HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001-05-14 TranscriptionMay 14, 2001 Work Session Page
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May 14, 2001 Work Session 6:30 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn, Pfab, Kanner
Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Dilkes, Franklin, O'Malley, Boothroy, Klingaman, Neumann,
Grosvenor, Trueblood
TAPES: 01-53 BOTH SIDES; 01-54 BOTH SIDES
Lehman/Additions to the Consent Calendar that we hadn't handed out tonight so.
Karr/Three of them are letters for support for affordable housing and the other one is
setting a public hearing on the Iowa City Kickers Park asphalt so we'll add those if
that' s okay.
Lehman/All right.
Karr/All right.
Lehman/Zoning items.
Planninl~ & Zoninl~
A. CONSIDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JUNE 12 ON AN
ORDINANCE CHANGING THE ZONING CODE BY AMENDING THE
PLANNED DEVELOPMENT HOUSING OVERLAY. OPDH-8, PLAN FOR
ARBOR HILL AN 8.2 ACRE 17-UNIT RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT
LOCATED NORTH OF WASHINGTON STREET ON ARBOR HILL CIRCLE.
Karin Franklin/This should be very quick. We have two setting of public hearings, the
first one is on an OPDH-8 plan for Arbor Hill, that' s off Washington Street.
B. CONSIDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR JUNE 12 ON AN
ORDINANCE VACATING HEMINGWAY LANE WEST OF RUSSELL
DRIVE.
Franklin/The second is a public hearing on an ordinance vacating Hemingway Lane that' s
in South Point Subdivision.
C. CONSIDER PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDINANCE CHANGING THE
ZONING DESIGNATION OF APPROXIMATELY 0.83 ACRES FROM
PUBLIC (P) TO CENTRAL BUSINESS (CB-10) LOCATED SOUTH OF
IOWA AVENUE BETWEEN LINN STREET AND GILBERT STREET.
(REZ01-00005)
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Franklin/Item 3 is the public hearing on the changing of zoning designation of. 83 acres
from P to CB-10, this is of Tower Place and I think we talked about it a little bit at
the last meeting so you understand the concept.
D. PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDINANCE AMENDING TITLE 14, CHAPTER 6,
ENTITLED," ARTICLE "CON/[N/[ERCIAL AND BUSINESS ZONES," TO
ALLOW MUNICIPALLY OWNED, MIXED-USE PARKING FACILITIES IN
THE CENTRAL BUSINESS SUPPORT ZONE (CB-5) AND THE CENTRAL
BUSINESS ZONE (CB-10).
Franklin/And then in Item D there' s an ordinance amendment which permits municipal
parking in the CB-10 and in the CB-5 zone in anticipation of the Transportation
Center which will be a similar circumstance to Tower Place.
E. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE ZONING CODE ARTICLE (D),
DEFINITIONS, AND ARTICLE (L) PROVISIONAL USES, SPECIAL
EXCEPTIONS AND TEMPORARY USES, TO ALLOW ACCESSORY
APARTMENTS IN ACCESSORY BUILDINGS. (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Item E is pass and adopt on the accessory apartments.
F. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE SENSITIVE AREAS OVERLAY
PLAN FOR WALNUT RIDGE PARTS 8, 9, AND 10, AN APPROXIMATE
35.15-ACRE RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION LOCATED ON KENNEDY
PARKWAY. (REZ01-0003) (FIRST CONSIDERATION).
Franklin/Item F is your first consideration of Walnut Ridge which I think we've already
have considerable discussion of.
Kanner/Karin I had another question for you there. We've been told by Southgate and
perhaps others that this something that the City wanted could you tell me how the
city initiated this if they did.
Franklin/What Glenn Siders was referring to was the entire development of Walnut Ridge
and at that time there was a sentiment among some of the City Councilor' s who
were sitting at the time that they wished to have a large lot development, one acre
lot development within Iowa City that would provide that housing option within
the corporate limits instead of that only being available in the county and that' s
what Glenn is talking about.
Kanner/Were there any special inducements that the Council gave for that to push that
forward?
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Franklin/When we first started the whole project there were some special things in that
plan development and primarily it was in a rural cross section of Kennedy
Parkway, there was a desire on the part of the developer when they started this and
thinking it would be a sales point for the project to have the rural cross section, no
sidewalks, no curb and gutter but just the shoulders as you would find in the
county. The Council agreed to that at the time but then as the project progressed
the developers found that it, they were having problems with that kind of
construction in the county and decided to go ahead and do the urban cross section
for Kennedy Parkway in this particular development so that' s the main thing that I
can think of was that there were some standards that were varied which we can do
under the OPDH plan. But they were modified as time went on and in fact the
development changed some of it's rural character to more urban at least in the
street cross sections. That's what I recall.
Kanner/Thank you.
Franklin/Anything else on that?
ITEM G. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE FINAL PLAT OF THE
PENINSULA NEIGHBORHOOD, A 12.09-ACRE, 47-LOT SUBDIVISION
LOCATED AT THE WEST END OF FOSTER ROAD.
Franklin/Item G is a resolution of the final plat on the Peninsula, we're going to ask you
to defer that to June 12, we're still going through construction plans. That will
mean that you also need to continue the public hearing in Item number 13 which is
the conveyance.
Lehman/Continue to the 12th of June?
Franklin/Yes.
Vanderhoef/I have a question.
Franklin/Okay.
Vanderhoef/In the resolution we're talking about especially on the second page number
two, and it says the city accepts the dedication of streets, alleys and easements as
provided by law. And specifically says to set aside portions of the dedicated land,
namely streets and alleys, it's not being opened for public access at the time of
recording for the public safety reasons. The second part of it I understand it
completely, however, with our general practice of not doing maintenance of alleys
or upkeep on them why would we accept dedication of an alley that we have no
intention of taking care of?. Do we have to?
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Franklin/We do, in this project what we have agreed to and this we went through with the
preliminary platting and planning of it is the alley' s will be public alley' s, they will
be, the pavement will be maintained by the city for the life of the pavement, the
homeowner' s association will be responsible for removing snow. And we will
provide garbage pick up on the alley's and that's going to be explicitly stated
within our sub dividers agreement.
Vanderhoef/I don't recall that discussion so this.
Franklin/Well it's something that has been, the alley' s have been an integral part of this
project from the beginning.
Vanderhoef/Having alley' s yes and as I recall we were going to have another discussion
about alley's before this project came up and it was in conjunction with redoing
and looking at all of our zoning, that part of the city code.
Franklin/Well this will just be for the Peninsula, it' s not extrapolating that policy to the
entire city.
Vanderhoef/Well that may be true and.
Franklin/But it's to see if it works too.
Vanderhoef/And my contention is that we shouldn't be doing it out there and if this was
talked about it slipped past me because I've never had intention of having this be
any maintenance by the city.
Franklin/Mr. Mayor.
Lehman/Well does anyone else share the same concern?
Franklin/I mean is there?
Vanderhoef/You know did somebody else hear a conversation that I don't recall?
Lehman/I don't think so but I think we require the alley' s for the subdivision that there' s
probably a certain amount of responsibility on our part if we're going to require
that the access be from the rear to the garages and whatever and that' s a city
requirement that' s not a choice on the part of the developer.
Vanderhoef/Right, it's a requirement but there was conversation just in general about
how much concrete we were putting in there and the alleys and the maintenance
and whether the garbage and I don't remember a finished out conversation that
said whether we were going to have garbage pick up in the front or the back.
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Franklin/A lot of that Dee has been done at a staff level with the developer, with public
works, with planning, yea I mean and I mean we usually work through details like
that at a staff, we have not had that discussion at the Council level, you're right, in
terms of the garbage pickup or any of that. The public ownership of the alley you
know frankly we've had so many conversations about the Peninsula I can't
remember if we had that conversation with the Council or not.
Champion/I don't think so I don't remember it.
Vanderhoef/For me in the general conversation for alleys and trying this kind of a thing I
was going to go along with it but I wasn't thinking I was picking up for the city
the cost of maintenance and plowing two streets for one set of homes.
Franklin/We won't be plowing alleys, the alley, the snow removal is the responsibility of
the homeowners association.
Vanderhoef/We'll be doing all the other things.
Franklin/We will do the maintenance for the pavement life, when the pavement
disintegrates or ages to the point where it needs to be replaced, that will be the
responsibility of the homeowners association and our agreement to have garbage
pickup in the alleys will be depended upon the developer and then the homeowner
association agreeing to do the snow removal, agreeing that when the pavement life
is passed that that will be taken care of by that organization.
Vanderhoef/Then I want to know are we requiring them to build the alleys to street
standards so that we don't, we are not sending out different kinds of pick up
trucks for garbage and all that stuff in the alley. Because typical alley, as I
understand it are not as reinforced concrete.
Franklin/The paving thickness will be the same, the width.
Vanderhoef/As the street.
Franklin/As a street yes. The width and the radius at the intersection with the street are a
different standard than what we typically have, they're narrower.
Atkins/Just for a heads up for Council we do already send out other than packers on
certain streets, we have private streets in town that we can not take a packer down
that street so we do have to send a smaller truck for the pick up of refuse, that' s
not uncommon. When we discussed this if I recall the standard that the alley was
to be constructed was similar to that of a residential street. And given the traffic
volumes on the alley it's expected life was far greater than the potential would be
for a normal thorough fare you might find in front of a home. I'm just trying to
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recollect our conversations Karin, does that sound about right what we talked
about over the months.
Franklin/Yea, I didn't hear the last part that you said about.
Atkins/That the life of an alley will far exceed that of a residential thoroughfare just
simply because of the volumes of traffic that occur. And it is unlikely we would
send a packer down those alleys we will have to send some smaller pieces of
equipment, which is not uncommon.
Lehman/But the street would take a packer ifit's being constructed as (can't hear).
Atkins/Yea we could the only trouble is the crowding of people.
Franklin/The turning movements I mean because we're going to have parking on the
streets and so the turning movements would be inhibited, I mean this is going to be
a denser kind of development and I thought we all knew that.
Atkins/And we also Ernie made you a contract (can't hear) may propose that to you since
you have a very isolated single neighborhood of unique but standard designs
throughout the thing, it might be easier for us to do that, I just don't know the
answer to those things yet.
Franklin/I guess the only point that I don't disagree with you on, I just don't know is the
life of the alley relative to the street.
Atkins/I've always understood it to be that way, yea.
O'Donnell/I guess I don't have a problem with the garbage man (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/Well if the street is built to that standard, that was my question.
O'Donnell/It will be a lot more convenient because there will be parking so I.
Franklin/It's built to the pavement width standard.
Vanderhoef/So when we talk about alley though we need to be real clear that it is built to
the standard of a street not what code presently allows.
Franklin/Right, well right now we don't have much for an alley, yea you're right.
Vanderhoef/That' s the difference because I know that was a concern of Public Works
from day one.
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Atkins/Well the, when we discussed it I remember when a number of you brought it to
me, we had discussions about making streets wider, alleys wider, but quite frankly
we were becoming so accommodating with width it appeared we were taking away
from the general intent of the design of the neighborhood which was to be
compact and have at least the appearance, I hate to say this of an old
neighborhood.
Franklin/Yep.
Champion/Did you actually say the alley was going to be as wide as the street?
Franklin/No, no, no, no.
Lehman/Thickness.
Atkins/Thickness.
Franklin/Thickness of the concrete, the width will be narrower much narrower.
Champion/I was just thinking.
Atkins/And now you understand why the snow removal in particular we will need a
private homeowners because we have no place to store it, it will be their obligation
and basically their own property except the snow when it's being pushed aside.
Franklin/Anything else? I'm done.
Lehman/Thank you.
Champion/That was easy.
Al~enda Items
Item 3d(1). CONSIDER A RESOLUTION ACCEPTING THE WORK FOR THE IOWA
AVENUE STREETSCAPE PROJECT, PHASE 1.
Vanderhoef/Consent Calendar I will be asking to have separate consideration the
resolution to accept the work for Iowa Avenue otherwise I have to recluse myself
from the (can't hear).
Pfab/Which item was that?
Vanderhoef/It's the one to accept the work for the Iowa Avenue Streetscape and that' s a
conflict for me to (can't hear) on that one. It is.
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Karr/3 d( 1 ).
Vanderhoef/3 d( 1 ).
Lehman/3d what?
Vanderhoef/( 1 ).
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/Yea I've got a few but as long as we're on that one there's two different cost lists
for that, one says it was page 93 in our council package, it says $1.225 million
dollars while page 94 says $1.099 million dollars and I'd like to know which is
correct.
Lehman/Is one the actual and one the bid?
Vanderhoef/One is the bid and one is the actual, the estimated cost was $1.056 and the
bid was $1.098 and the actual was $1.099.
Kanner/Yea and if you look on page 93 the engineers report says the final construction
cost is $1.225 so we need to clarify that, I believe they're talking about the same
project here.
Lehman/Can we have that tomorrow night?
Atkins/We're looking, well we'd like to get it for you tonight I just haven't gotten to it.
Kanner/93 and 94 in our.
Atkins/We'll look that up for you Steve, we'll get that to you before. You got it, there it
is.
Kanner/We need to find out what we actually paid or what the actual charge is.
Kanner/While your looking, info. package number 5 on the final 2000 census report, I'd
like to know approximately we'll discuss. Do we have the authority to ask for a
challenge, is it up to the City Council and if it is when we will put that on a work
session?
Karr/We are awaiting the figures right now and once we get those figures, staff will go
through them, assess them and then a determination, a recommendation to Council
whether we will challenge it or not. As I noted earlier it is a very small window
and a certain criteria of challenges, until we get those figures and take a look at
them we just won't know.
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Kanner/Do you know approximately when we'll get the figures again?
Karr/Well we, we've requested the figures on CD-Rom, we expect to get them in May or
June, but as I also noted there is a three-year window of challenges which doesn't
even start until June 30 and runs to September 3, of 2003. So we'll get those
figures, and I expect to get those in the next 60 days, and then we'll take a look at
each specific district or count and make a determination at that time.
Kanner/So you think we'll get a memo probably in the fall sometime from the staff.
Atkins/Oh sooner than that.
Karr/I think you'll get it probably earlier than that.
Atkins/Hopefully a lot earlier than that Steve, yea, we'll need something to work on. As
soon as we get them we'll turn them around to you very quickly, or soon as they
arrive.
Karr/I don't think.
Dilkes/I don't think, I assume it's going to take some analysis.
Atkins/Oh yea as soon as they arrive we can get them to you and we can begin our
analysis, but we can give you the heads up on what we have.
Karr/Yea, we're also going to have to put a priority first on also redistricting, using those
numbers to redistrict, we're going to be mandated to do that by September 1st. So
that will be our first responsibility and then we'll take a look at that.
Kanner/Okay. And number 9 in the info. package, we had a memo from Chuck about
the possibility of some sort of bicycle sidewalk or pedestrian sidewalk, from the
way I read it, it seemed that he thought it had to do with letting automobiles of
some sort go on there. He mentions opening it up to traffic and I just wonder if
we can clarify that about whether we can build just a sidewalk.
Atkins/I don't think we can build a sidewalk independent of the rest of the project but I
think Chuck' s concerns Steve were that if we encouraged traffic up there we're
going to get bicyclists, motorcycles and simply put, a lot of hell raising' s going to
go on because it's a remote area. Yea.
Lehman/There will be a path.
