City Council - workshop

Good afternoon and welcome to the Waterloo City Council work session. Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. Adam clerk roll call Mr Schmidt.

Here here I had to find you, but now I'm here.

Oh OK, perfect thank you. Mr Morrow here. Miss Creighton Smith. Miss Berry. Mr Salamanca here Mr Martin yes and Mr Simon here Mr Simon.

MR. MAYOR, I'D LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION TO PASS THE AGENDA AS PROPOSED AS WELL AS THE IMPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE AUGUST 17, 2026 WORK, COUNCIL WORK SESSION AS PROPOSED.

SECOND. MOTION SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR, SAY AYE. AYE. OPPOSED, SAME SIGN. MOTION CARRIED. FIRST ITEM UP FOR DISCUSSION IS DISCUSSION OF AN ORDINANCE ESTABLISHING THE CITY MANAGER POSITION SUBMITTED BY MYSELF AND COUNCIL MEMBER HECTOR SALAMANCA. Mr. Salamanca, would you like to begin and then I'll finish?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As many folks remembered during the first couple of council meetings, we had conversations. I had a work session on the city manager and what it would take to bring a city manager position to the city of Waterloo. After doing some research the past several months, if you were to look at Iowa code, Iowa code does give councils the authority and the ability to create the council manager position. THROUGH THAT, I WENT AND LOOKED AROUND THROUGH OTHER CITIES TO SEE HOW THAT POSITION WAS CODIFIED AND HOW THAT POSITION WAS CREATED WITH THE HELP OF CITY STAFF AND WITH THE HELP OF THE WEST Des Moines CITY STAFF AS WELL, I WAS ABLE TO FIND THE WEST DES MOINES ORDINANCE WHICH OUR ORDINANCE WILL BE BASED OFF OF THAT. THE REASON FOR THE CITY MANAGER position, as I stated earlier a few months back, is that it provides a professional, efficient, and a nonpolitical position for our city. In addition to that, it will ensure that our transitions are orderly, no more of an elected official, an elected mayor choosing or not choosing whether or not to properly transition their successor. In addition, it brings that structure that's needed to our city. If for everyone that's here in attendance and for those watching on TV, we are currently one of two larger cities within the state of Iowa that does not have a city manager. Unfortunately, we are seeing the effects of that and we've seen the effects of that. Uh, this is something that I'm passionate about and in conversations with folks, I think it's about time that it gets done. It's about time that we push into the twenty first century and we bring forward efficiency, professionalism and transparency to the city with that. Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, sir. And, um. Most of you would remember that when I ran for this position, 1 of my points was, I was going to work to establish the city manager. Now, Waterloo is is in the 10 largest cities with, you know, we have roughly close to 70,000 residents. Yet we are the only 1 of the largest cities in the top 10 of the state without a city manager as Mr Salamanca said. THE ORDINANCE USES THE AUTHORITY ALREADY GRANTED TO US THROUGH IVA CODE SECTION 372.4 TO CREATE A MANAGER POSITION. WHEN YOU THINK OF WATERLOO, THE WAY YOU THINK OF ANY SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS ORGANIZATION, THE CITY COUNCIL SERVES AS THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE CITY, THE GOVERNING BODY BEING ASKED TO ADOPT THIS ORDINANCE. YOU SET POLICIES, YOU APPROVE BUDGET, AND YOU SET THE VISION LIKE ANY OTHER BOARD. Under Iowa code 372.14, the mayor is the chief executive officer of the city that doesn't change under this ordinance. The mayor carries out policy decisions and represents Waterloo as the head of the organization, but Waterloo is missing. We have a chief executive officer, but we're missing a chief operations officer, a full time executive whose sole job is executing the vision of the council and mayor and what the mayor said across every department every day. And that's what the ordinance creates. Right now, departments report to a structure where operations compete for my time alongside executive leadership, community representation, and public engagement. This ordinance separates the roles the way a well-run organization actually would. The city manager is hired. This is important. The city manager will be hired by a majority vote of the council, serves at the will, and can be removed by a majority vote of the council. This is not an independent power center. It's a professional operations executive who answers directly to the elected officials of this city. The manager will be attending every council meeting as required to keep the mayor and council fully advised of all city opera operations, financial and economic development conditions, transparency and oversight aren't reduced. They're actually formalized with accountability while it was already has a talented and capable department has what's missing is leadership that does not change every election cycle. THE SUCCESS OF THIS CITY SHOULD