HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-01-08 TranscriptionJanuary 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 1
Hayek/Okay. Welcome to the budget, new members. I'm going to turn it over to
Rick, Dale and Jeff here. They will walk us through what they intend to
do over the course of the day and our job today is to listen and ask
questions and, uh, toward the end of the day, or at certain points, I think
we're going to be asked to give a bit of guidance going forward as they
jump into the, the bulk of the budget process, but, go ahead guys.
Helling/ Um, just, just to start off, echo what the Mayor indicated, this is not a day
for decision making per se, um, particularly with, with the CIP. Uh, the
whole idea behind the CIP process is to go through projects and get real
familiar with all of the projects, particularly the ones, focus mostly on the
ones that are proposed for FY11, but as you'll see in the plan there are
others that you know, in the, over the four year plan. Um, what we would
like from you is, is at least as you go through some indication that there
are projects that you think are, that you want to discuss further, uh, you
have questions about, so we can highlight those and help in framing the
ultimate decision making on the CIP. So, and, and we'll try to take really
good notes and make sure that when you come back we, we've included
all those issues that you bring up. If you have questions, uh, that we
need to get answers for about any of the projects, uh, certainly, you know,
this is the time to bring those up, so that we can get you as much
information as you need down the road when you're making your final
decisions.
Uh, same thing is true, the budget overview is just that, it's an overview;
it's not, not a time that you have to make, uh, decisions on the budget, but
again, on those kinds of issues, particularly, uh, policy issues that you see
as we go through. We give you a balanced budget, but it may not be
balanced the way you want it to be balanced. So again we'd like that, uh,
that indication of what are the issues for you so that we can bring them
back, get the issues you need so when it's time to start making decisions
on that you can. Um, with that, let's, let's move through the, uh, Capital
Improvements Program, um, and we' 11, uh, we' 11 give you as much
information as, as you need. Um, I think we can get through both of
those things today. There shouldn't be a problem with that, but don't
hesitate to, you know, in the interest of time don't hesitate to ask
questions and so forth, because I think it's important that you get the
answers now rather than, uh, be asking for that information later. And,
but I think even with that we'll make, try very hard to keep this moving to
get through. Uh, one thing we do need to take a break right at noon, um,
because Matt has to be some place to make a short presentation around
12:15, so, uh, wherever we are at that time, we' 11 have to, we' 11 have to
stop. But we'll have a couple breaks in between too. Okay? Rick?
Fosse/ Thank you, Dale. You want to turn down the lights, Marian, and we'll get
started on the Capital Improvements Program? Um, our budget is split
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 2
into two separate sections: we've got the Capital Improvements budget
and the Operating budget. And really what distinguishes the two is
Capital budget deals with assets and the Operating budget deals with operations.
Uh, but that's not to say that the two aren't, aren't related. Uh, capital
investments can have impacts on operations, most obvious of which we've been
talking about for some time, that's fire station. If you build a fire station you need
to staff it. Uh, one of the, some of the not so obvious examples are, are parks,
uh, streetscapes, roads, that if, if you build those you need to take care of them
too, and, an example, uh, a couple years ago, some of you may recall, that we
added an additional snow route to the city, just to accommodate that incremental
growth. So that, that's an example of how, where capital projects have an impact
on, on the operations.
Uh, we'll be working primarily from two documents this morning: one is the
Power Point, and you have a copy of the Power Point in front of you, uh, that,
with a spot to take notes on a project, so you can, you can follow along there;
also in front of you is a financial document that parallels the Power Point; they'll
be in the same order. And all the information in the financial document also
appears in this document, the draft budget that you've already received,
specifically, that, that section in the back entitled, uh, "The Capital Improvement
Program." Um, this is a draft document, there are a few tune-ups represented here.
The difference between the two documents is purely how they're organized. This
is a financial tool; this is a tool to facilitate our discussion today. So they, they've
been grouped by categories, and they are also listed within each category by
alphabetical order. So they're not, not listed by priority; don't, don't take any, uh,
stock in what order they appear in there. And, and we'll have a slide a little later
on, on how, how to read this. In fact, we'll get to that pretty quick here.
Um, our objective for this morning is just to familiarize you with projects, give
you an opportunity to ask questions, as Dale pointed out, if you have any concerns
or comments specifically about the, the projects that are coming immediately,
FY10 and 11, by all means let us know, and, uh, decisions will come later in the
budget process. Make decisions today all that you want, but don't feel pressured
into making them today.
Um, and the last thing I'll note before we start is, is I wanted to distinguish
between the timeline on capital projects and, and operations. Uh, they, they have
a very different life cycle, timeline type thing, uh, it was, it was ten years from
the first point at which the Council discussed the water plant to when it went into
operations. Um, for a road project that can span three to four years, typically,
from first discussion to opening the road. Uh, some of the factors that enter in
there, uh, just the design, uh, property acquisition, which is, is somewhat of a
lengthy state-specified process. Uh, you got regulatory approvals. There seems
to be more approvals necessary each year, and also with the State cutting back
on their staff, those approvals will likely take longer. Uh, and then we're
working more and more with funding agencies, and that can take time as well.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 3
Um, although we have an interesting situation shaping up on the wastewater plant,
where we've got one funding agency saying, slow down, not so fast, and another
funding agency saying, come on we want to see some results soon, so, they're,
they're in conflict with each other and that's one of the challenges that we have to
work through. Uh, so in operations, you can make a decision to, to add a parks
maintenance employee and, in, in two months, that person will likely be on line
and working. But you could make a decision the same day to build a new road
and it'll be two to three years before that's up and running, so, just wanted to
point that out.
So, any questions before we begin? Okay.
The way we've organized our discussion today will be, uh, by category. We'll
lead off with Airport, and then talk about Public Safety, uh, Landfill, then Public
Utilities, Transportation Services (that used to be Transit and Parking, those are
lumped together now), uh, Parks, Recreation and Trails, Streets, Bridges and
Traffic Engineering, uh, Miscellaneous Other Projects, that really don't fall neatly
into one of the other categories, and this, uh, we, we don't normally have in our
Capital Program, but we do now, and, uh, probably will remain here for a few
years, uh, Flood Recovery and Mitigation, and, uh, we have Recurring Projects,
these are projects that we do year in year out. You might ask if, if we do them
like that why aren't they in the operating budget, and, and the reason for that is, is
because they involve the, either the incremental growth of our capital assets or
major maintenance on those capital assets. So again, they're tied to assets versus
operations. And then we have a section on "On the Radar", they don't fall within
the funding document, um, well they, they show up, most of them, on the
unfunded list, but they're projects that, that staff thinks are important for you to be
familiar with because the possibility they, you know, a funding source becomes
available, an opportunity becomes available because of a development, they might
move sooner than later so they, its good just to tune you into those. And, whoops,
got Recurring in there twice. There we go. And then we'll wrap up with some
questions and discussions. And by all means, don't feel that you need to wait
until the end to ask questions and talk about projects.
Uh, this is just a snapshot of what's in the financial document, and show you what
is there, and let's look at the, the bottom one as an example. Got the project
name, this is the total project cost -in this case it's the South Wastewater
Treatment Plant expansion. This does not include the demolition and site work at
the old north plant. Uh, just a, a project description, then, uh, your, your columns
represent your fiscal years and rows represent the different funding sources, and
in this case we're hoping to get 22 million dollars from EDA, uh, 5 million dollars
from CDBG, uh, 3.5 million, to possibly up to 10 million from EDA, and it's this
funding source and this funding source that are at odds on timing, those are the
ones pulling us in different directions, and then the local option sales tax, as well
as wastewater user fees, so that's, that's how you read that information that's in
this document that's handed out today.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 4
So with that, let's lead off with airport, and Mike there's a mouse there that works
as well, should work, yep, yeah .. .
Tharp/ Alright.
Fosse/ And Mike will take us through the airport projects.
Helling/ Mike, why don't you introduce yourself to the new members, as well?
Tharp/ Sure. My name's Michael Tharp. I'm the Operations Specialist at the
Iowa City Airport, and I'd like to welcome everybody to our round
of budget discussions.
Uh, as far as the airport goes we're ...I'll go to this next slide here ... I wanted
to have these two up as we talk a little bit about how the airport's funded, um, as
far as through the uh, through the projects, the capital projects we do out there,
and where the airport's been over the last five years. Uh, in the upper left side of
the screen you'll see a, an over-head shot from 2005, and then a, a fairly recent
one from 2008, and you'll see that over the last five years, uh, what we've been
able to do at the airport is we've completed the runway extension; we've
completed the reconstruction phases of the existing runways that had been, uh,
had been the original concrete from the 1940's and 1950's. And you can see
some of the development that's taken place through, uh, Airport Commerce
Park, uh, Mormon Trek being completed to the south and also on the west side
of the airport the new PIP building, and I believe it's a car dealership across the
road, um.
And, uh, the airport is funded basically through a, a couple of different grant
programs. The, uh, Federal Aviation Administration, um, has an airport
improvement program which funds about 95% of any projects that are done by,
or, awarded by the FAA. Um, that, uh, grant system has, has basically allowed us
to do the extension; allowed us to do the reconstruction efforts, and uh, those were
fairly significant dollars that the airport was able to bring into the community
from, uh, the FAA. The, uh, state program mirrors, uh, the, uh, federal system;
however, the grant, uh, the grant matching is a little less. Depending on the
project you get anywhere from a 50-85%, uh, grant match, and we use the state
funds a lot for, uh, localized areas like taxi-ways, um, hangar rehabilitations, and I
believe, uh, the plans coming up are for, uh, resurfacing of the entrance roads and
some other, you know, non runway-oriented, uh, upkeep.
Um, as I mentioned the last five years really have been, uh, uh, more maintenance
oriented, uh: completing the extension, redoing the runways. What we're entering
now is kind of a safety and capacity enhancement phase, and that's what a lot of
our projects in the, in the, uh, program are tailored to right now. Uh, the 10-unit
T-hangar, this was actually in the book for fiscal year 2013. Um, the Airport
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 5
Commission is hoping to leverage some state funds to help construct the building.
Right now we have a waiting list of about 25 people looking to get hangared at
the Iowa City Airport. And it takes, it takes about two years to cycle through the
waiting list, so we're losing, uh, potential tenants essentially to uh, areas around
Iowa City -Cedar Rapids, Tipton, uh, Washington-basically, uh, if you're within
driving distance of Iowa City there are potential, um, airports around the area that
can get you hangared before Iowa City can. Part of this is to help, uh, alleviate
the, uh, um, capacity issue.
Bailey/Like, what revenue stream-how much revenue does that loss represent; the 25
person waiting list? Do you have an idea?
Tharp/ Well, the average hangar, once, rents for about $150 bucks a month. So, uh,
um, brain's not working completely well this morning (chuckles)---
Bailey/That's fine. I can do the math. Thanks.
Tharp/ The next facility we're looking at in the n--, in the immediate future is the airport
equipment shelter. Uh, for many years we used the, uh, old United hangar that
was recently torn down as part of the extension project. Um, with, with the loss
of that space a lot of our equipment now is, on the off-season, is sitting outside
and exposed to the weather elements, and we're just to get a, essentially a pole
building up so that we can have things here, outside of the elements and also
provide a little more, uh, storage capacity for actual airport maintenance and
airport facility items.
Wright/ Is that just a representative pole building?
Tharp/ Yeah, (chuckles) representative.
Bailey/But it literally will be a pole building?
Tharp/ I, that's our intent, we're not .. .
Bailey/ The price looks like it.
Wright/ And, uh right now things are just stored outside and wherever?
Tharp/ We, we do have one shop area which we can keep the active equipment in, so
that, uh, you know right now the snow plow, that, the truck, and a couple of a, a
minor pieces of equipment are, are within those buildings. But the off-season
equipment like the uh, the uh, batwings for the mowers and things are exposed
to the elements right now and are probably sitting underneath about a foot of
snow.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 6
The corporate Hangar L, that's the one, that one, again, addresses the capacity
issues. With the extension and the rehab of the, the, uh, runway system we have
seen an increase in the size of jets, so what we had thought was going to
happen, is actually happening. As the economy turns around we think that'll, uh,
definitely pick back up. Um, this facility that you see in the, in the picture here is
actually the fixed base operators maintenance facility. It doubles as a storage
site, you know, when, when they can fit things in. And, what we're looking at is
now a place to house the jet traffic that's coming into Iowa City.
Bailey/ Mike, why wouldn't you, um, combine space in the corporate hangar with the
equipment shelter? Did you look at that feasibility?
Tharp/ We have, and a lot of it comes, the, uh, corporate hangar L, right now what we're
targeting for funding is we've got a, um, local, uh, local funds via I, I believe a
GEO loan, and we're targeting state grant money for essentially the other half of
it, a 50/50 split. Um, I believe there's also some, um, funding remaining from uh
sales in Airport Commerce Park that may or may not get used, or, um, that's a
discussion we're in the process of having right now. And, oh, the conflict really
comes from the different sources of money, whether it's state or federal.
Bailey/I just wondered of there would be even a small cost savings to do that.
Tharp/ We, we're certainly, it's an option that uh, at least an avenue that has been
thought of and we are attempting to keep things together if we can.
Dickens/How many corporate jets do have now?
Tharp/ Right now the FBO, when their not in use stores, uh, dep- depending on facilities
stores four to six. Uh, the FBO also has offices in Galesburg and Burlington, so
they kind of rotate based on where they can get things in
Bailey/ Do you have a sense of the demand?
Tharp/ Um, not quantitative. I know the FBO has certainly requested more space,
because they, like I said, the, uh, storage facility right now is really the
maintenance facility, so. We don't have a, a true storage area for jet traffic.
don't have don't have a true storage area for jet traffic, and it becomes a, you
know, really a lot more apparent in inclement weather when you get, uh, spring
showers, spring storms, uh, that can produce hail, and really, uh, really damage
aircraft if they're left outside.
Aviation Commerce Park Flood Mitigation, the Airport Commission did present
to Coun-uh, the Council last summer, a, uh, essentially a development plan
which contained, uh, areas that the airport still needed in the south, as well as
potential areas that could be developed for other commercial uses. Uh, this
particular project would be, uh, pretty much what it says, flood mitigation for
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 7
either uh, the Willow Creek, which, uh, public works did a study on how best to,
uh, remove the area from the floodplain, and I think most of it dealt with, uh,
building, increased um, uh.. .
Fosse/ I can cover that for a sec if you like .. .
Tharp/ Sure.
Fosse/ Uh, as with many projects, they, they consist of building blocks that come
together over time, and one of those building blocks for the flood control down
here as when Mormon Trek extended was built we did a substantial investment
in a large box culvert that drains to the south. Prior to that Willow Creek used to
bend up here and then go through a culvert under the railroad that was built in
the 1800's and was very much undersized. And, and the airport winded up being
like a bathtub, because it didn't have a way to escape. Uh, we created that
outlet, but the problem that, that still exists is the capacity within the creek
channel itself, it has a tendency to spill over the banks, travel across the railroad
property, and then get, get back into the drainage system down here. Uh, so
what needs to be done is, is to build essentially a, a levee along here to keep it in
the bank, to get it down and on out to the river down there.
Davidson/ And in case you're wondering why we'd spend $2 million doing this project,
in the City's Comprehensive Plan, uh, the area, the colored squares there which is
airport property that you see, and the area just to the west, which is the Williams'
farm, uh, that is shown as potential for industrial development. It's flat; it has
good access to the highway system; it has potential access to rail, uh, Crandic
could be brought across, uh, old Highway 218, and so, you know, it does have
potential for expanding the commercial and industrial tax base eventually.
Wilburn/ That was all part of the plan with Aviation Park South anyway, wasn't it?
Davidson/ Yeah, the plan with Aviation Commerce Park South is a little bit amorphous
right now. Uh, the Airport Commission intends to have some more discussion to
that, but I think as Mike, Mike's indicated, a combination of allowing for
expansion for the airport and potential industrial development is basically what
will eventually happen.
Champion/ How much debt does the airport have now to the City? Do you have any
idea?
Tharp/ I think right now it stands at about 1.5 million, and that is, uh, related to the
hangars that were built in the late 90's. Uh, this last summer we're, we, uh, uh,
sold, a, Council approved the sale of at least the piece of Commerce Park North,
North that repaid the, uh, um, debt loan for that area. So everything now is, is
particularly, uh, hangar related, and, all of that debt is, is contained within the
operational budget.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 8
Helling/ Just, just to clarify particularly, uh, for our new members, um, they, the
improvements that were done on the, the, uh, Aviation Commerce Park North
were all done with, through general fund operations-or through general fund
funding. And, uh, the agreement was that, as that develops and that was sold,
that would go back to pay it off. And as mike was referring to, the last, not the
last parcel in the Aviation Commerce Park North, but the last parcel that was sold
put us over the hill on that, so. So, that is all paid off now, and that's what Mike
was referring to a little bit ago about there was some funding left from the sale
that could be applied perhaps to, to the City's portion of funding on some of these
projects. That clear?
Tharp/ I believe this is our final slide of the airport--, nope, couple more left. Uh, this
essentially is, is, a overview slide of, of what the projects are in the book, uh,
actually, what we're, as I mentioned before what we're going into is, is more or
less an expansion of capacity. Uh, the parallel taxi-way to 725, uh, will increase
the safety of the runways, and also allow for lower instrument approach
minimums, uh, weather minimums, so that, uh, the air, air, the, uh, aircraft can
use the runway at lower visibilities and lower cloud cover layers. Um, uh, the
airport entrance road and parking lot I, I did mention a little, uh, briefly, uh, part
of a just general rehabilitation of the pavements that have been a, you know,
installed and rehabbed since the 1950's and onward and it's just time for that to
be, uh, resurfaced. Uh, the perimeter road, uh, the flood mitigation that was
shown earlier and the perimeter road that's mentioned here are basically the two,
uh, initial things that, uh, enable the airport to really move forward on
development of, uh, that south area. Um, the perimeter road would be internally
used so that, uh, maintenance vehicles, fueling vehicles, uh, can actually get to
that south, uh, area without having to take fuel trucks on the, on the road on
Riverside and loop around that way.
And, another capacity enhancement which is, uh, the expanded apron, uh, uh,
parking area, as you can see by the photograph, on, especially on game days
and other high traffic, uh, um, uh, times, we do get, uh, pretty well packed with
aircraft. I believe this, uh, photograph was an Iowa/Ohio State football game a
few years ago, and the count officially was about 74 aircraft at the airport, um,
with folks that, uh, were attending the game. As, as you can see by the photo as
well, there's a couple of aircraft way down here, also poses, you know potential
security issues because we don't have, uh, the manpower on staff all the time to
be able to make sure, you know, this line of, especially these guys down here,
you know, if somebody were to hop a fence to the south or something or
otherwise gain access they may be able to beat us to aircraft and that's never a
good thing.
Champion/ Mike, uh, just for the information of the new City Council people, how many
landings and take-offs at the airport a year?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 9
Tharp/ Well, the last, uh, DOT study, uh, the D-uh, Iowa DOT did an economic impact
study this last summer and rated the airport at about 36,000 operations: an
operation is a take-off or a landing, so, essentially 18,000 aircraft a year. With
the economy, the downturn certainly has been felt, you know, I, I'd probably put
us closer to 20-25,000 right now, just with, the, uh, aviation itself is a cyclical
nature, spring and summer are the best, you know, flying opportunities, and
these last couple years with the, uh, the way the runway reconstruction has went,
um, that's also hampered activity. But, uh, as everything turns around, again,
facilities are, are, you know, as far as the runways go, they're finished so we
don't anticipate any major disruptions, uh, in the immediate future, and I think
we'll see traffic pick back up.
Hayek/ Are the, um, are the line items under the "Miscellaneous Improvements"
section-
Tharp/ Mm-hm.
Hayek/---listed in order in which they would be, uh, executed, assuming funding?
Tharp/ Let's see, "Obstruction Removal" ...yeah, they are listed, a they're listed in here
as they are listed with the FAA, uh, federal plan, so that our obstruction
mitigation and, uh, essentially parallel taxiway, in, and, even the airport entrance
road ... Let's see here, the obstruction removal, the parallel taxiway, uh,
perimeter road and the apron reconstruction and expansion and connecting
taxiway: those four are actually federal programs and filed in the federal program.
The airport entrance road is something the Airport Commission anticipates going
after state funds for. That would ...assuming funding cycles through like we
hope it will, that would enable, uh, those projects to be done ,according to the
schedule.
Fosse/ Any other questions for Mike?
Karr/ You need a mike.
Manfield/ Can you address which one of these projects have had prior units completed,
like the parallel taxiway? Is that, um, just so they know what's kind of continuing
in process?
Tharp/ Well, as far as, uh, the projects that are shown here, everything would be
essentially new projects. Uh, um, ongoing projects that are, you know, still in the
system but, you know, for various reasons either were, were, (inaudible) an
overhead here. Uh, the reconstruction projects that we've done this last summer
are still in the, uh, capital system. Uh, there are a couple of springtime issues
that'll be done, like seeding, so as far as those projects, this, uh, the bulk of them
are done, but through the way the FAA system works with grant close out, uh,
they will be in the system for a little while. Um, and the way, uh, the way the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 10
airport works with the City as far as, um, the design and construction
implementation, um, it's all dependent on FAA or state grants, unless, you know,
the projects specifically had local money, um, with the FAA grant, uh,
participates in the cost of design and the cost of construction, and without, um,
those items we really don't do anything until, uh, something is in place.
Fosse/ Anything else for Mic? Thank you, Mike.
Tharp/ Thank you.
Fosse/ (Inaudible) I'll point out that in relation to Deb's question, another distinction
between these two documents, the purple one that you got earlier and the one
that's in front of you today; there are a lot more projects in here than in here, the
difference being that the projects that are already in progress, that is they've
already been bid, or, or, construction's complete, waiting to close out the
contract, they're all in here. This is a financial document. We gotta track all
those things. But for the sake of our discussion today, they're, they're irrelevant
because no decisions need to be made on them. So that's, that's where we've
weeded it down to something that's much more concise for our discussion today.
Rocca/ Thank you, Rick.
Fosse/ Mm-hm.
Rocca/ Good morning all. Special welcome to our new Council members, Susan and
Terry. As you know, I'm Andy Rocca, serving as your Fire Chief, and, uh, still
looking forward to our tour of Fire Department facilities by the way, once the
weather does finally settle down.
Uh, with that, let's talk a little bit about Fire Station 4. It's the uh, the first project
that we've got within the Capital Improvement Program. Uh, as you know, we
did a groundbreaking, uh, I guess it was last fall, late last fall. Uh, we've secured
some I-JOBS funding there, as indicated, uh, I believe in the lower left, $2.2
million. And, uh, we're hoping to get that project, the, uh, the plans cleaned up.
And it should be coming to you, uh within the next two or three weeks. And we'd
like to get that out to bid very soon, so we can take advantage of, uh, the early
spring construction season. Uh, the facility is about 10,000 square feet. As you
can see here, it is a, uh, drive-through facility, and uh, it's got all the amenities
that you would think fora 24/7 operation: um, you know in terms of, uh, a
dayroom area, office area, here, some of the central core functions, locker-room
space, dormitory space, fitness space with an expanded apparatus area here.
And, uh, as related to this project, we are looking at purchasing a pumper, uh,
fire engine, and then another ladder truck as well, to serve the city. And so that
would give us our second ladder within the city. Do you have any questions
about that project? I know that many of you are quite familiar with it; we've
talked about it for a number of years. But it's, uh, our intent to get it out to bid
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 11
here in the very near future.
Champion/ Andy, at one time we talked about incorporating some ambulance service in
there. What's ever happened with that?
Rocca/ Uh, we've had some discussion with them, informal as well as formal. At this
point I don't know how interested they are. Uh, it seems alogical, uh, thing to
occur down the road; it's happening all across the nation, and the state for that
matter, to have fire-based EMS. Uh, it's one of those things that, uh, I believe
currently Johnson County Ambulance has one unit out in one of the Coralville fire
stations now. And so, it, you know, we're trying to build for that, uh, but it also
has to strategically meet their needs, I think, if we were to enter into some kind of
a cooperative agreement with Johnson County.
Hayek/ Is there anything we can do now in terms of design to anticipate that eventuality?
Rocca/ It's incorporated in there currently.
Hayek/ It already is.
Rocca/ Yes, it is.
Dickens/ Seems to be a lot of ambulance going out Dodge Street, so, because of the
interstate there and north Highway 1. So it seems to be .. .
Rocca/ Right.
Helling/ Just as a note, we actually designed that into Fire Station 2, also. For those of
you who've been there, there's dormitory space for it.
Rocca/ The facilities are expanded, whether it would be for an ambulance unit or second
fire unit; there is expansion built into the facility.
Fosse/ This is a LEED certified building, is that right?
Rocca/ That is correct. In fact, we just learned that Fire Station 2 received gold LEED
certification, so we're quite excited about that. And, uh, Fire Station 4 as well, is
designed for the, the gold LEED certification as well.
Fosse/ And we got an I-JOBS grant that covers approximately half the cost?
Roccal Yeah, some of the, uh, construction cost, design cost, and I believe even some
of the, uh, interest on the GO bonds was uh, applicable under the I-JOBS grant.
Other questions related to Station 4? Hope to get that to you very soon; we can
move forward.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session .Page 12
Hayek/ Rick, I'm sorry, can you describe the inter-fund loan; how that plays into it?
Fosse/ Actually, I think Dale's got a better handle on that, or, or, Kevin. One of the two.
Helling/ You know, we would handle that much like other projects where we fund
them either entirely or partially from inter-fund loans. That's usually from our
eserves. Uh, a lot of it comes from the landfill because we're required to, to hold
money in reserve in the landfill for a variety of reasons, including the debt that we
have, and also, uh, we have other funds that we have to have available because of
the volatility of the landfill. Um, but we are, we are allowed to, to move that
money internally, and we do do internal loans and we do charge the going rate of
interest, so eventually it's paid back at a current interest rate to the landfill fund,
or whatever other internal fund it may come from. Uh, but we're able to do that
and utilize that without having to pay the costs of, of, of borrowing money, you
know, through the sale of bonds. So, it's a little bit of a cost savings for us and a
convenience, and I think it works well for everybody.
Rocca/ Anything else for me on Station 4? The next item then is fire apparatus, and
probably for the benefit of our new Council members and a refresher for some of
the incumbents. Uh we have a fire apparatus replacement schedule and it's
essentially built around a 15 year plan. Our fire apparatus, generally the
pumpers and rescue trucks would run front line for about seven years and then
go into reserve status for about another seven years, at which time they're ready
to either be traded in or sold outright to another department or user. Uh, what we
have this year upcoming, uh, would be the replacement of our rescue truck,
heavy rescue truck known as Rescue 1, a reserve engine, a Spartan engine, and
then the fire safe-house - and I don't have a picture of that for you, but that is the
fire safe-house that we utilize through-out the elementary schools and Safety
Village, uh, to work on educational materials, public education, fire prevention
activities, within the elementary schools and Safety Village. Uh, these two units
are up for, uh, replacement in FY11 and FY12. Um, years ago, I think we were
running our apparatus 10 years front line/10 years reserve, and by the time they
hit reserve status they were virtually worn out, some of them approaching 90,000
miles on them. And so, this, uh, seven and seven schedule seems to fit
appropriately. We are experiencing much less down time with them, and, uh,
again, it's been along-standing schedule and one that has, uh, worked well for
us. Questions related to our apparatus replacement?
Wilburn/ Why is it called Scotty House?
Rocca/ Why?
Wilburn/ Scotty house?
Rocca/ That's the vendor. Yeah, we know it as the fire safe-house.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 13
Wilburn/ Okay.
Fosse/ Anything else for Andy? Thank you, Andy.
Rocca/ Thank you.
Fosse/ Well, let's move on to Landfill and Public Utilities. The first project there is the
East Side Recycling Center, and that's a project that, that's been around for
awhile, because we've had a design for some time and we've actually had it out
and, and took bids in the summer of 2008, early summer. That was at the, just
before the bubble burst when the economy was at its wildest and most
expensive. We got only one bid at that time and it was over $5 million. Uh, so
we chose to reject that bid and, uh, go back and, and see if there are less
expensive ways to, to approach this project, and perhaps phase it. And at this
time last year we were hoping to phase this project, uh, but that, proved to not
really work out really well because of the interrelations. We've got the, uh, we've
got the existing facility there now, which is where Restore is. They'll be some
improvements made to that building, we'll expand warehouse space here, uh, put
in recycling facilities and then we have the, the, uh, classroom space over here.
The, uh, geothermal for the classroom space is underneath this area over here,
so that's one of the obstacles to phasing the project. We decided it's in our best
interest if we do it to package it all back together, uh, bid it as one project; it's
about a, estimated at about a $4.6 million including design and the works there.
Um, and then that will go out later this spring. So far, we've seen good bids
coming in this year. It's a much better bid climate than in the summer of 2008.
Um, this is another view of it and this is the education center. I will point out that
we've got a lot of innovative things going on and one of the things that we've
changed is that this will continue to be LEED certified, the education center; but
the warehouse space will not, because there's not a big payback on getting
LEED certification on a space that's not even heated. Uh, so we, that, that was
one of the things that was driving up costs on that first go around, um, so that's
one of the changes that we've made. We also have some unique drainage
features down there, innovative, off of this area, and we received a, a stimulus
grant for that of about $70,000. However, when we examined it and looked at
the, at the, restrictions, or the obligations that that put on the entire 4.6 million
project, it wasn't in our financial interest to accept that $70,000. It would end up
costing us more than it was worth. So, we politely declined and, and moved on
on that one. Any questions of East Side before I move on?
Okay, we'll head out to the landfill now, and, uh, this is uh, for those of you new,
this is out west of town. Uh, it was opened in around 1972, I believe. And the
east side, these cells are all full, and we're in the process of filling the cells on the
west side now, and we are, uh, actually in the process of building the newest cell
that extends out onto property that we purchased just a couple years ago. As a
matter of practice and policy we, our intent is to have the space available, land
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 14
available for a minimum of 20 years in the future. Anything less than that, in the
life of a landfill, is just cutting it too close. So we're in good shape there with the
land that we own, and this cell, the new cell, will have plenty of space for quite a
number of years to come.
Um, we've split this new cell into two phases. And, uh, one of the reasons we did
that is, is that the EPA and the state DNR are changing the regulatory
requirements for landfill cells, and this is one of the first ones that they're
reviewing. It's taking a long time and we didn't have that much time, so we, we
let a contract just to dig the hole. And, uh, so that's going on right now, digging a
big hole out there. And, and really got great prices on that. I think we had 13
bidders on it and we saw earth prices, unit prices for moving soil that we haven't
seen since around the 1980's. So that's, that's terrific. And one of the things that
we're doing out here, as we dig the hole we're sorting the soil and we're, we're
putting the good material in one place, the not so good material in another. So
that we're stashing away soil to elevate Dubuque Street. And we got a lot of dirt
out here, so perhaps what you're seeing in this picture is future Dubuque Street.
(Chuckles.)
One of the things going on out there is the, uh, when we build this new cell we're
going to cut into the toe of these cells. These cells all drain in this direction.
They all have leachate collection systems in it. Uh, what we're finding is the, uh,
the uh, these, these were all built to EPA specs, using exactly what they wanted.
And the, uh, the filter mechanism around the the system is, is starting to plug up
in those. Uh, kind of like an air filter might in your car over time. And, so, what
we're going to do is cut into the toe of each of those to allow them to drain into
the new drainage system in the new cell that has a different design, and alleviate
some of that, that water that's pooling in the bottom of those old cells. Now,
those old cells all have liners in them so that water's not gonna go anywhere.
Uh, but, that might be one of the things that's contributing to some of the odor out
there. And, and that's, as you know, one of the things that we've been focusing
on lately is, is getting that manageable.
Wright/ So does the EPA, do they come out and monitor the leachate that comes out, or
is that something we have to do and submit? I'm just curious .. .
Fosse/ We, we monitor. We do the monitoring. And we've got a lot of monitoring wells
out there, and we're putting in more. Uh, and, we do I want to say, last time I
checked it was like 1,680 tests, groundwater tests per year, and we look at a lot
of different constituents in there. Uh, both to see how much water's in the cells,
and we also monitor the groundwater surrounding the landfill. So we see if
anything is getting out from under there. We had that issue back in the 80's on
the old cells, that weren't lined, and we retro-fitted a drainage system along here
that seems to be handling that problem well. .
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 15
Dickens/ Is this the entire amount of land we have or do we have anything west of that?
Fosse/ We have, uh, let's see, we bought 80 acres here.. .
Dickens/ So there's more?
Fosse/ Yes.
Dickens/ Okay.
Fosse/ And there's another piece down here, and we got another 40 acres up in this
area here.
Wright/ Are we filling the cells more quickly than we'd anticipated?
Fosse/ Well, the, the tornado and flood debris are not helping, you know. That's, that's
taken up a lot of space there, and uh, to, to, solve this, this, um, the drainage
issue here we're gonna need to move a lot of garbage that's already in there.
Now, we won't lose space but we're just moving it around. And that's, that's
gonna take time and expense, but the, that's ... It is the best way to approach
that project there.
The other thing going on at the landfill that's not a capital project, uh, but I'll just
fill you in on it, is we have our gas collection system out there. We collect the
methane, we flare it so that it becomes less potent a green house gas. We're
working with the University to pipeline that out to the Oakdale Campus. We'll
sell them the gas and that'll go into their boiler system out there. Uh, so that'll be a
win-win for both parties. So that's, that is a project we, we're meeting every
other week on that right now to move that forward.
Wright/ What happened to the MidAmerican concept?
Fosse/ Well, we, we examined a variety of concepts and they kind of boiled down to two.
One is do we work with the utility company to build on-site generation out here,
or do we work with the University to, to move our gas elsewhere and, and burn it.
Uh, the, the option of working with the University is best in our view for a couple
reasons. And one of the main one's is, when you generate electricity with, with
gas on-site here, uh, there's a lot of waste heat. You're not getting the full value
out of every BTU in that gas; whereas if it goes into a system, a boiler system,
that the University operates, they have a way of capturing and using that waste
heat. So they can get more value out of each cubic foot of that; hence, we get
more value out of it. That went into our decision making.
Anything else on landfill?
Wright/ We're still required to keep a reserve to cover closing the landfill?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 16
Fosse/ Yes, that's the, the closure/post-closure fund, and that's what Dale was talking
about. It's a, it's a fairly substantial fund, and that's a, a fairly substantial chunk
of what you pay every time you take a ton, or, or whatever you take, out to the
landfill; it goes into that fund.
Fosse/ Transportation Services.
Davidson/ While Chris is coming up we can start giving you some information about this.
The first, uh, project that, uh, is listed in your materials -thank you, Rick-
Fosse/ Mm-hm.
Davidson/ Or, actually, (inaudible) ... is the, uh, Near Southside Multi-use, uh, Parking
Facility. If you, if you go back, uh, 25 years, what we have generally done to
accommodate, uh, growth in the Central Business District is add about 500
parking spaces every five years. Uh, and the, the cost per space, uh, has varied,
uh, you know, sometimes using about $20,000, $25,000 per space, uh, it gives
you an idea of the, the expense of doing this. Um, the model that we've used
with our last couple facilities, and I think everyone would agree fairly
successfully, uh, those being the, uh, the Tower Place facility which you see
here, as well as the Court Street Transportation Center, which I believe you saw
a slide of earlier, um, is to, to do them as multi-use facilities. These are such
giant, monolithic facilities that, uh, trying to make them fit into the context of the
Central business District is something that I think, uh, behooves us in terms of
just making sure that they're good neighbors for the, the rest of the Central
Business District. So, we, we are going to pursue our next facility on the former
site of St. Patrick's School, across the street from where the church, uh, was hit
by the tornado. It is going to be a multi-use facility. It will accommodate the
growth of the Central Business District, uh, to the south. (Clears throat.) Uh, we
are looking at again approximately 500-600 parking facilities in this space. Rick,
if you want to click to the next slide; it just shows a location map of where we're
talking. Um, we will have both commercial space -we are hoping between
25,000 and 35,000 square feet-uh, we won't be determining exactly how that's
configured until we get a little further into the design process. Uh, it may be
individual spaces that will be sold as commercial condominiums, uh, as we did
with Tower Place. Uh, or we, we do have one single larger tenant, uh, that is
interested in working with us. Again, the goal here is to make the building, uh, fit
more into the context of downtown, and put it, in the case of this space, back on
the tax rolls. Uh, the space, since it was St. Patrick's School has not been
generating property taxes, but at least that portion of it dedicated to commercial
space we would see as property tax generating entity. The other thing that we
are hoping to, uh, pull off with this building for the first time is incorporating
housing, uh, into it. We will partner with a private developer to do that, and
again, until we get into the design of the building, uh, we don't know exactly what
the configuration will be. We are targeting, and this is at the, uh, request of the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 17
previous City Council -which five of you were members of-what is referred to
as workforce housing. It's, it's housing for, uh, basically middle-income, uh, type
folks, it's a niche that we feel can be done successfully, uh, in the, in the Central
Business District, but has not so far. And so we want to kind of do a
demonstration project. By having the City involved with a private developer we
can introduce some incentives to hopefully, uh, pull it off and show that it can be
done successfully. So, what you have in your budget for FY11 is basically the
design and engineering work to get the project ready to bid. The, the decision to
go forward and construct the project will be a subsequent decision of the City
Council, and you're, you're approval of this budget item is for the design and
engineering expense during FY11. Do you have anything to add?
Obrien/ No, I just think that, um, as far as capacity for that, that facility, we always carry
a, a, a waiting list for our facilities, and currently we're in the 2,200, uh, range as
far as awaiting list for all of our facilities. So, demand is something that's always
there for additional facilities, um, in this area of the downtown.
Davidson/ Yeah, similar to when Rick was talking earlier about, uh, um, designing a road
project, or the differences between the operating budget and the capital budget,
in terms of a, uh, parking facility of this, of this magnitude, we'd --now, we're
fortunate with this one, we have the property acquisition out of the way; the City
controls the site; we did that about a year ago-um, typically we would have
perhaps even a year for preliminary discussion and acquisition of property, a
year to design and engineer the thing, and two years to build it. So, it's, it's,
again, we do need to plan and anticipate because it's a basically four years from
when you start thinking about it to you, Chris is able to sell a permit for a
particular parking space, so.
Dickens/ What's the potential cost of the new ramp, just based on (inaudible)?
Davidson/ Yeah, the difficulty in answering that question specifically, Terry, is that we,
we can tell you for the parking part of it -which is of course, our part of it-but
for the, uh, but for the commercial and the, uh, basically the property tax
generating space that will be privately held, um, but, but to give you a ballpark I
would think this could end up being a $25 million facility, $25-30 million,
perhaps.
Dickens/ How does this work in with the River Crossing?
Davison/ Well, this is at the very north edge of that river, river, Riverfront Crossings
area. It's certainly consistent in that, uh, you know, could potentially be an area
of long-term parking for other development that would occur in the area. The
next slide we're gonna talk about is the uh, the Rock Island Depot, and the
potential for Amtrak Service. Uh, this facility would definitely provide long-term
parking for that, as well as the Court Street Transportation Center. So, it's not,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 18
uh, it, it, it's slightly outside of the district, Terry, but I think consistent in terms
of the overall plan for south of Burlington Street.
Dickens/ Two blocks from the tracks.
Mims/ Mm-hm. The ... (inaudible), Jeff, you're saying if we do the, the planning and
engineering in ' 11, then we're looking at probably a couple years past that before
construction would be completed.
Davidson/ ' 12 or ' 13, we would expect an 18-24 month construction period.
Mims/ Okay. Because I know, I've had some discussions with people looking like for
office space, and large office space, kind of things, and, then, in some of their
timeframes are running shorter and shorter---
Davidson/ Right.
Mims/ ---as they're looking at whether they stay in Iowa City or leave, and didn't know
if this was going to end up being a possibility.
Davidson/ Yeah, and, and that's a good point to bring up. One of the catalysts for the
City constructing parking is to jumpstart exactly that sort of thing that you're
talking about. We do also collect impact fees in this area. The area south of
Burlington has an impact fee district where for, for development, commercial
development in that area, uh, and residential development, a developer only
provides half of the parking on-site and pays a fee for the other half. And those
fees go into us building our facilities. So we definitely do want to be a catalyst
for development such as you're talking about.
Mims/ Right. Okay. Thank you.
