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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006-01-31 Transcription January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page I January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session 8:00 A.M. Council: Bailey, Champion, Correia, Elliott, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn Staff: Atkins, Karr, Franklin, Fosse, Lewis, Helling, Trueblood, O'Malley, Davidson, Mansfield Other: Schreiber (arrived at 11 :20) Tapes: 06-16, SIDES I and 2; 06-17, SIDES I and 2; 06-18, SIDE I CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM: Waterworks Prairie Park Development Trueblood! I am told that this is page. ..Cl3 in your book. We start with Waterworks Prairie Park Development, and as you know, we've been kind of gradually developing this over the years. So, hopefully, this will be pretty much the end of what we will need to do with the park, but these slides just simply show you that the, it's probably a school outing - we've had a number of outings out there, more than we know, I'm sure, because they don't have to go through us unless they want to reserve something, but it's reported to me that there, that the park is getting more and more heavily used. So, we're pleased with that, obviously. Go to the next slide here. This is an aerial photo of the park, and it's a little bit on the old side because before the parking lot was built, and just wanted to point out to you on here, if! can...Rick, did you (can't hear). There it is. Obviously, the big pond over here, one of the main things that we want to do now is to construct an accessible fishing pier, probably over along this side of the large pond. We're also going to need to do some prairie seeding, some overseeding in a few areas that we didn't get to before. Over in... .that rascal arrow just doesn't want to stay there very long.. .over in this area right here, you might be aware that there is a, an old area for canoe access that is being used, but we need to improve that. It's in pretty bad shape. The only park shelter in the park right now is up in this area right here, and we would like to construct one, maybe two more, park shelters. Oh, yes, and we'd like to also do some nature trails. The hard surface trails are all completed. Actually, down right here where it shows that that's terminated is no longer the case. As you're probably aware, that now goes down under 180 and all the way over to Foster Road. We're having discussions with Hospice to create a memorial; probably over in this area, which would obviously not be all our funding. They would help out with that. The little amphitheatre, which is an overstatement actually, it's a grassy hillside where students can sit with a concrete slab down below and presenters can present, but, Rick, what'd you do with the arrow again? There it is, right down basically in this area right here, and we'd like to put kind of a little cover over that, you know, just a picnic shelter type cover - nothing fancy. And some nature trails, probably in the, well not probably, would be in the forested area down here, and maybe, just maybe, in the wooded This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 2 area over here along the river. So, that's it for that particular project. The next one is also mine. Champion! Terry, how big is that park? Trueblood! It's 230 acres, give or take, the whole property, about 200 of which is park land. This shows an aerial photo of City Park, ball diamonds, and little league diamonds over here. This project, we want to put a new water main basically over from the Manor Normandy area over... Atkins! Terry, want to point out that these are not in... Trueblood! Okay, actually it is in on one of the out-pages, but it's not in the pages that you're looking at right now. So.. . but anyway, it's a small project by comparison. Now this red line may not show exactly where it's going to go, but that's generally where it would go. Reason for that is because we just don't have the water pressure we need in lower City Park, and when we're filling the pool or adding water to the pool, we've got virtually no water pressure in lower City Park, which creates problems flushing toilets and that sort of thing. Even getting a drink of water, but water main will then enable us to better take care of the little league diamonds and give us better water pressure throughout lower City Park. One thing I wanted to point out here, the discussion that we had on another project was with the Riverside Festival Stage, which is right here at the sidewalk, that we're proposing, would go basically from the stage over there through the street, between the street and the pond, and over here to the main parking lot. That's that lighted walkway that we talked about before, and Dee, you had questions about where the other trails were. That's a trail going along right there and they converge over in here. So that gives you a little better picture as to where that would, where that would go. Next. Highwav I! Kittv Lee Road Right Turn Lane Fosse! (can't hear) daughter is getting tubes in her ears this morning, so I'm going to wing it on a couple of his projects. The first one is Highway I, Kitty Lee Road right turn lane, and this is for westbound Highway I, out past where the Newman Arts will be going in, and that's right where (can't understand) from two westbound lanes to one, right at the point where the turn is. So, we're going to be adding a right turn lane at this location, to keep the traffic moving through there when people are going to turn right and reduce the likelihood of a rear-end collision, and we'll be getting some new USTEP money from the State to assist with that. Highwav I! Highwav 218 Interchange Improvement Likewise, in that same neighborhood, is the Highway 218, Highway I interchange. I didn't have a good vantage point to really show you what's going on there. It's This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 3 pretty much related to the off-ramp, coming off of southbound 218, coming up to Highway I, and we'll be adding some additional lanes and signalizing that intersection to improve the capacity there, because what's happening is on occasion traffic will back all the way out onto 218 and that's not a good situation when you have virtually an interstate standard there. Again, we'll be getting some USTEP money from the State to assist in the cost of this project. Questions on either of those two? Elliott! We already have the property needed for that. Is that correct? Fosse/ Yes, yes we do, and in between these two projects is the (can't hear) Lane? Is that...Naples, excuse me, Naples Avenue and Highway I project and that's a point project between the developer and the City, and that's being led by the developer there, and that will improve and signalize that intersection, as well. Bailey/ so to signalize when you're coming off the ramp, you'll have a signal, right, to get across.. . okay. Fosse/ Yep. Public Works Facilitv Fosse/ The next one is not in your book. What you see in your book is the water distribution building, and that's kind of a placeholder. This public works facility thing is still evolving, and Steve and Kathi and I are still working on the numbers, but basically we're in a transitional phase in our public works facility. We have the facility at Riverside Drive and Highway I/Highway 6 intersection. Are you all familiar with that? We don't have our map here today and I don't want to risk blinding Ross by pointing the laser back there. Wilburn! I appreciate that! Fosse/ Let me forward one, oops.. .yeah, please. Right here is our existing site and we've acquired a new site down, just south of Terry's facilities, along Sand Road. So it's north of Sand Lake, which we talked about last week. That site that we're looking at acquiring and sandwich between there and Napoleon Park. It's about 22 acres in there, and we're moving because of the economic value of the site up at Riverside Drive. We get a lot of requests to purchase this site, and as those . facilities, they've been running now for a number of years so rather than replacing them there, we're moving them down to the other site, and so far, about the only thing that's been moved has been the administration building, and if you remember the old administration building was the last remaining urban renewal temporary building that was left, and it was literally collapsing around our people. So we do have a facility down there. Elliott! Rick, a question. That's the old dump site, right, you're talking about? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 4 Fosse/ The... where we're at? Elliott/ I thought that land was so unstable you couldn't put anything on it really. Fosse/ Well, the... Elliott! But you're getting a lot of requests? Fosse/ Yes, yes we are. In the places where we have the buildings now are relatively stable. Elliott! Uh-huh, oh, okay. Fosse/ Except for where the transit facilities are. That has been designed to deal with that, for the most part. Elliott/ Okay. Fosse/ We'll talk more about that. Elliott! Good. Fosse/ We intend to move everything from the Riverside Drive location to the new spot, and that includes the streets' functions with traffic engineering, solid waste; the equipment division, as well, and then also from the Highland Court area, up in here, we're going to move water distribution down to that new site, because it just makes sense to get them all together because they use some of the same equipment, materials, and maintenance and that sort of thing. Also, we've been getting requests to purchase this site, as well. So, we'll get these sites, good economic sites back on the tax base and get us situated down her. We've got a master plan to get all this accomplished. It's about $15 million. We don't have that, of course, so we're looking at an incremental plan to begin to move some of the key operations down there, and that's important because right now we're in a very functionally awkward situation, especially in the winter time, and that's what these stars represent is to find heated space for our equipment. We squirreling them away at six different locations that we either own, borrow, or rent, and it just makes it a chore to get going in the morning. You start with your morning meeting and then you've got to get people out to their equipment and we just lose a lot of time and functionality there. The same is true when we come in to respond to a winter storm. So, we'll be giving you additional information for a phased approach on that. What it'll likely include is some site work, grading for the buildings in 07, perhaps salt storage building, and additional design work on the ultimate facility, and then in 08 could include some more site work; the vehicle wash system, and that's not just for making them shiny, but it's for like cleaning out the garbage trucks at the end of each day, cleaning out the salt trucks This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 5 and sand trucks after they've been out on the routes, just keeping the equipment in good shape; and perhaps moving the fueling system to this new site, but at some point along the way, we're going to have a large capital investment and we need to think about how we can make that happen. Did I miss anything there, Steve, that you want to add? Vanderhoef! How do we stand on ownership of all the land, all the way down to the Mormon Trek Extension? Fosse! We own it all, from the railroad tracks, Terry, do we own all the way to the railroad tracks now.. .did you.. .okay. So, we own from the railroad tracks, it's Napoleon Park down as far as you see the green here. Then we own this land in here, with the exception of this strip along the river. That's privately held yet, and then you get to the other side of the old S&G Materials and that's the piece of property that we've looking at purchasing next for the Sand Lake area. Vanderhoef! So, any chance of getting that river land so that we can extend our trail from Napoleon Park down? Fosse! We're looking at that. Yes we are, we're checking into that right now. Karin's been.. .yeah, we're having an appraisal done right now on that. And I wanted to point out that, one of the stars here where we keep stuff is a building on the S&G property, that we're renting now from them, so, if we buy it, I guess we'll (can't hear). I don't know. (laughter) ANNUAL PROJECTS: Pavement Rehabilitation. Brick Street Repair. Bridge Maintenance Fosse! Next we'll move on to our annual projects. Annual projects really fall into two categories primarily. One is the maintenance of our infrastructure and the other is expenditures for incremental growth offacilities to keep pace with the growth of the city, and these are things that we can expect on an annual basis. They're not huge projects, but they're something we need to be mindful of. So, we'll take you through those, as well. Our favorite rehabilitation is something that we spend money on each year and it was scaled back about three years ago, when things were tight and we're looking to bring that back up to a good level now. These are some of the best dollars spent and that's keeping, we've got a road system out there that's well over 300 miles, it's approaching 400 miles, and to keep the pavement in good condition is a much better expenditure of money than waiting for it to get to the point where we have to replace it. Just because that's such a difficult thing to do, like you see on Dodge Street. Pavement rehabilitation projects come in two flavors. We've got asphalt and we've got concrete repair. We apply the techniques that work best for the situation. If you remember a few years ago, we renovated that stretch of First Avenue between Rochester and Court Street, and we actually used both of these techniques because we had different This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. -----~-'"-,-,-._--------------------'-~-~-'~--_..-_._-~--_."--- ._-_._._.._-_..__.,~._-_...__... --.------ January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 6 types of problems with different stretches of pavement in there. So, it's just applying the right tools to the (can't hear). Elliott! Rick, quick question. I hadn't thought of it until while ago you or someone said that, I think it was Benton Street, you couldn't fix it up anymore. How many times can you add asphalt before you have to simply replace the concrete, or was, you know, what's.. .how long does that go on? Fosse! Well, without getting out a flip chart, you think of pavement life as starting out good and then just degrading, like that. When it gets down to a certain point you need to replace it. What these projects do is as you're sliding down that curve there, you do the rehabilitation project, you get it back up, and if you time your rehabilitation projects right, you can do that many times before the pavement is completely shot. Elliott! Okay. Fosse! And that's where the trip comes in because you need to do these types of projects while the pavement's still in a tolerable condition. If you wait until it's intolerable, often times it's too far gone and that's where it's easy not to spend that money on roads that are tolerable, and when things are tight, that's money that's easy to spend elsewhere. Elliott! Good. Fosse! We also have some money in our budget every year to work on our brick streets. We made as a matter of policy for the City, we decided no (can't understand) in brick streets, back in the 1990's, and so we're just taking care of what we have. We don't intend to overlay any more, except in special circumstances. I think in 1994 we had one that got so bad in 93 when we had all that rain fall, we had to overlay it. But, this is very expensive repair. You can see it's very labor intensive. One of the things about brick repair is you take the bricks out and go to put them back and they never fit, and that's what you see in the foreground here. You see these slivers and the odd pieces? That's one of the things that makes it expensive. But by the time you take out a brick, fix the base, repair it and put it back, you can figure about $5.00 a brick is what you'll spend on that. Very expensive. Bridge maintenance, we need to keep our steel beams painted so they don't get rusted and we do occasional concrete repair. Then we also need some money to repair our bridges because they get beat up, especially during the winter months when the bridge decks can get frosty before the pavement and people slide and cause problems, like we see here. Terry, want to cover this one? City Hall & Other Proiects Trueblood! These look like pretty high-tech pictures for me, don't they? (laughter) With City Hall maintenance and annual budget here...is basically just to take care of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 7 this building. Ifwe have a major project, like the re-roofing of several years ago, then we budget that separately, but a lot of our items, as this picture shows here, will go into HV AC, the projects that (coughing) course of the year and we need to contract out to get them repaired. Can also involve carpeting or other floor replacement, painting, carpentry, of course, plumbing and electrical, and even smaller roofing projects. It's just, basically a small pot of money there to take care of things in this building as they arise, outside of major capital improvements. That includes police and fire, of course, and that's all I got to say on that one! (laughter) Creek Drainage Maintenance Fosse/ The next is our annual creek and drainage maintenance fund, and that fund is available to assist property owners with erosion problems or problems with downed trees in the creek that are really beyond their means to take care of on their own, and we certainly favor projects that are neighborhood-wide, because when you mess with creeks, sometimes it can cause bad feelings between neighbors, especially if you fortify a bank in one area and depending on how that's done, that may exaggerate a problem just down stream on the other side, and the, we also work with the NRCS, the National Resource Conservation Service, that's a Federal agency, and they're very good at providing technical assistance for us and sometimes financial assistance for these proj ects, as well, and once in a while we'll work with the Mayor's Youth Employment Program to use this money to do erosion control projects on public land, and those projects have been very successful in the past, worked out well for us. Curb Ramps Fosse/ Annual curb ramp projects, this actually is an every-other year type of thing now. Back during the 1990's we did this on an annual basis. We were pouring a lot of money into this. We've got a lot of our accessible routes established and now we're doing this on an every-other year basis, and the reason for that is, is there's so much specialized in construction and by packaging it in an every-other year type thing, we can get a large enough contract to attract good prices. We were having trouble for a few years getting good prices on that. Davidson! Yeah, this is a project that I just want to, oops, Rick, can you put that back... I'm not sure. This is a project that I just want to highlight because I think it's a little bit misunderstood and it's one that for the money that is budgeted for this, we frequently don't use all the funds budgeted for this. Terry and I get a lot of bang for the buck out of this. This is a project that I would say two, three, maybe four times a year, we'll get a call from a person with a disability that there's an issue, a very site-specific issue of, 'I'm six blocks from some destination,' or 'I'm three blocks from the bus stop,' and there's just one spot here where there's not a curb ramp or there's a stretch of a block where there's not This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 8 curb ramps on either end, and we can go out in a very site-specific project, take care of that so a person is able to get to work, is able to get to the grocery store, and I think it's a very worthwhile project. Typically for any individual project we might spend $2,000 to $4,000, maybe $5,000, frequently can be done by City crews, but I think it's a very worthwhile project in terms of solving a problem that someone has, relatively straightforward and simply, and I think it's very valuable from that standpoint. As I said, I think very rarely do we spend all the funds that are budgeted in this each year. Bike Trails Trueblood! And just to add to that a bit, we do use the funding on occasion to rent helicopters. (laughter) Just to let you know, that this particular photo is a good example, not the helicopter one but the other one, is a good example ofthe usable park land acquisition and the annual trails budget. This particular area is located out there on Aber Avenue, which used to be Teg Drive and they changed it just around the curve. We actually purchased a lot here through park land acquisitions, and then built this trail, using the bike trail account to go back in and connect up with the Willow Creek Trail. And, the helicopter picture, I think Rick just put that in there because he thinks it's a neat picture. But actually, we have used money from this on occasion for small bridge projects that connect up to trails. Not this particular one, and we didn't rent the helicopter by the way. That was donated for Iowa Air National Guard or something like that. That was on the Hickory Hill project. Open Space Land Acquisition Trueblood! On the annual project of open space land dedication, course you might recognize Benton Hill Park, one of our newest parks, and the reason that I put this one in there is it's kind of a unique project as far as, because we did use money from the park land acquisition fund in conjunction with money from Community Development Block Grant funds, and then supplemented by land through the Neighborhood Open Space Ordinance. So, this is three and a half acres and the acquisition of which came from three different sources. The lower picture is actually the parking lot on the east end of Hickory Hill Park, right on First Avenue there, and that one was, that land was purchased - that's just another example ofland that was purchased from the park land acquisition fund when that became available, and we (coughing) to the east end of Hickory Hill Park. You want me to (can't hear). Overwidth Paving & Sidewalks Fosse! Next is for overwidth paving and overwidth sidewalks. Many of our, in fact most of our collector streets and some of our arterial streets are actually built as a part of the subdivision process. A developer puts them in as parts of the city expand. The City uses this fund to pay for that additional street width in most cases. The This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 9 developer will pay for the equivalent of a local street and we pay for that oversizing. The same is true to put an 8' walk in, instead of a 4' walk. So that's just our way of financing and making sure that our arterial street system and collector street system grows the way we need it to grow. Back to you. Parks Maintenance & Improvements Trueblood! Just a few examples here of the annual parks maintenance and improvement projects. The picture in the upper left is actually the new bocce' courts in City Park. We did get a few donations to help with this, but the primary funding for it came out of this annual parks maintenance and improvement budget. Then in the lower left, that shows the new parking lot in Happy Hollow