NOT BE BASED ON THE NEXT ELECTION CYCLE. SO, YOU KNOW, WHAT'S MISSING IS THAT LEADERSHIP AND WHOSE SOLE JOB IS COORDINATING THE TALENT ACROSS THE $150 MILLION PLUS ORGANIZATION BUDGET DRIVING EXECUTION OF THE COUNCIL AND MAYOR'S PHYSICIAN. THE CITY MANAGER DOESN'T REPLACE DEPARTMENT HEADS. THE CITY MANAGER LEADS THEM, ALIGNS THEM, AND HOLDS THEM ACCOUNTABLE TO THE STRATEGIC DIRECTION THE COUNCIL AND MAYOR SETS. AND IT ALSO REMOVES POLITICS. Politics should have no role in what we do at our city. We shouldn't be worried about decisions that we make at a city level and how it's going to affect me or somebody else in the next election cycle, whether I'm going to get elected or not. This takes politics out of it. So departments don't operate as silos in this organization, a city manager will be responsible for breaking down those walls, leading cross departmental projects. So they move forward on time on budget and regardless of what elected officials is currently leaving the city, the council and mayor set the vision department heads, bring expertise. The city manager makes sure it all comes together and the team delivers outstanding service to the taxpayers. Now, how are we going to pay for this? Reorganized reorganizing the mayor's office and utilizing funding that's been allocated for a number of years from the previous mayor for a chief of staff position. That money's always been in the budget salary and benefits. And then I've reorganized some, some salary levels and that so we have the money in our budget. That will pay for city managers position salary and benefits so that that's not a problem. If the council adopts this ordinance to create a city manager, I will be bringing a 2nd ordinance. To the council to reduce my salary and reduce it significantly because a large portion of my duties are going to be done by the city manager. Uh, so I have no, no issues doing that and we'll, we're gonna work on on setting that schedule, but it's gonna be reduced dramatically and that will have to come before a council vote and it will come before the next election. My salary can't change before the next election, but the next election cycle, that salary will be set. Uh, at a greatly reduced rate, and that will also fund the city manager position in future. What this means is Waterloo gets a professional city management without increasing taxes, the structural improvement that aligns with salaries and with corresponding levels of responsibilities. Mayors in the past have had no experience running city government when they first came into office, and they became the leader of a complex governmental organization, and the learning curve is steep. The only advantage I had is 41 years of structural experience or structural seniority into this, or 10 year into the city. So that that helped me immensely. But you're running and lead in an organization of over 500 employees and our city on our sides need steady operational leadership focused on fostering working relationships with our elected officials. Waterloo's economic and financial health going forward is critical, and our focus must be zeroed in to what's best for our taxpayers, not worrying about who's going to get elected or if I'm going to get votes in the next election. As the city changes, budget constraints grow, and the cost of doing business increases. Separating elected leadership from day-to-day operational coordination is not optional. We need laser focus in our operations to reevaluate how we do business and to maximize service delivered to our citizens. In closing, this ordinance modernizes how Waterloo runs its government by completing the governance of structure, a council that governs, a mayor that leads the community, and a professional operations executive who executes the vision, funded through smart reallocation, fully accountable to the council, and consistent with how the rest of Iowa's largest cities operate. so keep in mind that if we bring this for the city council we can we can move forward with the city manager's position with the majority vote but we will then come back before the council with job descriptions correct or present job descriptions to the council yeah they'll come after the order if the ordinance passes if the ordinance passes you'll get you'll get we'll be moving forward with job descriptions and uh and the ordinance to to reduce my salary So, uh, I've, I campaigned on this. I think this is in the best interest of the city. It's been the best interest of all the top cities in the city of Waterloo with the exception of us and council bluffs. I'm asking for your support in this if you have questions. Between now, and when this comes up for a vote for the majority of the council. Feel free to contact me at any given time. Come to my office. We can sit down and discuss it. But I truly believe that this is going to move the city forward. It's not going to cost the taxpayers any more money. And it's the correct way to run a city government. Questions? We only have a couple minutes for our next one. Mr. Morrow.

