HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002-01-10 TranscriptionJanuary 10, 2002 Special Budget Work Session Page !
January ! 0, 2002 Special Budget Work Session 1:30 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, Vanderhoef, Wilbum, Pfab, Kanner (O'Donnell absent)
Staff: Atkins, Helling, Karr, Fowler, O'Malley, Mansfield, Herting, O'Brien
TAPES: 02-03 SIDE TWO; 02-06 BOTH SIDES; 02-07 SIDE ONE
Budl~et
Atkins/You have a handout in front of you which is as I've done in the past, this is a
copy hopefully in order of all the overheads I'll do so you can doodle on these.
Also just hot off the press is our citizens summary, as you know we will mail one
of these to all members of all Boards and Commissions, we just produced a small
bunch of them. It's (can't hear) as you've seen in the past.
Champion/It's a lot easier than ours.
Atkins/Yes it is but it's good for doodling purposes.
Kanner/Although it is getting clearer although I didn't like the direction this one has.
Champion/No I didn't either.
Atkins/You know the reason we have to do that is that we need a bigger font for copying
purposes, I agree with you I like it the other way too.
Vm~derhoeff And I thought this was kind of neat because it leaves us space on the table.
Atkins/Well I'm glad you like it and I'm sorry you don't but we don't have any choice.
Karmeff It's almost clear, each year (can't hear).
All talking.
Vanderhoef/I lean it up against my computer screen and I can just keep reading.
Lehman/Okay.
Atkins/Okay now that we all like the book, now what's inside it.
Pfab/All in favor say aye.
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Atkins/What I'd like to do today is I'm going to walk you through some of the basics, we
have handouts, overheads, you recall there are two parts to our budget operations
and capital. However, yes.
Lehman/One question before you start, do you wish to go through this and have us make
notes on questions we have or do you want to take questions as you go along?
Atkins/You know if it' s just clarifying a point I'd just as soon take it right on but if you
want to get into something that's you think is going to tend to something like I
like this and nobody else does I think we better, record those questions and we'll
go back to them particularly even if you suspect there will be some debate.
Lehmm~/Okay that's fine.
Atkins/Bottom line this is the third year with this group, so my intent this year is I'm
sorry.
Karr/I was just testing.
Lehman/Marian, seeing if we were awake.
Pfab/Timing was great.
Atkins/I am not going to be as detailed as I have in the past, I mean I'll rely on you to ask
the questions, there are some things we have to go over for you to understand the
consequences of the budget we put together before you. But it will not be in the
same detail, if you have questions we will take it from there. We've applied all
the applicable laws as we know them to be, what's next the Legislature convenes
on the 14th and we'll find out if that has any affect on this. The biggest difficulty
and I'll be showing you that in a moment, the State has obviously reduced
revenues to us, the formula driven component of the budget has been dramatic in
it's drop off. A big concern I would just ask you to tuck this away is that in state
governments run through the form and what they've done in maybe it's easy to
speak by example, we traditionally get $620,000 a year, at least we have for the
last 10 or 12 years of something called a State Population Allocation, it's a nose
count and it's given to cities. This year it's $590,000, what I'm concerned about
is next year it may go down again which the state has indicated two years of
reductions, we think we've accommodated those. But when things get better the
base is no longer 620, the base is 590, the state may provide us with more money
and get us back up to 610. So we're falling back all the time particularly as it
relates to those types of revenues. In the budget what I did a little differently was
in my highlight section I put together a more lengthy narrative, sort of explaining
each point, the intent was just let you read it, you can take it from there, it saves
me some presentation time. I want to summahze to start with and this is in your
charts our general fund reserve position is declining, I'll show you the details of
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that in a moment. With the debt plan that we have we will exceed the 25 percent
policy as we gave you heads up to last year. Our general fund contingency is a tad
bit less than one percent but we feel we're generally satisfying that particular
policy. This year we have completely lost machinery and equipment which is
about 3 ½ percent of our total tax base, we receive no reimbursement from the
state, that's about a $700,000 loss. There have been a number of state programs
reduced and of course my question as I've already pointed out to you will they
recover, we don't know. The restricted levies, those that are capped which have
the greatest influence on oar general fund our not producing the revenue to
support the current programs, I'll take you through that. We have a major bond
sale planned shortly in the next couple months and the implications of which are
in the upcoming budget when it comes to repaying it. We have tried to prepare a
budget plan that maintains our Aaa credit rating, it will be difficult and I can't
really make you any promises on that. We have a major increase in our operating
expenses for health insurance, we're not alone, I think you've certainly read about
that everywhere, we are self funded but we do have professional management in
the form of Wellmark who does the things they do for us and gave us the estimate
of what it was going to take to cover our employees. We have a major increase in
airport operation subsidy, doubling, I'll explain what I believe to be the
consequences of that and the circumstances surrounding it. And because of the
high profile nature of public safety improvements I identify as a policy issue that
we are proposing that we postpone. The construction and staffing of the fourth
fire station we do have in the budget sufficient money to do the land acquisition
and the architectural work but not sufficient moneys to construct it and build it.
Wilburn/Steve was it your goal to put the health insurance to maintain the same benefits
for your staffat this point?
Atkins/When we go over the health insurance the benefit program is not changing.
Wilburn/Okay.
Atkins/We have an excellent program, our health insurance program for all practical
purposes is locked in by labor contract, if we wish to reduce it that would require
us to negotiate and that goes for the cost of the program also but there is a
substantial increase in that, whether it appears at the bargain table those issues
we'll talk to you a little later on not now. Okay that's just kind of setting the
stage, I want to take a couple minutes to show you sort of one of my major
concerns because we don't see any change forthcoming. In it's simplest terms we
have a very prosperous community but we have an eroding tax base, this is page
two, this comes directly from your budget. And what I want to show you here is
you can see fiscal year 03 is easy enough to mad. Our total assessed value for
property is $2.9 billion dollars, if you look at fiscal year 02 it's $2.625 billion, it is
up almost 10 percent, however the difficulty is that when you read and you imply
the roll back factor which this year also includes commercial and industrial our
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actual taxable base is up only 3.3 percent. The roll back for residential dropped
almost nine percent in value, it went from 56 to 51 and then of course with the
addition of, and I'll show you some of the examples of the impact of that in a
moment. Our bottom line in simplest terms, remember all the revalue we went
through and all those issues, it's gone with the roll back. Now I've tried to find a
way to help identify and measure that for you, and what I have is in it's simplest
terms I guess. If they'd only just left us alone, no change in the rollback as we had
projected, allowed normal growth to occur in values, here's where we'd be. You
can go back to your.
Vanderhoef/We don't have that sheet do we?
Pfab/That's the third or fourth sheet.
Atkins/That's the third sheet, fourth sheet.
Vanderhoef/Okay got it.
Atkins/Our residential value in 03 was $1.9 billion dollars, up we had $213 million
dollars in increased property values in residential, however, leaving, just left
things alone, no changes, to give you the impact of the rollback, that value when
you apply the rollback as proposed for 03 generates that $9,578,000 in property
tax. If we'd left it alone, left it at 56, it would have amounted to $10,400,000
right off the top of our budget we lose $846,000 in income to the general fund
simply because of that.
Kaimer/Is that 51.7 the Republican proposal?
Atkins/51.7 no that isn't Republican or Democrat, that is a formula, and that's the thing.
Kam~er/Oh it's based on agricultural.
Atkins/Ag., you've got it, your allowed to grow a maximum, the aggregate value of
residential property in Iowa is allowed to grow by a factor of 4 percent, that's how
the rollback is calculated. That or the value of agriculture property whichever is
less following that formula and it isn't, it was a political decision made in the
early 1970's, we get a notice in the mail, so as far as political accountability if you
want to go back 30 years and find out who voted for it that's where you'd have to
go. Go ahead.
Pfab/When did, I don't remember the utilities and as much commercial, when did that?
Atkins/Commercial and utilities are going to be up in just a minute and I'll answer that
question for you.
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Pfab/That's fine, that's fine.
Atkins/I wanted to show you the dramatic impact however, the rollback has if we were
being funded at $800,000 of additional moneys we wouldn't have a lot of the
debate over some of the service expansions that we had planned, remember that's
operationally. It would also have a significant bearing on our other tax levies, but
it's a formula, we get a notice in the mail. Now if they would, they, you know
who they are, if the would only have left us alone in commercial and industrial we
grew from $932 to $976, however there's also this year the first time in a long
time is a rollback of commercial/industrial values. You have to take out of that
the gas and electric because that's a separate formula now and that separate
formula calculates out that they will make us whole with respect to the property
tax value of that which is removed from that portion of our tax base. The question
~ve have and a concern we have is that that's only good for another year, one more
year mad the State Legislature as you know is notorious for saying well we need
some of that money so the likelihood I believe of us being reimbursed completely
through the new gas and electric is not good. The same principle, what the
rollback did is cost us $19,000,000 in property value for commercial/industrial.
And I was trying to find a way to measure that for you and what I came up with
was for Owens-Brockway every year just to keep current. Owen-Brockway
project is about $4,500,000 dollars, property value, land and construction, you
need four a year just to be current. Well as you know folks that doesn't happen
very often. And finally just to give you a little summary, here's the history of the
rollback, and I do have this partially in my budget message. In 1993 it .73, this
year it is .51, it is a 40 percent decline in the value of the rollback or as it affects
our budgeting so 40 percent over 10 years and they allow us to grow at 4 percent a
year, virtually they wipe out growth in a community in value, that's what the
rollback has done. And the disappointing thing folks is that we never gain any
ground and it is a formula that State Legislature can choose to change it or they
can choose to leave it alone which is what has happened and we just simply get a
notice in the mail. Yea.
Pfab/I'd like to have you just go back and refresh my memory here. On this, the
philosophy and the origin of the rollback was.
Atkins/I can give it to you as it was explained to me Irvin but it's about 30 years old, at
the time there was some farm economy problems, as Iowa typically goes through.
The Legislature in there was chose to put property values for the urban setting at
the value of agricultural property that one would not grow dramatically more than
the other because residential was growing and one was declining. The State also
felt that in aggregate, and that's one of the problems we have in budgeting in Iowa
is that it's, virtually everything is done in aggregate, it's really difficult to get it
down to an individual property owner, I try later on and I'll show you. And so the
rollback became a factor that residential property would in aggregate would not
grow more than 4 percent throughout the state or the value of agricultural property
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again in aggregate whichever is lower, that determines a number and that number
is applied to all residential properties and thereby roll backed in value.
Pfab/Where did the support come from or who was, who felt that they were, they needed
this to survive?
Atkins/I think ! was in high school when they did that? I don't mean to (can't hear) but
it's been a long time ago.
Pfab/But I mean, I'm trying, is there, what I'm saying is it doesn't appear that it's a farm,
a country or rural, it wasn't a big help to them.
Atkins/Well let me ask you, let me toss the question back at you. Why is the Farm
Bureau hell bent on freezing property taxes in cities?
Pfab/Yea good question.
Atkins/! do not understand that debate, go ahead why.
Lehman/All the farmers retire and move to town.
Atkins/Is that what it is?
Kanner/Well I'm not sure the answer for that one but I would suspect that a little bit has
to do with trying to make it so agricultural land doesn't drop so low that there's a
gold rush out there to tum it into residential, to keep residential lower.
Champion/That's a good point.
Atkins/That's a good point Steven, it could be, I mean it's been so long ago, I think it
(can't hear), that argument does make sense.
Pfab/How do you rationalize? Or where did it come from? I mean did somebody wake
up with a bad dream?
Kanner/Well also there was the big property tax stabilization movement led by California
at that time.
Atkins/Yea.
Kanner/It's something that in the future maybe we could look at in terms of lobbying
well our State League is lobbying on this.
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Atkins/We lobby vigorously on this, I've served on two State committees on property
tax, we've gone through extensive revisions, we've sent them to the State about
three or four years ago, zero, we got nothing, they rejected them all.
Karmer/In two years we might get relief with the new districts that are.
Pfab/Might yea.
Atkins/(can't hear).
Pfab/But if doesn't, yea, but if wasn't rural generated and so it was.
Champion/Well it was probably rural generated.
Pfab/Well that's, it's hard to find.
Champion/That was a very rural Legislature at that time and had to be worried about.
Lehman/Well that's neither here or there, we've got to live with it.
Vanderhoef/And the population base has changed so dramatically over the last 30 to 40
years.
Atkins/Well and remember about 4 or 5 years ago for the first time in Iowa the value of
manufactured goods exceed the value of agricultural goods, I mean I think that's a
clear indication of the change in what was going on in the state and that was only
4 or 5 years ago and we've substantially remained an agricultural state up until
that point. But Irvin that's about the best I can do for you on the history of it,
Steven's assessment is as good as any I've heard and I think it does make some
sense. Okay so that's our rollback history. The next chart I wanted to show you is
a summary so we understand, I'm skipping the tax rate one because we'll pick
that up in a little bit, I've already answered some of that. This sort of summarizes
for you what happened this year and how the state's economy does have a bearing
upon us locally, machinery and equipment no more reimbursement, we're out
$700,000. General fund, commercial and residential properties, the State Transit
Assistance be across the board by the State, loss in road use tax, going into the
budget we were $2.4, almost $2.5 million dollars less available revenue to do
what we're doing right now.
Lelunan/That's not adjusted for the change in the assess for growth, these are just.
Atkins/These are flat out gone dollars.
Lehman/I realize that.
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Atkins/No adjustment, no.
Lehman/No but it doesn't include additions of new construction for this last year,
Atkins/Yea it does, oh it's all gone Ernie.
Lehman/I mean the net net is 2 ½ million bucks less.
Atkins/The net net is this, that's net net.
Pfab/Now that you've got our attention.
Atkins/I have your attention now more so than before, no this is net net it's gone, now
whether it will come back, remember at the beginning of the program we talked
about that new base. This is a good example and two years ago our projections
for gas tax, the road use tax was $87.00 per capita, this budget year it's $76.00.
We expect it to return to $80.00 in about three or four years.
Pfab/What's it now? What is it this year?
Atkins/76, so you take 62,000 times $76.00 you'll know generally how much money,
now the state legislature is going to be debating this year trying to get more money
for urban road systems as opposed to the rural.
Wilburn/Who knows.
Atkins/Yea who knows, I can't, we've made the assumption that it's going to remain
down projected out over the next three years.
Pfab/That won't affect what we're going into is it?
Atkins/Yes it would, if the state is to change the formula Irvin it would improve our road
use tax position, that is in the form of dollars, now we've tried to have it amended
so it would allow us more flexibility in the use of road use tax moneys, that hasn't
been successful yet those lobbies are to be. Yes Dee.
Vanderhoef/So the new census nmnbers they've taken away any growth of population off
of us with this.
Atkins/Yep, it's gone too.
Vanderhoef/Think about the cities that have lost population and see those drops.
Atkins/ Yes. So the difficulty is the reduction in our property tax base and our revenue
base in general terms. We have new spending we have coming on line, a new
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library, the debt associated with it, the staffing associated with it. The general
downturn in the state economy, the across the board adjustments and whether
they'll do anymore I don't know. I think you can have some sense of dilemma
that we find ourselves in. The next thing ! wanted to do just spend a minute or
two with you, this has bearing upon us operationally and also with respect to our
credit rating, this chart is in your book.
Pfab/Where at in the book do you know?
Atkins/It's in the book or in.
Lehman/It's in the handout.
Atkins/It's in the handout, this is just bigger, this is for older eyes, we made bigger print.
Vanderhoef/What are you implying?
Atkins/No for mine. Anyway the issue I want to raise with you here is our cash balance,
how community manages it's cash, has a significant bearing upon our overall
credit rating. You will note in fiscal 03 that are cash position of 18 percent which
is reasonable, there are a lot of cities that carry a lot more cash than we do in the
30 percent range, you will also note that our expenditures and receipts, our
expenditures actually exceed our receipts in 03 by $500.00. I am expecting and
that is about 1 ½ percent, I am expecting that in the course of the year we will
make that up, we will good bids, we will do better in investment income, we will
maintain certain vacant positions, we normally have in the neighborhood about a 8
percent turnover. To take an additional $500,000 out of the operating budget
would have involved I believe would have involved layoffs or other dramatic
reductions that I wasn't prepared to make so I'm saying to you trust us that we can
bring that back down to maintain that cash position. But I do need to show you
that if for some reason we're not to work we don't get the turn over whatever the
circumstances might be. This will get jumped all over by bond rating folks. Yes
lrvin.
Pfab/Is it your collectively the staff's position that we can expect a higher rate of return
on our cash this year?
