HomeMy WebLinkAbout2000-02-07 Transcriptions February 7, 2000 Council Work Session Page 1
February 7, 2000 Council Work Session 3:30 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Kanner, Pfab, Wilbum
Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Franklin, Walsh, Schoon, O'Neil, O'Malley, Herting,
Mansfield, Trueblood
Tapes: 00-20 Both Sides, 00-21 Side 1
Atkins/I gave you a summary memo outlining what we'd like to do today and before we
leave I'd remind you that you wanted to talk about the schedule for the meeting of
the 14th what time your going to start and I'll bring that up before we get out of
here.
Lehman/Good.
Atkins/OK.
Champion/That's awesome.
Refuse Collection (pg. 90)
Atkins/With that everybody' s all set to go. What I want to talk about is our Refuse
Collection.
O'Donnell/Norton committed us to a certain (can't hear).
Atkins/Page 90 in your budget. There are no substantial changes proposed in this
budget, Council will recall a year ago we lowered the rates, the rates have been
where they are or lower over the last 5 years. I don't expect any substantial
changes in our curbside collection program other than the mixed paper where we
will begin collecting that at the curb. The problem we're having is that we've had
some equipment difficulties. One of the trucks, the trucks we were purchasing
which added the extra bin you recall that we had to do all that business, so we're
not ready to go yet. As soon as we resolve those difficulties we'll be presenting
that to you.
Lehman/Do you have a time flame for that?
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Atkins/Yea, six months ago.
Lehman/Well before that it was a year ago.
Atkins/We're going to do a dispute with the manufacturer yea, so we're hoping folks by
spring time we'll have settled the equipment difficulties.
Champion/I have a quick question.
Atkins/Shoot.
Champion/When we talk about the mixed paper didn't I read somewhere or did it, I
know, don't we get like $36-$37,000 for newspapers? Cash or in pay for the
newspaper.
Atkins/We have a contract with City Carton and basically it is a floating contract that is
the market on used paper changes dramatically.
Champion/Right.
Atkins/And there are times when we have and it's based on the Chicago Market Rate.
We're not a big enough market to support our own and that's where it ends up
getting shipped. That rate moves, there are times when that market is great and
we will actually get money.
Champion/Oh OK.
Atkins/The overwhelming majority of the time.
Champion/We don't.
Atkins/We either break even or have to pay a little bit.
Champion/OK because I was wondering what this mixed paper thing was going to do to
that.
Lehman/Well.
Atkins/Well really the bottom line is that we're attempting to get as much out of the
land fill, preserving the life of the landfill as possible and that' s a legitimate
question Conhie, I don't have that number for you right now.
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Champion/Because I was just concerned that everybody had a decrease use of the
landfill. Where are we going to come up with all this money?
Lehman/When we decided to do the mixed paper, Brad Neumann was here and the
consensus was that the reduction by being able to mix the paper was worth more
than we're getting for the newspaper.
Champion/OK.
Lehman/So we're really better off than we would be if we didn't.
Atkins/And we're going to talk about the land fill budget in a minute anyway and we're
not going to spend a lot of time on it because we have to redo that budget but I'll
give you some of the particularly for some of the new Council Members some of
the things. Again generally speaking our refuse collection budget is I thought you
might find some interesting statistics. That division of our Department of Public
Works makes 1.5 million stops per year. We have over 12,000, remember we
pick up garbage, we pick up recycle materials, and we pick up yard waste. It's a
tough, tough, job. I don't know in the time that I've been here an employee that
has retired from that division. They usually move onto another division, it's
tough, back breaking, back breaking work. If it's OK with you all.
Kanner/Steve.
Atkins/Yes.
Kanner/A couple questions. Does all of our education in refuse go through Brad and
JCCOG's?
Atkins/Generally speaking, ECICOG and JCCOG are the two. Brad is our.
Kanner/How much do we do through them?
Atkins/I can give you a number in a minute on a. And I don't know how to quantify that
for you so I couldn't give you an exact number other than we deliberately hired a
solid waste management planner six or eight years ago if not longer, and that's his
primary responsibility. He administers our landfill grant program, prepares all of
our educational material, Lisa's involved too, she prepares the residential
homeowners packet of information. Brad does all the school contacts, we had a
program I think it was two years ago where we contracted with that person who
did the puppet show for the kids. I mean those are the kinds of things that he
does.
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Landfill (page 91)
Kanner/One of the things I'm interested in is doing more education and seeing if we
can't quantify some of that education and what affect it's having as far as flow to
the landfill for both residential and for business. I think it's real important that
we.
Atkins/The only difficulty is that the overwhelming majority of volumes in the land fill
are substantially beyond our control. Our residential refuse pickup program
where we have very precise numbers is about 10 percent of the volume. The rest
of it is other cities and private contractors and it would just be, I'm not saying it
can't be done, it would just be difficult because you have so many other players
that are not strictly under your control.
Lehman/Well residential does really pretty well, but we have another thing airing the
mix when we have haulers that may be going out of state. Landfill's who don't
care about cardboard and it's really tough to get some of their customers to worry
about it.
Atkins/Well and we're about (can't hear). Yea. And we have lousy law.
Lehman/Oh yea.
Atkins/I mean since the Supreme Court ruled that we can not, we can not really control
the waste stream. That' s why the Illinois landfills are as popular as they are,
they'll take it all because they're very much volume driven and have a different
set of laws than those in Iowa.
O'Donnell/But we are doing something and we're in the process of looking at our Solid
Waste Management Commission, we're (can't hear).
Lehman/And a recycling building.
O'Donnell/Yea, so there's not that things are being done.
Atkins/Yea, it's not that we don't, it's not that we don't.
Champion/We're doing a lot.
Atkins/Yea, I mean the funding is healthy, well I'm going to do landfill in just a minute,
I mean kind of get to that. Is there anything else in residential?
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Kanner/One other thing on here, the yard waste bags going down. Why is that projected,
that's like decreased?
Atkins/I'm assuming Steve that those.
Champion/It was trees (can't hear)
Atkins/Those are projections based upon what experience has shown.
Lehman/There's another big factor you can take your own yard waste out now and dump
it at no charge.
Vanderhoef/That' s right.
Atkins/Yea we did allow that, yea.
Lehman/In the compost pile I think that's probably the biggest reason.
Kanner/That makes sense.
Vanderhoef/Commercial still pays but the money that's (can't hear).
Pfab/When your able to do that does that show any reduction in the other thing? Or does
the truck have to go by anyway?
Atkins/Oh the truck has to go by, oh yea, absolutely.
Lehman/Truck goes by anyway, because your neighbor may need it.
Atkins/I mean your neighbor on either side of you may choose not to recycle but that
truck still has to stop at your house whether they stop at the other's or not. But
our recycling response by the public I think is excellent, we really do very very
well. You see the blue cartons that they have. That was one of our better moves
we chose to get those cartons.
Champion/Well I also think that limiting households to 2 trash cans was the force people
to recycle.
Atkins/Yes.
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Pfab/One other, it's related but not directly. Is anybody hearing what is going on with
the bottle bill in the state?
Atkins/Last I heard the conversation' s I've had at the ground breaking with Joe and there
had been some legislation interviews to change it but right now it doesn't appear
to be going anywhere. It may not change but hopefully it won't get any worse.
Pfab/Yea.
Atkins/Yea, because there are folks initiating it to make it even more restrictive so.
Vanderhoef/And there are folks who want increased recycling, they want the plastic
(can't hear).
Pfab/I would certainly support that, that would be a wonderful thing to (can't hear).
Atkins/Go to turn to page 91. I think most of you are very familiar with the operation of
the landfill, it is something a little unusual in the sense of we have a city that owns
a landfill and then provides that landfill service to the county, usually it's the
other way around. Our history, we moved on our landfill site in 1972 so we've
been there almost 30 years. The current policies were put in place oh 8 or 9 years
ago with modifications along the way. The landfill is made available to all of
Johnson County as well as Kalona, and Riverside and Washington County also
use it. We have a split fee that is, we charge $38.50 per ton, a tipping fee at the
landfill for Iowa City residents, basically what we charge ourselves. And we
charge $43.50 a ton to other users. The reason we did that is that there is a fee
figured into the per ton that is a liability. We assume the liability for all the users
of the landfill. And in doing that we pledge not only a cash and I'll show you that
in a minute, but also our debt, if for some reason there was some sort of a crisis at
the landfill, someone dumps something in there that I mean it could have been one
of our citizens just as easy as someone else, but in order to help offset that we
charge a $5.00 extra fee to those that are not Iowa City residents that use the
landfill.
Pfab/I have a question.
Atkins/Sure.
Pfab/If looking back on 30 years the ways the thing was set up, knowing what you know
now would it have been smart to do anything much different?
Atkins/No not really, I think that landfill, at the time and I wasn't here then I was.
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Pfab/It's easier for you to speak.
Atkins/Right, landfills still remain the most popular form of disposal I think throughout
the United States. The DNR set up a priority order and land fill was not their
highest of priorities but they also recognized the other options were so bad,
incineration. That it appears to be the best they can do. What they've tried to do
deliberately throughout Iowa is the DNR is trying to close down the landfills and
regionalize them. Part of the difficulty the Blue Stem is having right now up in
Cedar Rapids is that they have to justify their landfill. And when there is
available space in other landfills in the area the DNR looks very critically upon
construction of and the placement of land fills. Building a landfill, I've done once
in my career, I never want to do it again, I mean it's, the water plant was a cake
walk, in trying to locate a landfill. Because nobody wants it, I mean virtually no
one wants anything to do with it. The operations of the landfill have changed
dramatically in my career here. We used to pay about $250,000 to build a landfill
cell, I think our last one was a million six to pay for.
Lehman/A million five I thought.
Atkins/OK.
Lehman/Something like that, but the reason is that you have the leachate collection
systems now, the lining systems. There are so many other things, but of course
our volume has dropped dramatically. Six or eight years ago we were doing a
hundred thousand tons, we're now doing about 75. And that's throughout the
whole area, our tonnage as a city has also dropped dramatically. Basically
because of the yard waste and the other programs that we offer.
O'Donnell/Steve how much did we reduce our weight per ton last year?
Champion/Two dollars.
Lehman/No no about ten, a little over ten, yea.
Atkins/It was a about ten dollars a ton I thought we dropped it.
O'Donnell/How much was it (can't hear).
Atkins/I think it's about in the 1-20's maybe 30. I mean it's not substantially less.
O'Donnell/So let's say approximately $10 a ton (can't hear).
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Atkins/Yea and I remember someone one of the haulers telling me when you're into that
$10 dollars a difference, the cost to transport it becomes economically more
feasible. But remember there are things that and I'll show you those in a minute.
I don't want to spend a load of time, I mean I'll give you some history on the
thing, we're going to have to redo this budget anyway, I mean you can adopt it
and move on but we're going to have to come back and redo it particularly if we
have the experience we think we're going to have where the haulers are leaving.
Our charges and if your on page 92 which are also, there' s a solid waste surcharge
and what that is is you'll get a kick out of this. We charge $3.75 a ton for a state
surcharge, the state taxes our garbage. And then we send $2.80 of that we keep
$.95 cents of it and that $.95 we use to support our education, printing, the
furniture project, you may be familiar with that, we can provide moneys for them
as well as ECICOG, JCCOG and Brad's salary. The insurance and closure
reserve is just that. We have an obligation by law you may have seen it in your
packet a few days ago, Kevin sent a memo out remember to the state saying we
pledge that we're. Well he's saying that we have sufficient financial reserves to
close the landfill. And what that means what we pledged is cash and debt. Now
this surtax, this closure fund, the people in Illinois don't have to pay that so that's
how they keep, there's part of the reasons. They also I'm sure don't pay the same
wage rate we pay our employees. I suspect about a third, and then we also have.
Kanner/Steve before we go, what's that worked out for the landfill assurance closure per
ton?
Atkins/Oh it's $5.00 for Iowa City and $10.00 for all others. That's that difference, and
the big thing Steven is that we have guaranteed the liability and we have said our
policy we will be responsible for the liability if somebody should put some really
bad stuff in the landfill. Now again all of our new cells are designed, our biggest
concern is what was put in the landfill back in the 70's. Which generationally
won't show up for some time. Is there, and I don't mean to be an alarmist but is
there a 55 gallon drum of something in there? There could be and we would not
know, we would not know. The special clean up is $1.75 per ton and that's how
we finance our hazardous materials day when people bring their paint. Those
moneys will be diverted to help pay for the operations of our new recycling center
when it's up and running. So that budget folks is going to have to be done over,
we've done some very preliminary estimates and I would as soon not really get
into it until we can, because it could be rather dramatic for us. Anything else
about the landfill?
Kanner/Just to clarify for me.
Atkins/Sure.
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Kanner/The liability that your talking about that we're coveting. Does that show up as
part of the landfill assurance closure reserve or is it somewhere else where we're
holding that money?
Atkins/It's in this closure and assurance reserve that's what we call the number, but also
Steve if it were to exceed that amount of money we would have an obligation to
sell a debt to come up with the difference. The closure is that we have an
obligation from the day we close the landfill we must maintain it for 30 years.
And now remember that landfill will continue to leachate. We have a collection
system, you'll have to pay for the treatment of the leachate you know mow the
grass and do the things that are necessary to keep the landfill, it's not operational
as a landfill anymore but it is part of our landscape and we have to maintain that.