Do you have an estimate of when you plan to bring this in front of council for vote? What are we talking about?

Uh, this would be up for a vote for the 1st reading on September 21st, the next 1. all right Thank you.

And if it would be 3 readings correct correct. So, it'll come back in 2 weeks for its 1st reading. And then, and then if we don't, if it doesn't pass for the 2nd and 3rd reading at that time, it will come back the following week. So you'll have plenty of time to ask questions to do your research. I think if you truly look into the city manager's position and look into what other cities are doing, you'll, I believe you'll be sold on the idea. I truly do. Any other questions?

I'll just comment.

Oh, go ahead.

As you ran, I also ran the fact that I think city manager is a good way for the reasons you've outlined. I think it's a good way to take the city forward, and I agree with you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, so in our state code, we are then able to make this change, should we decide to do that? Yes, we are.

Did you read that, Councilman?

Okay, all right. That's pretty much all I have for right now.

Oh, perfect, yeah. We can do this. There are a couple of ways we can do it. You can have a mayor council form of government where you change Entire form of government and that would come to a vote of all the citizens or we can do it the way we're moving forward with it now Keep in mind that if this passes and we move forward with a city manager It's a majority vote of the council that hires or fires this person there's every department had answers to me currently and With the exception of the city clerk and the city attorney, they answer to you. You know, and you guys are the ones that that that reaffirm them each and every year. Okay. The same thing would be with the city manager. That city manager would answer to the council.

Are there any concerns with making this change in terms of the citizens and things like that? And I don't think we need their approval or have we looked at what the citizens, how they would feel, you know, the voters.

The people that voted for me knew that I was running on something that you wanted on that platform for a city manager. I truly believe that making this city more accountable to the council more the management is more accountable to the council more accountable to a citizens is the direction we should be going anyway. So, any other questions now, but keep in mind, you have plenty of time between the next 2 weeks to stop in or or to call with any questions. Any other questions Mr. Simon.

I think this is a great idea as well. And I think you mentioned council was, and I think of the top. largest cities, I think Council Bluffs and Waterloo struggle with tax rates and other things that I think this would definitely help. I too ran, you know, in a large position a few years back with the idea of a city manager being a good idea. So I am in favor of it and I look forward to answering anybody's questions in the community that they may have about this. My phone number, please feel free to reach out, send me an email. But I look forward to the upcoming couple weeks and discussions, and thank you for bringing this forward.

And thank you for your support, and as Councilman Simon said, of the top 15 cities in the state of Iowa, it's Waterloo and Council Bluffs, they're the two in the top 15 that don't have a city administrator or a city manager, okay? And those are the two highest tax levy rated cities in the state as far as the top 15 largest cities. You got another question, ma'am?

I can see where it does make sense. I was concerned we did cut a lot of positions and things like that. But you did say there is a place where there is money set aside then for this new position.

Mayor Hart had money set aside every year. Salary and benefits.

I wasn't here then, so thank you for explaining that.

It was, and then any shortfalls will be covered by salary adjustments that I've already created, and also me reducing my salary.

That part, yes. I remember you did say that early on, too.

Yes, and it'll be a substantial reduction.

Okay.

All right.

Any other questions? All right. We have here, ma'am, perfect next on the agenda is a discussion on an amendment on the chronic business property ordinance submitted by our city attorney and police chief.

Good afternoon. Chief of police, Marty Peterson legal department. We're just going to ask you guys for a change in the chronic distance ordinance. It's just a little bit of wording change a little back history on the chronic nuisance. It's something where the ordinance allows us to look at certain locations. If we are having a lot of calls for service there and use the legal way of getting them to change how they're operating, whether it be a business or a homeowner. and then also on the flip side of it hold the people who actually own those buildings accountable the change that we're looking to do is to to make it so it's instead of it's just a unit as in like if it's an apartment complex um the the owner could be just the the owner is going to be the entire apartment complex right now the wording just shows a unit So we want to change it to parcel. So it'll be, however, Blackwood County Assessor's Office has it as a parcel. That would be who would be held accountable from our standpoint as well. Does that make sense?

Mr. Peterson, do you have anything to add?

No, I think there's room in this change for the discretion with the department. I think the ordinance provides for entering into agreements with the owners to try to work things out before commencing the charges that are involved with declaring the property as a nuisance. And so I think the Chief and his predecessors Always and will you know exercise discretion and how this is implemented and it's only in my experience here used for the very Very worst properties that we have so it's just gonna allow them to be better how they're doing it.

Thank you we've had issues with some apartment complexes that have come up most recently and we have people that are moving from unit to unit to unit so if we have a complaint we keep coming back to unit 14b or whatever it is i'm just making that up right now and that person moves to another unit that starts all over again and we're having trouble you know evicting people they're having trouble doing all sorts of stuff at some of these apartment complexes and by putting it under the parcel it gives us an avenue to start the conversations on chronic nuisance first Uh, sooner so that we can come up with a plan correct before we, before we implement. Finds and everything else.

Yeah, my policy is I always sit down with the owners or the tenants, whoever's leasing the place. The ones that can make the change sit down with them ahead of time. So this is the issues that we're coming up with go over the calls to service with them. Try to come up with a plan before we actually. send a letter to them and then start enforcing the chronic nuisance ordinance so perfect there's a lot of a lot of things that we do um before we actually try to enforce this code appreciate it council questions mr mayor mr son the the benefits of having it go to the building instead of the individual units is there anything that we need to do in the in the ordinance or in any codes to

If the landlord and the tenant, if it's determined that it's the tenant and the landlord does not have the power to do anything in order to appease our efforts, is there anything that we need to do as a council or as attorney-wise to address that issue?

