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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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)
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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.
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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.):
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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(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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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(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 -
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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
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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,
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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!
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.