, that's my whole point. I know traffic planners like perfect
intersections...but I'm not sure so sure that I'm ready to effect businesses
to make it...it's not going to be that more efficient, is it?
Davidson: The only thing I would add to that Connie, and I understand your
sentiment there, is that if I...if you could assure me that this intersection
would just continue to operate the way it is now for the next five years, I'd
feel much better about it. But when I anticipate all that development in
South Iowa City, that's what concerns me.
Lehman: The changes that we made on Kirkwood really, really work well. From
my perception that has really worked. I tend to have, I should say I had
some of Connie's thoughts relative to this one, but this one isn't going to
get any better by itself. You have to do something.
Wilburn: It's not just a matter of patience and whether you have it or not to get
through the lines, if you're coming out of Hills Bank, just in that one spot,
there's a safety concern.
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Davidson: As Ross has touched on...our strategy here would also involve, to the
south of this intersection, reorganization of the Hills Bank driveway,
Waterfront Drive, Aldis, the Mexican restaurants and organizing that
much better so that to the South you would have another major
intersection that these driveways would feed into that could also
potentially be signalized and organize traffic much better here. You
wouldn't have people trying to cut through gaps that aren't adequate for
that sort of thing.
Elliott: You'd have a mini access road then?
Davidson: It's a little difficult to describe. It wouldn't be a like a frontage road, Bob,
but it would be another major intersection down in this vicinity and we'd
probably limit Waterfront Drive to right in and right out movements
because with the dual left turn lane, you have to have a median. You have
to for safety reasons.., so with a median extending down through
here...you would have right in, right out movements from Waterfront
Drive.
Vanderhoef: On the other side of the highway, the Highland Drive question...that's
such a dangerous thing and people try to use it but they can't jump enough
lanes.
Davidson: One of the things we would look at, Dee, we would investigate...and I'm
not saying this would happen...but we would investigate realigning that so
possibly it would come out the other side of the service station there and
pull it back further from the intersection. That is something we could at
least look at.
Vanderhoef: Or even organizing everything on that side of Gilbert Street and change
where the railroad crossing is.
Davidson: At the very least, Highland would be limited to right in and right out
movement, so we would function a lot better with just right in, right out
movements.
Lehman: That's true.
Vanderhoef: Otherwise, they have to go up to Kirkwood, take a left, take another left at
the light, to come back south.
Elliott: A lot of the difficulty is with the south bound traffic turning left onto
Highland.
Davidson: That's probably the worst. We can not add any more green time to those
movements because it's taking away green time from the highway and
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then you'll really mess the highway up by doing that. So, by putting in the
duel left turn lanes in, you add capacity with the same amount of green
time for those left hand movements.
Champion: That's true.
O'Donnell: Jeff, does that a set of medians extend north beyond the highway that
you're talking about?
Davidson: Beyond where?
O'Donnell: How far beyond the highway.
Davidson: We don't know, Mike. It would depend on how long that left turn lane
had to be. That would be a design issue for us.
Vanderhoef: But that's how we would take care of Highland if you can only go out
right so they could only turn...
Davidson: What we're getting into is exactly the point I'm making. There's a ton of
design issues with this one. If...we really need you to indicate if you're
serious about this project going in '08 or if you're not, let us know that so
that we can plan our work accordingly. Anything else on this?
Vanderhoef: I'd like it brought back, but I'd also like it brought back with a look at the
north side of the Gilbert Street up to Benton.
Davidson: If this is something you want to leave in 08, I would think sometime
during the next six to nine months we would probably schedule a work
session to start going through some of the design issues with you and
make sure that we're working through some of the design issues with you
and make sure that we're following where you want to go through that.
Champion: I think we've already been through that the highway to Benton. We've
already been through that two to three years ago.
Vanderhoef: It was in my first term.
Champion: I wasn't here on your first term.
Lehman: Alright you guys.
Champion: I guess I was here.
Vanderhoef: Because Dean was still here.
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Trueblood: This project should cause you no traffic problems or design issues.
(Laughter) It will, however, cost you some money. This, of course, is a
cooperative project with the Iowa City Community School District. This
is the Grant Wood Gymnasium Project. The City's share would be
about $460,000 budgeted for FY 06. The objective here was to build a
gymnasium of sufficient size that could be for community use.
Particularly build it in extreme Southeast Iowa City where there is a high
need for more leisure time activities and community facilities. The
targeted completion date is next January. It is uncertain at this time, due
to budgetary reasons, as to when we would start any extensive
programming in that area. We could certainly offer things that would be
at or near self supporting basis, just by simply renting the facility out
through us for soccer groups, basketball groups, volleyball groups,
whatever, whoever might have the need. The pictures on here. This is
showing the elevations. This portion right in through here is the addition
to the existing school. That gives you several different views there. It
would have a community entryway right here that would be used,
obviously, for both school and community purposes. The large blue area
is the gymnasium itself. It would be a basic needs facility and certainly
large enough to accommodate adult basketball. For example, to give you
an idea, the floor space would be slightly larger than one of the gym floors
at Scanlon Gym and slightly smaller than the gym floor space at the
recreation center. The reason for that, primarily, is the recreation center,
as you may recall, that we have fairly sizeable bleacher seating there. This
gynmasium calls for no bleacher seating. We could however bring chairs
around on each end to accommodate spectators for basketball or volleyball
or even indoor soccer, but it would be temporary seating. The rooms
down in this area were not part of this. I believe it's what they call a
community resource center, working with Johnson County Neighborhood
Centers. It would a primary center where they would have staff people
there all the time. Again, that's a variety of reasons, primarily to
accommodate school-aged children and their parents who have needs.
There would be no locker room facilities. Citizens would have access to
restrooms and drinking fountains. We'd have a small storage area for our
use only. Again, targeted completion date is next January. I think that
maybe a little bit optimistic, seeing as how I don't believe it's been bid out
yet. Any questions about it?
Bailey: Terry, talk about the programming. You said that you don't know about
doing extensive programming because that would be a budgetary issue.
Do you have an idea of what that might look like and what that dollar
figure might look like? I mean, what is your vision for programming out
there?
Trueblood: ! don't at this time and we're going to have to kind of feel our way with it,
if you will. For example, right now, it may or may not be...there may or
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may not be a need to provide similar types of programs as to what we do
at Scanlon and those programs have really taken off, especially with the
kids. Right now, I look upon it as a starting point where it would be lost
cost items to us. For example, if we have soccer groups that want to rent it
through us, we can do that. We would have to provide a supervisor for the
facility and we would charge a rate sufficient to recover those costs. But
the actual programming, then you get into more costs and there would
likely be registration fees for most of them, but in that particular area of
town we do have to take low-income into consideration as well. We
already take low-income into consideration, but it may have to be more so
with this particular facility. So, over the course of the next year, we will
be looking at what types of programs we feel are needed out there and
we'll work with the school and with the neighborhood to try to ascertain
that and then put budgetary figures together. Right up front we indicated
that we may not be able to do that initially because of the cost.
Elliott: The school will have use of that for after school programs and the City
would have it in the evenings? Is that basically what we're thinking of?.
Trueblood: Primarily we're looking at evenings and weekend use. We would have
easily sufficient number of hours to acconunodate us. It could even be
that we would enter into some conversations about the possibilities of us,
the City Parks & Recreation Department, running a before and after school
program out there. Right now somebody else does that, I believe their
PTA. But it's something that we could take a look at if they would rather
have us do that. Of course, once again, it would probably have to be on a
self-support basis. Before and after school programs you can pretty much
dictate fees for those. It's not as difficult to overprice yourself...so only
saying those programs...as it is for a lot of others.
Champion: Terry, is there any possibility of...because I think of the leisure time of
summer...of summer programming out there? I think it would have a high
use and maybe you'd have to replace summer programming somewhere
else, but walkability to the area for kids who's parents don't have
transportation. Maybe talk about that?
Trueblood: Not too far away from there at Whetherby Park is one of our summer
playground sites and I believe one of our Kinderground sites as well. It
doesn't get, what I would classify, as a tremendous amount of use in terms
of the enrollment. It's a free program but what use it does get is of a high-
need because of the working parents and that kind of thing. It provides a
low cost recreation program during the day for the kids in that
neighborhood. Of course, this is on the other side of Sycamore and we
could, very easily, and will be looking at, to see how high the need is and
how feasible it might be to offer some sort of a longer hour or more
structured type of summer program at this facility as opposed to just
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simply a summer playground program. With the Neighborhood Centers
being located out there, we can work with them on that.
Bailey: Could there the possibility of sharing a staff member with Neighborhood
Centers to do some of that rec programming? I'm just brainstorming...but
they're right there and they do so much in the area anyway. It's an
interesting combination of skills that the person would have.
Trueblood: From a conceptual standpoint I think that makes a lot of sense. From a
budgetary standpoint I think it makes a lot of sense too, but...
Champion: Well, it's a start anyway.
Lehman: But we're talking about something that is not going to be completed for a
year.
Trueblood: A year or more.
Champion: Do you know how the relationship between the Penn Schools and Family
Centers... you know North Liberty did the same thing with Penn School.
Do you know how that worked? Did that function well?
Trueblood: I think you might be talking about Wickham.
Champion: No, Penn. Penn had a joint room with the City.
Trueblood: I'm not familiar with that at all. I am familiar with the Wickham school
program.
Lehman: It's the Family Center, right?
Wilburn: Family Resource Center.
Lehman: That's it. There was now recreation involved in that.
Vanderhoef: The after school program, I think, is out there.
Trueblood: If you're familiar with Wickham school, the City of Coralville and School
District have a joint working relationship there. In fact, the 28E
agreement that we're working on will be very similar to that. The people I
talked to in Coralville at Parks and Recreation feel that that's been a big
success. Of course, a lot of their money comes from the fact that they do
run the before and after school program at Wickham - the Parks and
Recreation Department does. Anything else?
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Atkins: This is our contribution to the Greater Iowa City Housing Fellowship
program up on the Peninsula. It involves sixteen units of housing. Six of
which will be owned by Greater Iowa City, ten of which will be owned by
the City of Iowa City. It is targeted for the disabled and it is a Section 8
program. The reason we have this shared arrangement was because it
made us eligible, that the Greater Iowa City and the City for some state
funding, which went into the project. It seems like we adopted this two to
three years ago and it's finally coming together. That's it. That's our
contribution to this.
Elliott: How many of these would be owned by Iowa City?
Atkins: Ten. Section 8.
Lehman: That's being constructed as we speak, right?
Atkins: Yes.
Vanderhoef: I would like to investigate ownership, and I think it's this new program
that we just instituted with the housing authority that allows people to buy
the unit and pay down partially with their voucher.
Atkins: Often there is a contract involved with HUD with respect to that and I'd
have to check the terms with that. On the surface that doesn't seem out of
the question. As a City, we would encourage tenant to owner.
Elliott: I do have a concern with the City owning more residential houses.
Atkins: We do.
Elliott: Yes, but we have divested some of that from 107 to 90, maybe.
Atkins: We've done at least ten tenant owners. I can't really recall, Bob, but I
think your numbers are about right. These are...now remember...these
are targeted towards the disabled. This is a special project. So, many of
our housing units are for those citizens as well. Who's up next?
Knoche: This is another joint project with the Iowa DOT. It's the Hi~hwav 6
improvement from Lakeside out to 420th street. It's currently under
design with Shive Hattery doing the design for us. The project will three-
lane Highway 6 in that corridor, also making improvements for the
intersections at Heinz Road and also Scott Boulevard. The City portion of
this project is about equivalent of what the City's cost would be to redo
the Heinz Road intersection, which is our responsibility according to the
access agreement that was done for Heinz Road and also Scott Boulevard.
So, it's a good project with us. It's a similar set up with the DOT as with
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Dodge Street. We are in charge of the design, they will do all the project
administration, when it's let...the project will happen in construction year
2006.
Lehman: Will there be a signal at Scott?
Knoche: Right now we're not anticipating signals but we'll put the conduit in so
that it's a fairly easy thing to do when the signals are warranted.
Lehman: But we will have lights so you can at least find the intersection at night?
Knoche: That I'm not sure of.
Lehman: That is a very difficult intersection at night.
Knoche: I believe there is a streetlight at that intersection now.
Davidson: There is a streetlight there. It's 100 WATTS. We're upgrading it to 250.
Champion: 100 WATTS?
Lehman: It's terrible.
Davidson: We're upgrading it to 250 and if it's still too dark then we can put another
light in.
Lehman: That would help dramatically. Are there sidewalks associated with this
project?
Knoche: There are no sidewalks associated with this project. The project will have
paved shoulders, so bicyclists could use the paved shoulders.
Vanderhoef: Ron, in talking about the signalization, Ernie is talking about Scott being
signalized, which is a T intersection and I'm not aware of any plan to
extend Scott south across the highway .... but then I'm looking at Heinz
Road and that's the road that's going to connect up with the East/West
arterial with McCollister.
Davidson.' Actually, the east/west arterial will intersect with Scott and tie in at Scott
Boulevard. It will intersect with Heinz, but it will come up and intersect
with Scott Boulevard.
Vanderhoef: It will curl around?
Davidson: Yes.
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Knoche: So that will be a four-way intersection.
Davidson: Eventually.
Vanderhoef: Well, eventually it will go out to Taft too.
Davidson: At Scott Boulevard we're close to the signal warrants. We're not there
yet. The reason is that the predominant movement through there is South-
bound turning right and a signal really doesn't help right turn movements
that much because it's usually a free movement where you go right on red.
We know we're close and that's why, as Ron has eluded to, we're going to
put all the infrastructure in to do that. At Heinz Road, we're not close to a
signal. We're about 40% of the signal warrants. Regardless of what we
think, DOT won't let us put in an unwarranted signal in.
Vanderhoef: But Heinz Road will connect with McCollister?
Davidson: Eventually, yes. I was just thinking of the Heinz/US 6 intersection. It is
not close to meeting a signal warrant at this time. The left turn lanes are
what are needed there. That will be a big help in that intersection...getting
the turning movements out of the through movements.
Elliott: When you said McCollister will hook up with Scott. Are you saying that
Scott will then proceed further south?
Davidson: Yes. It will be a four-way intersection.
Knoche: McCollister Boulevard will...the terminus of McCollister will be at the
Scott Boulevard/Highway 6 intersection.
Elliott: And on this, we're talking about three lanes out?
Knoche: Correct, three lanes.
Vanderhoef: And will we rework Scott Boulevard to anticipate more lanes...right turn
lanes, left turn lanes, stacking areas, etc? That's the complaint I'm getting
right now is that people are stacked up trying to do a left turn and they're
trying to go right...
Knoche: That intersection will be set up for three lanes. The left turn lane will be
added at that intersection on Scott Boulevard.
Vanderhoefi On Scott?
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Knoche: Correct. The left turn on to Highway 6 will be added with this project.
The right turn lane...there will be a left turn and a right turn on Scott and
then through lane going north.
Vanderhoef: Because as soon as McCollister comes around we'll need a forward lane
then too...so we'll be needing to jump out for another width.
Champion: I think I'll be dead.