Hayek/ Uh, to the extent that we have non-city government facilities in the area in the
future -for example, a Justice Center, if that actually occurs-um, or University
facilities in the area, um, does, does that potential impact factor into our
planning?
Davidson/ It has. And, and it hasn't, it hasn't factored specifically Matt, in terms of the,
you know, we do demand studies when we're planning these. And the demand
study for this facility did not include the Justice Center. And, and, the, the impact
of the Justice Center, it looks like, is probably going to be displacing the Federal
Building parking lot. And, and the federal GSA will allow that to happen if
replacement parking is provided somewhere else, and that's where we come in.
Chances are the Court Street Trans-probably would be Court Street
Transportation Center and then that would displace parking to this facility---
Hayek/ Mm-hm.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 19
Davidson/ ---uh, would, would, would be connected to the Justice Center project. But,
those demand numbers Matt, are not part of the justification for these 500-600
spaces. Those will basically be added on in the future.
Hayek/ Okay.
Champion/ Um, we actually, the Justice Center actually got a letter from the federal
government --it, it takes years as you know- um, that they are, they would be
interested, but, if we can find parking for them. So, I'm sure they'll be
approaching the City again.
Davidson/ Yeah, and that has actually been the GSA's position for 10 or 15 years when
we've talked to them about displacing that lot is, it's sure, but they fell to market
the Federal Building, uh, commercial, or the office space, they have to have
parking in the vicinity to market that.
Yeah. The next slide then is the purchase and refurbishment of the old Rock
Island Depot, which you see here. Uh, I think most of you are aware that there is
a, an initiative, Midwest Rail Initiative, which we are a part of, that has as one of
its projects a, a line that would extend, uh, Amtrak line that would extend from,
initially, Chicago to Iowa City, eventually to Des Moines, and then eventually on
to Omaha. The first piece, uh, we would be the terminus, the west terminus here.
Uh, the State of Iowa has a grant application pending, uh, to the federal
government of which the, the purchase and refurbishment of this station is an
element; also would involve constructing a platform facility in the, I the area that
you see right here. And we'd try to do that in a manner that would be consistent,
uh, with the historic, uh, architecture of, of the building. Uh, we have been in
contact with the private property owners, uh, the law offices here, and, and they
are amenable to working with us on our eventual acquisition of the building.
Chances are that law office could remain there because we're, uh, we're not going
to need the whole building for the Amtrak service. Chances are we would use the
west end of it and allow the law offices to remain in the east end of it. Uh, we, I
guess, frankly are not in a huge hurry with this. I mean, it's going to likely take
two, three, perhaps up to four years for the Amtrak service extension to begin.
Uh, and so, what this project does, I mean you can see it does have the, uh, 50/50
funding, um, in, uh -I don't have the right page here-yeah, it does show the
federal grant of $800,000 in FYl 1; that's basically what we're waiting to hear on.
So, uh, this project will move ahead as that grant application moves ahead.
Dickens/ Nothing would be done until we actually get an idea when the train service will
come?
Davidson/ Right. Right, yeah, we'd have to have a pretty firm commitment, and, and I
will say Terry, that it does seem like there is a real firm intention at this point to
extend the service. I mean, they're serious about it. Uh, President Obama is,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 20
uh, obviously real interested in, in rail transportation nationwide. And especially
for those short, short trips like Chicago to Omaha, uh, those are trips where rail
can actually, uh, uh compete with, with---
Dickens/ Well, that line was supposed to be done in 2004, because I had to drive my
daughter over to Princeton, Illinois, to go to Chicago and the maps there said it
was supposed to be (inaudible) 2004 through Iowa.
Davidson/ You'll be, you'll be able to take the train to Princeton.
Dickens/ (Chuckles.) So, I know how they .. .
Davidson/ Any other questions about, about, uh, the Rock Island Depot?
Helling/ Before we move into, uh, Parks and Rec. projects there's been a request to take
a quick break. So why don't we take a five minute break.
****BREAK****
Moran/ Actually, the first item today will go ...will go to Ron. It falls underneath Parks
& Recreation, um, but it's actually gonna be a Public Works project, so. Let you
talk about that.
Knoche/ I'm Ron Knoche. I serve as your City Engineer. Um, this project is going to be
a joint project with the City of Coralville. Um, we have some STP funds
available to, um, we're actually going to widen the Butler Bridge, which is a, a
County facility, um, and make the connection between the Dubuque Street Trail
and the Waterworks Prairie Park's Trail. And, uh, that widening will happen on
the west side of the bridge, and, and then make that connection across there.
Currently the trail goes across the shoulder of the bridge, which is a unsafe
situation. So, we'll, we'll get it so it's a safer situation than it is today.
Davidson/ The splitting of the local match for this project is based on an existing 20/80
agreement that we have with Coralville, that shows that basically three quadrants
of the, the property here will, will eventually be Iowa City. One is already,
certainly, and then the, the one in the northwest corner if you will, that will
eventually be the City of Coralville. So that's, that's the reason for the one-third,
excuse me, one-quarter/three-quarter split of the local match.
Moran/ Uh, next project, City Park Trail Lighting, uh, we had this project moved up, uh,
into this year and we decided to pull it back for a couple of reasons. Uh, one is,
we wanted to see what was gonna happen with, uh, the rest of the trail lighting
along the Iowa River as result of the flood. And we hated to, we would have
hated to gone ahead and lit that and then had the university do something
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 21
different. And then with the Normandy Drive area, and, and however that's
gonna evolve after that, we just didn't want to do something and then have to go
back and redo it, so we wanted to push it back. The second issue we're
concerned about a little bit.is water. Uh, we've had two obviously devastating
floods, but whenever the water comes up, the trails are usually always the first
one affected. If you go by sometime in the summer and they open up, the Corp
opens that up, so, as you all know, electricity and water usually don't mix very
well. So we're trying to rethink how we want to put that together. So, you' 11 see
that later on in ' 14. We may decide to move that down further or move it up,
depending on what happens with the rest of the land across, across the river.
Fosse/ I might add in that, that the University and, and their lighting of the trail along the
Iowa River is, is looking at putting in a system that's very much like what we
have along Iowa Avenue. They like the fixtures we have there, uh, the globes
with caps on them, spillage out, and then we'd have a unified appearance and
theme throughout downtown and the trail system on lighting.
Moran/ Uh, Frauenholtz-Miller Park Development is something we've had on the books
for awhile. We've had that land, uh, donated to us through the family, hence the
name. And now with the development of the church, uh, right in that parcel right
there, that's become a focal point of that, that neighborhood, and they've got
quite a bit of development going along the south end, and a little bit on the east,
not as much on the west. But, uh, what we need to do is get with the
neighborhood now because the neighborhood is getting fairly established, uh,
and then decide what they want to do, how they want to do it, and then work
through those, uh, issues with them. And then, this is scheduled for FY12, so we
have a year to do that. And then we'll start hiring a design firm; then come up
with a plan. You'll see that, what we did, it's the same process with the North
Market Square, which we'll see a little bit later on.
Bailey/ So the funding goes for design?
Moran/ I'm sorry?
Bailey/ So the funding in ' 12 is design finding?
Moran/ No, it would be for the total project.
Bailey/ Okay. Design and the total project.
Moran/ Right. Correct.
Bailey/ Okay.
Hayek/ When would you anticipate that, all of it being completed?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 22
Moran/ Uh, by the end of ' 12 the money would be available so we'd like to start it the
first part of ' 12, which would be July 1 S`. And then whenever the construction
would be done by that. We'd hope to have, meet with the neighborhood and get
all that done prior to, uh, bidding it out, so we have a design to take to the
neighborhood.
Bailey/ Are there grant funds for city parks?
Moran/ Uh, there are and they're few and far between. But--
Bailey/ But we'll be pursuing those?
Moran/ ---we'll explore those. Yes. (Chuckles.)
Bailey/ Thank you.
Champion/ Just refresh my memory, where exactly is the land the City owns for that
park?
Moran/ Uh, this is Lower Muscatine Road, or, Lower West Branch, sorry, Lower West
Branch Road. This is where the new church is located at---
Champion/ Oh, okay. Okay.
Moran/ ---right here, and this is just a square.
Champion/ Ijust -okay, I get it. I was thinking that red spot was the church. Yeah.
Moran/ No.
Fosse/ A couple concepts have been kicked around here, anything from just a
neighborhood type park to if you would ever envision building a pavilion this
might be a good spot, because there's a lot of, it's just good flat, large spot. And
also it, it's set up as kind of a town square setting and you could put diagonal
parking all the way around that block and, to service that pavilion there. But
that's not is, what is envisioned in the capital program right now. There's a
much smaller dollar amount. Something you're interested in let us know.
Moran/ Hickory Hill Park Restroom and Bridge, uh, the, the front slide there is, is
currently, uh, what we call a tornado shelter -we're going after hazard mitigation
grant funding for that-uh, that would be placed in south Hickory Hill, along the
trial. If you're aware of the Norton Wayside, the new, uh, shelter that we put up
in honor of uh, Dee and Carrie Norton, uh, this would just right around the corner
from that and would be facing, uh, south, right along the trail. It comes across
the bridge from lower Seventh Avenue. We hope to have that application ready
and sent in by the end of this month and then we'll find out whether or not, uh,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 23
we'll receive funding for that. But that's a conceptual design. All the materials
and the design, uh, match the Norton Wayside. If you look at the, the top here,
uh, FEMA had an interesting question about that and told us they weren't gonna
pay for it and we said, yeah we know that. But the Norton, Carrie Norton bought
two of them when she put together the Wayside, and once we got that together
we figured out that it wasn't that big, so we just put one up, so she gave is the
other one. So we've already got that so we told them, aw, don't worry about
that--
(Chuckles.)
Moran/ ---we just wanted it to match and come together with that. So, so this will be the
restroom. And then the bridge replacement will be the oldest bridge that we have
if you go off of First Avenue into the park. Uh, it's a, the oldest bridge that we
have in the park and we'll be replacing that as well. And this is not the picture of
that, that's of the other bridge that we replaced. If you see the older bridge was
in the front and the newer bridge was in back, and we did that about seven or
eight years ago.
Wilburn/ Are we still allowed to call, name that park ...Did that get in before the .. .
not naming public facilities without the ten year ...naming ... uh .. .
Helling/ Frauenholtz-Miller?
Wilburn/ No, the, uh, the pavill---
Moran/ Norton Wayside?
Wilburn/ Yeah.
Moran/ That's what we came up with. That's what the family---
Wilburn/ I, I know, yeah, Iunderstand---
Moran/ ---absolutely, yeah---
Wilburn/ ---I'm just ask-- are we still allowed to call it that, I don't, if, if it didn't, I just
want to make sure that there's no hard feelings, misunderstandings .. .
Helling/ As I recall, um, this is your policy and, you know, I don't know that there's an
actual day, it's not been necessarily formally adopted, in fact, we, um were gonna
run it by the, uh, Parks, er, by all the commissions and, and---
Wilburn/ Oh, that's right we didn't. Alright. That's fine. Just wanted to .. .
Bailey/ Well, and that was---
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 24
Helling/ ---um, so if, if this is an issue at this point, let us know, you can discuss it again
and see if you want to modify that. Whatever, uh .. .
Wilburn/ I, I don't have an issue---
Helling/ ---there is some time (inaudible).
Wilburn/ ---but that was an action of the, um---
Bailey/ It was dedicated in May, so, that precedes---
Wilburn/ --yeah, that's what---
Bailey/ ---that precedes our discussion---
Wilburn/ ---I just wanted to---
(Bailey and Wilburn talking over one another.)
Karr/ I think, Dale, I think the thing is after you get back your comments from boards and
commissions you'll come back to Council, and then our goal is to have a,
something---
Wilburn/ That's right, that's right.
Dilkes/ ---enacted later.
Wilburn/ Thank you.
Helling/ Right. But again, if, you know, if there's any inkling in your minds that maybe
you want to tweak that policy, this is the time to, to talk about that.
Wilburn/ Okay.
Knoche/ One thing that I want to point out with this project in regards to the storm
shelter. Um, before you in February will be coming the 2010 hazard mitigation
grant, or Hazard Mitigation Plan for Iowa City. The approval of that plan is what
makes the hazard mitigation grant money for the storm shelters available to Iowa
City. So, that's just, kind of ties into some stuff that will be coming before you,
um, in the next month. Thanks.
Moran/ Uh, Kicker's Soccer Park, uh, we actually had earmarked two projects for this
and I think one of them was going to have to go away. The one in ' 14, uh, was
gonna be a pond development, uh, in that area, and I, and I think we're having
some water issues down there, where we're not gonna be able to do that. So,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 25
that may be something that we'll have to take off the table with that, uh, with the
water treatment plant and the Iowa River and all the land in between. Uh, I think
that that's not going to become a possibility. We wanted to use a pond down
there to do our irrigation with, uh, instead of using the effluent from the water
treatment plant. Uh, so that part of that will probably go away. The part in ' 12
would be the further development of the park itself, and that would be a complete
trail system throughout the park. Uh, right now we currently have a trail that
comes in on the north end of the park and ties into the north concession stand,
and that's really, basically about it. And we'd like to tie a trail system throughout
that so that people could go out there and use it for a walking trail or an exercise
trail while their kids are playing soccer and do some, uh, other park amenities.
And develop it more into a park instead of just an athletic complex, is what we've
been doing right now.
Bailey/ Would that change the access? I know we close gates at a certain time. If,
would that .. .
Moran/ Yeah, we' d have to work on that---
Bailey/ Okay.
Moran/ --because that's been an issue over the years, that access up in that, uh,
northeast corner.
Uh, Lower City Park Secondary Access Road, as you know, there's only one
access point into the park and that's right down here in Lower City Park and
comes through here, and so if you get all the way over to -uh, steal the other
one-the boys baseball field you have to turn around and then go back, uh, the
same way you came. Well, if you've ever been there during a, a tornado drill, or
boys baseball or, uh, Riverside Theater, uh, Festival Stage, all that, it becomes
quite congested. So what we'd like to look at, is we'd like to look at extending
this road, uh, across, this is the old trail system right here, that, that, uh, line
there, and then tie it in to the Normandy Drive area. Uh, these homes right in
here we've purchased through the flood mitigation, and it seems like it would be
easy to make a secondary access into that by tying that in. Uh, we wouldn't have
to make it a full time road, so we wouldn't have, uh, the neighborhood issues of
driving through the neighborhood. We could make it an emergency access or a
secondary access, only during boy's baseball, only during Shakespeare Theater
Festival, and, uh, items like that. But it makes sense that we should probably
have that for emergency access if nothing else, and then for secondary access,
uh, in times of heavy use activities. If the fireworks were to ever go back to City
Park, uh, it would be a nice time to open that up, and then people would have t
wo ways to get out of that. It would create a better, uh, flow.
Wright/ Long-term how does that tie into plans for the Normandy Drive area, in terms of
that remaining a neighborhood.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 26
Moran/ Uh, well, we're in the discussions of that, in terms of that. Uh, Neighborhood
Services, and myself, and the ECO grant folks went out there to talk to that
neighborhood, um, probably about two months ago. And we told them that that's
what we were considering, and then we talked to them about some other ideas of
what we would do down in there. Uh, they're still reeling from, you know, the
disappointment of losing a lot of houses and all that, so, we told them we'd pretty
much be back in about six to eight months after we knew how many houses we
were actually gonna own, how many houses would be destroyed or torn down,
and how many houses and neighbors would be in the area. And then we'll go
down and redevelop that plan. FEMA won't let us put a lot on there, uh, because
of their regulations with anything, so, my guess is it will be a lot of open green
space that we'll have to develop and then, uh, trail.
Davidson/ I think, Mike, it is consistent with Council's overall strategy of purchasing
everything in the floodplain down there, both 100 year and 500 year floodplains.
Uh, you know, we're not getting everything this go around---
Moran/Right.
Davidson/ ---but as a long term strategy, we hope to get everything along the river and
so this will basically become a, Normandy Drive would become a riverfront---
Moran/ With part of that secondary access---
Davidson/ ---with no houses between it and the river as our long-term strategy.
Bailey/ But I think that makes sense to make sure that we're moving forward with the
secondary access and the neighborhood redevelopment, sort of concurrently.
Moran/ Yeah. Yeah. We want to go slow. We don't want to do a lot of changes down
there fast because they've had a lot of changes now, so, I think the easier we
can get into that the better off it would make for the neighborhood and us.
Uh, Mercer Park Solarium, this area in here is known as the solarium. It's mostly
all aluminum and glass. And believe it or not, that building is twenty-four years
old, so we're, we're starting to put some money into it. Uh, this, uh, just went out
for bids. We just opened them up yesterday and got some really good bids to
replace this and this will be done, uh, yet this summer. Uh, and then, the second
half of the project would be to replace the filtration system in Mercer Park and
then that will be done after our August, uh, we have the state, uh, swim
championship meet the first weekend of August and we'll shut that down then
and do that during the month of August. So, it's atwo-fold maintenance project,
basically, for, uh, for Mercer Park.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 27
Fosse/ The bids that came in yesterday the, the estimate on the project was $251,000.
Uh, we got four bids; high bid was $196,000; the low bid was $128,400. So, right
now the bid climate is very good.
Moran/ Court Hill Park and Kiwanis Park Restrooms, uh, we intended to put restrooms
in, in these parks and we were going to use hazard mitigation grant funds to do
that just like we did similar to south Hickory Hill. Uh, what we discovered is
that both these parks are in the floodplain, believe it or not, uh, so what we have to do
now is, is we're working with a, a firm to try to come up with a, a master plan of
bathrooms, if you will. Uh, so what we can do is we can take that, that blueprint
and we can use that basically in all the parks that we need to put bathrooms in.
We don't want to do that over and over and over again. We'd like to just come
up with one plan and then take that and bid that out each time we want to do
that. These would be the first two that we would do that to, we would do that
with. Uh, the Court Hill Park one would be our top priority because of the Court
Hill trail. Uh, that place has just gone crazy with people walking and using that
trail. And so, that's the biggest need that we have right now. And then this is a
picture of Kiwanis Park and this would be our secondary, uh, uh, park to do that
with.
College Green Park Lighting Replacement, uh, this picture was taken for two
reasons. One, to show you the discoloration of the fixtures and what happens
after they're up for awhile. And then the front pole right in front here, uh, is
leaning, and what happened with that is that all these poles were fiberglass when
they were put in in the reconstruction of College Green. And we've spent in
about the last eight years, we've spent about $15,000 in parts and materials
replacing these, and about $10,000 more for labor for our staff to go down and
use that. Uh, since these are fiberglass, uh, the kids just go up there and just
start shaking them and that's what happens. And they start breaking the bulbs,
and they start breaking the cases of it, so, what we would like to do is go in,
maintain the integrity of the, of the pole, and maintain the integrity of the style,
but instead of using fiberglass, use aluminum or steel or something that's a little
more durable, so the kids that go through there, uh, late at night don't rip them
up. Because it's just becoming a high vandalism, uh, area for us, and we just
want to make sure we try to put a stop to it the best we can. We might be able to
tie this type of light into what we talked about earlier with the City Park trail
lighting. Maybe we can just finally get morphed together so that we're all doing
the same thing and we all have the same style of lights everywhere. That seems
to be, to make a little bit more sense, so the replacements easier for us in the
long term.
Bailey/ Have we thought about doing something that's more dark-sky friendly? I mean
those probably have a lot of bleed up.
Moran/ Yeah, that was one of the big complaints we had several years ago, when it first
opened it up was that it just brightened it up so much.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 28
Bailey/ Yeah.
Moran/ And so, we'll have to take in, take that into consideration. And my, my guess is,
and I don't know this for a fact, is we'll probably lose some fixtures, because I
think it's probably been over-lit.
Bailey/ Yeah.
Moran/ But it had a bad reputation so I think that was sort of the goal at the time do that,
to make sure it was, it was brightened up.
Uh, this project is a little bit different than our ongoing sidewalk maintenance
project. Uh, we're trying to eliminate these four-foot sidewalks that we have.
Uh, Mercer Park and Fairmeadows Park are, are the two that we're trying to get
rid of now because four-foot just doesn't work with our snow removal equipment.
We gotta have at least minimum six-foot. We would prefer eight to ten-foot on
that. So these would be two sections of, of park sidewalks that we'd try to
eliminate. And mostly because they're just four-foot. And you can see already
how we tear up the turf every time we go down there and use either a blade or a
brush. And so it creates more turf issues for us in spring and it's just a constant
battle back and forth. So, we'd like to get rid of all our four-foot sidewalks and
we've been doing that all over the city with developers, but we just haven't been
doing that on our own property yet. So this would initiate that and get that
started.
North Market Square Park Redevelopment was moved back by this body last
year. We were supposed to get it started this year, and, uh, through the juggling
of, of priorities it got moved back. Uh, we have already met with the
neighborhood and hired a consulting company to do this design. Uh, so this
design is basically what the neighborhood came up with, and, and liked and
agreed upon. And, uh, so this project was just basically what you call shovel
ready. As soon as the funding becomes available we would bid it out and get
this all developed. But this would basically take out most everything that's in
North Market Square right now and start from scratch. There's not a whole lot
that we're gonna keep in that area. Uh, there's a little playground area that exists
right now and there's a shelter that exist now over here but they're both in fairly
bad, bad shape. So, we would probably take that all down and then start putting
this all up together. Uh, the neighborhood's excited about this and they've been
wanting to go with this. And we, we met with them, the Commission and myself
me with them last year, after this meeting last year just to tell them it got
postponed for a year. So, I think there's some anticipation that they'd like to get
started on this project, uh, as soon as they could.
Bailey/ Have you talked to the school district about that? That was one of the reasons
we pushed it back.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 29
Moran/ Yeah, we talked to Lane about some other issues as well, and then that was one
that came up and we wanted to know the viability -and, of course, that was
before he announced he was leaving. So, uh, we've just had to take his word for
it. But he didn't think that there was going to be any changes in the near future
for that area.
Davidson/ I think this project is important to the Neighborhood Association, incidental of
Horace Mann School. Um, also wanted to mention we have the
University/Neighborhood Partnership Program, which gets a lot of publicity
because of the aspect of that, of, uh, going in and buying houses that are
currently in an area predominately rentals and trying to re-establish more owner
occupancy in these neighborhoods. And part of that initiative is to have the City
fund capital improvements in those neighborhoods, such as, uh, parks -well,
parks are the one to jump off the page at you, but other, basically fund things,
could be alley improvements, basically invest, through the CIP, invest in those at-
risk neighborhoods. And this project would be consistent with that.
Wright/ And I should just add, would like to add that this is an exceptionally heavily used
park. There are, in warmer weather there are people there from 5:00 AM to 1:00
AM. It's just amazing.
Hayek/ One thing we need to be mindful of is that, uh, the potential exists, whether the
school district, whatever, approaches about that or not, for the City to assist with
alleviating some of the ground space needs for the adjacent elementary school.
Um, and I don't know what form that would take and whether this Council would
have interest in that, but at, if we go forward with this I think it's probably a good
idea to be mindful of that potential future use of the northeast quadrant of the
park.
Moran/ Yeah, currently we have a playground up in here that, that we did in conjunction
with the school district. And, and we did just exactly that. We said, how can we
help you, and then what can we get in return for that. Uh, and they were
instrumental in at least the building principles. Some of the instructors in the
school would have meetings with the neighborhood and us when we designed
this area up in here.
Uh, Pedestrian Bridge Rocky Shore Drive to the Peninsula. There's a couple
slides on this. Uh, this remains the Park and Recreation Commission's number
one project, uh, of trying to get a bridge over into the Peninsula area for greater
use. I'm gonna jump ahead here. Uh, this, this goes through and, and shows
you some of the areas that, uh, are, are in there for existing trails -just hit this .. .
(inaudible) yeah--- and you can see we've looked at an area down in here, uh,
for, a, uh, pedestrian bridge and then there has been some discussion as well of
extending Park Road straight across this area as well, because we have
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 30
obtained some property in here with the, the home buyouts. Uh, in addition to
that---
Fosse/ Let me, let me clarify first. Not, not extending the road, but just putting the ped
bridge in line with the road.
Moran/ Uh, in addition to that we have applied for some, uh, trail grant fundings for
pedestrian trail systems for this project as well. And, uh, we won't hear about
that until, uh, the spring some time. And that would also assist with that, with any
kind of project like that.
Dickens/ There'd be parking along the river there so if people want to park and walk
across the Peninsula, or is that in the plan at all?
Moran/ We haven't talked about that, that concept with it. There is some land in here
that we've acquired with the housing there, but I'm not sure we'd be able to
develop that into a parking area by FEMA guidelines, uh for that.
Knoche/ There would be the potential for parking at Crandic Park and then using the
sidewalk and trail system to get across the Peninsula part.
Bailey/ I think we talked about this last year when we talked about this. And, um, the
bridge would be designed in such a way that it could be used for emergency
access, is that correct?
Fosse/ Yes, to get over to our, our well-house which is right on that; it's at the end of the
green trail within Peninsula Park there.
Moran/ Existing trail. This is the Iowa River Power Bridge, uh tie in to the City of
Coralville trail system. And this, uh, attaches to, uh, Waterworks Park and the
trail that goes underneath the interstate up in here, and then of course down in
here to pick up the trail system in here. This shows you the development of the
Peninsula Park. This is the Elks' Golf Course in here. This is the parking lot for
both the dog park, which is right in this whole area here, and then also for the
Peninsula disc golf area. Uh, most of it is out here. There's quite a bit of it in
here in the tree area that you can't see. It's a 27-hole golf course. It's really nice
if you haven't been out there. Uh, they've done a lot of work with that. And then
up here, the trail system, there's the bridge, areas up in here.
Fosse/ The, uh, the alignment off the end of Park Road works out particularly well for
getting over and tying into the existing trail system there and then also, we've got
a, a well house here, and a second one here. That's that emergency access that
Regenia was talking about.
Wright/ Probably a better placement for it than we'd been talking about originally.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 31
Fosse/ Mm-hm.
Moran/ And then we need to do some more, um, it's atwo-fold project. One is the
bridge and then you'll see another Peninsula Park project in there. We need to
develop this into more prairie, uh, by doing some prairie grass seeding, and, uh,
making sure that we get some naturalization of these areas in here. And that's
two-fold: one, to preserve the property, but also to protect the well-heads that are
down there as well. There are several of them around there. We don't want a lot
of, uh, activity around those, so if we can get that into preservation that would
work.
Uh, at the Recreation Center, we have three improvement projects, uh, to look at.
Uh, this is inside the social hall, uh, upstairs and we have a temporary wall that
was put in when the building was put in back in 1964. And it's rather
cumbersome to put up, split that hall into two parts, and we'd like the flexibility
to use that so that we could use two, uh, rooms make that into double-rooms and
get more productivity out of it. Uh, so we'd like to replace that with a new one.
That's the first project.
Uh, the second project is back in 1964 when, uh, insurance wasn't a big issue,
they made this balcony that everybody wants to go to and every time kids come
up here and, uh, salivate because they think they're going to get out there and
look at the pool, and they can't do that because we have to lock that off. What
we'd like to do is enclose this, take this wall out, and put a window enclosing
there so that it would become part of the building and people could walk out in
there and enjoy the pool. Uh, it would give them a little bit more space, and
make it a little bit more enjoyable. So that's the second project.
And then the third project is a renovation of our east entrance. If you park in the
parking lot and walk into the building you can see what kind of abuse and wear
and tear, uh, the steps have taken. This is our ADA accommodations, which is
all metal, which has to be replaced on a fairly frequent basis. And then, uh, the
railing up in here, uh, gets backed into on a fairly regular basis from people that
park, and so we'd like to redo that handicap access ramp up into this area and
replace that whole area. So, those are the three projects that would be wrapped
up into that, uh, improvement area project.
Uh, with the onset of, uh, exercise and the new, uh, recreation building being built
by the University, uh, we fell that, that making a, uh, our facilities a little more
user friendly and trying to get more people into them, that if we put in an elevated
running/walking track around the outside of the Scanlon Gymnasium in here. Uh,
similar to what's at the Field House at, uh, at the U; that would bring more people
in and they could use it on a year-round basis. Right now, if people come in and
walk, uh, then they have to walk around a basketball game, a kids' program, what
else, whatever's going on. So what I think would happen is that people would use
that, and they could use that at any other time whenever events and activities are
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 32
going on, and give them an activity to do rain or shine, winter, summer, any of
that. Not that we want to steal stuff from the mall walkers but we might as well
give it a shot.
Bailey/How long a track could you build?
Moran/ Well, we would go around the entire circumference of that, and so that would be
just under a quarter of a mile, would be -I can't remember right off the top of my
head-but it would be a little bit under a quarter of a mile. And it would only be
a two-lane walking track. Because it wasn't built to put a walking track on it, so
that's as much as we can do. We, the first thing we wanted to check is to make
sure that it could support that without major structural, uh, changes to the
building.
Uh, Scott Park Development and Trail is a continuation basically of the Court Hill
Trail, if you will. The Court Hill Trail comes right along in here, and comes up
basically and stops right here at Scott Boulevard. We would like to pick that up
and run it down along the tree line of Scott Park, and then get it tied into this area
in here so they can take advantage of the trail systems that we've got going on in
here as well. Uh, part of the, this project as well would be going down here and
tying, uh, the dog park into that, and we'd like to put a bridge across the crick
right there. So that the, the trail would come in here, and then there would be a
bridge going across that would also access the dog park that's currently there.
And then we would develop, the rest of it would come out here, and then tie into
this area in here and then the extensive trail system that we have, have there.
This is the trail line that goes across to the trees currently. This is the open field
on the, the north half of Scott Park that exists. Uh, would also include restrooms.
With that we'd have to put some sort of restroom facility in there, and it may or
may not, uh, also have anything to do with, uh, dredging out some of the storm-
water retention basin. Because you remember at Scott Park, on the south end is
all storm-water retention. So we have to be careful with our development there.
That's why we want to stay on the other side of the, of the crick.
Wilburn/ Is there a tentative date for dredging that out?
Fosse/ What we'll do in advance of this project is get some survey information and
compare that with the, the, original elevations around there, just to see how much
sediments have accumulated over the years. And then if we need to peel some
of those out of there to maintain capacity, we'll do that. Before the trail's built.
Wilburn/ Right.
Fosse/ So that we don't undo that work.
Moran/ Uh, Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. Uh, this was amock-up, uh, that we did a
long time ago when it was known as Sand Lake and we did our first round of our
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 33
Vision Iowa Grant funding. A little bit of this is changed. Uh, the beach area for
example, over here has now been moved over to this area, uh, tentatively. Uh,
we've let out phase one this year, and that included a two and a half mile trail
that went all the way around the facility. And then it, it developed a little bit of a
parking area up here, and a little bit of the existing parking area down in here.
Uh, that will be asphalted yet this spring and then hopefully will be finished. Uh,
we're currently negotiating a contract with Snyder and Associates, uh, to do
phase two and phase three, if we have to, of this project. Uh, what we would,
what our intention would be is when we originally applied for the Vision Iowa
Grant as, as Regenia knows, uh, it got stretched out by this group over a period
of five years. And the Vision Iowa folks want it to be a two year project, and they
wanted to be the last money in. So, uh, reflective of what, what you see in here,
we've put State grants in FY12 and FY13, and that would be a million dollars.
We would ask for the same two million dollars again and go to the, uh, Vision
Iowa Board, and, and try to make that work so that we can finish that project up,
uh, with the rest of what we've done already. Now, I don't know the future of
Vision Iowa (chuckles), and uh, the way you're smiling does not, doesn't sound
very good.
Bailey/ Yeah, I think it's optimistic to look at ' 12 and ' 13 unless something changes in
the State. But, um, and have you looked at recap possibilities as well?
Moran/ Yes, we will be looking at those.
Bailey/ I think there is a greater likelihood of recap sticking around than cap.
Moran/ ...than Vision Iowa, yeah .. .
Uh, so our current, our current mode right now is to take the money that we have
currently that we spend in FY10 for the development of the next year and then do
a phase two and see where that goes with, uh, grant possibilities and then take
an additional two years to finish this project up. And, uh, we've also obtained,
uh, this property as well, additionally, since we purchased this. So, some of the
expansion will go into this area also. Or at least we're in the process of doing
that. We haven't obtained it yet.
Wilburn/ I forgot, what's the distance of the trail, around?
Moran/ Uh, a little over two miles.
Uh, we have secured a, a state grant, uh, for the development of, uh, trail
connection from Napoleon Park, uh, down into the Terry Trueblood Recreation
Area. The grant is for $281,000, and then our match of that is for the $94,000 that
you see in the FYl 1, uh, CIP budget. Uh, this is the newly, uh, opened, um,
McCollister Bridge and then this is part of the trail connection that will just
further develop. Uh, we'll take it from Napoleon Park, the south end of Napoleon
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 34
Park where it currently dead ends right there by the water plant, and then we'll
pull that along the river, and then tie that into the Terry Trueblood Recreation
Area. Uh, it'll be both a, a trail-way and then it'll have signage for water access,
for, uh, canoes and portage points.
Uh, Waterworks Park Hospice Memorial is a FY14 project out at Waterworks
Park. Um, the Hospice Memorial that we have in Willow Creek Park has been
very well received, and, uh, the Hospice folks would like to do the same thing
again with Waterworks, so they sort of have a east side and a west side, uh, park
opportunity to do that. This was a very early schematic drawing, uh, that was
done just to sort of outline what they might want to consider with that. We have
not had any, any more talks with them to further develop this since we've, uh,
done the trail connections in Waterworks Park. We've done the fishing pier and
stuff there as well, so, we have about another year of work probably just to go to
them. The component funding for this, if you notice this does have contributions
and donations to it so they do anticipate to, uh, bring in some funding source for
this, for this project as well; similar to what they did at Willow Creek.
Fosse/ Any questions for Mike? Parks in general?
Hayek/ Thank you, Mike.
Fosse/ Thanks, Mike.
(Clears throat.) How we doing? Do we want to move on to the next section or
take another short break? This is probably about a 40 minute segment here.
Hayek/ Let's keep plugging along.
Fosse/ Okay. For Streets Bridges and Traffic Engineering, Ron and Jeff and I will tag-
team this one, and dive in and go on through.
The first project is the Burlington/Madison Intersection and, and Median that
would go from here to the Iowa River. Ron, you want to cover that?
Knoche/ Um, this, this project was originally scheduled to start construction this year.
Um, you can see in the background is where the new University of Iowa Rec.
Center is. Um, due to some potential FEMA funding for the University on some
steam tunnel, uh, reconstruction, um, the University asked us to, to delay this
project at least one year, and potentially longer. Uh, the concept here will be to,
um, actually add a median, um, to this section of roadway. Um, we'll reconstruct
the westbound lanes, um, further to the north, and, and actually allow for a wider,
uh, median in there. And then also within that, uh, cross section, uh, from curb to
curb allow for some pedestrian/bike lane, or, I'm sorry, some, uh, bicycle lanes in
there and then also, um, try to keep the pedestrians further away from the
roadway to try to keep the pedestrians from doing the cross-over movement that
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 35
they currently do. And, uh, make it so that they tend to use the intersection, uh,
for the crossing into the new, uh, rec. center.
Fosse/ That steam tunnel work that Ron talked about will be fairly substantial. We have
that outlined in a later slide in the Flood Mitigation and Flood Recovery section.
So we' 11 talk more about that later.
Knoche/ The steam tunnel currently lays right where the roadway would be relocated to.
So, if we would do the project they'd end up tearing all the pavement back out to
be able to do the steam tunnel project.
Davidson/ This is a very important project to the University. The President's office has
actually said that in terms of the median, uh, the median project and what it does
in terms of channelizing pedestrians, they feel is, is really a part of the rec. center
project.
Fosse/ They want to do is bring al) the pedestrian traffic to the intersection instead of
having them drifting across mid-block. So.
Hayek Has the University expressed any interest in a, in an elevated or subterranean
means across the street?
Davidson/ They've looked at some of that, um, their, their consultant has, uh, actually
going clear down to the intersection with Riverside Drive and maybe having that
be the transition and then bring people down the south side of the street. But I
don't think anything has come of it, Matt.
Fosse/ Jeff, you want to cover this one?
Davidson/ Uh, sure, the Burlington Street Median, uh, is uh, project of which the slide
that you just saw is an element. It is a project to ... it has two main purposes.
One is to enhance the north/south pedestrian movements as downtown grows
south of Burlington Street. Um, we feel like we need to do a better job, uh, with
getting pedestrians across there. This is not necessarily the ultimate solution.
There are other options, you know, Matt just alluded to, uh, either subterranean
or overhead, not out of the question that we might do some of that. We even
have some specific opportunities for doing that, but we do feel like this project is
one that would provide a median refuge halfway across the street for
pedestrians, and enhance Burlington Street aesthetically. So, the plan is for
between uh, Gilbert Street and the Iowa River, uh, for it to be implemented, the
Iowa Department of Transportation does concur, uh, with the benefits of the
project. Burlington Street being designated Iowa Highway 1 we have to have
DOT's concurrence. And we're (clears throat), it's important that we have an
overall plan for this project, uh, because we would see phasing this. Obviously,
the first phase is what Ron, uh, just presented down by the, the Rec. Center at
the west end of the project. Uh, certainly, the Rancher decision, uh, the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 36
Heironymous Square project which is pending, uh, the area around Clinton
Street, we would want to coordinate and, and do the median at that time. And
then the remainder would, would be, uh, pieced in after those, those two projects
are finished. So, a project that we, we need to sort of understand the overall
vision so that we can do it in pieces, uh, in conjunction with other development
along the corridor.
Fosse/ And this is one of those projects that'll have an impact on operating expenses.
Those, those medians will be planted medians, and, and Mike has put together
an estimate of roughly $45,000 per year to keep those looking the way that they
need to look. Um, because if they're not well-maintained then we'll have the
opposite effect on the corridor rather than being an enhancement it'll be a
detraction.
Um, and one other thing that'll need to be addressed in here is apre-emption
system for emergency vehicles, because currently they travel down the, the
center of Burlington Street to get around traffic. And we've got a slide on that
later under the unfunded, uh, because, uh, we're looking at it as city-wide GIS
based pre-emption system; that this project would be the trigger point for, for
going that way.
Davidson/ And I, I will just echo what Rick said, in particular because the Fire Chief is
sitting in the audience, we would with the median project consider the, the, uh,
emergency vehicle pre-emption system part of that project when we implement
the Burlington Street median. Basically it would be the first piece of what could
eventually be city-wide for emergency vehicles, fire department vehicles, uh, to
be able to pre-empt the traffic signal system (inaudible).
Fosse/ Yeah, one caution we have on this project is, is we don't know the full extent of
the impact on capacity of Burlington Street. Uh, it's really a difficult thing to
model on this corridor. Uh, there are days that it, it borders on gridlock and, and
whether this will trigger a worsening of that situation or not it's, it's difficult to
assess.
Champion/ Well, it does have gridlock because people block intersections. And I think
the City's gotta take a really strong stand on that. Uh, if you do that in any city,
your, your car is towed away. You don't get no choice. People literally block the
intersections. They don't give it a thought, even though they know the streetlight
ahead is red they will still drive up and block the intersection. I see it happen
every single day at Linn and Burlington.
Fosse/ Mm-hm. And one of the ways that, that, you know, right now for instance, let's
say this is filled up and people are stacked back up into this intersection. What
sometimes creates spaces, people who intend to turn left who are in the center
turn lane, excuse me, in this lane, will pull out into the center turn lane and move
down and create space for these people to leave the intersection. Uh, what this
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 37
median project does is prevents the opportunity to do that. So how much of a
factor that will be in, in the overall capacity of the street, uh, I don't know. Our
lanes will be narrower; there'll be more side friction. Um, but again, there's no
model you can enter these numbers in and, and get an answer out the other end.
At least the, the consultant we had working on this, uh, does not have such a
model.
Any other questions on that? Okay. Uh .. .
Davidson/ I kind of touched on, on this. Basically this, this project, well I touched on it
terms of the median project, there are also some geometric improvements we
would like to make for the north-south movements; if you've ever traveled north-
south through here geometrically, things don't line up exactly the way we would
like. Uh, we will make those improvements, again, at the time that, uh, the
Heironymous Square project, which is in the foreground right here, potentially the
Rancher project, which is where the bank is located there and then down the hill.
Uh, we're, we're just kind of waiting on those two projects. We'll, we'll do this
project in conjunction with those projects.
