City Council - workshop

Today is June 16th, 2026, and this is the City of Iowa City Work Session that we are transitioning into now. Item number one is University of Iowa Student Government Updates. Of course, they are on vacation because the university is out for the summer for most of the students, so we do not have a representative here today. Item number two is Clarification of Agenda Items. We'll move on to item number three on our agenda, which is information packet discussions. We'll start with June 4th. We'll move on to June 11th.

I want to discuss IP5 from June 11th, and that would be the memo from NDS director and senior community development planner about aid to agencies updates. There's an ask in here, I guess, for us to review the current processes and procedures in place and flagging the idea that we're changing the way that we're doing agency funding. I have the most boring reading list of anybody up here, probably. And I did, when reading this, also saw that Our state auditor had issued an audit report for Henry County where it does touch very closely to the way that local governments can enter into contracts with private agencies and is very explicit about how we absolutely cannot just give money. We need to do things where we enter into a contract and they go on to say That we have to detail what we're doing, which I think for the most part we do that And we have to say what the cost of those services are and we have to confirm that things are funded appropriately And then have clawback provisions That would be their advice and that comes from Attorney general opinions going back to 1972 and I I and looking at our aid to agencies sort of version, I don't know what version we're on, 5.0, 10.0. Right now, I just wanted to get the city attorney's opinion on whether or not our sort of competitive grant process meets that threshold. I think that our direct aid to agency with a large, what we used to call legacy agencies, we have all that framework in place. It seems to meet all those requirements. the ones where we're just handing the money over. I just wanted to know if we're really meeting the intent of all of that. And this isn't by any means to sort of try to undercut this program or process, but just to make sure that we're not setting ourselves up for a situation where we would no longer be able to give money to these organizations if we didn't do it following the correct processes. I know I kind of teed you up for that earlier. I was curious if you had a chance to digest that.

Sure, yeah. So the state auditor... They did an audit of Henry County and they found that a donation that they had made to Main Street Mount Pleasant was improper With the state auditor cited was article 3 section 31 of the Iowa Constitution And that's the provision that prohibits the use of public money for private purposes So, I mean, I think that's been on everybody's radar. I mean for a long time, of course and so I think In terms of the aid to agencies, I mean, I think it's always been set up that of course it's public money that's being used for public purposes. Those services are described in the scope of services and the applications. and sort of through the review I think have been determined to be a public purpose. They're then approved and that language is of course in the resolutions. But we had been and it might have actually been a little bit before this came out or kind of at the same time working on language for the agreements for fiscal year 27. They're still in kind of the drafting process but there is a provision that would require the return of the funds if they're not used for the services described in the application which would be a clawback provision um and like i said they're still being drafted and there's i think additional refinements that can be made but yes i think we are aware of it um I think there's some refinements that can be made, but I don't think we have any concerns that we haven't been expending public money for a public purpose.

Sure, sure. And the clawback provision is something that you would do automatically and it wouldn't ever come to the council to look at the actual contract? Well, we would see the contracts at the last moment. They would include the clawback provisions?

So the agreement that's being drafted now is the fiscal year 27 agreement. So if I'm understanding correctly, those awards have already been made because it's a fiscal year 26 and 27 program, I guess. So those they've already signed a 26 agreement and then they sign a 27 agreement. So it'll be in that agreement up front. So after that's executed, if there were need for that provision to take effect, yeah, it wouldn't come back to council for that to go into effect. Yep.

My assumption is if that did take place, the agencies could either pay back or if they didn't agree with it, then they could possibly petition the council in various ways, I guess, mainly through public comment, you know.

Yeah, so the provision would require the payback. Of course, people can always come to public comment. I think the legal, it's a contract, so probably the legal way to enforce it would be through a court proceeding to enforce the contract. If they disagreed with the city's interpretation or perhaps thought that... you know, it was an illegal provision or something like that. But it sounds like this would be more disagreeing about what maybe the money was or wasn't used for and whether or not that fit within the scope of services.