Vanderhoef: Buy all the land while you're at it.
Knoche: Right now the anticipation that there will be no property acquisition with
this project at this time. It's pretty much ready to go. The widening of
that will be equal widening on each side of the road so it will maintain the
same alignment.
Vanderhoef: Because we bought enough for a four-lane Scott Boulevard.
Lehman: Right.
Elliott: I didn't bring that up, did you notice that?
Bailey: I did.
Vanderhoef: Now you made us all curious.
Atkins: We're at about the halfway point, how are you all doing?
Champion: We're only half way?
Vanderhoef: Oh, well then I got to have a quick one.
Fosse: Five minutes?
Bailey: Let's do the landfill and then have a break.
Fosse: Landfill first?
Vanderhoef: Okay, do landfill.
Fosse: Like death and taxes, more landfill cells are inevitable. At least with our
present technology. It's time to start thinking about our next cell.
Interestingly, one of the things that is driving our next cell is that we're
running out of dirt that we use to layer with the garbage in our existing
cell. One of the things that we're doing a deal with that...if you'll notice
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in this area here, it's a light green color, we're experimenting with a spray
on cover material.
Champion: With aerosol cans?
Fosse: No, it's got a big machine. We call it the Spiderman spray one because it
kind of holds all the garbage down and keeps it from blowing away.
That's got two advantages for us. One is that we don't need the dirt, but
Dee already picked up on the other one. You take twelve inches to six
inches of dirt and replace it with three-eighths of an inch of spray on -
that's a huge amount of landfill space savings. We're working with the
DNR right now to expand the use of that. I'll fill you in more on that
during our next Public Works update.
Vanderhoef: How does that cost out? I presume they want an arm and a leg for the
spray?
Fosse: When we put the spray down it's about $80 a bag and then you mix it with
water and it sprays out of the same machine that you use to do
hydroseeding but when you do the cost comparison of what we're
spending on the dirt and then the lost space, the spray is about cheaper by
a factor of about ten.
Vanderhoef: Good work.
Lehman: We can use that same company for streets. (Laughter)
Fosse: We can use it for seeding along the streets.
Champion: Environmentally, what is it made out of?.
Fosse: It's cellulose and all this other gooey stuff: I don't know what all the other
gooey stuff is.
Vanderhoef: We need a chemical engineering.
Fosse: Right, and it's right in the landfill there so it's all contained. Any more
questions?
Elliott: Gooey stuff. That's just fine for me. That's just what I need.
(B~L.K~)
Franklin: ...this is to improve Lower West Branch Road to city standards. It
would be approved as a collector street. We have included it in the capital
improvements program for a number of years, the out years, but are
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moving it up to '07 in this program. Lower West Branch Road is between
Scott and Taft Avenue, south of Rochester and north of Court Street.
Elliott: It's an extension of...
Franklin: Okay, got it? It's a county surface type road now, a rural surface...but
obviously it need some improvement. This slide, the lower one, shows the
development that is happening here. This is part of Windsor Ridge, we
we're coming up right to Lower West Branch Road. This is a project in
which we are having shared costs with developers in the area. Southgate
Development, in doing Lindeman Subdivision, the Watts-Moreland folks
in doing Windsor Ridge, and then Plum Groves Acres, which has the Old
Town Center, which you'll be seeing at the your 18th meeting, at the
comer of Lower West Branch and Scott, will all be contributing a
proportional share, based on their frontage and a certain depth into the
subdivision. This was done as part of a conditional zoning as we brought
those properties in and zoned them.
Davidson: The next project is McCollister Boulevard. This is the portion between
Old Highway 218 and Gilbert Street including the river crossing. We
talked about it a little bit earlier. This is a project that is tied to a request
for federal funds that we've made. We've indicated to our congressional
folks that this is our number-one priority for funding. We've requested
five million dollars, which we would then match with funds, as you can
see in there. I believe the total project is 6.2 million. This would extend
the road, from the intersection that will be created when the project
coming down south of the airport will terminate at the Old Highway 218,
would pick it up there and would take it through...I think there's a
diagram...yes, Regenia is holding it there...a diagram that shows it
specifically. We would come to the South, through the Mossman Building
property between Thatcher Trailer Park - Manufactured Housing Park,
excuse me, Mesquawki Park, across the river, South of the (unclear) to an
intersection - which if you go down to Gilbert Street now, Sand Hill
Subdivision has built a portion of McCollister Boulevard to the East of
Gilbert Street already, so you can see right where that intersection is going
to be. The river crossing obviously will have some benefits in terms of
traffic circulation. This segment of McCollister Boulevard does not have
a lot of potential property redevelopment with it. However, the area to the
West has a lot ofcommemial and industrial potential. The area to the East
has a lot of residential potential and so it's kind of a critical segment for
traffic circulation between those two segments that have a lot of
development potential.
Lehman: Does this intersection with South Riverside Drive. Is that directly across
from where Mormon Trek...
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Davidson: It's just south of the bowling alley. Excuse me. It's just north of the
bowling alley. Between the bowling alley and the airport.
Lehman: But it meets up with Mormon Trek directly.
Davidson: Yes. A four-way intersection. We'll set it up so it could be signalized.
Lehman: We obviously have issues with wetlands through here.
Davidson: Yes, there are wetland issues.
Lehman: Isn't this the same area that we got in to trouble with the trunk sewer line?
Davidson: And we're going to avoid that area with the street. (Laughter)
Lehman: Good planning. Are there issues as we go -
Davidson: Wait a minute...Ron is telling me that we don't avoid the area. Ron, why
don't you...
Knoche: This roadway will go about right through the middle of where they had
trouble with the sewer down there. We're looking at different options of
how to prepare the roadbed so that there isn't any issues with the wetness.
Basically, there's a couple of different options. One option is drill a bunch
of holes, fill it up with rock, and basically have those be piers that the road
would sit on. Another option is to just load it up and push all the water out
of it... and squeeze it... and that's the cheapest cost and probably about the
best way to take care of it. That's one of the areas that our consultant is
looking at right now.
Vanderhoef: And then we'll have wetland reconstruction someplace else?
Knoche: Correct. There will be mitigation that will have to be done with this. We
are working...there is a little bit of wetland mitigation for the Dodge
Street project. We're going to put both of these together and build another
cell down at the South Sycamore wetland area. That construction...it's a
pretty small project and that will happen this year.
Davidson: As Ron eluded to, we are under design with this right now and the
environmental assessment that is required. You might recall last Spring,
Ron and I met with you and discussed the parameters of the
reconstruction. We are going to size the bridge such that we can add to
the lanes at some point in the future without having to reconstruct the
bridge.
Vanderhoef: ...and walkway.
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Davidson: Right. It will have a walkway under both scenarios.
Lehman: Do we have issues where we go through University property?
Davidson: Yes we do. We working on those right now with them. We are going to
meet Friday morning with them. We hope to be able to resolve those but
clearly it impacts. It does not actually get into the building, the portion of
the Mossman Building that we come the closest to. We feel that there is a
way to work this such that they would have the full, complete use of the
Mossman Building as they do now. It would clearly impact their ability to
expand it and that is part of what we want to discuss with them.
Elliott: What's the relationship of this road to Mormon Trek.
Davidson: Well, at this intersection right here is where it will change from Mormon
Trek as you go up the hill to McCollister Boulevard. That's where we're
going to make the name change here.
Elliott: One just runs in to the other?
Vanderhoef: Yeah.
Elliott: Why are we going with a different name. The thought was that at some
point that name needs to change and where do you make that change.
Mormon Trek, remember, begins near the intersection of Highway 6 as a
NorttffSouth road and the thought was that at some point, before it gets up
to Scott Boulevard, it needs to probably have a name change
to... otherwise it might be confusing for people.., at the intersection of
Scott Boulevard and Mormon Trek and then they see Mormon Trek
Boulevard clear over on the other side of town. Because it's not nice 90
degree intersections, it's hard to know exactly where to make that name
change and we determined it should be right here. Basically, it goes from
a north/south road to an east/west road.
Lehman: But it will be confusing any way you look at it. Scott Boulevard crosses
Highway 6 and suddenly becomes McCollister, McCollister crosses south
Riverside Drive and we'll probably change it to Franklin. (Laughter)
Champion: Why?
Fosse: Next is the Meadow Street Bridge. This is a bridge that can not be
patched or fixed any more. It's time to replace it. This is a bridge from
the era of cheap labor and expensive materials. That explains the quirky
beams that are underneath it. They're hot riveted steel beams that we
think that, prior to becoming part of this bridge, were legs of a water
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tower. What you see right here is one of the old rivet holes. And these are
the hot rivets, like you see on the three stooges that they throw around.
They're rusting out there and the concrete's gone bad. Any time we take
on a project like this in a neighborhood we look at what are the other
needs in the neighborhood and how might they be incorporated. We
identified two needs in this neighborhood and one is the Court Hill Trail
System, which you see going along the creek over there, and bridge is
going to accommodate the trail both East and West along there. I'll point
that these two slides here look along the route of the sewer that we built in
1989 so it's amazing how fast that ground gets overgrown again. The
other need that we have in that neighborhood is the Dover Street basin.
This is a shot out of the back door of one of the properties there. Similar
to the Sandusky basin, this is one of the first ones built in Iowa City. It's
never behaved well. This project gives us an opportunity to run a storm
sewer up and relieve that problem, so we want to seize that opportunity
and I believe the budget identifies using some of the storm water utility
money for that.
Elliott: Where is the Dover Street basin?
Fosse: Ron, can you point to that there? It's...there are some duplexes on that
little s-curve street that connects.
Elliott: I was going to say. I live on Dover Street and I've never heard of a Dover
Street basin.
Vanderhoef: Where is this pooling that we're seeing?
Lehman: Right in front of their houses.
Fosse: It consumes about 100% of their back yards and the pooling is problematic
and the overflow from the basis is problematic as well.
Champion: That's a lot of water.
Lehman: So, we're going to take care of it. Go for it.
Davidson: Another project that I think you'll have some familiarity with because
we've discussed this a couple of times with you and this is the
Melrose/Grand Road improvements. I think you are all aware that there
is a joint project between the University and the City which some FCP
funds through JCCOG were used to reconstruct South Grand here and
Ron's going to talk a little bit more about that project a little later...so we
won't go into details on that yet. The planning study that was completed
and I continue to believe, somewhat miraculously, had an agreement
between the University, the City, and the Melrose Avenue Neighborhood
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Association. Everybody signed offon it, which I considered to be a
wonderful thing. Had several improvements, in addition to South Grand
here, and that's what this project is. To summarize them quickly, we will
be installing a one-way loop system in this area here. Similar to the one-
way loop that we have down around the County Administration Building,
that might be a way to equate it. We feel that that is going to have a
significant benefit to traffic movements in this area and to pedestrians in
this area. One-way streets, because you can get the gaps in the traffic and
the pedestrian only has to look in one direction basically.., it actually will
have some benefits for pedestrian movements. We'll also be putting a
median in this area and making sure that pedestrians are better
accommodated than they are currently. This is an area where there is such
high competition between all your modes, everyone of your modes of
transportation for space down in this area. The one-way loop is one
element to this. We will be reconstructing this intersection. Byington and
Grand. The critical thing that we want to eliminate here is this movement,
which causes a great deal of traffic problems in this area. If you come out
here now, you will have to go around the loop in order to get back into
downtown Iowa City...but we feel that it's a good trade off for the traffic
benefits that will accrue from it. So, there will be some reconstruction of
islands and that down in this area. There also, in conjunction with the
one-way loop, will be a contriflow lane for Cambus and University service
vehicles to get through this area down here. It was still very important for
Cambus to be able to have front door service to Slater. We looked into
coming around and having a stop down here, but they didn't want to make
it that more inconvenient for the Residents of Slater. So, there will be a
contriflow lane down through here, which we show will not create any big
problem. We will also try to improve this intersection a little bit as well.
The thing we are going to do is a separate right turn lane, add some
capacity. The widening will actually occur here, but then we'll shift
everything over. There will be a new right turn lane there. This basically
implements all of the recommendations of that study, except for one. And
that was to redo this curve here. Which you know geometrically is a little
bit kooky to what you expect typically but it's not a high-collision type
situation. It's just a little unfamiliar to motorists. The University wanted
us to hold up on that for the time being because they don't know exactly
what their redevelopment plans are for this area quite yet. They have
some ideas but they want to firm those up a little bit more before we
determine how we might realign this. The realigning of this curb is the
only thing we are not doing that's one of the recommendations of the
report. Everything else is being implemented. With the design study that
is going on right now is being split 50/50 with the University we have
their buy-in as well for a 50/50 split of the eventual reconstruction. We
want to do this at the same time that this is being wrapped up, which
would be the end of this summer so we can have everything open by the
time the Fall semester starts.
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Vanderhoef: Are they thinking about moving that leg further east?
Davidson: This one here?
Vanderhoef: Uh-huh.
Davidson: No. If you look at the plans they've shown us, it would be just a real
gentle improvement of this curve here and the improvement of this curve
here...just to make it a little more gentle as you go down through
here...but the bottom line is that it's expensive to do that and there's a big
retaining wall... (end of tape)
TAPE 05-05 (Side One)
Davidson: I won't speak for the University. You've heard them speak as to that
house. I think they have said that they want to preserve it but I don't think
they've committed to it being exactly in that location necessarily.
Vanderhoef: They want to move it.
Davidson: Anything else about this project?
Lehman: That looks like a lot of improvements for not a lot of money.
Davidson: It's going to be very nicely done.
Trueblood: Okay, what we're here to see now is the Mercer Park Ball Field
Uverades. A $300,000 project that's phased over three years. $100,000
each year over FY '06, '07, and '08. I want to emphasize up front that this
has nothing to do with the project that we've been working on at field
number one. That's a cooperative effort with the school district, particular
City High School. These are the other three fields other than Field
Number One. One o£the things on the pictures...it's primarily a lighting
project. The bulk of it is replacing lighting on fields two, three, and four.
One of the things that I wanted to point out...these are on field number
three right here...these lights.., and you see these kind of square objects on
the back of each light. That's ballast. Then, if you look down at this
small light right here, you'll see there are two lights there and in the
middle, right behind them, is what they call remote ballasts. So both
ballasts are in the same location. So, even if you had this many lights up
there, you can put all the ballasts in one location...and as a matter of fact,
with that lighting over here.., if you look way down the pole.., all the
ballasts are located in that right there. Which basically means you can get
on a ladder to work on the ballasts instead of having to go all the way to
the top of the pole.
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Champion: What is a ballast?
Lehman: The thing that makes the light turn on.
Trneblood: I couldn't have said it better myself.
Lehman: It's a magic thing.
Trueblood: It's sort of like an Everready battery, but it requires electrical wires to
make it work. If you ever notice in some lights inside, particularly
fluorescent lights, if you start hearing a buzzing, that's a ballast.
Champion: I know what it is... it's that little tiny tube.
