December 14, 2004 Meeting Minutes

December 14 , 2004

The Board of Commissioners of the City of Lawrence met in regular session at 6:35 p.m. in the City Commission Chambers in City Hall with Mayor Rundle presiding and members, Dunfield, Hack, Highberger, and Schauner present. Student Commissioner Justin Isbell was present.

RECOGNITION/PROCLAMATION/PRESENTATION: None

CONSENT AGENDA

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to approve the City Commission meeting minutes of November 23, 2004 and November 30, 2004.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to receive the Board of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters meeting of October 20, 2004. Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to approve claims to 536 vendors in the amount of $2,739,797.81 and payroll from November 28, 2004 to December 11, 2004, in the amount of $1,389,383.01. Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to approve the Drinking Establishment Licenses for the Salty Iguana, 4931 West 6^th, No. 100; Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire; It’s Brothers Bar & Grill, 1105 Massachusetts; Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts; WA Restaurant, 740 Massachusetts; Fatso’s, 1016 Massachusetts; the Retail Liquor Licenses for Texas Jack’s Liquor, 3020 S Iowa, Ste: B; Parkway Wine & Sprits, 3514 Clinton Parkway No. B; the Cereal Malt Beverage Licenses (subject to the required Departmental inspections) for Alvamar Orchards, 3000 West 15^th; Amoco-Hillcrest, 914 Iowa; Amoco-Louisiana, 2301 Louisiana; Bullwinkles, 1344 Tennessee; Checker’s, 2300 Louisiana; Chips, 454 N Iowa; Ste: B; Commerce Plaza BP, 3020 Iowa; Conoco, 955 East 23^rd; Conoco-Fastlane No. 3, 1414 West 6^th; Conoco-Break Place; 2330 Iowa; Dillon Store No. 19, 4701 West 6^th; Dillon Store No. 43, 1740 Massachusetts; Dillon Store No. 68, 3000 West 6^th; Dillon Store No. 70, 1015 West 23^rd; Eagle Bend Golf Course, 1250 East 902 Rd.; Eastside Tavern, 900 Pennsylvania; El Matador, 446 Locust; Food-4-Less, 2525 Iowa; Godfather’s Pizza, 721 Wakarusa; Henry’s Crossing, 618 West 12^th; Hy-Vee Food Store, 3504 Clinton Parkway; Hy-Vee Gas Station, 4020 West 6^th; Hy-Vee No. 2, 4000 West 6^th; Jayhawk Food Mart, 701 West 9^th; KOA Campground, 1473 Hwy 40; KWIK Shop No. 702, 1846 Massachusetts; KWIK Shop No. 718, 3440 West 6^th; KWIK Shop No. 721, 845 Mississippi; KWIK Shop No. 773, 1714 West 23^rd; KWIK Shop No. 784, 1420 Kasold; KWIK Shop No. 785, 1611 East 23^rd; KWIK Shop No. 786, 4841 West 6^th; Lawrence Food Mart, 3300 West 6^th; Mini Mart (Citco), 902 North 2^nd; Mojo’s, 714 Vermont Ste; A; Pick N Pay, 2447 West 6^th; Pizza Hut, 4651 West 6^th; Pizza Hut, 600 West 23^rd; Pizza Hut, 934 Massachusetts; Presto Convenience No. 39, 1030 North 3^rd; Presto Convenience No. 31, 1802 West 23^rd; Quick’s Bar-B-Q, 1527 West 6^th; River City Ice Co., 4910 Wakarusa Court, Ste: C; Rock Chalk Car Wash, 1215 East 23^rd; Sam’s Food Mart, 1910 Haskell; Site Service Station, 946 East 23^rd; St. John’s Church, 1229 Vermont; Star Food Mart, 501 West 9^th; Super Target, 3201 Iowa; Texaco-Fastrack, 1733 Massachusetts; Wheat State Pizza, 711 West 23^rd, Ste: 19; Yello Sub, 1814 West 23^rd; Zarco No. 4, 1500 East 23^rd; and Zarco No. 6, 1415 West 6^th. Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to concur with the recommendation of the Mayor and appoint Michael Randolph to the Neighborhood Resources Advisory Board, to a term which will expire September 30, 2007. Motion carried unanimously.

