HomeMy WebLinkAbout2000-06-19 Transcription June 19, 2000 Council Work Session Page 1
June 19, 2000 Council Work Session 6:30 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Kanner, Wilbum, Pfab
Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Dilkes, Franklin, Craig, O'Malley, Boothroy, Bliven
Tapes: 00-68, Side 2; 00-71, Both Sides; 00-72, Side 1
Library Board Joint Meeting (Martin, Swaim, Barklay, Magahaes, Parker, McMurray,
Dellsperger, Singerman)
Lehman/The first part of our meeting tonight will be a joint meeting with the Library
Board which is in request and by that board and so Mark I'll just kind of turn that
over to you.
Mark Martin/Thank you Emie I would appreciate it if people could refer to a memo
dated June 5 that I sent to all of you, it indicates the issues we'd like to discuss,
the first one of which relates to whether or not Council would prefer to sell or
lease the retail space that's being developed as part of the library expansion. Our
conversations with the planners director and City manager they indicated to us
that leasing would be preferable, we've discussed it as a board and have agreed
with that position and wanted to touch base with the Council to see if Council's in
that same flame of mind so that if we get asked questions about it we can give a
direct and accurate answer.
Champion/Well I would prefer that we lease it, I mean it, I would see it as a possible
future expansion, while I could also see it as a front part of a space for like Arts
Iowa City or incorporating some other things that are needing space that really
can't afford regular retail rents downtown so I would not like to see it sold.
Pfab/That's where I would come down, since you asked me.
O'Donnell/It certainly seems it would actually eliminate all (can't hear) for future
expansions, (can't hear).
Lehman/Well or it would require us to have (can't hear).
O'Donnell/It would be much easier to lease it then.
Martin/I think I hear people saying that leasing seems to be.
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Lehman/Does anybody disagree?
Kanner/Are there any downsides that to this that we can think of, financially or
otherwise?
Pfab/Lose the tax base.
Lehman/No I think financing might make some difference.
Atkins/The reason that the lease was proposed Ernie was that it's private purpose bond
and it's just a lot easier to package the financing package to lease the property as
opposed to selling it, and then there's a practical purpose that you've already
raised.
Lehman/OK.
Atkins/Selling it, buying it back from yourselves, all sorts of things.
Champion/I'd like just to ask a question, something I'm not sure Steve said it or not but
if it's leased as commercial space it would be taxed as commercial space isn't that
correct?
Atkins/You can do that yes.
Champion/Right.
Lehman/Or you'd have enough in your lease that would cover the value of the process
but one way or another you'd, the city would get the revenue from it.
Champion/Right.
Martin/OK thank you for that clarification. The second issue is one that we've all
discussed a number of times in relationship to the various plans that we looked at
and possibilities for library expansion, that's the issue of parking. We continue to
hear from our patrons that it's the most significant access issue that they can see
in relation to the current library and relation to an expanded library. And our
choice of keeping the library in the downtown area and expanding it on the
existing site raises for them questions about whether parking will be continued to
be available adjacent to the library. In our discussions with the Council and with
city staff as we prepared the various plans it was stated in three or four different
ways the anticipation was that surface lot 64-1A would remain parking for the
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foreseeable future and we just want to check in with the Council and see what
your thinking is about that and our main concern is as we attempt obviously to
encourage people to support the expansion we'd like to be able to answer honestly
the questions they would have about what parking facilities will be available and
so that's one of the reasons we came to discuss this with you this evening.
Wilburn/One addition to the (can't hear) that you pointed out in the memo that it does
bring in, I've heard lots of comments and just watched at some of the downtown
festivals and things like that and on Saturday's when people are shopping seem to
really like that as a short term option so.
Lehman/I would be, I would be not being, I would be terribly forthright if I told you
someone came in and wanted to purchase that property for a $8 or $10 or $12
million dollar development that I would retain it as a parking lot I think we would
be very very hard pressed that we would tell the public that we would not sell the
last piece of urban renewal property if there were going to be a significant
development on it so personally I would not want to say that you should rely on
that staying a parking lot for two reasons. I don't know how the rest of the
Council feels about it or this Council feels but even if this Council were to tell
you that we would keep it as a parking lot the next Council may change their
mind but this Council isn't going to find a future Council so I think the issue of
that remaining a parking lot is it's a question mark at best.
Vanderhoef/Well for me I have always been on record since 95 of saying that
commercial is important and for our tax base just to support libraries and
everything else so I would fully agree with Emie with a good offer to purchase the
property I would sell it.
Champion/Well I would be, I would too but I wondering if there isn't some alternative
plan that we could kind of think about, and maybe thought of other things like
some way to preserve space in that parking ramp on the lower level which would
be close to the library or some way to make the meters that are near only for
library users, I don't know how you would do that but I'm certainly open to any
options that would make it easier for people to park. I'm sorry being from
Chicago that walking from that ramp to the library seems so miniscule that I have
a hard time relating to people saying there's no parking for the library.
Jim Swaim/Could I comment on that for just a minute?
Champion/Sure you can.
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Swairn/One of the things the Library Board has done over the last few months now has
tried to have office hours every week and it's been a really good experience I
think for all of us, not just for the building but for just getting feedback for
services and getting a sense of how people perceive what we're doing. But one of
the things that has been absolutely clear from everybody's comments that comes
in and looks at the design and gets enthused about the design is that while some
people from Chicago might not view it as a burden to walk the extra block from
the let' s say from Dubuque Street. A lot of our patrons do view it as a burden and
I think enough have expressed that it leaves me at least wondering whether we can
if the surface parking is a question mark then how realistic is it to expect 60
percent of the voters including patrons of the library to support the referendum in
that sense? Again, again.
Champion/I know what you're saying.
Swaim/It's not a problem for me to walk over from Dubuque Street, it shouldn't be a
problem, it shouldn't be a problem for me to walk from my office up at Iowa
Avenue but after you've heard 20 patrons every other week say boy one of the
things that we really like about this plan is it's assuming that the surface parking
is available and is that right? And we keep saying well we that was certainly part
of what the design team talked about when we rank ordered the designs that we
did in joint session with you guys. Ifthat's not a part of the package it's really
going to change voters perception of the their support for the building plan that
we're putting forward.
Wilbunf I'm also wondering what is the status of office space downtown recently been,
helpful, I mean helpful, I mean existing facilities helpful or not full and with the
proposed Hieronymus Square and the development south of Burlington Street I
mean.
Lehman/That will have it's own parking set up with the ground transportation system.
Wilbum/That's true.
Lehman/I don't have any idea, I know there was an abundance of office space not very
long ago, whether or not that space has been leased or not I really don't know.
Because I know there was space that was really going (can't hear) and I know the
rates have come down dramatically and I know some of that space has been
leased. But for a long time there was a lot a lot of space available downtown.
Champion/Well I don't see somebody putting office space in that lot.
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Lehman/Well I don't either, I don't know why were you asking about all of that?
Vanderhoef/Retail, your talking.
Wilburn/Well I mean your talking about somebody putting some a multi million dollar
development there, what is that your?
Lehman/Well I don't have any idea, I'm just saying that if someone presented a plan for
that piece of property that was an $8 or $10 or $12 million dollar project I think
that we would be hard pressed to tell them no we're going to keep that as a
parking lot. I'm just saying that philosophically.
Wilburn/Yea, yea, I understand.
Pfab/I have a kind of a whimsical answer to your thing, while it might be difficult to tell
that they'd have to walk almost half a block to get to it then I think it would be
better than telling them to lie to them and say that (can't hear).
Swaim/Oh absolutely.
Pfab/Oh I know I just said it whimsical.
Swairn/Well and part of the thing is that feedback comes and actually some of the more
interesting feedback comes from the ends of generations people that have small
children share their views about how convenient the surface parking has been and
people that have more difficult time walking a block or two and those include a
lot of seniors that express that view.
Pfab/I don't recall is there any, are you going to lose that 3 or 4 spots in front of it as it is
now, will they be gone?
Lehman/I don't think so.
Champion/They are 5 minute parking.
Pfab/No, no, but I mean there might be such a thing that you could look at maybe
making all of those handicapped parking that would be a possibility for people
who have difficult.
Linda Dellsperger/Ernie how aggressive would the city try to market that property?
Would it be kind of the status quo like it's been the last 25 years or do you see the
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people in the city maybe taking a more aggressive stand at trying to market that
property?
Lisa Parker/Or has there been any interest expressed?
Lehman/Well if you remember we actually put what amounted to a five year moratorium
or whatever on that property to save it for the possible Center Space concept. At
that time we were out in the market at that time with proposals looking for
someone who would be interested in buying that property. And that included
property design and Karin could probably tell you more about it but the sort of
things we were looking at as a city that we wanted to see happen there so we were
aggressively trying to market that space prior to.
Dellsperger/Before the 5 year moratorium.
Lehman/That's right and then the folks who were interested in Center Space came in and
asked us would you please hold up on this until after we have an opportunity to
put this package together and voters have a chance to vote on it and we said yea
we would wait and obviously of course that time is over. I don't know how it, it's
obviously up to Council how aggressive we would be in marketing that but for the
last 5 or 6 years there is no developer who has any interest whatsoever in that
property who knew or who thought there was any chance of buying it anyway
because of the moratorium. Now that the moratorium is over, now that the library
plans to build the project is on the presence site along with Lenoch & Cilek ifI
were a builder and interested in was interested in investing in that property
certainly I would view that as a possibility at this time I don't know how
aggressive we would be.
Vanderhoef/There was that one letter of interest you know actually there were three
letters back and forth from someone out east that was keeping track of that piece
of property and inquiring about it and.
Lehman/There have been some inquiries about it I don't know how serious they are.
Singerman/Well would you consider another moratorium for a period of time?
Lehman/I don't think we can do, I, we can't bind another Council, personally I would
not. I wouldn't personally.
Parker/And what we could consider is a moratorium until the library gets to the point
where we're offering some kind of remote service. As it is now the only place to
come to the library is downtown, when we get to a point where we can do a
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reading or a bookmobile or something like that that would substantially improve
access.
Lehman/Well I would, as Conhie said I would certainly support reserving spaces like we
do with the Senior Center.
Swaim/Is the issue about developing the property the income that's generated by
developing the property or just about enhancing the downtown environment?
Lehman/To me it's a multi facet sort of thing, it is a piece of urban renewal property, it
was taken off the tax roles with the.
Swaim/But it generates now as a parking lot.
Lehman/No, what we basically told the public when we did this back in the 70's, we're
going to confiscate private parking, we're going to tear it down, we're going to
build something new, this property will be returned to the community, it will be
used by the community. And I think there's kind of an inherent sort of promise in
that that this property will be used and certainly it's very very difficult I think to
make an argument that a surface parking lot in the middle of a downtown is an
efficient use of space.
Wilburn/Unless it's critically needed by the library.
Lehman/When it's sitting next door to a 600 or 700 car parking ramp it's difficult to
make that argument too. I hear the same comments in my store as does every
merchant downtown about parking, everybody wants to park directly in front.
And I realize that it does make a difference and there are people who won't come
if they can't park directly in front. That's just a fact of life, I think that is true.
Pfab/I think there's are a couple things to take into consideration here, one is, there's
been a tremendous amount of improvements built to the downtown that would
make that property more valuable, you put a library next door it certainly isn't
going to reduce the value to it. Put up two 500-600 car parking spaces within a
block of that or a block and a half of that place that space has got to become more
valuable as you go along. Now whether it will ever be developed with some
parking maybe in the basement or something like that I don't know but I
sometimes see what your saying and I agree it's tough I'm wondering if we
maybe a made mistake by not putting underground parking in the library you
know I don't know.
Lehman/You can't do that where it is.
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Dellsperger/Couldn't do it where it was. Back to my question I guess I don't feel like I
got an answer form you guys and I think we as a board should I mean you guys
could be up front with us and say we're going to be real aggressive at marketing
this or we're not.
Lehman/Well let me just tell you that I know for a fact that there are at least two people
looking at that property right now. Either one of which have the capability of
developing it, neither one of which will make any sort of overtures about it until
probably the first of next year.
Kanner/But I think we can be creative and talk about if a building goes there that there's
some sort of public space or atrium that lends itself to going from the parking
ramp over to the library, I think we can be creative in how we market the parking
that is available and talk about how it's shorter distance than from the Coral Ridge
Mall where you park any almost any distance from the Coral Ridge.
Champion/That's a good point Steven I even thought today about a rod iron fence with a
cover over the sidewalk going from the ramp right to the library. I mean I think, I
don't know, I think those things should think about that might enhance the
parking and yet allow that space to be commercially developed. I think you have
to use some imagination, somehow to get more spaces along that street for library
use only. I don't know how you enforce that that's why we need help from you
know city developers of some kind but I think I'm certainly willing to work with
you anyway we can to provide better parking but it probably is not going to be
that lot because frankly if somebody comes with a good deal and is going to be an
enhancement to Iowa City I'm not going to be able to turn them down.
Barklay/I think that if you know the public can give them the message that the Council is
sensitive to this issue and appreciates the way people feel about it and is
committed toward working regardless of whether that parking will (can't hear)
toward making people feel that the library is accessible.
Champion/We need to have somebody to do that, I agree.
Lehman/But I think we, we certainly can do that, I think we do that with the Senior
Center, we certainly would be I think as every bit as anxious to make that parking
as convenient as we possibly could.
Swairn/To the extent I think of requiring a developer to have a walkway that goes from,
an enclosed walkway that goes from the parking ramp to the private development
over to the library.
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Lehman/It couldn't go through the private development because there's no entrance to
the ramp on private property, they'd have to go down to public sidewalk.
Barklay/I've been surprised at how strongly people apparently hate parking ramps. You
know and when you encounter a young mother with a bunch of kids talking about
how concerned about safety and just the logistics of getting books and everything
to who knows where in the parking ramp, (can't hear).
Pfab/All right this will give me a good chance to make my spiel again. Probably it won't
be long before all of that be monitored by cameras anyway, all those spaces.
Martin/I didn't hear that, Ernie's grimacing at that.
Kanner/Irvin wants to address the safety issue.
Champion/I know it but are the ramps unsafe? I've never, I mean I've been parking, I
don't know how you convince people that their safe, I agree maybe at midnight I
might be uncomfortable coming down fi'om the 4th level of that ramp.
Magalhaes/I don't know if it's so much safety in terms of being the cost of it rather.
Lehman/Conveniences.
Magahaes/Than cars coming zooming down and around the comers.
(All talking).
Singerman/Well whatever the reason people do.
Champion/Do feel (can't hear).
Singerman/Do feel that way and whatever the reason patrons do feel that parking is one
of the number one issues of the library and that it (can't hear) lack of access and in
all the plans that we develop with you there was sort of an implicit and sometimes
explicit understanding that 64-1A would be available for a period of time for our
purposes. And I guess what I would like is to get some time flame when we can
tell the public it will be available and we're working on other approaches at this
time.
Champion/We don't have an answer.
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Vanderhoef/One of the things that has been overlooked I think on the parking ramp, I
think everybody is looking at the one on Dubuque Street and the parking ramp
that is the friendly one that'doesn't have all the whipping around and so forth is
Chauncey Swan. And I think that would be a whole lot more appropriate and
easier both for families and for seniors.
Swaim/And I think people share that view and have shared that view during office hours.
And then the issue though is that why are we right next to, why aren't we building
this right next to Chauncey Swan.
Vanderhoef/As you recall, we had
Swaim/That was an option.
Vanderhoef/As an option and it was turned down by the Library Board.
Swaim/No it was not tumed down by the Library Board.
Lehman/Well look folks, the question is I understand that correct me if I'm wrong.
Swaim/I've been on the Library Board for 6 years and we have never ever tumed down a
plan.
Lehman/Well this, we're not talking about a plan, we're talking about whether or not
there's interest on the part of Council of giving the Library Board some assurance
that lot 64-1A is going to be kept for a parking lot for a definite period of time,
whether that be five years or two years or whatever. Irvin.
Pfab/I have a question, a lot of these, a lot of your patrons are saying that they don't want
to walk that far or that' s the idea that's brought up. OK I wonder the last time
they went to the Coralville Coral Ridge mall how far did they walk from their car
to where they did their business.
