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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006-02-09 Transcription February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page I February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session 7:00 P.M. Council: Bailey, Champion, Correia, Elliott, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn UISG Rep: Schreiber Staff: Atkins, Karr, Helling, O'Malley, Hargadine, Rocca, Fowler, Logsden, Davidson Tapes: 06-20, SIDE 1 and SIDE 2; 06-21, SIDE 1 and SIDE 2 BUDGET: Atkins/ Okay, read to go? Wilburn! Ready to go. Atkins/ What we have planned for this evening are Sam and Andy are both here to answer questions you all had about Police and Fire. Andy asked for a couple of minutes to kind of do a little overview of fire staffing and we'll do that, and then Joe will be along after these two folks. What we're going to do there is we want to give you sort of a feel for some of the transit route changes and make sure we're going in the right direction before we wrap the thing up. So, I think you're kicking off - Andy wants a couple minutes. Fire Department Rocca! Thank you and good evening. I look forward to our opportunity for some dialogue tonight. I did, as Steve mentioned, put together a presentation and I think what it will do is give us a clear basis for all of us to work from, and I believe your questions, many of them, may be answered tonight as we go through this. Let me get things put together so you can follow along with me, and I think we're there. What it's all about, and I don't think there's any question about it. You're all charged with putting together programs for all City services and insuring that they're high quality. I'm tasked with the fire and emergency service part of that, and emergency medical services, and performing a risk analysis of these unique demands that our community presents us with is really what it's all about. It's for us to take data, hard data, and plan appropriately with that so you can make good decisions about the future for the City of Iowa City. With that, I want to talk about some key considerations for you, and some of you will probably be familiar with OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Basically it's law, when it comes down to the fire service, and about 8 to 10 years ago they came out with what was termed as the "2 in, 2 out" rule, and what that basically means is if we have two firefighters in a structure trying to put out the fire in an immediately dangerous to life and health atmosphere, smoke and heat, that we need to have two people outside in the event that something happens on the inside and they have to effect a rescue for the two This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 2 injured firefighters. That's a mandatory compliance regulation. It's one that we do comply with. We don't have four persons on every rig, but we send multiple pieces of equipment to emergencies like that to achieve compliance. The next document I would like to refer you to is the National Fire Protection Association's 1710 Deployment Standard. This is a standard that we have not adopted locally. We have not implemented it to the fullest extent locally, but it would behoove us, and it is currently behooving us to implement the practices and procedures where we can. And what we'll do, the document in effect drives how our fire protection and emergency services are delivered, and I'll get into that in much more detail in a little bit, but it has to do with how we deploy personnel, where our stations are located, and our response times to emergencies. There's a certain element of risk inherent in everything that we do, and I guess it's what we're going to talk about tonight - what is that acceptable level of risk for the community, versus the actions we take, what are the benefits we expect to derive from those actions that we take, and result being, I guess, a little brief discussion on mention of liability. There have been lawsuits around the country about not timely fire responses or insufficient resources through those responses, and again, there's a certain amount ofliability associated with all of the services we provide, citywide, but I wanted to draw your attention to those. A couple things in the growth and development bullet, ifI might, we've had a number of annexations. We have had a number of large projects, infield development, all those things certainly need to be factored in to fire protection services as we look to the future. Population's certainly one number that I think we've looked at time and time again, and back in 1975, I believe, Iowa City, according to the Chamber of Commerce, was a community of roughly 43,000 or 45,000 people. The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau clocked us in at 63,200, and the Iowa Data Center, I believe, State ofIowa Library calls us out as having a daytime population of79,000 people, and that's significant. So, I just want to draw your attention to those. Given all the things I just mentioned, the City Council and the City Manager regardless of rules and regulations and standards and all those things, still are charged with making the decisions as to how services are provided locally. Our personnel, and I'm sure as you've gone through the budget this is no surprise to you at all, we are 56 uniformed personnel; we have 1 civilian position; we're divided into three shifts of emergency responders; our maximum staffing with nobody off on any type of accrued leave or sick leave or anything like that is 17 firefighters. Our minimum with days off so on and so forth would be 14 firefighters, spread across the three fire stations in the community. We did lose one firefighter position with the staffing reductions in fiscal year 2004. Atkins/ Andy, what's a shift? Rocca! A shift, a shift is basically a battalion of personnel. And shifts are 24-hours long. Okay? I want to talk a little bit about these numbers because they're interesting. We looked at our firefighters in Iowa City here, per 1,000 of population, and we tabulated a .89. I'm sure you're familiar with some ofthese. The State average, and we took the ten, I think, largest cities in Iowa with career municipal fire This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 3 departments and they have 1.4 firefighters per 1 ,000. We look at the Big Ten communities just for the sake of calling out other like university communities to some degree and I acknowledge that some ofthose communities are much larger than ours, but never the less, a 1.4 firefighters per 1,000, and the City Council survey that was done, I believe, fourteen communities were surveyed, as well, 1.4 firefighters per 1,000. The difference being .5, or 28 firefighters, given our current population. That's the difference between the Iowa City Fire Department and those other comparable fire departments. On our apparatus, we have Engine 1, 2, and 3. There's a Lieutenant and two firefighters on those apparatus for a total of three, as I mentioned. Truck I, or our aerial ladder, and Rescue 1 are staffed by the same personnel, and that's typically a Captain and three firefighters. You'll notice the asterisk there. Those pieces of equipment are staffed with the same personnel. So, if they respond to a rescue call with that truck, and we get a fire call while they're out, they're going to take the rescue truck and we're without the aerial ladder, and I'll talk more about the spot that that puts the department in and the impact that it has on the community, as far as fire protection services. The last position up there is our Battalion Chief who serves as the Incident Commander for emergencies throughout the City, again, bringing us to a total of our minimum staffing, 14 personnel. I'm not going to go into a great lengthy detail on this because I've got an example from the fire we experienced Tuesday morning at 1903 Morningside Drive, and I'll be able to tell you a little bit more about how some of these positions are deployed. Let's start off here with this Incident Commander, as I mentioned our Battalion Chief. Our pump operator will be from one of our engine companies, and if we're responding to a structure fire, we are sending two engines, two pumper trucks, one aerial ladder, and one chief officer. So, that's roughly 11 personnel. We're leaving our third engine back, and typically that, on a working structure fire, where we have active fire and smoke and we're going to have to put a fire out, we automatically are having to call the third engine in order to achieve that 14, and really I'm calling out 15 here because with 14 we are a little short on a room and contents type structure fire. So, if you'll follow me through. The pump operator's pumping water to the firefighters that are on attack lines. Attack lines are what we use to put fires out. The firefighters on the backup lines, get this thing to cooperate for me...there we go. The firefighters on the back up lines are in place for the safety, as well as the fire suppression for the people on the inside of the building, and...firefighters for, battery giving out on me, Marian, or is my...all right. Firefighters for search and rescue, as well as for ventilation on the truck company, the aerial ladder, we have that four-person company with the Captain, as well as three firefighters, and so we divide those out. We also use three firefighters to serve as our Rapid Intervention Team, and the Rapid Intervention Team is when things really go bad, when somebody pushes an emergency button, calls that they have emergency traffic, and we have a problem on the inside. We send that Rapid Intervention Team in there to rescue firefighters that are in trouble. Okay, and this will be, I'll kind of talk our way through this. This is just a short video clip, from the fire that occurred at 1903 Morningside Drive Tuesday morning, and I believe that fire was at about 4:48 in the morning, and that's not This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 4 what f wanted.. .you can see that.. . okay, basically the attack line went in from the back of this house. There's a backup line stretched over there. We have firefighters here that are ventilating. And this is about 25,30 minutes into this incident. The fire was extinguished in about 20 minutes, after our arrival, but the fire was a basement fire, sub grade fire, it was extremely hot. We had three people that were evacuated from the home. Two people sustained minor burns. In fact, one of them over 50% of their body, but I'm happy to report that they were both treated and released. Our Incident Commander's out here across from the street so he has a good overview of all the activities that are going on. Engine 3 was the first unit on the scene here, our first due unit, and they came from Station 3 on Lower Muscatine Road. Engine I, Truck I, our aerial ladder and our Battalion Chief responded from Station 2, or excuse me, from Station I. Our response time to this location, first unit was on scene in, I think, just under five minutes. Now I want you to keep that in mind. But there's a lot of support functions here, whether our RIT team earlier was out here in the front yard, and once active fire quit, we no longer needed to have that emergency rescue presence, and they were assigned other functions. Right now, they're really doing what we call "salvage and overhaul." They are finding hot spots within the fire, trying to salvage valuables in the structure, as well. And so that's a lot of the functions that are taking place here, but everybody has ajob. Everybody's working with a partner, minimum of one. What we call the buddy system, and they're all working within their companies or crews. We really try to maintain that because it's a matter of firefighter health and safety. We're just about there. Let me just scroll ahead here. I want to talk to you about response time, because as I've said to you before, response time really drives how successful we are, or are not, as an Emergency Service provider. And these are the important elements here. From the time you or a citizen would dial 9-1-1, and it rings into our Emergency Communications Center, and it's answered. We have the dispatchers processing that call, determining the type of emergency, what resources need to be sent, and notifying us saying, we'd like to have that done in a minute or less. The next is when the dispatcher pushes the button to page out, or notify, emergency units. That's what we call turnout time, and that time from when we hear the tones, get the message, get all our protective equipment on, and start the trucks out the door, is what we refer to as turnout time. Once the emergency vehicle breaks the plane of those doors, that's our travel time, then travel time starts. We have a goal adopted on the Department that we want to get our first unit on the scene within six minutes, 90% of the time, and that's basically how that response time is calculated. Okay. Going to move along. In a structure fire scenario, as I mentioned, we're going to send two engines, our aerial ladder, and a Chief Officer. The first due unit we want there in six minutes. Everybody else, we would like to get there within ten minutes. The same call processing or alarm processing time starts same time for all units; turnout time is roughly the same, again, we want less than a minute processing, less than a minute turnout, but the travel time, given the geographic locations and the area that we're covering, we're trying to get the rest ofthe units there within ten minutes. Looking at calendar year 2004, some of the statistics you've seen from our annual reports in years This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 5 gone by, our average response time was 5.3 minutes. As you know, an average is right in the middle. We have a number of calls right, well below that, and a number of calls well above that, but of the 2,390 emergency incidents that we responded to, our first due unit was on the scene within six minutes 82.7% of the time, falling short of our 90% goal. We can take a quick look at calendar year 2005, which we just closed out. You'll see that our average response time, right in the middle there, has gone up two-tenths of a minute. We're talking about some, a fewer amount of emergency incidents, yet we got that first unit on the scene only 81 % of the time, so we slid backwards just a little bit. Again, our response time goal is not met. That goal, the 90% in six minutes, and the, I guess, ten minutes and six minutes, or ten minutes 90% of the time, those are from National Standards like we talked about, NFDA, the Commission on Fire Accreditation International process, which we're involved. Those aren't times that we're pulling out of the air, and when you think about these times, when you think about an emergency medical call with a cardiac arrest victim and our need to get there quickly to defibrillate and administer oxygen before brain death occurs in that four to six window range, that's another way that we can benchmark, or look at, how critical it is from a time element. I think another scenario I've shared with you in years gone by is a structure fire situation, but maybe even a smaller example of that would be a wastebasket fire. Simple wastebasket fire bums. Every two minutes it will double in size, and so if we're not getting units on the scene with enough capability to achieve 2-in, 2-out to get into interior structure firefighting, we're a little bit behind the curve on that room and contents fire, if we get there at the ten minute mark and now can send people in. On a backup and one caveat there with that 2-in, 2-out rule, is that if we arrive on the scene and a citizen tells us that there's a victim or a family member in the house, we will effect rescue with whoever and whatever we have on the scene. If it's two people or three people or ten people, we will do what we have to do in an attempt to save that person. I just want to put you at ease with that. Okay. I know you've seen this, and this is the response time map for the City of Iowa City. It was done in cooperation with our strategic planning process. The areas in white are basically the first due response time zones, or where we can get to in less than four minutes with our current station locations and apparatus. These areas in the yellow are in the six to eight minute range. These areas in the blue are going to be in that eight, more than eight-minute range. I want to note this area up here, which is First Avenue, Scott Boulevard, and this ground that we now own for proposed Fire Station 4, should Fire Station 4 be constructed, staffed, and equipped, it would be my anticipation that this blue area would turn white, and much ofthis yellow area would then turn blue, you know, because it will have a profound impact on our response times in the northeast planning district there. The other area I've called out and this will become more apparent to you, is the southwest planning district. I think as we see that Mormon Trek extended, across the river, and the development that will occur there, we're going to have to give some attention to that area, but I'll talk a little bit more about that. But, again, response times are very critical to the services that the Fire Department provides. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 6 Champion! (can't hear)...that slide? Bailey! Adjust your microphone, Marian, or Mike, Marian can't hear you. Champion! Ifwe put the Fire Station at the First Avenue, that blue area would turn white. Isn't that what you said? And then you said the yellow area would turn blue. Was that a mistake? I'd think it would turn white too. Rocca! It would go white to yellow actually, so we would see a.. .our response times would increase, or decrease in that area - that's what I'm trying to say. Fire Station 4 would give us less than four minutes in the blue area up there. Yes. Our response times would decrease, they would improve. Champion! Right, and I thought white was the best. Rocca! It is. Champion! So why would that yellow part turn blue? Rocca! Yellow would probl,lbly stay close to what it is. My mistake. It's going to improve it, yes. Thl.lnk you. Anything else there? Okay, this is kind of an interesting thing. We looked at the last four years, 2002 to 2005, and you can se"e the total calls number there and the number of calls that we call overlapping calls and this numbers seems to continue to grow. It dipped a little bit last year in 2004, but for 2005, it peaked again, and what I'm trying to show you here is that we have four pieces of fire equipment that respond to emergencies in the City. Overlapping calls mean we have a call for service out there and we've now dispatched another call for service, so we have simultaneous calls going, which means we have fewer resources in the event that we have a structure fire. We have enough on-duty resources for basically one structure fire emergency. We handle up to four medical emergencies without too much trouble, if they're single-unit responses. When we get into multiple units, or if we have a medical emergency and a structure fire response, basically we've depleted all our resources and we have nothing in reserve. We look to callback personnel and mutual aids to fill those subsequent alarms or assignments, as needed. So you can see this trend continues to go up and it does diminish to some degree out ability to put forth a full response for a given emergency. Vanderhoef! Andy, would that also then be why response times are longer? Rocca! It could be a factor, that certainly would need to be considered, but certainly if we are trying to clear from one scene to get to another, or call in call-back personnel, or even mutual aid companies, because often times we can mobilize a mutual aid company quicker than we can recall off-duty staff. So it would certainly be a variable on those response times. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of Febrnary 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 7 Vanderhoef! Okay, thank you. Rocca! Okay. This next slide merits some explanation on my part and I intend to give that to you. We've talked about Fire Station 4 for four or five years probably with interest, and I think the number of nine personnel minimally to open that fire station should come as no surprise to you, and I know it's been one of the stickling points on the whole project, but I would consider Fire Station 4 and nine personnel a high priority and the Deputy Chief position that I have talked to you about on occasion, another high priority, and as I look at those priorities, high, medium, and low, I would look at them to be short-term, mid-term, and long- term. Obviously, when you get down there to Station 5 and Station 6, we're talking about 12 people, and that number 12 is derived from operating a piece of equipment with three personnel, 365 days a year, but again, I need that, those other three people in order to assure that I've got the three people on duty that are 24/7. Rescue 1, again, is a medium priority, but I mentioned to you we're cross- staffing that piece of equipment. So, if we have a rescue call and they go out on the rescue truck. If we have a fire call and they're out on that rescue truck, the aerial sits until we can get it out there. Ifwe're on a fire call and have the aerial out, and when you have a rescue call, potentially that rescue truck has to be somehow taken to the scene for all the specialized rescue equipment. It's not a very ideal way to operate. It puts us in a bit of a precarious situation when we're responding and saying that we can in fact do heavy rescue or technical rescue, as it's termed. Elliottl Andy, would you mind just going back, it takes a while for it to sink in. I was trying to get the priority on, if you have rescue out and you need rescue at the other, which takes the priority? The rescue or the fire? Rocca! Well, if we're already deployed at the fire emergency, suffice to say the fire emergency is our priority, until we can either decommit some ofthose resources and get a unit on scene at that rescue or backfill our system with call-back off- duty personnel, or call mutual aid for a neighboring community to come in and try to cover that particular response, regardless of what kind it is, rescue or fire. Vanderhoef/ So is Coralville the closest place with a rescue truck? Rocca! The Sheriff has a rescue truck, in fact, just about every emergency response agency in the area now has the ability to do some rescue. Vanderhoef/Okay. Champion! Johnson County Ambulance, is that the same. . . Rocca! No, they are the transporting EMS, Emergency Medical Service. So they will take the injured from the scene to the hospital, but again, the Sheriff and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 8 surrounding fire departments do have the emergency rescue - the vehicular rescue tools, they don't have the technical. All the technical rescue tools, such as for high-angle or low-angle, the ropes or trench rescue, or water rescue, so on and so forth, yes. Okay. So, I guess I'm trying to say, again, look into the future. My immediate needs - I think we've talked about at some length at recent meetings. What I'm trying to forecast to you, there's certainly other needs that are present, but I think we can deal with them. As the community develops, and I got to stop and say this, as the community develops we're good about getting water and sewer and streets and refuse and those kinds of services out to the community as they develop, but I don't think we've been very good about getting emergency services consistently delivered out in the community. I as a taxpayer have an expectation that when I leave on Thursday morning and I set my trash out on the curb, that when I come home it's gone, and you know, every day it is and I appreciate that, and when I turn that water faucet on, I have an expectation that water's going to come out and you know, every time it does and I appreciate that. And I think our taxpayers when they dial 9-1-1, have an expectation about consistent emergency service delivery, and I don't believe that we can do that in all areas of the community. I don't believe we're in imminent danger right now, but I do think we need to plan appropriately for the future. And I'll have a little bit more to say about that. So, Fire Station 5 and 6 while I believe they are needs, they are on the radar screen, we are going to continue to see development in the south, in the north, in the southwest, and we have to position ourselves to deal with that growth and manage it, and protect it appropriately. Support staffis something that I believe, public information officers, clerical support, and perhaps even another inspector somewhere down the road, but that's how I perceive the needs of the future and of no surprise to you, these types of needs have been called out in our strategic plan and so they're on our radar screen, but I would again remind you, high, medium, and low, short-term, mid-term, long-term. What I guess I'm trying to say, and encourage you to do, is to make good decisions based on the facts and what I'm trying to do tonight is present you with some of those facts that you can consider. We will continue to do the best job we can reporting to you with our data collection, with our annual evaluation of that data to see if we're doing good or bad or somewhere in the middle, we'll continue to report that to you, and hopefully that will allow me to provide you with real-world information that you can base good decisions on for the future and for the needs of the community. But most of all, I think what it will do is provide you with a clear indication of the level of services that are being provided to the community by the Fire Department. Lastly, I would just like to say that we have to plan to make these decisions. They aren't going to occur. We've seen a lot of fruitful discussion in years gone by about Fire Station 4. However, look at where we're at. We're at this crossroads - we know we need to do something. We pretty much know what that something is, but where's the revenue to do it? The property tax, the General Fund, that 8/10 levy just doesn't have the capacity to do what we want to do locally. That's a problem for us. We're going to have to find a steady source ofrevenue. We're going to have to continue to grow along with the community and all the growth and development that occurs. I will continue to This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 9 do my job as your Fire Chief, to bring forward my recommendations to do the best I can to execute our strategic plan and to fulfill our annual goals and objectives, but once again, it really revolves around the decisions you as City Councilors and the City Manager make. You will determine the level of protection and services that we will provide and can afford, and I respect that, but I also think we need to have funding authority as we look to the future, about how we're going to accomplish some of these issues that are so critical to public safety in our community. We're going to need that funding authority. We're going to need to know we have the money so that when we hire firefighters and police officers that a year or two or three or four later we don't have to say 'gee, we don't have the money to support that program anymore,' and lay of some of those personnel. We don't want to grow that way at all, but I think more importantly, once we have those decisions made, the funding in place, we need to stick to that plan, we need to execute it, there needs to be a commitment on your part, the City Manager's part, and my part to follow that plan in order to make these initiatives a reality to improve the delivery of public safety services to the community. With that, I hope that I've been able to educate you a little bit more about the services that we provide, the benchmarks, the goals, those things that are so critical and the timeliness of how those services are delivered. I will entertain your questions at this point. Wilburn! Andy, I've got a few questions. Before I ask them, I want you to know I always respect the work that you and the firefighters do. You're doing your job of pointing out what you see as a deficiency, and I appreciate that. Rocca! Thank you. Wilburn! And I'm going to ask that you appreciate in some of the questions that I'm running through that I'm trying to do a similar thing with broader responsibility, different responsibilities. Rocca! Uh-huh. Wilburn! Because one of the things you talked about, the importance of planning and trying to commit and stick to that plan in terms of funding and that type ofthing, one of the things I hope you recognize that there are factors sometimes out of your control. For example, you mentioned you try to have the buddy system and two in a building, two out of a building, but you pointed out that you get on the scene, there's not enough people there, but somebody says, 'Hey, somebody's inside,' you're going to do what you have to do. Rocca! We're going to do what we've been trained to do. Absolutely. Wilburn! Right, right, and one of the things that we've been facing, there was a plan to build a fire station and staff it, and factors out of our control related to the loss of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 10 million dollars in state aid, so we're, we're trying to regroup similar to what you would do in a situation like that. Rocca! Believe me, I do appreciate the position you're in. Wilburn! All right. Rocca! And I think, again, my point about a funding source, if the General Fund isn't going to do it, what is going to do it? Are there alternatives out there that we should be exploring? Wilburn! Right. One of the things I.. . and this is just a piece of education for me. How does fire suppression systems and prevention that you all do, both prevention and just the suppression systems, how does that factor into recommended response times? Rocca! Well, that's an interesting question, and I'm certainly a proponent of fire prevention activities, and obviously you are too because you afforded me with the luxury of a new inspector position. Ifwe can prevent something before it ever has a chance to occur, maybe we won't ever have to make that emergency response, so it can eliminate, it can completely eliminate an emergency response. Those are difficult to get your hands around and say, 'We eliminated "x" number of emergency responses,' but clearly fire prevention is a proactive means by which we can lower our risk or exposure to fire emergencies. When you look at, you know, response times, you know there's just a number ofthings that would go into that whole issue and how you would positively impact that, when you look at built-in fire protection systems, automatic fire alarms, sprinkler systems, some of those issues we have worked through the Board of Appeals with to try to bolster local fire codes, and quite frankly what has happened to us, at least on one occasion, was that by implementing built-in fire protection systems, we drove the cost of housing or construction up a little bit in our community and the Homebuilder's Association came and said, 'Well, it's cheaper to build in X, Y, or Z, so we don't want to have to do that,' and frankly we had to back off some of the built-in fire protection code requirements that we came up with locally. They can have a profound effect on the, on our ability to respond. Ifwe have, for example, and I'll go out on a bit of a limb here, but if we were to pass a retro- active fire-sprinkler ordinance in this community, we talk about sprinklering all buildings, residential, commercial, industrial. That might be a difficult position for me to take or for you to support, but clearly, we wouldn't need fire suppression people that we have because that system is designed to potentially be life-saving, certainly it's a life-safety system, but it will save property, and it will reduce the taxing or the deployment of fire suppression services. But you're still going to need the human element of firefighters to go in and put out the fire, total extinguish it, mop up the hot spots, that salvage and overhaul that I spoke about, but it's going to reduce property damage, so built-in fire protection systems, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 11 automatic fire suppression systems, automatic fire alarms are certainly good, but they come at a cost, just like firefighters and fire stations and fire trucks. Wilburn! Right, right, and I understand that. I'm juSt.. . looking for how that might, I mean, ifyour...response times and National Standards have comparisons relative to other communities, and if you have a community that is better at suppression and prevention, then.. . and I'm not talking in terms ofthe emergency rescue, you know, that type of thing. Rocca! Right, right. Wilburn! But just in terms of... Rocca! From a fire emergency standpoint. Wilburn! Can you walk us through, when does mutual aid kick in? Who makes that decision? Does that happen only after Iowa City responders are on the scene, or can you walk us through that? Rocca! I can. We have a given fire alarm, let's see, like the one out on Morningside Drive. We sent a full structural alarm response, a first alarm assigmnent as we term them, and that would be two engines, the aerial ladder, and a battalion chief. Our crews get on the scene and they have smoke, flames showing. Sometimes even before they get there they'll see the column of smoke and request the third engine from the opposing district. Out in Morningside Drive area that was district I so we had district 3 or you know, the units from Station I and Station 3 responding. The unit on Emerald Street, Station 2, they were still in quarters. I believe, shortly after they got on scene, maybe even before they left quarters and knew that it was a structure fire, often times we'll get word back through the police department communications that we have a working structure fire and that third engine automatically comes. Again, that's all the on-duty resources that we have. And so when they get on scene, depending on a number of conditions. It could be weather conditions, it could be fire conditions, we're going to do the best we can with what we have. We're going to make a size-up of the scene. We're going to determine if we need to call-back off-duty resources. First and foremost maybe to backfill our stations to make sure those subsequent responses have people and equipment to respond, or we may need some of those people to report to the scene, but if the emergency exceeds our on-duty capability, we're looking to get into call-backs and mutual aid rather quickly, and we have a mutual aid box alarm system that goes through five alarm levels, that systematically pulls resources from the surrounding communities, so it doesn't strip anyone community of all their own fire protection, so we maintain fire protection there and get the assistance that we need through our 20/80 agreement. Wilburn! Those total number of calls and, I'm forgetting the graph that you put up. The total number of calls, is that only fire? Is that all calls, fire and rescue? Or... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 12 Rocca! We were talking about the ability to meet those response goals, those nnmbers that are roughly 2,300 and some odd, or some, those were emergency calls. Those were calls where lights and sirens were needed, whether it was a medical emergency or a fire emergency, or some other type of emergency. It wasn't anything that was what we'd term Code 2 or non-emergent. Wilburn! Okay. I'll give some other folks a chance to ask... O'Donnelll Andy, I've got a couple questions, and I agree with Ross that fire suppression devices are wonderful indeed for saving property, but on your medical calls, you know, they do very little for somebody who needs a defibrillator. Rocca! Correct. O'Donnell/ I heard recently, one of our trucks was answering a call and went down First Avenue and hit a railroad track, the train at the railroad tracks. Rocca! Uh-huh. O'Donnelll They went around and hit a train on Scott Boulevard. Rocca! Happens. O'Donnell/ And that would truly be frustrating as you're trying to get to assist somebody. Rocca! Oh, it is, it clearly has a negative impact on our ability to provide that timely service. Depending on the nature of the call, ifit is a medical call, we can respond a unit from Station I, provided they're not tied up on another call, take an alternate route, but that's all time, additional time, you know, because the first due unit was delayed by the train tracks. That's a reality and we try to deal with that the best we can. I think some of the things that've helped, you know, some of the switching out west of here, but the reality is from time to time there's a train there. We'll take alternate routes to get there if we can. We'll send more equipment if we need to. Sometimes we just have to wait the train out if we get blocked in and we can't get around, and it has a negative effect. O'Donnelll Okay, and you said 90% of the time, you try and reach a, an emergency situation within six minutes. Rocca! Correct. O'Donnelll Or 82.77 Rocca! Yes, I believe that was in 2004, and just slightly less than that 2005. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 13 O'Donnell/ Would you attribute that to travel time? Rocca! Yes. I mean, that's probably the biggest variable that we have, and with three fixed base facilities, we generally know, based on the map that we looked at, how quickly we're going to get in to some of those districts. So, if we have multiple calls or have to send another unit from a different district to that call, travel time is a big variable because we can dispatch calls, process calls within a minute. We can turn out of fire stations within a minute. Travel time is the big component there that we're dealing with, and then once we get there, the set-up time and to accumulate, or to assemble the right equipment and people to effectively intervene, to have a successful outcome. Travel time would be the big variable. O'Donnell! Just one more here. If you, this 2 on 2, which I agree is how it should be done. Rocca! 2-in and 2-out, yes. O'Donnell! Right. If you get to a vacant fire where's there's no people inside, do you wait until two more people show up? Rocca! Absolutely. Ifwe're looking at property, if we're looking at something that's dilapidated structure, if it's not worth us saving, or risking our own lives, we're not going to risk a lot to save a little, but if there's something out there worth risking life and limb for, we'll make that determination on scene and we'll do what we're trained to do. O'Donnell! And I wanted to tell you, I've served as a volunteer fireman and a volunteer police officer, and I have a great deal of respect for both of those professions. As people run from a burning building, the fire personnel run into that burning building. So, that's something I'm appreciative of. Rocca! Thank you, Mike, I appreciate that. Elliott! Having been in, I think I have one question and one observation. Having been in a house fire myself, I know what it's like to be in one portion of the house and have smoke and darkness making it difficult to get out of the house, turns out the house I was in, my house, and I knew the way out. I think it needs to be pointed out that the firemen, the firefighters, are in houses about which they know nothing about the angles and the hallways and the dimensions of the room, and that's why there's just a life and death need for the people outside to be helping and relief units held and relieved. That's the observation. The question has to do with, I think everyone on the Council agrees that there's a need for a station on the northside. There are legitimate differences as to the critical nature of that need, and I understand that. One thing that might help is, you talk about the medium priority for Westside station. How soon with the developments that are going up, how soon do you think that need is going to be a high priority, because I think we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 14 need to think of, if we don't do the northside soon, pretty soon we're going to have a need for two stations and not just nine people but eighteen or twenty people. Could you give us a little insight on that? Rocca! You know, I tried to give you a little insight with the way I prioritized them and then gave myself plenty of wiggle room with short-term, mid-term, and long- term. You know, short-term I think as my budget proposal to you reflected was for the nine firefighter positions in three consecutive years. I guess I would look at that as a short-term. The mid-term, perhaps, would be another three, potentially five year period, and then the lower priorities probably could be eight and ten years or even above. A lot ofthat will just depend on how quickly those areas develop. You know, the number of calls that we're running in there, the types of calls, the type of development that occurs. Those are variables that I can't quite get my hands around, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't at least try to forecast some of those needs now. Elliott! One more quick point. Regenia pointed out at a recent meeting that we cannot keep expanding and putting developments that expand the City limits, and negate that with a lack of public safety service, so I think we need to look at this as a part of the planning process and a part of the public service process. Rocca! I would appreciate that and would agree wholeheartedly. Bailey! I have a...I don't even know if it's a question. The, and I do want to express my appreciation for the work you do. I think I'm one of the Council members who's actually used your emergency services, and your response time was good. Rocca! Well, hopefully it was successful and thank you. Bailey! Well, we do live on the near northside, we strategically purchased something within good response time. I think the challenge and the frustration with this type of service is that is very geographical and physical. There's nothing we can do, technological advances aren't going to get us particularly better response time, because it's all up to travel time, and that's the physics of speed and distance, and so I have a huge concern that as the community grows that we're going to be looking at something like Cedar Rapids with ten fire stations, and how are other communities developing additional revenue streams to support this kind of growth? Because you mentioned, we've got to find something different, so there must be something out there that's happening to make this kind of, addressing these issues possible. Rocca! You know, I agree with you and I'm aware of some communities. You have West Des Moines, I think, and they have that west metro area where they can combine some of their resources with their communities and share fire facilities that do good things for both, or several, communities. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 15 Bailey/ Right. Rocca! Certainly that's an opportunity. As we've called out in our strategic plan, looking at being a transporting EMS agency with dual trained firefighters, fire-medics if you will, would be another opportunity which would bump staffing and potentially get us additional facilities that could respond into these areas. Other funding mechanisms, we've talked about local option sales taxes here. I know that people have termed them as regressive, but maybe we need to look at crafting that for public safety initiatives, with some type of sunset clause which would allow us to reevaluate what we accomplish with those dollars and do we need to continue some kind of public safety tax initiative. As development occurs in the community, some communities are looking at developmental fees, and I'm hearing more about those. There are some options out there, but right along with those options are the difficult (TAPE ENDS). Vanderhoef/ When you talk about the metro area out there, are those all professional firefighters, or is that a mix of volunteer with professional? How does that look? Rocca! I deal routinely with their fire chiefs and they are paid, professional fire chiefs. Some of them may have partial paid staff, some of them may be supplemented with volunteer staff, some of them may be paid on call, there's really quite a mix out in that West Des Moines west metro area. That's probably as good as I can do on that, Dee. Vanderhoef/ Have we had any recent conversations about our metro area and doing a mix of professional and volunteer? Rocca! Well, we have some of that now with the 20/80 agreement, with our mutual aid box alarm system in that regard. Next Wednesday I have a meeting set up, Chief Standard from Coralville sent me a letter and wanted to discuss the appropriateness of automatic aid in the west end of the community. Camp Cardinal Road will run through there and will connect the communities, and we were going to explore options there that maybe beneficial to both communities. So, you know, we try to keep those discussions alive, but coincidentally I guess I'll have some dialogue with Chief Standard and so those things are alL.. Vanderhoef/ Okay, well, I'm glad to hear that you're doing, revisiting this. I think there has been conversation about it for ten years or more on how to connect the two largest of the metros here and certainly we see more growth again in the north corridor, and we're jumping 380 into Tiffin. I think we may well need to have a look at this as a metro project, to see what we can put together, and all of us share in the cost, and certainly, I for one, want to look at a combination of professional and volunteer. I think that has some real benefits to all the communities and, so, 20/80 agreements worked very well for a long time. Updating that agreement, I think, is important at this point in time. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 16 Champion! Andy, tell me what kind of training does a volunteer fireman, or fire person, have? Rocca! We have new legislation that went into effect, I believe, about a year ago, and it was hotly contested and debated, but there, there's a Firefighter One Training Standard that was developed through the Fire Service Training Bureau in Ames, Iowa, and basically it culls out, I believe, 24-hours oftraining hours in a variety of fire suppression skills, and it only deals with fire fighting. There's no mandate to certify at the Firefighter One level, but they need to train at that Firefighter One level. And, I wouldn't know the numbers, but I think we'd be well pleased to hear the numbers of certified Firefighter One's in our surrounding communities. There are a very dedicated, committed, and professional group. Albeit that they're volunteers. Any other questions that I can... Bailey! Just talk a little bit, we have talked about this dual-trained firefighters EMS, I mean, tell me a little bit about the likelihood of finding those people, or being able to hire those people, and do they come at a premium, I mean, are there... Rocca! You know, it's a very common service delivery method used out there... Bailey! Right. Rocca! .. . dual-trained personnel; certainly they're out there. I mean, it's not uncommon for us to, when we give an entrance test, with no openings, no known openings on the department; send out 300 applications for the jobs as we know them. Often times, the people that find their way on to our Civil Service certify list have EMT, Paramedic, or Paramedic Specialist, and maybe they are coming from career departments elsewhere, maybe smaller departments, looking to step up to a larger career. Maybe they're volunteers that have this certification or volunteer firefighters. So, it's really not a difficulty, believe me. Bailey! Okay. Rocca! There's a, for every one opening you might have, it wouldn't be uncommon to have 50 applicants for it. Bailey! Okay, and then, regarding the Fire Inspector, can you just give an update about that person and what they've been doing, and... Rocca! I'd be glad to. I believe it was in August we promoted Steve Stimmel to Captain, and since then we've been working to equip him, office space, laptop computer, we've sent him away to a number of schools to get code enforcement training, but probably some of the things you'll want to hear about would be the work we're going to be doing in the assembly occupancies, the alcohol-serving assembly occupancies, bars and taverns. What we intend to do, and I believe this will begin next month, we will start the training on crowd control management and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 17 emergency evacuation planning in assembly occupancies that serve alcohol, and what we have is basically curriculum. We'll be inviting the appropriate parties to come to this class, this training. There'll be a provision in there that requires them to submit, I believe, an emergency evacuation plan to us some time in August so that those plans can be executed within those facilities this fall. We want to be ready for, you know, the fall semester with crowd control and emergency evacuation management in assembly occupancies that serve alcohol. So I think we've made good progress. He's been a true benefit from a standpoint of new construction. I would say in the Moen Building, Plaza Towers, he spent a number of days up there working to make sure built-in fire protection devices, fire alarms, sprinkler systems, fire pumps, fire doors, and the list goes on and on, up there working to make sure, now that we're occupying that building, that we can do so safely. So we expect very positive things, but most likely the biggest and high profile project will be the assembly occupancies and crowd control management and evacuation planning. Bailey/ And you're talking about a training, will this person also be checking occupancy. I mean, I've heard some concerns... Rocca! Yes indeed. We will be utilizing this person in a non-traditional, you know, 8 to 5 day, it will be after hours going out there to make sure that those plans are being followed, crowd control is being managed, and as well, training in evacuation plans. So he'll be out there inspecting those facilities. Bailey/ Okay. Champion! I'll be glad to hear that because it's, it was pretty unclear to me if that was going to happen because... Rocca! It is going to happen, it is going to happen. Bailey/ But we're still, what? Three months away from that? The training... Rocca! Training will start; there'll be that period between, I guess, now in August when they put together their evacuation plans and then we will be looking for compliance this fall. Champion! Good. Bailey/ Okay, great. Elliott! I was just thinking, I think as soon as possible, there needs to be a frequent appearance in the I :00 and 2:00 in the morning time frame to see what's going on and how it's happening, because that's when push comes to shove. Sometimes literally. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 18 Rocca! Fully support and think it would be the right thing to do. Ifwe say we're going to do something, we'll go out and check to make sure that it is being done that way. Bailey/ And, we'll also be checking into making sure that all the exits on this, this crowd control, management system actually work? Rocca! That's all part of it, certainly it is. Yes it is. Bailey/ Okay. Rocca! And I do certainly appreciate your time. Anybody else, questions? Wilburn! Just one final comment. That's more, because we do still have some members of the media present that we do in the current fiscal year and the next couple fiscal years, I believe, have pumpers and other. . . Rocca! We do. Yeah...apparatus, I believe, April!. A large expenditure, and I think in the next two consecutive years, we have fire pumpers that are in need of replacement.. . Wilburn! And we are making some modifications to Station 2, correct? Rocca! We're in the process of working through that. Hopefully that is going to move forward, because it's certainly needed. Wilburn! Okay. O'Donnell/ I have one more question. Vanderhoeti' So do I. Rocca! Yes, Mike. O'Donnell/ Did I, my memory says that we're .89 per I,OOO? Rocca! That is correct. O'Donnell/ In like cities throughout the Midwest, are 1.4? Is that what 1... Rocca! There's a number of them. I mean, you know the cities that you, the fourteen cities, I don't recall them off the top of my head, but I think you have that information. We're trying to look at larger cities with career departments, again, I took it to look at the State ofIowa, the top ten in the State ofIowa, as well as Big Ten, and I know there's some obvious discrepancies with population and size of community, but there again, I think it's interesting that those per capitas come out to plus or minus 1.4, and we're at .89, 37% below staffing for comparables. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 19 O'Donnell/ Thank you. Vanderhoef/ I don't know whether this question is for Steve or for Andy. When you started mentioning how many days Steve was up in the Moen Towers, checking on all of this. Is there any kind of a licensing or fee that is paid, depending on complicated and how much time is being spent on a single project? Rocca! You know, under new construction, certainly HIS, Housing Inspection Services, will have a building fee. You know, we do sprinkler plan reviews and some fire alarm reviews, and what we've required in recent years is an ISA T certification where people who design those systems, as well as install those systems, so that when we go up to inspect them, there's kind of a check and balance there to make sure we're not spending an inordinate amount of time on the job site, trying to build or design or resolve issues. Vanderhoef/ Yeah. I didn't state it well, evidently. I know there are building inspection fees, but I'm looking at comparison to length of time, per project, and it doesn't always compute with dollar value of the project. It mayor may not, and I think we do mostly through dollar project. Atkins/ Yeah, there's plan check fees, but it's a fixed, it's a fixed number. Rocca! It's based on the dollar amount of the project... Atkins/ Bottom line is, Steve could go visit the next high-rise and know exactly, and be there half the time. Vanderhoef/ That's, that's what 1... Atkins/ We have not charged time. It's been a fee. Vanderhoef/ Whether that's a possibility or not. Atkins/ Oh, yeah. Vanderhoef/ I'd like to at least take a run at. Atkins/ Let's see if anyone else does it. It's been values for a long time. (several talking) Vanderhoef/ ... but if it's an uncomplicated, multi-family building... Correia! You're saying it's based on the size of the building? Atkins/ The value. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 20 Correia! The value. Well that seems to make sense. Atkins! Plus, it's helpful if you've got a very intelligent inspector. It allows you to move through a little more quickly. SO...that's a compliment, Steve. (laughter) Bailey! Maybe this isn't a good question, but you gave us two numbers. You know, the firefighters per thousand. And the response time. What's the more critical number that we should pay attention to? Rocca! More critical number? Bailey! Yeah. Rocca! Well, they really work together. Bailey! They do, but there will come a point that we could probably do... there will come a point where. . . Rocca! Response time is critical, but if! send one person there and they can get there in two minutes, but I can't do anything, what have we accomplished? If I look at a quick response time and sending a compliment of people that can and are trained to intervene, with a "positive" outcome, successful intervention, you know, I don't see how you separate the two. Bailey! But if the town grew like this instead oflike this, we could probably address response time pretty adequately, in a more manageable way, but ifit grows like this, we're going to have both challenges. So I guess what I'm asking is the consideration of growth. I mean, the question becomes, I think what I was saying before, we cannot continue to annex if we can't service, but if we do infill and grow up, maybe, the response time question can be addressed. Rocca! You know, it can to some degree, but as you grow up, that presents different challenges for emergency service delivery. (several talking and laughing) I wish there was a (can't understand) that we could work with here, but the reality of it is, yes, infill development is still.. . Bailey! I know you still want to look at both, but...I would imagine that response time seems to be the more critical. That seems to be the one we spend more time talking about. Rocca! It is, only how you're trained and what you're abilities are on arrival. I can't separate the two very well. Bailey! Okay, fair enough. Rocca! All right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, i006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 21 Atkins! While Andy's still standing there, Sam's also available for questions and Joe's chomping at the bit. So, however you want to handle this. Wilburn! I was just going to say, why don't we go ahead and take a ten minute break, be back here at 8:10, and we can move on to Sam. Rocca! Again, thank you for your time and I'd be remiss if I didn't thIDk the Chief of Police for his contributions to my presentation with his police officer's video, 1903 (can't hear). Thanks to the Council, I appreciate it. Wilburn! Thank you. Council Members.. . (bangs gavel).. .it didn't work. I tried being polite. (several talking and laughing) Police Deoartment Hargadine! Good evening. I would like to echo what Chief Rocca's comments were and the general comments about public safety. A lot of the similarities that he has in his emergency response side of things are similar to mine, with one major difference, and that is when he goes to the scene, everybody's glad to see him. (laughter) Very few of the incidences we go to, people are...sometimes half the people are glad to see us, but usually most are not. A lot of the things that you've seen as far as she statistics that were similar on the fire side, where we're low in the per thousands, it's the same with the police. We did a survey that was similar to the one that was provided to Council. It was very similar, some of the numbers were off a little bit, but the trends were the same, and that is, we were probably one of the lowest per capita in Iowa, and in cities our size, and frankly, I don't like being the lowest in anything, but (laughter) what that equates to. . . first of all, I don't think these types of studies are the best way to gauge how to respond to public service, but they're the easiest thing that people can understand. It's easy to put these numbers to it, and then (can't hear) yourself against other cities, but most of the consultants will tell you it's not the best way to actually do it. What it means though, the kinds of crimes that get headlines, the major crime trends, we have enough officers for that. If there's a homicide, if there's a sexual assault, if there's a fight in progress, a shooting, we have enough to do those because we basically, everybody drops what they're doing and gets going. It's the other types of incidents that, I think, are quality oflife issues. For instance, peace disturbances in your neighborhood. These are the kinds of things that you all get calls and emails about regularly, when your constituents don't think that we're doing a good enough job, and in many instances, I would have to agree with them. There are things we can do better, and that's those smaller those of calls. Well, not smaller, but the lower priority. That's something, that low ratio per thousand, that's what suffers is those non-priority types of calls, like speed in your neighborhoods, peace disturbances, parties, those are the things that we could do better, with additional personnel. Another thing that the statistic doesn't really tell you is, that includes me, and I'm not out answering calls, and it includes the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 22 command staff, and I think we have a very lean command staff, but it also doesn't include the number of solders we get called up that are in the National Guard or the reserves. At the most, since I've been here, we've had three called up, so that one, at one point, that three includes them, and they're not here doing their job because they're called up, but they're still on the roles and we can't fill those positions. Right now we have one that's in active service in the military. So, another thing to factor in. We usually average between one and two people that are injured at any given time. That's, it's not, these guys are usually coming from patrol and they get injured, maybe from a slip and fall, maybe from actually wrestling with somebody, but that takes them out of service, but they still are factored into this 1.13. Some of the benchmarks that we look at, that I think are pertinent to you as well, because they're customer service benchmarks. For instance, on the fire side it's the response to a scene. In police work, it's the amount of time that, when a call comes in, it goes into a stack, and the timer starts rolling. Until, until there's an available officer for that call to be dispatched, that's what we call stack time, and what we've seen over the last couple years in, stack time has gone, has gotten higher. And like I said before, on the serious types of crimes, we'll drop what we're doing. Those types of responses still receive a high priority. It's the other types, those, on average, the average has gotten a lot higher. Some things to keep in mind, as you're aware, we have the, we lost four officers due to the budget cuts a couple years ago. The city growth at the same time, the calls for service have continued to rise. We had a 2004, for instance, we had the highest number of calls for service we've ever had, 70,848 calls for service. These were after we lost the four. The four that we cut, that also included the community service, or community policing officer, and that's a service that we could improve upon, specifically with your neighborhood associations. I think when, I believe it was the last time I was before this Board, somebody asked me about neighborhood watch, and when you have an active neighborhood, you usually see burglaries go down. Well, those are things we can improve upon, and frankly we've not been able to do that well in those community policing type programs because of lack of staff. That is about the end of the presentation I have, and would like to open it up to questions at this point. Elliott! Sam, I've got an observation and then a question. I think I mentioned to you very early on that I always thought putting a face on law enforcement was very important, so I would certainly like to see patrol officers becoming integrated within neighborhoods, and especially those troubling neighborhoods, and also I get concerned on some types of, for instance, if there's ever an occasion where a single officer has to respond to a domestic disturbance, that would frighten the heck out of me. I'm interested, I think you generally talked about it when you first started here. What are the highest priority areas where you think officers are needed? What kinds of instances do you feel that your department is in most danger of not adequately serving, what instances come to your mind right away? Hargadine/ Well, obviously, when there's gun play, and we know that. They've been trained. As far as when, they know how to minimize those risks because of the This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 23 training that they've had, but you can never totally eliminate the risk. We've had some recent gun play in Iowa City where, even where somebody was shot, and so you never know how many guns you're going into, and then obviously, like with car stops. You just don't know who's armed in those types of situations. So you almost always have to have it in the back of your mind, there is no such thing as a mundane call or a routine call, because you, frankly, don't know who you're dealing with. Elliott! Your answer's kind of all of the above. Hargadine/ All of the above. It's when you get into the routine and get complacent, and it doesn't matter what kind of call it is, it's the routine and complacency that can get you hurt. Schreiber/ How about around I :30 to 2:00 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights in the downtown area, I was downtown last weekend and witnessed an altercation that ended up in one person getting hurt pretty bad, and there was a lot of blood around and it just wasn't very pretty, and talked to the officers on the scene trying to assist them. They were saying that they felt like they could use some more people down there. How many people do you routinely have down there on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night? And do you think it's sufficient to cover the amount of people that you have congregated in that area? Hargadine/ It, right now we have ten on and two supervisors, so there's a total of twelve. Schreiber/ Okay. Hargadine/ There are many types of calls that require multiple, we use solo patrols so they don't have two in the same car. So if someone gets pulled out ofthat area and it's a any type of disturbance that usually requires a minimum of two, and so that just pulls more resources away. If it was a perfect world and I could put everybody at the same place at the same time, then we might have enough, but some of these places, there may be 500 people inside and another several hundred people milling around outside, and it can get out of hand quick. Schreiber/ Sure. Correia! So you're saying at that time ofmoming, there's ten police and two supervisors covering the whole city? Hargadine/ We have that right now. Correia! Right, so, I mean, that's not.. . was your question how many are sort of on downtown, I mean, in terms of are people assigned patrol areas? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 24 Hargadine! We have four different areas, but it's fairly common for, and even with ten, they're divided up amongst four and then the central district has more than the outlying because ofthe calls for service, but it is fairly routine for officers to go help out a sister area. So, and you know, that just deteriorates your beat plan when officers in a central unit are so busy and everybody else is being called in to help. Well, that doesn't address the rest of the city. Bailey! So how many officers are routinely scheduled on weekend nights in the central area? Hargadine! I don't know exactly in, as far as the downtown district. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, our staffing needs are the same. So we. . . Bailey! Okay. Vanderhoef! Tell me a little bit about what Andy would have called mutual aid with the University Police and when you can, if you do, call them in for assistance, say in downtown, and then the reverse ofthat, how many times is our police called to assist the University, other than routine traffic control, crowd control, that kind of stuff? Hargadine! Since I've been here, there have been no formal requests because of, due to a large incident. By large incident I mean like an escaped prisoner, an officer shot and down and they need massive amounts of help. That has not occurred, to my knowledge. It happens on an informal basis all the time because they overlap each other's patrol. University comes out, out of their area, we call it poaching. (laughter) They come out and drive around, and then we drive into their area. So, it all averages out, but if they need help, it's usually, our officers are not too far away, and there might not ever be a radio log that reflects it, that they help each other out all the time. Same thing with the Sheriff. An example of that would be the recent incident with Hills Bank robbery. Our guys were right there during the capture, so... they were chasing him to Iowa City. (several talking) O'Donnell! Chief... with the addition of two officers, do you anticipate that will be more coverage for downtown on the weekend nights? Hargadine! I would anticipate putting them where they're needed, and that's definitely during the evening, midnight watch. O'Donnell! Thank you. Bailey! Will addressing some issues of occupancy in some of those establishments at least help alleviate some, like some potential critical situations? I think that I wouldn't want to go in to some of those places. Hargadine! And I think that's a correct assessment. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 25 Bailey! Okay. Hargadine/ And we're looking at ways presently to either enhance a few of the ordinances, or adequately enforce the ones we already have. Bailey/ So you'll be bringing us some recommendations? Hargadine/ Very soon. Bailey/ Great. Elliott! I think I was talking with the City Manager this afternoon and my question was, and he said, 'Well, Bob, we've already been meeting on that,' but I would certainly like to find a way to identify problem businesses, bars, and to quantitatively identify them and deal with them, and you are working on that. Hargadine/ Not only me, but Marian has had some great ideas, as well, and I think there have been several different City departments who are all working towards the same goal. Elliott! Good. Wilburn! Chief, not too long ago there was an article in the paper related to overtime, and where Iowa City ranked in terms of overtime. Can you walk us through, what, are there any safety guidelines that factor in to overtime and maximum overtime or hours on a shift or.. . Hargadine/ Well, a lot of it, you know, some of it is set by contract, and I don't really, I'm not in favor of the way the contract is currently written, where the most senior officers get to pick and choose the overtime. Usually what's good for one or two isn't good for the rest of the organization. I would rather see overtime spread out amongst all the officers, so that everybody gets a piece of it and everybody, we've had certain instances where they've worked so much that they get sick and they don't, they can't work the regular shift, but become highly efficient when they're on overtime. So, in my, in future negotiations, I would like to see that return to the old way the contract read. I do think we have a fairly high overtime amount, and a lot of it's due to the staffing levels, but also would like to remind you that we get reimbursed for quite a bit of it. University reimburses us for athletic events, any type of request for security or moving houses or whatever. We pay up front, but then they pay us back afterwards. Wilburn! I presume that data is still being collected on racial profiling, but I don't know that for a fact. Hargadine! It is. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006, February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 26 Wilburn! Okay, all right. O'Donnell! What kind of impact do you think, I understand the University Police are going to be moving to a downtown location, shortly? Champion! Well, they are downtown anyway, aren't they? (several talking) O'Donnell! Do you think that's going to make any difference in the effectiveness on their enforcement on weekend nights? Hargadine! Well, I think they're anxious to get out of the trailer, but other than that (laughter). They're, I don't think it's going to effect our job that much, as far as enforcement. They do come down and help, from time to time, but keep in mind, they're an unarmed force and so they're leery about coming down (several talking). Schreiber! .. . seems to me, and like Regenia, the problems seem to be in the bars necessarily that I see abusing, when you're in the establishments downtown at night, you've got people who are working those establishments that are kind of doing crowd control in there. It seems to be afterwards, when you've got 500, 1,000 people in the Ped Mall area immediately after the close, because everybody's closing at the same time, is when you run into it must just be an impossible task for the police to be able to get to the fights and all the altercations going on there. So, maybe if there were just officers, whether they were armed or not, just in uniform, walking, it might cool off the situation a little more ifit's University Police, and possibly get them to patrol the area. Hargadine! Keep in mind, they're not that big of a department, so, and in the late night hours, they might not have many on. Schreiber! Sure. Wilburn! I would slightly disagree with that, because there are some altercations that happen inside. Champion! I was thinking you weren't going to the same bars I was going to. (laughing) Schreiber! No, when altercations inside the bars happen, like I said, it seems like from my own personal experience, I certainly don't have any statistics to back it up, it's just that they generally get handled in a fast manner by the people who are working the bar because it behooves them to have people making sure that things are orderly inside, otherwise they can't do business. So... Wilburn! I think they attempt to, but I, just a difference of opinion. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 27 Schreiberl Sure, sure. Wilburn! They're not a trained law enforcement person and so the response will be different, and because they're not trained law enforcement, I think some of what happens inside trickles outside and escalates, and so I think it's the outside factors that escalate. Hargadinel The key there is to get the bars to voluntary comply with crowd control and that kind of thing. I don't want them to get in the habit of being able to get as many people in there drinking as they possibly can, knowing that we're going to be their bouncers. We're not going to do that. O'Donnelll Some of the bars downtown it seems like on a regular basis, are exceeding the numbers that are posted. Champion! They don't pay any attention because it's never been enforced. O'Donnelll I don't say that from experience because I'm not in there very often. Hargadinel .. . dealing with in the discussions we've had about the liquor licenses is what would happen ifIjust didn't sign one? And what, we're actually meeting to establish criteria for, if they continue to violate it during the time period of their license, I may not sign it, and then it's going to be referred to you. Vanderhoefl A few years ago we had a comparison that included the stats on the University number of officers, and I haven't seen that for quite a while. You say they don't have many officers, and I have no idea how they staff and like you say, maybe there aren't that many on at night. Is there any way we can find out? Atkinsl Yeah, sure, we'll do that for you. Vanderhoefl I think it would be interesting for the public to know, certainly that figure was presented to us as Councilors at that time, as saying that you have to remember that we have all of these other trained officers, trained at the Police Academy and everything. They just don't happen to have licenses to carry their guns, although they are qualified to carry guns. Hargadinel That's correct. And it, now, I've not spent that much time studying their department. I'm still studying mine. (laughter) Vanderhoef I I understand, but... Hargadinel True, and if you factor that into the per capita ratio, you also have to add the students, as well. So, I think it's going to corne out about the same. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 28 Elliott! Sam, I know the answer, but I think it needs to be clarified. I have some friends who are former police persons and your highest priority in dealing with the situations that we were just talking about, outside a bar, is defusing the situation. Is that correct? Hargadine/ That's correct. Elliott! And some people are better than others at that, but that's the highest possible priority, to defuse it so it doesn't come to a stand-off. Hargadine/ That's correct. Correia! Just have a question to get us off for a minute from the downtown area. With the addition of two officers, would there be more staff time, or person time, to be able to do. some more community policing? I think one, I heard in meeting with folks at the Broadway Center back in the fall that that's something they really miss, the... when they had one officer that could know the neighborhood and people could.. .you know... Hargadine/ Community policing, I would rather have, I don't just want one guy doing community policing. I would rather have them all doing it. Correia! Sure, but I mean would it open up the possibility because there's additional person power? Hargadine/ The more people you have, the more unassigned time that they have, and that's going to lead to more types of, they can attend neighborhood association meetings, they can go to schools, there's a number of things they can do with additional time. And I think they do a good job with that now, but I know it's not as good as they used to do a couple years ago. Correia! I mean, that's something I'm interested in with... Hargadine/ There's a lot we don't do, but I wish we could do better. Atkins/ Amy, that Broadway program was also something, we had an overtime grant. Correia! Right, I know. Atkins/ Remember that? (several talking) They had a PIN grant, but we also secured another grant. I don't recall the amount of money, but it allowed us to assign an officer on a more routine basis to that particular neighborhood. Correia! And so is that something that the Police Department is looking into on a routine basis, other funding sources like grants to be able to do some ofthat, we know there was some funding that went away, but if there's any new or other... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 29 Hargadine! Well, one of the sad facts about homeland defense is that it's taken literally billions away from the pot of money that it used to come from, and under the previous administration where they were universal hiring grants, Cops-more grants, but even Iowa City, I think, hired as many as seven, six at one time under a Federal grant. Those things have all dried up. About the only thing that you can continue to get for people, are cops in schools, and I can't think of any other one that actually provides people. Vanderhoef! The abuse.. . (several talking). Hargadine! .. .it's a Stop grant program, and we do that, as well. We do have a Domestic Violence investigator that's grant-funded. Vanderhoefl Since our community officers have disappeared from the force, how are we staffing our Safety Village? Hargadine! We've had, we've got one officer with a, just a love to do it, Al Mebus, and he's done it in the past. I'm aware that it's getting ready to come up yet, and I think, I haven't talked to him about it, but my guess is he'll be beating on my door (laughter). O'Donnell! Chief, one of my favorite Councilors from the past used to be a big proponent of auxiliary police officers. You ever had any experience with those? Hargadine! Well, I need somebody who's done it before. . . yes I have. I used to run the reserve unit in Columbia. Missouri and Iowa are pretty close in that they raised the minimum standards for police officers, which has really made it tough for volunteer reserves. It's not impossible, and I have I think the perfect situation. It almost is impossible in Iowa to do it from an inexperienced, green person who has no academy training and make them into reserve. What I would, the situation, if it presented itself, if an officer worked for five years, already had the Academy, had some experience, but then decided he wanted to go sell used cars or his family didn't like the shifts or whatever and wanted to get out of it, that's the perfect person to get into a reserve program, because they're already trained and are familiar with the organization, and they can volunteer their time, keep their commission current, and if they decide that they want to come back, then they've got that avenue. O'Donnell! Do you know, does Sheriffs department have auxiliary? Hargadine! They do. O'Donnell! They have an auxiliary, okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 30 Hargadine/ One of the things that accreditation requires is that reserves receive the same amount of training that a regular does, so that's where it's really tough to be a reserve. Because they have their own careers and then they have to come down and spend time, all the training and certifications that a regular has to be. O'Donnell/ Thank you. Bailey/ So, Andy gave us this high, medium, and low priorities and some personnel numbers. Are you going to provide those for us, as well? Hargadine/ I'll never, ever turn down personnel. (laughter) Bailey/ How many would be too.. .no. 1... Hargadine/ I think, and that's a good question, really. I would like, as a goal, to get up in at least the median category of where those studies were, at least where we're not dead last anymore. Bailey/ So what would that mean? I'm sorry. I don't have those numbers... Hargadine/ I think a decent target would be 1.6 per thousand. And we're not going to do that in the next year or two, but I think as a five-year goal it would be nice if we started.. .like Andy said, we need to start planning. I would agree wholeheartedly with that assessment. Bailey/ So how many more would we need and what would that bring us to? Atkins/ 1.6 will take you up into kind of the high 90's, 95. Elliott! And we're now? Atkins/71. Champion! Oh, that's a lot! O'Donnell/ What are we now? Atkins/ 71. (several talking) We are 1.13. Hargadine/ One thing I'm not used to is the dependency on the State for rollback, tax money, and I'll tell you a conversation I had with Steve. He was explaining it to me, because I frankly did not understand it. The Missouri state budget is pretty much been in the basement for the last ten years, but Columbia was pretty well insulated and frankly, they didn't know, really didn't know what a recession is, and as Steve was telling me about this rollback and what causes it and how that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page3! affects us every year and next year it'll be even less, I was like, , Well, that's a loser,' and his comment was, 'Now you can be City Manager.' So (laughter)... Elliott! Sarn, if you had more people, more than just two. If you had more people, you would have them getting to know different neighborhoods, and having their presence become much more visible and provide much greater interaction. Would that be where the emphasis would be, with more people? Hargadine/ Absolutely. First of all, we have to catch up to where we were, and as the city grows, we need to, at a minimum, maintain it, if not gain back a little bit. If it were a perfect world, and you were throwing people at me, there are a lot of things I'd like. I'd like to have a traffic unit. A lot of the complaints that you get, as well as I do, a lot of the things (TAPE ENDS) We have to take care of the basics first. Elliott! One of the things that I'd like, at some point, to talk further with you about, if! can end a sentence in a preposition, is we're getting an increasing number of neighborhoods who want humps in their, humps in their streets, and I would be interested in some of your observations, if there is a better way of doing something like that. I'm afraid that's going to just proliferate. Hargadine/ I think traffic calming devices, for the most part, work. Not all of them do, some of them are visually ugly. It's just... Elliott! People have described me that way, too. (laughter) Hargadine/ But, you know, there's times when you've just got to do it, and not all speed bumps work. There's times when kids will see how fast they can go over them, so, but it's one technique. It's certainly the engineering of the street itself, whether it's curvy, that slows people down. Some of the, one ofthe things I've noticed in Iowa City, the roundabouts, that slows people down. It just depends on the situation. Wilburn! Any other questions? Okay, thank you, Chief. Transit Fowler/ Ron and I are going to try something new. We're going to try Power Point. We borrowed a computer. We had somebody help us put it together, and Ron's learned how to run it, so...