Atkins/We programmed that we would do as well as we did last year, the problem is we
don't have as much money and so therefore our interest income is going to be
down anyway. About 6 or 8 years ago the state passed a very restrictive
investment policy taking away, we couldn't buy insurance, our investments for all
practical purposes and we do exceed the treasury bill rate that we use, the 90 day
T-bill is our measure, we exceed that. But when the Iowa Trust Scandal occurred
and you know you just remember the history of that, lots of folks lost a lot, they
got it all back but it was a real mess for a while. The State Legislature again felt
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they had to restrict the cities ability to invest it's money and so the instruments
that we can choose to use would dramatically change. We were buying insurance
notes four and five percent higher than what might be out there, now of course
we're buying them for 10 years at a time and we could afford to do that because
we could afford to take our money run out for a long period of time, well that's all
changed, we need it now to pay the bills.
Pfab/What, without going into a lot of details, what, where, what available instruments
are available? What instruments are available for?
Atkins/Basically treasury bills, go ahead Kevin.
Kevin O'Malley/Irvin what happened was they took our, one of the things we used to
enjoy the most was, we'd shop nationwide for CD's because those are guaranteed
by the government, by the federal government.
Pfab/Up to $I00,000.
O'Malley/Up to $100,000 and different parts of the state would need more money, now
we can only invest in banks within our county and adjacent county and so that's
been the most restrictive.
Pfab/So you can CD's in county and adjacent county.
O'Malley/That's right, so that's been the most restrictive covenant.
Pfab/Is there any, real desperate, no never mind?
O'Malley/No, I can't, I'm not at liberty to talk about that.
Pfab/No, I just.
Atkins/We have done, I mean within what we have as far as our ability we have an
aggressive investment program but it could be far better and I really believe with
minimal risk, there's always going to be some risk. I don't know what to tell you
but we do have less money and it's restrictive. Steve.
Kanner/I didn't get what you were saying about trust you that trust the department that
it's going to cover, is this fiscal year 04 and 05 to bring it back up to mostly 18
percent.
Atkins/We are hoping that 03, we anticipate that 03 we will minimize a draw upon our
cash and thereby available, make available to us the ability to carry over the
additional, the difference which would be about $500,000 which would improve
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both this number and that number. If you see right now, it's in affect out of
balance by $500,000.
Kam~er/Okay and so this 18 percent for 03 is what you expect with an average year.
Atkins/Yes that's right.
Kanner/And then this 15 percent is a worse case scenario but you expect it to be higher
than that.
Atkins/Yes, it is, remember they are projections, that's the year we go into collective
bargaining, we're not as sure about our numbers there.
Lehman/You weren't, your saying the 18 percent is a pretty solid number, you don't
think that the expenditures are going to be less than $39,300,000, your saying that
you think 2004 the expenditures may be a half a million less.
Atkins/I think, no I think we'll pull down 03.
Lehman/That's what I thought you said.
Atkins/No we're going to pull down 03.
Lehman/So the 18 percent may in fact be 20 or 21.
Atkins/Be about 20, that's right, I want to get back up to that no less than, remember that
policy you have, but I can't guarantee that.
Lehman/Oh no, I understand that.
Atkins/And the reductions we would have had to made based on that speculation ][just
couldn't recommend that to you at the time. Yes Dee.
Vanderhoef/I suspect your going to talk about the bond rating because you said this was a
a crucial number. Is that a later discussion?
Atkins/Yea, this is crucial. When we get into capital projects and particular you'll get a
chance to deal with that but one of the calculation and you saw in my highlights
the you know Moody sent out an analysis throughout the state and they were all,
and my language is pathetic because they pointed out exactly what could happen,
that the state restrictions on local governments are truly and when there's a
downturn in the economy it's just like piling on. Our case is even more dramatic,
downturn in the economy, regulations becoming severe and we have a big new
spending program and so it's sort of like circumstances all came together at the
wrong time. Dee.
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Vanderhoef/In working with the legislature and I'm sure you don't have this number
right now but would it be important for us to have an overview o£the lost of
interest income that was set off by the change in the regulations at the state?
Atkins/Oh we could probably calculate something, we'd have to go back historically and
do some estimating?
Vanderhoef/Would it be a lot of work?
Atkins/No I think we could nm a number that last year if we got $300,000 in interest
income if we had been able to do thus and so it would have been $500,000, yea,
see if we can do something like that Kevin.
O'Malley/Sure.
Atkins/Back it up 8-10 years.
Vanderhoef/Back it up to when the law was changed.
Atkins/I don't remember when that was but we can do that, no it's all right just backing it
up historically.
Vanderhoef/That's the kind of numbers that when you talk to the state legislatures to
show them other places that are income for the city has been, our opportunity shall
we say.
Lehmm~/Expansion.
Vanderhoef/Income has changed due to their regulation.
Lehman/I think perhaps expand the availability of assessment.
Vanderhoef/That would be one thing that might get a little look at.
Pfab/I, can I offer a little bit of a counter to what you proposed, I think that the state
legislatures are so scared because of what happened to Enron you won't, they
won't even look at it.
Karmer/Look at what?
Pfab/Just trying to get a little more aggressive.
Atkins/But Irvin they have the ability to, I mean what we we're buying, were shopping
CD's statewide, or throughout the country.
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O'Malley/Nationwide.
Vanderhoef/Nationwide.
Atkins/We weren't buying stocks.
Pfab/No I knew that.
Atkins/We were shopping insurance companies, what's the term we use for this
insurance?
O'Malley/Guaranteed investment companies.
Atkins/Thank you. We would shop those and do very well but I'm not sure we would
even do some of that fight now because some of those guaranteed investments we
had to commit 10 years.
O'Malley/Those had long term investments with them.
Atkins/Yea real long term and you could get great return on them, but if our cash is
beginning. I might say to you we might want to do some water and sewer, some
of the more restricted funds we could do that.
Pfab/But those things, what was the term you used?
O'Malley/Guaranteed investment companies.
Pfab/Guaranteed investment, those things have a market don't they?
Atkins/Sure but we can't invest in them, we're not allowed to invest in those.
Pfab/Oh I see, okay.
Atkins/They took that away from us.
O'Malley/They took that away from us besides the type of investment they took away the
length that we can invest in an instrument so we used to be able to invest into 5
years and they cut that back to 397 days or something like that.
Atkins/Something really silly.
O'Malley/The people you need to convince was the Iowa Banking Association.
Pfab/Do you suppose they have a vested interest?
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O'Malley/Who had an interest in keeping it within the state?
Karmer/Well the flip side also is that also our banks are doing well.
Pfab/They're buying, do you think they're buying? They're putting their money just in
Iowa? My behind.
Champion/Well plus we don't have a lot of independent banks in Iowa anymore anyway
so we might as well be investing in a chemical bank anyway.
Atkins/Well let's not fight about that because there's nothing you can do.
Kanner/But I wanted to comment then. I think that the point, I see the point that your
bringing out is that we as a council have to decide how conservative or liberal we
are in our reserve funds.
Atkins/That's right.
Kanner/That 9 pereent projections over the next three years and I think that's a major
decision on projects that we're looking at capital and otherwise.
Atkins/That's right, you've got it. Well good I made the point.
Pfab/He's just bright.
Atkins/Okay we'll give him credit for that. Okay you got the drift, now, you need to get
this document in front of you.
Pfab/Okay I got it.
Atkins/And you need to put right on top of that page 11, back front which shows our
assessed values and so forth, remember that one, page 2 1 think it was.
Pfab/Did you forget the number of the page?
Atkins/Page 11 in your budget book. You can tear it out but you need to look at the two
of them together. Do those in the media understand that? Okay. What I'm going
to try to do is walk you through how we get the numbers we get with respect to
the revenue side of our budget. Now I say' this tongue in cheek, it's hard enough
to explain to people who have had three years of experience with this, this is one
of the problems with the Iowa Tax System is trying to explain this to the average
person. But we're going to take a go at it, I want you to know how hard I worked
trying to figure this thing out into simple t. erms. Okay. Are we ready? You will
look on page 11 the one sitting on top there and you'll notice total assessed
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January 10, 2002 Special Budget Work Session Page 15
values, that was that $2.9 billion, $2.6 billion, now our assessment process in
Iowa is for all practical purposes controlled by the state, we must keep the
property values current periodically we must go through in affect a complete
revaluation, which we did, to make sum those property values are current or the
state can step in and apply what they call is an equalization factor, that's across
the board, your house, your house, everybody gets a 10 pement, or something such
as that. That's not fair because neighborhoods vary, values vary, we don't
equalization factors if we can help it. And you'll hear me use the term state law a
lot when I talk about this, and so the state law has a great deal to say about our
total assessed values as well as your own local growth policies and things that go
on. Our total assessed value went up 9.7 percent. You can see that number. Now
we know where we are with our assessed values, we have to apply rollback
because the state has another law that requires 4 percent maximum growth,
agricultural, when you apply the rollback that factor declined 8.9 percent, 56, 51
is 8.9 percent. I did not put in commercial because it only made it worse, it was
easier to do it this way. And so when you apply the rollback you come up with a
total taxable value to property. And if you will note the total taxable value
increased from $1,841,000,000 to $1,901,000,000 on your chart. Is everybody
with me? So now we know what our taxable value is, you get at home your
property tax statement that says what the assessor says it's value, you've got to
reduce that for tax purposes. Now we have then to deal with tax and ! want to
make sure you hear me right, rates because each one is a little different. And we
have a variety of tax rates, if you look at the bottom that will give you, we have a
tax rate that allows us $8.10 for 1,000 at taxable value for virtually anything we
want to do. You have a tax rate maximum of $.95 cents but it must be used for
transit. You have a tax rate under tort liability that has no cap but it is specifically
for our tort liability insurance, this year it's up one percent. You have a library
levy of $.27 cents, that's a maximum that can be used only for the library, when
that was passed back in 1992-93 what we chose to do was increase the size of the
staff to the library within that amount of money, that was the policy at the time.
You have an emergency levy, it's kind of a misnomer but it's a maximum of $.27
cents we use it, two-thirds of the cities in the state use it, it's purpose anything you
want but it's capped at $.27 cents. We have an employee benefits levy, the
employee benefits levy can only be used for employee benefits, nothing else, life
insurance, health insurance, pensions. This year our employee benefit levy rate
tax rate is up 20 percent.
Lehman/Is there a cap on that?
Atkins/No.
Lehman/All right thank you.
Atkins/We also have, excuse me Irvin.
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Pfab/Does that amount, that rate move around?
Atkins/Yes it does.
Pfab/Okay so who determines it?
Atkins/Well you determine it in a variety of ways, when you approve a labor contract
with employees that spells out a group of benefits, when the state an
administration of the pension law, the state approves the pension law, they send us
a bill saying this is what you've got to pay into the pension plan.
Pfab/So your saying it's determined by a composite number of(can't hear).
Atkins/It is a whole variety of factors, when I say employee benefits, it's plural, it's the
whole package of them. We also have a debt service levy which is indirectly
capped by the amount of debt that you can issue but you can only pay for debt out
of that levy, that rate and that's up 41 percent. The biggest reason is current
capital projects, add library on top of that, approximately two thirds of the debt
program we have planned for you which you'll see later is debt for the library. S o
the total tax rate goes up 11 percent, now that 11 percent and those tax rates, this
is going to come up unduly harsh is virtually meaningless, because you can have a
tax base of a million if your tax base is only that big. And as our tax base erodes
there's only certain things you can do within it, note the tax rate for our basic
government functions are unchanged. So if the base goes down you apply that
fixed rate to it, now for benefits and debt you have more flexibility. So when you
apply the variety of capped rates your total tax revenue this year 03 that we're
proposing is up 12.3 percent, now folks eyes get big and go wait a minute that's
really a big number, however, let's take a look at tax revenue by how you can use
it and it's pretty straight forward. General transit tort liability and emergency we
have on average about 1 percent more money than we did last year. Benefits and
debt are up substantially, it's a crazy law but we have the ability for example to
build a fire station because that comes out of debt, the problem is we can't hire the
people. One percent, our total general fund 8/10 levy is up about in round
numbers about $200,000 over last year. We need for each 1 pement in payroll is
$250,000, we have a 3 percent labor contract, that's $750,000. If we were back to
that, if they left us alone those numbers would read 3 ½, 3.5 numbers in that
neighborhood. Now and that's the way you hear, well is the tax rate up? Okay
but the base is way down, you could pay less taxes and have your rates go way up.
Now I'm trying to find another way because inevitably this is something that you
get hit up on so I created this chart.
Champion/I like this chart, it's so easy.
Atkins/You like this chart, well good. But this is the consequences of the previous chart.
Last year residential and I changed the, I use the term residential value.
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(END OF 02-03, SIDE TWO)
Atkins/State, condominiums and becoming residentially valued and not commemially
valued. Now I picked a $100,000 you can do it any increments you want, you do
the ahthmetic. But last year that $100,000 worth of value had a taxable value of
$56,300 and we had a tax rate of 14.85, and it generated $836.00. Now remember
40/40/20 it's just the city, schools get 40, counties get 20, we get 40, that's just the
city, Last year of that money, 19.8 percent was for debt, paying off borrowing,
which meant for tax purposes we had $671.00 available, the other is fixed debt,
we've got to pay it. This year taking $100,000 worth of value, note the tax rate
went up, the mount of taxes to affect $100,000 went to $853.00, but now's here
those tax rates change your whole perspective on tax policy. This year 25 percent
of that persons taxes are going to be a retired debt, from $165 to $215 so for other
city services this year we have $638. So in total you could ??legitimically say
your taxes are up 2 percent. Now make note of that because remember during the
campaign for the library bond it was $40 and $50 for the average whatever and all
that. Well with all these, that's forgot that, that's all gone, it doesn't count
anymore. Ourportionofourtaxesfordebtareup30percent. Other city services,
available money is down 5 percent. So when you tax someone they often will
look at simply the bottom line, if you go back to this chart you'll remember those
numbers, so your difficulty is your operating budgets, simply are not growing
sufficiently to even meet the needs of inflation. Everybody with me on that. Any
questions.
Vanderhoeff I'll just make a comment that I heard from the research paper out of Iowa
State. The tax portionment, cities are now at 38, schools are at 44 percent and
other is at 6 percent on your tax bill.
Atkins/Yea.
Pfab/Say that again, what was that again?
Vanderhoef/38 for cities, 44 for schools and 6 percent for other.
Lehman/Where's the other 12 percent?
Champion/(can't hear).
Lehman/It only comes out 90 percent.
Pfab/What about county?
Vanderhoef/(can't hear).
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Lehman/44 and 6 is 50 and 38's 88 percent.
Atkins/The term that I always give you all to use is that 40/40/20, that's the easiest way I
think, it's going to vary a little bit, that's a pretty hefty difference, 38 and 44.
Lehman/Yea.
Vanderhoef/Well that was the one they came up with.
Lehman/Yea that's right too.
Pfab/Did the cities and schools, so 10.
Vanderhoef/And other.
Pfab/So it looks like it would be about 20 percent for county in this case.
Atkins/Well remember you also have, well I use the 40/40/20, or in the 20 pement.
Vanderhoef/That's simple.
Atkins/There's probably one or two percent for Kirkwood Community College because
they have a property tax, the state has a very small property tax for something to
do ~vith cows, no I'm serious,
Lehman/Well you like steak.
Champion/I don't.
Atkins/It has something to do with cows but I don't remember but the 40/40/20 is just,
you know when your talking to folks about their taxes you can say 40 pement is
your responsibility, the other 60 you don't have any control over and you don't.
Champion/That's a great line, I'm not responsible for most of your taxes.
Atkins/You use that as you see fit.
Lehman/Don't use that too much.
Atkins/Yea.
Karmer/Well it does bring up an interesting point, how do we compare with the state
average and other cities our size (can't hear) breakdown? Dee's given us a state
figure.
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Atkins/Well it's difficult, yea and I don't think those are too far enough, I suspect our
property taxes are a tad bit higher than the 38 percent, I suspect we're going to be
in the 40.1 2, 3, 4, 5, it's in our financial report.
Champion/Oh we can all look at our tax forms too, it's all (can't hear).
Atkins/Yea and you can get a feel for it but you also have to remember when you talk tax
policy, we're the only city in the state that does not, major city that does not now
have a sales tax. And so they move those, I mean that can go into capital debt
retirement, that can go into operations, so how you measure that, I don't know
how you measure that. Okay are we okay on these two charts? That's quite
frankly folks all I wanted to present to you on the revenue side, because there's not
a whole lot to say.
Vanderhoef/Nothing to cheer about there.
Atkins/No there's nothing to cheer about and there's not a whole lot of room to expand
any programs, we're going to require you to head into current operations, the
budget is balanced in accordance with, pretty much keeping things the way they
are, I was going to start going through the highlights real quickly with you if that's
okay. Because I want to give you a few more details on some of those. I've not
done capital yet, I'll do that separately. This is a list of, this is just simply listing
them from your budget book and I tried to give you a quick analysis of what some
of the issues were. Road use tax I think I've taken care of, state transit, other
reductions, increasing employee health insurance.
Lehman/Just.
Atkins/Yea.
