City Council - workshop

We are now in our work session. And our first item is clarification of agenda items.

Anyone? I don't know how we're going to do it, because it's in the consent agenda.

I'm sorry?

Do we take it off from the consent agenda and for separate consultation?

Well, it'll be part of the consent agenda, but will be handled separately after the rest of the consent agenda is addressed. And Mayor Portem is aware of that recusal, so we're all set for that.

Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Let's move to item number two with our information packet discussion beginning with July 16th. Does anyone have any items? July 23rd.

Let me look here.

No.

I just have a brief comment actually, and I believe it is for, was it IP3 on the fireworks? Is that correct? Was it IP3? Yeah. I just wanted to say, I hope that it was because there were less fireworks that were set off, but good job on those who were doing less calls. So yay Iowa City for that. And in particular, my neighborhood, Weatherby Southeast, let's keep working on it. Anyway, but no, it really does help both fire and police so that they can attend to the calls for people who are needing them more. Since the fireworks are, I know, both anxiety producing and a nuisance, but it's very difficult to actually be able to do anything about it. Thank you for your patience as that happens on the 3rd and 4th, but also for your ability to not hit the phone and complain about it. So that's all I wanted to say. Okay, moving on. July 30th.

I have a couple on this one. I'll start with the simplest. I see that for pending work session topics on the August 18th meeting, we're having a pedestrian mall safety discussion due to a scheduling conflict. I'm gone that day. I look forward to watching that conversation, and I know that that's going to be an important conversation for us all to have together later. So I just wanted to say that I can't be there, but I will be watching. And then moving on to the historic preservation memo, I think the assistant city manager sent us a memo, a reminder to look at that memo about historic preservation and some of the challenges that we currently have in Iowa City. And this is of course very important to me since I started as a historic preservation advocate and did it professionally for a long time and live in an historic neighborhood. So I very much love and appreciate historic resources and the work that our staff does, but also know that it can be very challenging And I think that's what this memo is, is that it's sometimes very difficult and sometimes costly for people living in historic neighborhoods. And I think staff is looking for a little bit of direction on exactly how we should be prioritizing historic preservation. And I can tell you from my personal perspective, I like preservation because I think it's culturally important for the city. Thank you for the reminder. I'm sorry. I thought that was okay.

Then I will put a pin in it.

It was in the IP. I just jumped the gun. I'll come back to that.

IV-5, the housing information, city manager housing information. Again, I want to remind you, the housing twice voucher waiting list have 1,301 and the public housing waiting list have 729. Yeah, still we need affordable housing.

Thank you. Anything else on item packet discussion? No. All right. Moving on, honestly, to sort of the highlight of our work session. Our third agenda item is our Harvard Bloomberg internship overview. And so I am going to pass the mic over so that you all can take it away and let us know about the amazing things that you've been doing, starting with Adele. Thank you. And if you want to give us the intro.

Yes, Nora Cahill, public policy analyst. As you all know, my position is funded by the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative as a city hall fellowship. Through my fellowship, we had the opportunity to list an internship for a Harvard undergraduate intern. We were very lucky with a great candidate and a fantastic intern in Adele Rylot. I'm going to pass it over to her and first just say that we chose projects for her that were priorities of city staff and also gave her an opportunity to work with a variety of city departments, a variety of city partners, and hopefully gave her some good exposure to the city and to city government in general. So I'll pass it off to her.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Recording in progress.

Sorry. No pressure.

Thank you for having me. My name is Adele Rylot. I'm a junior at Harvard studying political science and biology. And I've been lucky enough to work on NORA on a variety of projects. related to housing and homelessness. The first of them was the housing authority rebranding. The second was a referral map resource. The third, street outreach data collection. The fourth, lived experience incorporation. And the fifth, website redesign. And I'm going to give you guys a bit of an overview of what I've been up to and kind of the process I took for each of these rather than any specific recommendations or anything like that. So for the Housing Authority rebranding, the primary goal here was to kind of clarify the jurisdiction of the Iowa City Housing Authority and its range of services. Some of the consistent feedback that city staff were getting was that service users were a bit confused, right? Because the Iowa City Housing Authority covers Iowa County, Washington County, and Johnson County, and that's not quite reflected in its name. In addition, its new priorities related to investing more in affordable housing units was maybe not so reflected in the Housing Authority piece of its current name. So that was my goal. I wanted to find a new appropriate name, a new visual identity, a direction for that, and a potential tagline, which doesn't currently exist. So in order to do that, I mainly ended up just talking to a lot of people, which is super cool because I got to see the range of services that Iowa City offers, talk to people that care a lot about the unhoused population here. And I was mainly talking to service providers and landlords and obtaining feedback from them in terms of current perception on the Housing Authority, ways they thought we could improve in messaging. And I found throughout this process that maybe a piece of that that's missing is rural outreach because when I talked to members of Washington County and Iowa County, they seemed quite unfamiliar with our services, so that's something I was exploring for a bit. The second bit was a referral map resource to help clarify what a referral timeline and process could look like for city staff that are seeking to help individuals. What I winded up settling on was an ArcGIS interactive resource where I collected information about, like, operating hours, any official applications that had to be submitted, information that staff had to collect for individuals getting referred. And I put that all on one map so it would be quite accessible for staff. And some of the feedback I got was that it might be helpful to have a public-facing version. So I'm also working on that right now. Thirdly, I was lucky enough to work with the Shelter House data team on a way to collect street outreach data. So this is pretty dear to me because I work a lot in housing and shelter work back home. So I had a lot of fun with this, and the main goal was to help Shelter House track encounters during street outreach so that the city could maybe collect some data over that over time. And this was also really good timing because we've been asking, or the city's been asking Shelter House for new metrics around this time of the year and it's been a way to help them with that transition. So honestly one of the main challenges I faced while I was shadowing our street outreach specialist was that he would meet so many different people all in one go and it would be difficult to track data on like a client level basis. So I settled on a Microsoft form, filled that once a day, to collect all of the data, all the people he referred to, specific resources, and had that tied to a coded Excel sheet that produced quarterly reports, which is what the city had asked for. And another project I had a lot of fun with was Lived Experience Incorporation, which was mainly looking at how can we incorporate the lived experiences of unhoused people or people that have experienced housing instability in Iowa City to inform city processes and so that we can get more feedback from them in a more direct manner. In order to do that, I reached out to lived experience advisory boards in Cedar Rapids, Los Angeles, and Winona. I also did a lot of research on For example, cities like Chicago that had tried implementing this in the past. And I was mainly researching best practices, including the Iowa Continuum of Care's lead framework and other guides such as this. And it was a lot of desk work. And for the fifth project, I helped with some of the website redesign pieces for the Johnson County Local Homeless Coordinating Board. So this website helps inform the public about different housing resources for the homeless in Iowa City. And it was out of date, just because no one had managed to log in for many years. So I helped update recent initiatives, membership, and some of the current data, for example, for winter shelter. I think this was a process that might help better inform the public on Johnson County's homeless response system and all the amazing work that's currently being done. Thank you. Any questions? And also, thank you so much for having me. I'm super, super grateful and I feel lucky to be here.

Thank you. Adele, how can we follow up once your time here is done so soon? How can we follow up on these projects that you've been working on?

I think because Nora has been an amazing supervisor. Some of the pieces that I've worked on, she might take up from there and turn them into actual initiatives that could be realized. I would also love to stay in contact with Nora and the different service providers I've managed to talk to here.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much for your work. Hey, good luck on your next semester.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Nora, our next presentation is the Housing Dashboard.