O'Donnell/It doesn't really make any difference.
Pfab/It's great.
Dellsperger/They may not have had four toddlers and a huge bag of books to return when
they went out to Coral Ridge. I think that's the issue.
Lehman/And perception is reality, whether you like it or not, I mean they just plain don't
like ramps and there's folks who don't they won't park it. The question is on the
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Council, from the Council are there folks on the Council who are willing to
reserve that lot for a specific period of time as a parking lot.
Pfab/I would be.
Wilbum/I'd be willing to I mean if the overriding message from the patrons is this is
what we'd like to have available, a heavily used library, this is what we want, that
just that demand then I'd be willing to (can't hear).
Lehman/Anyone else on the Council who would be willing to do that?
Pfab/I guess my, I would be willing to but I guess at the same time we lost a chance to
build on top of this library because we compromised with the public 20 years ago.
I think that it's not fair to mislead the public and to say we're going to do
something that is in the long run not in their best interest.
Lehman/So your saying what.
Pfab/That we can't promise that, I wouldn't go on the record of saying that that will be
there as a parking place for any length of time. I wouldn't try to sell it out from
under the library but at the same time I think you would be making a big mistake,
your credibility would be in danger if you.
Singerman/Now we all know that a past Council found a future Council by not
marketing that for five years, there's a five year moratorium.
Lehman/That was Council agreed to be (can't hear) I mean it, we could have changed
that.
Singerman/There is a historical precedence, so it's really not accurate to say you can't
bind future Councils.
Lehman/Yes it is accurate to say that because any Council can change that, it's their
choice, the new Council can change at a heartbeat.
Singerman/OK but in the past a Council did bind, say we'll do this.
Lehman/Didn't bind them, the future Council's agreed to go along.
Singerman/And other Council's agreed to go along with it so it could be, it could
happen.
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Lehman/It could be but I don't hear with an exception of Ross I don't hear anyone
saying that their, that they'd be willing to make the commitment to keeping that a
parking lot.
Singerman/We haven't heard from everybody.
Lehman/Steven.
Kanner/Yea, I don't have a commitment to keeping it as a parking lot.
Lehman/Mike.
O'Donnell/Well you know one of the reasons I supported the expansion as it is is I
wanted to preserve 64-1A for development downtown and I have to stick with
that.
Lehman/I don't think that that means we're going to be out running an ad in the paper
trying to sell that lot.
Dellsperger/Well that's my question.
Lehman/And I don't, but, and I don't know how this got, we've never discussed it.
O'Donnell/Because we'd like, as Ernie said earlier it would be inaccurate to say that
there aren't people interested in it fight now.
Dellsperger/Well and I know that but probably for the last 25 years there may have been
some people interested in it too, you know you just look from 1975 or whenever
that become available needless to say we haven't had to many takers come to
serious negotiations on that lot.
Pfab/I guess maybe I would ask the question, in the last 25 years how many millions of
dollars of public improvement were spent in the downtown area? You know and
so it's a different downtown than it was then.
Dellsperger/Well except back in that.
Wilburn/But there's a different spin on that, or a different twist whatever you want to
call it. In part where our goal setting session turns up how aggressively we would
market this spot, we prioritized the airport development, we prioritized Sycamore
and the Pepperwood area so it was (can't hear).
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Dellsperger/And this was not part of that priofitization.
Swairn/A different spin to though I mean the one that we're just going to have to
confront is to what extent the voters think that the plan that we're taking for the
library expansion is a good one, if parking adjacent to the library is not feasible or
worked out in some fashion. So I think one of the things that I feel compelled as a
board member of the library to turn to the Council with is if that's, if surface there
isn't the solution what do you suggest to us, is the solution for parking for patrons
and access to the library with that expansion? And then I'm not being personal
with anything or asking future.
Lehman/Well me suggest to you that probably is no different than any other activity that
takes place downtown. Library patrons should be aware of, obviously the surface
lot is cool, a lot of people like that whether their library patrons or customers of
the stores, obviously that's very convenient and they like it. With one block away
is Chauncey Swan, how many cars does that hold?
Atkins/400.
Lehman/Oh 400 and some cars, the ramp next door holds what 700 or 800 cars, about
half a block. A block and half, two blocks away is a ramp that holds 900 cars.
The ramp on Iowa Avenue is going to hold 560 cars, that's two blocks away. I
mean I would think that the most important thing if I were promoting the library
is the number of spaces within two blocks of that library is about 3,000 spaces.
Now admittedly their not fight square in front of the front door and they may not
all be surface but that's true in a lot of cities.
Swairn/I understand that Ernie but I'm just telling you what are you going to tell the
voters that are trying to decide whether to vote for this plan or to wait for a
different plan?
Lehman/On the other hand if you tell the voters that that lot is going to stay there for five
years do you think a voter using a lot of common sense will spend $18 million
dollars for a parking lot, or for a building that will be only guaranteed a parking
lot for five years?
Swaing Probably not.
Lehman/Absolutely not.
Swaim/I mean I.
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Lehman/So I think you just as well address the question fight now, can we guarantee the
parking lot? No we can't.
Vanderhoef/I'd rather be up front saying no we can't than put this iffy business on it so.
Martin/And again the only thing then I think in retrospect is in the initial designs that we
presented to you where we rank order the number of features then probably our
ranking was slightly out of sync with what your currently presenting in terms of
that surface lot and the convenience of parking and access to the library in terms
of this design.
Pfab/I would go on record as saying it's certainly if as we get these ramps in place and
working, that should be a chance to remove a lot of the longer term parking off
the main streets. And it should be, it's, I'm sure that there are ways that you can
make parking very close to the library a little more, something that will work
better.
Swaim/Well the only thing is if we don't have some idea of what those plans are when
the voters are deciding November then I wouldn't.
Champion/How would you reserve spaces for library users only?
Lehman/Same as we do over here for Senior Center folks, the same as we're going to in
the Iowa Avenue structure.
Champion/But how would you be able to prove that?
Lehman/Well I think that can be worked out without too much of a problem, a library
patron with their library card could get a sticker or something to affix to the
window of their car and if their parked in those spots they'd have to have a sticker
in the window, that's.
Parker/This is, how many card holders in town?
Dellsperger/70,000.
Parked Cardholders, I mean that's ¼ of the community would have the stickers I mean.
Lehman/Absolutely, how many are going to be there at one time?
Swaim/A lot of them, a lot of them pretend to be coming to the library to get flee parking
to shop or something.
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Lehman/No, no, no, don't use the word.
Vanderhoef/That's my concern whether you use (can't hear) or whatever you use that it
will be used by folks other than the ones that really need it for the library spaces.
Lehman/But it wouldn't be flee parking anyway, it's not flee now.
Parker/The other thing about the five year idea is.
Swairn/Two days a week it is.
Parker/Is not that there would be some sort of temporary premise five years and then
we'll see what happens it would be five years and then we'll have other
alternatives for access.
Lehman/What alternatives do you, what difference do you think is going to happen five
years from now? Ramps aren't going to move.
Parker/We could have a reading room somewhere that will be easier to get to, or that we
could have a bookmobile that would be traveling around that would go to senior
citizens homes or (can't hear).
Lehman/But access to the downtown isn't going to be any different five years from now
than it is now.
Singerman/The access to the library services would be changed by the types of things
that we're discussing now for the future.
Vanderhoef/Distant future your.
Singerman/Five years or so.
Vanderhoef/Well I guess I have to say how are we going to afford both a new library and
additional staff to do bookmobiles and reading rooms and so forth, that's how we
got started and a lot of this conversation to begin with and I don't see anything in
my budget when I look at it for anymore library staff other than the three that have
been in the plan fight now for when the library gets opened. But I don't see any
money for new staff, I don't see any money for overhead for another building, I
do not see money for a bookmobile, those things just are not out there and I find
that something that we really ought to be addressing to the folks in the community
that these can't happen not because we don't want them to happen but there's no
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money to do those things for you and you may be looking at 15 or 20 years when
the library is paid off before you'll have that option.
Martin/And we've been trying to say that Dee I mean I think it's, the Library Board is
trying to be honest with people about what causes the limitations to surface and
certainly budget is part of that.
Vanderhoef/Absolutely.
Martin/And I appreciate you saying that because that' s one of the first times anybody on
the Council publicly said even though we've asked them to a number of times that
your not going to have branches, your not going to have extra things because of
what the budget looks like, we're very aware of that. The history of this whole
process that we've been going through over the past several years can be
capsulized in positions that have been taken both by the board and by the Council
and as you look back over at what has happened there were a number of driving
issues for Council members that become clear to us on the board. One was that
the library was going to be in the downtown area, the downtown at that time was
defined as west of Gilbert and in that whole space. Number two was we're not
going to get rid of the building that we currently have, that was a significant issue,
are we going to try to sell it, or are we going to move out of it. So that limit to
where we were going and you know the third issue was the preservation of 64-1A
which the majority of Council Members have stuck to as a position that they
wanted to hold. When you put those factors together that becomes clear to the
library board that the options we had to agree on were very limited. I don't mean
to challenge your memory Dee but the Library Board has consistently in our own
discussions have said that if we had opportunity to build on a piece of city
property outside of that predefined area we would certainly consider that. And we
have specifically talked with the Council about that space that is now the
Greyhound bus depot that is close to Chauncey Swan. And I believe firmly that
the Library Board would continue to consider that option if it felt that that was
going to provide the best service to the patrons. Now what we have here is
competing interests in some ways and so it's clear that everybody's not going to
get everything they want all the time and I think we are trying to understand how
we present the current plan to the public in a way that is attractive to them and
they can be enthused about it with the support and backing of the Council since
you were kind enough to put it on the ballot for us. And because parking is a
significant issue we wanted to come and say look this is really a concern to us and
you've been up front with us about the answer. And I don't know what that
means for the Library Board, I'm not going to sit here and try to second guess the
other eight people on the board. We're going to be-discussing what that means
and part of what it's going to mean is we certainly will come back with some
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suggestions about we'd like to see, what we feel we need in terms of commitment
for parking spaces in the ramps so we can have that discussion in more detail.
You know beyond that I don't know I think we have to be honest with ourselves
about what we think can be sold in this community, we need to talk to the
supporters and we need to discover you know how significant ultimately this
parking issue is going to be for the survival or the passage of this particular bond
issue related to this particular plan.
Champion/Was there ever, as far as I know there was never a plan to put a library on
Chauncey Swan property or whatever you want to call this lot.
Lehman/It goes back to before you got on the Council it was an option that I don't know
how serious we considered it but it was one that was talked about.
Champion/Yea.
Martin/It was talked about because we talked about what city owned property might be
available and that was there and it was a logical thing to talk about but there were
conversations with business owners and with the downtown association with
others who said no we think the library needs to be you know essentially where it
is or close by where it is in order to be at an attraction for people to come
downtown and shop and to be in the downtown area. And that's been one of the
Council's major positions so we're going to have to talk about it, what this means,
we do appreciate knowing what you think about it.
Lehman/And again I think whatever we can do to be to make parking as accessible as
easy and whatever as we can we probably would be very receptive to.
Champion/Oh (can't hear).
Lehman/And you know that lot may be there 10 years from now but I think we'd be
remiss in telling you that if something came up with a responsible development
that we would tell them no in order to keep the parking lot.
Martin/I understand.
Pfab/I think that maybe a way to tell the people that ask that I think it would probably be
safe to say that until that is sold and some other development is there it will be
available to park as a place to park with some reserve space for patrons of the
library.
Lehman/That's what it is now.
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Pfab/Yea and I mean it will continue and as long as it's not sold and until or developed.
Lehman/You will stay the same as it is now until it's changed.
Pfab/Exactly fight. (can't hear).
Champion/(can't hear) Library Board. I would be so frustrated ifI were you that the
perfect library is not what people want and it's a parking space, I mean I'm sorry,
I think it's pathetic that your dealing with that as a major issue, I think that is
really pathetic.
Martin/Well it's interesting.
Dellsperger/It's the truth.
Martin/I've kind of kept an eye on comment in the community about the parking ramps
and while I think you have made decisions about parking ramps as a Council
based on good rationale facts and you know your looking at the economics of it. I
think you have probably failed miserably, convinced a lot of people in this
community that parking ramps are what they want or that they should use them or
that they will like them and your comment to perception is reality is exactly true
Ernie and that's what we face as well as you do.
Barklay/Well I asked some people who came in and talked to us if they'd ever park in
that, they said this is much more user ramp doesn't have buffed barricades and toll
booths and all that and you know (can't hear).
Swairn/But we don't like it.
Lehman/Well I think you can make positive out of it.
Martin/Well maybe we need to get together and jointly rim a love your parking ramp
campaign out of (can't hear).
Lehman/I think it's a great idea. Anything else Mark.
Swaim/I just have one other comment, in past Council members or Council past sessions
have shared with you other libraries to go look at and I want to encourage you if
you haven't been to the West Liberty library, that's West Liberty just 20 miles.
Atkins/I was there for the dedication.
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Swaim/It was over $2 million dollars and it's a beautiful building, it just opened this year
and if you want to get a sense of what a community can do when it rallies to get a
beautiful space it's a good one to look at and give you some comparison to.
Lehman/Very good.
Vanderhoef/I have a question just for you folks, I was looking through your brochure
today and seeing the changes we made tonight on not assuring that parking will be
across there and also that we're going to lease versus sell that condo'd space in
there. Will you be redoing the brochure? I feel it's sort of important.
Martin/Well I think we'll most certainly take a good look at it Dee, we don't intend in
any way to try to mislead the public about what's really happening so if there are
statements there that need to be changed we'll deal with it.
Vanderhoef/And I would encourage you to look at your statements about bookmobiles
and reading rooms and those kinds of things so that there isn't a perception that
that's going to happen in five years.
Singeman/I think that we're saying is that any obviously, any effort in that direction
would be predicated on the ability to fund it and changes in the community such
as that were possible but it's also our duty to bring forward the things that we
think will both best enhance library services in the community and then it's your
job to tell us you know we can or can't so we're going to do our job and we know
you'll do yours.
Vanderhoef/With a statement that says predicated on (can't hear) constraints, otherwise,
I sort of read it and in the context that will be doing this, we're already working
on this.
(All talking).
Vanderhoef/And working on it says to me that it will happen in the next five years.
Singerman/We're working on the process to bring you a proposal at an appropriate point.
Dellsperger/Obviously these things take a long time, if we don't start working.
Martin/Let me be as brutally honest as I can Dee, our responsibility is to let people know
that we're thinking about what the library ought be do doing. And thinking about
it in a way that makes it possible, your responsibility is to fund it. One of the
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problems that we've had recently is that people believe that we're not thinking
ahead because things aren't happening in a way that they like. Things that don't
happen because you can't fund them, we're going to continue to plan and think,
and your just going to have to stand up and say (can't hear) we can't fund it and
I'm not going to say that for you because that's not my decision, if I had a choice
I might do it differently.
Lehman/OK, we've done what we have to do, thank you very much.
Martin/Thank you.
Pfab/Thank you for coming.
Planning & Zoning Items
Lehman/Grandma you're up next, look at that smile.
Pfab/I think she lost her smile, somebody had better had give her another one.
Lehman/No she, no she'll, grandmothers never lose their smile.
Franklin/Oh really.
Lehman/Yes really.
Karin Franklin/OK the first few items are all repeats.
A. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE APPROXIMATELY 190 ACRES
FROM INTERIM DEVELOPMENT RESIDENTIAL (ID-RS) TO SENSITIVE
AREAS OVERLAY (OSA-5) (APPROXIMATELY 82.1 ACRES) TO ALLOW
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PENINSULA NEIGHBORHOOD, A
PLANNED DEVELOPMENT OF UP TO 400 DWELLING UNITS AND
LIMITED COMMERCIAL USES AND PUBLIC (P) (APPROXIMATELY
107.9 ACRES) LOCATED WEST OF FOSTER ROAD. (REZ000-0016)
(SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/The first one is second consideration on the Peninsula project and we are asking
you if you could expedite consideration of that to do waiver of the second reading
and pass and adopt tomorrow night.
Lehman/OK.
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Pfab/Is there a compelling reason?
