HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001-12-10 Transcription December 10, 2001 Special Work Session Page 1
December 10, 2001 Special Work Session 6:30 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn, Pfab, Karmer
Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Dilkes, Franklin, Matthews, Davidson
TAPES: 01-108 BOTH SIDES; 01-109 BOTH SIDES
Lehman/Okay before we start the meeting, there's an addition to the consent calendar for
tomorrow night.
Karr/Yes, we have a gentleman here who would like to add a Class C liquor license.
Would you like to step to the podium please. This gentleman is here from
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar. And just identify yourself and.
Jeff Flaherty/Yes I'm Jeff Flaherty, I'm the regional manager for Buffalo Wild Wings in
the midwest, and we're looking forward to get rolling down here in Iowa City.
Kart/We would like to add this liquor license application to your consent calendar
tomorrow evening contingent upon a meeting with our County Attorney at 1:30
tomorrow afternoon and subsequent approval, since we only have one meeting
this month it presents a little bit of a scheduling problem.
Champion/That's fine.
Karr/All of the other applications and signatures have been fulfilled.
Lehman/Okay, all right, thank you, welcome to Iowa City.
Flaherty/Thank you.
Lehman/Karin Planning & Zoning matters.
Planning & Zoning
A. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE .63 ACRES FROM GENERAL
iNDUSTRIAL, I-1, TO INTENSIVE COMMERCIAL, CI-1, LOCATED ON
TilE SOUTH SIDE OF HIGHWAY 1 WEST, WEST OF RUPPERT ROAD.
(RE01-00021) (FIRST CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Okay most of what we have tonight are repeats. The first is the rezoning from
I-1 to CI-1 of the property on Highway 1 west near Carousel Motors, this is first
consideration.
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B. CONSiDER AN ORDINANCE TO VACATE WEST BENTON COURT NORTH OF
BENTON STREETS. (VAC01-00003) (FIRST CONSiDERATION)
Franklin/The second item is the ordinance to vacate West Benton Court, also first
consideration, that's the one you'll need to refuse yourself Ernie.
C. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE FROM MEDIUM DENSITY SINGLE
FAMILY (RS-8) TO HISTORIC PRESERVATION OVERLAY (RS-8/OHP)
FOR PROPERTIES WITHIN THE LONGFELLOW NEIGHBORHOOD TO
ESTABLISH THE LONGFELLOW HISTORIC DISTRICT. (REZ01-00019)
(SECOND CONSIDERATION)
D. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE FROM MEDIUM DENSITY SiNGLE
FAMILY (RS-g) TO CONSERVATION DISTRICT OVERLY (RS-8/OCD) FOR
PROPERTIES WITHIN THE LONGFELLOW NEIGHBORHOOD TO
ESTABLISH THE CLARK STREET CONSERVATION DISTRICT. (REZ01-
00019) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
E. CONSIDER AN ORDiNANCE TO REZONE FROM MEDIUM DENSITY SINGLE
FAMILY (RS-8) TO CONSERVATION DISTRICT OVERLY (RS-g/OCD) FOR
PROPERTIES WITHiN THE LONGFELLOW NEIGHBORHOOD TO
ESTABLISH THE DEARBORN STREET CONSERVATION DISTRICT.
(REZ01-00019) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Items C, D, and E, are second considerations on the Longfellow Neighborhood
and the Clark Street and Dearborn Conservation Districts.
F. CONSIDER AN ORDiNANCE TO VACATE 11,800 SQUARE FEET OF
UNDEVELOPED KIRKWOOD AVENUE RIGHT-OF-WAY LOCATED
SOUTH OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST PARKING LOT AT 1320
KIRKWOOD AVENUE. (VAC01-0005) (SECOND CONSIDERATION)
Franklin/Item F is the second consideration of the Church of Christ acquisition of the
right of way of Kirkwood Avenue and you have that on for setting a public
hearing later on in the agenda, it's a resolution of intent to convey and set the
public hearing.
Lehman/Right.
Franklin/And we have received the offer from the Church of Christ which the staff is not
agreeing with.
Lehman/Right.
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Franklin/It's the one dollar consideration, I'm assuming that representatives from the
Church of Christ will be here tomorrow evening to make their pitch for that.
Lehman/I have one question in that regard. Would it, is it appropriate to set the public
hearing, set the hearing for the intent to convey?
Franklin/Yes.
Lehman/If we after seeing the proposal have no intention of conveying it but that.
Franklin/I would say no, what do you think?
Lehman/Do we still set the intent to convey?
Dilkes/I think, if there's discussion about, I mean if you have some dialogue with him
and it looks like there's going to be some negotiation and perhaps he's going to
come back with a different offer then I think you could go ahead and set it.
Lehman/But if.
Dilkes/But if it looks like he's at one dollar and your not interested then I wouldn't set it.
Lehman/Then we just do not set the public hearing to set the, okay.
Franklin/And then we'll just stop the whole thing including the vacation.
Lehman/Okay, that's fine, that's fine.
G. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE APPROXIMATELY 3.07 ACRES
FROM MEDIUM DENSITY MULTIFAMILY, RM-20, TO MEDIUM DENSITY
SINGLE FAMILY, RS-8, LOCATED AT 7474 W. BENTON STREET. (REZ01-
00013) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/Okay, Item G is an ordinance to rezone from RM-20 to RS-8 the Buss property,
that's pass and adopt.
H. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE APPROXIMATELY 24.12 ACRES
FROM INTERIM DEVELOPMENT SINGLE-FAMILY, ID-RS, TO SENSITIVE
AREAS OVERLAY LOW DENSITY SiNGLE-FAMILY, SAO-5, LOCATED
EAST OF HICKORY TRAIL. (REZ01-00012) (PASS AND ADOPT)
Franklin/And then a pass and adopt on the sensitive areas overlay, single family
development on east of Hickory Trail, that's the First and Rochester area.
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I. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION FOR A PRELIMINARY PLAT OF FIRST AND
ROCHESTER, PART 4, A 24.12-ACRE, 36-LOT RESIDENTIAL
SUBDIVISION LOCATED EAST OF HICKORY TRAIL. (SUB01-00009)
Franklin/Following that is the preliminary plat for that same sensitive areas overlay plan.
Vanderhoef/Have we seen that?
Franklin/The plat?
Vanderhoef/Yes.
Franklin/Yea I mean the plat and the sensitive areas overlay plan are essentially the same,
you just see much more detail on the sensitive areas overlay plan, let me.
Vanderhoef/I can't remember whether I've seen it or not.
Franklin/Well as soon as this kind of responds, we're not, okay. These are ones, okay
these are the sensitive areas overlay plan, no that goes right to the Village Green.
The plat Dee is underneath this, you can see the lots and the street that are shown
there and so this is going to be the same thing, so yes you have seen it, we've
talked about this in terms of where the conservation easements were and the
drainage and all that kind of stuff.
Vanderhoef/I see it, I know I've seen it too, thank you.
J. CONSIDER A REZONING ORDiNANCE TO AMEND THE OPDH PLAN FOR
VILLAGE GREEN PART XVIII TO PERMIT NiNE ADDITIONAL
RESIDENTIAL UNITS ON 4.33 ACRES OF PROPERTY LOCATED WEST
OF SCOTT BOULEVARD AND SOUTH OF WELLINGTON DRIVE. (REZ01-
00018) (PASS AND ADOPT)
K. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION FOR A PRELIMINARY AND FINAL PLAT OF
ViLLAGE GREEN PART XXI, A 1.53, 1-LOT RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION
LOCATED WEST OF SCOTT BOULEVARD AND SOUTH OF
WELLINGTON DRIVE. (SUB01-00020)
Franklin/Okay and then the next one is the pass and adopt on the OPDH plan for Village
Green Part XVIII, and this is to have nine residential units along Scott Boulevard
which again it's a pass and adopt on the OPDH and then the preliminary and final
plat for that and what your getting is this lot 65 which is now being created, this
was previously an outlot in part XVIII, so this is a resubdivision of Village Green
Part XVIII, okay.
Lehman/Okay.
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Franklin/That is really faint.
L. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE TO REZONE APPROXIMATELY 14.07 ACRES OF
PROPERTY FROM LOW DENSITY SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, RS-5,
AND PLANNED DEVELOPMENT OVERLAY - LOW DENSITY SINGLE
FAMILY RESIDENTIAL, OPDH-5, TO OPDH-5, FOR APPROXIMATELY
14.07 ACRES OF PROPERTY LOCATED SOUTH OF VILLAGE ROAD AND
NORTH OF WINTERGREEN DRIVE. (REZ01-00014) (PASS AND ADOPT)
M. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION FOR A PRELIMINARY PLAT OF VILLAGE
GREEN, PARTS 19-20, A 14.07-ACRE, 15-LOT RESIDENTIAL
SUBDIVISION LOCATED EAST BETWEEN VILLAGE ROAD AND
WINTER GREEN DRIVE. (SUB01-00017)
Franklin/And then you have another pass and adopt for a planned development for
another portion of Village Green which is further south and the preliminary plat
for that. That's easier to see there, and this is the one that butt's Wellington,
basically we're getting to the southern end of the Wellington Condominium's, this
also includes single family lots. And that is it.
Champion/Wow.
Lehman/Boy you're good, you're quick.
Agenda Items
Lehman/Okay review of Agenda Items, Steve.
Atkins/Any questions, Emie.
Lehman/I don't know it just says Atkins, that's you isn't it?
Atkins/We had to put a name down and (can't hear).
Lehman/That's right, okay agenda items for the rest of the Council.
ITEM 9. CONSIDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING TITLE 5, "BUSINESS AND
LICENSE REGULATIONS, "CHAPTER 2, "VEHICLES FOR HIRE," OF THE
CITY CODE CLARIFYING DEFINITION OF VEHICLES FOR HIRE,
ADDING REQUIREMENTS FOR CERTiFIED STATE OF IOWA CRIMINAL
HISTORY INFORMATION PRIOR TO ISSUANCE OF ANY APPLICATION
AND/OR DRIVING BADGE, AND REMOVING THE REQUIREMENT FOR A
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DISTINCTIVE COLOR SCHEME FOR VEHICLES FOR HIRE. (SECOND
CONSiDERATION)
Kanner/I've got one, I think most of us got calls from Dave Stoddard from he owns the
taxi, the Yellow Cab, and he runs the Greyhound.
Champion/Yea I got calls from somebody.
Kanner/Some of us got calls at least, he has a concern I'm not sure ifI agree with him
but I think it's worth looking into, discussing a little bit about, our new ordinance
that we're considering with the vehicles for hire about taking away the color
requirements and so he has a certain amount invested in Yellow Cab obviously
and he wants to keep that. And so I go back and forth on it, sometimes I think we
should make it easier like we're doing with this ordinance to take away that
requirement and let other people get into the game, but there's something to be
said for him having invested some time and years into that color.
Champion/I also got a call, it wasn't from him, I can't remember the girls name who was
concerned that it would be, that it might be on faith to eliminate a standard color
or because anyone could put a cab for hire, and you wouldn't have any idea who is
picking you up, and I think there are some safety concerns, she's coming to the
meeting tomorrow night to.
Karr/Could I just mention a couple of things regarding this?
Kanner/Sure.
Karr/Totally your decision, number one this recommendation is not taken lightly by staff,
there are always tradeoffs. Right now we have nine different cab companies in
town and when we talk about a distinctive color scheme quite frankly we're
running out of a lot of color combinations, if you said blue and white, red and
white, you know unless you really start distinguishing blue value too from navy
versus black, a distinctive color scheme is a little challenging for some of the new
companies when the colors are quote "spoken for".
Champion/No they could be any color as long as they were the same color for each fleet,
I mean or.
Lehman/Yea, except you've got how many cab companies?
Karr/I think we have nine right now.
Kanner/I think they have to be distinctive too Connie.
Champion/Right.
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Karr/And so I think again what we talked about and we've talked to various companies
involved, some of them are thrilled simply because a number of them when they
go to order the same vehicle can't get the same color anymore and so when they
add a seventh, or eighth or tenth vehicle to their fleet they no longer can get the
same color and so it changes a little bit in hue so it proves a little bit of a problem
to match them. On the other hand I totally agree and do not at all forget the time
when we talked about doing this before and we had citizens and we had a lot of
pirating within cab companies. Citizens would call Yellow Cab and would expect
a Yellow Cab to pick them up and if another cab company were a different color
and had beat them to the pick up point the person didn't know that they weren't in
the right cab.
Lehman/Are there certain trademarks, trademarks are probably the wrong thing?
Karr/We're still requiring two inch lettering on the side of each door.
Lehman/Yea but I would.
Champion/Can it be a magnetic thing?
Karr/It does not distinguish in magnetics, it says two inch lettering on each passenger
door.
Lehman/But does a cab company, for example Yellow Cab since we have it. Do they
have certain trademark rights if they use always the same cab and the same
lettering if there's someone?
Karr/And I might add Yellow Cabs are not all yellow.
Champion/No.
Lehman/Oh Yellow Cabs are not all yellow.
Kart/No.
Lehman/Why do they call them Yellow cabs then?
Karr/It's a company name rather than a distinctive.
Lehman/But all of the Yellow Cabs of the Yellow Cab company are not yellow.
Karr/That's correct.
Champion/No, they're not.
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Lehman/Oh all right that answer's my.
Champion/They're not even all yellow in Chicago.
Lehman/Okay.
Vanderhoef/So okay when you say that we can, that they could be a magnetic sign.
Karr/It does not say they can not be, that's correct.
Vanderhoeff Then that's the piece that hits me as a safety issue that you could get a
magnetic sign on any kind of car and drive up and say you are a cab.
Karr/We certainly could take care of that if that would be something.
Champion/Yea I think that is a safety.
Lehman/I do too.
Pfab/I only, that would be the only.