All right. Nora Cahill, Public Policy Analyst. You've got me a few times today. For the last almost a year, the city manager's office has been working on an affordable housing dashboard to communicate city data and goals to the public effectively. I'm going to be presenting a draft that is pretty much ready to go, ready to go live, with a little bit of background and the process of how this was developed, and then a quick demonstration of how it works. So the goal of the dashboard was to clearly communicate city goals, actions, and data on affordable housing to a variety of audiences. This includes the general public, and it's meant to be very accessible to anybody with any level of background in housing policy, as well as researchers, advocates, nonprofits, and city staff. We find that all of these populations are really high users of city resources that are already available. I don't want to toot my hometown's horn too much, but the city of Madison has a great housing tracker, as well as Burlington, Vermont has a great dashboard. I used these as kind of comparisons to see what the different visions of dashboards could look like. Other cities do have these dashboards and maintain them successfully. So I use this as inspiration while fitting it to the Iowa City context. While designing the dashboard, we kept a few key questions in mind that we wanted to answer with this data. First, what is the need for affordable housing in Iowa City? And what does residential development look like right now? What actions and investments does the city prioritize when it comes to affordable housing? And what does the homeless response system look like? To develop the dashboard, I sought input at a variety, at a range of stages of development from city staff, nonprofits, advocates, researchers, really focusing on the population that's going to be using this dashboard. The sources for the data come from a real range of organizations. A lot of it comes from the Department of Neighborhood Services and Development Services. We also have data on the homeless response system from Shelter House acting in its capacity as the lead agency for coordinated entry in the region. Also from the Institute for Community Alliances, which manages broader regional data for homelessness. We also have data from the city assessor and some state and national sources. With that, I'm going to get into a demonstration. So the dashboard lives on its own page under Neighborhood and Development Services to reflect that it has data from kind of across that department. At the top of the page, there's some basic information about the dashboard and then a large fuel gauge that shows a production goal of 9,098 units by 2050. This goal comes from the existing conditions analysis of the ongoing comprehensive plan update. This goal right now you'll see tops off at just over 1,800 units. This is to make it more readable. So we have 1,800 units as a goal for the next five years. And in five years, in 2030, it'll update to just over 3,600 units. And it'll add 1,800 units every five years so that it's more legible. Underneath the dashboard, there's a list of other resources that people might be interested in for more information, some frequently asked questions, and a lot of information on sources in case people want to get more information. My first recommendation on the actual dashboard is to open it in full screen. It looks best on a desktop in full screen. The first page is demographic information for the city. I'm going to try to stop myself from going too deeply into the data and instead focus on the actual dashboard. So stop me if you want any more information on the data itself. The one thing I'll highlight here is wage by occupation. You can open a lot of these visualizations in their own screen if that's helpful to make them larger. So for example, here you can see that the height of the bars represents the hourly median wage for an occupation group. We have a horizontal line that corresponds to the two-bedroom housing wage, which is actually a pretty low estimate for the wage that it takes to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Iowa City for two reasons. The first is it uses fair market rent, which for a two-bedroom apartment in Johnson County is $1,100 just about. That's lower than a lot of people actually pay for a two-bedroom apartment. The other reason is because the housing wage, as calculated by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, assumes that a worker is earning money for 40 hours a week. If somebody isn't able to work full-time, if their hours get cut, they may struggle to afford a two-bedroom apartment at this wage, even if they were previously working full-time. So we see that in Iowa City, we have a lot of workers at this high end who are comfortably earning above the two-bedroom housing wage. Darker bars have more workers. We also have a good number of workers who are hovering right around the two-bedroom housing wage. And then we have a good number of workers who, even if they're working full-time, wouldn't be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment comfortably on their own. The next page looks at housing costs in Iowa City. I'm going to focus on the bottom half of this page. This pie chart shows housing costs as a share of income for households where the head of the household is 25 years and older. So this leaves out anybody 24 and younger. These red and orange outlined slices represent households that are paying 30% or more of their income towards their housing costs. So across Iowa City, we see that around 30% of households are cost burdened. they're paying 30% or more of their income towards housing. When we focus in on renters, we see a very different picture. Over 50% of renters 25 years and older are cost burdened. Owners, on the other hand, it looks pretty good on its face. Around 20% of homeowners 25 years and older in Iowa City are cost burdened. But on the right, we see a more nuanced picture. The green line shows 30% of median monthly income being comfortably above this light blue line of median monthly owner costs. So we see a pretty comfortable gap, and that's where that 20% cost burden comes from. But the dashed blue line that corresponds to the right axis shows the median home sales price in Iowa City. That's been rising much faster than income. So this could introduce new barriers to first-time homeowners, people who need a larger home for a larger family, or people who want to downsize after becoming empty nesters. This page shows information on... overall residential development in Iowa City, where building permits are being issued by the construction type. You can filter this visual by the type of construction. Let's say we're only interested in single family. You can filter it like that. You can also filter it by year. And this will be updated on an annual basis. On the right, we have census data on the age of structures. Census data gets detailed enough that you can filter it by the number of units in this structure. And then we have vacancy rates separated out by geography. This gets really interesting when you separate out the downtown and near the university, where we see a lot of large developments that have gone in place in the last several years and haven't quite stabilized their leasing. And in the rest of the city, we see more sluggish vacancy rates. This page focuses on units under income restriction. This is what we often think of as affordable housing. The map shows roughly where units are under an income restriction in Iowa City. And you can filter it by the ownership of the unit. So let's say we're only interested in non-profit owned housing. you can filter this map and it'll update. It'll also show you how many units are in that group. If you're interested in one specific development, see how many units are there and what their ownership is like. This page shows city investment and spending on affordable housing. It's split into four categories, homelessness and eviction prevention, increasing the supply of affordable rental housing, increasing opportunities for affordable home ownership, and housing preservation. We have spending by fiscal year and housing services provided, and you can filter either by strategy, or you can filter by assistance type. So city administered activities are activities that are spent directly by the city versus partnership and funding is either done through a partnership with an outside organization or direct funding to support another organization. Funding sources will include a new one in fiscal year 2027 when we begin spending local option sales tax dollars that will be a separate funding source even though it is technically a local funding source. The sixth page shows data on the housing authority, including the number of units and the number of vouchers that they administer and the public housing and housing choice voucher waiting list. We are considering moving away from including the waiting list in the information packet and instead focusing on keeping this dashboard up to date every month. So it would still be publicly available, but in this format. So we can see this drop off, this decrease in the waiting lists due to routine maintenance to make sure that anybody on the waiting list is eligible and interested in a unit or a voucher. The final page provides information on the homeless response system. data from the point-in-time count, which is an annual census of people experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness in Johnson County. This count takes place at the end of January every year and is one of our most reliable or most frequent data sources on the number of people experiencing homelessness in the county. In the top right, we have the number of people accessing different homeless services from shelter to rapid rehousing, which is short-term rental assistance or services for people experiencing homelessness. and permanent supportive housing. For rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, you can also filter by specific populations. Let's say you want to see how many people in rapid rehousing have a diagnosed disability. That information is on here. On the bottom right, you can also see the average amount of time between when an individual enrolls in rapid rehousing and when they obtain permanent housing. You can see that number going up over time. That likely reflects higher barriers to achieving housing, to obtaining housing for people with complex barriers. You can also see the number of beds in Johnson County by the service that it provides for emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing. So you can see that capacity growing over time as well. That wraps up my demonstration. I'm happy to go into any of that data in more detail or incorporate any feedback that you have. Again, this is ready to go live pending council feedback.

I can't wait to play around with this and spend some time with it and share it with people that ask a lot of these questions. This is great. Going back to, just a real quick question, on the sixth or seventh page on the wait time, should I interpret that as... like the reason why the wait time has gotten longer is because there are fewer units available or because in earlier years people that were easier to like the people that were easier to find places for have been found places and like is the rate slowed down or the number like like is that or is it just a kind of a of a consequence of the the people who are easier to house are now housed now we're now we have a larger percentage of the population have greater barriers

You're talking about the rapid rehousing chart. The data itself doesn't give a reason. Anecdotally, from speaking with service providers, I would say that it's a combination. There is a lot of competition for the units that are available. And it can be hard to help a person with complex needs compete for a unit that many other people are also applying for. We also do see a lot of individuals seeking rapid rehousing and other homeless services that have complex barriers to housing. That has always been true. It is especially true right now.

Okay, thank you. That answers my question.

The two bedroom apartment, is it $21 an hour? Or how much is what? $21.94. Yeah, and that's considered like income for the people who pay only 30% of their income, not like 50 or 40, right? 30%. Okay. To get 21 minimum so they can pay 30% of their income for 1,100 two bedroom apartments.

Exactly. So a person earning $21.94 an hour and working 40 hours a week could afford a two-bedroom apartment at around $1,100 a month, paying no more than 30% of their income towards their housing costs.

Yeah. And that's not the case, actually, for a lot of people.

Yes. I would say that this $21.94 is certainly an underestimate.

Exactly. And can I ask you, what's the source of the data?

It's a variety of sources. So the two-bedroom housing wage comes from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, which produces a report every year called Out of Reach. It provides a lot of information on low-income housing needs, and they calculate this housing wage for metropolitan areas around the country. A lot of the other data, so for example, the median rent for the city comes from the census. Anything that's not otherwise noted at the bottom here comes from the U.S. Census, but we have sources from city departments. We have our partners like ICA and Shelter House. We have the city assessor. They come from a variety of sources.

Nora, this is really exciting. Thank you for all your work on it. I know you mentioned that this is designed for a number of different users, types of users. Do you, through building this tool and collecting, you know, putting all the data together, especially with the visualizations, do you have sort of any hopes for what a typical user would be or the kinds of conclusions or takeaways that you imagine people will be using from this?

My hope is that the audience is so broad that there isn't necessarily such a thing as a typical user. My hope is that any users who are curious about housing in Iowa City will be able to learn something from this. I tried to include a lot of kind of informational details describing what the two bedroom housing wage is, describing what fair market rent is, and why this might be an underestimate, for example, so that somebody coming in without that previous knowledge would be able to learn learn it from the dashboard. As for takeaways, I did try to keep this pretty neutral so that it's not leading anybody to a specific conclusion and really lets the data speak for itself. My takeaway looking at this data is that housing affordability is a serious challenge in Iowa City and we are also doing a lot to try to address it.

And just to build on the questions, who are we hoping to visit this flat and then from it? Is this built for? regular people or for researchers, people who care about affordable housing, us as a city council. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Personally, I hope everyone will access it. I hope that it's accessible to the general public and that anybody who's just interested in learning a little bit more about housing in Iowa City will be able to learn something from this. I also suspect that it'll be really helpful for nonprofits writing funding applications, or researchers who need some information on housing in Iowa City and need to know where to start, advocates who want to make a case for more affordable housing, and also city staff who are one of the biggest user groups of city data. I think this will be really helpful for policy development, for presentations to council. I hope that it will also be helpful to all of you.

Yeah, I think the amount of times I've tried to just by myself calculate how many income-restricted units we have, and I got pretty close. But no, this is just amazing. And I think I kind of view it as not only information but accountability as well. Like if anybody has a question about what we're doing or what the numbers are, I think it's just awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Oh, it's really amazing. Very, as, like, Kansal said, can't wait to just navigate and see, like, what's the number here and what's the number there. This is exciting. But I hope we still have that column in our work session for me to read it all the time so don't replay that hopefully because that's especially like for us because i heard you saying like we can take that from you know we don't need to i think so i requested that so i can do it all the time sure thank you um i enjoy this i i was curious one of the slides could you go to the city investment slide um

is these are COVID bumps, right? And that's, yeah. And so I'm curious to hear your thinking about how granular you were thinking with the data, because that tells a story that we've cut investment, but the real story is we had a huge infusion of cash from the federal government. And I'm just thinking, oh, I'm gonna get a question about that. Why did we cut funding? And the reality is no, we continue to increase local funding. And there's just not this huge influx of COVID cash coming in. So like for this one, I'm curious, how do you make the decision? I mean, it's honest. It's a number that's flowing through the city, but yeah. Yeah.