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Atkins/Oh yea, I mean we can get a foot path up there, but we didn't want to provide, I
think Chuck' s point was that if I put any kind of paved surface I'm going to
encourage all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles, other folks.
Kanner/Well don't we have that possibility for any bicycle path you have?
Atkins/Yea you do, this is a judgment call, this just appeared to be a little more remote,
your going through basically undeveloped territory, if somebody' s going over our
bicycle paths now it's a little difficult to hide.
Lehman/Well I can't imagine we would hard surface the path when we're going to have
to take it back out when we pave it.
Atkins/I think Steven's point, was can we encourage some use of the thing, but it is a
reasonably attractive site.
Kanner/Well even just a simple asphalt thing that will last a year or something, simple.
Atkins/You know folks it's up to you, and I think Chuck is speaking from experience that
if your going to get motorized vehicles up there your asking for trouble.
Dilkes/I think one of the concerns is that if we just throw something down that doesn't
meet our standards then we're going to have some difficulty defending a liability
suit if we draw people to that area.
Wilburn/If somebody has an accident up there is that what you mean?
Atkins/Foot traffic I don't think there' s any trouble, encouraging foot trouble up there, in
fact it will happen anyway.
Pfab/Are you going to be able to keep people, is there going to be a problem keeping
people off of it?
Atkins/I beg your pardon Irvin.
Pfab/How difficult is it going to be to prevent motorized vehicles from accessing?
Atkins/If their motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles they'll find their way on there pretty
easily. But the foot traffic I don't think we care.
Kanner/Okay thanks Steve.
Item 3d(2). CONSIDER A RESOLUTION ACCEPTING THE DEDICATION OF
OUTLOTS A AND B TO THE CITY OF IOWA CITY AS PLATTED IN THE
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SCOTT SIX INDUSTRIAL PARK, IOWA CITY, IOWA AND DECLARING IT
OPEN FOR PUBLIC USE.
Kanner/Consent calendar #d(2) the outlots at Scott Six industrial park, how big are those
and what's the topography like there?
Atkins/If it's Scott Six I'm sure it's flat and I don't know how large that.
Lehman/No I think it's around the creek isn't it?
Atkins/Oh the creek outlots.
Franklin/Basically it's a storm water detention basin.
Atkins/Oh that one.
Franklin/And well let' s see how do we explain it, it goes down from Scott Boulevard and
then up the other side. I think it's about.
Lehman/With the low point at the bottom.
Franklin/Low point at the bottom, and it's kind of linear, about 3 acres.
Kanner/3 acres.
Atkins/Aren't you glad you asked?
Franklin/If you go down Scott Boulevard you can see it very clearly from the sidewalk.
Kanner/And that' s, is that where one of the areas we're thinking of a possible dog park
that was explored?
Franklin/No, no, not unless we want the dogs to drown. It will get, it gets water in it
with some frequency.
Atkins/I think the Scott Park your thinking of Steve is the one over off of Scott
Boulevard up by, yea.
Franklin/Yea, this is the industrial park down by Highway 6.
Kanner/Okay.
Atkins/And yes that is one of the locations, Terry is going to be here tonight, one of the
locations that the Commission had talked about for a dog park was what is the
storm water retention, or detention basin off Scott Boulevard.
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Kanner/And so are they going to put any kind of path around the basin or anything like
that?
Atkins/This basin.
Kanner/Yea.
Atkins/Probably not since it's industrial.
O'Donnell/It would be hard to reach in high water periods.
Champion/(Can't hear).
ITEM NO. CORRESPONDENCE 3e(1). Jason Schaffer- Energy Efficiency.
Kanner/We have Jason Schaffer talking about more energy efficient light bulbs and I was
thinking is it possible for lights, indoor lights to do more compact fluorescent
lights that are more energy efficient.
Atkins/We can give you a reasonably comprehensive report on energy efficiency. I would
assure you that we are probably as good at it as any organization at least around
here with respect to implementation of energy policies, we have a pay back fund.
With respect to the street lights I think Jason mentions that' s the transfer over
from incandescent to fluorescent, I know that that' s a routine program when we
buy or basically rent a street light we have an obligation to pay for X number of
years and as they are replaced out I'm also positive we put in the newer
florescent' s. We can find out some more information for you in general, that
would be easy enough to do.
Vanderhoef/Then let' s copy this gentleman.
Atkins/Sure you'd like to response, okay fine, give us a little time and we'll prepare
something a little more comprehensive for you and let you know what we're up to
with respect to that. Just so you know all the department directors at our meeting,
our regular staff meeting are aware that the fact that they have to look internally
with respect to their own fuel consumption and other energy related issues with
respect to their operations on how we can start bringing down the costs, simply
because of the fact that the cost per unit is going up dramatically, both electricity
as well as fuel, so those are underway but we'll get you something on that. And
then we'll prepare an answer for Jason, right Jason.
ITEM 3d(17) CORRESPONDENCE - Tom Saterfiel - Sidewalks
Vanderhoef/There' s another one that might need a response, Saterfiel.
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Atkins/Where am I again Dee, I didn't hear you.
Vanderhoef/Tom Saterfiel.
Kanner/Number 17.
Vanderhoef/Yea.
Atkins/Is that a Lexington issue?
Lehman/No.
Kanner/Muscatine.
Vanderhoef/Muscatine.
Kanner/Why there was a barrier for 6 weeks?
Vanderhoef/It's still there.
Lehman/I think it's still there yea.
Atkins/That one I don't recall, I'll check that for you and get an answer for you.
Vanderhoef/Yea, know what's happening there and (can't hear).
Kanner/And one other correspondence
ITEM NO. 3d(3) CORRESPONDENCE - James Petran - Lexington Avenue.
Kanner/And then one other correspondence #3 James Petran seemed to have a good idea
about posting signs for possible alterations to street parking and street calming
similar to like what we do with rezoning so that other neighbors are aware of that.
Atkins/Oh some additional signing when we go through the closure process on
Lexington, is that?
Kanner/Well before, when we send out postcards to the immediate neighborhood but we
still take into account other people's comments but often times they're not aware
of it.
Atkins/(can't hear) did you want to add something?
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Dilkes/I think that' s all, the policy that you all adopted as I understand it for traffic
calming was followed so if you all want to make changes to that policy you need
to look at it and say what those changes should be.
Kanner/Right, that's what I'm bringing up, that we, I think it's okay that we set a limit of
where we get postcards to but it would be good I think to put up a couple signs on
the streets saying or on the neighborhood that this is subject to traffic calming
study.
Dilkes/All I'm saying is that you need to look at the whole policy, when that would
happen, what the input would be when people saw the signs and that kind of thing
SO.
Pfab/I would like to make a comment about the signs that are posted regarding zoning
changes. I feel that the public really gets short changed and the fact that they're
so generic and without any being more specific, you see a sign out there just
subject well I know signs in the past had more information on them about a
specific item. And I really think that' s something we should get back to.
Champion/There's a number to call.
Pfab/Yea there's a number to call but it's an evening and so nobody's there and you
know, with no information on it I just don't think that that' s a good way for the
City government to communicate with it's citizens.
Franklin/We'll do it obviously however you all wish us to do it. We had this discussion
with the Council, I don't know if it was just this past Council or the one prior to
that in which we expanded the amount of notification we give in terms of letters
being sent to everybody.
Pfab/No, no.
Franklin/But the signs were also changed at that time to be more generic to give as much
information as we could at that time but have the citizen whoever is interested in it
contact our office, we then put them on our mailing list, we then talk to them, the
planner who is working on that project talks with the person, it does require
somebody to call the office but they potentially can get more information.
Pfab/All right does it?
Franklin/So if you want to change it we can relook at it.
Pfab/Okay to me the sign was extremely barren of information and did it? I don't recall
exactly the words, it's been two or three weeks since I came across one, and does
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it say on the sign that if you want to be put on the mailing list call and have your
name added?
Franklin/No it says for information call the office number.
Pfab/Right, and I think that that you know, people live busy lives and they have no idea it
can be, I just don't think that' s a good way, that' s my personal opinion and.
Franklin/Okay if the group wishes us to change our practice you'll let us know.
Pfab/Maybe would it be possible for the City Council and the public to bring one of those
generic signs to a Council meeting?
Lehman/Well is, Irvin, first of all anybody who' s got enough interest to read the sign will
probably call the number.
Pfab/I, I.
Lehman/You're not going to be able to begin to put enough information on the sign to do
any good.
Pfab/No, but say it' s a building, or it' s a street change, or a stop sign or just something.
Lehman/No, no, we're talking zoning which is not stop signs or.
Pfab/But I mean something to change it from so and so to so and so real simple.
O'Donnell/I think the phone number covers a great deal ifit's too late that night, you
know it's 8-5 here, I don't see a problem with this.
Lehman/Well the thing I like about the phone number, if we put something on the sign
people assume that may be all the information they need and we can never put
everything on the sign.
Pfab/I agree.
Lehman/Pick up the phone they can find out everything they need to know and be mailed
information.
Pfab/Well the telephone, if the sign states that then I would probably back off but if it
doesn't state, in other words to get more information, to get on a mailing list.
Lehman/That' s what it says.
Pfab/Hard to be better informed, something that, just say.
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Lehman/Well for more information dial a certain number pretty much tells the story.
Pfab/Well it's maybe a recording, maybe nobody answers see. I mean that' s my own
personal opinion.
Lehman/Other agenda items.
Atkins/Ernie on Agenda, a couple of things, Maggie and Doug are both here if you have
a question on the "Dream Home" project or the annual housing plan. And there' s
a memo that I put at your place on Harlocke Weeber concerning parkland
acquisition, while you can not discuss it this evening it does need to be scheduled,
I think Eleanor wants to give you a heads up on Harlocke Weeber.
Dilkes/Oh I was going to do it at Council Time but I'll just mention it now. I understand
from the press that Southgate has filed suit in connection with the Harlocke
Weeber rezoning, I haven't seen the lawsuit so I can't comment on it.
Atkins/So it will have some bearing on the memo that I had given you.
Dilkes/But we shouldn't be discussing it tonight, we need to, put that, and put it on your
agenda.
Lehman/Are you asking that this parkland acquisition item be?
Atkins/It will need to be scheduled for a work session, I just wanted to give you a heads
up and now the lawsuit has been filed so there will be (can't hear).
Lehman/Do we need to ask if we have four people that want to put it as an agenda item,
is that what your asking?
Atkins/I think your going to discuss the lawsuit anyway, Eleanor has to advise you.
Dilkes/We'll deal with it. If the four of you want to talk about it openly, talk about the
acquisition then your going to need to put it on your public agenda. I suspect
we'll be talking about the lawsuit in executive session.
Lehman/Right. Do we want to put the acquisition of parkland on a work session?
O'Donnell/No.
Champion/I don't see any reason to put it on a work session if we have a lawsuit pending.
Pfab/Is there anything that we can discuss?
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Dilkes/While we schedule an executive session and we'll talk about it and we'll go from
there.
Lehman/All right so we won't schedule it for a work session until after the executive
session, all right fine. Other agenda.
Atkins/Again Doug and Maggie are here if you have questions for that.
ITEM NO. 7. THE IOWA CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY' S UPDATED ANNUAL
PLAN.
ITEM NO. 8. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING ACQUISITION OF A
SINGLE-FAMILY LOT LEGALLY DESCRIBED AS LOT 6, BLOCK 39,
EAST IOWA CITY, UNDER THE AFFORDABLE DREAM HOME
OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM.
Kanner/Yea Maggie I have a couple questions for you, please come to the microphone.
First for the "Dream Home" which is in our page 225 the resolution. Where
exactly is the lot?
Maggie Grosvenor/By the Odd Fellows, I don't know, Doug do you know the actual
address? I don't know the actual address.
Kanner/Well where' s Odd Fellows? In what direction there?
Lehman/By City High.
Boothroy/It's on B Street and it's south of Court Street, generally south of City High in
that area, immediately south of Court, it's not quite as far out as Hoover, it's more
about a block and a half east of the intersection of 7th Avenue and Court and B
Street is a diagonal street that runs easterly, if your going out east that' s the way
you'd go and it's on the south side of the street and the lot is about 80 x 150
approximately in size.
Kanner/How big?
Boothroy/And as I indicated in the memorandum it is presently owned by Mike and Judy
Cilek who are going to be selling it to the City at a cost less than what they paid.
Lehman/This is an in~ll lot with trees.
Boothroy/It does have some mature trees on it that's correct.
Kanner/And this is for Council and sort of for you to from Steve Nasby about the median
income going up in Iowa City for family of four to $62,000 or so and but he said
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we mostly limit benefits to families at 50 percent and I was wondering if Council
would want to consider putting some sort, the same kind of limits for things like
the "Dream Home" also at that 50 percent level because your talking 80 percent,
your getting up quite high income.
Vanderhoef/But those folks have to meet a regular bank loan and sometimes the percent,
it can't happen, they won't qualify for a loan.
Kanner/Well then I would propose that we look at Dream Homes that are less expensive
that meet the financial ability of people at 50 percent which might mean a different
way of looking at the program.
Champion/But the program is to provide homes to families who basically are supporting
themselves and have the ability to maintain a home but can't quite come up with all
the, isn't that right, the down payment, that kind of business.
Grosvenor/That' s correct.
Champion/On their own so it's that proof that this home was being targeted for and
although 50 percent of whatever you said the median income is now that' s pretty
low and a lot of these people that move into these homes have kids and believe me
80 percent of the median income in Iowa City is not a lot of money when your
trying to raise children and maintain a house and so I disagree with you on that.
Kanner/Well I think 50 percent is $30,000 and there could be a lot of opportunity.
Champion/I don't think you could afford a house in that price range at $30,000 if you've
got a family.
Lehman/And if you can't get a loan then the program won't work, the banks have to
carry the loan.
Kanner/You can, I think you can get loans at that amount at $30,000 and that' s the point
of this program is to help those people who are just on the edge and I think 80
percent is starting to get up a little too high.
Vanderhoef/Well I think we need that range in there Steven and certainly and any family
who comes and can qualify for the home and they're at 50 percent more power to
them, if they qualify they qualify so putting all we have to do is put that upper limit
of 80 percent.
Champion/That' s the good point.
Vanderhoef/Which is required by the federal law.
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O'Donnell/It's the other (can't hear).
Lehman/If someone qualifies at 63 percent they can buy the home.
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Grosvenor/Correct.
Vanderhoef/Sure.
Lehman/It just can't be over 80.
Vanderhoef/It just can't be over 80 so.
Kanner/Well the point is making homes affordable Dream Homes that would be for the
50 percent range and it means I think a slight revamping of our philosophy on the
Dream Home project. I think it's geared, it seems to me it's geared more towards
that upper 80 percent limit.
Grosvenor/We don't gear it towards an income level, we gear it towards a project, for
example the last year we did it was a green built home which is more expensive.
This home is going to be a universal design which is going to be more expensive
and sometimes the lot that we pick or that have an opportunity you know to be
built on are going to be a little more expensive so I don't think there' s any
argument that you can maybe build a cheaper home and less, but that' s exactly
what your saying, it's not our philosophy at this point.
Vanderhoef/What I see as possibilities out there is if we build multi unit kind of thing like
on the peninsula and the condo one or two out of the multi unit that that might
come in and be available to a family that maybe is a lower income just because the
price of that unit could be driven down because it's a multi, I don't know that but
it was something that crossed my mind when we started looking at those units out
there.