The City Commission reviewed the bid for the Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa Relief Project for the Utilities Department. The bids were:

BIDDER BID AMOUNT

Engineer’s Estimate $97,640.00

Nowak Construction Co. $79,185.00

Wildcat Construction Co. $79,505.00

Redford Construction $135,532.00

Garney Companies, Inc. $143,877.50

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to Nowak Construction Co., in the amount of $79,185.00. Motion carried unanimously. (1)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to authorize the City Manager to enter into a contract with RD Johnson in the amount of $56,431.30 for completion of technical specifications for concrete work for bus bay and shelter relocation and installation contract at various sites. Motion carried unanimously. (2)

The City Commission reviewed the bid for the 2005 Water Treatment Chemicals for the Utilities. The bids were:

PRODUCT	VENDOR	BID
QUICK LIME – BULK, PEBBLES	Mississippi Lime Company	$87.68/ ton*
	Global Stone Corporation	91.00/ ton
QUICK LIME – BULK, POWDER	Global Stone Corporation	91.00/ ton*
	Mississippi Lime Company	107.68/ton
CHLORINE – 1 TON CYLINDER	G.S. Robins	Not Acceptable
	DPC Industries	569.00/ ton*
	Brentag Mid South	626.00/ ton
POWDERED ACTIVATED CARBON – BULK	NORIT	600.00/ton*
	Cal Pacific Carbon	620.00/ ton
	Advanced Chemical Solutions	630.00/ton
	Carbochem	704.00/ton
	G.S. Robins & Co.	744.00/ ton
	Polydyne	750.00/ton
	Univar	793.40/ ton
CARBON DIOXIDE – BULK	EPCO	49.00/ton*
	Air Liquide	51.90/ ton
	Ethanol Products	52.00/ton
	BOC Gases	120.00/ ton
SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE – 50# BAGS	Calci Quest	1080.00/ton*
	Carus Chemical Co.	1109.80/ton
	Carus Chemical Co. Alternate	194.70/drun
	Shannon Chemical Corp.	1127.27/ ton
	Univar	1140.00/ton
	Summit Chemical	1289.00/ton
	Brentag Mid South	1410.00/ton
	NALCO Co.	1420.00/ton
	G.S. Robins & Co.	1560.00/ton
SODIUM SILICOFLUORIDE – 50# BAGS	Brentag Mid South	628.00/ton*
	Harcros Chemicals	637.00/ton
	Univar	650.00/ton
	GS Robins & Company	700.00/ton
	Shannon Chemical	874.74/ton
SODA ASH – BULK	Univar	189.50/ton*
	Harcros Chemicals	198.50/ton
	BHS Marketing	201.00/ ton
	G.S. Robins	215.50/ton
AQUA AMMONIA – BULK	Harcros Chemicals	155.40/ ton*
	Univar	214.00/ton
	GS Robins & Company	340.00/ton
ALUMINUM SULFATE – BULK	Univar	254.00/ ton*
	G.S. Robins & Co.	257.00/ ton
	Harcros Chemicals	269.00/ ton
	General Chemical Corp.	325.00/ ton
	GEO Specialty Chemicals	355.00/ton
POLYMER – BULK	Polydyne, Inc.	570.00/ton*
	Univar	680.00/ ton
	NALCO Co.	756.00/ton
	Consolidated	N/A
QUICK LIME – BULK, PEBBLES	Mississippi Lime Company	87.68/ ton
	Global Stone Corporation	91.00/ ton
QUICK LIME –PEBBLES, 96%	Mississippi Lime Company	87.68/ton*
SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE – BULK	Brenntag Mid-South	.784 /gal*
	DPC Industries	.84/gal
	Univar	.867/ gal
	Vertex Chemical	.96/ gal
	G.S. Robins & Co.	.98/gal
SODIUM BISULFITE – BULK	Univar	1.3649/gal*
	G.S. Robins & Co.	1.405/gal
	Advanced Chemical	1.41/gal
	Harcros Chemicals	1.55/gal
	Brenntag Mid-South	1.56/gal
	PVS Chemical Solutions	1.99 /gal
FERRIC CHLORIDE – BULK	Kemiron Company	.68/gal*
	OFS, Inc.	.744/gal
	PVS Technologies	.87/gal
	OFS, Inc., Alternate	.994/gal
	Univar	.721/gal
	Fini Enterprises	.8738/gal
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATTE	Univar	1.535/lb*
	G.S. Robins & Co.	1.59/lb
	Brentag Mid-South	1.71/lb
	Harcros Chemicals	1.72/lb
	Altivia Corporation	2.8328/lb
POLYMER, TOTES	Polydyne, Inc.	2,271.15*
	Polydyne, Inc. (alternate bid)	2,315.25
	Univar	2,860.00
	Consolidated Equipment	3,858.75
	Consolidated Equipment, Alt	3,297.60
	Consolidated Equipment, Alt	3,297.60
	Fort Bend Services	3,344.00
FERROUS CHLORIDE, 1025 N. MN	OFS, Inc.	.744/gal*
	Kemiron	.76/gal
FERROUS CHLORIDE, 3613 Brush Creek	OFS, Inc.	.744/gal*
	Kemiron	1.41/gal
FERROUS CHLORIDE, 720 Grant	OFS, Inc.	.744/gal*
	Kemiron	.76/gal