Champion/Because Irvin could go downtown and pick up some young girl if he had
(can't hear).
Pfab/Oh yes, to fight them off.
Lehman/Well but also we do require a safety inspection and if that magnetic sign is
movable you wouldn't, I think that's a good point, that it needs to be a permanent
sign.
Karr/It says "each vehicle for hire must have painted plainly in letters two inches in
height on each side of the vehicle".
Lehman/Okay that eliminates magnetics.
Karr/And we could also include as Eleanor just mentioned permanent.
Dilkes/I think the painted is.
Karr/ Painted in first permanency, but it does not say.
Vanderhoef/It infers that and Eleanor should we say no magnetic signs just to make it
clear that that's not an option.
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Karr/Non removable or some.
Lehman/Well painted permanent pretty much says it.
Kart/It doesn't say permanent it says painted.
Dilkes/It doesn't say permanent but painted is not magnetic and if your worried about it
we certainly could say no magnetic signs or no easily removable lettering or
something to that affect we can come up with something.
Vanderhoef/I think I would appreciate that.
Karr/Okay.
Pfab/To go back and sort this out, you brought this up Steven and you were saying that
you got a call stating what?
Karmer/Well from Dave that he feels that other people might be using the same color of
his cab company that he's been using and he likes the idea of having a distinctive
color, but it sounds like he doesn't necessarily have a distinctive color, I didn't
know that, I didn't know that some of his cabs were not yellow.
Lehman/Yea I didn't know that.
Pfab/Okay so now the request is to not have any color distinction.
Lehman/That's the way the thing is written.
Pfab/Now that's what we're trying to get to happen.
Lehman/That's the way it's written.
Pfab/So now the only, it looks to me like the only issue is that of a safety issue for certain
people.
Champion/Right.
Pfab/I mean, and I don't, that would be my only concern.
Champion/I mean ~ve have cabs with many different colors in town but I think they need
to be identifiable in some manner so that somebody just can't go downtown and
put a sign on their car that say's taxi and who knows who it could be, it could be
me.
Kart/I'd like to point out also that Cedar Rapids.
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Pfab/It could be a terrorist.
Karr/Cedar Rapids recently changed their ordinance to delete the color scheme as well.
Champion/Well I think there are valid reasons to change that part but I am concerned
about the safety.
Kan'/I think again, I share your concerns, I think again I would go back to the two inch
lettering on each panel as being perhaps the response.
Kanner/It sounds pretty reasonable I guess and if Dave or others want to make an
argument tomorrow they can make that during our discussion of this ordinance.
Lehman/But it would be kind of tough if he himself have different colored yellow cabs.
Karr/I want to clarify Mr. Stoddard is one of the gentleman who has privately, he has
private drivers driving for him so he has leased cars from private drivers, they
form their o~vn company who drive for Yellow.
Champion/Right.
Karr/So therefore the other company driving for Yellow has it's own distinctive color
scheme and is not yellow.
Champion/Okay.
Kanner/I didn't follow that the other.
Champion/He hires other (can't hear).
Karr/He leases out.
Champion/His phone calls so to speak.
Lehman/I could be, ifI worked for Dave I could take my pickup and be a yellow cab and I
would contract.
Kanner/And you'd be part of his company he set up of sort.
Lehman/And he would pay me a commission for hauling, and I would be a Yellow Cab
in a green pickup.
Champion/Well I used to have a yellow truck, that would work better.
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Lehman/ You'd be legal, all right.
Pfab/No, no, just a minute, I'm concerned, the only thing that's required of the vehicle
for hire now is a two inch letter on the door side, that's the only thing that's
required?
Lehman/It has to be inspected.
Pfab/Nothing on the top, nothing on the front.
Karr/No we do not require bubbles or rates.
Pfab/That seems like a very minimal identification.
Karr/It is minimal.
Kanner/Well that's the other side, I don't think it should be so difficult to get into it, we
want to give people options, I don't know if we have to be like New York City
and limit the number of cab licenses that are out there.
Pfab/But shouldn't there be a little bit more identifying either on the roof, or on the
front, or the back, somebody's waiting for somebody to pull up, or waiting for a
cab, shouldn't they be able to identify it as it pulls up or do they have to wait until
it gets there?
Lehman/Well two inch letters on the side.
Kanner/Well if they're smart, if they think it's to their advantage they would put
something on the top.
Pfab/Okay, that would be my only concern is the safety part.
Lehman/And we'll take the rest of the discussion tomorrow night when the public shows
up. Other agenda items.
ITEM 6. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING DAVID DAHLQUIST AS THE
ARTIST FOR THE NEAR SOUTHSIDE TRANSPORTATION CENTER
PROJECT, AND AUTHORIZiNG THE MAYOR TO SIGN AND THE CITY
CLERK TO ATTEST AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF IOWA
CITY AND DAHLQUIST CLAYWORKS, iNC.
Franklin/Ernie can I address one?
Lehman/Yes.
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Franklin/You have a contract on their, I think it's Item 6, this is a contract with an artist
for their art component of the Near Southside Transportation Center, the draft that
you have in your packets, we're still working on some details of it, basically what
we've changed a little bit is the schedule to give them a little bit more time in
terms of design of the fence and then the Section 1.9 risk of loss, working out
insurance between the City and the artist, it's not anything large but I'm going to
have a final contract tomorrow it's just that I know your not going to be able to
read through it tomorrow night.
Lehman/So we can act on it tomorrow?
Franklin/Yes I believe that you can.
Vanderhoef/Okay I have a question about that schedule too, when you go to page two of
the agreement for services, clear at the bottom of the page number 5 "Council
approval of fence design by March 19, of 02", but then you go over on the next
page and it says "complete community participation plan by September of 02."
So what is the community piece that's coming after we've approved the design?
Franklin/Well the design, this is going to be a different project of course, we try to have
little nuances to each one to make it sort of complicated. First of all the timing
there, it's going to be probably April of 2002 rather than March 19, that aside the
artist will conceive of a way to install this fence, create this fence within the
budget, and he will have an overarching design in mind, the community
participation part then will work into that design, so what your going to be looking
at when you approve it is that overall design, you won't see the particular's. For
instance, if it's a combination of a metal sculpted fence with a tile component, the
tile component being the community participation part, you will not see the design
on every little single tile, but you will know that this part is going to be the
community participation part of it and this is what the community participants will
be asked to do. So that's what you will be approving because as the as individuals
get involved, say it's kids or the elderly or anybody, we don't know exactly what
they might put together for their particular piece.
Vanderhoef/So we're looking.
Franklin/But David's charge, the artist's charge is to make sure that it all fits together
and doesn't look like what Rick Fosse calls refrigerator art, okay.
Vanderhoef/So we look at it in terms of durability.
Franklin/Oh yea.
Vanderhoef/And all of those things and do we approve again then after the participation
part of it?
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Franklin/No, no, but we ought to have a very good sense of how that works, we will have
a very good sense of how that works into the whole when you approve the design
in April. And when I, when we talk about the community participation plan,
that's how, who it is who's going to be involved, how we're going to make the
contacts, what the logistics of it all are going to be, that's what has to be decided
by September so the execution of it can take place that following semester, or
term or school year, to have it ready in time for installation.
Vanderhoef/Somehow I.
Franklin/You can participate, be part of it, but to bring it back to the Council for every
little piece of the community participation I think would be an awful lot.
Vanderhoef/No, the final, the final look of it before it's.
Franklin/You should have a very good sense of the final look when you look at it in April
but I can't tell you what that's going to be right now because that's part of what
his work is that we're hiring him for is to come up with it.
Vanderhoef/Well we approved something recently that we didn't see before.
Franklin/Right.
Vanderhoef/And I wished we had, and.
Franklin/That's art.
Champion/That's art.
Vanderhoef/Yea and I'm leery of like you say refrigerator art.
Franklin/Well I think when you look at it in April that if that's not, if you don't have
adequate, if you don't believe at that point that it's adequate for you to make a
judgment that's what we'll have to deal with it then.
Vanderhoef/Okay.
Franklin/But I frankly Dee don't know how to approach it at this point because it is
working through the concept and then how to do it and what part. A lot of people
are going to have in it and when you have that community participation part of it
you lose some control as we all know. Okay.
Lehman/ Okay, thank you. Any other agenda items?
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Appointments
Lehman/Which ones do we have?
Vanderhoef/We have Parks and Rec.,
O'Donnell/We've just got.
Vanderhoef/No we've got Housing and Community Development.
Champion/I don't have my computer but (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/Okay Housing and Community Development I would like to suggest Jason
Cupp.
Champion/And the other girls name, I couldn't get my computer.
Wilburn/Christine Boyer.
Champion/I would nominate the woman Dee just because he's only been here like three
months, six months or something, and she's been here 10 years.
Pfab/What is the composition now?
Lehman/There's three males and five females presently on that Commission.
Vanderhoef/That's one of the reasons that I was interested in getting more balance and a
business background I thought was a very good attribute to this gentleman and the
housing interest coupled in with business background.
Lehman/Okay guys.
Champion/How long has he lived here?
Vanderhoef/It is about 8 months, I agree.
Champion/Right, it's less than a year.
Vanderhoef/He has opened a business year and so he has interest in participating in city
business.
Lehman/And so you are.
Vanderhoef/Jason Cupp is who I.
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Lehman/Jason Cupp has been nominated, are there four people who would support Jason
Cupp? Okay I guess not.
Vanderhoef/Christine Boyer.
Lehman/Christine Boyer, do we have four? Okay.
Wilburn/I would support her.
Lehman/Okay and the animal care.
Vanderhoef/We don't have anyone that.
Lehman/Well we got through that in a hurry.
Sensitive Areas Ordinance
Lehman/The next item is the Sensitive Areas Ordinance, presently the Sensitive Areas
Ordinance is being handled as a zoning item even though it is not, has no
relationship whatsoever to zoning, it is only a matter, and ifI say anything
incorrectly Eleanor please correct me but my understanding is that the Sensitive
Areas Ordinance is and I ought to know it because I guess I was on the Council
when we passed it is protect steep slopes and various features that we try to
preserve in sensitive areas. Presently it's handled as a zoning item, goes through
Planning & Zoning Commission, gets a recommendation to Council and Council
acts on it. When in reality it is nothing more or less than an administrative
function and the requirements of the sensitive areas ordinance are clearly spelled
out so that a developer or a property owner or a neighbor or whoever knows what
is required. I've talked to Ann Bovbjerg from P & Z and I think I won't speak for
her but I sense that they share the same sort of interest that this should be
administratively applied and I think we're going to get the same recommendation
from our consultant out of Chicago if I'm not mistaken.
Franklin/He's looking at it.
Lehman/Yea, but rather than continue with, and P & Z obviously has an awful lot of stuff
on their plate any~vay and so does Council, but rather than see items on the
Sensitive Areas Ordinance be treated as zoning items I would like us to send this
to P & Z and ask them to revise that ordinance so that it becomes administratively
applied. If the requirements are met, it will be certified by the staff, the engineers
and it would proceed from there rather than having to go through a political
process which it is now.
Pfab/I think there's part truth in that and there's it's (can't hear) as trouble. And that it
how many sensitive areas ordinance applications are not modified? The rules are
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there but then they keep pushing them past what the rules are written in and laid
down and that's the ones we get.
Lehman/We get them all.
Champion/We get them all.
Vanderhoef/All of them.
Kanner/I'm not following that Irvin, what do you mean pushing them?
Pfab/In other words there's a sensitive ordinance, if the rules are followed just the way
it's written we never see it.
Lehman/No that's wrong, we get every one of them, and that's why I'm saying we don't
need them.
Pfab/But every one we've ever worked on was it was in opposition to what was
originally laid down.
Lehman/That's not true, Karin would you speak to this.
Franklin/Well first of all you don't get every one of them, you get ones that have
wetlands, woodlands of two acres or greater, critical slopes, that's 25 percent or
protected slopes, so if it has anyone of those four things, wetlands, woodlands,
two acres or greater, critical or protected slopes, then it goes through a sensitive
areas rezoning. If there are modifications made to a development plan such that
the street widths are narrower, the housing types are changed from what is
allowed in the underlying zoning, then it has a sensitive areas ordinance overlay
and it also has a planned development overlay. So the ones in which you would
have modifications to the other codes of zoning you would have to look at as a
planned development anyway. There are some instances and obviously Harlocke-
Weeber is one of them in which the only reason that you looked at it was because
of Sensitive Areas, now I thought this was a fairly isolated case, however we have
two more that are now potentially before us that may come through as Sensitive
Areas Overlays only because of the Sensitive Areas application not because
they're part of the planned development. But it is important to know that if you
have that variation in housing types, if you have changes in the standards of
streets, if you have height variations or setbacks or something like that then it
needs to go through the planned development process regardless of whether it has
a Sensitive Area.
Lehman/We would still get that.
Franklin/Yes you would.
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Pfab/So in other words it's the final stop from the boundaries of good judgment that are
in the Planning & Zoning laws, it's when they get pushed farther than the way
their presented or written or in law right now, then that's when we get them,
otherwise we don't see them.
Franklin/Well as it stands now under the Sensitive Areas Ordinance you do see them if
one of those four characteristics are in there, yes.
Pfab/So in other words if they follow the plan we don't see them.
Lehman/No that's not true.
(All talking, No.)
Dilkes/No.
Franklin/No if there is a wetland on a piece of property and all of the buffers are met, all
of the mitigation is met, you still see it and it goes to the Planning & Zoning
Commission and the City Council as a Sensitive Areas Overlay.
Pfab/Even if there is no modifications to the way, in other words if they follow the rules
as their laid out what they can build there, if they don't try to either make the
street smaller, add more height, add more this we would still see it?
Lehman/Right.
Franklin/That's correct.