As you see that number just kind of creeps up, it's a lot of money, I mean
considering we have 5 ½ million dollars sitting in that account and it's just
basically just to protect our interest.
Kanner/Are we allowed to use that for short term for anything else?
Atkins/Yes we use it for short term cash. We have financed an airport hanger with it, we
pay ourselves back at interest so there's no loss of income. The reason we do, we
use that is that is basically you just hate to see that kind of money sitting there and
not being used productively in some fashion, as long as we record it for a project,
pay it back we're OK. Yes.
Pfab/How is the internal interest rate determine I might ask?
Atkins/Kevin decides that, what we do is what is our cost of borrowing if we were out
there Irvin and we calculate a number and we charge ourselves that. And if an all
opportunity costs we average what our investments are and then we put that
number on that.
Pfab/So basically it's just a it's just a wash.
Atkins/Yes, that's the idea. And it still allows you to get some projects done.
Pfab/Good idea.
Airport
Atkins/OK. Next is page 93, is the Airport, there is no substantial change, I do owe you
a report and you should get that yet this week on the amount of debt we have on
the airport and proposed debt, we'll have that out to you in a couple of days. The
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airport subsidy that is shown here that is the transfer of general levy of $80,700 is
the operational subsidy, that simply means that' s the short fall in their revenues to
run the day to day operations of the airport. We've had a couple of very positive
projects, a new hanger has been built, we've renovated the terminal, under the
capital outlay where it shows $857,000 and I recommend zero. What that is a
transfer to the debt service as opposed to taking it out of operations, the operations
couldn't afford that and that' s two projects, an airport hanger, the one we just
approved and then the underground storage tanks which are also in your capital
projects and you'll look at that tomorrow. The airport master plan is proceeding, I
think the only real frustration we have in dealing with the airport master plan
implementation is the speed of which we receive money's back from the FAA. I
don't think there's any doubt that you know that we will secure the money's. I do
want to give you a heads up that we are likely to have some airport land
acquisitions coming forward shortly. We usually pay for those and then seek
reimbursement, our share, a 90/10 share from FAA.
Lehman/Steve why is the, I probably should know this but the transfer from general fund
was $64,000 in this fiscal year and next year it's projected to be $80,700? It goes
up from 28, 64, 80, 86, and 91.
Atkins/28 is actual Ernie.
Lehman/Yea.
Atkins/The other 64 is an estimate, we have traditionally overstated that with respect to
operations, Ron will generate other income during the course of the year. Our
estimates are off, I don't know the trouble with that I think it's maybe a tad bit
high.
Lehman/In other words we're just coveting ourselves?
Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/All right.
Atkins/And since it's you know we also if you read down there, we have a small reserve
we keep to which if you subtract that from the 80 that puts us at that 60 number
and that's where we kind of keep. We don't need a big reserve in the airport
operations. Irvin.
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Pfab/I have a question. When we look at the just the financial operations of the airport,
what are the good things about the financial operations and what are the things
that we wish were better?
Atkins/Well I think the good things is that you operate a nice general aviation airport for
about $80,000 a year. Now in the scheme of things that's really a very small
amount of money. Secondly the Airport Commission I think has been very good
about their capital investment, that is that they in effect, they have a greater
latitude, someone like the library and other boards and commissions have come to
you saying we want to make investments in the airport but we're also going to pay
you back and that we charge them not unlike we would others. I think the third
point is that you get down to the issue of economics, that is, is an airport and the
Council decided this a number of years ago when we were planning on going to
the debate of moving the airport, they said nope we're not going to move, we're
going to stay where we are and we're going to renovate it and we're going to
bring it up to speed and that' s exactly what we have done. And the federal
government has been a player, a slow player but they have been a player in getting
us.
Pfab/As a player while they are a slow player they are a substantial player.
Atkins/Oh yea, 90/10 money, oh absolutely. Well and I don't recall but the it's the Air
Aviation Fuel fund from the Fed's is some huge amount of money, billions of
dollars and you'd think they could release it a little quicker but they, Ron can
share you his frustrations with you. But there is one thing I want and this is
coming up at the time we're talking about the airport. I want us to be cautious
about carrying costs. For example, FAA is a little slow, and were going to go out
and buy some land, that means we're going to pay for it, that means that we lose
opportunity costs money. We bought the peninsula for $1.3 million and we're
still booking it as an asset to our reserves and it's a non cash asset, now we're
going to get paid back, right.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/Secondly, we're buying the Englert, it's the same thing, it's a $700,000
commitment on our cash, airport land in affect works the same way, we go out
and have to spend several hundred thousand dollars but we're going to get
reimbursed. That keeps whittling away at our reserve position and since we only
get paid twice a year, property taxes, we often have to go to other reserves to meet
a lot our day to day expenses. So I don't want to over do these fronting the cost, I
mean Englert's going to come back, airport stuffs going to come back, peninsula
stuffs going to come back. But often folks it's a matter of timing. You know
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one of the advantage we have for example if we had the sales tax, we'd get once a
month so we'd have this big block of money that comes in that helps you pay
your bills. So it's just something that we don't have a loads of margin in our
reserves. Kevin watches it closely and I'm not uncomfortable about that but just
something to think about, if somebody came tomorrow and said by the way we
want you to help us buy this, front it, we'll pay you back, well there's, they can
get, you understood pressure can come.
Pfab/How many people pay us interest?
Atkins/They all pay in, well the peninsula is a decision of our own making.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/We decided that. The Englert is a decision of our own making, the airport I
think we do we are able to recover some of those expenses so.
Kanner/Steve, let' s say sometime in the future the airport is totally independent of the
City, who owns the physical property and the buildings and?
Atkins/Well fight now the airport is owned by the Iowa City City Council. The Airport
Commission in simplest terms can do, they have broad powers to run the airport
but there's one thing they can not do is sell it without your permission. And then
if you were to sell the airport, first of all you'd have to find a buyer, and we're
talking 450 acres of land. You'd have to find a buyer for that and then I suspect
the FAA would come knocking on your door and say OK we need to have a little,
we're going to have to make a deal with you on what your going to reimburse us
for the investment we've made on the airport. In some, Ernie, we went through
that debate because we were going to move the airport and sell it, take the cash,
go buy the new land and that's the decision that Council said no we're not going
to stay where we are.
Lehman/No but FAA would let you do that but if you sold the airport for commercial
purposes you've got that airport I think is in comfort big time.
Atkins/Oh yea.
Lehman/You know the FAA have put millions and millions and millions of dollars on
the airport and if the airport ceases to exist as an airport and the property' s sold
off I think the FAA says.
Pfab/The 90 percent.
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Lehman/We want the money back that we put in. And realistically unless you own
another airport there's no way it happens. I mean the incumbency (can't hear).
Atkins/Well first of all, if you were able to sell the airport, first of all you have to find a
buyer of 450 acres of land. Secondly and we when we going through the debate
about this, the City of Iowa City is probably, would make us the largest public
owner of private lands in the city, economically you'd have the ability to alter the
value of land throughout this city simply by policy because your sitting on this
huge track of land and then you have to decide what your going to do with it.
Vanderhoef/Wouldn't that constitute a conflict of interest?
Atkins/I would think we would have to have a long talk about that Dee. But anyway the
policy position is we're going to, we're renovating this one and we have moved
along I think quite well in fulfilling that particular goal.
Assisted Housing (pg. 115)
Atkins/The next item is Assisted Housing, that's on page 115. Now I have a significant
familiarity with this program but I will be quite candid with you, the federal
government it's rules and regulations and changes here on. We have in our
Department of Housing and Inspection Services something called our Assisted
Housing Division. And there are really two components to that, one of which is
the provision of certificates and vouchers, and all the certificates are going to be
converted eventually by federal regulation shortly. Those certificates and
vouchers we charge an administrative fee, that's how we pay the staff to run the
Assisted Housing Program, there's no local moneys in there, it's all federal
governments money.
Pfab/Can I ask you what that fee is?
Atkins/It's.
Pfab/It's a percentage.
Atkins/Yea, the amount is $46.00 per unit for our first 600 units and $42.00 for all units
over 600. We currently have for our citizens 1,077 certificates.
Pfab/So that's.
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Atkins/So simply taken that means that our, we provide housing assistance to 1,000
families in our community. We also, and the housing assistance payments
process is where and I think your, are your familiar with, we have contracts with
landlords who own apartments who offer their units for make them available.
When a family qualifies they're given their voucher and they head out, and they
have to seek housing, they can go to Coralville, they can go all throughout
Johnson County as long as we have a contract with the landlord. And then there
are the income guidelines, 30 percent of your income can only be paid toward
housing and so that's basically how that works. Go ahead Irvin.
Pfab/Is that, as tight as housing is for a lot of people here, is this an adequate, is this
working good in this community or if it could be better how could it be better or if
it's not working good what is?
Atkins/Well I think that you saw Maggie's recent recognition, I think you've seen that
we have and I think our last go around received a superior rating with respect to
our relationship with HUD. A thousand families in a city of 60,000 people is a
reasonably healthy number of families that are getting assistance. We have
traditionally been very aggressive, 200 of these we've only picked up in the last
18 months or two years, 200 additional. And that Council's position has been it
pays for itself, people need the help, go out and try to secure the vouchers for the
thing.
Lehman/There are some communities that do not do this at all.
Atkins/No.
Lehman/They just do not (can't hear).
Atkins/I think we're the third largest housing authority in the state, of course we're not
the third largest city, I think Des Moines, Davenport, and us.
Lehman/Isn't this all done by HUD rules and regulations? I mean they're really.
Atkins/It's really truly all HUD rules and regulations.
Lehman/We don't have.
Atkins/You (can't hear) no discretion.
Lehman/We don't have much to say about this.
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Atkins/Unless you don't want to do it.
Lehman/Well we either do it or don't do it but if we do it we play by their rules.
Atkins/Right, we play by their rules.
Pfab/But my point, and no I'm not criticizing it, I'm just asking information. I'm saying
is there anything that we can do to cap, grease the thing to keep it moving along?
Lehman/We did, we got an extra million bucks here what two years ago, a year and a
half ago?
Atkins/Yea.
Pfab/OK, I'm not talking money but, we as a Council, do we, let's say this is a collective
(can't hear) is there anything that we can or cannot do here to help this along?
Atkins/Generally speaking the position that I've heard you take over the years is that if
these programs are available and if the federal govemment finances them then we
are to aggressively seek them out. And our relationship with HUD has been that
they send out something called a Notice of Availability, we apply. And then they
come back here and you ultimately have to approve whether we're going to do
this or not but there are so many units that the Fed's will finance and I think
clearly we get more than our share of those.
O'Donnell/Maggie's done (can't hear).
Atkins/Maggie's very good, you know very good at it, and we also remember we have
public housing. We have about 100 units of public housing, that is units that we
own. Now there is often thought in the community that the city' s this huge
landlord of all kinds of, that's simply not the case. We have about 100 units that
we can own it, we have maintenance people who maintain them, people who have
certificates or vouchers can live in them, it really kind of closes the circle. We
also have a program of tenant to ownership where when our financial position
approves, say our cash position within our in any of these programs we have
discretion there. So what we try to do is qualify these families to sell them a
house and then we're done, you know, its your house, it's your mortgage, it's
your everything, and we move on to try and help another family.
Pfab/But that money you get has to do something else right?
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February 7, 2000 Council Work Session Page 16
Atkins/The money that we get we have to, has to go right back into these housing
programs. When we sold Broadway I think our cash position there is we have
three or four hundred thousand dollars of available cash fight now and we can use
some of that as long as it's a housing related program. When we sold Broadway,
they purchased it from us under a 1 O-year contract and that was a HACAP. Yes.
Pfab/My point is I'm not asking my question fight and I can see that. But what I'm
saying is yes our relationship with the fed is they offer the program we say how
can we help it and it moves on.
Atkins/Yes, right.
Pfab/But what about in the community, what about land owners that or landlords that say
this is so messy I don't want to get involved.
Atkins/We don't do that, we're OK on that Irvin, there are a few landlords that don't
want to play, but generally speaking I think our landlord assistant housing
relationship is a positive one, these folks know that when they sign a contract with
us we qualify them, the families, they know their going to get a check from us,
they know that the deposits in it if the apartment gets trashed their going to get
reimbursed for it. They know those sorts of things.
Pfab/And they also know that if a tenant screws up they're out of it.
Atkins/Absolutely, yea I mean, yea.
Pfab/To me it looks like a landlords, well it's not a landlord's dream but it gets pretty
close.
Atkins/I don't own property so I'm not a landlord.
Pfab/So I'm saying is yea, if the, are there ways that are landlords resisting and rightly so
or from previous experience are they running old tapes when they should be
looking at?
Atkins/I don't think so.
Pfab/That's my only question.
Atkins/And the reason I say that is we have qualified a 1,000 families and they're living,
they are out there looking for housing and they would come to, I mean our
housing assistance, our housing assistance that's their job, I mean to help these
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families find housing, get them list, get them information. We also have the
family self-sufficiency coordinator position which is also paid for by the Fed's.
And that' s where we require families to go through training to learn how to be
self-sufficient.
