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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-01-10 TranscriptionJanuary 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Council Present: Botchway, Dickens, Dobyns, Hayek, Mims, Payne, Throgmorton Staff Present: Markus, Dilkes, Andrew, Mansfield, Fruin, Karr, Schaul, Bockenstedt Page 1 Hayek/ 8:00, welcome everybody to the 2016 FY budget session. Markus/ Can we start over with a little more enthusiasm? (laughter) Hayek/ Yea I know it. I will wake up at 8:11 and join the crowd at that time. Um Marian, thanks for putting things together this morning. Someone is making noise. Botchway/ It's me, mic on the wrong side. Hayek/ Alright, so with that I will turn it over to the capable hands of our staff. Thank you. Markus/ Well thanks and good morning. There is certain people in this audience that actually see this as a holiday, this guy, his two staff members and Simon, this is kind of the culmination of all their work and effort and there is a lot of work that goes into this, it's a big document. Rick was commenting jokingly that we needed an executive summary of the manager's message and I have to tell you it is a pretty robust long message um... probably longer than what I typically do but the ... this budget is fairly complex in terms of the community. We have I think 158 59 million dollars in total expenditures so this is a big operation in terms of our community and at the time we are putting all of this information together we are dealing with all the other issues that confront our city right now. And quite frankly they are pretty significant so while we are dealing with those issues we are trying to figure out how to infuse those issues and resolutions to those issues into this document. And understand that our state has passed major property tax reform and so you know we're ... we've got an eye out quite a ways past this actual budget time frame. Um kind of taking all those things into consideration when we go through the document and we go through the requests from the different departments to make sure that everything is smooth and that if the expected backfill elimination actually occurs that we have the ability to land smoothly rather than abruptly. So with that we will take you to our Fosse point presentation (laughter) so that you don't forget our long tenured public works director. So today we're here. Karr/ Excuse me Tom, we have handouts of the slides do you want me to hand those out? Markus/ Oh yea absolutely. Karr/ They are right there, that pile. Markus/ So while those are being handed out you can just kind of look at our schedule, today we are here going through this document for the first time collectively, um the capital improvement program will be dealt with on the 12th, we will actually hold our public hearing on the document March 9th and we'll actually ask for This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 2 formal improvement on that same date. According to state law you have to have your budgets approved by March 15th. So ... we, you know, we are cutting it a little short but it's um I suspected if there is any major concerns we can adjust that schedule and meet it but in the past that hasn't been a big challenge. In terms of um the work session agenda today we are going to go through this overview of the document the intent here is to give you kind of the big picture of what the document entails and then get into some of the details as each of the departments come forward and talk to you about their particular operations. And encourage you to engage the department heads, that's fine, I think to understand what they deal with and um some of their challenges is a good thing. So we go through the different sections of the document and the general government, public safety, parks and leisure, enterprise funds, public works budget and then towards the end a Q&A general counsel discussion to determine if there is anything in here that you want to see changed, reduced in any fashion, um... or enhanced or any questions you have. And feel free during the course of all this you know to jump in and ask questions if you have any. We hope to have an open conversation about this document and how we are spending our money. The document itself consists of the transmittal letter, financial and fiscal policies, and a lot of times that is easy to gloss over but you should really make yourselves familiar with those polices because they kind of guide exactly what we do in terms of setting up the document and how we spend our money. Um there is summary information in the fund overviews and then we do a lot of supplemental information, one of the things that I think is really important is to do the comparative analysis. So when we look at these documents we want to make comparisons to what other cities, comparable type of communities to us, what they are doing and how they fund things and what their expenses are so that our Council is informed and our public is informed how we spend our money and you know how we compare to these other places. And there is a lot of differences between you know the largest communities in the state as to how they fund things and what they pay for. So ... that all shakes out into things like tax rates and utility rates and we get into some comparative analysis on that and I think you can learn from others do in terms of whether you want to keep doing the things the way we are doing them or if there may be some best practices from other jurisdictions in the state of Iowa are doing that we may want to adopt... So the goals for this budget are to prepare for property tax shortfall resulting from the 2013 legislature changes while maintaining service levels, maintain the City's Moody Triple Aaa bond rating, maintain a competitive tax and fee environment for economic development purposes and utilize the strategic plan priorities to guide our financial decisions. Urn... continue to follow industry best practices and pursue the GFOA distinguished budget award and the annual reporting award. Um... just as a note we have received the annual reporting award here in the City for 29 straight years so obviously that is something that the City has taken a great deal of pride in. We started the budget award process and we've received that for the last three consecutive years. It's not so much that we need to be receiving another plaque or another award but the document itself is reviewed by our peers across the country and it gives us a lot of feedback as to the types of information we are providing and just how other places are doing things so ... we see the benefit from that standpoint... In terms of budget highlights, we are preparing for the impact of the property tax reform, we created This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 3 an emergency fund last year. The whole idea of the emergency fund was that we would have a soft landing if in fact the backfill was pulled on us so this emergency fund not only allows us to use funds for that purpose but some other purposes as stated on the chart, I will not go into great detail on those. Um ... this is the fourth year of the property tax rate we are reducing. Urn ... there is about one point growth in our taxable valuation when you look at the rollback it is actually a rollup in terms of residential properties. And then you offset that against the setback of commercial property tax reform the net result is about 1.1%. Um ... the tax rate is actually been reduced since fiscal year 12 by about 6.6% the rate dropped from $17.84 to $16.65 during that period of time and it's actually going to be the lowest tax rate you've had in this city since fiscal year 2002 so... I take some personal pride in and I think the employees do too in working hard to you know work on that tax rate and work on the efficiency of our operations and still provide a very high level of our services. (coughing/clearing of throat) At this point, the balance at the end of fiscal year 15 in the emergency fund is just under 3 million dollars so we have set up a situation where we do have a cushion when rollback is likely to be reduced. And just so you know um ... the rollback here in Iowa City from the State, based on property tax reform, is at the rate of 2 million dollars per year so if that gets pulled back along with the other adjustments in property tax reform it is a pretty significant hit on our community. And you really need to be in a position where you can cushion that blow so that you don't take that impact all in one particular fiscal year. Um ... that enough on those comments. In terms of budget highlights, there are some rate increases that we are proposing, parks and rec, urn ... there are some rate increases inside that operation, I think our goal is to try to get operations to be covered about 50% by our fees for the different programs and facility rentals. The water is in the second year of two year approved 5% increase, landfill we are recommending (coughing) an increase in the tipping fee of $4, Neighborhood and Development Services we have some site plan fee adjustments that are going to be ... that are incorporated into the document and we'll come back afterwards with the legislature after the budget is adopted to actually adopt those fees. And one thing that we kind of came across that we've been having a lot of discussion on, especially with all the new schools being built, is back in the 70's the City passed a resolution that waived the fees for public buildings and Marian is researching the resolution on all this. I think the interpretation on this has been we don't charge building permit fees for the other agencies. That would all be well and good if everybody was doing that but we are expending a lot of money um ... you know... in building plan reviews, inspections of the new Alexander school and eventually the school out on the East side. And at the same time we are doing that without charging any fees our friends in North Liberty and Coralville are charging building permit fees. Now, when you get to the size of buildings like a high school or a grade school, those are tens of thousands of dollars in permit fees and so my recommendation is going to be that we take a hard look at that and consider rescinding that resolution. Now I don't know what all the dynamics were when that was passed back in the 70's, I have a suspicion it might have involved county buildings at the time and we would have been the primary recipient of the county building construction but until Marian has a chance to get into the minutes and see if there is any kind of dialogue on how that happened This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 4 really don't know what that is but we'll come back with a recommendation when we do the fee adjustments to deal with that. Dickens/ there was a lot of urban renewal at that time too. Markus/ But these are for public buildings and so you have to remember you are taxpayers here in Iowa City are paying a significant portion of the property tax that goes to the School District and so if the school district is paying their permit fees in North Liberty and in Coralville we are paying that and at the same time we are passing on our fees that come back to Iowa City so it is basically a subsidy buyout from us to other jurisdictions. So again, you have to pay attention to those type of things. I have mentioned it to the school administration um ... and had those conversations, and we all want the schools, that is not the issue, quite frankly I want the county buildings located in our city as the county seat, I think there is some benefit in having that, so I suppose you can pick and choose but we'll have to craft a resolution about that and I thought I would make you aware of the issue ... We continue with an aggressive capital improvement program and um ... as I said (coughing) try to follow our strategic plan in how we prepare our documents. Um ... tax reform impacts, we keep taking about it but it is kind of a reminder for you about what what's happening. In fiscal 15, which is the current fiscal year you are in, commercial property taxes were rolled back to 95% and the residential and agricultural values were limited to 3% state wide. Now the important part of that slide, or that half of the slide, as you look up there is cumulative 10 year loss on that provision alone is estimated to be about 21 million dollars. Now shift over to the right side of that slide, and in July of 15, which is the start of the 16 fiscal year, commercial properties will be rolled back to 90% and that rate continues in perpetuity. In many respects on the commercial side I kind of think we, we could have Lived with that, that would have been fine, it's when they moved into the multiple family that really clobbered us. The commercial, I was okay with that. Um... and then the annual backfill that is achieved that is a result of the state trying to make us whole is about 2 million dollars, so again, that is what is at risk. What does 2 million dollars pay for? You know, what does that mean 2 million dollars? Well it's about a fifth of your police field operations or a third of your fire emergency ops or a third of your library expenses or two thirds of your park expenses or two thirds of your trash collection or all the aquatics plus all of the senior center expenses or all of your hotel/motel plus all of your utility franchise revenue. It is meaningful. Go head Throgmorton/ Tom you just said or? Markus/ Yes, each — it could be any one of those. Throgmorton/ Any one of those, not all of those together? Markus/ Exactly, anyone of those. Karr/ Jim could you wear your mic for me, thank you. Markus/ I just trying to give you kind of a what does 2 million dollars mean in a grand scheme of things right, if you had to make this up by cutting expenses that is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 5 what it means. Um ... and then you can just see the differential in terms of values um... between the 3% and the 4% and that is what that 20 million dollar hit does to you over that two year period of time. So let's move to the next... Um ... tax reform impacts yet to come, here is the one you really want to pay attention to, this is your multiple family, multiple residential property class is broken out from commercial and so we are going to have three classifications of property now right, you are going to have residential, commercial and multiple family. And, um ... that value will decline to 8... it's at 100% right now but beginning in fiscal year 17 it will drop to 86.25% and then every year thereafter it will have a proportionate decline and until it gets to the rate of residential. Alright. So that is a significant impact over that period of time in fact the estimate is, and this does not have backfill, remember that, this is a 15 million dollar hit on our city. That is what's going to happen to us, so when you start to look at our reserves and you start to look at our fund balances and contingencies that's why we've put them where we have. Because I want to cushion this airliner coming down for its landing right, I don't want this to be just one big bang, I want it to be a nice smooth landing when it happens so we are looking out and for future years and for future councils and administrations as to what this impact will be. So we are trying to create a nice smooth glide path on this without really knowing when it's going to happen (coughing) if it's going to happen... Alright, so let's look a little bit at our property tax comparisons (coughing) this has been a focus of mine and there is debate on what this all means but we were tied for second (coughing) four or five years ago and we are down now to I think the fifth position in terms of our property tax rate but you can't just look at isolated parts of our budget document, whether they be revenues or expenses, you have to do the comparative analysis to really understand why, you know, why we are there and why somebody else is somewhere else that we'll do that. Utility rates, um ... we are kind of in the fourth position on that, a couple things I would note again as you start to really evaluate things um ... you'll note that um ... Ames and North Liberty their trash collection is provided by private contractors and so in the case of Ames they are right at the bottom but there isn't nothing shown but obviously they are paying something for trash collection so you know you get these, on occasion a citizen complains that this is too high or that's too high, again you have to have the context of what you are looking at in comparing everything so we've done a comparison on this. And the other thing I would say to you is in terms of your water and sewer production and treatment facilities they are very contemporary so a lot of those costs are very current. Now I would say to you while the plants are in very good shape and they have a lot of additional capacity, I think some of your distribution lines and receiving lines um ... do need some work. My ... Washington Street is a classic example of a water line that obviously needs to be replaced and that gets to be very expensive when you get into that kind of infrastructure replacement. As an older community we have some sections in town that I have some challenges in terms of distribution system and we are going to have to make some improvements and that is one of the reasons we are really pushing for the, or recommended a year ago, the two year water rate increase so that we can start addressing some of those distribution issues Payne/ So on the utility rates I don't see Coralville on the list. Is that because they are less than eleven? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 6 Hayek/ They are at the bottom there. Mims/ They are number 10. Payne/ Oh, why am I not seeing them, okay. Throgmorton/ Because it's 8:20 or whatever (laughter). Payne/ Yea, there you go Jim, thanks. Markus/ Now then a good example though I would tell you, you can look at these different rates and a year later a communities rates can jump significantly especially if they have to get into a plant, you know, expansion or a total rebuild. And the other thing you need to keep in mind is the Feds put a lot of pressure on us okay, on these issues. So in terms of your sewer plants um ... they may say that your outfall has to have um ... an additional treatment or you need to examine what it is doing to the receiving waters and hen all of a sudden you are talking about a major expansion of your plant. Um ... water facilities you know there is constantly being monitored you know in terms of our water quality there may be improvements that have to be made. And I can tell you in the mix of those communities we showed you in terms of utility rates there are some places on the cusp of having to do some major public works and your community, our community, has done those things, we've made some major improvements you know, we just abandoned the north plant we just gone through a major expansion of the south plant so over time I see us actually creeping a little lower offset somewhat by the actual line replacement we have to do. I think we'll move into a better position over time um ... with our plants. Hayek/ Do we face, in terms of water, sewer, those kinds of public utilities, does a city of our population face different or higher um... requirements visa via federal or state or is everybody in the same? Markus/ No I wouldn't say they are higher requirements but one of the things I've noted and Iowa is a great example of this um ... you know there is this whole discussion going on right now about um ... the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, the impacts and then backing that all up here and I can tell you the debate that is going on in the state legislature is going to put a lot of the responsibility on cities as opposed to the agricultural areas. And so that debate is going on and I think it's going to put some pressure on our rate and utilities going forward. Hayek/ I think the Des Moines water system just filed suit against ag interests. Mims/ Three counties. Markus/ That is a raging debate and um...I have kind of mixed emotions. Rick and I had a long conversation about that in terms of um... how you mitigate the impact and as I understand what's going on is they are going to talk about protecting areas around streams receiving waters into the water sheds right and so that would be This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 7 cheaper for us than to do, you know it's always that last 10% of improvement that you have to do, so what they are going to I think create is an environment where we can buy rights from rural areas which will cause more significant mitigation benefit instead of making that last incremental improvement here. And they will actually, the net benefit to the receiving waters will be better. But that is how they are orchestrating this process to occur. So they are putting a lot of pressure on us for that last increment and the way that will work out is we'll end up having to buy the rights from ag. And that is what I'm seeing kind of evolving the conversation. Geoff, do you want to chime in and... that's what you are hearing as well. Fruin/ Exactly. Throgmorton/ It's a very interesting idea and was originally proposed nearly 20 years ago at least and especially in the state of New York and we had some discussions about that 20 years ago on this council. Markus/ Yea it's one of those things you have to keep your eye on and the other things is Matt I think it's kind of an interesting conversation but what I've thought of is some of these rural places around the state of Iowa, these towns that are emptying out, water and sewer facilities are kind of a fixed cost kind of deal right, they are heavy infrastructure and you have to have a certain minimal number of people to plant operate these places. Well as those populations decline the way you make money in these enterprises is you sell water and sewer service right, so as that demand goes down, it puts more pressure on the utility and their rates have to go up. So in a growth situation, where we have capacity, we should have some marginal improvement in terms of what our rates are, we shouldn't have to increase quite as significantly once we get past some of the infrastructure improvement. We can continue that conversation when you get um... Ron Knoche up here... So, um ... where was I ... two more, okay ... this is just another example of a comparison of what other places do compared to us, I mean look at Des Moines for example in terms of their utility franchise tax around 7.5% and of course that is a revenue source that comes in. Des Moines by the way, if you look at what Des Moines has been going through for the last decade I mean they have been in a ... you know... shedding employees left and right. The impact on Des Moines is pretty dramatic and um... I think it is how they are jux disposed and their metropolitan areas core city versus the loss of development that has occurred in their suburban areas which is why I'm so concerned about being competitive and getting reinvestment and getting economic development in our community because we have challenges in terms of providing services and you have to in the long run, you have to balance that with some property tax um ... value increases to compensate for increases in services and demands. And so these are some of the ways other places are generating revenues and will continue with that. Um ... of course we had the whole conversation about local option sales tax. Um ... I personally have encouraged um ... at least the staff and Susan sits in on that discussion to kind of pay attention to what goes on in our legislature this year. You know Branstad came out right after the elections were over and he talked about um... increasing the local gas, the gas tax and you know that was one of the major elements in our menu of what we wanted to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 8 accomplish so I think the other thing we want to do is I think we want to have a conversation with our neighbors to a higher degree than we did this last time. Recall that it did pass here in Iowa City, there is going to be some legislative um ... recommendations, bills introduced this year, on local option sales tax and we need to pay attention to those um... because they may change things up. One of the ones I just read recently is one that may actually be something we might be interested in, it causes councils to have the authority to impose the tax and it changes the referendum to what is referred to what is typically a reverse referendum so the Council would pass the tax and then the public could do a reverse referendum and cause the issue to be placed on the ballot. I don't know all of the terms of what that is proposed and what will happen. But the other thing I would tell you when you look at this list, there is only two metropolitan areas in the state of Iowa that don't have the local option sales tax. If you look at the dollars, okay, that it's generated from these different places you can understand why our tax rate is here and theirs is there, because they are offsetting their property tax rate to some degree. Whether you use it for roads, or debt retirement or just property tax relief that is having an impact on their property taxes. So we don't have that and therefore you know we are at the higher quartile of (coughing) Dobyns/ Tom, why isn't there a sunset on some of those communities for their lost (local option sales tax) Markus/ They were able to pass the referendums and when they put their proposals together they didn't require, they didn't impose a sunset and their public approved it through the referendum process. We decided it was the appropriate thing to do so that it was revisited at some point in the future and our proposal was 10 years. Again it was marginally approved here, um... in the state and there is all sorts of discussion and you know we've talked, our senators and representatives at the state level and they don't necessarily agree entirely you know there is going to be shift in you know the tax coming, generated in a community, staying in that community, you know, but we've seen a lot of things happen you know and you get into that legislative process you know, what goes into the discussion and what comes out multiple family property tax reform, that wasn't on anybody's, you know, discussion until right at the end. And that is the most devastating part of that property tax reform to our community. So, you know, to me it's, it's all bets are off I just think we have to pay attention to what's going on because if they do come up with some amendments and we go down this process before we know what that information is you know we may have to make a major course correction in you know pursuing this. What I'd really like to see happen is for some of our elected meet with some of the elected in the other communities and start the dialogue and really talk about where we go with this issue in terms of if it's still going to be a metropolitan vote ... Okay so we are going to talk about revenue comparisons um ... while the um ... in terms of it I will just kind of highlight where some of the more significant changes, if you look at other city taxes um ... there are some projected increases in TIF, hotel/motel, and utility franchise revenue that's making that significant impact of about a 17% increase. If you look at um... use of money and property we are projecting a decline in interest revenue, that drives that difference and then an intergovernmental we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 9 are estimating there will be fewer federal and state flood reimbursement grants which results in that decline. And then in miscellaneous revenue there is a projected reduction in parking fines but there is also a miscoded um... reimbursement of expenses there that I think occurred in that area and that caused that change there. In terms of all funds, in terms of revenues, this is kind of a um ... (coughing) um ... the um ... just how the breakout of the major sources in terms of all funds where the monies comes from in the City and property taxes, charges for services, that's your fees and intergovernmental, that's your grants. And it's kind of you know a fairly nice distribution of where the money comes from. I've always argued that the widest array of revenue sources probably gets to the more equitable distribution of who pays for things is in city government. The problem is the wider array of the types of revenue sources you have, every one of those has an administrative cost associated with it so what you try to do is find revenue sources that have the least amount of administrative costs. Just like when you look at you know social service agencies and who you contribute your money to, you are always looking for ones that get the most amount of money to the service you are trying to provide and keep the administrative cost as minimal as you can so um... I think there are some revenue sources that over time we are going to have to look at especially if backfill goes away ... In terms of general fund revenue sources the big one of course in general fund is property taxes and this is a big concern because if um... rollback goes away this kind of goes to your core types of services, your police, your fire, all of the operating types of departments that are not fee dependent. You know that is where the hit comes and that is why when we talked about what gets cut you know that is why we pointed out those 2 million dollar items and where that comes from. Um ... full versus taxable valuations um ... you can see that there is a fairly steady increase in 100% in the assessed values of the properties here in the city and you do the comparison down to the taxable and you can see how that decline occurs from what something fully assessed is at, like commercial used to be, and then what taxable is so that taxable number is probably as a relationship to fully taxable is going to show a greater gap. In terms of taxable value increase for 16 we are estimating about a 1.5% increase. Obviously the rollback for residential was higher than that but then that gets offset by the decline in the commercial property values at 5% for years 15 and 16. Dickens/ When is the next county reassessment? Markus/ They do it every other year, odd number years. And then full versus taxable, I kind of like to have everybody look at this chart because you know at the federal level we always talk about this flat tax and everybody should pay this flat tax, let's make it simple, let's not have all these deductions and all this stuff, but here is an interesting comparison for you. The full value of residential property shows to be 75% of the total but when you move through all the you know manipulations, to get to taxable value it reduces it down to 65%. Commercial, if you look at the green up there, at full value commercial is 23% but when they go through all the machinations, even after property tax reform, they are paying 33% of the total. So we are still placing a much heavier emphasis on commercial properties in terms of what they pay for taxes. It's a political decision you know, who's picking up the burden, but with property tax reform and especially with multiple family This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 10 property tax reform, the burden shift is going to residential. Now the only relief I can provide as a manager in recommending a budget for residential property owners is to cut the tax rate. That also benefits commercial even more so I think what we have to do going forward is we have to look at these commercial properties, especially the multiple family, and we have to make sure the services we are providing them because they are multiple family are being charged fees that cover the costs. And so we need to be on that every year making sure our costs are appropriate. You know the sidebar for everybody when they talk about property tax relief for multiple family is oh yea I bet you everybody's rent is going down, right, we've all heard that, right, and you know darn well that isn't what has happened. It's gone to somebody's bottom line but certainly isn't the renters so I think we need to figure out ways to make sure our costs are being recovered through the rental permit program, inspection program and any other things you know we can be somewhat creative on. They certainly have managed their way into a system of getting reduction and we are not getting any backfill for it. Hayek/ What um ... what is the threshold in terms I guess of number of units or some other measurement at which a rental property becomes a multi -family unit. Markus/ Three units. Hayek/ Is it more than three units? Payne/ More than three, or three and more? Markus/ I think it's three or more isn't it? Fruin/ k believe it's three or more. Hayek/ If you have a single (both talking) family house or a duplex that you are renting you are paying residential rates. Markus/ You pay residential to begin with right but three or more gets you to the multi- family. But eventually it's just going to roll you down to the residential rate anyway, it's just a longer period of time. Mims/ Right, but I think the point Matt you are trying to make is those are the people getting the break, if they had units of three or more. Hayek/ Yea. Marcus/ Well they are and they aren't its philosophical isn't it. Residential units are residential units, they have been paying more all this time, that's the argument they are making. Hayek/ Yes they would say to bring in everybody with two units. Markus/ You know it's that whole philosophical point about flat tax versus having different categories of properties paying different rates of taxation, I mean it's This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 11 philosophical you know. I mean I've always looked at the issue of commercial properties and industrial properties and said you know every place across the state country that I'm aware of usually charges those properties more but I always go they don't produce any children, okay, they aren't sending any children to school, so why are you putting the burden on them for the school system but that's the culture okay, you know that's evolved over the years. So, I'm not going to change that but... Payne/ Well they are typically valued more and getting taxed at a higher rate also so you could look at it like it's a double burden. (laughter) Markus/ Which is the argument and that's why when I go back to when they reformed commercial property values, I think we came out of that okay. I was okay they only reduced it to 90% it was the multiple family thing that really hurt us. I mean just from a financial standpoint not the philosophical issue that's tied into that. Botchway/ Do we have anything that shows um...I know you talked about increasing cost of services, do we have anything that shows what we could be charging compared to what we do charge? Markus/ No l- think Kinglsey what my point is I think we are going to have to delve into that and you know that all has to be completely above board and legitimate you have to determine if there is actually additional costs associated with the process of managing from the city's standpoint multiple family. And then tie your costs to the actual level of service, it's not something you can just create it has to have meaning and it has to have a direct connection um ... or else it isn't going to be sustained. So no, we are not there yet but I'm saying as kind of a counter punch that is something I want to look at least and see if there is some justification to do some of those things. I'm not saying for certain that there is. Fruin/ We do recover our cost on the rental inspection program and part of this budget recommends a 5% increase in rental permits to help cover that cost but there are other services that we provide that we probably don't recoup full costs on and that's what we need to look at. Botchway/ When I was also talking across the board as well because I think it would be good for the public to see kind of what we do as far as um ... helping (coughing) helping you know subsidized costs of making it more livable to be in Iowa City I just think it would be something to see I think people would like. Markus/ I think the other thing obviously we've had discussions about but it's this whole revenue department interpretation that in mixed-use buildings once they reach a certain threshold that the commercial property, legitimate commercial uses, would be taxed at the residential rates, it's (coughing) if the local assessor determined that the predominate use of the property is for multiple family residential the rate at the commercial would be there. And um... Matt and I met with Senator Dvorsky and Representative Jacoby last I think of all of our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 12 meetings with legislatures and we keep bringing that issue up and we are getting kind of mixed messages as to whether we can get that straightened out. Part of the problem with that whole discussion is that if in fact that rule interpretation goes forward you are going to have a situation now where your commercial properties, you know like commercial properties, are taxed at different rates and that may be in terms of the ideology of certain individuals a desirable situation because then at some point in the future they can say well then all commercial properties should be taxed at that residential rate. So that is something we got to watch, we haven't figured out the strategy on that one yet at either end, we aren't getting a whole lot of really good ideas from our legislatures yet on how to tackle that good ... you know we have an administration, the governor's office who I think influenced that interpretation so there is a challenge in trying to get that reversed. And the other part of it quite frankly is that it's a planning problem, I mean we want mixed use buildings that's kind of the direction that you know the country is going in terms of good urban planning and this is kind of a disincentive because if you are not able to capture the higher rate of value you know there is less interest in mixing up the building. I still think it's the right thing to do but it's a crazy interpretation to create two distinct values for the same type of property and it doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's a legal challenge at some point but we're not there yet. So, um ... this particular chart is really a very good chart because it shows you the burden shift okay, so if you just looked at the bottom line that says residential, and you just went from fiscal year 14 to 15 to 16 you can see how that residential category is picking up more of the tax burden. And at the very same time you can see how the commercial property values are paying less of the commercial burden. So property tax reform is doing exactly what those that promote it wanted it to do and that's the proof of that. Um... in terms of property tax receipts there relatively flat there really isn't a whole lot of significant change in terms of what is happening there and that is partly because um ... the values are not climbing greatly and we are actually pretty moderate in our tax rates. So that's what's happening there. Property tax rates, you can see that um... um ... there has been a steady decline, not great declines, but... and I don't like to take things down abruptly, I like to you know I like to kind of finesse them in over a period of time because then you don't get those major bumps and interruptions of major revenue or in services and you know you don't have this herky jerky kind of tax rate, there is, people can count on what's going on. But even with the tax rates decline, because the values go up, people at the end of the day are paying more taxes and we'll show you that in a minute. Urn... other major revenue sources, this just gives you an example of what the hotel/motel, gas, electric excise tax and utility franchise tax generate and these are actuals and that is run through 2014. Just so you have an idea of what our other major revenue sources are, they are pretty moderate. Next is moving into expenditures and um ... the big one you know that you see that big dip in, is that um ... the community economic development, the decrease is to fewer homes being purchased through the universe city program. I can tell you, you know, we kind of fairly significant inventory of houses that we are scrambling to get those on the marketplace, get the improvements made, and get those out on the market so I made a conscious decision not to be acquiring more inventory until we shed the inventory we have. General government, the increase is due to moving cable operation into the general fund, um ... cable is going to change significantly with This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 13 the move from local franchise to state franchise and so we think incorporating that more into the communications operations end and streamlining those operations is the right direction to go. General fund expenditures um... in terms of personnel, this is the combined increase of step increase, pension costs, and reduced FTE's despite our best interest to streamline and cut out positions through, mainly through attrition as time goes on there is an actual, you know every time you have a contract settlement there is a burden added in there and those are offsetting those things. Um ... going forward it would be nice to be able to have our, especially because personnel costs make up 70+% of most of these funds, it would be nice to be able to have those costs aligned with what our revenue are so, or closely to that. But, um ... the other problem of course in the negotiation process is that you have to be competitive in terms of what you are paying your employees and we do all sorts of internal and external analysis in terms of deciding what our pay scales are. Dickens/ Has the market change helped as far as the pensions at all? Or has that effected it at all? Markus/ Um... I'll get into that Terry, um ... I still think we have some significant challenges at least with what one of the pensions funding and I'll talk about that. Services, um ... you know when you look at services a lot of these services are really providing personnel service types of things, it's just through the private sector as opposed to having full time employees. So those kind of get rolled into the whole category of kind of personnel costs in my opinion. Supplies, there is an increase in plants and trees, okay you are going to like this one, it's an increase in plants and trees and a decrease in firearms and supplies. (laughter) It's kind of a nice jux of position isn't it, that's what we should be doing. Buying more plants and trees and getting rid of weapons. Um ... and several office supply lines, capital out crease is one time capital fiscal year expenses that include a university home land acquisition, Laserfiche software upgrade, and expenses associated with the neighborhood development services merger review model. And the costs associated with those. That floor, quite frankly, I don't know how we got away with it this long, there is no bathrooms upstairs, I don't know if you knew this, okay, so the people on the second and third floor or the tower, they have to go down to the basement to go to the bathroom. Just think about the hours of wasted productivity (laughter) Hayek/ Sounds like a wellness program. Payne/ That's what I was thinking, exercise. Markus/ This will be a major productivity move once we get that done. Throgmorton/ Staff ought to be moved in and out (several talking). Markus/ So contingency fiscal year 15 amendment. Seems like kind of an inhumane thing to do. Um ... the fiscal year 15 amendment budget is less than original contingency funds were used, um... actual expenditures moved into appropriate categories, um... so what this means is it shows this difference, but when we set This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 14 up a contingency fund, okay, we have a percentage we use like .75 of expenditures and transfers out, so that gives you a number, let's say that number is $400,000 well then during the course of the year, we take those funds out and we put them in the fund or the account where they are spent. So by the end of the year the number goes down and so it looks like there is you know a big increase in from one year to the next year. But the same thing will happen in this upcoming year we'll take those funds out of that account and move those into the appropriate expenditure. So that kind of explains why you have this difference in terms of from one year to the next. Then debt service, university home repayment, um ... fewer homes budgeted in fiscal year 16. General fund expenditures, where does the money go, clearly personnel, and like I said before if you added personnel to services you'd see that it's over 90%. Services are really kind of a personnel function as well it's just probably a private contracted relationship rather than a fulltime employee so ... we are a service oriented operation, that's where the money gets spent largely, then that's the general fund. General fund is running what I think, 50 million dollars. Yep, and then um ... here's the conversation that you kind of wanted to have I think, um ... this is public safety pension contributions and the City of Iowa City um ... 