Council - Regular Meeting

is here.

Good goes. Yeah. Yeah. We're lucky that [Music] [Music] Okay, it's uh 6:30. We will start off with roll call. Council person here. Council person Bendle here. Council person Basking

here. Council person Huber here. And council person Johnson

here. Ice to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands. One nation indivisible for all. I can get up. So, right now it's time for public input and we'll have a white. Yes, sir. First of all, gentlemen, we're at a public meeting and I don't think hats are necessary. I think you'll take them all. Another thing, who are you proud of the city? I'd like to have each one of you.

I'll start it off. Yes. I would say yes as well. Yep. Yes. Are you Are you proud of the way things look? Like right outside the front here, there's a flower garden full of dang weeds. It's being taken care of. It is. Yeah. We had here yesterday. Okay. Yeah,

I spent a full day actually of my own comp time meeting it and did bring it to the attention because it has overgrown and um I reached out to someone because it is unsightly to get it taken care of and it's not that it's not getting taken care of, but the weeds do come up very quickly because it's uh very old. need these daily repair. But anyway, that's one thing. Another thing, isn't there an ordinance if your grasses your lawn get so high you're supposed to mow it?

Yes, I think 8 in I think it's Yeah, there's a lot of them that are and and they're very well. We've sent letters out, notices out to those lawns that need to be taken care of. You know, I'm I'm proud to be in rebellion and I and I stick up for it wherever I can. But, you know, strangers come in here and look at that and they wonder what in the heck's going on. That's that's the only thing I've got to say. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. And the hats are still on. Uh James, James Mory, 675 Madison Lane. Uh I have a question about the uh agenda for tonight. Item 7D, discussion, North Benton ambulance and police vehicles. Are we buying police vehicles or are we selling police vehicles? Oh, we'll discuss that when it gets to the meeting, but we have vehicles. We probably should get rid of them. Okay. Is that the new police vehicle or is that the old

ones? Okay. Because I was just making sure that that the council doesn't have plans to basically sell out police property before the decision has been made with continue police. Okay. I appreciate. Thank you. Okay. Motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. I'll second. Okay. Then moved in a second to approve the consent agenda. Any more discussion? Now we'll vote. Council person. Yes. Council person Hold House. Yes. Council person Huber. Yes. Council person Johnson.

Yes. Council person. Yes. Okay. [Music] Looks like the uh staff reports are all Thank you. I'll take mine out too. Thank you. I didn't do my hair. Do you have anything else to add to the city engineers? No. Okay. Do you have any questions for me?

Okay. No old business will go on to new business. Item A, overview from easy cog and up on upcoming comprehensive planning. That's me. Oh, can I just make a quick statement? Sorry, I did forget to take off the um I had mentioned that we were removing old business item A in the email. Oh, okay. Perfect. Sorry, it's still on my old copy of it in front of me. Okay, Tom, thanks for coming tonight.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Tom. I'm a planner from the East Central Iowa Council of Governments. Uh so we're a regional planning agency and um so we do uh plans for six counties in uh that cover six counties in central Iowa. Uh and then in my role as a community development specialist, I work with a lot of uh small towns on their uh planning and um uh uh planning needs and land use ordinances and then I've got some grant administration experience as well. Uh so Jennifer asked me to uh come here tonight to um talk to you about the comprehensive uh plan and the planning process of what we started here. Uh we actually uh got the agreement in place to start working with the city, but planned to not start it for a while. I understand there's a couple new council members since that happened. Um because the uh first priority for the community was to work on the strategic plan uh uh capital improvement plan. Um so now we're with that finished, we're the part where we're getting started on the comprehensive plan. Um and a conference plan is a long range visiting visiting document for a community. Um so it uh describes current conditions and then there's a we'll try to do a like public engagement effort um and use the information that we collect from different data sources and the uh organic community uh to set some goals and objectives for the community over the next about 10 years. Um, so in the state of Iowa, comprehensive plan is required for cities that have zoning uh like Urbana does. Um, so we're going to uh get that updated uh before possibly considering an update to uh land use ordinances. Um and

uh kind of in addition to like the legal requirement for a comprehensive plan um you know one of the other benefits uh well there's a couple benefits again for like kind of listed planning processes um uh like including the capital improvement plan uh and the comprehensive plan. um the conference of plans a little bit higher level and is going to have more of that public engagement whereas when you did the uh strategic planning process that um was more with the council looking at like the near-term needs and so involve a lot less of the public because it was kind of about the kind of looking at the uh expenditures we might need to make in the near future whereas this is this plan is going to go more for the trying to get more public engagement to help drive uh the development of the plan. Um, so you'll have uh input from the community and something that documentation to show like at this point in time this is what the community was saying was important to them. Um, and then that's going to provide some continuity for elected leaders of the community too. um so that they're you don't kind of have to come in and re reinvent the wheel and do the things that are kind of the personal priorities of the council or you can kind of take your personal priorities and look for what's in line with the campus and the uh interest of the community. Um so just kind of at a high level um there's like roughly six phases to the process which will take about a year um from now to get through. Um sometimes it uh we get through stuff in about a year and then there's still like a month or two depending on how quickly that adoption process goes. Um uh but yeah, right now we're just uh doing a community introduction. Um, so I'm going to be meeting with uh city