Kanner/Ernie, a couple comments in regard to what you said. I think that it's good that
we redefine zoning essentially to mean more than just density that there's other
things we're concerned about the environment, that's what I think is good about
this ordinance in Iowa City when it was passed about 95 or so that we said we
have concern that it's more than just how many houses per acre, we have concern
for saving the trees and for saving wetlands because there's some benefits not
only aesthetically but also economically and environmentally in a lot of different
areas, and I think that's a good thing that that's part of our criteria. I think some
of the things that it does do the current law is it allows more citizens rights and
input and we don't want to take that away, I think it shines a spotlight on the
issue, it allows people to do a 20 percent protest which we've had an example of
citizens using that and I think that's a good thing which kicks in a super majority
and that's something that we need to keep with this rezoning issue, at the very
least I think we should wait until the court case of Southgate versus Iowa City to
see what the judge determines because that will see if we do have the right to have
a broader interpretation of the Sensitive Areas, I would argue it's not just a simple
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little thing, the Sensitive Areas Ordinance is written in a larger sense that allows
us to look as Council members at the greater community that when this kicks in
there are some other things that kick in that are good and I think the court, I
believe they're going to rule in our favor and say that we do have that right to
interpret it as Councilors, that's the, our lawyer argued that that's why we have
City Councilors to have that broader viewpoint, and so at the very least I would
say let's wait until the court case which is suppose to have come out a decision a
week ago should be coming out anytime and I would say before we send it
anywhere let's wait and do this at the next meeting if there's a decision at that
time.
Lehman/Well my only concern is, I really don't care how the court comes out, if this is
an administrative issue that if we technically follow the rules that we set out in the
Sensitive Areas Ordinance that it should not be a zoning item.
Champion/It's not a zoning item.
Lehman/It is a zoning item, it is written as.
Champion/But it (can't hear).
Lehman/No, if it meets all of those qualifications then it is a technical, it's a technical
issue on the part of the staff that it be approved or disapproved whether, if it meets
the regulations prescribed by the ordinance. I mean that's my only concern, that's
the only part I see about it because technically if it meets all of it, it's like a
preliminary and a final plat. If you approve the preliminary plat you can not deny
the final plat as long as it does not differ substantially from the preliminary plat.
And I don't see any point in having all the rules and regulations and if they
comply with those regulations how it becomes a zoning item.
Kanner/You can say that about any zoning item it should be with the staff and
administration and I think that's a bad policy, that's what we're elected to do is to
make those decisions and look at it for the greater good.
Lehman/All right, my question is do we want to send it back to Planning & Zoning and
let them rewrite this thing if they're interested, I mean this takes their, they have to
discuss it too.
Vanderhoef/I'd like to get their opinion on it and I'd like to send it to P & Z and have
them take a look at it.
Champion/Yea I would too.
Lehman/Okay we'll send it to them and get their opinion.
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Transportation Vision
Lehman/Mr. Davidson, Transportation Vision.
Jeff Davidson/Thank you Mr. Mayor, typically when I meet with you we have a very
specific issue to talk about, particular traffic calming project or what a design of a
road should be and tonight and this will not happen very often we have a very
unspecific thing to talk about. I don't want to take up a lot of time on this but it is
something that is relatively important, that is the update of our long range multi
modal transportation plan. Six of the seven of you are part of the JCCOG
Urbanized Area Policy Board and certainly Mr. Mayor you participated at JCCOG
many times. This is a matter that ultimately JCCOG will approve, we need to
have our plan updated by May and we are schedule to do that. There are some
pretty serious sanctions if we don't get this done, the City of Sioux City just
underwent a period of time where they had federal projects held up because they
did not have their plan updated and so there are millions of dollars at stake, we
don't want to be in that position that having had happened to them, we especially
want to make sure it doesn't happen here so one of the things that is in the current
plan that when we passed the initial plan in 1994 each city that belongs to JCCOG
Urbanized Area Policy Board wanted to have their own vision statement in the
plan. And as you might imagine this was something that was particularly
important to the smaller communities, they wanted to have something in their that
reflected how they felt about things and so we agreed to do this, have the
individual vision statements and then try to tie together as much as we can in the
plan. What I want to do tonight is just very briefly go through what's in their
currently for the Iowa City Vision Statement, if you don't want to change
anything that's fine, there are a couple of things specifically that I want to bring up
that are in there currently that I'm wondering if you still feel are pertinent or
current. If those of you who don't bring it up already, there are some things that I
think go without saying if you read through this document, there's obviously a
clear commitment to a multi modal transportation system, not only streets and
highways and motor vehicles but also pedestrian and bicycle and transit. I think
that comes through clearly here although you may want to stress one way or
another tweaking that. Yes Irvin.
Pfab/Are we up to date having to wait for Segway or (can't hear) person transporter?
Davidson/Oh is that the thing I've been leading about, I don't believe that's addressed
specifically in here.
Pfab/I just want to be sure that (can't hear). No that's just in just, I think that's the last
thing we want.
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Davidson/All right, Iowa City's is also a little different, you have a little clause in there
that addresses the downtown parking system, you know the other cities don't have
that element in their transportation so ours is a little more elaborate. The structure
of this, you probably noticed Iowa City's was a little different than the other cities
and that was because the Council at that time wanted a section in there that said
okay we're pretty good at this, we want to keep doing that, and well we need a
little work on this other stuff and that's the second page and if you'd like to keep
that structure we certainly can, if you'd like to modify that we can and so does that
kind of lay out what we want to do? I thought the first thing I would do is is there
anything in the two pages currently that one of you would like to raise as an issue?
Vanderhoef/I'd also like to just sort of go with page one, two and three because it may
work out that it will lead the way for later.
Davidson/Okay why don't you start Dee if you have something in mind.
Vanderhoef/Okay, the first couple of paragraphs, or the first paragraph is fine as far as
I'm concerned but then when we get down to the numbered issues when they use
the word adequate arterial street system it's sort of like.
Davidson/What number are you on?
Vanderhoef/Number one, that we ought to be talking about.
Pfab/What page?
Wilburn/Page six of your info. packet, of your info. packet.
Davidson/We're on the second page now.
Kanner/Page four of our info. packet.
Pfab/That was my problem.
Davidson/Your on the strive to improve part now, the vision.
Vanderhoef/The adequate, no down on number one, an arterial street system.
Kanner/On the vision.
Vanderhoef/Which will accommodate all modes of transportation, to me the word
adequate is terribly broad and not useful in there at all, so you could take it out or.
Karr/Page 17, Jeff.
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Davidson/Got it, okay.
Kanner/Summary.
Davidson/Got it, in the summary, yea I was back on Iowa City's, okay.
Vanderhoef/I would just.
Champion/ How about functionable (can't hear)?
Davidson/So you feel there is not adequacy in the (can't hear)?
Lehman/Adequate may not be enough.
Vanderhoef/I'm saying there's no standard when you use the word adequate so to work
with upgrading or expanding our arterial would be more in line to my vision that
we will continue to add to the system and upgrade the present arterial system.
Davidson/Okay.
Champion/But Dee is that part of prohibition statement or is that part ora plan? I mean
if someone gets the two confused.
Vanderhoeff Well my vision is to add arterials and upgrade our present arterials.
Champion/No that's a function, that's a do, a mission statement is (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/No but this is the vision for the community, I do get what your saying (can't
hear).
Davidson/In Iowa City specific vision Dee, if you turn to the Iowa City section it says
Iowa City must strive to improve an arterial street system which will
accommodate all modes of transportation efficiently and effectively, and to me
that says we have some work to do on that which I think is what your implying as
well.
Vanderhoef/Okay you went to the next page.
Davidson/Right.
Kanner/That summary, the was the overall JCCOG's one.
Davidson/Yea that was a page Steven where I tried in the 94 plan at that time, it may be
different now, but in 94 1 tried to, I listed those four items that I felt were in every
cities vision.
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Vanderhoef/Okay so we can go back to that one?
Davidson/Right.
Vanderhoef/Okay that's fine.
Davidson/But I think Dee to pick up w hat your saying that Iowa City must strive to
improve section in Item One there does reflect that we have some work to do on
the arterial systems.
Vanderhoef/Yea and when I got down to number four I wasn't sure how modest traffic
congestion and good air quality including attention to individual neighborhoods,
that didn't have meaning for me, I'm not sure what they were pointing to at that
point.
Davidson/Yea we obviously don't have air quality issues at least document according to
federal standards in this community. The neighborhood issues of course are there
constantly.
Vanderhoef/Certainly.
Kanner/What number is this?
Davidson/This is Item 4 on the first page of the Iowa City Vision Statement so I guess
what Dee seems to be proposing is perhaps striking the air quality element of that.
Champion/Well I think we're, I know we're serious about maintaining it, you don't want
to say we don't care about it.
Vanderhoef/No what I was going to strike was including to individual neighborhoods,
that's the piece that doesn't fit for me, if we worked for a modest traffic
congestion.
Davidson/And good air quality.
Vanderhoef/And good air quality throughout I think that says it.
Kanner/Well one of the things I was going to bring up is that we need to emphasize
development I think and that perhaps speaks a bit to ideas of development and
how that relates to traffic concerns because I think that's the other large part of the
puzzle is how we do development. I think we have a concern for that and it's not
emphasized here but that seems to be the only place where it does. Well number
5 it talks about, but maybe we need a separate bullet point for development.
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Davidson/Okay.
Lehman/Something like neighborhoods which encourage non motorized modes of
transportation, addressed that at all in number 5.
Karmer/Perhaps that does enough of it, I was wondering if it could be a little stronger.
Champion/Pretty good.
Davidson/This was number 5 on strive to maintain now? Okay.
Kanner/Because the next 10 years or more we're looking at all these outlining
neighborhoods and this addresses it in some way but perhaps not enough, maybe it
needs to be a little stronger.
Vanderhoef/Well my reading of that number five is that the intent is good there but it is
not a good sentence and how do you define a population, strive to maintain a
population appreciative of and willing to use the multi mode transportation system
available to them. Well how do? I think that whole phrase can be stricken, we
can strive to encourage people to use the multi modal and that could be a different
point but it doesn't seem to belong in there.
Champion/Yea you really can't maintain a (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/No.
Pfab/Dee I think maybe what the pedestrian strive or the, we're asking the people to
strike to use it, well maybe we want to make it more, make it inviting for those
people, maybe the city has the obligation to make those systems more inviting for
public use rather than shoving people on the bus have an incentive for them to go.
Vanderhoef/Well I think what I'd like to do is pull that piece out of number five and put
a statement in there about the willingness, how should we say it, multi modal to
encourage.
Pfab/There, now we're getting closer.
Vanderhoef/Citizens to use but we can't use this leave in statement that Iowa City must
maintain.
Champion/Right, I agree with you Dee.
Davidson/Okay so that was in number 5 the strive to maintain, on page 1 of Item 2.
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Vanderhoef/Yea, pull out the a population appreciative of and willing to use the multi
modal.
Davidson/Got it.
Lehman/We could just check the work maintain and change it to encourage and it would
work for all of those.
Vanderhoef/But they, you think.
Champion/Or you could just say provide modal transportation system that is appealing to
the population.
Pfab/Now your using the right, now the words are getting closer to what we're (can't
hear).
Davidson/Yea, because your right, how do we provide a population, I see why that seems
kind of (can't hear).
(All talking)
Vanderhoef/That's what was giving me a problem.
Champion/You can't walk here unless your going to do that, yes you can't do that.
Davidson/All right, Steven had mentioned development specifically. Is there anything?
You know new development is not, I mean you can certainly read into a number
of these how it might be impacted when we have new development projects that
we're reviewing but.
Vanderhoef/Well I think we get it at in number 5 if we get that phrase out of there that
gets you thinking differently. Then it would read a vital pedestrian friendly
downtown and compact neighborhoods which encourage non motorized modes of
transportation and then it reads like that and it gives more emphasis to the idea
that we are looking at development in doing some compact neighborhoods.
Davidson/Okay.
Pfab/Not only that your getting real close, not only encourage but facilities might make it
easier, we want developments to encourage, maybe that's the word your using,
develop in such a way that it's easy for, or it's inviting for those people there to
use multi modal transportation.
Vanderhoef/That's what it says.
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Pfab/Okay in the sense that, how do you see that in there?
Vanderhoef/In number 5 if you.
Pfab/Okay what parts?
Vanderhoef/The compact neighborhoods which encourage.
Davidson/But I think this one is talking about maintaining our compact neighborhoods,
in other words not letting them decay because of traffic issues which of course
they regulate feel threatened by. I mean if there's something that you feel this
notion is important for new developing neighborhoods, I think we ought to put
that in specifically.
Vanderhoef/And do another number.
Pfab/Something like the Peninsula at some point in time there should be easier (can't
hear).
Davidson/Yea the Peninsula is a good example, an initiative that creates a compact
number, sure.
Pfab/So if we can put that in here that there's some type ora on the continuum of
encouraging and making it easier for people to use multi modal when
developments are put together.
Vanderhoef/Then might I suggest that instead of putting it under the Iowa City must
strive to maintain that we put that over strive to improve.
Pfab/Okay no problem with that.
Kanner/And I would suggest that we consider the word development and/or sprawl
somewhere that those are things that we want to try not to have as far as sprawl,
that's an important issue.
Davidson/Do you want to put to discourage sprawl?
Pfab/I think if we go back to where we were just on number 5 Dee where it says we
encourage compact development.
Vanderhoef/No we're striving to maintain in this one.
Pfab/No the one before, okay, is that the one?
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Vanderhoef/Strive to maintain so we're doing that so instead we're going to put it over
here under strive to improve.
Pfab/Okay, all right, but the idea was I think what Steve was addressing it says.
Champion/I agree with you but I don't think sprawl is a good word Steven.
Pfab/In compact neighborhoods that encourage.
Champion/In everybody's mind.
Pfab/Compact neighborhoods.