411 MF, it's municipal fire police retirement system of Iowa, that's the acronym, I call it the 411 cause it's the statutory number related to it. Um ... for example what we've done here is we've just shown you what the contributions are both out of fire and police and they are significant. There is a decline this year in actually how much is contributed but when I show you what we actually still contribute as an employer you are going to go wow. Anyway... next... so here's the contributions, so if you're in the IPERS system, which the bulk of our city employees are, right, the contribution from the employer is 16.58%, if you are in the 411 System the contribution is 29.22% and the reduction went I think from 32% or something like that and the pension plan for the 411 if you look at that line down to 27.77%. So what that says is you pay your employee a salary and then on top of the salary the employer is contributing another 27% just for the pension system. Um... I can tell you, and maybe this is something you wouldn't want in a city manager, but I spent 22 years in Michigan and I paid a lot of attention to pensions, I sat on a pension board, we managed a pension system of 100 million plus portfolios so I have an intricate knowledge of how pensions work and how expensive they are. And I will tell you the IPERS system is a very prudent system and it's a good system and my view is that over time um... and I talked to Bob and Dave yesterday and Matt will verify this, I just said look I understand you guys are democrats and I understand pensions and employee benefits are a big issue to you guys but I gotta tell you my experience is you need to do something about this pension system, I said you need to figure out how to do it, and my suggestion is, and Geoff and I have had these conversations, cause Geoff dealt with it in Illinois too, is that you need to cap the system. Anybody that is currently in it okay stays in it, gets the benefits that we agreed and contracted, but what you need to do going forward in this state, is you need transition fire and police employees to the IPERS system. IPERS also provides police and fire pension systems but at a much more modest basis. And right next door, Coralville's in the IPERS system, North Liberty is in the IPERS system, okay, and so there are 40 of the biggest communities that are in this 411 system and we are paying those benefits and the pensions are much higher. Well what's the difference This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 15 between a cop in Iowa City and a cop in Coralville? I mean to me, and I joked with Bob and Dave yesterday, you know maybe I have to take a different tact, maybe I have to go out and start rallying that every police and firefighter should be in the 411 system 'cause I can guarantee you the cities, okay when they heard that conversation would not be real happy about having to jump into the 411 system because it's that much more expensive. So this is an issue, its long term, it's not going to get resolved in my lifetime, but I can tell you, and what happened in Michigan both in the private sector and the public sector if you don't deal with this issue you are going to have less officers on the street both in police and fire. That's going to happen to you. Because more of your available resources are going to go to that system to the point where you can't afford to put people on the street. It's a generous system, I think going forward you could cap it and put people in the IPERS system and eventually you'll work your way through it. And I think it's a fair way to do it, and I think people can live with that kind of approach, anybody that's going to be a police or firefighter knows what the system is then coming into the system. So we've actually offered a solution in this regard, hopefully as overtime, as this keeps getting hit, um ... maybe it will get some traction and maybe get changed. Payne/ People in the private sector would give their first born kid to be in the IPERS system. Markus/ Yes, let alone the 401 K system. Payne/ It's way better than private (laughter). Markus/ And you know that is, I always make the argument how fair and how honest is it to agree to give employees something ultimately isn't sustainable. You haven't given anybody anything, all you've done is created some real pain going forward in the future, and that's what's going to happen. And I can tell you, read the book Detroit, okay, and I'm not saying we are like Detroit but read the book Detroit and see what's happened okay, there are a lot of people that were counting on those pensions, they've got a court ruling, they've cut those pensions, they are getting you know pennies on the dollar from what they were promised. And now they are in a situation where they are retired and on fixed incomes, how is that fair? So we need to be smart about these things and we need to look forward and not just you know go to our political constituencies and protect all these things that maybe aren't sustainable. Have I said enough on that? (Laughter) Hayek/ I think you know, politically the cities affected by this are 40 or so largest cities. Markus/ Right. Hayek/ They are more urban, probably more democratic, which makes it a steeper climb politically to affect change on a public pension system. And there is no incentive for the rest of the state to engage. Markus/ Yep, that is why my take. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 16 Hayek/ That is why your views. Markus/ I'm encouraging this system for everybody in the state, 'cause I know they aren't going to buy it. Alright, next is the pension system comparison, um ... yea, I talked about that one... um... and this is another nuance of the 411 system that I think you guys need to be aware of. There is a presumption that any lung, heart, cancer infliction um... on a officer is geared to their employment. And I'm not sure when they passed this legislation any actuary did any kind of evaluation on this but that is a significant impact on the operations of our city and any city that is in this system. So, here is an interesting comparison, and I think what this is actually, we've talked about this chart, this compares like worker comp claims for your IPERS employees versus the 411 system and the payments on the presumptions. And so if you look at our workforce 81 % of your workforce is in the IPERS system, 19% of the workforce is in the 411 system, but then go over and look at your medical expenses, okay, and that 81% of IPERS is only accounting for 46% of the expenses whereas the 19% in 411 is accounting for 54% of your expenses because of that interpretation. So it was an expensive decision and I'm not convinced, it might have been voted on party lines, and it was a nice thing to do, I'm not sure they really understood the financial implications of that and I think that is another thing that is really putting, it's basically an unfunded mandated, you know that is a statutory thing. I don't know if you folks realize this but I can't negotiate pensions, that's not in the realm of negotiations, that is a statutory function so I mean it clearly falls into the realm of unfunded mandates, and that is an challenge for us, a huge disconnect for us in my opinion, and again it's adding to the burden. I, I'm, all about being fair, but how can you say that's fair and look at that chart and then look at the rest of your employees and say it's fair to the rest of your employees. I mean that, I can tell you when we had the fire out at the landfill, firefighters were out there, but I'll tell you who the most exposed people were to that fire and the toxic fumes coming out of that were your public works employees. I mean they were right in the midst of it. You know, they were out there, our firefighters know enough to be protected, that's their business, they protect themselves, but our fire, public works employees, quite frankly I was concerned about their health condition more so than the fire service. 'Cause they were right in the thick of it trying to correct those problems. So... Mims/ Tom, let me ask a question I think I understand this but to clarify, I don't know if everybody on Council has looked at this closely, when you look at this difference in medical expense, while these people are still employed with the City, there is no difference in terms of they're using whatever we have provided through the City in terms of health insurance. Markus/ Yes. Mims/ Where the big distinction comes is once they retire... Markus/ Post retirement (both talking at same time). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 17 Mims/ Your IPERS people are going on Medicare or their own private insurance if they aren't 65. Markus/ That is the distinction. Mims/ But the 411 employees are going on Medicare but these kinds of medical issues we are first payer for cancer or for heart or lung problems. Markus/ Yep (both talking at same time). Mims/ Medicare doesn't even kick in, we pay it. That is what is so ridiculous in my opinion in that this wasn't structured where at least Medicare is first payer and maybe we pick up any uncovered costs by Medicare. We're first payer. Markus/ Anyway, it's just one of those things that I think over time and legislatively this needs to be addressed. Alright, let's move. Botchway/ Well Tom, I guess my point is you brought this up last year, or last time, and now this time, outside of talking to our legislatures about it, what else can we do? Markus/ You can't negotiate it. I've had conversations you know, I'm very candid with our police and fire and annually our fire department runs a strategic plan I lay this on them every year. And to the... it's an honest conversation, I actually think we have some firefighters who do really, I think understand it, recognize um that this is a very generous situation and they understand what it can do ultimately to our fire service. One of the things quite frankly in a more strategic area I think this dept ... this City needs to consider is a kind of hybrid operation in our fire service. Um... I think we need to keep the kind of core fulltime employment we have but supplement it with um ... volunteer service. And typically that is like oil and water but that doesn't mean it can't work. I mean we, you are going to have to look at alternative service delivery mechanisms because of the costs that are associated with the fulltime service. Remember we are the only fulltime service in Johnson County, Coralville is a hybrid, the last numbers I think I hear were they have four fulltime people but the bulk of them, they are student fire fighters, and they are living in quarters and they provide them room and board and there are approaches to all of this. The other thing I talk about is people, you know when we have mutual aid, um ... a lot of our fulltime fire fighters serve on volunteer departments where they live. Okay, so when we have call back, we call back our fulltime fire fighters and then we are paying them whatever the contractual is, I hope overtime or whatever, and we get some volunteers once in a while from these other departments but when we send, on the other side of reciprocity to these other departments we are sending fulltime fire fighters down there with exceptional training, exceptional equipment, all of that, so it's another one of those services that I look at and say Iowa City is providing services beyond our borders for which we are not being reimbursed. Botchway/ So I have two questions, first one being, is it a part of our strategic, our legislative priorities. I can't remember off the top of my head. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 18 Hayek/ Pension funds is, broadly speaking. Botchway/ Okay, and the second question is it kind of goes back to what I was speaking about concerning costs across the board or looking at increasing cost across the board, is, I was thinking about the University's efficiency plan and they recently did and is that something that we should do? Markus/ Well I can tell you that I view that as an obligation of my office and I can tell you if you look at what we in terms of paring down staff mainly through attrition because I think that is the more humane approach to how you create a reduction in workforce, I think we've made incredible progress. And that I can tell you I feel is a personal obligation of mine as your City Manager and I can tell you I can't imagine some consultant coming in here knowing more about this operation than the people that work it. Botchway/ I was more talking about from an overall corridor city standpoint, the cost that we give, or the cost we take from Coralville, I mean burden ourselves with from Coralville, North Liberty, the other areas in the County. Markus/ Yea, we know those, I think there is some intricate governmental finesse that has to occur to get to the actual results, we know what the differences are, but, like I don't know what the solid waste industry professionals know. I defy most consultants to know what we know about our own operation and we can make this better. Another thing I'll tell you is I have seen, because of the places I've been, and we've gone through reduction in workforce, I think most managers failed to understand the capacity of employees to adapt to new environments and changing circumstances and create new ways of getting things done. And when you empower those employees to do that, you can, you will be amazed at what they can accomplish. And when you let them do that, they take a lot more pride in what they do... so I think we've had those kinds of engagements and I'm really proud of some of the employees around here, and how they've stepped up to some of the issues you know of changing staff services, circumstances, I actually see a better energy as a result of that so ... there are ways to do that I think you know an outside approach that I've seen in so many places for efficiency studies and all this stuff, boy it's kind of agitating to me and to the employees I think. The engagement of the employees is a much more important thing and we are going to talk about a change that is going to be proposed as part of this budget and I can tell you, you know, and Geoff, Geoff is kind of that good conscious on my shoulder, (laughter) he says you know you got to go out and talk to these employees before we propose this in a public setting and that is what we do. We had three major engagements in this last week, where I went out with Geoff and others and we engaged the employees that we are going to be working with, change kind of who they report to and how they operate. And we are making real progress in those areas, I think we are close to what, 40 employee reductions in a four year period. And have you heard any major push back from your public? We've done it in I think a very humane attributed way that people understand, people got their pensions that moved on, they moved on to other opportunities, every one of those times that occurs, we take a look at how does the fit work. How does the organization adjust to that circumstance, and how can This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 19 we you know end up being more efficient as a result of this thing so ... I'm very pleased with that. Hayek/ On the fire department issue, I'm glad you brought that up, we've talked about it in years past, it, you know, that is a general fund service. Markus/ Right. Hayek/ It's very expensive, it's the only fulltime service in the area, it's going to be impacted by property tax reform, um... and I continue to believe there has to be a way to introduce an auxiliary component... Markus/ Right Hayek/ ...To our paid component to complement what we already have. Markus/ Right. Hayek/ And save costs over time. I mean, if you look at Coralville, I wouldn't even call them a hybrid, they have four fulltime people as opposed to our, I forget what our number is now, 60 something, um ... and then everybody else is volunteer. They've got a large commercial and retail sector, including a massive mall and a lot of other employers and large buildings and manufacturing and that sort of thing... Markus/ 64 Hayek/ 64 ... who are apparently comfortable with the level of fire service they receive and they have an ISO insurance rating that is comparable to ours in spite of their largely volunteer makeup. Um ... they are getting it done and maybe they rely on our mutual aid and they have the fulltime professionals next door that can come in the event of a major fire, maybe that's part of it but I just have to think there is a way to, in that department, going forward, I wouldn't say the same thing about police, that is an entirely different... Markus/ I wouldn't either. Hayek/ You don't want an auxiliary police force, but on the fire issue it seems to me that there's something we can do going forward. Bockenstedt/ Matt I will just add that a lot of these suburban fire departments that are, not are, the term volunteer is thrown around a lot, but most of those are part time fire fighters that are paid. Hayek/ Okay. Bockenstedt/ and so a lot of those fire fighters come from Iowa City, Des Moines, were we are training them and they are going to the suburbs as far as second jobs, so there is really not a drop off in professionalism and training or service because we are the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 20 ones providing the fire service employees, they are not working for free, they are working at a part time rate, say $50 a call or something of that nature so they get a benefit from being next to us by getting firefighters at a reduced rate. Payne/ Now my brother-in-law is a fire fighter in the Quad Cities and he was doing just that, so he had several part time jobs and their union went to them and told them they couldn't do that anymore. They couldn't do the part time thing anymore. Markus/ Yea, the IAFF is unequivocally opposed to the volunteer core and they, they are not very supportive. I will give you an interesting fact about our firefighters, a lot of them come from volunteer departments to begin with and after they are employed they maintain a relationship with the volunteer department. Okay so I think we have a different dynamic than we can make work but it's going to take some finesse and a lot of discussions there. Um... I'm getting the high sign that I need to move this along so I'm going to hit debt service. In the state of Iowa you are allowed to issue debt up to 5% of your total assessed value, we are actually at about 1.3% so we manage our debt very closely. You will note that is the comment, um ... the conversation we've, the community has weighed in on, total debt in the area and that is something that requires management and you have to pay attention to what you are issuing debt for. The debt should correspond to the years of service to the item you are actually using the debt for. Um ... the one thing that happened before I started here was you actually increased your debt allow ability from 25% to 35% of the total city levy. That was of concern to me, and we had that discussion when we interviewed, and we haven't breached the 25% since. So, um ... quite frankly I think that was a smart place to stay. The real challenge in debt is that you do not want to start slipping into issuing debt for more traditional operational types of things, you want to do it for legitimate capital improvements, that have long value and that is a way of spreading out the cost so that the people that benefit from that pay for it over a period of time, not just the current folks picking up all that cost. Um ... this is just a, this is just a chart that shows you in the blue what we would be allowed to issue for debt, and what we've actually issued in debt. And if you look for example at fiscal year 16, we are only at about 26% of what our allowable debt is so your community is very well managed in terms of debt management. Next is our source of pride and that is the Moody's Triple A bond rating, and um ... of all US cities were are in the 6.5% um ... that is again, I can't stress enough, that is one of, you know all the surveys that you get and you show how good you are, that you are all at the top, this survey is the most analytical evaluation of your community. Moody's, there are three rating agencies, Moody's, Standard & Poor and Fitch, Moody's is the most conservative. To have this rating, is the gold standard and that is what you folks are. And what is unique about Iowa City having this Triple A bond rating, is we don't fit the typical profile of a triple A rated bonded community. So we have a lot of things going for us differently than the hoity toity suburbs with you know, you know, mcmansions on every lot, and real high end commercial, we have a real community with real issues, real problems, and you are Triple A and you are only one of two in the state of Iowa. And one of the reasons we maintain that is because we maintain healthy fund balances and you have a very prudent approach to management of your issues and how you deal with those things, so you should all be very proud, um... and it's going to be a challenge because This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 21 Moody's is becoming more conservative in the way they approach evaluations of communities for bond ratings. So in the state we are only one of two, West Des Moines, you know West Des Moines and Iowa City are very different places, but West Des Moines is probably the more protypical of a Triple A community you would see, heavy, you know, shopping centers, office developments and all sorts of nice taxable value sorts of stuff. Take a lot of pride in that and keep a lot of pressure on us to maintain that. Um ... the other thing I would talk about is Enterprise Fund balances. And this is critical part of having that Triple A bond rating is to have and maintain significant fund balances in all of your accounts. And you know, a lot of times what you'll see is you'll get a conservative member of council and they will say "yea, you are sitting on all this money you should be spending that money, get rid of that money, cut that down" this is the thing that Moody's takes a real hard look at, and says maintain those fund balances so not only can you get yourself through cash flow situations, but that if you have a real emergency you've got the funds there to take care of things. And so I just make a couple comments, um ... we are looking at transit for possible funds increases in that area, we are in the second year of a previously approved two year water rate should help the fund balances in the water system, refuse will be impacted by a certain degree by the landfill tipping fee we've increased, and of course we had increased the landfill tipping fee by $4 which should improve that situation. A lot of money in the landfill by the way is in reserve, the EPA requires us to have what is called post -closure requirements for our landfill cells so if there is some environmental disruption we have the funds available to correct those in a very quick basis. And then finally the cable fund has been moved over to the general fund so that was eliminated from that. Next items is the... Throgmorton/ Tom, Tom, Tom, let me ask a question about that. Markus/ Sure. Throgmorton/ Are there any industry wide rules of thumb about the percentage of revenues that should be, that about the percentage um... Markus/ Of balances? Throgmorton/ Of balances. Mims/ Balances of revenue and expenditures Markus/ Yes, in fact if you look at our fiscal policies, that drives a lot of what we do, and then if, there is unassigned and assigned, the landfill is a heavily driven one by the EPA that says you have to have certain amounts plugged in there. Some of them quite frankly, like the refuse, you really don't need to hold that much in there because it's pretty much a pay as you go basis, but its equipment potential and may have an expansion of a service, so we keep you know a fair balance in there. Nothing excessive in my opinion so yes there are industry standards and Moody's by the way looked at the situation and Moody's is now for the first time in my history, has established a 30% goal balance as they want to see for Triple A bond rating communities. So now they are looking at the different categories, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 22 and they are kind of suggesting what they expect to see in terms of percentage of fund balances. Throgmorton/ Okay, thanks, that is helpful but I ask the question because the total here is something like 35 million dollars or I don't know, and so why 35 instead of say 30 or 40 or some other number. Markus/ But in those numbers Jim there is cash flow projections, there is assigned responsibilities, and then the unassigned, and the unassigned is kind of for the cash flow issues, the assigned is usually sort of prescriptive requirement so you have to assign and set that money aside for those purposes so... um... it's a conservative approach but once it's there, then from going on your tax rates deal with the issue going forward and you don't have to build those all over again so ... to me that is money well spent, and the real key is, you know, ultimately the Triple A results in less interest rate costs when you have to go out into the debt markets and that is directly connected to that. What is saving you money at the same time, it's earning you money because those funds are invested. Fruin/ Can I add to that. Just real quick a couple of examples, to point out this you really have to look at the uniqueness of each fund to, for instance, parking and transit you see a fund balance of 3.8 or 3.2 million um ... that may seem excessive for their operation purposes but you have to think about what type of facility or capital needs may be coming up and that is essentially your down payment on a new transit facility or new parking deck. When it comes to waste water treatment, that is a number that really jumps out at me, 8 million as a fund balance, that seems like a lot, but then you dig down further and you understand you've got the (clears throat) excuse me, the new treatment reduction study we talked about earlier and some possible plant upgrades that might be forced on us. lJm... we received a 6 million dollar um ... grant from the state to help with the north waste water treatment plant, that is based on the assumption we will have growth in state sales tax, and if we don't hit that sales tax growth over time, it's the sewer fund that's going to have to pick that up so you want to keep a larger balance while that grant is outstanding as a safety net, so there are industry standards but um ... you have to use those standards and then adjust them for your local conditions and that's the discussions we have with departments. Bockenstedt/ I would agree with what Geoff said and one of the things they don't incorporate into the industry standards because the way most utilities operate is cumulative depreciation and on of the things we look at if you look at our financial report is our net income um ... before transfers in and out for these operations, and are they making a net income after appreciation is concerned. And we set our revenues based on funding our cumulative appreciation which that then causes additional cash balance. Most utilities do not fund their depreciation so essentially they look at maintaining these funds balances and setting their rates accordingly and they are not funding the deterioration of their assets. and ultimately what happens is that goes on for a period of time and then you see the hyper rate increases that have to catch up all those years that they did not maintain an even rate structure. So, what you are better off doing is funding your depreciation, setting your rates accordingly, I mean that is the the would be the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 23 appropriate, that would be a way a private business would operate, that's the sustainable way of doing business and so when those um improvements are required you've got the money to do them rather than going out and borrowing revenue bonds at a higher rate of interest that character requirements to pay for that depreciation that you did not fund preciously. and that is where a lot of utilities and government operations get into trouble because they took a look at their fund balances and they think we got to spend this down we got to use it up, we got to get rid of it without looking at it like a private business would, the bottom line, a private equity situation. And that is what is why is that money in the bank to begin with, that is the more appropriate, we look at it from an accounting perspective rather than just looking at one piece of of a balance sheet, you have to look at the entire balance sheet. Markus/ So there is a lot of analysis that goes into determining what those are. Let me move on property tax impact um ... what we do use 100% assessed evaluation because that equates, you know people can take that and apply it to whatever the value are in their house is and then make the adjustment and then calculate what their taxes despite a tax rate increase or decrease the rollback in the values results in when you have a $100,000 home about a $19 increase um ... in the um ... property tax. Um ... property tax on a $500,000 commercial property um ... I would note it the fiscal 16 includes a state mandated 10% reduction in taxable value, it dropped from 90 or 100 to 95 to 90 as well as the City's drop in municipal tax rate. It does not include, and there is a provision in the state law that that business can apply also for tax credits, it doesn't include that. So you can see where these commercial values or property taxes have declined in the burden shift is coming to residential. In terms of budget analysis, the proposed rate increases will water fund as I said, in miscellaneous parks and recreation program fees, the landfill tipping fees, the development services fees and that public um ... building issue that we talked about, the neighborhood services fees. And what we tried to do is make sure we look at these fees as an annualized basis to make sure that we are not just allowing the cost to shift to property tax so that um ... so that we get reimbursed for actual services provided. Annual financial household impact, what we do is take property taxes, storm water, refuse, sewer, water and we calculate what the differential is in terms of what people will pay. Um ... the transmittal letter suggested the property taxes were at 929, there is a rounding difference so this one shows a $920 so you can see that the percentage change in terms of what the um ... taxpayer would pay is is about 1.9%. In terms of the budget summary, um ... continued funding the emergency fund to provide the stability for sudden drops in revenue in particular the unfunded mandates and continued progress in making the community more affordable and economically competitive. Their tax rates, status quo service levels with the reduction of 8.74 FTEs from 15 to 16 and despite the FTE reduction you have still have the roll up in the cost because of contractual adjustments in pay and benefits. And then building the fiscal integrity to ensure maintain of Moody's Triple A bond rating. Um ... in terms of budget summary capital improvements, we have major flood mitigation improvements still going on not the least of which is the gateway, the north wastewater treatment plan demolition, the animal center completion, Rocky Shore Drive and West High levee. Critical infrastructure, the big project there is 1 St Avenue grade separation, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 24 significant water main projects, water um ... on Washington Street, Wade Street, sewer main replacements on Sycamore, American Legion Road, Mormon Trek, healthy neighborhood improvements, um ... Mercer park playground, Iowa River Trail, Pheasant Hill Park, Willow Creek, Frauenholtz-Miller Park, school district recreation facility partnership, that is the expansion of the um ... the school down at um ... Alexander School. And then the economic development um ... Towncrest, RiverFront Crossings, and Moss Ridge and investments in those areas. Looking ahead we are talking about reorganizing um ... and maybe what we'll do is just shift to the streamline operations. Currently your Public Works department includes engineering, equipment, water, wastewater, and streets. Transportation Services includes parking and transit. My concern was from the very beginning that I think the scope of work um ... this span of control over under public works is quite burdensome and I think it really doesn't give the management of the department the opportunity to spend some critical time in each of those divisions so what what we are suggesting is moving the um ... landfill and solid waste features from Public Works to the Transportation Services and um ... we refer that to now as the new terminology is sustainable resource management. So that would move under the transportation services department. We'll probably change the name from transportation services to be more compassing to include this. But what I think will happen is um ... the management of that department will be able to give more attention to that. There is, and why do I do that, and not just the span of control issue, but we've got a lot of retirements of key personnel in Public Works and that was expected. In fact just last week we had three retirements um ... major, key people in Public Works and if you recall when I was hired and we went through the interviews attrition was a big issues. We knew this was coming, you know that this, that we would be losing some key people. To me those are opportunities to make some realignments and to make some um ... decisions about who gets you know to assigned to who. So I think this is a better balance of management to urn ... the actual service delivery and so we had three meetings, we talked to the supervisors of the Public Works operations, Transit operations, we met with the employees that are directly impacted with the moves, having those conversations we told them we would be introducing this, the actual financial impacts are not included in the budget document this time, we will come back subsequently and introduce legislature to the City Council to further describe what we are doing and describe the cost. The one thing I will tell you is that my intent is to urn ... we have one person who supervises both the wastewater treatment operation and the solid waste operations and the fact of the matter is the person is stretched too thin and I don't think I'm going to be able to go out there and find someone with that person's equivalence of knowledge. That person is just a valued employee, okay, and has incredible depth and knowledge of these issues. But to find somebody that is going to pick that up and carry it forward is a real challenge so my intent is to create supervisors, one over each division, and so those will be new positions, those enterprise funds can support those individuals, but I think going forward we are going to need dedicated supervisors in each of those operations. There are major changes occurring in solid waste, the whole industry is changing as you probably know. City Carton has recently sold their operational operations to Republic which is a nationwide waste management firm, so that is going to change things up. Um ... there is a whole field is in flux, my point to the employees is they have a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 25 role in all of this but the roles are going to change. The roles are going to evolve and it's going to be more sustainable. We are going to try to get more recycling product out of the waste stream um ... we are going to landfill less, doesn't mean necessarily we are going to pursue the Fiber -Right proposal, there's other proposals in fact the director has given me a very specific proposal on how we can do some of the same things. So I think that there is opportunities for us for us to really take a look at how we really manage our waste, get more um ... material out of the waste stream and not put it in the landfill and get it back into the market place as a sustainable product. So that is the direction we are going, the whole movement is now referred to as restainable, sustainable resource management and I think it is a good title for what we are trying to do, it's not the old dump situation of