HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-08-15 TranscriptionPage 1
Council Present:
Council Absent:
Staff Present:
Others Present:
Cole, Mims, Taylor, Thomas, Throgmorton
Botchway, Dickens
Fruin, Monroe, Dilkes, Fruehling, Matherly, Havel, Boothroy, Schwindt,
Ford, Bockenstedt, Knoche, Howard, Yapp, Porter
Nelson, Stewart (UISG)
Presentation on Data Driven Justice Initiative:
Throgmorton/ (mumbled) First topic is a presentation on Data Driven Justice Initiative. Dave,
nice to see you! Jody's gonna trample all over ya there! (laughter)
Matherly/ I just wanted to kick it off, uh, first of all, Benjamin, you musta bit a phone booth
cause you were in flip-flops and shorts an hour ago when I was in a meeting with you.
(laughter) Changed out quickly! Uh, folks, I wanted to introduce, uh, Officer David
Schwindt to you. Many of you already know, uh, Officer Schwindt, but he's been with
us 16 years and this Data Driven Justice Initiative is a really good example of public and
private partnerships and .... and some of the headway we can make in .... in problem -
solving, uh, what can be seem, uh, like a long-term and very .... vague problem, uh, and
really hone in on .... on having solutions so that, uh, Officer Schwindt's been a small piece
of that but a very critical piece of that, and I can tell ya that he's, um, he'll never admit to
this, but he's pretty much taken the lead on it and .... and has been (laughs) really good
at...at being part of the solution to this. So with that, I won't steal his thunder, uh, he'll
do the piece on this, but uh, just know we're in good hands with this, so with Officer
Schwindt taking the lead on our end (mumbled)
Throgmorton/ Good deal! Thank you, Jody.
Schwindt/ I don't know that I even want to say anything now! (several laughing and talking)
Throgmorton/ Yeah, really!
Schwindt/ (mumbled) put together is just a basic slide, some slide information here to give ya
kind of a real broad overview of Data Driven Justice, what it is, how we got involved,
and kind of what we're lookin' to do with it. There's three of us here locally in Johnson
County that are working on the Data Driven Justice Initiative. Uh, Jessica Peckover from
the Johnson County Sheriff's Office, Crissy Canganelli from Shelter House, and me, and
in a little bit I'll kind of explain how the three of us got involved. Kind of started back
with, uh, part of a low -barrier shelter, that winter shelter we've done for the last three
years. One of the projects I worked on was tracking the number of people that came in,
unique individuals, and how our calls for service at the Iowa City Police Department
changed as that shelter was going in place, and one of the things we saw was over those
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three years, a 60 to 70% decrease in the vagrancy type calls during those shelter hours,
cause we no longer had people seeking shelter in apartment buildings, in parking garages,
in, uh, City stairwells or other places where they draw negative attention, people call the
Police Department and ask to have `em removed. So we saw a significant decrease in
those calls for service. And so, uh, after the third year ... or the second year, started
lookin' at that more and sayin' what other data do we have on positive effects we've seen
from that, and I started to look at the public intox information to see .... a lot of these guys
are getting arrested for public intox, uh, when they're not cooperative, when they're
passed out, etc. And ... so the kind of question was how is that low -barrier shelter
affecting those numbers as well, and when I started looking into the data, I was kind of
looking at it in different ways, and one of the things I did was graph the age of the
person, uh, at the time of arrest over that, uh, two and a half year period I was .... I was,
uh, looking at, and one thing I noticed is that that bottom line, kind of looks like a dark
orange up here, that's only a partial year, so that's why it's a much lower line than the
others, but the trend was pretty much the same across those three years, and the other
thing I noticed was that high number of arrests in that 20 to 29 age range, and as I looked
into that further, I broke it down by year, and so this is the number of arrests for each age
group at the time of arrest, and so by looking at that, we had 27% of our intox arrests
were people who were not even legally old enough to drink at the time of their arrest.
Expand that out to our college-age range, that 18 to 24 demographic, and that's 54.3%, so
more than half of our intox arrests are that collage -age group, and this kinda falls into
data driven justice because what's important is when we get .... bring this data together,
you kind of....I was given this advice a long time ago, let the data tell the story. You can
go in looking for one thing but be open to other things. I went into this data set looking
to see how the winter shelter impacted our public intox arrests of a group that is
traditionally 50 to 59 years old, and really that was a very small segment of our public
intox arrests. Kind of the real story here seemed to be how many of our college-age, uh,
residents are being arrested for this. Around the same time we had started looking at, uh,
ways to address a number of homeless issues. The Council at the time, uh, passed some
ordinances to help control some issues in the downtown. Local advocates put together,
uh, the Local Homeless Coordinating Board and started looking at what are some other
more positive steps we can take to address these problems and one was a Housing First
option, and we needed to look at how can we gather up some real data to support the
need for that Housing First option, and I'll kind of gloss over this cause I think you guys
have seen this plenty of times, but the idea is identify those people constantly rotating in
and out of emergency rooms, jail, ambulance services, police, but they're seeing no long-
term positive effects from dealing with all those services, and how can we focus services
on them for a .... for an actual positive impact on them. And so we studied four, uh,
people here in Iowa City. The study went just over four years of time that we looked at.
We got releases from them to get medical information and such, and those four
individuals used $2.16 million in our local services over just over a four-year period, and
at the end of that four years, they were all still living right here, and this is a photo of
the.....under the Gilbert Street bridge. So after four years and $2.16 million they were
still homeless, they still had substance abuse issues, so those individuals and our area
basically got nothing for all of that time. As a side note, two of the individuals we
studied have since died while still homeless and as part of their substance abuse issues,
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uh, since we completed this study. So Data Driven Justice somehow learned about this
Johnson County information and data from our presentation in news articles, and Crissy
Canganelli got a invitation to, uh, have our local group come out to this White House
Data Driven Justice Initiative last year. The two women you see on the right are Kelly
Jinn and Lynn Overmann. They were Senior Advisors in the Obama White House and
Data Driven Justice is their baby. They started it there and of course they started it just a
year before the end, and uh, when Obama transferred out, the question was where is this
gonna go, how are we gonna keep Data Driven Justice moving? So the point of this slide
is to show that the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, uh, were very interested in Data
Driven Justice. They took Kelly and Lynn on and they're now providing the funding to
keep Data Driven Justice going. So Kelly and Lynn are both still in charge of it and it
was kind of seamless for all us jurisdictions working on Data Driven Justice. Just new
email addresses for them and we're working with the same people. They have partnered
with Matthew here who has Open Lattice, and Open Lattice is kind of the official online
platform for Data Driven Justice. So when we talk about integrating data, it's basically
taking data out of our local systems, putting it into a cloud service that provides us the
security and tools we need to merge and analyze data, and I'll go over that in a minute.
But this is an online platform being developed specifically for DDJ, paid for by the
Arnold Foundation, and provided to jurisdictions free of. ... free of charge. So we've been
using this for a number of months now and it costs us nothing. It's just....it's completely
free to jurisdictions. When you go into the web site you have these different data sets.
Now for us, we'll have police call for service data. Um, tomorrow we're actually
starting, uh, implement an on-site integration with the Joint Emergency Communication
Center, where every 15 minutes calls for service from Johnson County will automatically
be uploaded into the Open Lattice, so we'll have almost live data for analysis up in the
Open Lattice platform. Uh, we also have Johnson County Jail data in there right now,
more than 10 years of jail data, and we're working on .... working with a number of other
providers, uh.... uh, HMIS for the Shelter information, University of Iowa Hospitals to try
and get emergency room. I've been meeting recently with the Iowa Health Information
Network, which is the Health Information Exchange for Iowa, and I just met with one of
their people today about going in at that level and possibly getting just State level Health
Information Exchange into Open Lattice so that rather than us and every other
jurisdiction in Iowa having to negotiate individually with each hospital, we would be
pulling data from the Health Information Exchange, as a member, and there would no
longer be that need to go around and, uh, negotiate the compliance issues and that with
each hospital individually. One of the neat things about, uh, the Open Lattice platform
is .... is kind of the time savings. So we had literally hundreds of hours into the study to
find that $2.16 million, cause I did police information, and then it went over and
somebody had to do jail information, and University of I .... Iowa Hospitals had to study
those individuals, and all these people had to get their data, put it together, um, and then
kind of figure it out. So there were a lot of Excel spreadsheets gettin' e .... emailed around
and a lot of, uh, a lot of manual calculations going on. Now in here when you look at a
data set, you can just go in here and click on that, uh, up there they call it `find top
utilizers' and within a few seconds it pulls up that information that it took us hundreds of
hours to get. Uh, they're leveraging the cloud computing platform to do all of that work
behind the scenes. So once that data is integrated, if you wanted to study, urn ... how
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our .... how do, uh, people's interactions with police go down when they get into Shelter
House. Um, we can take Shelter data, we can take police calls for service data, merge
`em together, and then all of a sudden we have all of the information we need. Another
tool they have is to de -identify data sets. So if we take protected data, let's say
emergency room data, um, mental health treatment data, and police call for service data,
we can go into the platform here, merge all those data sets together, and export out the
identified information that can be supplied with third parties, for example the University
or another academic institution for analysis. That's kinda what I got then. (laugher) Any
questions you might have?
Throgmorton/ Well you went through it pretty quickly. (laughter)
Schwindt/ I was told to keep it quick! (laughter)
Throgmorton/ Yeah! Well thanks for doin' that, uh.... (laughter) What's next?
Schwindt/ Next is kind of continuing to work. This Health Information Exchange is a big one.
Um, we here in Johnson County, we were the first ones to get data into the official online,
into that official Open Lattice platform, um, we are further along, so it's continuing to
push ahead and keep kind of at the forefront of this. There is not a single public hospital
that is a participant in Data Driven Justice now, simply because, um, there's this
hesitation to be the first, and this is where the Iowa Health Information Network is gonna
hopefully be very important, because at that level, they're very excited about this and
they're willing to handle and deal with the legal and compliance issues at their end. So at
that point it becomes we no longer negotiate with all these compliance officers. We just
go right to, uh, Information Exchange and they handle all that for the hospital. So next
is .... is focusing on that. Um, and then kind of working our way down those service
providers. We have meetings coming up with HMIS to get Shelter information, um, we
have an agreement with Johnson County Department of Public Health to get ambulance
data in, and it's just a .... the time-consuming process of doing the meetings to convince
people of the need and satisfy the compliance issues. I think it's kind of one of those...
as the first domino falls, uh, it'll be much easier. The police call for service and jail data
was fairly simple. Uh, it was just the technology hurdles, only because we're only
putting, uh, publicly available information in anyway. Uh, and you see just information
was scrubbed was before it was, uh, sent up into the cloud. So once we get that first
hospital or that first belt ... health information exchange, it makes the next state or the next
jurisdiction that much better. So it's just kind of continue to whittle away at those... at
those concerns and compliance issues, and convince people it's secure and safe to do.