Thank you very much for that. And just see what looks like another county did something that appeared to be for all good purposes, but they didn't follow all the proper processes. So got their hands slapped and don't want that to happen for us.

I just wanted to point out a couple of things in the memo that are quite literally for future counsel. Because it always becomes very difficult at the time when staff recommendations and HCDC's recommendations come to us. And I just think that there's a lot in this memo that is incredibly useful for future council. That a couple of things stood out to me, that the scoring metrics are going to be transparent to the agencies, incredibly important for us as council or for any future council. That moving forward, not all agencies, because it is going to become more competitive, that not all agencies are expected to get funded. That there is an emphasis from staff's perspective that they will be looking for agencies with demonstrated financial stability. That there will be internal controls in place. and administrative capacity. And I would just note that given in the Iowa City community, especially right now with unfortunately we have a precedent with the Iowa City School District issues, this kind of accountability and these kinds of metrics are incredibly important and this kind of transparency is important. And so I just, I put this on record right now so that when we have these kinds of conversations, because we want to fund as many agencies as possible, we know that there are many agencies doing really good work across the board, and agencies that have the intention of doing a lot of good work, but not all successful. Can necessarily get funded so we're going to we're heading into a season of having to make hard decisions So I'm just putting this out here that there has been a lot of collaboration and that these Agreed upon metrics and emphases moving forward have been agreed upon by United Way and uh hcdc and us actually we agreed upon this earlier so i just mentioned it now so that i can remind us that i'd said of this earlier once we get to it later on i was gonna say i had some similar thoughts to just kind of you know um you know recent learning from recent uh things in our community about the importance of

really getting ahead and making sure that the accountability and transparency and just taking that up, just reaffirming. It's not something new. We do that. We've been doing that, but emphasize the need for that. A couple other things I'll point out. One of them is as we do have some of the the various requirements for, depending on the level, the size of the operation. whether it's a year-end financial statement, an annual financial review, or an actual audit, depends on the size of the operation that we're dealing with. There will be technical assistance for groups that are going to be applying. And so groups that are interested in applying need to be watching for that, really just as a friendly recommendation to be proactive and to watch for that and to take advantage of those. You know, don't let an opportunity slip by. And then just kind of pointing out, too, that the thing that we are just wrapping up with, the former system going into the new system where we have, and this is something the council decided on earlier, The direct aid to agency funding being about five or six different organizations that provide Essex core services to the community that align with the city's strategic values, sort of big impact sort of groups. For instance, Community Crisis Center and Food Bank, DVIP, Free Medical Clinic, Neighborhood Centers, Shelter House, UAY. I think I got them all. But then everybody else is going to be in the same pool of competitive funding. It's not gonna be legacy and non-legacy. And I know that, again, that'll probably take a little while for that to filter out through the community, but I wanted to make sure people understood that so that there will be competitive one of the things that we're doing is making sure that the minimum funding award goes up so again back to uh counselor alter's point maybe fewer total awards but the awards we give based on a scoring criteria will have the greatest possible impact in our community uh which at the end of the day is what we're you know it's not about it's about the impact right at the end of the day that we want to have in our community uh using a variety of both these larger agencies that provide some of these core services as well as other agencies that are hitting pockets that nobody else might be hitting. So just kind of wanted to make sure that the public is aware of those things.

Yeah, the scoring metric to me is important too to notice that I believe that the most important thing is services provided. So that's what we're looking for is the organizations that provide the best services for the best cost is really important. These are things, these are public goods. that we just as a city can't provide, but want to.

Which brings us back full circle to your original point about public money for public good and services.