Champion/Yea.
Lehman/No, no.
Franklin/No, actually this is kind of coming to that other item on the agenda about the
development agreement. The agreement is not ready for you for discussion
tonight or action tomorrow night and so I wanted to talk to you about setting up a
special meeting before the first of July so you could do the pass and adopt at that
meeting.
Vanderhoef/In July.
Lehman/No at a special meeting.
Franklin/Before the first of July. We would be looking at it after June 27 like the 28, 29,
or 30 in the morning maybe.
Vanderhoef/OK, I've got a couple questions. After I read the P & Z minutes it brought
up for me what goes back to the planning time.
Franklin/The planning time did you say?
Vanderhoef/The planning time and so forth and as I recall the discussion at that point in
time we were talking about this as a concept that we would have plenty of time to
address the things like streets and alleys and so forth. And if I read the minutes
correctly, both Scott and Sarah made comments that unless there was a change
that this was going to go just as the plan is there and that those narrow streets and
so forth would be put in and all these alleys and so forth.
Franklin/The narrower streets and alleys are integral to this concept.
Vanderhoef/I understand that but what I was lead to believe or what I understood out of
all of this was that as the pieces came in we would look at pieces and have the
option of saying yes or no to the narrow street or the alley or the what have you at
that point in time and this is not what I'm getting out of the minutes.
Franklin/Well you'll be looking at what's called the regulating plan and the preliminary
plat for the entire 82 acres that would probably be, that would be in October. And
as with any plat you look at the specifics then but I think it's fair to say that if we
if you as a Council now are to take the position that you will not have narrower
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streets that you will not alleys that that is a significant diversion from the concept
because those issues are so, those as an opportunity of how to develop a site are so
integral to the concept that it would change it radically. Now whether it's 24 feet,
25 feet, 26 feet, 28 feet all of that will be worked out for the specific streets as we
go through that regulating plan and plat. But what your going to see is a plat that
shows you all the streets, all the dimensions and the type of housing on every
block. So it's much more detailed than what you would normally see with a
preliminary plat.
Vanderhoef/But then my question comes back around Karin is on this particular vote
you're saying that it's locked in if there aren't any changes in what the Dover-
Kohl plan looked like and that' s not the way I want to support it.
Champion/Well does anybody else have any objections to that? I mean I think it's a
great idea to have narrow streets and alleys.
Lehman/Well.
Franklin/If you are rejecting 25 foot wide streets as a possibility within this plan then
that is a rejection of the Dover-Kohl concept.
Vanderhoef/The concept.
Franklin/Yes but it is not at this point we're not saying this street in this configuration is
going to be 25 feet, and this street and this configuration is going to be 28 feet,
except for Foster Road, I mean Foster Road is clearly going to be 28 feet wide,
we've already built most of it. So that's about the only one that's fixed.
Vanderhoef/So I guess what I'm not getting out of the minutes and the conversation at P
& Z then is what can we change or what can't we change? Because I read it that
we aren't going to be able to change
Franklin/Well first of all you can do whatever you want, it may change radically the
direction in which we're going. But by adopting this concept, the Dover-Kohl
concept which we went through and the Council adopted by resolution. What you
are saying is that in this development there is the opportunity for narrower streets
and there is the opportunity for alleys that that is part of the essence of this
concept.
Vanderhoef/That's fine.
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Franklin/And for you to vote for this and then say narrower streets and alleys are not an
option would be a divergence from that concept.
Dilkes/And can I ask?
Franklin/And I think what Mafilyn and Dean were saying at the Planning & Zoning
Commission meeting or at least Dean was that he did not want to have any 25 foot
wide streets so he was saying for him narrower streets were not an option.
Lehman/Eleanor.
Dilkes/Well and you'll see this same issue with the developer's agreement because it's a
partnership between us and the developer the whole developer's agreement is in
reference to the plan and even/thing we do from this point forward and every
reference in the developer's agreement is to that plan, to that concept plan.
(END OF 00-68 SIDE 2)
Dilkes/But the concept, the narrow streets are integral to the concept plan.
Franklin/Integral to the concept plan.
Dilkes/And so for instance we do the developer's agreement and our reference point is
the plan it will be dramatically different and we're going to have a problem down
the road if all of a sudden we're into wider streets so I think Karin's fight you
have to make that decision (can't hear).
Franklin/So if you do not, if you can not embrace the concept of having narrower streets
that it doesn't make any difference what they are or how they're con figured you
can not accept that then you vote no which is what Marilyn and Dean did.
Vanderhoef/But what?
O'Donnell/Let me ask one question Dee. Is your concern, the concern obviously safety
on the narrow streets for fire equipment?
Vanderhoef/Well that's one of them.
O'Donnell/OK, can we, can we get around that by no parking on the other side of(can't
hear).
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Vanderhoef/That was my next question then, will we have the option as we are putting in
to action when we see these plats and so forth and it might be a 25 foot wide street
that we will put in a 25 foot street but there will be no street parking on that street.
Franklin/It's possible, it's something that can be discussed but I do want to point out to
that as we went through this whole concept from these beginning planning stages
the fire department and the public works department have been part of those
discussions and we made some adjustments in the whole concept to address some
of their concerns and it is not correct to say that 25 foot wide streets are unsafe.
As you saw from the map that we have of Iowa City we have many many many
25 foot wide streets. The survey that we did of the 25 foot wide and the 28 foot is
that there is no appreciable difference between those two.
Champion/(Can't hear) concrete is saved.
Lehman/Irvin.
Pfab/I think perhaps I can sympathize with what Dee is saying and I believe what she is
saying is this, this is a question to her. While you support the concept in
particular but if you get down to something that you look at when it gets to the
final plat and you say I can't see how this is going to work, I don't, I can't in good
conscious vote for that but then somebody says well but you already agreed to
that way back then it's too late. I think is that kind of what your saying?
Vanderhoef/There are (can't hear) that it may not be as appropriate for me as it might be
for one of you folks but I want to be able to have that option at that time.
Champion/You would always have that option.
Vanderhoef/No.
Franklin/Yes of course you would because collectively you make decisions and
individually you may disagree with it and you may vote no or you say you can't
support something. But I think the critical thing right now is that if in your mind
you do not believe that you can envision a circumstance in which a narrower
street, not just the 25 foot wide but even the narrow ones that are proposed in that
plan where you have give way streets. That if those concepts are ones that you
can not endorse, that you can't imagine the circumstance then you should reject
the concept. And you have every right to.
Vanderhoef/Oh yea I understand that.
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Lehman/I have a question. The plan that we sent out, the concept plan that we all agreed
to as a Council was given to I think what was it 6 people the second time around
to look at?
Franklin/What do you mean?
Lehman/Six firms that, potential developers to that property.
Franklin/Yea.
Lehman/The concept plan would be, and all of that, I mean they all got if I understand
this correctly, they got a concept plan approved by this Council, it was a Dover-
Kohl plan that we had looked at and said conceptually we think this is a good
plan.
Franklin/Yea.
Lehman/We had two people that came back and said we can live with this plan, we think
we can develop the peninsula in basically in substantial compliance with the
concept plan, is that correct?
Franklin/We actually had three come back, yes. One.
Lehman/So we had three people.
Franklin/We had three come back, one chose not to go through the whole process.
Lehman/Right but what I'm saying is that we had three developers, one chose not to be
in the competition, two chose to stay, one developer which we are going to be
acting on shortly. After looking at the concept plan approved by the Council said
yes we believe we can develop in accordance with this plan.
Franklin/Right.
Lehman/OK that's what I wanted to know.
Pfab/I have one comment, I think, I am just really excited about this plan, I think it's
going to have some surprises but I expect the surprises that we see will be
surprises that, good surprises that we didn't anticipate. I looked at this thing and
something I've been aware of for years before this came up and I think it's
something that will, is a very exciting thing and I think it's a sign of what future
development may look like.
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Champion/It also is meant to be pedestrian friendly and narrower streets and sidewalks
and (can't hear) a garage is what makes a neighborhood pedestrian friendly and I
don't see any reason for streets to be as wide as they are now to be totally honest
with you. I think going back to narrower streets is great, you know how much
concrete and run off they create.
Lehman/If we wish to address that, street with whatever I would suggest that we do it at
a public meeting so the public can hear our comments, I mean what we're saying
tonight are good thoughts but we'd be best if they were part of a public meeting.
Kanner/Along those lines of public meeting I would not be in favor of condensing and I
hope that we can keep to three votes and have a special meeting and I would also
ask to make sure that we have at least a few days to review the final product that
it's not given to us the day that we're going to be voting.
Franklin/Oh absolutely.
Lehman/Does the special meeting with action on the plan that we have, is that an action
that requires three readings?
Franklin/No the development agreement only requires a resolution and I think since we
do need to have a special meeting I would with concur that we just do the second
consideration then tomorrow night and do the final at the other one.
Lehman/OK, all right fine.
Vanderhoef/OK and what will the code look like in terms of some of the design
standards?
Franklin/Well the code book that will also be part of the adoption in October is like
placing zoning on this property which is different from our own zoning ordinance.
And it will address issues like setbacks and design issues particularly, bulk issues,
it's more the architectural content of the development so that people know exactly
what their buying into. The plat is going to address the specifics of the
dimensions of the streets and those two things you'll be getting concurrently
because part of the agreement is that 120 days after this agreement is signed that
the developers will come back with the regulating plan, the plat, and the code
book. And then the next step after that is a final plat of first phase to allow the
site development to start in the spring. OK.
Lehman/OK.
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B. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE APPROVING A PRELIMINARY PLANNED
DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY (OPDH-5) PLAN FOR VILLAGE
GREEN SOUTH PART 6, AN 8.69 ACRE, 35-LOT RESIDENTIAL
SUBDIVISION WITH ONE OUTLOT FOR PROPERTY LOCATED AT
WINTERGREEN DRIVE, WEST OF SOUTH JAMIE LANE. (REZ00-
0010/SUB00-0009) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item B is second consideration of Village Green South Part 6, 35 lot
subdivision.
C. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE APPROXIMATELY 2.01 ACRES
LOCATED NORTH OF WASHINGTON STREET AND EAST OF GREEN
MOUNTAIN DRIVE FROM PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING
OVERLAY (OPDH-8) TO LOW DENSITY SINGLE-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL
(RS-5). (REZ00-0008) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item C is for the Green Mountain Drive OSA or OPDH-8 I'm sorry, that's the 7
lots on Green Mountain.
D. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE 54 ACRES FROM
PUBLIC/INTENSIVE COMMERCIAL (P/C1) TO SENSITIVE AREAS
OVERLAY - PUBLIC (OSA-P) AND FOR APPROVAL OF A PRELIMINARY
SENSITIVE AREAS DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR PROPERTY LOCATED IN
THE NORTH PART OF THE AIRPORT PROPERTY, WEST OF RIVERSIDE
DRIVE. (REZ99-0001) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item D is for the north airport commercial part, the OSA for that.
E. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ZONING CHAPTER 14-6D-5G1
REGARDING THE NONCONFORMING PROVISIONS IN THE
NEIGHBORHOOD CONSERVATION RESIDENTIAL ZONE (RNC-12).
(PASS AND ADOPT).
Franklin/Item E is the nonconforming provisions pass and adopt in the RNC-12.
F. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING DESIGNATION FROM
LOW DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (RS-5) AND PLANNED
DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY (OPDH-5) TO PLANNED
DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY (OPDH-5) AND APPROVING A
PRELIMINARY PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY PLAN
FOR VILLAGE GREEN PARTS 18-20, A 19.6-ACRE, 10-LOT, 63-UNIT
RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT WITH ONE OUTLOT LOCATED SOUTH
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OF VILLAGE ROAD AND WEST OF SCOTT BOULEVARD. (REZ00-0002)
(PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item F is Village Green parts 18-20, the OPDH on that for pass and adopt.
G. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE PLANNED DEVELOPMENT
HOUSING OVERLAY (OPDH-5) PLAN, AND APPROVING A
PRELIMINARY PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY PLAN
FOR VILLAGE GREEN SOUTH PART 5, A RESUBDIVISION OF A
PORTION OF VILLAGE GREEN SOUTH PART 3A, A 12-LOT, 3.33-ACRE
RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT LOCATED AT WINTERGREEN DRIVE
WEST OF SCOTT BOULEVARD. (REZ00-0009) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item G is pass and adopt on Village Green South part 5.
H. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE VACATING THE NORTHERNMOST PORTION
OF NORTH JAMIE LANE, LOCATED WEST OF SCOTT BOULEVARD.
(VAC00-0003) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/And then the Item H is the vacation of North Jamie Lane, the conveyance of
that is completed. We still have the deed which we'll hand over as soon as all of
this is passed.
I. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING AN EXTRATERRITORIAL FINAL
PLAT OF WOODLAND RIDGE PART 3, A 7-LOT RESIDENTIAL
SUBDIVISION WITH ONE OUTLOT LOCATED AT THE EAST TERMINUS
OF MEADOW VIEW LAND SW, (SUB00-0013)
Franklin/And then Item I is the only new item, that is Woodland Ridge Part 3, it's a 7-1ot
residential subdivision south of Iowa City, we've already seen part of it, it's off of
Naples. That's where the access comes from. The legal papers and construction
drawings are.
Dilkes/We may have to defer it but particularly if we have that special meeting we could
defer it until then.
Franklin/Oh really, OK, OK.
Vanderhoef/There's something in that.
Franklin/In Woodland Ridge Dee?
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Vanderhoef/Yea.
Franklin/OK let me find it.
Vanderhoef/About dedication to the public.
Franklin/You know I had that question for Scott today too but I haven't been back long
enough to ask him, I'll find that out before tomorrow night.
Vanderhoef/Thank you.
Franklin/I think that is a standard piece that's in our resolution that maybe is part of
boiler plat that shouldn't have been boiled.
Agenda Items
1. ITEM NO. 12. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION ADOPTING REVISED
PROCEDURES AND DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR REVIEW OF
APPLICATIONS FOR CERTIFICATES OF APPROPRIATENESS
WITHIN HISTORIC AND CONSERVATION DISTRICTS AND FOR
HISTORIC LANDMARKS.
Franklin/I have a question for the Council. Do you have any questions about the Historic
Preservation Guidelines? They're on for resolution on your agenda and Scott and
Mike Gunn were here for the public hearing did not intend to attend the meeting
tomorrow tonight but if you have questions I can make sure their there.
Kanner/I think it explained pretty well. I have a question about the Item number I.
Could you explain the concem of the street entrance and exits, I guess there's a
big cul de sac of 25 homes that describe.
Franklin/Right, now, remember this is in the, it's in the two mile area of Iowa City but
not in our growth area so some of the things that we are very insistent upon that
we are in our growth area we may be a little bit more lenient on when it's in the
two mile area. But the issue here had to do with the number of homes on this one
access point and the ability to have an access to the noah to connect with any
development to the noah to give an alternative means of access to this property in
the future if more development were to occur. So basically what happens is that
existing cul de sac is extended and then there's an access point that is stubbed out
to the north propeay which is owned by another property owner. It's more like
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how we do subdivisions in the city than in the county. I don't know if that, does
that answer?
Kanner/What does stubbed out mean?
Franklin/That means that it's built to the property line and then it just stops and there
will be a turn around, a temporary turn around there, but the intention is is that
that road will continue at some point if the property to the noah is developed and
so there will be connection between the two subdivisions and another way for this
traffic to get out other than Meadow View Lane.
Kanner/So that means they'd keep one spot open for a possible road through there?
Franklin/There will be a right of way that will be identified on the plat and in fact they
have one lot that has access, it's only means of access is to that road so that road
will be improved all the way to the property line, it won't be just on the plat it will
be on the ground.
Pfab/Is this the property where there's quite of bit of grade, some rather steep grades on
the road?
Franklin/It's rolly there, yea, fight near 218.
Pfab/Very rolly.
Vanderhoef/Who looks at this for emergency vehicles when it's in that fringe?
Franklin/Well we comment about that and the County is looking at it also and then the
whatever fire department is the first responder reviews the subdivision plat so
they're looking at that too.
Vanderhoef/So there haven't been any comments made about that yet?
Franklin/No.
