HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002-01-29 Transcription January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 1
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session 6:30 PM
Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilbum, Kanner, Pfab (6:35)
Staff'.' Atkins, Helling, Karr, O'Malley, O'Neil, Craig, Franklin, Trueblood
TAPES: 02-16 BOTH SIDES; 02-17 BOTH SIDES
Lehman/And the Council knows the rules, you've got 10 minutes to give your
presentation, we have five minutes to ask you questions and then the next person
stands up.
Senior Center Commission
Jay Honohan/I don't intend to take 10 minutes.
Lehman/Thank you very much, next.
Honohan/The Commission would like again to thank the Council for it's support over
the last year and hopefully for it's approval of the proposed City Manager's
budget. It is your support and the support of the County which I hope will
continue is one of the best reason's that we're one of the 28 accredited Senior
Center's across the United States. And if you didn't know it we scored 180 points
out of 187 in that review and the lady told us that we couldn't get a perfect score
so she had to find something wrong, but we're real pleased, you probably know
more about our budget than I do but I would point out that because of capital
improvements reductions we're actually asking for six percent less than the City
Manager's projections. We would also again, 1 would personally say that we
appreciate the support we've gotten from Steve and the staff an the City Attorney
and all of our Commission' endeavors, and I'll answer any questions if you have
any.
O'Donnell/Wow.
Lehman/I have to tell you Jay I think that the Council is very, very proud of the Senior
Center and the way you folks run it.
Honohan/Thank you.
Champion/Great job.
Kanner/Jay, we were told that after the skywalk opened up that the room next to it would
probably be available for meetings for the public as other rooms are available, has
that come to pass?
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 2
Honoharff Not yet and I think we're still waiting for some security devices and things like
that to be put in place this year that then that will be available.
Karmer/Well do you have any time frame for that?
Honohan/I have no idea.
Kanner/And that leads to the next question, in general there's been some talk about how
can we expand use of the Senior Center and for more hours and some suggestions
are work study students at night, possibly shifting around some of the paid staff,
what kind of solutions are you folks looking at for better use of the facility?
Honohan/Well the Commission for a couple of years or at least for the years that I've
been on it has already felt that an additional half time person would really be the
way to go on that situation. Unfortunately the budget constraints of the City we
asked for it but it was turned down by the City Manager and I can understand that,
and we're not excited about that but we understand the realities of your budget
situation and hopefully we are going to explore some other alternatives but the
best one would be a half time person.
Champion/Jay with the County and getting out of the food service, will they still have, is
there representation to the Commission based on just the county people who use
the Senior Center or is that based on the Senior Dining Program?
Honohan/Well there has been some disagreement about that particular issue, it is my
opinion that their membership on the Commission is based upon the 28E
agreement which is as I see it and I read it is separate from Senior Dining so their
participation is the same at the present time. Linda and I have some disagreement,
she's less optimistic than I am but I'm always very optimistic and I think we'll be
able to work something out with the County which will continue the fine
relationship we've had over the last 20 years.
Champion/Thanks.
Kanner/So you don't anticipate in the near future them drawing, wanting to withdraw
their 20 percent after the?
Honohan/The conversations that I have had with three members of the Board of
Supervisors indicates to me or makes me optimistic that for at least the coming
fiscal year they are going to fund us at approximately the same amount that they
funded us last year.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 3
Kanner/And are we looking for any kind of rent payment from Elderly Services for use
of that facility since the County's not the tenant and they in a sense paid us
through their 20 percent for their space?
Karmer/That is one of my "what ifs" what if we don't get funded by the County what
will we do? The Commission will try it's best not to have to ask anybody at the
Senior Center to pay rent, any of the agencies that service seniors. And the Carol
Thompson has indicated that she wants to get back together on the 28E committee
and work towards some kind of a funding arrangement involving the County.
Champion/Good.
Kanner/Thanks.
Honohan/Is that it?
Lehman/Thank you Jay.
Honohan/Thank you very much.
Airport Commission
Rick Mascari/Hello everybody, I'm Rick Mascari the Chair of the Airport Commission,
and let's see here 6:40 okay so I'll be 15 minutes or less. I just want to review a
couple of things regarding the budgets for the airport. I know it's been brought up
to many occasions that there has been an additional general fund subsidy for the
Airport this last year and I think that your all aware of the fact that we lost our
major tenant, Iowa City Flying Service left us December 2000 and their annual
rent to us was $6,862 a month which adds up to be $82,349 per year.
Consequently if you look at our shortfall we are at $78,200 in the additional
general fund subsidy, so you can see without having our major tenant we actually
did pretty well. Looking at some of the figures we have here, building J one of
the hangers that we had built back in 1995 will be completely paid for in the year
2005 which will add another $23,349 to the total income for the airport. Let's see,
we have no capital outlay for landscaping or for permanent sides outside the
Riverside Drive for the Aviation Commerce Park which is now built, mainly
because we just don't have the funds to do it. We have also deferred some capital
outlay for some concrete and asphalt repair mainly because of the same reason.
And also there's a pending grant from the FAA for $670,000 which is 90 percent
of the funding for the relocation of Dane Road. A while back according to my
records here anyway you all received from us, actually on February 12, of 2001 a
memo and a copy of the Economic Values of Iowa's Air Transportation that was
done by the State of Iowa through Iowa State University and I hope you all had a
chance to read it, if not we can get an extra copy to you. But what it does is it tells
what the total economic affects of the airport does to our county and according to
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 4
the Iowa State Department of Transportation the total economic affects of the
airport is actually $17,882,347 and even with our shortfall due to the loss of our
tenant a total operating budget is $368,120, I think it's a pretty good bargain.
Now keep in mind that out of that $368,120 we're still collecting $153,000 worth
of revenues at the airport which leaves us a shortage of $213,700. Now since the
loss of our largest tenant we got a new tenant on board that came from Galesburg,
Illinois, and they've been in 1968 and they're very well established and we expect
them to be ramping up so we can get rid of the shortage that we have right now. I
reviewed a lot of things here that these numbers are just flying right by so if you
have any questions maybe now's the time to answer it.
Lehman/Rick we're going to be scheduling a meeting with the full Conunission and the
Council, well I don't know exactly when but apparently soon, because there are a
number of items that we need to work over with you folks.
Mascari/Okay, we'd welcome that we really would.
Lehman/And I suspect that there will be questions that we probably would have for you
at that time but is there any questions that the Council has for now?
Champion/I think I'd rather reserve mine until we have that meeting.
Vanderhoef/Yea.
Wilburn/Prior to that could we get a copy of the figures you rattled off?
Mascari/Sure, absolutely, you bet.
Wilburn/Before the meeting.
Mascari/Absolutely.
Wilburn/Thank you.
Mascari/That's it.
Lehman/Thank you Rick.
Mascari/Thank you.
Library Board
Lehman/Library Board way ahead of schedule.
Shaner Magalhaes/Their not here yet.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 5
Magalhaes/Hi my name is Shaner Magalhaes and the Vice President of the Library Board
and can we have a deferral for the moment, I do not have, seriously any
information about the proposal, here's Lisa she has the information about our
budget request.
Lehman/I see.
Lisa Parker/Are we moving that fast?
Lehman/We're moving that fast but I suspect that we won't keep this pace up all night.
Scott Jcnnings/Hey, excuse me, I'm from the Iowa City Coralville Jaycees and I received
a letter that said we were to be here at 6:30 for our slot and we've either, a little
miscommunication or something but when the Library is done can I take five
minutes of your time please?
Kart/IfI could just point to the end of the first paragraph in the letter your holding, if you
would like to make an appointment, please call.
Jennings/I thought we were already on the agenda.
Karr/And so that's entirely up to the Council on when they'd like to.
Lehman/Well let's do the Library now and we'll see how much time we have.
Lisa Parker/Good evening. I have prepared comments which Shaner didn't you know.
Vanderhoef/He could have danced,
Parker/I'd like to begin by updating you on the building project again as you've seen the
construction fences gone up and we'll be putting signs up on the east side of the
construction fence so that people know that they can still get around the fence and
get into the pedestrian mall from that side. We've also sent a communication to
the Downtown Association to let them know that we're doing that kind of
signage. There's a seven foot wide area on the south side of the construction
fence between the fence and the parking that pedestrians can get through on.
Demolition begins on February 11 and is scheduled to take 10 days so. Relative
to our budget request we appreciate your continued support of our library
programs. We especially appreciate the fact that Steve has included our request
for a mid year addition ora maintenance person, that's going to be a great help as
we're moving into the temporary facility and then moving back out again. In fact
as a point of reference in the current building we have 12 restroom fixtures, and
when I say restroom fixtures I don't mean sinks. And in the expanded and
remodeled building we'll have 31 restroom fixtures so a maintenance person to
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 6
help us out with that's going to be a nice addition. In the first six months of this
fiscal year library circulation is tip 13 pement, this is a fairly extraordinary figure
and the time I've been on the Board that number has varied plus or minus one to
two percent and we throw out a lot of reasons why it's high although I think that
the economy has a lot to do with that. But we feel really good about more people
coming to the library because we're about to go into a period where there's going
to be a lot of disruption and you know we feel like that will help us to continue
good service. At our last meeting we voted to expand our park and read program
to every day of the week so now any day of the week when a library patron comes
in they can get their parking ticket stamped for an hour of parking in any of the
ramps. And parking continues to be a concern to patrons and we appreciated our
opportunity to visit with you the last time we all sat down together and all talked
about parking and I hope that we can continue to move forward on the plan for
short term parking in the Dubuque Street Ramp particularly when there's no more
parking available on 641A when construction starts on the project there. That's
about all I had and I'd be happy to take any questions.
Lehman/When do you anticipate? The demolition starts you say the first part of
February and of course then construction of that new building will start this year
and my understanding was that it would be the exterior work were hoping to have
done by Fall is that?
Parker/Well as I understand it we would be able to move into that new building at about
a year after the time that construction begins.
Lehman/Construction begins or Demolition starts do you know?
Parker/Well that's you know, I guess I'm not actually 100 percent sure when
construction will begin because after the demolition is done they're going to shore
up walls and all that kind of thing. But my understanding is that we would be
moving into that space February, Marchish next year.
Lehman/Okay.
Parker/Any other questions?
Kanner/Well we had talked about the maintenance worker this morning and we agreed
that we were not going to fund it in 03 fiscal year right?
Champion/We're going to move it up 6 months.
Kanner/So that's something that perhaps you might want to comment some more to let
us know why you think it might be important, if you want us to put it back into the
budget but as of this morning we took it out.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Cotmcil Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 7
Parker/Well I know Susan is counting on the help of that individual when we're making
a transition, when we're getting the library, I mean it's going to take a lot of work
to get the library ready to move into that space, to move into that space and then
you know unpack and all that kind of thing. She could probably speak more
clearly to her specific plans for that person. We did plan a mid year start so we'd
only have half a year of their wages to cover but I know just the job of getting
moved over into that space and providing as little disruption to public library
services as possible is going to be very critical.
Vanderhoef/And how does the janitor fit into that move?
Atkins/I was going to say Susan's in the lobby.
Parker/Susan's in the lobby, I know Susan would very much want to comment on this so.
Vanderhoef/Okay, in the meantime the Parks and Rec you said your using stamps now
rather than the.
Parker/We stamp the back of their card.
Letunan/Stamp parking card, yea.
Vanderhoef/Because you'd been using tokens and I had had a.
Parker/No I don't think we're using tokens.
Vanderhoef/For the parking lot.
Parker/No we just stamp the back of their parking ramp card.
Vanderhoef/So it was only in the ramp.
Parker/Yea and we do bus too, we'll give them a bus pass.
Vanderhoef/Okay, have you thought anymore about the parking for when the
construction starts on 641A?
Parker/Yes and I mean the Board discussed parking at our last meeting and we asked
Susan to have a conversation with Joe and Steve about a variety of approaches to
take in terms of dealing with short term parking in that space and what kind of
options were available and we're looking forward to getting some information
back from Susan on those conversations.
Vanderhoef/And so you'll be sending that forward to us then at that point after you have
some?
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 8
Parker/I would presume we would communicate with you in some way yea.
Pfab/Dee I think you sent out an e-mail today saying or armouncement of some sort, an
announcement I believe it was that you can park in more one ramp.
Parker/There's three, any of the three ramps that are staffed.
O'Doimell/(can't hear).
Pfab/Okay so in other words, I didn't hear you say that so that's why I wanted to be sure
that that was known to everyone that that was good since you were stamping
parking ramp tickets which where they came from didn't make any difference to
you.
Parker/Right.
Champion/I think it's important that we allow Susan to comment on the fact that we
talked about moving, bumping the library, employees, the new employees up to
the next fiscal year and how that would affect.
Pfab/I think there might be a more humane way to say that.
Lehman/Well it says it.
Susan Craig/Well reality is reality you know.
Lehman/Right.
Craig/As I understand the City Manager's recommendation which now I understand your
proposing to change was that we had requested two staffpeople to help us
transition into and then run the new library and one was a full time maintenance
person which was in his recommendation to begin in January of 2003 and the
second is a librarian position which would begin in January of 2004 and I'm sorry
I'm late, your a little ahead of schedule here.
Lehman/Yea.
Craig/And so I understand your decision is going to be to move the maintenance position
into the next fiscal year.
Lehman/To begin July of 2003 instead of January 2003, that was the discussion earlier
today.
Craig/Right, right. You know we can work with that, we just.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 9
Lehman/Bless your heart.
Champion/That's so nice of you, honestly.
Craig/You know we absolutely, by the time we open those doors we have got to have
that additional maintenance person, but you know we'll just, I understand time is
tight and so.