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to award the bids as marked with an (*). Motion carried unanimously. (3)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to authorize the City Manager to execute an agreement with Tischler & Associates, Inc., for a Fiscal Impact Study (Phase I), in the amount of $12,800. Motion carried unanimously. (4)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to authorize the City Manager to enter into a contract with Bartlett and West Engineering in the amount not to exceed $313,702.30 for detailed design and construction phase services for North Lawrence Pump Stations 1, 2, and 3 Improvement Projects. Motion carried unanimously.

(5)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to authorize the City Manager to enter into a contract with Nutri-ject Systems, Inc., in the amount of $106,000 for Biosolids land application services for 2005. Motion carried unanimously. (6)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to set a bid opening date of January 4, 2005 for the Neighborhood Resources Comprehensive Rehabilitation Projects at 811 East 11^th Street and 2236 East Drive. Motion carried unanimously. (7)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to place on first reading, Ordinance No. 7799, rezoning (Z-04-15-04) a tract of land containing approximately 26.712 acres from A (Agricultural District) to RS-2 (Single-Family Residential District); the property is generally described as being located north of Harvard Road. Motion carried unanimously. (8)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to place on first reading, Ordinance No. 7849, establishing “reserved parking for persons with disabilities” in front of 1505 Vermont Street. Motion carried unanimously. Motion carried unanimously. (9)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to place on first reading, Ordinance No. 7850, establishing that traffic shall yield on 29^th Street at Kensington Drive. Motion carried unanimously. (10)

Ordinance No. 7847, establishing “no parking” along the south side of Kresge Road along the entire frontage of 601 North Iowa Street, was read a second time. As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to adopt the ordinance. Aye: Dunfield, Hack, Highberger, Rundle, and Schauner. Nay: None. Motion carried unanimously. (11)

Ordinance No. 7843, establishing maximum special assessments for the improvement of Lake Point Drive, was read a second time. As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to adopt the ordinance. Aye: Dunfield, Hack, Highberger, Rundle, and Schauner. Nay: None. Motion carried unanimously. (12)

Ordinance No. 7848, establishing maximum special assessments for the improvement of 3^rd Street, Alabama Street to Illinois Street, was read a second time. As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to adopt the ordinance. Aye: Dunfield, Hack, Highberger, Rundle, and Schauner. Nay: None. Motion carried unanimously.

(13)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to adopt Resolution No. 6574, declaring the boundaries of the City of Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas. Motion carried unanimously. (14)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to approve the site plan (SP-08-56-04) for Cornerstone Plaza 2, a site plan for the construction of a commercial building, located at 1981 East 23^rd Street, subject to the following conditions:

1. Execution of a site plan performance agreement per Section 20-1433;

2. Provision of a photometric plan per staff approval, prior is release of the site plan for issuance of a building permit;

3. Recording of Final Plat with Register of Deeds Office prior to release of the site plan for issuance of a building permit.;

4. Provision of a revised site plan that includes the following:

a. Revised contour lines to match approved drainage study per the approval of the City Stormwater Engineer;

b. Show proposed storm sewer extension to the north and note public improvement plans per the approval of the City Stormwater Engineer;

c. Show location of cross access easement; and

5. Submission and approval of public improvement plans for sewer, water and stormwater improvements prior to release of the site plan for issuance of a building permit.