(laughter and several talking). We have big maps out in the car if it doesn't, so.. . (laughter). Vanderhoef/ I believe Kara then does all the homework? Fowler/ Okay, like to start off and give you a little bit of a background as to how we got where we are, what we've done, what we have left to do, get your input to see if This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 32 we're going in the direction that you'd like us to go. We started off with a committee to look at our routes, aud Ron aud I were on the committee, Jeff Davidson, Kevin O'Malley, Chris O'Brien, aud the three trausit supervisors. In addition, we had Dave Ricketts, Michelle Ribble, and Brian McClatchey from the University ofIowa who have participated, aud this is because the city qualified for small cities, the trausit intensive funding. And we initially were programmed to receive $311,000 through that program. I % is taken off right away for administration, not our administration but the Federal Transit Administration; 20% is required to be spent on capital, so that put us down to $246,322. Vanderhoeti' 20% for what? (several talking) Fowler/ Right, and then we received an increase in our Federal funding of $66,700. So, we're looking at new Federal money to work with of$313,000. Now, in addition this.. . (several talking)...in addition to this, we have additional local money that we anticipate is going to be generated by the Court Street Transportation Center, and we've anticipated that this facility will generate an additional $200,000 a year in revenue that we can put into transit service. At this point, we have not incorporated any of the Transit Center funds into our proposals, and we've taken the position that we'll program these funds, after they've been collected and we know that we've hit our projections, rather than commit the funds and for some reason it doesn't come it at what we think it's going to come in and then we're short money. So, basically we are looking at programming the revenue from Court Street one year after it was received, so the first time would be a year from now that we'll be looking at incorporating any Court Street revenue in. It appears right now that we're in good shape. We got a late start because we didn't open until September. We're looking at probably between $100,000, $150,000 in revenue the first year, but we haven't finished the year. We're not sure; that's just kind of our proj ection. Vanderhoef/ How much of that goes to payout the bonds? Fowler/ None. Champion! None. Vanderhoef/ So this is above and beyond the payout for the bonds? Fowler/ The bonds are General Fund bonds. Champion! Right, remember? 80% Federal, 20% State, and we couldn't use funds and we're going to have to pay back that bond. Fowler! Right. Champion! Isn't that correct? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 33 Fowler! That's correct. Wilburn! Go, Connie! (laughter) Champion! 'Cause I had dinner! (laughter) Fowler/ So the goal that our committee established when we started this was that we wanted to increase transit services in areas with the greatest potential to increase system ridership and decrease the number of vehicles on the road. So, the approach that we took as we looked at expanding the service was first, we identified our largest customer, and that's the University ofIowa. We determined what areas ofIowa City currently have the highest ridership. (several talking) And that is west of the Iowa River and north of Highway I, the bypass, and the southeast area, basically the area that is south of the railroad right-of-way that runs through town. So, those are the areas we currently have the highest ridership in. I've got numbers but.. . (several talking)... Elliott/ Joe, while you're waiting on that, the, if you increase ridership, one of the concerns is that now the rider fees represent about 15% of the cost. If you increase ridership, will that increase that percentage, or is that just going to remain pretty steady? Fowler/ It's probably going to remain pretty steady. (several talking) Atkins/ Joe, is it safe to say that when we make these adjustments, whatever you ultimately approve, there will be some efficiencies to the system, but the real bottom line is we're using these monies to increase the ridership, with substantially the same fixed assets that we have right now. F owler/ That's cOrrect. (several talking) Bailey/ .. .no matter how many numbers get on the bus, it doesn't... Fowler/ Our operating cost basically for a bus, after we take out for overhead, is basically $50 an hour, by the time we pay the driver, we fuel the bus, we fix the bus, we clean the bus, so that's basically the number that we use. Elliott! I would think there would be times when you have a bus half to clear full then the efficiency of scale would mean that the more riders you have, the more people share that cost and the percentage would go up. Fowler/ Correct. (several talking) Okay, these are the additions and changes that we have developed. They need further refinement, if they're approved by the Council for implementation. Additional transit service on the west side ofIowa City is the first. We've looked at two potential routes. This would be a new This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work sessiou meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 34 concept to Iowa City Transit in that these busses would not come to downtown Iowa City. These busses would use Hospital Ramp #2 where the Cambus currently turns around, as their turnaround point. People that rode the bus to that point that wanted to continue on to downtown, could either transfer to a Cambu~ or to an Iowa City Transit but, and this would allow us to go further out to the edge oftown because if we try and do that and go all the way downtown, we'd be looking at an hour trip, and an hour trip is way too long for anybody to want to ride the bus. So we're looking at a shorter trip, and then we're looking at a high destination, which on the west side of town the residents of the west side of town, University Hospital is a high destination area. So, one route that we're looking at on that side would go out the Rohret Road area, and it would serve the area of Cole Drive, Shannon Drive, there's some assisted housing units on Shannon Drive that we've had a lot of requests for. It would go out and around the Duck Creek area, back by Weber School, and then serve the north side of the Mormon Trek Village, and Mormon Trek Village is one area that we've gotten a lot of ridership out of, we've had a lot of requests for, but the people on the north and west side have several blocks to walk to get to a curb bus, and they've requested a bus closer. So then this bus would go back, go by Fareway, go through the high density area along Westwinds and go to University Hospital and turn around. Now that's about a 40-minute trip. So that leaves us 20 minutes in our hour, and what we were looking at on the 20 minute side of that route, would be to go out Melrose and use Chatham Oaks as a turnaround, and we would be able to provide service to Chatham Oaks that way. And Chatham Oaks currently has 85 residents out there, basically all of them are certified to ride on SEATS and the reason that they're certified to ride on SEATS is because no bus service comes close to their facility and the difficulty they have is walking to a bus. So, if we can put a bus out there, we would lower the demand for SEATS service to the Chatham Oaks. So that would, that's one route we're looking at and it's an hour and serves basically the west side. The second change we're looking at is the Manville Heights bus. Currently that bus goes by University Hospital, through Manville Heights, by City Park, out to Forestview Trailer Court, turns around and comes back the same way. What we're looking at would be have that bus, instead of going back through Manville Heights, come in on Dubuque Street. At evening, we'd reverse it. It'd go out Dubuque Street, then go by the hospital, and then go downtown. Our goal in this area is to expand that bus into the Peninsula area. At the present time, we have riders who are walking or going in their wheelchair, from the comer of Laura Drive and Foster Road, and using the sidewalks, rain, snow, whatever, to get back to the Peninsula area. And we're looking at trying to get our bus service closer back to accommodate the people back in this area. The new housing development going in, Mackinaw, has requested bus service. They've had several people that've expressed interest in building and buying in that area, but one of the criteria they're looking for is busses. The downside to be able to do this, we may not be able to continue to be able to go up to Forestview, but those people would have to walk up the hill from Foster Road, but that's still to be determined in the timing if this is something that you want us to pursue. Third change...is combining the Rochester and the North Dodge bus at night, and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 35 this bus would go out basically the, excuse me, the Rochester route, serve the majority ofthe Rochester route, then use Scott Boulevard to go over by AC.T. and then come back in the North Dodge route. By doing this, we could expand service on the North Dodge route later at night. Currently, that's one of the routes that service ends early, and currently it turns around at Hy-Vee at night. So we would expand the service out to AC.T., the Press-Citizen, through that area. We don't know if we have time or interest from Pearsons to continue out to the NCS area. We've contacted them about doing an employee survey, but we haven't been able to finish that yet. So that would be a possible expansion then, in addition to what we have currently talked about. O'Donnell/ Joe, one question, where's it going to cover Scott, Scott Boulevard? Where's it come in and go out? Champion! This is Rochester. Fowler/ What'd you say about it, Mike? O'Donnell/ You said the bus is going to run on Scott Boulevard. Fowler/ Yes. It would go, it would go out the Rochester route, and then it would take Scott Boulevard around to AC.T. and come in North Dodge. Yeah, it would loop. It would go out, right now the bus goes out and then comes back in the same way. What we're looking at is running it out, then using Scott Boulevard to connect it over to another route and run it in, so we'd be able to serve both routes with one bus, serve the ACT. area that we're currently not serving, and be able to serve the North Dodge area later at night than we currently area. Wilburn! Can you double click on that so it'll, so the slide show will start, on number 9, just double click on it. (several talking) Go ahead and try the other way to get the slide show going. Fowler/ This is one of the things that we were able to develop working with the University, and.. . (several talking).. . first of all, the University developed two separate maps, one showed where faculty and staff lived in Iowa City by census area, and at the far left comer of the west side... Karr/ Do you have the pointer there, Joe? Atkins/ There's a pointer there, Joe. Fowler/ This is the combined isn't it? Okay. Karr/ Unless Andy has it. Here you go. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 36 Fowler/ Can you get just the University, the employees up? Now, okay. (laughter) This area has the most dense University employee area, and this area has the second most dense employee area, and so that was part of the reasoning that we were using for putting the additional bus service there. Now, and then the student area, the density was mostly, this was the highest density in this area right here, and I don't know where the second highest on the student was at this point. (someone else talking) Right. We've got this area. So, the University provided us with a lot of good information, as far as where their concentration of students, faculty, and staff were, and that was part of the driving force on the west side bus. Then.. .so we've looked at the combined Rochester-North Dodge. Okay, there's out student area and you can see it's also concentrated on the west side, on north of, not used to this technical stuff. Wilburn! Appreciate you taking the risk! (laughter) Fowler/ This is the bypass coming out. That would be the Lodge area, obviously, heavily student. Elliott! Are you serving that now? Fowler/ Just on the bypass itself. We go by there once an hour. And then this would be your Benton-(can't hear) area up and through there that we have, and yeah, Westside Drive is down through here. So... Wilburn! What time is that stop out to the Lodge area? What time is your bus system stop there? Fowler/ It is out there right about on the hour, a little bit before. Wilburn! I mean at night. Fowler/ Oh, at night? It stops very early. Right, but it doesn't, it's...yeah, 5:45 and it's not a very late service in that area now. Our next change we're looking at is extending the Broadway route at night to the Industrial Park. Right now, the Industrial Park, service out there ends at 6:22 P.M., that's the last bus out in that area. And if we take the night Broadway bus, we'll run it out the Highway, turn around in Industrial Park, come back by Kirkwood Community College. We would be able to serve out there until approximately 10:45 at night. So, we get a lot of requests from people that work in that area that don't have a ride home in the evening and we think this will answer that. Vanderhoef/ Excuse me, Joe, is that when shift changes are happening, or are we on... Fowler/ We haven't been able to find out from them, like I said, if we haven't finalized this. We're just kind oflooking for approval to go ahead with these concepts. I'm afraid that it may be before the last shift change, thinking that it's 3-11, 4-12 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 37 type of shift, but we are still getting requests and maybe if this is how the majority of the people get to work, some accommodations can be made on the other end so that the people can get home, if they need the work force. Still to be worked out, but it's just areas that we're looking at that, whether you want us to explore them further or not. And then the last change that we've proposed at this point is adding 30 minute service to the Lakeside route mid-day, so that there's 30 minute service that would serve basically the southeast area of town, all day long, and then we'd still run the Broadway out there on the hourly basis, but this is, that's our highest ridership area and this would give them a higher level of service. So, we could do these changes and we would still have funds available to buy a used bus, if that's what, if we needed a used bus to implement these changes to increase our fleet, and to establish a fuel reserve fund, and the fuel reserve fund would be there for the years when we have the unanticipated, unbudgeted fuel increases. Now, that's what we've been able to do. What we've not been able to do, basically, is determine how to get service east of Scott Boulevard. We've addressed it several different ways. We've looked at extending our current routes and we've run into the fact that our routes would become too long, and the fact that those busses are already full during peak time. So, if we go further, they're coming into town, standing room only at times, and we've had conversations with people who have said there used to be on the Rochester bus two to three people getting on at my stop, now there's 12 to 14. So, we've seen an increase in ridership in that area of town. Another thing that we've looked at is running a bus that would just come back and meet these busses. Run a smaller bus through the neighborhood, and we ran into the same problem again - capacity. We could go out and pick up 20 people, but we don't have a bus that we could put them on. The next problem that we ran into was the connector roads on the eastside of town because as you go out Court Street, we have about four developments that are developing off on the north side of the road, but only two of them are connected. The rest of them, there's no way to get from one to the other, and if you go all the way out to, well, not all the way out the end, next to the last development, you go all the way to the back, there's a new road that goes all the way to Lower West Branch, but the last five feet's not paved. And, so, we don't have a way to go out to this area and get turned around and get back downtown in an efficient manner. O'Donnell! Joe, the bus that goes out Court Street, and hits Scott. Fowlerl Doesn't go that far. O'Donnell! Why couldn't the bus go out and hit Scott and then swing around? We've been asked by a fairly large group