Kanner/Your saying when you open the door to the.
Champion/New.
Kanner/Fully renovated both sides or when you open the doors to the new (can't hear).
Craig/Well I had asked for it mid year so we would have it during the time that we're
moving and because there's just going to be so much confusion, I, people are
going to be coming in a different entrance, the bathrooms are going to be all over
the place, everything's going to be overused and the maintenance needs are going
to be up and we're going to want to be taking good care of it because in the
transitional space about half of that space is the new building the way it's going to
be. It's going to have the new carpet in it, and everything and we want to take
good care of it which is why we asked for it mid year, if it means we have to hire
people to come in and do the carpet more often or whatever that aren't our paid
staff but we hire them from outside to come in and do some of those things you
know I understand that the budget is tight. But that was the thinking behind it was
helping us move, making sure that the new things are well taken care of so that
half of it isn't worn out by the time we really open a year later.
Kanner/I hear what your saying, as you know the budget is tight for us and we felt that
we could push that back. How much smaller is the new half of the new library
than the old half or is the same size in square feet?
Craig/The new half is a little bit bigger actually, not much, it's a lot less efficient though
because we're using three floors instead of two, and all the, most of the public
restrooms end up on the new second floor which will be the third floor, all the
meeting rooms are down in the basement so it's a very it's going to be an efficient
operation while we're in that transitional space and we had another staff person to
help us with that it would be good but we'll get by, when times are tough that's
what you do.
Champion/Love you tonight.
Lehman/Any other questions tonight for Susan?
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 10
Pfab/I think the better way to say instead of chopping off a person we just aren't going to
give you any more money, what you do with it that's yours, that's your
opportunity I guess.
Champion/That's not what we said.
Pfab/But that's really what it got down to.
Craig/I understand and if you were saying you were going to take it out and leave it out I
would be squawking but if you know six months, I can clean bathrooms I do it all
the time.
Lehman/Steve.
Craig/Steve grimaced. It won't get that back.
Lehman/No I'm sure it won't.
Vanderhoef/Be careful they may put it in your job description.
Craig/Library Directors learn a lot about library maintenance they didn't learn in library
school. Anything else I can help you with?
Champion/Great, exciting.
Kanner/Yes, I have, first our condolences on Larry Eckhardt on his death.
Craig/Thank you.
Champion/Oh yea.
Lehman/Yes.
Kanner/How is the fundraising going and what is the prognosis for a new director or
carrying on your fundraising mission? Because we are counting on some of that
money to offset the costs of the library.
Craig/I understand, we have two parts to our campaign and one of them is to raise $1.5
million dollars to fund the furnishings and equipment for the new building, the
other part is several million dollars we hope to enhance our endowment fund with.
As you could predict in this economic times we're not where we wished we were,
we are about halfway to the $1.5 million, we are you know continuing to work
and we're just extending some of our deadlines out a little bit. We still have every
belief that we will raise $1.5 million dollars for the building and give the city a big
check it just might be a little bit longer than what we had hoped for.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 11
Kanner/Do you have a contingency plan of what you won't get if you don't raise certain
amounts of money?
Craig/In fact the money, the full amount of the project was in the bond proposal, is in the
$18.4 million dollars, that, as we campaigned, I mean it was your decision and
city staff's decision to go ahead and recommend putting the full amount for the
project on the bond in case the fundraising didn't come up to expectations or
whatever. So the total cost of the project is the $18.4 million, it's our intent to
help defray those costs through the private fundraising so the bonding we will
help pay off those bonds. Is that the way you'd put it Steve?
Kanner/So your budgeting figuring that we're going to get the full amount that was put
by the Board, the Library Board. Is that what your budget reflects?
Atkins/Our budget reflects $18.4 million dollars in borrowing, now you want to raise
$1.5 million, let me just try some arithmetic, is that to be subtracted from the
$18.47
Craig/Our intent is to give you payments toward that eight, that would pay that bond off
more quickly than the city could otherwise do.
Atkins/Now the financing arrangements that are yet to be resolved until we actually go
out and sell the debt, I need to ask Kevin a question, but I don't want to get the
bum steer on this, too much money. Kevin if we sell the $18.4 and the library is
able to raise $1.5 I'm assuming from interest income generated by the $18.5 your
actually talking about making a debt payment?
Kevin O'Malley/Right, we could put that aside and have a debate to debt service for that.
Atkins/Okay so we can actually set that aside, that doesn't get us into any arbitrage
problems or anything?
O'Malley/Not the $1.5 that she generates.
Atkins/Not the $1.5, okay, all right we're okay on that.
Pfab/I have a.
Atkins/Susan I think ultimately, Susan I think ultimately were going to want to get that
all committed into some sort of agreement and understanding and the thing
because then we can just routinely draw upon that account.
Kanner/So that's not figured into our budget as of yet and that's not.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 12
Atkins/No it is not.
Kanner/So that's something that.
Atkins/That just (can't hear).
Kanner/Maybe this year we could adjust, have a mid year adjustment to our budget and
our debt would not be as great if we can count on close to 100 pement or we
might have to do it at a lower percent.
Vanderhoef/Or are you saying Steven that instead of going out for the full $18.4 that we
might only go $17.4 or something like that and never borrow?
O'Donnell/Well you can't count on that money.
Atkins/Personally I think it's a little risky, yea.
Karmer/I'm just saying that it perhaps should be reflected some way in our budget and so
that our budget debt does not look as bad as it is, I don't know exactly how that
would be done.
Atkins/I don't either.
Kanner/But it's something that we should, we should get maybe a report back and a
formal agreement is a good idea.
Atkins/Yea.
Vanderhoef/Right.
Craig/And again it depends on our ability in hard times to go out and raise that kind of
money, like I said we're about halfway there now.
Champion/I think that's terrific.
Craig/And a lot of that is in the form of pledges and things that are coming in over the
next few years so we don't have that amount in hand to write a check to anybody.
Atkins/We have to talk about that because they're going to have to do that.
Lehman/Okay.
Craig/And do remember that sometime probably in the Fall I hope, I hope the Fall of
2004 we will have moved out of the first floor space and some space in the
basement with the intent that we will rent that space and that you know I mean it
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 13
will take some money, it will take some money to manage that property but that
rental income was intended to help pay down the debt for the library as well. I
mean again I would assume you would make a choice about how you wanted that
applied to that debt but that's another income source which is a ways out there.
Lehman/Right.
Champion/The other thing is.
Letunan/Go ahead lrvin we need to get going.
Pfab/The question I would like to ask you, are you comfortable telling us how much cash
you have on hand of that $1.5 million your tempting to raise?
Craig/I couldn't tell you, I mean I don't know.
Pfab/The reason why I ask you that which is not the important part but there's a cost to
us to go out and borrow the money right, over and above the interest, whatever
cash they have on hand if we can use that to end up borrowing less, is that, does
that make sense or not?
Champion/Well I think they'll figure that out.
Wilburn/I think not giving, some of those are in pledges and they.
Pfab/No, no, no, I said the amount of cash, and I'm not pressing her to.
Atkins/ It costs to borrowing and we calculate that in I mean that's, if we reduce the costs
of borrowing, I mean bond council and those sorts of things.
Pfab/But is it a percentage? Does it come out?
Atkins/It comes out to be, yea I'm sure it's a percentage of the face value of the bonds
traditionally something such of that.
Pfab/Is there a fixed rate over and above the other expenses?
Champion/Well I think we have to worry about (can't hear).
Atkins/I don't understand that question Irvin help me out.
Pfab/So instead of paying a commission of 6 percent or 10 pement or 50 percent or 1
percent or halfa percent, is that an up front cost that we could avoid depending on
how much cash that may be at hand?
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 14
Atkins/You could avoid it but generally we would probably capitalize that cost into the
face value of the debt, when we're ultimately done we would walk away with
$18.312 or something such as that because the borrowing costs are covered under
that.
Champion/And you don't really know what's going to happen during construction, we
may have cost over mns.
Pfab/Whatever you have at front.
Craig/I had hoped that if there was an issue and something came up and it was a couple
hundred thousand dollars and it had to be done rather than you know not have any
furniture in the children's room we would come to some agreement about the
amount you know that we could use some of that gift money to help pay for that
which I think the gifters would like to see happen you know if there's a crunch in
there somewhere, right not we're okay and so far.
Lehman/Well we need to wind this up because we've used our.
Champion/Thank you.
Lehman/Actually we've used 20 minutes but I'm sure when the time comes to bond you
and Susan and will get together and figure it out.
Atkins/Yea we'll get Susan briefed on that but I think the important thing is that the
library's pledging a portion of their fundraising to help retire their debt.
Lehman/Right.
Atkins/And that's what we need to get down in writing so that's understood.
Craig/Right.
Atkins/Okay.
Lehman/Thank you Susan.
Champion/Thanks.
Vanderhoef/Thank you.
Lehman/All right Council we have, we're 10 minutes ahead of schedule, the Jaycees are
here, they have no appointment on the agenda do you want to let them take?
Champion/Yes.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 15
O'Donnell/Sure.
Pfab/I move we give them 10 minutes.
Lehman/All right 10 minutes.
Jaycees
Scott Jennings/Thank you very much. Sorry about the confusion of the appointment, I
must have misread the letter or something.
Lehman/You need to give your name before you start.
Jennings/I'm Scott, I'm chairing the Coralville fireworks, or the Iowa City/Coralville
Jaycees Fireworks Festival this year and last year was the first year we asked City
Council to help fund the festival and this year we're coming back to ask the
Council to help fund the festival again. I was hoping to come in here with a lot
better information than what I have but because of a flaw in the, or not a flaw a
hurdle in our planning the ability to set a date has not yet been able to set because
of some scheduling conflicts with the park. We had planned on having the
fireworks festival on July 6th of this year which is the Saturday following the
Fourth of July again so we would not have to compete with the Jazz Festival or
with Coralville's fireworks to make it more of a community event to have more
people show up, to have more, to allow more people to come. Last year we felt
we had a record crowd with the choreographed fireworks show the Saturday
afterwards so we decided we'd want to do it again. At this time the park has been
scheduled to be used by the Shakespearean Play Society to hold a play that night
starting at 8:00 which indicate that we can't hold a musical festival all day before
the fireworks which would have to begin later at night approximately 10:30 or
11:00 which would diminish our crowd at that standpoint. To do it on the Fourth
of July we would have to compete again with Coralville and we would not be
allowed to have the festival that we had last year because the bands, the food
vendors and everyone that we had last year will be at Coralville. So tonight after
I leave here we will be discussing alternatives to the point of where and what we
want to do with the fireworks festival this year.
Lehman/So your plans are still a little bit in the year.
O'Donnell/I think it was incredibly successful last year and I enjoyed it.
Jeunings/Thank you.
Kanner/Do we have a contractual agreement for the Shakespeare Festival days?
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 16
Champion/Oh we can't move that.
Kanner/Is that pretty (can't hear).
Atkins/Yes, Riverside Theater was putting together their promotion and under that
agreement they have sort of dibs.
Wilburn/The materials are already out.
Atkins/Yea they've already put it out.
Kanner/I do like the way you folks are splitting up the nights, I think that's good, spread
it out for a whole week of celebrating. The Jazz Festival is going to go the
weekend before?
Jennings/I believe so that's, I talked to someone and they said it's not 100 percent but it's
99 percent sure it's going to go the weekend before. I was not aware that the,
when I went to schedule the event earlier this month I was not aware that the Jazz
or the Shakespearean play had booked the park for the day of the Sixth. I sat on
the Board of the Jaycees last year and it had never been brought to the Board that
we needed to have a specific date that we need to know by, but we did know on
July 7th of last year that we were going to do it the Saturday afterwards so we
have as I said we have, kind of now up in the air of what we can do. If we do do it
on the 4th again we will not have the capability of simul casting it to music
because all the equipment is going to the highest bidder and we are by far not the
highest bidder and doing a choreographed show.
Pfab/Your asking how much compared to last year? Asking for how much help.
Jennings/We're asking for $12,000, last year we asked for $12,000 and I believe you
gave us about $5,000.
Pfab/Optimism is a great.
Jennings/We have to be optimistic when everything we get is by donation sir.
Pfab/I congratulate you on your optimism so.
Lehman/Any questions, Council.
Karr/Excuse me, can I have your last name.
Jermings/Jennings.
Karr/Thanks.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 17
Jennings/Sorry.
Kanner/Can you tell us what, if you got the $12,000 would you do things differently
than if you got the $5,000 or vice versa or are you just figuring you just have to
fund raise harder to get that, that you need that money?
Jennings/If I was, if we received the $12,000 yea it would be less fundraising, last year's
celebration cost an excess of $65,000. We would have paid for that all with if it
would have been a cash transition on all accounts it would have been an excess of
$65,000. And the largest majority of that would have went to fireworks, there's a
$30,000 fireworks show put on last year. Last year though some of the fireworks
was donated so it helped donate that, some of the advertising was donated so you
know contributions in different forms. As far as answering your question in a
direct manner, if we get $5,000 from you this year yes we'll campaign harder to
get more money, if we get $12,000 we'll campaign harder to get more money to
see if we can improve the festival, so it's not really a matter of you know, either
way we're going to try to improve what we did if it's possible. If we only raise
$500.00 this year then we'll have a $500.00 festival. If we raise $70,000 this year
we'll have a $70,000 festival.
Kanner/With our budget being pretty tight it's probably not likely that we would be able
to get close to that $12,000 but if you could just give us an example of one thing
that you would do in addition that you didn't do last year with the extra money if
we gave it?