Throgmorton/ Who's analyzing the data, and what kind of analysis are they using?
Schwindt/ Right now no one is analyzing the data. We haven't taken that step. Um, I recently
communicated with, uh, Dr. Brook who came in and did some ... a presentation with the,
on the, to the Police Department, police officers, um, about getting the College of Public
Health involved and what their interest may be in looking at this data and studying it for
whatever specific purpose or to just get in and look at the data and see what they can
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learn from it, um .... other than that we're just kind of looking at what are the possibilities.
Right now we're still at that step of let's get the data in there and find out ... kind of cover
those hurdles and then from there, um .... you know, if you take an agency and put their
data in and we'll just, uh, use for example Shelter House. Um, that's Shelter Houses'
data even once it's in here. So I can't go in and do anything with Shelter Houses' data
without their permission. I have to explicitly request permission, so any agency that puts
their data in there still has full control over who has access to it and what the .... how
they're analyzing it with and so data sharing agreements will need to be put in place for
that, um, but that can't happen really until the data gets up there to be used.
Mims/ I think one of the -and I think as all you recall I'm sitting on the Steering Committee for
the Access Center. I think one of the most important things is we are talking with other
organizations and I think as, um, people are looking at potential grants, one of the things
they're asking for is well how are you .... how are you going to measure the effect of the
Access Center. So why should we give you money? Well, you can't measure the success
unless we have some baseline data. So what this is going to allow us to do is at least start
getting that data in there so we can start getting some baseline data, and as Officer
Schwindt said, I mean, hundreds of hours, virtually all of them his, on his own time
(laughs) as I understand, or a lot of it, generated that first set of data that tho.... showed
those four individuals who used basically $2.1 million worth of services over those four
years. By getting all of these organizations to agree to put data in here, um, and .... I've
sat in a meeting with Matthew and his computer didn't work as well as he wanted that
day (laughs) but literally within 30 seconds or even five minutes they can go through just
reams and reams and reams of data and kind of give you whatever information you want.
So it'll be easy, or certainly eas... much, much easier to get that baseline data, and then
assuming that the jurisdictions do come together and fund and open some sort of an
Access Center, um, with lots of different purposes, it will allow us then to actually
continue to analyze that data and actually show, hopefully, the improvement and the
effect of having that kind of a resource available. You know, the decrease in calls for
intox, um, you know, one of the goals obviously is people who are chronically homeless
who end up here, trying to gradually get them connected with social workers or case
workers who might get them, uh, services that they are.... currently resistant to. All, you
know, all different kinds of things. Um, the idea of the Iowa Health Network, getting
them on board, uh, as Officer Schwindt is saying is huge because as I've sat in these
meetings, that's one of the things that people have talked about is all of these medical
people, whether it's at the Hospital or any other kind of health service, they are
incredibly, incredibly concerned about confidentiality and their legal liability of where
their data goes, and so if we can kind of get it from the top down that says, hey, we're
gonna .... we're gonna take on that responsibility and we're gonna okay it, um, that might
open the flood gates for some data. So that would be very positive.
Cole/ Officer, I'm glad that Susan brought up that issue of the $2.4 million for four individual
over the course of four years. Um, that ... data is .... is consistent with what we find
nationally. It's my understanding that the .... that the homeless population that's
chronically homeless does consume that amount of resources. I .... I keep on thinking of
the article "Million Dollar Murray," um, by Malcolm Gladwell. Um, it's available on the
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New Yorker for free. You can just Google it and find it and basically articulates that
there's a very ... there's a convergence, I think, on this issue that we can save money by
investing a .... a small amount of those funds to reduce the .... the services that.... that they
ultimately will .... we'll have to pay for, and what I'm wondering is is..is it too early for us
to project once we go where we want to go in terms of the Access Center and other public
policy issues like Housing First, what sort of reduction we hope to achieve in terms of
that public expenditure on the chronically homeless population in the emergency room,
jails, legal expenses, those sorts of things. Do we have a sense of what we can actually
save?
Schwindt/ I don't know if anybody's taken... numbers from other areas that have implemented
that (mumbled) measure that against our population and our service costs here. Um, I
know, for example, the Housing First, uh, first year they were looking at 60% to 70%
reduction in system usage in the first year of housing, and urn .... uh, but as far as a larger
Access Center, I don't know that anybody's done that analysis.
Cole/ It's too early. Okay.
Mims/ One of the challenges, Rockne, that we've talked about at the Steering Committee is...
you can't necessarily equate .... the reduced cost of an individual who say, you know, no
longer ends up in jail for five nights or 10 nights a year, or no longer visits the emergency
room 20 times. You can't equate the cost of those services if you .... if they no longer
need them .... to actual savings. Because some of those costs, uh, have to do with police
officers' time. You're not necessarily going to reduce our police staffing simply because
of that. You're not necessarily going to simply reduce the staffing in the jail, because of
that. You're not necessarily going to automatically reduce staffing in an emergency
room. So it's..... it's hard because it's not a one-to-one savings. If you pull those four
individuals out of the system, you don't necessarily save that full $2 million. So it's...
it's complicated to calculate and I don't think anybody has a perfect way of calculating it
yet.
Schwindt/ I think more what you'll see is, you know, you'll see fewer people with those negative
interactions on the street of being intoxicated and passed out somewhere, or just trying to
seek shelter in the winter and generating calls for service. Maybe going to jail because
they were aggravated cause they were cold and tired when the police interacted with them
and, you know, got into a physical encounter. Um, you'll see those people not being in
the waiting rooms. It's going to be people not tying up beds in an emergency room, and
maybe allowing other people to get quicker treatment (coughing, unable to hear speaker)
emergency room because they've been diverted someplace else to prevent those issues,
um, so I think you'll see more of those types of issues than the actual dollar.... dollar
savings.
Throgmorton/ So, Dave, thanks for the review. Uh, you're doin' great work, urn .... you, Jessica,
and Crissy are doing great work. Keep it up, full speed ahead! Uh, we look forward to
hearing more, uh, but I mean I'm gonna have to cut you off a little bit cause, you know,
we've gotta be respectful for other people who have to make presentations and stuff like
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that. Thank you so much! (several talking) All right, we can turn to our next topic, uh,
it's a presentation on the form based code final report. John.
Presentation on Form Based Code final report 1IP #3 of the 8/10 Info Packet]:
Yapp/ Good evening. Uh, Dan Parolek and his firm Opticos, uh, have been working in Iowa
City for the past eight months, conducting an analysis of the Northside and the South
District. Uh, Opticos are leading experts in zoning and form based code techniques. Uh,
the full, uh, report is in your Information Packet this week. Tonight Dan will present a
summary, uh, of the findings and take questions. With that I'd like to introduce Dan
Parolek.
Throgmorton/ Thanks! Good evening, Dan. I'm.....I'm gonna step out for just a second to get
something, but go ahead and start talking.
Parolek/ Good evening, Mayor, and good evening, Council. Urn .... (mumbled) ... well so as we
work through this, uh, process, as John mentioned we've been workin' for about eight
months now and that eight months always goes by very quickly. Um, it became very
evident, um, that, uh, this process that we're making recommendations for in terms of
assessing form based code application and enabling missing middle was a lot about
sharpening, uh, the points of a pencil or a series of pencils, because there's been a
tremendous amount of really good planning work, really good policy work, really good
coding work that's happened over the course of the last 10 plus years that the more we
dove into it and worked with staff the more we realized that, um, there's a lot of good
content here that really just needs to be taken across the finish line, and that point's
sharpened. So that was .... that's always really good to find out and to .... to really see the
quality work that was done. Um, just a quick overview of my presentation. It's pretty
straightforward. Just a really short introduction, uh, to the two different planning areas —
the Northside and the South District. Uh, then jumping, uh, really directly into what our
recommendations are for the Northside, uh, overview of that and overview of the
recommendations for the South District, and then just a .... some initial thoughts on next
steps so that you guys can start thinking about that, as well, and urn ... just a quick
overview of the process, uh, of eight months, as John mentioned, um, we were, uh, out
here for our first trip in February, uh, as a core part of the process that we call
`understanding.' It's really where we as, uh, consultants really dive in head -first. I get to
understand sort of the background, the history, the context, the .... the issues, the politics
of the place, and get up to speed really quickly and a .... a big part of that was the
stakeholder interviews we did over the course of a couple days. Uh, the second phase,
uh, through the course of, uh, April, May, June and July was our `exploring,' um, and
that entailed a trip in May, uh, a trip where our Project Manager John Miki came out in
July in this trip here and this presentation, and the final phase is just, uh, consolidating
these recommendations into, uh, the document that we have drafted to date and making a
final set of recommendations based on some input on our original recommendations. So
just introduction, right? I think most of you are pretty aware of the boundaries, but to
give you a sense of the Northside project area, it starts just north of Brown Street. Uh,
the southern edge is Jefferson, uh, the western edge is Clinton, and the eastern edge is,
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uh, Governor Street. So it's a pretty large area. Obviously a really fantastic, compact, a
pre -1940s, walkable neighborhood. Um, and we .... it was a real pleasure sort of learning,
continuing to learn, about this neighborhood and how it functions. Uh, then jumping to
the South District, and obviously a very different, uh, type of project area, but it's ... it's
really a .... an interesting and a fun challenge to look at these two different types of places,
but a fairly large area, bounded on the western side, um, by .... urn ..... sorry, I just totally
drew a blank! I must be really tired. Urn .... the name of the street on the.... Ogilvie!
Throgmorton/ On the western (both talking)
Parolek/ ....western edge.
Throgmorton/ Yeah, Sand Road (both talking)
Parolek/ Sand Road! Sorry, I must be really tired from a series of meetings today. Sort of, uh,
working its way down on the southern edge by lower Sycamore, and then down to the,
um, the soccer fields, uh, on the southern edge, and then on the far eastern side it actually
goes to the, um, greenway, just a little beyond the greenway, and on the upper edge,
um... uh, goes just up to the, um.....oh gesh! Governor's Park, the little park that's up in
that corner (both talking)
Throgmorton/ Wetherby!
Parolek/ Wetherby Park, sorry, I'm .... I apologize. I'm a little bit .... must be a little bit tired here.
