Bronwyn's Council Review

As usual for the review, my comments are red and italicized in the context of the latest Council Preview by David Martin.
 

The Ames City Council meets on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. on Zoom.  The agenda includes:
 

• 11. Resolution approving appointments to various Boards and Commissions. Thank you to everyone who applied to serve on a City Board or Commission! In this item, Council is being asked to approve the Mayor's recommendations for these appointments.
  
  This item passed 6-0 as part of the consent agenda.
• 22. Small Arts Grant Program. This trial program will offer competitive grants for small arts projects that will benefit the residents of Ames and contribute to making Ames a fun and vibrant community. A total of $10,000 has been made available for the program. At this point, Council is only being asked to approve the criteria for grant applications. Look for later announcements on the final application criteria and application deadlines.
  
  The grant application criteria presented in this staff report passed 6-0, with no changes.
• 23. Discussion regarding citizen’s request for a policy pertaining to pulling items from the Consent Agenda. Like many organizations, our Council uses a consent process to expedite its meetings. Our agendas explain that "All items listed under the Consent Agenda will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a request is made prior to the time the Council members vote on the motion." The issue now is exactly what happens after a request to pull an item from the consent agenda has been made. Our current practice is that after pulling an item from the consent agenda, we treat it like the any other non-consent item, with Council discussion, motions, and votes. The possibility that Council might discuss or vote against something is implicit in every agenda item, consent or not; that's the point of putting things on an agenda. However, it has been suggested that when an item is pulled from the consent agenda, our procedure should either encourage or require Council to postpone the item to a future meeting. I believe the theory is that this additional delay would allow interested parties to take additional notice that Council plans to discuss the item and/or possibly vote against the city staff's recommended action. 
  
  After input from the constituent who requested this item, Councilmember Betcher moved to add a requirement that if a Councilmember wanted to pull an item from consent to follow a course of action other than the one recommended by staff, they would be required to move to table that item until the next meeting. This motion failed 2-4 (Betcher and Gartin voting aye, Beatty-Hansen, Corrieri, Junck, and Martin voting nay). 
• 24. Resolution approving Historic Preservation Commission Recommended Preservation Plan Amendments. "In the past year, the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) has reviewed in detail the goals, objectives, and action steps of the Ames Comprehensive Historic Preservation Plan that City Council adopted in November 2009. Following this review, HPC is recommending changes to update, clarify, delete, or add to the goals, objectives, and action steps of the Plan." While HPC's six main goals are mostly unchanged, there are some more substantial changes to objects and action steps that fall within those goals.
  
  After a presentation by staff and some questions from Council, these amendments passed 6-0
• 25. Second Amendment to Pre-Annexation Agreement with Rose Prairie, LLC. The Rose Prairie developers are asking to amend their 2016 agreement with the City. The requested changes include altering the timing of some of the required payments for infrastructure, deferring construction of part the planned shared use path on Hyde Ave., deferring the dedication of future city park land, and widening a planned east-west shared use path through the development if the City agrees to pay for a pedestrian bridge over the waterway. My understanding is that the northernmost parcels shown in taupe below would be developed in the first phase of construction, with the yellow parts to the south coming later.
  
  The amendments suggested by staff (and described above) all passed, 6-0. 
  
  
   
• 26. Staff Report regarding Community Gardens & Food Forests. The City's community gardens are individually rented plots or raised beds. Last year, Council asked staff to explore what could be done to either better utilize the current community gardens or increase the community garden space. Additionally, we asked for information about a potential "food forest." In a food forest, participants share the responsibility of maintaining and cultivating the vegetation and additionally share the produce. In addition, the plants in a food forest work together in a way that benefits each other, similar to the way they co-evolve in a natural ecosystem. Following up on Council requests for expanded community garden and food forest options, the Parks and Recreation department held Zoom meetings and conducted an email survey. The Parks and Recreation Commission and staff considered this feedback and recommend adding space and water facilities to the existing Carr Park community garden, establishing a new community garden at the east side of 830 Delaware Ave., and holding off on development of a food forest on Billy Sunday Road at least until more is known about the potential relocation of the Ames Animal Shelter.
  