Trueblood: All I know is that they don't have any gooey stuff in them. (Laughter) At
least they're not supposed to. This light right here is on Field 4. And you
can see that's partly there for references to how short that pole is
compared to the new lights on Field #1 right across from them. The lights
on Fields 2, 3, and 4...by the way, all these new lights on Field #1 are
being paid for by the school district. Just an aside on that field, right down
in here, you don't have a very good view of it, but that's one of the new
dugouts that is being built by their booster club. Babe Ruth will still be
using the field and using the dugouts and the pitching cage, and the
bullpens, and whatever. The light fixtures on Field 2, 3, and 4, range in
age from the newest being seventeen years old and the oldest being
twenty-five years old. The wood poles on which they are mounted range
in age from twenty-five to thirty-seven years old. Over the last few years,
there's been more baseball and less softball being played on these fields.
The only field now that uses softball is this one right here, Field 4. That
came about for two reasons. Primarily, you may recall a number of years
ago, we entered into an agreement with the University of Iowa here we
started using their fields primarily for our adult softball leagues, and the
other reason was with the increase in youth baseball activity. Our adult
softball used to share fields with Babe Ruth and it just wasn't a good
situation. We had softball being played on baseball fields and scheduling
was difficult and it just wasn't a good situation. Like I said, the primary
cost of this project is new lighting. The other cost is renovation to Field
#3. Which you don't have a good view of it here, and when I went out
there the first time to take pictures, the camera quit working, and when I
went out there the second time I forgot the keys and couldn't get in. So,
anyway...it's beyond this building right here. If you look real close at that
building, you can see a dent in that roof. That comes from a home run hit
years ago by our City Manager. (Laughter) We've put a little railing
around it which you can't see on there and a sign over in this area with an
arrow pointing to it's historical significance.
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O'Donnell: That just had to be a towering home run.
Trueblood: It was wind-aided but it was towering. (Laughter)
Elliott: Have the fences been moved back any? Literally. That's always been a
short fence out there.
Trueblood: We did increase the height of the outfield fence after that. Kind of figured
that if you could hit it out it's time to increase the height of the fence.
Beyond that on Field 3 is a field that in order to get...well, first of all
better use for anything...several years ago there was a fairly maj or sewer
project that went through there. So, Rick went in, tore up our field, and
then didn't put it back right. I think we ended up have to bury a bulldozer
out there in that big hole. Seriously, there was a huge hole out there and
there was a bulldozer and the contractor, as I recall, went bankrupt in the
middle of it, and left his heavy equipment sitting there. Had to sit there
for months because we couldn't touch it until we settled that stuff:
Fosse: The IRS actually locked up that equipment on site.
Trueblood: It's still Rick's fault. Anyway, what we need to do with that field is go in
and basically tear up half the outfield, put more soil in, reseed it or resod it
to simply make it a good playing field like it was before Rick messed it
up. And we also need to move the outfield fence back a bit to better
accommodate the thirteen-fourteen year old Babe Ruth play.
Champion: I would suggest that you not allow City employees on park property.
Vanderhoefi To play.
Trueblood: That would make it hard for us to go in there and mow. Remember, we're
City employees too. So anyway...that's it in a nutshell. Any other
questions? Thank you.
Davidson: The next project is the Missing Link Trail.
Champion: That's a good name.
Vanderhoef: It will be that forever for us.
Davidson: I think you're all aware that the link here is the link between the north and
south parts of the Iowa River Corridor Trail for which this completes the
Iowa River Corridor Trail, which is very exciting, especially given the
relatively modest amount of funds here. We were able to have some cost
savings by cooperating with the Mackinaw Village developers on this.
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You can see Interstate 80 there in the background. This is from the water
plant site and the trail will go underneath the 1-80 bridge over here and
there is room for that. That's the other thing that's really nice about this.
We don't have to make some provisions for that. We can just go right
under here. You can actually get a vehicle through underneath here, so
there is plenty of room, it will then go up the Mackinaw Village property
and tie into Foster Road - the wide sidewalk on Foster Road - which is
the portion of the River Corridor Trail at that point. It will also of course
tie into the part that will then go down the hill by the dog park and over
the damn into Coralville. This is a real, real critical link and it's just going
to establish a really nice regional trail system. The other thing that we
anticipate is that there is evidence, and I can tell you it's true because I am
one of them, that when you establish a trail of at least ten or twelve miles
in length it becomes a regional trail and you get people coming in from out
of town to spend the day, maybe even spend a couple of days, riding the
trail. This will do that for us. I really think it's going to have some
economic development benefits that our current system does not have, as
well as all the benefits to local folks. It will be a wide trail and will be
constructed incrementally as Mackinaw Village is constructed so that it's
all hooked up at once but then the permanent portion of the trail - it will
be a temporary trail in areas and then eventually become permanent as the
subdivision develops.
Vanderhoef: You say that the trail then is twelve miles?
Davidson: It's between twelve and thirteen miles, I believe, yeah.., and that's from
the dam at the Reservoir down to Napoleon Park. And then of course at
Napoleon Park eventually it will intersect with the Willow Creek Trail
which will come down from West Iowa City as well and establish an even
longer system. Any questions?
Knoche: The next project is the Mormon Trek Boulevard Extension Project. The
first phase of the project, which was from Highway 1 to Willow Creek is
complete. The W-B sewer extension is also complete so everybody up in
the W-B development is on gravity sewer right now. The next step in the
project is to build this box culvert. This box culvert will be let in March.
It's about $550,000 and that will use the rest of the STP funds that were
allocated for this extension project. After this is complete we're also
working on the design of the larger box culvert. Going underneath Old
Highway 218 or Old Highway 921. That project there is about 2 million
dollars. We're on hold right now...waiting on our conversations with the
University so we can get access to the University property. The piece of
pavement that will be left from the end of Mormon Trek to Old Highway
218 is also on hold awaiting the completion of the runway extension.
Lehman: Will that grading be done at the same time the culvert's done?
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Knoche: We won't be able to do the grading in here. The roadway comes up
significantly here and it ends up getting into the protection zone for the
runway.
Champion: When is that runway going to be moved? Do we know yet?
Lehman: We're really kind of hoping next summer they get part of it extended.
That was last that I heard.
Knoche: I'm not exactly sure which fiscal year it is in the budget but that's one of
our goals.
Davidson: The next project is the signalization of the Mormon Trek-Walden
Square intersection. This is an intersection that we've been keeping an
eye on for a couple of years. We have evaluated...you'll recall...right on
the other side of the Credit Union which is right here...is the intersection
of Mormon Trek and .... I'm drawing a blank on the name of the
road...what's the name of the road that comes down through there?
Lehman: Westwinds Drive.
Davidson: Westwinds, thank you very much. I had a brain freeze there. Westwinds
Drive comes down. We looked at both intersections, assuming one or the
other, at least initially, would be signalized and the determination was
made that the higher traffic volume and the greater need is at this
intersection, which is the driveway in to Walden Square on the West and
then Cameron Way on the East and this is Mormon Trek here. We will be
signalizing it. As you can see, it's a relatively modest project in terms of
the amount of funding we need and that is because we've determined that
for the next four or five years we can get by just fine without left turn
lanes on Mormon Trek. We'd love to have left turn lanes on Mormon
Trek, don't get me wrong, but that of course makes it a much, much more
expensive project and our capacity analysis shows that capacity wise there
is still enough capacity for the number of left tums to occur out of the
inside lanes of Mormon Trek. You have another project in the unfunded
years of the CIP for looking at this whole corridor. Basically between
Abbey Lane and Melrose Avenue and doing something either with turn
lanes at all the major intersections or with a center turn lane. That's the
project we fell will then address the issue of left turn lanes here. We did
want you to know that we're buying time here by not installing left lanes
at this point. This intersection, in addition to meeting one of the volume
warrants, I believe it meets two of the volume warrants, also meets the
crash warrant. When we start meeting the crash warrant we want to do
something right away because that's a safety issue...and we did have over
five crashes in the past one year period of the type that would be
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correctable by a signal so we want to get this installed next year if we can
- this coming year.
Vanderhoef: Will we have the cameras on this signalization?
Davidson: We will have video detection, yes.
Vanderhoef: And will we have it then down at Benton Street too?
Davidson: ! don't believe that Benton Street has video detection or not. I don't
believe it does, Dee. I think there are still loops down there.
Lehman: Benton and Mormon Trek?
Davidson: Benton and Mormon Trek, does that have cameras?
Lehman: I think it does.
Davidson: What we're doing is over time, as we maintain these, we're installing
video cameras at all the intersections. In fact, we're using a new
generation of them that is a big improvement over the ones that we started
out with.
Champion: They are nice.
Davidson: Any other questions?
Atkins: Old Bus Depot Land Acquisition. The Old Bus Depot happens to be a
parking fund asset and when we are moving those folks out of there, down
to their new location, that site is then available. If we are going to put it to
any other use other than parking fund related, it seems that it needs to be
acquired at least internally.
Wilburn: So just like a transfer, then?
Atkins: Pretty much. But it still is an expense on the general fund or general
obligation debt. Now, tmdemeath the old bus depot is a building called
You Smash 'Em.
Champion: I knew the Smash 'Em was around there.
Atkins: There you go. You Smash 'Em being an old body shop. We used to have
that for storage. It's a real pit and we've pretty much gotten everything
out there that should be out of there. We own the property next door, the
old Wilson building and we do use that extensively for storage. Sort of
the bottom line...that whole corner is going to have to go and we need to
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think about what we want on that site. We have pursued a line of thinking
that that block would be used for some civic use, some public use, even if
it was a parking lot. When we do go to start the removal, for example, the
Wilson Building is also one of the walls .... but anyway, the bottom line is
that the Wilson Building will likely have to go which means we need to
replace that storage. We have some interest in a spot out in the new Public
Works Yard where we think we can accommodate that but it's still an
expense that has to be addressed. I will be bringing this back to you for a
little bit of a brainstorming session. We've had all kinds of ideas.
Expansion of the recreation center, location of new emergency
communication center, permanent Farmer's Market. Some really kind of
fun things that we can do.
Champion: Is it big enough for Farmer's Market?
Atkins: Well, remember that the park is right there and that allowed us...we could
creep into the park and still not...the park used to be a parking lot and we
could creep into the park without really destroying that because that has
become a pretty popular park. So, we don't really need any immediate
financial authority, but you will have to put your thinking caps on because
we are going to have to start making these decisions.
Lehman: According to this, we're intending to borrow money to pay for that lot.
Atkins: We could, Ernie, and I'd sort of like to avoid that if we could.
Lehman: No, but it says GO debt $400,000. I don't understand why we would
borrow the money for it until we know what we're going to do with it.
Vanderhoef: But that's '08.
Lehman: I know it's '08.
Atkins: That's making the assumption that you have decided what is going to go
there.
Lehman: Until we do that we're not going to borrow the money. Thank you.
Atkins: We won't do any borrowing until you decide what the use is going to be
and then quite frankly it's very much internal. You can pay the parking
fund over time if you wanted. There's all sort of things you can do?
Champion: Could the parking fund make it a gift?
Atkins: The parking fund could make it a gift. We told Joe that, he didn't like
that. It would be a stretch. Kevin is back there pointing his finger.
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O'Malley: Until our parking revenue bonds are paid off you can not sell any system
assets. You can not give away any system assets. You have to use fair
market value.
Champion: Can't we hire our own appraiser?
Atkins: I was just going to say a run-down old gas station can't be worth too
much.
Champion: That is really a cute old nm down gas station.
Lehman: We're bringing up the value, Connie.
Champion: You can sell that building. People will move it.
Elliott: You're talking about both buildings?
Atkins: Yeah, I think we almost have to talk about them.
Elliott: That's kind of an eyesore, that whole corner.
Atkins: It would be nice to dress it up. We've made an informal policy of the
recreation center site, Chauncey Swan Parking Garage site, which includes
these properties and then this City Hall site. We would like to have all
three of those blocks in public ownership.
Elliott: Regenia is surprised that I'm concerned about the appearance of
anything...but I do notice that.
Champion: You know Bob, I'm going to have that put on the National Registry of
Historic Places.
Atkins: Anyway, it will be back to you soon so you want to put your thinking cap
on shortly. What's next up?
Fosse: Parking ramps are high maintenance structures. It just makes sense
because cars are harder on buildings than people are. You've got a
building that you keep cars in you've got to take care of it. As a result,
our maintenance strategies for parking garages are similar to what we use
for streets. That is you do preventive maintenance and then timely repair
problems as they develop. If you don't stay on top of things, you end up
in trouble and I think they call that 'penny-wise and pound-foolish' so
that's why you see in the budget $330,000 every other year. That just
takes care of those preventive maintenance things and any problems that
come up during that two year period. Here you see a patch that's been
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made in the floor. This do-dad here is a called a king-truss and what that
does is that it supports the deck above it because the post-tensioning cable
in that deck was severed. So this is necessary to keep that deck from
coming down. So those are some of the things that you do.
Lehman: You guys have done a great job of maintaining those ramps. They really,
really have been well maintained.
Fosse: A lot of that credit goes to Joe.
Lehman: That's a lot of money invested in a ramp...to not take care of it doesn't
make any sense at all.
Champion: What's the life span of a ramp?
Fosse: If you take good care of them, the older ones downtown are well over
twenty years right now and we hope to get many more years out of them.
Champion: They must be thirty years old.
Vanderhoef: They were redoing some in Des Moines the previous two years and those
things had to be forty or more years old. I mean they were really old.
Fosse: I think you get life expectancy about the same as a bridge. 70 to 90 years.
Lehman: Well, we do a good job with them.
Trueblood: From parking ramp maintenance to park shelter maintenance. Connie,
you asked the question of 'the average life span of a parking ramp' and I
can tell you the average life of a park shelter is somewhere under forty
years, evidently. This particular budget calls for ten shelters to be
replaced at an average cost of $14,000 per shelter for a total of $140,000
in FY '06. By the way, have you noticed by any chance yet that when
Rick and Ron get up here and talk to you, they're talking about 'well, this
project is two million and that one is seven million' and so forth like that.
I think ours totaled up to something less than 1.5 million over a three year
period. My point being, if you want to transfer some of that money from
public works over to us, we'd find a way to use it. (Laughter) This
particular shot is at North Market Square. Just to give you an idea of some
of the problems, and this one, this shelter as nearly as we can tell is about
thirty-five years old. Thirty to forty years ago some of the record keeping
wasn't as good as it possibly should have been. But just to give you an
idea on this one shelter...this picture right here shows what we've had to
be doing with a lot of our shelters - putting those metal brackets down at
the bottom to solidify them and even in a lot of cases, or some cases
anyway, burying an additional support structure up against it. Then, like
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these rafters and these cross pieces. We've had to put cross pieces in a lot
of our shelters because, well, they kind of started swaying in the wind.., so
we had to figure out a way to not let them sway in the wind. We've been
kind of going about this piece meal for a number of years now and finally
just decided 'you know, there's a bunch of shelters that we really need to
replace' and should try to do it over the next couple of years. The most
likely candidates to be replaced, besides North Market, and there is one
shelter there, and I distributed a sheet of paper earlier because in City Park
there are maybe four or five of the shelters. Just to give you an idea of
which shelters those are...those are 4, 7, 11, 13, and maybe 12. Now,
some of this could change as we keep inspecting these facilities. But all of
these shelters are thirty-eight to forty years of age. Court Hill Park, that
small park has four shelters for some reason, and those were put in thirty-
eight years ago and our proposal there is that we would replace two or
maybe three of the shelters and actually eliminate one or maybe two of the
shelters. They're not...one in particular is not heavily used and it's very
close to the adjacent residential area. Oak Grove Park, down by the
railroad tracks, that shelter is about thirty years old and the one shelter in
Mercer Park is thirty-five years old. So, you can see that they are aging.