Kanner/Well it's a.
(END OF 01-I08, SiDE ONE)
Kanner/I think there's a general understanding, these are not necessarily very specific.
Davidson/I mean I think it implies Iow density land consumptive type development and
your right Connie that probably has different meanings in everybody's minds from
person to person but we need to generalize using that.
Kanner/And we could do it in terms though of wherever we put it like the number five
we could put it as a subset so it has more meaning, it's within the context of
pedestrian friendly compact neighborhood than specifically mentioned
discouraging sprawl and development in that way.
Davidson/Why don't you let me draft something up, and what I'm going to do is draft
this up and get back to you and let you (can't hear).
(All talking)
Lehman/People need to be able to read what we've written and ka~ow what we're trying
to say and whether we get the exact word here or there as long as the intent.
Davidson/Yea give me a shot at it and I'll get it back to you.
Lehman/Yea I mean the intent is what we're interested in rather than you know going
through each word.
Pfab/I take it there was some ideas of interest in and maybe a little more interest in
certain areas than.
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Kanner/A couple other things, first going out to the other cities, the goal is I guess we're
going to have one major thing and see if we can agree on some things and so I
think it's legitimate to bring up this other cities visions and so I have a question
about Coralville and North Liberty, one they're opposed to a consolidated bus
service.
Davidson/Coralville stated that very strongly last time.
Kanner/And I know that folks have tried to do that, we're working, we worked together
in certain ways but hopefully we can talk about that in JCCOG's to see if we can
talk in that, I think there's possibility down the road that it would be beneficial for
the people in the area to come together even more, a lot of us have talked about
regional issues and this is one thing that keeps coming up time and time again.
Davidson/Yea and I'm going out to Coralville second week of Coralville and it may be, I
intend to raise that with them Steven and see if they still feel the same way about
it, and then of course you'll all get a crack at them at JCCOG.
Lehman/That could certainly be in our long range statement whether it's there's or not
(can't hear).
Davidson/If that's something that you feel strongly about pursuing about one way or
another, I mean there's nothing in there now about consolidation in Iowa Cities.
Vanderhoef/And it needs to be in there.
Champion/Yea I would like to see it in there, we've talked about (can't hear).
Davidson/That we would encourage that type of thing.
Champion/I would sure.
Pfab/It's kind of frustrating to me to see one bus after another, after another, after another
go down the same street and that just, that leaves me perplexed.
Davidson/As long as we've brought up transit, one of the specific things I was going to
ask you about was a statement in the "must strive to improve" section, "financing
arrangements should strive to eliminate the annual fiscal vulnerability of public
transit and para transit." Given a couple of our trends with A. fair revenue and B.
State transit assistance I mean unfortunately that's going the other direction and
do you as a Council feel it is still even though that's something we would like to
see do you feel it's realistic because it's going to mean more local locally
generated revenue?
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Lehman/Well the new transportation (can't hear) ail the revenue off of that project does
go to transit.
Davidson/It goes to transit.
Lehman/I mean that's probably one step in this direction.
Davidson/That's a good point Mr. Mayor.
Karmer/What number are you at here?
Davidson/I'm at item number 4 on the second page of the Iowa City Vision Statement.
Pfab/What's the header?
Kanner/Strive to Improve.
Davidson/Strive to Improve yes.
Kanner/Page six of our info. packet.
Lehman/We do have a transit levy, and we do, obviously those things don't totally take
care of the, but there are plans and arrangements that if we do strive, I mean I
don't know what (can't hear).
Davidson/Okay so striving to eliminate fiscal vulnerability is still something we hope to
do for the transit, okay, we'll leave just the way it is.
Champion/I think it's (can't hear) it doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do it.
Davidson/Good point, agree.
Kanner/Well and there's new ways of looking I mean right now we have a hub system
maybe there's other ways of combination of fixed and para transit routes that we
can combine and save money and maybe the combination of the different cities. I
also wanted to ask are you throwing in the University for striving to combine with
Coralville?
Davidson/Oh yea, well I think it makes sense to consider all three systems if we're going
to talk about that issue, I think everybody's aware that the issues are a little
different for Cambus, there's a lot more commonality between Iowa City and
Coralville but I mean we've got everybody at the table we might as well talk about
all three systems.
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Vanderhoeff Well I'd like to go one step further because I would still like to look at
corridor possibilities between Iowa City Cedar Rapids or some sort of a loop even
it went up as far as Wright Brothers Boulevard and connect in with a Cedar
Rapids and in this respect somehow to word it to coordinate it with the rural para
transit possibilities through the ECICOG.
Davidson/Okay I'm just going to kind of lump that under coordination issues with Cedar
Rapids for the time being.
Vanderhoef/That would be fine, going back to the first page.
Pfab/Before you stop there, well if your going farther your also thinking of North
Liberty?
Vanderhoef/Absolutely.
Pfab/I mean since, when you just say Cedar Rapids.
Davidson/Yea you might have noticed North Liberty's statement once again seven years
ago they were very specific we are not starting a transit system in North Liberty
because they realize, that makes them very vulnerable then, if they start it for one
day and somebody becomes depending on it, a constituent of there's becomes
depending on it, that puts them in a difficult situation.
Pfab/But if we're thinking that corridor obviously that includes North Liberty right?
Vanderhoef/Right.
Lehman/These are visions.
Vanderhoef/These are visions.
Davidson/It will be interesting to see, you know North Liberty's got a completely
different City Council if they feel the same way about transit, I'm going out there
tomorrow night so we'll know shortly.
Vanderhoef/Going back to the first page down towards the bottom in number six they list
a few things and what I would like to work in there is indeed downtown
businesses offices and University that we want to recoordinate and then that
brings me to some of the stuff that is to improve, I think Iowa City has done a
good job in coordinating some transportation that has alleviated some congestion
downtown in our shuttle and I think we need to recognize in our vision that we
want to maintain this, it's no longer a striving to.
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Davidson/And I think that's a good point Dee to maybe be added to Item Six, on the
strive to maintain, that was an innovative thing for Iowa City to do, we never had
a route like that, it's not a common thing, and it's been extraordinarily successful.
Vanderhoef/And likewise the loops for the schools, and I don't think this addresses it.
Davidson/And so I mean those are a little less successful according to performance
factors but I think adding those to number six makes sense.
Vanderhoeff Yes, thank you.
Pfab/But does the time come when by running a shuttle through Iowa City, University,
Coralville and keeping just a rotating shuttle and other feeders into different spots
on the shuttle.
Davidson/That would be a very long route.
Champion/Yea it would take forever.
Davidson/If you had a huge route that wandered all around.
Pfab/No, no, no, let's say, I'm just out of nowhere, let's say you took the shuttle and you
went say oh let's say Dodge Street down to across down and you go across the
river to Coralville, say to Town Squares probably too far and then come back up
Melrose or even maybe farther down and then just come back like this and people
get on and off and that keeps the buses from having to come to downtown a
shuttle bus they might have to transfer but you know that's, it's keeping all, this
really is hard to justify running buses up and down the street with such few people
in it because they have to get to those locations.
Davidson/Yea and there are some other opportunities out there, the connection of First
Avenue is going to present us with an opportunity to take two routes and make
them into one, the Rochester Route and the North Dodge Route, they're not
terribly well performing route either one of them and there's the opportunity to
combine them into one route now.
Lehman/Well I mean our purpose here isn't to design (can't hear) give a vision of what
we'd like to see them do.
Davidson/Just to say that, and that being the innovation with the transportation system,
we will add that.
Champion/Okay.
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Vanderhoef/And I think we've done a couple other things in the last three or four years
that could maybe be moved from strive to improve over to maintain and that has
to do with traffic calming.
Davidson/Yea I noted that as well Dee.
Vanderhoef/Okay and then also we've done more with the lighting and the coordination
of lights to have a better flow.
Davidson/Okay, another one that I had noted was.
Vanderhoef/The trails.
Davidson/Item 7 under strive to improve, in the last several years we've had a real
serious initiative to improve bicycle parking downtown, we've tripled the number
of spaces, we've gotten rid of all the old wheel bender racks and put in racks that
are actually functional for bicycles, and I think that's one you can clearly move to
maintain rather than strive.
Vanderhoef/That's one I had noted also, something else that I.
Kanner/Dee could I comment on this? Should I wait?
Vanderhoef/Sure, go ahead.
Kanner/Well I think we have made strides in that area but I think there's the (can't hear)
bicycle commuting one of the things that studies show is that you have secure
bicycle lockers and we really haven't done much of that for bicycle locker.
Davidson/Planning those for the transit center.
Vanderhoef/They're in the transit center.
Kanner/That's good because when I asked about it there was a negative response at that
time, I'm glad you changed your mind on that.
Davidson/I'm not, we're going to evaluate how good of an idea they are, I mean we
should do that, we have the opportunity to do that, we should evaluate it and I
think we will take advantage of that opportunity.
Kanner/And so that's a good start but, so, perhaps then we need to say perhaps we could
use even more of those, and you could move part of number 7 over and then put
that part because I think that is a really big encouragement for people to have a
secure place they can keep, that they can rent out, a lot of cities they rent out
lockers.
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Davidson/I think we plan on at least having coin operated or something like that.
Kanner/And we'll probably have like what 5 or 6 or?
Davidson/We'll probably start with either 6 or 12.
Kanner/Right so we might, if we really want to see bigger commuting by bike we
probably would need more, I don't know how many Madison.
Davidson/We will have room for more in the area where we're going to have them in the
Transportation Center, we could add mom in this area.
Pfab/Okay do they all have to be in that Transportation Center?
Kanner/No that's what I'm saying.
(All talking)
Davidson/If they're successful there then we can maybe look at it.
Pfab/But maybe what I'm saying is to look at, if your looking at that in other places.
Davidson/ You could probably put 8 or 10 of those in a single parking space in a ramp if
we ever decided we want to.
Pfab/But see what I'm saying is if you say they're there, if that's one of the things we
want to strive for is more looking at the possibilities of adding more in a different
location.
Champion/We have to see if they're successful.
Pfab/But if they are.
Kanner/Right so my point.
Pfab/But your looking at a vision statement.
Kanner/Point is to put it in "strive to improve" on that point.
Davidson/Okay.
Vanderhoef/And I think we should acknowledge all the work that we continue to do on
our accessabilities with our curb ramps.
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Davidson/Which I believe is in here some place.
Lehman/I think that's in here.
Vanderhoef/But I think it's in the improve and I think we have that under control in that
we've done a lot and we have a plan that is moving forward.
Davidson/Yea Item 3 in "Strive to Improve".
Vanderhoef/But that could be moved over to.
Champion/But we still have to improve (can't hear).
Davidson/Yea and that's an ongoing program.
Lehman/There's a lot of work to do.
Vanderhoef/That's an ongoing program is what I'm saying.
Lehman/But I imagine that we probably have less than half of all curb (can't hear). Oh
yea even residential areas, we've got a huge.
Davidson/There's a lot to continue to be done especially in the older part of town, but
we've made a big dent, I mean we've put in a lot of curb ramps and you probably
are aware there's been some difficulty in getting contractors that are interested in
that program because it's kind of small potatoes so, that's an ongoing program we,
you determine that, an ongoing project.
Vanderhoef/Every other year, it's in the budget.
Davidson/$25,000 a year in CIP which you'll be discussing in January. Anything else?
Karmer/A couple, surface transportation project, they did a survey of what makes bike
friendly towns and one of the things they found was that there's a bike
coordinator. We're probably small to have our own bike coordinator and we
have in JCCOG's, John.
Davidson/ Half time, John, yea, half time.
Kanner/Does some with bikes, half time, we might want to increase that perhaps for the
JCCOG's, something to look at. Madison, my understanding is they have 25
percent commuting by bikes and I think that's a goal we can strive towards. Their
weather is a little worse than here.
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Vanderhoef/And are they that much further along in their connectivity from
neighborhoods all the way into the major industry be it the downtown, the
University or work places?
Kanner/I think they are ahead and they also have a citizen commission that looks at this
issue for the city along with car issues and public transit and walking.
Davidson/And being a bigger, being a si~ificantly bigger city they have some challenges
we don't have, I mean they have six lane arterial, how do you incorporate bikes on
it like University Avenue in Madison and they have some real challenges.
Pfab/But can we learn from them as we get bigger though and learn from them before
we.
Vanderhoef/The big thing is the constraint we have in building them fast enough and
getting that connectivity and that's more of a budget thing.
Davidson/In fact we're following a research project oftheir's right now with some
signage that they use for pedestrians in cross walks, it's a innovative practices
program that they're doing with the Federal Highway Administration, we're
following it real careful because I don't know about you all but I get deluged with
people saying they feel threatened in crossing cross walks so we're following that
real carefully the project of theirs up there. You had another one Steven.
Kanner/Yea, the other thing is I think there was some jokes about the new scooter or
whatever that came out but actually someone did mention to me about the idea of
scooter, the old fashioned scooters perhaps with little motors, those things are
popular, were popular last year and I think in Europe and other countries there's
quite a bit of popularity with that type of thing and that's something we might
want to consider in our ordinances, I think our ordinances don't allow some of
those things to operate.
Davidson/Nothing motorized on a sidewalk no.
Kanner/Or in the street.
Champion/You can be in the street.
Davidson/I think you can be in the street.
Kanner/But wouldn't you have to get a license?
Lehman/Yes.
Champion/You need a moped license.
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Davidson/Yea moped's have different rules, you have to have the flag if your a certain
age and things like that.
Lehman/Vehicle has to be licensed.
Kanner/But it's something we might want to look at as part of our vision to encourage
that.
Champion/All you need is a driving permit.
Lehman/Tempting but that's, those are probably state laws on those things.
Champion/Yea I think they are too.
Davidson/Typically motor vehicle laws are governed by the state.
