City Council - Regular Meeting

It's 530. I call this meeting to order. We'll start. Please rise for those that want to pray for the invocation. And after that, we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for this city and for these city council members. Thank you for the gifts, talents, and the wisdom of each of these men and women and what they are giving to this city. I pray that each of them considers your will as they make decisions for this city and for all the citizens they represent. May the greater good of the whole overshadow personal preferences, politics, and perspective. May each member walk in grace and compassion. May this meeting be a place of respect and upholding dignity for one another, and may that flow into the streets of Ottumwa. I pray that we as citizens of Ottumwa decide to live up to the name of the City of Bridges. When many things are trying to divide us, may we remember that bridges bring sides together. Show us how to walk together in this community. And my prayer, Lord, is that you are the common ground that makes us a community. For those who don't yet know you, I pray they come to know you, your heart and your love. For those who do, may they walk in wisdom and grace to always put you first in all that is said and done. that we present ourselves as the hope for the world, not the judge and jury. May the church return to a place of refuge and strength, help for the hurting and hope for the lost. Help us to uphold your word and walk in your spirit so that others will see you in our lives and come to know your grace. I pray tonight that every person in Nantumwa feels that hope is restored as this council walks in wisdom. This is the time and place for greater things to begin to happen in Ottumwa. May each of us decide to take part in the greater things. We truly ask for your blessings for the best for this city and for this community. In Jesus' name alone we pray. Amen.

You may be seated.

And Chris, if you would take the roll, please. Council Member Reed.

Here.

Council Member Galloway. Here. Council Member Hoffman.

Here.

Council Member Dupre. Here. Council Member Kavanagh. Here. Mayor Foote.

Here. At this moment, I think that I have a motion that is going to be made.

Your Honor, I'd like to remove item five from the consent agenda before we approve it.

There's been a motion to remove or omit item five from consent agenda part one. Is there a second?

Second.

Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid?

Yes.

Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman? Yes. Council Member Dupre? Yes. Council Member Kavanagh?

Yes. Okay, with that removed, we will move into consent agenda part one. Do I have a motion to approve? You do. Second.

Second.

Any discussion? Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid?

Yes.

Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman?

Yes.

Council Member Dupre? Yes. Council Member Kavanagh?

Yes. Moving on to Consent Agenda Part 2, do I have a motion to approve?

So moved. Second.

Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid?

No.

Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman? No. Council Member Dupre?

Yes.

Council Member Kavanagh?

Yes. That I'd entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid?

Yes.

Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman? Yes. Council Member Dupre? Yes. Council Member Kavanagh?

Yes. And with that, I will turn it over to Administrator Rath for his report.

Okay. Thank you, Honorable Mayor. Travis, what should we have in the queue first, mine or Laura's? Okay. All right. Then I think if Laura Carroll is ready, I'll have her come up first to do an update from Meet Ottumwa.

Good evening, Council, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Rath. I thank you for the opportunity to stand before you tonight and tell you some good financial news. Are you ready for it? My name is Laura Carroll. I am the Executive Director of Meet Ottumwa, the Greater Ottumwa Convention and Visitors Bureau. We are the 501c6 entity that does all of the marketing and promotion and economic development outside of Wapello County. I'm going to walk you through some of what we do tonight. You have a packet in front of you of numbers and all the fun stuff that we'll get to in just a minute. But first, a little bit about us. We did just wrap up our financial year for fiscal year 26. It was a phenomenal year. I'm going to save that for the last page because my portion of it going up means your portion of it went up. So lots of good things to report. The number one goal of Mita Tamwa is to bring in outside visitors, anybody who resides outside of Wapello County specifically, and most importantly, outside of the state. We are looking for people who are going to stay overnight in our community. We focus mainly on outside of the state of Iowa. We're looking at regions like Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, and Minneapolis. Those are our big draw areas. Those are also, if you look at our arrival list data, where the most visitors are coming from to stay overnight in Ottumwa. We are attracting visitors to Wapello County, strengthening our local economy, enhancing the community's overall appeal outside of the borders of Wapello County. That's where we're looking specifically. We do that in three different ways that we're gonna go through. Travis has a presentation of what you have that he can put up on the screen. We balance leisure tourism, which is the people who are just coming through for a quick visit. Our meetings and group travel. which is large groups all at once, and strong local business support. We are hyper-local in our office. Everything is look local first.

You have a clicker right there, Laura.

It's right here.

I have the power.

You gotta point it to Travis.

It bounced off of something. So one of our favorite parts of what we do is interacting with leisure travelers. These are the people who are coming in for a day, an hour, a week. We don't know until they get here. These are the people who we are sending visitor guides to. These are the people receiving our email blasts. They see us on social media. They are receiving things from our partnership with the Travel Iowa program. We have a co-op with them. We spend thousands of dollars every year to use their mailing lists, their email blasts, their social media, their print guides. Our Minatomo website is... The first and best place that we send people, it has direct links to all of our local organizations, businesses, their Facebook pages, their websites. We're just the go-between. The Mitatumwa Visitor Center has now been open for almost two years at 115 East Main Street. We are seeing rapid growth of our foot traffic since we have been down there. We have people who are specifically coming off of the highway to see the Radar O'Reilly Interactive Exhibit. They find us on On Google, they've looked us up and found out that there actually is something to go see now. So they're able to come into the visitor center and interact with Radar and his desk. They can look at all the Atumwa quotes from the TV show. They can have their picture taken with him because he's sitting at his desk being productive. But he will not smile, no matter how much you try to convince him. We also have partnerships with all of our local attractions. The visitor center is also a mini museum. We have snapshots in exhibit form of what's happening in those museums, in those organizations. So they get a quick taste and then they can go visit those places. The museums and organizations get to bring in whatever they want to show off. Whatever they have new, they get to bring in something new. And then we give them their material and their business cards. And then they go out into the community and explore. That has been huge for us because we're able to interact with those museums and organizations on a regular basis. So we get to get updated information directly from the horse's mouth. So we know what's happening there and what they're going to see when they get there. So we're able to share that. We also do lots of promotional items, work with lots of organizations for giveaways, for you need something for a gift basket, we'd love to do that too. All those things then get passed along to the leisure travelers who are coming through. If you look at our arrival list data and our star data, which is hotel occupancy, We have about 56% of the visitors who are in town for two hours or more, we get their cell phone data. So we know where they're coming from, how long they stay. 56% of last year's fiscal year visitors We're staying for at least one night, which is up slightly from the year. So we know not just Meeta Tamwa, but our hospitality organizations are doing something right because people are coming back and they're staying for more than, and that's huge for us. The rest are day trippers and we love them too. So I'm, be my favorite part. I think all of it's my favorite. But one of the things that we have been tasked with at Meet a Tumwa is bringing in multi-day, large group events. This is the core of what we do. We are of RFP responses for any organization or event that is looking to host their event in a Tumwa and Wapello County. So when we receive those, we meet with whatever venues we match up with that particular event, whether it's Bridgeview or Legacy Fields or the Sports Center. We have a whole list on our website of available venues for all of these groups that want to come in. We match them up, we have the initial conversation, and then we pass it off to the venue and they get to take it from there. We also have lots of one-on-one sales conversations to begin talking to these groups about bringing their events to Ottumwa. Many of them don't realize that we have what we have, and we have a lot. And it's growing every year. We have more now than we ever have. We are able to start those conversations thanks to the Legacy Foundation. We received a grant last year to purchase a subscription to the Play Easy platform, which is basically an RFP matchmaking service. There are organizations that want to host a sports tournament, and there are destinations that have venues for those tournaments. We're able to match up our facilities with their needs, and we can reach out to them. We don't have to wait for somebody to send us a letter and say, we're looking for a place like the Sports Center. We get to reach out and be proactive. And that has been the biggest blessing. We've already won two of those in the past year. One at the JBS Sports Center and one at Legacy Fields. So that is a growing process. We're learning more about what those organizers are looking for in a facility, in a destination. And now we're able to just springboard off of that and be able to offer exactly what they're looking for. So again, partnerships with Bridgeview Center, with the Sports Center, with Ottumwa Parks and Recreation, We get leads that we are able to follow up on from the Iowa Travel Industry Partners. We are members of that organization, which is a statewide organization like Travel Iowa, but we also have through them lobbyists in the state legislature. So we're able to know what's happening at the state level for taxes and laws and new bills that are coming through. that are going to affect people who are staying in your community that's what's huge for us we also through the city's donation investment to us of the hotel motel tax we are able to use some of that for sponsorships for organizations that are bringing events that include people from outside the community so we have supported for many years over a dozen different events that meet our requirements for bringing in people from outside the community. If it's drawing certain numbers and has certain hotel occupancy requirements, then we're happy to give them funding that will go either towards their marketing, which is our first choice, or facility costs if they're staying somewhere and they wouldn't be able to afford the building otherwise. And again, number three may be my favorite. We are hyper local in the Mitotamo office. We will go to our local people before we go anywhere else. We put out our visitor guides, our email blasts, our social media, all of the Travel Iowa co-op. These are all Again, because of the hotel motel tax, these are free of charge to all of our residents, to all our businesses, to all our organizations. We don't charge to be in the visitor guide. We don't charge to be on the website. we don't charge to be in our social media. If you take two minutes and give us a photo and submit your event to our events calendar, which is the most popular page on our entire website, then you are automatically in our email blasts that are going out to all those metro areas. You're automatically in our social media. You are automatically on the calendar. So We want to make sure that our local residents get the absolute biggest package. I'd say bang for your buck, but you don't have a buck you have to pay. We are happy to take that on for them. Just a side note at the bottom of this one, we sent out almost 4,000 visitor guides to all 50 states last year, plus Puerto Rico and Guam. So Ottumwa is getting represented to everybody in the country. And all of those local organizations, all those businesses, all the restaurants are getting free publicity because we get to do that for them. We get to send them out into the world and let everybody see what we're doing and want to be part of it. Now the money part. Mita-Tumwa receives 40% of the hotel motel tax that is collected. The 7% tax that is at the bottom of the hotel bill goes from the state to the city. We get 40% of that. We also get some from Wapello County. We write all of our own grants. We don't hire anybody to do it. I do it all myself. We raise our own sponsorships for local events. For example, we just helped the Ottumwa Little League with their state championships. We were able to get some more sponsorships for them, and we got to roll T-shirts and fill goodie bags for them, and it was the best week ever. So we're able to do our own sponsorship raising as well. to cover things like that. And we host two events of our own every year. We go to Bridgeview and have the wildlife weekend every January, which is one of our favorites. It's my word of the day, I guess. We get our own sponsorships that cover the entire cost of that. So all of the organizations that have booths, get to do it for free. They don't have to pay anything. It's a free event for the kids. They get to come in and meet eagles and play games and have all of this information about activities that are happening in the community given to them for free. So we're able to get sponsorships for that. We're also one of the sponsors for Pages for Pennies. And I will put in a plug, August 24th, we start taking donations at Bridgeview Center. Clean off your shelves, get your books ready to go. But we also do that completely for free. Everybody can come in for free. There's no cost to the library to do. The proceeds are then divided between Meet Ottumwa, Friends of the Ottumwa Public Library, and Bridgeview Center. We also, now that we're in the Main Street office, we're able to have our own gift shop, which is all Atemwa-themed, all designed by myself and by Wilson Miller, our digital marketing specialist. And we just finished renovation on our upstairs space. Above Main is our co-working space that we designed as a quiet space for business The people, not only in the community, we want them to be there. We want them to take advantage of it. But it's a rentable space for people who are coming in from outside the community to work, and they just need a place to get away. We saw a lot of people who were working in their cars in the hotel parking lot on their laptops. And that doesn't sit well with me. We wanted to have a place where they could go, rent it for a day, drop in, get your work done, have your Wi-Fi, get your coffee, and just be in a quiet place where you can get something accomplished. Because of all of these investments from the city and the county and all of these grants and sponsorships from the community, again, everything that Mita Tamil offers is free of charge for our residents. So state and national marketing, social media, event planning assistance, which we help dozens of organizations who just need a little extra to get their events accomplished. Inclusion in the visitor guide on the website, meetatumwa.org. We give tours. We do all kinds of connections on our website that people can get out and do all of our tours. We do speaking engagements. All of that is free because the city has invested that money in us and we are so grateful. And the numbers. So every October, we get the visitor spending numbers from IEDA for the previous year. So we're still a couple of months away from 2025, but these are the year before's numbers. So visitor spending in 2024, $64.1 million. This is up 4.9% from the year before. The year before that, it was 9.6% up from the year before that. So any up, I'm super excited. The 150,000 plus visitors over the 12 months is also up. It was 130,000 the year before. Breaking down that money a little bit, these numbers flipped from the year before. Food and beverage. Everybody wants to come to Otomo and eat. It's crazy. Our restaurant guide is the most popular brochure in the entire building. Everybody wants to know where to go. Then transportation, getting here and getting around here are the second. Then lodging, retail sales, recreation, and entertainment. So we have in our Mitotomo budget for hotel-motel tax for next year are 40%. We're budgeting $230,000. or just for the fun of it, 0.36% of that visitor spending that came in that year. But what we're most proud of is the next two numbers. Wapello County tourism directly supported 467 people. Those jobs are what's more important to us than anything. We wanna make sure that our tourism related employees are taken care of. So that's 5.2% of the Wapello County workforce that is somehow in the tourism industry. And then finally, to put it in perspective. So six years ago, we only received 35% of the hotel motel tax. Our portion that year was that 115,286. This year at our 40% that we've had the past four years, we were up to 266,033. So 130.7% increase of ours, your 60% did the exact same thing. We don't take credit for all of the visitor spending because we're just one portion of it, but the community is doing something right. They have banded together as a hospitality industry, as a retail industry, food and beverage to make some reason that people want to come, they want to stay, and they want to spend their money here. Our goal, our hope is that as we invest the city's money back into the city, that that number is just gonna keep going up because we're growing, we're learning how to do this thing called tourism, we're helping with economic development and we just wanna put that all back into our people. We wanna make sure that the tax burden from the tourism aspect is not placed on our residents, that we're bringing in enough people to offset that, that it will do some good and we'll be able to spotlight what Atum was doing, not just in the state of Iowa, but all over the country. And that's really what we're seeing.