2. ITEM NO. 6. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE PENINSULA
NEIGHBORHOOD AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF IOWA
CITY AND TERRY L. STAMPER HOLDINGS, L.L.C.
Lehman/OK. Karin before you leave, Item 6 is the one that's not going to be ready for
tomorrow night is that correct? The resolution.
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Franklin/Yes that's right.
Lehman/I think that it would be.
Franklin/I'd like to discuss, I mean we don't have to do it right now because I know,
what is it there's agenda items and then your appointments, well do you want to
do it now?
Lehman/Well your up there and yea let's go ahead if that's all right with the rest of the
Council.
Pfab/That's fine, let's do it.
Franklin/My suggestion would be if this works for everybody that we have a morning
meeting 8:00 in the morning on either Thursday or Friday June 29, 30th.
Champion/Thursday.
Pfab/Thursday.
Lehman/Thursday the 291h I can do.
Franklin/OK the 291h at 8:00.
Lehman/8:00.
Champion/What day of the week is that?
Lehman/It's a Thursday morning.
Franklin/It's a Thursday.
Champion/Oh good.
Pfab/Thursday 8:00.
Champion/June 291h.
Franklin/That' s right. So tomorrow night you can defer Item 6 to the special meeting on
June 291h.
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Lehman/And I think for the rest of the Council we better plan on making that morning
available because this is a, it's a pretty big item, I don't want us to be acting on
something unless were.
Champion/You mean the Peninsula thing?
Lehman/Yes.
Franklin/Yea.
Lehman/I mean we meet at 8:00 and I have no idea.
Franklin/It's not a 15 minute thing.
Lehman/No, no that's what I'm saying, it may be the majority of the morning.
Kanner/Well I hate to say.
Vanderhoef/How long do you expect this?
Franklin/I hope not that.
Vanderhoef/Because I have to, I have to be out of here.
Franklin/I mean I would hope that we could do it in an hour.
Lehman/Oh great. I don't have any problem with that if we can do it in an hour. I just
want people to be prepared to spend a little time because special meetings are.
Champion/5 minutes.
Lehman/You know 5 minutes.
Franklin/I mean if you read it all before hand and you know certainly your always free to
give me a call if you've got questions about it before the meeting.
Kanner/Will this give you time to get it to us by Monday?
Franklin/Well I'm hoping Steven that we have it in your packets on the 22nd but.
Kanner/Oh.
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Franklin/Yea.
Vanderhoef/8:00.
Lehman/8:00 on the 291h.
Vanderhoef/I have to be out of here by 10:00.
Franklin/OK.
Champion/Oh that's fine, good to have a deadline.
Lehman/OK.
Franklin/Oh we should, it shouldn't take that long.
Pfab/We'll use as much time as we have.
Vanderhoef/Well I'm just, I've got three meetings back to back to back after that.
O'Donnell/We could always come in earlier, I love those early meetings.
Vanderhoef/I don't.
Lehman/OK Karin you set the meeting it will be on the 291h at 8:00 in the morning.
Franklin/OK. Thank you.
Review Agenda Items (cont.)
Lehman/Does anybody have any comment on agenda items?
3. (Agenda f(1) - CONSIDER A RESOLUTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR
JULY 18 ON PLANS, SPECIFICATIONS, FORM OF CONTRACT, AND
ESTIMATE OF COST FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE NORTH
DUBUQUE STREET MEDIAN IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT, DIRECTING
CITY CLERK TO PUBLISH NOTICE OF SAID HEADING, AND DIRECTING
THE CITY ENGINEER TO PLACE SAID PLANS ON FILE FOR PUBLIC
INSPECTION).
Atkins/I have two items for you Ernie, under the consent calendar f( 1 ) is calling of a
public hearing for the median improvements on North Dubuque. I had asked the
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staff to put together a project, they did that, this one got away from me, it
shouldn't be on the agenda now, it should be on the next because you haven't had
a chance to look at in any detail.
Kanner/What number?
Atkins/F( 1 ) on the consent calendar setting a public hearing.
Lehman/Page 3.
Atkins/I'd ask that that just simply be deferred to the meeting of the 18th that we can call
a hearing then.
Dilkes/Delete it.
Atkins/All right just delete it.
Lehman/Well OK.
Atkins/Delete it and I'll bring it back to you.
Lehman/That will be amended by tomorrow night so that we'll be voting on the consent
calendar as amended which would not include that.
Atkins/OK just delete then.
4. (Agenda #14 - CONSIDER A RESOLUTION DIRECTING SALE OF $14,310,000
GENERAL OBLIGATION BONDS).
Atkins/And the second item is bond, the bond item, just to let you know we received our
credit rating today and we again received a AAA so we're doing good there.
Lehman/That's significant. Other agenda items.
5. (Agenda #8 - CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO
SIGN AND CITY CLERK TO ATTEST THE DECLARATION OF
CONDOMINIUM FOR TOWER PLACE AND PARKING).
Vanderhoef/The Item #8.
Pfab/What number?
Lehman/8.
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Vanderhoef/Yea the declaration of condominium, the Tower Place. This is coming after
we've already voted to sell one of the.
Dilkes/Yea the purchase agreements attached the declaration and say the one that's
recorded will be substantially similar.
Vanderhoef/But this has to be done for the entire condominium.
Dilkes/We cannot convey a unit until the declaration is of record.
Vanderhoef/Until this is done, OK, but it was OK for us to vote on the other one before
that. OK.
Dilkes/Yea. And there are still, the declaration the draft one that you had, the major
change that we're making is there's some division of some units. For instance the
space to the noah of the Cottage space, the big space, that's being split into two,
we have a purchase agreement for half of that and so those are really the maj or
changes that are going to happen. And then the mezzanine space is going to be a
separate unit so but other than that it's pretty much in final form.
Lehman/This is, just sets up legal descriptions for the condominiums is that correct?
Dilkes/Yea, it sets forth the fights and obligations of the paaies.
Kanner/I have some questions on that issue Eleanor. Could you explain, it talked about
limited role of condo owners versus the usual role by condo owners have in this
where limiting and it also explained how we have the 81 percent voting share for
the termination of the agreement I guess versus the lower percentage for other
voting shares that were put in the agreement, can you explain some of that.
Dilkes/Typically in a when a condominium is established each unit owner has a an
obligation that is proportionate to their unit for maintenance of the common
spaces for instance. In this case the city has taken on responsibility for a lot of the
common area maintenance for purposes of one because the city is the biggest unit
owner for one thing, and secondly as we were working through this it was just far
too difficult to have all those types of decisions to to a homeowner's association
for instance as you would find in a residential condominium. So that's why we
did it that way.
Champion/Then we will be doing things like shoveling walks clear around the ramp and
that kind of, fight.
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Dilkes/Yea, for instance the entry area off of Linn Street.
Pfab/I have a question how does that, how will it be determined what cost that is to
different owners?
Dilkes/Well that's what I'm saying is that the city has the way that we have set this up is
that the city will be responsible for a lot of that that would normally be shared
among unit owners.
Pfab/Is that affect the value of the space itself?.
Dilkes/I think it makes it attractive, more attractive than what you mind find otherwise
and when all the units were commercial units owned by individual owners.
Kanner/Ernie I have some other items.
6. ITEM #7. - CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO SIGN
AND THE CITY CLERK TO ATTEST THE FY01 AGREEMENT BETWEEN
THE CITY OF IOWA CITY AND THE CITY OF UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS
FOR THE PROVISION OF TRANSIT SERVICE WITHIN THE CORPORATE
LIMITS OF UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS.
Kanner/Number 7 the agreement with University Heights. What routes go through
University Heights?
Atkins/I'm sorry Steven I don't know the name of it, I'll find out for you.
Kanner/OK. But we, I guess it's not that important we, do you know the number
approximately, do we have one or two?
Atkins/No I'm sorry I don't, I'll found out for you.
7. (ITEM #10. - CONVEYANCE OF A SINGLE FAMILY HOME LOCATED AT 1417
FRANKLIN STREET TO THE TENANT).
Kanner/And then I had a question on number 10, conveying the tenant to owner home on
Franklin.
Atkins/OK.
Kanner/Does the city second mortgage that up to $14,000 in addition to the $73,000?
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Atkins/Doug's here.
Dilkes/No the $73,000 is the purchase price.
Lehman/Total price.
Dilkes/Which will be financed by first mortgage of $58,400 and a second mortgage to
the city of $14,600.
Kanner/OK.
8. ITEM #15. - CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING AN AGREEMENT
BETWEEN THE CITY OF IOWA CITY, IOWA, AND THE FOLLOWING
AGENCIES FOR AID-TO-AID AGENCY FUNDING BY THE CITY OF IOWA
CITY IOWA, AND AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO EXECUTE AND THE
CITY CLERK TO ATTEST THE SAME: BIG BROTHERS AND BIG
SISTERS ($41,011); CRISIS CENTER ($40,600); DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
INTERVENTION PROGRAM ($54,256); EMERGENCY HOUSING PROJECT
($10,000); FREE MEDICAL CLINIC ($6,284); HAWKEYE AREA
COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM ($8,635); IOWA CENTER FOR AIDS
RESOURCES AND EDUCATION ($11,000); MAYOR'S YOUTH
EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM ($43,483); NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS OF
JOHNSON COUNTY ($62,856); RAPE VICTIM ADVOCACY PROGRAM
($14,850); AMERICAN RED CROSS ($5,500); AND UNITED ACTION FOR
YOUTH ($52,025).
Kanner/Just perhaps a small correction is needed I believe in #15 Aid to Agency Funding
doesn't Mayor's Youth have a new name?
Champion/Yes it does.
Kanner/So perhaps we should put that in there.
(All talking)
Kanner/Sorry Emie.
Lehman/Yea I'm sorry too.
Kanner/Losing the mayor.
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Lehman/No that parts OK.
Kanner/But I think there is a new name yea so we probably should correct.
Dilkes/Is that their formal name has been changed as well as they do business?
Kanner/Yes.
Vanderhoef/The Mayor's Youth thing.
Champion/Which was really a name that really had no significant meaning.
Lehman/(can't hear) say the former Mayor's Youth (can't hear).
Atkins/We'll get you the (can't hear).
Lehman/Now known by some other name.
Atkins/AKA.
Pfab/AKA.
Vanderhoef/That may be changing the (can't hear).
Lehman/OK other agenda items.
Appointments
Lehman/Public Art Advisory Committee.
Kanner/We don't have anyone on that.
Lehman/We didn't have anybody apply. Parks and Recreation Commission.
Vanderhoef/I'd like to propose Doug Ginsberg.
Champion/I'll second that.
Vanderhoef/I think it was a very very nice idea to have someone who has had a long
standing association with the Kickers and how that recreation program works and
understanding youth programming whether it be for soccer or any other youth
program.
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O'Donnell/We have two really good candidates as Carol Casey looked awfully good too.
I was going to nominate her.
Wilburn/Actually I would support that because I think, some of her, she has some of that
traditional youth recreational through her YMCA type stuff but also some
alternative type activities with the (can't hear) program at the University with the
outdoor recreation (can't hear) so just seemed kind of a little different twist.
Kanner/I have a legal question, I think Carol Casey said she's a member of ECICOGS,
it's a JCCOG's employment, does that affect who we can appoint or not?
Lehman/No I don't think there's any conflict at all.
Kanner/Our resolutions.
Dilkes/I think the resolution talks about city boards and commissions and comparable
boards in other for the county so I don't think it would apply.
Kanner/I guess I would lean towards Carol because it's hard for me to get any last
minute kind of things, I guess if things are equal I would think Carol.
O'Donnell/Well like I said we have 2 very good candidates and I could go either way,
but I like Carol Casey.
Wilburn/I'd also look at her, this could also be consideration of the balance of males to
females on our commission, 6-2 and I don't remember if that's including Kathy, I
think that does include Kathy so it's an opportunity to look at the balance in terms
of gender.
Lelmaan/OK how many would favor Carol Casey. OK Carol Casey will be the
appointment.
Housing Inspection Services Computer/Web Access
Dilkes/Ernie.
Atkins/I think Doug needs about a minute or two to get set up.
Boothroy/Yea.
Agenda Item
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Dilkes/Emie I just want to back up just quickly to the declaration of condominium.
Lehman/Yes.
Dilkes/One thing I neglected to say it that not only is the city assuming maintenance
expense for a lot of what would typically become an areas but we're also keeping
ownership of those areas so that's sort of an important point.
Lehman/OK. Should we have another break?
Pfab/Just give Emie another cup of coffee.
Lehman/That will ensure we will have another break.
Housing Inspection Services Computer/Web Access
Doug Boothroy/I think I'll go ahead and start.
Atkins/Council while they're setting up, have you met Kent Bliven?
Doug Boothroy/I'm sorry.
Lehman/We're about to.
Boothroy/Let me introduce Kent Bliven he's with Information Technology and he's our
web, what's your, it's not master.
Atkins/Webster.
Boothroy/Webster. Kent's also the person that knows the most about our software
system, he was involved with our upgrade last year, he's involved with our
presentation tonight in terms of our web access that we're going to be rolling out
in July and we're really lucky to have him so. Let me go ahead and get started
with some introductory comments and we're going to try to give you a live
demonstration if everything works as it should. This particular soilware system
we brought into the city back in 1991, it was provided, or it is being provided by
Tidemark Solutions and they're here tonight and will help out in the presentation
and I'll introduce you to them in just a second. One of the things that. Go ahead.
(Can't hear).
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Boothroy/They're too bright.
(Can't hear).
Lehman/Want me to get popcorn too?
Boothroy/Anyway since 1991 the department, I want to give you a little background
about permit plan and what we've done with that system. Since 1991 we've been
using that system and all the activities that housing and rental housing, building
and rental housing are involved with are in putted on a daily basis into that system
so what we do is we track our inspection activities by what we call cases. We
have a rental case, we have building cases, we have electrical permit cases, we
have complaint cases on snow, weeds, etc., etc., etc., all that information is
tracked on a daily basis, we've been doing for 9 to 9 ½ years so we have an
incredible data base that we've already put together which we'll, at some point
interface nicely with a GIS system so you can look at different things like permit
values and things of that nature. Now 9 years later we're taking it to another
level, what we're going to be introducing next months is our web base services
and what that really is all about is giving the public, giving our customers greater
access to our system than they've ever had before. What they're going to be able
to do is get data from our data base in real time, in other words when the inspector
updates that final inspection if you log in on the web you'll be able to see it as
soon as he updates it so anything that we're working on within the department of
Housing Inspection Services whether it's a site plan review, whether it's a
building application, whether it's a rental case, whether it's a complain on snow
or weeds. The public or the customer can see what that status is, they can check
that status by simply going into the web site and pulling it up by address. They
can also do other kinds of things that we're going to be looking at too, not only
will they be able to check status of the things that we're doing but they're going to
be able to schedule inspections, they're also going to be able to request service
such as snow complaints, or weeds, those are two that are very popular during
particular times of the year. They can request those types of services from us
directly without having to make a telephone call and the beauty of the system is is
that it's available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, anytime they can get in there and
they can make those requests. When we come into the office then during our
normal hours that stuff is waiting for us to look at and we can bring it into our
system. The fact that they've made the request they've established the case and
they've already inputted some data into our system. Right now before this web
base system we get a lot of that stuff sent to us in paper form and then somebody
has to sit down and keyboard it in. In the future a lot of that is going to be done
by our customers and that's going to speed up our service to them because we
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won't be taking so much time to do it on that end and we'll have more time for
inspections and more time for review of plans, etc. and so forth.
Lehman/Will the person who makes the request, they will have to obviously they will be
identified, you will know who did it.
