Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-03-22 TranscriptionPage 1 ITEM 2. PROCLAMATIONS. a) Peace Corps Volunteer Day: March 22, 2011 Hayek: (reads proclamation) Karr: Here to accept the proclamation is University of Iowa Peace Corps representative Meredith Gall. (applause) Gall: Thank you. We have several Peace Corps, uh, Return Peace Corps volunteers in the audience today. If you could raise your hands to show who's here. Thank you for coming. Um, I'm the Peace Corps representative for the University of Iowa, and a Former Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana from 1995 to 1997. Um, as the UI representative, Ihave the pleasure of interacting with Return Peace Corps volunteers in the area and can witness first-hand their contributions to Iowa City and the surrounding areas. Return Peace Corps volunteers share their stories of their service and information about their host countries in local events and in civic organizations. They give presentations to local schools, elementary schools, junior highs, and high schools. They bring their commitment to service and their global understanding to current issues facing Iowa City, and are actively volunteering and using their skills here in the community. Iowa City also offers a lot of volunteers the opportunity to prepare for the Peace Corps, and applicants are out there putting in many hours, tutoring and working for, um, health and environmental agencies here. They too are helping where needed and gaining skills that they will then use in the Peace Corps. Iowa City is richer because of the presence of both the future and Return Peace Corps volunteers in the community. Thank you! Hayek: And, uh, I'll note...we've got another speaker...absolutely! Come forward! Hansen: I am, uh, Katy Hansen, a Return Peace Corps volunteer who served, uh, from 1967 to 68 in Nigeria. I taught chemistry and mathematics in the secondary school. I've been active in the Return Peace Corps volunteer movement since it started in Omaha, uh, at the University of Nebraska's Third World Conference back in 1978. At first we called ourselves the National Council of Return Peace Corps volunteers. Uh, in 1986, we celebrated the Peace Corps' 25t" anniversary and then opened up an office in Washington, D.C. Some place along the way we changed our name to the National Peace Corps Association. Along with the national organization, 140 member groups of RPCVs are organized and active in local areas and nationally around the United States. This includes the Iowa Peace Corps Association formed in 1986. We have held local events and managed to keep our PCVs in contact with each other, first through a quarterly newsletter, and then as email and listserves came into being, through an electronic listserve, uh, operated in cooperation with the Peace Corps recruiting office here at the University of Iowa. In Iowa there are more than 1,000 Return Peace Corps Volunteers. We are high school and elementary school teachers. We work in state government and in, uh, non-profit sector. Return Peace Corps volunteers are This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 2 making a difference back home, helping our neighbors to understand the people we work with and helping us all to live in a globalized world. The National Peace Corps Association and its members strive for a world in peace, shaped by understanding and tolerance. First, uh, we learn the obvious, uh, the differences between people in the countries where we serve. Second, we learn behavioral differences and learn how to act in a different culture. Uh, third, we learn a new culture, uh, with new values and new beliefs, and then we try to make sense of it all and make peace here at home. Thank you. Dameron: Good evening. My name is Graham Dameron. Uh, I've been in Iowa City since, uh, 1976, um...I, uh, was first, uh, after March 1S` in 1961, I made application to the Peace Corps and uh, was accepted in...in May of 1961. Um, after an F.B.I. investigation in my hometown, um, they decided that I was okay, uh, and then um, in September I got a...a telegram from Peace Corps headquarters saying, "How would you like to go to a Midwestern university and study and uh, then go to a southeast Asian country?" Um, and I accepted, so in October of 1961, I went to Thailand as a malaria eradication, uh, entomologist, and uh, spent two years there, um, well, actually I spent three months in the University of Michigan, and went to Thailand in January of 1962, and returned in 1963. It's been a lifetime experience, and uh, I certainly commend. the Council for making this proclamation, on behalf of all the Peace Corps volunteers in America. Hayek: Well, and coincidentally this evening we have a number of, uh, journalism students here in...in the crowd, and let me make a pitch to you. If my wife is watching I need to, uh, preface this by saying with the exception, uh, of... of the decision to get married to her, that my (laughter) decision to go into the Peace Corps...my decision to join the Peace Corps, which I did at age 22, right out of college, was the single best decision I have made in all of my years, and I encourage you to take a look at it if you're curious about what comes next after college. So, thanks for... for being here. Champion: (mumbled) I have several nieces who have gone to the Peace Corps. I kind of talked them into it, and they will never, ever regret it. So seriously think about it. It's really a...an important part of your life that you...that youth you bring out of college! Hayek: So...next proclamation is for Meals on Wheels. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 3 ITEM 2. PROCLAMATIONS. b) Meals on Wheels: March 23, 2011 Hayek: (reads proclamation) Karr: Here to accept the proclamation is Elder Services representative Mary Wiemann. (applause) Wiemann: Thank you very much. I'm Mary Wiemann. I am the Executive Director of Elder Services, and as the Mayor said, we have been the Meals on Wheels provider in Iowa City, Johnson County, area for eight years, but I'd like to commend this entire community. The federal government began the federal funding stream for meals to the elderly in 1976, and this community organized in 1978, a mere two years after that funding stream was established to start a Meals on Wheels and Senior Dining program. In fact, uh, it was started at the Close Mansion, when it was a Department of Human Services facility for the County, and up until last year, we used that original stove to produce meals out of the Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center, where it was moved, uh, from the Close Mansion to the Senior Center in 1980 when the kitchen was relocated up there. So, um, thank you for giving us this proclamation. Thank you for the recognition for Elder Services and for the important role that Meals on Wheels and nutrition plays with seniors. It is through our partnership with the Senior Center and out of that kitchen we serve 300 seniors a day, and that number is growing every day, and it is volunteers. So if you're not going to volunteer for the Peace Corps, think about volunteering for Meals on Wheels because we could use you there too. Thank you all very, very much. Hayek: Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 4 ITEM 5. PLANNING AND ZONING MATTERS. a) CONSIDER A MOTION SETTING A PUBLIC HEARING FOR APRIL 5 ON A RESOLUTION AMENDING THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TO INCLUDE THE SOUTHEAST DISTRICT PLAN, FOR PROPERTY GENERALLY LOCATED SOUTH OF COURT STREET, EAST OF SYCAMORE STREET & FIRST AVENUE, NORTH OF HIGHWAY 6 AND WEST OF THE CITY'S EASTERN GROWTH BOUNDARY. Bailey: Move to set the public hearing. Dickens: Second. Hayek: Moved by Bailey, seconded by Dickens. Discussion? Bailey: I do have a question about, um, when we'll be receiving this, because I remember...well, it was the last time we did this. We had quite a bit of comment. Oh... Davidson: Yeah, that's a very good question. Um, and we actually thought of that already. So we're going to try and get that in your Information Packet this Thursday, so you'll have a good solid ten days, twelve days to look at it and, uh, give yourself a little bit of extra time. It is kind of a lengthy document, but (mumbled) real good public input process to produce that, so you'll want to give it a good scrutiny, and then we'll have the, uh, presentation on the St'' along with the public hearing. Hayek: Thanks, Jeff. Bailey: Thanks. Hayek: Further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Opposed say nay. Motion carries 6-0. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 5 ITEM 5. PLANNING AND ZONING MATTERS. b) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION APPROVING PRELIMINARY AND FINAL PLAT OF EPS FIRST ADDITION (A SUBDIVISION OF A PORTION OF LOT 19, HIGHLANDER DEVELOPMENT FIRST ADDITION,) IOWA CITY, IOWA. Wright: Move to... Dilkes: Mr. Mayor, we're going to need to defer this item. Uh, we still need signatures on the legal papers. Hayek: Okay. Do you have, uh, a date? Dilkes: April Stn Hayek: April Stn Bailey: Move to defer to April Stn Wright: Second. Hayek: Moved by Bailey, seconded. by Wright. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. Opposed say nay. Motion carries 6-0. This will be deferred until April Stn This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 6 ITEM 6. TO ADOPT THE IOWA CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY'S ANNUAL PLAN FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011. a) PUBLIC HEARING Hayek: This is a public hearing. (bangs gavel) The public hearing is open. Mr. Rackis. Rackis: Uh, good evening. I can't believe a year has gone by since, uh, we were last here. Uh, I just wanted to just quickly run through...the annual plan is really not a plan, it's a report, uh, but HUD decided to call it a plan and uh, as such, we did go to the Housing Commission and discuss it with them and shared the statistics and the data. Uh, there's just a few items that I'd...I'd like to point out, um...you know, we...we tend to get a lot of phone calls and queries from the general public, uh, try to refer them to the booklet, which is on the Internet, and I thought I'd just, you know, take a quick moment to, sort of, you know, address the...the primary questions that we tend to get, and...and one is, you know, where are the vouchers used, and in the book, uh, I did something a little bit different this year because we got the census data, and I looked at, uh, the preliminary census data that was reported at the state data center, uh, got all of the incorporated, um, areas of Johnson County, and then plotted, and this is a point in time. This was done, uh, the number of vouchers as of, uh, January 21 S~, uh, 2011. Just looking at