Boothroy/I'd like to make a comment, I think one of the, I think is a neat thing about this
particular project is that this is turning into a community project, Mercy Hospital
has signed onto provide us a substantial amount of money toward the project.
Mike and Judy Cilek are going to participate, Coldwell Banker, we're going to
have other groups, talking to the Home Builders, AARP and others to be part of
this demonstration and what this house is looking at is demonstrating how people
through planning can build homes that are useable by people of all ages and
abilities and/or levels of disabilities by simply doing things that are not much more
expensive in terms of construction but can add some enhancements like step less
entries, wider hallways, doorways, a larger bathroom, they make the house look
more spacious but at the same time that house will age well with that particular
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family or subsequent family. And what' s important here is that I think that not
only do we have the opportunity to raise awareness but it's also an opportunity to
establish information that we can share in time because we're looking at trying to
do a video or a CD video type thing which will show people some of the things
that they can do to make their house, if they're planning a house work for them or
other families as they age or change or circumstances happen. So let' s not, I don't
want to lose track of that particular thing and one of the things that the ad hoc
program has allowed us to do is to go into these different areas and I think this
will be very interesting, I think we can get a lot of information out to the
community about how these things can be done.
Kanner/And I'll second what you said, I like the idea of how you've go the different
partners and the universal design is a good thing and I think it's a Council decision
in the future if it wanted to move and say we wanted to make it a point that we
want to limit things to 50 percent and then make these things work at that level
which we can with different kind of financing and so forth so that' s I'm bringing
up, it doesn't appear there's a majority that wants to go along with it but I still
think it's a good idea to maybe get to that 50 percent level in general, it's getting
really high that 80 percent.
Boothroy/I think simple family detached is always going to be more expensive than if we
did attached units, and but I think there' s a need to try to meet those types of
levels, I think that as we've talked here, there are a lot of families t hat are low
income by definition, 80 percent median income and they need this opportunity and
it's a good thing to provide that opportunity for them as well as what your saying
that may be able to get it to 50 percent but our experience over the last few years
has been that it's really difficult for somebody at 50 percent if not almost
impossible to own their own property, it's very difficult to qualify them. Where
it's even difficult to qualify someone at 80 percent let alone 50 percent. So it
really narrows the markets severely.
Lehman/Yea but I think that Peninsula property there' s going to be some of those
possibly some of those multi-family that can be condominiumized.
Boothroy/At some point not initially.
Lehman/Yea and if the Section 8 voucher becomes available for mortgages this could be a
whole new ball game which we'll probably get to the first of, next fiscal year.
Boothroy/And I think that address what Steven is talking about is we're looking at
coming to the Council sometime in the fall I think with a Section 8 ownership
program which allows us to use vouchers as a way of doing mortgage payments
and when we get to that level I think were going to be able to open it up to a little
broader group.
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Lehman/Thank you.
Boothroy/About the plan, okay.
Kanner/Yea I did have a few questions. All in all it looked really good, the plan, and I'll
ask a couple tomorrow and I have a few for today. For instance the capital
improvements look good the schedule you laid out, it was interesting to see that
how everything is laid out the next five years, furnaces, screen doors, etc. On one
category you had shop improvements, this was under the non-dwelling equipment
category for $50,000 for the year 2002. This was, we had a different packet page,
do you recall what that was?
Grosvenor/That was, we didn't alter the 2000, this was projected two years ago, two to
three years ago at that time we were going to renovate the (can't hear) Shamrock
on that development, we're no longer going to do that so those funds will be
moved out of there. So we took what we did is take our existing plan and expand
this out five years.
Kanner/Is this? This is a shop for repair shop? I'm not familiar with.
Grosvenor/See our whole structure has changed in the last year, we used to have a
maintenance person and snow equipment and those kinds of things, we now
contract out for that.
Kanner/Okay.
Grosvenor/So at that time this was projected we were at a different place with our
organization.
Kanner/And what' s the Hope 6 revitalization grant and why is that not appropriate for
uS?
Grosvenor/It's really bad public housing, we don't have any in the State of Iowa, we have
no Hope 6 projects in the state of Iowa, it's where they come in and they'll
renovate and then give money to rebuild so we're not even eligible for Hope 6
funds. Nor will we ever be.
Kanner/Okay, good.
Champion/And we don't.
Lehman/Good is right.
Kanner/And it said that we assist Section 8 folks to locate units outside of poverty or
minority concentration, that' s a standard thing. How do we help do that?
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Grosvenor/That' s just a catch phrase. What I've said when I've addressed certain reports
with HUD that Iowa City doesn't have a very designated you know poverty area,
you've seen the statistics and the charts and all that but we just don't have a
problem. What we do is we tell them this statement that you should look outside
of the poverty area whatever that may be but you must address where your family
goes to school and where your job is and that' s where you need to look, we try to
focus on the positive aspects of where they should look for their units. And we
also service all the small towns in Johnson County, half of Washington and half of
Iowa County where you go to a small town their not going to have a high poverty
area. What this plan is is a boiler plate plan that goes across the board, it has to fit
you know Chicago, New York, LA as well as a housing authority with which has
much less than we what we do here at Iowa City, sometimes those things don't fit
exactly so.
Kanner/That was it for the report thanks.
Lehman/Any other agenda items?
ITEM NO. 10. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AMENDING THE FY 2001
OPERATING BUDGET.
Kanner/Oh Kevin on the budget amendment which is on our page 228, under revenue,
everything looked pretty good, there' s just one figure stood out for me was the
intergovernmental increase from $19.2 million to an extra $5.592 million, why
such a big increase, over 25 percent?
O'Malley/Those are mostly capital projects, money received for a $2 million dollars for
the State of Iowa that helped them build a, I think it was a bridge, pedestrian
bridge.
(END OF 01-53 SIDE ONE)
O'Malley/There was a couple of capital projects that we have streets.
Atkins/(can't hear).
O'Malley/There' s $2 million there, oh and the other 2 ~A for the airport, that' s federal,
those are the two large ones. It's on page 18 of the budget document.
Kanner/Okay.
O'Malley/Do you want me to show you? This public works grant here on page 18, we
are the pass through agency for the State of Iowa for a pedestrian bridge.
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Kanner/For the Wolfe Avenue? No, not that, the new one that just went up
Lehman/Right, across Highway 6.
O'Malley/And this is money that we budgeted in case we buy the property around the
airport, and that' s the 90 percent the federal government will kick in at $2.25
million, do you remember that property? I think they call it the Ruppert property.
Those are the two major items in that $5 million dollars.
Kanner/Okay and we didn't know when it would be coming in?
O'Malley/That' s correct, these are in case the money comes in we'll have the budget
authority to accept it.
Kanner/Okay.
Lehman/Any other agenda items?
ADDointments
Lehman/I think there are three applications.
Vanderhoef/Okay I would suggest Rick Spooner.
Champion/Who?
Lehman/Rick Spooner.
O'Donnell/I second that, that's a good one.
Champion/Yea that' s a good one.
Kanner/I'd like to nominate Charlotte, I think she' s got a lot of qualifications, been active
with Elder Council at the Senior Center, has worked with housing issues, she lives
in HUD housing as a senior citizen.
Lehman/Is there any other nomination? Okay how many would support Rick Spooner.
Well we have five of us so Rick Spooner will be the appointee.
PIN Grants (ITEM NO. 16. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING
DISTRIBUTION OF THE "PROGRAM FOR IMPROVING
NEIGHBORHOODS" (PIN) GRANT FUNDS
Lehman/Pin Grants, Marcia.
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Marcia Klingaman/Tomorrow evening your going to be asked to pass a resolution for the
FY 2002 PIN Grant recommendation that the neighborhood council has made and
tonight I'd like to just run through them if you have any questions. Tomorrow
night your going to be getting a brief presentation from the neighborhood
associations with graphics and some pictures so hopefully that might even respond
to some of your questions as well. In terms of background, the PIN grant program
has been around for 7 years, $25,000 has been allocated by the City Council for
this and it's open for all organized neighborhood associations to apply for. The
first application that is being recommended is a spring leaf brush pick up
application from the Longfellow neighborhood. This has been something that I
know as Council Members you've seen many requests for, the neighborhood
thought it was important enough to apply for PIN grants for that. The $4,000
that' s been requested will ensure, or has been guaranteed by the lawn care
company that they can get around and pickup all the spring yard waste from all of
the residents' in the neighborhood. If there's not that kind of demand then they
will go around twice or three times in order to be able to commit that funds.
Lehman/Who makes the recommendations on the PIN Grams? I should know this.
Klingaman/The neighborhood council does and those will be the (can't hear).
Lehman/Why would the neighborhood council recommend a cleanup for one
neighborhood and not every neighborhood?
Klingaman/Because Longfellow took the initiative to apply for the funding to do so.
They talked about that, there was a real conflict initially because this is somewhat
controversial, it's been requested by a variety of years, at least I've seen in the
Council packets.
Lehman/But this is ordinary cleanup, I mean raking yards, I mean like everybody else' s
(can't hear) does all over the place?
Klingaman/Exactly.
Lehman/Don't we normally put money from PIN grants into capital projects rather than
projects like this?
Klingaman/It's taken a number of twists over the years, I think every year they expand it
a little bit more in terms of what their interests are, the neighborhood got together
and this was something that as a group they decided they wanted to apply for and
the neighborhood council saw fit to go ahead and initiate it, it's very experimental
but.
Vanderhoef/I'm a little afraid of this particular one in that we have requests from all over
the city and part of it depends on when we get our first snow and how much gets
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picked up in the fall and we know that in the past our refuse folks to get that
picked up. And obviously you've got all the pin oaks in the city that don't drop
their leaves until late so if we fund this one I think we'll end up having requests
every year from all the various neighborhoods for the same thing and we can't
afford it so.
Klingaman/Well that, and when that time comes, I guess I'm kind of akinning it to the
sidewalk replacement program, the City' s going around marking sidewalks to the
neighborhoods.
Lehman/Yea but that' s a capital improvement, leaves fall every Fall. You know (can't
hear) except maybe every 20 to 25 years.
Vanderhoef/And those replacements would be done for persons with low income, not for
folks, a whole neighborhood. This is a whole different bent on it and yes I'd like
somebody to pick up my pin oak leaves too but yes we mulch them and back them
and send them out our self and that' s the way it is.
Klingaman/I know it was discussed at the neighborhood to prioritize low income but the
logistics of working through that process just got to be somewhat insurmountable
so they went ahead and suggested the $4,000.
Wilburn/Marcia do they know at this point what private lawn care company would pick
up the waste for them?
Klingaman/Which kind or who particularly?
Wilburn/Which private lawn care did they?
Klingaman/It wasn't mentioned, I think there' s just a couple that have the, it would be a
vacuum type truck somewhat that the city uses and there aren't too many that have
that kind of service.
Wilburn/The only concern, or an additional concern I would have is the if their given that
would they, would the waste actually end up not in the landfill?
Lehman/Well it couldn't go in the landfill, we wouldn't allow that, it has to go in with,
state law won't let us, it has to go in the compost pile.
Wilburn/Right, well it's not suppose to.
Kanner/Or the question is will they take it out of state to someplace that won't get
composted anywhere so from.
Lehman/Probably not because they dump it for free here.
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Champion/Not commercial.
(All talking)
Lehman/You can, leaves can't you.
Atkins/Commercial can't.
Lehman/I'm sorry, residentials can.
Kanner/Yea, I mean Ernie I don't know if I have quite your concerns about the capital
projects, if they would have said a community event like getting a compost pile
going, organizing that.
Lehman/It's ongoing though.
Kanner/Yea something like that I would go for but this, if it's not benefiting low or
moderate income people I have some problems with the whole thing, and I think
they set it up well with the sidewalk in getting to low and moderate income and I
don't see why they couldn't do that here or look at it from a slightly different
direction.
Champion/But PIN money isn't just for low income people, for neighborhood
association.
Kanner/No but and there's, like a bus shelter, they're going to put a bus shelter in there
eventually and that's not just for low, and there's certain things, but I'm saying if
we're going to do something like, it just seems a little too much that everybody
would want this service of coming to your house and picking it up.
Champion/Then they could apply for it through their neighborhood association, they
could apply for PIN grant money for it.
Lehman/But most of this work be done by the time the money is.
Champion/I would think so.
Lehman/I mean most spring clean up is done right now.
Klingaman/The money would be available throughout the fiscal year so they would.
Lehman/Is this for next spring?
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Klingaman/It would start in July so this wouldn't be funded until next spring, a year from
now.
O'Donnell/What is this, is this like the yard waste?
Klingaman/Yea, remove yard waste.
O'Donnell/I rake mine to the curb and this big truck comes.
Champion/That's in the Fall.
Klingaman/That' s in the Fall, this is for Spring.
Lehman/Well how do we handle this? If we choose, I mean if were going to get
presentations tomorrow night, if we choose not to fund one of them.
Klingaman/Last year you chose not to fund an application.
Lehman/I remember that.
Klingaman/And basically what they end up doing is taking the money back, reallocating it,
opening up applications again.
Lehman/All we do is say yea or nay, okay, all right fine.
Klingaman/Yep, we just amend the resolution and go from there.
Vanderhoef/There are some projects that were not fully funded that they might want to
choose.
Klingaman/Right that maybe could be refunded again.
Vanderhoef/Added to.
Lehman/Okay.
Klingaman/Okay. The Summit Street Railroad Bridge Historic Plaque, I think that's
pretty self explanatory. They did reduce their funding by $100 or they possibly
could come up with some donations for their garden walk that they have. The
bulbs for (can't hear), that project originally was focused in on providing bulbs to
any neighborhood residents at a reduced cost to be planted in their front or side
yards, the neighborhood council had a problem with that because of private
property issues and the insurance that these would end up actually getting planted.
And so what they ended up doing was compromising, suggesting that they would
have the funds available only for bulbs to be planted in public areas such as traffic
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circles and around the bridges and a few other places in the neighborhood that
were more visible and had more concentrated. The butterfly garden benches,
that' s on the Longfellow school property, there' s a butterfly garden that was
planted years ago and they've reduced their funding to reflect just one bench rather
than two in order to fit into the budget. The toddler swing that was funded in it's
entirety simply because that' s what the cost was, this will be installed in the
Longfellow school playground area because there's not any toddler equipment for
the smaller children to be playing on, and they consider it a neighborhood park.
Be a good neighbor, clean up your pet poop signs, this application was amended
considerably, they were planning on putting in at least a half a dozen signs in
various locations, they compromised by writing down their costs to just put one
sign in along the Russell Creek trail area on the south end and then the city' s park
and recreation department is going to be putting in a dog poop dispenser with a
sign which is something that' s been done in the past through that department.
O'Donnell/(Can't hear).
Kanner/Is there a garbage can that would be there?
(All laughing).
Klingaman/There will be a garbage, well and that's very (can't hear). What was the
comment?
Lehman/What is a dog poop dispenser?
Klingaman/A dog poop dispenser.
(All talking)
Lehman/No, no, I have plenty at home, it's name is Peaches.
(All laughing)
Klingaman/You know what I meant.
O'Donnell/I wanted to make sure.
Klingaman/They're plastic bags that.
(All talking)
Klingaman/But to the answer to Steve's question, yes there will be a garbage can, there's
some reservations in terms of making it's secure and it's not stolen with vandalism
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but that's typically a problem with these bags or any kind of bags is that people
want to get rid of them immediately and they have been known to go down storm
sewers and a few other places. Wetherby Park trees, this grant again was reduced
from $4,500 to $3,000 just because of limited funds but these trees will be planted
along the trail that was just installed a couple of years ago since there are very few
at this point.
