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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-12-06 TranscriptionDecember 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 1 Council Present: Staff Present: Others Present: Bailey, Champion, Dickens, Hayek, Mims, Wilburn (arrived at 6:35 PM), Wright Markus, Helling, Dilkes, Karr, Davidson, Fosse, Johansen, Moran, Purdy, Knocke Higgins, UISG Council Appointments: Hayek/ Why don't we get started with the work session. First item is Council appointments. We've got a few to make here. I think the first one, uh, in the order in which they appear is, uh, Airport Commission. We've got a, uh, gender balance requirement on that. Um, does anyone know if this individual would have any interest in the, uh, Airport Zoning Board? Champion/ Well, he's been on the Airport Commission on and off, uh, I think that's what he really wants to (both talking) Mims/ Yeah, I think so too. Hayek/ Okay. Bailey/ Well, and I thought...we had looked at him before, so we haven't passed our time? Champion/ No, it's the 20tH Bailey/ Okay. Hayek/ Marian, do...I know it's kind of catching you as you walk, on Airport Commission, do you know how... are we at the start of the 90 days or (noise on mic) through that? Champion/ It is 12/20. Karr/ 12/20 (mumbled) Dickens/ Yeah, it was September '7tH. (mumbled) Hayek/ Oh, yeah... Dilkes/ It's 12/20. It's right there at the (several talking; noise on mic) Karr/ There are some you can appoint. That's not one of them. Hayek/ Okay. Well, we'll just hang on with him. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 2 Champion/ (sneezing) Excuse me! I'm allergic to this place! (several talking) Hayek/ Uh, then we get to Parks and Rec. (noise on mic) Wright/ I could certainly speak to, uh, Lucie Laurian, and I think she'd be a terrific addition... Bailey/ Oh, me too! Champion/ Oh, yeah, I agree! Wright/ Very sharp individual! Bailey/ I was really glad to see that she was willing to do it. Champion/ (mumbled) I'm stuck here...lost. Hayek/ Consensus for her? Champion/ Yeah, and then Dave is on his first...um...first three-year term, and we...usually allow a second (several talking) Hayek/ Typically (several talking) Okay. I thought all the applicants looked really good. (several responding) All right, so David Bourgeois and that is Bourgeois actually. And uh, Lucie Laurian. Got it? Uh, then we've got, uh, Public Art, two vacancies, and two applicants. Bailey/ Two good applicants! (several talking) Hayek/ Both of `em? Bailey/ Glad Jan is willing to continue to serve. Hayek/ Yeah, she (mumbled) (several talking) And then we get to the Youth Commission, um... Sam Fosse, uh... Bailey/ Doesn't Ross (mumbled) Wright/ That name just... Hayek/ Yeah, she doesn't come from a good family (laughter) but we might overlook that. Dickens/ You let my nephew on it (laughter) Hayek/ Let you on it! (laughter) So is there a consensus for (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Wright/ We have two terrific ones (mumbled) Hayek/ Except that we could do one at-large and one from (several talking) Bailey/ Yep! Mims/ So why don't we do Leah from West and Caroline for at-large. That work? Champion/ Sure! Wright/ Sure. Hayek/ Good! Everybody in agreement? Champion/ Yep. (Wilburn arrived) Wilburn/ Yes. Hayek/ Okay. Agenda items. Page 3 Karr/ Ross, did you have any recommendations, um, since the bylaws for the Youth Advisory Commission, before appointments are made has the City Council liaison recommending. (laughter and several talking) We just passed that item (several talking) Hayek/ Ross, we, uh (several talking) Wilburn/ Second, second! (laughter) Hayek/ Good! Wilburn/ I had a chance to speak to two of the three. One of them, Mr. Fosse (mumbled) but the other two, um...and I will catch up with them tomorrow, but uh, the other two, um, sounds like they have some interesting ideas in trying to...how to plug some of their peers in to, uh, input, um, one's with the newspaper staff; the other's with the student senate. Hayek/ We put one as the West High rep and the other's at-large. Wilburn/ Yep! Yeah, I discussed that with them too so they...they knew that...they were prepared for that! Hayek/ Sounds good! Uh, agenda items? Agenda Items: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 4 ITEM 4. CONSIDER ADOPTION OF THE CONSENT CALENDAR AS PRESENTED OR AMENDED. c) Public Hearing. 1. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION SETTING PUBLIC HEARING FOR JANUARY 10, 2011, ON A PROPOSAL TO CONVEY A SINGLE FAMILY HOME LOCATED AT 416 DOUGLASS COURT. Wright/ Um this is just a very minimal question, but on...in the Consent Calendar, 4.c.1. The sale of the house on Douglass Court. Uh...I just wondered what those carrying costs were. I actually called today (mumbled) Does anybody know? Dilkes/ Well the... Hayek/ This is the UniverCity program. Dilkes/ It would be the interest on our loan, um... Wright/ I meant the...the figure, I'm sorry. Dilkes/ Oh, the...you want the actual figure! Wright/ Yeah, I'm just curious. Dilkes/ I don't have that (both talking) we certainly could get it for you. Wright/ ...I just meant to call and get it today, and I forgot, so... ITEM 13. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO ACCEPT A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT FOR THE CONSTRU(:TION OF A LEVEE ON TAFT SPEEDWAY AND NO NAME ROAD AND TO SIGN THE GRANT AGREEMENT. Mims/ I don't know if other people have...I have a number of questions on number 13. The Taft Speedway levee. (several responding) All right, okay. Hayek/ Yeah, we're going to spend some time on that. Mims/ Other than that now I'm good then. ITEM 7. DETERMINING THE TOWNCREST URBAN RENEWAL AREA OF THE CITY TO HAVE CONDITIONS OF SLUM AND BLIGHT AND TO BE AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AREA, AND THAT THE REHABILITATION, CONSERVATION, REDEVELOPMENT, DEVELOPMENT, OR A COMBINATION THEREOF, OF SUCH AREA IS NECESSARY IN THE INTEREST OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH, SAFETY OR WELFARE OF THE RESIDENTS OF THE CITY; DESIGNATING This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 5 SUCH AREA AS APPROPRIATE FOR AN URBAN RENEWAL PROJECT; AND ADOPTING THE TOWNCREST URBAN RENEWAL PLAN THEREFORE. Bailey/ I have a question on 7, just because...you know, I know Economic Development Committee has done this, but I...I just want to know, once we get this area designated how quickly can we see businesses coming in, I mean, I think that there's a lot of excitement. We're...entering spring so people want to get things done. Davidson/ Um, well, this is certainly the next step, uh, this has been a little bit all over the place. You passed the resolution of necessity some time ago. We held off on the urban renewal plan then because Planning, and Zoning hadn't had it. It's now out of Planning and Zoning; they recommend approval. We're also going to have the design review overlay district on...because of a statutory requirement, we couldn't bring that to you now as well, but that's an important facet of this, uh, also that I wanted to make sure you were apprised of. There's kind of a carrot and stick thing at work here. Um, we decided to bring the urban renewal plan to you now and not wait for the urban renew, uh, excuse me, the design review overlay district, which will be on January 10, because we wanted to get the financial incentive programs, uh, rolled out, and these are the ones that at least the Economic Development Committee have been...I guess we talked about them a little when we did the economic development, um, review, and there's...there'sthree or four, four of them then, plus TIF' which of course is the big one that...that the urban renewal plan will allow as well, anti we've got `em...a little marketing thing to roll out and then have it on the web site and...and of course we've been talking with individual property owners about what's available as well, and so um...this all enables that to happen, um, the design review overlay zone then is basically to ensure that this design vision for it, and I think there might even be some...yeah, this is the, if you haven't had a chance go online and look at the design plan manual here. Uh, this is...and I'm...I'm really proud of this document because I think that without exception in the time that I've been here, uh, we haven't had a more organic or internally developed plan from a neighborhood, I mean, there has been a lot of participation, almost unanimous, uh, recognition that something needs to be done in Towncrest, uh, and that we need to adopt a new vision basically and then this is the vision that everybody agreed on. This is...this was not in any way a City implemented, top-down kind of plan, and I'm really proud of it for that reason. Um... and so that'll come to you on January 10, and basically be the stick part of the carrot and stick approach. If somebody wants to take advantage of our financial incentives, and we think some of them are really great programs, then they will be required to go through design review and make sure that their architectural statement is consistent, uh, with this plan, so...and then of course this is...this is kind of the years down the road when people...the economy recovers and we have the opportunity to build some larger buildings, uh, this is the more higher density type vision. In the meantime, though, the facade improvements, which are like what you see here. These are existing buildings in Towncrest that have had facade improvements done. That's the kind of thing we anticipate, uh, initially. In fact, we've got a couple projects already that have applied for CDBG funds. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 6 Bailey/ So we're rolling that marketing plan out after (noise on mic) design review overlay zone (both talking) Davidson/ Right, you'll have...you'll have (both talking) Bailey/ ...first of the year? Davidson/ No. We're rolling the...we're rolling the financial assistance programs out on Thursday, if you approve the urban renewal plan on Tuesday (both talking) Bailey/ That's kind of what I wanted to know (both talking) Davidson/ ...there'll be something in the Info Packet. Yeah, exactly! We want people to come in and start talking to us and developing projects and then by the time we have something actually designed and ready for, uh, review, uh, if there's a majority of you that, of course, want to implement the design review overlay, then we'll...we'll have that in place January 10. Bailey/ Good! That's...that's kind of...cause we've been (both talking) Davidson/ Any other questions about the urban renewal (both talking) Bailey/ ...well, I bet people are eager to see opportunity and what's out there...for them, and I'm hoping.. . Hayek/ What else? We do have the, um, on 17 and 18 the more complete agreements (mumbled) passed out this afternoon on the artwork. Bailey/ That's exciting too! To see that get going. Hayek/ Okay. Any other agenda items? Okay. Pick up the levees. CDBG Levee Grants (A~enda Items 11,12,13): ITEM 11. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO ACCEPT A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A LEVEE ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE IOWA RIVER BETWEEN MCCOLLISTER BOULEVARD AND THE CRANDIC RAILROAD AND TO SIGN THE GRANT AGREEMENT. ITEM 12. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO ACCEPT A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A LEVEE ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE IOWA RIVER BETWEEN THE CRANDIC RAILROAD AND HIGHWAY 6 AND TO SIGN THE GRANT AGREEMENT. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 7 ITEM 13. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO ACCEPT A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A LEVEE ON TAFT SPEEDWAY AND NO NAME ROAD AND TO SIGN THE GRANT AGREEMENT. Davidson/ Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Members of Council. Uh, for those in the audience, uh, I'm Jeff Davidson, the Director of Planning and Community Development for the City, and with me is Flood Recovery Specialist, uh, David Purdy, and uh, items...let's see, is it 13, 14, 15? Bailey/ 11, 12, 13. Davidson/ 12, 13, and 14, excuse me. On your agenda tomorrow evening are, uh, three levee projects that, uh, we have for your consideration and...and a determination of whether or not, uh, it is still our desire to go ahead with these. Um...what we want to do this evening, uh, there...there was, uh, some good correspondence in your, uh, actually has been for the last, uh, couple of meeting packets that you've had, about people on... on either side of, in particular the Taft Speedway, No Name levee, uh, No Name levee, uh, as well as the other two, and what we want to do is try and present some information this evening, uh, that will hopefully dispel some of the questions but certainly not all of the questions, uh, of...of that correspondence, and...and try and leave you with as clear a vision as possible of what the task is before you, uh, tomorrow evening. Um, we have, uh, just over $15 million that has been made available to us for three levees, the eastside levee, the Westside levee, and the Taft Speedway levee, and I apologize, I didn't have Bob load the, uh...uh, the diagrams that are included in your meeting packet, uh, your meeting packet, but in spite of the one being upside down, um, I think you can...you can get a pretty good idea from those exactly, uh, what is proposed in terms of where these levees will be located. Um...we are under no obligation to accept this money, uh, it is if it is still a will of a majority of the City Council as to whether or not you're still interested in these projects.. Uh, because they are three distinct projects, we have separated them into three distinct...distinct decisions for you. Uh, you can implement two of them but not a third one, or... or one but not the other two. Or none of them. Or all of them. Uh, and... and we will, uh, try and answer as... answer as many of your questions as we can about...about that funding and what we can and cannot do. Um...I think it's good for us just to take a quick look back, how...how did we get to this point. Um, you'll recall that our....after the flood of 08 in the summer of 08, uh, our initial efforts were almost 100% towards, uh, dealing with the flood, uh, and our Emergency Response people and our Public Works people were focused on that. Once we had that under control and the reservoir was no longer...the reservoir was once more under control by the dam, we then focused on recovery, and we had two sessions, uh, where Rick Fosse and I led you through a discussion of what the possibilities were, uh, that we could do. And I think very much to your credit, uh, you decided at that time to focus on buyouts of property that were in the flood plain, in harm's way, uh, to basically eliminate with 100% certainty, uh, the possibility that we would deal with flood emergencies in those areas again, and I think you get, uh, a lot of credit for that, because that...as you've heard us say, that...those are the only strategies that with 100% certainty eliminate This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 8 the...the flood hazard in the future. Uh, you also then focused on both some very large, larger than certainly we'd ever dealt with, uh, public infrastructure projects, and those are the focus of our attention right now, uh, north Dubuque Street and Park Road bridge, as well as the relocation of the north waste water treatment plant and about $100 million between those two projects., Uh, we're focused on those, and some smaller projects, some, um, pump and uh, things...things that deal with the floods, for example, in the Rocky Shore Drive area and...and some smaller scale type things. Um, we were then left with some areas, three specifically, uh, for which we really didn't have a good strategy at the time, and the people in these areas, and again, this was in the early fall, uh, late summer, uh, early fall of 2008, uh, they were very much concerned about what we were going to do for their, uh, for their areas. Uh, and this included certainly the Baculis and Thatcher Mobile Home Parks, the commercial court area, and the Idyllwild Condominium's area and...and people were quite outspoken at the time, and so we consulted with Stanley Consultants who were our engineering consultant, that were helping us develop strategies for these areas, and determine that in those areas some type of strategy of levees or flood walls were...basically the way to deal with it, uh, in those areas, and we expressed to you at that time, and you adopted as the City's policy, that we would attempt to find funds, uh, for those projects. Then...and you did establish that they were not the high priority projects for the City, that the buyouts were the higher priority and the public infrastructure projects were the higher priority, but after funds were available for those, if funds became available for the levees or flood walls that we would attempt to protect those, and at that time, the Parkview Terrace neighborhood was also included in that because we were just under the impression at that time that we were only going to get the FEMA, or HMGP buyout funds. We subsequently got a bit of a windfall in having CDBG funds made available to us for everything within the, what at that time was identified as the 500-year flood plain, and so our buyout strategy became substantially larger than it would have been under just the...the FEMA program, and...and basically for the entire Parkview Terrace neighborhood the strategy became buyouts and because of that, no longer consider flood walls or levees in the Parkview Terrace, uh, neighborhood. Um, our initial application for funds then, which again you approved, uh, us applying for those funds was turned down. Simply wasn't a high enough priority for the State. We had some smaller projects funded from that, but recently, uh, the State did open up, uh, another, uh, another allocation of funding, and we were granted the $15...what is it, $15.7 million for these three projects that are on your, um, agenda tomorrow, uh, tomorrow evening. Um, there are, before we just quickly walk through the projects, there are a number of very good points, very reasonable, very logical points, that have been raised in the correspondence you've received by members of the public, regarding any project that would attempt to construct a levee. Uh, and they are proj...they are questiolis that either have been answered in the case of the west side levee, or will be answered if you decide you... decide to go ahead with the eastside and the Taft/No Name levees, uh, when you design those projects and when you design any levee project. Uh, and they are very good points that need to be answered. For the Westside levee, because o:Fthe low-mod income level with the Baculis and Thatcher Mobile Home Parks, we v~~ere able to get Community Disaster Funds to basically design that project. Um, I...my understanding is that the final design has to be re...revised slightly, but we basically know what we're going to build, and we're pretty confident This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 9 about that cost estimate. We have not had the luxury of going through that exercise with the, um, eastside and Taft/No Name levees, and that is...certainly a source of frustration, because there are a number of questions that we wish we could answer for members of the public, but we have not been able to answer, but...we do feel that they are questions that can be answered, that the projects can be engineered to answer those questions, and basically allow a levee system in these areas to work, uh, as they're supposed to work and protect the property that is behind them. Um, certainly the, on the Taft/No Name levee, the issue of the homes that would be between the levee and the river, uh, is something we knew, that if we got to this point we would have to deal with. Um, Rick was able to give us a couple of pieces of information, and we can have him come up and elaborate on them if you'd like, that we did learn, uh, this afternoon. Well, maybe one that we also want to point out that David learned earlier in the week is that the State will require us to design the three projects to meet the 100-year flood, plus three feet. That is the minimum that we can design to. The cost estimates that you...you've seen that are on the three projects right now are for the 500-year flood, plus three feet. So...if a decision is made, and you will ultimately make that decision, and...and again, a question that's always asked whenever you design a levee is how tall are we going to make it? That is a question you have to answer every time you design a levee, and we will in this instance... instance as well. Um, I know some of you have wondered about the cost estimates. They've been inflated as we've tried to refine them, uh, in talking to our engineering consultants as we've found out more about what it might take, uh, to do them. They have inflated and expense some, uh, and...and well, let's...let's walk through them real quick and then we can...we can talk about them a little bit. Eastside levee, uh, will...will protect the Gilbert Street, uh, commercial area south of Highway 6, as well as south Gilbert Street, and that's a significant, uh, you know, public infrastructure, uh, deal for us in terms of south Gilbert Street. That's a...a major arterial in the City's arterial streets system, which we would prefer to keep open, uh, there are a lot of Public Works' functions further down, uh., that we want to make sure not cut off from the remainder of the city. Uh, the cost estimate for that, and remember, this is one of the ones that's very, very rough, $4 million, uh, with the CDBG funds paying $3 point, uh, $3.9 million, the... the funds from the State. iJh, again, this is designed to the 500-year plus three so if a decision was made to reduce that down to, but...but again, not to exceed 100-plus-three, uh, likely the...the expense would come down in that. Uh, Westside levee is to protect Baculis and Thatcher, as well as commercial court, approximately 190 homes, 450 people, a number of us have said that, uh, this would have been a major, major issue if the temporary levee had not held in 08. Fortunately it did, and we didn't have a disaster on the order of, magnitude of basically the city of Hills, the equivalent population of the city of Hills, being under water. So, uh, it's fortunate that we didn't have to deal with that, uh, the...the cost estimate, which we feel pretty good about, is $4.2 million with CDBG paying everything except $400,000. Um, and by the way, the...we...we did receive essentially, David, correct me if I'm wrong, the final money from the State. Uh, was the $15.7 and so the State's emphasized to us that anything exceeding that $15.7 will be our responsibility. Uh, and... and David, you've checked even as recently today, we don't believe there's any more money coming... Purdy/ No, there won't be any mare money (mumbled) in the State. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 10 Davidson/ Okay. Uh, the final one then is the Taft Speedway, uh, No Name Road levee. Um, and we've...we've uh, you know, given you some figures there, I mean, this will be a bigger deal to design, and to build, uh, than the other two levees. Uh, obviously it would have a road on top of it, uh, which means it would be wider at the top, uh, than the others. Uh, it has to obviously fit in a very confined space, uh, between the two housing developments. Uh, and it has to tie in with the Dubuque Street elevation project, and so all of that's going to require a lot of very careful engineering. It is as you can see as well, uh, a substantially more expensive project, uh, the $11.7 million though, again, to repeat is the 500-year plus, uh, three feet level, and you know, it's definitely worth pointing out that a design to the 100-year plus three feet level would not have kept the flood of 08 out of Idyllwild. Um, so clearly that's something that's going to require a lot of thought. It is an opportunity to reduce the cost estimate, and that's one of the pieces of information that Rick had, uh, from earlier today, that, uh, the...the estimate now, and it's a rough estimate, but if we were to design to the 100-year plus three feet level, was $8.9 million, is that right, Rick? $8.9 million so that would be a reduction from the $11.76 million to design to the 100-plus-three, uh, level. Um...let's see...um, also one of you had a question so I thought I'd provide the information to everybody, the nine homes that did not accept buyout offers on the riverside of Taft Speedway still have the ability to entertain buyouts. Uh, David, that program, the CDBG program, not the FEMA program any longer, but the CDBG program would be eligible until when? Purdy/ Uh, well, they haven't set any deadline, but probably within the next year or so. Davidson/ Okay, so approximately for the next year, uh, those nine individuals will have the opportunity to consider a buyout, if they wish. Of course the policy on that is that it is strictly a voluntary program and the City as part of your policy made a decision, uh, that we would not do condemnations as part of the buyout, even though it remains along- range strategy to eventually get all the homes in the, uh, 500-year flood plain. Um...the...we, we also have funds available to us from the project that's in your approved adopted CIP for FY11, uh, to elevate a portion of Foster Road that would keep the remainder of the Peninsula, remember the Peninsula had to be evacuated because the, all the access was under water. We had a project, $3 million funded totally locally with GO bonds that will become a redundant project, uh, if you do the Taft Speedway/No Name Road levee, uh, so that does provide $3 million of local funds that are...that's in your approved budget that you would have available, uh, to use for the local match on the, uh, Taft/No Name Road, uh, levee. Um, finally then the grant guidelines, we've indicated to you that you will be required to meet the, uh, goal of three, uh, three feet above the 100-year flood plain. Um...David, is there any other information in terms of design guidelines or requirements of the grant funds that we've received from the State? Purdy/ The, uh, the only thing that I received today was, there's been several questions from the public about whether we can use temporary or Hesco barriers, um...because it's CDBG money, they do require permanent...a permanent structure there. So, um...it's not like we could use the $8 million to build a set of Hesco barriers there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 11 Davidson/ And if you have more questions about the Hesco barriers, those should appropriately be directed to Rick and Ron, obviously the Public Works Department would be heavily involved in the implementation, uh, the set up and take down of those or, I presume would at least, and so...and so if you have questions either tonight or, uh, tomorrow night, we can get Rick and Ron to answer those in terms of the impact to the city of that. Uh, the one other thing that. we wanted to, um, before we conclude that we, uh, wanted to...we've had a lot of questions and...and again, these are part of very legitimate questions of well, what is going to be the impact on flood levels of building, in particular the Taft/No Name levee, but all the levees, and I think, you know, logically you have to expand that to all the flood mitigation strategies, all up and down the river that are being implemented by Iowa City, Coralville, and the University. It really does no good to look at them in isolation. It is the aggregate effect of everything, and Rick did have, and again, if you have more specific questions we'll get Rick up here, but Rick did find out from the team that is doing that modeling that their initial views show that because of the benefit of some of the strategies, in particular the buyout program which is creating new capacity within the flood hazard area, as...and in particular, getting the Park Road bridge up out of the river, that the aggregate effect in the Taft Speedway area is 3 to 4 inches lower, even building the levee. And again, that's the aggregate effect of everything, not the levee in isolation. And, we will continue to refine those numbers. The modelers are continuing to refine them a.nd put inputs in when, uh, and...and basically make that as accurate as possible, but that is at least with the initial runs of the modelers showing, uh, in terms of the aggregate effect of everything. So, again, that's just a piece of information. We're not using that to advocate one position or another, but that's a piece of information for you to have. So, to conclude then, what's before you tomorrow evening is a decision as to whether or not you want to accept the grant funds for the three levees. If you do, then we will notify the State, and they will prepare grant agreements, and in your resolutions basically authorize the City Manager to sign the grant agreements, and those would likely, uh, be available in what, three to four weeks? Purdy/ Yeah, probably. Davidson/ So, you know, the...I think the question before you, and we've talked about this a lot at staff, is do you intend to build these levees or not. Um, and with the information we've provided you, which is as good as we have right now, are you able to make that decision, and I guess certainly for the purposes of our discussion this...this evening, if you have any specific questions, let's try and answer them. Hayek/ Rick, do you want to weigh in... add some flavor to this good presentation? Fosse/ I believe what Jeff has shared with you is... is very accurate. Uh, and we spent a good deal of time visiting about that at...at, amongst staff. Um, I will share with you some preliminary information in the modeling downstream, the impacts of the eastside and the Westside levee. Uh, just upstream of the Westside levee, which is the southernmost one, uh, we're looking at an impact of about, uh, three-quarters of an inch during a 100-year event, and about two and three-quarters inches during a 500-year event. That's additional height in a flood profile, and then just upstream of the eastside levee, which'd be just This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 12 upstream of Highway 6, um, the effects are very similar there, uh, about three-quarters of an inch during the 100-year, and... and roughly two and three-quarters of an inch during the...the 500-year event. Mims/ So when you were talking...Jeff, when you were talking about 3 to 4 inches lower in the, um, in the Taft Speedway area, Rick, do you have an idea of what the effect would be in the Parkview area? Cause t:hat's certainly one of the issues that's come up in some of the letters, what...what's it going to do to Mosquito Flats, I mean, I realize we've got a lot of houses gone there, but... Fosse/ Uh-huh. The aggregate effect, uh, is about 3.6 inches during the 100-year event, lower; it's a positive effect, and about 6.1 inches during the 500-year. Again, these are preliminary numbers. Mims/ Yeah. Fosse/ But they're the best we have to work with right now. Mims/ And so those are both lower? Fosse/ That's correct. The Park Road bridge is...is really a big project for the corridor, and it is...it is the only flood mitigation project in the corridor that actually has a positive effect, and the buyouts, yes. (several talking and laughing) Hayek/ So 3.6 and 6.1 inch figures were without the levee? That's just the impact of... Fosse/ That's...that's with the levee. Hayek/ With the levee. Dickens/ But raising the bridge. Fosse/ And the bridge. Bailey/ It's the aggregate effect (several talking) So, another...go ahead if you have...I know you said you had a lot. Mims/ No, that's fine. Yeah, I'm just kind of...I just kind of went through all the letters and I'm like, okay, you know, I don't know the answers to these. They raise some legitimate questions.. . Bailey/ So you probably (both talking) Mims/ You know, one of them was, and this comes back to Taft because to me that's the biggest issue is that one. Um, when we talk about the 100-year plus three feet, or 500-plus-three feet, how much higher is ghat than the road now? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 13 Fosse/ The, uh, the 100-year plus three feet would be in the neighborhood of...of 4 to 6 feet higher than the road. At its highest point. Mims/ Okay. Fosse/ Uh, the 500-year plus three feet would be in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 feet higher than the existing road. Mims/ Do you know anything about the, uh, assertion by one letter writer that in doing this their, uh, flood insurance premiwns would go up significantly? Fosse/ I read that, and...and if I understood the letter correctly, they're making the assumption that the base flood elevation, that is the...the predicted 100-year flood level would go up, and if that goes up relative to their first floor elevation, then their insurance rates may go up. What we're finding from the modeling is that actually goes down, so, the opposite effect occurs here. Mims/ Okay. So they're basing that on an assumption that is not consistent with what the model is telling us. Fosse/ That's right. Mims/ Okay. Okay. Um...what about the comment that some of the flooding in and around the Idyllwild area really is ground water and the whole issue of drainage from the ponds out to the river and backflow, uh, valves or whatever on that? Can you address that as well? Fosse/ Sure. Uh, that's a part of a~ly levee design is...is looking at the permeability of the soils beneath the levee, and I...I believe that the soils out there are quite permeable, uh, just based on our experience in the area. Uh, both the estimates for the levees include a...a cut-off wall that extends about 10 to 15 feet into the ground. It's a...it's a trench that helps cut that off and prevent that water from going through the soils and then coming up on the backside. Mims/ And then would a backflow valve be put on...whatever drainage system there is from the ponds out to the river? Fosse/ Yes. Yes. And... and most likely the 80-some acres upstream from Idyllwild that drains through the pond, uh, would be re-routed along No Name Road, directly out to the river, as part of the design of this so that you're...you're not worried about accommodating those flows through the subdivision during a flood event, because once that backflow prevention valve is...is shut, you need to pump all the local rain out of there, and that is one of the downsides of levees, and... and a lot of things that you read about in these letters, they are all accurate in the sense that levees do have their downsides. You know, some day they'll all be overtopped, you know, how soon depends on how high you build it, um, you have interior drainage that you need to attend to, um...they have maintenance This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 14 expenses, and that's why that...the levees were not included in our first line of...of flood mitigation, which was the buyouts. Mims/ I understand that, you know, not much design really has been done on this one, you know, for Taft, but looking at that, you know, and from your engineering background, what...one of the concerns that some people have expressed, and I've heard this from other areas too, typically you don't design a levee that you can drive on top o£ And what additional problems does that raise for us, not only in the initial cost, but also potentially in terms of maintenance down the road? Fosse/ Well, I don't see that as an obstacle to maintenance. One of the things that you worry about with levees is trees growing up in `em and...and critters burrowing holes in them, uh, when it's a roadway, you don't have that opportunity for those things to go on there. I think one of the design challenges, uh, for us will be accommodating the driveways down off of that. Wright/ (mumbled) asking about the driveways. It's such a narrow space. Fosse/ It is. It is. And, uh, the footprint of the levee, uh, would be roughly at its broadest point, which is its highest point, about 125 to 130 feet, ballpark. Mims/ Wide, is that what you said? Fosse/ Yes. Yes. That's if...if conventional construction techniques are used. Mims/ If we decided not to do a levee...what do you see as, and I don't know if staff has looked at this in much detail, what: do you see as the viability of something like Hesco barriers? Fosse/ One of the things that we've been doing with the...the Idyllwild neighborhood is working with them, in fact we...we gave them a grant, uh, to work with an insuring firm to help develop their own flood emergency response plan. So in the next big one, what are they going to do and what steps are they going to take, uh, and they looked at...at the various options for sandbagging around their entire subdivision, or taking it on, per building or clustering the buildings. And what they found is, they're able to reasonably sandbag for some of the smaller events, but once they get larger, it just...the logistics of it all, is beyond what...what anybc-dy can do, and that's really what we experienced in 2008. It reaches a point at which you just can't get enough workers in there doing those things. Uh, the other thing is...is the interior drainage issue that...that we talked about earlier, uh, without that cutoff wall, if you're successful with sandbags or Hesco barriers, you need to be prepared to pump that ground water that comes up through the soils. And how much will come through there, I don't know yet. Mims/ How...I mean, I can understand where volunteers become, you know, a real issue in terms of, you've got a pretty big area there to try to sandbag, but when you're talking about Hesco barriers, you're really talking more about truckloads, I mean, yeah, you've got to have people to set t11em up, but my understanding is then you're talking about This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 15 truckloads of sand, rock, whatever, coming in and filling those things, which...is going to be a little bit different, and I don't know how much...if there's any numbers out there that give any kind of cost for communities who tend to use those in terms of putting up, you know, 500 feet, 5,000 feet of `em, you know, whatever. Fosse/ Yes. There are some estimates out there. Those estimates vary depending on, um, the...the preexisting conditions. For instance, University is...is working on a system where the...their sidewalks along the river are designed to go up with Hesco barriers. Um, without such a system around the units, uh, that...that might be difficult to install those, and...and certainly the cost of deployment goes up because of all the heavy equipment in there and...and uh, it's...it's really going to do a number on...on all the yards and everything. So, whether the flood gets that high or not, you...you've still got a significant recovery expense, just for taking things back apart again. Wright/ Roughly how long would it take to put up Hesco barriers, uh, in the, uh... stretch along Taft and No Name? Take a wild guess! Fosse/ (laughter) That's a dangerous guess to take! And part of the answer to that is...is how prepared are you? Are you staged with the Hesco's out there, in the building, waiting for deployment, or are they, urn, someplace else. The Hesco Companies, they'll keep them in a warehouse for you, in another town, and... and drive them in, for a price. You pay an amount every year to have those available to you, um, so there's all sorts of options there. Champion/ I have a hard time envisioning this barrier. I...I'm...I don't have any problems with the east and the Westside. The one on Taft Speedway...what is...it's just going to be a big wall, a big monolith, whatever it's called, when you're driving down Dubuque Street? I mean, I just can't envision this! It's... Davidson/ Have you ever been to Guttenberg, or to Galena? I mean, they have levees in these communities and for example, you know, I go up to Guttenberg all the time and, um, there's...there's alevee on., it's like amile-long linear park that's a...that's a levee, and when you're on the street, that...that used to be right on the river, um, when you're in the first floor, you know, you can't really see the river... from a first floor, but from a second floor, uh, of those dwellings you can...you can see the river. Um, and it's, you know, it's incorporated into a park and it looks...it looks very natural. The one in Galena is to me a lot less natural. It looks like a big, giant green mound and it's got flood...flood gates on either end of it, but you know, again, Connie, we...we really can't conceptualize what this is going to be. You know, Rick told you the difference in the heights between 100- plus-three and five hundred-plus-three, I mean, that's a big visual difference between 4 and 5 feet, and 8 and 10 feet. Champion/ Yeah, I just can't imagine it! I can't picture it. Hayek/ You said 130 feet wide. Isn't a basic road about, I don't know, 50 or 60 feet wide? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 16 Fosse/ At the right-of--way out there now is 60-feet wide, so you would have the road section, and then sidewalks on one or both sides, uh, the road may not have curb and gutter because there's very little drainage to be accommodated by it, so it might be a rural section, uh, in that there's no curb and gutter. There'd be no ditches up there. And then from the back of the sidewalks it would begin to slope down, probably at about a 4 to 1 slope, and that's a slope that we use in...in subdivision designs, and that's the thing, it's a mobile slope. Hayek/ So the 130 is from beginning of the slope on either side? And everything in between. Fosse/ Yep. Hayek/ Okay. What, um, with respect to the east and west, on the south end, and in particular the...I guess east, um, do we have...you've got some preliminary information in terms of anticipated upstream impact. And I think you quoted three-quarters of an inch to two and three-quarters of an inch. Do we know, um...how close some of those, uh, businesses got to flooding, uh, in 08, and whether...what impact if any we think this would have in those areas? Fosse/ Well, I think that the businesses upstream from Highway 6 sandbag-ged... sandbagged, excuse me (laughter) but they were...they were designed and built to our...our flood plain management ordinance, which was a foot above the 100-year. So the...the event that we experienced in 08 ~NOUId have been above that. Hayek/ But like in the, you know, the area I think like, I think that's R.R. Donnelly, for example, at the bottom of the eastside levee photograph, um, which is a substantial facility, and I believe they escaped any problems in 2008 because they happened to have been, uh, constructed on higher ground. But I don't know how close it got. Davidson/ Yeah, we asked them that specific question when we were out there, Matt, and I think...I thought they said that their parking lot, they had a parking lot get wet. Did you say, Rick, you knew that they had a building wet at R.R. Donnelly? Okay, yeah, I think they told us they just had their, part of their parking lot get wet, but even in the 08 flood that they didn't have a building. Dickens/ And how close did it get, I know on Gilbert Street there, cause they...I'd heard from some of the businesses cause I went down and sandbagged, like Brian (mumbled) and Good Fellow, and those, cause they were saying if it got over Gilbert Street, that it's lower on the other side of Gilbert Street, and it got to about the middle of the street and, how much higher it would have had to go to, you know, impact that area. Fosse/ I don't know off the top of my head. Just (both talking) Dickens/ ...rumor or not. I know all those areas down there started sandbagging. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 17 Fosse/ Uh-huh. One...one thing to keep in mind to help frame your decision is that under our current, uh, flood plain development ordinance that we have in place, uh, we have defined floodways. Are you familiar with the concept, where you can get flood plain development permits to develop outside of the floodway, and in theory, if you develop all of our floodplain, outside of the floodway, the water surface elevation for the 100-year event will go up one foot. That's the basis of how those floodways are defined, and that's the same technique that's used throughout the country for the various flood plain management ordinances. So in theory, over time, as the flood plain develops, you can expect that water surface pl•ofile to creep up to one foot above what it was when the original maps were made. Hayek/ If you covered every square inch outside of the floodway, the impact is a foot. Fosse/ Yes. That's how the whole (mumbled) Davidson/ When I was talking about the...the great benefit of the buyout program, I probably should have added that as ~~vell as reducing the flood risk hazard down to zero, it's creating capacity then in the flood plain to allow waters to inundate, uh, and...and that's one of the benefits in that it reduces the water profile overall. Mims/ If (both talking) Davidson/ Any other.. ,excuse me, Susan. Mims/ If we accept the money, we're committed, in some way (several talking) Davidson/ Yeah, you know we've tried to get... as good an answer as we can from the State as exactly what you're committing to, and I think you know we...we certainly want to leave you with the impression that you know if you really don't think you want to build one of these levees, don't accept the money! Um, because you know we...we, and David, if I'm paraphrasing this incorrectly, please interrupt me, but you...we asked them what if we get into we accept the money; we get into preliminary design and then when we see actually what the impacts are going to be, we decide we don't want to do it. Mims/ Right. Davidson/ And I guess their answer was along the lines of, if you run into something that really changes the direction that your application said you wanted to go. If you uncover something that, oh my God, we had no idea of this, then there is a chance, but certainly no certainty, that we would be able to keep the funds that we' d expended up to that point and then turn the rest of the money back. Otherwise, if they make a determination that hey, you said you wanted to do this, and now you're saying you don't, we will...we would be responsible for the grant funds that we had...we would have to reimburse the grant funds that we'd spent in design up to that point. So we certainly don't want to leave with...leave you with the impression that we can go through the design phase and then decide not to do it. Unfortunately we need to decide that tomorrow. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Dickens/ But we can build two out the three (several talking) Davidson/ Yes. Dickens/ And...return the money that we don't use (several talking) Davidson/ Yes, you're able to do that. Page 18 Dilkes/ I've looked at the boilerplate agreement that you're likely to sign, and it, um, specifies that if you default, i.e., if you don't build the project you say you're going to build, um, then...you...you have to return the money. Bailey/ But it's just a return of the money, there's no additional penalty, right? Dilkes/ They, well they maintain all their legal (mumbled) they keep all their legal options which would include specific performance requiring you to build the project, but I...I think that's unlikely they would do that. Mims/ Um...hate to belabor this, but more...some of the other points (mumbled). What about, uh, people on the river side of the Taft levee talking about their, um, tapped in I believe to water and sewer connection being on the other side of the levee. How would that impact them? I realize we've offered them the buyout; they've chosen not to take it. So there's some risk on their part, but...what kinds of impacts might they expect with that? Fosse/ Those are details just like the cutoff wall and the driveways that would need to be worked out during design. Mims/ Okay. Fosse/ ...just can't cut those utilities off. Mims/ Yeah. What other...I just didn't know if there was anything from your perspective on, you know, additional expenses that they might incur down the road, I mean...if there's a water main break underneath this levee... Fosse/ Yeah, uh, many of the water services today are bored, underneath roads. You can conceivably bore underneath the levee, but...I don't know the complete answer to that question, without doing the design. Dilkes/ In Iowa, uh, cities are strictly liable for water main breaks. So they would not bear the expense...of that (both talking) Mims/ But if...if the City water main is on the Idyllwild side of the levee, and they're connecting there, is the City responsible both from the city main to the...to the house? I mean...(several talking) service lines. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 19 Champion/ You're responsible for those. Mims/ Yeah, that's what I thought, and that's, yeah, going underneath the levee. Davidson/ Any other questions for Rick, David, or myself? Bailey/ Well, I...I have some funding questions, I guess, I mean, because...you know the eastside and the Westside levee...levee estimates are closer. There's less of a gap, but when we get to this Taft Speedway...and you know, I am generally supportive of this. This is a direction that we've been going for a couple of years, and um, this was...this was something that we indicated was likely, um, to people in this area, both on the river side and Idyllwild, because we couldn't buyout Idyllwild, but if we look at this Taft Speedway, I mean, the cost estimate is $11.6, and I know that we have this availability of $3.7, um, but...but it's going to be somewhere in between, potentially, because we may not build to the 500-year. So...we can get a 100-year, uh...plus three feet levee for around $8.9, I mean, I guess I'm going shopping here. What can we buy for $10? (laughter) I mean, what...what would that, I `m just curious about this whole thing and...and when will we discuss what kind of, I mean, when you get some preliminary design we'll have some better figures and then we'll choose, at what level we're building? Fosse/ I think the answer to that is mostly yes. In that...the question in front of you tomorrow night is...is do you want to accept the grant... Bailey/ Yeah, I get that. Fosse/ ...not necessarily what level do you want to built to. Bailey/ But, in accepting the grant, we are potentially looking at local obligation for a gap, and I want to understand, I mean....the range of that obligation looks to be $3.75 million. Generally comfortable with this because we don't have to elevate Foster Road, but I'm just kind of trying to find out what we might discover down the road, so to speak. Fosse/ And...and those types of things will emerge during design. Bailey/ Okay. And so when would we be looking, I mean, design would commence immediately after the grant and so next...you know...within the next six months we would have an idea of... Fosse/ That might be a little bit soon because of the federal money, will need to go through a procurement process for the...for the designer, so that would take a couple months right there before we get started. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 20 Bailey/ So, you're also saying that we should feel comfortable with this, filling this gap if we accept this money, because potentially we're looking at buying something for $11.7 million? Fosse/ Comfortable, I...I don't know about that. That'll all come out in...in January when you're looking at the capital programs. Bailey/ Right...well...well, Ijust want to, I mean, these decisions aren't made in isolation. I just want to know what other decisions are impacting, but...from what you said tonight, we could also spend $10 and get a perfectly serv...serviceable levee. I know that you won't say yes, because you're an engineer and you won't (laughter) but it sounds like that's the case. Fosse/ Right. Bailey/ Potentially! Fosse/ Our best estimate now fora 100-year plus three, which is the minimum required, roughly $8.9. Bailey/ Okay. That's...I just wanted to...because if we go down this road, we start down...we start on a journey. It's not just one decision, and I think we all know that, but I just want to...to confirm that. Fosse/ Yes. Bailey/ For myself. Okay. Thanks. Hayek/ What, uh, how high do we intend to build Dubuque? Fosse/ Dubuque will be, uh, probably about a foot above what we experienced in 2008, uh, again, those details will errlerge (several talking) that is, um... Bailey/ 250-year plus! Fosse/ Yeah! (laughter) No, the...what we experienced in 28, or 2008 was pretty close to the 500-year event, so we'll be about a foot or two above the 500-year event, with Dubuque Street. Hayek/ How many feet up? Fosse/ Oh, how many feet? Bailey/ Yeah, from where it's now? Fosse/ Uh, at its lowest point probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 14. Is that...that close, Ron? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Knoche/ (unable to hear) Fosse/ Roughly 12 feet. Bailey/ And so (both talking) Hayek/ That's 500-plus one or two? Page 21 Fosse/ Yes. (both talking)...which puts it...real close to where Taft Speedway would be if you do the 500 (several talking) Hayek/ Okay. Fosse/ Yeah, it'd likely all be very close to the same. Champion/ How many feet will the bridge be built up? Fosse/ what we want is for the...the bottom of the beams on the bridge to be one or two feet above what we experienced in...in 2008. Because once those beams make contact, that's when we start to have that significant backwater. So by moving the bridge south, we're going uphill a little bit. That's going to help, but then we also need to build a...a higher bridge, probably a thinner deck, if possible, and then a longer span. The other thing to keep in mind about Dubuque Street is there's no part of Dubuque Street that will act as a levee. The intent of that is...is it simply protects the...you're getting the roadway up above what we experienced in 2008. So that...that freeboard level may not be as much as you would put in a levee when you're protecting residential property. Does that make sense? Freeboard is that...that additional three feet...that you're talking about. Wright/ It's going to look very different! Champion/ So how...I know you can't answer this. It's not designed but (laughter) how do people get to their houses along Dubuque Street? When this is...way up here in the air. Fosse/ That's one of the things that will need to be worked out in design. Is there room to run the driveway straight down from there? Do we run a parallel drive partially down the front side of the levee? I mean, there's options there. We just don't know which one is the best, yet. Champion/ Cause there are a lot of driveways! Fosse/ Yes. (several talking) Ron, did you want to come up and comment on anything? Knoche/ (unable to hear away from mic) Bailey/ You're going to have to... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 22 Fosse/ Oh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Connie. Champion/ Yeah, Dubuque Street. Fosse/ Dubuque Street. In most cases, those driveways are on the...the uphill side. So we'll be...we'll be elevating up into those. So it'll be a different issue than we face on Taft Speedway. I'm sorry. I was thinking a (both talking) Champion/ Yeah, but I can...I can see that. Those ones that are...don't have anything and the driveways just go straight up, and so you can connect into those, but what about those houses that are kind of down on Dubuque Street? Fosse/ Oh, are you talking about the...the one with the stone garage? Yeah, that's...that's one that we really need to get figured out there. Is there an option for that, and we don't know the answer yet. Champion/ And so they're going to go out their back (mumbled) their front door because I don't know if there's a back or front to that house, but are they going to walk out of their house and look at this ten-foot wall of dirt? Fosse/ We've already been talking with the property owner on that one, and that's one of the things our consultant will be focusing on, but that is...that's a design challenge on this project. Champion/ I mean, I know we have to raise Dubuque Street. That was closed for a long time. Hayek/ The same, uh, question as it relates to Taft, and the...the driveway spans from where a levee would be placed to where garages are located for those houses, I mean, how much depth is there to those driveways? What impact does this have on an individual driveway along Taft? Fosse/ It'll vary from driveway to driveway, and...and that's something that we haven't quantified yet. We don't know the specifics. Hayek/ What other questions or requests for information can we generate? Champion/ One of my concerns... Davidson/ Is there, excuse me, Connie. Is there anything that you want us to bring tomorrow night that we haven't presented today, or included in your memo? Champion/ A decision for my brain! (laughter) Davidson/ We'll get right to work on that! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 23 Champion/ Um...yeah, completed design (several talking and laughing). One of the things I'm worried about, and I know this is minor when you're comparing it to people's houses, uh, but I am really concerned about...coming into the city and what that's going to look like. And I know because it's not designed you can't answer the question. Um... Bailey/ But we do have respect for our entranceways and I assume that that would be maintained. Fosse/ Yes. That is...has been a big area of emphasis with our, even with our consultant selection for the Dubuque Street project. Is the preservation of that corridor and the experience that you have when you come into Iowa City there. Bailey/ (mumbled) Champion/ Yes, well, that will be changed. Hayek/ As we...do you have more? Mims/ Well, I...do you...kind of asked this already with the Hesco, but do you see any... reasonable temporary alternative? Instead of building a permanent levee along Taft? Fosse/ If you go back to the...the report that Stanley did in the winter of 08, 09, uh, they looked at a variety of alternatives for that...that area along there, and one of them that they looked at was...was a demountable wall, one that you take down and is not there when you're...when you're not using it. Uh, the cost was pretty close to an earthen structure. Um, but certainly what we experience as a city is each time that is deployed, we have an expense to deploy it and then take it back apart, and each year you basically need to practice that, uh, replace parts that are warped or old and...and it's...it's something that's got to last a long time. So it's...it's an option that we had not, uh, considered. Hayek/ Is that what's being done behind the Marriott? For example, just (mumbled) Fosse/For certain stretches of...yeah. Hayek/ But not...anywhere near the length of this? Fosse/ Right. Hayek/ (mumbled) Fosse/ The University is also looking at it. They called it an `invisible wall' because you don't see it when it's...when it's not in place, but it's...it is (laughter) around the, uh, the Art Building West, West Art Building. Wright/ The thing that'll be...up on the sidewalk right away and around the building? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Fosse/ Yes. It's real close to the building there. Page 24 Bailey/ Well, and I do think you bring up a good point, Susan, about...what we consider in flood response, and then what we commit to for city resources down, for flood response, and...and levees and permanent structures, buyouts and those kinds of things, reduces our, not only our expense, but the expectation, because as you know, during those events, there's just a lot going on. And, to add to that list...I think creates challenges. Wright/ And I would expect that even if we were able to purchase some kind of invisible wall (laughter and several talking) um, that it would still be putting the houses on Taft on the wet side of that wall. Fosse/ Yes. Wright/ So... Bailey/ It doesn't address some concerns, although I will say that...this is not a direction that should come as a surprise to anybody. Unfortunately. Fosse/ Keep in mind that if for any of those temporary measures, we still need to do the sub- surface cutoff that we talked about earlier. So that would need to align with whatever system we plan to put over the top of it. It can't be staggered. Hayek/ And the...the amount of a wall still results in a...a post or a pillar every ten...five or ten feet, doesn't it? Fosse/ There's a couple versions. One is you leave those pillars in place. That's perhaps the most reliable. The other is that those...you pop those pillars out and you store those with the wall, but then you've got to make sure you can get `em in those holes. Which...to me, I...I worry about that a little bit, because when I go out and watch the people try and reinstall their sidewalk cafe fences every year (laughter) can't do it! Mims/ When you talked about the Hesco, you talked about, you know, all the heavy equipment and basically tearing up lawns and, you know, that sort of thing, bring... is there any feasible...way of using Taft and No Name as the base for the Hesco's? Fosse/ You could, but again, you'd need to put in that sub-surface cutoff. Mims/ Right. Fosse/ There'd be significant expense there, and then, um...you probably want to...to grade it all to a uniform elevation. It gives you a pretty good head start. Mims/ Sure. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 25 Fosse/ So that you can go up from there, similar to what the University has done with the sidewalk system. And, I...I, I'm trying to recall if that was one of the options that they investigated, that Stanley investigated. Mims/ Uh-huh. Fosse/ I don't recall off the top of my head. Champion/ So we're going...if we build this levee, this Taft Speedway/No Name levee, we...we'll probably create more damage to the houses that are on the waterway, is that correct? Because they... Wright/ In what sense, Connie? Champion/ ...well, if the water can't go anywhere, it's going to go up! Wright/ Well, anything we put in there is going to...have those houses wet. Fosse/ Yeah, that's...that's where we're talking about the model earlier, and the combined effect of the larger Park Road bridge, with this levee, will have a net effect of...of lowering... Champion/ Three inches or (mumbled) Fosse/ Yep. Champion/ And we're going to spend a lot of money to protect Idyllwild, I mean, which is a lot of people live there - I understand that -but cause we could not buy them out, because they're condominiums, cause the government hasn't caught up with condominiums. Davidson/ Yeah, I mean, there was...there were some possible, well, sort of ridiculous scenarios, if...if all the property owners had agreed that was not going to happen, um...you know, you don't know. It's a unique situation with a condominium, um, association. Um, and we did, you know, we did point out the tax base there so it would be, you know, prohibitive using local city funds that didn't have the federal stipulations attached to them, you know, it would be cost prohibitive to doing that with local funds. Champion/ Right. Davidson/ Yeah, and David's point about that if...if you were to decide not to do the Taft Speedway/No Name levee, we would then continue to have the Foster Road elevation project in...I think it's in 2013, I think. Um...so (both talking) it's in the FY11 budget, but it's not in FY11. I think it's in 2013. We wanted to keep that project in cause otherwise you know there continues to be housing built, uh, quite a bit more than was there in 08, so we probably need to think about doing something there. Hayek/ And that's $3.7 I think, isn't it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 26 Davidson/ No, it's $3. Champion/ Three. Davidson/ It's $3 in the CIP right now. The $3.7 was the local match for the 500-plus-three. Champion/ And, can somebody just remind me how much higher does that road need to go up? It wasn't really totally flooded. It was just...too much water to drive through. Fosse/ Foster Road, roughly six feet. Ron, is that pretty close? Bailey/ Because that's grown, because...hasn't it, that estimate I mean? Fosse/ Yeah. Bailey/ Because...it...it seemed like it was under a million at one point, to just elevate a portion, and then... so we're making it higher or you discovered something? Fosse/ I don't...I don't know the basis of the one million dollar one, but what we...what we do have in that corridor is our primary raw and finished water lines for the city, and if we elevate the road we want to elevate those utilities with them, because we don't want to bury them so deep that if there's a problem we can't get at `em. And, also what we're looking at is alternatives to elevating Foster Road, perhaps a...a route, a northerly route might be a more appropriate solution there. That's...that's one of the things that will be explored if we go...if we go with that...that technique. Bailey/ I think at one time we had just talked about a smaller portion, that little dip portion, elevating that. I think that's how the (mumbled) Fosse/ Okay. Champion/ One more question about that. How will we provide access while we're doing that? Fosse/ That's the challenge on any project we do, any paving project. It's...it's something that we need to work out in the design, and then work with the contractor to...to do that. Davidson/ And of course when there's no flood event, Taft Speedway provides the alternate access to the Peninsula. Hayek/ Can you, um...I don't know if this is more you guys or...or Eleanor, but...tell us what we are deciding tomorrow night and what we are not necessarily deciding tomorrow night, as to these agenda items. For example, we've talked about a number of ways to approach the Taft issue. iJm... and we've talked about the limitations of the information that we have now. Um, and certain ideas have been thrown out, you know, do you build them up a certain way, and then do something temporary to get through the rest of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 27 way. What is on...what is in the bucket of things we have to decide tomorrow night, versus would come with more information as the design unfolds? Dilkes/ Well, the way I would answer that is to say that you're deciding to take the money and sign the grant agreement, which will obligate you to design and do a project that provides a minimum of 100-year plus three feet. Davidson/ And that it be a permanent structure. Hayek/ Okay. Dilkes/ And...if you chose at some point not to complete whatever it is you decide to design that meets that criteria, then it is likely you would have to give back the money that you have received. Hayek/ Okay. Well, I think that's important for us to note. Tomorrow night we're deciding whether as to each of the two projects we are committed to building a permanent structure at 100-plus-three :feet. Davidson/ Right. And (several talking) and you know the State's expectation is that it is going to be an earthen levee. If you have any ideas that you feel would qualify for permanent structures, and we know Hesco barriers do not...please let us know and we will try and check them out with the State...to determine if they would be grant-eligible or not. If you have any other ideas. Hayek/ Okay. Any other questions? All right, thanks for walking us through this. (several talking) We do appreciate it. Why don't we take afive-minute break and then...the rest of the issues. (BREAK) Brick Street Repair /Funding Strategy (IP2 of 12/2/10): Hayek/ Next item is brick streets, uh, repair funding strategy. Fosse/ Thank you! See how my voice does. It's a lot of talking in one night! What...what we've got here are... are two agenda items that have spent perhaps a record amount of time on the pending list, and...and (laughter) kind of like Bret Favre's starting streak (laughter) we're ending our streak tonight. Part of the reason they've been on the unfunded list is so much of our focus has been on...on flood recovery and flood mitigation, that it's hard to...hard to get back and look at this, but we thought...we need to have this conversation before we address the budget this year, so that's why they're on this evening. Uh, we'll talk about both brick streets and alleys tonight. They're very similar in a lot of ways in that they...they are kind of low on the priorities for competing for funds, especially alleys, and we'll talk specifically about that policy, um...and...they, they're very similar in a lot of ways. So what I've tried to do is...is lay out the memos and our conversations tonight to be as parallel as possible, and then we'll talk about them in that context, and we'll lead off with brick streets and just start out, uh, with our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 28 inventory of brick streets. ~JVe have about 26 blocks of streets out there, uh, most of them are with the old vitrified clay bricks. Uh, we do have a few, uh, blocks on Iowa Avenue, and then, uh, an intersection that has the...the new concrete pavers in there, and I'll show you some pictures of that a little bit later, but mostly we're talking about very old streets, um, and I'll mention that most of the original part of the town of Iowa City...the streets were not paved at all originally, and uh, the first streets that were paved were Linn Street and Brown Street, to provide a route for the downtown churches out to the cemetery. Uh, so that was a good thing, because cem...or funerals were a rain or shine type event and... and you really needed some pavement for that. Um...what we've done is we've just somewhat unscientifically classified our...our streets into very good, good, average, or in very poor condition, and if you're into bell curves, this is a pretty good bell curve. Prior to a few years ago, it was not in that, you know, we've completely rebuilt a couple of blocks of brick streets, so that's taken two off the very poor and moved them to the very good end of the spectrum. That's a good thing. And...and I want to tell you that it's...it's really hard to do the condition of brick streets justice with pictures. You really need to go out and drive (several talking) feel just what they're like. Um, this is...this is Church Street. This is one of the streets that we've reconstructed. You see it carries a lot of bus traffic and that's part of why it was in a position where it needed to be reconstructed. Um, and this is...oh, I'm thinking this is (several talking) Linn Street! Yeah. One of the examples in there. Uh, Brown, uh this one actually falls in our average to good area. And here you can see some of the... some of the undulations that you' 11 see, uh, this is a bump in the middle. Here's one of the things you really watch for is when the bricks start to come out, you know, you've all held like a...fi:eld corn and it's hard to get the kernels out till you get the first few out and then they really start popping! Same thing's true with our brick streets so we need to be careful in that regard. Um, and then Dewey Street is a good ex~unple of one that's in very poor condition, and that's one we...we really hate to go out and put any asphalt over existing brick like this, but this was a case where it was just impossible to plow and pretty difficult to drive and we didn't have the money to rebuild it at that time. This is Harrison Street over by the Post Office. That's one that's...that's starting to get in very bad condition there. Um...but a little bit about our policies. Back in the 1980s, we made a decision as a city that we're not going to overlay any more brick streets without specific City Council approval. And since that time we've only overlaid two blocks and that's the Clinton Street hill where it goes from the railroad tracks down to Benton Street, and that one just came apart on us during 1993. We had 63 inches of rain and that's a bus route and...and trucks going down to City Carton, and that just disintegrated so we ended up overlaying that, uh, other than though, everything else has stayed put out there. Um...so we don't put down any asphalt on bricks without being back to the City Council, uh, the other policy that we implemented in the 1990s is if you're in there doing a utility cutting, utility repair, you've got to put bricks back there. You're not going to put in a concrete patch or an asphalt patch. Because that's...that's just as bad as overlaying it. It really messes up the brick streets, uh, for us. So we also maintain in our budget about $20,000 per year to deal with spot repairs, and these are...are~ we just go out and...and deal with some of the worst things, and the...one of the things that we, well, here's an example of...of doing spot repairs out there. One of the things that we find is that these bricks are really a finite resource, and not all the bricks in Iowa City streets are the same. There's a variety of different... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 29 different sizes out there, so we can't just...it's not aone-size-fits-all solution. So we've started stockpiling bricks and uh, we've even gone so far, um...let me move ahead here. That where...when we do construction projects, in some cases where we know there's likely to be brick underneath that asphalt, we'll mine that brick and salvage it, and then it ends up down at...at the Public Works' yard, and I wanted to point out, this...this is one of Gilpin's garages here that we...we acquired from along Taft Speedway and we're using that down in our Streets Department now for storage. Now these bricks, you know, they look clean. It's just a searchable thing to get `em out and put `em here, but it's really an ugly process getting to this point, because they virtually have to be hand-sorted out of the pavement that gets...that comes out of here, and then they go in a big pile down in the Streets Department, and they've got asphalt and tar and all sorts of things stuck to `em, and then we use community service folks, we use volunteers where brick by brick you take a hammer acid you get the junk off `em and you palletize it. So it's...it's very labor intensive to get to this point, but we understand that this...this is a resource that...that's finite, so we've got to...got to save the ones we can. Um...I wanted to point out, this is Bowery Street before we rebuilt it, and...and this is an area where we had done a couple spot repairs, and you can see `em... see that dark spot there, and this dark spot here, and what our experience has been is...is once a street reaches the point where you start doing those spot repairs, you're just chasing it around, and pretty soon you've done the entire street, but you've done it on a small incremental basis that you really pay a lot...a high unit cost for. Um, so the...the most economical solution has been to remove and replace a block at a time, and what we do is...is we built basically just a regular concrete street that carries all the structural strength. We put on an asphalt setting bed, and then the bricks go down on top of that. And you'll find that when we do that, it rides pretty rough. I mean, the bricks aren't really smooth. You know they don't undulate, but they're not all the same height and...and part of that is is that as those bricks have been in there close to 100 years and they wear, so they're not all the same thickness and then they go in a big pile and you pull them out of the pile and you just put `em in here. So that's if...:if you drive Church Street, you'll see a lot of those variations in brick heights, so that's just one of the things that comes with it. That adds a little bit of noise, but it...it also adds...it's nice character for the streets, as well. Wilburn/ Traffic calming. Bailey/ Traffic calming. Fosse/ Traffic calming, there you go! Um, I put some comparative prices in there, and based on our experience with the two blocks we've done. When you look at total project costs, that's design, inspection, and...and your construction costs, roughly $290,000 for a block. That's 31-feet wide. Uh, compare that to...to concrete street alone at $204,000. You're paying, you know, roughly $85,000, $86,000 to get that brick veneer on top. Uh, but I think you have a pretty durable product, uh, once you're at that point. Uh, and also that's compared to $58,00() to put down, uh, simply an asphalt overlay on top of the brick. Now what this comparison does not do is...is look at life cycle analysis, in that if you put down a brick over... or, yeah, excuse me, an asphalt overlay, you're going to need to replace that on average about every 15 years. Whereas if you do a complete This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 30 rebuild, you can expect to get 40 to 60 years out of that, hopefully more, and when you look at Brown Street and how long that's lasted, uh, with the concrete that they had to work with back then, it's... it's really held up very well. So if you look at an annualized cost, it's probably at least abreak-even there. So, if...if you've got the money, you...and they're thinking long-term, it's...it's a flip of the coin there. Dickens/ What would it take to do all the streets? Fosse/ All the streets? Dickens/ Yeah, that need, I mean, that are in the worst condition (several talking) Fosse/ Well, we're looking at (both talking) Dickens/ ...very poor to poor. Fosse/ Yeah. Dickens/ Just to get those up to average. (several talking) Fosse/ Yeah. Yep. So...roughly a million dollars for three blocks, little less than a million. And, uh...we...we do have a good, couple good successes with that. Church Street went very well, and Bowery. That turned out even smoother. I was surprised at how even the tops of those bricks were, and maybe it's cause it didn't have as much bus traffic that wore the bricks a different thickness - I don't know! Uh, but...that turned out nice, and that's one we came up...more short on the bricks than we thought, that is we had to go out and...and buy some bricks from an antiquer to fill these in, and that's kind of a big task if you've got to find bricks that are the same thickness and pretty close to the same color. Uh, so that added to the cost of this project. And...and when I talked about mining the bricks, one of the things that I forgot to mention is...is, you know, for every good brick you get out of there you might have two or three broken ones. So you... you don't get aone-for-one on that. Now one of the other products that...that's being used out there, uh, and I don't know about the long-term performance of it, uh, structurally is ...is the concrete brick paver. This by no means is a historical solution to...to some of the brick streets in the other areas of town, but uh, it's kind of cool. You have a lot of colors you can work with; the industry's pretty standardized on size and that sort of thing, and...and you can do some really cool things with the patterns, but what I'll caution you with is...is it looks great on the plans and it looks great for a while, but...but today that's...that's what that intersection looks like and uh, when...when we did the design of this (laughter) we knew...we knew that this occurs. That...that the concrete pavers they lose some of their color over time and then they get dirty, and if...if your colors are subtle, you're...you're not. going to see a difference. So we instructed our designers to use as much contrast as they could, and they thought it kind of garish at the time, uh, but still, even with that contrast, that's what we have today. Uh, you have better success on the sidewalks that, you know, as far as maintaining that pattern, and if you want to look at a...our oldest installation of this type of product is go the center of College Green This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 31 Park, and that was redone...I want to say about 15, 18 years ago, with a red brick in there, a red concrete block, and you can see that that fades out to almost gray over that period of time. So I'm guessing it over a longer period you'll have more fading. The neat thing about vitrified clay is it... it holds its color. The hard thing about vitrified clay is...is the standardization of the industry there. So, with that background, let's talk a little bit about, uh, about recommendations and analysis. One of the things I'm showing you here is...is our road use tax fund balance. This is the cash balance at the end of the year, and our history there going back to just 2004, uh, and I'll point out that that has an annual expenditure of about $6.5 million. So this...uh, this is...we get this money from the gas that's collected at the pump. The road...road use tax. And it's been fixed since 1989 and we talked about this a little bit last year during the budget analysis, and how that is declining, and one of the things where we kept it from going in the red is that...that we used to use road use tax to pay as we go on certain things, and now we use GO funding for, uh, a number of these things. Some of our paving projects, they usually had a component of it that was funded with road use tax, you know, a million dollars or something was not unusual to spend in a year out of paving, part of paving projects. Traffic signals are now paid for with GO, as are curb ramps, uh, part of our bike and pedestrian trail system is paid for with GO, as well as sidewalk infill. So that's one of the things that has kept this from venturing into the red and then also you'll notice that, uh, from 11 out through 14, those are projections from the State, and...and they have told us to be cautious about the out years. You know, don't spend that money before you see it! They, you know, they show that turning around for us, but uh, that's...that's just based on their projections, which we seem...axe a little bit optimistic. So with that, let me run through the recommendations here, uh, things to think about. One is, uh, to continue our existing policy with regard to asphalt overlays and utility repairs, and salvaging