Knoche/ Uh, American Legion, uh, Road project: this would be a, uh, urbanization of the
current rural cross-section, um, on this roadway. This project, um, the roadway
currently is in, is in decent shape. This project is in the budget, um, so that we
have the ability to, um, collect impact fees from the developers along the corridor.
Um, the current project that we, we have, um, that is going on a far as
development goes is the Windsor West development. So, in order for us to be
able to collect those fees we have to have the project within the capital program.
Dubuque Street/I-80 Pedestrian Bridge: uh, this project, um, we received, uh,
Congressionally designated funds for pedestrian bridges over I-80 in the last, um,
go around of funding; um, um ,approximately, uh, $435,000, I believe. And in
that, um, it was for either Dubuque Street or for Dodge Street. Dodge Street we
were able to get funding through the stimulus, um, package to, to build that
pedestrian bridge. So we would have that total amount available to us for the
Dubuque Street crossing. Um, the current six laning project for I-80 will be
urbanizing this intersection in FY12. So, uh, there's a potential that we would try
to work together with the DOT, um, in that timeframe to be able to build a
pedestrian bridge at this interchange.
Fosse/ By urbanization the interchanges, uh, what will happen is these free movements
will go away, and, like that. And these two intersections will be signalized. And
those are critical to being able to bring a trail across, because you just, it's tough
to get pedestrians across free movement with high speeds there. So, that's,
that's the first step. And, and that's, 2012?
Knoche /2012---
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 38
Fosse/ 2012.
Knoche/ ---is the current schedule with the DOT.
Davidson/ This is a project that's been around for a few years and remains a very high
priority for us, and is one that we are getting to the point of, of actually being able
to implement. Those of you on JCCOG know that JCCOG recently allocated, uh,
$2.4 million to this project. Uh, that basically, according to what is budgeted in
your materials, uh, enables us to proceed with the project in terms of our
intentions for local funding versus federal funding. Now that being said, we are
still hoping to perhaps get, uh, another federal earmark. Uh, the delegation that
goes out to Washington here in a few weeks, uh, will be taking this project with
them as one of three priorities. But we do, as you can see in your budget
materials, have a means of this funding, of funding this project, going ahead with
it basically, uh, with the funding that we do have in place. Uh, you can see it's a
project that will take a couple of years to implement because we do hope to keep
it open to traffic, uh, as we construct it. All those details haven't been worked out
yet, but we'll take a little bit longer in order to do this. Um, but we do have a
means of going ahead with the, the funding that we have in place, uh, between
now and, uh, FY 13.
Fosse/ And, Ron, is it possible that we may have some drainage projects in advance of
this project? I know that's one of the things we discussed.
Knoche/ Uh, we're not certain on the schedule of that yet. There will be some drainage
improvements of First Avenue that'll have to go along with this project, and, uh,
and that' 11, it ties into some storm-sewer but it goes back to the P&G property.
But, uh, the project, this project is currently under design, um, and we're in the
process of going through the environmental, um, process with the DOT currently
on the project.
Hayek/ You know, and to the Council in addition to the safety and the school-related
aspects of grade separation, I think this ties in well to discussions we've started
about eastside urban renewal.
Knoche/ Mm-hm.
Hayek/ Up and down that First Avenue corridor.
Fosse/ And on the---
Wilburn/ When's the estimated ballpark, when will the environmental work be done?
Knoche/ The environmental work should be done by July, and then we'll be able to
proceed with, uh, the final design of the project.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 39
Fosse/ We hope we have not created a problem for ourselves on the other side of the
tracks there. We've worked with Southeast Junior High to build this really neat
rain garden, uh, which we hope will not become a, a regulatory impediment to the
project. Um, the, there'll be a fairly substantial retaining wall along the west side
of the road, uh, north of the bridge, and we're working with Neumann-Monson on
how that's gonna look. I mean, you put that much concrete into a neighborhood,
you're gonna want to do it in a way that's gonna fit in and work well.
Wright/ How do the sidewalks get routed around that?
Fosse/ They will go underneath the bridge there. They'll be eight-foot walks---
Wright/ Okay. (Inaudible.)
Fosse/ ---Yes. Yep. And one of the things that we haven't, uh, worked out yet is whether
or not we want to put a rail system between the sidewalk and the roadway or not.
And if we do it, how do we do it in a way that doesn't just get banged up a lot?
Wright/ I think we do.
(Laughter.)
Bailey/ Mm-hm. Kids that age .. .
Champion/ And, I don't understand how this is going to work, but, whatever.
Davidson/ Well, the railroad gets elevated and the road gets lowered. It's a combination.
Uh, and then, of course, you have to bring, you have to reconstruct quite a bit of
the railroad---
Champion/ Oh, sure. Okay.
Davidson/ --so that it doesn't exceed a 1 % grade at any point, so. But it has been
engineered far enough that we believe it can be done.
Champion/ Wow. It'd be a great asset really.
Wright/ Oh, it'd be huge.
Hayek/ How far out east and west do you have to go in terms of elevating rail?
Davidson/ Has that been determined?
Knoche/ It's approximately a half mile in both directions to be able to get it to the grade
they would like it at. And then along with the project, you know, currently it's a
one-track crossing there, and with the bridge project, the bridge will be wide
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 40
enough for two tracks. So if Iowa-Interstate would go back to a two track system,
um, it would accommodate that.
Bailey/ Which is nice anticipation of a passenger rail.
Fosse/ Yeah.
Champion/ And the train will actually go behind those buildings, so .. .
Knoche/ Mm-hm.
Champion/ Right.
Fosse/ In our last discussion with the railroad, uh, they anticipate based on projections
that, that the traffic here will double; the rail traffic will double in the next -do
you remember how many years they said, Jeff? Four or six years?
Davidson/ It's, it's increased quite a bit already with the ethanol plants that have come on
line. And those of us who live in the neighborhood, you can walk across Summit
Street and look down and occasionally see the big unit trains, which all the cars
are exactly the same, and you never used to see those. So, there's going to be
more of those, the Amtrak service, uh, there's just going to be more need for this
thing basically in the future.
Bailey/ This is as quickly as we can get it done?
Fosse/ What's that?
Bailey/ Is this as fast as we can get it done?
Fosse/ I believe it is.
Knoche/ Yeah. Yeah, the STP funds---
Bailey/ Well it's such an important, I think this is our most important capital project.
Knoche/ The STP funds won't be available until, until that timeline.
Bailey/ Mm-hm. Okay.
Champion/ Yes, but we could do an inter-loan. I mean it is a high priority.
Fosse/ One of the things that we can get moving on are the, uh, looking at what the - I
don't even know if we can get started on the property acquisition because of the
federal process that we need to go through for with the plan approvals.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 41
Knoche/ With this project, before this year we didn't have any federal funds and so we
were having issues with the DOT actually starting the process for us. And, and
since, now that we have the federal funds available to us, or we know that they
are earmarked for us through the STP process, um, the, the DOT will be more
willing to start the process for us and that'll be able -- once we get the
environmental clearance then we'll be able to proceed with acquisition at that
time, so. The STP money available to us really, it will help us get this project
moving quicker.
The Gilbert Street Streetscape project, we, uh, it's, kind of goes in conjunction
with the Gilbert, (chuckles) Bowery, Prentiss project. Uh, we are currently under
design contract with Confluence to start the process. This will take it from
Burlington Street down to the Iowa-Interstate Railroad Bridge, and while we're
moving through that, hopefully we'll have a project bid for this summer
construction.
Fosse/ This is a picture on a day when it's looking its best.
Wright/ Can we go, just go back to that for a second?
Fosse/ Sure.
Wright/ It will be, uh, has this been envisioned to the point of, uh, the tree-scape that
currently exists down there?
Bailey/ Some green?
Wright/ Will, will we have some?
Fosse/ You know?
Knoche/ We're, we're meeting with Confluence in two weeks to see what their
preliminary concept is. Um, but that's something we'll, we'll look at, uh, and,
and make sure we try to incorporate into that. Um, you know, obviously the issue
in front of The Mansion is it's just, it's a tight right-of--way, um, and one of the,
the original plan there was, was gonna work and, and get some more trees planted
in front of their building. Um, we'll see how we can incorporate them into the
right of way.
Wright/ The, the existing trees are of a, a good size at this point, and it would be really
nice to see those preserved. When they were taken out further down that
became such a harsh intersection.
Bailey/ Yes.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City city c:ouncii speaai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 42
Fosse/ Mm-hm. Yeah. It was, as Ron pointed out there's a limited amount of right-of-
way to stuff things into. Uh, the one positive of that is, is we've heard and The
Mansion has heard a lot of nice feedback about opening up the view of that, that
old historic structure. Do enjoy that. And we, did a nice job with the limestone
retaining wall.
Champion/ It looks really nice. And the intersection works very well now.
Bailey/ It does, though it doesn't look like an Iowa City. I was just talking to other
people about all the trees that we have in our community. So, softening it up
would be more in, sort of, line with where, where the rest of the community is.
Very bleak.
Wright/ Bleak is a good word.
Knoche/ Uh, one, uh, project that we've been working on, uh, with the Coralville and
with the DOT is the aesthetics improvement along I-80. It kind of goes along in
conjunction with the six laning project. Um, this was one that was, uh, that we
have done some, uh, preliminary, um, work on. We have also applied for, um,
road -can't think which one it is- uh, Living Roadway Trust Funds, and uh, and
so we're going through that process. This would be doing a couple different
varieties of, of sections throughout the corridor, starting with Coralville and
extending it through the Highway 1 corridor. And, uh, this would be a project
that we'd be able to phase as the money becomes available, and work both with,
with Coralville and, and Iowa City and the DOT to beautify that corridor a little
bit more.
Fosse/ This is kind of like a giant version of the last one we just talked about, that
Prentiss intersection. Here, they're going to be paving the entire median of the
interstate out there and how do we counteract that? And, uh, a couple neat
things about this project is that we've got a unified theme throughout the whole
Iowa City and Coralville corridor. And the, the planting plans vary depending on
the view that exists at that location, the terrain, uh, what's beyond the edge of the
right-of--way ,and that sort of thing. So, it's a very nice plan and hopefully that
Living Roadway trust Fund will continue out there and we'll be able to access it,
plug away at this over the years.
Mims/ I want to go back one project. I apologize---
Fosse/ Mm-hm.
Mims/ ---because I was looking for the, the project. It's in an unfunded year; it's the
Gilbert Street underpass. And I was wondering if we could combine, did you
look at the possibility of combining the Gilbert Street Street-scape and going
down a couple more blocks and just doing that underpass project as part of that.
You know what I'm talking about?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City city council spec~ai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 43
Fosse/ Yeah. Yeah, and as I recall, that that's a fairly substantial project. It involves
structural alterations to that bridge to get that sidewalk behind those piers, rather
than in front of them.
Mims/ But it's only $308,000 which seems very, given what, given how it's described
the dollar amount seems very small, but .. .
Fosse/ Let us look into that then.
Mims/ It seems to make sense if we're going to improve that entire corridor to, to look
into the possibility if this is an actual number .. .
Bailey/ Seems low.
Champion/ That seems really cheap.
Bailey/ It seems really low for the extensive---
Knoche/ Yeah, one of the things that we did with the intersection project, we did, we
changed the way the sidewalks laid out underneath the bridge. Uh, we went to a
higher curb and then went and widened the sidewalk out a little bit more. They,
when that bridge was constructed the, the engineers only left enough room to
have four-foot from the back of the curb to the face of the pier. So, we, uh, we
can look at that and see how we can fit that in.
Mims/ It just would make sense, I don't .. .
Wright/ Since we're in the neighborhood.
Mims/ Yeah, since we're working in the neighborhood. Thank you.
Fosse/ Sure.
Knoche/ With the, go back to the I-80 aesthetics project, with the pedestrian bridge that
we're going to build along Dodge Street, we took the concepts that were
developed with the aesthetic preliminary review and incorporate that into that
bridge. So you will see, uh, within that project kind of what the plan for the
aesthetics of the infrastructure features are going to be along that, with that
corridor improvement.
Lower Muscatine Avenue, um, project: this one is, uh, is, is, uh, a huge project
that, uh, has a lot of players that are involved in it. Um, we're working with, uh,
MidAmerican; we're working with, uh, Kirkwood College; working with the
mall, Sycamore Mall; trying to, um, meet everybody's goals for the project and,
and make it a buildable project. The, the current concept takes the existing four
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 44
lane configuration in front of the, the mall, and reduces it down to a three-lane
section. Um, and what that'll allow us to do is, um, to get a nice sidewalk on both
sides of the street there instead of having the sidewalk end as it does, uh, in the
picture on the right. And then we will continue that three-lane section through the
Sycamore Street, uh, intersection and, the three lane cross-section, through the
Sycamore Street intersection, uh, and then rebuild the two-lane all the way back
to Kirkwood Avenue, accommodate for a wide sidewalk on the north side of the
road. Uh, we will be undergrounding the power throughout the corridor, and, um
be doing some, we'll, since we'll be doing the, the undergrounding the power
we'll have to do some roadway lighting along there. Um, the current proposal
does not include a signalized intersection at Sycamore Street. Um, due to the off-
set of the Kirkwood, um, driveway and MidAmerican's driveway, um, it, it just
doesn't meet the warrants right now. Uh, we are in discussions with both
MidAmerican and Kirkwood currently to try to relocate the Kirkwood Drive at
the, at the MidAmerican driveway, and, and combine those two, and, which,
would, would really um, would be a great thing for this corridor. It would really,
it'll, it meets our goals of what we're trying to do throughout this corridor.
Bailey/ Have we looked at crosswalks along there anywhere? Because it's very difficult
to cross, Imean---
Knoche/ Yes.
Bailey/ ---I don't know what we would do if we don't signalize. It's not gonna make a
huge bit of difference, but there's really nowhere to, for pedestrians to cross.
Knoche/ Yeah, and what we'll end up doing, you know, with the sidewalk improvements,
um, you know, obviously what we'll, we'll incorporate the crosswalks into it and
then we'll also look at doing some actual striped crosswalks in the corridor,
which, which aren't there currently, especially for the Kirkwood students coming
across from the south side, and, and teachers, from the south side to the north
side of the road.
Fosse/ I think---
Mims/ Can you do, I'm sorry, can you do the same thing you've done on, uh, First
Avenue with like the little island and the third lane in the middle---
Knoche/ That's acon---
Mims/ --- ...the safety ...by Hy-Vee First Avenue.
Knoche/ Yeah, that's a concept we can look at, I, I, we haven't reviewed that, you know,
we haven't gotten that far into the design yet, but that's something w can look at
and see if we can incorporate that.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session .Page 45
Mims/ Okay. Thank you.
Fosse/ That does work out well there because that's, there's no light in the area.
Mims/ Right.
Fosse/ Regenia, you're exactly right on, on getting a light for this corridor is key for
getting pedestrians across, across the street.
Bailey/Right, but an island would make a lot of sense too, because the traffic is so
variable, depending on, on, in the lanes. You can get across one lane, it's harder
to get across .. .
Mims/ Right. And even if we get a signal and it's down at the MidAmerican, you know,
driveway a lot of the pedestrian traffic is not gonna walk down there and cross.
They're gonna try and cross right in front of Kirkwood's building, so.
Davidson/ if we were able to get a signal down there, Susan, it creates gaps in the traffic
stream so that pedestrians could cross easily---
Mims/ Yeah, it would help certainly.
Bailey/ Most of the students who park, who won't park in the parking lot, most students
and teachers park at Sycamore and those other, so, a signal down there actually
would benefit some of the, a lot of the (inaudible).
Mims/ Mm-hm (Inaudible.)
DavidsonV We do want to emphasize that this will be a great project for the corridor, as
Ron has indicated, but, you know, we've tried and tried and tried to work to make
Kirkwood understand that with a several hundred space parking lot that has one
way in and out you can only do so much operationally. It will, this project will
not solve that problem. They need multiple entrances and exits to that parking
lot---
Bailey/ (Chuckles.) Classically (inaudible).
Davidson/ ---they have not been able to achieve that yet.
Hayek/ And among the players you mentioned, Ron, are the property owners up and
down---
Knoche/ Definitely.
Hayek/ ---Lower Muscatine. As you know, they've contacted staff and us, and, with
concerns about loss of vegetation and things like that.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 46
Champion/ Well, I think it's a valid concern.
Hayek/ Yeah, so, we'll---
Knoche/ Yeah, definitely.
Hayek/ ---I, I don't know if I speak for everyone, but I think there's an expectation that
we'll have to, see what the design concepts look like.
Knoche/ Yeah, especially through the residential area. You know, one of the, one of the
things that we originally were looking at was just undergrounding the power
through the, kind of the commercial area and then leaving it overhead through the
residential. What, what that ended up doing was taking up room for power poles,
and, and ended up having to shove the sidewalks all the way to the back of the
right-of--way, you know, basically a foot off, which is where they are most places
around town. We're currently, the sidewalks in that corridor are about five or six
foot off the right-of--way, so they, the, the property owners have, you know, feel
that they have more property than what they actually own, which, which is
understandable. Um, with, proceeding with the concept of, of undergrounding all
the power, it, it allows us to move the sidewalk within that, um, cross-section a
little bit more and, and not keep it a foot off the right-of--way line like we
normally would on a new construction. So I think, it's, we're, we're working
with the property owners and when we get to the next step and get the, the final,
um, profile and the alignment laid out, we'll have another neighborhood meeting,
and also meet with the, the folks that we've, you know, heard from and have a lot
of concerns with what the, what it's gonna look like in front of their home.
Champion/ Sure.
Fosse/ Anything else on this project? Okay.
Davidson/ This project is one that we actually had some staff discussion about taking it
out of a funded year of the plan; decided to leave it in because Mormon Trek, uh,
Boulevard between Melrose and Abbey Lane is the highest, uh, traffic accident
corridor, uh, in, in the city right now. Now, fortunately, it's not a high severity,
uh, crash corridor, okay. We, we keep track of severity when we're keeping track
of crash data. But there is a very high frequency of predominately related to, to
there not being the ability to left-turners to get out of the traffic stream. That's,
that's the predominate, uh, crash history that you see here. So what this project
would do would be to enter, introduce a center turn lane, either for the entire, uh,
length of the corridor, or at a minimum at the major intersection to get turners out
of the traffic stream. We know that would bring the crash frequency down in the
corridor. So, because it's a safety related project, we decided to keep it in the
funded program. It's on an FY14, so there'll clearly be additional Council
decision-making in, uh, in future years on this, but we decided to leave it in the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 47
funded plan, FY14, just to keep it out in front of you as a traffic safety related
project.
Fosse/ Park Road, uh, from Riverside Drive down to the, to the river is a stretch of
pavement that's, that's getting in poor. condition and in need of replacement. And
any time we do that we begin to think about are other capacity improvements
necessary. And, you know, the outcome to that question depends a lot on the
Hancher decision and how that will work out. Um, with or without Hancher we
have some capacity issues at the, at the Park Road/Riverside Drive intersection.
So, um, as, as this one comes into focus, we'll, we'll get a better handle on what
the roadway improvements will be. There may be an opportunity to consolidate
the design and construction of this project with the Dubuque Street/Park Road
bridge project. And if that opportunity presents itself we want to do it, just
because, for minimizing disruption of the corridor, economy of scale, and all the
other good reasons that go along with that.
Now we're going into a series of Public Works related projects, and this, this is
the Public Works area own on south Gilbert Street. Orient yourself. Uh, here's
Gilbert Street and this is the large lift station down there; softball fields are off in
this area; this is the parking lot for the softball fields. And we're in the midst of a,
along-term migration from the Riverside Drive site to this site. I'll talk more
about that a little later. Uh, but will I, I will point out that some of our stuff is
already built down there. We've got the administration building is constructed;
uh, the salt storage building is, is in place now -this is our first winter using
that-and it's in a slightly different location than what is shown here. The next
two steps in this migration will be building the, uh, the fuel facility over in this
location, and then after that, the uh, the vehicle wash system, which will go in
here, and we'll, we'll talk about those in more detail in just a moment. Um, right
now all of our equipment kind of sits outside here, and, you know we talked about
that earlier for the airport. It, it's a luxury that we've never had in the Streets
Department. As long as anybody has worked there, our equipment does sit
outside. Uh, long-term we do want to get it inside, in, in a storage facility, and
then also move the equipment division and, uh, solid waste operations over here.
Uh, during the winter time we stash our plows all over town in whatever enclosed
heated space we can get or rent. And, so when we mobilize the plow, it, people
take off in different directions, go get their plows, and go from there. So, let's
see, let's move forward. Let's see. Oops. I gotta get out of this mode. Uh .. .
just turn that off, there we go. There we go.
Fuel facility. The, uh, right now, you know we've got the old one there at the
Riverside Drive intersection. Uh, we're actually one of the bigger gas stations in
town because of, uh, all we serve. We serve our fleet, uh, we serve the school
buses, uh, SEATS, uh, we serve all the Johnson County except for the
secondary roads trucks, uh; they've got their own fuel facility out there. And, you
know, what we're experiencing now is we're outgrowing that facility while at the
same time it's, it's coming of age. It's getting very old. Our tank is barely larger
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa Glty city councu special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 48
than that, that comes to fill it. And we, fortunately we've had a very vendor that,
that gets there just in time and fills that up for us. But what we experienced a
couple summers ago when the fuel market was kind of goofy was, is we had
some deliveries that weren't quite just in time. And we were draining off the
bottom of the tank, this old tank that we do clean regularly, but we. We were
having some problems with vehicles, uh, getting their fuel filters plugged. And
this is what was coming out of that, so, that's the risk you run, besides running
out of fuel, but just drawing off the bottom, and since police fire and ambulance
all fuel there we want to make sure that we've got good quality. The other thing
that's going on is that is, that's an industry that's becoming more heavily
regulated. So, as, as we do maintenance and repairs on that old facility, uh, they,
they're quite expensive because we need to come up to current standards. So in
a sense we're putting good money after bad there. We want to get this moved
over to the ultimate site, so that we don't risk a major reinvestment in this one.
Dickens/ Now isn't there the potential of selling that corner---
Fosse/ Yes.
Dickens/ ---sometime, too? That come in .. .
Fosse/ We'll talk about that a little later. That's, that's a very good point.
Dickens/ Sorry.
Fosse/ And this is one of the steps for getting there.
Um, vehicle wash system. This is our wash system now. Go out and hose
things down. Uh, we have gotten away from hosing down the garbage trucks at
this location. We do those at the wastewater plant now, so that the, the runoff
from those is collected and treated. Um, we do have an indoor wash facility but it
doesn't have the vertical clearance for these types of things. The indoor wash
facility we have now is kind of tiny and it's rusting away. Uh, but as I pointed out
earlier on the site plan a facility like this would be located right next to where the,
the fuel islands are, and, uh, usually the way the communities build these is they
have what's called a wash rack. This is like the sprayer wand so you can get up
above and clean out your trucks and another rack, or, or the bay next to it is a
drive-through type thing for large vehicles that just clean the outside up. And,
and that would add the potential, we could use that, or allow the other users of
our fuel system to use that wash system as well. You know, you just key in and
then we can bill accordingly. So as far as schedule on this, the fuel system
would go first and then vehicle wash. And then we're done with the, the easy
transitions over to the new site. Uh, moving the, the equipment division over is
probably a $8-9 million move. And then solid waste is, is not quite that big, but .
That's one of the obstacles to clearing out that intersection. We'll talk more
about that later.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa city city t.ouncu apev~ai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 49
Regenia, did you have a question?
Bailey/ I know we talked about this last year, did we, did this move? I thought this was a
FY10.
Fosse/ It was---
Bailey/ Okay.
Fosse/ ---and with all the flood recovery things going on it, it slipped out of here. Yeah.
You're right.
Bailey/ Okay. Okay. Good, my memory serves. Thanks.
Fosse/ Okay. Rochester Avenue Bridge.
Knoche/ Rochester Avenue Bridge. Um, this, this bridge, uh, we received word within
the last month that we have, we're eligible for state bridge funds on this project,
so it's kind of moved it forward on it, for us a little bit, as far as getting the design
done and getting it built. Those funds will be available for us, uh, October of this
year. So we'll be looking at a F-- 2011 construction on this project. Uh, we will,
obviously, rebuild the structure, um, incorporate sidewalks, uh, on both sides of
the bridge. And then continue the sidewalk on the south side of Rochester all the
way up to Seventh Avenue. So we'll, we'll get that taken care of, with this,
sidewalk currently ends right there at that fire hydrant on the top picture, so.
Fosse/ This fire hydrant here is to stop you from riding your bike into the creek.
(Chuckles.)
Hayek/ How old is this bridge?
Fosse/ Boy. Yeah... I ...Old.
Wright/ 70 years?
Mims/ It's very old.
Knoche/ I'd, I'd have to check---
Davidson/ It's older than I am. That's old. (Chuckles.)
Champion/ It's old and decrepit.
(Murmuring.)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa Gity city councn special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 50
Knoche/ The Scott Boulevard Pavement Overlay, this, this project, uh, will actually be
included in our, this, this summer's, uh, pavement rehabilitation program. Uh,
this is a section from Rochester down to Court Street. Uh, the pavement is
starting to, uh, the joints are starting to, to come apart a little bit, um, due to some
issues with materials. Uh, we'll be looking at doing a crack and seep project and
then overlaying it with asphalt. And, um, we have had some complaints from,
from the neighbors in regards to noise, so we'll, uh, take care of that with the
overlay project.
Fosse/ This is a shot of the way the, the joints are displacing out there, and that, that can
be very annoying to live next to; especially with the truck traffic that's along
there.
Knoche/ With the industrial park being down at the end of the road it's, it's definitely
increased the truck traffic in that corridor.
Dickens/ Will that get better eventually if Taft is used for truck traffic? In long-range
planning .. .
Fosse/ That will take some of the loads off this. And from a pavement perspective, cars
are, are virtually invisible to the life of the pavement. It's, it's the trucks that,
what deteriorate it. So moving that truck traffic over to Taft will help extend the
life of the, of this pavement.
Knoche/ Project that's currently in final design and, and the property acquisition phase is
the Sycamore Street project, uh, from Highway 6 down to the city limits. Uh,
currently the, the PC pavement ends at Burns, uh, Street, and what we'll do is,
uh, extend an urban section, a curb and gutter down to the city limits just south of
Dickens, um, just south of Langenberg Avenue; include aeight-foot wide
sidewalk and a, and afive-foot wide sidewalk, um on each side; uh, make the
connection, there's currently an asphalt trail that runs down along that roadway
so we' 11 make that, um, a permanent feature. Uh, we' 11 also be looking at taking
the existing four lane section from, that goes from Highway 6 south and
converting that to a three lane section; similar to what we're doing on, uh, Lower
Muscatine. And then, uh, also looking at some, uh, intersection work at Highway
6, um, to accommodate, uh, left turn lanes at that intersection. Um, also working
with the DOT, um, for potential U-Step funding, and do some, uh, lengthening of
the left turn lanes on Highway 6 to accommodate more vehicles there. Uh, that
intersection is, uh, in the top ten, uh, as far as accident, um, locations in Iowa
City, so, that'll help make it a safety improvement.
Dickens/ Is this going to go all the way down to where the soccer fields are, or not quite
that far?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa city city ~ouncu apev~a~
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 51
Knoche/ It won't. It'll stop where the current city limits are; just south of the South
Pointe subdivision, right where Bill Langenberg's house is.
Dickens/ Just south of Langenberg.
Fosse/ And I believe MidAmerican's going to start doing some utility relocations soon on
that?
Knoche/ They, they were originally gonna start in December and I, with the weather
getting bad on them early, they, they didn't get a chance to get in there, but, uh,
they, they, will be in there, uh, um, moving the power poles back, and uh, Qwest
will also be in there doing some duct-bank work along the corridor.
Davidson/ In terms of going the rest of the way, terry, there's a, quite a substantial area
of property where the Lehman farm is right now that's not in the city. Once that
comes into the city and is developed, with, you know, for city development then
we' 11 start talking about taking it all the way down to the soccer field road.
Dickens/ Is it the long term to bring McCollister across?
Davidson/ Exactly. There's a plan for doing that, and right about where, there's a
farmstead right there (clears throat) at kind of a high point, that's where the
arterial comes through and has an intersection.
Fosse/ Yep. Okay we have two Miscellaneous Other Projects. Do you want to do
those and then take a break, or?
Hayek/ Can everybody hang in there for a couple more minutes?
Fosse/ Okay. Jeff?
Davidson/ Yeah, 420th Street, uh, Industrial Park, I mean, that won't eventually be the
name; it is for now. Uh, there are three projects that you can see here, uh, that
basically are all part of the infrastructure for getting, uh, this 173 acres, uh, on line
for industrial development. Uh, we feel like this is a tremendous opportunity for
the City in terms of, uh, increasing, uh, uh, the amount of industrial property for
development, uh, I the city. Uh, it is annexed. It's in the process of being platted.
We hope to have that plat to you, um, you know, by the time it gets to the
Planning and Zoning Commission realistically it'll probably be February or
March. Uh, we are with ICAN already marketing the property. Uh, we have had
quite a few expressions of interest. Uh, with the economy being, being depressed
the, the companies that have been interested have had to, uh, ratchet back a little
bit and they're taking a little bit more time than we'd hoped. But, uh, we, we are
getting everything ready. Uh, we have the 420th Street improvement which is a
partially RISE funded, 50/50 RISE funded, which will reconstruct 420`" Street as
a city street, uh, between Highway 6 out to the east, uh, property line of the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 52
property we own. Uh, we do have the, the projects then as you can see to extend
the municipal sewer and municipal water to the project as well. Uh, so this pretty
much, uh, you know, it's a pretty high dollar amount here, but it, it is something
that in terms of the eventual property tax generation for the city will be very, very
positive, uh, for us in the long run.
Bailey/ Given that we're looking at wind energy and the weight and the truck traffic and
the, and the impact on roads, is there a different construction mechanism or a
different way we construct this particular---
Davidson/ Oh yes, for sure. Yeah, we'll make sure that in terms of the pavement design
as where, as well as the geometric design that it's designed for the larges
vehicles that are gonna---
Bailey/ And the heavier loads.
Davidson/ ---and of course with the wind power industry, and just to clarify we are
specifically target marketing to the wind and power industry out here. It will not
be exclusively a wind power industry park, but we are target marketing to them.
And they of course do have the very, very substantially sized vehicles for certain
components, depending on what would eventually locate here. So that's all
being taken into consideration here: the pavement design and the geometric
design.
Bailey/ Good, I think that's going to be important for selling.
Fosse/ Anything else on this one?
Knoche/ One of the softwares that, that we've been talking about trying to implement
and it, it just haven't had the opportunity yet, is a geographic information system.
Um, we, we rely heavily on Johnson County currently, um, to do, with the data,
and, and using their data to make maps and some of those things. And so what,
what this would do is, is actually implement, uh, GIS system for Iowa City. Um,
we would then be able to have, have our own database, be able to populate that
information ourselves, be able to keep track of, um, you know, accidents, um,
police calls, fire calls, and, and, and be able to produce reports, uh, a lot easier
than what we do today. Um, this is something that would probably, would
eventually have some ongoing, um, operating costs, just due to be able to have
the staff, um, to be able to keep it implemented, keep it up to date.
Bailey/ We're going to be asked so tell us why we need our own system and, and sharing
with another government or governmental entity isn't the way to go.
Knoche/ I don't think that that would be a bad thing to do-
Bailey/ Okay.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council ~peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 53
Knoche /Um, and I, and I think that, you know, those discussions should happen. Um, it
would, it would just, it would, I guess, we would, if we would have our own
system, we would know that we have that availability to us all the time instead of,
and, and have control of how we want to maintain that data, versus, uh, having
an outside entity maintain it for us. But I, I think that, um if, if there, the
opportunities that are out there to share with, uh, Johnson County, I, I think that
that would be a good way to go to implement this system.
Dickens/ Is this a current cost or is this a projected?
Knoche/ This is projected.
Fosse/ Yeah, and this is something we've, uh, we are behind the curve on this when you
compare it to other communities. You know, the early `90's were, were big years
for starting to get into GIS. The good news with being behind the curve is in the
early `90's they had about a 50% failure rate. So you spend a couple million
dollars and the system just would not work, or they were unable to sustain it. Uh,
we came close to implementing in the late `90's, uh, but it was one of those
things similar to the fire station. We could afford to buy the software, we could
afford to populate it with data, but we were not in a position to add the staff
necessary to keep the data current. That's a key feature to this because it's out
of date the day after you put it online. And, uh, you know, so whether we do
stand alone or, or piggy-back with the County, or some sort of hybrid, which I
think is most likely, those upfront expenses of software and migrating our
information from our existing mapping systems into GIS, and then that ongoing
expense of keeping it current.
Bailey/ Why couldn't this be a JCCOG function?
Fosse/ It's possible.
Bailey/ I mean, that would, I mean there are some functions of JCCOG that may be sort
of phasing out. It would make sense to maybe phase this one in and have that
staff--- Oh, John will tell me why.
(Laughter.)
Yapp/ Uh, John Yapp, Transportation Planner and JCCOG Director. Uh, in JCCOG we
currently do have, uh, we do use GIS software for many of our map creations.
And we do use Johnson County data, uh, for much of that information. What we
are not able to do in JCCOG is create and maintain our own data. So we are
using data created by other agencies, Johnson County, DNR, uh, Iowa DOT, um.
To be able to maintain data for the entire metropolitan area we would need, uh,
more staff.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 54
Bailey/ Staff. Yeah. I, I mean that---
Yapp/ But certainly that is, there's potential.
Bailey/ -- that doesn't surprise me but I think just potentially, that, that's something I
think we should talk about.
Yapp/ I think something from the public Works arena, some of the data intensive needs
and what's shown on the, on the map on the overhead, is utilities: uh, water,
storm-sewer, sanitary sewer. Uh, there's a lot of filming and a lot of data
collection that needs to be done there. Different departments would use it in
different ways, but, yeah.
Bailey/ Sure. Okay. Thanks.
Hayek/ I think it's worthy to explore those if there's cost-sharing that, we just have to be
mindful of the flip side of, um ... Another system I'm familiar with, um, not,
not GIS, uh, use of software and databases, um, we have to put in requests for
specific reports that the public had asked for us, and this particular entity has
multiple clients and they wait, you, the numbers of requests of types of changing
of fields and reports, uh, stack up because it's not worth their while unless they
get multiple jurisdictions saying we want this report, as, as "blank." And, uh, you
know, so, they, they control that so that we can't even if we had the staff to
generate that database and collect it and maintain it, uh, we don't have the
licensure, so we're not allowed to, to do that-
Bailey/ Mm-hm.
Hayek/ ---so it's just, it, maybe it wouldn't be that big of a deal because in this particular
case the County or JCCOG may not have the numbers of, of, uh, clients. But it's
just something to, to pay attention to.
Bailey/ Well, and maybe if we want to talk about this more, discuss if we want to bring
this to JCCOG and see if we can set up a taskforce to explore the feasibility, and
see if the County or other entities would be interested. I don't know. I mean it's
a million bucks plus ongoing maintenance, so it seems worth exploring.
Fosse/ Public Works is excited about this, and for information that's not in the County's
GIS system now, as John pointed out is really utility related. And we've got
hundreds of millions of dollars of assets out there underground, and then we
have our paving system as well. And, and, this would provide us a much better
way to manage those assets for preventive maintenance and maintenance and
that sort of thing.
Hayek/ What we're, we're not making any moves in the near future on this anyway. I
.agree. I, this seems like an area, and I have zero technological prowess here,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa Gity city councn speaai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 55
but it seems like an area in which, uh, shared resources could be a, a potential
benefit to local municipalities and so when we get to it I think we should, we
should, we should explore it in some fashion---
Bailey/ Or just you know---
Hayek/ ---and whether it's JCCOG---
Bailey/ ---begin to explore and---
Hayek/ --- or some joint agreement, or something-
Bailey/ ---know if we're going to start .. .
Hayek/ ---and maybe it won't work. Maybe it, maybe the, the need to, to control data
input and management are so specific to our purposes that it doesn't make sense,
but ...Okay.
Fosse/ Take a break before we talk about a lot of water?
Hayek/ Yeah, why don't we take a five minute break?
****Break****
Fosse/ All ready?
Hayek/ We ready to proceed? Let's start up again and we'll go until just about exactly
high noon and then we'll take a break, take a lunch break.
Fosse/ Okay. If we reach a logical break point just prior to that we'll do that.
Our next section is Flood Recovery and, and Mitigation and, and let me begin by
distinguishing those two terms. Uh, flood recovery is what it takes to make
yourself whole and operational again. Flood mitigation is what are you changing
to better prepare yourself for future floods. And, uh, we're, we're gonna review
with you some of the projects that are in the capital program related to these two
items, uh, but you'll get a more in depth view of all this in a couple weeks. We
are now working on a, a summary memo of all the efforts through the end of
2009, and it's, it's really a hard thing to get your arms around. There are so
many things going on, we're trying to boil, boil it down into something that's,
that's digestible, and then spend some time with you in a work session and talk
about these things in more detail.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 56
Uh, but with that introduction let me lead off by showing you a composite map.
We, we continue to meet monthly with the University of Iowa and Coralville and
coordinate on our projects, and talk and make sure that, that what we're doing in
one location does not counteract with what we're doing at another location. So let
me work through the corridor and I'll, I'll show you some of the projects but I
won't go through them in detail. The red projects on this page are in Coralville.
This is the, uh, Interstate 80, and down here is the, the Coralville Strip. And the
blue projects are Iowa City projects. We're doing some protections in our well-
fields -we'll get into all these projects, like I said, in detail later. Uh, down
within Iowa City we've got a number of, of blue projects here. This is a blue one
with a yellow border because it's a, it's a joint project with the University of
Iowa, and that's modifications to the Riverside Arts Campus storm-sewer system.
And then the yellow projects are University of Iowa projects. And then, as I
mentioned earlier today I wanted to share with you about some of their
modifications to the steam tunnels. Uh, that, that was their Achilles heel during
the flood. The levies held, the sandbags held, but they got flooded from within
when it came through the steam tunnels. Uh, so they're reconstructing a number
of those steam tunnels, uh, to prevent that from happening in the future and one of
those will be along Burlington Street here, and then another one is going to be out
in that intersection of Riverside Drive and Burlington Street. They need to cross
that intersection with the new steam tunnel. And they need to do the work under
live conditions, with live steam, so it's a segmented project that goes slow. So we
just need to be prepared for that type of thing going on.
Uh, continuing south, uh, we have Iowa City projects, uh, relocation of the north
wastewater plant, animal shelter, east side levee and west side levee. And so
that's the overview of the whole works. And in addition to the map showing them
all what we're going to do is have a hydraulic model built of all the projects to
look at the composite impact of those, rather than look at each project
individually. That, that'll be coming together this winter.
Our first project is Section 206 project that Ron will cover. And this one was
actually in the works prior to the flood, but the flood I believe was the catalyst for
the Corp wanting to, to fund this. And, why don't you go ahead, Ron?
Knoche/ This, this project actually dates back to 2003 was when I had first gotten some,
involved with the project. It's a joint project between the Crop of Engineers, City
of Coralville, University of Iowa, and, and then ourselves. They had done some
feasibility studies of, um, ecosystem restoration, so they're looking at, you know,
whether we, incorporating wetlands, reforestation, uh, repairing buffers, um, and,
and ...They did the feasibility study. It came back that it was a feasible project
for them to fund, but at that time they didn't have the money to fund it. Uh,
within the last two months I had a phone call from the Corp, uh, saying that lo'
and behold they have money now to fund this project, are you guys ready to go.
And, uh, this is an overall map of the, the project sites that they had done the
feasibility study on. And of the, of the sites that are shown t here are, there's
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 57
three of them that, that involve Iowa City. There's a site up at the, at the
Waterworks Prairie Park, up at the Waterworks Prairie Park, uh, there was a site
on, uh, Peninsula Park, and the, a site along the Iowa River, along the Dubuque
Street corridor. Um, uh, and that one actually has, has become a funded project
under a different program that the Corp of Engineers has, so what we'll be able to
do is be able to focus on what is on this map Site A and Site D. it, it kind of I
guess segues into what Mike was talking about the Peninsula Park because some
of the concepts that they had reviewed in the feasibility go along with what the
Parks and Rec. would like to do down on the Peninsula Park. Um, up at the
Waterworks Prairie Park they're looking at some, some wetland areas along the
river. Um, um, doing some prairie planting back along the interstate, and, uh, that
would be a prairie buffer, and then looking at doing some, cleaning up the, the
trees along the river and, and thinning out the species that are gonna be hard hit;
whether it be some diseases within that, that species or even ones that are, are
dying. So that would be up at the Waterworks Prairie Park, and this one's kind of
a little bit harder to see, but down on the Peninsula Park, um, they're looking at
taking pretty much the whole area that's in the, the 100 year floodplain, actually
removing sediments that have been deposited in those areas, and restoring it
back to more of a, a wetland, uh, um ecosystem. Um, one of the things that.
we're gonna have to review is, is, is what they would like to do at the Peninsula
Park consistent what we'd like to do with our well-head protection and making
sure that, that, we're not going to cause any troubles with ourselves with our
water sources that we have down in the peninsula. But uh, this is a, an exciting
project. I think it'll be a neat one if the funding does actually come through.