Thank you. Not to put you on the spot, but did you have an event today?

Yes.

Yeah, you seem pretty excited about it. What was that event?

So we had seven carloads of people from a car club in central Iowa who came down. They specifically wanted to see the Radar O'Reilly exhibit, which, yeah, everybody does. But they also wanted food recommendations. So we send them out into the community with the restaurant guide guide. We kicked them out the back door. Our office opens up into Canteen Alley. So we showed them the street art, gave them the visitor guide that has the QR code to the whole tour. If you go onto the website, meetatomwa.org, our public art tour that Olson made is interactive with Google Maps. So you can go all over the city and see all of the public art. And it gives you stories about the... art itself and about the artists and their connections to Iowa. So we sent them there, we sent them for pie, we sent them for milkshakes. Yeah, so there's some days where it's a couple here and a couple there. But today we got seven carloads all at once and it was fantastic. They really learned a lot about Atumwa and the community.

Thank you.

May I ask a question? Of course. Would it be a possibility? I don't know what kind of money you have, but as you're handing those bags out in the back door where the canteen is, have you ever thought about enclosing a certificate for one canteen to each person? And you cut a deal with the canteen, try to get a little adjustment there.

We can absolutely talk about it.

That's a very famous place in our community, and a lot of people enjoy eating there.

A hundred years next year? I want to say thank you for helping the little league. They were really very pleased with your bags. They showed it to me and actually I got one. Well, they called us that night. It was really, really well done.

We were so happy to help.

I do have a question on your space that you rent. How much is that? Is it an hourly rate or is it a daily rate?

It depends on if you do a drop in. it's like 12 bucks a day to just drop in. Or you can do by the hour. If you just want to have a board meeting, you can just block it off.

We had family do this in Detroit and it worked out really well. And it was a nice conference space also for small companies that didn't have conference tables.

Absolutely. And we can do up to 16 people. So we just break it up to rearrange everything however you need. Okay. Thank you. Of course.

I loved everything you said. I just want to say any other department that we fund or doing things like this department, take your lessons from her. I just want to say what you just said had genuine passion. You didn't get up and fake anything or call anything in. It's genuine passion for Atumwa. And that honestly just warms my heart because I know you love Atumwa and I know everything there was genuine. So thank you. Of course.

Do you by any chance have a picture of the beach on your website?

We do.

That made me think about it when you went through there, but I have to say I'm guilty of not looking at your website very often. Sorry.

And we just updated it. Olson went through today and updated a whole bunch of stuff. We're already into fall promotion. It's 97 degrees outside and we're promoting fall. So he went through today and updated a lot of our pictures and things. So this would be the perfect time to go check. just to see the new stuff. A lot of our fall events have also already posted their schedules and put their stuff on the website. So all of that's there to start sharing and doing that kind of thing with. We also have beach postcards and we have them included in our riverfront promotions where you can work your way down the entire river and do all the things. Okay.

Keith, you need to go to the website. You might see the cutest dog ever. Mine or yours? Mine. They're both on there.

Keith, maybe you and I could go swimming tomorrow and our picture would be on the website.

I don't know if we're getting out tomorrow. It might rain. We might stay inside.

Tara, I don't think I heard what you said. I probably don't want to hear it.

No, I just encourage you to go to the website. Oh, thank you. Yes. There's a really cute dog on there.

I'm not a website junkie. My wife does.

Well, you're all welcome to come and visit the visitor center anytime you want so you can see us in person.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much. I'm moving on to my monthly report then. I mentioned last meeting or two weeks ago about some conference highlights, and I'll come back to that at the end here. I just want to mention a couple other things. The opening of the Market Street Inclusive Play Space. Last Saturday, the grand opening of the newest play space in the city of Ottumwa was officially opened. um with that grand opening uh project is a great example of what can transpire when a community comes together for the greater good from the organizers the financial supporters the volunteers uh just a big thank you to all uh for the support of the project and improvement to the city uh vocal heights infrastructure uh i believe travis is gonna pull up a video here uh it's progressing along and he's got a video to show the current progress on the site It was a time-lapsed video here. May 4th, that moment there. June 2nd, or if you can see the date in the audience. A week later, June 8th. I believe this is on our site, and there is some nice music that he had picked out to go along with it, so you don't have to watch in silence. Free music, right? June 15th, another week. Yeah. Oh, Kara's going to sing?

Oh, Dan.

July 2nd. You can see the continued progress there. That's a couple weeks later on the 14th. And another couple weeks on the 29th. August 4th. See where some laterals are going to be going in. And that was what as of today, I guess so. And I know this is something that Travis has talked about and Public Works has done some videos and things of different projects. And one of the things, big projects like this or just fun projects is getting that, especially when they take over a long period of time, gets to that time-lapse stuff to really see the before and after and the progress throughout. Yeah, it's just a different map view here with a different coloration. It's a little bit easier to see some of the differences with the dirt work. All right. Thanks, Travis.

Bill, could I make a comment on your earlier comment about the inclusive play space? When they opened that place up over there, it was packed from the beginning to the end of the day, even into the evening. People were just all over that place, children and adults alike. Yeah.

