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.  The agenda includes:

• 18. Staff Report regarding Interim Traffic Control Plan for the Intersection of Hyde and 190th Street. Traffic safety at the intersection of Hyde and 190th Street on the north border of Ames has been an ongoing problem, particularly during the 7am-8am hours on weekdays. Responding to Story County and Ames City Council requests to accelerate improvements, staff recommends installing a temporary traffic signal and adjusting speed limits while awaiting a deeper study of this traffic corridor.
  
  Council voted 5-0 (Councilmember Junck was absent at this meeting) to install a temporary signal at this location. This intersection (and others along the corridor) are scheduled for a more in-depth traffic study during the '22/'23 fiscal year, so the signal is meant to be a fix until then. Two members of the public spoke in favor of this temporary fix, as well as moving up the date of the traffic study if possible.
  
  
   
• 19. Downtown Parking Permits for Chamber Indoor Events. The Ames Chamber of Commerce has recently renovated an event space for up to 60 people in their Main Street building. But the free parking behind Main Street has a four-hour parking limit, so it isn't well suited to all-day events. Staff is proposing a permit system whereby the Chamber could provide all-day parking passes for these events. Each permit would be priced to cover the cost of a vehicle being parked at a downtown meter all day.  
  
  Council voted 4-1 (Betcher voting Nay) to allow this to proceed as a pilot program, with instruction to staff to reach out to the Main St. parking input group for their feedback on its implementation. The City will charge $4.50 per spot under this model, to recoup the cost of metered parking.
• 20. Resolution approving Agreement for Transportation Data & Analytics Subscription Service with Street Light Data, Inc., of San Francisco, California, for August 30, 2021 to October 31, 2024, in an amount not to exceed $105,666.67. The City currently has a subscription contract with StreetLight Data, Inc., which uses anonymized mobile device data and City fleet/navigational devices to gather vehicle origin/destination data, trip attributes (including "socioeconomic data"), segment travel times and speeds, segment traffic volumes, intersection traffic volumes, truck/commercial truck data, and vehicle route choices. The City uses this information for speed studies, traffic studies, and transportation planning activities. Coming up on a subscription renewal, staff recommends expanding the service to include multi-modal data & analytics for pedestrians, bicycles, and transit (CyRide). Staff anticipates that this would be beneficial for multi-modal planning efforts, including the Ames Bike-Ped Master Plan and Wayfinding implementation.
  
  After questions about how this company protects user privacy while also gathering location data (which staff were able to adequately address), Council voted 5-0 to proceed with this subscription service.
• 23. Hearing on rezoning property located at 525-6th Street from Residential Medium Density (RM) to Special Purpose Government/Airport District (SGA). Council has supported using this land to provide parking that will be lost in construction of the new Downtown Plaza; this agenda item rezones the property to our "governmental" zone (S-GA) to facilitate the new use.
  
  By the way, the City previously designated this land for affordable housing and purchased it using federal funds for that purpose. However, it eventually became clear that affordable housing developers weren't interested in partnering to build housing here. So, Council voted to reimburse HUD for the estimated market value of $198,000 for this land, freeing it up for the current parking project. These funds will actually be repurposed towards infrastructure for the Baker subdivision affordable housing project, increasing the overall level of support for that effort. We're still eagerly waiting to hear whether our funding applications for the Baker subdivision will be approved at the state level, but that $198,000 should be helpful no matter what happens there.
  
  Two members of the public spoke about the need for more low-income housing, especially low-income rental housing, and they asked Council to seek another round of bids for this parcel to be developed as such. Council heard from Staff the difficulties in finding a "qualified" developer (one who can meet the rigorous federal standards required) who would be able/interested in developing this property. As David mentioned above, the funds for this parcel can be transferred to the efforts to develop the Baker subdivision at the old Middle School location. Council voted 5-0 to proceed with the rezoning as recommended in the staff report.
  
  

Communications to Council: None this week!

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