That was certainly challenging, and especially because we see this large bump in federal spending in 2023, which doesn't sound like COVID spending, but it is. It's hard to communicate that through charts, and I wanted to keep the text in this dashboard very evergreen so that we don't have to be changing it every year. Sure. But I hope that the... that narrowing in on local spending really tells that story of increasing local investment and when the lost dollars are on there. I think that will also show increasing local investment. But this page was a challenge to put together because you could get quite granular and look at individual programs, for example. But to kind of preserve the longevity of the data and make sure that it keeps on being Relevant? Yeah, relevant and numbers that you can compare to each other year over year. I decided to split it out by funding source like this, but you're right that this is quite a large jump that could be difficult to interpret.

Maybe the default is show local first.

Yeah, we could do that.

Or a red arrow that says COVID year.

By the way, this is nitpicky stuff. You've done a beautiful job. And I totally understand you have to make decisions at some point about how to make it legible and clear. And you've done a wonderful job. So just that local button should be a default.

I had one other tiny. Oh, go ahead.

No, go ahead. I do have one thing I want.

Under the funding source, I was just thinking of a fourth tab that would just be total.

So if you don't select anything, then it'll show the total.

Ah, okay. I didn't get that. Sorry.

I could change the default, I believe, to be local.

I mean, I don't care what the default is. I just mean there just seems like I didn't realize that there was a total option just to see what the total investment, because even if they're federal or state dollars, I mean, obviously a different source, but we still decide at some level, either the staff or council level, where those go. And those are investments that happen within our city. So I just think it's cool. I mean, you've got all the numbers there. It's just, but if there's nothing clicked, it's the total. Okay.

And I should have clarified, too, that this page does not include any federal or state funding that goes directly to organizations. It only includes funding that goes through the city and either straight out to households or to organizations.

Oh, good to know.

Oh, okay.

Is that because that data is very difficult for you to know because it might be going through a private not-for-profit that wouldn't report? Exactly. Okay.

Is there a data point on here that just says flat out how many rental units and how many, sorry if I missed it, rental units there are, period?

So that is in household tenure. Tenure means is a unit owner-occupied or renter-occupied. If you hover over these pie slices, this dashboard is very interactive. So I encourage anyone using it to poke around and hover over everything, click on everything. You can see there's 30,816 total households. Of those, just shy of half are owner-occupied and a little over half are renter-occupied.

Sorry about that. A data point I'm always interested in, and again, you know, I'm not trying to be nitpicky, but I love the correlation of percentage of income-restricted non-market units compared to – so this would be, you know – we have about 1,200 versus however many rental units. That's a number that I always think about is what percentage is non-market here in Iowa City.

Don't you have that on one of the... Yeah, so the number of income-restricted units is here. They're on different pages, but you can calculate it from the data on the dashboard.

Mm-hmm.

So I love that you talked about your hometown and where you were gathering some of this. And I can absolutely, from this map, I can see it. I was actually just in Madison two weekends ago at a conference. And there was a dedicated panel with the mayor and her neighborhood director talking about their housing plans. And so they brought this out and were talking about it. So I was like, I recognize this. One of the things that actually I was most appreciative of and that I would hope you still have a little bit more energy for, is it's not part of the tracker per se, but I loved that they have that PDF that is as a part of their tracking, I don't know, package, the Housing Forward update. If you just go on their site, It's a two-pager, and it just says in sort of bullets what the things are that their strategic plan is and what they have as part of it in sort of high level, but then what they have been doing towards it. And that, in terms of thinking about audience, it is absolutely for the layperson. It would be for the people who are saying, what have you done for affordable housing, right? And that this is just, it's very, very accessible. And it is text, but it's also got, you know, pictures and stuff like that. But it's something where it just, it gives that, like, $20,000. you know, foot view of what the city's plan is, what we've been doing to accomplish it. And then people can go and dig in a little bit more. And it just seems like it's a really nice compliment to it. And I'll bet that you could probably just crib it straight off of what they... What they do as a model, it just seemed like it's so very accessible. And it's like, because we have all of these different programs and things that we are doing that we talk about a lot, but it's not necessarily all in one place. It comes out usually at the mayor's video once a year. but if it was actually put together in an easy to digest two pager thing that it was almost like as a compliment to the tracker, it could be a really nice add on.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, that could be included in these other resources below, um, the dashboard or even above it to, to highlight. Yeah.

Cause I was just thinking, I loved that you've that tracker at the very beginning of the progress towards production goal, right? It's huge. It's like, it's this kind of like yeah how are we doing right and it's that needle it's that thermometer but this too it's sort of like it says here are notice notable accomplishments for these past two years and then what's next right and especially as we are looking towards doing our own strategic refreshment refreshment of um our goals you know we can say okay these are our next priorities so it's something to think about and yeah

I just want to ask you about the income restricted units and what's the example of private city monitoring?

So if you zoom in far enough on here, all of those dots will disappear. The other thing that adds some privacy is rather than putting in exact addresses, these all had to be geocoded into latitude and longitude. The census geocoder that does that is imperfect and so moves the dots around a little bit, not in a way that's intentionally kind of privatizing, but the effect is the same. So these are moved around a little bit and will also disappear if you zoom in close enough to see actual buildings.

Um, sorry if this was already said, I've just been looking at it. Um, uh, are we planning on, cause I know the city of Lawrence, Kansas, they have a dashboard that's really cool and it's, you can, it's, it's very like you go to the city of Lawrence page and it's right there. You click on it, it takes you to the dashboard. Have we talked about where this is going to be in terms of just the Iowa city websites layout? Um,

Yeah, so it lives in the Neighborhood and Development Services page. So if you start in the home page and go to Neighborhood and Development Services, it'll be on the left side there. That's where it has been going live for today.

Is there a desire to make it more front and center?

How are we going to know it is on there? Like the other people, I mean, we know.

We're planning to do some publicizing of the dashboard through regular Iowa City communications through the weekly videos. I'm hoping that by making this a, you know, by presenting in a public meeting, some folks will know about it. I've also been talking with all of the nonprofits and advocates and researchers that I, sought feedback from to let them know that this is a tool that is very, very shortly going live. But I would also appreciate any spreading of the news that you can do, too. I hope that this is a really helpful tool for a very wide audience. And to do that, we do need to spread the word. Okay. And how often are you going to be updating this? Most of the data will be updated annually. For example, census data comes out only once a year, so we can't update it more often than that. A lot of other data just doesn't really make sense to update more often. For example, building permit data is arduous to update and also doesn't change quickly enough to make sense. to update more frequently. But for example, the public housing and housing choice voucher waiting list, we've been updating that monthly through the information packet, and we'll continue to update that monthly. Cool.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your hard work on this.

Thank you.

Great.

Do you want to grab a drink of water and go right back to streets?

I can just stay up.

All right. Well, you have the next item. It's the street grants application presentation. If we have approximately 10 minutes before we hit 545, will that give you enough time? Or do you make a good dent at least?

It will make a good dent at least. And I should be able to get through all of my presentation. And if you have any questions, I can stay until after the formal meeting.

That's fantastic.

So my last presentation to you, Nora Cahill, Public Policy Analyst, is on an application for a federal grant that the city sent in in mid-July. I'm going to tell you about the grant opportunity itself, our proposal, and finish off with some next steps. So the STREETS grant stands for Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-Based Support. This is a grant opportunity funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. This is a federal agency under Health and Human Services. They often fund programs on substance abuse and mental health. Streets has a very narrow eligible population of unhoused individuals with serious mental illness, or SMI, substance use disorder, SUD, or co-occurring mental and substance use disorders, or COD. The goals of the grant, as laid out by SAMHSA, are to reduce homelessness and to increase especially long-term engagement in treatment for SMI or SUD for unhoused individuals who are in need of that treatment. It's a large grant. It's $3 million a year for four years, or $12 million total. It was a very quick turnaround for a grant of that size. SAMHSA released the funding opportunity on June 17, and applications were due on July 17. Another core piece of eligibility is that only local governments were eligible to apply. So the city coordinated this grant application, but you'll see in the proposal that this is really a community-wide effort. We coordinated it. The City of Iowa City is the name on the application, but this is a community-wide effort. The mechanisms that are required in streets run across the spectrum from street outreach all the way through housing. So required activities include proactive outreach to unhoused people with SMI, SUD, or COD, immediate treatment or referrals to treatment for SMI or SUD, recovery housing for people in recovery from SMI or SUD, Baked into this entire spectrum is a lot of cross-system collaboration, making sure the service providers are working together, are coordinating their activities, and that people aren't falling through the cracks. Our proposed program has many pieces that work together to hit every part of that spectrum. I'm going to go into each of them in a little bit more detail, but I want to highlight that across this entire stretch of services is a lot of cross system collaboration that I'll talk about after going into detail about these program pieces. The first one is a street outreach and psychiatry team that would operate in Johnson County three days a week and Washington County two days a week. This would provide outreach and housing connections to people experiencing homelessness through a new street outreach specialist. It would provide acute symptom stabilization and referrals to treatment for people with SMI or SUD from healthcare providers that would go out with the team. And would also include peer and social support through a peer support specialist. You'll see me on each of these slides include providers at the bottom. This is because the city will be contracting with, will be giving some awards to service providers who have a lot of experience providing these services. So the Abbey Center and Shelter House both have extensive experience providing these services to unhoused individuals and have agreed to provide these grant funded services. The second piece is a day center and clinic that will be cohoused in the same building. The day center will operate daily and provide basic needs for unhoused people focusing on serious mental illness and substance use disorder. things like a climate-controlled environment, water, restrooms. It would be a great place for service organizations to provide food or clothing that are donated for people who need them. There will also be an additional Johnson County Social Services Navigator funded by the grant. This person will be able to enroll eligible individuals into Social Security, Medicaid, other benefits that they might be eligible for. It'll provide... similar peer support as in the street team. And the day center will also serve as a collaboration hub for service providers. One thing that we see is, for example, there are multiple street outreach teams operating across the city. It's hard for them to coordinate their activities because there's not a clear space for them to do that. This would be shared storage, collaboration space, space for service providers to meet with clients, for example, would be a hub for many service organizations across the city.