Um, so two really interesting project areas, two very different, uh, sort of both phys...
physically, um, the challenges and the opportunities in those areas. So obviously needing
to think about form based code application in both of these areas and what similar
features, similar approaches and unique approaches and unique features to the process
would, um, each of these project areas, urn .... uh, would we recommend for these areas,
and so, um, just a quick overview in terms of what the goals are for the Northside. Um, I
think once again this was, there's been years and years of...of planning and coding that
has happened and really done a.....a really good job to date in preserving and maintaining
the quality of this neighborhood. Um, and part of this is about, you know, continuing to
improve housing options, uh, throughout the area, sort of maintaining a level of stability,
uh, maybe even thinking about increasing homeownership if there's some strategies to do
that in this area. Um, preserving the historic character, right? It's got a really unique,
charming, um, sort of late -1800s, early -1900s character that, uh, a .... a strong effort has
been made to protect that, really high quality, and sort of just continuing those efforts,
um, and then obviously as every great place has, uh, parking concerns and parking issues
and just making sure as a pre ... as this process moves forward, that we're hearing and
understanding the issues, um, addressing those issues both in the planning and the new
form based code pieces that get adopted for this and applied to this area. Um, basically,
uh, what became really apparent is that the Northside Marketplace is the one area at the
southern edge of the .... the Northside project, uh, planning area that has some of the
largest opportunities and, you know, potentially some of the, uh, biggest concerns
because of some of those opportunities and sort of gaps to fill, um, and so, uh, basically
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thinking about the future of filling in some of those gaps in the Northside Marketplace
as .... as a strategy for the future. Um, just simply thinking very big picture about how can
we improve walkability. Right? There's a high level of walkability, really high walk
score, but how can we as .... as we do some planning and code writing think about what
sorts of improvements can we do to make it even better, um, over the course of the next,
uh, the short and the mid-term, and then, um, the last one is just simply thinking about
predictability, and how can we put a .... a process and a set of, uh, new regulations in
place that actually lead to predictability, and we like to say predictability both for, uh,
developers who want to come in and do the right thing and... and meet the, sort of the
objectives of the planning and the code, as well as predictability for, uh, community
members who are really concerned about, uh, their ... their community and their
neighborhood. So that's a really important part. Um, so, uh, the .... the Northside area
is ... is composed of three historic districts and, urn ... uh, what .... what's really interesting
about that is as we dove deeper into that and sort of did some mapping in terms of
contributing structures, urn .... uh, the key contributing structures, non-contributing, you
know, it became really evident that in these three historic districts that, you know, 90 -
plus percent of the lots in these historic districts are either, uh, contributing or these, uh,
key contributing feature. So, uh, number one, what that says is we need to make an effort
in here to protect, continue to protect those, uh, really important historic resources, but
the other thing we need to be thinking about is, um, you know, what can we do to, um,
sort of think about those non-contributing lots, what are the futures of those, even though
there's only a few of them, to make sure that as, uh, sort of reinvestment happens in
those, that it is reinforcing the quality and character of, uh, this .... this Northside
neighborhood. So I just wanted to....to zoom in on these a little bit, to show you, um,
this is just the northern edge, sort of near surrounding Brown Street, to show you, you
know, it's only the sites that are in gray and the hatched ones that are not, uh,
contributing or key contributing, so, right, there's very few of those, especially in that
northern side. As you move your way down, and look at sort of just south of Church
Street, there's just a few more of those site lots that aren't, um, contributing or key
contributing, but still, you know, 80 -plus percent that, you know, the .... the goal is simply
maintain and preserve, uh, the quality of those areas, and then as we move down to the
southern area, this .... this Northside Marketplace not in a historic district, um, this map's
a little bit deceiving cause there's still, uh, historic.... there's still landmarks and
contributing buildings in there, but it's not in a historic district. It just needs to be very
carefully thought about. Lot of. ... lot more gaps and opportunities in that area. Part of
that sort of is the balance of the charm of the area, sort of the neighborhood scale of it,
feels more like a neighborhood sort of Main Street than a downtown. So thinking about
that scale and how the ... the ultimate plan and coding can reinforce that, um, intent of the
Northside Market Place. So, the first recommendation, and I'm gonna go through this
pretty quickly, and feel free to ask questions as I go or you can hold your questions till
afterwards, but .... um, the first one was just simply integrating the intent of the Central
District Plan into new form based code, or form based zones. And what became really
apparent is the planning work that was fairly recently done on the Central District Plan is
a really great foundation. It just was never fully implemented from a regulatory
standpoint, so it's like taking that next step of that really good intent and instead of
making a developer, the staff that's trying to administer, uh, a project go both into zoning
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and into the Central District Plan and trying to understand the intent was just collapse all
that really good intent into a new set of regulations or form based zoning districts. So
that's our first recommendation. Uh, the second recommendation is once again just
thinking about the intent of the historic districts and the .... all the standards, um, to .... that
reinforce the historic district, and once again it's taking, um, as much of that really good
content and those regulations as is possible and compressing that down into one unified
system because the .... the fewer layers you have, the more easy that system and that form -
based code will be to understand and the more easy it will be to administer and the more
easy it will be for developers to understand what the goals and objectives are for .... for
that area. So, examples like we've .... we've acknowledged that you could think about
larger rear setbacks, because the pattern in these neighborhoods be 150 -foot deep lots,
actually pretty substantial, typically large back yards, um .... uh, sometimes those
buildings are sort of encroaching into that large setback and they start to feel out of place,
and out of scale with those neighborhoods, so those are the sorts of fine tunes we can do.
Um, and then just thinking about, uh, overall width and depth of the buildings. Uh, what
we find with a lot of conventional zoning is that, you know, if the lot stays small, the
building will stay small, but at the point at which a lot starts getting bigger, there's no
standards to actually prevent the building from getting bigger. So we think very carefully
about, well what is the appropriate maximum width and depth of a building, and we just
directly regulate that and it's very carefully assessed. Um, through.... through (coughing,
unable to hear speaker) we go through this process. Um, the third recommendation is just
simply getting back to this idea of the missing middle housing — the duplex, the four-
plex, the cottage court, these house -scale buildings that happen to have multiple units and
how can, uh, we go through a process and write a code that can enable, uh, the missing
middle housing where it's appropriate in the Northside, uh, planning area. And so, um,
part of this is, um, thinking and just being very cognizant of, uh, where we have historic
landmark buildings and contributing buildings and acknowledging that. We're not
putting a process in place to potentially harm or jeopardize the protection of those
historic, um, attributes and those historic buildings. It's simply looking at those
opportunities that aren't contributing and even more likely putting a system in place that
could actually apply in other pre -1940s nei ... walkable neighborhoods, maybe to the east
of the planning area. You know, as we put the system in place, the Planning staff can
assess, and the Council could assess, where else within the larger, uh, Iowa City context
that we might be able ..... you all might be able to apply sort of en .... enforce and reinforce
the notion of integrating missing middle housing. Um, the other thing is that, urn .... uh,
just thinking very carefully about this form based approach, uh, to .... to zoning, and a lot
of this especially related to these types of neighborhoods and missing middle housing is
simply getting back to, um, ensuring a house scale building, right, even if it might happen
to have multiple units in it, it inevitably still sa.... stays the scale that is compatible with a
single-family home. So that's a really important part of the concept as .... as we think
about this. It's .... it's also really important part of this as we.....as you jump into phase
two, um, that you have a multi -disciplinary team on board, um, and an important part of
that is an economist that can actually as .... as planning is being done, as the form based
code is being, uh, written that you can actually test the economic viability of the
concepts, especially of these missing middle housing types, because it doesn't make any
sense to, um, sort of go through this exercise and propose, um, ideas that haven't been
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economically vetted and won't actually.... maybe.... maybe they're not viable in the short-
term, but viable in the longer tern, and the last thing I want to mention is that, you know,
with the new State occupancy legislation, um, the staff in the short -tern is going to be
putting some really quick fixes in place to address the .... the new occupancy
leg... legislation that will take place, or sort of kick in in January, but as .... as you go
into ... through the phase two of this process, um, they'll be more carefully crafted and
integrated set of regulations that, uh, will effectively address that occupancy.
That's... that's a real challenge because Iowa's the first state to actually, um, adopt this
sort of legislation, or at least the first state we've worked in, and, um, but it will be ... those
thoughts will be very carefully integrated into the coding process as it moves into phase
two. Um, as I mentioned earlier, uh, Northside Market Place, um, in a lot of ways is
the... the lowest hanging fruit, probably the best opportunity in the, um, maybe the one
that makes the most sense to focus on in the short-term, if you need to prioritize, urn ... uh,
based on, you know, recent pressures, um, project applications, new projects that have
been built there, uh, growing neighborhood concerns, but we're recommending that as
part of the form based strategy, that the City first does a more detailed vision and a plan
for the Northside Marketplace area that then the form based code can implement. And so
the first step would be a .... that visioning process and, uh, that visioning process, we're
recommending a multi -day design charrette and it sounds like most of you are probably
familiar with that process. Maybe you've done a handful of times, including I think the
Riverfront Crossings probably, but where the design .... the small (mumbled) multi-
disciplinary design team sets up a design studio. Ideally on site or in the project area.
They're here three, four, five days depending on sort of what is determined as the right
amount of time, and .... the team goes through a series of feedback loops, and so major
stakeholders are brought in, community members are brought in. They can participate in
formal ways. There's sort of a formal kick-off presentation, mid -point presentation, and
closing presentation, those are the formal ways to participate. Through the course of
those several days, the studio's open for most of the day, usually from about 9:00 to
about 5:00, um, except for the last half day where we're sort of putting our heads down
and sort of actually producing content. Um, there's typically brown bag lunches where
they're topic -specific. It might be street design. It might be form based coding. It might
be missing middle housing, where people can come in and, um, participate and sort of
learn about specific aspects of this project as .... as they are interested. Um .... the other
thing is .... this is just a continuous way to, uh, continue, uh, a really robust and ... and
broad public outreach, uh, through this process in terms of using this multi -day charrette
process, and what I like most about this process is is not just simply about getting
together and talking and writing on post -it .... big post -it notes and gathering comments.
It's actually about testing design options. So pick a site, study one-story, two-story,
three-story, five -story, six -story — what does it look like with ground floor retail, could it
just be all, uh, residential, and actually put those up and talk about them, and over the
course of those several days, you're getting sort of feedback loops and sort of `I love
that,' `I hate that,' `I kind of like that but could you try this,' and so the team's
continuously evolving those .... those ideas and concepts and testing them, uh, over the
course of those several days. Um .... some really specific recommendations, uh, sort of
making some adjustments to impervious cover requirements. I'm sure you notice as you
walk around Northside some of those beautiful, lush backyards have gotten paved over
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and are big parking lots. And part of the ... the idea is that's obviously not healthy for
a .... for a neighborhood, of thinking about ways to reduce the impact of. ... of simple
paving in the backyards, and that's gonna be tied into the larger strategy. Um, thinking
about, um, developing a series of pre -approved ancillary unit plans. So that it would ease
the .... the process of getting an ancillary unit, uh, entitled and built (coughing, unable to
hear speaker) only one ... sort of timing is only one of the obstacles. Cost of construction
sounds like is .... is another one of those, but we feel that this could be, in targeted areas,
actually be a really great tool to enable more housing choices and appropriate scaled
housing in -fill to happen in this ... uh, in this Northside planning area. Uh, improving
walkability and public safety, right, we heard a lot about, um, sort of that it's just really
dark, uh, when you're walking through the Northside area, uh, after the sun goes down.