Lehman/Health insurance probably obviously that's a factor when that comes to tax rates
but it does not, because there's no cap on the employee benefits that is less of a
factor than other things.
Atkins/Well there's a cap on employee benefits as it pertains to the benefit you provide,
unfortunately many, many years ago I don't know how long it was, we agreed in
our labor contracts to provide health insurance. And the health insurance is being
provided in a very specified fashion in accordance with that. Some cities have
dollar figures built it, we chose not to do that.
Lehman/But what I'm saying but we choose to tax for that as a separate item.
Atkins/Yes we do, yes, well no.
Lehman/Or, no, is that a separate item on our tax bills? Employee benefits (can't hear).
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Atkins/No it's folded into the whole rate.
Lehman/But it is a separate item in (can't hear).
Pfab/Separate line item.
Atkins/Separate tax rate.
Lehman/For which there is no tax, no cap.
Atkins/That's correct them is no cap.
Lehman/So this item.
Atkins/But you can only use that tax, that one rate for employee benefits.
Lehman/I'm well aware of that but I'm just saying that this is not as much of a factor in
our discussion as other things might be because we do have the ability to raise the
money to pay those with unrestricted.
Atkins/Substantially unrestricted as long as you use them for benefits.
Lehman/Right 1 think that's important to keep that one in mind.
Atkins/But the benefits are spelled out in what you can put in that tax rate.
Lehman/Right.
Champion/And the same thing with the tort levy, can't you?
Atkins/The tort levy is substantially uncapped but you can only use it for tort, yea.
Champion/That's why it's called tort.
Atkins/And that's why they call it tort.
Kanner/In regards to health insurance, how does our increase compare to private
insurance industry increases? I would assume it's lower.
Atkins/No, no.
O'Malley/No our increase is pretty much the same as the industry.
Pfab/Once we get our smoking ban in it will go way down.
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Kanneff Aren't we saving any money by I know there's (can't hear) but aren't we saving
money by taking some of the profit part of it that a project firm would have?
Atkins/You mean by being self funded?
Karmer/ Yea.
Atkins/Well yea we've been doing that forever anyway it doesn't make any difference I
mean unless we went to one and went back, I don't know how we compare that.
We say, yea we did okay but our rates are substantially the same as most
everybody else is experiencing in the market. Our employee profile is.
Lehman/Based on a profile age and number of employee.
Atkins/And it's expense.
Karmer/Yea but a significant portion of that is administration and profit.
O'Malley/No, the significant portion of it is claims expenses.
Atkins/Yea.
Kanner/Private it's like 25.
O'Malley/Yea but ours is based on what our usage is, and our employees are going to
doctors, they're going to more, they're using more doctor services, doctor services
are becoming more expensive. Employees are using more hospital services, those
services are more expensive so when we look at the breakdown of how the
expenditures, the expenses was in the medical community not in the insurance
community.
Kanner/So we do more expenditures perhaps than those that have private insurance?
O'Malley/No the medical community is not holding the line on the cost that hospitals
and doctors charge.
Pfab/I think there might be another factor.
Atkins/(can't hear).
O'Malley/Well that's how.
Atkins/That's what's happening.
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O'Malley/That's what happens in my report.
Pfab/And we have, we have readily accessible, a lot of places do not have the
accessibility that we have so it's there so we use it.
Champion/There are other things, medicine has become very mechanical, there are tons
of equipment that you have to pay for. The other thing is that the City of Iowa
City has an incredible health benefit package that a lot of people do not have the
privilege to.
Atkins/That's absolute.
Champion/The first dollar coverage.
Atkins/In certain things, we have an excellent, excellent, you will have hear an employee
complain about it.
Champion/You will not hear it, I've only heard of two medical insurance that are as good
as this and one is this one and is the school district, they're both self insured, you
will not get that in the private market, you will not get it.
Pfab/! have a question, what is our management fee or manages that fund?
O'Malley/It's around 11 percent, and that includes some aggregate insurance, some stop
loss insurance, (can't hear) and those are also mandated by the state because we're
self insured program.
Pfab/Okay so in other words if somebody it cost somebody a million bucks you have
private insurance to cover that,
O'Malley/Yea we have a self insurance on the first level so I think it's, we had to
increase our exposure from $50,000 to $100,000 per individual and then on the
aggregate basis we have a 120 percent cap, if our premiums are over $3,000,200
then they pay all of that so we've reduced our exposure on that.
Atkins/We have excellent benefits but we have a very, very, to Kevin's credit and the
Finance Department a very tight contract.
Pfab/But that whole package over and above what everybody puts in the pot, takes out is
11 percent administrative for what, over and above.
Atkins/Our administrative fee is from my friends in the private sector I think a whole
heck of a lot less than what they pay. And so we have an excellent program your
not going to hear anybody fussing about that. Worker's compensation, I made a
note to you that it's a regulated insurance by the state, they allowed us to increase
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January 10, 2002 Special Budget Work Session Page 23
that by 4 percent, I fully expect those numbers to take off probably in the next
couple of years w hen the whole Pentagon World Trade Center thing begins to
settle down, that's going to move it's way through the insurance industry and we
expect to see those rise. Our general worker's comp., we do okay, we give a,
sitting in the audience, Erin who runs that for us, we pay a lot of attention to that,
in fact one of the programs we want to talk to you about is that new refuse
collection which is worker's comp. related. Ernie did you have a question?
Lehman/Well I was just saying, insurance generally is going to experience an incredible
increase in the next couple of year.
Pfab/Oh they've got an open door for profits, they're running.
Champion/ Oh yea we're all (can't hear).
Lehman/Well they happen to have a lot of competition but the losses on the World Trade
Center were so incredible (can't hear).
Atkins/The potential property tax freeze, I think you'll see that in your packet the city
voices, we understand that Farm Bureau's going to come right out of the shoot,
first thing (can't hear) license plate there is go after that, so you can expect that,
Dee's nodding her head I think, that's what you heard, the as I did.
Vandcrhoef/Absolutely.
Kanner/But they're looking at basically county.
Atkins/No.
Vanderhoeff That was a year ago.
Atkins/That was a year ago, they want cities back in now.
Vanderhoef/They exempted the cities, this year they're looking at both of us again.
Kanner/Well they're looking but I heard that there isn't a lot of chance for the city (can't
hear).
Atkins/I do, yea, I really do. And when you look at, and one of the things, I'm going to
be preparing some correspondence to our legislators, that first chart, I mean we
can show folks by the numbers that our property taxes, yea are they going up for
those things that we self impose on ourselves, debt, employee benefits, the rest of
it isn't going anywhere, and particularly with the rollback, we're regulated
substantially yea by the state. Okay, no layoff policy, that was a principle I
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January 10, 2002 Special Budget Work Session Page 24
applied in this budget. Our most valuable resource, we ought to go kicking and
screaming before we ever decide to reduce our work force.
Vanderhoef/I noticed the only changes in staffing really were titles and so forth within
the departments. Was there any consideration of reducing an FTE or a partial FTE
in a department and increasing in a different department?
Atkins/Talked about it, those that ! have that's how it all sorted out is what is in front of
you fight now, there was some talk as doing some things such as that. Joe Fowler
for example, when we combined parking and transit, he is now taking his
maintenance workers and can move them back and forth but nothing major Dee,
notl~ing really I thought significant, that we're pretty well set, this is what we've
been doing, this is where we're continuing to do, nothing substantial.
Champion/But we could not fill empty positions.
Lehman/Well that's (can't hear).
Atkins/And that's okay, I would please allow to reserve the right to argue with you on
the ones you pick because positions you can't, you don't want to get rid of that.
Lehman/But I'm not sure (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/But we may have to do that if you say we're going to make it back from the
18 percent and get it back up to the 20, we may have to leave some open longer.
Atkins/And that I agree with, I have no trouble with that and the department directors
have been informed of that because we traditionally allow them to fill them rather
quickly.
Vanderhoef/Do we need to have a policy of?
Atkins/Time.
Vanderhoef/Timing or council at least knowing when there are positions open before
they're.
Atkins/We can prepare anything you want I mean as far as information. We do an
annual, we track in our personnel office on where we're going to see turnover.
Now some turnover is not predictable, for example, we just hired last year six new
firefighters, those are young men and women, that's going to change that
percentage of turnovers in the firefighters dramatically because they're building
their careers, their just not going to change.
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Lehman/But, and I don't, and I totally agree with the no layoff policy but it does not
eliminate the possible of reduction due to attrition and I wouldn't presume to tell
you where to do it, but I assume.
Atkins/Yea, (can't hear) informed about it.
Lehman/If that become something that is necessary that if we do need to reduce
employees it would be through attrition not through layoffs which I think is a
good policy.
Atkins/That is my preference.
Vanderhoef/However that could be affected Ernie if you have say two people out of PD
and two people out of community planning, and those two spaces both being held
open rather than.
Champion/Well you have to use some sense Dee.
Vanderhoef/I know but.
Lehman/I wouldn't try to micro manage, we'd leave it up to you.
Vanderhoef/I know but how you, the point is to get the number back up to 20 pement.
Atkins/Yep, that's the goal.
Vanderhoef/And to keep the departments balanced and yes that's Steve job but I want
him to be real aware that I will hold off on rehiring on certain areas because my
goal is definitely to get us at the 20, I'm concerned about the bond.
Atkins/We share a similar goal so that's not a problem.
Pfab/Is it unfair to look at the possibility of people with high income, relative high
income pay a higher percentage into the medical care?
Atkins/Why are you picking them?
Pfab/Pardon.
Atkins/Why would you pick them? The cost is same, insurance costs the same for them
as anyone else (can't hear).
Pfab/But it's a greater burden to a low income people and I'm not, I'm not saying, I'm
just saying is it unfair? I didn't say, is that a way, is that a possibility? I don't
know how you do it? And I'm not saying it's right or wrong but it's.
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Atkins/Emie you were going to say something.
Lehman/Well I just don't know that it would be legal if you sold the same product to two
different people for two different prices.
Pfab/Well you could say a percentage of income, you could do it that way, I mean I'm
not saying you should or shouldn't but I see this medical thing, I mean there are
people walking away from it because they can't afford it.
Atkins/Not our people.
Lehman/No, (can't hear).
(All talking)
Pfab/Across all over but I mean, when you take $40 to $50 out of some people's thing
additional it's a lot bigger.
Atkins/If you want to reduce the employee benefits levy then we can do what you say.
Pfab/Okay, I'm not saying, I'm just looking where.
Atkins/No, it doesn't accomplish anything. I mean if you want to reduce the employee
benefits levy sure we'll pass the cost along anyway you want to pull it down.
Lehman/It doesn't do anything for budget.
Atkins/But it doesn't do anything for Joe citizen other than yea you want to reduce the
taxes that's a way to do it.
Lehman/Yea because it's a separate levy.
Kanner/But it does, I mean that is one aspect to look at is reduction in taxes or if we're
going to raise it in other areas to think about that and we can't change that
employee benefit until we negotiate the next contract but it is something I think to
keep in mind when that does come.
Pfab/Well let me just give me what triggered this. I go out and buy a fairly expensive
computer, 1 buy a service contract for three years, my contract on that computer is
the same cost as somebody who pays a quarter for a quarter so maybe the health
care, I don't know I'm just saying is there?
Atkins/Well what's the goal? If the goal is to reduce the employee benefit levy then
we're okay, if it's to make it better in the market it won't do that.
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Pfab/Okay but we, but we can keep raising it but some of it comes out of, employees pay
something right?
Atkins/Yes, $20.00 a month.
Pfab/$20.00 a month.
Atkins/It's not much.
Pfab/Well maybe the case should be that some people, maybe we should look at a
percentage of income and say this is a, and then we don't have to take as much out
of the general fund.
Champion/Irvin it all has to go into negotiation, it's a waste of our time to talk about it.
Lehman/Well, Irvin it doesn't come out of the general fund though it's a separate levy so
it doesn't affect.
Pfab/But it's also, it keeps us from raising taxes.
Lehman/No it doesn't, it's a separate levy.
Pfab/But the tax bill to the average citizen is somewhat affected, not much, I'm just
saying we're looking, we're looking trader every rock today, we're going to have
to.
Lehman/Well we're going to get, I suspect we'll probably get to that at some point but
this is really a subject I would assume would come up when we start negotiating.
Atkins/This is a very sensitive subject, I really think that you ought to, you need to
approach it with a great deal of caution because of the message you send to your
employee groups.
Lehman/Well I think it's also something to talk about when we negotiate contracts with
employees and just take a hard look at it exactly what's involved, I think there's a
lot more than we think.
Atkins/ Okay.
Karmer/And Connie we're not setting up the three plans here so I think it is appropriate
to maybe make a note of it that there is some concern.
Atkins/Well when we're all said and done Steven I'm going to ask you just that question,
when we're done with this budget and you saw those numbers if we're going to
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January 10, 2002 Special Budget Work Session Page 28
make changes we need to begin thinking about them right now, for those
projection years, I didn't mean to interrupt you but that's exactly we have to have
that discussion, and if that's one of the items on the table, put it on the table but I
need to know now how you want to change the budget two years from now
particular if it comes to labor agreements.
Champion/The thing that, the only thing that I would like to see is I would like to see
benefit packages become part of our salary package so employees then have to
make choices, do you want to take a $1,000 deductible in my health insurance and
have more money in pocket. Or do I want, do I need first dollar coverage on
everything? I mean those are the kind of things when you wrap all the benefit
package into the pay raise then employee groups have to get together have to get
together and decide where they want that pay raise to be. Do they want it to be in
health insurance? Do they want it to be in dental insurance? Or do they want it in
their pocket?
Lehman/I think it's really, really, (can't hear).
Atkins/In principle, your fight, I understand that point well.
Champion/But to take, for me to decide to take that away from an employee I would
never do that, that's a great luxury for they have right now. But they decide to do
it themselves if it's part of their pay rise.
Wilburn/That's kind of what the service agencies have done, when we had our insurance
discussion, letting the employees know we value you but our costs are going up
and so we're going to continue to try and pay what we are for insurance as an
employer but in order to do that we had to make some changes in benefits.
Atkins/Well we've actually written in our contracts the insurance program we provide,
and that's tough.
Lehman/But I think that is something (can't hear) to look at that at some point.
Champion/But that's the only way I would ever touch that if they would let the employee
(can't hear).
Atkins/Okay but it's certainly subject for discussion, we're certainly fine that we'll deal
with it (can't hear).
Kanner/And I just want to comment on Ernie what you said about micro managing, I
think what we're doing is looking at the budget, what's presented in here and that
includes the number of employees we have in the aggregate, I don't like the idea
of laying off, though we might want to consider by attrition eliminating certain
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positions, I think that should be on the table, I don't think we should take it offthe
table.
Lehman/I don't disagree with you but I think if we, my personal obviously if we feel that
is attrition is an appropriate way of reducing the number of folks and that's a
council policy I have no problem with that. I personally do not want to be the one
who says this is the position that goes or that is the position that goes because he's
responsible for operating the city and I believe that the decision has to which
position gets filled or not is far better made by someone who deals with those
folks and is held responsible rather than by a Council that's not held responsible
and doesn't have the information that can manage (can't hear). That's my only
point.
Atkins/And the important point to me.
Lehman/Policy I agree with, the decision as to which decision or whatever, I personally
wouldn't want personally have anything (can't hear).
Atkins/And the important thing for me is I lose three refuse collectors, well folks I've got
to put people back to work because they've got to pick up your garbage, you know
that has to happen. Those pools of employees where there's large numbers, fire,
police, certain streets and maintenance workers that's a little different because
then you can rearrange activities that.
Lehman/That's why I think it should be.
Vanderhoef/Even some of that is seasonable.
Atkins/Sure, talk about it's fine.
Kanner/Would you just put that down there then, talk about job positions, the number of
job positions.
Champion/The other thing that we're just talking about, things that you've just brought
up to us is that I feel very strongly that we have to increase our chance of
maintaining our cash balance, I think that's imperative to our Aaa rating and I'm
not going to give that up.
Atkins/And I'll be talking to you about in depth, I think is one of the very subtle things
that you do that tax payers won't appreciate it and I'm sorry they won't appreciate
it but Aaa to A credit rating for our $20 million dollar bond and I use just a
working number is a $1 million dollars over the life of the bond in savings
because of the improved credit rating.
Pfab/What life?
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Atkins/20 year.
Vanderhoef/Say that again please.
Atkins/20 year bond payable over 20 years, if your a Aaa, if you drop to A it's $1.1
million dollars more in debt service.
Pfab/It's interest.
Atkins/Again folks don't recognize that but it's really a number of some consequence.
Champion/It's a lot of money.
Atkins/Well that's when we're doing our jobs I think and I really want that library bond
and those other bonds to go out at Aaa because we're going to fix that number in
the next few months, it's really critical that we're able to do that.
Lehman/If we lose Aaa we might as well expand on our tax bills to retire debt is going to
go through the ceiling, that 24 percent would just be crazy.