This does and still will put ultimate responsibility on the owner of the complex. Landlords under the Iowa Landlord-Tenant Act If a tenant is creating public safety, clear and present danger through their use and behavior there, landlords can evict the tenants for creating a hazardous environment. So the landlords have that tool. We have the tool against the owners to declare it a nuisance property and start billing them for the police time that occurs.

So currently, and tell me if I'm wrong, but there are situations where it's hard to evict a tenant. Is that correct? Have you heard situations like that where, I mean, we all see it on the news sometimes, but I don't know if that's locally as well.

Yeah, I can't quote you the exact language, but if a tenant is causing other tenants to be at risk with their safety, that they can be evicted.

And that could be expedited because I think the last conversations I've had, sometimes that takes months, weeks or months.

Not under that code, particular code section.

Very good.

Thank you. There's the eviction court every week, correct? Correct. And there's normally a lot of people that are being evicted, so there's tomorrow. Yes.

Question. Does this impact the timing or whatever? Does it make it to where you can do it quicker or anything like that? Or is it just still current timing?

Well, this will just be every time we get a call for service. They'll send them a bill, basically. Okay. That's how this works.

Okay. So this doesn't take any steps further to actions to actually remove the people. This isn't addressing any of that.

Nope. Okay. Thank you.

but in a chronic nuisance, maybe the plan that they put together requires them to contract private security and have them on site. We're gonna come up with a plan. The chief's very good at working with people and coming up with a plan to try to make it work until it doesn't work anymore. Any other questions? Quickly, yeah, Ms. Berry.

So, Chief, chronic nuisance, or maybe this is for you, Marty, can you give me some examples of chronic nuisances?

yeah um fighting loud music drugs shots fired um pretty much anything three more calls for service within a year will get you in quote in the the area of where we would start looking at it it's usually going to take a lot more than that but um we try to be somewhat lenient when it comes to some of this because they're you know if it's a business we understand that they're there to try to make money but We also, depending on where they're at, have to understand the location and the citizens that live around it as well. If that makes any sense?

Yeah, it does. Thank you.

Anything else, folks? Thank you for your time, and that'll be up next meeting too. Yep. So that'll be on the 21st also to amend that. Next up is a discussion of contractor registration and the ordinance amendment by Jennifer Sparks.

Jennifer sparks, um, writer and residential plans examiner for the building department. Um, the ordinance change that, um, you should have a copy of. You probably remember last month, uh, you received it based on file a letter of their intent to no longer do our contractor registration for us and other communities in the county. So this ordinance change is eliminating the language that directs. contractors to register at Intercog and instead they'll register with us. There's also a change in the type of licensing that I'd like to implement. Waterloo has three different types of residential contractors. I want to narrow that down to two to combine. What's happening is that the roofing contractors who also do siding are having to take our exam that covers a lot more than just siding or windows. So they're having to do a remodel. So I want to condense outside work basically and inside work. We're building new homes. So there's two different licenses. And then adding a license fee for the general contractors that we've never collected. Intercog kept that. So proposing that we add a fee for us to collect for general contractors in addition to the residential contractors.

Council any questions on this inner cog stop doing it. So we're going to start doing it. So, you see, this is that was very easy. You should come up all the time and there's no questions. We just keep moving.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time. Next up we have a review of the new parking operations with, uh. Municipal services, regional manager and. It was submitted by our finance director, Bridget Wood, and we'll let you take it off and have them come in.

Good evening. Bridget Wood, finance director. So tonight I've got Michael Bandy and Ryan back from PCI Municipal Parking Services here to give us a presentation and kind of go over what they learned in the first two months of being our parking operator. Oh, I did go.

Good evening. My name is Mike Bandy. I'm with PCI Municipal Services. I'm a regional manager. I'm based out of Omaha, Nebraska.

I'm Ryan Bach. I'm district manager for PCI Municipal Services. I'm based out of Cedar Rapids.