Jennings/We'd probably do a different, more fireworks would be one thing, we would
probably try to improve maybe more bands or longer bands, more bands perhaps,
more kids games would be one thing that we would do, that seemed to be the
largest, people conm~ented the most on the kids last year so we would maybe try
to do more with that than we did this year.
O'Donnell/That's good.
Kanner/Thank you.
Jennings/Thank you again for taking the time I appreciate the time very much.
Vanderhoef/ Your welcome.
Champion/Thanks.
Lehman/Okay Public Art.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 18
Public Art
Sandra Hudson/I'm Sandra Hudson, and I'm the current chair of your Public Art
Advisory Committee. Last year I was before you to retain a line item for Public
Art of $100,000, and I'd like to take 30 seconds ifI may and review some
statistics I gave you last year. The arts are a growth business, they're a significant
part of the economy in the U. S. Six percent of the gross national product is based
on the arts, that's more than based on construction which is only 4.8 and just
under wholesale trade which is 6.9. And as an example the Mayor's office in
Bloomington, Indiana, population 60,000 just like us a home of Indiana
University, a university town just like us, showed a total impact from the arts of
$53 million annually. That's not counting the things that we can't put a price on
such as sense of place, spirit of community, or the value when you are trying to
bring in new corporations and employees into the area. Last year after you heard
these statistics you restored $25,000 to the Public Art budget, however you've
upped the ante on me, so there's nothing left for me to do except give you some
more data and so before you is the information on the number one, number two,
and number three arts towns in America. I hope that you've visited one or more
of them because if you have there's no need for me to try and say more about the
economic benefits a leading art town will gain. And you see how close we are to
becoming a very significant art town, in fact we rate better than 1, 2 or 3 in many
categories and across the board we're really moving up. So please look to see how
Iowa City compares, most of us know we live in a great small arts town but most
of us are surprised to see just how great when we make comparisons, well now
you can it's right there in that cross tabulation. We're a little bit like the antique
road show, we know we like this little gem of a town but we really aren't aware of
how valuable it is. I think it's the same with that $100,000 line item for public
art, we know we like art and all but what else is that $100,000 is that $100,000
going to buy. Let me share with you what it has bought for you in the last nine
months. And that is addition to the sculptures on the ped mall and the bronze
literary walk, that $100,000 has been used again and again and again to bring
state, federal and foundation dollars from outside the community into your
community. Every proposal for funding for a cultural event, cultural dollars has
been made using public arts allocation of $100,000 to show your local
commitment and you know you won't get those dollars if the local commitment is
not there. So thanks to that line item of $100,000 you had Englert Night Out, Art
In the Windows, The Iowa City Cultural Incubator, The Epicenter Project and
Save America's Treasures, they all showed that $100,000 line item as Iowa City's
cultural commitment. So is $418,000 a good return on investment or what? So
please I'm asking you be creative, find a way to maintain that $100,000 line item
for Public Art, it brings you much, much more than just Public Art.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 19
Champion/Yea I think it's really important that we maintain money for Public Art but I
think it's important to know that I doubt lucky for these other to~vns that are not
listed, they're not in Iowa, they're not dealing with Iowa State Government.
Hudson/No but this $418,000 are the results of cultural commitment, a great deal of it
from our state.
Vanderhoef/Sandra one of the things that needs to be recognized in that $418,000 is that
when we started the Public Art Program we had enough funds in our general
funds so we didn't have to borrow and do long term financing on it so the cost is
more than $418,000 for last years and anything we would put in this year because
there's no money in the general fund for it so if it goes out to bonding it's costing
you that much more.
Hudson/I think there may be ways if you look creatively that you can retain that
$100,000 line item and I'll leave it up to members of the Council to think
creatively. I know that I'm sure you will.
Pfab/Sandra we're open to hints.
Hudson/I think that there may be some things within your budget that could well come
under the umbrella of Public Art and therefore maintain that line item.
Lehman/Just as a hint.
Hudson/I'm sorry.
Lehman/I say just as a hint when we did the Wolf Avenue bridge we spent a significant
amount of money that a beautiful bridge and when we did the Summit Street
Bridge we certainly spent a lot more money than we would have had to make just
a plain bridge so I think there perhaps is a possibility in the terms of creativity if
we had a line item of $100,000 half of which would go into construction projects
which we already do. The cost to the, as far as the budget goes would be the
$50,000 which we have talked about, the other $50,000 we're already spending on
projects anyway. Anyway we can discuss that.
Hudson/But that is creative, and that would accomplish what I'm asking for.
Kanner/Sandra it drives me crazy when asterisks with no footnote, what are these
asterisks mean here in your chart? You have four small art towns, one asterisk,
and then one, two by Iowa City, do they mean anything or is this copy from some
other thing that?
Hudson/I'm sorry I don't have my copy right here, I'm sorry. Okay, not having here but
what my husband just informed me was the.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 20
(END OF 02-16, SIDE ONE)
Hudson/Tape that I took this data from the 100 small, Best Small Arts Towns in America
and the double asterisks is to indicate that this is data I put together myself.
Lehman/Okay.
Hudson/Iowa City I did on my own.
Kanner/Is this widely viewed this Best Small Art Towns, who puts that together?
Hudson/Oh it's just a publication and I used it.
Kanner/I mean who does it? Who see it? I'm looking at this as a positive thing.
Hudson/It is a book that is available at Prairie Lights.
Champion/Terrific.
Hudson/It's a commercial, it's a commercial book.
Pfab/And the title of the book was what?
Hudson/"The 100 Best Small Arts Towns in America."
Champion/And I think you have to remember too that we did put money into the Englert,
we're putting money into the Riverside Shakespearean Theater, so we're not
ignoring the arts, we, I think most of us totally support them, and we appreciate
your work..
Hudson/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you.
O'Donnell/Thank you.
Nancy Purington/Good Evening, I'm Nancy Purington the current Executive Director of
Arts Iowa City, former chairman of Public Art Advisory and this evening I just
remind you that yes we are very appreciative of your support of the performing
arts but this is a very business in the art world and that's the visual arts, so if you
want to divide up equal portions please don't leave us out of the pie. We are a
very different section of that arts world. And it comes with very different
handicaps and very rules and as far as Arts Iowa City is concerned we are free and
open to the public year round except for right now while we're helping the Englert
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 21
but what you have in front of you, the cover says Weather Dance Epicenter, a
couple years ago Arts Iowa City with a tremendous amount of help from the City
Council was able to locate itself in the jewel of the crown in Iowa City at 207 E.
Washington Street where we had a lot of interest and we had a meeting every
week called the "Cultural District Discussion Group" which several of you
attended and out of that weekly meeting we were trying to find an identity for
Iowa City as a cultural center, cultural district, I had reviewed the NEA,
American's for the Arts District Outlines, Power Points if you will, and one of the
major power points was for cultural district was public art. And in a list of 12 or
13 arts or Iowa City has all of those things for a cultural district so what we were
trying to do is develop and market Iowa City in general as based on the resources
that exist here and so trying to determine where is this district, on the back you'll
see a map. We couldn't just decide that it was Burlington to Jefferson or Clinton
to Gilbert but that it continue to (can't hear) flow and so it ~vas it had circles and
spirals and the name Epicenter group out of it that Iowa City has a national
reputation as a cultural Epicenter even though it has not been identified, labeled
and marketed, it's in the national consciousness wherever you go. So how can we
help the community? How can we help the community draw more attraction,
draw more business, draw more people to this town? We already exist, how can
we market ourselves so. Just as we had everything sort of outlined an NEA grant
came across the desk of Larry Eckhardt and he said this grant is exactly what we
just finished developing as downtown development strategy, economic
development strategy, utilizing art programs that are in place, public art being a
major one. And so he just filled out the form and wrote it off and we were
accepted and that was you know just a small miracle and Benson and Hepker
designed this and so a lot of it was in kind, a lot of the printing was in kind from a
local business and the Epicenter is located at Weatherdance, the first public art
project which was done in conjunction with construction so that we have tried to
be prudent as far as where and how that money is spent so that we're multiplying
it conceptually. And you have you know on your place a lot of subjects to look at
as far as funding or cutting and as a person whose whole life has been in the world
of the visual arts and in arts education, I know that when the going gets tough, art,
music and PE are first, art being the first in the alphabet. And I'm asking you
tonight to cut everything equally, cut everything equally, that's my creative
solution, but don't cut us out and don't cut out more of our, a percentage of our
performance in your world than you would cut any other public social human
service that you have to deal with. It's just easy because it's traditional but I'm
hoping you'll look at the work we've done, these were just delivered the day Larry
died so I just picked them up today, he had a lot to do with the design of it, and
that's a lot of volunteer energy, don't discourage us. Thank you.
Champion/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you. Okay Everet Connor Center.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 22
Everet Connor Rights and Resource Center for Ind. Living
Karen Kubby/Good evening, I'm Karen Kubby and this is Harriet Gooding from the
Everet Connor Center. I'm here with the Emma Goldman Clinic as a major
cosponsor of the ADA event the last couple of years. And Harriet has some
information about what happened last year. We traditionally have done some kind
of keynote speaker and a parade which many of you have participated in as a City
Council and last year we realized that year after year if you do the same kind of
thing your event starts to lose some energy and so we wanted to do something
different last year, and last year we kept our keynote speaker but we added an art
fair and artists came from all over the state of Iowa, they came from Des Moines,
they came from Iowa City, they came from surrounding counties and some from
southern Iowa, and they were artists with disabilities and artists without
disabilities or not seeing disabilities. And so our group has not exactly formulated
what we're going to do but the art fair aspect of it was so successful, the artists
sold work and the community enjoyed viewing it and purchasing it and so it's
very likely that that is going to be what our plans are going to be for this year. But
we know a lot of our expenses are going to be very similar even if the format of
the total event changes a little bit. Did you want to add anything about that?
Harriet Gooding/The legislation's that we're celebrating The American's with
Disabilities Act is civil rights legislation for people with disabilities and the
community activity of person's with and without disabilities I think is very
important for everyone, we, by having the parade's that we had in the past and the
art fair where persons with and without disabilities participated equally it is an
enormous, this is uncomfortable, it's just promotes everyone's sense of self worth
and dignity to involve equally.
Kubby/And the parade we found people loved participating in the parade but the parade
in July was a real burden physically for a lot of people and even when we
shortened the route it was real difficult for people.
Lehman/This was a great event I thought, really, I know it was the first one and I know it
will get better but I thought it was a (can't hear).
Kubby/Well and we had some bumps in the road, we had some transportation problems
with our main speaker, but he joined us via telephone and did the training anyway
so he was a real trooper and it made it more difficult, it also made some expenses
be less and some be more because of that and for example I assume you have our
budget in front of you. Do you have this as I?
Lehman/We have your request is all.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 23
Kanner/Just the gross amount that your requesting.
Kubby/Oh I thought that, I'm sorry I would have made copies for you to see the details of
the budget, and there's an asterisk that's explained.
Kanner/All right.
Vanderhoef/We've had this thing about asterisks in the last few days.
Kubby/Last year we had some big travel expenses because our speaker needed some
special accommodations for his travel and so the travel would go down from
$1,300 to $500.00 for travel and $500.00 1 think may be a little high depends on
when they get tickets and what kind of accommodations, depending on who the
keynote is. Other expenses, because I don't have that in front of me now.
Lehman/You will have in just a couple of minutes so just.
Kubby/They're mostly the same from last year, I think we put our food budget up a little
bit although that amount also includes the facilities donating a discounted meal
amount, we provide lunch during the training because it's such a long period of
time and many people are coming from various surrounding counties so they've
gotten up pretty early to get ready for their paratransit ride plus they're here so we
really feel like we need to feed them. On the, do you have a question Dee?
Vanderhoef/I'm not real clear what the training is that your talking about.
Kubby/The training that happened last year was about the legislation, about what people
need to do to become activists to lobby about what their needs are in the
community as people with disabilities and just how to advocate for themselves, so
it was an art fair, it was a celebration of the legislation, but the keynote was also a
training, so it's kind of a lot of events rolled into one.
Vanderhoef] Okay thanks.
Kubby/So I'll wait until you can get a copy of that. So you can see that our expenses are
less this year and mostly it's because the travel expenses are a little bit less this
year projected. There's, under transportation you'll see that there is
transportation from various counties to pay for paratransit and there's also
transportation for artists. We would apply for Iowa Arts Council money and if we
didn't get that then that would just go away, and artists would not be offered any
kind of stipend for travel. It's very difficult, a lot of people with disabilities have
trouble with transportation for themselves let alone their display and their artwork
and so we wanted to offer some assistance in that participation. On the income
side the Connor's Center's amount is down a little bit, they just moved into a new
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 24
facility and their expenses associated with that and t his is their first year and so
they didn't feel like they could commit exactly the same amount but wanted to
make a substantial commitment. The statewide Independent Living Council, we
don't know what that status of that money is and so we didn't feel comfortable,
and we don't have a long history of getting money from them and so we didn't
feel comfortable putting anything down there although we're not sure if we'll be
able to get that money or not to apply.
Gooding/(Can't hear) money is all that in the past have provided so training qualified but
depending on our direction it may or may not even qualify to ask for money.
Kubby/We have had a good history of the Hospital School and with getting community
co-sponsorships from financial institutions and other community organizations
and so we feel those moneys are very solid. The registration fees are down to zero
because we've tried to collect registration fees for the training but so many people
qualify based on income we gave everybody scholarships that it was I can't attend
if I have to pay and so we just need to realize that reality and raise the money to
provide the training. So what we're asking from the City of Iowa City is a little
bit more than last year than last year so it's $18,060 that we're requesting.
Lehman/Questions from Council?
Kanner/Yea I have.
Lehman/Yes Steven.