And I was disappointed I wasn't able to be there for the event. But from what I heard, you know, even despite the weather, in spite of the weather, it was a really great turnout. It would have been a good turnout, you know, even if it was great weather. But with that really said a lot for for the the project, for those that were involved and for the event. that new amenity for the community i was driving across jefferson earlier today and i just looked over to my left and i could see you know that the improvement there and just the the new life and so it's it's really neat to to see that um along those lines moving on uh comprehensive plan 2040 uh specifically guiding principle number three which is growth uh so just an update on the plan the overall summary of the comprehensive plan identified approximately 46 completion it includes about 63 of the objectives that are either completed or on track toward completion focus of the plan this month is a guiding principle number three which is growth Of the 28 action items, six or 21% were identified as completed. Another six is having some level of disruption or behind schedule currently. And the remaining 16, about 57%, are on track toward their scheduled completion date. The next reporting period is going to look at the collaboration with the University of Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities on several projects throughout the city. And additionally, the city will work to engage Quincy Place Mall stakeholders for continued development opportunities in that space. And that's really one of the areas where there's some disruption time-wise. And so furthering that will help with getting that back on track. Some upcoming council policy decisions or things that should come before council. Ambulance service, future direction of service delivery is one of the top priorities the city council identified last November. The Walpole County Board of Supervisors has appointed an EMS advisory council to review the topic as well. Last month, Chief Canto delivered a copy of his report to the elected officials for review and future discussion. And on Wednesday, August 19th at 6 o'clock, Chief Canto is going to be presenting an overview of the findings from that report, supporting data and recommendations from his professional opinion. The public is invited to attend that. That'll be at Bridgeview Center, 6 o'clock on August 19th. um regulations related to e-bikes elected officials and staff have been receiving many calls and messages related to the use of electric bicycles there has been discussion to hold a work session gather more information related to the current laws and regulations for e-bikes and determine what if any revisions to city code may be necessary so if you're interested in that topic be looking ahead to future agendas and we'll have more information on that Sewer fee rate structure and stormwater ordinance. City staff has met with financial advisor to review modeling or revised rate structure of various fee structures, including the lower base fee or higher usage rate, while maintaining zero stormwater fees. There's a discussion from a previous meeting. We are anticipating the model to be ready and available for meeting or work session in September. So that was the latest from Tim Oswald on that. So looking forward for that. uh later this year yet okay so as uh as mentioned um one of the the keynote uh for the conference that i attended was on championing civility uh and um one of the the big questions or that what started out and kind of came back around at the end uh was when looking at civility um The question was, are you a citizen or do you just live here? And the underlying part of that was a citizen is willing to invest in their community. Residents view that relationship is predominantly through a transactional lens, meaning that if you're a citizen, you're putting back into the community, as we've heard from prior meetings, from Mita Tamwa, from the park, people that are putting back into the community while residents are basically, they live there, they purchase their water, do sewer, maybe have to use fire or police, use the streets. It's just a transactional aspect. And then it went on to say, citizenship, it's more than residency. Civility is more than being polite. Why is civility so hard right now? And it's saying that the confidence in institutions that once connected us has collapsed. Trust in government is plummeted. That's at the federal, state, and even local level. And it's closer at the local level. There's more trust. And as you go further away, as governance goes further away from the local, that trust is a little more eroded. Participation in civic and religious organizations has declined and social isolation has increased dramatically. At the same time, public discourse has become more caustic. People confuse speech with responsibility. The First Amendment, primary freedom, I have a right to say it. And just because someone has a right doesn't mean they necessarily should. Strategic choice, the issue is too important for politeness. Or the moral equivocation, if you're offended, that's on you. Each one of those dismisses that relational cost of the caustic discourse. If only people would be more civil. Unfortunately, governance is also built on tension. There's trade-offs that we live with. Representation or the will of the people, that comes at the expense of individual rights. Efficiency, which is the expertise, evidence, and competent administration, comes at the expense of representation. Justice, due process, fairness, equal protection, comes at the expense of efficiency and individual rights. Liberty, property, undue interference comes at the expense of the community or representation. So it's a cyclical thing they all pull from each other. So when people feel their preferred value is ignored, civility is often the first casualty. In the face of conflict, people tend to retreat to efficiency. Governance is about consequences of decisions, not the technical superiority. Which consequences are we willing to live with? What kind of community are we trying to be? And then he went into a couple of different things as far as... tools to when looking at being civil. And he told a story of cows. He grew up on a farm and there was a highway that ran along the farm and they raised cattle. And so if There was a hill that also went along and if the cow got up off the hill and maybe got over the fence and into the roadway, well, a 1200 pound heifer can be devastating on a vehicle and vice versa. So whenever cows got out, they were responsible with getting them back into the yard. And so the story went that one day a cow got out and his mom was having a heck of a time trying to get the cow back in. And he and his sister come back from school and they're all trying to get the cow in. And innocently enough, his sister says, you know, well, what does the cow want? You know, cow wants food. It wants, you know, shelter wants to be safe. So they go and get food and the cow starts following. So the moral was defining the problem first and then moving to the solution. What do the cows want? So we need to listen and try to evaluate what the other side is looking for. That's one of the first tools for stability. Second tool was ice cream. Putting yourself in the position of understanding what the other person wants and what they're saying. My favorite ice cream might be different than the mayor's favorite ice cream. Why do I like mine and why does he like his? Something as simple as that, but trying to understand what the other person is doing and wanting helps build that civility. 203 was the pledge. People have a limited understanding of governance or government. I don't know if a lot of people believe that we have a democracy. It's a common understanding or misunderstanding of majority rule, when in reality, we have a republic. It limits the latitude and authority of the majority via constitution. Therefore, liberty is protected for all, even those in the minority. In a democracy, you may have delegates. Elected officials serve as a direct instrument of the people who elected them. But in a republic, you have representatives. They're elected to utilize their judgment in order to make decisions in the best interest of the city and their constituents. And so I think when you have that confusion, that can lead to challenges. And the elected officials up here that have votes, they may have different information than people sitting at home or people sitting behind their computer screens. And decisions made up here aren't always going to be reflective of what people living in their homes may want to see, but they may not have all that information. And that's one of the differences between delegates and representatives. Elections may have consequences. It doesn't mean it's a license to ignore the minority. Representatives have a duty to protect the rights of the minority as well. Sir Edmund Burke famously said, your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment. And he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. Why is leading so difficult? Making people uncomfortable is the job. Growth and comfort rarely coexist. The highest rate of individual growth happens most far from our comfort zone. And in creating a psychologically safe environment is the job. When people feel safe working with others, their capacity for learning and performance increases significantly. And then the final tool that was shared was to avoid the alligators. And on most issues, there's 10 to 20% on the extremes, 34% in the middle. The middle are those sofa sitters. They're not participating. They're in the middle. They're comfortable where they're at. They're not going to feel strongly one way or another to move. People on the extremes, those are the alligators. As was said, they're all mouth and no ears. They're not moving from their extreme position or anything you can say or tell them. And that leaves 20 to 50% that it could be persuaded or may become involved in the dialogue. So to improve civil discourse, we must, and this was the takeaways from it, model civil behavior consistently. set expectations and norms, acknowledge shared values, model civility and citizenship publicly, Protect the process. Avoid victory conversations. And finally, encourage curiosity, not combat, by asking questions. Can you tell me what led you to that point of view? Can you help me understand where you're coming from? Asking questions like that can help the process moving towards a common solution, or at least, at the very least, avoiding a combative solution. So there's some things and I noticed in this social media type world, it can be very difficult at times. And we have differing viewpoints and someone's not in front of you to resort to name calling and other tactics that don't help move the issue forward. So just some things that were, I think, timely and a good takeaway from that conference. So thank you.

All right. With that, I will state if you are here and would like to speak on anything on the agenda, I'd ask you to fill out a slip of paper. They're in that basket on the front banister. And then they'll get that up to us so we can plug you into the right place on the agenda. So with that, we'll move on to the public hearing.

This is the time, place, and date set for a public hearing on the proposal to convey certain real property at 113 East Maple, Ottumwa, Iowa to Enrique Sanchez.

So with that, I would declare the public hearing open and turn it over to Jake Rush, Planning and Zoning Coordinator. There you go.

Thanks, Mayor. Good evening, Council. So the city accepted bids on this property until 2 o'clock May 7, 2026. We received one bid. Enrique Sanchez submitted the best bid in the amount of $9,800. and staff would recommend accepting the bid. You've seen this, but unfortunately the previous public hearing notice didn't get published. And so this resolution also rescinds resolution 155-2026. But yeah, you've already had this one before you, but it just didn't go the right way. So here it is again.

Any questions? I don't have any question, but I'm glad you guys are careful to follow the procedures and notice things like this.

That's Chris. She keeps me in line.

This is a public hearing. Is there anyone from the audience that would like to speak on this? Okay. And then I need to ask if we've received any other correspondence in regards to this matter?

None.

None. Okay. Okay. With that, if no other questions from council, I'd entertain a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. Thank you. Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid? Yes. Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman? Yes. Council Member Dupre? Yes. Council Member Kavanagh?

Yes.

Resolution number 162-2026, accepting the bid and approving the sale of 113 East Maple to Enrique Sanchez for the sum of $9,800 and rescinding resolution number 155-2026. Recommendation pass and adopt resolution number 162-2026. I have a motion to approve. So moved.

Second. Any other questions from council? Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid.

Yes.

Council Member Galloway. Yes. Council Member Hoffman. Yes. Council Member Dupre. Yes. Council Member Kavanagh.

Yes. Thank you.

Community Development Annual Report Fiscal Year 26. Recommendation consider motion to receive and file the Community Development Annual Report for Fiscal Year 26.

Do I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Motion to recommendation. Second. And then I'll turn it over to Amal, our Community Development Director.