So, we took over July 1st, and we, there was a lot of. We came across a lot of interesting items within the operation. We've only been here. This is day 70. we're just talking about it, but within that 1st, 30 days, there was a number of unusual things that we came across and water lose parking system that we haven't seen anywhere else. And I don't think there's anything that's different anything that would merit these differences. So I. A lot of what we're gonna see, embrace yourselves, I think there's 10 slides, so. Drink some coffee, fill up your coffee if you got any. But we have some recommendations that we wanna make off the bat, and we're probably gonna have a number of recommendations over the next six to 12 months as well. We thought it was important to sort of outline how long a paid parking program was in Waterloo. City Council adopted the ordinance back in 1947 for a paid parking program. The purpose of that was to, the monetization of the curb space was for the purpose of limiting the time in the curb space and to promote turnover so that merchants would have the spaces in front of their businesses. and i'm missing a lot of years in the middle here but you fast forward to the fishback study in 2023 this mind you we were not here yet we just got here a couple months ago but uh the fishback study had a number of uh recommendations that uh that they wanted to make and there was a compromise that was made or lobbied i would say probably by it sounds like some from what i'm hearing merchants or the main street association where they push for a first hour free That was the number 1 thing I think that we came across that was unusual. Waterloo, I did a little bit of research on this Ryan and I were going through trying to figure out is there is there any other city out there that has. A paid parking program with off street and on street parking. That gives that 1st, hour free away on the street and that doesn't exist that we could find there was 1 exception in Texas with a new new parking new new brunfels and that 1, they don't have an off street program while we do. So, I wanted to throw that out there that. While we do have that first hour free, it's also not being done properly if we truly didn't want to do that. So the first hour free actually doesn't start. Until we have staff that goes over there and digitally chalks. The the space, so I don't have people that are going to be on every block watching people park and saying, okay, your hour starts now that would need to be initiated by the by the customer if we truly wanted to do that. Um. We want to be able to also utilize the on and off street together and push. Parkers that are on street long term into our off street surface lots parking garages. We got a lot of evaluation to do on this still, but that is going to be the end goal. We want to be able to use the curb space smartly and originally as designed back many, many years ago. The other thing about that is, I don't have this in here, but after the 1st, our free was initiated a few years ago. I've heard numbers of $200,000, about half of your revenue has gone down. So the taxpayer is subsidizing all that loss of revenue there. which leads into our first recommendation, which, as I've been talking about, has been to remove the first hour free. We wanna be able to sort of get in line with what we see a lot of other Midwestern municipalities do in terms of managing their on-street. So eliminate the manually tagged first hour free and promote the first hour free in off-street facilities. I told you this is not going to get any more exciting. So bear with me a little bit here. The other thing that was there was a little unusual. I'll say this is not the only city in the country. That that's doing this, but it's a very rare that we don't see time limits on the streets. I didn't do a lot of research on this either, but it sounds like there was a lot of there was a time limits at 1 point and at some point they were discontinued. The purpose of that was, we wanted to be able to promote turnover in the core downtown areas in front of the merchants and businesses and retailers. The purpose of of Waterloo and all municipalities is to densify that downtown area and grow your tax base. And in order to properly do that, we need to have parking act as a support service. So we want to be able to have the most convenient spaces turn over quicker, and the lesser needed spaces that don't need a lot of turnover, that would be the areas that you wouldn't have any time limits. Another thing that we noticed, and this is sort of a new thing, especially after COVID, it's been pushed a lot of frictionless, gateless technology. The commercial street ramp where we do have a paid parking program with the 1st hour free. It has access control. It's got gates. It's got a cash box. It's not a very overly used garage. It's not very busy and the equipment is expensive to maintain. On top of that, we're taking cash, which of all the daily parkers there, roughly 10% are paying with cash. So we don't have a lot of people that are paying us cash at this garage. And we're gonna have to maintain the gate boxes, the equipment, and the software, and it's not cheap. So one of the things that we were recommending, because we're doing this in all of our municipalities, is promoting gateless technology. We're technology agnostic, so we can do any type of gateless program, but it is cheaper, it's easier to maintain, and part of it would be to phase out the cash that we are currently accepting in the garage. And I know that's probably going to be a hot topic for for some. Parties, but I just wanted to emphasize that we have a small, smaller and smaller portion of the population that is paying with cash. As I was saying, ninety percent of everybody that is in the garage is using a credit card. These are some of the metrics that we're just tracking for our own benefits. So we understand what's going on in the garage. The average person pays four dollars and thirty five cents that we have a number of grace period transactions. This was for the month of August. And on the other side, though, on the on street operation. 85% of all of our payments that are coming in are mobile payments. So 15% of all revenue coming in for people parking on the street, people are actually interacting with the kiosk. So we're not making any recommendations in terms of removing them. I just wanted to outline that that is a, it's sort of an industry average. We're seeing less, that number I would expect over the next year or two, it would consistently go down. The other thing I wanted to point out is right now we're averaging about $1,000, $1,100 in the free parking for the commercial street ramp for the first free hour. So that first free hour that we're sort of, I wouldn't say giving away, but we're allowing parkers to come in there for short term, they park for that first hour for free, and in the course of a month it adds up to about $1,100. Sort of another reason why we're thinking we don't need to give any more revenue away on street. We're really trying, it's not really, There's no need to give away the revenue, but I think we just need to make sure that we're putting our policies in place where we're getting people to park where we want them to park, and to do it using the best practices that the parking industry has. And I know we're far away from this, but what we like to do is when the operation does become a little more mature, we gravitate to getting away from the tax dollar. Getting off of the general fund, establishing a parking fund. And having all of the revenues cover the cost of running the operation, labor repairs, equipment, all that stuff. Another one, which we'll have to have a lot more conversations, I think, on this piece as well, The citations for enforcement out here, like I said, when somebody parks, they don't have to do anything until we digitally chalk them. But even so, when that does happen and they choose not to pay, there's a first citation that's a warning, I guess you could call it, and it's a free ticket. The second one would be 15, and if you get two in a day, it goes from 15 to 30. We don't want to have policies that. Help the violin we want people to pay. We don't want to issue tickets. We don't need to make any revenues off of. We don't need that as a revenue stream for the citations. We want people to come down, pay for their parking, not get a ticket. It would make everybody's lives a lot easier. But in this case. We're sort of incentivizing somebody to say, hey, you get 1 free a year. So go ahead and not pay your ticket. No, go ahead and not pay a chaos today. Um also fifteen dollars is sort of on the lower end too uh we have found that in other cities when we've raised it to twenty five or even fifty people take a little more seriously and uh they will tend to make that decision to go ahead and pay the kiosk. Um that is something that we're going to have to iron out a little bit, but I just wanted to make everybody aware that that is one of the things that we're looking at. Uh, but the summary summarize everything here. This is a quick. Bullet point of what we talked about, eliminate the 1st hour free is probably the number 1 thing on our list right now. For the on street operation, we do want to evaluate suggest time limits. Come up with a map of what we think that would look like. Go gate list in the commercial street ramp and other lots as the data comes in. Establish its own our own parking fund and try to gravitate away from the from the general fund and Then of course evaluate the warning citation fee structure. There's a lot of things to go over it's been a Interesting a couple months to say the least but it's been all good so we've been learning a lot about the the city and We're hoping to meet some of them the merchants and introduce ourselves and see what we can do to make everybody work together on this so I hope I didn't bore you guys too much. That's the end of the deck. If there's any questions, we're happy to field those right now.