Kanner/ Yea I'm amazed first that you do so much with so little money and I applaud
you for that. Could you, I'd like to have a few numbers if you can recollect those.
How many people do you think have attended the first ADA events and do you
know if there were any outside people that came into this? Is it marketed to other
areas?
Gooding/At the Connor Center we serve seven counties and that most of our counties,
individuals do come from each of those counties. Numbers when we have the
parade we had 38 different organizations and groups participate and I don't know
walking pedestrians and so forth I, several hundred though and very large
gathering at the park where we rallied and so forth. Last year I would venture
near 100 people participated in the training and the passer's by are all I know was
the artists did well I think almost every participant from the artists said that they
were very pleased from the outcome of the sales that they had.
Kubby/And most of the publicity in other counties is toward consumers and not the
general public.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 25
Champion/Karen how many art exhibits that you had booths or whatever you want to call
them? Do you remember?
Kubby/What did we have 20ish?
Gooding/About 18 actually, we had a couple people that for some reason or another were
unable to attend.
Kubby/We had people coming on a greyhound bus with their artwork.
Lehman/Wasn't that the same one where we had the Accessible House and we had the
architect from the City down, the drawings of the house with the?
Kubby/Yes.
Atkins/University.
Lehman/Yea, I mean she was really good I thought that was really well presented and
there were a lot of folks when I was there anyway that were looking at that.
Kubby/Well and the city, it's a natural way for the city to highlight its programs because
the city is doing some things and so it's a good collaboration in that sense as well.
Vanderhoef/Did you do this at College Green?
Kubby/No we moved to the Ped Mall and we were in front the fountain and we had
music on the stage and the art fair was in the parking lot which we would need to
figure out another place this year and we were in the public library which was
really great because it gave people a chance to be outside in the summer but then
there was the coolness of being inside with water fountains as well as the meal
and accessible restrooms as well.
Kanner/Do you have a date for this year?
Gooding/It will probably be, although the committee will make this decision July 27
which is a Saturday following the anniversary of the signing of the ADA.
Kubby/And it might depend on the keynote or when the Mayor can come or whenever
our invited guests need the convenience to so, anybody who wants to join our
committee too to help us organize this would be welcome.
Gooding/Very welcome, we've had the same dedicated people for probably seven years
and Karen is one of them, Hospital Schools, members from the art, Women's
Resource.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 26
Vanderhoeff Yourself.
Gooding/Myself, and Board from the Connor Center as well as individuals with
disabilities have worked very hard and a number of years to put on a good
activity.
Kanner/Are you applying for a Convention and Business Visitors Grant, are you working
with them at all in any capacity?
Kubby/We're not.
Kanner/But do you?
Kubby/The new stretch for us is the Iowa Arts Council.
Lehman/CVB would be very, very difficult to work for a grant because of the criteria that
we use in awarding those grant, and that is the number of overnights that will
come into town, the number of folks and whatever and I think this is a wonderful
event but I think it would be very difficult for CVB to work that into the criteria
that we use for grants.
Kubby/There's probably a very small percentage of participants who are staying over
night.
Lehman/Right, right, although CVB is obviously interested in seeing the event because
it's good for the community.
Gooding/(Can't hear) that I was made aware of.
Lehman/Any other questions?
O'Donnell/Nope.
Kubby/Well thank you for your consideration.
Lehman/Thank you.
Pfab/Thank you.
Lehman/Good luck.
Kubby/Thanks.
Johnson County Historical Society
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 27
Lehman/Johnson County Historical Society, are we, is someone here for that?
O'Donnell/Five minutes.
Karr/Do you know Margaret?
Vanderhoef/Margaret Wieting.
Wilbum/I was just saying I was on RAGBRAI last year when this was.
Vanderhoef/Yea and this was when I was in Thailand and so it was like, what happened
here.
Atkins/Thailand, RAGBRAI, you get setters you.
man/We'll take their money.
Lehman/Okay.
Kanner/I think I was in Cedar Rapids maybe, exciting.
Champion/Good night Karen.
Lehn~arff Good night Karen.
Margaret Wieting/Sorry I didn't realize (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/We're ahead of schedule.
Kanner/Where's the community put on.
Lehman/Yea about five minutes.
(talking within a couple Council people, can't hear)
Kristin Sumrne~ill/Are you ready?
Lehman/We are ready.
Champion/We are ready.
Kristin Summerwill/I'm Kristin Summerwill and I'm the current President of the
Johnson County Historical Society and Margaret Wieting is the Executive
Director and we're going to brief and to the point. First off thank you for your
past support, as a nonprofit funding from you, the City of Coralville, and the
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 28
County is definitely our main stay. And in view of that relationship of the core
funding we try really hard in all of our programming and the selection and
recruitment of our Board and in our future long term planning to really represent
the interests of the City of Iowa City, the City of Coralville and the county at
large. But I want to say that we also make a really great and successful, especially
this past year attempt at funding ourselves. We in the last fiscal year have been
able to raise just a little over $100,000 through grants, through individual
sponsorships, and through corporate gifts. And we're just starting to do a
corporate membership drive, we're just beginning to do that and we're hoping it
will be successful, and we're going to have a renewed members as well, because
we have lots of visions and lots of plans and we know that you can't support all of
that. And so I think from my standpoint it's all good news, we're very pleased
with our director and our staff and so as representing the Board I would say it's
good days, it's good news, thank you.
Margaret Wieting/And I just wanted to share a few things that we are currently doing to
be active in Iowa City and to have a presence. We will be continuing our site at
the Old Capital Mall which we're really excited about and out of the tragedy of
the fire at Old Capital what has evolved is that we have met with Old Capital
Museum Director and the Executive Director and assistant Ann and Shalla, and in
talking with David Brimsel about school field trips, as you know the Old Capital
Building will be closed for a substantial mount of time and this is the time of
year in another month when a lot of school field trips were counting on making it
an excursion to Iowa City to Natural History Museum and to Old Capital and so
what we did is we have worked with Ann and Shalla and we're going to use our
site at Old Capital, we have a Mesquaki, a early pioneer settlement area and a fur
trading post and what they have put up now are the fire, the pictures of the interior
and exterior of the Old Capital Museum and so together we're going to design
curriculum that will integrate Iowa history, Johnson County history and the Old
Capital Museum history and so the schools are very excited that they are not
having to cancel and of course the Natural History Museum is excited too because
many schools make that excursion to go to each of those so we're very excited
about that. We're also offering a series of special events, tomorrow we have one
on, it's a Humanities Iowa Speaker's Bureau series that we're offering, and it's on
trains across Iowa and that's tomorrow at noon to 1:00. We also because we have
that space offered to take one of the murals from the Alternative High School and
when I met with Liz Nichols they needed space for two more and so we were able
to accommodate that and so we have three of those, they're not hung yet but they
are in our site at Old Capital. We will continue to be involved with the Irvin
Weber Days, held those at the Plum Grove Site and that's a family day where
people can come, last year there was a wonderful picture of people with a tug of
war and so we're looking fbrward to that and maybe we'll win the Irvin Weber
Quiz Bowl again, we have a wonderful trophy. And then of course we'll do the
time machine camp at City Park so we're very excited about all the things we can
do to be a presence within Iowa City and help tell the story.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 29
Pfab/A strange piece of information came across and maybe you can figure out how to
make something out of it. What is happening the Chinese is buying the scrap
from the World Trade Center and there's a fear that they're going to make little
models to sell, I don't think that's going to happen so that's was a little roar in the.
Wieting/Oh thinking that they would do that with the Old.
Pfab/No their shipping the steel to China, the scrap steel.
Karmer/Oh thinking of the old dome?
Pfab/No, no, the World Trade Center.
O'Donnell/The World Trade Center.
Wieting/But I don't understand.
Pfab/So what I'm saying to you is there any scraps that you can make out for souvenirs
around?
Wieting/Oh from the Old Capital dome or the scaffolding.
Pfab/Yea, whatever.
Wieting/I don't know that we have, I don't know that that's our.
Kanner/That's your second business life there Irvin.
Lehman/That's kind of tacky though I don't.
Wieting/No, I don't think, no.
Pfab/I didn't say, I didn't give it my blessing, I just said is there a way. Is there
somebody, is that trigger something?
Wieting/Yea, we did have a presentation last week Ann and Shalla came and showed
pictures and they did bring the clapper from the bell, they did bring the scaffolding
that maybe could, but those are things now that will, that is definitely out of our
realm. I don't know.
Pfab/I mean you were talking about other displays and things you had and that just kind
of drifted through my mind as you were talking so I thought I'd share that with
you.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 30
Wieting/Oh okay.
Vanderhoef/Where is your space?
Wieting/It's on the second floor, it's about, if you know the side where Gifted is.
Vanderhoef/I know that space, I thought you were talking about that you had a space in
Old Capital.
Wieting/I'm sorry.
Vanderhoef/Not Capital Center.
Wieting/The Old Capital Mall, Town Center really throws people but we've had a site at
the, on the second floor.
Vanderhoef/ Yea, I know that one.
Wieting/Okay, and that's what I'm talking about.
Vanderhoef/But that's where your going to do your Mesquaki.
Wieting/Right and that's been there, yea, this is beginning of our second year of being
that site.
Pfab/Very interesting.
Kanner/I have a question for you. Speaking of the realms your involved with and Irving
Weber, have you been approached at all about the statue that some people are
planning for Irving Weber and also another person involved intimately in the
history of Iowa City and Johnson County is Phil Hubbard and I was wondering if
you have any talk about doing anything in relationship to Phil Hubbard and some
of the history that he brings to the area?
Wieting/Yes, I've read about the statue but no one's addressed us about the Irving Weber
statue, concerning Phil Hubbard yes last year we did have him come in February
where we did have him do an introduction for Joe McGill from the Black History
Museum in Cedar Rapids and we will plan something to honor him.
O'Dormell/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you ladies.
Champion/You guys do a lot.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 31
Lehman/Okay folks, it is break time.
O'Donnell/We're out of here until quarter after eight.
Lehman/Well why don't we try to get back here like 5 after, we may just wrap this thing
up before.
Champion/You'd better hope there's somebody here to talk to us.
(BREAK)
(Small talk with Council members)
Lehman/Mormon Trek Historical Society, is somebody here for that yet? Do you know
who's going to be here?
Atkins/No I don't.
Champion/It's Heritage.
O'Donnell/Are they suppose to be here right now?
Champion/They are.
Karr/8: ! 5, they were asked to be here a half hour before.
Atkins/We told everybody to be here a half an hour before their time.
Lehman/Tell you what we could do, is Terry still out there?
Atkins/Yea, I'll get him.
Lehman/Why don't you get Ten'y we'll take him out of order.
Champion/And he can go home.
Kart/He's used to that, being out o£ order.
Lehman/He's usually out of order. Okay Parks and Rec. here we go.
Parks and Recreation Commission
A1 Stroh/Just because I, my name is A1 Stroh, some of you know me, just because I've
been here for an hour and a half I'm going to give my two cents worth in and then
turn it over to Matt to carry the ball. I just want to make one point and that is that
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 32
I've been on Parks and Rec. for six years, and one of the reasons I volunteered for
that Commission was that I have the preconceived notion that I was going to
straighten some people out and make sure that the City money was spent wisely
and tax money was spent wisely and since my first meeting I've been under a
constant increasing level of education, I've always been impressed by the high
level of professionalism that Terry and his staff demonstrate. Some of you folks
have intimate knowledge of that level of professionalism, and he holds our feet to
the fire as far as taking away the operating budgets, prioritize the capital projects,
and the point I'm getting at is that I hope that the ideas that we bring forward have
a high level of credibility, you can be confident that the money is spent on Parks
and Rec. projects is spent wisely, and efficiently.
Matt PachaJ Well said Al.
Champion/It was good.
Lehman/Do you guys pay each other for this?
Matt PachaJ The timing couldn't be better, I was just on Highway 22 and it's a little foggy
and just this second pulled into town so, thank you Al, Al's here on behalf of the
Parks and Recreation Commission as well and.
Lehman/For the record, you'll tell.
Matt PachaJ I'm Matt Pacha.
Lehman/Thank you Matt.
PachaJ And this is an honor to be here in your presence but I'd like to start by thanking
the Council for their past support and the City Manager, I think we've
accomplished a lot in the last 9 or 10 years or whatever it has that I've been on the
Commission. And I'd just like to address three areas briefly tonight, fees, staffing
and then capital improvement projects. In terms of fees, we certainly appreciate
the fact that you folks are willing to accept, we came up with our 40 percent self
imposed support status that comes from our Recreation Division operating budget
and at the risk of raising fees more than we want to to begin with or further budget
cuts we landed at 39.4 percent and we appreciate your support of that, we want to
make sure we can still keep things affordable for the citizens and if we have to try
and get it to 40 percent, although it doesn't seem like much it's going to make
some, it's going to make a big difference in some of the fees that we've got to
raise to do it. When Terry brought me the list to look at at some of the further
cuts we could consider, they were pretty ugly so I'm real appreciative that your
accepting our 39.4 percent. In terms of staffing as you may or may not know we
requested 4 ½ additional permanent positions for the Parks and Recreation
Department for next year, a half time custodian, the good news is at Mercer the
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 33
Scanlon Gymnasium it's being utilized wonderfully, it's extremely popular, it's
booked all the time, but we are requesting a half time custodian to try and keep the
thing in good shape. Also a full time maintenance worker, we've got over 15,000
trees in our, not just in our parks but also in our shared, in our public right of ways
throughout the city and we've requested a full time maintenance worker in the
Forestry Division who's responsibility would be to care for those trees. Another
request that we made is for an additional maintenance worker in the Parks
Division. Your all aware of the amount of park land we've acquired in the last 10
years, both as a result of the half of me is on the highway.