Pfab/OK so I guess the question that I have, we have so many vouchers, how many
people are unable in the current market to find?
Atkins/I can't tell you that.
Lehman/Ask Maggie, Maggie.
Atkins/But we can find that out for you.
Pfab/That's just a question in, what I'm saying.
Atkins/Kevin would you make a note of that? We'll find that out, what our list is, yea.
There are people that have their certificate that have not found housing.
Pfab/Right, and what I'm saying is.
Atkins/What is that number?
Pfab/You know but I'm saying is if there is a number, which there is, is there something
that we as Council people could do to help educate people and owners that saying
you know, I'm reluctant to take a look at this and maybe even just sit down with
them and say well (can't hear).
Atkins/That has not been (can't hear).
Lehman/I think first of all every voucher we have is used, there are no excess vouchers.
Atkins/Yea, yea.
Lehman/There are people who don't get vouchers but we use every nickel we get.
Pfab/No no no, I'm saying how many have vouchers but they can't find a landlord.
Lehman/None. I don't think there's anybody with a voucher that hasn't have a place to
live.
Pfab/I don't think, that's not what I hear. See that's where my whole point.
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Atkins/We can get you a number, we'll try to find a way that, waiting list or something,
we'll find out what that is.
Pfab/And then I may be wrong and that's I hope I am.
Atkins/That would be a good thing to be wrong about.
Pfab/Yea.
Lehman/OK.
Kanner/But I, Irvin I like where your going and saying what can City Council do to
perhaps do to make the situation better if there is something and along those lines,
for instance, our housing authority they have information about our programs
which are real good but it's difficult though to find out about other programs.
They'll direct you in the right direction when you go in there but maybe we want
to think about one location that we want to help support that talks about all the
programs in the city that are available from the Iowa City plus other non profit.
Because it's very intimidating when you have to go from place to place and your
told to go over there and they say go over there. And if we can do anything that
would make it easier for people I think it would be a plus.
Pfab/I can give you my standard response to those people that say go there, go there. I
say your (can't hear) while they just pull out their cell phone out of their pocket
call their limousine driver and say would you pick me up here I have to go over to
someplace else.
Lehman/Steve, this move with the expansion of the Civic Center is going to really help
that a great deal, it will all be in one place so that will help.
Atkins/Yea, one of the, selfishly speaking is that it was a difficult, whenever your having
satellite operations are harder to manage and when Maggie will be coming over
here we won't be paying rent, we got a grant to substantially pay for their space in
the remodeled, where public works is where Assistant Housing will be located at.
Pfab/But isn't isn't, I'm looking at, isn't this a basically a flee income string to the (can't
hear).
Atkins/Sure. I can, I won't say it's a 100 percent, but it's 99 ½ percent all federal
money.
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February 7, 2000 Council Work Session Page 19
Wilburn/There's always going to be, regardless of your line of rationale that I agree with,
there's always going to be people regardless whether they're landlords or
landlords or not, they're going to have a different value base and (can't hear) with
the concept of(can't hear).
Pfab/Right, I'm, but all I'm saying is can we expand that base? That's all I'm saying,
and if there is nobody waiting with a voucher in hand, which I was told there for a
long time there was a big waiting list, people couldn't find a place to use their
voucher.
Lehman/Well that's their, those are things we need to take up with Maggie, because
those are Administration questions (can't hear).
Pfab/But also are they public policy, we, as Council people can help and move along,
I'm not saying money.
Lehman/Well I think that may well be but I think that (can't hear).
Atkins/Planning knowledge of the program in itself in your traditional, your routine
social contacts being able to speak to the program is always very very helpful to
us. I mean a lot of, it's like the public housing thing and I remember having to,
half a dozen Realtors in my office saying your buying up all the housing in town.
Well, I said we own a 100 units, oh well the meeting's over, and you know that
sort of took care of it right there. OK. Page 94.
Broadband TeleCommunications (pg. 94)
Champion/It's so boring.
Atkins/It's so boring?
Pfab/That' s (can't hear) my workstation.
Atkins/I don't know how to spifthis up a tad bit for you.
Wilburn/Be a part of the commission.
Atkins/Yea.
Kanner/(Can't hear) filming you.
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Atkins/Our cable operation is financed by two primary sources, that's a 5 percent cable
franchise fee which is part of your monthly bill and we also have a $.50 cents
what we call is the pass through. This budget is substantially unchanged, they
will eventually our plan to move them out of this building to get them the kind of
space they need over the new ramp. That' s contrary to my desire to keep them in
this building but we just simply can not design an office building environment the
kind of space those folks need to have for their studios. They have, they will
purchase the space just like any other. The other big item in here is the PATV,
it's a revenue to us and we pass it through to Public Access in the amount of
$165,000 a year.
Pfab/I have just a simple question now does, do we get a percentage of the income that
passes through that cable operation or is it a per line or per unit?
Atkins/It's a 5 percent fee on your monthly bill, if your cable bill is $10.00, yea who 's
bill's $10.00 a month? Yea, $50.00 a month is more like it, 5 percent of that that
number calculates out to $2.50 is sent to us.
Pfab/Is there any part of that bill that is not part of that, does not react to the 5 percent
Dale?
Dale Helling/(can't hear).
Atkins/OK.
Pfab/OK so.
Atkins/He should answer that for you in a second.
Helling/Just the taxes and so forth, but there are, it's 5 percent of their annual gross
revenue so there are advertising revenues and so forth and also, we get 5 percent
of that as well as.
man/It's growth.
Helling/Five percent of annual gross (can't hear).
Pfab/Really, my question is is what are the projections over the next two or three years of
the gross income there?
Helling/They're probably going to have some additional income because of some of the
services they're marketing, the Internet services which AT&T has taken position
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February 7, 2000 Council Work Session Page 21
that that is cable related and subject to a franchise fee. There's a big (can't hear)
that's going to happen about that because some of the other telecommunications
companies are saying no it isn't and the FCC hasn't ruled on it yet.
Pfab/So that's your question.
Helling/That will increase it some, we don't anticipate a lot of increase in subscribership,
the number of subscribers, that's (can't hear) 70-75 percent. And without
knowing what McLeod is going to do in the future which we don't know, it's
probably going to stay pretty low.
Pfab/Well if McLeod if they come in will they have to do the same thing?
Helling/The franchise agreement has to be substantially the same and that's by federal
law, there has to be an even playing field or no playing the competition.
Atkins/Dale knows it better than I do.
Pfab/OK I'll so OK, all fight, it looks to me that that should be a growing revenue
stream, just as a.
Atkins/Well as they increase rates, I don't know that penetration, subscribership is going
to change a lot.
Helling/I don't think we're going to find substantially more subscribers, it's grown a
little bit but then with the wireless systems competing that and we don't franchise
them, we can't so that plays against it. So I don't know I think it's going to be
fairly level unless there's some services that we haven't anticipated.
Pfab/But your saying the franchise are the wireless are probably going to be the thing
that's the variable for keeping it from.
Helling/I'm saying that' s probably now the most effective competition that a community
like this has is the wireless alternatives because we don't have another cable
company.
Lehman/But even if another cable company came in and took half the subscribers the 5
percent fee if your getting half as much from the first one so your increase, you
wouldn't experience increase in revenue.
Helling/You'd anticipate a little higher penetration rate the community may move up in
the high 70' s in terms of the total number of people.
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Lehman/But not a lot.
Helling/But not a lot.
O'Donnell/What happens (can't hear) Coralville elects to have their own station and they
do that?
Helling/Well Coralville can do whatever they want. Right now we don't get any revenue
from Coralville so basically our revenue will remain the same regardless.
O'Donnell/We are not getting a percentage of their fees?
Helling/No no they get it.
O'Donnell/They get that.
Atkins/Yea but services they choose to provide for that, I don't know how they book
their revenue do you know?
O'Donnell/What are they providing with that?
Atkins/I assume it's a revenue to their general fund.
Champion/It's none of your businesses anyway.
Helling/It has been.
Atkins/That's true too.
(all talking).
Helling/What they do won't affect our revenue.
Pfab/OK.
Kanner/Dale so what's the negotiations that are taking place now with Coralville and
Iowa City with PATV?
Helling/Coralville wanted, PATV is, even though it's funded through Iowa City has
always been looked at more of a regional thing, we have not limited participation
to Iowa City residents so the use of the PATV facilities and so forth can, is for
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Coralville and other folks than been here. Coralville wanted some equipment the
last time we negotiated an agreement with PATV and so we brought them in as a
third party, there' s a limited amount of equipment in the library. We encourage
public access to, they do some community types of things where they go out and
facilitate the cable casting of the events in the community. We encourage them to
go community wide because we think those are the things of all interest to Iowa
City, things like Coralville 4th of July celebration for exan~ple, kind of, those
sorts of things so it's been a three party agreement and.
(END OF 00-20 SIDE 1)
Helling/It was a 1 O-year agreement, four years and then two three-year new options,
we're in the first of those two three-year new options that Coralville's interested.
So we're going to see if we can hammer out another agreement. Essentially what
it does is it may put a limited amount of equipment in Coralville, the Library, so
folks out there have access to it without coming to the Community Program
Center.
Kanner/So they, if ihey got some equipment, they would have to kick in some of that
money that we were just talking about before that we don't know what it's being
used for.
Helling/Well basically the money that comes from the cable company is one could argue
that some of that comes from Coralville residents, we don't know where they get
the money because this is not a (can't hear) a part that funds public access, this is
simply a pledge of a dollar amount from the cable company. We've said to justify
Coralville being involved, we've said well you know maybe some of the money
comes from Coralville subscriber's because that goes into the whole system, on
the other hand we don't know that. Like I said it's not moneys collected some
place and ear marked, it's just a contribution from the cable company.
Champion/It's a gift.
Helling/A gift yea.
Lehman/We'll call it that.
(All talking).
Vanderhoef/A contracted gift.
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February 7, 2000 Council Work Session Page 24
Helling/What it took to negotiate that doesn't make me think it was a gift. Well, but the
bottom line is we've agreed to this and it's a regional thing and Coralville.
Lehman/They're part of the region.
Helling/And should be involved. Yea, yea, that's fine and that's always been the local
policy, we can change that but we don't see any reason to.
Kanner/And another issue that I've been thinking about, there was talk of the
Government channel and PATV moving in together, being able to share
resources, maybe the biggest one would be studio space which both organizations
say there' s a shortage of and if you combine it then perhaps we can get a better
deal. What happened to that talk and is there any possibility of reviving that?
Helling/Well it wasn't exactly moving in together, we wanted to try to get proximity, we
called it, we talked about a joint programming facility. What we wanted to do
was try to get some proximity so there could possibility be some shared space. I
think that, I don't know where we would get the funds to do that frankly and to
get the space we need for both entities, PATV has now got space that I think their
fairly comfortable with. We're going to be stretching our budget to pay for the
space in the parking ramp for the Channel 4 operation for Drew Schaffer's
operation so at this point in time I don't see that the funds are available but you
know we keep looking. One of the options I think where they came about was this
whole idea about center space that turned into the Lot 64-1-A facility where they
talked about building it in there, we may have been able to do that because it
would have been from the ground up. To go out and buy space I'm not sure that.
Kanner/Don't we have reserves built up for that?
Helling/Well we have $125,000 as part of the local access pass through. Actually
$100,000 fight now, $25,000 a year, that pass through was set back for a facility
of some type. But to get them the kind of square feet they need that you know,
we're going to pay, for instance over in Durant to move their operation they were
going to have to pay about $400,000 for the space and then remodel.
Vanderhoef/And is that a responsibility then of the city to cover the debt on that or are
they capable of carrying debt themselves?
Helling/PATV?
Vanderhoef/Yes.
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Helling/Well they're not going to be in this facility.
Vanderhoef/I understand but they're going to go, and how does that work? You say
they've got maybe $100,000 and they've been putting $25,000 away.
Helling/No I'm saying that this local access pass through $100,000 of that after four
years is reserved but that' s city money that's not PATV money.
Vanderhoef/So how are they buying space and rent, how does that get?
Pfab/It's not PATV.
Helling/It's not PATV that's our buying space and rent, it's our (can't hear), you look
back at your cable refranchising there's $200,000 that was in (can't hear) for
refranchising.
Kanner/Where is that?
Helling/Page 95.
Atkins/Page 95.
Helling/That will go into (can't hear) when the cable offices is moved into this building,
we part of the construction costs so we estimated the value of that about
$150,000, if you have any equity up there that will go into this and then the
reserves, we're going to look at the reserves and we're going to look at the. We
are just not having the design done for the remodeling or for the interior
construction so we'll know then the total amount but I think we can squeak it out
here this it could be tight.
Kanner/What if we wanted? Irvin if you'd just wait, finish up with this.
Pfab/Go ahead.
Kanner/What if we wanted to cut back a bit on the remodeling and use some of that
money to televise our work sessions on Monday? Is that something that's a
possibility?
Helling/I suppose although our plans are not to do anything real fancy over there so it
depends on how much money we're talking but I mean as long as we're going to
spend that kind of money to put it in that space I think we have to make sure that
we have to make it functional but I think we have to look at that in conjunction
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with the total budget. The figure that we were given for the televising was what
$13-14,000 dollars.
O'Donnell/$25,000 dollars.
Kanner/Well $14,000.