Atkins/It will take off.
Vanderhoef/Well the opportunity then that we have to do any kind of new projects goes
way down because then we hit our bonding debt even quicker,
Atkins/Okay. Landfill assurance is a new policy that I proposed in the budget, many
years ago, many, many years ago it proceeds me when we operate the landfill we
tried to make it regional, the county didn't want anything to do with it because it's
a real drain but it's also something that we have to maintain huge amounts of cash
in. But you must also maintain in accordance with the law the ability to close that
landfill at almost any time and you must be able to maintain that landfill closed
for a period of 30 years. Because the landfill keeps working, I mean the leachate
keeps being graded and so I'm proposing that we would take assurity, that is that
we are guaranteeing that within our debt policy, and I would write a policy that we
will always maintain sufficient debt capacity to create the income to close the
landfill at any particular time. I believe that we should be compensated for that
policy so all the people who use the landfill in affect would be paying a portion of
that.
Pfab/In fees.
Lehman/Does that mean an increase in landfill fees?
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Atkins/No it does not, it does not mean an increase in landfill fees, it means a
redistribution of the income coming in, we are very comfortable, we lowered the
rates a couple years ago.
Lehman/No, I know that.
Atkins/An acquisitive look on her face. IfI was going to protect interest, your interest it
would not be uncommon for me to go out and buy something called assurity
bond, I'm saying the landfill is buying "a surety" bond based on the policy that
you folks adapt, adopt, that affects that landfill operation. And in return you
should be compensated for it, and that means we compensate the general fund
because that's the one that ultimately has to pay the debt on the thing.
Vanderhoef/Because we tend to use GO bond rather than.
Atkins/Bingo.
Vanderhoef/Okay so tell me since we run the landfill, we own it, we're responsible for it,
and then we had to take a reduction in tipping fees .just to stay competitive.
Atkins/Didn't have to we chose to, sure, yea.
Vanderhoef/So there isn't anyway that persons living outside of corporate Iowa City can
be charged other than in the tipping fee.
Atkins/Okay right now they are charged a premium in the tipping fee, our citizens pay
$5.00.
Vanderhoef/Can we adjust that piece?
Atkins/Sure, in affect it's the same principle Dee I chose not to raise the rates, I chose to
take it from the cash that we have available. Right now if your an Iowa City
resident part of your tipping fee $5.00 is to pay for closure, if your a non Iowa
City resident it's $10.00.
Lehman/And that assurity bond would come out of that fund.
Atkins/ Yes it would.
Champion/What does that mean $10.00 a month, what does that mean?
Atkins/Your tipping fee, when somebody picks up your garbage. We the city pick up the
garbage at your house.
Champion/Right,
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Atkins/We charge ourselves, we charge ourselves $40 some dollars a ton to tip in, to
dump it. In that is, there's a state tax on garbage, I bet you didn't know that.
Champion/I sure didn't.
Atkins/Well there's a state tax on garbage, we have a variety of other fees and charges,
one of which is imposed by Council and that is if your a city resident you must
pay $5.00 per ton to be set aside in an account to someday close the landfill.
Champion/Oh okay.
Atkins/Irvin who lives in the country, same thing but he lives in the country his is
$10.00.
Champion/Okay but it's not $5.00 every time they pick up my trash.
Atkins/No it is not, no, no, no.
Champion/That's like I pay (can't hear).
Atkins/Unless you put a ton, do you put a ton at the curb every week?
Champion/! could.
Vanderhoef/My house would look better ifI did.
Atkins/Go ahead.
Pfab/Okay one thing that I never can understand why we are not the exclusive collector
of garbage inside (can't hear).
Atkins/There's a decision called (can't hear) vs. somebody as the Supreme Court decided
that we weren't allowed to do that, now that is being challenged because we had
proposed that Irvin, long before you were on the Council we were trying to do just
that. And the Supreme Court decision said it's contrary to Interstate Commerce
clause in the.
Pfab/In other words, well don't a neighbor say well I want out too? Why don't?
Atkins/That's part of the problem, don't you remember what just happened? What
happened when we lowered the rates in order to make sure we continue to attract
the folks that were picking up they were going to Illinois to dump and they can do
that, we can not control that it's called a waste stream, we don't have that control.
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Pfab/Right, but I mean, I'm saying, okay maybe we better start at the beginning, real
simply. Okay why can't we drive the garbage truck, why do we have to drive past
all these places where garbage is generated and not pick that up and the city not
earn the income on that?
Atkins/Well it depends on what you mean by we go to Connie's house and Mrs. Jones
next door.
Pfab/What if we buy XYZ Cafe or?
Lehman/Commercial.
Atkins/ You want us to get in the commemial business?
Pfab/Yes.
Atkins/Well we could do that we've chosen not to.
Pfab/Why?
Atkins/Other than we didn't want to put a bunch of people out of business, there's a lot
of commercial haulers in town, I mean you have a commercial hauler that pick up
your stuff, you pay him so much a month. Could we do that as a city? The
answer is yes, we'd probably charge you a lot more.
Lehman/But could you require that the residents use the city service?
Atkins/I think you have, yes, I think you have the ability to put together a franchise that
could be bid upon and we could control it.
Pfab/I still.
Lehman/But the (can't hear) could we require that they use our service?
Atkins/Yes ! think you could.
Kanner/Well they don't have to but they'll pay the fees.
Atkins/They'll pay the fees anyway.
Kanner/You can go anywhere you want but you'll still going to pay the fees, that's
what's allowed under the Supreme Court ruling.
Atkins/That's right.
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Pfab/This thing, there's nothing in the city that bothers me more than why we drive our
city trucks by ami it generates it and it doesn't generate an income for our landfill
which we, which is a money maker or takes money to operate.
Atkins/We're not trying to make money.
Champion/You would need a lot more trucks if we got into the commercial business.
Atkins/Oh yea, no, it would be some, it would be a decision of some controversy.
Champion/Our residential traffic (can't hear).
Lehman/Well that's another discussion, but Steve how does this landfill assurance? I'm
not sure exactly what your saying here.
Pfab/Well see that's my point, then we can collect for our landfill insurance for that
additional tonnage there.
Atkins/Well you can do that now.
Lehman/What change are you saying? What changes from what we're doing now?
Atkins/I am saying, what it does it allows as a matter of policy for you to charge the
landfill account $140,000 a year, like assurity bond, in return which we have been
doing this, you guarantee which we do now, you guarantee that we will have
sufficient cash and bond capacity to close that landfill at anytime we're so
required by the state.
Lehman/That, the change is really the ability to transfer the $140,000 for what we've
been doing all along.
Atkins/Yes.
Kanncr/We're going to spend that money now whereas before, potentially we'll spend
that $140,000 where before we were not spending it.
Atkins/You were not spending it but I'm telling you that you must maintain your debt
policy to allow sufficient margin within the law to create the debt on demand.
Lehman/We still aren't spending it.
Atkins/I know your not spending it.
Lehman/Your collecting it.
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Kanner/Well no.
Vanderhoef/The other piece of it.
Atkins/No it goes in the general fund.
Kanner/Until we spend it, which I think is what Steve is saying.
Atkins/That's exactly what I'm saying, it's going in the general fund.
Kanner/We're going to spend it as oppose to.
Vanderhoef/Okay and there's another piece of that one also in that we have been earning
interest off of those dollars as they sit in an enterprise fund and we have been
loaning them out occasionally for projects.
Atkins/Do all the time.
Vanderhoef/And have dollars come back in as interest from the use of those funds. The
other piece of it is that then it also affects our bonding capacity within our general
fund.
Atkins/That's right.
Vanderhoef/Or for our capital improvement projects, so I need to think about that one.
Atkins/Okay well you'll see when you see when you see the debt, I think we have
sufficient margin, my point is I believe as policy you should be compensated
because remember 12 percent of the refuse that goes into that landfill is our
residential program, the other 88 percent belongs to everybody else, we are truly
providing a regional service. And remember if something goes wrong at that
landfill.
Champion/We've had it.
Vanderhoeff We have to take care of it.
Atkins/Well it's our responsibility and that's why we're maintaining the position, you
know the cash that we have to maintain, otherwise you would be charging, really
substantially more for the people other than us that use the landfill. Could you say
that this landfill is strictly for the use of the Iowa City citizenry? Well then I'm
going to tell you the tonnage is going to drop, but of course everybody in every
other town in the county they're going to have to find another IandfiI1 somewhere
else and I just believe we should be compensated for the decisions that you've
made to. What are you grinning at?
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Lehman/Okay budgets are tight, you look for money from the general fund.
Atkins/Well thank you.
Lehman/It's legitimate pay.
Atkins/It is a legitimate money.
Lehman/Then that's the bottom line.
Pfab/But the other thing is I think I understand you to say that at the same time ifa, I
don't know ifa catastrophe, or all of a sudden we have to close it down, we may
have to go to the bond market for money.
Atkins/That's right.
P£ab/And so we have to kind of leave a little space in there in case we have to.
Atkins/Yes we do, that's exactly what it is.
Champion/Well I'm sure we'll leave enough space there.
Atkins/There's plenty of space.
Pfab/But I mean at that point, now the other point is, I'm going to bring up something
that's kind of, we just hit, it's touchy but I'm going to real quick. When we let
the credit union lend the money to the Peninsula we gave up a good interest thing,
we took the heat but.
Atkins/Sure.
Pfab/1 don't know what is our money earning right now Kevin?
O'Malley/About 2.8 percent.
Pfab/And that money went out at 9 pement something like that.
Atkins/That's right.
Pfab/So we gave up 7 percent of it.
Atkins/Right.
Lehman/Yep $27,000.
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Atkins/Yep, okay break time.
BREAK
Atkins/Each year as a part of our audit we will identify what that dollar figure is inflation
adjusted, we will have contributed more money to the cash.
Lehman/It will build every year.
Atkins/And it will very slowly it will begin to come together. And I can't tell you when
but maybe 10-12 years out from now we should have sufficient cash, we then
inflation adjust it every year, we would not be entitled to the assurity.
Lehman/The bottom line is we're responsible for that closure whether or not we pay
ourselves the $140,000.
Atkins/Yes you are, that's right.
Lehman/It makes no difference in our liability whatsoever.
Atkins/No it doesn't.
Vanderhoef/But the.
Atkins/I'm saying you deserve.
Lehman/No, no, 1 hear what your saying and I understand that, but we're not taking on
any liability that we presently don't have, we still have the same requirement if we
have to to borrow the money to close the landfill if it happens tomorrow.
Atkins/Unless you want to change your liability, now the difficulty is if you think about
the Resource Reclamation Act and they all, and the (can't hear) Comprehensive
something and something Act, it would be virtually impossible if we found the
source of contaminant, the person who put it there is responsible.
Lehman/Yea right.
Atkins/Now of course it may have happened 12 years ago and it was in the back end of
an old Ford or something such as that, the way we do it ! think is the most
reasonable way because if you were going to do anything else then I would say
you tell other folks to go find their own landfill.
Vanderhoef/So we draw from that $7 million reserve or whatever the reserve level is
each year.
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Atkins/The $140.
Vanderhoef/As we no, I'm talking about in upkeep of closed sell because we are required
to do certain testing every year and so forth and that comes out of that reserve.
Atkins/ Yes, yes, and we have a reserve to build landfill cells, remember we started the
design process.
Lehman/Yea but the $7 million dollars doesn't get, I mean that fund is larger every year
isn't it?
Atkins/Oh yea, it will grow a tad bit every year.
Lehman/But we draw from what we're putting into it so that fund continually builds.
Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/So we're not drawing the fund now.
Vanderhoef/Yea we're not paying out anywhere near what we're taking in at this point.
Atkins/To give you the impact of environmental regulations I recall is about two years
after I was here so it would have been about 1988, 1989, we built a landfill cell, it
was just a little under $300,000. The one you'll build this is $2.8 million.
Lehman/Right, right, okay.
Atkins/A good loss.
Kanner/I just want to comment on this. I think the point that was brought up before that
Irvin brought up and we started the discussion, ! think we need to have that
discussion. We have a philosophy now where we lowered the price which
encourages enough garbage coming in so that we can maintain our program.
Intrinsically I think there's something wrong with that philosophy and we might
want to consider, first of all as our assurance financing is that we say we want the
other 80 percent of the people that use to cover it, they might say well forget it and
we're going to leave and that could be fine if that's philosophy that we want to say
instead of growing, we want to see how it would look if we con tract it.
Champion/We couldn't afford it.
Atkins/Contract it, shrunk.
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Kanner/Shrunk, so I think we need to look at these issues, we need to look and see if we
want a control flow, if we want to charge residential above two units and
commercial and that way we can keep prices higher to discourage garbage use
which would mean we would not expand as fast, it's a whole different philosophy
in some ways but I think we need to have that discussion. I think in part that's
what the citizen group was going to do, hopefully in my mind, but we're not going
to have that. I still have hope that someday we will have that but I think as a
Council we need to have that discussion to see if perhaps we do want to change
the direction we're going and. And we can if we start bringing apartments in then
we'd start having recycling there also and other programs and see how that all fits
into the budget.
Vanderhoef/Well the recycling, if there were a bigger incentive because of dollars into
the cost of tipping, that might encourage them to do more recycling at the
commercial level.
Atkins/Outside of our curbside pickup that we perform as a city service which I believe
we do a really good job in, I would really very much like to have you have that
debate because I think there's many, many things we could be doing. That whole
philosophy question we as a staff went back and forth and there was a number of
us and it happened to including me was there, that's what it cost to run the place,
if you want to go to another landfill go ahead. Well there was an economic
position that. I think that would be an excellent discussion.
Lehman/No it's a frustrating situation but I think, what your saying is exactly right, it's a
matter of being able to keep enough cash flow to continue to operate the facility
and at some points they both become counter productive but I think that's a
discussion we really do.
Kanner/And it is some scenario could keep the private haulers in the game if that's a
concern too.
Atkins/Well the franchise for example, I served as a city, as a manager there and what we
did was took the city and carved it up into four districts, and we did franchises,
you get this district, you get, because we had haulers, you two live next door to
each other you had a separate hauler, we don't want that, that doesn't make any
sense, the point that lrvin was making one right after another but those are big, big
decisions.
Vanderhoef/And we need to have that.
Atkins/Particularly if (can't hear) business, okay, we'll get it on the list. Okay parking
system amendments we have a number of ideas that we want to be running by
you, I have a separate presentation planned for that, I'd just as soon move through
that if we get enough time today I can have them do it otherwise we'll plan on that
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January 10, 2002 Special Budget Work Session Page 40
for the 15th. Experimental refuse collection, same thing, we have a plan that we
are putting together whereby we would like to change how we pick up refuse
collection residentially. It's really kind of a neat idea, the unusual thing about it is
that we can not do it in all of our neighborhoods, and we as a policy have
traditionally tried to make sure everybody gets exactly the same kind of service so
there will be a departure from that, we have a presentation planned for you on
that. Public transit, that's just a heads up, nothing substantially changes
operationally, I've just incorporated it into the general fund, transit is now
approaching 70 percent tax supported. It certainly did not meet the definition of
enterprise fund, we can still account for and do all the things that are, but I rolled
it into the general fund. Airport operating subsidies, this is one that we have a
little consternation about, I balanced the budget providing for substantial increase
in the subsidy to the airport. We've done an audit and your going to have to give
this some real serious thought, the hangers that I've always understood our policy
to be is we advance the capital, they would create the rents, that's not happening
and they're about $75,000 a year short.
Lehman/Steve this is going to require, I don't know when you want to address this but I
do think this is an issue that the entire council needs to spend a little time on
because.
Atkins/I really believe you do.
Vanderhoef/I do too.
Lehman/But our, I think we have been very, very supportive of the airport and what it
means to the community but we've also been with the understanding been with
the understanding that that was becoming more and more self sufficient, we have
dealt with those folks very, very considerably when it comes to building
buildings, we've offered to finance them, and all of these things have been placed,
and if that.
(END OF 02-06, SIDE ONE)
Lehman/Would mean a lot more subsidy, 1 believe that's a discussion that needs to
involve the Council, and we need to go through these things one, by one, by one.
Atkins/I want you, I'm just summarizing for you today, because that list will.
Lehman/That's fine, and that isn't the discussion you want for right now, but I do think
we, or do you?
Atkins/I want you to give it some serious thought because an additional $100,000
subsidy comes right out of the general fund for that airport, I thought full well that
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we understood, they understood that we were going to advance the money to build
the hangers, and they were going to have to lease it.
Vanderhoef/They stood here and told us they would.
Atkins/Okay, secondly, we have just signed an agreement with them to manage the
industrial park, and that's a $1.8 million dollar investment on our part, and I will
be candidly, I'm nervous about that now.
Lehman/Well we need to have that discussion (can't hear).
Champion/We haven't signed it yet.