Lehman/Mandatory park land.
Pacha/The park land of the.
Kanner/Open space.
Champion/Land, Open space.
Terry Trueblood/Neighborhood Open Space.
Pacha/Neighborhood Open Space, thank you, well that was a team effort. Needless to
say we've had a very modest increase in the number of maintenance workers that
we've had and it's, as I've said every time I come here it's becoming increasing
difficult to maintain that land that we acquire. We've also requested an additional
maintenance worker for our Central Business District, obviously we're trying to
attract people, keep them coming downtown, we're trying to keep it nice looking,
keep it neat, keep it clean and so we really need more staffing to do that. And
then lastly, I know the last time I spoke here in fact we talked about our Natural
Areas Specialist, that demand for the Preservation of Natural Areas is just
continue, continuing to climb and if you recall I'm pretty sure it was a consensus
amongst you folks that this position should be a priority this year. And yet I did
not see it in the budget, so I would, I just want to assure you that each and
everyone of these requests we feel as a Commission is very legitimate. Move on
to Capital Improvement projects, we've done some wonderful things over the last
seven, eight, nine, ten years both on our own and also with some tremendous
support from some of our in kind groups such as baseball and the Kickers and
with your support we've, I'm just going to review a few of them, the Scanlon
Gynmasium of course I've already mentioned, our softball complex out at
Napoleon Park has been completely renovated and is one of the nicest parks in the
state and I've seen a lot of them. Of course we did that with the support of the
Iowa City Girls Softball Association, a lot of improvements at the baseball
diamonds at City Park, in fact I understand that we're not being considered but
we're actually going to get an award for our tournament field out there from the,
the Baseball Diamond of the Year award, which I didn't know there was one from
the Turf Managers Association. Also a new concession facility with the support
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Io~va City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 34
of the Babe Ruth folks out at Mercer Park is finished. We've done some things
with Tennis Court lighting at both Mercer and City Park. Obviously every year
we do a little bit to improve our soccer park out there which is a beautiful facility.
We've had a couple neighborhood parks, Wetherby has been expanded and
renovated, we've had a lot of input from the folks to get their by in on it. Of
course College Green Park has been renovated thanks to with the help of Project
Green. We've had four new parks developed Kiwanis, Hunter's Run, Ned
Ashton and Chauncey Swan, a lot of public input there as well. And there's a lot
of park land to be developed at this point.
Pfab/Can I interrupt you?
Pacha/Absolutely.
Pfab/You were saying that Hunter Run and then you said there was a lot of public input
there. What are you talking about, ideas or?
PachaJ Neighborhood Associations, yea, you bet.
Pfab/Ideas and okay.
Pacha/How they want it developed, if they want paths at park, if they want active
playground equipment and that type of thing.
Pfab/I was there at one or two of those and there was, it was good, it was well done, I
thought the Parks and Rec. did a great job and I thought the neighborhood (can't
hear) well.
Pacha/Yea Terry and his staff do a nice job of making sure that we get input from the
neighborhood association and. At any rate and this year of course we've got kind
of the second phase, the cement is done and now we're going to get some seats in
there at the Shakespeare Festival stage. And this summer we'll hope to complete
the first all concrete skate park in Iowa over by Terrill Mill Park. We've done,
obviously we've done, there's been a lot of trail work done over the years, we
continue to have as you have seen from our top 10 lists trails are still a priority of
that. The expansion of Oakland Cemetery amid some concertable controversy
which I was thrilled to be part of. The amusement park rides, you know there was
a little bit of controversy there but I think we made the right choice to get those
purchased, we've made some improvements on them, painted them up, they look
great, we're able to staff it with the help of some civic groups.
Kanner/Which group is going to run it this year?
Pacha/Same as last year which was the, well yea as far as we know.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 35
Trueblood/Successful Living.
Pacha/Successful Living, yea. A lot of playground equipment has been updated, we've
had some old stuff, we've updated a lot of that, I guess the point we've made a lot
of progress, built a lot of momentum over the last few years, the reason I've
stayed on this Commission is because it's one of those things where you can see
physically you can see what you've accomplished, or you helped accomplish,
you've been a part of.
Wilburn/That was because I got off the Committee.
PachaY We've been able to make a lot of progress since Ross is gone, it's really nice.
Vanderhoef/And Dee.
PachaY Well yea, I didn't want to say that you know. Yea and I guess the point is we want
to continue the momentum that we built, you know I see that it's really
disappointing to see that not only none of our top 10 projects appear on the CB?
list for the next four years but we're also in danger of some of our FY02 projects
are in danger of going away or being substantially reduced so I guess I would,
we've not always agreed in the past but I think we've together we've made a lot of
progress, that's the reason I'm taking so much time to go over all the things that
we've built and we've accomplished. And I'd just like to urge you that to help us
continue that momentum and build on it and move forward with some of our
priorities.
O'Donnell/Matt I've got one question. At Mercer Park we've got one custodian there
now is that right? One in.
Pacha/We have one full time and one.
Trueblood/We have three individuals there, there's one full time and two of them are
three quarter time.
O'Donnell/Okay and with the addition of the Scanlon Gymnasium can you tell me
approximately how much of the area's increased over there?
Pacha/16,000 square feet.
O'Donnell/But we've not increased any staff.
Trueblood/Actually we did bump those up a little bit a couple of years ago as I recall, I
think they were half time and we bumped them up to three quarter.
Atkins/That's right.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 36
Trueblood/And at that time we felt that would be sufficient and it's we'll continue to
keep the buildings as clean as we can but it would be real helpful you know the
equivalent of another half time which would essentially the two three quarter time
people full time.
O'Donnell/Okay thank you.
Pfab/I want to ask you something and the timing may be totally wrong here but I'm
thinking of it. Is there any success or any method of having different
organizations adopt a park or a trail or something like "Adopt a Highway"?
Trueblood/We do have a "Adopt a Park" program just like the "Adopt a Highway"
programs they meet with varying degrees of success. We have some groups that
do a very good job on some parks and some other groups that just kind of tinker
around the edges so to speak.
Pfab/Is there a way that the people who adopt a park and do a good job that they can get
recognition and (can't hear)?
Champion/Their name is on it.
Trueblood/The recognition that we give them right now is they get their name on the
park sign, adopted by Old Capital Kiwanis or whatever the case may be. But we
have talked a little bit about some further recognition, of course we're not talking
about anything that costs a lot of money or anything like that or some sort of
public recognition beyond that, we haven't come up with anything just yet though.
Pfab/I mean some of those people put in a lot of time and you know do a good job.
Trueblood/Some of them do put in a lot of time and like I said others don't (can't hear).
Pfab/It would be nice if the people that do if they could be recognized, anyway.
Karmer/Just to let you know Matt we have initially put back one of your projects in for
the city filtration, City Pool filtration which was number like eight or nine on your
list.
Pacha/For the City Park.
Kanner/For number nine, the plan is to put that back in. And also maybe Al could
perhaps answer some of this along with you. How much do you try to work with
the University with recreation issues? For a couple of things, one like the skate
park for instance that's going to open up right across from Mayflower, I see a
natural connection there. I was at the Rec. Center the other night and I saw that
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 37
there was the buns and abs class there and it looked like there were a lot of
University age people there, and I was happy to see that there, and so are we
working with them just for to get them enrolled in the programs and are we also
asking them for money perhaps both ways I don't know to see if there's any
money available from the University for any of these programs where we would
be drawing in University aged people, looking at Stepping Up project for
alternatives and so forth.
A1 Stroh/The best example.
Lehman/You need to speak in the mic. please and then after this question we're going to
have to go to the next presenter.
A1 Stroh/I recall recently, it was probably four years ago now but it was a joint
University/City project to put the lights on the softball complex at the First
Avenue at Coralville, next to Coralville and those fields are shared by University
and City activities and they shared the cost of that installation. I don't think we do
a lot for programmatically with them in partnership but I think we do share on the
capital stuff when opportunities present themselves.
Kanner/Do you think it's possible to press more on these and maybe if we saw even five
or 10 percent coming from the University on some of these projects we might be
more likely to fund them?
Champion/I think you have to remember though Steven that the University of Iowa
Students are also Iowa City citizens.
Karmer/Oh I understand that and I know the budget's also tight at the University
especially this year and last year and but it's just something to keep in mind.
Stroh/I think the opportunities are fairly rare but we're always looking out for those
chances, I mean I don't think there are too many opportunities to do that
programmatically.
(END OF 02-16, SIDE TWO)
Kanner/Really filled up like that, just booming, right after that class there was the square
dancing and the folks from the dance marathon that were there to take pat of that,
it's great to see that kind of activity happening at the Rec. Center.
Lehman/Thank you gentleman. Mormon Trek Heritage Society.
Vanderhoef/Can I say one thing?
Lehman/One thing, just for Parks and Recreation we heard a lot at.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 38
Atkins/Terry, Terry.
Vanderhoef/Terry. At some point in time I would like a little bit of an update on what's
happening in the recreation part and what we're looking at in the space and the
number of participants in recreation activities at the Rec. Center, those kinds of
things.
Trueblood/Your looking for number for basically how we do in recreation (can't hear).
Vanderhoef/Yea are we maxed out on our space, what, how many people are enrolling,
how many classes are we running, can we add classes, not add classes that kind of
stuff. Thank you.
Trueblood/Okay, all right, we'll try to do that.
Lehman/Okay.
Karr/Okay do you have more than seven here? (Can't hear). Go ahead.
Mormon Trek Heritage Society
(all talking)
Lehman/If you would just give us your name before you start please.
Ken Richardson/Okay. My name is Ken Richardson, and I'm a citizen of Iowa City, a
homeowner at 2200 Arizona Avenue, I'm also a MD, PHD student which
translates if you can spell that that spells forever in school so, although I am a
student I feel like a resident, I've been here nearly six years and will be here quite
a few more, possibly do some training, medical training here as well. I love Iowa
City, I think it's a great place to raise my family, I'm delighted to be here. I
represent the Mormon Trek Heritage Society and the specific budget request that
this presentation relates to is an event we hold called The Mormon Trek Heritage
Festival specifically in June 2003 will be the Fifth Annual Mormon Trek Heritage
Festival. Please ask me any questions you have all along, this will be a short
"presentation" of it. The Mormon Trek Heritage Society was founded a few years
ago, it's a non profit organization that was formed to watch out for the Mormon
Handcart Park which I'll tell you about a little bit more in a few minutes and also
to remember and commemorate the Handcart Pioneers that were in Iowa City for
a time in the 1850's. Mormon Trek Boulevard is named after this (can't hear)
these people and a lot of people don't know that, in fact more often than not it's
even misspelled, and people don't really have an idea of what Mormon and Trek
and why they're together and that's one reason why we've named our society the
Mormon Trek Heritage Society of Iowa City so that people can understand we're
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 39
a local organization concerned with the local history of the Mormon finders that
came through here. And I might note that that is distinct from a different group of
Mormon pioneers who ten years earlier left (can't hear) Illinois and crossed
Southern Iowa and which is going to be in the news here because the temple that
they built is being rebuilt in Navu and so that's a, although same religion, same
following the same creed but a different group of people about 10 years earlier.
These are people that came to Iowa City because this is the end of the line, end of
the rail line from the east and at the time was the capital of Iowa and they got off
the train station, walked about two miles west and there set up a camp and staging
ground for a trip to walk to Utah and there weren't any oxen around, they had all
been used up and weren't available and so they built wooden, basically
wheelbarrows and they threw all their belongings in them and pulled them about
1,600 miles. There were close to 3,000 people that did this over the course of
several years. We have some affiliation with some local groups that we've, we're
kind of novices at this but some of the groups that we've affiliated with and are
delighted to be affiliated with are the Johnson County Historical Society, I
understand Margaret Wieting was here earlier this evening, she's a great friend
and she is delighted to tell people that that organization was actually begun as an
organization to commemorate the Mormon Pioneers 30, 40, 50 years ago and
became the Johnson County Historical Society. Friends of Historic Preservation
with Jackie Briggs is a good friend and has helped us a lot with that organization
as well. There's also some state and national organizations, Iowa Mormon Trails
Association and the Mormon Trails Association who are concerned with us, we're
working with them on National Legislation to add the Handcart Pioneer Trail to
the National Mormon Historic Trail which was a different topic but would have
great benefits to Iowa City that I'd be delighted to tell you about at another time.
We also are in constant communication with the University of Iowa, the
Department of Biology, Campus Planning, even some archeology interests, people
interested in archeology, anthropology religion, who are interested in this
phenomenon of these people. And the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints,
they are more locally known as the Mormon Chumh who is obviously interested
in the history of these people. The Mormon Handcart Park is located in Iowa
City, it's on the south bank of Clear Creek just east of what is being formed now
as the Clear Creek Trail, it does not connect with the Clear Creek Trail it's
distinct and it is owned on it's entirely University of Iowa land and it's jointly
maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the University,
our role is we've kind of shoehorned ourselves into the situation by offering to do
maintenance, day to day pickup making sure the place looks good and also just
sort of watching out for the needs of the park. Yes sir.
Pfab/Where is this located?
Richardson/I have a diagram, just a second.