Both unsafe from a, you know, a standpoint of muggings. I think there's a pretty large
number of muggings that happen. So those just tripping... somebody tripping over a, you
know, where a sidewalk has been, uh, sort of raised by a root, a tree root, and so, uh, you
know, I know that the City has been working on some of this, just continue to reinforce
those efforts about, uh, in... increasing walk ... the quality of the walkability, and then
transportation and parking. Right, once again, parking always a hot .... hot topic. Um,
we're actually recommending that, urn ... uh, to .... to consider allowing on -street parking
on both sides of the streets, um, in the Northside District. Um, the real benefit of doing
this, as a starting point, is that we feel that it will dramatically reduce the speed of traffic
as it goes through the neighborhoods, and increase safety. I know we ... we talked with a
lot of different community members about potential fixes to getting cars to driver slower
with little traffic circles and, you know, obstacles in the medians. The much easier thing
to do is just allow the parking to happen, on the sides, and then people will slow down
just because there's a perceived sort of squeezing and tightening of the .... of the street
design, and if. ... if you were to implement that, one of the things to keep in mind that
we're recommending is just keep a constant, uh, sort of assessment of the need for a
potential, uh.... uh, parking permit district, or a parking permit system. Um, you know,
how .... how, you know, we usually recommend like every year to year and a half that it's
assessed whether or not, uh, a parking permit system would want to be put in place to
help with turnover of cars, preventing people from parking there and going to the
University and such, um, so .... just highly recommend that as well. Arid .... and then the
last sort of, uh, transportation related recommendation is just one that we've heard many
times and we think it's actually moving forward in .... in the City already but we just want
to reinforce that. Uh, push to actually consider converting the one-way streets back to
two -ways, in terms of improving livability and walkability in the Northside, uh,
neighborhood. Um, last recommendation for Northside, um, is, uh, looking at, uh,
developing a missing middle pilot project. Um, in the last, uh, presentations we talked
about the 724 Ronald Street lot that the City owns, thinking about that site as a potential
cottage court, a four-plex, and basically showing.... basically proving, uh, in this market
that the missing middle will perform financially. I think that could be a really great way
to plant some seeds of...of some really high (mumbled) housing choices, um, in the
Northside District in particular. So South District. Um, right, some really broad,
overarching goals here as a starting point. Once again, really great work done on the
South District, um, Plan, um, just really great foundation. Uh, one of the ideas is just
reinforcing this concept of neighborhood nodes, which makes a neighborhood walkable.
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What is a node? Might be a small neighborhood Main Street, like a Linn Street, right?
One, two, three-story, uh, buildings with ground floor commercial, cafes and such. It
might simply be a park or a .... a green space, as a .... as a node. Um, it might be where
you change the building types. All of a sudden at a node you get rowhouses as opposed
to single-family detached, and that sort of defines a different character. So thinking about
this hierarchy of nodes is an important part of moving forward with implementing this
plan and reinforcing it with the form based code. Um, expanding the .... the really, uh,
fantastic open space network and trails network that already exists out there, and sort of
make that permeable, uh, through the .... through the project area would be .... would be a
really, uh, important priority, and then once again, thinking about housing options and
housing choices, um, throughout this area. Missing middle housing, duplexes, four-
plexes, townhouses, small lot single-family, um, to .... to.....to be, to put together to
compose, uh, these diverse walkable neighborhoods, um, improving connectivity, uh,
street network, thinking about the ... the, an integral street network, thinking about the
design of the streets, um .... just generally improving walkability and then, um .... talk
about this, introducing, um, new set of development standards, um, to effectively
implement, uh, a series of walkable neighborhoods, um, and when we've done this
before in other communities, we've called it a traditional neighborhood development
ordinance. Some peop.... some communities have called it a new walkable community
ordinance. You can call it whatever you want. It has a similar set of tools where you
actually define a street network, uh, you define an open space network, uh, you define a
series of form based zones that one might be neighborhood Main Street, the other might
be missing middle housing, the other might be a mix of missing middle and some small -
lot single-family, that are the .... give you the (mumbled) that are necessary to effectively
implement a walkable neighborhood in this... in the South District planning area. Um,
once again we're recommending for this area as well that we fill out a multi -day, uh,
design charrette is a really great approach for this project because we can bring different
stakeholders, property owners, community members, uh, different builders, uh,
developers that may be the ones that end up developing the site to the table and talk
about, uh, different potential build -out that ... in ways that meet the intent of the Central
District Plan and the new vision. Um .... and then, uh, what's interesting about this
approach is that, not only do you have the new form based zone districts mapped, but I
think .... I think you did this in the northwest, uh... uh, the Riverfront Crossings is that you
also have a specific set or palliative street types mapped, so we flushed out a set of
walkable pedestrian -oriented street types that get mapped through the course of this
process. Um, and, uh.... right, this diverse palette of form based zoning districts. Main
Street, missing middle or walkable neighborhood, mix of housing types, uh, approaching
this from a community character in a form standpoint as opposed to a use -base or a
density -base system, and .... you know, we're sort of, uh, still trying to figure this out, but
we're.....we're thinking about once again recommending potentially introducing a set of
pre -approved missing -middle housing plans .... and housing designs that would further
enable sort of the im.... implementation of missing middle in the South District.
Developers that are a little sort of leery of this or sort of have cost limitations, like this
would be a really good way to give `em a set of pre -approved plan that they can latch on
to, and sort of, uh, implement more effectively. Um, this is just a really, uh, great
diagram that shows this concept of a series of different nodes along McCollister. Um,
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and we know that McCollister likely will be the first of the ... the thoroughfares of the
streets that gets built through the site. Um .... uh, it's ... it's really, really critical that, um,
the design of this street gets done in a way that sort of takes into this account of the
pedestrian and walkable nature of the desired, um, neighborhood or series of
neighborhoods, and I think, um, you know, if the street gets built in a way that doesn't
take that into account, sort of start off on a .... on a losing fitting so we're .... we're
thinking very carefully about that. Um, how do streets connect through the site, um, and
how do they connect to that McCollister, uh, Boulevard, uh, extension. So, um, right,
this is just one potential scenario of...of reinforcing this idea of an, uh, a really connected
street network. Uh, the likelihood as you go through this charrette process that will be
refined based on the types of buildings that you're trying to place in those streets and
blocks, uh, but this is just reinforcing that idea that even McCollister Street, as a really
strong connector to larger parts of the city, has a lot of neighborhood streets connecting to
it. You know, some of them might only be right -in or right -out. You don't want to
actually have a lot of stops along that street, but thinking about, um, reinforcing this idea
of walkability and connectivity, and also as ... aspects of the plan. So next steps, um .... uh,
right, we'll be meeting with the City staff over the course of the next couple weeks, uh,
getting feedback from you all to finalize the recommendations report, and that will be
done fairly quickly. Um, and then really it's up to .... to you all and the City to prioritize
implementation and sort of, uh, what are the .... the steps for implementation, and there's
really four primary pieces here that we feel that kind of, the decision can be made about.
The first one is this recommendation for this multi -day charrette process, both for the
Northside and the South District, and you ... do you all feel that that's a good idea and a
good process, moving forward to sort of put that detailed vision plan in place, that the
code would reinforce. Uh, the second one is .... is just thinking about form based code
application for both Northside and as well as the South District and what's.... what's
interesting about this, the way we've done this in the past is .... we recommend putting a
structure in a ... and a shared system in place so that they're.... they're one, uh, form based
code that can be applied to those two different areas so that the staff's not trying to
administer... you're not trying to look at multiple documents, and even the .... what's
working in your current Riverfront Crossings code. We need to look very carefully at
that in terms of what can we share, lessons learned we can plug into the new form based
code process. Urn ... uh, integrating the new standards within your existing zoning code,
really careful thought into how do these new standards plug in, replace, supplement, uh,
the existing standards, the esist... existing processes, how they're administered, um, and
then, um, once again, identifying demonstration projects. Uh, Ronald Street is kind of
low -hanging fruit in terms of one that's been looked at. Um, there's actually sev ... several
other opportunities that even came up in conversations today with some of the developers
in your community who are actually interested and saying `Well what if..I don't want to
wait for that big South District Plan. I want to try missing middle across the street, like
would you be open to working with us to make that happen?' I think that's really
exciting. I think those are the types of opportunities that you should latch on to and take
advantage of. Um, and even other opportunities in the downtown where properties are
turning (mumbled) turning over and there might be opportunities to look at missing
middle or sort of this middle -scale in -fill. So, um .... that's.....uh, those are a series of our
recommendations. I know that was a lot in, uh, a fairly short amount of time. I'm happy
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to answer questions, but once again, like the further we dove into this, the more we
realized that there's a really good foundation here, and it's also really good foundation in
terms of the .... we have a community here that's familiar with that charrette process, that
multi -day process, so it's not something new. It's not scary. It's been effective already.
So we can kind of latch on to and learn, uh, from .... from that as well, and um, you know,
think about what this really is .... is, uh, form based ... we were talking about this today,
form based coding has actually advanced substantially in the past 10 years. It's over 30
years old, um, but in the past 10 years in particular it's advanced very rapidly and .... we
feel very strongly for both the ... the Northside and the South District, that it will be a
really effective tool for, um, ensuring high quality, long-term implementation of these
goals, uh, that the City's put in place, uh, over the course of the last 10 -plus years.
Throgmorton/ Okay. Excellent overview, Dan. Thank you, uh, thank you very much. Uh, I'm
guessin' that people have a variety of questions to ask and also responses to provide, uh,
and it's really important that we do that because you need guidance, uh, but more
importantly our staff needs guidance, about whether we want to proceed basically that's
the starting point question, and then whether there are particular aspects of your
preliminary report that we .... really like or maybe are troubled by or whatever. So .... uh,
I .... I'll just make one real quick comment. I definitely think we should proceed, uh, I
think there's great potential associated with, uh, the form based code approach to both the
Northside neighborhood and to the South District area, uh, and I note in reading your
draft report that there's ample opportunity, should we choose to take it, to extend the
form based code work to other neighborhoods that, uh.... would benefit from it. I think
in ... in part about Manville Heights, for example, and everybody at the table and the
audience probably knows there's a huge, uh.... urn .... urn .... mmmm, adverse response to
a proposed building in .... in Manville Heights, uh, that ... was permitted by existing code,
and .... and then that played out in the courts and, uh, and so on, and I think a form based
code would help us avoid those kinds of problems in the future, uh, in neighborhoods like
Manville Heights. So anyhow, I don't wanna talk too much right at the start. I just
wanna express my general point of view and then see if you folks have questions you
want to ask, uh, reactions you want to provide to Dan and so on.