Can you explain why you have to digitally enter, digitally chalk these cars? Because the scanning system, I think, works okay when you have angled parking. But most of our streets are parallel parking. I don't know how that scanner even works.

Sure, yeah. We have two ways to do this. So we have cameras on a vehicle where it can go through and digitally chalk that way. We can also have somebody on foot and use their handheld and take a picture of the license plate. And basically we're saying, okay, But they go up to it and that says, okay, this car is the 1st time I'm reading the plate today. It's going to market, let's say, at 9 o'clock in the morning. And now they're going to have to go back again. 1 hour later, if it's still there and not paid, that's when the citation would happen. But to answer your question about parallel and angled, there are some settings within the technology that they work surprisingly well. On the parallel, I think the slower you go, the better they work, but it's not a flawless technology, I'll say that.

Yeah, I didn't think so with cars parked almost bumper to bumper, how you pick up a license plate. Yeah, yeah. And it's, I mean, it's labor intensive to walk every block and digitally chalk every vehicle that's on there to start their hour-free parking.

You're right and and if we were and i'm not promoting this, but if we were to do this free hour, if I was here a couple of years ago, if we had to do the free hour of parking for, it would have to be initiated by the customer. So when our staff would go up to it, we can clearly see if they have initiated it or they're in violation. That would be the easiest way to go about doing this. We would have to add a lot of payroll to sort of.

do it the way that it's been designed right now thank you council questions mr mary thank you mr mayor um do you guys have an opportunity for monthly parking you do have that we have monthly parking in the garages okay and so you will maintain that yeah that's what you're saying okay are you going to be hiring more staff people or to do the walking around you know i don't know you call them parking

Yeah, we are ambassadors or enforcement officers is different in each city. It depends on how our client wants our clients want to label them. Um, but depending on how it goes, and depending on the nature of the operation, we have, we're fully staffed. With what we thought we could run the operation for Waterloo for Waterloo right now, like, as we're talking today. But realistically, we're not capturing all of those people that are parking on the street at all. If we have one guy out there that's digitally talking, that would be their full-time job going around doing that. And there's no meaningful way to make sure we capture every vehicle that parks in every street in downtown Waterloo with one person.

And if you could just repeat the part about you trying to eliminate the use of cash eventually. Did you say that? In the commercial street ramp, yes. Okay, just in that ramp?

Just in the off-street facilities, yeah. And it's something that we've, you know, politically, it's usually more of a hot-button discussion point because there's sort of a smaller group that would make a lot of noise over it. But overall, it... It does make the garage run a lot smoother. It's easier operationally, and the reporting and the accounting on the back end is much easier to work with too. We try to eliminate cash from a lot of our operations.

And I know that that's the future, you know, no cash kind of a thing, but I do know in our city, there's still quite a few people who use cash.

Yeah, yeah, no, and I get that. We have the same, we have some, I guess you could say outliers in a few of our cities where we do go cashless, but we make some exceptions for the one or 2% that come in. So as we get closer, we can come up with some sort of a solution that hopefully we compromise on everybody's side.