That's, you'll see that it's actually out at the end of the capital program. Um,
we're still waiting to hear back when that funding is going to fall into place.
Fosse/ Once these new ecosystems are established they will have specific maintenance
requirements and, at least the initial years of that, our expenses in doing that will
count toward our contribution to the total project. Is that accurate, Ron?
Knoche/ That's correct.
Fosse/ But we still need to be aware that multiple, long term we'll have some, some
different maintenance expenses there, but the majority of those are getting those
ecosystems established, those that occur in the first years. Any questions before
I move on? Okay.
Next project is the Dubuque Street Park Road Bridge. This is one of our, our
highest priority projects that came out of the flood. And, just a composite vie of it
all and I don't need to really go over this with you all again, since you're all quite
familiar with it. But we have a, we have a, a pretty good commit from the EDA
to fund the design of this project. Uh, we don't have the, haven't executed the
funding agreement yet but we're looking, uh, to them for design money. And
then, uh, thus far it appears that we've got $1.5 million of, of a earmark for us for
the construction phase. So, we still have roughly a, uh, $8.5 to13 million gap
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 58
when, well, when you combine our wastewater relocation and Dubuque Street and
Park Road bridges together we have about an $8.5 to 13 million funding gap that
we need to fill and we're still looking at, at different funding sources, and we'll
talk more about that in a couple weeks at that work session. I wanted to show you
after the flood of '93, uh, some students, uh, altered the crossing sign out there to
reflect the, uh, the, uh, new condition. (Laughter.) We still have this sign. It was
a keeper. That's the neat thing about living in a college town.
Davidson/ Uh, this is a project that actually has some alternatives to it. Uh, the goal of
this project is to be able in a flood event to keep the larger Peninsula open. You'll
recall that the access right, just right there, uh, that, the flooding in Foster Road
in that area, uh, created a situation where we had to have the entire Peninsula,
people's whose homes were high and dry, evacuated because we could not get
emergency vehicles to them. The Peninsula was basically cut off. So, the goal of
this project is to, uh, bring better access to the Peninsula so it can remain open
during a flood event. We have a couple of alternatives. One is that segment of
Foster Road that you just saw highlighted there, to elevate that. And, originally
this slide was called Foster Road Elevation because it was, and I think in the, in
the materials that you have its still referred to that, and that is one option of what
we feel are three that we may possibly do. The, another one that is out there and
very popular with the people living at Idyllwild is the Taft Speedway/No-Name
Road levee. Uh, which was a levee that would be created to, uh, elevate Taft
Speedway and No-Name Road, keep them up, uh, out of the water during a flood
event, and also would, uh, basically de facto create a dike for the Idyllwild
Development and keep it high and dry. There's about $20 million of assessed
valuation in there, uh, I believe. So, it would be a way to protect that. Um,
there is also a third alternative, which maybe Rick can highlight there involving
Laura Drive, the redevelopment of the Forrest View Trailer Park, which the
owner of the park does come in and speak to us periodically about the potential
redevelopment of that, the strategy he has for doing that. It would reconstruct
Laura Drive, bring a collector street through the existing trailer park's property
over to the, uh, Mackinaw Development where we have streets stubbed there. It
would then create a point of secondary access for the Peninsula located at the
intersection, and I'm drawing a blank on the name of the street, the main
connector street there from Mackinaw, and Foster Road, just past the Elks Club
entrance. That would become the point where there was only a single means of
access, uh, past that point. Right now it's the No-Name Road/Foster Road
intersection, everything past that point currently only has a single means of
access. So, we don't know for sure, uh, thus far the State has not been willing to
fund with CDBG public infrastructure funds. We've made applications for the
Taft Speedway/No-Name levee, it's not, it's simply a, too low of a priority
currently. Um, once we get through all of the buyouts statewide, the non-FEMA
buyouts come from that same program, uh, we'll then see if maybe they increase
the priority for the levee projects. And at that time we'll know not only about this
levee, but our east side levee and west side levee, which we're gonna talk about a
little bit later, um, uh, we'll know about the funding prospects. At that point then
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 59
we can make a decision on which way we're gonna go basically with this project.
But the project does have as its goal to keep the Peninsula open during a flood
event.
Fosse/ One of the things---
Mims/ I have a qu-I'm sorry, a question, when we were talking earlier about the, under
Parks and Rec., the bridge across the river, and the comment was made that that
was also gonna provide emergency access---
Davidson/ Could.
Mims/ ---to the Peninsula. It could? Okay. With what's budgeted in there now does it?
I mean it's in, there's like a $1.3 million project/
Fosse/ Yeah. Let me clarify. The emergency access is just -this mouse wake up;
there we go- this is a well-house right here.
Mims/ Mm-hm.
Fosse/ This is another one right here. It's just to get us to those well-houses for
emergency maintenance during a flood event.
Mims/ And then from there it's just trails. There's no road.
Fosse/ Right.
Davidson/ Now those trails are designed for a Public Works vehicle to be able to use
them because they, it is basically the system for Public Works vehicles to service
the well fields down there. But, in terms of whether or not it would be elevated
high enough during a flood event that would all have to be engineered.
Mims/ Okay.
Fosse/ And that's, it's unlikely that we would do that because there's a fair amount of
conveyance area over there, uh, that would be cut off by elevating those trials.
Mims/ Okay.
Fosse/ Right now the water goes over that and then the, we're necking down that cross-
section and worsen things on the Coralville Strip.
One of the things that makes this a somewhat expensive project is it's a dense
corridor for water utilities. We've got raw, unfinished water, major mains in that
corridor that we need to, we've raised the road significantly, we want to bring
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 60
those up as well. Otherwise they're so deep that if we need to get at them on
short notice because of a leak, then, we'd be in a, in a tough way.
Champion/ Jeff, when you talked about going to the trailer park, that would be about the
cheapest way to do it wouldn`t it?
Davidson/ Uh, it just depends. There's a lot of relocation expense. That won't happen,
Connie, unless the, the, uh, manufactured housing park goes away.
Champion/ Oh, okay.
Davidson/ And, and according to the Comprehensive Plan it, it eventually will go away.
But that, the relocation assistance to be provided to all those people, now, as it
stands currently that's a private issue between the private owner of the park and,
and them. Uh, we would probably only move ahead with that if and when---
Champion/ It's gone.
Davidson/ ---the trailer park goes away.
Bailey/ On the Comp Plan does that continue to be residential in that area?
Davidson/ We're trying to limit the amount of residential that's that close to the
interstate.
Bailey/ Right, but we wouldn't do .. .
Davidson/ More likely you would get perhaps an office type development in that. That's
a good land use up against the interstate. Uh, I think Mackinaw is finding out
some things about their adjacency to the interstate that's led to some of their
problems in the area. So, might have some multi-family residential; but likely
also some office.
Fosse/ Anything else on this? Okay.
Knoche/ Uh, with the, the flood of 2008 there was some damage to the, to the face of the
dam at the Iowa River Power Dam, so we need to get in there and do some repairs
on that, on that dam. Uh, nothing that's detrimental the, the structural stability of
the dam, it's just some, some pop-outs in the downstream face of the dam that we
need to take care of. Um, that's one where we're, uh, FEMA is covering that as
far as the public assistance. Uh, and we're to the point now where they've,
they've bought into the project and they're willing to fund that.
Uh, the second, uh, project that we have there is this summer, at the end of June
we had a tree fall over on the pedestrian bridge that goes across the top of the
dam. And uh, the consulting engineer that we had come in and take a look at it,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 61
our, our concern as, as far as service vehicles going across the bridge, um, we
need to replace that, that bridge to be able to bring that back into the, um, ability
to do that. Um, this is that, it's a, it's a tough one to want to do because it's out
closer to the dam, and so there's not a real easy way to get to it. So we'll have to
build a causeway to get to it in order to, to pull the bridge out. Um, luckily, the
bridge fell at the, uh, the tree fell at the mid-span of the bridge. And so what
we'll be able to do is salvage that section into smaller bridges and be able to use it
in the park system. But, uh, it's, uh, it's about a $40,000 piece of bridge that we
have to buy. It ends up being about a $100,000 project by the time we are able to
get out there and get it pulled out.
Hayek/ You're, you're talking about one section of that.
Knoche/ It's just a 70-foot section. There's, I think there's six bridges that go across it
and they're 70-foot sections. And it's just one of those 70-foot sections that turns
out is damaged.
Dickens/ Any shared cost with Coralville on .. .
Knoche/ There is not.
Dickens/ The dam too?
Knoche/ We own the dam.
Dickens/ Oh, we own the dam.
Knoche/ And then, oh, go ahead, Mike.
Wright/ I was just curious regarding the dam, does that serve any functional purpose any
longer?
Fosse/ Yes it does.
Wright/ It does.
Fosse/ And, and it's integral to our, our water plant and it keeps the pool of water over
our well-field up there, as well as keeping a pool of water in front of our river
intake. So when we, uh, decided on the place where our water plant currently is,
we purchased this dam from the County. They gave us a deal. It was only $1.
(Chuckles.) And, since then we've put a couple million dollars into it.
(Laughter.)
Bailey/ I don't think that was such a deal.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 62
Wright/ I got a used car like that.
Fosse/ But it's very important to maintain the integrity of that dam for that reason. Uh,
one of the things that will be blending into all this is a portage for people to get
around it with kayaks and canoes so that we can have more of a water trail from
City Park al) the way up, up to the reservoir. It'll be kind of a neat thing.
Knoche/ That' 11 be done with money that we've received from the DNR, and, and part of
the River Trails program that they have.
Fosse/ As Ron pointed out, the nice thing is we'll be able to cannibalize this bridge and
make it into shorter ones that we can use for parks. If you've not been out on
this bridge, especially in the evening, get out there. It's, it's an amazingly popular
spot. I've seen families eating pizza out here. It's just a, a neat place to be and it
was, it was the most exciting place to watch the flood before we closed the
bridge.
Hayek/ I' 11 bet.
Fosse/ In fact there's Ron right there.
Champion/ The eagle watching too .. .
Hayek/ I think he has some binoculars around his neck.
Fosse/ Uh, this is the Normandy/Manor Intersection Elevation project. And, uh, this is,
this is for that Parkview Terrace neighborhood. And just in a, in a broad sense
about the neighborhood, we have not been able to develop a mitigation strategy
or flood protection strategy that will function in an event of the magnitude that we
had in '08. Um, the best option for that neighborhood for the large events is the
buyout program. That's your best way, best form of protection. We are looking
to do a, a couple things in that neighborhood for midlevel floods, more like we
experienced in '93. And one is the, the, again this is one of our neighborhoods
with a single means of access --trying to remember if I've got a, no I don't have
an overhead picture of that--. Um, let's see, back up a little bit. Yeah, here we
go. Uh, this is, this is Parkview Terrace neighborhood, and it comes in and this
intersection floods out, although there are a number of homes in this area, in the,
in a flood like we had in '93 that still need access that would have to drive
through water. So we would elevate that intersection and then also, uh, modify
the storm sewer outlets from the neighborhood so we could valve those off to,
uh, facilitate the pumping of the water out of the neighborhood. Again, this is a
midlevel protection project. It would not perform in, in an event like we
experienced (inaudible).
The next project is, uh, Riverside Drive/Arts Campus Storm Sewer Project. And
this is one that, that was a joint project with the University of Iowa after the, the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 63
flood of '93. And it was designed to function up to a 100 year event, roughly
28,000 CFS. And it did. But it was not designed to go beyond that, so when the
head on the river exceeded the ability of the pumps to get the water out and of
the pipes to contain that pressure, then we started having problems with the,
containing the water within the storm-sewer system. And then eventually it over-
topped the banks and the entire area flooded out here. Now the University's
looking at modifying the, the trail system along the river to provide that higher
level of protection for this area. So the storm-sewer system needs to be modified
to deal with that higher head in turn. So that's, that's one where we're looking at
sharing the project and, and we'll be searching for some outside funding sources
on that one. Any questions there? No?
Uh, the next one is the Rocky Shore Lift Station and Flood Gate. And, uh, oddly
enough, this is our only flood mitigation project that's 100% funded by outside
funding sources and it was one of our lower priority applications. Uh, we've got
a, uh, a drainage way that goes, uh, drains to the Coralville Strip and the
University, uh, practice fields area and goes out to the river, uh, and, and where it
goes out to the river actually is in Iowa City. Uh, there's like, two and a half lots
in Iowa City there. And the valve system was in place. We built that after '93,
uh, but what we did not build was, was a means to pump that. So during the
flood we brought in every available pump we could find and we're pumping and
pumping and we were not keeping up with the water that was coming, coming
out of that watershed. And, and it comes from two sources. There's the water
that falls out of the sky, and then also there's the water travels through the sands
and gravels and comes up on the backside of that railroad levee. You know,
ultimately when the levee blew out and flooded that entire area there was no, no
way we were gonna keep up. And fortunately we did get all of our pumps out of
there before they were, they were taken by the flood waters. So we were able to
reposition those elsewhere. But there needs to be a, a permanent lift station in
there. So the, the bulk of the benefit of this project will go to the University of
Iowa and Coralville, uh, but it does fall in Iowa City. At least, we shouldn't have
any out of pocket expenses for the initial construction. Uh, we'll have operating
expenses of about $8,000 per year, just in exercising the valves, exercising the
motors, make sure it all works. You can't just turn it on once every 20 years or it
isn't going to work. Um, and then during a flood expense we estimate that we'll
have about another $7,000 in energy costs, so that sort of thing. So we, we're
gonna hopefully look at a means of sharing those costs with the other benefitted
parties there.
Champion/ Yeah, because we don't really benefit from it.
Fosse/ No. Well, we, we have a couple properties.
Um, this is another big project, the South Wastewater Treatment Plant Expansion,
and well, another way to look at that id the relocation of the north wastewater
treatment plant. Uh, through thoughtful planning, uh, over a number of
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 64
years this, this plant site has been designed to be expandable. And, the, uh, the
facilities that' 11 come down here from north plant will, will pretty much occupy
this area in here. Then the north plant will be abandoned. So, it's basically we're
growing this plant abandoning the north one. Uh, with the funding package that
we've been able to put together so far, the total project cost of expanding this and
demolishing the north plant, regarding that and preparing it for the, the River
Crossings, which Jeff will talk about later, is $63 million. Now, this component,
just this plant expansion is $46 million and that's what is in funded years; the
demolition of the other plant is, is in the unfunded years -we'll talk about that a
little bit later. But, uh, the EDA has indicated that they're likely to contribute
about $22 million for this one. Uh, we have about $5 million in CDBG money, or
up to $5 million, and then the I-JOBS, looking at somewhere between $3.5 and
$10 million. And then we fill the rest of that gap with sales tax revenues and user
fees on that. And in addition to flood protection what we want to build into this
project is, is enough growth for at least the next 20 year so that our rate payers
aren't facing that, that expense again before too long; and then also positioning
ourselves to deal with future, uh, more stringent regulations on wastewater
effluence.
Any questions on that?
Dickens/ Why is there such a big increase in local option in 2011 compared to ' 12.
Fosse/ Let's see. I think it's just the way the, uh. Let me find that here. Chime in .. .
Dickens/ Goes from 3.6 to 5.6 and then drops back down to 4.2.
Helling/ That's, that's not all the revenue from the local option. It's just, I think it's just
how it's apportioned in here.
Fosse/ Yeah.
Helling/ The total revenue we projected was about $9 million a year.
Fosse/ So that local option sales tax is being split between this project and the Dubuque
Street project.
Dickens/ Okay.
Fosse/ So it's just how that works out from, from year to year.
Next project is a couple water main crossings that we have going beneath the
Iowa River. And what we've found by using the divers after the flood is that uh,
the, the river had scoured underneath those water-main crossings that were once
underneath the river. And fortunately, uh, FEMA has contributed to this so that
we can replace those water mains rather than just trying to cobble together, uh,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 65
getting those covered up again underneath the river. So those are in design right
now, and, and will be constructed next year, replacing those.
Mims/ Where are those located at?
Fosse/ Um, there's, there both in the University (inaudible), Ron?
Knoche/ No, one is at where the old water plant site is, there's a crossing that goes
across to the Theater Building. UH, and then the other site is south of the
Highway 6 bridge on the Highway 6 corridor.
Champion/ How big are those mains? They must be huge.
Knoche/ I believe that those are both 12-inch mains.
Fosse/ You have flow under pressure you can get a lot of water through there, versus
storm-sewers and stuff, that's all gravity flow.
Uh, Well Field Protection. First of all, our water plant, when we built the new
one back around 2000, the, we built it high on a hill, so that was high and dry, but
our, our water sources by their nature are down in the floodplain. And, uh, what
we want to do is improve the level of protection for them. And the, the objective
being two-fold. One is, is we want to keep the motors dry for the pumps, so that
we can continue to pump, and then secondly we've got to keep energy to the
motors. So that's the focus of it. And we want to do it in a way, if we can
without making them stand out and stick up and, and look odd, because both of
those are in park areas; they, uh, the Peninsula Park and the, uh, Waterworks
Prairie Park. So, we're, we're looking at modifying the structures and modifying
the way that the electrical system is laid out, and, so that we'll have a minimum
amount of flood-walls if you will or elevated structures out there. And, we have
separate projects, one for the Peninsula and one for the water plant site. One is, is
funded, the other one we're in the works and hopefully we'll get funded on that.
The West Side Levee is from McCollister Boulevard up to the Crandic Railroad
Bridge. Uh, it would, would come up, so this is, this is where McCollister is.
This is the Crandic Railroad Bridge here. Um, the levee would be constructed to
an elevation higher that the 2008 flood. Uh, with that it would protect the
Thatcher Mobile Home Park, the Hammes Mobile Home Park and then
Commercial Court. The, we are in design now. We were able to get some
community disaster grant funds to do the design of the project. Uh, we were
trying to get some CDBG flood money to actually construct the levee and
unfortunately we're not able to get those funds. So we're still in the process of, of
pursuing funds for this project. Um, along with this it would also, within the
design we would be looking at putting a trail along the top of the levee and that
would, um, help for future, uh, river corridor trails along there. Uh, we have a
siphon structure that goes underneath the river, um, to the pump station at
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 66
Napoleon Park. Um, this levee would also give us access to that during a flood
event like we had, um, in 2008.
Dickens/ What is a siphon structure?
Knoche/ Uh, typically when you build a sewer, it'd be a gravity sewer. So, you'd have
your slope and your pipe and it would, flows downhill. When you have an
impediment like a river, where it, you can't continue that pipe straight through
you'd go down underneath the river and it's a siphon. Same as you'd siphon gas
out of your car, it just goes the other way. It's an inverted siphon.
Fosse/ We're just finishing up replacing the ones that just, that are upstream from Iowa
Avenue. Uh, those were washed out during the flood. This one stayed put.
Davidson/ And as I mentioned earlier the, we hope to know within six to twelve, maybe
eighteen months once the statewide non-FEMA buyouts are completed, if there's
going to be money to increase the priority of the levee projects. So they're just a
low priority, uh, right now, at the state level. And so, um, we feel this is an
important just because of the vulnerability of the population that's associated with
it here. This is not actually a land use that, uh, is a good one this close to the
river, but we just don't have a lot of other options for the folks in this area and
that's why we think this is a valid project.
Knoche/ Along with this project, with, with the alignment, we own, we own the property
just to the north of McCollister and then we also have a strip of property that we
own along the Commercial Court property. Um, through the Baculis Mobile
Home Park we will have to acquire right-of--way properties in order to build this
levee project. Um, the current alignment of that shows that we would have to
relocate three structures, or relocate three of the mobile homes that are there
now with this project.
Fosse/ Okay our last project in this section is not actually a project at all, and it doesn't
show up in the capital program but I wanted to include it here because it's part of
our mitigation strategy and that is the buyouts of the Parkview Terrace
neighborhood. As I said earlier, that is the best fail-safe method of protection for
that neighborhood is, is to move out of it and convert it back to floodplain there.
It just does not lend itself to flood protection. Now, uh, this is the, the end of the
section on flooded, or excuse me funded flood mitigation and recovery projects.
Two that are absent from this, that are on the unfunded list we'll talk about a little
later, one is the Idyllwild levee, and the other is east side levee. We just don't
have any good solid leads on funding for those two projects right now. Uh, but
it's something that we are pursuing. I did not want to include them in the, in this
section and give people false hope or expectation of that.
Davidson/ We have applied for CDBG community disaster grant funds. They were not
funded in the first go-round which funded the Rocky Shore Drive lift station.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 67
That was, again, in the higher priority category so it was funded. They didn't
really care what our priorities were; they basically used the State's priorities.
Fosse/ Ready to move on to the next section? Recurring Projects?
Davidson/ Real quickly on the buyouts, that'll end up being a $20 million project by the
time we're done. So it's a substantial commitment by the federal government to
our community.
Wright/ Refresh my memory on that a little bit, if you would. Will there be any homes
remaining in Parkview Terrace that are unaffected by the buyout strategy?
Davidson/ Uh, um, well just a real quick summary, Michael, there were 40 home s
eligible for the FEMA buyouts, and we're gonna, looks like we'll end up with 33
of those. Uh, there were 72 eligible for the non-FEMA buyouts, it looks like,
we're hoping to end up with about 55 of those. So that gives you a notion of how
many will remain, uh, in the flood hazard area. And then there are, gosh, maybe,
10 or 15 on the two cul-de-sacs- that aren't in the, the floodplain at all, and those
were the ones that that Normandy intersection project are designed for, to keep
accessible.
Wright/ Thank you.
Fosse/ Well as I mentioned earlier, our Recurring projects are either annual or semi-
annual expenditures, uh, that are for the maintenance, preventive maintenance
or incremental growth of various aspects of our capital assets. Um, most of the
things in here have a life of at least 10 years or more. Again, that's, that's the
reason they're in the capital program versus the, the operating program.
Exception to that is the pavement markings; I won't bore you with the story about
why they're in here and not the operating, but, needless to say they are.
Let's see, the first one is the, the, Recurring Projects is the Bicycle and
Pedestrian Trails. And a lot of these are linked to the park system and this is a
good one to begin the discussion of, uh, something that Dale will cover more in
detail this afternoon, and that is, the health of our road use tax fund. You know
you're familiar with our, we have enterprise funds for water, wastewater, storm-
water. Uh, our roadway systems are similar to an enterprise fund but not exactly.
But they are funded with road use tax money. And that is something that's been
fixed since 1989 as far as the tax itself, and, uh, what is happening is our, our
fund balance has, has been diminishing each year, and is, is going to be going
negative, uh, pretty soon. So we're looking at ways that we can, uh, fund things
with revenues other than road use tax. And this is one of those that in the past
had been funded with road use tax. It's now being funded with GO bonds.
That's what `s in the, in the program this year. And I'll highlight the others that,
that we come across that, that fit into that category. But this just helps link trails
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 68
to other trails, fill in gaps, small gaps, and, uh, but is not of the scale of the
sidewalk infill project that we'll highlight later.
Davidson/ Before you leave that one, Rick, I just wanted to highlight. This is a source of
funding that we have on several occasions been able to use from when we would
get a request from a specific individual, typically with adisability ---I can't get
from this point where I live to the bus and for that reason I can't be employed,
and if I'm able to get to the bus I can be employed-and so, we're able to do
some curb ramp repairs in the order of, magnitude $3,000-5,000 to make that
person able to hold a job. So it, it can fund some very valuable, relatively low-
cost projects.
Fosse/ Yeah, we also do that with the curb ramp project we'll be talking about in a little
bit as well.
Um, Brick Street Repair, uh, what we have is $20,000 per year in there. And
really what that'll get you is some small scale repairs. Uh, what we've found is,
is the model that works best for brick street repairs is doing a block at a time.
And we did that block o, on Church Street between Clinton and Dubuque, and,
and that worked out very well. Do you remember how much that was, Ron?
Roughly $300,000?
Knoche/ Roughly $300,000.
Fosse/ $300,000, and, and the one we'll be doing this summer will be, uh, Bowery Street
between Clark and Summit. That's one, in fact, that's this one right here. We
were in and did some spot repairs, uh, but, when you do it of this scale you can't
repair the entire base, and you just don't get the life out of it. So we'll be
replacing that one as a capital project. It was approved last year, and it'll happen
this summer.
Uh, next one is just our Bridge Maintenance. There's a variety of things: there's,
there's regular panting, sealing, uh that sort of thing. And then you've got the
kind of damages that sometimes occur; oftentimes we're able to recover those
costs from the insurance of, of the vehicles that hit the bridge. Sometimes we
are not. And then deck patching; anytime you have a structure, just like our
parking ramps that Chris takes care of, it takes, takes money to keep those in
good shape. You don't want to let those deteriorate on you.
Uh, Cemetery Roads Resurfacing; same as for streets just on a smaller scale.
Uh, that is one that they contribute, uh, they have some money in every other
year for that one; $50,000 every other year.
City Hall. City Hall maintenance, Mike, do you want to chime in on that?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 69
Moran/ Most of the projects that involve this we're still doing a little bit of storm
recovery. We have uh, three rooftop HVAC units, uh, that we have to replace in
this building. This building's sort of been patch-worked together and added on
and changed, so. Uh, the projects that we have are the three rooftop units, and
then this roof above Harvat Hall, and uh, the fire station roof need to be resealed.
So what we have to do is recoat that, and most of that stuff is still, believe it or
not, from the tornado damage that we had. So, those'll be ongoing just to get
little projects like that done and finished.
Fosse/ Uh, okay. (Inaudible.) Next one is Curb Ramps. And that is one where we have
$50,000 every other year. And that one in the past has been funded with road
use tax, and that's one that we've shifted to GEO bonds. And, uh, I'll just
comment, one, one of the things that we made a strong commitment to in the
`90's was, uh, building curb ramps to the ADA specifications. And we committed
$100,000 per year throughout all the `90's to get that done. And we, we got a lot
of them built, and then in 2002 they changed the standard to require truncated
domes, which are these little bumps right here, which have made everything that
we d dint the'90's obsolete. So if we even just overlay a road that's adjacent to
the ones we built in the `90's we have to redo them to put the truncated domes in
there. It's just a very frustrating thing for us because we, we felt that we were
doing a very good thing by making that investment, uh, over a million dollars
during that period to get that done. So. And, and also as Jeff pointed out earlier,
occasionally we get requests and this is another fund that we'll tap to put in curb
ramps in specific locations for people.
Next is Over Width Paving and Sidewalks, and this is part of that incremental
growth in our community. When we have a subdivision go in, if, if the
subdivision includes an arterial street or collector street that requires additional
width of paving. And, we pay for that additional width. The sub-divider pays for
the equivalent of a local street and we pay for that additional width. And the
same is true for the sidewalks; because we try to get an eight-foot sidewalk on one
side of our arterial streets, we pay for that additional four-feet on that sidewalk.
And this one ebbs and flows, you know, sometimes it's, it's a larger expenditure
than others, depending on how much developments going on. This is one we've
got $30,000 a year budgeted and it's still funded with, uh, road use tax.
Moran/ Our Recurring Projects for parks and Recreation are mostly, at least have been
the last two years, replacement and repair of playground systems throughout the
city. Uh, and also the onset, you'll notice this spring we'll have to get in and
repair the, uh, the playground surfacing up at the Ped Mall, the freeze and thaw
of that have created a lot of issues with that so we have to get in there and
repair. The second thing that we've used this for is trail connections, and not so
much physical trail connections but a lot of signage connections. Like when we
put the Court Hill Trail in we had some gaps where people had to leave the trail
system, go up on the street, follow the street until they get to the trail system and
then back on to it. So, we've been applying for grants for trail signage which
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 70
we've been awarded as well, and then, uh, working on the connections of trying
to get the trails connected together, either through signage or through other
means. And that's a $200,000 a year project, mostly for playgrounds.
Fosse/Next project is pavement rehabilitation, and we really have two flavors here: we
have the asphalt resurfacing and then the, uh, diamond grinding, where we
diamond grind concrete and do spot repairs on the pavement to rejuvenate that
pavement and give it new life. These types of measures are some your best
dollars spent for preserving pavement life and saving us money in the long-run.
Coincidentally, they're also the easiest money to cut from a budget because the
consequences are -there are very few immediate consequences by scaling back
on preventive maintenance. It's, it's the type of thing, it sneaks up and bites you
later, um. And, this is one of the areas where some of the income from the
franchise fee is going. Uh, we have $400,000 per year from, from road use tax
going into this, and $100,000 a year from the franchise fee going in here. And
this is part of that right-of--way management expense that is talked about in that,
uh, because of the toll that utility, specifically the underground utilities take on
our pavements out there. And what that $100,000 amounts to is about 1.5% of
our total roads budget, that type of thing.
Next is Railroad Crossings. This is a product, the railway crossing itself has
come a long way in the last 20 years. If you remember back n the'80's and early
`90's, they were in terrible shape and they started manufacturing these, these
pre-stressed concrete railroad crossings that are lasting much better than the old
ones were. Uh, but we still need to replace them on occasion and when we do
it's a joint project with Iowa City, uh, whatever railroad it is, and then the State of
Iowa. The State of Iowa pays the majority of it. I want to say it's, it's in the
neighborhood of 80%; uh, but there's about a five year wait to get that money
from the State. So, one of the tricks with railroad crossings is trying to anticipate
which ones are going to be bad in five years and then get in line for that money
(laughter), because once they go bad that five years seems like a long time to
nurse that along until it is repaired. You hear about it a lot all during that period.
On to some of our other infrastructure. Our sewer-mains, we have, uh, some
repairs that we need to do each year as we have sewers cave in, get in bad shape,
and sometimes we do spot repairs, sometimes we do replacements. Uh, other
technologies that we use are our lining with acured-in-place liner. This is like the
asphalt overlay equivalent of the sanitary sewer, uh, where we can do no-dig
solutions to certain problems that we have with our sanitary sewer system. Uh,
you know, there's hundreds of miles of those out there and one of the keys, that is
truly something that is out of sight and out of mind, and, and it's important to us
to monitor and manage that asset in a way that doesn't, we don't fall behind on
essentially, you know, get us into a position where we need to do too much
maintenance at once, which we can't afford. And that `s why our televising truck
comes in handy, is we're able to see what's going on inside those sewer s and do
preventative maintenance like this.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 71
Knoche/ For the sidewalk infill program, uh, we have some carryover from last fiscal
year of about $99,000, so we'll actually be looking at two locations for this
spring. Uh, the first location will be along Rochester Avenue from Amhurst back,
I think it's Mt. Vernon Drive, uh, there's a, it's actually on the back of Green
Mountain Drive, um, subdivision. There's an eight-foot walk that ends there, uh,
we'll make the connection in there. And then we'll also be looking at the
sidewalk along, um, Dubuque Road from Hy-Vee up to Bristol Drive. The Dean
Oaks subdivision, Quincet Street, there's no connection from that subdivision
back to into town, so we'll be, um, doing both of those connections this year.
And I have to look and see what's the next one on the list for the next, next year,
but, uh, those are the two that will be doing this year.
Fosse/ This is the one along, uh, old Dubuque Road that Ron talked about.
Uh, this is another project that has been shifted from road use tax to GEO bonds,
and it's about $100,000 per year.
Knoche/ For the street pavement markings we have $185,000 a year that goes into this,
um, program. Uh, it, it's split in between two locations. We have about $60,000
a year that we spend on the long line, uh, which is the, the photo on the left. And
then we have about $125,000 that goes into the, the continental crossings that
we do. Those are, those continental crossings we use at, uh, trail, trail crossings,
uh, school crossings and then also down, in the downtown CDB, CDBG area, CD
-that isn't right yet-CBD area. And uh, and what we, we have set up right now,
that $125,000 is there, is enough to do about a third of those. And so, every
three years we're back and, and are able to, you know, rejuvenate those if they
need them. If not, uh we continue that onto the next year.
Fosse/ And one of the things that's helping us get a little more life out of our stripes is
the change in the way that we deal with, with, uh, the streets in the wintertime,
because we're using less sand and, and just going with a straight salt application
at a lower rate than in the past. So that, the sand acts as an abrasive and just
removes the pavement markings. We're getting a little better life now that we're
using less sand.
Uh, traffic calming, is, is a program that we've had in place for a number of years
and, and -Jeff, you want to outline for (inaudible)?
Davidson/ Sure. Yeah. Yeah, this is a program that's budgeted $30,000 a year, and we
actually developed this program internally. City Council developed the criteria.
We were getting a lot of requests from neighborhoods, uh, to do projects to
basically calm traffic or to deal with traffic safety issues in neighborhoods -
perceived or actual. Um, so we developed a set of criteria and basically
established this program so that our 36 neighborhood associations can come to
the City, outline a problem, we then have a process where we assess, uh, the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 72
degree of the problem, determine if it's a legitimate problem or not, and then
develop a set of possible solutions, uh, that can be implemented. Ultimately the
City Council makes the decision on, uh, on whether or not to do one. Uh, the
little more higher visibility ones have been the traffic circles and speed humps
that we've done -- oh I suppose by now 10 or 15 projects citywide-- I think the
thing to emphasize is this is not a program where the City goes out and does
things arbitrarily. It's generated by a neighborhood association and ultimately
you all make the decision whether, whether or not to implement it. A, a typical
project would be in the $3,000-5,000 range. Uh, we did have the one in Walnut
Ridge that was $18,000 because it was such a long street, but typically they're
more in the $3,000-5,000 range.
Fosse/ And this is, is currently funded with road use tax, and, we're, we're, doesn't
appear that we're going to be in a position long-term to continue to do that so
what we'll need to consider with this program is it: a) is it something we want to
continue, and if it is, b) how will we fund that? Is that something that we want to
fund with GO monies? You don't need to answer that now, but it's something
that we need to be thinking about. We've got enough road use tax money to do it
this year and, and probably next year, but after that we need to, we need to
figure out another way to pay for this, or reconsider whether or not we want to
continue the program.
Hayek/ Just to, to paint the picture, especially for our new members, the long-term
degradation of our road use taxes forces us to borrow and pay for things we
didn't use to have to borrow for, and obviously that ends up on the debt levy on
your tax bill, so, that's how you connect the, the dots to the ever-increasing set of
things that cities locally have to pay for that they didn't use to.
Dickens/ Why are we losing all the road use funds?
Helling/ I knew you were going to ask that,
(All talking over one another.)
Helling/ Yeah, well, yeah. It's pretty simple.
Davidson/ We're driving more fuel efficient vehicles.
Helling/ Yeah. It, the tax is on the gallons. It's not on the price.
Fosse/ Yeah. And we're losing that to inflation that's been accumulating since 1989.
That was the last.. .
Dickens/ They haven't changed the way it's done since then?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 73
Fosse/ No. It came close last summer but it, it didn't happen. We were very
disappointed about that.
Hayek/ One of the moves that we might see this next budget cycle is the State patrol
coming out of the road use tax also, which could also decrease the monies
available to counties and cities.
Fosse/ To build on what Matt was saying, is, is one of the side effects to funding some of
these routine maintenance projects with GO rather than road use is that, that
effects our self-imposed debt limits, our 25% limit that is self-imposed. It makes
us bump up against that sooner because we're having for that with borrowed
money rather than road use tax revenues.
Bailey/ We're having a more extensive discussion about road use tax this afternoon,
right?
Fosse/ Yes.
Helling/ Yes.
Bailey/ I have quite a few questions.
(Laughter.)
Knoche/ And, and, I believe staff would also like us to have a more extensive discussion
on our self-imposed debt levy cap. Um, so we'll get into all those things .. .
(Laughter.)
Fosse/ Okay, I think we're winding down on the, we have just a few more of these
recurring projects and then we'll break for lunch.
We've got the traffic signals, this normally is the result of incremental growth.
As, as the community expands we get more traffic and need additional signals.
And, and they're roughly $120,000 a pop, last one we did was at the intersection
of Court and Scott, if I remember right. And then another thing that we're doing
is working t do is connect our signals in corridors and citywide get them talking to
each other so that we can platoon cars, get them through corridors better, use less
fuel. --well maybe that's working against us-- (chuckles) and also have better air
quality.
Uh, this is a new Recurring Project, and this is the undergrounding of electrical
utilities, and this is paid for with revenues from the franchise fee. Again, it's part
of our right-of--way management expenses. We have been paying in past years,
we just now have a new way to pay for that, and it's $175,000 per year that will
go into a fund for this. And the most immediate projects that we'll see will be the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January S, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 74
Lower Muscatine, on the left as you see, undergrounding that, and then also the
Dubuque Street corridor. That's one, it's a beautiful entryway to our community
and one of the things that we have in there are the overhead electrical. And, you
know there's, there's three or four good reasons to get that stuff underground, and
not the least of which is it's more reliable for the utility companies. But it also, it
cleans up the corridor visually and then, also, when we're widening streets, if you
don't go underground with it you often times need to move those poles out. And,
and when we're in areas where we've got overhead trees and that sort of thing,
then you're starting to cut into those. That's, that's another one of our
motivations for undergrounding on Lower Muscatine Road, is that it, it helps
avoid this type of situation. And it, as I pointed out we've been doing this on past
projects. The way it works is MidAmerican is obligated to move their poles at no
cost to us if we're widening a road. They're not obligated to underground it. And
what we've worked out with them, if we want it underground, uh, they do an
estimate for what it'd cost to move the poles, and then that is deducted from the
cost of putting it underground. So if it costs $100,000 to put it underground and
they would have spent $25,000 to move the poles, we pay $75,000. Uh, any
questions on that?
Uh, next is, uh, again a, uh, asset management type thing and that's our water-
main replacements. We've got hundreds of miles of water mains out there, and
some of them dating back to the 1800's. Yeah, it, it's interesting, we track those
water-mains that, that we're replacing and that fail and look at trends. And one of
the trends we're seeing is some water-mains that went in in the late `50's, early
`60's, we're seeing a lot of breaks and break downs in, and we're trying to figure
out just why that is. Always good to find a reason. UH, part of that might have
been, that was the waning years of this being a private water system and maybe
they were putting in a lower grade pipe at that time, just trying to stay afloat and
keep things going.
Um, one of the good things about the weather this winter is we got an early
blanket of snow. And that has helped prevent frost from going very deep into the
ground and we've had fewer water-main breaks this winter as a result of that.
Now with this cold snap that we've had maybe it's going to start penetrating and
I'll eat those words within a week; so far it's been a good thing.
One of the major projects we did this year was down on Keokuk and Plum, down
in that area.
Now, Public Art is no longer one of our recurring projects because of the different
way it's being compiled. And we just wanted to remind you all of that, and Jeff
will give an overview.
Davidson/ Yeah, in last September, the, the City's public art program doesn't have any
substantial operating expense associated with it. It's like $5,000 a year. Basically
the administrative expense is absorbed by myself and the Neighborhood Services
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 75
Coordinator as parts of our budget. The, the expense has been for the capital
items, um, originally started at $100,000 and then a few years ago Council
changed that to $50,000 a year. In September a decision was made to pare the
program back even further, and basically, for the time being not consider any
large, substantial projects, but rather a pared down list of more moderate type
projects, uh, to the tune of $14,750 a year. And that we would use the existing
balance, uh, from the capital budget for this year FY11 & in FY12 reconsider the
program again. But that's where the Public Art program sits at this time, $14, 750
a year out of the existing balance that's remaining.
Bailey/ I'm looking at page 149 in our book. So those GO bonds that we've sold, those
balances are carrying forward. What, what did you say, though ' 12?
Davidson/ Kevin?
Fosse/ Basically, from a financial standpoint, the, the program's going dormant, and
we're gonna use the revenues from those bonds to---
Bailey/ Right, but, why didn't, just simply as a placeholder, and as a communicator, I
guess, because that's what this document is, um, why didn't we just simply space
those GO bonds out into, did you say ' 12?
Helling/ That, that's my recollection. We had about three years.
