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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-01-14 TranscriptionJanuary 14, 2010 City Council Page 1 Council Present: Bailey, Champion, Dickens, Hayek, Mims, Wilburn, Wright UISG Rep: Shipley Staff: Helling, Fosse, Karr, Tharp, Craig, Moran, O'Malley, Kopping Air ort Hayek/ Okay, uh, why don't we get started this evening? And, uh, we're gonna stick to the schedule as, uh, best we can, and in fact where there are opportunities to, uh, conclude early and if the next applicant is here we will take that opportunity to actually shift forward and try to stay as busy as we can and get out of here at as, as reasonable an hour as possible. First up is, uh the airport? Tharp/ Well, good evening. Once again the airport gets to lead off some budget discussions. Um, I am here with, uh, Airport Commissioners Minnetta Gardinier and Howard Horan. Howard is our secretary for the next couple of months as we turn over, uh, the, the Chair and the Secretary, and Minnetta is our newest member. Um, really what we want to do tonight is kind of highlight a couple of things. One, is our annual report that was in the, uh, information packet. And, uh, the highlights out of there really are, are what happens to the support that the City gives us. Uh, this last year we were one of three airports in the state to receive air, uh, economic stimulus funds. Uh, we got an additional $1.8 million in, uh, funding from the FAA to complete our runway reconstruction projects. And that was, uh, on top of the $1.6 million that came from the Airport Improvement Program. Uh, the uh, the, the local matching is, is typically provided as part of the capital improvement funds but on, on a given year you'd, usually it, it encompasses about $100,000 to $200,000 and it brings into the City anywhere from $2 million to $4 million worth of work. Uh, operationally we, uh, maintain a, a budget of roughly $400,000. Uh, the uh, general levy support in previous years has kind of been in flux a little bit, up and down. Uh, this year coming up in FY11 we're, we're, we've targeted the $100,000, uh, uh, cap that, uh, was put in place, uh, during the, um, discussions this last, uh, year. And, you know, that's done a couple of things to us specifically: one is we if we could keep it there I think it'd work great for the airport. It maintains a 75-25% split. Uh, the airport, with that $100,000 levy is, uh, raising 75% of its own income, and then 25% becomes the, the operational (clears throat) assistance. On, on the down side of that, with the, uh, cuts coming the way it's done, uh, what we have outstanding is the Economic Development Coordinator, over the past number of years we've, uh, contributed about 10% of the salary to the Economic, uh, Development Coordinator without any real tangible, uh, uh, returns on that investment. And with the levy support as it is now we, we're not able to, uh, maintain that. Previous years it's been, you know, as part of the operation budget, and uh, we're looking for a little, uh, help there. Essentially we'd like to, uh, um, duck away from that obligation as the levy This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai ~suaget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 2 support really no longer, um, is capable of maintaining it. Or, you know, we'd like to see some more tangible, um, activities out of it, that we can, you know, grab some of that Economic Development Coordinator's time and do some things, uh, with the airport that aren't being done now. And, uh, that is, uh, that's the bulk of what we wanted to ask for tonight. Uh, a couple other highlights out of the annual report were the, uh, economic development study that the Iowa DOT did, uh, this last summer. That, uh, study related that the airport, uh, economic impact to the community is about $11.2 million. And that translated to about 115 jobs for the airport. So I think I think the funds that we get, you know, from the City as part of the operational support and as part of the, uh, capital improvement support certainly uh, uh, reverberate around the community as, as a great economic, uh, opportunity for a lot of businesses. I will be happy to turn it over to, uh, any of our Commissioners that might have comments. Gardinier/ Uh, I'm Minnetta, not Howard. Um, I just wanted to, uh, I guess amplify on the, er, yeah, amplify a bit on the Iowa DOT report. I mean, I think it's a pretty big feather in Iowa City's cap in terms of having an airport that is essentially the fourth largest GA, general aviation airport, in the state. And, um, that is in bringing in $11 million, $11 plus million, into the community, um. And then I think in terms of the federal, ARRA monies, um, coming in in support of that airport and I think that's a, a strong statement from the federal government anyway in terms of what they, how they feel about the importance of that airport. It's the only GA airport in the entire state that got ARRA funds, and only one of three, the other two being commercial airports. So I think that's a little bit of a recognition of the importance of the, of the airport in this area, uh, not just Iowa City. Um, and then I think, just to talk a little bit more about, um, the Economic Development Coordinator, um, it, with all of the improvements to the airport that have occurred now, I mean, we have two brand new runways, um, and that they're allowed, they're able to accommodate, um, some of the better jet traffic, um, which again brings more business into Iowa City, and, and allows us to serve communities, or, businesses in the area. Um, so I think we're kind of at a really pivotal point that, um, being able to if, if we have some of the time of the, somebody like an Economic Development Coordinator, now is a really opportune time for us to sort of, um, punch out and put together perhaps a more effective business plan, um, to sell the airport, uh, more effectively around the community and also bringing, uh, business in to the Iowa City area. And that's, that's all I have. Horan/ Hi, I'm Howard Horan. Uh, it's nice to be here again. Uh, just want to remind you that all of you can get on an airplane at our little Iowa City Airport, fly to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 3 either coast and get home the same day. Now, forgive me, I don't think that's what's important. What's important is that people with investable dollars who will make jobs in our community can do the same. They can fly from either coast and get home the same day. We've worked hard to get the airport to that level. Okay? And I think it's great and I think it's a real advantage. My only other concern is that I would like the Council to help us in thinking about helping the economic development effort to lease some of the land that we have available. If we leased it, it becomes an income stream that supports the airport and lightens yet further the City budget. That's my story. Thank you. Bailey/ So in so far as the (clears throat) the Economic Development Coordinator's time you're interested in seeing, um, the land marketed, I mean, which we have a real trick to do, what other, what other activities are you interested in seeing or have you talked about? I know you're engaging in a strategic plan, will your, uh, will you be doing a business plan at the same time? Tharp/ Of right now the focus is on the, that five-year strategic plan and, and we're hoping to have that done approximately in April. I think what the Economic Development Coordinator could help, and the airport in general and the Airport Commission as well as myself with would be more of like, uh, more of a business plan type thing. How do we present the airport to the local businesses that may have travel budgets? Um, you, know, partnering with the University, uh, they have a lot of travel that, you know, some of it does go through Iowa City through companies, uh, the fixed-base operator in Iowa City. Some of it's, uh, being outsourced to various other groups that aren't in Iowa City. So what can we do to, uh, bring that all into Iowa City, if it's possible. Um, there's companies that uh, uh, you know, and, and right now they've been in very regularly for the last couple of months. You know, are these companies that perhaps would like to have, you know, hangar space, be able to work something out where, you know, we can have some corporate hangars at the airport, uh larger facilities fro the, for these companies. Um, you know, I, I think it's those types of, of items that perhaps the airport in the really hasn't been in position to, uh, in position to do, uh, really do a good job of being able to market towards, but now that we have, uh, not only the extended runways but the runways completely reconstructed, uh, I, I think the airport's in a much better, uh, position, um structurally to be able to tackle some of those questions. Bailey/ In addition to the University how many of our major employers use jets through the airport? I mean, what are you seeing? Tharp/ What ... uh, well, uh, the Billion Autogroup which, uh, is locally--- Bailey/ You don't have to name names if you're not comfortable doing that. I mean, if you have a sense, I mean, if you want to name names that's fine, I don't know about the discretion . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 4 Tharp/ Uh, maintain discretion I'd say there's about, uh, ten or so that I can think of off the top of my head that are pretty active in, as far as, uh, traveling .. . Bailey/ And so that helps, uh, us gain money with the fuel sales, correct? Tharp/ Yes. Yes. Bailey/ Okay. Thanks. Hayek/ As you gear up for what looks like a slight diminution in general fund support, hopefully it'd stop at that $100,000 threshold, how are, how's the airport doing that? Is it doing more with less, is it, is it doing ...bringing in higher, uh, unit rents and the things we've talked about over the last couple of years? Is it a combination? Tharp/ Uh, combination of a little of everything. Uh, we've had a couple of leases come on line that, uh, we haven't had in the past with some ex-with some land that, uh, the airport owns but really doesn't use. Um, we've had some personnel shifting. Our, the longtime maintenance person retired and that really opened up the opportunity to, uh, look at essentially outsourcing the uh, maintenance operations of the airport, you know, as far as building rehab., pavement repairs, things like that. And that's, uh, been able to save us a, a, uh, you know, a good amount of money. And you know we're, we're, annually we look at, uh, the rent revenue and, uh, you know, adjust that as far as, uh, being able to match, you know, our local revenues as well as maintain, um, inflationary adjustments too. Hayek/ Okay. Champion/ And what are the major stumbling blocks to building corporate hangars? Your debt? Tharp/ Well, if it's something the airport's gonna take on itself it would be the debt right now. You know, the hangars, if the airport's gonna build them and then turn around and lease them we have to make sure we can build them at a cost that is lease-able. Uh, um, right now we have three hangar buildings that we're currently paying on and, um, you know it, it is a significant debt load for the airport. And without either state grants or federal grants, um, you know, I'm not sure that we're able to pursue, you know, independently being able to build hangars. With that, if there's a corporate partnership that, you know, certainly the corporate folks may be able to have funding mechanisms that we don't that we could maneuver some type of agreement to, to construct them. Champion/ What does a hangar cost approximately? Tharp/ Well, uh, the Capital Improvements Pro-uh, Program has a million dollar budget for, uh, uh, roughly 120 square hangar. Uh, T-hangars are uh, you know I think in the Capital This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Councu speaai ouagei ~~a« Session (BoardslCommissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 5 Improvement Program as it exists right now in a couple years also has a block of T's, and that project has about a half a million dollar, uh, budget. Hayek/ Other questions for the Airport Commission? Okay. We appreciated the, the good in- good materials that were in our information packet. That's very helpful and appreciate your work on that. Tharp/ Mm-hm. Thank you. Hayek/ Thank you for coming down tonight. Senior Center Commission Hayek/ Next is the Senior Center Commission. Welcome, Jay. Honohan/ Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, Dale, Rick, Marian, I don't want to forget anybody. Uh, we like the proposal that, uh, Dale has submitted, with one exception. I'd like another $8,557. What this is for is right now we have a Maintenance Worker I who's working 81 % for the Senior Center, and 19% for Cable Television. And we would like that maintenance worker full time. Uh, we've had a 16% increase in Senior Center memberships. Connie can remember when I was in here at times saying I was happy to have a little over 900. Well, now we're at 1,230, uh, this week. Uh, our attendance, our visits, our I call them hits -Linda doesn't like that but I call them hits- have increased over 19,000 in fiscal '09. We have an average of 23 evening and weekend programs at the center. Our computer lab, our pool room, our fitness rooms and Senior Center television are open to members unti17:00 PM four nights a week, and three hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. Because of this expansion, which is what our direction has always been from the Council, to expand what we're doing, to expand our evening programs, we need more maintenance. It's pure and simple. And, and we can provide that we think with making this Maintenance Worker I full time, as I said, at a cost of an additional $8,557 in FY11. I'll, I'm open to any questions and I've got Linda here to correct me when I make a mistake. Uh, I'll try to answer anything that you have, but I know you're on a tight time schedule, so, just give me the $8,500 and I'll be happy. (Laughter.) Mims/ Jay, on the 28E agreement, um, it shows $75,000. Where is that coming from? Honohan/ Johnson County. Mims/ Is it my understanding, is my understanding correct that any of the other cities in the area themselves do not pay anything into the Senior Center? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa city city t;ouncn apec~ai ouuyc~ Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 6 Honohan/ That is correct. But the others pay an additional participation fee. If, if a person from Coralville or the County, they pay, uh, more of a participation fee than someone from Iowa City. Mims/ City ...Okay. Thank you. Champion/ Do you have any idea what percentage of patrons, members, are, are from, from outside Iowa City? Honohan/ About 11 %, or, right around that Connie, I--- Champion/ Right. Right. Honohan-don't, it's not exact. Champion/ I'm not gonna hold you to the exact number. Honohan/ it's in that neighborhood, 10 to 11, 12%. Bailey/ This might be a question for Linda, can you talk a little bit about your utilization on the second floor and your, the classrooms. You said your computer lab, your senior t.v., you've shifted some things around, where are things located and what space to you have yet to fill up? Kopping/ Uh, well, I would say we don't have any space to fill up because it's all full. Um, we have three classrooms on the second floor, and we can't schedule classes in there continuously because we have to allow for room set-up and tear-down after each event, but we are at the point now where we have situations which we can't find a room to hold a program in. Um, it's, I feel that uh, we're maximum-maximizing the use of the, uh, the entire facility, um, with the except--, with the exception of evenings and weekends, where there's still room for growth. Bailey/ Okay. Thanks. Honohan/ I can speak to one thing on that, is my Spanish class, we had to meet in the lobby of the mezzanine because there wasn't any room on the second floor. It was pretty, and we have, uh, that class has expanded. It started out there was about seven or eight of us, and now we're at 16. And it's very difficult to find space in the Center for, for .. . And the painting class that I'm in, we have a problem down there because it can only accommodate a small amount of people and we have right now in the afternoon session three on the waiting list and that many on the morning list. Space is a real problem. Hayek/ You uh, you temporarily lost some space in connection with some HVAC and other work. That's a thing in the past, is it not? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special tsuagei nrorK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 7 Honohan/ Well, that building wasn't designed to be a Senior Center, Matt. (Laughter.) Honohan/ No, we had some problems with that and we've had some water problems here recently too, and, lost a classroom for awhile. Bailey/ Water problems again? We have a lot of water problems. Uh, which classroom? Kopping/ We do have a lot of water problems and we are, um, working on getting a new roof on the building hopefully sometime this spring. We really need it, it's uh, the roof has outlived, um, the wildest imaginations for its, uh lifespan. Bailey/ Was it that same room downstairs that was damaged before? Or, that was a different, that wasn't the roof--- Kopping/ Oh, no--- Bailey/ Okay. Kopping/ This was on the second floor. Bailey/ Okay. Champion/ When are you going to replace the lettering on the sign outside? (Laughter.) Kopping/ Well, that is a hot topic. (Laughter.) Kopping/ Uh, we actually, I believe, have money in the budget to replace the sign this year, but, um, there's some controversy over what we, uh, should replace it with. So I think I'm gonna pull together a committee to, um, explore options and the first thing we'll have to do is find out if we have to maintain that limestone, um, marker, that we currently have. And if we, if we don't have to do that, then um, we have a lot more options. So, hopefully very soon. Wright/ And hopefully it'll be vandal-proof. Kopping/ Exactly. Shipley/ Uh, I had heard of a situation, I don't, you know, know if I have all the details on this correctly, but one of the board members was pretty irate about the way, uh, one of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa city city t,.ouncn apec~a~ ouuy~• ••~~ Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 8 mailings was sent out? That it was more expensive than it should have been. I mean, was that situation resolved? You know what I'm talking about? Kopping/ There is no situation. We, um, this, uh, is related to the annual report. Um, we produce an annual report every year. We mailed out, um, like 1,200 of the annual reports. We send them to the membership and also to, um, donors and partners. Uh, we've been doing this for a long time. I mean it's included in, the funding for this is included in the budget. Shipley/ Then are relations on, on the Commission better than I, I heard they were kind of, getting kind of aggressive. Honohan/ I' 11 try that. Kopping/ Yeah, good. Honohan/ There's one member on the Commission that has a different philosophy than the rest of us. And, uh, she is very emphatic at times with her, uh, positions. Uh, we try to handle it as best we can. Shipley/ Thanks, that's, that's all I need. Hayek/ What kind of a planned, and this is Jay, this is right up your estate alley, what kind of planned giving, uh, development work does the Commission do? Honohan/ Well, we have what is now been called Friends of the Center, in which, through donations and contributions over the years we have raised, oh, almost $500,000. Uh, in the past few years we have, uh, spent from that foundation approximately $120,000, $125,000. Uh, all the furniture in the assembly room, for example, was purchased with money from that foundation. Uh, we are continually trying to get, uh, both through estates and through direct contributions, uh, we do that on a regular basis, and uh, some of the money has been spent um, all, almost all of it has been spent for capital improvement type stuff, Senior Center Television, the fitness equipment, things like that. Oh, excuse me. Kopping/ Um, we are in the process of doing an operational self assessment and we, uh, have uh, staff members, volunteers, participants and community members looking at various subjects and one of them is, uh, fundraising. And, I believe their goal is to develop, uh, an aggressive fundraising plan to increase the, uh, endowment. Hayek/ Any other questions for this? Honohan/ Thank you and don't forget the $8,000. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 9 (Laughter.) Hayek/ Got it. Champion/ It was $8,557. Hayek/ Thanks, Linda and Jay. If Parks and Rec. is ready we can proceed. Parks & Recreation Commission Claussen/ Uh, I'm Clay Claussen. I'm here tonight with, uh, Margie Loomer, and uh, Acting Director of Parks and Recreation, Mike Moran. Uh, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council, good evening. On behalf of the citizens of Iowa City and the Parks and Recreation Commission, I am happy to give you an update/status report of events and activities that we have been involved with, as well as concerns, that I am sure we share with you regarding the Parks and Recreation Department. Uh, number one, we are in a discussion phase with the department's affiliate groups that have enjoyed the use of our facilities at no costa We are going through the feasibility process to determine if a cost- share recovery program is valid to help us off-set our ongoing expenses and costs of providing those services. Uh, item two, we have just completed our Farmers Market survey of both vendors and the public. We will be going through the responses and bringing forth recommendations from staff and the Commission for next year at one of your early March meetings. Item three, we would like to remind the Council that we are still committed to our department's master plan. I'm sure you've all had a chance to - this is the slim version; this is the not so slim version- of our master plan and have kept that in mind during our budget and CIP preparations for this upcoming year. Our intent is to work with you through presenting and preparing the budget, capital and CIP projects, especially too through any budget cutting processes that may occur. Now we continue, item number four, we continually seek assistance for staffing in order to take care of the mandatory park-land dedications from housing developments, existing facilities and the ongoing maintenance with other land areas, including trails, IDOT areas, and medians. We must be mindful ofever-changing budgets that stretch our staffing levels past the point of doing more with less; but also not getting the quality of work that is needed to enhance our program delivery and services to the community to provide the quality of life issues that we have continually provided to the citizens of Iowa City. And as an example of this, in the past ten years the City has obtained an additiona1473.4 acres of park-land, bringing the total to 1, 603.42 acres. In those same ten years, we have not acquired any additional staff to maintain these properties, and too those figures do not include the 6.2 miles of unpaved trails, 22.61 miles of paved trails, and 45.19 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 10 miles of paved and wide sidewalks that we must also maintain on an annual basis. And item five, our last issue, we remain committed to providing a good quality of life to our citizens and may be forced to thinking outside the box to bring new streams of, uh, revenue and resources to the department in order to maintain the service level that has been expected and delivered in the past. Thank you for your time and listening to our agenda. We appreciate the hard work you do for us, and for the city. Hayek/ Any questions? Wright/ I'm just curious, in terms of thinking outside the box you just mentioned, that, uh, have you had any ideas that might be alternatives that, uh, might be alternatives that you might explore. Claussen/ Well, I think that, uh, fee for services thing, and I, and I think, uh, Mike might be able to address that better than I can. Would you like to have Mike talk to you? Wright/ Sure. Moran/Uh, the found- we're working more with the foundation now. If you know Matt Pacha, who was along-time Chair, uh, of this Commission has moved over to the foundation branch. They were real instrumental in, in getting a significant amount of money raised for Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, which we're still working with. And, uh, I think now they've also put out a gift brochure, uh, or a memorial brochure, and that's been distributed throughout the community already. So, I think what we'll do with that is we'll work through the foundation because that's a better mechanism for us than to, to work through the City. Bailey/ I was at a meeting yesterday that had, in a much smaller community and their, their recreation foundation was very, very aggressive. It was, it was quite impressive. Um, it's a different model but I think that there's a lot of opportunity here, at least from what I hear about people's enthusiasm for our parks. So I think that's good. Um, in addition to working with the foundation, what about the Friends groups that are around town, like Friends of Hickory Hill Park, do you anticipate, uh, sort of a greater collaboration with those groups? I know that you work very closely with them now. Moran/ Yeah, and one thing and that we've done with the Commission is we've gone around and done meetings with them, and that started last spring. And then what we'll do is we'll take members of the Commission and myself and we'll sit down and go through those issue by issue. Uh, we've done that with Friends groups, we've done that with neighborhood associations, and all the folks that are neighbors of us. And we started that process and I think we went five visits, six visits total, and, uh, we'll start that again this spring and do it all over again. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 11 Bailey/Because the work that the Friends of Hickory Hill Park, uh, the work that they do is, well, it's beneficial to all of us, and it really, I think helps that particular facility quite a lot. Hayek/ We, are you able to quantify in any way, uh, even if it's just an estimate the, the kind of uh, assistance, um, these non-public groups have provided that helps the Commission and the department maintain our park infrastructure. Moran/ Yeah, it depends on the project. For example, Friends of Hickory Hill just put in the Norton Wayside, which was a little, um, memorial park, uh, and that shelter probably ran upwards of $50,000. That's, that's something that we didn't have to do or replace and they did that for us. Uh, Project Green spends a lot of money doing design work for us at the entrances to Iowa City, along the medians, along Iowa Avenue, and uh, that's countless number of hours that we could do per project. But, just to pull that off the top of my head, I probably wouldn't do it justice. Hayek/ Sure. But, but the assistance is generally more capital improvement in nature, for lack of a better word. It's, we're, not, not aday-to-day maintenance--- Moran/ Yeah, it's not, it's not programming or daily. It's aone-time event or project that they buy into. Bailey/And I'm cautious about getting into too much volunteer programmatic or, or maintenance with those kind of things, but do you see some opportunities in that direction that might be some of your outside of the box thinking? Moran/ Yes and no. I'm just about as cautious as you are with it--- Bailey/ Yeah. Moran/ ---because, you know, sometimes that, we get a lot of people will say they, they want to do projects and, we're actually having more success now running most those events through Carol Sweeting in the Water department, we're getting river-ways cleaned and we're having work days, and she's sort of touched into that. So, we're doing some operative efforts with her, uh, `cause she's doing that aone-time deal. There's no sense in five of us in the City doing the same thing. Bailey/ So perhaps the City could think a little bit more aggressively about those kinds of activities, if, if experience has been--- Moran/ Yeah, she's pretty aggressive with it now and she gets a real good turnout. You know we get 100 kids out to clean up the rivers on certain weekends, and, and she's real successful and has been. Bailey/ Think that she can get some mulch on those, uh, Hickory Hill trails? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City council speaai auagei ..a~ Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 12 (Laughter. ) Moran/ When she gets done cleaning all the rivers, I'm sure--- Bailey/ Yeah, okay. Moran/ ---that's gonna be next in line, mulch may be. Champion/ I, uh, I have to tell you that I'm amazed what you get done with all the maintenance you have to do with, I know w haven't given you any maintenance people, I don't think since I've been on the Council. So. Moran/ It's been over ten years. Champion/ Yeah. I know. Uh--- Moran/ I think you've been on 11 ? (Laughter.) Champion/ Twelve, actually. Oh, we did give you one twelve years ago, or ten years ago? Well, then you're done. (Laughs.) No. I do think you have a huge job and you have, we have given you a huge amount of more property to take care of and, I, I see it being done. I think we do need to look at getting some maintenance help for this group. Moran/ I can't find anybody that disagrees with you. Champion/ I don't know how you do what you do really. Hayek/ Go ahead. Bailey/ One other thing, I know that we met with, um, the University Rec. Building, has the Parks Commission, Parks and Rec. Commission talked about what the City might need to do in anticipation of the new Rec. Building open, and then the fees that the University will charge for all their facilities, have you had that discussion yet in your Commission meetings? Moran/ We have not. Bailey/ You anticipate that you' 11 be thinking about that? Moran/ Well, we're gonna have to do something at that point in time--- Bailey/ Yeah. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 13 Moran/ ---that, but we're working through the affiliate group issue and trying to charge some fees of our own on that. So, I think that to us is a little bit higher priority and then we're gonna wait and see what happens with the University and then address that. Bailey/ `Cause I, I can't speak for others, but I'd be really interested in seeing what you anticipated as impact for the usage of our facilities, what the expectations of the community will be or won't be given a brand new, a spanking brand new building over there, will use of our facilities drop off, will, you know, what are we anticipating and what, what should we be planning for. Moran/Usually what happens in new facilities is everybody goes to the new facility first so you have this newness factor. So I, I really think the impact probably won't be until a year after it's been open. And then people will settle into either going to the place where it's least expensive or most convenient or that they'll find their niche in that, but initially if you have a brand new building everybody's going to go to the brand new building. Bailey/ Even when there's a fee associated, you think? Moran/ I think so. Bailey/ Okay. Moran/ Go and try it out .. . Wright/ I'm guessing part of that's gonna depend on what the fees turn out to be. Bailey/ Yeah, I think that, yeah depending upon what markets--- Moran/ And I think that they're gonna be fairly reasonable--- Bailey/ ---are elastic or not. Moran/---it sounds like, but that ha, is yet to be determined. But I really think people will try and do the, the new factor and then they'll settle into where they think it's comfortable based on their budget and where they live, stuff like that. Hayek/ Any other questions for the Parks and Rec. folks? Okay. Thank you very much. Is the Library Board, uh, fully, uh, geared up here? We're ten minutes ahead of schedule. Champion/ We always are. Library Board Dean/ Thank you. My name is, uh, Tom Dean. I'm serving as President of the Board of Trustees of the, uh, Iowa City Public Library this year. Uh, we're joined tonight This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City city councn apeciai ouayc~ rran r Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 14 by Susan Craig, our Library Director, and also three other board members, Linzee McKray is here, John Kenyon and Leon Spies, so, uh, thank you for coming. Uh, on behalf of the trustees, library staff and the citizens of our city, I thank you for your generous support that you've shown the library, uh, over the years and continue to do so. Your support allows us to boast of the busiest public library in Iowa with nearly three- quarter of a million visits in fiscal year 2009. That translates into almost 2,000 visits to the library per day. Last year we exceeded the 1.5 million circulation threshold for the first time. In fiscal year 2009, the library hosted over 2,100 non-library meetings in its meeting rooms, and nearly 35,000 people attended library programs. We believe we have not only the busiest library on Iowa, but one of the best libraries in the country. The Iowa City public library continues to grow as we seek to meet the needs of our community, especially in these tough times. Uh, difficult economy means increased usage of public libraries. In challenging times citizens need the library even more for learning and entertainment materials, Internet access, and job search resources, especially computer use for online job applications, which are becoming more the norm than the exception. In preparation for our new strategic planning process this year the library conducted a community survey which confirmed the importance of the library to our community. Nearly three-quarters of Iowa City and contract area residents, and those contract areas are University Heights, Hills and rural Johnson County, nearly three-quarters of, uh, residents in our areas had visited the library in the past year. Eight-three percent of our respondents rate the library as good or excellent, with afifty-five percent majority of all respondents rating us excellent. The survey has also revealed to us that many residents say our library is an essential city service. Fully one in four of our survey respondents say the library should be among the last city departments to suffer from budget cuts. A strong majority, sixty percent, believe the library should be treated the same as other essential departments such as police. I'd like to share a few of the representative narrative comments, uh, those were the statistic ones, here's a few narrative comments. "The library is a basic service, as the fire and police protection is. One of the reasons we live in Iowa City is the ICPL. It is the heart and soul of the Iowa City surrounding communities. It is the major destination point for downtown." Another one: "The library is the best service, I believe, my property taxes go to, and I am very proud of it." "The library is a huge public asset and should be preserved and protected for the good of our citizens." "This is the best public library imaginable. I've been using it for forty-five years." Another one: "Best library I have ever seen in the United States." The last two comments I'd like to share with you, are perhaps not representative of the majority, uh, but they do reflect the passion that our community has for the library. First one: "I love the library and if it came to that I would donate my life savings to keep it open. Thanks for all you do." This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2070. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 15 Champion/ Get that name! (Laughter.) Dean/ The last one, even better: "I love the library. Please raise my taxes to avoid cuts." (Laughter.) Dean/ I think we only got one of those. (Laughter.) Dean/ In the first six months of this year, this current fiscal year, usage of the library continues to grow in several areas. Circulation so far in fiscal year 2010 is up 2.3%. In-house computer use is up 7.6% over last year; and in our survey, uh, it revealed, uh, we had another survey five years ago in our, uh, last strategic planning process, and our surveys have revealed in those five years, uh, computer use has tripled, uh, at the library. Adult program attendance is up more than 60%, uh, and this is over last year, the number of non-library meetings compared to last year is up 15.4%. The goal of the Board of Trustees is to maintain and enhance the collections and services of the library that our citizens so highly value. And, of course, we're challenged, as are all City departments, to do so in a current difficult economic climate. We understand the need to do our part in making sure the City of Iowa City is able to meet its myriad obligations to our constituents in these hard times. The library has served more patrons and provided more services in recent years without an increase in staffing and in the past year with the budget cut. So we are doing more with less. Last spring when the City Council decided on further fiscal year ' 10 budget reductions, this is those, uh, mid-year ones in uh, in uh, last spring, or the, the later ones, the library was cut the highest dollar amount of any City department, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the entire cut from the City budget at that time. So our fiscal year 2011 budget proposal starts from that already-reduced position. And within the next year, library usage, no doubt, will continue to increase. For the current fiscal year, uh, ' 10, we have made cuts in temporary employees, over-time, staff education and travel, equipment replacement, senior and family programming, and collections. Flexibility and our ability to cut our expenses has virtually been eliminated. And our patrons are noticing the effects of the cuts. The recent community survey showed that eliminating the Park and Ride program, which provided one free hour of parking in City ramps for library patrons, has met with significant distress by the community. It was perhaps the most commented upon area of dissatisfaction with the library. And although, as I said before, overall library use is up, there are areas that have declined. This, uh, past year, uh, fiscal year so far, we have seen a drop in the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa city city counai apeciai ouuyca . Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 16 number of families attending story time; traditionally, one of our most popular and beloved programs, along with a drop in picture book circulation. Library staff feel that the lack of parking reimbursement may be related to this decline. If the Board of Trustees needs to make further cuts, it will face a menu of very difficult choices. Cutting existing staff, down-sizing or eliminating collections, reducing computer support, and cutting hours, to name a few. But as I said earlier, we do understand the library needs to do its part in hard economic times. On a positive note, one way in which we capitalize on our value and contributions to the community is through partnership with other City departments and community organizations. The library provides the City general fund dollars through parking ticket revenue that is generated by library staff who monitor the Linn Street parking spaces, uh, designated for library use; and income from the rental space is being used to pay off debt. This year we embarked on a very successful program, ECO Iowa City, through a nearly $58,000 International City/County Manager Association Public Innovation Grant, in partnership with the City Recycling Center. Community organization partnerships have included children's programming with Hancher Auditorium, the Iowa Children's Museum, Iowa City Community School District, Cedar Rapids Public Library, and others. The Iowa City Public Library also is an excellent economic development tool, providing a major attraction for prospective businesses and residents who value a high quality of life, uh, in their community. In that vein, the ICPL's excellence played a role in Iowa City being designated only the third City of Literature in the world by UNESCO. And our library director, Susan Craig, serves as vice-president of that initiative's new organization. At the same time these partnerships leverage the library's contributions to the community, they would also be threatened by further budget cuts. The board and staff of the Iowa City Public Library to continuing to provide expected services to the citizens of Iowa City who look to us as essential to our community's quality of life. We are especially determined to help Iowa City weather the current economic storms by what we do best: providing free, high-quality and readily available collections and services..So thank you very much again for your past and continued support, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Champion/ Tom, do you know off the top of your head what the price tag was for the Park and Ride, uh? Dean/ It was several thousand dollars, was it ...Susan has the numbers. Seven? Ten? Something like that? Craig/ The amount that was cut was just over $6,800. Champion/ $6,800 in that one month? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 17 Craig/ No, no. Sorry, it, for the budget, for the year--- Champion/ Okay. Craig/ --to discontinue, um, the parking numbers. Champion/ And how much money, how many tickets did you give out last year? Craig/ I don't know. You'd have to take $6,800 and divide it by, $.40, is that the reimbursement rate? Champion/ No. Bailey/ No, no-no. How many parking tickets? Wright/ Parking tickets. Craig/ Oh, parking tickets. Um .. . Wright/ Bad tickets, not good tickets. Craig/ Twenty-some thousand dollars worth. In the high twenties. Champion/ Yeah, I know, it was twenty-seven--- Craig/ Between twenty-five and thirty thousand, I think. Champion/ Twenty-seven thousand the year before. Craig/ Yeah. Wright/ How much do you anticipate coming in from the foundation? Uh .. . Craig/ The most, uh, the largest gift we get from the foundation supports our collection each year, in addition to the City money that we get for the collection the foundation gifts to the collection are between $85,000 and $100,000 a year. And they also provide gifts that support the Summer Reading Program for children and young adults, and a couple of program initiatives. But their major contribution is to the collection. Champion/ And then, Susan, the library levy then is that about $900,000 a year? Just roughly . . Craig/ I think that's right. Champion/ And that all goes to the collection? Craig/ No, that, that just goes into our budget and is used for a variety of .. . Champion/ Oh, okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 18 Hayek/ I know it's a tough, uh --what's the word I'm looking for-development climate, but how is, in terms of the size of the endowment and efforts to grow it, how is that going? Craig/ Um, probably about the same, although we, hopefully a little better than everyone else's endowment, and the hits that it's taken in the last couple of years, you know, we're coming back just like everybody else is, and we're not where we'd like to be, but, um, there's an effort on the foundation's part this year to create new interest in endowment requests and those long-term kind of gifts. Hayek/ Do you, do you think you will see a, a drop in support from the foundation as a result of either the economy or just the (inaudible)--- Craig/ We did not, they try and give us an increase every year and we did not get an increase t his year. But, you know, they are committed to, um, keeping that support at least level. Bailey/ I want to ask sort of a detail question. When you talked about your computer usage are you talking about use of your computers in there or also use of the wireless internet as well has increased 7%. Craig/ Both. In fact the wireless use is up higher than the, the in-house use. I mean, we only have so many computers, so--- Bailey/ Right. Right. Craig/ ---but the wireless use is up considerably higher than even the public access computers. Bailey/ I think, I think people are dropping their home access and coming--- Craig/ Right,--- Bailey/ ---to the library. Craig/ ---it's an economic thing. Bailey/ Yeah. Craig/ Right. Dean/ And the number I quoted was just our computer equipment use; that did not include wireless. Bailey/ Oh, it didn't. Dean /That number that I quoted. Craig/ Yeah, it does. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Eventsl meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Bailey/ The--- Craig/ Ithink it does. Bailey/ The increase includes wireless--- Dean/ Oh, well the sur--- Bailey/ ---because--- Dean/ the survey amount Ithink--- Craig/ Right. Bailey/ Okay. Dean/ ---but, but the uh, over the five year amount, yeah. Bailey/ You are seeing increased use of your wireless Internet. Craig/ Yes. Bailey/ That makes sense. Page 19 Champion/ And this is a weird question, but the 45% of your respondents that did not think the library was excellent, what were they smoking? (Laughter. ) Craig/ I don't know. I think they haven't been in lately. Champion/ I mean, that's amazing. Craig/ Most of them thought it was good, you know, there are people who would never give excellent to anything. Bailey/ Would never say excellent. Yeah. Wright/ It's Iowa City. Yeah. I have to admit I'm one of those, but I would have given a "very good" if that had been offered as an option. Craig/ See! (Bailey laughs.) Dean/ And I think that our, our survey said that actually is quite, I don't know if "extraordinary" is the right word, but you, even, over 50% excellent is quite admirable. So, good to excellent was what, 85% total? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Champion/ Yeah. Page 20 Bailey/I think the most amazing thing about our library -I see a lot of libraries because in my volunteer work we fund a lot of libraries-and, um, ours is so incredibly busy all the time. And you, and across the state you don't see that. You don't see that in Des Moines, you don't see that in Marshalltown, you don't see that in the small towns. It's incredible. Craig/ No, you don't. Um, there was a, an invitation on the, the listserv that goes to Iowa libraries today, and a, a much smaller than Iowa City town, but they were celebrating the fact that in their 37 years of existence they were ready to reach a milestone of 1.5 million checkouts. We did that last year in one year. So, it's taken them 37. Bailey/ But you were nice about it right? Craig/ Oh, I didn't say a thing. So, it's taken them 37 years to do what, you know. And a 2% increase in circulation doesn't sound like a lot, but it's more checkouts than many libraries in Iowa do in a whole year. I mean, if you have an increase of 100,000 or 200,000 a year, it's not a huge amount percentage-wise because our circulation is so high, but. Bailey/ And you attribute the drop in attendance of story-time with the Park and Ride; anything else you think is going on with that? Craig/ Well, I think a little bit of it is Coralville reopening--- Bailey/ Oh, sure. Craig/ ---because it, you know, I, we, probably picked up some use from Coralville when they were so hard to get at and people were parking on their front lawn. For awhile they had worse parking than we did. And, um, and when they reopened it went the other way and unfortunately it happened about the same time that we were having to say to people we're dropping--- Bailey/ Mm. Craig/ --um, this parking reimbursement. So that may be part of it. Um, it is concerning because early literacy efforts are so important and story-time and reading to young children and teaching parents to read to young children is something that we're trying to do more o£ And so it's disconcerting when the audience even, it's down like .02%, um, but we don't want it going that way; we want it going the other way. Hayek/ I'm just curious some of your smaller circulation CD, DVD, video, uh, those flat, increasing, decreasing with Internet, Netflix and all that? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai i:3uaget worn Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 21 Craig/ Actually, our AV circulation goes up across, continues to rise across the board. Um, we just started a program to improve the, the maintenance of some of our AV collections. And, we're taking the movies out that have circulated more than 200 times. And, there are a lot of them, so our, that type of circulation continues to grow. I think, if I were to predict somewhere down the line music will probably be the next format because so much of it is moving to digital. I don't know. Our, our music collection is still very heavily used. Bailey/ And your new technology collections, the downloadable books, I mean, how, what are you seeing with that? How's the success rate with that? Craig/ The newest downloadable collection we have is electronic books, and we started that in the first week in December, and we own two hundred and some downloadable electronic books now and we gain new patrons, you know, they have to register in that service, and so we gain new patrons, between three and seven new people a week, go and sign up and start using it and people are having a very easy time learning to use it. Easier than when we introduced the audio download. Dean/ Even as we increase the downloadable, uh items -we did the downloadable book, books on tape a few years ago-circulation of hard copy things continues to (inaudible)--- Bailey/ Mm-hm. Dean/ ---replacement of, of the traditional library with the, uh, virtual library is not happening here. Bailey/ Oh, I don't buy into that myth. I think people, there will always be people who want to hold a book. Champion/ If you could ask for one thing that wasn't money what would it be? Craig/ That wasn't money? Oh. Wasn't money .. . Bailey/ This is Susan ... (laughter) ...she's like .. . Champion/ Is there something that doesn't cost anything? (Laughter.) Craig/ Dale's even laughing over there. He's thinking she never wants anything that isn't money. Oh.. . (Laughter.) Hayek/ A money printing machine. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council (Laughter.) Page 22 Helling/ I was laughing because, the second question, I don't think there is anything that doesn't cost money. Champion/ That's probably true. Bailey/ You've got all the feelings of good will that you could want, right/ Craig/ I was going to say, you know, the response from this community survey that we, that we did was so positive that it does energize you, and it makes you realize how valued you are in the community and it's nice, I mean I know it, but it's nice to hear it. And, um, so that was very good, and the survey did cost money, but, still, it was nice to hear. Champion/ Well, I can guarantee that my grandchildren think it's my library, well it is, and, um they love it, I mean they can't wait to go. And we've been, I've been to visit them and taken them to their libraries and they just can't wait to get back to Iowa City library. You've done a terrific job, Susan, really, thank you. Hayek/Thanks, both of you. Okay. If the Youth Advisory Commission is ready to roll you can come on up. And at this point Council members, uh, you'll see in the packet that you received tonight, um, the materials that are in our, uh, information packets are repeated here in this, and there are page references on the, uh, updated, um, schedule that Marian gave us and you can see, for example this one's pages 51 to 53, just for your reference. (Clears throat.) Hello. Youth Advisory Commission Heywood/ Hello, um, I'm Luan Heywood from the Youth Advisory Commission. Um we are requesting $4,500. This reflects, um, an increase of $250 from the fiscal year 2010. There are no changes from the request that is included in your packet. Um, so this $250 deviated from 2010 is coming um, it's, it's different in three main points. We chose to discontinue requests for, um, money, for a Back to School Funfest, and our participation in the Summer of the Arts Global Village Program. And also we're requesting, uh, a new item, which is a recognition scholarship as outlined in your packet. Hayek/ So this is a, this, uh, the recognition scholarship, have you launched this, this is, uh, something you intend to do. Heywood/ This is a plan. Mm-hm. Hayek/ And your, you know I can't tell if your, these are the exact same materials that are in your information packet then. Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Heywood/ Mm-hm. Page 23 Hayek/ Other than the recognition scholarship are the other, uh, estimated expenses as shown here the same as last year's, or have those been modified? Heywood/ Um, our, we, the request for $1,000 in Youth Forums is new, and um, that's all. Bailey/ I wanted to ask anon-financial question. Um, I know that the Youth Advisory Commission has had challenges filling its, um, its slots and I assume that the Commission has addressed that and is, is working on that to be more aggressive about recruitment, and I'm assuming that the recognition scholarships were part of that discussion--- Heywood/ Mm-hm. Bailey/ ---what else do you, what else do you think would help, um, get more people engaged in the Commission? Heywood/ I'm not sure, um, exactly. As, as a Youth Advisory Commission we're disappointingly, uh, under utilized by, by our demographic, youth. No one really knows why that is, so, uh, that's why we're trying to ramp up our advertising and marketing efforts, um, and our presence in the community. Wilburn/ Um, can you share your thoughts with the Council, um, it's more of a structural thing I know, you'll be looking at the, at the by-laws, uh--- Heywood/ Mm-hm. Wilburn/ ---sometime soon. Um, some of the more recent applicants have been from other communities. Do you want to share your thoughts on that? I know you all had your opinions about that, but .. . Heywood/ Well, um, right now we're constrained by, uh, several things that are written into our by-laws. Um, four of our seven spots are delegated specifically to different schools and for example, um, we're having trouble, um, getting Commissioners from Tate Alternative High School, um, and so. Also, so, seven minus four, um, we have three at large spots which currently are all filled. We have, so we're running at five out of seven, um, and our quorum is four. So we're having trouble, we're having quorum issues. And also, um, for the Regina spot, we've had several people who are interested in, um, joining the Commission but they live outside of the city limits; Regina being, um, I believe the only school that is, accepts people from outside the city limits, so we're having trouble there. Hayek/ Sounds like it's a good idea to look at those by-laws. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (BoardslCommissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 24 Heywood/ Mm-hm. Hayek/ Make some decisions. Heywood/Our next meeting. Bailey/ Might create an opportunity for us to form some more cooperative ventures with our adjoining communities and, and the County. I mean, I don't know. There might be opportunity there too. I don't know. Wilburn/ Yeah, I think we'll, we'll give it some thought. In the past there was a blend with some of our other boards and Commissions where we`ve had, uh, people from other jurisdictions, uh, try and apply for Commissions, the thinking was that, uh, Iowa City tax payers want their tax dollars to go to etc., etc., but, I don't know. Heywood/ Mm-hm. Wilburn/ The, uh, the Commission will have, share their thoughts about that with the, uh, the by- laws. Bailey/ Perhaps we need to look at a different format, a different model. Heywood/ Mm-hm. Bailey/ Seems like a nice opportunity here. Hayek/ Any other questions for Ms. Heywood? Okay. Thank you for your time. Heywood/ Thank you. ADA Celebration/Disability Awareness Month Kickoff Hayek/Next is the Americans with Disabilities Association, or ADA Celebration, pages one and two. Ruff/ Tonight, I don't have one but I have two projects, but they are interconnected. And you'll see as I go on. The first one is the ADA Celebration, which happens every July. But this is a very special July because it's 20 years old, and because of the speaker we are seeking to help, we're asking for a little more than usual. We've always tried to educate this city's public as to why ADA is necessary. And the City has always cooperated. So for that one project, instead of $900, we're asking for $1,400. That will include the compensation of the speaker and getting him or her to Iowa City. The other project is very different, but the government has put it on our shoulders. October has always been National Disability Employment Month, for the entire month. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 25 And independent living centers across the country have been asked to have akick-off program that lasts for the entire month. It was how far people with disabilities have come in employment. We no longer are janitors. We're behind desks. We even work in banks; we're realtors. We're finally getting somewhere, so the government has asked all independent living centers to try to illustrate that with a complete month of October. And we are asking for $2,400. That would cover a number of speakers, and it would cover our gratuities to these speakers. We're hoping that even if we can't get the total amount, we're hoping that we can get most of it. Because we're in a situation where we get so much money from the government that we're told we can raise only so much. Champion/ Keith, how much, um, money would you plan on raising? Ruff/ Well .. . Champion/ I know you can only raise so much. Ruff/ We can, I think we can go up, the government would allow at least $1,000. Because most of the money they give us is to help other people become more independent. And we have to detail that every year, how many people we have helped. And we do cover, a eight to nine county area. Champion/ Wow. Hayek/ Mr. Ruff with, uh--- Ruff/ Yes. Hayek/ With uh, uh, budgets being what they are, we, if you, if you assume we have an extra let's say $500, and you had to make a, for, for your group's work, and you had to make a difficult decision between the first and the second project, do you know how you would choose to handle that? Ruff/ Yes, because I think the project in July is worth all its money in gold. Because no matter how many times we talk to people, and remind people that it's not a disability, it's a person behind a disability, and that's what ADA is about: trying to show the rest of the world there are people behind the disability, just like every one of you sitting at the diaz; you're an individual person. So, we would go for the July. Wilburn/ Keith, think I noticed that, uh--- Ruff/ Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa Gity city councu special auage~ ..a~ Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 26 Wilburn/ ---one of the, you have a panel discussion with some of the agencies, promoting some of their activities. Have you had a chance to approach them yet about possible contributions or in-kind contributions to the disability awareness kick-off? Ruff/ No, because we, we wanted to see what would happen here first. Wilburn/ okay. Ruff/ And we also wanted to know which project we should hone in on. Wilburn/ Sure. Thank you. Ruff/ You're welcome. Dickens/ Will there be any sponsorship opportunities for this? Ruff/ I hope so, Terry. But again, it's very early in the process. We do have a separate committee for each project, and whatever news or questions I bring back tonight we'll discuss. Hayek/ With respect to-did you have something, Regenia? Go ahead. Bailey/ You, you serve a large county area, you indicated. Do you raise other, do you raise funds from those counties as well? Ruff/ Uh, those counties usually fight for poverty--- Bailey/ Okay. Ruff/ ---but we' 11 try if, we' 11 keep trying. Hayek/ And, and my question, sir, was, uh, with respect to the kick-off project--- Ruff/ Yes. Hayek/ ---the second project, um, a lot of times when, when groups are trying to start something new they have a sense of the minimum budget amount that, that's required to even warrant--- Ruff/ Yes. Hayek/ ---trying it in the first place. Is, and I know you don't want to bid against yourself here, but is there a, is, is there a minimum amount below which you just can't start this? Ruff/ I can take it back to the people who gave me that figure. The first figure I took care of, for the ADA project. The second figure was done by other staff. So. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 27 Hayek/ Okay. Ruff/ So, we will discuss that. Hayek/ Okay. Ruff/ I did remind you it was trying to showcase people with disabilities being employed in jobs that are meaningful. Champion/ Keith, why couldn't you incorporate some of these ideas into the 20-year anniversary of the ADA? Ruff/ Because it's, government has designated October as Disability Employment Month. And because they pay most of our bills, we have to. But we could try and see what that would, would entail. Hayek/ Any other questions? Dickens/ Thanks, Keith. Hayek/ Thanks for your time. Ruff/ Thank you. Hayek/ Uh, there's been a request to take a quick bathroom break and we're running ahead of schedule. Why don't we take five minutes and then head on back. (Break) Landlocked Film Festival Hayek/ Let's get started again. Next on the list is the Landlocked Film Festival, pages 36, 37 of . our packets. Hello. Blackwood/ Hello. I'm, uh, ready to go? Hayek/ Sure. Blackwood/ Okay. Um, hi. My name is Mary Blackwood, I'm the Creative Director of Landlocked Film Festival. And the first thing I want to say is, on behalf of everybody from the Landlocked organization, we have, we want to give a huge thank you to the City Council and to the City of Iowa City for all the support they gave us in last year's festival, both financial and otherwise. It was absolutely incredible, and, and something that helped us enormously in making the third festival the best one ever. Um, I do have a little slide show for you. Okay. Thanks. We, we're not that great at, we have a little bit of difficulty deciding how many people come, but we do count heads at, at the theaters, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 28 so we know that over 12,000 viewings of movies occurred at Landlocked this year. Uh, there were hundreds of people who attended workshops, panels and other events. Uh, we know at least, there were more than 50 film artists and screenwriters whose work was in the, uh, in the festival, traveled from outside Iowa to come to the festival. They were staying in our hotels and eating in our restaurants as well. And, um, for those of you who don't know what "Sixteen to Life" is, that's um, a movie that was shot last year in Iowa, and uh, it showed, it had its Midwest premiere here, at, at Landlocked. And it drew hundreds of people from around Iowa, and the reason I know that is because the week or two before the festival we were getting um, a lot of frantic calls from people saying, "I have to have tickets to this! How can I be sure I can go to this movie?" So we knew people were coming in from where it was screened in McGregor, but also other places in Iowa. And a ton of people in the town also cam, and and had a great time. Now, let's see. And there's, there's just some of our sidewalk crowds, the, uh, the evening of the, the uh, Midwest premiere of "Sixteen to Life." Um, we decided on a new event this year, we're not fancy enough to have a red carpet in Iowa City, so we had a green carpet instead; kind of like green Iowa. We knew that the, um, stars and the director of "Sixteen to Life" would be there so we thought, what a fun event to have. And in fact it was like the best kind of madness, hundreds of people actually came to talk to the people, to the stars, to watch them being photographed and to get interviewed, actually, outside. Like, this little guy is one of the stars of `Sixteen to Life" and that was a big thrill for him to get interviewed by the CBS reporter. Um, and to the left you can see Holly Hirsh, who was the star of the movie. Um, let's see now. And here's the inside of the Englert. We actually sold it out. Actually a little bit more than that; at one point the Englert staff came to us and said stop letting people in. (Laughter.) And every seat was filled. Um, that's Becky Smith, the director, at the front taking photographs because she was so excited by it. And the balcony was totally full, uh, there were people sitting on the steps. And everybody really loved the movie and got to hear from the, you know, filmmakers, the local Iowans who worked on it, and some people from L.A. who came. Now, Becky herself is actually from Okoboji. Um, but she is now a UCLA professor of, at the Film and Theater and Television Department. And, uh, this is her first narrative feature. She is an Emmy-nominated TV director though, and she's a great screenwriter. She also gave a workshop at this Landlocked in screenwriting, and a lot of local people came to that because there are a lot of local people here who do screenwriting, and that was a really incredible and wonderful, um, workshop that she gave. She had such a wonderful time here too that she said, "I want to come back and do another workshop." So, she's coming back, and, this coming August, and this time she's going to give a workshop in directing, because she's very skilled at that. Um, and by the way, she's also still thanking us all the time for the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City city council apeciai ouayC~ rr~i Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 29 experience she had here. She sends us cards all the time and tells us it was like a, the highlight of her year, at Landlocked. And it was a highlight for us too. We also had some, uh, our first international guests. (Laughs.) The minute they got, uh, woke up in the Sheraton in the morning they had to be taken to the hotspot of tourism in Iowa. (Laughter.) And this is, um Ast Kesselbach, he's on the right, and then on the left Sonny LeHeigh. I never can say their names right. Fortunately, they speak English. And they are big fans of American movies, so they knew exactly what this was. They asked to go there. Um, they were, I think this was the first time an international guests have come to an Iowa film festival, specifically to come to the festival. And it was part of the Danish film program which a local woman, uh, Danish-American woman, Berget Koffmann, out together, and we also had sponsorship from the Danish, um, Immigrant Museum in Elkhorn, Iowa, and the Embassy of Denmark in Washington, D.C., also sponsored this program. And then we were able to get Sonny and Ast to come over and they brought one of their films with them. And we also showed about another 10 Danish films. And so they were able to talk to the audience too. Now, they also had a great time here. Uh, they walked around town and just talked to anybody they felt like, and as far as I understand they're still corresponding with some people they met at Landlocked. And, uh, if they do a feature film they're coming back with it. So that was very exciting for us, and for the town, because I think people really enjoyed meeting them. Um, here's a guy, he came on a, kind of on a whim, um, John Putch is in the upper left; he's with Dana Delaney there. And he, he is, um, very, uh, very experienced television director. He's directed a number of episodes of shows like "Ugly Betty," "Scrubs," um, "How I Met Your Mother," um, but he, um, um, on the side he likes to make independent features, just really cheap ones, with some of his favorite actor friends. Lot of faces you can recognize. Um, but he also, he calls it micro-budget film making, and he, like I said, you know, he wasn't sure if he'd have time, I got an a-mail like the night before the festival and he was saying, "Where should I stay?" Uh, I said, I didn't know who he was, I didn't know how much money he had, I said, well, there's the Super 8 in Coralville. (Laughter. ) Blackwood/ I said there's also a really neat boutique hotel called Hotel Vetro. And ten minutes later he e-mailed me back and he said, "I got two nights at the Vetro." So, you know, he had a, he had a great time here too. That's him with his Q&A with the audience in the Englert after they watched his movie. Um, he was really lively. In fact, he liked it so much he wants to come back. And in fact we, we said we want him back. He will give a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 30 micro-budget film-making workshop at the next Landlocked. So we're just developing relationships that are going to, we think, keep building on. To let people like Becky Smith and John Putch come and teach people here what they know about film making. Um, oh and one other thing about John Putch. I didn't realize until after he left that he's actually Jean Stapleton's son, if any of you remember "All in the Family." I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. Uh, these are just some stills, you know, I, I love all these movies we were able to play at this last festival. There's so much diversity in what we show and what we offer to the public here, um, documentary and narrative. Um, oh, another interesting thing we did this year is, before the festival started the UI College of Public Health just contacted us out of the blue and they said, can we do a screening and a panel with you guys. And we thought that was a wonderful idea so we sent them some of our documentaries we knew we'd be playing. They picked out the one on the left. That's "Garbage Dreams," which I think, um, has been nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Feature Documentary, or at least was in the running. It's a really excellent, um, documentary, and right after it, that happened, the, um, College of Public Health had some experts on a panel who talked for 45 minutes with the audience. They liked doing that so much they want to do it again (clears throat) next year. And we said we definitely want them back for that. Um, let's see. What else? Those are just some more fun ones. I, I love all the, the, the one in the lower right is actually, um, from Spain and it's called "Manuel Practico Del Amigo Imaginario". Wow. (Laughs.) It was a great one. Uh, so what's next? Okay, uh, I just attended in December a film festival summit where I hung out with, uh, and got to meet with and network with, uh, a few hundred of my fellow film festival directors and, uh, people like that. And there were people there who were from, uh, 35-year old festivals like Telluride, and others, and when I heard what they had done in their early years, I, I could see we are doing everything right in the way we're going along, in our goal, in our strategy of becoming a destination festival. I also learned a lot there and met a lot of people I can get some information from that will help us take Landlocked further into the future. Um, one of the things that we really liked doing and that we heard from the film makers, especially from our Danish film makers, is that the educational opportunities at Landlocked were a really great part of it. One of the, uh, workshops we did this year was with PATV, and that was to, it was like do-it-yourself film making, to show local people how to make films and to let them know that PATV is there to help them continue with that. Um, so they want, they're really excited about doing that again this coming year. And we're excited about that too. We want to get as many local people to know what, what's there, how to make films. If they're a little shy, we want them to come and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 31 feel more comfortable about it. Um, now we, we do screenings throughout the year, and in fact the College of Public Health can't even wait until the next Landlocked so we're actually, this, this coming Monday on January 25~h at the library, um, we're doing a screening of "Katrina's Children," um, a feature documentary, and they'll have a panel of experts with it. Yeah, so that's free at the public library at 7:00 PM. And feel free to come please. Um, okay. Where was I? This is just going back to the excitement of "Sixteen to Life" again. Um, it was very funny that Holly Hirsh, who, like I said, she's a very, uh, she's a very experienced young actress, uh, and she's in the picture with some of her young fans there on the right. She told us, uh, "Sixteen to Life" premiered at Method Fest, which is in L.A. County, and what she told us after Landlocked is, she said, you know, Method Fest felt like the small-town festival and this, Iowa City here felt, felt like the big time. And this is a woman who lives in L.A., and goes to these things all the time, so she thought we, uh, you know, had a wonderful experience here. She loved it. She still remembers it and I think a lot of the people in the town still do. I know I do. Um, Becky is still working to get distribution for her film. And that's always the sad story for all of the independent film makers, that it's very hard to get your movie, documentary or narrative, into a theater. Um, the fact is that all too often the only place, the only chance we'll ever get to see these movies is at a place like Landlocked Film Festival. And these movies, you know, in an actual theater, and, and these are movies that deserve to be seen in an actual theater. And, here in Iowa City, because of Landlocked, we can do that. Thank you. Hayek/ Thanks. What questions are there? Wilburn/ Are you familiar with the Council on International Visitors to Iowa City? Blackwood/ Um, yes, I've heard of that. Wilburn/ Uh, I was just gonna recommend, you might want to contact, uh Jean Lloyd Jones--- Blackwood/ oh, yeah. Wilburn/ ---is the contact that you might want to link up with them. I know this month, they bring different sets of professionals to, um, to the community, but I know this month they're bringing a group from Russia and they're going to be doing some filming. Uh--- Blackwood/ Actually, that's, thank you because that's--- Wilburn/ ---at the University here. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 32 Blackwood/ ---that's what we'd like to do, is to work with people like that. Maybe combine resources to help bring these people. Wilburn/ Right. Blackwood/ Mm-hm. Thank you. Wright/ I asked the same question last year and, uh, I'm anticipating the same answer but I want to ask it again anyway.. Blackwood/ Okay. Wright/Um, you've got a pretty good, uh, projected attendance this year. I mean attendance last year was terrific. We went; we had a terrific time. Blackwood/ Mm-hm. Wright/ Uh, have you considered, again, the possibility of just charging a nominal admission to a lot of these events? Because your budget is quite small, and even a $.50 or $1 admission to a number of these would, would--- Blackwood/ True, and--- Wright/ ---be, be quite a boost. Blackwood/ and that, I absolutely remember you saying that and we talked about it a lot and what we did was, this past year, we did charge for some movies. What we decided to do, because, you know, it, it, we have a small budget, but still, you know it takes some money to put this on, so we decided for the narrative features on Friday and Saturday night in the Englert we charged $5. And everybody who came was like, oh, whoa, $5, that's worth it, that's nothing. Everything else remained free. But that allowed us, in it, just by itself to come out in the, in the black instead of just spending every penny we had. So we've got some money to go forward this year. And we would like to do the same thing this year, is to go with the narrative features in the Englert and charge for those at night, because that feels like going out for a movie, and a, you know, dinner and a movie or something, and keep it, uh, keep it at $5, but then have the other things be free so that nobody will be kept from going to something at Landlocked; that everything will remain, you know, as much as we can have accessible will be. I know I'm willing to pay $5 for something like that. Wright/ It was worth it. Blackwood/ And it was a great idea and thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Hayek/ Do I understand this correctly, that the overall usage of the Englert, uh, netted the Englert, or brought the Englert $5,000? Blackwood/ Mm-hm. Hayek/ Is that? Blackwood/ Yeah. I think we paid them $4,2001ast year. Hayek/ Okay, but .. . Page 33 Blackwood/ I, but we're working on a deal right now with Sean, it's kind of like, yeah, uh-huh. Hayek/ Yeah. No, it's just interesting to, to see the impact of one non-profit on another--- Blackwood/ Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Bailey/ Mm-hm Blackwood/ And we even did talk them about selling tickets through their box office but they were like, no, just do it the way you did it last year. We don't care. You know, it can be either way, but we pay them a rental fee basically based on the number of hours we're in there. Mm-hm. Champion/ Well, you certainly were successful last year. You must feel really happy about that. Blackwood/ Yes, we are. We send thank you things to Becky too sometimes. (Laughter.) And actually to a lot of people because there just, you know, everybody who made it great, including the people who, the audiences who came. It was an incredible experience. Bailey/ Mm-hm. Blackwood/ And I hope it was for the town, too. Bailey/ I think it created a very fun vibe downtown. I mean there was a lot of energy. Um, "Sixteen to Life" was really, really fun and--- Blackwood/ I, I think I saw you. Bailey/ Yeah, I was really ...I really liked that movie a real lot. But, you know, it does. It creates an interesting vibe, that we're all about here. It's terrific. Terrific festival. Blackwood/ I think it, I mean, partly for me it's, I, I know I focus on the narratives because that's my interest. I love the documentaries. But I don't mean to give them short shrift, I shouldn't. But I am also the kind of person who likes the fun aspect. Do This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 34 you know? It's like fun, oh it's just exciting and it's fun. But there, there is so much more to it than that. I also have to remember that the educational aspects, you know, really mean a lot to me too. But I, I sure loved that fun event. It was just great. Bailey/ Have more fun. Blackwood/ It was great. The buzz was fun. Yes, it was. Bailey/ Yeah. Mm-hm. Wilburn/ Might also contact, you might have to Facebook or something, there's the, I think the first um, it was like the first mountain bike triathlon, uh, that Sunday. That was called the Sugar bottom Scramble. You might Facebook and see if you can contact the organizers. Blackwood/ Wait ... Is that at the same .. . Wilburn/ That Sunday is when it's going to be, so .. . Blackwood/ Oh. Okay. Wilburn/ And, and people come from all over to do those, so. Blackwood/ Oh. I see what you're saying. Interesting. Bailey/ Yeah. He's seeing complement not conflict, right? Wilburn/ Right. Yeah. Blackwood/ Mm-hm. Hayek/ In lieu of money we're just going to give you unsolicited advice. (Laughter.) Bailey/ We're really, really good at that. Money? It's harder this year. (Laughter.) Blackwood/ You know, we, we did say, we will be self-supporting someday. Um, you know, and I said I'm not gonna always be coming back to you asking for money. But because we know the economy's bad, we actually asked for less than we got last year. Champion/ I know. I noticed that. Bailey/ Thank you. Champion/ We love that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 35 Blackwood/ Because we thought, it's hard for everybody. We will make it stretch further, or whatever we get, and you know, we have, we had wonderful sponsorship from the community and, you know, without it we couldn't do it. And, and the advice was very helpful, by the way. So I appreciate that. (Laughter.) Wilburn/ Neener, neener, neener. Bailey/ Well, we figured as we get these contacts in L.A. who have other contacts ho have money, um, that it will become self-sufficient at--- Blackwood/ yes. Bailey/ ---because people will love coming to Iowa and love supporting this activity, so, yeah, good. Blackwood/ That's in our minds. Hayek/ No further questions I think we'll move on. Thank you, Mary. Appreciate your presentation. Blackwood/ That's it. Thank you very much. (Several Council members thank Blackwood) Summer of the Arts Barnes/ That was a great movie, too. I went to it as well. Hi everybody, my name is Lisa Barnes. I am the Executive Director for Summer of the Arts. Otherwise known as City of Iowa City's Summer of the Arts, which I'm sure you've all seen. I first of all just want to thank you for your past support over the last four years. It's enabled us to get to the point where we're able to offer more programming and do more things in the community. I'm proud to say that I've been involved with Summer of the Arts since its inception, both as a staff member as well as as a long-time volunteer. I've been able to experience the generosity, dedication, creativity and energy the people of Iowa City give back to their community. As we expand our programming throughout the year, it is essential to have the support of our community. In 2009, we added "Sand in the City" which exemplifies our mission by adding the team-building component. This year we're branching out by bringing "The Big Read" to Johnson County. "The Big Read" is an initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, designed to revitalize the role of literature in the American culture, and bring the transformative power of literature into the lives of its citizens -and no, I didn't write that part. "The Big Read" brings together partners across This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 36 the country to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlighterunent. What better way to celebrate Iowa City's designation as a City of Literature? This is a component that we haven't had before with Summer of the Arts, so we're really excited to be a partner in that. The mission of Summer of the Arts is to build community by bringing people together in the Iowa City area to experience, learn about, and enjoy the arts. With the City of Iowa City as our presenting sponsor, the citizens of Iowa City know that SOTA belongs to the people, and we should all be proud of what Iowa City has to offer. SOTA's grateful for the partnership we have with the City to help the arts to come alive in our wonderful community. And, Regenia asked for dates so I'm going to give you that real quick: Arts Fest is June 4`" through the 6`"; Jazz Fest is July 2"d through the 4`"; and back again this year, Sand in the City is August 20`" through the 22"d. Champion/ I loved that Sand in the City. That was so much fun. Barnes/ We're really excited about that. And I wasn't involved with it last year, so I'm really excited to get involved with it this year. And now, mine was brief I'm gonna turn it over to Don Thompson, President of our Board. Thompson/ Thank you. I am Don Thompson. I'm an attorney with Bradley & Riley P.C. in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. I'm very proud to be President of the Board of Directors of the Summer of the Arts. With me tonight, in addition to Lisa, is Dirk Keller from, uh, Common Sense Advertising; he's the immediate past President of the Board, and Mark Ginsberg, who was one of the first presidents of the Board of Summer of the Arts. And they will be here to answer any questions that you may have that they can answer and I will be unable to. The first thing, as Lisa said, your past support has been instrumental in both allowing Summer of the Arts to exist, to literally come into being. People with the City of Iowa City really prompted us and encouraged us to form this organization to, put it bluntly, save some, uh, festivals in this city that were floundering. And it, the City had the foresight, as did the CBB, and others to encourage us to form this umbrella organization to save these festivals. And I'm, I'm here to say through thick and thin we've done that. And we've done it because of the commitment of the City of Iowa City. That's why. you are known, as we are known, as the City of Iowa City Summer of the Arts. Your support has, uh, given us the ability to form the organization and to strengthen the organization. It's also why the City of Iowa City has been prominently, uh, advertised or promoted in, what Dirk Keller has been responsible for, over a million dollars last year in free promotion in print, television and radio media. It's pretty amazing. I'm sure you all saw the City of Iowa City just constantly mentioned in the context of Summer of the Arts. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 37 But I do want you to know, without your support we wouldn't be here. And your continued support is important to us. We submitted our final report on 12/30, and after my remarks Lisa will provide you with some additional written information. I don't have a lot of time; I could stand here for an hour and a half and talk to you about why I think Summer of the Arts is worthy of your support. We'll provide you with additional written information. Uh, Marc Moen gave me a letter, uh, late this afternoon that he wanted to submit to you. But I'd like to stress just some of the things that are important to me as an owner, uh, of a small, professional corporation in the city of Iowa City. Why am I involved? Why is this important to me? I'm a business person. Um, it's important for three reasons. One, it has a real economic impact. It is an economic development tool for this city and for this area. And I'll talk to you about why I believe that's true. Second, it has a direct, positive, economic impact on this city and on this area. And third, not to ignore the economic impacts, but it has a huge social impact, and a very positive social impact, on this city. Economic development: well, first of all it's no accident that the members of our board of directors are owners or key employees of significant employers and businesses in this city. On our board, we're represented by the University of Iowa Community Credit Union, Randall Electric, The Iowa City Press Citizen, West Bank, M.C. Ginsberg, Goodfellow Printing, Lepic and Kroeger Realtors, Common Sense Advertising, Lensing Funeral and Cremation Services, our firm, Bradley and Riley P.C., the University of Iowa, Knowledge Meridian, Inc., Blank and McCune, McGladrey and Pullen, Security Abstract, and the Rose Law Firm. People and owners from all of those businesses give their time and talent and money to this organization to make it thrive. The reason we do that is because we know the importance of investing that time, talent and money in an organization that brings back benefits to us as business. owners. Why is SOTA an engine for economic development? I think the answer is really simple. SOTA is in part responsible, well, we are totally responsible for events that I think are vitally important to creating the kind of atmosphere in downtown Iowa City that makes our city attractive to firms like ours and other employers. We, and I'll give you an example, when we decided to open an office in Iowa City, I think it was in 2002 that we started thinking of looking, we'd open the office in 2003; we looked at office space in Coralville; welooked at office space in outlying areas in Iowa City. We kept coming back to downtown Iowa City. It wasn't easy. There wasn't much space available. Uh, we certainly didn't locate in downtown Iowa City because our clients were excited about trying to find parking places or going into parking garages -you know how much clients love parking garages. It wasn't because the cost of occupancy was inexpensive; it was much more expensive downtown than in many of the places we looked. It wasn't because people coming down to see us from Cedar Rapids could pull right off the interstate into our offices. We chose downtown Iowa City because it's the most attractive This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 38 place for our existing employees and for the people that we expected to recruit next year, five years from now, ten years from now, and twenty years from now. It gives us a real leg up when we're interviewing people and we bring people in from out of town. And SOTA, Summer of the Arts plays a vital role in making downtown Iowa City that kind of place. It is exciting. I wake up every morning, get in my car and drive to downtown Iowa City knowing that the moment I walk out the door I'm gonna find the best restaurants in the state; I'm gonna find the best retailers in the state; I'm gonna find entertainment almost every day of the week almost every week of the year. It's a great place. It's a place where our employees want to be and our future employees will love to come to. We're gonna provide you with some hand-outs about economic impact, positive economic impact. And they include information about measuring that economic impact according to the Americans for the Arts economic calculators for the corridor area. You've seen the numbers. You know what we do. Uh, with a budget of only $350,000, just approximately, and attendance of over 100,000 people, those guidelines tell us that we have a direct economic impact of more than $2 million on this community every single year. And we produce revenue for local government of approximately $110,000 each year. That comes, certainly, from local people spending local dollars. But it also comes from people coming from out of town. Like Mary indicated with Landlocked, bring in folks from out of town, coming to Iowa City because of the arts and culture that we're providing to them. We did an informal survey a couple of years ago at the Jazz Fest, and we learned that over 35% of the audience at Jazz Fest was coming into town from out of the area. And 15% of that, of, of the