And currently, the on street kiosks do accept cash. Oh, it does. No plans to make any changes with those.

I just happen to be one who uses cards, but I know quite a few people who still cash, cash, cash.

Yeah, one of the things, the reason I wanted to bring that up as well is because our first week here, we did go around and meet some of the merchants that that were available to talk with us. And some of them were really against the mobile pay. But as we were digging into it, it looked like it's a very small percentage of the people that are even engaging with the kiosk on the street. So that's why we thought it'd be good metric to show everybody here what we're talking about.

Thank you.

And if you get rid of cash pay at the commercial and fifth ramp,

And we can look at getting rid of the high maintenance gates and all the equipment that we use. And then you're gonna, your license, you're gonna use your app, your license is gonna be scanned when you come in, scanned when you go out. And then you're charged appropriately.

Yeah, exactly. And we have this system, like I said, I'm based in Omaha, Nebraska. We have that technology there. We're using it in Cedar Rapids. And I think 90% of all of our cities are currently like that right now. Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir.

So do you know the percentage of people that are unable to pay with a phone that are using the cash? Is that apples to apples? Is that the same number? Like when we had this discussion going back a couple years ago when it was put into place, my concern was there were some people in the community, elderly to some degree, that do not have a smartphone. And I was worried that they were not going to be able to access the kiosk.

Sure, yeah, so I anecdotally, I got some figures from other cities, but what I showed you here was 15% of the people are engaging with the kiosk with. Uh, with either cash or card and then 85% are using mobile now of that 85% that are choosing to use, uh. Uh, the kiosk. Your question sounds like who truly doesn't have a smartphone to do that. It's. 2%, I think in some of our other cities, when we had this conversation where there was a survey, if I can remember what city it was off the top of my head. But we have a solution to that as well. So if you don't have a smartphone, there are companies out there. I think we even use some here in Waterloo that have a pay by phone option where you can actually call. The 7 digit number and and pay it that way as well, or send a text even.

Yeah. Okay. So, I think I think in informing those people that. You know, there's what kind of marketing that would be to to inform those individuals that that's available and then to piggyback on that, going back to the ramp and going cash free there. Um. Is there a way that they can build like, uh, like, prepay or with cash go to your office and in a, you know, and have prepayment so. They can still use cash because I'm a big cash person myself. I know I might be old school, but it says right on here. This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. So, as soon as they start taking this away from us, we're all in trouble. So, I don't think we should get away with this or away from this. So, I want that ability for somebody to be able to pay cash.

We'd certainly want to provide an option for them in Cedar Rapids. We have the license plate reading cameras that. Our notice, but we also do have a kiosk or two in every facility just for those are those type of people, so they can certainly type in their license plate however many hours and then pay with the cash cash option. And one of the things that we may do a study on is is the utilization of these kiosks that we have out there some. THAT ARE REALLY UNDERUTILIZED COMPARED TO OTHERS, MAYBE WE COULD RELOCATE THOSE AS OPPOSED TO HAVING TO BUY NEW EQUIPMENT AND STICK THEM IN THE COMMERCIAL STREET GARAGE.

THAT WOULD BE NICE ON THE EXITS FROM THE COMMERCIAL STREET GARAGE, ONE GOING TO THE CONVENTION CENTER OR THE HOTEL AND THE OTHER EXIT, JUST DROP A KIOSK BY THAT EXIT THAT THEY CAN PUT THAT INFORMATION IN.

THANK YOU.

AND WE DO HAVE UNDERUTILIZED KIOSKS, TRUST ME. SURE. MR. MARROW.

prior to you guys taking over I was having a lot of discussions with a few of the downtown businesses that were trying to find ways they felt that the parking situation in front of their business could be helped I guess what I'm really asking is is that looks to me like you guys have got several ideas of things to change to help are you planning to meet with these guys Are these businesses, or can we bring them together and talk to see if we can find a way to help them or at least alleviate some of their concerns?

Yeah, absolutely. Communication is a big piece on all of this. And when there's a large change that's being proposed in parking, that's usually the first thing we try to do. We try to get any of the downtown people, retailers, everybody together so we can go over it. And usually there's a lot of pushback, usually. However, in 100% of all of our experiences, every policy implementation that we would make has always been for the better of the retailer. So after a while, they start saying, oh, this actually does work.

I agree with you. Communication is a big part of it. And that's why I was saying if we could have some dialogue with them, I think, and help understand their concerns a little bit and see if we can alleviate them.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

Mr. Salamanca. Just real quick for that communication piece, transitioning from a free hour to no free hour, who will own that? Is that something that you guys will own and you'll develop the, I'm assuming the flyers, the language, et cetera, and then disperse it? Or is that something that the city is going to have to take charge of and do it ourselves?