Cole/ I really liked your concept of the pre -approved plans for auxiliary dwelling units. In the
presentation I went to three weeks ago, one of the responses from the audience was `Does
the pre -approved plan mean ... that does not mean that you can't do another type of design,
if you choose to hire your own designer to do that,' the thought being that these are the
suggestions and that if you adopt these you pretty much know that it's gonna be pre -
approved. Am I understanding that correctly?
Parolek/ Yeah, absolutely. If..if a property owner decides they don't want that specific
designer.... picking from several designs that are, uh.... uh, pre -approved, they can choose
a different design or have their own architect do a different design, but it would just, uh,
the .... the purpose is to streamline approval as quickly as possible with the pre -approved
one, so there would just be a little bit more review. Now it's not a .... a complicated or a
large building, so ... uh, but you'd need to think very carefully about then what .... what is
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the trigger if you don't use those pre -approved ones as opposed to what's your process if
you do choose the pre -approved plans.
Cole/ One quick follow up. I really liked your concept of the parking permit system. I was
wondering whether you could elaborate, um, about what type of system you could
imagine, um, could .... could you do that?
Parolek/ Yeah, and .... and what I would say is we .... we have a transportation consultant on the
team. I'm not .... I'm not an expert, but I will try to ... we do this in a lot of different
projects that we work on, and the idea is that, um, you can do it a number of different
ways. Um, but the.... the.... the residents of the neighborhood, um, sometimes are given
free permits, sometimes everybody buys a permit, but the idea is that if you don't have a
permit, you can usually only park in that area for a limited amount of time, maybe two
hours, maybe three hours, and if you.....if you don't move your car after that amount of
time you get a ticket. Um, and so what that does is it prevents the.... somebody from
parking there and walking to downtown to work or walking to col ... to scho... to classes
and leaving their car there for 12 hours, and it....it provides the turnover and enables
there to be more parking available for the .... the people who actually live in ... in the
neighborhood.
Throgmorton/ If I could, a follow up on, uh, Rockne's first question, uh, which has to do with
control of design basically. So in .... in a recent public presentation, one of our, uh,
prominent business owners, uh, spoke very negatively about form based code, if it was
going to be applied to the downtown, and I don't want ... I don't wanna open up that door,
uh, at the moment, but its concern had to do with the.... perceived control over design.
He wanted to make ... if I understood him correctly, he wanted to make sure that owners
would have flexibility, be able to be creative about what they could do with their
buildings and so on. So am I right in understanding the form based code does not strictly
limit what a person could do with a particular piece of property, but it does.... provide,
uh.... guidance about the mass and scale and height and a few things like that of ...of a
proposed .... of a building that could go in to a site. So ... can you help me....
Parolek/ Yeah, particularly in the downtown context, um, number one is, uh, form based code
does not inherently regulate architectural style. If a city decides to put other architectural
design standards on top of it they can, uh, for a downtown most don't. Um, but what the
form based code does is there are specific elements, uh, and .... and characteristics that
actually create a, uh, a good urban building and you know the frontage, like how does a
building address the sidewalk, and there's just some really basic parameters. It ... it
doesn't have to be overly complicated that we usually put into a form based code for a
downtown that say here's a .... here's a series of three or four really basic things that your
ground floor, your characters that your ground floor has to have to actually be a, uh, well
behaving urban building, and what we talked about is like the building from the knees
down is actually really important to think about and so the form based code does, um,
sort of give some really basic parameters, but there's a lot of, urn .... uh, variety and
options that an architect can, uh, different approaches they can use to achieve those
and ... and objectives. It's quite a bit of flexibility.
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Throgmorton/ I thought that was the case but .... um, Susan, John? Pauline?
Thomas/ Yeah, I'm, uh, certainly supportive of the work and its .... as your presentation reflected,
it's a .... covered a lot of ground in two different areas, different scales of, urn .... uh,
proposals, um, but I would say overall I'm pleased with .... with the outcome in both
areas. Uh, I ... I would agree that Northside Marketplace, I think is ... is the one that .... may
require more detailed consideration, uh, but I've felt for many years that, you know,
a .... a clearer idea of how we, as you had mentioned, take the intent of the Central District
Plan and .... and get that intent into a more regulatory framework, because as we've had
many discussions on Council (laughs) about yes, there's the .... the aspiration of this, the
plan and yet it doesn't necessarily tie into our zoning. So I would like to do that, make
that connection. Um, in -fill development, the notion of house form versus block form, I
thought, was an interesting concept. Uh, and the notion of how do we....what I've really
been struggling with and .... and at the same time interested in trying to understand is
how .... how to identify and articulate the next increment of development. I think for the
neighborhoods that .... that becomes clear with .... with the concept of taking the house
form and adapting it to, urn ... to different densities and different contexts. The, um, the
traffic component, I thought, was really valuable. Um, the parking benefit aspect of that I
think is critical because what we, you know, what we have now is basically free parking,
and um, that's a value that I would like to capture. What's... what's unique then to at least
the Northside is that much of the street parking is not, um, utilized by residents. It's used
by outsiders. Now there are some residents who don't have access to off-street parking,
so this would also benefit them, because right now (laughs) they .... they are having
trouble during summer finding parking spaces in certain parts of the Northside. (clears
throat) Taking Donald Shoop's concept that you .... you take the permit revenues and,
um, especially in this case because so much of it would most likely be outsiders,
uh.... and take that revenue and apply it towards some of the improvements that were also
identified in the plan, uh, I think overcomes what I'm hearing is some of the objections of
certain residents who feel that having cars parked on both sides of the street is just too
much, you know. It's too urban. Um, I think when you .... when you tie it to a benefit to
those same residents, they may not be quite as resistant to the idea. Um (clears throat)
and then the, in the South District, I think we have an opportunity to ... to really reconsider
our street design, which I think as your consultant noted, and we're .... we're hearing
many complaints from residents in our subdivisions that, uh, traffic speeds are too high,
um, so in my view if we can redesign and reconfigure our streets, most likely, uh,
narrowing them, that will give us more ... not only more calming effect with traffic flow,
but also more land with which to develop if we reallocate. Um, take less .... less land for
our streets and more for .... for development. So, I think there are a lot of opportunities,
um, we can take advantage of with this. I was pleased to see in the, uh, the South District
how it looked like the cottage courts were .... were, uh.... favored by the residents in some
of their.... looking at different housing types. I'm .... I'm a big fan of cottage courts. I
think they're.... they're really pretty cool. Uh, so .... yeah, I say we move forward, um...
and, you know, it's gonna be kinda multi -faceted, but I think it's all .... all for the good.
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Mims/ I really liked .... the vast majority of what I saw. I'm not gonna try to go into detail, cause
I don't think that matters really tonight, I mean I guess the one I will comment is I like
the idea of trying to get some human scale lights in the Northside, urn, you know, on
those dark sidewalks (both talking)
Throgmorton/ ....mighty dark on (both talking)
Mims: ... but there's a lot of other things I could comment on. I guess .... with the idea that I was
pretty sure everybody was gonna want to move forward. What I would like to focus on at
the moment is ... how do, you know, and this.....lot of this is going to come back to staff.
I'm not asking for an answer right now, Geoff, or Ashley, but.... timeframe and dollar
wise, um, in terms of what we've already spent, um, in terms of consultants, what two
multi -day charrettes would cost for each of these areas, and then paying for the
develop... the assistance at least of the development of the form based codes, because,
you know, I say that having gone through all the packets and everything, and .... not
necess.... I mean I heard all of it, but I didn't put it all together, all the things that were
mentioned by Council in terms of the budget for next year (laughs) and when I read it in
the packet I was like `Oh my gosh!' (laughs) We've gotta, I mean ... we got a lot of things
that we want to do, and so .... how do we balance all this, not only, you know, work of
staff, you know, we've talked about the amount of work that we've been asking staff to
do in the last year and a half with the strategic plan. These, I think these are incredibly
important. It, to me it's hard to prioritize from the standpoint that .... we don't ... we don't
want to miss out on opportunities on the Northside and let it .... let it go further than it
already has in terms of bad rentals, if you will, in some cases. On the same side, on the
same token, we don't want to let things get started on the Southside that would basically
end up being a .... something in the middle that doesn't fit with the rest of what we're
trying to develop around it. So I think we've got some .... some real competing priorities
here, um, that we're gonna have to figure out how to manage, and I guess my thought is
to throw that in Geoff s lap (laughs)
Throgmorton/ Yeah, we'll have to follow up on that.
Frain/ Yeah, and I think maybe, urn .... you know, I'll need some time. I think we need to figure
out our scope before I can really comment on the cost piece.
Mims/ Sure!
Frain/ Dan could probably provide some guidance on the timing, cause I .... it's, uh, one, I'll say
it's not going to be cheap and it's not going to be quick.
Mims/ Iknow.
Frain/ Um, and .... but that's not to say it's not worthy of pursuit, because we're talkin' about our
built environment for the next gen .... you know, several generations but, Dan, can you
touch on the timeframe. If you were to, uh, tackle the four bullet points up there,
what ... you might be lookin' at.
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Parolek/ Right, I think it's, urn.... it's.... it's likely an 18 -month process, I mean, could potentially
be done in 12 if. ... depending on actually more than anything staff availability to review
drafts and to keep, uh, I know they're working on a bunch of (noises on mic) things, but
I....12 to 18 months, probably closer to 18, just to be conservative about it, and um .... uh,
what's nice about it, there's actually some nice efficiencies in doing them together
because you are creating one form based code that, you know, certain elements are more
specific to .... to South District and certain are more specific to the Northside, but there is
some efficiencies in the code writing that you're creating one and not trying to create two
different systems.
Fruin/ I think from a .... from a staffing standpoint, um, we fully expect that we'd be moving
forward with this. I think the intention was we'd do phase one, un ... unless there's some
major red flags raised, we ... we would pursue phase two. Um, I think what we all have to
realize though is the capacity to layer major planning initiatives on top of this effort,
and .... and the other things we have going on. Um, I don't think we have that capacity
right now. So whether that's.... whether that's a downtown form based code or any
number of other things, we .... we might think of, um, from a planning staff perspective,
this would .... this would probably bring us to capacity.
Throgmorton/ Yeah. So we'll have to have a further conversation about that. Pauline, did you
want to add anything?
Taylor/ I just want to say that I ... I was so impressed with the amount of information, just ... you
said basically seven, eight months of gathering all this information. Uh, that you put
together. A lot of detail and one of the items, uh, Susan mentioned our....our budget. I
had asked about our transit system and you actually had an item (mumbled) the
Northside, and the Southside, for the need for that, uh, different routes and different
timing on that, so I was impressed to see that. And then someone else mentioned the...
the survey of the different types of, uh, homes, uh, and that was very, uh, interesting to
see that and see what people preferred, cause I like the four-plexes and the cottage type
too, so that was good to see.