We don't believe that they are unsafe or we wouldn't be using them, but
we believe that they could be unsafe without much more to do in the next
year or two if we don't take some action soon.
Champion: What will you replace them with? Will they have the same rustic look?
Have you decided?
Trueblood: Most likely. They would be similar types of shelters. One of the things
that a lot of companies are going to now, rather than the wooden support
structure, is steel support structure, which you have painted in any color
you like. A lot of times they're just brown so they look like wood until
you get up close to them. They'll obviously last a lot longer. One thing !
forgot to mention and I didn't have a photo of it here because it's not the
case here, but in some of the shelters too are also the concrete slabs are
starting to show quite a bit of deterioration. So, when we replace them, in
some cases we would replace the concrete slab as well.
Champion: Does City Park have enough shelters? They always look really busy to
me.
Trueblood: Well, City Park is certainly our busiest location and those are the busiest
shelters as far as reservations go and I suspect the busiest as far as drop-in
use as well. We have added two park shelters there in recent years. One
being an open air shelter and the other in our old maintenance building,
when we relocated, we took part of that maintenance building and made it
an indoor shelter all with our in-house labor. So, there are times when
City Park could probably use a half a dozen more shelters. You know, just
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from the standpoint of people wanting to reserve them and they're not
available. But then again, do you really want to put half a dozen more
shelters in that park? That's what it comes down to.
Champion: It's just such a well-used park.
Trueblood: Oh yeah. It also has a lot of activity besides all the shelters. Swimming
pool, amusement rides, horseshoe courts, baseball diamonds, the festival
stage...
Champion: By the way, the rides are absolutely terrific. They're really well-run and
the people who are running them...it's pretty incredible because I take my
grandson there a lot and they even let him choose what color they want on
the Ferris wheel. I mean, come on, where else would that happen?
Vanderhoef: Terry, how are we doing on our busy days out there? Does overflow
parking go over to Hancher? Do we have enough parking to even service
the number of shelters that we have?
Trueblood: For the most part there are a sufficient number of parking spaces. Now,
there may be times when someone would prefer to park in a parking lot
closer to the shelter that they have reserved and they may have to park a
little further away but really...there are only two major complaints that we
get about parking out there. One of those is during boy's baseball season
and there is plenty of parking within what would be the equivalent of say a
block and a half, two city blocks...but too many people drive through the
parking lot and park in the grass instead of driving five hundred feet away
and parking somewhere else. The other one is when we get parking,
particularly in Upper City Park, close to Templin. We will get complaints,
on occasion, from residents up there because there's a bunch of cars
parked in the park and nobody using the park. So, it's people who mainly
work at the University or at the Levitt Center who will come over and park
and we have to send them reminders on occasion that they're not supposed
to do that. But other than that, I honestly don't recall ever having a
complaint about parking for somebody that went down there for a park
shelter reservation. Now, there may have been but I just don't recall any.
We have...it's been a while since we counted...but I believe it's over six
hundred parking spaces in City Park.
Vanderhoef: What is your ticketing policy within City Park? We had a letter to council
recently about.., somebody got a ticket for parking in Upper City Park and
I think they went to Hancher event or something like that...
Champion: It as the band...the senior band...they had a band festival or
something.., and if they had called the Parks Department, they would have
allowed them to park there in the morning, I was told.
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Trueblood: There are numerous times throughout the year, particularly for Hancher
events, but also for Levitt Center events, if they a~range it with us ahead of
time we do allow them to park there. When we do that I send an email to
the Police department letting them know that that's happening so that
tickets aren't issued. So, if we don't know about it ahead of time, they
may very well get a ticket.
Elliott: Are there signs there?
Tmeblood: Oh yeah.
Elliott: I guess I've never noticed that you weren't supposed to park there.
Trueblood: There are signs there that say 'Parking for Park Use Only'.
Vanderhoef: I brought it to attention because I used it on a Sunday afternoon recently
for a Hancher event, because it was so full down at Hancher, and it was
just easier to walk across the street.
Trueblood: Typically during a Hancher Event. The things we arrange with the
University is that when they have a big show coming in, they need a place
to park their trucks, so we allow them to park them on the lower end of the
horseshoe in Lower City Park and we notify the Police Department and
the appropriate staff that that is happening. Now, during Hancher events,
we don't make it a policy and I don't think the Police Department does
either, to go through there and ticket vehicles that park in there so they can
go to a Hancher event. I did it myself once and I didn't get a ticket. Of
course, I had my City car, maybe that's why. No, ! didn't really.
Vanderhoefi I've done it and walked down to the Art Museum for the Art Tours
because on a weekday the reserve parking is all filled up in the Hancher
lots and there's very few meters over there.
Trneblood: I know they have parking problems. When there's Hancher events, that's
typically not during a time that's going to cause us any problem. It's
during the school year, they're using it at night and there is plenty of
parking that is available there. We don't go through and ticket vehicles
and I don't think the Police Department does either.
Vanderhoef: I guess the only ones that might are the ones that choose not to get
University stickers and try to use that as their regular parking place and
hop on Cambus.
Trueblood: Occasionally we will go through or ask the Police Department to go
through and ticket vehicles. When obviously there is a number of vehicles
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parked there and nobody's in the park. That doesn't happen very often but
every once in a while. Generally we choose...like I'll send an email to my
contact at the Levitt Center to remind them that we're going to have to go
through and start ticketing vehicles if they insist on parking there because
that's usually who it is, not always, but usually.
Lehman: Moving along.
Trueblood: I'm sorry.
Lehman: Moving along, ! think you're next. Peninsula Road.
Atkins: It's noon .... we probably have...I just saw the lunch person arrive...we
probably have about another half hour of capital.., do you want to eat
lunch and finish? It's very much up to you. We're good until around
three o'clock. It depends upon how long you want to stay.
Bailey: Can we try to finish capital?
Atkins: You want to try to wrap it up?
Trueblood: Steve just asked me to give you a couple minute update on the boy's
baseball building and the progress out there. To give you a little refresher,
we the City, were prepared to move forward and undertake the entire
project ourselves. Boy's baseball came to us and said 'We can do this and
we think we would prefer to do it with your help' - on certain things with
the city - 'because it was originally put up by boy's baseball volunteer
efforts and that's the way we'd like to rebuild it'. So at which point my
comment was, 'That's great!" So, they have been working on it, they have
been making progress, unfortunately, I think, it's primarily been one
person that's been from boy's baseball, that's been putting in a lot of hours
out there, either working or keeping an eye on volunteer contractors and
that kind of thing and that is Jim Schintler, who is the President of boy's
baseball. Frankly, if there is one person from there that is out there
keeping their eye on it; I'd prefer it be him. He's had forty years in the
construction business. If you go out there you'll see that walls are up.
They're still shooting to have it open for some time in early May for the
boy's baseball season. We have gone out on a couple of occasions and
helped them out. I was going to say rescued them, but that's a little too
strong of a term. Both Terry Robinson and myself have made it clear to
Jim Schintler that if he needed help to not hesitate to call. So far he's
handling most of it on his own. We have put some money in to it. We
have had our maintenance workers help him out on occasion, but primarily
they're handling it and they're progressing along quite well. I would have
had pictures of it had I known I was going to talk about it. The next
project is the Peninsula Parkland Entry Road and Parking Lot. That's a
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small project...about $70,000 budgeted for this fiscal year FY05. You can
see this picture right here shows the current dirt and gravel road way that's
going back in to there. You know, I took a city vehicle out one day after
rain and went back and forth, I don't know how many times, to create
these ruts to make a better picture for you to see. (Laughter) I had to call
to get towed out. But anyway...it goes on down through there and
actually you can see way down in here where it starts to enter the
park...actually it's beyond the park...this...a certain way down it changes
in to asphalt right here. This is to show you the blind curve that's going
around through there. This is only about ten to twelve feet wide...so part
of the problem is to provide a better surface to get in to the park and part
of it is to eliminate this blind curve where we have to widen it out for
traffic to get in to and out of. I do want to emphasize that this is to...for
improvements for the entire park and not just the dog park that they hope
to have up and running this summer. The roadway, up until you get down
to the asphalt part will be a chip seal surface initially. Part of the reason is
to keep the costs down but part of the reason is, even though it's being put
on the location currently planned for a permanent road to be in, if that
should change, it will be a whole lot easier and cheaper to reroute it at that
time. Where it is asphalt...that will continue to be asphalt. You can see
that Rick included a little picture up here...site of future dog
park.., immediately when you get down to the bottom of the hill.., and this
project also includes a small parking lot that will accommodate about
twenty-five cars or so and that's also a chip seal surface initially. We
figure if that needs expanded or a better surface put on it, then we can do
that at some future year when the whole park development project comes
forth. That's it. Oh, and that's to be done this spring. Anything else?
Champion: How is the dog park funding coming? Do you know?
Trueblood: I've not had any reports from them as to how well it's coming along. I
know they continue to work on it, I know they continue to be optimistic
about it. They may be coming to council at some day in the future as far
as the possibility of attaching a name to it if they get a large contributor.
Vanderhoef: Could we do either park naming or a recognition plaque for either smaller
donations but still substantial?
Trueblood: Right. I think you saw the copy of the letter that Steve had sent them
some time back that basically indicated, correct me if I am wrong, that we
didn't feel a $25,000 contribution would be sufficient to have a park
named after an individual or an organization. Certainly when they came
to the Parks and Recreation Commission we told them one of the things
they might consider is having signage put up that read 'This was
constructed partially through the generosity of whomever' as apposed to
actually naming the park.
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Champion: We're just talking about the dog park here or the whole park?
Trueblood: Just the dog park.
Champion: What does the dog park cost?
Trueblood: There is a range. They can be flexible but right now, with what they've
got right now, they're looking at something in the neighborhood of
$150,000 give or take.
Champion: So, the Scanlon gymnasium. Did the Scanlon's contribute a third of that?
Trueblood: No, the Scanlon Foundation contributed $100,000. The facility itself is
about 1.5 million.
Champion: Tell me that again?
Trueblood: Scanlon contributed $100,000. Total cost was about 1.5 million.
Champion: Oh, so they got a gymnasium named and they didn't. When I see this in
comparison, a $25,000 contribution to a dog park would be a bigger
contribution than the Scanlon Gymnasium.
Vanderhoef: If you went straight out on percent but maybe that isn't the way we want
to go in naming rights.
Champion: I'm just talking about a dog part, not the whole part.
Bailey: It's still a name. I think one percentage gets you long term donor
satisfaction problems.
Lehman: Why don't we deal with that at some other time? We'll call it Rover Park.
Knoche: The next project is the Riverbank Stabilization Project but City Park
and south of the Park Road Bridge on the East riverbank. This is south of
the Park Road Bridge, Dubuque Street is up here on top. We're having
trouble with erosion here so we'll put rip wrap on this. At City Park, it's
kind of unique where the erosion is at because it's on the inside of the
curve of the river rather than on the outside where you'd normally see it.
This is looking south towards the Park Road bridge. You can see there's
some trees that are in that area that in a couple of years won't be there
anymore because the river will take them. It's a joint project with the
Core of Engineers. It falls underneath their Section 14 program. It's a
35%/65% match. The Core is 65% of that match. It's one that we're just
starting to work with them on that.
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Lehman: That's a lot of rip wrap.
Knoche: It is a lot of rip rap.
Lehman: Is there some real engineering issues here or do you just dump the stuff in?
Knoche: They'll do some design on it. It will be cut to a two-to-one slope so there
will be some engineering that will happen and the Core of Engineers will
take care of that.
Davidson: Since we determined that since I have been working with Airport
Commission on their strategic plan that I probably knew about as much
about this project as anyone on our CIP Committee, so I will attempt to
give you as much information as I have about this. I think you are
aware...the principal element....there may be .... is there a better diagram
in your materials? I don't know. I think I can describe it pretty well. I
think you're aware that the adopted airport master plan includes, as one of
its principal (unclear) the extension of the runway which runs
southwest/northeast. When you turn off of Mormon Trek Boulevard on to
Highway One by the McDonalds, you're sighting right down the barrel of
that runway. That's the runway that will be extended. That runway will
be extended to the south and the west and this is being down in
conjunction with reducing the airport from three runways to two and that
is being done at the behest of the Federal Aviation Administration. They
have indicated that they will support, for an airport of this size, two
runways and so a determination has been made, as I think you all know
that the north/south runway will be the one that will go away. There are
some things that they have to accomplish before that can be done. The
Airport Commission is well aware of the issue with Mormon Trek
Boulevard and they do not want to impede that. I can tell you that they
want to cooperate and try to get this all settled as soon as possible. This
particular project is for the site preparation for the runway extension. It
still has to be worked out, is about as much as I can tell you, in terms of
it's going to be a two-year project or a three-year project to do that. The
issue for them is temporary closures that are going to be necessary and if
it's acceptable to have the airport, at times, reduced to one or potentially
zero runways during the construction project. That's really the issue.
They're in the process of working that out and I will tell you that they do
want to cooperate. (Unclear), Hartwig, and myself are going to be at your
January 18 work session and that might be a good opportunity to just
engage him real briefly in some conversation about that. One of the
elements of the strategic plan that we will be presenting that evening is to
complete the master plan and this runway extension. Any questions that I
might be able to answer? Okay.
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Knoche: This is the Sand Road and South Gilbert Street pavement improvements.
This is kind of a neat picture. This is south, out in the county, but you can
see the realignment that's going to go on with the Sand Road south of
Sycamore Street and beyond. This project will take and put a concrete
pavement from where the improvements end north of the Hills Road,
which is 480th Street, all the way up to Napoleon Lane here in Iowa City.
It's about a four million dollar project and the project will be let in two
weeks. In Iowa City, it will be a four lane roadway and will continue with
the four lanes that are there today South to where the McCollister
intersection will be. Then it will be a three-lane cross section south of the
City limits to Sycamore Street. Both of those will be urban cross sections
with the curb and gutter and storm sewer. South of Sycamore Street it will
be a rural cross section with side shoulders for bicycles. The project will
be phased. It will begin this spring. The road will be closed from
Napoleon Lane and South to the City limits in the first phase. Then it will
be closed from the City limits south of Sycamore Street in the second
phase. Now, with S&G Materials not using the sand pit any more that
may be changed where they could actually close the whole piece from
Napoleon Lane south to Sycamore Street to speed up construction of the
project.
Vanderhoef: You said a four million dollar project and I only see one GO Debt in there
and no road use tax monies.
Knoche: Our portion of it is the $800,000 that you see there.
