City Council - Regular Meeting

Westergaard. Here. Mandelbaum. Here. Gatto.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Next item is approving the agenda as presented and or as amended.

Move approval. The record showed that Councilmember Voss is here also. I don't think he was.

Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded. Is there any questions or concerns? If not, please vote.

Seven, yes.

Motion carries. The next item is item three, approving conveyance of city owned municipal housing agency property at 3308 Kinsey Avenue, pursuant to section 32 home ownership program, board communication number 26 dash 240.

Move approval, Your Honor.

Any questions? If not, all in favor, please vote. 7 yes, this is motion carries next item is item for motion to adjourn. The approval second the moon second place out.

Sorry, I don't I didn't have it was for it.

OK we can just all in favor aye aye any opposed if not motion cares. We will reconvene at 05.00PM for the regular meeting.

No.

I'd like to call to order the July 13th, 2026 meeting of the Des Moines City Council. Please take the roll.

Rosen.

Here.

Simonson.

Here.

Voss.

Here.

Barron.

Here.

Westergaard. Mandelbaum.

Here.

Gatto.

Here.

We have a quorum.

next item is item two approving the agenda as presented and or as amended uh tonight number 20 was moved to item 40i on the regular agenda items 40i was moved on the proposition to authorize a lease purchase agreement with ziegler inc for the lease purchase of a tractor with boom or for use in city operations not to exceed $88,875 and providing for publication of notice thereof and to continue to the August 3rd, 2026 council meeting. Item 43 has updated the speaker's list.

Move approval, Your Honor.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Please vote.

Seven yes.

Motion carries. The next item is approving the consent agenda. Those are items 3 through 37. Tonight, 5 Voss votes no, 6 Voss votes no, 31 Barron is abstaining, 33 Mandelbaum wants to speak, 33 Barron is a no. These are routine items and will be acted by one roll call vote without separate discussions unless pursuant to council rules. Council requests an item to be removed to be considered separately.

Move approval.

And we have one speaker, Carol Maher, who wants to speak on item 18. We will allow public speaking to a consent item for three minutes each for a total of 15 minutes. Please state your name, address, or ward prior to providing comments.

Thank you. Mayor Bozen, members of the Des Moines City Council, my name is Carol Maher, and I live downtown in Des Moines in Ward 3. It was my pleasure to observe strategic planning session number two this morning. Good stuff. Once again, a vibrant downtown was mentioned in the mission and vision statements. And Des Moines does have an actual downtown, not a Disney-inspired town square named The Village, The Triangle, Uptown, or Jordan Creek. It's a real downtown with downtown-specific zoning that isn't found in the Burbs or other Des Moines neighborhoods. At the end of the session, each of you named top three strategic priorities, and you generally agreed with each other. Coming in at number three, complete streets, multimodal, accessibility, vulnerable road user safety, and transit warm my active transportation soul as I ride my bike to meetings at City Hall. Please keep that active transportation priority in mind as you weigh your decision on the hyper energy bar site plan request. Yes, the site plan. You've already voted to sell the parcel for $550,000. Hooray for getting city-owned property back on the tax rolls. The hearing in three weeks is to override the decision made by the plan and zoning commission. In a tie vote, the commission declined the site plan and the applicant is appealing that decline. This is the decision you'll need to make. Do I want to bring an Ankeny product to downtown Des Moines? Remember, downtown Des Moines is not Ankeny. Do I want to open the door to drive-through businesses in downtown Des Moines? Our downtown zoning code does not allow them, period. Even the Starbucks on MLK does not have one. Up until now, it was a hard stop. No drive-throughs. It's Urban Planning 101. U.S. cities with serious downtowns do not allow drive-throughs, a car-centric design focused on traffic throughput. But how American is it? Need an energy boost? No, don't get up. We'll bring it right to your car. Finally, there are outstanding questions from our traffic and transportation department regarding queuing, turn lanes, and the bike lane that fronts the property. As of this afternoon, those haven't been addressed in the site plan. Also, the applicant has not yet met with the railroad that runs through the parcel. How can you approve a site plan when the question of basic safety of residents has not been addressed? Thank you.

Okay, entertain a motion.

We got it. We just moved in second. Right? We just got it.

It's been a while. Please vote.

Seven. Yes.

Motion carries. Next item we will go to is the hearings. Item 38, on request from Monte Properties Incorporated, Brenda Sanchez, Officer, to amend the plan DSM, creating our tomorrow plan to revise the future land use classification and to rezone property located in the vicinity of 2006 Indianola Avenue from N5 Neighborhood District to MX1 Mixed Use District to allow the conversion of a retail sales use to a tobacco store use. Plan and zoning commission recommends denial requires six votes for approval. Choose one alternate below. A is deny or B, continue the hearing until August 3rd, 2026 and direct the city manager and legal department to prepare the necessary legislation to approve the rezoning. First, we'll hear from parties and interest applicants rezoning and those within 250 feet of the property to be rezoned. We'll be given up to five minutes to speak. Second, germane comments from the general public, two minutes per person to speak, 20 minutes maximum. Anyone wishing to speak? If not.