of people to put a bus stop on Scott Boulevard. Fowlerl We could, but then you can't get that bus back downtown in the time limit that you have. You can make it, you can make it a longer bus, a longer route, which would require us to do some creativity on the other side, you know, as far as making our pairs match up so that the busses, they run out one side and back the other, so you know, it takes some work on the other side. But the other problem This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 38 that we run into, Mike, is capacity on that bus. Ifwe go out there and the bus is already full, and then we have the people that don't want a longer bus ride. That's why we were looking at what could we do to put a bus in that area that doesn't depend on the bus that's currently there. Bailey/ So, I'm assuming you already looked at this, but did you look at sort of an eastside loop that connects with something going downtown? To a, I guess... Fowler/ That's under our list of things still to do. Bailey/ Okay, sorry. Fowler/ We just recently received a survey from A.C.T. employees. Ron worked with their personnel people and got a survey sent out. It was sent out to about 1,000 employees all of whom do not work in Iowa City. So some ofthe people went to work, weren't going to be able to answer. We got approximately 100 surveys back? Is that what you said? Approximately 100 surveys back. What was, and Jeff is working on the final tabulations. What I found very amazing going through those is there are a lot of people who said they would take the bus to A.CT. if it didn't go downtown. So... Bailey/ Pardon me? If it didn't go... Fowler/ Ifit did not go downtown. So, you know, there is an interest in an eastside loop bus. Ron and I have discussed an eastside loop bus that doesn't go downtown, that serves the east side. Rochester, not Rochester - excuse me. By the Towncrest area, the Sycamore Mall area, where somebody can get on an eastside bus and then be connected with another bus that's going downtown. That, that we haven't had time to fully develop at this point. Elliott/ You seem to be getting away from the spoke concept. Does it look like that's going to be increasing, that you're either going to start going to east-west, north- south loops, or maybe even busses that run east and west, north and south? Fowler/ Yes. We've kind of reached the point where it's too far, the community has grown so far that it's too far to take a bus from the downtown, ride all the way out, and ride all the way back. And so we were looking at establishing transfer points where we could serve an area and people that wanted to go just in that area would ride that bus with people that wanted to continue on to downtown or another part of town, would transfer to another bus. Bailey/ When you surveyed, and I didn't mean to interrupt your... Fowler/ No, go... Bailey/ Are you completed with all these...I'll ask questions at the end. (can't hear) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 39 Fowler/ Okay, this is kind of where we are at this point. We have more information. We're kind oflooking at do you want us to pursue what we have. What we've talked about so far, basically with buying the bus and establishing a fuel reserve, spends the money that we had talked about, the just over $300,000. Champion! But not the money from the parking... Fowler/ But not the money from Court Street. Champion! No, I think you're doing a good thing. You're putting busses where the ridership is. I think that's very positive. And I think it's some good ideas. Are there areas of town that aren't covered that could actually really use the bus? I mean, some of those areas I can't imagine anybody using the bus. Fowler/ Well, I think every area of town has some people that would use the bus, but whether there's enough people in an area that would justify the expense of the bus, if you could put the bus in another area where there's a higher demand, and that's kind of what we looked at in doing this at this point. Champion! Did you look at people to work type situations? Is that what your criteria was? Fowler/ Yes, right, that and students downtown. Do you have, can you get that ridership.. . maybe Bailey/ So in this, what you presented, the other current routes would stay the way they are? Fowler/ Yes, yes. So, what we were looking at...okay, I don't know if that's really big enough that you can see the.. . (several talking).. .the blue area is (several talking), the blue as you see now, is our current ridership on the west side of town. That is where our largest ridership is located now, and that's basically the area we were talking about, north of Highway I and west of the river, and then our southeast is our next highest ridership area, which is basically south of the railroad right-of- way. So, that was, that and the University maps of their density of student and employees were kind of our driving force to increase transit service in these areas where we know there are people that use the bus, and that like on the west side, we run a Plainview bus, but the Plainview bus is so full we have to run another bus to carry the excess passengers. So we're running two busses to do that. By putting on this west side, that bus would serve part ofthe same area and we no longer have to run the helper bus two times a day to get everybody to work on time. So, there's some efficiencies that we really didn't talk about, as far as being able to discontinue some of the additional things that we're doing now, but they were taken into account as far as determining what we could do with the money. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council bndget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 40 Champion! That's great! Fowler/ So what we're looking at is where do we go from here, and it kind of depends on when Council wants to commit the money from the Court Street Transportation Center and we were looking at a year from now, our transit intensive funds increase. We know how much money we have from the Court Street Transportation Center. We no longer would be setting aside money for fuel reserve. Hopefully, we wouldn't spend it up the first year that we establish it. We wouldn't have to purchase any additional busses. We would have the busses purchased out of this year's money, and the eastside, we're hoping that by that time, as the eastside community grows, we'll see more connector streets and we'll be able to run busses through the area, instead of going into areas and kind of running into a dead end and not being able to go through. O'Donnell/ Joe, what do we have to do to service Scott Boulevard out there? Correia! Is the question like, the corner of Scott and Court? Is that where it is? And you can't do (several talking). Elliott! Isn't it up closer to Washington Street? Fowler/ Well, we could take the Rochester bus and not go down Overland and not pick up anybody in that neighborhood, and go down Scott Boulevard, and come in that way. Atkins/ What I'd like from you, and if we sense a consensus that you want that served, then we'll, we just need to go back and figure out how to do it. It's just going to be very difficult and we think it's going to punish some.. .yeah (several talking). O'Donnell/ We're missing a large segment out there that's going to use the bus, and (several talking). Fowler/ We know that because we can't, I mean, we've looked at how to put the bus out there and we can, we can put a bus out there. I mean, it's $50 an hour. We can put a bus out there, but you know, if that's where you'd like us to spend the money. That's why we're asking for direction, Mike. Bailey/ You said you hadn't look at the eastside loop yet, you were getting, that was one of the things you were going to look at, so that could be a way to service the Scott issue? Fowler/ Right, we've talked about, the things Ron and I have discussed that we haven't really been able to put on paper is a mid-day deviated eastside route that would be run similar to SEATS but not exactly, but we would have a route, but if somebody lived two or three blocks off that route, we would be able to swing over in that area and pick somebody up, and we've talked about that. We've talked about an This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 41 eastside loop. We ran an eastside loop bus probably five or six years ago. We ran it all day long, and it had like zero ridership, and that's not much of an exaggeration. Bailey! .. .lag time is there between changing routes and shifting and getting people on the bus, so they know that things have changed? Fowler! The way that we look at it is, the sooner we can get a bus into a community as a new community develops, then we'll have riders out of that area. I mean, it's kind oflike building the parking ramp. If you build a parking ramp next to an undeveloped area, the areas going to develop. We've done that with each one that we've built so far and that's one of the things that we would like to do, especially on that eastside. Ifwe could go out, if we could figure out how to go east of Scott Boulevard and connect around and then come back, and especially if we could go by the area that's going to be developed at Rochester and Scott Boulevard, that would be an excellent route, and to have it there as that area develops so that people move in and they use the bus right away, because once they become dependent on their car, and have their car as a means of transportation, it's hard to get them back out of the car, but if the bus is there from the beginning, and that would be, that's our goal for that area, is that as it develops, as the street system goes in, to be able to put a bus in that area and grow with that part of the community. Correia! There's an eastside loop that runs for junior high and high school, for before school time and after school time. I think there's like two, goes around twice, is that right? Fowler/ Uh-huh. Correia! Does that go by this area? That you're talking about? So if you, if there was an eastside counector that had the hub of Sycamore Mall, like what you're thinking about the hub for University Hospitals, is that, when it would come within five minutes, there would be the bus that would go Mall Drive, that would be going downtown, that might eat away to get that area covered, without having this whole other extra longer, kind of thing? Fowler/ Right, and that's one of the things that we've talked about is how can we run a bus out there and where do we hook it up and what hours do we run it. Bailey/ Are you looking at later services to student areas? I thought it was interesting that the Lodge service sort of, I mean, have you talked about that? Fowler! We have service out there, off the Oakcrest bus, but it doesn't stop directly in front of the Lodge. It stops like across the street, over by the car dealership and the frame. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 42 Bailey/ Across the street, or across the highway? Fowler/ Across the highway. (several talking) It comes out of.. .so, you know, there's service there later in the evening, but it's not convenient service. Vanderhoef/ And we still haven't found any way to get service to the retirement and senior citizen housing on Scott? Champion /That's what we're talking about (several talking). Fowler/ Yeah, we looked at, you know, can you take the Towncrest bus and run it just a little bit further out so you can get Legacy Pointe, and yeah, you can, but then you're throwing off your time schedules because you can't get back downtown in time for them to make a transfer to the next bus to go...(several talking). Right, if we did a loop we could, yes, but we've discussed the loop that would do all along Scott Boulevard, would do the Industrial Park, would do the Sycamore Mall, would do the Towncrest area around Hy- Vee, and you know, it's basically determining, do you want us to pursue that? Do you want us. . . what hours (several talking)... Champion! The other thing too, you know, the Free Medical Clinic's going to be moving . over to that T owncrest area, so I think there'd be a greater demand for bus service in that area. Bailey/ And they're open in the evening, so we're talking about time, what time do they close? 9? 1 a? Champion! They're usually done by 9 or 9:30. Bailey/ So there would be... Fowler/ Do you know where that's going to locate, Connie? Champion! It's going to locate, you know, my husband's in internal medicine. Across the street (several talking). Fowler/ We do have the Towncrest bus that would still be going by there at night. Yeah. Bailey/ And, when you looked at A.C.T., did you talk to the employees on the main campus or the temp employees? Because the temp at A.C.T. Circle, that parking lot really, really fills up and I think that there's a challenge with convenient bus service, and many of those temp employees could probably benefit from, as gas prices go up, because... Fowler/ Yeah, went to 1,000 employees, but we don't know who they sent it to. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 43 Bailey! Because I think that's another challenge that A.C.T. has and they certainly have parking challenges over there, as well as... those might be people who would benefit from taking the bus because they're hourly's are a little lower. Fowler! On the eastside loop bus, do you want it til 11 :00 at night, like the other busses? Do you want a mid-day 7:00 A.M. to early evening? Champion! Well, I think you have to make that decision. (several talking) Fowler! I mean, are you looking at a mid-day convenience bus that will take people where they can get on the bus, get to work, other people can use it to travel around the community during the day, and then people can use it to get home and then not have night service in that area? Or.. . (several talking) Elliott! I think the ridership has to dictate some of that. I think we have to be a little business-like and cost effective in our decisions, and so I really, without getting into specific routes and specific loops, I like the approach you're taking at getting away from a mandatory spoke concept to better serving the different regions, increasing ridership, and along that line, have you looked at cost per mile for large busses versus smaller busses versus mini busses? I get so tired of seeing. . . Fowler! . ..we have a 40 foot bus and a 30 foot bus, and the 40 foot bus gets better gas mileage than the 30 foot bus, and (several talking) the operating expenses basically the same, except small bus is getting worse gas mileage, and... Elliott! But I see the bus going down Muscatine, just in the afternoon and evening, virtually empty, and sometimes literally, save the driver, empty, and it just seems...I just cringe when I see that. (several talking) Fowler! It depends on which way you see it and the time of day. I mean, in the evening, you're going to see the bus empty basically as it comes back to town. In the morning you're gong to see the bus empty as it goes out to pick up people. Mid- day, there are times that the ridership is down, but to buy two busses and to go out and change the bus in the middle of the day, that would become cost prohibitive. Bailey! I have some more questions. Did you look at Kirkwood? The Kirkwood campus, because they're having increasing parking problems and I wondered if you had the same kind of map and information about. . . Fowler! No, we do not have any Kirkwood information. Bailey! That would be something I'd be interested in seeing, what others... we're having increasing traffic problems down there, and if that could, if some of that could be alleviated with bus service. I mean, especially if we have some big turnaround at Sycamore or something like that, and then concerning hours on the eastside loop, part of it also depends on where it's going. If it's going to Sycamore Mall and the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 44 movie theaters, yeah, it should run later because that allows people the opportunity to take the bus. Fowler! We could propose a route on the eastside, and we could determine, well, I'm not even going to try to guess what the hours would be right now. Set a set of hours, monitor ridership, and then come back and adjust those hours, depending upon usage. Bailey! I just think also we have to be cognizant of where it's going to support businesses. Not only employees (several talking). Fowler! Right. What we're looking at it as being a convenient shopper bus during the day time, where you can take the bus and go to the store and be able to count on a bus to be there, and on the Kirkwood, the Broadway bus would still service Kirkwood at night. Now, we're running service one hour, mid-day right now... Bailey! But those kind of demographic maps, and I don't know if those would be available for Kirkwood, and I don't know if those