Pfab/Oh, okay, it's coming.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 40
Richardson/The same diagram is in the packet that you just got and if you look on the
map, this map is pretty good but it's still sort of hard to see where it is. If your
familiar with where Hawkeye court Family Housing is that's this little, where that
arrow is that points north, that's essentially where Hawkeye Court is. And then
the campus, the University Athletic fields are, Handcart Park is just north of those
fields, it's about a 25 acre spot of land, completely undeveloped, mostly forested,
there's about a quarter of a mile to a third of a mile trail, very easy walk that goes
through and at the end as you can see it makes a little loop and it ends and if you
were to throw a stone about 50 feet further on that's where the trail that swings
down so West High students can come across the track and go to West High,
that's where the Clear Creek trail is but the Mormon Handcart Park doesn't
connect with that trail by design because it's just not wide enough for bikes and it
just doesn't meet the standards of that trail. One of the several events that our
organization sponsors is the Mormon Trek Heritage Festival, this is an annual
event that commemorates the departure of the first Mormon Handcart Company
on June 18, 1856, and this is how that at that Mormon Handcart and also on the
adjoining athletic fields which just got more interesting because they just put up a
fence between the two and we're going to have to figure that out but as I said
we're in dialogue with Rec. Services and the University and they're supporting
our desire to continue to have this event there. And this is an outdoor sort of a
field day type of event, we have blue grass music, or I was informed by Guy
Drollinger that's not the right term but we have music, it's good, I really enjoy it,
you can dance to it. Last year we had Guy Drollinger and his daughters, we had
A1 and (can't hear) Murphy and several other local musicians who came and just
had a blast and have begged to do it again, and we've been delighted to say yes,
we'd like to pay them more than we did last year. But we had barbecues,
authentic as we can get, we have all kinds of competitions, people are invited to
dress up, we have all sorts of photo opportunities and lots of stuff that's designed
to sort of be a period experience as much as possible to commemorate and to
remember the event that transpired. Now the person who took all the good
pictures and I weren't able to hook up today so your going to have to see my
pictures, my family pictures.
Lehman/That's pretty good.
Richardson/Yea, okay, well my wife took, well I guess she's in one so she didn't take
that one. One of the exciting things that we've been able to do is to have actual
handcarts and have people pulling through the, there's a patch of prairie that, the
Department of Biology, Jeff Schabilion is a biology professor and I are fighting
tooth and nail with Rec. Services to not mow it down and so we have these hand
carts that we borrow from Navu Restoration Inc. and we pull up and people go off
in the prairie and there's about, and you can go 150 yards and it's a blast and
people really enjoy it. And what these pictures don't show are some of the other
events, the public you know the staging and the music and the tents and all the
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 41
things that we had. This is an event, if you've been out to the fields other than
restrooms and a drinking fountain which isn't very cold there's nothing else out
there and we have to cart everything out there, we fill entire vans we take it all out
there and we kind of build a little city for a few hours. So our fourth annual event
will be in June 2002, we're working on being able to staff and fund that event,
some places that we, and as I said I'm new at this but we're going to local
businesses, University of Iowa through our student organization has been very
generous, the Friends of Historic Preservation, Johnson County Historical Society
both in personnel and equipment and other needs we have been very helpful. But
some of the things that we kind of need to sort of take it to the next level have
been very difficult for us to come by for example a real stage that our musicians
can really stand on and you know decent sound equipment and things like that and
so our needs, we always have needs for these big tents to keep people out of the
sun. For basic equipment, we'd be delighted to actually own the equipment at this
time we've had to rent it each year. And then to be able to continue to have
quality of entertainment, and then there's a number of other things that we dream
about and hope for for this event. In June 2006 a number of people are going to
come to Iowa City descend upon Iowa City and build handcarts and pull them to
Salt Lake City in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Handcart
Pioneers. And so we want this event to be the kickoff for that, it will be the 8th
annual will be the kickoff event for that, and I just figured out it's a Sunday and so
what we'll probably do is have the big kick offon Saturday, send them out about
15 miles and then they can have a worship services on Sunday like the pioneers
did. And anyway that's as far as I wanted to go, I wanted to give you an
opportunity to ask any questions you might have.
Wilburn/About how many folks came in last year and any idea came in from out of
town?
Richardson/Yea, I'm sorry I should have told you how I got that estimate, our first year
we had about 350 people, the next year we had about 500 and this past year we
had about 600, and I would estimate that maybe 55 percent of those, 50-60 percent
of those were members of LES, who are naturally interested in these things, many
who discovered they had ancestors who were on this because we put up the
names of all the pioneers that were on these, in these groups. And others were
others from the community, in particular people from Hawkeye Court and Drive
came out alive.
Pfab/Is there a danger of this getting too over commercialized? Is part of the draw of this
event the primitive's of it?
Richardson/Well it's actually more difficult to put on an event that's primitive than it is
to put on one that's.
Pfab/I didn't say that.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 42
Richardson/I would be delighted if we could be even more period or even more primitive
but you know like we talked about having them come and build a handcart or you
know sew their own clothes or something like that or even simple things like
making soap or rope or things like that and you know open fires and some of these
things we just can't do so we've been limited in some of those activities we'd like
to have.
Champion/I'd just like to ask a historical question.
Richardson/Yes.
Champion/Did these Mormons come out of Navu that went on this trip? Came out of
where?
Richardson/No these were, in the 1830's Missionaries were sent to Europe and the 10 to
the next 60 years really until the 1890's their converts and the descendants of
those converts were flocking first to Navu and then to Utah and so these were
people from Denmark, Sweden, Wales, Scotland who got this far and Navu
wasn't there anymore in fact by the time they got here the Navu Temple had been
burned down and Joseph Smith had been martyred and.
Champion/And they'd left, they'd already left.
Richardson/They've been gone yea.
Lehman/Had they brought the train here?
Richardson/Yea they did, so they mostly came to Boston, New York, some of them came
up the Mississippi and went as far as the train would take them.
Kanner/A couple of questions. What kind of gathering are you envisioning in 08? Are
you hoping for scores of people or hundreds or do you think this will be a
national event?
Richardson/The only thing I have it to compare it to is in 1996 which was the 150th
anniversary of the first migration through Iowa, you may have heard that people
were finding wagon ruts in their property and getting very excited about the
counties that it went through in Southern Iowa, And in July that year in Council
Bluffs and this is pretty much sponsored by the chumh and this type of event
probably would not be sponsored by the church because they don't own the park
and they don't, we're sort of on borrowed land, you know it's University land.
But there were probably 15,000 people that came together and reenacted the, there
was a group called the Mormon battalion that went and found the
Spanish/American War in 1848 and all these different things, Mexican/American
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 43
War excuse me. And so that was in Council Bluffs at the Iowa School of the Deaf
and I did go to that and that's what I sort of have in mind but it was an outdoor
event, different booths and crafts and things like that and then a main stage where
they held these different events and so that's what I have in my mind, whether we
would get up to 5,000, 10,000 plus I have no idea I would kind of doubt it. But
as I said I've already had people who have contacted organizations say they intend
to reenact this. You may that now in 1986 about 3,000 reenacted that you know
they, wagons, and wore the thing, every day they went the same number of miles
they went and the whole bit. I don't know what, they must have a pretty koosh
job to be able to get off of it for four months and do that or something.
Lehman/All right Ken, I'm sorry.
Kanner/The other question is what's your total for 03 that your asking $1,500 from us?
Richardson/$1,500.
Kanner/What's your total budget for this event?
Richardson/In the past we've had a budget probably of $1,700 or $1,800 dollars and that
includes all the equipment, and entertainment and different things like that, there's
a number of things we haven't been able to do because of budget problems so
we're hoping to take this to the next level and have support from various, you
know I would love to get up to a budget of $4,000 to $5,000 and be able to do
some of the things. We also would like to get better at in kind donations and help
like there's the trailer that's always used for Irving Weber Day down here at
College Green, if the City could lend us that that would be great or if we could
rent that or something like that you know things like that would be of great help to
us because we're just really working from a position of not having much and just
trying to get started so.
Lehman/Thank you Ken.
Richardson/Thank you.
Lehman/Next presentation is Jazz Fest.
Jazz Festival
Chris Brus/I'll bet you were expecting to see Steve weren't you?
Champion/Yes.
Brus/We figured after 11 years you might want to look at somebody else, no.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 44
Lehman/You were right.
Brus/Actually Steve is teaching a class so I'm the designated stand in, my name is Chris
Brus and I've been involved with the Iowa City Jazz Festival for eight years but
according to Steve I still have not been here long enough to know much about it.
This will be our 12th event, 1 lth year, and you're all pretty aware of the Jazz Fest.
It's been kind of consistent even around the fourth of July each year, this will it
will July 5, 6 and 7, we were asked to move from the actual 3rd, and 4th to a
weekend and we have continued to do that. We'll start on the 5th by using the on
Friday night, using the DTA Friday night concert series to start and we'll have
again the two high school jazz bands along with another band as we did last year.
Sixth and seventh generally going from on Saturday 2 until 10:00 and on Sunday
from noon until 8:00. Because we found last year that that really helped not to
have something from that 8-10 slot on Sunday since we've been bumped to the
weekend. One of the things that is very exciting to us and I know Steve has talked
to some of you about this so I'm hoping it's not a surprise. But we're moving
next year and the stage will go one block north and will be on Iowa, Iowa and
Dubuque as opposed to Washington, and Washington will remain open this next
year. We want to take advantage of all the incredible work that's been downtown
and it will provide much better viewing because that street has been opened up so
much. We will need to have discussions about power and water but Steve will
come down and talk to you about those things so we're actually very, very excited
about moving. The stage will still be facing south however, it will not be facing
the capital, it will be facing south. As usual we will have the main stage, we will
have three side stages, one of which will still remain the youth stage. The other
two are stages where in between the main acts for those of you who don't know
we use local talent so we provide lots of opportunity for musicians in the area to
play as well as bringing in national talent. This year we are still putting the ad in
Jazz Times, we found that the national advertising has really been helpful. The
Jazz Fest is pretty committed to staying downtown, we find as you all know that
weather sometimes plays a part in how we do but generally it's been pretty good,
the heat sometimes is problematic but we always make sure we have plenty of
water downtown and people generally have a good time. The other thing that's
important to me is that everybody realize that the Jazz Fest. is still free and by that
I mean not only free admission wise but alcohol free, it is a wonderful venue for
families, anybody can come and that's kind of a commitment we have to keeping
it open and accessible to anyone who cares to join us so if you have any questions
I'd be happy to answer them.
Atkins/Can I ask you a quick question? And I'm just confused on schedule, you said the
5th and 6th.
Brus/5th, 6th and 7th, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Atkins/Okay now we had it earlier as the 29th, the weekend preceding.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 45
Brus/Last year we did the weekend preceding.
Atkins/And that's okay, my question was we just went through a discussion Riverside
Theater just scheduled their events.
Lehman/The same weekend.
Atkins/The same weekend, your aware of that. Okay.
Brus/Yes Steve mentioned that there was something about that, the only issue that I
know of was that we were asked to go to the weekends because of another
celebration but it wasn't Riverside Theater.
Atkins/It's the Jaycees.
Brus/Yea it was the Jaycees.
Atkins/Yea and they were here earlier and they understand the dilemma that they were
unable to pick and I know the Riverside folks wanted. Is that a problem?
Karmer/But they actually thought your event was the week before.
Atkins/Oh right,
Karmer/They thought there was some communication, coordination between the three
events, Coralville, you and (can't hear).
Atkins/Apparently not.
Brus/Steve has talked to the Jaycees, they know that we are the 5th, 6th, and 7th.
Atkins/Steve was in the other day, he stopped in the other day to talk to Lisa about it and
I was just, is the fact that the Riverside program is scheduled the same time as
yours is that a dilemma for us? Because their two premier events scheduled.
Brus/We've had to deal with these things before and I think we pull, you know in some
ways I think we pull from a little bit different audience.
Atkins/Well it's much, your audience is much bigger than what obviously goes down at
Riverside because it seats 400 people.
Kanner/And they have a few week different events too.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 46
Brus/You know this is just going to be problematic, the more we grow the more events
we have in the area.
Atkins/I just wanted to make sure of the dates because I'm sure the Jaycees will bop in
tomorrow.
Champion/Let me just ask a question here, the Riverside Theater event is a
Shakespearean event? Is that correct?
Atkins/I'm not sure what (can't hear).
(all talking)
Vanderhoef/Yes, I think so yea, two plays this year instead of one.
Atkins/Two this year, yes.
Champion/Okay now my only concern is the Jazz Fest. music going to drift? That's
pretty close proximity isn't it?
Atkins/Oh.
Brus/To City Park?
Lehman/Oh I don't think so.
Brus/No, I don't think so.
Pfab/But the fireworks may.
Vanderhoef/We just don't need fireworks.
Champion/Okay, well anyway guys it is a great event and it is incredibly well attended.
Lehman/Yes.
Brus/Well you know we so appreciate, it's been clean, we've had such a wonderful
relationship with the City and we try very hard to keep things running smoothly.
Vanderhoef/What is your total budget now?
Brus/This year we've, the budget is going to be a little smaller, we're feeling a lot of
impact from September 11, and also the bottoming out of the economy
somewhat, people have less to give and I'll tell you one of the things that's
interesting about the Jazz Fest you know not only are we all volunteer, Steve gets
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 47
paid almost nothing as well and we find that we have a harder time raising funds
because we do not have a physical place, there's something about you know being
a (can't hear) people don't think of us except for about a month ahead of the Jazz
Fest and then they have good memories for about a week after and then they cycle
back around and so we've tried to have fund-raisers during the year and it hasn't
been as effective as we would like and so we really rely on grants, we're writing
many more grants, on corporate funding, and that's where we've kind of had a
hard time this year is with our corporate base. So this year the budget is going to
be around 62. And you know we'll get there one way or another.
Wilburn/This might be a small picky point, I, we appreciate being allowed to put signage
up as a sponsor on the main stage, I don't know what criteria you use for
announcing who the sponsors are at that stage and the other stages but I didn't
hear the city, I was down for two of the days last year and I never heard the city
mentioned as a sponsor but I don't know what level, I don't know how we
compared to some of the other sponsors but.
