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 at City Hall. There is currently no mechanism to address Council during our live meetings using Zoom or other online services, so if you would like to speak, then please plan to attend. The agenda is available at this link. The evening begins with a meeting of the Ames Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and is followed by a Joint Meeting of the Ames Human Relations Commission and Ames City Council:

• 1. Presentation of Annual Report. This report details the activities taken by the Ames Human Relation Commission in the past year and provides an opportunity to provide direction for future Commission activities. 
  
  The AHRC gave their annual report, part of which includes statistics on claims of discrimination filed with the state (Iowa Civil Rights Commission) relating to employment, housing, education, and other services. The Ames HRC does not investigate such claims in-house, but rather sends these cases to the ICRC for investigation.Of the 36 complaints filed in 2020 from Ames, 5 resulted in a right-to-sue letter, meaning the ICRC's investigation found them to be legitimate claims of discrimination. These 5 were all related to employment, claiming retaliation or discrimination based on several factors, including race, disability, sexual orientation, and age. 

This will be followed by the Regular City Council Meeting. Highlights include:
 

• 24. Staff Report on 12th Street and Duff Avenue Pedestrian Crossing. In this item, staff responds to a letter from McFarland Clinic requesting improvements to pedestrian safety at the 12th St. crosswalk across Duff Avenue by outlining three options they have considered and seeking Council direction on how to proceed. While the report doesn't express a preference among these options, it does note that the McFarland Clinic and neighborhood response to the idea of closing 12th St. at Duff Avenue was "overwhelmingly negative."
  
  Following a presentation by staff, Council voted 5-1 to take no action on the current crosswalk configuration (Beatty-Hansen voting Nay). We then voted 5-1 (Gartin voting Nay) to direct staff to conduct a targeted speed study on this road section, considering the potential for lowering the speed limit to 25 in the Hospital/Medical zone.
• 25. Motion authorizing staff to solicit and engage professional engineering services for a sidewalk/path infill assessment project at 1305 Dickinson Avenue, 4535 Mortensen Road, and/or 4515 Mortensen Road for Mortensen Road Sidewalk Infill Project if installation has not been completed by the property owners on or before July 23, 2021. These addresses correspond to segments of Mortensen Road where no sidewalk exists. While the City generally requires sidewalks to be built whenever properties are developed, no such development has taken place on these properties, so that particular trigger for construction has not yet kicked in. However, a substantial amount of housing has been built to the west of here, and that leaves many of those residents without reasonable pedestrian access to the rest of the City. In November of 2019, responding to a citizen request, Council asked City staff to contact the owners of the missing sidewalk properties to determine how to get these sidewalks built. In February of 2020, Council agreed to give the owners until July 1, 2021 to complete the sidewalks on their own before directing the City to build them and charge the costs back to the owners with a special assessment. The sidewalks have still not been built. Now the property owners are indicating that installation will begin forthwith... and Staff is recommending that Council authorize them to proceed with a City-based sidewalk construction effort if the property owners have not actually begun installation work by July 23. 
  
  Council voted 6-0 to begin this infill assessment project.
• 26. Staff Report on Status of Reinvestment District Projects (No action requested at this time.). On June 25, the Iowa Economic Development Commission approved provisional Reinvestment District funding in the amount of $10 million towards the concept outlined in Ames's proposal. Hooray! Most notably, this anticipated $10 million would offset the cost of the $27.5 million indoor aquatics center intended to eventually replace our current Municipal Pool when it's demolished in 2022. In this agenda item, City staff presents financial alternatives that Council should consider to pay for the project as a whole. Some amount of financing is going to be necessary simply because we have to pay for construction up front, while Reinvestment District funds will trickle in over the next 20 years.
  
  Basically, Council has to decide (though not at this meeting) how much of the financing to put to a public vote, if any. In my view, that decision depends on the answers to two key questions: (1) is an indoor pool in Ames along these lines an essential city facility or more of an optional amenity? and (2) how confident are we that the Reinvestment District income will actually hit the $10 million target, given that this income depends on actual sales and hotel/motel usage over the next 20 years in the designated downtown area of Ames? 
  
  Staff gave their update on these Reinvestment District projects, and Council voted 6-0 to put a discussion about funding on our next agenda. At our next meeting, we will discuss if/how to issue the funding for the pool project, whether through a public referendum or by issuing the bonds ourselves and risking a 'reverse referendum'.
• 27. Resolution awarding Downtown Facade Grants for improvements at 108 Main Street, 209 and 211 Main Street, and 301 Main Street. The Downtown Façade Grant Program incentivizes properties to improve their streetscape appearance in a historically appropriate way through matching grants funded from the "community betterment" portion of Ames's 1% Local Option Sales Tax. This agenda item presents applications from four properties and recommends funding them up to the available grant program balance.
  
  Council voted 6-0 to approve these Downtown Facade Grant requests.
• 29. Hearing on Rezoning with Master Plan of 4514 and 4605 Hyde Avenue from Agricultural (A) to Suburban Residential Low Density (FS-RL). The applicant for this "Auburn Trail" land is proposing rezoning for construction of 98 to 111 detached single-family houses and 50 to 70 townhomes. The applicant has also expressed interest in using the recently created "Planned Unit Development" overlay zoning tool to develop part of the site as small lot homes. City staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission recommend approval subject to completion of a simultaneous contract ensuring that that land will be developed in accordance with conservation subdivision requirements (due to its location with the Ada Hayden watershed) and that city infrastructure will be extended through some adjacent county land to connect with the anticipated Hayden's Preserve (formerly Rose Prairie) development.
  
  This rezoning requested passed 6-0, though the project itself will be back in front of Council when the Master Plan is complete because this area is part of a conservation overlay that is more restrictive than some other developable areas.
   
  

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. 
 

• Overnight Parking in Downtown. The Ames Main Street organization writes asking the City to implement an overnight permitting requirement for downtown parking. 

• CDBG Requests. This letter from The Bridge Home presents data and concerns related to the City's Community Development Block Grant affordable housing programs.

Thanks for reading,

Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen
Ames City Council, At Large