It varies city by city. We can do it. However, it's asked of us. We can certainly provide all the information. If there's a social media person here with the city, we can work with them or provide it to somebody to have it approved and then we can push it out. We find it's very helpful to have it pushed on. We put on our platforms, but you have more visibility through your Facebook pages and other social media accounts that you might have as well. But yes, we would be able to do. any which way, we're pretty flexible.

Okay, and then it sounds like this is really rooted in efficiency, the decision to go from free parking to no parking. With that being said, is there, have you reviewed the previous study and seen what was recommended? I haven't so I don't know, but what was the recommendation in the previous study conducted?

There was a number of different recommendations, everything from the first free citation to the first hour free that was being discussed when they met with the retailers. They did not recommend doing the first hour free.

And sounds like best practice is no free hour. Move folks to... Waterloo's the only one doing it right now.

We still want to provide the free hour, but just have it be in one of the parking garages.

In one of the parking rooms, okay.

Got it, got it. And possibly expand it. I know we do have some other off-street lots and garages. We still need to pull some data on that, but we would like to keep that first hour free and expand, as Ryan was saying.

Okay, awesome. Thank you.

This was beat to death over and over and over and postponed and postponed and postponed and every and then every time we postponed it, it came up with a different plan. And it was, it was a struggle at best.

I have 1 more question.

on the Situations that you've measured right now with a free hour and probably mostly in the garages Do you find that those are people that come in for an hour and left are these people that are parking say all day?

But they just took advantage of the first free hour of their day parking Currently they're really not able to get out Without paying if they're in there for more than an hour

Well, I understand that, but I'm just saying, is it people that are trying to basically do something an hour and leave, or are they basically parking eight and paying seven?

What's the, I don't think we have the data.

Okay, that's fine. I was just curious if it was, because that leads into some of the discussions I was having with some of the businesses, because there were people trying to get things done in an hour, and they couldn't get it done. I was trying to get a feel for that.

Yeah, and typically how this is usually structured when we do have cities that do a first hour free in the garage, let's just say for talking purposes, it's $1 an hour. When a city elects to do that first hour free, that second hour is the $2. It doesn't start fresh on the second hour with $1. So you try to recover that first hour free on the second rate band.

I understand your logic. I just was trying to see if people were trying to get in and out and avoid parking at all, or if it was just part of their total bill.

To be honest, we haven't noticed anybody trying to abuse the system or take advantage of it too much like that, but we're still evaluating a lot of that. There's a lot of data to look through.

All right, thank you.

And if you're parking on the street expecting your free hour, and you know that your free hour doesn't start until that guy digitally captures your license. Sometimes it's two and a half hours. Sometimes we are losing revenue. And if an hour of free parking just outside of our ramps is costing us $200,000 to $300,000 a year, That's money that could be used to to be self sufficient. So they don't have government funding and taxpayer dollars to do it. And also to help with the upkeep of our ramps, because we know the condition of our ramps. Mr. Smith, you have a question.

yeah i was just thinking i really enjoy i know cedar falls has the three-hour parking in front of some of their businesses so that i really enjoy that when i'm there for an hour or so um are you working with them as well i know that they have some parking uh concerns as well are you working with cedar falls our neighboring city sister city or

Uh, cedar falls we have, I don't have any correspondence with cedar falls. Uh, we work obviously with cedar rapids closely. So we, we, we try to take some of the best practices from the surrounding areas and try to apply it to the neighboring communities. Um, but we have talked about different types of ideas in terms of, like, maybe a shopper zone. Maybe it's the bottom floor is 3 hours only. 1st, hour free only though we've we've. We've had a bunch of different conversations on it.

We haven't landed on the best recommendation for that yet, but they're the all that's conversations on the table still Any opportunity for say free parking at night or any of that Do you guys do that?

It's just free anyway and weekends, too. I Yes, our current current enforcement hours are Monday through Friday 9am to 5pm outside of those hours, you can park wherever you want Saturdays and Sundays yeah.

Pretty good, thank you.

And then you still get. You still get merchants complaining on the weekends when there's something at the convention center, because they don't have any place for their people to park because everyone's parking for free. Or you get people that stay in the hotel that don't want to pay for parking park on the street on the weekends because they don't have to pay for parking. So, we're, we're dropping a lot of revenue each and every year. Trust me. Any other questions for these gentlemen 1st of all, I want to thank you for your presentation and for what you've done. Since you took took over, uh, over from Republic, everything you're doing is is is, uh, it's been great for our city and appreciate all your ideas and information and we'll have to work on these ideas and bring them back. maybe gradually, certain ideas and integrate them into our system, but thank you again. Thanks for all you do, thanks for coming up all the way from Omaha. Mr. Simon.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion we adjourn.

Motion to second, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Same sign, motion carried, we are adjourned. Finance starts at 5.10.