Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2000-02-14 Transcription February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 1 (After Conference Board - don't transcribe) February 14, 2000 Council Work Session 6:20 PM Council: All 7 Council present Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Dilkes, Davidson, Schmadeke, Schoon, Craig, Trueblood, Nichols, Eckholt, Nasby Tapes: 00-24 Both Sides, 00-25 Both Sides, 00-26 Both Sides PLANNING & ZONING ITEMS A. PUBLIC HEARING ON A RESOLUTION TO AMEND THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TO ADOPT AND INCORPORATE THE SOUTH CENTRAL DISTRICT PLAN FOR PROPERTY GENERALLY LOCATED EAST OF HIGHWAY 218, SOUTH OF HIGHWAY 1 AND WEST OF THE IOWA RIVER. Davidson/Junior Varsity tonight, Item A is the Comprehensive Plan amendment for the South Central District Plan. Had quite a bit of discussion at your work session and formal meeting last time. There seems to be two things that were principally discussed certainly at the formal meeting on Tuesday. And we have hopefully cleared those things up, let's see Melody gave me a locator map which Dee had requested to handout, pass those around. The purpose of this is simply to put a few landmarks on here so that you can better identify when the discussion is occurring, when things, where things are located. You received two memoranda in your Council packet, one from Melody and one from myself, the one from Melody addresses two things that came up principally when Mr. Schuchert's comments which he made at the meeting, we think we have clarified both of those. The use of the term neighborhood commercial is not strictly speaking suppose to indicate CN-1 zone, neighborhood commercial zone but rather a mixed use type of commercial development and so we are proposing to change, strike the word neighborhood and insert the term mixed use and we've indicated the various places where that would be done. The other thing that there was some, there were some comments about that we could not fully resolve at the meeting but I think we've resolved here was Mr. Schuchert's the existing zoning on Mr. Schuchert's property being mislabeled, it ended up I think just being an unclear label so we will clarify that as well. Melody has noted at the very last part of her memo that there are just some minor changes that we will make as well. My memorandum This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 2 deals with the proposed extension of an artefial street between Mormon Trek Boulevard and Highway 1 intersection, Sycamore Street, Gilbert Street intersection. You received a number of comments, there basically is coming down to three alternative alignments that are under discussion, those three fight there. And what we've simply done Karin and I thought it would be a good idea to you know these are choices and at the time that the road is constructed we feel these are the three choices that we should use based on the research that we have done to make a decision on where the road should go. We are very comfortable with the recommendation that Planning & Zoning Commission gave you of somewhere between the N- 1 and N- 1.1 alternative. You have received some comments from people preferring the N-1.2 alignment, staff and our consultant had some concerns about that but we would emphasize to you we do feel that it is a buildable alignment that we can build according to our artefial streets standards. Now we just had CIP discussion last week and this road is not in the immediate future, we feel it's in the relatively short range future but it is not in your funded years which are the next three or four years are funded years, four years the next four, the current year and then three projected years. So you need to decide yourselves I guess how specific you want to be in your recommendation of what the wording should be in the plan. You know the information is there for whatever future Council decides they want to build the road, this one or otherwise we feel like we have a lot of good research you know that the situation with Mr. Williams who lives right in here you received some comments, that may change. Mr. Williams stated himself fight in front of you that he's not ready to move yet but he might be at some point in the future so you know maybe that's something you want to leave a little bit a little bit loose, that's your decision, Irvin. Pfab/I would certainly not like to see the possibility of going to N-1.2, I think to me when I look at it it makes a lot more sense now so I would not want that off the table or out of consideration. I think N-1 is doesn't make a lot of sense it just doesn't to me but N-I.1 is kind of an alternative, to me it looks to me like the best way would be to go to N-1.2. Davidson/Well N- 1.1. Vanderhoef/I would disagree with you but someplace between N. 1 and N.2 depending on the situation at the time that this goes in so my preference would be to write this loosely so that everything between N-1 and N-1.2 would be considered at that time. O'Donnell/I agree with that. Vanderhoef/Because there will be lots of things to be considered at that time. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 3 Davidson/I don't disagree with that at all Dee, I think the one thing we might want to do so we don't end up reinventing the wheel five years from now is maybe try and put some of this information in the plan so that it's there for future Council and future staff to know the research that was done. I mean I think we have some good information here on the alternative. Vanderhoef/I do too and there's some real alternatives on how that crosses even Dane Road and how extensive it gets when you start trying to make the tight angle with the comer there without having to change the alignment of Dane Road which I think is a very expensive proposition that you have to do that just so you get the proper angle. Davidson/Yea the proper (can't hear) is the issue with Dane Road. Vanderhoef/Yea and so I don't know whether staff would like to write something for us, put in there or. Davidson/Well the hearing's continued tomorrow night and I think any, you know, you've essentially got in your memorandum from Melody what we are, the changes that we are proposing to make currently. Otherwise the statements that are in the plan currently about the road we won't make any changes to unless you direct us that you would like it tweaked a little bit to reflect your combined sentiment. Vanderhoef/Well I would like it reflected that it include N.2. Lehman/I think that, that needs to be done tomorrow night. Dilkes/You probably want to wait until the public heating tomorrow. Lehman/Right. Vanderhoef/OK. Lehman/And we're not having public hearing tonight. Davidson/Right. Lehman/One question I have for you and I don't know if it's necessary for the public heating but as I think we may, you may be aware this property to the west of the Wolf's property as referred to by Mr. Wolf. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 4 Davidson/Yes. Lehman/With the intent my understanding is that manufactured housing, does that change the plan for this area? Davidson/That's obviously in the County fight now. Lehman/It is. Davidson/And is, and everybody's aware that it was inconsistent with the city's recommendation when that development plan for this parcel was approved. We would I think take a position that those plans for inconsistent, I mean, if this plan is adopted the city would take the position with the County that approval of additional manufactured housing in this area would not be consistent with this plan. Lehman/All tight where I think we are, we're going to continue the public hearing tomorrow night, and I'd like to have you note at the beginning of the public heating the changes of wording regarding the Schuchert property so that and I realize it may be just wording but and then I believe that if the Council has some feeling about the planning of the road and we wish the wording to be changed that should be expressed tomorrow night. And unless something really unusual comes up I would expect then that we would close the public heating and then proceed as we normally do. The next regular meeting would be the first reading for the plan with the changes if anything we might suggest tomorrow night. Davidson/Right. Lehman/Is that OK with the rest of the Council? O'Donnell/But the changes Ernie would have to be very specific I think. Lehman/Well I think well. O'Donnell/Between N-I.1 and N-1.2. Lehman/I think we'll express that tomorrow night then precisely what we'd kind of like to do and then you can tell us you know what that does. Davidson/Sure. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 5 Lehman/OK. Vanderhoef/Is there also a way that we can attach, you talked about the research you have done and somehow I would like to see that added to our addendum so that research stays with the plan. Davidson/Yea, that's exactly what we're proposing too Dee. Wilburn/If you were interested and you thought it might be a further sign communicate to future Council's which you have any interest in prioritizing the three options.. Champion/I think that's kind of hard to do. Pfab/I wouldn't. Wilburn/OK, just asking a question. Pfab/I would say just leave it at the range of the. O'Donnell/(Can't hear) it's a good idea. Davidson/Well you can be as specific as you want to be. O'Donnell/Very good. Lehman/Well I think this is something we should talk about tomorrow night at the hearing. All right. Davidson/OK, sounds good. Move on? Lehman/Yes. B. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM LOW DENSITY SINGLE-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (RS-5) TO SENSITIVE AREAS OVERLAY - LOW DENSITY RESIDENTIAL (OSA-5) AND APPROVING A PRELIMINARY SENSITIVE AREAS DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR THREE FOUR-UNIT BUILDINGS ON A 2.72 ACRE PROPERTY LOCATED NORTH OF ROHRET ROAD, WEST OF HIGHWAY 218. (REZ99-0012) (SECOND CONSIDERATION) Davidson/Item B is the rezoning of for the Duck Creek Condo's property, this is second consideration. Anything you want to discuss? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 6 C. CONSDER AN ORDNANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL (CN-1) TO COMMERCIAL OFFICE (CO-l) FOR 2.5 ACRES OF PROPERTY LOCATED ON THE WEST SIDE OF FIRST AVENUE AT TUDOR DRIVE. (REZ99-0015) (FIRST CONSIDERATION) Davidson/Item C is the rezoning from CN-1 to CO-1 for the proposed Mercy Hospital project. First consideration, I believe the way this was left last time is that you will give this first consideration tomorrow and then depending on what you all decide and may have, may piggy back this onto the meeting that you have scheduled with P & Z already with the Louis condominium's on the 6th and then you would have subsequent considerations to that. Does that sound fight? Vanderhoef/I really hesitate to vote before we have that meeting. Lehman/We've been asked to do it though. DavidsoW Yea you need to indicate to P & Z how you would vote yea. Lehman/OK. Davidson/OK. D. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM LOW DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (RM-12) AND MEDIUM DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (RS-8) TO PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY (OPDH~12/11.79 ACRES) AND OPDH-8/1.47 ACRES) AND APPROVING A PRELIMINARY PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY PLAN FOR WINDSOR RIDGE, PART 15, A PROPOSED 98-UNIT RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT LOCATED NORTH OF COURT STREET AT ITS EASTERN TERMINUS. (REZ99-0011) (SECOND CONSIDERATION) E. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING A PRELIMINARY PLAT OF W1ND~OR RIDGE PART FIFTEEN, A 40.27 ACRE, TWO-LOT, RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION WITH TWO OUTLOTS LOCATED ON THE NORTH SIDE OF COURT STREET. (SUB99-0020) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 7 Davidson/Item's D and E are the rezoning and preliminary plat for Windsor Ridge Part 15, anybody want me to put that up or any discussion? Lehman/The first one is requesting an expected consideration. Davidson/Expected consideration okay I (can't hear). Pfab/I would like to have you put that up if you would please. Davidson/OK let me find it here. Pfab/(can't hear). Lehman/This one is second consideration. Davidson/The, my pointer deely, oh here it is. The issue with that is outlot "T" here according to the conditional zoning agreement this trail will be constructed as part of that agreement. The developer had proposed this as being public, publicly held property, it is our recommendation now and we would expect to have reflected with the final plat when it comes in. That this would be private open space, what we would like to do is reserve the cities ability to acquire open space for the Lindeman property which will be up in this area rather than take this on at this time. And I think the parks and recreation department feels it's appropriate that this be maintained by the homeowner's association rather than by the city. Lehman/OK, do you have any questions Irvin? Pfab/That's fine. Davidson/OK. Kanner/So the question tomorrow is whether to collapse the readings? Letunan/Yes. Kanner/Have you heard anything of an emergency nature? Davidson/Was there a letter? Lehman/There was a letter in your packet. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 8 Kanner/I know there's a letter I'm asking if you've heard of anything else. DavidsoW Nothing else, nothing else but that Steven. Vanderhoef/And it's true we did have a long (can't hear). O'Donnell/This has been a long drawn out process, they've jumped through the hoops and dotted the I's. Pfab/Was there any, does staff have any comments one way or another? Davidson/No we're comfortable. Pfab/Everything' s fine. Davidson/Ann did you have something? (can't hear) Ann Bovbjerg/This is the next to the last drawing, there is a perfect drawing but the lower left 6-plex was made a 4-plex. Kanner/Do you want to get closer to the microphone Ann? Bovbjerg/That was made a 4-plex in order to draw the trail down so it would stay on this property and it might be helpful tomorrow night to have that change so it would be (can't hear). Davidson/I'll try and find that yea. Bovbjerg/Just so the records are clear on that. Lehman/Well let me ask a question then, if, has that been changed since our first consideration? Are we voting on the same thing that was voted on the first time? Davidson/That's how it came out ofP & Z yea. Bovbjerg/What came out was a 4-plex. Davidson/Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 9 Lehman/OK so we're voting for. Bovbjerg/Right, your voting on the same structure it's just that the drawing is different and I don't want anyone to have a disconnect here. Lehman/Fine, fine. Davidson/This was just in the materials Karin gave me so apparently that's been changed to a 4-plex so that the trail comes down and connects. Vanderhoef/And she had told us that. Davidson/She had told you that. Vanderhoef/Yea. Davidson/OK good. I'll try and find a correct drawing by tomorrow just in case. Anything else on this? F. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM PLANNED HIGH DENSITY MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (PRM) TO SENSITIVE AREAS OVERLAY (OSA-PRM) AND APPROVING A PRELIMINARY SENSITIVE AREAS DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR APPROXIMATELY .28 ACRES LOCATED AT 522 S. DUBUQUE STREET. (REZ99-0013) (SECOND CONSIDERATION) Davidson/Item F is the rezoning and sensitive areas development plan for the apartment building on 522 S. Dubuque Street. That's second consideration I believe, yes. G. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING A FINAL PLAT OF SCOTT BOULEVARD EAST, PART 4, A 7.36-ACRE, 15-LOT RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION WITH ONE OUTLOT LOCATED AT SCOTT PARK DRIVE AND HUMMINGBIRD LANE. (SUB99-0027) Davidson/Item G is a resolution approving a final plat for Scott Boulevard East. Scott Park Drive, Hmnmingbird Lane. Anybody want to look at this one? Pfab/Yea I think this is the one that I really wanted to see. Davidson/Oh Okay. Pfab/And that's the one with the narrow streets? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 10 Davidson/Right 25 foot wide streets. Pfab/Now is there going to be, is the street expected to be extended at some point in time? Davidson/This street connects to the portion of Hummingbird Lane which is in the County presently. And there was a lot of discussion at Planning & Zoning Commission of how best to handle that situation, it's a tipsy old, relatively unimproved road where at this is of course a (can't hear) cement concrete city designed standard street. Obviously because this is in the County and it will, and in fact this is, I should clarify what that so-called street is is private property owned by Plum Grove Acres with an easement over it for access for the persons who live along that street in the County. And you know we really struggled with how best to handle the situation and I don't think any of us ended up completely satisfied about it but there will be an agreement between the city and the county for maintenance of Lower West Branch Road and we feel that you know at least for the time being this is a satisfactory way to deal with it? Pfab/Is that agreement in place now? Davidson/It's under, not in place currently no. Pfab/OK but it, should that be in place before (can't hear)? Davidson/No because I mean Lower West Branch Road is not actually contiguous at all, in fact Irvin I think the Lower West Branch Road maintenance agreement is more tied to the proposed annexation that you have of further north. Pfab/Am I envisioning correctly that in other words people live along that street could see somebody walk there in that muddy mud flip off their tires and see you go down the street? Davidson/Well that's, it's chip seal which is considered a. Pfab/OK. Davidson/Basically a gravel road that's had an oil treatment placed on it, it's a dust flee type surface. I mean the issue will be, we will have to try and make sure as best we can that when these lots are developed in the spring time which is when you have problems and that's when they embargo all the chip seal roads in the County because the frost comes up through them and they're very very soft and you can This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 11 wreck them and really ruin them with heavy equipment of course heavy equipment is what will be presumably coming in here in the spring, we'll need to make sure that those folks know to come in this way on a city street which can handle the heavy vehicle and not come in this way and hopefully the builders will cooperate with us. Any other questions about this? OK. AGENDA ITEMS Lehman/Should we deal with Agenda Items? Anybody have anything on the Agenda Items? 1). Item #24. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AWARDING CONTRACT AND AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO SIGN AND THE CITY CLERK TO ATTEST A CONTRACT FOR CONSTRUCTION OF CONTRACT 3 - SOUTH PLANT IMPROVEMENTS, WASTEWATER TREATMENT AND COLLECTION FACILITY IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT. Atkins/I have something for you Ernie. Lehman/Yes sir. Atkins/We are recommending the award of the contract to South Plant Improvements that was laid in front of you. Karr/Steve. Lehman/Depends on how you look at it. Atkins/We are recommending the award of the waste water treatment south plant improvement project, the engineer's estimate was $24.9. The low bid of Story Construction was $26.5. Chuck believes that and I would concur with him that the top three bids are just a little more than 2% a part which represents market (can't hear). Those bids are so close I did ask for a brief history and if you go along with the recommendation of Story Construction this still represents about 5.5 million dollars less than our engineer's estimates were bid for the whole waste water treatment project over the last several years. (can't hear). 2). ITEM #23. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION REJECTING BIDS RECEIVED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2000, FOR THE IOWA CITY LANDFILL RECYCLING CENTER, PHASE 2, AND SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR MARCH 7 ON PLANS, SPECIFICATIONS, FORM OF CONTRACT, AND ESTIMATE This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 12 COST FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IOWA CITY LANDFILL RECYCLING CENTER PROJECT, PHASE 2, DIRECTING CITY CLERK TO PUBLISH NOTICE OF SAID HEARING, AND DIRECTING CITY ENGINEER TO PLACE SAID PLANS ON FILE FOR PUBLIC INSPECTION. Atkins/And the second one is a recycling center at the landfill, we are recommending that you reject those bids. It appears the building is coming in OK but it's improvements in and around it, concrete work, driveways and so forth. I've asked Chuck to go back, we want to go back out and rebid the project with anticipation of doing a chip seal as opposed to pouring concrete, that should save us a lot of money and we can still proceed with this project under a short time. Champion/That's the only change (can't hear). Atkins/Chuck seems to think that if this is the, this will be third time we've gone out and it's, we haven't quite figured out why we keep getting bad bids on the project, maybe it's location, (can't hear) landfill, I just really don't know, very unusual to have that happen and have to go out for a third time. Pfab/Is it possible that you can split the bids out, I don't know I'm just asking? Atkins/Well we thought about that Irvin and in fact that's kind of what we're thinking about doing is that we would bid the building, and it's (can't hear) features. Pfab/(can't hear). Atkins/We would bid it as a chip seal depending on how the bid goes and we can go back out and rebid the second contract to a different contractor and do some work ourselves (can't hear). Pfab/I'm reluctant to see a anything but a first class road to go in there because of the nature of that being. Atkins/Yea and I understand what your saying and I would like to think that in the long whole Council and I think your staff is committed to doing a first class job there but with the bid as high as it is, well right now we don't have anything, I'd like to get that building up soon (can't hear). Pfab/OK is possible just to build a building and worry about the? Atkins/That I don't know, I'd have to ask Chuck that. That's a point I'I1 raise with him (can't hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 13 Pfab/OK. Lehman/Steve we do have the equipment out there even if we chip seal that road to maintain the road? I mean it's not like we. Atkins/Oh, yea, there's no doubt that the road will be maintained I mean given the heavy traffic that we have in and out of the landfill and building this recycling center we're going to generate even more traffic. Lehman/Yea but I'm saying the chip seal road will not be nearly the problem where you have the equipment to maintain the on site that it would be if it were someplace else. Atkins/I don't think so. Pfab/I, the reason I bring that (can't hear) there are a couple things as we go back we've seen were we've under bid and what we tried to get the bid the project to fit the money we ended up wishing we didn't do it when you look (can't hear). Lehman/Well are you thinking about the library? Pfab/Well I'm thinking of another, I'm also thinking of the jail which we didn't do so you know I think we have a bad history. Atkins/Chuck, I'm talking about the recycling center, is it possible to build the building and bid the building separate from, it would be two contracts, one for the building and one for the surrounding features. Schmadeke/Sure. Atkins/OK, the answer Irvin then is yes we can do that. We just will have to come back to you with another bid, another bid package but it appears to, the building itself, can be separated and it appears to haunt us with (can't hear) other work around it. Champion/Well if we had to go to two, Irvin's right to do it right, but the road you can always redo, you can always resurface the road. Pfab/You always the. Champion/But the building needs to be. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 14 Atkins/(can't hear) basement. Lehman/This is really I think this is your call Chuck, you know how much traffic, what will work and what won't work, I wouldn't resume what to tell you what kind of road to put in. Pfab/Well, but the point is you did say it should be a pour concrete road. Lehman/And he may not change that either. Pfab/Right, I'm just sticking up with him, I'm trying to prop him up. Atkins/OK we're not choosing up sides, I mean, the thing is we want to get the building up (can't hear). Lehman/We're all on your side Chuck. Atkins/And to, yea, whatever you decide. Vanderhoef/Then is there an advantage do you think (can't hear)? Schmadeke/Probably because of the saving of the contracts (can't hear). Vanderhoef/(can't hear) for a road or? Schmadeke/Well more accumulative parking lot (can't hear). Kanner/Steve, getting back to the water plant. Atkins/Yes, waste water plant. It's real important, it's a waste water plant. Kanner/The waste water plant, the money came in for. Atkins/A whole different set of rules. Kanner/Do you anticipate fees having to go up? Atkins/Now we think we can more than accommodate this as I pointed out to you. Our, all of our bid package the last, the river, the south river corridor interceptor and Napoleon Park pump, Scott Boulevard (can't hear), Willow Creek and now the waste water plant, our engineer estimates were 59.9, if you accept this bid it's at 54.4 so we're still well under our estimates. In fact we're well under our 1990, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 15 well well under, we're a million 2 under our 94 estimates so we've been six years six years in the budget. Lehman/That's pretty good. Atkins/And I think folks, the important thing is when you look at the bids, if you look at (item #24) the top three bids, we try to, first we have five bidders, the top three are just a tad bit more than 2 percent apart which I think is a reflection of this is what market is for this type of project. We are also making the assumption that we could be bidding at probably another better time than we are now, these folks are lining up their work for this, for the next couple years as soon as warm weather breaks and we'll break. Lehman/Did you take into the account that this firm is from Ames and could be a Cyclone? Atkins/No. We choose not to. Lehman/OK. Atkins/Well Knutson you'll notice is the high bid. Lehman/Yes I see that. Atkins/And that's our water contract. Vanderhoef/(can't hear). Atkins/And which we got an exceptionally (can't hear). Pfab/I'm thinking something but I won't say it. Lehman/Bids are a reflection of the amount of work a contractor has, if he can get it, get it with a nice little cushion he'll take it, but if he can't he won't. Atkins/Well we discussed actually going back out, remember we have that administrator order with the DNR, it's a whole different set of rules, we've got to do the things we've got to do. I would think one of the things they have with the bidding and Chuck and I can speak better to (can't hear). Remember these folks are going to building an addition to the waster water plant that means it's going to running while they're building. Well one of the nice things about the water plant is they don't have any pressure to keep the system up and running, that does make a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 16 difference I think (can't hear) again comprehensively we've still done very well in our bidding projects. Lehman/OK. Arkins/That' s all I have. Lehman/Other Agenda items? 