Atkins/With the hardware, yea it was $14,000 basic operational cost Dale and then
there' s hardware that would be purchased, one time expenses.
Helling/OK. I think probably the equipment the equipment could be, we have a pretty
healthy replacement reserve we might be able to do something to that. So I
wouldn't weigh those two against each other because I don't think that amount of
money is, that' s a little different than say PATV where your talking about several
hundred dollars to provide the space for.
Pfab/I'm sitting here thinking now, also Senior has a TV production operation, is there
any reason, are those unmixable, are they like water and oil?
Atkins/Yea. All I can say is be careful. They're sensitive about that.
Pfab/We're going to make an assumption that someday there will be a ramp there or a
walkway there and ifthat's where your going to go with that is there is there any
reason why there shouldn't be some very serious negotiations to?
Helling/Really the Senior Center what they do is produce some of their own stuff but
that' s part of the Government Channel offering so a lot of what they do goes on
the Government Channel, we put it on, we program it, we schedule it in and so
forth and there's already a lot of work into getting.
Pfab/But I mean facility wise because I see that, I hate to use the word gobbling up more
space but it looks like they're going to take up more space there. If we're going to
build a facility why can't TV operations do they have a history of not getting
along at all?
Helling/Oh no, no not all.
Pfab/So if why when we're that close why not put them all together with the economy of
staff.
Helling/We could.
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Atkins/We could.
Pfab/I mean that's something we very seriously ought to look at.
Champion/(can't hear) the Senior Center.
Helling/I think right now that proximity will allow more convenience for them to come
over and use our editing and so.
Pfab/But is there any reason why such editing equipment they can't just say hey this is
the Iowa City TV center whatever we want to call it? Is the space there in the
ramp?
Helling/Not right now.
Atkins/Could be tight.
Helling/We're tucked in pretty good there.
O'Donnell/How big of space would you need (can't hear)?
Atkins/I don't know.
Helling/I don't know.
Pfab/Is there any reason we can't get the people in charge of that to sit down and see
what' s what and tell us why just absolutely why it will not work?
Atkins/I would think that the next time the Senior Center Commissioner comes to the
City Council to talk about their services that would be a good question to put on,
put it on their agenda.
Pfab/OK but is it, do we have, is there anyway we can initiate them sitting down together
and say here we really want you to tell us if you can make it work, if not why not?
Atkins/As a City Council you've order it done.
Pfab/Well I'm going to propose it.
Atkins/As it is written so it shall be.
Lehman/OK (can't hear).
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Atkins/And I'll duck through the bullets.
Champion/I don't think it's going to quite work that way.
Atkins/OK. Page 83.
Wastewater Treatment (pg. 83)
Atkins/Our Wastewater treatment budget is really not a lot I think I can tell you know,
we're out to bid on the major renovation, that will be coming in in another month
or so. If not, if not sooner, we do have one rate increase plan for our wastewater
and that's in August of 2001 5 percent. Historically we have our 25 percent cash
policy, in the year 02 we added $300,000 to the operating budget in anticipation
that we were likely to have some new costs particularly with the renovated facility
and some other staffing needs. We anticipate two bond issues to pay for all of
this, one this year and one next year. Pages 84, 85 and 86 are bond accounts, I'm
not sure really what to tell you the budget is substantially unchanged until we
open those bids, I know it's a big budget to go hurrying by but everything has
pretty well been factored in over the last four or five years. We're just playing out
the plan, the plan was.
Letunan/The rate increases our scheduled to go into affect the first of July is that correct?
August 1.
Atkins/On August, we have an August 1 of 2001 is, we have one more rate increase of 5
percent, now Ernie like you and I were talking the other day if we get really great
bids, we were able to take advantage of that a couple years ago when we got those
really low bids.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/So you keep your fingers crossed and maybe that will change some of those
things.
Pfab/Are we going back to, are we going to be outbidding, getting more bids again for
the see, or is bidding out of the way now?
Atkins/No it's out to bid right now.
Lehman/It's out to bid right now, we're waiting.
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Atkins/Right now it's out to bid, we're just waiting to receive the bids.
Pfab/And this is bids for?
Atkins/This is bids for the wastewater treatment plant expansion to take care of the
amount (cant' hear).
Pfab/I thought you said something about bond bids?
Atkins/Oh no we haven't done that yet?
Pfab/That's what I was going to say because.
Atkins/No I'm sorry I missed.
Lehman/Well after we get the bids for the plant though then we will be selling bonds.
Atkins/Oh yea, that's all.
Pfab/I'm watching the money market move around and I'm saying.
Atkins/Yea it does. This is a budget where we budget large amounts of cash, some of the
things you see in here, these interest reserves, covenant reserves are all
requirements of bond issues. Sinking funds are just what they are that pays the
principal and interest on our debt. I really don't know else to tell you about it,
we're proceeding through the development plan as approved many years ago.
Lehman/Steve why if they, explain to me and I probably should remember but I don't.
There are reasonably substantial ending balances does that reflect the amount that
we're required to keep in reserve for the bonds?
Atkins/A couple things Ernie there, the big cash balance is also part of your 20 percent
policy so we accumulate cash in there and we'll pay that out. That will disappear
in a few years, it will drop off as we pay cash.
Lehman/At what point is it, I thought the (can't hear) policy was 20 percent down when
we made the expansion of the plan. This goes through FY03.
Atkins/Right.
Lehman/Which doesn't anticipate anymore big expenditures does it?
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Atkins/That reserve position will likely be spent down sometime in 04 when we actually
pay for the project. I can only give on an estimate right now on the debt.
Lehman/Right, right, fight, but this is going to be, that position of $5 million dollars is a
temporary one that we.
Atkins/Oh yea.
Lehman/Paid off, or be using that money in 04.
Atkins/Yes, yea, now when you see the covenant reserve of $2 million that's a
requirement of a, that's a bond covenant, we have to set aside $2 million dollars,
the bond holders then know that we have money available to fix something major
that would occur. And then you have an interest reserve and that's exactly what it
means is an interest reserve. When we go and sell our debt we usually sell one
year's worth of interest, that gives us a lower rate and it also protects, it protects
the bond holder. So that if for some reason we said we can't pay, that reserve sits
there, it's specifically intended for the purpose of paying off at least one more
year' s interest.
Lehman/That' s the required reserve?
Atkins/That' s the required one. And then the sinking funds are just that these are various
bonds we pay the principal and interest out of. OK. Page 87.
Water (pg. 87)
Lehman/Now here you can see ending balance reflect.
Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/It reflects the payment for that OK.
Atkins/Yes that's what we did, all fight, you understand the, it works the same way in
water.
Lehman/Right, fight.
Atkins/Now water budget is, we have a rate increase plan for this year of 10 percent,
we've also added $300,000 which is a lump sum. It's kind of like what we do
with the library, in case when these things happen, we have a portion of that at
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least identified as coming on, coming on line as an expense. As you see the
interest balance drops dramatically, there's really nothing new in there, the bond
sales will be coming up shortly to pay for the water plant project. Yes.
Lehman/This is probably, I know we're talking budget but I think it's really important
for all of us to realize that the projections on water and sewer bonds and whatever
require that we follow the plan that we started back in 93 in order to pay off those
bonds. And if we change the rates we're going to go back and change the whole
structure by which those bonds are sold. In other words this is all part of a plan,
and I think that this rate increase is the last increase, I believe it's planned for
water which may very well not be 10 percent depending because we did.
Champion/We got 5 percent last year.
Lehman/Yea we got a really good bid on the water plant.
Atkins/Yea, got great bids, yep.
Lehman/But if we try to change those rates or change, then we have to go back and have
to redo the whole thing.
Champion/But we could the percentage of increase because of that bid.
Lehman/(can't hear) be changed.
Atkins/Yes you could do that, you have the ability if you set us to the task of refinancing
these projects and that's that can be done.
Lehman/But it could be pretty expensive?
Atkins/Well, oh yea, I mean that's something I can't give you an answer over night. I
mean I could take you through a thought process on how water rates are
developed and all the issues associated with it, I know some of you are interested
in that and that's fine, put that on the agenda, we'll do that. But I want you to
know we have built this plant facilities project based upon decisions that were
made back in 93 set in motion.
Lehman/And these rates are, this budget is based on a 10 percent increase, the actual may
be somewhat less but can not be more?
Atkins/I can't imagine it being more unless you made some other decision along the way
to add a bunch of projects and I don't think that's in the cards.
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Lehman/Can we, I mean if we certify the budget to the state we can't change the rates
(can't hear).
Atkins/No we're OK on that, no this is, yea, yea. This is, it's the same thing is that I'm
going to recommend to you to certify the landfill budget knowing full well we've
got to do it again.
Lehman/OK.
Atkins/Now if you all want to make changes in this, I'd say, certify this budget, bring it
back to you as a separate issue and say we want to refinance it or do we want it
financed in this fashion? And what I need to know from you is what this fashion
means because there will be a variety of opinions about it. OK.
Champion/Steve, tell me approximately how long in the future will it be before this is all
paid for?
Lehman/20 years.
Atkins/Most of our debt on water will be 25 year bonds.
Champion/Really.
Atkins/Yea. Connie don't get too excited about that, I mean, hopefully we'll both be,
won't be around at all. I don't know about that.
Champion/I think it's amazing because it is a lot of money.
Atkins/It is a hundred.
Champion/But we've always paid dearly for it and it doesn't even touch it.
Atkins/Well I try to vision these things is that this is a 100 year decision.
Champion/Sure.
Atkins/And it's at least four maybe five generations.
Champion/True.
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Atkins/That are going to live with this decision. Now sometime in the future could we
refinance it? We've done that before. Are there other issues that might come
along? Maybe. But I think your always going to be, I mean as a, this sounds a
little soap boxish but we decided as a nation by passing the safe drinking water act
we were going to improve the water supply to all of our citizens throughout the
United States. That meant an obligation on our part as a provider of water that
we're going to do these things. Is that going to change? Look what happened on
sewer, we thought we had a ten year reprieve that lasted two years. So could we
be back out borrowing more money to build other projects? Sure. Could rates go
up? Sure.
Champion/OK thanks.
Kanner/Ernie I'd like to see if we can get a commitment to have a debate in the future or
a work session whatever you want to call about the water rates. Some of us ran on
that issue and I think it would be good for us to look at that and I know you have
some strong feelings about one way about the way they are currently and it would
be good if we could examine that a little more closely and perhaps in the future.
Some time this year.
Lehman/I don't have any problem with that.
Kanner/Have a work session on that.
Atkins/That's fine with me, I just need to prepare for it.
Lehman/I think that it, periodically just as I think it's true of branch libraries we need to
review, no I think we do need to review and explain why the rates are the way
they are or if we're not happy with the way they are to change them so. Steve I
don't know when we do that but I don't have a problem with that and.
Atkins/Well adopt the budget.
Lehman/I know you've done some work on that.
Atkins/Yes I have, I mean knowing that this Council has interest in that I did some
preliminary work and I'm prepared to take you through a very generalized
discussion now.
Champion/Steve (can't hear) discussion.
Atkins/What's that?
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Champion/You could do a pretty good 10 minute discussion on that.
Atkins/Oh I can. What I'd like to do is get the factors on the table because when you
think of things such as water rates, we have sometimes a prepincity to throw
around terms we have to be very cautious about such as fairness.
Lehman/Well that's something we'll.
Atkins/And we all want to be fair and we want to make sure that this thing, but you also
want to sure that your water system remains financially viable. And if you don't
have the money coming in you can't pay the bills. So I'd be happy to schedule
that at your.
Lehman/Put that on your list whenever it works out.
Atkins/Got it done.
Pfab/Is this a time maybe to bring this up, is this maybe better done in a public forum
issue rather than a City Council issue?
Lehman/Work session.
O'Donnell/Well it will be a work session.
Atkins/Yea I think.
Pfab/How is this going to say no, I mean just take it and put in on a public forum and
invite other any kind of (can't hear).
Atkins/My only trouble with that Irvin is that setting water rates, you think the property
taxes is complex enough, setting water rates is a very sophisticated detailed
process and we had loads of meetings before we ever settled in on that. And I
think you know quite frankly out of the debate that you all have amongst
yourselves if you want to propose some kind of changes we have traditionally, if
your going to change the water rates you open it up to public hearing. And that' s
fine with me.
Kanner/But it is something that perhaps could tie in with education from our education
coordinator and something that might come out of our work session and we might
want to tie that in to further education.
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Atkins/That's, and Carol's very, as you know, very good about those kinds of things,
communicating that kind of information.
Lehman/Well I think the appropriate thing is to schedule it for a work session. Go
through it preliminarily, if we then want to get into it deeper we can do that.
Atkins/Then you have to decide.
Lehman/Yea.
O'Donnell/But don't you think it's more appropriately Ernie to see if there' s four people
who want to get into it?
Lehman/I think that we probably, the preliminary discussion that Steve can give us is
probably like Connie said, a 10 minute rendition of where we are and why we're
there based on that then I think we decide whether we want to go further with that.
Atkins/And that's fine.
Pfab/And since, by that time there's a good possibility that our work session will be
televised and it'll also be (can't hear).
Lehman/That's another discussion so let's.
Atkins/For another day. OK. Page. 90, our final enterprise.