Motion carried unanimously. (15)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to authorize the City Manager to sign the Project Information Form for the Save America’s Treasures Grant from the NPS. Motion carried unanimously. (16)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to authorize the Mayor to sign a Subordination Agreement for Diane Bucia, 333 Johnson Avenue. Motion carried unanimously. (17)

Commissioner Schauner pulled from the consent agenda for discussion, the Planning Commission recommendations to adopt the findings of fact and approve the Use Permitted Upon Review (UPR-09-03-04) for Village Meadows Retirement Community. The property is generally described as being located north of West 6^th Street and west of Congressional Drive.

He said he did not have any particular problem with the Village Meadows Retirement Community as a use at that location, but as a Use Permitted Upon Review, but asked if that property was rezoned as requested, would that zoning remain even if the Village Meadows Retirement Community was not built.

Paul Patterson, Planning, said the rezoning request was separated from this Use Permitted Upon Review because the applicant originally applied for RO-2 rezoning other than RO-1, but which the applicant had now applied for. This issue would be heard by the Planning Commission and would come before the City Commission in January. This recommendation came forward to the City Commission with staff recommendation contingent upon a replatting of the property so until the property was replatted, the zoning would not be perfected and would not be published.

Commissioner Schauner said if this area was replatted and the zoning became RO-1B, even if the applicant did not build the Village Retirement Center that zoning would remain.

Patterson said correct.

Commissioner Schauner asked if the zoning could be conditioned upon that project being built.

Patterson said no, not to his understanding.

David Corliss, Assistant City Manager, asked if the zoning was conventional zoning.

Patterson said yes.

Corliss said under the current code, the City Commission did not have the authority to condition conventional zoning based on one particular use. If the City Commission wanted to condition the use of the property, the UPR was the best vehicle to condition.

Commissioner Schauner said he was concerned about the underlying zoning rather than the UPR itself.

He asked if it was Patterson’s answer that the City Commission could not condition the rezoning upon that particular UPR.

Patterson said the application for the UPR that was before the City Commission and a separate application for zoning would be heard at a later date. He said the UPR and zoning were two separate items. He said the conventional zoning generally could not be conditioned upon a specific project.

Corliss said as the zoning application stood now, the City Commission did not have the authority, if that application came before the City Commission with a positive recommendation from the Planning Commission, to condition that conventional zoning based upon that particular use.

Commissioner Schauner asked if the Planning Commission could condition the rezoning upon that particular UPR.

Corliss said no. The Planning Commission could recommend a different type of zoning to perhaps accomplish the same use and condition that use under the Planned Unit Development.

Mayor Rundle called for public comment.

Gwen Klingenberg, Lawrence, said the neighbors were excited about having a retirement home at that location, but the neighbors would like that location to be a Planned Unit Development because that type of zoning would guarantee that area would be a retirement home.

She said their concern was that it was Patterson’s opinion that there would need to be a lot of changes to the preliminary plan such as the buffer zone and several other changes. She asked if the UPR could be placed with the zoning.

Vice Mayor Highberger said he understood the neighbors concern, but it seemed that before anything was built on that site, there would need to be a site plan. If the site plan was not consistent with the UPR, the City Commission would have the chance to address the situation at that point.

Commissioner Schauner said it was not his concern that the site plan be consistent with the UPR, but the underlying zoning that would permit other uses. He said he would like to see the UPR and zoning be tied back together and let the Planning Commission take a look at the issue as a whole rather than causing them to be reviewed separately. He said that would provide the neighbors with comfort and he did not see the project being delayed. (18)

CITY MANAGER’S REPORT:

During the City Manager’s report, Mike Wildgen said concerning 27^th Street (SLT) staff received a call from the State Traffic Engineer for KDOT in which they indicated that they would add 5 additional warning signs on the SLT. He said staff would be looking at the pedestrian bike path and signage for that path as well as approaches to the sports complex .

Wildgen reported that staff had received bids for Fire Station No. 5. He said the estimate was not good because the lowest bid was approximately a half million dollars higher than the engineers estimate. He said staff was working with the architect to see what could be done to redefine that project.