Where would this hub be housed?

We don't have a space identified. We have some options. But if we are awarded grant funding, then we'll be pursuing that with great haste.

Okay. Sure. And I assume you've already worked through some of the various complexities of privacy challenges between these different organizations? Yes. Like some of them can't collaborate effectively because of privacy issues? Yes. Is this weave them together or are they just sort of co-locating with their own silos of information?

So part of the cross-system collaboration does include informed consent for data sharing. Okay. So when somebody is enrolled into the program, then they'll have the opportunity to consent separately to participate in the program, to have providers share their information between each other within the streets program. So for example, if a street team member wants to refer somebody to someone at the day center, they could share that information with informed consent from the participant to make that referral a bit easier. And then the final piece that they can consent to is anonymized data collection for evaluation of the program.

Great. Thanks. Nice.

The second piece at the day center is a two-day-per-week integrated behavioral health and primary care clinic operated by University of Iowa Health Care. This is a major service for unhoused individuals with SMI and SUD. They will be providing specialized care treatment both immediately and referrals to longer term treatment, stabilizing people in the moment and also making sure that they have access to the longer term treatment that they may need. Grant funding does not cover the entire cost of operating this clinic. UIHC really graciously agreed to basically stand up this clinic and use grant funding to cover whatever we can. and to work out the rest through Medicaid billing and other funding sources. Other providers for the day center and clinic include Shelter House, who will do a lot of the operations for the day center itself, Johnson County providing that benefits navigator grant funded through the day center, and the Abbey Center providing peer support. Our next piece is long-term outpatient and residential SUD and COD treatment through community and family resources and Thrive Now. CFR already provides outpatient individual and group therapy for people with substance use disorder or co-occurring disorders, including medication-assisted treatment. This would be either located at CFR or the day center according to client needs and space availability. Thrive Now provides residential SUD and COD treatment, and the grant would provide bridge funding for people who are uninsured or people who need their Medicaid reinstated. This would allow them to initiate treatment whenever they're ready without waiting for their insurance to be ready to pay for it. And while they start to get treatment, the benefits navigator could start to enroll them in Medicaid, reinstate their Medicaid, make sure that they have a way to pay for it long term. The final piece of services is recovery housing. This would be a new National Alliance for Recovery Residents certified home that provides a home-like living environment for people in recovery from SUD or COD, provides a lot of social support and case management to help people in long-term recovery. CFR has a lot of experience providing this kind of support to folks and would be the provider in this service as well. Like I mentioned, cross-system collaboration is a really important part of this, both through informed consent for information sharing across program aspects, and also through kind of top-level collaboration. The Johnson County System of Care is a county-wide group of behavioral health providers, housing providers, medical providers, other social services that meet monthly to collaborate kind of high-level activities. It's not case conferencing. They're not sharing anybody's individual information, but they are coordinating their activities and sharing challenges that they may all be facing. This group has agreed to provide oversight on a regular basis and to facilitate collaboration between the program aspects. Another really important piece of this program is having strong referral pathways between both program aspects within streets and also between streets providers and other service providers. So for example, the Abbey Center provides a lot of services that would be outside of streets. They've agreed to make sure that there are easy referral pathways between all of their programming.

How is that different from the coordinator entry?

Coordinated entry focuses on housing specifically. This would be housing, medical, other needs that people may have through this informed consent process.

On your previous slide you discussed recovery housing and I was curious to learn a little bit more about the similarities and differences between permanent supportive housing and recovery housing and if they can co-locate and co-cross refer because I understand some of the goals are slightly different. Has that been figured out yet or is that a if we get the grant we'll figure it out issue?

They are quite similar in many ways, recovery housing and permanent supportive housing. I would say the main differences are for recovery housing, somebody has to already be in recovery from substance use disorder. So they have to already be sober. They have to have initiated treatment and maintain that treatment while they're in that housing. Permanent supportive housing is a housing first intervention. Somebody does not have to already be in treatment or have been sober for a certain amount of time, for example, there aren't those barriers to entry. The streets grant explicitly makes housing first interventions not allowable. So I would be wary of co-locating the recovery housing with permanent supportive housing just to make sure that there's not any issues with proving compliance.

Understood. Thank you. When you say not allowable, you mean just not allowable with this grant, but

Exactly, not allowable with grant funding.

Got it. Yeah.

So I'll finish with next steps before we break and I can answer questions after the formal meeting. SAMHSA anticipates making awards in the fall. Given that this is a federal agency, I am skeptical of their initial date of September 1st. I think that that's quite ambitious, given that that's a month and a half after applications were due. So I will be sitting by my phone waiting for more information from SAMHSA. If we're awarded funding, then we'll begin implementation when the award agreement is finalized. I want to really emphasize that regardless of what these next steps look like, regardless of whether we are awarded funding or not, this was a huge achievement to get this many partners on board. I think this proposal showcases the level of collaboration that we have across Iowa City, across Johnson County. We're providing services in Washington County and are collaborating with partners in that county as well. The level of enthusiasm that our partners had in providing these services was incredibly impressive and encouraging. So I would commend them on their innovation and their excitement to collaborate on this effort.

Thank you so very much. And yeah, take a moment to jot down questions while they're still fresh in your mind. And sorry to make you sort of have to wait. However, knock on wood and all of that, toss the salt. Don't say it. Our agenda.

Don't finish that sentence.

Our agenda. Dot, dot, dot. So with that, is it correct for me to say that we adjourn for now and then we come back?

We will recess.

We will recess. Thank you.

Can I have for just one quick thought? Both Adele and Nora have been fantastic additions to our team. It's hard to believe in Adele's case, she's only been here 10 weeks, brand new to the community. And we would not have made progress on any of those objectives that she laid out had she not been here. The capacity you brought to our organization and the running start you gave us on those five different projects is truly appreciated. And just gives us a lot of momentum going forward. So thank you. And Nora's been here a year, which sounds a lot compared to the 10 weeks, but is not a lot. And you see between the dashboard and this grant, I mean, the lift on this grant alone is massive. And this wasn't the case, whether we're talking the dashboard or the grant application where Nora's getting a lot of help. She's working completely independently. She kept talking about the city doing this. The city was Nora in both of these cases. Make no mistake about it. And I'm just so thankful and appreciative of all the hard work that you've given us in this year, too.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

All right. We are in recess until 6 o'clock. And I believe at this point we are back to questions on the streets grant.

Court session agenda.

And actually, if I can take the opportunity, because I actually have my question right here. It's a broad one, so maybe it's not a bad one for a kickoff. The application and the program as was put together seems really comprehensive and really exciting. Should the city and the collaborators not necessarily get the grant? Do you think that this is something that the parties involved would be interested in pursuing in other opportunities? I mean, so much work, albeit in a short amount of time, but this seems like this really is a model that could be carried forward and should be. Is this something that you've been able to discuss

Yeah, absolutely. And one advantage of this application is that there are all of these discrete parts of the services that we provide. For example, we don't get the streets grant. but there's another grant that comes up for street outreach and psychiatry. We have a plan ready to go that we can apply for funding for that opportunity for. We even, I should have mentioned in my initial presentation, the Community Foundation of Johnson County had an opportunity to apply for funding. That was a very wide range of eligible costs, but a very quick turnaround. So they were looking for something shovel-ready. I talked with them. They wanted to provide... through their funding, should they receive it, funding for a vehicle for that street team. So we even have, if they get their funding, we'll have a vehicle that street teams could use. We will definitely be able to put that money to use. And any one of these services would bring a lot of good to the community and could be its own application on its own.

Thank you. Other questions?

Thoughts?

Can you remind me when we know about this application? September is the like, yeah, right, we're not going to really get the information, but is the initial deadline?

In the notice of funding opportunity, SAMHSA said September 1st for awards. Again, I'm highly skeptical of that date just because they must be getting a lot of applications. It's a long application for them to get through. I think turning that around in a month and a half isn't necessarily realistic. But I am hoping that they'll move this fast, and I will certainly provide any updates if they ask for clarification on our application.

And do we know if we do get the grant how quickly we're expected to initiate the program or start expending on the program?

After the award agreement is signed, we can start implementation pretty much right away. There's in the Notice of Funding Opportunity laid out kind of within, for example, four months of application, you should start X service. So a lot of these have... specific deadlines that we should be meeting for service provision. Some of these are very easy to implement. For example, residential SUD treatment, Thrive Now already provides that. We would be providing bridge funding for people who need it before their insurance will pay for it. Others may have a longer lead up, for example, the day center. For the clinic, we do have a backup plan for before we identify a permanent location. The Johnson County Board of Supervisors agreed to allow us to use the part of the guide link center that is used for winter shelter, but it sits vacant during the summer. So we could open the clinic two days a week between April and October of 2027, operate it just for those six months out of that space and while we're looking for a permanent space.

And what is the local funding expectation with this grant?

There is no local match required. Okay. So there's no direct local outlay. There are a couple of staff positions that would be at the city and at the county. So there may be some supervisory or training costs associated with that, but it's not a direct outlay.

Are you suggesting that there might be additional staff needed just for compliance? It's not a thing that the current staff can do?