Parolek/ Yeah it was interesting, we ... it was actually the first time we did this, uh, missing
middle board game, housing board game, that we sort of, uh, one of our staff members
created that concept and it really engaged the community members and there's
something... there's something about the cottage court that it's ... it's a little bit easier for
a lot of people to, um .... uh, relate to, cause it's .... the closest to a single-family detached
house, but it's sort of community that's being created, but .... thought it .... we were really
excited about how people responded to that exercise and got some really good feedback
from it.
Throgmorton/ I really like the idea of follow through with that particular building on Ronald
Street, and the one that we bought, I don't know, a year and a half ago, whatever it was,
uh, and using it as a test case. Yeah. Okay, anything else for Dan?
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Fruin/ Well, what I would recommend is, um, that, um .... staff put together a scope of work for
phase two, bring that be .... before you to make sure that you agree with what we're
lookin' at doin', um, let you provide any comments, and then we have to go through a
procurement process, um, from .... from that standpoint, but we'll try to do that, uh, fairly
soon here, return to you after... after the plan's finalized and suggest, uh, how we move
forward on all the recommendations.
Clarification of Agenda Items:
Item 3f(2) Frank Williams: hello
Tlrrogmorton/ Good deal. Dan, thanks for the great work you and your staff have done, and your
colleagues. Uh.... it's been good seein' ya. I enjoyed our conversation today too. Yeah.
(several talking) Okay, we might be able to do, uh, the .... the next element in our work
session, which is to discuss clarification of agenda items. Is there .... are any topics, uh,
are there any topics you want to address or get some clarification on? I ... I guess I wanted
to comment briefly on an e .... Item H(2), which is correspondence. Uh, it's an email
from a man named Frank Williams and it notes that we plan to spend roughly $6 million
to, uh, on the pedestrian mall, and he was wondering whether we would be spending any
money to revitalize the east ti .... east side of town. All right so, uh, I think it's correct
that we are planning to spend approximately $6 million over 2018 and 2019 on the ped
mall, but we've also .... I just kinda want to say this publicly, we've also done a
substantial amount of work on the ..... on the east side that is comparable to the ped mall.
So I'm thinking in particular about reconstruction of First Avenue and the railroad
overpass, as well as reconstruction of Lower Muscatine Road and South Sycamore Street.
And there's more, I'm sure, but I .... I don't know the dollar amount. I intended to try to
look that up, but it's substantial (both talking)
Fruin/ Far more than six million.
Throgmorton/ Yeah. So, uh... I think it's completely appropriate that Mr. Williams wrote and
asked a completely reasonable question, but we have been investing a lot on the east side.
Thomas/ I did email him.
Throgmorton/ Ob good!
Thomas/ And .... said I'd be happy to meet with him if ..to discuss what his concerns were and
what improvements he would like to see, uh, and also make him aware of what the City
has done that he may not be as conscious of.
Information Packet Discussion [August 3, August 101:
Throgmorton/ Yeah! Okay. Any further clarification about agenda items? We can touch on the
Info Packet for August the P
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Mims/ Uh, Geoff, I just wanted to ask about .... can we get staff, or I'd like to go to the ICAD
Annual Meeting.
Fruin/ Sure!
Mims/ RSVP (both talking)
Fruin/ Yeah, if anybody's interested (several talking)
Throgmorton/ ....want to? I mean I've already connected with (both talking)
Mims/ Okay.
Throgmorton/ ...Kellie about that.
Mims/ Thank you.
Fruin/ We .... we'll get you registered.
Mims/ Thank you!
Throgmorton/ With regard to IP3, you know, it's a .... a ICAD Happenings or something like that,
there's an announcement about Oral-B and about its moving its portion .... a portion of its
electric toothbrush manufacturing unit to the former Menard's building on Highway 1.
We've known this is .... has been underway, but I think this is the first time we've seen
anything in writing about it. So I just want to acknowledge that this is taking place, and
it's .... it's a pretty big deal. So.....August P. August 10th?
Thomas/ IP5 and IP6, um.....the Community Rights Movement and the Worker Bill of Rights,
uh, I also .... I think Kingsley had met with Paul Cienfuegos and, um .... when he was in
Iowa City. I met with him as well, um .... I don't.... Eleanor, if you're familiar with his
work but, urn .... uh, it's kind of an interesting concept at any rate (laughs) you know, the
idea of local municipalities taking greater control over their own destiny. Uh, so, um,
just wanted to mention that I had met with him, and I ... I find his ... his approach interesting
at....at the very least.
Mims/ I went to a meeting that he conducted in the area about a .... I don't know, time flies, a
year and a half or two years ago. Um .... found it very interesting, um, again I think kind
of looking at what other municipalities have done this and what kind of legal challenges
they've had and how successful they have been I think would be (both talking) interesting
thing to find out.
Thomas/ Right! And I ... I emphasize too that his focus was more, it seemed to me on corporate -
related issues, and I mentioned to him (laughs) in our experience, at least recently, it's
been State (laughs) that has been the .... the source of our challenges, but I think the
principle is the same.
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Throginorton/ Yeah, and it's always important to remember that cities are creatures of the State,
you know, we don't exist.... cities don't exist in the Constitution. So .... our powers come
from the State legislature, or the State govermnent. So ... there are certain things we can
do, certain things we can't do, and .... all that would have to be probed. I ... I, with regard
to pending work session topics, I ... I want to, uh, I will want to, uh, bring up a suggestion
concerning the September 50' meeting, but I don't think we have time to really kinda
flesh it out cause we're .... we're pretty much out of time, uh.... uh, prior to our formal
meeting. So heads up, when we get back together after the, um, the formal meeting I'll,
uh, suggest a particular topic for September the 5a'. Any other, uh, topics on that...
Mims/ I would just want to mention IP9, if people didn't see this in the news, I want to
congratulate, uh, Crissy Canganelli and the Shelter House on their $2.7 million award
from the Iowa Finance Authority, um, for housing that they're going to construct for the
chronically homeless. So .... great work on their part in getting that grant.
Throgmorton/ How does that fit with the proposed Access Center?
Mims/ It doesn't. I mean I don't think really. This is actually permanent housing for people who
are chronically homeless. The Access Center is gonna be more temporary, detox, uh,
those kinds of things.
Throgmorton/ Okay. It is excellent news though (both talking)
Mims/ ...excellent news!
Fruin/ Two quick items if I could.
Throgmorton/ Sure (both talking)
Fruin/ Real quick I wanna call attention to your ... your late handouts, uh, you had an invitation
that came in after the deadline for the Information Packet, but the Housing Trust Fund of
Johnson County has invited, uh, any one of you to attend its annual meeting. Um, it is in
your late handouts, but that's Friday, August 250', from 8:30 to 9:15, and that's at
Midwest One's new building on South Clinton in the Riverfront Crossings District. Um,
there's an email to RSVP to, or you can just let (coughing, unable to hear speaker) attend
and we can RSVP for you, and then, um, IP7 is the food truck pilot program evaluation
memo that Simon prepared. Um, based on the experiences, the recommendation is that
we amend the code to allow the evening vending. Um, there were no issues, so to speak.
Um, I don't think it was necessarily as successful as the vendors would have liked, but
um, that said, we didn't experience any negative, uh (noise on mic) feedback, um, from
the expansion. So, we will move forward with that code amendment, uh, absent any
comments from Council.
Thomas/ Well, my only comment was the one complaint, which was DP Dough, and, um, you
know, my .... my concern would be that that little .... node of commercial seems, you
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know, it's going through a little bit of. ... disruption, um, and so .... I don't know if you
have any thoughts in terms of monitoring that, but it was something that I was concerned
about, as much as I like the Robert A. Lee Center as a place for the food trucks, I am
concerned about the sustainability of that commercial area.
Fruin/ Yeah, I don't think we would .... I don't think we would, um, continue to use that parking
lot for the food trucks. We're really just looking at the on -street parking spaces that they
have access to during the daytime hours right now, and .... and putting that, uh, making
those available in the evening. Um, we would also not be hooding the meters for this
pilot. We actually had staff go in, reserve the spaces, and then check on `em and clean
up. Um, we're not really staffed to do that on a consistent basis. That is a concern of the
vendors because, uh, parking is tight, especially in those evening hours, um, and so for
those trucks to find a couple of consecutive spaces to park their, uh, vehicles, that will be
tough, um, but I think that's at least in my view that's.... that's fair that they're seeking
those spaces, uh, along with everybody else that is coming to the downtown, or ... visiting
campus, whatever it may be.
Throgmorton/ Okey doke. So, uh, I think we need to stop there. So we're .... let's adjourn for
now. We'll come back to the work session right after the formal meeting. Pick up at, uh,
the August 10th packet and IP #5, which is pending work sessions, and then go through
anything else that we need to cover, uh, following that. So .... we're done for right now
with regard to our work session. Formal meeting starts at 7:00 PM.
(BREAK FOR FORMAL MEETING)
(RECONVENE WORK SESSION)
Information Packet Discussion [August 3, August 10 (cont.)]:
Throgmorton/ We're adjourned to the work session so .... find notes for that. Uh, turn to the point
that Rockne was on the verge of making till I interrupted him, so with regard to the
September 5a' work session, uh.... uh, the August 10 Packet, IP #5 indicates that we
don't have.... defined topic for that, so I thought well maybe we could do the Lusk
Avenue, uh, situation, because that .... that's on our pending list, but then I thought, no,
we really want to .... uh, we want to have, um, our neighborhood stabilization presentation
before we discuss anything havin' to do with Lusk Avenue. So then I thought, well we...
then I looked at the, uh, that long list of items that we recommended as a Council
concerning the budget and I thought, this is just too much, uh, we .... we should focus
more. I .... I strongly believe we need to spend a half hour, or more if we need it, to
prioritize our budget suggestions so that the staff will get a set of recommendations that
come from at least a majority of the Council, maybe unanimous, uh, votes from the
Council, so they get clear instructions instead of not really knowin' whether there's only
support from one or two individual Council Members. Uh, so I connected with Geoff
about this, um, and asked, you know, ran it by him and he says, yeah, sure that seems like
a pretty reasonable thing to do. Uh.... but I .... I also asked Geoff if he could help us by
first of all restructuring the list to that the ... the items appear under the seven, uh, strategic
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plan priorities, so we'll have a sense of really what they're tryin' to get at, and also that
the staff indicate whether the individual suggestions would have a low, medium, or high
budgetary impact, so that we have a little bit of sense about .... you know, be able to make
that kind of choice that we have to make really. We can't just do it Willy nilly, like you
made this point last time.
Mims/ The other.... the other thing I would suggest with that, Jim .... is what is the, what would be
the staff time commitment to those things, because some of them are not just a financial
commitment, but if we put the money in the budget and we're trying to do it, we may also
be talking about significant staff time, and given how much stuff staff is already loaded
up with, I think it's important that we have kind of an understanding, and ... and Geoff,
you... you've gotta really tell us if we're overloading staff.