Wildgen also acknowledged Ron Hall, Director, Information Systems, for his work in the E-Government Program in which the City would receive an award that would be presented at the ICMA University’s Best Practices Symposium in Austin, Texas in April, 2005.

Commissioner Schauner said he had a question about the Wakarusa traffic headed south toward the SLT. He asked if it was possible to move that stop sign in front of the pedestrian way. He said the comments that he had received from the public was that the way those were configured made it more treacherous for pedestrians. He said one reason was because that crosswalk was not marked, it was worn off. The second reason was if the stop sign was further up the road, it might provide some additional protection for pedestrians.

Wildgen said City staff looked at those types of issues and it was not a KDOT issue. He said staff would review it. (19)

REGULAR AGENDA ITEMS:

Consider approving (subject to conditions) SP-09-61-04: City of Lawrence Evidence Storage Facility, a site plan for the change of use of existing buildings from industrial/building manufacturing use to a storage facility. The property is located at 900 East 15^th Street.

Sandra Day, Planner, presented the staff report. She said the site plan before the City Commission was for the reuse of buildings on existing developed property on the north side of 15^th Street. The total property was approximately 2 ½ acres. There were two existing buildings that would be the area of use and the remainder of the property, not quite two acres, would be retained in open space for the site. The subject property would be used as evidence storage and would be enclosed with a fence as well as a controlled gated access to the site. There was no proposed lighting associated other than the lighting that was at the building entrances. The use of the parking lot and the buildings was consistent with the previous uses. In terms of the zoning, the area was zoned M-2 (General Industrial District) that allowed a wide range of uses. The proposed site plan, because there had been site plans in the past, could have been addressed administratively, but given the concern and the public issues related to the site, this item had been brought to the City Commission for consideration.

This property had also been considered by the Historic Resources Commission to deal with the site improvements that were proposed such as fencing and the addition of an antenna for two way communication between the police facility and the other facilities.

Commissioner Schauner asked what the height of the antenna was.

Day said the antenna would be a total of 81 feet between the structure that the antenna would be mounted on and the antenna itself which was consistent with what was approved in 1998 when that area was Capitol Concrete Products.

Commissioner Schauner asked if the antenna was a monopole or something else.

Day said staff would probably call the antenna a monopole. The antenna was not a conventional tower structure, but a pole with an antenna mounted to it. The pole was not designed to have other carriers.

Vice Mayor Highberger said it was his understanding that neighborhood representatives were involved in that process.

Day said she had not been involved in that part of the process, but believed that other City staff were involved in talking with the members of the public.

Mike Wildgen, City Manager, said staff met with the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association, at least twice, the Turneys several times and also representatives of the property owners.

Mayor Rundle said he noticed this issue was in the 2002 Capital Improvement Plan, but it was not in the 2003 or 2004 CIP. He asked if this issue had been a discussion at staff level. He mentioned the alternative for use of this property was for evidence storage, and asked if there was any broader explanation or other alternatives.

Wildgen said when the City first bought this property, he brought the concept to the City Commission that there could be alternative uses for those two buildings and those buildings did not necessarily need to be torn down. He said he believed this use was in more than one Capital Improvement Plan.

He said staff had not addressed the idea of leasing the property or building other buildings, but staff was aiming to reuse one-fourth of this property and the remainder of the property would be undeveloped open space. He said staff had examined whether the LEC or the facility on 15^th Street could be used for storage, but staff did not believe those buildings could be used for that type of use.

Mayor Rundle called of public comment.

Austin Turney, owner of property at 15^th and Pennsylvania, said he had some concern about the site plan for the Police Evidence Storage Facility. He said his property was the Samuel Riggs House and grounds that were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but from the standpoint of the Historic Resource Commission this area had been a mixed use area since 1867. He said his property was somewhat screened by trees. However, he did not intend or want to either build a fence or create a shelter belt on their property for further screening.

He said he had a visit with Day sometime ago. At that time, he requested screening on the west wall of the building that was closest to his property to soften the appearance of that industrial building. He said it would also be the closest to any residential property that would be eventually built on the property next to it which was zoned residential. He said Day suggested screening along the fence line, but so far there was no commitment to do any screening on that side of the building, so they were formally making that request to the Commission. To be fully effective the fencing would need to be 10 to 12 feet high because the trees on the fence were old hackberries.