Good evening, everyone. Council, our report is in your packet. Tonight, I'm going to be highlighting some aspects of that report. But before I do that, I'd like to highlight some aspects in regard to community development department, what we're about and what we do, and also for the benefits for those watching us at home. Community development is a long game. As a department, we do all things concerned with growth and sustainability of this community. What we do on a day-to-day basis is work on improving existing conditions and shaping the future, basically taking care of the community we have today and also making sure we're building for the community we want to see next. An annual report, it's basically a snapshot in time. It will show you trajectory, direction we're taking, and the steps we have been taking. And most importantly, it will show you how we budgeted and we spent staff time during the fiscal year. and not to take credit from our partner organizations in the community, because we do work in tandem with many organizations. And also, we are always making sure we're aligning efforts together to advance the community development agenda, because it does take a village. We work closely with Main Street, Tamwa, and GO-PIP, and Legacy Foundation. And like you just heard Laura because we're all working on this big picture community development. All right. So the brief kind of introduction I want to do to make sure everybody is kind of oriented to what we are reporting on. So I'll start with explaining how our operations are designed. So everything we do in that community development department is designed geared to make sure we're ensuring safe building, responsible development, holding neighborhoods to higher standards, promoting investment, supporting higher quality of life, basically, in the community and also making sure we are working on the sustainability of the community in the long run. We operate through zoning regulations, building codes, everybody's familiar with that one, rental housing program to make sure all the housing units are safe and we're making sure quality housing options are provided. And also do a lot of development incentives, trying to encourage private investment in the community. And we do a lot of economic development and supporting those initiatives, ours. And those are spearheaded and carried out with the efforts that are done by partners, GoPip, Legacy. We have Rippling Waters and GoPip. We also work to advance historic preservation efforts through the commission and through that to celebrate and protect the heritage in the community. And we do also nuisance abatement, enforcing city codes, address property neglect and maintaining community standards. And we also do urban renewal programs. Those are a lot. And in a nutshell, those are to breathe new life into underutilized areas and, of course, for the long-term sustainability of our tax base and to make sure we're working on quality of life in the neighborhoods. and we do a lot of work under neighborhood improvements area. Basically in that we focus on blight remediation, and we're going to talk about that a lot, especially with brownfields and infill developments. We have six divisions. I'd like to separate those. And of course, everybody's familiar with building safety, where we review building plans and do building inspections. And then zoning code enforcement. This is where we enforce Chapter 38. and also process cases through P&Z commission. And we do nuisance code enforcement, which is enforcing chapter 24. You hear a lot about the cases we manage and placard properties and those under that category. And then we do planning and development, anything plans. as we develop them, policy, urban renewal programs, as it relates to development agreements for development or initiating authorizing incentives and making those deals. Along with that goes impact assessments for those projects. Under category neighborhood stabilization, those everything JIG does, blight remediation, condemnations, proceedings, 657A program, when we take those properties, dispose of and sell them back for redevelopment. A lot of work is being done under that category. And then of course, last but not least, our rental housing, where we do licensing and inspections. And basically we're maintaining the rental housing stock for the community. Last year, fiscal year 26, we have been focusing on, those are the top four priorities. We do more than that, but those were the highest priorities. Advancing housing and redevelopment, neighborhood improvements, A lot of code enforcement staff do. Then also focusing on strategic partnerships, building those and to just leverage the resources we have and to augment our efforts. Then also working on us as a team and an organization, working on our technologies and our processes and improving those. Again, for efficiency, efficient government, efficient and effective for our process for those programs that we are tasked with. So when we come to permit activity during the fiscal year, somewhat moderated compared to previous years. This is here you see on the screen stats. We processed 104 residential permits with a total estimated value of 4.2 million. 23 commercial permits issued for estimated 3.7 million. This is new permits. issued during the fiscal year. We still continue to work on ongoing projects that were started in the previous fiscal year. Everybody knows that construction spans two fiscal years. This is relative to previous fiscal years, as you can see here. I think the most significant drop was in the plumbing permits, but we do think a lot of work is being done without a permit. And I had some explanation in the report. Planning and zoning activity, we process a total of 17 cases, those ranges from rezonings, variances, site plans, all to support development in the community, including amending the code itself to be flexible and responsive to the needs. Three, conditional use permits. That also talks a lot about our flexibility. Those are just highlights of the major construction projects completed during the fiscal year. I'm going to highlight a couple here. Hopkins contractor base suite number one, Jefferson County Health Center, Indian Health Wellness Center, and then Ottumwa Regional MRI suite. Just some highlights, ideal ready mix, Jersey mics, inclusive playground. Just talked about the grand opening on Saturday, always built out those projects, even though probably our involvement here limited to inspections, but those projects support quality of life. City hall renovations, of course, we had to spend time in inspections. Cemetery building, high school renovations, and the high school gym. Also advancing infrastructure in the community that support quality of life. On the growth and housing development front, we supported seven significant projects. We continue to work on that. Some of them are still in the pipeline, but I wanted to highlight the total. Here, we're talking about 250 units. The first one we processed in the fiscal year was Danaher Phase II around Sherwood. Those were 40 units. Gray means this is still not proceeding or might be in a pipeline. Yellow, that means it is moving. 2504, Romer. This is a multifamily, 16 units. Minupa Housing, 8 plex. And, of course, Alta Vista, 58 units. We've done all sort of involvement on that, including resolution to support for workforce housing and then for agencies for the 9%. and we heard the news about that. They're getting 1.2 million in tax credits. And then Otomo Housing Group LLC Sherwood were expected to add 48 units. Dairy can development. This is only phase one. We process the site plan for that for an eight flex and it will have other phases coming along. And then 404 West Mary, this is also going for a 9%. We haven't heard from the company about that, but they were adding 40 units. Downtown revitalization, downtown is a priority, continue to be. We did a lot of work in terms of downtown grants, supporting catalyst and CDBG and development agreements. The highlights of those projects are 209 to 11. This is adding two ADA housing units. And then 317, you remember that, kitchen equipment grant. And then 105.7, 109, those were projects a development agreement and we are in the process of a CDBG funding. 131 East Main, this is the bank building. We supported the Catalyst Grant with Main Street. And then currently we're working on a development agreement. Hotel Atomwa, we continue to have discussion on the development on that. And on the partnerships, we partner with a lot of organizations. But here I wanted to highlight under livability, GO-PIP and staff secured funding for 50% of the retail strategies grant. We're grateful for that. And under sustainability, we are excited about being on board with the IOM Initiative for Sustainable Communities. We're expecting a lot of projects to be advanced through this partnership and doing the legwork for a lot of development. Under placemaking, staff also collaborated with... American Gothic and Mita Tomwa and other partners to develop an arts and culture strategic plan. housing rental housing program. Uh, we do maintain over 2,900, uh, units, uh, registered with us. And we done two out of three inspections, uh, scheduled for the year for lack of staffing. We do, um, no, now that we might have, uh, 230 units unregistered. We're working on sending those notices and trying to get them registered. Neighborhood stabilization, that's a big one. Code Enforcement Division did a lot of work, nuisance inspections. There were over 2,000 inspections completed during the fiscal year. Over 1,400 cases resolved with different reasons and probably taking a couple of trips to get the enforcement done. placarded 49 addresses, unsafe situations. And we did release 24 out of those. And we continue to keep an eye on over 150 structures. This is just to show efforts for infill development. This is done by Rippling Waters before and after. enforcement challenges we do struggle with no shows for rental housing that's why we're not able to get to all of them um and basically staff will take them a couple of trips to get an inspection completed it's a it's it's not efficient for us to be um or to continue doing that. We're working on that with the notices and talking to landlords. Budget constraints, we spend a lot on cleanup for mowing and just property cleanup. On demo alone, we spent over $120,000 last year. Between mowing and cleanup, $170,000. So we do a lot of work in the community. to straighten up neighborhoods. Frequent flyers, nuisance properties after being cleaned up and brought back to code, come back again on our list. It seems like we haven't done much, but we continue to work on those properties. Those are just the struggles. Also the challenges, we have a lot of vacancies. We suspect there may be 300 vacant structures. Red dots are tagged properties, continue to make a couple trips, securing and making sure they're making progress. Light remediation, we condemned seven structures, caused the demo of 11, and sold eight properties, technically saved the city over $250,000 on demo costs. And those got sold and approved, estimating added value of $700,000. Those are six, 57A program and disposition. This is just showing before and after. Development Ready is just summarizing for you what we have been doing to be development ready, starting from designation as thriving community, make us eligible for LIHTC, workforce housing, home, and catalyst. Those are extra points towards the application. And then we amended our tax abatement for single family developments from a three-year to five-year. And then we amended the urban renewal area plan to allow for investing in infrastructure for Alta Vista site and the put together scope for an airport development planning project as a CIP project. And we made some steps towards that project and we partnered with the University of Iowa and released an RFP for Brownfields Assessment Grant to hopefully be ready to apply for half a million, close to half a million EPA grant to prep for redevelopment of critical sites in the community. This is just more about the airport area planning. We've done pretty many scope and data collection and also had conversation with DOT District 5 about the scope of the project and getting the stakeholders together. Blight remediation, we're going to talk about that here again. Brownfield, basically any property that may be or perceived to have environmental contamination would be considered a brownfield. Why? Should we worry about it? Because it does impede the process of development and investment in the property. Just because of our age, we are an older community. We have a lot of structures that are old. And for us to do our due diligence, we want to make sure we've assessed them for our brownfield, did a phase one, phase two, for example, and show developers that we're ready and we probably mitigated the risk. trying to be ready for development and close that gap, just like what we did with the Alta Vista with the infrastructure. Close that gap for the developer to facilitate that redevelopment process. So those are strategies we have been working on, mapping our urban renewal areas. They're on GIS now. And of course, they're the source for all the development agreements to redevelop those and authorizing funding for infrastructure projects. and the rfp were released for assessment and cleanup plans those pictures are from an older project that the community done on their brownfield assessments Under efficiency and effectiveness, this is what we have done just for our processes. We've added an improvement. We've added a bilingual code inspector and has been great addition, helped with customer service and reducing our costs in terms of needing translator. and make us able to connect more with the community. streamlined our workflows and handouts, record management. We scanned a lot of records. They're digitized now. So yeah, the basement feel lighter. And we invested in evaluating software to be able to move their Intel housing management and also tracking and reporting for other processes. GIS apps, we invested in that license and we made our zoning map online in GIS and mapped or digitized our urban renewal area maps. And we continue to add interactive maps for internal consumptions for staff, for example, all the tagged properties and those kind of things. And then communication platforms, we moved to Office 365. We're working on adding body cams for inspectors. This is just in summary, evolved from being primarily a regulatory agency into a more strategic partner in the community, advanced housing developments, region blighted properties to productive use, focus on efficiency and improving our effectiveness and matured as a high performing team, collaborative, we're more collaborative now, geared up for foundational planning work with the partnerships. Looking ahead, we'll continue on housing momentum. Growth area will be focusing on the airport area code update. We'll come back with updating our code to the 2021 cycle to be at least with the fire code. Planning projects through the partnership with the University of Iowa, we'll be advancing those. And then I will be working a lot on brownfields and getting priority 657A projects and Hotel Tamwa and going for the grant. That's most important. And then we continue to implement the software for our processes. This is just showing the team here. We're a team of seven. And I have a couple staff in the bag if you have any questions. Or if you want to add anything, Jeremy, Dick, and Kurt. So that's about it. I'll take any questions if you have any.

I don't have questions. I just have a few comments. So throughout this report, you can definitely see the importance of that partnership and that community involvement from what the city does and then what our community partners do. And just to see the growth over the last year is pretty phenomenal. I also want to touch base. You kind of touched on it at the end. So there are seven people in your office, correct? Seven people who are handling 2,183 nuisance, 1,246 building code inspections, and then overseeing 2,940 rentals, managing 151 active properties. uh, placard, uh, properties, seven people, seven people are doing this, correct? No, not, not everybody.

Uh, divisions.

Well, yeah, but I mean, there's completely this, there are seven people handling all of this. Yes. And I think that I just want to shout out to them because that's pretty phenomenal to see that like this year we've had 1,400 resolved nuisances with seven total people in this office. And that's pretty phenomenal. So I think the three of you back there, I think you, I think the ones that aren't here because that's accomplishing a lot with a small but mighty team. So I appreciate you all and thank you for that.

Thank you. And you can see it's really hard to be proactive because the whole year we've been gearing up, we want to be proactive when we are reactive. So putting fires all the time.

The guys are great. I will say they're pretty awesome. I know Jake probably wants to just lock his door when he sees me coming, but I appreciate him not doing that.

I would echo that same comment. And, yeah, to the three in the back and the rest of you guys, you guys do a great job. It's a thankless job so often. And you go into situations that you have no idea what you're going into, and you do it anyway to improve our community. So, yeah, I know I threw a couple fires at you today, and you guys were all over it. So that was just awesome. So thank you all for what you guys are doing.

And they have been very collaborative. When I say that, I mean it. When we were talking about housing being a priority, all of them, when they're walking around, they were identifying sites for me. That's where I put that housing, potential housing sites. I put it together in GIS for the interested parties. They were talking to us because of them. They know the community. They were identifying those. They were involved in the big picture, and it was really great to see. So we are collaborative. We're being collaborative and growing in the same direction.