We've identified some evaluation that can be done by current staff, but there would be an additional staff member that's grant funded to do kind of overall compliance, look at collaboration between service providers and kind of serve as this neutral kind of central person to manage that collaboration.

Great, thanks. With how quickly this application had to come together and how diverse the different partners are, how realistic is this massive scope of services for $3 million a year for four years? Is that realistic?

We did try to focus on our strengths as a community. For example, we have community and family resources that already provides recovery housing in other communities. They indicated it would be pretty fast for them to start implementing that. We already have street outreach. We have a couple of physicians who are really interested in providing street psychiatry and their supervisors were open to to renting out some of their time through grant funding to start that pretty quickly. The day center and the integrated clinic are certainly ambitious. And I mentioned before that grant funding actually won't cover the entire costs of standing up the clinic. UIHC has agreed to figure out the rest of that funding if we get this grant. So it's ambitious, but everything in our proposal is doable, and all of our partners agreed that they could accomplish these services.

That's incredible. Thank you.

The university poll is just huge. I mean, not just with this, but with everything else, with the dashboard and with You two have just gone beast mode the past summer. It's crazy, so thank you so much. One question I had was when it comes to potential, if we get the grant, amazing. We implement things, and then when the grant funding sunsets, what do we foresee in that situation, or is that a bridge we cross when we come to it?

So this is another advantage of the grant is that it lasts for four years. So that's a pretty good ramp to be looking for permanent funding sources. Sometimes with a one-year grant, you spend the entire time kind of looking for permanent funding sources, trying to prove that it's worth funding longer than one year. This gives us a good amount of time to gather data on program evaluation, make sure that we're implementing it right, make tweaks as we need to, and really prove that it's something that the community needs. from permanent funding sources.

Cool.

Thanks.

Thank you so much. As Oliver said, I mean, not just... This is incredibly cogent. set of presentations, but also the work that you have done in such a short amount of time that has already made such a mark and has the potential to really be a game changer for so many people in the community. So thank you for bringing so many different stakeholders together and being like, we got this, and putting it all together. It's really exciting. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Moving on, I think we are now to Historic Preservation Incentive and Guideline Review. And, ah, there we go. I was just sort of looking to say, who's going to lead us through this charge?

Thanks, Mayor Pro Tem. Kirk Lehman, Assistant City Manager. So I am not necessarily going to lead you through it, but I will definitely frame up your discussion before you start. Obviously, we have the memo in your packet dated August 3rd, so that talks in a lot more detail than I'm about to do. But I just kind of wanted to remind you why this is before you today and then talk a bit more about what kind of direction we're looking for. So this item was added to your work session pending list following the Paglii's landmarking, or excuse me, Paglii's landmarking. At this point, it's been two years roughly in 2024. At that point in time, you know, there's a lot of public discussion about, a lot of discussion amongst council, and it really led to a desire to return to this topic in a bit more detail and talk about our historic preservation program more generally, as well as the possibility of incentives and what we provide and what we could provide. So it's been on there since that time. And in the meantime, staff's been doing a couple things to try and wrap all this together, to take some of the feedback that we heard at that time and move forward, and to explore some changes to the program as a result of that conversation, as well as bring some more information to you. So I'm not going to summarize most of what's in that August 3rd memo. It does talk about our historic preservation program. The only things that I really want to mention right off the bat are just that it's mostly implemented through our zoning code, as you talked about earlier today, where you landmarked the properties, the Foxhead Tavern and adjacent properties. So it's implemented through the zoning code and designated overlay districts. It is something that is triggered anytime there is a exterior material change. So that triggers our historic preservation review process for any property that is within one of those zoning districts. There are a number of different ways that that can occur. Sometimes it's administrative. Sometimes it is done by the Historic Preservation Commission, which is a 12-member board that helps along with staff to administer our historic preservation program. And it really... all the work must comply with that historic preservation handbook that we have. So in general, most of our historic preservation reviews are done administratively. That means that staff reviews them. A smaller subsection goes on to the commission itself to make decisions. But it is all guided by that historic preservation handbook, which can impact what types of practices are allowed, what types of materials are allowed. It can also impact the cost of work as well as the review timelines as part of that. In order to ensure that our codes aren't one of the barriers to historic preservation, we do have flexibility built into both our zoning code and our building code. Those things reduce some of those barriers to complying with our handbook. We also do have some incentives, both built into our code through the Riverfront Crossings District where you can get, for example, additional building height if you preserve a historic building. But we also have a number of programs that help support historic preservation. So we have our Historic Preservation Fund, which is primarily focused on small, typically residential projects in historic districts. We also have rehabilitation programs for housing that can help with compliance and then we occasionally have a tax increment financing that helps support historic preservation goals as well as other tools that we use on an ad hoc basis. Things come up and we try to leverage those tools that we have available to protect those historic assets that are in the public interest. That's kind of that summary. Since 2024, what we've really been focusing on, though, is trying to address some of the concerns that we've heard since that time. So that includes primarily trying to increase the predictability of our process, as well as streamlining the review process that still provides that protection to historic resources. So some things are relatively simple like streamlining or refining our operating procedures, clarifying which projects are available for administrative review as those are determined by the Historic Preservation Commission and then also updating our intake and review processes with really a customer service focus since it's those property owners that are ultimately the ones who are responsible for maintaining the property. uh beyond that there are some larger uh that we've had as we've looked at historic preservation. And a lot of those come from some of our broader code changes that are coming up. So for example, we will be updating our zoning code as soon as the comprehensive plan update is complete. As I mentioned, that's where a lot of our regulations come into play and so that really provides that much broader opportunity to explore design standards in our code as well as our historic preservation code if it is structured. And then also we do regular building code updates which provides us an opportunity to look at some of those triggers for permits that trigger historic review as well. Beyond that, that's really what staff has been focusing on. That's the direction that we've been trying to take things. Beyond that, there is a possibility of broader excuse me, broader changes to the historic preservation handbook, if that's something that council is interested in focusing on, that is a bigger lift. So it's something that does need to be balanced. But if that is a focus, that's one of the places where we'd like council guidance. And then we've also started exploring what incentives might look like if we wanted to explore additional incentives. Right now, the biggest gap that we see in our historic preservation programming is really related to larger commercial buildings. So a lot of our historic districts right now and conservation districts are located in the residential areas surrounding downtown, but we do have things that are on the National Register of Historic Places downtown. but they are not protected by a local zoning ordinance. And again, it's that local zoning overlay that really protects the buildings. So when we're looking at commercial buildings, there's a gap of folks that don't necessarily want to voluntarily designate themselves. And so if we're looking at that, then it really comes down to what incentives would be desirable to get them to voluntarily designate. to voluntarily designate themselves, which would require a substantial amount of funding, most likely. There are new opportunities for funding that have come available, like the local option sales tax. If council determines that that is an appropriate thing that it would like to prioritize, for example, through partnership funding, that could be a possibility, but that's something that council would have to weigh against other priorities that you currently have in place. Another opportunity or possibility, I guess I would say, is tax increment financing. So like I said, our TIF regulations do allow its use for historic preservations, but that's really once a project is identified and you have to identify it in your plan at that time. But one thing we can do is more aggressively advertise that that's an available tool should folks want to voluntarily designate. We saw it be very successful on East College Street on the Ped Mall where we designated a lot of those properties and worked with them to also allow development of the Nest building that's downtown. But making sure that folks are aware that that's an option could be one way that we approach it. And then finally, on a smaller scale, this is something that staff is planning on moving forward with anyway, but looking at our historic preservation fund rules. So those were established several years ago before our recent inflationary spike, and the funding amount hasn't changed for the amount per project. And so looking at that, looking at eligibility, and trying to make sure that we're really focusing on the resources that we want to most protect. So that's something that staff will move forward with. The other two are really items that we'd like some feedback on. So that brings us to today's discussion, which is really a twofold purpose. I've kind of hinted at this throughout, but I'd like to just lay it clearly before I step away and allow you the opportunity to discuss. So first, we want to provide an opportunity for council to share your collective thoughts on our historic preservation program. So that includes things like the level of regulation, the process, since that's often where we get feedback from the public. We'd also like you to talk a bit about the aggressiveness of our designation efforts. Like we've said, a lot of that has been voluntarily designated up to this point. And then also our use of incentives. So looking at things like Do we want to dedicate funding for commercial rehab or try to use tools like TIF or let folks know that those are available? All of those things are things that would help us guide our efforts. Beyond that, we also just want to get general feedback on staff's current direction. So I glossed over it. Like I said, a lot of that's in more detail in the memo. But with the things that we're moving forward with, we believe that that reflects what we've heard from council so far, what we've heard from the public so far. But we'd really love your feedback, especially if there's something different that you would like to see staff focused on at this time. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I will do my best to do it. Jeff and Danielle are here to help me out as well.

happy to answer any questions and and otherwise i'm happy to let you uh discuss in a bit more detail the historic preservation be happy to jump in yeah i'm ready to talk i guess i have a i do have one question um have has staff sort of gone through the process um in the role of being somebody who needs to do some kind of change? Have you gone through the process of what it means to have to get the approval to do X, Y, and Z to a soffit or a window or replace a porch? Have you done it from the perspective of the applicant?

That's the essence of doing good customer service, I think, is to put yourself in that role. I think we have staff now that are very good at that. We've taken that customer service part and distributed it amongst all of our associate planners who do that day after day with other kinds of applications, and they're really fresh eyes on this whole world of historic preservation. So I think that has helped immensely. They all started from a very solid customer service background, and they're new to it, too, so they're kind of very aware that this is probably brand new for the homeowner the first time, maybe the one and only time they ever do something like this.

Yeah. No, I actually, that very term of customer service perked my ears. And it was just, again, from this conference that I went to, there was a group that's a nonprofit that will come in and do this kind of work. And they were talking about it in terms of like actually people, small business owners, like the steps that they would have to go through and talking about how many city staff, like how siloed the process was and, Byzantine. And so I was just thinking of it in that way, but it sounds like you're already on top of it.