Stormwater (pg. 90)
Atkins/This is a new item, and the new item is a storm water fee. I think I sent all of you
the July memo that sort of outlined what the skinny was going to be. The EPA
regulation is such that we will now begin a process of being required to improve
storm water quality and well as quantity, as you know I think we regulate quantity
satisfactorily. That will help us in, in fact I think we're going to be a little ahead
of the game because of things. It is an unfunded mandate, as you recall I wrote a
letter to Mr. Leach asking him what might be forthcoming, I have not received an
answer yet. I did get a call from DPA person about a month ago said the letter
was on it's way. Well as soon as it gets here I'll get it to you all.
Lehman/Steve, this fund is, this is funded by a $1.80 per month?
Atkins/Yea.
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Lehman/Did we reduce the amount we charged for residential pickup for trash?
Atkins/$.55 cents.
Lehman/We reduced it by $.55 cents.
Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/Does this produce, well, does this the kind of revenue that we think we need at
$1.807
Atkins/No, no.
Lehman/You know when we added recycling charges to the waste, how much was that,
$3.007
Champion/$3.00.
Atkins/Almost $3.00.
Lehman/We didn't hear a word from anybody and it raised a fair amount of money, I just
am, Dee and I talked earlier, $.55 cents from a $1.80 is actually a net increase of
$1.25 which is pretty small and lord I hate to raise fees but on the other hand I
hate to get caught behind the 8-ball too, if we're going to need to do it is $1.80 is
that where we should be?
Atkins/$1.80 generates about $400,000 a year.
Vanderhoef/And it's $500,000 for the permit.
Atkins/Yea and it's $500,000 for the permit, Dee's read everything.
Lehman/Well I know that, say a $2.50 charge.
Champion/I don't withstand that, that's OK (can't hear).
Atkins/OK, well, if you, first of all you have no choice, your going to clean up storm
water run off.
Champion/Right.
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Atkins/Your going to do that, I mean so, we can stomp our foot if we want but the
bottom line is that we are going to do that and we need to generate an income to
do that. I mean I can give you, it depends on how far you want to go and I think
you saw in the memo we do lots of things to help clean up storm water.
Champion/I'm not complaining about what we do.
Atkins/But how far do we want to go with this thing? I mean we could raise that fee, in
fact I think Solon charges $5.00. I had intended to generate sufficient income for
us to do the permitting process to get us started. And that, do we want to get into
a formal fee that helps pay for capital projects that are going to be a result of
fulfilling that permit? Basin excavation, South Sycamore regional creek
maintenance, Beer Creek, all of those things are all storm sewer projects that fight
now we're going to pay for by general obligation debt which goes on the tax rate.
Champion/Steve does the state allow like you know it seemed to me that a lot of our run
off is due to roads.
Atkins/Yep.
Champion/Why doesn't the state allow (can't hear) gasoline tax on it, rebate that back? I
mean that's where that money should come from.
Lehman/We use that to build roads.
Champion/Another tax, I don't care what you (can't hear).
Lehman/That's right.
(All talking).
Lehman/My only thought is (can't hear).
Atkins/You know that's an excellent idea, you make the person that uses the, for benefit
gain, pay your tax, your causing it you pay it.
Champion/A lot of that waste water problem is from roads.
Atkins/Oh absolutely, yea.
Champion/Yea and there ought to be (can't hear).
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Atkins/But there's another, what I'm trying to do and I wanted to break ground with this
and there is something that's called an equivalent run off and I'm not prepared to
give you a formal recommendation on it but sort of. Let's say these are houses on
a street and what we would do is actually calculate how much money you would
need, you got to back into this thing. And that this house on this lot has a 20
percent impervious surface.
Pfab/Is that for driveways and everything?
Champion/(can't hear).
Atkins/ That' s, put everything in it, that's right. You know you put driveways, this house
may be 22, this house obviously is only like 12. But anyway there would be a
factor the guy that's got the big house on the big lot and the big driveway pays
more money than the person that's got the small house and the fee then is based
upon what kind of run off you actually create.
O'Donnell/Well he's already more anyway Steve in the way of property taxes.
Atkins/Well that's true Mike but the difficulty is is that our property taxes are so highly
regulated we cannot generate sufficient income to run these programs without
borrowing which means your going to tax them. You can raise the property tax
rate for debt but you can't raise it for operations.
O'Donnell/It seems like we'll soon be in to charging for linear foot in storm (can't hear).
Atkins/That's not uncommon, that's not uncommon.
Vanderhoef/There are several ways to go about it.
Atkins/I didn't say it was a good idea but I said it's not uncommon. This is one of those
things where the benefit derived to these people, the guy, I mean, what's Procter
& Gamble's fee going to be? I mean (can't hear) under roof. Parking lots but
those are the culprits, those parking lots are the ones that have the crud on it when
it rains it goes from the storm sewer that goes to the river. They're creating the
mess.
Lehman/But the guy that lives in the 12 percent houses leaks oil in the parking lot and so
the guy that parked on it has to pay for his 12 percent. That's another story, I
guess.
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Arkins/But this has become fairly common throughout the United States is a way to
create storm water income because look, you can look the public in the face and
say I may not want to do this but this is a federal law and we're going to do this.
And if your going to do it at the expense of some other program that' s a policy
decision you all have to make. I don't think you want to do that.
Vanderhoef/Come up with figures at national meetings in December that they have
worked out that the start of the figure is $6.16 per capita for that start up year and
then they're talking in terms ofanyplace from $1.39 to $7.39 per capita per year.
Lehman/Boy that' s a big difference.
Vanderhoef/Well after you get the start up you see.
Atkins/Yea.
Vanderhoef/And it's a big difference yes depending on the size of the city and the
infrastructure.
Lehman/This is a refuse add on, that means only residential customers are paying it.
Atkins/No, no, we, anybody who, this $1.80 is anybody who gets a utility bill, it will be
on the utility bill and what I would do is I would propose that if we do the
equivalent run off per unit it would go on the utility bill so that everybody pays.
Lehman/Right, my only question is that, is that enough to build the kind of reserve that
we need to build.
Atkins/Well I'm not sure we're even in the reserve business Ernie.
Lehman/It would be nice to have some money when we have to pay the $500,000.
Atkins/Well that's the $1.80, that will get you over that first hurdle.
Lehman/It would also be nice to have a little money to help with South Sycamore.
Atkins/Well South Sycamore, remember all of your road improvement projects, virtually
all and more involve some kind of storm drainage. Highway 6 project is
substantially a storm drainage project.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
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Atkins/It just happens to be adjacent to a highway. Now how are we going to pay for
that?
Vanderhoef/Is there any way that we could talk about the start up fee at this point to get
us up and running to get the $500,000 for the permitting and to start a few projects
while we get into how we might (can't hear) this whole thing?
Atkins/Oh absolutely Dee, that's fine.
Vanderhoef/And there' s always the possibility of dropping back then on this other fee as
we get it figured out how much (can't hear).
Atkins/The legislature just passed two years the ability to create a storm water utility
district and what we will do in order to make this work is our storm water utility
district will be the corporate limits of the city, I mean that's how you would
fashion that. Then you all and I think this is where we're going to have some
political courage, we're going to have to start telling Coralville's, the County,
your run off is coming into our city and we're paying to clean it up.
Champion/Right.
Atkins/We've got to find a regional way to deal with this issue. And I'm not, I mean
Coralville's going to have to deal with their own storm water but these water
sheds, our political boundaries don't recognize those perfect water sheds and if
that is coming into our community we shouldn't have to pay for that.
Pfab/But if ours is running into somebody else's.
Atkins/Absolutely Irvin, your absolutely right, that's a fair way to do it.
Champion/We do have to find some way to finance it, we can't be financing this out of
our general fund.
Vanderhoef/No.
Atkins/I, I, general fund absolutely no way.
Vanderhoef/It just (can't hear).
O'Donnell/Obviously the important thing to do is we don't want to be caught on a fiasco
again like we did on the water plant where we have these constant increases and I
think it's very wise to start preparing now for it.
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Lehman/I do to.
O'Donnell/You know if Council's 20 years ago would have started setting aside a little
money for the water plant we wouldn't have these tremendous increases now but
this is when you have to start.
Lehman/Your comfortable with the $1.80?
Atkins/I'm comfortable with the $1.80 because one it doesn't over state it, it generates
efficient income to allow us to apply. Now remember it will keep coming in year
after year after that that's one. Secondly it's step one and in fairness, in fairness
this is the fair way to do it. This means if you own a big house and you own a big
lot and you've got the impervious service you pay. That's fair.
Wilbum/The other thing it allows for people to make modifications in their properties
there' s people that (can't hear) run off from the terrace.
Lehman/Yea but then, you're right Ross except that if you, and I follow that, there are
homes that might very well take the ease spout water run it through ADS tubes
into their own little retention funds or whatever. How complicated are we going
to get in assessing each individual home?
Champion/You can't do that (can't hear).
Lehman/You see you may get into a situation where it takes you more to perform the
assessment than it's worth. If you take the space of a square footage of the
driveway and charge everybody the same, it may not be fair.
Wilburn/But if someone is doing whether it's a style usage, plantings, buffer, whatever,
that gets it cleaned up what's coming off(can't hear) the 12 percent and (can't
hear).
Lehman/I agree with that.
Wilburn/I hear what your saying but I wouldn't want to (can't hear).
Champion/It would be so hard to, for instance my driveway which is really almost a
block long.
Lehman/Hey we're going to get you baby.
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Champion/But not everybody runs into the street, not everybody into the storm sewer.
Atkins/Yea.
Champion/It all runs into the back yard.
Lehman/What does it take into (can't hear).
O'Donnell/My driveway is an abandoned street.
Champion/Right it goes down hill, (can't hear).
Wilburn/I guess my point was Steve was bringing up the fact that nationally with clean
water to make things clean I wouldn't want to see us penalize someone for taking
efforts to keep things clean.
Champion/Right.
(All talking).
Atkins/One of the things that I think you folks remember is that this will require an
ordinance, a separate, I mean, when you adopt a budget you adopted it at
principal, which directs me to bring things back to you. And if you want to do
something more than a. Go ahead Connie.
Champion/I just thought of another thing in my favor. (can't hear).
(All talking).
Champion/But you know when you do it the way your doing it you think that' s totally
fair but I might only drive like 3 miles a week in Iowa City. Like the person who
has that little house on a little lot may be driving 50 miles.
(All talking).
Pfab/Well we'll get them to pay the tax when they put the gas in the gas tank.
Atkins/Yea.
O'Donnell/What if it rains on the north side of town and not on the south?
(All talking).
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O'Donnell/Let's take a break we're losing it.
Atkins/Before you go, before you go, just understand that in the budget I'm introducing
these concepts, they'll have to come back to you, right now we do not have a
storm water utility in place, don't have a fee in place, we're going to have to
decide that over the next few months or so.
Kanner/Steve.
Atkins/Yes.
Kanner/You don't have budget here for 01 for us to pay for that permit?
Atkins/If what, I'm showing we have, we have budgeted in our capital plan to pay for the
permit by debt. I'm saying this is an option if you choose, you could pay for the
permit with this money Steve or you could use it for some of the storm related
capital project, we haven't decided that yet.
Kanner/OK so you have here on the capital.
Atkins/Under capital plan.
Kanner/Where would that be?
Atkins/In the back of the book under capital projects, EPA Storm water run off, page
129, see that project, second one up from the bottom, $500,000 GO.
Kanner/GO. OK.
Atkins/Got it, that's how it's been proposed in the budget, I'd just as soon not do the GO
and do something else.
Champion/Yea I agree.
Atkins/OK you guys are out of here.
Champion/Aren't we going to do Economic Development yet?
Atkins/Yes.
(Break)
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Atkins/Funds and keeping with the calendar I set up for you all tonight, there' s two other
items, our Economic Development Strategy and a Parks and Recreation
discussion about the master plan. Anybody that doesn't have one I've got a
couple extras.
Champion/Can I borrow it please? Oh I've got it, I found it.
Atkins/Got it. Irvin (can't hear) there are extras.
Economic Development (pg. 139, 104)
Atkins/Now your familiar with the document so I'm not going to spend a load of.
Lehman/All right.
(All talking)
Atkins/I'm not going to spend a load of time reading through the document because it's
a, it's long winded enough but what we're proposing here is a change in direction
strategy with respect to our community' s economic development. With the defeat
of the local option sales tax we've been told that our underlying financial
foundation is going to be based on one primary source of revenue that being the
property tax. If we are to rely on the property tax, you've seen the numbers I
presented to you earlier, we have basically inflationary growth in our property tax.