Champion/And I think it's good they have a flag on them.
Davidson/Where they can be within the city is something you have some jurisdiction.
Vanderhoef/I think where we have maybe a policy question is to put motorized things
like that on our trails, on our hard surfaced trails.
Davidson/They will not be permitted right now motorized vehicles of any type.
Vanderhoef/And I suspect that that's going to be a request that will come and that still is
a policy question that we would have to.
Davidson/Well your trails are obviously a transportation system that have a lot of unused
capacity on them at certain times of years certainly, that's something you could
always consider in the future if you wanted to look at that.
Vanderhoef/Well my understanding some of those go like 12 miles an hour max. speed
on those, I read something recently.
Davidson/I'm really not an expert on those, an issue that you are going to have before too
long when the Peninsula gets a little further along are golf carts on the river
corridor because there are people moving up into that area of Iowa City who plan
on traveling from their residence to the Elks Club by a golf club and that's
something that's not uncommon in other communities and you may eventually
have to consider an ordinance one way or another, I mean it's just kind of
informally occurring now but eventually if it gets to be an issue you may have to
consider an ordinance.
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Champion/You know when to big, just when you get to a big resort areas that don't
allow automobiles they have wide trails, you have walkers, bicyclists, motor
scooters, and there's just certain rules that everybody seems to follow, I don't
think it's an unworkable thing, people have to be, have some common sense to
just (can't hear).
Davidson/Well I think for the purposes of this we can consider that under our considerate
innovation and that sort of thing in the future for any mode like that.
Kanner/Well I'm wondering for our vision part we need to say something specifically
about non motorized transportation for younger folks, people under 18, right now
we're, it seems to me we're encouraging more and more that everyone you have to
have car to get around and these scooters, kids start when their.
Champion/14.
Kanner/They're young, or even younger.
Champion/No, not in Iowa you can't.
Kanner/No not motor, I'm saying in general the idea of non motorized or small
motorized, whatever it might be, whatever it might be, I think the vision that I'm
talking about is one where we encourage, we find ways to encourage whether it's
through ordinances or whether it's through education programs, or whether it's
through actual money, grants to help encourage people to do these things. I think
if we start young and we put that in there and it's going to help with congestion
problems people get used to other ways of transportation.
Champion/(can't hear).
Davidson/I had one additional thing.
Kanner/I'm sure your kids started talking to you about I want a car.
Davidson/I had one additional thing I wanted to raise under Item 3 under strive to
improve, this, the statement was written that pedestrian and bicycle facilities must
continue to receive increased emphasis, you know in the last several years you've
had increased emphasis and I just wondered if you still felt you k now from the
level of commitment you've had for example with your trails for the last five
years and you've literally spent millions of dollars on trails, do you believe that
deeds increased emphasis?
Lehman/No.
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Davidson/Or is that something that should be shifted back over to the let's, see what we
can maintain that?
Champion/I think we need to.
Lehman/Continue emphasis.
Champion/To continue effort that maybe finding ways that they're being used more, we
have a lot of money invested in something that's not used a lot.
Davidson/Yea we take counts Connie and I mean we know pretty much how they're used
so okay continued emphasis.
Pfab/Do you want to put encourage?
Vanderhoef/Okay and something else.
Pfab/And continue to encourage use?
Lehman/Of what?
Champion/To encourage, to make it known to people that they're there.
Pfab/In other words, okay, (can't hear) bicycle trails, and multiple use, pedestrian
facilities must continue to receive encouragement.
Davidson/I'll work on the wording.
Pfab/Yea okay.
Kanner/Actually I think we need to increase that, I think there's some room for
improvement, we've done some good jobs but I would say we need to increase it.
Lehman/I don't, I think we've done a pretty good, not that we'd do less.
Davidson/I hate to rush you along here but I know you have agenda items after this
anything else that's a burning issue out there for you?
Vanderhoef/Just something that I think we have moved into a new era and that we are
definitely recognizing all patterns of transportation and that we should be talking
in number one about environments for pedestrians.
Davidson/Are you on number 1 on page 1 or 2 Dee?
Vanderhoef/2.
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Davidson/On page 2 okay.
Vanderhoef/I think spelling out any more specifically on wheel chairs in our city I don't
think that's necessary anymore, I think that's part of our transportation, we've put
our trails out there, they are available, we are doing the curb ramps and so forth.
Davidson/Yea I can tell you that I recall, this item was structured this way, it was right
after the Kirkwood Avenue issue, and a decision was made and some Councilors
were unhappy with it that Kirkwood Avenue would remain in it's existing
geometric configuration even though it did not meet the new standards, and what
a lot, what some of your predecessors felt that did was okay yea cars are
accommodated okay but bicycles and other modes of transportation were not
considered in that decision and the structure of that statement came right out of
that Kirkwood Avenue issue and so maybe that's not pertinent anymore.
Vanderhoef/Well maybe because we are addressing the over width sidewalks along
arterials that.
Davidson/Yea see there was a decision made not to, 4 foot sidewalks on both sides of
Kirkwood Avenue, same as what was always there.
Vanderhoef/And we now have a policy that.
Davidson/No that policy was there then too.
Vanderhoef/Really.
Lehman/We weren't.
Vanderhoef/I can't believe that.
Davidson/Yea and so that's what this was suppose to address, come on let's do better in
the future, that's why it's here like this.
Vanderhoeff And we've been doing better.
Davidson/And you have consistently done better since then, there hasn't been another
issue that I, another arterial street issue since that time that's been handled that
way.
Champion/And there always has to be exceptions.
Davidson/Oh yea, and Connie brings up a good point. I will redraft this, this commits
you to nothing, absolutely nothing, your commit to these things is when you have
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specific projects before you and you decide whether or not to fund them, that's
when you commit to them. This is really just a lot of good intentions.
Champion/It's vision, right.
Kanner/But also then we're told staff uses these things, comprehensive plan these visions
to justify (can't hear).
Davidson/And the Feds. will pay attention to this Steven, the Feds. will pay attention to
this.
Karmer/I have a couple other things. I think we need to put something in about, we have
something about arterial streets, we want good arterial streets and that's connected
to 1-80, there's a plan now to widen 1-80 between Coralville and Iowa City and I
think there could be better use of our federal funds and I think we need to make a
statement on that, a lot of that traffic is local traffic, commuting traffic and if we
emphasize arterial street development, that would take some of the traffic, and
some of the other modes of transportation, I think we need to send a message to
our congressional representatives and our state representatives that we don't want
that widening that that's going to hurt us, you widen it, your going to get the same
traffic congestion in a number of years, that's the common engineering
perspective now that I've heard and so I throw that out there that we should put
something in there.
Champion/I think the widening of that Interstate though is a safety thing with all the
people turning off of it, I mean those on and off ramps actually back up during
peak traffic times, that's a busy highway and people are driving really fast, and I
think widening between Iowa City and Coralville is because of all the exits.
Usually exits on Interstates are 15-20 miles apart.
Davidson/I think the state's perspective on that issue is that the way they've structured
their proposal is that they want to put the capacity back to where it was when the
Interstate was first built.
Champion/Oh really.
Davidson/That there's so much local traffic on it now in that area that Steven outlined
that okay you can keep your local traffic but we're putting some additional lanes
in to handle the through traffic.
Vanderhoef/The Interstate traffic.
Davidson/That's how they're justifying that.
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Lehman/Well which is certainly better than running it down our arterial streets and
collector streets if we can run it down the Interstate.
Kanner/Well or we can get this commuter line from North Liberty whether it's light rail
or bus of some sort which would take people offand there are arterial streets that
are going through and other public transportation and trails, people are taking
trails as a means of transportation. I think it behooves us to emphasize wise use
of tax dollars at whatever level, I don't think we need that.
Pfab/At what point are we going to have Highway 1 enter 80 west and then go south on
218 and pick up 1 below Iowa City?
Davidson/There's no, there's been no thought Irvin of having a bypass.
Pfab/Okay.
Davidson/I mean it's come up a couple times where people questioning it why is there so
much attention being paid to a bypass around Solon when in fact it would do a lot
more good with a bypass around Iowa City.
Pfab/No, not the bypass just use the facilities there.
Lehman/It would effect the bypass.
Davidson/Oh sure, just change the designation yea, that actually would have a negative
affect on Iowa City because you get a lot of maintenance money for Highway 1,
the local streets would pick up Highway 1.
Pfab/But are we on a maintenance money addiction?
Vanderhoef/Oh sure, state highway.
Lehman/We pay for it if they don't.
Vanderhoef/You know the Highway 6 Highway 1.
Champion/It's one of the few cash cows we have Irvin.
Davidson/Anything else, why don't you give me a crack at redrafting this and I'll get it
back to you for comments then.
Lehman/Other comments for Jeff.
Davidson/Okay thank you.
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Lehman/We're going to take a break until about 8:00 and then we're going to go (can't
hear).
(BREAK)
Public Power Initiative
Jim Larew/Thank you Mr. Mayor, my name is Jim Larew and I'm with a group, diverse
citizens who's common interest is trying to summon this Council's attention to an
issue which I think deserves and will require your attention in the coming months
and that is the consideration of the proposal made by our utility company that the
current franchise of MidAmerican Energy Company should be extended for 15
years. We believe that historical circumstances have changed such that at least
another alternative should be seriously considered before the Council would adopt
that proposal. We appreciate the fact that the Utility company was given an hour
of time some meetings ago and we congratulate them and we thought they did a
nice job in setting out issues from the company's perspective and we know that
hour time limit will be severely imposed here so our proposal is that I be the time
taker for ourselves, we brought a couple gentleman from out of town who we
think could assist you in getting a start on understanding some issues related to
municipal utilities which is the particular focus of our question. This is a billion
dollar question, a one billion dollar question for the City Council to answer, you
know from MidAmerican's presentation that local rate payer's pay about $66
million dollars a year in their electric and gas utilities, they're asking for a 15 year
franchise and anyone who looks at the situation carefully would project at the year
2005 there's likely to be a significant increase in utility rates. We've gone
through a number of merger's since the utility franchise was signed 15 years ago
and it's not our purpose to question the judgment of prior Council but so many
variables have changed since then including the very company itself let alone
national, state, and local variables that we think the whole issue needs serious
consideration, nothing clearly is the same. On the national level if one just thinks
about California for a moment and how difficult the energy situation was for that
state it was instructive that those communities that were municipally owned
utilities on the whole they were better than those that were owned or governed by
investor utilities, Los Angeles would be an excellent example of that kind of
situation. A year ago Enron Energy Company was considered the premier,
economic and political example of how to get things done in the energy industry
in less than a year's time the assets of that company have evaporated. I know that
Mid American had it's own ties with Enron and I don't suggest that it's been
weakened by the example but it's no longer I think fair to say that getting bigger is
always better, that getting bigger protects local interest and local citizens. So as
things have changed at the national level it's also true that they've changed
fundamentally at the state level which makes your decision one where you have
more opportunities. For one thing 15 years ago this state had excess generating
capacity, we now have no access, in fact it's considered to be a shortage of
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capacity of electrical generating plant. How does this affect what your decision
may be? When we had excess generating capacity and that was a period ora
generation's time it was not economically feasible for a local entity to create a
municipal utility because they were punished economically for making that
choice. That is to say that by regulation that if a municipal govermnent withdraw
from a investor owned utility, it also had to pay back because the investor owned
utility by regulation was allowed to have a payback of it's investment in the plant.
So 15 years ago an entity applying for a municipal utility opportuniiy would be
paying twice for the same electron, once for it's own local utility and once also
for the franchise the company investor owned utility who had invested in plant.
That kind of economic situation is no longer here and we would guess that the
Iowa Utilities Board would look favorably upon applications made by
communities who are seeking to create municipal utilities. We'll have more
information about this but there are a number of Iowa communities who are
seriously considering and conducting feasibility studies to have a municipal
utilities established for their communities. A second reason on the state level
why it would be a good idea for you to consider if you enter into any kind of
franchise agreement at ali to have it be short term is that rates will be stable,
electrical rates will be stable for the next four years, this is by order and by role.
After Mid American holdings company bought out our local district franchise
which used to be Iowa Illinois 15 years ago a series of mergers and buy outs, part
of the protocol was that energy rates would not increase, however as soon as the
most recent acquisition was completed an application was made to increase utility
rates by 22 percent. The Iowa Utilities Board did not view that as a favorable
advance and the consumer advocate applied for a 17 percent reduction, now the
compromise made was that Mid American said they would keep rates stable for
the or revenue stable and that also probably means rate stable for the next five
years so you have a period of time no matter what you do that your not going to
have your rates increased here locally as you carefully consider what is in the best
interest of our citizens. Finally there are changes in the law which give you an
opportunity to examine if it might be a wise idea to create a regional energy
municipal organization, that may not be the only focus, the City of Coralville's
franchise expires in four years time, the w hole issue right now is buying energy in
aggregates, that's where the economies of scale are. If we have municipally
owned utilities without the hard pressed of profit margins which persons like
Warren Buffet who now owns our utility company, he and his associates, a place
on our local utility we have an opportunity to buy an aggregate, and to have a
great savings to our local tax payers to be an engine for economic development as
we compare our region to those who may still be controlled by a franchise with a
monopoly that is to say Mid American Energy. There are all kinds of possible
energy savings that you might (can't hear) to your citizens that were not possible
in terms of creating regional entities and in terms of creating municipal utilities at
a time that's right in our own state. Finally the utility company, that you entered a
franchise with, by that I mean your preceding City Council 15 years ago is simply
not the same company that it was then, 15 years it was an investor owned utility
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owned by lots of shareholders, lots of them were local people. Anymore there's
no stocks traded on the open market, basically 3 enterprises own all of the stock in
the holdings company that totally owns your local franchise. We think that you
ought to seriously consider whether an energy company of that size and of that
distance from our own home state is the one that is most apt and able to prepare
for our energy future and protect the needs of our citizens. If that's the
environment that is changed I would like to introduce Carol Spaziani to tell you
what our Public Power Initiative Group is and to outline briefly the goals that we
have for you. Thank you.