Mm-hmm. I appreciate the team too, because I know that you mentioned the frequent flyers that can get discouraging for people that you've helped them, things got good, and then they just let it all fall apart again. And that's discouraging to have to keep going back like that. So I appreciate your efforts, all of you.

They've done a great job. They've cleaned up a lot of property's since I've started, especially the one online. Yes. So I go by that one a lot. I do have a question, and it's not, just for knowledge. You said that the plumbing permits have dropped. When there's a final inspection, it's not caught that they didn't pull a permit, or are they just not pulling permits, period? They're not pulling permits. Wow. That's not good.

Come in. Yeah, Jeremy.

Jeremy is in the field.

I'm not being critical. I'm just nosy about permits.

Hey, I'm Jeremy, one of the building inspectors. So to add to that a little bit, what she's talking about, we're not seeing are like side jobs that are happening. or we're not involved from the start. So like if it's a big project, you know, everybody's pulling their permits because they know that we're gonna be involved in it. But it's just like your one officer doing work inside of a house that we might not know about.

Oh, okay. I was just wondering, my brother's a contractor down in Florida and he's always talking about permits this, permits that. And he thinks our permits are a lot cheaper here.

I think we're a few cycles behind on how much the permits should be to get caught up.

But he said that some of those guys can be really tough. Can be. Thank you for what you guys all do.

I also, I want to shout out to engineering because they do tell us when they get requests for locates, this is where we know there's work being done on the property. So, and we go after that. So it's been helpful knowing that there are locates being asked.

Anything else from council? So if not, Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid.

Yes.

Council Member Galloway. Yes. Council Member Hoffman. Yes. Council Member Dupre.

Yes. Council Member Kavanagh.

Yes. Resolution number 171, 2026, awarding contract and authorizing the mayor to execute agreement with, I'm not going to pronounce that right. Is it EOC? EOC. Okay. Environmental Group Incorporated for EPA Brownfields Assessment Grant Writing and Grant Implementation Services. Recommendation pass and adopt resolution number 171, 2026. Do I have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second. I'm all in.

We're going to talk about brownfields. Like I mentioned, brownfields are sites where they are perceived to have environmental contamination, or they might have actual contamination. We deal with that through our demo program. We spend a lot on testing, for example, for asbestos, lead, and all of those. Typically, those would be industrial sites, factories, gas stations. and older buildings. And it is a barrier to redevelopment. Redeveloped, we want investment in the community and we want to close that risk gap. So background, the city did apply for and receive EPA brownfields assessment grants in the past. I believe it was 2013 through 17. It was a great project, big project, and they were successfully able to identify and evaluate sites or challenge properties, reducing that uncertainty and helping attract new investment. Like I mentioned before, it's doing the due diligence for properties and it's the first step towards returning those underutilized sites into productive use. Now the need is there. That's why we're pursuing this to continue advancing redevelopment opportunities. This is part of our efforts to be proactive and development ready. Accomplishments completed through that 2013-2017, those maps show the areas that they were focusing on. They completed phase one, phase two, performed asbestos and hazardous materials survey, prepared analysis of cleanup alternatives, and also redevelopment recommendations. for those assessed properties. I have a list here of previous projects. I would want to mention, too, Alta Vista is a brownfield because we've done phase one, phase two, and got it there ready for development. The former Washington Junior High School So they did investigations to help remove that uncertainty. And then developers secured over $800,000 in housing tax credits. Kmart, older Kmart property. Also done surveys through the grant. And then Romer Avenue property. Those were a couple projects completed with EPA grant funding. So because of the need staff issued an RFP request for proposals for firms to respond to were asked or the firms were asked to demonstrate their experience with EPA Brownfields grants in doing assessments and then community engagement and compliance in terms of administering those grants. We received a total of three proposals. We evaluated them based on those criteria listed on the RFE experience, qualifications of the project team, technical approach, and understanding of our community, and also ability to meet the requirements and costs. and the overall value they provided based on the evaluation. And then staff is recommending awarding contract to the highest-ranked firm, UCN Environmental Group. This is the tally of those scores. We had a company called Rockleaf, UCN, and Terracon. You've seen provided the best bid Scope of services in the agreement is to put together a grant strategy and application, prepare for the application, environmental assessment planning, coordination, grant administration if we're awarded, public outreach, redevelopment, and then phase one, phase two for as much as we can fit within that grant. And then implementation. The agreement compensation would be 7,500 for the fee for prep for the application and helping us with the application term would be three year agreement with option to extend by mutual agreement. And then implementation services will only begin when we get the award.

And are there fees then going to be paid out of that award then if there's extra fees?

It would be out of the grant. Yes. And I think we're a really good candidate just because we are an older community. And, uh, All our communities take advantage of this grant year over year. I was in Oskaloosa, and we received $300,000, and we did a lot of work, including the CHEO on the Cool Mind Loop. A lot of work has been done because of those assessments. So, yeah, and I have representatives from the company here if you have any questions for them.

Amal, can you let us know where that $7,500 would come from?

It would come from our community development. We have the demo program. It fits under that category. Right now we spend more than this on asbestos testing. Okay. And actually, if we get that money, we're able to, because right now we spend $400,000 on that. We have budgets for the demo program. Some of the brownfield grant can be spent on those projects as well.

Awesome. Thank you.

Amal, have you worked with EOC before? Have you worked with this company before?

Personally, I have not, but I did work with their staff in Oskaloosa. They did a lot of work, good work in Oskaloosa.

So the grant that you mentioned earlier, that you had the previous grant? Yes. That's all gone? Is that what you're saying? Yes.

And yeah, it was 2013, 2017, Otomo took advantage of this. Honestly, we should have continued going for that grant because it's a lot of money.

So is this going to be in that same area that the previous grant was, or is this a brand new area?

That's why we need the company to do analysis and put together a plan for EPA. Okay. So we apply based on a lot of work we do to assess the areas and prioritize those areas. And then a lot of narrative goes in.

So the areas that you showed on the map, the 2013, 17. Yes. Were those all taken care of or was it just we found out what was wrong and we didn't do anything further? I'm just trying to find out where we're at.

Projects. Sorry. Projects. Yeah. Projects within that area. Yeah. we're completed. Okay. But of course, we have more need than money. Sure.

Hi there, if you don't mind, my name is John Reese with the EOC and Environmental Group, and I'm here with a co-worker of mine.

Hello, I'm Yasmeen, and thank you all for your time.

Yeah, thank you very much. And I can speak to a little bit, I guess, of what's been asking as well. One of my coworkers who unfortunately wasn't able to be here, he was the project manager with his previous company, HR Green, and managed the previous grants. And I think it was one or two grants. I believe he said it was $800,000 the city received from the EPA to do assessment activities over the course of two grants. And so kind of the areas outlined there is where probably most of the work was focused. But like was mentioned, it didn't assess every structure or property in there. And when we work with the city to prepare the grant application, we'll look at where the city wants to focus the assessments at this time. The assessment grant, if it's awarded, will be an area-wide or community-wide assessment grant. So even though we can focus here, that doesn't limit it to just assessments in that area. If there's another priority site for the city, something that would really help, we can go outside of that within the community city limits. And then the EPA maximum, like was kind of mentioned before, currently for an assessment or cleanup grant is $500,000. And it's always subject to change a little bit, but that's what the EPA has put out right now. And the grant term is four years to complete the work. So I guess I'll kind of open it up. Yeah, what questions, additional ones can we answer for you?

What kind of report do you give that shows the value that you've added to the community by your work?

I was going to say, we have some completed with other communities that we've worked with in the past, and we can definitely get examples for you. As part of the reporting for the assessments that are completed for the grant, the EPA wants us to document what the leveraged funds are. So if we spend, let's say we do a phase one environmental site assessment, maybe some soil investigation, asbestos, phase two activities, and we spend, let's say $30,000, but then that kind of clears it. documents that, hey, you know, maybe this is not contaminated. And then someone comes in a developer and builds housing on there, that gets documented of this $30,000 was spent and resulted in, you know, x amount of, of redevelopment. So we have those, I don't have anything kind of with me offhand. But we can definitely, you know, get something to yours to your staff and you for different communities we work with.

I just wondered if something like that, if you did keep track of that kind of information so it would be available

Yeah, definitely. And that's where all the grant closeouts, they kind of look at what was spent on a property. And unfortunately, the realistic thing is not every site kind of gets redeveloped or gets reused right away. Sometimes we do the assessment work and it kind of sits there. But for those where additional development does occur, we track those and report it to the EPA. Because that's, you know, they want it so they can, show to their bosses and keep getting the funding for it and document its importance and benefit.

Honestly, I think it's going to be a good incentive for development as well, because if the property found to be a brownfield, they would be eligible for brownfield tax credits. And developers like those because it does make their bottom line. So it's an attractive thing to do. Of course, we're going to target... strategic areas, strategic properties, for example, downtown, airport, some like YMCA building, those kind of things. And then whatever we put together in the application, we can provide for council to see where the priorities are.

Amal, did you say that the Alta Vista property is also eligible for brownfield, even though it's in progress?

Which one? Alta Vista?

The Alta Vista property.

Alta Vista is a brownfield, but it was already assessed. Phase one, phase two were already completed on the site.

And that's what made it, helped it to be available for this current project out there.

Yes. Getting properties ready for redevelopment.

Okay.

Any other questions? I'd like to ask the administrator a question. Is there any particular reason that you chose not to include the council members in the Brownfield conversation? And in fact, it should be a public meeting, in my opinion. Is there any reason you decided not to do that?

No, this is the public meeting.

Yeah, already. It's on the book. You want us to just pass it? You just want us to say yes. Sorry, that's not the good answer.

I guess I'm not understanding the question.

Well, how about the council and city becoming involved in the process before you put it on the book and say yes? What about including people? The council specifically.

This is the part of the process where the council would weigh in.

Okay, I'm gone.

Any other questions from council? Okay, if not, Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid? Yes. Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman? Yes. Council Member Dupre?

No.

Council Member Cavanagh?

No.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you. Resolution number 173, 2026, ordering construction of the CDBG Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation Project and fixing the date for hearing thereon and taking of bids therefore. Recommendation pass and adopt resolution number 173, 2026. Is there a motion to approve?

Motion to approve. City Engineer Burgmeier.