Atkins/You haven't signed any leases yet but we allowed them to make a lot of decisions
when it comes to the leases for marketing that particular place. The third point
and this is coming off unduly harsh, we also discovered that their doing sort of
off the book accounting.
Pfab/Enron.
Atkins/For example, there was a wiring project that needed to be done and a company
was hired to do it who had a hanger and so you gave them so much rent in the
hanger, it's just, it's not illegal, it's just not a good practice to have. And finally I
have no knowledge of the jet air agreement with the fixed base operator, you have
to understand this is a Commission appointed by you, substantially independent of
my over sight, Ron has cooperated but with all the leases, I think we've
discovered some things, it really needs your policy attention if we're going to do
anything.
Lehman/Okay.
Pfab/Do I understand this is just basically heads up for us?
Atkins/Yes, that's all, you'll be kept current, we'll get back to you.
Vanderhoef/ Okay can we do airport at a work session real soon prior to the adoption of
budget?
Atkins/Oh I think you have to, because that's going to include the level of substance.
Vanderhoef/Well, I'm asking for that, thank you.
Lehman/Do you want to summarize the situation during the budget discussion so we
have some idea of what we want to address at a work session?
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Atkins/What I'd like to do, finish this list, it will only take a couple more minutes, we're
going to prepare a summary memo for you on the airport circumstances, you will
have that. I do think your going to have, you know we have a meeting scheduled
for the 15th, I want to be able to give you some additional written information
because we finish most of the stuff, Sarah who does our investments for us also
has experience in auditing and did the review for us and I need to, we need to
question her some more about it but I asked her for a rundown. Yes.
Karmeff In the airport operations the services and charges, page 108 on their list, that's
$112,000 budgeted, I would assume that's for things like legal assistance and
insurance.
Atkins/Let me get mine out.
Pfab/What page are you on?
Karmer/Page 108.
Pfab/108.
Kanner/Service and charges.
Atkins/Yes those are routine expenses right.
Karmer/And so those are things also that that's available for change.
Atkins/Your review, absolutely. But remember one of the things that's troubling is that
the records are not maintained here, the records are maintained by the airport, it's
a separate commission, it is a group of folks that you appoint to the Commission
but they run their show and for all practical purposes Steven we accept very much
at face value the information that they present to us in the form of their budget.
Now that 112 is the number that if you notice runs pretty consistent so I didn't see
any unusual numbers changes in there.
Pfab/112 where are you getting that?
Vanderhoef/For the proposed 03 budget.
Atkins/The big change was the receipt side where the income for the airport wasn't even
close to what was projected. I'm really concerned about the income side for the
expenses we've already obligated.
Kanner/And I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that there's other areas too in here
and that's, I mean that's figure out services and charges that look pretty clear on
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that, although, and their proposal went up quite a bit from 94 projected for 02,
they were asking for 116.
Atkins/And what did I propose?
Karmer/You proposed 112.
Atkins/All right well we can give you, we'll make a note that we'll pull what's in that
accotmt and show you any aberrations in there. Some of it in many of the
accounts it's the cost of heating, electricity, we're expecting it continue to bump
up, and we had a spike, we didn't put it at that level but we did bump the stuff up
a little bit.
Pfab/But the cost of utilities Ernie go down we could also not keep.
Atkins/No, no, our, we expect it to continue to rise, last year was a spike, we did not
budget the spike, we budgeted a gradual increase, that's what that number will
show you.
Lehman/Well we'll have to go over these.
Atkins/They're making a note, we'll get you the details of that.
Kanner/Steve before you go ahead I had another question about the public transit.
Pfab/What page are you on?
Vanderhoef/Seven.
Karmer/Yea page 7, that's correct. Your going to, some of the employee benefits then
could be transferred to the employee benefit levy.
Atkins/Levy, right.
Kanner/How much is that clear in?
Atkins/It's about.
Kanner/For us to use.
Atkins/We charged against the employee benefit levy which helped increase the benefits
levy it was about $200,000. That's the cost of benefits for that group of
employees, that we can not charge it against the employee benefits levy as
opposed to the 8.10.
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Karmer/And so that clears up quite a (can't hear).
Atkins/Yea it does, it does give you more room in there. We'll make a note of that,
Steven, I want to give you an exact number, but that sounds about right doesn't it
Deb, 40, 50 people, yea I'd guess that, okay we'll get you that number. Okay we
have a couple new positions that have been identified, water plant.
Vanderhoef/And those have been planned for.
Atkins/Yes, that's all part of, opening the plant.
Lehman/Those are, are all the new positions that we're referring to in enterprise funds?
Atkins/Yes.
Lehman/So they won't affect.
Atkins/Except the police systems analyst, I want to point out what we did there. We
have a mountain of technology, computers and cars now, all of that we believe it
needs full time attention. I proposed to the Chief and he accepted, I would take
one full time position in police instead of 75 we would go to 74 and we add the
systems analyst, it's a tradeoff.
Lehman/All right.
Atkins/The equipment maintenance, that's returning to our 19, I believe 1995, 1976
level, we run a second shift, about 25 percent of the time, please don't hold me to
that number but I think it's somewhere in there, that person was working alone, I
disagreed very much with that, that's dangerous work, particularly at night, so I
suggested, this is one of our internal funds where we charge the various funds
where we would increase it by one mechanic, we would also bring back into the
operation about $25,000 services we had farmed and we would have two people
working at that second shift at night.
Pfab/That's a good idea, I support that.
Atkins/It does not have an affect, minor, minor affect on the general fund. The water
system plumbing inspector, a number of years ago the state passed a law called
"Back flow prevention", you may have seen the story in the paper just recently
where anti freeze at the University of Iowa, all right. The bottom line on this is
back flow prevention has become a very expensive public service, it's an
unfunded mandate, they passed the law but it makes a Iot of sense. We've got to
give it full time attention, I would intend to charge it against the water revenues.
We now have about 600 of those and we expect it to grow, all business are
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ultimately and residential are going to have to have these back flow preventers.
Do you understand the basic principle?
Lehman/How do we get along for 200 years without them?
Atkins/Well state legislature decided that you weren't going to get along without them
anymore.
Lehman/I know that but I mean.
Atkins/The principle makes sense, it works the same way as a sewer check valve, that
when the pressure starts, back flow means if someone were to put something into
the water system it would shut down, so to protect you.
Pfab/You can't go backwards.
Atkins/ You can't go backwards. We've got a lot of work to do, it is a, in fact the latest
spin on the thing has been the potential for terrorism there's been some articles to
that affect that if you want to get to a community and make a lot of people sick.
Champion/Hit the water.
Atkins/Yep.
Pfab/And also it's good if you own the patem for the back flow.
Atkins/And if you own the patent for the back flow which you and I don't (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/You could mn out and buy some stock.
Karmer/Steve would you put a note for the position the water clerk position?
Atkins/Sure,
Karmer/Later I'd like to hear a little mom about why we need that.
Atkins/Deer kill, I propose that we do it every other year and the reason I propose that is
we don't have the money.
Champion/And we have smart deer.
Atkins/A lot smarter, it will happen next year, skip a year, following year, skip a year.
Pfab/Their memory cells will be regenerated.
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Lehman/There will be so many new ones (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/Was that what was recommended by White Buffalo?
Atkins/No, no, they recommend every year, I recommended it.
Vanderhoef/No, what I was wondering is whether next year's the 03 budget is the one
we should be skipping?
Atkins/You could ask that question Dee.
Vanderhoef/I don't know enough about it.
Lehman/Good question.
Pfab/Don't we have enough experience now say the way Coralville does it or hunters, is
it, I don't find the back life that we keep being afraid it's going to happen if
Bambi dies halfway across somebody's yard or whatever it is.
Lehman/For what?
Pfab/Turn a note a hunter's license and let them go after them.
Letunan/You can't shoot a gun in the city limits.
Pfab/But no, bow and arrows.
Vanderhoef/But that's our deer policy right now so if that's what we want to do we'd
have to change the policy.
Pfab/Right but I mean it seems to be, it is working right near us, so I'm saying and
besides people pay a lot of money for this equipment, they pay a lot for a license.
Atkins/This is going to come out real bad for me but the bottom line is if we're going to
discharge fire arms in the city limits I want somebody who works for us.
Pfab/But what about bow and arrows?
Champion/No.
Letunan/They don't.
Atkins/Personally, same thing.
Champion/I agree.
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Atkins/1 mean the bow and arrow seems to be less harmful I'd hate to have one come
winging across my patio when I'm sitting there.
Lehman/Well it's not nearly as affective in reducing the herd.
Pfab/Well you have to see what these people have in these bow and arrows.
Atkins/Well it's those people, I want employees of ours. Please don't write that down.
Pfab/He was asleep anyway.
Champion/I mean I haven't shot a bow and arrow since I was a 20 but I can easily get a
license to go out there and get a deer, no thank you.
Atkins/That alone scares us.
Pfab/I don't think it's that easy, I don't think it's that easy.
(All talking)
Pfab/I mean until you start working with these powerful bows oh my gosh.
Champion/I know, I know about those.
Atkins/Folks that's the general run through, the next set of issues that I have for you is,
we have special presentations, I can get somebody over to do the parking for you
yet this afternoon.
Champion/Let's do it.
Vanderhoef/Let's do it.
Atkins/Bill would you call Joe, he's over at the parking office and he can be here in a
few minutes.
Champion/Can I add things to the list if(can't hear)? I mean it's more for you than I
think for us but ! would really, really like us to find a way to work toward whole
package negotiations.
Atkins/Oh, okay.
Kanner/Say that again Connie.
Vanderhoef/Whole package negotiations.
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Champion/Whereas we decide, I mean it's negotiated obviously, but.
Atkins/It's a package deal.
Champion/It's a package deal.
Atkins/The schools do that on a common, it's very common.
Champion/We're willing to increase our employee, the cost of our employees by seven
percent and so then you negotiate how much goes into benefit package, how much
of it goes into salary. The way we do it now everybody gets a 4 percent pay raise
but it may end up costing us 10 percent because of the benefit package. Do you
see what I'm saying? So if we knew right up front how much we could spend
then we don't get into that, well we're getting a four percent, we're only getting a
three percent pay raise, well your getting a six percent employee pay raise, I mean
benefit raise.
Pfab/But basically what.
Champion/So we need to know what it's costing us, what that employee is costing us,
and it's not just their pay raise because a couple years ago when social security
went up.
Atkins/ Yep.
Champion/Insurance (can't hear).
Atkins/Pensions went up.
Champion/Jumping pensions went up so I mean it was a 12 percent pay increase for that
employee but we had on the book a three percent.
Pfab/But is it in fact that your transferring a risk to a person.
Champion/No, no.
Pfab/A person, a group of individuals that are less able to take that risk?
Atkins/No, not the risk, we'll still have the insurance.
Champion/Right.
Atkins/It just depends on who pays for it, I mean the insurance program itself I'm
assuming, I mean you can make those changes.
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Champion/Right (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/Or there could be choices within so an employee would have the
opportunity to take say all 7 percent in wages if that's what they chose.
Atkins/Now that's a little more difficult.
Champion/No, you don't, it's got to be the whole (can't hear) got to be able to do it.
Atkins/But if you use the package negotiation concept Dee not wrong about it, there's a
way you can do that because we occasionally say gee I work here and my husband
works at the University or my wife works at the University and I have their benefit
plan. And so when we budget, we don't budget for them because we do that by
employee, we actually calculate by employee of who gets covered.
Pfab/But we do budget for it because we give it to them in another way.
Atkins/No we don't.
Champion/No.
Atkins/No, no we don't.
Pfab/It's not like a cafeteria type.
Atkins/No we don't want to do that, we've discussed it but it hasn't really gone very far
in negotiations.
Champion/What I think it might help our general fund too to know what an employee is
actually costing.
Atkins/What happens I think as I understand, I'm not the school finance expert is that,
schools though, schools in their negotiations always have that allowable growth
thing that's right in your face from day one, whereas we don't do that. And our
concern is that we're taxed capped, if we weren't taxed capped, there's really not
a whole lot of motivation on the part of the employees to try to negotiate
something that stays under a certain number, you have it allow, it changes the
whole process of bargaining.
Champion/Well it does, it's also true that the other money that's available to school
district's for instance, the instructional support could be used for salaries. You
can do raise class size to raise money for salaries. There's lots of ways though.
Atkins/School's got an income tax that we don't have.
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Champion/Right, so there's a lot of negotiating beyond that allowable growth. Like I
don't think and I'm not saying this is the thing you should do, I'm saying it's
easier for people to understand that a lot of times pay raises, when your talking
about whole package what (can't hear) allowable growth and the money had to be
somewhere, just like you have to find money.
Atkins/What you have to do is, and I would hope you would understand if we begin a
concept, it's incrementaI.
Champion/Oh of course.
Atkins/Yea, I mean it will succeed all of us here, it just takes time as you begin pecking
away at those kind of policy issues. Yes sir.
Champion/But I don't think, the University doesn't do that either (can't hear).
Pfab/While we have a minute on this refuse.
Atkins/Oh the list.
Pfab/Yea, under refuse collection. You said this is a system that we can't implement
across the board or at one time.
Atkins/Without telling you the whole story on the thing here's the refuse truck, there's a
hook that we install, we can not do that on the north side of parking and other, we
can't get to the cm'b so certain neighborhoods just simply because of the
constraints of the curb we won't be able to do that service. As long as we know
that going then I think, the neighbors will be okay, that's why we selected a group
of neighborhoods around town to experiment with this thing.
Pfab/Well I'm sure that the people (can't hear) have figured out, have come up with ways
that this can be worked.
Atkins/A car is in the way, a car's in the way, it won't work, we tried it.
Lehman/There's the liability of dropping something on the car too (can't hear).
Pfab/Well is it a case where you put a no parking place and you collect them together.
Lehman/In front of every house.
Pfab/No, no, but I mean one every three houses or four house.
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Atkins/Irvin and I mean this respectfully, you propose that on the northside and they're
going to run you out ofto~vn. They just simply aren't going to do that.
Pfab/Well are there benefits to them?
Atkins/No.
Champion/No it's a benefit to us because (can't hear).
Atkins/It's more of a benefit to us and our employees than anybody, the primary
motivation behind this thing is try to reduce my workers compensation cost
associated with our employees. Remember I told you it's.
Vanderhoeff A backache.
Atkins/Not many people retire from refuse collection, they look for other jobs because
it's so physically demanding a job, they head for other jobs, yes.
Lehman/Steve in this handout you have the.
Atkins/I don't know what your looking at now.
Lehman/Well the one that we have hem, but it shows the capital improvements for the
projected years. Is it possible before we meet next to get the funding sources by
project?
Champion/Yea.
Lehman/No because.
Atkins/Hem's what I did, I thought you'd like that list better because it was simpler, the
funding sources are all in your book.
Lehman/Oh so we can cross reference.
Atkins/If you wanted to look, if you picked a project in there.
Lehman/Well Mormon Trek Highway 921, is that all GO or is part of the road tax use?
Because ! think it will.
Atkins/It's all in here, what I did for this was to allow you a summary so you could work
and say let's talk more about this one, we can go to the details.
Lehman/No, no, I agree with that except that depending on funding source, some of these
may be higher priorities for me than others.
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Atkins/And we will flag that for you when we present it to you. But I just wanted to give
you a summary sheet, some of you are interested in this one and not that one, I
didn't want you to have to hunt through that book. We need to do that because we
need to have that variety of sources and it's still available to you.
Vanderhoef/Excuse me, what meeting are you targeting for capital?
Atkins/Next week, 15th, next one, the 15th at 3:00.
Vanderhoef/Okay.
Kanner/I had a few things while we're waiting for Joe. Are you done?
Lehman/ Yea I just.
Kanner/Maybe we need to talk about the assistant for the City Clerk for the PCRB,
that' s.
Atkins/It's gone.
Kanner/What?
Atkins/We got rid of that, it's gone.
Kanner/To get, well to see if that's going to work, we've heard from the City Clerk that.
Atkins/Oh we can put it on the list.
Kanner/I think put it on the list to talk about to see how that's going and to see if maybe
we need to revise that.
Champion/Okay. Well I see one thing on here I'd be willing to get rid of after the last
couple years, and that's traffic calming.
Vanderhoef/Thank you, I never wanted it on there to begin with.
Lehman/It wouldn't save much money though would it.
Atkins/Do you want to talk about it?
Champion/Yea.
Atkins/Okay.
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Kanner/I had a question about personal services (can't hear).
Atkins/Okay.
Kanner/For instance on page 28, Central Procurement, we have it looks like a 15 percent
leap from 02 estimate to proposed for 03, and then right below we have treasury
which is way less than 15 percent increase.
Atkins/We may have, tell me the employee complement, did we change the numbers
there?
Kanner/No, it's stated 4.26.
Atkins/Okay,
O'Malley/That page is corrected.
Kanner/This is corrected.
Atkins/Your looking at the corrected one yea.