Carol Spaziani/Hi my name is Carol Spaziani I'm co-chair of the Public Power Initiative
for Iowa City (PPI-CI). And I'd like to introduce Saul Medies who is also the
other co-chair and other members of our group who are here this evening
listening. Thank you to the Council for this opportunity to share our views with
you as you seek information on the best way to provide electricity to Iowa City.
The Public Power Initiative is a diverse group of local residents, not professional
sin the public utility field, but informed citizens. Our members include retired
persons, economists, lawyers, labor and political leaders, and environmental
advocates. We believe that the facts we have learned since last summer when we
began meeting and studying warrant that the City look into the possibility of a
municipally owned electric system for Iowa City. We have three requests of you
tonight. Number 1 that you renew the franchise with Mid American Energy for a
period no longer than four years to avoid tying the City's hands in an increasingly
volatile utility environments. Two that you invest a modest amount to conduct a
preliminary feasibility study to determine if municipal ownership of the electric
utility would benefit the City, it's residents and it's businesses. In our view there
are five facts that support this course of action the preliminary feasibility, I'm still
in point two and these are sub points under point 2.
A. There's evidence that the average of rates charged by investor owned utilities
in Iowa are 30-35 percent higher than the average of those charged by
municipally owned companies. Furthermore, Mid American Energy's rates are 40
percent higher than the average rate of Iowa municipally utilities.
B. Many of the 137 municipally owned systems use part of the revenue stream
generated by sale of power for relief for their city's tax base by funding capital
improvement projects and/or making a payment in lieu of taxes.
C. We are confident that there will be a sufficient revenue stream under municipal
ownership to repay the revenue bonds necessary to acquire the infrastructure for
the power system even with lower rates for consumers.
D. Municipal systems have a good record of using environmental friendly sources
of Energy.
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And last E. Municipal ownership provides local decision-making and keeps
profits generated from the operation in the community rather than going to distant
owners. Our last of the three points that we're asking of you tonight that in your
decision making process you consider creating a broader community discussion
and use local citizen expertise by appointing a citizen advisory committee to study
and develop options for you. Based on these points we believe that the Council
now has an important opportunity to invest this question further rather than simply
renewing the current franchise even though it just expired. We do not feel that
we have all the answers so tonight we've invited two experts in the field of public
power here to share their expertise and assist in answering your questions. Jim is
going to introduce them to you.
Jim Larew/A few weeks ago our group hosted a meeting held at the Public Library at that
time one of the speakers was a representative from the Muscatine Municipal
Utility, they have a very vibrant group there and a statement from their group is
included in the packet that I handed out. I bring that up because there are two
models of governance which I think the Council would seriously want to consider,
both would work well in Iowa but one you may feel is more adept to local
situation than others if you would seriously consider having a municipal utility. In
the case of Muscatine an independent Board is appointed by the Board and
approved by the Council and they adopt procedures under the supervision of the
Council but carry out the activities of the municipal utility. In Ames Iowa and our
speaker today is Merlin Hove who is the Director of Electrical Services represents
a different mode of governance that is to say it's a division within city government
and works closely there for an administrative way with the other departments
within the city governments and the head of the municipal utility is directly
answerable to the City Manager and then to the Mayor. Because Ames is a larger
community, it has a University there, it has interesting synergism's that occur, we
thought that what went on in Ames would be particularly instructive and
interesting to the Council so Merlin Hove is our next speaker.
Merlin Hove/Thank you Jim, I'm here for three reasons, one because Carol invited me,
and secondly because the Mayor thought it would be a good idea ifI came and I
respect that and the City Manager said it was okay to come as long as I didn't try
to boss around and say what Iowa City should do and I'm kind of used to doing
that anyway because we're at Ames we do an energy thing, a community energy
solution that's brought us a lot of visitors and people come there to see how we do
this waste energy thing because in December of 1975 we began burning waste
refuse to (can't hear) fuel with our main fuel and our coal burning plant and we've
had people from all over the world and they come there and look at it and one of
the frequent questions they come before they get out of there is they say well what
about our town should we do the waste energy? And so I'll say well that's for you
guys, so I'm used to saying you know we'll show you what we do and then you
can go from there and take a look at it. Buy I'm always, the last mason I'm here is
that I'm always, it's kind of fun to explain what we do in our municipal electric
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December 10, 2001 Special Work Session Page 45
utility. And your going to find myself kind of bragging about it because we've
been doing it for 100 years but it's kind ora fun job, I've been doing for almost,
well 30 years and it is a fun job. One of the things that comes up about our utility
sometimes is how we compare with other utilities and our rates are really pretty
competitive, they're on the order of, you heard a little bit ago some people are
talking 40 percent, we talked about like 20 pement our rates would generally be a
number that I'd go to for a comparison. Our rates are lower than the people
around us. Alliant and Mid American the neighbors along with a few
cooperatives. One of the things that people ask about our municipal utility is how
people feel about reliability and customer satisfaction. We've had an in-house
survey for I don't know close to 15 years asking how people how people they feel
about our utility and we've come with good or better ratings that are 92 percent
which are really pretty high as far as how people feel about our price and
reliability and our service in our community. Here a year ago or so ago we hired
Thomas C. Porter who does the work for the investor owned and the Co-op's and
so forth and they had a lot longer questionnaire that they did but it was almost
identical what the investor owned's and the Co-op's are using in their survey's
and we faired very well in that, in fact we were higher than the competition if you
went to the, shown by the Co-op's and so we're proud of how our customers feel
about us. As Jim said we have, we're a part of the city government, there are 14
departments in the City, there are some shared costs with some departments that
the electric goes with for example, the City Manager, a percentage of his salary is
paid for by electric, City Clerk, Finance, they also provide services for the electric.
Under Finance you have purchasing, customer service, you know the billing and
things like that are a shared cost. Risk Management, wellness, those are all kind
of shared services that we can do with other city departments. As far as our
electric department only we have about 45 people in the power plant coal fired
power plant and by the way their, the power plant workers are around the clock,
they happen to be organized with the operating engineers as far as, and we have a
very good relationship with the union there and then the outside crews, we have
about 20 people in the outside crews and they're organized by the IBW and we
also have very good relationships with them. And we have about 10 people who
are fairly high level professional people that run our utility, four of them are
electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers and that pretty well covers the
staffing. We have metered sales, I don't know about $30 million dollars a year,
we do an lieu of tax payment that directly goes to reduce the general fund, it goes
to the general fund to use as they wish. That amounts to $1.1 million dollars a
year and we have about $100,000 a year towards economic development in the
community. And the matter of economic development we were successful here a
couple of years of bringing in a nice industry that has about 6 ½ megawatt loads
going up to 8 ½ megawatts, it's (can't hear) plastic company, they make plastic
two liter pop deals, and now their going into beer, they're going to make plastic
beer bottles. And so one of the things that we kind of brag about is that they are
so happy with their utilities that they get there that they're expanding their plant
in An~es as opposed to other plants they have around the country. And their
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plants has some of the best costs in the whole, in the Ball Plastic Company and so
it's kind of nice to have a large customer that is so happy with you. And of
course reliability and all of those things are important to them. Our electricity is
produced with two coal fired units, we have a 35 megawatt unit and then we have
a newer unit that's 65 megawatts, it was new in 1980. There's a little sticker
shock when we talk about money buying these plants, the 65 mega watt plant cost
$43 million dollars in 1980 and we are practically debt free and all of that and our
rates are 20 pement than the rest and we have very low debt. We have exceeded
environmental rules, on an annual basis we purchase 20 percent of our energy in
the stock market. We purchase most of this from Mid American Energy and we
have a good relationship with Mid American in fact I'm pleased to tell you that
we've been invited to participate in a plant that Mid American is plarming to be a
joint owner and we're looking at that possibility. We've been successful in
competitive bidding, it's funny how much good competition will bring you,
whenever we purchase good services and even coal, and by t he way half of our
energy costs is for fuel and we've been successful in getting competitive bidding
on fuel for our plant, we were able to get.
(END OF 01-108, SIDE TWO)
Hove/Between the railroad lines, and you say why is that important and we'd say about
three-fourths of the cost of getting the fuel to the plant is for the transportation, we
have a five year contract and we're into the second year of that the five year
contract, our fuel costs have really clad all through the summer, or all through the
winter last winter, there were some utilities that had natural gas fired supply that
their electric costs went higher, due to the fact ours is all coal ours remained flat
all winter. We see ourselves as continuing to perform a role for the citizens of
Ames to find the best power supply that we can and deliver services to them and
as Jim Larew was saying you know aggregate, we really see ourselves as
aggregating, used to buying power of our customers and then matching it up with
a power supply and then deliver good service. Finally I'm impressed with the
initiative of this group here and to visit with you and thanks for having me over.
Champion/Can I just ask you a question please? Your telling us that you own your own
power plants and you've always owned them well at least for 100 years, so your
not making an initial investment of power plants. And so I assume you own your
own lines and telephone poles and all that thanks.
Hove/Yep.
Jim Larew/Thank you, Iowa is really blessed to have a strong organization, an
association that helps to assist the municipal utilities that (can't hear) our
landscape, we have 137 electric utilities at this time. My first meeting with this
group introduction to it came a few years having been bom and raised in Iowa
City all I knew was investor owned utilities, the predecessor's and interest to our
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present franchise and the context was a group in Des Moines I was appointed by
the Attorney General to examine utility issues and the co-chair of the group was
appointed by Governor Branstad, a very conservative republican Weston
Bertsoff?. ? who also happened to be the general manager of Osage Municipal
Utilities which is one of the great municipal utilities in Iowa in a smaller town.
And when I saw the kind of work that they were doing on matters that we thought
were important as a committee, working on energy efficiency, trying to assist
homeowners and businesses to use energy more wisely, to make wise ecological
choices. I was introduced to the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities and
found that it really created a driving force and frankly much more progressive
force in my opinion than the investor owned utilities who dominated them and
probably in a political way wondered if they still dominated our state. Well Bob
Haug is the Executive Director of that group and can bring to this Council and to
our meeting tonight a wide variety of experiences. Some utilities and municipally
owned own their own power plants, others are buying electricity off the wheel and
don't have to make investments in power plants, some make very small
investments, very large plants, etc. But across the board I think the record of the
Iowa Municipal Utilities is quite impressive and Bob Hang is the person best able
to speak to the collective experience of that group that's lasted well over 100
years that is municipal utilities and a very strong presence in the State of Iowa
because of the good work that Bob and his colleagues do. Bob was kind enough
to come at our request so he could share his knowledge with you.
Bob Haug/Thanks Jim, play musical chairs here. I appreciate the opportunity to be here,
we had hoped to leave a good amount of time for questions, for your questions so
I'm going to skip through some things very quickly here. I would like to say first
a little bit about municipal utilities in the state, as Jim said there are 137 municipal
electric utilities in Iowa, they range in size from one of our smallest is Westfield
Iowa I believe they have 89 customers. The largest on the other end, the larger
municipal utilities include Ames, Cedar Falls and Muscatine. Our association
represents 550 Iowa communities that operate electric, gas, and
telecommunication utilities, we represent our members before the legislature in
both state and federal regulatory agencies, and we provide training, workplace
safety training, and job training, we have a Department of Labor qualified
apprenticeship programs for line workers and do a lot of training at a training field
on our campus in Ankeny. I was here a couple of months ago and met with some
of you and various community groups, and during the course of those meetings
and the time since a number of questions have been raised and the handout that I
gave you is an attempt to chronicle some of the questions that were heard most
often and to provide a response to them. I'd like to touch on just a few minutes
and then we'll open it up for your questions and the unlikely event you have no
questions, I can go back and touch on a couple of others. One of the questions is
if establishing a municipal utility is such a good deal why haven't there been
municipal utilities formed in the last 20 or so years? And in fact the last
municipal utility formed in Iowa was at Arilia??? up in northwest Iowa. And
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there's been one attempt since and that was the City of Sheldon, on or about, well
it was about 1989 and 1990 that Sheldon held an election, had very broad
community support to establish a municipal utility, did a feasibility study and took
the case to the Iowa Utilities Board. Jim alluded to the finding in that case, the
Iowa Utilities Board at that time told the city that because there was an excess
amount of generating capacity in the region and their utility, Iowa Public Service
had built a power plant to serve the community, if the city withdrew it's service,
withdrew from the Iowa Public Service company it would leave the rate payers it
would leave the remaining rate payers paying for unused capacity, a term of art
has developed around that called stranded capacity. The ruling of the Utilities
Board required that although the City would have to compensate IPS for the
stranded capacity it was not entitled to use the output of the generation and in
effect the City of Sheldon would have had to pay for electricity, or pay for
capacity two times, once to replace what was being provided by Iowa Public
Service and again payment to Iowa Public Service for what they were abandoning.
Under those conditions feasibility could not be met and the City did not move
forward with municipalization. That is in fact the reason why there hasn't been
more municipal utilities formed in Iowa in recent years, the probability that a
Board, a Utilities Board in Des Moines might make a similar finding.
Incidentally our association offered to appeal that decision and by that time
interest in community had waned and they didn't take us up on that offer, we
think we could have reversed it. But things have changed, we're very close to
being in a deficit position with regard to a generation, there's not enough
generation to cover existing load, or that' the position we'll be in in Iowa
according to the Iowa Utilities Board by about 2003, next year, year after next.