Kanner/Marcia since these are $300.00 a piece, are these pretty significant trees?
Klingaman/They're pretty substantial trees, they're two inch or more caliber in the trunk
dimensions, they wanted to get something a little bit more mature and larger just to
avoid any vandalism problems and insure that they grow. Saturday night drive-in,
this was an application that Wetherby Friends and Neighbors applied for a couple
years ago, it did not receive funding at that point but this year they chose to fund
it. It's basically going to be renting a large screen TV and a video to be played in
the park and then provide refreshments as well. As you see it went from the
original requested amount $400.00 to $525.00 and through the negotiations with
the funding limitations, rather than have an oddball figure for the Wetherby Park
trees so that $300.00 a piece didn't fit they opted to add to the drive-in (can't
hear). Does that make sense?
O'Donnell/That's really a neat idea.
Lehman/Yea.
Klingaman/I think so, yea, I think it will go over well. The Ralston Creek Nature Trail
resurfacing and drainage repair.
Pfab/Let me just stop you, ask you some questions about this, can you go over this just a
little bit more, about the TV, I must have missed something here, is that just a way
of increasing activity at that park?
Klingaman/To bring people together and to get them to know each other as a
neighborhood.
Pfab/That park has a problem and which is really too bad for when you look at the
neighborhood the Broadway neighborhood, it' s just a little bit too far for the
average small child to navigate that far over especially people who may, well just
for people who live in that area and I would presume that this activity is not
focused on those, that population.
Klingaman/All of those people, the Broadway Street area as well as everywhere east of
there to Sycamore is considered the Wetherby Friends and Neighbors
neighborhood association, and they plan on getting out information to everybody
in the neighborhood to attend.
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Wilburn/The neighborhood center has been very good at getting kids over to the park,
especially in the summer, in fact they run, they've in the past run one of their kind
of day summer programs (can't hear) park regular basis.
Pfab/But it's for a child or a small group of children to walk from Broadway to Wetherby,
that' s a relatively long hike.
Klingaman/Well and this will be an evening activity as well, so I guess in the (can't hear)
circumstances, I wouldn't.
Pfab/I guess I don't have a solution.
Klingaman/Yea, I think the neighborhood center would provide some function, the
Wetherby Park just due to it' s location there' s just some limitations on smaller
children being able to get it, I think the parents come with.
Pfab/I think this is anything that you can do to utilize that park to those people in the
neighborhood is I would support.
Kanner/Yea this seems like it would be a good attraction for like 8-12 year olds or 13.
Lehman/Families.
Kanner/Families and they all walk over that distance.
Pfab/Yea if for a family, if you have real small children it's walkable but for children who
don't it's quite a distance.
Champion/My rule for small children is you walk to you drop so I don't think it's that far.
O 'Donnell/Well and there' s parking down there too, there' s parking, there' s street
parking, I think the whole (can't hear) is really like a drive in theater. Yea I just, I
support it.
Pfab/Oh yea, I think it's a great idea.
Lehman/Okay we all love it.
Klingaman/The Ralston Creek trail resurfacing and drainage repair, this nature trail has
received oh I won't say annually PIN grant funding but on a pretty regular basis,
what they're experiencing now is that the trial itself is starting to have some
erosion problems and rutting problems because it gets so wet, it's within the flood
plain, they're going to try something a little bit different, they're going to get some
drainage pipe installed and then their going to be using the asphalt grindings from
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the asphalt overlay program to recreate or resurface the trail surface and see how
that works. This wasn't originally part of the CIP funding budget so they've
initiated it with public works and public works will be orchestrating it.
Lehman/Okay.
Klingaman/And then "Take back the night", this is Wetherby Friends and Neighbors, they
are requesting $5,000 for 163 hours of additional police security around the
neighborhood, it will average out throughout the summer months probably 3 hours
or so for Friday and Saturday nights, the Police Chief is aware of this and supports
it and has staffing available to do so.
Champion/Great.
Lehman/Didn't we have a, here a couple years we increased police presence in that area
for, I mean fairly concentrated?
Atkins/We've had two circumstances Ernie, one was unfortunate when we had that
shooting a number of years ago but I think just prior to that we secured a grant for
over time to put folks on bicycles and foot patrol throughout that neighborhood.
This request it doesn't surprise me, it does have a little bit of a leaf pick up brush
flavor in the sense that it is an operational program that folks can become
accustomed to very easily. But we have generally been pretty successful in
securing moneys for extra policing that particular part of the community.
Lehman/I guess, I guess my question is if we need the extra police down there on
Saturday nights is there a reason why we can't provide that protection without
PIN Grant?
Atkins/It would require an overtime expenditure to commit an officer in this
neighborhood, I think what they're saying, please correct Marcia is that this
neighborhood is saying we want a commitment of police for a specific period of
time and while we might be responding to calls on a Friday or Saturday night
throughout the community this is, I'm assuming they understand that the officer
does have to be available for emergency calls in particular but their presence is
supposed to be, for a lack of better reasonably permanent during the period of
time.
Lehman/In other words similar to the presence of the police officers in the ped mall,
they're there, if they need them somewhere else they go.
Atkins/Yea, they have to, they have to go.
O'Donnell/And there' s a group of people down there that are doing a really great job
trying to bring the kids together and they have had some problems.
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Lehman/Oh I don't there' s any question of that.
O'Donnell/I think this is.
Lehman/I think Ernie's question is shouldn't we be paying for this out of our budget, I
mean I think that's the big question.
Vanderhoef/I think so.
Lehman/Yea that' s my only thing, I don't think we should be using PIN money for what
should be coming out of the general fund.
Atkins/We have encourage neighborhoods to use their own judgment, they know how
much money is available. They also know the consequences of the lack of funding
of these sorts of things, practically speaking you could virtually have every
neighborhood would like to have an officer on a Friday or Saturday night.
Lehman/Oh yea.
Atkins/Fixed in their neighborhood, we just simply do not have a department large
enough or the resource available to do that.
O'Donnell/That's right we have had problems in (can't hear).
Lehman/I'm well aware of that, yea.
Pfab/I would look at this a little slightly different, I think this is basically a frantic call for
more active response to neighborhood requests for help from the police
department. I think this is, this is a lot more serious problem than this PIN grant
addresses. Now I was over a meeting at the SCAT team in the neighborhood
association, I think that' s, the neighborhood center had a program or an officer
Matt Johnson and the SCAT officer, Jackson I believe his name is. And as I was
leaving that someone made a comment to me, there's a project to get basically to
get a cop next door or some kind of a presence over in that neighborhood. This
has been going on for about a year and a half, I wanted to get involved and I was
told basically "butt out" at the first for about the first year and I did but my
patience is now exceeded the limits. I understand there is money going to be made
available to put a parole officer's office and a police officer's office in that
neighborhood, I have talked to about three or four entities and I believe something
can be done. What I would like to know what is going on now?
Atkins/It's Dale's project, he can fill you in.
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Dale Helling/It's become mine. What I intend to do within the next week or so is try to
meet with the parties that are involved which includes neighborhood centers folks,
from our police department and the sixth judicial district corrections and try to
bring them together and see what we can do to make that happen, you're right it's
been going on for a while, there' s been some negotiations back and forth
apparently, I only became involved recently so I've kind of had to educate myself a
little bit on the history but they just have not been able to come together and my
intention is to get everybody together and see if we can do that (can't hear).
Pfab/I think there' s more people should be brought to the people and I believe that the
apartment complex Cedarwood, those people have an extreme interest in this and
are willing to walk very very far to get this cleaned up. I understand that across
Broadway is another apartment complex, somebody, can anybody?
O'Donnell/Irvin your kind of fishing without bait here.
Pfab/No, no.
O'Donnell/Get what cleaned up? What are you?
Pfab/Okay to get more police presence in that area.
Lehman/Is the thing your talking about Dale will that be putting an officer down there?
Helling/It will be a field office that will be staffed at least to some level by the police
department as well as by the Sixth District Bureau of Adult Corrections.
Pfab/And there is HUD money available for projects like that, there's a HUD, right now
across the street from Broadway there' s two HUD complexes. Unfortunately
Cedarwood will have taken care ofit's obligation it had to HUD and go market
level rentals very soon. There is a HUD property right across on the other side
west of Broadway that has about 7 year life left on it and the person that manages
or operates it is, I'm drawing a blank, but anyway they are interested and will help
to try and get an office there some way.
Helling/Right now we're looking into that, we started first with Cedarwood and for the
reasons you said because Cedarwood is going to do something differently in the
future that HUD money would not be available or would not be applicable to
Cedarwood, however we are looking into those other units, or the other
complexes to see if we can get any HUD money for that, however, that hasn't
been determined yet.
Pfab/Bob Burns says he's willing to also kind of unrelated, there is a place to for a
location to build another structure, there is (cant hear) available.
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Lehman/Well I guess my question is is there a possibility that we will be locating an office
that' s going to have police presence at least part of the time, whether or not we
allow this PIN grant?
Atkins/Ernie that is the intent, remember there' s a number of players, we have the Sixth
Judicial District, neighborhood centers, Iowa City police.
Pfab/Apartment complex.
Atkins/Let' s not have the mistake of notion that this is going to be a permanent
assignment of an officer who' s down there, it's space available for an officer to
work in and out of the same way with the Judicial district folks, and it's a
reasonably complex undertaking because you know your basically agreeing to a
permanent police presence in that neighborhood and I that's something that I think
we want to approach with reasonable caution.
Champion/When you talk about a field office are you talking about, I mean I know the
answer to this. Like instead of coming here to fill out a report, they would stay
there and fill out a report, that kind of thing so they wouldn't be running back here
all the time to fill out a report.
Helling/Right and they would try to schedule sometime when they're going to be there so
that the neighbors could, it's an outreach kind of thing to with the Sixth District
and with the police department.
Champion/That's good, that's great.
O'Donnell/And now we need that presence down there.
Champion/We do.
Lehman/I agree.
Pfab/But the reporting back to the police station is basically with modern technology
that's not necessary to do that, a lot of that reporting can be done in the car, by
radio, by computers.
Champion/Well I'm sure that they (can't hear).
Atkins/I'm assuming we'll let them, them being the police and the Sixth Judicial decide
that.
Champion/But I'm in favor of this PIN grant regardless.
Pfab/This is basically a stop gap nation.
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Lehman/Okay.
Champion/It's a good idea.
Klingaman/That's it.
O'Donnell/Thank you. Let's take a break.
Lehman/We got a break.
Kanner/How long?
Break 7:45 to 7:55 PM
Alley Clean Uo (IP1 and IP2 of 5/10 info. packet)
Lehman/Okay folks, clean up time, Brad.
Brad Neumann/Yes what you have is a recommendation from your solid waste advisory
committee on the downtown alleys. As you know the city every year gets a lot of
complaints about the mess in the alleys, the over flowing dumpster, the blowing
litter. I've got some pictures to kind of give you an idea of what the complaints
are all about. And you can see and the recommendation from the committee,
we're recommending a permit system for the dumpsters. This would help us better
identify who to call and who to get it cleaned up in a more timely manner than
what we're doing now. Of course if that verbal request is not followed then we
have to follow it up with a written violation and go that path, but that' s already
ordinance wise we already have that in place.
Lehman/What's the fine? Up to $500.
Neumann/Up to.
Dilkes/No it's a municipal infraction not a simple misdemeanor so is it, is the penalty
specifically set out or does it just refer to the general penalty provision, probably
the general penalty provision which is, you want to grab me the first volume. I
think it's $100 the first offense.
Lehman/Well it's significant, it's not like a $25.00 fine.
Dilkes/Well everybody's significant is different, but no it's not $25.00.
Lehman/That' s true.
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Dilkes/It' s.
Neumann/I guess the idea is there is.
Dilkes/If you want to keep on going Brad (can't hear).
Neumann/Is not to get to that written violation, we hope to just verbally make the contact
in to have him clean it up quicker rather than let it sit for a couple of days and
when it's going to, the haulers going to be there in a few days anyway and pick it
up. The permit system would require an ordinance change, currently in the
ordinance any dumpster sitting in the public right of way does require a written
agreement with the City Council which we just have not done. And rather than
run that all through the City Council we would rather just set up a permit system.
And the permit system we would have a small fee, that fee hasn't been determined
yet, but probably for a regular two yard dumpster a small fee, a little bit more for
a grease dumpster and then of course the recycling dumpsters would be free but
still would require a permit.
Pfab/(Can't year) is that a two yard dumpster?
Neumann/What you see down there is a standard two yard dumpster and of course we
don't want any, and I believe that' s all the bigger you can get in that alley.
Through this permit system would allow us to pass along the information to those
folks about locking the dumpsters down, keeping it clean around there, everything
that is already in place in your ordinance and in the city so it' s just a matter of
getting that information passed on. The other thing we're looking at is increased
enforcement. We would like to increase the enforcement so we can get it cleaned
up quicker. The idea there is to hopefully put somebody, or have somebody go
through the alleys on a daily basis, make the phone calls, get the folks to clean it
up quicker, and then of course go to the written violation if need be but.
Pfab/Is this a baby step so to speak to eventually having the business people subject to
pick up by the City of Iowa City just like residents?
Champion/No.
Neumann/No, that's always an option.
Pfab/Why don't we go for that?
Neumann/Well that' s up to you guys?
Pfab/And I mean, I think it just doesn't make any sense not to but it looks like it's
probably going to be an uphill battle to change it because it just, why shouldn't the
residents have the same options as the business people or the business people be
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subject to the same things that the residents are. I think it's the same city
government that they operate under.
Lehman/There' s a significant difference in the amount of refuse that is generated.
Pfab/Okay but there are ways that the city could accommodate.
Lehman/Why would the city want to even get involved in the commercial?
Pfab/Well maybe they have an obligation to.
Kanner/Well flow control is probably the greatest reason and something hopefully we'll
talk about more down the road.
Lehman/For now though your asking us if we are in agreement with what your proposing,
that we permit them, that we require them to be locked, that we cite people with
trash is overflowing and that we clean up the alley.
Neumann/Step up enforcement yea.
Champion/The only, I mean I totally support this because of it being downtown, I can tell
you the alley's, it's ridiculous. The other thing is that a lot of them, we don't just
automatically blame the businesses because a lot of that trash that shows in that
alley is not from the business people.
Lehman/The stuff your looking at came from those business people, they're restaurants
and bars that pile those dumpsters two feet high above the dumpster, they can't
close it, the wind blows it all over and that is coming from the (can't hear).
O'Donnell/It looks to me Ernie like if they'd recycle the cardboard alone the dumpsters
wouldn't be running over, at least break the cardboard down.
Champion/Right but when I had a dumpster in the alley I kept it unlocked so that people
would throw trash in it rather than on the ground and you know who was the
main abuser of my dumpster, was the University. Their offices were using my
dumpster and so I finally had to lock it, they were using it instead of having one.
Lehman/Doesn't the code say it should be locked?
Champion/Yea.
Lehman/We require that.
Neumann/They're required to be locked down, if you notice in these photographs I think
only one or two out of the all the dumpsters in those photos are locked.
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Champion/Because they charge you another $20.00 for a locked dumpster, I'm not saying
they shouldn't, I'm just that they do.