bricks where we can. I think that''s good policy that should be sustained, um...we should evaluate the remaining brick streets and see if there are any locations that don't warrant the additional expense of... of maintaining them as brick streets, and if... if you take that on, that's something that you definitely don't want to do in a vacuum. You're going to need the input from the neighborhood association, the Historic Preservation Commission, and it's...it's a broader question than a decision that we'll probably make around the table here. Um...prioritize main...remaining streets for construction and restoration, and develop projects that are minimum of one-block in length. So (noise on mic) think that... Champion/ (mumbled) did that! Fosse/ Yeah, we can put more at this annually. You know, we've got $20,000 a year now, and you could double that to $40,000, but I don't know that you would get double the outcome for that, in that yc-u're just taking care of those bad spots and you still have the broader issue of those...those large streets degrading. Um...recommend including the reconstruction, restoration projects for consideration in the capital program, so they go in the hopper with all the other projects that you look at in January, and make decisions on it. It's just something that we want to do this year or next year, or year "X." And then as I said, continue to dedicate that...that $20,000 per year and use for temporary spot repairs, because we do need to do that on occasion. So with that I open it up to discussion to get your thoughts on it... (unable to hear person away from mic) It has This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 32 been, and there's some years we don't spend any of that, other years it goes a little bit long. That's...it's true for most of our annual type allocations that we make. Champion/ So the two worst streets, I guess one is Dewey Street, and what's the other one? Do you know? Fosse/ Harrison is... Champion/ Oh, Harrison, right! Fosse/ ...very bad shape, you know, and that's one that it's an area that's going to redevelop. Champion/ Right! Fosse/ And we need to think about, what's our vision for that street. That also goes a block to the east, excuse me, west, running down the hill by the Courthouse there. So there's two blocks of it, at that location.. I don't know if I have a map in here...nope, sorry! Champion/ That's okay, I know where you mean. Bailey/ And...and the Courthouse is on the National Historical Register, but that's not a historic district. Fosse/ Yeah, and that's... Bailey/ I think that merits some consideration when we Look at those (several talking) Champion/ And Harrison...Harrison Street is also being looked at as part of the, uh, Justice Center construction. Fosse/ Uh-huh. Champion/ So I wouldn't want to put any money into that, and with the... School District offices moving, I'm not sure what' going to happen with that property either so... Fosse/ I don't know. That is one of our quirkiest sizes for bricks. If you look at that, it's a long, skinny brick. It doesn't fit with the others in town. Dickens/ (mumbled) Fosse/ I don't think so. Wright/ (away from mic) proceed with caution (mumbled) streets are (mumbled) Bailey/ Part of that (both talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Wright/ (away from mic) Fosse/ Uh-huh. Bailey/ Right. Hayek/ Let me throw an idea out there, um... Karr/ Mike, do you have your mic on? Wright/ (away from mic) Page 33 Hayek/ The, uh...the per block reconstruction and rebricking is obviously very expensive, but I guess the perspective I come from on this is to look at, and this is a term you gave me earlier today, Rick, is the life cycle cost. Fosse/ Yes. Hayek/ What's the cost of doing it., um, with asphalt, and how long does that get you before you have to replace it; what's the cost of doing the concrete underlay with brick, and how long does that, uh, you know, what sort of life span does that get you; and you know, I mean, I think Brown Street's a hundred years old and...and much of it is in perfectly good shape, or a good chunk of it is in perfectly good shape, so you're talking about a decade's long return on...on that investment and...um...and I did some very rough math, but if you got, you know, 50 or 70 years out of...out of a project and compare that to the 15 years, the costs are more comparable; there's more up front obviously. Fosse/ Yes. Hayek/ But...uh, you reap that down the road and I think that, you know, when I...when I brought the brick streets thing up, uh...many months ago, before Bret Favre joined the NFL (laughter) um, uh...I think maybe you brought it up as well, but in any event, at the time I was thinking, you know, just a modest increase, $40,000 a year or something better than...something more than what we're doing now and, but this idea of a...if you're going to do some...if you're going to make some progress do a...do it a block at a time...makes some sense to me, and I'm wondering if...if we have too many blocks and...and too tight a budget to do anything...very significant on the frontend, but...I wonder if we couldn't consider some measured approach to slowly working our way back and...and look at doing, um...you know, one block a year or every other year, some period of time, and obviously that would change because future Councils could say, you know what? We don't want to do that, but something that would start us back in the right direction, and I know therf; are folks out there who want us to, you know, uncover currently asphalted areas and restore the bricks there. While that would be nice, I think we need to look at what we, first things first, exactly! So, that would be my idea. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 34 Bailey/ Well, and I think that's a really good approach, I mean, it makes sense, and um...looking at the annualized costs, it is a great way to do that, and...and we know that this isn't...it would be nice if every decision was a cost benefit analysis, but it's not. I mean, this goes to historic preservation, it goes to sense of place, and...and that broader discussion, but we wouldn't have to necessarily GO bond. We can do inner-fund loans, Landfill, I mean, there are some other funding options, I mean...still not delightful, but...we could make that commitment and look for those funding options. Mims/ Well, and I think we need to look at...from the maps that Rick gave us, look at the streets and...and again, take a broader approach with the neighbors, etc., and get that public input, but as I glance at this, there are certain brick streets that I would say they aren't worth keeping. You know, in terms of location, housing, um...at first blush that would be my response. Now, neighborhoods might be totally opposite to where I am, but just because they're brick now, I think doesn't...doesn't necessarily mean we have to be committed to every single one of these, and so I think we need to really look at if we're going to try and do what IV[att is saying, which I think is a good idea, really prioritize not just on the condition they're in, but you know let's find out what are the worst ones, but like you said you know why put any money into Harrison when we don't know what's happening with, uh, the new Justice Center and what might, you know, what might go there. Um... Dickens/ But is something going to have to be done sooner...on that because it is in such poor condition? Fosse/ That's one where, uh, yeah, we'll probably reach a point where we'll need to do some repairs, and then we' 11 need to discuss, do we pay to do the brick repair or do some... do some patching, similar to what we've done on Dewey Street to get us through until...until another decision is made. Dickens/ Yeah, because there is no residential on Harrison at all. Champion/ No. Dickens/ Either of those blocks. Hayek/ (mumbled) (several talking) and I guess...the other point I was going to make is that, um, especially when you look at the north end, brick streets, I mean, that's part of historic district, uh, we have invested in that area because we believe it has an economic development side to it, um...and certainly that's the area where the neighborhoods are going to be... Bailey/ We already have a letter. Hayek/ Yeah, so... Bailey/ Some of us have already gotten a call. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 35 Champion/ Yes, I had a few calls too. Um, well, I do think we need to take care of the...Dewey Street. That looks almost as bad as Bowery was, maybe worse! Dickens/ I walk up there a lot and that's... Bailey/ (both talking) Dickens/ ...cars are going to come off of it! It's...it's (mumbled) shape! Hayek/ Well, we can figure out which ones to tackle first, and then maybe that's more of Engineering or Public Works, so I don't know but...I'd like to see us at least be open to it as we get into CIP, some sort of... schedule. Wright/ I think it's a terrific idea! Bailey/ And, even as we move into CIP and some sort of schedule, I would like minimally some input from, um, I mean, naturally the neighborhoods, but minimally some staff and maybe the Commission's input about what they see as priorities, as well. You know, let's not make this decision in a vacuum. We have a commission that looks at the historic significance of these kinds of things. Let's involve them. We have a staff person; let's involve her. Champion/ Well, I think there are other things to consider though, for instance, Dewey Street is probably not a historic housing area, but it's a really tight neighborhood and um... sometimes those small houses that aren't, um, maintained like, um, historic structures, it's easy to say let's pave their street over, I mean, I...I mean that concerns me too, that I don't want just Historic Preservation people to kind of go forward with this. Wright/ Well, it's not a historic district... Bailey/ ...well, and let's involve Marcia (several talking) yeah. Yeah, I mean, let's get some neighborhood input. I...I agree! Because like Terry said, I was there just yesterday and... Champion/ Yeah, it's not good! Dickens/ (mumbled) on that at all! Fosse/ So, I think what I'm hearing is that you'd like us to...to package for the capital program for consideration in the capital program, uh, a couple blocks, you know, not necessarily in one year, but...but...in some years where we can fit it in, uh, for the sake of our discussion for the capital program, we may not need to decide which block we'll do, but roughly how much we want to spend on that. (several responding) And how that stacks up against your other capital project priorities. Shall we go there? (several responding) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 36 Champion/ Great, thank you! Alley Inventory (IP3 of 12/2/10): Fosse/ Okay! Well, let's uh change gears and uh, we'll move onto alleys, which really are the bottom-feeders of the (laughter) of the funding world! Yes! That's our number one alley for complaints! (laughter) Champion/ I drive down it almost every day! Wright/ The alley from hell! Fosse/ It's a bad one! (several talking) That one, it got so bad that we...we actually went out and...and put rock over it, because there were...there were hunks of concrete that were tipping as cars drove over it, it'd pop up and snag the frame on a car so we put rock over it and we started grading...grading over it. Uh, but...but looking at our inventory of alleys, we have just shy of 250 alleys in...in town, about 100 of those are currently concrete or...or close•to concrete. (laughter) Um, asphalt, chip seal and gravel! Um...and...and what we've done over the years, let me show you some of them. You know, the concrete, they start out pretty good and this one's over 20 years old. It's holding up very well, but they just start going downhill, breaking up, and...and then suddenly they reach a point at which these pieces start popping out and tipping, and...and they end up like...like the one over by John's Grocery that are, basically we...the term for this is `unserviceable' and we...we just, there's not much we can do, uh, to keep those in business, keep those running. Uh, asphalt alleys, there are...there's a surprising number of asphalt alleys. I was surprised to see 26 because I don't believe that the City has ever asphalted an alley! These are all private projects where people have banded together, or...or at least a couple property owners on a block have (noise on mic) and... and put some asphalt down. But then once that's down, there's an expectation on our part that we're going to take care of it. Then the gravel alleys, uh, again, those...those are in varying states. Some are pretty good and...and some are not. I'll talk with you in a little bit about some of the issues, of uh, taking care of those. Now the...the concrete alleys, uh...as I said, they just generally degrade till they get to a point, at this point, and... and this by and large is where the majority of our complaints about alleys come from, and...since we stopped doing special assessments for alley projects, our...our reconstruction of alleys has pretty well come to a standstill. Uh, one that we were able to put together is the one across the street by the Co-Op, and we were able to work out a cost sharing agreement with them, because there's only one property owner to work with. They own both sides of the street out there, but in my memo, uh, to you I've outlined, uh, five different schemes, if you will, for how alleys, improvements, might be funded, and over the years we've tried various schemes with...with really no success on getting property owners to really band together and... and deal with it, and Eleanor and I will talk about this a little more later on, but the...the special assessment thing, there's a process by which you can (mumbled) request that by petition, and...and we tried that for a number of years, and...and the hard part is we can get a lot of property, er, residents to sign the petition that they want their alley approved, but the property owners are not This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 37 willing to sign the petition, and we'll come back and talk more about that a little later on, but...but this is really where...where the focus of our problems are. Uh, there's another alley, and might even be a shot in the same...no, that's a different alley. Uh, but it's very, very bad condition. Now gravel alleys...when...when we can get at `em are...are really not that hard to fix. Our policy there is the...the property owners pay for the rock out at the quarry, and we gc- get it and we spread it, and...and we put it out there. And, uh, but we can't get in every alley. You can't get your trucks through an alley like this; you can't get the motor graders through there, so it...they just really...you don't get maintenance happening there. Couple other unique problems that we have with...with gravel alleys is they tend to migrate. Uh, here's one you can see, here's the opening in the curb, you know, that's...that's where the alley's supposed to be. But over years, because of side friction here, it just crept off to the left there, you know, maybe a quarter inch here, but...over the decades, it leaves the right-of--way. Then we get calls from people saying come get your alley out of my yard (laughter). I don't want it here anymore! (laughter) And it's hard to do, because as the alley moves in one direction, plants and trees and stuff go in on the other side, and we spend a lot of time with our surveyors and city forester trying to sort those things out. Um...and...people ask too about plowing alleys, why we don't go in and plow those, and this is just a good example of...of some of the obstacles where you've got a cross slope toward the building here and...and if you slide on the ice at all with a plow truck, you're right into that building, and the plow will be coming through the wall into that apartment there. Uh, other problems we have is you have wheel wells right, or window wells right next to the...the alley, so you bury those in the snow. You can plow people's garage door shut. So, you know, any time we go into an alley with a plow, it...often times generates more complaints than it solves. Uh, the only alleys that we do spend some time on are the, uh, the downtown alleys, and...and we primarily just apply salt to those and try and burn down and melt through that. Um, I did want to mention that our philosophy, uh, on funding of alley improvements has been based on the fact that...that the alleys serve primarily, if not exclusively, the property owners that abut them. So based on that, the cost of...of the alley and the maintenance of that alley should be borne by the adjacent property owners, and that...that's been the basis of the policy over...over the years. Um...so, let's...let me move on and talk a little bit about the cost to upgrade an alley. To convert a gravel alley to a paved alley is roughly $170,000, and that includes design and other expenses, and that's excluding storm sewer. If you put storm sewer in, you'll...who knows what that's going to cost, because that varies from alley to alley. Some alleys it all drains out either end and you don't worry about that. Uh, if you do it by special assessment project, it's going to cost a little more than that - $ 181,000 is an estimate of that, and the reason for that is is the technique of which the State specifies that we recover the assessment costs and also put together a fund if there's...there's a default on that sort. Uh... so let's talk about, um, recommendations on that. For gravel alleys, we're really not looking to change the policy, at least I don't recommend changing the policy at this time, because the...the, if we do change the policy, the only way we could really accommodate that is by devoting more of the road use tax funds, which...which we are short on right now. Um, so it's...it's hard to change that in any significance. It's not pretty, but it works. It gets the job done in most cases. Uh, but I...I do think that we're...we've kind of reached an impasse on the paved alleys, and the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 38 alleys that really need to be repaved, uh, we haven't done any projects in 20-plus years so the...nothing's coming off the bad list. But more are going on the bad list over the years, as it...as it continues to degrade. So we have a couple options available to us there. One is the special assessment process, and uh, when Eleanor gets back... Karr/ She'll be right back. Fosse/ Okay, we'll talk a little bit more about that as...as well, and then, um...perhaps funding with GO bonds. Now that would be a... a variation of... of policy that we've had in, well, up until this point. I don't think we've ever...ever varied from that, with the exception of the Central Business District. And within the Central Business District is the alley behind the Mayor's business, which is an exception. That's private alley so...he's stuck with that one! Hayek/ Yeah, I get no love there! (laughter) Fosse/ So...to get moving again, we need to...we need to get some money to do the projects, and uh...one of the...if we do the assessment option, uh, we can...we can begin that process with...with a petition, again, and if it...if it does not...(mumbled) cause she understands this process better than I do! But basically as I mentioned earlier, you...it's easy to get signatures of people who live along the alley. It's hard to get signatures of the people who...who own the property and will actually be assessed for that. Uh, but once we have a petition, it... it will go to you, and then you can make a decision, if you want to proceed with an alley paving project there or not, um...but...when you make that decision you'll need to understand that...that with the special assessment rules that are specified by the State, that if a certain majority of the property owners oppose the project, then it takes I think a... a 6 to 7.. . Karr/ Extraordinary majority vote. Fosse/ There we go! You want to expand on that. Is there two different levels? Extraordinary and then unanimous? Karr/ Uh-huh, that's correct. There is. Fosse/ Okay. And the...the history that we had in the late 80s, alley assessment projects as well as sidewalk assessment projects, is that we would...we would proceed with a project and expend quite a bit of money on design, uh, assessment plats and that sort of thing, and then when it came to the l lt" hour, there were a lot of people at the podium and...and we did not finish the project, we did not do it. So it's really a losing proposition for us. We were spending money on design and not recovering anything, and then not getting a...a product out of that. Um... so that was, the point at which we decided we were not going to move forward without a petition signed by...by, uh, property owners. And, Eleanor, do you want to talk a little bit about what you learned, uh, from other communities on their petition process. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 39 Dilkes/ Well, I just...I asked the city attorneys, um, of the larger cities in Iowa kind of what they've been doing with special assessments, and...and many, or several, just like us, have kind of abandoned the whole process because of all the "fights" and, uh, needs for super majorities or unanimous decisions by the city council if the...and um...the ones that are still using them are using them if they get, um, a petition from 100% of the abutting property owners. IJm, petitioning for the use of a special assessment. Um, and...and the benefit of that is there's two resolutions. You do a preliminary resolution at the very beginning of the process, and that only requires a majority of council. Um, but you could structure something so that at that initial point, you knew at least at that stage of the game that you had 100% or 75% or whatever participation by the abutting property owners. And so you would have that information up front, rather than the city initiating it, or the city initiating it on the petition of 25% or something like that, and then you do that initial design work, you get the cost estimates, and then you have this resolution of necessity that you need to do, and that's when you get the requirement for, um, 6 out of 7 council people or if 75...or if property owners that represent 75% of the assessments, um...object, then you need a unanimous council. So, that's what I'm learning from other cities. Some cities continue to do, uh, Dubuque does special assessment projects, um...still, um, with some frequency. Um, Waterloo recently did one for downtown, but there are about four others who use them only if they have a petition where 100% of the property owners are in support of it. Hayek/ How much objection does it take, again? To...trigger... Dilkes/ To get it...well, it's a...it's asuper-majority 6 out of 7 regardless. It's unanimous if you have objection by 75...property owners who represent 75% of what's to be assessed. Wright/ So in some cases that could be one or two property owners that carry the big club. Champion/ So, we basically have no control over the condition of these alleys, is that what you're saying, unless we're going to pay for it ourselves, which I'm not willing to do. Bailey/ Or we have to have a very, very strong commitment, I mean, to...to an assessment (several talking) Champion/ And how do you. Karr/ Tom, could you put on your microphone, please. Thank you. Fosse/ I also included on...on the memo a list of...of, just an informal survey of alley maintenance policies from other similar sized communities, and...and looking through here, what struck me is...is the cities with the more generous policies also had casinos. I don't know if there's a link there (laughter and several talking). Champion/ We just need one of those! Bailey/ Is that your recommendation? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 40 Fosse/ (laughter) No! Dilkes/ You know, you have to remember too that a really strong commitment does not necessarily move from one Council to the next. Bailey/ Right, I agree. Get a lot done in two years and...move on. Fosse/ So we're at a 20 year deadlock, uh, we can...continue as we are, or...(several talking) Mims1 Are we...are we getting a lot of complaints, I mean, how often are you hearing from people, or have they just given up that nothing's going to happen or... Fosse/ Well...the majorities of our complaints are focused on a very few alleys. The really bad ones, like you see here, and...and they're also seasonal. And when the problem goes out in the spring, we get a lot of complaints on the gravel alleys, and...and more complaints than normal on...on these paved alleys. We have a lot of ice build up in the winter, we hear about that. Dickens/ Where does it become a safety issue that...we have to do something about? Fosse/ That's...that's where we went out and we put the gravel down there, at our expense, because we were...we were concerned about that. Mims/ Do we have any liability? In terms of the alleys? Bailey/ Yeah. I mean, we require parking from some of these rental units along this alley. The parking is off of the alley. Do we have any liability exposure if their access to the parking creates problems? Dilkes/ Well, I think we have some liability exposure. Alleys are part of the streets and public ways over which we have control and have a maintenance obligation. Um, but there...you know, it depends on the facts, the circumstances, etc. Fosse/ Ideas? Besides casinos? (several talking) Wright/ ...some of these alleys, the City needs to do as we were talking about with the brick streets, and have an allotment to do, um, one of the worst alleys every year or two. Champion/ I disagree! Wright/ Getting the property owners to agree up and down an alley is almost impossible. Hayek/ Well, will be even less possible it seems to me once we signal that we're willing to spend GO money to do some. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 41 Champion/ I mean, people who (several talking) right! But no, I...I'm not willing to use...tax dollars to repair all these terrible alleys, if the people who live on `em aren't willing to repair them! I don't ask you to repair my driveway. That's basically their driveway...to their garages. The City doesn't come in and repair my driveway when it needs replacing! I have to replace it! Wright/ Well, think of the scenario where, which we have a number of situations in Iowa City where you might have...one side of the alley is owner-occupied houses, and these folks are saying yes, we've got to fix the alley; we'll put up our share, and on the other side of the alley, I might be speaking from personal experience here - I'm not sure - um, you have one property owner with 75 parking spaces, accessed from the alley. Bailey/ Right. Wright/ They're not interested! Bailey/ And the way Eleanor described it too is these alleys are part of our public ways in the community, I mean, I...I mean, I see the challenge, but they are used in that way. Mims/ To me if we were going to do anything, one thing I'd want to look at and consider doing is some sort of acost-sharing, that we...that we do a special assessment for the property owners to do a 50% of it, and maybe we pitch in 50, and I'm not sure 50/50's the right way to go, but I...I'm with Connie. I'm not in support of spending taxpayer money of everybody else in the city for things that those neighboring property owners should be putting in a higher percentage for the maintenance of. Bailey/ But we also know, I mean, cautionary makes a little bit more sense, because we also know, in situations like this for example, it's not just the people who park off of this who use this. This is...this one particularly is a public way. I mean, it's used quite frequently by, well... a lot of people. Fosse/ You also might think about it in two categories. One is if it's...if it's a rebuild, you could consider acost-share, cause you know they've been assessed once before for it. Granted it's a long time ago, um, but if it's an upgrade from a gravel to a paved alley, and usually that's precipitated by a change in land use, going from single family to multi family, then that may be more appropriate fora 100% assessment. And there's all sorts of different ways you can go with this. Champion/ But then if you have...let's say you have 100% assessment for a new alley because there's a new multi family, it...is there a future tax to maintain that thing? We get back to the same problem we're in now! We don't have any maintenance money for these things! And that, no that alley is terrible! I drive down it frequently. I just drive way over on the side. Fosse/ I will tell you that...that the alleys, uh, that we would build today would be much more stout than the ones that were built in the 60s and 70s because we see that they don't This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 42 perform well in the long term, and I think part of that is that, um, there's...there's just a lot of garbage truck traffic, and big dumpsters, and on...on wet days, those are some of the heaviest axle loads on the roads, and they're out there on 6-inch pavements and they do a lot of damage. Hayek/ And (mumbled) Mike's point, these alleys were not built for massive multi-family structures with scores of cars every hour driving up and down, you know...not built for that. Is the...is the ability to object in the super-majority (mumbled) requirement, that's State law, and it applies whether we do, uh, 100% assessment or some sort of cost- sharing. Dilkes/ Yes, in fact one of the...one of the attorneys I talked today said that, he said, you know, it just got to the point where they were...they were compromising down to doing 10%, you know, over the... so the abutting property owners were only doing 10%, you know, that's how it ended up in th.e process. It's just a very difficult...it's avery difficult process and it's set by State; code. Fosse/ It's a chore...to do an assessment project. For the City Clerk's office, the City Attorney's office (laughter) and Engineering! Karr/ We...the last...I can recall we did...we did attempt, and it's been probably 25 years ago and what happened is we did a cost sharing and we kept decreasing it because as soon as the owners found out you were willing to share it, then instead of 50/50 it became 60/40 and then it became...and...we just haven't done one since. Markus/ Gotta have the will to do it! Mims/ Yeah. Bailey/ Uh-huh. Karr/ And to follow it through. Champion/ Well I say we follow something through and get some of these alleys repaired, but not with my property taxes;. Markus/ Sounds like you have the will to do it! (laughter and several talking) Bailey/ Will that be maintained, that's all I want to know! Champion/ My attitude about it? Mims/ Well, but I think also as Rick has said, I mean, if you're...if you're doing it today you're going to do it to some different standards than what a lot of these were originally done, and so hopefully the maim;enance and upkeep... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 43 Bailey/ I was talking about her commitment being maintained, not the alley! (laughter) Mims/ Oh, okay! (laughter and several talking) Hayek/ ...the commitment to encourage a petition signed by renters and then vetoed by land (both talking) Champion/ Wait, it doesn't do any good to have renters sign the petition! Markus/ You can initiate the action yourself! The City can initiate this petition, correct? Dilkes/ Yes! But... Markus/ And you just have to have the will to stand up through this process of (both talking) Hayek/ Oh, I see, I see! Okay. Wilburn/ Historically speaking when we've needed super-majority or plus for a variety of reasons, it falls apart. Bailey/ The will goes away? Markus/ But why would you pay for it as a city? Champion/ I'm not going to. Bailey/ I wouldn't. Markus/ In your situation, you were talking about single-family homes all supporting it, and the multiple against it. Right? So why wouldn't you approve it? As a voting...uh, Council Member? Wright/ I think this Council might! But another one might not. Champion/ Well, we're still here! Mims/ Well, get done what we can get done while we're here! (several talking) If we have the will! I mean... Champion/ Most of us... Hayek/ Ross has got the smile of the ages on his face! (laughter and several talking) Bailey/ Ross is waiting to see it happen! (laughter) Hayek/ Been around the block! (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 44 Fosse/ Something I forgot to cover that somebody will bring up with you once...once we leave is, why don't you just put an asphalt overlay on these. And...and the difference is, streets have curbs so that you can put that extra three inches and the water can still fall down and...and drain, whereas these are an inverted crown and if you raise them three inches, then you've got... everything cannot drain to it anymore. Yep, and... and we did have a situation where a...an alley south of Bowery was...was privately overlaid and...and they just asphalted a guy's garage door shut (laughter) cause they're that close to the...to the road. That was...that was ugly! Champion/ Oh my gosh! That's hinny! Wright/ It wasn't to him! Mims/ Yeah, I was going to say, not to him! Champion/ It would be funny to me, I mean, it wasn't funny to him, but it is kind of funny (mumbled) done right. Hayek/ Well, is there, uh, there appears to be a lack of interest in the City taking this on as an expense. At least by a majority. Champion/ Right, I mean, I... Hayek/ (several talking) seems to be, okay. Mims/ I'm not willing to. I'm willing to consider some cost sharing, depends on the circumstances again, but I'm willing to consider that. Hayek/ I might consider that as well, although I...I do think that, and this would require consistency, for the indefinite future by multiple Councils, I mean, you've got to be...if it's 50/50 it's got to stay that way. As soon as you signal a willingness to negotiate, you've... Wright/ Bargaining (several talking) Bailey/ Well, and I'd start with special assessment. Wright/ You what? Bailey/ Start with 100% assessment, if that's the direction people want to go, because I mean the vote requirement is the same. You know, the (several talking) yes! Hayek/ Right (several talking) Dickens/ ... if you're going to go through the same abuse. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 45 Champion/ So, can I clarify this. If we can get 25% of the property owners to agree to a special assessment, we can vote it in. Hayek/ No. Dilkes/ Connie, it's just not quite that simple. Champion/ Well, if 75%... Dilkes/ No, it's...it's not necessarily 25% of the property owners. It's 7...it's...you have to have...all of you have to agree if 75% or more...if property owners representing 75% or more of the amount to be assessed objects. So if you have one big property owner abutting the...the alley, ancl...you know, 75 of the assessment is going against that property owner, they can...make it, require a unanimous vote. Champion/ Oh, fine, yes. Fine. Markus/ Property owners can petition to do it, but the City can initiate the process itself, without the petition. Champion/ Fine. I think we should do it! Markus/ So the City looks at...at all of these different alleys and says, these are the priority alleys we need to do. They initiate the process, we...we get through the different stages and we get a petition. That says that we abject to this and maybe this certain percentage statutory requirement. Then you get into a position where the super-majority, or the unanimous provision, it's unanimous at that point, kicks in. Champion/ Okay. Markus/ So at that point, your will. has to be that you're going to stick to it and enforce this. Champion/ That's easier than I thought! Markus/ Well... Champion/ I mean (several talking) Markus/ ...not to do, it seems to me that it puts you at a much more defensible position that you have a policy and that...you know, if they come in and object and you follow the objection, then at least you have a process to do it. I think you're much more at a...the City's at a much more defensible position at that point. Why they didn't do it. (male)/ Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 46 Dilkes/ I...I think what we're not getting clear on though is whether it makes some sense to at the initial, at the beginning of the process, you want to have a policy where you are not going to start down that path, unless you have demonstration of, you know, 50% interest or 75% interest or in the case of some of these other cities, 100% interest. Of the (several talking) yes, so in other words you make that...that, you get that information at the front end of the process rather than initiating the process, spending the money, getting to the very end, and then being faced by property owners who are objecting. Bailey/ Because we would design...if we initiate the process, we design, so we know what the assessment is, correct? So we pay for design (several talking). Okay. So there is an expense.. . Markus/ Which is eligible to be reimbursed through the assessment... Bailey/ Right... if we get to that point. Markus/ But if you had a capital improvements program, and you said, for example, these are all your alleys. Rick's prioritized which ones need to be done. You're scheduling them out fora 5-year CIP and you say we're going to take three of these on every year. Bailey/ We're going to spend the design... Markus/ And we're going to spend the design and we're going to initiate this process. We're not going to wait for petition. The procedure Eleanor's talking about is if petitions are submitted. But if we initiated the process, okay? And said, we call the public hearing and do all these things, and I know Eleanor may not think that that's really the way to do it. It seems to me though that if you've adopted the CIP that you've started down the process of the group collectively saying, "We are going to do these things. We're going to stand up, and we're going to vote to do these." And, it seems to me that sitting around as we have for the past 20-plus years, we haven't fixed many of these, and you all know these things look and operate terribly! I mean, you've heard all the anecdotal evidence from...from Rick on this stuff. Some of these things need to be fixed up! I think they do serve a driveway kind of function, and that they should be assessed 100% to the benefitting property. So...it seems to me if you put it in a plan, you folks decide, you know, in the face of all the people coming up, you know, we've dealt with this back in Michigan through assessment. We don't have these quirky super-majority, unanimous provisions but I've seen them stand there and take a lot of heat and then vote it in and go through it. Some of these things you have to do once in a while. Bailey/ I mean, I `m going to put this on the table because I do believe this one...um, serves a public purpose, as well as serves as driveways and parking lots for people. So, I think if pressed, I might see more of a public purpose and have a hard time doing (both talking) Champion/ Why would it be a public purpose? Bailey/ Because, like a street... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 47 Hayek/ Cause you use it, Connie! Bailey/ ...cause I use it! I don't live there. You use it. You don't live there, and so should your streets in your...in your city be maintained by more than just people who live along them. Dickens/ ...Mercy Hospital sometimes (both talking) John's Grocery and... Bailey/ But my point is, I mean, should...if it's a public way, and I'm just asking this philosophically. It's a public way, other people use it -should your streets be maintained by more than just the people who live along them, and this is functioning in that way. Champion/ (both talking) ...paid to have this paid, we'll never get an assessment done for an alley. I mean, I agree that this is more of a...a public alley. It's like the downtown alley. Bailey/ But that's the argument you're going to...we're going to hear, and I'm saying that I buy into that argument, to a certain degree! So... Mims/ Is there any way to categorize the alleys? Bailey/ I don't know. Fosse/ (mumbled) might be one. Champion/ I mean, John's I think (mumbled) I mean, I know it's a constant problem for Alberhasky's to deal with this alley. And they've tried to get stuff done with it with their neighbors and have not been very successful. Bailey/ Right. Fosse/ And they've done a good job of taking care of their little piece. Champion/ Yeah, it's totally paved! Bailey/ Right! Markus/ Well, and that's the other option I suppose. Once you start down a process and they see that we're going to do it, if there's a commercial enterprise, commercial enterprise may decide that they can do it cheaper than the, you know, if it's a significant... Karr/ That's what I was going to mention, is that potentially a compromise of what, um, Rick and Tom and Eleanor have said and the missing link that we didn't have say 25 years ago, and that's some sort of a program, a plan, of putting them out there in your CIP, and the...the owners would see it coming up and in the meantime they would be getting estimates. They would know that theirs is scheduled three years out. Um, they might do This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 48 some, um, looking at, uh, pricing themselves. It may initiate them doing it cheaper than waiting for us to come in,1>otentially. Champion/ That's a good point! I didn't...well, how do we do sidewalk assessments? I mean, we go around and mark those sidewalks; we don't have any people voting on that. And if you don't fix `em the City .fixes `em, so it'd be the same kind of thing! Fix your alley or we're going to fix it! Fosse/ That's very specific in the State code, the provisions that allow us to do that, and...and our liabilities, if we don't have that program. Champion/ Let's call `em sidewalks! (laughter) Dilkes/ Each sidewalk square's only in front of one property. Bailey/ Yeah! Markus/ You know, I come at this a little bit differently maybe than most of you around the table. And...and part of my perspective is being responsible ultimately for presenting a balanced budget, and knowing you have concerns about tax rates and things like that. Quite frankly you need to start looking at ways that you can fund things, quite frankly, differently. The way you funded this is you just haven't built any of `em. Right? We've kind of ignored this issue. But, you know, when you talk about these types of improvements, you want to do something that is sustainable. Well, sustainable also means how you finance these things, and to me, we can't sustain issuing GO bonds and then just paying these things out of property taxes. In the long run I...I think you're going to get a lot of pushback. You may not have to face that small chunk of people that come in for each one of these assessments and you have to stand up to that issue on that evening and vote for that, but you know, I...I stick myself out there on these because in the long run this all either gets shifted to every taxpayer in town pays for these things, or the benefitting property does. That's the whole theory behind special assessment, is that the benefitting property pays for these things. Connie's example, I think, is pretty good. You know...the driveway, even the driveway aprons I presume in this town, that the adjacent property owner's paying for those things, right? I think that's the logical extension, that these things service the rear of these properties, and the more you go to, you know, new urbanism. The new urbanism policy was put in here, right? (several responding) (mumbled) we keep expanding down that process, cause I see you doing more of these things eventually, rather than fewer! That's the new model for development, it's going to have more alleys. Mims/ When we do special assessment, how long do people have to pay for it? I mean, I'm just going back looking at the numbers, Rick, that you gave us, I mean, $170 or $181 to construct or reconstruct a block. Okay, $181 if we're using special assessment. I mean, obviously depending upon the alley...there's awhole range of property values along that alley, but to come up with that $181,000, I mean... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 49 Fosse/ It's a 10-year period, and... Mims/ So they have 10 years to pa:y it. Okay. Fosse/ And the financing costs are included in the...in the special assessment. Karr/ Yeah, the State sets the financing costs, we don't. So it's set right in the price. Mims/ Okay. Well, that makes me feel better if they've got 10 years to pay for it. I had no idea what.. . Markus/ Let me...can I ask a question? In the State law, does it require an actual design, or can you...can you, uh, have a spec for how we're going to build these things? Can that become the basis for the estimate of cost? To me, if you have a spec, you...you can extend the, uh, front footage as to how much these things are likely to cost. I mean, do you actually have to do the physical construction design for each one of these before you...call the hearing? Fosse/ The... Dilkes/ L .. go ahead. Fosse/ I was going to say, certainly the unknown and variable from alley to alley's the (mumbled) Markus/ I understand that. Fosse/ ...so that the paving component...could be fairly constant. Markus/ I would think it would be. It'd be fairly accurate that you do an estimate on it. Mims/ So basically what you're getting at, Tom, is that being able to keep our design cost to an absolute minimum before ewe really get into the process. Markus/ Right. Because ultimately the real cost that gets assessed is based on going out to bid and having a bid come back. Right? Fosse/ Yeah, and...and one other variable you'll find is... Markus/ ...and we aren't going to do that, before they've actually decided something (noise on mic) Fosse/ No, we...we have an estimate and then part of that State process includes a...a 10% contingency within that to cover...cover additional costs. The other variable in the alley designs is how...how elaborate, do you phase construction and maintain access, you know, some alleys only have one way in and out, others have two. Some have some This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 50 places you can squirt out at mid-block, uh, but that...that can bring the price up. You'll pay more for square yard on the complicated pours. Dilkes/ This says, the code says the preliminary plans and specifications must only be in sufficient detail to advise any person interested of the general nature, character, and type of the improvement. (several responding) Bailey/ So pretty broad. Hayek/ Let's do something! Mims/ Yep! Wright/ I think...nothing has gone about as long as it can go. Bailey/ The one thing that Susan mentioned is this different classifications of alleys, and I'm trying to think of anything beyond this one, that I would classify, and I can't, but I was wondering if there were thoughts on that. I mean, one that really serves as a... alleys that serve really as a public way, and less as a driveway. Even (both talking) Mims/ I think we, I mean, I think it's easy to say we start down a really slippery slope if we do that, and...but I was just kind of throwing it out as a question (both talking) Bailey/ ...worth discussing at this point, rather than when we get into the middle of a special assessment hearing. (several talking) Wright/ ...alongside the, uh, the Hamburg Inn. Bailey/ Yeah! Mims/ Well, but that's mostly for...a lot of that's parking for Hamburg Inn and those businesses along there. Bailey/ Yeah. The City accesses...our lot is there. Markus/ Is it desirable that they're used in that fashion? Or had they just evolved into that? Bailey/ I desire to use them in that: fashion, thank you! (laughter) Hayek/ Do we need to get to that level of specificity? Can we...can we reach a consensus that we'd like staff to put together some sort of...proposed program on (several talking). Okay. Fosse/ We'll be back to you with .a recommendation then. Hayek/ All right. Thank you. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 51 Wright/ It's finally off our pending list! (laughter) Hayek/ All right. Roosevelt. Roosevelt School Repurposin~ (IP4): Dickens/ Mainly...this is the minutes from our last meeting. Probably has the most that we got done, as far as some ideas of what to do with the building. Our concern mainly was...is there any use for the City and... and... would we be interested in purchasing it, even at a minimal amount, and what would we do with it. Uh, I know the...Dale called me. I think the Fire Department went through it and took a tour and... said that it just is in such condition that it really didn't (mumbled) and talking there was not a lot of other departments that were...a whole lot, there wasn't a whole lot of interest in that...that direction. We still are looking at the costs...right now the School District is trying to keep it cost neutral. Helling/ When Terry raised the question from the...from the Committee, um, I asked staff to just (mumbled) see what, you know, what they might come up with, and I got two...two responses. One was from t:he Fire Department as a possible training center, uh, they were over there last Friday, looked at the building, looked at, you know, the configuration, the condition of the building, um...taking into account I think too the location and their conclusion... and I think primarily on the configuration of the building and the condition of the building was that...that they weren't really interested for a training center, and I think that's probably a good decision. I would have some concerns about the location, interjecting that into a...into that type of a neighborhood. Um, the other thing that...that came up, and Jeff brought this to...to my attention, uh, something that we've looked at in conjunction with other...other, uh, considerations in the community, other community development situations, and that's, um, called a arts...artist space, and Jeff agreed to stick around and kind of give you the, you know, the 3-minute version of what...what those are. They do exist in other communities and they do involve apublic/private, uh, partnership in terms of funding. Davidson/ I think we can even make this the minute and a half version probably, uh, we initially scoped out Art Space, uh, 'when we were considering alternatives for the...the next multi- use parking facility. We keep calling it the St. Pat's facility cause it's on the location of the old, uh, school. Um... so we learned a little bit about it. I went an looked at a facility that...there is actually a new construction in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, that they're doing as part of a FDA project up there. Um, the way Art Space works is they...they're a private organization. I think they started in the Twin Cities. Initially it was for conversion of old downtown spaces, warehouse space, and that sort of thing into live/work spaces for artists. They also then expanded it to include, um, sort of creative economy businesses that also can incubate out of the facility. Um, Art Space is an organization that comes in, uh, there's initially an expense of about $12,500 to do their initial evaluation. They kind of bring together all the groups in the community that might be interested in it, um, they...they're very experienced with financing these sorts of things, and they can even This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 52 end up actually owning the facilities when it's all said and done, but the idea is to create, um, as I said, artist spaces. They can either be live/work spaces or just, uh, studio spaces. Uh, there are some projects where they...they have an affordable housing element as part of them, and in fact, Steve :Long and Tracy just...are going to Omaha for some HUD training, and they're going to stop in Council Bluffs and there's an old International Harvester, uh, warehouse that, near...right in the edge of downtown, that's been converted by Art Space into...it's, uh, I think it's got both the live/work spaces for artists, and then the, it's got an affordable housing element. They're going to tour that. Um, and you know, every financing...program is a little bit different. If there was interest in going ahead here, I...I spoke to somebody who's experienced in working with Art Space, and what they suggested was that you'd want to maybe consider Roosevelt School and then maybe even a couple of other locations, maybe something in Riverfront Crossings, something in Towncrest. They can do both new construction and they can do, uh, renovation of old buildings, uh, but you know, you might want to, since...since you'd be going to the expense of the evaluation anyway, just evaluate all potential locations and then, um, you know, see if there was enough interest and enough possibilities for financing to go ahead and do it. Because...because the school, Roosevelt School, will be used next year as an elementary school as well because they haven't started the Crossing's school yet, and you know, we've got plenty of time, but there would be the $12,500 initial evaluation expense, and what happens is out of that process, if you decide you want to go forward, then you start focusing on the specifics of, okay, are we interested in a...in a live/work space for artists or exactly what the...and then there's a more detailed evaluation that actually produces a business plan basically and a financing plan, and that...that comes at an expense of more like $30,000, but that's phase two, and you don't ever have to advance to phase two if you don't ever come out of phase one. Helling/ We wanted you just to have some idea of what that...what that alternative is. I think the issue, obviously Art Space is something you can look at in conjunction with, as Jeff said, Riverfront, or River Crossing...River (several talking) or...or any other development. Um, the issue here tonight is that particular building, and um, I don't know how definitive an answer they need, um, but I think in conjunction with the study of the...the need and the application of Art Space we'd also want to do something more detailed with the building, uh, initially it: looks like it needs both exterior and interior work, just to be...just to be weather-tight. Dickens/ And boiler work. Helling/ Pardon me? Dickens/ Boiler. Helling/ Boiler, uh, and then again need to have the interior, the renovation that would be necessary to convert it to another use. Um...so there is con....some concern that...that while we might be able to get the building for a minimal price, um, there would be substantial expense in...in making it (several talking) types of issues...of uses that we're talking about. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 53 Champion/ I like the idea of the Art Space, but not there. And I look at that building and I'm irritated they're closing it, but they are so I can't do anything about that. But that is prime land. It's a huge tract of land. Now, I think this is...kind of nonsense. I would think they would sell that to a private developer, and let's get it back on the tax rolls! That is a lot of space! Dickens/ There has been little or no interest (both talking). They put it out and they've only received one... Champion/ They have to demolish. the building if they want to sell the land. Bailey/ I'm interested in looking at some kind of repurposing, I mean, as they're...as they are pursuing, um, yeah. That':> a large tract of land that would probably be developed into a huge multi-family, which the adjacent area's zoned that way. But we are investing in that neighborhood too, and we :have concerns about stabilizing that neighborhood, so my question is, what...what invests in that direction? And I think this Art Space idea is compelling, or I mean, I was talking to a small business today and the more I got to thinking about this space, it might be a space that they would be interested in if there were some...some additional information about what it would cost to repurpose it...for what, I mean, they would certainly, in their facility, love to use a... an elementary sized gym for sure. So, I think that there are possibilities that would serve the neighborhood that would also put it on the tax base. I'm not interested in owning it long-term. But I'm interested in pursuing...we don't have a lot of build...buildings to repurpose. I mean, a lot of rural Iowa is repurposing their school buildings for sure. Um, we don't have a lot of buildings like this to...to be able to seize this opportunity so if there's an opportunity to evaluate its feasibility, um, and we don't have a of live/work spaces, believe me. I mean, I've looked at Des Moines and they're doing great stuff in this, and we are not! And...we're supposed to be this creative class, creative economy place, and we don't have these...we don't have these attractor...resident/commercial facilities. For artists, for, um, people who work from home, so I think there's some opportunity here, not to own it long-term though. X don't...want the City to own another older building, um, I want other people to own it (laughter). In condos and commercial and... Wright/ Well, I agree with you, there's very little opportunity in Iowa City for live/work spaces, but we have a lot of peoplf;, I think, who would utilize something like (both talking) Bailey/ I do too! I mean (both talking) Wright/ I can think of three or four off the top of my head. Bailey/ I...I meet with them, you :know, people weekly who are looking for different kinds of facilities or different kinds of living situations so they can do, I mean, think of the Paper Nest, I mean, she was doing her letter-press printing in her house, I mean, and we have people like this throughout the city who are not going to rent retail space in downtown or any of our other areas. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 54 Hayek/ So who pays for that? I mean, you know, if...if... Bailey/ We look at the...I think we do a feasibility study. We get to the place, we see if there are developers or engage other people who might be interested in coming in and doing the work. We do not...or we do it through economic development public/private. I do...I do not see this as a public project, for sure, except to spur the possibility. Dickens/ Our next...our next meeting is Monday, and Steve, uh, Murley's going to be there at that meeting, and so we'll ]lave a little more idea where the schools are coming from too. After that meeting I' 11 provide you with all the information too (mumbled) Bailey/ Well, and if we would do a feasibility study, could we, I mean, I think we should look at Riverfront, I mean, we have another nice building in Riverfront Crossings, the...the one that's on the sewer treatment plant, I mean, it's a beautiful brick building. I mean, that's what people look for, what are the possibilities, how are we thinking about... Hayek/ If we can leave that building under our flood funding (both talking) Bailey/ Sure, sure, sure, but...you know, looking at feasibility, looking at interest, there is interest and...nobodies tapping into it, but you know, I...I guarantee five to seven years, they'll be hot and...people are getting it in other communities. They're getting it in Dubuque, and they're getting it in Des Moines, and they're not getting it here! I mean...it's just... Dickens/ There would be some zoning changes though in that area. Davidson/ Yeah, it's going to havf; to be rezoned anyway cause it's zoned Public right now. Uh, Matt, to answer one of your questions, uh, and Tom also clarified with me just now that...that the projects are generally privately held when they get done. They're not owned by the municipality. Now they're not all taxable, because there's frequently...it's not uncommon for there to be a private, non-profit status, um, so they aren't taxable, and they're generally housing tax credit projects, um, because there's usually aloes-mod income angle that they qualify, uh, for those, so that's...that's aprinciple means of financing, I mean, and that's what part of Art Space, the organization, works out is all that financing of, uh, if they use tax credits. Bailey/ It wouldn't have to be that. model. It could be a live, a commercial and residential model, right, like (both talking) Davidson/ ...comes out of the evaluation, uh, the evaluation, which is a public process, by the way. Champion/ I can't imagine puttin€; enough money in that building. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 55 Dickens/ So what would you like me to take back to them Monday? (laughter) The Art Space and the possibility, or feasibility, to (mumbled) Bailey/ Well, what have they done in that direction, I guess I would be curious about any, to what degree they've looked at these organizations that are out here? Wilburn/ Is it possible to, uh, make sure that, you mentioned economic development, uh, funding. Is it possible to get them to (mumbled) so that any others in that group that may be interested in looking at them themselves or any of the community groups that came forward that want to see something so that they can...that might spur some ideas, at...at least if they were to try and do something privately, then ask for some type of support from the...from the City. Champion/ I like the idea of the work/live space. I'm just not so sure that building is... Bailey/ Well, and that's what a feasibility study would tell us, that if we can get a feasibility study in town, and there are other possibilities to look at, you know, get some scale and spend $13,000 and figure out some opportunities. Hayek/ Does $13 get you this study...the 12 or $13,000? Bailey/ The initial. Davidson/ Yeah, the initial study's $12.5.. . Hayek/ And uh...would that be something we would share the expense with? Davidson/ Well, I mean, that's something Terry (several talking) The $12.5 includes multiple focused groups, meetings with potential developers, review of available sites, etc. And then.. . Hayek/ Maybe we express some (both talking) Davidson/ ...Terry to take back. Hayek/ ... a shared, uh, study. Shared cost, uh, analysis. Davidson/ Yeah, I mean, if Terry can get some other funding commitments, we' 11 be happy in my department to, you know, pursue...pursue it if you want. Wright/ I think it's worth investigating. Mims/ Sure. Bailey/ (mumbled) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Hayek/ It's a big facility. It's a...i:mportant decision. Page 56 Davidson/ Yeah, they like schools too because they can...they can reconfigure the gyms into performance spaces. Bailey/ (mumbled) Hayek/ (mumbled) public facility falls into that level of disrepair, uh... Bailey/ That's another (mumbled) (several talking) Champion/ I think it was deliberate (several talking) Hayek/ Okay, uh, so you have the direction you need, Jeff? Helling/ I think so. Terry's going to go back to the committee and...talk about the possibility of a joint study? (several talking) And...share the costs, yeah. Hayek/ Okay. Well, it looks like we're (several talking). Mobile vendor regulations. Mobile Vending Regulations (IPS of 12/2/10): Helling/ Yes! You received a memo from Kathy and I, um, basically the situation that has existed or that continues to exist, um...essentially what there...we're spending a lot of time (several talking) to administer this whole (laughter and several talking) that would be great! If you, if everybody agrees with that (several talking). Kathy's here if you have any questions of (several talking and laughing) Mims/ I said I like the recommendations! Champion/ Me too! Just let them sell whatever they want! Hayek/ Uh, Regenia, you seem to be the voice of opposition on this. What are your thoughts? Bailey/ Well, I mean, I'm assuming that vendors will be allowed to sell any and all food products? Okay, cause food is mention...is missing from that. Champion/ Oh, probably cause... Helling/ Your ordinance would allow vendors to sell something other than food. But, nobody ever has. Bailey/ I would like to be very specific about it being food, myself. I mean, unless... Dickens/ Stick with food. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 57 Mims/ Yeah. Helling/ We can make that change. Bailey/ I mean, you want...people to get vending permits for jewelry sales, I mean, I don't know. Dickens/ We already had the lady walking through with her boards, so... Helling/ We have mobile vendor or, uh, ambulatory vendors. Bailey/ We do! Helling/ Ironically, to let you know how long it's been since we did this, uh, one of the thoughts was somebody might want to sell like magazines and tobacco products. (laughter) Way back! Uh, when that wouldn't have been acceptable. Dickens/ Stick with food, cause th;at's regulated. Helling/ Yeah, and...and that's (several talking) other than food or beverages. Non-alcoholic! Bailey/ And then, the only thing is remove the required hours, I mean, I think it needs a little bit more structure. I'm not...I'm not desiring overstructure, but allow vendors to operate when they wish. Well, it...I mean, could we say a minimum number of hours per week or month or something? It just seems...I don't know. Helling/ ...so difficult to regulate to...to know... Champion/ How many hours they"ve been there! Helling/ ...when they're down there, and self-reporting (several talking) uh, that's something we found out, and when you get... get feedback from time to time from other vendors about that vendor who is supposed to be there from 11:30 to 1:30 and... Bailey/ It's highly competitive and so why wouldn't I just get a mobile vendor permit so you couldn't. I'll get one of the five so my competitor can't. But I'll never be down there. I just have a permit. Wright/ Then you don't have a competitor! Bailey/ Well... Wright/ If you're never there! Bailey/ I mean, I don't know it just seems too unstructured, I mean, I thought that we came up with this idea of having mobile vendors because they added to an ambiance of a downtown. If we have permits but they're never used then...it just... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 58 Mims/ I guess my thought would be to go with the recommendations and if...if we find that they're never there, then I think we need to relook at the whole vendor situation. Bailey/ Okay, but...we don't do...we do minimal inspections, so how are we going to ascertain that? Helling/ Well, we can certainly... Mims/ Midnight! Helling/ (mumbled) on their downtown walking patrols, and tell us if they're there or not. Some of them will only be there at night, late at night. Bailey/ Well, and I understand (several talking) and I don't have any problem with that, but if you're going to have a permit, I mean, for some purpose, I think you should be down there on occasion! Mims/ Well, you know (several talking) Bailey/ Especially if we're reducing the number of permits to five. I...I don't know. I...I like the mobile vendors. I think that if...if it's something that... Mims/ If it's profitable, they'll be there. I mean, that's the way I look at it. (several talking) Hayek/ I think, I mean, your concern...is legitimate, that theoretically somebody could try to acquire (both talking) squeeze out the competition, but...maybe, you know, wait to see if we see that kind of (both talking) Bailey/ I think...I think that that's completely...that's fine with me. I just...L..you know, no regulation, I don't know...then why...I don't know. Helling/ It wouldn't be no regulation and...and... Bailey/ About hours, I mean. Helling/ Oh, okay. Bailey/ Yeah. No, I know you're not going to let them serve, you know, things that aren't health inspected... Helling/ And Kathy...Kathy may be able to speak to this better than I can because she...she has more direct communications with the vendors, but um...typically, uh, they'll be there during certain events like Arts Fest, Jazz Fest, they'll be there during the day. Uh, Friday evenings they'll be there early for Friday Night Concert, anything that's going on that brings people downtown, but on a normal day, uh, you may not...you don't find `em This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 59 down there in the evening now. They were really taking a hit during the evenings, and so we (several talking) um, and now they're...they're experiencing the same thing, and originally as... as we indicated in the memo, they were the only outdoor venue when they started, and (several talking) and now you have sidewalk cafes all over the place and uh, they're just less in demand during the day and most of `em are saying that they...and, this is not unlike other businesses, but they basically have to subsidize their, uh, bosses during the day with their profits at: night. Bailey/ Right. Well and, there are a wider range of food choices downtown, um, at different price points, and when the vendors started, you know, lunch was typically you know not as, not such a bargain as you could get from the vendors and now you can. Okay. Champion/ But I think all businesses that regulate their hours, when they're going to sell what they're selling, I mean, I'm certainly not going to be open at the 2:00 in the morning, cause I'm probably not going to have any customers, but I mean I think you really have to give them (several talking) okay! Helling/ And we are...we are raising it to $1,000 a year for the...for the price, so nobody's likely to get a permit and then not (several talking) Bailey/ As long as it says "food products." Hayek/ So with the food modification, we're good to go? Champion/ Uh-huh. Hayek/ Good to go. Info packets. Helling/ Kathy says thank you (laughter) Champion/ Glad you came, Kathy! Mims/ Thank you for (several talking) Champion/ But you don't have to deal with the taxicabs, do you? That's Marian! (laughter) Karr/ Yeah, and some of these same arguments, I'm going to remember and try and (laughter and several talking) Bailey/ I think we've...we're done with taxis now, right? (laughter) Hayek/ See you, Kathy. Champion/ Thanks, Kathy! Info Packet Discussion (Dec. 2): This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 20]0 City Council Work Session Page 60 Hayek/ Uh, Info Packets. We've talked about most of the stuff. Anything else on the Info Packet? (several talking) Council time? Council Time: Wright/ I have a question. It just happened that I (mumbled) and it's a night when I could ask it, and I have to preface my question by saying, I'm Jewish, so don't get down on me for that...that angle here. The Menorah that shows up on the ped mall every year... Bailey/ Eleanor can tell (mumbled) your annual (mumbled) Wright/ Well, I just...I...part of me questions the...something with a religious symbol on public property, um, that it shows up every year when we don't have...I imagine a Koresh would not be welcomed on the ped mall, for example. Dilkes/ If, uh, entity came in wanting to put a Koresh there under the terms of our code, which allows it there for 30 days, throughout the course of the year, yes they could. Wright/ Oh, okay, that's good! Then I have a follow up question to that. Is there any way to ask them to make...to have a little bit of an aesthetic standard (laughter)? Cause this thing is patched up with duct tape and (laughter) and weighted down with cement blocks and sandbags and it desperately needs a paint job. Dilkes/ I...you go ahead (laughter) and talk to them about that. We...we wouldn't do that. Dickens/ They got it up about two days late too! Champion/ Yes! Wright/ I wondered about that, yeah. Champion/ It was a little late! (several talking) Dickens/ I think they had to get it working again. Champion/ I have... Wright/ Duct tape was a nice touch! Champion/ I have a duct tape coffee mug! Um, I have two small things. Um, because I've been out at Bud's a lot, does anybody go to Bud's to get your tires fixed (mumbled) um, because my daughter's had a couple accidents with my car, um...and Scott Boulevard, you can be backed up thirty and forty cars on Scott Boulevard and Muscatine, when you try to come home from Bud's! And I wonder if we've done any traffic studies there. It This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 61 seems to me there's a lot of trucks. I think it warrants a stoplight...to get those trucks moving, instead of moving two, three feet at a time! Hayek/ Bring Fosse back! Fosse/ Yes, that intersection does (;mumbled). Uh, during peak hours, and that's one of the projects you'll have presented to you in the capital program this year. Uh, typically we budget $120,000, $180,00() a year for traffic signals, and (mumbled) that will require the addition of a center turn lake, similar to what we did at the intersection of Court and Scott. So that's about a $600,000 project. It'll be on your platter in January. Bailey/ It doesn't warrant lights! (laughter) Champion/ I've been out there several different times of the day and there's a big backup on Scott Boulevard, um, well, not...maybe not forty cars, but... Dickens/ Light don't take care of every problem, cause First Avenue's that bad any more, I mean (mumbled) other areas have had lights already (several talking) Champion/ The other thing I wanted to ask is (several talking) maybe we can ask Parks and Rec if they've talked at all about natural bur...burial areas in the cemetery. Natural burial sites. Where you're not...where you're just wrapped in a sheet and buried (several talking) no coffin, no...nolle of those concrete tombs that keep you around forever and ever. Cedar Rapids has one. Hayek/ So would you like us to look into that, we have our resident expert over there, Marian. Champion/ (laughter) No, I'm...no, I'm wondering if (several talking and laughing) because it's kind of a growing trend and...and uh, it seems very valid to me. You don't have to be embalmed (several talking) Bailey/ We have requirements in our... Karr/ We do have requirements. Now whether they're...I'd have to check to see what they're based on. You're saying Cedar Rapids has it? Champion/ Yeah. Karr/ We'd have to check to see if...(several talking) Champion/ I don't know. I don't know, but...I know Lensing is offering that kind of burial. They must be putting those bodies somewhere! Karr/ Which leads way to why Matt thought I know where the dead bodies are buried. Got it! (laughter) I'll check...I'll check with the cemetery. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 62 Champion/ But I think it's worth looking into. It's a going trend and not everybody wants to be encased in something forever. Dickens/ (mumbled) Champion/ Me too, but (mumbled) (several talking) Hayek/ Any other Council time? (laughter) Bailey/ Now that we're thinking about death! Mims/ I would just mention, um, last week we had the, Marian, you might have to help me out - the CEO/RWIB board meeting. It's Workforce Development is a big part of this, okay. I go twice a year, so I know something about it. Uh, the...Workforce Development is in Eastdale Plaza, and Voc Rehab is in Eastdale Plaza, and Goodwill is in Eastdale Plaza, and the whole Workforce Development in the State of Iowa is changing and going to an integrated model, and they have...let me tell you, there are so many different funding streams and programs under Workforce Development, it is literally an alphabet zoo! Um, but they have gone to an integrated model in Cedar Rapids, in Lindale Plaza or Lindale Mall, um, on the Younker's side, and I was in there the other day for the meeting and it is an incredibly improved model that the State is moving towards. People who are looking for jobs or upgrading or need skill assessment, computer training, whatever it might be, they basically come in, they become a member, and then they can do kind of a one-stop assessment and then kind of get them directed out to different people. They are trying to move towards an integrated model here in Iowa City, and one of the things they're looking at is space, and so one of the things I asked them about, um, you know, was were they happy at...at Eastdale, and they are. They like being at Eastdale. They like the location. They're on the bus route. They're close to Kirkwood, etc. Um, but they are looking at maybe trying to shift around that...that is all condominiums in Eastdale Plaza now. And so they're working with... some of them have the same landlord, and so they're trying to work with maybe shifting some spaces and getting more square footage so they can do more of this integration, um, so I just wanted to make the Council and staff, whatever, aware of it, cause I just...and I'm...I offered to be on a subcommittee to help them as they work through this integration process so that if there's any assistance or input or anything from the City that maybe we could help with in any way, I wanted them to make sure that they let me know so I could bring it back to staff and Council if there was any kind of coordination that we could help with. Um...I think they could use ultimately more square footage than what they have, but um...it's a...it's a good direction that the State is going in in terms of integrating these services. So... Hayek/ Keep us posted! Mims/ Yeah, I will. Hayek/ Anybody else? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 63 Budget Priorities: Okay. Budget? Coming up! (laughter) Pending work session issues? Summary of Pending Work Session Issues (IP6): Mims/ Coming up! Higgins/ I do have one thing I'd like to bring up, um...the, I've been hearing a lot about, um, tenant, uh, renter tenant relations, and uh, that's kind of one thing that I'd like to discuss in the future. Um... so it's one of the biggest complaints that I hear from current students, I mean, besides the 21-ordinance, which I don't think we're going to revisit any time soon (laughter). So I thought I'd move on to this one! (laughter) But, um...so I...I've reviewed what other cities do and what Iowa City does. Iowa City doesn't have, um, ordinances that kind of...that address it beyond what the State statutes say. So um...I've kind of...I've drafted a proposal with some basic um, protections that would be extended to...to tenants, and um, I'd like to...to discuss the particulars of this proposal with each of you individually and then, um, you know, if...if there seems to be some support or if you guys have advice on that, I would take that and revise the proposal, turn it over to the City staff, have them give their input, and then maybe address it...I spoke with Marian about it earlier. Um, she said maybe late January, after, um, the budget stuff. Karr/ So (mumbled) you just want to at this point add it to the pending list until after you talked to Council, and then (both talking) Hayek/ I think we're open to that, as long as...I would encourage you to meet with...with Eleanor's office as well to make sure your read syncs up with our read, her read, and get any suggestions they might have. Mims/ I mean, I know that...I had two of my kids went to school in Kansas, and let me tell you, the state laws in Kansas are a whole lot better than here! In terms...well, number one, for example, in the state of Kansas, and I don't think this is just a Lawrence law. I'm pretty sure it was under state law, they have to...you have to do a joint walk through between the tenant and the landlord within three days of moving in to do an inspection sheet, and if they don't do it within three days, the landlord cannot keep your deposit, no matter how much damage you do to the apartment. I mean, just...certain things like that. We...we end up with an issue of living on a hill, flood water in a basement apartment, I mean, had to get him moved out, I mean, kind of situation. Let me tell you, they're public people for housing were a great help in informing me of the state law in Kansas. Bailey/ And I know that student, um, Student Government did take this to the legislature, was it two years... Champion/ ...got that one thing passed about deposits. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Page 64 Bailey/ Yeah, but...but I think, yeah. If there's something we could do locally, because I don't think it's going to move state (several talking) I mean, let's get it on the pending and see what.. . Mims/ ...and I don't know what we can do at the local level, what the State allows us to do. So, that's why I would agree with what Matt said is to talk to Eleanor maybe sooner rather than later so...but yeah! Dickens/ Do we need to add the Roosevelt back on to the, say the January 10th work session, or do you have a group of things that you add on? Karr/ We can certainly put it on the pending list. January 10th is your next meeting and it's a combined meeting. Dickens/ Oh, that's a combined meeting! Karr/ Yes, it's a work session and a formal. That's entirely up to you. Hayek/ (several talking) just use your discretion, when you think it needs to be back on there. Dickens/ I get the minutes from the next meeting, which is Monday night, I'll forward those into the next packet. Karr/ We can always put it in the packet and you can talk about it under packet discussion, as well, cause the...it'd be in the packet. (several talking) Bailey/ And you're not going to lose track of the issue, so...you'll keep...you'll make sure we will! Dickens/ I'm trying to! (laughter) Helling/ As I indicated last time, I...put some dates on these. Hopefully they can sync with your priorities. We've got ICAD presentation, will probably be at a formal meeting, fairly short, and uh, be on TV that way, and I think that's their preference. So if everything else works, we'll try to keep that, those dates as much as possible. Community Events/Council Invitations: Hayek/ Okay. Upcoming events, Council invites? The Wreaths Across America event is Saturday, 10:30 or 11:00. I'll attend. Typical jam-packed schedule. They want to fly over (laughter) Mims/ At what altitude? Hayek/ Yeah! (laughter and several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010. December 6, 2010 City Council Work Session Wright/ (mumbled) (several talking) Page 65 Hayek/ Any other invites? (several talking) All right, meeting schedules? (mumbled) All right. See you tomorrow night. Good work tonight! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Work Session of December 6, 2010.