As a side comment was that the 15^th Street side of the east building was now quite unattractive, there was a range of 5 windows, two windows have closed blinds, the next two windows were covered on the inside by some type of plywood, and the 5^th window carried a window air conditioner and was covered on the outside by white painted wood. The total effect was tacky, that was no personal concern to him, but it was part of the general affect because the shrubbery in front was intended to be taken out.

Beyond those two matters the plan that they had reviewed for screening and landscaping was reasonable, but they had other concerns in the long-run. The site plan carried a number of restrictions. He asked Day what the process would be if the Police decided to modify or eliminate those restrictions. He said Day said, “some sort of an administrative review” and Day was not able to tell him whether there would be any notice to the neighbors. He said in light of that they were inclined to believe that those restrictions might be lifted at any time. He said those restrictions were beneficial to the neighbors.

He discussed the more important restrictions. He said the site plan allowed for a communication tower up to 100 feet tall. He said Day said that the initial plan was for an antenna, tonight he learned it was an 81 foot monopole. However, in the future as he understood it there could be an administrative decision to replace that with a tower as much as 100 feet tall of the type used for commercial communication and he was sensitive to that type of use because the School District received an application from commercial sources to convert a light pole at Free State High School and there was sufficient financial inducement for the School District to do that. He said if that type of tower was built in that location, it would be negative to the neighborhood.

He said security lighting was needed which was another one of the conditions because of the nature of the material stored and the fact that the facility would not be manned at all times. Those lights would be on all night, every night and it would increase the amount of light in the area. He said it was important that these lights be directed so that they illuminate only the immediate area and do not shine out into the neighborhood. At present one light on the wall of the east building shined directly on their front porch. Light should not be installed on the west side of the west building which was the area closest to residences.

He said the alarm should be silent and dogs should not be used as a security measure.

There was some neighborhood concern that the material stored would be possibly attractive to thieves with resulting night time troubles.

Other conditions were that traffic should be limited from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and from the neighborhood standpoint, from Monday – Friday, it would be to the maximum extent possible because this would have minimal effect on the residential neighborhood particularly if night traffic could be avoided; signs that identify the use of the facility should be avoided; barbed or razor wire that gave the appearance of a detention facility should not be used; and most importantly was the prohibition of storage of weapons or drugs because this was vital to the security and comfort level of the neighbors.

He said all of those issue were important and the neighbors did not feel that those restrictions could be lifted at some point.

He said if the Commission approved the site plan as it was or modified that the Police and City Administration would always keep in mind that this was in a middle of a residential neighborhood and it needed to be well maintained and as unintrusive as possible.

He said they must expect that this facility would reduce the sales of residential property for an indefinite distance into the surrounding neighborhood. Persons considering purchase or rental, once they were told that this was police evidence storage, might quite reasonably decide they would prefer to live elsewhere. He said the neighborhood was being asked to make a sacrifice for the sake of using two abandoned industrial buildings.

Patricia Sinclair, Lawrence, said she was given the permission of Dr. Tom Christy to state his opposition to this project. Dr. Christy’s home was immediately east of the Samuel Riggs house, home of the Turneys.

She asked the City Commission to deny the site permit for this police evidence storage. There were many reasons for this denial, but the first should be enough. She said the first reason was that the site in question was completely surrounded by residential property. The site was in east Lawrence and the Barker neighborhood began across the street. The only park, Parnell Park, was directly across the street from this site. The property to the immediate west was a pasture with horses, a barn, and a farmhouse.

The second reason for denial was the proposed usage would detract from the surrounding properties and be visually unappealing. The proposed 81 foot tower would require a new permit and might cause interference or health risks. The new permit was based on discussion with Barry Walthall, Code Enforcement Manager, that once the tower had been down for approximately a year, a new permit needed to be issued. She said whether the tower was up in the past was a moot issue.

The fencing was taller than allowed in residential neighborhoods and unattractive vinyl coated chained link with vinyl strips woven inside would be the fencing on three sides. The site would be clearly visible from the street and the necessity for after hours use and the additional lighting might disturb residents. In other words, 24-7, if the police needed to get into this property they would access that property.