Boothroy/Exactly and when Kent goes through our web base stuff he'll explain a little
bit about how that system works and we'll get into that in just a second. This is
what we're working on, have been working on the last couple months. As I said
we're going to present that in July to the citizens of Iowa City and to the
contracting community. The other thing that we're going to be working on
throughout the year and hopefully by this time next year we'll have in place is our
wireless application. What that really means simply is that all the inspectors will
have real time access to the data base that we have in our office. They won't be
hooked to a wire or something, they can take this data base into the field, they can
enter their inspections in the field, they'll be able to print out the inspection notes
and the minute they enter that data in it will also be available on the web as
already being entered in so they don't have to be at their desk to do data entry,
they can be anywhere, well it says (can't hear) they could be in Hong Kong but
they shouldn't be that far away from their job they should be anywhere in Iowa
City they can be putting that data in and that's going to speed up our process with
regard to our customers as well. One of the things that is happening is that access
to our data base and access to our services is all going to be now more or less via
the Internet which is going to change the dynamics in terms of how we do
business and so forth. So the first part of the presentation tonight is Kent and he's
going to show us our what I referred to as our Housing Web Services and then the
second part of the presentation will be from Tidemark Solutions and Andy
Ruotsala's back here, he's the President or, I don't know what your title is now
but he's the founding, he's the founder of Tidemark Solutions, he's the one that
created permit plan, he's the father of the system if you will and he'll be doing the
showing you some stuff with regard to the wireless application so I'll turn it over
to Kent.
Kent Bliven/Thank you. All right Doug's explained it pretty well here now I'm just
going to go ahead and show you some of the features. All these are available now
and what we're doing here is a live connection so but it will be available to the
public in the middle of July. So there's a couple different levels of access you can
have and I'll go ahead and show you the first set, let's get in here, by clicking on
the this top section, you'll be able to view this, the status of the case, review
parcel information and being able to comment on a case. Then I'll go in and show
you how you can actually apply for some of these building permits and that
requires a little higher level of access. These items that are available without any
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access are, you can get in here to check the case status, and just by clicking on
here you click on the item your interested in so check the case status. And then
once your presented with this screen you can search for the case in question by
either address or case number. The way our system works is with case number,
the first three letters is the type of case it is, whether it be like a building case, a
rental case, a rezoning subdivision, any of these cases that are available. The
second two letters or the two numbers there represent the year the case was
created in and then final five numbers show the order that it was made throughout
that year. So in most cases if you do have the case number its more advantageous
to type that in if not you can always type it in by address but keep in mind that a
particular address could have you know 10, 20 or more cases that were associated
with it. And this will be all the cases that have ever been done on that property.
So once you do that, oh and the other thing that's important to know is that like
when you type in an address you can type in as little information at least to start
your search, less is actually better it will take the everything that happened. It's
like a street for instance if I typed in a street, street number, ifI put in B it would
find like all the Benton's, all the Burlington's, Bendon's all those would come up
so you don't have to type in the full address but let's see let's find like Dubuque,
OK by just putting Dub it found that there was an address at 1515 Dubuque so by
looking through this list you can see all the different cases that ever been created
on this property. You can see here that there's been some electrical, some
plumbing, there's a complaint in a building. And then you can see some general
information off of this list such as the address, the address, the description of the
case and the current status. By clicking on the hot link there you can actually go
in and see detailed information on that case. And now here once we're going into
there you can see the name, address application description. Down below you can
see all the activities that have occurred during the life of this case. For instance
on a building permit there's a plan, the application was received, you have the
date, them was a plan check and scrolling on down you can see all these items.
Now this is all live data, it actually went and hit against the data base so
everything is up to the second active so one of the real positives we can see here
is with for instance contractors could check this to see if a case, if a certain action
has been, a permit's been issued yet. Or you could look, an owners for instance
could look in at a house their thinking about buying and seeing all the different, if
there's ever been issues with that house. Possibilities are really endless. After
these different activities down below you can also see, you can see there was a lot
on this one. The conditions if there happen to be any conditions on this case and
then finally you can see the fees that were paid, the amount and then the amount
remaining. For the different types of fees that you would be charged for the
various different cases. The second thing you'll be able to look up is parcel
information, clicking on check parcel, again it works just the same way only this
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time you can type in the actual parcel number if you have it or you can type in an
address.
Pfab/I have a question, where does the parcel number come from?
Bliven/That's assigned and.
Pfab/By who?
Bliven/Is it the county or?
Pfab/County, OK, it's the county.
Bliven/Right yea.
Pfab/I was thinking it was but (can't hear).
Bliven/Right. But most people in most instances will not actually have the parcel
number so again they can just type up the address.
Boothroy/We update our parcel information (can't hear) on a monthly basis, the
download from the county.
Bliven/Right, so the actual data.
Boothroy/The data's fairly current.
Bliven/The data' s kept at the county and then. So again I can type in what I need of the
address, click search and then parcel information for that address comes up. And
here I can see some different activities and by clicking on one of these parcel
numbers it will bring up the actual detailed parcel information screen. You can
see the status, some of the various different items, again this is just information
that people would normally come down and request or call up, now they can
access it you know via the Internet 24-7 it's all fight there. Further down here to
when your looking at an information on an parcel you can see all the cases that
have been associated with this parcel. So ifthere's ever been you know building
permits, electrical, all this information is available here and again with the hot
links it's all tied together so once you see this list if you want to see more
information on anyone of these specific cases you just go ahead and click on it
and information on that specific case pops up.
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Boothroy/And one of the things that your looking at is primarily building information
but this particular system is available to any applications the city processes so
rezoning applications if you wanted comments on that. If you can't make public
hearings, subdivision, any kind of an application that we have in the system is
available at the same kind of access to the public via the system so you have to
think of it in terms of not just building but a whole system within the city.
Bliven/The final item in this section was the comment and we also have the capability of
having citizens comment on a particular case and then we don't have in store fight
now that we'd really want commented on but that ability is there. We were
thinking of different ideas like for instance we could have maybe create a new
case type for CIP projects and if you would you know require, or request public
comment they could do that and then that would become part of the activity, part
of the official record for this case. It would just say you know public comment
and we have the ability to have as much or as little access as we want so if we
don't want the public to comment on certain case types which for instance
building permits, there's no reason to have comments on that, then we cut that
ability out. So for our initial role out there, there will be no comments, cases to
comment on. But again it works pretty much the same way you just type in your
address, zero in on that place, that case that you want to comment on, click it and
then you'll have the ability to type in your comments. OK clicking back to home,
now this is the higher level access I talked about is by gives you the ability to do
apply for permits actually. This other stuff we were just looking at that's just
basically information that anybody can look up. This is actually something that
you can affect the system with where you can log on, you can, so what you have
to do first of all is register to create the applications and this is just very similar to
like any other web site where you have to put in a user name and password so the
every citizen that wants to apply for a permit will have to type in a user name and
then give themselves a password and then retype their password and they will also
have to, and this is mandatory, will have to supply an e-mail address. Once they
do that their in the system and it looks, go through, well I'll just go through.
Boothroy/The advantage of logging in like that then we create a file that has information
so anytime they log in again that information's automatically put on the
application so that we don't have to retype that information all they have to do is
log in, once their registered if their doing business on a routine basis they can
continually use the same stuff that will fill in the application form.
Bliven/So I'll just go ahead and create a whole new account here. And by typing it in
and then I'd say register, now you'll see I'm at that screen where we were at a
little bit earlier only now I have a few more options on here. I can start, you'll see
the common three ones checking the status, checking parcel information and
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commenting on a case but in addition to that I now can start a new application or I
can search for an application. By clicking, but another thing to this level, now
that's just the level of access that a typical user would have. There's a lot of
different accesses, access levels and I'm going to relog back on, with a higher
access, now this is something that we can see as having the inspectors would have
their own log on's and that would give them a lot more ability so they could
actually comment on, or they could do a lot more things here like checking
activities, signing off on things, looking at schedule and inspection, things.
Pfab/Kevin so what your saying is there are certain portions of these can be password
protected.
Bliven/Yes, yes, and it's fully, there's fully security access to, we can tigthen it down as
much or as little as we want so ifthere's some information we want everybody to
see we can do that but if there's some things that we only want scheduled like our
in house inspectors to see we can do that. There's also a little middle ground that
we can have like for contractors for instance that they do more things than the
average home person would do. We can give them a little more ability for
instance to schedule inspections so if their doing a lot of work in town and they
want to be able to schedule it they'll have that ability so it's totally customizable.
Boothroy/So in other words they could on a weekend put a, if they need a footing
inspection on Monday AM they could go ahead and send that to us and then when
we bring up our, when Jann comes in in the morning she can bring that up and go
ahead and schedule that with the inspectors, they wouldn't have to make that
phone call or get a busy signal from us.
Champion/Boy it's going to save a lot of phone calls isn't it?
Bliven/It could save a lot of phone calls.
Lehman/Yea but what happens if you schedule a footing inspection for Monday
morning and 27 other people do to, once he E-mail's you he assumes I mean, you
don't show up because you've got to many inspections.
Boothroy/Well I don't think we'll ever have 27 in one morning but I hear what your, I
understand what.
Lehman/For some reason you can't go and you're still going to have to either e-mail him
back or call him.
Boothroy/Right.
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Bliven/But actually the system's smart enough to know that when you schedule it it
looks for available times.
Lehman/Oh OK. So 4:00 in the moming is not available.
Bliven/Well you'll have to talk to the inspectors about that.
Boothroy/Overtime.
Bliven/One of the initial cases everybody will be able to apply for initially is building
case, a building permit, and I can show you briefly what that will look like, by
clicking on building.
Pfab/Kevin this all works very nice, you (can't hear).
Bliven/Excuse me.
Pfab/You're on a T-1.
Bliven/Yes.
Pfab/What about a person with a 58 K?
(END OF 00-71 SIDE 1)
Bliven/It's very, there's very minimal graphics on here it's all text so it's very snappy
and I think Andy can attest to the speed.
Ruotsala/(can't hear).
Lehman/All right, I think it's important for us to know the capabilities, I don't think we
really care about, you can tell us the things that we need to know, not the things
that building, builders and contractors and subdividers need to know. I think the
capabilities of this sort of thing is important to the Council but a lot of these
details probably aren't relevant.
Ruotsala/OK. Also if you'd like log ins we can get log ins to a system in Seattle that you
can actually play around with and we've got log ins that we can give you to some
of our other customers like City of Anaheim and Saint Carlos California so you
can see live systems in operation and you can try it from your 56K modem.
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Pfab/So what your saying Kent is you can keep it as bare bones as you can in form for
people that don't have a (can't hear).
Bliven/Right, absolutely. But also it's been tested on outside the system, and our
system, we actually have very good server so I think Andy said it's been one of
the fastest ones they've seen, the response time has been very very favorable. OK
so I'll refrain from going through this but you can see how it's going to be a 6-
step process, they just go through each step filling out the pertinent information, at
the end they submit their application, and at that point it goes into a holding cell
and Jan or somebody down in HIS would review it and decide whether to accept it
or not. So there is a little bit of human intervention and that's plmmed so that if
you have the miscellaneous person just filling out these bogus ones it will not
actually clutter up the system, she'll see that and then she can just delete it.
Champion/So once she's read this and realized it's a (can't hear) bona fide building
permit then does she just type in that it's OK on fee or how do you do that? What
happens to that?
Boothroy/She accepts it.
Bliven/Yea. Right she can look through and she can make changes if she sees any like
minor things or that are incorrect or needs to change anything but if everything
looks OK she hits a button and it's accepted into the system and it's just like we
had sat there and entered the entire case only this time we don't have to, all that
information has been entered.
Champion/And then the builder can look and see if he's building permit has been
accepted (can't hear).
Bliven/Exactly, exactly, exactly, they'll have numbers when they successfully submit it,
they'll get an ID number that they can look and they can see where that process is
whether it's been accepted and then once it's been accepted they can just go to the
case status like I showed you a little bit earlier and they can see the history if any
activity has been done on that case.
Champion/Great, great.
Boothroy/Why don't you move on to the (can't hear).
Bliven/Right, so this is just the first, the building permits, we're also rolling out electrical
and mechanical and plumbing permits at that time as well.
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Lehman/Are most of the contractors that are going to be using, or in need of this
information, are they going to be using this? Will they be doing their applications
by Internet?
Boothroy/Well presently electrical and plumbing are done by fax.
Lehman/Right.
Boothroy/And so they don't even come into the office for that and some of those places
do have computer access and could use this system. It's a growth thing, like for
example, I talked to Ben about it, he probably will use it, but not all contractors
have access to the Internet. But it's only a matter of time because cell phones and
everything else are becoming.
Lehman/But if they call or fax you then you will then input the information?
Boothroy/Well that's what we're doing now.
Lehman/Right, fight, so, OK.
Boothroy/They'll still be able to fax applications, but we're going to encourage the
plumbing and electrical community those that have access to provide it to us by
Internet because it's faster to get the data into the system, you know it will speed
up their application. If we have to sit down and go through the pages and enter it
in it takes a little bit longer. Sometimes it takes a day or two.
Lehman/Have you heard, I mean what's the reaction of the plumbing and electrical
building community to this sort of?.
Boothroy/Well I know Bemie's talked to them and I really don't have an answer for you
because I don't recall but I do know that from talking to some contractors it's
been positive but I'll. What we want to do is we're going to do a test with some
contractors prior to rolling this out to see what changes need to be done, how to
tweak it up, make it useable. But you keep in mind too that the contractor use of
this is a small portion of it, I mean we get hundreds and hundreds of zoning
complaints and snow and weds and business complaints and I see a lot of that
being possible and maybe even a higher volume at least initially than with some
of our repeat customers.
Lehman/Is all that information?
Boothroy/I'm sorry, go ahead.
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Vanderhoef/What kind of training sessions are you having for your contractors and
builders?
Boothroy/Well we'll just have see, it's fairly user simple, but we're going to take it to a
meeting of the contractors and just do a demonstration and the maybe, I don't
know if we'll have some hands on stuff or bring their laptops so they can play
with it, something of that nature.
Pfab/Also if they enter it themselves there's less chances of error.
Boothroy/That's true.
Pfab/Once it's in, it's.
Boothroy/And we're not reading handwriting.
Champion/Right.
Vanderhoef/Or lack of.
Boothroy/I think we probably should move on to Andy's part of the presentation.
Bliven/So again that will be the middle of July we'll be releasing that to the public so
there are still some minor changes it's mostly aesthetic in nature but that's (can't
hear).
Kanner/Thank you.
Boothroy/(can't hear) for the wireless application and we had some difficulty maybe
Andy can explain that getting his system to work here in Iowa City so we're going
to show it to you via the Internet but I have seen this demonstrated on and we do
have the capability of doing it here but technology we somehow didn't get it done
SO.
Ruotsala/If the same software that handles the page generation for the part that Kent was
showing you a few minutes ago can also feed HTML pages to PDA's like a palm
pilot that are equipped for the browser. I don't have an account on the wireless
service here on Iowa City so when I tried to connect this morning it said I can't
connect but there is service is available we understand. It's just commercially
available, it's called cellular digital packet service that transmits these pages over
the Internet. The, as Doug was saying the idea is to allow inspectors to retrieve
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information to enter inspection data to be able to take a complaint right there out
in the field. We've set up a, this is off of a server in Seattle, we've set up a bit of
a demonstration web site to show how this might work. When an inspector logs
in, and I'm going to shrink this down so you can see, pretend you're on a palm
pilot where you've got a smaller screen, perhaps not as wide but a longer screen
that you can scroll to. As you log in, the inspector can simply click on the screen
and get a to do list of items. So let's say that they wanted to look up some
neighborhood services types of complaints simply click here and it would return a
to do list of all of the items that needed initial inspection or recall inspections.
This is coming from Seattle so.
Champion/I was wondering where it was coming from it's taking so long, should have
the Concorde.
Boothroy/Boy that was loading faster this moming than it is this evening so.
Pfab/Everybody's on tonight.
Boothroy/Yea I think that's it.
Ruotsala/So here's the case where Oto Grimmly at 7822 West Kinyan Boulevard,
$1,357,892 old Ugo tires behind their house but.
Lehman/You got the wrong address.
Vanderhoef/Are you sure it's not cars.
RuotsalaJ It's a little counter that clicks up the number of tires that, so the inspector can
go in and say OK here's the, inspection has been received, let's say I want to
check on the tires I can click here, and I can add some additional notes.
Kanner/So people have to do it on that small computer you first showed us?
Ruotsala/Well it also runs Kent do you have your Gernetta?
Bliven/No.