Bras/It's a very (can't hear) list, which Steve can give you, it tells you how many times
your mentioned and what stage, and I know we don't mention everybody all at
once it's on a rotating thing so we always run into this where somebody's down
there for only an hour and they don't hear. But yes you are listed as a sponsor.
Wilburn/It's just nice for people to know, I was bumping into people, did the City help
out with this? Yes we did, it's just nice for people to know that their tax dollars
went and we could probably do more on our part to let people know that.
Brus/Oh yea, absolutely. Right, and I know one thing that is said from the stage and we
try to do as often as we can is you know we're very proud that this is a free event,
and we couldn't do it without the city, and it's not just what you do in terms of
money it's what you do in terms of good will of working with all the other city
groups so yea it's not only an imperative for this event, it makes us credible in the
eyes of others as well ~vhich.
Wilburn/Well it's a great event, I wish you luck, unfortunately this is the first one I have
to miss now, my 20th class reunion so.
Lehman/Oh really.
Vanderhoef/Oh got to go to that.
Brus/Oh your way too young.
Lehman/Yes.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 48
Pfab/I have a question, have you ever tried or are you thinking about doing some
fundraising of the after glow of what you have?
Bras/Actually we do.
Pfab/Because there's a lot of good will, I mean there's a certainly an over abundance of,
or great abundance, I don't mean over abundance.
Brus/Right, well and we have to hit those two things that's exactly what we do. One of
the things that's kind of interesting is when you don't charge admission you have
no gate to ftnd out exactly who's coming and it make it harder because often times
that's the list of people you go to immediately after the even to get support. So
it's kind of a trade off, we keep the event free but that also means we have no way
to really get back to that constituency, we try and create lists from other things.
We're doing a lot of things on the web site now to try and create lists of people
that we can go back to in terms of fundraising. Yes, and again what we do
especially right after the event is go back to corporate sponsors, make sure it gets
on their agenda for the next year. And we've all sorts of things, we tried to have
people sponsor a band that costs $25,000 because that really helps the event but it
hurts our budget in terms of trying to do three days worth of programming. But
any ideas you have in terms of how to negotiate fund raising when we do have
kind of an issue of temporal presence, you know it just kind of has a big hit and
no physical space from which to have any sort of.
Pfab/I think you have an advantage, you don't spend any money for physical location so
it all goes to the entertainment part of it.
Brus/Well it's kind ora tradeoff, I mean you can look at it that way as well.
Pfab/Your not buying bricks and mortars if you make a donation.
Kanner/Kris.
Brus/Yea.
Kanner/Just to get me prepped for the Jazz Fest, off the top of your head, who should I
listen to nationally known jazz person? I don't know much about.
Brus/Who's coming?
Kanner/No, no, not that's coming.
Brus/Oh I was going to say my favorite that's coming is Paul Motin and the Electric
BeBop Band which is really quite a coo to get them this year.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 49
Karmer/Paul who?
Bras/Paul Motin and the Electric BeBop Band, the other one that I'm really excited
about, every year we try and bring in kind ora historical figure and sometimes we
have trouble because on an occasion they get sick and they can't come because
they're really old and it's kind ora problem but we try and keep that slot because
we' think it's important. But this time we've got the legends of the Bandstand,
and these some old cats that are going to be so fun, it's Cedar Walton, Ray
Drummond, Lewis Hayes, Kurtis Fuller and David Fathead Newmann, and so I'm
excited about that. Someone you may have heard of Lavay Smith and her big
band, again this year is a little bit different and we're really going back to our
mission of making sure that we bring in people that have some recognition that
are really good in the field but also educate, bring in the kinds of things that you'd
never see unless you were in an urban area, and that's kind of important to us, you
may like them, you may not like them but at least your exposed.
Lehman/Chris your enthusiasm is infectious but Chuck is waiting and there's about three
minutes left out of the 15 so.
Brus/That's fine, I'm done. Who's Chuck?
Chuck Goldberg/I am.
Brus/Hi Chuck, who are you representing?
Lehman/Downtown Association.
Brus/Come up DTA, I didn't know I was sharing.
Lehman/No, no, that's fine.
Goldberg/I don't think or at least I'd hope it's not going to take a whole lot to convince
you to keep funding the Downtown Association Friday night concert series as well
as the Saturday Night Just Jazz coming up over the next several years starting
with this year with all the construction downtown it's going to be even more
important to keep the downtown image a family oriented image, a place that
people want to come to support the shopping, the eateries, the businesses that
were impacted by the tragedy last year, you know we're going to start to dig our
way out of it this year I think. I understand budgeting constraints are limiting and
sometimes frustrating but this is an event that draws 300 to 600 people per
concert. We work in conjunction with some of the larger events that Jazz
Festival, the Arts Festival to make sure we're all rolling together to do the same
thing and that is to really bring the image of Iowa City home and I believe this
series does that. We've got some great acts lined up and I'm no means a musician
so I couldn't give you advice and ifI knew you had an AVI would have brought a
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 50
tape or something but I didn't so I won't but I would just ask you think long and
hard about the image of Iowa City and how we want to portray it and how we
want to support the businesses that are down there and help them to keep moving
forward as we go into this year and the years forward and that's about it.
Questions.
Kanner/What's your total budget?
Goldberg/Well I'm new at this so I'm going to tell you over the past several years what
we've spent has varied anywhere between on the Friday night concert series
anywhere between $12,000 and $16,000 total dollars, I drive contributions from
the City, dues, donations and contributions that were solicited from businesses.
We're also going to try to increase, I don't think we're going to have a lot of luck
this year but we're going to try to increase the corporate sponsorship by going
outside of the downtown area a little more to some of the larger companies to see
if some of the larger companies to see if they would like to cosponsor with the
sponsors that we have so I tell you this year it will run somewhere between
$12,000 and $14,000 for us just to put on the Friday night series. Saturday nights
are a little different and I don't have true numbers on that I could get them for you
I'm sure.
Atkins/Saturday night has been pretty much our show, we created that about four or five
years ago and the city has been pretty much the, David arranges those things.
Kanner/Mostly our budget then.
Atkins/Saturday is mostly our budget.
Goldberg/And I would tell you that if you chose not to fund it this year or cut the funding
tremendously Saturday night pretty much wouldn't happen and that would be a
tragedy the community and I think there would be a lot of people that would be
affected by it, I mean it would be just a tragedy, it's a good event so, I think we
depend very hard on you for Saturday night funding.
O'Donnell/I think everybody agrees.
Goldberg/Thank you, that was easy I can go home, have a great night.
Lehman/Thank you.
Champion/ You too.
Brus/You got me all excited but I was suppose to let you know that we're requesting
$7,500 from the city, the same as we have the past few years.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 51
Lehman/Right, we've got that, okay. Dance Marathon
University of Iowa Dance Marathon
Karr/Video.
David Cooling/Yea, I also have some literature ifI could pass this out.
Lehman/ You certainly may.
Atkins/We'll send them down for you.
David Cooling/My name is David Cooling, I'm the Development Director for Dance
Marathon 2002 which is happening this weekend Friday and Saturday from 7:00
to 7:00 and for those of you who don't know what it is it's a 24 hour event which
raises money for the pediatric oncology/hematology unit over at the UIHC
Children's hospital and a special thing that just happened today was that Dance
Marathon got to unveil it's new bone marrow transplant unit at the hospital for
just this morning for how much money we gave them over the past year and this
year which totaled in $500,000 and so Dance Marathon over these eight years
have been quite a success, over $1.6 million dollars have been raised for UIHC
and this weekend we're looking for over another half a million dollars so making
our grand total over $2 million dollars. Why I came here today is that over these
eight years we've never asked the City of Iowa City for sponsorship at all, and I
believe it would be important for this city especially to fund the largest student
run philanthropy west of the Mississippi and I believe only second to Penn State's
Dance Marathon in the whole United States and so it's quite a feat when the
citizen's of Iowa City and the citizens of the State of Iowa can say that they have
one of the most special events in all of Iowa. And two to kind of further capture
what Dance Marathon is I brought a brief 5 minute video tape that we can see on
this screen and then after wards I can detail what we're specifically looking to use
the money for and then I can take questions so. Should I just play, plug this in?
So it's right in the middle of the tape, it's a 15 minute tape, so I tried to get the
best of it.
DANCE MARATHON VIDEO TAPE
(Can't hear David talking over music)
Lehman/Pretty impressive, pretty impressive.
O'Donnell/Very nice.
Cooling/So that was just a little glimpse of what hundred's of University of Iowa
students do to help benefit the Iowa City Community, Iowa families who
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Cotmcil Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 52
unfortunately use the Children's Hospital, specifically the Oncology/Hematology
unit. So it's a large amount that we raise, and we're always looking to get bigger
and we're always looking for more sponsorship from businesses and just like I
previously said I do think it's important for the city to get involved as well so you
guys can be recognized along with all of our hundreds of other wonderful
sponsors. I guess I'm open up for questions, hopefully you'll have some so I can.
Karmer/David, what is the extra $5,000 allow you to do that you couldn't do the previous
year?
Cooling/Well the extra $5,000 specifically we're using it for the family relations
committee, and this committee specifically, it's main goal is to, the emotional
support for these families, and the $5,000 will relieve some of the, will pay for
supplies, such as crafts, pens, papers, markers and other stuff that the children use
at the hospital. It also will allow more families to attend the family events and if
you turn in the second, in the middle part, there's a list of family events that the
Family Relations Committee does put on and with this extra money we'll be able
to have more families attend it and build more of a community within the
Children's Hospital and hopefully relieve some of the emotional suffering and
make life a little easier on them. Where we have family events at Adventureland,
at Planet X, over at the Children's Museum at Coral Ridge Mall, the money would
also be used to relieve families of the burden who are paying for hotel stays, for
parking, just like the little stuff that you won't think about during this treatment.
Lehman/But this goes into as part of the total.
Cooling/Yes.
Lehman/I mean this is, you raised $504,771, whatever, this would have increased that
total by $5,000.
Cooling/Yes, it increases it.
Lehman/In other words this is a pledge to the event.
Cooling/Yes.
Vanderhoef/It's a donation.
Cooling/A sponsorship.
Kanner/Not for the administration of.
Cooling/No, not for the administration at all.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 53
Vanderhoef/What is your budget to put on the party?
Cooling/This is Chris Linn our business director who fortunately handles the monetary
aspect of it.
Pfab/Is this a place where in kind can be used, in transportation?
Lehman/What would you give them in kind?
Pfab/Bus transportation or shuttle bus (can't hear) I don't know.
Linn/I can answer a question about our budget, for fiscal year 2001 which ended in July
our income was $543,000, our expenses excluding those that are used to benefit
the families were $50,000, so about 9.2 percent of our revenue is actually.
(END OF 02-17, SIDE ONE)
Linn/Also receive a lot of in kind benefits, like Councilor Pfab was talking about from
various businesses of the community, support of the community is tremendous
and we're looking to expand that from the City here tonight.
Vanderhoef/So those expenses cover the entire year of programming not just for the
marathon itself?.
Linn/They cover the benefits, or the expenses we have that are not related to the support
we give to the hospital and the families, most of that comes in the event that is
actually in February, and our largest two expenses are our T-shirts that we give to
the dancers who raise the money and the hotel expenses we pay for the families
who stay for the weekend.
Lehman/Heck of a deal, thank you guys.
O'Donnell/Thank you.
Lehman/Thank you guys, appreciate it. Iowa Arts.
Iowa Arts Festival (June 6, 7, 8, 9)
Vicki Jennings/Well the Dance Marathon was pretty impressive and now I'm not sure I
can talk, that was a little emotional. I'm Vicki Jennings, Executive Director of the
Iowa Arts Festival. And thank you for the opportunity to submit the 03 budget
request to the city for the support of the Iowa Arts Festival. The Festival
respectably requests that the city fund $8,000 of the Festival's $125,000 overall
budget. As you know the Iowa Arts Festival it's, this is the 15th year, and as you
know it's a four day multidimensional free event dedicated to showcasing the best
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 54
of the regions performing and visual artists bringing to Iowa City exceptional
examples of artistic achievement. More than 40,000 people attend the festival,
making it one of the largest tourism events in the region. The University of Iowa
Alumni Association collaborates with the Festival by featuring it's largest alumni
weekend of the year to coincide with the festival and they are doing that again this
year. In addition the Shakespeare Festival begins the same weekend in City Park
and the very popular 1-Care breakfast also takes place on Sunday. In 2001 the
Iowa Arts Festival expanded to a new location with a host of new events and art
venues and activities. Our traditional single day of children's and family
programming and entertainment has become two days of fun filled draw for
families. In addition we offered three performance venues with high quality non
stop entertainment. In that I mean we offered three stages, a main stage, a family
stage and then street entertainment. The Global Village was a new educational
venue for children's and families where they learned about cultures of five
selected countries. The Art Fair has increased from 100 highly talented artists
from around the United States filling the streets with quality art. Culinary row
will be featured again with 20 enticing ethnic food choices. A sponsorship
hospitality tent where the festival sponsors can be recognized is also a new venue
for the new 2001 festival and will be this year and next year as well. The synergy
from all these entities of makes the festival even mom successful and brings a
record number of visitors to downtown Iowa City where they enjoy the restaurants
and shopping opportunities while they're staying in the Iowa City community.