Neighbors feared that this site might be vandalized or even destroyed by those seeking to destroy evidence contained within. She said if she was a thief or a crook and her evidence was in that storage and it looked too hard to burglarize, she just might burn it. That idea was a hypothetical.

This site was within the environs of the Samuel Riggs house which was on the National Register of Historic Places.

She said Austin Turney and his wife both had spoken and written extensively about this matter and also at the East Lawrence neighborhood meetings and to the Historic Resources Commission. She said it was her understanding that those groups would rather not have it on the issue that Turney was talking about in mitigating things that would have to be on the table.

She said that site was clearly visible from this house, even with the fencing, as the house was tall and at a higher elevation from this site.

The State Historical Preservation Office had told her that the environs of the Rigg’s house were at least 500 feet, that figure was opened to interpretation and could be larger than 500 feet.

In a review by the Historic Resources Commission, those Commission members were sympathetic to the problems this project could present to the Riggs house and supportive of the Turney’s efforts to maintain that home, but they were advised by staff that they could not consider a change in usage in their vote. In fact, the visual impact of the project did negatively impact the Rigg’s house. The fencing was a change that could have been considered by the HRC and the tower would require a new permit, all reasons that the HRC could have been allowed to vote against this project, even so, two of the five members voted against the project.

She said this land was acquired with stormwater funds and the public was told after inquires last year that the land was to be for stormwater first and greenspace second. No mention was made of this proposed plan before the City Commission. She said she received those figures concerning the acquisition and dates of acquiring that land from Ed Mullins, Finance Director.

She said it had been stated that there would be greenspace north of this building and the area would not be part of the park system however, it would not be easily accessible except from the north.

Anticipated expansion needs in the future made her skeptical that this green area would remain. Many mature trees and other greenery had been removed due to the stormwater channel that had been opened and dug to the east of this property and so many trees that were going to be planted, according to the site plan, were just going towards replacing those trees that were removed as required.

The City Manager’s office had stated that because this project was in the CIP, it was public knowledge, yet this use was not known to the Planning Department when she inquired about this issue last year. The most recent CIP she had seen only mentioned retaining one building.

The City spent 3.5 million dollars to acquire property on west 15^th Street. The need for the evidence storage should have been addressed at this time and perhaps it could still be with that site. Articles in the paper at that time indicated that evidence storage was going to be part of the package that was looked at when the property was acquired and a move was made.

She said this was the kicker, the site was almost completely a floodway. As such, it was subject to the City’s code article 9A. If the City expected others to comply with its floodplain ordinance, it really must do so itself. The Code did not allow for fences in the floodplain. This was made very clear during the development of The Wood’s, that property south of this property in question, last year. She said The Wood’s wanted to fence a playground area and they were told that they were not allowed to do so. The Code also did not allow for the storage of hazardous and flammable substances which cars and evidence might contain. As a flood would wash those substances into the river and cause other environmental damages.

The word “development” was a term which was defined specifically under article 9A of the City Code. Therefore, it was different from development when thinking about the rest of the code. The word “development” was defined as “any man-made change to improved or unimproved real estate, including but not limited to buildings or other structures, levees, levee systems, mining, dredging, filling, grading, paving, excavation or drilling operations, or storage of equipment or materials.”

The City was spending over $2,000,000 in stormwater improvements with the channel east of those building which was just for the area between 15^th and 12^th Street and more money had been spent further to the south. She asked why the City would impair the drainage in this area by maintaining two buildings, paving and installing fences. She also asked why the City find a site that would allow them to provide proper security and lighting in a like industrial zone.

She said in regards to Vice Mayor Highberger’s comment about public input, she was unable to get the Barker Neighborhood to have a meeting about this issue, but she did attend her first East Lawrence Neighborhood meeting where the general consensus was the City was subject to quite a bit of mockery because someone asked about a dog and that person made light of whether there would be dogs at that location. She also said it was suggested at the meeting that their neighborhood did not want a police presence if they opposed this facility and other issues that made it quite unpleasant.

She said she did see in a file that looked like this past September letters might had gone out to those with adjacent properties. She did speak to the abutters on the west last winter and again this weekend and they said they had never been notified or talked to by the City.