O'Donnell/Isn't it a $125.00 fine to throw in somebody else's dumpster?
Champion/They do it all the time.
Lehman/They won't if they're locked.
O'Donnell/I think it's enforceable though that fine.
Champion/Yea I had to lock mine because you know I had to.
Neumann/But again another one of the problems is the stuff that doesn't even get to the
dumpster, it's on the ground and it's blowing. And what we would propose there
is for that business to take care of maintain of that alley and keep it clean behind
their business same as they do in front, that's a little harder to enforce but that's
one of the biggest problems is the blowing there, not necessarily the overflowing
dumpster.
Lehman/But doesn't a significant amount of that blowing litter come out of dumpsters
that are filled three feet too high?
Neumann/Yea, some of it doesn't even make it to the dumpster, the bag breaks open, it
just sits and then it blows. But then there' s others that yea it overflows and that' s
when it starts to blow, and it ends up all over the place. And we get a lot of calls
on that and then it gets difficult to identify, well I don't want to pick it up because
it came from them or you know call the hauler and the hauler says no you've got
to call the business and so the idea of the permit is to identify a contact that will
get out there and clean it up including the stuff sitting on the ground.
Lehman/So you want a yea or nay from us to proceed?
Neumann/Well yea we'll proceed with the ordinance change for the permit system and
then we have to discuss the enforcement, who's going to do that, I don't know if
that's.
Lehman/Are we all in agreement to proceed with this?
O'Donnell/Yes.
Vanderhoef/I am.
Pfab/Proceed to do something.
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Lehman/Yes, you've got a go.
Neumann/Okay.
Kanner/And we're talking what like about $25.00 or something for the permit, rough
figures?
Champion/Oh it would be cheaper than that.
Neumann/Well I think what I was thinking for a cardboard dumpster it would be free, it
would still require a permit, two yard garbage dumpster like $10.00 a year, and
make a grease dumpster $25.00 a year.
Kanner/Yea it's not going to break you.
Lehman/It's nothing.
Neumann/It doesn't, and we clean the alley's, steam clean them three times a year I
believe and it won't come anywhere near covering that cost but it's just a fee that
maybe we can put back into signage or education or (can't hear).
Lehman/Just be sure the fee is adequate to cover you know the paperwork involved with
you've got to set up the permit, your going to have to keep a list of people to call,
your going to, I mean $10.00 is pretty cheap.
Atkins/Brad don't you know how many dumpsters we have in downtown? Didn't you
count that at one time?
Neumann/In the public right of way there's over 80.
Atkins/80.
Neumann/In that downtown area, now this would not apply to dumpsters that are on
private property in the downtown, because a lot of them would be tucked in or on
private property and that it's only what is located on the public right of way.
Lehman/Except the cleaning of the alley itself, if the business is responsible for the
condition of the alley behind the business they'd be responsible whether or not they
have a dumpster is that correct?
Neumann/Yea, (can't hear) we could still enforce that yes.
Lehman/My dumpster is on my property, it overflows into the alley, I'm going to be
responsible for cleaning that area behind my business. I think it's great.
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Dilkes/The penalties are $100.00 first offense, $250.00 second, and $500.00 for third and
subsequent offenses but you can specify a different penalty in the ordinance if
you'd like for violation.
Atkins/And I hope you understand that in keeping with sort of a general philosophy, we
don't want the penalty money, we want the compliance.
Lehman/Right.
Champion/Right.
Atkins/We want it clean.
Dilkes/The state code authorizes higher penalties.
Lehman/That's all right. Go for it.
Vanderhoef/For me I don't think there' s anything wrong with charging (can't hear).
Neumann/If the city did it, city cleaned or?
Pfab/Clean up around them you mean?
Vanderhoef/No, to steam clean the dumpster itself.
Champion/We don't.
Pfab/We don't.
(All talking).
Kanner/She'd like to charge.
Neumann/The dumpster itself in the ordinance is required to be cleaned periodically.
O'Donnell/By the waste hauler.
Neumann/By the hauler, so if they switch out the dumpster and bring in a cleaner one,
we'll supply another sticker to put on there with the number, and it will change
annually, it will be a different color every year so we can continue to hand out that
education material and how to handle those dumpsters on an annual basis. As far
as steam cleaning the alley's it's done I think three times a year, run you about
$3,000.
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Atkins/I know we do it, we do it two times on a regular basis and there' s some spot
cleaning so you understand it this is not cheap, that's $10,000 - $12,000 a year we
spend doing that.
Neumann/So to collect that out of 80 dumpsters is.
Atkins/A little hard.
Neumann/Is very, it would be a high cost so.
Vanderhoef/Requiring them to steam clean their dumpsters.
Neumann/Well they're suppose to do that now, we're talking the alley surface.
Vanderhoef/They're suppose to but are they?
Atkins/Oh.
Lehman/Most of them aren't very dirty.
Neumann/Well they're supposed to be labeled which a lot of them questionable so we can
identify who the hauler is, they're suppose to be locked down, they're supposed to
be cleaned every few months, steam cleaned, things like that and a lot of that is not
being done and of course we haven't pushed the agreements with the Council
either on having them placed there in the first place. So that' s the information we
can get across in that annual permit, they'll be subject to enforcement on those
issues also. We could call them up and say you've got to lock that thing down and
not just clean up around it but you've got to lock it down so we can enforce that a
little more regular.
O'Donnell/Some of these alleys are just absolutely (can't hear).
Pfab/They're a disgrace.
O'Donnell/They are.
Pfab/I have a question. What do other cities do and what success, ones that are
successful with this, what is the method that they use?
Champion/This is higher somebody come and clean it, that's how it, that's the only way
it's successful.
Neumann/We looked into a lot of different cities, a lot of them don't even allow it in their
alley' s or on public right of way at all, they don't allow dumpsters there period.
Others have a permit system similar to what we're proposing, others do very little.
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Pfab/Have you had a chance to visit any where you were impressed with how well it
worked?
Neumann/I think it was Rodney Wall' s visited some of those communities and looked
into some of our dumpster issues, he's on our advisory committee and he gathered
a lot of the information but I think it was Dubuque I think that had a permit system
that seemed to work out pretty well but it was specific to dumpsters on public
right of way not just as a whole city wide, just in the public right of way.
Pfab/Because the city furnishes them and a place to set it the city definitely has some say
about how it's going to be (can't hear).
Neumann/Yea I mean it's public right of way.
Pfab/And if we don't enforce who do we blame, look in the mirror.
Neumann/It's public right of way and that' s what we have to get a handle on and like I
said there' s always been an agreement in place through the Council, we've just
never acted on it so the dumpsters just keep accumulating, yea.
Pfab/(can't hear) how far push the envelope.
Lehman/You just pushed it off the dumpster, good bye. Thank you.
Vanderhoef/Good pictures.
O'Donnell/Great pictures.
Skate Board Park
Terry Trueblood/Good evening everybody. To start with here I'd like to introduce Tom
Dunbar who' s with the Dunbar Jones Partnership out of Des Moines, we may have
one or two commissioners join us, we had a couple that wanted to but they
couldn't be here until after 8:00 so they may or may not be wandering in. It has
been some time since we last discussed this particular issue so I'd like to give you
just a little refresher to start with. We've actually been trying to deal with the
skateboarding issue since 1988 and that's, that I know of. It's been a more
pressing issue since 1995 or there abouts with complaints and citations etc. in the
downtown area. For two summers I'm sure you'll recall I'm sure we had a
temporary skate park out here in the Civic Center parking lot, and this helped but
it did result in a number of problems both regarding the durability of the skating
components and the parking issues as well. The current planning process has been
going on for a full two years and it's involved at least a dozen public meetings
probably more, and attendance at those meetings has ranged from 15 to 55 people
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and primarily our skating youth. Our initial meeting I had put together a plan to
give them something to react to, they didn't like the plan, I put it together on a fair
amount of research I had done but obviously it wasn't the right research. But in so
many words they said if were going to do this let' s do it right. It was about this
time that through a grant we could hire the firm of Dunbar Jones at no cost to us
to conduct a series of planning meetings to arrive at a plan that would be pretty
much designed by the users, that being the skate boarders and the skaters in the
community. And the final project, or the final outcome of that series of those
meetings was this book so it was a very thorough process, I think you've seen this
before, at least your aware of it. Since it was now obvious that the skate park
wouldn't be built as quickly as we would like it to be, we agreed to provide
another temporary skate park, we being Parks & Recreation department and we
would make it though of a more durable quality than those that appeared out here
in the Civic Center parking lot and we would locate it in Mercer Park, and it's still
out there right now. Now a significant time and effort went into the planning
process and particularly discussing locations and the top three choices were #1
Terrill Mill Park, #2 City Park and #3 Mercer Park. You may recall I think it's
been about a year ago now that we first came to you about locating it at Terrill
Mill Park. Now at one point in the progress we also brought on what you might
call a sub consultant, a person from the Minneapolis area who actually built the
skate parks and wrote a book about it. And we actually had this, while this did
take a long time, we finally reached a point where the vast majority of the steering
committee as we now call them agreed on a final plan which brings us to this point.
And you know we originally had this on your May 1 st agenda to set a public
hearing on the plans and specifications for your May 15 meeting, that was delayed
because only a few days before that we had discovered in a miscalculation which
would have resulted in water being in the, a water problem being in the bottom of
the bowls which we obviously don't want to happen. And this problem is being
resolved with a proposal to relocate the skate park within Terrill Mill and
constructed on imported fill. Now it's important to note that this does not change
the design of the skating surface itself as was finalized by our steering committee.
At this point I think I'd like to turn it over to Tom and he can go over some of
these plans in more detail.
Tom Dunbar/Thanks Terry, good evening. What I'll do is go through basically where we
are and over here Dubuque going through here, the parking lot going into Terrill
Mill the shelter that' s there and the first location here and the second location were
talking about now. Now what happened, as we go through this process going
from concept to construction the differential Terry is talking about is the flood
level. Initially we had conceived this as being flat and coming up, as we worked
with the consultant our concept went from the top down, so instead of coming up
off the surface we went down into the surface. And what that did, in order to get
those bowls 644.5 is the 100 year flood elevation and we want to get those bowls
up above or at that elevation or above so you can see the lines around this one, it
show what we would have to fill here and by moving it down to this location we
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have to fill a little bit less. If we come over to this side, this is the original, and you
can't see it on the color very well but you can see the parking lot, coming in the
walk way, coming in the shelter and then the skate park itself. The skate park
doesn't change in either concept only the location and how we access it. Terry if
you would put up the second one. And if you look at the brown piece on both
here and here that is the sand volleyball court that is in Terrill Mill so you can use
that kind.
(END OF 01-53 SIDE TWO)
Tom Dunbar/Parking lot going by the shelter and coming through and connecting as well
as connecting to the trail along Dubuque Street itself so we have pedestrian access
from Dubuque along the pedestrian way and then from the parking lot around the
shelter into the skate park. The, if we look at this and we take a section, here' s the
initial proposal, the shelter' s there, we just catch the corner of the parking lot here,
we take a slice from Dubuque over, here' s Dubuque, you see the terrain coming up
and you can see the very marked change in the fill right here, these are the bowls,
steps down the shelter and going on out. If we go to the new location, cut the
same section to the river, we come at Dubuque, the bike trail, (can't hear) and you
can see that the profile is much lower on the proposed site. Now the reason that is
is because that section of Terrill Mill is a couple feet higher and there' s a much
more gradual grade up to it. Terry if you would put the next one up. Just
showing some sketches, the initial, this one and this one were the initial computer
generated views of what this might look like with the shelter. This one is the new
location right here looking from about here into here and also picking up the
walkway that would go over to the parking lot. Again looking here you can see
Mayflower, over here in these trees these are large cottonwoods and silver maples,
very large ones, we would lose 5 of those trees in that location. In this location
move slightly over here we lose 7 trees but they're much much smaller trees, there
may be several of those that can be moved although they're very marginal. We
have cost estimate, as you pass these out the total construction cost with the new
fill on this one is $309,000 the total construction cost on this $271,000. Now
you'll see on your cost estimates we've added a 15 percent contingency to each
one of those to cover any contingency prices since this is the first one that' s been
built like this in Iowa. Okay anytime your dealing with the first one of anything
you have to have a pretty substantial contingency. Now the differences in
tradeoffs, in site preparation the second, this one is about $13,000 cheaper, site
amenities, the second is one actually $3,000 more expensive because we have
additional walk way going in that we didn't have on the first one. The skate park
plaza in the original one we had an extensive a pretty extensive skate park plaza
come off of that shelter. The skaters by the way weren't terribly interested in this,
we thought it was a good expansion of that amenity around the shelter house, in
the second one that area is much smaller, right there so you get a differential of
about $17,000 in the skate park plaza. The vegetation difference between the two
is the proposed site is actually $3,000 more and that's because we're putting in
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more trees, it's a little more open so we're planting additional trees in that area.
And then the skate park facility itself is about $14,000 cheaper in this one, less
expensive primarily because in this one we have a retaining well and a step system
that go in and so we have more structural stuff going into that.
Pfab/Where is the fence that your talking about here?
Dunbar/The fence originally would have come around here.
Pfab/Okay I can just barely see when you put that little thing from here.
Dunbar/Let me step up, I'm going to come around.
Pfab/Okay so now (can't hear).
Dunbar/We're not putting a fence in the proposal.
Pfab/Okay.
Dunbar/I mean there' s pros and cons to a fence, if you put a fence up it really demarks
the territory and visually it would impact, be more intrusive than without it, it will
be signed, there will be signage. So the difference between the two options is the
new option which is the one in this location, here' s the sand volleyball court, total
with contingency is $311,800 and on the original location with the fill is $356,430.
Pfab/I think this, I'm moving it higher, raising and increasing the elevation is certainly is a
great move, I think it' s a wonderful idea, that' s just my, as I see it because it really,
you can get it out there and you can get a little bit more exposure, a second access,
which I think is a great way for, it's a lot easier for people who are coming from
downtown area or from the local area, it's a nice way to get into it rather than
going around or cutting through. And you say it is the same park.
Dunbar/The skate facility itself is identical.
Pfab/I think it's a great idea.
Kanner/If we have a tournament of some sort where would people watch? Let' s say we
got 50 to 100 people that wanted to watch or something?
Dunbar/This, they would be watching all the way around here, these areas around here
are actually benches that the skaters would be using at all times, but those benches
could be used as a spectator area around the edge. Because most of the
tournament stuff would occur in these areas not on benches. What we're trying to
do is combine a streetscape element which are benches, steps, rails and those sorts
of facilities along with the more traditional bowls, things called bower boxes and
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fun boxes, ramps, and steps, put all that together, so you take advantage of the
edge with a series of benches that the skaters can actually skate on. But they can
also be there for people there watching if there' s a tournament.
Vanderhoef/Are the benches concrete?
Dunbar/They're concrete, every edge that will have potential skating on it is a concrete
facility with a steel edge, it's either a pipe edge or a tubular steel edge that goes
into the concrete.
(Can't hear).
Dunbar/Yea if you don't have that they come apart, it's a great point.
Vanderhoef/(can't hear).
Champion/That's great.
O'Donnell/It's real nice.
Kanner/No I just wondered is there some, is the land going to be a little elevated around
part of it where people can sit and look down a little bit on it.
Dunbar/Actually it's just the opposite.
Kanner/Opposite yea.
Dunbar/It's just the opposite, to get it up a little bit, now that slope isn't great, it's
something we could consider as we look at the future as a way to add a slight
filler.