students are coming from out of town. I just don't even know. And I know that many of them are probably going to Kirkwood and have jobs in the field and they need their car, but I still think it's something worthy of looking at. F owler! Yeah, we'll... Bailey! .. . and then, Sunday service, because I've heard requests from City employees who work at the Library for Sunday service. Wilburn! I have a question, Forestview's the one out by the interstate, correct? How did you say ridership is on that route? Fowler! Uh, ridership on that route is very low, to the Forestview area right now. The ridership on that route, basically comes from the University Hospital, people that ride that route in the morning, tend to get off at University Hospital and people that ride it in the afternoon, tend to get on it at University Hospital, because it becomes the Court Hill bus, and the Court Hill has excellent ridership, and a lot of them are University Hospital employees. Wilburn! Do we do anything to get information in (TAPE ENDS) ...actually there's one or two communities in Mexico where folks arrive from there and it's been my experience and some folks at one or two of the schools, that the folks get to town and they're really kind of stationery there, not going to venture out too much, but... Fowler! No, we don't, but it would be something that we could.. . (several talking). This represents only a reasonably accnrate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 45 Wilburn! Yeah, because from like, at Horace Mann, DSL, teacher out there and one of the, that's for some of the folks who come to school and they frequently talk about transportation issues and that's, I'm just wondering. Fowler/ Yeah, we have some staff people that are very fluent and can communicate, but we don't have anything official, but it would be something that we could explore. Sunday service, Ron and I ran these numbers this afternoon - 179,000 - $170,000 a year to have Sunday service at the same level we have our current Saturday service. Correia! $170,000 a year? Fowler/ Yes. Champion! That's a lot of money. O'Donnell/ What's the ridership on Sundays? (several talking) Vanderhoef/ That's still Saturday hours? Fowler/ Yes, that would be basically five busses, during the daytime. The one thing that we have found is, this is the increase in Saturday ridership from last year to this year. So we've had a large increase in our Saturday ridership, which... Bailey/ Do churches provide their own kind of transportation for people? I mean, I know that churches used to do some bussing, vans... Fowler/ To the best of my knowledge, some do, some don't, but... Bailey/ But you haven't gotten requests from individuals regarding church? Fowler/ No. Bailey/ Okay. Wilburn! Kind oflike, some of the places like Oaknoll and stuff, they'll run a bus into town for folks to... Wilburn! That was one of the reasons we went above and beyond on the SEATS service and had SEATS service on Sunday morning, was requests to get people to and from church services. Bailey/ And if you looked at Sunday service, how would you evaluate potential ridership? Do you have any ideas? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9,2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 46 Fowler! Well, like I said, Ron and I had this discussion today because we felt it could be a discussion item tonight, and we could see student riders, we could see transit- dependent people who currently don't have a way to get around on Sunday so basically they stay home on Sunday. (several talking) Right, and there are some people who would do shopping on Sunday with a bus, so we think there are groups out there that would use it. To be able to put a number on how many people, we...it would just be a pure guess at this point. Bailey! Okay. Fowler! I think it might be similar to the Saturday, but... Bailey! Oh, okay. Fowler! ... but like I said, that's a pure guess. Bailey! And then do we have the capacity, this is just something that went into my head, do we have the capacity to run like events busses? Or Arts Fest? Or Jazz Fest? They would be typically weekends. Would that, has that been anything that anybody's ever talked about, because that would be something to boost some of the attendance, potentially. Fowler! Well, we have busses. Bailey! Yes, and people who know how to drive them. (laughter) Fowler! We have (several talking), see we have Federal regulations that we can't run a charter. Bailey! Right. Fowler! So, we could establish special bus routes. We put in a family fare to encourage families to ride on Saturdays, but a special events bus... Atkins! Didn't we do a 4th of July once? Fowler! We've done (several talking) to the Park. You know, basically, if we wanted people to ride the bus, to come to special events, the way to do it would be to waive the fare that day. (several talking) Bailey! So, but we're talking about like a special Sunday Arts Fest, half of it (several talking). That's another question too, if we had a dollar amount that that would cost, would the City be open to getting sponsorships for that bus? I mean, it could be part of the whole component ofthe event. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 47 Atkins/ As long as it's not charter, we can provide special events. Generally speaking, we can do that. Fowler/ As long as it's... Atkins/ .. .as long as it's open to everyone; who pays the freight is the question. Vanderhoefl It could be more in the way of remote parking because my feeling is that sometimes people stay home because they don't want to, they don't want the remote parking and then have to walk into the festival from wherever that is, but that was prior to opening Court Street so I'm not real clear whether that's going to be a valid thing at this point in time, but ifthere were, like a circle bus from Hancher if that could be arranged on a Sunday when there wasn't a performance. They don't tend to have performances in the summer. (several talking) Logsdon! Generally the charter's determined if each individual you can make a nominal fare, but if you have, if the City paid for it, it was free, because Cambus gets by with it - they have a free fare. We don't. So you would probably have to, to abide the charter laws you'd have to charge a quarter rather than your normal fare or something. They determined if each individual has to pay rather than a sponsor paying.. . and you're competing with a private sector once you start doing that. Elliott! Isn't the shuttle free? Logsdon! The shuttle is free (several talking). You might have an angle! Elliott! My question was, how cost-effective is the shuttle? I know, Joe, one time you said, 'Well, if we didn't run the shuttle that would run the ridership down and we wouldn't get perhaps quite as much from the Federal government...' Fowler/ That would affect our transit-intensive money and right after we started that service, Jeff and his people did a survey, and 25% of the people that were riding that shuttle, would have driven downtown, even though it's only a couple blocks. Elliott! That's a bogus survey. Those people are smart enough to know that if they say.. . Fowler/ .. .no it's not! Elliott! .. .ifthey say they'll drive downtown then... Fowler/ No it's not, because one of the reasons we put it in was observing pedestrian traffic patterns and observing the number of people that were walking up Burlington Street, that were jaywalking across Burlington, that was one of the reasons. The other one is watching the cars that come downtown and park, and three, four, five people will get out and you know they're coming from the sorority house on the eastside of town, and I, now I don't think that's... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 48 Elliott! Well, anyway, that's fine. Fowler! We'll disagree. Elliott! That's fine. But anyway, you feel that there is sufficient trade-off in providing additional ridership, so that it increases the funding from the Federal government? Fowler! That, and it decreases our demand for parking, when you're looking at $15,000 a parking place that those people, that we would have to build to accommodate those people. Elliott! The other question, have you thought further about the "pass with care" sign on the back of busses? Fowler! We've talked about (laughter and several talking) Elliott! 1.. .on Muscatine especially and other streets, the cars back up because some people are hesitant to pass the bus when it's stopped and then you get, as soon as you get two or three cars stopped, then nobody can pass. Logsdon! When Joe mentioned that to me, we have fairly regularly, maybe not weekly, we have cars passing busses at 4-way stops, when they're just stopped at stop signs, and so, I think there might be some liability there to encourage that, and we'd have to weight... Elliott! Yeah, that would not be cool! Champion! How is the Transportation Center, how's the parking doing there? Is it getting full? Is it full? I've heard... Fowler! There's currently a waiting list of200 to park (several talking). Bailey! I have a question about the Transportation Center since the plans for happened before I was on Council and somebody asked me this this past week in D.C. is, how is it that we have a Transportation Center that our City busses don't, that's not the center for our City busses. That was in the plans, I assume, from the beginning, or it wasn't? Fowler! Right, our goal was to stop the cars outside of the central business district, and to have people continue on from there on a bus. So, we have current routes, 20.. .no, busses going by there every day. .. it's a.. . Bailey! But it's not the bus exchange...right? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Work Session Page 49 Fowler/ It's like over 100 busses a day go by the Transportation Center, and everybody that has a parking permit in there, is eligible for a bus pass that gives them a ride from that point to the downtown, and then they can use that to ride throughout the town throughout the day and then go back. So, if you parked your car there, you'd have a bus pass that would take you to work, if you had a Dr. ' s appointment, you could then take the bus to your Dr. appointment and back again, without ever having to bring your car out. Bailey/ Right, but the busses don't exchange there. They still exchange at Old Capitol Mall, and will that continue even though Old Capitol Mall is fundamentally University? . Fowler/ Because ofCambus and Coralville being (can't hear) being able to make their transfer to the other busses. Bailey/ And then where are we with the job access reverse commute information, Jeff? Because that will have an impact on how late those busses run, right? Davidson! Yeah, there's a Federal initiative I think you're aware of, involving human service agency transportation, and the public transit systems that we. . . combine, it's basically the same process that you have to go through for the job's access reverse commute funding, which both Iowa City Transit and Coralville Transit have asked, so we're going to kind of dovetail those. What the State D.O.T.'s been telling us, the money comes through them, is to wait and there's going to be this system of statewide meetings. ECCOG is hosting the one in May for our area, both Linn County and Johnson County will be part of it, and there's where we're supposed to have this all laid out for us in terms of what the process is we're supposed to follow. We've been working with Ron and Coralville Transit and Cambus for this special money. It's a special program that we're going to get this year, and we're hopeful there'll be kind of a stream-line process this year, but after this year, there's got to be this process for determining where your needs are and then the money that's supposed to go to fulfilling those needs - late night service or Sunday service or whatever the process would determine that would be. Bailey/ Okay, so we will, after we decide this, that information will come after some of these decisions are made, it sounds like. Davidson! Yeah, I mean, we're getting into them right now so that by the time you're finishing up this process, you know, we should maybe start having some ideas, and we have some ideas already, but the States telling us just kind of relax, go to these meetings, the providers will (laughter) the service providers are supposed to be there. You'll all be getting invitations to that so... Wilburn! There are a significant number of questions... I guess [' d recommend us taking a short break. I guess [' m trying to get an idea of how much we have left tonight. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 50 Vanderhoef/ I have a request for a printout of your slides with your numbers and stuff on it. I'm presuming that some of the slides, we didn't see that had some of those early numbers, Joe. Fowler/ I wasn't watching what he (laughing and several talking) Vanderhoefi' The whole point is I still can't copy them in the dark from up there. (several talking) Karr/ Just so you know, we do try for every Power Point presentation, we ask the staff to furnish it to us so that we finalize it. We do put it on the web site and it is one per page. That is the goal for every Power Point. Bailey/ Right, but the challenge with this one is the color, and the... Karr/ It's sort of what we talked about earlier today, about controlling the original. Bailey/ But it's only nine slides, right? Karr/ We can scan and color, given ample opportunity. We can scan and color. O'Donnelll Joe, you will be coming back to us with this... Fowler/ Right, basically what we would like is just for, you tell us what you want us to develop, out of what we told you tonight that we'd looked at, and what we looked at, and develop the eastside loop. If that' s what you want us to do, then we'll come back with final, we can do this for this much money during this time, and give you one more shot at... Wilburn! I think I saw enough heads nodding that that's. . . sorry I interrupted you. Champion! Are there routes that are, that the ridership is so low they should be discontinued? Fowler/ That would depend on who you ask. (laughter) Bailey/ Can we just get a list of ridership numbers for all the routes? Fowler/ Yes. Elliott! I do believe that we need to make some hard decisions on some ofthose, and by the way, I know in St. Louis, I don't think they do it anymore, but they used to have a Red Bird Express, 'course they had games all the time during the summer, but for special events, if we could do that, we could run just so it's well advertised and people know it's going to happen, because if you try it and don't promote it, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006. February 9, 2006 City Council Budget Wark Session Page 51 nobody knows about it, but I think the Red Bird Express in St. Louis had a lot of riders. (several talking) Wilburn! Okay, any final questions for them? Again, I'm looking at if we're. .. Correia! Oh, and with those routes and the ridership numbers, can we get a sense of why those routes were established, or what shifted or why the routes ran there in the first place? Just a sentence. Fowler/ Basically, when Iowa City took over the transit service, there was a system of routes from the private provider. Those are the routes that are still out there. Bailey/ It would be good to put that so everybody knew that. Elliott! Mr. Negus' routes didn't run quite as far as that, but they're still a lot similar. Fowler/ Right, I think we actually have a map of the original routes, so you can look at that and what we have today and there's very little change. (several talking) Elliott! I had to walk down Muscatine quite a bit, quite a ways, to catch the bus that went out there at that time. Wilburn! I've got a, just a procedural question for Council before we close here. There may have been some other questions generated from both of the Chiefs' presentations. How do we want to handle.. .one of the things that came up was the question about some type of development fee with fire protection and funding. Do we want to have it on a work session? Do we want to submit questions? What would work... Atkins/ ...1 can tell you right away, those are exactions, and Eleanor's probably going to be able to respond very quickly and most of those are illegal in Iowa. Wilburn! That's.. .that's just one example. I mean, because you know it would involve, but just.. .how about folks just jot down questions, get them to Marian, and then we can take a look at. .. Atkins/ That would be fine, just bundle them up and we can probably prepare quick written responses to a number of them. (several talking) Wilburn! Any of the presentations tonight. Right. Okay. I think we're done. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe Iowa City City Council budget work session meeting of February 9, 2006.