Bailey/ Right. But they're, but they're blank in 20-my question is, why didn't we just
take ' 09 GO bonds and divide it out ' 10, ' 11, and ' 12. That's my question.
Instead of just lumping it all, I mean, uh, maybe it's just typographical, but it's a
communicator and I think that it looks like, it looks like we are to spend
everything in ' 10.
O'Malley/ Regenia, you have a good question there because this budget, FY10 has
already been put to bed more or less.
Bailey/ Mm-hm.
O'Malley/ But, uh, the discussion by Council was done in a work session I think?
Davidson/ Yes.
O'Malley/ And, my recollection is that this thing needs to be done by resolution, this, uh,
Public Art project.
Bailey/ So we have the, but what you, I think you said in our work session that we have
the balance; we sold the bonds, or the bonds are intended to be sold?
O'Malley/ No, they're sold. That's why they haven't been taken out.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 76
Bailey/ So we have, we have a balance, so perhaps if this is a communicator, we carry
the balance forward divided out. I'm not saying spend any more money. You
see what I'm saying? Instead of it going blank.
Davidson/ It's a modification to the accounting, but not to the accounts.
Bailey/ Yep, it's simply a communication devise rather than an accounting devise.
O'Malley/ Yes, that's correct, and the only thing is no one, no one has created a form
and submitted it to Finance in that format.
Bailey/ Right, so, in order to do that---
O'Malley/ That's all it needs.
Bailey/ ---in that form you would want a resolution, is what you're saying.
O'Malley/ No, that's the second issue. There's two issues.
Bailey/ Oh.
O'Malley/ There's a staff issue, which wasn't done. And then the other issue was I think
a form which, uh, Eleanor was looking into, you talked about on Wednesday,
used to be $100,000, I think went to $75,000, then I think went to $50,000. But I
remember, uh, the previous, uh Planning Director said that this thing had to be
done by resolution, so.
Bailey/ I'm just concerned---
O'Malley/ So it's two issues.
Dilkes/ I, I, I don't think the res-the formality of it is irrelevant to how you want to do
this, I think, to Regenia's question.
Bailey/ Yeah, my point is, you know, everybody knows that I'm a strong proponent of
this. We agreed that we would do a very modified, uh, basically bottom-line, but
we would use that balance. And I, it would be helpful I think to communicate that
in our documents. That's all I'm saying. Because that seemed to be our
discussion earlier. I'm not proposing anything different, or suggesting anything
different. Well, I'd love to but I'm not that foolish, not today yet.
O'Malley/ I have no problem with that.
Helling/ We can, we can make the change.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 77
Mims/ I see what you're saying, yeah..
Bailey/ Yeah, I mean, just reflect the discussion.
Wright/ If we could present it to reflect the discussion we had.
Fosse/ Yeah.
Bailey/ Right.
Fosse/ Yeah, and the, the place may be in the project description. As I understand the
financial document reflects the year in which the bond was sold, and it's already
sold and, yeah, we'll take care of that.
Bialey/ I just think we have to communicate our intent, not just the reality of the, the
accounting.
Fosse/ Mm-hm.
Bailey/ Thank you.
Fosse/ That is it for annual projects. Shall we pick up after lunch with these?
Hayek/ Uh, on the unfunded "On the Radar"?
Fosse/ Yes.
Hayek/ Yeah, I think that would be good, and I know they'll be a discussion on that, on
that list, so. Why don't we adjourn for lunch and shoot for 1:00. (Inaudible.) I
think so my comments are very brief and they start at 12:15 sharp, so, do you
think 1:00 is realistic?
Helling/ Whatever works best for everybody (inaudible).
Hayek/ I can do it.
Davidson/ Is, is that gonna be enough for, for you folks to grab lunch?
Hayek/ Okay, 1:00. Thank you.
***Break***
Hayek/ Why don't we start up? Uh, Ross is going to be just a couple of minutes late but
instructed us to proceed without him. Let's get back into it Rick.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 78
Fosse/ Okay. Alright, Marian? If you're following along in the, uh, in the smaller
document that we passed out today you'll notice there's a section in between the
Recurring Projects and the unfunded. That represents a number of projects that
are in the works right now, that is they're under construction and they'll be
winding up in the next year or two. We used to include a section of slides on that
as well, just to show what, what's going on, but it makes for a pretty long day. So
we, we spared you that this year. But if , if you have any questions about any of
those, we're happy to answer those either today, or, or any time you like. So
now we're, we're basically moving into the unfunded section. Rather than go
through that project by project, we've entitled it "On the Radar," that is, those
projects on the unfunded that we think for one reason or another are, are
important for you to know about. Either there may be a funding opportunity, a
development opportunity, uh, they just might, might be interesting enough to you
that you think well let's, let's try to find some space in a funded year, or I want to
swap to this project for that one in a funded year, uh, that type of thing. So we'll
take you through the projects that are here and then also we're happy to talk
about anything else on the unfunded list as well with you. So with that, let's lead
off with the Gilbert/Highway 6 Dual Left Turn Lanes.
Davidson/ This is a project that a few years ago we had funded, and actually had begun,
uh, design on. I think that design has gotten pretty much finished, hasn't it, Ron,
in terms of being on the shelf and, I mean it would .. .
Knoche/ We did not complete the final design but we were able to identify what the
property acquisition needs were gonna be.
Davidson/ And what happened, we started to get into the, what, what ended up being
some fairly contentious property acquisition issues involving the four quadrants of
the, of the intersection. And based on that Council made a decision at that time
to, to back off the project. And that was a few years ago. We have kept this on
the "On the Radar" because it is an intersection, it's, it's relatively high volume
on, on all approaches; it's one that is only going to continue to gain volume as the
city grows to the south. And with the, uh Riverfront Crossing project, which
we'll just touch on briefly a little bit later but I think all of you are pretty much up
to speed on because you participated in the, in the charrette we had a few weeks
ago. Uh, this is something we just want to keep out in front of you. It, it, it is
going to be an intersection project that, uh, the, some of the operational
difficulties, depending on the time of year are actually starting to go beyond the
peak traffic periods into, I mean, you can, can go through this intersection
depending on the direction you're traveling, but you can go through this
intersection at 2:30 in the afternoon and have to wait through, uh, multiple traffic
signal cycles, which is, is not typical for Iowa City; you know in a big city maybe
a little more typical, but not in Iowa City. So, it is, it is a project that we're gonna
have to deal with eventually. You can see the medians on here. Uh, we have
proposed to do a left turn lane on the gilbert Street approaches which would
necessitate the medians. And that was one of the issues with the property owners.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 79
Uh, one of the properties, uh, the individual has passed away since we were
dealing with him on that, so the new owner may, may feel differently about, about
the project. Uh, there's also one quadrant of the intersection where although the
person was uh, um, quite opposed to the project that we had proposed a few years
ago, is since marketing the property for redevelopment and always has the people
interested in it come to us to find out what the ultimate plan is for the intersection.
So, she basically does acknowledge that at some point we are going to be doing
that project, uh, in the future. So, it is, it is a project that we'd like to keep out in
front of you and we'd be happy to answer any questions. It's not, you know, as
Rick, as Rick indicated, not currently in a funded year however.
Bailey/ Any more support from the businesses down there, I mean, any push from
that end?
Davidson/ I, I haven't heard any actually advocating for the project. When we, when we
uh, did the Riverfront Crossings project and also met individually with some
prominent property owners down here, they do ask when is the City gonna do
that project. And the question is, well, that'll be up to Council to determine
because we don't have that funded currently. Some, some people are not aware
of that. But I, I wouldn't want to characterize it as being any real loud advocacy
for the project from the, the private sector.
Wright/ What's the price tag on this?
Fosse/ Four million?
Bailey/ Four or five. It's on C-24, it's 4.5.
Wright/ h, I guess I could look., couldn't I?
Davidson/ It's project 14 on the unfunded list, so yeah---.
Wright/ Yeah, right here at the bottom of the page.
Davidson/ ---four and a half million.
Champion/ So you'll keep us informed about any possible redevelopment of that one
corner there where there's some possible (inaudible).
Davidson/ Oh sure. It would require a, some major site plan, so you'll, you'll know
about it Connie. Might even involve a rezoning; you never know.
Fosse/ The average daily traffic at this intersection just about is the population of Iowa
City.
Davidson/ Yeah, total entering volume's over 60,000.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa Gity city councn special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 80
Champion/ And why don't we extend the light period on that, the green light.
Davidson/ Well, it's, it's kind of like taking a bigger piece of pie from over here; it makes
less pie, you know, from, from another approach. And we feel like we've got the
intersection balanced real well, you know, depending on what approach you're
coming at. And, and it is also fair to say, we favor, favor the highway movement.
That's the way the system is set up. We're moving a lot of traffic, uh, through
Highway 6 and so it is, it is set up to favor that movement. It sometimes seems
like you wait a long time at, up and down t he corridor at the intersecting streets.
But that, that's just to, to get volume through the highway.
Hayek/ So, uh, do we in transportation or traffic management terms, do we hit a, a
boiling point where we've just got to do something, and?
Davidson/ Well, well, ultimately Matt it's always a political decision. We brought the
project to you because we believe given the, the, you know this is another one of
those with a two, three year lead time, um, uh, that, that, it was something we
should address. You know, you felt differently, that's fine, we're living with a
little bit lower level of service here. Uh, keep in mind that lead time though. I
mean, even if we dust off the, the, uh, design and get it ready to go in fairly short
order it'll be a two year construction, we'll have property acquisition with it; so
it'll be a two year construction.
Wright/ Uh, for four and a half million I'm willing to let it wait a little while.
Bailey/ Well, it depends if putting it on funded helps us get funding. I mean that's
another question too. We should .. .
Davidson/ Uh, you'll have the ability to fund this through JCCOG with STP funds as we,
we had it funded previously. Um, you know, might always be a possibility of a
special earmark or something like that. But the, the bottom line is you'll have to
prioritize it.
Dickens/ Because it's Highway 6 do we get any federal on that as well, or.. .
Davidson/ Um, it's not out of the question, Terry, but I wouldn't expect anything
substantially. They, the, the DOT looks at this as a project where it's the Gilbert
Street approaches that are really, need to be reconstructed and that that's our
responsibility not theirs.
Dickens/ Right.
Helling/ Jeff, and I know I didn't ask you this sooner, but is there any idea at this point
the effect that the completion of the bridge and McCollister over to Gilbert will
have on the intersection?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 81
Davidson/ We did model that with JCCOG's arterial street traffic model and maybe
surprisingly, a little bit surprisingly, it doesn't divert that much traffic because
there are just so many destinations along the Highway 6 corridor; it's such a
commercial destination corridor that, uh, that the traffic diversion was not that
substantial. But it, it's not gonna hurt. It's not gonna hurt---
Helling/ It isn't, okay.
Davidson/ ---and it will, it will divert a little traffic.
Fosse/ Like Jeff said, I get a lot of questions too about when are you going to work on
this intersection, but not as many as the First Avenue railroad crossing. So---
Wright/ Yeah.
Bailey/ Right.
Fosse/ ---you know, in relative terms out there.
Hayek/ We've all heard about that one I think.
Bailey/ Mm-hm.
Fosse/ Well one thing I'll point out in the, in the Highway 6 corridor those, those medians
really look ratty. And, you know---
Bailey/ Yep.
Fosse/ ---every time we get to the point where we think, aw, we should spend some
money on that, then we, you know, we begin to think about this project and will it
be throw away money. So that's, if you wonder why those look as ratty as they
do, it's partially because we don't want to make a significant investment of this is
likely to come along within the next ten years or so.
Champion/ There must be some way to make medians look better than they do.
Fosse/ Yes.
Well, that's a good segue to our next project actually, the, and that's the, uh,
North Dubuque median. Uh, Connie's been on the Council long enough she
probably remembers that we've discussed this, this median along Dubuque
Street out here before. That's one that's, uh, somewhat erosive and a high
maintenance and just can look bad. And we had a project in fact in program a
few years ago that perhaps got a little bit elaborate and expensive and, and went
away, uh, because of its expense and perceived payback. Now what's, the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa Gity city councn special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 82
reason we put it on the radar for you is, as Ron talked about this morning, this is
going to be urbanized, this intersection will be urbanized, new pavement. From
here on down will be rebuilt with the Dubuque Street project, and we're going to
have this piece in the middle. And what we want to look for, keep our eyes
peeled is for an opportunity to some way blend, uh, some sort of media treatment
here into this project so that when we're done we have a good looking corridor
from I-80 all the way to downtown. And, uh, you know, what that will consist of
we don't know yet. But, uh, as I said, the, the concept that was looked at a few
years ago was, for this location probably too elaborate and had elevated planting,
or elevated beds and plantings and that sort of thing.
Champion/ But we've done a lot of planting along the sides.
Fosse/ Yes, uh, Project Green, specifically, has.
Champion/ Yes.
Fosse/ They've done a wonderful job along there. It looks great. And we've done some,
some erosion control within the median that's, that's controlled that little bit, but
we don't have it fully under, under control yet.
Davidson/ Northside Marketplace, uh, it was brought to our attention that we had a trip
hazard, uh, in the area, which we were able to alleviate with some asphalt
patching and, and get rid of that. But, uh, a t the time we took not and had a
request from some of the business owners to, to take a little more
comprehensive look, uh, at it. What we've done is a streetscape plan which we
just took to the businesses a couple of weeks ago. We had a meeting at motley
Cow in the afternoon and had a meeting with them; had a very, very favorable
response, and so we indicated to them that it would be placed in the, uh, in the
CIP as a, um, unfunded project that Council would have to prioritize to a funded
year. But it basically, uh, between the two blocks of Linn Street, both sides of the
two blocks of Linn Street between Bloomington and Jefferson would be a redo of
the streetscape element, I'm sorry, improvement of the streetscape elements.
Um, trying to, uh, look at some of the things that aren't quite adequate like
bicycle parking and that and refurbishing all that, new plantings and just generally
sprucing up the area, so. Questions about that?
Champion/ Have we ever talked about putting like atwo-story parking ramp on that big
area?
Davidson/ We have discussed parking in this area, and, and how it ties to a possible
zoning change in the area as well. Um, you know, the building that was built
where the, the Teaspoons coffee house is is an example of a CB-5 building that
could be built throughout this area. What's reflected in the current zoning,
Connie, is preservation of the Hamburg Inn block, if you want to call it that, and
the scale of those businesses. Which means you're not gonna get large scale
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 83
redevelopment of those simply because you can't fit the parking on the lot. I tell
ya, the two opportunities for parking in this area would be the, the Pagliai's
parking lot, and, slash, meaning it could be combined or be stand alone with the
one that the City has next to George's. Uh, but unfortunately they're not quite
large enough, the scale economies aren't quite there for, uh, uh, parking
structure. You could get 200-300 spaces, and that becomes a lot more
expensive for Chris to operate; because you only have that number of spaces but
a lot of your fixed costs stay the same.
Uh, this is a project---
Champion/ You could meter it though.
Davidson/ Pardon?
Champion/ You could meter it.
Davidson/ Uh, meter what?
Champion/ A parking ramp.
Davidson/ A parking ramp? Uh, yeah, I'm just talking about the cost of building it.
Champion/ Oh, I see.
Davidson/ The per space cost ends up pretty substantial.
Champion/ I see. Right.
Davidson/ Because you can't spread it over more spaces .. .
Uh, this is a project I think recently the developer came to a City Council
meeting and you heard them say they would be bringing a development proposal.
Uh, that development proposal, the, I should say the annexation is a Planning and
Zoning Commission right now. Um, but this is a $5.5 million project which we
have repeatedly told the developer is in the unfunded years because the City does
not have any money to put toward it at the present time so they're trying to figure
out a way to finance it privately. And we should be getting a proposal on that
shortly, but it would construct a portion of Oakdale Boulevard, and this is
Oakdale Boulevard according to the agreed to plan between Iowa City, Coralville
and the County, uh, construct a piece of it from North Dodge Street to the west, to
the west property line of the, of the developer's property, and then allow this loop
to go in which would be a, uh, a corporate park/office development, mixed, little
bit of mixed use but primarily an office development, uh, with a green bent to it.
Uh, at least that's what the developer is proposing. Uh, you know, we're, we're
trying to be encouraging about this because Northgate Corporate park across the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa city city councu apeciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 84
road is, is about built out, not quite, but about, and so we, uh, we think that it's a
good idea to be planning for additional development of this type. But the
infrastructure question still looms and we're working through that with the
developer.
Fosse/ Uh, next is, uh North Wastewater Treatment Plant. As, as I talked about earlier,
uh, what we have done from a financial perspective is to, is to split this into two
projects: one is the expansion of the south plant; the other project is the
demolition and redevelopment of, of this area, whether it redevelops into park
land, or, or other types of development, or flood protection, or some type of
combination thereof. The, uh, the component of this, the estimate on this part of
it is $17 million, which is significant. Now that includes a fair amount of grading
thee. Now one of the things that we're, we're finding with the, uh, funding
sources for our wastewater improvements, the $5 million that we got for CDBG
and the, the, uh, I-JOBS, those, those were submitted when it was a combine
project at $63 million. Now that we are doing the, the wastewater project as a
separate one, uh, they may scale those awards back some if we're not able to
work that out with them. So that, that's one thing that's hanging out there that
we're trying to work through. Questions on this one? No? Okay.
Moran/ Sand Prairie is a, a 38-acre piece of property that's adjacent Napoleon Park and
the Public Works Facility down by the Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, sort of
adjacent to that as well. Uh, we had a group of, um, kids from Minnesota
Conservation Corp come in last summer and remove quite a few trees, I call
them scrub trees and non-native trees, to clear this out. We'd like to reintroduce,
uh, sand prairie plantings and turn it back into a natural sand prairie. Our intent
would be to do that and then do a, a circular trail around the area, and then put in
a small parking lot so people could come in and enjoy it, and figure out what a
sand prairie is and, and go through there. It would not be an active park at all. It
would just be preservation of what we've already got. And with Public Works
moving down to that area and the Terry Trueblood Recreation Area and
McCollister Boulevard coming in, it seems like it would be a, a nice addition to
get some of that land in there, uh, developed.
Champion/ What is a sand prairie?
Moran/ Uh, sand prairie is, is basically, uh, a different type of a, uh, planting that grows
in mostly in sand instead of soil. So it, it's a little bit different plantings than what
you're going to find if you walk up at Waterworks Park for example; that's a
good prairie. This one down here would be a different kind of species of plant
because it's mostly sand based instead of soil based.
Champion/ Okay, so it's kind of like the, the dunes in Indiana.
Moran/ Yeah. Exactly.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 85
Champion/ Same kind of plantings.
Moran/ Yeah.
Fosse/ Actually the, the lush hills in west Iowa is, is a better analogy. This is lush soil
and it blew up out of the Iowa River valley and it's a very unique formation for
around here. You don't find that very often. Thanks, Mike.
Next one is the East Side, uh, Levee. And that's one that we talked a little bit
about this morning. Uh, it protects that South Gilbert Street commercial area.
Uh, Gilbert Street goes right through the middle here. Interestingly, uh, this road
along here is called Riverfront Drive, so I think they knew, uh, when they named
that. That's one of the few streets in Iowa City that was platted as aright-of--way
before Iowa was a state. So when you're looking up the right-of--way
information on that, it's, it's very quirky in that regard. Just a sidebar ... Uh, but
that, that's an area that we'll hopefully be able to protect with a levee along the
river system here and then tie that into the railroad down at the, hit the south end.
Uh, you'll also see Idyllwild Levee project, and that would come down No-Name
Road and then follow along Taft Speedway, and, and then it will need to cut back
up here and then tie in right at this location, rather than tying directly into
Dubuque Street. And the reason for that is, is there's a significant drainage way
that comes through here, uh, that would, the backwater would flood coming out
of that. Um, certainly when we get to the point of design, if we do, on a project
like this we'll weigh, uh, the cost of enclosing that in a box culvert versus running
the levee back around. We'll see which is our, our best cost and best
performance option.
Bailey/ How did we come up with the numbers for these levees' dollar amounts?
mean, they're not designed at all so this is just smart estimates?
Fosse/ Yes, particularly the Idyllwild levee was prepared by Staley Consultants when
they looked at options for this neighborhood, as well as for the Parkview Terrace
neighborhood. The east side and west side levees, do you know where those
estimates came from, Ron?
Knoche/ They were, they were based on the Stanley Estimates.
Fosse/ Were they? Okay.
Bailey/ Okay. Thanks.
Fosse/ Uh, this is, is not a capital project but we included it in the, in the radar, since it's
on our radar and we wanted you to know about it, and that is updating the flood
plain maps. It's a prudent thing to do after the flood that we just experienced.
And there's, there's three components for that. One is getting updated flow rates
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 86
estimated by the Corp of Engineers, and they've done that now, and they've,
they've bumped them up by a surprisingly small amount. And I'd like to talk to
them and learn more about the basis of that. But I was surprised by how little
they went up. Uh, secondly is the hydraulic model; you know, we have the new
hydraulic model in place that the University built, so that's a better one than we
had when, when these maps were built. Uh, the third piece that we're waiting to
fall into place is, uh, the state is looking at floodplain management regulations
from a statewide perspective. And if those are going to change, we really don't
want to change ours locally before that and then be out of sync with them shortly
thereafter. Um, so we're, we're waiting to see what comes out of that process. If
it appears that that process is, is going slow or, or floundering, we can go ahead
and update our floodplain maps independently of changes to the floodplain
management regulations, floodplain development regulations.
Hayek/ Ballpark price tag for that?
Fosse/ The, uh ... I want to say in the $50,000 to $80,000 range, for getting all the
consulting done. That, that might be a little bit low. That's my best guess right
now. And then we'd, once we get the mod--our new maps built, then we need to
take them to FEMA and, and take them through the approval process with, with
that.
Hayek/ And what, jumping to the end, what is the benefit, or I suppose detriment, to
homes and businesses that are close to existing flood boundaries? I suppose
there's a potential that new structures, existing structures will be newly part of an
expanded floodplain area and subject to eligibility, uh, for this that and the other,
and requirements for this that and the other.
Fosse/ Right. The, the real impact is that they'll have better information to make
decisions on, on whether they reinvest in their property or, or purchase in that
area. As we go through this process, public notification is very important
because if, if you live in an area that right now is, is considered 500-year
floodplain but is likely to become part of the 100-year floodplain and you do not
own flood insurance yet, you can go out and buy it at the 500-year floodplain rate
and get locked into that rate for, for good, even though you're, you're actual
designation will change.
Hayek/ Yeah.
Fosse/ Does that make sense?
Hayek/ Yeah.
Bailey/ Mm-hm.
Fosse/ So those kinds of things are, I see as positives.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 87
Hayek/ If you're outside the 500 and getting into the 500, that would also be a possibility.
Fosse/ Yeah. That's right. That is right.
Knoche/ The, the latest revisions to the floodplain maps were actually done in 2007, and
it was, they were changing, they were changing how they produced the maps,
and, and one of the things that we've found is there's been some drift of the
mapping. So, by going through it and actually doing a remapping, doing the
modeling, you know, getting the contra-elevations, you know, all that taken care
of, it may actually correct some folks that are currently shown in the 100-year
floodplain that actually aren't. So, it kind of goes both ways in regards to this, to
this project.
Fosse/ That's a good point. I forgot about that drift. This, those problems do need to be
cleared up. So, any other questions on floodplain map?
Fire Training Facility. Uh, that, of course is down by our wastewater treatment
facility and, and that took a significant hit during the flood. Um, there's a couple
of factors at work here. One is it was out of service, had the repair costs, and
that sort of thing. But, but the second is that as this area redevelops, you know,
once we take the wastewater plant out of there, this, this is an inappropriate land
use for that area. So it, it's best to get that taken out and moved someplace else.
So this is one of the things that you'll be visiting with our, uh, Congressional
delegation about, uh, when you go to Washington in February. This is one of the
three projects that we're taking forward there. Anything you want to add to that?
Uh, Public Works and the Transit Site Redevelopment; uh, we talked briefly
about that this morning. Uh, it's, it's a high profile site at the intersections of
Highways 1 and 6. And right now we have our Equipment Division working here
and, uh, part of our Traffic Engineering shops are here, and then Solid Waste
operations, and then this is the Transit facility here And the long-term vision for
this intersection, or this area, is to, to move the public operations out of there and
then allow that to be sold and, and redeveloped and, and get it back on the tax
base. Uh, certainly one of the challenges to this site is that once you get beyond
the footprint of these buildings, very far at all, you're on old dump, and, and the
ground isn't stable. This is actually on old dump too, but that was, that was at an
age at the dump when they used to burn, and, and, uh, like areas to the north,
where that was burned it's actually very stable, and. And works out well. As you
get further south it's just regular garbage in there. And we know from putting in a
storm-sewer right through here we pulled out newspapers from 1962 that you
could read quite clearly, so that's, that, that gives you an idea of the, of the
vintage of the garbage that's in there. So to move these operations out and, and
get those over at the other site is roughly about $13 million by the time you build
the new, uh, equipment building, uh, maintenance building, and then also, uh,
provide that storage, or that, that building for the Streets Department vehicles
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 88
that we do not have. And then Transit is, is looking at, perhaps if there's room
going down to that same Public Works campus, it's sandwiched between the
Terry Trueblood Rec. Area and Napoleon Park, uh, and, and then that would be
for vehicle maintenance and storage, and then their, their operations would be up
uh, in, in this buildings, or next door, ---is that right, Chris?
O'brien/ Yeah.
Fosse/ Up in, in Tower Place area. So, anything you want to add to that, Jeff?
Okay. Good. Rick?
Wyss/ Good afternoon. Um, we're slowly but surely moving towards rebuilding the new
Animal Shelter. Uh, we have been working with FEMA, uh, FEMA's been very
good and provided considerable amount of resources to help get the, uh,
temporary facility up and running and operational. And we're continuing to work
with FEMA to rebuild the new facility at a permanent location. Right now
where we're at is we're trying to identify a specific location that's gonna be best
for the facility as well as the community. We have identified a couple properties
and, uh, it'll go through a approval process, and once that's approved we go
through the design and the construction phase. At that point, we have two
options. We can do a basic rebuild of that old facility. Or we can do what's
known as an improved project under the FEMA guidelines. There are pros and
cons to both of those options. And, uh, at this point we have a lot of unanswered
questions as to which option would be the best for us. Um, regardless of which
option we select, or which option is, is deemed to be the most appropriate for us,
it's very apparent though that, uh, we're gonna, uh, have to ask for some
additional funding both in the short term during the construction phase of the
project, as well as in the long-term, after the facility is constructed. I guess I'd
like to open it up for questions.
Mims/ FEMA has already given a certain amount of money, or obligated a certain
amount of money, is that correct?
Wyss/ They have, uh, identified this as a forced relocation, uh, and it has approved the
project itself. With that, uh, one of the options is a basic rebuild. And, uh, they
have identified that the old facility was a 7,280 square foot facility. A basic
rebuild would put a facility of similar size and construction make-up on a
different location. The problem that we have with that is we ha d a feasibility
study that was completed that stated that with the current operations that we have
at this time we would need a 16,000 square foot facility. So, so if do that
blueprint on another location, right out of the gate we're going to have too small
facility for the operations that we do. Uh, the other problem with the basic
rebuild is the construction material; some of the construction material that was
used to build the original facility, uh, does not meet the current industry standards.
FEMA will not pay for, uh, the increases in construction material or the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 89
improvements in construction material; they will only reimburse us for the base
price of those, of that, uh, replacement material.
Hayek/ Do we have a number that they're, uh, counting or allocating for this?
Wyss/ Currently?
Hayek/ Currently.
Wyss/ Currently, not really because we haven't even completed the design phase of the
facility. A 16,000 square foot facility would be somewhere in excess of $4
million. Um, the reimbursement from FEMA, the estimate would be between
$1.6 and $1.8 million dollars. Uh, I spoke a little bit earlier about the improved
project as opposed to the basic rebuild project, an improved project, well, and let
me back up, the, if, if we do a basic rebuild (clears throat), the approach that we
would suggest taking is do a basic rebuild and design it such that it could be
expanded in the future. The, one of the advantages of going that route would be
that if the construction costs exceed the estimated costs, then those would be
eligible expenses. If we do an improved project where we expand the facility or
we incorporate some improvements, FEMA's reimbursement would be limited
only to what their estimate was, again, between $1.6 and $1.8 million dollars.
The, the questions that we have, a lot of that has to do with, uh, how we can
separate some of those improved projects out. So for example if we do a basic
rebuild, if there's some, uh, improvements that we can make, like for example
drywall has to be changed or should be changed, they can, we can certainly take
the difference in prices of the old drywall, uh, the old style of drywall, and the
new and then that would be a cost that could easily be separated out. When you
talk about, uh, kennel sizes, uh, that complicates the, uh, the construction even
more, at least the reimbursement aspect of it, and those are the questions that
we' 11, uh, we' 11 be seeking out.
Bailey/ And Friends of the Animal Center Foundation have indicated that they would do
a capital campaign, have, I, I assume that, what percentage are we looking at
this to be funded?
Wyss/ By the, uh, foundation?
Bailey/ Mm-hm.
Wyss/ They are, or, I know they're working towards a, they're going to complete a
capital campaign also but at this point I'm not sure their goal, or what the funding
level is.
Bailey/ Okay.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 90
Goodman/ Their goal is to have a goal. They're probably based on, uh, based on what
we know and what the City might be able to, to fund at this time, they're looking
at a goal of $1.5 million.
Bailey/ That's what I was hoping.
Fosse/ Any other questions?
Champion/ Is it possible, just so we make use of any FEMA money we can get, to
construct this using that money but with the idea of adding on to it after that's
been done.
Wyss./ Yes.
Champion/ Do it in stages.
Wyss/ Yes. If we do a basic reconstruction, uh, certainly that's, that's the approach that
we've looked at, uh, so far is designing it as such so that I can be expanded in
the future. One of the problems though is if you do a basic construction as soon
as they're done with that we need to be operational, fall within the parameters
that we can be operational upon completion of that construction. And, a lot of
this has to do with the design phase of it and how, uh, we're gonna incorporate
some of the changes, like for example some of the kennel sizes, the uh, the
standards for kennel sizes have changed.
Champion/ Oh sure, exactly, you'd have to incorporate that.
Wyss/ And it's, it's very difficult to justify building a structure under the old standards.
Champion/ No, no, I don't, I didn't think you should do that.
Helling/ Yeah. That, that's one of the things that I think we can't even entertain the
notion of building something that's sub-standard in, in specifications.
Champion/ No. No.
Helling/ It has to be up to, to current standards and, uh, that does make it significantly
more difficult in terms of how to package this. So, um.
Champion/ `Cause you could end up with a new facility that would be the same size that
would house less animals.
Bailey/ Mm-hm.
Wyss/ Mm-hm.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 91
Champion/ Including chickens.
Bailey/ Oh, that's right.
Helling/ There are still some unanswered questions and still a lot of work to be done
trying to figure out exactly where to go, but you need to know where we are
currently, and some of the issues that we're facing.
Bailey/ But, given that we need to do this sooner rather than later and it's on an
unfunded, I mean won't we have to put this somewhere in our capital list?
Helling/ We will have to come up with some capital, I think, immediately. Um, if we
build it to the, the size that we're talking about, um, it's, you know, uh, probably a
lot less, and if you, you want to go and build the whole facility now, the 16,000
square feet, and rely on the fundraising, you know, to, to reimburse or whatever,
then it becomes very significant in terms of finding that kind of cash. We, we
don't have that allocated anywhere at this point. Um.
Bailey/ Right, but it's gonna need to happen so it's strange to me that, I mean, it seems
like we need to get it into afunded---
Helling/ Yeah, I think the important thing is that we design it such that it can be
expanded to meet our needs after, after the initial rebuild is, is done.
Champion/ Do we get, um, capital money from the other, (inaudible), areas of Johnson
County for the animal shelter?
Dilkes/ Uh---
Goodman/ Idid have a conversation with Johnson County recently about, uh, whether
they had any interest in, uh, uh, joining with Iowa City on any type of project and
they had not discussed it. Uh, it doesn't mean we can't present it, uh, but it
hasn't been discussed.
Helling/ Eleanor you were going to say something?
Dilkes/ I was just going to say keep in mind that I, I think that without a referendum we
can't spend more than $700,000. Correct Kevin?
Helling/ Yeah, we can't borrow more than GO debt, more than $700,000.
Dilkes/ Right.
Fosse/ Anymore questions? I will say that of all of our flood recovery projects this is the
one with the, with the most unanswered questions for us as staff trying to get
figured out with FEMA. And, unfortunately it's the one where the meter's
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 92
running. We're renting space where there operating temporarily, and it, it, it's an
adventure. (Laughs.) That's the best way to put it.
Hayek/ Yeah.
Davidson/ The next three projects that we have are economic development projects, um,
which we'll step through one at a time. I think it's important to take the long
view of these projects. Um, all three are related to, um, thing, things that in, in terms
of the investment of public funds potentially, uh, stand to grow the property tax
base, in terms of creating more industrial development, as well as, uh, revitalize
areas that have been a period of decline.
Uh, the Towncrest Redevelopment Plan is the first one. Um, I'm sure most of
you are familiar with Towncrest. Uh, the area of the former, uh, Towncrest
medial office, uh, complexes has seen a period of decline and disinvestment that
we're trying to, uh, turn around. Property tax, um, assessments have even started
to decline on certain properties in this area, which is pretty unique for, for Iowa
City. The thing that really gives this area such tremendous potential is that it's
surrounded by a, a great neighborhood. Um, all of the things that we typically
have to figure out how to finance in terms of growing new neighborhoods -public
transit and parks and schools and all those things-are, are in place here. There's
a very viable, successful commercial district, uh, within walking distance of this,
uh, of this area. And so that's what we're trying to take advantage of. Um,
we've had a series of neighborhood meetings and based on those meetings, uh,
gotten some very good input and developed internally, we developed in house in
the Planning Department, uh, some concept plans. And you see an example, uh,
in the lower right corner there of what might possibly be done. And I encourage
you, don't be scared away by the size of those buildings. I mean, we deliberately,
uh, did something that's maybe at the higher end of the density that might be
achieved there. But we clearly are looking for something that would redevelop
the area, uh, with, uh, commercial spaces, likely predominately office on the first
floor, uh, and then have residential up above; so take advantage of increasing the,
uh, the revitalization of the area with some buildings that are, are significantly
more expensive buildings, would have a higher tax assessment. You also see in
the background there a green space and the church; and by the way, just to orient
you---
Hayek/ That looking east?
Davidson/ Pardon?
Hayek/ That looking east?
Davidson/ Yeah, you're looking, essentially the two pictures are the same perspective.
You have William Street in the foreground of both pictures, and so, uh, basically
you can see that it would be extending Towncrest Drive, or Avenue or whatever
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 93
it's called, Towncrest Drive I guess, uh, further down. The, the church in the
background there is the existing church, uh, on Wade Street that desires to
relocate. Uh, and, and, and also achieve a goal of our redevelopment plan to open
up Towncrest Drive to First Avenue. Uh, again, this would be done in, in stages.
Now we won't, we don't have to get in the details of the plan now, we're gonna
roll that out once we've done some, uh, some additional work on it. But we did
want to give you an illustration of what is planned. Now in, in terms of the
capital improvements budget, there's nothing programmed currently. There will
need to be, and this is part of our strategy that we will develop when we roll it out
to you, I think a combination of public investment, and, and, and I think
investment is the right term, investment that's a little bit later going to have
positive aspects in terms of the tax base in this area, and then incentives for
private development. And, and we need to come up with a package. We're
evaluating those right now; how do we get developers interested and focused in
this area? We've talked to a number of developers. We've had them come in and
look at the preliminary plan. They're very excited about it, but they basically
need to loosen things up with the banks and be able to focus in this area. And
that's where hopefully our incentive package will come in. So we'll be rolling
this out, uh, in the future, and, uh, we're hopeful that you will see the value of it
in terms of, uh, committing some public funds, uh, for some things to establish the
character. And I, I'd like to use as the example what Coralville's done in River
Landing, where they've gone in and spent some public money to establish the
character of that area for developers that will then come subsequently, and invest
private funds. And that's the same thing on a much smaller scale that we want to
do here. We're also trying to do some things, I talked to Kirkwood Community
College, which is basically within walking distance of Towncrest. You don't
realize it because of the circuitousness because of the railroad, but it's within
walking distance of their campus, and so there might be some opportunities to
work with them specifically. Um, we'll be hopefully within the next six months
taking this through, having additional neighborhood meetings, taking this through
the Planning and Zoning Commission, and then to you eventually. But, uh, if
you do see this as something that you believe there's some merit in terms of
investing public funds, what we've got in the unfunded years is a, a placeholder
amount of, you might as well call it, of a million bucks; could be more, could be
less. Uh, but it just gives us the ability to do something in the future.
Hayek/ Does it, uh, hamstring staff to have, on, on this project to have that, that line item
be in the unfunded category?
Davidson/ Well, certainly in terms of actually doing anything.
Hayek/ Well, and it'd be, given, given where you are conceptually in planning-wise now.
Davidson/ Unfortunately, Matt, we can't sit here and say we need "X" amount to do "Y"
project. We don't know what that is yet. But we certainly within the next year
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 94
want to be able to do that, and that's why we put the placeholder amount in
there, so we'd have the ability to do that.
In your budget deliberations you may wish to pare that back if you want to do
something but don't think you could afford a million bucks. It's just in there as
something that would enable us to do a, a streetscape project or, or something
that would open up an area and establish the, the new character in the area.
Hayek/ I guess my point is, you know, assuming for the purposes of discussion that the
consensus of the Council would want to move forward with some form of that,
um, in terms of the planning and the upfront procedural work, um, are you
hamstrung by having this in the unfunded or would - we don't want to---
Davidson/ Yes. Yes, we are.
Hayek/ Well, you are, but, but you're also not prepared to say we need "X", so that's
the---
Davidson/ Right, we're just not quite far enough along. And, and we are being very
deliberate with this. I mean, in terms of our discussions with the, the local
developers, we've taken a few steps back in order to come up with something
that ultimately is going to, that's going to be, uh, more favorable in terms of what
we might do here.
Hayek/ Thank you.
Champion/ Would we sell this, uh, to a single developer as an urban renewal project that
would qualify for .. .
Davidson/ Good question, Connie. Um, and one thing I, I probably should add, is that
it's been clear from our neighborhood meetings and some subsequent research
that we have done about the area that we have one problem property in this area
that is going to encumber redevelopment, uh, unless we do something about it.
And that, we're, we're having some discussions with that property owner, um, in
spite of the, uh, notoriety that southeast Iowa City has gotten, this particular
property has the highest, uh, rate of police calls per unit of any property in Iowa
City. Uh, and we need to do something about it and we're trying to figure out
what. Uh, and we' 11 again be bringing that to you. One of the options is to do it
as an urban renewal project, where we would go in, I mean, it's certainly the way
to grab people's attention is to go in, demolish the area, start out with a, a new
site and then market, market it for development. And according to the
preliminary plans that we've developed, again, would be one that although we'd
have to spend some money up front, ultimately, would increase the tax base of
that property substantially and get rid of the problems associated with that
property. It's come through loud and clear in our neighborhood meetings that
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Speaai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 95
other people are going to be slow to reinvest in this area as long as that property
is in its current state.
Champion/ I know exactly what you mean.
Hayek/ Yep.
Wright/ We all do.
Fosse/Next project?
Davidson/ Any other questions about Towncrest?
Champion/ Well, I'd like to see it pushed forward. I think it's an area of town that we're
losing a lot of money on.
Davidson/ This is, uh the next one then is Riverfront Crossings, which we very much
appreciate, uh, I think pretty much all of you, uh, participated in the design
charrette that we had in, in one form or another. Uh, again, you talk about an area
that has tremendous potential, and at the same time is something that we need to
deal with because of the, the '08 flood. Um, what we're basically looking at here
is a strategy, and this uh, map her shows it with some, you know, basically
shows the general concept and that is that to take those very high risk flood
prone areas and put them back to green space. So that they would be essentially a
public amenity in the area; they would be allowed to inundate during a flood
time, similar to City Park for example. Uh, and the rest of the time would be a,
an amenity to the area. The Comprehensive Plan has identified that this area
has pretty much turned its back on the river and we need to turn that around and
really open up this area and take advantage of the river as, as an amenity. What
we desire to do then is to create a higher density, uh, urban neighborhood, takes
advantage of the walk-ability to the University, walk-ability to the, uh, major
employment center. I think you're aware that one of our strategies with this is to
have a trolley car link between River Landing in Coralville, uh, and this area
along the Crandic line, which is very well-suited, and Crandic's working with us
on that; see we deliberately put the trolley car there in the, the concept picture.