Lehman/The bottom elevation shows you the center of that is the bowl and the property
gradually falls away so it is a little lower.
Dunbar/Here' s the area that comes up the, so this whole area as you come up is relatively
flat, (can't hear) come on this side as well as a slight small area, the most (can't
hear) would have it (can't hear). Other questions. Thank you very much.
Lehman/Thank you.
Atkins/Terry, so we can give the Council a schedule, what' s your next move?
Trueblood/Well we anticipate we'll be back at your next Council meeting which doesn't
occur for a while to set a public hearing for the Council meeting after that so we
can get out to bid on that and see some activity yet this summer and fall on
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construction but because of a couple of delays I don't know Tom do you think we
can realistically expect to skate on it yet this year?
Dunbar/Yet this year, it would be tough, you have to have 28 days curing time and I was
in a new facility in Boston (can't hear), the biggest battle they had was keeping the
kids off until the concrete was cured, because it looks like you ought to be able to
skate on it. So I think it would be tough, it's possible for this fall but I think it
would be tough, it depends strictly on the fall that we have.
Lehman/What sort of construction time if the weather is good?
Dunbar/This is like building a swimming pool, it's basically swimming pool construction,
so I think your looking at 2-3 months.
Lehman/Yea and see if we have the public hearing the first meeting in June that means the
earliest we could possibly let the bid would be the second meeting of June so
construction couldn't conceivably start until after the first of July, your right it's
not going to get done this fall.
Dunbar/It's close, it depends on the fall strictly, and this is the type of stuff you've got to
have above freezing.
Lehman/Very good.
O'Donnell/Thank you.
Hunters Run Park Plan
Lehman/Hunter's Run, I think you've got an encore Terry.
Trueblood/I just want to move these out of the way so nobody thinks this is going in
Hunters Run Park.
Lehman/Keep it interesting.
Trueblood/Are you two making an even swap here or what? Okay next on the agenda
doesn't require quite as much as a refresher since we haven't been here to you
before with regard to this project. But you will recall Hunters Run has been kind
of an on again off again project for a number of years and now it's on again and
we hope it stays on again. But for this particular one we hired a local firm of
Shoemaker & Haaland and Steve Ford is here to kind of walk you through the
plan. We did hold a series of neighborhood meetings to gain neighborhood
residents input on what they'd like to see in this park of 22-23 acres. They were
fairly well attended although not as well attended as the skate park meetings but
I'd say we had 18 to 20 at our top end and maybe at the bottom end maybe 8
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people helped out with it. At any rate as I said we did go through the process with
them and in the final analysis came to pretty much unanimous agreement on what
they'd like to see in the park with one or two possible exceptions and Steve will
talk to you about that in a little more detail. We anticipate this project to be under
construction later this summer and not completed until next Spring or early
Summer with the landscaping. I'm surprised that hasn't happened before, I think
I've developed an allergy to skate parks or something I'm not sure what it is.
Steve are you ready to go? I've drug this on about as long as I can, this is Steve
Ford. By the way, never mind, one of our commissioners did come in but he left
again before I had a chance to introduce him.
Lehman/We saw him.
Champion/We saw him.
O'Donnell/We know him.
Steve Ford/Thank you (can't hear) nice to be back again. I want to go through the
process because I think that' s a real important part of this and Terry alluded to the
fact that there were several meetings and we tried to, we endeavor to get as much
information from the neighbors in the neighborhood as we could. And I have
some things that I'd like to hand out which was a design process that we used and
I have a survey that went out and some comments so ifI could. We had four total
meetings and I think the average was probably 25-30 people that showed up, the
kick off meetings was a, and I tried to outline it such that so everyone knew what
was coming, what was expected of them, what the route was going to be from
where we initially started out to some kind of final design. So the kick off meeting
I thought was real important just to have a brief outline as to what, how much
work they would have involved with the process and what I expected of them as
well as what they should expect of me. We had a task force sign up that night and
the survey went out and every survey that I did hand out that night was returned
that night and that' s commendable for that type of thing. I did leave several others
and they did filter in at a later date but as you go through the survey you'll see
some of the answers to some of those questions that you had. What I wanted to
do was get them more hands on, more involved with the process and that involved
me putting together several boards of the site itself and if I might, I don't know if
you, I guess this one doesn't do it. This entire site that' s underneath this particular
sheet is to scale, it shows the existing topography that' s there, I clearly explained
how the topography worked and the first workshop I put them to work, I split
them up into task force groups, there were five groups, each of them had boards,
each of them had templates which related to the survey, what kinds of amenities
they may or may not wanted and I allowed them to break up into groups and tried
to design themselves, get a handle on what they might want to see. Before I did
that I introduced this board which basically is a site analysis, it explains what
they've been talking about, what they knew already but before you start to do any
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design at all you look at what the site offers not only visually but also from sound,
from water, from the topography from the existing plant material that' s there and
just real broad brush idea so I introduced this first and then we broke up into
groups. There are five of these boards, this is the only one I brought but this is an
example of what they were doing, and I wished I would have had a video camera
on this night because everybody was very engrossed in trying to do some design of
their own and trying to determine how best they direct their efforts to their own
park and I made myself available to comments along the way and explained to
them what kinds of things I might be expecting from them. This is one of the
things that came out of one of those groups, a front entry off of Duck Creek Drive
into the park land from the south, crossing through the existing lowland and
Willow Creek up along the meadow in the back and trying to keep it as natural as
they could. And this was kind of a common theme, it was interesting because you
get all the boards together and they said a lot of the same things, keeping things as
natural as you could and introducing plant material to help visually screen 218,
from the noise and visual and try to keep it as natural as they could so that's what
the result of workshop 1. And given the fact they were in charge of design, they
were also in charge of presenting so they had to nominate a presenter of their own
to talk to the group and what they saw, what they decided, how they got there.
The next meeting which was design workshop 2, I turned it around and I was
responsible for giving something back to them which meant I needed to take a
look at their information and what I knew about the site, how I walked the site,
how I judged the site and presented a preliminary plan back to them. And we spent
a nice hour and a half critiquing what I had prepared based on what they had done
first and some of the early things that came out of this and it was based on a lot of
their wants and wish lists was an entry off of Duck Drive obviously, they had a lot
of, the sledding hill was a major important item in their wish list, that you could
not touch the sledding hill, that was a priority item and so we left it alone. We
had a lower pond involved, they had ponds in several locations but they felt that a
pond for possibly winter skating, a four season amenity would be a good idea, in
this case it's kind of a foreground pond. There' s a pond in the back which is, was
currently or has been farmed over the last many many years and the thought was to
try to get that as natural as we could and try to go with a possible prairie meadow
and beyond this prairie meadow as a shelter belt screening visual and road noise
from 218. So that' s what kind of happened with work session 2 and what I did
beyond that was to invite, I took that information and some final comments that
were filtering in and we did a final plan and then had an open house, that was April
10 and this is the result of, so a lot of the similar items are appearing. We have a
front entry trail that comes off of Duck Creek Drive and carefully it wanders down
the hill at a reasonable rate that' s within ADA slope requirements, this is a 10 foot
wide trail that moves over to, across Willow Creek itself to a child play area and
that continues west, and it terminates on the west edge but meandering through the
entire site is a 6 foot wide interpretive trail and that is to move you through the
existing natural open grass land that were, prairie species that will be planted
through there. A pond within that meadow fits in very nicely to the environment
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that' s created with that. And that' s about it, that' s an overall look at what we
were up to for the past 3 months. I do have a cost estimate but I didn't make any
copies, do you want, I can just go over a few things with this. The estimated total
construction cost with engineering services included was $324,000 and that's
including the landscape plantings for all the shelter belts, planting along Highway
218 and some of the existing, as we start to open up this corridor through here
we've added some new plant material, some of the plants that are in there in the
Willow Creek water shed are not exactly the most desirable trees, they tend to be
more cottonwood, mulberry that type of thing so we needed to open that up to
bring a trail through, bring the bridge through and have a good open view from
Duck Creek Drive to the child play area and then were adding some new plant
material through there. The next step beyond this that we're getting into is a more
design phase, construction type documents and one of the things that appeared on
this wish list and shows up here on this master plan is the proposed pond in front
that as far as we know at this point, it's kind of a 50-50 split with the neighbors,
50 percent want it, 50 percent don't, so we're going to move through the process
assuming it's going to stay, it depends on budget, it depends on other factors along
the way, we may or may not have that but for the most part everything you see
here with this master plan we are attempting to go with and hopefully build. I
think we can hope that the contract documents, the plans will be done toward the
end of August, early September and if there's time as Tom alluded to earlier with
his plan if Fall is kind to us we might be able to get some things started, some
grading, some planting but again it' s, as we start getting later in the season we just
have to pay attention to mother nature' s given us.
Champion/The pond that' s already naturally there or maybe it wasn't natural but the pond
that' s there, how deep is that pond? Does it freeze?
Ford/The pond, there's no pond there right now.
Champion/Oh I thought there was, up there.
Ford/No that' s just an open drainage swail that' s running through there and actually
we're taking advantage of, there are several watersheds that come through here.
Willow Creek watershed itself is very large and there' s a larger amount of water
that goes through, in fact the culvert that goes underneath 380 there acts as a
retention condo so ifthere's a lot of run off it does back up into the area that' s one
of the things we did pay attention to with where child, any of the play area goes
it's back beyond any of that runoff or stacking of water. The ponds themselves
will be probably dug out to within four feet deep possibly five, four to five feet
deep, safety is always a concern, that' s one of the comments of the citizens, the
folks that want it know that water safety is a priority item but they're willing to
deal with it because the amenity is, it's more of a positive than a negative. The
folks that want to use the ponds maybe for ice skating, good idea if we have a
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good winter for ice, we don't always in this region so it's kind of an iffy thing with
the smaller pond whether we do that.
Vanderhoef/The shallower the quicker they freeze.
Ford/Yes.
Vanderhoef/Routine.
Ford/And some folks want fish in there and if you make it real shallow the fish don't live
so it's sort of a two-headed sword with that, there' s a large water shed that comes
from the south west into the pond, there' s just enough water shed above here to
fill that proposed pond. Obviously those kinds of things and design have to be
carefully looked at if we're saying we can fill this pond with this water shed above
but in the dry season it gets lower, what does that look like? In this area back here
it is to be rough natural looking and we don't care so much about the edge it
creates if the rainfall isn't very heavy but with the pond up front it's a much
different situation because it is a formal look, there' s a formal front yard to this
park and you want it to look good so treatment of both of those are important in
the final design.
Vanderhoef/The discussion at all about in that dry season how that might affect the
mosquito and?
Ford/Oh sure, we were, I think with the pond in front particularly if we do go with that I
think we will air raid it so the surface does move and then you don't have that
problem. The one in the back it is just, it' s like we were talking all along as a
natural pond and it will stay still so that, but the mosquito issue did come up yep.
Any other questions? No I, we talked about connections or I'm not sure If they
brought it up or if we brought it up but the connection of the trail from east to
west, there is that existing condoance there, it's an 8 X 8 foot box culvert and
that' s an option to go through, we talked about an option of pushing another
culvert through or an option about going over the top. There is enough of a grade
change right here that you can go over the top of 218 and not underneath and so
we just through some ideas at everybody just to let them know that we still are
interested in the future to make that connection, how it's made is another issue, we
don't know for sure.
Vanderhoef/Where' s the culvert again, which one?
Ford/That one right there.
Pfab/How much of a dangerous is that an attractive nuisance, that culvert?
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Ford/From graffiti and dark space for people to hide and that type of thing I don't think
there' s a problem with that and I've checked with police force on Coralville and
their tunnel and things. A bigger issue would be the amount of water that' s being
pushed through there.
Pfab/Yes that was the part that I was referring to as a possible to catch people.
Ford/Yea, I don't know you know normally I would think have enough alert time or time
to react to that kind of thing, as adults we do as kids we just don't know. It is just
simply an 8 x 8 box which means you can't raise the floor up like you could
Coralville and let some of the water run underneath. Your one to one at the same
level with the run off so that' s a little bit of an issue I think. It' s there, it' s a way
to get through, but at the same time your competing with run off.
Vanderhoef/How close does that empty out on the east side then close or (can't hear)?
Ford/To the south?
Vanderhoef/Where (can't hear) the highway I guess.
Trueblood/Actually Dee that' s quite a ways from Rohret Road, I would.
Vanderhoef/So where do we come out further noah on Mormon Trek?
Ford/Right beyond West High School.
Trueblood/Yea where that comes out it would be pretty close to connect in with the
Willow Creek trail that runs behind West High School.
Vanderhoef/Okay.
Ford/Willow Creek Trail is almost up to this point already in this general area I don't
know it's probably within a I don't know 400 yards or so from the outlet of that
structure.
Trueblood/Just to emphasize the future trail connections, or the things that we talked
about are not part of this project but it was brought up in discussion as a possibility
for some future time.
Ford/Any other questions?
Champion/It looks great.
Pfab/It looks great.
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Lehman/Thank you.
Vanderhoef/Are they keep, this is probably for Terry, are they keeping playground
equipment in that other section down in that (can't hear) section behind the
housing.
Terry/No there isn't any there right now?
Vanderhoef/Are they going to put some there or what are there thoughts?
Trueblood/The location for the play equipment is right there.
Vanderhoef/Only there an leave that other area open on the other side of the road.
Trueblood/That's correct, that's the sledding hill that Steve was referring to that they
consider to be an important thing to keep.
Ford/It's a shrine, we need to stay away.
O'Donnell/Perhaps how big is that small pond Terry?
Trueblood/A little under half acre, I guess it would be a little under half an acre.
Champion/Thanks.
O'Donnell/It could be a great skating pond.
Champion/And how big is the other pond?
Pfab/A little over a half an acre.
Lehman/A little over a half an acre.
O'Donnell/I think the other pond would be a little over half an acre.
Lehman/Yea I think that' s right, just a little bigger than the smaller one.
(All talking, can't hear).
Pfab/Some of it is wet and some of it is dry.
(All talking, can't hear).
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Extension of Sunset Clause for PCRB
Lehman/The next item is the extension of the sunset clause for the PCRB which was on
our work session two weeks ago but it got a little late that night.
Champion/So you want to extend it to when?
Lehman/That' s what we're here to talk about.
Champion/Oh.
Pfab/I would propose that you extend the sunset clause, I would propose it 10 year.
O'Donnell/Propose what?
Pfab/A 10 year, extend it out for 10 years so people can work through it and work with
it.
Vanderhoef/I don't think that's what we're talking about, at least that's not what I
understand.
Lehman/Well we can do anything we want, at the last, when we met with the PCRB there
was, a majority of the Council was in favor of maintaining the PCRB in some form,
there seemed to be some interest and I know there' s interest on the part of the
PCRB in changing the way they operate and I sense there's an an interest on the
part of the Council to changing you know some of things that we expect them to
do. It's quarter till 9, if we wanted to talk about this for a few minutes we can
give the staff some kind of idea and the PCRB some sort of indication of where
we'd like to go or just get some ideas on the table.
Pfab/I mentioned earlier the idea of extending it and then after that work our way through
and decide, I mean input from everyone.
O'Donnell/I don't think that that' s a fair way to do it Irvin, we need to know what we're
extending to, for purpose.
Pfab/I think to take away any of the authority it has which isn't very much right now is a
drastic mistake.