Vanderhoef: The rest of it is County.
Knoche: Yes, correct.
Elliott: You said broad shoulders for bicycles, will those be paved?
Knoche: Yes.
Atkins: Sand Lake Recreation Area. I think you all know where it is. That's
sort of the name we have sort of hung on to. It's not official by any
means. We talked about this about a year ago. It appeared to be a
resource that its future was very limited. Because of the way it is, it might
make a very interesting Water Recreational Area and particularly some of
the properties surrounding it. Was it about two to three months ago, Rick,
we did an environmental assessment where we hired a firm to review it
and things came back in pretty good shape. There are some things we
have to deal with, but I can't say that any major environmental issues stare
us in the face.
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Lehman: Are we looking at lakes on both sides of Sand Road or just on the west
side?
Atkins: Just the one side.
Elliott: East or west?
Atkins: West, the largest of the two.
Elliott: The one on the east side?
Atkins: No, I haven't expressed interest in it. I don't think, Rick...the East side is
being filled in, according to Ron. Anyway, we need to begin ratchet this
project up, if it's something we're going to plan on doing. There are a
couple of things that I'd like to suggest. The monies that are shown there
could be applied to acquisition, but it is substantially a place holder for us.
I would like to initiate some more formal planning process, in particular, if
you're so inclined to have you refer it to the Parks and Recreation
Commission, see what their interest is, what kind of uses they might like,
how they envision it. That would allow them to set some goals. I think
there are some citizen groups in the area that might also have some
interest in seeing how this might all come together. If those things are
favorable then we can begin planning the infrastructure. There are other
issues such as extending a bike trail down to it and that would be the Iowa
River Corridor and the Willow Creek Trail Systems. We would also
likely want to entertain more formal negotiations with the Barkers. The
Barkers are the ownership, which would require appraisals and a number
of other issues.
Elliott: Could this be Barker Park? Would he like to do that?
Vanderhoef: That sounds like a dog park.
Atkins: Very good. That would require me to comment on the ownership and I
just doubt very much whether that's an issue.
Elliott: Will this have any connection or relation to...you know Casey Cook has
been working on that big pond.
Atkins: Casey has that one up north and clearly everything can be tied together.
This kind of leap frogs that. This is newer...the other one has a lot more
history. I didn't bring that with me. You're right, Casey and his folks
have done some work on that one. So, my question to you will be, when it
comes time to consider your capital plan, do we give the okey-dokey and
proceed with this thing?
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Vanderhoef: The only thing that isn't in the capital plan that I still would like to see
forwarded, as a project in conjunction with the Mormon Trek/McCollister
thing is the completion of the River Trail down to McCollister.
Atkins: I don't have a problem with that. That's likely going to happen. That
makes sense. While we are there, that's what we should be doing.
Vanderhoef: So, which project you connect it to, I just don't want that missing link,
shall we call it?
Atkins: I'm fine with that.
Elliott: If the bicycle trail could be any part of tourism, having this as part of the
bicycle trail would be a major attraction then for people who might come
here to ride a bicycle.
Atkins: It will be an attractive bike route around a lake.
Vanderhoef: And see, Willow Creek will come across on the new bridge.
Davidson: What we hope to do as a temporary measure is where Willow Creek Trail
terminates right now, around where Iowa City Coach Company is down
there is to bring it kind of up to the new part of Mormon Trek that Ron
told you about, the piece that has been built, and temporarily the eight foot
sidewalk will serve as the trail getting down across the river. Eventually it
would be nice to take it around the airport property along Willow Creek,
but in the mean time, this will serve.
Vanderhoef: This could do it and having that link to the River Trail... so there's two
crossings to the River Trail.
Atkins: Referring this to the commission and with you all, we just need some
visioning on how you...you know...I envision this to be water but more
passive. No power boats, sail boats, paddle boats, maybe some
swimming. That's sort of how I envision the thing. If you want to make a
tourist attraction then I think you run the risk of bait shops and things like
that.
Elliott: I think of that as a tourist attraction.
Davidson: Scott Boulevard/Court Street Intersection. We've had a lot of
comments from the neighborhood over the past couple of years. The
residents of this - I shouldn't say the neighborhood - mainly the residents
of this area that go through this intersection. We've been keeping an eye
on it and now meet the signal warrant, both the volume warrant and the
crash warrant, so as you heard me say earlier, when we start achieving the
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crash warrant we like to get to it right away. So we are proposing this for
the upcoming construction season. This project we do have a scheme for
putting in left turn lanes. As part o£this...you'll see it's a little more
expensive but Ron and Anisa have determined that probably within this
cost estimate we can get turn lanes on all the approaches, as well as the
signal, so we would like to do that this summer.
Lehman: Good.
Bailey: And the walk lights? Could we have...
Davidson: Yes, we could have count down walk lights.
Elliott: This will please many people.
Davidson: Yes it will, I have heard from some of them even this week.
Tmeblood: Okay, this brings us to the Soccer Park Improvements. This is the Iowa
City Kickers Soccer Park, just like the sign says. This photograph right
here shows the existing trail that comes in. It enters the soccer complex at
the northeast comer. Where this picture is taken from is on the hillside
just inside the fence of the soccer park. Part of this project...I should start
by saying that our original request for this project was $350,000...what it
shows in the budget is $100,000 for FY06. The $350,000 request included
a system of accessible system of trails or pathways throughout the soccer
complex, basically the trail aspect and extending this on down and then
taking it all the way down through the complex and out over here along
the road that goes in to the sewer plant - I'm sorry, waste water treatment
plant - as well as out the southwest comer, down over in this area. But we
would also like to include some offshoots of that between the fields to
make it more accessible for people with disabilities. That's the major
component of that initial request. The second most major component is to
construct an irrigation pond and a pumping system, which requires a little
explanation. We do have the fields...the fields are all irrigated now. You
may recall that they're irrigated from affluent from the adjacent.
Wilbum: Have you drank any of that water yet?
Tmeblood: No I have not and I won't. Not on purpose anyway.
Wilbum: You can, you know.
Tmeblood: At any rate, that was a great concept and it has worked out very well and
we will continue to use it but there is one problem. It has a high degree of
sodium content in it, which means that we have to counteract that by
frequently putting on a lot of gypsum, so the turf is not growing like it
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should. It doesn't thicken up like it should. You may recall this last
spring and summer when we had a lot of rain...we didn't need to use the
irrigation system very much and it was the best turf that we've ever had.
What this system would do is that we'd construct a pond as an amenity to
the park but then we would pump water out of that pond in order to use it
for the irrigation system but still use the effluent system as a back up. Use
it as much as we could without adversely affecting the turf. A couple of
smaller components were the development of two back-up soccer fields.
That would be in this large open green space down south of the parking lot
right in through there. Now, these would not be intended for every week
or every day use. They would just be used for back ups when we need to
do some work on one of the main fields and we can also schedule them for
practices. Then, the smallest component would be the development of two
practice softball fields, which could also be used for youth baseball. Not
league fields, not regularly scheduled game fields, but just practice fields.
So, anyway...with the $100,000 what we would likely opt for would be to
concentrate on the irrigation system and the pond and with the second
most important component being developing the two back-up soccer
fields. I guess that's it. Any questions?
Knoche: The next project is the South Grand Avenue project. This area here is
where the new parking ramp is being built by the University. We will
improve south Grand in this area and then also add a turn lane out here.
That's what is shown on this map. Basically we'll be adding two lanes to
the roadway. There will be a northbound lane and then the inside lane will
be a left turn lane for access into the parking ramp. Southbound will be
two through lanes. One will turn into a left turn lane for the one way loop
with the other south Grand Project and then a right turn lane on to Melrose
Avenue. This is strictly a University project. We're contributed STP
funds for the project. The University really feels that it's important that
they get this area improved for access to the ramp, but this is one the
major bottle necks we have in our (unclear) system.
Lehman: Will this project be done at the same time that the other one is?
Knoche: To be able to do the configuration of the two left turn lanes out on Melrose
they basically need to be implemented at the same time.
Lehman: So, it's really one project.
Knoche: Sure.
Lehman: But because of who is doing it, you list it as two.
Knoche: The different is the split funding on the one-way loop.
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Elliott: Now this is going to be two-way traffic?
Knoche: Yes, two-way traffic will be maintained up to this point here where the
gate will be for the busses to go down Grand Avenue. Access will still be
there for the Emergency Room and also for access to Rienow and Quad
and Hillcrest parking lots.
Elliott: But that complements the one-way loop.
Knoche: The next project is just a short extension of the South Sycamore Trunk
Sewer. This would be north of the Soutpointe Development. The sewer
will be extended basically along the alignment of where Russell Drive will
be going to the North and will extend over to the Sand Hill Development.
The project is about 500 feet. It's mainly to help recoup some (unclear)
fees that we have with the south Sycamore trunk sewer project.
Fosse: Our next is StormWater Utilities/StormWater Permitting. We've
obtained our permit now from the state for this and it's a five-year permit
that has a number of obligations that ratchet up over the years, so you're
going to be seeing some things there. The most visible for you, probably,
will be some ordinance changes that we will be bringing to you regarding
a list of discharges and also some runoff from construction and
development sites and that will, in turn, have an impact on the
development community. Fortunately, for us here in Iowa City, that
impact will not be quite as big of a shock to the development community
as it will be in some other communities because we already have in place
the grading ordinance and the sensitive areas ordinance, which gets us part
of the way there to what the State is requiring with these. Another thing
that you will see that is quite visible is the public education and outreach
which provides property owners, be it residential or business, with the
tools that they need, the educational tools, so that they can manage their
property to limit the pollutants and m-off from their properties. Not as
high profile but probably more expensive are some of the other things that
will be going on. We will continue with our mapping and that's what you
see going on here. We use global position to map our storm sewer system
out there and we're overlaying that on top of the topographic map, that
you authorized the expense for a couple of years ago, that we have in
place. The permit also requires a maintenance program of our storm
sewers. It includes regular inspections and sediment removal. That will
have some costs associated with it and then also we need to work to
manage all of our facilities in the community, from looking at how we
store materials outside to what sort of application rates for fertilizers that
we put down in our parks. This storm water permit is something that cuts
horizontally throughout our entire organization and it effects most every
division, from Parks to Housing to Public Works. Questions?
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Elliott: What's the location of the photo on our left?
Fosse: I don't know. Brian forwarded it to me. It's got kind of a green hue,
doesn't it? I think that might be algae growth. That's from too many
nutrients in the water there, probably fertilizer.
Champion: When this deed...is this the federal government or the State addressing
these issues? The federal government is addressing waste water but the
State is implementing it? Is that correct?
Fosse: There are federal regulations being administered through the State, but
ultimately implemented at a local level.
Champion: Is the State doing anything about intercultural mn off?.
Fosse: No much at this point.
Vanderhoef: We can just deal with what comes in to our City.
Knoche: This project, with the upgrade of Sycamore Street from Bums Avenue
south to the city limits. This is the Southpointe subdivision here. The
project really is being speeded up by the need due to development that is
going on. The project will be funded not only with GO funds and Road
Use but also with contributions by developers along the corridor. You can
see there is a water main sitting over here. This is the general corridors
development. Southpointe is here. There is the Cross property in between
Southpointe and Hollywood Manor. That area has been sold for
development now. Steve Kohli will be developing that. Probably starting
this summer. So, this project obviously is getting speeded up rather
quickly. The sidewalk that you see along there is a six-foot asphalt
walkway that was put in with the Sycamore Trail project along the
greenway. It's basically to help connect the Southpointe development to
the City.
Vanderhoef: Is this going to be four lanes to connect with what we already have to the
North?
Knoche: I'm not quite certain on that. I kind of envision four lanes down to
Lakeside Drive and then three lanes south of Lakeside. But as we get
further along there and get the planning done, we'll have a better feel of
what the widths will be.
Vanderhoef: Because this too will intersect with McCollister and become...or could
become major arterial and at last we've had good planning along this line
in that we don't have curb cuts for housing and so forth so that it can be
built to arterial standards.
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Knoche: Correct. Along with that planning, an 85-foot right of way has been
maintained through the corridor so that four lanes could go in to this
corridor.
Franklin: This map shows the Targeted Area Housing Rehabilitation districts.
Targeted Area Rehab is something that grew out of our Rehab program
that is funded by federal programs. This is funded by local funds and it's
to address the rehabilitation of house for people who are in the 80% to
110% percent of median income bracket. We have had this program for
three years. In those three years, we have done seventeen projects.
Currently, these are loans that are loaned at a rate that is lower than market
rate typically, but it is whatever our GO bond rate is at the time. We now
have about $1400 coming in each month in terms of loan repayments
which we can then recycle back in to the program.
Lehman: Typically how long will a loan be?
Franklin: The loans are twenty years.
Lehman: Twenty years, similar to real estate loans.
Champion: That's a nice program.
Lehman: At some point, after we get enough of this out there we should be able to
fund the program from receipts.
Franklin: Yes, we should be able to. It's a good way to preserve our housing stock
in a strong tax base.
Davidson: The next two projects are transit projects. The first one that you see
there is for a total of six busses. Four in '06 and two in '07 and you can
see the majority of the funding there is federal. It needs to be lift-
equiptable size busses. The FY '06 busses are pretty well locked in. Iowa
City Transit has to compete on a state-wide basis with the thirty-five other
transit systems in the state, including Coralville and Cambus and it looks
like the four busses in 06 are pretty much secured. The 07 busses are
much more speculative but we're confident about them but we won't
know until next year about those for sure. The cameras then...I believe
you're familiar with that project...twenty-one cameras to put in the busses
for security purposes and also the majority of the funding is federal on
those and those are locked in as well. We have the funding for that in
hand.
Champion: Are the cameras like the video cameras at Quiktrip or something that
rerecord over themselves?
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Davidson: Yes, they do and they do preserve the loop long enough so that if there is
an incident on the bus they can go back to the office and look at it and
they have done that and it's been quite successful.
Fosse: Next is our water distribution building. Our water utility has two basic
components to it. One is producing the product, the water, and the second
is getting it out to the customer. To get it out to the customer, we have
about three hundred miles of water main out in the community and the
folks that take care of the water main are stationed in this building down
here. It's the old bus barn between Gilbert Court and Highland Court,
down there. Over the years, we've had various people interested in
purchasing this property and we're at the point now where we're
considering selling it, getting it back on to tax rolls and moving this
facility. More than likely combining it with the public works facilities.
Vanderhoef: So that million goes into general fund so we could build another public
works building or replacement of the Wilson Building and that kind of
stuff?.
Fosse: If we move out of here, we will need to do something right away because
they've got to have a place to work out of and store materials so that
million dollars, plus the sale of the site, would more than likely be needed
to construct that facility, either free standing by itself or in conjunction
with other public works needs.
Champion: What goes on in this building?
Fosse: This is where the folks that fix the water mains and put in water main
extensions, hydrant flushing, new water meters, all that stuff are stationed
out of here.
Champion: They have a lot of equipment in there.
Fosse: Equipment and materials.
Lehman: But the proceeds from the sale of the property would be required to go into
the Water one?
Champion: We'd need it anyway.
