City Council - Regular Meeting

Seeing no one assigned from the open forum, we'll move on to the consent items.

I move to approve. Second. Aaron Holtz? Aye. Jackson? Aye. Sloan? Aye. Weitrich? Aye. Winkelmann? Aye. Committee Businesses, resolution setting time and place for a public hearing concerning the grant of easements to red line renewables for solar installations.

This is us continuing to work with Red Line on a couple of the installations we had originally talked about. One of them would be the canopy installation on that Alliant property that we had purchased here at the last meeting. So we'll set the public hearing date and we can keep proceeding forward with that. The other one is the service to a lift station up in the 900 block of Wilson. That lift station sits on easement to land that's owned by another property owner. But the city is the landowner directly adjacent to the north. So we're just able to move the installation of the solar a few feet, about 20 feet to the north, and then it all comes on the city property then. So, but when we held our original public hearing on it, that city parcel, we did not hold a public hearing on that. So this is, it moves it from the Eastman area to the city land. But this is just setting the date then to hold the public hearing at the next council meeting.

occupy the city space and don't take up any more of this other landowner? Right, sure. How much more space would it have been?

It needed to move 20 feet to the north to be on our property. As soon as you get on our property, there's some setbacks and that moves it a little further, another 30 feet to the north. Second.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, good afternoon. I'm bringing up for approval a resolution transferring funds and closing fund accounts essentially ending the fiscal year. So if you make your way through it, there's the transfer from to account amount in the description and then budgeted. Most of those should be budgeted until we make it down to the last two, items 29 and 30. The first of these is transfer from water capital improvement to downtown buildings for the Jeffersonian. This is $300,000. And the second of that is again, transfer from water capital improvement to the TIF fund for $500,000 for urban renewal projects. You guys want to take a glance over that?

So just whenever you're transferring funds from one fund to another, the transfer needs to be properly authorized by resolution. Again, all of these are budgeted line items that would have been in the original 25-26 budget, except for those two that Henry had spoken about. That was that internal TIF debt that we did several months ago. So this all has to do with the past fiscal year and we're authorizing then those transfers for year end. Move to approve.

Second. Winklevon? Aye. Jackson? Aye. Stone? Aye. Weitrick? Aye. Aaron Holtz? Aye.

January 4th, Jim. High School East Shared Use Path Project, I think we're still waiting to hear on the graph on that one, so hopefully that is coming soon. The airport fuel farm, as Scott mentioned last time, they did have the final walkthrough and they're working on punch list items, a few small items, nothing major. I think the farm itself is usable and everything like that. The second grant from the FAA did come through. So that is this year's entitlement funds, and that was what was being used with last year's funds to pay for this project. So now that's in place. And then hopefully, if they get all the punch list items taken care of, we'll have a reconciliation change order and payout. for the first meeting in September which will be in all of our retainage and the project will be almost complete. Emergency response plan for the water department, we're doing an in-house final review of that and then we'll send it to the city staff for review and comment. That's not due until December. Tower inspection, as Scott said last time, all the field work was done. We're waiting on results for the coating samples that we took for lead and should be about four to six weeks to see the report. And then on Westwood sidewalk project, we're reviewing contracts, bonds and insurance. And then we'll get that to the city for their review. We're trying to set a pre-count for the week of August 24th, that Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. I did not get a response before the meeting here today, but hopefully we'll get that set here tomorrow. Their tentative plan right now is to start right after Labor Day. Do not have any more detail than that right at this time. So hopefully at the pre-con we'll get scheduled, kind of get a sequence of construction and stuff. And then I intend to send out a construction update to the property owners in the area to let them know where things are at. And then we can also post that to city Facebook page, other social media that they want. And working on some temporary easements, got about half of them done in signs. And so I'll be working on those here in the next week to get those finished up. So that's it.

Okay. Oh. Here's your word, sir. Where was I doing?