  Staff presented this proposal, and Council voted 6-0 to proceed. This includes adding more raised beds and a source of water at Carr Park as well as developing a new garden at the Delaware Ave. site, but considering alternate locations and waiting on an installation of a food forest.
• 27. Motion approving/denying renewal of Class C Liquor License with Outdoor Service & Sunday Sales - Sips and Paddy’s Irish Pub 126 Welch Ave, pending Dram Shop Insurance. This memo reports that "At this time, the Police Department would not recommend a renewal of Sips/Paddy’s Irish Pub license for the next year," due to 20 on-premises citations being made in 2021 alone. However, the memo also mentions the possibility of approving a liquor license with a 6-month timeframe, during which the Police Department would continue to monitor the above location with regular foot patrols, bar checks and by educating the bar staff through trainings and quarterly meetings.
  
  Instead of renewing their license for one year, Council moved for a six-month renewal, which passed 6-0. (Interestingly, the bar owner reported staff having confiscated hundreds of fake IDs in the past month alone.)
• 28. Hearing on proposed change of use designation for the City-owned properties located at 519, 525, and 601 Sixth Street. These properties were originally purchased using federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds for affordable housing, but the City was never able to attract an affordable housing developer for the site. Later, the City purchased 10 acres of West Ames property now known as the Baker subdivision, where we are planning to have 14 new affordable single-family homes and 37 affordable multi-family housing units constructed (pending state LIHTC approval). Given this new focus, Council determined that the Sixth Avenue lots would be an appropriate location to relocate parking that will soon be displaced by a new Downtown Plaza. To accomplish this, the City must remove the "affordable housing" designation for the Sixth Street lots and reimburse HUD appropriately, now that the Sixth Street properties won't be used for their originally envisioned purpose. A recent appraisal valued these lots at $198,000. Following these transactions, it appears that HUD may allocate all or a portion of those funds back to Ames for new programming — which we would use to complete the public infrastructure improvements at the Baker subdivision. 
  
  This item passed 6-0, with no public comment during the meeting.
• 29. Hearing on Squaw Creek Water Flood Mitigation - Tree Clearing project. To move forward with this FEMA-funded flood mitigation project, the City needs to clear trees before continuing with further construction. Due to threatened and endangered species (two bat species) requirements, the tree clearing must be completed prior to April 1, 2021. Council is being asked to award a contract to the lowest bidding firm to do this work, for a total of $74,745.
  
  This item passed 6-0 as well.
  
  

Communications to Council: The following items are requests and communications to Council that aren't published on the agenda, so we won't deliberate them substantially.  This includes staff reports and communications or requests from constituents and developers. Typically, Council will ask city staff for more information, put the item on a future agenda for deliberation and possible action, or just accept the communication, taking no further action. 
 

• FCC Emergency Broadband Benefit Summmary. The Federal Communications Commission has recently authorized a substantial benefit for lower-income households. The Emergency Broadband Benefit provides eligible low-income households with a monthly $50 discount for broadband service from participating providers, as well as a one-time $100 discount on an internet-enabled device. This includes any household with a resident who currently receives the federal Lifeline telephone benefit, is approved for the free or reduced-price school program, experienced a substantial job or income loss since February 29, 2020, or received a Pell grant in the current academic year. I understand the FCC anticipates the program and household enrollment will begin by the end of April. The City will not be directly involved in administering this benefit, but we may be able to help publicize it.
  
  Council did move 6-0 to direct staff to engage with ISPs to encourage participation and program education.

• Face Coverings in Church. An Ames church writes asking for an exemption from the City's face covering requirements.
  
  This was moved to be added to a future agenda for discussion, but that motion failed 2-4 (Gartin and Martin voting aye, Beatty-Hansen, Betcher, Corrieri, and Junck voting nay).
• Gilbert Priorities for AUFP Amendment. The City of Gilbert writes to identify areas of primary importance to then in crafting a new Ames Urban Fringe Plan.
  
  No action was required at this time, but we did acknowledge receipt of this letter.

• Green Burials. A resident writes asking whether the City could allow "green burials" in our municipal cemeteries.
  
  This item was referred to staff for a memo, 5-1 (Gartin voting nay).

• Parking Lot Repair. A local business writes asking whether assistance is available for repair of a parking lot that is also used for ingress/egress by neighboring businesses. 
  
  Council declined to take action on this item with a vote of 6-0.

• Story County Water Monitoring & Interpretation Plan. Prairie Rivers of Iowa has convened a large group of stakeholders to take a comprehensive look at stream and lake monitoring in Story County and is offering to make a presentation to Council about this plan on March 23, if Council is interested. 
  
  Council moved 6-0 to put this on the agenda on March 23rd for a presentation.

Thanks for reading,
Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen
Ames City Council,  At Large