Champion/(can't hear) corrected pages.
Atkins/No he's got the corrected one, Steve's okay. I don't know, we'll find out.
Kanner/And so this, it's a big leap and I see some of those and I don't understand.
Atkins/Ask what Kevin knows.
O'Malley/Okay what happened there was an individual under the Buyer II position there,
that was actually one and a half in FY02 that person left and the Buyer left and we
took part of her duties and put it in ITS and made the succeeding person a full
time Buyer so that's why Personal Services section went up more than Treasury.
Kanner/So it was budgeted for two but really they were only there for like half the year
and that's why the cost was much less so in reality it should have been closer to
$200,000 let's say for 02.
O'Malley/Right, that's correct.
Vanderhoef/I have something else to put on the list with the traffic calming and that is
the art program.
Atkins/Public art.
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Vanderhoef/Well since we put it into bonding a year ago it went into bonding and I made
comments and yes you remember it, and add into that matching private dollars.
Kanner/Matching what?
Vanderhoef/Private dollars.
Atkins/Okay. Okay Joe and Chris are here, oops, Joe and Chris are here and will take
you through some of the parking proposals. Just so we're thinking about it
because we may get up against time, we'll do capital next time, I'll have a
proposal for you on the refuse, and a couple of others. I also will need from you,
we need to pick a date for Boards and Commissions. All of your budget this time
is during the day and I'm assuming Board and Commission folks like to come at
night and so we'll need to pick a date. So by the next meeting, because I do need
to give the Boards and Commissions a heads up, at least a week notice. Your
budget meetings are now this, 15, 24.
Champion/27.
Atkins/And 29, so you need to get something in them.
Vanderhoef/I think we need to pick that date today.
Atkins/Okay before you leave then I'll remind you that we need to pick that.
Vanderhoef/Well if we aren't changing ours, we can just say, I would say the one after
capital.
Atkins/That's fine, whatever you'd like.
Vanderhoef/If that's enough time or the one immediately after that.
Karr/You mean the 24th, the 24th your on 1:30 to 5:00 and that's a meeting week that
your meeting on the 22nd on Tuesday.
Pfab/The 29th is.
Atkins/Morning.
Karr/Your last, it's 8 to noon.
Vanderhoef/I would think.
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Atkins/Okay well before we leave I'll remind you we need to pick that date because I do
want to get a letter out to the Boards, Commissions, special events, you know ail
those folks that like to come in and (can't hear).
Champion/Oh right.
Atkins/Yea you've got to do all that.
Vanderhoef/So give them as much time as possible.
Atkins/That's my point.
Champion/Well if we skip Tuesday through Thursday I'd be okay, I'm leaving town a
couple times, 1 can't remember for sure.
Vanderhoef/Well we'll do it at one of our set meetings already but we just need to let
them know which one.
Champion/Oh okay.
Vanderhoef/We're not adding one.
Champion/I thought you were adding one.
Kanner/Maybe add one Dee.
Lehman/No that's not right because our meetings are day meetings, we've got to change
it to a night meeting in order to do this.
Karr/That's what our point is.
Pfab/Okay let me propose something here, I may have to leave it so I would like to see
this move on and then at the end clean up, okay.
Atkins/We should be able to wrap up folks by 5:00 so if you want to have some idea,
okay get it done. Next week capital, capital (can't hear) I'll bring the whole staff
here, you know all the folks like we've done in the past. Chris and Joe.
Lehman/Chris and Joe show.
Atkins/Chris and Joe show. Now you have folks met Chris O'Brien, our parking system.
Lehman/We're about to.
Vanderhoef/I did when I went down to his office, I had a wonderful tour down there.
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Lehman/Can you fix parking tickets?
Chris O'Brien/No I can not.
Lehman/Good that's the right answer, right answer.
Pfab/It was a trick question.
Joe Fowler/Put $5.00 in it Ernie and we can take care of it. We're going to pass it back
and forth. I think what we would like to do here would be talk about the
philosophy we've used in the parking system historically and what our
recommendation would be to as a different way to look at the way we've done the
parking system.
Pfab/Does he get a new page?
Fowler/No we're not going to use that I hope.
Vanderhoeff You hope.
Fowler/Well because I.
Vanderhoef/Come on now.
Fowler/I'm not that good with my spelling and I don't write where anybody can read it.
Lehman/That's the kind of list I like.
Fowler/Okay. Historically we've had two areas, divided our parking into two areas, our
central business district and our outlying, and the central business district has been
bound by Gilbert Street, north of Burlington Street, Capital Street and south of
Jefferson. And inside that central business district area we've set our meter terms
to be shorter rates with higher rates and felt that that area higher reflected the
highest demand and for that reason we had the shorter time and the higher fee.
During this time the University has expanded their building areas north and south
of that central business district area, we've had growth in the area of Mercy
Hospital. We've had increased businesses in the North Linn and Gilbert Street
area and our metered terms and our parking enforcement in these areas don't
necessarily reflect the changes that have occurred there. Do you have that map
Chris of the? Which way is north?
Lehman/Last page of the handout.
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Fowler/Yea it's the last page of the handout. So we've had, here we go let's see ifI can
figure out how to work this.
Karr/Want a pointer Joe, would it help?
Fowler/You mean a like a laser, yea if you've got one. Oh that dot, there we go, all
right. So this is our central business district area and our short term and our more
expensive parking is located in this area. Now what's happened over the years is
the University has expanded in this area, they put buildings down through here,
and what we've seen now is that we have long term 10 hour parking meters at
$.40 cents an hour in areas that we've had a change in the demand and so we have
basically a 10 hour meter in front of Pappajohn Business Building and you have a
lot of people who want to go to this area, same with the new Biology Building
down through here, we have 10 hour parking meters, and what we're having is
we're having people come in here first thing in the morning, fill the meter up for
the entire day and as people try and visit this area throughout the day there's no
parking available.
Pfab/There's another thing, there's also, it doesn't generate as much money either right.
Fowler/Well the .40 cent doesn't but we've kind of priced our long term meters at a
lower price so that they.
Pfab/Right that's what I said, there's two problems.
Fowler/Right.
Pfab/We've got a low turnover and we bring in less money.
Fowler/Yea up here we have a dental office, we have a church, we have new businesses
that have opened in this area through here with the redevelopment of Brewery
Square although that's not real recent but it's more recent than our parking policy
changes. So Chris is going to take over for a minute now and give you an idea of
what we'd like to do with time limits and pricing and give you some references of
what other people are doing.
Chris O'Brien/I'll put the map up there in a second, we're on the third page now, Joe
covered the first two of the handout, the third is where we get into what our
proposal would be. And the first thing would be to change the rates and time
limits of the meters that were based on demand and not location before we were
talking how the CBD as he designated before, that's how we showed the price
demand, $.60 within that frame and it would be $.40 on any of the outlining area.
The areas that would be affected by this, what we're proposing is to raise the rates
from .40 to .60 in the areas where the demands are a little higher. And that's
similar to what we have in our ramps excluding Chauncey Swan where the rates
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are a little lower. In talking to University parking, they have three facilities that
are in that area, the Pappajohn, which they have parking at night and on
weekends. The north campus ramp and the IMU ramp all priced at $.60 that are
in that area, and we offer on street close proximity parking at $.40 so they fill up
fast, no turnover and therefore people have a harder time getting t the businesses
and to buildings in that area that they may need to do business at. Another area
that we're, I guess the areas we're looking at.
Pfab/Can I interrupt you a second?
O'Brien/Sure.
Pfab/I wondered why you go to two hours, why don't you go to one hour?
Fowler/The reason that we, is this one on Marian?
Pfab/ Yes it is.
Fowler/The reason we picked a two hour time limit is we thought some of the
destinations in this area took a longer time to park, to get to your destination, go in
do your business and come back out.
Pfab/But those people have access to ramps though right? Ramps aren't very far away
from anywhere. So if they're going to be there for two hours maybe you ought to
start looking at the ramp.
Champion/The closest ramp would be Tower Place.
Pfab/No, no, no.
Fowler/Then there's the University facilities, other meters that we have in this area, you
know currently we have two hour parking meters on North Clinton Street up by
the dorms because we felt that was a adequate time to be able to park, go into a
dorm, up in the area of Hamburg Inn, and the businesses in that area we have two
hour parking meters. And so we kind of felt the two hours fit into what we had in
that area and what we were seeing as the time needed to complete your business.
Pfab/I'm looking at that a little bit more aggressive, and one of the things that brought
this to attemion, I'm being told that we have, that we have the ability to sell a lot
more parking permits. Is that what you call them in the ramp?
Fowler/Yes.
Pfab/And obviously if we have an oversupply we're below the market price.
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Champion/Oh no we're just the opposite.
Pfab/We're below the market price, and maybe we are here too. See in other words, we
should expect a few empty meters if we're pricing them right.
Fowler/Right we're going to get to the permits in just a minute, and we start, well we start
converting from one hour meters to two hour meters on Clinton Street between
Iowa Avenue and Jefferson, we start.
Kanner/This top group that you just said the $.40 to $.60 cents, is that an hour, those are
hour meters?
Fowler/Per hour.
Pfab/But there are two hour.
Fowler/Two hours.
Kanner/All meters are two hours.
Fowler/In that we're recommending in that area.
Vanderhoef/And one hour meters at our part by the Pentacrest.
Fowler/No, no, not throughout the city but in this area that.
Karmer/So we have some one hour meters you'll get to in a minute.
Fowler/Well the one hour meters are still in the core of downtown.
Lehman/Right.
Kanner/Okay.
Fowler/And as we got further out we were going to go with a two hour meter with the
same pricing as what we currently have in the downtown area.
Vanderhoef/I think that's positive.
Champion/Good, very positive.
Lehman/I do too.
Pfab/What part is positive?
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Champion/Well you can park on Jefferson for 12 hours (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/For 12 hours to 2 hours.
Pfab/But are you opposed to going to one hour?
Champion/Yea.
Lehman/Yea, I don't see any point of it, your going from 10 to 2 and that's a pretty
dramatic drop the way it is and a lot of times people can't accomplish in 60
minutes what they'd like to and all you do is frustrate them when they get a ticket
and they can't put more than an hour in a meter.
Pfab/Well is getting to a ramp for two hours is that unreasonable?
Champion/Yea.
Lehman/I don't know but I can't, I (can't hear).
Pfab/That's my, I'm not defending one or the other, I'm just asking (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/I think it is unreasonable and we can try it and watch and see what kind of
turnover we get on the two hour.
Pfab/ Okay.
Vanderhoef/If we don't get turnover then I will suspect that University employees are
plugging the meters every two hours and if that's the case then I will consider one
hour.
Pfab/How will we know that?
Vanderhoef/We can chalk tires.
Fowler/Well what we can do is we can take any area that you want and we can collect
that revenue separately, we can see how much revenue we're getting, which
would show us how many paid hours of parking we're having in that area. At the
same time we can track how many parking tickets in that area, so we'll know what
percent are paid, how often a ticket is given in that area so we'd have an idea.
Pfab/But you don't answer it as accurate as the way he was suggesting, chalk the tire.
Fowler/We can chalk the tires, if that's what you'd rather.
(All talking)
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Vanderhoef/If we need to, you know that's just one way,
Champion/Two hour parking I mean we could spend the afternoon discussing this, let's
just try the two hour parking.
Pfab/But at the same time I don't want that to be cast in stone.
(All talking)
Fowler/No, nothing is cast in stone.
Vanderhoef/You know us better than that.
Fowler/There's two ways we can change these to two hour parking meters in a higher
rate and one is we can go back now and ask Jeff Davidson to send you a memo or
you can just direct us to do it so if you direct us to do it we'll do it.
Champion/Do it.
Lehman/Do it.
Pfab/Do it.
Champion/No, we don't want another memo.
Fowler/Okay.
O'Brien/No more memo's.
Vanderhoef/Wasting paper.
Lehman/Well the other thing too I think that's a significant factor that's in addition to
reducing the length of time on the meters by 80 percent your increasing the cost
by 50 percent and so I mean two hours is fine.
Fowler/Okay we had a. Do you want to go to that?
O'Brien/In addition to that because we might be displacing people from these 10 hour
meters and now that Tower Place is done and running, we're proposing a daily
maximum charge of $4.80 to people that are more the long term parkers, and
that's what we have at the Dubuque Street ramp cm'rently. To promote people
going into there if they're going to be there for long periods of time, that would be
at both Tower Place and at Capital Street ramp.
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Lehman/How full is the Capital Street ramp? You know one of the things that concerns
me and obviously Joe we, you got a letter that (can't hear), but as the Old Capital
Center fills hopefully, we're going to have more and more demand for that
parking ramp and I don't know that we want to necessarily encourage a lot of long
term parkers in that ramp, it may be wonderful today but a year from now but that
$4.80 may not be something we want nearly as much as we would in Tower Place
which is really built to take the cars off the street. Is Capital Street ramp, isn't that
fairly well used?
Fowler/It has a 875 spaces and our most, we did a survey or went back and compared our
numbers over the last year and we just picked like three times a day, 10 in the
morning and 3 in the afternoon and 8 at night just to give us a gage. And last
Spring at 3:00 PM, and 1 to 3 is usually our heaviest time we had probably 725
cars in there.
Lehman/Which is?
Fowler/Which means basically the top floor was open so we could, we could take this
and put a daily max. in Tower Place if you'd like to, forget Capital Street ramp or
we could forget the daily max. altogether.
Lehman/I don't have a problem, I think the Tower Place is a wonderful thing, we want to
put as many cars in there as we can but the Capital Street one concerns me a little
bit because of the Old Capital Center and I know how those folks feel, I don't
think there's a problem right now, I hope there's a problem six months from now.
It would be a lot easier not to institute that $4.80 then have to rescind it.
Fowler/Yea, I'd have to say I haven't, I can't tell you from recent six months, year.
Historically Dubuque Street ramp has been where your all day employee has
parked and you can see that by looking at the numbers because your 9-10 hour
stays are over there because they know there's a max. there and they're not in
Capital Street because of that so we could.
Lehman/Which is what we wanted.
Fowler/Right which is what we wanted and the reason we put it in there and so we could
extend that to Tower Place and these people that are losing their 10 hour meter
would have an alternate place to go to.
Champion/Yea good idea.
Lehman/Right, it's also closer to where your (can't hear).
Fowler/Right.
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Vanderhoef/The people who may be using it and that might encourage them to stay out
of the two hour meters and plugging them all day long.
Fowler/Right it would be cheaper to go to the ramp with that cap on it than to plug your
meter.
Pfab/Is it possible that maybe we should look at increasing the cap at some percentage or
something?
Fowler/Our cap right now is set on an eight hour day, I mean that's how we set it was
eight hours and.
Pfab/At .60 cents an hour.
Lehman/Right.
Pfab/Okay.
Vanderhoef/So your setting it on an eight hour day, if someone is in there longer than an
eight hour day.
Lehman/It's still $4.80.
Fowler/It's still $4.80.
Vanderhoef/It's still going to be $4.80.
Pfab/And you basically are saying you do not have an over system, not enough capacity
to handle before and after so that's not your busy hours, your busy hours are that
eight hour.
Fowler/Our busy hours are the eight hours during the day.
Pfab/So you want to keep other people from parking there because.
Fowler/No, no. We have capacity in Tower Place right now.
Pfab/You have what?
Fowler/We have room in Tower Place right now to accommodate people and this would
be a good move to get people to go in there.
Kanner/I think we need to raise the rate for two reasons, we've been told there's great
demand for permit style.
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Pfab/Permit.
Karmer/Permit style parking, this is close to permit style and this is a great bargain and
two it discourages use of public transportation and I need to find ways to
encourage public transportation, as long as we have something at $.60 cents an
hour that's a bargain and I think people would be willing to pay more and should
pay more.
Lehman/I like the bargain.
Kanner/I think our city tries when we encourage public transportation as a healthier city
to have.
Champion/I don't think the people who use public transportation.
Vanderhoef/How does this compare with a permit in cost?
Fowler/A permit costs in Tower Place $60.00 a month.
Pfab/So how does, okay figure the math.
Kanner/5 x 4, figure 22 days in the month that you would use it for Monday through
Friday, so 60 divided by 22.
Lehman/$2.90 a day or $3.00 a day.
Kanner/$2.90 a day.
Pfab/If we have a surplus demand for permits and we have, and we don't have enough
spaces, let's get to the market, let's raise the price.
Champion/We just did raise the price.
Pfab/Well maybe we have to raise it again, I hate to see somebody to say we don't have
the places to put these, my gosh.
Fowler/Skip to that page Chris, we're going to skip a couple and go back.
Vanderhoef/This is something you won't have but I would be interested in, how does
that $4.80 a day or $60.00 a month per permit compare to the University
employees who have parking say at Pappajohn or at the ramp and so forth?
Fowler/It's quite a bit higher than they're paying, than University employees are paying.