Who knows what the state might do and end up fleezing that but if we're anything
we would like to do of any quality or quantity is likely to require additional
income. There's really only one option available to us in respect to property tax
and that' s to grow the commercial industrial part of our economy. Now we're
going to the eb's and flows now, there's been a good shift out to Coralville as it
became some what of an economic center, I don't get, I'm not overly concerned
about it. We still have a lot of strengths in our local economy. But I think there' s
a lot of things we have to think about in economic development. That's business
retention expansion, attracting new and encouraging folks throughout
entrepenourship to invest. It's going to require a lot of thought and some policies
on your part, our relationship with ICAD I think is going to have to change. The
extent to which we have to discuss if we are going to expand our tax base we're
going to have to I think give credit to and the strength of many of the economic
development policies we already have in place and that is I'm not asking you that
they be done away with but I'm asking that we as a community become far more
aggressive in seeking out the commercial and industrial component of our
economy. Karin and her staff are right now interviewing consultants to go
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through the regulatory review that we would call that, that was one of the things
we had talked about about a year ago and we're down to getting a
recommendation to you that' s also in there. I think there are redevelopment plans
for certain components of the economy. I've made a long winded list, I think this
is of sufficient priority. I would ask that the Council actually consider the
creation of a three person Economic Development Committee. Someone that and
understand your public body and would be meeting substantially in public but
someone we can work with, David and Kafin will staff it, but I suspect Dale and I
would be involved. We need for you to, we need to run projects by you, policies,
idea, by you, get your blessing and bring them back to the full Council. We could
do it with a full Council but usually your agenda's are so busy that it's difficult to
get this issue the time that I think it deserves. And that's about it.
Champion/You're absolutely fight.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
O'Donnell/Steve this is great but can you just briefly tell me how your going to expand
the idea.
Atkins/I'm not real sure yet. All I know is that ICAD is a creature of a group of
municipalities, the County and businesses. That they have been generally good
about showing all of our options that are available to us, and we haven't had a
whole lot. I think that we just need to be much more vocal, and press them on
reports, follow-up, I want to know who you talked to, when you talked to them,
what you told them, and I think in some respects as maybe as a member of that
board I failed in not providing, asking for and demanding that kind of
information. Please understand it's important to the media, I'm not mad at ICAD,
that's not an issue but I think we have got to get them to be more aggressive. We
pay $50,000 a year into ICAD's budget, we are far and away the largest
contributor. And I just want more from them.
O'Donnell/You know though Steve, many things were proposed to us and you know
many things have said about Coralville. And Coralville basically has been very
receptive and I think you've done an excellent in responsible growth and I just
don't feel that Iowa City has been as receptive as Coralville.
Lehman/And I think this is a step in that direction.
O'Donnell/This is a great step.
Vanderhoef/This is exactly what we need to do.
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O'Donnell/(can't hear) to encourage this.
Atkins/And I think those are probably, because each of you, I mean, I'm not telling you
anything you know, you are a diverse group, with diverse opinions about these
things and I think you need to have create some kind of a forum where you can
talk this through. But I do believe that we, that it's important enough that some
sort of a working committee of three of you where we can meet and we want to
propose ideas. All right here's what we want to do, what do you think, what do
you think? And actually work with us then it comes back to the full Council and
the Council will have to bless it.
Lehman/No use to suspect to this committee, or this direction might redefine sometime
in the future to roll ICAD.
Atkins/I think this policy in and of to itself will cause a redefinition of our relationship
with ICAD. Karin, if you wanted to add something just Karin and David spent a
good bit of the time preparing all this work and.
Wilbum/Well for example, one what I was thinking as you were talking about ICAD,
you said who you talk to, what you said, but that might be a function of this group
to follow up and say that this is a particular commercial business or industry that
we'd like to recruit for this area and so we can follow up with that and do you
know a song and dance.
Atkins/Well one of the things you know and I also pointed is that we need to expand the
community in leadership in this area. One of the, to Cedar Rapids credit if they
need something for economic development, Rockwell rights them a check, or
McLeod write them a check, we don't have that. And that our strength is in the
people that we have here, they may, they don't have the money but we have got to
find a way to get more folks involved. I think the real estate community and
development community needs to be brought to the table and you as a committee
or a Council need to talk to them, what is it? Now we've tried this before and
remember when we went through code review and we sent this out and they talk
and talk and talk and what did we get in the end? Nothing. Well we still have to
continue trying to get those folks involved because I think the image that we
project as a community is going to have a great deal of barring of whether they're
going to go out there and invest. And they're really only going to invest for one
reason, they're going to make money.
Champion/Right.
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Atkins/But there are other things in here, I think we need more industrial land, I think an
industrial spec building is a good idea. I think we need to define areas in town
that need some renovation. I've mentioned to you in the past about Towncrest
and the noah side and there are projects under way. I think that we have, I think
that Council members actually have to or this committee, let's pack ourselves up
and go out to one of the corporate and you sit down with them, what is it we can
do? I mean you can't promise the world and the reason is because the tax policy
in Iowa is so restfictive, it's not like your going to be getting, but we need to
know what their interest is and I think if you establish that kind of relationship it's
going to go a long way to seeing investment made in our community and when an
investment is made that's good for all of us. It creates jobs for our citizens and
that's what I want to see done.
Vanderhoef/We definitely need to change our diversity in what's happening within our
city because we do rise and fall with what is happening within our community, we
base all of our dollars coming in off of a few industries that may change then
we're going to be in trouble if the have a down side (can't hear) we definitely
need.
Atkins/Well economic diversity is always critical to a community survival. I mean
having served in a community in Michigan the moment there was a bump in the
automobile industry you could, it just tippled throughout the state.
Lehman/Well what do you want from us?
Champion/Yea what do you want?
Atkins/Well first of all I want is this an idea that you believe is worthwhile?
O'Donnell/I think it's a great idea.
Atkins/And to say it's worthwhile then we. Secondly I think you need to schedule for
your an upcoming work session to actually naming of a committee.
Lehman/All fight.
Atkins/Because what I want to do is I want you, you give the committee to me, we want
to go to work, we want to call a meeting, we want to take you through some of the
ideas that we've prepared in here, so that you need to say that we think a business
retention survey.
(END OF 00-20 SIDE 2)
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Atkins/Karin out tonight, we can't get all that done when there's just David and Karin,
it's probably just David.
Lehman/Yea Karin's working on his (can't hear). Do we have.
Atkins/Kafin's got to sell the Peninsula, that's her (can't hear).
Lehman/Do we have a consensus that we'd like to move forward with this?
O'Donnell/Absolutely.
Champion/Definitely.
Pfab/Absolutely.
Lehman/All fight you've got a yea.
Atkins/OK thank you.
Champion/It's the best thing I've seen today.
Kanner/Steve.
Atkins/Yes sir.
Kanner/Before you go through. Could you outline for us and the public what you asked
for funding for this year and this fiscal year?
Atkins/Oh good idea thank you Steve. In this budget there are I think four things we
have to consider. One is there's a $50,000 contribution to ICAD, that comes from
our general fund. Secondly we have proposed $500,000 from various city funds
for the purpose of Operations for an Economic Development Policy, that means
do a study, something such as that where it's not a capital investment. Third is
that we have proposed an Economic Development Fund that would provide
$2,000,000 over three years of purposes of economic investment and that
investment could in be the spec. building, buy some land, and then four I've had
Karin in and we'll talk a little more tomorrow night we've identified in the capital
plan those projects that we believe have an economic development component to
it. For example, Scott Park, is it Scott Park area, is that what it's called? Scott
Park Area Trunk Sewer is intended to provide sewer service up off of Scott
Boulevard and Rochester to the Iowa City Care Center. But it also open 300
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acres for potential development and we've flagged those for, and there's a list of
those that we'll share with you tomorrow when we do capital projects. I think
those are the four, three smaller ones and one big one that is the number of capital
projects. Yes sir.
Pfab/I would say also as we go looking at this I mean these are well thought out and well
I've gone through them, this is the second time I've gone through them I was
quite pleased with them. And also no idea is too crazy to look at.
Atkins/Oh absolutely not, I think we need a reasonably open economic development
agenda that gives us a chance to say something that would no wait a minute, that's
a little off the wall, OK let's take a run at it and see what it looks like, I'm fine
with that.
Pfab/Good.
Atkins/I mean we've allowed I think in the time that I've been here that historically our
economic development initiatives have one relied clearly on ICAD to do it for us
but that was all the reasons it was created. And then I think the second one in
economic development is most of the economic good fortune that's occurred in
our community it happened. I mean we really it just happened.
Pfab/By accident.
Lehman/Well (can't hear).
(All talking)
Pfab/(can't hear).
Atkins/I mean our prosperity has been based upon our prosperity, people see that and
want to invest.
(All talking).
Atkins/And remember in one of the things that.
Pfab/I was just being somewhat flippant about it (can't hear).
Atkins/That I was, that I was disappointed in is that when the Press Citizen wrote their
editorial about it, they missed the whole point of the Economic Development.
This is as much tax policy, we're trying to create income so we can provide
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programs of the character, quality and quantity that our community wants and it's
only through economic development initiatives which has a bearing on tax policy
to, I mean folks our building permit activity over the last year was excellent.
Their not leaving the town in droves, I think that was the quote in the editorial.
And our commercial development is generally OK, it needs to be better, if you
want to do things, you, that's the collective, all of us, we're going to have to
generate more income. That's all there is to it. Yes Steven.
Kanner/I want to just clarify some of the figures you gave out here. And then perhaps
you can tell me where we're getting that money, from what fund so we can clarify
that. Your saying.
Pfab/What page are you on there?
O'Donnell/He's on this.
Atkins/The summary that I just gave you Steven.
Kanner/We will get that in our budget (can't hear).
Pfab/OK, your referring to this.
Kanner/To the funding that.
Pfab/OK sorry I thought you were looking at a page (can't hear).
Kanner/No no just my notes I'm looking at. $500,000 for the what are you calling it the
Economic?
Atkins/Yea it's intended to finance the studies and the analysis and it comes from four
separate funds, water and sewer, landfill, it's $125,000 each and would you look
that page number up for me Deb.
Kanner/For reserves?
Atkins/Yes.
Kanner/You're saying.
Atkins/And I would assume if we make this policy work we pay it back. I mean legally
you can use those moneys by just simples Council's declaration by whatever you
want it to. Traditionally we only use water for water, waste water for waste water,
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roads for roads, I mean that's what we have done. So this is a little but I'm not
quite as that you need to pay it back. Under our economic development budget
you would find the $50,000 contribution for ICAD. In our capital budget it would
be found on page 139 at the top it shows $2 million dollars, 700, 700, 600 over
and tomorrow night I'll flag those for you again when you do capital projects.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/And then finally we'll have a list tomorrow night of kind of those capital projects
that we think have an economic development beating to help you in your decision
making.
Kanne~ So that would be $700,000 of the $2,000,0000 this year plus $500,000 in the
reserves.
Atkins/Right, that's correct, that's correct and then $50,000 for ICAD.
Kanner/And we'll get where the reserves are in just a second.
Atkins/Yea she's looking those up. Maybe I can find it faster.
Lehman/Well it showed it under waste water because I remember seeing that (can't
hear).
Atkins/Well you'll see it all ties back to, 104 1 think is the page number Deb up at the
top, $500,000 and it shows the four funds. If you look up each one of those you'll
see a transfer from each one where it ties back to that.
Mansfield/Road use, waste water, water and landfill.
Atkins/This one is the loosest, I mean I didn't know what number, I wanted to present a
number that allowed you some flexibility to do some things and that we're
proposing $500,000, this would really be a number, I mean you can amend the
number 400, 300, 200, I don't know.
Lehman/That's just kind of seed money.
Atkins/That's exactly what it is Ernie. And then one of the first challenges I think to the
Committee is do we need a set a policy to make sure we pay it back? Yea. But
those are things that, those are details that yet to be identified.
Kanner/And Steve, for instance if we didn't fund that $700,000.
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Atkins/Right.
Kanner/Approximately what percentage would that lower the increase that we're
proposing for taxes that people have to pay? We're talking a 3.2 percent increase.
Atkins/I hear you Steve yea, I can't tell you now but I'll have it for you tomorrow night.
Kanner/And maybe also throw in the $500,000.
Atkins/We'll have those numbers for you tomorrow night.
Lehman/$500 wouldn't affect it because it's from the reserves.
Atkins/$500 wouldn't work, because their from the reserves and the reserves in those
funds are substantial but I will get you that number.
Lehman/It wouldn't be GO money.
Atkins/OK I'll get you that.
Vanderhoef/Pay back would be over the long haul.
Atkins/Yep, that's up to you all. I mean if your immensely successful you can pay it
back in a shorter period of time, if not, it doesn't make that (can't hear).
Kanner/That's something we have to discuss to see.
Atkins/That's right, absolutely.
Kanner/What risks and (can't hear).
Arkins/And I'll get you the $700,000 for tomorrow night. Did you make a note of that
Kevin? OK. OK.
Lehman/All right.