Yeah. We always start with the thought that whatever the person is asking you is probably not really what they should be asking you. So it's more of a conversation for them and you to kind of learn each other's language and go from there.

And then you walk them through the steps. Yeah. Thank you.

I'm happy to dive in. I'm the one up here who's clearly the strongest advocate for this. And so I'll try to keep cheerleading to the minimum and dig into the nuts and bolts. But I do think just for framing, I want to explain I like historic preservation because it's good for our economy. It's good for our culture. It's good for the environment. And that's kind of how I think through all three of these three things that are good for us and what we could and should be doing. I also did it professionally for a long time and live in a 130 year old home. So I've restored 130 year old windows and it's a pain in the butt and it's a little bit more expensive. But I'm the person who can tell you that it's actually more energy efficient, even though it's harder. And it takes more time and it takes more money. And so finding that balance in our community of how do we preserve these assets, but also make it not too economically burdensome for people who try to live in them. That's the sort of housing side. And then the commercial side, I think the big question is downtown. I mean, we have amazing historic assets downtown that are unprotected. And it is possible for somebody at this point in time to, if they could assemble a large assemblage of buildings, tear down a large portion of our downtown. And we know that our community would not stand for an entire block of downtown being removed. And so it might behoove us to be a little bit proactive about that. I think that's maybe some of the things Kurt was talking about with how aggressively we wanna be with historic preservation. So I'm not sure which one of these pieces to talk about right now, but the fiscal dimension I think is really important because I think, and the customer service piece and they go together. And I would like for the city to have NOT JUST FINANCIAL TOOLS, BUT ALSO TECHNICAL TOOLS TO HELP PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DO SOMETHING GET TO WHERE THEY WANT TO GO THAT MEETS THEIR NEEDS AND THE CITY'S NEEDS. I THINK A LITTLE TOO OFTEN SOMETIMES PEOPLE COME TO THE CITY WITH, THIS IS WHAT I WANT, AND THEN SOMEBODY HAS TO SAY, NO, YOU CAN'T DO IT THAT WAY, WE HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY. AND THE CONVERSATION IMMEDIATELY STARTS IN CONFLICT, AS OPPOSED TO GETTING INVOLVED EARLIER, MAYBE, AND MOVING TOWARDS SOMETHING THAT THEY that's even better and then having the money to back it up to help them get that done one of the challenges i know we have here in iowa city is lack of skilled trades who can do specialized historic preservation work it's actually really hard to find those people and like i'm constantly hiring them and they're sometimes years and years out so there's a maybe our trades program that we work with the building homes with the schools could be really focused on historic preservation. There's a lot of rehabilitation work in Iowa City, and synchronicities like that, and there's technical expertise that we need, and there are people who do this in the community, maybe bringing them in to sort of help them getting engaged and getting that work done. There's so much in this memo, I don't even know where you guys are most interested in talking about, so maybe I'll shut up and let you guys tell me where you wanna go, but I think that we should do more i think our community wants us to do more and i think that the way we do that economically is we find things that are already our goals and make them also historic preservation goals so affordable housing and historic preservation ought to go together and this climate action and historic preservation ought to go together and our trades program and historic preservation ought to go together i think we should think about all the things we're already doing and thinking how do you put a historic preservation lens on it how do we

train local crafts people to do this to keep the money in our community interesting thoughts i had a couple of um so kind of looking at just building off of that um you know one of the things i appreciate by the way i appreciate all the work that's gone into this um you know since we've had the discussion on palais and we had a couple of other uh historic preservation issues right around that same timeframe too that brought some of these things to light. And so it's really nice to have, really appreciate city staff taking the time to work on this when we're not facing a controversy or a crisis. And so I think that's really good for really wise policy building. So thank you for that. One of the things I particularly appreciate also is when talking about the bottom line of the bottom line and how to make this affordable for people and looking at the various different options, I really appreciate the idea of looking at some flexibility areas. I do not have the same background, so if I make any comments or thoughts that somebody who is more intimately involved with these kinds of processes that seem foolish, please let me know so I can be corrected. In general, one of the things I've heard in this and other communities are things like Windows being particularly tough and having some flexibility on something like that. It can be close, even if it's not exactly historic. To me, I don't know if that's what the ultimate final draft needs to include, but that kind of thinking, I think, is a way to do that. I think flexibility in terms of what kinds of funding help that can be available to people. I mean, the practical reality is we're not in a situation where we're going to be having a lot of extra disposable income. I mean, you mentioned lost, and yeah, maybe, but we are balancing that, as you also mentioned, against some of the other priorities that we have. And so that's always on my mind in a really big way. So things like looking at promotion of TIF, adjusting our grants program so that even though we might not be able to kick up the total amount, but looking and making sure the grants that we are giving are effective at the levels that we're giving them. I know that's basically bigger but fewer grants is what that boils down to. But these grant programs, they refresh every year. So if we can actually get that to move some things forward, I think that's got some things that I think sound good to me. And in addition to sort of the technical tools that you mentioned, I wonder too about, and again, this is out of my depth, so apologies, but if there's other exterior sorts of funding for historic preservation that the city could help facilitate. I don't know if they're state or federal types of programs. I imagine they exist. They do. They're generous. I'm sure they are. We know from all the state and federal grants that we apply for, like the streets grant that we were just talking about. But if our pockets aren't going to let us help in the way that we wish we could, If there's ways we can, you know, either through flexibility, through funding mechanisms like TIF, which aren't, you know, give us a little bit more, maybe some more wiggle room with the financial part, and then also helping people hook up to other sources. If there's ways we can, and maybe there isn't, but maybe there are ways that we can help facilitate. Those are my thoughts, and that's all I had. I'll just stop there.

I'll add to my sort of technical expertise to sort of lay it all out. To do like a historic preservation tax credit program in which if you're a commercial building, you could get 25% of your expenses from the state government returned to you and 20% of your expenses from the federal government returned to you, which is a massive amount of money. I would love to see those state and federal dollars coming to Iowa City. It takes a historian, it takes architects, it takes engineers, it takes a CPA. There's so much compliance involved, but there's also so much money involved. In addition to the actual craftsmen who can do this work, because it takes really skilled carpenters to do historic preservation. and they're in short supply in Iowa City. So there's this whole group of people and that's I think where we as Iowa City sometimes can't quite get over the finish line with historic preservation is putting together that whole team or maybe we have a lot of residential projects and those don't scale appropriately to these complicated tax credit projects or aren't eligible in some situations. But if we as a city could help sort of tip the scale to put together that, Group of technical experts so that we could leverage those state and federal dollars. I think we could Make the people here feel like they're made whole because it's a little bit more expensive sometimes to live in a historic district But also bring in those state and federal dollars here and like I said make jobs interesting

Yeah, I mean, I agree so much with Sean. When I think about this, I think about how the window example, I think, is really good because that direction of easing the burden through taking a look first at what And this isn't my expertise when it comes to best practices or the school of thought around historic preservation and what is considered acceptable for historic preservation versus what is crossing the line in terms of this is not – like if you do this, it's not historic preservation anymore. So I guess I would need more – To make any decisions, I would need more maybe like input from people who are experts in that field or who have opinions in that field, like the Historic Preservation Society and folks like that who would be able to say like, This would save a lot of money for people, but it would also defeat the purpose. So I don't want to cross that line, but I really want to explore. I mean, because I've talked with folks, particularly in the Longfellow neighborhood, who – and I don't know the material off the top of my head because we had this conversation a while ago – They were saying, yeah, a bunch of our neighbors and us and a bunch of our neighbors, part of our wall is coming down on the garage and we can't repair it because we can't afford this niche material that goes into it because of the historical preservation. So having those conversations like, does it need to be this niche material or can it be more, if it's aesthetically the same, some more modern material that's way cheaper and way more accessible to people. I absolutely would love to hear more about these grant opportunities that I don't know much about when it comes from the state and federal government. That would be amazing to have that discussion about the strings attached and would it be worth it with putting load on the staff and the costs that would go into the front end. But yeah, if that tracks for y'all.

And I think that your point about the scalability depending on the project, that sounds like something that makes sense if we were talking about a large downtown building. Maybe not so much for a two-bedroom house.

It's a wall in your house in Longfellow.

Right, right. It doesn't make sense. So I appreciate that because that does make a lot of sense to me, the way you described that.

One of the things that I like is in looking at the staff recommendations is that it's really looking at the gamut of both residential, so like update the historic preservation fund rules, which is currently at project limits of $5,000 to upping it to $10,000, which may help with somebody's wall to an extent. And then also looking at a commercial historic preservation program, which is not scaled all the way to what you're talking about, but it's a move in the direction so that it actually can be engaging with the commercial property owners in what would be historic, you know, with the very places that are most vulnerable to say, we want to start those conversations. And then...

to be able to start talking about, and have you thought about, right?

And to say we recognize this kind of scale of doing whatever. I mean, this is so many steps down the road, but to be able to do things like having a prioritized list to engage the property owners and et cetera, et cetera. You know, it's like one step in front of the other to get to this larger thing. So I'm very much in favor of what we have in front of us with these... proposals from staff in terms of some of the specifics of what staff would like to do financially, as well as TIF, especially since it's underutilized. And as a reminder for the very fact, and I know that Iowa City, we have at the moment, TIF is scary because we have not done well with it, but we actually do not utilize TIF much at all. especially relative if I can't remember if it was Hills that is in fact the one that used TIF was it not I mean there's like a document that we have but I mean in terms of funding and the places that actually have used TIF the most Iowa City is in like the bottom third so to use it in very specific ways for already underfunded and underutilized areas that could be growth and for protection for the buildings that create the very characteristic and flavor and quality of Iowa City. I think this is a really good place for emphasis and potential.