All right, thank you, Mayor. So the purpose of this resolution is to order construction of the project and set dates for accepting bids and holding the public hearing. So this is the CDBG project we've been talking about for the last year. We finally got all the paperwork approved and ready to move forward with the project. Just a refresher, it's 13,000 lineal feet of sanitary sewer main being lined with curative place pipe. The primary project location is between South Weller and South Madison from Mary to Silk Avenue. Some other smaller sections are located along James Street, Glenwood, Adeline Road, Mowry Avenue, and Quincy Avenue. The bids will be opened and received by the city of Ottumwa on August 26th at 2 p.m. The public hearing, bid report, and bid award recommendation will be presented to council at the meeting on September 1st, 2026. So this is just... ordering construction, letting us go out to bid. We'll have the public hearing with the bids and all the presentation of the plans at the August 26th meeting. I'm sorry, not August 26th, September 1st. August 26th is the bid date.

So Phil, this is just the sewer project, right?

Yeah, it's lining existing sewers.

Any other questions from council?

Could you give us a really quick explanation as to how this works or what's happening here?

Yeah, so these areas were chosen because they have either really deep sewers, they're in really awkward locations to repair, or they have a history of breaks. The big area we're doing around... silk and mary that area we recently were not recently a year or two ago had a repair that cost us like 120 some thousand dollars to fix because we had to dig down and it was so sandy and the water table was so high that we had to put shoring down and put eight well points down there trying to keep the water table down to fix it and we thought there's got to be a better way to do this so rather than waiting for these to break again and the clay pipe that's been in there for you know for a long time to to break we're gonna go line all these pipes ahead of time and hopefully prevent incidents like that in the future or like uh on maori the sanitary sewer runs in people's yards And so anytime you have to dig down there, you're digging up people's yards. It's right next to foundations. It makes it really difficult to repair. So again, rather than waiting for the repairs to happen again, we're going to go in there and just line the whole sewers to kind of do the preventative maintenance.

What's the projected time for completion of this project?

We had 50 days of actual work to do it. How many days? 50 working days. It should be minimally... disruptive though i mean they'll be setting up a truck at one pipe or one manhole and then the next manhole downstream and they'll line manhole to manhole like that so no no digging what what do they line it with it's like a fabric that they impregnate with a resin okay and most of it's steam cured so they'll pump steam through there and the steam cures it and hardens it into a that's the area where the water table's really high they flood a lot down that area yeah yeah

It's hard working conditions.

Yeah, good place for a well if you have a garden.

Is there a downside to using this material in there? Does it cause a problem with some sort of repair later if one's needed?

No. It'll help. Like I said, most of this is clay pipes, so the joints are really short. So it'll cover up those joints. They have to be really careful about making sure they locate every single lateral and make sure they... once they line it go through and they know where the laterals are at and they'll drill drill out the laterals to make sure they reconnect everybody's sewer so i guess that's the biggest downside is making sure that gets done yeah i could see that be a problem if you missed one or two yeah yeah but it's a good like i said a good print of maintenance in the right area any other questions

Okay, Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid. Yes. Council Member Galloway. Yes. Council Member Hoffman. Yes. Council Member Dupre.

Yes.

Council Member Kavanagh.

Yes.

Resolution number 174-2026, approval of TSIP grant application for the South Ferry Street Mini Roundabouts Project and authorize the mayor to sign. Recommendation passed and adopt resolution number 174-2026. Is there a motion to approve?

Okay, thank you. Mr. Bergmaier.

All right, thank you, Mayor. So this is an application for a Traffic Safety Improvement Program funds to construct two mini roundabouts at the intersections of Ferry Street and Findlay Avenue and Ferry Street and Williams. The proposed improvements are intended to address the history of crashes, including a fatal crash at Ferry and Williams. So a little bit of background for this one and the next one. So I got approached by ISG, an engineering firm. They asked me if I had any, they kind of specialize in safety programs. So they asked me if I had any areas I wanted to look at. And I looked at the south side and two of the areas I looked at were the area between, by the middle school, along Ferry Street that we've had lots of calls about, about safety there and about traffic. then the other one was a long finland ferry and the amount of stop side running we have there but this is the uh the mini roundabout one so this is strictly a safety grant um not looked at traffic flow it's just strictly a question of safety here um a little bit hard to see apparently they didn't pay very much for high resolution aerials but The entire intersection won't be tore up. Their intent is to save as much of the existing pavement as possible. So each corner will be repaved a little bit to pull the curb line back a little bit to widen that. A little bit of sidewalk that changes where the pedestrian crossings are. And then it adds splitter islands to the middle of each of the pavement areas. So the existing intersections, the DOT has a website on the potential for crash reduction. It's a ranking of how intersections perform versus how they're expected to perform based on the traffic volume and intersection type. So these percentages here, this compares Ferry and Williams and Ferry and Findlay to all undivided low speed partial stop controlled intersections. That means basically it's a two lane road that is in town low speed and does not have a four-way stop it has either two-way stop or it's a t-intersection with the one you know one leg has a stop sign so the ferry williams intersection ranked in the bottom 2.5 percent for all crashes compared to all the intersection types in the state uh ferry findlay ranked in the bottom 1.1 percent for all crashes that's the number of crashes above what's expected for that intersection When it comes to severe crashes, Ferry Williams is the bottom 1.8% for severe crashes and Ferry and Findlay was the bottom 0.1%. So they're bottom one out of a thousand. I think there was like 50,000 some intersections here and it was like ranked 60th worst out of 50 some thousand in the entire state. So that's why these intersections were looked at. Sorry. I guess, why did ISG recommend roundabouts here as a solution? they reduce conflict points. The conflict points directly correlate to safety performance. At a four lane intersection, you have 32 conflict points, whereas in a roundabout you have eight. 16 of those conflict points at a four-way intersection are right angle conflicts and those are the most dangerous types of conflicts you can have. And there's zero in a roundabout. That's why roundabouts have about 80% fewer injuries and deaths than a standard intersection. The other issue is like with pedestrians when you pull up to a four-way intersection you have to make seven decisions all at once they all have to be right you have to look at every you have to look at all three other legs of the street and you have to look at every corner for a pedestrian and every one of those conflict points has to be a go decision before you can take off from the from the stop sign and go and you're making all seven decisions at once whereas with a roundabout can pull up to the intersection the uh pedestrian crossings are set back so you have one decision to make there is there a pedestrian if you say no there's not pedestrian you can go you proceed to this intersection and you look left and you say all right is there a car coming to the left one decision the answer is no you can go then as you exit the intersection you have one more decision to make about a pedestrian crossing you so it it simplifies the intersection by allowing drivers to make one decision at a time. And it makes it safer for people that way too. So some numbers, if you convert from this, our application that we submit to the DOT, we use the crash modification factors from this, from a website that the DOT provides. And then we submit it on a DOT form and it calculates what the reduction in crashes are estimated to be for the treatment that you submitted for. So the conversion of these two particular intersections from two-way stop control to mini roundabout is estimated to reduce the total crashes by 47.7%. That's all that the application that we submitted So I went online, found some other studies. And this is 82% number that you find 75 to 80% from pretty much all the studies. But New York City Metro Council, they estimate 82% reduction in injury crashes. And they also estimated 27% reduction in pedestrian crashes. So then I also went, and I know there's been discussion about all-way stops at these intersections too, and they do reduce crashes and injury crashes as well, but not as much. So you get a 36% reduction in total crashes and a 42% reduction in injury crashes. That's from a 2020 study in Washington, D.C. And then for some reason, their study said there's actually an increase in straight-hit pedestrian crashes, which are like, not a turning car, like a vehicle going straight. And I didn't have access to the full text of the study, but I've read other studies on like unwarranted stop signs and A lot of the increase in pedestrian crashes, it increases the number of crashes, but decreases the severity because the person's stopping or they roll through the stop sign. Well, pedestrian sees a stop sign. It makes them feel all nice and comfortable that their cars are going to stop, but not all cars stop the intersection. So they'll step out in front of a vehicle that's rolling through the stop sign and get hit. So I think that's where the, the effect comes from there. Although I didn't, I couldn't read the study to, to find out what they saw.

Phil, why are we using Washington, D.C. and New York City information to regulate our traffic?

That's the only studies that have been done on the effects of a big deal. And that New York City metro study, that study has been replicated all over the place. I mean. The Federal Highway Administration has done it. We get numbers from all over that give you the same effect.

Do we have any numbers for how safe the Findlay Ferry intersection was prior to putting a four-way stop when we were doing the work on Mary versus when we did use the four-way stop? the police department have a reduction in accidents there or not? Do you know?

Yeah, there was a reduction. There was, there was less, but it also, you had less traffic on ferry as well. So it wasn't really representative of what it would be with the full amount of traffic on ferry. Cause you have like six or 7,000 cars per day on ferry street. And you have like, when we did our traffic counts earlier, Finley had like 1800 cars per day. Williams had 1200 and Finley, ferry in that area had between six and a half six to six and a half thousand depending on which intersection you're at so when we had mary street closed there wasn't as much traffic on ferry street it was all coming around bypassing ferry and they all come into williams so like even there was there wasn't any crashes there with the four-way stop but the traffic wasn't the same because you didn't have the cross traffic there like you would would now

And then when you did the study too, we didn't have school in session, so that's going to change things as well.

Right, right. There was no school. No school was in session.

I've received several complaints from citizens regarding the roundabout suggestion that you're promoting, at least at the school intersection, if not Williams. And I'm telling you what, we're so successful with our roundabouts, we really need to have a big flag put up that we're a roundabout community. We're not a roundabout community. And the citizens don't want a little roundabout where it would cause traffic for children to get across the street

Well, that's what I'm trying to explain here, that roundabouts, statistically speaking, and by your numbers, people can have the opinions they want. If they don't want roundabouts, I'm fine with that. I'm not wedded to these at all. I'm just explaining here what the safety issues are, and you guys can make a decision whether you want them or not.

Well, I'm not going to Washington, D.C., so it won't make any difference.

Just to continue on as a case study, so we have an all-way stop at Chester and all-way stop at Williams. The traffic on Chester is 1,180 cars per day. The traffic on Williams is 1,186, so real close. One's a four-way stop, one's a two-way stop. As you can see, the last 10 years, they've been almost the same exact notches. Not 10 on Chester and 11 at Williams. Interestingly, because there's more traffic on Ferry, nine of the 10 crashes on Ferry Street were caused by traffic on the Ferry Street legs. At Williams, eight out of the 11 are caused by the Williams Street legs. Pretty much the same mix too. You had seven failure to run stops or failure to yield right away or running the stop sign at Chester. And there was nine at Williams. Two rear end crashes at both intersections. And then there was one person at Chester lost control while they were accelerating for the stop sign. Injuries, there was two minor injuries at Chester. One of them was a pedestrian that was hit. And then Williams had one fatal injury from a car running the stop sign. And there's been one other pedestrian hit in this section and it was actually at a stop sign as well. So in these areas, both pedestrians have been hit by the middle school, both been hit at a stop sign.