Lehman: No, we can't build a new building, sell this building, and then put the
money into general fund.
Champion: Why?
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Lehman: I don't think you can.
Champion: But we could pay to build the new thing for this then pay ourselves back
with that money.
Fosse: The real benefit is getting this back in to the tax base. Are you ready for
the last slide?
Trueblood: Well, here's a picture that should look familiar to all of you. It's been
around for several years. This one over here. This is, of course, the
Waterworks Work Prairie Park development. We have $200,000
proposed over a two-year period. $100,000 in FY06 and $100,000 in
FY07. The pictures on the slide show that this is the one and only park
shelter currently in this park in an excess of two hundred acres. It's in the
far south end of the park land. So, it's not accessible in the sense that for
people who may want to picnic in it, unless their bringing their picnic
baskets on their bicycles. One of the things that we would like to do is to
build at least one more, if not two, more park shelters in that park and
perhaps supplemented with or maybe if only one shelter, some small rest
stops along the trail. Maybe small shaded areas with a bench where
people can stop for rest, get out of the sun, get out of the rain, whatever
the case may be. This picture fight here is showing the existing canoe
launching area. It's become pretty popular for canoes and kayaks. It's not
intended at all for motorboats at this time. It's located up near the parking
lot at the north end of the park, the park parking lot, if you will. This is
something that we inherited. It was already there when we got the land,
when the City got the land. But, it's in need of upgrades and repairs. This
photo up here is of the large pond on the property and one of the things
you may recall, which was in the original plan, which we would still like
very much to do, is to put in an accessible fishing pier on the pond. This
wooded area...this is showing the wooded area here because another
component of this.., something we'd like to do... is to construct some
nature trails...which have always been part of the trails as well. The
nature trails would be primarily through the woodland areas. Right now,
we're at a point on the large drawing over here; essentially the red line is
what is being worked on, what's being completed right now, plus the
access to the Butler House. Well, that should have been done by now,
right, Ron? But...it should be done by next spring at this point. Just an
aside, while I'm talking about this project, we do have most of the prairie
planting, if not all of it, completed now thanks to the grant we got from the
DNR. We may supplement that some yet if some doesn't come in the way
we hope it does or if we decided to expand it a little bit. Now as the aside,
we are having conversations with the local Hospice organization to create
an area out there .... basically a quiet area...not a large memorial or
anything like that...but kind of a meditation area or something like
that.., probably somewhere on this side of the pond and it would be
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designed as where people could go as a remembrance, maybe even have a
small prairie or wildflower area in the middle of it where people can go
out there and grab a hand full of seeds that we would provide and throw
them out into the area, that kind of thing.
Elliott: Do we work with Hospice on something like this to see if maybe they
have someone who would like to contribute and do it themselves with a
plaque or something like that?
Trueblood: I have a meeting with them later this month as a matter of fact. We do
have a Hospice Memorial Area in Willow Creek Park...memorial partly,
but mostly a recognition area for all the hospice volunteers. They
contributed to that as did private donors as did the City. This one is not
anything that is likely to have any great costs attached to it but I do have a
meeting with those folks later this month for that purpose.
Elliott: I just think that things like that are nice. Not so much from a financial
savings but it involves the community more. Instead of something that the
City does.
Lehman: Where is the shelter located that we have out there now?
Trueblood: See this large wooded area, here? This is the woodland area that you see
from the interstate. Ron can show you.
Lehman: Okay.
Trueblood: Okay, anything else?
Elliott: Chow time?
Vanderhoefi You bet.
Atkins: Soups on. It's really up to you all what we want to do after that. We got
through this just a little bit quicker than I thought we would.
(LUNCH BREAK)
Atkins: That was the conclusion of the capital projects presentation. We think we
spent a lot of time and have a good package with a lot of good projects in
there and hopefully you'll feel the same way. If you'd like to kind of
continue the capital projects while we have all these folks here. Are there
things in the unfunded that you'd like to visit with us about and see what
your thinking is?
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Elliott: Steve, one of the things that I'd like to do is we had something on the
trails on the scheduled capital projects and then unfunded ones at the back.
I don't know, there must have been several things about different trails
here and a different bridge here...I think it would be neat if we could have
some sort of handout, and maybe we already have one already and I've put
it aside, that puts that into perspective. I'm always a little concerned that
we're approving this and then approving that. Are we doing it in the
correct order?
Atkins: I feel pretty confident in saying 'Yes, it is comprehensive', unfortunately,
it comes together piece by piece when development occurs and other
projects. I mean, Meadow Street, there's a chance to get a piece of trail
because we're repairing the bridge, let's go ahead and do it.
Vanderhoef: And that one has been identified for years.
Atkins: Yeah, and it just worked out for us.
Davidson: One other thing, Bob, is that all of the trail projects are consistent with the
JCCOG trails plan. Which means, you are not only consistent with other
Iowa City trails, but you're consistent with Coralville and North Liberty.
It's all one system.
Elliott: So you're right and heard on that all the time.
Atkins: Anything else?
Vanderhoef: I have some things that aren't even on the unfunded list.
Atkins: Well, tell us about them.
Vanderhoef: Well, just to start thinking about because they may jump up at us even
quicker than we might now. I'm talking about bridges and streets and so
forth. A grade separation bridge for First Avenue.
Elliott: I was writing that down as you speak.
Bailey: I have that on the list.
Atkins: We didn't put it in? Let Jeff give you a...it is not in here...but it's been
discussed.
Elliott: Before you start, I've seen times when traffic, South bound traffic was
backed up past Muscatine.
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Davidson: Yes, we're doing a study right now. NNW is working with us. We're
looking at grade separation at First Avenue for exactly the reasons that
everybody knows. It appears, I don't have a lot of empirical data, but it
appears to be getting worse. The blockages appear to be more frequent
and of longer duration. We're looking at and evaluating both the road
over the top of the roadway...and it looks much more likely like we would
go under the railroad tracks with the road. We should have a project for
you in the next couple, two to three months. As you might imagine, it's a
very expensive project. It's probably in the magnitude of three to four
million dollars but I think we have the opportunity to get some clean air
mitigation fund money that we used for the railroad interchange
relocation, because it obviously stands to improve or reduce emissions
significantly in having a grade separation. We should know more
specifically in the next couple of months but we are pursuing that. I
thought that was in here already.
Vanderhoef: To go along with that while you're there -
Bailey: I have a question about that, ifI may? How long of a time-line would that
end up being? I mean, how long does it take to do a grade separation?
Davidson: Ron, do you recall? It was something that could be done under traffic. It
could remain open. Was it like eighteen months? Okay, so one
construction season, so not eighteen months, but it will take longer to do it
under traffic, but with fifteen thousand vehicles per day through there it's
something we'd probably want to do under traffic.
Elliott: I have a question. Growing up in Chicago and we had viaducts...every
time it rained it flooded. Is that one of the things...
Davidson: The storm water is something they will be taking a look at because
certainly the road would be sub terrain, or lower elevation than it is now,
so that's one of the things...Ron may know more.
Knoche: If you basically started...what is the intersection there by Southeast...if
you start at Bradford and you take it right through Mall Drive you can take
a continually slope and not have a dip at all in profile.
Davidson: There is a little bit...the high point is the railroad tracks, I believe, so you
actually go up from Bradford. So, if you start at Bradford...
Knoche: You would raise the railroad tracks by about a foot and you lower the road
enough so that you have sixteen foot of clearance.
Davidson: The railroad is cooperating. They like the idea of a grade separation there.
I doubt very much that we would see a dollar from them. (Laughter)
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Well, that was the experience that Coralville had with the new bridge in
Coralville. They cooperated but they didn't put any money towards it.
Bailey: Are we going to add this to the list? I don't think we're going to lose track
of it but...
Vanderhoef: Well, they'd have one less crossing that they'd have to constantly repair.
We should ask Dee Norton here to give us an update on repairs, but so be
it.
Davidson: I just don't think they have any money to put towards it.
Vanderhoefi To go along with this project, Mall Drive. My experience, recently, like
you were talking about, middle of the day...Mall Drive, sometimes you
can sit through three lights. Part of that...that I think I has happened...
Davidson: Are we at First Avenue or Lower Muscatine? Which signal are you at?
Vanderhoef: First Avenue and Mall Drive. There's that connection in there where you
not only have industry but we have two child-care centers and we are
putting a new school in there's some talk, but it hasn't materialized yet,
that Kirkwood, from their back parking lot behind the school, are trying to
get an easement to come through the Oral B property to dump out on to
that area. What I think has increased the change right now has been the
change down at Sycamore Mall in that they only have one entrance and
exit on the North side of the parking area. So, more people are turning off
and using Mall Drive to go straight into Sycamore Mall rather than go
down First Avenue and catch the other entrance where they avoided a
light.
Davidson: Yes, we have a couple of things there. We've looked at that signal a
couple of times. Mike had some questions about that about a year ago and
we did a study there. The situation with that signal... I mean, we can
obviously manipulate that signal and add more green time to Mall. If you
do that, you take away more green time from First Avenue. The way
we're set up there right now is we are prioritizing First Avenue. First
Avenue is arterial and Mall is a collector. The delays to the vehicles on
Mall Drive represent three to five percent of the total traffic through the
intersection. It's similar to...we get requests for Bradford and First
Avenue to add more green time to Bradford, but I have to try and explain
to those folks 'We know that you have more delay than the people on First
Avenue, unfortunately we're trying to prioritize traffic movements on First
Avenue.
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Vanderhoef: Okay, but what I envision is...in using that...I think we need two left tums
coming off of Mall Drive on to First Avenue and that would actually then
be involved in the grade separation.
Davidson: That would be a good thing to look at. The one thing we'd have to keep in
mind there, Dee, is that the one lane terminates as soon as you make that
turn to North bound.
Vanderhoef: That's why I'm saying you need to look at it in terms of the cost.
Davidson: We have a similar situation at Scott Boulevard and Dodge Street, which
people are finally getting used to, that if you want to continue on Scott
Boulevard you need to be in the one lane and not the Dubuque Road lane.
It's certainly a good opportunity to look at it while were doing the grade
separation project.
Vanderhoef: That's what I have on roads but I have some others if anyone else wants a
turn.
Atkins: Why don't you .... if there are some capital projects that you're interested
in...we may have already done some work on them. Why not toss them
out. We'll record these and find some way to summarize these for you
and bring them back to you so you'll have another crack at them.
O'Donnell: You know we've spoken before about giving people, on the South side of
the highway from Sycamore down, giving them a way to cross the
highway. There's still walkers, kids going to SouthEast Junior High and
into Mark Twain and that's a very difficult and dangerous road.
Champion: Can I just say something about that? I mean we all agree that something
has to be done. I mean, I will publicly reluctantly support doing
something at the intersection...which will be very painful for me... but I
don't think there is any support for doing anything else along Gilbert, is
there? I mean, I do we even want to discuss it? Does anybody support
widening all of Gilbert?
Lehman: I think that what Jeff...
Champion: I know you do.
Lehman: I think that was Jeff was saying is that when we get the intersection it will
probably take a very short time to look at what has already been done. I
happen to agree with you. We've done a great job by taking care of
Kirkwood and there may be a little bottleneck here or there but the
disruption of businesses and whatever north of there seems to me to be not
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worth it. But we can certainly look at it at the same time that we look at
the intersection.
Atkins: What else?
Vanderhoef: Anybody else besides me? I was thinking about what we have done at
Grant Wood...and...I'm thinking about the west side of Iowa City for
recreation purposes and gym space is usually the first thing that comes up.
The new National Guard Armory that is being built out on Melrose west
of 218 South. In other parts of the State, they have collaborated with cities
to use gym space and lots of other things. But in gym space I think this is
something that we ought to at least work on and talk about. If we can
collaborate with them, somehow or another, and be able to use some gym
space at certain times. If the times that they need it and the times we need
it don't work then maybe it isn't the right project but I think we need to
explore it.
Elliott: That's west of 2187
Lehman: Right across from the old county home.
Champion: It's too far out.
Bailey: Do we have any school options on that side that would be...
Atkins: School options?
Vanderhoef: Wickham is the closest one and it's in Coralville.
Elliott: No, West High.
Lehman: Weber.
Champion: Weber is the closest one.
~Vilburn: They do some youth partnerships in terms of sharing space and facilities.
I know, for example, even with the some of the club girls softball stuff and
boys softball stuff, West High has a lot of...in fact, there have been some
private donors that have donated or built some facilities stuff that they do
indoor softball hitting over there year round for even the club and ten-to-
fourteen year-old girls.
Elliott: West High does this? Yeah.
Champion: The grades schools are very cooperative about sharing their facilities when
they're not being used for school purposes.
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Vanderhoefi Do we have any recreation things going on at Weber?
Trueblood: We don't have anything on a regular basis going on at Weber.
Occasionally we might use it for, I think, special populations program or
something of that nature. But we don't have anything specific. They run
their own before and after school program or their PTA does. I'm not sure
what.
Vanderhoef: I'm not sure of the size of the gym. Is it big enough for adult volleyball
or...
Trueblood: It would be big enough for adult volleyball. It wouldn't be big enough for
adult basketball. It's more of a multi-purposes room type facility with a
tile floor.
Vanderhoefi So it's not a soccer place and it's not a basketball place.
Trueblood: It could serve for youth basketball, certainly, but not for adult basketball.
Wilburn: I think it would be important to check out or keep your feelers out with the
school, you know, in terms of what is going on. I remember a big thing
over with Weber...I helped them with a little action plan a few years
back...their big thing was the child care and after school stuff and they
eventually worked something out with, I think, with the PTA doing
something. But that was the big need about three to four years ago that
they were crying out for out there. They may have even worked
something out with that church over there, I'm not sure. I know that was
one of the ideas that they had talked about.
Elliott: Well, one of the things that the people here wanted, just during the past
year, was this indoor soccer facility. So, at least that would be a
possibility. I don't know how big the armory is going to be out there.
Vanderhoef: Well, you know, we are putting $400,000 into the Grant Wood to create
additional space so that we have a potential and I guess what I'm saying
is, it doesn't hurt to ask some questions and find out what is or isn't
available and then we can talk about it.
Atkins: There's really two issues here. One is that a discussion of the west side
and in particular the recreation needs and secondly is the guard and the
construction of their facility. Anything worthwhile considering that we
might be able to address some of these.
Vanderhoef: Well, they have done them in quite a few places...that's why.
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Atkins: Dale, remember when you...where was that at? Estherville? It was
Estherville.
Vanderhoef: There's a huge one up there. Oh yeah.
Helling: What I found out then was that the National Guard typically...when they
build a facility, they call a drill floor and it's not necessarily a...in fact, it
probably isn't anything that's like a basketball court. I think with
Estherville they coordinated on that and actually agreed to build into that a
hard surface floor for basketball. They also put in some bleachers and
then the City of Estherville shared the cost of that and they also did
something with parking...but we'd have to coordinate with them and it's
not likely that they're going to build something that is gym floor quality
just for a drill floor so it would mean some collaborating with them on that
and probably some expense to the City in terms of those improvements to
make it the kind of facility that we would want.