Scott, just that I included this in the information memo in this packet about the city council meeting next time to have everybody show up a half an hour early. Let's show up at five o'clock and then we will meet with the fire department downstairs. What they're going to do is give us a demonstration of that piece of equipment that they bought that allows one firefighter to operate the truck from the end of the hose. So just if we can come out early for that, this is posted then as part of the public meeting, public in the media, it would be welcome to attend. Other than that, I'm going to be gone on Thursday, Friday, Monday for a little family getaway and that's it.

I've seen Greg's not here. We'll go on to the departments.

Mark? No report. Chad? No report.

Henry?

They're doing our models right now, so that's the big news. They're really blessed today. I don't think they're coming in, but they still need, you know, still working with them, but they still need, and we'll take you guys at that moment. So, commandments are in, transfers, whether it would work to get in or not, so we need to go.

I was curious, Mark, what kind of turnout did you get for that bicycle thing?

It was very low. Very low numbers.

Oh, low numbers? Yeah. We didn't take into account it was the tax-free school shopping weekend, so that could have had something to do with it, but... We're just prepared to educate on roadside. I think that's going to be our best.

Let's try and set up anything else here before.

Probably still do the radio spot and Facebook pages and stuff. But outside of that, I think roadside education is going to be the best education we can do.

Yeah, it was pretty good. I'll be different. I think Harry, they're going to... maybe deal with the elementary and middle school PE teachers and work on that. Matt.

Well, I was just going to say thanks to the PD and the Jefferson Murdering Club and Hy-Vee for hosting that. Good to have it regardless, but continue the conversation. You got to start somewhere. Also happened to be the 141 garage sales that weekend too, which also tax free. But it was a busy weekend all around. Also, I just want to take this second to encourage anybody from the community, if you've got questions about things we do, you know, I see a lot of confusion and misunderstanding on a lot of the comments here and there, especially online, of course. Very firmly knowledgeable staff at City Hall to call and ask questions and get clarifications on whether it's some of these transfers we do or, you know, with utilities. all that kind of stuff so just encourage people there's there's factual information available and good honest friendly people at city hall that want to help you understand things so just put a plug in for for understanding of things a lot of transparency here and that's that is definitely a goal for all of us and i know the city staff as well so that's all for me jack no report

Luke. Scott, as well as I, and you, Mayor, attended the groundbreaking for the McDonald's. I'm really excited to meet the franchisee members as well as the future management of that building. I'm really excited to see McDonald's make its inaugural visit to Jefferson. I did have a question, Chad. I've been kind of, barrage is a strong word, but I've been asked quite a bit by a few different members of the community about derelict properties or dying trees. Would you be able to fill me in, or fill us in, and I know that you do it, because in driving around, I see you going up to doors and affixing notices. How many notices have gone out in, say, the last month? for either both derelict properties or mowing needs or dead trees. I know you've been busy at it.

I don't know without looking. I keep track of those things on my computer, but I don't. I just have to go back. Earlier on in the mowing season, we get more notices for mowing because I only have to post, you know, one time. So within the last 30 days, I mean probably 10 to where like, you know, first part of the mowing season, you know, in the first 30 days that might be 30, you know, or so. And for properties, you know, I talk to homeowners. I typically send out From month to month, maybe. Some months, four letters. Some months, six letters. Somewhere in that two to six to eight a month, just depends on the time of year and how many complaints we receive.

For future updates, this is really interesting. I'd love to hear about it. how many notices have been sent out so that I mean granted we want to we realize that some of these places are owned by people that are disabled can't get out very often and so I understand there's a balance between enforcement and you know being understanding of the resident but uh but I'm really curious you know how many it's a good issue it sounds like it's way more exciting to you than it is to me Thank you. I can email you those things. Appreciate that. Yeah.

Library board met last night. The Friends of the Library will have their semi-annual used book sale in September. The Library Foundation is moving on with their fundraising drive for a new library. They met with Grove Green County. They have other plans soon and they'll kind of kick off a more concerted effort in a couple of months and the summer reading program The number of pages read by kids went up 87% since last year. A theory is they gave incremental prizes as you went along rather than just an end of the year thing. People want instant gratification, especially me.

I have no report, so we're done.