that point in time, and plotting them by the particular city, and you can see, Iowa City has 62% of the population and at that time, 70% of the vouchers. Coralville had 17% of the population, 18% of the vouchers, and North Liberty 12% and...and 7%. When we've done this in the past, we've seen these numbers typically be in the area for Iowa City of 65 to 70%, Coralville anywhere from 20 to 25%, and North Liberty steady at about 7 to 9%. So in looking at this over...over the years, and again now with fresh data, we can see that, you know, the vouchers tend to go where the general population is at, and then um, another look at that same data that I could not fit into the format of the book was actually attached to the memo where we've broken it down by either city or recognized neighborhood association, and where there wasn't, uh, a neighborhood association, um, we used the designations that the Press-Citizen has for their map, uh, when they're plotting, uh, the...the crime. So, uh, like for example, there's no neighborhood association, Sycamore Mall industrial park, but there is some rental property there so we...we just sort of take the data. I think the one thing that is common here which leads into another theme that we saw a lot in the redistricting was the impact of our program on the School District, and you can see in just taking this point in time, and again, this is a longer data that was in the memo, at that point in time, we had, uh, 1,1.74 vouchers being utilized; 736 were households that did not have any minor children, uh, which works out to be 63% of all of the families that we were serving, uh, had no minor children. Then conversely, 37% or 438 families did, and so again, that's plotted by that neighborhood association, or city, showing the total, uh, households with minors and households without minors. Uh, the next thing is who...who's on the program, after taking a look at those households. Um...as always, now this data is...is not point in time, uh, it's...it's, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 7 uh, data that we report to HUD. Every time there's a change in the family composition or change in income, we have to report those changes to HUD. HUD also requires that we conduct annual, uh, exams and reviews of the household to reestablish the income and the family size. So this data covers, um, a...a five- quarter period of time and when we look at those five quarters, 96% of the families are either elderly, disabled, or working families. If... if we break that down, elderly and disabled are 70%, or about 865 families, uh, elderly alone is 188 or 15%, and working families are 44% or 546. Uh, the program was designed by Congress to help elderly, disabled, and working families, and you can see by this, uh, data that that's, you know, primarily who we are serving. Again, over this longer period of time, uh, we look at households without minor children, and over that period of time, 59% of the households did not have minors, and uh, 41 did. Uh, further data to s how that it's working families and predominantly elderly, disabled, or then when we look at income sources, and we see that Social Security or supplemental security income is 64% of the sources, and employment is 44% of the sources. Um, I threw in people who receive income from the Family Investment Program. This is the welfare reform program, and we typically have about 9%, uh, of the program are receiving income from that source, but when I look at the families that have that reported as their sole source of income, it's 3% or for this reporting period, only 37 families. Um...the other thing is how long can people stay or how long people are on the program. Uh, 60% of all of our participants exit the program in five years or less. If you look at, um, five to ten years or people that stay ten years or less, that percentage jumps up to 83%. So, again, demonstrating that the longevity in the program is primarily the elderly and disabled families who are on fixed incomes and prospects for self-sufficiency are...are limited. Uh, the one thing that I've done in error in the past, and I've corrected in this, is we started comparing the number of minor children that we have on the program and comparing that to what the School District is reporting for free and reduced lunch eligibility. The School District is reporting the number of children in families that have actually applied for free and reduced lunch. Uh, now they suspect that there are more families that are eligible for free and reduced lunch, but may not have applied. What I've been counting is the number of families whose income would make them eligible for free and reduced lunch, but we have no idea whether or not those families have applied or not. So for this school year, the um...the School District report, uh, that 29.6% of all students, um, we eligible for free and reduced lunch, which is about 3,461. Uh, what I've done in the past is just counted minors. This year I broke out the...the kids that were actually school-age so the total minor children at this point in time that I did the numbers that are participants in our program is 1,163, but actually, um, only 629... actually 811 are K through 12, and of the 811, 629 are actually eligible for the free and reduced lunch. So we...we represent less than a third of that number. Uh, the other key thing that we did this