3). Champion/Well I just wanted to bring up a matter of how we handle things, when I was reading through the minutes of the Planning & Zoning on the Mercy Hospital rezoning. Do you know I'm wondering if when we do a major change like that, like the drawings were altered, the driveway was taken off, the access was just the same road as there is now, the building was moved forward, there was a pedestrian access to the front of the building, the parking was changed, I mean there were some major changes to that and staff has (can't hear) the concept but it, Planning & Zoning never got the information to look at again and so I just think as a matter of habit when there are major changes like that why doesn't it go back to our Commissions? Lehman/Why don't you say that tomorrow night when we get to that item? Champion/OK. Lehman/I think that' s appropriate for you to make that point in observation. Champion/I mean I'm going to support it but I see there's something wrong with the process there. Lehman/Other agenda items or comments. Boy this is pretty rare that we're ahead of. Atkins/Yea don't start bragging. Lehman/I'm not. O'Donnell/Let's break for 10 minutes. Lehman/7:00 (can't hear). Joint Meeting with Library Board This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 17 Lehman/Joint Meeting with the Library Board, I'm going to turn this over to you Mark because that's you, (can't hear). Mark Martin/Thank you Ernie, I probably would be a good idea for us to go around and introduce ourselves once again as Library Board members and it probably would help us if you would introduce yourselves as Council members. Anyway we'll start here, I'm Mark Martin, the current President of the (can't hear) Library. Lisa Parker/Lisa Parker. Mary McMurray/Mary McMurray. Jesse Singerman/Jesse Singerman. Shaner Magalhaes/Shaner Magalhaes. Mike O'Donnell/Mike O'Donnell. Ross Wilburn/Ross Wilbum. Jim Swaim/Jim Swaim. Linda Prybil/Linda Prybil. Irvin Pfab/Irvin Pfab. Connie Champion/Connie Champion. Dee Vanderhoef/Dee Vanderhoef. Emie Lehman/Emie Lehman. Steven Kanner/Steven Kanner. Linda Dellsperger/Linda Dellsperger. Martin/Ernie what we really. (END OF 00-24 SIDE 1) Martin/The architecture will present the plans they have been working on and Chuck Engberg and Joe Huberty are architects and they do a fine job so. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 18 Lehman/Before we start that I think everybody on the Council knows where we are and how we got here. Is that right? Well I (can't hear) you helped decide. Go ahead. Chuck Engberg/That was an affirmative right? Lehman/That was an affirmative. Engberg/I'm assuming you can all hear me because I think I'll mic here, if it's not enough I'I1 pull it up a little bit a little bit. Testing, testing. I'm Chuck Engberg, Joe Huberty is with me, we have presented to all of you folks on multiple occasions in the past, this time we're coming to you because we want to show you the fruits of our labor and what we have accomplished since November when we met with you as a body last to talk about several options. If you will recall we looked at 15 different options and of those options based on some evaluation criteria that you helped us establish. Which in a sense two of these criteria here, there were a few others but these were the main ones. We choose, you choose Option 7 which was commonly called Westward Ho, or building from the existing library westward toward Dubuque Street mall. This diagram that Joe just pointed to is called Option 7 and it indeed essentially the footprint we presented to you in November. It is the same footprint we are presenting to you tonight although there are a lot of differences. Whereas this was a conceptual level drawing in terms of just an idea about can we get the gross square footage into a building of that configuration on that site. We know tonight are ready to show you what the building will look like with much more detail look at the program, the function, the way the building looks and what it costs. These were the basic assumptions, the function of the library with minimal amount of 80,000 square feet, developed to enhance the mall, address parking, preserve the downtown, consider all the implementation issues about what it would cost to get this project built on this site and what, how long it would take, what the phases of development would be in order for us to reach a completed building. We also had to make sure that it fit the program in terms of making the building work and that it fit onto the site that was given to us. That the image was appropriate to the City of Iowa City both in terms of materials and scale and how it fit with the mall and finally we were asked to come up with for this meeting with a schematic level cost estimate. Schematic level is a much higher level of refinement as I mentioned than the earlier scheme which was a conceptual estimate. So tonight what we're going to do is take you through the stages of development from this point and this point to the point where we actually show you the building. Joe. Joe Huberty/One of the first challenges in generating a functional plan was to address a constraint (can't hear) for this particular site. As your aware we're trying to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 19 preserve two of the commercial facilities that are currently on Dubuque, remove the existing Lenoch & Cilek building and then expand the library operation to the west without encroaching too much on the pedestrian mall along College Street. So we're trying to preserve and enhance the character of the mall starting at the east end and working through the play area towards the west. And some of the challenges there are the shape or geometry of the building which is now cut out of it and then the existing structural grid that the building has. We're really trying to work with and make sure it doesn't issue us any problems for the library in terms of future flexibility. In fact the building has laid out fai~y well on the existing structural grid. One of the things that we've been able to do is really maintain the efficiency of the building at about 80 percent which is very efficient for a public library about the target of levels at 67 percent and we're well in excess of that. So the imposition of this octave geometry and the structural grid really haven't imposed too heavy of a penalty on the design of a library as a functional series of spaces. A couple of things I want to address is that the program areas have increased by about 63 percent, that is the spaces in the building given over to public service are up 63 percent and the primary increases are in children's area, in the reference collection, and in the adult popular sections, fiction, audiovisual, and young adults saw dramatic increases. So a lot of that increase in area is related to the portion of the building that the public uses. There are also significant increases in staff area, if you've been in the library you know that staff areas are quite tight, the offer no adaptability or flexibility in terms of the work flow and the other thing that the building is missing is a lot of the support facilities that a modern building should have like if your trying to use the rest room in that building you know what were talking in terms of some of the building deficiencies. And so those are things we tried to adjust in the design of the building, really eliminate some of these deficiencies that the existing facility has. And we're still at 78 efficiency which as I mentioned is fairly fairly good. Kanner/How do you measure efficiency, what is that? Huberty/Efficiency is the amount of the building that is directly related to program activities, it's all were taking out and the other 22 percent you don't see here are things like walls, structural columns, rest rooms, elevator shafts, and stairs. Something that you can't really use to deliver library service goes into that mid to gross conversion. Essentially it's a ratial??? net usable square feet to the overall building area. Kanner/Well what is it currently? Huberty/Right now it's at 79 percent and we're at 78 percent and typically when you increase the size of a building you have longer corridor's more stairs, things of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 20 that nature, it's very difficult to maintain a high efficiency ratio when you expand a building, it's a bigger building yes, the less efficient it tends to be, a one room building is most efficient, everything in the building is usable square feet. So as we start to develop the plan. Pfab/Might I ask a question? Huberty/Sure. Pfab/When your talking about usable square foot what about efficiency of the whole operation when I see you have a second entrance there and so in other words usable square foot and total efficiency of the operation are two different items. Huberty/They are related, the overall building operations efficiency are increased. We've got a lot of the departments more conveniently located with respect to circulation of the building by circulation I mean movement, where are the entry points located? How do you move through the building, we really tried to cluster the public spaces very close to things like stairs and entry points so that you don't have to walk the whole length of the block to find the collection your looking for so now in terms of building area is it efficient. It's efficient in terms of the layouts of the specific zones in the building. If your a member of the public come to the building, all the things your interested in are clustered around that building entry. If your a staff person all the activities that you need to support your role in delivering library services are clustered and there are a range in such a matter that the nature of your job changes in the future the building can adapt to that use. Pfab/So essentially your saying that the second entrance to the library is not a big entrance? Huberty/Well we've got a couple entries to the library proper, and they're at either end of the vestal, we'll get into that in some detail. But there's a single entry the real secure portion of the library, we'll get into that in the first floor in some detail. Let's start with the lower level plan, as you know the Lenoch & Cilek building has a lower level and we're proposing to reutilize that space and eventually saw it as a condominium of commercial space and this is about 14,000 square feet of (can't hear) level, that a number of access points, primarily a stair and an elevator that bring you down to this point, and then an emergency egress stair along the alley, it's really intended that this zone be developed as commercial space and sold off after the library operations complete. Before that point though the library would really like to take advantage of the space as surge space during the construction of the library. Get the west addition complete as Phase I and then move some of their operations into this lower level, primarily staff operations and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 21 that would flee up some of the space in the existing building to allow one of the remodeling phases to occur. So it's important in two regards, one is you can sell it and second it gives you some surge space to keep the operations of the library going during the construction period, so again about 14,000 square feet on the lower level. Engberg/The building of that space basically allows this building to, for the library to stay operating on this site during the construction, without it it would not work. Huberty/It would be much more difficult. Above that states at the intersection of Dubuque and College there's a zone of about 5,000 square feet that's dedicated to retail space, again this would be a condominium that would be sold off after completion of the project and entry to the space is from Dubuque Street and here's the stairway that would lead down to the lower level and a corridor that brings it back to an elevator that makes the lower level handicapped accessible. And then there's a series of spaces or one large space oriented primarily toward College that has a potential to be felt as one or more retail spaces. The building is really developed so that you can enter off Dubuque directly into a retail space and then potentially two more portions of the building could be split off. This really operates anyone who purchases this space the opportunity to develop a number of different spaces in the building so if it helps them rent the space to have it developed as a single space that's possible if it helps to split it up into a series of smaller shops that's possible as well. But this really becomes the retail space of the building, it also serves as a potential buffer for the library as expanded, it's conceivable that at some point the library would purchase the space back and it becomes gross space if in fact the library needs more space at this site. The other zones of the diagram are library space proper, the darker shading are staff zones, and the ligther areas are public zones. And those zones are really located up this entry, (can't hear) is developed with an entry that faces Linn Street which is at this side of the drawing and an entry that faces west towards the College Avenue mall. The play equipment currently sits in about this zone to give you some sense of a location. And those entry pavilions face east and west and then both of them face south across the mall to the parking area on 64-1-A so it's really designed to encourage people to come to the library from those three primary directions and make access to the building convenient whether your coming by foot, being dropped off on Linn Street, or parking on the surface parking lot and then coming across the mall to use the library. Another important feature of this allotted zone is that it connects the exterior to the two primary public portions of the building on this level. The first being a meeting room cluster, and this cluster of space is located at the Linn Street elevation which is about two feet lower than the existing first floor of the library, that allows us to put the meeting room activities at street level, not raised up above it and really increases the connection between the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 22 meeting rooms and the life on the streets. So the library gets a lot of great advertising so people can see all the wonderful things going on and the street benefits from the fact that's there's something interesting going on as your walking along Linn Street. It also allows us to push the ceiling of the meeting room a little lower, as you can see meeting rooms tend to have very high ceilings, helps with the acoustics, helps with the lighting, helps with the overall proportion of the space. But if we kept the floor in the meeting rooms at the existing elevation we would end up with a very flat floor or be forced into pushing the ceiling past the level of the second floor and pulling the whole thing down we get to run the second floor out over this area entirely. So the pressing of that, that portion of that comer, there's a lot of things, it improves entry, of the stairs and ramping are now inside the building instead of outside so you don't have to worry about snow and ice on the handicapped ramp or on the stairs leading up to the building, it's all moved indoors, it gives you a better proportion for the meeting rooms and it gives you much more flexibility and a more economical use of the second floor so it's a rather dramatic gesture but we get a lot of benefits for the library and for the street life out of that gesture. There' s a block of public toilet rooms and then entry to the library proper. One of the things we're really try to do here is shorten the amount of space between the lobby and the point where you actually see library staff, books, collection, any of that. One of the issues with the existing library is some of those entry corridors get to be pretty long and it's a bit of a travel distance before you get to the library and we really tried to minimize that, enhance the son of (can't hear) control of the library. Once again that space the first floor collection span out from this entry point. One one side is the check out desk and then straight ahead and to the left are the various first floor collections, there's the audio visual collection and the viewing area, listing area, set up in a series of viewing cubicles in the back. Like an adult alcove which is something that the library currently doesn't have and it's an expansion of their services to a particular user group. There's the movie and CD collection which really animates this portion of the building, a large fiction collection, then a few specialty collections along the front, new bigs??, large print, and foreign language. All those collections are organized around a help desk which is the first thing you see as you come to the library. So instantly your greeted by a staff member who can help you and you understand the building and where to find a particular collection. Directly opposite that is an elevator and the stair up to the second level. The help desk and the stair are located in such a manner so that anybody coming into the building can instantly be directed to the portion of the building that they really want to use. That's important with a facility that's getting to be 83,000 square feet. Then going to the second level you come in the front door and immediately you can go up to the second level, you don't traipse through the building looking for an elevator like you do now. I think those circulation's of the building are greatly enhanced, like putting those elements to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 23 the front. Across the fiction and the AV collection is the children's room, and that's this portion of the design. Both the children's area and the fiction area features seating room, seating areas along the mall, really trying to enhance the connection again between the mall and the inside of the building and in this area in children's and the connection between the play area and the seating groups right inside the glass so the strong connection. Pfab/I'm assuming that's staying at the same level it is now. Huberty/These levels past this point are all at the existing level right. Once you come to the children's level there's a series of younger kid activities, toys, picture books, board books that lead back to an arch to a story hour room. The story hour room is really designed to feature the audio visual elements that can enhance a story time presentation. But it's also designed to be flexible enough that if a presentation isn't going on the wall slides all the way in and a big door hinges open it really becomes a soft seating area for kids to curl up with a big book with their parents or bring one of the toys in. And really sit in some of the a couple of the window seats and make double use of the space. The northwest comer of the children's area is developed into fiction collection and nonfiction and that leads you back to the AV collection, reference and homework and then again the new books and the seating area along the pedestrian mall. The emphasis has really been to pull people towards the glass, towards the south, towards the natural light, and the views out to the pedestrian mall, one of the really nice amenities that Iowa City really has to offer and then let the remainder of the building be very flexible and adaptable in terms of collection and features. The staff area is very briefly, circulation, that's the circulation desk, the number of sorting and staff positions, there's a book drop along Linn Street that's accessible by the ramp, and a series of stairs. The staff entry has been moved off the alley into a safer spot, along Linn Street and this is staff lounge and locker area in the comer. A couple garage spaces are enhanced and then there's the work area for the children's staff directly behind the story hour room. Those are really the main features of the first floor, all right. On the second floor again your coming in the building, going up the elevator or stair and arriving directly in front of the information services desk. So you've come up through this double height space all the while getting a sense of orientation because you can see the mall and you arrive at a staff position. A (can't hear) range of this desk are reference collection, back up forms???, copy area, the web net, Intemet access and a series of viewing carrels that relate to the non fiction audio visual collection. You've got some (can't hear) articles and the main periodical collection organizing a series of reading elements (can't hear) Linn Street and the pedestrian mall. And these again are really (can't hear) now for the patrons of the library to take advantage of the light and the views but also to advertise the services of the library to the community. This is a very open and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 24 glassy comer element that you'll see in the elevations. From this point west we've got the print non fiction collection that runs all the way to Dubuque Street, this comes out over the retail space on the first floor and again there's a series of spaces arrayed along the window wall to take advantage of the light. There's a primary corridor running east-west to the building that separates the general collection area from the staff area and there's a few public use spaces introduced into that zone. There's a series of three six-person study rooms, a two-person study rooms and then some group study activity spaces, an ICNeral??? which is relocated from the first floor and then the training room which when it isn't being used for training activities is really an open computer lab for general public access to word processing programs, instant resume writing, things of that nature. There's a vending and lounge area tucked in here and then public rest rooms on this level as well. The primary staff zones of the building are arranged off of an entry into the business and development office, reception and then the board room and then tucked in behind that element, a shared open office work space between the business office, development office and then computer services on the noaheast comer. The server room for the computer systems is located at that comer as well. Technical services for most of the processing for the library occurs is a start of a flexible open office zone that forms an L in this zone. The technical services, audio visual production and inspection, and then the adult and information staff work space. Again this area is really developed on an open office system so that as the needs of the staff change the system can be reproportioned, reconfigured to allow them to perform the tasks in the most efficient way. Those are the major features of the second floor. Kanner/There's one elevator, there's only one elevator? Huberty/There are a number of elevators in the building, the primary public elevator is the one we've been talking about on the south face of the building. We keep the existing elevator primarily as a staff use elevator to mn materials up and down through the building, this works out well, it's tucked away on the second floor, but on the first floor it comes right down into the circulation work room so again staff efficiency is maximized. There's a third elevator introduced at the far west end that has a number of functions, one is it's handicapped access from the Dubuque Street entry to the commercial space in the basement level and then secondarily the key access is it's a freight access elevator through the entire building. So if your moving a new (can't hear) for example up to the second level of the library you can delivery them in the alley and mn them up and then bring them up. It also offers us the potential to use that lower level and make it handicapped accessible during the initial construction because that will go in as part of Phase I and that allows to run a lot of stuff into that basement. The basement doesn't extend into the area of this elevator or this elevator. What the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 25 building has the potential to go up another floor in the area of the addition, and then that scenario this elevator becomes more important because it's one of the way's we can offer handicapped accessibility to that third level. That's a long way out depending on who you took and when but the building will have the structural capacity to avoid some of the issues we're facing with the existing facility. It does have potential for vertical expansion and that shaft will become important in that scenario. In terms of developing the image for the building there were a number of things we were interested in, one of which was to really emphasize the nature of the library as an open and inviting facility. We wanted to give it a little bit of sense of it's significant importance but not overwhelm the streetscape or the user so it should be open and friendly and inviting. That' s particularly true on College and Linn Streets. We reinforce that notion with a lot of glass in the entry Paviliian but also in the reading rooms at the second level so you can really see the activity alive and going on, there will be people behind these windows that you can see reading and using the library services. The other thing we really want to do was create a gateway something that says welcome to the library services but also welcome to the College Street pedestrian mall. We're really trying to form a gateway at the east end of that mall that announces this special portion of Iowa City. And to that end, you put the next board up Chuck, just to sort of accomplish some of these goals we looked at a number of building elements, one was scale. You know the pedestrian mall has a nice human scale to it and a building that's 83,000 square feet for library and another 20,000 of retail, 100,000 square feet is a big building and we didn't want that to overwhelm anyone walking by the building. And so breaking that scale down into street developments and here you get to see the introduction of that, an entry element, basically a civic library element, and then a background element, really breaks down that scale. If we rendered all this as