I think just to think about our role in this conversation, I'll be maybe a little more pointed than some of my colleagues. I really appreciate, there's over there. I really appreciate all the thought of bringing together so many different threads and those changes that the memo indicates Staff is going to go ahead and do this. Excellent. I agree with promoting TIF. I agree with updating the historic preservation fund rules. I would stop short of creating a new fund at this time. I appreciate how it's hedged in the memo for the commercial fund. program idea i appreciate that it's hedged depending on lost receipts maybe that would be an option of funding um i think we have a very healthy and balanced approach to historic preservation i think we have had some you know i appreciate what you're saying josh of like there are properties that are um vulnerable right and and that could be a significant risk to the character of different places, particularly downtown. But I think that's where the TIF can come into play as well. So just as far as like where we might like to go in the future, I wanted to be clear that I would not be in favor of shifting other things that we've already talked about allocating to create a new significant fund for

commercial preservation I was zoning in on the let's get a list of people that we can reach out to and be like hey did you know about these opportunities but I would agree right now to think about it to do a fund I'm not in favor of that but it's nice that it's on the table to say maybe someday but at present I just I don't think we're in the position and the place to do that that is not the increase from five to ten no yeah

We're not talking about increasing the overall pool. I think this would be instead of involuntarily landmarking downtown buildings to preserve them, we would give a funding pool to say, for example, like when I worked on the Englert Theater years ago, you may have a new marquee, the city will pay for it, and then now you're going to voluntarily choose your designation, your landmark designation. So we do have a history of doing that. It was just not in a fund. It was kind of a project that happened. But it seemed like a successful way of achieving our needs without having a fight And not at that large of a cost, honestly. I think that was a $300,000, I'll call it a historic preservation, landmarking buy for the city. And we all get to look at that beautiful marquee. So I disagree with you, but I think we should start a fund.

Yeah, that's why I wanted to be really clear. I was hearing you say that.

Because we have done it and it has been successful.

For me, I really think, yeah, like, we need to have some kind of incentive to the people who are going to join this. And also, the mayor in Iowa was also, like, pushing for changing the city requirement. We don't have to be so restricted. Is there some, like, Something like easy that is not going to change the picture of the building itself. We might think about those kind of things. And instead of like the money or anything, just make the life easy a little bit for minor things that is not necessary. If they did it, they would change completely the future of the building.

Yeah, and that's why when it comes to... having the right people at the table in the conversations about what those Sorry, I'm using the term best practices. I hope you know what I mean. The best practices involved with what is and is not historic preservation. I'm sure there's lots of opinions there, but to figure out how much easing the burden we can provide without establishing a fund first. It's Yeah, and again, that's coming from someone who doesn't have the familiarity with the ins and outs, and it could be that the easing that I'm talking about is a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed, but yeah.

I think starting there will make sense to me, and after that we can talk about funding.

I would add two more tools that aren't in the memo, too. The state does allow property tax exemption for substantial rehabilitations. I think it's a 10-year period of time. Something that I don't know that it's ever been done in Iowa City, but Iowa Tax Code allows it. They use it in Dubuque heavily. It does require some amount of city buy-in, so that's maybe more of a city attorney question as towards what the financial cost to the city would be. four, two, seven, one, six. And another one that I think is a real interesting thing that's a new change in Iowa code would be, we think of smiths like the downtown district as being commercial exclusive. Iowa law did change recently to allow residential smiths if they're historic districts, so that would be Neighborhood supported so it would be cost neutral for the city if the people living in a neighborhood would be at all interested in participating in that and they theoretically like the Longfellow neighborhood could pay a you know, a penny per mill or something, and they could have a large fund to keep the neighborhood up. But that would require, I think, city technical expertise to do that. And I'm not really sure where that line is between what the city attorney can do versus in that kind of thing. because we have the downtown district, which has an executive director and they're a private separate organization. I'm not sure how much of that can be done under the city, but. Well, to the extent that it requires any kind of city approval, it would certainly be appropriate for. But that's another tool. Like these are all, like I would love to just throw it on the table.

No, I had no idea about that. That's cool.

Yeah, and it would be one of those things where neighborhoods would have to, just like the Smith, your neighborhood wants it. And so I like that, too, because then it's like the neighborhood is self-supporting itself. And maybe nobody will go for it, but if it's not an opportunity that's presented to people, it's certainly never going to happen. We have whole committees.

you know, the historical preservation committees. I don't know. I don't know what, yeah, like you're saying, I don't know what, uh, it'd be very interesting to navigate that and figure out what, uh, uh, avenue that would have to be, that would have to go through.

I do think financial tools are key though to this.

Hmm. And I think that gets to the other question that Kirk brought up, looking for direction, is how aggressive. And I think the incentive to make it not so much as aggressive in the sense of trying to recruit people to do it willingly. So you mentioned the Englert example, which would be sort of plan A, right? That there's something out there that makes people want to do it. Or we saw it with the Foxhead. We got people that really want to do it, and that's fantastic, right? We saw a different situation with Palaeides a couple of years ago, where there was some disagreement between the property owner and the city and historic preservation needs. And so then when we get into that, then I think that's the other part of, other way to look at aggressiveness. And I don't know that I have a personal, you know, in that case, I think, you know, back then the case was made that this really, and they made a wonderful job of making a case. So I mean, I think, you know, I'm open to that in terms of how proactive is a city looking for, I'm just going to call it plan B, just as something where we want to come in and sort of impose that designation on a property without there being a funding incentive tied to it or them being voluntarily. I mean, I would really want to know what would be the consequences, both the intended and unintended. My understanding is that you can go ahead and designate something, but a landlord has the ability to just not keep it up until it gets so bad then they can say, well, it's falling down i guess we had you know if there's a loophole there i want to make sure we don't accidentally back our way into allowing something we didn't want in the first place so that would be as we evaluate this that would be that would be something i would love more like clarification on make sure that i'm not misunderstanding the the pitfalls And that kind of aggressiveness, the aggressiveness towards coming up with project specific incentives, looking at some of the stuff you had mentioned, TIF funding. I'd be more open to that. The further it is away from trying to come up with a new fund, I think that's, especially until we kind of see what's happening with as we say this every year, but it's been true every year, the property tax thing, we never know how much of the rug they're going to pull out from underneath us. And so I wish I felt more secure in making commitments, and hopefully we'll get to a place where we're more sane. In terms of like creating a second fund, you're absolutely right. That would be fantastic and useful. I may also be, you know, need a little more information and reassurance before I would be willing to jump onto that in any big way. But, you know, like you said, having stuff on the table is good.

Is there, I know we've talked about looking in the direction of, and I think some of you have echoed the looking in the direction of how can we ease the burden in a not just giving money way. I guess, and I've brought it up like four times now, but not being an expert, not wanting to have those people at the table in that discussion, is that something that... staff would, we should have staff facilitate or?

Yeah, I think you need historic preservationists and contractors, absolutely local contractors in that conversation.

Okay.

Yeah. But yeah, people who are trained to do this kind of work. Because, yeah, I mean, I have responses to window comments and responses to material complexes, but that's not my role here. My role is to say, like, let's get a community conversation together with the people who, you know, maybe some outside experts, but really, I think, people who are working with it. We have some great historic preservation carpenters who have, I think, could provide great feedback for how our current systems could be more contractor-friendly, more owner-friendly, and still achieve integrity. That's the goal.

So maybe that is probably the most... actionable kind of feedback as far as like a suggestion for like what would be good that's not within the memo that could be further you know have some conversations with those experts in the field yeah um to to talk about what could be additional kind of um and i think that's the reviewing the historic preservation guideline handbook or whatever but yeah Yeah, and not even necessarily for an overhaul, but where could there be pieces that could be modified and made easier for both the applicant and then also for the contractor. I do want to circle back to the...

the cost neutral way to get what we want is to, again, think about climate action and to think about jobs creation through the lens of historic preservation that preserves our current investments, but sort of says, let's see, can we do an affordable housing project in an historic asset? Can we do, I know we already do climate action in older neighborhoods, but can we really push on the historic neighborhoods? That's also something I think we can, I would like to see.

and just as a side note too I mean that it would end up actually being incredibly educational I think for the entire community because there is a balance as you started off it's like There is the sense of... It is expensive to maintain a 130-year-old house, and yet it's also... There are so many benefits to doing it, and it can be economical in certain ways, but it's not economical in the same way as, like... So there's an educational piece to this, because I think a lot of people will think of historic preservation as it's a lot of people who have a lot of money at their disposal to do this. And so it's nice to have. And so I think that it's important to actually show how the historic preservation actually does fit in. And I like very much what you're talking about, where it's like that historic preservation actually is a part of these other buckets of our community values and our strategic plan, and that this fits into that. It's just, you know, it has to be seen through a lens. So anyway, that's just my two cents on that. But I think that it's, that's an important piece of it, because it's in this particular day and age, people will glom on to affordable housing and they will think of it in a particular way and if it just needs to be tempered by what that means through historical preservation context. Any other thoughts? Additional feedback for Kirk. Do you feel like in the midst of all of this conversation that you have some?

So I just wanted to try and pull things together and make sure that I'm kind of getting the direction that I'm hearing. So what I'm hearing is generally supportive of staff's current direction laid out in the memo. including things like expanding our outreach around TIF funding for those at-risk buildings, but stopping short of exploring a full commercial rehab program of some sort that involves a new funding source, but exploring net neutral funding resources like maybe SMIDS or things like that if there are other options that are available. Beyond that, kind of different than what is in the memo, some form of outreach towards contractors to try and get feedback about additional changes to the handbook. And it sounds like some sort of flexibility in materials or within the handbook is something that the majority of council would support exploring moving forward. Is that an accurate representation of this conversation packaged up?