And we've had really good, robust conversations over the last several years, I think, in ensuring that this process can be as simple and equitable and efficient as possible. And I really do urge people, like you said, Counselor, the technical assistance. I think the city providing increased technical assistance or improved additional, is what the memo says, additional technical assistance to really take advantage of that. Because I think, especially for new organizations, I understand that it can be very daunting to engage with a funder directly to say, how am I doing on my application to get money from you? But I think that actually tends to really improve the strength of applications and the likelihood of being able to match the application to the scoring criteria.

yeah the scoring criteria is explained right in our packet and hope people review it all right anything else from june 11th now quick note on the next ipl that we oh yeah let's get uh i'm just gonna say bring out our sala back in please she recused herself from this uh discussion item

I was going to bring up IP6, which was the memo from NDS talking about the comp plan update. Thank you. I've been getting some questions in the community about that, and so we don't necessarily have to take a deep dive, but just wanted to point out for those that did have questions, there's more information in the in the packet IP 6 That does have sort of an update of where it is and where it's going and since I'm not on that committee That's all I'll say about it. None of the counselors that are actively engaged have anything else to add. I

Yeah, we was our last meeting update meeting Wednesday week ago and I know Councilor Alter and I as well as the facilitators have been an NDS staff have received lots of comment from the community. We appreciate that very much. And I think that the group is doing a good job of responding and explaining. you know thank you for your feedback and this is how we might approach that i think there with some of the comments we've received we're starting to see the limits of what a comprehensive plan is and can do and maybe what is more appropriate in other Sort of vehicles that the city has like maybe a TIF policy and economic development policy because the comp plan is at its core land use plan, but of course it has economic development implications. So I think that's the moment we're at and the feedback is sort of figuring out where that appropriate place for comp plan. The feedback we're getting is for the comp plan versus maybe spills over into some sort of other efforts. that this council needs to take on. So, you know, the feedback again is really appreciated. So I don't want to discourage anybody from reaching out and talking, but in the people that I've spoken to, sometimes I think we fall into the trap that perhaps we fell into in the last comp plan where we got- Comprehensive. It was beyond comprehensive and hyper-specific, which ended up meaning we added a lot of different parts and pieces. So it was a little bit of a kitchen, everything but the kitchen sink in some with a lot of our appendices, which meant that you could use our comp plan to say kind of anything you wanted it to say. And I would prefer we have it a little bit more focused this time around and peel off the things that are, again, an economic development plan or a strategic plan item and into sort of a different collateral sort of effort and keep the plan to strategic plan.

That said, actually, for anybody who is listening and for those who have reached out to say, well, where are we in it? Because there are some folks and they're keenly interested in this process and want to know when do they get to see it? When do they get to comment on it? And actually, we're kind of entering into that phase. There's going to be a robust response kind of trotting it out to the public with something like four listening posts, I want to say, that will be starting, let me see, four public open house events. There are going to be stakeholder interviews and focus groups, and the entire plan is going to be uploaded to an engagement website for review and comment. That is going to be happening, I believe. All this summer and fall.

Yeah. Page 31 of the IP has a phase four. Yeah.

Yeah. So if you go 31, page 31. But it's coming up that you will be able to take a look at it. You'll be able to give feedback more widely to those who are interested in doing so.

Mm-hmm. And then the phase five would be...

Incorporating.

Incorporating, would be going to planning and zoning, who would adopt it and make the recommendation to come to city council. So there'll be many, many, many opportunities for the public to participate in the formation of it. But now is a really good time because it's problematic to come at the very last city council meeting and say, I'd like a major change.

Yes. And the memo does say this, but this is an updated timeline because I think things got moved. Yes, you are correct. It had gotten slowed down. The original timeline that had been public facing kind of looked like people had maybe missed their chances to engage. So I think this is a very helpful update with public engagement opportunities are upcoming.

Anything else from June 11th?

I think just highlight IB4 again, memo from the city manager about housing information. And as you see in your workstation agenda, for the housing voucher waiting list, we have 2,501. Like we're increasing public housing 1,529 as of May. We need affordable housing. All right.

All right, anything else? Moving on to item number four, council updates on assigned boards, commissions, and committees. Hearing none, we are adjourned and we'll start our formal meeting at 6 p.m.