staff on the planning and zoning commission uh soon to um start getting to know the community a little bit more. You know, do just a site visit and kind of walk around and uh start to take some notes from the community. Um and then from there I'll start uh working on the information gathering. Um so that would be looking at existing related plans uh the city might have or other entities might have related to it. Um start pulling some data like demographics and um uh assessor data for parcels and visit number of different sources for some different topic areas. Um and at that point I would start meeting with the plan steering committee. Um so in in the state code the planning zoning commission has a role in the development of a comprehensive plan. Um and I would usually like meet with them during the process and then they'll uh uh the plan will have to go to them for review and recommendation before it goes to the city council for adoption. Um, but I typically work with a plan steering committee instead of uh working directly with the planning and zoning commission to kind of broaden the perspectives of the input that we're getting from um that I'm getting from the community. So it's not just that people who are coming to the commission meeting every once a month and thinking about what are the land use needs of the city will probably um you know get a wider range of different perspectives by including business owners if we got any nonprofits in town um other community leaders really big volunteers uh typically uh includes some city staff and elected officials too um and so I'll start working with them to develop the

public engagement process. Um we'll we'll refine that too to kind of um do some of the things that make sense for the community. But uh generally that's going to be a visioning workshop. Uh community survey is the the big one. Um and I it's in the proposals we provided, but we definitely recommend a mail out survey to households. Um uh see the best uh response rate when that happens. Um then potentially uh focus group discussions and stakeholder interviews with uh members of the community. Um and then after that there'll be uh I'll take that information and analyze that start work on the strategy and then kind of reconvene with the steering committee um to start uh working on goals and objectives for the plan. Um, and then there'll be a couple months after that for some final thing writing and getting it all put together. Uh, before hopefully the adoption of the plan. Um, are there any questions with that? Um, so yeah, so kind of I mentioned already uh how you might have some like different levels of planning for the community and those should um it's good when those kind of uh kind of work up and down here in the list. So we'll take a look at the capital improvement plan is one of the um items that we'll look at. Um and uh by having those different planning efforts, they can like reinforce each other. Um one thing I'll add to uh in regard to the public engagement too is that for everything we do, we uh usually tend to have um like inerson or activity or paper copy of the survey and also an

online uh presence as well that will duplicate the activities and survey. um that way people who can't take an event, they can still participate online. Um and people who are more interested in um submitting the survey online that's makes me happy because it's a little bit easier to I don't have to tabulate those responses. Um but we set it up both ways so that there are uh so there like lower barriers to participation from the community. Um, so there'll be a project uh web page that'll be getting set up in the near uh future. Um, and that is kind of a just a high level overview of of what we'll be doing. Um, Deer, I know you had a couple questions. Um, I think one was potentially up in council about the planning process. Yeah, just once we get started since the main portion of it is not through just the council itself, although the committee will have elected representatives on it. Um, just I thought that it would be nice if we just had a section maybe a line item that'll just be devoted on the agenda if it's all right with the council just to give those monthly or couple month um updates to the council to kind of let everyone know where we are in the process, how we can get as much information out to the public that we can. Um, we did start sending out letters or invites uh to various uh steering committee suggestions which we talked about at our last council meeting. Um, I did also put an announcement out on the web page that I shared for people that would like to be involved and how they can connect and um, still reaching out to more business owners, nonprofits.

We don't have a ton. So I just kind of go down the list. So I think that was kind of it. You mentioned a project website. So is that something that we would just link on to our website so it would be easy enough? I mean like you're going to own this website. Yeah, we have a public engagement platform. Um so yeah, you could link to it. Yeah. So we can access we'll have like um maybe for the process since he did say it's almost a year long maybe on our front page we can have a link that's direct to the comprehensive planning page just so that it gets people out there and engaged.

Yeah. So um and uh my goal for this one too is to um really try to minimize the time from like when we start the public meeting process to when we're getting. So, it's still going to take some time. Um, but really try to get some things done more things done ahead of time to kind of minimize that time. So, you might want to I'll get the project web page website um set up this month, but might not want to like advertise it heavily until we're ready to time send out the survey and have the plan, right? It would be nice before we launch it to make sure we have information out there for the public comment to go to it.

For the in-person public input, is that something that councils usually sit in on or is it just the steering committee that's present listening into that or just you listening into that?