years ago, it's evolving so we had some people very dedicated to that. In terms of looking ahead, construction boom continues, University has a number of projects, school district obvious has a bunch of projects, not just here but across the school district. The City, we have a number of major projects, not the least the Gateway project, the separation, North wastewater treatment demolition, park improvement, the Washington Street water main water and streetscapes improvement, the Moss Ridge Project and Sycamore Street. And I would say to you, you know, you are well positioned, you have an industrial park on the East end that has not gotten the traction we've wanted to get and you'll have the Moss -Ridge Research Campus, you are well positioned, you are going to have, you are going to have, shovel ready facilities that we can recruit businesses into our community that here before we have not have. I think we are going to continue to see sustained economical development and I think we are going to continue to refine our incentive packages um ... to be even more conservative than they are now, but we've got it started and we've got a lot of projects um ... talked to us about and we have a lot of projects in difference stages. I think our economic development is going to continue to grow and I think quite frankly you have to make the nexus between growing your tax base and the services the citizens here demand of you. So we need to have that kind of balance, you need to have the tax base to pay for the things your public wants. So ... life isn't about just one thing or another, it's about the whole gamete. And I was just noting, in the last two weeks, and the next two weeks, we have been dealing with affordable housing, diversity including police, employment and housing, historic preservation issues, economic development issues, corridor issues including getting a communication plan amongst the three communities and a pilot project to consider consolidating how we operate between the ICAD and the alliance up in Cedar Rapids urn ... the interdepartmental issues of transferring departments, legislative issues at both the state and federal levels, and school district issues not the least of which is diversity, 28E agreements and infrastructure, and rec facilities. And at the same time we are evolving this significant um ... budget document at 157 million dollars with a 50 million dollar general fund. This is a lot of work, and we've got, we are being pulled in a lot of directions right now and are just barely keeping up with a lot of this stuff and there is going to be a lot of dialogue that is going to push and pull us in a lot of different directions and so I think what I would say to you is we are all going to have to be patient. We are going to need to pace ourselves through these issues and in a very civil way to get to conclusions that we feel in this community serve what the requests are, what the issues are, and some of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 26 them are going to be very difficult conversations, but at the same time we are dealing with all the social issues, we are also running a major corporation here so we need to balance all those things and make sure that we have the resources to address the problems. It's been a real challenge just in the last month, and then in the next month we are going to have a lot of recommendations on how to deal with some of these issues. So with that I will wrap it up and um ... I think that was pretty much it. Urn ... so ... any other questions? We start getting into the individual departments what I would suggest is to we let legal go first so Eleanor can deliver her budget and if we have to we can kick the management types of budgets to the end 'cause we are going to be here anyway and then we can get into the others and keep moving. Karr/ So we either before or right after break do Eleanor. Hayek/ How are people doing here (mumbled...). Mims/ Eleanor said she needed five minutes (multiple people taking). Hayek/ So let's have her go. (laughter) Botchway/ I have questions in 10 maybe 15 minutes (laughter). Karr/ Hours. Mims/ We'll cut him off (laughter). Botchway/ Tom I had one question though, um ... I just forgot it. How do we show that our debt is so good? I mean how we show from a community standpoint. I know we get up here and say we have this triple A bond rating, it's great, but how do ... but maybe other councilors can help me out, maybe not, but how do we communicate that to the public. Because you know when you first got on council and said it, granted, and explained it, it made since, cool, great, but how is that, but is there any way we can show it differently so the public can see how big of a deal that is. Markus/ It really doesn't resound too much of a sound bite but maybe what the nexus is is that we show how much our interest rate costs are as a result of having this bond issue as opposed to maybe other jurisdictions with lower bond ratings, how much that saves. Hayek/ I mean the analogy is you have got a credit card that charges you 5% versus a credit card that charges you 20%. That is maybe couching it in personal finance language, I mean it's a hard thing... Bockenstedt/ You can think of it as the same analogy as if you have a $80,000 balance on your credit card versus $800 dollars balance, it's pretty evident one you are This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 27 paying more interest and will owe a lot more down the road. So if you look at our total debt versus other communities total debt that are smaller or even in comparable size, we have far less debt um... and then something else we've never shared with you is the Moody's score card, they actually gave us a report card last year and you can look at those debt bubbles and see where we rank among all other rated categories. Dickens/ Tom, I have question for you, when I was looking through the budget, page 77, just real quick, I just didn't figure it out why we have the general fund, the beginning balance is $43 million and our proposed estimated is $23 at the end of that, it's almost 20 million dollars less... Bockenstedt/ That, that's total fund balance, 43 million, there is actually a line if you look couple lines above that 23... Dickens/ But this is the top line Bockenstedt/ Yes, the top line, but if you go to the bottom at the 23 if you look just above the 23 there's another total, that's total fund balance, and then we back out what is restricted. So out of that 40+ million there was... Dickens/ Another 23 million there... Bockenstedt/ There was 20 some million that was restricted. And a lot of that was maybe sales tax funds or it's um ... federal funds, or it's other funds we have to spend in a specific way... Dickens/ So that should be included... Bockenstedt/ So the total fund balance might have been 43 million but the amount that's really available for general spending might only be 20 million. Karr/ Eleanor's budget starts on page 113. Hayek/ Thank you Marian. City Attorney: Dilkes/ So there's um ... not a whole lot to do with budget um ... people and pencils (laughter).. Hayek/ Books, things it takes to run a law office. Dilkes/ and continuing education expenses, that's about it. You know there was a change in my staffing level actually went from 5.6 to 5.5 'cause I went back to full time and then I have 2, 1 have 1.5 assistants and actually you have to look at the 1, my budget, starting on page 113 and also look at page 140 one of my assistants is fund by the um ... in tort liability, that's her area. I can answer any questions you have. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 28 Hayek/ My question would have to do with the, the level of demand on your office. You know as Tom mentioned the litany of things we've been dealing with and um ... most of them seem to have some baring, most of them seem to result in work for your office. Are you doing okay? Dilkes/ No, yea I mean we are doing okay. It's been a challenging time but the economic development um ... stuff takes a lot of work um ... I do, we do more and more of that in house which I think is good, I mean we need to know how it works and how to deal with it. We still use urn ... Ahlers as a resource when we need them for development agreements but we are getting more and better and better at doing those ourselves. Obviously things like the historic preservation, the cottages, that takes, those take a lot of... Dobyns/ Eleanor, what is a sign that you, your office is starting to need more um... personnel, I mean is it contracting out I mean is there some sort of warning signs that maybe... Dilkes/ We don't urn ... outsource really the only time I hire outside counsel really is if there is a wait, pay for it, like we've got a contract like when we were dealing with the water plant issues, we had a contract that would require Knutson to pay those attorney fees. Dobyns/ The fact that you are not outsourcing tells me perhaps you are not creaking, busting with too much work at this time. I'm trying to get a sense of the foreshadowing of what the City Attorney's office... Dilkes/ Well we're professional employees, we work harder (laughter) Mims/ You work until the work gets done. Dilkes/ If there is more work to do, we work harder. Dobyns/ So that's foreshadowing. Dilkes/ That is just the way it is. Mims/ Have any of the alcohol issues started to fall off at all? Dilkes/ I think there has, I think there has, I think Eric has been spending a little less of his time on alcohol stuff. Mims/ Good. Dilkes/ Um ... it seems like (laughter). Mims/ Maybe we can get to some really productive work stuff for him. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 29 Hayek/ I'll drink to that (laughter). Dilkes/ Yea, no, I mean he's been really. Hayek/ I couldn't resist. Dilkes/ He's busy, the property acquisition stuff is also taking up a lot of time right now, we have um ... 1st Avenue, um ... it's taking up a lot of Eric's time. Sycamore Street is taking up a lot of my time because we are really pressed to get those, we are going to start condemnations for some of the big property down on Sycamore Street simply because we need to be in a position if we can't get things worked out. Um ... okay. Mims/ Thank you. Hayek/ Okay, I don't think there are other questions which is an indication of of the regard for your office that this Council has. Dilkes/ Well, I appreciate it. Dickens/ We could make up stuff. (laughter) [BREAK] Police (started mid report; recorder problems) Dobyns/ I assume it's nice to have everything in house for when you need it but a city this size, I'm not, I guess frequency of occurrence and need would be an issue, would the alternative would be partnering with adjacent large municipals like Linn County, Cedar Rapids, would that be the likely alternative. Hargadine/ We do that quite a bit within Johnson County, examples being the dive team, the drug task force, and the bomb team. Urn ... and those are, like the bomb team is has been in the last 10 years, we've had um ... the drug task force, that predates me, um ... Cedar Rapids, um ... they are big enough that they don't need help from anybody. For example, a major case, it's not common for them to bring in the state um ... division of criminal investigations, they typically handle theirs in house. Dobyns/ I was looking at it the other way Sam, they don't need help from us but would there be a financial advantage for us to perhaps having less than a full service police department? And contracting out with Cedar Rapids or some other municipalities for lesser frequent police needs. Hargadine/ Urn ... being able to do it cheaper, I'm not sure we could. And then there is always the timeliness of it, are they available when you need them and for what I know about the Cedar Rapids Police Department they have been really busy this year. Can they, can they afford to have a team come down here, you know there have been cases where um ... there have been investigations um ... throughout ... in this This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 30 part of the state and ... the state criminal lab has been snowed in Des Moines and couldn't get here, they call us, they didn't call some of our neighbors even in the larger cities, they call us, and I think that just goes to the quality of investigators that we have. I don't know that I answered your question. Dobyns/ I'm just trying to do due diligence about our budgetary issues. while I recognize the quality and value of timeliness of the police reference even if they are seldomly used so... Hayek/ Chief there's a ... a ... on the revenue tables, the administration services shows 28E agreements of a little over $200,000 and then on the field ops there is a $10,000 28E line item, I'm just curious what those are. Is that animal? Hargadine/ It's going to be animal. The $10,000 1 imagine in the field ops is for Dave Schwindt's position that would the downtown district contribution (Fruin speaking at same time), categorizes it as 28E but technically it's not a 28E. Hayek/ But on the administrative that's all animal shelter... Hargadine/ Un Huh. Hayek/ Okay. Mims/ Have we instigated any kind of conversations with University Heights, I mean I know they have contracted previously with the County Sheriff and it just seems just kind of crazy to me that a community that small has, I don't know if it's 3 to 5 full time officers now, when our officers are probably driving through there very frequently because it's landlocked within Iowa City um ... I don't know if they have any interest at all in talking to us, but I guess I would encourage staff if it hasn't been done to ... and maybe it's just a roadblock that isn't worth going through. Hargadine/ This is has come up before... Mims/ I'm getting a look. Hargadine/ This has come up before and I've discussed it with Tom and it really needs to come from one political entity to the other. Mims/ Okay. Hargadine/ Because urn ... for example if their mayor contacted our mayor, hey are you interested in this, could we do it, then we would look into it. Mims/ Okay. Hargadine/ And that is not what happened. Mims/ Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 31 Markus/ I would also say to you that ... your degree of prudency dictates a lot of their decisions. And ... um ... I think they... they... their focus on traffic enforcement to recover the cost for their operations, I think drives a lot of their equation. Another thing I would say to you is think about fire service. We have a fire station a block away, they negotiate a deal with Coralville, 'cause Coralville can provide them a substantially reduced amount from us. Knowing full well, the reality that we will be there, John... Dobyns/ 20 feet away Markus/ And ... and so Mims/ Why would we? Markus/ Well... Mims/ Well, we can wait until fire Hargadine/ I will tell you they have a new chief, new police chief, and um ... um ... the communication that is occurring now is ... is.. 100 time more than I heard before. And ... um ... um ... he's doing a good job there and I like him, he's going to, he was a breath of fresh air. Mims/ Thank you Markus/ I think you know, I've seen these things in so many places and so many times, and it...it...it's partly a control thing, partly a connection to their city identity and those things are hard to change. Hayek/ Oh it goes back to the old age stories of transit, and bus lies, and there is a history there. Mims/ Well, do you get a county -wide law enforcement, I mean ... how many different ones do we have in the County? Markus/ I think I counted 7. Botchway/ Well and speaking to that point, has ... is that another political... between us and other entities about asking that question. Because my next question was, I mean as we get bigger, and I think we move to, you know I'm looking at, both some of the things you've highlighted here but also some of what you've highlighted in the document for the meeting on Tuesday, um ... which is getting out there for more community outreach standpoint, from crime prevention standpoint, where is that, I mean, because that is obviously going to cost money, so where is that burden or where those cost burdens, they are going to lie with just us, or other communities, or ... I'm just looking at ... again what... Markus/ What we are promoting Kingsley, is going to be lying with us. At this point. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 32 Botchway/ Okay. Markus/ And quite frankly these issues, these political boundaries are imaginary you know, and...and people trip over them all the time going from one jurisdiction to another and I don't think for a moment that the issues that were being confronted with in Iowa City are any different than Coralville, North Liberty or Johnson and ... that is part of the concern I have ... I think we are kind of the lightening rod location to have these conversations and I think quite frankly there is kind of a duck out of the way mentality by some of the other jurisdictions on those things. They are glad to let us be the focus of attention and not stepping into those and so what I think has to happen the constituencies that is demanding these services, they have to get their act together and pursue these issues in other jurisdictions so there is some potential for collaboration and cost sharing for dealing with these issues. But ... we ... you know... culturally we are a very differently than our neighbors so I think we tend to be more open, willing to engage, and have those conversations, and the others are, you know, quietly happy about being able to sit on the sidelines and watch the turmoil here. And that is a dynamic quite frankly that this council, through the political process, has to raise the bar on, and create the pressure to get the change. And I think you folks have that ability, we need to push that issue. And sometimes it is going to be very uncomfortable, but it is not going to happen unless it happens at the elective level. I've confronted the administration several times. Chief has talked to administration several times, it's easy to retreat back into your comfort zone. Am I making sense? Hayek/ Yes, and this is ... it is political... urn... and I think some of it falls to this body to take up whether it is police, community relations, or housing, or the other issues we deal with a lot. It is also the private sector, the non-profit, community activists who also need to be part of taking the message to our neighbors. And I think they do some, I don't think they do nearly enough as they should given that a lot of these issues are shared across the jurisdiction across Johnson County. Housing is a huge one. Um ... so I hope that changes. Botchway/ From a communications standpoint (clears throat) this kind of speaks to the whole idea, or our idea, of the metro police, it just seems like Iowa City PD is always in the news, and I'm not saying rightfully so, could it be the University Police, the Coralville Police... (Several talking at once) Hargadine/ ..they say police, could be someone shot in New Mexico but they say the police ... the police did it ... or likewise with editorials, Tom and I have talked about the different ways media behave urn ... on story ... it will be a similar story on something that happens in Cedar Rapids or something that occurred here, but the same station or newspaper treats them differently. That does go... Hayek/ And don't we report more through the City website? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 33 Hargadine/ I think we work harder at maintaining the relationship with the media than anybody else. Hayek/ I'm just talking about like the police blog, I don't know... Hargadine/ That's part of it, we put our more media releases though than any other, more crime stopper releases than any of our partners. Hayek/ Yea. Markus/ You had an individual who is deceased ... in a holding cell, in a neighboring jurisdiction, do you recall that? In the last year? What would that have been like if that were here in Iowa City? You all know what it would have been like. (coughing) Throgmorton/ It's hard for me to see what could be done about that, we can't control the news media choose to do. (many talking at once) Markus/ Well... Throgmorton/ Look at our local newspaper, there is an editorial today um ... and the ... the editor of the newspaper says we've got 6 staff, 4 of them are entirely new. And ... they are covering the news around here. Markus/ Oh yea. Hargadine/ And that is ... we've had coffee with the editors before, but none of them are there now. Throgmorton/ That's a problem for us and I can't see what to do about it... Markus/ And I ... and I ... I hope you see the distinction on Gazette coverage, I mean have you watched what has gone on in the Gazette, in coverage areas in Cedar Rapids ... and terms of violence ... and then compared it to what happens here in Iowa City, I mean quite frankly it's a major incident ... I mean ... I look at some of the crime in Cedar Rapids and it doesn't seem to ... the same kind of social dynamic doesn't seem to occur there that it does here at all. Mims/ They have a much higher level of tolerance or... Markus/ Ignorance. Mims/ Being used to it. Hayek/ Tolerance... complex. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 34 Mims/ Chief, what um ... what efforts are you looking at in terms of the ... the um ... what do I want to say ... the not the policy academy, the youth, to get more kids involved and John I'll have the same question for you but I know maybe this first year my sense we didn't get maybe as many young people involved as maybe we would have liked and particularly... Hargadine/ We did um ... about 12 in our first ever youth police academy, all good kids, but all very white and um ... and we reached out to several of the different groups that all deal with juveniles and youth and it was just unsuccessful. Going forward we are working with diversity focus, Chad Simmons, um... Markus/ Stephanie. Hargadine/ I'm sorry... Markus/ and Stephanie. Hargadine/ And Stephanie, Stephanie's been very integral um ... there is another name I'm thinking that works with Chad... Fruin/ I think Fred Newell Hargadine/ Fred Newell, that is the one I'm trying to come up with. So we are looking at the possibility of doing an explorer post, this would be a year'round um ... probably a couple hours a month and still culminating in a two-week academy, we are still working out a lot of details, what's our target age groups for example, um ... but um ... we will have it in place by this time around. Mims/ Okay, good...good Hayek/ Other questions? Payne/ Are there budged dollars for that? Hargadine/ They are, but they are already, they are already in there. Fruin/ That is one thing we should probably just mention, everything that is contained in the memo for your Tuesday work session is incorporated into this budget, so whether it's the staffing, the overtime costs, the training costs, the police academy outreach, that is all contemplated in this proposal. Hayek/ Okay, thanks Chief. Hargadine/ Everyone have a good day Hayek/ Thanks for your time this morning. Fire Department: This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 35 Markus/ Fire Chief John Grier. (laughter) Grier/ Kind of warmed up. Karr/ Fire department starts on page 166. Grier/ Good morning. All/ Good morning John. Grier/ I'm going to steal a lot of Sam's words we too are a full service fire department, urn ... staff of 64, 4 stations, have the typical breakdown through staff officers, and then we have three shift captains, 13 lieutenants, one of those lieutenants is our training officer, training is a big ongoing thing for us. and then we have 42 line fire fighters. Minimum staffing would be 16 on duty at one time. But urn ... we've um ... had a busy last year, we've urn ... did exceed 5800 calls, our numbers continue to rise an issue we continue to have is overlapping calls, we are getting busier is an issue for us. Um... as Chief Hargadine mentioned we also have a number individuals involved in a number of organizations and an number of teams, Johnson County Hazmat team is pretty much based at fire station number 2 and we have a number of people on that team, and we have a special operations team in town. (clearing throat) Excuse me. then we also have an (clears throat) ... I woke up with a little frog this morning ... we have urn ... one of our captains is attached to the Use R Team in Cedar Rapids and all that training is free, so that is always wonderful. And then myself in deputy Chief Jensen we are both on the state incident management team, so if there were to be another Parkersburg type of thing or ah some major incident, we could get deployed. We are on different colors of teams, so we would never be gone at the same time, but um ... I will hit a couple of highlights. One of the issues that has finally been taken care of temporarily is our training center relocation issue with the demolition, demolition of the north wasterwater treatment center went away so we were able to lease some space to store some of our bigger ticket items but um ... um ... continuing training will be an issue for us so we did re -do the basement of station 4 made that into a training room, it looks very nice, a lot of hard work, a little bit of ingenuity on our staff and then we are partnering more now with Coralville to use the regional training center over there, the issue with going over there is obviously being out of the jurisdiction. um..cause the response time is the big thing for us, time is very important. so we are coming up with ways to deal with that but um ... it's a challenge but we are up for that. that is kind of the highlights, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Payne/ What are the weather alert sirens that have $20,000 from capital outlay for 2016? Grier/ That is going down in the southeast part of the town, it is just a little coverage blip down there where the new school is going we don't have as much coverage as we'd like. And then eventually we are going to need to add another one to the north as well. And then going forward we are starting to look at replacing This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 36 (coughing) most of those are early 90's sirens so we are going to try to replace 3 a year at $20,000 a year or per siren, sorry. Payne/ Okay so that $20,000 is one. Grier/ That is one siren. Payne/ Okay. Grier/ And then there is another additional $5,000 for the radio equipment and a pole, but the ones we are replacing will just be the siren cost because we have everything else in place already. Mims/ I've got a question, this might be more for Dennis but I want to ask it while I see and think of it, on a lot of these budget sheets under revenues it says property tax, and on this one on page 173 it says general revenue subsidy, so as I went through all these spreadsheets and some said property tax and some said general revenue subsidy what is the difference or is there? Bockenstedt/ Um..well... I'm sorry, there may or may not be without having to go take a look... Mims/ Okay, that's fine. Bockenstedt/ There... there's a general pool of revenue like interest income, um ... franchise taxes, property taxes, are basic pool of revenues that picks up... Mims/ certain things... Bockenstedt/ There are direct service fees, do not um ... but there are some that have direct taxes or property taxes for that particular purpose. Mims/ Okay, that's close enough. Bockenstedt/ um ... so if I had some comparatives I could tell you if that's the case or if it's just an inconsistency in the document that we would want to get corrected. Mims/ Okay, thank you. Payne/ I have a question on page 172 where it talks about the percentage compliance, I work in a world if you are not a 100% compliance you are breaking a law. Grier/ Sure. Payne/ Is this a law or is this a goal? Grier/ It's part of a goal, part of the accreditation process is to be ... the goal is to be, to do it 90% of the time all the time so it's constant continue improvement issue. um ... what these numbers represent is our inability to get to those far reaching parts of our districts, quickly, safely. With the expansion out on Court Street, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 37 station 4 helps us a little bit but it doesn't get us out to that tip and there is actually a place that is removed from um ... Court and Scott ... a little hard time getting to in existing area. And then as the west continues to grow we are going to have struggle to get there as well. But... Payne/ So when the new fire station um ... went into service was that in '11, 1 can't remember what year that was? I mean we went from a 11 prior response time 8:44 to 6:41 is that in direct response to the new fire station? Grier/ It could vary on where the calls were as well. Payne/ Right ... right. Grier/ We all, it's where they are plotted and how many incidents we have. Some of the higher times are also go to when we have a flood and we can't use one road and when we write our document we speak to those issue and say our times are off because of these potential issues, so to combat those we come up with different ways to have another vehicle stack or on the other side of the river. But station 4 is going to continue to help us get to the east side and we can always jump on the interstate and get up to the Peninsula area too so... Payne/ A two minute reduction is a lot. Grier/ Yea, it definitely helps. Dobyns/ John, how many calls has station 2 had to University Heights over your tenure? Grier/ Into University Heights? Dobyns/ In the average year... Grier/ I mean we've mutual aided with them. We don't respond in there right off the bat, we have to be asked, and I ... I don't recall being asked anytime in the recent past. Dobyns/ So we don't make ... so that... indirectly happens but it doesn't happen. Grier/ It does happen, there has been a couple of fires in University Heights where they would ask us to come help them. Coralville would call ... and I was at station 2 for a number of years and we knew that if there was something that happened at the school or University Heights, we were going to go. Dobyns/ Were those calls you would have made even if station 2 hadn't been adjacent to University Heights even if they had been far away? Grier/ Yea, Coralville could call us anytime. Dobyns/ Yea, I'm sorry I didn't phrase that right um ... is the fact that station 2 is across the street from University Heights, do you think there is an incremental increase in um... calls made to the station just because it's there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 38 Grier/ I don't know... it's.... certainly have the opportunity there. Dobyns/ Is that a call we would make, would we make a request ... how much ... how much does that eat into our budget over the typical cost. Grier/ Well the ... the amount of calls we go into University Heights and the amount of time we would spend there I think it would be minimal. Dobyns/ Okay. Grier/ We are helping out and you know obviously use um ... the neighboring fire departments to help us out too. But. And we did look at University Heights in the last year and just the money, they are getting a great deal from Coralville, and we just can't do what they do for what we need. I think the thing is the number of people that live in University Heights have no idea that their fire protection comes from Coralville. Dobyns/ Coralville gets a great deal because of us too, so ... thank you. Hayek/ John, there is a roughly 1.4 million dollar line item for state 28E agreements is that our University fire protection? Grier/ Correct. Hayek/ Okay, and it's my understanding that covers 15 million square feet of University property, something to that effect. I mention that because here is the budgetary focal point on that, and we talked about the pilot out in Coralville and the University paying at this point over a million dollars for one building and we are getting paid 1.4 million for an entire campus. Mims/ And theoretical our agreement calls for us to give fire coverage for the University throughout Johnson ' County, correct? Hayek/ That is correct. Grier/ If you read the document... Mims/ That is what the document says... -yes. Markus/ So the properties at the research center and Iowa River Landing, they could have required us to make that arrangement... Mims/ Right. Markus/ Instead they rolled into the cost they paid Coralville. Mims/ John, when you talk about um ... overlapping calls, how, can you tell me, how often have you had overlapping fire calls because I know you guys are first This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session responders on basically everything. Grier/ I could it would take a little research. Mims/ Okay. Page 39 Grier/ It does happen obviously the number of fire call, I think, I think we had 93 the last calendar year, some of that might have changed. We could always find that out. Mims/ But it's pretty minimal compared to just the number of overlapping calls you having because of first responders? Grier/ Correct, I mean it could be fire alarms that we are, we do run a number of fire alarms, we have changed our response protocol for some of those less likely events, we used to run a full complement structure event so everybody went, now if it's a fire alarm but no waters flowing we, something like that, we will just sent one unit. Because I think it's like .0016 of the time an actual incident on a fire alarm. It was... Mims/ I just raise the issue because we've had this discussion before of ambulance, and who's certified, I mean who has the medical certifications and running our fire trucks out every single time there is a 911 call and I would just like you and all of our administrative staff to keep looking at ways we can increase our efficiencies and I realize that means again inter jurisdictional agreements with the county and other municipalities if we can find ways to be more efficient yet provide the services we need and should be providing within our community but..maybe helping others as well -but ... as we talked earlier about the expenses of these full service departments, um ... and some of the things we are doing, and the concerns of our budgets going forward with property tax reform, I just think it's inherit upon us to try and find those efficiencies as much as we can. Grier/ Agree. Hayek/ John, I just want to mention um..in... in fairness to you ... we ... before you showed up we were having a general conversation that got into um ... general fund issues, and the fire department was mentioned. I just want to kind of repeat that conversation for your benefit and it's something you and I have talked about and I've talked to Chief Rocca in the past ... you know with ... with -with these changes on property taxes the... the ... I ... you know -with the changes in commercial.... multi residential .... and ... otherwise Iowa City is going to get hammered going forward, largely in our general fund and of course that is where we fund fire department revenues with a little help from the utility franchise. Um ... but ... urn ... and so .... we are going to have to look at cost saving in the future um ... hopefully I can get off this council before you guys make any hard decisions (laughter) but ... um ... you know it strikes me as you know we are the only professional operation, fire fighting operation, in the area um ... and you look at for example Coralville, they've got about 4-5 full timers. Grier/ Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 40 Hayek/ And the balance are volunteers, urn ... and that seems to work for them and they've got a comparable ISO rating and they don't appear to be under pressure from major property owners and businesses out there to do something other than what they are doing presently and it strikes me as um ... that ... we should at the appropriate time, look at what we can do to introduce some sort of auxiliary component to our professional system ... um ... to ... for cost savings purposes going forward. Because it's working in a place like Coralville where they have a lot of commercial and office type facilities and a growing population. I just wanted you to hear about it... Grier/ Sure. Hayek/ Because we spoke about it about an hour ago, before you showed up. Grier/ I was expecting it Hayek/ Yea, I knew you were expecting it (laughter) but I think it's relevant and I think it's something we will have to do um ... if the ... the budgetary is as ... turns out to be as we are currently forecasting. So... Grier/ No, I know you and I had ISO conversation, I don't know how they have the same, I really don't ... I would love to see the document, but it's not a public document. The public part just says you are this ... the components of training hours, I'm sure they get the full one, and equipment is pretty easy, if you have so many widgets you get so many points um ... but ... just the personnel, I don't know that part of it and the other thing I would say is, we are two different animals, I mean it's hard to compare us to Coralville as far a fire service Grier/ I mean we are running 58... Hayek/ Sorry, I coughed right into my mic! Grier/ We are running 5800 calls and I don't know what their fire department runs but I know it's nowhere near, 'cause the police officers over there run EMS for them, so it's two difference animals. And I think the expectation of this community is you have um ... professionals that arrive in a timely manner, that are able to assemble what we call an effective response force to get the job done. I'm not saying they don't get the job done, it's just that I think we get it done more quickly and more efficiently because it's what we do every day. And ... some of the things you run into with that type of department is the turnover and a lot of those folks that are on that department are trying to get on my department or someone else's department for a professional career. So..but..yea... but I've certainly had the conversations with the City Manger about different ways to look at it, and I call it a response model re-evaluation, people don't like it when I say it, but we have to look ahead and I understand what you are saying, we are certainly looking at all the different ways to do it. Hayek/ Okay This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 41 Dobyns/ And this is the second year Chief that we've discussed these sort of things, this community also the expectation that we use our funds in the most efficient way... Grier/ Correct. Dobyns/ Those are tough decisions and I think Susan came up with some ideas regarding responders and do we need all out personnel to do that and I'd like to see some work on this in the City Manager's office too in terms of giving some more ... I think we've micro managed enough ... I think you guys need to take the baton and give us some ideas over the next year... Grier/ Sure. Payne/ I had a couple questions, sorry Jim... Throgmorton/ Go ahead. Payne/ Um ... on page 173 there is a line for charges for fees and services, fire services, is that like inspections? Or ... like inspections... urn... business inspections that you do every other year I think. Grier/ Confined spaces I think we do some confine space where we would get fees we charge fees. Payne/ And then, I think I remember last year talking about the ... or maybe it was the year before ... um ... if you get a repeated calls, for the same thing, from the same location, that they could get a charge? Grier/ Correct. Payne/ Is that this line that's the 2384 on the 2015 revised, same page ... so you don't really budget for that because you don't know if you are going to get it? Grier/ Correct, urn... sometimes the private ambulance service will call us to come help them do something and since they are getting paid, we would bill them. Payne/ Okay. Grier/ Or if we go to a repeat customer that ... then we do bill as well. Payne/ And then my final question is the capital outlay shows a trench rescue trailer for $33,000. Grier/ Correct. Payne/ Is that something ... I mean ... Iowa City, North Liberty, Coralville, everybody doesn't need that same piece of specialized equipment is that something that you could um ... purchase as a together so everybody could use it, or does it take This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 42 specialized training on it, and so you would get specialized training on it if they need it they will call and we will bill them to use it, to use our services. Grier/ Correct, the ... we all do specialized training in all the high angle, water, trench, building shoring, all those... there's technician level classes and we are moving for all our personnel to be a technician and the neighboring departments would not have that expertise. So we would be the experts they would call upon. Now we could look at something like the Hazmat truck, where it would be something funded by everybody, but... Payne/ So in those cases I know we have mutual aid agreements, but if they called for assistance, would we bill them because they are specialized. Grier/ We would not bill the city. Payne/ No? Grier/ No. Payne/ Okay. Grier/ If there was um ... we do some billing for Hazmat if a semi -trailer comes through and does its thing we do charge that carrier. So if, I would have to check with legal of course, but I do know we charge back for some things, whatever we can we do. Payne/ Okay. Thank you. Throgmorton/ Looking ahead, when do you think we will need a new fifth fire station and where do you think it would be located? Grier/ Well ... I think we will need it sooner rather than later ... we might have to look at some shifting around in what we are doing, planning to do over the next year is do a no standard of cover document which basically looks at our whole ... all the risks associated with our city and evaluates your station locations, your ability to get to all the places in your city, so as we continue to grow south, we need to look down ... we need ... one planned for down there and as we continue west then there would be one over that way too. It kind of depends on what area grows more quickly. Right now we have a difficult time getting out to the eastern fringe of the town. Fruin/ The reallocation of resources in this study they are going through that is something that from our office stand point we are going to assist we look at before we even start a conversation on ... on the next station or the next two stations... it's ... um ... it's so much more um ... economical to even pick up and move a station and spend 3 or 4 million as a one-time capital expense than to invest in a station where you are going to have the kind of staff you see on that screen there. So that is going to be something that is going to take a lot of analysis and as John stated they are starting that process. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 43 Mims/ Yea it would seem to me that moving into some sort of auxiliary model along with or prior to full implementing new stations just so we can help control personnel costs is something we have to look very very carefully. Grier/ And there are certainly models out there that have worked and getting the ball rolling, because as you can imagine there is resistance to evaluating those things. Mims/ Understand. Hayek/ Any other questions for John? Thanks Chief. Grier/ Thanks much, have a great day. Hayek/ Thanks for the service you department provides. Grier/ Thank you. Library: Karr/ Library is page 205. Trogmorton/ Hello Susan. Craig/ Hello. Fruin/ Good morning. Susan if you wouldn't mind just hitting next on the PowerPoint there, the arrow ... or... Craig/ I'm glad I was able to do that (laughter) I depend on my staff for some of my technology. So this year, the Iowa City Public Library is still the single busiest public library building in the State of Iowa, we had over 700,000 people through the door last year and our ... the busiest time of year for us is in the summer, and in the summer we were averaging between 20,000 and 22,000 visitors per week. Um ... compared to the public libraries in Iowa's 10 largest cities, only Des Moines, who has 5 buildings and 200,000 people had more people through their library doors than we did. The average for the other 8 libraries, which between them have 13 facilities was about 400,000 so 60% of what we do. Um ... our library is truly a destination point. One highlight of the last year was the completion of the two year building improvements plan. All those improvements have met with lots of compliments and seem to be working really well for us, but the one I want to highlight because I think ... I'm just so pleased with how it's working out is the Kozer Family Teen Center for the first time we have a room with walls to put teens in, and um ... they are ... you never know with teenagers whether they are going to come ... if you build it will they come ... well they have been. The space opened in the fall of 2013 and the number of programs last year grew over 50% with an attendance of 3200. The first six months of this year that we just ended in December, we had an attendance of 2961 at 197 events. We've partnered This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 44 with the University for several programs in that space including a well -intended called Way Cool Chemistry. Um ... and we didn't have the fire department there at all ... and with the school districts we've been doing um ... we've been partnering with their home school assistant program for a teen book club that's aimed at home schooled students. I'm also very excited last year about our success with renewed efforts to involve more kids um ... and adults ... in summer reading program. You know all studies show that kids that continue reading through the summer do not backslide um ... we worked with the Iowa City School District, the Coralville Public Library, the North Liberty Community Library and the United Way of Johnson and Washington Counties last summer to make special efforts to reach out to under -served families and children. We made outreach efforts to elementary schools serving lower income families and worked with the school personnel to register kids for library cards. Um ... we worked with a local church group to canvas an area with high concentration of Spanish speaking families to drop off library card information and during the summer we visited the two neighborhood centers weekly to promote reading and library visits. This work resulted in a growth of almost 1000 more children registered for summer reading program than the year before. Um ... we also promoted the summer library bus that allows a free bus ride downtown during certain hours if you just show your library cards and we saw those numbers double last summer. 2014 was also a planning year for us, we engaged a consultant to conduct community surveys, hold focus groups, and work with the planning committee. 94.3% of mail survey ... m.a.i.l. every time I say that I go m.a.l.e. no, m.a.i.l. survey responses said the library was either a central or very important to the quality of life in our community and this was the highest positive rating that the consultant had ever experienced. The 2016-2021 plan was adopted by the library board in September, you all got copies of it electronically, I brought paper copies today if any of you would like to see those. I just wanted to read you our um ... new mission statement. The Iowa City Public Library is a center of community life that connects people of all ages with information. Engages them with the world of ideas and with each other. And enriches the community by supporting learning, promoting literacy and encouraging creativity. Our FY16 budget request does not include any major level service changes, staffing is down slightly due to some position adjustments following a retirement. We will be continuing to develop um ... partnerships we have in place, growing our outreach and summer reading efforts, revamping our website, and planning for what I hope will be a great fun series of music events during the 14-15 school year to welcome the College of Music officially downtown. Urn ... looking further ahead in FY17 is ... is stated in our plan and you see in the capital improvements budget request we hope to introduce a book mobile service. Questions? Botchway/ So ... I'm sure everybody else is excited, but I just get excited about the library ... just because the ... of the ... I don't know if it's this year ... from last year to this year ... just the changes you made just within the library have been phenomenal. I think I was there yesterday for an annual review and was just doing ... or an ... yea annual review ... and she was doing something else and um.. was in and out quick, I love that ... um ... I don't want to say anymore because I don't want to take up anyone else's time, but you could just ... I like it a lot. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Craig/ Thank you. Botchway/ So good job. Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 45 Payne/ I think our library is phenomenal too, I love to do there. Um ... I do have a question on page 209 on capital outlay, the RFID tags, do these go on the books? Are these a tag that go on the book? Craig/ They go on all... all... both books and the media. It's urn ... what lets you check out through self -check and also if it's not checked out it alerts at the gate that... Payne/ It signals? Craig/ Yes. Payne/ Urn ... so are these replacements then of bad ones? Or do we not have them on everything yet? Craig/ No, this is for the new materials. Payne/ Oh so it's to put on new materials that come in. Craig/ Right, everything that comes in ... everything new gets a tag put on it. Payne/ Okay. Dickens/ What does the Foundation bring in every year as far as dollars? Craig/ The Foundation gives us an annual gift from their annual fund and fundraising of about $100,000 and then in addition, they channel to us designation gifts so ... um ... if ... if someone comes in we get .... if someone comes in as this happened at the end of the year ... and says here's $500 1 want you to buy children's books with it ... you know that doesn't count in that $100,000 so we typically um ... see revenue from the Foundation in the 100,000 to 200,000 range depending on other kinds of gifts. They urn ... committed to raise a substantial amount of money for those building improvements, it was about $250,000 that they raised and they have committed, if we move ahead with the book mobile, that they will raise um ... more than the half of the cost of that vehicle. So then ... I think we are very fortunate with our Foundation because most foundations that I hear about and have experience with for libraries typically only raise money for big ticket capital items like a book mobile or a building renovation but we get an annual amount of money that we use for collections and technology upgrades ... and things like that. Dickens/ Thanks. Dobyns/ You know Susan, the blue zones um ... ideas are going through um ... the Power 9 as you market the library and um ... maybe you and Robin can think about this but This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 46 the 8th and 9th part of the Power 9 Blue Zones they talk about ideas which I agree about that but take a look at the final two parts of the Power 9 Blue Zones um...in terms of ... I think there is a lot of wellness and it just isn't Mike in Park & Rec that is about wellness, I think the library also makes people well in various ways in terms of um ... avoiding social isolation and getting them to work with their families in terms of their children... there is a lot there ... in terms of how you guys market yourselves. I think there is a lot of overlap that you can be thoughtful about what the library does. Craig/ I just wrote a ... a blog post about that really ties into the top 10 reasons to really visit the library more and the first one was you get to have some exercise getting there because we don't have convenient parking so... (laughter) Dobyns/ Well that is (unable to understand, too much laughter and noise). Craig/ And I also said when it's really cold come walk around the second floor because it's a block long and if you walk around it twice you've walked four blocks. Dobyns/ Well if Mike has books in his park, you should have at least exercise in your library. Craig/ There you go. Hayek/ Susan, um ... there ... I see four contracts with local communities... Craig/ Yes. Hayek/ Um ... is there a consistency across those contracts or are they an ad hoc negotiations? Craig/ Well, well I have to call our Deb Mansfield here who figures out those contracts every year and most of the ... the one that is a little different is University Heights because they pay both Coralville and Iowa City for library service, but the others, Lone Tree, Hills and the County um ... all are based on the same -you know each of those contacts model the other. And they are based on a percentage of the tax support we get from Iowa City and then we look at the percentage of circulation that that district accounts for and um ... they pay that percentage and our County contract um ... we get significant amount of money from our contracts and are pretty much the envy of many other libraries in Iowa who pretty much sort of take what County Boards of Supervisors give them. We have a history that predates me that if you want the service you need to pay what it costs to Iowa City people. Hayek/ Okay you are comfortable with our arrangements? Craig/ Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 47 Hayek/ Okay. And then my other question is kind of a more ... it's a broader, more abstract question, you know I look across the array of City departments and services and I think with... with... with maybe a few exceptions with what we do with solid waste and those type of things over the long run and... and... and... where some of our Parks & Rec stuff goes, in like our rec center you know which has seen a complete change at least in how the downtown building is used now versus when I was kid going there on Saturdays ... Um ... a library is vibrant now obviously, but is part of social changes that are just going to provide us with an unknown future and as we digitize and as people's habits change and there is less reliance on hard copy books ... all these changes ... are you comfortable that the library is positioning itself to be relevant? Craig/ I'm very comfortable with that. Hayek/ 20 years. Craig/ And I think we talked, the group that worked on the strategic plan, talked a lot about that. We tried to address those kinds of issues in our surveying and ... and the focus groups that were conducted and there is less reliance, our circulation went down, I want to say 6%, we still have a very high circulation per capita and people in Iowa City read more than most people do but they are reading in different areas and doing different things. The difference gets picked up in the types of social activities we do. You can't just sit in front of a screen all day and every day and the meetings that people still want to have to bring people together and the role that we play in early childhood literacy that really nobody else does to the extent that we do it, and I think libraries are finally getting credit, for something again 50, 60 more years um ... getting kids ready for school. So some of those roles just don't change. And giving people a place to socialize, see people face to face, um ... those are all ... I think we are doing good and that we are looking far enough ahead to try and be responsive for what people want from us. I am grateful many many times a week that we are where we are ... when I think people thought we should not be downtown, when that building was first built in the 1980's and again when the remodel was done, that would have been such a mistake to put us out on the edge of town with a big parking lot, you know, we bring people of downtown and it is the center of town, the hub of what is going on and that is what we want people. Payne/ And kind of going along with that, on page 206 there is a highlight on the top talking about the circulation. Does that circulation include if somebody checks out a book online? Craig/ Yes. Payne/ Okay. Craig/ That is one area where our circulation is going up, people are still ... they are still incremental rise of both... electronic media, both books that you download in print format and audio books as well. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 48 Payne/ It will be interesting to see that trend, you know, the hard copy checkouts versus the online checkouts and trend that and obviously one is going to go down while the other goes up but it would be interesting to see that trend too. Craig/ Nationally people are seeing the use of eBooks level off. You know, people are not wanting to sit in front of a screen all the time and the most popular eBook users are people who travel which makes sense, you don't want to lug three books with you, you take one eReader. And certainly there are people devoted to them um ... but you know one place where you ... it's interesting, you know in our large print collections, our circulation is going down because people who need the large print are using the eBooks because they can expand the contrast and the size of the print. So ... it's just the little nuances with keeping up with it. Payne/ Yea, I definitely understand that, I mean we get our packets online now, we stare ... I mean we go to work and stare at the computer for 10 or 12 hours a day and then come home and read a packet... Craig/ Right. Payne/ ...or read a book and I'm still online ... no ... I want a hard copy ... I don't want.... Craig/ Exactly, that is why I brought the hard copies of this ... I thought I would rather read a hard copy. Dobyns/ Some of us read it closer than others Michelle. (laughter) Hayek/ You learn to read. Any other questions for Susan? Thank you so much. Craig/ Thank you. And I'll just leave some of these with Marian if somebody wants one. Bockenstedt/ Susan, I would just point out on page 209 in there you asked about the property tax versus the general fund subsidy and the ... um ... this is an instance where there is a property tax levy. Craig/ Right. Bockenstedt/ Specific to the library... Craig/ Yep. Mims/ Thanks. Bockenstedt/ And so that it is shown as a separate funding source. Craig/ Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 49 Hayek/ And that is a levy with no sunset. Bockenstedt/ Right it's a 27 cent levy dedicated just to the library. Dobyns/ Was that by Council to create a pass or is that by public vote? Bockenstedt/ Public vote. Craig/ Public vote. Dobyns/ Okay, that is what I thought, okay. Parks and Recreation: Karr/ Parks & Recreation starts on page 182. Hayek/ Good morning Mike. Moran/ Greetings everybody, how are you? All/ Good ... good -thank you. Moran/ It's early right. All/ No ... not anymore ... (laughter) Moran/ Yea... Hayek/ That is correct Mike, it's still early. Moran/ For some of us. (laughter) Um ... I'll start with Park & Recreation administration and go through in the order you've got it in your budget book urn ... couple of changes in administration or differences you will see is we had -we will have quite a bit of neighborhood stabilization going on with spending down urn ... our neighborhood open space monies. We have lots of projects you'll see on Tower Court, Hickory Trail, Mercer Park Playground, Reno Street and Pheasant Hill and those will all be project we are currently working with neighborhoods with and have neighborhood meetings with and have them input on the design of their neighborhood parks. Um ... in addition to that we will also have other neighborhood improvements at Highland Park, Willow Creek Kiwanis Park, and Fairmeadows. So we have quite a few projects with both neighborhood open space money and then CIP money that you'll hear about on Monday. Farmer's Market has added an additional Tuesday market at Mercer Park and this was in lieu of going and staying at the Iowa City marketplace um ... we had a winter market there and then a summer market last year, and with the addition of the whole foods store, they asked us not to have a farmer's market there anymore so we had to relocate and we moved out to Mercer Park in the summer. The winter market, we still haven't found a place with think will be suitable for anything like This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 50 that so we are still working on trying to relocate something we can use on a year round basis for farmer's market. Payne/ Did you see the same amount of traffic at the Mercer as you did at Sycamore for that market, do you know? Moran/ It was about the same and I think it was because of the newness of both locations. They had to get used to going to the old Sycamore Mall and then they had to get used to going to Mercer so that is one reason why we went back to Mercer as we thought well they were familiar with that last year, or two years ago, before we moved it. Payne/ I'm glad it didn't drop off, I mean at least being the same, to me it's a positive. Moran/ Yea. We tried it at Grantwood School as well, and that just ... we just could not get population down there to attend. Um ... we may try it again at the new Archibald School when that gets open to see how successful that will be ... but we want to get that open and see how that goes first. But for the meantime for the summer we'll have a Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday market. Dickens/ Have you approached Eastdale by any chance for the indoor? Moran/ We have not, um ... we are just trying... Dickens/ Or is that too close to the... Moran/ No, I don't think it would hurt with the Sycamore Mall you know we have a lot of things to figure out like parking and it's getting real congested over there with what they've got in there but we could certainly try that as well. And then to address sustainability we've had a huge increase for the number of garden plot requests throughout the city and that is because mainly Doug Paul's garden plots off Rochester Avenue and Scott Boulevard will be closed down this year. He told those folks that they won't be able to farm that as well so, the additional pick up for us will be with the Chaddick Green Park and we ... I just met with Mike Carberry and some garden folks yesterday and we always did tell the Chaddick sisters that we would put garden plots there because that is what Carl did and that is what that neighborhood is reminded for so ... we'll establish a garden plot park program at that park as well as our existing program at Wetherby Park (clears throat) and then we'll be meeting with the Chaddick people this spring to see if there is anything else they want to bring to that park system and see if they want to expand that or do something different that we've done over the years with them. Mims/ So at this point Mike the only place we'll have garden plots at will be at the Chaddick and at Wetherby? Moran/ That is correct. And we also have an edible forest and an edible fruit maze and stuff there, we've been working with Backyard Abundance and we've got a USDA Agricultural Land Grant to put the edible forest in last year and that will be This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session finished up this year as well. Page 51 Payne/ Will we continue ... I think last year we did a thing where people could plant stuff like between the sidewalk and the street that could be ... anybody could use it? Would that continue? Was it very popular? Moran/ It wasn't very popular at all and I ... we'll probably continue it we just didn't have a heavy demand for that... Dobyns/ You ask good questions. Moran/ and most of that was because of care and the high weeds and we got into the other weed ordinances and stuff through the city. Payne/ Right, yea you have to take care of it. Moran/ Yea, and that sometimes happens, and sometimes doesn't. (clears throat) And then government buildings... how... we removed a 5/8 position and transferred it into the park system to take care of our sports facilities and to assist those folks in parks as well and then at Mercer we lost a custodian to attrition and now have contracted that service out similar to what at transit and parking ramps, and that just started in December so we'll going to see how that goes to help bolster our maintenance needs at Mercer Park. And then just specifics in Park & Rec Administration, we still only have 1511 acres of parkland um ... 43 designated parks, 28 1/2 miles of trails, 486 acres of residential turf, 212 acres of rough areas around water and highways, 31 playground structures and 15 bathroom facilities if you are interested. Throgmorton/ Mike ... Mike I am interested. So with regard to the parkland, to what extent have you been exploring the possibilities of converting more of that land to natural areas instead of being mowed areas and have you assessed the cost savings that would be associated with that and the extent to which converted um ... um ... areas could become more um ... um ... more natural habitat for wildlife? Moran/ It is high on our list to get done this spring, last spring when our new parks superintendent started in May urn ... he just (coughing) wanted to get a sense of what was going on and didn't -and we didn't really want to institute many changes with that. We did decrease the mowing times so we don't mow every 7 days or 8 days we mow now every 14 or 20 days and extend that out so ... that will be something we will look very intentionally on to try to get some of the land transformed. I'll talk about that a little about that in the parks section because there will be some other significant changes you'll notice in that. Um ... also the Iowa City Park & Recreation Foundation was instrumental of course in raising our $400,000 that we used to ... for the Vision Iowa Grant, and just this week we got our last installment from the State, we got our $310,000 check which brought that grant total up to 1.6 million dollars for Terry Trueblood Recreation area and then the Foundation successfully fund raised that as well. The Foundation currently has a balance of about $90,000 to $100,000 and they'll use that to supplement most of the maintenance cost for the Terry Trueblood Recreation Area and the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 52 Ashton House. Um ... at least right now. We don't have any active fundraiser going on with the Foundation right now, the $400,000 was enough to kill everybody, just about did, but we were successful with that. In Recreation we've transformed our 50 year old building, the Recreation Center, into a fitness center and more program space and we are utilizing a central point of entry for the public as well. If you've been in there, we just finished up the fitness room enclosure with that and I think it's added some additional, so nice additional space to that. Our focus next year will be to transform it into meeting ADA availability. We meet ADA now but it needs some upgrades and we have had a ADA audit in all of our facilities and we have a list of what we have to do for that as well and we'll start chunking those off as we can get to them. Um..we are entirely web based for customers, you can go online and get park shelters, you can make reservations and everything which is a nice amenity to that, one of the changes you will see is we have -we have had two layoffs for our clerk typist positions, one in Recreation and one in Parks and we will ask for a programmer to come in and communications and public relations and bring all of the contact information for Parks & Recreation underneath one house and one number, so you don't have to call Parks to do something and Recreation to do something and Cemetery to do something, we want everybody to be able to make just one call, sort of like the City Hall front desk here or the Public Library so that we can take care of all their needs with one instead of sort of shuffling them around the system with that. They'll also be in charge of our ... our entry folks, so they will be greeted and make sure we can answer all their questions as sync -fully as possible with that, so that will be a fairly significant change you will see in our division next year. Um ... we are updating the fee structure, and you'll see the fee structure probably at your first February meeting, as you are aware, you have seen that before, we are trying to get to the 50% and we will get to the 50% um ... fee structure so that we ... we collect those fees for that and then we will only ask for limited property tax money because we know that is becoming unavailable as well. You'll see a lot of different changes with that and I'll walk you through those when you get that so you can approve those separately and individually. Fruin/ Mike, you might take this opportunity, the Council has probably read articles or seen letters but has not been briefed by staff by the whole softball fee issue, can you just run that... Moran/ Yea, one ... one thing that we are doing, we've had numerous affiliate, what we call affiliate, groups in Parks & Recreation and those are people like boy's baseball, girls' softball, Babe Ruth, camera club, square dancers, the swim club, all those folks have basically started way back in the 40's and 50's when the department was created and a group of volunteers ran the program and we supported them with that. They never paid a fee for the services we provided for them so any of the softball diamonds we've fixed, baseball fields, any of the meeting rooms we've provided them for any activities were all free of charge for them. The Parks & Recreation Commission has been meeting with all the affiliate groups for about the last four or five months just to have some discussion with them about their stability and how they are doing and how they are not doing and what we can do to help and the other reason is of course is that they want to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 53 institute an affiliate fee upon staff recommendation and initially we just want to initiate a 10% affiliate fee which means they would pay 10% of whatever they used in our facilities. So of all the ball diamonds they use ... if they use ball diamond space 50 times a year they would pay 10% of what the going rental is for that. And we want to initiate that so that they start taking better attention to what they use, because a lot of the time they will want to come in and reserve all the ball fields from Monday thru Friday from 5:00 to 10:00 and maybe only use three of them or maybe only use eight of them, and that prevents us from going in and renting them to other people. So we want them to take a little more... pay a little more attention to what they use and be a little more appreciative of the services we give them. Now that has caused some rubs between folks because as you know, Kickers and ... and girls softball in particular have donated money to us in the past, I mean Kickers has donated up to $400,000 to us um ... probably since the 1990's for the creation of the new soccer complex and for additional items. Girls' softball has given us up to $50,000 for the addition of lights at the field and stuff as well. And while we are very appreciative of that we don't want to get into a credit situation with them where we say well, you have $400,000 of credit and how much can you use for that, because it should be a partnership so we all do the same thing for everybody in the community. So we are going to ... staff will make some recommendations to the Commission and then the Commission will vote as to whether or not they want to institute an affiliate fee or not or if they want to do it in a more sequential manner over numerous years and then that recommendation will be brought forward with the fees and charges recommendations will be brought to you. So you get a chance. Dobyns/ Mike, I'm a bit confused like ... using Kickers as an example, on good faith they have been partnering with the City and the upgrade of the facilities but you are looking to transition that to a more fee based structure where they actually pay us on a yearly basis for... Moran/ They would pay us 10% on what their actual usage would be for example. Dobyns/ So it isn't just baseball, we are looking at all... Moran/ All affiliated groups, everybody that uses our services and doesn't pay a fee for that. Dobyns/ So it's a level playing field for everyone. Moran/ Right yea, so we aren't going to say we are going to charge you only and not charge you, it's going to be all or nothing. Dobyns/ Okay. Moran/ So that is also on the Recreation docket, underneath Recreation as well is the new school additions, the Alexander School addition will open up this fall, we will give them $750,000 for the expansion of the gym just similar to what we did at Grantwood as well and we will do the programming of that gym after school hours and on weekends and that will probably be more related to our own This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 54 programming needs and rental to the community for basketball tournaments, volleyball tournaments, soccer tournaments and stuff like that. That is scheduled to open fairly soon this fall-ish, so we'll see how that starts out and we'll treat that just like the Grantwood agreement we have with the school district. In the Parks division the service contracts for Terry Trueblood, the Ashton House, the Marina and Normandy Drive are working extremely well. We instituted an event services coordinator and a company through an RFP program to run those programs for us and they've been wildly successful and they've actually done a very good job so we don't have any backfill for problems we have to pick up with them. The Terry Trueblood Recreation Area has been extremely busy, in fact I don't think we have a Saturday or Sunday open for the next 18 months. The Ashton House has started to pick up but it isn't quite as full, it's about 50% full right now, but I only anticipate that will get better. The division, to address some of your concerns Jim, the division in Parks has got some ideas to split up the city in quadrants, in four different quadrants, and change the work habits with the staff so that they go from quadrant to quadrant so that they can all become familiar with all the facilities we have in the city. Right now there basically assigned two or three parks and that is all they do and which is fine, but I think the quadrant system will people to understand the whole entire use of the park and what's in each one of them so they become more knowledgeable of them as well. The sustainability for that is we would like to institute "no mow Wednesdays" or "no mow Fridays" so that we take staff and we start breathing some life into our facilities that are well worn. Take care of park shelters, take care of bathrooms, take care of trash can receptacles and things that we just haven't had time to do since we've been so focused on mowing grass and doing other things, so now we are going to take those off and not do those things and start breathing some more life and start refreshing our facilities a little bit so they look better for the public as well. And one of the reasons for that of course in the fees and charges that we set as well is the park shelter fees, you'll see a fairly significant increase in park shelter fees and that was because we let those go for so long, we never had any fees and then all of sudden we better start charging. For example you used to be able to rent a small shelter for five hours for $7. And so we doubled those two years ago to $14 and we now have doubled those again to $28 and we still feel that is significant um ... or reasonable cost for rental of a shelter of that magnitude. We had University students do a study on what was acceptable and what was palpable and what wasn't and we have fallen in line with that and we've fallen in line with what all the other communities around us are charging for park shelter usage. Um ... the dog parks are ... have been self-sustaining with the addition of attendance, we've added attendance to that they can also sell dog passes at the park, we can also purchase them at the recreation center at Mercer Park and then of course at Animal Services so we have a good relationship with the Animal Services folks. The dog pack folks were considered an affiliate group of ours as well and they gave us some significant money to establish the two dog parks. Just recently they told us they wanted to abandon that relationship if you will, and it was nothing personal but what they want to do is now take their focus in say our Johnson County dog pack into other areas of the county like Coralville and North Liberty and help them establish dog pacts, or dog parks, which we certainly welcome because I think it will take a little pressure off the dog parks being used now in our county and we'll certainly help them with that, but they just This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 55 don't want much of a hands-on approach with the two parks we've got right now. Forestry ... the forestry folks are pretty much going to be identifiable with the EAB, that is going to be their main point of focus we are going to start with street trees, we are working very hard both budgetary and schedule wise to get to a one to one tree replacement, I'm not sure we can to that so it may be a two for one or three for one initially until we can put that program together. We've got about 1300 street trees that we have to concentrate on and look at, and we'll start doing removal of those first and then go back in and try to get in to a one to one planting basis. I'm not sure we'll be successful with that but that is our goal to get to that point in time. The legislature loosened the restrictions, I think you were told when Zach did his presentation, that we can now take that and take that to the landfills and we don't have to do things they were talking about that we had to do we thought we also ... add additional costs to that. We've also had talks with the University of Iowa so that they can take our ash tree logs and use them for burning in their incinerator program they have been working on as well. Um ... that program I believe has some connection with Muscatine and so we may have a little bit of travel with that but we wouldn't bear the cost of that, that would be the University to bear that cost, they wanted to take our trees for that program. So we'll see where that goes, but that would be a good way to get rid of those trees so we wouldn't fill up our own landfill with, with that waste. Throgmorton/ Mike, I'm a little concerned about the, the replacement rate description you just provided us with, there is a huge difference between one for one, one for two, one for three, so I wonder if you are going to be able to provide greater precision for us about that. Moran/ Yea, what will happen with that is the reason I'm a little vague with that is we are trying to establish contracts and if we get contracts with stump removal and assistance with removing trees and planting trees and we get good bids on that we'll be able to do more (coughing) if the contract is not very favorable then unfortunately we are going to have longer replacement values with that. So it's purely a budget thing that we'll have and we'll fight through. I don't anticipate it will get much past 1.3 or one to three ratio because we are going to strive to get it down to that but it's all budgetary concerns. Throgmorton/ Yea, yea, that makes sense. I don't want to engage in hyperbole but empty streets have huge economic costs. Morton/ No, we understand that. Fruin/ What we talked about with Mike and Zach too is that um ... you've got really two categories of trees, you've got your street trees and your park trees and um ... we are going to um ... strive very hard to hit the one for one ratio on the street trees and we'll let the park trees slip a little bit and then hopefully we'll be able to come back and ... and um ... improve upon that after the rush of EAB is gone, but street trees are our focus, it's Zach's focus, it's Mlke's focus and so we'll do everything we can to get to that one to one hopefully like Mike said, the bids we have for some of the contracted services come back good but, but we feel pretty comfortable with the budget that you see right here in terms of street tree This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 56 replacement um ... is significantly enhanced over what you had in FY15 and FY14. Payne/ And I gotta notice that Park Road is going to be closed for some tree removal, is that for the EAB or... Moran/ No that is just for dead older trees that have to be removed. We are afraid they are going to fall down, they are dead now and we don't want them to get caught up in the spring rush of everything so... Payne/ Or fall into the power line or something like that. Moran/ ...Or fall onto a power line or something, where that isn't a high priority but we'll get'em. Payne/ (laughter) it is for the people that live there. Dickens/ (laughter) yea and we start um ... maybe ... just throughout there and adopt a tree program where you can get the private sector to step up. Moran/ Yea, we've got that now and we'll have to pick that up a little bit and get that out and that could be a ... a good program for the Foundation to pick up on as well. Dobyns/ Like to avoid future blight. The replacements going to be having a multiple tree species I assume? Moran/ Yea that is correct. Dobyns/ Okay. Moran/ And we've had a tree inventories done up at the CBD and they've given us a lot of different suggestions with the Dubuque Street projects we've got a lot of different suggestions with that. Urn ... I will say we are sora of on a maple moratorium right now those as well because we do have an overpopulation of maples and feel that is going to be the next bug if you will. So.. you won't see a lot of maple replacements. Ah..the Central Business District, you'll see a little bit of transformation with eh Ped Mall of course with the construction that is going on with that as well. Um..but we are going to do some things like decrease the trash removal contract and try to do that internally with our refuse folks. We want to pick up the ambassador program and make that a little bit more... Payne/ Terry, quit playing (laughter). Dickens/ It's alive. Moran/ The Business District (laughter)... it's alive ... um ... and one of the things we did this year with the Central Business District is we hired the Shelter House to come in and ... and help us clean ... assist during home football games and they came two hours before kickoff and then stayed through the game and then and stayed two hours after kickoff, I thought it was a highly successful program and it was very This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 57 visible, people saw them out and they saw what was going on and I think we will continue that through the festivals. They will also help us through Jazz Fest and Art Fest and do those types of things as well. It's good for the Shelter House, it's good publicity with us and it's a nice contract we can put together with that. And last, but not least, is the cometary division, and in the cemetery division you will see some substantial increases in this. We haven't had any fee increases in the cemetery division for nine years. So ... we went around and sort of did some relationary things to Memory Gardens and to Oak Hill and all the cemeteries around here so we would fall in line with this but you'll see changes anywhere from $125 to $750 depending on what is being done and we'll walk through those with the park fees as well. And ... if you are interested there is 40 acres of land in the cemetery um ... 