people in total were from out of state. I mean, those are new dollars. Those are dollars that we wouldn't otherwise see in this community. In terms of positive social impact I could go on and on and on. Team-building: why is team-building important? I spoke to the City Manager in a another community this fall about festivals and about things that make them attractive to cities. This particular manager is responsible for promoting a festival in which his city invests the majority of the dollars to put on the festival, in fact I think probably 90-95% of the dollars. We talked a lot about the benefits that that festival gave to his city. And he said, you know the one thing that we really couldn't do without and one of the major reasons we support it is because of the team-building aspects of the festival. He said it brings together our staff, our employees, and members of the community in a real team-building effort to put together a festival like that. He said, I couldn't ever give that up. And we deliver team- building, and you can't believe. Um, we depend upon hundreds and hundreds of volunteers from this community to put on these festivals. Not board members, not employees, but volunteers, people that come in and do the dirtiest jobs and spend the most time that you can imagine. But one of the fun things is that our board, our staff and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 39 those volunteers every year have really intense but positive and joyful interaction with the City staff. And I'm looking at Rick because, I mean, how could we do Sand in the City without the cooperation of someone like Rick? It would be impossible. And that's terrific I think for both the city and its citizens. Diversity and tolerance: um, is there anything like Summer of the Arts to present things that attract people from all walks of life in our community, from all economic strata. It's amazing. You walk downtown and you see everybody represented. And that's something that not many communities can pull off, and we're able to do that and I think it's terrific. Think about the neighborhood that we create downtown. Think about the common interest that people have in what we do downtown. And I think that gives you a sense of that. The other thing I want to talk about, and very briefly, is the whole village commons idea. Uh, SOTA I think really enhances that concept in the city of Iowa City. And I was thinking about commons, the gathering place, places in cities and I said that I have an office in Cedar Rapids. I love that town. I've been there for many, many years -I've never lived there, worked there for many years-- but I'll tell you I can walk into a restaurant and see somebody I've known for 30 years, and I haven't seen them for 5 years because there's no common gathering place in that city. The city of Iowa City is so fortunate, I mean, think of the cities that you really admire in the world, you know, you may think of Boston in the United States, you may think of Venice, Copenhagen, um, Sienna, any number of cities. What do they have in common? They have that centuries- old tradition of a gathering place, a common space where people come together, where people see one another, meet one another, greet one another, renew friendships, renew acquaintances. The city of Iowa City has that. The downtown area is our commons. And it's not a commons because of its physical attributes; it's pretty, it's beautiful, we have great architecture. It's a commons or a village commons because of the things that we do in downtown Iowa City. And I think SOTA is an important part of that. We enhance that public space by providing high-quality, family-friendly, and free arts and entertainment throughout the summer, and now, I am proud to say, into a lot of the different parts of the year. And, and I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention "The Big Read." Susan Craig is here form the library; they're our partner. And, and this isn't the first time that we've partnered with them. Without them Arts Fest wouldn't be what it's been; they've been a terrific supporter of Arts Fest. They've teamed with us. Another great example of how we have team-building in this organization. Your investment really greatly enhances all of these things. And I've spoken for quite awhile, so I'd like to just thank you again for your consistent and strong investment in Summer of the Arts. On behalf of the Board and the community that you serve, we again ask you to continue your support at the level we've asked for. Uh, and Lisa and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 40 my fellow board members present and I can answer any questions, I hope, that you may have. Hayek/ How is, not, I guess sponsorship? Tough season .. . Thompson/ It's a tough season. Um, but, uh, on Sunday you'll read a little bit more about, uh, you may have seen the Press Citizen, I think, on the 30th, had ten issues to watch in 2010, and one of them was arts and culture. And I read that and I said, man, we've done the things that they've asked for and, and they're going to publish a guest opinion, uh, on Sunday. Uh, sponsorship, we've doubled our efforts. We've quadrupled our efforts. Let me tell you some of the things we've done. First of all, the Board of our organization has given more money in the past three months than it's ever given in any fiscal year, in its history. Number one. Number two, uh, as President of the Board I sat down with people and I said we need to restructure this Board; we're not going to have a fundraising committee anymore; this entire Board will be the fundraising committee. And we've been more active in fundraising than we've ever been before. We've lost sponsors. Uh, we have. And we will continue to lose sponsors; we will have some sponsors reduce their gifts. One of our major sponsors has already told us that this is the last year we'll have support at that level. But we've also found new sponsors. We have to find new sponsors. It's a lot of work, but you all live in this community; you now we only have so many large businesses. And it's tough to raise the kind of money that we need to raise every year. I think, Lisa could tell you, but I think our budget for sponsorship's right around $175,000. We're holding our own. Um, we can't quite make it every year. But we're doing other things. We're asking more sponsors to give us in- kind uh, uh, donations. We're asking them to give us things that we otherwise would have to pay money for. A couple of examples: uh, Mark Moen has recently given us free office space. In February we'll have no more rent to pay. That's a terrific benefit for us. It's just like handing us a check for $10,000. Uh, Myron Construction provides tons of things in-kind for us. Lots of people do, and of course the, the promotions people. The other thing we've done, um, Mayor, is we worked harder on the budget this year than we ever have. We spent more hours, Board hours, on the budget this year than we've spent in the aggregate in the five years of our experience, or of our existence. And we've cut to the point I'm confident that we're going to survive this year and we're going to do, do well. But it's going to take a lot of things falling into place such as the City support to make that happen. Hayek/ No questions? Thompson/ Sounds like my exit. Dickens/ My God, you've anticipated everything. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 41 Barnes/ But since you guys have so much extra time, we thought we'd get you involved with "The Big Read." And we just got our delivery of books today, so I'll give you each a book. Champion/ Thank you. Bailey/ Thank you. Barnes/ And you can actually go to the Iowa City Public Library's website and post your comments. And there's going to be a variety of book discussions going on throughout February and into March. Mims/ Thanks. Champion/ Good presentation. Thank you. Thompson/ Thank you very much. Wilburn/ $6.99. Could donate it back to the City. Just read half of it. Bailey/ Donate it to the library when you're done with it. Wilburn/ Oh, there you go. Champion/ I do think it was, oh, very helpful for the City and organizations to put all of this under one umbrella, under Summer of the Arts, makes it, it's just much easier to deal with, on person. Thompson/ And a lot easier for us. That, that's a great point because I was active with the Iowa City Jazz Festival and it's a real struggle to operate an organization with a budget like that, and when we combined the organizations, see one of the things it allowed us to do is to have a staff person. And it makes a terrific difference. Um, you know, Mary did it, Mary Friedan did a great job for us. People mention Sand in the City, that was her idea, and she had to sell that to us as a Board. But we're extremely happy to have Lisa Barnes back, um, and uh, I think we're in terrific shape in terms of our structure and our organization. But yeah, we're, we're very glad that the City and others encouraged us to form this organization. Thank you very much. Hayek/ Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Susan, we'll have to donate the books to the library after we read them because they're worth--- Craig/ Well, the library is getting their own ones. Hayek/ Well, these are worth $6.99, so .. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 42 Craig/ That's not what we paid, though. It was a grant. Hayek/ Hello. Backyard Abundance Meyer/ Hi. My name's Fred Meyer. I'm the Executive Director of Backyard Abundance. And thank you so much for allowing me to come before you and speak about Backyard Abundance, and also thank you so much for supporting local organizations. That's a wonderful thing. Tonight I want to tell you about Backyard Abundance and where we've been, where we're headed, and, uh, what we're, some of our activities. I want to tell you a lot about the effect that we've had on the community, and some of the benefits that we're providing to the city and to our community. I founded Backyard Abundance in 2006. This is our fifth, our fifth year. And I founded it as a response to people's disempowerment they felt when they were faced with our environmental crisis. Everybody wants to help the environment. I don't think anybody wants to trash our, our home right? But when we're faced with all these environmental crises and the magnitude of these crises, nobody quite knows what to do. They try to do something and they're not quite sure if what they're doing is effective. And so that creates a feeling of disempowerment. And that doesn't really make people feel like doing anything more. And so that's why I created Backyard Abundance. It's, this is a response to that; to help people learn how to directly help their local environment. And so, we do this in three primary ways. First way, is yard tours. And we find peop-- find communities, I'm sorry, find people in the community who have consciously designed their yard to benefit the environment and themselves. Then we open up that space for a couple hours and allow the public to come in and see the space, talk with the homeowners to understand why the homeowners did what they did. And we often invite local experts to talk about the environmental features that are in the yards, whether it's a rain garden, or a prairie, or whatever, rain barrels, and people get ideas and they take those ideas and they go back home with them and hopefully implement them. That's been the mainstay of our activities, is these yard tours. And what's really interesting about these yard tours is people meet each other. We usually have anywhere from, on average, about 65 people attend these yard tours. But a, sometimes we've had up to 100. What's really interesting about these yard tours is people don't make Facebook friends here. They actually sit down and talk with each other. That's one of the things that we learned early on was if you put chairs out people sit and they stay and they talk and they talk and they talk; because they're meeting up with people of like-mind, people who want This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa clty city councn apeciai ouuyca ..~ Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council. Page 43 to help their environment but they're not really sure how. And they actually get to spend time with local experts to learn how they can actually help the environment. The other thing we do is we hold presentations around the community. And these presentations are at schools and churches and the library showing people how to actually (inaudible), held film-screenings, and, uh, held design workshops. That's the third thing that we do: workshops, actual hands-on workshops showing people how to implement these things in their yards. We held a prairie planting workshop last year to show people how, how to plant a prairie in their yard. Uh, this summer we showed folks how to actually look at their entire backyard and design the space so it's environmentally friendly. So hard to know what to do with your backyard, you know. We all have these huge swaths of lawn. What do we do with lawn, right? Well, we show folks how to divide that lawn up into these really wonderful little spaces that feel natural and nice and actually benefit the environment and also are more self-maintaining. You know, often times our yards are modeled after our, uh, industrialized agriculture system. We implement these gardens that require tons of energy and tons of resources to maintain them. What we want to do is give people ecological skills, ecological knowledge so they know how to create spaces that are vibrant, so that they're vibrant and resilient and improve the health of our environment. And throughout all of this, this isn't just about landscaping, it's not just about gardening, we're constantly telling people how it fits in the big picture of our community. Their yard actually plays a role in our community, for bettering its health. So we'll show people where they fit in a watershed so they'll know how if they install a rain garden how that's going to improve he water quality of our community. So, if they want to plant food in their yard, they'll know exactly how that impacts \the, the, uh, the environment. That food won't need to be grown elsewhere, won't need to be shipped in with a lot of energy. And so we're always relating it back to the community so they have a better understanding of where their yard and, and they fit in our community; have a better understanding of what their role is. And so, we show people how to plant food, how to install rain gardens, how to plan great, beautiful landscapes like I was saying. And some of the benefits to the City are: reduced, um, pollution through reduced waste that goes out to the landfill; people learn how to compost stuff; they learn how to make a compost bin, alright; they learn that they can actually hang onto the leaves that fall on their property and compost those, just rake them around a tree; really simple things like that. If I understand right, one of the major, uh, carbon emissions of the City is the landfill. And so we're helping reduce the amount of carbon emissions that are produced by the landfill because we're showing people how to recycle and hold onto their waste right on their own properties. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 44 Some of our partners have been ECO Iowa City, New Pioneer Co-op, University of Iowa, Field to Family, Environmental Advocates, Local Food Alliance. What we do is we try and partner with as many folks as we possibly can. And we try to promote their efforts as much as we can because, feels like when it comes to the environmental movement there really hasn't been much of a movement in the environmental movement. Our whole environment is constantly just crumbling around us. Part of the reason it's like that is because all of the environmental organizations haven't really linked up, haven't really joined up and worked on one, uh, kind of worked together. So what we want to try and do is promote everybody efforts, kind of bring us all together to magnify all of our efforts. And ECO Iowa City has been a wonderful partner in that respect. I've loved working with Jen Jordan and, and Maeve. We, uh, worked on a couple of projects together. One is the, uh, Rec. Center. You may have heard that the north side of the Rec. Center there they have torn out bushes there and we designed a space there to be kind of an outdoor classroom for the children there, so they could go and learn about nature. And, uh, we also are implementing garden beds there that are more self-maintaining, (inaudible) designed based on ecological principles so that will reduce the amount of maintenance that actually, landscaping maintenance, that actually takes place there. We also, uh, sponsored a worm composting workshop at the library of all things. And you know what? I love vermicomposting, but, 90 people showed up. Crazy. You know, I, I love composting but I didn't think 90 people would .. . So this year's actually, 2010 is a real pivotal moment in our history. The past four years we've been kind of passively educating people. Well, this year, we're going to launch a series of ongoing classes called "Create Abundant Landscapes." And right now it's a series of six core classes that will be held on weekends. And we'll be teach---directly teaching people how to implement all these ecologically sound features that they've seen in these, in these yards. And to, uh, the, the yard tours that are mentioned, the yard tours that we've been doing, those will actually be integrated in with the classes. So we'll take the participants that are going through the classes and get them involved in the yard tours as well. They start acting like mentors in our community and tell people what they've learned in these classes, and that will help other people see them as mentors and that will start spreading this idea of creating a resilient community throughout the rest of the community. So, hopefully it will rapidly spread. To, uh, real excited about create