O'Donnell/Well that' s what we're here to talk about.
Pfab/I just saw where, I was going to bring it out, it might be in the car, where Chicago
just settled for a $18 million dollar shooting, it's in the Chicago Tribune, it was
one of the lead articles so people accident or whatever happened.
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Kanner/ You' re saying prevention.
Pfab/Yes, I think.
Kanner/Will save us money.
Pfab/Yes I don't know what did our, what did it cost the last time we had a real bad
accident? And I think this is a very inexpensive way to minimize something like
that happening. And you and I don't spend much time observing the police where,
for all indications we know it's very good police but it's still police work.
O'Donnell/Ernie what's your opinion?
Lehman/Well I have, I see the PCRB as being an important board, I think it's important
to the community, I think it can be a useful tool for the Council and the police
department. However, I view them as, I've said it before, I would like to see them
operate in very much the same as our Board of Adjustment does that when there
are complaints that they address those complaints that the cause of those
complaints particularly if they have a complaint that is sustained that they have the
direction of the Council to look at whatever the problem was and address any
policy that results in a complaint that is sustained. In other words they file a
complaint, it's sustained, why was it sustained? They should have at the direction
of Council the authority to go in and make a recommendation to the Council or to
the Police Chief or the City Manager and I think they should be available for the
Council or the Police Chief or the City Manager for specific projects but for them
on their own initiative to initiate those sort of things I don't, I think that basically is
the job of the Council. I have no problem with them addressing complaints and I
think they should, and if the complaints show up problems in policy then I think
they should be directed to address those.
O'Donnell/Again define policy, we're talking policy here, you know policy and
procedure, those are two words that have been used frequently.
Lehman/Maybe I mean more procedure, policy has got to come from the Council or from
the Chief, but if we have procedures that result in complaints that are sustained it
would seem to me that that board would be a good tool for the Council to use to
ask to address those procedures and see ifthere's a better way of handling.
Vanderhoef/To make recommendations.
Lehman/Yea.
Vanderhoef/I'd like to be sure clear.
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Lehman/No, no, no, I think that's right, I'd like to get some indication to the staff of
where we think we'd like to go and I also think the PCRB should know what
direction we're thinking.
Pfab/I have been watching a number of articles, some of them, different parts of the
world, one right now that just struck me was the use of plastic bullets in noah
Ireland and the British, I mean Great Britain. What your seeing here is the police
system is changing, it's becoming a tremendously a lot more sophisticated and
powerful, and the citizens are becoming, it's easier to have a greater distance
between the person on the street and the power of the police force. I think the
Police Review Board is the part that links those two and keeps those in touch with
each other and sort of balances them out. I think it's an extremely important part
of our society and when you look at the budget we have for the police force that is
not, this is not a neighborhood watch group, this is a very powerful force and
living here on the Interstate we have to be ready for things like that. So there' s a
reason to get some of this extremely sophisticated police systems in place but it
also is a temptation.
O'Donnell/You sound Irvin like we're about to be attacked.
Pfab/Well no, but well why do we spend this money if we're not going to be attacked?
O'Donnell/I agree with Ernie, you know I think it's a good tool for the community used
properly.
Pfab/Right, but to sit on the, put them on the shelf is not the way.
O'Donnell/Well nobody' s ever talked about putting them on the shelf.
Pfab/Okay.
O'Donnell/We're talking about reviewing the sunset clause and we're talking about what
we feel the responsibility should be. There are words used like policy and
procedure that I'm in direct disagreement with, it's not a policy, it's the law, you
really don't have much option on how you enforce the law.
Pfab/Right.
O'Donnell/So that's the problem when you say policy and procedure, it's not a police
policy and these folks are out, Irvin it's like give me a list of the 20 crimes that you
feel we should enforce and then you give me a list of the 20 crimes you feel we
shouldn't enforce. I mean we don't have that option.
Kanner/Well actually we do, we were just talking about it as far.
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O'Donnell/Actually we don't Steven, it's the law.
Kanner/As far, wait Mike we just had that discussion about with the dumpsters. There
are laws, now we can put a person at every dumpster but that' s not the exact point
I think that this discussion should take, it' s. I agree with Irvin to a certain extent,
the police officers have powers beyond the average person, they're given that by
state code and city code and by federal law. And so I think it warrants a special
over sight committee and we have that and the question is "how much over sight
should that committee have"? And I want to rely on it for a lot, I think it's a good
thing to have there, I think it's pushed the police in some positive directions in that
initiated racial profiling and some other things and I think that we can give some
credit to the Police Citizens Review Board.
O'Donnell/I'm not sure that's right, I don't think that's right.
Vanderhoef/I don't either.
O'Donnell/I think (can't hear) initiated the profiling long, long before the Police Citizens
Review Board. You know however you are entitled to your opinion, I just
disagree with you. I think the laws are very clear in the State of Iowa and I really
don't think you have much option or discretion on which laws you enforce.
Lehman/Well why don't we first of all, do we have agreement as we did the first time we
talked about this with the PCRB that we will continue the PCRB? Is that a given?
Champion/Yes.
Wilburn/Yes.
(Can't hear).
Vanderhoef/I will not be supporting that.
Lehman/Okay. But the majority of the Council will be, Eleanor you're about ready to
say something.
Dilkes/Well I'm just going to ask for clarification, go ahead, I'm just, I just want to know
what I'm suppose to do.
Lehman/Oh, no, the PCRB in some form will be continued. Now the question is what do
we want to change, what they do, materially?
Dilkes/Well can I, can we, then I should do an ordinance eliminating the sunset clause and
then you all can talk about what changes you want to make.
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Lehman/I think it's possible, but it's also possible, I'm not sure t hat this will work but I
can't imagine that we will not be able to, I don't want to personally, extend the
sunset clause for a year, I want us to do, if we're going to modify the ordinance, I
think we need to have a time frame to get it done and if we just remove the sunset
clause or extend it for another couple three years or whatever there is no impetus
on us to make any changes so I would like to see us make whatever changes we
need to make you know in a judicious fashion and I'm not at all sure that those
changes cannot be pretty much worked out by the first of August.
Kanner/But Ernie one of the problems is if I want to vote for the Police Citizen Review
Board we're going to have some disagreement on what the powers or the purpose
is and I think it would be better if we could separate that to keep the Board and
say we're going to have it, vote on that and then talk about what we want to do.
Lehman/Oh I think that' s just what we're doing, we're saying we are going to keep the
Board, the question now is how do we want to change what they do or do we
want to change (can't hear).
Pfab/Okay, all right, I think but now, how are we going to do it just eliminate the sunset
clause?
(A couple talking)
Lehman/I don't think so.
O'Donnell/We're going to extend.
Champion/Let Eleanor work on (can't hear).
Pfab/My proposal was to extend it for 10 years.
Vanderhoef/No.
O'Donnell/10 years is an awful lot of time.
Dilkes/It sounds to me like some of you are interested in using an extension of the sunset
clause to put pressure on yourself to make some changes to the ordinance.
Vanderhoef/That's exactly right.
Dilkes/Is that what your talking about doing?
Lehman/That's what I would do.
Pfab/I think at that.
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Dilkes/That sounded like me to what.
Pfab/I think at that point your mixing and I don't think it's going to work that' s my,
basically with one exception here the Council seems to agree to continue it, so if
you continue it for, you get rid of the sunset clause and say it's part of city
government until we decide to get rid of it, or you know we can extend it 3 years,
5 years, 10 years, my proposal is 10 years.
O'Donnell/I'd like to extend it 3 months.
Vanderhoef/Okay let me say this to you, there could be a real change in that whole
picture Irvin depending on how the changes are.
Pfab/Well we can always.
Vanderhoef/Well what I'm saying is the vote can change and your depending on what
changes are being made on whether your even going to keep (can't hear).
Pfab/Okay but that doesn't mean, if we come up and make a lot of changes in the
authority and the procedures and what not, we can also change the other, say okay
now that we've got this one we're going to say it's going to be over in 6 months.
Vanderhoef/You lost me, I don't understand.
Pfab/Well I say let's get rid of the sunset clause, it's going to be part of.
Vanderhoef/No and I'm saying you've got to keep the sunset clause there and you've got
to make the changes so that we all know what we're voting on before we extend
this.
Pfab/Well then how long are we going to extend it so I know what to, how to make the
changes?
Lehman/What changes are we interested in making?
Champion/Well I'm not sure what changes I'm interesting in I mean I definitely think we
need the Police Review Board that it's becoming a nationwide problem, that
citizens want some control or they want to feel that their police are treating
citizens right and I think that's what this Board does, it tells us that the police are
obviously treating the citizens pretty well. But you know being a policeman, and
I've said it before it's just a human endeavor, and mistakes are made and things
happen that the public doesn't like and I think it's very important that we keep it.
I haven't quite made up my mind on what changes that I personally want to make
or whether I support the changes that anybody else wants to make because I don't
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really know what they are but I also feel that I need to hear more from the
community at large so when you say by August, I'm not so sure we can get this
done by August but I'm willing to try.
Lehman/Connie I don't think you're going to hear from the community at large basically
until we basically have the ordinance on.
Champion/Oh to react to it of course, your right, your right.
Lehman/I mean we can ask for public input always and we find the public input the night
the ordinance is going to get voted on.
Champion/No you're right.
Lehman/We have public hearings, we have all kinds of meetings and nobody shows up
until, although there will be I believe significant reaction from the PCRB, I mean if
we come up with changes certainly we're going to want to hear their reaction to
those changes. But I think to expect the public much in the way of public input is
going to be pretty tough.
Wilburn/A change that I would be interested in would be related to the language that
prohibits the PCRB from essentially kind of making an independent judgment
separate from the Police Chief. I know that some of the Board members have
expressed an interest in this, I know, let me finish please.
Pfab/Okay, I'm trying to get clarification of what your saying. Okay go ahead.
Wilburn/So that the Board will be allowed essentially it's own, essentially it would be an
independent body, independent voice. Now all the other stuff in my mind that
gives me something as a Council Member as we're looking at policy and procedure
where I can say I have the recommendation of the police chief and I have that
"independent voice from the PCRB" now whether that could work in a Board of
Adjustment type fashion it might and I would be open to exploring that but giving
it that language so that they could make their own judgment essentially.
Champion/Would that be kind of a safety net to you then? Is that like?
Wilburn/I like that idea too.
Champion/I like that idea too.
Lehman/How will that differ from what they're doing now? I guess they just confirmed, I
mean they either.
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Wilburn/There are certain, there are certain cases where there and maybe John Watson
you can maybe help me with the language where they can't essentially voice their
own opinion on (can't hear).
Lehman/They can just sustain or not sustain.
Dilkes/No, that the way and I don't know that I have the words exactly right but it's kind
of a substantial evidence rule.
Wilburn/That's right.
Dilkes/If the decision of the Police Chief is you know is supported by substantial evidence
and is not unreasonable and arbitrary then they have to sustain his decision. I give
you an analogy is you remember when you were at, you were reviewing a decision
by the Historic Preservation Commission about.
Lehman/Siding.
Dilkes/Yea.
(END OF 01-54 SIDE ONE)
Dilkes/It's a very high standard, it's not one where you substitute your own judgment
well yes reasonable minds can differ, I see that you can see it this way but I can see
it this way, that' s not what the PCRB is charged with doing, they're charged with
doing the substantial evidence or the not unreasonable arbitrary. And I know
from reading their minutes.
Wilburn/That' s how the (can't hear) has been, can perhaps function as barrier for them to
be given that independent voice.
Pfab/Okay the statement was made by somebody here and I'm not even sure who it was
and it doesn't make any difference. We talked about what powers we're willing to
give the Police Citizens Review Board because we don't want them to make
policies or procedures or whatever it was. Well because we want to reserve that
to the Council, I would dare ask the Council when was the last time did we make
any recommendations to how the police departments run? I don't ever remember
one, and as to interact with them on a, from a citizens to, from our constituents to
the police department, when was the time when what the citizens had to say to the
police department you know I think you ought to change this. Has it ever been
done?
Lehman/I don't think it has on the other hand.
Kanner/Well we did it tonight and.
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Vanderhoef/Sure.
Kanner/Yea tonight you recommended that we have a presence in Broadway and Connie
brought up a good proposal that the majority backed to have more police presence
against bicyclists and so forth on the ped mall.
Dilkes/It's been hot, it's been very much involved in your discussions on alcohol as I
recall.
Kanner/So it happens.
Vanderhoef/And presence down on the ped mall we've directed.
Pfab/Okay, all right, I stand to be corrected that' s fine.
Kanner/But I think you can take the point further and this it where it would be helpful to
have a Police Citizens Review Board make recommendations on those kind of
issues.
Pfab/And I think like in support of Ross was saying, the police may have this thing, the
citizens may have this and we have to make a decision and we would anticipate
that the Police Citizens Review Board would have their own independent however
they come together with it.
Lehman/You know I think to make this a little simpler we need to decide whether or not
we want the Police Citizens Review Board to be an organization that deals with
problems that exist within the police department. In other words when problems
show up because of complaints they have the ability to look at those complaints or
whether we want them to be a legislative body and that sets policies or procedures
for the police department. I think that' s basically the question, I believe the
function should be to review complaints to address complaints that appear to have
a problem with police procedures, I think they can address those but when it
comes to establishing policy or procedures or legislation I do not feel that is the
appropriate place.
Champion/I do not feel it is either.
Vanderhoef/I agree.
Pfab/Okay but one question.
Champion/They're not trained people, they're citizens.
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Pfab/But they spend a lot more time at this than we do. But is it, but are we opposed to
them saying this is what we see going on in the community, this is something that
you might want to take a look at.
Lehman/I think we can see those things Irvin but if the things that they see are the results
of a complaint I believe that should be their responsibility to address those things
and get back to us. If their not the result of the complaint I don't think (can't
hear).
Pfab/Okay, I don't think we're very far from agreeing this.
Lehman/John why don't you come up here so we can record you?
John Watson/And it has to do about establishing policy and I called Connie about this, the
ordinance does not allow us to establish policy or set policy or correct policy.
Lehman/No but you said yourself in this and some of your the statements I've seen is to
determine the pulse of the community for policing or whatever, that is in stuff that
we've gotten either from you or in the ordinance.
Watson/Yea the ordinance does say that we should you know we should review policy
which we do and make recommendations about policies, practices, procedures,
and so on, but we are an advisory board, we don't have any power, the Board of
Adjustment has a lot of power, they can make a decision and that' s it.
Lehman/Yea they either uphold or object.
Watson/And we do not have that kind of power, we are only an advisory group, we're
not seeking to be anything other than that, we're not seeking to be a policy making
or a legislative group, we're not seeking to overturn the chiefs decisions. But we
may see it a different way, we may see the evidence a little different way. And I
think as Ross was saying we might make a different call, I don't think that would
happen very often but that' s where we're restricted, it's a high standard that we
have to meet to make a different call. Really that' s the basic change that we're
seeking, it's still an advisory, it's a recommendation, you can take the
recommendation or not, you can ignore it, we're not seeking a change in anything
like that.
Kanner/What I see in our info. packet we got notes from your April meeting.
Watson/Are you talking to me now?
Kanner/Well to the Council and to you and you made some recommendations, we need to
clarify a few things and I think at the minimum we should try to clarify that about
the meaning of all complaints, you mentioned that and I think we should try to
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clarify that and I think it is good that all complaints should come to the Police
Citizens Review Board.