18,000 in interment sites and two columbariums that we are responsible for there. Markus/ Mike, talk about how many full-time staff are dedicated to that cemetery? Moran/ Yea, we have three full-time staff um ... that uses that ... for the 40 acres and we also have 2 1/2 miles of trails, roads, roadways we have to maintain in and out of there. Markus/ Do you think that ... do you think that's the most efficient way to operate, that cemetery? Moran/ I think that we'll look through um ... retirements and stuff as to coming through and do some different things. We've been doing that a lot with maintenance and we'll do that a lot with care as well. Markus/ And are we actually providing the grave service? Moran/ Yes that is part of the fee structure for it, and then what happens is that um ... the ... funeral homes charge that to the parties and we bill them, and they pay us. So we don't get paid directly from the person or the family or that, we get paid through the um ... cemetery directors and funeral directors. Markus/ And when is the last time we examined that? Moran/ Nine years ago was when we had the last fee increase so we just examined it now for fee increase that are coming right now. Should have been done every three years and we've just let it go. Mims/ So do our staff do all of the mowing, or is that contracted out? Moran/ No right now those three do all the mowing.' Mims/ Wow. Moran/ And they do all the service for the digging and the removal and everything as well. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 58 Markus/ And is there a perpetual care fund established? Moran/ There is a perpetual care fund (coughing) established but we haven't utilized that for a long time, it was established way back in ... boy I don't even know... 1800... late 1800's. And ... um ... we can tap into some of that but I don't know what the rules are, we have never really looked into that. Markus/ So are we still selling grave sites? Moran/ Yes we do. Markus/ And do we extract a perpetual care contribution... Moran/ No, no we do not. Hayek/ Mike, I've a question about the ... the Rec Center..um... I was a staple there as a child and this is my last opportunity to remind people that in the third grade I won both the singles and doubles foosball tournaments at the Rec Center. Moran/ Do you want me to put that up on the wall somewhere? Hayek/ Yea I think you should (laughter) but, I mean I'm joking. I'm serious that I did win it but I'm joking and bringing it up but there is a reason for that and that is that the use of that facility has transformed over the years... and... and... the... I'm just curious what your sense of just overall numbers at that facility is versus what it was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. My sense is because population has shifted ... um ... personal time spent differently, kids do different things, they are more league, you know, travel teams and things like that and not coming downtown and now with the rec, University rec building, what does that mean for the Rec Center? Moran/ The place where we struggle the most is during the week. Um ... weekends are still busy and packed, you know when I went in there this morning we've got indoor soccer going on and it will be going on until 2 or 3 o'clock this afternoon and you get these hordes of 30 kids coming in and out every 45 minutes or hour where we'll have basketball tournament in there, we'll have a volleyball tournament. Gym space is still at a high premium during the week, I mean during the weekend. During the week um ... we struggle a little a bit because we don't have that population base, we don't have any after school type of activities that occur in there because we just don't have any school kids in the area. So I think what is happened is we've seen folks leave during the week and do other things but still use it during the weekends and um ... our meetings rooms stay full at night, but those are other people who come here intentionally to use the facility. Yea, we don't have a kid base much downtown like we used to and so I think that's where we see the biggest down, downturn in activities there. Hayek/ I don't think kids are as mobile as they used to be ... I would ride my bike... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 59 Moran/ They don't hop on the bus anymore. Hayek/ They don't hop on the bus... Throgmorton/ Iowa City is more disbursed too. Moran/ I think transportation is a huge issue for our youth sports activities and ... um ... we have to figure out how we can better utilize that system to get people to where we need to for activities. Especially during the summer, you know baseball, softball, all those kind of things. Botchway/ Well, um ... I had three things to bring up. One, since we are bringing up accolades I remember um ... just recently winning the basketball um ... program tournament, whatever, at the Iowa City Rec Center, so ... pretty good ... but... Hayek/ Pretty good teammates... Botchway/ Anyways... (laughter) Throgmorton/ That's what it is all about Botchway/ Um ... on a serious note, have we looked at um...'cause we are kind of talking about um ... you know having more people come in the week and the ability of folks, have we talked about, I mean obviously I'm bringing up basketball, but other programs or making those more robust. I mean I'm thinking about the North Liberty league basketball program, they charge about $375 per team um ... doing that. I know we have a winter program, but i don't think we have a summer program, or a fall program, and again I'm just talking about basketball so I'm not sure about all the other sports, but um ... is there a way to do that because I'm also thinking about the closure of the field house for, and that was when I first got here, from a lot of areas using that facility from a free standpoint, and now ... not having anywhere to go, and I know some kids do come down to the Rec Center, but if there is the ability to use multiple gyms, you know work with the school district, or obviously use the facility that we have to make that program, I mean again I'm just talking about basketball, but other programs as well, more robust I think we might see some potential increases from a revenue standpoint, from a usability standpoint, that we don't currently have. Moran/ Yea, we do currently use the recreation center downtown for most of the adult leagues, basketball and volleyball in the fall and winter and in the spring we do have the senior high basketball or high school basketball league that also uses the recreation center in the winter. And then most of our other kid related activities happen at Mercer Park because of the relationship with Southeast Junior High. And ... and if you were there at 3:30 in afternoon that is a total different venue there because all the kids just transform from Southwest all the way into Mercer Park. So we have the dichotomy of two different facilities, one that is very busy all the time and one that is busy only at certain times and that is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 60 the downtown one versus the east side location. We can certainly open that up again, but again I think transportation is huge issue trying to get those kids downtown after school. Botchway/ Um..the other things I was thinking about, and this is kind of um ... on line with... downtown as well ... is the alley ways and everything, and I don't know if we've ever talked about using those potential community gardens or I know light placement and... that... kind of has an affect as well, but I guess I'm just getting tired of seeing the nasty alleyways. Fruin/ Yea... we're... we're ... um ... we got some wheels in motion there and um ... there is a couple of things, one this semester through the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities partnership that we have, we have a graduate student in urban planning that is going to help us um ... sort through the waste issue. And that is really ... that has to be the first step, if we can't clean up the waste there it is not going to be an inviting pedestrian way, you are not going to be able to public garden there, whatever you want to do in alleys the waste has to be solved. Um ... there is too many dumpsters, too many carriers, it spills out, um ... so that is the first step. We think we can overcome that, it's probably going to take a year of prep and planning, it's pretty complicated because each individual property or business has individual contracts with a dozen or more different waste carriers and so we got to figure out how to create a situation where folks can get out of those contracts and we can consolidate dumpsters and coordinate building and all that. Dickens/ Can the downtown district help at all with that? Fruin/ Yea, yea they are a partner with us on that, but we certainly think we can get that cleaned up and um ... the second piece of that is that is we are going to look at the waste first through the Sustainable Communities Program and then we are going to have some engineering students the second semester develop a green alleyways program, which has been successfully implemented in Dubuque and Chicago and a few other communities, so we hope to convert those over time to um ... areas of where you have permeable pavement, um ... you might even have some vegetation and public art, and what communities like Boulder, Colorado or Fort Collins have seen ... would be actual... seen storefronts open onto your alleys. Um..and... and ... we are a long way from that but we know how to get there, it's just going to take a little time. Hayek/ That is a good point, you know Fairfield has some of that actually if you are down there. It opens up essentially, not doubling, but increasing your... your... streets... your.... you know ... it's a good idea. Botchway/ The third thing I had was you had brought up doing an internal or external audit of your um ... of ADA compliance with your buildings. Moran/ Yea, we had an external auditor come in and do a report for our buildings. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 61 Botchway/ So then my question is, urn ... do you do an internal or external audit of your ADA compliance as it pertains to services? Um ... and I know that, I think that Simon and I shared an email about some services that occurred within the recreation department but I guess as we move forward from a fee standpoint and getting to that 50%, is there going to be some type of internal audit in making sure that ... if we do charge ... I mean ... there's a whole bunch of different scenarios, if we do charge a certain fee whether or not we charge a comparable fee to somebody who might need some ADA services or whether or not there is a ability to charge extra if we are going to do that, obviously we have to look at it from a ... from a personnel standpoint and back and forth. So has there been any thought... thoughts on that because I think that is going to be, and I kind of talked to Simon about this briefly and I haven't been able to follow up with your, that's going to be a push I think (coughing) in coming months just to make sure you know we are above approach. Moran/ We currently have had a budget of I think 2-4 thousand dollars almost every summer because that comes up for our summer camp program and as long as parents come in and give us a two-week notice and tell us for example they need a sign language interpreter or they need extra help with their children, then we provide that activity so we are currently doing that in our programs already. It isn't highly used, but we have done that for a considerable number of years. Hayek/ Um, I just wanted to follow up on something Jim had mentioned and we've talked about it a last year, and this came up ... and it has to do with parks ... and our approach in trying to shift from mow the grass, remove the garbage and move on approach, to a more collaborate holistic one. You know the Northside Park is the shining example of that and I know a lot of ... financial and time investment occurred with that, but it is a good model, now um ... maybe the neighborhood is more ... in that area, positioned to play a strong role um ... then we will see elsewhere in terms... especially from a budget standpoint we need the neighborhoods engagement in our parks going forward and I just hope we see that... Moran/ These projects that I mentioned in the very beginning, like Reno Street, Hickory Trail and Tower Court have been great to work with and they are fully on board with what we are doing and I think we'll get a lot of that ... we seen a lot of buy -in. Markus/ You fully engage the neighborhood in these park issues? Moran/ Oh absolutely. And you know we have up to 20 people at each meeting and ... they tell us what they want, we come back with plans, and they review them and they give us some suggestions, and then we go and ... and we say okay here it is, what do you think. And you will see a lot of projects this spring actually turn ground and get ready to be installed. Mims/ Speaking of that Mike, what's the timeline on the new one on North Dubuque Road? Jessie Allens' Public Palisades or what's called? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 62 Moran/ Yea, I don't ... we don't have a timeline on that yet, I have seen any dates on when that is going to happen. Mims/ I mean I know they've set the lot aside and they've planted a whole bunch of trees around it which... Moran/ Yea. Mims/ ...concerns me... Fruin/ So we'll approach like we did with Fraunholz Miller and it will be open green space you know... Mims/ ... for now Fruin/ That folks can use but in terms of improvements it's not in our five-year capital plan that you'll see tomorrow. Mims/ Okay, good, thanks. Hayek/ Okay, thank you Mike Mims/ Thank you. Moran/ Mr. Mayor I'm sure I speak on behalf of the whole council, we are looking forward to the next 11 months hearing about your exploits to your childhood in Iowa City. Hayek/ Well, you've got 11 1/2 months and I will get to work on my list. (laughter) Markus/ Have you heard about his lifesaving award? (laughter) Hayek/ Just foosball. Senior Center: Karr/ Senior Center starts on page 2.1.6, 216. Throgmorton/ Hi Linda. Kopping Hi, good morning. Is there a special button I'm supposed to push up here or? Fruin/ Just push the right arrow or the space bar would be fine too. Kopping/ Technological genius. Urn ... to begin with um ... I'd like to update some of the information about the senior center you've been given in the financial plan. Urn ... since this information was compiled, we have more recent information that represents ah ... FY14 participation programming. Urn ... I'm really happy to tell you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 63 that our membership and participation counts have increased by 3% in FY, both of them increased 3% in FY14 and our volunteer count increased by 4% who ... all the volunteers together donated 27,000 hours of service over the course of the year. And I've said many times before we wouldn't be able to run the senior center without the volunteers. I also want..um... point out that our current FY16 budget request shows less than a 1 % increase over our FY15 budget and it is over $37,000 less than our FY14 actual budget. Now ... um ... this last year, since January, has been a pretty exciting and eventful year at the senior center and there are several upcoming challenges listed there and I think due to the events of the last 12 months these challenges might be refocused and I'd like to talk about some of the ways they will change. Urn ... first of all ... I don't think that we will be trying to expand evening and weekend hours in FY16, 1 think that one is on the list there, probably one of the last, we won't have the staffing available to plan or monitor expanded hours of operation, and if we did have the time available that would probably be the lowest activities I would want them to spend their time on. Um ... and while we may look at the remodeling of the second floor, um ... which is ... still needs to be ... work be done on it, that is going to be a lower priority activity also. Um ... we will continue to work on increasing participation of low income, physically challenged, minority seniors, in senior center programs. Urn ... this spring, this spring and um..not this coming spring but last spring, we started a project called the Earth Box, it was a pilot project, it turned out quite successfully. This project was funded Friends of the Center, and what it involved was, was the friends purchased a bunch of earth boxes, that are like self- contained garden centers, and they can come with stands that hold them up ... and like little box trellises that you can extend vegetables and such on, um ... they purchased a variety of herbs and vegetable plants and um ... we secured volunteers to support and help. And then we identified our target population, which was um ... a low income and or less able older adults, and partnered with Pathways, Emerson Point, Ecumenical Towers, and Assistant Living at Bickford Cottage, and each of those locations received 8-10 of the earth boxes and they spent the spring planting and um ... and the summer um ... nursing these plants along and then they were able to harvest the, um ... fruits of their labor. This was a really successful program, there were a lot of, many benefits they enjoyed, along with exercise, a lot of socialization, not only during the activity, but the sites planned activities in conjunction with the ... ah ... with whatever they were harvesting. You know like if there was a whole bunch of tomatoes they had a ... a ... program on what to do with a whole bunch of tomatoes and that kind of thing. Some of them had small farmers markets where they could share with everybody in their facility. Their nutrition, they were able to um..enjoy fresh produce and of course they were involved with the planning and selection and materials and such. Um ... I hope that we will continue to expand this type of programming, um ... in other areas of the city um ... this kind of programming will occur offsite and I think it will help us reach out into under -served areas of the senior population and um ... make contact with people who are unable, seniors, who are unable to get to the center and who can really use this additional produce in their diet. Um ... I think the primary challenge, and um ... that we will be looking at in fiscal year 16 um ... and this one is identified in the financial plan and is one that was highlighted by the ad hoc senior services committee, is to diversify the center's funding and lessen our compliance on the general fund. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 64 Now this is not a new activity for us at the senior center, um ... we have done um ... fundraising to support our operational expenses since 2003 um ... before that time we were fully funded by the city and the county together, but um ... since that time we have gone from raising zero to 25% of our operational budget. Um ... we built in an endowment that, that is now at $700,000 and annual provides money to support operational expenses and our 501(c)(3) Friends organization has provided us with well over $175,000 to provide equipment and other funding to support programs in the center. But I think the needs for us to um ... raise additional funding to support the operational budget are there, and I think we can do better, I think we need to do better, and I think we will do better in raising funding. When it comes to funding I think the first challenge we've face is staff time and expertise. Um ... as I'm sure you are all aware, we have 6 1/2 full-time equivalents at the senior center and two of them are maintenance support. The other remaining other staff fill their time producing the programs and services we currently offer and none of us have any of expertise in fundraising at all. I think it is foolish for us to waste our time and resources on fund -raises that don't raise any money, and we've done that many times in the past. Um ... and I think it's um ... not a good idea to approach fundraising without a solid plan in place. People have suggested things like um ... bake sales or other ideas might raise $500 or $1000 1 think the kind of money we need to raise is far greater than that. And..so..um... since the ad hoc committee produced this report, and as they were working on it, I spoke to a consultant who works with an organizations to provide guidance and strategic planning fundraising and grant development, um ... I provided her with some background information about the senior center and its funding, and we have set up an appointment that will take place in um ... well ... about 10 days. And we plan to discuss the specifics about what services her company can provide us and at what cost. She did mention that it would be possible to have a strategic fundraising plan developed within six months, for the senior center, which surprised me, and then she cautioned me at the implementation of the plan and seeing any solid results from the plan might take as long as 18 - 24 months because there are a lot of preparatory steps you have to take in order to get ... get the plan operational ized. Um ... because this plan um ... would involve and benefit the Friends of the Center and that has to do with the endowment such an important part of um ... our operational budget, in its annual contribution to our funding, um ... I plan to ask Friends of the Center to pay a proportional amount, an appropriate proportional amount, of the expenses associated with this consulting service if we should choose to um ... proceed in that manner. So, while I don't know the shape of the strategic final plan, and I don't know how ... what shape that is going to take, and I don't know what recommendations you are going to make, based upon the plan from the ad hoc committee I am fairly certain about several additional measures I believe will be taken to reduce costs and increase revenues for the center in the near future and I would like to go over a couple of those with you. Um ... first, because the senior dining program no longer serves meals on weekends, that is really freed up the assembly room during daytime hours and we think we should capitalize on that, and what we plan to do is um ... reorganize our weekend programing on Friday and Saturday nights so that the room is available for rentals. Um ... in conjunction with that we would like to um ... move forward on our alcohol policy which we have just been sitting on for a couple of years, do a really much better job promoting This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 65 the rooms availability and then I want to work with the Commission and Volunteer Leadership committees to develop some recommendations for you so that very large kitchen space um ... it is quite possible that changes to the room could enhance the assembly room's rent -ability and on the other hand that space could be redesigned to um ... to be a revenue generating space in and of itself. So there are some possibilities there. (clears throat) Excuse me. Um ... as the ad hoc committee progressed over the year, there was wide spread support among members um ... for increasing membership fees, so I'm fairly confident that is one of the things that will be taking place. Um ... most of our members feel that $33 a year for Iowa City residents is a very modest fee and that could be raised. And ... as a part of the increase, non -Iowa City fees are likely to see ... are likely ... more closely reflect the level of operational report support received from Johnson County than they do right now. The ... the amount of support we have been receiving from Johnson County um ... is around $59,000 which is a drop in the bucket when you think of the ... um ... overall budget. We appreciate the support from Johnson County and we are very happy to have it, but... when... when compared to the tax support provided by the City um ... it's very ah ... small proportion. Um ... in conjunction with the membership fees while the regular fees will be increasing I don't, do not, believer there will be in the scholarship, low-income scholarship, fees, I believe those will remain at $10. Um ... I just think they will remain at $10 those aren't going to go up. I think we will identify an ultimate goal for annual fundraising, um..right... um similar to what the rec center has... right now we are raising 25% of the operational funding, and our goal in the financial plan is certainly nonspecific but it suggests it will increase. I do foresee that we will identify an ultimate goal, but I think that we will have incremental increases as annual targets. Um ... I suspect that this topic is going to be a divisive issue when discussed at the center and having a ultimate goal that we can approach incrementally may be a lot more palpable for some of the people who will be discussing this. It's ... as I said, it's going to be a somewhat divisive issue. Another thing that has happened um ... and it started long before the... the ... um ... ad hoc committee ... um .... but the timing of it has been perfect ... is the ... um ... we have worked with the finance department to reorganize our budget presentation so that we had separated out our program expenses and revenue for senior center television, our special events, senior center classes, and the senior center choruses um ... we separated those out from the operational budget and this is clearly illustrated how much money is being spent in each of these areas and where there is a need to modify programming or generate additional revenue. Um ... this was an eye opener for the ... me ... and for the other staff members and it clearly shows where we need to put some work in and um ... to either raise additional funding to support additional... particular area, programming, or really consider if we want to continue with that area programming or not. Very eye opening. Um ... finally, um ... I would like to add a challenge to that list and that would be to address the recommendations you will be giving us um ... that you will draw from the ad hoc Senior Services Committee report to the City Council that I believe you will be working on the 20th. I look forward to hearing those. So ... and I think everything else is pretty much self- explanatory in that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 66 Mims/ Linda I have a question if I heard you correctly near the beginning, you said that your ... budget being proposed for 2016 is actually less than what you had for 2014? Did I hear that correct? Kopping/ Yes. Throgmorton/ Actual expenditures I believe. Mims/ I don't see that in the numbers I guess. Kopping/ Gosh, I hope I didn't read that wrong, that would be kind of an embarrassing mistake. Mims/ I mean, when I look on page 223, I'm seeing expenditure of 8, a little over $807,000 for 14 and budget for 16 $831,000 almost $832,000. So ... I didn't know if there was something I was missing or..l mean I know the increases for the senior center have not been significant by any means but I didn't think we were going backwards. Hayek/ She may be looking at the 15 revised version. Kopping/ Well now I'm really embarrassed because I did that wrong. You're absolutely correct. Mims/ No, that's okay, that's okay, I just ... well as Matt had said... Kopping/ It sounded good though didn't it. (laughter) I ... what I probably did was use the numbers for FY13. Mims/ Okay. Kopping/ I ... I am very sorry. Mims/ No, that's okay Kopping/ I stand corrected. Mims/ That's okay, I just wanted to make sure I mean certainly the numbers have kind of gone up and down as you look at, yea, if you go from 12 and kind of jump up in 13, well I'm looking at revenues but even at the expenditure side down in 14 then 15 revised, can you remind me Dennis why 15 revised, I mean I know we aren't done with 15 but why that looks so much higher? Kopping/ Urn ... I talked to Dennis about that just yesterday and it had to do with some budget carryovers. Mims/ Okay, okay This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 67 Kopping/ Is that correct? Bockenstedt/ That is correct, there is some capital items (not speaking into mic) that carried forward... Mims/ So that is one reason that 14 looks lower than we would have maybe expected and 15 looks higher because of carryover? Bockenstedt/ (not speaking into mic) there was nothing in 14 ... Mims/ Okay. Bockenstedt/ (not speaking into mic) so that was budgeted in and revised upward... (unable to hear) Mims/ Okay, thank you. Kopping/ I think the only point I was trying to make in perhaps I should have said it this way instead of reciting numbers and percentages, is our budget has been fairly constant. Mims/ It has. Kopping/ Um ... for several years and urn ... again, I really apologize for making such an embarrassing mistake. Mims/ Don't worry about it, don't worry about it, things ... like you say get carried over and things move and I just wanted to make sure I was understanding, and that I could add and subtract. Fruin/ The senior center, it's probably the one budget, there's you know, it's been kept as Linda said , relatively flat um ... without changes in personnel and that has been really difficult because personnel is so much of what the senior center is so it's really been focusing in on some of those um ... service type of line items and I'm not sure, as Linda and I have had this conversation, there is not a whole lot more to cut in the senior center unless you want to touch staff. Kopping/ I um ... I calculated yesterday, I hope this one is right, I think that out budget is um ... 66% of our budget is personnel. Mims/ Oh I would believe it yea. Bockenstedt/ And she may have been going 2014 original budget because of those items would have been in there that budget would have exceeded the 2016 budget, the capital items so... Mims/ Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Bockenstedt/ So that may have been the number she was using. Mims/ From the actual or original? Bockenstedt/ From the original. Mims/ Instead of the adjusted? Bockenstedt/ Instead of the actual. Mims/ Okay, gotcha. Page 68 Payne/ Which one of these lines items and on which page includes the membership f fees? Bockenstedt/ Um ... there should be a chart just for fees and services on page 223 about midway down the revenues. Culture and recreation um ... under charges for fees and services. I believe that would be the membership fees. Payne/ That's ... so there is one of those on the next page too Bockenstedt/ And that, um ... those would represent probably activity fees for program fees, so if they sign up for an art program or something or programs that Linda mentioned that is the fees they would pay to participate in those programs. Mims/ So you are saying the $50,000 something is just membership fees? Kopping/ Yes. Ah ah. Hayek/ So um ... we'll take this up when we work session this, but um ... um ... I ... I fully recognize that .... these are tough conversations and will be and we'll have no choice for broader budget reasons to ... to get into this with time as Iowa City gets squeezed tighter and tighter, but I'm glad you mentioned the membership fee issue because .... I'm sure that won't be an easy conversation, but as we are sitting here this morning I ... and Mike was here before you talking about Parks & Rec things, I just pulled up the Parks & Rec website and just for purposes of comparison if I wanted to get a um ... year long pass to the rec center swimming pool, just one person to swim in the pool for the year, it's almost $200. And ... which is almost six times what a membership fee to for me if I were age eligible and a member of the senior center. Um ... You know which would give me access to a lot of things including the workout facility and I think we even reduced parking in the ramps... Kopping/ Well you have to pay for it but then you, you'd be eligible to participate in the reduced rate. Hayek/ So ... I mean there ... that is just one comparison, and it may or may not be fair, but the membership fees seem very low to me and I'm not convinced that as a class seniors in Iowa City are less affluent. Um ... I mean... you could have your scholarship program, which I am sure will not go away and might expand with This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 69 time, but ... there are many seniors with considerable affluence for whom $33 is nothing and ... I don't know how much that would move the needle, I mean I know you have 1500 and some members and... Kopping/ 16. Hayek/ Okay ... so ... and there is probably some price elasticity there um ... you know and so I don't know what people could support and what percentage of that 1600 are ... would be eligible for a scholarship subsidy but..l throw that out there because I think it is something we have to look at. Long term ... and I don't know where else you can ... maybe the programming is another area but, I agree I don't know what more you can cut ... you've been operating with static um ... personnel levels. Fruin/ Kopping/ Fruin/ Hayek/ Mims/ Payne/ Hayek/ Kopping/ Hayek/ Mims/ Hayek/ (Lunch Break) You certainly could cut personnel but you ... I couldn't sit here and tell you it's not going it impact service levels and at this point... Well you could cut personnel but then we'd lose membership. Yes. So ... well thank you, unless there are other questions. Thank you Linda. Thank you It's a great organization and certainly appreciated in the community. Thank you. Well, look at this, one minute until noon. So we'll take a break. Lunch just came in. Food making its way in the door. Neighborhood Development Services: Markus/ ...(tape started in mid -sentence) the value of questions or the discussions going forward our goal is to try to conclude by 3:00 . Boothroy/ Wow, I thought I had until 2. Hayek/ Your ten minutes just went to five. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 70 (laughter) Hayek/ Alright, why don't we get started? Dr. Boothroy. Boothroy/ Well I appreciate having you taking part of your lunch hour to talk to me about the budget. Um ... this is of course the first time we've reported back as the Department of Neighborhood and Development Services and if you recall last year um ... as part of the budget process the Department of Planning and Community Development and Housing Inspection Services urn ... were um ... joined and urn .... so it's been almost a year that we've been together as one department. I wanted to start out by talking a little bit about some of I think the positive things that have happened in terms of..of urn.... communication within the department, sharing of staff resources um ... urn ... just um ... a greater level of um ... customer support I think by people working together going in the same direction. And as an example with resources, you know when we have all the inspectors being cross -trained and being able to step in either with rehab or housing inspection or building inspection. That gives us a lot more flexibility in terms of our staffing and also in terms of..of getting to using expertise in areas when we need to. Um ... so ... you ... we were ... the intent was to try to make us more efficient and also to improve the way we work with each other and the planning and building inspectors, planners and building inspectors, in the same division, I think that has worked out really well. John Yapp is the development services coordinator and I think he has done a great job bringing those folks together, it's a work in progress, we are going to continue to build on what we've done. I think the other thing is when you do a reorganization people have a chance to...to...um...get new perspectives as well as new jobs and I'm really pleased that Tracy Hightshoe finally was ... after waiting in the wings for many many years, has her opportunity to urn... be the um...be appointed the division head for Neighborhood Services and of course when John moved over to take development coordinator position that gave the opportunity for Kent Ralston to become the MPO um ... director ... so .... urn ... with that leadership and change in all these various areas in terms of the division, I think we've had a lot of energy interjected into the operations. And one of the things that we will be doing as we go forward and we'll talk about that in a little bit with the CIP and you'll see a floor plan, is that order to further cement this, because we haven't really put people in proximity with each other in terms of where they have overlapping or responsibilities that are common, um ... next year, starting in maybe Tom already mentioned this to you in his presentation, we will be starting late spring during the summer the remodeling of the second floor ... of the north wing ... if we call it that ... where the planning department is located and what we'll be doing is bringing the building and housing inspectors up to that floor so we'll be putting a lot more people up there, but we'll be opening it up, giving it a new look, and it will be putting people together that work together within the Neighborhood Services or Development Services on the same floor within eyesight of each other. So we'll talk about that you'll see it more on Monday, but I think it's a way to begin to cement some of those relationships that would begin um ... to build. Any questions about the reorganization before I go on, or ... okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 71 Throgmorton/ Doug, are there heads of each of the subordinate units? Boothroy/ I'm not sure what you mean by subordinate units Jim. Throgmorton/ Well, well I mean there is for the Housing Authority but housing inspection? Boothroy/ Yea, the way that those..when we did the reorganization the folks that were ... like Stan who's in charge of the housing inspection, is still working as a team leader for that group, but he reports to John, or excuse me, Tracy, I got the wrong one. Of course Steve Rackis is with the Housing Authority, those folks are still in place. Throgmorton/ Okay. Boothroy/ You know last year of course you know we..,in order to get the Housing Authority's budget in ... in a sustainable situation we had to lay off a couple of individuals, but as a part of this reorganization through attrition, um ... we did hire one of those individuals back full-time and is now working in the Neighborhood Services area so that is a positive thing that also came about as part of the reorganization. Moving on I wanted to talk a little bit about our electronic plans submission um ... process. The, what, it's, it's been successful in that all the building permits and site plans that come into the city are electronic and those few that don't come in we scan and put in the system at the counter so when someone comes into the counter, like a citizen doing a deck, or a small remodeling, they can type in the application online and then we scan their documents and review it. We've essentially eliminated all our filing cabinets for um ... building plans and there is probably 20 some filing cabinets that have been eliminated as a result of this. Next year we will be um ... actually we are in next year, in 2015, in the next month or so we will start um ... moving this to towards some of the planning processes and the one we are taking on first is subdivision reviews. So we expect it to develop that this spring and then by summer or fall have that up and running. It will be a little faster this time because a lot of the people that do the subdivision process also... submittals... also do the site plan submittals ... so the training we did with the private sector will transfer over and the process will be similar so I think it will be faster. um ... then the first time around. Um ... but ... goal is that everything in the planning area at some point will be electronic just as it is with buildings so that we reduce our paper footprint. And it also helps customers as you recall because they don't have to make so many trips down to the civic center, excuse me City Hall, sorry my age got in the way there. (laughter) Any questions about that? The money is already in the budget so it's just a manner of going into phase two of this particular... and by the way it does fit very well with Laserfishe and there has been some upgrades there too so it will be very compatible there too in that area. In the budget I wanted to mention that this..every four years it seems ... we increase housing inspection fees. We ... the budget that you see ... the revenue that is supported by a 5% increase in housing inspection fees to support the housing inspection division to make them um ... totally sustained by the fees or revenues they are generated. Um ... it's a four year cycle, one of the reasons we do four years, is we have two year permits so by doing four years and 5% we are able to go through a couple This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 72 of cycles with people and we are not constantly changing the inspection fees with them and it seems to work out pretty well, and it's not a significant change in the sense that you know years ago ... we were doing ... we had to do a 50% or 100% fee increase at one time so ... that is one of the fees you'll see in the budget. I also um ... will note that the subdivision, zoning, and board of adjustment fees are updated annually based on an inflation rate. We are going to be proposing a nominal fee increase, a fee for our official zoning confirmation letters, we get a lot of requests from financial institutions and appraisers to write a letter verifying zoning and it takes time to do the research, so there will be a $25 fee for that. Minor site plans currently do not have a fee and they take a significant amount of time, that fee will be $100 so it doesn't really cover costs, but we need to have something I think to help defray some of the costs. And major site plans are going to go from $250 to $350. 