Question about those injuries. Were they, so they were at actually at the stop sign. So, cause I know, um, when I, I drive that area quite often. Um, and so I know kids are running across the street and the school has done, um, increased measures to stop like in the middle of the street or so those injuries are at the stop signs.

Yeah. The two, I just did a search for everything from Chester down to, to Williams. And the, the one accident was a south bound, uh, i have it written down here actually it was a southbound vehicle at chester yeah southbound vehicle at chester um just failed to show a pedestrian and then the one at hamilton was a car on hamilton that had the stop sign didn't yield the right away pulling it onto ferry street and hit someone trying to cross um across hamilton um The reason I brought it is because the benefit cost ratio of this was 21 to one, which is what I was told is astronomically high. The benefits, present value of the estimated benefits are over $8 million. the present value of construction and maintenance costs are 400 000 which is 21 to 1 and they told me that usually projects that get awarded by the dot are around three to four to one between three and four to one that's a low end and the estimated out-of-pocket construction cost for the city is sixty one thousand eight hundred forty dollars um again those are the numbers i know public sentiment can be different than what the numbers show and it's up to you guys how you want to move forward with this. Um, I do want to point out that stop signs are not always the answer.

Um, and actually I got a, a, uh, just one thing I want to point out before we, before you guys start asking questions.

Um, I found a review of over 70 studies on, on stop signs. And one of the, uh, findings was that pedestrian safety is decreased at unwarranted multi-way stops, especially for small children. Pedestrians expect vehicles to stop at the stop signs, but many vehicles have gotten the habit of just rolling through the unnecessary stop signs. 13 different studies found this to be their finding, and it references 13 of them here. i would like to see us use the lighted stop signs that it will get much more attention than just a plain old stop sign yeah i think there's also i haven't seen this but i'd like to sit down maybe it's the thing for the public safety advisory committee to get a safe routes to school map made because one other thing that would benefit pedestrian traffic there too is if you try to concentrate all the kids, like get them all across at Chester, that way when people drive through there, they're not having to worry about kids at every single intersection. If the school could, you know, get a safe route to school plan up, get a map for the kids and have them all kind of take predictable routes to school. People get used to seeing kids at those intersections and not have to worry about them at all these different areas. And it would probably help the kids to know where they should be walking to. Cause you know, a lot of times, uh, 10, 12-year-old kid doesn't realize they don't think about stuff like that.

No, they don't. I think Public Safety Advisory Committee, yeah, they'd be happy to do that. I know they've been talking with the school district. In fact, they met with the superintendent in their last meeting talking about the intersection of Findlay and Ferry and wanting that to be a four-way stop at that point. Before we move forward, though, I do have someone in the public that would like to speak on this item. I'd like to bring him up first. So I would call up Sid Koiman. Mr. Koiman, when you come up, just state your name and address and... We'll put your three-minute timer on.

My name is Sid Koiman. I live in 716 East Highland Avenue here in Ottumwa. I would, Mayor and Council, I would speak in favor of the roundabouts. I enjoy them very much. They seem much safer to me. At the intersections, even where there are four-way stops, there's oftentimes a race to get across the intersection. But on the roundabout, it's almost impossible to race because it's a circle and you have to maintain control of your vehicle. I'm sure it's a safety thing, improves safety. But for me, it improves the flow of traffic and gives me much more security that I only have to look at one direction to get onto the circle and then to get off of it. I appreciate them very much, and I would encourage many more. Thank you. Thank you.

I would like to have a comment on his comment. I think that when you have a roundabout, you have an inflow of traffic and an exit flow. If the people who are coming on allow that traffic to flow, it works. If they try to jump in front of somebody or just ignore the fact there's someone already on the roundabout, it doesn't work. So I don't see that it is safer, in my opinion, than without.

Go ahead, sir. He's coming to answer.

Sir, I understand your point. The issue is that when I get to the roundabout, I only have to look in one direction. that if I'm at a four-way stop, I have to look in three other directions and sometimes even try to make eye contact with the driver to identify what they're going to do. If it's a young person, I'm a little bit older, if it's a young person, they're generally going to try to beat me to the punch and they're going to come through. On the roundabout, it's much harder for that to happen. And because of the flow of traffic, there will be a way for me to get on that circle and to continue my way. Thank you.

Thank you for your explanation. Thank you.

Mayor.

Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Oh, no, I was just, I just have a few comments, but go ahead. Councilperson Hoffman, I wasn't going to comment on that.

Oh, I'm good. Mr. Hoffman. I think in my mind, we're getting there. This is two different problems. This isn't one issue. It's safety and it's financial. We can argue about the financial costs, but you can't argue the safety statistics. I mean, you have to look at it. roundabouts are proven to lower the severity of accidents. They are proven to prevent accidents. They are proven to keep traffic going. And I know there's a lot of disagreement. People don't want them in their neighborhood. I get it, but you can't argue the statistics that they're safer. They absolutely are safer. So you have to look at, in my mind, I look at the risk versus the reward. Now, stop signs, Mr. Burgmeier said was 36%. It was 42%. There was a 6% difference. Now, if you're looking at a 6% accident reduction, one six percent better that may not mean anything until it's your loved one crossing the street or it's your loved one in the car or it's it's you know your loved one that gets hit so we my point is is we can't argue the statistics the statistics are there and and i do understand the financial ramifications i do understand that people would be upset with it but but i think I don't know. I'm not going to hide it. I'm a safety guy. That's what I ran on. So, you know, I'm, I'm for the, I want to be transparent and I actually pretty much support it right now. So I'm welcome in the other comments of the councilman, but.

Mr. Bergmeier.

Yes.

So first off, thank you for your report. I appreciate it. And thank you for answering my questions earlier that I got from citizens. So I, just to put it out there, I love roundabouts, but I will, I think we should have roundabouts everywhere. I will be honest about that. I agree with the gentleman. My concern, and I talked with you earlier about this, is I understand the safety, like the numbers you provided here. I understand those. My concern goes back to the kids. Again, I see the increase in like the straight hit pedestrian crashes, and I appreciate you talking about like a safe way to school. But so when I think of I don't know if you've ever tried to cross it around about, but I did try and I thought I was going to get hit multiple times. So I I wanted to see if I could walk to work. I'll be honest. I cannot. It's too far for me. Yeah. I don't have the stamina, but anyways, uh, so, but then I think about like my 11 year old trying to cross, um, a roundabout because she's always been taught, uh, you know, you wait for the cars, but now she has to go across the street to the middle, to the median and then cross again. Um, and I know she only has to look one way, but now, so I'm just, that's where I struggle with it. Um, especially if people are coming in more often i've seen some people go through roundabouts and they don't always pay attention the most and so maybe it would be an adjustment but that's what i worry about the most is um the kids trying to cross those across the street for those roundabouts and in total agreement the pedestrian data is the least conclusive of all i mean the vehicle data is very conclusive but pedestrians have it's it's very inconclusive that's why i had to go

to D.C. to get a study. There's like three studies I could find on two ways to roundabouts. One of them was from like the 60s in San Francisco and Philadelphia. One was on rural intersections in North Carolina. And then this one was the most recent that had, I thought, the most relevant data. That being said, I think the pedestrian numbers are the least agreed upon among traffic engineers on whether it's better for people. If it's smaller kids, again, it's kind of a separate issue, but I would suggest that they bring them all somewhere where a crossing guard can be there to help them across. I would expect kids to be walking like north and south along the parallel sides of these.

Yeah.

but hopefully there won't be a whole lot crossing Ferry Street on these roundabouts. It'd be going up to Chester where there can be a crossing guard there to help them.

Is there a way?

Or it can be a lighted sign like Keith was talking about where you designate the school crossing sign a little bit or the school crossing a little bit more conspicuously.

So is there a way to like, look, put this four way stop back this year, look at a study at do our traffic count. So we get those numbers of what we're seeing and then we can come back and really look at like the numbers to, to see if it makes sense, like to go forward with that. Is that a way, is that something we can do this year or is this grant like it's one, they do it every single year.

So it's a long ways out too. So like the grants we apply for now is like physical year 28. So like, right. you don't get the money until July of next year. So if we waited, we can wait. We can put the four-way stop out there, see how it works.

Get our numbers for what it looks like when ferry's going, when everything's kind of like a normal.

One year's not always the best judge of how intersection works. So sometimes you get a lot of crashes one year because they're not used to the stop sign. Sometimes it takes a while for people to get...

But we had a stop sign last year, so actually this year would be a...

But like I told her, it was not really analogous to what you have now because all the Ferry Street, all the Mary Street traffic wasn't down Ferry. A lot of people that go down Ferry Street to go to Mary didn't go there. So you had thousands less cars a day on Ferry Street versus what you have now. And the turning traffics are different too. Because another weird thing about stop signs is if there's a big discrepancy in like how much traffic comes from one direction, it makes it work weird. That's why like... you convert a two-way to a four-way stop if the if like on this instance ferries you'll have a lot more traffic and on average you'll get now you have 6 000 cars today on ferry street they have to make decisions at the intersection and that many more chances for people to make a bad decision whereas before only the people in the side streets make decisions so It's hard to tell short term, but like I said, it's not something that has to be done today. It was just something that we applied for. The money was there. I wanted to bring a friend of council and see what they thought about it.

So we could potentially bring it back later. Like, I don't know, we've tabled things for a long time before, but we could potentially table it, but then work with the school on developing a safe way to school route to kind of avoiding those areas, look at the traffic counts, and then we can come back and say, does this make sense later?

I'd just vote no on it. Or vote no. Yeah, we don't need to table it, but we could vote it down.

But you could put it, kind of file it away that this is something we want numbers on and working with the school or the safety committee.

I like your suggestion. Let's do something. Let's stop signs now and come back and reevaluate at a later time for roundabouts.

I always appreciate your explanation. I appreciate all the information you come up with and you do a good job and I appreciate that. And personally, I like roundabouts because you get to keep moving. And when I think about that, I think that's exactly the problem with having roundabouts at these positions because you get kids streaming across and a car is thinking, I want to keep moving, I want to keep rolling. And it just seems like there needs to be better protection for those kids. and vehicles stopping seems like a help. So, you know, before I saw your information and so on, but I just, I feel like that, I've seen people try to cross the roundabouts on foot there at Albee Road by the gas station, different places, and it seems like it's a bit of a struggle for them. And here we got young ones having to cross, and it just seems like it's an accident waiting to happen with those little ones somehow.