The overall event is a huge success but as you know it does put a strain on our
budget, with the expansion there's increased costs for sanitation, security,
additional generators for the stages and the food vendors, equipment rental and
clean up. The Iowa Arts Festival four day free event is a great celebration and
also is becoming a regional event, the increased support given by the city will be
used to enhance the events infrastructure as well as promote the event throughout
the Midwest. I think the Iowa Arts Festival brings a real sense of community to
Iowa City as does the Jazz Festival and I would hate to see funds being cut for
these types of events that you know that bring people to our community, they're
spending money downtown and I think that's very important. This year's dates
for the Festival I might add are June 6, 7, 8, and 9 so that's all I have to say. Do
you have questions?
Kanner/Did you say your going to be on Iowa Avenue?
Jennings/We are this year, we are this year and hopefully next year, we think because of
the Literary Walk this is a perfect place to have this type of event and I remember
reading in the paper after the Literary Walk I believe Karin Franklin was quoted
that that's one reason they built the Literary Walk was to have these types of
events downtown and we are going to be under the green bridge facing south and
we'll be having Iowa Avenue from Clinton Street hopefully we have asked the
City for this, we haven't gotten the okay so I shouldn't be too presumptuous, but
to the Clock Tower parking lot so people can still get into the parking lot and park
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 55
and then Washington Street for all the art vendors, or artists we need that area for
them and then the short Dubuque Street from Iowa to Washington.
Lehman/Your going to have both Washington and Iowa Avenue?
Jennings/We have asked for that, yes we have.
Lehman/Andy Rocca's going to have to comment on that one.
Champion/The Fire Chief.
Jennings/Yes I know.
Atkins/You all understand that staff is intimately involved I mean Vicki comes in and we
all worked together on that.
Champion/This is not a surprise no to you.
Atkins/This is not a surprise no.
Jennings/No, no, I had my.
Atkins/Her announcing publicly is a surprise but.
Jennings/I have my application for use fight here, I was just ready in case there were any
questions.
Lehman/When we first talked about Iowa Avenue it was mentioned before we ever, I
mean just drawing the plans for that street that this should be a venue for events
such as this, you know it's perfect.
Jennings/And actually we would welcome the city, I would like to talk to David Schoon
because I know last year I was going to be involved with some of the activities
with the Literary Walk and it rained so we would welcome them on Thursday
night especially, that's community night, we won't have the main stage up then
but Friday evening maybe we could do some nice presentation collaboration or
something for the Literary Walk again.
Vanderhoef/And you promise the sun will shine.
Jennings/I'm really worried because this winter's been too nice and so we'll probably
have a rainy spring, I hope not though.
Lehman/Questions for Vicki. Thank you very much.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 56
Jennings/Thank you.
Lehman/Okay Weeks of Welcome (WOW)
Weeks of Welcome (WOW)
Mary Ellen Sinnwell/Good evening, we'd like to end your night on a WOW note.
Lehman/Tell us who you are first.
Mary Ellen Sinnwell/My name is Mary Ellen Sinnwell and I work for the Department of
Residence Services here at the University Of Iowa.
Carlos Serrato/And I'm Carlos Serrato I'm Assistant Director in your Office of Student
Life and also part of the WOW Executive Committee.
Sinnwell/Tonight's goal is we'd like to share with you this past years WOW event so if
your unfamiliar with all the different events that happen on campus we want to
share that with you as well as extend a thank you for the participation and your
collaborative efforts this past year of a very successful WOW event. As well as
like obviously to introduce our upcoming year, we're in the planning stages for
this upcoming August obviously with a request to assist us in this collaborative
effort.
Serrato/Okay what I have here is some pieces, marketing pieces for WOW, they're just
probably the tip of the iceberg but they are important marketing pieces. I don't
think I have one for everyone up there so you'll have to share.
Champion/We have to share.
Lehman/We can share.
Serrato/Okay good. What I included there are three pieces, one which is really important
is the diagram for the street, the last years' festival, and the one that's really
important, they're all important pieces but this one here is the one that we pass out
to all the incoming students in the fall for orientation and it highlights our
highlight WOW event and you can see one of them is the street Fest so this is
what all incoming freshman and transfer students get in the summer during
registration in their packet when they arrive on campus. The other piece, the
booklet then lists all the events during the two weeks of weeks of welcome and
what we do is probably in the next month we'll be sending out letters to all the
departments and organizations on campus to start thinking about WOW events
and then by the end of May, throughout the Summer we gather information to
create that piece and then that distributed probably like the second week, first
week of August. And but specifically for weeks for the street Fest, we created last
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 57
year this poster specifically for the street Fest with our sponsor the City of Iowa
City, the Downtown Association, the Stepping Up Project and this is the poster
specifically created for the Street Fest for last year.
Sinnwell/In addition to that this downtown poster was actually exhibited in many of the
stores and business throughout the city so the students had an opportunity, even if
they were here for the summer had an opportunity to know that there was
something coming for all the students. WOW is not designed just for the
incoming freshman or transfer students it is designed for all 20,000 students or
20,000 plus that actually attend the University of Iowa. It's also focus for faculty
and staff; it's introducing the community, not only to the city, the community of
Iowa City, but it's also, the University of Iowa I should say it's introducing them
to the City of Iowa City, this WOW week is designed to show the bridges that
occur between the University as well as the city so students are actually not only
getting introduced to their academic departments, their deans, and advisors and
fellow students in the residence halls, they're also getting introduced to the city
and we provide a variety of activities both on campus and oft: But tonight's focus
is purely for the downtown street festival as we are seeking.
Serrato/One thing I want to add to is all the events are free to the student public, there's
no admission charge to anybody on this, it's just, you don't look for an admission
fee.
Sinnwell/So out of the event for that evening for just the downtown street festival the
event runs or costs us approximately $7,000 and we are seeking $2,000 of that to
assist us with the attractions, the staging, the marketing, the equipment, the
entertainment as well as the beverages. And so at this point we just wanted to
share with you from this past year the downtown street festival it was hard to gage
with as much traffic that was walking through the ped mall, experiencing a
hypnotist, having their palms read, to hearing a band but we approximate it
anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people, all ages, from little toddlers and children
that were having events and experiences or activities as well as adults and that
obviously the college community, it's a very community based event and we were
very proud of that event. Are there questions, anything else?
Lehman/Well I just want to make one comment because I was active in this two years
ago. One of the real selling points of this was that it was an intermingling of
people who live in Iowa City, we had new students, old students, towns people, 1
mean it really was kind of an opportunity for university and the community to
totally mix and I think it does a really good job of that.
Serrato/I think the key on that was the traditional Friday Evening Concerts such as that
so we kind of mended both of those together, my understanding is you and
President Coleman had a conversation on this three years ago about that but that is
a key thing for both of those events.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 58
Kanner/Yea, along those lines, the first year or the first two years it was somewhat
sparsely attended and then it seemed the last year or two it's really taken off do
you attribute it to that adding that Friday night concert or what other things do you
maybe attribute it to really taking off
Serrato/Part of it is the Friday night concert but the other pieces are our marketing pieces,
as you can last year and this year it became really attractive the pieces that you see
and it's eye catching to people so that's one thing and we do put an add in the
Press Citizen and the DI and all that but I think the marketing really became much
more I'm not a marketing person but much more attractive and for students.
Kanner/I also have a sense that some of the events you had changed, were a little more
attractive to the students, it seemed a little more hip, I think there was a hypnotist
I think or something that you had there and maybe a palm reader and maybe a few
other things like that that you didn't have the first year.
Sinnwell/Correct, there's a variety that each year the committee is comprised of, we have
the executive board but we also involve the students and the committees and so
students are actually helping to design and create next years WOW events. We
have some standards that we want to still continue and one of those is the
downtown street festival because it is something that is very, it's well known now,
students know about it and those that are returning are prepared for it, they look
forward to that knowing that this kind of a way to gather and meet with their
friends that they haven't seen over the summer months. But the events are really
designed and focused on students and as they tell us they don't want to see this
anymore and we're respected to that and help design events to bring t hem out and
to interact with one another.
Lehman/Good event.
Champion/Yep.
Vanderhoef/I like your enthusiasm.
Lehman/Yes.
Sirmwell/ You can see why we're on the WOW committee.
Vanderhoeff Yes.
Lehman/And don't say your not marketing people, I think you are.
Serrato/At this hour it's almost time for bed or something but we appreciate having us
here and your support in the past and in the future.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 59
Lehman/Thank you for coming.
Champion/I love your T-shirt.
Lehman/Yes.
Vanderhoef/We are finished.
Lehman/No we're not finished yet, we need to set up another meeting hopefully the last
meeting to kind of tie up loose ends on the budget and we were going to have our
calendars here and I trust we do.
O'Donnell/Trust I don't but I'll be here.
Lehman/Marian we need, we're going to set the public hearing for the budget at next
Tuesday's meeting is that correct?
Karr/Correct.
Lehman/And the budget that we publish will go to the papers when?
Kart/It will go to the paper Tuesday it will be published Friday and in accordance with
state law we need it 10 days before your hearing on the 19th.
Lehman/Right.
Karr/I believe as Steve mentioned to you earlier today again you can go down you just
can't go up. So that allows you some flexibility if you'd like and hold you to the
fire if you don't, because people will see it, it will be in the paper on the 8th,
Friday the 8th, a week from Friday.
Lehman/Is there any interest in doing this sooner rather than later, like Thursday
morning?
Champion/I think we need to do it as soon as possible just so we have anything fresh in
our heads.
Lehman/Well will Thursday morning work for the Council, let's say 8:30.
Champion/It would for me.
Vanderhoef/For how long?
Kanner/No, no.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 60
Lehman/Wouldn't work, all right.
Vanderhoef/What about Friday after the radio?
Lehman/Well Friday from 9 till 12.
Karmer/Mornings are out, the best time for me would be for.
Vanderhoef/Thursday night is out for evening.
Lehman/Thursday night's out.
O'Donnell/Friday night's out for me.
Kanner/Friday afternoon possibly like 3:00.
O'Donnell/No.
Lehman/I have a meeting at 3:30 Friday.
Kanner/Saturday or Sunday.
Lehman/Or the other thing is is there any interest in for example coming at, Steve do
you have any idea of how much time your talking about? He don't even know.
Atkins/Thank you, it's up to you.
Lehman/Well is there any interest.
Atkins/Thank you Connie for laughing out loud.
Lehman/Is there any interest on meeting earlier on Monday before the work session?
Champion/That would be fine.
Atkins/On Monday the 4th.
LehmaW Monday the 4th.
O'Donnell/How early?
Champion/Oh don't kid yourself we're going to kid yourself we're going to need at least
two hours.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 61
Lehman/Well I'm not sure 4:00 is.
Champion/Early enough.
Lehman/Yea.
Karr/I just wanted to point out I think you've got, I'm 99 percent sure a conference board
meeting at 6:30, not that that matters I'm just saying that you can't, you'll have
the school board and you'll have some other reps here at 6:30 and so you'll want
to either take a break from that to do your conference board and go back to it and
so just think of that when your scheduling.
Vanderhoef/Let's go that morning, can you go that morning?
Lehman/I can't do Monday morning, well I.
Pfab/What around, early afternoon on Monday?
Atkins/It's up to you all.
Pfab/How would that work?
Lehman/Well I mean I don't mind meeting from like 3 to 5 and then break until 6:30, or
if we had to run 3 to 5:30, that gives us two hours.
O'Donnell/Three to 5.
Lehman/3:00 on Monday, does that work for folks?
Pfab/Is there a possibility of this getting a pressure at the end?
Champion/That might be the only way to get it done?
Pfab/But it may also cause it problems too but if your not under pressure maybe.
O'Donnell/It causes us to be more efficient Irvin.
Champion/You know I think we'll fill up as much time as we make available to
ourselves, I think that's probably a good choice of time, we're just going to have
to move on.
Lehman/If we don't get it we'll just have to continue later, but 3:00 to 5:30 is 2 ½ hours,
that should give us.
Champion/Oh yea that should do it.
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 62
Kanner/Well I can do that but my preference is earlier in the afternoon.. Can anyone do
it earlier in the afternoon?
O'Donnell/Ernie 3:00 to 5:00.
Lehman/Well I don't mind the.
Vanderhoef/I have a meeting at 1:00.
Lehman/It takes care of my day, my day is shot we can do this and then we can stay for
the Council meeting, I really am not going to be able to get anything done if I do
early in the afternoon until.
Pfab/It was just, I'm flexible at this point.
O'Donnell/(can't hear).
Lehman/Does that work for folks?
Vanderhoef/3:00 to 5:00, yea.
Pfab/3:00 to 5:00 on Monday the 4th.
Lehman/3:00 to 5:00, 3:00 on Monday, we've got it, all right folks we're out of here.
Champion/I just have a question.
Lehman/ Yes.
Champion/Never mind it wasn't not worth it.
O'Donnell/Come on give us your idea.
Lehman/The answer is yes.
Champion/I was just wondering if we're going to you know if we say we're going to be
done at 5:00 what if we go to 5:30 then I'm always worried about what I'm going
to eat.
Lehman/Chocolate chip cookies.
O'Donnell/I don't think, not a cookie, not if we're going to.
Atkins/You know folks if you want food (can't hear).
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.
January 29, 2002 Special Work Session Page 63
O'Donnell/I think we ought to have meetings in the morning.
Champion/I do too.
Lehman/No, I know that but if it appears we're going to run into that we can do that.
O'Donnell/Yea but staff works all day.
Atkins/Well we need to know that.
Vanderhoef/Well if we're starting at.
Lehman/Pizza Hut.
Kanner/I'd go for pizza.
Atkins/That's right, there's Happy Joe's.
Vanderhoef/Happy Joe's delivers.
Adjourned 9:30 PM
This represents only a reasonable accurate transcription of the Iowa City Council Meeting
of January 29, 2002.