Elliott.' Here again, the soccer club, I think, indicated it had some money to put
into a project like that.
Trueblood: Well, two things, quickly. We do use West High to supplement our adult
volleyball program so we do use some facilities on the West end. With
the soccer folks you have to know if they're talking about an indoor soccer
field or an indoor space about the size of a gym that they can use for
micro-soccer because there is a huge difference. We had suggested that
the three major soccer groups in Iowa City, that would be the Alliance and
the Iowa Soccer Club - those are the two competitive organizations - and
the Kickers collaborate to start talking about indoor soccer and see what
they want and see if some sort of a joint effort could be made. Somebody
had indicated that they were going to take charge of that and that
somebody wasn't me or anyone from my staff. That was somebody from
one of the soccer organizations and that's the last we've heard. So, I
frankly don't know if they're meeting or not, I don't think they are.
Elliott: I just like collaborative efforts and I thought if the National Guard, if the
City, and soccer groups could work collaborative on something like that it
could be beneficial.
O'Donnell: I can't imagine in time, the National Guard with security problems and
just the location of that alone...
Champion: So far out.
O'Donnell: So far out and highly unlikely.
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Champion: But they do use the facility here. I mean youth groups have used it and
that criminal justice youth reform program was held at the National Guard.
O'Donnell: Have they done that since 9/117
Elliott: I think the distance out is not anything because they drive to North Liberty
now but the security aspect that Mike brought up, I think, is something
that might be prohibitive.
Trueblood: Since 9/11, that might be an issue. Prior to that the youth soccer used to
play at the old armory on a regular basis and had a few injuries but nobody
lost their life.
Vanderhoef: Well, I guess that's another question to ask. When we go to them.
Bailey: On project number 90, have talked to Riverside Theatre about the Festival
Stage Improvements and what would be their role in that?
Atkins: The Festival Stage Improvements have been discussed. The restrooms are
open air.
Trueblood: Yes, we have talked to them. As a matter of fact, this is their suggestion.
Bailey: And did they bring their checkbook?
Trueblood: No they did not. Well, they might have had it but they didn't open it up.
Bailey: Because providing facilities certainly has to cost them something for their
Festival and I just wonder if over a period of time this might not be a...if
there were some collaborative opportunities.
Trueblood: If we were to ever get this placed on the schedule for actual funding I
think we would want to talk to them and see what they could do to assist.
It's an organization without a whole lot of money.
Champion: And you're talking about restrooms?
Bailey: Yeah.
Champion: They're not that bad.
Bailey: We don't want port-o-potties.
Champion: You can walk to the bathrooms by the parking lot.
Vanderhoef: There's not a sidewalk.
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Bailey: Maybe we should get a sidewalk or trail lighting then?
Vanderhoef: That's all part of that project.
Atkins: Terry, don't you have an annual appropriation for certain sidewalk and
general improvements in the park?
Trueblood: We have an annual appropriation for almual park maintenance and we use
that for a variety of maintenance things and we use that for a variety of
things. It could be sidewalks. Last year a lot of it was used in parking
lots. It can even be used in playground equipment or basically anything
that is needed within the parks or adjacent to the parks. We had several
parking lots improved last year and we have some scheduled for the
upcoming year. I didn't hear the specific question as far as sidewalks.
Atkins: Sidewalks from the Festival stage.
Champion: But you have to go clear around the pond to get to that restroom anyway.
Trueblood: What we typically we do is if there is a project of sufficient size, whatever
that definition is, to try to get it as separate project rather than
incorporating it into that annual maintenance funding.
Elliott: While we're talking about... I'll just ask Terry what the name of the golf
course is out Scott and Muscatine. If it goes away, what reprecutions does
that have to the city?
Trueblood: I'm sure we'd have to build a municipal golf course then.
Vanderhoef: Over somebody's dead body, I know.
Trueblood: Probably mine.
Elliott: That is privately owned, correct?
Atkins: Hi Point?
Elliott: Fairview.
Atkins: I'm surprised I know that much.
Trueblood: You didn't. (Laughter)
Lehman: That was good. That was really good.
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Atkins: Let's go to streets and bridges.
Vanderhoef: I have one more for parks. We touched on it a little bit this morning, but
as I went through capital improvement projects, I singled out about five or
six projects that were smaller in scope and very defined and this particular
shelter and restrooms was one of them. The skate park shelter restroom
area, the trail around...to be newly named, I think, the Old Sand Lake
Trail, around that that is the loop there by Hills Bank, the internal trail that
Terry was talking about through the soccer park. Those are projects that !
see that our community would like to have. We aren't going to be able to
do them in the near future, some of those, but yet they're a doable kind of
a project for a group that wanted to take up the flag and say 'We want to
do this.' It could be an industry, it could be two industries, it could be
three or four major donors, it could be the Optimist Club... we already
have the Optimist Club recognized for a park - the play park down on the
Pedestrian Mall...we have the Kiwanis Park, that was donated, a lot of it,
but we cooperated with them. There are possibilities where we can either
do naming rights or certainly recognition plaques and I'd just like to have
a little list of these available that when somebody comes in or someone is
looking for a project for their service club, that they could come in and
talk to Terry or talk to Steve and say, 'What does the City want, what does
the City need, and what kind of dollars does it take to do that kind of
project?' Because I think we could get some of them done and I think we
have a lot of generous groups in this area that might do that.
Elliott: Good idea. I like that.
Champion: I'm sure they'd like to have their names on restrooms.
Vanderhoef: The shelters.
Champion: The Optimist Restrooms.
Elliott: My brother and father have their name on them. My brother and father
did. They're both John Elliott.
Atkins: I was thinking of Catherine's Commode. (Laughter) We'll get started and
we won't be able to stop.
Champion: It's time to go home.
Atkins: I think it's an idea that we can pursue. Just a list of smaller projects.
Bailey: I think it's very...because those dollar amounts aren't that great. They're
very feasible.
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Atkins: We'll get a list of those kind of projects -
Champion: And send them to all the clubs.
Vanderhoef: Alright. I like that.
Bailey: Put it in the paper.
O'Donnell: I think that's a better idea than waiting for somebody to come in and say,
'Hey, can I spend a lot of money?'
Vanderhoef: Uh-hum. We're marketing our community and these are ways you can
help us.
Champion: I think it's a great idea.
Lehman: Ernie, you get the same kind of calls. I mean the Kiwanis, 'I'11 do this, I'll
do that,' and it would be nice to give them a 'By the way, here's one of
our fundraising projects.' I would...and I didn't share this with Terry
yet...and we're going to do about ten shelters this year, but I think we may
want to consider putting one or two every year. Ten is a lot to do. Each
year we'll know that one is going to get replaced or rebuilt or whatever.
Bailey: Where are with the concept of incorporating public art in to some of those
shelters?
Trueblood: We're still fighting it tooth and nail.
Bailey: Another public art critic, huh?
Trueblood: What is it that you said, Emie?
Wilburn: It's about blowing Marian's ears out.
Lehman: I apologize Marian.
Trueblood: I may be reading something in to this, but I don't think Ernie likes that
idea. We are still looking at that. We don't have anything definite at this
point. Kahn and I have had some conversations about it, but nothing in
any detail yet. But we're not going to lose track of that particular idea.
Bailey: Like with the North Market Square shelter, for example, that could be a
pin-grant opportunity or a neighborhood partnership I could see or...I
mean some of them have those kind of once again collaborative
opportunities.
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Vanderhoef: I like that, you know. Take it to neighborhood council.
Trueblood: You mean the overall concept, yeah.
Elliott: Steve, you've talked about the alleys downtown. I think the whole
downtown...if it isn't going to get done by anyone else, I think the City
needs to take a leadership in, not just alleys, but making the downtown
clean.
Atkins: Well, we have a full-time crew.
Elliott: I don't know. I've talked to so many people who go down for brunch on
Sunday morning...
Champion: Sunday morning is bad.
Atkins: Sunday morning is bad.
Bailey: It's disgusting.
Elliott: That's when you have people who are staying...who come to town for a
football game and then go downtown on Sunday morning and there's...if
it's not a black eye it's certainly not a clear eye.
Atkins: Sunday morning is a bear. I don't think there is any doubt about it.
Vanderhoef: The (unclear) was one of the things that they had talked about doing
because the only place that the City is responsible is the Pedestrian Mall.
Lehman: This is on our pending list.
Atkins: A couple of you have already bumped me. As soon as we can get to the
general direction of the budget, I think we just need...that's a topic, here's
four to five options and how to take them on, sort them on, decide on a
policy and press ahead.
Elliott: ! will say that I think it's unfortunate that the City has to be taking a
leadership. I wish the people downtown would do it.
Champion: The people who are creating the dirt aren't the ones who are interested in
cleaning it up.
Bailey: I think we should talk to the alcohol board too. ! think that this is
something that they could work on as well.
Champion: That's a good idea.
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Bailey: Show some leadership in the downtown and this is a wonderful
opportunity for them to step up.
Vanderhoef: And they hire a weekend...Friday morning and Saturday morning and
Sunday morning to sweep the streets and clean up in front of all the whole
block instead of...
Champion: If they'd clean up in front of their own businesses I'd be happy.
Vanderhoef: But Sunday morning the other retail places don't open until noon and so if
they even have an employee.
Atkins: We have trouble getting them to shovel their walks in front of their own
store. I mean, it's to their advantage to clear the walk in front of your own
store.
Champion: I'll just tell Bob, because he wasn't here when I...I used to be the biggest
bitch about...
Elliott: I beg your pardon.
Champion: About litter down town until I went to the convention with Dee in...where
did we go?
Vanderhoef: Sioux City.
Champion: Sioux City, and the streets are spotless. There's not a cigarette butt,
there's not a piece of paper. It is so clean you can't believe it. ! took a
walk, a two-hour walk, and I never saw a soul or a car. (Laughter)
Elliott: That's why it's clean.
Champion: So then I decided there was nothing so bad about litter.
Lehman: I was just going to...
Bailey: That's the way I want the downtown cleaned.
Champion: And I've not griped about it since.
Vanderhoef: I was out on two different tours of Indianapolis in December and you have
never seen a cleaner city. One of them I did the whole trail system, which
they have something like eight-hundred miles of trail in that city - it's just
astronomical - and every one of them is clean.
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Champion: I think when you deal with any city of any size they keep anywhere
tourists are going to be spotless. I mean, look at Chicago. You get three
blocks away from the where the tourists are and it's filthy. I think that's
part of the city's philosophy.
Elliott: Michigan Avenue looks nice...
Vanderhoef: But this was out in the neighborhoods on these trails. It was really clean
and people were commenting. :.
Champion: I think our trails and our neighborhoods are pretty clean.
Vanderhoef: I don't know.
Champion: Take a walk there.
Vanderhoef: I haven't heard complaints.
Lehman: I have a question that is not related to capital improvement projects or
trash. I need a little bit more...I need more thinking on this taking
$500,000 out of the road use fund and applying that to employee benefits.
This really concerns me and I need to know the rationale behind it. You
know, if the state cut us back $500,000 on the roll-back, you'd be the first
ones screaming. But you're doing the same thing by taking it out of road
use fund when you have the ability to collect it on employee benefits levy.
So explain to me what...where are we on this?
Atkins: Employee benefits has a levy that is growing at a rate that I felt, and you
felt, was unacceptable. This year was the last year of payment from the
Public Safety Reserve. Remember, ten years ago...and we've used that
wisely over those ten years. So, my read was that I need to make sure,
since I'm going to have to pay these bills, let's not have the tax policy so
spike that it becomes...that it could effect something else somewhere in
the budget. We have a group of Streets employees. They are eligible to
be paid by Road Use Tax. We had paid their basic wages from the Road
Use Tax Fund. We had charged their employee benefits against the
employee benefit levy because it was unrestricted...the cap was
unrestricted. We reached a position that the Road Use Tax Fund is
healthy, we're funding all of our capital projects, we're maintaining the
million-dollar balance - which is something we wanted to do - we were
beginning to bump up the levy, with respect to employee benefits at a rate
that I thought was unacceptable. This was an alternative and I chose that
alternative. Now, you could, if you wish to say 'I want those monies to be
in capital projects or whatever,' then we just have to adjust the employee
benefits line. And you could do it next year.
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Lehman: Well, I guess...if we started that, obviously that's an ongoing thing. It
wouldn't have to be but realistically if we start doing that, we'll do that
every year. If we have some sort of significant reduction in Road Use
Funds, I'm not sure it's a good idea to use that. We all share the same
concern, when it comes to taxing for employee benefits, because they're
really getting out of line. I mean, it is huge. It's almost half of our total
taxing. Now this, I think Kevin said, was twenty-five cents or twenty-five
dollars a year for $100,000 house. I don't know. I have to think about it.
Champion: The other thing is...that maybe we should levy it so that the taxpayers
know what it's costing and the legislature might look at this and put some
kind of cap on it. I think there are two sides to that. Do we hide the cost
of this and what a great expense it is? I mean it's pretty incredible to me
that we can tax that unlimited for all benefits.
Elliott: All I know is that the taxes are going up.
Champion: They are going up.
Atkins: Remember, much of what is in the employee benefits - and the State does
this - is beyond your control.
Champion: I know.
Atkins: They send us a bill for pensions. 'Here's your bill. Pay it.'
Lehman: Our employee benefits levy. What departments...do we have other
departments...for example, sewer and water employees. Are their benefits
taken out of the fees that we charge for sewer and water?
Aktins: Yes.
Lehman: They are? So they are charged against the enterprise fund?
Atkins: Yes.
Champion: It's even worse that I thought.
Atkins: The police and fire pension costs just took off.
Lehman: That's the big one.
Vanderhoef: It went from fifteen to twenty eight percent.
Atkins: Just...offthe chart. It went 100% in five years. The employee does not
pay any more. That's also somewhat of a area...because your AFSCME
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group, and all other folks that pay into IPERS, don't pay into the police
and fire. We all continue to pay. Our share...I mean as a percentage we
pay more each year. Police and fire do not. But what happens is that
when its flush and the stock market was great being granted benefits and it
comes home roost later on. What went up must come down. The thing
that I found disturbing was the 7.5% return on what should be very, very
safe investments, pension monies. I mean, you're not out buying
apartment buildings. I mean, you're doing some basic utility stocks.
Champion: Yeah, you don't play with it.
Atkins: And it went down to the point where we have to increase the contributions
by the cities...this comes offa little harsh but 'Your bad management, I'm
paying for.' That doesn't seem right. And you can pick a number and
next year...'Oh, and by the way, next year we're going to do a ten percent
increase'...'Oh, and we didn't make it so here's another bill.' Ernie, I
understand your point. And it can, for example, if there was some
extraordinary that you're willing to take the hit on the tax because you
want those monies for an unusual capital project, that's okay. You can do
that. You can do that. You make that choice. My choice this year was
because of the whole package of where we were.
Champion: And this is not the only group we're doing that with. If we're doing it
with water and sewer...
Lehman: Okay, water and sewer...okay, the enterprise funds...
Champion: What about landfill?
Atkins: Yep.
