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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-01-09 Transcriptionpage I Council Present: Bergus, Mims, Salih, Teague, Taylor, Thomas, Weiner Staff Present: Fruin, Monroe, Kilburg, Dilkes, Fruehling, Seydell-Johnson, DeLoach, Tharp, Bockenstedt, Carman, Knoche, Grier, Nurnberg, Hightshoe, Nagle -Gamin Others Present: Longenecker (UISG) Budget Overview and Highlights — City Manager's Office & Finance: Teague/ Good morning, all. Today is Saturday, January 9th and you are at the City Council budget work session and wanted to welcome everyone. Typically we do this `breakfast on a budget' with the community members present and have a little time to just have some discussions with Council and... and mingle among the community and we're missing that this year here at City Hall, so ... but nevertheless, we're gonna jump right into the budget. Just a few housekeeping things to remind people about is we'll have presentations from different departments within the City and we are scheduled for a few breaks and some lunches, which there's no definite time. We're going to have to feel our way through this agenda and, Councilors, my assumption is around 10ish and ... we'll have some type of a break around the 10 o'clock hour, and we can decide if we want 5, 7, 10 minutes and then around noonish we'll try to figure out a time for lunch, and (clears throat) might propose, depending on how we're feeling, maybe a 30 -minute break there. So we'll just kind of think about how you're feeling about things and as a team together we'll decide that. We're going to start with the introduction of our City Manager. I wanted to welcome Geoff Frain and open us up please with the budget for 2022. Frain: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council. I appreciate your time this morning, especially on a weekend. It's a long day. So my remarks will be kept really brief and we'll jump into the presentation, but I just want to acknowledge, one, the staff work that went into preparing the budget document and getting ready for the presentations today. Staff's really been working on this budget since August, and it's a ... it's a good feeling to be here today to be able to present it to you. It is a long day, and there's probably going to be lots of topics that you want to jump into. I would urge you to ask questions as we go along. And then you all are going to kind of have to gauge how deep you want to get into particular issues today, versus reserving some work session time in the future to dive deeper into any topics that you may want to. So I ... just keep that in mind, especially early in the ... in the morning here. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ashley Monroe, who's going to start the budget presentation this year. Kilburg: Kelly, can I have permission to share my screen? Fruehling: Yeah, you should, but if you ... I'll have Lily take a look at it. There you go. Monroe: There we go! Well good morning, Council. I will be speaking for a while and, Rachel, continue to move us forward through the presentation. I'm Ashley Monroe, the Assistant City Manager and I get the pleasure of starting us off today. So, as Geoff said, we began preparing This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 2 for the budget in August or so this year. We have a slide that ... I can't quite see it yet, but it talks about our budget review schedule. So, we began earlier this summer. Council held a work session in September to review your budget priorities. Using that, we put together and assembled the proposed budget that we'll be talking about today. Tuesday you had a presentation of our capital improvements plan and were of course here in our review this morning. Something for the operating budget review. A couple of dates that we need to keep in mind. We need to set the public hearing for our maximum property tax levy on February 2"d So we'll need to have a good idea of what that maximum property tax levy will be by the end of the month, when we prepare the packet for the February 2nd meeting. That was a ... an addition in the last couple of years that the State legislature requires of us to held an extra public hearing for that purpose. We'll also need to know what the ... the total expenditures of our ...of our budget will be by March 2"d. So we'll be holding another public hearing on the budget on that date, and therefore we'll need to continue to make discussion... have discussions and make decisions on what our expenditures within our operating budget, um, and the capital improvements plan by that ... by that time towards the end of February when we're preparing the packets again. So ... and of course we'll need to certify the budget with the County Auditor by the end of March on the 31 st. So in your budget document there's a couple of areas of focus. Predominantly what we'll be talking about today in the presentation is in the transmittal letter, so that executive summary. Those are pages 9 to 27. We also in the budget, a couple of points of interest might be our ..our fund structure. I'll walk through that chart next. We have our financial and fiscal policies, and of course the general fund summary. So, um, can see all the ... the pertaining page numbers there. I'll hit on our major funds. So those are highlighted in yellow... and... on your screen. We'll start with those budgetary funds, including the general fund. So when you think about our operations that are funded in ... from the general fund, um, they ...they make up the great majority of the things that we do with the City, but not all and, um, fun things like our parks and recreation, fire, police services, um, the City Manager's office, finance. The special revenue funds are project -specific. So those are funds that are going to be dedicated specifically to the ... to projects. So we'll take in the revenues from, for example, the road use tax and those funds are applied directly back into road surface improvements. Community Development Block Grant funding, so that's CDBG, the one on top. Uh, those funds are directed right back into affordable housing and economic development programs for the federal CDBG program. Our debt service fund is just that. It repays the ... any money that we've borrowed plus interest. So those ... those funds service those debts. The enterprise funds, moving along in the col ... in the ... in the column there. Those are more ... they operate more like a business than ... than the other funds in ... in the fact that any service charges and fees that we may take in through... for those services are put right back into the operation of those services. So our... our parking and transit. You pay a water bill and, you know, our water bills are paid. Those bills directly pay for all the operations within our ...our water department and water services. Our capital projects fund, of course, I mentioned that we met about that on Tuesday, and that projects fund services those major infrastructure type projects for the City. And then finally, the non -budgetary funds listed is our internal service funds. Those are simply internal operations that service and improve services for the things that we do on an external basis. So we have City vehicles and so our equipment fund is ... is paid into by our various departments that use those vehicles, and ... and that is, you know, what ... what makes up that ... that fund. You This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 3 know, other things include our health insurance fund, dental insurance, information technology services. So things that we need and require internally and pay into to operate those departments or divisions. Okay, we'll move on to the next thing. COVID-19, um, clearly this year was ... we experienced kind of unforeseen circumstances and therefore we've had to make adjustments all throughout the year, because we've had, you know, lagging revenue levels and you heard several times late last year about the impacts we had to our parking fund specifically. There was a sharp decline in local development. So we'll talk a little bit more about the impacts on that taxable growth leader. There's been uncertainty over the pace by which these things can return and recover to normal. You know, normal at this point, or if they're going to stagnate and we're not going to see that... that piece of recovery that we would ... we would hope for over the longer term, and then finally we recognize that, you know, our households, our businesses, our non -profits, you know, they're financially strained. And so we've had to make adjustments in this past year and we would anticipate that we will do so going forward. A couple of the things that we took action on, and Council took action on this year were, uh, to make a couple of different cuts. The pandemic began when we were still in the FY20 budget, and so we made a $1.5 million spending cut during that time. We made an additional $3.7 million spending cut in this budget year. So we're ... our current budget year. We froze the hiring of six positions that were approved in that fiscal 21 budget. Those were new staff additions. So we did transition the temporary positions to permanent status, but left some of these brand new positions open and unfilled. Council delayed the water rate increase that was supposed to take place on July 151, and we also as part of the support for our residents with suspending water shut -offs and delinquency fees. We expanded the utility assistance program and then the Mayor just recently delayed that ... that water rate increase further until July 1 st of this ... this year now. And finally, there were numerous COVID relief programs in place. So both local and federal funds were provided throughout the community for our households and our businesses and social service agencies. Talking about this year in ... in our FY22. So how are we planning for this? A big goal of our budget was just simply to get back to where we had approved the budget in FY21. So when we adopted that last year, that ... that's what we were shooting for here. There's a modest decrease in our City property tax rate. So that's 10 -cents from the debt service levy. We're not adding any new fees or rate increases this year. We prioritized the filling of those six authorized but unfilled positions, and then are recommending an increase of three full-time equivalent positions in this year. We'll talk about that a little bit later. And then we're going to continue to both use the ... the federal, state, local funds to provide additional relief to our households, our businesses, social service agencies, and continue our investments in our strategic and master plans. So I get the privilege of talking us through our strategic plan initiatives and what we've done. This year on an organizational -wide basis, many of these things are going to continue to be a focus of...of the City and of Council in the upcoming year. And so we thought it would be good to talk about where we're coming from. So starting with climate action, we've got a 24 -cent emergency property tax levy. We did levy this amount the same amount last year. It garners about $1 million, and those funds directly support the projects, programs, and implementation efforts of...of our plan. So our climate action and adaptation plan, and then that follow-up report last year, which identifies specific projects. So we still have the same goals to address, our carbon emissions reduction, and a couple of ways that we've done that are ... uh, to add a ... a annual climate feast. It's a good way to get our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 4 residents involved in our community, involved in this efforts. We've got our Root for Trees program that we began this year. That's a ... a rebate program for tree plantings, um, helping sup... sup... supplement our City's tree planting efforts, and we continue to want to ramp up those efforts. We completed our methane study. That was a major task, uh, looking forward, and you'll see more about that in the coming year. And of course, continuing our ...our new energy - efficiency grant programs. We've done a lot with a very small staff. It has remained largely unfilled or...un... not quite fully staffed for this part of the year. We're hoping to change that soon and just want to recognize the amount of things that have been accomplished, but not alone. Many of our departments are contributing to the climate action initiatives and efforts. For example, our Parks and Recreation division or department planted approximately 60 acres of new prairie, thanks to Council's approval, um, this year, and... and so we're going to do that and work collaboratively throughout the organization for further improvements. So in this year we're... we're working on that momentum. We're continuing those projects that we began this year. We're looking at additional new ways to expand into the community for partnerships on energy efficiency, reducing emissions, and and other ...you know, things that we can do to reach our goals. Were doing some City projects, so LED replacements or...or HVAC -type facility initiatives, solar applications, and then continuing some of these ongoing community efforts. We'll talk about social justice and racial equity. This addresses your strategic plan item, urn .... to enable, you know, social justice and empower human rights. In fiscal year 2021, Council applied a $1 million fund for social justice and racial equity initiatives, as part of your June resolution, and the Truth and Reconciliation budget will ... will come out of this money. They'll also be ... that Commission specifically will be addressing what you should do with that ... that million dollars to help support Black Lives Matter, and reducing and eliminating systemic racism in our community. We'll also be expanding community partnerships and trainings. We've done some of that already this year and look to expand on those ... on those opportunities. The social justice and racial equity grant program, Council's approved $75,000 for the last couple of years, and we're continuing that in this budget. We're also expanding, of course, our translated City materials. Council keyed in on that in our last, um, in your last meeting on the policing plan, and we anticipate doing more of that. The Office of Equity and Human Rights has asked for a year-round intern position. That specifically will supplement more opportunities for us to put on events and trainings in the community, and help with awareness efforts. And then we have a couple of new opportunities and we've reallocated funds to accelerate community policing. One example of this expanded non-profit partnership would be something like the Shelter House agreements you just recently approved, uh, to support homeless services by an outside agency, that ... that is doing that work in the community rather than a sworn police officer. Um, we also, I'll note, are two or a couple of positions that we'll be talking more about, um, those being a new half-time civilian immigrant and refugee outreach position. So we have one full-time community outreach assistant position in the police department. This position will be half-time and specifically dedicated towards the immigrant and refugee populations. The civilian supervisor will assist with getting that con... continuum of...of response, as was ... was proposed in the policing plan, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later, as well as a civilian public safety communications position that would be housed in the communications office, um, supplementing the work for citywide, but trained specifically in police and fire public information and communications. We'll have another slide here. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 5 Council's really been dedicated to ... in the last couple of years in getting our minimum wage up to $15 per hour. So the cost for ..for that ... to do that this year is $416,000 in FY22. This is the year that that happens. So I want to thank Council for just having the forethought and urn ... in setting this goal years ago. Um, it took us steps throughout the last couple of budgets to get to this amount, and although the numbers speak for themselves, it's a ... it's a high -dollar investment. It's long term. Uh, you know, you've... you've made that happen and ... and that's exciting. And let's see ... I think that's it for this one. Okay. We've experienced a lot of discussion in the last year about our social service agencies. We have an Aid to Agencies grant program to support those things. After several years of sort of flat increases, Council recently made a one-time infusion of...of funding to support the Aid to Agencies program. And now we've set a new baseline moving forward for ...for additional allocations in ... in the upcoming years. So you see here we're recommending an increase from fiscal year 2021 into 2022 of 595,000. So that would be allocated this year, and I'll also note that in addition to these funds, um, and the experience of the pandemic, we've had COVID relief support direct to social service agencies and non -profits in our community. This particular year we've already provided over $400,000 in relief to these non-profit agencies that are ... that are providing support to our community, uh, you know, food assistance and homelessness prevention, utility support, those... those types of operations; child care. All of those types of things are...are supported with these funds here. I'll just check my notes. Okay, and then the details are here on ... on the slide. Okay, um, talking about investments in affordable housing. So since fiscal year 2016, the City's invested approximately $9.2 million in affordable housing initiatives. So the budget con ... this budget contains $1 million in general fund support for affordable housing for the third straight year. So over the last several years or so, Council had increasingly made additional contributions to the affordable housing fund, and for the last three we've contributed a million dollars. Um, the breakdown there is ... is identified, um, and I'll also just note that staff is preparing for your 2021 affordable housing action plan update. So that's going to kick off this month, and I'll ... I'll just note that if you break down that $9.2 million, it says in here that... that we've assisted 507 households or affordable units over that period of time. The breakdown, just say know, is $18,000 a unit. So that's what our actual costs are for ...for each of those ... those activities. Move on to ... still discussing affordable housing. We're trying not to rely solely upon general fund and federal dollars when it comes to affordable housing. So we're looking at other options for our revenue streams. So here they're listed, you know, we have several different fee in lieu options. That being specific to the Riverfront Crossings District. We have our TIF increment... or, you know, our tax increment fin ... financing, TIF; fee in lieu negotiations; and our annex... annexation policy fee in lieu negotiations. We haven't collected on the annexation policy, but just noting that it's a possibility. And then our recent examples include $750,000 from Riverfront Crossings. We've got our Foster Road TIF that, as a reminder, is ... is not the fee in lieu, but is 45% of the tax revenues collected there are dedicated to affordable housing and the remainder of that. Those collections go towards repayment of the road infrastructure. And then finally, in the Tailwinds development, it's ... it's upcoming. We're not quite there yet, but there's an anticipated fee in lieu of 1.8 million. Okay. Investments in roads. Everybody likes to talk about these things, especially in the spring. These... this here is an ... a demonstration of our overlays and our patching. So I'll talk about the bigger projects next. We have equipment replacement funds to help the Streets division improve our efficiency, effectiveness. And we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 6 have been ... just based on need, a greater portion our general obligation bonds that we take out are going towards our ...our capital needs on our roads and resurfacing. Couple of items of concern are just that, you know, the increased fuel efficiency and low fuel prices, um, lead to ... lead to at least the stagnation of funds collected in our road use tax and then the tax is allocated by population, and so in uncertainty with the Census count may further impact any large increases that we ... we could potentially see from this revenue source. Okay. We'll talk about the major road improvements. So we've got 2021 upcoming. I'll highlight our Melrose Avenue improvements, Benton Street rehabilitation project, and Orchard Street reconstruction. We're planning... we're continuing to plan for 2022 Rochester Avenue, the Gilbert Street Bridge replacement, and Fairchild Street reconstruction, and some of our, you know, very large roads, to the resident's relief and our communities' relief, include plans to redo Dubuque Street core, Dodge, North Gilbert, Park and Taft. So some of these big collector areas, those ... those are the roads that, um, are largely reliant on general obligation bonds and federal funding. They take a long time to plan for and put in place, and ... and I'll also note that our pavement plan. So the things that we're doing both for the overlays and... and patching, as well as reconstruction, that plan is largely complete and staff is going to set a schedule time to review with Council in a work session. Geoff will talk about that a little bit later. Okay. So along with the outside, we're looking at our ...our internal operations. We need structures and facilities to operate in. Um, I'll thank Council especially for the recent investment in our Public Works facility. So our Streets building, you know, our staff and operations have greatly benefited from a facility replacement. The buildings that we replaced and moved out of were, you know, going on 40, 50 years old, and just don't have sufficient... sufficient resources. There... they were built decades ago and they no longer meet our facility needs. Um, those needs are also present in other areas of our operations. Some of the things that we list on the slide here, for example, of our Transit facility; you know, if we ... if we build a new Police department; we're relocating fire stations or require a greater amount of space for those; and some of our recreation centers. We've got the recreation and aquatics facility planning study coming up, and these funds address exactly that. While this ... this balance that we are estimating of $9 million seems like quite a bit, you know, it's ... it doesn't meet all of our needs. We ... when you think about the Transit facility potentially costing up to ... around $20 million. We're looking at a need for facility replacement and improvements in the tens of millions of dollars. So this is a really good start, but just addressing the... that we're thankful for what we've had so far, but a lot of work is yet to come. Okay, master plan... mark ... Parks master plan implementation. Juli reviewed quite a bit of these things in ... on Tuesday. I won't go into detail with all of the upcoming improvements, but just know that we're continuing to ... to address all of our ..our identified projects within our implementation plans. So we're moving along here. Talk about bikes and our bike master plan, and we, as Kent mentioned too. He ran through a couple of projects on Tuesday, but I'll highlight a few. We're planning those bike lanes on, you know, Benton Street specifically, Southgate Avenue. There's a plan for kind of a navigation around Muscatine Avenue in the surrounding neighborhoods that accounts for that notation there. Bike boulevards, so areas where they'll be signed, um, preferred routes for ..for residents will include areas in Bower, Prentiss. We're ... and South District, Sandusky, Taylor, Burns, and some others that are ... that are included there. One not noted here is the Jefferson, Glendale, and Heather area, um, that'll also have a bike boulevard included. Um, I'll note the Keokuk four to three -lane conversion, and the Highway 6 pedestrian This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 7 trails that are planned. I know that the City had planned to apply for gold status or gold designation for ...as a bicycle -friendly community with the League of American Bicyclists. Due to the pandemic, for various reasons, that wasn't quite ... urn, that we weren't quite ready at that point. So we plan to apply again this August, which is pretty exciting, and if we get that we'll be the first city in Iowa to have that ... that gold bike -friendly designation. Um, we'll touch on the recommended staff. This is the last thing I have for you now. Last year in 2021 budget, we added more staff than ... than we have, you know, in ... years. That included 15.9 full-time equivalents, but those ... those included both new positions, as well as the temporary status employees to permanent conversions. So not quite half or so of those positions new, um, were ... were those temporary conversions. And so, of course, we still have those six positions that are ... that are left unfilled. We've increased the minimum wage up to the $15 per hour. So that's a benefit for our temporary staff. And then I'll just review the recommended additions for core staff support. So as I mentioned earlier, when discussing the social justice and racial equity initiatives and our ...our plans. Those included a couple of positions, that being the public safety communication specialist. As I said, it will support and be housed in the City Manager's office as support for the Communications division citywide, but a good portion, the majority of that portion of that work is going to be focused on public safety, including fire department and police, and acting as the ... the public information officer for those divisions, and offering digital platform support and other messaging... messaging help. So a civilian supervisor that will be in the police department, and as I said, it'll have a greater focus on that continuum of responses model. So a lot of the prevention work, the outreach and other engagement with our community partners, as well as supervising our... our civilians. So community outreach assistance, as I said, that'll be a half-time position focused primarily on outreach with immigrant and refugee populations. And then the balance of those three full-time equivalents are ... one is a .25 hours in our ...in our scale house, so support for Landfill, and scheduling support and assisting with improvement and customer service levels, and the other is a buyer I, um, just making that into a full-time position in our Equipment division, so as we expand our fleet (mumbled) the complexity inventory. They need those hours to help support those efforts. So with that, I will tum it over to Rachel. Kilburg: All right. Salih: I'm sorry, Rachel, but just I want to know when should we ask questions? Fruin: You can... that... that's completely up to you as Council. You can ask them now or...wait till the end. Salih: Yeah, I ... I .... I rather ask them now. If the Mayor agree. Teague: I agree, if you have questions throughout just go ... feel free to answer ..or ask your questions. Salih: Yeah, actually I just would like to, you know, the position that you say like safety position. (mumbled) is wearing officer or just like public safety communications specialist. Is that like a swearing officer or just civilian position? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 8 Monroe: No, all of the... that's a good question. All of the positions here are non... are non -sworn positions. So none of them are police officers currently... are currently specifically to the police department and ... and fire actually as well. The communications, the broad amount of communications put out from both police and fire departments, are performed by those ... those sworn personnel. So our firefighters or an ... a uniformed officer or sergeant, some... something of that nature, a supervisor in those departments. This position would be removed from, you know, although they would have daily interactions likely with those departments, they'd be removed from... from any interpretation as a professional within those fields of police or fire, and providing communication support from the perspective of a professional communicator, at ... with a knowledge of what police and fire do, you know, how ... how can we communicate about, you know, they can help provide support for press releases about fires, rather than waiting for the fire department to provide that information. They can also help provide support for public events and other notices. Any information that the police department may request be put out would be doing so without the sworn personnel being the ones to ... to comprile ... compile that information and put it out to the public. We'd have a ... a civilian person doing that. Salih: Thank you. Monroe: Yeah, you're welcome. Kilburg: Okay, if we don't have any other questions. Thank you, Ashley. My name is Rachel Kilburg. I am the Assistant to the City Manager. I am just going to take the next few slides to talk through just some factors that we have to be aware of as we're going forward. So I'll talk a little bit about the 2013 property tax reform; of course COVID uncertainties, especially when it comes to our development and taxable growth; and then just a couple of other expense items that ... that fluctuate and are largely outside our control. So first, uh, next few slides are going to relate to that 2013 property tax reform. Um, that continues to be phased in through 2024, and it's important to remember that there are several components to this tax reform. So one piece of it is that commercial property used to be taxed at 100% of its value, and that was rolled back to ... to 90%, and that ... a portion of that is backfilled by the State. While in addition to that, multi -family units and apartments were previously taxed as commercial property at 100% of their value. And at the same time, those... those types of property were pulled out into their own separate property tax class, which you see on the screen here, uh, called multi -residential. So they are taxed at a declining rate each year, until they reach the residential rollback rate in 2024. So, uh, that portion of it is not backfilled. So it is on the commercial side, but not on the multi - residential side, and in FY22, that taxable percentage for multi -residential property will be 67.5%. So that equates to about $2.8 million in lost property tax revenue, just in fiscal year 2022 alone. So just for that one year. If you want to think about it cumulatively since it was implemented in 2015 through the end of FY22, we expect that, uh, loss to be over $11 million. And again, we're not receiving any sort of backfill payment for that on the multi -residential side. So then looking at our residential rollback trend, um, and when I'm saying rollback, that ... that just means the taxable percentage of the property. So residential properties aren't taxed at 100% of their assessed value. Uh, the State rolls that back, so that...that... that's what This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 9 we call that rollback rate. And that's set ... that's a number that's set annually by the State. We don't have control over it. And it's ... it's not specific to Iowa City. It's a statewide number, um, and in FY22, it will be at about 56%. You can see it has been much lower in ... in previous years. For example, in 2007 it was low as 44%, uh, and the difference between a rollback rate of 44% and 56% is pretty significant. That actually equates to about $9.5 million, so that's... that's a pretty good chunk of money. So moving on, just kind of pulling those last two slides together. Uh, you can start to see that relationship here between the residential rollback rate and the multi -residential rollback rate. So if you're looking at the top of the chart, in fiscal year 2014 you see before the property tax reform was implemented, multi -residential was taxed as commercial property at 100% of its value. Well, then in 2015 and the years following, you begin to see that multi- residential rate drop each year as it drops lower and lower, closer to that residential rate. So at the bottom then you can see our big question mark is obviously going to be in fiscal year 2024. So that's why... that's what we're referring to as a cliff, because on ... we don't know what the residential rollback rate will be in fiscal year 2024, but whatever it is, the multi -residential rate will have to drop enough to reach it. So on the residential side you can see we've been pretty stable around 55, 56% taxable percentage there, and even if it stays at that rate in 24, we'd still be looking at a 7 to 8% decrease on the multi -residential side. So much higher than the 3 to 4% decreases we've been seeing there, uh, in the past few years. And again, I just really want to point out too, as you're looking at this (clears throat) multi -residential column and seeing that that taxable percentage drop from 100% down to the 63.75% it'll be in 23, we are not receiving any compensation from the State for that. So we're not getting backfill payments for this change to the multi -residential classi... tax classification. Um, the backfill payments that we are receiving are for the commercial property. So as a reminder, part of the tax reform changed the tax ability of commercial property from 100% of ta... of its value to 90 ... well, 95 and then 90%. So we ... the State does backfill a portion of that. Those backfill payments are about $1.5 million annually. To put that into context, that is enough to fund about 15 of our full-time firefighter positions. So that is a pretty good ... pretty good number for a city of our size. But as you know, the future of those backfill payments aren't certain. In the last few legislative sessions, there has been... there have been discussion and different proposals about eliminating or phasing out these backfill payments. So that's something that ... that we'll just want to continue to monitor. We have been preparing for that very real possibility of losing those payments. Things such as the facility reserve fund, for example, that Ashley talked about earlier. So one of the things that actually has been helping us manage through the implementation of the 2013 property tax reform has been just that over the past few years, we have seen some pretty incredible... incredible growth here. So it's important to remember that development translates to taxable value. So what you're looking at here, this building permit construction value. That can be a pretty good indicator of what type of increases you'll see in assessed in taxable value in the coming assessment years. So you can see I'm ... um, we were at a pretty high level the past few years and we didn't really expect to ... to stay at such a high level, but it's clear that COVID really expedited that. So in the past three years, we were averaging around $213.7 million in building permit construction value, and that dropped to 87.3 million in 2020. So it's actually lower than that 2010, 2011 range, and the reason that this is just concerning is because we don't know what that recovery rate is going to look like. Of course you're... you'll hear about it all day. There's a lot of COVID uncertainty. So we aren't sure if it This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 10 will stabilize around this (mumbled) 2020 rate and then climb back up. If...if development will continue to do ... be depressed for several years, which would be pretty taxing on us. We're just not really sure what that looks like. So we'll be keeping our eye on this. One of the indicators that we'll be watching especially is commercial properties. Uh, they make ... they make up a big chunk of this construction value. For example, in 2019 the value of commercial building permit construction value was about 85 million, and it was only 26 million in 2020. So that's a big chunk there. The student housing market is another thing to watch. We've had some big recent additions there, um, recently and there ... that coupled with the fact that there will be continued COVID uncertainty about operations and remote learning for the University. That just kind of brings on an additional concern about maybe a softened market there. So just a couple of different trends that we'll continue to watch. (mumbled) so then we have variable costs. So each year we have a couple of costs that fluctuate year to year, things that are largely outside of our control. These are two of our big ones. So obviously in any given year, it's pretty difficult for us to try to predict the frequency or severity of snow events. But that being said, when it snows, it snows. We have to plow the streets, no matter what those costs are. So you can see that our cost for snow and ice management have been higher in recent years than they have been previously. To kind of give you one example of just how those costs can add up, it costs the City about $25,000 each time we have to snow blow the downtown, and we have had to do that twice in the past two weeks. So just to ... just to give you a little context there. And then the other big kind of variable cost for us is our health insurance costs. These ... we don't have control over these costs, but they're obviously a necessary expense for our staffing levels. And we have really seen with our rates and our usage climb in recent years. We're paying about $3.5 million more today in health insurance costs than we were in 2017, and one other thing I want to note here is that when we were preparing this budget, we had projected a 5% increase to our health insurance contribution rate, uh, for fiscal year 2022. Um, since we released this budget, we've actually learned that that increase is going to be much higher, actually closer to 15%. So we'll just continue to see ... to see these costs go up, and this is really important to consider when you think about years like FY22, where we're trying to really build a status quo budget. Some of these costs, especially personnel costs, which I'll talk more about later, they're really outside our control in a lot of ways, um, and ... and can make it difficult for finding some flexibility there. Teague: I did have a quick question about that. When you talk about the 5% was kind of the anticipated but it ... 15% is the reality. Is that what I understood? Kilburg: Yep. Yeah. Teague: And then I think I just heard you mention that you're going to cover what will be passed on to employees? Kilburg: (both talking) Um, I ... sorry, go ahead, Geoff? Fruin: I can jump in on that one, Rachel. The ... the split between employees and employers is all governed by our bargaining agreements, and then non... our... our management staff or our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 11 confidential staff, non -bargaining unit staff, urn ... uh, generally have mirrored what the AFSCME contract is. So all that's governed by bargaining agreements. Teague: Thank you. Salih: (garbled) but if you can .... oh, Mayor, you done? Teague: I'm done. Go right ahead. Salih: Yeah, if you go back just to the commercial's tax cut, you know, where ... yes. And you said that this is has been cut from 100% to 90%, and we ... we get some fill like, uh... fill back from them, but I just want to ask you the ... the amount that we get from the State, is this like equal to the cut, less than the cut, more? Kilburg: I don't have the exact number of what ... of what that difference is, but it's not ... it's not equivalent to ... to what that rollback rate is. It's just kind of a portion of it. (both talking) So in 2015, um, yeah, in 2015 when it was starting to get rolled in, we were actually receiving backfill payments at a much higher rate, I think over $2 million. So now we're at about 1.5 million. Weiner: (several talking, garbled) So could... Taylor: Oh, go ahead, Janice. Weiner: I just wondered if someone with more history could... could help me understand the rationale for the 2013 multi -residential tax cuts that are now the ... the gift that's continuing to give. Was the ... was the theory behind it that ... that landlords would pass along the property tax savings to their tenants, and has any of that, if so, what has any of that transpired? Fruin: Well, that may have been the theory. That was, uh, the multi -residential piece was something that didn't get a lot of focus during that legislative session. It kind of snuck in there at the end, um, and was a bit of a surprise at the end and ... and clearly hits the college towns more than ... than your average community. I think the, you know, the ... the rationale was ... I think alluded to what you said. You know, it's ... it's ultimately it's residential property. It should be the same as residential. They didn't view it as a kind of an income producing commercial enterprise, but... but... but clearly, you know, the... the ... the owners of multi -residential property are going to charge what the market will bring for their... for those ... for those units, and that has really no bearing on what the ... what the taxability of the property is. So I don't know. I have not seen any studies on passing savings along to tenants, but I would be shocked if any such study could demonstrate that that actually happened. Weiner: Right, so I ... all I wanted to do, I mean it's not gonna change anything, is sort of make the point that this type of trickle down was aimed at the college towns. It almost never produces This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 12 anything in terms of affordability, and we're stuck... we're stuck with that and tenants are stuck with that, and ... and it's ... and it's a cost that we are fully having to bear. Taylor: I had a quick question about the healthcare data, Rachel, and you'd said that it's been increasing. Now is that that the employer contribution has had to go up or is that that the ... the use of healthcare benefits has been increasing? Kilburg: Actually both. Yep, we've seen our usage climbing, especially some higher dollar claims, more expens ... expensive specialty drugs, and then in addition we're seeing annual increases in our contribution rate. Taylor: Thank you. Kilburg: Okay, if we don't have any other questions, I believe Ashley will walk us through some more detail on the revenue side then. Monroe: I'm ready. All right, so we get to now see, urn ... kind of the proportions of what makes up the budget and ... and our funding, uh, both our revenue sources and then Rachel will cover expenditures. I'll start with our all funds revenue sources. This is showing a very simplified version of everything we take in. I'll just highlight the fact that, you know, you see property taxes is the ... the greatest portion of that, followed by our charges for services, our intergovernmental revenues, and I will focus more specifically on ... on the next slide on what each of those are. Um, we're heavily reliant on property taxes. So you see in our ..in our general fund, I'll kind of describe what some of these are. Our general fund is predominantly property taxes. So that's 69% here. We've got our charges for services. As you saw in the all funds, it makes up the second biggest part of that pie. That includes the program fees, our ...our housing and building inspections, animal care. Um, you know, that's... that's also our ...our water, our refuse and ... and recycling charges, those things make up those ... those charges for services. In here, in the general funds, it's ... it's not those enterprise funds. It's not the water. It's not the...the refuse, but these other for, you know, parks and recreation classes, those types of things. It's a very small piece of...of our general fund. The intergovernmental, urn ... revenues overall describes those... those state and federal grant... grants that we receive, but in our general fund that 7% in inter- governmental includes... includes those state and federal grants, our 28-E agreements. So fire protection services, agreements with the School District and other local governments are ... are in the... that piece there, uh, 7% there, and then I'll just note that, you know, when ... when we think about these supplementary taxes collected — the hotel, motel, for example, that's just a very, very tiny piece of our overall budget. So you see here, um, that 4% is kind of on the left lower corner includes the hotel, motel and our utility franchise taxes, and that's just 4% of our general fund. So in the overall big picture of our community, it's ... it's a pretty small amount of our total budget. I'll talk about the property tax rate trends. As I mentioned earlier, we're ... we're proposing a 10 -cent decrease in the debt service levy to account for a drop in the total levied tax rate from the City. You see that the ... the rates, um, the rate, the property tax rate we're anticipating will be fairly... fairly flat. From here we're not anticipating additional large declines in our ...in our rate, as we had been able to do in the past several years. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 13 You see the progression of history. I'll describe the ... the red line kind of...going from your left hand screen to the right, um, is our property tax rate. So we went from this ... this chart in particular shows a rate of $17.26, almost 27 -cents, um, to our current and proposed rate of $15.67. So over this last almost 10 years, City Council is progressively and ... and aggressive, rather aggressively, reduced that property tax rate over time. And then the blue bars here are also demonstrating the property tax ... the taxable value. So even though we have had a declining property tax rate, the valuation of...the taxable evaluation of properties are continuing to increase. We're not 100% that ... that based on current economic conditions that will continue to elevate at...at the rate that it has over this period of time, but we're pretty proud of the fact that we've been able to decrease the tax rate over the last decade. And ... and of course, has Council to ... to thank for that. I'll just note also that in odd years, those are our,um, the reassessment years, so as we're approaching this even year, the growth in that ... in that assessed property tax value is going to stay pretty ...pretty even. And as Rachel noted earlier, when we're talking about the development, if the City is not growing in that property, you know, the taxable value, we might even see that ... that valuation decline over time. Salih: Can I ask question here, like really when ... when you say 10 -cent decrease of the tax levy, what that mean to the residents, like somebody like me, a homeowner, what that means to me. How much is it, if my home value is 300,000. Monroe: That's a really good question, Mayor Pro Tem. I know we're going to cover that. I believe we're going to cover that right towards the end of the presentation. So we will definitely get to the individual property owner impacts, if you can wait for that. Great. Okay. We'll talk about the overlapping tax rate. The only thing I want to point out here is just that, despite our ...our portion ... so we're 41 % of a resident's tax bill. We're still less than half of that total tax bill. The other entities in our ...in our tax rate or tax bill, the thing that people see, um, also comes from the Iowa City Community School District, Johnson County, and a little teeny piece for ...for Kirkwood, and the State of Iowa. So we'll go to the overlapping rate trend. I'll just highlight the City of Iowa City is the yellow in the top portion of these bars you see across the screen. And it's just showing that the portion or the proportion of our ...our piece of that overlapping tax rate has continued to reduce. So we've gone from about 44% of that tax bill to approximately 41 % of this overlapping tax bill, and then that ... that blue line kind of shows our ...our percent of that total of taxes collected. Okay, how do we compare throughout the state. We ... you see here where we stand, and in the total amount levy for our current rates and in comparison to what had been levied back in 2012. So I referenced over the past decade. This is the progress we've made. You see here, we've had a 11 %...11.5% change in ... in a decline in our property tax rates. We found our way from somewhere towards the top of that pack to towards the middle. We anticipate that based on other communities circumstances, we may continue to see ourselves fall within this ... this kind of ranking of...of total tax levy. We've ... we've dropped below Davenport, as well as Des Moines and anticipate we could potentially see a drop below Cedar Rapids as well over the next year or so, uh, based on their council's decisions. So let's see. Major revenue sources. So you've got our hotel, motel. We talked about although this is a small portion of our general fund, it's still important to kind of look at that fluctuations and since they're an important part of our community. FYI 9, you see that as the highest peak. That was This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 14 right after the Graduate Hotel reopened. They had remodeled after the Sheraton closed and in FY20, that was a partial... that was when we saw part of the pandemic, um, starting to come in. Fiscal year 2021, we're currently in. That's our estimate for nearly, you know, the full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then the projection for FY22 is a rebound of that, um, closer to where we ... where we had been in FY20. So ... so maybe not as high as the peak of 19, but certainly gaining from our position currently. We've got our utility franchise. This just greatly fluctuates through, um, based on weather a lot of the time. So hot in the summer, people run air conditioning; cold in the winter, they run the heat and ... and natural gas, and so therefore this is going to pertain to those patterns. Some communities in the state go all the way up to the allowed 5%. Iowa City has a set utility rate of 1%, but just showing that there's flexibility there, and ... and each community has the ability to decide what ... what that utility franchise rate might be, and the chart on the right just identifies what, um, kind of where we fall in that ... that mix of how cities are using the ... the fee. Cable TV franchise, you see a steady decline. This is as people cut the cord of cable and telephone services in their homes. This is reflective of that. We also have ... had the Mediacom franchise go to the ... to the State, and therefore we're just continuing to see it ... a decline in our revenue sources here. And ... and from here at this point, we're anticipating that it's going to stay pretty stable to ... to what we're seeing right now at this level. So about half a million dollars as ... as a revenue here. Our major revenue source, our road use tax. I hit on this earlier. These are the ... the funds that we use to support both our equipment purchases, but also our road improvements, the overlays and... and patching budget. If you pay attention to kind of how this line progresses, it looks like that growth between, you know, 11 ... sorry, I'll start over here. In fiscal year 2011, we saw a bump. In 2012, we saw a bump from the US Census count. So as our population grows, the allocation the City receives goes up. This ... we also received another bump in 2016, or fiscal year 2016, because the State increased the ... the rate that they have. So ... so that accounts for that next jump. And then we're just flat out uncertain what the last census is going to gamer for us, if we'll see another kind of jump up in the road use tax allocation because of an increased population or not, and I think that's... that's it. We'll ... we've gone from a receipts and now we're at about 9 million in ... in roads use tax. Last thing I'll cover, local option sales tax. This is just a reflective chart of how communities in Iowa are using the LOST, uh, that they receive, uh, when they put it into effect; and ... and their estimated receipts. The City did have for four years after the flood in 2008, we had a LOST that was ... was approved and passed by our community. We received about 8.8 million annually through that period of time, and then of course it expired based on the referendum. The State law now requires us to have at least 50% of our... of our LOST go to property tax relief, and (mumbled) I'm sure it's going to be a continued subject matter going... potentially going forward. I know that Council has included a discussion of this in ... in your strategic plan and ... and it was also included within the City Manager's recommendation in the policing preliminary plan, as well. So thank you and, uh... turn it to Rachel. Thanks. Kilburg: Okay. Um, so on the expenditure side. So this first slide here is just all spending by category. So that ... that tall column that you see on the far right, those business type activities, that makes up the bulk of our spending. That might also be what you know as enterprise funds, so transit, parking, landfill, waste water, water, those kinds of things. And next to that you see our ..our strong capital improvement program is represented, and then on the far left there, public safety This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 15 is going to include PD, fire, building inspection, housing inspection, and code enforcement. Then this is a look at expenditures, just by general fund. So I talked a little bit about our health insurance costs earlier. In a few slides I'll talk about our pension contributions. And this just provides a really good visual of how those personnel expenses can really add up. You see that we are a labor -heavy organization and our staff allow us to operate at the service levels we do. So unless we cut staff .... if we cut staff, that ... that would not allow us to ... to provide the level of service that we do. I kind of show that on this slide as well. This is just a year over year comparison, and looking at it like this does a pretty good job of illustrating that kind of cautious budgeting approach we took towards FY22, um, just based on COVID uncertainty. So you can see our personnel costs, they ...they really drive a lot of our expenditures, um, including those things I've talked about that are largely outside of our control. So when we don't have a lot of flexibility there and we're trying to remain status quo, um, you'll see, uh, you begin to see cuts in other areas like our services and a bit in our capital... capital spending as well. So as I promised, this is a look at our public safety pension contributions. So these costs have been increasing over the past 10 years. In 22 we will be paying about a million dollars more than we were in fiscal year 2012. Um, as a reminder, we don't set these rates, we don't set these benefits. So again, this is ... this is one of those personnel costs that we don't have control over. And then looking on the IPERS side of things, we're seeing a little bit of growth here as well. Again, just about a million dollar difference between FY15 and FY22. You see that little jump in FY21. Last year's adopted budget included some new positions, some temporary to permanent conversions. So that ... that's part of the reason for that jump there. Going forward, we expect to stabilize around a 3 to 4% annual increase. Uh, as you can see, we project a 3.24% increase for FY22. Okay, and then I just have three quick slides on our debt service strategy. So the big thing I just want to point out here is that a lot of what Council has been ... a lot of Council actions, especially some of these one-time significant investments in spending, have really been possible through a reduction in our debt service. It's safe to say that our debt ... debt strategy has really enabled us to improve our service levels, and these are kind of three (mumbled) three benchmarks that go into that. So the first here is that under State law, we are not allowed to borrow more than 5%, um, more than the amount equal to 5% of our total assessed property value. So that's what we call the statutory debt limit, um, is what you might hear of it as, and we are currently using about 19.3% of that debt limit. So we still have plenty of bonding capacity. The second box here just shows that under Iowa City policy, our debt service levy should not account for more than 30% share of our total City property tax levy. So Ashley mentioned earlier, we are recommending another 10 -cent drop in our debt service levy for FY22, and that will put our debt service levy's share of the total property tax levy around 15.8%. So we really made some improvements there over the past decade. And then this last one here is actually a benchmark set by Moody's for AAA -rated cities. So you can see that their benchmark of net direct debt outstanding is at 0.75%. We don't quite hit that. We're at 0.96%, but we have been making improvements here as well. This is a lower projection than it has been in recent years, and I do still want to point out that we are able to attain that AAA rating, as I'll talk about on the next few slides, and that's just due in part to our strong fiscal position in some other areas, such as our reserve funds and things like that. So this is a look at those Moody ratings. As a reminder, Moody's is an independent rating agency, so they issue their GO ratings for municipalities based on a specific set of criteria. This first slide that you're looking This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 16 at is a rating of all U.S. cities, and Iowa City, um, you can see falls into that top AAA category. We are one of 247 cities in the United States who... which, who attain that rating. And it's notable to point out that we don't have the typical profile of a city in ... in that category. Usually they're much higher income, little bit more suburban communities. So ... so that's something to be proud of there. And then this is that same rating, but just statewide. So we are one of four cities in the state of Iowa to have AAA status. Um, Cedar Falls was actually upgraded just this summer to AAA status. So that's nice to see. And then the other two that join us there is West Des Moines and Clive. So again, a little bit higher income or suburban -type communities. And the last thing I just want to note here is that this rating is nice, but it's not just a recognition. It actually translates to real savings, real dollars, that we are able to spend on City services, instead of on interest payments to the bank. So it's ... it's good to have. Okay, so with that, I think I'll hand off to Geoff, if we don't have any questions, and he will take us down the homestretch. Bergus: Rachel, just really quick on the bond rating. You just mentioned that that translates to lower interest rates. Are we able to quantify that as far as what, you know, a decline in our rating would mean? Kilburg: I don't ... I don't have a number for that. We ... we could try to pull something for you and get that to you offline. Bergus: Yeah, I think it, just in terms of how significant it is even, you know, a ballpark would be nice; not to spend a lot of time, you know, having to dig into it, but I appreciate that. Thank you. Kilburg: Definitely. Fruin: Okay, that's definitely something that we can follow up on. As Rachel said, I'm going to take you through the last final slides here. I want to start with just looking at our enterprise fund balances and make sure that you know where we stand with some of these different operations. The first one I want to highlight is the parking fund and, Rachel, if you could advance the slide for me. The parking fund is at the top of this slide, and, you know, this is the area where we've seen the greatest COVID impact, and what I want to point out here is that estimated fund balance. It's the third column, right in the middle of the page, at 1.2 million. Just to let you know, this time last year, that fund balance was 5.8 million, okay? So that's two things really driving that down. Part of it was intentional. You'll remember that we used that fund balance to retire the debt at the Harrison Street parking deck, and that helped with the cash flow situation we had. So that's a very positive thing. We no longer have debt outstanding on the Harrison Street deck there. But also it's a recognition that the fund has been operating in the red for much of COVID. So we do believe we've stabilized things but ... but as we emerge from COVID, if things remain stable, we have much less flexibility in this fund. We're at 18% of balance there, and that's challenging, not just for parking, but as you know, we ... we had sights on perhaps using some parking dollars to support our transit operations. And when we lose that type of flexibility, that decision becomes much more risky going forward. The second area I want to talk about is right below there, is the transit fund, and we're going to spend some time This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 17 here in a couple of slides talking about our transit fund, particularly as we look to expand services. So our transit operations are still operating with about 30 to 40% of the ridership that we would normally see. So there's definitely still a major COVID impact and that, uh, that definitely strains our ...our financial situation. However, on the flip side, there was a CARES Act allocation to transit agencies, so we did get a nice injection of CARES Act dollars there and have been able to maintain a pretty high fund balance here. You see the estimated fund balance of 10.5 million. We have a little over 5 million of that reserved or restricted, and that's really set aside to be....be a match for a federal grant that could come up for a new facility. So we really don't want to ... don't ... don't want to use those dollars. We want to make sure that we have those to take advantage of...of that grant opportunity. But we do have an unassigned fund balance of 5.4 million, which ... which is kind of the ... where we have some flexibility. So as we look at expanded services, one of the things I want to talk to you all about is perhaps using some of that balance for—for a pilot program, as opposed to developing new revenue sources right now to support the transit operations, and we'll get into that a little bit. The last one I want to point out here is our refuse operation, which is the third green highlight in the middle of the page. Just to note here that ... that we are operating at a deficit right now in our refuse collection. And I think in normal years we may have suggested a rate increase here. As Ashley mentioned early on, we really tried to hold off on rate increases, given the stress for... for households right now. So this is one that we'll probably look at a rate increase next year, on our either refuse, recycling, or yard waste funds, um, just to try to stabilize that a little bit. We're okay. It's ... it's a small deficit, and we have some ... some fund balance where we don't need to do it this year, but Council should expect that that'll come back next year. Moving forward, we have the property tax input and, Mayor Pro Tem, this is the slide that will address the question that you have. We use a $100,000 valuation, just because it's easy to multiply that im... impact. So if you had a ... a assessed, that your home is assessed at $100,000, that's the value that... that's been assigned to it. The next one will show you what the taxable change is, and if you remember back, Rachel talking about that rollback figure and had that chart where the number kind of fluctuated up and down. Last year that number was about 55%. So you see the taxable valuation of 55,000. This year that went up a little bit. So even though your home value hasn't changed, you're going to pay a little bit more taxes on that home. That's the 56,409. From there, you take the City tax levy to determine the actual property taxes that you will pay, and you can see that we'll have a rate decrease, as we've proposed, and so if you had that $100,000 home, the difference is $15 in more taxes you will pay. So even though our rate's going down, you'll still pay more taxes. So that $300,000 home that you asked about before would be a $45 increase in property taxes. Salih: My question will be, if we decrease it, it will be like that, and if we leave it alone ... what going to happen, more also? Fruin: Yeah, so if the rate stayed the same, at that 15.773, that $15 is going to increase and we can ... we can ... Dennis, if you have a calculator you can probably give us that number right now. But that, yeah... that would increase. So that drop of 10 -cents is definitely helping keeping that number down, despite the taxable growth. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 18 Weiner: Yes (garbled) I would have the same question as Mayor Pro Tem as to what ... what would the... what would the rate be if we don't decrease the rate, or what would the amount be if we don't decrease the rate. Salih: Yeah, use the same example for like simple, like 100, same example. Bockenstedt: What I'll do is I'll ... I'll run a quick calculation for you, and then I'll ... then I'll jump back in and let you know what that is. Fruin: Okay. Thanks, Dennis. So we'll revisit that. You can move to the next slide and then this one takes not just property taxes, but all those utilities into account too, so if you look at that far slide, you can see that we're estimating a 1.8% increase in ... in kind of the cost of your government, so to speak. And you see that ... that top line is the red, is the property taxes, and so that's... that's where you see the $15, okay? So you'd have to multiply that for every $100,000 of assessed value you have. And then we are factoring in the water rate increase. So even though we're not ... this is just the delayed water rate increase that we expected to have happened last year. That's about a $20 increase. So overall it's $35 to your household, again with that $100,000 property valuation. Uh, that breaks down to, you know, just about $3 per month cost increase there. And then we'll keep moving forward and, Dennis'll jump back in when ... when he's ready. I want to talk about reserves. You know, one of the big focuses we had after the flood recovery period and then heading into property tax reform was ... was building an emergency reserve fund, and we're really happy to see that fund balance at 5.2 million. We've used it a few times here and there, for property acquisition so far, um, buying properties out of the floodplain. But largely this is ... this has been unused, and you can see the bullet points there that give Council some flexibility in ... in how you use this emergency reserve. You really have the ability to, uh, to tap into that for any emergency that ... that you see fit. And then Ashley tu... touched on the ... the $9 million fund balance for our facility reserve, and we're really... really proud of that. But as she mentioned, $9 million doesn't cover very much when you're talking about the the level of facility improvements that we need. She mentioned the new transit facility at 9 million, you know, your new fire station is going to be probably four to five, you know, million, in that range, by the time we get to ... get ... get in a position to build those. So this is a great ... a great balance to have, but we'll need to continue to be focused to build that if we want to invest in ... in this kind of next generation of...of facilities for the government. And again, a lot of the reason we do this is because there's limitations on bonding. We cannot go out and just borrow $20 million for a new equipment building. We'd have to go to referendum and ask for voter support. And as you know, that would be very difficult for the types of facilities that we need to see improved here at the City. I see Dennis ready to go. Bockenstedt: Yeah, so just running a quick calc on that. So we would add about another $5.50 to the -to a $100,000 home. Fruin: Okay, so that ... that 15 goes to about $20.50? Bockenstedt: (garbled) Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 19 Salih: You mean by reducing the tax levy by 10 -cent, a homeowner who have a house that value $100, he will see deductions in his bill of $5? Bockenstedt: Correct. Salih: Is this $5 per year or per month? Bockenstedt: It would be over a year. Salih: For the whole year I will see $5 deduction, and in the same time, if we don't do it, the City will receive 500,000, if I'm calculating that right. Bockenstedt: Correct. Salih: Okay. (mumbled) I want the Council to know that ... the residents and also the public. If we reduce the tax for a person (mumbled) house is value 100,000, he will see $5 a year reduction, and if we don't do anything, the City receive 500 ... half a million dollar in revenue. Fruin: Yeah. Any other questions on that? Okay. Um, I wanted to ... to talk about COVID relief a little bit. You know, one of the things we're really... really proud of is, you know, this year we've been able to ... we've been able to launch over $2 million in recovery programs. A lot of this is through CARES Act funds that ... that filtered through the feds and the state's (mumbled) but that also includes some... some local funds. That's a lot, and we should be ... we should be proud of that. I know I'm proud of the staff that's... that's had to pull those new programs together and administer and ... and all the social service agencies that helped us distribute those funds, but we also need to realize that we don't know what additional support may be needed, um, in our community, as ... as we continue to recover and we don't really know at this point what additional support will come from the federal and state government. So this is just more of a reminder than anything that we do have some flexibility to ... to offer recovery and relief funds to the community. I think we need to wait and see how ...how these, uh, the recently approved federal legislation kind of filters down to ... to our community, but the Council should keep this in mind going forward and know that you do have that ability to ... to accelerate our recovery, uh, should you see fit to do so. Transit again, we are moving forward with the launch of the new transit system for this summer. You have requested some additional information on service enhancements, particularly Sunday service and expanded late night hours, and we are actively working to pull those together. You saw some of those cost numbers in the transit plan. Those are expensive services to offer. So we need to work with you on how you want to fund that. Listed below are some of the options that we previously talked about in terms of how you would fund transit expansion. Our property tax levy for transit is fully maxed, so we cannot ... we cannot increase the ... the property tax levy for transit. But you could certainly divert funds that are property tax supported right now to do that. You also have utility taxes, a local option sales tax, and we previously had talked about parking fees, and ... and you understand the ... the challenge with that in the current environment. I tend to believe and would ... would This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 20 push you to ... to considering a one or two-year pilot program, using some of that fund balance in the transit fund, before you permanently raise a, um, a new tax or fee. I think we have that fund balance, we could run a good 12, 18, even 24 -month pilot program on Sunday service, expanded late night hours, and and then, you know, in a year, year and a half, hopefully there's some more clarity surrounding the COVID recovery, and the Council could use the data from that pilot program to make decisions on whether to keep those services in place, and if so, how best to fund them on a permanent basis. Roadway maintenance. We're excited. Hopefully, very soon, uh, depending on your work se ... session schedule to be able to present to you the pavement management program plan that is ... that is complete. The, uh, a little preview of that plan. It does show that our road conditions stacks up very well with our peer communities across the state. We have the third highest pavement rating amongst comparable large communities in Iowa. And that's all data -driven, based on road surface information that's collected at a statewide level, and... and while that's a good thing, we still know that our roads are in ... in great need of repair, and what the study shows is that our current funding allocation for roadway maintenance will not allow us to sustain our ...our current overall pavement condition. That at the current level of investment, we're going to see the roads continue to deteriorate. So, we obviously want to get ahead of that, and we'll need to talk to Council about the best ways to ... to increase funding for roadway maintenance, and again, should be ready for that discussion here in the next 30 days depending on your work session schedule. The local option sales tax. I don't think I need to spend any more time on this. It is identified in your strategic plan. I do suggest that you give this strong consideration. Clearly, a very important aspect of this is how you spend those dollars, and there's been conversations from non-profit support to public infrastructure, transit, and as Ashley mentioned, the State law now requires 50% of those funds to go to property tax relief, but ... but clearly these funds can have a significant impact on the community. We saw that with just the four year, uh, LOST that we had, um, and would encourage the Council to reserve some time in the upcoming months to have a discussion and make a go or no-go decision on ... on whether to present this to the voters or not. Last slide is just a ... kind of a preview of what we see next year. Again, this was a very much status quo budget, really trying to get back to just where we were a year ago. I'm very concerned about the taxable value growth and ... and and you saw that $80 million in development this year. I hope that's a one-time blip, and we can ... we can recover. But if we have a couple of years at that level, we're not going to see that taxable value growth, and the Council is going to lose a lot of flexibility, um, in supporting some of the things that you've done. You know, without the taxable value... without the taxable value growth we had over the last 10 years, it would have been extremely difficult to do the affordable housing investment that we've done; to increase Aid to Agencies; to invest in the GuideLink Center at the level that we did. All that flexibility is because our taxable value was growing and our operations were staying status quo. Right? We didn't invest heavily in staff in the last 10 years, but we invested heavily in these other programs. And as soon as that rate starts to drop, as ... as Rachel was pointing out, those personnel expenses are there. You know, we ... we're going to eat up to 2 to 3 to 4% per year just on personnel expenses. So if we're not growing more than that, you're going to lose a little bit of your flexibility that ... that we've enjoyed the last few years. We do expect stable tax rates. We expect stable utility rates. There'll be a minor increase here and there, but our ...our enterprise funds are pretty good right now, they're pretty strong. So you ... you don't This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 21 have to worry about major water rate increases or major sewer rate increases at this time. And then, you know, we're going to continue to invest in the things that the Council holds ... holds the highest in your strategic plan, which is affordable housing, social justice, and racial equity. We're going to invest in those master plans that you've adopted and endorsed, just as we have these fa ... these past few years. So with that, we'll end our presentation and field any questions, before getting into department budgets. Teague: Sounds like we're ready to move on. Thank you all, staff. Okay, City Manager, staff. Fruin: Mayor, we'll probably... let's see, um, let me pull the agenda up here. It might be ... good to get through Eleanor's budget and then maybe skip the City Clerk, City Manager, and Finance budgets, and then jump into the Public Safety ones, and we'll ... we'll circle back to those, since we're going to be here all day. Does that sound okay? Teague: (mumbled) sounds great. Welcome, Eleanor. General Government Program Budgets: Dilkes: Morning. Teague: Good morning. Dilkes: Thanks for letting me go first. So you can find my budget on page 134. And also ... I need to get it in front of me. Yeah. And also, on page 170 there is a ... in the tort levy is where one of the attorneys in my office is funded. So primarily looking at page 134. Again, as always, there's not a whole lot to my budget. It's all people. And my staff are all at the top of the ... of the merit scale. So they're all at this point just receiving the cost of living increases. I have actually seven people, 6.5 FTEs. Two of my assistants work less than ... than full time. You can see that there has been a jump in the services expense by about 13%, and as I understand it, that is due to, um, IT charges, primarily a lot of that is storage, some of that has to do with ... with the remote access that we had to set up for ..for COVID, and just more emails. Other than that I don't really have anything to say, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Weiner: My only question is, is there ... is your office maxed out? Do you have the capacity you need as we look forward to, not just this year, but the couple of years to come? Dilkes: Uh... you know, attorneys kind of do what they need to do to get things done (laughs) So I ... I don't, you know, I think we work pretty hard. It's been a long time since there's been any staff added, but I think we're holding our own. Teague: All right, thank you, Eleanor. Dilkes: Thanks. Have a great day. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 22 Teague: Yes, thanks, you as well. All right. I think if I understood our City Manager correctly, we'll jump down to Public Safety program budgets, with the police department starting us off. Public Safety Program Budgets: Fruin: Yeah, I can .... I'm going to be covering the police department budget this morning. And I guess we'll just ask the Council, do you ... do you want to go ahead with that now, uh, do you want to ... Chief Grier's here from the Fire department. Do you want to cover fire first? Do you have ... have a preference? I know you're probably looking at a break here (garbled) Teague: I think I might suggest this, since you're going to be here all day that we jump down to Fire department and then go from there. Fruin: Okay. Teague: Welcome, Chief. Grier: Good morning! Deputy Chief Eric Nurnberg is joining me as well. So we're going to tag team you a little bit. We'll be as brief as we can, but ... cause we know you have a long day, but just a brief overview. Four fire stations, 64 personnel serving you in the community. We do keep pretty busy. Our four divisions are administration, emergency operations, fire prevention, and training. I'm not going to ... oh, we're starting at page 198 in the budget book, if you want to follow along. I'll hit a couple of the highlights, but I'm not going to read them. I know that you've had an opportunity to look at it, but some things that have been keeping us busy in Fire administration, obviously, for this past year and as we see in the future will be COVID-19. We've been kind of on the forefront of that response for the City and especially Deputy Chief Numberg. He's kind of taken the lead on that, but we ... we have City internal emergency operations, uh, conversations every week, and then we also participate with the County. So that's certainly keeping us busy with managing supplies and just figuring out the next steps, which seems to change about every day. Also under administration, we've been busy with developing a bias .... we ... we had a policy that we adopted this year, the bias -free delivery of services policy. I think you've... you've seen that. That built upon kind of our implicit bias training that we've done in the past. And then we're continuing to do that with our own diversity, equity inclusion training within... within the Fire department, and we have a couple folks on the DEI Committee for the City. So those conversations are going well with our shifts. And the hope is is that we can take what we're doing and help promote that through the city. So more to come on that. We did submit our annual compliance report for accreditation and that was recently approved. We continue to work with My Sidewalk to develop our data analysis options and so that we can make it look forward so that folks can understand what all the numbers mean. So that's... that's ongoing, and see ... we did add some washing machines to the City or to our fire stations, due to the COVID response, which has been a ... been helpful for us, and we've also taken over washing our own fire gear, so ... we don't, uh, I'll say in general we have no staffing changes for either... all the divisions, any of the divisions, and so there's limited numbers of capital outlay that I'll kind of just highlight a little bit. Under administration is also This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 23 emergency alert sirens or weather alert sirens. We do have a capital outlay of about $54,000 coming up to finish out our weather siren update. Emergency operations, it was ... it was certainly a different year for emergency operations. Our numbers are actually down, our response numbers are actually down. You take out, you know, a few home football games and college students not being in town. We don't run as many calls, but we were still close to 7,000 calls for the year. Similar as in the past, a lot of emergency medical calls. Fires are ... are pretty steady. We did develop some automatic aid agreements with Coralville and North Liberty, to help with coverage for them and us for fire incidents, and then you just recently also did one for the 380/80 interchange area, just due to all the construction there. Tiffin, Coralville, and Iowa City came together to do a sustained response there. We do have a capital outlay in emergency operations for a technical rescue search camera. Fire prevention, those numbers are way down as far as fire inspections. We didn't go out and do a lot of the fire inspections because... because of COVID. We did institute a self-assessment or self -inspection for all City facilities this year. The Fire Marshal worked with all the departments to get that done. He had ... he got all those back, so that's awesome to get all those responses. (mumbled) will continue to look at different options on how we can help with... streamlining all the processes we have. We've had ... we have a number of inspections that need to be done for licensures and we're having a plan with NDS once they get some of their positions that we'll trade off some inspections work with them to get those...those done. So just trying to, you know, streamline services throughout the City. No capital outlay expenses for Fire Prevention. And then training, I think some of you had the opportunity to go down to the training... see the new training center. It's ... it's an awesome facility. We're continuing to work down there. So thanks for funding that and helping us get that built. The Cor ...going to Coralville was workable and it worked. It was nice that they let us do that, but having our own training facility back in the city, it's certainly given us more ample opportunity to go down and work on the skills that we need to. We do have some expenses that will continue to ramp that facility up, to help it be ... become even more state of the art than it is. We have some capital outlay expenses to buy some additional shipping containers. We ... we're going to build a roof training simulator over one of those and do an additional SCBA confidence course in one of those. And I think that's the capital outlay expenses for that. So that's kind of a quick overview. Eric, I don't know if you wanted to jump in and add anything real quick. Nurnberg: I think you covered it well, Chief. Just see if there's any questions. Teague: Well thanks for all that you're all doing. I know it's a little bit of a different year and I ... and I don't know that the general public know that at least for the internal operations of the emergency management in relationship to COVID, our Fire Chief has led those efforts. So thanks for all you've done here locally for the COVID efforts. So, and thanks to all of your ...to all of the staff that are really first responders in our Fire department so... Grier: Thank you. It's certainly been a group effort. As I ... as I mentioned, Eric's been handling the bulk of that. We do have certainly everybody on board and the internal City committee that's been running COVID response has been very, uh, very well put together. So, but thank you very much. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 24 Teague: Yes, you as well. Thank you all. All right, we're gonna move on to the Library, with Elsworth, I think I saw. Welcome. Culture & Leisure Program Budgets: Carman: Good morning. (mumbled) the opportunity to be here this morning and for the continued support that you offer the Library. ICPL (garbled) by a nine -member Board of Trustees. We operate out of a 82,000 square foot building, um, and we also have a bookmobile and full service virtual branch. We're entering the 125th year of service for the Library in Iowa City, so that's an exciting benchmark for us. Our budget request was largely the same this year as what we requested last year. It continues to be a challenge to know how COVID-19 will impact our service design and delivery, but the budget we submitted will provide some flexibility and let us shift as needed to accommodate either in-person or remote offerings as we ... as we move forward with COVID. (both talking) Teague: Elsworth, I'm going to ask you to maybe speak a little closer to your mic. It's a little difficulty... having some difficulties hearing you. And then also just for the general public, so your pages that you were referring to with your budget is 239 and 248. Carman: Thanks, Mayor. I apologize for the volume. Is this sounding better? Teague: Yes, thank you. Carman: All right. Um,We... we tried to be appropriate and conservative in what we asked for and recognize sort of the complexity of the financial landscape we're in right now. We're six months into a three-year strategic plan that emphasizes turning outward and focusing on community aspirations. Addressing barriers to welcoming everyone, and working to identify and change systemic and organizational racism in our agency and our community. So these initiatives will mean some changes in how we use our resources. I'm ... I'm looking forward to working with the leadership team to meet that challenge of leveraging the maximum impact out of every line in our budget as we navigate some new ideas with the community. In addition to those strategic initiatives, staff training and education continue to be very high priorities of mine, and I look forward to the coming years. Just keep exploring ways we can ... we can look at that differently and get the most return on our investment to keep staff growing and learning, and I'd welcome any questions folks might have about our ...our budget. Teague: Thank you, Elsworth. Carman: Thank you. Teague: And you all have been very innovative this past year with, uh, during COVID, as well. So really appreciate the adaptations that you're doing to allow our community access to the Library. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 25 Carman: Thank you. Teague: Thank you. All right, we're gonna move on to Parks and Recreation, and I see Juli Seydell Johnson and for those, in ... this is budget pages 217 through 236. Welcome. Seydell Johnson: Hey, good morning, everyone. It's fun to go this early in the day. Juli Seydell Johnson, Parks and Recreation Director. Our budgets, as you said, are in the 200 pages, starting about 219 or 217 you said. Parks, forestry, cemetery, government buildings have seen a very interesting year in that our services have increased due to COVID in the use of the parks, in the building needs needed to keep our employees safe, and cemetery operations have increased. That being said, our budget is very status quo. Some of the highlights for those areas is we're asking for some additional equipment in the forestry area. We have ... also have two full-time positions that were approved in the current budget, but have not yet been filled in the forestry division. So along with that we're asking for a watering truck and an actual truck to drive that watering. I guess it's a watering wagon. All these trees are great that we're planting, about 450 trees this last year, but we really need to water them, and we are looking with working with volunteer groups. We're working with Project GREEN, AmeriCorps, some other volunteer organizations. As Council Member Thomas mentioned in the last budget meeting on Tuesday, we've been looking at that. We were very successful with our Root for Trees program, where we have residents planting their own trees in their own area. But it's still going to take more staff and more equipment to keep all these trees alive and get them to maturity, where we'll get an increase in the canopy. Recreation staff very status quo. They've been kind of our utility players this year during COVID. (mumbled) started out, they offered the emergency childcare for frontline employees right off the bat last ... last March and through the summer. Since then they've been doing all sorts of things, uh, backfilling in other departments, including working with the leaf pickup crew, the cemetery crew, parks maintenance, doing a lot of building maintenance type things, and doing some general programming. We are working on getting Mercer Park Recreation Center open again. We have limited lap swim, and we'll start limited gym use next week. So it's been an interesting year. Our budget is pretty status quo to reflect that, and we're looking forward to getting back to more normal operations very soon. I'll answer any questions. Teague: Thank you, and enjoy your Saturday! It's beautiful out, and if you walk through any of the parks, many of them are plowed. (laughs) Seydell Johnson: Right. We have a lot of additional trails. It's been very popular. So thank you for approving that and letting us do that this year. It's been a big hit with our public. Thanks. Teague: Absolutely. Thanks for all that you and your staff do. Thank you. All right. I think I want to actually maybe jump back to Police department and ask Geoff to give us a presentation there. Public Safety Program Budgets (cont.): This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 26 Fruin: Sure, I can do that, and by the time I'm done, I think LaTasha will be available, if you want to continue to move forward. Teague: Great! Fruin: So the Police department budget starts on page 184, a new document. And we released a lot of information about the Police department in the plan itself. So the ... the org chart and the position descriptions and ... and historical staffing levels are all in there. I won't go into that in detail, but I do want to remind you that we're authorized for 109.26 positions in that department; 84 are sworn positions, and again, sworn just reflects that they are law enforcement officers. That includes supervisory staff. It includes the Chief of Police, but we have 84 sworn positions approved in the budget. As Chief Liston arrives on Monday, for day one, we'll be at a staffing level of 80 sworn positions. So while we're authorized for 84, we'll only have 80 on the payroll, so to speak. And we'll have a ... a slightly num. ... lower number than that, that's actually available for service in the community. So as with any department, you ... you have employees that are not able to perform their duties at any given time due to any myriad of issues. So that's... that's where our current staffing levels are. As you may recall, when it comes to hiring new sworn positions, we use a hiring list to do that. So we go out periodically every year, every two years, and we do a comprehensive application and testing process, and we develop a list of officers that could be considered for hire, or sorry, people that could be considered of... for hire. That list is nearly depleted now. We may have the ability to pull, I believe one more person off that list, but in reality, we have to test again and develop another list. And of course, you can imagine that's a ... a very difficult thing to do during COVID, especially with requirements on ... on physical testing and written testing. So we're not going to be able to go out and... and test right away, and I also think it's ... it's good that the Council continues to have discussions on the plan, uh, the preliminary plan, and ... and set a clear vision going forward. Anytime you're recruiting, you want to make sure that the employees that are coming on to your team, uh, know exactly where that department's going. So in reality we're probably not going to be testing for several months, and so, you know, once ... once a new person is hired to be an officer, it usually will take them a minimum of nine months, sometimes longer, to actually receive all the training and begin to operate on their own as a ... as a police officer. So I say all that to let you know that we are going to go through a period in this next 12 months of being short staffed in the Police department. We don't have the hiring list ready, and we're already down several positions, and what that's going to do is going to put some stress, particularly on our specialty positions. We have an obligation to have enough patrol officers out there to meet minimum staffing standards and make sure they can respond to basic calls for service that ... that ha ... come in the community. And when we're not at those full levels, it's really hard to keep positions like a downtown liaison officer or a neighborhood resource officer actively engaged, as you know from reading that plan. The unique thing about those positions is that they don't have to respond to calls for service. There's patrol that takes care of those calls for service, and they can focus on really those proactive policing activities that we found really good value with. So that's going to be a struggle that ... that we're going to have to balance here going forward for an extended period of time. I'm going to start with page 187 of the budget, and that covers the Police administration function. This budget covers the police chief and an This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 27 administrative coordinator, so a very small piece of the department, two positions. And as you can see overall, expenses are expected to decrease slightly with this next budget year due to some small cuts in department wide training and the removal of a one-time expense that existed in FY21 for a space needs analysis. When I say a reduction in department wide training, that does not mean that we're doing less training. It simply reflects in this still COVID environment that we have, there's less travel associated with that training, there's less lodging, and so your ...your actual cost of that training in some cases drops a little bit, but we still remain committed to providing the training that we believe is ... is needed for all of our officers. There is some new shelving in this budget. You'll see that called out for our off-site evidence storage, just an efficiency and safety investment there. The support services budget starts on page 192, and this budget covers much of our civilian operations, such as our station masters, our records, our animal services operation, planning, research, accreditation, etc. There's some notable changes in this budget that I'd like to highlight. One is the partnership that you just approved with Shelter House for the homeless outreach service in the community. The second would be for a program that you have not yet considered, but we will be presenting to you, which is a partnership with CommUnity and Foundation 2 for a mobile crisis co -responder program. And this again would be similar with the Shelter House program in that we're not talking about a new City employee, but we're talking about the ... the City committing to funding for a, in this case, CommUnity position that would be part of their mobile crisis, but also be a co -responder, and as we think about the continuum... continuum of calls that I presented, this is that third kind of column that ... that we're looking at, um, to make sure that we have a law enforcement professional and a trained crisis professional working together for those unique calls that come in. This budget also recommends a half time permanent community outreach assistant position that will focus on our immigrant and refugee population. I would expect doing everything we can to make sure we hire from within that population to make sure that that position is successful. And then there's also a new position for a supervisor, a civilian supervisor, and this is actually a position that the department had up until probably 2011, 2012, somewhere in that ... in that range. But what this position do ... will ... will oversee some of those civilian operations, such as records, and that will basically free up resources internally to place a better focus on our ...on our calls for crisis continuum that's described in the plan. So again, we're putting a civilian in charge of those civilian operations. We also then are able to downgrade a sergeant position to an officer position, and really focus on creating some specialty assignments, and focus on those diversion and co -responding programs. Salih: Geoff, uh, before you go more, can I ask you why ...what the reason that we have the ... like the position that we funded for the Shelter House under the Police budget? Fruin: Yeah, it's a, um, good question and one I've got a ... a few different times. It certainly could be taken out of any department budget. It could come out of the Manager's budget. But the reality is is that the Police department and this position and the Shelter House are always going to be working close together. They, uh, the Police department will continue to get calls for service related to homeless individuals. We had over 300 of those calls for service in ... in 2019, and so you really need that good communication between the Police department and this outreach position. So the Police department can call this position and say, Hey, we've had four calls for This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 28 service regarding an individual at this location. Could you spend some more time there? I think it's really going to streamline those communications, and on the flip side, that outreach worker ideally could... could communicate with the Police department and say, Hey, you may be getting calls for service regarding this individual. I'm working with him or her on a regular basis. If you do, call me. Or if you do understand that here are the triggers for that individual. Please be careful on how you approach, all those things. So I think it just really makes sense that that ... there's a strong connection there. And the other thing is that Police is a 24/7 operation and, you know, if we put it in the City Manager's office, we put it in like a ... the Neighborhood and Development Services office. Those are largely Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 5:00, and unfortunately calls for service don't follow that pattern. So that's... that's why I decided to place that in the Police department. Salih: But can they still like do this cooperation, like both way and at the same time just their financial will be like some... somewhere else. You know, I don't think ... what the problem if we just ... it just like, to me, it seemed like we increasing the budget. You know, the police even though we know this is not policing. This is really community service where that what we was looking for. I don't know if there is any way that we can still like have that core operations between the Police and the Shelter House in the same way that you are envisioning, and the money come from someone else. Fruin: Yeah, I mean, you could ... you could take them ... you can put the money wherever you want. At the end of the day it's property tax dollars that are ... that are paying the ... paying the contract. It could come out of our office. It's ... it's just a bit unusual because we would look to the department to manage that contract, to make sure that the reporting requirements are being met and the communication channels are effective. So it adds just another layer. But if you really didn't want to see that expense in the Police department budget, you'd have the ability, and we'd ... uh, we'd probably just put it in ... in our City Manager's budget. Mims: I think it's something that we should discuss. Maybe not today, but as we go forward, simply as we look at public perception right now of what we're doing with money and ... and the pressures there to have that separation. I certainly underw... understand where you're coming from, Geoff, in terms of managing the contract and the 24/7 operations. Um, but I would ... I think this is worth a little bit more discussion by the Council later. Weiner: And I would put in that same category the immigrant refugee outreach or something similar to that, because I think that (mumbled) for a future discussion but .... but from my perspective, the more of these community service focused positions that can be in a ... coordinated with for sure, but in a budget that's not police budget, I think the ... the more positive it can be for us as a city right now. Bergus: I think this is worth more conversation and, you know, I've reflected on this a lot, asked Geoff a lot of questions about it as well, and ... and part of it really comes down to our transparency, and just honesty of what we're doing. I think, you know,we can take the entire Animal Shelter budget, move it out of Police, call it something different, and say, Look, we reduced the Police This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 29 budget by this huge amount. Right? Or the management of our ...our deer population in town. Same thing, right, falls under Police, and we could ... we could move it out. This contract with Shelter House, same thing, and other community servicing roles that we anticipate growing that are included in the preliminary plan recommendations. So I ... I completely agree and understand with what my colleagues are saying, but at the same time I think it's ... it's a question of just being really as transparent and honest as we can be. And if it's the label of police that we have a problem with, we still need to ... we still just need to be transparent about what that means and educate the public more on what the current Police budget includes, because of reduction in sworn officers and, you know, the ... the priority that's articulated in this budget of the shift in responsibility from uniformed patrol response to civilians, I think is ... is the key. And I think we're looking to do that and looking to do more of it. We just need to be transparent about what that means in terms of dollars. Salih: I really understand, Laura, what you're coming from, but, you know, I don't think we are not transparency here. I'm not talking about like something existing that on the Police budget we need to take it out. I'm talking only about a position that's really is not policing position. That we fund it, and it is new position. I'm not really like advocating... even for the like community outreach, they will be working side by side with the police. Helping the police navigate communities. I can totally understand that we can leave it with the Police department. There is no problem for me doing that. But I'm talking about only the position that at the Shelter House that we funded. I don't think this is have nothing to do. They will be dealing with homeless because we don't want the police to deal with that. That actually the main reason we did not, you know, like we take the police out from that because the police was responding and now we want to have like a community organizations or a civilian person who can respond to the homeless people. So this is real. I believe it's transparency, and we don't want to just like put it there, and but I agree with the other positions, you know, I ... I did not like say all the position. I'm talking about only this, just to be clear. Teague: We'll certainly have this on a ... a future work session, because I think it's something we'll continue with conversation about. All right. Fruin: Okay. Within that support services budget, the ... the largest percentage increase is within the crime prevention category. And there's some notes in there about increased cost for software, just so you're aware of what that pertains to. As you... as you, um, I believe all know, we are starting a crime analyst position. It's really a carryover from the data -driven justice initiative that ... that was so valuable for... for our department and our community. If you think about a lot of the tools that that grant provided in terms of data analysis tools, um, that ... that grant's not supporting those any know... anymore, so there's some subscription services and software expenses that we are now taking on to support that, um, crime analyst position, and that's what's referenced there in the budget. The field operations budget is on page 197 and this is the largest component of the Police budget and covers our 78 patrol and investigations positions. Patrol budget was kept largely flat and only increased .83% over the current year. And as we talked about significantly in our opening presentation, you realize that the cost of maintaining those staff is well below, or I'm sorry, well above .83%, which means we were cutting This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 30 elsewhere in those non -personnel expense lines to bring that patrol budget to an only .83% increase there. So a significant part of this budget, in addition to the actual personnel, is going to be your fleet, your vehicle fleet and replacement of those dollars, and the fuel that's needed as a 24/7, 365 operation. You will, uh, you can appreciate that there's a lot of fuel usage. There's a lot of wear and tear on vehicles, and thus those expenses add up year to year. There are funds in this budget to replace six vehicles with the department, and we're continuing to pursue electric and hybrid vehicles when possible, to support climate action efforts. That also helps us reduce our carbon emissions, but it does increase the cost of vehicle replacement, and that's not just in the Police department. That's City wide. As we invest in more fuel efficient vehicles and electric vehicles, we are going to have higher outlays for those expenses. So overall this is very ...much a kind of hold the line budget. The total year over year expenditure increase is 2.5%. That's well below the 10 -year average of the 3.6 that was detailed in the preliminary plan. These costs are lar ...largely tied to the bargained wages that we've agreed to; the insurance costs; the pension costs that (mumbled) detailed earlier in the morning; and other administration ... administrative functions, as well as the 1.5 new positions that ... that we just discussed, and the partnership with the, um, CommUnity and Shelter House agencies as well. Happy to answer any questions you have that we didn't already cover. Teague: Thank you for that presentation, Geoff. I don't hear any questions coming forth right now. I don't see LaTasha DeLoach from the Senior Center right now. So I think what we'll do is take a short break. I might suggest seven minutes and then we'll come back and Tracy Hightshoe with Neighborhood and Development Services, I might put you on alert ... that we might start with you when we return. You're on mute, Mayor Pro Tem. Salih: Yeah, we ... we just like put it mute or .... or just...we don't sign out, right? We don't leave. Teague: Yep, you can turn off your camera. Mute your mics (several talking, garbled) We'll be back (several talking) So we'll be back at 10:17. Salih: Sure! Thank you. (BREAK) Teague: All right, it is 10:17 and we are... coming back from a break and continuing our City Council discussion on the budget for fiscal year 2022. All right, and we are going to welcome our Senior Center LaTasha DeLoach and that ... those are pages 250 in our budget. So welcome, Mrs. DeLoach. Culture & Leisure Program Budgets (cont.): DeLoach: Good morning, everyone. I'm LaTasha DeLoach with the Senior Center coun..uh, Senior Center, the Senior Center Coordinator. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you all of the Senior Center budget. As the Mayor mentioned, you can find our information on page 250 for those who are following along. I just want to hit a couple highlights and talk about a couple This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 31 things that's going on with our budget. This year, as you all know, with the last, uh, earlier this week, we presented on the future master plan that is coming up, which will also include the kitchen. I know that that's really important, and I'll circle back around to that. First I wanted to publicly thank the public, as well as Council, for your continued support. This has been a trying year, particularly for the population of which we serve, and so we have been blessed so many times over with the generous donations, as well as the assistance and volunteer help. This year, we have about seven staff. Only three of them are full time. Our budget also includes two full- time building facility maintenance employees. So I guess it's a total of seven full-time employees. Um, in this fiscal year we've had some ... some challenges, not necessarily financially, but just with the population we serve, due to the coronavirus and how it's impacted how we serve them, but we also have had some really powerful stories of how our population has adapted to technology. And so you also see that in our request for this fiscal year coming up, of more assistance in IT with being able to be more prepared to do hybrid programming, which will allow us to focus on our vision, which is to keep people in, uh, continue to be involved in social activities, as well as those who haven't had the opportunity, that they may have an opportunity with some remote location options, and so we have found that through this time period, through the COVID landscape that we've endured, that we have seen our population be able to be flexible and our virtual programming has been outstanding. Actually, we just were reached out from the Washington Post, um, specifically about the services that we have been providing during COVID and how it's being recognized nationally for how we continue to be innovative in that way. So, I wanted to pass that along so that you all could be really proud of the work that we are doing here at the Senior Center. During this past fiscal year, just a couple higlilights as we had already started partnering with the University of Iowa rehabilitation counseling department with Dr. Aaron Barnes and students. Through that partnership, we were able to respond with the coronavirus senior anxiety chatline to be able to assist many seniors in our community, older adults in our community, who had some anxiety about what's going on and were able to have someone from that background to talk to for free. We worked with Endless Hours, we reached out to over 1,700 Senior Center members, and were able to connect with them and try to pull together the assistance that they needed during this time, and this is coming from the ... the incredible gift of having ... being able to be a part of the City budget as a senior center, where some places nationally, they are non-profit organizations, and with us being able to have the personnel that we have, we were able to reach out to many individuals and provide assistance, which also with the CDC request for masks, we were able to with volunteers and staff produce 2,000 -plus face masks, to be able to get into the hands of seniors quickly with our partnership with Trail of Johnson County. So we're very proud of that. We still have some leftover, if folks need them, um, but before they went into mass production in ... into the local stores, we were able to provide that for folks when it was not available. We continue to provide high quality programming. We definitely are leaning into the Council's strategic plan. We've increased our diversity, equity, inclusion programming, including even just starting yesterday and we started the 1619 project, an eight-week social justice program specifically to look at the history of slavery in the United States. We continue also to work on our climate change (mumbled) include educational classes, partnering with the 100 Grannies and other organizations, specifically come in and talk with folks about what we can do as a community to continue to work to decrease... emissions that are coming in our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 32 community, with small things that they can do in their homes, etc. We continue to offer those classes, and participation and interest in these areas are very strong. We do see even on ... now that we've gone to Zoom, 40 and 50 people showing up to many of the programs that we are ... we're offering. What we have also found is that we have the ability to go outside of the Iowa City area in some way, since we have been virtual, and we've been able to touch other states, as they've been able to participate in some of our programming through word of mouth, through other senior members, about how phenomenal it is, which gives us an opportunity to make some adjustments about what membership could potentially look like. We also continue to work on inter -generational programs. It was very important to Senior Center members, as well as staff, that we continue to make sure that we're serving across generations, um, because many of our general population that we serve, they have family members, they have younger people in their lives, and it's important to them. So we continue to do that. We've been very successful with whether it's a Halloween pizza party or a square dance, um, we've been able to bring people across generations together into a public building that is set out to serve people who are 50 and older. This year is the 40th anniversary of the Senior Center. The Senior Center opened its doors in 1981, and so we are excited about what we may be able to do. We don't know what the future holds, but we are in planning stages of within our next fiscal year to celebrate that 40 years, um, because it's... it's... it's definitely worth it, and there's so many people committed to the Senior Center and we want to celebrate, um, regardless if it's virtual or in person. We want to make sure that we're celebrating this anniversary this year, so you will see that also represented in our budget, which will include advertising, etc. We continued to, before we closed, we had the opportunity and we offered expanded weekend hours to members, and it was appreciated, and it really was utilized. And so we definitely plan to go back to those hours when we are able again to ... to open. One thing that we also have added in the last year or so was our simple and free pantry exchange, which became very popular and increased opportunities for volunteers who had never volunteered with the Senior Center. They came in to help us with that. We had high usage. I mean we really couldn't keep sometimes items in because they would kind of go so quickly. But we were able to partner with organizations, such as Horizons and Table to Table to continue to keep that going for seniors who were coming into the building. We also had our free lunch for kids program, which allowed us to partner more with Horizons and bring in lunch for kids and their families to come in and be able to enjoy meals with those who were already attending our congregate meal. So we had a inter- generational lunch. As you all know, we have our master plan coming up. We're pretty ...we're getting pretty close to the ends of that and looking forward to presenting that to you all sometime here in the next couple months. We're really excited. Yes, the kitchen is a huge part of that. What I'm loving about that is that it has the opportunity for people to be able to utilize the kitchen as outside organizations, but also that is a classroom space and it's being set up, um, so that we can adapt to the needs of people who are taking those classes. So I'm definitely looking forward to that. We have been able to continue some services online that we didn't think was possible, which include our (mumbled) health insurance, um, appointments, and this is all creativity with our staff and with others in the community to make that happen for people who are turning 65 and ... and needed assistance in picking their Medicare. Let me see, I think ... we continue all of our community partnerships and some of them have increased because of the work that we're doing, as well as new partnerships with the State of Iowa Public Health This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 33 Department, where we are also providing some virtual programming from the Des Moines area in for folks who are here in the Iowa City area. With you all's assistance, we were able to expand the hours provided and to turn our front desk receptionist positions into part-time permanent positions, which has been very helpful... during this time as we continue to be able to relay information from one staff to the other, with some crossover time, that we're able to make sure that needs that come up are being addressed in appropriate time, as quickly as possible, but has definitely increased our efficiencies. Our program is (mumbled) well. We're holding really close to the values and mission and vision of the City, as well as those that are closely associated with our own. Just as a reminder to you all, our mission is to enhance the quality of life by creating opportunities to support wellness, social connection, community engagement, and lifelong learning for a diverse and growing older population. I believe that's all I have for you all. (mumbled) questions. Salih: LaTasha, I ... I don't have a question, but just like a comment. I ... I ... I see that even though, yeah, I just want to say that I can see clearly there is more members or people of color joining the ... the Senior Center. That true, right? DeLoach: Yes. Salih: (mumbled) awesome idea, which is really amazing, even though we still need to (mumbled) a lot more work of recruiting people of color to be there, but I'm glad to see that the membership of the people of color has been increased, which is amazing. And again, speaking back about the kitchen. This is really going to bring a lot of opportunity for the people to come from outside and see the (mumbled) you know, word of mouth, is big deal, and people will start knowing about the Senior Center that way, just from the, you know, the way that we advertising our fun. This is ... this summer, uh, word mouth is work better than any advertising tool. So when we open that kitchen, uh, I guess and for the community and the community start to use it, they will (mumbled) about the Senior Center, and most likely those will be used by people of color. So we're going to have more people of color coming in. You know, good job. I just really appreciate everything you do. Thank you. DeLoach: Thank you. Thank you. Weiner: So really incredibly impressed by the inter -generational work, which is so important to building just what Mayor Pro Tem was talking about, and your flexibility during the pandemic and reaching out to people, especially seniors who really need it. Thank you so much. DeLoach: Thank you. (mumbled) Teague: Well, yep. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I will say ditto to both of the comments. Thanks for all of the work that you do. DeLoach: Absolutely! Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 34 Teague: Thanks. All right, so I think if Tracy Hightshoe is ready, we will transition to Neighborhood and Development Services. This was certainly a item that we had on after lunch, but we're gonna bring you forth, and thanks... and welcome. Community Program Budgets: Hightshoe: Thank you. This is Tracy Hightshoe with Neighborhood and Development Services. Happy to be here. So I will be able to go out for lunch. I think the last time we presented, get a 10- second delay and while entertaining, this should go much faster, and hopefully no need to read lips. So, I'll start. When I go through the budget, Neighborhood and Development Services all throughout your budget book, we have general funds, we have enterprise funds, we have special revenue funds. So I will mention the page number as I go. So we'll start off with just a general overview of NDS on page 59. We have 44.54 positions budgeted. We have 44 employees, two positions are not filled right now, 2.0 FTE. One is the building inspector position that was approved last year. That was to focus on energy efficiency and climate action. The other two are part-time staff, our Housing Authority. We delayed filling these two positions while we were closed to walk-in traffic, but as we go, we hope to fill those positions in the near future. Our budget is 18.7 million. (mumbled) notice this is down from 22.6 million from last year. This is due to carryover of consulting contracts, the purchase of the Chauncey and Augusta units. and we expect less COVID funds through the CARES Act in 2022. Um, in addition to administration, which is myself and a position of our develop... Development Services assistance. There are three divisions that make up NDS. They are Development Services, Neighborhood Services, and the Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County that we call MPO. I'm going to start with Neighborhood Services on page 264. One of the divisions of Neighborhood Services is Housing Inspection Services. They inspect over 20,000 rental units in our community over two years, for health, safety, and welfare. I do want to mention that our both our building inspection, our housing inspection, due to COVID have had to work on different protocols to make sure we ... we not only our employees stay safe, but the public stay safe, and that we we get the inspections that we need to do done ... on a timely basis. We also have the Housing Authority. They are an enterprise fund. So they have information starting on page 470. The Housing Authority primarily administers housing programs. We have the voucher public housing programs. These are mostly done through federal funding that we get through HUD. We have 86 public housing units in Iowa City. Five of these are the units that we just bought in Chauncey. We have 16 affordable home... units that we own and manage. This is the Peninsula, and then the six units that we just bought in Augusta. And we administer 1,298 housing choice vouchers throughout our jurisdiction, and many people don't understand that our jurisdiction includes all of Johnson County (garbled) parts of Washington County, and then we are excited that in calendar year 20, that we applied and were awarded 78 new mainstream vouchers. These help us house our chronically homeless with a disabling condition. So those will get utilized within this year. Anytime I talk about the Housing Authority, I also like to educate the public about some of the continuing myths or feelings people have about it. Our vouchers are dispersed throughout Johnson County and relative to the population. So if Iowa City's about 70% of the population, we get about 70% of the vouchers in Iowa City. Less than one (mumbled) and then over 50% of the vouchers that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 35 we administer are utilized by the elderly and disabled. And if you're not elderly disabled, less than 1% report welfare is their sole source of income. So that means our families are working. They just aren't able to afford rent in our ...in our community. The last division of Neighborhood Services is Community Development, and Community Development is our wing that administers all the Conummity Development Block Grant and Home funds. Those are a special revenue fund. You'll find them on page 297. We administer various housing programs. We do neighborhood outreach. We work with the neighborhood associations. We staff public art, the Aid to Agencies, and we administer economic development programs for primarily low to moderate -income residents. I know Geoff and Ashley touched on this, but COVID relief has been a major addition to our workload, something that HUD has directed that those COVID funds to the CARES Act need to get out. They take first priority for us. So we've allocated 823,500 to our local partners, and we have found that, unlike the floods at 2008 where we hired staff directly, in order to get those funds out as soon as we can, we've had to partner with our community partners, um, Center for Worker Justice, the Shelter House, CommUnity Cri ... Crisis Services. So in addition to just the money that we worked with partners for rent and utility assistance, we've also ... adm... allocated 559,980 in Community Development Block Grant funds to local non -profits that serve homeless and prevention services, childcare, mental health, or food distribution. We've also made available 140,000 for security deposit assistance that were available through FY21, and we're partnering with Easy Cog and a subcontract with the Chamber to administer a small business assistance program for 424,000. Applications were just due for this fund. We received 75 applications. We believe about 30 to 35 will make it through scoring, and we can probably hit ... probably assist about 25 of those businesses. It's, like I said, it's been a huge commitment for our staff. These funds represent just the amount in Community Development Block Grant funds alone represent twice our annual entitlement. So it will impact our ...the ability of Community Development to ... to other ...just to focus on other areas, because our focus right now is getting these funds out to the people who need them. In Community Development we're also excited about the South District program. In your last Council packet you saw the acquisition of our third duplex on Taylor. This is a great program. It allows... this'll provide six opportunities for neighborhood residents to own an affordable energy-efficient home that's just been renovated. That's an opportunity that's just not available that you see in most of the rest of our community. We hope this last one that we did we'll partner with climate action and we'll offer ...we'll offer it a lot more ... energy efficiency upgrades than you would see, and maybe some demonstration projects for that project. Development Services starts on page 277. This is our ...our division that facilitates the development process. So you have our urban planners and our building inspections, our building inspectors. They do our comprehensive planning, our annexations, our zonings, subdivisions, (mumbled) floodplain management, our historic preservation programs. And just to highlight some of the major work that they're doing right now that facilitates the