Seeing none, Your Honor, I'll move 38A. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Please vote.

7, yes. Motion carries.

Motion carries. Okay. The next item is 39. Proposition to authorize a lease agreement with industrial scientific police of atmospheric monitoring. Didn't get that right. Devices and services for use by the public works department not to exceed 35,000 and $13.72 for a four-year period and providing for publication of notice thereof and to continue to August 3rd, 2026 meeting.

I don't see anybody who wants to speak. Jonathan, thank you for the description of what that was because I didn't understand what it was. So I will move item 39. Second.

So moved and seconded. Please vote. Yeah. Joe, I'm sorry.

Seven. Yes.

She carries. Item 40. An application to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for the fiscal year 26 pathways to removing obstacles to housing or pro housing council communication number 26 dash 242.

Move approval, Your Honor. Item 40. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Please vote. It's one more.

Mandible. Seven, yes.

Motion carries. Next item is 40, aye. on proposition to authorize a lease purchase agreement with Ziegler Inc. for the lease purchase of a tractor with boom mower for use in city operations not to exceed $88,875 and providing for publication of notice thereof and to continue to the August 3rd, 2026 council meeting.

I'll move 40 aye, Your Honor.

Second.

Moved and seconded, please vote.

Seven yes.

Motion carries. The next item is 33 from the City Council Personnel Subcommittee, Bozen, Simonson, and Voss to consider receipt and approval of the City Council Personnel Committee's annual review and compensation review for the Council's direct reports. Councilman Mandelbaum, do you want to speak on this?

Yeah, one of the things that I've been trying to, well, I guess given where we are at in the budget and this year's budget, I think we are scrutinizing things that we hadn't scrutinized previously. And one of the things that I hadn't spent a lot of time on, admittedly, was the retention bonus piece of the compensation package and trying to understand understand that piece in the history. And I've been trying to do that just, I got a little information just before this meeting, but I don't know that I have all of the information that I would want. One of the pieces, the discussion was freezing. The retention bonus is kind of in place of, or in lieu of, the longevity pay. And we haven't really examined that. This was initially a five-year program, and it's kind of been continued without discussion. And maybe that's my fault for not asking in the previous years and not realizing. But I don't fully understand the difference in pay between the longevity, what longevity would be, and what the retention bonus would be. The other thing is that my understanding is that last year we did not freeze the manager's longevity pay. So that went up, which was kind of the premise that this was in lieu of. And so we kind of had both happen. And so I think it's worth revisiting. And I'm not... I went back and forth. I was... a little uncomfortable and then as I was may be comfortable than I was reading some of the history and I'm maybe at the point where I'm not comfortable without knowing and having a discussion on the longevity pay versus retention and what this means in the context of a broader policy. The other piece I would note is that when we started the policy, our city manager wasn't even in the top two in terms of pay of city managers in this state. And that was a piece of why I think, at least when I go back and read the older document, why we did the retention bonus. At this point, I believe our city manager is the best paid city manager in the state. No, is that not accurate?

I don't believe so.

Not, okay. So in the top two, but not the best paid, okay.

I would say the gentleman in Cedar Rapids is probably the best paid. Yeah.

Okay.

I think he makes well over 400. I just thought it was... In a small town like Cedar Rapids, but...

Okay. Anyway.

I was hoping to just... There's a world where I'm comfortable voting for this if I understand a little better on the... longevity versus retention and what the policy is and where we're at with that um and i know the mayor was going to ask about what what that would what that would be and that we would hopefully get that i'd prefer to be able to vote for this to wait one more uh one more council session so that we can get some of that longevity versus retention and have a discussion on that. But I understand if folks wanna just vote on that today.

Others that were on the committee, I think that based on the review that we received from the fellow council was exemplary, was very high, that we didn't make the change this year. If you wanna have that discussion for future, uh because i don't think there's i don't know what the differential i don't know if it's that great but it was a matter of keeping the benefits they're paying more in insurance that went up and again had a very strong review so that's why we kept some of the other things just the same as we had capped retention a few years ago because it was supposed to keep going up and we had stopped it so I'm just giving you context of what has been done in the past. So I'll defer to if anyone else has comments. Just want to give you a little history.

I'm quite comfortable where we are. This is the most important position in the city. Having had to hire people, high-paying people, you get what you pay for. And when you look at what it costs to recruit and hire people, That's really expensive. I think we've as a committee have done our due diligence and I support it fully.

Is that a motion?

I don't think you need a motion from a committee report.

Yeah, no.

Okay, we still do. Okay, Roberts rules of order don't require it. But I would if we do.

According to, yes. So there's been a move, it's been moved, it's been seconded. At this time, if there's no other comments, I would just say please vote. Mayor?

Who moved that? I'm sorry, I did not hear.

I don't think, Simonson moves.

Okay, and who's second? Thank you. Yeah.