any of those sort of vocabularies it would_get to be a bit of a monstrosity and so we've broken down a block long building into a series of smaller components. Another thing we tried to do was use materials that were one indicative of the local architectural tradition and I think the use of stone on public building is represented by the Courthouse and the old library building, are examples of that sort of approach. We also introduced a lot of glass through laths of that that notion of an open building, an open society, open access to information. And the final thing we were trying to do was create a building that blended in and respected the scale and the color and architectural traditions of the community, also had a bit of identity to itself trying to create a bit of an icon for the library so people instantly recognize what it was, where it was, and what it had to offer. And so the entry element is trying to do that, the use of the banded stone is another effort to try and create a bit of a unique building with a sense of identity on the mall and the clock tower is the third element that really tries to establish a separate identity for this building. With those ideas in mind I'll walk you through the College Street elevation, these are drawn at twice the scale This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 26 the plans and for scale you can see a 5 foot 5 scale getting person standing in from of this entry door, that's about 5 feet high. A couple major features are entry pavilions to either end of(can't hear) and these are developed in a series of metal panels with metal backness on arcaded rhythm that repeats the rhythm of the stone Paviliian behind it so it's more a contemporary look, a very classical architectural module. And the little pavilions off to either side feature a rose window that's an addition of the big stained glass window that you see as you come into the library now. That's actually an (can't hear) out of dome in the old library across the street, we wanted to use that as one of those repetitive elements that lead you through the building, they see that old as you enter the building it will be repeated at the entry near the serve desk and it helps you find your way through the building. Tucked in behind that glass in an aluminum Paviliian is the stone portion of the building, again that's the piece that really anchor's us to the traditions and the architectural context around us. And is represented of the civic portion of the building, we wanted that to be about two-thirds of the building or when you come from the west the farthest you'd have to walk to get into what appears to be the library is about halfway along it's length, again if we developed the whole building in a single material it would look like the library started at Dubuque and you'd have to pretty much traipse all the way down through the east end of the building to get in. Psychologically the library starts here in terms of entry and this is a much more welcoming gesture, it's come halfway to meet you. At that point the clock tower serves as an element to announce the start of the civic portion of the building, it's actually an elevator shaft for future elevator that is another one of our optimistic in getting people up to that future third floor. And it signals a transition back to a retail portion of the facade, this is a more neutral background element that's developed in brick, it has a window vocabulary that we borrowed from the Masonic temple down the street from the library at four score window pattern with those stone medallions inset at the comers in the (can't hear) brick. So it again it helps to tie the background building into the architectural vocabulary of the community. Then poking through that brick end are a series of bay windows that we're really featuring as big display windows for the retail space that goes in at that first level and they're projected out and really have the function to advertise whatever goes on in those spaces. You can see the potential introduce doorways into a number of different shops. Finally when you come to the far west end, this last piece is developed in more retail vocabulary that relates to the buildings along Dubuque Street. The building immediately adjacent to our site is a dark brown brick and we're really trying to relate to that in terms of color and in terms of banning. This comer (can't hear) here relates to an existing comer (can't hear) on the neighboring building as do some of these stone baselines. Having developed a series of discrete elements like this, metal, stone, and brick we wanted to make sure they didn't read as (can't hear) elements and to weed these all together we've taken the aluminum and the sort of sun screening This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 27 elements that are along the two story spaces and introduce them throughout the building so they start to become real sign boards and sun screens along the retail portions of the building, they serve the same function at this comer element where there's a knot cut into the building and then the aluminum bands mn across the aluminum becomes the comer space on the retail portion. And that helps integrate the three different vocabularies into a unified whole. As you come around the comer on Linn Street you get a sense that there really is a thin simple element along College, along Linn Street it's much more of a (can't hear) of specific stone element and the background service block of the library. This brick plain is about 13 feet high into the stone element and you get a sense of this is you walk by the existing library, this plain is pretty much in the same location as the second floor of the library and then the ramp went up into the library right now is in this plain in that front plain. But again the intent is to emphasize a civic end to the building and then let then step down into the general vocabulary of the fabric of the city. Again the buildings next door to us start to pick up more of the brick dominated vocabulary. Another one of the elements that were using to integrate the three pieces is this granite based to the building and that's the piece that you see rendered in gray along this element. Again you get the sense of the rose window, you come into entry icon and this is the entry that would face directly down College, so that as your coming West on College you pretty much be in line with that element. Just to get a sense of some of the markers that illuminate the corridor on the second floor that runs east-west and a sense for the pedestrian mall in this area. Any development on this site and we're suggesting that there would be a series of site elements that relate to a library (can't hear) again draw a line from the entries to the library back to that parking area. And if there's any development on that parking site would certain come from this line and this is the nature of the mall at that far east end. We think it's important that the site be developed back to integrate the library to that parking area. The third facade Dubuque Street again is more of that background vocabulary, (can't hear) in the darker brick so some of the stone banding is accents, the granite base, again you can see that this space is much shallower, the slope will end as come up as we've come west, the banding, the integrates, the various components of the building, a sense of multiple entries again to animate the street, relate to the scale of Dubuque Street and a lot of downtown Iowa City. And in the background these are set quite a ways back as you can see in the plan, the brown facade is Dubuque Street and the stair tower, elevator tower are quite a ways back. Again it's much simpler at the same time it relates to the overall vocabulary in the development of two story window elements and then picking up on the fenestration each of those with the emollient pattern. So we really tried to break down the scale of the building integrating into the architectural (can't hear) introduce a few of the elements that would make the library distinct, yet a part of the downtown fabric. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 28 Engberg/One of the distinct advantages of building on this site is the fact that the building faces south and all the windows that Joe has shown you are on the east- south and west facades of the building. Where this be built on any other site particularly across the street we wouldn't have this kind of natural light coming into the building in the most public of the spaces. Pfab/So how can you protect it if somebody builds on the other side? Huberty/Well you'd be a minimum of 40 feet away, and that's the closest, and as our building steps back that distance is increased. If someone were to build on 64-1- A the closest they can come is 40 feet away, that's where the property lines start and that's a code requirement for. Pfab/But say they went up 3 or 4 stories they would take yea. Huberty/They would start to shadow the building during certain parts of the day, they'd have to get pretty high. Engberg/Nevertheless the light and the view would still be there, you might compromise some light in the middle of the winter but during the height of summer you'd still have plenty of light. Pfab/Right. Engberg/Now as we talked about this project which was Option number 7 previously we identified to you the fact that it was the most expensive of the options that we had looked at for a number of reasons. There's more demolition on this project, there's going to be constructed in stages, there are going to be more contingent costs that have to do with real estate acquisition, and a longer length of time. And so all of those things play into that. What we are looking at in the costs that you all have in front of you, the demolition and construction, furnishings and equipment, testing fees, related costs of moving the collection several times, having several, I think we have it down to six potential moves inside the building. Well maybe we can have it fewer than that. And we have the potential of land acquisition and contingency funds so all those things are part of the detail that you have before you which in fact is a summary, we have more detail than that if you have questions. Then we have construction costs of the retail space and remember that although this building is originally program you know with it's space somewhere like 96,000 square feet, we're about a under 5,000 square feet now, a lot of that has to do with this additional space and your going to be selling back that space to somebody who is out there in the private sector. The changes that have taken place since the building was conceived as Concept #7 have been This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 29 mostly in detail, the size of the building has increased by about 11 percent. The detail comes in the sense that we now know how to use all the nooks and cranny' s that are within the zone that was shown in that initial site plan. In this initial site plan it would (can't hear) up here, we have discovered that there are places that things areas that we didn't actually know about, our information wasn't as accurate as it is now in terms of the actual length of building, what is now, not a basement space but can be made into a basement space so we tried to maximize the utilization of the site within that parameter of the building. We also know more about the materials of the building, since we're talking about a 3 part facade we are cognizant of what those materials cost. We know what the renovation aspects of the building are going to be, we know that the building performs as it's suppose to that it has an image that is consistent with the Iowa City scale, letting light into the building and so forth. So we've taken all these items into account including durability as we've gone through the several iterations that have gotten us to this stage of schematic design completion. This summary board here shows you basically how those costs are ranged the building library itself is $11 million dollars, the retail is $1.4, we're figuring a $1,000,000 dollars of escalation and because we're guessing that from this point on we will probably be building this building starting to build the building in October of 2001. And then we will probably be building it for a period of over or about 24 months, that's what we've took, gotten in our cost estimate. The reason that it's a longer period of building than a building on a simpler site is because we have so many steps, we have to move things from one place so that we can reconstruct it, and then we have to move them back into a finished space so we have several of those moves included in that and this is the escalation that is due to time, that is due to cost of materials that is due to possible labor costs. So that total comes out to $13.7 million dollars, the ancillary or the auxiliary costs have to do with furniture, fixtures, and equipment, fees, a number of other items in here all essential to designing and using the library, there's a lot of equipment costs in here and this building will be serviced to a much better extent, higher extent that it can be now because we will have much more accessibility for media and communication equipment. So the building costs of $18.4 million dollars can be reduced as you sell of the property that has been developed as commercial space, a condominium basis. The cost of the land is essentially as we see it a cost of an opportunity cost (can't hear) and the retail sale prices approximately the same as what it will cost to actually build the space. This is based on some local observations about what probable value or probable value of that commercial space is to an outside person person who is in the private sector. So the net cost of $17 million dollars, that's an 11.5 percent increase over from what we have predicted from this very schematic level drawing and I might just remind you that the drawings which of which this was based were these two drawings, the building's going to be in that site and it's going to look roughly like that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 30 Pfab/Could you raise those two up and put them in the stands, yea? Huberty/Oh yea, sorry, it's blocking your view. (can't hear). Engberg/These are in affect are highly conceptual diagrams to give us a sense of where we want to get and at that point of time we are predicting that that building was somewhere in the $15.3 million dollar range. We're saying now that we've got a $1.7 million is it's a little bit higher than the original prediction but we are in a situation where we know so much more about the building, we know that we're utilizing every potential bit of space within this block on this site and we feel that this is a very compact and efficient building that we are bringing to you tonight which gives you flexibility for the future and also potential for expansion in the future. Lehman/Does that cost include the cost of the acquiring the property? Huberty/Yes. Engberg/Yes. Lehman/I thought it might. Kanner/(can't hear) think the ancillary? Huberty/Right and ancillary costs. Engberg/Now if you have. Huberty/Any questions at all. Engberg/Any questions at all about anything and I will try to answer them. Vanderhoef/Show me again where the meeting rooms are. Huberty/The primary public meeting rooms on the first floor off the main lobby, we call it the meeting room A is this spot here, and that's adjacent to two smaller rooms that are separated by operable partitions so this can be combined into a larger space. And then there's a fourth meeting room just to the north of that that's a conference room or TV studio side. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 31 Engberg/They're essentially in the same place that they are now except that they're two feet lower so that they're at street level. Huberty/Right. Vanderhoef/Can those spaces be separated off into anything larger? Huberty/Yes, the security zone and the library start at about this point and that can be locked up and you still have access to the building entry, the public rest rooms, the meeting rooms, and, excuse me, the emergency exits. Wilburn/That must have been a hard question. Huberty/Right. Jim Swairn/There are some other meeting rooms on the second floor, the Iowa, the fiber optic ICN meeting rooms up there. Huberty/Right, there's a couple of other public spaces, the story hour room has a sort of meeting aspect to it, media technology, as you mentioned the ICN room, and then there's training computer lab is also a larger publicly accessible group activity space. Pfab/OK I have a question, is the library conference room (can't hear) not intend as appropriate. Huberty/What is that? Pfab/The conference room up in there (can't hear). Huberty/There are a number of spaces, the board room, the library board meeting is a public event and that's accessible, you'd come in through reception and directly into that that space. It also doubles as a staff meeting room. Pfab/But it's not intended as a company? Huberty/I don't believe, not primary. Pfab/It's not set up that it could be used that way? Huberty/No, you'd have to be invited to a specific library board activity. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 32 Pfab/OK. Engberg/There is room in that board room for a number of people such as city council to attend a meeting. Pfab/But I meant is there a way that it could be accessible to the public during the time that the library was open, it's not designed that way? Engberg/No it's not, it's intentionally not designed that way. Jesse Singerman/It will be used as a staff meeting room. Pfab/OK fine. Engberg/And it will be used as a staff meeting room. Lady in audience/I am worried about the flat roofs, are they totally flat or slightly slanted, just a modern technology, know how to maintain those roofs? Huberty/Yea, the roofs are slightly sloped to help the water. Lady in audience/slightly (can't hear). Huberty/Yea, right, it's minimized so that we have some vertical expansion, we want to be able to transform it into a floor in the future ifthat's necessary. We want that flexibility but it's pitched so it will help the water drain. Pfab/You didn't go through the process of how far you were going to take this building and my question was you talked about building a third story but only on the new part so obviously you don't intend to do anything to reinforce the foundation. Huberty/That's correct. Engbert/Correct, and one of the reasons for utilizing this scheme and all of you folks have looked at it was that we did not have to go higher than 2 floors so we didn't have to get into that level of expense and tearing the existing foundation. Pfab/How close will you get to the foundation? Extend it, in the, you don't talk about the stages of the, and at one point level this and do this, and then do this, that's not addressed here so how far down do you actually go? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 33 Huberty/In the. Pfab/I'd sure like to see the potential to add a third story over the entire situation if it's at all possible. Engberg/Well I think we've already sort of gone by that, we've already combed that one out in looking at 15 options because it turned out that those options were so expensive and virtually impossible to build and keep the library open that we collectively felt that that was not a good idea so that's why we're going in this direction toward the west. But we do have, instead of the building on top, we're building new space over here. Huberty/At the lower level. Engberg/At the first floor and at the second level, and finally the second level space becomes library space. Pfab/OK so to go back, pull up the second floor plan, the second story 4-5, OK, with that, and how much of that part that's blue is covered in the? So what part is the, how much of that is the blue spot, that's blue down below is OK. Huberty/But that' s (can't hear) area, that's all addition. The potential third floor would have that shape, that's 14,000 square feet. Engberg/Show them where the new library is. Huberty/Oh, this blue area is the new addition to the library at the basement level. Pfab/So if you go up third floor, that's as much. Huberty/That's the same, it would be same shape except at the third level. Pfab/And that has a foundation that will hold that? Huberty/Right, we're designing that to have the capacity for a third floor but it's just on the addition. Champion/Would you? I think it's great and beautiful but what are you exactly doing to the library we have now, is that being torn down I mean? Huberty/It's being renovated. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 34 Champion/It' s just being renovated. Huberty/Right. There' s certain parts of the existing building that are in the fight location but have enough sort of infrastructure to support another 20 years, 20 plus years worth of library activity and they're primarily located along the north end. The stair elements, some of the mechanical systems in the existing building, the boilers in particular, that boiler room, the electrical service gear, there's a stair, the elevator we're going to reuse, all of that pretty much stays in place. The structural system throughout the building except that this comer where we're putting the new meeting room's in, the structural system stays in place. We're going to try and redo the roof on the second floor. (END OF TAPE 00-24 SIDE 2) Huberty/The north exterior wall will remain, this primarily building structure and some portions of the mechanical system. The interior partitions, the doors, all that gets reconfigured. Pfab/Would it ever be possible long range down to put commercial or business offices on the third floor of that building and if so how would they accommodate it? Huberty It would work the same way the lower level does now, you'd have that stair that would run all the way up to the third floor and that elevator that we talked about in this spot, you'd come in on the first floor, got too many plans. You'd come in off of Dubuque Street, down the corridor, up the elevator, past the second floor, to a third floor and get off there and you could use that third level as commercial space. Engberg/You will recognize the building when it is complete to go back to your question, you brought that up back in November. If you go this way, if you elect to build this site in affect the center of gravity of control of activity comes to the west and everything else in the building has to sort of move with that except perhaps the meeting rooms which are logically placed on that noaheast comer, southeast comer of the building. And because that moves everything else begins the change around it and as a result of that we're able to, with this extra area zone the building so, as Joe put it earlier we can be as efficient as the building is now and put all the staff areas together that have to be on the second floor, the staff there is on the first floor, and then all the public spaces are right around the exterior of the building. Pfab/OK, obviously when you build this library, your going to make the downtown Iowa City much more valuable, there are people trying to get office space in there so This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 35 your saying there's nothing to stop building office spaces on top of that new addition? Huberty/It would just be the cost of constructing it. Pfab/Right, fight. Engberg/It's physically possible to do it, somebody has to want to do it, go through all the. Pfab/Right. Kanner/Can you talk about any energy efficiency or any energy conservation components that are built into the new building? Huberty/There are a number of things that we'll be looking it, one is the construction of the wall system which is really designed to maximize our separation between the eternal environment and the external would be well insulated. We'd have multiple coding, insulated glazing lights, there's a series of sunscreens and portions of the glass would be fritted, to reduce the amount of UV radiation that would come in to the building that protects the collection but it also reduces the amount of heat gain during the summer months. We're also suggesting that there would be a number of multiple zones in the building so we can adapt the mechanical system to each of the micro climates something facing west has a different exposure to something facing south which is different than east. And then the interior zone is different than something along the glass so that we can get the individual mechanical system components to respond to the particular needs of those little micro climates. That means you can reach of them at optimal efficiency and the other thing we do is design the system so it would come in series of increments rather than having one massive boiler which would run the whole thing and you have to fire it up, we'd have a series of package boilers which would come on incrementally as the demand for heat would increase. Also it allows a little bit of redundancy so that the, if one of the components fails the other pieces can help to make up for it whereas if you have one large system which it' s a boiler or a single air handler if it goes out your done. The other thing we've looked at is control systems for lighting so that as the natural lighting into the building would diminish and that' s a big advantage of all the blazing that during daylight hours we'd have much lower electric lighting usage and as the sun would set different zones of the buildings lighting system would come on at appropriate levels and there would be multiple levels of powering those systems up. And then the individual rooms the individual study rooms or offices for example they'd have occupancy sensors, same as public rest rooms, if there's no This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 36 one in them no sense having the lights going. So all those things would help to address the energy consumption in the building to minimize your operational expenses and protect the environment. Kanne~ Do you have an estimate on per square foot savings compared to the present system? Huberty/No I don't, I don't have a sense of what the current building costs to operate. I can tell you that most of the buildings that we've designed using these systems cost about $1.00 to $1.25 square foot for heat and power, $1.00 per square per year. And that's given sort of a current level of efficiency on mechanical systems without going into anything exotic, they're all sort of tried and true systems and without, excuse me, for going into any sort of electrical essentials that libraries find themselves needing these days. So it's fai~y electrically intense use in buildings and that helps to push the dollar a square foot kind of number. Kanner/Using a $1.00 to $1.25 necessarily what? Huberty/Cost in terms of heat and power. Susan Craig/Currently 75,000 (can't hear) about. Huberty/Right so your over that. Craig/Heat and electricity. Huberty/And your down to 47,000 square foot building so I would expect to see a reduction in the square foot costs of energy and increase in the ability of your building to respond to the tenants needs. Man in audience/In reference to expansion 25 years the road. Letunan/Excuse me this really is for Council and the Library Board discussion. Huberty/I'm sorry, OK. Lehman/If you've got questions Mark I think if you want to forward those questions to the Library Board I mean this meeting is intended for Council and Library Board and I think you have probably something you'd like to discuss with us after (can't hear). Huberty/My apologies. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 37 Lehman/No problem. Vanderhoef/Do you do a general breakdown and percentages of what spaces are, what percent is for staff, what space is for meeting and (can't hear) rooms, what is for support service spaces and what is for collection space? Huberty/Yes, yes, we did that. Your going to want, your going to ask. Vanderhoef/Do you have any idea of those? Huberty/Yea. Engberg/It's absolutely in the book in there too. Vanderhoef/Oh OK, I haven't read the book obviously. Are these percents since I haven't looked at them, are they pretty standard to library service or library board needs? Huberty/That 's what this, this building is a lower percentage of staff or public (can't hear) and I 'm getting that. This building actually has a lower percentage of staff to public space than most buildings. I'm looking for that sheet. There's an area summary table in the portion of public space in the building is 68.7 percent, the staff area is 25.1 percent and the support space, public rest rooms, some corridors that sort of thing are 6.1 percent. Typically we would find that the staff areas are 30 to 33 percent of the overall total. So this is actually a higher percentage of public to building total than you would typically encounter. Part of that is there's just a lot of public space in the building and part of it is the flexible nature of that second floor space which allows for a lot of different activities to occur in a relatively small area. Engberg/We worked through several options on the second floor particularly to condense the staff space in favor of the public space and the plan that your seeing on the second floor with these very clear zones reflect that kind of refinement, this is all public space, this is staff space and then it's converged in this area here. Vanderhoef/I'm not seeing those numbers in. Huberty/They're at the very bottom, there's a line in the left hand column called subtotals and if you read across into this center block there's a public total and you (can't hear) down, it says 68 percent, 68.7 % or 44,800 square feet. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 38 Vanderhoef/OK. Thank you. Huberty/So again in terms of buildings of this size it does quite well in terms of maximizing the portion of the building that's usable by the public. Vanderhoef/So you've put the meeting rooms into the public space along with corridors, and rest rooms, and (can't hear). Huberty/Right, portions of it, if it's a corridor out in the public area it goes into that total, if it's a corridor in the staff area it goes in the staff total. Vanderhoef/OK. Lehman/Mark, I presume the board has poured over these plans? Martin/Yes one more time than you have. Lehman/With new (can't hear) obviously or I would say I assume questions that you folks have regarding this have been answered to your satisfaction, I mean we're looking at a proposal that has the approval of Library Board. Martin/The Library Board is excited about what we're looking at yes. Lehman/Not just approval but excited. Yea I think a lot of the technical things obviously you and your people are much better able to adjust than we are. Yea I think things like appearance of the building and whatever obviously are concerns for us, that' s what the public's going to see and (can't hear). Are there questions we have for the Library Board as well as the architects? Champion/What are your plans now? Lehman/Well I think the meeting you will continue from here sir. Martin/Well obviously we would like to know whether this particular approach which is the flushing out what we talked about in November finds favorable with the City Council and if it does we need to proceed to develop a referendum resolution placed before the boards and determine when that's going to happen. We need your blessing to continue this project. Pfab/How far are these numbers or at this point, in other words is this, this is what it's going to be? What you see is what you get here? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 39 Engberg/We'd like to be fairly. (can't hear). Engberg/Go ahead. Martin/We spent a lot of time asking that same question. Basically the flexibility you see in the numbers is in the area of the escalation and contingency in the sense of they could be not as high as what is shown there and yet. Pfab/They could be higher. Martin/They were being cautious in the estimate so this was not, would be intended not to go higher obviously. Pfab/So would, basically what I'm hearing you if I think I hear understand what your saying, your saying other than those, whatever you called contingents, what was the term you used there? Huberty/Escalation. Pfab/Escalation, those are pretty solid after you, you've other than that? Martin/There' s probably enough that we would like you to put a bond referendum before the voters with a dollar amount and this plan. Pfab/How much padding have you got in it? Swaim/We have several contingencies that they've already talked about and our outline in the thing but we think that $16 million dollar bond referendum would at least give somebody a chance to vote on it and if they don't like it well then they'll speak but we think it's a beautiful building, it does a lot for the downtown Iowa City, it does an incredible amount of things for the children who are being denied a really decent children's library service so that's what we'd like to see happen. Champion/So you want the bond referendum for $16 million? Swaim/Well I'm. Lehman/$17 million. Champion/Well he said 16. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 40 Martin/Well that's obviously the point of discussion, but we also want you to know that the library is prepared to you know pitch in on this process, our Foundation has been holding itself back from raising money until we had an opportunity to present a plan that would be shared with the public and could generate some excitement. Champion/It's beautiful. Martin/And you know, our intention is to raise money both for the capital campaign and for the endowment of the library and we have been discussing in the neighborhood of $3-4 million dollars, I think that's for both of those pieces so the library intends to have private money invested in this process. Wilburn/How soon do you think you'll come back with a referendum? Pfab/Today. Wilburn/No. Dellsperger/This is it. Martin/Well the timing is a little bit tricky, that is if we had been further along in the process we probably would have shot for at the end of the spring which would have made sense. As we look at the need to educate the public, and we need to you know really be able to sell this and get some excitement built up I think the board feels at this time that perhaps we don't want to move quite that and we'd be better off looking at fall for a referendum. Champion/I agree. Kanner/I hate to ask this question but I think it's going to be asked a lot ifit's placed on the referendum. Old Capital Mall, they seem to be giving better offers, they're now offering all three floors, they're saying there's potential of buy-in, and they've got 77,000 square feet. If we were to get a great deal from them even with the potential cost of reinforcing the floors, can we afford not to do a little more in-depth study to get some initial engineering report that it can't be supported for anything with any kind of significant savings if your at $17 million? Martin/Well let me go after it a couple different ways Steve. First of all we've looked at and over the past 7 years we've looked at a lot of possibilities and the one thing that's become clear to us is that to build a library and 85,000 square foot library This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 41 whether your renovating another building or whether your building new is going to cost us at least $15 million dollars. I mean we're renovating an existing building to build this and it's costing $17 million, there's no reason to believe it wouldn't cost us the same amount of money to renovate Old Capital Mall and we have no good engineering studies that indicate that that's you know really feasible for us at this point in time. We had a discussion with Madison Realty Group and the conversation they were pleased that we had given some thought to that, they were also clear that they were moving rapidly to acquire retail tenants for that space and they have big plans for developing into a major retail center that is going to renovate the downtown area. And frankly the library board is excited about that possibility for Old Capital Mall which we think would be far better for the economy of the downtown and taking that space that of the you know private sector and making it public space. The other thing that's clear, it's interesting to note that when this was presented back in 1997 we worked up the figures 96-97 the same basic thing was costing about $18 million dollars and that was you can see that there hasn't been a huge amount of change in that period of time, I mean we have not escalated that cost significantly. In order for us to determine what it would cost to redo Old Capital Mall we would have to invest basically the same dollars we've invested to come to you with this plan, so were talking $60-90,000 dollars of city or library money to determine if that is workable in the long term. The Council indicated to us last year they wanted to proceed in this direction and we talked about those possibilities. The library board feels strongly that the library is as you can see here is a much better addition to downtown than attempting to remodel a portion of Old Capital Mall. Champion/Well I think you've just, I don't think the main reason for this plan is because it fits into the downtown, I think you've come up with a beautiful building that seems to meet your needs and to compromise your needs for a space that might be cheaper, it probably wouldn't be any cheaper by the time you finished it. There's always a lot of discussion that, I mean I've heard a ton of discussion about this library, you guys had to have a major job, but I think anytime you do a public building that costs as much as the library whether it's a jail, a library, a rec. center your going to have those same discussions. And I think that's a beautiful building of the concept any. Dellsperger/I think another thing too Steve one of the reasons that I think the Council went with this plan rather than something on 64-1-A was what do you do with the library if it moves someplace else. And I think that was, from what I got from our meeting with City Council last November that was a huge concern which was why this plan has been going forward rather than any other option because we are able to use that current site, it's not going to leave a city building open. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 42 Champion/Also I think people have a better understanding of adding onto a building than rather doing a whole new structure. I think it's going to make it easier to pass, that' s just my own personal feeling because I just, even one of my kids (can't hear) I said we're going to discuss a library, it is a new library, I mean so I think that' s, you know that' s part of your problem telling yourself. Magalhaeser/Your not abandoning a building that's only 20 years old. Champion/Right, and I think you've done a great job. Vanderhoef/And it's interesting to hear the comment today though that you said that this will accommodate your library for 20 years, it's like oh my. Swaim/That comment wasn't about the whole building. Champion/No. Swaim/That was about the existing older building, noah walls, I just wanted to make sure you didn't misunderstand what he was saying about the 20 year part. Vanderhoef/Well it's still comes out that there's a large piece then that's still is not expected to last longer than 20 years and that's a hard sell to the public space in general. Singerman/There were spaces in this building for expansion though I mean we could go back to the retail space and go up to third floor and I don't know what the total there is 34,000. Engberg/There's 14,000 square feet on the third floor. Singerman/Plus whatever the retail is. Huberty/Right, which is 20. Singerman/20, so 54,000 square feet, that's a pretty good addition. Champion/Hard to believe we even need that. Lehman/Well. Singerman/Of course what we've been saying is that the next logical expansion of the library, the next logical expansion of library services is a branch library. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 43 Martin/I think we want to emphasize that the fact that we see this as you know the completion of our main library use for downtown and we're going to seriously look in the immediate future and talk to people about the branch issue because that would be the next logical place to go and I don't want to lose that in this discussion because that's an important piece of what's happening. Champion/Well I think. Lehman/I think whether or not we individually support this particular proposal or not I think it's kind of important for a number of years the library has been working on various concepts for expansion and a new building. And I think there's been a certain mount of frustration involved over the years and I think we certainly understand it. We had a proposal that was a part of a sales tax (can't hear) which I think was really (can't hear) on a lot of things. We've then asked the library board to come back to us with a comparison between a building on 64-1-A and remodeling the present facility and I think there were 14 options. Huberty/Right. Lehman/I mean this has been narrowed down to one option, it's been developed, we've been presented with that option and I think what you say Mark may very well be true as far as consideration of the Penney's space. But at some point in time I think you have to go with it and I believe the library board has eamed the opportunity to go to the public with what we're looking at as long as we agree and I don't know if we have to jump up and down and beat the drums and say it's a wonderful idea or we think it's a bad idea, but I do think they've eamed this. They've decided the direction they wanted to go, they've done that with the advice and the consent of the Council, now I don't know, precisely what you want, I think I know precisely what you want from us, I'm not sure when you want that I think Council probably would, we don't know exactly what the amount of the bond issue would have to be, we don't know, I guess I am prepared to tell the library board that I am willing to move forward with this concept there's been a tremendous amount of work and effort that has gone into it. And I think at some point you've got to go for it, and we could talk about Penney space as an option, Sycamore Mall space as an option, by the time we get through with that there's going to be another option. And there's never an end to option's that might be available. And I think that we have told you folks and I think we told the public that this is an option that of the ones presented to us of which there were like 14, this was the one that we thought you should move forward with, I think we're looking at that option now. I think what we need now is some sort of idea from the Council if this is OK and then I also think we need to determine This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 44 what the amount of the bond issue will be and at what time and that obviously will not be discussed or decided at this point but what's. Pfab/I have only one question and it's so obvious, there are no foundation problems (can't hear) or anything else that looks like or related to a foundation problems, there is no weak spot into this plan. Huberty/We've soaked some pretty poor soil conditions and then we'd have to go down 60 feet with a series of piles for the addition so. Pfab/But that will be taken care of. Huberty/That's what we've. Martin/The money is in the budget for that. Pfab/OK I just want to make sure. O'Donnell/Excuse me Emie, I think the library board asking us to bless this design, it's one that we picked out, we recommended it, I think you agreed with us. Are we going to vote to put it on the ballot I think of course we are, it's our responsibility to put it there and let the voters decide. Pfab/My feeling is. Singerman/One thing I think that from our point of view is that when we knew this project, we worked with you for a number of years to develop it, we are going to need your support in order to get this passed. And one of the things we're doing tonight is testing the waters, do you support this project? Will you actually support it beyond saying yes to a referendum? I'd really like to know. Magalhaes/And that's something Ernie said himself several months ago that without the City Council's support you can put it to a referendum but you know the chances diminish greatly if the Council isn't. Singerman/I mean this is a big deal for Iowa City. Lehman/I think your right and I think there's probably two levels of support that you might see from the Council, I think the first one being that if Iowa City is to expand their library this is the best option that the Council sees and I think that that is something that Council should be willing and able to answer that the options we've seen, we believe this is the best one and in that regard we're This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 45 supporting that option. As far as the basic concept should we consider building another library, I think individual Council people are going to answer that themselves either support. I would hope that no person on the Council would work to the defeat of that project, and I would hope that those who support it would do so enthusiastically but I do think we have to. I can't imagine that we would not say to the public that this, of the proposals we've seen, this represents the best proposal that we have seen for a new library project (can't hear). Beyond that I think it becomes an individual Council person's choice whether to actively campaign for the passage of the bond issue but other Council people. Pfab/I see no reason why we shouldn't as a Council. Lehman/I don't think we can speak for all. Pfab/I mean I said, from what I can see I see no reason why we as a Council shouldn't support it. That's my opinion. Champion/I love it now that I've seen it. Man/(can't hear) let's go with it. O'Donnell/Well Connie does that mean you support it? Champion/Oh totally. Lehman/Well I think we need to give the library board, are we a Council inclined to agree this is the best option that we've looked at and we are willing to place on the ballot? Singerman/You have the right to tell us to keep looking. Lehman/I absolutely (can't hear). Singerman/I mean that's why we're here tonight. Lehman/We told you that before. Singerman/We went down the path, we went down it together, here it is, do you want us to keep looking? Champion/No. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 46 Lehman/I do not think that we are looking (can't hear). Pfab/I think it's time to move on. Lehman/(can't hear) Tell us which one they want. O'Donnell/That's precisely (can't hear). Lehman/Well the rest of the Council speak for yourselves. Wilburn/Yes. Pfab/Yes. ???/Yes. Pfab/I support it. Vanderhoef/Put it on the ballot. Kanner/Well I want to support expansion of the library I think it's good for Iowa City. I guess my major concern is increased costs, on one hand and I want to explore to see if perhaps if we can cut back on if there are any options on that, you know we've been given that this is what has to be but there's always room for discussion to see if we can cut back on that. And then I still, I just want to feel better about eliminating Old Capital Mall one, I mean I've heard people say that you can't ever have the support structure without putting in significant money but maybe we can have cursory engineer look at it to give us an idea without having to go to soil samples and things like that for maybe a couple thousand dollars. And then if we come back with an issue report that says it's going to cost about the same when all is said and done, this plan then we can go with that one stronger to the public. Magalhaes/I don't think Mark was blunt enough about our meeting with Madison Realty, basically we talked with them last week and we left the table mutually agreeing that that space was not an option, period, from both of our perspectives. O'Donnell/And I think Linda brought up a good point to. Champion/(can't hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 47 O'Donnell/Part of the reason for us doing this was we didn't want another empty building downtown and I think a single use building downtown and without much much renovation I just really don't think that building will be sold. Swairn/Steve if I could just comment again from the sort of 5-year board member perspective. If you walk down that path and it takes us another year and a half, at the end of that process somebody like Freda Hieronymus will say you know my project hasn't gone very far let's look at that project for the library and you'll explore that for two years. And about that time you'll be ready to dispose of where the bus station is to the multi-model centers down and somebody will say you know the Freda Hieronymus project was a good idea but let' s look at this other project. O'Donnell/I think we get the point. Swaim/I've just got to tell you at some point Ernie's right, this is a beautiful building. I was here when we put forward a similar site plan but a much different building, this one does everything that we could ask for a library so why not go to the voter's and say you know what we want a really great library, this is a great plan, and let's vote for it. Champion/I think that's great and I think it's important that people realize that I know you've been through all this and you must get really just sick thinking about it and the ability for options are endless and (can't hear) totally endless maybe since we're redoing Iowa Avenue we could put it in the middle of Iowa Avenue or (can't hear). O'Donnell/We'll talk about that later. (All talking). Lehman/All fight do have consensus that we are willing to put this plan, this proposal as we've seen it on the ballot7 All fight. O'Donnell/(can't hear). Champion/Let's go. Lehman/Do we? Kanner/Well you're saying at this price? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 48 Lehman/We'd have to, you know if we decide on, we could be fine tuning this two years from today you know, yea I have to believe that if Scott says the running bids of the contractors may be way, that they could move along and save some money on the project, I hope that those (can't hear) to go along. There's no way we're going to fine tune this entire building project at this point. If we want to do that we'll never build the building. Kanner/I don't necessarily agree with you, I think when you get something 30 minutes ahead of time and they've only looked at it only once before I think there's always room for a little discussion and we also meet our deadline of having time to campaign for it and put it on the November ballot as been proposed. Lehman/Well I guess I'I1 saying, I mean all we're saying or would like to hear us say is that this conceptually we think it's a good plan, we think that it's been presented, it's OK, they're going to have to come back to us anyway with a date and the amount for the referendum but that does give us a fair amount of time. Atkins/No I'm not so sure it does Ernie, it's time for me to wade in. Lehman/Wade in. Vanderhoef/I, Because I'm concerned, I hear fall and then I hear November election and I'm interested personally in having a special election for this. Lehman/Well that's going to come later when they come to us, Steve. O'Donnell/Well I don't think you could do that, that would be X amount of cost and I just think that would be a. Martin/Yea we're not suggesting that as one. Atkins/There are two issues that you have to resolve. If we're going to buy that property we need a referendum date because the property owner has expressed interest in selling the property and I'm assuming you will purchase it contingent upon passage of a bond issue and that certainly means we've got to have a date or we can not negotiate the purchase of the property. Secondly, I've got to get bond opinion, I need to go to bond counsel and confirm, not so much the amount but how moneys will be distributed because of the retail component of that. I'm not concerned about it. Lehman/When would you need? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 49 Atkins/We need authorization by bond opinion which will concur that's the number, that's OK, passing (can't hear) debt, that's more for us to worry about than the library people but the referendum date and bond opinion I've got to have and (can't hear) to move on it. Lehman/When do you anticipate coming back to us with those dates and numbers? Martin/Well we can come back to you with numbers and dates after our board meeting which is the 4th Thursday of this month. Lehman/The fourth is next week. Martin/Soon, yea, but you know frankly we've had contact with citizens too that have expressed that a desire that if we're going to do that it be part of a general election and we have not specifically talked special election and I'm hearing some response here that's negative to that on the building so you know this is something you have some statement too so I'm wondering what the Council feels about date and. Vanderhoef/Well there's another conversation that Council has to have also with the price tag that' s coming in here and that has to do with our policy of self imposed bonding limit and this we knew the $15 million was a take us over and now this is even that much more so I think Council needs a conversation about policy that if this were to pass whether we're going to change that policy because otherwise what it effectively does for our budget is take away projects that we are just now approving for capital improvement plan. Martin/I believe the library board is interested in defining as much as we can the private participation of this project to lower the amount of the bond referendum and we'd like to keep it at $15.3 that we had to start with. Vanderhoef/Which still takes us over our limit but not as much. Martin/I mean at least it puts us back (can't hear). Vanderhoef/Yep, and I appreciate that, I think that's a healthy goal. Pfab/I just have one question. Is it, at one time we were thinking about special election early sometime, that's passed. Lehman/Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 50 Pfab/Is there any reason why, is there any reason why it shouldn't go on the general election? Lehman/I don't think so. Susan Craig/Is it true we can't do it on a school board election though? Atkins/Correct. Champion/We can't, we've got to (can't hear). Lehman/We can do it on a general. Martin Yes and I mean I don't think the board wants to add another political nugget into the mixture about having special elections, that' s just self defeating it so. Lehman/All right. Well I think. Atkins/(can't hear) is that. Champion/General election. Atkins/You will need to have on your agenda a resolution authorizing filing a special election, special in the sense that this election, whether it's held today or not but it has to be done by resolution. Lehman/OK. Atkins/I mean your going to vote it up or vote it down. Lehman/Right. Atkins/I think there should be some consensus on the part of both parties that. Pfab/What are you going to vote on? Lehman/Well I think were going to have to wait until after their board meeting. Champion/Until after their board meeting. Lehman/They need to come back and give us. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 51 Atkins/And the second question is I need to seek the bond opinion from the bond Counsel in the amount of money. I've heard Mark say that your interested in a private fund raising component because when you do call this election you know your going to have a (can't hear). Lehman/But both of those things we probably can after their next meeting or early next month I'm assuming. Martin/As early as possible but I just need, what do you see your timing to be Steve, I mean we've talked about this tonight and we can say that we're willing to shoot for the additional $1.7 million of private funding and if Council's willing to put a bond referendum on for the $15.3 we can start out with it. Atkins/No they can not, I can get a bond opinion done in a couple weeks, that' s not, that' s not as much problem, I just need to know what it's going to be, when you want to follow it. Again the Council will vote on it in March and April, I don't really know, I don't know what your thought process is on how much money your going to raise privately. Singerman/Well if we. Atkins/You have to understand when you vote on the bond, that' s it. Martin/No we understand that. Singerman/Just come back to you after our next meeting does that give you enough time? Atkins/Oh that's fine, oh sure that's fine. Martin/Larry's dying back there, I don't know. Larry Eckholt/No I just keep reminding people. Lehman/I'm sorry if your going to. Martin/Our Director of Development can speak to this. (All talking). Eckholt/We've been on hold for this feasibility study that we're planning to do since last late summer waiting for this proposal to be developed. We are commencing with This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 52 the with our consultant cause assessment study, as soon as possible. Now we have true figures that we can put into this case statement that is, we also have drawings that will make it better so that by the April board meeting of the foundation we would be moving ahead with the fundraising project so that by November theoretically there would be a sense of what you know, where we are with the campaign. So we've been talking a $2 million dollar capital campaign for about 5 years so it fits fight into our plans. And that will start interviewing in March so. Craig/And your names are all on the list (can't hear). Lehman/Mark you get back to us, you give us the date which sounds like is going to be the general election, the amount of the referendum, I think a formal request asking us to do it. We can then Steve can get the work done that we need to do it sounds to me like we've got lots and lots of time but we should move forward on it. Other comments from Council. O'Donnell/That's good. Kanner/I think the March 7th meeting is when we could hopefully could vote on this. Lehman/Or I think (can't hear) the second one we could. Steve. Atkins/I've got it, I think it'll probably be more like the second meeting in March. Lehman/Second meeting in March, that gives us ample of time. Atkins/It gives you a whole month to put it together. Lehman/Yea, thank you folks. Martin/I appreciate your sensitivity about how long we've been talking about this but the fact of the matter is we ain't done yet so we're getting warmed up here (can't hear). (All talking). Landfill Grants (1P2 of 2/10 packet) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 53 Atkins/In your packet you should have a memorandum on the Landfill Grants on the recommendation, there were 14 projects that we recommend. For new Council members we annually set aside $25,000 in your landfill account. This is for allowing really closely businesses and other institutions will apply for a grant from us for the purpose of handling the improvement recycling opportunities within their organizations and/or whatever agencies they might represent. This is the largest of our projects we've had, and I think you'll recognize these not all Iowa City folks, a number from the County, a couple from Coralville. The reason is is that the landfill is regional and we allow anyone to go far. Other than that we are recommending that you proceed (can't hear) individual contract with each person on the funding. Lehman/Any comments from Council? It's a good project. Atkins/I (can't hear) our history is that it's been a very good project. Kanner/The office shredder right? I don't know, I mean I guess it would be OK but I can't see that they generate that much that they'll be recycling that much more with the office shredder one of the (can't hear). Vanderhoef/I appreciate the fact that they have a nice mix of both private people and also the public non profits (can't hear). Champion/Well the thing about shredding Steven is then they do recycle it. Wilburn/They also are shredding confidential documents. Champion/Right, that's what I mean they do recycle it. Wilburn/And they can recycle it. Because I remember not this agency but I remember years back maybe 20 years ago one of the agencies was resorted to burning some of their documents so. Atkins/I thought for sure you were going to ask me about the worms. Wilburn/No. Lehman/I think the reason Steven probably is that if they shred it they will recycle it. Kanner/I know my question is. Lehman/The quantity you mean? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 54 Kanner/Yes. Pfab/It appears that I've seen different loads of paper come, I think from NCS and theirs go through a great big grinder and oh not the recycling place, yea the recycling place, what is the name of that? Kanner/City Canon. Lehman/City Carton. Pfab/And it looks like they stand there and before they leave they it's already done up and they make them unload the pallets I think for, so that's another alternative but that's the quality of truck loads. Wilburn/And Steven in a years time with one client that agency I could easily see them with one client 1 to 100 pages of confidential documents I could easily see that with one I see, they easily see over a couple thousand a year so. O'Donnell/It's a good project. Lehman/Are we OK with it? Champion/Yes. Wilburn/Yes. Atkins/OK we'll (can't hear). HCDC Hawkeye Court Apartments Letter Atkins/That's the letter you asked me (can't hear). It's a letter prepared by the preparer of (can't hear) commission. Lehman/I think that was the letter you asked to be on the agenda. Kanner/Well yea it was because it was in the packet and I guess what happened was that the Commission had decided that they were going to write a letter to the University in their name and then they were advised by staff that they should bring it before Council and so there's two issues here. There's the issue ofwhat's happening at the University with the Hawkeye Court Apartments and then there's This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 55 the issue of the relationship between the Commission and the Council. So I think maybe we can talk about that for a few minutes and see if Council wants to do anything and I think the first issue is a horrible one about what's happening with I guess there's about 750 people that might lose housing over at Hawkeye Court depending on what the University does. And maybe this can be an opening for us to work with the University, a number of towns Ohio State for instance has worked with the city to make nonprofit development corporations, maybe that' s something we should talk about develop a corporation between the University and the City that will to develop housing and business perhaps. Businesses that would satisfy the needs of nonalcoholic events, we've gotten a lot of letters about that, just as an example. I would see this as an opening to talk about the housing issue and involve the University more, I think, I would assume they would want to be, want to have more partnership with us in developing housing that's affordable for students so I put that out there as the first half of the discussion. Lehman/Well I think the what if I understand correctly what you would like to see us do is indicate to them that this would have a very negative impact on the overall housing market in Iowa City and that we have certain concems about anything that reduces the amount of affordable housing. I think that, I think, and I think that' s a very valid point, anytime you reduce that number of units of affordable housing it's certainly impacts the community. My, they, the Housing Commission would like to write a letter to that affect to the University regarding that affect, that's why we got it. Do we have some interest on the Council in sending such a letter? Pfab/Yes sir. Champion/Yes it would be a good idea. Pfab/I definitely support it. Vanderhoef/Was it in the minutes of that meeting or where did I get some sense that the University felt that to bring the University housing up to standards was going to be so expensive that it was not going to be affordable housing in the way that it presently is. And I didn't get any sense that they were interested in replacing any housing, I could be wrong but. Wilburn/I think at least the part about the expense and renovating Hawkeye Court, Hawkeye Drive that was part of a news account I had seen. Vanderhoef/Is that where I got it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 56 Wilbum/But even still I would think it appropriate to ask you know what if, because of the impact it could have on the community, what are your plans, or what are you thinking? Could you keep us posted something. Champion/Also there were problems with actually renting them now and that it was originally intended to be affordable housing for married students and there' s not enough to fill it so anybody who wants to live there can live there. I'm not saying that's bad but I think they've seen a downturn in the number of people applying to live there. Lehman/Then a letter to them might elicit a response explaining to us why it is there. Champion/Right. O'Donnell/People inherited things. Lehman/So I have no problem with sending the letter. Champion/No I don't either. Vanderhoef/Do we need to have our own cover letter then that it expresses our interest in talking to them about that? As I would say in the letter (can't hear) so it's been a couple weeks since I read it but it was more about what the impact would be but there wasn't much in the way of an invitation to start up this. (END OF 00-25 SIDE 1) Vanderhoef/To concerns. Atkins/Well if you wish. Lehman/I would suggest that we written a letter expressing our concern and interest in the plan or whatever that we've heard about them reducing the number of housing units. That these two represent affordable housing, that it will have a definite impact on housing stock of the community and we would like to be kept informed as to what their plans and to feel flee to discuss that with our Housing Commission. (All talking). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 57 Vanderhoef/That's what I was trying to say that perhaps maybe it should be a letter from Council spelling this out and that we would be open to having some conversations about it. Pfab/And at least see what can be worked out, the inquiring of it. Lehman/Well I think just a letter. Vanderhoef/What their intentions are and if how we might be able to do something. Pfab/(can't hear). Atkins/My question was it sounds like where you were going with this issue is going to be one of the City Council directing a letter to the University, these are Community Development Staff, Steve Nasby staffs the Commission that' s raised the issue, you seem to want it (can't hear) it up a tad bit Steven. Lehman/I would want to keep the Commission involved though because I really believe the conversation between the University and the community regarding the housing probably should best take place with Steve and his group even though they were asking apparently for us to sanction a letter, I have no problem with us telling the University on behalf of those folks or those folks on behalf of us saying precisely what we just said. Atkins/OK (can't hear). OK. Champion/Would it be appropriate for you to bring that up in one of your conversations at those open forum things you do with the University staff. Lehman/I don't get to those very often, but let's, for the time being, go ahead, we'll draft a letter and send it, we'll encourage them to visit with. I think it's appropriate (can't hear) and certainly I'm sure they'll respond to us and we'll know at that. Kanner/So the single point is sort of what you were raising Dee I think and what exactly, how far can the commission go? For example, our Human Rights Commission we empower them I think to do education. One could look at this perhaps as education, so I think we probably can't resolve here but need to refine you know do we want to enlarge the goals of Housing and Community Development Commission in a certain way that they can feel free to perhaps take initiative in the future on this or do they have to clear everything with Council before they do anything and so maybe we can continue to have that discussion down the road. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 58 Lehman/This response may indicate somewhat of what your talking for the University, that front matter may bring up questions that people have for us as to what can we do and can't do. Kanner/But I mean also between us as a Council and our Commission and how much initiative can they feel free to take. I think that was one of the things that there was a problem a bit of a problem with our Commission they felt they didn't need. Vanderhoef/Policy I think Steven. Kanner/Yea, that's what I'm saying. Vanderhoef/And right now the policy is that it comes through Council when you talk about education for Human Rights Commission those are education programs that already deal with what our ordinance say and educate both and how that was applied to the community. So I think that' s a little bit different than what we're talking about offering education programs and later on maybe there would be an education program component that comes out of this. But right now just still bringing it through Council I think they did exactly what I would have expected them to do. Kanner/Well actually they weren't too thrilled. Champion/Well. Kanner/Except on that and so, but actually I think Human Rights Commission does more than just our laws on education, they have a broader agenda. Champion/If they have an idea they can always bring it to us. Kanner/OK that' s. Lehman/Well I think certainly we can broaden the scope of what you folks do if you have suggestions for us so. Anyway for the time being we'll send the letter. Atkins/OK. Cemetery/Hickory Hill Park (January 11 memo) Lehman/This is I think in response to something we've. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 59 Atkins/Eleanor (can't hear). Lehman/Eleanor (can't hear). Eleanor Dilkes/At the, the last time this was discussed and this was with previous Council the direction was or the majority of the Council wanted to dedicate 30 acres of the Gaulocher property to park land. So we proceeded to, Terry and I talked about you know the forms we need to do that and I decided that we really should get a legal description prepared about the land, for the land we want to dedicate so I just need to have you confirm that decision, change it if you so desire or tell me what land you wish to dedicate so I can get that legal description prepared. Lehman/As you remember. Pfab/I have just a real simple question. Lehman/Yes. Pfab/This is, this was dedicated to the park, everything except that's already developed? Champion/No. Dilkes/No the 30. O'Donnell/There's 40. Pfab/Then I. Dilkes/There's 40 acres approximately 4 of which has already, is being used as cemetery, the recent cemetery expansion and then you directed, or the prior Council directed that there be a dedication of 30 of the remaining 36 acres that has not used, currently used as cemetery rather than a dedication, and then a designation of the 6 for parkland for future use as a cemetery if necessary. Champion/And so because the Council has changed that' s why we need to take a new stab at this and I would want to dedicate 36 acres to the. Lehman/We about two years ago looked at the cemetery situation and did a master plan for a cemetery that would take us for like 200-300 years. It utilized I believe 9 acres of the Gallagers which I think was 39 acres, 4 acres of that has presently been developed the balance of that master plan is currently in use as park land. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 60 The previous Council wanted to dedicate 30 acres of the park of that property that was purchased for cemetery, dedicated to park land and the remaining what five or six acres. O'Donnell/Six acres. Lehman/Six acres that had been in a master plan for a cemetery that may or may not be used in the future be designated as park land, now that's where we are. Do we want to designate six acres and dedicate 30? Do we want to dedicate 36? All knowing full well it doesn't make any difference what we do that any future Council will do whatever they want to. So what's your pleasure? Pfab/Dedicate 36 acres. Lehman/Dedicate 36. Champion/36. Wilburn/36. Kanner/36 double the (can't hear). Lehman/OK. O'Donnell/You know by doing this we totally ignore the original purpose that the land was bought for, we've got a cemetery that's been around since 1838, we've got a 25 year old park we'll all respect. What we're doing, and what Ernie said any Council can change this but it's just absurd not to respect the wishes of the Gallagers that's the original reason that we bought this land and it's in the contract so. Champion/Has anybody going to change their mind I mean we just did this? Dilkes/I just, I want to clarify one thing and I do this every time Ernie says any future Council can change it. There is one condition there and that is if improvements are made and reliance on this as a park a claim could be made that it cannot change, now whether such a claim will be made 10 years from now, 15 years from now, but I just want to make that clear. Pfab/Maybe we ought to do like the theater people did, put a deed restriction in it. O'Donnell/There's four people let's go for it, this is ridiculous. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 61 Vanderhoef/This is a shame since we have a. O'Donnell/It is a shame. Vanderhoef/The plan in place and the family has very specifically said that they want cemetery there and it was intended. I feel badly that this might all be put into the park for dedication, there is no reason that they can not use it but it will eliminate that possibility that Eleanor is just talking about that it will be designed specifically so that it never could happen. I think it's wrong to have spent the time and effort to do a plan and there are different things to that plan and it is the land that is possible to do cemetery space on and that's why we even gave it to the Council with this idea of the 30 because we had expert opinion that those 30 acres are not developable as cemetery use so it was a real important specific yes, we'll go ahead and do this and the family was OK with the fact that those spaces, the 30 acres was not usable for cemetery use. Lehman/Eleanor your going to prepare a resolution that will dedicate 36 acres, is that correct? Dilkes/That's what I hear. Lehman/If somebody changes their mind then they'll have to go back and make the resolution. Dilkes/No let me tell you I would have just put it on, I would have put the resolution on after your last discussion, you all could have done whatever you wanted with it. The factor that came up here is that we decided we needed to have a legal description prepared and I don't want to invest the money in that and then have you change your minds. Lehman/Right. OK. All right, do agree that we did have a lasting plan either though it may never be implemented, I (can't hear) with you we've got to leave it designated. Champion/But I'm not the only person to have changed their mind on something in this Council in the last 20 years I don't think. Lehman/I don't think you'll be the last one either, maybe even tonight. OK. Champion/I hope I'm not the last one. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 62 Lehman/OK Recreation Center fees. Recreation Fees (Item #21. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION ESTABLISHING A REVISED SCHEDULE OF FEES AND CHARGES FOR PARKS AND RECREATION SERVICES AND PROGRAMS. Atkins/While Terry's, Terry's walking to the microphone (can't hear) Parks and Recreation Commission, we've balanced the budget according to these numbers just so your aware of that. The rest is Terry's. Terry Trueblood/Can I take 30 seconds to clarify something on the Cemetery/Hickory Hill issue first? Lehman/Yes. Trueblood/Your intent is that all the remaining land be dedicated parkland whether that' s 36 acres, 37 acres, 38 acres, because it's not going to be exactly 36 acres I can tell you. The intent is whatever already hasn't been expanded becomes park land is that correct? Lehman/I think that's correct. Trueblood/Four of you. OK. O'Donnell/Only four. Lehman/Go ahead. Well we're here with our annual pilgrimage regarding recreation fees, as you know we look at the fees every year and year end and year out don't raise all of them but raise a considerable number of them as Steve as indicated they have been adopted by the Parks & Recreation Commission. The budget operating budget has been planned around the revenue that the fees bring in so and I know you received all this information a couple weeks ago, and I don't really have a presentation I'm just here to answer any questions that you might have but I'll forewarn you by telling you I don't have all the answers. Lehman/Terry I've got a question. Trueblood/Yes. Lehman/Those folks in the community who are unable to pay the fees that we, are posted fees do have a vehicle available to them to discounted fees. Is that correct? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 63 Trueblood/That's correct. Lehman/How's that work and what does that amount to? Trueblood/Oh we have a low income rate where they can participate at half the cost of most of our activities. Certain things it's just not possible like where there's team fees you know, like a basketball, softball, or a volleyball entry fee, or there's a park shelter reservation fee that's a group. Group things you know we can't do it but virtually all if not all of the other activities and programs they can get in for half price. A number of them also work with some of the local agencies to get them to pay that half fee as well so. And we use the same basis that the free and reduced lunch program that the school's use on that income level. Champion/Does that include things like swim lessons though and? Trueblood/Yes, absolutely. Champion/OK. Trueblood/It also doesn't include like general admission fees, like to the swimming pool, they come in to pay their $2.00 is what it would be, you know we can't on a daily basis give half price but they can buy a punch pass or an annual pass or a 3 month pass and get in for swim lessons for half price. Champion/OK. Trueblood/We even offer, and I'm not sure if this has ever been taken advantage of but we even offer a program whereby if they just don't even think they can afford half price to come in and talk to us and we'll see if we can work something out. Champion/Great. Lehman/I think we've been very sensitive to that. Champion/That's very good. Pfab/Is that available, does the public know that? Trueblood/Oh yea. Kanner/What's the criteria for determining low income? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 64 Trueblood/It's I can't tell you exactly Steven but I know it's the same criteria that's used by the free lunch program or free and reduced program. Champion/It's a guide established by the federal government. Trueblood/Yea, right, it's a guide that's established by the federal government that if your family is four members this level, if it's five member this level and so forth, but I just can't tell you the figures just offhand. Pfab/Did you miss (can't hear) when you said free lunch event at school. Trueblood/Yea it's the same criteria that the school' s use. Pfab/But free lunch, whatever. Trueblood/Yea right at the schools. Champion/It has a sliding scale and it's actually quite generous. Kanner/Yea I don't know if I would qualify for that but it I consider myself low-middle income and to me it's pretty expensive, the rates are going up. Maybe compared to Cedar Rapids they're not expensive but I think they're getting out of the range of moderate income people and even low income people for even at half price. I think we're going above the rate of inflation and I think it's something that we might want to look to see if we can subsidize at the rate we have before. And I think the goal of 45 percent is a little too high that we're moving towards, right now this will put us at what about 41 percent or so. And youth football and volleyball is going up near 10 percent and I think that's a two-year increase so that's over the rate of inflation. I think our goal right now should be inflation and so I would propose that we explore where else we can hold the line on this and see where we can get some moneys, it's something that's very worthwhile and making it as accessible as possible. So maybe we could have, if anyone has comments and reply to that and then I have another issue about the rates. Champion/Well I don't have any problems with it, I did two years ago when I realized that the City does have a meehanigrn built in for low income and it really is quite generous, you could get a hold of one of those fee schedules, I mean one of those rates, income levels and I think it's fine. You have to support these programs they're fairly expensive where we get the money. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 65 Wilburn/Well the thing about looking at some other cities, I think given that some given that a few years ago there were some attempts made to try and bump some salaries in terms of officials and things like that to make it competitive with some other summer jobs. For example if that, I think, and compared to some other cities it's a, even with the increases I think you guys on the Commission try and do a nice job of trying to keeping things reasonable and affordable. I'm looking at some other cities where although people collect for the team fees wouldn't be able to qualify for the half price thing but I was, Steven and I were talking, I was talking about volleyball in a couple cities like in Cedar Rapids, there's, I'm not sure if it's the Park Commission but the fees that they have are exceed ours pretty substantially. But they charge a per person fee to play on some of the, for example with volleyball, at here the team fee includes an unlimited roster so you could have 10, 15 alternates which a lot of people do have several alternates for the same price whereas in, an example in Cedar Rapids the number of people you have on your roster you pay an additional $20-$25 and so the price would get up. And then some other communities where they're fees are comparable with us but they don't have officials, they have to referee themselves for volleyball and softball and things like that and so. Well I hate, you know, hate to see them go up, and I complain every year myself when softball season comes up I'm still out there you know we try and do the best we can so. Vanderhoef/Terry does the equipment rental basically buy the replacement equipment? Trueblood/Exactly. It's a, you know, it's a moderately popular program and we do, it's becoming more difficult to properly maintain the equipment that we do check out you know and in order to keep replacing and provide quality equipment, picnic baskets we call them. We just felt that it was time for the fee to go up. Vanderhoef/No I don't object to it I just was curious, I had forgotten and then the other question I had on pool rentals, it says per hour but then you have ranges there so is that half an hour slash hour? Trueblood/Which one is that Dee? Vanderhoef/It's pool rentals to the general public and you've got like a range of $30 to $55 but yet in the margin it says per hour. Trueblood/Oh no, no, what that is is like at the recreation center your talking about the $30 to $55. Vanderhoef/Yea. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 66 Trueblood/The $30.00 is a shared used, in other words you can reserve it for a group but you'll have a shared use program and the $55.00 is if you want to have exclusive use, nobody else in there. Wilbunf Terry, my assumption I don't remember if it was in your letter or not. My assumption is if some of the fees don't go up your looking at either not having staff or cutting back some services, is that accurate? Trueblood/Well it, if the fees, like if these fees were to be cut back you know and then that either programs would need to be cut back or the revenue would have to come from elsewhere. Wilburn/Right. Vanderhoef/I say we go with it. Lehman/Well Steven I think has something else. Kanner/My other point is that Farmer' s Market I worked at the Market's supervisor and then my supervisor was Marilyn Kriz who's Terry's secretary and so she puts in time for that. But the only thing on the salary of the supervisor which is about $1,800 so one we're generous and put in the secretary's time let's say would be up to $5,000 it brings in $10,000 in permits and I've heard a lot of complaints last year about the prices that were too high last year for the vendors and there's more competition and there's Farmer' s Market. I think the Farmer' s Market that I think we should look at as a jewel, it's something that' s part of our economic development, it's part of the health of our city, it gives us some good fresh healthy food, and it also brings people in and still there' s a lot of people that don't know about it and we don't put much money into marketing, in fact there's no paid advertising at all that goes into this. And so there' s a proposal here, already it's making at a rough estimate $4,000-5,000 for the City and there's a proposal to raise the cost per single use, single day users and for season pass users and I would say that we should hold the line. There are some people there that are making money off it, and I think we're getting a fair price for what we're charging now and if we raise it more the people are talking about they're going to go Coralville more, they're going to go to the other Farmer's Market' s that are available. Plus we lose, you get a variety when you have a low cost for single use that people can come in one day and sell some of their clay work or their art or some of their vegetables and it adds a nice spice to it. And so I think we want to support the Farmer' s Market as much as possible, we're already making money, I don't think we should be making more money off it, there's a net gain already. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 67 Champion/What's the raise going to be? Kanner/The raise is over 15 percent per fees for the daily flee from $7.00 to $8.00 and then on the season from $5.50 to $6.00. Champion/That's pretty decent. Pfab/When was the last time these fees were raised? Kanner/This is on a biannual (can't hear) fiscal year 98, oh fiscal year 99 it was raised from $6.50 to $7.00. Pfab/And what are they requesting now? Kanner/From $7.00 to $8.00 per daily and then from $5.50 to $6.00 a season pass which would be you commit to doing the six months, you pay up front basically. Pfab/$5.00 per day. Kanner/Yea per session. Trueblood/What they do that first session is based on an annual fee, if they want to buy a season fee that's how it comes out per market and that's what most of them do. Pfab/That's why there's no discount other than the number that's less for a season per day than it is for individual. Trueblood/It amounts to $2.00 per market cheaper if you buy the season. Pfab/I guess I'd ask Steve this question and I don't want it to be misinterpreted have you ever seen any one of those say it was too cheap? As far as the nature of the that business, they always complain about you know (can't hear) that's just the way they do it. Vanderhoef/Terry, how close to (can't hear). Kanner/Well keep that in mind with economic development strategy in general, I want to say that when we're giving out the big bucks. Pfab/Oh I will. Kanner/All right good. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 68 Pfab/I've got something I'm going to pass around on one of the first days. Kanner/But the point, I think the point beyond that is that this is something we want to support, this is good for the city in a number of different ways and I don't think we're given enough back to what we're taking in money wise. Pfab/OK, just for instance, do you have any idea how much those people cash they turn over in an evening? To me it looks like a heck of a bargain. Lehman/Well it would be. Pfab/Yea but then so, so I'm saying no, let's leave it as it is. Lehman/Well I ask you Steven and I don't know maybe you know Sherry. Do we have trouble selling spaces for the Farmer's Market? Trueblood/We have a waiting list every year. Vanderhoef/That's what I thought. Lehman/I think the Market's going to determine and the other thing they do use, their using a $6 million parking facility. I don't know, obviously there's no, we don't show it as a cost. Kanner/There's no traffic, there's no parking when they use it. Lehman/Well do you think that if I'm sure there's a lot of other groups that will come down and ask for it they probably wouldn't get it because it's public facility. If we got (can't hear). Kanner/I'm sure that anyone, (can't hear). Lehman/If we've got a waiting list to get it in which apparently we have obviously our prices must not be out of line. Why would we have a waiting list? Kanner/First of all there' s a waiting list during certain periods of the time and actually Terry I think there was a thing (can't hear) almost any week last year that I was there, I found that them are a lot of open spaces. Trueblood/Marilyn tells me we have a waiting list every year and a lot of times what you might see is people will buy a season pass knowing full well their not going to use This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 69 it every market. And some of them just choose not to show up thinking that it's still a good price for them I guess. Other people we have a method where if there' s somebody wanting to get on a single market and if the season, but their full and the season vendor let's Marilyn know that they won't be there at a particular market then she can let one of the individual ones rent the space for that particular day but that' s contingent upon the season vendor letting us know. Kanner/Well we almost always found ways to get people in there that wanted to get in there and I think if we're going to charge this much we have to offer them more, we have to do more advertising and put more effort into it, there' s a lot of people that don't know about this in the city. Trueblood/Well unless things changed last year I didn't ask Marilyn this specific question but we've always had advertising Farmer's Market and part of their fee would pay that advertising. The vendor' s themselves would determine what they wanted to advertise and when they wanted to advertise. Kanner/The city puts no paid advertising, what's happened is, it didn't happen last year on previous years what happened was the farmer' s paid a little more per session for some advertising but the city never paid last year for advertising. Trueblood/Right but that' s what I'm saying is that that's part of the fee, that' s used unless that changed last year. Kanner/What? Trueblood/Part of the fee is used for advertising purposes unless that changed last year. Kanner/No there is no, there was no paid advertising last year. Trueblood/OK well then evidently it must have changed because there always was before. Kanner/Well what happened in previous years was there was an additional fee for this normal fee that people paid for advertising. Trueblood/Well the advertising fee was part of the fee. We didn't have two separate fees, we didn't have them marked fee and then an advertising fee. Kanner/Yea there was actually and there' s a little bit of that left that money. But my point again is that this is economic development at it's best I think it develops small businesses which is good and it brings people in and we can do a lot more This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 70 and we should be careful about losing that, there's a lot of competition out there, there's more and more farmer's market's opening up because towns are realizing this is the thing to do. Pfab/Were you ever told by anyone that they weren't going to come because of the fee? Kanner/Yea I was told they were considering it. Pfab/That they weren't going to come? Kanner/What's that? Pfab/Were you told by anyone that they would not come because the fee was too high? Kanner/I was told they might not come. Pfab/OK that's. O'Donnell/I'm sure the cost of a bunch of radishes has gone u_p over the years and tomatoes, I mean the price is raised, it's just. Parks and Rec. has gone over this thoroughly and I'm prepared to go with the recommendation. Pfab/I would just move on. Champion/People will just have to pay a little more for their tomatoes. Lehman/All right, are we comfortable with the recommendation for the Parks and Rec.? Champion/Yes. Pfab/I am Lehman/Thank you Terry. Wait a minute. Champion/Don't go anywhere. Trueblood/No I wasn't, I'm not leaving. Skate Board Location (1P3 of 2/10 packet) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 71 Trueblood/This is a conceptual drawing, before I go any further something I should have done when I first got up here is we do have two commissioner's tonight, James Moxley and Craig Gustaveson so if any of you wish to direct your attention at them instead of me at any point in the meeting I'd appreciate it, especially if it's something you don't like. Champion/Maybe they can sit over there. Kanner/Yea come on up. Pfab/Yes, we have a space there. Trueblood/You all would have received one of these this last week on the proposed new skate facility, so this picture up here, this drawing will look familiar to you because it was in the it was in the booklet. This particular one shows the concept for Terrill Mill Park. Just to briefly retrace steps a little bit here for the past four months of so we've been going through a community planning process, had five meetings, attendance ranged from 20-50 people, meetings were conducted by Tom Dunbar, a landscape architect out of Des Moines. Resulting in this conceptual design and the proposed locations, the preliminary design cost was nothing as we were able to take advantage of a grant program that Mr. Dunbar helped us with through the Iowa Department of Transportation. At any rate we looked at, we tried to, or Tom tried to run the gamut so to speak talking about all considerations, all concerns. And with that the final three choices that were selected by the group, this public planning group were Terrill Mill Park, City Park, Terrill Mill Park is number one up here, City Park is number two, and Mercer Park is number three. Now as you know we have a temporary skate park in I should say a partial temporary skate park in Mercer Park that was built in house. The permanent one will really be nothing like that in that that' s constructed components on top of a concrete slab, the concept of this one would be more than in ground, some above ground, mostly at grade and some actually below ground made almost entirely out of concrete with some metal involved with it. The particular locations that were tentatively identified for the three choices in the, this one in City Park, you can see fight over in this area that' s near the train tracks, that's the old object right there, boys baseball diamond' s over here. And the ponds you can see so you get the generally sort of in the more of the western part of the park. Terrill Mill is immediately south of the existing shelter, it would be about approximately 400 feet from Dubuque Street. The Mercer Park location which they didn't have as good a map for is in that green area that' s just a little ways south of Bradford Street and more or less in a northeasterly direction from the Mercer Scanlon Complex. The existing one is, right here's the aquatic center, here's the parking lot, here's the old pool This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 72 bathhouse and right over in here that western edge of the major parking lot is where the temporary one sits right now. At any rate as the memo indicated as far as locations the community group voted I believe if my memory serves me correctly there were only two that voted to the contrary that Terrill Mill was their number one choice. Their number two choice was City Park, their number three choice is Mercer Park. When I had a staff get together to talk about it, we concurred with the number one choice being Terrill Mill, we thought second choice Mercer was a better location City Park being third. But when it went to the Parks and Recreation Commission they voted unanimously Terrill Mill Park with no second choice and so that's where we're at right now. Would tell you there is money tentatively allocated in the CIP budget as you know $200,000, I don't have solid cost estimates as of yet, I've been given a preliminary range of $200,000 to $250,000 to construct what we would like. That does not include the design fees okay that's the construction cost, so were looking at the possibility of getting some grant moneys to supplement the budget if necessary. We also don't know yet who will be hired to do the design work, we'll certainly be considering Dunbar Jones as they've done this work to date. But I'd like to team them up with somebody that's more renowned shall we say in the skate park design business. So at this point open it up for questions. O'Donnell/Terry did anybody address rest room facilities? Trueblood/Yes, as a matter of fact we talked about that on several occasions and when the group, the public group was doing their voting that night I posed that question. I said at City Park you would be close to rest rooms, there would be concessions there at least part of the year, like during both boys baseball season and at Mercer Park of course their near Scanlon Gym or there's a concession area, the Babe Ruth diamonds where there's concessions area, rest rooms nearby and so forth isn't that a major concem, I asked them. They said no it wasn't a major concern, as far as beverages they bring their own, legal of course. O'Donnell/How could that not be a concern with, I've heard 60 some kids use this use this over at Mercer Park, how can facilities not be a major concern? Trueblood/They indicated if we could put one or two port-a-potties there for them that would be fine. Vanderhoef/And our entrance way to the city, put port-a-potties. Trueblood/Well you know, there not the prettiest things. Vanderhoef/No they're not. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 73 Trueblood/Keep in mind that this is about 400 feet off of Dubuque Street, it's not right on Dubuque Street. There are things as Tom indicated that could be done fairly easily in terms of some buming and landscaping if it becomes an issue but I wouldn't. Well let me put it this way, I don't personally feel that this skate park even with port-a-potties would be as much as an eye sore as a parking lot full of cars there every day. Vanderhoef/Is there water, is there electricity for lighting and obviously there' s no sewer out there? Trueblood/There's water nearby, water fountains would be a part of this plan, there' s a phone fairly close but we would plan on putting one closer. Electricity, I don't know how close electricity is but light's weren't part of our planning for this. Vanderhoef/And there's no lights on that parking lot are there? Trueblood/No I don't believe so. Lehman/But electricity is relative low cost item (can't hear). Trueblood/It is unless you have to put in a major transformer or come from a large distance away yea. O'Donnell/I could never support this with port-a-potties out there, you say it's not as much of an eye soar, I don't (can't hear). Any recreational facility we have for use I don't look at it as an eye soar I look at it as (can't hear). Trueblood/Well it's a good point. O'Donnell/But your going to have the skate park facility plus the parking lot because I don't look for that to change. Trueblood/But wouldn't it be nice to have a parking lot that's full of cars that are using something in the park? O'Donnell/There's skateboard, these are kids primarily aren't they? Atkins/Yea. Trueblood/They're kids aging in range from probably to 8 to 28 yea. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 74 O'Donnell/(can't hear) 8 year olds some day. Trueblood/Yea, good point. Pfab/I certainly can't see why it would, I don't know, what, on a good day how many people will be outside? Trueblood/On a good day, excuse me. Pfab/I mean if it's an active time how many people would be outside? Trueblood/You mean at the skate park? Pfab/Yea. Trueblood/Well just with our temporary one out there we've had as many as 50 or 60 at a time. Pfab/I can't believe that we that there shouldn't be a public facilities there, I just, it just doesn't make any sense, other than that I think it's a great idea but that really makes me (can't hear) I guess. Just even for changing clothes or something a like and I just this port-a-potty thing I just, it just doesn't seem like it's, I mean these are athletes, they're you know athletes have dressing rooms, they won't have a dressing room there but you know this is a sport, this is a very vigorous a sport. Wilburn/Maybe I can ask a commissioner since your you came up with one recommendation and no other. What' s your thought' s were, did you see them going to the rest room, you know, going through the sidewalk and trail over to City Park or what was your thinking about? Gustaveson/You know the times when we put the temporary one up and I'd go over there quite often just to see who was using it and how it was being used. Nobody ever, you know of course they were, I wasn't watching where they were going but nobody indicated that having a bathroom you know 50 feet away was an important issue. Champion/It's not until you don't have one. Gustaveson/Well that's true. O'Donnell/I think that's kind of our responsibility to look at that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 75 Pfab/I, yea I just. O'Donnell/I just think you need facilities there. Pfab/I'm not saying that your wrong not to propose it but I just think that approving it I don't think I could without public facilities. Trueblood/We have a lot of park recreation facilities without rest rooms. Champion/Right. Wilburn/Right. Trueblood/A lot of them. Basketball courts and parks, playgrounds in parks, go on and OI1. Vanderhoef/Those are neighborhood parks. Trueblood/Pardon me? O'Donnell/Are they closer to facilities than this is Terry? Vanderhoef/They're closer to the park. Trueblood/Not that are readily available, not that are readily available no. They're closer to home if they live in that neighborhood where their using the park. Vanderhoef/Right and this particular kind of activity is suppose to be supporting our (can't hear) city wide, and what strikes me about this location, I looked at the numbers and the number one points wise was Willow Creek Park and I think Mercer is number 3. But when I watched the activity out at Mercer Park it was drop in kind of recreation activity and these were yes they were older skaters who drove in, parked, got out and came to the skate park. There were kids that you saw them coming down the sidewalks from various places coming to skate. We have no young children in this vicinity at all and the younger children are the ones who depend on dad and mom frequently when their going that far away from the house. To me Mercer and Willow Creek speak to one of the things that we seem to be wanting to do with our recreation programs, we're trying to find activities for our young folks to do for that hour or so after school when maybe the are latch key young folk but organized or semi-organized activity for them to do. And with the school nearby in the southeast, it just seems like we'll have the audience that they talked about, we'll have the drop in that they can come over for This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 76 30 minutes, they don't have to take the bus fide, the folks who are living near Terrill Mill are the ones probably that have cars or certainly have a wider range just because they are older. The other thing I see about Mercer Park is that that is a family oriented park and because of recreation activities that happen there having raised three children in this town I have taken two children with me while only one was playing baseball. This gives an alternative activity and yet the family' s all in the park area which I think is a really positive thing. One of the things that was in the plan that the people spoke about was that they wanted audience to come and watch. We can't have it both ways if we tuck it back in Ten-ill Mill they're not going to get casual walkers, if we put it up by the street we're not going to like that either. So I see lots of people coming in and out of Mercer Park from all parts of the city because at least one member of their family has something that they're coming to specifically whether it be baseball or tennis courts or going to the swimming pool. Lehman/Well you can say the same thing about City Park in that regard because you've got. Vanderhoef/City Park has more of those kinds of things it still concerns me that City Park doesn't have the neighborhood younger children concentration when you look at your school age children fight now they are not in the Manville Heights and that closer walk in areas so. O'Donnell/I think Dee that' s got pros and cons because you also don't have the likelihood that your going to have complaints from the close houses close to the area. Vanderhoef/However, when we do have our parks close at 10:00 at night. Trueblood/10:30. Vanderhoef/10:30 sorry, thank you. O'Donnell/10:00. Trueblood/10:30. O'Donnell/City Park does. Vanderhoef/OK, whatever. Kanner/That' s when the fun starts at 10:00. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 77 Vanderhoef/That's a concem with Ter~ll Mill for me and it's going to be isolated enough that skating is going to go on even later and if your worded about noise, noise over water is amplified (can't hear) barely large number. O'Donnell/I've never done a study on that. Vanderhoef/I've lived on a lake, I guess I'll put it that way. Kanner/Yea I think if we're open and attract a more diverse group, younger kids and girls and young women, I don't know how comfortable they would feel going out to Ten'ill Mill Park and I kind of concur with some of the other complaints or objections about no bathroom facilities. I think the idea is good, I think we could have it somewhere but I think I agree with some of the other folks that maybe we need another spot that's going to draw the best of it's ability. Trueblood/Well I too thought rest rooms would be an important consideration but then I'm not going to sit here and tell you. (END OF 00-25 SIDE 2) Gustaveson/Can I address something on this? When we went through this process and we looked at 20 some locations in town and through a process of elimination we came up with these three spots as being the three most desirable that won, that the skate boarders wanted and I think that's the first thing we have to consider is what they want. This is a skateboard park for the boarders, not necessarily what we want but this is what they wanted. One of their main concerns and the more we worked with this young group of people the more impressed I became with them because one of their major concems was how is the public going to react to their skateboard park. One of the things that they were concerned about, and two of their major concerns about Mercer Park was one a lot of complaints from the neighborhood, not wanting them to be there because of the noise, for the way they looked, whatever it was, that's something they took very heavily into their decision. Two was safety, one of the complaints they have that the temporary one is too many families around, people not watching their kids, walking out onto the skateboard park, unattended kids so that's one of the things they wanted to be away from, City Park and Mercer Park is to eliminate some of the dangers that were there with unattended kids, kids that were just walking in from school. Some of the kids that live over in Mercer Park, I ran the concession stand for Babe Ruth last year, the biggest problem I had over there were the neighborhood kids coming in not being attended by their parents, stealing from us, causing problems, calling, I had to call the police several times to have kids run out. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 78 That's where a lot of the problems came with Mercer Park is the neighborhood kids, Southeast Junior High being over there, disrupting what they want a place a sanctuary to go to skate board so there are two reasons they chose Terrill Mill was one because of it's isolation, it was away from neighborhoods so they won't be disrupting the neighborhood, communities. The safety factor that their not going to have a bunch of little kids running around all the time jeopardizing them. They'd have kids come up and sit down on the ramps and get in their way so those are the two things you brought up are two of the reasons that we chose this park. The bathroom facilities I agree with you I think that's an issue, I don't know how much it's going to cost to put in a bathroom but maybe it does but I think the way this thing would be designed the way it would be laid out even if we put in port-a-potties for an interim period we can disguise it, there's a lot of wooded area over there. Like Terry said it's 400 feet away from the city, I don't know if any of you have been out there, I've lived here for 25 years and I went out once to see where it could be put up and I tell you what you wouldn't even know it was there, there are places we could up a earth berm, you put port-a-potties behind there, you wouldn't even know they're there. I think the bathroom facility is a minor and I really want to emphasize minor issue on this, this group of kids, 50 kids spent 5 sessions working on this, they don't trust city government, they don't trust the process and I think if we went back and said we don't think your findings are valid I think it's a shame on this Council to just say we don't buy into what you've gone through. All this time we've tried to teach them the process and they've done it. Wilburn/I would say, do you mind if I. Above all I just want to see it happen so and I wasn't done yet, excuse me Irvin. And for the reasons that Craig just sprawled off I think just for you know my background coming from working with young people just in a power process to come up with this, I don't have an answer for the bathroom thing and you know if you all want to take that it on and that's your concern I don't have a good argument, Craig mentioned some possibilities. But again above all I just want to see it happen. In terms of looking for other spots or revisiting the list the committee, the kids did come up with three options and I think your the later concern that you addressed going back and saying you know we're going to throw out your idea, I think that's that's avoided as long as we stick to the three options that they came up with. O'Donnell/One of the three. Wilbtm'g If we look at anything else in there I think we're, your saying well the work that you did is no good. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 79 Pfab/I would say complement them the work that they did and say we think it's such a good idea that we also believe there should forego rest room facilities then. Lehman/Terry I think that skate board parks are about as compatible with regular parks as (can't hear) Wilbum/I agree with you. Lehman/Really do, I think the reason these kids want to be secluded is because there are folks who object to their sorts of behaviors, I shouldn't say behavior's but their sport, they don't want to be close to it, they don't want to have their children with it. It bothers me to see it in City Park where there are all kinds of young children running around. I think that it needs to be secluded and I can't believe that Ten-ill Mill is basically an undeveloped park, it's city (can't hear). It would be much easier to develop a park around the skateboard facility than to try and put a skateboard facility into an existing park, I really believe that. I don't disagree with the reasoning of the commission at all. Gustaveson/I tell you one of the concerns that as a commission that we had when we looked at, when I first started on this whole process I had no doubt it had only one place to go and that was at Mercer Park because of Scanlon Gynmasium, we have facilities there, we have people that could take care of them. But after going up and looking at Cedar Rapids facility, it's at Czech Village, there's nothing around there, it doesn't make any difference where it's at as long as they have it. Trueblood/No rest rooms either. Gustaveson/No rest rooms either. But one of the things that the commission had concerns with when we started looking at Mercer Park and my contention was this is a family oriented, it's a multipurpose park. Well I finally realized that that's the reason it shouldn't be there because it's getting too crowded. We looked at City Park and we felt the same way, we've got the new Shakespeare Theater coming in, we've got maybe expansion of the train, and we're trying to crowd one more thing in there to where it's going to get too populated. The nice thing about Terrill Mill Park it's fight across the river from City Park in a sense it's a part of City Park. It's secluded from the fact that it is set so far back from the highway and if your worrying about looks the way this is designed and landscaped. I mean even when we drove up to Cedar Rapids skate park it is amazing how traffic even looked with the earth berms the metal they had their metal painted. We're going to probably more concrete but from the road it could be, we talk about the gateway coming into Iowa City, it could be a very appealing facility there with the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 80 landscaping, the park, I can't tell you how much I disagree with you if your thinking about putting in someplace else. Champion/Well you know you've convinced me, although I was against it being there for the very reason that you told me I shouldn't be because I thought it should be isolated but it should be where people can observe. Gustaveson/And it will be you know, this will be a place where people can drive up with their kids and they will come to see it. But what the kids don't want is a bunch of people just walking around because it is a danger. Champion/Your right and it never entered my mind. Kanner/Craig, two, you make some good points but the answer couples, I remember reading minutes from Commissioner Wilbum talking about how the softball players were much noisier than the skate boarders that were there, that it really wasn't that much of a problem. Gustaveson/You know Steven I think. Wilburn/And, that was, there were, some neighbors had addressed a concern about the young people having foul language and inappropriate behavior and so my counter point to that was I see some adults act a lot more childish than some of the kids that I saw out there. Gustaveson/You went out there and saw some discrepancy of softball, yea. Kanner/But when I visited one time the temporary one I saw them getting along pretty well there and I think we could deal with the any possible noise issue and it's something that's different for a lot of people that grew up with the tradition of maybe softball or football and it takes a while to get used to. And I think design, the design will help deal with the problem of people coming in and interfering with it I think you have a good design here and it's going to tend to keep people off that aren't going to participate in it that it's going to be more focused than it is is now. Again I want to get back to girls and young women participating, how many girls and young women did you have in the participating in the design process? Trueblood/One, maybe two. Gustaveson/It just seems to be a sport that doesn't attract girls or women. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 81 Wilbum/My daugther has a skateboard. Gustaveson/That's one thing we kept hoping that we'd get more females showing up for some input but it just never happened. Kanner/I'm feeling you could get quite a few out but I don't think we're going to get them when we put it in that isolated spot. Gustaveson/Steve one thing I want to emphasize to you more than anything else. I don't care what you think where that skate board park should go. What I really want to emphasize is this is what the kids wanted, this is what they've asked us for and I think more than anything else take that into consideration please. I mean if it's there. Kanner/I know but my point is that it there weren't females that were really involved, young women and girls and maybe that's why it's oriented in this way. Maybe that's why the decision came in, I think we as a Council we try to see, take all this input in, and I'd be, I think the people would be happy if we chose one of the three sites. It doesn't necessarily have to be (can't hear). Gustavesord Steve down at Mercer Park, I've been down there numerous times, now Mercer Park I don't know how much more centrally located you can be in a community, in a neighborhood community, you've got Southeast Junior High, girls don't come and I don't know if it's because they're intimidated by the guys. You know if we build it people are going to use it whether it's men or women, that I can't determine. O'Donnell/You know you said take the kids recommendation and I really want to do that and they have three of them you know, all young kids thing they can stay up until midnight every night but they have to rely on adults. And I just don't do not feel it's responsible to put a skateboard park down where there's no rest room facilities for the kids. If we can talk about doing that, I can support that, I just I, especially with the mixture of boy and girls. Gustaveson/Yea I really think your making a minute into a major issue. O'Donnell/A rest room. Gustaveson/A rest room. O'Donnell/I think it's a pretty important issue. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 82 Gustaveson/I disagree with you. Vanderhoef/What was the average age of the young people that worked on this? Did they have enough in the ten and under that didn't have older kids? Gustaveson/I could tell you, I'd say the group that I was familiar with and a lot of those kids I knew down there were junior high age to high school age. There weren't, very few, there were a few kids I knew that were maybe in 5th or 6th grade but the majority of them were junior high and up. Vanderhoef/So they have more more flexibility and privilege from the household if they're responsible young people to go further away from home to do these kinds of activities. That's my concern that we're not going to be bringing in some (can't hear). Gustaveson/But if we put it at Mercer Park then you have the west side kids saying they have to go all the way over here. Vanderhoef/I understand that. Gustaveson/If you put it over at City Park you have the same issue and I don't think that's a valid issue. Champion/I don't think age is an issue mainly because there is no way I would let my 5th grader go skateboarding without adult supervision, it's a very dangerous sport and so your still going to, you can really hurt yourself and I can't imagine letting a 5th grader go skateboarding alone. Pfab/What would it cost to put public rest rooms in? Trueblood/I don't know, we haven't gotten cost estimates. And you know public rest rooms are just like building a house, you know, you can buy it for a minimum, or build it for a minimal amount or you can spend a lot more money. I think your probably talking in the neighborhood to build a basic rest room of $50,000 or so anyway. Lehman/But we probably wouldn't consider that until we determine the need I would assume. Champion/There's no sewer there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 83 Trueblood/Well that's the other point that was brought up is maybe just like anything else I know if you build something, we built the soccer complex to accommodate 2,500 kids and used port-a-potties this spring will be the first time they've had real rest rooms there. Lehman/Now you've said the Commission voted unanimously, for one option and one option only. The kids selected the option, your staff looked at this. Trueblood/That's correct. Lehman/What was their opinion? Trueblood/Ten'ill Mill. Pfab/Only one (can't hear). Lehman/So what we're saying maybe the kids don't know what they're talking about I don't know. But does the Commission not know what they're talking about and the staff not know what their talking about? Trueblood/I'd rather not respond to that. (All talking) Pfab/We'll talk about the permanent rest rooms (can't hear). Lehman/Well what do you guys want to do? We're 10 minutes to 10 and Terry turns into a pumpkin pretty quick. Turns into a port-a-potty. Champion/Well I had my mind made up it should not go in Terrill Mill and now I've got to have it there (can't hear) time to think about.. Trueblood/One thing, and I just wanted to follow up on something that Steven brought up is about the girls and women. Whereas we, I can only recall one girl, there might have been two that of the younger variety that attended but there were over the course of the meeting four or five mothers anyway that came with their sons and none of them ever brought that up as an issue, Ten'ill Mill being secluded. Pfab/Before we actually vote on this I don't know. Lehman/We're aren't going to vote tonight. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 FebmaW 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 84 Pfab/No, no, but is there a way that you could tell us approximately how much permanent rest rooms would cost. Champion/There's no sewer there. Lehman/Well there's got to be, there's. (All talking). Lehman/I don't think we would consider putting in a permanent rest room until you find out the need for it. Pfab/Then I, that was my point, if I, if the votes aren't there forget it then. (can't hear) Lehman/They've used port-a-potties at the soccer fields for how long? Trueblood/Well. Lehman/For 2,500 people and that's. Trueblood/At least three years. Lehman/And that doesn't include the parents, the grandparents and. Trueblood/Well longer than that because when they played at Willow Creek and Scott Park and Court Hill that's all they ever had was port-a-potties. Pfab/I withdraw my objection. (can't hear) Lehman/What do we need to tell you Terry? Trueblood/Well if possible, I would just like to get an indication tonight whether or not we can proceed with the plans to build this thing in Terrill Mill Park with that being the number one choice and if not, if there aren't a majority of you that are willing to proceed on that basis then we'd like to know where we go from here. One of the reasons that I'd like to have that indication is because I just got some information last week that there are some grant opportunities available but the deadline is March l 5. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 85 Lehman/Real quick. Trueblood/Yea, now I can't guarantee you that I can even have a grant application done by then let along whether or not we would get it but I'd like to shoot for it. And one of the things to do that you have to be able to tell them exactly where this is going to go. Lehman/All fight. O'Donnell/Have you thought about liability down there in a place that isolated? Trueblood/Liability? O'Donnell/If a kid gets hurt, telephone, anything like that. Trueblood/Well we'll have a telephone there. O'Donnell/There will be a telephone. Trueblood/Yea, yea, there' s already one not too far from there but we'd want to put one closer. From what I understand Mike is that you know the liability there would be no more than it would be at Mercer or City or somewhere else. I did want something to is that the police involvement has been involved with this at least on the periphery. Their main concern is that it be placed somewhere where they have easy access and all three of these locations would accommodate that. Pfab/If somebody were to ask me I would support it. Lehman/All fight, do we have four people willing to tell Terry to move forward with this? Champion/I changed my mind again twice in one night. Lehman/Well where are you now. Champion/You convinced me, I'll go for it. Lehman/All fight, go ahead. Trueblood/Yea we do have four. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 86 Kanner/Can you talk to the University to see if they want to get involved at all? Trueblood/That was done a couple years ago. Kanner/What did they say? Trueblood/Well we're not planning it with them so. Kanner/Can you build like a pyramid that jump across the river, what is it called a steel or (can't hear). Lehman/It's called the Laser Center if you move it up stream a little. Kanner/To go across. Trueblood/Cost will go up. Pfab/What is the next one/ Lehman/All fight. Thanks Terry. Sale of City Property/Right-of-Way-Valuation ( 1 / 12 memo) (Item #10. CONVEYANCE OF A PORTION OF LOT 1, BLOCK 3, RUNDELL ADDITION, CONSISTING OF APPROXIMATELY 2,995 SQUARE FEET LOCATED AT THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF GRANT STREET AND COURT STREET, TO ADJACENT PROPERTY OWNERS WILLIAM G. FLANAGAN AND ELIZABETH ROSE.) (Item #11. CONVEYANCE OF AN APPROXIMATELY 7,720 SQUARE FOOT PARCEL OF THE UNIMPROVED, VACATED PORTION OF THE VIRGINIA DRIVE RIGHT-OF-WAY LOCATED BETWEEN LOTS 2 AND 4 OF NORTH HILLS SUBDIVISION IMMEDIATELY NORTHEAST OF THE INTERSECTION OF VIRGINIA DRIVE AND RIDGEWOOD LAND TO ADJACENT PROPERTY OWNERS PHILIP AND HELEN OLDIS.) (ITEM #12. CONVEYANCE OF ONE-HALF OF A TEN-FOOT WIDE VACATED PORTION OF THE WASHINGTON STREET RIGHT-OF-WAY LOCATED BETWEEN 1033 (LOT 7, KOSER BROTHERS SUBDIVISION) AND 1025 WASHINGTON STREET TO ADJACENT PROPERTY OWNER MAKIORIE B. HAYEK.) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 87 Lehman/Eleanor you and I visited very briefly earlier today and I think you have an idea that probably is very valid and might work well for us. Dilkes/Well I, my recommendation would be on the bigger issue of just where you start on these, is that you start by looking at assessed value of the neighboring property and then each one is going to have to be examined on it's own facts. For instance what the incumbrances are, what the demand is for the property, whether there are appraisals submitted, etc. so in terms of the philosophical construct that you might develop that seems appropriate to me. Now I think there are, the only item, the item that brought this all up is the Flanagan item. So you need to make a decision about in general how do you want us to look at these things and then you need to tell us what you want us to do with the Flanagan item whether you want to direct us to go back and have a conversation with him based on what you decide tonight. And go ahead on the other two or. Pfab/What, which one is the issue? Lehman/Valuing, when we transfer property from the city to private folks how do we determine the price. And Eleanor is saying that the starting point would best be with an assessed valuation and then each individual parcel would be handled on it's own merit. For example if there are easements across that property that would affect the price, it's a 6 foot wide strip as oppose to a 50 foot wide strip. If it's buildable, I mean those sort of things which you'd handle on an individual basis, but the starting point would be the assessed value that then being adjusted by other factors that might be present with the situation. Is that correct? Dilkes/Right. Pfab/What is the history of'?. Vanderhoef/(can't hear) assessed lot and the pricing, you said both. Lehman/Well I think assessed. Dilkes/I think a starting point would be assessed but if the appraisal, if the property owner gets an appraisal then you should put that in the mix too and have it considered. Lehman/Right. Vanderhoef/Well I'd like assessed and I thought you were since saying appraisal (can't hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 88 Dilkes/Yea. Pfab/Say out of the last 25 or 30 sales how close were they to appraised values? Dilkes/To appraised value or? Lehman/Assessed. Pfab/Assessed value, how close did the sales parallel the? Dilkes/I've not looked at the last 25 or 30 sales. Pfab/No I'm just. Dilkes/The most recent I think that's what we started to do. What's been done in the years past. Pfab/No. Dilkes/I think that's that's what makes the appraisal submitted sort ofproblematic because they use those old (can't hear). Pfab/Oh okay so the assessor changes the title on and upgrades his records for 25 pieces of property in the last year, how close did they follow sale prices? Lehman/There are so few of these things that we transfer it's going to be tough to come up with. Pfab/No, no, I mean all over, not just these items, as assessed value. Dilkes/How does in general assessed value compare to the sale price of property? Pfab/There you go. Right, if it's within 5 or 10 percent of(can't hear). Dilkes/I haven't done that analysis. Pfab/If it gets different than that I'd start looking for other ways. Lehman/But at least you'd start every one on the same basis, your not saying you'd ever sale it for assessed value. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 89 Pfab/I have no problem with that. Lehman/But that would be the point by which you would start for each one of them. Kanner/(can't hear). Dilkes/You know frankly, I'm sorry, but starting at assessed value is it has another benefit in that these are little teeny parcels sometimes and we don't want to go out getting appraisals on each of these little lumps. Pfab/No I agree, but my point is let's say the sale price on each of the last 25 is 15 percent is lower or higher then maybe add (can't hear). Dilkes/Sure. Vanderhoef/Lower or higher from what? Pfab/From sales, assessed value. Vanderhoef/From sales of what? Pfab/The same proper, houses in your neighborhood sold, over the assessed that, what did they sell for? How much was the difference? And if it was the fight amount then you do (can't hear). Champion/Well how do you even do that when your using doing strips of land (can't hear)? Lehman/I don't think you have to worry about (can't hear). Vanderhoef/(can't hear). Lehman/I think, I really don't think that that, because that's just to start. For example if you've got this 18 foot strip of property you want to, I want to buy from the city and it's got a sewer easement, a water easement and the assessed value is $3.00 a square foot and then the staff or their determination says it's $3.00 a square foot because of all the easement it's worth $0.28 cents. Well no no that's exactly how they would do it. Vanderhoef/Yea all fight. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 90 Lehman/Where it's 18 feet added to my lot allows me to build a garage, the assessed value. O'Donnell/I don't think that's, I don't think that' s correct way to look at it Ernie. Lehman/How else do you look at it? O'Donnell/Your increasing the size of the lot, I mean if you have a house built on a 50 foot lot it's worth less than a house built on an 80 foot lot. Lehman/That' s correct but if you get 30 feet of it on easement. Dilkes/Well for instance, for instance in this case then yes we as pointed out in Sarah's memo although the assessed value of Mr. Flanagan's lot is $4.00 a square foot, neighboring property that are more regular size lots than his are at $3.00 so it might be appropriate in this case to bump down to $3.00 given the demand is only him it might be appropriate to bump down a little farther. But we have, I'm just suggesting that as a starting place. Vanderhoef/And then look at the (can't hear) the building ability and what easements are there. Lehman/Well I guess the question is do we want to use that as kind of a starting point? Vanderhoef/Yes. Champion/Yes definitely, that' s fine, I have no idea what your (can't hear). Lehman/All right, we have 3 or 4 things on the agenda tomorrow night, one of them, the Flanagan property we probably would like to defer pending a recommendation from our staff as to what they would feel would be an equitable price. O'Donnell/How many times have we deferred that one now? This will be the third time. Vanderhoef/We're bumping it? Lehman/We don't have anything more tonight than we had two weeks ago. But I think we have an opportunity to get something if that' s what we want. Dilkes/What I would do if you sent it back to me is that we would get in touch with Mr. Flanagan and we'd have discussion about you know, that the City Council has. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 91 Lehman/You'd have a recommendation. Dilkes/And then we would do a little negotiation essentially but it would be at the staff level. Vanderhoef/and driving at roughly that $3.00. Dilkes/Right. Vanderhoef/Per square foot. Lehman/And it could end up exactly what he's offered, I don't have any idea but. Champion/Right and that's about as much time as I'd like to spend on that. Lehman/OK, is that? Dilkes/And so. Kanner/Connie I need a little little more time, I'm a little slow here sometimes. I'm not quite following, we're looking at the assessed value of the property of the home owner's property. Lehman/The assessed value of, in most cases it would be the assessed value of the adjacent property. Kanner/Adjacent to the odd lot. Lehman/Yea. Kanner/OK that, and. Lehman/And the people' s (can't hear). Kanner/And we're going to come up with sort of a general guideline that for for anything that comes before us so we'll, and these three or four that we've got now we'll try to. Lehman/One of them is affected by this. Kanner/Well wouldn't they all be? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 92 Lehman/Well not really because one of them is a conveyance that it's very close to the assessed value because it increases for a parking lot if I 'm not mistaken which is pretty much the assessed value which would be the formula we would be using. There are a couple others that are very very small parcels or easements that aren't worth anything. Dilkes/Number 11 and 12 1 think are fine, 11 is entirely encumbered which brings the price down, number 12 is essentially at assessed value so the only one I would suggest that you might want to defer to give us some time to talk. Pfab/I have a question. Dilkes/Talk to the owner that's number 10. Pfab/I have a question and it's at the other side. We, it's not our property that was conveyed, it's the city' s property, and if it's worth nothing why doesn't the city just keep it? You know if it's worth nothing, why don't we just keep owning it? You know if it, if we don't get anything out of it why? Lehman/Ask Terry Trueblood he's got to maintain all of that property. Pfab/Does he maintain those little spots? Lehman/I think this one lot he'd love to get rid of because he's got to take care of. Pfab/Oh OK. Lehman/Well we'll have enough we change tomorrow night we'll go on that assumption. Council Committees Lehman/Council Committees, this I think is relative to the Legislative Committee and we all got a memo from Eleanor and I think that the at least my perception of the Legislative Committee and what we were doing were two different things. I think we intended that three people from the Council be able to attend legislative meetings with our State Representatives at the League of Women Voters meeting or at the Chamber office without there being a conflict with the open meetings law but because we officially appointed those committees they become whenever they get more than one person that's an official meeting. Is that correct? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 93 Dilkes/No, I think what you, it takes more than that to make them a governmental body (can't hear) open meetings, it takes, they have to be a policy making body, they have to be appointed to recommend policy to the Council. So for instance it's the Legislative committee's only purpose is to gather information as to what's happening at the state level, federal level with legislation and report back to you that shouldn't be a problem. But if the purpose of the committee is to establish a legislative agenda and recommend that to the Council then that becomes a policy making body that is subject to the open meetings law. Lehman/Well we think it's the former don't we? Pfab/Oh sure, naturally. Lehman/Well no no I'm asking the Council. Pfab/I propose that we dissolve the committee and three people can go at least. Lehman/I think that solves the problem. Vanderhoef/I think that' s true. (All talking). Dilkes/That's fine. Vanderhoef/That' s what I thought but I was waiting for somebody (can't hear). Dilkes/We'll do it by motion. Pfab/Otherwise two of us can't even talk. Lehman/No I realize that. Dilkes/We'll do it by motion at your next meeting. Now with respect to the Student Senate committee, that's the only other one we have an issue with. Is that sort of a gather information and bring information back committee? Lehman/Yea, I think it is. Dilkes/Are we, is everyone in agreement about that? Lehman/OK. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 94 Vanderhoef/(can't hear). Televised Work Sessions Lehman/Televised Work Sessions. Pfab/That's my proposal and I believe it should be and the reason that I do is since this is the city's business, the citizen's business, they have a right to know and I think the cost of doing this is (can't hear) within reasonable. Lehman/Well I speak in rebuttable. Pfab/OK. Lehman/This has come up. Pfab/The honorable Mayor. Lehman/And I don't know that the cost of it is to me is a deciding factor. I do believe that there are many times quite, Council needs to be very candid with each other I believe and I think particularly at work sessions a lot of times there are issues that we may not understand as clearly as we would like to. I think it's a time we ask questions, I think it's very important that every Council person feel very free to ask those questions and not be influenced by the fact that they're on TV. And I think that televising the meetings will make Council less candid, less effective and the public is invited to every single work session. The media is here, the public is invited to be here, certainly it's a public meeting but I do believe that it would be a detriment to our meetings to, aside from the costs to televise it. Pfab/Your point is that we might say or do things on but because it was on TV. Lehman/I think we wouldn't say or do things that we might other wise ask. Questions that we might not ask that we might be embarrassed to ask. I just think we would not be as candid. Pfab/You think none of those were ever asked or you ever acted that way when we were on TV? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 95 Lehman/I think that, no, but I think far fewer of them, anyway I just, I just have a little problem with it and the meetings are public, the public can come, the reporters are here. Pfab/Sure but I mean if you are holding our two jobs, you can't find a baby sitter and you have an interest in coming, here' s what' s going on and we want people to get involved. Lehman/That's true. O'Donnell/I wonder where the public out cry for this is, I've not heard anything, there aren't falling to see this. Pfab/How many people came to vote at the last election? O'Donnell/Probably not enough. Lehman/(can't hear) 20. Pfab/Well, where were the other 80? Kanner/Ernie I would agree more with your argument if we weren't being tape recorded right now, we're under the public scrutiny and I think that the camera's it's something that we get used to and pretty soon we'll act in our same same manner that we were before. I think it's good, it brings a few more people into the process. O'Donnell/If we have an extra? Lehman/Other comments. Vanderhoef/(Can't hear). O'Donnell/Can I make one comment? Lehman/Absolutely. O'Donnell/If we have an extra $15,000 to $20,000 to do this just lying around why don't we give it to SEATS or Emergency Housing, or Crisis Center. Lehman/Well I do assume your speaking in opposition of this. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 96 O'Donnell/I think you can assume that and I think we should vote on this. Lehman/Well anybody else prepared to speak. Champion/Well I brought this up two years ago and I still think it's worth a try. I think this is where decisions are being made, and I think one of the reasons that people don't feel like they're part of the system is they don't see the discussion. Pfab/And so we do stupid things, does that make, being human is that against, is that a criteria that you shouldn't be a Council person. Lehman/I hope not, your stupid thing. O'Donnell/I hope not there wouldn't be a person left. Pfab/Thank you for your yes vote. Vanderhoef/The thing for me on work meetings is that this is a conversation for speculation and you put out everything and too often people only hear part of it and snatches off of the television because they're doing other kinds of things while they're quote "watching television" or you just plain tune out, your in the room with it but you don't hear and likewise if that information gets out that Dee said this like it was what she was going to support it is harder to stop misinformation because they didn't hear the whole conversation. I would love to have this place filled for work meetings, for somebody heard the whole conversation. Pfab/But they can't speak here anyway. Vanderhoef/I want to be here the whole conversation, I want them to hear that all the ideas that were put out, and what was settled on because if you only hear a piece of the replay then you say OK, Ross said so Ross must be for this because they didn't hear the other 30 minutes of the conversation and that' s where misinformation goes out. And so they're saying, Ross said and Dee said that we're going to do this and for people to put those out this is what Ernie is eluding to is that you will pull back from offering all the possibilities even though you don't necessarily support it but your playing devil's advocate basically and your putting it all out and those things, those conversations are good because they allow you to say to yourself OK have I thought of every single thing that might come up with this issue and that' s what I appreciate about Monday nights. But I don't want misinformation going out there that we're trying to correct because somebody only heard 5 minutes of a 30 minute conversation. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 97 O'Donnell/I think the key to it is in formal, and I think anybody that would like these televised on repeated one night and then the next night. It has to be a big fan (can't hear). Lehman/All right we have. Pfab/Could I make a comment to what Dee said? Lehman/Sure. Pfab/OK, so what your saying is that everybody who watches it on formal nights sits and watches the whole tape, they never leave the room so they see all the arguments from one end to the other and they go away totally completely informed as to everything that went on at the formal session. I believe the argument you made for the informal or for the work session is no different than (can't hear) it (can't hear) the same thing for the formals. Vanderhoef/Except that at the formal you are taking a formal vote so you are publicly saying this is where I am. It's not where the speculation. Pfab/I respectfully disagree with you. (All talking). Kanner/I would say that we're making decisions here in informal to formal sense, there's a grade in but we are making decisions and I think it's important for people to hear that and I think that although Adam is doing a good job over there getting everything down. Pfab/Wake him up. Kanner/People should have the opportunity for themselves to get the whole picture and one final thing is I think that we want to continue the spirit and philosophy of the open meetings law and I think that one of the things that it talks about is that if your going to air towards closeness or openness your on the side of openness and I think in this case we should air on the side of openness. We should try, we should look at it for six months and see how it goes, see what the costs are and then reevaluate it in six months. Pfab/I would consider that a friendly event. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 98 Wilbum/In an abstract sense. Lehman/Yes. Wilburn/The reason's for me to do it or not to do it one have to do with the questions are openness of meetings and education. In my mind you can't get more open to city government than you have here. You can't go to the state house and walk on the floor like you do here for the public comment or public discussion or whatever we call it. You can't do that, you pointed out we've got out of here, we've got watch groups. Periodically TV-9 Mike will come in and flash you know will flash over us or so I do believe that with the camera there it's a little bit more intrusive than a microphone. I look at that and I don't even recognize it, they've got it so disguised I didn't recognize that's a microphone but I think for better for worse we are part time people here, we're not here everyday of the week so I think not only for my benefit but for future newer Council members you benefit from. And you know, in a year I may think well maybe we do need to revisit it but. The other thing is the education part and I think that, I think that's our responsibility to try and make sure that comment that we make here is brought up again Tuesday night. So you know, I'll try and work hard to do that, I think you know others have mentioned that so I will not be supporting it at this time. After. Lehman/All right. Wilburn/After having two months of meetings. Lehman/How many support televising Council meetings? (Champion, Pfab, Kanner) And how many do not? (0'Donnell, Lehman, Vanderhoef, Wilburu) At this point we won't but that doesn't mean this can't be brought up and talked about again (can't hear) time so. O'Donnell/Maybe next week. Lehman/No I don't think it's going to be quite that quick. Pfab/Is it on the agenda for tomorrow? Lehman/No it won't be quite that quick. Appointments Lehman/Airport Commission. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 99 O'Dormell/I'd like to nominate Alan Ellis. Champion/I'll second that. Kanner/Hold on a few minutes while I get to my notes here to see what I've got. Lehman/OK. Kanner/It will take me a minute or so. Lehman/We also received a couple of new applications tonight for a couple other. (All talking). Kanner/Who did you say? Lehman/Ellis. O'Donnell/Alan Ellis. Kanner/Did we get an application with him? Lehman/Yes. Champion/Yes. Kanner/When was that? Lehman/It came in last Friday' s packet and I think we got three applications prior to that in previous, probably last Thursday, previous Thursday' s packet. (All talking) O'Donnell/I've selected members of the airport commission, it's been nominated and seconded. Vanderhoef/I spoke with him also, he has quite a history. Champion/Yea he does. Pfab/Who are you speaking of?. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 100 Lehman/Ellis, Alan Ellis. Pfab/Same here. Lehman/All right. Kanner/I like Dan Grinstead I think he's involved in the city and I think we need to think about connections with the University, someday you know if we don't support, we pull away our support from the airport I think we have to talk about University who uses it quite a bit, making connection and I think it's important to have. I don't know if this Ellis is a pilot or not. Pfab/He is. O'Donnell/He is, grad. student also. Kanner/We should have somebody that' s not a pilot I think from that perspective. I think it's important to have that. Champion/He's a retired military helicopter pilot. Lehman/He built airports. Vanderhoef/Yes. Champion/And helped build airports and has worked with. Lehman/His experience is really incredible. Champion/His experience is incredible. Vanderhoef/And he's working on his Aero Science degree. Champion/And he plans on studying for six years. O'Donnell/And I think I heard four for (can't hear). Lehman/All right do we have four for Alan Ellis? Vanderhoef/Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 101 Champion/Yes. Wilburn/Yep. Lehman/All fight. Lehman/Civil Service Commission there's one applicant, Mike Kennedy. O'Donnell/I'd like to nominate Mike. Vanderhoef/Second. Lehman/We have, all right, all, we have an agreement there. Lehman/Historic Preservation Commission, this one's going to take a little more time because we got some more applications tonight. Champion/Wasn't Peter Jochimsen the only one from Woodlawn though? The Woodlawn district. Dilkes/Yes. Yes. Champion/And he's excellent, and he would be really good. Lehman/So you just nominated him. Vanderhoef/Yes. Champion/Yep. Kanner/Peter Lawkinsen??? Pfab/Jochimsen right. Champion/Jochimsen. Kanner/The only one yea. Champion/He's up for (can't hear) there's only like 10 houses there. Pfab/Oh there's. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 102 Champion/But that' s not for the Woodlawn. This is for a specific seat I think it's probably Preservation Commission. Lehman/Peter Jochimsen is the only one from that district. Pfab/OK. Vanderhoef/Right. And James Enloe is the only. Lehman/From East College Green, East College District. Vanderhoef/Yea. Pfab/I would support him. O'Donnell/Michaelanne Widness is. Lehman/(can't hear). Vanderhoef/And Pare Michaud is the only one I think. Marian Karr/No there's another one. Vanderhoef/Is there? Karr/At large there's two, at large there were two. Lehman/At large there is Pamela and. Karr/Rita. Lehman/And Rita. Champion/Several of them. Kanner/Who' s Michaelanne? O'Donnell/It's Michaelanne Widness. Vanderhoef/She's been on, but Pam has been on, they each of had one term, part of a term. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 103 Lehman/Pam's been on before. Vanderhoef/Yes. Lehman/Or part of a term. Vanderhoef/Yes, she's had one term according to her. Wilburn/One full term. Vanderhoef/Yea, and. Lehman/Are you nominating her? Vanderhoef/Yes. Champion/Who are we nominating then? Lehman/Pamela. Vanderhoef/Michaud. Champion/And what is she, what? Lehman/College Green. Vanderhoef/College Green. Champion/Oh OK second her. Lehman/Do we have three people, four people? I've got Peter is it Jochimsen? Champion/Yes. Lehman/Pamela Michaud, and James Enloe and we have. Champion/We need one. Vanderhoef/One at large and we have an application from Michaelanne Widness. Champion/Has she only been on one term? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 104 Vanderhoef/She's only been, I'm not even sure it was a full term. Champion/Three years. Vanderhoef/OK good, (can't hear). Champion/It is a full term. Karr/It's a full term. Champion/I think you know if unless you've done a terrible job that you really do need two. Lehman/Are you nominating Michael? Champion/Yes, only, yea, you really do need two terms because it takes a while to get to know what your doing. Lehman/Do we have four people that would concur in that? Vanderhoef/Yes. Lehman/So Michael Widness is at large. Karr/Yes. Lehman/Peter Jochimsen is the Woodland District, Pamela Michaud College Green and James Enloe the East College District. Champion/Got it, good. Lehman/Human Rights Commission. Champion/Wait I'm stuck on this one, I'm willing to listen to any ideas that anybody has. Vanderhoef/I'm looking at pretty much at Maureen Howe. Champion/And why? Can you tell me why. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 105 Vanderhoef/She is working specifically in Goodwill where she has, crosses paths with lots of folks that may fall into protective classes. She also comes from lower income that gives her a perspective at least. O'Donnell/Who did you say Dee? Vanderhoef/And she has a good educational background. Kanner/Maureen Howe. Champion/Anybody else have any ideas? Wilbum/Is it one for? Champion/Human rights. Wilbum/(can't hear). Vanderhoef/Yes. O'Donnell/I second Dee's. Lehman/Well I don't have any problem, I think the background is excellent for that job. Do we have four people who would favor Maureen? O'Donnell/Yes. Kanned I think she would do well but also I want to put a plug in for Jeffrey Maiden he's called to us quite eloquently about the ordinance before. He's homeless and he's pretty sharp and I think having that orientation is something that would be good to have on the Human Rights Commission. Champion/I agree with you Steven but I the only problems I have with it is he's kind of mobile and I think you have to be a resident in Iowa City to. Lehman/No, I think that. Champion/Because he's homeless doesn't mean that he has something to offer you know, offer this commission I don't mean. Do you know what I'm saying? So this, I have a little bit of problem with it because just because he's homeless to me doesn't mean that's a reason he should be on the commission. Although it's a good reason for him to be on it, it doesn't add other attributes to go along with it This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 106 and because I don't know what, never mind, it's too late. But I agree with you, I mean it would be, he would be a wonderful adjective but I just have problems with it because I'm not sure that I know well enough that he would be a benefit. Lehman/Maureen Howe, do we have four for Maureen? O'Donnell/Did we get four votes on that, I thought we did. Lehman/Maureen Howe for all right. Lehman/Telecommunications Commission. O'Donnell/Who is? Vanderhoef/Cathy Weingeist. O'Donnell/Cathy Weingeist. Vanderhoef/And Elizabeth McKray. Lehman/Elizabeth McKray, those two. O'Donnell/Sounds good. Lehman/Do we have four that would like those? O'Donnell/Indeed. Lehman/All right. Council Time Lehman/Is there anybody that would like to do anything on Council information or do we want to go home? Champion/I just want to go home. Pfab/I'm ready for going home. Dilkes/I'm sorry, I have one just one quick thing to bring to your attention. The item that you and I talked about earlier today Ernie that was added late should be in This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 107 your late handouts. We've been having some problems with the blockage of the alley next to the Gene Kroeger building that' s going up at Court and Linn. (END OF 00-26 SIDE 1) Dilkes/Terminating their agreement to use the public right of way. As I told Ernie we brought this to you as a last resort. We have tried very hard to resolve those issues and as of today they were not resolved so this is on your agenda for tomorrow night. Lehman/We have every reason to hope that that will not have to occur but at this point that's what I hear. Champion/Oh my goodness that's terrible. Kanner/I have two things. Lehman/Steven. Kanner/One I talked to President of the School Board and thought it might be a good idea that we get together sometime just City Council and School Board, has it been done to much? Let' s talk a little bit about the lights but the seven of us and all of them. And I was wondering if the Council would like to proceed with that and see if we can set up a meeting in the future. Champion/Well what would we talk about? Kanner/Well use of. Champion/Besides the lights. Kanner/What can we do together that would make the community a better place. How could we maybe use the school buildings as community centers, there' s talks about you know Jonathan Jordahl talked about what' s happening, was it in North Liberty about the what do they call those family centers. Wilbum/Resource Centers. Kanner/Family Resource Center, just what we could do to work together better and how we can get a synergy. I think it's a good idea. Pfab/(can't hear) important anyway. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 108 Lehman/Well the Weber School Park area out there I think Terry's talking about some sort of cooperative effort with the school district much like (can't hear). Champion/Right, Horace Mann. Lehman/And Coralville and that the new school out there did a project with the City of Coralville so there' s going to be joint use of the facility for the playground. Champion/Actually there's two schools in Coralville have worked with school board on playgrounds. Lehman/So I mean I think there is. Champion/So is Horace Mann here. Lehman/And there are a couple other issues that I don't know that this needs to be (can't hear) in a meeting but I don't have a problem with doing it if they have an interest of meeting with us sometime. Vanderhoef/Is it more though than what should be done at our joint meeting? I'm not real clear that. Lehman/Yea there's one thing when we talked about the tennis court lights we talked about the possibility of passing zoning regulations which would control schools which we can do apparently legally, there are I think a reasonably good chance that the school district may wish a resolution on their own to vote to comply with some of our zoning regulations which would save us a tremendous amount of effort and time and ill will, flee will. O'Donnell/Well they can do that Ernie and we can, we can suggest but we certainly can't make it mandatory. Lehman/Well yea we can but I don't think we want to. O'Donnell/I don't think we can. Dilkes/Well that involves a balancing test with each application so we haven't gone through that analysis. Lehman/OK. But it would certainly be much easier to have an agreement with those folks (can't hear) sort of fashion so. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 109 Pfab/I would think a joint meeting just to discuss just to stay in touch. Lehman/I think, I have no problems, kind of put that on the burner that that' s something we'd like to do as far as setting a date I don't know that as busy as we've been the last month or so (can't hear). Karr/Mr. Mayor. Lehman/But I would have no problem meeting with the school board. Karr/Mr. Mayor, just to remind you you've got a joint meeting coming up in March with all the bodies. Champion/Another one? Karr/Yes. O'Donnell/Let's have a meeting before March. Vanderhoef/They do those quarterly and that' s why I was perhaps just. O'Donnell/I mean why not. Champion/Well maybe we could do it then and then just not invite (can't hear). O'Donnell/Someone nudge me. Kanner/Well one thing the school board is meeting with other cities separately and I think it's good to be proactive and I would like to have staff start a conversation with them and get a date sometime in the next few months. Champion/Well I think we could do it at that joint meeting, seriously, there's so little discussion that goes on at any merit of that joint meeting. Lehman/That meeting is in March. Karr/Yes it is. Lehman/All right why don't we bring that up after the March meeting and decide what we want to do (can't hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 110 Karr/The other possibility that was discussed at one time was the possibility of doing it, that there was a reason for entities to get together you might want to start the meeting earlier than the joint meeting so that' s another possibility is rather than another meeting is potentially. Champion/Right. Vanderhoef/(can't hear) early. Karr/I don't know but I know this was discussed at one other time for specific issues and I can't recall fight now. Pfab/How many, how many of the school board would come to these other meetings? Lehman/It's up to them. Champion/It's up to them. O'Donnell/Probably the same amount that come to the joint meetings. Pfab/OK. Kanner/Well the idea is that the whole school board would come, it would be a joint meeting like we just had with the school board, the Library Board. Champion/They weren't all here. Vanderhoef/The whole school board isn't invited to the joint meetings. Kanner/No no no, I meant the Library Board. Champion/But the whole library Board wasn't here. Kanner/They came pretty close. Champion/But you know it would be really nice if we could combine it with that meeting, there time schedule is just as tight as ours and since they already have that on their agenda maybe we could pursue that to see if that would work the best. Lehman/Yea I think that would be a good idea. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 111 Pfab/Pursue it. Champion/We almost use the first half hour of that meeting, is the last one the Board of Supervisors controlled it and never discussed it until the very end. Lehman/No no but that we could and based on that, I mean we could do that meet for a half hour or 45 minutes before the meeting starts, we might decide then on any subsequent meetings. Is that all fight with you guys? Pfab/I think pursue it see if it's possible. Lehman/Yes. Pfab/Because other people may, it may be so tight they can't come anyway so then (can't hear). Kanner/So staff will pursue possibly meeting earlier. Lehman/Earlier on the same meeting date based on that we could decide. Pfab/Or even afterwards if it meant that. Lehman/No, our portion is going to be tough. Kanner/And the other thing is I'm going to the CDBG here is anyone else going that I have to watch out for? Anymore than than (can't hear). Champion/What meeting are those, I can't remember. Lehman/CDBG. Champion/The convention girls. Lehman/No no no no. Pfab/When is it? (All talking) Kanner/It's Wednesday and Thursday. Pfab/And where here? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400 February 14, 2000 Council Work Session Page 112 Kanner/No at the Senior Center starting at 6:00. Champion/We do meet with them. Pfab/Wednesday and Thursday. Kanner/Yea. Lehman/All right, no one else is going or at least not three others. Anybody else on Council? Vanderhoef/I'm just going to tell you fight now I'm going to abstain from the agenda consent calendar. O'Donnell/I want to tell you fight now I'm leaving. Vanderhoef/Because I'm too sleepy to even say it right now but there is an Iowa Avenue thing on there that rather than pull it out I'll just abstain. Kanner/Your abstaining or (can't hear). Adjourned 10:20 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 14, 2000. WS021400