RuotsalaJ It can be any, it can be a laptop, it can be a pen based unit, a small PDA, there
are some that have keyboards and screens that are about this big, any PC or PDA
that rims browser and has a CDP connection so it's really, you have a wide choice
of hardware that's available. The palm pilot is the least expensive, it's also the
smallest screen. We have some customers who are using laptops much like yours
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that are rugged eyes, their water proof and they have a little antenna that just pops
out of the top of the display so that the inspector can work from a car, can work
inside a building, pretty much anywhere that you can set it down and type.
Boothroy/There's really no limitation on hardware, it's our choice, and the inspectors we
would have, most of the units would have keyboards.
Champion/Yea I think this is great.
Pfab/If you have to ask the price is it?
Boothroy/Actually it's not that expensive because we're taking lap tops that we're not
buying the ones that you can drop off a 70 story building we're buying, their
rugged enough to go on the field but not so that they're not indestructible like the
Am~y might spec. or something like that.
Ruotsala/Some other ones that for instance to take in a complaint, we can have a number
of different things like potholes and abandoned vehicles, and complaints, business
license information so like Kent was showing with the applying for a building
permit, you simply fill out the details of the complaint, there may be several pages
of information.
Boothroy/One of the things this does is everybody that has this system can interface, if
we're talking engineering today if they have their fight of way excavation permits
and some of their other stuff with potholes and things like that, any inspector in
the field can make a service request, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to wait
for it to be sent in by a citizen or once you get back to the office or whatever. If a
stoplight's out all these things can be done.
Vanderhoef/Do you envision that this will allow your inspectors to handle a larger case
hold?
Boothroy/Yes, but they will be more efficient and we'll get our work done quicker either
that one of the two you know.
Pfab/And with high price gas you don't have to drive around so much.
Ruotsala/Here's another possibility now, I realize the city is just embarking on GIS but
this is a link again the City of Anaheim where the this is web based GIS and this
is one of the things that is now possible where you can have maps available on
your desktop in the office via the Internet or to citizens at home or even
downloaded automatically to say an inspectors laptop in the field. Other types of
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information like a lot of time inspectors need to look up reference data so as an
example here we've tied into the City of San Carlos' municipal code so, for
instance ifthere's a question about street sidewalks and public places about see
sidewalk and driveway construction and repair you can get the details of city code
right there so if your working with a contractor or something of that nature you
can access this information in real time so that you can say well you know here's
what the city code says, here are the requirements, so that pretty much any
information that's available on the web can also be brought down to the inspector
in the field.
Boothroy/As we, one of the things that we're going to be doing with permit plan is we're
going to be attaching more and more documents so that the case information is
going to be more and more complete with either copies of plans at some point or
agreements like sub dividers agreements and things of that nature so if there's any
question about an issue that comes up in the field it's, you'll have literally
anything that you've got on Intemet or accessible if you want to attach documents
you can bring up and answer that question on the spot, not that you would do it
every day but if you need to you just click and go.
Ruotsala/Some of the other non permit types of things like were setting up some
inspection systems in Califomia that will allow inspectors to do earthquake
damage survey's from wireless units in the field. It's something that the state
advance technology council has put together and by making it available on the
palm (can't hear) you know you don't have earth quakes here but typically things
like storm damage, flooding, (can't hear) of other types of things that are not
strictly speaking permits could be entered directly from the field in an emergency
services kind of situation.
Boothroy/You know that's a good thing to stress because were talking about Tidemark
Solutions so we're not just talking about traditional building permits we're talking
about anything that you, applications or anything that you want to manage. Any
information that you want to manage and then that information can be accessible
in the manner that we're talking about which is almost anywhere anytime to any
level.
Champion/Should be great.
Ruotsala/I'I1 take you just briefly to San Carlos and then to Anaheim, the San Carlos has
been using our system here in the community development department and so and
I'll send Doug the URL's so that if you would kind of like to cruise the net and
take a look at these systems your welcome to do so.
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Kanner/What is URL?
Ruotsala/Oh I'm sorry URL is the address, it's fight here at the top, it's the Internet
address for accessing the site and the way we'll send it to Doug is as an e-mail so
that if he sends you the e-mail all you have to do is just double click on the link
and the e-mail and it will automatically take you there.
Boothroy/One of the things too that we'll be integrating with with our system at some
point is the use of e-mail to transfer information along with our applications and
maybe you can explain how that would work in terms of example.
RuotsalaJ Well the customer or citizen or a contractor could go on the web site, fill out
the information in one of the forms like Kent was filling out earlier and then
receive an e-mail notification back if there's a problem. For instance the reviewer
who checks out the application can say, can send an e-mail back to say whoops
you forgot this or the address is in the wrong place so that you can communicate
that way by e-mail.
Boothroy/Plus you can send plans in by e-mail as well.
Ruotsala/Right and we'll also have the ability to submit to attached plans to the
application. How many of you have ever tried it's a flee e-mail service called hot
mail from Microsoft? No.
Pfab/You need putting attachments on it?
Ruotsala/Exactly it's the same thing, it's so simple that you just say I want to do an
attachment, you attach the file and it automatically goes over with the application.
Pfab/That' s not just limited to hot mail, everyone else does it.
RuotsalaJ True, OK, OK. One of the capabilities that San Carlos has active now is the
ability to submit comments on planning applications, this is kind of an electronic
democracy type of concept where the system posts, for instance here's an
ordinance amendment that's open for public comment so that customers, citizens
can come to the web site and pull up the information, here's an ordinance
amendment, here are the various planning commission meetings, and such and
then if a citizen wants to submit a comment they fill out the information, the city
here asks that you have to put in your name and address and zip and phone and e-
mail but you can control how much information is required to be able to submit
the comment. And then the, there's a space to put your comments, it
automatically comes back into the system, your made a party of record for that
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particular application. The comments get routed to whoever to Karen or whoever
the planner is handling that particular case so that it's an automated way for
people to submit comments and suggestions about new types of development
applications. Like the example your talking about the subdivision with the
narrower streets that this is a way that you could use the system for that type of
comments.
Pfab/And I would presume that the person that's in charge can e-mail back and create a
dialogue that's.
RuotsalaJ Yes, exactly.
Lehman/Doug it appears to me I mean I this basically I would think the value of this tool
for folks who work in this building.
Boothroy/Oh yes but it's more than just within this building, it's also with everybody we
work with outside of the building so.
Lehman/Right but I mean the value is with the people you work with in the community
who interact with the people in this building housing department and whatever.
Boothroy/They're going to have access to.
Lehman/You start getting into public comment obviously the only people that are going
to be able to comment who will be exercising public comment are those people
that are familiar with Internet and have computers and choose to do that. How
much of this information that we've been looking at is going to be public
information?
Boothroy/We can make as much of it as we want public or as little as we want public.
Lehman/Somebody complains about somebody's sidewalk isn't shoveled is that going to
be available to anybody in the city?
Boothroy/We can either show that name or not show that name. What we have done is a
matter of practices that is that most people we take complaints anonymously so
you could file a complaint with the city and not leave your name so what would
happen is you would see the complaint on the property but it would not be, there
would be no name involved because it was an anonymous complaint. Ninety-five
of our complaints are anonymous.
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Lehman/So I could file an anonymous complaint about a sidewalk that wasn't shoveled
when in fact it was shoveled but if it becomes, if it's available publicly.
Boothroy/Well then we close it out, it's better to close it out with comments saying it
was not a legitimate complaint.
Lehman/At what point is it posted where people can read it, before or after you find out
it's not valid?
Boothroy/Well we're out the same day so.
Lehman/When you post it go out and find it's not valid and then take it off?.
Ruotsala/Actually.
(Can't hear)
Ruotsala/Yea you could say you could control it so that only if it were a valid complaint
would it show so.
Lehman/I would hope that's what we would do.
Boothroy/That's, I mean we could do it either way.
Pfab/You could also do it another way, you could have the person had to sign up to send
it, their name just wouldn't be available.
Boothroy/You could keep that off to the side.
Pfab/Yea, if you make the complaint you put your name in but the public doesn't know
where (can't hear).
Lehman/Well we aren't going to make the rules here so.
Boothroy/No, not tonight, there's a lot of rules to make up, business rules on this.
Ruotsala/Any other questions or I'll send those URL's to Doug so that you know if your
interested in taking a look your welcome.
Kanner/What' s the cost of the wireless?
Boothroy/Well you've already budgeted for it.
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O'Donnell/The palm pilot.
Boothroy/And it was in last years's budget, I don't remember the exact dollar amount,
I'd even hesitate to guess.
Kanner/Well for the whole system that we bought from this company.
Boothroy/Well keep in mind that the database part of this and a lot of it you've seen
already has already been paid for. Part of it we started developing in 1991, this
upgrade to this Internet application was an upgrade and I can't give you a number
because it's, I just don't remember, it wasn't that expensive.
Maddie McCambridge/For the conversion?
Boothroy/No not the conversion, I'm talking about the upgrade for the Internet
application. What 10-157
McCambridge/It was around $20,000-$25,000.
Boothroy/$20,000-$25,000 for most of what you've seen.
McCambridge/For the software and the services.
Karr/We can't, I'm sorry, we aren't picking anything up on the tape.
Boothroy/I'm sorry, let me explain, let me repeat it, it was someplace around $20,000-
$25,000 for the web base services that you saw here tonight. And basically those
web base services is what runs the wireless part of the application. Most of the
wireless part is hardware and programming, a lot of the work is done by Kent.
Lehman/You have to speak in the microphone to speak, we're recording this.
Kent/And this is just we were created, what we've created so far and we now have the
ability to create as much more as we want, we have the base product so we can
create, next is going to be rental applications so you'll be able to apply for a rental
permit on line and then we can go from there on and on.
Pfab/I have only one comment, don't jazz it up to much so that people with a regular.
Kent/No I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, it's very quick.
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Lehman/OK.
Boothroy/Thank you.
Lehman/All fight.
Appointments (revisited)
Karr/Mr. Mayor.
Lehman/Yes.
Karr/Regarding the public art appointment and that was a week, you had the applicant a
week ago, I don't know if you've gotten it, I certainly could pass it out for
tomorrow night for consideration if you'd like. You have one applicant, Karen
Michael.
Pfab/When did we get it?
Champion/Was it in the last packet?
Karr/I believe so, I ran in while you were on break and I'd be happy to make copies for
tomorrow night or later tonight if you'd like.
Lehman/We're going to take a break fight now so we can do that.
(Break)
Lehman/Tomorrow night, do we want to make this appointment, Karin Michaeli?
Kanner/Can we just look it over real quick?
Lehman/Sure.
Vanderhoef/Oh I know who she is.
O'Donnell/Yea, sounds real good.
Vanderhoef/Looks good with me, I'll go with here.
Pfab/Best one we've got.
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Lehman/Do we have four folks that would like to make that appointment?
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Kanner/Yes.
Lehman/OK thank you, Steve your up.
Water Rates
Atkins/A couple meetings ago you asked that we make a presentation early open for
discussion the issue of water rates in our community. What I'd like to do is walk
you through and the, my resources were the American Water Works Association,
sort ofwhat's involved in setting water rates. I'm not going to get into numbers
with you and in any excruciating detail, I think that's for another evening but I
just wanted to give you sort of a flavor of what what' s involved in water rate
banking. This is not my professional long suit so forgive me. Whether we
recognize it or not water is free, it's a girl from god what we have to do is find it,
pump it, treat it and deliver it to people, the water itself you can get all the water
you want by dropping a garden hose in the Iowa River and pump it to your house
up to 25,000 gallons a day is permitted through DNR regulation, at least that was
the last set of regulations. Our practice in the past has been to that we will do our
water rate studies in house, it is substantially based upon information that was
gathered back in 1982-1983 when we apparently had some consultants and there
is an industry of folks who will do water rates, sewer rates studies for you. Again
we've chosen to do it in house. It is substantially a technical and a financial
process but it also can be a political process and that's the extent to which you
choose to add community political issues to the rate making process. We have
traditionally pursued a policy of cost of service, that is the benefit gain from the
service provided. An example you'll see in some of our other enterprise funds,
the parking fund, the user of the parking system pays for it. Our refuse collection,
same thing, landfill, same, cable vision. We have two enterprise funds that we
choose to subsidize by way of property tax and that's our transit and airport.
Again those are political decisions made some time ago. There's a basic
underlying principle we have to remember that as a public utility we have got to
receive sufficient total revenue to ensure the proper operation and maintenance,
one of the first things you have to decide is annual income or revenue. The
question is what is fair? And to whom is as much a political question as it is any
elements of this discussion that I'm going to have and I just ask that you set that
aside for a minute. There are about 7 or 8 factors that the American Water Works
Association identifies that are important for you to consider when your setting
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your water rates. First of which is the source of supply, where you get your water,
where it comes from. That's not always volume, the amount but also the quality
of the water. In our case we had been substantially river, we are now river and
wells. The cost to secure the water from the wells as you know is we have to drill
the well and then we have to pump the water. These are expenses. Our electricity
bill for the water plant runs about $300,000 a year to give you some idea so it's a
pretty hefty number. The chemicals we use to treat our water run in the
neighborhood of about $350,000 a year. So in those two factors alone
operationally again and I haven't even, I could but I haven't even calculated
capitol that secures the source of your water. Yes Irvin.
Pfab/Do we see reduction in chemical costs as we get to the wells?
Atkins/We will expect that to occur, the quality of water that from our collector wells is
such that we believe that we will be able to reduce the chemical treatment process
substantially.
Pfab/But of course what we save in chemicals we pay in electricity (can't hear).
Atkins/Well that' s true Irvin but that's just, what I'm trying to do is identify for you the
factors that you have to consider when you make water rates. The second is the
transmission and distribution center system, that is the water has to get into your
treatment plant and it has to go out of your plant. And out of your plant is a
system of mains, reservoirs, and meters for determining how much water goes
where. This is basically the ability to deliver the product to your home or to your
business so that one you can consume it, you can consume it personally, bath in it,
drink it, you can wash your car. In our case we also use that water consumed to
measure the transportation of waste, water is used to get the waste out of your
house and send it somewhere else, a whole separate treatment system and a whole
different set of circumstances for rates. The third point is customer service, we
have to read those meters, we have to collect the revenue, we have to account for
the individuals who are our water customers and we refer to them as customers.
In our case we do very well, I think you've known from what we've presented to
the Council, our uncollectibles are substantially less than 1 percent so we do very
well in collecting our revenue. A fourth point is I'm simply calling it general
administration is that water treatment plants and the whole process of treating
water is regulated industry by the state of Iowa as well as the federal government.
The safe drinking water act and the fact that the chemicals that we must test for,
treat for, are being added to each year as part of the regulatory process of the
federal government. Also must be accounted for in determining how much it
costs to run our water system. A fifth point is fire protection, often not really
considered in the detail I believe it deserves, but it's a very important part of our
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water system. The hydrants at the curb are paid for by the water system. It is part
of our development process that we require hydrants to be placed at certain
locations so many feet apart. And the importance of that hydrant and the
importance of the water system is the ability to deliver large volumes of water
immediately. And throughout the city, so when you build a water system you
need to build into it a demand and a standby capacity. Both of those factors have
to be considered. You have to have the capacity to meet the demand, the peak
demand, in the summer time is different than the winter time. But as it relates to
fire protection which doesn't respect any seasonal variance we have to have that
ability to deliver large amounts of water very quickly. I don't have the accurate
number but an estimate was well over 300,000 gallons of water was put on the
Mondo's fire. And we believe, in our system we have designed that in different
parts of town we could fire two major fires simultaneously, that are system has
sufficient water to do that. You'll remember the Abbey Inn fire many years ago
and one of the problems that Coralville had at the time was that it was such a huge
fire, well I don't know if you knew that, there' s a connection point between
Coralville and Iowa City. And one of the things we did was tum the valve and
that opened up the water capacity that they needed to fight that major fire for
community, for a small community. The system design another factor is again
sort of a consolation of all of these issues. We must be able to deliver the source
of supply, we much have the capacity to withstand seasonal issues. Taxes, in
Iowa the state taxes water, we collect it for them. They charge sales tax for that.
We also are taxed for the regulatory process, we pay a fee to the state DNR so
they can regulate us and so it's part of our system, we pay them, again factors that
all have to be considered. And then finally other policies that affect water rates,
and again this kind of (can't hear) on some of your political decision making.