Parks and Recreation Master Plan
Atkins/My next policy plan for you all is the Parks and Recreation Department
Commission are planning a master plan and Terry through when Rex was in front
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of the Council I think kind of laid out for you the extent of the changes that have
occurred in the Parks and Recreation over the last 10 years. As he pointed out our
park plan inventory is up by almost 100 percent. Trails, we've added about 10
miles of trails, Terry estimates that 7 miles of those require snow removal. We've
got 20 miles proposed over the next few years. We have pending developments at
Water Works Park Peninsula, Hunters Run, Kiwanis, Walden Woods, Miller
Orchard, these are all projects that are pending, most of which have some money
identified. My concern is our citizens are given, and by citizens I'm referring to
the Parks and Recreation Commission fight now are given direction from you to
put together comprehensive plans on what we'd like to see in our community with
respect to parks and recreation facilities. But financially it's going to be very
difficult for us to even do what we're doing fight now and I think we'd do a
disservice to the community, that is the whole community, unless we provide
them with some sort of guidance with respect to how this master plan needs to be
put together. Now that doesn't mean we're going to pack it all in, but one of the
and I think I've mentioned it to you at the last meeting when Rex was speaking is
that I think Terry to his credit has a nice balance between Parks and Recreation
has been created, but we've got approaching I think 5 or 600 acres of natural
areas. And if we're going to program it and since make sure it's enjoyable and
maybe useful to our citizens, now that's an expense. And I'm not sure what to
recommend to you, other than when we get into these visions and these
comprehensive plans it directs our future action, we've spent millions on water
and sewer based upon these plans but of course that' s based upon the fees that can
be generated from those systems. We don't have that same luxury in our general
and operating general fund and our general debt service fund. Each and every one
of you has some ideas on what you'd like to see, changes and amendments in city
services, we've got this one staring us in the face on how we're going to pay for
all of this and I think we have an obligation to either have a sit down with the
Commission and provide them some general direction because again doing a
study that we can't fulfill doesn't do anybody any good. It's also interesting to
note that when you have a vision or a master plan, let' s say like the airport,
they've got loads of money, plus it's a lot easier to get it done when you have the
Fed's paying 90 percent of the bill. Terry and the Commission don't have that
luxury.
Kanner/Can they offer an airplane ride or something like that?
Trueblood/City Park next summer.
Pfab/A question.
Atkins/Sure.
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Pfab/Is, are there funds or grants other things that we may, are we pursuing to the hilt
everything that can be?
Atkins/Yes, I can tell you that I can't imagine, Terry came up with that grant on that
whatever it was for whatever it was for the Shakespeare Theater that I still haven't
figured out how it pulled it off, it was $80,000 and to your credit.
Lehman/But the big thing Steve and I see the list of priorities from Parks and Recreation
and I also see it in the CIP, even if we had the money to do all the capital projects
we don't have the money to maintain them, I mean the challenge really is how do
we maintain what we have now as well as try to fulfill some of the wishes of the
Parks and Recreation Commission, I don't know how (can't hear).
Atkins/It really is a cut the grass and plow the snow issue in many respects Eruie.
Lehman/Yea, we keep getting more grass to cut and more trails to plow and we can, yea,
we can build them but how do we do it?
Atkins/I know.
O'Donnell/Plus we're asking $50,000 for a natural areas manager.
Lehman/That' s right and also.
O'Donnell/(can't hear) that's on top of this.
Lehman/And another $50,000 a year in park land acquisition when we can't pay for the,
we can't maintain what we have, it seems a little extreme.
O'Donnell/A little extreme to budge.
Lehman/Yea we are strained to budge.
Vanderhoef/I'm not sure what page it's on, where are we on our acquisition fund right
now for parks?
Atkins/Oh in the cash position?
Vanderhoef/Yea.
Atkins/Go ahead and talk away while we look it up.
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Lehman/Well you've got this billed as Park and Recreation Master Plan, I don't think
this Council's going to come up with a master plan, what are you asking us?
Atkins/I'm asking you that I think that you, we need, and maybe it's a sit down with the
Commission, the Commission and the Council need to have a talk and don't let
the Commission let, don't have the Commission plan a comprehensive plan of
development that they can not fulfill. Now are there some significant policy
issues yea, maybe one of the things that we have to tell ourselves is that for the
next four or five years or whatever the period of time is the land that we've
acquired through acquisition is going to sit there. They're not going to develop it.
Pfab/Is that all bad?
Atkins/Yea, and your right Irvin I don't know if that's all bad but that is something we
do need to talk about. You have in the capital budget two major priorities for two
trail projects and you saw and I recommended that they go to the unfunded. One
because of the amount of money I mean it was like $3,000,000 we were
approaching. But even more so Terry' s got his hands full now.
Lehman/Well what your really saying is that the Commission, we need to give them
some direction that if rather than plan for development of some of these new parks
these are kind of, we may have to say we put them on hold you know with that,
yea they are, they are priorities for us but until we get the money to maintain them
we can't build them.
Atkins/And I think that you have a Citizen's Commission here that may have to say what
other means of financing do we have? I mean Terry knows the laws as well as I
do when it comes to what's available to respect to property tax and we can be very
candid with them. And we can't get into fees for everything. Because part of the
enjoyment of parks is the fact that they are, and I can't imagine you wanting to do
something such as that, recreation's a little different.
Lehman/So are you asking us to set up a meeting with the Park and Recreation Commission?
Atkins/I'm asking you one become conscious that, be careful about your expectations of
Terry and his operations and of me and our ability to get these things done.
Lehman/I think we're pretty well aware of Terry's (can't hear).
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Atkins/And I do too and I'm not whining but I just want to be realistic about it and
secondly I think if your going, I'm whining OK I'm sorry. Then I want to be able
to have and I think you need to have a meeting with, they need to tell you what
their interests are. And you need to be very candid with them of what available
moneys are, page 114.
Pfab/I think the point that your making is let's, we have limited amount of time, money
and effort, let's (can't hear) and not waste any of it so we can get as far down the
trails so to speak that we can.
Lehman/No, no, once (can't hear).
(All talking)
O'Donnell/We're at the end of the trail.
Atkins/Yea, you may want to make it a priority, you may say the completion of the trail
system will be a priority, but the development of these parks will not or vice
versa. I mean those are some of the.
Vanderhoef/Or neighborhood parks over.
Atkins/Yes.
Vanderhoef/Say the Water Works Park as a community park that kind of thing. And I
think we owe it to the Commission.
Atkins/So do I.
Vanderhoef/To go and talk to them, let them know what we have in the way in dollars to
spend, what we might be able to give for the next three years towards doing
projects and we know what their priorities are right now and obviously they're not
able to fund some of the priorities right now so what can we fund for them? And
let them choose then within those.
Pfab/I would even, can I go as far as suggest that maybe some kind of an educational
tour with members and some other people take a look, physically take a look at
some of these things, check what' s going on out there so when we talk about them
we all, we're all on the same page.
Atkins/We have a Parks Tour every July, right Terry?
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Pfab/So I mean even maybe even sneak one in a little earlier if that's, I mean just to, so
we, as we start working on this thing. So what do you mean here? Why is this
important? And have the people go with us.
Atkins/Yea. I think one of the things that we can also do for you is that Terry can
actually make a list of the facilities that he's currently responsible for, I know it's.
And what I would encourage you to do is that when your out and about on the
weekend running some errands drive by one of the parks, go over and see it. I
mean we can, I think you get a feel for it in that fashion. Part of what precipitated
some of this was that going down Miller Orchard, there' s a kind of a, there's a
very nice feel good sign there that says site of the new neighborhood park. Which
we put up.
Lehman/Shame on us.
Atkins/No I don't think so I think it, that' s a neighborhood obviously that' s been
deserving a park for a long long time and we need to fulfill that obligation. But I
would like, I mean at the very least unless I hear differently I'd like to schedule a
joint meeting with the Parks and Recreation Commission.
O'Donnell/(Can't hear).
Lehman/I would agree but.
Atkins/Terry did you want to comment on anything? You don't have to.
Trueblood/No.
Atkins/OK, fine, just saying it's available.
Lehman/Thanks for coming though. Appreciate your input.
Atkins/No he had a great deal to do with it.
O'Donnell/It's been very valuable.
Lehman/Yes.
Wilburn/Well maybe this just for our thoughts between now and then some of the things
we can be thinking of, Steve had mentioned one, just within like trails and one of
the things that we might decide is trails that are going on top of some existing
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developments, sewer, whatever are going to have priority over some other type of
trail.
Lehman/Because they're less expensive to do and it's much cheaper to do at that point.
Wilburn/And that' s the type of.
Atkins/Oh he does want to talk.
Pfab/No shamed him into it.
Wilburn/That' s because I started talking (can't hear).
Trueblood/You know I thought I'd better jump up here before Ross continued there he
might get us in trouble. I just, Steve had mentioned and it's on your agendas,
Parks and Recreation Master Plan and what we're looking at there is a document
that may very well turn out to be something like this. And it's a gross over
simplification but basically what it would be all about is letting the citizens of
Iowa City tell us what they think is important. So that's just something that I
think with this future meeting is something that we will want to talk about, that is
money that is currently budgeted but we haven't started on it as yet. And at any
rate it on one hand it might develop a plan that we can't fulfill but on the other
hand it will give the citizens the opportunity to tell us what they feel is important.
Maybe the citizens don't feel it's important for us to have 600 acres of natural
areas, or maybe they think we should have 1,200 acres of natural areas, I don't
know. But it's not just parks and it's not just trails, it's also recreation, recreation
facilities, recreation programs and activities, that sort of thing to develop a
strategy for the future.
Lehman/Terry I think that's very very good and I think we all would like to know what
the citizens would like to have but at the same time I would hope that we don't
create an expectation that these sort of things will happen when we don't have the
financial ability to make them happen.
Trueblood/That's exactly right, it's kind of, it can be a double edged sword.
Atkins/And Ernie that' s exactly what we have to say to them. We have to be very honest
with people, is that as you know as Council Member, they're going to come to the
microphone and say I want this, I want this, I want this.
Lehman/Well look at this.
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Atkins/Well absolutely and I want to say to folks invariably we get ourselves in a jam is
that you don't seem to understand that there's a fixed amount of money that we
have in our general operating budget. I didn't do it, you didn't do it, the State of
Iowa decides that for us. Now how are we going to? And folks in some respects
we'll have a very capital year, we'll just cut that out, well as you know that's not
all that easy. I think we have to be very candid about this to make this a
successful policy. Because I want to be able to do something we can actually
fulfill and achieve.
Pfab/I brought this up before, it's another place where instead of sitting down with a
Council framework here we'd be better off to looking for a public forum or
something like that, an education, and you know like we've gone through
different things, you put them on the board and where's the priority. That' s what
we need to go around to the neighborhoods and say this is what it's for,
recreational.
Trueblood/That' s what would happen if we were to undertake a Parks and Recreation
Master Plan. We wouldn't be doing it ourselves, we would be hiring a consultant
to do this. They would come in and they would conduct a lot of community
meetings and survey's and that kind of thing. But yea, ultimately that's where it
would be.
Atkins/But Irvin (can't hear) want that consultant to be able to say, I think we need, you
know 500 acres of so and so. OK how do you respond to the question that
financially that may be beyond the cities means? That question has to be posed.
Pfab/Are we looking for input from the citizen's first? I'm not so sure we're not.
Lehman/Yea but Irvin the other problem you pit neighborhood against neighborhood. I
mean each neighborhood has what they consider to be very very important and
when you don't fund that you really create. Neighborhood associations are
wonderful things in some degrees, they're are also self-defeating in another
because.
Pfab/Well bring all the neighborhoods, the neighborhood things and say hey this is why
you know we would love to do this and this and just basically an educational
aspect rather than a budget aspect.
Atkins/OK but it gets down to what you can afford to pay for.
Pfab/Right and that' s the point now.
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Atkins/But then you still have to make that call and I think that the public needs to
understand that you are going to have put in your lap a very difficult decision.
Second point is that I really believe you need to use the Parks and Recreation
Commission, this is a wonderful tool for you to let them know what you think,
what they think, and I think there' s going to be a sorting process will occur very
clearly then. Use those people because they are citizens.
Lehman/They need to do the sorting.
Vanderhoef/Yep.
Atkins/Yep. And they'll.
Pfab/Are we, I hate to say this in this way but I'm trying to think of a nice way to say it.
Are we afraid of the public's input?
Atkins/No no.
Vanderhoef/No.
Atkins/Just on the contrary.
Pfab/That's what I'm getting to feel and again I'm just saying from my.
Atkins/Irvin if we create an open microphone, I don't think it will accomplish a thing.
Pfab/What about a forum type of thing?
Atkins/If you created open microphone I don't think you'll accomplish a thing, I mean
that as sincerely as I could.
Pfab/You see this as more as more polarizing?
Atkins/No.
Pfab/Open mic.
Atkins/I see this. That will because you can come to the microphone and take no
responsibility. Now come to the microphone but here's the rules, if you propose
an expansion of this how would you pay for it?
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Wilburn/Steve what your kind of getting at is something that I brought up at the Parks
and Rec. Commission meeting when we were talking about this. When Terry
(can't hear) said to you.
Trueblood/Parks and Recreation Master Plan.
Wilbum/Master plan and I tried to the Commissioner's about the idea of strategic
planning. Strategic planning is when you make those considerations, you look at,
you go ahead and dream your vision, you look at your constraints and you look at
feel the fuse, elect things that if you make some strides and three or four strategic
directions, it's going to move us closer to what the public would like but also it
would take into consideration those budgetary constraints and that' s what I was
trying, when I was talking with the Commission. And something different from
like, my experience when we did strategic planning with the school district maybe
6-7 years ago was it ended up being more of a master plan, an entire list of
strategies as opposed to a real focus area. And which allows for public input but
also allows the public to wrestle with where do we want to get the most bank for
our bucks. (can't hear).
Atkins/One of the things we had, one of the things we had going for us in water and
sewer, if we had anything going for us. The reason we have something going for
us in water and sewer is there was a target, it was called federal regulations.