Council's strategic plan include the South District form based code. We expect P&Z and Council approval this summer. We are working on the Southwest District update. We're wrapping up comments right now of our initial public input. We expect to have P&Z and Council review in May and June, with a comprehensive plan amendment for the area adopted at the end of our fiscal year. One of...one of the trends that was really important to us...it...was just the development statistics. In fiscal year 2012, we issued about 1,800 permits with a permit value of 87 million. This compares to our 10 -year average of 2,300 per minute This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 36 with the value of over 184 million. So we have ... we've seen a significant reduction in all permits, including single-family, multi -family units this past year, um, due to various reason. I believe COVID has been a serious impact on that. So we hope to see it rebound in 22. I did want to mention just the impact of land use and (mumbled) change our zoning code. So the investment in Riverfront Crossings District since 2014, we've had construction permit values of over 196,000 or million, with the addition of almost 1,000... about 1,100 multi -family units. So that's great that up -zoning. It allows people who want to live, um, students who want to live close to the University in the downtown. But we realize not everybody wants that living arrangement or ho ... type of housing. So that's why we're working on that form based code in the South District and one that might be replicable to the Southwest District. The Building Inspection staff during this time have attended approximately 60 hours of continuing education to stay updated on the latest energy code, with the hopes that the State of Iowa will adopt the latest energy code standards... and la ... latest energy code, and we continue to get additional inspection certifications. One inspector has achieved residential energy inspector and plans examiner certification. And ... our Building Inspection staff continues (mumbled) solar regulations. We've processed over 55 permits for solar installation permits in 2020. And then on page 278, we also highlight the major projects that Develop Services staff have worked on in 20, in our past fiscal year. And then our last division is the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the MPO, that starts on page 317. This is our transportation planning wing. They ...they plan and they study all modes of transportation - vehicle, bike, pedestrian, and transit. They complete our traffic studies or traffic analysis. They administer our transportation related grants. And they funnel federal and state transportation funds to projects and programs through cooperative planning and decision making. For 22, they'll continue our efforts to fulfill the bike master plan, especially promoting and educating residents on trail use this year. That'll be our focus, especially because due to COVID the ... the, just the benefits of trail use for your mental and physical health. And work will continue on our ...our long-range transportation plan update. It's a major 18- month planning effort that will culminate with adoption of the plan in May of 22. I think I've tried to run down and yes, as fast as I can. I think this is the fastest report I've ever done for the budget year (laughs) but I know, you know, Zoom meetings get long. So if you have any questions, I am available to answer them. Salih: I have only one question for you. Thank you for everything you do. I just want to ask you about you are saying like (mumbled) like apartment in what building, which building that we purchase apartment on? Hightshoe: Oh, these are due to tax increment financing agreements. We purchased five units in the Chauncey, and then six units in Augusta Place, the building (both talking) Salih: Yes. That's what I was looking (mumbled) Okay. And for the, um, I know that we really was great by providing all this money for the COVID-19 relief for our residents. I just wondering, do we still have money, and if we do, how much left? Hightshoe: Um, that's a good question. Um, I think I just provided that, if I could pull up the email. know the funds ... hold on. Out of the 62,500 we administered to Center Worker Justice, those This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 37 funds have been spent. We've allocated 125,000 to Shelter House, approximately 65,000 has been spent. CommUnity Crisis Services, they have a contract for 246,000; 155,000 has been spent. We have not entered agreement with Shelter House for the CARES Act, the second round of funding that we're going to get through the Iowa Economic Development Authority. When the 246,000 funds are spent, I think there's about 80, 90,000 left, we'll enter agreement with Shelter House for those funds, and then security deposit, they spent their FY20, CommUnity Crisis Service did. And on their second 70,000 award for FY21, they've spent 35,000, and then the 424,000 in small business assistance, that just went out. So nothing has been spent yet, but we just received applications (garbled) Salih: Yeah, thank (both talking) Hightshoe: I think that's where we're at right now. Salih: Yeah. (both talking) amazing work. Thank you. Teague: Any other questions for Tracy? Well, thanks and happy to hear about the COVID relief numbers. That's been very helpful during this time in our community for ...I think the individuals specifically that have been affected by COVID. Hightshoe: It's great. Teague: Yes. All right, we are going to move on to the Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County. Hightshoe: That was the update (laughs) Teague: Oh, I am so sorry. Hightshoe: I just included all of NDS together. Teague: Yes. All right, Transportation Services. I'm not sure ... yeah, there we are! Welcome! Business -type Funds: Nagle-Gamm: Hello there. Hi, I'm Darian Nagle -Gamna with Transportation Services, and I'm very happy to walk you through our budget today and give you a little overview of our ...of our department and what we've been up to for the last year and our plans for this year. First, I'd just like to say we're made up of...we have a team of about 75 ... uh, essential workers now ... now we can call our employees this year. So we're a 24/7 operation. We manage the transit operations, the parking operations, and maintenance of the Central Business District. So if you ... if you turn to page 292 in the budget book, I'm just going to walk you through briefly each of those divisions, give you the highlights, and give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have for us. So without further ado, on page 292 the first division is our Trans ... of the budget is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 38 our Transportation Services administration and the ... the activities in this organization are administration, myself as the Director, Mark Rummel, Associate Director, and we do have a maintenance worker specifically dedicated for the Central Business District (mumbled) Gibson, who rolls up under this category, and ... and really our responsibilities in the Central Business District is to maintain operations in a safe, comfortable manner so people enjoy coming downtown. It's been really nice to be able to pick up where the Public Works department left off in terms of the ... the downtown ped mall project. So we've been ... we've sort of taken over after they got done with that great project, and it's our job to really keep it neat and tidy, and make sure it's a place that people want to visit. Of course one of our favorite things that we get to do as a department is help support all of those great festivals and events that happen, that we miss so much. I know you all probably miss them and the community misses them as well. So we're really looking forward to helping out with those next year. Just a few accomplishments. Um, as you might imagine, and I've heard from other staff that, you know, COVID has been at the top of our list and implementing from a ... from a downtown perspective, we've really been focused on implementing protocols to help maintain safe operations. A lot of that is disinfectants, sanitization, but we've also been assisting the Downtown District with expansion of the outdoor eating opportunities and waste management initiatives, and I think probably the most popular thing we've assisted with is the ... the designation of the 10 -minute pickup, drop off parking spaces. So people can come downtown, grab some food, grab some, you know, books from the bookstore, and ... and then head back home, and they can do it quickly and conveniently. In terms of challenges for our department, snow removal is, you know, always... It'si just a challenge! Um, it always is for us. It's particularly tricky for us in the alleys, because we have asked for all of our ...the dumpsters are located and the private agencies have a hard time getting into the alleys when there's snow. We have a hard time clearing the snow for them because of the dumpsters. So there's a little give and take every year, and we (garbled) kind of a perennial problem for us. And on page 3 ... or excuse me, 293. In terms of financial highlights, and you'll see this through each of the divisions that we discussed, there's, you know, been a shifting of budget, which looks, um, large percentage -wise, but really it's just a shifting of funds due to the sanitization, CNS... sanitization, sanitation work we need to do because of COVID. So just a shifting of duties and, you know, funds that have been reallocated to make sure that we can maintain safe and comfortable operations in the downtown for people to visit. The next page ... we are going to turn to is 372. We're going to talk through our Parking operations. So this division oversees the operation of nearly 230 bike racks in the downtown and making sure there's... there's ample bicycle parking, which is a total of over 1,300 bike parking spaces. We also manage, of course, six parking facilities. We have five surface lots. We've got downtown loading zones. We've got on -street meter parking, and just on -street parking in general in the downtown area, and again, you know, I'd say the mission of our department really is to help people get where they're going (laughs) and do it in a safe, comfortable, convenient, you know, low- cost way. And so that's what we try to ... that's kind of at the forefront of our minds every day, and in terms of our department's Parking department ... (garbled) the activities, you know, we have of course parking oper...excuse me, administration, and that includes the administrators. I mentioned myself... myself earlier, myself and Mark, operations supervisors, a data analyst position, which I think we really (laughs) we ... we really could use this position. Unfortunately, and it's something that you all had approved for the department last year, but due This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 39 to, you know, it's almost immediately as soon as the budget was approved, we were in a pandemic situation, and we've been holding tight on that. We have a treasure trove of data on both the parking and transit side that we can use to really improve our operations and help... excuse me. Sorry, forgot to tum my phone off. Uh, improve our operations and help us be strategic and provide better service to the community, but we don't have dedicated staff to help get that information into the hands so we can use it for planning, we can use it for decision making. So we are looking forward to, you know, coming out of the pandemic and hopefully returning to more normal operations so we might have an opportunity to fill this position, which I think would be a great benefit to the community. Um, we also have customer service representatives who help the public when they call in, and they work not only to help people with parking questions, but transit related questions, and they also assist with landfill related questions. So anything regarding refuse, they take ... they're kind of the first line and they ... the direct communication with the public. In parking, we also have on -street parking lot operations, as I mentioned before, and parking, uh, on street parking lot operations and on - street, excuse me, not on -street but parking ramp operations. We have two cashiered garages. We have four unattended garages. The newest of which is the Harrison Street garage, if you ... if you haven't seen, uh, if you haven't been, you know, far south downtown. That's our newest garage. That was built in 2017. Our oldest garages are Dubuque and Capitol Street, and those were built in the 80s. So those are ... those are getting up there in years, and we'll talk a little bit about that...more about that in our challenges. On page 373, just some really quick highlights. Um, something we like to ... to share with you all every year is the amount of `first hour free' we've been able to provide to the community to help make, you know, to help welcome people downtown and make trips downtown simple and easy. This is the seventh year of the `first hour free' program and we were able to provide over 840,000 first hours free (mumbled) which is a lot of first hours free, but it's actually a 25% decrease, which is probably not much of a surprise, um, compared to the previous year, and that's, of course, due to ... due to the pandemic that affected us for that last quarter of last year. We were also able to provide free parking March 23 through May 17, and that was really an effort to assist essential workers. Some other accomplishments, I can't speak highly enough, um, about our staff and the work that they have done during the ... the COVID pandemic. They've been here every day since the very beginning, and when ... in the very beginning, I feel like ... you all may have this experience too, but it feels more comfortable now, we're accustomed to it. We know a lot more about COVID now than we did say, you know, last year in March and in those early days when it was a lot ... maybe more scary. I can't ... just can't say enough about staff and how they perservered and they came up with solutions on a daily basis on how we can change our operations to make things more safe and comfortable for staff, but also for the public, and it's ... it's a considerable accomplishment. We have quite a playbook built up now. I hope we never have to use that playbook again. I would like to just put it away and never have to look at it, but I didn't want to go without saying how ...how proud I was of staff over the past year. In terms of other accomplishments, again, the 42 temporary 10 -minute pickup, drop off spaces were really popular. We've been able to install electric vehicle parking in every single parking facility now. The last one was Tower Place. We had a grand opening during Climate Fest and during the electric vehicle car show, which we can't wait until next year because we'll... hopefully we'll be able to make a much bigger deal about it, but we had a nice ribbon cutting for it and it was really fun. In terms of challenges, as This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 40 I mentioned before, parking facilities. We have, you know, our Dubuque Street ramp and our Capitol Street ramp. Um, you know, the average age of parking facilities is about... lifespan I should say, is about 40 years. Those facilities are getting close to that, and we ... we have developed over the last few years a ongoing program to help maintain and invest in those parking facilities. They do need it. As you might imagine, their wear and tear and, you know, they're open to the elements, and then there's age and all of those things. So that's a continual challenge for us is tackling those issues as they arise, and as you ... as you heard earlier this week, there is a CIP project that's dedicated to kind of the ongoing support of those facilities. (mumbled) deliveries and ... and evolving downtown continues to be a challenge, and I think this will even be more so in the future as transportation technologies change and how we travel changes. There's going to be more... there's going to be more focus on what we're doing with that curb line, meaning who is parked at the curb line. Is it, you know, commercial vehicles, is it bicycles, is it, you know, private vehicles, that sort of thing. So that's something that we're constantly evaluating and reevaluating. (mumbled) we're in the process of rehabilitating and expanding bike parking in the downtown. I think the Washington Street project is a really great model for how bike parking should look in a central business district, such as our. So we're looking to expand that model. Those racks are... those... new racks so simple and they're fantastic from bicyclist's perspective, because you have two points of lean. They're really spaced well. They're at the right spots. And so we're going to look to expand that model through the rest of downtown to help support the bicycle master plan, and the efforts to make it simpler and more convenient for people to choose a bicycle for their transportation needs. And last but not least, bringing a bike share online. This has been (laughter) this project has been something else, I will say. I think we've been on the receiving end of kind of a ... an upending of the business model of bike shares. They've gone from, you know, having bikes to not having bikes to having a -bikes to ... and I think there's a ... we're also perpetually in the midst of companies combining and divesting from each other. So our bike share company as ... I think in August of last year, 2019, we brought that to you, and you approved an agreement. Not long after that they were bought out by another company, and we just got word yesterday that the company Gotcha has been bought out by another company named Volt. So we have been in communications with them and as you might imagine, the pandemic has really brought that, you know, project sort of to a screeching halt. At this point last year, I was talking to you about how we were trying to get the bikes here from overseas where they're produced, and I think we're still in that situation. And clearly, there's more pieces to work out with our new bike share vendor, but prior to this week's change, um, the last direction we had been given is that the earliest we could expect it is in the fall. So I will keep you apprised as that timeline is updated, but just wanted to give you the latest, since we just (garbled) yet. Um, in terms of staffing level change summary on page 373, there's not ... there's no staffing level changes proposed in the ... in the FY22 budget, but as I mentioned, we do have some on -hold positions (mumbled) analyst position that the Council had approved last year is on hold, and we're waiting for, you know, things to normalize a bit. We also have some open parking enforcement positions that we could really use to help in the downtown area. The demand isn't quite right now (laughs) where we... where we usually are. So it's not a, you know, the utmost priority. But as things begin to normalize, we could definitely use that additional assistance to help ensure that there's the turnover that we need to have in the downtown so people can easily visit. And another position This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 41 that's been placed on hold is an evening maintenance worker, and this was again approved in the FY21 budget, and this is ... we have, you know, an increasing number of tasks. In part related to those challenges related to our parking facilities. But, you know, some of our tasks simply are just easier to do when there are fewer people around, and so that's why our evening maintenance worker team is really important for getting some of those challenges addressed. In terms of the financial highlights that are on 373 and 374, in short again as I mentioned before, you know, a shifting of funds due to priorities related to the pandemic, um, I think is the big ... is the big takeaway from that piece. All right. And last but not least, if you tum to page 384, I will finish with a discussion. If I can find 384! Excuse me. There we go, 384. I'll finish with the discussion about Transit, which it's been a really big year for Transit, and I expect this coming year will also be a really big year for Transit and maybe the year after that. Lots of changes in terms of Transit, but I'll walk through each of how, um, each activity within this budget really quickly just to bring you up to speed, but in terms of Transit administration, it consists of a cost share of the Transportation Services admin budget. Of course we have operations supervisors, customer service representatives, that data analyst position that we're hoping to fill, and administration oversees, of course, our daily transit operations. So currently we have 20 routes. We have weekday, uh, on weekday peak service. We have a 27 -bus fleet. We operate Monday through Friday, 5:45 A.M. till about 11::00 P.M. on some routes, uh, Saturday from 5:45 to about 7:40. Most routes operate on a 30- minute headways during peak hours and then off-peak. So in the middle of the day you mostly see hour long service, and on Saturdays it's hour service. We have paratransit service that is contracted through Johnson County SEATS and ... and, let's see here, paratransit through Johnson County SEATS and then we perform the maintenance for those paratransit vehicles. So of course we just went through the transit study. And if you rewind back to last fall, the last opportunity I've had to speak with you about the transit study, of course. The ... the recommendations from the plan were to reduce the number of routes. Mostly to ... to make the ... the system simpler for... for folks to understand. So really the proposal is for a 13 -route system. So there would no longer be separate night and weekend routes, and different routes during the daytime, which can be very confusing to people. So it's really more streamlined. It's also higher frequency. So there's a significant increase in especially that midday, um, those hour long trips during the midday don't always meet people's needs for getting, you know, getting groceries, running errands, that sort of thing. And then also service on Saturdays has been greatly increased, um, and the recommendation is to really mirror... mirror the routes that are on a weekday on the weekend, except for the two that don't run on Saturdays currently, and that's our eastside loop, which is really a school -focused route, and then the downtown shuttle, which is a University (garbled). In addition to those recommendations, and I'll talk a little bit more about the transit study at the end here, but of course you had directed us to look into some enhancements to our transit service. Sunday service, you know, what could we do on Sundays and what is ... what's a fixed route, um, Sunday look like, what does an on -demand Sunday look like. So we're preparing those scenarios, and those costs associated to bring back to you at an upcoming work session. You also asked us to look at later evening service to see what we can do about improving people's ability to travel using the transit system later at night. And then also you had ask us to bring you back some (garbled) evaluation regarding a night owl service, as they call it, and that's really the off transit hours. You know, how... how do third -shift workers get from point A to point B during the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 42 evening hours. Those are all things we're preparing six scenarios for you, some cost and structure for you to evaluate, and we'll bring those all back to you very soon. We also are responsible for fleet maintenance, as I mentioned. Court Street Transportation Center is, it's a little bit of an oddball, so I always like to point this out. Court Street Transportation Center is to (mumbled) looks at, it's a parking facility. However, it was built, it's a multi -use facility. There's commercial properties. There's also (mumbled) that uses the Court Street facility, and it was funded through... through a partnership with the Federal Transit Administration, and therefore the proceeds from the Court Street facility are dedicated or earmarked for transit specifically. So that's why you see this parking facility under the Transit budget. Last but not least, replacement reserve. That is a really important reserve for Transit because it allows us to set aside that 20% of the accumulated depreciation of the bus fleet and the maintenance facility. So it allows us to set aside funds for future purchase of buses, future improvements or construction of a new transit facility. It's really important for us. We actually leverage those funds for the grant award that we just, uh, we were the recipient of in the last year for four new electric buses. So without that fund, you know, it's harder to come up with those dollars. They are significant to purchase buses. So, we are excited about that grant and I'll talk more about that in just a second. So last page is 385, just a couple highlights. We provided 1.156 million passenger trips during fiscal year 2020, which is a lot of trips. It is actually a significant decrease. It's a 22% decrease from the previous fiscal year, attributed to the pandemic, of course. We've seen ridership steadily hovering between about 65 to 75% down from ... from where we usually are. So we have our work cut out for us (laughs) in terms of rebuilding ridership and the trust in the transit system as we ... as we come out of the pandemic. But I'm confident, and I'm especially confident because of the transit study and the recommendations from with, uh, that will come from that transit study, that we are in a really good position to make some really positive changes, and to, you know, to welcome people back to transit, welcome more people to transit in the future. Also we, of course, we contract paratransit through Johnson County SEATS, and just to give you a sense of how the pandemic impacted those trips, we provided 73,000 trips for ...on paratransit and that, again, was about a 24% decrease. So you've probably heard pretty consistently that all of the impacts related to Transit have really been about a quarter from where we normally are, which means at this time next year, we're probably ...the numbers are going to ... they're going to go down from where we're at currently, so ... but we're hoping to get to that point very soon, where (garbled) Recent accomplishment, real quick, again, COVID operations, especially related to Transit. I can't tell you how many times we've ... we've gotten our heads together. Here's our problem in terms of transit, especially early on in the pandemic, how do we ... how do we maintain safe, comfortable operations, you know, that staff feels comfortable with, that the public feels comfortable with, and it's been everything from sani ... sanitation to eliminating fares and back -boarding, to adding helper buses and, you know, the masking policies, electrostatic disinfectant protocol. That's something that we all learned about (laughs) So I've been really proud of them and how ...how staff has ... has handled all of the curveballs that have been thrown at them this year. Of course we're working through the transit study. It's taking a bit longer than we would have liked. We had to press pause when we were working (garbled) all those operations for paratransit, but I ... the transit study, I think, it's got some really great potential to set us up well for inviting the public back, transit en masse. It's still there. I don't want (garbled) transit's not available now. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 43 But I think we're really positioned well to help imple... to help provide the community better service through the transit study, of course. Just to give you kind of the next steps really briefly, we are working now on ... on the ... the public outreach. We're putting together all the public outreach materials we need put together to help go to the public in a public hearing and present the ... that information to the public. We're hoping to do that within the next month or two. After that, we will come back to the Council and we will present the plan for your consideration, the actual ICATS transit study plan, and we are ... we are targeting an August launch for the transit study recommendations at this point. And I neglected to add, we also, as I mentioned earlier, we're planning to come back to you with more information on those enhancements you asked us to look into, so those transit study... those transit service enhancements, those things that are ... that are outside of our current resources, our current budget. We will be bringing those to you, again, at an upcoming work session for ...for your thought and consideration. Two real quick accomplishments ... that ... that I'm really proud of and they have been a revolution, um, big revolutions in terms of transit versus the introduction of the transit app. And if you haven't downloaded it, I recommend you do. It is ... it is truly, I will say, it's so revolutionary that it's what transit has needed since the first day transit has existed. It is an app that you no longer need to know anything about transit at all whatsoever. You could literally arrive here, be on the side of the street, and open up this app and it will get you where you need to go. It knows both where you are and you just need to tell it where you're going. So it's just like a Google Maps when you just type in where you're going and it knows where you're at. It will provide you with, you know, three different ways to get there by transit and if you use the go function in the app, it will tell you ... it will give you a reminder when you need to walk to the stop. I mean, it really does pretty much everything except carry you to the stop. But it gives you reminders when you're on the bus. It tells you, hey, don't forget, you got to get off here. So if you like to do ... your scrolling and relax, you don't even have to think about where you're at. You can just let your phone tell you it's time to get off the bus. So it's ... it's really revolution, it's ... it's a, you know, we were early adopters with our Bongo app and it served us well for a long time and it will sort ... they're kind of both in play right now, but Bongo will be transitioning out. It doesn't have nearly the features. We can also communicate with our, um, we can communicate with our riders. So through these winter storms, we've been able to get messaging out to our riders and that's -we didn't have that ability before and that is invaluable. So we've been really excited about that. Teague: I do have a question about the (garbled) Nagle-Gamm: Sure. Teague: How are you communicating that to the public, the difference with ... the transition between the systems. Nagle-Gamm: Oh, yeah. So we had ... we had started that, Mayor, last year and I think our first conversation was about, you know, I'm going to say the second, maybe the first week of March is when we started having communications on ... on that, and we we sort of tabled it because, A) the University's timeline. They really own Bongo. I mean they manage it physically for us. So This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 44 their ...their timeline for taking it down, which was supposed to be last June, was really ...they kind of -they pushed it so we kind of pushed our communications as we were reprioritizing our efforts on other things. But yeah, we ... we need to have those conversations with the University again about the new timeline and then we'll work with Communications to develop a (garbled) we've been pushing (garbled) transit app information, but we ... we really need to have a more concerted effort and let people know when we're getting close or not even when we're getting close. When ... when we know when Bongo is going to go away, cause we want to make sure people have had an opportunity to ... to get on the transit app and get familiar with that app. Teague: And I'm assuming that Coralville... any other transportation systems, uh, adjacent to our city, they're all on the new app as well? Nagle-Gamm: That's correct. Yep. The University of Iowa is, all the CAMBUS routes are on the app, Coralville's already on the app. We've all ... yep, we're all on it, we're all using it, and it is a great tool for... for all of us. So yeah, it does give you ... it will connect you. So if you are in Iowa City and you need to get to Coralville, you will get ... you will get recommendations that will see ... that will transfer you between the two systems, which is really great and really important in our metro area. Teague: Nice, and paratransit is not a part of that at this point. Do you ever foresee SEATS or paratransit being a part? I ... I don't know what (mumbled) I don't know if they have requests for rides, you know, through your... through that system, but wondering if there's any options in the future, or actually any options within the program itself to have paratransit, um, with some linkage through the program. Nagle-Gamm: It's a good... that's a really great question. So I'm not sure if there will be an explicit link between the two. Um, that's something we could certainly look into. I do know that Johnson County SEATS has been expanding their use of on -demand. I mean, they're an on -demand service but, you know, like all agencies a few years ago, it was this was your demand. You picked up the phone and you talked to somebody, you know, you dialed numbers and talked to somebody. So I do know, and they may have this now and I can ... I can check with Tom (mumbled) and get back to you, but my...my understanding is that either they have recently implemented or they're going to recently implement an app. So they use a system called `route map.' So there are app -based ways that ... that now that people can ... that request those rides, those paratransit rides, so I can check more on that and get back to you on where they're at with that process. It might be a separate system from our fixed route, um, because again, it's just they're requesting the rides, but I think they can also see when ... when that bus is arriving, um, as well in that app. So, you know, anything that makes it more user-friendly for ...for customers in Iowa City, I think, is something we want to ... we want to encourage. Teague: Last thing I might suggest is that with the new app that we're going to be fully, um, in operation with, maybe just checking on the option of if they have an on -demand option, because we've talked, you know, here at Council of the potential of such, um, service. So might be nice This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 45 to know if there's a limitation or if there's, you know, something already in place with this current system. Nagle -Gamin: I will check into that and I will let you know what I find. Salih: I have a question here. I'm gonna take you back to page 383, and, you know, under the fund summary, uh, I see under replacement reserve, uh (mumbled) happening every ...I guess even on the year, like 2018, 2020, 2022. What that is? Nagle -Gamin: So that is ... that is when we have withdrawn funds for the purchase of buses. So our last, um, so in 2022, what you see is that will be the purchase of the four Proterra all -electric buses that we will be purchasing this summer, that we will receive 75% reimbursement from the federal government, as part of that $3 million grant award. In 2020, the 312,000 was the purchase of new paratransit vehicles. So that is the smaller, lighter duty vehicles that you see Johnson County SEATS using to help folks get around town. And then in 2018, that was a purchase of, um, I would say... hopefully our last para ... uh, excuse me, not paratransit but diesel buses. That was our last round of diesel buses. Salih: Sure, thank you. Nagle -Gamin: Uh huh! Weiner: I have a quick question about Bike Share. So you just described this... the... the situation that we're in, where the company got bought by a company that got bought by another company, as well as having to deal with pandemic -induced delays in bringing in bikes in from overseas. With the ... with the purchases twice removed, I guess my question is ... is are we bound by that contract and is this ... is still the best, um, in your view, is this still the best way to go to eventually get Bike Share here? Nagle-Gamm: That... that's a really great question. I can't (mumbled) would be able to answer whether we are ... we are bound to that contract. I guess I'm not .... um, from a legal perspective I can't weigh in on that, although I can't imagine... there's been a lot of challenges, um (garbled) things that have not been that ... within that agreement. So I think I would like to think that if we wanted to exit it, we ... we would be able to do so. You know (laughs) every time we've gotten a curveball, we, you know, the curveballs that we got thrown during the pandemic. You know, we've got other ...we've got other fish to fiy. We've got other, you know, big priorities. We haven't necessarily dug in deeply to see if this is the right move for us right now. But I think one of the things that we need to evaluate is the new company. And I did a little bit of internet sleuthing last night. We would actually .... we have a call setup with them, or we're setting up a call with them, within the next week or two, because I think the first thing we need to do is really evaluate them and the services they offer and how those services may or may not differ from what we had agreed to and what our vision was for a launch of Bike Share in Iowa City. So I think that's really the first step, and if we don't think that it's a good fit, then I think that's the time at which we need to ... to think about what the other possible options might be. You This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 46 know, we've been reached out to by other companies, you know, throughout this process, because it has been a lengthy one. So I think there might be other opportunities if we don't feel that this, um, this is the right fit for Iowa City and for the University, and we are also, I should mention too, um, you know, we're working with the University on this project. So, um, we're trying to find something that fits for... for both of our needs. We thought we were there, um, and then, you know, some curveballs. So it's something we need to look into, and ... and in the upcoming weeks I think we'll have a little bit more sense for whether that's the case. Weiner: Thanks,. I mean ... with all the other challenges, obviously it's a ... it becomes an even bigger challenge, and it's also obviously a climate change issue as well. Nagle-Gamm: Absolutely. Taylor: Well thank... thank you, Darian, for your very extensive report and thank you to all of your wonderful staff that have literally helped keep our city on the move, uh, during all the recent crises that have gone on in 2020. I especially thank you and your staff for assuring citizens that they could comfortably board the transit, our transit buses, and feel safe for their health. So I think that that's... that's very ... that's a big major step. And on ... on though...that note, uh, have you noticed recently at all that maybe, I mean, those are some very dramatic numbers you gave us on the decline, uh, prob... possibly due to COVID. Have you noticed at all just a little increment of...of some increase... in some folks returning to the tra... (garbled) Nagle -Gamin: Yeah, that's a great question. So at the very beginning of the school year, and we were kind of waiting for the University to open back up again, at the very beginning of the school year we did start to see a glimmer of hope. But we all know what happened within a week or so of the ... of the beginning of the school year, and then it...it dropped kind of right back where it had been pretty steady over the summer, which is to have a summer ridership at the same level as a school semester is really unusual for us. So ... again, we're ... we're in the same position we were in last August. We were, you know, hopeful as the school year started, and we're hopeful again right now as we're, you know, we are a few weeks out from the University starting... starting up again. So we're ... we're hopeful that, you know, folks will return to some, you know, normal and comfortable level of travel through the community, but I guess we're just going to wait and see in a few weeks. Taylor: We can certainly hope so, but I also wanted to say that, uh, I'm ... I'm looking forward to some implementation of some of the transit study recommendations, because I think we have a great system now, but I think, uh, that with implementation of those ideas, we're going to have the best transit system in the state, uh, that ... that assures serving all of the community, all community members. So thank you. Nagle-Gamm: Thank you. Salih: Would you please remind me about the (garbled) day to day implementations or kind of like do you have an idea? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 47 Nagle -Gamin: Yeah, we're aiming for August 1 st right now. That's our... that's our... that's our working date at this point. It's a good ... we figured, you know, a good month before school starts, so we can get, you know, the kinks worked out. It's usually a pretty low volume month in terms of, you know, it's a quiet period in Iowa City usually, this year that withstanding, but we're really aiming so we'll have the ... the last few months of the summer. Clearly there's going to be a lot of physical changes we need to make, signs, things like that. That will give us time to do that kind of work that we can't do ... things we can't do, um, you know, during the winter season, but we're targeting August Pt. Salih: Thank you so much. And thank you and your team for the hard work you do. Bergus: Darian, just a quick follow up on ... on that question with the implementation. I'm wondering about, um, timing as far as the budget. Of course the ... the operations that you've spoken to today, you know, have taken some pretty significant hits and Geoff mentioned in part of his overview that maybe... or let me just ... tell me if I'm understanding this correctly, that maybe some of the enhancements that we're going to be talking about in the near term could potentially be funded as, um, kind of pilot programs out of, um, more of a reserve, rather than ... cause you're not budgeting for any of those enhancements in this budget. Is..is... am I understanding that right? Nagle -Gamin: That ... that's correct. So the ... the majority of the changes that we'll see with the transit system, again, are ... are reshuffling of our existing resources, but those ... those enhancements, those things that ... that you asked us to come back, you know, that the study identified as potential enhancements and you identified as potential priorities. Those would require additional funding. So... and ... and yes, and out of...timing order, it takes ... it takes...it's taking time to take those recommendations and present them in ... in a way that you can really, you know, think them through, make some decisions. So we would have liked to have had them, um, for you before the budget, but timewise it just didn't work out. So, yeah, I think there's an opportunity. We have ... we have been the recipient of emergency CARES Act funding, for example, which could be potentially used to pilot some of these enhancements, which would give us a sense of whether... or give you all a sense of whether these are things that you want to continue serving the community with and then can budget for in the future, if you so desire. Bergus: So if we were to implement say Sunday service or late-night service, which I think are the two big ones we've been discussing, we wouldn't have to wait for the next budget year necessarily, is that correct? Fruin: (both talking) yeah, that would be correct. I ... I think really what you want to be cognizant of for this budget is that if you know right now you want to fund these services and you want to fund them with property taxes, then we need to make that decision right now. But if you want to look at ... if you're comfortable knowing that there's reserves there or that you would rely on a utility rate increase, those don't have to wait for a budget approval. You can ... you can pass, um, you could ... you pass a utility rate by resolution anytime. Um, you could consider a LOST, you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 48 know, at the regular intervals. So it's really a question of do you want to use property taxes for it, and if so, we'll need to adjust our rate upward to accommodate that. We'll need to figure out how to do that. But otherwise, no, you're not going to be having to wait a whole other year for those services. Bergus: Thank you, and Darian, I just had one other question. You ... you spoke very well about your... you and your staff's ability to adapt and make so many changes, um, that, again, even with reduced revenue, reduced use of some of those services, is there anything from this COVID playbook that you've developed that you would anticipate continuing into the future, like lessons learned that are going to change the face of those operations going forward? Nagle-Gamm: That is a great question. Um, I think the first thing that comes to mind is ... is maybe because we just implemented it this week. Uh, we found some new ways to, um, to enhance our disinfectant operations, which is, of course, part of what we do on a regular basis, but this has been a level of intensity (laughs) that we have not seen and the amount of...especially when we were rotating staff in the early stages, the amount of person power it took to, you know, sanitize these buses multiple times a day was pretty incredible. So we have just ... just this week we have a new system for disinfecting our ...our buses, which is pretty amazing. It's electrostatic sprayer using Vital Oxide, which is a pretty inert substance, but it is ... it does the trick. So we've been able to reduce the burden and not only due to the pandemic, but just on staff in general. It's something that people do every sing ... we have staff, um, our night maintenance staff does an amazing job every night, turning those buses over, making sure they're ready, um, clean, safe, presentable, ready to go for public. So ... so definitely some of those enhancements are great. I also think about, urn ... I'm thinking more of like physical things we've done for safety, but also I think of the barriers that we have in the buses, and if you've been on any of our buses you've noticed we have a complete sheet. We call ... it's Jeep plastic, for all intents and purposes, for most of you who understand Jeeps and how they operate. They have kind of a soft plastic, but it has to be really highly visible and you need to be able to see through it, but we quickly... Scott Amlong, he's our ..he's our Fleet Operations Supervisor, quickly designed and worked with a company to turn out basically protective (mumbled) protective shields so the drivers have kind of a little bit of a cocoon. So it provides some protection, um, and I think that is the thing that we're going to see, I think with the new buses we're going to get. Um, they're just going to have driver protected areas, um, so we can make sure we can keep transit running. That was one of our fears in the early stages is what happens if we can't run transit, because we found it to be really important that we keep the system running for essential workers. So just those types of things, I think, are just going to become part of our ...part of our standard process. Those are just two things that ... off the top my head. Bergus: Thank you. Nagle -Gamin: Uh huh. Teague: I know that, um, well I wanted to mention because of the transit study and COVID, we've had some challenges, um, decreased ridership. One of the things that at the beginning of our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 49 meeting today we hae talked about anything that we kind of want to go in greater detail about, we would kind of wait for further work session. What I would say to the Council is we're really doing good on time, and I would encourage us to maybe, um, go into greater conversation and even the one police item that we said we would defer to at a later time. I think after, you know, we come back from break, which I would still suggest that we take a break, that we actually engage in that conversation today. Nagle -Gamin: So, Mayor, are you asking (both talking) Teague: No, no, no! I ... I just ... so it wasn't really directed towards you, but it was really directed towards the Council, that if we wanted to deliberate a little bit more on the transit study and the two things that we talked about, which will be nighttime and Sunday services, I think we can take time and have those discussions now. Salih: I really think that's (mumbled) discussion, especially when we think about are we going to fund this through ... from the property tax or from the increasing of the utilities. You know, this is really something that we need to discuss and give the staff direction on. To me, I really believe that it has to, you know, if we want to fund it. We been just like... increasing the utility. We already have increased (mumbled) that the Mayor responded, if I'm correct, about July for the ... for the water and why we put the burden all the time on the people (laughs) you know, who ... like paying tax both ways, you know, an in the same time we are giving up 500,000 that could come from the property tax (mumbled) you know, by reducing the tax levy. I ... I just believe that if we left everything as it is. We don't do ... do nothing on the property tax. Don't increase it, don't decrease it, leave it like that, and we got more money. I ... I really don't know. But I don't thinks we need because utilities, this is ... there is many low- income, they use, you know, this is essential need, essential service that will affect a lot people. Weiner: I thought I heard earlier from ... from you, Geoff, that ... that we have the capacity within the existing transit fund reserve to ... to fund what ... the extra projects for a year or maybe two years, as a pilot program to see how ...to see how that goes, so that that... essentially that money already exists. I would, I mean I think I ... I believe I support what you're saying as well, Mayor Pro Tem, but in terms of supporting the transit that the ... the additional transit service itself, it sounds as if the money is already there for at least a year, year and a half. Fruin: Yeah, that's correct. And ... and really what we will ... what we would plan to do is bring forward those scenarios that Darian and her team are working on and here's some different ways to provide Sunday service, evening service; here's the cost; and kind of pros and cons of each of those approaches; and then again my recommendation would be to use that fund balance. Um, probably wouldn't have said that if we didn't get the CARES Act money to support transit. That kind of...it came in and helped keep us stable. But ... but the fact is it's ... it's provided us a nice cushion, um, and I think you can, you know, experiment with those dollars for a year to add service to the community. And then you'll get a better understanding of ridership, the cost of that riding. You may want to tweak the service, you know, if you pick on -demand and it didn't really work out very well, maybe you go back to the fixed route type of model, but I think you'll This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 50 have a lot better information, not just on how those services work, but also how the public readapts to transporta... public transportation, and ... and how quickly they come back and, you know, we don't know if we'll reach our former ridership levels in one year or five years or 10 years. We really have no clue what that, uh, what that's going to look like. So I just think working with that fund balance makes a lot of sense in this case, and we'll ... we'll make sure that your decision down the road in another year or two is ... is much more informed than it ... than it really can be right now. Bergus: And that fund balance has to be used within... for... for these transportation services, is that correct? Fruin: Yes, correct. Salih: And that's one will be for (mumbled) enough for two years on.. Fruin: That's what we're... that's what we're working through internally, and we have to present to you. I'm ... I'm very comfortable in saying at least a year, hopefully two years. I ... I think if you're going to pilot som ... something like Sunday service, um, certainly like six months is not enough. I don't think that ... I think you need a year at minimum. Ideally, you'd have 18 months to two years for that type of pilot. Salih: Yeah, that sound very good. Teague: When do you anticipate you'll have this before Council, because I think if..we will need to make a decision on, you know, levies and that type of stuff. Just to give us an (mumbled) an idea, because we can probably table this part of the conversation until we get that from... presentation from staff. Nagle -Gamin: I'd say best case scenario is next month. Um, so during February I .... we've been targeting February to March for that conversation. So we're hoping to get it together as soon as we can. Fruin: Yeah, obviously you have to set your max levy rate, you know, you have to know that by the end of this month really, um, from the information that Ashley presented earlier in this morning. So if...if you knew as a group that you wanted to use property taxes, what we would do is we would ... we would have to develop those scenarios with property taxes and base those estimates based on ... use those high-level estimates that we gave you at that fall work session when we said we think it'll be roughly a million dollars for... for X service. We would have to levy with that estimate in mind. Teague: I guess it may be beneficial just to get a ... get a census of what Council is thinking when it comes down to do we want to, um, we know we don't underst... we don't fully understand how much will be in the ... in the transit fund reserve for the the programs that we're referring to. But This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 51 are Councilors leaning towards, you know, doing a property tax for this amount or more leaning towards less self-funded in some fashion, uh, temporarily and do a pilot? Mims: Much rather do a pilot and really make sure that we're getting services in place that really match what the community wants and the community needs, and that we're going to get the kind of ridership that makes sense to continue the services. And, you know, like Geoff has said, you know, it may be an on -demand. It may be a fixed route, and we don't know that. And if we have reserves to take us at least 12 months, then that gives the Council an opportunity if they want or need... during the next budget year to budget through tax... through, um, property tax revenues for that. So I would rather continue with the decrease in the levy this year, knowing that there's probably a really good chance, depending on our coming out of COVID, etc., that this may very well be the very last time that we can reduce it. But we do have those reserves to get us through at least ... at least a year of the pilot, and at that point if we needed to could increase tax revenues to finish the pilot if we had to. Salih: I really agree that's will be the best option. At least that's what I believe, and also just questions, uh, for you. If that, uh, the route is still going to be the same way that like going downtown and going now, coming downtown and going out, is that still going to be for Sunday services and for everything? Nagle -Gamin: So if we looked at a fixed route option of the fixed route scenario, you will likely see presented to you, would likely be a mirror of Saturday's proposed service, and Saturday's proposed service would look different than today's Saturday service. It would be, um, it would be 11 routes running throughout the day, versus we just have six routes running on an hourly basis on Saturdays. So there'd be more service on Saturdays, which was a request we heard from the community. So it would really be, um, the scenario that we would likely present would be a mirror image of what the Saturday service would look like. Salih: I just want to you know that I was talking about Sunday services and, you know, Saturday service, and night service for the people who really working on that time. (mumbled) we ... we have opportunity to have this and this is will help a lot. But most of the comment that I receive is, for example, if I'm going to Coralville for my work and I live in Mormon Trek, uh, do I ha ... I'd rather just like figure out something and go there, even bike or do whatever, than coming to the downtown and take a bus and going back or the same thing like, you know, from somewhere else in the city that they have to go through downtown first, and to there especially on the weekend and night, because it's like critical time, weekend maybe, you woke up late. You want to just take like some time. You know, you are not doing the same thing that you used to do on the weekdays and also nighttime. You just wanna get home as quick as possible. You don't want to take that out during winter time. And all this. That's why it worth a try to see if the people going to like it or not, for the, you know, are they going to benefit out of it, so we can continue another year or something like that. I really rather go with this, you know, policy of trying. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 52 Weiner: I..I agree as well. The only thing I'd say is I'd separate out the issue of the pilot program from what we ultimately decided to do with, uh, whether we keep the property taxes the same or reduce the levy. I just think we should. But I think that during the pilot program from ... from existing... from the existing reserves makes a ton of sense. Thomas: Yeah, I agree. I think I ... I really liked the pilot concept as a way of testing out ideas. and I prefer the funding for that come from the transportation budget and the reserves, keep it within the enterprise... funding sources. Taylor: I agree. Teague: Sound like there's consensus amongst the Council, so I think, staff, that'll be the route you all really should be focusing on. Any other questions or anything else you would like to share with us? Nagle -Gamin: I think that's it for me, unless you all have any other questions. I would be happy to answer. Salih: Thank you again for everything you do. Nagle-Gamm: I appreciate your time very much. I hope, um, I hope the rest of your aftemoon goes well, and thank you, all. Teague: Thanks to you and all of the first responder.. well, all of the ... the first line staff that is doing transportation services. Thank you all. Nagle -Gamin: I'll pass that along. Thank you. Teague: Yes, we're gonna move right along to our Airport, and I believe I saw Michael at one point. Tharp: I'm here! Teague: Great! (laughs) Welcome! Tharp: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Council. I am Mike Tharp. I'm the Airport Manager for the Iowa City Airport. Um, Iowa City Airport, much like every other department, has had its challenges over the last year with COVID. Aviation as a whole, you know, early on in the pandemic just absolutely cratered. It was about 10% of what it normally was at...at the lowest point, I believe. General aviation, however, has bounced back substantially. Uh, right now, the last few months at the airport, we've been running at roughly about 90% of our numbers, um, of where we've been pre-COVID. Uh, commercial aviation, however, has not been so fortunate. I believe over the last couple of months commercial aviation as a whole is kind of running about 50% of pre- COVID numbers. That does have an impact on the Airport because all of the ... the airport programs that the FAA does, uh, the AIP program, which is a big maintenance and project This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 53 program for airports, is funded through ticket taxes and airline fuels or fuel taxes in general, but airlines obviously drink up a lot of fuel and, you know, as those activities remain .... urn, depreciated from pre-COVID numbers, that impacts the dollars that are going into those aviation trust funds, and ultimately the ... the amount of grant money that the FAA has to dole out. Early in the spring we did ... we were a recipient of some of the CARES Act funding. We did get $69,000 from the CARES Act that the airport was able to use for just general operating funds and that helped us out for the couple of months that we were, uh, we all, I mean, we were also cratered in terms of activity. But with that, you know, we're bouncing back, we're ... we're looking over for the, you know, the next year to try to get things at least some semblance of normal, maybe not immediately, but hopefully in the second half of the year. As far as the Airport goes, ba ... uh, basic details of the Airport, we have a primary runaway with the longest landing distance being 5,004 feet. That is a critical number because of the way the FAA mandates aircraft operators budget, not only the aircraft landing distances, but then also extra allowances for things like when the runways are wet or when the winds are slightly off. That determines the size of the aircraft and things that can use the airport. Our secondary runaway is 3,900 feet. As I talked about in our C ... CIP program, a lot of our focus in the upcoming year for those projects is to get both ends of the primary runway up to that 5,000 foot landing distance... landing number. We have about 90 aircraft that live at the airport. Um, that number does tend to fluctuate because our FBO, Jet Air, is also an aircraft broker, so they're always buying and selling and trading and ... and ... but within that number we have about seven jets that live at the airport. Um, I believe we now have three helicopters and jet ... a number of single engine and small twin engine aircraft that are used for a variety of uses. With that, the Airport does about 30,000 operations a year, and operation is classified as a takeoff or a landing, and I mentioned the FBO, Jet Air, but we also have CARE Ambulance. Uh, they are a medical transport company. They provide the medical staff in partnership with Jet Air for medical traffic or medical flights that might take place from the airport, come into the airport. We also have the Operator Performance Lab, which is a, um ... College of Engineering function. It is with the University of Iowa, and they do a number of research projects. Tom Snell is the Director of the facility and they've done human factors research; they've worked with Rockwell Collins or Collins Aerospace or what ... not sure what quite their names right now (laughs) but a lot ... and a lot of different... different projects with any number of Department of Defense agencies, Department of Transportation agencies. So they are really important with what they do at the airport. They've done work in ... in drone technology, and being able to detect and see and... and figure out where drones are flying, and also how to make sure drones can stay away from other things. So quite active, um, happy to have them there. In a normal year we have a number of activities that would take place. We do a Young Eagles event, which is a program. The Young Eagles is a program by the Experimental Aircraft Association, and what happens is pilots donate their time and their airplanes and give basically anybody under the age of 18 a ride in ... a free ride in an airplane. The purpose of that is to try to spark the ... the aviation enthusiasm in some of the younger teens, but also it helps to, you know, as ... as the teenagers are, you know, starting to get out of high school, or even in high school, you know, talk about the careers in aviation that are out there, whether it's a, you know, maintenance side, pilot side, management side, there's a number of things in aviation that we try to spark. We also do ... did occasionally airport tours for schools, classes. Get to see the maintenance shop, get to talk about a little, you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 54 know, folks that are doing flight training and ... and pilots and again, another way to... to spark the aviation bug in folks. And then we typically have a pancake breakfast at the end of August, that usually capped off the year. That's typically hosted by the Optimist Club. Hopefully this year some of that might be able to come back. Um, with COVID, one of the things we were able to do was work with Summer of the Arts and we had drive-in movies throughout the summer. It looks like that program is going to come back in some fashion. So we'll have at least some drive-in movies at the airport coming up this year. Uh, really happy that that relationship is going to be continued. We're also looking at...at releasing a solar power generation RFP sometime hopefully late spring, early summer. One of the goals is to take the, uh, basically the utility bills that the Airport is generating, maybe some of the other larger users at the Airport, like Jet Air, like CARE Ambulance, and try to put them as much on ... on solar power and renewable generating power .... as we can. So right now working on ... on, you know, going through the rules and writing the RFP, but hopefully that comes out this spring. As far as the budget, our budget that's submitted is a $373,000 budget. This will be the fourth year that we are, uh, we're not requesting any tax subsidy to support the budget. Still self-sufficient in that regard. So pretty pleased on that, especially with COV1D and everything that's been going on. Uh, we are able to maintain that ... that streak. And then we use, you know, our budget is used to maintain... maintain the Airport, maintain the grounds, do a little bit of work here and there that ... that helps to brighten the Airport, maintain... maintain the buildings. The ... the terminal building is a 1951 vintage building. So it does require a little bit of care just to keep running and make sure the ... the systems are working to keep it nice and climate -controlled in the cold winters and the hot summers. And that is primarily (laughs) my...my Airport conversation. Um, happy to answer any questions folks might have. Obviously this year we're still expecting challenges from COVID. We've done a good job of working through those and will continue to do so, and as vaccines are, you know, rolled out in the communities and as aviation continues to bounce back as a whole, you know, we'll be ... we'll be ready to adapt as needed. Salih: I guess great to hear that (mumbled) COVID-19 without increasing budget (laughs) with the same budget everything going on. Uh, my...my question is, you know, I really will love to see diversity of staff on the Airport. I ... I know that there is a lot of immigrants who like really pay a lot money to go to Indian Hills and graduate from aviations, and when I have like (mumbled) out at the Airport, I was asked if some of the mechanic there, where they graduate from. All of them they graduate ... most of them at least, I talked to, they graduated from Indian Hills... Tharp: Uh huh. Salih: ... same place that (mumbled) has been graduated. Each time I encourage those people to go and see if there is a position open, even though I know our airport is small and we, you know, it is rare to have a position open, I understand that, but, you know, it (mumbled) and ask those people to go and apply, they have that notion, oh, they are not going to hire us. They will hire white people. You know, let us just break that, you know, notion. Tharp: Sure! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 55 Salih: And just try to recruit members of the community who really live here, contribute to this place. All of them now go outside Iowa City to figure out like what do Illinois. I know like couple of families. They live here, but their ...their husbands work in Illinois because they find jobs there. And most of the job that they find through a temp agency that will place them in different, you know, it is really sad that to see people who went to the University and try hard, then graduated, different language, and all this, and at the end of the day they are not going to find job. Please consider to like really give opportunity to the minority people in this community and let us lead by example that we are not only hiring certain people in the community. Tharp: Sure! I'll pass along those comments to our FBO and make sure, you know, I know they have a great relationship with Indian Hills. They've... they've leased airplanes to them for their flight instruction side. I ... I know they have a pretty good hiring rate for ...for graduates that are coming from Indian Hills and finishing their work. But yeah, I'll pass along those comments to them. Salih: (mumbled) thank you again for all the thing that you do. Thanks, and your team. Thanks. Taylor: Michael, over the last year and a half, two years I had the opportunity. I live on the west side. So I've talked to a lot of folks that (clears throat) excuse me, have been involved in the mitigation efforts. Tharp: Uh huh. Taylor: And I've received very positive comments from them on how they were dealt with, how they were ... how it was handled, and although I, uh, along with John and others don't like to see the removal of trees. I mean that's... that's... that's hard. But I would like to make sure that, uh... these folks are compensated and new trees are planted that ... that won't interfere with ... with the planes. Tharp: Yeah, absolutely. Our mitigation project did have for folks to ... to select trees. Um, we had quite a list of variety, and the idea is ... is to take out the trees that were in conflict with the airport approaches and, you know, allow... allow the property owners to ... to pick something that would ... that could go back, that wouldn't grow to be a future obstruction, because that's... that's the one thing we don't want. We don't want to put something back and then in 20 or 30 years have to do this again. Um, but, yeah, we, you know, we've done our best to try to communicate what ... why we're doing it, especially. You know, I don't like to do it either. I love the tree canopy. You know, I don't want to impact anything, and I know, you know, just from a homeowner's, uh, homeowner's standpoint myself, I can see, you know, I ... I'd have similar reactions to some folks that I've gotten that, you know, they don't like the idea of, you know, somebody coming in and tell them what they have to do with their property. It's not ... not something anybody enjoys. So we try to make the best of it, you know, the program is something that, you know, we're ... we're taking care of all of the work. We're coming in and we're removing the trees, restoring the property, offering up a replacement. If they choose to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 56 have something, some folks have chosen not to have anything replaced, so they might... they might have different plans with their property. I don't know. But certainly doing ... doing what we can to make the process as easy as it can be. Taylor: Thank you. Teague: Well, thank you for joining us and hope you enjoy the rest of this day! Tharp: Absolutely. Thank you. Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your presentations (laughs) Teague: Absolutely. All right. So, Councilors, it is almost noon. We have, urn ... still some reports to hear from, um, one earlier, our Finance Director or Finance department, as well as Public Works. What I'm ... what ... and ... and we could actually spend some time deliberating. What I'm going to propose is that we actually take a 30 -minute break and we come back in 30 minutes and we continue our discussion. I'm seeing some heads nodding. So why don't we plan to be back at 12:25 and we will continue, and we'll ... we'll actually start with our Public Works, Ron Knoche. So be ready to go right when we return. All right? We will see you all in a little bit. (BREAK) It is now 12:25 and we are returning to our budget work session, and we will continue with Public Works Director Ron Knoche. So welcome and ... happy to have you here. Public Works Program Budgets: Knoche: Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Ron Knoche, Public Works Director. I've had the pleasure to serve the Iowa City community since April of 1999 and although hard for me to believe, this is my seventh presentation of the budget as Public Works Director. So it's... it's... it's been exciting so far, especially 2020 was definitely exciting. The department budget summary is on page 63 of your budget book. The Public Works department has seven divisions. We have nine operating areas. This proposed budget includes 158.76 full-time employees or equivalent positions for FY22. Of that number, we currently have 151 employees in the department, um, with staff experiences ranging from a few months to 44 years. So with that, uh, through our succession planning, we expect 20% of our workforce to be retiring within the next five years. So it's ... it's going to be some challenging times as we look to replace those employees. But we continue to try to build the bench with our internships that we do with our community colleges and the University of Iowa, and then also our seasonal employees as they come onboard. The administration budget is covered on page... starting on page 285 in the budget book. You know, it ... so that ... that just... that... that piece of the budget just includes myself and and Kim Sandberg, who's ... who's our Project Coordinator. You know, kind of the overall big picture, um, you know, this, you know, we're in charge of the sidewalk cafe program. You know, the other big picture things and bringing things in, um, you know, we've started a automated vehicle location system and brought that online. We're in the process of working through an asset management program. Um, that's actually out for permit now. Um, the permitting software that we have implemented in NDS, we're also using for all of our permitting, uh, through the Engineering and the right-of-way management side of things. Um, those are all good systems to have, and it's actually made our process a lot easier, especially in a COVID world where City Hall being This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 57 closed and not having people being able to, you know, come to the front door, per se. It ... that online permit application process has really helped the overall system. The Engineering division is start... starts on page 288 in the budget book. Basically two activity areas in the Engineering division — the general engineering overall, which is right-of-way management, and then the oversight of the private and public projects, construction projects that ... that go on, um, and then there's a second group in there. That's kind of our special projects group, and so we have a few employees that fall in that group and those tend to be our larger projects. So the Gateway project (garbled) would be an example of that. Um, wastewater plant production is where those ... those folks would fall in. In FY21 we were able to add a senior engineer position. Um, due to the COVID, uh, situation, we ... we actually held off on filling that position, and (mumbled) we'll be filling that position within this calendar year. That will be a great addition. If you recall, we took a senior engineer and moved that position into our assistant city engineer. So there's... there's a little bit of capacity gap that we have there, um, as far as getting projects (garbled) and keeping things, uh, flowing through the pipeline. We have currently 35 projects that are private development projects that are going on that staff are reviewing. Um, that is down, as was mentioned earlier. At this time last year we had 50 private projects that were going on. Um, the capital program side, you know, we've had some backlog just with where we've been at. We currently have 67 projects that we're working through within the Engineering division. And I think the good thing there, that's down from 112 projects a year ago. So we're ... we're starting to get caught back up in the overall construction of our capital program. The Engineering division has been working through the statewide urban design standards over the past few years. We're already have adopted the construction specifications. We've been using those on our projects and also in our private projects. The next step is actually looking at the design standards piece. We've been able to work through that, and now it's a matter of coordinating with the other divisions and departments within the City, and updating the ... the necessary City code sections that we have to, to help implement that design piece. A prime example of that is our stormwater management ordinance that we have. There's some updates that we'll be looking at as a part of the adoption of the design standards. And it was also mentioned earlier the Iowa City pavement management program we ... we have that final report. I think there were a few additions that we need to make to it, but, you know, that... that's a ... that's a piece of the puzzle that we've been using on our pavement rehabilitation program that has helped us align what we're doing in our overlay program to, you know, make sure that we're getting the biggest bang for our buck as we move (garbled) Any questions on the Engineering division or administration? All right. So we ... because of the way the Public Works Department is structured, we have a multiple funding sources, and so what we kind of fall all over the place within the budget book. The next group is the Streets division. That's a special revenue fund. It's funded through the road use tax and that is on page 307 in the budget book is where that begins. There's two major activity areas within the Streets division, the overall streets operation and maintenance. That group is responsible for 495 lane miles of streets within our community. Traffic Engineering is the second piece of that, and they're responsible for over 100 signalized intersections that we have, and they also deal with all the lighting in the downtown, as far as our decorative lighting and then also our roadway lighting that we own ourselves. The, you know, I think the highlight of the Streets division at this point is ... is really the facility, you know, the new Public Works Facility is hands down the ... the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 58 (garbled) biggest improvement that we've made within the Streets division in a very long time. You know, with the events that have gone on this year, the use of that facility by pretty much everybody within the City has ... has been a key to being able to work through the derecho, to work through the ... the Black Lives Matter movement, um, and... and as those things have been, you know, going on and it's... it's... it's a huge improvement over what we had. The, you know, the derecho I think, uh, up until this year, I've been able to say I've avoided the natural disaster bug. Unfortunately, I can't say that anymore. You know, the derecho event, you know, really highlighted what we've done from an equipment standpoint within the Public Works Department. Uh, we have added, you know, a small excavator that, you know, through previous budgets, we upgraded the (mumbled) equipment that we have at the Landfill, you know, upgraded trucks and... and those all were key in our recovery from the derecho, and then the automated vehicle location, which we ... which we've been implementing, also is key. We have that on pretty much all of our vehicles now within Public Works and and, you know, we were able with our Refuse and group going out, they were able to identify locations where we had piles and then, um, of debris and that allowed the Street staff to identify those locations on the backside, and go in and get those areas cleaned up. Obviously the ... the help that we received from the State DOT and from Johnson County, you know, we wouldn't have been able to get through in the two months that we were able to without their support. You know, the... Brock has done a very good job of working through 28E agreements. We have two of those in place now, um, the revised 28E agreement Johnson County. We've added one with Coralville. We're currently working on one with University Heights, and basically that just helps us identify, you know, we can jointly maintain those areas that are joint jurisdiction. So if we have a, you know, a joint road that we're working on, uh, help staff know what they need to be doing, and then also make sure that that Iowa City's not paying more than what their fair share is for those maintenance items that are going on in those areas. From a sustainability standpoint, we will be adding solar to the new facility, um, that we're ... we're in the process now working through legal on the purchasing document. So that... that should be going out here in the next couple of months, uh, and then the other piece in this budget that you'll see is a crushing contract. So we have been stockpiling all of our pavement that we've been removing for water main breaks, for pavement repairs, and we're going to crush that material and use it for rock replacement. So we're not having to go to the quarry and buy rock. We're able to have it on our own facility. We believe with the amount of material that we have right now, we probably have at least three years worth of material or rock material, um, as we move forward and that'll be used by not only the Streets department. It'll be used by Water, we'll use it out the Landfill, and then we'll also have it available for the Parks and Rec (garbled) Any questions on the Streets division? Okay, next division is Wastewater. This ... this is an enterprise fund. It's on page 397 in your budget book. We have three activity areas kind of identified in that budget — administration, plant operations. We're responsible for the operation of one treatment plan. We have sani... 17 sanitary sewer pump stations and five storm water pump stations that ... that the plant operation side is responsible for, and then the collections group is responsible for 320 miles of sanitary sewer and about 110 miles of storm sewer. On average, uh, the average day we're treating about 8.7 million gallons of wastewater, and ... and that's been down pretty significantly over the ... over this year. Just with COVID, you know, with students not being in town, we've seen ... we've seen a pretty big reduction in the amount of waste water that we're seeing every This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 59 day. Highlights of this budget, so a year ago I reported the EPA had ... had ... we had entered into a consent order with the EPA due to some zinc exceedances that we had on our permit. I'm happy to report that we've had zero of those in this calendar year. So as we ... we've been required to do quarterly reports back to them. With our quarterly report that we do in March, we will request to get out of that consent decree. So we're, um, good things are happening there. Um, biggest contributor to zinc is Procter and Gamble here in town, and we've been able to work with them. They're doing a lot of pretreatment on their side of it to ... to make sure that we don't exceed our ...our limits on our permit. We are in the process of working with University of Iowa on a Wastewater Technology Research Park. This is with Professor Craig Just. He is...got some funding through the Iowa Economic Development Administration to look at different wastewater technologies, um, for kind of the smaller scale side of things, but then for smaller communities but then also looking at the ability for some different treatment techniques on the nutrient side, which is something that as we move down the road, uh, that we're going to need to work through at our plant. And then the other piece that we've been working through, uh, we actually last week started to send some test samples to a research program that's looking at COVID and the ... the community spread and just being a part of that as we move forward. So those ... the University of Arizona is where we're working with on that right now and ... and sending those ... those (garbled) Sustainability side at the wastewater plant. Um (mumbled) we make a lot of biosolids. Those are land -applied and used as, uh, fertilizer for... for farm fields around the the plant. We just have been finishing up the methane feasibility study; that was presented to the Climate Action group at the last ... at their last meeting, and then they've also been doing a lot of energy... looking at energy reductions within different blower upgrades and then variable frequency (garbled) some pumps (garbled) The...the biggest change you'll see in this budget is actually a su... proposed support to the Water