Watson/We're not recommending that, we're recommending that we recognize that there
is a two formal complaint, there' s an internal formal complaint system that' s much
quicker and faster and expedition that goes through the department. It sounds like
the ordinance doesn't recognize such a system but it's there and we think it's
probably a good thing. We'd like to get a report of that investigation, we
wouldn't act on that, that' s not our investigation, not our report, we'd just like to
be able to report to you the outcome of that investigation that the chief makes, and
he makes the decision and so it's kind of a quasi mediation step to handle some of
the more minor complaints if the complainant agrees to that so.
Kanner/Actually I think though it is good that you should see all complaints that come
through and whether you want to act on that or not I think would be a good thing.
Champion/Well you never choose to act on a complaint, a complaint is brought to you,
isn't it?
Dilkes/I think the, my involvement has been in that whole process is that it is, it should be
up to the complainant.
Champion/Right.
Dilkes/What process they choose to subject themselves to, the more lengthy Police
Citizen Review Board or something else, I think that has been the.
Watson/Correct, we endorse that.
Kanner/Well actually the Police Citizens Review Board I think along with Council has the
right to bring complaints to review complaints and I think that' s a good thing and
again I would argue it's probably good that you do look at all complaints and on
your one determine sometimes it might be appropriate for the Police Citizens
Review Board to start the process, sometimes people are intimidated and they
don't want to do that and sometimes for the greater good it might be worth it for
the Police Citizens Review Board to use that part of the ordinance that allows you
to initiate a complaint.
Pfab/Okay.
Dilkes/I think those are two different issues though, the Police Citizen Review Board
initiation of a complaint is one issue and the other issue that I think John was
talking about was whether every complaint that is made about the police
department must go through the PCRB process.
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Pfab/I don't think that was the thing, I think what John is saying here is what he would
like, what the Board and I speak for he as the Board and it's my understanding and
I stand to be corrected if I'm wrong is that some complaints they will never see,
they will never go to the Police Citizens Review Board because the police will
have solved it.
Lehman/And the complainant didn't choose to fill a complaint (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/(can't hear).
Pfab/Right but John is saying they would like to be informed as to what they were.
Champion/That's all.
Pfab/Just a report, a minor a relatively small report.
Dilkes/They.
Lehman/Eleanor.
Dilkes/I believe you do get a report don't you?
Watson/There' s three, yes, we get a quarterly report that just, that says what the
complaint was, what the allegation was and what the chief decided. We don't get
an investigative report, we'd like to have access to that just so we can see how it's
handled and we don't think they're not handled well but in order to report to you
on an annual basis which the ordinance says we do about all complaints we really
need more information about those complaints. We are not going to rule on those
complaints so.
Pfab/Background information.
Vanderhoef/You know in this respect though with all of those complaints that go directly
to the police department those folks number one made a choice to go that way.
Watson/Yea, absolutely.
Vanderhoef/And number two if they aren't happy with the outcome they have the choice
to come to you folks.
Watson/Absolutely.
Vanderhoef/Or to come to City Council or come to City Manager.
Watson/Absolutely.
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Vanderhoef/So for those reports to come to you I think perhaps some of those folks are
specifically choosing the other route because they don't want it out to anymore
public than absolutely necessary and in that case I'm saying they're thinking you as
public.
Watson/Well it wouldn't be public at all in any sense of the word.
Vanderhoef/I understand that but that would be how many more people sat around a
table and talked around their case. And if it's in closed section that' s.
Lehman/Just a minute Irvin.
Dilkes/It doesn't necessarily have to be and the names wouldn't necessarily have to.
Pfab/Right and the names are not in there.
Dilkes/If they received such a report.
Watson/Most of those, there are really three complaint process, one is a very informal
process, somebody has a complaint, they come into the station, they have a beef
and they sit down with a watch commander and get it off their chest. Sometimes
they come into our office and talk to Sandy and get it off their chest, and it's
resolved, it's done, there' s no report. If they're not satisfied, or if they want to
make a formal complaint they have to choose one of two forms, one' s the internal
departmental form, one is our form, they have the same cover page explaining the
two processes. The police internal process is short and sweet, I mean it' s, there' s
not a mediator there so it's not really a mediation, there's not a neutral party there
but they can sit down with the watch commander and the officer if the officer is
willing to and hash it out and get it off their chest and the watch commander can
say you know I think you've got a point there, we'll talk about this in the
department and that can change it and they might do a more investigation but
there is a report made as a result of that formal complaint on that form. And
there' s a report made. We'd like to have access to that report, I honestly don't
think we want to review every report, but we'd like to have access in case we had
a question about it, and then we can inform you about every year about the
complaints and what they're about and how they're resolved. But it's not our
complaint so it's not going to slow down anything, it's just a review.
Pfab/And you said there' s a third one.
Watson/The third one is our form which is a lot more lengthy and formal and so it's
spelled out in the ordinance.
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Pfab/Okay but I think what was stated here and I'm not sure whether it's right or wrong
is if the police, if the citizen goes to the police department and says I have a beef
and I want to use that process, okay let' s suppose they can't get it resolved, would
they have an automatic right to come to you then?
Watson/Sure as long as it's within the 90 day time limit.
Pfab/Okay so other than the time constraint they have access.
Watson/Sure.
Champion/John as long as your up there. One of the things that really bothers me about
this whole, the present ordinance or whatever it's called is the public means where
you go out to the public, it just seems to me that that' s asking, I don't know
something bothers me about putting a policeman up to try to defend himself
against people who obviously don't like him in the first place. I, is that, does
anything positive come out of those public meetings?
Watson/Well the issue of profiling came up in our first one frankly, and I know there
seems to be some disagreement on where that came from but we're the ones that
decided to adopt that and ever since our first few meetings that became one of our
issues to explore. The Chief came to us fairly early, I think sometime in the first
year and we asked him if we'd be willing to do that and he said no, siting
administrative hassle and so on and it seemed like a final answer, we kept it on our
dock as something that was important to us, I think within a year he decided on his
own I think to his credit to go ahead and initiate the good work he's done in that
area so, but, we did ask that early on.
Pfab/And to think he wasn't happy with it is not correct because if you go, there' s an
article in what is it? CityScape Today, he was pretty proud of that article and I
think he had a right to be.
Watson/The climate was very different three four years ago or three years ago when we
brought that issue up and it's a more accepted thing to do.
Vanderhoef/That issue came up during the public hearings after the Shaw case and
internally things started working at that point.
Watson/All I can tell you is what he told us when we brought it up so.
Pfab/And also for everyone else to know that process is being refined considerably it's
changing evolving quite a bit because there' s a possibility of getting a lot more
information from that than is now readily available.
Lehman/Well what do we want to do? How do we want to handle this?
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O'Donnell/I think that we extend the sunset clause for another three months, work out.
Lehman/How are we going to work out the things we would like to see incorporated into
the ordinance?
O'Donnell/Obviously we've got differences in opinion Ernie, we want some people that
want them to be strengthened and more power and authority and I believe very
similar to you do, I think it should function like the Board of Adjustment. I don't
really think that you accomplish anything by going out into the community like
that, I've been to a couple of those.
Lehman/Would it be far to ask each of us to sit down and write down what we would like
to see and discuss that at our next work session and pick and choose from what we
write down as to what we want to ask Eleanor to try to.
O'Donnell/Sounds fine.
Champion/That's a good idea.
Lehman/Put down, I mean I think we're going to have.
O'Donnell/At least we've got something accomplished.
Pfab/Okay but then one other thing, that' s one issue, what about the extension, the
chance of getting this done by the first of August or what, how much?
Lehman/I don't know Connie just said a three month extension, whatever length of time it
takes us to get this done I think is how long (can't hear).
Pfab/So, in other words is it not certain that it's going to be continued after that?
Champion/No.
O'Donnell/Irvin (can't hear).
Pfab/Then why don't we just.
Champion/We don't know what we're continuing, we need to know what we're
continuing, we need to know what we're continuing.
Vanderhoef/(can't hear).
Pfab/Well how are you going to, I understand there are vacancies now, what do you tell
the people that may apply or may decide (can't hear).
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Champion/Maybe we'll ask the present, we'll deal with that later (can't hear).
Lehman/I think it's fair to say that we will not let the PCRB expire.
O'Donnell/No.
Lehman/It will continue.
Champion/Right.
O'Donnell/That's not the intention at all.
Pfab/Well isn't it our intention to get rid of the sunset clause period?
Vanderhoef/No.
Champion/No.
Lehman/I think that we have to decide that I don't know.
Pfab/That part hasn't been decided.
Champion/No.
Karr/Ernie just to clarify, if Council would like to jot down some suggestions that
individual would like to see pursued maybe you could drop them off and we could
combine them into a list of talk subjects for your June 11 meeting.
Lehman/That would be a good idea.
Karr/And you could use it, you know you'd have it ahead of time, that you could then go
through. And then at that time you could then assess perhaps at that discussion
we'll schedule it again and then you could decide maybe on some direction and
then that would be the meeting that we would also be announcing the vacancies.
You would not, it's an ordinance, so any decision you make on the sunset you can
do at your July meetings but in June if you could give some direction to staff then
we would know, be better able to give you a time line.
Pfab/So in other words before we go out and advertise for vacancies most people will
know.
Karr/No Irvin that' s not what I said. There are two different issues here, one is the sunset
clause and changes to the ordinance the other one are advertising the vacancies.
I'm saying at your meeting in June you will have a list and the opportunity to
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discuss the changes in the sunset clause. On that same agenda will be the notice of
vacancies that we will be advertising. Based on that discussion you may choose
not to advertise at that time or you will decide to go right ahead with the present
advertising, so there will be at the same agenda you can decide that.
Lehman/And I would also like to see us if we come up with our list, consolidate the list.
Karr/Yes.
Lehman/Decide on whatever general points we think we like and then send that to the
PCRB for their review because I'm sure that we really want to know what their
reaction to some of the things are that we're suggesting. Get their comments and
then review those along with ours and we can probably put something together, I
think the process can work but I don't think it's going to work unless we sit down
and come up with points that we, like you have a point Ross, a particular point
and someone else has one but yes this is good, no that one isn't then come up with
a group of things that we, the majority of us agree on, send that to staff to work
something up and then send it to the PCRB.
Champion/That' s a really good idea.
O'Donnell/Ernie I think you'd take that even a step farther I understand PCRB is meeting
quite regularly, I'd like to know how exactly how they think it should function.
Lehman/I think that's fine.
Champion/I think they've told us.
O'Donnell/No they haven't.
Watson/Actually we meet Wednesday night and it's on our agenda.
Karr/John I can't pick you up.
Lehman/John we can't hear you I'm sorry.
O'Donnell/I think that I would like to have (can't hear) before we.
Lehman/No, no, good, but you hear what we're saying I think we do want to know.
Okay we'll hear from the PCRB and then okay we'll get them together.
Karr/So you'll get them to my office, I'll put a reminder in the packet, and we need them
a couple weeks ahead of that meeting so we have time to put them together and
consolidate.
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Vanderhoef/Which meeting now for sure?
Karr/Well it will be the June 1 lth work session is the next time your going to be meeting
so it would be the packet proceeding that so give or take the first week in June.
Lehman/So basically you've got two weeks to get it.
Karr/I'll put a note in the packet.
Council Time
O'Donnell/One quick thing I promised myself that I wouldn't bring up Ernie if you'd
dumped pancake batter on the floor and I'm not going to do that.
Lehman/And I promise I won't argue with you about the quantity. Dee do you have
anything you promised not to talk about?
Vanderhoef/No I don't think I'll think like that.
Lehman/Ross, Irvin, Dee. I've just got two things, the parking ramp on Iowa Avenue
opened today with 360 cars and there are people using it, they haven't announced
it yet but it's being used. The other thing Steve I would like to see, you've heard
this a million things and your tired of hearing it, I'm going to say two things, one
I've never said to the Council before, we need to get papers in those kiosks.
Atkins/Yea.
Lehman/I mean either get, the other thing is we've got significant numbers of people
riding bicycles and skateboards downtown.
Champion/Terrible.
Lehman/And I really thing we're going to have to start giving tickets even to Connie and
Mike if their riding their roller blades.
O'Donnell/Connie rides the skateboard and I ride the bike.
Lehman/Okay then we're going to give you both.
Champion/It's terribly dangerous, you come out of a store, a bicycle is roaring down that
sidewalk, I mean we're not anti bikes, we're not anti skateboards but you can not
ride bikes on downtown streets, people are coming in and out of store fronts and
twice I've almost been hit I know somebody' s probably trying to hit me but you
know.
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O'Donnell/You know somebody is going to get hit on a bicycle downtown, we've had
reports of people are hitting bicycles on the sidewalk all over downtown and we
need to give.
Lehman/We need to give some tickets, go ahead.
Vanderhoef/(Can't hear) this afternoon, at noon when I was down at the west end of
Iowa Avenue the pedestrians and the cars were commingling because the
construction fencing is completely out of the cross walk on the west side so
people have no way to cross there without going (can't hear).
Lehman/That will be taken care of before the evening is over.
Atkins/(can't hear).
Lehman/Hold it, yes.
Dilkes/I have a, just a quick update, as Ernie knows the ETC. license denial was appealed
to the state, my office participated in a hearing last week and it is pending before
the administrative law judge so we'll let know.
Karr/I have two things, number one can you, any of you tell me if you plan on attending
the Historic Preservation presentation, you all receiving invitations in your packet.
And ifthere's a quorum of you going then I need to know and we need to post it.
Lehman/That' s Wednesday at what time?
Karr/Wednesday at 4:00.
Lehman/In the afternoon okay. Are there going to be more than three Council people.
Kanner/5:15 isn't that the.
Karr/I'm sorry I have to look that up Steven I've got it down here as 4:00 1 think that is
correct. Yea I need to post it ifthere's going to be more.
Vanderhoef/Program at 5:15.
Kanner/There's a good chance but I'm not sure though.
Lehman/Irvin will be there, Steven will be there, Dee are you going to be there?
Vanderhoef/Yea I usually go.
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Lehman/You better post it because there may very well be four people, oh that means you
have to be there as well.
Karr/Well it's going to be, because it's an item your going to be discussing so there' s
nothing, your getting to be getting this coming down through.
Champion/(can't hear).
Lehman/No, oh you mean the morning thing, the 8:00 AM thing.
Karr/I'm talking about the memo you received from Michael Gunn in your packet
regarding a presentation at 8 AM in the Council Chambers.
Lehman/8:00 Wednesday morning, how many Council people are going to be there?
Karr/Two.
Lehman/I see two.
Vanderhoef/Subject of.
O'Donnell/I have to work.
Karr/Central Business District survey and evaluation, Marlis Svenson.
Kanner/Yea and then there' s something in the afternoon that we were talking about.
Karr/Right that I'm not, that' s not something (can't hear).
Lehman/Dee are you going to be there?
Vanderhoef/I may come down and listen to that.
O'Donnell/I have to work.
Lehman/All right the fourth person who gets here leaves, all right.
Champion/Well if it's 8:00 in the morning on Wednesday I don't think it's going to be a
problem for me to be.
Karr/Okay and then I have one other thing, I've got one Council Member who has
requested to be on the mailing list for the PCRB packet, are there any more of you
that want the packet?
Lehman/No.
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Champion/No.
Karr/Okay.
O'Donnell/No.
Adjourned 9:30 PM.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council meeting
of May 14, 2001.