Um, eventually, that line would go on to Oakdale and North Liberty and
eventually, uh, Eastern Iowa Airport and, and hopefully eventually into
downtown Cedar Rapids as the two ends of the corridor grow together. Um, but
you can see the concept of the building there at the top is the kind of building
which we envisioned for this area, which will be perhaps some commercial. Uh, I
don't think we'll see a lot of commercial in this area, but some commercial, uh,
oriented to the area, and then a substantial residential neighborhood with a variety
of housing types, variety of income levels, both student and non-student, uh, that
we envision for the area. Um, we've had a lot of positive feedback, uh, we've had
very little the, the, uh, you now, we're obviously one of the predominant
industrial, uh, presences in the area. Uh, and, and you've heard Rick, uh, outline
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 96
the, the plan for getting the north wastewater plant out of there. Uh, the City
Carton folks, we've been in with, working with; I think they also envision a more
suitable site elsewhere in the community for themselves. It's hard for them to get
their trucks in and out of here. A lot of their property really can't be used even
during a, a relatively modest flood event; it's so low that they have to pull their
storage out of there. So we're working with them. Uh, the notion is to turn this
from sort of a gritty industrial area into, uh, something more like what you see
here. And, and similar to our discussion that we just had with Towncrest, it will
involve a combination of public, uh, investment along with incentives for
development, and we will be developing those. Where the Riverfront Crossings
initiative stands right now is we are awaiting a, it won't actually be a plan, but it
will be a summary memo of the design charrette and the results of that, uh, that
we will then be able to basically use to move forward with this. Again, we're not,
similar to Towncrest we don't have specific projects for you yet, but we hope to
not have to wait a year for the next budget cycle to be able to, to start some things
down there.
Champion/ We have a step forward with this with the County purchasing some of that
property, and that nice new building they have, and it really has made it very .. .
Davidson/ And Connie, it will be critically important for the County, the school district
also has a presence down here, the County, the school district, uh, the University
and the City to all keep talking to each other. Because all of us have interests in
this area, and, and, you know, there's been quite a bit of polite discussion, but
when it comes right down to it each of those four entities are looking out for
themselves. And we need to make sure that the plan moves forward, uh,
consistent with the vision for the area, in terms of those four entities, as well as
private development.
Bailey/ Well, and I heard a lot of excitement from people who participated in that
planning session, um, throughout the community, throughout, from different
entities, and I, I would like us to continue the momentum on this, so, if there's
some dollars that we can move into a funded year I think that makes a lot of
sense.
Davidson/ Any other questions about this?
The final economic development project is the Downtown Business Incubator.
This is a, a project that, uh, because of the flood, uh, EDA determined that we
were a at-risk area and eligible for these funds that we would not otherwise have
been eligible for. Obviously the downtown business incubator isn't anything that
was directly impacted by the flood, but indirectly we became eligible for the
funds, in terms of trying to increase economic activity in the area, ostensibly
because of the floods. So, we've taken advantage of that, received a $60,000,
uh, grant from the Economic Development Administration, uh, and we met with
our consultant last week, uh, who is just now commencing the feasibility study for
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City city councu special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 97
this. And essentially what this will do is determine how we go from the general
notion of this being a great idea to specifically how you would implement it. Uh,
this is a combination of an economic development exercise and a downtown
initiative; try and, uh, create some, some jobs downtown, create some
businesses downtown, and take advantage of the existing energy that is there.
Sometimes we spend too much time trying to attract, uh, capital, and attract
people from outside of the community. Why not start with people that are already
in the community, committed to the community, love being here. We've got
some niche areas that we are specifically going to be going after. Uh, the
University is a partner with us on this. Uh, there are, there are again some niche
areas within the University of people, for example, in the, uh, in the sciences and
engineering that don't desire to go on for PhD degrees; they've got an idea that
they would like to incubate, uh, into a potential business. And those are the kind
of folks that we'll be focused on with this. So, we'll be bringing back, once the
feasibility study is finished we'll be bringing back to you, uh, a specific proposal
on how we might go ahead with this. Uh, depending on the tack we take it might,
it may or may not, uh, require, uh, city investment. We, we can kind of, kind of
go some different directions there, but we'll be bringing something specifically
back. The, the feasibility study is to be completed in, in April.
Fosse/ Questions?
Davidson/ Questions about what we have in mind here?
Fosse/ Uh, the next project is a citywide signal preemption system for, uh, police and fire,
ambulance, those types of vehicles. Uh, some communities already have citywide
ones. We have some very small localized preemption systems within Iowa City;
one right outside of this building here for when they're getting in and out of the
fire station. We also have some preemption systems associated with, uh, railroad
crossings; such as the First Avenue one so that you're not stuck on the tracks on a
red light when a train's coming. When trains come, that preempts those signals
and it dumps that, that leg of the intersection out so there's nobody waiting there.
Um, if, if we look at a median project on Burlington Street that will need some
sort of preemption system along there, and that would probably be the trigger
point to look at a citywide system that would be GIS based so that the vehicles
were tracked and then, uh, the signals are turned green to, to dump that area out
`cause, uh.. .Currently what they do on Burlington Street when they encounter
traffic like this, where there's folks that just can't pull off to the side, is they, they
go down the middle of the street and then go out in the oncoming traffic if need
be. With the medians there that option won't exist. You gotta move that traffic
out of the way in front of you. Uh, citywide system is, is at about $1.15 million
dollars, and, uh, I think, and John indicated the other day that they're looking for
some, some grants, uh, to help finance that if, if, if we do that. Anything you
want to add to it, Jeff? Okay.
Champion/ Who would have use of this? Police and fire and ambulance?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City council ~peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 98
Bailey/ And Council members.
Champion/ And Council members?
(Laughter.)
Davidson/ It's, it's possible to expand it to public transit also. That's not being suggested
at this time. But in larger cities, public transit does also have a system.
Fosse/ Hm.
Wyss/ Uh, that Police Firing Range has been an issue, it's been ongoing for several
years now. We've been fortunate, at least since I've been a police officer here,
that we've been able to use the Cedar Rapids Police Department for our training
purposes. And it's been a very good facility for us but over the last few years our
access to this range has been greatly diminished. We don't have unfettered
access to it. And, um, there's also been talk of in the near future they would like
to, uh, shut this range down. Uh, we have been working with the other local
agencies and we would like to develop a regional police fire range. Um, it's on
the unfunded list, but, and the main reason it's being brought up at this point is
because it can be a very controversial issue, mainly because of location. It's
very difficult to find a location that's, that's suitable for a police firing range.
Unfortunately it's, it's something that we are definitely going to need, need,
definitely going to need in the very near future.
Fosse/ Do I understand you already have a grant in place for the equipment?
Wyss/ We have a grant for the equipment, yes. Um, I'd like to think the funding for the
range itself may come from forfeiture funds or some other funding. The, the main
controversy or the main issue that we need to, or the obstacle that we have is
identifying a suitable location for it.
Hayek/ Who takes the lead on that? I'm assuming it's land acquired in the county?
Wyss/ I'm sorry?
Hayek/ I, I assume, first of all I assume the, the property would be acquired in the
county? But, I could be wrong .. .
Wyss/ We do believe it would be in the county. Ideally it would be relatively close to
Iowa City, but if we would have to go out of county corridor, clearly the further
away we get from Iowa City the more, uh, expense it is for us to do our training
there. But, yes, it would be in the county.
Hayek/ Is it understood that the ICPD would take the lead on this project, or .. .
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City councn Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 99
Wyss/ We will probably try to take the lead on this to get it moving forward. And I
know Johnson County is very active in, in seeking this also, the Sherriff s Department.
Wilburn/ Is there a deadline that we'd lose the grant for the equipment if we .. .
Wyss/ It would be three years, or just over two years, so there is a timeline on that, yes.
Wilburn/ Okay.
Helling/ It, it is anticipated that Iowa City would, at this point in time anyway, would
actually, um, develop the range. And, but, all the other law enforcement
agencies are interested and, and certainly willing to contribute in terms of, you
know, however that might be, either initially or, uh, some remuneration back to us
for the, for use of the range. Uh, and there are forfeiture funds available for the
purchase of land. It depends on what the land would cost but we think that would
probably be sufficient to .. .
Champion/Did we at one point have some land?
Helling/ I'm sorry?
Champion/ Did we have a site picked out at one point?
Helling/ At one point, yeah, we had a site that we investigated very heavily but, again,
uh, it was one of those situations where the neighbors, um, the, the idea of having
a firing range isn't, isn't particularly attractive. Um, and we thought, the one
parcel that we looked at was, we thought it was a good parcel because it, there
was some natural buffering I terms of the, the terrain. Um, but, uh, it was I
Johnson County and I think, again, some people approached the Board of
Supervisors and ... So it's, it's, it's like a landfill, (laughter) not quite as bad as a
landfill but, but, or an airport. Now those are, those are, it's very difficult to site
those because they're not a particularly attractive neighbor to residents around.
Bailey/What's the ongoing operations, operating costs for a firing range? Nominal?
Wyss/ Once, once the equipment's in place, and I don't have a dollar amount, but once
the equipment's in place it's relatively minimal. It's maintenance of the property
an security.
Bailey/ Why couldn't we put it on our landfill?
Fosse/ One, one of the places we could look at .. .
Bailey/ Yeah.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 100
Wright/That's a great idea.
Helling/Keep in mind, that, that, you know, while we typically think of the landfill as
being way out there, it isn't anymore.
Bailey/ I know, but, yeah .. .
Wilburn/ The issues of public concern that folks might have that do live out by the
landfill, those, those will come up anyway.
Bailey/ Well, yeah.
Wilburn/ I mean .. .
Bailey/ Yeah, I mean, it's kind of packaging those issues now .. .
Wilbur/ Sure. Yeah.
Wyss/ We're certainly open to any suggestions.
Wilburn/ You can only get yelled at for one really (inaudible) set of things as opposed to
(Laughter.)
Bailey/ Yeah, exactly. How much land---
Helling/ One of the hardest, uh, sort of beliefs or assumptions that's difficult to, to, to
debunk is the notion that there's gonna be, you know, wild, you know, bullets
flying all over the place. Uh, and, quite frankly it's, it's just the opposite.
They're very contained, very structured. And, uh, this, it's not a real issue but it's
a perceived issue.
Champion/ And then what do you do about the lead in the bullet that's going into the
ground?
Mims/ That's, that's what I was wondering about ongoing?
Wyss/ There are specific designs for ranges, uh, that we have that help, uh, alleviate
those issues.
Champion/ Well, I think we need to move on this. We've been talking about it for
several years.
Mims/ How much land is needed?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 101
Wyss/ I don't have the answer to that, uh, right off the top of my head.
Helling/ Again, it's one of those things where you, it has to be pretty well buffered. So
the actual amount of land needed to, for the functional range is, is far less than,
than probably the amount of land we would have to buy in order to be, you know,
far enough removed from the neighbors.
Wilburn/ I presume the other law enforcement jurisdictions have the same, uh, access
issue in terms of the Cedar Rapids range, or .. .
Wyss/ That's correct.
Champion/ The dump. The dump; the landfill would be a lot closer than Cedar Rapids.
Fosse/ Okay. That's it for the, the unfunded ones that we wanted to visit with you about.
One project I want to bring your attention that is, has left the program, at least
staff is recommending that it leaves the program is, is the neighborhood lighting.
We, uh, had some money in there last year for that. The need for that seems to
be diminishing and another driving force in that is that the ongoing operation and
maintenance and electrical costs, uh, for that don't align with the budget
constraints that we've been facing lately. Well, that's one, one project that we
recommend removing from the program.
Bailey/ Have we talked to the neigh-there were a couple neighborhoods that felt very
strongly about that. It's not one of my favorite projects but there were a couple.
Davidson/ I think there were a couple of individuals in one neighborhood---
Bailey/ Okay. So.
Davidson/ ---that felt strongly about it. I'm not sure ... We have no indication that it
went much beyond that.
Hayek/ A general question, the uh, the unfunded list items number almost a hundred.
And what you went through is a distinct sub-set of that. Was this a, uh, a
representative sample, or are those what you would consider the top unfunded
candidates that are the most likely to bump up into funded years.
Davidson/ The latter.
Fosse/ Yes.
Hayek/ There has been a request to take a quick break. Is this a decent juncture to do that
before we jump into the---
Fosse/ Perfect time. Yep.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 102
Hayek/ Okay. Let's do five minutes.
(break)
Hayek/ All right, we'll start up again. Do you want to take it from there?
Fosse/ You bet! We're at the point now where we're happy to discuss in more detail any
of the projects that we talked about today, um, answer your questions, entertain
moving things around -whatever you'd like to do.
Hayek/ And... to preface that, I think, uh, staff s made it clear to at least me ...actual
decisions on CIP do not need to be made today. However, if there are, uh,
directions we...that enough of us want to take or at least explore, today would be
a good opportunity to air those so that staff can have some time to react to those
and do some potential planning for that.
Helling/ Yeah, and...and particularly, I mean, what...what you've been given is...what's
been put together is a proposal, uh, beyond the radar topics are the ones that...or
the projects are the ones that you might want to discuss a little bit about whether
or not, uh, when and if you'd like to see those moved to funded at some time. We
have that information and we can go back and sort of rework this. Uh, just keep
in mind that anything you...you move into the funded, uh, or put in as a place
holder or whatever, we have to attach a dollar amount to that, and it
does...because it is then possibly committed, it does, uh...constitute part of the
capacity for that particular year. And, you give us a project and we can figure out
(mumbled) some of those, um, (mumbled) projects are...are funded by a variety
of sources, and to the extent that they don't require debt or...or, um, City money
up front, you can move them in there. Some...something for instance like the, uh,
the, um, firing range. At this point in time, we believe that we could construct
that with...with little or no City funds.
Hayek/ Okay. Well, I'll...should we just open it up at this point...to, uh, various
questions that might come?
Champion/ Well, I think we ought to start working on that gun range, uh, because we've
needed it for several years. The funding's not going to be a big deal for the City
budget.
Helling/ We don't think so!
Champion/ And...let's just get going on it! They need it!
Helling/ The problem with that has been siting. That's the real issue.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (Clp's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 103
Wright/ Did I catch some allusion that that, uh, you'd had some discussions about putting
the firing range out at the Landfill?
Fosse/ I think it's been discussed before, and it... one of the things that we need to be
sensitive to is...is the surrounding property owners, like other locations in the
context, and...for which we bought the property, and you know, we bought it for
the purpose of putting a landfill there, and then if we layer on another, uh,
obtrusive land use, it...it may be perceived negatively by...as a bait and switch
type thing. So that's a caution for that site, but it doesn't rule it out.
Wright/ If one...as you get further...I'm not familiar with the landscape and the
topography surrounding the...the Landfill, but as you get further into that, are
you, um, particularly close to any residential property?
Fosse/ Well there are isolated residential properties, but certainly you can get over the
ridge where you have the...at least a ridge between you and Southwest Estates
and Country Club Estates, those other subdivisions there, uh, how effective that is
at controlling noise I don't know, and uh, I brought up that property owner thing
earlier just...based on some experience in dealing with the property owners
around there now, and some have been around since it was acquired back in the
early 70s, and they're saying that the City hasn't done what they said they were
going to do on this site. I don't know what promises were made in the 70s, but it's
still sticking in some people's (mumbled).
Champion/ I think we should...what about...well, so they are constantly looking for a
site, is that true?
Helling/ They certainly are.
Champion/ Okay. All right, then that's all we really need to know. Okay. When they
have a site they'll come to us (mumbled).
Mims/ It would help me...being new to this process, um...I mean, I can look at a lot of
these that are on the radar and say I'd love to put them on the list, but I don't know
at this point what our limitations are in terms of what are our bonding limitations,
do we have on the list...we've already maxed out on our bonding limitation with
what's on our list, so does it mean if we take something that's on the radar list and
put it on the funded list we've got to take something off the funded list? If you
can help me with that, then...
Helling/ Okay, and...and, yeah, that's a good point. Clearly, for FYl 1, the upcoming
fiscal year, anything that was going to be added there, there... something would
have to be moved. As we get into the out years, um, that's...that's not something
that we would have to decide immediately, uh, but we would want to package that
together and come back to you. We'd have to make a decision if...if anything
else has to be removed or moved back to a...farther out, um...but it's...it's kind of
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 104
one of those chicken and egg things where we can't really do anything until we
know if the priorities that we've established or...or suggested are truly your
priorities and unfortunately you have to determine that in the context of all the
projects together, and so it's not something...what we've looking for today is
some... some general direction so that we can, uh, come back and formulate, if we
wanted to change this, we can come back and formulate something, but keep in
mind that FY11, even 12, you know, the more immediate the project is the more
likely we're going to have to move some things around now, rather than later.
Bailey/ Insofar as priorities, I think we should be looking at these economic development
projects.
Champion/ Oh, absolutely! I just wanted to tell Susan something, um, we're nowhere
near our bond capacity. It's aself-limited...
Mims/ Right.
Champion/ Okay.
Bailey/ We're certainly not near the state (mumbled)
Champion/ Go on, Regenia, sorry!
Bailey/ I just, well, I think that we should be looking at, um, investing in projects that
actually are going to grow our tax base in the long run, particularly in these
difficult sort of years. The three that come to mind of course is the Towncrest
redevelopment, the Northside Marketplace, and then Riverfront Crossings. I once
again think we should be building on that momentum. I don't... as Jeff said, we
don't have real firm numbers, but I think we should maybe send staff back to get
some...what they think and put those in 11/12, and be getting going on those,
particularly Towncrest, I thought, and...and...well, and Northside, I mean, that's
(both talking)
Mims/ I would add to that the Oakdale Boulevard, because, I mean, it sounds like we've
got a developer there who's anxious to get going. It's not in our funded list.
They're willing to try, it sounds like from Jeff, to work out some kind of private
funding and we pay them back or whatever, and...I mean, it sounds like they've
got a project that...could come to fruition maybe faster than some of these others,
particularly like Riverfront Crossing, with...with possibly substantial amount of
the property value that would really help us tax-wise. I don't know how much
you can talk about that at this point in terms of where those discussions are and
what that means in terms of the cost to the City, um, and how we would look at
that if we were to make it a higher priority.
Davidson/ Yeah, we've been able to quantify some concept figures. You know, it's
basically the road, the sanitary sewer, and the municipal water. And those are the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City council speaai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 105
three things you have to have to enable that, uh, project to develop. And between
Rick and Ron and myself, we've given the developer, um, the guidance of how
that can be done. Now the rough...rough expense, you saw the $5.5 million for
the road, but (mumbled) the other infrastructure components, it's pushing $10
million. Um, and that's what they're trying to figure out how to privately finance,
as you say, Susan, and then with public...some kind of public repayment. Um, I
think the other distinction Council wants...should...should bear in mind when
you're considering all of the projects. They all have merit. Is there's a distinction
between an in-fill project, where basically all the infrastructure's right there
already, and...and a green-field site, like the Moss Green property where it's...it's
extending all of those infrastructure pieces, and that's the $10 million. You don't
have that expense with the in-fill projects, other than possibly some upgrades.
Dilkes/ Susan, I don't know if you've seen your Info Packet yet, but there is a letter in that
packet from Dale to, uh, the developer of that project, telling them what
information the City needs in order to move forward on that.
Mims/ Okay. Thanks! So how...with a project of this type, and whether it's this one or a
different one, how...how do we put something in our budget, um...I mean, like
you had the Moen project and...and TIFs involved and, I mean, I don't know how
much, and of course he was purchasing that from the City. I don't know how
much upfront money the City's involved in, or even like with Towncrest when
you're talking possible urban renewal, and you've...you've indicated probably
some public investment. How...how do we get dollar amounts, so that we can
look at that and put it in perspective with these other projects and what our budget
is going to look like?
Davidson/ Yeah, and that's...that's what we're developing right now.
Mims/ Okay.
Davidson/ Um, in terms of Towncrest, I'm sure will end up being a range of alternatives,
um, you know, because Connie raised the issue of urban renewal -yes, that's an
option, and not just for that one problem property that I was talking about, but
possibly for some of the other properties. (mumbled) jumpstart it, to get it
going... it's much easier to work with a perspective developer when you're
showing them a bare site that's ready for development, as opposed to one where
they have to purchase it, they have to do the demolition, they have to get it ready.
So, you know, that's the City's incentive, and you know, unfortunately we're just
not quite far enough along to have specific dollar figures for doing that, and that's
why you saw the placeholder (mumbled)
Mims/ Uh-huh.
Bailey/ Well, and that's what I'd like to do is...is give some philosophical underpinning.
Let's work on these economic development projects. See what we can get for
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 106
placeholder numbers, but move them into funded and see what other adjustments
we have to make. I mean, we have some, um, I'll just say from my perspective
philosophically some less compelling projects that I think we could move to out
years, um, they're certainly beneficial to the community from a quality of life
perspective, but insofar as leveraging increasing tax base, they don't do that. So
I...that's what I would put on the table and encourage others to...to, you know,
support, to give direction to staff.
Hayek/ How do the rest of you feel about that? (several talking)
Wright/ ...particularly the Towncrest, North Marketplace, and uh, Riverfront are three
that could have, begin to have some payoff relatively soon, and Oakdale,
personally I just need more information before I want to say whether we...it
should be pursued or not, but it certainly has possibilities.
Bailey/ Right, and I guess Oakdale comes in at a higher dollar amount, and also for me,
the in-fill projects are always from a sort of sustainability (mumbled) little bit
more compelling, but I...I concur that we should be looking at Oakdale as well, if
there's...leveraging possibilities, and that's what we have to be thinking about
(mumbled)
Mims/ Well, especially if it's possible to put together a package where they're going to
privately fund it, and then...you know, we pay them back in a way that isn't
affecting our budget through whatever mechanisms are there, um, you know.
Champion/ Well, and also it's going to be office space, which we're in dire need o£ The
only reason to push the Riverfront Crossings cause there'll be office space there
also.
Wright/ And Towncrest.
Champion/ Yes!
Bailey/ Right. And then, related, the business incubator - I can't find what we were
talking, I mean, what did you want to do with that, insofar as a placeholder or a
dollar amount or...I think we need to continue to move forward on that project.
We'll have to see how the feasibility study comes out.
Davidson/ Yeah, unfortunately we didn't even put a placeholder amount in on that project
because given our preliminary discussions with our, uh, feasibility study
consultant, there's such a range of possibilities there, you know, there's actually
models for creating these incubator spaces where it's all privately funded
basically, you know, by (mumbled) investors and people like that. So, you know,
we just really don't have any idea what type of public investment we might be
talking about for that. If we end up going with a conventional, what I would call
a conventional business incubator space, then it's a matter of the City purchasing
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 107
the space, renovating it, coming up with some operating expenses for the
mentoring that's necessary (mumbled) we're just unfortunately, again, just...just
starting the feasibility study. It won't be till April that we have anything specific
for you.
Wright/ And along with that, have we, um, staff talked at all with the University. They
have a small business, um, planner. I can't remember his exact title, and uh, it
seems like those two can go hand and glove.
Bailey/ He was at the meeting.
Wright/ Pardon me?
Bailey/ He's been involved.
Wright/ He's been involved?
Davidson/ Yeah, David Hensley who runs the PappaJohn...the PappaJohn Center, he's
basically working with us on this one just to make sure...we're being very careful
not to duplicate anything here. University also has then the (mumbled) center out
at Oakdale as well, and so we're making sure that we're apples, oranges,
grapefruits, in terms of the services that (mumbled)
Wright/ Good!
Bailey/ What if we would put like a half a million dollar placeholder for FY11...FY12,
knowing that it can range, knowing that we'll have a feasibility study, knowing
that it might not even come to fruition. It might not be feasible...for the
incubator. I just want to see us moving aggressively on economic development.
Champion/ And 420 is already in the next year, right? Yeah.
Davidson/ Yeah, those are all funded, Connie.
Hayek/ Well, we can, uh, if...if the consensus is to move on 1/2, or all of these, um, we
can do so, uh, with the exception of Oakdale they're all...they're each, uh, a
million or less at least in terms of the initial estimate. Do we want to direct staff
on...well, first of all, there are four or five now on the table. (several talking)
Yeah. Incubator, Towncrest, Riverfront, Northside Market Place, and...and
Oakdale. Um...
Davidson/ Was there a consensus for, I'm sorry, I missed that, Northside Marketplace, as
well? A consensus?
Hayek/ Is there, in fact, consensus on that? That would be streetscape work on...on (both
talking)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 108
Mims/ I guess my question would be on that one is, what...what do we see as the
payback in terms of increasing property values and a kind of a timeframe, if we're
going to look economic development, what's our...
Davidson/ That's not one, Susan, that has a direct correlation, uh, because we're not
presupposing that this streetscape project will cause reinvestment necessarily. I
mean, I think there's a correlation in terms of if you let the area decline, it causes
this investment, but this is more just kind of a housekeeping thing of, especially
an older neighborhood like that. You just need to try and keep up with it. It
certainly would not be projected to grow the tax base the way those other projects
potentially could.
Mims/ I guess of the five, that would be my lowest priority, I mean, I'd like to
concentrate if we're going to pick some that are economic development, I'd like to
concentrate on the ones that are going to give us the biggest bang for our buck, so
to speak.
Bailey/ I would like to, I mean, I...I can understand that, um, you know, we have to
prioritize. The Northside Marketplace though is a project that's been out there
probably since we did redevelopment of downtown before I was on Council. It
just fell off that, and I would like to see us try to do something there. There's
some safety issues. Um, one of the things I think we need to talk about with the
property owners, they're a very active group, is...is how they're going to invest in
the area. Um, and maybe continue some ongoing maintenance, and I think there
are some possible instruments that we could use in that area to do that. So...
Helling/ That's a good point. We get a project...like the Northside Marketplace is really
more of a maintenance project than...than anything else. It's...there's some things
about the streetscape there that really need some attention.
Bailey/ Safety-wise too.
Helling/ Correct.
Hayek/ I think it would be...it would help us catch up with the recent infusion of private
money into that area. I mean, there's been heavy-duty investment by the private
sector up and down that street.
Champion/ I think we should go ahead and do the Northside.
Wright/ That's a relatively small (both talking)
Champion/ ...tie in with our...our joint venture with the University to rehab houses, and
it just...
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 109
Bailey/ That's a really good point!
Champion/ I think we should... it's a half a million dollars.
Wilburn/ It's also the type of thing where...um, in addition to that, communication with
the, uh, both...the private residential and commercial folks in the area, it helps
that dialogue with them will help reinforce that the City is investing in those
areas, as opposed to a comparison to, uh, there are some related to the downtown
that forget some of the public investment that we've made and the perception or
the buzz that some continue to reinforce is that we don't put anything into
downtown, which you can look in your budget and see, you know, and past
budgets, you can see that's not the case, so...
Shipley/ Once the money's there, how quickly can this project be completed?
Davidson/ Uh, upcoming construction season, or would it be one more beyond that?
Fosse/ That would be tight (several talking) more likely be December of 11.
Shipley/ It's pretty quick then or the actual...
Davidson/ Perhaps not the upcoming construction season, but the one after.
Bailey/ But if we know the money's going to be budgeted, some of these...well...maybe
not (mumbled)
Hayek/ Well, are there four people interested in... in, uh, in moving the Northside
Marketplace streetscape project up into the funded? (several responding) Okay.
Bailey/ (mumbled) as well.
Helling/ The only thing that troubles me a little bit about trying to put this together, if we
put, you know, those are...Towncrest for instance, um, Oakdale Boulevard,
and...and (mumbled) and the River Crossings, they're all very...they're not only
large scale projects, cut they...they extend over time. They're all in the
conceptual stage, um, I... it's pretty hard to predict at this point which ones might
develop faster than others. Um...and so it may be...it may be premature to...to
try to make that decision. Um, I don't know in terms of capital planning, uh,
again, as I said, if you put those in, even...just the initial stages, starting to design
or initial, uh, investment, something else has to come out, and that's...that's my
other point is as we go along here today, somebody indicated there were a number
of things in there that...that maybe weren't, didn't grow the tax base and we need
to know what those are too, so that we have an idea what you're willing to trade
off for... for what we put in.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 110
Champion/ Do you think, Dale, we're better off putting those things into the next year's
budget? Will it take a year to get those designs done and ready to go?
Bailey/ But we need money for design (both talking)
Champion/ That's right.
Davidson/ The people in Towncrest, there's some property owners who are really anxious
to redevelop. Um, Riverfront Crossings, I think a little of a longer timeline, you
know, we need to do something with City Carton, do something with the north
waste water plant. So that's going to take longer.
Champion/ So that could go into next year's budget.
Bailey/ Or it could be a nominal amount for design in FY11, you know, stretch it out, but
first and foremost, these are unfunded. We need to get them to funded, and that's
what I was suggesting, is let staff look at how we can do that, what's...what's
probably coming online fastest.
Davidson/ The Moss Green developer definitely wants to get going as soon as possible,
insists to us that they've made some commitments to, you know, development
entities that they're working with, so...that and Towncrest certainly the upcoming
year could...could see funds expend...expended for some very visible, tangible
things. Riverfront Crossings, you know, FY11's going to be a challenge for that
(several talking)
Champion/ But if we did the Moss whatever you want to call it; can't remember the
name; Towncrest... and North Market. Are those feasible?
Davidson/ Those are ones that are pretty much ready to go, or will be by FY11 certainly.
Champion/ Great! Those are the ones we should keep out there then.
Bailey/ I think so too. I think we should move Riverfront Crossings to 12 though.
Wilburn/ Well, I mean, the other things too, I mean, we can give indication to staff
continue, I mean, Dale's already sent the note out to the folks about, developer
about Oakdale to keep that dialogue going, to try and make a little bit more
tangible what they're thinking, what's, uh, educate them about what's feasible with
the City, and if it looks as if there's going to be some momentum, then this time
next year we can move something up into...sooner, into a...a, from unfunded into
a funded fiscal year, um, which has been done in the past, you know, something
comes up, an opportunity, and we...
Helling/ Well, and certainly...in the realm of possibility to amend this.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Speaai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 111
Wilburn/ Right.
Helling/ (mumbled) the only thing is if you commit to a project and you start construction
and...it's, yeah (several talking)
Davidson/ The letter that Dale, that Eleanor referred to that Dale .has sent in the packet,
that's in your Info Packet that came out yesterday, is a strategy for proceeding
with that development, without anything in the City's capital improvement
budget. Okay? Um, now whether or not everybody's going to be able to pull that
off, we don't know yet, but I guess you could proceed and get that question
answered first, if it ends up that we...between we and the developer we can't pull
it off, then you could go back in and decide if you wanted City funds to try and
put that project forward.
Bailey/ (mumbled) good approach.
Champion/ And when things like the water and sewer come out of those revenue funds
or...
Davidson/ That's all packaged in the infrastructure package that we've told the developer
we don't have any money for. Sewer, water, and the road.
Hayek/ And it seems to me that you have two ends of the spectrum here. You have the
unfunded end, and then you have the FY11 end, and in between are 12 and 13,
and it's my sense that placing something in 12 or 13 is...it's a step to our
commitment, but it's very malleable, and it's not a hard commitment, and if that is
the case, what advantage is there to the City and to staffs purposes to placing
something from unfunded into 12 or 13 when it is nevertheless still so malleable?
Davidson/ (mumbled) between 12 and 13, 13 is a very soft commitment.
Hayek/ Yeah.
Davidson/ Plenty of time to change your minds before then. Twelve a little less so, and
then 11 you're committing.
Hayek/ Sure.
Bailey/ Well, if we place something like a road's project though in 12, we can go out and
begin to seek funding for it. If it's in our unfunded we can't, right?
Davidson/ Well, sure, if your commitment to placing it in a funded year is for us to go out
and try and find outside funding, that's not nearly as much of a commitment as
when you're directing Kevin to sell bonds for something.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 112
Wright/ But if we put Riverfront Crossings out to 12 for example, I think that indicates a
fairly significant...
Bailey/ That it's moving along.
Wright/ ...interest, uh, on the part of the Council, and... and knowing that when things
come along next year we might even say then, well, we're not there yet. We can
bump that back one more year.
Fosse/ By having Riverfront Crossings in one of the out years, might be helpful for us in
trying to secure additional outside money to demolish the north plant, if...if we
show that we've got something in a funded year, targeted for that area.
Davidson/ And it may be that once we get these materials back from our EPA, um, I-Jobs
consultant... is it I-Jobs? Yeah, I-Job, um, that summarizes the shred process, we
may need, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars to actually prepare a
redevelopment plan. Maybe that would be our activity in FYl 1, while we're
doing exactly what Rick said in terms of trying to secure the funding for the
demolish... demolishing the, uh, the north waste water plant, and you know, it
may be that level of commitment, of a couple hundred thousand dollars to get a
redevelopment plan...which gets everybody on the same sheet of music then, uh,
maybe that's your commitment for FY11.
Fosse/Now one thing that might be unique to our program this year with the flood
recovery projects is typically the immediate funded years are...are packed up full,
and then it diminishes a little bit as you get into the out years. I don't think that's
the case this time around, is it, Kevin, that...we're pretty well full to the gills
through 14. So even though we...we want to put something in 13 or 14, we still
need to look at something to pull out. We don't have that capacity to...it just
adds, even to the out years.
Hayek/ Well, with respect to Riverfront Crossings, if there is sufficient interest maybe the
thing to do would be to ask staff to give us a sense of what kind of placeholder
would make sense, from a planning perspective (both talking) to get us onto the
scoreboard, so to speak.
Helling/ ...probably look at all of these and come up with what's feasible for FY11, I
mean, what... and uh, put some dollar amounts in there and then come back to you
(mumbled)
Wright/ I'd be comfortable with that.
Bailey/ Yeah, that was my intent, is just further discussion among staff and a
recommendation to get these into funded years.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 113
Helling/ It would be helpful if there are...if there's a consensus of anything, particularly
in 11, but 11, 12, 13, as well, that you're willing to trade off and...and you know
that now, it would be helpful for us to know that.
Wilburn/ When's the, uh...
Helling/ Or at least to be looking at it so when we come back to this you'll have some
ideas on (mumbled)
Wilburn/ When's the, uh, I've forgotten when the University has indicated they may be
making a decision related to Hancher. I'm looking at like the Burlington Street.
They...okay, all right (several talking) yeah, okay.
Dickens/ When is Dubuque Street bridge and raising the elevation, when is that
(mumbled)
Fosee/ Probably, uh, 12 and 13, those two construction seasons.
Dickens/ I know there was a developer, with Foster Road going through the...
Fosse/ Uh-huh.
Dickens/ ...that was willing to donate some of the dirt, but wanted to know (mumbled)
Davidson/ I think that developer, Terry, was also looking for a commitment from the City
Council for the Foster Road project between Prairie du Chien and Dubuque
Street.
Dickens/ Yes, that's...that's the one I'm referring to and that he would...
Wright/ Dale, you're suggesting looking for things to bump from 11 or from 11 and 12?
Helling/ Yes. (several talking) Anything you see in there that...
Wright/ Anything that looks, uh, malleable.
Champion/ Well, as usual, we have a lot of Parks and Recs projects, um...I mean, I really
would like to see the pedestrian bridge go in, um... Scott Park (mumbled) trail, a
million dollars. I guess that's in 12 and 13 (mumbled)
Wright/ Well, we've got...$365,000 for restrooms and replacing a 4-foot sidewalk with a
6-foot sidewalk.
Bailey/ I would be willing to move that a little farther out. I think those are good projects
(several talking)
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 114
Wright/ Park restrooms are handy! (laughter)
Bailey/ Probably more for me than you, but...
Wright/ College Green light replacement in that bundle.
Helling/ As I said, there are things...this may not be the best process to try to make those
decisions now. Go back, take a look at 'em, we'll put together what we think we
can do in terms... (several responding) of... of putting these things in, and where
they might fit in, and the amounts, and then you'll have an idea...you'll have the
opportunity to look through some of the funded projects and make some
decisions, at least in your own mind what you would...would get rid of, but also,
uh, you'll know your target in terms of dollars and the trade off. We could...that's
probably...if we could get to that point to start the decision making process on the
CIP, I think that would probably work (mumbled)
Hayek/ I think that makes sense. We don't know how much will have to come out if we
pursue, uh, these priorities.
Wright/ (mumbled)
Hayek/ Right, but with...but the one we really haven't zeroed in on is the Oakdale, um,
proposal, and I think in part it's because the actual approach and the City's
potential out of pocket is in flux, as are the merits of the project.
Davidson/ Well, the City's out of pocket right now is not in flux, Matt. It's zero. We
have no commitment to any...
Hayek/ I understand that, but...but we haven't decided whether this project could be
pulled off without out of pocket and if the answer is no whether we're willing to...
Davidson/ ... so everybody understands here, the letter that we've been referring to is so
that the developer can provide us with the information we need to determine if
they can pull it off.
Hayek/ Right. So based on that, should we take no action on this, at this time?
Champion/ Right.
Wilburn/ Well, and...given that the developer has a proposal to do this another way...
Davidson/ I mean, I guess it'd be nice to have that answer, and I will have it shortly.
I... you may not even be finished with your budget deliberation by the time we
have it. So...
Hayek/ Okay.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 115
Bailey/ And I think we're all excited about the project. I think if we can pull it off in a
different way we (mumbled)
Davidson/ We might as well exhaust those possibilities first.
Dilkes/ I think it would send really conflicting messages at this point to put it in your
capital improvement (several talking) budget, given the letter we just sent out.
(several responding)
Hayek/ Okay.
Bailey/ (mumbled)
Hayek/ Are we comfortable with that approach to these unfunded issues? What else,
uh...
Bailey/ Bring 'em back and we're going to...
Hayek/ Yeah.
Helling/ We might even have a recommendation or two on something you might want to
take out and you can...
Bailey/ Yep.
Helling/ (mumbled)
Hayek/ Someone mentioned, uh, moving something up from unfunded and it's
ability...it's, uh, the impact on our ability to seek outside funding and one of those
was the fire station training facility. Um...that's unfunded, but I know it's
something we're seeking outside funds for. Are we hamstringing ourselves
because of that? Do we need to move that?
Davidson/ Excuse me, Rick.
Fosse/ I was going to say that'd fall into that Riverfront Crossings, um, one as well, if...if
that's in a funded year, that is in that same general area as the... fire training
facility.
Davidson/ The proposal you'll be taking to Washington, Matt, has $800,000, well, what
we're asking for is $800,000 in federal funding that we would match with
$200,000. So if they come through with the $800,000 we are saying we'll commit
$200,000.
Hayek/ Okay, and that was what I was getting at. Thanks.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 116
Wright/ Just something I need a clarification on. Uh, on the...the unfunded list and for
Parking and Transit is the You Smash 'em Demolition. What's You Smash 'em?
Champion/ Oh my gosh! You don't know what You Smash 'em is? (laughter)
Wright/ Nope!
Davidson/ You smash 'em, I fix 'em.
Helling/ You smash 'em, I fix 'em.
Wright/ You're all not helping!
Helling/ (several talking) over where the, uh, Chamber of Commerce parking lot is now
(several talking)
Wright/ Okay.
Helling/ ...and it was called You Smash 'em, I Fix 'em a long, long, long time ago, and
for the lack of any other term it's always been the You Smash'em building
and...and the basement is still there under the parking lot.
Wright/ Okay.
Fosse/ The building is on borrowed time right now. We inspect that annually,
structurally.
Wright/ The basement you mean.
Fosse/ So that it doesn't live up to its name, yeah, the...basically the north wall is where
our concerns are.
Wright/ Oh, okay. I know exactly where you're talking about then.
Fosse/ Yeah! Yeah! And at some point, we will need to demolish that. And...and then
we need to make a decision do we take the Wilson Building at that same time,
cause it's...structurally they're tied together, um...
Champion/ I think you'd take the whole thing at once when you take it down. You took
down the cute bus station; you might as well take down the whole thing!
(laughter)
Davidson/ There are a total of four properties there that, uh, we control three of the four,
that eventually could be either a very prime redevelopment site, or a place for
additional City facilities, uh, we haven't answered that question yet. We...with
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 117
some regularity get requests from private developers interested in the corner.
There's 500-space parking facility right next door, but the Wilson Building, the
You Smash 'em building, the old bus station property are the three that we
control, and then the substation property, which we do not.