A lot of times I do more of like an openhouse type event um where we've got activities where um people can leave input but they get a little bit of information about the community and then leave input. um on topics like um uh you know what types of things would they like to see in the community? Um kind of transportation like both transportation issues that there were like safety um or uh like road conditions. Um so that something we got a record of that. Um and then possibly like where they'd like to see like future roads or trail connections that that kind of thing. what people like to see the parks and recreation main street. So that kind of stuff.

Thank you.

Other questions for Tom? I did tell him if he doesn't want to stick around for the meeting, he's welcome to. But no, thanks for your time. city and get started on this project. Thank you.

Okay. Item B, consider resolution 2025-145 authorizing an amendment to the professional service agreement between the city of Holland Hall Engineering. Okay. So, um I have this prepared. I'm actually just I mean unless I you guys had additional questions to what was provided to you. I don't know John if you want to just give a quick overview. Yeah. Um of resolution 2025145 which is authorizing amendment to the Holland Hall contract which believe is on the pump house side.

It's on the pump house side. So um so this is an amendment so that we can bring Carrick Con on as a sub consultant to to us to provide some testing services out there for since we don't have certain equipment um for soils testing soils testing we don't have the nuclear gauge you get put on the list um if you own a nuclear gauge for soil testing and have to get certified through the feds we don't have that ter does um and then um doing some testing, some soil bearing testing below the foundation of the building. Um and we have equipment and standards for that that we don't. Um and then on the concrete side of things, um you know, we'll still be doing the repair and slump testing, taking samples, casting cylinders so they can be taken to a lab, broken, ensure they're hitting um the the specified strength, make sure we're getting our money's worth. Um, but we don't have the lab equipment to break those cylinders. Terown does. Um, so this is really just bringing them on board to to help us out and doing some of that lab work.

And when we did the second bid out and we knew that this would likely come up as an amendment to your contract because that was part of the cost savings to the city.

Yeah. And Matt had included um in our original contract that he wrote up, you know, as part of our construction engineering that we would have some concrete, I think it was sewer and water main testing and that's I think the concrete testing was more geared towards the stuff we are certified to do was there and slump and taking samples, but this is really more to do with you the equipment side of things that we don't have. Um and it's different from the tank. the tank we put on the contractor to hire the third party testing agency just because that's way more elaborate and several different concrete mix designs and obviously the structure technical side things on that way more complex pump out so um contractor has included that in their bid already for hiring the testing agency but like Jennifer said on the pump out side of things it was on the city to provide all the materials testing so um any questions concerns with Ter County's proposed services. Have a motion to approve resolution 2025-145. Second move second to approve 2025-145. Any more discussion? If not, we'll vote. Uh, council person Bendle.

Yes. Council person Huber, yes. Council person, yes. Council person Johnson, yes. Council person holds, yes.

Uh, discussion of utility connection fees.

Okay. So, um I have put together a memo for the council and the mayor regarding a review of water sewer connection fees which was sent to me by uh council member Bendel that this might be a good opportunity for the city to take a look and analyze what our current utility connections are uh really based on the projects that we've been doing uh doing that we're also going to be going into a loan about amount um and I can certainly let uh council member Bendel discuss that further. But what I provided here in the memo is the current fees for Urbana connections. So this would be for new construction and water sewer connections um for a new home. I gathered some information and this was very high level information um from Google really just reaching out to any small towns in Iowa that had their published water utility sewer fees um and provided a chart here for where Urbana falls in with these same connection connections. I provided the council with three findings in terms of regional benchmarks um looking at larger cities as well as smaller cities in the range and where Urbana falls in that current connection. So Urbana's current fees are water connection fee is 950 and sewer connection fee is 950 for new construction on homes. And as you can see, Urban uh did fall in the higher end for both the small and the larger towns. Um I did look for some back information trying to find like when those were actually set up or what some of the reasoning was behind that and I did not find necessarily that

information from a city perspective. Um, but by gathering this information, uh, I've provided some key points here on why the city maybe would like to look at a fee reduction, um, for getting new people into Orbana and new construction and the fees that come with that. And then um I did get a good question from council member Vasi in regards to what our current dollars are that we actually have in these connections. Um I had to pull it up on my phone because I think I forgot to print it off for myself, but I think I uh sent it off to all of you. the two water sewer meters that every home has, new construction now has to have the second meter purchased. So, those meters are $175 each. So, that's $350 in um the meters. We do now have our system moved to the radio so that it reads the live data. A radio um for new construction homes is considered a dual radio. So it brings both um meters and that is $200. Small fee for like couplings for when those are installed or and that's only if we do not install them, the contractor, the plumber does, and then a city employee will go out and do the inspection. Um so those are full small fees. The approximate time in that is probably an hour for an employee. I did put in here that you would have to maybe consider the impact on long term for you know more new construction obviously adds to the utility mains. Um so I found that the total that the city has in um the sewer and the water is 610.

And yeah, really I don't have much to add other than um I know it's it's pretty high fee can you know um I think there was a comment by