1 don't know ... Tom whether you mentioned the waiver for building permit fees for public... Markus/ Yes I did. Boothroy/ ...Okay so that, that will also be part of that resolution when we bring fees to you, again in February or March, I'm not sure when, but whenever you get through the budget process, I think we follow... Markus/ Budget will follow up, but Doug the other one we talked about um ... was having a TIF application and reimbursement for the National Development Council Fees by anybody applying for TIF... Bookthroy/ Okay. Markus/ ... which is likely to be rolled through the gap but at least then the beneficiaries of increment, of the economic development will be paying for that as well. Boothroy/ Okay, Okay so that is kind of a summary of the fees and again over the years um ... tried to keep our um ... fees from building inspections, building permits, as well as housing inspections at a level that pays for the cost of our staff um ... the building inspection fees are .... I didn't get into ... they are based on an inflation factor also so we don't have to come back to you for a fee increase, they automatically go up with the cost of ... with an inflation factor that is built into the equation. Um ... let's see ... I was going to mention that ... with regards to the building inspection revenue, jumping around a little bit, last year in 2014, and we are on a calendar year, building inspection, just to make things a little more confusing, um ... that was 152,579...152 million excuse me ... um .... and that was up about 22% over the previous year, that was a good year, we have some projects that need your approval that will make next year even better. (laughter) So ... keep up the good work, we can use the fees. Um ... one of the things that is interesting to note is that um ... with the current planning division, um .... urban planning division, building, development services I should say, the fees from building basically pretty much cover um ... um ... all of the expenses they are, just a little bit short and when you add in the subdivision fees and the other things we are almost 100% covered with fees in the development services division so, that's kind of a good change that has come up as a result of um ...that. Um ... let This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 73 me go, I'll come back to building inspection in a minute, I kind of jumped over there because I got into talking about fees, um ... let me mention that ... I wanted to talk about the Housing Authority, you know it was just a little over a year ago there were some hard decisions that had to be made because to try to stabilize the financial condition of the Housing Authority. It is stabilized, the revenue from administrative fees from HUD have ... have stabilized it at about the same level as we expected. One of the things that we ... our utilization rate is up even though we've changed our staffing level, were were up at 98.9% for voucher utilization rate and that equates to more fees. So ... we made some changes in our operation in order to get our utilization rate up at almost the highest point possible. Um ... projections are, is that, the federal government will once again get 100% funding for vouchers, where we've run into problems is has been that the administrative ... the administration fee for staffing that's where they keep cutting, but we don't expect to see any cuts there so we should see a much ... um ... should stay in the black next year anywhere from about 10 - 30 thousand dollars depending on ... on ... what our voucher utilization rate is. Urn ... the FSS should be 100% funded, CAP or CIP for public housing will probably be down a little bit, last year our total revenue including vouchers, public housing, FSS, our CIP or CAP was about 7.6 million. On to other... and... all the staff in that division are 100% funded through federal funds, either good or a bad thing depending on how you want to look at it. CBDG and HOME was the same and one of the things I ought to mention is that both the projection for CBDG and HOME funds are expected to be down. CBDG is expected to be down at least 1 % which is about $45,000 loss and HOME is expected to be down about 10% which would be about $56,000 so that's about $100,000 of less revenue that we expect to get during this upcoming funding process that we are going through with the Housing Commission. We don't know those numbers yet, we won't know those numbers until probably February, maybe even as late as March but um ... we'll certainly know them by the time the recommendations come back to you as a result of the process. And typically what we do is if the funding goes down and the dollars aren't there, then we just take that percentage and do it across the board of everybody in terms of reducing the amount they receive. Now one of the things that ... that helps make up that a little bit is we have program income in both CDBG and HOME and the combined program income and by that I mean this is ... when we give money to various projects it's loaned out to be repaid under various different conditions over time and um ... our ... we'll have over a quarter -we'll have about a quarter of a million dollars in program income that we can throw into the pot to help defray the losses that we get from the federal government through this funding session, period or whatever you call it. I wanted to mention the Broadway Street improvements, you'll talk about a little bit, this is a project that has been going on for a couple of years, it's finished up now. Um ... I just wanted to mention that over the last two years we've spent about 1.2 million dollars and the Broadway Condos that Southgate owns were improved, transitional housing this year finished up their landscaping and transitional housing is the first set of housing units you come into contract to there just south of Casey's when you are going down Broadway Street. Um ... and ... the whole street scape has improved significantly and some of the crime issues that we had in that immediate area were the Broadway Condos have diminished a little bit so, so I think it's money that been well spent in order This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 74 to improve that corridor that was having some difficulty. Um ... we'll be continuing with the facade improvement I think that is really downtown, with the..um... CBDG money and it's..l think it's been a really good program. We have approved for next year Cold Stone Brewery which is..Cold... excuse me (laughter)... Cold Stone Brewery, sorry about that ... um ... the Cold Stone... Throgmorton/ You've had too much ice cream. Boothroy/ Yes ... Cold Stone Building ... I ... I have building abbreviated and I read it as brewery. Um ... that is on the corner and I think that is a..a... nice corner to have improved. Martini's, Yotopia, Joe's, and the Sports Column are slated to be done this year ... in term ... as part of that programs, so some of those are along Dubuque Street so it will be nice to see some of those improvements in that area. Um ... owner rehab last year we did 37 homes... and ... um .... hopefully that will continue on into the next year. UniverCity ... um ... to date we've done 38 homes, we have some homes, we have 18 homes, two of which we are in the process of marketing and I think are probably sold at this point. And ... we've got the other um ... 16 to market this year ... and that would be an explanation in the budget why um ... we are only asking for $100,000 for the UniverCity program because we have enough stock to move before we expand to additional homes so the $100,000 would be for two more homes as we get that ... that stock down ... um ... and ... um .... are able to manage it in terms of marketing and getting people situated in those houses. Hayek/ Is the UniverCity money dried up now? Boothroy/ Yes. Hayek/ There ... is not waiting for anything else? Boothroy/ No. Fruin/ They backed out of the partnership. Boothroy/ Yes, yes they did. They are still back ... um ... one of the things Matt and Susan and I ... in a memo we talked about using some of the UniverCity money, we'll talk about at Council at some point, I think it was about 150 was it that we put in for neighborhood facade improvements on the north side based on stuff the housing code inspections, and the idea would be that.... that... this would be loan program we could use to help improve both owner -occupied and rental property much like the downtown to try to improve the street scape in the north side areas and do it in a strategic manner. So ... that is something we will be talking about I think in the future, whenever we schedule that for Council informal council session. Throgmorton/ It could be a very good idea, I'm glad to hear about it and I know that there are certain street segments that are significantly, in significantly worse shape than others. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 75 Boothroy/ Yes. Throgmorton/ And this district intervention in those particular street scapes would make a huge difference. Boothroy/ Yea, 'cause I don't see those... particularly as you get closer to Dubuque Street, I don't see much opportunity for home ownership in those areas but I do see, think there is a need for improvement of building appearances. Which helps everybody feel better about the entire neighborhood as well as coming into Iowa City. So it's time we get into something like that and ... um ... help spruce up that area. Um ... just also wanted to um ... mention that the ... the single family new construction program finally came to a close this year. Um ... this was in response over the 2008 flood and I just wanted to remind you that um ... we built, or assisted in, 141 houses that were available to low or moderate income folks. That was a construction value of about 23 million dollars, some of that occurred right in the middle of the recession we had so I think it was not only important in terms of how we looked at our flood ... um ... control issues, but it also provided a lot of jobs and economy ... in ... the construction area in a time where it was desperately needed. Plus you know ... we have 141 homeowners that um ... that have new homes as a result of that program. Down payment assistance that was a part of that program was about 6 million. So ... I think that was a great program and um ... it's finally done, I guess at this point, we don't have any more money to spend in that area. Um ... another thing is..that..we'll... that will be happening on the 28th of this month I will just mention is that we've been working with the Riverfront consultants with regard to the Burlington Street Dam stafing, the riverbank restoration, the west bank, as well as the riverfront part, there is ... that information is coming together. Um ... there is a major wetland feature in the Riverfront Park, part of that park is down there where the north west water treatment plant was located. And we plan to have a presentation by the consultants and an open house on January 28th, down at Terry Trueblood Pavilion, is that what it's called? But at the Terry Trueblood. Throgmorton/ Do you know what time that will be? Boothroy/ Pardon me? Throgmorton/ Do you know what time that will be done? Boothroy/ I think we are going to run them from 5:30 to 9 maybe or 8:30 so part of it's an open house, we'll have boards up so people can walk around, so if you miss the presentation you can still, we'll be there to answer questions and you can circulate and um ... get a feel for that so. I think the Riverfront... Payne/ I think MPOJC might also be that night Jim. Throgmorton/ Yea. I know, thanks. Boothroy/ So you can come at any time. It's ... a ... we are going to have information coming out shortly Jim, within the next week, next week sometime to set up the times This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 76 and dates more specifically. Um ... that whole thing about the Riverfront Park is going to make a huge, as I mentioned the other night at the informal meeting, it's going to make a huge difference on how that part of town looks and feels and so that is kind of really exciting thing to happen. Um ... building inspection, a couple of things I wanted to mention, obviously revenue has been good this year, I expect your approval process, our revenue will even be better next year. Urn... keep up the good work. But we'll also be looking at the adoption of 2015 building code, two things I would highlight for that, most of the changes are things that I think are important but not necessarily controversial or things that need to come to your attention, but for the first time, in the building code, we will be requiring on all new construction, single family construction, I'd have to go back and look if it applies to the multi -family, but carbon monoxide protectors that are interconnected. That is a technology that didn't get into the codes in past years because of there was some problems with if you ... that would work ... with false alarms and all that stuff, but now it's, now it's gotten to a point where you can get combined smokes and carbon monoxide detectors as one unit and um ... they can be placed throughout the residential units. Um ... outside bedrooms as well as in the furnace areas. The other thing that we will be doing again because most, many states have done this, including Iowa, we will be, once again, eliminating the sprinkler requirement for single family dwellings. Um ... this code amendment has not been adapted, adopted nation-wide, and one of the things the code developers have been doing since that went into effect, I don't remember when it went into effect, I think it was 2013, is they've done some other changes in the building code to beef up floor assembly and things like that so they can address some of the issues. Um ... we're ... in ... kind of ... lower the requirement for the need for the safety for a sprinkler system in the building so ... those are the two things I think I will just draw to your attention with regard to the building code. And you won't ... you probably won't get that until late spring ... um ... before you see a recommendation on the 2015 Building Code. I hope I've got that timing right ... um ... With the other ... other things within the development services division again, we had adopted the Riverfront Crossing Form Based Code and you can see that it is beginning to be applied. Um ... we ... um ... have rezoned the south downtown area, which is the area just south of Burlington Street in the Court Street, Burlington Street approximately. Um ... a big rezoning is the Goosetown/Mann conservation district, and we had about 264 properties to this conservation district area which is urn ... a big effort with regard to ... maintain neighborhood integrity and neighborhood preservation, so you know it is important to note that and remember that. Um ... we have started the south district plan update, it's at P&Z, um ... public hearing, I think it was maybe held recently, and um ... we are also ... in both the south district plan and the comprehensive plan for the central district plan, downtown plan, will be coming back to the Council shortly. Um ... I'm not sure when that be, that will probably be in February sometime. Um ... any questions about that? We are, um ... looking at ... we will be looking at the exclusionary zoning over the next few months, um ... we have on our work... schedule review of the sensitive areas ordinance and we also have on our work schedule as a priority, the form -based code standards for downtown Iowa City, so some things coming, that's you know ... coming up in the future. Um ... on sustainability, one of the things we did as the reorganization is we added sustainability into the department, to get, I This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 77 think to give it much more presence in the process, much more visibility. Um ... I'm very impressed with Brenda, her knowledge, and what she does, it's pretty amazing. So I'm learning a lot about sustainability that I hadn't thought I'd ever know. Um..but she is really busy with the, she's working with climate adaptation group, there are five I think states involved in that and what that is about is ... um .... looking at some of the things that are happening locally in terms of like, let's say, rainfall, issues as it comes and how quickly, intensity of those events, and how do you change your flood plain ordinances or what you do to adapt to that particular climate change, and so that's... that's something that is happening and they are in the process of pull all that together in the next year. Um ... and she is got a sustainability initiative with the University of Iowa that she's working with ... and partnering with the University of Iowa and there are University students that would be involved with that. So that are a number of things going on with sustainability, it's not something you see a lot of at Council meetings, but we are pretty much involved with that and I've been looking... talking to her about looking trying to get sustainability into a checklist that we can integrate more into our development processes so that we are attune to thinking about that as we look at subdivision plats and things of that nature. I mean we already look at the sensitive area ordinance and review for wetlands and things like that, but there are more things than that we are looking at. Markus/ Doug can I say a quick word or two... Boothroy/ Sure. Markus/ ...about the work that work that Brenda is doing, I sat in on the first meeting she held with the regional network sustainability coordinators, I don't know two months ago or thereabout, it was held at the library. Boothroy/ Yes it was. Throgmorton/ Yea, and I was very impressed by the group of people she has brought together, but also something that is really quite unique. They are taking advantage climate, for climate change forecast, and bringing them down to a... Boothroy/ Local level. Throgmorton/ ... a local level and then trying to connect those projections about climate change to actions that public works department and other units of local government could be affected by and what that implies... Boothroy/ That is what I was trying to say Jim, but you said it better. Throgmorton/ Yea... yea... and that is really unique and um ... I was very impressed by that so ... I want to make sure... Boothroy/ I think it's a very good effort that the, I think that is a really important thing, of the things she is doing, I think that is really... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 78 Throgmorton/ Yea ... one other thing though has to do with sustainability, you know most people deal with that concept talk about the three E's. The economy, equity, and environment. And ... it's not clear to me yet if whether the sustainability work that Brenda is doing is connected to the equity part, so I.. I'm not saying it's not, it's just not clear to me how much it is. Boothroy/ Yea, she's got a lot on her plate so I would say that is probably not a strong connection at this point. Throgmorton/ Yea, she's doing great work. Boothroy/ You know we have over 50 acres of wetlands that she is responsible for maintaining so not just the reports that we are talking about, but there is also so physical areas that have to be monitored and she's involved with that too and I..and making sure they are kept as wetlands and function as wetlands. Um ... of course she was involved with the LED lighting as well, so and she is still involved with that in terms of seeing how that transitions in terms of replacement of lighting in Iowa City and in using some of the money from you all to see that the lighting gets... Payne/ He started with you all... Boothroy/ From somebody, I don't know where all it all came from... Hayek/ It was paid for by us all... (laughter) Boothroy/ Us all -that overpayment that you made that came back, like a rebate, or something. Payne/ Savings plan. Hayek/ Or savings. Boothroy/ Yea, it was a savings account I'm sure there was interest involved there. Um ... let's see, a little bit about the MPO, next year um ... they'll be ... I've not read this plan, but they will be working on a long range plan which is like a comprehensive plan for the area. And it -it's done about every five years and um ... sort of sets the basis for a lot of other things you work on. So that is a project, that they'll be working throughout next year to try to get that completed. Um ... and maybe a little bit into 2016 actually, the spring of 2016, that is a thirty year plan by the way, so I'm not sure about thirty year plans, but that is required. Payne/ Thirty like 3-0? Boothroy/ Yea. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 79 Payne/ Oh my gosh! Boothroy/ I'm sort of one that thinks that thirty year plans are not relevant anymore but that is kind of what the standard is, I think it's required in this particular plan. Um ... the, the MPO shortly will be awarding the um ... the STP and TAP funds this spring so that is coming up, I think in February maybe, I'm not sure about that, but that's ... the other thing I should mention is that ... through the reorganization they are down a half a staff person, and that was the in a memo that Kent sent out to the Board. And what I will tell you is that we were able to fill that half-staff position with a ... within development services, Sarah Walz was able to pick up half time position. I'm really excited about that, she's going to bring that level of energy to the transportation and I think one of the things she will be working on, besides other things, will be the bike planning aspect and some of those kinds of activities. As Kent mentioned in his memorandum there are some additional funds put in there for consultant to pick up that half that's ... that they are down. But this was also an opportunity for somebody that is highly valued in the organization to go full-time and I think she'll do a great job. She certainly did a great job with the south district plans so ... I expect that to be the case for the MPO. Urn ... so there will be a reduction in the annual payment this year, part of that comes about because they are down a half, part of it comes about because Kent is making less than John, and Sarah is making less than Kent coming in so .... there will be a little, some savings as a result of new staff people taking a position within the MPO. Urn ... let's see... Markus/ Thank you Doug. Boothroy/ I don't think I have any else that that I know (laughter)... thank you Tom for hurrying me out the door. (laughter) Did anybody see the hook? (laughter)... Matt, I have to leave ... no questions... Botchway/ I had a question about housing inspections, how does, I mean, how does it work, because you know seeing some of the dilapidated areas around... Boothroy/ Are you talking about the rental inspections I assume? Botchway/ Rental inspections but also um ... I just remember a conversation where somebody got up in front of public comment and she was talking about ... and Tom, maybe kind of steer me where I'm going with this ... maybe it's a different apartment, but she got up and talked about some of the areas in which people you know were just letting... Hayek/ Anna Buss Payne/ Yes. Boothroy/ Well, and her, I want to qualify that before you get too far, her information was inaccurate. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 80 Botchway/ Well, and I'm not ... I'm actually not speaking to her particular point, I'm also speaking to... Boothroy/ Because the tenant got their furniture out on the curb because they had bed bugs and so it was out there while they were sanitizing the unit. She used as that an an example of ... of ... trash and debris of the neighborhood, it was far from that. So... Markus/ But I think what you are referring to is the aesthetics of some of the properties in the area and your colleagues on Council have stressed that to us and we've done a joint review of that and I think Doug will be coming back with some new initiatives on how to address that in a more aggressive way. Boothroy/ That is what those funds were for the facade improvements. Botchway/ Okay, and then going back to ... from a rental property aspect ... do we ... is that going to be in the same type of discussion from initiatives. Because I ... I am thinking about the cottage discussion we've had, because regardless of what side you landed on..l just didn't like how that came about in whether or not, and that is just a particular example, there are more examples around Iowa City, I mean use Dolphin Point for example, um ... where ... I would just like know from the inside of any type of rental property or even housing properties, what is going on with, I don't want to have a person come to Council and say you know um ... I've been living in ... for the past five years ... a terrible unit, I feel like we can do something towards that, I'm not talking about the cottages or anything else, just in the event that they comes up, is there an opportunity where the City can interject and say you know, we're going to run our own type of inspection or figure out... Markus/ We are doing that. Botchway/ Okay. Markus/ And we're actually shutting some down from future rental until they make substantial corrections. Botchway/ Okay. Markus/ The other thing I would say to you is as we build student housing at higher density levels closer to campus one of the by-products of that is we hope to take pressure off some of our inner-city neighborhoods and hopefully get them to be more attractive, to be gentrified with pioneer families moving back into those areas, you know, are closer to jobs, or closer to transportation, or closer to public facilities. And I can tell you that based on what I've heard from certain major landlords in town, they're feeling that kind of pressure, okay, they know that these initiatives to put more student housing in the Riverfront Crossings area is going to shift the demand for housing there and diminish the demand in some of our neighborhoods, which quite frankly I see as a good thing because it takes the pressure off those neighborhoods for rental and hopefully gets to the point where This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 81 we can start to re -balance the ownership issues in those neighborhoods. Hayek/ And I think ... one thing that will help that .... as that shift naturally occurs, assuming it naturally occurs is higher expectations of the management. Markus/ We are setting the bar, and you know ... we are raising the bar again, and I think that has to happen. Boothroy/ You see that in new construction, you see in the newer apartments have more amenities than they used to because of that ... there is a higher expectation. I agree when the competition is there there will be higher expectations. Markus/ But when you have not 100% rental okay, people are forced to take what is available and so the bar is very low. When you start to raise the bar on the quality of the unit, even though the price point is higher, I think that puts a lot of pressure on these other units because I think they can see rates will start to go up and I think that is when we have the opportunity to really make an impact on converting some of these neighborhoods back to more single family neighborhoods. Which I think would be incredibly desirable for people you know moving into this area. Throgmorton/ I couldn't agree more. Hayek/ Quick..quick question or comment, we talked about it earlier this morning with us getting slammed on property taxes going forward thanks to what they did in Des Moines, both on the multi -family and on the Department of Revenue definition of multi -use, you know we are going to get far fewer taxes on our um ... apartment portfolio if you will in the future, and we are going to have to look at other ways to recapture costs, and I'm sure you've had those discussions, but ... that will be very interesting. And when you think about, not just the demands placed on not just your department in terms of inspections and handling complaints and what not, but shear traffic in and out of neighborhoods, we've got you know, 20 cars as opposed to two on a given postage stamp, a plot of land, I mean we are going to have to be creative and figure out ways to appropriately and adequately cover our costs. Markus/ When you look at the neighborhood services functions, a lot of those functions are self-supporting, okay, um ... when you get into the building inspections and so forth, those things are self-supporting and we want to keep that in play. What we'd like to do is get some of those planning services that we provide to be more self-sustaining themselves, and I think there are ways to get there, but community development type operations tend to have a higher level of fee for service payment rather than having to allocate taxes to them. So we have to stay on top of that, especially moving forward. Hayek/ Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 82 Markus/ It keeps the process honest too. You know we get less fishing, so thank you Doug. Boothroy/ Thank you. Dickens/ Run, run before we ask another question. Airport: Fruin/ Mayor, if you don't mind I think we are going to flip-flop here and have Mike Tharp come up and talk airport before transportation comes up. Hayek/ Sure. Karr/ Airport is page 439. Tharp/ Well, good afternoon. In terms of the airport operating budget we're proposing essentially a status quo budget maintaining the operational levels we have. One of the big things with our ... our general levee support we're asking for about $30,000 which I think is half of what we had last year, we were just under $70 last year. Part of that is coming from our land sales of airport commerce park is running through, we've got a couple of purchase agreements we are hoping to close on the next couple of weeks and that should, that will take the airport out of debt. We'll have no outstanding debt at that point and time and be able to take another look at our operations and just make sure we are running things efficiently and keeping going on the trajectory that we've been going on. One of the biggest things with the airport, we've got a lot of buildings out there, a lot of buildings that are aged, the terminal building is a 1951 vintage so that does um ... increase our maintenance costs, and that is one of the focus areas we've been on the last couple of years, and we'll continue to focus our operations heavily on making sure we are presenting a good appeal to folks that are using the airport. Business users that are coming through the airport into the city. Um ... and ... and ... making sure we have a facility that um .... is able to capture and handle folks that are using the airport and coming into Iowa City. Um ... with that ... I don't really have a lot else unless there are particular questions about the operations. Mims/ In talking about that, and maybe this is directed as much to Dennis, we were talking earlier today about budgeting to cover depreciation, um ... you know in terms of getting the money there to replace, are we doing that at all with the airport yet? Bockenstedt/ No, not really. Mims/ Okay, that is what I figured. Bockenstedt/ And some of these we look at, we talk about depreciation and I think transit that will come up as another one, and the airport are heavily subsidized in their capital outlay so, it ... there ... you wouldn't normally have to for those operations This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 83 fund 100% of the depreciation because about 90% of is funded from elsewhere. Mims/ But will the FAA, I mean is it possible to get grant money from the FAA like to replace the terminal building? I mean if we got to the point where it made more sense to replace than to keep repairing it. Tharp/ To some...the terminal building would be an eligible FAA project. Mims/ Okay. Tharp/ It may not weigh very high on the FAA scale of a ... of funding but it would be an eligible project. Mims/ Okay. Markus/ The challenge we've had in the past is the hangers don't, they don't price out. Mims/ Right. Markus/ And so ... you need hangers to attract business, and yet the hangers you know, you can't do a proforma that makes any sense. They're... they're a loose proposition so that's been one of the challenges in the past that created the debt, but then we used land that we were able to develop and the proceeds for and we came up with an arrangement between the city and the airport and we wrote down most of the debt now, and in the same process we have ratcheted down the city's participation even though in additional to the 30, 1 think it's $100,000 that we contribute towards GO for basic improvements on match with our grants. Bockenstedt/ Yea, and we did ... I'm sorry ... we did change that process in this year's budget and one of the things we wanted to do because right now the airport does not cover it's debt service cost on those improvements is to try to move that away from debt service funding for their capital program. So ... using what formerly had been an operating subsidy, and we ... you know, promises capital outlay, we are essentially moving that over to the airport fund to allow them to fund their capital program and take that matching funding off the debt service. So there are things like that we are looking at ... pulling out of our debt services, out of our GO bond issues, and moving to them to funding out of ongoing operating's versus, if possible, to help alleviate some of that pressure on the debt side. Mims/ Are all the lots sold now? Tharp/ All the lots are either sold or obligated. There is four.. Markus/ That haven't closed yet. Bockenstedt/ Yea. Mims/ So the real challenge going forward is that resource is gone. The debt is gone. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 84 Bockenstedt/ There is a site that is at the south end of the airport that is potentially develop- able but there is some flood issues, and I'm not sure we want to create more industrial lots with a lot of infrastructure investment until we've had more success with our east side industrial park... Mims/ Right. Markus/ Otherwise we are just competing with ourselves. Tharp/ And the airport is currently in the process of updating our airport master plan which is a 20 year plan and part of that will take look at our rates and fees not only the hangers we also do annually, but ground leases, and future development opportunities especially in light of that ... that sound area that is available. Markus/ I sat in on the airport managers selection process for Eastern Iowa Airport and I sit on the planning committee that Mike is talking about, and there is classifications of airports, we are in GA airport, general aviation, Eastern is a commercial but they also have GA traffic up at Eastern Iowa Airport and so one of the things I heard pretty clearly is they are trying to mend some fences with their GA airport community. They have had some rough relationships, and so I'm seeing that as potential competition. The other thing I would tell you is, using Josh Schaumberger who's on the board of the Eastern Iowa Airport, and the previous manager, we did look at potential collaboration, between Eastern Iowa Airport and our airport as kind of a main reliever back to the Eastern Iowa Airport. The numbers don't really seem to warrant and justify that it can be done any more efficiently under their umbrella any more that as a stand-alone airport. So ... we are going to struggle, but if you know we pay attention to the numbers we'll make it through this. The other thing I'd say to you is that this airport has economic development type spin-off, but that spin-off benefits not just Iowa City, but Coralville, North Liberty in terms of potential business locations there that might use that airport. But again, this is one of those things where the City of Iowa City, through subsidy's, even though it's $30,000 and $100,000 for capital, we are the ones that are paying the price of that subsidy to create that benefit that creates economic benefit spin-off so ... I'm pretty cognition about how much money we stick into that. Hayek/ Mike, a couple of questions. First on rentals, the hanger rentals, I think your position is that, those prices are pretty elastic, meaning if we were to bump up the rental rates we'd lose tenants... Markus/ Yes. Hayek/ Is there ... do you... Tharp/ Possibly ... the airport commission has held a position where they want the rates at Iowa City to be at a premium compared to the airports around us. So when we talk about raising rates, we are walking that line of ... of the top of the market value This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session versus going overboard and losing the tenants. Hayek/ Yea, okay. Page 85 Payne/ I did see in your last commission you did talk about rental rates and some of them were going to go up slightly and some were going to stay the same. Tharp/ Yea, we have kind of two vantages of hanger buildings... building... three buildings that were built in the 1950's, 1960's and then three building area that was built in the 1990's and we adjusted the rates to the 1990's area buildings but we left the older ones the same. And part of that reasoning was because of the market cap, if you look at the airports around us you can find hangers for about half the cost that are almost equivalent space and size and age. Payne/ So people do read your meeting minutes too. (laughter) Hayek/ And then my other part has to do with the ... the main... terminal itself and I suppose broadly the whole facility, but ... things we may want to consider doing to capitalize those assets more, make them more of a destination, yes the building is old but it is also pretty darn cool art deco piece... Tharp/ Yes it is. Hayek/ ...of architecture that a lot of people love and ... and I don't know if it's within the pilot demographic or the public in general if there is something we can do to draw more feet down to that facility, I don't know, and maybe that would make the hangar space more attractive and I just throw that out there. Dickens/ Do we get any money from the fuel sales or... Tharp/ Yea, we have a 10 cent fuelage fee on fuel sales, so every gallon of gas... Dickens/ So where is that in the revenues, is that in a separate, I didn't see it in there. And also when was the last time we built a hanger? Tharp/ Um, we just built two box hangers in 2012 that were rented for $650 a month each. Markus/ The amortization on them? Tharp/ That one was built with cash and state grants so ... there is no debt attached to those. Mims/ And the fuel tax is all staying with the airport. Tharp/ Yes. Mims/ Okay, I just ask because I just heard about a lawsuit yesterday or the day nationally before about fuel tax money. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 86 Bockenstedt/ On page 441 in the airport fund summary, there is royalties and commissions revenue. Dickens/ Okay that is where that is located. Bockenstedt/ That is the royalties off ... the commission off the fuel. Hayek/ Well, thanks Mike, I remember when I started on Council, we were well into the six figures on the annual subsidy and the debt was, I don't know, half a million or something like that. Tharp/ When I first got here it was about 3 1/2 million and the levee was $170,000 it's been substantial progress and we hope like I said to keep the trajectory going. Mims/ Great improvement Tharp/ Thank you. Throgmorton/ Good deal. Transportation Services: Payne/ You have a thick folder there. Karr/ Transportation, parking and transportation, 353. O'Brien/ I was going to actually walk up here and say "Chris O'Brien, transportation service, thank you". (laughter) Fruin/ Before you leave Chris, I want to get a picture of you and Nick together too. O'Brien/ Yea, I know, I saw that when I walked in. (laughter) Markus/ How about Mike? (laughter) Payne/ If it's orange. Hayek/ It's got to be orange. O'Brien/ I think the purple gray glasses thing going on, I saw that when I walked in ... leave it to Geoff, thanks. Parking and Transit, I'm sorry which one would you like to start with? Dickens/ Your choice. O'Brien/ Let's go transit first. Um ... transit operating budget... pretty status quo from prior years, there is really nothing put in this budget that ... um ... carries the operational piece higher than we've seen in prior years, we aren't proposing any rate This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 87 increases we just ... did our last rate increase 13 and we have another 15 years before we can raise it again if we keep going with past trends. Um ... I think it was 15 years prior when we did our last rate increase. Um ... we do have several grant funds coming to us for bus purchases, 12, 12 buses is probably what we'll be purchasing over the next 12 months, 4 of which are light duty ... that PO was just issued this week for ... those are replacement of vehicles of our para -transit fleet. Then we have eight vehicles that will replace our 1997 heavy duty buses ... that we have grant funds for, we are just waiting for the contract to be approved, and then we'll make our purchase off those, and those are about $400,000 a piece with about 80% funding so we'll have, I think it's $620,000 is our share and 3.2 million is what the Federal share will be for those purchases. As you know, we switched transit over to an enterprise fund, meaning we are self-supporting, obviously we receive levee funds through the transit levee, which we obviously sense an impact from that from the tax reform, so that will be something to keep an eye on. Um ... and then we also receive federal and state operating assistance for our transit as well. Just some highlights of some things we've done over the last, last year or so, and we have upcoming, so we had BONGO for several years, we are actually going into our fifth year of..of... our next bus AVL system. We added a trip planner piece to that which allows people to get online and actually plan their trips. And that utilizes all three systems, Coralville, Cambus um ... as well as Iowa City, so they can plan, they just pick a point they start and a point and end at and it builds the route for them, tells them their transfer points. And that was with assistance from University IT, using a .... what was it called .... an open map I think was the trip planner. Portland was who originated it. Um ... we completed a joint project with Coralville to replace our fare boxes. Um ... we are going into year three, this budget year, of our para -transit contract. I believe we are looking at 1.4 million up from 978,000 was the last year, the previous contracts, we are up to about 1.4 million. Um and we are ... the maintenance costs were a little bit higher than we anticipated which led to our budget being a little tighter this last year, there were about 140,000 and I think we anticipated at about 50 in maintenance. I'm getting those caught up, so these four replacement buses are going to help a lot in keeping those maintenance costs down. We had our tri annual review, so every three years FTA sends us a packet, and you thought these folders were bad, the FTA packet is more like this ... um ... I think it was 157 pages of information and I think we sent them several, several megs of data back and then they come down and do a site visit. And we had one finding out of the 17 areas that they evaluate and it was resolved in like three days. We get in the findings, so it was a very very minor finding. And then upcoming, this spring we will be coming in front of Council to talk about potential transit changes, route changes, looking at rate structures, looking at hours of servicing, things like that. So we can talk about how to better serve the public and looking at some of the route changes as developments have occurred, has jobs have popped into different areas, so we can serve those areas better. Payne/ On the BONGO thing, we can go in and kinda map your route and it tells you what bus to get on, does it tell you how long it's going to take you to get...? O'Brien/ Yep, it gives you an actual, it tells you the distance walking from wherever you start to the nearest bus stop what that bus stop is, um ... and then it will tell you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 88 your whole trip and give multiple options and allow you to plan per time of day as well. Payne/ So Denver has one of those with the same type of... O'Brien/ Yes, there are several places that have them, there are just different back end systems that operate those. Hayek/ We have historically, and I believe still do, had a system that um ... blankets as much of the city as it can versus... O'Brien/ I believe you referred to it as peanut butter, peanut butter last time, you spread it all over the entire community is how you referred to it that last time. Hayek/ I'm not sure I did... O'Brien/ Yea it was good. Hayek/ ..I hope I did ... its brilliant. O'Brien/ It's a good one. Hayek/ Yea, I don't think I did though, versus through... O'Brien/ Coralville. Hayek/ Metaphors fish where the fist are, sending buses... Dickens/ Did you know he was the foosball champ... (laughter) Dickens/ What do fish have to do with peanut butter, I'm a little confused... Hayek/ Well, they might bite on it. No the fish, go where the population where needs the transportation the most you know, is there... O'Brien/ So when we come in front of you we'll have both. Hayek/ Okay. O'Brien/ What it will look like and similar to how we do things now and what ... a ... go with where the highest rider density is, sort of a... Hayek/ We see lots of buses in neighborhoods, with if anybody ... with maybe one person on the bus, and maybe those are non -peak hours, but there are a lot of buses riding around almost empty and that may, you know, may be policy reasons to maintain that, um ... but ... you're .... Tom's laughing ... but how do you make the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session argument that... O'Brien/ I know what he's laughing actually so... (laughter) Markus/ I just had a vision of your future .... (laughter)... Mims/ Riding around in a bus. Page 89 Markus/ ...we have a longtime attorney in town who brings that issue up on a regular basis... Hayek/ Oh ... I know who he is... And he burned out Adam and he's working on Simon, and I'm going to take over when he retires ... I'm going to complain about those trees on Kirkwood too. (laughter) Dickens/ Taxi vouchers... Hayek/ Anyway... O'Brien/ Yea we are going to come with both scenarios and see, and talk about some different express options and some day/night differences to how we do things now, it will become an all-encompassing discussion about how we move forward. Mims/ Will there be anything on there with Sunday service? O'Brien/ Um ... we'll present what that options would look like and what those costs would be going later, starting earlier, offering later night services on Saturdays, all of that will be part of the discussion. And then we can, we will roll that into something we talk about for the ... so maybe a year from now ... the next budget... anything we talk about can maybe implemented into that budget... Botchway/ And when will that be? O'Brien/ That'll be this spring, I think March is what we are looking at. Fruin/ It's on your pending list, so we'll schedule it when, when we can here, it's not looking like it will be February, probably March. Botchway/ I thought you said summer, that's why I was asking. O'Brien/ Spring, I'm sorry did I say ... I meant spring, my mistake. Throgmorton/ Speaking of pending lists, in the past I've suggested that taxi regulation seems to me should really be part of transportation services. I know this is a city manager's choice so I'm not trying to dictate anything here at all, but I wonder, I would hope there have been conversations about the ... the possibility and viability This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 90 of ... of .... linking the three into a coherent transportation. O'Brien/ Yea, I think there ... there have been some discussions, we've had some brief discussions with some taxi providers just to kind of high level discussions of what that would look like and what type of options are out there in order to ... maximize the amount of ... utility out of all of the resources. Meaning ... you know ... to kind of get to your point, areas where one or two people are riding you certainly don't want to take away a mode people depend on, but can you provide some other types of modes urn ... subsidy cab programs for work options ... I mean there's different things you can look at and that will part of the discussion we have, coming up in spring and possibility, depending on how, early spring to late spring, depending on when I am back here. Parking: Hayek/ Thanks. O'Brien/ Okay ... on to the parking piece ... I went to parking much like transit as an enterprise fund the only difference is we operate seven days a week on the parking side of things. On street parking. Off street parking, parking enforcement, maintenance of the facilities, maintenance of the equipment. We also do a lot of downtown snow removal, we assist with streets department in helping clear the downtown so the parking stalls are open. Zip cars is something jointly with the University of Iowa, we brought in um ... and ... I think that contract is up for renewal as well. And then we work closely with the downtown district to help out with events, event planning in how we set up the parking for that, as well as any new initiatives that maybe coming up, or technology that might be able to be used to help the parking convenience to people. Um ... we have 1142 metered spots, we just did a, last, well over, a year and a half now, a meter upgrade to the smart meter system with credit card, um ... credit card access for people to utilize. We also have 3086 off street spaces in our facilities. We've got a, we are working on a designs for lease purchase that will be coming before you guys here in the next month or so. Um ... as far as highlights for the parking operation, you know I mentioned the lease purchase, that is a 600 space facility that will be fully automated much like what we've done over the past couple years with eh Court Street Transportation Center and with Tower Place, we've fully automated both of those facilities. Um..we do still have a cashier presence at Capital Street and Dubuque Street just because, I think Dubuque Street with the hotel aspect of it, both the Vetro and the Sheraton, it makes it having a person there is still beneficial from the standpoint of giving directions, assisting people who are in from out of town, and Capitol Street just because the size of that facility, 875 spaces, um ... still having a presences for people who, it's always the more utilized facility that we have, so we still have a cashier presences there. Upcoming technology changes that we see. We've just in the last year gone to online permit renewals which has been um ... it's been a great process for us, a module in our software that we've had there, but just ... the online renewal portion was available until this last year so customers really like that piece. Obviously we automated Tower Place and Court ... Tower Place and the Court Street Transportation Center ... um those automation ... um ... aspects have actually raised our credit card usage in those facilities up to 70% depending on which facility we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 91 are talking about. So 70% of our revenues are coming in on credit card. Um ... going back to the smart meters, last year when I was, when were six months in, were were at about 36% were credit card, we are up to 45% overall, and we just had our first month of over 50 in October. Where 50% of the meter transactions were done with credit cards. Mims/ Do you get many complaints about those, or problems with them... O'Brien/ Um ... we did at first, we had some issues with the coin reads and the speed at which those credit cards were processing so we made some adjustments to the modems and the software in order to speed up the transaction times um ... but we still get the occasional, much like we did with our other meters, you are going to have malfunctions at times, as (a) it's battery powered and (b) there are other components that lead to failure at times. Payne/ It's still really slow when you put your credit card in... O'Brien/ And I think that ...the tough part is with those, you know, it depends on the modem connectivity, it's actually down, I forget, we timed it there for a while there, we tracking it, and it was ... I think we got the time down, we cut in half from the when we first got it in. Payne/ I'd almost rather pay the ticket, then stand there and wait for it. Mims/ Well I couldn't figure out if it was working one day, when I tried to do it so... Payne/ It's like, it seems like .... five minutes Mims/ I left it and got a ticket. Payne/ But it's probably more like two. O'Brien/ Usually we are in the seconds when we have those, so we don't see too many above, but ... we'll keep an eye on it. (many talking/laughter) Botchway/ I've had really quick speeds with it, I know I've talked to you before where it was, I didn't like it at first, but now, I mean..20-30 seconds tops. Payne/ I think it's really convenient... yea ... I think it's extremely convenient to be able to use it, but I just don't like to stand there and wait for that little, that little hour glass thing, it seems like it takes forever. Dickens/ The first hour free, how is that affecting... O'Brien/ I'm actually, that is one of the big highlights I was going to cover. Um... Hayek/ Stand there and read your airport commission minutes while you waiting... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 92 O'Brien/ First hour free was something that we've been through the first year, we are six months into year two, and um that has been a very successful change for us. Dickens/ It's still an education thing because I know we, on a regular basis, we tell... O'Brien/ I think because people turnover so much I don't think people anticipate that we are going to give anything away from free, from the parking side of things, so ... in the first year of operations, we gave ... there were 1 million 70 thousand free hours of parking that we gave away in our facilities. I mean that's a ... anything over ... we were hoping to get to a million and it was really really close. What's awesome about it is we are up 11.3% in usage this year already. Which was ... and we are up 18% last year from the year prior to that so the changes that we've made of trying to get people into the facilities did exactly what we wanted, which was open up more on -street spaces, turn them over, increase the usage of the facilities, I think that is 27.8% is what we are up July - December this year versus two years ago before we went to first hour free. Dickens/ And in dollar wise, how did ... did it equal out? O'Brien/ We actually ... we anticipated a slight decrease and we actually had a slight increase because what we are seeing is more people and they are actually staying longer. So our average length of stay is up. Um ... and then obviously with on -street, with the changes we made, we had a decrease in the usage, but an increase in the rate, so we saw an increase in the revenues from that as well. But we are well beyond the point of needing to up that on -street, so it was higher than the off-street, that was a ... that was a good decision for us, and it worked exactly like we wanted it to, it was keeping those on -street spaces free for the short term, and getting the people who are going to park a longer term into the facilities. It resulted in a 160,000 more vehicles than the prior year, so you take that out over ... how many extra vehicles a month um ... and actually this year we ... it's looking like another 150,000 to 160,000 increase from last year, so that's... urn... that was a good program for us. Urn ... a few projects we have coming up, pay by cell ... that is something that we'll have, that will be a joint University project, along with electronic charging stations. We are looking at joint procurements for University and the City on those. Um..bike sharing, another University/City joint ... got some news that it's looking like the recommendation came through on that, now we'll see if the funding comes through on that, for the bike sharing program. Um... Payne/ The bike sharing program that'll be like you can put your credit card in and you take bike out and take it around... O'Brien/ Yea, there are different, there's different ... you can either set up memberships or some that it's... it's... you could actually utilize um ... a credit card to do it and you have either an account or it charges you and then you have different stations at different locations so you can get a bike at one location, dock it at another, and somebody, either us or the University is responsible for balancing those out on a regular basis to make sure you don't have empty docks and somewhere all ones fully loaded. So ... And this is just the initial ... I think they will have three to four This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 93 stations they are looking at, and then they are all on the east side of the river with eventually goals to expand it once ... if it's successful to the west side so that we have that connectivity with the east and west sides of the river. Hayek/ I ... the first hour free ... is ... is great PR, I mean people love it, it's like this ... almost like an unexpected mini tax break or they... they... you see their faces change when they learn about it and the relief that comes over their face when ... you know ... that's great. Quick..on the zip cars, I know they are very popular and it's going, doing well. They do take up on -street spots, prime parking spaces. Is the plan to still leave them outside there at those spots or is it... O'Brien/ Yea, we really on have two right now that are actually in ... and that's on Linn Street, we got rid of the ones on Iowa Avenue. Hayek/ Oh, Okay. O'Brien/ So if there are some up in front of Burge, and then you have the ones on Linn Street, we got rid of the ones on Iowa... Hayek/ Okay. O'Brien/ ... and relocated those. But we only have the two that are on Linn Street right now. Um ... I mean we could always look at that, I mean... Hayek/ It's just a couple ... it's not that big of deal, but... Throgmorton/ So how is that experiment worked? O'Brien/ Every month the amount of people that have joined, as well as the utilization had increased. Um ... now obviously when you hit December the usage drops a little bit, when the University is out of session. Um ... but they actually added, for the first time they added a vehicle in October, and we had, usually when you hit to 40% is kind of when they start ... well we had on vehicle at 49%, on at 42, one at 38.9, so as our utilization got up there they added another vehicle to make sure they didn't have too many times where vehicles weren't available in those pods. So ... it's been a good program for us. Um ... I think, unless you guys have other questions about parking, I'm... Markus/ Thanks Chris. O'Brien/ Yep. Hayek/ We appreciate it. (laughter) Payne/ You see how this works... Dickens/ It's that hook... O'Brien/ I told you I was just going to say thank you and walk away. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 94 Markus/ We were thinking that maybe Marian..you would... Karr/ You want to have Ron's since he's here? Markus/ No, we are going to give him a chance to relax for a second and have you jump in. Karr/ Okay. City Clerk: Karr/ Mine is on page 109, mine is as lengthily as Eleanor's. Um ... basically the city clerk's office, there are two major functions. Duties assigned by state and city code as well as those assigned by Council in achieving your strategic goals. Duties for the state and city code, which are outlined on ... in the budget and on the report, maintaining records, publications. The general requirements. The strategic plan goals we are spending a considerable amount of time converting our old documents, saving of storage, and also making them accessible 24/7. Um ... we have, we are being contacted by a lot of the major cities actually right now, there are some major ... major survey going on across the state. Many cities are in the process of converting their documents and are going through a retrieval system. Many, none of them however, do what we do and after, once they are electronically they are archived, destroy. They are all looking at that because of the obvious, you take your time and effort and resources to electronic preserve them, make them available and then you still have to maintain them or store them, and you still have the constraints. Many of them are looking and um..hopefully will follow our lead and take look at the advantages of that. Mims/ You're saying that we are destroying them? Karr/ We are..we have had a ... a .... schedule that goes through, through Council, it is updated every few years, and it allows the destruction of the documents once they are electronically archived. Um ... many are looking at doing it in phases and identifying certain ones that they do the first year, certain ones they do the second. Getting ultimately to a five-year plan. We are about 10 years ahead of that plan. Mims/ How many archived versions do we have of our digital stuff, I mean... Payne/ You are saying do we have a back-up? Karr/ Oh yes we do ... at least one. Mims/ I know we have a back-up, but I'm just, in this crazy world where you think of everything electronic going kaput... Karr/ We are backed up minimally three different ways. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 95 Markus/ She has one at her house. (laughter) Karr/ Under my bed (laughter) I sleep with it. Um ... we are looking also um ... at ... we recently as you've heard from a couple of other departments, we've undergone a Laserfishe, which is our software provider, um ... upgrade and we are really taking a look at streamlining and working more closely with departments on workflows and agenda preparation management. There is a lot of time spent each week getting those electronic packets to you, and several iterations of um ... changes made, and what we are taking a look at is improving that with a better electronic workflow and allowing departments to change it themselves, rather than once submitted letting me know to change this part, and then getting back to letting me know they changed that part. And putting it back on the departments to create that package, ultimately that final agenda items, comment and materials that go to you. Um ... we've had no new employees, the largest additional cost you'll see in the budget is the off year election costs. I always laugh when I see our, my budget going up 42% or down 42% and it's elections, it's not really.... Mims/ And how do you see ... the state law, that changed the way elections are run, basically took a lot of things away from the City Clerks and gave it to the County, how do you see that working in terms of coordinating? Karr/ I don't know yet, I think we'll have a better feel after we go through the first one. That's ... we've not experienced other than the local option sales tax, which isn't really a city council election... Mims/ Right. Karr/ Since the change in law ... um ... I don't see the any ... I don't see the cost, the actual cost changing in the short run, when you talk about the actual costs of the elections, you still pay the precinct workers, you still have the same number of precincts, you still have the paper ballots, you still have the satellite voting. All of those things, how it's going um ... what's its going to cost in other ways we won't know until after we go through it. Um ... there is, there's an option that the Commissioner of Elections may deputize cities upon request, um ... whether we'll be part of that or how that will influence us, we'll know after the next one. I think in the long run, it could end up essentially costing the city more as well. Botchway/ One of the things, when we talked, whenever we are going to talk about elections, I know that is a previous role of mine, but um ... they were, or we were talking in the county about consolidating precincts, is that something you can do for off-year elections? You can't do it for governor, gubernatorial or um ... or big elections ... um ... and that being a potential cost savings. Mims/ Well school does that, they do that for the school elections. Botchway/ Right, but for the fact that Iowa City has 24 precincts and for the fact that the County basically starts voting at onset, so 40 days prior to the actual election day, nobody is really ... is realizing cost savings in that. So somebody should ... I This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 96 think Karr/ I think that before we can add to that we'll have to wait and see what the Charter Review Commission um ... makes any changes or recommendations on the district. Both representation and the election process. Botchway/ That's true. Karr/ Because the school board election combining is very different than the opportunities and the voting restrictions within precincts we have. Botchway/ True. Karr/ So certainly some of that can come into play. Um..this year also in the budget you'll see a slight increase for the legal counsel, for CPRB because we replaced a previous attorney who represented the Commission for over 13 years, so we did see an increase in the hourly rate on that as well. Special projects for 2014, um, of course we were involved with the Senior Services Ad Hoc, Charter Review, started almost, it's still in the process, the 175th celebration, and going into 15 um ... as I mentioned we had the electronic prep and management, working a little bit more with the new software and workflow opportunities that we have, as well as expanding the taxi regulations that you have before you. Finance: Markus/ Dennis, you are next. Hayek/ Thank you Marian, we appreciate what your department does in so many different areas. Bockenstedt/ Alright, um ... the finance department, we are actually made up of six different divisions. We cover a lot of territory in the internal services realm. The first division... Karr/ Finance starts on 117. (several) Thank you. Bockenstedt/ Thank you, I've got actually ... So um ... administration we've got four employees, and we take care of the health and dental reserves, employee benefits, the general obligation bond issuance, and other general long-term bonds, prepare the budget, we do the investment in banking management, and um..we also ... manage the community funding program that's in the budget. The major things, initiatives we've been doing on the administrative side is to continue to implementing software packages that are going create efficiencies and the, the MUNIS software package has done a lot to decentralize a lot of the processing of information as well as making a lot of the information into images. Where people can access what used to take, individuals to do research, go through files, to try and find things it's now all digitized and accessible to the end user. What would take seconds or minutes used to take days or weeks to research? Another This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 97 package we've added is a CIP software package and if you've looked at that section of your book, um ... what was formerly done in spreadsheets or journal entries is now done through a, kind of a access database system that was, we were able to take information that the department submits and transfer it right over into the access database and it reduces a lot of double entry and addition work in managing those project. Um ... one system we are looking at implementing now is a time -keeping solution, and this is hopefully, we'll create more efficiencies, we are kind of in that system now where people will punch in and out on a time clock or computer and that will transfer right over to the payroll system, rather than people having to hand enter time sheets, which requires a lot of effort for everybody to gather that, put it into a format, and then hand enter it, so hopefully we'll see some additional efficiencies created there. And ... another area we are looking in our ITS department is creating a ... tracking software to track programs, service calls and other events to see not only performance measures, how are people are preforming, how long people are waiting for things to take place, but also to document the activities that are taking place down there. So ... that's really ... in our area we are just trying to look at streamlining through automation and software and we've really been in that process for the last several years, and will probably go on for another year of implementation software, which does take a lot of effort from a lot of people to do that. Um ... the second division, accounting, and this division has seen a lot of change because of the MUNIS system implementation, has decentralized a lot of the work and changed a lot of how the workload takes place. Where a lot of it is now paperless, they just look at monitors and screens and things are transferred back and forth electronically. we completed our first year under accrual basis accounting versus cash basis and that has been a real learning curve for everybody as far as ... because you are changing processes, you are changing the timing of your reporting, and whose expecting what and so that has been a big change. Also in accounting we were affected by, basically three disaster events in the last, about a year. We had two in 2013 and one in 2014 and ... at the time we were preparing to eliminate um ... a ... our grant accounting position that was hired from '08. We had three events in basically one year, um ... and so we had to bring that position back as a part-time person to assist us with working through those three disaster events and any more of these FEMA events, even if the dollar amounts are significant take a tremendous amount of time dealing with that agency and the, and the detailed documentation requirements that they have. Um ... our third division is our purchasing and central services. They do our purchasing and bidding and manage our copiers, they do our postage for the City, and they do radio maintenance. Um... you know, something that we did last year, we really kind of went in and revamped the purchasing policy, we felt we built a lot more efficiencies into that, and helped streamline things from a end user, as a well from a department management perspective. Um ... we chopped the document to only about half the size it was (laughter) and tried to simplify things and we think that has been very successful, at this point. Something new that is in this division that once we changed all the radio system, all the radio maintenance now goes through the central services division. And they handle all those contracts, so that is something new for them. Our fourth division is our revenue, our utility billing division. They are actually in the middle of their MUNIS implementation now and they have been so since, for about a year, I think we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 98 started a year ago in January, and this is something that will affect everybody who, city-wide, so it will be something you will be getting a report on, or hear more about as we get closer because essentially we are going from a very old, old system um ... and replacing it with a new utility billing system which will affect everybody's water bill city-wide. So ... if nobody knows about it, that means it went well. (laughter) But you know, anytime you are flipping over from one computer system to another there is a potential for issues, problems, errors and one that is affecting 25,000 customers, bills, that they expect to be flawless every month, has potential for heartache, or heartburn. So ... we are getting closer to that implementation and hopefully, as we get closer you'll hear more about that. So ... um ... Information Technology services is our fifth division, and they handle the City's fiber-optic network, PCs, network services, they also handle all the telephone systems city-wide, and ... some of the major issues going on right now with that is the incredible ramp up of the storage requirements of the City's needs. You know as we continue to proliferate video camera systems, into buildings, into water systems, you know, um ... you know after the terrorist attacks, a lot of the water stations, the pumps and the meters, or the pumps and the different areas for security purposes they put video cameras all over the place. We've added more of them into City buildings for security, monitoring, and then of course now as the police department, we get into body cameras. The storage requirements for all that video and all ... and plus as Doug mentioned, the plan sets for engineering and planning, heavy, heavy load requirements for all that storage. That is definitely a challenge that we are seeing and working on. Throgmorton/ How long do we store that stuff? Bockenstedt/ It varies, you know some of the stuff like emails, we may store for three years, things for the police department of legal department we'll store indefinitely, depending on you know, if there is a murder case or something like that, those files, they would would be permanent. Like Marian's stuff, they would be permanent, or it may just be stored until those cases are resolved or... Throgmorton/ I had in my mind an image of this ... the drinking water plant, and a camera that is on, it's on all the time, does that video, do we store all the video just observing... whatever the seem is? Bockenstedt/ No, we do not. And you know that can present challenges because sometimes if there is vandalism or there is an event, and you found, you find out about it after the fact, that video may be destroyed. So I mean there is always offsets between how long to store things, or how long to keep things versus when do you destroy it, versus when you may need it and you wish you had that video back and I know those are issue the police department are dealing with right now with the body cameras and how long do you store this because of the ... of the requirements and there is stuff, because of legal reasons that we maintain permanently or for a very long time that does have a steep storage requirement. And there is a cost to that, 'cause each megabyte, gigabyte, we're into terabytes now, to store has a cost associated with that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 99 Mims/ Dennis, can you, this is simply a way this is presented, when I look at most of these spreadsheets like under City Attorney, City Clerk, or whatever, the ... total revenues equals the total expenditures, okay. When I look at yours, and I've seen a few others like this, and yours is on page 138, it shows total revenues of 30, over 30 million dollars and total expenditures of $440,000. 1 don't... Bockenstedt/ We like to maintain a profit in the finance department (laughter)... Mims/ I mean obviously there, obviously there is a transfer of money going on, but it's..it's now showing up here and I guess that's what got me when I was looking at this stuff. Bockenstedt/ Yea, that is, that finance admin page you are looking at, that is really the area where all that other revenue comes in, that's subsidizes all the other operations and, you really you have to pick a cost center to run it through it's like all, all the primary property taxes and other general tax and general revenue that maybe isn't affiliated with one operation or one activity, comes into this one cost center here so, and then that is when it transfers out of the general fund to the other areas. So that is why it's... Mims/ Okay. Bockenstedt/ Off set that way. Payne/ I mean, with what you are saying, should there be a line item on there that says transfers out? Mims/ That would have made more sense to me. But I'm not the accountant or finance director that knows how these things should be laid out, so. Bockenstedt/ That's fine ... so ... but that is why that revenue... Mims/ I mean that's what I assumed, and there are a couple others too that I saw with revenues a lot greater than the expenses. Bockenstedt/ There are some programs that do make a profit, that do make income, or... Mims/ Yes, some are enterprise so I'm sure, I know... Bockenstedt/ Um ... and then our sixth division is our risk management function which handles insurance, claims, safety programs, and reporting. Um ... we have made some changes in this area. One of the things we've done, normally we've bid our insurance programs out each year, and last year we tried it where we bid it for a three-year basis thinking we'd get more bidders and better bids and I think it was moderately successful but that is something we are going to just try out, 'cause there is a lot of administrative paperwork when you apply for that insurance, the applications are as big as notebook, so ... um ... so we are going to try doing that seeing how that goes. And, um ... something else we did was we outsourced claim processing for the police and fire, medical claims, and retiree claims This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 100 that... formerly been handled in house and just for reduction of paperwork and HIPPA, other reasons that we've farmed that out to our other claims processor and then they make adjustments and do those filing for us. Those are some of the issues we've dealt with and are dealing with and urn... if you have any more questions I'll try to answer them. Botchway/ I had a quick one, just from kinds a public standpoint, is there any way we can get like a ... some type of chart or map of each department, and I know that we kind of have that right now, but that's ... like, budget for dummies 2015 from where you know exactly how things are expended and why and so in transit they're ... that money can't be transferred um ... to the police department or something like that. I think, I'm going back through a couple of discussions, or people that came up even from like the housing standpoint where we were talking about those two positions and who pays for those positions, and why can we pay 25 million dollars here for a particular TIF but then you know we are cutting these positions here. Is there any way we can show that on a ... again you know book for dummies, that I mean I could co-author or whatever the case may be, to make sure that, that type of rhetoric can be proactively stopped. Bockenstedt/ Yea, I mean there's... there's certain things you could learn from a broad perspective I think, you know, just far as like what an enterprise fund is. You know, how's that accounted for, 'cause really we operate a lot of different funds and they... they.... the requirements and what, how that money is used and how they are accounted for are different. And some of them, like the ones you just mentioned, the housing authority, has additional layers to it that are even deeper, that have federal requirements as far as how those monies are expended. So ... to ... to ... we could to try and make it as simple as this is public finance for dummies but it really is a ... a complex set of rules that each fund and within those funds activities, there is different layers of requirements that need to be met. And so ... um ... you know I think there are some generalities you could start with to say special revenue funds are special revenues that are... have... required to be used for legal purpose. You know, enterprise funds are business type funds that are meant to be operated like businesses although there are exceptions like airport, transit, and what have you. But within those generalities there are additional layers of requirements that have to be met depending on the source of funds that have come in, if they have restrictions, um ... if they have been ... and there are different layers of restrictions from whether it's assigned, or you know, restricted, unrestricted, committeemen, if I can remember all the different types of commitments there are. So ... so although ... um ... I can sit here and tell you that... that.... you know there are generalities we can make, to ... to put that out there, and if you read some of the notes about this they talk about those in the notes of the financial statements and budget book, it is..it's generally more complicated specifically when you get into some of those funding areas like housing because of the ... and Doug touched on ... the admin fees that are based on the utilization that are restricted for certain ... we don't necessarily get into all those nuances of the requirements of the budgets. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 101 Markus/ I've seen citizen guides to municipal budgets that kind of breaks it down in more layman's terms and we'll go online and see what we can find and accumulate to our situation and see what we can come up with. Hayek/ Okay. Bockenstedt/ And that's why, if you look at a lot of the narrative within those funds... Mims/ That's helpful. Bockenstedt/ Yea, there is a lot there to read. So... Markus/ It will be somewhat simplistic, and for every statement we make there is an exception. Mims/ There is a caveat, yea. Botchway/ I mean that, I think that is what you are saying as well, I mean I'm sure there is going to be a disclaimer line on each and every page, but I think, I think it would help just from a... Markus/ And we'll load it on the site. Botchway/ Yea, that's fine. Throgmorton/ I think it would help too, you know, I recall President Lincoln's words "Government of the people, by the people and for the people" and if the people cannot understand anything about the, how the government operations are funded, and how a budget is balanced, then can't possibly a meaningful role other than to elect their representatives, and that's not what Lincoln, among others, had in mind. So I know the world is different from what it was in 1861-5 but a... Markus/ But that is what representative democracy is all about. So like (many talking, laughing) selecting people to make decisions which in their best judgment serves the entire public. Throgmorton/ True enough but there always... Dickens/ And exception to the rule. Throgmorton/ ... a possibility, and I'd say a desirability of the general public playing a meaningful role in shaping such documents as the budget and the comprehensive plan, etc. It's not simply a matter of electing seven people who then appoint the city manager, it's ... it goes deeper than that. Bockenstedt/ One analogy I like to make with the city budget is, you know we are not a widget company making widgets. You know, I mean, if we were, you know, we could sit there and tell you all the revenues and costs that went into making a widget, we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 102 really have an operation that really has about 50 different widgets we are making. And each operation has its own funding sources, its own... everything... the way they operate, the way they do things, their own uniforms, their own equipment, waste water department is nothing like parks department, or the parking department, I mean there may be some overlap there but each one is very unique and to its own individual self... Mims/ And different kinds of restrictions which makes it so complex. Bockenstedt/ And so when we prepare this book, it ... yea there are some interrelationships, it's like preparing a budget for 50 different organizations not just one. But ... that being said, I think there are things we can get for you, and there is a set of handbooks as prepared by the Government Finance Officers Association that covers all sorts of public finance for elected officials. And I probably have a number of them in my office alone. And they are just pamphlets that basically cover whether it's insurance, or budgeting, or accounting for elected officials. So it's breaks it down to similar concepts to understand. Hayek/ Well, we'll look at that. Um ... let's move on, before, Dennis thanks for the presentation and as the storm clouds gather of all the important things your office does, any forecasting and helping as Tom described, helping the City make a soft landing with the roll-out of property tax reform is so critical going forward, you know that, but just had to say it. Karr/ Just for the record, wanted to apologize finance of course started out on page 135, sorry. Mims/ Yea, we found it. Hayek/ Got it. Public Works Program: Markus/ And so now that Marian and Dennis have modeled for Ron Knoche's first attempt at presenting the budget (laughter), Ron you're up. Karr/ And that is page 259. Payne/ Hopefully you won't be quite as long winded as your predecessor. (laughter) Because that would take to like 5:15. Knoche/ Yea, that won't happen. (laughter) Hayek/ ...leaves are already throwing him under the bus. (laughter) Mims/ not CIP Knoche/ He is in Hawaii so it's... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 103 Hayek/ Yea, he was terrible (many talking at once) Hayek/ A breath of fresh air to have you come in. Knoche/ Alright, urn ... Public Works department is split up into six divisions and nine operational areas. Urn ... we have the first division is the admin area, and that area we take care of all the sidewalk cafe, street cafes um ... right away use permits that go on, agreements that go on, are all managed through that area. Um ... the Public Works Engineering division obviously deals with all the... the... division... construction that goes on in our community, oversees all subdivision work that occurs and site plan work that goes on. Um ... the ... I think the biggest challenge that we are going to have is the management of the capital program over the next few years with the Gateway project coming on, that will be a big one. We've finished up or in ... continuing to finish up on our waste water plant construction. Um ... and we'll move forward with that. Urn ... obviously we know one of the challenges that we do face all throughout Public Works, in engineering and Public Works admin especially is retirements. Um ... you know with Rick retiring, Denny Gannon and Rick retiring, that you know is 70 years' worth of experience that walked out the door last week, so it's urn ... it will be a challenge for us, but I think we have the staff that are capable of moving forward with that. Urn ... as we move on, the streets division, you know I guess overall in the Public Works department I think we are going to move forward with the standard of service that we've provided in the past, with the current budget that is before you there aren't any major um ... changes that are going to occur within this next budget year. And ... and that stands tall for the rest, for all the divisions. The streets division will continue to provide the services they have, um ... with Jon Ressler at the helm I think we are doing a good job, or a better job of, getting out and taking care of street patching, getting staff trained and moving forward with those things. Um ... the streets division, that is page 284, is where that starts in the budget book, um ... the challenge that is there is funding in that area. Road use tax it sounds like there may be some interest in increasing the gas tax, but that depends on the day to day thing as far as the legislatures goes. Um ... within the ... within that area we are continuing pursue the public works site and development of that site and now we are in the process of putting out our RFP to do the master planning, or a remaster planning of that site and moving forward down there. Urn... continuing on ... Waste Water Treatment, that's page 376 in your budget book, we ... obviously are bringing a new plant online, and in... that is going... coming along very well. One of the things we will have to do is a nutrient study after the first year of operations to see what our limitations will be on nitrogens and prospheres at that plant. Urn ... we will continue with the demolition of the north plant, they have been onsite starting the mercury abatement project, that is moving on ... moving along very well. They have found some mercury onsite but it's not a ... not to the state ... we are hoping it's not to the state where it was thought to be. Um ... the asbestos in ... hazardous waste folks are onsite also, taking, getting rid of those materials to prepare the site for the demo. And um ... you will be seeing, within this current fiscal year, the plans and specs for the demolition of that site moving forward. Water division, 395, page 395, they ... we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 104 continue to provide a high quality water product to our citizens, um ... you know with the ... with the conditions we've had, you know the cold weather, um some of the drought conditions we've seen, we still are experiencing some high levels of water main breaks in our community. But, urn... obviously we have the folks on staff that can take care of that. Um ... refuse collection, page 415 starting, urn ... we are ... um .... doing very well with the one arm bandits out on the, out in the community and as far as the collection goes, we've been very happy with those trucks, um ... one of the things that we will be looking at with regards to recycling is single stream recycling and looking at moving forward with that initiative. Um ... you may be aware that City Carton has sold their operations to Republic, and one of the things Republic is looking at doing is to do more with single stream recycling in our community. So ... that's a big thing... currently when we do the single stream recycling, which we are doing some pilot areas, that material has to be hauled to Cedar Rapids because that is where that facility is to deal with those, that type of recycling. Um ... landfill ... we are um .... you know, after the fire, we've recovered very well out there, we have rebuilt the cell that... partial... we have rebuilt partially the cell that was, that was damaged in that event. Um ... we have put some material in that cell and we are continuing to finish out use of the exiting cells that were in place prior to that event. Stormwater management, we continue to work with our citizenry with regards to best management practices, grants, and also stream bank protection grants. Um ... the best management practices are impervious payments so pavers, rain gardens, those type of facilities that people want to place on their private property, we help fund those. Um ... in our community we also have a lot of the creeks, bank areas are not ... are privately owned, not publicly owned, so we help with erosion control in those areas. Um ... stormwater arrangement was on page 446. And then ... the last part of our function is the equipment division, page 565, um ... the um .... Tom Hanson obviously retired last week, we have ... a .... a good replacement in regards to Dan Striegal, and um ... you know there it's .... we've um .... bringing the new fuel facility online, and then we continue to provide maintenance operations and replacement operations for the equipment fleet in the city. Botchway/ So ... you talk about single stream recycling, um ... so my whole thing is, is there any ... is there any plan or thoughts on just getting recycling at our major hubs, so I"m talking about specifically about downtown. For example, when we have our jazz fest and stuff like that, we have recycling, but then that disappears when we don't have those particular programs. And then going to other cities, and I know it costs money, but then going to other cities, just nearby they have that feature. And so, what are we doing about it, are we doing something about it? Fruin/ Yea, I can jump in because I've been working, um, this has come up on the street scape planning a little bit, we do have some recycling stations downtown but they've, they don't, um ... they are contaminated to the point where we are not recycling that stuff, it's going to the landfill for the most part. Um ... this spring we are going to start pilot project downtown with some solar trash compactors and recycling stations, thy are called Big Bellies, and they are used throughout the country, I'm sure you've probably seen them in your travel, travels, you just may not know it, but they will provide a couple of things. One with the solar power compaction, we won't be picking up the trash as much, you can cut the collection This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 105 down by several days, instead of doing it every day you might need to come back every third or fourth day to pick up the trash. But they also have companion recycle stations and I think the way they are built and constructed will help us minimize or hopefully eliminate the contamination. So you'll see those on Iowa Avenue, we are going to install four on Iowa Avenue this spring when the weather warms up. We got through Jen Jordan, secured a grant from the DNR to help pay for those. And if those are successful you'll see those built into the Washington Street Improvement, the Ped Mall improvement and Dubuque Street as we go along. So, take a look online, just Google Big Belly, and you'll see what we are talking about. Dickens/ The paper this morning just had some more recycling where you can do your milk cartons and everything now, it was in this morning's Press Citizen so there's been an increase. Markus/ Yea we are expanding the items, but the downtown issue is as Geoff said, we are exploring that, we hope to move into that in a larger area. And you heard his comments earlier about the alleys as well, we are trying to figure that out. Botchway/ And then on the, maybe from a 30,000 foot level, from a city initiative standpoint, and I think maybe this question is kind of directed at Council and Tom and Geoff, um ... is there any way we can get to the point where, I don't know necessarily if we require it, but if there is some type of push that all buildings recycle? I mean it... Markus/ You mean multiple family? Mims/ That was my question. Botchway/ I'm talking about multiple family, and I know we've talked about it briefly because you are waiting, but I'm also talking about all buildings, like every single building needs to recycle as being a part of, you know, Iowa City's initiative from a sustainability standpoint. And... Throgmorton/ Restaurants for example. Botchway/ Restaurants, um ... I'm thinking of places I've worked before and there's not... Dickens/ I work in a University building and we have no, there is really nothing for us to recycle, we do it ourselves, but it's not offered. Markus/ I think we are moving towards the multiple family to begin with, but I don't think it will be a major ordinance change. Most of what we are going to require is the privatization of that service. Um ... back to the, to the recycling, we are not going to take that on as city crews and try to gear up with all the equipment to do that. The other thing is, we do not have at MRF here in Iowa City, MRF is up in Cedar Rapids and... Payne/ And what does that stand for? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 106 Markus/ Material Recovery Facility. And there is clean MRFs and dirty MRFs. Dirty MERFs, you know everything gets thrown in one truck, it gets taken to a floor, it's gets separated, or there's conveyors taking it all over the place, there's shredders involved in it. I've had some experience with MRFs and there is all sorts of different things going on. The attractive part of FiberRight proposal was they were going to build the dirty MRF and then they kind of transitioned away from that and were going to put it up in... Throgmorton/ Marion. Markus/ Marion and so now you are shipping all this stuff, so Dave Elias, I don't know how many of you have the chance to talk to Dave, but Dave has a lot of insight into these issues, so he's kind of laying out different scenarios. Jen Jordan we've been having these conversations. We are trying to figure out, you know, we don't want to just step into something because we've felt compelled to do it, we want to do something that is pretty strategic, makes some sense and extracts a lot more of this material out of the waste stream successfully and gets it into the recycling markets. And that is typically MRFs do, they sort, separate all this material and they get into the plastic and the glass, and the metal and the newspaper markets and they sell the stuff all over the county, and they take bids on this material. And so we are thinking rather than shipping all this stuff out of the area, which doesn't generate a whole lot of value when you have to move it, you know, with fossil fuels that if we can do it somewhat locally there may be some advantages to doing that. But that is going to take a lot of research, investment, maybe some upfront capital to pull that off. That is kind of what we are looking at in terms of trying to get that done, that discussion is moving pretty fast and furious and Ron didn't get into the conversation, but that, that conversation is moving with the relocation of that department into transportation, so we are going to have those conversations continuing. It might cause a little bump in the time, but we are committed to try and figure out how to reduce the amount of stuff that just gets flat out landfilled. And... FiberRight made it very clear, there is a huge ... huge amount of material that's going right into our landfill that's clearly recyclable. Mims/ Well and I think, I think there are so many components to this, I think the experiment that Jen Jordan was just involved in with the organic matter was really small pilot program that sounded like to try and get that stuff out of there and then you take the multi -family units that we've talked about but kind of put on hold because of kind of waiting on FiberRight. Markus/ And we are shifting gears on that again. Mims/ Right, and just ... yea I'm glad to hear you are talking about it and you know, just encourage a faster ... we can figure something out the better so that, one, our landfill lasts that much longer, and then just from an environmental standpoint that we're, you know, being better. Markus/ I think FiberRight, as I recall, was talking about, you know, 80-90% recovery, reduction in what was going into our landfill. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 107 Mims/ Well somebody, I don't know if it's Jen or somebody said how much cardboard is going into... Markus/ Oh yea, it's amazing how much. Mims/ And how up in Cedar Rapids or wherever they banned cardboard, and I know there are some issues there, but just ... some things like that that seems we need to be ... looking at a lot more strategically. Hayek/ We've got to do something about our dining and bar... scene... downtown, I mean the amount of waste generated from those places is extraordinary. Fruin/ We will tackle that when we look at the alleys, 'cause remember the alleys are public property, so we govern what goes on there. Currently we permit dumpsters as long as you can fit on there, but its well in our power to say, we are going to have two dumpsters on this ... on this block of alleys and we're going to have a large recycling compactor and then there is different ways to figure out the billing. And you know, people have figured it out to where if you're not recycling you are paying a heck of a lot, based on the weight you are putting in the dumpsters so... Markus/ They have these coin operated leach boxes now ... and ... or cards, and you can use the card that opens up, and it compacts it all. Part of the problem is, if you start getting into sort separating stuff out of the alleys you are going to chew up the alleys full of these leach boxes, picking up cardboard and plastics and metals and everything else. So it would be nice to get it into a single location and then probably have to sort/separate afterwards. To make, to get to the point where you have alleys that are functional and they aren't just filled with you know all sorts of garbage boxes up and down the alleys. Botchway/ And to Matt's point as well, I mean we obviously live in an unique community, well, I guess taking it further, because of the turnover that we see obviously on a yearly basis that ... I mean... there's ... I mean I was a part of that product as well, I mean there is just waste, I just mean I remember trying to just dump everything in a dumpster because I didn't want to take it anywhere and, you know, urn ... if it was me, I know there was tons more. Throgmorton/ People do. Markus/ Yea, it's true. Throgmorton/ I have a question, a couple questions for Ron, I'm a little leery of asking these questions because Ron is kind of like my teacher in law ... because Ron's wife teaches my daughter computer science so (laughter) I'll be delicate here. So, two questions, one has to do with recycling, to the extent that anybody can talk about it and have discussions taken place, either with the previous or current owner of the recycling facility about moving their operations somewhere else. I This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session don't know if anybody could feel free to talk about that. Markus/ You mean City Carton? Page 108 Throgmorton/ Yea, City Carton or Republic. Markus/ Oh yea, we've had all sorts of conversations, moving everything from trading sites out, to putting them in our industrial area, to building MRFs in the industrial area. We've had extensive conversations. Throgmorton/ So they didn't want to move, but now there is a new owner right. Markus/ Well ... they are selling their operation but there's... see what's going on is they've had all sort of um ... interest expressed to them about selling the property for potential redevelopment, because it's in the Riverfront Crossings area. You'll recall that part of the Riverfront Crossings has a provision in there that if they will dedicate land they could transfer development rights, I can tell you they don't necessarily see the merit in that particular provision, they like cash instead, so ... we are talking about all those issues, Jim. The other thing is over on the other side of the river we have development proposals going on, they don't like looking at the other side of the river, so we have, you know, impotence to try to clean that area up. Despite, you know, the service it provides it's not the most aesthetic way to have your riverfront represented. Throgmorton/ Yea, of course. Markus/ So ... so all those conversations are taking place, and I think the other thing you have to understand, they are kind of in a life... changing time ... in the ownership themselves. I think they are kind of questioning where they fit in, you know, so ... when ... when they sold to Republic it didn't really surprise me. So I think there are still a lot of discussions that need to take place, to get how this is all going to end up. Throgmorton/ Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought that the ... City Carton's site was in the flood plain part that is intended to become part of the park. Markus/ Yea, the area when you extend, is it Capitol Street south? And then it goes over to... Throgmorton/ Kirkwood. Markus/ Kirkwood, pretty much everything between, including, well between the road and the river is flood plain, but the other stuff there is some height there that gets them out of the flood plain and is actually develop -able as I understand it. Throgmorton/ Okay, second question... Markus/ We know way more about it than we want to. Throgmorton/ Good, let's not talk anymore about it then right now. Um ... second question has to do with um ... stormwater regulations pertaining to new subdivisions. Um ... my This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 109 gut sense from talking to a whole variety of people is our stormwater regulations really need updating. That they are, there is a lot more that can be done with regard to ... for example, using ... what are they called... rain gardens more effectively, instead of just having all that water going into a pond somewhere, you know, you know I just don't need to say any more so, what do you know, what's your sense about... Knoche/ You know our stormwater management ordinance that we have in place is, is pretty restrictive. I mean, if you look at it just based on what ... what most communities, the way they deal with stormwater management, they would refer back to pre -development and go to 100 year event, we limit the outlet of those, of those detention basins just based on a per acre area. 1.5 CFS per acre which is actually less than the 5 year event. Um ... you know we have looked at urn ... th idea of the best management practices and um ... looking at impervious pavement and um ... rain gardens and some of those other things, and the concern that we have with that is if ... initially if you don't build your detention facility large enough to deal with your stormwater management, based on somebody in a rain garden or impervious pavement, and down the road that item goes away based on lack of maintenance or just redevelopment, it kind of puts you in a bind, on how you deal with stormwater management in the future. And so, we've tended not to, give credit to folks for those types of facilities to be put in. It's just ... it's kind of the conservative nature of ... at least of engineering, of public works. And kind of conservative of our community a little bit. Throgmorton/ Yea, yea. I don't feel confident enough to say more any about it I just hear from a whole variety of friends that a lot more can be done. Knoche/ Sure. Throgmorton/ People I respect you know. Knoche/ You've ... and one of the things, right now the way that our stormwater management is set up, it's really based on a quantity based, not a quality based. And, we are seeing a shift to go to the quality side of things, so I think as we move forward we will probably see some shift in that part of it, so we'll be dealing more with stormwater quality beginning with the first 24 hour storm and you know, trying to get rid of the oil, the oil that's on the roads and those such of things and deal with that in a better manner than what we do currently. City Manager: Throgmorton/ Okay, thanks. Markus/ We have one final budget and that's management and Simon I think is going to walk through that for us. Hayek/ Yea, okay. Knoche/ Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 110 Hayek/ Ron, thank you very much, and welcome to the position. (many)/ Thank you. Throgmorton/ You've done good. Karr/ City Manager is 117. (many talking at once) Andrew/ We are going to start on 107. Karr/ Okay, we are going to start on 107. Andrew/ We'll start on 107 with the Council budget I will tread lightly (laughter). These should all go pretty quickly, they are all very personnel heavy, not a lot of services or supplies. On 107 is the City Council budget, it is a small increase over the previous budget in the um ... in the membership and dues category. Um ... city dues for the Iowa League of Cities and the National League of Cities have gone up slightly compared to the previous years. Urn ... one other item of note in this budget is the welcome letters to University students, still budgeted at $4,000 it's been pretty well received and we recommend leaving it at the same level as in previous years. Markus/ How are we doing with the International Students? Andrew/ Um ... we sent those out by email this year, that was the way the University preferred to do that, obviously here is a lot lower cost with sending them via email, but that is something we work with their registrar on as well. So that's all I have for the Council budget, did you all have any questions on that? I did recommend across the board raises but was told we didn't have the funds for it, so ... (laughter) property tax reform. But... Throgmorton/ Quintuple the raises or ... salaries. Andrew/ Yea, that's what I recommended. (laughter) I'm still low on the totem pole so ... No questions on that one, then next one I'm going to jump to is on page 117 is the City Manager's budget. It's a less than 1 % increase compared with the prior year's original budget. A notable changes from the previous year is a decrease in $26,000 in temporary staff, um ... that was for the management intern from last year, the intern last year was a master's of public administration graduate and was a full-time employee and was what we felt at that time justified the hire expense, but this year's interns are working for free. Which is good for us, and they've done a fantastic job. Um ... couple of other notable items from the City Manager's budget is a $5000 increase in city sponsored event, we like to have this available, for instance, this line items was used for the wrestling championships a couple years ago that we put on events to try and welcome those University events so ... we have an increase in $5000 recommended in that budget line item. The lobbyist contract is also in the City Manager's budget, that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 111 is $30,000 a year, same contract as in the previous three years and an attorney service for collective bargaining agreements. Again ... flat from previous years. And certainly entertain any questions on the City Manager's budget. Throgmorton/ I do have a question but it may reveal that I was not paying close enough attention earlier. I'm wondering about the website update, and where that stands right now. Andrew/ Sure, that will be in the communications budget which Geoff will get to here in just a second. Throgmorton/ Okay, in there, thank you. Never mind. Andrew/ Yep Throgmorton/ Sorry, okay, never mind. Hayek/ Thank you Simon. Andrew/ One more, page 126, Human Resources, and then Geoff will take the other three divisions from administration. Again, status quo budget from previous years, services has dropped 17% prior, um ... compared to previous years, because of police and fire promotional testing that isn't an annual expense, its sporadic base on hiring needs. Um ... so that was one decrease, and then another item of note in their budget is a position advertising for vacant positions, but by and large it's again personnel heavy budget. Okay. Thank you. Fruin/ Alright so I'm going to take us through Communications, Cable, and we will wrap up with Human Rights. The, this budget is the first budget to reflect. Throgmorton/ Page Geoff? Fruin/ Oh I'm sorry we are starting on 121. That's Communications. It's the first budget to reflect the merging of Communications and Cable TV that we undertook this past year, um ... and as such it reflects the cable formerly enterprise fund, into the general fund. Jim, as you inquired about just a few seconds ago, the major initiative with Communications office right now is to wrap up the website redesign. If you recall, we did a, we executed a 28E agreement with the University to complete a website redesign which was a first for the University, they had never provided this type of external service and it's been a real phenomenal partnership for us. Um..and... and we are really excited to get that going, the timing is probably that we are looking at last spring, early summer for a launch. Um ... the ... the University portion should be wrapped up sometime this spring and then we're responsible for transferring the content over, rewriting the content essentially so there is a little bit of a mystery on how long that will take, but we feel real good about it. And ... and it's not just a simple website redesign for us, our current website, it certainly challenge for anyone who wants to access it, but it really hamstrings the Communications team. It's a homegrown website that was written by a former employee of ours and we can't utilize video, we are This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 112 limited on subscription services that we can do, so there are a lot of communication strategies that we are geared up and ready to go with, but our website won't support them. So we are really looking for this transition to launch us into a new era of communication with the public. Mims/ Geoff, I was just comment ... you made the comment about what a good partnership this has been with the University. Earlier in the fall I happened to be at a function with the individual from the University who oversees all of this from their end and she had nothing but the highest of compliments for city staff that she and her staff are working with on this project, so... Fruin/ That's good to hear. Mims/ Yea, I had forgotten to pass that along so ... wanted to do it while I thought of it. Fruin/ Yea, Shannon and Kelli from our Communications office have really been heading that up, they are doing a nice job. Um..the bulk of the expense in the Communication division here lies with the three staff folks that we have, there are some service expenses that you'll see in the budget, those are really website support of hosting fees, maintenance fees, that sort of things. It is a also where we keep funds for translating documents and we've been a lot more of ... of translation of pamphlets and different documents, so this is where those funds are parked going forward. That is a very expensive endeavor, particularly contracting out the translations itself, but we've got a pretty good system in place and what we do now is just try to prioritize those city documents and which ones should be translated and which ones are okay remaining in one language. Any questions on Communications? As we shift to Cable, it's reported on as a separate division within Communications, primarily because they have their unique revenue source. As Tom mentioned earlier, Mediacom has shifted from a local franchise to a state franchise and that's... that's considerably impacted our operations. If you look at the, on page 125, I'm sorry, here ... oh we've got it split between two areas now, so 125 just shows the 2016 budget, if you were to look later in the document, there is the cable reported on as an enterprise for those previous years, but we've lost about $100,000 over four or five years in cable franchise revenue so we've had to adapt to that. We have eliminated one position and then in this budget we are anticipating, or we are showing the elimination of a second. We have a known retirement that will be coming up in a couple of months and we'll take that opportunity to shrink the staff down one more. Urn ... in 2018 there will be another hit, and that will another $100,000 to $120,000 hit for our operation, and we'll also um ... the community will feel the brunt of the hit to PATV and that's when the roughly $230,000 that we transfer to PAN every year will be stopped. It's not being phased out, it's just going to be cutoff. So ... I've seen some materials from PAN where they are starting to ramp up and looking at fundraising which I think is very wise on their part because really their primary revenue source is ... has an expiration date on it that is coming up quick. Um ... I don't think there is really anything significant to point out in the cable budget, I can tell you our plan in adapting to the new revenue will be to continue to look at staff reduction when ... when opportunities arise and I think you'll have to ... you'll see us necessarily start to pull in those operations a little This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 113 bit. Unfortunately we probably not going to be able to do the amount of community programming that we do now. We see them out at festivals and special events, or ... taping for nonprofits and that sort of thing, that's probably the area where we are going to have cut back on. We are really going to have to focus on the government aspects making sure the meetings are taped and broadcast and that sort of thing. So ... It's not going to happen right away, but it's on the horizon. Do you want to switch to Human Rights. Hayek/ Sure Fruin/ Human Rights starts on page 130, we have two staff members including our equity director Stephanie Bowers. And um ... that drives the bulk of the expense as you would imagine. We have increased the services line considerably over the last couple of years and that is really in response to the Ad Hoc Diversity Committee and some of their recommendations. So included in those services lines, is a $60,000 figure for agency partnerships we've used these funds in the last couple of years, to partner with diversity focus and if you recall a couple of years ago when, um ... the fast track funding issue came up, we were able to use these funds to help extend that service in the emergent times. So that gives us some flexibility to move quickly, they're not necessarily designated for 2016 and who exactly we'll partner with, but as opportunities arise, we have that flexibility to form those partnerships. We have, increased their budget for special events and for outreach and advertising so they can reach out to um ... populations throughout the community in different ways, they can ... um ... work on the Latino newspapers or the Sudanese Newsletters that get circulated and make sure City information getting distributed in those venues as well. And then Human Rights has very special events they do, there are funds in there to support those special events and sponsorship of other events that may not be City run, but certainly help meet our strategic plan goals, we have sponsorship monies in this budget for those too. Questions? Hayek/ Okay ... any questions for Geoff? Back on the letter we send to students, do we ... can we give any thought... or has the University given any indication about sending part of that message in Mandarin or whatever to the international students. I mean we've got a critical mass... Andrew/ And that's why they refer to do the international letters via email, is that correct, had to do with the translation I think. Hayek/ Did they translate? Andrew/ Yep, they did the translations for us, is that correct? Fruin/ No, actually they don't translate, they don't translate any admissions materials to international students. And that was originally our hope, that they could have them translated. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015. January 10, 2015 Iowa City Council Budget Work Session Page 114 Hayek/ It's a political move to avoid scrutiny from Regent's types who ... that's how I interpret it. Fruin/ Yea... Mims/ They do expect them to be fluent in English if they are going to go to school here. Fruin/ That's what we were told. Hayek/ Anyway, it was just food for thought. So... Markus/ But it's my understanding that Ames may be doing something differently in that regard so we are trying find that out. I serve on an international committee which is really designed through ICAD to work with the student community from foreign countries and we pick up different information. And Kate Moreland by the way, is our kind of our staff liaison for (can't hear) and we are trying to open up that whole conversation. Throgmorton/ I'm looking at the most recent report from International Programs about how many students come from various countries and from China, this year, there are 2558 student out of a total, I don't know, what's the total? Hayek/ 3500 maybe, 4000? Throgmorton/ Yea, and... (too much rustling and noise) Hayek/ Okay. We are done for today, we come back ... the economic development council meets at noon on Monday, and then at 1:00 we hold our CIP. Markus/ Yea, but before you go I just wanted to point out you have Deb Mansfield sitting here, and you have Nick Schaul and who's not sitting here today is Cyndi Ambrose, and those are kind of three of the people behind the scenes that help put this whole document together. You know Geoff is actively involved and Dennis is involved and Simon is really involved in this budget process, but these folks spend a lot of time doing that and you should know that they do that and acknowledge how much they provide in this process. (applause) Hayek/ Excellent document. Thank you so much everyone. (Adjourn 3:05 p.m.) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Budget Work Session of January 10, 2015.