Park. That comes out of this annual allocation, and actually, back here, you can't see it very well, but that's brand new playground equipment that also came out ofthis fund. Happy Hollow. The project, the light standard in the center is actually out there on the trail, going past Terrill Mill Park. That was something that the, a couple years ago the University wanted to put lighting along there because they had had requests for security purposes, people going to and coming from Mayflower, so when we talked with them we said, 'Well, how about if we pay for it and in that lighting project, you just extend the lighting on down to Taft Speedway.' And so they did that and they handled the project and we reimbursed them the funding for it. They actually put one of these up by the skate park too, for security purposes, and in the lower right, that shows the brand new playground equipment over in Reno Street Park, that comes out of this fund, and actually Reno Street was a recipient, if you will, a few years ago of park land acquisition funds, when we expanded that park. We had the opportunity to do it in conjunction with when Montessori School was there at that time. So, that just gives you an idea of some of the annual parks maintenance and improvements projects, anywhere from parking lots to lighting to playground equipment to shelters. Anything along those lines that we don't have a major capital budget for. Vanderhoef! Do you know off the top of your head the size of the fund right now? Trueblood/ (coughing) well that's a different fund. Park land acquisition is a little over $200,000, I believe, right now. Vanderhoef/ I know it's in here, but I couldn't remember the number. Wilburn! Terry. if you need an extra bocce' ball for your equipment, there's one in the storm sewer over by Wetherby Park. (laughter) Trueblood! They have trouble with the bocce' balls going down those sewer things, so we try and stay away from that. Actually, now that you mention that, we are building two more, bocce' courts, out in City Park. It's a budgeted item separate from this, but after building these, I found out, don't know why I didn't know it before, but This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council bndget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 10 bocce' ball was a very popular special Olympics sport, and so we're going to build two more over there for that purpose. Public Art Franklin! The public art program is another annual project. This is something that we started in the late 90's with the first allocation being fiscal year 99. Our very first project with this was Weather Dance, which was a major project in conjunction with the downtown streetscape improvements. At the beginning of this program, we tried to, and have continued to try to integrate it with public works' projects as much as possible. Also with parks' projects. It has evolved in that now the emphasis for many of the projects is with neighborhoods, and so the neighborhood associations have been involved in putting together projects in their particular areas. The geese that are on the street signs in Goosetown is one example. The markers, the historic markers, in the Longfellow Neighborhood, and Wings Return, which is the sculpture on the Longfellow, Pine Street Trail. This started out with an allocation of $1 00,000 a year. That was reduced in FY03 to an allocation of $50,000 per year. It is governed by the Public Art Advisory Committee, which recommends to you, and you ultimately approve or disapprove whatever's being acquired in this program. The most recent project that we've had in terms of a public, a public project versus a neighborhood project, is the Court Street Transportation Center. And the fence, that was included at the Court Street Transportation Center, as well as the tiles in the elevator lobby areas and that project was a, in a sense a collaboration because it was an 80/20 project with the FTA paying for 80% of the public art, as well as the overall transportation center project. Wilburn! Be nice if there were more of those type of photos were on the City's home page, web page. Franklin! They're not on the home page, yeah..: Wilburn! Most people come to the home page first, and.. .just throwing that out. Franklin! I think that's a good idea, too. Wilburn! I did too, but I wouldn't dream to tell.. . (laughter). Railroad Crossings Fosse/ Railroad crossings have come a long way in the last 20 years. The materials have advanced quite a bit, and the technology has advanced, and we're slowly making progress on that thing. We have a good relationship with the railroads, as far as pooling our money together, both City and railroad money, to go after Federal money to do these railroad crossing improvements. The trick is it can take three to seven years to get that Federal money, so you really need to look out in This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 11 advance and plan for these crossings before they reach a condition that is awful. And we've been doing a good job of that in the last 10 or IS years. Street Pavement Markings Fosse! Next is pavement markings, street markings. The thing to remember about pavement markings is really, the paint is nothing more than colored glue. In the daytime, you're seeing the color glue, the lines out there. At nighttime, this is what you're seeing. Here, let me pass this around. Those are the glass beads that you see at nighttime, and the object of the pavement marking is to hold those in place as long as possible. That's the first thing that you lose is the pavement, where pavement marking wears out. Those, incidentally, are recycled glass. We like to use recycled materials whenever practical. That's one of the few applications for recycled glass that I've ever seen. The Feds have some new standards coming out on retro-reflectivity, that is how well your stripes maintain their reflectivity at night. When those kick in, our expenses are going to go up in that regard. They're already somewhat expensive now. We're spending about $60,000 a year on lane markings that we subcontract out. In addition to that we put down some latex paint lane markings on our less-used streets. In contrast, and you can tell we live in a pedestrian-oriented community, we spend about $125,000 a year on crossings, and this is somewhat of a new program. I'll let you have a touch on that for just a minute and share some ofthat with you there. Elliott! Jeff, have you charged accident rates? For instance, I'm thinking this time of year, the other night when it was snow and rain, and the paint is all worn off, and it's really difficult to see the line markers, especially those intersections where you don't know for sure. Davidson! Yes, it is, and we will on occasion this time of year, recognize something as being a real serious issue. In fact, just recently we did go out and tried to find an appropriate technology for this time of year, and the weather's been great, but we put the skid markings down again across the Burlington-Riverside intersection, which had worn off completely. As Rick mentioned, it's a very, very difficult issue. We're hamstrung somewhat by the technologies that EP A allows us to use, because, you know, this stuff doesn't disappear. It goes down the storm sewer system and because of that, EP A has some regulations as to what we can and cannot use for these. As Rick mentioned, we are trying to ratchet up; we've made an internal decision with the City Manager that we were going to try to do a little bit better job with pedestrian pavement markings, and so what you have proposed here as part of this annual project is JCCOG did some research in terms of what really works and what really doesn't work in terms 0 visibility and making pedestrians safer. The continental crosswalk type marking that you see here is now what we're trying to use in the high pedestrian locations. What we are going to do is a program that will have a three-year cycle. We'll start with one-third of the of the crosswalk markings in town this upcoming year. We'll do them with a permanent-type material, but it's much, much more visible, stays down a lot This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 12 better, has a three-year life cycle to it, and so that over the course of three years, all of our pedestrian crosswalk markings will be done in permanent, the more permanent-type material, and we will then continue doing that on a three-year cycle to try and increase visibility and make pedestrian, improve pedestrian safety. We do in our crash analysis take a lot of care with pedestrian-type crashes. When we see a high incidence of those, for example, the crash that we had on Burlington Street this past year where we went and retimed all the crosswalk markings. We found some of them weren't exactly right. We put down the continental-type crosswalk style marking. The countdown timers - those were all strategies at locations where we did have a higher incidence than we were comfortable with of car-pedestrian crashes. So, this is an initiative to try and improve pedestrian safety that's reflected in this annual project. That's why you can see it gets ratcheted up there in the upcoming years. Vanderhoef! I love it when you say permanent. Fosse! Something we are pleased with is, we talked a couple weeks ago about putting less material down on our streets during winter storms, and we're seeing benefits from that. You don't see the sand (can't understand) usually piles up along the lane markings because that's where the traffic just blows it. We're not seeing that this year. We're seeing better life out of our lane markings. So, the strategies of using better materials, put the markings down and then less sand and salt is all paying off in that regard. Sumo Pump Discharge Tiles Fosse! There are homes, many homes in Iowa City, that have sump pumps that run pretty much year round to keep their basements dry and finishable. Some people do not have suitable outlets for those sump pumps and they'll discharge into the yard or into a neighbor's yard, and when they run year round, in the winter time, you get glaciers building up and in the summer time, you actually get algae building up that can be just as slippery as the ice is in the winter time. What this fund allows us to do is to retrofit a tile system into neighborhoods where people do not have a storm sewer or a hillside, for instance, that they could discharge their sump pump to. We've got two public interests - one is to get rid of the icy or algae conditions, get that water off of our pavements; the second interest that we have is that whether or not good alternatives, property owners have a tendency to plumb this into their floor drain, or into their sanitary sewer system, essentially, and our sewer systems are not sized for that. Neither is our waste water plant. So the wet weather, these sump pump discharges can be a significant contributor to surcharging of our sewers, flooding into other people's basements, and also overwhelming our waste water plant. So we have a strong interest in getting these where they need to be. In new subdivisions, sump pump discharge tiles are standard equipment where they've identified hybrid soils or in other locations where we know there's a history of heavy sump pump use in neighborhoods that already exist in that area. Getting those built into the new subdivisions. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 13 Traffic Calming Fosse/ We've had a fair amount of activity on that in the last year. There's really three components to that. One is the enforcement, which the Police Department takes care of; second is education and you see that flanking on either side here. We have a speed trailer that helps tell people how fast they're going, get them to think about that. The other thing that we're doing is that we've developed the check your speed sign. Terry, this arrow doesn't work very well. There you go. This check your speed sign, to try to get people to think more about how fast they're driving, and it actually works, as long as you move these around. If you put them up and leave them put, just becomes part of the scenery, but if they appear and then disappear, Jeff has measured that they do actually have an impact on speeds that people drive, and they're actually becoming popular in other communities. They're made in prison industries, and you'll see them in other towns throughout the state now. So, we've started something there. The last ditch effort is physical modifications to the roadway, and that's the speed humps that you see here in the center pictures, and the interesting thing is, is if you take some time and go out and sit by one ofthese and seeing who's hitting the brakes before they go over them, it's usually the moms and dads driving the vans and the people who live in the neighborhoods. It's not.. .it's being cut-through traffic. It's somewhat of a surprise. But those are the three main components of our traffic calming program. Is there anything you want to add to that? Okay. Traffic Signals Fosse/ This is part of the incremental growth ofthe city now. Usually in an average year, we'll have one or two additional intersections and we need to add traffic signals to them, and that's what this fund is for. Traffic signals are becoming more expensive than they used to be, primarily because they're getting smarter. They've got eyes and they can see now, rather than using the loops that are cut into the pavement, which are unreliable and don't provide a lot of information, and they have their own brains out there. They've got processors on site and these talk to each other. We're in the process of interconnecting our entire traffic signal system so that the decisions can be made on a (can't hear) basis rather than just an individual basis, and that helps keep traffic moving better, which reduces fuel consumption, and just has a lot of benefits for the community there. Elliott/ Rick, do those cameras catch things as small as motorcycles? Fosse/ Yes. Elliott! That was one of the concerns previously that there were sometimes motorcycles come up to an intersection and it wasn't enough to change the light. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 14 Fosse! Yeah, that was particularly problematic with the loops that are cut into the pavement, because they rely on mass. They also rely on movement. You can't sneak up on the loops or it can't tell you from a water main. It's because there's other metal in the area. These are better in that regard. Elliott! Good. Fosse! Yep. Steve, do you want to talk a little bit about.. .just keep going? Okay. UNFUNDED PROJECTS: Foster Road - Dubuque to Prairie du Chien Fosse! We... there are a variety of unfunded projects. What we've done here is name four of those that we anticipate some discussion on, and I'll just run you through the slides of those and then we can get to talking about them. First is Foster Road from Dubuque to Prairie du Chien. This is looking east from Dubuque Street and right now the Foster Road, the road grade is actually in place and all cross-road culverts are built. That was done when we ran a major water main through there, I don't know, four or five years ago. So to put the road in at this point is relatively inexpensive, compared to putting a road through an area where the grading hasn't been done and the storm sewer's not in. It's right at about $1 million, and as I said, the grading's done, the (can 't hear) done, the... Champion! (can't hear) Fosse! That'll come out, it's just south of the interstate, about, yeah, 300 yards south of the interstate. Atkins! Before you sit down on that one, Karin, is there any comments we want to make about prospective developers who come to us? Franklin! The way we have approached this road is that it would be paved as development occurs. There's two major land owners in the area, and they probably will develop independently. Our thought is that when we have one person come in with a proposal for development in this area, that they would be responsible for building the road through their section, but then we want to take on the responsibility of doing the other half, at that time, so we don't have a situation in which we have a road in, a population that settles there, and then a constituency to argue against connecting the road onto either Dubuque Street or Prairie du Chien, depending upon which end goes first. So that's the approach we've taken to date. Vanderhoef! If you go that route, then obviously if we're (coughing) for that in the first request part. The second can you get (can't hear) from the second property when it opens up? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 15 Franklin! Both of these properties would have to be rezoned, and so I believe we could get exactions through the rezoning process, as the other half came in, to pay a proportionate share. Vanderhoef/ Make it happen! Franklin! That would be the effort. Well, ultimately that would be up to you all. Fosse/ Anything else before we move on? Okay. Sycamore - City Limits to "L" Fosse/ In the funded years it's from Burns to the city limits, and this would continue right now into that 90 degree comer where you can turn left and go to the soccer site. This is looking north now from where the soccer road comes out and intersects at that intersection. Elliott! You're calling that comer the "L"? Fosse/ Yeah, where Sycamore turns and goes east/west, that's called the "L" because I guess it looks like a backwards L. Drainage will be a, probably a design, one of the design parameters is getting that to work, and that's true with the segment to the north. That's just one of the design.... Atkins/ Where the blue signs are, that's county, is that correct? Fosse/ Yes, these are private streets in Makahta Subdivision. Atkins/ Okay, and we discussed with those folks about annexation? Franklin! We are currently talking with the owners on both sides of Sycamore Street here. They've approached us about the potential for annexation and zoning for a development. This would take the corporate limits down to the "L" and would encompass the Makahta Subdivision. Just south of, well let's see, how to describe this...it's south of the location of the "L", it's as you, if you go down Sycamore and then you take a left onto Lehman Road, I think we just named it that, and then you're going toward the soccer park, that portion is all in Iowa City now, and so with the annexation of the two farms just south of our existing corporate limits, because we already include the property owned by the Cruises and the soccer park, then Makahta Subdivision would become an island, and so we would need to look at that particular situation at the time, but I think that probably the Sycamore, this section of Sycamore Street is going to be something that the developers will be approaching the City Council about, including in the Capital Improvements Program. At least in the out years, so that we can do the exactions This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 16 that we have done in the past, as we've done annexations and rezonings to get a share of this road paid for by the development. V anderhoef! You mentioned the two farms. These are the annexations of 15 years ago. Franklin! No, the two farms that I'm speaking about are Prospect Farms on the west side of Sycamore and then the, what's called the Gaten's Trust Farm on the east side of Sycamore. All north, yeah, if you look in this picture, Prospect Farms is this area over here, goes from Sycamore all the way over to the S&G, S and some letter, quarry, pit, and then the Gaten's Trust comes from where our corporate limits end, which is on the other side of this hump, and goes all the way to the Sycamore greenway, and then south to Lehman Road. Okay? So, it's about, what's...almost 300 acres total, because Makahta's broken out of there. Champion! (can't hear) Atkins! That's correct, yeah. Fosse! What makes this area good for annexation is from an infrastructure perspective, a lot of things are already in place. There's already a water main coming down this road that serves our south wastewater treatment facility. The sanitary sewers are already in place to serve both sides ofthe road. On the east side of the road, there's the regional storm water facility that's already in place; the Sycamore greenway project that Karin just talked about. So, really a lot of those pieces are already in place. It's just the road is the last component to go in down there. Atkins! And the reason that we're showing you these unfunded, they are unfunded, but they're going to get hot.. . okay, you understand. Elliott! That road is also successful in keeping a reasonable amount of traffic off of Highway 6 with the people.. . (TAPE ENDS). Atkins! ... well, you know there's weather, I mean, remember folks, back in the mid-80's we were at 2.2 million. (can't hear) pretty flat for the last six or eight years, but the unfortunate thing is their expenses are growing. I mean, just inflationary adjustments for the thing. I still believe we have an excellent public transit system and this year what we did a little differently is I pulled out the para-transit budget seats just to show it as a separate item. I think that's important that the public be aware that that's a service that we pay for. We don't provide it, but we pay for it. State grants under revenues are substantially unchanged. Federal grants, that is the operational, you all. . . a couple of you will remember about four years ago.. . (unable to hear person talking).. . okay, I'm under Transit Operations; I'm sorry. State grants are substantially unchanged. Most of that State grant is a nose-count, so that's where the shuttle system helps us, cause we throw those numbers in and that's how we end up with that money (TAPE STOPS) This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Conncil bndget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. --_._._--_._~.--_._-~---------------,-~------_._----~--_.~-_._-- - --..----,...-.-------...-...----.- January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 17 420th Street Fosse/ .. .420th Street is just south of the Scott Six Industrial Park and it's a chipseal road right now, and we're finding two problems with it. One is, it just does not have the structural strength to carry the truck traffic that's on it. We've gone out and made stop-gap repairs, just this last summer, at both of the intersections where the industrial park comes out there - here and then further down. Then also, the geometry of the road is truck's trailing rear wheels have a tendency to slide down on the inside of this corner and they tip over into that ditch there, and that of course is not a good thing for getting traffic in and out of an industrial park. So, that's one expense that's going to heat up, as well. Anything else there, Steve? Champion! Could we do something to kind of beautify those roads? (laughter and several talking at once) Atkins/ Well, I think... when we do, I assume the improvement will include curb and gutter and to an urban standard. Bailey/ Curb and gutter makes a huge difference, I think. Atkins/ Yeah, and there still should be sufficient room between that and those industrial buildings that you could do some tree planting or something, just make it more of a thoroughfare look than industrial road. Champion! ...so ugly. Fosse/ Well, that and these are winter-time pictures. They just look blah. Bailey/ If it had snow it would look a little bit better. Correia! What's...so what are we thinking about in terms of moving this up? I mean, why is it unfunded now if it's causing problems now, or... Fosse/ There's just not enough money to go around for all the projects that we want to do, but this is one where we might be able to get a RISE grant, and if we are, that would certainly move it up in priority (can't hear) criteria that we use. So, we want you to be aware of the project and be thinking about it. Correia! And this is just over a million? Fosse/ Yes. Atkins/ The idea of the unfunded is to simply... Fosse/ Karin noted that half the road is in the County, right on the corporate limits there. Steve? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 18 Atkins/ The idea of the unfunded is (can't hear) to do it; however, we want to flag for you we recognize that these" .you'll, this is going to become a popular project before too long because I think as we continue to pursue the industrial development out there, those folks are going to... Elliott/ So this is staffs way of saying these are at least our priorities? Yeah. Vanderhoef/ Okay, so half of this project is in the TIF district? Is that correct? So, that's" . Atkins/ That's a source offunding, yeah. Vanderhoef/ ".infrastructure that we certainly need to look into. Champion! (can't hear) is in the county? Atkins/ Oh, County would probably be very cooperative, tell us to take it all and pay for it. Champion! Yes, exactly. (several talking) Davidson! ".the County does not assist in the maintenance of this, anymore".(several talking) Atkins/ For all practical purposes, it's, it might as well be the City really because we maintain it and take care of it. The County, even though half of it is in their jurisdiction. Vanderhoef/ (several talking) into their total transportation system in the County, other than the industrial park, how much other traffic is generated in this area? Davidson! Yeah, it's not a high volume route for the County. I would point out that this is in the JCCOG arterial street plan, this down to Taft Avenue. So, it's clearly intended to be part of the arterial street-thoroughfare system for the urbanized area, and I think the reaction from the County would likely be, you know, if it's going to serve urban purposes at that time and it is in the growth area ofIowa City, so it'll probably be an Iowa City city street eventually. Vanderhoef/ Where is it in conjunction with Taft? Davidson! Taft is down, where those buildings are in the distance there, is probably in the vicinity of where the Taft Avenue intersection is. Vanderhoef/ Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Conncil budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 19 Fosse/ And as you move north and go along Windsor Ridge subdivision, that's another example ofa road that's half in the city, half in the county. The City maintains the chipseal on that and does the plowing. Next project. Fire Station #4 Fosse/ This is the rendering of it and Steve, do you want to speak on this one? Atkins/ Everything's been said that's been said. We all know that we own the ground; we have the preliminaries. . . it' s a great picture. (several talking) Fosse/ So, with that, we'll just move on and field questions from you about the entire program. Vanderhoef/ I'm curious and I know this is probably rushing staff, but moving funds from the TIF district dollars, what might we be able to add using those funds, and keep our bonding and road use tax and... Atkins/ ...simply spoken, we have a number of projects which you in your discussions have identified as being potential for TIF funding. Karin, I think, prepared a list of those and we just simply have not figured out exactly how much, can we use $100,000 worth ofTIF funding as opposed to $100,000 worth of road use tax, yeah. That's on our agenda of things to do. We simply don't have that yet. Correia! Have we proposed to use TIF funding on any projects? Atkins/ No. Correia! So, it's.. . okay. Franklin! Well, what we have to figure out too, in each of the districts, the taxes that we can use, that we can capture, are from an incremental value between the base year and right now, and so one of the first tasks is to figure out what that incremental value is. Ifwe, and it cannot...there's some restrictions about what you count in that and so if a district is not growing substantially, we're not going to have enough incremental value to make any difference. When we figure that out, another decision point for the Council is whether you want to use that on an infrastructure project, or whether you're going to want to have it in reserve for possibly some economic development projects in that district. So, what we've done now is we've identified the projects that we could potentially use TIF. Kevin's working on getting that figure of what is it that we're going to have to actually use, the dollar amount, and then we can see ifthere's enough that will make a difference, and then talk to you about applying it to whatever projects. Champion! .. . store this money away and so... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 20 Franklin! Well, it's not exactly stored away. It's, it goes to, it goes to the taxing districts, unless we decide to capture it for a project. Champion! (can't hear) Franklin! Yes. Yes it does. Hopefully, I mean, in places where we had depreciation it wouldn't be growing, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Okay? Correia! And right now we don't have policies in place saying how we will use those, sort of on a district. . . Franklin! We do. Each... Correia! I mean, in terms of infrastructure versus banking, that kind of a deal. Bailey/ We've mostly used those for economic development, specific projects. Correia! But, I mean, are there, is there a policy in place governing how we determine that, or it's just.. . Franklin! But it's not specific in that when we, in order to do TIF, you have to designate an area an urban renewal area and you adopt a plan for that area. And in the plans that we have adopted, we've left it wide open in terms of what you can, at any point in time, choose to use that TIF money for, whether it's for private improvements or public improvements, and it hasn't been weighted one way or another. Correia! Okay, that was my question. Franklin! The practice has been so far that we have used it for private improvements, but we've used it as a rebate, as opposed to an investment up front, and, I don't know how much discussion you want to have on TIF at this point in time. We've used it very conservatively. Vanderhoef/ And never used it for infrastructure, that I'm aware of, for streets and roads. Atkins/ Nothing comes to mind. Correia! But that's an allowable? Bailey/ Yeah, one of your benchmarks (several talking). Mansfield/ One of the things with TIF is that we certify that, an amount to the County Auditor each year, so we're not banking it within our City funds. We, you know, we certify to the Auditor that we either have a debt service, as is the case with Plaza Towers and City University, or the rebate agreement, like Sycamore and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 21 various places like that. So, we give them a schedule that says that with that incremental value, we have these obligations, and therefore, we collect TIF revenue. So... Atkins/ Now you're completely confused! Champion! Yeah! Mansfield! Sorry! (laughter) Atkins/ It's not, it's a source offunding. It's not a pile of money. (several talking) Case by case. Correia! So if you don't apply to get it, then it rebates to the owner. Atkins/ It just becomes regular property. Correia! Oh, oh. Bailey/ When we do a private project too, the rebate also has benchmark standards and that's... Atkins/ ... performance standard concept that we use... Bailey/ That's my question about infrastructure, it's just, I don't know, a standard pro forma TIF... Atkins/ But you can understand, an infrastructure decision to put a road in, if you put this road in and pay for it by TIF and it opens all of this land, that's.. . (several talking). That's a gamble, yeah. Vanderhoef/ And the structure is whether you put the infrastructure in first, using the TIF dollars, as in this case, or whether you wait, put the road in later after we've had requests, but then they're going to ask for those TIF dollars. Atkins/ That's the end of the formal presentation by staff. So, as far as questions are concerned, the door is open for you. That's our sort of recommended Capital Plan for the next four years. Bailey/ And when will we get that list from Kevin? OfTIF possible projects? Atkins/ How long will it take you to do that? O'Malley/ Probably a week at least. Atkins/ Yeah, it'll take a little while to do that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 22 Bailey/ Okay. JOINT COMMUNICATIONS CENTER Wilburn! Steve, at what point would you like direction one way or the other for, from the Council, related to the capture some more information and interest by the County in the Joint Communication Study, to either (can't hear) more details on what the cost would involve and then... Atkins/ Sort of my intent would be 1'd like to bring the study, I had Andy contact the person who did the study, said we need to know more about this $6.9 million- what's in it, I mean, are there radios, are there towers, are there.. . and I don't know any ofthose things. Secondly, I spoke briefly with a couple supervisors and I'll be meeting with Lonny next week, saying we're not asking you to nod your head in (coughing) but we need to proceed as a city to upgrade our communication system. We'd certainly like to be able proceed with something comprehensive, such as the Joint Communication Center, and then sooner or later we're going to have to put it to you, you're going to have to either give us a yes or a no; I'm convinced that this Council, and I think the staff is prepared to say to you, we need to do this upgrade and here's the budget and here's how we'll pay for it, and here's the consequences and circumstances associated with it, and then here's an option for the County and here's their position. Kind of set it up in that fashion. Wilburn! So, you'll let us know when we're at the crossroad... Atkins/ Yes, yeah. Give me a couple more weeks because I'd like to bring it back to you where you all can just bang around the idea of what you think about it. But I'd like to talk with the Sheriff a little bit more (can't hear). Elliott! Do we have a timeframe on the City's part? Atkins/ Not really, Bob. Pretty much whatever we want it to be. Elliott! We know that we have to upgrade at some point within what, a year or... Atkins/ .. .2013 Federal mandate change bandwidth, you know megahertz, and all those sort of things, that has to be done. As far as... we're ahead of that. Elliott! So time is still our friend. Atkins/ Time still is our friend. Our system just needs to get technologically updated. Nothing's going to crash and burn. We're okay with running it the way it is, it's just not (several talking). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 23 Vanderhoef/ And how much equipment might we have to replace in the meantime... Atkins/ That's... we don't know that, Dee. That's another question. Vanderhoef/ That's the $64,000 question is (several talking). Correia! But in terms of what we have in the Capital Improvement Plan for emergency cormnunication on C-5, what, ifwe're...go ahead. Atkins/ What that means on C-5 is that, if you. ..I don't have the consultant's report in front of me. . . he listed like six options. The first two options, we were the purchaser or the (can't hear). The first two were upgrades to the City system. That's what I budgeted. The next, yeah, the next series of upgrades involves something far more comprehensive, and would cause us to come back to the table. Correia! But those, were those upgrades to the system if we were going to continue on our own system? Atkins/ Yes. Correia! If we were to decide that we wanted to do this joint communication system, would it make sense to spend that money? Atkins/ No, it would not make sense. That is simply, in some respects, a placeholder, to point out to you that we do need to upgrade our system, and we do believe to upgrade our system it'll cost, I think it's $1.3 million we have budgeted. Ifwe're going to do the thing comprehensively, it's a different number and I don't have that for you yet. Correia! So, in terms of deciding on this though by the deadline of our budget, if we don't know which way we're going to go, this would only be... sort of a draft. Atkins/ This is a budget, not necessarily an authorization, and 1... the clue I could take from you all is that you appear interested in the joint, we need to play that out completely before we truly spend any monies. Elliott/ That's the question I was going to ask, you do have a sense of the Council that we're interested in moving forward. Atkins/ Yes, that's my sense of the Council, correct. O'Donnell/ Steve, have we checked to see what funding Homeland Security would be available? Atkins/ We're doing that, yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 24 O'Donnell! I got from that meeting that this is not going to save anybody a bunch of money, that it's going to improve coverage, and it's really, real interesting...I also feel Homeland Security could come tomorrow and dictate what area you will cover. So, I think we have to do it. Atkins! Well, we've looked at Homeland Security. There's the E-9-1-1Iine charge, there's a variety of funding options out there. My concern is that that $6.9 million is a comprehensive joint communication center. Now that doesn't mean that we pay $6.9 million. That means that comprehensively those costs have got to be distributed and that all has to come back to you for your blessing before we proceed. Elliott! At least personally from me, I'm interested in this from a public safety standpoint. Vanderhoef! And I'm looking at this as a potential regional kind of thing, and when they say the expansion into other counties can be done from this site center, but adding towers out in the other areas, and we have rural areas that are out here that are in our agreements for fire protection and everything else, so why would we not be looking at Cedar County or Washington County. We've got the Riverside Casino's going up - certainly they're going to want mutual aide to Iowa City and everything else down to that area, and we need communications that work in a regional area. We can't just be sitting back and thinking that if we get one going with Johnson County and Iowa City Police Department that we've got it all taken care of. Bailey! Well, I'm fundamentally concerned from that report that we don't even have baseline, what I would consider baseline, safety communications in Johnson County. I mean, that was very chilling to me, and I'm curious about Linn County, because I also, if we look regionally, I anticipate ifthere was such a disaster, it would perhaps be corridor. I mean, these rural counties, I understand, but I'm also curious about where Linn County is. Have we looked into.. . and what systems they are on and when did they last upgrade and what are they interested in? I mean, we have to be thinking down the road in that way. Because these communities are going to grow together, I anticipate, I mean... Vanderhoef! And the sooner we get communications coordinated, the better in my mind. Bailey! Yeah, we don't want a disaster to say 'if we would have only.' Atkins! Folks, those are all good questions and we just need to put some, quantify them for you so you know where you're headed, and we'll do that. HIGHWAY 6 ! RIVERSIDE Vanderhoef! Okay, questions. Highway 6, Riverside, specifically when do we get the fifth lane between Burlington and Benton? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 25 Bailey/ Where are you? Vanderhoef! That's the one piece that is not complete, by the time Coralville gets their whole thing done. Davidson! We don't have a project right now for that. I think there's a streetscaping proj ect (several talking) Vanderhoef/ Riverside Drive, which is Highway 6... Bailey/ Oh, this is nothing in here, right. This is just out of your head. Okay. Elliott! Burlington... Davidson! The piece that Dee is talking about is designated both Highway 6 and Highway 1, that one stretch between the Dairy Queen and that area. Vanderhoef/ Along the Dairy Queen and (several talking). Davidson! What we've done is look at the critical intersections through there. Many times you get the intersections working okay, and we did a project with Benton Street, oh by now, it's probably been eight or ten years ago, that expanded the capacity of Benton Street and actually we...a westbound, right turn lane went in even more recently than that. So that intersection, we upgraded the signal system and all that. The other intersection is the intersection with Myrtle and I think there is in the unfunded list a project, a signalization project there. We're real close to the warrants for a signal there, at Myrtle and Riverside Drive, but you don't want to do that without a left turn lane improvement, which takes it from a $120,000 project to a $450,000 project with the additional pavement that you need. That's the only thing that's in there right now. We've also done some preliminary planning of... the sidewalk system needs to be upgraded through there, particularly on the west side of the street. With the trail, now the east side of the street works pretty well, but the west side of the street, getting around the railroad and there's some places that simply don't have sidewalks at all. I don't know if you remember when Dan Burdin was here last summer we walked that area with him and looked at some of that, but there's nothing, Dee.. .we would have to structure a project if that was something where you're interested in a whole corridor improvement. Some of.. . what's needed there is actually not so far different than what Coralville's doing. .(several talking) ... with the Coral Vision project that's been moving out. Similar type improvement would be an excellent improvement there, but .... Vanderhoef/ Well, and we've got a trail in there, but the appearance when you look across the river at the backside of those businesses that are there, it could be enhanced a whole lot and some collapsing of parking and entrances to businesses, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. -"~-_._~----------~--- January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 26 it's pretty ugly along that strip on the east side of the road, and then when you get south of the railroad, then you've got Hartwig's and you've got the gas station and you're got Bruegger's and... Davidson! You do have the center turn lane (several talking). RIVERSIDE DRIVE STREETSCAPE Bailey/ That's the streetscape, right? Item 27, $2 million....you've got increased pedestrian traffic along there and basically no way to accommodate that. When do we anticipate that corner redeveloping? The corner we own. Vanderhoef/ Oh, you're down the next... Bailey/ Well, yeah if we're going to...(several talking). Fosse/ ...to move solid waste out of there and traffic engineering is probably in the $1 to $2 million range. To get the equipment division out of there is up in the $5 to $6 million range. Because of the building and all the specialized equipment inside that you need to work on vehicles. (several talking) What's that? (can't hear) And even with all that, what we're still missing is the building for the streets division itself. They're still parking under the stars. BUS STOP ON SCOTT BLVD O'DonneJII Steve, we were talking about a bus stop out on Scott Boulevard. Atkins/ You will be getting a report on the bus stop, and that whole transit proposal, and I will tell you, we're having trouble serving that area, trying to get a route that takes care of those folks. Joe's in the process of preparing that. He's taking the tactic of how can we increase ridership, how can we increase coverage, somewhat in that order, and we will have options for you. O'Donnell/ When will we have that? Atkins/ It's really just a matter of getting it scheduled. We could probably have it almost any time. Elliott! I think, my understanding was after the budget we were going to look at the (several talking). Vanderhoef/ I want to go back... Atkins/ ... the fire as well so you've got that one - you've got a number of pending discussions.. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 27 STURGIS CORNER CLEAN UP Vanderhoef! No, I didn't hop in quick enough to continue the discussion on the Highway 6, Highway I comer and the moving. I would like some information on the depth and what it will take to clean up Mesquakie Dump, and whether, you know, I've had different reports from Joe or Ron and so forth about different depths of garbage and stuff down there, and what would it cost to just clean it out? Versus... Fosse! Excavate it and move it to the landfill and...(several talking at once) Vanderhoef! ...if it's five feet deep or ... Elliott! What's Mesquakie Dump? Wilburn! Just a reminder for Council, the transcriptionist will have difficult if there's multiple conversations going on at the same time. Bailey! Tell Bob where this, where we're... Vanderhoef! South of the transit building, along the river. Elliott! So, we're talking about old 218,6/1 intersection? Vanderhoef! But right on down. Elliott! The old dump site? Okay. Fosse! The Mesquakie is south ofBaculis and Thatcher and it'll be, actually it'll be south of where McCollister Boulevard comes across, so there's a number of different areas along there that were a part of the City dump system, prior to the 1970's. Correia! So, you're talking about the Sturgis Park behind (several talking). You're not talking about. . . Vanderhoef! And I said Mesquakie'. Fosse! Watch yourself, Ross, and I'll try and go to the map back there. This is Sturgis right there, that green spot, and then Mesquakie is further south yet, it's actually down in this area. Bailey! So you're asking about the Sturgis, farther north, right? You're interested in farther north, not this south... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 28 Vanderhoef! Just south of the transit... Bailey! Right, okay. Franklin! We have a report on this Sturgis Park which I can resurrect for you which was about remediation of that site in anticipation of sale of it, because we made application to EP A and DNR for funds for remediation, so why don't I just dig that out and give it to you. It's dated, so we'll have to ratchet up whatever the dollar amount will be. Vanderhoef! Oh, one of the things that I am still interested in doing is looking at our transit building down there, which is not going to move, and going south from it into that, whatever it takes, to know if we could put another building along down in there to do our para-transit. Fosse! Okay, immediately south of the transit building is old, or what's called a landfill because it wasn't built to those standards, so that... with our experience with the transit building, I'd probably recommend removal and replacement of the material underneath there, and the report that Karin's talking about, one thing to remember when you look at that, as she pointed out is it dated, and a technique that was suggested in that report is something called dynamic compaction, where it drops a large weight and packs that. Questions remain on whether or not that's really a good option because that does get at a lot of the issues associated with the wastes there. O'Donnell! Is there methane under it? Fosse! Yes, yes. If you go look behind the transit building, you'll see kind of this small metal building, and that is where we house the vacuum equipment to keep the methane from building up under the transit building, and then it's filtered in there. We don't flare it like we do at the landfill. Champion! What kind of research is being done on landfills? I mean (can't hear). Think about it. Fosse! That's a whole work session in itself. One of the directions that landfills may be heading and we're looking at is called a bio-reactor. So rather than doing what, the techniques of our landfill now is basically a dry entombment. We just build a tomb and put it in there and it really doesn't rot very fast. The bio-reactor concept works a little bit like our sludge digesters that Amy got to look at last week, and where you basically you add liquids, you elevate the temperatures, and you digest the materials in there that are digestible and then you landfill the remainder. So you have an immediate volume reduction. You take care of that methane production right away, and it's, it holds a lot of promise. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 29 Champion! The only thing that bothers me is all these (can't hear). What ever happens to those? Do they ever deteriorate? Fosse/ They flow into the trees. Champion! No, I mean...the big (can't hear). Fosse/ Oh, the big ones? No, and we're seeing, when we dig through an old landfill, newspapers from the early 1960's - you can still read them and I've got ajar of pickles in my office.. . from 1962, they were landfilled. I haven't taken the lid off yet. I tell my kids I'm going to open it at one of the graduation parties. (laughter and several talking) Bailey/ Did you see what San Francisco... Wilburn! Any other questions on this? BENTON STREET WATER / WASTE WATER / STORMW A TER Vanderhoef/ I have another one. A number of years ago, like maybe six or seven, you mentioned, Rick, that the water, waste water and storm water on Benton Street, that section between, oh... the bottom of the hill up to Oaknoll, that area, all was in getting elderly and needed replacing in the shorter future. Fosse/ Yes, what we've done with the water main, sanitary sewer and storm sewer for that flat area at the bottom ofthe hill, that was replaced back in 1998 when we did that large storm sewer project with CDBG money. I believe it was last summer that we replaced the water main up at the top of the hill, going onto the west there. That stretch along the hill is old infrastructure and right now we're kind of in a holding pattern because we don't want to go in and replace that, if we're going to replace the road in the near future because it's just not very economical to go about it independently. So, when we have better direction on where we think the road's going to go, then we'll make some decisions about when to replace the water main. Vanderhoef/ Okay, I guess my question really then is, the critical time period - we know (can't hear) until we have basically no curbs left along that section with buildup of overlay and you're best guess critical, we know it takes a couple years or more to go through the process to get a project going like that, not an easy one to do. Fosse/ Two to three years at least, yeah. Vanderhoef/ Yeah, and is this the year that we need to start working on that? Fosse/ That's really a decision as a group you'll need to make. With regard to the pavement condition, what we do, now that the curbs are somewhat full, before we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 30 overlay it again, we'll mill off two or three inches of the old asphalt and keep replacing it at its present level, and over time, as that pavement structure below it gets in poorer and poorer condition, that just increases the frequency at which we need to overlay it. So, we can nurse that along for some time. The question becomes, you know, when is it functionally obsolete, as well as structurally deficient? And... Vanderhoef/ Or the infrastructure, the water, waste water and stuff, and that's more my concern that if we're at the time we need to replace that, we're talking this two to three year time lag before it actually gets done, so is this one the Council needs to bite off? It's not an easy one to do, it's not cheap, and it certainly is keeping with working with our community and citizens, it's a tough one but I think it's time to do it. (several talking) Champion! I think it's your idea of (can't hear) so I don't think we should have the discussion for a while. Fosse/ Well, if you're thinking about the underground infrastructure being a driving factor in the decision, what we should do is take a look at the water main break records which I've not done prior to this discussion. We can televise the storm and sanitary sewer to get a feeling for what kind of condition they're in, from the inside out and then report back to you with those findings. Vanderhoef/ I think it's time. Correia! (several talking) have information to know how close we are to functionally obsolete, for the road and the infrastructure underneath it. It sounds like we don't really have all the information to be able to asses that today. Vanderhoef/ Yeah. It's time to get the information. Elliott/ I also think we need to talk about what Benton Street needs to be, because right now it's one of two main ways to getting over to Coralville and going past the V.A. Hospital is a nightmare at 5 :00 and Benton Street needs to be a much more improved street to move traffic. Fosse/ Well, another thing that's hurting us on Benton Street and some of this may be resolved a little bit by now, but if you recall last summer, University Heights put in place a basically a truck embargo through their city. Cars don't wear out streets, trucks do, and what they've effectively done is extended the life of their pavement at the expense of Benton Street. When you divert all that truck traffic down to Benton Street, you're basically doubling the rate at which it's going to degrade. O'Donnell/ Is that still in place? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 31 F osse/ You remember, Steve, have they.. . Elliott! I was thinking that Eleanor wrote a letter and they backed off, indicating they might reenter that in the future. That's my recollection. Atkins/ There was a letter; we challenged it and I think it sort of quietly went away. Fosse/ In addition to routing truck traffic by two elementaries, we had the (can't hear). GIS COMPUTER PACKAGE Bailey/ I have some questions on our unfunded things that.. . okay. So, can we just start there? (several talking) Well, I have a question first of all. Yeah, Capital Improvements. And specifically on number 83, it's on page C-21. This GIS computer package. Is this the same computer package that the County has? And do we have an agreement to use their. . . I mean, what is this? Fosse/ Okay, for the City to ramp up and build their own GIS computer package is a little bit like the fire station in that at one time we had the money to put it in place, but we didn't have the money to maintain it, and that's something that you've got to staff, you've got to keep current, or you're investment in it is going to be worthless in a matter of just a few years. So, we're looking at partnering in with the County to the extent that we can and piggybacking on their system as much as we can, and that's looking more and more promising. Bailey/ Good, because I know that's something that they taut quite a bit and I didn't know how much we were really plugging into that availability or ifthere was indeed availability. Fosse/ Yes. Champion! Is the County's actually up and running and maintained? Fosse/ Yes, they have a good system in place. Vanderhoef/ We're going to see some of their mapping and stuff on a bus tour. Fosse/ The question becomes, you know, how much. There's mapping and infrastructure management and in the tools that they have in place really aren't for tracking water main or sanitary or storm sewers because they don't have that, so the question becomes how functional can we adapt their system to work for our needs. Bailey/ Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 32 Champion! (can't hear) Atkins! .. . quite a bit, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars. Champion! (can't hear; several talking) Right, right, I remember that now, okay. Wilburn! Let's, before you continue on, before we continue on with unfunded projects, let's take a break. Be back at 20 til. (TAPE OFF) Let's go ahead and come back together, Council, and we'll finish Capital discussion and then move on to a few other things. 420TH NEAR INDUSTRIAL PARK Champion! Can we talk again about that Scott Road or industrial park road. Bailey! Yeah, I'm interested. Champion! Is there, I mean.. . dangerous entrance, from what you said about trucks pulling on the edge. I mean, is there something we could do there temporarily to make that. . . Fosse! Yes, we could add some fill and put some asphalt around the inside of that curve. Champion! I mean, the dangerousness of it bothers me. I don't care (can't hear). Fosse! Fortunately there's no sidewalk there where the trucks are tipping. It's (several talking). Elliott! Rick, is that the road that goes on down past the turnoff to Fareway, is that what we're talking about? Fosse! Yes, yep. Elliott! East beyond that... okay. Champion! (can't hear) Fosse! Well, I think we can reduce the frequency, but our experience with trucks and turning radius is, if you go in and modify it, they just cut it that much closer and just keep creeping over. The curbs are the real answer. They're going into an urban section and putting it in at a geometry that works well with over the road vehicles. O'Donnell! What trucks are those? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 33 Fosse/ Those are semis that are going back into Gerdin's property and some of the others. Bailey/ I'm interested in seeing if we can move this project up. I'm not just interested in sort of, I mean (several talking). Champion! (can't hear) Franklin! Just another piece of information here. Weare looking at this area a little more comprehensibly right now. 420th Street, access to the Prybil property, the possibility of bringing a road down, kind of in the center of this industrial area, to access the Prybil property north ofthe tracks and come down to Highway 6 and have a road that would get you a much better intersection with Highway 6 than the 420th/Scott Boulevard/Highway 6 kind ofthing that you've got going there. So, we are looking at that right now in terms of costs and relative costs to serve that area and to open it up for more industrial development. Bailey/ See, yeah, that's why I'm interested in moving this up. The possibility of.. .this project would fit into that. It wouldn't get in the way of it.. . okay. Vanderhoef/ Just to expand this conversation a little bit, how much property is actually left to develop in Scott Six? Because I'm thinking we're pretty well built-out and we need more industrial park. Franklin! Yes, it's not so much looking at building out more in Scott Six because that is pretty much consumed or owned by individuals who are going to do things there over time, but what we've been talking about is expanding Scott Six to the east, that is in our long-range plans to extend that out to the 420th/Taft intersection. Also looking at the possibility of using that railroad access on the north side of the railroad, which kind of ties into the southeast district planning, which we're going to be talking about in an upcoming work session, in terms oftiming our district planning schedule, but that's all part of looking at this comprehensibly is growinR that industrial for more industrial opportunities, north of the tracks, south of 420' Street, down to Highway 6. Wilburn! Will this all be part of that southeast conversation when you bring it to us? Okay. Franklin! Yes, yes. Elliott! Karin, Amy may, that may be the question that Aml. asked, but if we're talking about upgrading that road, what'd you call it - 420' ? Weare certain that that road will stay there. Okay. Franklin! Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council bndget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 34 Elliott/ Because I was just out looking around the Airport the other, where there's a very nice concrete road that we're apparently going to move. Franklin! Well, somebody's going to move it - not us. Elliott/ Somebody. Vanderhoef/ The road that you're talking about then would go up to American Legion Road? Franklin! No, not necessarily because we have to look at all those land use questions between the railroad tracks and American Legion Road and how you would potentially do industrial development along the tracks and then transition that into some other land use to come up to American Legion, which would be a residential use. So, there's a lot of issues to deal with there, having to do with infrastructure, what the appropriate land use is, but what we're trying to do is some how grow that Scott Six area because it is relatively flat. It is good for industrial development and has that rail access and look at how we can potentially do that. Bailey/ So what's the timeline for this planning process, the southeast... Franklin! Well, that's part of what we'll be talking to you about. Dee had raised the issue of doing the southeast district next, and that southeast district is from essentially from Highway 6 north to Court Street, I think, and looking at that whole area, which includes the agricultural property that's north of the tracks. It includes what happens on the east side of Taft Avenue, what happens with Taft Avenue for the future. So, there's a lot of big questions there, but one of the most difficult, I think, is transitioning the land uses from the industrial to the residential, and doing that well. Vanderhoef/ The question I have then is certainly we can look at our connector all the way across from Mormon Trek Extended, McCollister, and our first blush we were saying take it over to Scott Boulevard. Might we take it... Franklin! ... to Taft. Vanderhoef/ It's to Taft... Franklin! Or Utah. VanderhoefJ Well, where does Utah come in (several talking) map? Franklin! Utah's the next mile over. And it comes out... Vanderhoef/ .. .in conjunction with Hoover Highway (can't hear). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 35 Franklin! I can't picture the map in my head, but it would be just south of the interchange, one would think. Taft is the one that intersects with American Legion Road, Herbert Hoover Highway, west ofthe interchange, and so Utah is probably not a good one because it goes right to the interchange. (TAPE ENDS) Vanderhoef! ...upgrade on Taft (can't hear) whole industrial area park and maybe 420'h (can't hear) major intersection. Franklin! I think that in looking at this now, the options that we're looking at is because of 420'h Street's, well, one of the reasons, because of 420'h Street's configuration, and the way it comes into Highway 6 and the proximity to Scott Boulevard. Does it make sense to look at some other access point to Highway 6 from the industrial park area? Okay? Whether that's Taft or some road in between, or both, those are all questions we have to answer. Bailey! So that's going to be part of our southeast district planning? Franklin! Yes, it definitely will be. And I mean, everybody who lives along Scott Boulevard would love to have all the traffic go to Taft. Just as everybody who lived on First Avenue wanted to have it go to Scott Boulevard and that's why we built Scott. So there you go. Elliott! Well, I hope the road that we build further east, wherever it is and whatever it is, I hope that it is straighter and wider than, because right now. . . Franklin! I'm sure we'll have discussion of all of that. Elliott! ...it seems a bitty to have that road curve around and, have a straight shot. Bailey! If you have residential, to mitigate the speeds, I mean, the curve makes sense and it sounds like we probably will have residential. Elliott! Yeah, but this is to get trucks from the interstate to the industrial area. It's not.. . Bailey! But if we have residential along it, we don't want speeds that fast. Elliott! Don't put residential along it then. Bailey! She just said that we were going to.. ..but that's part of that land use (several talking at once) Wilburn! Before we get into the design (laughter and several talking) Vanderhoef! So, my bottom line is I'm not ready to say 420'\ I don't disagree that it needs, that something needs to be done, but that may not be the one that we're going to have to do. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 36 Champion! (can't hear) Bailey! Well, it seems like it needs to get done for the safety of the folks getting in to there. We're going to have to do it anyway. Rather spend some money making it safer (several talking). Fosse! It'll always be a player because there are industries in Scott Six that interact with industries (can't hear) so there's truck traffic just back and forth between those two, and they're going to use 420th for that. Vanderhoef! Why aren't they using the rail? Fosse! It's only half mile (several talking). Bailey! Regardless of what we do east, it seems apparent that this to benefit economic development needs to be improved. Wilburn! So, are you all looking to move this to (several talking at once). 09, 10, that far out or are you thinking sooner than that? Atkins! Why don't we do a cost estimate, bring it back to you... Bailey! Yeah, and see how... Atkins! .. . direct budget impact right now, but we can spend a little money doing a cost estimate. . . Bailey! But I'd just rather see it scooted over instead of in the unfunded list. Atkins! Rick, did you get that note? Fosse! Yes. SKATE PARK RESTROOMS Champion! (can't hear) lot of money, but I think we can come up with the money, the bathrooms at the skate park. It's a small amount of money and it seems wasteful to me (can't hear) that stink and are awful. (laughter) Elliott! I didn't know that's where you spent your time? (laughter) Bailey! I'm glad to see that it's heavily researched. Champion! I don't like porta-potties. I don't know how the Council feels about it, but it's a small amount of money and we could come up with that money somewhere. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 37 Vanderhoef/ But, is it.. . okay, but is it more important than the one at the Shakespeare Theatre? Bailey/ They're separate. I'm not willing to trade this off. I mean, we've had kids come and talk and ask for this. If you drive by it, it's one of our most used parks. One of those porta-potties will end up in the river, regardless of the structure you build around it, unless you bolt it down, right? O'Donnell/ At least one of them. Atkins/ Do I sense the Council majority would have us do the preliminaries? Wilburn! I'll throw my hat in there too. Elliott! I, of course, safety reasons more than aesthetic reasons for me, at, with the kids not wanting to take their skates off to cross a busy street to go over to Mayflower. I am, for safety purposes. O'Donnell/ I think we should have done this several years ago. Vanderhoef/ I think we've got as many people saying they want and need it at the theatre.. . (several talking). Wilburn! There's four of us who would like to. Atkins/ (can't hear) put it together. Fosse/ I'd be happy to put it together, with the (can't hear). Wilburn! Ijust hate to see us have another area that's being well used, and downtown nobody's willing to let people go into the restrooms in their businesses, some places aren't, when they have festivals going on, so we have another large grouping offolks together. . . I' d like to see this happen. So... did you have any other, Regenia? Connie, Mike... SIDEWALK TRAIL - CREEKSIDE PARK / LONGFELLOW Vanderhoef/ Okay, I do. Two things, and Terry's probably the only one who hasn't heard all of this. You folks heard it a bit in the Vision discussion, but since we're completing the east side trail to Creekside Park, two trails that I want that will have to be sidewalk trails, but I'd like to see on the list a connection between Creekside Park and the Longfellow Trail. It isn't all that far, but a designated wide sidewalk area to get those two pieces connected. I think would be real important, because that will take you under the railroad track and get you to southtown area, and the second one is that our trails are being used more and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 38 more for commuters, and in the old section of town, the Longfellow, the Summit Street, and all those areas, the street is being used a lot; however, I'd like to see an oversized sidewalk connecting Creekside Park, via Muscatine, all the way to the river. I'd also like to see... Bailey/ How, how, can you, those are all residential streets. I mean, how would you... Vanderhoef/ That's our trail system. Bailey/ No, I understand. It seems pretty safe, I mean, I don't know... Vanderhoef/ (can't hear) Bailey/ No, I mean the roads themselves. Vanderhoeti' But, young children are not going to go on those arterials. Bailey/ We're talking about commuters. I thought you were talking about commuters. Vanderhoef/ Well, kids commute down... Bailey/ I can't even visualize where you're at. Elliott! Creekside Park is along Court, isn't it? And you're talking about Muscatine? Correia! Creekside's on (several talking). Bailey/ So to get to Longfellow you would go, 7th... Karr/ I'm sorry, if you're at mikes or turned away, I just won't get it. It's just not going... Wilburn! (can't hear) give me a warning, right? Vanderhoef/ Somehow or another we've got to have the sidewalk system to connect our older inner-city areas to the river trail. Trueblood! Just off the top of my head, Dee, I have no idea what we would need to do to make this work, but we'll certainly look at it. I'll get together with Jeff and some of his folks and we'll see what the possibilities might be. SInEW ALK TRAIL - SCOTT BLVD TO RIVER Vanderhoef/ And the other one that would end up connecting some point in there because we need the same kind of sidewalk over with the sidewalk system, all the way from Scott Boulevard to the river, via Rochester. So, that would come down and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 39 that would play into this Ralston Creek bridge that's coming, and make sure that we get the oversized, wide sidewalks to go on down and probably on Muscatine is where they could cross over, make a loop. Bailey/ You're talking about.. .you're talking about Rochester and you're talking about Muscatine, that don~t intersect. Vanderhoetl Well, yes they do. Bailey/ Way down. Vanderhoef/ Clear down, that's right, so there would be a loop in the surround area of the downtown, and then we could have our choice of whether we used Burlington or Jefferson or Market, whichever one, to get it on down to the river. Correia! Could we get, is there a sense, is there a way to get groups of bicyclists, commuters together. Bailey/ People with strollers, walkers. Correia! Right, just to get a sense of is that how they... it seems like there would be a lot to do to get over (can't hear). Bailey/ Well, and some of those streets when you talk about down by Creekside, some of those streets to connect like over to Summit are a delight to walk along and ride through. If you're commuting, if you're an adult commuter, I don't think that they're a problem, and then there are sidewalks for, I mean, if I had an eight year old, I'd just kick 'em onto the sidewalk for (can't hear). Fosse/ I was going to mention that back in the mid-80's we did this assessment project to fill in some of the gaps in the sidewalk along Muscatine and doing the design work at that time, one ofthe tradeoffs that we found was you had to stuff it between trees and, both right of way trees and trees in people's yards, and that might be a tradeoff we'd be looking at if we put in an 8' walk. Champion! (can't hear) There's too many encumberments along there because it's older, established, and a lot of those front yards aren't very deep, and a lot have (can't hear). Vanderhoef/ On Muscatine? Correia! On Rochester certainly. Elliott! You're talking about a sidewalk on the north side of Muscatine? Because the sidewalk's clear out on the south side. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 40 Fosse/ On the southside, but it wasn't in the early 80's. Elliott/ No, no, but I mean it is now, so there's sidewalk there. Fosse/ North side is not complete though. There's a steep bank and once you get west of the creek there, we haven't filled in that gap, and there's also some spots along Rochester. Now, as you get further out on Rochester you'll see that there is 8' walk. As redevelopment occurs, we do get the 8' walk along arterial streets. Vanderhoef/ And that's what we need to keep completing to make those connections. F osse/ Yes. Trueblood! Just one other quick thing, I think you're all aware that we have a JCCOG regional trails and bicycling committee - several communities, the County, John Yap who works for Jeff is on it, I'm on it, and we can take it through that process too, because they're.. . although it says regional trails and bicycling committee, that committees has concerns about pedestrians, as well as the bicycling things, and wide sidewalks, stripes on the streets, dedicated trails - whatever it might be. Wilburn! There's a, is one of the bike representatives on that? Trueblood! Yes. Wilburn! Is there someone from like one of the neighborhood associations on... Trueblood! Neighborhood associations specifically aren't represented. No. Wilburn! I was just thinking... Trueblood! Besides Iowa City, Tiffin, University Heights, the University, the County, North Liberty, Coralville. That's pretty wide representation. Champion! Yeah, that's regional rather than specific. Trueblood/ It is, but just to call your attention to it, like most ofthe funding for that new Court Hill Trail, that's in the planning stages right now, is coming through that committee, in a way through that committee. That committee recommended the funding - what is it, STP or enhancement funds - to go towards this project. And they don't make the final decision, but their recommendations carry quite a bit of weight. Wilburn! Yeah, and I'm sorry if this exists and I'm unaware of it or haven't paid attention to it. Typically, our multipurpose trail recommendations come with the Parks and Rec overall recommendations. Is there a plan or a set of recommendations just on the multipurpose trails? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. . ._--------------~_._"---"-~----------------------_._----_.....,._-"._~._._. . -,- "------,~-----_._._-_._,,--_..----_..."----_.._------_.....--.- January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 41 Trueblood! Yes, well, the Parks and Recreation Commission, when they go through their priorities, they (can't hear)... Wilburn! That's what I mean, but is their... Trueblood! .. . all together and they don't, you know, these are our parks priorities and these are our trail priorities, because they look at them as all interrelating, but and it's not just Parks and Recreation. Planning is involved in trails a great deal. Wilburn! Jeff, do you and your department do you all have such a prioritization list or not? 1... Davidson! Yeah, we have the JCCOG regional trails plan, which is ultimately under the jurisdiction of the JCCOG Board, which all of you have participated in, or are currently participating in, and that addresses a lot of the kinds of issues that Dee is raising of being able to connect, you know, origins and destinations and if we have a gap here then let's get a project program to address that, and it tries to have us end up with a comprehensive system of sidewalks and trails. Wilburn! And I note that, but there's no prioritization amongst those. Davidson! No, that's done individually through this process. Wilburn! I guess I was looking for maybe a recommendation from that type of group, in terms of. . . Davidson! Well, I think as Terry suggested, I think taking it through RTBC, the bicycle advocacy groups are represented (can't hear) that are represented in that, and is a good place to get feedback. Wilburn! I guess I'm not making my point about a prioritization list as opposed to (several talking). Yeah. Vanderhoef! Maybe if they broke them in to projects, that they see as necessary, that then we could prioritize and it would be partly on system and available funds. Wilburn! Right, right. Bailey! You aren't conceiving that we would have 8' trails completely connected through the city, I mean, I see that as somewhat unfeasible. Wilburn! Well, and I understand, opportunity comes up and all that, and I was just thinking - and I won't belabor this point - because part of the conversation was feedback on what is most desirable and needed by commuters and people with strollers and bikers, which isn't necessarily part of our process here, and so... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council bndget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 42 Bailey! I was just trying to see what Dee's objective was, I mean... Vanderhoef! I think we have already done this in the developing areas because of opportunity, so we've got an 8' wide, which signals to our residents that this is the trail and is leading to and is on the trail map, and we get to our older sections of town, we don't have that distinction. Bailey! Because retrofitting would be very difficult in the older sections of town, that's why... Vanderhoef! In some places yes, maybe not. Bailey! Right, but that's why I see it as somewhat unfeasible. Vanderhoef! I think it is feasible, personally, but I would defer to having the trails group really go out and figure out what is the best possibility, the feasibility, and the best possibility to create that, because I think we need to do it. Correia! Is there a way (several talking) is there a way, because one of the nice things when you're going on a bike ride you're on trails and you're in an older part of town that's safe to ride on the street, but even if you have kids it's nice to ride on in the older neighborhoods. Bailey! I love riding on the street. Correia! Is there a way to ... I mean... Bailey! Signage would help. Correia!.. .you get to, you're at Scott, you get to Creekside Park... Davidson! An issue that the RTBC has addressed, in fact they've addressed it at least once ifnot a couple times, is the notion of bike lanes and bike routes, especially in the older area, and as I recall, the summary of their discussion was that in a lot of the older neighborhoods, you know, Longfellow, Northside, Court, you have a good gri.d street system. You have a good system of local streets with good connectivity so that basically your, you know, your Class A bicyclists, the people who that comfortable being on the street, have good safe routes on street to use, you don't need to paint...you introduce a whole new set of problems with bike lanes or bike routes that you really don't want to have, and that there's also good sidewalk connectivity. A few gaps, as has been pointed out, but you know we also have ways of dealing with those gaps, but the folks like the kids and the strollers and that kind of thing, there's a good sidewalk system in those older neighborhoods, as well, and you have to balance all that against the character of those neighborhoods, you know, and the property acquisition issues. One more This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 43 stab at trying to answer your question. The projects 35 through 52 in your unfunded list are pedestrian and bike way projects that have been identified as needs, but obviously haven't gotten to the highest priority to be in a funded year. You have some trail projects in the funded years, but that's really all we have right now. I mean, some way these projects have been identified as priorities. And I assume that they'll be added to and hopefully a few get bumped into a funded year, but that's really the system right now, Ross. Wilburn! Okay. Dee, did you have any other of those (can't understand) redone? Vanderhoef/ Go ahead and move on. I'm going to check my list. Wilburn! Bob or Amy? CITY PARK POOL Correia! I'd like to talk about City Park Pool. I see you brought in a City Park Pool picture. Trueblood/ I didn't bring that in. Correia! Okay, somebody brought in a nice City Park Pool picture (laughter). Trueblood!I told you these pictures would get me in trouble. (several talking) Actually, I have to admit, I knew this was in the works, but the first time I saw this was at your previous (can't hear) when we had that, saw that leaning against the wall and thought, 'Hey, that's pretty neat.' This is something, a relatively small project that's actually in the operating budget. Correia! Okay. Trueblood/ And Steve wanted to highlight a couple of things, one of which is this, and it's just some small plans right now for taking some, extending the fence out, if you will, and including the two highlight green space areas, including that within the pool area, still grass, maybe even some trees in there, where people, especially people with families or if it's just mom there with the kids and she really just wants to sit back and rest and watch them, they'll have a grassy area in which to do that. Champion! How do you keep the grass out of the pool then? Trueblood! You don't. That's what the filtration system does. Correia! So, would there be seating? Or would people be able to...because right now you can't bring in chairs or anything. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 44 Trueblood! It's probably going to have like a few lawn chairs, and it's just primarily a throw down your blanket and sit there kind of area. Correia! Okay. Trueblood! You know, just to make the overall pool concept a little more, broaden the scope a little bit, make it a little more user friendly. We've also, in the operating budget, got one or two, best way I can describe them is big toys, budgeted for larger inflatable, like I think it's an octopus maybe. So, sit out in the pool, kids can climb on it, and fall off of it - hopefully not drown underneath it, you know, that kind of thing. Anyway, we're just trying to make the pool a little more user friendly. Champion! (can't hear) the way it is, by the way. Trueblood! You do? Champion! (can't hear) ...few kind of plain pools and it's not very big actually, so I (can't hear) in the middle, is that going to... Correia! .. .or the side space? Trueblood! Now that I think about, I think the octopus is intended to go to the recreation center pool, just to, and we're going to charge admission for it every day. We'll increase our revenue - the octopus, I mean. (laughter and several talking) Champion! Just as a user of the pools with kids - my own kids and now the four grandkids, is there are two great pools in town. One is City Park Pool and one is the Rec Center Pool because they're totally safe for all ages. The new pools just simply aren't safe for small children. So, I hope this is never (can't hear). Wilburn! ...a lot of swimmers too.. ...(several talking at once) Correia! I really like the addition of the green space. As a parent, especially of older kids, ifI go, I'm done (can't understand) to sit, except against the fence. So, it's nice. I think that adds really good... Trueblood! Well, you'll still be sitting up against a fence, but you might be sitting on grass instead. . . Correia! Well, right, but ifI'm sitting on grass I don't have to worry about all those sunbathers.. . maybe the sunbathers will move from the side of the water. Bailey! I'd definitely put trees on the (can't hear). Vanderhoef! Sunbathers may find out the green space is not large enough. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 45 Correia! So this will be happening for this swnmer? Trueblood! Well, yeah, it's in the FY07 budget so... Correia! Oh, so it won't be happening? Trueblood! (can't hear) Occasionally our finance director wants us to have allowance a little bit earlier. Correia! The other thing I wondered about with City Park is, more food options. Right now there's just the vending. I don't know, some pools there's actual, I don't know if this is something if we had a structure that we farmed out to somebody else to actually run so there's real food there, you could go, have lunch or go after work, have dinner. Bailey/ Wait a half hour before you go in the water. Correia! Well, I don't know if that's an old wives' tale, myth. I don't know if that's ever something that's been tossed around, if that could make some money, if that could encourage.. . Trueblood! Some of you may recall that 20 years or more ago, there used to be a vendor there in the building that the City would contract out - bid it out for vendors - and they would sell directly. It got to the point that we couldn't get any vendors to bid on it because their profit margin was so low, and we didn't get a very high percentage of it, either, so it was determined at that time that we still wanted to have that service for the patrons, but, and we, the City, did not want to run a concession operation ourselves, so the decision was made to go to vending machines. Something that we could always revisit. You know, those are very good money-makers at the places that have the leisure pool concept, where they attract a lot more people and a lot of them have specific concession areas set aside, you know, for the shaded tables and chairs, all that stuff, so it can be profitable (can't hear). We can look at it, but I'm just not sure that we would get any takers, especially with our pool the way it is. Bailey/ But, I mean, it would be concession for the park. I mean... Correia! Well, it could be concession for the whole park. Bailey/ For the whole park because there isn't... Champion! ...it was quite a large (can't hear). Trueblood/ Well, on the concept that we had done a few years ago, where it was just a very preliminary concept of converting City Park Pool to a leisure pool type thing, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 46 and at that time, part of that was a concession area that would not only serve the pool but other park users, as well. O'Donnell! Terry, what's attendance like at the City Park Pool? Trueblood! It's truly depends on the weather. O'Donnell! How is it over a period of years? Last five years, is it rising or dropping in attendance? Trueblood! Up and down. Just like always, dependent on the weather, but, and I can't quote you those figures off the top of my head. They'd be easy enough to get for you. Last year was a good year, good summer. The year before was terrible, with all the cold, rainy weather we had. Vanderhoef/ How does our admission price compare to those that are all the toys and games and such? Trueblood! Ours are lower, and that's typical with your traditional type pools, that these are going to be substantially lower than those who have a lot of water slides and zero depth and all that kind of thing. Some of those around Iowa, some of those run $5.00 or more per admission. Our admission right now is $2.50 and that's pretty close to average around the state for the traditional type pool. V anderhoef/ Would this be a location that we could allow a vendor cart to (several talking) and see if there's anybody interested in trying it? Trueblood! Yeah, we do that right now. I don't think it was last year, but for two or three years, maybe four years in a row prior to that, we had a snow cone vendor that set up outside of the pool and sold snow cones. Vanderhoef/ Was there a second one that was down below then at the rides? Because I remember the ... Trueblood! For a very brief period of time there was, yeah. And... Vanderhoef/ Was it the same cart that they moved around, or... Trueblood! Ifit was snow cones it would have been, but (several talking). Well, actually the group that we contract with sells popcorn right there. Vanderhoef/ Does it have popcorn and ... Trueblood/ Popcorn and snow cones, what more could you want? O'Donnell! Hot dogs. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 47 Bailey! Not really a picnic, but... Wilbuml Any other items? Champion! Have you ever talked about, I'm not saying we need one, but what do you call those pools? Leisure pool, water parks, have we ever thought about another location to put one of those, or if it'd be feasible or usable, I mean we have several within pretty easy driving distance. Elliott! Coralville has one. Champion! North Liberty, don't they also? Correia! North Liberty. Isn't there one planned for Tiffin or something? Bailey! What about those, I don't know what they're called but they remind me of our fountain downtown, they're more for little kids. They're splash pools or something like that. Have we looked at that... Trueblood! We've had discussions about it, we haven't looked into it real seriously. As a matter of fact, probably the most seriously we looked at it was when the playground equipment was replaced downtown? We actually wondered about some of those water features on that and then we thought, well, we've got the fountain there so if maybe if we're going to do that we should do it in another location. But in answer to your question, Connie, we've never had any in-depth discussions about where we might be able to put a leisure pool or a water park. The consultant that we talked to years ago said, 'Yes, it's definitely feasible and it would make money in Iowa City,' but some new ones have been built since then so that's something that we'd have to take a look at. It would require a referendum. So, we'd have to have all that ironed out before ever going for a vote, if we ever did. You know, it's, when it was recently - I can't remember the last few months when it was brought up - and then can't remember why, but we received a few letters, maybe four or five, from people who said you know, water park concept is fine, but please don't do it at City Park, you know. City Park would be easy if you had a lot of money to convert that into a water park, but one of the big problems is having sufficient parking. Champion! (can't hear) O'Donnell! I brought that up about, oh, two years ago, that we needed a leisure type pool, and it's amazing because I've got about a dozen letters at home from young folks saying what a great idea, you know, we need that. We need a pool that caters more to the young. I got two letters from older folks that said leave it alone, it's a perfect lap pool, but that made my point. We really don't have a pool that caters to the young element in Iowa City. I mean, if you want to go out and swim laps, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 48 that's a great pool. But it hasn't changed. I life guarded at that pool in 1962 and 63, and it's exactly the same. Trueblood! We've got a new bath house. O'Donnell! New bath house, okay. Bailey/ ..maybe explore that new idea. I mean, one of the things is we expand east, that might be a possible location, and I would suggest if we do something like that, looking at an indoor, or an indoor/outdoor, something that could be used in these types of months, because there's not a lot of...right, yeah, well (several talking). I mean, on the eastside of town you might not be so inclined to buzz up to North Liberty, so that might be something worth exploring, instead of retrofitting . something. I mean, if we want to have a referendum and build something. Trueblood! More of the indoor ones these days tend to be, but not always, tend to be the privately owned ones. (several talking at once) O'Donnell! Tipton just built a new complex. Trueblood/ Is it indoors? O'Donnell! Partially. Correia! Well, and because City Park.. .Iowa City Eels uses that, as well. I mean, competitive swimmers, don't they, in the summer? (several talking) In the summer is that used for competitive swimming, at all? Because it's... Trueblood! Yes, but not as extensively as during the school year. Correia! Right, and with the sports authority because it's a...regulation or whatever, would there be implications that we'd be able to capitalize upon that. I mean, there's no other outdoor pool in our area that has. . . Vanderhoef/ The big competitions chose to go indoors so they can plan on the weather and the other thing that is being looked at more and more by the United States' swimming is depth for entry, and 50 meter pools, when you have young age groups, you have kids taking offfrom both ends, and for a 200 relay and that creates some question if you've got a pool like Mercer where you've got a four foot depth for entry, versus I think it's only three at the 50 meter mark at City Park Pool, if! remember correctly. Trueblood/ Might even be less. Vanderhoef/ That...regional, you know, multi-state regional competitions. They want to go to the indoor pool. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 49 Elliott! Peripheral to this, I have a question for Steve. We apparently have not had many injuries at the fountain downtown, is that correct? Atkins/ That's correct. ElIiott/ I just, it just always concerns me when I see little kids running through there and I thought somebody's going to slip and crack their head open on that. O'Donnell/ They say the water isn't that deep. Elliott! No, but in a pool you say no running, but down there it's conducive to running and they slip and slide, but apparently we've been very fortunate. (several talking) Champion! (can't hear) so dangerous. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ If you wanted a water feature of these spray kind ofthings, it seems to me that to be family-friendly those kinds ofthings could be added to like the soccer field area where families come and there's kids not playing soccer, but they can't stay home. So, what do they do - they've got some play equipment. So, Napoleon Park and soccer field park are the two places that I see, family- friendly.. . (several talking). Wilburn! Any other projects? Steve, did you want to run us through...? GENERAL BUDGET DISCUSSION Atkins/ Yep. Any reason you want to (can't hear). Okay. (several talking) We discussed the other day the issue of the revaluation increase and (can't hear). Question? Correia! I just have a quick question, in terms of... so the revaluation that increased 16% is due both to increases of individual property and increase in the size? In the... Atkins/ It is due to a revaluation, then there's new construction. The overall values in residential tax base went up 18%. I'm only dealing with the issue of revaluating your existing home. Correia! My existing home went up l6%? Atkins/ On average, that's what we're... Correia! On average. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Conneil budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 50 Atkins/ On average" ,its aggregate that your house could have gone up 15 and Bob's could have gone up 12 and Dee's could have gone up 17 and.. .Ross's gone up nothing. Correia! Okay. I guess, do we have a high and low point, just because averages are so hard because you have outlyers in both areas that kind of skew. Atkins/ That's very possible. Yeah. Elliott! Now the aggregate went up 18% and roll back put it to 16, is that. . . Atkins/ Everybody just kind of slow down; we'll get you there. Elliott/ Okay. Atkins/ Okay. (several talking) I have it right here and was about to hand it out. Okay. There was an increase in revaluation for 16%. On average.. . remember, we revalue property every other year. So, it annualizes at about 8% a year. If you remember, I can show you that chart again. On average, property has grown in the 5 1/2% to 6 1/2% annually, but a revalue occurs every other year. There seem to be interest on the part of the Council to lessen the impact of that rather dramatic increase. And the way to do that would be to lower the tax rate. In order to accomplish, that is lessen the impact, we also will need to use cash reserves, and so I've done both. Now the tax rates that we're dealing with is that our current budget, the one we're in right now, 17.729 per $100,000 of value, or $850 in tax, property tax per $100,000. Champion! Does that include everything? Atkins/ That's what you pay. Comes out of your pocket. Champion! Includes everything. Atkins/ Everything. The proposed 07 budget had a tax rate of 17.863, but with the revalue increase, as you can see, the $100,000 is $951. So what we've proposed to do is the use of cash and the reduction in the tax rate. We have an amended budget of 17.238, or $917. Now, what does this mean? I guess I have the numbers. What it means is that we are changing our cash reserve policy to a 30% policy. We had going in 39% approximately, and I can show you the numbers. It also means that we would not levy the emergency levy at 27 cents. We would reduce the benefits levy, as we indicated to you we were going to do because of our experience related circumstances, that is we had budgeted based upon what Wellmark provided us at 13%. Our review indicated that 6 Yz to 7% was more likely and that's the result of that. This number results. We would also reduce the debt service levy. It's coincidentally close to the 27 cents, and then we would use cash to reduce that debt levy. What that simply means is that instead of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 51 borrowing monies to do capital projects, we would pay cash, and paying cash reduces the tax asking, and quite frankly, that will play well in the short term for us with our creditors that we are deliberately reducing the property tax rate. We are deliberately using our cash to pay for capital projects, and we still have a very sound, I believe, cash reserve policy, that's the 30%. The numbers that calculate, it's a reduction in the levy rate, that is the 17.2 from 17.8. The effect of it is that for every $100,000 there's a 16% on average increase. So, it's as ifit's $116,000. That was the increase. By doing this, it's $111,500. And that's an annualized growth rate of5.75%. Much more in line with what our history has been. That's how I would propose to get at that problem. (several talking) Elliott! Steve, if! read this correctly then, and if! understand it, which is doubtful usually, that this year per $100,000, $850. With what you are proposing, instead of going to $951, it would increase only to $9177 Atkins! That's correct. Elliott! Okay. Correia! So it's essentially a $34 saving. Atkins! $34 per $100,000 of value, that's correct. So if you have a $300,000 house, $34 times three. Correia! $90. Okay. O'Donnell! $102. Correia! Doesn't seem like a lot if... we're not saying that we're not able to provide the services, especially the public safety services that (TAPE ENDS) Atkins! Give me a second. As far as bang for your buck, I understand what you're talking about. Correia! And in terms of next year, we have to go back and then, ifit'sjust going to be a one-year thing. Next year we're going to go back and re-impose these levies because ofthe rollback and what not, that seems like. . . right, and you still wouldn't be able to do what you wanted to do, then people would be upset about that. Atkins! This is the current budget. This is in your book. (can't hear) we're at 46.7. The receipt side we're at 47.2. Remember, I pointed out to you that I didn't think we could justify the emergency levy because we were $500,000 to the good in balancing under that tax rate. Now if you take this new tax rate. . . Correia! So, hold, can you go back to that again? So, say that slower. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 52 Atkins! Okay. Total receipts for the proposed budget 47.2, receipts, income. Expense side, 46.7. The difference is about $500,000. Correia! So, then if the difference is $500,000 can we use that $500,000 for additional police officers? Atkins! Yes, you can use it. I would recommend strongly on recurring expenses. You...is the $500,000 available to you? The answer is yes. How you go about it is another debate. Your budget is balanced at $500,000 to the good. Now, with this new proposal, that is lowering the tax rate, that's no longer the conditions, the circumstances. Correia! But, I mean, can we go back again. Atkins! To this one? Correia! Yes. So, it's $500,000 to the good. Atkins! That minus that is $500,000. Correia! Okay, and that... Atkins! This is the current use of reserves. Those percentages. Correia! And that's what...so, ending balance is 17.261. Underneath the 46.718, we have 17.261. That's our reserve. Atkins! That's the reserve. You have to subtract the specific reserves which you can't get at and that's the 33%. Correia! What is that... what's the designated reserve that you can't get at? Atkins! Library equipment replacement reserve, library computer replacement, park land... Correia! Are you on a page number? Atkins! No, you don't have these. (several talking at once) The largest one... Wilburn! We're restricted by so many conversations going on again. Atkins! Restricted by policy, as well as restricted by certain accounting procedures. For example, we maintain cash development escrows from developers. That amounts to about $800,000 ofthat. And they can, they have the ability.. .you have my This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. '_'~__'_'_'~_'__"___k____._______,_......____.._ _....__,____.___.__.________.___~.__.,_._,____. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 53 money on escrow; yes we do.. .here it is. You can't use that for anything other than that purpose, and that's $1.6 million. Correai/ That's $1.6 million. And then under that... Atkins/ This is true cash reserves - it's 15.616, cash. If you wanted to blow it, you could blow it. Correia! ... we have a policy. Atkins/ Yes. Now, this is the current budget right now. With the proposal in the tax rate change.. . Vanderhoef/ Would you read those percents of the 05. That's the one thing that isn't on our sheet.. . Atkins/No, this is a new...yeah. Ready? 39,34.1,33.4,32.2,32.5 - current circumstance. The proposal I gave you just a couple minutes ago... Correia! Do we have that? Atkins/ No you don't. O'Donnelll What'd you give us? Correia! No, I meant this. Atkins/ This is minimal. Your expenditures, 47.1.. . expenditures 47.1, receipts 46.4. Now, that simply means are we spending more than we're taking in? Yeah, but we made a deliberate decision to use our cash reserves in this particular fiscal year, brought down the tax rates and paid for capital projects. And then the 30% policy reads across, 39, same as the other one, 33.2, 30, 29.3, 29.8 - yes. Correia! But you'll get that for us? Thank you. Atkins/ That's the effect of the new tax rate. Correia! And then you project it across then on the other years, in this form, that new tax rate? Atkins/ What I was trying to do was that in the third year with the new tax rate and the proposed increases in that new tax rate, we can get back to approximately where we were, so in two years we don't dig a hole for ourselves, and still keep the policy at about 30%. Correia! And... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 54 Bailey! It seems that we need to change that policy, because we're not even hitting in the goal, range of cash balance. Atkins! We would now. Correia! So the old policy, the current policy on the books is 20%? Bailey! Yeah. Atkins! Current policy is a 20% reserve, five year average, no less than 15% in any given year. Correia! Okay, so this, so you're proposing this new policy? Atkins! Increasing it. Correia! So, if, is there. . . have you, is there scenario out there of what it would look like if we were operating under that policy? Atkins! We can calculate virtually any number you want. If you wanted 28% or 25%, you can... that's, you just need to tell us what you want to do. That's easy enough to calculate. Correia! And I guess, is there, is there any scenario that gets us at figuring out how to. . . bolster or return back to that public safety status that we. . . Atkins! No, I don't believe it's there. Correia! Okay, so this.. . can we create what that scenario would look like? Atkins! Oh, sure, we can do that. Bailey! So you're talking about firefighters and police officers? Atkins! If we were to do that, I can almost assure you, you'll have to layoff other employees. It would, it's that... the firefighters alone are $600,000 a year. Correia! Well, and I'm not saying maybe all the (can't hear) but... Atkins! Unless you do nine, you don't open the station. Correia! Okay. Atkins! That's the Chief's position. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 55 Correia! Well, we can't open the station until it's built, and that would take how long? Atkins/ Couple years. Correia! Two years, so... Bailey/ Why I'm most interested in adding police officers if we're looking at public safety challenges, as we grow. I think that's a concern for... Atkins/ ... four police officers was about $260,000 a year. Correia! So, ifwe...so even our contingency, which we have at 465.. .ifwe decided by policy that we would have a $200,000 contingency over the next three years, we could... we see we have that for that allowable, recurrent... that wouldn't involve laying any other employees off, if we.... Atkins/ ... the short term, but remember, in your overall revenues, when we talked last time, you have a number of soft revenues that I had cautioned you about. For example, the sale of property. This will go away in 2010. That's a loss of revenue of about $400,000, of that item alone. Will we continue construction activities at the level that we've experienced? We're assuming it's going to stay up there. You have a bump in the economy, that goes down. So, general revenue because.. . general fund revenue, because it's made up of this sort of grab bag of all sorts of revenue, property taxes used to balance it. Problem that we have is that we're at the maximum at our property tax, unless you would choose the levy, the 27 cents. Correia! But we have a few big projects that are going on, like Plaza Towers... Atkins/ Right. Correia! ... and that's going to generate. . . Atkins/ Most of that's under TIF. Correia! But, the, all of those residential, are the residential, all the condos that are in there, that's not under TIF? Atkins/ Yeah, everything is, the whole building (can't hear) Correia! The whole building? All those residentials? (several talking at once) Atkins/ The building itself is what you're talking about... Champion! But the people who built those condos are not paying property tax? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 56 Atkins/ Sure, they have to pay property tax. Champion! Oh, okay. Correia! That's what I mean, that's what I mean, right. (several talking at once) So how long we not get those property taxes? Atkins/ Well, we took a little shorter...we took 20, Kevin? 20 years. Elliott! Steve, didn't you... Correia! So all those people that have $400,000, $200,000... Atkins/ They're paying taxes. Correia! Into our TIF account? Atkins/ Yeah, we enjoy the benefit of it. They don't get out of here tax free. Correia! Okay, okay, so a certain percentage of that TIF, could be set aside, but we can decide how those TIF dollars are used? Atkins/ No, you can't. Then we'd have to go back and redo the TIF, and then we have to look at the value of the whole district, which is supporting the TIF, if you were to try to generate any additional income. Bottom line is, I don't see any additional income out of Plaza Towers for 20 years, but we all knew that going in, no matter what the project was going to be. That was part of the deal. Elliott! It was an investment in the future. Atkins/ Yes. Elliott! You gave us some information the other day that showed, now was that residential, I think it was building permits, or .. ..value, that has gone down somewhat, each of the past three years? Atkins/ No, our building permit activity has done very well. Yeah. We're way up there. My concern, Bob, is that can we sustain it? Our building permit activity, I mean, that's one of the things, in may, irritates the heck out of me. Our construction activity, we do very well in all phases of construction in the community. Now, the point remains, will it stay in that million dollar range? 1...I have, you know, of course we've had 18 years of unprecedented growth in the national economy and we enjoy the benefit of that, and we've had two small recessions, but neither one of those recessions have affected communities such as ours because of our prosperity. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 57 Champion! The other thing about that is though, even if it's maintained at a million dollars (can't hear) I think it's gotta stop some time, or slow down. Is... the State keeps the rollback, we could actually be (can't hear). Atkins/ We assume the rollback stays the same. That's the only thing we can predict, because we have no idea what they're going to, what they're going to do. We do know that they took a million dollars worth of revenue away from us. I mean, that was very clear, we all saw that happen. Now, right now there is little the State can take away. Now, they could grant certain property tax exemptions and make us pay for them. Correia! But if we could, I'm just going to go back to.. . with the contingency, and we have, in all ofthe other budgets for the departments, they've all increased about 3%. Atkins/ That's correct. Correia! So that's increase both salary and services, 3%? Atkins/ It depends.. .you know, fuel went up higher, certain.. .gas and electric, those things grow at a little bit more rapid rate, but we accommodate those in our budget planning, that's correct. Now, our contingency is a 1 % policy, and we have for years not done that. Is the contingency... this is, is it overstated this year? No, it's currently at policy. Normally the contingency has been in the 350 range. So it is $100,000 whatever, $105,000, $150,000 higher. Correia! Well, in terms of the. . .it seems like we have the request that came in yesterday, but I think we really haven't talked about the request on public safety, and I'm interested in at least this year trying to get those police officers. I mean, I think people expect that, that was something that came up with it. Champion! We can't do it, because if we pay the contingency to pay it this year, what're we going to use next year? Correia! But we have the contingency...ifit's $200,000, we have the contingency budgeted at $470,000 out three years... Atkins/ That's correct. Correia! "so.... Atkins/ Could the contingency be reduced to the 350 range and have us live with it and project it out accordingly, the answer is yes. That has been our history, history, but the policy of I % when we originally did.. . remember the proposal, we were $500,000 to the good, we were $100,000 high on the contingency. Remember I pointed those, but we also have a number of soft revenues in here that you've got This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 58 to take account for. We're assuming the Peninsula project will continue and the guy will continue making his payments, and there's no reason to believe otherwise, I mean, we know we have a good fallback position, but after this 4/11 payment, it's done. So, your sale of assets is going to be zero in 2010. Wilburn! So, really what you're saying, in order to stay within our current policy, including trying to keep our bond ratings where they're at, highest... unless we're willing to take a greater risk with some, several points of soft money, and!or not buy down the increase in the tax.. . and, and to continue to do these bold levies, including the emergency levy, then your recommendation is we can't add that number of staff, either police to get back up to where we were two years ago or phasing in police, without impacting... Atkins! We have a request for nine firefighters and four police officers. That's 13 people. When it's all said and done, is going to be $900,000 in the general fund. Correia! But that's all, if we're talking about phasing in... Atkins! Well, what makes the different, if you're ultimately going to have to pay the full boat anyway? In fact, in three years we're going to be in worse shape because we're going to lose the sale of assets. Bailey! Well, are we going to make a decision then to stop annexing and stop growing the community, because if we can't, if we can't address the basic issues of public safety, I mean, I'm advocating for the police officers - I see greater challenge with the firefighters, but that is the same question. Ifwe continue to grow outward, out city becomes less manageable for those people who have to respond to emergencies and insure security, and so, I think we need to make some decisions instead of just going along as we are. I mean, either we say no to additional public safety and say we're going to stop growing outward. We're just going to do infield development, and hope that that can sustain us, because that's a smart choice, because we can't keep this pace. Vanderhoeti' Cities that have chosen not to grow are the ones that are dying, at this point, and there are some cities like that around the nation that made a conscious... Bailey! But it's irresponsible to grow if you cannot provide services. Vanderhoef! But the tax base keeps eroding. Bailey! So we need to figure out how to work on the numbers so that we can provide the (can't hear) that people expect when they pay their property taxes. Elliott! I spent some time on the telephone with a woman the other day. She said, 'I'm from Coralville but we have purchased a lot in north Iowa City. My husband has a heart condition and he said after talking with the fire chief, we've decided pretty This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 59 much that we can't live there because the northside ofIowa City is not served for public safety purposes sufficient to protect us the way the rest of Iowa City is saved,' and I think this is a very serious public safety problem, and we heard requests for money and 1 think if we cannot protect our citizens, we have to do something about it. Bailey! Well, and I'm more concerned quite honestly, I'll be really frank. I'm, 1 don't know how many of you have ridden along with a police officer in the last year, but they're one in a car. You have to wait for backup. If there's a serious issue and we're seeing increasingly serious issues, that's a delay in addressing that immediate need. 1 mean, Ijust have concerns about that. Vanderhoef! 1 don't disagree. What 1 have seen over the years, is this appetite from our constituents of things that see as "necessary" and there has grade in there between whether we have parks and recreations, or whether we have police officers, whether we have expanded library services or we have firefighters. It's the services that we have to make the hard decisions, and that means people. Bailey! And I think library services are basic. 1 mean, 1 know that you don't agree. You call them an amenity. I think that we could look in our culture and recreation and do some creative movement of programming, but 1 think our library's a basic service because it provides for those who don't have access to those kinds of things, and if we value education and early childhood sorts ofthings, that library is critical to that continuing. Correia! Right, and 1 don't think we can necessarily compare, I mean, 1 don't think we can have police versus the library, but I think if we're talking about whether we're going to do a property tax... whatever, relief of $34 and say we can't provide basic services that people expect, 1 mean, that doesn't make... Wilburn! 1 understand your point. 1 guess just to get us making, towards the decision making mode, and correct me ifI'm wrong, but the choices that would guide us would be to, someone just throw out a recommendation. You're either saying raise tax; you're saying here are the layoffs tb,at 1 want to have in order to get police or fire; you're saying here are the fiscal policies I'm willing to amend and take greater risk with the consequences being bond rating, etc., etc.,; or name another source of revenue that we would pursue. I mean, otherwise we're going to spin our wheels back and forth here. So, we need, rather than just saying we've got to do this, we've got to say, '1 want us to do this. Here's what I'm willing to, here's what I'm willing to give to get that.' O'Donnell! 1 don't think you can do that without a great deal of thought. Not growing is not an option for any city. You just have to continue to grow a tax base, because whether you grow or not, expenses increase every year. But I'm not ready right now, and that's very clear and I think that has to be done, but I'm not ready to do that right now. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 60 Wilburn! And I'm just saying.. . otherwise we're going to punish each other unless we say, here's what I'm willing to give to get. Elliott! What I'm not willing to do is, I started two years ago and we had this discussion; we had it last year; we're having it this year, and I can see every year for the next ten years we're going to talk about well, we can't add the necessary firefighters and police because we don't have the funds to do it. I think we've got to find a way to do it. Period. Wilburn! So what are you willing to give to get? Correia! I have some questions. (several talking at once) Bailey/ You're willing to what? Are you willing to stop growing? Wilburn! In order to give us (several talking) as opposed to... Elliott! What is more important than public safety? O'Donnell/ But that's why, we need more.. . before we just throw something out, !think we need to think about it.. . Wilburn! Well, and I'm just saying then, that's the direction we need to go. ...this is my, this is what I believe is the number one priority given input from constituents then I'm willing to name, you know, here's, and that's where we've got to move if we're going to... O'Donnell/ That's exactly true, but I think we have to give it some very careful thought. Correia! I have some, I have some other questions, just to.. .in some of the budgets for our business enterprises, that have large balances, which I understand that it's a requirement to have balances. I guess one ofthe things I'm wondering is, for each of those, what are our legal requirements, and I don't need to answer those right now, and then.. . and what, what are our legal requirements, what are our policies and what's in place, and then in some of those we have interest incomes. So, I'm just thinking of the landfill. Like a lot of interest income, which I imagine comes from the landfill balance. It must be.. .huge, so it's, we're generating lots of income that goes then back in to the landfill, is there, could we.. .is there a possibility of saying 50% of the interest income from the landfill business enterprise, we're going to use for public safety? Atkins/ Short answer is yes. Correia! Okay. So that is, I mean, I think some of, finding where there's other income that we can use and transfer, and I think that landfill is about $330,000 of interest This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 61 income, so if half ofthat went to public safety, that could fund one and a half officers, or ... Champion! And then you're going to have to raise the fees for the landfill. Correia! I don't think you could. It's still generating income. It's still over, generating more expenditures than, I mean more income than expenditures. Bailey/ So, I want to make sure I understand this. We have.. . (several taking at once)...because we're required to have a large balance and we continue to reinvest that into the landfill that continues to hold the large balance, right? So, that money isn't, I don't want to say needed, but it's not required, nor is it being spent. Correia! Even if we spent 30%, I mean, I'm not saying all of the interest. Mansfield! Okay, with the landfill you have certain restricted cash. Your closure and post -closure reserves, and you cannot, you cannot direct that interest to the General Fund. Correia! Oh, you can't direct that, so that's... Mansfield! That portion of the fund balance is truly offlimits. There is another part of the landfill fund balance where the unrestricted portion of the landfill fund balance, I believe you can direct that to the General Fund, and we actually, I believe, did that like two years ago. Atkins/ Yes, we did. Mansfield! And so... Atkins/ About four years ago. Mansfield/ ...okay, so I, part of that landfill interest income is already corning into the General Fund. A tkins/ Our. . . Correia! Is corning in? Mansfield! Yeah. Atkins/ Yeah... the business type funds that you're talking about, can monies from those funds be generated and can they be directed to the General Fund, again, the short answer is yes. We have to research those ordinance, but the bottom line is, you could raise water rates. . . and use water income to pay for... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 62 Correia! Well, I'm not interested in that... Atkins/ No, I understand (several talking) But you have to understand here kind of the bottom line is that the State exercises an immense amount of control over what we can and cannot do. They truly grant us an allowance. You have $8.10 per $1,000 of so and so, figure it out, and maternalistically, it's pat you on the head and send you on your way. There's not a lot ofroom. Champion! (can't hear) I mean, I'm not interested in raising anybody's property taxes $100 per $100,000 because there aren't a lot of$IOO,OOO in Iowa City, for one thing. The average house price is now $179,000 or $180,000? Atkins/ I'd say $180,000. Champion! So, when you're talking about people who are living in Iowa City, that $100 a year can be important to them and I think our property taxes and property evaluations are about as high as people can tolerate who of that income bracket. (several talking at once) Correia! Well, we're still raising it $70, I mean, we're only... Bailey/ Well, and I think that's going to get lost too in the whole configuration. I mean, this is our portion of it, and I suspect, well no, I suspect we're the only body that's actually exploring the possibility of not raising taxes. Champion! (can't hear) library referendum? And you've got (can't hear). Correia! Well, I think what Regenia's saying is that this $30 that we're rebating is not really going to, people aren't really going to even sense that there's a $30 impact. It's.. . Bailey/ I mean, that would be the reason to do it, but I think it's lost in the whole mix of it. Vanderhoef/ That's where our own P.R. comes in, to make our case and look at it - the emergency levy. That is what's bringing us down too, but you turn around and we've heard our presentations last night asking for a half million dollars, much of it to be used for housing with figures like we are cost burdened by 40% in housing in this city, and then you talk about raising taxes $100 per 1,000 versus $70 per 1,000, I mean, what do you want? What can we do? We can't have everything. We've got this huge appetite. Our citizens have a huge appetite for amenities. Bailey/ They're not amenities. Until you stop calling them that, we are not going to see eye to eye. Our citizens expect library services and that's not an amenity. Vanderhoef/ I didn't say library. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Coun,ell budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 63 Bailey/ Okay, so what are you calling amenities? Curbs and gutters? Trails? V anderhoef/ I'm talking about all of the parks and recreation kinds of activities. Bailey/ But that wouldn't be an area that any of us would cut. Vanderhoef/ Okay, but they are amenities. Can you live without them? Do you want to live without them? Bailey/ No. Can you live without, can you actually have economic development without those kinds ofthings in a community? No, and that's exactly what we need to be doing. (several talking) Champion! .. . okay, so Amy, the other problem is, if you're going to raise somebody's property tax $100 a year and they live in a $100,000 house, are the commercial properties, that's going to be $200, which means that people who are paying already $600 to $700 a month rent are now going to be paying $800 to $1,000 rent, which makes our rental market even more unaffordable than it is now. So, there's so many repercussions from even our raise in the property taxes, let alone the other jurisdictions that also do that. Bailey/ Yeah, how do.. .how does our evaluation compare to other jurisdictions in the area? I mean, what's the range and... Atkins/ Well, the difficulty that we have is, and I'm convince ours are much higher, we have a, this is... we have a city assessor and the city assessor has the ability through their calculations to provide us with this information. The (can't hear) abstract is a lump sum of everybody else, and it all gets lost. You'd have to do a specific report. Bailey/ Let's say the lump sum, what was the evaluation increase? Atkins/ That I couldn't tell you. Bailey/ Do you have a sense? Atkins/ Because then you've got agricultural property and everything... Mansfield! I can check it for you, but it won't be a break between construction and, I can tell you county wide how much it changed between revaluation and new construction. Bailey/ That would be something. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. --'--"--~-'-'~-----""--------'---'-"-'-"---~~---~-_._"..._._.._--_."----~._-_.._--------- January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 64 O'Donnell/ You know, lowering taxes is always a great thing, and when you start high and lower half, you're still increasing. You know, we're increasing $67. We're cutting $34 from what's proposed, and that's a good thing any time you can lower taxes, but...what's that? And we've done good, but realistically it's $34 per $100.,0.0.0. for the year. Elliott! I want to point out.. . Steve, I asked you a bit and I found what you gave us...City ofIowa City yearly building statistics, and 20.0.3, $169 million; 20.0.4, $119 million; 20.0.5, $112,0.0.0. million, so it has dropped each of the last three years. Atkins/ If you back it up about three more years and tell me what those numbers were. Elliott! Yeah, it goes up and down. Atkins/ 60., 70., then it goes to 10.0. and stays there. Over $10.0. million for seven years runnmg. Elliott! But what I'm saying is, we have a three-year trend and my concern is with this rollback, what's the Legislature going to do when part of the reasons for the rollback is the success of the Des Moines-Ames corridor and the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids corridor has, and I am not, at least I think there is a possibility that there might be hard times coming, and I'm concerned that we're looking at that, and it seems to me that we're either going to have to say we want all these things. What do you call them, amenities or needed niceties, but we're going to be here in five more years and public safety is still going to suffer, so we either need to make that decision, or we need to bit the bullet and say we need another form ofrevenue. Champion! Or (can't hear) give up to get it. I mean, I think this is still the first decision we have to make. Elliott! Oh, yeah, but I want us to talk about this before we, I don't want us to just leave this now. I want us to talk about how important is public safety to Iowa City. Bailey/ But if you can't tell me what you're willing to put on the chopping block for your, for these nine.... Elliott! I have told you already. Bailey/ What? Elliott! Whatever it takes! There is nothing more important than public safety. Bailey/ So if it means closing the library, you're willing to do it. Elliott/ Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 65 Bailey! If it means closing the Rec Center, you're willing to do it. If it means closing the Senior Center and selling the building, you're willing to do it. O'Donnell! Those are all hypotheticals... Bailey! He said anything! He said anything. I really want to know what that means. So if these.. . I can't make a decision.. . Wilburn! If we could take a time out for a second here. I think the, we can take a break, but maybe something to think about here going to the break. What some of us are asking, rather than leave it out there, whatever it takes, could you envision making that decision, because...1 mean, that's, whatever it takes for you may mean something different for each of us. .. Elliott! Oh yeah! Wilburn! ...will help the conversation and decision making for some of us if you go ahead and say here's where I am, we can do without in order to... what you feel is (several talking). That's where I'm... Vanderhoef! Find the balance. Correia! I have a question, I have a quick question. Elliott! Well, just in response to that, because I am very serious, whatever it takes. We cannot go on another five or ten years and say we can't afford more police, we can't afford more firemen. Wilburn! I understand, (several talking) are you saying we, given the recommendation from the City staff and the City Manager, given this set of circumstances, positions people will have to be laid off, are you saying we come up with that? Elliott! No, I'm saying the City Manager sits down and says if we have a three year time period, or a five year time period, here's, here are three or four alternatives. They're all going to be very tough. They're all going to be very serious, and some of them may be attainable and some may not. Bailey! With all due respect, I think that courage has to be ours and not our employee. I really do. We have the direct, people speak directly to us, and I think that that needs to be our discussion and decision. Atkins! They work for Steve, not us. Bailey! But, Ijust think that that is...(several talking at once). O'Donnell! Are we going to be talking to the police and fire department? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 66 Elliott! Yes. O'Donnell/ Does anybody know where we rank in officer per....I can't find that. That's what we need to look at carefully before we get into any more discussions. Bailey/ I'm willing to keep taxes the same if we can get two additional police officers. That's the extent I'm willing to go for public safety, and that's what I would do. Correia! That's what I was going to ask. Ifwe kept it the same, we would be able to afford over three years projected, two additional firefighters... three years projected, two additional firefighters, that would give us... Atkins/ I don't think you should do two additional firefighters. Correia! I mean, I meant police officers. Atkins/ Okay, police officers. Correia! I meant police officers. Wilburn! Okay, but that's the type of conversation (several talking). Amy is saying I'm willing to go ahead and raise taxes at this rate in order to get those things. Correia! Well, I'm willing to keep taxes at the current rate. I mean, taxes are going up. Wilburn! I understand. My point was that's an example of what will be a more helpful conversation as opposed to.. . Bailey/ And that's what I'm willing to do. Champion! I am not willing to follow this under any circumstances. I am willing to tell the City Manager over the next three years in your budget how would you want to do it, I'll be glad to approve; I want at least two positions opened up for police, or nine positions opened up for firemen over the next five years. Elliott/ That's. . . Champion! But I'm not willing to raise people's taxes to get it. We have to give something up. Bailey/ We would be giving up our staff members from other departments. Champion! And they might layoff. It might be done by attrition, like when we cut the police department by four. We didn't lay anybody off. It's not (can't hear) Steve Atkins to say this department could use one less person, they're going to bitch and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 67 bitch and bitch, but they could get by without this one person, but that's got to be management's decision. ) have to approve it or ) can disapprove it, but) don't know what part of the City has some fat, if there are any. You know,) don't know that so ) don't want to say. Bailey! Well, none of the areas have fat. ) mean, we've heard from... Champion! They're all pretty skinny. It's an incredibly well run city, but those are the tough choices and ) don't see where) can make those. ) could say, you know what,) see two people down there turning that fire hydrant on. We could only have one person do it. ) mean, those, that's the only perspective) have on City economics. ) don't really know if we have too many people out at that reception desk or whether people could wait in line longer to pay their traffic tickets or their water bills or that kind of thing. That's the kind of thing that) don't know. ) can approve it or disapprove it by hearing the repercussions, but I'm not going to micro-manage the City and say these budgets (can't hear). Wilburn! Why don't we... .let's take ten minutes, okay, and when we come back, why don't we, I've had two people say that they're willing to keep the current tax rate if we get two officers out of it. I've had two say that they're willing to direct staff, the City Manager, to put those two in, and one said without the current tax rate. Why don't the rest of us think about that and then I'd like to have just a generaL) think it's fair to give staff, Steve, a chance to respond. So why don't we go take ten and... Vanderhoef! Can )just make one quick comment on this? Just looking on page 38 of the approved new one in the budget that was presented to us before we looked at this tax drop, we have a.5 grand total addition of new employees, even at the higher tax rate, so there's money to do two additional as I'm hearing it. Just think about that. (TAPE OFF) Wilburn! We should get going so we can take advantage ofthe time. We should get going here. I've asked Steve to go ahead and comment here. Atkins! Just a couple quick comments. I'll do whatever you instruct me to do, obviously, you understand that, but) have to tell you that one of the questions) would ask of you maybe this is a round about way to make you make these decisions, ) got to know ifthere' s any sacred cows, and) want you to understand some of the numbers. We have 400 employees in the General Fund. If you exempt police and fire, you're down to 240, and if you're going to take 15 employees, if you end up with that high a number, it comes out of that 240 because I'm assuming, you know, you wouldn't... there's a very real potential you'll set a tone in the organization that could be very, very difficult to control for a period of time because people are going to be saying, 'Who's next?' These are not things we want to triffle with. ) know you want to add things to the budget. My job is to give you a financial assessment. I'll admit, I'm a very conservative guy and I like This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 68 to believe the results are we have reserves, we have good credit, we have those kinds of things. If you're willing to take some risks on a couple positions or couple of issues, we can work with that, but let's not rush wholesale into opening the 4th fire station as the be-all and end-all. I mean, folks, three years ago we had a plan to do it, and we had it yanked out from under us. We didn't do that. We had a plan. That station would be open today if it wasn't for the State. End of soap box. Wilburn! I will have to.. . first a response to where we ended up. If the Council were to decide to proceed with layoffs or to make cuts to get public safety, police back where it was, and two to continue on with the plan that we had for staffing that fire station, I personally in terms, and this is my take, in terms of responsibility when you're talking about a large scale oflayoffs, I personally feel that that's the policy maker and not our staff. If you're talking about Steve, see if there's 3%, 5% to cut across the board and that would involve some phasing out or some small scale layoffs, then that's a different story. This would be a major organizational impacting decision and I believe that's the responsibility of the policy maker. That's what I believe. Given what I would be willing to give to get, and I believe the priority offolks that I've talked to in some of the neighborhoods, would be to get law enforcement back up to where it was. I know the impact, but it's also a service thing and I believe that I would be prepared to explain to citizens that we would keep the current tax rate to get those two officers. So, that would make three, but rather than counting to four and stopping, I think we should hear from everyone still. Vanderhoef/ So, within the proposed budget, ifI'm understanding you, you're saying you're going to make enough cuts out of the General Fund to increase that $150,000 or $200,000 to add for police officers? Wilburn! Your suggestion was that the current, the current rate could get us to, with some additional cuts, or.. .is that what you were, Regenia suggesting? Atkins/ That's proposed. 07 budget. (several talking) (TAPE ENDS) plus, to the good your revenues for fiscal 07. (can't hear) 08 and 09, but for 07, you are $500,000 to the good, at that tax rate. Bailey/ And that could get us two police officers? Atkins/ Oh, easily. Bailey/ So we don't have to do any, from what I'm hearing you say, we could take this proposed budget, add two police officers, and we wouldn't have to suggest or... Atkins/ We would probably take the emergency levy and reduce it a little bit. Instead of 27 cents, maybe make it 13 or 14, I don't know exactly. You have the choice in doing that. The reason that we said no emergency was we were $500,000 to the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 69 good. If you grow the budget, that changes that number a little bit, and I also think you can justify some portion of the emergency levy. Bailey/ For good public safety. Elliott! See if I'm hearing this right. Ifwe went with the reduction this year, you're saying that might simply put off the maximum increase one or two years. Atkins/ It'll put it off probably two. Elliott! So, we would be losing, by making this reduction, which some of us think would be very significant and positive to do, but by doing that, we would lose the potential to hire two police officers, and perhaps we would be only putting off the maximum increase for another year or perhaps at the most two years? That's a rather high price to pay. Bailey/ Can I, and so you said if we were willing to take a few more risks, your conservative on, I mean I'm more risk comfortable. Atkins/ Well, I'd like to think I'm not risk adverse. Bailey/ I didn't say you were. (laughter) I said you were conservative. You identified yourself as conservative. Wilburn! Well, there's calculated risks and there's all-out... Bailey/ .. .jumping off a cliff without a rope and then there's the rope. Where does the rope go away on the number of police officers if we did 17.863, could we get three? I mean... Atkins/ If you did 17.863, I'm setting aside library hours and Senior Center hours and. Summer of the Arts. I mean, those are not huge numbers. 17.863 would allow you to do virtually all four. Bailey/ Right. Atkins/ Four police officers. Bailey/ But we don't get any other toys. Atkins/ I have to go back, it would get pretty tight. Bailey/ Right, okay. Atkins/ I would probably say to you, if that was the case and you're interested in doing that, then reduce your contingency and use some of those monies if you want to This represents only a reasonably accurate trauscription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 70 phase in a couple of the smaller, I'm thinking of Summer of the Arts. Very clearly said.. . for three years and that doesn't mean it'll go away because it'll be a new group in three years, and... Correia! And we've been able to survive on the contingency lower then? Atkins/ Generally speaking... we always have our working capital reserves, the big number. We don't like to go after that. We like to use those monies during the course of the year. We also like to invest them a little longer term because you get better interest (several talking at once). Elliott! But if we don't do this modest reduction this year, what does that do if we leave it there? What does that do to the commercial properties? What's the increase those people, because we're talking mainly about residential properties here, and commercial properties are paying taxes at a rate of more than twice. Atkins/ Commercial property, oh yeah, I mean there's no doubt that commercial property, just simple arithmetic is twice. $100,000 worth of commercial, you're going to pay $1,700 and not $850. Elliott! Yeah, we're now getting into an area that impacts economic development. Atkins! But, my counter to that is, it affects economic development throughout the whole state ofIowa because the same law applies to everybody. Vanderhoef/ And if rollbacks were to go down again the next two years, then would we still be able to afford those two. . . Atkins! Next year will be a more difficult year because it's an off-revalue year, which is also one of the importance of keeping your cash reserve in a good position to ride out that.. . every indication that property values in Iowa City, Iowa are not going to decline. In two years I think you can expect to see another 6% or 7% growth without too much trouble, I mean, that's been our history for all those years. Vanderhoef! So, at what time do we hit that point where the commercial taxes really impact the economic development of this community? Atkins! And, Dee, my counter would be to you, I'm more concerned about the State of Iowa. They have to answer that question. You can't! We're stuck with what they give us, and if someone says my commercial property taxes are obscenely high, well, check Ames, check anybody, it's a State law! They don't permit the rollbacks on those properties or a minimal rollback. Vanderhoef} But the State is in that position of trying to grow economic development and work force development and all of those things so they're robbing Peter to pay Paul (several talking) cities to put it into grants to come out from the state. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 71 Atkins/ We're the economic engines - that's the cities. There's no doubt about that. But we can be all the engines we want. They make the rules. Champion! So the three of you that are willing to keep this current tax rate, you're willing to raise people's rents by probably a minimum of$IOO a month? (can't hear) Correia! I don't always know that raising or lowering, or at least lowering, is going to have benefit to the renter. Champion! Oh it sure does because if you raise them, that's passed on. Correia! But I mean, I think they generally raise taxes, I mean, raise rents, that they can get, and as our market opens up, and we have a higher vacancy rate, which is a healthy vacancy rate. We've had unhealthy low vacancy rates which is what's been driving up our rents, they're going to have to keep rents to get renters. Because there's a lot of competition. Elliott/ Whatever rent is charged, that rent will incorporate all the expenses that the property owner has and one of those expenses is property taxes. Now what they do in addition to that, if you lower property taxes, I doubt that it's going to lower rent. If you raise property taxes, it will increase the rent. Correia! Well, it's going to be raised anyway. Even with what we're proposing we're only proposing, it's still going to go up $70 per $100,000. So, the rents are going to go up regardless of whether we change... Elliott! The thing to remember, everybody pays property taxes. Everybody. (several talking) Wilburn! ...ifpublic safety, getting back to those levels of police protection two years ago is a priority, then they have to be paid (can't hear) willing to put forth. O'Donnell/ You know, in the days of $2.30 gas and high utilities and high water bills, high taxes, high food, people in the community on fixed incomes, I think when you have an opportnnity not to increase as much as you can, you should do that. I'm not going to support this. I will support the reduction of property taxes. Correia! So you're not going to support increasing the police department? O'Donnell/That's not what I said. I said.. .that's what we'll have to work on. I cannot have that answer right now. Wilburn! So, for right now, at least the question of the tax rate, we haven't heard from Dee. That would be the deciding direction. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 72 Elliott! I don't know for sure what I'm going to do on that. I'll have to figure that out in the next two or three minutes. Wilburn! Okay. And you, excuse me, I presumed you were saying earlier, but you haven't made a final decision. So, go ahead, Dee, I'm sorry. Vanderhoef! I'm sitting here looking at our economic development engine and our commercial properties. I don't see how we can add tax at this point. Creatively I think we might be able to do a little attrition within the rest of the staff, but not (can't hear) looking at cutting three, four, five - whatever. I still corne down on the cost of housing, also. Cost for housing, if we raise this tax this amount, I think we're trying to say to our community that live some place else unless you are a high salaried person. I don't think that's what some of the people around this table want to have happen, and I think it will happen. I don't think we can do this. The only place I can see that's left in the budget is attrition and trading some of the FTEs from present employee or staffing levels by departments. That's a hard choice to make for police and fire. If I saw a huge increase in, we have the calls, but I think we have a safe city. I think we can be real proud of our police department and what they are doing, and yes I would like to add police officers, but I don't think we can do it at this point in time, and still keep the rest of our goals. The results are, in my mind, I want to see a safe city, which I think we have at this point in time. The amenities, as some of you around the table know, I've been asking for years to have a plan ofFTEs, additional FTEs. We have a very modest.5. I think last year we had maybe one FTE, but it was split out in pieces to two or three departments. So, growth of FTEs certainly has not been our problem. Steve states it correctly - it's a state problem, a rollback problem, that we can't control, but I think this budget that has been presented to us gets these tax deductions, reduction rather, are the way we have to go for another year. Wilburn! .. . supporting, I guess that brings us down to three and three with Bob, and this may drive whether the law enforcement is another conversation, but... Correia! I have a quick question, given that in this proposed tax structure, we would reduce the debt service levy and use cash to reduce our debt levy. So that would, that could still stay. Atkins! It goes back to the next year if you want to use cash again. Correia! No, no, for this year. Atkins! Oh, this year sure. Correia! Right, because when we were just talking it was we either don't do this, we do do this, so there are portions ofthis that we could still do because there were others, so we could still, this reduced debt service levy could happen? Because This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 73 we were going to use cash reserves because we had over cash... we were reducing the benefit's levy because.... Atkins/ Experience related, we had a better year than we anticipated. Correia! Okay, so we could still do that. Atkins/ Yep, that's correct. That would be a (can't hear). Correia! And then you were just saying about ten minutes ago that if we wanted to do two, two police officers, that we could reduce the benefit's levy, the emergency levy, to 13 cents. Atkins/ Certainly. It's one to 27 cents. Correia! So we could do most of these things. We could do -.084, -.271, reduce that.27 to .13, and get two police officers. Atkins/ Yep, we'll look into that. Bailey/ So we could be at 17, what 368 or something like that, 378. So we could actually reduce. Correia! ...it's most of it, except some of the emergency (several talking) Wilburn! .485? Bailey/ So we could go down is essentially what we're saying. Correia! Could still go down, really significantly, well not as significantly but... Elliott/ Amy, are you saying that in, what were we talking about, a reduction of like 34 dollars? Yeah. You're saying that maybe there's a way to reduce that, not by 34 but we could reduce it by.. ..fewer and still get the police officers. Correia! Still reduce it, not by quite as much... Elliott! You're looking for a little middle ground on this situation right here? Correia! Right, yes. Elliott! Connie? Champion! I think from $30 to $20 is a major break. That's taking a third of the tax cut away. I still have problems with it. I just think we're, I think taxes are out of hand. I really do. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 74 Elliott! I would go for a compromise, lowering this with the understanding that this Council will have a meeting at some point after this is done to talk about how we're going to accomplish our goals in the future. Whether we're going to fight - _ Ross outlined a two-step process. Ross, I don't think that's an either or process. I think that's a two-step process that we would go through with the City Manager as to him bringing to us several alternative for us to consider, and also there's an alternative source ofrevenue that we might attempt, though difficult as that might be, but I want this Council to have this, I would vote for this compromise if we have that discussion later on this year. Champion! Ifwe do the compromise, which is a third, will we still be able to do the Summer of the Arts, again, hours at the library....I mean, are those, if we just do two... Atkins! Summer of the Arts, as a proposal, is appealing because they've indicated it's a three year seeding, so that's, that looks favorable. If you want to add hours to the library as a recurring cost, then you face it forever. Want to add hours to the Senior Center; do it but you face it forever, in the sense of it's continuing a recurring cost. Bailey! Susan mentioned last night when I talked to her though, is that they just want to try it. They, the survey came out very favorable, but I truly believe that if it's not used, that they would probably scale it back and that's what she indicated, because I was saying why not 9:00 Friday night, and she said we'll have to actually see if there's going to be usage. Correia! And that might be something too that's more used during warmer weather, but when there's things going on Friday nights downtown and not used as much during the winter. Atkins! (can't hear) you can really put whatever hooks you want, but I want a one year this or a one year.. .. Bailey! Well, no, I guess what I'm saying, yeah, I think we should be ready if we're going to do it to acknowledge that it could be recurring costs, but the impression that I got and the impression that I get from the library is they really do check in with citizens about what the needs are and they're responsive to that and they're not going to needlessly be opened if it's not used, and so I think we should acknowledge that we have a very responsible department there and if costs don't need to be recurring, they won't be recurring. Elliott! I would like to see them indicate that if they are able to extend those hours, that they extend them certainly during the Friday night summer series and see where they go from there, as you just pointed out. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 75 Bailey/ No, no, what I said is I said why not 9:00 on Friday night and they said that they're going to be open until 8:00, as they indicated last night, to see how it works and so I say let them run their plan and I think they'll come back to us with some good solid numbers as they did last night about usage and then we can have that discussion, ifit's a recurring cost or not. Wilburn! [fyou're going to put money into something though, [really think that you need to do it with the expectation that it's going to be successful and... Bailey/ I agree, but I just say, [ guess I trust their ability to analyze that. Vanderhoef! I had a discussion with one of the Library Foundation folks who is very supportive of trying this, which certainly [ am supportive of trying it, but the funding on it. ..and [ threw out the possibility. The Foundation is being funded by strong supporters and users of the library facility and certainly they care about it, and looking at a $38,000 potential pilot project or whatever, that this might be something that the Foundation could do, and it's different than what their policy is, but he indicated that, oh, that's never even been talked about, and if this is what we see, and given the constraints of the City budget, it might be worth talking about there. So that's one piece. The other thing that we have not alluded to today is obviously the sources of new revenue for the City, and certainly we have one that our citizens have said no to before, however, it's been quite a while since we have talked about a one cent sales tax, and other communities have been using this to fill these needs, just like we're trying to find new revenue to do these kinds of things. I don't know whether there's any interest from Councilor not, but we're at that point that if fire stations and police officers are critical to the operation of our city, then our the citizens willing to support a one cents sale tax for those kinds of things? Correia! Well, I think that's a separate conversation. Vanderhoef/ No, it's new income for... Correia! No, a separate conversation in that that's obviously not going to happen this year or even over the next, I mean, that has to go to the voters and that's the, low collection sales tax is something that's been documented to be a regressive tax, those that are lower in income pay more based on their, proportionately than those of higher income, and so... Vanderhoef/ I will argue that one with you in the fact of the things that are exempt are the basic (several talking) Wilburn! The point is well taken that given our time frame for where we were close to direction here is not going to happen before (can't hear). So, were there four of us willing to go with this compromise suggestion in not, in adding the two police officers with reducing the amount of these suggested levies? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 76 Elliott! As I said, I would support that, with the understanding that we have a meeting sometime before the end of summer to talk about how we're going to come up with adequate public safety. Including some of the conversation Dee just had. Champion! (can't hear) to assume that we don't have adequate public safety and Ijust have to disagree with you on that. I think our public safety is adequate. It may not be fantastic, but it's certainly not inadequate, or we wouldn't be sitting here today. Elliott! And, those, that is something on which people can disagree. Bailey/ Well, I have a question about scheduling that discussion after the fact and not to belabor all of this, but you indicated that you're willing to sacrifice anything to get to this place, this 4th fire station, and is it really fair to move ahead with the budget and stretching this out with some assumptions, when a subsequent discussion could completely turn that around 180? I mean, shouldn't that discussion be part of this broader discussion? I mean, I know that everything is related and you can't talk about everything in, within a certain time frame, but that seems a little bit confusing to me and it would be confusing to me as a citizen if we start off in this direction and by a discussion in July we've completely switched directions. But we will not then keep these two police officers if we're able to hire them, or we will not go in this direction of extended hours for the library, or whatever else we've decided. I mean... Elliott! I'm just willing to say, I'm willing to do the same thing this year that we did last year and the year before, but I'm not willing to go on another year, and come up with the same thing next year - well, we can't. We haven't even heard from the police chief and the fire chief yet. Bailey/ I guess what I'm saying, I'll just use an analogy, if we decide to drive to California with this budget and a subsequent discussion says no, New York City is the better place to go, won't we be turning our car around and won't that potentially be confusing? Elliott! I don't think there's anything irreversible.. ..(several talking) Bailey/ I just see, potentially, with Bob's willingness to sacrifice anything to get to this fire station that we could start off in one direction with this budget and end up turning completely around and that concerns me. O'Donnell/ The original question that Ross asked was are there four, and I'm not willing to do it. I'm going to hold by this budget. Bailey/ But I'm just saying in subsequent years if we do indeed hire police officers, are, would we then be willing to lay off police officers to get to your fire station? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 77 O'Donnell! I understand your point, I understand your point. Elliott! No, police and fire are one and the same for me, and I don't see that we're doing anything that would be irreversible at this point. Bailey! My point is I don't like to start off in going in one direction and reverse course. It sends odd messages to the community. Wilburn! So.. .go ahead. Champion! I think you ought to remember when you hear from the police chief and you hear from the fire department, that they have the ideal situation in mind. It'd be like me, I don't know (several talking) Elliott! All I ask is that you hear from them. Champion! .. .it's a goal to get the fire station open in two years, or is the goal over the next ten years to hopefully get the fire station opened and staffed? Because I think ten years is a very short span (can't hear) time frame and in a budget frame, ten years is not a long, long time. The other thing that I wOrry about is, if we keep raising people's property taxes, we actually won't need another police station, or fire station, because everyone will move out of town, but I agree with you, we do need more police and we do need more firemen, but I'm not willing to touch anything to get them, because I don't think we're in a dangerous situation, and I think if you frankly asked even the fire station, are we in a dangerous situation, they'd have to say no. So, I know that you feel very strongly that this is the most important issue facing the city. I think there are other issues that are actually more important. Elliott! And that's fine. All I ask is that we have that discussion, and I think a part of that discussion is the revenue stream. Champion! There is a tax, I mean, it's either, can you do an alcohol tax? (laughter and several talking) Elliott! Where are we? Wilburn! Bob suggestion that we continue that discussion and Regenia's suggestion that that be a comprehensive discussion in terms of direction, it would appear that there are four of us, Amy, Bob, myself, and Regenia, that are willing to go with that compromise. Atkins! Accept the compromise. Ijust need to calculate that. That means what? O'Donnell! It means taxes go up. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 78 Atkins/ Two additional firefighters (several talking) I got it. ElIiott/ At least from my perspective, that doesn't mean that I don't think that anybody disagrees with anyone else on where we want to be, it's the way we get there and people can differ on that and we'll have some strenuous discussion. (several talking) Correia! I think it's also, taxes are going up, whether we do this or not, they're not going to go up as much, because we had the revaluation and values went up, taxes were going to go up, they're just not going to go up as much but not as little as you'd like. O'Donnell/ I just think it's unfortunate that every time a city gets, needs something at any point in time, it's automatic to raise taxes. I just don't think that's a good option, in this case. Wilburn! ...and for some of us, well, I think all of us recognized that a big thing happened two years ago when (can't hear) so we're disagreeing on how, in this case, how we can get back to police levels of two years ago. Elliott! Instead of the devil made us do it, the State made us do it. I think one thing to remember is we talked about taxes are going up and prices are going up and everything, any time you read about Iowa City as a great place to do business, a great place to live, they always mention that the cost of living here is very good. (several talking) It's high for us, but it isn't high for a lot of other people. Champion! ... this will affect our affordable housing, it really will. Correia! And when are we hearing from police and fire chief? Atkins/ Andy's on vacation; he's back, I mean, it'll be soon. Bailey/ When we hear from him, I'm interested in hearing what the new inspector is doing and how we're looking at occupancies, okay. I just wanted you to give him a heads up. SCHEDULE Atkins/ I sure will. We meet again on Thursday, 7:00 here. Now I want one minute with you before you go. Please. I was going to hand this.. . remember I said we're at some decision points. Senior Center, Library, Airport, Telecommunications, they want their $100,000 back; Parks and Rec wants to finance a master plan and they want to use park land acquisition money; Airport, we have to decide on a subsidy. ICAD, we talked about that, they virtually want to double that. Summer of the Arts is $32,000 additional money (several talking) and I thought it was 15 at the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 79 time. Water, sewer, refuge (can't hear) transit's on its way, police and fire's on its way, and (can't hear), we had a 3% across the board adjustment in those numbers. They need to be assigned to discussion items, franchise agreement, and a joint communication center. O'Donnelll Steve, cutting the water rate, if we didn't do that, what would that generate per year? Do you.. . approximately? Atkins! We can find that out, Mike. What we calculated was the water rate increase, the water rate decrease, the sewer rate increase, and the refuge collection increase amounts to a little over a dollar month, in aggregate. It's not a huge number. (several talking) There are many cities that have for accounting purposes, they virtually take every source of revenue and run it all through the General Fund, everything. They don't have, there's advantages to that. Okay. Wilburn! Before we leave here, we're going over again Thursday? Atkins! Thursday, I assume we'll pick up where we left off. I'm hoping this is just a starting point for you and then take her from there. Elliott! Thursday, is that evening? 7:00? Atkins! You want to plan on another one? Wilburn! Well, we, that's what I'm (several talking) Bailey! It's hard to schedule if we wait til the last minute, I think. O'Donnell! (several talking) Wilburn! Excuse me, my question is can we set another day and give us incentive to finish Thursday so that we don't have to use that other day, because if we go over, we're going to be stuck and trying to find (several talking). What's...Steve, what's still left? We've got.... Atkins! Decision list. Bailey! And do you want to talk about aide to agencies because Dee and I will bring our recommendation. Atkins! I would just (several talking) 3% across the board. We usually do a little adjusting in there. Bailey! Can we please add a date? Elliott! Where does the amount that (can't hear) for housing? (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006. January 31, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 80 Atkins/ That was a surprise. [didn't have anything for that. I've made the assumption that Federal programs that we administer, if the Federal money declines, so does the program of services. Elliott! The City does put some money into that, correct? Atkins/ Very little, very little. Elliott/ How much? Atkins/ Oh, $30,000 or $40,000 maybe out of, out of a million dollar budget. Correia! But isn't that money coming back in (several talking) Atkins/ Yeah, program income for CDBG money. Some of the staff in the CDBG office help us with other related projects and [ feel that's only fair to charge that against the General Fund and that's the $30 to $40,000. Really, other than that it's all strictly CDBG. Elliott! It's strictly CDBG. Atkins/98% Elliott! Okay. Bailey/ Can we tentatively put an evening of February 9th? And hope that we don't need it. (several talking) Wilburn! That's the fall back and we'll push ourselves to be done. (several talking) These were the four options that, after everybody gave their suggestions to Marian. (several talking) 7:00, and that's the fall back.. .Dee had one final thing. Vanderhoef/ Yes, I just have a handout for you, a proposal thinking about the Summer of the Arts and it's something different I'd like you to take a look at it so you have the opportunity to think about it before we get into those discussions about events funding. Wilburn! Okay, thank you all. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of January 31, 2006.