year is we, um, we closed the waiting list in January of 2011 because the wait was two plus years and that was just creating false hope. We reopened the list, uh, this February and we reopened it once we exhausted all of the families that, um, claimed their residency preference. So when we were left with nothing but This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 8 families who live outside of our jurisdiction, we reopened the list and to date, and that was February 9t". To date we've received about 600 applications for the Housing Choice voucher program, and 350 for...for public housing. Uh, the other, uh, neat thing that we did, we...we continued to partner with the, uh, Iowa City Area Association of Realtors and this year with the help of cable TV, they did all the work, uh, we now have our homebuyer education course online where people can review the videos, uh, take the examination online, uh, review the examination, go back if they have to, so we typically taught that class live twice a year. Now families can...365 days out of the year access that class and get that homebuyer certification that's required by, uh, many programs, like Habitat for Humanity, banks, United States Department of Agriculture, uh, a lot of lenders require, uh, that people take that class. So, we've expanded that class by, and of course people can check out the DVDs if they're so inclined. Last thing that I put in the executive summary, um, Congress just passed athree-week continuing resolution, uh, we are still operating under that continuing resolution. Again, all of our funding is federal. So at the end of that continuing resolution we will be six months into the federal fiscal year and still not really knowing what our actual budget for calendar year 2011's going to be. So we...we monitor that very closely with the, um, with the advocacy groups that...that we belong to, and provide data to HUD and uh, and Congress so that, you know, as they debate this, they can understand how the impacts, uh, affect each housing authority. So, that's really all I have, um, unless you have any questions. Hayek: Any questions for Steve? Bailey: It's a very thorough report. Thank you! Hayek: Thanks, Steve! Rackis: Thank you! Hayek: Would anyone else like to address the Council during this public hearing? Seeing none I will close the hearing at this time. (bangs gavel) b) CONSIDER A RESOLUTION Bailey: Move adoption of the resolution. Champion: Second. Hayek: Moved by Bailey, seconded by Champion. Discussion? Roll call, please. Item passes 6-0. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011.. Page 9 ITEM 11. CONSIDER A RESOLUTION AWARDING CONTRACT AND AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO SIGN AND THE CITY CLERK TO ATTEST A CONTRACT FOR CONSTRUCTION OF THE NORTHSIDE MARKETPLACE IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT. Hayek: Bids were received on this project and Public Works and Engineering recommends awarding the contract to All American Concrete out of West Liberty for, uh, just over $702,000, uh, the Engineer's estimate had been, uh, north of $747,000. Bailey: Move adoption. Dickens: Second. Hayek: Moved by Bailey, seconded by Dickens. Discussion? Roll call, please. Item passes 6-0. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011. Page 10 ITEM 16. CITY COUNCIL INFORMATION. Hayek: We'll start down with Council Member Mims. Mims: Nothing! Champion: Just want to remind people about some of the awful things that are going on in Japan, and there are almost a million people living without much food and water in horrible, cold conditions, and we're all (mumbled) with the nuclear reactors there and the news kind of forgets about the people and I hope Americans will really dig in their pockets and send some money to Japan. Japan is a very giving country and has helped this country and many countries during their disasters, and I just think what's going on there is horrible for the people and we all forget that it's the people who are really suffering. Bailey: Um, I just wanted to note the passing of Dean Thornberry, somebody who served up here, um, in these seats and his, uh, dedication to the City, and I just wanted to express appreciation for that and dedication to, um, animals and his, uh, generous donation to the Thornberry Dog Park, so um, just note that and our community, uh, loss of a leader. Hayek: Um, I also want to, uh, recognize Dwane Noser and the Noser family, uh, Ewers Men's Clothing Store. Mr. Noser was a... a stalwart downtown, uh, on the Chamber and with the Downtown Association, and left a... a legacy for us all to follow. Um, also, uh, want to let the public know that at last night's work session, uh, the Council and staff decided to experiment with moving up the starting time on our work sessions. Work sessions are typically held on Mondays before the Tuesday formal meeting, and starting April 4t" we will, uh, start our work sessions at 5:30 P.M. Um...let's see here...and I...Eleanor, I wasn't going to bring this out, but uh, Eleanor Dilkes, the City Attorney, is celebrating, uh, has reached the 15-year milestone with the City and um, just want to recognize you for a job well done and you're a huge asset to this operation. Thank you for all that you do! Okay! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special formal Iowa City City Council meeting of March 22, 2011.