I'm sorry, I... so i'm i'm voting no on this and yeah you already put down and i already yeah i already did noted note that ahead of time and um you know i will say coming into this i i was uh skeptical of the uh city and city administration and i've appreciated uh working with the city attorney city manager city clerk uh thus far but you know we're we're on the front end of of cutting millions of dollars from our budget and excising people's jobs. People are not going to be working for the city anymore. The retention bonus alone is almost $22,000 for the city manager, $17,000 for the city attorney. Increasing the longevity back from 1% to 3% is about $10,000 a year. We're quickly getting to the numbers that our department directors were bringing to us on June 17th. as being the types of things that we would cut. A meeting ago, our council voted unanimously not to take a raise. I thought that was appropriate out of leadership at a moment like this. I feel like this is the right thing to do is still to respect the work that's being done. There's still a 3% raise already, but then adding 3% longevity, 6.5% retention for the manager, 1% for the attorney, 6.5% retention for the city attorney. I think that's excessive and I can't support that.

Okay. I will just say I appreciate the job of the personnel committee. I know it's not easy. And I would reiterate Councilman Simonson's statements. You get what you pay for. I was here when City Manager Sanders was hired. He was hired at a very low end of the spectrum of city managers. I'm glad that he's at least number two. I didn't think we would ever probably get you to number one. I don't think that makes a big difference, but I appreciate the job that all three of them do. They're all very good at their jobs. I would say at the point in time, because there will be a point in time that we will have to replace them, I would say that we're gonna see what it's gonna cost to pay somebody to sit in that seat and that seat and that seat there, because I don't believe that you're gonna get it much cheaper. That's my opinion, depending on who you get, I guess. So I'm happy to be supportive and thank you for the job you guys do.

To that point, though, we were paying an additional $30,000 a year for one position compounded year over year. You're not talking about saving it. You make the point about you're going to have to hire a search firm and things like that. But I mean, $30,000, $50,000 when you take in both positions, you're going to be over $100,000 just in two years. That's the cost of a search firm right there. So we're making that payment to maintain the people that are here. That's fine. But I don't think I would say that we're saving money on the front end by doing that.

I would say we get what we pay for. And you can look at the Des Moines public schools. and see what the leadership that they've had and how many changes they've had since he's been sitting in this seat and the mess that they've been in. That's what I would state of where we're at with some of who we hire and how we hire.

I think we do pretty well for $337,000.

Okay, we will look at this. The other thing on longevity too, you get compensation from IPERS, so there's a differential too.

whereas on retention there isn't so i think there's some numbers we need to get more final numbers you've taken the position to vote no so we can bring those numbers back in the next review like i said mayor i would like to make one final comment this goes back to my childhood growing up my dad ran the department of mental health developmental disabilities for the state of iowa that budget was a billion dollars and that's when i was in high school and i remember how stressed he was on occasion coming home. This is when they were slashing budgets and that takes a toll on a person too. I'm glad to have the continuity in this seat.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. We'll bring back numbers and we can review it at the next review period. It's in next year. Right.

I would say that next year, the personnel committee, after the review process with Mark, that maybe we can have, I don't know if it's appropriate, Jeff, we can have a closed session to where the seven of us can sit down before there's...

you know of recommendation that goes on the council agenda that we can have a discussion with seven of us all in the room we can do that very easily this is how we've done it for that i understand how many years at least we have reviews they went for five years with no reviews yeah they did no i i agree with what councilman gatta suggests as well absolutely more conversations okay five yes to no motion motion carries next item 41 is amending chapter 26 of the municipal code relating to building per requirements I assume that's code it is Council communication number 26-244 Is there a...

I'll move item 41.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Please vote.

Do you want to wait for the second, third reading?

I would like to, pursuant to 42A.

Okay, so we are going to... Is that good, or do we need to revote?

Yes, correct. Six yes, one no. Motion passes. Motion carries.

item 42 amending chapter 114 of the municipal code regarding traffic regulation changes as follows council communication number 26-246 a is parking modification related to repurposing of walnut street school 1 walnut street to 9th street to 10th street 2 is 9th street to walnut street to locust street

I'll move 42A, 1 and 2, and pursuant to rule 42A, I'll waive the second and third reading. Second.

Been moved and seconded. Please vote.

Robin, yes.

Motion carries. The next item is item 43. It's a request to speak. And we provide speakers under the public speaking portion the opportunity to address the council for up to three minutes each for up to 20 speakers for a total of one hour on the agenda. Speakers will be called forward individually. And we ask everyone to please state their name and address ward prior to providing comments. Please keep comments germane and avoid references to personalities or character attacks, as those types of comments do not contribute to the purpose for which this public forum exists. As a reminder to the council and the public, this public speaking time is to hear your comments. And if there is a need to follow up, we will get it to the appropriate staff or council to follow up after the meeting. So the first speaker we have is Laniya Deward. I don't see her. Is Sarah Heldreth here? It looks like we don't have anything.

Moved to receive and file 43 A and B with no comments, I guess.

I guess. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and second. Please vote. Is there a... Motion to adjourn, Your Honor. Okay. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? If not, this meeting is adjourned.