division for the... for the customer service side of things. So, you know, Water is the one that's out checking all the meters, uh, replacing all the meters and... and so, which is how we determine what our utility bills are, and so with this ... with this budget, we will actually be having a shift of some dollars out of the Wastewater division to be able to help support the Water division. Any questions on Wastewater? Okay. Water division is our next enterprise fund. That's on page 416 in the budget book. We have four activity areas that we work with in the Water division. There's the administration side of things, plant operations, responsible for one treatment plant. We have four ground storage reservoirs that we have in our system. The water distribution group is responsible for 280 miles of water mains and then we have the customer service group. They're responsible for, you know, going out, doing all the meter reading, doing meter repairs, and... and helping with meter installs at times, as necessary. I would note with the administration side, uh, Kevin Slutts, who had 37 years of service with us, uh, actually retired on December 3151. So John Durst, who is our Assistant actually has ... has filled that position. We're out on the street right now to hire a new assistant superintendent for that ... for that division. Um, you know, happy for Kevin, excited to see where we go with ... with the division as we move forward. Annually we ... we pump about a billion gallons of water. So ... and with that, I mean, I know I've mentioned in the past, you know, it ... for us to produce a gallon of water it's about a penny. So it's, you know, we're pretty efficient and effective in the processes that we go through to produce the ... the water that we send out to the community. One of the highlights, and it's something that we didn't get into the budget book. We've talked about lead service lines in the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 60 past. We have kind of a heat map of where those services are within our community. Um, EPA has just come out with a new unfunded mandate which will go in ... in line with lead ser ...le ... service ... lead service line replacement. And so there's some testing that ... that protocol that go on with that and depending on what those test results are, um, there'll be ... there may be some action items that we have to look through in the future on that. Sustainability, we have our lime solids, um, that we produce as a part of our ...is a byproduct of our production. We land -apply those and work with a company to actually remove those from, uh, from our lime storage area, and then, uh, dewater those and actually haul them out. And then as we look through our (garbled) different, um, pumping scenarios, we're looking at energy reduction in that manner. One of the things that we saw in this budget is a significant increase in the ... in the cost of the lime solid removal, uh, and then also just a cost of our lime, uh, that we're actually using in the process. So what we're... what we'll be doing here in the next year, one is to look at a different method of the lime solid removal. So right now we hire a company to come in and they remove the... remove the solids and haul them out and ... and find a farmer who will take those. We're going to, um, kind of be the ... the front person, um, try to find those farmers upfront and ... and maybe get some revenue on the lime side of it, and then just hire the ... the hauling side of things. So we'll see if that ... how that process goes for us, and the increase in cost of the lime that we use should decrease the amount of lime solids we actually produce. So it's ... what we'll ... we'll see how those two things play together as we move forward in this in this next year. Do you have any questions on the Water division? Okay. Resource Management is ... actually has two operating areas within Resource Management. So the Refuse side of things is in our enterprise fund. That's on page 434 in the budget book. Um, you know, we provide service to 16,000 households within the Iowa City community. We have five activity areas that kind of fall underneath that Refuse side of the operating side of Resource Management — admin, refuse collection, yard waste collection, curbside recycling collection, and then the white goods, bulky item pickup. We are in the process... we've actually ordered two new automated trucks to add to the fleet. Um, that will allow us to start to make the transition to automated pickup for yard waste. Um, kind of going along with that, we're looking at a shift to yard waste carts and getting those out, you know, making sure everybody has the availability to have those, um, both for the yard waste and composting side of things, but then making a shift to ... to not allowing for those, you know, garbage cans that have been used in the past. For the resident snaking a shift to going to ... to just carts on that side or bags, just due to the ... um, it's the employee safety. It's ... it's a...there's some concern there in regards to having to throw those containers up into the automated truck, just because of the way the automated trucks are set up, you know, the packers. (garbled) obviously it's ... it's about a foot difference between where the packer lip is when they throw it to where they throw it in the back of the automated (garbled) On the Landfill side, that's also an enterprise fund. That's on page 447 in the budget book. (garbled) activity areas - administration and then the operation side. This year's and this... this... the Landfill side also includes Eastside Recycles, uh, facility and the staff that are there to help operate that area. The budget includes a.25, uh, FTE for a scale house operator. So currently the way that ... that that is set up at the scale. You know, we're a six .... six day a week operation at the Landfill, 10 hour days. And so with the one and a half current FTEs that we have available, there's no overlap between when those operators are there at the scale, um, and so this is gonna allow us to do some cross -training and then also just the general training out there, and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 61 then give some breaks, uh, as ... as they're at the ... at the scale itself. From a highlight standpoint, you know, the ... we made the shift this last year, uh, household hazardous material drop-off. There's no...no longer a requirement to make an appointment. We're in the process this year of working through a master plan at the landfill to better understand what our future needs are, and then also to identify locations where we're going to have our equipment storage out there. Our equipment is to the size now that it won't fit in our current buildings. And so, you know, they're having to maintain their equipment outside in the elements. Um, the, uh, we are, uh, in the budget this year we have an early upgrade on a dozer. So we had purchased the D-7 dozer. It was going to be the ... the best thing since sliced bread when it was purchased. We've made some changes and went to a flat fill operation out at the landfill, which the D-7 just doesn't ... it doesn't do a very good job in that ... in that environment. And so we're doing an early upgrade to add another D-7 ... or a D-8 to our equipment fleet out there, um, just to be able to ... just do a better job on the ... on the flat fill side of things. Um, you know, the FY21 budget included an excavator and a haul truck. Uh, the excavator actually was delivered two weeks ago. So we're waiting on the haul truck yet out there. You know, with the landfill I think we had a pretty good downhill trend in regards to tonnages that coming in. Uh, unfortunately COVID and... and derecho and a hailstorm this year, it has had a ... bad a negative impact on that. And so we're up right around 10,000 tons right now at the landfill. So we're, you know, we'll...we'll see as ... as we start to, you know, recover from the ... from the ... those pieces, we'll just see where we end up at, and hopefully we get back to that downhill slide, uh, on the amount of tonnages that (garbled) Any questions on the Resource Management side? Okay. (both talking) Fruin: If I could jump in real quick. I just ... make sure the Council doesn't miss this. It's on page 437 and it's back in the Refuse section of the budget, but Council knows that we've ... we've had a major focus on materials and diverting as much as we can from the landfill. And so this... this... these metrics on ... on page 437 show some of the ... the tremendous success that we've had on the residential level. You can look at the refuse tonnages that have remained relatively stable, which is a really good sign in a growing community, that ... that we're not increasing refuse tonnages. At the same time, you can see tremendous increase in recycling and yard waste, and... and that's all items that are diverted from the landfill, um, and in the case of the yard waste and compost, ultimately reused in the ... in the community. So just kudos to ... to the Resource Management staff for being able to execute so well on ... on all those changes, you know, rolling out all those carts, changing recycling procedures, adjusting equipment. Those are huge undertakings and it's really paying dividends for us. Knoche:And then, you know, also in regards to just...just general availability of recycling. You know, we made the move from the old north Dodge site down to the current or old Public Work site, however, you want to refer to it. And that really has not missed a beat. We've, you know, folks have ... have still, you know, been using that site and it really hasn't been an issue for us in the move (garbled) Um, the next enterprise fund is the storm water utility, and that ... that is actually managed by our Engineering division. So we have one of our senior engineers that oversees that, and then we also have a technician that ... that is a part of that ... a part of the Engineering group. Um, you know, this... in here, uh, you know, there's funding obviously for capital programs, um, capital projects, but ... but this is where our storm water quality, best management This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 62 practices grants are ... are, um, come out of and then also we have some creek maintenance programs that we work on and, you know, the storm water... the... the BMP side of things, you know, that's, you know, dealing with maybe adding pervious pavers, uh, as far as in, you know, on decks or on ... on patios. Um, also looks at the deep tine aeration and a few other things that ... that the residential customer can ... can, you know, use in their yards. The creek maintenance program is for those pieces of Ralston Creek, Willow Creek that don't fall within the City right-of-way and ... and, you know, those are key areas for erosion and, you know, potential issues, uh, for... for backyards, and so this just helps those folks that ... that it really is 100% maintenance on their part to be able to work through some of those programs (garbled) and repairs that are necessary. Um, you know, both of those have been very successful in working with ... with the community members (garbled) The next ... the next division is the Equipment division. This is an internal service fund and ... and this is on page 622 in the budget book. You know, Equipment's responsible for the fleet procurement and maintenance of...of all of our pieces of equipment, minus those that are in Transit. Um, also in charge of the fuel facilities, you know, the ... the acquisition of fuel, um, and that is we provide service both, you know, not only to the Iowa City fleet, but then also Johnson County and then the Iowa City (garbled) uh, for their busing. Also that group oversees the non-public safety radio system. So, you know, the public safety side works through JECC for the radio system. Uh, we've been maintaining our own system for those non-public safety radios. The ... this in tlris budget, we've included a staff increase of .25 for our buyer 1 position. Our buyer 1 position currently is ... is obviously three-quarter time. That's... the person that fills that position will be retiring within this year and so just making that increase that, you know, as ... as our fleet is increased, um, you know, it just ... a little bit more depth in regards to the position. Um, also in this budget you'll notice in FYI 21 we added a mechanic position. That position was added due to a mechanic that actually is deployed, has ... is on military deployment, and so, you know, just due to the time frame that they were going to be out, we needed to be able to ... to maintain the fleet and, uh, we added that position, in FY21. As we move forward in this budget, you know, probably the biggest thing that we'll be working on over the next few years is a radio system replacement or upgrade. We're at the end of our useful life with our current system and so we need to, you know, look at what our options are. You know, whether that would be to continue to maintain our ...maintain our own system or whether we would look at making that transition to JECC and using their system. Sustainability standpoint, urn, obviously when ... when we're making replacements in the fleet, we're looking at the ability to replace those vehicles with electric or hybrid vehicles. Um, that has been very successful as (mumbled) moving forward on those. Um, with the ABL system, were able to develop different types of reports and ... and one of those reports that we're able to develop is to look at idling equipment and determine idle time on what's going on out there in the fleet, and so that's a new (mumbled) a new report that's going out to the division heads. It is helping them understand that, you know, we have a no -idle policy. You know, clearly, if we have a... Water divisions out in the middle of winter fighting a water main break, their vehicle can idle, but in the middle of summer they probably shouldn't be, and then, uh... from ... also from the sustainability side, uh, we made the transition a year ago to 5% biodiesel, uh, year round, and ... and that's been very successful, uh, in regards (mumbled) and had no issues in regards to equipment, um ... with that use of the biodiesel. Have any questions in regards to the Equipment division? All right, I ... and just in closing, you know, I ... I This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 63 would put our Public Works staff up against anybody's in the country. Um, it continues just to amaze me as ... as we, you know, come up with the various things that we come up against, uh, the ability that they have to adjust to any task at hand, whether it's trying to figure out a way to install an arch for RAGBRAI coming to town or it's trying to figure out how we're going to go clean up the 50,000 cubic yards of debris that come out of a windstorm, uh, in the derecho. So with that, I'd answer any questions that folks would have. Weiner: I just had one quick question about Streets, sort of going back to the beginning. Because I noticed that in the upcoming challenges that ... that you said that limited road use tax revenues inhibit adequate preventative street maintenance and of course deferred maintenance causes problems down the line. Is it ... do you see this as a ... as a substantial problem right now? Knoche:Well, you know, I think so. There's... there's a couple things that are going on right now. Obviously with ... with COVID, you know, there's... there was some -been some reductions in what we've seen in our receipts for ...for road use tax and, you know, I ... you know, we've been very lucky, I think, with our capital program to be able to maintain our street rehabilitation programs at the levels that we have. Um, but obviously, as we ... as we ... as we get to a point where, you know, the ... the income stays level and the needs increase, you know, we'll have to figure out how we're going to overcome that... that part of it. Frain: Yeah, I think ... I think part of the challenge, if I could add to that, is road use tax even ... even if we get a little bump from the census, it's ... it's flattening out so much, um, and there's... there's all kinds of reasons for that, but we're just not going to see the growth and, of course, we know that there's going to be growth in the, uh, the number of repairs that are needed and just the ... the expense of those repairs, and keep in mind, road use tax helps fund personnel. It helps fund salt. It helps fund more than just the actual pavement repairs. It's really a revenue source that ... that comprehensively funds the Street maintenance operations, and so when you have that flat revenue source, and as we talked about before, you have salaries and insurance and salt and all those things that are increasing... even though we're maintaining the budget that ... like the resurfacing budget at 2 million. Those dollars just don't stretch as far and every year you get a little less lane mileage out of...out of those dollars, and that's what you'll see in the report that ... that we come back that that payment plan is without that revenue source that's... that's growing comparatively with the ... with the expenses. We're eventually going to get ourselves into a bit of a backlog when it comes to deferred maintenance. Teague: All right, well thank you. Knoche: Thank you! Teague: Yes, we'll see you later. Knoche: You bet. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 64 Teague: We will kind of backtrack a little bit on our agenda and go to our Finance Director... Dennis. Welcome. General Government Program Budgets (cont.): Bockenstedt: Good afternoon! I'm going to talk about the Finance department and give you an update on what's going on in our staffing and what we do. Like Public Works, we have a variety of divisions throughout the budget. And so I'm going to just talk about each of those and what each one does. And I'll give you those page numbers. Starting on page 47 there's a two-page department summary that talks about the different divisions we have. Uh, the department has roughly 35 employees across six divisions. The first division is administration and, uh, Finance administration starts on page 164 and goes through page 171, and there's roughly three FTE in that division. That includes myself, uh, an assistant director, uh, budget and compliance officer, and then we have a part-time internal auditor. And then, of course, a risk and finance assistant. We handle most of the administrative functions within the department, one of which is a compilation of the budget, which we're talking about today, and also the compilation of the Capital Improvement Program, which we met on the other day. We also handle all the City's investments and banking, which roughly invests and manages about $200 million in cash flow and investments. A new area we added a couple years ago, uh, that's... that's very interesting and is our internal audit division, as it reviews each of the City's financial policies and procedures and internal controls. We also manage the ... the City's annual debt issuance, and ... and then also the IRS and SEC compliance, uh, with that debt, and I do have some information for you. Lori, you asked about the impact of the triple-A. So looking at some of the data, and... and just to say this is like a moving target. I mean, the timing, it's all market driven. So any given day, whatever is going on, it can fluctuate. But roughly it's about a 20 basis point, uh, difference between a triple-A and a double-A on what you pay in interest rates, and that translates to buy $2,000 per year for each million dollars of debt. Right now (mumbled) if you look at the last 10 years, the City's had roughly between 52 and $77 million of debt, and so annually we would save about 105,000 to $155,000 per year, um, on our general obligation debt. So that kind of gives you an idea of...of the dollar savings that we experience because we are able to maintain that ... that triple-A bond rating. And then of course, you know, along with that bond rating what we do kind of circles around that as we put the budget, CIP, and a lot of this other stuff together. It does impact some of our thinking into a ... a very conservative realm in trying to maintain our ...our finances to ... to as best as can possibly be. And then administration also manages the health and dental reserves, the workers comp programs, the employee benefit programs, and also TIF financing and TIF debt. Some of the upcoming challenges that... and... and issues we're looking at, uh, right now we're managing two federal disasters. We've got the coronavirus, which is one FEMA disaster. Then we got the derecho, which is another one. And so, you know, we're just working with FEMA pretty much on a daily basis, and Iowa Homeland Security to ... to submit those projects, get them tied out and ... and to get financing or funding in from the state and federal governments for that. One of the things we ... we've spent a lot of time this year on or is the ... this fiscal year and hit the last half of the last one was just managing what's going on through the COVID-19 and just, you know, checking revenues, checking budgets, seeing where ... where things are at, and ... and if there's issues out there or actions we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 65 need to take. And then one other thing we're looking at, we're going to ... is potentially looking at an online budget book software. (mumbled) we've been looking for maybe something for that or to ... continue to reduce paper. So we're just evaluating options and something hopefully we can come up with,uh, by next year. The second division is our accounting division. That's on page 172 through 175, uh, and they have roughly 6.45 FTE, but sometimes we split people up and place them in different divisions. So there's actually seven people within that division. Their primary services include the accounts receivable. They billing and ... and bill for services and collect. Uh, they also do accounts payable, uh, which is paying the City's bills. They do the the bi- weekly payroll. They also manage a lot of the grant payments and they coordinate our annual financial audit. They also produce a lot of other financial reports and then they manage the JECC's bookkeeping for them. One of the things that they've been working on for some time now is to continue to move to paperless. We've continued to get more and more vendors signed up for electronic payments, ACH payments. You know, we've got our (mumbled) as many poi... employees as possible into direct deposit, and we're also trying to get as many employees as possible into electronic W2s. One of the other issues facing accounting is the continually changing and evolving accounting standards. It's not very exciting, but some of those changes can be very detailed and time consuming, as well as can be rather costly to implement. Our third division is our purchasing division, and they actually have two separate functions wrapped into that division. They have our ...the purchasing function and then they also oversee the central services. The purchasing is on page 176 to 180 in the general fund, and the central services is on page 642 to 645, and it acts as an internal service fund. The ... so there's four individuals in that division and purchasing is exactly what it is. They go out and they get bids. They get quotes. They manage contracts. They ...they do what they can (mumbled) they keep it competitive, uh, keep an open environment, uh, keep it as fair as possible for vendors. Uh, the central services manages the City's copiers throughout the City. So they charge copier charges and then they replace the copiers throughout the City as they come up. They also do all the postage and mail. So all the mail in the City goes through central services and ... and they now have a service that actually picks that up and ... and takes that to the post office every day. Um, one of the issues we've been working on with them is we've had a lot of staff turnover in that division in the last couple years, but we are looking at trying to really get more streamlined in ... in our bidding and take that online and go fully electronic and that's one of the things we really would like to hopefully get done this spring, uh, if we're finally up to full staff in that division. Also we're looking at a citywide scanning contract to try and take a lot of paper out of the building and put it into the electronic format. And one of the things they've been working on also the last few years is to increase the minority and women vendor usage. This is... we've ... we've gotten much better at tracking it. We're hoping that once we go online we'll be ... we, uh, do a better job of being able to locate and find minority and women vendors. But that has been a goal of...of theirs for some time now. Our fourth division is our revenue division, also what you might think of as our utility billing division. They have 7.88 FTE, as a couple of them are ... are part-time individuals and that is on page 181 to 183. And actually they do the utility billing. They do the landfill billing, and they also do the daily banking for pretty much all the divisions citywide. Most of the deposits in the City come to this division and they tie them out to the City's accounting system and then get them to the bank. And one of their main challenges is the... implementing the new late fee and shut-off notice changes that were This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 66 approved by City Council, and then implementing the electronic notifications software that we acquired, so... Our fifth division's our risk management division and this has three individuals in it. And it manages the City's insurance programs, um, of all varieties - property, liability, environmental, cyber. I'll go through our risk management division. They also manage those claims. They work with the City Attorney's office, as Eleanor mentioned earlier this morning. We work with them to ... to oversee these claims, to ... to complete them to get them paid or settled or...or removed from our books. They also run and coordinate safety programs throughout the City, and they do the City's annual OSHA reporting and filings that are ... that are required. Um, and every year we ... we ... or every other year, we get quotes and bids on the City's insurance, and then we renew those insurance premiums annually. So one of the things we have worked on and that has continued to document our safety programs and what we do, how ...how it works and coordinates. One of the other things we're working on is monthly facility inspections to make sure that we get in those facilities and make sure that they are up to the necessary safety standards. And all of the various divisions are part of that safety certification where they have to meet minimum safety standards and... and that we put out there, and we have quite a few divisions that have ... meet those minimum standards for training. You know, if there's an injury they review those injuries and ... and just also looking for ways to do safety and implementing those programs. Our last division is our information technology. This is also an internal service fund. It's on page 632 to 639, and they have 9.8 FTE, with nine full-time staff, and pretty much just about anything that's electronic or computer -oriented in the City, they work on. They do all the City's servers, personal computers, all the networks, wi-fi, fiber optic lines, telephones, all the software. They ...they manage the GIS system and all the video cameras in all the buildings and throughout the City are also managed by this division. I will give them a bit of a shout out in regards to the response to the pandemic. I'll say that, uh, my (mumbled) approached me very early when that first came up and they had done pandemic training, and... and said that we should get out in front of it. And so by the time it actually got bad, we had lined up a lot of the remote access licenses and a lot of things that we needed, and they were actually ready to go pretty quickly in response to ... to the pandemic and... and get online and start having remote meetings, employees working from home. We were actually able to mobilize that fairly quickly and in no small part to ... to their planning, uh, for the possibility of that happening. Some of the things that we're looking at is ... is integrating, expanding the GIS system. Uh, we have a plan for that. Also, you know, we're involved in the asset management software integration that ... with Public Works. (mumbled) the challenges we continue to work with our internal audit division to enhance our network security, uh, train staff on email safety and just overall IT safety. It's... it's... it becomes more and more challenging as you see more and more cities being taken hostage or school districts or infiltration. So it's just an area that continues to become more complex and ... and take more resources, uh, just to manage. They're also very much involved in our carbon emission reductions, cause so much of our stuff is going electronic um, or...or...and also the service took a lot of power. And so a lot of things, what they're doing is looking at how they can reduce electric consumption with the computer equipment, as well as making things so somebody doesn't have to pick up a piece of paper and drive it across the City to drop it off in another division, and we've managed to ... to go a long ways towards elimination of paper and having people to actually deliver paper throughout the City. And then one of the other big challenges that we ... we're trying to get our arms around of and come up with a good This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 67 strategy is with all of -all of these things go electronic and that is continuing to manage that data and find that ... a better... good and better ways to store it and retrieve it. So just what it takes to ... to store the data, to back it up, to retrieve it, particularly with a lot of the video that we're doing in ... in the parking ramps, you know, in the traffic signals and the buildings. Just continues to take up more and more data, and more and more storage requirements. And so that's kind of the finance department and what we do. And I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Weiner: I don't have a question, per se, but I really wanted to give you kudos on focusing on the cyber security aspect because, especially as we put more and more applications online and with everything that ... that we've seen, um (mumbled) cyber attacks. Uh, it's incredibly important to our being able to continue to do business. Bockenstedt: It is...it is, um, you know, and it is getting ... just getting worse and more challenging and one of the things we really focused on is ... is most times when a system gets attacked, it's really somebody lets them in either ...most times it's inadvertent, and so we've done a lot of fishing training and email training with staff, and ... and from when we started doing that to now, I would say that it has been a vast improvement in the awareness and knowledge about the potential of clicking on things in emails or downloading, um, has ... we've greatly improved as an organization in ... in being aware of what can happen from not being careful with those things that you're receiving in your email. Salih: (mumbled) what you refer to by ITS risk assessment (unable to understand) or is that something different? Bockenstedt: Oh yeah, you know, that was something we did this year, um, and our internal auditor discovered that, and that was done through SISA, which is the federal agency, um, you probably heard a lot about that in the last month or so, um, with what has gone on with solar winds and ... and the federal government. And they actually came in and ... and sat down and did a risk assessment of all of our systems with us and produced a ... quite a lengthy report on our risks, where they were at. Um, it was a really interesting process, and what that's going to allow us to do is ... is we know what we're doing well. We know maybe we're ... we can do better ,and allow us to focus on resources into improving those areas that we need it. So ... so that was a really interesting process and it's one that we're still... still working on. Teague: Any other questions or comments? Thank you, Dennis. Really appreciate you being a part of this. Bockenstedt: Thank you. Teague: Great! All right, so we are going to move, uh, continue more with the general government. Urn ... uh, so I'm going to ask our City Clerk to do a presentation. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 68 Fruehling: Okay. Good afternoon. Kelly Fruehling, City Clerk's Office. My budget starts on page 133 and ends on page 133. (laughs) I have no buildings or fancy equipment. But I do have three fabulous full-time staff. In this office it's myself, the Deputy Clerk, an administrative secretary, and then our licensing specialist. We don't have any recommended changes or requests as far as personnel is concerned. One of the main duties we do is prepping for Council meeting agenda packets, the weekly information packets, uh, with items provided by staff. We do the archival. We make sure that everything after the meeting is signed and completed and take care of the the filings with the Johnson County Recorder's Office or the Secretary of State. We're also responsible for legal publications, such as public notices, ordinances, minutes required by law. All open records request go through the Clerk's office. So once we ... it's an online form now. So once it's submitted, we route it to the appropriate department, it comes back through us, and we finalize it and send it back out. Licensing, we do taxi companies, taxi drivers, outdoor service areas, cigarette permits, beer and liquor licensing, and we also do the like the parade and public assembly permits, which were drastically reduced in 2020. And then we also provide support to the Community Police Review Board and are clerical support for the cemetery, and we assist City staff and the general public in researching information. Budget status quo for the Clerk's office. It is a ... there is a slight increase because it's an election year, and then also for the Community Police Review Board's budget there was an increase in that. That's for their legal counsel, and more ... more meetings and more research time, I believe, for him, uh, with the directive from the City Council for the recommendations report. I think a lot of people are looking forward to 2021. We've been getting more parade and public assembly permits in with I think high hopes of being able to hold more events this summer. So fingers crossed. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Bergus: Kellie, I was just wondering with the archiving of Council packets, um, I spent a fair amount of time in this past year trying to help point people to information, you know, if...if it was something that I knew I could find rather than necessarily directing them to your office, and so I feel like that, um, archival system is probably excellent for retaining the records and making sure everything is there. It's just not the most user-friendly (laughs) Are there any plans as far as those ... those documents or how that's structured for future changes? Fruehling: Not ... not in the works. Of course we love it, but we use it every day, um, and there are tricks to the trade but ... and we've talked about how to ... to get that across, because it...it has a search mechanism. But like I said, there's certain tricks to it, and how you get that across to the public without talking to them on the phone and walking them through it, you know, the first time ... is ... is a trick. And there is a ... it's Laserfiche that we use to archive. There is a conference coming up, um, so that could be something that I could look into and maybe ... I know IT's probably going to attend that too, uh, virtual, that we can check into to see if there's anything to ... to help that public portion of it. Teague: All right, any questions for Kellie? Thank you, Kellie. Fruehling: Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 69 Teague: All right. Um, I did want to just make a comment to Councilor Bergus. The website (laughs) is something that we've discussed, and so I think it's ... that's the bigger question ... is when are we going to work on our website. So, all right, we're gonna move forward and have our ...we'll start with our City... Assistant City Manager, Ashley Monroe. Welcome! Monroe: Hi! Thank you. I'll cover the couple that I'm ... that I'm going to speak about. I'll start with the communications office. So they're... the communications office budget is on page 139. A description of the division, um, they support our ...all of our citywide communications. The media that we put out in various forms and our cable TV operations. So there are currently 7.89 full time equivalents. In the last budget year there was an increase from temporary status employees to permanent status employees, so that accounts for that jump from six employees to 7.89. And then this year, in fiscal year 22, is the addition of that public safety communications specialist, to bring it to a 8.89 employees. So I'll just note the major initiatives for the upcoming fiscal year include that website redesign. I know that Shannon our Communications Coordinator is at work on developing the request for proposals for ...for completion of that project. So as soon as we get the RFP draft, if there are any suggestions right off the bat that we need to consider or include within our ...the proposals we need to see, um, please communicate that to ... to us or to me. I'm happy to talk with Shannon about including that, and then, you know, Council will be involved in the ... the project as it evolves, providing public feedback. And as well as staff and employee feedback in that process. And then I'll also touch on the fact that, you know, we are in this budget year, um, doing some work on required closed captioning services. So when we put our video productions out ... out there, the Americans with Disability Act and the requirements for local governments and public entities requires the closed captioning of those services to ... to provide more access. So we did include funding in this budget to go ahead and start doing that. It's not going to cover all of our public meetings, but it will start and we're starting on the venture. I'll just close by saying we're concentrating our efforts in communications on expanded engagement with special populations, collaborative work throughout all of our City departments, as we're doing all these exciting projects and ... and continue to need that community feedback for each of those things. And just finding creative strategies to do all those things, um, streamlining our ...our organization's efficiencies with the things that Dennis was talking about, for example, the forums and ... and just other ways to reach our public in a more transparent and engaging way. So ... any questions about our communications division or more on the website? Salih: Ashley, you just...I want to ask you about the ... the public (mumbled) and public safety communications. Do you position that ... you just mentioned that this will be on the communication office? Monroe: Uh huh. Salih: With all those six employees that you talked about, or seven... Monroe: Uh huh. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 70 Salih: ... and ... and those employees (mumbled) budget from this office, right? Monroe: Yeah, so the ... the employees that kind of make up our communications division, um, it sounds ... it sounds like quite a few. Two of the half-time positions or part-time positions are located at our front desk. So they're just our front ... front of house customer service persons. We have a full time communications coordinator and a digital specialist that kind of does the ... the general City communications. The other four full-time employees are housed in the cable services. So cable TV offices. So they're the media coordinators and the people who help, you know, do our filming of public meetings, support our cable TV operations, and put together all of our production. And so this one public safety communications specialist would help support the coordinator. So they'd be kind of like a ... like an assistant in ... to Shannon in ... in that role, um, acting as a leader within the division, but have a specialty training in working with police and fire personnel, and ... and communicating about the issues that ... that public safety would encounter. So they would manage the ... the digital platforms, the press releases for those departments, and support the general ... the general operations. They'd be one of the frontline sources of information when it comes to public safety information. Salih: Yeah. Again, also I ... I, that's my own opinion. I don't see a necessary of adding that position, since it is on the communication department is the leader of those and making sure everything about the communication safety, and of course anything safety you going to be ... you have to work with the police department. You know, always like public safety in general, and that's again, I ... I hope the Council will talk about it later. Monroe: Okay. All right, I will keep going, since I have the floor. Um, we'll go to the human resources division. So this is page 145 and a little ... little shorter summary. The human resources division supports employee and labor relations, our union contract administration, our benefits administration, and employee recruitments. So there are three full-time employees in the division. Those three employees provide those services I just listed to approximately 600 of our permanent status employees and in ... in a typical year, uh, non-COVID year, we'd see about almost 1,000 employees that are kind of go through those doors or are consulted on the phone. We have an upcoming AFSCME, um, union collective bargaining. Um, their contract is coming to a close and we'll be negotiating that soon. And I'll just note that they were exceptionally helpful during the COVID response and navigating all of the new changes and policies and all those things. So I want to say thank you to them for providing that guidance to the whole organization. And then they ...they also are regularly navigating those changes. So this year we had a couple of different changes to federal clearinghouse databases and getting information to some of our employees, you know, changes to CDL requirements and those sorts of things that, um, they're... they're really integral in working our way through those things. So fiscal year 22, the only things notable in the budget, it's pretty status quo and there's a little bit of a services expenditure increase due to consultant services for the police and fire, uh, promotional testing. So we do that on a recurring basis and this is one of those years, and we'll have the upcoming anticipated police officer testing as well. And that's housed in the human resources budget. Questions here? Okay. So we'll keep going with, um, we'll focus on climate action and outreach. So this is our newest division housed in the City Manager's office. We created this This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 71 last year in order to focus on the implementation specifically of our climate action and adaptation plan. So this is general fund, uh, supports the staff for this division. It's ... the staffing isn't dependent on the emergency levy, in case Council wishes to reprioritize those funds in the future. Um, the division is managed currently by myself, the Assistant City Manager, and has one of the three positions in the division filled currently. We are very close to filling the second position. And then the third and final position is being held, um, vacant until there's more certainty with the COVID budget situation. The budget on page 160 or kind of the things that are covered in page 160 ... is for our operations of those three staff, um, any training that's required, uh, includes a small supply budget, and it also covers the support for Green Iowa AmeriCorps team. The City's hosted that for several years now, and they're helping us accomplish goals for home energy assessments and various education and outreach initiatives. So I'll cover more specifically the projects and programs in my next, but do you have any questions about the division itself? Teague: I guess I have questions about which position will you plan to fill of the two that's vacant? Monroe: Yeah, certainly. Um, currently we ... we had recently posted for a climate action analyst. So Council will... Council's already seen the ... or approved the position itself. It's just a matter of hiring someone. You'll see it come in on the Civil Service (mumbled) the Civil Service list will come into Council through your correspondence. So we're close to hiring the analyst. They'll cover a lot of the the data analysis. Uh, we have quite a lot of it throughout the City. Um, they'll be doing the reporting for our annual greenhouse gas inventory, assessing our facility energy and water usage, and assisting with implementation of facility projects and other citywide initiatives, as well as supporting some of this analysis of our equity efforts, as it pertains to climate action initiatives. So that's... that's what we're shooting for, and then we've got a, um, just kind of finalizing and shape the ... the third position, based on needs of the activities that the division and what else is needed with the City, as it pertains to climate action. Teague: Thank you. Monroe: Yeah, you're welcome! So I'll close by talking about our climate emergency levy. This is all the way in a different section of the budget book, on page 330...330. And as I said the ... this morning, the levy supports the implementation of the projects and programs within the City's climate action and adaptation plan. And so I'll note some highlights, uh, those include our City facility energy efficiency and solar projects. You know, examples like Ron had described the ... the solar ...rooftop solar at the Public Works facility and Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. The support for sustainability measures in residential rehabilitation projects, um, at your formal meeting on Tuesday you had approved the purchase of a duplex home for the homeownership program in the South District, and we're using opportunities like that to enhance both the living ... the living space for our residents, but also take it as an opportunity to provide, um, you know, chances to ... to improve our energy efficiency in homes of all types and ... and income levels and affordability, and using those as examples for people throughout our community to take and adopt. And so that's just one way that we're ... we're helping with support of the levy. We also have incentives for community energy efficiency improvements. So we are working on This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 72 that. We ... we have examples in ... in the industrial, the recent TIF... allowances for energy efficiency projects with industrial buildings. Although that funding source is separate, it gives you the idea of... of what we're shooting for. We want residential projects that support energy efficiency, commercial and industrial projects, and this helps us encourage people to take part in those things. Um, we have support for community partnerships and engagement that address climate action. So we're continuing to build those relationships. We host events like the Climate Action Festival and those put on with ... by the community, with support from our climate action grants program. And then it also ... uh, the levy supplements our City tree planting budget with capital project funding. A portion of the levy goes directly into additional public tree planting, and we also used that levy this year to start the new `Root for Trees' rebate program. So we're really pleased with the participation of that as of now, and we hope to continue to expand on that program into the next fiscal year, and perhaps build on it with some other opportunities, either for partnerships or...or other programs that benefit our residents. So that concludes my...my discussion. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Bergus: Mayor, I just wanted to ask, Mayor Pro Tem had mentioned this, uh, the communications position and maybe having more discussion about that. I'm interested in discussing that a little more as well. Is that something you want to do now or at the end? Teague: I think only because it's ... maybe still related to the other item, it's similar. We can just put that at the end. All right! Fruin: Rachel, you want to go through yours real quick? Kilburg: Sure! Um, I'll start on, uh... I'm sorry, the Office of Equity and Human Rights. That's on page 149 of your budget book. So this office supports discrimina ... civil rights discrimination investigations, community education efforts, social justice and racial equity initiatives, programming, events. So as a reminder, there's two FTE in that department, a human rights investigator and a coordinator. That coordinator staffs are Human Rights Commission, as well as the ad hoc Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So you probably noticed that they've... there's been a lot more activity coming out of that office, especially in the last year. So they've been pretty busy putting on new or expanding existing programming, events, that kind of thing. So this budget does include new funds for a year-round intern SHIP program in that office. That helps get people involved in that kind of work and helps support that workload, especially with getting out information about their events. There... there's some additional funds as well for increased advertising and educational programming. And then what else you would see in that budget is continued funding for the social justice and racial equity grant program, that $75,000, um, and sponsorship funds for various community events, such as, for example, upcoming MLK Day celebration, Iowa City Pride celebration, those ... those type of events so ... any questions on equity and human rights? Okay, I'll take you back a few pages to City Council's budget. So that's on page 127. No major changes to this budget. As a reminder, your annual salaries are now tied to an inflationary index. So like ... like other budgets, just annual inflationary increase for personnel. And then in addition to that, there's ... the budget is mostly made up of funding for membership dues for various professional organizations that you all are This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 73 a part of, Iowa League of Cities, the Metro Coalition, U.S. Conference of Mayors, a few others. and they are also some funding available as well for training and professional development opportunities for Councilors. Any questions on City Council budget? Okay! And then the last one I will touch on is the City Manager's office itself. So that's on page 137 of the budget document. Like City Council's budget, most ... the expenditures that mostly drive this budget are personnel related and professional development. And some ... some community sponsorships, as well. So there's three FTE in the City Manager's office. That is a City Manager, assistant City Manager, and myself. The biggest change you'll see in the City Managers budget this year is just a 22% decrease of spending in the services budget, and that's just due to being done with that final payment for the U, uh, the University of Iowa's Big Splash event that was postponed for ...until 2022, due to COVID. Fruin: Okay, I have the last budget. It's economic development on page 154. This budget covers one staff person, that's Wendy Ford, is our Economic Development Coordinator, but it's a fairly sizable budget. There's annual assistance dollars for programs that support local arts and economic development organizations. So this is the budget where you'll see those annual contributions to the City of Literature, Englert, Riverside Theater, FilmScene, and others. And those are listed on the ... on that budget page. We also have our newly instituted ESL partnership with Kirkwood Community College coming out of this budget. That's a $25,000 year expense that allows Kirkwood to expand the number of ESL offerings they have and also explore workplace ESL partnerships in the community that can facilitate job connections throughout our community. So that's been a little slow through COVID, although they did report to us that so far they've expanded their ...ub, expanded by 100 seats, which is encouraging. It's about half of what they projected they could do with this partnership. So we're about halfway to that goal. And again, they are exploring some partnerships with some of our industrial companies in the community. One of the bigger things that Wendy has been working on this past year, with the assistance of the City Attorney's office, is a, um, establishment of a tax abatement program along the Highway 1 and 6 corridor, and I'm told that that is close to being ready to be presented to Council, but that's taken a lot of work to organize that. We also have a retail consultant that we have included in this budget. That consultant is ... is doing their best to identify primarily national, regional real ... um, retail companies who tend to locate in communities similar to ours and then match those up with current properties that are available in the community. So it's a citywide effort, not just focused on downtown or any one particular district. And I believe we're in year two of three for that consultant and certainly, like about everything else, as COVID has kind of flipped the retail market on its head, it's been ... it's been tough to really gauge the success of that program so far. That is it for the overview I was going to give on economic development, but we can answer questions on any of those City Manager office budgets, if you have them. Teague: All right, well thanks to all of you (laughs) and the City Manager's office. Lots of many, many programs there for certain. So thank you for that. Well, Council, I think we can ... what I might propose is that we take maybe a seven minute break and then come back and just engage in some more dialogue. Sounds great. All right, so we'll be back right about ... we'll just ... what do we want to call it? Let's just take a 10 -minute break. We'll comeback at 1:55. Great. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 74 (BREAK) It is 1:55 and we are going to continue with our City Council budget discussion. So I wanted to maybe just gauge from Councilors some of the topics you might want to talk about and bring up. I do know that we're going to talk about items that's within the police budget, a few positions. Is there anything else that people would like to talk about? I know that there's been mention, um, about the property levy, uh, tax. (several talking, garbled) Transportation. Any other item? Okay. So what I might suggest is certainly we can get as micro or (laughs) as we want to. Um, certainly we can ... we have some time for some items to get on a future budget or a future discussion. So I think we just go as long as we desire to today. I think, personally, my hope would be that we could ... I want to offer each Councilor any opportunity to speak on, you know, just offer some time, if people want to throw anything out. We'll kind of feel our way through this time. If we ... if we, urn ... and feel free to just, you know, say if you want to continue a topic or if we feel like we need to take a step back, either get some research from the staff, direct staff to bring us something. If we're waiting for an item, I might, you know, again, like with the transportation. I think we're still waiting for some information from staff. I might suggest we kind of put that one on hold until we get that information from the staff next month, which they've already... hopefully next month, which they've mentioned, um, but ... I'll just open the floor and, um, Councilors, just bring up whatever you desire. And why don't we start with the police item then. So I understand there are some positions there, and I think the ... the question really is, I mean, there's a lot of..there's a lot of items to this question. It's ... there is definitely, um, I guess we may all somewhat agree that there is a diversion of...we're creating positions that will be in the best interest for the community. Some things that the police used to do and now we're trying to go a different route, which is a great thing. I think that's what we're doing. We're assessing how can we bring in some community positions and that the police has assumed in some manner and transfer that over to a ... a different, um, a community person, and I think that's what we're talking about here when we're especially talking about the Shelter House position. I know, Mayor Pro Tem, you had brought this up. So if you want to start us out or... Salih: I just believe that the main reason for giving this money to the Shelter House is still just, uh, the police used to deal with the homeless (mumbled) so that's like really odd and if we can just give it to the Shelter House so they have (mumbled) are specialize on this. And they are the, you know, organization that service is this the best. And so that's also will minimize the interaction between people and the police. So since this is really something, uh, just have nothing. I ... I understand the cooperation that the City Manager said between (mumbled) the Shelter House and the police department, and that's something has to be, you know, and this is not all these issues. I guess we need a lot of those organizations is still need some time to contact the police for various reason when it comes to safety. But, you know, I really think we need just to keep that position somewhere else, as long as the ... at the end of the day, this money coming from the general fund, the property tax, so we can just move it around anyway. That what I really think, and I will love to hear your opinions on this. Weiner: So..so if I can weigh in. My...I mean, I heard what what you said earlier, Laura, and I understand your point on that, but it seems to me that there... there are two positions that we're ... that we're discussing, that legitimately do not need to be within the police budget. One of them is the ... the position that we just approved for the the homeless liaison for ..that we're co - This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 75 funding with Shelter House and the other one is the communications position. Most of the... virtually all of the funding that we give, that we allocate to Shelter House and to other other non -profits goes through Neighborhood and Development Services. They ...they are the ones who allocate the CDBG funds, and they... they... they basically they ...Aid to Agencies and so forth, which is why... and of course they're going to continue to have contact with ... with the police, but that's why it seems to me that that would be a good fit for that chunk of the budget. Maybe we want to discuss the communications one separately, but... so in any event, I'll stop there. That's... that's why I believe that that would ... that's where that could find a good home and that it's (mumbled) completely legitimate place to have it. Mims: I think this opens up a bigger conversation that we may or may not want to completely have right now. And I think that that has to do with when we look at what's happening on the national level and the whole discussions that started this summer with defunding the police, the fact that we have an awful lot of things in the police budget that really are not law enforcement related at all and, you know, I think the Animal Shelter and dealing with the deer population, those are maybe two of the ... the easiest examples. I think a lot of people when they look at a police budget, police department budget, they don't get into the nitty gritty at all. They just ... they just look at that high level number of how much does it say that we as a city are spending on that and they view it as what we are spending on law enforcement, even though a lot of it is not law enforcement. So the question I think we can easily today maybe just talk about these two positions, but I think it raises that bigger issue of is there ... in light of this, and I'm not sure how to phrase this. In light of the more ... more oversight, more attention being paid to law enforcement budget, does it make sense to think about moving things out of that budget that are truly not law enforcement related. Now related to what Laura said earlier, too. I think it's absolutely important and vital if we were to decide to do this, that we are as open and transparent and honest as we can possibly be, so it doesn't look like we're trying to say, `Oh wow, we reduced the police budget by $2 million,' when all we did was shift $2 million out of that budget into some other part of the City budget. I think it requires a real focus on the fact this is what we have always been paying for that core law enforcement piece. It's actually going up a little bit, because we're keeping the same number of officers. We have increases because of salaries and benefits, etc. So there needs to be definite transparency, but since most people don't dig down into the budget, is there merit to removing those pieces that are not law enforcement related, even if...even if the police depart... even if they're, uh, even if they're being overseen by the police, like the Animal Shelter, etc. And I'm more than open to input from you, Geoff, as well. I'm just thinking of it from that .... kind of that big national perception we're looking at right now about ... how much we spend on law enforcement. Thomas: I think it's a pretty... this is a pretty interesting part of our conversation, and I think it's sort of being triggered by budgetary considerations. But in my mind, you know, what I've been focusing on say with policing thus far has been, uh, bow ...how do we address how that interface of the police department with the community takes place and, you know, there's been a couple of areas where, in my mind, we've been focusing. One is the emergency crisis, homelessness, you know, those sorts of things. And then ... then the traffic law enforcement that I've been interested in. The other part of this conversation now in my mind has to do with to what degree This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 76 that... those changes raise questions about how the organizational structure of the City adjusts to respond to those changes and, for example, with traffic law enforcement. One thing that hasn't been talked about but ,you know, I obviously had an interest in this. I could envision that possibly spinning off, uh, you know, some of the current roles that are played there, to the MPO group, to the traffic group. So, you know, I think there are a number of ways in which we could... these... these things could go, but 1, you know, Janice's comment about the Shelter House position, you know, if we were to use the existing organizational structure we have, I think NDS certainly seems like a reasonable option to consider, and then I would just put out there and this gets into, you know, this notion in my mind of what do we have, what might be best practices elsewhere, you know, it's not something that I've ... up to this point paid any attention to, but, you know, I'm beginning to now and that is how ...how do other cities of comparable size structure their organization. Perhaps, you know, there ... I think it's an interesting question about how if we're giving more emphasis to this... these community services, neighborhood services, in what way do those changes, uh, how ... how can we reflect them, and I think this is a meaningful change, uh, with the organizational structure we have, so that the community understands it's more visible, uh, to the community what the organization... how the organization does its work. Those are some of the things that I'm thinking about as we consider these changes. Taylor: I ... I'm not real certain yet about the communications position and where that actually should fall. I'm actually thinking along the lines that it should remain with the PD budget. But I ... I do agree with Janice. I think that's an excellent point about the NDS, since they do the Aid to Agencies and Shelter House falls under that. And this position is primarily going to be affecting the Shelter House and their operations and some of their staff and... and their support organizations across the community also. So, that makes sense. And I think John's point about the MPO and ... and their traffic group makes a lot of sense because they are primarily concerned with the safety of our streets and... and even do the collision studies for the intersection, so that ... that makes sense. I think like he's mentioned before and I'll bring it up, uh, are ... are the traffic lights ... or the traffic cameras, having ... doing those rather than having the police be in charge of doing those traffic stops, and that could maybe fall under the MPO, because that falls under the safety of our streets. So that made logical sense too, maybe those... those items being moved out of the PD budget. Mims: I guess I'm not understanding this traffic thing and maybe I'm misunderstanding John, but to me that's laws. If you're talking traffic stops, to me that is strictly law enforcement and you need a ... I would think a sworn officer. Maybe I'm wrong. The communications, I ... I guess I'm tending if that's going to be related mostly to communications out of the police department and those issues, my sense that that makes the most sense there. I have a problem with what Janice has suggested, but at some point during your discussion I would really like to hear Geoff's thoughts too. Teague: One of the things when we first had this discussion earlier, I began to think when I heard Mayor Pro Tem say she was just referring to the Shelter House, uh, that position itself. And of course as I'm, you know, continuing to look at what's in the budget we have. Um, you know, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 77 the ... the CommUnity. There will be an outreach crisis response efforts there, and we have the animal, you know, the animal care or the animal center. They're a part of this budget, and so one of the things as I was thinking about it ... I began to think about what we do for affordable housing, and I think it's so hard to track all of the, urn ... well, it's not hard to track. Staff brings it together for us. But, um, affordable housing, it can be all over the place and ... within our community, um, or within our budget, and then, you know, I think they try to pull it all together from all these sources to bring it ... to bring a bigger picture of what we're doing for the total amount of affordable housing. So I bring that up to bring up when we're talking about... community efforts. Um, when it comes down to policing, if it's in NDS or if it's in, you know, some other department's budget, we may not be able to really identify the efforts that we're doing, um, when we're evaluating what are some of the things that the police are doing now that we can bring in someone else, a ... a community partner, to fulfill. And so that's the ... that's the challenge that I see, um, that if we take (mumbled) from the budget, and so one of the thoughts I said, well, what if we did another section where it's very clear and it identifies, urn ... you know, that this is more of a ... a community element of safety, and .... and I don't know what other... what other words, but that I just wanted to at least mention that, that was at least my thought process, that whether it's in the ... it will be nice to capture it somehow. And I don't know if we can, you know, do a ... capture it, even if it's in NDS, to be a part of the, you know ... this is some of the things that we've done to divert or redirect how we're going to service the homeless in our community or some of the things that the police have been doing, but I just at least want to mention it, just to get my thought out there. It's not fully clear, um, where I was going with it, but I just wanted to kind of ramble (laughs) so that you all can at least hear my thoughts. Bergus: I think that was, I don't know, Mayor, what you just said was actually really helpful for me to kind of crystallize what I think are some top level issues, which is, you know, we've got like ... like Councilor Mims said, we have this public perception question. Right? And we've got the police budget of about $16 million, right, and it includes a lot of non -law enforcement and non -sworn officer expenditures. Right? There's... and I think even what you were just articulating, there's kind of the CommUnity part which, in my mind a lot of that is currently under the support services part of the police budget versus the field operations part of the police budget, but yeah I mean just ... whether it's philosophically or just to ... to send a ... a clearer message to the community, the question of what we define as police, I think, is what we're talking about here. And we have a lot of law enforcement that isn't within police, even in the broader way that we're talking about it. You know, we have code officials, right, we have, you know, the fire marshal, what they do, inspectors in other departments that are ... that are enforcing laws. And so I don't know ...I don't know, Geoff, if you have more insight as to defining what falls within police or not, um, to kind of help this conversation. I recall earlier you said, you know, police are 24/7 and that's really important with the the Shelter House position. But then I was also struck listening to Darian and that, you know, we've got ... we've got some other 24/7 operations, right, not to say that it's the same kind of thing. But we've got, you know, parking folks that are working around the clock or...or wastewater folks that are working around the clock. And so that's not to say that we should move, you know, something like the Shelter House position into one of those departments, but it just made me think, like, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 78 what ... what are the criteria or can we articulate the criteria for what we call police, cause I think that's been a failing, you know, as we've kind of worked through the last several months of talking about restructuring the department. Fruin: Well, a lot of thoughts on this. I mean, what's in police now, I firmly believe it makes sense, you know. Animal ... our animal services. Animal services can be dispatched directly from JECC. There is very close cooperation with ... with officers in our animal services officers, you know, they're... those animal services officers are getting dispatched to respond to wounded animals, to residents that have a trapped animal in their house or in their yard, for... for dog bites, and ... and officers are interacting in those same situations, right? If a deer is hit on the side of the road, there's an officer responding to an accident and maybe animal services helping as well. So it makes a lot of sense to have animal services in the police department because there's very close collaboration there. And, you know, if you just think about the whole dispatch model and the collaboration, it makes a lot of sense to have a police supervisor kind of oversee at a very high level that ... that animal services operation. So yeah, I mean it's ... it's getting back to the same thing with the Shelter House. We can take those dollars out. We can make them look different on paper. But at the end of the day, it makes the most sense to have those embedded with police. You know, with the Shelter House position, we can list that as an Aid to Agencies expense, um, and I think there's a fair reason to do that. But the success of the position, the success of the Shelter House position I'm talking about really depends on that collaboration with police. And ... and if you want the police to own that ,to embrace that position, to really work collaborly...collaboratively with the Shelter House and be able to talk about it with the community, with the annual statistics and here's how it's working, it's going to, you know, the police going to have to take ownership of that, and it makes complete sense to do that. But again, getting back to the Shelter House position, the street outreach position, they need the police. There's going to be ... there's going to be times when that the street outreach worker is working and they say, listen, I'm not comfortable going to this encampment or under the bridge or interacting with this person, unless there's an officer nearby. And that's just the reality of it. I'd like to tell you it's not. But that's the reality of it. So, urn ... you have to integrate that really, really... really tightly, and that's where I see this one a little bit different from the other Aid to Agencies services, because we're really creating a close partnership here, whereas those other Aid to Agency dollars generally just support operations and (both talking) Salih: (both talking) said that's example again, Geoff. You said in what example they might need the officer to go with them? Fruin: Yeah, well, you know, and ... and certainly the Shelter House staff could articulate this better than I could, but there's going to be cases in which there.... there's a public safety concern, and that street outreach worker isn't necessarily going to want to go alone to a encampment. Say ...say there's folks living under a bridge. They may have a reason to believe it wouldn't be safe for them to go alone, or if a ... a person has a history of violence, but they want to still connect them with services. They may want an officer nearby or...or with them on some of those contacts, and that's where that close relationship works. I'm not saying that's every situation, but that's... that's... that situation definitely will exist. And so you're going to have that really This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 79 tight ... um, relationship and that's where it ... to me it just makes sense to place it in the police budget. I don't know. Again, we can move things around and it can look different on paper, but at the end of the day ...we're going to do what it takes for those positions to be really ...to be successful and achieve the goals that we set forth, and that can't be done by management, by the NDS. NDS staff cannot manage this and make it successful. They can (both talking, garbled) Salih: (both talking) very offended. For a Shelter House person, if (mumbled) somebody to help them to bring the police with her. If I'm that person, I don't want to see the police. Unless there is something happen. Maybe I got... as a ... as a person who reaching out to homeless person to help them out. Our goal is the person to interact without the police there. But if I will like thinking that this is going to risk like my life. That's ... why you made assumption. I should go there. I was something ... I feel like it's not going to go through okay, and I have to have the police with me, that's something else. And even if someone doesn't want to do something and you have to bring the police, so they can ... I really don't understand where you guys come from in this and that's why I don't want to talk too much. I don't understand it. And I don't know how to Shelter House handle it, you know, just... that's why I should stop, but I really believe this position, when we said it's better for us a social, uh, like social service organization to interact with those people, better than the police. To me that's the most important thing is gives this position to (mumbled) social service who have experience in this, because this is not the police thing to do. That what I come from when I say just ... yeah, but it's still of course for safety. You still have to reach out to the police, no doubt. But that's really what I'm coming from. I just want to make it clear. Taylor: In thinking about this some more, and I'm remembering back to all the discussion since last summer and all those events. What continually came up was that what the police department needs are social worker type people or counselor -type people on staff. And... and... and rethinking this. That's exactly what ... what this is, uh, are having those kinds of folks there and ... and handling these situations, rather than an actual law enforcement officer. So this is what people were asking for that, that these folks be a part of the police department, but not law enforcement. Bergus: Well, I think this is even a little bit more distance than that. And that's why we're talking about it. Right? So I think what you were just saying, Councilor Taylor, is more like the co - responder maybe, right, like there would be ... and we have the social worker who we hired as the victim services coordinator. And ... but I really appreciate you bringing that up because I think we're not really clear in how we're talking about it. Right? There's the continuum that we've tried to articulate, preventing calls for service. Police are not involved at all. If there's no call for service, there's no ... no, you know, swom uniformed officer involvement at all. Diverting, right, and maybe a call for service comes in, but it gets handed off to an agency that's not the police, right? And then co -responding, which is those circumstances where agency involvement or, you know, are on staff and non-swom officers who are responding to calls for service that are not, you know, violent crime kind of situations. So I think we can keep trying to articulate that continuum and see what are we really trying to do. I think the Shelter House position is on that ... that prevention end, and ... which is why this is a hard conversation, because This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 80 we've ... if we're saying like we don't, you know, the idea is take it completely outside of our organization, provide the funds to Shelter House for them to have an employee to do this, then why are we funding it out of the police department. And so I'm, yeah (both talking, garbled) Fruin: I think what's complicating, you know, all that is ... is that continuum doesn't have clear lines and... and it's going to be this way for ...for nearly every solution that we talk about, but the ... the Shelter House outreach position is largely preventative. They are going to be proactively doing work without even our knowledge of where they're at in the community. Right? They're just going out and doing their job. But then there's going to be circumstances in which they are maybe ... we use them for diversion. So we get a call that comes in. We know that the outreach person is on duty. We call them because it's not a time sensitive really issue, and we can divert that outreach worker to that scene. And then there's going to be probably some element of co - response in which, which is what I was talking about before, when there's some ... it's not an assumption. But that there's some known information that gives the outreach worker pause to going alone, uh, in whatever that situation may be, and that's when that co -response piece may come. So while this solution is largely preventative, it's ... it's gonna... it's going to be fluid based on ... based on some individual circumstances, and were going to see that with with nearly every solution. If you think about mobile crisis, mobile... mobile crisis is largely a diversion. But there's times even right now, at least pre-COVID, when mobile crisis may respond to something and say, no, we need some law enforcement presence here. And there's times in which a police officer gets called to something and they say, I don't think we need to be here. I'm going to call mobile crisis. So there's that fluidity among the continuum that makes this ... that makes this fairly complicated, and it's... it's... it's never going to be straightforward. But getting back to my...back to my initial point, when I just look at the organization as a whole from ... from my level, the bulk of the work and the collaboration is..is definitely within the police department. Teague: I do have a question (both talking) Oh! Go right ahead (both talking) Salih: Just to his point, because I don't want him to go like far from that point. You know, what everything you said here, I understand it and I'm with you 100% on those, Geoff, but what it will make a different if we budgeted like differently. Is all those service you talk about is not going to happen. All those cooperation that you talk about is not going to happen if the fund comes from somewhere else? Fruin: No, I think we ... we would still work, we would still make it work. It's just ... it's just a non- traditional way of doing things. Usually you budget where that... where that operation is taking place. And we can ... we can definitely do that. If you'd like to see that $35,000 elsewhere, that's ... it's not a problem. I'm just trying to explain the rationale for where it's at in the proposed budget. Teague: You know, as I'm listening to the conversation, I think we're all onboard with the programs and understanding how they'll interact, um, and as I think about this more, there's going to be some more things that it will be civilian or community, um, driven, that it could be in the police budget or it could be somewhere else. I, you know, again, we ... we have CommUnity in this This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 81 budget, you know, the CommUnity Crisis Center collaboration within this budget. I guess for, you know, I still go back to the thought process of is there any way for us to track some of the programs that we're creating that used to be, you know, within the ... within the umbrella of the services solely of the police department. Now granted, there's been partnerships with the ... with the Shelter House prior to this homeless liaison position being created, right? So I think the question that we're really asking, and I would encourage us not to get into the programs anymore, because we're all onboard there. It really is ... where do we track this. How do we want to track it, and and I guess I'll take it a step further is do we want to track what (mumbled) something that the police used to do and ... and even though they have partnered with the Shelter House before, but now we've highlighted this one position to really give it a little more support and out of the police hands. Uh, sort of speak. But how do we track it? How do we say that this is a diversion, a ... a civilian program that we've created? You know, do we now maybe in the police department, um, have a civilian community, you know, line item and things under there where we... where we keep track, and again, I go back to the affordable housing. We ... we give funds everywhere. And you can even think about the arts. We give funds everywhere. And we don't get all the credit of where those funds go, and so, you know, do we talk about maybe having another umbrella. Now Councilor Mims is the financial expert (laughs) in my opinion, but when it comes out to books and we have Dennis here. He's still here. Um, you know, because what we're talking about is not having it...it clumped in .... in with everything else. And maybe just having it isolated. Whether that's isolated within the police budget or (mumbled) if it's going to be diverted throughout other budgets, throughout the organization, it could get lost and ... and we not... associated with some ... some efforts that we've done. Mims: Here's what I would suggest, having said my piece kind of and listened to everybody else also and listened to Geoff. One, I don't want to make things difficult for City ...more difficult for City staff in terms of the way they do the budgeting and keep the books, and if...if it is logical, I think what we're hearing and I think we all accept that where we put the dollars is not going to, and I believe that we don't want it to impact the work that is done. We want that homeless liaison to do the best work they can possibly do as an employee of Shelter House, um, as much on their own as possible, but coordinating with law enforcement if and when that is absolutely necessary. We want them safe. We want people ... the homeless individual safe. Everybody. So to me then it doesn't really matter. I ... I maybe opened a can of worms here at the beginning when I, you know, kind of talked about what's going on nationally and how we look at the budget. Maybe the better approach is we let staff assign it where it makes the most sense in terms of who in City government is going to ultimately be overseeing this and has the expertise to have that relationship. But maybe what we do is kind of what you were referring to just now, Mayor, is we find a way within that police department budget to more clearly identify what are actual ... more core law enforcement expenditures, as