I guess just to what I was saying to make sure that asking these contractors and historic property owners or the society, historic preservation society, what not only is appropriate but would make the biggest impact in like finding those and yeah.

What are the real pain points that we can address?

I talked about easy the requirement. I don't know if everybody as much as you can, so.

Yeah, and that's part of, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's really important that you had the opportunity to have this discussion and set some really high-level direction. It's probably good to take this feedback, generalize it, and then get Historic Preservation Commission involved and say, hey, this is the general thought of council. You've asked these 12 individuals that are on the commission to really step up and take on this role as a commissioner. I think we need to figure out a way to engage them now and say this is kind of where council's looking at. They're looking at wanting to explore some additional flexibility, work with the staff, bring in some contractors. That doesn't all have to be... done at this level now. And then we'll come back to you at some point. The other thing is just we don't have the staff capacity to go 100 miles per hour on this. It took us a while to come back to you on this with the zoning, with the comprehensive plan, the parking study. All the other things that the planning staff have going on. This is probably going to be a continued kind of slow push unless, you know, you give us that direction. Otherwise, this really needs to be accelerated. Otherwise, we'll keep it moving. But I don't want to have that expectation that this will be coming back to you in a couple of months. It probably won't.

I think slow and steady.

Okay.

Yeah. Is that fair? And thank you so much for, as I think either Sean or Oliver mentioned it, that we didn't have to bring this up again in the midst of another crisis. Just the fact that it was so responsive after a couple of years ago and that there really was so much thought. And these are some really, really workable thoughts. shifts in the way that I think the office is moving. And I think it's great. Okay, two items left, guys. We have a discussion, council discussion, following joint entities item regarding the data centers. And with this, just as a refresher, I think most of us were there at the joint entities meeting on July 20th. I think Iowa City was there, and they provided a little pricey about the fact that it is no secret that data centers are cropping up everywhere, and Iowa is among them. And so they have been approached by multiple stakeholders, many of them, since I think Iowa City's main Greater Iowa City. Thank you. Oh, my God. Yes, and you said that under your breath a couple times, too. Correct me. So Greater Iowa City is primarily, you know, is there to gather in multiple stakeholders, primarily from a business perspective, so that's who they've been hearing from. And they proposed at joint entities to gather essentially a focus group, a work group, to... come together and to think about what parameters the region might agree upon as far as what data centers... should abide by, should look like, what we can and can't do as municipalities and as a region in terms of zoning, in terms of allowing them here or not, etc. The county, as you know, has had a temporary moratorium on it, which expires in November. They are extending it. And so... Greater Iowa City is asking for one to two representatives from each municipality to be on this working group to talk about both if there's a desire, but more likely over the next several years as the technology shifts, what types of parameters the region can adopt. demand, ask for, require, what's legal. And yet the flip to that coin as well is so that all the municipalities, we are all educated about what our region holds in terms of its resources, what current technology for data centers, what it uses, and then also to understand what that means up and downstream for the region. That's sort of the broad context for those who, just as a refresher for the public. And then the ask is for one to two representatives to be on this group. So that is the ask. Since I have the mic at the moment, I will say that I'm interested.

I was also going to say that interested, I know like I think like probably many of us on this, we have deep concerns and deep interest in this topic. For me, this, you know, all of the ways that I share with the rest of my colleagues. Council members. This also has a titch of a professional overlap since I, in my day job, I'm a professor that looks into things like media, internet, teach about those kinds of topics. So it sort of overlaps a little bit as well into my other life, which makes it that much more interesting. and a little bit of expertise I can bring to bear from that background, although this is a rapidly developing and new thing to all of us, relatively speaking. So I, you know, certainly would be very interested. I will not be, like, angry, upset, and throwing a tantrum if we pick two other people, but I would throw my, into consideration, I'd throw my hat in the ring, so to speak. So...

Yeah, I also would. I've been really considering the approach that our city could take. I know it was a recommendation of one to two representatives, but if I'm not mistaken, didn't the county choose a staff person to also be on the board? They did. Yeah. And so, I mean, that kind of... Based on what you're saying, and this isn't supposed to be a dig at greater Iowa City because that's their job, is to look at the economic development aspect of data centers, which can be attractive sometimes in that context. in that sphere. I guess my thought was, since we have such amazing people in our climate action division, would it be... I had the idea of having someone from our climate action division and two of us go so we can have that person right there to have that expertise about what we do in the city and maybe have some numbers right there. Because the concern that maybe I have with the greater Iowa City is who is coming to these meetings and who is setting the agenda, who is driving conversation, who is mediating, facilitating. not that I think anything is malicious is being done. It's just I just want to make sure that aspects are equally grounded. So I guess I was interested in serving on that and also promoting that idea of bringing a staff member along.

I mean, we can certainly ask. I think that You know, I mean, one of the things that I know will be true is they're not going to be asking Iowa City if they want. Data centers aren't going to come to us. They're going to be coming to Swisher. So, I mean, it's entirely possible that, I mean, obviously our climate action staff is amazing and they know more than just what's going on within Iowa City, right? So they would be expert in that way. I think that it's... We can ask. Yeah, we can ask. I think the county, they were pretty vocal themselves and have that sort of a widespread.

I don't want to make a demand of our Climate Action Commission to pick up this task if they didn't have the capacity to it, but it was just an idea I had. Yeah.

I mean, I think that, you know, at risk of, well, not at risk of anything. I think the reality is, is that it's at once educational for this group, but it's also something where it's very realistic to say, what are the things that we legally can and cannot do as a region? Because there are certain things like for us shy of the county being able to have some kind of like airlock moratorium, like can we tell a landowner in a rural part of Johnson County that no, they can't sell their private property to a data center? Right? So the best thing that we can do is try to also anticipate and think about what are the things that we can put in place as well as to say what is the most responsible ways in which we can try to protect our assets and our, you know, that type of thing. So anyway, I'm, again, not trying to... I'm just mindful of sort of saying who are the stakeholders and whatnot. And I think that it matters for the very people who actually are either at once who are proponents of it to be able to... I want to hear what they have to say as well. I don't want to have people who are not involved with data centers not at the table. I don't want to not know what they're thinking. So anyway, I just think it'll be an interesting group. Do we have thoughts on...

I'm not offering myself to do this. I just feel like I would not be able to, but I'm very interested in it. And I will offer my thoughts about the meeting that we had and would look to see who here is interested in sharing these thoughts. And that would be, I was kind of disappointed in that meeting, not in the greater Iowa City, but in the larger group, not starting with really basic foundational questions about like, what is a data center? What are we regulating? I mean, it didn't even come into the conversation that we already have dozens of data centers in Iowa City that are non problematic. And I think the ones we're all envisioning are these hyperscale ones. And we're all envisioning things that suck up lots of water and make lots of noise and like cause electricity issues. But like we didn't even start with the basic conversation about what is the thing that we're scared about and let's name those things. And then I think you already said this, like what's regulatable and what's not and what are the trade offs and like having a conversation about like what it all is. But I I That's what I'm looking for, somebody from here who's just going to start with real basic questions and report back to us about this is what we're defining a data center.

I was thinking about that, too.

Seriously, this sounds like a stupid question, but what are we calling a data center? And by the way, it would be really instructive for us to have for our comprehensive plan process because We do have data centers in our zoning. We have for years because we have data centers here. And sort of becoming smarter about this new thing and what it is we're concerned about. So anyway, that's my piece. I'm looking for somebody who's

Yeah, I think to be clear on that, too, we should probably let people know we're talking about that. We're talking about existing businesses that have a great deal of computer needs. So UIHC needs lots and lots of servers in order to run their EMR, their electronic medical records and those kinds of things. So, you know, that's the kind of stuff we're talking about. And I think the thing with those two, I think we use the analogy of almost to borrow from agriculture, the difference between a family farm and a computer CAFO. you know uh you know to kind of kind of how i've been thinking about it but then where do you actually draw that line so that it's both reasonable and and uh you know usable and uh you know and making that distinction you know so yes i i agree with you i think that's going to be whether i'm that person or somebody else i think i i'm with you that's something that i think is going to be important and to have the whole our entire all the different pieces of our community as a county to be on the same page i think that's that's the exciting the other exciting part about this is to actually have this opportunity to be on the same page before somebody gets picked off you know you know like maybe we've seen in some of our neighboring counties

That vernacular change is super important, like what you're saying, because I think the vast majority of people couldn't – that wasn't a foregone thing in their mind, a data center, until AI data centers, large-scale industrial and – So, yeah, I mean, just getting the basics of what is, what are we talking about, you know, trying to define the thing that everyone has in their head, you know, when they think about this and not accidentally taking away critical, you know, or, you know, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Is that the correct term? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So who are we emailing Nancy Bird? What names are we emailing Nancy Bird?

I mean, again, like, I am not going to throw, you know, a tantrum, or I'm interested, be as interested you are, but I'd be happy to do it, but it's no biggie if not.

I mean, I'd really like, if you're okay with that, I don't, I would really like to be on this, so. Is that, Megan and I, is that okay?

That's fine with me.

Okay. Thank you.

Hell yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

And, you know, I mean, obviously we'll be reps, but, like, if you've got questions, feed them to us.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

But really, as... Councilmore said, we need to know what it is and all the details.

I've been using the internet while sitting here, and I will go home and watch Netflix. Those utilized data centers, let's be real. But also be really mindful about our resources that are limited. I think we're all on the same page there.

Okay. Last item. Council updates on assigned boards, commissions, and committees. Nothing for me.

And already your life was quiet. Mm-hmm.

My life was quiet. It was. Yeah.

Okay. In council, anyways.

All right. With that, I believe we are adjourned.