And as a result a lot of planning is being done for power plants and a lot of
interest has been sparked in new municipal utilities as well. Emmetsburg Iowa
has been conducting a feasibility study, a consulting firm out of Minneapolis has
been conducting a feasibility study, it was suppose to have been done this
summer, they wanted some additional work done on it, it's expected to be done
sometime in the next few weeks and I believe that will be a public document and
you may learn a lot from that because the feasibility study looks at alternative
power supplies that would be available to the new municipal utility. So
Emmetsburg is looking, the little town of Everlyjust west of Spencer is, has
approved funding for a feasibility study, they may in fact move more quickly than
Emmetsburg to be a first case through the Utility Board process, the reason for
that is that back a few years ago they took over the municipal gas, or took over the
gas operations from People's Natural Gas and have a municipal gas utility there,
and are very satisfied with it and are anxious to move along to establish a
municipal electric utility as well. I met with the City Administrator from the City
of West Des Moines and I understand the Council there has indicated an interest
in doing a feasibility study. Keokuk Iowa is looking again at municipal utilities,
and so there's interest in activity elsewhere in Iowa and across the nation. One of
the handouts near the very back of the packet I gave you there's an article from
our the daily paper of our national affiliate talking about the operation of a new
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municipal utility in Oregon. Another question that I'd like to address that's come
up among some Council members and members of the community is what is the
cost of a feasibility study? Let me start by mentioning Emmetsburg, their
feasibility study is, it's called a preliminary feasibility study but it's really quite
complete, it's looking at the inventory of the distribution plant that they would
acquire from the utility there, the incumbent utility. It's looking at power supply
options, it's going to give them the information they need to know in order to
determine whether to proceed with the establishment of a municipal utility. That
study is being done by a competent engineering firm out of Minneapolis, I think I
mentioned that earlier and the not to exceed fee for that study is $20,000. In the
packet on page 6 you'll see a quote from the American Public Power Association
Debra Penn works for the Association and deals with cities who are interested in
forming new utilities. She mentions that last year two towns in Florida, one of
population of 34,000 the other of 4,000 had a joint study done for about $50,000.
The study reviews the city's options, costs to acquire and maintain, it estimates
savings, and does a thorough job and the cities were pleased with it as a first step.
I've also checked with other consulting firms that have done this kind of work, the
feasibility work, nationally and regionally and the range of costs for the feasibility
study are between $25,000 and about $75,000 for a city of Iowa City you'd expect
to be somewhere in the middle part of the range or it could be higher. I don't
want to mislead you that if you get the feasibility study done and it looks
promising and you get a strong electoral support for establishing a municipal
utility, there are more costs, there's more, the rest of the feasibility study would
need to be done and that would include a business plan, the development of a
business plan, legal costs associated with taking the case before the Iowa Utilities
Board and similar kinds of costs associated with getting ready to operate a utility.
The costs of the legal proceeding are quite substantial, you'll hear representatives
of Mid American say that the town of Emmetsburg spent close to a quarter of a
million dollars, and the significant part of the costs were in the process before the
Iowa Utilities Board to get the formation of the municipal utility, the service area
of the municipal utility defined. I think that was an exception to the rule, but in
any case ifa municipal utility is formed before you move forward much of the
legal ground will have been plowed. Since we haven't had one of these since
1976 many of the questions will be looked at by the Utilities Board in a fresh
context, and I think once one system is formed others will follow quickly. That is
the case with municipal gas systems, several which have formed in.just recent
years.
Kanner/You said with that costs, did you mean Shelby? Sheldon.
Haug/Did I say Emmetsburg? I meant Sheldon, thank you for correcting me, I meant
Sheldon back in the 1990 case. Why don't I stop there and ask if there are other
general questions that any of us could answer. I really don't want to cut offyour
questions.
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O'Donnell/What was the total cost of the Sheldon feasibility study?
Haug/I don't recall what the feasibility study cost. I would think it would have probably
been somewhere in the neighborhood of what Emmetsburg is paying and
something in the $25-35-45,000. You had, in that case you had Iowa Public
Service the incumbent utility which is now part of Mid American which from our
point of view was doing everything it could to raise the cost to the community, to
discourage other communities from following Emmetsburg, so it's not
unprecedented, we see it all over the country when new municipal's are formed,
the attempt is to try to make an example out of the utility, out of the city that's
trying this option and to raise the cost as much as possible, so if there's an appeal
available you take it, if there's an extra step that can be added you put that step in
and that's really what happened to Sheldon. In addition to that we ended up with
a situation with what most of us in the public power world think was a very
strange ruling on the part of the, what was then the Iowa Commeme Commission.
As ! said we offered to pay for the appeal we thought it was so, it needed to be
challenged but by that time, actually what had happened is that there was a new
City Council that had been elected that didn't want to proceed. And one other
thing on that stranded cost issue less that frighten you away, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission has declared that it would be the decider of any stranded
cost issues in a wholesale case, and so this isn't even an issue that the Utilities
Board could determine with final authority.
Champion/Bob what, let's say we were willing to spend $50,000 on an initial consultant.
Haug/Feasibility study.
Vanderhoef/Feasibility study.
Champion/Feasibility study right, thank you. What would you get for that $50,000?
Haug/You'd get, well let's say it looks like a product that the Emmetsburg City Council
is getting, it would include a thorough analysis of the wholesale market to answer
the question, if we formed a municipal utility and we went out into the market to
buy power, what would it cost me? You need that to determine what the savings
are. In fact in the case of Sheldon for this $25,000 study they have at least one
firm offer for power supply and it's firm and could be executed if the City moves
forward so they have that in their pocket in addition to that they would most
likely conduct a request for proposals to get the lowest cost power supply
available.
Champion/That's all your getting? No, it must be.
Haug/Oh I'm sorry, no, so that, that study.
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Champion/The analysis of the power.
Haug/An inventory of the existing facilities in Enmaetsburg has been completed and the
consultant is doing evaluation of those facilities.
Champion/Okay.
Haug/I don't know ifI can list other specific issues but essentially what the consultant
has to demonstrate with some certainty to the city is a range of cost savings that
would be available to the community if they moved ahead and that range would
bracket the likely purchase cost of the facilities.
Champion/Now would this analysis, I mean I know your going to get what you asked for,
your going to list what you asked for and then your going to get a price, so I'm
really asking this off the wall now. Would it take into consideration things like
buying the lines, the poles, the liability, all that?
Haug/I mentioned that it includes an inventory of facilities and that would be valued.
You don't need to have that down to the nearest penny because what the city is
ultimately going to say to the Utility Board is we've looked at the facilities and
based on that analysis this is what we think they're worth based on original cost
less depreciation our preferred method for evaluating the system and the utilities
are going to come in and say they're going to want something closer to
replacement costs but it's up to the Iowa Utilities Board to determine what costs
your going to pay for the facilities ultimately.
Champion/So your going to get an analysis of the cost of power, your going to get an
inventory of facilities that you would need to run your own power plant, is? I
mean your own power plant, your own power place.
Haug/Your going to purchase the distribution facilities, the lines and poles and
substations and transformers that are used to deliver power to ultimate consumers
in the area, that's what we're asking about.
O'Donnell/Could I ask, is it Jim?
Hove/Merlin.
O'Donnell/Do you mind ifI call you Jim? You said you have 45 employees that work in
the plant itself, what's the total number of employees (can't hear) line men.
Hove/Yea we have about 20 outside crews, we have about 45 there, and we have 10 and
it all adds up to about 75 to 76, 77 around in there, electric only employees and
then in addition to that we share services with the finance and things like that, and
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I'm not counting any (can't hear) where the shared services, but our department is
75 plus.
O'Donnell/How do you handle? Like in 98 we had a straight line wind go through here
and take down literally every, how do you handle emergency situations? Do you
have crews you can call in?
Hove/Yea we've got two ways we can go on that, we'll, we have a thing in the Iowa
Association of Municipal Utilities have got a mutual aid thing that is drawn out to
help each other, obviously we're a lot bigger than a lot of the members so there's
limits on how we can draw on that. For additional help we call on contractors, we
regularly use the same contractors that Mid American and Alliant do and so we
have, they're on our place usually every year and if we're using one for example
we had power in there one time and then we used, but that's how, we'll get
contractors in and the combination of mutual aid from other places and we have
done both of those and it really, if you would check with people that have been,
and we've had some straight line, we had two and a half miles of line just leveled
here one year and we had service back up really quick. We had a contractor on
the job before 8:00 the next morning.
O'Donnell/Just one more question.
Champion/I'll follow up on that.
O'Donnell/ You said in 1980 you purchased this generator that this place 65 jigawatts or
megawatts or whatever. You said it cost $43 million dollars. Do you have any
idea what that would cost today?
Hove/Yep, yea it would probably double that easy.
O'Donnell/So you could be approaching.
Hove/Oh yea.
Kanner/So have you saved up $25 million for your next plant, I heard your Mayor said
that you've saved up $25 million for the next time you have to purchase.
Hove/Yea we have a reserve fund, partly the reserve fund is there, has been accumulated
for one reason that as long as we have debt we had a reserve fired that is required
by our debt ordinance and so we had some money's accumulated from that and in
addition to that we've accumulated about $25 million dollars that the Mayor will
tell you we'll tell you we'll use that to write down some of our future capital
costs. And so we're very fortunate not only have we been able to pay down that
debt that we had in 1980 but we've got cash reserve so we're obviously very
happy how our finances have been working.
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Lehman/Do you make loans?
Champion/I want to ask.
O'Donnell/You say that 65, this one generated (can't hear) 1980 does that cover
approximately half of your?
Hove/Our peak loads are 112 megawatts and so then we have a 35 megawatts and so our
capability total and it's in your sheet there if you want to look it up is 121
megawatts so you can see from that we can cover our loads. But there's a thing
called reserve so we even buy additional capacity beyond that.
O'Donnell/Okay.
Champion/I have another question to ask you following up on Mike's question about the
big wind which I don't think any of us in Iowa City are ever going to forget as
long as we're alive. I'm going to say roughly, I mean I don't even know, but let's
say 50 percent of our electrical power was disrupted, poles down, trees down, I
mean it was a disaster, it wasn't unmeditated like a (can't hear) dome burning, but
it was a disaster in my book. How would you cover that? I mean do you catty
insurance or I mean what if you just started your own utility company and the big
wind came I mean how would you ever cover such a huge expense?
Hove/Yea it's a cost of doing business, I don't know of any utility company that's buying
insurance for that, I suppose you could but most people choose to self cover that
kind of loss of storms and the best kind of thing you can do is risk management
and that in the case of the electric lines is preventive maintenance on the lines and
tree clearance and if your in Ames and take a look at the lines are well maintained,
you'll see nice new poles up, you'll see good line clearance and there aren't trees
in the lines. You can really decrease the probability of having lines down a lot
with good tree clearance program. We spend annually, oh I was trying to
remember, I think it's $ i 00,000 a year on tree trimming.
Champion/I'm sure you do but I don't think you've probably had a big wind in Ames
like we had here.
Lehman/They've got a Cyclone.
Champion/They cut a very narrow path.
Lehman/Now you said a number of Iowa City's are presently looking at the possibilities
off
Haug/Well in my vocabulary book the number is five.
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Lehman/Right. Now I would assume, boy that's a bad word, but I would assume that the
value of distribution facilities is similar to capita as you go from city to city, let
me rephrase that. Cities of similar size would probably have a similar cost per
capita for the distribution equipment, I mean is that a fair statement?
Haug/Help me out here Merlin, I would say it really varies, it would vary community by
community depending with the age of the facilities and perhaps the extent to
which they're underground.
Lehman/No, I understand that, but I guess one of the thing that occurs to me if there are
five cities looking at feasibility studies.
Haug/Oh I think I see where your going, yea.
Lehman/I mean if they're looking at these things, wouldn't some of the same factors be
tree in all cities?
Haug/Sure and I think that's why I mentioned one example of two cities in Florida that
went together on the feasibility study because of so much of what your looking at
is common, your looking at an alternative power supply.
Lehman/Yea but I mean rather, it would seem to me that if there are a number of cities
looking at this that there should be some commonality among those studies that
would benefit each mutually, the cities.
Haug/I'm sure that's the case.
Lehman/Now you, your the Executive Director for the Iowa Association of Municipal
Utilities, is that a government agency?
Haug/No it's a non profit trade association.
Lehman/Okay that's funded by municipal utilities?
Haug/Yes, for our cities.
Lehman/So you are members of like we're members of League of Cities.
Karmer/We're members of this too aren't we?
Haug/No.
Kanner/For water, I thought someone said that we're a member.
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Atkins/I don't, we may have the, there may be a similar water association or something
such as that.
Haug/No we represent water and waste water utilities, City of Des Moines, Waterloo are
long term members of ours.
Kanner/Okay I heard from someone that we pay dues for that.
Lehman/Has the League of Cities ever looked into this at all Steve? Or I don't go to their
meetings at all.
Atkins/League of Cities looks into what, you've got to help me out here a little bit.
Lehman/I mean this is an issue obviously that there are a number of cities in Iowa that
are doing this although it appears that most of them have gotten into it a long,
long time ago but also there seems to be renewed interest, or at least it sounds to
me like them is.
Atkins/Most of the issues that I recall and I think the League's position would be that's
really a local decision, sort of none of our business, you decide what level of
municipal services you want and the type you would want. I do know we had an
interaction with the association oh when the utility replacement tax and a number
of other issues were kicking around legislative issues that's fairly common and.
Haug/We work closely with the League, we have a common membership, our members
are cities, and really when your talking about utility issues like this it's not
something that's likely done by the League because it's more or less our turf, you
know we do utilities.
Lehman/No, I understand that but League of Cities I think generally, at least I think of
them as an organization that looks out for the best interest of cities, and this is
something that if, if what we're looking at has merit I would think they would be
interested in it because it would be a benefit to their members.