Lehman: Okay. But this would be the use...the only non-enterprise fund that we
would be funding?
Atkins: Remember, your enterprise funds are enterprise funds are enterprise funds
because you want them to be. That's your choice.
Lehman: No, I understand that.
Atkins: Road Use Tax is State law.
Champion: What about parking people?
Atkins: Same thing. Those are because you want them to be.
Ellliott: So this really puts those people in line with all the other...
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Atkins: Yes it does. Substantially it does, Bob. You're right.
Vanderhoef: So tell me, are we unique with this in the City of Iowa City or what is the
standard practice throughout the State?
Atkins: I don't know. We could call around but I...I'm disappointed that we
didn't think of it earlier.
Mansfield: The State law is that the employee benefits administrative rules say that
you can use the employee benefits funds to pay for your general fund
employee benefits and employees that are paid by the Road Use Tax Fund.
Period. So it doesn't .... employee benefits fund can't cover any enterprise
fund employees.
Lehman: So that isn't by choice, that's by law.
Mansfield: It's by law, but we have the choice between General Fund and Road Use
Tax Fund.
Atkins: But we also could say, all of a sudden, there's no more Water Fund.
We're just going to recede everything into the General Fund.
Champion: But doesn't it just amaze you that that levy is that huge then. I mean that's
even worse.
Vanderhoef: It was a half million dollars, is that right?
Lehman: Well, it is for the Road Use Fund but the tax -
Vanderhoef: That we were going to swing over at this time?
Atkins: I'm just trying to think...we have eleven snow routes, we have two people
per route, that's twenty two people plus some back up...we have about
twenty five to twenty eight people in Streets. If they all have family plans
for health insurance...that's almost $300,000 right there.
Vanderhoef: I'd like to know, I guess, some of the other cities and what they're doing
because what you see in the paper always is comparison of Iowa City's tax
rates with someone else's tax rates and you don't know what's in that tax
rate.
Atkins: We can do...in fact it's very simple for us to do a chart for you. But, I
will remind people when they look at their property tax rate here and look
at it somewhere else...and the first thing I normally say is, 'You pay a
franchise tax on electric utility to that city, you pay sales tax to that city,
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and you pay another sales tax to that school district. Now those are things
that generate lots of money but those are the hidden taxes.' The property
tax is your bill. That's what it costs for your city services.
Elliott: I think it would be a good idea for public relations purposes but just for
information purposes when somebody wants to know about that we have
the information. Here are some of the things you should know when you
start comparing. Make sure it's oranges to oranges.
Atkins: I'm okay with that, Bob, because that can be prepared easy enough.
Particularly after budgets are due in March. We can call the state and get
those numbers. ! don't think we ought to be smacking around other cities.
Elliott: No, but I think if someone asks, we've got an answer.
Vanderhoef: Revenue from gambling also.
Atkins: Well, Dubuque is one of the better...Mike Van Milligen might. He's the
city manager there. City sales tax, school sales tax, gambling revenue,
franchise tax...boy, you're really good aren't you. Their tax rate is about
11 and ours is 177 But they have all these other income. I mean it's lots
of money.
Wilburn: That indirectly gets said every year or every other year. It's fine to have
that to compare, but every year at budget time the bottom line is that
someone's property tax bill goes up and the City Manager does a gyration
with the press and sales tax and nickel beer tax and cigarette butts tax and
they've got gambling. The bottom line is that it may give you an
explanation to someone but they still won't like that their taxes... I mean,
it's not going to take away their anger. It's fine to do just be realistic
about what it's going to accomplish.
Atkins: Remember that property taxes are still deductible from your federal
income tax.
Elliott: I've heard the complaint and I've never heard this response.
Atkins: I will go to a service club and I will that get question and out comes my
four-to-five minute diatribe and it's usually 'Oh, now I understand.'
Vanderhoef: It's that public education.
Atkins: But when it's all said and done, 'Taxes are still too high.'
Wilburn: Yeah, that's the headline.
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Atkins: There is a bah-humbug about it.
Lehman: I guess for me is $25 per $100,000 worth using up 10% of our Road Use
Tax funds. I don't...I'm not sure I know whether it is or not. Now that's
going to add, you're right, that's going to add on to the tax rates. We have
a projected Road Use Tax of $5,200,000. The employee benefits alone
takes 10% of that. That's a lot. That's a chunk.
Vanderhoef: The total of unfunded projects...I don't even know what that total is...but
Atkins: It' s $153,000,000.
Lehman: Yeah, I was going to two or three hundred million.
Vanderhoef: Just the total within trails and road projects. That half-million dollars...
Lehman: I'm not looking for some place to spend it. That's not my -
Wilbum: I guess I'm looking at it the other way. I'm okay with it because I can say,
'Yeah, your taxes did go up, but we did what we could by using some
other revenue sources to keep it down.'
Elliott: I think you're damned if you do and damned if you're don't. To me,
infrastructure in Iowa City is about as important as anything we have. On
the other hand, you have to do something and to put this in line with all
the other situations...I don't know. Ernie, I agree.
Atkins: We're obtaining an excellent credit rating. A good bit of that is because
we do use a property tax. It's a very steady source of income. When
you're evaluating your credit worthiness, the property tax looks good.
When you evaluate someone who's got sales tax as their primary source of
income, that's more volatile. There's an elasticity in that revenue that
causes .... and if we were .... at my previous managership, it was sales tax
and we had substantial reserves and the reason we did was...we're going
to have a good Christmas...because if you didn't, it would effect the
amount of income.., so you just look at how you manage your
community's money and we take a very conservative approach to
budgeting.
Champion: I was against us using that money, but I think I'm not any more. To keep
people's taxes down, whether it's $100 or $30 or $50...it's...
Atkins: It's not like...I mean, you can make that decision every year. You have
that choice. You can make the decision next year to take the $200,000
from Court Street and lower the tax rate for the transit loan. That's
another way you can...you have flexibility in their to do those things. We
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have such...rarely do we have that kind of flexibility. I think it's a good
decision because all of your existing policies are met. The reserve
position, we're funding projects...now are there capital projects that we're
not doing? I mean, we need to talk about that and you can tell me that.
Lehman: We always the ones that we're not doing, regardless of-
Atkins: And I can go over there and say...
Lehman: Even if we had a sales tax and all of that, we'd still have projects we can't
do.
Atkins: You'd have a lower tax rate but you'd have the same issues.
Elliott: When we're doing with this, I have just a quick question about a personnel
matter when we're done with these capital things.
Atkins: If there are no more questions, we're going to off the capital projects right
now.
Elliott: This, you can just answer for me quickly. The non-contract employee, the
non-union employee, follow the AFSMCE guidelines...
Atkins: Generally speaking, yes.
Elliott: By council resolution, I think that was.
Atkins: No, I don't think so.
Elliott: Anyway, AFCSME says that the wage adjustments are X percent, X
percent, plus any step increases. Are there step increases for the
administrative employees?
Atkins: Yes, they are, but it's a ten-year plan not a four-year plan. Administrative
employees take ten years to reach the top of their pay range.
Elliott: So there are automatic step increases...
Atkins: No, it is not automatic for administrative. Each one every year is subject
to review.
Elliott: But then what are the percentage wage adjustments?
Atkins: Same as AFSCME.
Elliott: This that a cost of living? Is that across the board?
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Atkins: If it's 2.75% applied to the AFSCME...
Elliott: It's 2.65% and then 2.6% -
Atkins: If 2.65% was applied to the base wage this current fiscal year, next year
it's 2.75%, and the next year it's 2.85%. Then, you adopted a pay plan for
AFSCME that does just that. You also adopted an administrative plan that
applies those numbers in the three years, just like AFSCME does.
Elliott: So it raises the entire wage plan?
Atkins: Yes, all wage plans go up. But it takes ten years for an administrative
employee to reach the top of their range, whereas it's.., is it 48 months
now for AFSCME?
Helling: I believe it's four and a half years.
Atkins: Four and a half years.
Elliott: And then what happens when you reach the top?
Atkins: It's capped.
Elliott: That's it, period, that's it. No cost of living, no...
Atkins: That's it.
Elliott: This wage adjustment would lift the whole plan up?
Atkins: The whole plan, which bumps up the top end.
Elliott: But you can not go higher than that.
Vanderhoef: But it gets compounded .... basically...because when the plan gets moved
up, then you add the new percentage.
Atkins: The pay plan is moved up by 2.75% at either end. This person at the top
end gets 2.75%. Somebody at the middle of the range will get a step
increase plus the 2.75%. That's how it works and that's how all of your
bargaining groups work, it's done the same way.
Vanderhoefi So it gets re-adjusted every two to three years, depending upon what the
contract -
Atkins: Yeah. AFSCME signed a three-year agreement.
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Elliott: And then it gets adjusted then each year?
Atkins: You adopt a plan for three years and you're done with that. AFSCME is
three, Fire is two, and we'll do Police this year as they only took one.
Vanderhoef: But each year, it is...so if they start out with 2.6% the first year and
you've got the base number. Then the second year, you still use the same
base number or do you use the...
Atkins: You use a new base number because both ends go up.
Vanderhoefi It goes up each year, so that's what I'm talking about compounding.
Atkins: Let me do this. Not right now, but let me walk you through how that's
done on show and tell and it will be easier.
Elliott: I have some thoughts that I'd like to discuss on that short of thing.
Lehman: If you have entries of 3%, it's 3% of last year's salary not 3% of the salary
you had when you started working.
Elliott: But then whatever increase there is the following year -
Lehman: It's on top of that.
Vanderhoef: So that is compounding. So you can end up higher then...ifyou're at the
top of your pay scale, you can always end up higher than the scale -
Atkins: No, there is always a top. The top may move every year -
Bailey: The top shifts, though.
Atkins: It shifts up, but you can not...if the top is $10,000 and you get a 5% raise
that makes it $10,500 - that person can't be paid $10,600. $10,500 is
tops. It peaks. It takes ten years to get there.
Vanderhoef: I'm comparing one pay plan a year off because there is a top limit of
$40,000 and a salary of $43,000.
Lehman: There's not a top limit of $40,000. The $40,000 is on the base...but the
first year your base is $40,000 and that's the limit. After you get a 3%,
you're going to make a $41,200. That top limit just increased by 3%.
Atkins: I'll draw something up for you. Anything else?
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Bailey: Can we add Project 40 to that project...
Atkins: The discussion list.
Bailey: There is some tree and shrubbery and that certainly is a Project Green
opportunity right there.
Atkins: We did some of that already.
Bailey: I know. But this is the median though, right?
Atkins: Isn't that going to be done with the Dubuque and Foster intersection? I
think we were going to do something with that.
Davidson: There is reconstruction of the median, but it's not as extensive as the
project that we applied for the State Enhancement Funds for.
Atkins: The landscaping component will not be in there?
Davidson: Right.
Bailey: Well, the landscaping component could be in there if someone else paid
for it - I mean if Project Green ventured in.
Elliott: Let's not make it prairie grass.
Bailey: But I love prairie grass.
Vanderhoefi Number 24, the Church Street and Dubuque Street. There's a $300,000 -
Bailey: But we don't want that done.
Atkins: Now I have to tell you something. Dubuque and Church comes up on a
regular basis. I asked the staff, for them to rank for me, no rules. What
are the next ten projects that you'd like to see moved up. That was the
highest priority.
Champion: Do what they did with Kirkwood and Gilbert.
Atkins: What's that.
Davidson: We evaluated split phasing...which is what Connie is talking about. It
introduces so much delay overall to the intersection...it makes the left turn
better but everything else it makes worse. Overall it was (tape ends)
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Champion: The highway does going towards Summit, where you have to be in the
right hand lane if you want to go straight.
Davidson: Once again, we looked at that too. We looked at the capacity in both lanes
and there's just so much through traffic that you can't pile it all in to that
outside lane.
Champion: But you do it on Jefferson.
Lehman: But the outside lane always has the Cambus stopped in there, and you
really have issues there. You don't have any place else.
Atkins: This is a project...let me give you some history. I had been here a month
and Bill Ambrisco was saying 'We've got to get this fixed' and about once
a year, whenever I run into Bill, he talks about it. Dubuque and Church.
Elliott: Is that the stop light?
Bailey: It's going to take a left turn lane.
Vanderhoef: One other new one...and it's the Phase One of the Highway One sidewalk
trail component...well, it's new and...it's number 58...and I want it...but
Phase One of it is the sidewalk basically from Ruppert Road down to
Riverside. That's a dangerous area along there and we now have a huge
housing development at Ruppert Road.
Atkins: We have introduced substantial pedestrian movements in there.
Vanderhoef: Yeah, if we get more activity in the aviation commerce park, there's even
going to be more traffic with sidewalk needs.
Atkins: We'll do work on that.
Champion: I don't want to discuss it today, but I'd kind of like to alert everybody that
I'm really interested in discussing our Human Service Planning and what
we can do with that.
Bailey: What do you have in mind?
Champion: I'd like to redistribute some funds to more of an equalizer, but I think it
would be interesting to look at this concept with Neighborhood Centers
too. I'd just like us to think about using some of that money to maybe
help fund some of the Neighborhood Centers, something at Grant Wood
School when that general room opens. Use our imagination a little bit.
Vanderhoefi More grants, project specific?
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Champion: That would be okay, I just think we should think about how we distribute
this money.
Bailey: I agree.
Champion: Some of these people...the Free Medical Clinic, MECCA, the
Neighborhood Centers, the Shelter House, Crisis Center...those all give
direct aid to people and I think those are important that we fund and then
some of the other money...and I'm not saying that all those agencies
aren't important, don't misunderstand me, but I think I like the direct aid
type thing and if we can do something with Parks and Rec and the
Neighborhood Centers and do some kind of summer programming that
would be educational and physical care...I mean, let's just sort it out. It's
a possibility.
Atkins: Connie, it would be helpful to me if you would...well, we'll get it from
the tape, maybe just jot down some of these ideas because I can bring
quite a bit back to you. A list that says 'Here's the things that I want to
talk about.'
Bailey: Can we commit to spending a little chunk of time to talking about that?
Because I also have some ideas.
Atkins: A little sooner than later.
Vanderhoefi Before we make our recommendations for allocations?
Bailey: Oh yeah. Let's just do it all at once rather than later, why not.
Elliott: Do we want to categorize some of these services and put a priority on the
degree of services that they provide?
Bailey: Are we going to use the United Way categories? Because I have a chart at
home that put them all into those categories.
Vanderhoef: That's the one we typically use and it's in this book. I think you may have
some interest in something that's not on the list. I think we need a work
session to...
Lehman: You got it.
Atkins: I'll go back through this and schedule these things with Ernie.
Champion: Maybe you and I can get together and we can just drop Steve a note with
what we have in mind.
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Atkins: That would be fine. It would just helpful...I can get some staff people to
make some comments on it for me.
Champion: Okay.
Atkins: I'm tired, Ernie.
Lehman: We're done.
Atkins: Monday, 6:30, here. You're scheduled until 7:30 with Boards and
Commission so from 7:30 on, things are open. Maybe we'll be able to
pick off some of these on Monday night.
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