I'm not sure how it is legally in Iowa, but I know in some states the vehicle has precedence. The pedestrian has to actually yield to the vehicle at a roundabout because it's not a stop sign. I don't know if that's the same case in Iowa, but there's some states like that too. So it is confusing on who yields to who at that because there's no...

This roundabout that you're talking about is referred to as a mini roundabout. Yes. That means it's smaller. Yep. Have we given any consideration to whether a school bus or a truck could get around that intersection?

Yeah, the medians are going to be transversable, so they're only like three or four inches high. It's enough of a bump that you can't fly through it 30 miles an hour, but it's small enough that you can drive around 10 or 15 on a semi, or not a semi, but, well, a semi, too, but...

a school bus or a garbage truck or something like that you have to slow down though thank you council member to pray did you have something i i agree with almost everything everybody said because we did i think we all received a letter from one of the concerned citizens and they were they were upset about the roundabouts in the neighborhood and they do realize that you know the kids were what they were worried about as well. And that's my concern. I mean, I live in that neighborhood and when the school is open, the kids are coming from all directions and we're talking middle school kids, you know, they're not exactly paying attention to everything and they're still invincible. So I think that that's my concern from the standpoint of looking at it, that the kids crossing, I mean, watching them at the couple of roundabouts that we have on Albia Road and over on Richmond, I've seen people, adults, trying to get across, and it's very difficult. I mean, if you're not paying attention when you're driving, you're going to hit somebody. And when you got an 11-year-old who thinks he can sprint out there and do it, he's not going to fare well in front of a car or truck.

Well, then I said, not to change anything, but like, In 10 years, neither of these intersections have ever had someone hit on them crossing without a stop sign. So I'm not sure how many actually cross it. I mean, we had to ask the school on how many actually use that route.

There seems to be a lot, you know, because we see walkers all the time. You know, I live clear up by Shaw Cemetery and they walk. to down my street to go to school there. So, you know, they're, they're going through, yes, they're going through intersections, but you know, for us, they're, they're walking on our, our yards and cutting through, you know, they're not paying attention even on Shaw. So.

They still should look both ways, even with a stop sign.

Yeah, they should.

The two people that got hit are at stop signs so far.

You can't, you know. I just worry about the roundabout because I've seen adults almost get hit over.

You'd have to have some education on who yields to who.

It's just hard the way that's located right in the middle of the neighborhood. They come from all directions. So you can't just say, okay, I want you to go up here and come down Chester. then they're going on other streets and still crossing Findlay to get there.

The only thing I'd like to add is just so we're working with the same information, I know we're probably going to put it down on the table a bit. For pedestrian accidents, there was a National Highway Survey along with 12 different states that I counted that did it. Pedestrian accidents were lowered by 40% and a decrease in fatal pedestrian accidents were lowered by 70%. Some were more and some were other towns in school zones. um the pluses were the lower speeds the staged crossings and i don't think something we brought up is a a roundabout or a minibar has shorter crossing zone um so you're not getting traffic from 18 different ways you're getting it from one way with shorter crossing zones so just so we all had the same information i just wanted to share where my mind was

I would like to share a suggestion. We have a large class for the public to teach them what the word S-T-O-P means. Most of them roll right through it.

Yeah, that happens. Chad, it's on you.

Maybe you can give us a presentation on what a stop sign does.

Well, I think we had a suggestion from council member Galloway to maybe switch it to a four lane or four way stop. Cause that can happen pretty quickly.

I can bring that next. So for a four way stop, I can put one up there temporarily, but it needs to be an ordinance change too. So I can, we can put it up there in time for school. If it doesn't, if you guys don't waive the second and third readings of the ordinance, I can still put one out there before school starts, just as a temporary measure until the ordinance passes, but we'll have to bring an ordinance to the meeting next in two weeks here.

Okay. That'd be great. Yeah, I think that'd be good. I know the school district is looking for it and they were looking at other alternatives if it wasn't going to happen. So yeah, I think that would be good. But right now we're needing to vote on the roundabouts. And what we do with them right now. So if no other questions.

I just want to be, so if we, so put that stop in and then also just continue to look at that. So we have updated number, like accurate, more accurate numbers than we can look at it after a year or so and see how it.

How's it working? I would appreciate that.

So Phil, your actual request is that we would vote it down so we can try the. Yeah, if you're not going to vote yes now, I would not table it.

I would just vote it down and let me bring it back in the future because it would be a different application for a different physical year.

All right, I want everybody to know to be transparent. I'm probably going to vote with the rest of the council, but that does not mean I disagree with the roundabouts. I'm agreeing with this study.

Okay. Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid?

No.

Council Member Galloway? No. Council Member Hoffman?

No.

Council Member Dupre? No. Council Member Kavanagh? No. Motion failed. Resolution number 175-2026, approval of a TSIP grant application for Vine Street and Finley Avenue stop sign enhancement project and authorize the mayor to sign. Recommendation pass and adopt resolution number 175-2026. Is there a motion to approve?

Motion to approve. Second.

All right, Mr. Bergmeier.

All right, thank you, Mayor. So this T-CIP application would be to improve safety along East Vine and East Findlay corridors, the installation of enhanced stop sign treatments at 10 intersections, the documented history of stop sign violations and severe crashes. So there's a number of north-south streets that cross both Findlay and Vine Street, and those are the only two stop signs in those stretches of street. It's Ward Street, Davis Street, Moore Street, Sheridan, and Ransom. And the proposed improvements would be to put LED flashing stop signs at the existing stop sign locations, to paint stop bars at them, and then also put advance warning that there's a stop ahead. Since 2021, 42 crashes have been reported resulting in 33 injuries. The major cost for 16 of the 42 crashes was people running stop signs. And it was always the north-south people running a stop sign, obviously, because there's no stop signs on Williams and Perry, but people running north-south stop signs. And both crashes resulting in serious injuries were the result of these people running stop signs as well. The benefit cost ratio of this project was 9 to 1 with an estimated $1.8 million of present value of benefits. It's an 80-20 cost share grant. Anticipated out-of-pocket construction costs for the city are $34,595. So this is just taking existing stop signs and making them more visible so people stop running them.

I'll start by just saying I love this idea, because I happened to witness an accident several years ago, and knowing that that person didn't die because of the report you had in here is very pleasing to me, because I wasn't sure if they were gonna make it. They got hammered at one of these stop signs. So yeah, I love this idea. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Council.

How likely do you think it is that the grant will be funded if you apply for it?

Again, I don't know for sure, but the engineer told me three to four to one is usually the lower cutoff limit. This is nine to one. So I think it's pretty likely to be funded.

How much light did those stop signs put out at night? Is it...

Drive to Marion Street. There's a lighted stop sign there. I think it was flashing right in your window. It would be kind of bright, but I'm not sure if it's facing down the street. It's not really facing directly at a house. It's bright enough to see for sure.

Yeah, there's one on 2nd Street as well over by Wells Fargo.

Okay.

They're solar driven, so.

Yeah, they're solar powered. And the one we had down there, we haven't touched it since it was put in about maybe five, six years ago, I think.

Great.

Any other questions from council? Okay, Chris, take the roll, please.

Council member Reed. Yes. Council member Galloway. Yes. Council member Hoffman. Yes. Council member Duprey. Yes. Council member Cavanaugh.

Yes. All right. We've come to the, thank you, Mr. Bergmeier. We've come to a public forum. And so I know there's a couple of people that want to speak. So I will call up again, Mr. Coyman.

Mayor, Council, thank you for your patience with me today. I really appreciate the Bridgeview Center. It's a place where people of my age can walk when it's really hot and when it's really cold. I really appreciate that. I don't enjoy concerts like Hairball, but I do enjoy the symphonies and things like this, and I would encourage more of those. The trails on the levees are a great addition to our town. There are two problems with them. One probably not fixable, goose poop. And the other one is high-speed electric bikes on the levees. We have, my partner and I, a friend that I walk with in the morning, we've had an individual pass us several times 25 or 30 miles an hour. on the levee. If they can go 25 or 35 miles an hour, they ought to be on the road. They don't need to be on the levee. And I don't know how that could be fixed, but I would encourage something be done to limit the speed of the e-bikes on the levees. The last thing I wanted to mention was the Market Street landing in the north side of the Market Street Bridge. That's a huge addition to the city, and I'm grateful for your efforts in that area. And I hope that the police chief can keep the graffiti off of the facility. Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. And then also, Mr. Rick Vick.

okay rick bick 1204 north wapolo and i had a bunch of stuff i was going to say but i'm make it short um i appreciate pastor hornback's prayer for hope for our city because i think we're seeing a lot of hope for our city um the uh report from um where is it here the uh amita tummo and that was that was exciting. I was like, I was really encouraged that it's that we're seeing things and, and what I'm seeing with all the interviews that people because I talked to be a pastor and a chaplain, I talked to a lot of city employees, a lot of people over town, I get a lot of confidential conversations, I hear a lot of boohoo and all that. But I'm beginning to hear And so these things tonight were very encouraging. And so that hope is exciting. And if you don't think people are paying attention more now, just take a look at Mrs. Dupre's Facebook page. She has had up to 10,000 hits on it. They may not be here, but people are watching and they're getting excited about or wanting to be excited about what's happening in Ottumwa. So this is a day that we have an opportunity to write a new narrative. So keep at it. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. This is a public forum. Is there anyone else from the audience who would like to come up and speak? Okay. If not, I'll turn it over to the council. If you guys have any communication you want to give to the community.

I just want to say that on August 15th and 16th, the all Ford car show will be at Jimmy Jones again this year. Bring your Fords out, come and join them.

I think you can bring Chevys and Dodges and other things too, right? They don't have to be Ford.

No, it's gotta be Ford. Oh, if you don't like a Ford, well, you can like them for a day or two.

Anything else from council?

I would just reiterate, I think that program over at the base or the beginning of Market Street Bridge was wonderful and a lot of people used it and it was amazing. There's also parking inside there. A lot of people didn't know that. You can park inside as well as across the street in the parking lot. It's a great project and I think more use of that than anything else that's been in that corner for a long time.

And I just wanted to say that Central Park Cinema, the free movie in the park is this Saturday at 7.30. The movie's Hoppers. It's just going to be right out here. So Saturday, 7.30, and the movie's Hoppers.

All right. And with that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second.

Chris, take the roll, please.

Council Member Reid?

Yes.

Council Member Galloway? Yes. Council Member Hoffman? Yes. Council Member Dupre? Yes. Council Member Cavanagh?

Yes.