Throgmorton/ Yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it (several talking) high, medium,
low, again (several talking)
Botchway/ ...but I would say ... that being kind of in conjunction with timeline, cause there may
be some things that staff are able to take on. It may not necessary be immediately but
over the course of time...
Mims/ Right!
Botchway/ ...worked out, and so (both talking)
Mims/ ...how it can fit in with their workload, I think, needs to be considered as well.
Botchway/ Yeah.
Mims/ There's no point in budgeting it if staff doesn't have time to do it. (several talking)
Botchway/ My last point to add to that, is there any way we can talk about the kind of...and
maybe this is gonna be somewhat ad hoc or as we kind of discuss it, but just .... and
maybe this is you or, um, Simon, I know he's helped out in the past, but the structure of
how we deliberate on it. Um, I know I mean we only have a finite amount of time, so I
just wanna make sure we're using it effectively. I just don't want to have another like
kind of budget planning three-hour session (mumbled)
Throgmorton/ Uh, yeah, uh, so we'll have to put some thought into that. Uh, one thing we need
to do is eliminate redundancies, cause there's some items that are redundant to others.
And .... and then judge which ones really... warrant priority, and which ones don't, cause
there really a different scale, some are fairly small and can be done pretty quickly.
Others are kind of big and expected, uh, go on for a year or whatever. So .... we need that
kind of sense too.
Fruin/ And I think there's really two types of input that are important for us to hear. Um,
particularly in the context of the strategic plan and wanting us to, um, list these, uh, under
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those seven priorities. First if there's a .... a specific project that .... that you want us to
accomplish, by all means tell us. We'll get it in the budget. There may be a domino
effect with other projects, depending on the .... the magnitude and scope of it, but we
would let you know that and you can reconsider your discussion, or your .... your decision
if need be. Um, but the other would be, some of those were .... were not well defined,
and .... and that's okay. I don't think you need to feel pressure to .... to.....to nail down,
uh, details. A lot of times what .... what staff needs is just the framework. Where do you
think you want to go with this, and then we can give that to the departments and... and
they can really vet it with their staff and work it into their budget proposal that ... that we
see.
Throgmorton/ Okay. All right, good deal, so that's what we're gonna do on the 5"', and there
was one other thing you said....oh, the strategic plan. We can ... we're gonna get an
update on the strategic plan, so (both talking)
Fruin/ Yeah, Ashley's been working on that. We just plan to put it in your Info Packet, not
necessarily step through it with ya. This is the last update we'll provide before you start a
new process, but um, if you want to dedicate time on the 5h we can. I mean you'll be
able to discuss it (several talking and laughing)
Throgmorton/ ...we look forward to getting the report. Okay, anything else on that Information
Packet (both talking)
Fruin/ Can I just clarify one thing.
Throgmorton/ Sure!
Fruin/ I want to make sure that I'm following the ... the direction. We will have the budget on
September 5a'. Do you want the parking discussion on the 5a' as well? Or is that
something.... otherwise we're probably (both talking)
Cole/ I guess I don't feel it's super -urgent so I mean if we would want to do it in October I'd be
fine with that.
Fruin/ Having it in October would allow our staff to ... to better research (several talking) uh.... uh
elements that come along with permit system. (several talking) Okay.
Mims/ If you could at least maybe communicate to Mark that that's what we're doing, so he
knows we're movin' forward on it.
Fruin/ Will do!
Throgmorton/ Okay, any other items on that Information Packet?
Cole/ I have a question about IP10. It's looking like from the memo, Kellie, that the taxi
community, um, didn't really give us a lot of feedback in terms of needing to improve or
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modify our taxi regulations in light of the new transportation network ordinance. Um,
and I forget ... I should know his name by now .... (several talking) A ... Adel? (several
talking) Adil! Um, but I think really what he's bringing up through all these various
public comments that he makes is a really good point, is his question of regulatory parody
between taxi companies, and Uber and the transportation network companies. Obviously
the legislature has taken away our ability to do anything, vis a vis Uber, um, but it sounds
like we still have some authority, and we want to make sure that we absolutely keep those
regulations in place that protect the public safety. That's paramount for all of us, I know.
Urn .... but it just seems to me that we should, um, you know maybe in the next 90 days or
100 days just review that cause I still get the sense that there are more regulations for the
taxi company than there is for the transportation network company, or networks, and I'm
not really so convinced that the fact that you get it over the smartphone really justifies
their getting such a .... lesser regulatory application, and I don't know what people feel
about... it seems like the taxi companies weren't really complaining though, um, but it's
just still something that's sort of on my mind (both talking)
Throgmorton/ Well I'm really struck by the decline in the number of taxis and the number of taxi
companies.
Cole/ Yeah!
Throgmorton/ It's really quite striking and clearly is a function of Uber coming in.
Cole/ Yeah.
Throgmorton/ Drivin' taxi companies out of business basically. So it's really quite striking, but I
think, uh, that Adil Adams was making, uh, a.....a different point. He was asking for two
things, if I understood correctly. He wa.... let me see if I can read my notes correctly.
Um....
Thomas/ He wanted the minimum (both talking)
Throgmorton/ He wanted to reduce the minimum from four to two (several talking)
Thomas/ I wasn't clear on the, you know ,the material in our packet this time, what it actually is
now. Is it four?
Throgmorton/ But apparently it was two.
Thomas/ Originally.
Throgmorton/ Originally, and increased to four (several talking)
Fruehling/ ....yeah, they wanted, uh, an increase in vehicles to ... to make it a little bit harder
for .... for companies, um, not harder for companies, but the pop-up companies that come
around football season time. Um, and want.... wanted people to be really invested in their
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company, so you know to maybe pull together two vehicles isn't so hard but .... cause they
had thrown out like six, and .... and we tailored that back to four.
Thomas/ That was pre-Uber, right?
Fruehling/ Yes.
Thomas/ So I .... his .... his point seemed.... valid to me, I mean just on the face of it, you know,
without knowing how .... how that industry works, it .... made sense that, you know, it
might be something if it's four now to go to two, but....
Fruehling/ It would take looking at it, because if you go to two and we have the color scheme,
you're gonna run out of color schemes for one, urn .... and I could see .... the number of
companies increasing quite a bit if you drop down to two.
Fruin/ I think both regulations were.....were of. ... may be additional reasons but responding to
a ... a problem the community was experiencing with, um, particularly with the football
season, where you would get these pop-up companies that would come in, um, cater for
those seven or eight football weekends, but not invest in anything else, and they weren't,
urn .... uh, necessarily following all the regulations but they knew that by the time the City
caught up that they would be out of business and they could just re -up again next year.
Um, there was also a lot of, uh, issues, uh, with customer service and .... and people
feeling like they .... they were being treated unfairly. We were getting calls, um, the CVB
was getting calls from people that were visiting the community. So there was .... there
was a .... a community discussion, including the cab companies at the time, and whether it
was the, um, June, uh, ls`...is it lst9
Mims/ May I".
Fruin/ May I" (several talking) Um .... or this .... or this renewal, those were primarily designed
to .... to solve that problem. Um, and of course now we have some .... well established taxi
companies that are still operating that, um, will .... would probably come here and support
keeping those regulations because they recall that, um, I'm not suggesting Mr.....Mr.
Adams has that motive in mind, but that's the reason for the regulations the way they are
right now.
Throgmorton/ I think the other thing he drew attention to was that he missed the deadline date
for applying for renewing his license.
Fruehling/ He did come in before the deadline date though and had informed us that he wasn't
going to renew. So....
Throgmorton/ Yeah, so then the other thing I think about is, and .... I think this is fair to say,
uh.... uh, he's not entirely fluent in English, though he's lived in Iowa City for .... several
years, and I .... I think it's probably pretty difficult for somebody who's not fluent in
English to understand these rules and .... and....respond to them in a timely fashion and do
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all that kind of stuff as (mumbled) supposed to do, and yet my guess is, I don't know this
as a fact, that he's .... also providing a service to other Sudanese residents. I don't know
that as a fact. Uh, but it just strikes me as a difficult situation for .... for one .... for one
person, and ... he's come to us many times now. This is probably the sixth time he's
shown up in a public discussion period and ... had some concern about the taxi ordinance.
So... is there anything we should consider doing, and if so, we probably have to change
the ordinance.
Cole/ I guess we should just probably keep an eye out for it, I mean I would .... I think if, as the
taxi cab companies review their ability to stay competitive in relation to Uber, I just think
we have to keep an open mind to do a potential work session on this is sort of my
thought.
Botchway/ Well my ... my initial thought is when is .... (several talking) have meetings for the taxi
cab companies?
Fruehling/ Not on a regular basis.
Botchway/ I guess I'd be interested to see, I'm not trying to put more work on you, but ... what
that collective body in the same sense of they came together to discuss some of the
changes that, you know, were put forth before and then came together, I believe, when
discussion about Uber, um, was, you know, thrown out there. I would see it'd be
reasonable to have another kind of discussion with some of these additional, uh, things as
well to see whether or not there needs to be changes and then kind of send that back to us.
Mims/ It seems to me we'd be hearing from others if they felt the need to be changes. I mean...
are we gonna start every time one person comes in and complains about some of our
ordinances.
Fruin/ These are .... what Mr. Adams is talkin' about are .... are barriers to entry into this market.
think if you go and ask the taxi cabs that are existing today that are still successful,
despite the Uber, they're going to be interested in protecting, you know, they're not
gonna want to make it easier for competitors to come in, so I don't think ... if you go and
talk to the five existing companies they're gonna say, `Sure, lower that threshold to two
cars,' or make it a rolling application period, because they're surviving under the .... the
tougher barriers to entry into the market. They're probably going to come back with a
whole other list of things that they would like us to reconsider — color scheme or, uh, you
know, reporting requirements, uh, you know, uh, 24, you know, just phone requirements.
They're gonna have other things that they wanna open up, um.....so if you're con ... if
you're just lookin' at Mr. Adams' two concerns, I'm not sure .... um, we can check with
the existing companies but I could pretty much tell ya what they'll say on those two
items.
Taylor/ How long had he been licensed as a taxi company .... in Iowa City?
Fruehling/ Not off the top of ..I mean, it's several years he was, yeah. Previous, so...
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Botchway/ I mean I guess the only reason I also wanted some additional, you know, thought to
that is, you know, we've already talking about the fact that there is lack of, uh,
reinvestment in the community. Could there be a change to the ordinance that would
focus on the time limit that a business has been open in Iowa City, um, and so you just
said, uh, that this individual had been open for two to three years. Is that a change or a
stipulation that we could have to, uh, to accommodate, um, that .... I'm just throwing that
out there literally as I'm thinking about it. That's why I ... I think there's other people that
have more expertise in kind of thinking about that. Or on the opposite front, I mean if
this is a language barrier issue or something else, can we make sure that we have then
that frank conversation because I ... I've had those in my job where it's been discussed
where it seems like there's that language barrier issue, um, or the information's not being
communicated or articulated clearly, that we just kind of have that frank conversation
with somebody else, or whoever, to make sure that, um, we're clear about some of those
guidelines, um, as we move forward.