Anything we wanted to do was OK, but you must fulfill that federal regulation,
and there was that constraining element in the debate. I think we should build a
this, or I should. That's fine but that won't meet that regulation so you focus the
debate, and I'm saying to you that you need to focus the debate around your
desires but you also have pocketbook issues that have to be identified or you can't
fulfill those desires.
Pfab/I think instead of a federal mandates our focal point is how much money is there
available? And so what is, what is not, what is different than that except putting a
different constraint on it and say here folks here's what we'd all like to do now
how do we make this thing work in this numbers.
Atkins/And the thing I'm saying here Irvin is the willingness to put the constraint on it, if
you're willing to do that.
Pfab/Well I mean that's, we don't another choice.
Lehman/Yea but I think it's best done if we meet with Parks and Recreation
Commission.
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Atkins/That's why you have that.
Lehman/And I think we do have some guidelines of things that are going to be very
difficult to do and say folks this is what we have to work with. Now you give us
your advice, either you can give us the concepts, it's our job to make the pieces fit
into the puzzle. Which is why I have a real problem with going out and asking
each neighborhood what do you want? Because they come right back and they
can't have it, then why did you ask us when you knew you couldn't fund it?
man/(can't hear)
Wilburn/And the difference with the strategic planning is you tell the public now it's not
our job to put the puzzle together you put the puzzle together.
Lehman/And your exactly right.
Pfab/But is that the wrong approach? Is it still not the right thing to get the public in
there? It's city wide? Say take them to the library, say here (can't hear).
Wilburn/You give the public input and then you say OK now it's your job, here's.
(All talking).
Pfab/Here's how many pages you have and here' s money projects, where would you put
your pennies?
Champion/And you don't put it off until your done.
(All talking)
Lehman/But that needs to be the job of the Parks and Recreation Commission, I think
they're far better able to do that.
Atkins/I think that they need to hear.
Lehman/Some direction.
Atkins/This debate your having fight now.
Lehman/I agree.
Atkins/The Commission members need to hear what you just said.
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Kanner/One thing I want to add to the mix that I think there's an Economic Development
component to this also, one of the things, the priorities that companies list as a
high priority is quality of life. And that's something, it's one of these things in
your third component on the budget, I think we should consider it and the
Economic Development Committee that we're going to form should consider this
that it might be worthwhile to put some money from Economic Development in
this area and be able to promote that, that we have this great park system and
we're doing all this and we have this place for your kids to go. And we have you
know rides so that I think we should keep that in mind too.
Champion/It's (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/But these are the kinds of things that city need continually puts out.
Atkins/But don't forget if you don't have the tax policy you can't have anything of
quality or quantity. If you don't have the tax policy to pay for it that's what
you've got to have in place. I think that's a, I think that's an Economic
Development and Recreational parks are clearly tied.
Lehman/Are we agreed that we would like to meet with Parks and Recreation?
Champion/Sure.
Pfab/Sure.
O'Donnell/Sure.
Atkins/And I'll set that up.
Lehman/All right.
Atkins/Now, thank you, anything else?
Trueblood/Just one.
(All talking)
Lehman/Didn't get any but we're (can't hear).
Atkins/OK tomorrow night.
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Vanderhoef/Well maybe we can focus it so you don't waste your energy.
Atkins/Tomorrow night I will have all the staff here and I'm assuming we can do capital
projects. And what I would like to hear from you is what are those you would
like on the table. Each of you, I mean this is kind of an open, tomorrow night is
our, sort of our last scheduled.
(can't hear).
Atkins/Well I don't (can't hear).
Lehman/Well we don't get through.
(All talking).
Atkins/Yep, you'll have to pick up another one. Now a couple things to keep in mind is
that, I gave you a little list of budget decisions and that' s historically the things
that you have to decide. I'll have a handout for you tomorrow night on non-
operational, Jaycees, you know all those kinds of things you'll have that.
Kanner/I didn't follow.
Atkins/You have in your, who's the committee on the Human Service Agencies?
Champion/Mike and I are.
Lehman/Yea you Connie.
Atkins/They have settled their recommendations and I can, you can have it tonight if you
want to take it with you.
O'Donnell/Sure.
Atkins/And it opens up, you'll have to make certain decisions, for example, Arts Iowa
City wants another $30,000. I did not budget that. Jaycees wants $9,000, I did
not budget that.
Lehman/We're going to talk about that tomorrow night?
Atkins/We got a new. Yes. Well we can do, we can either start with (can't hear) those
kind of, or we can go to capital, you really.
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Champion/I think we need to start with capital improvements.
Lehman/I think so too.
Atkins/I think that's your biggest ticket item.
Lehman/Yea.
Atkins/We did get another one came in, just was handed to me mid week on the juvenile
crime prevention, they want $20,000, not in the budget so. Remember if you
either reduce a revenue or increase an expense it pops out somewhere else and so
we'll have to go through that. I have on the agenda Recreation fees for the
meeting of the 14th, we could also do that tomorrow if you'd like, but fight now I
have it scheduled for Monday night the 14th.
Lehman/I don't think we better find out tomorrow.
Pfab/Our plate looks a little full.
Atkins/OK. You all asked me so capital projects will be our primary theme for
tomorrow night. You all asked me to raise with you the meeting of the 14th.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/We have a very busy session about starting earlier. You have 6:00 Conference
Board, and then at 6:30 you begin the work session.
Karr/Library Board.
Champion/Library Board.
Lehman/Well have they requested to be?
Atkins/And the work session involves Library Board, and they're going to take about an
hour. Zoning and then there's a number of miscellaneous items that you have on,
Hawkeye Court Apartment's letter, Cemetery, Hickory Hill, the Acreage
Dedication, Recreation Fees, televise work sessions, legislative Council or
Legislative Committee, sale of public property, the fight of way valuation. You
have a busy agenda. Now what do you want to do?
Lehman/Well, let's go by one by one. Hickory Hill, I think is a very very quick thing, I
don't think that' s going to be subject to a whole lot of discussion.
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O'Donnell/It shouldn't be.
Lehman/No I don't think it should be. I don't think we're probably going to spend a
whole lot of time on televising council meetings, we're going to come to a
conclusion.
Atkins/(can't hear)
Lehman/A yes or no and we'll proceed with that. What else we got? Valuation of public
land, have no idea how complicated that is.
Atkins/I don't know either. We do have, those property owners pending, we have to, we
always are going to (can't hear).
Lehman/We do, we'd better leave that one on. What else you got?
Atkins/The Legislative Committee about.
Lehman/That's one we should do because we have legislature in session.
Atkins/OK. Zoning items, Agenda, the zoning items are.
Franklin/HCDC.
Atkins/Yep and the HCDC, Hawkeye Court Apartment letter.
Lehman/I don't know what we expect to do with that.
Atkins/It has to be put on, I don't know what you want to do. I honestly forgot who
asked me to put that on.
Karr/Steven did.
Atkins/Steve did okay.
Kanner/Well it was from a request from.
Atkins/There's a letter that's fight, thank you.
Kanner/From Jane from the chair that she wanted to send a letter about the.
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Lehma~/Impact of changes.
Kanner/Impact of maybe taking away the housing over on Hawkeye Court.
Atkins/OK. And then we have Rec. fees, and then we have landfill grants, that' s a
recommendation on the landfill grant program, that should go very quickly for
you, but Rec. fees may take some time because that' s new to a couple of you.
And then the joint meeting with the Library, they asked for an hour.
Vanderhoef/That's (can't hear) 7:30.
Champion/If we start at 6:00 with the Conference Board.
Atkins/6:00 is Conference, then 6:30 is work session.
Lehman/Well we have two options I suspect we could either start earlier in the afternoon
and do some of these things earlier.
Atkins/Yea.
Lehman/Or spend the night. Well what's your pleasure?
Kanner/I like the afternoon meeting if people could make that.
Champion/Well I couldn't come in the aftemoon but I could come earlier.
O'Donnell/I will come earlier, I can't get here in the aftemoon either.
Kanner/What time can you get here?
Pfab/These are important members so we have to work around them.
Kanner/What?
O'Donnell/6:00.
Pfab/These are important members so we have to work around them.
Lehman/Well do we want to try to meet at 5:30?
Champion/Well that's going to give us like a half hour before the Conference Board, are
we going to get anything accomplished?
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Lehman/No.
Champion/No, by the time we get settled in, we're going to have 10 minutes and then it's
going to be Conference Board time.
Lehman/Well I guess we can go until we decide we can't continue.
Champion/I'm totally willing to come if you think we'll get anything done.
Lehman/No we're not.
Champion/But I don't think we will in that.
Lehman/Not a half hour's going to make that decision.
O'Donnell/Hey we were here until 12:40 last Tuesday night we ought to be used to it.
Atkins/No, no, you never get used to that.
Vanderhoef/How about coming at 6:00 on Tuesday night on the 15th?
Pfab/I still would rather not but that's my personal preference.
Vanderhoef/We'd have (can't hear).
Atkins/Folks you may blow through these you may not I just don't know.
Lehman/Let's just plan on, ifit's OK let's meet at 6:00, Conference Board, let's meet the
Library Board, if we don't get through everything, we just plan it for another
meeting.
Atkins/What if I did this?
Lehman/What?
Atkins/What ifI did 6:00 Conference, 6:30 we'll do zoning.
Pfab/Is this the 14th?
Atkins/Yes 14th. 6:30 we would do zoning and you'd discipline yourselves to be done
by 7:00 because we'll have the Library come at 7:00. I'm just kind of making.
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Lehman/I see what your saying.
Atkins/Putting you up against something.
Champion/Well that's.
O'Donnell/Challenge us to be efficient.
Atkins/Challenging you to be whatever you want to call it.
Champion/(can't hear) Because otherwise we're going to waste 15 minutes as we
exchange groups.
Atkins/Yea.
Lehman/Actually could it be possible, the Conference Board might not last a half hour.
Champion/No it won't, it won't last.
Vanderhoef/We could start zoning.
Lehman/Why don't we start zoning at 6: 15.
Champion/We need to schedule it though.
Lehman/I mean it needs to be on the schedule because if we get through with the
Conference Board at 6:15 and we haven't said we're going to start at 7:30.
Atkins/Let me, I'll assume that the Conference Board will be short.
Champion/It will be, it usually is, that meeting.
Lehman/Well it won't be, but I don't know of any reason why it shouldn't be.
Atkins/OK is that what I hear?
Lehman/6:15 and then we'll do what we can.
Atkins/Capital projects, I'll have that non-operational, operational.
O'Donnell/It's easy for you.
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Atkins/Well here you can take them yea, I know.
Lehman/Well Hickory Hill's dedication or designation of that proper.
Champion/Then we could move forward on the agenda (can't hear).
Atkins/This has, this has, recommendations in it and what I did was I just took a page out
of your budget and redid it so you have a worksheet that's the same that your
familiar with.
Champion/That's all together that's nice.
Atkins/Yea it's all one piece of paper, and so just take it from there.
Lehman/Everybody have one?
Pfab/(Can't hear)
Lehman/Are we going to be acting on this tomorrow night?
Atkins/No Ernie it's pretty much up to you all, you've got 2 ½ hours, I'm assuming 6:30
to 9:00.
Lehman/Bottom half of this though probably should.
Atkins/The bottom half needs your attention.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/Arts Iowa City keeps calling and when your going to decide how much money
they're going to get and then the new one that was added.
Pfab/That's on here.
Atkins/Yea, you see it down at the bottom where it says $21,400 Irvin almost near the
bottom and has no, Johnson Co. Crime Prevention.
Pfab/Yea.
Atkins/Okay you got her, that's the new one that just came in, I told them I'd put it on
the list, I don't know a lot about it, I'm still trying to find out.
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Wilburn/(Can't hear) to all the different City Council's to (can't hear).
Atkins/I've got a copy of their letter, the letter doesn't say a whole lot.
Champion/Just when you look up the age (can't hear) finding the request I just start off
with the new people that almost everybody got what they requested this year
which was a real pleasant surprise because we used money out of our contingency
(can't hear) that had grown to a larger amount of money we could use that. So
I've asked her when she presents this to the agencies that they understand that this
is kind of windfall this year and that their base cannot start at what we give them
this year.
O'Donnell/And we also like to reserve in the contingency.
Champion/Right but the base next year won't start at what we're giving them this year,
she's going to add an inflation to what we gave them last year and then that's
what their base will start next year. This is a windfall year for them.
Lehman/Yea, I know what happens then.
Atkins/That's all I have sir.
Champion/They can't do that.
Lehman/No but they will.
Kanner/I have a question for Council. It seems that tomorrow night is when we're going
to be making decisions, budget items and that we, and then we'll hear feedback I
guess on the 291h. Do people think that we can get that all done especially when
we're going to be looking at different components of the following week. Do we
need to think about having another meeting?
Lehman/It depends on how we get, it depends on how we get along tomorrow night?
Atkins/And I think Steve's correct, is that it depends on how you do tomorrow that I
think you may need another meeting.
Champion/Yea (can't hear).
Lehman/If we do we'll just schedule another meeting.
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Atkins/Just bring your books with you.
Kanner/We should think that maybe the 21 st or the 22nd there might be.
Lehman/Well, based on tomorrow night though if we don't get through we just have to
go out and set.
O'Donnell/That's when we decide that tomorrow night, see how much we get done.
Atkins/That's all I have.
Lehman/Thank you.
Atkins/Good night.
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