We've made a decision that we're going to grow the property tax base. And if
we're going to do that and I'll show you some of our larger users in a moment.
We need the ability to be able to provide adequate water, not only for fire
protection but also for the purposes of a particular company who wants to make a
particular product. One of the good things we have with our system considering
all the grief we took is that our source of water we estimate is about 25 million
gallons a day that we could produce. The treatment plant however has a 16.6
million a day capacity, but the nice thing to know is it's a good problem to have
that we have resources that exceed our capacity to treat. Water also has an impact
on land use planning, and it's simplest terms we draw water from the river and
from wells and into our treatment plant and then it's distributed throughout the
system. Now you have to apply all of the previous factors. We pipe water, that's
suppose to be a pipe by the way, pipe water into our neighborhoods, into those
neighborhoods are homes, there's hydrants, there's water mains, there are laterals,
there are reservoirs to maintain pressure, that serves these neighborhoods. These
neighborhoods have to be interconnected. You understand the process of
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interconnection, if we had a break at that point we could continue to supply the
neighborhood, that's called looping. You remember you've heard us mention
that. An industry on the other hands a little different is that they do not have that
same kind of demand particularly when it comes to the distribution system. You
could basically run a straight pipe to them if you wanted to. They have less
customer service demands, and the peak demand however is something that we
have to accommodate for both residential and our commercial and industrial.
Questions that you all I thimk need to consider when you discuss the issues of
fairness is who should pay for what. If you accept the principle that you pay
based upon the cost of the service to provide the water rates can be designed in
that system. If you would choose for example to go to something and there are a
couple communities in Iowa that use a flat rate, that will increase water costs to
some of our larger users, then the questiofi you have to ask yourself is what' s
going to be a larger user? Is it commercial, is it industrial, is it a large family? Is
it someone like me who has a teenage daugther? Those are decisions that you,
and I don't mean to make light of it those are decisions on large users. Yes Irvin.
Pfab/Do you, are you aware of, or can you state a couple cities that use flat rates?
Atkins/I don't have them in front of me but I can get them to you. We have a list of
them. Kevin we have that Ames report, remember that, we'll pull that up for you
and I'll distribute that to you.
Pfab/I'd be curious.
Atkins/Well what we did on the flat rate while you bring it up is that it has been
discussed and we ran a for instance, and we took our top 21 water users and
applied, if we made our, we have a declining block, we have one block rates and I
want to get into those details because I don't think you want to do that tonight.
System, we took all of our large users and applied a flat rate to them, now this is
not exact science but this will give you a feel. Procter and Gamble is our largest
user, the current system of billing them, they are billed $305,000, by the way I
have copies of all this if anybody needs it, $305,000 a year. If we were to go to a
flat rate which is column three their bill would go to $422,000 an increase of
$117,000. Now the important thing in these large users is not only the water they
consume but if you choose to add a political dimension to your water rate process
I want you to note who they are. The second hospital is a hospital, the fourth
largest is a hospital. We have one, two, three, it appears we have four residential
projects in there. And the rest of them I think speak for themselves, those are our
largest, our top 21 users.
Lehman/The public school system is not one of the big users.
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Atkins/They probably have separate meters at each school Ernie. These are, these are the
large accounts.
Lehman/OK.
Atkins/Now when I, we have about a half a dozen folks who work in treasury, we
maintain about 19,000 water accounts, but we also maintain 13,000 solid waste
accounts, there are sewer accounts, there are about 40,000 plus accounts that have
to be maintained by those folks and the important thing is that maybe by example.
Stopped by the other day, a citizen was concerned about their water bill, talking to
a customer. I found out it involved $6.00. Now that citizen is entitled to work
that through but there's a lot of time and energy to maintain those accounts.
Whereas when you send out a large bill you understand my point. There's no
fight or wrong it's the type of water system and the rate structure that you wish to
have. Basically the declining rate means when you reach a certain use, in our case
3,000 cubic feet on a monthly basis, the rate drops. It's like 0 to 3,000 is a rate,
3,000 and up is another rate, and that's how we maintain our system. Many cities
have 3, 4, 5 categories, that's the declining rate. This is a presentation I gave in a
very abbreviated fashion to the Chamber of Commerce because they were asking
about the factors. I really think it's up to you all, if you wish us to proceed further
with any other kind of rate analysis that's certainly fine. We do do one thing
that's a little unusual and I think Emie and Dee will have to help me on that. You
debated long and hard and hot and heavy over the 20 percent cash policy, the
Council was very split. We accumulate, our rates are higher than they would be
because we choose to accumulate cash from our current users to pay for long term
capital. Our rates again could be argued, could be lowered if their just strictly
reducing the debt over a long period of time but we chose to use cash. That's it's
folks.
Champion/Thank you.
Pfab/I guess we gave everybody else a round.
Atkins/That's OK Irvin, that's all fight.
Pfab/Very informative.
Atkins/Should I go sit down?
Lehman/Questions, don't sit down there may be questions for you.
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O'Donnell/Well I saw rates ranging from 14 to like 38 percent, is that what it said?
Atkins/Most of them were in the 30's Mike, and now remember that was, that was for
demonstration purposes on the flat rate now when you push one up another one
might. Anymore of these? Can we talk while we (can't hear)?
Lehman/Steve one thing you did not address that I guess for me is basic. In determining
the rates and the sliding scale if you will, obviously the cost of production, or at
least I would assume the cost of production basically is a significant factor in how
we determine the sliding scale.
Atkins/Yea, each category of those items I listed 7 or 8 items we could put about, I can
do an estimate of the dollar figure, the operational, for example, pump it, treat it
but also the capital asset that's there. You've got water lines in the street, you've
got water plants, and you can apply those, then you have to take your customer
base, why are the water rates in Cedar Rapids substantially lower than ours? Well
they have a lot of big end users through industry so those are lower than ours.
Lehman/Part of their rates compare their sliding scale, do you know?
Atkins/I couldn't tell, I don't know that, they have declining block like, well we only
have the one block, and they have three or four something like that. But Ernie and
I would caution you about comparing yourself because every town is different.
Their water resource is the Cedar River area, ours is the Iowa River, it's a
different resource, different quality, it's the same, different Phoenix Arizona so
you have to measure those differently.
Lehman/But the same principles apply whether your buying water or your buying toilet
paper, you buy it a roll at a time it's a lot more expensive than if you buy 8 rolls.
Atkins/Yes that's correct.
Lehman/And my at least I've always been under the impression since I've been on
Council that our sliding scale was directly related to the cost of production and
delivery of that water. That the big users required less initial investment, less
maintenance, and costs less to deliver to them per gallon substantially than it does
to the minimum user.
Atkins/That's correct. The basic principle is correct yea.
Kanner/But I would like to see those figures, I don't think it should be that hard to figure
out the capital costs and amortize monthly costs of capital costs.
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Atkins/With all do respect that's very hard, that's a lot of work, I'd be happy to do it for
you, but that's a lot of work.
Kanner/Well I think though that's what this hinges on.
Arkins/OK.
Kanner/It might be a lot of work in principle then maybe I should say I don't think it's
that hard to do. And I think perhaps that's what we need because I think we could
have arguments the other way that it's not. (can't hear).
(END OF 00-71 SIDE 2)
Kanner/And get some figures on that and also bring in, there's a professor of Economics
that I'd like to hear what he has to say perhaps at the next meeting.
O'Donnell/You know what I'd like to hear? The Procter & Gamble going up 38 percent,
I'd like to see the payroll that they put into the community, a flat rate is in a mind
just a another negative perception of trying to promote economic development in
this community. It would just, and do we think that if they listed a trailer court up
there, do we really think that you know that is in a certain aspect affordable
housing, do we really think that if we increase 34 percent on water bills to an
individual trailer that it's not going to be passed forward?
Kanner/I'm not sure, those are some things we have to look into, you bring up some
good points and I don't know if economic development hinges on that water
increase. I think when I see that the lowest, the first 100 cubic feet users are using
10 percent and paying 23 percent of the cost versus the over 3,000 using 35
percent and paying 24 percent, it just doesn't seem fair in a basic way and if we
do want to adjust it I'd say just as we have people that are low income can come
to us and apply for us, let's have those other users come to us and apply also. I
think that might be a fair way to deal with it Mike.
Vanderhoef/I see some other things and I'm following along with this economic
development and when we talk about wanting to build our tax base in Iowa City
and when we want to encourage new businesses in Iowa City if it's a person or an
industry that uses more rather than less water one of the things that they certainly
are going to look at is the rates on water knowing full well what they use for their
plant. And the tradeoff for me is to build the tax base, we'd certainly have dollars
that come into the community from the state economic development, we have it
coming it from all sorts of little grants here and there. They bring things to us to
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create some grant dollars to encourage someone to come here. But we've got to
get them to even look at Iowa City and if it's a water user I think perhaps we
would exclude our self in the competition for new industry coming in and we
might exclude our self from expansion of our existing business if we increase
their water rates.
Pfab/There's no question that water rates are as political as anything that happens.
Vanderhoef/I think their economic I don't.
Pfab/No, no, but I mean it's a political statement. OK so again we come here and we end
up, say we attract a new business. A question that I never can figure out, at what
point do we, what's the term I'm looking for. Are we back? When we bring in a
new industry and we make all kinds of concessions, at what time, at what point in
time do we become even? What's payback time?
Champion/Oh maybe a $20 million dollar payroll (can't hear). I don't think it's a matter
of getting even I think (can't hear).
Pfab/Or payback, in other words we could invest, we could invest put a solar system on
our house.
Champion/Well see, but it's impossible to judge, to say what you're talking about, sorry,
what your talking about because let's say they throw a $20 million dollar payroll
into the city well you can't just say here's $20 million dollars because those
people that are going to have those jobs, (can't hear) going to have what most of
like and that is jobs that could probably live off. That means that they're going to
be investing housing in the community, so they're going to become property tax
payers and that means they're going to become water users, they're going to pay
water bills, that means they're going to be coming to my store and buying clothes,
Ernie's store and buying luggage, and the grocery store and buying food and
there's just no clear cut answer like that, when is the pay back? I would say it's
immediate.
Pfab/OK let me ask you this and this is questions we don't have answers to and that's
what makes the political decision so difficult?
Champion/No you make it political.
Pfab/OK somebody comes in and decides a buy a house, at what point does the city get
payback on the services?
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Champion/Never on a house, probably never.
Pfab/Well but industries they don't, the people that work in industries don't live in caves
either.
Champion/Oh (can't hear).
Pfab/It's a political thing that.
Champion/You make it political.
Pfab/No, no, no, I'm saying no, I'm just saying my point first statement was it's a
political decision.
Champion/And I'm just disagreeing, I'm saying it's an economic decision.
Pfab/All right give me the facts so I can make it economical.
Champion/You're making it political because you somehow think the big guy is pushing
the little guy well I don't think so.
Pfab/No, no, I'm not saying that, I'm saying it's eventually is how we're going to price
is a when you get down to the end is really a political decision.
Champion/Well, I don't know I think Steve used that word too and I disagree.
Pfab/No, no, that doesn't make it wrong.
Lehman/I think that, I think that your probably right, I think that there's probably an
economic.
(Can't hear).
(All talking).
Lehman/Now wait a minute there is an economic basis for setting water rates but politics
is going to influence how you ultimately set them.
Pfab/So I think the point is to get as many facts on the table if we could find cites that are
doing flat rates, what other cites are doing, it's, when it gets down to the end,
Steve's point is right none of them are exactly the same but at least it gives, you
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try to build a Mosaic and can say what is the fight picture that we should present
to the public?
O'Donnell/Well I think, we have three members of our newly formed economic
development task force that sit here and I wonder if they think this is a negative
perception going out as we try and attract development to Iowa City.
Development. Like Connie says, it does better, a $50-$60 million dollar payroll
into the community everybody benefits from that. And I just think you need to
encourage them to expand as well as put up a positive front for a new business
wanting to establish in Iowa City. And I think before we talk anymore about a
flat rate let' s us talk and see if there maybe aren't four people that want to talk
about flat rate.
Lehman/Let me just suggest something and Steven mentions that we have someone who
would like to speak to us about the water rates. I would propose that at a future
work session as soon as we could that we accept a five minute presentation on just
on flat rates.
Kanner/Yea and in part and why that might be preferable.
Lehman/I have no problem with that.
Kanner/Part of the dialogue.
Lehman/And after we hear that presentation let' s see if there are four of us that wish to
pursue this thing.
Champion/Well then I want somebody to speak for five minutes on the opposite view.
Pfab/That's fight let's have Proctor and Gamble come in and.
Lehman/No, no, no, I think it's pretty easy for the finance.
Vanderhoef/I think the Chamber is one of the.
Lehman/Whoa, we have people fight here in the building who can speak as to why we
have a decreasing rate schedule, that's no problem, one of them sitting right up
there, standing there. Because I don't think we go through volumes and volumes
of work to get there.
Atkins/I am not a water rate, sewer rate expert, I do not have a CPA, I'm a general list
folks, I mean I understand the basic principles, I understand the issues that are
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here and if you want me to prep myself to prepare for something such as that
that's going to take me some time.
Lehman/But I wouldn't, that' s why I submitted (can't hear).
Atkins/I don't want to get into a sparring match, with all do respect to the professor of
Economics I don't stand much of a chance in an economics debate, if you want to
have a political science debate absolutely I'm OK with that.
Lehman/All I'm saying is that we hear the presentation.
O'Donnell/I'm not interested Emie, I'm not, I'm about as interested in that as I am about
heating the local option income tax.
Lehman/Oh.
O'Donnell/I'm not interested in either of those and if there are four people here who are
interested I would be willing to sit and listen but I'm not interested.
Champion/I'm not interested.
Wilburn/I'd be willing to listen to the presentation but at the same time I'm looking at
the economic impact and affect (can't hear) looking at the numbers up there you
know even though those are rough guesses and stuff I mean I look at it as just
input that I can consider or not consider so I would be (can't hear).
Lehman/This has come up, I've been on the Council 6 V2 years and we've discussed this
probably three times, we've come to the same conclusion on each occasion. I do
think that there is a certain value in the public seeing that we have, and generally
it's associated with new council folks who don't really, they get a clear picture of
what the costs are involved in producing water, why there is a reduced rate. I
don't have a problem with a five minute presentation on flat rates at the end of
that presentation if there are four people who want to continue the discussion fine,
if there are not that' s the end of it.
O'Donnell/Why don't you find three others and then let's do it.
Champion/But then what happens though is the counter point of that is, is that we have
these big users and so every two years we have a new Council are we going to stir
their economic areas up.
Lehman/Yep, yep, been doing it that way ever since I've been on the Council.
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Champion/Well I think it's ridiculous. If there are four people here who are not
interested in supporting flat rates then why move on any further?
Vanderhoef/I agree.
O'Donnell/I agree.
Champion/I mean, are you going to pursue flat water rates Ernie?
Lehman/No, I've heard this three or four times.
Champion/So we've got four people who are not going to do it so why are we going to
waste anybody's time discussing it anymore?
Kanner/I think Connie we might discuss it because there are a number of options that
might mix out better. One of the problems in Iowa City that a number of people
are talking about the water rates are very prohibited.
Champion/They're terrible.
Kanner/And when you talk about economic development we also have to talk about
people living here and paying those water rates and so I think there could be if we
don't have a flat rate, actually I'd like to see an increase rate.
Champion/Steven who do you think produces the money for all those things that you
want?
Kanner/Let me just finish please, and so I think we ought to take a look at a flat rate but
also some other possible compromise and I think by having further discussion
would be good. I'd also like to know what the rate decrease the percent rate
decrease would be for the first 100 rate. You mention the top 31 but also I think
it would be good to see the other side, what would be the percentage decrease for
people and how it might make it more affordable for more people and perhaps get
more workers in here that we know that we need more and make it a more livable
city. I think we need to continue this discussion.
O'Donnell/Make it a more livable city and who's mine?
Kanner/For people that are having trouble paying the water bills.