Wilburn/ I'm thinking, uh, not for conversation today, but I'm thinking this year we
probably should have that philosophical discussion with Parks and Rec about
whether the...one of the concepts in the past was that as potentially expansion for
the...the, uh, the Rec Center down here, and we do get requests from people. Uh,
we've had one recently about... about that spot and without knowing a direction
of... of the Council or the City... is that something that we think really is
something we want to maintain, retain, for City space, City use, (mumbled)
or...or not. It would seem to me that, um, that...um, that's a question that I hear
more energy about over the last couple of years, uh, well, and even our
conversations where, uh, .Connie wants to put something on the...on the spot on
the corner across from the church there, and Regenia wants to put, uh, open space
or...
Bailey/ (mumbled)
Wilburn/ ...okay, but it seems to me...I have sensed more questions, energy, comments
from the public about that area so I... sometime this year, um, it seems to me it
would behoove us to have a conversation about public or private usage of the
area.
Bailey/ Are we going to do a facilities study at some point though? That has to...
Fosse/ In... in our current funded years a space need's study, and... and I think that'll
provide a lot of the information.
Bailey/ I think that'll have to set the groundwork for that discussion.
Helling/ (mumbled) for your information, I don't know if you're aware of it, but in the
past, um, the City's policy has been to buy up any land that came up for sale in
these three blocks, uh, and to preserve that for some sort of a City government
campus type thing, and that's...not been by any means unanimous on the part of
the Council, uh, whether or not that's a policy that you think we should maintain
or not, and so it's always up for discussion. The issue is if we don't have
immediate plans for that, do we still preserve it for some future plan versus
putting it back on the tax rolls (mumbled). So, I think that's the conversation that
(several talking)
Champion/ I do think the corner is embarrassing, and I think we should do something
with it. It... it's really embarrassing.
Fosse/ Well, we will have...
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 118
Helling/ No, go ahead.
Fosse/ Okay. I was going to say, we're going to have a fairly substantial asphalt
resurfacing program this summer, and if you want to convert it to parking, that's
one of the things we can look at doing is just getting an asphalt mat on it and
stripe it and...and use it temporarily as parking.
Hayek/ Well, it seems all of this would be...presaged by facilities study, which has been
budgeted but we haven't done. Do we...do we need to put that on a work session
agenda and... and have that discussion as to whether we proceed with that, so that
we can proceed with the philosophical discussions and everything else?
Helling/ You had that discussion last...about a year ago.
Hayek/ Right.
Helling/ Uh, it was one of a number of things that sort of got put aside and we had the
flood issues and all of (mumbled) some other things, um, and so I guess the thing
is just to get it back, uh, you know, moving ahead, uh, if you want to talk about it
again, we can bring it back. It's basically a facilities master plan is what
(mumbled)
Mims/ And when would that be done?
Helling/ Um, it would probably from the initial time that you put out the RFP, and we
have that ready to go, uh, until we could have it done, I'm thinking it'd take six
months probably (mumbled)
Fosse/ Six to nine.
Helling/ Yeah, a little longer than six.
Wilburn/ And I just...think that, uh, the fundamental question to start that conversation
with the City use/public use or private, and then...that will reinforce that decision
and that helps answer some questions from folks that are looking and always
asking us now about that space.
Hayek/ Well, it was in last year's budget, it was an $80,000 line item, um...
Fosse/ Move forward?
Bailey/ I...I thought, yeah.
Hayek/ Should we do that? (several responding) Okay. We'll do that. Did we decide on
the incubator, uh, whether we want a placeholder on that? I heard something
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 119
from your corner of the table, but...what was your proposal? Just give it to staff
to come up (several talking) okay, so that's on your list too (several talking)
Okay.
Bailey/ ...knowing that that may change.
Hayek/ Okay. Anything else?
Wright/ Just one that I wanted to ask about is the...the Sunset Street storm sewer. I'm on
page C28. Number 64.
Fosse/ That is one...
Wright/ I've heard from people not recently but I've heard from some neighbors out there
in the past. (several commenting) Uh, how serious a problem is it, and...
Fosse/ That...that is one that, uh, I'm thinking of a different one. (laughter) There's a
couple out in that part of town. We've not had a recent experience with that one.
We went out and we did some...we did some sanitary sewer improvements in the
area, and... and we dealt with the sanitary sewer charging that was occurring.
The... the storm sewer one had to do, I think, with a... a external basement
stairway that occasionally would take on water when it got deep enough in the
backyard. So I...I've not heard anything within the last two or three years from
the property owners out there...on that one.
Wright/ Okay. I was just curious if that was an ongoing problem, or an occasional, or...
Fosse/ Yeah. And unfortunately with the storm sewer ones, they do go dormant. They're
quiet for a number of years and then we have a really bad rain and they all come
to the surface again, and we hear about 'em.
Hayek/ Okay. Anything else on... capital improvements, pending or unfunded list. Any
direction we want to give staff (mumbled) Okay. (mumbled) Everyone okay?
Do we need to take another break? (several talking) Do we take a break? People
okay? No one's willing to admit it, are they? (laughter) Let's take five-minute
break. (BREAK)
Helling/ ...get into the file so we can.. .
Hayek/ Yep, And at this time we'll pass into the operational side of (mumbled and
several talking)
Helling/ While we're getting into the system I'll just, um...what I'd like to do is go over,
and I don't...I'm not going to read back to you all the pages in the budget
document. We talked about the policies and some of the...the illustrations, um,
but I did want to highlight some things, and that's what hopefully we can pull up
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 120
and they'll be on the screen behind us. Uh, in terms of our policies, and also to try
to give you some information, interpretation so it'll help you, uh, again, as
you... as we move forward toward making decisions on the budget, to
uh...understand, you know, as best you can...how to read the various documents,
and what they mean, and to highlight (noise on mic)
Wright/ Nice save!
Helling/ To, uh...to highlight some things that...that I think sort of encapsulate where we
are with...with this year's budget, and give you the...kind of help you get the big
picture at this point, and then we'll get into the details when we start getting into
the decision making. The...the screens that we use will be...they're arranged
pretty much in the same order as the pages in the budget document, starting on
page 5. So...and the reason I say that, you may...use the screen, but you may
want to make some notes in the...in your document. So we didn't want to get you
confused about what, you know, what page we were on or how to...how to access
those. Okay. (several talking) Um...any general questions that...I'm sure you've
all had a chance to at least look over the document. Are there any general
questions that you have? Before we...take a systematic overview? Or if not
that's fine (mumbled) save them until later. Actually, let's go ahead and start
since you have the...you have the your budget in front of you, and then we'll pick
up when these...when we can get'em up on the screen. Um, starting on page
S...in the budget proposal. Um, and a couple of things that...that I just wanted to
point out, and number one is right under Operating Budget policies, that first line
the City will prepare an annual, uh, balanced budget, and that's what
we've...we've given you. It is in balance, um, it's based on a number of
assumptions and a number of decisions that you've made. Uh, certainly we would
anticipate that there'll probably be decisions that will move things around a little
bit, and we may have to, uh, we may wind up with something still in balance that
we may have to make some adjustments, uh, as we go along to keep it balanced.
Um... at... in any event, we have to have that balanced budget certified by Council
and submitted to the State before March 15th. And then, uh, the last line on that
page, again, is something that I've highlighted, um, we prepare a budget, mindful
of the fact that we want to retain our triple-A bond rating, and the last, uh, bonds
we sold last spring, uh, we got very favorable comments from Moody's, um, in
terms of...of our budgeting and reporting process, and uh, I would anticipate that
we should be able to keep that as long as we...we don't, uh, compromise our...our
fund balance (mumbled) On the next page, the...the first paragraph at the top. I
just point out, again, that uh, we take athree-year planning perspective. That's
part of the...these are all the policies, the Council's policies for budget. So take a
three-year planning perspective, and in doing that, uh, we do some trending. We
also try to find isolated, um...considerations, if you will, for the future that...that
we plug in that maybe aren't consistent with budgeting trends or with the trends
that we've seen, but things that we know that are coming, and a good example of
that is for FY12. There's a 27th payday in FY12, and so for that one year, we
have to have about a million and a half extra dollars in the operating budget to
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 121
cover that. So those kinds of things are not, they're not in the long term trends are
there, but in the short term we have to try to identify those things, so...and then,
um, going down to, right, the revenue policies. I've highlighted a number of
things there, and I just wanted to go over them briefly. Um, the first two kind of
go together. We maintain, uh, as diverse a revenue, uh, revenue system as
possible, and obviously one of the purposes of that is because there can be short-
term fluctuations and we see that in property tax sometime because we rely so
heavily on the property tax, uh, that we've experienced that in the last couple
years, some of the downturn a little bit has been...has been problematic for us.
Um...and then we try to maximize the benefits of...of our major revenue sources
in a way to try to keep that property tax as stable as we can. Again, that's...that's
very difficult when it's 60% of the...of our income. The, um, and one of the
things that...the implications there and the thing that we've done with the
Metropolitan Coalition and the Iowa League and, uh, I know we've talked about it
a number of times in our budget priorities is try to get more diverse, uh, sources of
revenue and more diverse, uh...options I guess, if you will. Um, what...what we
found out is when we looked, and just for example, and I know some of you have
heard this because I've said it a number of times, but when we did our research on
bond ratings and what did we find in terms of, uh, looking at cities that have
lower fund balances than we do, as percentage wise, and still maintain their triple-
A bond ratings, and the thing that...one thing that's very consistent across the
board on that is that those cities are in states generally that have a lot of different
sources of revenue, so they don't have to rely on one. So if they draw down those
reserves, they can build it back up, uh, we have a problem... if we have to draw
down our reserves, the only way we really effectively can build that back up for
the most part is property taxes. Um, moving down to the...the third highlighted
paragraph, where it says we establish, uh, user charges and fees...at a level related
to the full cost of operations. We try to do that, um, and the next, uh, line says
that we review that, and we do that on a regular basis. Um, that's what our policy
is, but I wanted to point out that if you go back up to, uh, up a page to about the
middle of the, uh, second paragraph under Revenue Guidelines, where it talks
about where we...we revise our user fee structures according to that policy,
essentially, that last phrase is very important -while maintaining sensitivity to the
needs of local...of low-income citizens. When we go through all our...our fee
determinations, for the most part just about everything we do, we try to take into
account how does this affect the low-income, uh, most of you are aware of that, I
know. But again, point it out as a very important policy that I think we plan
to...to stay with, um, as we go through studying fees, and we anticipate that
that's...that will remain a priority for you as well, so...sometimes we have to
build that into the...the fees, and particularly those operations that we have that
are fully funded. Uh, the Enterprise Fund and so forth, we have to take that into
account, and our fees will reflect that. They may be a little higher so that we can
(mumbled) operation our, uh, our, uh, considerations in terms of discounts, our
low-income discounts and that type of thing. And having said that, the...just to
remind you that our policy remains that, uh, for Parks and Recreation, particularly
recreation fees, I've always looked at it the other direction that we try to make
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 122
sure that we can fund 40% of those. Your policy is that we don't...that, uh, the
City doesn't fund any more than 60%. So what we try to do with our fees is fund
at least 40% of our costs. The rest is subsidized and... again, these are a11...I kind
of point these out because, you know, if there's any... any indication from you or
any thoughts that you might want to revisit any of these policies, then this would
be the time to let us know. Uh, just informationally, the...the, uh, the Enterprise
Funds, the ones that...we fund as enterprises from user fees are listed in the top,
that first paragraph, parking, refuse, water, waste water, uh, storm water, landfill,
and broadband telecommunications. Um, the...also, um, the Road Use Tax, and
we'll talk about that more...Road Use Tax is a source of revenue, and essentially
what we do is we apply it to certain things that...that we can by State law apply it
to, so in essence, in a way, some of those operations that we apply it to then
become Enterprise Funds because we try to fund them from Road Use Tax. And,
uh, the...the amount that we, um...we reserve right now from the Road Use Tax
fund to...to go into offset the employee benefits levy to pay for the benefits for
employees who are paid out of the Road Use Tax fund is 5% and that's the
amount...there's about $285,000 annually. That might not mean much to you
right now but as we get into talking about the Road Use Tax fund, it'll give you
some perspective of the dollars that...that are involved, if we have any, uh,
flexibility there for changing that. For instance, you could add $285,000 a year to
the Road Use Tax fund for whatever you wanted to use it for, by putting this into
the employee benefits levy, but then essentially that's going to up your tax rate for
that year or for the future. Um, down at the bottom of the page, Reserve Policies.
A couple of things. We...we do set aside three-quarters of 1% of our...our
operating budget. Um, and that's...that's revenues and transfers, or expenditures
and transfers out. Um, and that's how we set up our contingency every year.
That's our operating contingency. Three-quarters of 1 % of the budget. You also
have a policy that says your reserves, cash balances at the end of the year, you
want to project...at least 15% of expenditures, but no more than 25%. And
that's...that's a, basically we...we believe, and again, we talked about this before,
that remains a healthy range in terms of maintaining our...our triple-A bond
rating, and we're going to shoot for the higher end of that, and we'll talk about it a
little bit later about what that fund balance can be used for. Next page at the
bottom, I just wanted to highlight a couple things on Debt Policies. The total GO
debt will not exceed 5% of our total taxable assessed valuation. That's...that's a
State law, and we're bound by that. We cannot go higher than...than, uh, we can't
be in debt for an amount higher than 5% of our total valuation. Uh, we have a
self-imposed debt service property tax, uh, policy that says the property tax shall
not exceed 25%, or that the debt levy shall not be 25% of the total property tax
collected. We'll talk about that in terms of how it affects the capital improvement
program, because it does have an affect on that and...and that policy. Um, I
highlighted the last paragraph on there because it's...uh, it says to the extent we
can, we'll have apay-as-you-go financing for general capital improvements. Um,
that's been in there for a long time. We don't really do very well at that any more,
and the reason we don't is because we don't have the funds available. An
example, again, the, uh, Road Use Tax fund. We used to put a lot of Road Use
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 123
Tax money into the capital projects, that the ongoing road maintenance, street
maintenance, and that sort of thing, plus even, um, street reconstruction projects,
uh, one-time, um, projects, and what's happened is more and more we're using
Road Use Tax funds to pay for operations, salaries, wages, benefits, within Streets
for instance, um, Traffic Engineering I think is another one. And we're doing that
because of limitations in our General Fund, ability to raise general tax revenue.
That's where we used to pay some of those positions out o£ So what happens
when we use that for operations then it's no longer available for... for capital
projects, and that's why when you go through the CIP and look at the funding
sources for most of those, you don't see much there in terms of Road Use Tax
anymore. So, that means that we borrow, rather than...than pay cash. The, um,
compensated absences - I wanted just to explain that briefly, particularly
for...again for Terry and Susan, who um...we've talked about it before, but
essentially it's a discontinued benefit, and it goes back...over 20 years. We used
to have a benefit that said that anybody who retired would be paid for one-half of
their value of their outstanding sick leave, retired or resigned, and um, that was
negotiated away in the 80s, uh, but the way it was negotiated out was that we
calculated for each employee what they would, uh, what the payout would be for
them, at a given date and time, if they left employment at that time, and said that's
a...and froze it, and that's an ongoing, uh, benefit that's available to some of us
oldsters yet, and some of us are still around and that's why it's in the
budget...because, uh, there is an eligibility there, but again, it's capped at the
amount that if I would have left in 1983, I believe, um, some people wish I had
but (laughter) so that...that's what that's all about. It's kind of confusing when
you read it, but it's just a discontinued benefit that we still have a liability for.
Um, in terms of accounting, auditing, the...that's where we're directed by your
policy to have a specific three-year plan and also the multi-year capital
improvement program that we've talked about, in addition to each annual budget.
Uh, the only thing I'll say about Purchasing Policies is we have...we're...getting
close to having a new person...purchasing manual finished, and that will be out.
A couple of things that...that, uh, have been, well, one thing in particular is the
buy-local, uh, movement that we've had through the Chamber of Commerce and
so forth, and that will be, uh, be reflected in this policy. Um, also we'll have
better reflection in this policy of... of our, um, collaboration with other entities, in
terms of purchasing and we do...we do some of that, um, and those questions
come up frequently, so it'll be better iterated in that policy. Risk Management, a
couple things I would point out there. Um, in the first paragraph, we assume risk,
uh, property damage, liability and so forth in all cases where the exposure is
small, and it can be disbursed, um, insurance is purchased where possible against
major exposures, and we, on the next page then at the top you see some of the
specific areas where we do purchase insurance. The bottom line for this policy is
that we do self-insure. I think most of you are aware of that, um, but we do
purchase certain types of insurance that we don't self-insure, and those are listed
on page 11. We also have umbrella policies, stop loss and so forth to cover the
major, uh, liabilities or judgments, whatever we may have to cover. Let's go to
page 13. And we'll talk more specifically now about...about the financial plan.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 124
Um, again, the...the property taxes, I wanted to point out that...that they do
account for 60% of what we, um, of what we, uh, generate in revenue. It does say
63, and...but the number, the 60% numeral, is correct. Um, by the way, maybe
we're sort of shifting from policies more into the budget. Is there any questions
anybody has about our specific policies?
Bailey/ I don't have a question...well, it's kind of a question, and I don't think we can
really necessarily get into it here. We talk about maintaining our...our fleet of
vehicles, on page 8, and I was just wondering if we'd ever looked into, does it
make sense to maintain, own and maintain a car fleet. I mean, I understand
maintaining specialized equipment, um, but maintaining a car fleet, are there other
options that would be more cost effective for us? I know...I don't know how
many cars we own. Have we ever looked into that particularly in, you know, in
recent years?
Helling/ Uh, what we try to do, and Rick may want to speak to this a little bit
because...the, uh, maintenance shop is in his department, but what we try to do
is...is look at, compare our shop rates.
Bailey/ Okay.
Helling/ We operate that as an enterprise, and what...we try to maintain a comparison of
our shop rates to what's out there in the community as far as, uh, um, maintenance
and so forth to...to see if we can do better. I think you're probably referring to
some places where they just lease cars?
Bailey/ Yeah. I know that other, you know, entities, other governmental entities look for
other options particularly in this area, particularly in difficult economic times, and
I just wondered to what degree we'd explored that.
Helling/ I don't think that we...in the past that we've ever come up with...to a conclusion
that...that we could do better by...by leasing or whatever than we can by
maintaining our own fleet.
Champion/ But could you, I mean, but you...no, I agree with you - I don't think you
would do better by leasing, but what about, uh, car allowances or mileage. Has
that been looked into by the City?
Helling/ We actually will do that. Employees generally have a preference. If they would
like to drive their own car and collect mileage, um, we replace our units based on
mileage. So if they...don't get as much mileage because people are using their
own cars and, by the way, most people still use a City car when they go out of
town, um, but if they...we look at time, the age of the vehicle, but we also look at
the condition and the mileage on it. So, um, we're comfortable and, you know,
I'm the first to tell anybody, and I believe that I can... if I'm going to go out of
town, I can drive my own car and collect mileage and I've got money in my
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 125
pocket, but I cannot operate my vehicle for essentially, you know, 50 whatever
(mumbled) federal government rate of .50 a mile, if you take into account all your
maintenance costs, insurance, the cost of the vehicle, and um, but if people want
to do that we allow them to do that. There was a time when we actually required
them to use the City car, uh, because it was less cash out right there, but in the
long run I think, uh, I think the policy we have is...is a good one.
Fosse/ We especially...I was going to say, we especially use the car allowances if we
have a temporary appointment, uh, like a special projects manager for instance
where if... it doesn't pay to add to our fleet, and then detract from it later, and
what we try and do with the point of sale of our fleet is do it such that we...we
minimize that total life cycle cost of the vehicle. That is we...we sell it before it's
run into the ground so (mumbled) cost per mile, we minimize that.
Helling/ We're a little scientific about it. Um...
Hayek/ Let me interject for...for the benefit of the new Members. The...the um, reserve
balance fund, um, I think that issue has been pretty well resolved, at least for now,
but in the last couple of years there was considerable discussion at the Council
level about what that policy should be. Are we stating too much, should we be
using any of that toward operational or other things, which would quickly draw
down the balance, what's enough to maintain atriple-A bond rating, etc., and a lot
of discussion and...and help from staff. We came up with the policy you see on
those pages, um...
Helling/ My recollection is that the 15% floor was what we had before, but I think we
were at 30%.
Hayek/ Yeah.
Helling/ Uh, and so that's come down a little bit, but still I think we're...we're
comfortable that that's...as long as we stay within that and that we build that back
up if we draw it down. That, uh, we can expect to preserve our triple-A bond
rating, in that aspect anyway. There are a number of other things that go into that,
yeah. Um...let's look at valuations, and I wanted to just point out, uh, the
highlighted piece there. Since 1995 the valuations within Iowa City corporate
limits have increased an average of 10% in... in revaluation years, which is what,
that's where we are now. Um, as opposed to about 2% in the non-revaluation
years. So we would have expected that our valuations to be somewhere, you
know, approaching that 10% range, um, somebody asked me if the 10 and 2 was
an average of about a 6 per year, and... and I think that's kind of what we've
seen...over the last, up until recently. Um, but this is a year when we would have
expected it to be higher, and if you go down to the next...the next, well, two lines
down it says the report indicates 1.2% increase in total assessed value this year.
So...when we're looking at the things that have an affect on our revenue,
and...and on our, uh, tax revenues, property tax revenues, I think this is very
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 126
important because we would have expected some growth, uh, in revaluation years,
but instead it's even a little bit lower than average for anon-revaluation year. It's
the economy, it's, you know, that whole thing, but...there are...there are factors
that influence our, you know, what we can...what we can generate in tax revenue,
and this is one...this is a negative factor. There...are some positive factors too,
and one of'em is this year, well for the last two years, is the rollback. The
rollback has tended to go down and down and down. Uptick once in a while, but
the overall, uh, trend is clearly down, and I don't know, I think we have that
in...don't we, Kevin? Can we maybe scroll back to that, because we...I think it's
the last...yeah! This is...something we got from I think the Department of
Revenue. I'm not sure, but it was from the State at any rate, and this gives the
rollback history, back to 1978. And what I would...in the second column,
because it is a residential rollback, uh, that we have to, uh, it's really the problem
for us. And if you look in that column, the residential, and go down to about
199...or 1987, 88. At that point it was at 80%, and that's really when the
consistent downhill really started. And if you can see, if you follow that trend, it
was probably down to, um, about 1999 before we had a little uptick... and then it
started down again, and uh, in the last two years it's gone up a little bit. The
bottom so far has been a little over 44%, and this is the percent of tax...of
assessed value that becomes the taxable value on residential property. Um,
so...in the last couple of years that's gone up a little bit, and what that means is, at
the same tax rate. We generate a little more money, because we taxed on a little
higher percentage of its value, but again, um, the overall trend is down, and
there's reason I bring that up, and I talked before about when we do our three-year
plan, we do some trending. We're looking at the overall trend, and so I think we
can anticipate that unless something is done by the legislature to put a floor
or...or something with the rollback, uh, we will see as things...as the economy
recovers a little bit, we'll see that inching down farther, uh, so it's kind of a mixed
thing in that when it does go back up like it has, that helps, but it doesn't...we
don't find ourselves in that situation very often.
Hayek/ Does the beginning of that historical drop, um, coincide with the mid-80s farm
property recovery? Is that what.. .
O'Malley/ I think it started with the Proposition 13 movement across the United States,
uh, Proposition 13 meaning the...the California Proposition 13 that froze property
taxes. There was quite an avid movement in the 70s for that type of reform. And
this is what our legislature bestowed on us.
Helling/ Are you talking about...when it went down a few years and went back up to 80?
Hayek/ No, I'm... you identified 80, 1986 or 87 as sort of the beginning of the long-term
slide.
Helling/ Yeah.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 127
Hayek/ And that was my question.
O'Malley/ Oh, okay. That was the inception of it.
Helling/ Yeah, I...I don't know what the influencing factors were back when it
went... went from 78 down to what, about 64, and then right back up to 80 again.
But since then it's been a very consistent...okay, um...
Hayek/ I'm sorry, one more thing. Do we...we anticipate that trend, even though it's
upticked twice now in a row, to continue downward?
Helling/ Uh, I... no reason to believe, other than... if the legislature would do something
to change that, um, the other thing is that, and that will go, just look at the second
paragraph, assessment limitation, uh, slash rollback. I think probably credit this
to Kevin; he wrote this language, but this is one of the best short encapsulations of
what the rollback means, and how the...the rollback, coupled with ag values,
what it does, or how it affects our taxing, and um, what the end result is, that last
sentence is very clear. We're limited either to...uh, change in taxable valuations
for urban residential property, and this is state-wide average, or the growth in
agricultural property, state-wide, whichever is less.
O'Malley/ I'd like to give credit to Leigh Lewis for that sentence.
Helling/ Oh, okay! So, it is a very good summary. Um, just, if you look at the chart at
the bottom I think that's very telling too. Just in the sense that it starts out in
2002, the difference between 100% of assessed valuation and the taxable
valuation on residential property, the affect of the rollback, and if you look at
the...graphically the distance between those two...those two lines in 2002 versus
2011...you can see that the valuations have gone up much more rapidly than the
actual taxable values on property. And that's because the rollback has kept
inching them downward. So we talk a lot about the rollback and hopefully that's a
little bit better understanding what it means. Um, the next page, TIF districts. I
just pointed out that a couple of you have asked for numbers, and I didn't know
exactly what they were, but the, uh, the TIFs that were released for 2011 totaled
$92.3 million in taxable value. Um...property tax levy rates, I would point out
that the rate for 2011, or FY11, has actually gone down just very slight amount,
not a lot, um, yet you'll see that the...the owner of a $100,000 residential property
is going to pay...yeah, about $23, roughly $22 to $23 more in taxes, um, on their
property for that year. The reason for that is because of the rollback. The
rollback has brought it back up a little bit, and uh, so the actual property taxes that
you pay, even at the same rate, would be a little higher, and uh, we see that...not
too often. Any questions about the rollback and... and how that applies
and...understand what's happening there and why we continually lobby for
something a little bit different. The next page, I wanted to point out a few things.
Basically what this does is...is breaks down by the individual levies, you know,
we have a number of different levies, some are regulated, some are not. Well,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 128
they're all regulated, but some are capped. Um, the...general tax levy is capped at
$8.10 per thousand dollars in taxable valuation. That's our basically levy for the
General Fund. Uh, and then we...it's 2010 to 2011 on top, and then down below
2012 to 2013. So you can see some trends there, um, as we go through these.
The Transit levy at the maximum is 95-cents per thousand, and we've been
levying that for...probably at least 15 years, maybe longer. Um, also tort liability,
that has to do with...with, uh, any judgments we might have against us, uh...risks
that we take, um, and that fluctuates a little bit, and that's based on a reserve that
we maintain. Uh, the Library, we have a 27-cent, uh, levy for, just for Library.
And that's something that the State allows, and you can see again the dollar
amounts that these generate are right beside so you can see that, uh, they're
significant in terms of the amount of money that's generated for the Library
through that levy, in addition to the General Fund (both talking)
Champion/ That's avoter-approved levy though, right?
Helling/ Yes.
Champion/ Yeah.
Helling/ Um, and then special revenues. We have an emergency levy, and we...we were
at, this year we're at $643,000 which is 25.6%, uh, the max is 27. Um, you'll
notice that that's, there's nothing there for the next three years. When we put the
budget together, and we saw that, uh, and this is assuming a 2% on the franchise
fee, that's one of the assumptions we made, and then all the...all the money that
came in from the TIF release, um, what we found out is that we could...we could
give you a balanced budget, and eliminate that. Now that may not be what you
want to do, uh, I believe that emergency levy should be just that. And, I had
hoped that we could start chipping away at that and bringing it back down. I
didn't anticipate, until we...we found out that the revenue we were going to get
from the release of TIFs that we might be able to eliminate at all, uh, but I asked
Kevin to put it in that way, and...and factor out, or factored in that way and then
calculate the budget, and it works that we can give you a balanced budget, without
any... anything in the emergency levy, assuming that, you know, no other changes
are made. So, uh, one of the reasons I point it out is because if we do make
changes, that's some place where we can put part of that back...a 5-cents on the
emergency levy generates about $135,000. Okay? Um, and the next one is
employee benefits levy. We do levy to cover most of the employee benefits and
the, and we'll talk about it a little bit more, but the main, uh, things that we fund
with employee benefits, the highest cost things, are health insurance and uh,
retirement. Okay. And you can see that that...there's anticipated some...some
pretty healthy increases in that over the next few years, and we'll talk a little bit
about that, how it relates to retirement system in a few minutes. And then the
debt service levy is, that's...that's the levy that primarily pays for our Capital
Improvements program. Uh, at least the City's portion of those, and um, that's the
one where we have the 25% policy that says debt service won't generate more
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 129
than 25% of the total, uh, tax revenue. Okay? And we always have to mention
the ag land levy, um, it generates like $4,000 a year. That's agricultural land
within the city that is taxed as ag land. There's not a lot of that. Jump in if you
have any questions or...okay. Um, next is the employee benefits, uh, property tax
levy, what I was just talking about. Uh, health insurance, I've highlighted also
the...the last two are retirement systems, um, and I think it's important to note that
the...there are significant increases and it has a lot to do with the, what's called
the MFPRSI, which is the police and fire retirement system. Um...that is going
up significantly, and it has a lot to do with the economy, and the investments that
they had, and IPERS, the general employees' retirement also suffered some losses,
um, as did, you know, systems nationwide, I mean, investment income was way
down. But, it's projected at this point that that may go up, right now we're at
19.9%. In other words, 19.9% of the wages we pay a police officer or firefighter,
we pay almost 20% additionally into their retirement system. Uh, it was up to 28
a few years ago, and then it got better economically and it came back down. It's
being projected in the next five years it will go up to 38% plus. So, if it does, that
will, at 38% plus, would be about double what we're paying now. When it
hits...it's going to go up. We're projecting about 5% a year, um, but 38%, to
double what we have now would be about another million and a half dollars that
we'd be paying into that on an annual basis.
Hayek/ Can you explain, especially for the new members, how, uh, the...the legislative
requirement of this, the fact that this is apass-along, uh, to cities?
Helling/ Oh, sure, sure. Uh, there's a little history because until the mid-90s?
O'Malley/ Uh-huh, 92.
Helling/ Cities were mandated by code, certain...cities of a certain size, were mandated
to have a retirement system, but we each had our own, and there were State
requirements that we followed, and as long as we did that, we had a... a local
board to manage it. This is just for police and fire. Uh, back in the 90s the...the
State decided to take it over, and um, we...we were required then, over a period
of time, we had a pretty good reserve so we were, over a period of time we had to
pay into...into the system to keep it fully funded for the State, um, and the State
took it over. They set a... a floor of 17% that each community then would pay
70% of wages that we would pay in, but there's no ceiling. Um, the State
legislature sets the benefits. We don't have anything to say about that. Um, so
any benefit changes, increases, whatever are...are legislated by the State, and then
they set the rate, and it's based on actuary, you know, analysis. So, we're told
each year how much we're going to have to pay, and the idea of course, you
know, actuary means that it's sound, or that the income is there to build it to make
it sound, so that's when they took the hit on the investments. The actuaries came
in and said, okay, this is what it's going to take to bring this back up, uh, that's
examined on an annual basis, so, you know, whether it really reaches 38, I don't
know, but that's what's projected right now. But, but the bottom line is, we are
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 130
told how much we have to pay into it, and we don't have any choice. Um,
whenever the benefits are increased, that's an ongoing expense, and that's funded
largely out of the...the employer's pockets (mumbled). There was an increased
benefit, uh, in recent years, and I don't recall what it was, but it was acost-
sharing, and I believe that the police officers and firefighters, uh, share went up
just a fraction of a percent from I think it's around 9 and there may be like 9 1/2 or
something.
Wright/ Yeah, 9.4.
Helling/ 9.4...um, so the lion's share of it is...is on the cities, and we really...we don't
operate it any more. We don't make the policy decisions. We're just told what to
pay and (mumbled). Okay. Is that covered, Matt?
Hayek/ Yeah, yeah, I just...(mumbled)
Helling/ Okay. So moving on, uh, on General Fund. Again, this is kind of old news. I
did want to point out a couple things in the, uh, in terms of the revenue. Uh,
changes that might not be real apparent to you, particularly number two, other city
taxes. And that has to do with the local option sales tax, it's injected into
the...into the equation, starting in FY10. Uh, that revenue is brought into the
General Fund and then it's, uh, doled out to the specific projects like, you know,
the waste water treatment plant, Dubuque Street, so forth, whatever we're using it
for. Uh, so that's why that jumps up so high, um...I'm guessing if we had FY14
on here it would go back down because I think we have a...well, I know we have
a four-year sunset on the local option sales tax. Also I point out number four, use
of money and property. If we could go back, if this table went back, uh, earlier
than 2009, we'd see some much higher numbers, uh, what's brought it down for
the most part is our interest income, the interest that we can earn on our
investments, our reserve funds and so forth. FY07, 08, average, we were doing
something like a million six a year, in investment income, with about the same
number, or same amount of dollars invested. Uh, what we've projecting now
is...is something around 350. That's the, the investment isn't the total amount in
this, but it's most of it. We're projecting around $350,000 out through FY13.
Hopefully that's...and we try to estimate conservatively. Hopefully they'll start to
move back up, but that's...that's over a million dollars out of our operating, uh,
budget, just because of lost income, or lost interest revenue. Um, and then there
are a number of other things and...and if you look at number seven and eight,
miscellaneous revenues, um, we'll talk about that a little more, and what that is,
uh, and it...just in a couple of pages here. Uh, again, if you look at the pie chart
at the bottom, the thing that I've circled on...on my, uh, my sheet here is the 60%.
60% of revenue from property taxes. That's not... diversity of resources in the
sense that we'd like to see it be. Next page, uh, just looking at other city taxes,
and I just wanted to point out that we do have the 1% sales tax, uh, it went into
effect July 1. Just talked about that. Also, built into the budget is...is the 2%
franchise fee that was, uh, passed by Council just, uh, late last year. Um, and to
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 131
break that down a little bit, uh, $1.68 million estimated for that 2% per year, about
$1.1 million goes to the...to General Fund for maintenance of the right-of--way
and the new police officers and firefighters, uh, this is presented in terms of
financial reporting. Uh, the difference between the 1.6 and the 1.1 includes, um,
employee benefits that were not for the new firefighters and police officers, and
those are employee benefits that we're not attaching to the employee benefits levy,
but rather paying them out of this. Uh, so, um, it...works a little bit differently in
practicality than it does here in the sense that, uh, what we're really doing is we're
providing more like 1.... between 1.2 and 1.3 million to fund the firefighters,
their levy...their benefits and so forth, and then about a little over 300,000 as we
indicated to you before goes into those...those management, administrative costs.
Rick was talking about the...the money that goes into undergrounding, 175,000,
and then there was another 100,000 in..that we were adding to our, uh...the
reconstruction...yeah, street maintenance, the reconstruction, and then the rest of
that small amount is administrative costs.
Hayek/ How are the new officer...police officers treated, uh, in terms of (both talking and
laughing) in terms of employee benefits? Is it coming from franchise fee or the
levy?
Helling/ The additional positions will come from the franchise fee.
Hayek/ Okay, so all 15 of police and fire...okay.
Helling/ I think they're all...
O'Malley/ That's correct.
Helling/ Yeah, okay.
Mims/ That's salary and benefits?
O'Ma11ey/ That's correct. And operation of the fourth fire station.
Helling/ Operating costs are built into that too. The, uh, those administrative costs that
we talked about are constant, um, so they would come...that's a flat dollar amount
that would come out of the franchise fee no matter what the percentage is. We
can go on to page 19 then, just, uh, very quickly. We have a number of
intergovernmental sources of revenue, um, you can read through that and see
where some of that comes from. You may have questions about what some of
them are. I wanted to highlight some of the, just a few of the...the ones where we
get significant revenue intergovernmentally, um, we do get money, um, through
our contracts with the County, University Heights, and the City of Hills...for
library services. As you can see, that's over $400,000. Um...the biggest one is
our...our University of Iowa fire protection contract, which is...it's, well, by 2013
it will be a million and a half dollars. That's based on a formula that's...been in
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 132
effect since the 50's I think, and it's just basically square footage of...of property
in the city, versus the University. It's worked extremely well. I
think...experienced no, or been aware of no controversy as, you know, over the
years as we apply this. The University's happy to get the fire protection. They
don't have to provide it themselves, and uh, we equip ourselves to be able to
respond, and we do...we do, uh, you know, generate revenue from that. Transit
assistance -that is State revenue. Uh, they're...it's one of the few things that, um,
that we actually get from the State, um, and it's also one of the few things that are
left for the State to take away, uh, to help solve their...their, uh, problems.
However, I think that, you know, it's always been pretty, uh, kind of a sacred
thing that, you know, transit assistance, we've gotten that pretty consistently and
regularly from both...both from the federal government and from the state
government. And we do rely on it very heavily. Um, and then the federal transit
FDA operating grants, um, again, approaching $900,000 there so, uh, we do rely
very heavily on state and federal money for transit. Beyond that, if you go back
up to the state revenue, uh, there's not too much left. We used to get a share of
the alcohol, uh, revenues that the State takes in and a number of other things
that...personal property tax, uh, of course machinery and equipment used to be
taxed, uh, so anyway, that's...those are just kind of highlight some things. If you
have other questions about any of those others, feel free to ask or, uh, again, you
know, give us a call, see something in here you... want a little more detail about.
Go to page 21...this is kind of our master sheet that we use, whenever we make
changes in...in, uh, either revenues or...revenue projections, or in expenditures,
because of decisions that are made. This is the page we plug it into. This tells us,
the end result tells us what our total receipts are going to be, um, that's...can you
scroll that up just a little bit, Kevin. At the bottom you see total receipts, and then
our total expenditures projected, and...and so you can do the math there and
figure the difference, and then how that...calculates to our fund balance, and
particularly the unreserved fund balance, and then the last line is that percentage
that we talked about that we...our policy is to stay between 15 and 25%. Again,
that's 15 to 25% of our projected expenditures would be our projected, uh, fund
balance. I highlighted a few things in there too just to bring to your attention, uh,
other city taxes, again, that's the second one, uh, down from the top, and that
again reflects the, uh, local option sales tax revenue that we have coming in now.
Um, and I believe it also...franchise fee...
O'Malley/ That's correct.
Helling/ ...which is by definition a tax. Um, down a little farther I just pointed out transit
fees and that's what we generate in revenue. Um, interest revenues, again, to
point out that those have pretty much tanked, especially if you go back prior to
2009. Um, and then one thing that...I picked up on Road Use Tax which is down
about five from the interest revenue, right there, because that's a very small
amount. What that...that is is, that's just the revenue, that Road Use Tax revenue
that we put in the General Fund, and I believe that's to fund one position that
(several talking) yeah, we have one position in Forestry that basically, uh, we
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 133
dedicate at least the equivalent of one position to maintaining our street trees and
other plantings in the streets, and uh, so that's why we've...we've diverted that
some years ago from the Road Use Tax into the...to the, uh, Forestry fund. There
are other things on here, and just...you know, to inform you of, you know,
how...the kind of money we generate through our various fines and so forth, and
keep in mind again that on this sheet this is just the amount...the money that goes
into the General Fund. Okay? This...this sheet is the General Fund. And we'll
refer to it many times as we go along. I...I guess I should point out, if you look at
total receipts versus total expenditures, um, right now the balance...the budget is
balanced, um, precariously. Not...not, $300,000 and some difference. In FY12,
it dips a little bit the other way, maybe $100,000. That's not something that we're
worried about, that we can't manage that, um, but when we go to looking at the
FY 12 budget, it'll be a little bit tighter. I think part of the reason for that is
because we did have to, uh, factor that additional million and a half into
expenditures to cover that 27th pay period, or pay day. You go to 2013 then, our
projections are pretty good, um...the farther out again obviously the more it
is...or, the less accurate it may be, but uh, so we're starting to see some things
look a little better, and again, a lot of this has to do with what we've been adding,
been able to add to the taxable valuation this year, the TIF releases. Any
questions on that? Okay.
Champion/ Um...no, I don't have any questions. It's very well laid out, um...my question
is, and I don't know if this is the time to bring it up, because...but you've already
built in 2% of our franchise fee, um...and I'm interested in 1%, and so I think
that's something we should talk about before we leave today, because that would
be a major change (mumbled) this budget.