Mims/ If you'd only had a license for a year or two and missed it, I'd be more inclined to ... I
think that might be the issue, but if he's had it for several years, it would seem to me that
the individual ..... was able to and understood the permitting process every year.
Botchway/ I don't like to assume.
Throgmorton/ Well I .... I don't sense any strong desire to....ask staff to revise the ordinance or
anything like that, so ... but I thought, I mean, I think it's valuable to acknowledge at least
that we have heard Adil and have read what he submitted to us and talked about it and
decided not to .... not to do anything different. Okay. Is there anything else in that Info
Packet?
Botchway/ So IPS, urn .... I didn't know where we were at, so I'm glad we stepped on that. I had
a really good conversation with Paul Cienfuegos. Finally said that name right even
though I've been sayin' it (mumbled) for.... forever, urn ... and I think Susan was at a
meeting, um, maybe (both talking) yeah...
Mims/ Year and a half or two years ago.
Botchway/ Um, in regards to when you talked about community rights, I, you know, I would say
this. Um, there's a lot of information, um, that is shared in a short amount of time, um,
about kind of a community rights ordinance and what's happened in I think Spokane,
Washington and some of the other things. Um, I do think that when I was talking with
them about this, that had direct relation to the minimum wage ordinance. Um, you know
I felt like at the, um, legislature in general has, for me, or at least in my perspective, has
basically just attacked Iowa City. So, um, there's been somethings that I think have
frankly been focused on Iowa City, compared to, uh, other places or other municipalities
across the state. That being said, I do think the minimum ordinance was more of a
county, um, situation, but I do feel this is a particular opportunity where we could say,
you know, and again, help me out, Eleanor, because I think that when we had that
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conversation, and I looked back at your memo before I put this in the packet, a lot of the
conversation was really focused on that this was in the health and welfare, um, piece of,
um, kind of Home Rule authority, and I just feel like from a city Home Rule perspective,
um, that is one of the few things that as a city we regulate. Our own residents and their
own health and welfare, um, in our, uh, borders, and .... so I just felt like this was an
opportunity to, uh, bring up, uh, cause he really galvanized me around kind of this
community rights ordinance and what this could mean for, one issue being the minimum
wage, that I think was, um, kind of taken away with that pre-emptive bill, and just wanted
an opportunity to kind of discuss, um, maybe not right now, cause we're now late in the
night. It's almost 10:00, but discuss in the future kinda what this means and what this
could possibly mean as far as stances that we can take, um, kind of against State
legislation in general. I know that, Jim, you had mentioned not too long ago, um, and
maybe it was a .... a conversation with Geoff that it was kind of at the end of the Council
meeting but kind of talking about how we need to prepare for the next, um, kind of
legislative session and I agree with that, but it also seems like we're on the defensive a lot
on, you know, well we're just gonna see what happens from that session, and not
necessarily you know be kind of clear about what our intentions are and what we're not
gonna budge on. So, not trying to light a fire under everybody at 10:00 at night, um, and
I didn't expect to be talking about this this late, but for me I'm just requesting kind of a
work session to kind of talk about this issue. I hadn't talked about it with Eleanor. I was
kind of hoping this was an opportunity to see if there was Council interest to, uh, bring it
up later on and discuss, uh, not only maybe a community rights ordinance but also, um,
bringing up the minimum wage debate.
Mims/ Well we talked about it a little bit during the work session (both talking)
Botchway/ Oh, okay!
Mims/ Yeah, cause, um....I think, John, you were the one that brought it up and were talking a
little bit about it and .... and I had mentioned that I had been to the meeting a year and a
half or two years ago when he was here, and found what he was saying very interesting
and compelling, and then Jim made the comment, and I have to admit I have not read the
Iowa Constitution (laughs) but basically .... I read the U.S. one but not the Iowa one,
um...
Throgmorton/ I haven't read the Iowa one either.
Mims/ But basically that city .... and Eleanor obviously could tell us more but cities don't exist
except under Iowa law. So ... I mean ... I guess I would be interested if anything of having
Eleanor maybe look at this and without going too deep into the weeds, you know, is there
even any legal, would we even have any legal standing to do any of this stuff in the State
of Iowa, I mean, Paul goes all around the country.
Botchway/ Right.
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Mims/ And obviously state laws and state constitutions are totally different, from state to state,
so Spokane might have more legal standing to do some of this than we might here. So
if. ... if we have absolutely zero legal standing to do any of this sort of thing, there's no
point in wasting our time, but if we do, I, you know, if there's any chance, yeah, I ... I'd be
interested in having a little bit of discussion.
Dilkes/ The ... the framework's really pretty simple. Um ... um, even though it's not particularly
favorable. Um, the Iowa Constitution does embed, does guarantee Home Rule as a, um,
Constitutional right, but in the Constitution it says `subject to the acts of the General
Assembly,' and so that's.... that' why you get state preemption. Um, and if they are
explicit about preempting you, I mean that's the easiest way for them to do it. There's
other ways they can do it, but when they say `You can't do this,' there's.... there's not
much .... (laughs) there's not much way around that and some of the details of the ... of the
community rights....I think it's fine to ... to, you know, state values and state rights, um, to
provide remedies that are .... like some of the Spokane stuff is providing remedies, like
suggesting that a court has jurisdiction over certain things. I .... I think that's, can be a
little bit misleading because you're.... you're like, you're saying you've got a remedy for
someone when there really isn't that remedy available. So, that's kinda the basic
framework.
Throgmorton/ Yeah, I .... I think, um, I think it would be politically untimely for us to take up this
particular topic. I think if we, uh, adopted some kind of, uh.... worker bill of rights
ordinance, uh, a lot of it would end up being preempted by the State legislature. We'd
probably end up in some kind of big political fight, and we have all sorts of other things
we want to be accomplishing. So. I think it'd be a mistake to take it up right now.
Cole/ But we don't have to (both talking) but we don't have to .... (mumbled) work session, and
I .... and I think there are Home Rule problems with this and we need to talk about that,
but even if we end up with just saying, you know what, Eleanor comes with a memo and
says, `Look, the specific remedy you seek, we just don't have the Home Rule authority,'
and maybe we just end up with a proclamation and say, you know what, we believe in
Home Rule, we believe in democracy closest to the people, and that's where we're at. I
think in terms of the fight, Jim, I .... I think that may be a healthy issue to have a little bit
more, uh, declaratory statements in terms of what our values are. So I would at least like
a .... a lot of people have brought this up to me as well, at least a work session on it, so we
can have a well developed, um, articulation of this issue, and if nothing else we end up
with a proclamation. I think that would be (mumbled) I mean, we can pretty much
proclaim on anything, can't we? Um, is .... (laughter) there's nothing limiting our ability
to express our ... our political view as a Council, right? So I .... I would support a work
session.
Throgmorton/ Well I don't object to a work session about it, if there's support from a couple
other people. We can put it on the pending list.
Mims/ I think we have a .... I think we have other topics that we have more ability to actually get
things done on that I'd rather focus time on at this point, plus even though we may not be
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able to do anything, I think going into the 2018 legislative session there's no point in
doing anything that .... it isn't going to be constructive and yet draws attention to us from
the legislature.
Cole/ (mumbled) ...draw attention to that but (mumbled)
Mims/ I ... I don't. Not enough and so....
Cole/ So I need three to get it on, don't I?
Thomas/ I'm kinda of two minds on this. I .... I think it would be useful to have a public
conversation about it, that is ... not that we would necessarily act on it but that there
is .... you know, there have been discussions, there .... this is a topic that is of concern, uh,
I'd be interested personally to know, you know .... how were other, I mean cause this is
kind of a national phenomenon. This is not unique to Iowa. Uh, and what if any actions
are being considered or what discussions are taking place in other cities? Um, cause
yeah, we .... we were hit pretty hard and, um, there was a sense of hopelessness or
helplessness, um, so I think, yes, trying to take ownership of the situation on some level,
uh, would potentially be, at least informative if not empowering, that... yeah.
Throgmorton/ I'm gonna modify what I said a little bit ago. I ... I.. A believe it's politically
untimely to take on this kind of discussion, if we ... it would be a mistake to have this kind
of discussion before the legislature closes its session in May or whenever it is they stop
end of 2018. Uh, I ... I agree with Susan about this. We don't want to have attention
drawn to this, when we don't know if there's anything really that's going to come of
value. More importantly we got a whole bunch of stuff to do between now and the time
our terms end, and I want to get that stuff done. I think it really matters. That's why
we're here. Let's do it and not get distracted by other stuff that, you know, emotionally
and politically I kind of agree with, but I think it'd be a big distraction for us and uh, not
be very....
Botchway/ I would just say this, you know, if this was a conversation that the legislature had
decided that they wanted to, you know, possibly mitigate climate change. I would hope
that you would take away some of our ability to, um, you know work on that from a
Council level, I'd hope that we would collectively come together and want to do
something about that, so .... I will remove my proposal, um, but, um, again, I just don't
wanna... sit and take it, um, from the legislature. So, uh....
Throgmorton/ Well we're not just gonna sit and take it, I mean, there have been lots of
conversations about things we should be doing. (mumbled) ...holding a work session on
this particular topic so the next thing you know it's in the news we're doing this, that
distracts attention from what we're trying to accomplish. And ... so .... I think it's just a
mistake to go down that road, at this moment in time. But....
Taylor/ I think that on that line sort of powerless, so to speak, you say sit back and take it but
they're the rule makers and .... what they say, unless we can get around it somehow.
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Mims/ And I think .... to Jim's point, oh I'm sorry! (both talking) More timely point if we want
to do this, as he said, is after the legislature has closed in the spring, and if you want then
doing it and trying to use it as motivation for people in terms of the election next fall.
Throgmorton/ Yeah.
Dilkes/ I don't .... we are not sitting back and taking it, but when you strategize, you have to look
at what strategies you think may or may not be successful. We have some litigation
strategies, we have some legislative strategies, but .... we're not at all I think sitting back
and taking it.
Throgmorton/ Right.
Mims/ If the Constitution is that clear .... I mean there's not a whole lot you can do from that
regard. So....
Botchway/ And also just to be clear, I asked for a conversation. I wasn't saying we were going
to sue or pursue (several talking) effort in general. I just wanted a more in depth
conversation than a I0 -minute conversation at 10:00 at night. That's all.
Cole/ Could we have it set out like nine months from now?
Botchway/ Like I said, I removed my ... (both talking) I removed it.
Cole/ Okay.
Mims/ I think bring it back up after the legislature (several talking)
Throgmorton/ ...afterwards. All right, I think we're done with the work session. All right. Work
session is adjourned. Thank you everybody!
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