Vanderhoef/Well there was discussion at League Legislative Policy a couple of years
when there was a lot being batted around about electric deregulation and at that
point in time there were a number or cities who had already utilities in their city
and they couldn't support a deregulation as legislation that was being written at
that time and it was also something that the League was not willing to take up as a
special interest group but more to look at it in total terms and what the policy
came out and was approved by the membership was that we would encourage our
legislatures to slow down on this that we were not under a mandate to deregulate
at that point in time and there wasn't any advantage to us at that point to do it.
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Karmer/And to further answer your question Emie I wrote a letter to the National League
of Cities and I called also the State League of Cities, and the State League gave a
response basically what Steve said and they had no position. To follow-up also on
what Dee was saying, they said they have a position here which I'll pass around
from the National League of Cities saying that restructuring should not interfere
with services provided by municipally owned utilities, that's the extent of any
position on any municipal electric.
Lehman/On these municipal utilities that are included in this chart here we have
comparisons. Do these municipal utilities all own their own generation capacity
as well as distribution?
Atkins/Probably not Ernie.
Haug/No there's something around I think it's around 80 of the municipal utilities that
own generation. A lot of municipal utilities own peaking or back up generation,
simply diesel electric generators or simple cycle gas turbans to cover their loads in
an emergency but there's also a large number of municipals that are owners of
coal fired plants with other utilities, mostly with Mid American Energy, Cedar
Fails for example owns parts of two Mid American operated plants, one if Port
Neal, and the other at Council Bluffs, Algona owns part of the Neal floor plant so
an individual municipal utility with few exceptions is too small to enjoy the
economy's of scale you want to build a power plant and so they need to get
together with another utility to own generation. In the handout I gave you on
page I want to say it's about 16, it's page 15, there's a national comparison of
rates into which I've put in, in gray shaded area some specific utility revenue per
kilowatt hour for different types of rates and you can see that Indianola for
example has average revenue per kilowatt hour for residential customers of 5.42
cents per kilowatt hour, they don't own any generation, they buy exclusively
through contracts from Mid American Energy.
Lehman/They own the distribution system.
Haug/Yes they do.
Lehman/So they buy, they contract with utility companies to buy the energy and then
they distribute the energy.
Haug/Right, they buy wholesale power from Mid American Energy and they have their
own distribution system.
(All talking)
Vanderhoef/Now tell me what you would call a mini muni.?
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Haug/No, that is a municipal utility, many municipal utilities pumhase wholesale from
the wholesale market and sell it retail and.
Champion/I'm sorry I'm interrupting, go finish.
Haug/No please.
Champion/The 4.71 is that dollars and cents?
Haug/It's 4.71 cents per kilowatt hour.
Champion/Oh okay, now is that wholesale or retail?
Haug/That's retail, well it's not a retail rate, it's when you measure these things because
there are nuances of rate structures, summer rates differ from winter rate
comparisons are done on a revenue per kilowatt hour basis, this is all from data
that utilities submit to the Department of Energy annually and it's just.
Champion/So this is what the customer is paying.
Lehman/Right.
Champion/That's what my question was, thank you.
Haug/Yes.
Kanner/So we got the same figure from Mid American a few weeks ago this 9 here, up at
the top here, that's what we're paying from Mid American.
Champion/Right.
O'Donnell/Your purchasing power from a grid somewhere is that right?
Haug/From a supplier someplace yes.
O'Donnell/And how do you transfer it?
Haug/Over existing transmission facilities on the regional grid, many of those facilities
are owned by Mid American Energy or by Alliant or Coop's, municipals own
some, we intend to own a lot more.
O'Donnell/Do you lease those?
Haug/No there are rates that have been developed. Since 1992 when Congress passed
the Energy Policy Act that year transmission owning companies have been
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required to make their transmission systems available to others at the same rates
that they pay internally, so we essentially had an open highway for transmission of
electricity in the region. That transmission is constrained now meaning there's
not enough transmission facilities to bring on a lot more generation, and we're
going to be bringing on a lot more generation so we're all looking at making
investments in new transmission facilities and that will effectively have a rate
stabilizing effect for municipal utilities if we own more.
O'Doimell/We live in kind of an unusual place with many students coming and going.
Champion/So do they.
O'Donnell/Do you have any idea how many contacts you have with customers per year?
Is that (can't hear)?
Merlin Hove/Well we have 20,000 meters and we have 50,000 people that live there and
I don't know what the student population is way over half of that so our customer
service group is really busy, I think they, the people in and out is very similar to
your community which provides a challenge and also a reward in my view. I
meant to mention this is my opening statement that the University community
really adds fun to my job or it adds, we get people asking good questions and they
also help us guide us through some things. For example this waste energy thing
was literally born on the campus of the University as a cormmunity energy solution
that we came to and that isn't out of ordinary at all for our University people to
get involved. For example there was concern this, some months ago maybe you
heard about it about dioxins coming from the Ames plant, we were very fortunate
to have University people that could, that were very helpful in following up on
that concern and to reassure our community of what we're doing. I talked to
people in the muni. business a lot of times they say I bet those professors drive
you crazy but they really kind of keep us on our toes and add value to our utility.
O'Donnell/We have a lot of fun with the University of Iowa too.
Kanner/Merlin to follow-up on that and then another quick question. For instance we
heard that Mid American brings in during two weeks of students coming back
extra staff people to help with the registration or at the end of the school year
when they're leaving, do you do the same kind of thing to accommodate the
influx, the big influx, the change every year?
Hove/We don't bring in hardly, we don't bring in extra people but we, our people work
extra long hours during that time and we're moving towards and we're not quite
there yet but we're hopeful that we'll be able to have them sign up on the Internet
and they won't even need to come in is where we're going and I don't think it's
that far away.
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Lehman/We do the same thing with water, the same thing over time (can't hear).
O'Donnell/Are we looking presently? Aren't there like, doesn't Mid American have like
70 employees if I don't remember right like a $22 million dollar payroll with the?
Lehman/Yea it could be but from what we're talking about we do the same when the
students change we have the same situation with water.
Kanner/Merlin I had another question for you, Mid American they were required to put 2
percent of their gross revenues into energy efficiency and conservation programs,
that's no longer their requirement but they still put significant amounts in. What
percentage does Ames put in for energy conservation and efficiency program of
their gross revenues?
Hove/It would be on that order, our flagship for energy efficiency is our interruptable air
conditioner load program that we have that we do self audit's, we have a full time
energy efficiency coordinator, and one of the things we don't do is rebates but
from time to time we look at that, so we're somewhere in that same range but
we're at that range not because we're needing a spending target for the state,
we're at the spending level because our City Council has debated how we should
be doing this and they have chosen that program. We're looking at expanding that
a little bit fight now and some other programs that have to do with interruptable
rates.
Lehman/How do you determine your rate? Residential, industrial, commercial, how are
those rates determined?
Hove/You know it's called a cost of service study and you allocate cost based on a
variety of things generation plant, distribution plant, time of use load factor,
there's just a whole, and anyway those things are, or consultants come in and do a
cust. service and you have some political choices to make as you go along, we
chose the last one, we did a rate study to go to seasonal rates because our highest
demand for electricity is in the summer and so our comxntmity has chosen to
charge more electricity in the summer than they do in the winter but that was
chosen by our City Council to be that way. Before that we were the same year
round, the rates were the same year round.
Lehman/Do you have about the same differential between residential and commercial
customers people like Mid American would have?
Hove/Yea about the same.
Lehman/Probably the same sort of formula that both of you use.
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Hove/It's a pretty traditional rate, part of the things that you take into account after
you've done your costing and you've inserted your ideas that you believe in for
incentivizing?? use or conserving if you will, then you look at what the others are
doing and say are we going to be way out away from them. And so that was the
last thing we did we did a comparison of what the rest of the people are doing and
it isn't that far from what the others are doing.
Champion/You used a term, I forget (can't hear) all these terms but in your interuptive
service?
Hove/Oh that is if the culprit is high use in the summer time okay and because you have
to have install a capacity to cover that and so one of the ways that you cover that
is buying ne~v plants and building new plants. Another way to cover that need is
to say well we'll reward you on your rates if you will agree to shut your high level
of use down during those times ~vhen, this is being done by most companies or a
lot of companies now and so on, maybe these three or four hot days the power
company calls the large company and says we'll cut back that 5 megawatts that
you signed up to cut and you reward them financially for doing that.
Champion/Oh so I wouldn't be like drying my hair and have my electricity go off?.
O'Donnell/No that's a rolling (can't hear).
Haug/You have to be in California for that to happen.
Lehman/Cedar Rapids had that last year, they had schools that shut down.
Kanner/Well the University of Iowa has a contract that does the same that.
Lehman/No I mean that's not uncommon.
Haug/Municipal utilities have been doing that since the late 70's using computers on
residential homes, the compressor in your air conditioner drops off for up to 15
minutes over a half hour to hour period. The fans still run in most cases the
temperature doesn't change but what the utility gets is the control so that not
everybody's air conditioner happens to cycle on at one instant.
Champion/I'm sorry I really have to be educated in this terminology.
Haug/I wanted to make, ifI could just simply say one other thing, something that could
help Iowa City in the future if you become, if you establish a municipal utility is
that the legislature in the last session allowed municipal utilities to come together
to jointly finance facilities. It's something that we've been fighting for 30 years
and we won last year. Last week Board of Trustees in Atlantic, Algona, and Traer
went through the legal process of establishing the Iowa Public Power Agency
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under which Municipal Utilities across the state will be able to jointly finance
electric facilities including generation and transmission facilities and so that's
going to be available to any new municipal utility that comes along.
Vanderhoef/Before you go I just want to ask Bob one more time. Define a min. muni.
for me.
Haug/I've, when I was here a few weeks ago I talked about a muni. light, a Bud Light,
the concept and we've had some legal analysis of this and we think it's valid, the
concept would be to have an election in which you, the voters would approve the
establishment of a municipal utility, at that point you wouldn't take the next step
at least not immediately of acquiring the distribution facilities, you would be a
municipal utility essentially in name only. But your not just that because for
reliability purposes the water and waste water operations have installed generating
capacities, some diesel generators, as a utility you'd be able to sell that capacity
into the wholesale market, you'd also be able to buy wholesale power from the
grid for utility operations, it would have to be utility operations only, you couldn't
light the lights here but you could do your water and waste water operations which
might lower costs there and you could also do street lighting so that, it was a first
step on the chance that you were looking for a baby step first, creation ofa muni.
light could give you that. There's potential savings in your energy costs for
operating existing utilities those, some of those savings might have been, might be
used for feasibility study of a full utility.
Champion/Do you, when you, let's say we decide okay we're going to do our own utility,
we're going to be our own utility purchaser whatever you want to cai1 us. Does
that have to go to the voters?
Haug/Yes.
Champion/Okay.
Kanner/Bob Mid American has said that we want a franchise agreement because of
indemnification issue, could you briefly address that for the (can't hear)?
Haug/I can't explain it, I heard it, the City has probably more qualified people to talk
about this in the room but the City has certain protections from liability in the
code, the utility gets some liability protection in a franchise in that they have the
legal authority to occupy the streets and alleyways if somebody hits the pole, that
pole in there by authority of the City. The reverse indemnification from the utility
to the City I must admit I'm a bit clueless on that, a lot of cities have run for long
periods of time without a franchise. The Iowa the franchise agreement really isn't
much of anything, there's no franchise fee, there's no service quality issues you
can deal with. You can't deal with rates, it is almost exclusively when you look at
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the franchise is nothing more than a grant of authority to the franchise utility to
use the public streets and alleyways so I can't explain (can't hear).
Jim Larew/I want to thank you for your attention, it is my hope that we as a City we
could look at the asset here not unlike how Warren Buffet does, you know in the
15 years since the City last signed a franchise, this franchise was bought and sold.
(END OF 01-109, SIDE ONE)
Larew/At least the public pronouncements were that the purchaser was paying full
market value and still able to make a genuine nice profit. If you look at Berdshire
half the way, they own 76 percent of this franchise, they don't look at things
unless they're getting a 16 percent return on investment. So much of what you do
as a City with limited resources is try to pay money for services that are needed
where you have real no economic turn you do it because citizens need the service.
A public utility has so much potential, not only to serve people but it's another
way to generate income in ways that you don't otherwise have and still have rate
payers pay less than what they would be paying Mid American. I would hope that
the City Council whatever the result of your decision would be could at least look
at this as an investment opportunity the same Warren Buffet does, this is an
investment, he didn't say there's a cost in Iowa City, he says there's an
investment, why couldn't we at least mentally look at it this way and then decide
whether it's a good investment and the proposal that we have made is that you try
to engage the community in this. It's such a big decision in an embolical?? time, I
would think you would need that support, you deserve it, you have resources in
the community as terms of people who know a lot about it or are interested in it
who can help you make the decision. You can find some structure to have the
conversation percolate, you can challenge the University of Iowa, Coralville,
others and say does it make sense at this moment in history that maybe we should
do something like this together, we have no turf wars, we have no vested interest,
couldn't we do this together and make this a region that has the most progressive
and enlightened energy policy (can't hear) rather than residential living and
commercial living a lot easier. Industries aren't out there always cutting their own
deals, they're not going to be any worse off than (can't hear) these other uses who
will be potentially better off. And my view is if after a long and considered
period, not long forever but long enough so you have the facts that you need,
whatever the decision you make the citizens of Iowa City ought to support you but
I think it's clearly one of those things that deserve your measured attention and
that's the hope that we would have for you that you would find some way that we
could have a community dialogue and do this in a civilized way and come up with
an answer that we all think is reasonable.
Champion/I think we all agree that we need to make an informed decision (can't hear).
Larew/Well we thank you for your time.
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Lehman/Thank you.
Champion/Thank you.
Lehman/Okay guys you've got some homework to do, some reading. Council Time.
Council Time
O'Donnell/See you tomorrow.
Lehman/Tomorrow night 6:30.
Adjourned 9:15 PM
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of December 10, 2001.