the general public would think about that, versus what are more ancillary, whether it is animal shelter or...or our civilian assistance or the Shelter House program, so that we don't try and remake the City budget, but I do think as people look at it from the outside, I think we need to have an easier, clearer kind of line of, yeah, that we're spending this 15 or 16 million, but this money really is very, very indirectly related to law enforcement. It's not really law enforcement at all. They're overseeing it, they're This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 82 there to assist if need be, but it's not what people think of when they think of law enforcement and when they think of sworn police officers. Thomas: I personally think that's... that is an important issue that ... we're talking about an important issue. I mean, I think we agree, you know, that the need for the services that we're budgeting for are important. I'm trying to think, well, another example. As we were talking about this with say our climate action program. It's in the City Manager's office. I mean, I ... it would be nice if we looked at our organizational structure. We ... that was foregrounded in a way where it would be much more evident that we as a community have placed a high value on climate action and that, you know, if I were ... if I were to open our website, I ... I don't think I would look under the City Manager's office in trying to identify where our climate action efforts were located. Similarly with homeless outreach. You know, what ... what value does that represent and how do we want it situated within our organizational structure, which hopefully just by its ... its structure and the names of the departments and divisions within it capture what those values are. And I think some of the things we're talking about speak to that. One could create separate divisions within the police department. That may be one way of approaching it. It may be renaming some of our existing organizations or, you know, coming up with ways to try to get that better fit between our values and how we describe the organization. That may be a longer term effort. I mean right now we're sort of just talking about the budget and how we approve the budget for now. But it does seem to me there is a ... kind of a disconnect and, Susan, in talking about the traffic issue. The City of Berkeley has assigned some of its traffic enforcement and particularly when you're talking about the, you know, automated enforcement, to its transportation department. So ... so there are ... there are examples of entities that are rethinking some portions of what historically has been associated with policing. So there are various ways this can go. Um, you know, I think first and foremost is we agree on the budget, but if we can find us a simple solution that would be nice (laughs). (several talking, garbled) have an a -ha moment and say, yeah, that sounds good. But I do think there are some some issues where ... we are facing here that are real and go beyond kind of just the everyday connections that may take place, you know, between an employee and the over... overall organization. Fruin: Well, I can make a ... I can make a suggestion and maybe there's a short-term and long-term look at this, because it's ... it's not going to be easy us ... to ... to flip the budget model on the police department in a, you know, before this budget's due. I mean you could get ... you can get into the weeds with, you know, what do we do with crossing guards? Crossing guards are at ... with the police department right now. And we do that because the police often have to backfill for crossing guards that can't show up on a particular day, and again, they have the staffing to be able to do that. So it just, you know, you start pulling that string and it's going to be a long process. So maybe that's a longer term is just looking at the budget structure of the police department and trying to figure out what needs to be in the police and if it needs to be in the police, how do we more clearly articulate to the public exactly what the core functions or missions of those various are, because as it stands right now, it's fair to say as a member of the public, you know, I don't know what support services are. I don't know what field administration is or field operations are. So we can definitely look at that, but unfortunately This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 83 there's just a lot of accounting tied to those titles (laughs) and it could get kind of messy. For now, why don't we just take the 35,000 and ... and put it in the Aid to Agencies budget. It's not ... as I'm hearing folks talk, it's not a whole lot dissimilar than perhaps the winter shelter contribution, which the winter shelter contribution absolutely has a prevention goal to it and ... and we have held up statistics in the past about how our investment in that shelter has reduced calls for service. And the hope is that can be the case here. So I think we could ... we can take that 35 out, put it in Aid to Agencies, and package it with the winter shelter, the 30,000 that we provide or up to 30,000 that we provide for the winter shelter operations. And, you know, maybe next year when we return with a modified budget structure, it comes back to the police. We don't, I don't know, but if it did, it would be in a very clear manner like you were mentioning, Mayor, to where it's ... it's very evident that it's not a law enforcement function. Salih: I just want to also like mention a lot, even though you did like something that I would like, but I would like just to say (mumbled) last point. When we talked about, for example, all this like the cross ... the crossing guard that you just mentioned. Yes, they are not ... they are civilian. Not only that, if we talk about everything Susan Mims said earlier about the animal service to provide animal control center, animal shelter, all those, but the difference between this and the Shelter House is that we have none (mumbled) civilian member of the police department who has been hired there. And it makes sense to me to be under the... even though they are civilians, but it makes sense to me to be under the police department. It makes sense because the police department is the one who hire a person to go there. The police department is the one who ... would the volunteer or maybe hiring the cross guard, because if they are not there, the police will go and do that. Yeah, okay. But I'm talking about this Shelter House position, which is completely different. And if that person, something happens to them, of course they have somebody else to fill out that person until they come, but it's not going to be the police. That what I'm coming from. Teague: No, I ... I think, at least for myself, your ..your point is well taken. And I think, um, as we're going to have more civilian and community type services that will transition from some of the operations of the police. Again, I think we do want to try to have some sense of...of what we're, you know, what we've changed and kind of tracking, and I think if...if Council is comfortable with what Mayor Pro Tem has suggested, you know, and... and... and our City Manager just suggested that we put it in NDS, and actually I guess Councilor Weiner was the one that actually gave us, um, kind of gave us where it should go. Are we comfortable with that, Councilors? Yeah, we have a majority there. So we'll... let's... let's go ahead and put that there. And then are we also wanting to just say to City Manager to think about this conversation and ... and bear this in mind next year with the budget? Yes, I'm seeing, all right, sounds great. Any other item that we want to bring up now? I don't know if people want to talk about the property tax levy or... Bergus: Could we talk about the public safety communication position? Teague: Oh, absolutely! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 84 Bergus: Yeah, so I just want to clarify. I think that is presented as not within the police department, that's under the City Manager's office and the communications division. Is that right, Geoff? Fruin: Yeah, that's correct. We ... we already have centralized communications in place. So our... our communications department supports all other departments, um, and there's... there's a few instances in our larger departments where they may have staff where part of their duty is communication. So we have one of those individuals in Parks and Rec, and in the case of police, we've always had a sergeant who had those kind of public information officer duties, and what we're suggesting is we take those out and put them in the centralized budget of the City management. Salih: Yeah. (both talking) I think I'm the one who's so ... it is on the police because I saw the public safety and... and right under it is the City (mumbled) and the immigrant outreach, and I saw all of them come together, but I'm glad that this is under the City Manager. Thank you (mumbled) Teague: Great! Bergus: And I just wanted to clarify a couple things about sort of that position and how it all fits in. I think, you know, this last year I spent a lot of time talking with Geoff and pushing Geoff on communications and how we tell our story and how we get out, you know, in response to things that are happening in the community. I think it's really good to have a public information officer type role for police and fire, that's under the City Manager's office, rather than in those departments. I really hope that in structuring that and bringing on a full-time communications role that we can also have a person designated who is the ... the, like kind of the overall spokesperson for the City. I think if this individual that would be new is going to be out in front a lot, um, meaning literally in front of a camera or responding to media inquiries frequently, I think having them focused on public safety, um, may be necessary, but I also think that having someone in a more centralized, you know, spokesperson role is something to consider, and maybe there's an opportunity for that as you bring on, you know, looking at that ... that division. Similarly, with the technology changes that we're talking about with the website being updated and, you know, what we were talking about in terms of the different divisions and cable TV and how that, you know, revenue has gone down and that kind of thing. Just really being cognizant of how especially in this last COVID year we've changed the way that we present information to the community in terms of public meeting coverage and, you know, video availability, and I just hope that, you know, maybe even without ... I don't know if it even has to have a budget impact, but the ... the, that consideration can be, you know, that ... that can be part of it so that we can just get more information out. So I don't know how other folks feel about the emphasis on public safety versus other communications, but I'm very excited about more ... more communications personnel. Mims: Yeah, I am, too. And I think having somebody who can really handle that public safety piece may be better than we've had in the past. I mean if ..given what we saw this last summer, when we have those kinds of urgent, high profile issues, we really need somebody with that capability to generate those messages. Yeah, they may need to run them by the City Manager, that's fine, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 85 but to have that close communication and for them to have that real skill set, like you say, Laura, to be...be in front of the camera, be that person to call, uh, to have that kind of skill set I think is really important. Weiner: Yeah, count me as the other person who's been... who's been talking a lot about communications with Geoff. I sort of come from a culture with a ... with a different communications model. So I would love to see this person and it's ... it's almost ... it's, let's say it's very often going to have a public safety component to it, just based on where the ... where the need to communicate urgently most often comes from and comprehensively. But to me it's really key that that person be a..be a trusted member of the senior management team essentially, takes that burden off of the ... of the City Manager and ... and the Assistant City Manager, so that they're not the ones doing the drafting, so that this is ... this is a person who has the expertise to say and to give advice as well, this is what I think needs to happen. Here's... here's ... I propose doing this. Just producing essentially written or...written products, as well as potentially being a spokesperson, that of course would need to be signed off on, but can ... can really take a burden off the... the... the top levels of the City Manager's office, uh, and come with that skill set. Teague: I think this is a great position. We can talk about 2020 being a unique year and the need to have a lot of communication, but I ... I have to say that I believe Iowa City has always here recently, uh, had a need for this position, because we have a lot happening all the time within our community. And so I believe this is a very necessary position -and welcomed. So, all right. Anything else on this item? So we still have any other item that Councilors want to talk about, and again, we can certainly bring anything in a future meeting as well. But the property tax levy, I know that that's something we're going to have a limited time on, to make a decision on. Fruin: Yeah, and if I can clarify that. I mean your next meeting is ... is January 19th and then the ... the max property tax levy needs to be ... needs to be set before your first meeting in February. So if ...if there's going to be discussions on ... on where that levy needs to be set, it really needs to either happen today, on your ... your work session on the 19°i, or a special work session that you'll need to set between the 19th and... and the 25th or 26th. And remember, it's a max property tax rate. So you can ... you can bring it down. You just can't push it up after that day. Mims: I'm comfortable keeping it where staff has proposed. Salih: I just believe we need time. If we can talk about this next week (mumbled) Next time we meet will be great. Bergus: I think to the Mayor's point of, you know, we have a little extra time this afternoon. Is there at least some additional information that folks might need if we're going to talk about it at our next meeting? Or, I mean, we got the information on the addi... so the 10% differential, keeping it where it's at now versus the reduction by 10 -cents per thousand. Right? Um, for this year, which would be continuing a downward trend in the levy rate, you know, for the last decade, anticipating that it probably won't go down again. Or we may not be able to have it go down again. And, you know, I'm just ... we had the ... the presentation or the information from Dennis This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 86 that it's $5.50 per year per hundred thousand difference. And then we had the information that, you know, that the City ...if we take an overall tax bill, right, the City's portion is only 41 %. Do we have a sense of...Geoff, do you know other entities that plan to that, so School District is about as big as ours and County is the other next big one. Are they coming down? Are they seeing the same? Are they going up? Fruin: Yeah, I ... I haven't seen any release on proposed levies from either of those organizations. We... we tend to be one of the first ones out of the box when it comes to presenting the budget, so they have not had a similar downward trend like ours. I think it's been fairly stable, but it hasn't been like a steady decrease like ... like we've seen. So, you know, if you're looking at the average -if you're looking at an average home of a couple hundred to (mumbled) talking, uh, $15 a year roughly on,uh, for the... for the City portion of it, and then assuming that they keep a flat level, um, great. You're going to see that impact grow, uh, for those agencies as well. So, you know, I couldn't tell you what that number would be, but you shouldn't just think of it as ... as ... as $5 (mumbled) It's probably more realistically that 15 -plus, whatever is caused by the other (garbled) so 30, 40, 50 bucks that would be probably where I'd guess but (garbled) Salih: But when we talk about ours portion, we don't have to talk about that because that's happening no matter what, even if we reduce it, it's still due to the assessor value, by...by the County, is still the people will be more, even though because like since I bought my house, every year I buy like I pay more in like tax ... in taxes and even though this City is reducing the taxes. I understand what you're saying, but the increase will be by $5 for the 100 that we have to make that clear. And also have to make that clear what revenue we'll get, uh, if we just don't do anything. You know, the ... the value of houses in Iowa City is starting incre... we seeing increasing every year. That means no matter what the City is doing right now, we are going to see like increase in tax. Right now I'm paying like more taxes to the City, like the amount that I paid for tax, property tax, is more than the actual principal go to my house. And... and... and this is really something, you know, it's not ... but if there is money that we can get, like $500,000, even though I know, Geoff, you can argue that's paying that debt service levy, you are just reducing the debt service to me. I understand that completely, but still that's 500,000 coming in. And we always saying that we don't have money for this service. We don't have money for that services, and we reduce them. I guess we as (mumbled) as a City Council, our priority is not reducing the tax law, you know, levy. I think if anything our priority is to see what the need of the City and if the people are not upset about not decreasing their tax this year by $5.00 for the 100 value, then why not (mumbled) the right to reuse that 500 from (mumbled) like for the debt. And it's (mumbled) like doing something else for them by using this money. That what I really think, but just keeping reducing the tax ... I ... and there is many needs that the community needs. That ... I don't know. Teague: (garbled) I did hear Mayor Pro Tem suggest that we bring this up at our next meeting. And... and I know Councilor Bergus wanted to make sure there was any other information about the tax levy right now if anyone had any questions, um, you know, certainly you can ask it now or between this meeting and next, go right ahead. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 87 Mims: I do. Since this is the debt levy where we are reducing, potentially going to reduce, what does that mean for actual use of those dollars, because it's debt levy dollars. What restrictions or lack of restrictions are there on using that money? Salih: Geoff, you can answer that. You have experience more than I do (laughs) Fruin: Yeah, I'll let Dennis chime in. And while he's... while he's coming on the, you know, the other option the Council has is keep the debt service levy at a 10 -cent reduction and then bring another one up 10 -cents. You know, add 3 -cents to your emergency levy, add 10 -cents to your employee benefits levy, and that will free up other uses. But specific to debt service, Dennis, you want to talk about those limitations? Bockenstedt: Yeah, I mean the debt service levy itself, cause it's just that. It's used to payoff debt. So, you know, if you were to add that 10 -cents back into that debt service levy, really you'd have to look at issuing additional debt or something to use those funds up. So you wouldn't want to just (mumbled) property tax dollars just to put in the debt service fund without anything to repay it with. As Geoff mentioned, you could shift that levy rate to another eligible rate, which would primarily be the employee benefits levy. Like our general levy, it's at its limit. Our transit levy, library levies at their limits, and so there's really a restriction on where you could move that 10 - cents to, which would primarily be our employee benefits levy. And by...by doing that, then you would essentially use... cause we don't pay 100% of our employee benefits with property taxes. So you could shift ... then transfer that money out of the employee benefits levy, to the general fund. In which case you would then be able to use those general fund dollars for whatever legal purpose the general fund (mumbled) I don't think you would want to do that since the bal... the budget is balanced, unless you did allocate those dollars towards a specific purpose. Salih: But what if we didn't do anything. And we have 500,000 coming to the debt, like, you know, to the debt. We paying our debt by 500. Am I might true? Bockenstedt: Well, right now, I mean we're issuing enough dollars to repay our ...our, what's currently owed in our next debt payments. (both talking) no need to issue more property tax dollars than ... than what our payments will come due. And so you wouldn't necessarily just issue or, you know, debt service property tax dollars just to collect it. Salih: No, I don't mean that. I mean like for example, we need money for certain things and this year we did not do anything. We did not reduce the debt service levy by 10 -cent. And still we have 500, uh, like $500 coming in, but it coming toward the debt service levy (mumbled) it's not coming to any another like section. So if we borrow money for 500, are we (mumbled) that, as if we're not doing it. If we borrow 500,000... and used it. (garbled) Bockenstedt: You could do that. It wouldn't necessarily be the most economical thing because you would have to pay interest and issuance costs on that money. So, not only would you be repaying the amount you borrowed, but then you'd also have to pay for the cost of borrowing This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 88 that money. In which case, you might only get 450,000 but you'd still have to pay 500,000 because you have to pay $50,000 in interest and borrowing costs. So it doesn't necessarily make sense to use that levy in that manner. You could, it certainly would be a legal ... if you follow the, you know, the proper procedures, it would be a legal way of doing it. But it'd be somewhat better to shift that to the employee benefits levy, um, and then allocate it towards a purpose through the general fund. In which case, you wouldn't have to experience those borrowing costs. Salih: (mumbled) still believe we need to postpone this and come up with more information, and let the public also lay on this and tell us what they think about it. I'm sorry, Pauline, go ahead! Taylor: Well, that's okay. I just had a quick question for Dennis. Um, it was mentioned earlier, and I know it's a pet ... pet thing of Susan's, and I now understand, Susan, why this has always been so important to you all these years. Do changes in this, either plus or minus, have any effect on our triple- A bond rating? Bockenstedt: Well, certainly if you're going to borrow more dollars, you know, that's something that they pay attention to, and I will say that, you know, as far as the State goes, they've been paying a little more attention the last few years, if you're ... if you're collecting property tax dollars without any where to allocate them towards. So, you know, I would say if you are going to raise the property tax rate that you do have, uh, a place, an idea of...of where those dollars are going to go or what you're going to spend them on, um, versus just maintaining a rate just for the sake of maintaining a rate. Teague: All right, so what I would ... go right ahead. Yes! Fruin: But, Dennis, it might be helpful for you to, um, touch on the capacity of the employee benefits levy, if we do decide to raise that up 10 -cents. Obviously you can't raise that up indefinitely, it can only be used to cover benefits. So the more you raise that up, the... it's just less flexibility you have in the future of doing that. Do you have any insight on kind of how much capacity we have in that levy? Bockenstedt: That ... that is something that we ... we actually do report that to Moody's every year. And that is, you know, we have so many dollars that we're actually spending on FICA, IPERS, police/fire pension, health insurance, and all the eligible benefits. And then we have the amount we are ... are levying for taxes, and the difference there Moody's looks at our flexibility as an organization to react to unplanned impacts. Like for instance, the Mayor mentioned the possibility that our insurance could come in much higher. So, you know, that's something that, you know, that would have an impact on the availability of that employee benefits levy, because it would take more of those taxes, and so having that capacity in that levy is something that it's somewhat protective of the City's finances from a risk management standpoint. And so, you know, the more dollars that you would issue, the higher you would raise that rate. (mumbled) we would get to paying 100% of the benefits with that levy, the less flexibility that you would have in that levy if something were to happen. So, you know, that ... the more we ... of that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 89 capacity we use up, then if say if we have a healthy insurance rate shock or something like that, uh, we may at some point not have that capacity in our employee benefits levy, in which case then we would have to look at other means of being able to cover that, um, such as the emergency levy, which we're using for climate pur...purposes, and a lot of other cities use that just for the sake of balancing their budget. So .... they all kind of string together in ... in ... in different ways or indirect ways. But certainly there is some capacity there. I'd have to look to see exactly (garbled) what the capacity remaining is versus ... (mumbled) as far as what our benefit costs are and how much we're levying, but there is some capacity there. Bergus: I just want to ask a really high level question, cause, Dennis, thank you so much for that explanation, but my...it's ... I got a little bit lost and then you kind of brought it back for me. Um, biggest picture though. We've got the different levies at the different rates. Um, can ... can either you, Dennis or Geoff, kind of explain the ... is there ... is there kind of a rationale that you can articulate for why this reduction of this size at this time, given that we're always concerned about revenue and, you know, we always want to look to ... to ... to maximize that in the ways that we can, um, just kind of how did this come... recommendation come to be? Bockenstedt: As far as why 10 -cents and why the debt service fund? Well, we've been, um, you know, through refundings and ... and of course the rates have come down, and as far as just modeling our debt service payments, you know, and in ... through that at times... sometimes if you have a bond issue you get some capacity built up in that levy and then you can model your debt structure. So one of the goals that we've had is ... is one is to we want to get a nice even debt payment structure. And one of the things that we've done recently is to try and get an even principal payment structure, which lowers our interest cost, um, but through that we've been able to kind of gradually reduce that property tax rate. And that's been a goal of City Council's. So one of the goals we were looking at structuring that debt, paying that off, and when we issue new debt is ... what's going to be the impact on our debt service levy? And so through that we've ... we've managed to be able to model that to gently bring down that property tax rate over a period of years. Um, and that's just really (mumbled) what that program is going to look at... look like. So for instance, we raised our debt when we issue annually from 10 million to $12 million, you know, when we decided (mumbled) that whole program over the next 10, 20 years what it's gonna look like and model it accordingly. And so, you know, when you ... when you do make changes in there, we want to make sure that it's ... it's going to be a long-term impact, it's going to fit into what the City's goals and needs are. And so we've been able to really model that and ... and like I said, we've been lucky. We've had a lot of growth. We've had lower interest rates. And (mumbled) issue more debt, model it, and bring that debt levy rate down. There's nothing magic about the 10 -cents, per se, other than it just continues that program of bringing the rate down, getting the debt structure, and the capacity where we want it, and right now it's probably about as close, as tight as we could get in regards to the amount of debt we want to issue, the property tax rate, and ... and as far as just how that is all modeled. It's... we're kind of really at a fine line there, unless there'd be some other environmental change like ... I don't see interest rates coming down. (laughs) Um, you know, unless there's another environmental change that ... that might change, uh, of what we're doing with that levy. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 90 Salih: And the worst case scenario, Dennis, if we don't do anything, we still... 500,000 coming to pay our debt, right? Bockenstedt: Well, but the problem is we don't need the money so (both talking) Salih: What do you mean you don't need the money? Bockenstedt: We don't need the money in the debt service fund. That's why we're not asking (garbled) Salih: You don't need the money to pay the debt? Bockenstedt: Not ... not this upcoming year. Salih: Why? Even though it was critical year for us. Bockenstedt: Well, because... because the debt payments are ... it's a long-term thing. It's, you know, there's ... we issue that debt for a 10 -year period. And they all layer on top of each other, and the debt payments become set, and then the valuation fluctuates depending on what is going on. And so based on the debt we have outstanding and the property valuations, we can determine how much taxes we need to pay that ... make that debt payment, and that's what we're asking for. Salih: I really don't understand that. That's why I said I have to go and look at it again. But for me, I'm going to present it just like a credit card and they ...I'm paying debt. I'm paying 500 to my credit card and I'm borrowing 500 as if I'm not (garbled) anything, or if that not the case, I will love to (garbled) about it, but I'm seeing like we are paying some debt, even if we (mumbled) or even if we don't borrow, we are paying off some of the debt. Mims: Maz.... Maz, bonds are different than a credit card. So you have a ... you have a set interest payment every year on the bond. And you can't just pay the principal back anytime you want. Some of them are callable, which means you have the right to pay them back early. Otherwise, you can't pay them back until you said you would pay them back when you put them out in the first place. And I think from what Dennis said, a lot of ours are 10 -year bonds. So even if you had a bunch of money pile up, you can't just throw that money and pay it off, because those people bought those bonds with the idea that they were going to have a regular interest payment being made to them. A lot of people who are retired buy bonds, and they get the interest on those bonds every month or every quarter, and that is what they live on. And they ... it's important to them that the City, or anybody else who sells bonds, can't just pay them off all at once. There's... there's certain rules and regulations, so they're very, very different than a credit card. So like when Dennis says, you know, that we've got the money on hand or we're projected to have enough to pay what we need, and there's limitations on how much extra we can have, then that's why we ... they figured out that we could lower that levy by 10 -cents, but still have the money we need. What Dennis... and a lot of you I don't think have either been around long enough on the Council and maybe ... and Dennis, of course, with COVID we haven't done it in a long time, but a year or two years ago, maybe three, I remember Dennis going through an This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 91 incredibly detailed presentation on the modeling that they have done in the Finance department on our debt structure. And what they are planning in terms of selling for bonds in every year, what that's going to mean in bond payments. Kind of projecting what that is going to mean for the debt levy. They have to project, of course, what the taxable valuations are, etc. And it's an incredibly complicated process that they have gone through, and I will tell you from my background in .... for 20 years doing some stuff in finance, they've done an incredible job with that, so that we don't end up with huge fluctuations in our tax levy. So we don't end up all of a sudden having to raise our debt levy by 20 -cents, because we just went out and sold all these bonds. And so when we do a five-year Capital Improvement Plan for the City, that is all built in, you know, between Geoffs office and ... and Public Works and everybody else, and Dennis's office. That is ... that's a ... that's a huge jigsaw puzzle that these people put together that we don't even see. We see the end result of it when they give us this budget. But it's all predicated on a lot of Dennis's modeling and his staff modeling of how much bonding we can do and when that'll get paid off, and what that means for our debt levies. So it's ... I think if we're ... if we're not going to do what staff has recommended, then I think like Geoff and Dennis have said, then what we have to look at is which other ...uh, if we ... if we ... if we don't want to reduce the debt levy, but it does make sense to take the debt levy down by I O -cents because we don't need that money, then we need to have that discussion of which of the other levies have any room on them. And which ones make the most sense to increase. The other thing I would just mention on that debt levy is to go back and keep in mind when we stop... start at the very beginning and talked about the triple-A bond rating, Dennis mentioned that we actually are above Moody's recommendation in terms of our debt ... our amount of debt service to be a triple-A rated city. Salih: Yes, thank you very much. That's very helpful and, you know, Dennis, I appreciate it, but I really still want to know what the 500 that we going to get if we don't do anything. There is no any useful use for it at all, unless we add that to like another one. And you saying now everything is to the limit, except to the employee, uh, like benefit levy, right? That what I'm hearing? Bockenstedt: There's a little capacity in the emergency levy. I think there's three -cents remaining in that. Um, and then of course the employee benefits levy. I'm not sure that we have any other option levies with capacity still in them. (mumbled) and if you wanted to do that, it's just a matter of identifying, you know, how you want to use those funds, so... Fruin: Yeah, I ... I think if you identified what ... how you want to use the funds, we'll ... we'll do everything we can to figure out how to make that work. So for example, if you told us, hey, you know, I'd rather ...I'd rather invest more in roadway maintenance. Then what we're probably going to do is ... is bump up the employee benefits levy, take those dollars generated by that extra 10 -cents, transfer it over to our road use tax funds, um, and pay employees benefits with those funds, and that gives us $500,000 more of road use taxes to work with. So it's just kind of...we've got to figure out that piece, so we can help you with that. That's what we're here for. I think if you are ... if you are looking at this and saying we want to keep the tax rate flat. And if we ... if that means that we're going to get an extra four to $500,000, here's where we'd like to spend it. And then we'd come back to you with the mechanics on how you can do that. And if This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 92 there's some reason that that can't happen, then we would explain why not, and maybe give you some alternatives. Weiner: (several talking) say thank you to Susan, Geoff, and Dennis, because even though my brain is starting to turn to mush, I understand a lot more than I did before. (laughs) Teague: Yeah. Salih: Yeah, I just ... I really not advocating (mumbled) for no reason. Okay. I understand now what you guys saying, there is a lot thing that makes sense right now. By listening to Susan, by listening to Dennis, and even Geoff and everyone, but I just like really, you know, that there is many, many service need in the community, and we need such money for it. And I always hearing we don't have money. We don't have money, and keeping reducing the tax. That's why I want to like figure out a way if we can do something with this money, uh, just give us an option. And if we find out like just you are saying an option which is I'm not gonna use it, Geoff, because you also said there is certain room you have to use it, and in the future you might need to do that, you know, like increasing this employee benefit levy. That's why I'm not going to play on that because we need it on the futures maybe, but just give us all the options. One, we going to understand exactly what ... what the option is, what the risk to that option is, can we do it or just like forget about it and reduce, you know, the tax levy. I think this is very helpful discussion and I hope you just bring like more information for us about, hey, this is your option and this is the risk for that options. And this is what you can do and this is ... if you did this, this is what's going to happen. Hopefully I want to see that when (mumbled) more, and will make me decide the right thing for the City. Fruin: Yeah, we can ... we can craft something up and I'll throw another layer of complication on this, but if -if you said, hey, I want $500,000 to do X, let's just, you know, let's ... let's stick with the road example. You want to ... I want to spend half a million dollars more on roads this year. That's really important to us as a Council. It's unlikely that we would say, okay, let's raise the employee benefits levy and transfer money over. I mean, we can do that. But we're also going to say, all right, well we have reserved levels of 35% and half a million's not going to make a huge dent there. Let's probably just use some of that reserve capacity. And ... and fill that need and ... and not tinker with the ... not tinker with the the levies. You know, the same I would say for COVID relief. If you really wanted to say we need more household rent relief and utility relief in this community. We can't wait for the State and feds to do it. Let's do it. We're not going to recommend that you do that through your property taxes. We're going to recommend you do that through your emergency levy or your general fund reserves. So that's why I always encourage Council, as you look at this budget and you ... you know the community needs out there, if something's not reflected in the budget, you tell us what it is and we'll give you the best options to fund it. But we can ... we can describe some of the levy dynamics for your January 19th work session and at least you'll have a ... a pretty good understanding of what the pros and cons of changing those levers would be. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021. page 93 Salih: And also if you add one (mumbled) I'm sorry, guys. I'm taking long time, but if...if you add one more piece about if we borrow more money, how that's going to affect the interest rate? How that going to affect our good like place of Moody and like the triple-A and everything. Yeah, just like also tell us about that so we will know exactly (mumbled). Thank you. Mims: (mumbled) just add one last piece. And that is, I think, and I hopefully, Geoff, you and Dennis will provide this information and it's probably in the packet. I got the electronic one this year, which I found a little more complicated to navigate, but, you know, where we are in terms of the the levies and the maximum that we can go, and this is my 12th and last year of doing this, and I would just pass on one piece of advice. I would encourage us not to get close to the maximum on any more of these levies than we absolutely have to be. Otherwise, it leaves you with very, very little flexibility as you go forward into the next year and the year afterwards. And add on to that the fact that we are not seeing our tax valuations increase in the same way they have in previous years, which has allowed us to do things like move up to a million dollars in affordable housing, to move up our, uh, the wages that we're paying, etc. So if...if those assessed values stay flat and if you get yourself close to the maximum on those levies, you're going to have no flexibility going forward, and you're going to have to significantly decrease services to the community. So I just urge a word of caution as we go forward. Teague: Okay. All right, I think we're going to revisit this on the 19th and I ... because it's very complex, as we can tell, I would encourage us really to do a little research between now and then. And we know that staff is always available and, um, I ... personally, I've always enjoyed talking to Councilor Mims with ... on ... on these items because I learned so much (laughs) and so I would encourage us really between now and then just research and ... this complicated item. Salih: I want to thank you again, uh, Councilor Mims, of that explanation. Is very helpful. And, Dennis, you might see me like calling you soon and schedule something! Mims: ... 20 years of teaching I've ... I can listen to somebody give an explanation and I can watch expressions and figure out where the eyes are glazing over, and if it's a topic I know well, I can try to come at it a little different angle. And so that was my attempt. So I hope it was helpful. Teague: Great. Any other item that people want to bring up today? Well, I'll tell you, we've been here since 8:00 A.M. (laughs) on what used to be `breakfast on a budget' and of course we've missed the engagement with the community, but I'm still happy that we can come together, have our discussions virtually. If there's nothing more for today, we will end. And we'll reconvene on the 19th of January with our 5:00 P.M. work session. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council budget work session of January 9, 2021.