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O'Donnell/You know Steven the problem is Council's for the last 20 years have refused
to take action because of the public process, they refuse to address something that
needed to be addressed. We're facing another thing it's storm water management,
that's coming, it's right around the comer, we'd better prepare for it. We've
really had no choice but to do this water plan and in doing it unfortunately prices
for water has to go up but it'sjust we're in it now Steven, we've got to do it, I
disagree with your flat water rate. I think it's a negative perception to business
and I'm really not interested in discussing it. If you have can find three people
who want to do it I would be more than happy to sit here and listen to your case
but you're going to have to find three people besides him.
Lehman/Can I suggest then that we just, we receive some sort of a report from the
profession as to his position, we'll read that paper and decide at that point whether
or not we want to pursue it.
O'Donnell/I have no problem with that.
Kanner/I don't know why we're so afraid of having people talk to us and.
O'Donnell/I'm not scared of this Steven.
Champion/I'm not, I'm not afraid.
Lehman/No Steven, I'm not afraid of that but one of the reasons and I guess if you had
heard, gone through this three times you probably would be not be nearly as
excited about hearing it again is pretty simple, there is not, I do not know of a,
well I take that back apparently Steve you say that we have a couple cities in Iowa
that have flat rates.
Atkins/A couple of them.
Lehman/Is there any utility company with flat rates that your aware of?.
Atkins/Utility company.
Lehman/Utility company that sells electricity or gas.
Atkins/Oh Emie you're asking me things that I just don't know.
Lehman/Well I guess, but it just seems to me that one of the laws of production is that
the more you produce the less it costs you per item and in almost every single
case that I can think of in light you get volume discounts. We don't paper at the
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City of Iowa City you know 10 pages at a time, we don't buy a ream at a time, we
buy thousands of pages at a time and get a much better price than you pay.
Should the City of Iowa City pay the same rate that you pay?
Kanner/Ernie we, the argument that you're making is that that's there's an economy of
scale that is in accordance with the savings but we're also hearing that there are
other factors that go into it so I would say it's not just the economy scale why we
have this declining cost. The savings that are going into for people that are using
more and so I think we need to for the public' s sake and for my sake and I think
for perhaps better policy that we need to hear a little more about this. We need to
see what the costs are, I've never heard what the costs are, you keep saying there's
this economy of scale, I can make this argument that there's not much economy of
scale in water production.
Champion/OK so.
Lehman/Wait a minute, hold it, hold it.
Champion/If I agree with you that there isn't, let's say there is not an economy of scale,
and that their getting a bargain on their water, I don't care because why I'm
saying is they bring so much more to this community that I'm willing to give that
to them because I can tell you that we wouldn't have any housing subsidies, we
wouldn't have any free medical clinic, we wouldn't have any of these things
without those jobs that are being produced there so the reason I'm not willing to
discuss it, I don't care if their getting a bargain, I would give it to them even
cheaper because what they bring into this community is so much more than what
we're giving them and so that's one reason I'm not willing, it's not that I don't
want to listen to people's speech I just think my time is more valuable than to hear
speakers about something I'm not going to change. I'm sorry I really, I'm
grouchy this week.
Lehman/That's all fight, (can't hear).
O'Donnell/I have been too all day.
Champion/I have been too, I'm sorry.
Pfab/Maybe it's the weather.
Lehman/All right, Steven let's get some information and we will talk about this at
another meeting but let' s get some information in writing, the Council can read it
and we can decide based on what we read whether or not we want to pursue it.
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O'Donnell/So what we have is three no's and a qualified maybe.
Lehman/No we're going to get information that's what I said.
Pfab/And Steve, Steve Atkins you will find some other comparable rates in, if you would
do that.
Atkins/Yes, I'll get that distributed to you.
(All talking).
Pfab/It' s a political decision.
Atkins/We do rate surveys, survey the rates of other communities just simply so we
know where we stand but now we do not get into the discussions of why
Ottumwa's rate is $1.00 and Ames is $.50 1 mean I haven't got into that kind of
detail.
O'Donnell/When did we get into this cable rate again? That really upsets me.
Champion/(can't hear).
Lehman/Steven will you get the information for us, will you get it by next time, we'll
read it and decide whether or not we want to pursue this any further. OK folks
that's that one.
Council Time
O'Donnell/Press Citizen Saturday moming made a comment about the stop light on
Pepperwood. They really basically sounded like I was not in favor of it, I am 100
percent in favor it, I don't, they also put that there were no streets that parallel the
highway either noah or south and I suppose the folks on Highland and Hollywood
Boulevard and Kirkwood for that matter would take exception of that. I believe
that if we put that stoplight there and don't synchronize the lights that we will see
an increase of traffic on those streets and I just wanted to clear that up. That's all
if have.
Lehman/Very good.
O'Donnell/And I'm in a better mood now.
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Pfab/We'll discuss flat water rates.
O'Donnell/No we won't.
Lehman/Irvin.
Pfab/Let it go around, let me.
Lehman/Dee.
Vanderhoef/I was just going to remind you.
Lehman/Oh you were going to remind me, there's a meeting that's been, the Cedar
Rapids Gazette has got a couple neighborhood meetings which they've
communicated to Council. I talked to Allison Cink who is Marketing
Communications Director for the Gazette regarding a meeting they're going to
have, two neighborhood meetings they have indicated they were going to invite
the Council, I indicated to them that I would attend but the Council would not
similar to that meeting at Horace Mann where Council, we can't have a public
meeting with.
O'Donnell/Well we can have three.
Champion/No.
Lehman/If somebody else wants to go that's fine but I think.
O'Donnell/You want to go Conhie, I'll go if you go.
Champion/No.
O'Donnell/Then I'm not going.
Lehman/All fight in any even when you get the article from the Gazette it's important
that we don't have more than three people.
Vanderhoef/And there's going to be three of those open this summer.
Lehman/Two of them that I know of.
Vanderhoef/Two.
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Kanner/Is anyone else planning to go?
Pfab/What day is it?
Kanner/Thursday I think.
Pfab/This coming Thursday.
Lehman/No it's July 20th is one and August 3rd is the other.
O'Donnell/I might want to go to one of those Ernie.
Lehman/All right just keep it on your, make a note of it, we'll talk about it again just so
that we don't get to many people there.
Pfab/And the other one.
Vanderhoef/Unless there will be places that we will be there as guests and we won't be
speaking.
Lehman/That's correct. Formally we won't be speaking.
Kanner/I have some items.
Lehman/OK. Steven.
Kanner/A little concemed about the example of the Devonlan Fossil Gorge procedure
how even though technically it might be on the agenda it was through
correspondence and I would feel better if we, if things like that come up again that
it comes to our formal meeting either through Emie mentioned perhaps through
our consent agenda or some other means. And so I put that out there to see if
there's any thoughts on that.
Atkins/Steve didn't it come from the consent calendar.
Lehman/The letter came in the consent calendar but the decision to make any
contributions.
Atkins/Oh OK.
Lehman/I think Steven's point is a good point.
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Champion/Good point.
Kanner/It was in the correspondence in the consent calendar and so my point is anybody
can throw something out in there and Council can consider it in. I think it would
(can't hear) to think about taking it another week down the road and putting it in
as a regular agenda item somewhere.
Champion/I agree with you, I think you're fight about that.
Kanner/And Steve you mentioned some future work sessions and I think those would be
good to put on for our work sessions.
Atkins/That was the idea Steven, you know we're starting to accumulate odds and ends,
there's like four or five of them and I need to know when you folks want to talk
about those things to. We can make them all in one night if you want.
Kanner/Well the one thing that I would ask for employee negotiations do that later in the
year, that would be my request, to have some time to look at it, and see how other
places are doing it. And also.
Atkins/Steve just as a heads up, Dale just reminded, we do have a bargaining session in
the fall so we would, September, two of them in September there abouts so if
that's your interest.
Lehman/I would suggest that if we're going to be items that may be the subject of labor
negotiations that with the permission of the City Attorney we do that in executive
session.
Dilkes/Yea I'll have to look at that particular division.
Lehman/Would you look at that?
Dilkes/I mean I know, but I just don't know in terms of general, I think probably.
Lehman/Well check it out and see to it, find out whether it's appropriate for a public
meeting.
Atkins/Because I think there's a difference between a policy discussion about what
you'd like to get in as to opposed to exactly what you (can't hear).
Kanner/Yea because I don't think we'll be talking specifics but.
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Pfab/No asking for.
Lehman/Well you're not, go ahead.
Kanner/And then the travel policy, I think it might be good to kick it around a little bit
at a work session, we were asked at our correspondence if people agreed with it
and I have some proposals that I think might be better, you and I disagree and
there might be differences but maybe we can do that at a work session just to
finalize that and put it on the table if Council agrees with that. And I had a
question, two more things, the transit interchange I given you a note about that
we had asked Joe to go to Old Capitol and talk about possibly not using angle
parking or not putting that in and now we have the angle parking so I would
assume then we are moving along with the other building. I just wanted to hear
what's going on.
Atkins/Yes.
Champion/Good.
Lehman/Good.
Atkins/I feel better today than when we all got mad and said we're going to take away
their parking and whatever.
O'Donnell/I didn't get mad.
Atkins/Yes you did.
Kanner/One final thing for and this might also be a JCCOG's thing, sidewalks on
Highway 1 west of Riverside. There's a lot of people walking there, I was told
that someone fell down, someone came to me and said that there aren't sidewalks
there.
Champion/Are you talking about Highway 6 or Highway 1 ?
Lehman/Highway 1 west.
Kanner/Highway 1 west of Riverside.
Lehman/Spenler Tire, Slager Appliance, Paul's, Iowa City Landscaping.
Champion/Oh, fight.
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Kanner/I don't think we have sidewalks.
Atkins/I think there are.
Kanner/And we're getting more and more foot traffic I think in that area especially with
the Mormon Trek coming through.
Atkins/And the nature of the businesses that are located there, there are a lot of.
Kanner/Arby's and things like that.
Pfab/I would piggy back on that sidewalk thing, I noticed when I was coming in on
Rochester on this side of Amber Lane.
Atkins/Amhurst.
Pfab/Yea there are no sidewalks there I see people trying to ride their bikes or kids and
what not. I'm thinking on the south side of Rochester.
Atkins/There is a foot path, in my neighborhood, there's a foot path in the, yea.
Pfab/OK I have two things. Are you finished Steve?
Kanner/Yes thank you.
Pfab/I would like to, because of the fact that we had another dog incident where there
was viciousness concerning dogs I'm wondering how we're doing at controlling
the people who are letting their dogs run in the Hickory Hill area? That's one
item, do we have any lists of how many tickets were written, etc. etc.?
O'Donnell/(Can't hear).
Atkins/And the answer is Irvin, the answer is I am having a report prepared to answer
that question for you.
Pfab/The other thing that is kind of important to me and I'm wondering if there' s a way
around it. Different times we come up with property proposals that the city
participate in and I'm a little uncomfortable coming from a real estate background
that the city does not have an appraiser on a retainer. We, this came up the other
evening when you talked about the consultant that we use to negotiate with the
cable people. I'm wondering is there a way that we can have an appraiser on a
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retainer fee or something like this so we don't say well we've got to act now and
it takes to long to get an appraiser. I don't think that' s a legitimate, that's a
situation that I feel very comfortable in.
Lehman/How often does that occur?
Pfab/Well I can think of two or three or four times in the last since I've been on the
Council.
O'Donnell/Which one do you use? Do you rotate them or what do you do?
Champion/You retain somebody.
Kanner/But I think it's worth looking at in our budget as is.
Pfab/I do too.
(all talking)
Lehman/Hold it, hold it.
Dilkes/I think when we need an opinion from an appraiser we can get one, you don't
need to have an appraiser on retainer. If you all think, I mean if the Council
thinks that we have not gotten appraisals when we should have then you need to
let us know.
Pfab/Well I think I have.
Dilkes/You know so, but it's not a question, I don't think we need, nor do I think we
should have an appraiser on retainer because I think there are different appraisers
you want for different appraisal situations, etc. etc. I don't think it's good to have
an appraiser in the city's pocket because you lose credibility immediately, I think
there are a number of reasons. If the issue is there needs to be situations where we
should have had an appraisal and we didn't then that' s a different issue.
O'Donnell/I agree.
Pfab/OK but one of the other points that came up in tonight's meeting was, or tonight's
work meeting was the one at now in condominium the condominium units that are
going to be there are put together with different sets of services, a common that
the city's providing. Now we're paving, buying the sidewalk, we're not asking
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them to clean it and things like that. Now how is that figured in as to the cost of
what the market value of those units are? How is that set?
Dilkes/Well for number one we've retained ownership of those areas as well so they're
not commonly owned and maintained by the city, they're owned by the city and
maintained by the city and there are a number of reasons for that.
Pfab/OK.
Dilkes/But in terms of that, the marketing of those units a decision was made by the
Council to have a Realtor market those and part of what a Realtor does for you is
determine what a good price would be and we have relied on our Realtors for that
in this case.
Pfab/How many offers have you got on any of those parcels?
Dilkes/We have gotten full price offers on all of them.
Pfab/But who set the price? Now OK I can make a point here and I'm not going to but it
could be a point now that the market prices set low enough so any friends that
they have can get it bought, they can make a full price offer and they own it, is
that, that' s a legitimate question that the public can answer us.
Dilkes/Well I think if you had wanted to add a provision to the purchase agreement
making it a contingent on an appraisal you certainly could have done that but that
is not something that at least I was informed that four members of the Council
desired to do.
Pfab/OK.
Lehman/Well Eleanor let me ask you a question. Those properties that were in question
were listed at a price, do we know how many offers we got for each of those? Did
we get 5, 6, 8, 10 offers for any of them?
Dilkes/No we got.
Lehman/We got one offer for each.
Dilkes/I never had competing offers sitting on my desk.
Lehman/But they were available for anybody to make an offer on?
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Dilkes/Absolutely.
Pfab/They were in multiple listing right?
Champion/OK is it my tum now?
Lehman/Yea.
Champion/Well I know it's a big conspiracy to get rid of me but I'm really serious about
downtown, I was almost hit by a bicyclist the other day. And it is dangerous, I
have seen people hit by bicycles, it's not pretty. I am begging us to do something
about that and what I'm going to suggest just as a little experiment is if we could
ask a couple of police officers on their work time to dress in street clothing and
walk around that downtown so they can really see what goes on. Because it is
amazing, it is not safe to walk on the sidewalks of downtown Iowa City because
of the bicyclists. And if they're coming up behind you and you're walking around
talking to somebody.
Lehman/You can't hear them.
Champion/And you move you could be right in their path, with all those (can't hear).
Atkins/Connie when you brought up the other day RJ was gone for a week and we've
only had a brief conversation about it today.
Champion/I promised I would bring it up again.
Atkins/No I know you said that didn't you. I just, I intend to talk to RJ and I intend to
tell him that it's the consensus of Council you have to get tough time on the
bicyclists. Now the police are going to take it on the chin for this.
Champion/Tell them to come see me.
Atkins/All right I just want you to understand that they will be, you're mining it for
everybody, and you know you understand what's happening.
Lehman/Well skate boarders the same way, they were on the (can't hear) today.
Atkins/Same thing, same thing.
Champion/They know they're not suppose to be there.
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Lehman/I know it.
Atkins/Yes.
Vanderhoef/And they know they're not getting tickets.
Pfab/We all know we're not suppose to speed too.
Lehman/Well we've been nice guys and we haven't been getting tickets.
Champion/No I mean the bicyclists, it really is dangerous downtown, we have bicycles
riding the same direction your walking. I've had other people comment the same
thing to me, in fact I could even name them if RJ wants me to.
Atkins/OK.
Champion/He can call them and see how they've almost gotten killed coming out of the
doorways or a bicycle behind them and they've just moved over a step.
O'Donnell/We need to start writing tickets.
Champion/It's just really not a safe situation OK.
Pfab/Connie brings up another very interesting point. We've talked about a lot of
damage down at the ped mall. Do we have a report of what vandalism and broken
city property has been down there. Can we get a report?
Atkins/Sure.
Pfab/As to what say the last six months?
Atkins/Sure.
Pfab/OK.
Lehman/Anybody else for council time? All right we're out of here guys, see you
tomorrow night.
Adjourned 9:40 PM.
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