abundant landscape and so to announce this to the community we're holding a 2-month, uh, events series called "Seeds of Sustainability." And so from now until mid-march we're going to hold a series of events, there's about, oh, probably eight or nine of them, um, lined up right now, and it culminates with a workshop that's going to be held at the Pomerantz Center on, mid-March, March 14th, or This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 45 March 13`h and 14`h. And we've invited a speaker to come in and teach. He's an expert, his name is Dave Jacky, but he's an expert in teaching ecological design. And (inaudible) a workshop on how to create resilient communities by following these principles and practices that are in, that you see in healthy ecosystems. So, real excited about that. And it' 11 be held at the Pomerantz Center. With that, like I said we're very excited. Avery big year for us, and uh, um, with that I'll open it up for questions. Wright/ I noticed your, in your, uh, estimated major expenses you have a fairly substantial budget-line there for salaries for 16 public events. What salaries are you talking about there? Meyer/ This has been, for four years this has been entirely volunteer basis. It's been all volunteers and, uh, so we're hoping to pay some of our volunteers now so they don't get quite so, so burned out. And I, I'll admit, I am one of those volunteers, and, a lot of uh, a lot of what we've been doing has been, I don't want to say it's simple, it's fairly complex, but we're actually going to be offering very um, sophisticated, a very sophisticated curriculum at these classes and so that actually costs a little bit of money to put all that together. So that's, that's what it's .. . Bailey/ So can you talk a little bit more, because I think we all have a good understanding of your programs, and thanks for all that information, I've, I've certainly seen you out and about, explain a little bit more about the structure of your organization. You've been all volunteer, you're a SO1C3? Meyer/ Yes. Yes. Yeah. Bailey/ And now you're moving, I'm assuming these salaries are more stipends for the, I mean, talk a little bit about how you're organization works. Meyer/ Sure. Sure. So, we got a, we're anon-profit like you say. We've actually made us, ourselves anon-profit this past year, and we have a board of directors, and a lot of the board of directors, well, we have board of directors and then we also have committees. And a lot of those folks will be the ones who are going to be receiving those salaries. They' 11 be the teachers at these, at these events, and so we wear multiple hats. Is that kind of what you're looking for? Bailey/ Yeah. Just how, how you're structured, I mean, you've moved from all volunteer - you're four years old you said? Meyer/ Yeah, this will be our fifth year. We started in 2006. Bailey/ But you have a governing board right now? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai ~uaget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 46 Meyer/ Yeah. We have nine, nine, nine people on our board of directors. Hayek/ How, do you have a membership or a volunteer roll or how do you count your total clan, so to speak? Meyer/ Yeah, we're a, we're a ...Yeah, that's been an interesting question. Um, we're going to start a membership this year. But we actually haven't had a, a membership. Hayek/ How many volunteers then do you count in your ranks? Meyer/ Well, probably about, core, probably about 15. Yeah. And, and you know it's an interesting question too because folks that we have on our, that volunteer their yards for these things often volunteer a lot of time getting their yards in shape and, and all that, so, you know, you could broaden that circle out to include them as well. What's interesting about that is these people opened up their yards, consciously designed their yards to help the environment are always asking us to come back and see them again, so, in some cases we've had yard tours, um, at yards over again because they want to do more and show people more, and so it gives people an opportunity to see the progression of these yards. Champion/ Also forces them to keep it all in good shape. (Laughter.) Meyer/ Yeah. Right, right. Bailey/ Are you regional or just based in Iowa City, the, with your yard tours? I've mostly focused on Iowa City. Meyer/ We try to focus on Johnson County. Yeah. Yeah. But most o our events take place in Iowa City/Coralville. Hayek/ Any other questions? Okay. Thanks, Mr. Meyer. Appreciate your time. Magalhaes? Johnson County Historical Society/Irving Weber Days Magalhaes/ Good evening ladies and gentleman. Uh, my name is Shaner Magalhaes. Nice try there, mayor. Appreciate that. Hayek/ Yeah. Magalhaes / (Laughs.) It was close. Uh, I'm the Director of the Johnson County Historical Society, um, and I'm here, uh, on behalf of the Irving Weber Days, uh, event. Uh, first of all I want to thank you for, uh the City's continued support of Irving Weber Days. It's hard to believe but this is an event the City started in 1998, so, we're going on, on, uh, the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special isuagei vvorK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 47 thirteenth annual event, uh, this coming spring. Uh, we, it's been a great, great celebration of Iowa City history, as I like to call it. Um, we are, uh, requesting, as you know, sort of a reinstatement I guess if you will uh, of the, uh, funding for this event to $10,000, uh, from the current fiscal year's $7,790. And I'll get into that in a little bit. Um, one of our goals as an organization of course is to do, uh, engage the public about the County's history, uh, through exhibits and collecting artifacts and, uh, doing those kinds of things. But, uh, one of the main focuses that we've had in the, the last couple years is, uh, really doing things that bring history to life, uh through events and programming, and, and things of that nature. Obviously, Irving Weber Days and all the different things that happen during that whole month, uh, fit in perfectly with that. Uh, so we've been absolutely delighted to be the lead planning organization for Irving Weber Days these last two years. Um, obviously we're, we're very indebted and, uh, thankful for all the partners that we work with, uh, on Irving Weber Days. And I want to acknowledge, uh, the Iowa City Public Library that's already been mentioned before, and probably been mentioned by several organizations, uh, as a great partner, uh, Friends of Historic Preservation, uh, work with us, University of Iowa, Project in Place Studies, the Iowa City Genealogical Society, the Press Citizen, the host Noon Lions Club, uh, last year we even brought in another faction, a competitive service club, the Kiwanis Club was involved as well, uh, and we also got various local businesses involved, uh, last year too, so, again, we're really trying to make this more and more of a all encompassing community event. Uh, and I think one thing that really helped that, uh this past spring was bringing the event downtown, uh, which Mr. Hayek and, and Ms. Bailey suggested the previous year; that maybe we ought to think about having it be a downtown event. And that uh, that really helped us connect with some of the businesses downtown and that kind of thing and we hope to build on that, uh, this year and the following year. Uh, so that, that was really a great idea. Um, one of the, the purposes for, uh, for trying to, or requesting that the City uh, bring the appropriation back to the $10,000, uh, is very simply, as, as the folks from Summer of the Arts mentioned, uh, you know, it's it's increasingly difficult to, uh, go out and find sponsorships and so forth. And this is a pretty, uh, uh, modest event budget-wise, as you know, but we do have some additional expenses that we have to go out and raise separately from City support and, uh, you know, we have the same challenges as anybody as far as, uh, trying to find that money. Um, for this, you know the $7,790 is for an event that will happen this May and it'll be a great event with the $2,000 less, but, uh, obviously, uh, you know with more support we can do even more, uh, programming and more events and so forth. Um, so that's what we're certainly hoping to bring to, to going that direction rather than the other direction. Um, I guess, believe it or not, I can be brief. (Laughter.) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai tsuaget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 48 And I'm going to be brief tonight so I have lots of other things to talk about in terms of Irving Weber Days, but I think that kind of hits the highlights of, uh, what we're trying to do and basically just reiterate our, uh, uh, great appreciation for the City's support over the years and, uh, hopeful that, uh, we can continue that partnership, uh, at the same or higher level than before. And I'll be glad to answer any questions. Wright/ How was attendance at the events, uh, last year? Magalhaes/ Um, it's always kind of hard, I guess, with events that are spread out. We estimated about 750, uh, at the ice cream social. Uh, it's a little bit easier to quantify all the other events that go on during the month because it's usually a lecture, or it's a tour that people have to buy tickets for, um, I don't recall of the top of my head from my report that I submitted, uh, I think we had 1,128 people participate in the other events during the month. So in total we had close to 2,000 people that, uh, participated in one thing or another during the month. Wright/ Is that up from previous years? Magalhaes/ Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Champion/ You've done a lot to kind of get this program off the ground. It never quite moved along very well. Magalhaes/ Thank you. And one, on e of the things we'd like to do, uh, this year, and I've never done this before so I don't know if it's too late to even think about this, but several of us were talking about doing a, a SK race, uh, run/walk that would include various historic, uh, landmarks in Iowa City that, especially the walkers could actually stop, and there might be historical interpreters there or whatever, uh, to talk about the significance of that site. The runners, not so much because they would run too quickly. The interpreters could run along side them or something (laughing), "This house was built in 1847..." or something. Um, so, you know, we want to add things like that, that kind of, uh, maybe have a little bit broader appeal. Again, we think that it's been a very successful event and, and we get a lot of, uh, participation but we, we want to keep growing it and, uh, try to find some things that are true to the, the purpose of celebrating Iowa City history, but also can have, uh, a little bit more general appeal for folks. Bailey/ Did you talk about a swimming event because wasn't ...wasn't Weber a swimmer? Magalhaes/ You know that, that was, yeah, we've talked about that before. Um, we haven't quite figured out how that would work. The closest we've come and we haven't done this yet--- Bailey/ We're talking triathlon, I think is what we're talking, going towards. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 49 Magalhaes/ (Laughing) Well, yeah, we could do ...the closest we've come to having a swimming thing involved with this is a old fashioned swimsuit fashion show. (Laughter.) Magalhaes /And, and you know, we'd be open to any of the Council members that might participate in that. Wilburn/ Or dunk tank for the Mayor. (Laughter.) Magalhaes/ That would be a good one. Wilburn/ That is Bike to Work Week, I believe, so you might want to consider--- Magalhaes/ Guess we could connect with that. Wilburn/ ---talking with Bicycles of Iowa City or .. . Magalhaes/ Yeah. That's be great. Bailey/ We're moving towards a triathlon aren't we? (Laughter.) Hayek/ Has, has going downtown changed the, the programmatic structure in any way? I mean, are you, are you doing the same -I was there two years ago, I wasn't there last summer-uh, two summers ago--- Magalhaes/ No, we added quite a few things last year. We had an antique car show. We had a Iowa history, Iowa City history trivia game show which, uh, I think Connie's daughter might have won, in fact. (Laughter.) Magalhaes/ She was amazing! I didn't realize she knew so much about Iowa City history. Champion/ It was probably a good guess. Wilburn/ That was rigged. Rigged. Magalhaes/ (Laughing.) Rigged ... Um, so it gave us the opportunity to have lots of different venues. Uh, we had something in the Senior Center and uh, we hoped to have something in the Englert, and unfortunately it wasn't available. It really, uh, added a lot to our ability to have lots of different things going on. We had a, a Granny Basketball Game at the, at the Rec. Center, which was just a hoot. Uh, these ladies that are 60, 70 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 50 years old and they dressed in 19~" Century, uh, basketball outfits and, and they played by the 19`" Century rules, and--- Champion/ Idon't play by those rules. Magalhaes/ (Laughing.) ---it was just hilarious. Wright/ You don't play by anybody's .. . Bailey/ There are no rules for you, Connie. Magalhaes/ We almost had your daughter convinced to participate in that too. She was gonna do double duty there that day, but. Uh, so, yeah, again, we want to continue doing more stuff. We want to do a scavenger hunt, uh, this year that would take people into the different, uh, downtown businesses, especially ones that are, well, they're all pretty much in historic buildings, but, uh, you know, really kind of get people in there and, and, you know, maybe they've walked by but, you know, get them inside the stores and so forth. Hayek/ What, um, if last year's attendance was roughly 2,000 what was the year before and the year before that? That's, if you recall .. . Magalhaes/ Um, I would say that, well, if you're talking about yeah, the whole month, um, I believe, because I've only, I've only been, you know, I've been involved for two years now, having taken this job, um, two years ago I think it was roughly 1,500, uh, and then the next year was probably 1,750, something like that. So, we're going in the right direction. Hayek/ Yeah. Magalhaes/ But we'd like to get to the point where we're drawing 10,000 people. I mean, that's my goal. Champion/ I think you've got some good ideas. You're moving that way. And this was, it really was a festival that was dying; it wasn't moving up, and now it is moving. And you've got a lot of great ideas here. Magalhaes/ Thank you. Dickens/ Did you work with the, uh, cable, I know Irving Weber did a lot of his, uh, shows, you know, his bus tours, you know. If that could be coincided with your program that might help. Magalhaes/ Yeah, the, the library runs those pretty much the whole month of May and during the day of the ice cream social they have the, the shows going and .. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai rsuaget vvorK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 51 Dickens/ Irving signed some of my books though, before he passed away. Pretty neat guy. Magalhaes/ Yeah. Yeah, one thing that we heard, uh, last year in particular, I don't, not so much the first year I was involved for some reason, but there were a lot of people saying, well, who the heck is Irving Weber. I mean they had a great time at the event, but they didn't really get who Irving Weber was. So we, we need to do a better job, especially at the ice cream social of really making it clear this is why it's called Irving Weber Days. This is who Irving Weber was. Because there are a lot of people, of course, that, you know, have moved here since he's been passed away and wouldn't have any reason to know who he is. Hayek/ Well, and apropos that and Mr. Dickens' comment, the essence of Irving Weber is not only those videos but the books, you know, the Lions' Club books of which there are 15, something like that, volumes. Is there any way to incorporate that back into the public reading universe? Um, especially in this City of Literature. Magalhaes/ Well, um, certainly at Irving Weber Day events throughout the month the Lions' Club is often there with, with the remaining books that they still have for sale, uh, and at the ice cream social. Other than that we're, we're, we talked to the press Citizen the last couple of years and I'll try again this year, uh, we'd like to have them re-run at least a few of those columns during the month of May. Uh, but so far we haven't had any luck with that. So, if you guys have any influence with the Press Citizen. (Laughter. ) Magalhaes/ Does that mean you don't? Wright/ Only with the food column. Bailey/ Nice. Champion/ Irving Weber's book? Wright/ Actually, we have Martha Weber's recipe box, so. Bailey/ With recipes? Wright/ Martha Webers. Bailey/ With recipes? Wright/ With recipes, yes. Magalhaes/ Oh, wow. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 52 Bailey/ That's neat. Magalhaes/ So maybe we can have you do an activity .. . Bailey/ So maybe there might be some food columns in the Press Citizen that would be r Magalhaes/ Could draw from Martha's recipes, yeah ... That'd be fun. Wright/ There was one last year. Hayek/ Any other questions for Shaner? Thank you very much. (Multiple Council members thank Magalhaes.) Magalhaes/ Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Hayek/ Children's Museum if you're ready. Iowa Children's Museum Dunkhase/ Good evening Mayor Hayek and City Council members. We are very grateful to be here tonight, and extremely thankful for the opportunity to come and talk to you about the Iowa Children's Museum. I would assume that a lot of you have been to the museum to play; I've seen a lot of you there before. We exist to inspire every child to imagine, create, discover and explore through the power of play. We make a tremendous impact on this community in the areas of educating our children and improving the quality of life of children. We have, uh, this is actually our tenth birthday year. We just finished celebrating; we celebrated all year long, which was great for us. In ten years we have seen our attendance grow dramatically. And when we opened in 1999, we had about 70,000 people come through our doors. And we just finished this year with 125,000 people, so we have seen tremendous growth and it continues to build. So we're very, very excited about that. We are here tonight to ask for your support for an event that we do out at the Johnson County Fairgrounds every year. One of the things that's happening to the Iowa Children's Museum is that we are truly bursting out of our walls. Um, we come, and we have for several years, Fran and I were talking about this as we were sitting here tonight, we have been involved in events in Iowa City for years. We have collaborated with the Iowa City Public Library, with the Englert, Summer of the Arts, the Sand, uh, Sand in the City, we came to Irving Weber Days to help out Shaner, um we worked with Riverside Theater, with the Downtown Association with a new event that was just put on. We very. very much believe in collaborations. Collaborations are what have really helped make the Children's Museum thrive. And I'm really sad to see that, uh, Backyard Abundance This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 53 just left because we were going to invite them to the event that we're here tonight to talk to you about. But we'll track them down. (Laughter.) One of the things you possibly could be asking yourself if you haven't really immersed yourself in the educational experience at the Children's Museum is why is the Iowa Children's Museum important to the City of Iowa City. And there are truly so many reasons why we are important to you. One of the ones that could mean the most to you is that we do have a membership basis; we're anon-profit, we have about a little over $1 million operating budget every year. We earn about 50% of what we need for operations and we solicit the other 505 from sponsorships and grant writing and, uh, support from individuals. Out of that 1,500 family membership, we just looked it up today because of course our numbers change pretty much weekly, 842 families are from the Iowa City, the Iowa City city, within your city limits of Iowa City; 842 families, so that's 56% of our membership. And that's a trend that we have seen from the day we opened. We, um, and we're not here today to talk to you about our new aviation exhibit that is just amazing and I really hope you all come out and see yet. But since we opened that new flight exhibit, bringing in, though we're not here to talk about it, we brought in over $1 million in funding from grants from outside, um, Johnson County. And we're really proud of the fact that we're able to do that. In this economy, which many people have talked to you tonight about how challenging it is, we felt it was really important to look outside our backyard to look for funding this year. So with that new exhibit opening in September, of course we track our daily numbers in attendance, and our attendance has gone up, it has grown 20% October through December 2009 over last year the same time. Out of that attendance, 15,266 from Iowa City have visited the Iowa Children's Museum, that's 52% of our attendance in that quarter. So we take very seriously, and we're very responsible to the people who live in Iowa City, and serving them in the best possible way that we can, to help them provide resources for their kids. One of the things, or the thing that we are here to share with you tonight, I'm going to ask Fran to come and speak to it, is a very exciting, um, event that we put on right here in Johnson County. Jensen/ I might add to what Deb said, my name is Fran Jensen I'm the Director of Development and Marketing at the Iowa Children's Museum. From the $1 million that we received in grants, um, from out of state grants, of that $1 million we will spend, um, 96% here in Johnson County. So we also follow that chamber, buy local, and we believe in that, and that we want to invest that back into the community. What Deb is handing out to you, and there's just a cute little boy on the front, and, um, that this is Move It, Dig It, Do it, and this will be our fifth year that we, um, will be hosting the Move It, Dig It, Do it out at This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City counai ~peciai ~suagei vvvrn Session (Boards/Commissionsl Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 54 the Johnson County Fairgrounds. This has been the perfect location for us to be. Um, we looked at different things to do, um, with this event, where, you know, we wanted to do a real family event, that um, boys, girls, moms, dads, grandpas, grandmas, it didn't matter, everyone would have a great time together. And we'd be following our mission to inspire all children to imagine, crate, discover and explore through the power of play. Well what better way is there to play than to climb up onto a, a crane, or to climb into a great big tractor and to be able to honk horns and talk with the people that operate these machineries, so that these children can learn about what, what all these big pieces of equipment are about that they see outside of tier window as they're driving through the streets of Iowa City, and, and beyond. And, um, what those equipments for and what they do and how they change their lives. Being the Iowa Children's Museum, uh, we always have hand-on learning, uh, activities. We do garden stones every year, we've had, um, this'll be the fifth year, we've had people come back every year and the first thing they want to do is make a garden stone. With Backyard Abundance could have a great way to put hat in their backyard and figure that out as the children grow through the years. Um, we have, uh, Johnson County 4H groups come in. They bring in their sheep and cows and we had donkeys and miniature horses, and so the kids, and it's amazing, you think, you know you're, Iowa City is, you know, kind of rural, but there's many children that the parents have said, and they never have this opportunity to get this close to these animals and see an actual sheep-shearing demonstration. We want to make it a whole day event. We provide our, our volunteer guild provides the Dig It Cafe. So families can come in, we provide very, um, reasonable priced, um, uh, refreshments and they can come in and, um, enjoy the day, have a little break and then go back out. The highlight of the evening, the whole day I think is probably when the UI helicopter lands, and at that point everybody drops what they're doing, they run over to where the helicopter landing is and, um, they watch the helicopter land. Um,-the first year that it happened, um, the pilot came out and I went to greet him and when it happened everyone started cheering. And he said, I've never landed before where people cheered for me, and I said, well, they should every time that they see you because they gotta be glad that you're there. So it has just been really a fantastic event that has grown from the first year, in 2006 we had 600 attendees to last year we had 2,600 attendees. So, we want to keep this growing, we want to stay at the Johnson County Fairgrounds, they have been excellent to work with, um, we just like having it in this community and, um, we would appreciate any support you could give. Any questions? Hayek/ Do you have any sense of the domicile or residence of the people who attended last year's event at the fairgrounds? Jensen/ Well, we don't--- This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Hayek/ I mean you don't--- Page 55 Jensen/ ---we, with tickets we don't really. The one thing I do know is that, uh, we do get calls, um, from all other communities as well, so that we know that we're also bringing people into the community. I've had calls from Muscatine, we advertise in the Muscatine area and trying to get those smaller towns here into Iowa City. Um, we've had Cedar Rapids and Marion, uh, we do get a lot of other areas as well, as well as local. Dunkhase/ One of the other things we've added new to the program, we're actually, this, we've done it a little bit in the past but his ear we'll be doing it in a much bigger way, is we had so many families come to us a last year, local families, asking for free tickets. The economy had hit them hard and they needed some financial support to attend, so we began soliciting in a very small way some additional sponsorship to fund the free tickets. This year we'll be doing that n a much more significant way and so we're hoping, we always shoot for about 20% of anything we do to be absolutely free to families who need the help. The, we have a program at the Children's Museum called ICM for Everyone. And right now about 20% of our annual attendance is actually given away free. So we'll hope to carry that forward into this event as well. Wright/ have you approached other communities in the county for funding? Dunkhase/ Other communities in the county? We get annual funding, I don't know, we got one huge donation from the City of Coralville that has carried us over for ten years, so 2011 will be the year to re-approach the City of Coralville, but other than that no we haven't. Because you're talking about city organizations. We have lots and lots of sponsorships from local businesses, as Fran said, and individuals. Jensen/ And the one problem that we have found with sponsorships is that what we really need to make the vent come alive is to have those construction equipment and farming equipment. And so it's either we can bring in the equipment or we can give you cash. Well, we need the equipment there, and so that's why it's harder for us to find like a big cash sponsor to do that. Bailey/ Have we provided equipment before to this event? Uh, that would probably be from Public Works, right? Fosse/ Yeah, I don't recall. Jensen/ No, but we'd love to have that as well. (Laughter.) Dunkhase/ It's be a good year to start. -. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 56 Jensen/ Uh-huh. Hayek/ Show those kids the leaf vacuums. Jensen/ They'd love that. Bailey/ Lose a few kids in it. Dunkhase/ Last year just to give you an idea of how incredibly fun this is for kids, we had a new activity called the pooper scooper--- (Laughter.) --- and kids actually, we purchased imitation droppings, and kids went around with their pooper scoopers and picked it up in baskets and went around threw it out again. It was great. We had the Iowa City Animal Shelter come with animals that were adjacent to that activity. Hayek/ Hilarious. Bailey/ That's great. Dickens/ It is a great event. My grandkids go to it every year. Look forward to it so... . Jensen/ Thank you. Dunkhase/ Well, we would be, indeed, honored to partner with the City of Iowa City on this, on this event. So we appreciate it. Bailey/ Thanks for your time. Hayek/ Thank you very much. Okay. That brings us to the end of the application/organization interviews. We have a couple of--- Karr/ Mr. Mayor, just to be sure ,there's no other--- Hayek/ I'm sorry, I should have--- Karr/ There's no other group that didn't sign up that's here to speak, correct? Okay. General Bud>:et Discussion Hayek/ So it would appear. Okay. Good thought there, Marian. Alright, we've got a couple of just placeholder items here at the very end of our agenda. One is, uh, the general budget. Any discussion points for that. I don't have anything and I don't know if staff does or if any Councilors have any questions. Obviously we've got a full, full plate next week. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai t3uaget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 57 Helling/ Yeah, it, it wasn't our intent to, to, generate any further discussions, just if you had anything you wanted to bring up. As we prepare information for you for next week. Hayek/ Put this on here just so we can talk about it, notice-wise. Helling/ Yeah. And we will have information for you, it's, it's not in the packet but we'll have it for you tomorrow and we' 11 make sure that, that you get that. Karr/ We'll be releasing, a, a supplemental, or an addition to the packet tomorrow. Um, and we'll release it in the same manner as we do the packet, um, uh, so it will be on the website tomorrow. It'll be, uh, hard copy, and it'll simply be the additional material or the memo that'll be coming. So, it'll be in the same, so if you get your packets electronically it' 11 be there electronically later in the day, and then a hard copy will be over in the Police Department if you're not able to pick it up before five. Bailey/ So you think around the same time too, or shoot for---- Karr/ Uh, later in the afternoon. We're aiming for later in the afternoon, yes. After three. Hayek/ Anything else on the budget? Okay. Discussion of Agenda Items for January 20 Joint Meeting Hayek/You'll notice that on Wednesday of next week we have a, a joint meeting with the local governments up in North Liberty. Something that occurs three or four times a year; North Liberty hosts it this time around. Um, anyway. Karr/ Um, I, we were just notified um, yesterday, unfortunately, we, we missed the Tuesday meeting so we, going to bring it up. I can tell you that two items that are tentatively planned on the agenda is an update on the school district boundary committee process, and an update on the trail connection to Kent Park. Um, I also pulled the items from the last meeting just as a reminder, kind of refresher, and uh, we had Neighborhood and Comprehensive Plan presentation and overview, flood update, a facility plan proposal from the school district, uh, stimulus projects. Again, I just didn't know if there were any things that Iowa City would like to add to that agenda. Bailey/ I think it would be helpful for the group going out, the delegation going out to D.C. to have an understanding of what the other communities, and we can present what we're taking as well, some of it will be review from flood, but it would be helpful to know what Johnson County and Coralville were saying. Karr/ So an issue, an issue type of discussion, general discussion? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 58 Bailey/ I don't know how others feel about that, North Liberty, Coralville, um, Johnson County, um, Iowa City go out there. What do you think? Helling/ I received some information but, uh, each time it's been indicated that that's not necessarily the final or the complete information. Uh, but we did talk about that a little bit in the uh, recent meeting with the Chamber with Rebecca, and, uh, we should be getting everything in its final form. Bailey/ Might be nice to see it at the joint meeting so we all have an understanding of what our local--- Karr/ Are you actually talking about seeing the, the documents or are you talking about just general issues discussion? Bailey/ I think just general overview of what--- Karr/ Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Bailey/ ---of what they're looking at, that would be a lot less pressure--- Helling/ Yeah. I don't know if .. . Bailey/ ---if people are still formulating their documents. Karr/ So, a general issues discussion of D.C. lobbying trip. Bailey/ I don't know what do other people think? I think it would be helpful to, to be in the loop. Hayek/ Or do we get that in advance of the trip through the Chamber? Helling/ Yes. Bailey/ The delegation does, but not the rest of the Council. Karr/ So you would just discuss, you would just suggest that Iowa City would discuss Iowa City's and then the other, the other entities could bring it to the table if they so choose. It's just information. Bailey/ You think that would be helpful.. I think it would be. Wilburn/ Yeah, and just briefly, brief the others as to what we're intending to pursue. Wright/ It'd be interesting to hear. (Several indicate agreement.) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 59 Hayek/ Now, you made reference to the school district in terms of what's already on the proposed agenda .. . Karr/ That's correct. Hayek/ And that includes a boundary, uh, .. . Karr/ The boundary, that is one of the items already on is the update on the school district boundary committee process. Hayek/ Okay. We don't necessarily have to submit anything, I mean. Karr/ No we don't. Hayek/ If you're not the host city, you can, you just, you can--- Karr/ If there were any outstanding issues--- Hayek/ ---live with what they did or add anything you want. Karr/ If there were any outstanding issues, um, I didn't know if we wanted, Connie's our delegate, didn't know if you wanted anything on the, the uh, jail update? Champion/ No. Bailey/ Okay. Guess not. Karr/ If there was anything else. But no we don't have to, we don't have to submit. Bailey/ Just important to have a meeting, so we need agenda items. Wright/ Yeah. Bailey/ But it sounds like we're going to have a meeting, right? Karr/ Sounds like it. Hayek/ I would, I would have asked about the boundary issues but it's already on there so. Karr/ And I' 11 confirm that as well. Hayek/ Okay. Guess that's it. So. Okay, if there's nothing else for the good of the cause,. Wright/ I think we have to give our books back. Hayek/ They said they were ... I don't know what they paid for these, she said they were .. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council 5peciai r3uaget worK Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010. January 14, 2010 City Council Page 60 Karr/ Yeah, we, we typically would ask, our practice has been that you would give them back and they would donate them. Hayek/ Let's do that then. Bailey/ I guess we could ... We can keep this, right? This is just .. . Champion/ I think this is $10.99. (Laughter. ) Wright/ We can start anon-profit book club and the first book for the seven members of said organization can be this. Hayek/ Okay. Been a long week everyone. Part-way through this arduous process. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council Special Budget Work Session (Boards/Commissions/ Events) meeting of January 14, 2010.