Helling/ Any...any broad policy changes that you're looking at, we would like to know
today so we can go back and restructure this, um...
Champion/ Um, I don't know, is anybody else who agrees that we should go to a 1 %, um,
franchise fee, what should make it...um, what am I trying to say? For the
corporate, for the companies, for the manufacturers because with a 1 % franchise
fee, uh, that would be...that would keep the utility bills even because they would
not have to pay the I % sales tax. And I think they're really feeling the heat from
Korea and Mexico and China, and I think it's imperative that we keep those
corporations here, and um, utilities are a major expense for like Proctor and
Gamble and Oral-B, so if we maintain a 1% franchise fee, which Dale said we
could get by with, um, then their utility bill would remain flat. So I'm interested
in suggesting that we do a 1 %, uh, franchise fee instead of a 2%, so this budget
could be adjusted accordingly.
Mims/ Remind me what the 1 % brings in.
Helling/ Each percent brings in about $840,000, and that was an estimate from
MidAmerican, um, going on a year ago now, uh, I don't know if that's, I mean,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Gouncn Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 134
obviously the experience is how much are people paying, uh, and if people are
considering energy it may be a little less than that. The, certainly gas prices
haven't gone up. I don't know what in the long term or the mid-term what's going
to happen with electric prices.
Bailey/ I'd certainly like to see some numbers. I mean, the question is for those corporate
taxpayers, do they prefer a franchise fee versus property, I mean, if it means that
we increase the emergency levy for example, I mean... some things may move
around, or have to move around.
Champion/ I don't see that happening, Regenia. I think that's a pipe dream, that if we
keep it at 2% that we're going to lower their property tax.
Bailey/ No, no, no, no, no! I said if...if we reduce it to 1% do we have to increase
property taxes, and what is the preferred tax...what is the (both talking)
Champion/ We're already at the maximum levy.
Bailey/ Well, we have emergency levy.
Champion/ Well, I think...
Bailey/ Which went down to zero. I mean, I guess my question is, what's the preferred
taxing mechanism of these companies? Because...
Champion/ I...I don't know. I think we find a way to cut the money out of the budget.
Shipley/ And in addition to what Connie was saying when you're talking about investing
in these, you know, uh, industrial parks and economic development projects to
ensure the success of a lower tax rate would certainly add to that.
Bailey/ But, in the long run, what's the more sustainable lower tax rate, um, using a
franchise fee or property tax, I mean, it might have no impact on property tax this
year, but what's the sustainability of no impact on property tax across the board?
I mean, I think we have to look at this in a very big picture sort of sense, and the
one thing about franchise fee versus property tax is a franchise fee, because it's
energy use and consumption, it's to some degree controllable, whereas property
tax is less controllable.
Champion/ I don't think utilities are controllable by Proctor and Gamble and Oral-B. I
think they need a lot of power to do what they're doing, um, so there's no way you
can make an exception for those corporations. I think we're naive to think that we
can continue things as they are, and that's what we're doing with this budget -
we're continuing things as they were, and everybody else in the country is facing
major cuts and here we're talking about maintaining things as they are, with a
franchise fee, and that wasn't the idea of a franchise fee to maintain, it was
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 135
to...you know, for public safety, but what we're saying is we're going to do the
2% because then we don't...we can just keep the budget the way it is. We won't
lose a thing. We won't have to make any concessions, don't have to do any
budget cuts, we just maintain Iowa City as it...as it was. And...and I don't think
that's quite fair, um...
Wright/ I also don't think it's quite realistic.
Champion/ Right!
Wright/ Um, I...I agree with you. I'd like to see that come in at a 1% and the...
Mims/ I would too. I'd like to see what, you know, what suggestions, you know, either
that staff can bring to us first without any direction, where you think we might be
best able to, or if you feel that we need to sit down and do some brainstorming
about what our priorities are, um, so yeah, I'd like to give that some consideration,
definitely.
Hayek/ I think this, and I want to hear from the rest of you , as well, but as we get...as we
hold this discussion, it really reminds me it has two parts to it. You know, one is,
uh, do we reduce the franchise fee as proposed from 2% to something south of
that, and the second part is, if we do that, um, do...how do we pay for it? Do we
look for property tax increase, uh, to make up the...the difference, or are...are we
looking at a reduction in services or, you know, operational expense, um, that
we'd also look at (several talking)
Mims/ Yeah, I think we have to look at decreasing our operational expenses. I mean, I
think just, you know, transferring it from one tax to another is not what people
want or expect in these tough times. I mean, they...there have been cuts, you
know, I think we have to look very carefully at what our expenditures are and
what the citizens of the city are able and willing to pay for. It's a fine line.
Dickens/ I definitely agree with that, as far as going to the 1 %, uh, I don't know what a
raise is, in the last three or four years. Business is tough and I think the City has
to look at it a little bit in the same way that we just can't keep funding the same
way, we're going to have to make some sacrifices. The franchise fee, because of
the public safety issue, is the only reason that I thought it was a good idea,
because we do need those positions, but...to continue on the same...same-old,
same-old, I don't think we can do that.
Hayek/ Ross?
Wilburn/ Well, I was willing to go with the 2%. That was my concern to send a
(mumbled) to the neighborhoods in particular that we're going to add... it's paying
for, uh, police and fire, that we're going to add those extra officers, um, if one
approach isn't to...and I'm not suggesting this, to bring the emergency levy back
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 136
on, in other words what's the appropriate mechanism for that tax, then the
question that we should be giving to the answer, and the direction that we should
be giving to staff in order for them to make those projections is...which line item
are we going to decrease. Do we decrease the debt service levy by get
rid...getting rid of some of those capital projects? Do we say...staff, tell us what
it looks like by reducing the franchise fee down to 1 % by, um, saying there's no
neighborhood services. Are we saying that your garbage is going to be picked up
less frequently so that there's fewer...it's...it comes down to some staffing things.
Champion/ Well, I mean, those are things that we have to look at, I agree, although trash
is not one of'em, and that's a revenue thing, but um, it's...you know, I think we
have to look at where we can make cuts, and we talked about this last year. What
if... if this franchise fee hadn't come up. We already planned on staffing that fire
station, so where were we going to get the money then? We were already going
to...that was already going to be done. So, we're only talking about a small
amount of money that we have to look other places for, to get that, but if we can't
just keep taxing people for services that we want. I mean, I know they want a fire
station -don't misunderstand me.
Wilburn/ And I'm not suggesting to eliminate trash pickup or staff...decrease the ability
to do that, but that's...that's what we're talking about if (both talking)
Champion/ Exactly!
Wright/ Something's going to have to come out of somewhere else.
Wilburn/ Right, and some of us looked at the franchise fee as people are wanting...we've
put off for so long and maintained staffing levels over the years, while we have
maintained or in some areas increased some service delivery, so, um...are we
doing without...are we doing without, uh, leaf pickup, which has ramifications for
storm sewer, I mean, those are the types of, um, I'm...if I were a staff member,
and I'm...and I'm being told, uh, get rid of...what was it, 800,000 or I'm sorry,
what was the I %?
Helling/ 840.
Wilburn/ If I'm saying knock out 800,000, and the bulk of our costs are staffing for
services, then give me an idea on which services we're going to do without.
Bailey/ Well, and I...I don't quite...I don't quite see things the same way we've described
them. I think that we've gone, I mean, we've had pretty constrained services. We
haven't grown for years, I mean, since I've been on Council I don't think we've
grown at all in services or...or certainly much staffing. So, um, this might be
same old budget, but I...I view it as a fairly constrained budget. Sure, let's look
for where we can cut, but you know the concept of cutting just because other
people are cutting, you know, if I'm hurting I don't feel better because you hurt
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 137
yourself so you can join me in hurting. I feel better if you can provide services
that I might need, um, in the wake of my hurting. So, you know, that argument
that other people are hurting, we should, you know, we should also slash as well
doesn't make any sense to me. If we can get by with a 1 % franchise fee, and look
at other areas, or even just have a tighter budget, certainly willing to look at the
numbers, but the fundamental question is, these are two types of taxes. Which tax
would people rather pay? Because I do, I mean, I know that P&G is a large
energy user, but with conservation programs we know that the franchise fee as a
tax, sort a sustainable tax, is only going to grow with growth. It's not going to
grow necessarily because...because people are employing conservation measures.
So, I...I would always rather have something that I can better control, a cost that I
can better control, and if, you know, if for example simplistically I turn out my
lights more frequently, I lower my thermostat, I would rather have that than my
property taxes which feel like I can't control them, because they just change. So,
that...that was my approach is, you know, what tax would people prefer.
Certainly willing to look at the numbers, but I think... and I'm certainly willing to
have the discussion, but I think that we can't, uh, I mean, we all come at this from
different philosophical approaches to taxes.
Mims/ I guess I look at it in sitting and listening to the Council during, you know, the
election process, the 2% was, my understanding is was put on the table because
that basically was what it was going to take to fund the firefighters and the new
police officers that the Council decided the City wanted and needed, and
after... and that was with everything else in the budget basically staying the same.
Later on, you know, as we heard, the City was able to, uh, get some relief from
some TIF money that was able to be released that was not anticipated, uh, by the
Council during the early discussions, um, of the franchise fee. And so being able
to release that money for the City, from the TIF, um, has actually put money into
the budget that when the Council originally talked about franchise fee was not
anticipated. So now...to me, if you stay at 2% and you take the money that's been
released from TIF, you really are, you know, increasing things and your
taxes...tax revenues, more than you were really anticipating. So by being able to
use some of that money released from TIF to cover the cost of the fire...and the
police, you know, that really has freed up money so that I guess if we don't do
anything, we're...we're avoiding cuts that would have to have been made if that
TIF money was not released, and I think we owe it to the taxpayers of this
community to at least look at, you know, what would we have had to do if that
TIF money was not available to us now, and decide, you know, do we go ahead
and take the TIF money, don't make any cuts, just keep things going as they are,
or do we say we have an opportunity here because this TIF money's been
released, and we need to, you know, look at that as being a real savings.
Bailey/ Well, $840,000 out of this...well, budget won't, I mean, it's not particularly
impactful. It just impacts our percentage of reserves, at this point.
Helling/ Well...
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 138
Champion/ No it doesn't. We can find other places. We don't have to get into our
reserves.
Bailey/ No. If... if, no if just simply cut the franchise fee to 1 % and don't do anything
else, that's...that would be (several talking)
Champion/ ...something else.
Helling/ And we're looking at trying to balance the budget in terms of...of expenditures
and revenue, have that in balance.
Champion/ I mean, you know, Dale told us before we voted on this that we could get by
with a 1 %, and I mean, he knows a lot more about the budget than I do. I'm, you
know, I'm...I look at it, but um, I mean I trust him. If he says we can get by with
1 %, I say let's give it a shot.
Helling/ Yeah, and that...it makes the budget tighter, but...but I did say that, and...and
we can, certainly, there's no question about that. Let me just say this -had you,
uh, enacted a 1 % instead of a 2%, I probably would not have recommended the
total elimination of the, uh, emergency levy. So, and, you know, we can still do
that, but I need that direction before, you know, we try to put something together,
because if I can't put that back, and...I have to have some idea if there are places
where you don't want me to find that, you know, that money, then tell me.
(several talking)
Wilburn/ ...emergency levy was roughly 600, um, 600,000 that you were...
Helling/ 635 I think is...
Wilburn/ I'm just trying to think of a methodical way to...to look at this. Um...if I'm
looking at our expenditures, General Fund expenditures, and the breakdown of
where those, uh, roughly 61% of our expenditures, uh, correct me if I'm wrong,
Kevin, is personnel.
O'Malley/ (mumbled)
Wilburn/ The other categories are services, supplies, capital outlay, other financial uses.
If you're saying cut expenditures then you're either going to cut personnel or
you're going to cut services. Could you give us an example of the services that
are delivered...of those service costs that are not personnel-related. I'm just
trying to look by category.
O'Malley/ Well, I...I haven't talked to Dale on this, but uh...
Wilburn/ I'm saying is that...is that one way to go about...
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 139
O'Malley/ The contingency is based on a percent of expenditures.
Wilburn/ Uh-huh.
O'Malley/ Okay, previous to this year, we didn't have the local option sales tax, which is
roughly $8 million. It comes into the General Fund, and it's transferred out to a,
uh, to capital projects. So we're taking three-quarters of 1% on a known quantity.
We don't need that...that, to take a contingency on the transfers out. So we'd save
about 80,000 from contingencies. By changing your policy, just make it, uh, 25%
of expenditures.
Wilburn/ Right.
O'Malley/ I mean, there's ways to...to tweak the budget.
Champion/ And then (several talking)
Helling/ I'm not confident we can...we could tweak it to the tune of $800,000 without
doing something more than just, you know....
Champion/ Right! But you know, for instance, when we did the budget cuts last year,
department by department, correct me if I'm wrong, but Kevin, I think you said
somebody was leaving your department that you thought maybe you could get by
without?
O'Malley/ That's correct.
Champion/ Yeah, I mean, so there are other positions out there that maybe not saying that
we get rid of the person, but as people retire that we look closely at that position.
Uh, we have some firefighters that have been hired that aren't doing fire fighting,
um, for instance, we have a fireman who's in charge of, um, capacity issues. I
don't see that happening. Uh, I mean, we might have a firefighter that can be a
fire fighter (laughter). But I mean I think that those are things that we need to
look at, to come up with that $800,000. Um, not every position is...is sacred, and
it doesn't mean you can't reduce...you might have to reduce some services.
Maybe we need to look at all our departments. There's not a lot of...I mean,
obviously Planning and Zoning, there's not a lot of development going on now,
but we're asking them to do a lot, but maybe there's some cut there. I mean, we're
asking them to do the Towncrest, or we ask them to do the other things, so they
may be just as busy as ever, um...
Helling/ Well, and they picked up a lot of the slack, not slack, but a lot of the work on
flood recovery.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP'sl and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 140
Champion/ Yeah, that's what I'm saying, we're already putting a lot of work on them, but
I think these are things that we have to look at realistically, and um, I think we
need to...really look at, well, I don't want to get into negotiations, but we really
need to find some other way to get this money or to reduce...if we're going to
increase the emergency levy, maybe we need to find another way to reduce the
property tax.
Hayek/ I think the decision... obviously, you know, it's 4:15. We're not going to get into
a discussion of what would get cut, but I think it would be helpful for staff if we
can walk out of here knowing if there's a consensus to not only cut the franchise
fee to 1 %, but also not pay for it by a corresponding increase in for example the
emergency levy. That's the question, because if... if it's, if we're going to cut to
1 % and we're not going to raise property taxes, you know, then you get into a
very difficult discussion. Um...which is about as much as we can accomplish
today.
Helling/ I think that's right.
Wilburn/ Well, what I'm wondering to know, um, I guess a little more assistance from
you, Dale, in terms of what types of...um, guidance are you looking for from
staff, in order to make that adjustment.
Helling/ From staff or from (mumbled)
Wilburn/ From Council, yeah, I'm sorry. From Council, for example, an example you
brought up, Connie, if there are, uh, I'm...I'm hesitant to say go back to your
department heads and say, well, which people...if Kevin has determined that's
something he can do, that's great, but I as a Council Member want to know if
department heads are going to look at whether it's, uh, phasing out someone or by
attrition, which was done before, uh, or if someone is picking up additional
(mumbled) or if there's something that's not going to be covered, I want to know
what's not going to be covered. That's a service. If someone is unable to, um, if
we phase out someone, or if someone were, um, were let go, um, then something
manages for a population in our community and (both talking) and we have to
answer.. .
Champion/ Things take longer.
Wilburn/ Right.
Hayek/ I think...
Wilburn/ You're right, or...or things will take longer. So I...if we're going to make those
adjustments, I...I need to be able to say and/or justify for folks, here's what
you...here's what you will do without if we do...if we go down to 1 1/2% or 1%.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 141
Helling/ I think...certainly it sounds like, um, there's a majority of Council who wants
1%, rather than 2, or at least...(several talking) look at it, yeah, uh, I'm not sure
whether there's a majority that says don't add anything back into the...to the
emergency levy or not. Um, but... and you can tell me before we leave. Um, but
what I think we need to do is that we need to take that direction. If there's
anything else that you're saying, you know, we don't...we don't want to
compromise then...then tell me that. Then we go back as a staff and we'll make
the adjustments, um, and you'll know what they are and the impact, uh, so when
you come back to your next meeting to talk about this in a couple of weeks,
you'll, or ten days or whatever it is, you'll have something to go with. At that
point, um, you may not agree with...with the way we've, you know, we've
adjusted the budget to cover that. If you don't, then I think you...you'll have to
start talking among yourselves about, you know, what can, at least a majority of
you agree on are...are cuts in service or whatever that you would make, if you
don't, you know, if you're not comfortable with what we've proposed.
Wilburn/ See that's an example what you just gave, in terms of the...the, uh, emergency
levy, that I would not want, um, us to, a Council Member, um, I don't want to
say...I don't want to frame this as not trusting Dale or Dale's judgment, but when
Dale made the statement we can do this 1%, he was thinking...he wasn't thinking
cutting the emergency levy, which meant that we wouldn't have...as proposed,
there's a decrease in the tax rate that wouldn't have happened, correct?
Helling/ Yeah, I...
Wilburn/ With that emergency levy, so, which is...
Helling/ And that was just my own personal (several talking)
Wilburn/ No, and I (both talking) but I, um...but that...but that, as proposed there, uh,
there would not be a slight decrease in the tax rate, uh, which gets to the question
of, uh, is property tax the way folks want to go, or was it that, um, the franchise,
but what...the commercial folks, which do they feel is a more fair mechanism for
them.
Bailey/ And we don't have to reduce it by even, I mean, we can reduce it anything in
between too. We can go to 1.5 too, I mean, there are some options here,
depending upon how this all affects, I mean, it's just all so tied in with each other.
Wilburn/ Right.
Hayek/ Well, what do we want to do? And...and we need to know how much specificity
you need from us in terms of consensus on this issue (mumbled) walk out with.
Helling/ We basically made some assumptions in putting the budget together, and I think
that we can go back and...and rethink those things and...and come up with
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 142
some...some, uh, other suggestions anyway, and make a revised proposal. Um,
and then you can, you know, you can look at that, but all I'm saying is at some
point...you'll, if what we propose isn't...you're not comfortable with that, then
you as a Council will have to identify those areas because otherwise, you know,
we can't just, you know, let's try again (laughter). That could go on forever.
Wilburn/ Well, one example, uh, again, um, as you come up with that, I was viewing
backing off of that emergency levy as a positive, and so if you're going to
decrease it, then that was something I was hoping we would not have to do
is...utilize that emergency levy, well, it is property...it is (mumbled).
Hayek/ Do you envision giving us a series of scenarios, for example, you know, that the
extreme would be add back all of the emergency levy to make up for the lost
franchise fee 1 %, and then there's a gap, we manage our way through that (noise
on mic) uh, maintain a zero emergency levy, drop it to 1 % on the franchise fee
which creates the $840,000 gap, which we have to make decisions about. What
makes most sense?
Helling/ I think you have to let us go back and take a look at it, and maybe a combination
of those things, frankly. Um, we may be...I would certainly want to look at other
areas where maybe we can shave that down and to a point where I might need to
add in, you know, a dime back in the emergency levy or something, maybe that
becomes an alternative. Um, whatever...you know, whatever that turns out to be.
We may look at how we bring people on, um, the...the new employees, um,
(mumbled) both a short term and a long term look at that, um, visa-vie our
revenue projections at this point, um, and...and some other things that we may be
able to go in, oh, Kevin mentioned one -you know if we adjust that...the
contingency, um, add $75-80,000 there, you know, that's a little piece. We need
to look for those and see what's there, and uh, before we, you know, and somehow
identify, okay, this is the amount that we're going to have to, you know, really cut
that's going to affect service or whatever, and it may be there. Um, the kinds of
things that we've talked about in terms of...of positions that we may not, you
know, we may not replace. Chances are those are going to be there anyway. We
just haven't identified them at this point, so we may be able to roll that in, say
okay, you know, this is one where we'll identify as one that we won't fill.
Wilburn/ Here's another question too, and...and uh, Dale or Kevin, maybe this might be
helpful to you. Um, for example, um... l % um...the 1 % franchise fee equates to
800...$840,000, um, if we look at the debt levy line, is there a corresponding
figure with our capital improvement program, um, is there a corresponding, or a
parallel, uh, dollar figure, percentage, that, um, for example, X-million dollars
worth of in our current capital, as proposed, improvements...ifthat dropped by
10% what would be the impact to our...how much would that decrease the debt
levy, or would it, is that...
O'Malley/ Yeah, it would.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City Gity council special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 143
Wilburn/ Okay, so...
O'Malley/ It's directly tied to the debt levy.
Wilburn/ Okay. Do you...do you know that off the top of your head or...
O'Malley/ By how much? Let's see...
Wilburn/ That way we...if we determine the debt levy is an area that we want to reduce,
then we have an idea on how many capital projects need to be deferred, delayed
or eliminated.
Helling/ Keep in mind...we do about ten year issues.
Wilburn/ Right.
Helling/ So (both talking) about 90% of your debt levy is to pay off debt that you've
already incurred. So to make up $800,000 in the new debt levy, uh, I would guess
that (both talking) goes away.
Wilburn/ ...but I think that's helpful for us, instead of...it's real easy, and easy for the
public to say where you're looking at doing, uh, the Northside whatever, and it's
like, well, if we don't do that we're really not, it's really not impacting that
particular line. I'm just trying to think of...
O'Malley/ (both talking) as Dale alluded to, that emergency fund for a nickel, that nickel
in the debt service fund would buy you about a million dollars worth of projects.
So if you took a million dollars out, you'd save a nickel in debt service.
Wilburn/ Right.
Hayek/ Okay. Are we clear enough for your purposes for planning purposes?
Wright/ I think, uh, several different scenarios would be helpful, um, certainly
the...options at either end. May not be what some people want, and uh, yet the
other end (mumbled) people don't want, um, it would be good to see what we can
come up with.
Helling/ Well, what we'll try to do is put something together that...that has the least
impact possible (noise on mic) and that will help narrow down any decisions you
would have to make, you know, as Regenia alluded to, the overall scheme of the
budget, $800,000 isn't a huge amount of money, um, it's just...it will make things
very tight and we may have to, you know, cut a little bit into what we plan to do,
um... in terms of, I don't...I'm not saying that it will involve reduction in force,
uh, with the exception that, you know, and generally even if there is some times,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 144
you can manage through that, um, by attrition, rather than laying somebody off,
but it does affect services and, uh, one of the things I was going to say sort of at
the end of this is...is that I think we are pretty lean. I think we've, you know, we,
um, anything we're doing, any service we're providing, I think we're pretty lean,
and I don't think we're providing any services that nobody wants. And so that,
you know, that's...that makes it kind of difficult, in...in terms of some of the
positions that...that we look at in terms of administration. It's not a direct
services (mumbled) to the, uh, customer out there, it's not, you know, we're
not...somebody picking up their garbage or...or whatever, but you know, those
are positions that are needed to, you know, keep things functioning. Uh, but we'll,
you know, we'll take a look at everything, and uh, I just need to know right now if
there...specific things that you want to tell me leave it alone, and if there aren't
that's fine. There may be the next time we talk about this. You may identify
other things (mumbled)
Bailey/ Well, and I want to underscore what Ross and Dale just said is we need to
understand the impact. What you're trying to do is reduce the impact to these
corporate, um, our corporate citizens by reducing the franchise fee. We need to
understand the impact by, when we start moving things around, of the broader
impact to services or timeline or anything like that, and I think if we have a good
understanding of that, and we can explain it, we can all feel comfortable or not
moving forward or... or going on that.
Wilburn/ That helps with the decision in terms of the burden because, uh, in the past
we've had...we've had, uh, citizens concerned speaking of the TIF districts, uh,
the corporate entities that have benefitted from, um, having a burden reduced
there. There are residents, residential folks that feel, that have been against the
TIFs because they don't feel that they get a direct benefit. They don't feel that
they're getting a burden so...um...and a certain sense some citizens have felt that
resid...in their residential property that, um, that they, um, that they have felt or
experienced a burden in order for some of the corporations to...now we have
looked at it in terms of an investment and the most recent example is we're willing
to provide that benefit and that break for them to make an investment, and for us
to enjoy on behalf of the citizens, um, a benefit, which we're experiencing now, so
in that...those cases, it worked out, but um...
Champion/ Well, and the other way you can look at it too is that we lose those
corporations, oh, if we lose those corporations we're going to lose a lot of
property taxes, and people are going to lose a lot of jobs. So I don't, you know, I
think that's where it's at.
Bailey/ But we do need to talk to them and see which tax is the most appropriate, and
there'll probably be as many different answers as there are corporations, but...
Wright/ I think we need to remember too that we're not talking just about corporations.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 145
Bailey/ Right.
Wright/ We're talking about individual citizens.
Bailey/Right.
Wright/ When we say we were going to do a franchise fee for public safety, and then it
ends up that we can do a little other balancing with as well, I'm uncomfortable
with that.
Bailey/ What did you say at the end? When we end up doing what?
Wright/ Well, we say we were going to use the franchise fee for public safety...
Bailey/ Uh-huh.
Wright/ ...and...we can do that with a 1% franchise fee. We don't need a 2% one-time
franchise fee to cover public safety.
Bailey/ We could use more for public safety and shift other things, I mean, there are all
kinds of, I mean, Road Use Tax is an issue, I mean, we can do all kinds of things.
But, it's 4:30.
Wright/ Yeah, and I...I think there are certain expectations operating in the community
with that franchise fee, that we need to be very attuned to.
Hayek/ Okay, what else do you need from us?
Helling/ Uh, do you want to finish this? It's only a few more pages?
Hayek/ Sure.
Helling/ Um, we can go through it pretty quickly.
Hayek/ And I don't mean to squelch the discussion of this, but I think you've given staff
clear enough direction (several talking)
Bailey/ I also think this is a discussion that we need to notice a little bit more before we
get into a lot of decision making.
Wright/ And it's 4:30! (laughter)
Helling/ Again, if you go to page 22, and if you...you'll just look at, uh, some of the
things that are highlighted. I just tried to highlight those areas...this is, again, uh,
General Fund, uh, and if you, uh, take out certain functions and I highlighted
police patrol because that's by far the most expensive part of the Police budget,
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 146
but it's not the whole thing. Uh, then you look at Fire, um, you look at Parks and
Recreation, uh, and you look at the Library, and take that as a...as a percent of
the...the entire, particularly public safety. If you even just look at public safety,
you know, we're getting into the third or more of our general operating budget just
for public safety, and so when we go to...to see where we can make cuts,
obviously public safety is not an area where...where we're going to find a lot of,
you know, a lot of money to take out, because we're putting money in to try to
keep that up, so...but, more...I just wanted to illustrate. There are certain
functions that collectively, uh, account for a large percent of our operating budget,
and uh, that's all I really...we spell it out, so I thought you might want, you know,
want to take a look at that. Um...I talked a little bit before about, um, on...on
page 23, I've highlighted Other Financial Uses, and if you look at the last
paragraph on page 25, uh, Other Financial Uses -that spells out what those are,
uh, what you see primarily in FY11, 12 and 13 has to do with the, uh, the local
option sales tax revenue. Uh, the highest number is in FY10, the current fiscal
year, and that also explains what some of those things are that...that makes that
exceptionally high, um, and for the benefit of anybody who can't see the screen,
TV audience or whatever, it's infrastructure for the 420th Street project, the
industrial park, uh, reconstruction of Fire Station #2, and construction of Fire
Station #4, and also some money to, uh, assist businesses, um, the A-2 occupancy
businesses that have to, uh, beef up their water service in order to sprinkle their
businesses downtown. Um, and then on the bottom of page 23, the only thing I
would point out there is that if you look at...personnel, going from the bottom up,
personnel, the next one, the diagonal hash is services, and then that small amount
for supplies, cost of supplies. There's a real, those are the things that we...kind of
the meat and potatoes of our budget, and the trend there is...is, um, I think just
indicative of...of basically inflationary costs, and we've stayed just about the
same in terms of those services, um, because we haven't added staff or services
appreciably in the last several years. Um, on page 24, uh, there's just a reiteration
that, um, I highlighted this, probably forgot I highlighted it before, um, in terms of
the...the Police and Fire, uh, pension and what the meaning is to our budget there.
Um, health insurance premiums, our...our anticipation is that we know they're
going up about 10% for fiscal 11. We're anticipating about 6% in each of 12 and
13, but we don't know. Uh... so, you know, those are some things that can have
an impact, um, new positions, again, just addressing the new positions in the Fire
Department and the Police are all that's in there. We don't have any other new
positions, uh, and I would anticipate, given... given the budget, that we probably
aren't going to be able to do anything meaningful in terms of adding other
services, at least for the foreseeable future, the three-year, uh, certainly the three-
year, uh, three years of the financial plan that we have before you. I also noted
that we do...we don't actually have 27 pay periods in FY12. We just have 27 pay
days. Uh, there's not an extra two weeks in (laughter) FY12 is what I'm saying,
but those...it falls such that every eleven or twelve years we have that extra pay
day. Million five, that's about what it'll cost us there. Um, page 26...that just
addresses our unassigned fund balance. It matches those numbers on page 22.
I'm sorry - on page 21, uh, and the fund balance numbers. Uh, but it breaks it
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 147
down in a little bit of detail about what are the restricted number, uh...um...parts
of that fund balance, the things that...that we can't use for just whatever we want.
Um, and so that just gives you an idea. You see restricted and unrestricted, and
this is...this breaks down what the restricted amounts are, and where...what the
genesis of that. Uh, the next page on 27, this...the chart at the top shows you
what the shortfall is, um...those of you who've been here a long time remember
Steve Atkins saying, 'We get paid twice a year.' Well, we do. We get our tax
revenues from the County in October, and then in April, and since the fiscal year
ends June 30th, we have to meet a cash...our cash flow. We don't have to -some
cities actually have to borrow, but we want to make sure that we have enough
money in our reserve to meet our cash flow needs between July 1 and the time we
get that check in...in October, um, from the County, and that's our property tax
revenues. Um, that's one of the things that we...that the, uh, fund balance is used
for, and what this shows you is the actual cash shortfall, um, in each fiscal year
that we had to make up with...from the fund balance in those first three, little over
three months of the fiscal year. Um, but in addition to cash flow, the fund balance
is also our rainy day fund. No pun intended there, but you know, a rainy season
fund, whatever it turns out to be. We can have a lot of expenses when we have a
flood or a tornado or certain things that we need... we need cash up front to pay
the overtime, to...to, uh, you know, bring in, uh, contractors and so forth to clean
up after a disaster. That's our rainy day fund, and it's important that we're able
to...to build that back up. Also it's for one-time opportunities if we have, uh,
certain land that comes up, for instance, I think we, uh, when we, uh, purchased
the 420th Street industrial park property. We went to our fund balance for that, as
well. So that draws it down, and then it's important that we be able to build that
back up. That's what the, that's what Moody's and the bond rating folks are
looking at when, um...and then the Road Use Tax. Um, we've talked a little bit
about that. It's fairly flat, um, and we don't anticipate that given the...the
increases in Road Use Tax that we see coming, we don't anticipate that we're
going to be able to add anything in there, in terms of either operations or have a
lot of money to...to start financing projects again. If...if, it's probably not even
enough to keep us afloat, and the State...the State is experiencing the same thing.
They use that same Road Use Tax money, that tax money, for maintaining State
highways and so forth, and (mumbled) as well. And I believe they fund at least
part of the State Police out of Road Use Tax too. Um...
Bailey/ And I have a question about...and I assume that you've looked at different
scenarios of how we use it, whether we use it to pay for personnel, whether we
use it for capital projects and what makes the most sense financially. Is that true,
Kevin?
O'Malley/ Yes. Actually the Road Use Tax fund is scripted by law that we have to use it
in a certain fashion and...and most cities use it for operations, and the rainy day
fund for large capital projects. That was our past practice until about ten years
ago and slowly we're just using it for operations, and some recurring CIPs. Now
looks like...I'm not sure which page you're on.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 148
Bailey/ 56.
O'Malley/ (mumbled)
Bailey/ Well, and given what you just said about debt levy and the way we sell debt, it
seems to make the most sense for... all, I mean, money is money, but it seems like
it's...it's different, um, better...the Road Use Tax is better employed using it for
operations, from what I can tell. Okay. I just...that's what I wanted to confirm.
Helling/ Well, and...there are...those are positions that we probably would have had to
eliminate (both talking) general tax revenue...
Bailey/ Or we would fund it by having a high emergency levy or something like that, just
to be able to plow our streets, if we were using it for capital. (both talking) Okay.
That's just what I wanted to clarify, because...course we all have concerns about
that fund...may need to do something about it, but they're not going to.
Helling/ And I just point out the last, in the second paragraph there at the bottom of the
page, the last sentence is in italics. Um, I mean, this (mumbled) is advised to
budget conservatively in regards to Road Use Tax, that projections are subject to
dramatic changes, and they certainly are relying on gas tax. So...so we'll, that's
the essence of our problem there. Um, I think we...we did look at the charts on
page 29 and...did we talk about 28? (noise on mic) It has to do with your...with
your, uh, your allowable debt margin, and as I indicated to you earlier, 5% of total
valuation, that's all you can have in outstanding debt. If you look at that column,
and then the one next to it, outstanding debt as of July 1, you can see that we're
well below, um, back when we, uh, sold the bond issue for the Library, uh, that
kind of shot up. Uh, and that...we've reduced it back down to about the same
percent, about 38% where we were in FY00, and we're at about 38% again, even
though the raw numbers are about, you know, approaching double. Um, and we
have a policy that says, um, or I mean the State policy says, you know, the 5% is
the maximum we can have in, uh, debt as a portion of our valuation, and you can
see that we've stayed pretty near half of that. Again, with the Library situation,
we went up about 2.9, but for the most part we're...we're at less than half of
our...of our allowable debt fund. So...um...on page 29 at the top, basically that
shows, again, our... our outstanding debt versus the allowable debt, and how the
allowable debt increases, because of our increased valuations, but because of our
policies, we stay relatively flat, um, we talked a couple years ago...I remember
we had the discussion and uh, maybe we can...we can talk about it again this
year, um, but I really would question the policy of having our, uh, restricting
ourselves to 25%, our debt being 25% or less of the total levy. The, we might
want to do like a lot of other communities are doing and... and look at a policy
that relates outstanding debt more to, um, allowable debt, because what happens,
and...and here's a'for instance.' Um, we put this all together and the...the capital
improvement program and the debt that we would incur was a little bit lower than
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 149
the 25%, but because it's a percentage of our, uh, of our revenues, um, when we
went in and pulled out the debt, or the emergency levy, just taking that out, the,
uh, the debt that we would incur actually jumped up to about 25.6 or something,
and that's...that's where it is with this. I wanted to point it out, because we're a
little above it. So...it's a question whether or not, you know, that's a good
yardstick, um, because if...if you maintain that policy, you know, I'm convinced
that we will be able to borrow less and less for our capital projects, as we borrow,
uh, more to fund other things. We just talked about borrowing money to..to
purchase fire engines. We used to purchase those with cash, we had a reserve
and...so that's what's happening there. Maybe we can talk a little bit more about
that (both talking)
Bailey/ And didn't you once say that, um, the benefit of the triple-A bond rating, one of
the things they looked at...look at, is adherence to our...our own policies, and if
we're out of whack with our own policies, that can be difficult for maintaining
that?
O'Malley/ That's one of the considerations, uh, and I also did a little preliminary research
about a year ago when we talked about this, and we're the only triple-A city that
does this type of restriction. They have other restrictions. They're all based on a
percent of, uh, debt available.
Hayek/ Is that state-wide or more...
O'Malley/ No, just the triple-A cities. Uh...
Hayek/ Right, but...
Bailey/ Nationally?
Wright/Nationally?
Hayek/ Geographically speaking, uh, is that nationally?
O'Malley/ No, that was just, uh, the (mumbled) because every state has different, uh,
metrics than we would have.
Hayek/ Well, I...my sense is that you would like us to take this up in greater detail.
Helling/ I think it's worth taking a look at, yeah, at...I think right now, we can...we can
make it, but I think it's going to be tougher and tougher as, you know, as we go
along. Now, having said that, I think that we're getting very close to...as long as
we adhere to our policy of not selling debt to purchase things, uh, with a useful
life of less than the term of the debt. Um, I think...I think we're fine, and I think
we're getting close to...I think we're getting close to that at this point. So what
my point here is that (laughter) if we increase our debt capacity, uh, or our policy
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 150
to increase that, that would primarily go if not 100% close to that for...to help
fund capital projects, which is where we're...that's what we primarily rely on...on
debt for is to fund the capital projects.
Wilburn/ So the value or philosophical approach, that conversation might be what's the
appropriate metric to observe the amount of debt we occur, given the current
fiscal environment, compared to when this policy was established maybe.
Helling/ Yeah.
Wilburn/ It may be something different.
O'Malley/ When this policy was established, we had several more tax levies, so we had
more, the percentages...we had more of the levies to be, uh, a component of.
Now we're down to six levies and four of'em are frozen. So...the only thing that
changes is employee benefits go up, then you're debt service can go up.
Helling/ And we talked about inching some more funds into the CIP for some of the
(mumbled) economic development type of projects that I think are good projects
and we...we don't want to find ourselves not able to participate if, you know,
those that look like they're going to fly so...
Hayek/ ...wait for direction from you as to when we should hold this discussion?
Helling/ I think just in conjunction with your, when you talk about your budget decisions.
Um, and then page 38, it just, again, I have to say that staff was extremely
cooperative and a whole bunch of other good things in putting their budgets
together. Um, the top of page 38 shows the positions that we've incorporated into
the, uh, the new positions we've incorporated in, and only the Police and Fire
personnel are going to come from the General Fund, um, we've also had a
reduction in staff in emergency communications. That's all built in, um, of 10.25
staff, but we also have to, uh, we've had to add back in the additional CSOs to
staff the Police Department, so that's not...that's not a net loss often positions,
um, and then down below are positions that were requested which, you know, in
each instance I would have loved to said yes to them, but obviously (mumbled).
Um, page 39 and 40 just show, um, basically our...our contingent of staff in all
areas. Page 39 is the General Fund funded positions. And you can see there,
well, uh, yeah, 368 full time and some part-time, uh, in FY10 and then it shows
FY11, um, and that reflects primarily the difference is your police and
firefighters. Uh, the other funds shows that as well, so you can just look and see,
you know, where our employees are and look at that at your leisure. It's pretty
self-explanatory. And then the last couple of pages that we put up here, um, are
just a samples, and I don't know if...particularly again, Terry and Susan, if as you
read through the department budgets, are things pretty clear to you? I put these in
so we could kind of talk through them, if need be. Um...but they're pretty
straightforward in terms of, you know, where our revenue comes from, where the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.
January 8, 2010 City Council Special Budget Work Session Page 151
expenditures are, and then down below, the number of personnel, uh, and...and
then capital outlay. Um, for, like the Police Department we had the general
summary. That's what this is. This is the whole department, and then as you go
back into the, uh, the following pages, you'll find that, um, you have patrol, you
have investigations. Those are all just pieces of this total. So the first one is the
total, then it's broken down more. If you did the numbers they would all add up
there, at least I hope they did! (laughter) So I don't know if you need any more
on that or not (mumbled). Um, anything else you want to...I hope that's helpful,
just in terms of reminding you what your policies are and where you are with the
current budget. Uh, one other thing I should mention is you can go back and look
at, um, there's some pages in there that...that talk about Aid to Agencies, and um,
events, and we're doing that a little differently, but the pages in there now are the
same as you've seen in past years, where they show you a bottom line, and then
it's always gone back later and did the allocations, but I think this year you
wanted to do them in conjunction with your budget decisions, so by the time you
get there, um, we should have recommendations on those and I...I believe part of
the reason you wanted to do that was you wanted to see if you had any flexibility
on some of those, and not be necessarily locked in, but typically if you want to
deviate from those they're fairly small amounts.
Hayek/ Okay. Well...thank you for your diligence and attentions today, uh, encourage
you to ask questions if you have follow up questions. Enjoy your weekend and
we'll see everyone on Monday.
Helling/ And if anybody has any ideas about how to make this better or...let us know and
we'll...we'll work with that. Otherwise we'll see you on Monday.
Hayek/ Thank you, staff!
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special
Budget Work Session (CIP's) and Budget Overview meeting of January 8, 2010.