O'Brien/They pay $39.00 a month, isn't it.
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Fowler/Something like that.
Vanderhoef/$39.00 a month, okay thank you.
Fowler/They're reevaluating their system at this time but I don't think they have any
recomxnendations or know exactly what their going to do with their parking
systems.
Vanderhoef/Well maybe Dave will give us that at JCCOG.
Fowler/We could skip ahead here, Chris why don't you go through this.
Pfab/I just heard comments here that we are, our bus system, or our public transportation
is going more and more to tax dollars and obviously there's not enough incentive
to be using that for people who are parking for long periods of time.
Champion/Irvin, you know that's a great idea philosophically, but in reality it doesn't
work, I don't care if they charge me $8.00 a day to park, I'm still going to drive to
park my car.
Pfab/Yes but you.
Champion/And I think that most people feel that way.
Pfab/Well let me tell you Connie you are no where's near the average citizen.
Champion/I hope not.
Pfab/No I know.
Champion/I don't want to ever be average.
Pfab/No, no, but I mean just because it's good for you doesn't mean it's good for every.
Champion/I'm talking about people who drive cars in general.
Lehman/Well no, I think there's another very significant factor, it's very difficult to
evaluate. There is a point where people will not come downtown and park.
Champion/Oh that's right, they'll go somewhere else.
Lehman/They will go someplace else, and they aren't going to ride the bus, they're going
to drive their car, they just aren't going to come downtown anymore, now that's
not too hard to figure out and it's an extremely expensive lesson to learn.
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Champion/That's what I meant to say.
Vanderhoef/Oh your so smart.
(END OF 02-06 SIDE TWO)
Kanneff Public transit component that's encouraged, that's what's going to make it an
exciting vibrant place, the cities around the world, whatever their size is, in
Europe there are small cities, they have excellent public transportation, we could
have the same thing. We could be known as an entertainment capital in a positive
way, we have a lot of good things, and public transit could be part of that.
Champion/I think that's.
Lehman/Well public transit (can't hear).
Champion/When you have gasoline at a $1.00 a gallon instead of $4.00 a gallon people
are not going to (can't hear).
Pfab/Well after some people in the Mideast decide that we aren't going to get gas for that
price.
Fowler/I think one thing that might be a little helpful here to know is, you know we
didn't run the shuttle over the summer and so we obviously had a decrease in rider
ship because we weren't running that bus, but our year to date numbers are
showing us running about 6 percent ahead of last year on transit even though we
didn't have those summer rides and so we are seeing an increase in transit and one
of the the areas that we're seeing it in the biggest one is that we put some half
hour service out in student areas and we're seeing like a 31 percent increase in
rider ship in that area. A 12 percent increase in the mall, the Sycamore Mall
because we're running out to the industrial park and I think it's a little bit under
20 percent on the other side of that 31 percent where we're going out to
Towncrest more often. And so them has been an increase in transit rider ship this
year.
Lehman/Joe our parking system is self sufficient is that correct?
Fowler/Yes.
Lehman/So the parkers pay for the building. Our bus system we charge $.75 for what a
$2.75 ride or $3.00 fide.
Fowler/Yes.
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Lehman/I would assume, it appears to me that we are really, really promoting public
transportation by offering that sort of substance, I mean I don't feel that we are not
promoting public transit, I think it's extremely important to this community
otherwise we wouldn't be putting the kind of money into a bus system that we are
doing. But I don't see discouraging folks from using other means, they're going
to use their automobiles, I don't think there's any question about that. And if we
try to force them to take the bus they're just going to drive someplace else.
Kanner/But I think that's part of the argument and Irvin I would disagree and Connie is
average in many ways, nothing personal. You excel in other areas but.
Champion/Could you write those down for me later?
Kanner/I think the point is we're under need what we can be getting for those what
people are willing to pay and I think we can go higher without discouraging, if
that's what your concerned about people paying for that. I think people will pay
more than $4.80 for a day's parking permit and I think we should raise it
accordingly.
Lehman/At a time when we've got the difficulties that we've got economically
particularly in the downtown area this would be absolutely about the worst time in
the world you can do as a disincentive for folks to come downtown.
Pfab/But my point is as we start seeing more and more tax dollars going into the bus
system because we don't have enough riders there then that system is going to get
weaker and weaker and it's going to be used less and less and so your on a
downward spiral.
Lehman/I think he just said it's being more and more.
Pfab/Well that's what we want to encourage, we want to keep going that way.
Champion/Well sure we do Irvin but (can't hear).
Lehman/Are these rates okay with you guys?
Champion/Yes, they are, they're perfect. Thank you.
Kanner/Is there a majority for four?
Lehman/Yea how many of us feel the rates as proposed are okay, could we see a show of
hands, I see four hands, how many are not Steven and.
Pfab/Well I won't, I don't know, I don't have an answer.
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Lehman/We have one opposed and one that doesn't have an answer. Okay go ahead.
O'Brien/The next thing we're starting to discuss parking permits so we skipped one of
them which I'll come back to but these what we have in our facilities right now
currently. These are the spaces that we have in each of the facilities, and these
are the permits that we offer, well these 10 here at Tower Place, the lower level
off Gilbert Street where we have 10 spaces there, the city does that we have
permits for and they are priced at $65.00 a month so that's what those two mean.
And these are the permits that we offer and this is what the waiting list for each of
those facilities understanding of course that we have, people that are on, the same
person may be on all four of these so that's not the total number of people that we
have waiting for parking but.
Pfab/I would say if we get a waiting list of over say 25 percent of what's available we
need to change that pricing, increase that pricing.
Champion/That's not the reason we have more people who want, that isn't the reason, it
isn't the price, it's because we try to maintain spaces in the ramp that turn over
frequently, that's why permits are limited.
Pfab/ Okay so, I still think, if you can give me the real numbers there where they're not
duplication of more than one place and we have over 25 percent more in a waiting
price than we have I think we're underpriced, the market is just, it's just not.
Champion/Your not, if you figure out.
Fowler/What we wanted to with this would, we wanted to tell you that we wanted to look
at the number of permits in each facility and then we want to increase the number
of permits that we sell in certain facilities and that will probably will give us a
truer picture of how many people are on the waiting list because there are people
who have been on these waiting list for four or five years that may have found
another place to park, they may have moved from town, so.
Pfab/Okay.
Kanner/Could we switch out some of the waiting list with the Green Bay Packers waiting
list (can't hear)?
Pfab/And so I mean, it's either artificial or it doesn't make sense. I mean it's not
accurate or it doesn't make sense to do this.
Lehman/Well your telling us is, what are you telling us? I don't even know why we're
even looking at this.
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O'Brien/So one of the parts of our proposal is to offer more parking permits in facilities
where the space permits for it.
Lehman/Why don't you just do that?
Fowler/We're just telling you that we were, wanted to keep you informed, sorry.
Lehman/Well tell us after you do that.
Pfab/If you start seeing over 25 pement of actual people wanting a place in there I think
we should, at that point we should be raising the price.
Fowler/Pretend you never saw that.
O'Brien/Yea we're going to get rid of this one now because that one went over like a ton
of bricks, we're going onto the next one.
Lehman/Thank you.
Kanner/I think you should tell us how many, give us a memo of how many your going to
increase it.
Fowler/We will, we can do that.
Lehman/I would just encourage you to be cautious in issuing you more permits in Capital
Street, that's the one that has most pressure.
Fowler/Capital Street, we would not look at increasing that.
O'Brien/Tower Place is the one of the main.
Fowler/Dubuque Street we wouldn't look at increasing that because we closed 64-1-A
and we're not sure what the demand from that moving in there and so the Library
is going to want space so we wouldn't be looking at putting any into Dubuque
Street.
Champion/He's already got all the answers.
O'Brien/Chauncey Swan we already have 400 permits out of 475 so we want to keep
some.
Fowler/Really what Chris wanted to tell you was that we'll be selling more permits in
Tower Place.
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O'Brien/Right, I just wanted to give you all the information so you didn't feel short
changed when you (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/So you confuse us, thank you Chris.
O'Brien/Your welcome. This one I put up, this is the one I wanted to go to second but
demand for the permits we went to that one. We have a nightly permit currently
on the books in the code that the city has had on, I can't tell you for how long it's
been in the code but it was initially was put in there my understanding of it was
for the people who worked at night in the downtown area to have a permit so that
they were not parking on street. Is that correct?
Fowler/They couldn't get moved by 2:00.
O'Brien/By 2:00 for the 2 to 6. The current price is $35.00 and what we're looking at
doing is making it valid from 5 PM to 9 AM the next morning and then it would
be good all day on Saturday and Sundays.
Pfab/Might 9:00 be a little long because it might get somebody else from coming in?
Champion/Your not going to sell day permits.
O'Brien/Yea, we're currently only going 90 permits total which would be 30 in each of
those facilities.
Lehman/How do you enfome that?
Champion/Yea how do you do that?
O'Brien/They would have to go through the cashier on their way out.
Champion/Oh.
Lehman/But what if they stay for three days like we have some right now that there's
one car I know has been there for seven days because I park right next to it.
Fowler/They have to have their card to exit.
Lehman/Yea but if you lose your card you pay the max. for one day right, so if you store
your car in there for a week and you leave you pay for one day.
Fowler/Well hopefully there's a series of parking tickets on that car.
Lehman/I've never seen a ticket on a parked car over there in my life.
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Champion/Maybe they just park there before you get there.
Pfab/I think Chris is taking care of that.
O'Brien/No if you would let us know that there's somebody doing that, some are permit
holders that are in there that long that just leave their car.
Lehman/That just don't leave.
Fowler/Right.
O'Brien/Right.
Lehman/But we would go through and check for (can't hear).
O'Brien/Yea we check for storage in the facilities also.
Lehman/And ticket the cars.
Fowler/Well what they would do is if they leave after 9:00 in the morning, they pay $.60
cents an hour for each additional hour they would stay after 9:00.
Lehman/How do you know when they go in or out?
Champion/They go in and take a ticket, not a card.
Lehman/They use a card.
Fowler/They would not have a card like a regular.
O'Brien/They would have to have a ticket and would have a permit displayed.
Fowler/Right.
Lehman/So if the permit is displayed at the back of the car and it's 10:00 in the morning
they would.
Champion/Be charged $.60 cents.
Lehman/Well they would be charged $.60 cents unless they waited for another day and
then at 10:00 they'd still be charged $.60 cents.
Champion/No because they have a ticket.
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Lehman/Date is on the card, they can't get out without the ticket unless they leave after
2:00 in the morning which anybody can get out. Right, fine.
Fowler/Right.
Kanner/And in the dialogue in our book it sells this partially as a way for people living in
the area to park.
Fowler/Why don't you tell them what?
Kanner/But it doesn't seem like that would work, what if your late or sick or away from
town and your car stays there for a couple days, it sort of getting what Ernie is
saying.
O'Brien/Yea what happened we started checking in the residential area right outside of
the CBD at night because we did this years ago and we found that there were half
as many cars out there at night as there were during the day which lead us to
believe there were a lot of commuters at that time that were parking in the
residential area and then going home at 5:00. Well we found this time when we
went out and counted was there were about twice as many cars out them at night
as there were during the day because of the odd/even parking restrictions so at
5:00 when the odd/even went away the stmets filled up more. And our thinking
was that the people who lived downtown were going just out to the edge of town
at the residential area parking their car and then coming back and getting it the
next morning before it got a parking ticket. We thought we could offer this permit
to maybe help the people that were downtown have a place to park their car, right
now if they park their car in the ramp all night they pay $.60 cents an hour all
night long to park their long.
Pfab/Also I think we have to figure out a way to accommodate, we basically said no
underground parking in downtown living facility but I think we have to come up
with a way to accommodate those people although we were a little harsh on them
with that other approach and I think parking belongs in the parking ramp if it's not
too far away. Sure it's nice to go downstairs but that just doesn't make very much
sense to me ifa parking ramp is closed but it also should have a way of
accommodating those people.
Champion/I think that's a great idea, sure there's going to be some abuse, there's always
abuse of everything but it's a good idea.
Fowler/We'll put it out there, if it's not successful it didn't really cost us anything but at
least we offer an alternative.
Lehman/That's right.
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Vanderhoef/But the parking permits still works for the full 24 hours.
Champion/Ours does.
Fowler/The regular one.
O'Brien/The regular permit that we sell currently.
Vanderhoef/And max. parking per day it could be per day it could be $4.80 so why
would there be any incentive to buy an evening permit.
Lehman/For $34.00.
Champion/That's $1.50 a day.
Lehman/Yea, instead of $4.80.
Vanderhoef/Yea but that one is limited to night versus if you worked downtown or
whatever and you wanted to just store your car.
Lehman/But this is only for night.
Vanderhoef/But I'm thinking about the person who wants their car downtown for part of
the day also.
Lehman/That's not the permit.
Fowler/That's not for them.
O'Brien/Well this is kind of for people who wait on a waiting list for a permit who might
be interested in this who can't, you know when we have 313 people on a waiting
list for Dubuque Street which has slow turnover, as an alternative if it's somebody
who works somewhere else during the day but they lived in the downtown area in
the night, this is a way for them to have a place for their vehicle.
Kanner/And explain again what happens if they're late getting it out.
Pfab/They start paying the regular fee.
Fowler/They start paying the regular fee at 9:00.
O'Brien/At 9:00 $.60 cents an hour.
Pfab/No penalty other than just.
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Kanner/And so if they forget it, let's say they go away for vacation in someone else's car
or bus or whatever how.
Fowler/They would pay their $34.00 and then their $4.80 a day if they were in Tower
Place or Dubuque Street, they would have an additional $4.80 a day maximum
charge.
O'Brien/On top of that.
Pfab/So that would be how much a day then?
Lehman/$4.80 a day they'd have.
Pfab/Plus the permit.
O'Brien/Plus the permit.
Pfab/Which would be how much a day?
Champion/About $6.20 about.
Pfab/$6.20 a day for however close to where you want to be. Is that unreasonable, is that
an exuberant price?
Kanner/A $180.00 a month. People are paying I think parking spaces I don't know how
much but they're paying in the downtown area I've seen advertisements maybe
$50.00 to $100.00.
Pfab/But that's not covered parking,
Lehman/That looks like that would work don't you?
Vanderhoef/I think it will but you can report back to us in six months and see what's
happening.
Fowler/Okay we can do that.
Pfab/I think that, I really am opposed to this underground parking, if we have the parking
facilities but at the same time we have to accommodate those people, somehow, I
don't know the answer but that's what you guys get paid for.
Lehman/That's what he's proposing.
Pfab/Yea so no I'm willing to look at anything.
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Fowler/So sometime late summer you want an update on how everything is as far as
how many people are on the waiting list, how many people are buying the night
permits.
Vanderhoef/I think that would be good because that will take in second semester and
summer.
(All talking)
Fowler/Well if you go to first of June or July you don't have six months and it's going to
take us a little while to get this going. I mean we can send you a report and if you
want to talk about it then you can tell us to come see you.
Pfab/Yea but I mean in six months you'll feel that you have a pretty good feel right?
Fowler/Six months on some of it yea because it's going to take time to do that. One
more thing, the most controversial.
Pfab/You mean you've got something that you've got that's controversial.
Fowler/Yea and this is expansion of the parking meter area to the area that surrotmds
Memy Hospital. And what we would be proposing would be five hour meters at
$.40 cents an hour, lower term, we think that this would provide additional
parking for Mercy Hospital and it would free up parking spaces in the business
area just west of Mercy up around where the 10 hour meters were. And it would
give us some structured parking in the area, right now there are a lot of complaints
about cars that block cross walks and park in no parking areas out in that area so.
Champion/What streets are you talking about?
P£ab/What are you proposing again? Go back over the.
Kanner/It's on the six page and.
Fowler/Basically it would be extending down Bloomington Street for two blocks, across
this block of Johnson, and on Van Buren.
Lehman/Oh that's cool.
Fowler/Right now there's a business located on this comer, the house to it is listed as a
residence but it has a paved yard that has signs that say reserved for staff and so
I'm not really positive.
Lehman/That's their last name.
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Fowler/Yea.
Vanderhoeff You haven't knocked on the door yet.
Kanner/Well that's the law.
Fowler/Then there's another business on this comer and so it would appear that there are
two residential homes in that block. On the next comer down here it appears to be
a residential business combined, I believe there's a law firm on the corner there,
then there are a couple residents, a vacant lot, an apartment house and then a
converted apartment house on the comer.
Champion/And so what happens to parking for those private residences or apartment
houses if they're using that street to park on?
Lehman/They have to pay for it.
Fowler/The apartments from my in depth research of driving down the alleys up there all
the buildings have off street parking.
Champion/Okay.
Fowler/Except for maybe this one residence on the comer right here.
Pfab/Do you have any information as to the availability of parking, Mercy's facilities, are
they full, partially full?
Fowler/I don't.
Pfab/Do they cover their needs virtually?
Champion/Yes they do.
Fowler/Yea I'm not sure. This block right here is all Mercy buildings, this block is an
apartment house and two or three houses on this half block down here that have
been converted over to apartments. And this is an area that we have a lot of
problem with enforcing parking, now it's a bus route and the buses have a lot of
trouble making that turn right there because of illegally parked cars.
Pfab/Well if you put meters there if there's no meter they probably won't park.
Fowler/When we put in meter parking we put in meter and we paint a stall on the ground
and it's pretty obvious where you should be parking and where you shouldn't.
Pfab/Great, great, okay.
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Vanderhoef/Tell me what the meters in the lot by Gilpin's, are those $.40 cents an hour
also?
Fowler/Yes and there are 2 hour and 10 hours in there.
Vanderhoef/Both, okay and what is the parking charge at the Mercy Plaza parking?
Fowler/I think that's $.50 cents an hour.
Lehman/I think that's right.
Champion/Yea I think so I.
Vanderhoef/Because of a change in demand there in that area and the congestion in that
area I'd like you to take a look at consistency in pricing for that if it's $.50 cents
over at the Mercy Plaza and it's cheaper on the street, competition wise with
Mercy is something that I don't think we should be encouraging.
Lehman/Except the folks who park there right now park there for free so my suspicion is
we'll have little or no affect on Mercy parking because these places are already
full of cars.
Vanderhoef/Oh I know they are constantly.
Fowler/What we're hoping to do would be have a positive affect on the parking in this
area up in through here. I've gone through and checked at various times and
between Bloomington, up to Clinton over to Jefferson back down to Lirm as few
as one available space and as many as seven when I go through there. And so I
think the people that are going to Mercy are coming up to the metered parking,
long term metered parking and then that is having a negative affect on businesses
in that area and people trying to visit that area because there's no parking
available.
Pfab/I question the 10 hour parking there if that's what we want to continue.
Vanderhoef/Well that was my question, what's the utilization within our city parking?
Fowler/The 10 hour meters there are just about 100 percent full. We have some permits
in there too.
Vanderhoef/Okay and how much turnover do we get in the two hour?
Fowler/It's usually full too.
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Pfab/I have kind of an unrelated question but not. There's an awful lot of students up in
that area, but what is the current situation as far as the University having a place
to store vehicles over a semester, what's available?
O'Brien/They have their Hawkeye storage lot.
Pfab/Is there a charge for it?
Fowler/Yes.
Pfab/Substantial or?
O'Brien/I don't believe so I believe it's modest on that.
Fowler/But I don't know if it's limited to just students who live on campus or if it's open
to all students, I couldn't answer that.
Pfab/Okay is that full? In other words the students that bring cars there try to get rid of
them when they really don't need them because of the Cambus and what not, I
mean I think they should be discouraged from leaving the cars there and whatever,
and if it's too easy to leave them there then we're doing something wrong, they
should put them away in storage I would think.
O'Brien/Didn't they expand that lot not too long ago.
Fowler/I think that's up to almost a 1,000 car parking lot right now.
Kanner/Well maybe that's something that we have to check into to see if we could
cooperate with them if we need to expand it if we want to consider subsidizing
students or whoever want to park them.
Lehman/Park where?
Kanner/At these lots, if one of our goals is to clear up some of these streets maybe we
want to talk about we'll kick in $5.00 towards your putting it there if you keep it
in the slot.
Lehman/The other end if we get them to feed a parking meter all day we get a lot more
money we don't have to pay anything.
Kanner/And you have crowded streets and all that kind of stuff, I'm saying it might be
worth our while to get them over there, I don't know that we have to pay them but
we might want to talk to the University.
Pfab/Or you have a dissentive by paying the meter.
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Lehman/I think that would be good.
Vanderhoef/If we're taking more 10 hour meters off of the streets over on the Clinton
area I suspect the 10 hour meters at the Gilpin parking will definitely be full and
probably with staff persons that are pushed out of those other meters. And truly
the, I don't know what the utilization is at Mercy Plaza but as families come to
visit or be there on day of surgery and so forth that a six hour meter or something
like that that would give some length of time if Mercy is full would still turn it
over versus having a full day for an employee at the University who's there every
day.
Fowler/Would a five hour meter.
Vanderhoef/Five hour that would be fine.
Fowler/You mean in the Market Street parking lot.
Vanderhoeff In the Gilbert Street.
Champion/The problem I have with that is there's not long term parking available there
for people who might work in the area, then where do they park? So I mean I
think they're the ones that are probably parking in those.
Pfab/Well into you get into that area you get awful close to CAMBUS and if there's
places where people can get onto CAMBUS and get back and forth pretty easily
and I think we ought to encourage them to use that. If there's a way that people
can get where they need to go is on the Cambus route I think we ought to
definitely encourage them to use it.
Kanner/Or shuttle, where does the north shuttle?
Pfab/Shuttle, okay.
O'Brien/It comes down Jefferson makes a turn onto Johnson to Bloomington I believe,
Bloomington to Gilbert, Gilbert to Church, and then Church to Dubuque down to
Market, and so it services this area, I'm sorry this area.
Pfab/I brought up the thing one other time, is the time, does every bus have to come
downtown at a such and such a time? Is there a way that you can do loops and do
loops shuttles that way to get more people to use the public transportation system?
And for instance your downtown instead of one shuttle two and you get out farther
and back at whatever time you want.
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Fowler/Well we did the parking studies several years ago one of the things that we
looked at, or not parking transit study. We looked at circular neighborhood routes
and our concern would be that you, at that time we weren't sure that the
community was ready to take a neighborhood bus to a transfer point to wait and
get on another bus to come downtown to transfer to another bus to go over across
the river to work at the hospital or something you know on the west side of the
river. Our concern was that while we might serve a neighborhood better people
that wanted to go from that neighborhood to the downtown would end up with an
extra transfer and we were afraid that that would slow their trip up and it would
discourage them because they would have to go from bus to bus.
Pfab/Is there, does the transfer itself discourage people from using the bus?
Champion/Yes.
Lehman/I think so.
Pfab/You think so.
O'Brien/Especially if there's any sort of.
Vanderhoef/Because of the time, it depends on which bus you come in.
(All talking)
Pfab/Okay, okay.
Lehman/Joe have we talked to Memy Hospital at all about this proposal to put meters in
that area?
Fowler/No we have not.
Lehman/You know I would just suggest that you give Ron Reed a call, my suspicion is
he might be very supportive of that just because of the convenience of those folks
who are visiting patients or need to go to the hospital would have problem, but I
would.
Vanderhoef/I know one of the businesses on Bloomington Street asked two years ago to
get meters out in front of his business to help.
Pfab/I would, not even consider talking to Reed, I would just go ahead and do it because
it's for our benefit.
Champion/Well no.
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Lehman/Well after all they are very good neighbor, they are part of the community, the
least we could do is let them know what we're doing.
Fowler/Well this is, you know since this is a change in the system we wanted to come to
you first to see if you wanted to pursue the idea.
Champion/Yea.
Vanderhoef/Yea, and look at the lot.
Champion/Yea.
Kanner/These would be in affect until 5:00 PM.
Fowler/Yes.
O'Brien/Yes.
Kanner/Okay and when do they start in the morning?
Fowler/8:00.
O'Brien/8:00.
Kanner/And with all these changes are you talking about needing perhaps more people to
collect the coins and enfome the meters?
Fowler/No.
O'Brien/No.
Kanner/And sorry Tom left (can't hear) about using (can't hear) we should just put them
all in the Gazette parking lot up there I think.
Lehman/I think he went out to get meters to put in his lot.
Champion/Good.
Pfab/Maybe the new video tape rental they'll have meters in that.
Kanner/Oh Pearson's.
Pfab/Pearson's.
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Fowler/So what we're going to do is change the time limits, increase the fees in the areas
that we talked about up there.
Pfab/And shorten the time.
Fowler/And shorten the time, we'll go with the night permits, we'll let you know how
much we're increasing the number of permits in basically Tower Place.
Pfab/And what the real waiting list is.
Fowler/What the real waiting list.
Lehman/And I presume later in our budget discussion we're going to be looking at the
income and expense and whatever of the parking system.
(Can't hear).
Champion/We asked if it was making money.
Pfab/Does that ever get to work and subsidize the public (can't hear)?
Fowler/We have in the past up until this year. The increase from $.40 cents to $.60 cents
an hour on the north parking meters we've estimated that that would increase
revenue by $25,000.
Lehman/Well Joe my question really is relative to a much, much larger issue and I'm not
sure, and we may address it later. But as we look at the ground transportation
center and as it relates to the parking impact fees to the CB-5 zone, to the new
library, to the new hotel downtown and the plans to move permit holders across
and the projections of numbers of people, and cost, I'm sure we're not going to
get into that this afternoon because it's way too complicated.
Fowler/Thank you.
Lehman/But there needs to be some sort of projection so that that is such a complicated
project because you know that's been going on for eight years since we've talked
about a facility south of Burlington Street and how important that is to that CB-5
development to the Hieronymus Square and some of those other places, the
impact fees that have been paid by Haywood Belle and Tom Breese and I think
perhaps by Kroeger. And also then the construction of that library, the Moen
project and the hopefully tremendous increase in parking demand having to move
permit, I mean this is a pretty complicated picture, but I do think it would be nice
to have some projection of the kind of usage that we can, maybe that's too hard to
project at this point but at some point we do have to look at that and see if the
present parking rates cover the cost of that facility, what kind of, and this is
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probably really a shot in the dark, what kind of occupancy you expect because the
Moen is a huge project that when it's completed which I suspect will be three
years. What will be the impact? Are those the kind of things that you can work
with at all or are they way too soon?
Fowler/Yea I think we could, I think we could take the Moen proposal and talk to Marc
in between you know and what we've seen happen with the Sheraton and then put
that against what he's planning to build. That we can take how many spaces that
he's talking about putting in his facility and then determine how many more that
the residents would generate that would need to or want to park in our facilities.
Lehman/And losing the surface lot that we have now.
Fowler/Right, and losing the surface lot, I mean one of the things that happened was 64-
1-A used to be a permit lot basically and we moved all those permit holders into
Dubuque and opened that up for hourly parking and so now we've lost half of it
for hourly parking and we're going to lose all of it for hourly parking, and we
haven't decreased the number of permits so the Dubuque Street ramp has quite a
few more permits in it than it did, well actually it has 80 more permits in it than it
used to so all of that with the new library demand and everything I think we need
to sit down and try to work some numbers and.
Lehman/That's really, and maybe it's too soon and obviously there's going to be an
awful lot of projections, guessing going on there but we do need to start to get
some kind of feel for what that's going to do.
Champion/How many parking spaces in that lot by the library, how many surface
parking?
Fowler/How many do we have left?
O'Brien/32 1 believe.
Champion/Boy it's not easy.
Lehman/Okay, other, all right Joe.
Karmer/Thanks.
Lehman/Thank you sir. And I won't ask you to take care ora parking ticket.
O'Brien/I appreciate that.
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Lehman/Because I asked Joe one day, I said Joe will you take care of this and he said
sure it's only going to cost me $5.00 and it embarrassed me so I never asked him
again, over a $5.00 ticket.
Champion/Oh that's a question I just wanted to ask. A parking ticket downtown is $3.00
and they can only give a ticket every three hours is that true?
O'Brien/It's once an hour for an expired meter.
Champion/Thanks.
O'Brien/Every two hours for your odd/even and.
Champion/Okay I was just checking that.
Atkins/Okay thanks guys.
Vanderhoef/Yes I'm glad we got through that one more thing today.
Atkins/I said I'd remind you about picking an evening for Boards and Commissions.
Pfab/The one we have scheduled in the evening would that one work?
Atkins/We don't have an evening one.
Lehman/We don't have an evening one scheduled.
Pfab/Oh that's right I looked at it and.
Atkins/Now next the 15th is scheduled from 3:00 to 7:00, ifI keep you until 7:00 I'll be
surprised but.
Champion/That would be (can't hear).
Atkins/My stomach will start rumbling and I really can't unless you want to be.
Vanderhoef/The Tuesday.
Kanner/Well that doesn't give a lot of time of notice.
Atkins/No it doesn't, no you need a couple hours at the very least folks.
Karr/Steve were you going to suggest part of that on the 15th later in the evening?
Atkins/Could do that, it's a thought.
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Karr/If Steve had indicated just now that I'm hearing myself that he wasn't going to use
that whole component of 3 to 7 he'd be surprised so the possibility, I'm just
throwing out would be like 3:00 to 5:30 for budget and 5:30 to 7:00 or something
like that for Boards/Commissions if that's the case it's a very short timeline for us
to notify them.
Kanner/yea.
Karr/But that would be.
Champion/It's too short, it would be a good idea though, it's not for, tomorrow's Friday
and.
Atkins/We'd have to call all.
Champion/I don't think they have enough time to prepare, I think it needs to be in the
next week though, at the end of that week.
Vanderhoef/Okay we've got the 24th then.
Karr/1:30 to 5:00.
Vanderhoef/Do you suppose we could get people to come in at 4:00 and go 4:00 to 6:00
on that?
Champion/Boy that would be tough people.
Vanderhoef/I don't know I'm asking.
Pfab/On the 24th.
Atkins/My impression is that that's really hard on folks, I think most of them like to run
home and get a bite to eat and come back and see you. You know the 6:30 is, no
one has ever griped about that.
Vanderhoef/Let's do the 23rd.
Karr/I think you could probably go as early as 6:00 potentially.
Atkins/We could probably go as early as 6:00 and not have a trouble.
Karmer/Were people busy in the evening on the 24th?
Wilburn/I have a mandatory budget meeting with the student senate so (can't hear).
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Champion/Okay what, I don't have my calendar so.
Vanderhoef/We've got a budget meeting on the Tuesday the 29th in the morning.
Lehman/Monday night.
Vanderhoef/Monday night the 28th or Tuesday night the 29th.
Lehman/Well we're going to be working during the day Tuesday it would be kind of
tough but we'd be kind of, it would not be too bad if we met with Boards and
Commissions Monday night and then we have our regular budget session the next
morning.
Chan~pion/What date would that be?
Karr/28th.
Lehman/28th.
Kanner/28th of January, that would work with me.
Champion/What day of the week is that on?
Vanderhoef/It's a Monday.
Champion/That's when I'm going to be at market, that's why we didn't schedule a
meeting for that day.
Lehman/Oh well you'll just have to sneak back early, no.
Champion/I'm sorry but I've got to buy clothes for the summer.
Lehman/Well then Tuesday it's 8:00 until noon, do we want to come back?
Kanner/I could do it.
Vanderhoef/At 7:00 that night.
Pfab/What day?
Lehman/The 29th.
Champion/What's that now, is that Tuesday the 29th.
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Lehman/Tuesday the 29th.
Wilburn/I could do it.
Champion/Yea I'm sure I'll be back by then, if I'm not just start without me.
Vanderhoef/Well your going to be here for the morning meeting.
Champion/What's that Dee?
Vanderhoef/The 29th is Tuesday.
Champion/What day of the week?
Vanderhoef/Tuesday.
Lehman/Tuesday.
Champion/Oh right.
Vanderhoef/So we're meeting already from 8 to 12 on budget that morning then take a
break and come back and hear Boards and Commissions at 7:00 say.
Lehman/We could start that.
Champion/Could I just see your calendar a minute?
Lehman/We could start that at 6:30 couldn't we?
Atkins/Sure, it's your call.
Lehman/Well I mean I, early.
Atkins/We have in the past.
Kanner/6:30 works.
Pfab/On what day?
Katmer/29th of January.
Champion/The 29th would work for me, I'll just go to market a day early (can't hear).
Lehman/All right the 29th.
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Atkins/The 29th of January at 6:30 we'll get the note out to the Boards and
Commissions.
Pfab/6:30 is Boards and Connnissions then.
Lehman/Yea.
Atkins/And so I'll see you.
Vanderhoef/6:30.
Atkins/I will see you Tuesday, whoops Deb.
Deb Mansfield/That's our last budget meeting so they're going to hear Boards and
Commissions and give their recommendations all at the same meeting.
Karr/Because you'll be setting public hearing at your next meeting.
Champion/Oh, should we move that up a week or something?
Atkins/Well that's the lump sum of money though isn't it?
Mansfield/Yea it won't, correct.
Atkins/I would say to you folks traditionally you've not varied dramatically off that
number, I mean if your talking $10,000 swing one way or the other I'm usually
very surprised about that, that doesn't mean we can't use contingency to cover
that if we had to. I'd like for you to go ahead and just go with the 29th.
Lehman/We got it.
Atkins/29th at 6:30 we'll put out the word. Now the next meeting is Tuesday 3:00 in
here, capital projects will be the primary and a couple of presentations.
Lehman/It works.
Atkins/Thanks folks for your time.
Lehman/Thank you.
Adjourned 4:50 PM.
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