She presented maps and photographs to the City Commission showing and explaining the floodplain area.

Vice Mayor Highberger asked Sinclair’s opinion whether there be any acceptable use for those buildings or should those building be bulldozed.

Sinclair said before she realized about the floodway problem she considered whether that area might have a neighborhood or community use in which she had several ideas along that line in ways that those buildings could be used on a limited and hourly basis so as to not have so much traffic or traffic at odd hours that it might be a problem for the neighbors. For example, a community meeting place, Habitat for Humanity, and clothing facility for kids in foster care, but she thought perhaps the floodway concerns would override those ideas, therefore she backed down from making any of those alternative suggestions. She said it would be nice to have greenspace because the small amount of green on the north was not anything that was contiguous to Parnell Park.

Price Banks, Attorney, speaking on behalf of Ashbury Townhomes, said they had met with staff in March to take a look at what was proposed and staff had been responsive to some of their concerns, but there were still some unanswered concerns.

One concern was a question about the sidewalk on 15^th Street and he was assuming that sidewalk would connect all the way to the east to the existing sidewalk in front of the Ashbury Townhomes. He said the City’s property abutted Ashbury Townhomes, but the City was not required to site plan all of its property, but only that portion that was being proposed for the evidence storage facility.

There were concerns in the neighborhood about the tower and he asked what the tower would look like.

Staff presented a picture of a tower similar to the type of tower proposed for the facility.

Banks said he was under the impression that the tower was either a lattice or a guide tower and both of those types of towers would be of concern. He said every time he came down to City Hall with a tower proposal, he was told that it should be a monopole.

He said the tower should be a monopole for two reasons. One reason was because a monopole was aesthetically more pleasing and the second reason was because it was difficult to climb a monopole which would make the tower less of an attractive nuisance.

He said this was a difficult site for the City because it demonstrated the worst type of planning having an M-2 (General Industrial) district in the center of a residential neighborhood, but that type of zoning was inherited. He said the City had the opportunity to mitigate that type of zoning somewhat, but it looked as though the City Commission was about to miss that opportunity unless the new zoning maps were changed. He said he looked at the zoning map and that site did not take advantage of the new local government zoning district nor the new open space district. He suggested that the area that was specifically being used as the storage facility (i.e. that portion within that enclosure) be zoned for government and the remainder be zoned open space because that might alleviate some of the neighbors concerns about the facility growing at some time in the future.

He said there was land at that location that might not have been there had they not listened to the neighbors. He said this was not a particularly good location for the use, but the City was left with a white elephant and something needed to be done.

Mayor Rundle asked about the flood regulations and their applicability.

Wildgen said staff had applied for a Floodplain Development Permit like anyone else would have to do as required by City Code. He said Chad Voigt, Stormwater Engineer, would tell the Commission that with that stormwater improvement, the floodplain would be narrower and would be changed. He said that was the whole purpose of those stormwater improvements to channel that stormwater so it did not spread out in the area.

He said regarding Price’s last suggestion, staff proposed to amend an area to allow for open space (OS zoning) and General Public Institutional Use (GPI zoning) which was on the site plan and had been proposed for approximately six months.

Commissioner Dunfield said he was glad to hear about that type of zoning because that was his understanding. He said he heard Day suggest that this tower would be a monopole.

Day said the term monopole would be the best characterization of what that tower would be.

Commissioner Dunfield asked for a clarification that the tower would not be lattice or a guide tower.

Day said correct. She said she did not have the architectural details of that structure, but in conversations with other City staff, she had been told that it was a pole type structure similar to what had been at that location previously, if not, the same piece of equipment. She said the tower was not scalable and there were no guide wires that were associated with that tower. She said staff tried to make it clear in conversations with interested persons that it was not intended to be a conventional communication tower that would typically go through different review processes.

She said given the public comment, staff was aware that changes to the site for any reason would more than likely come back to the City Commission especially if the Commission was to direct staff to that conclusion. She said that idea would address both the allowed uses table which was shown on the site plan. She said those were use restrictions that were above and beyond the zoning district, but because those were part of the site plan then those uses become enforceable. She said those uses changed through the public process making property owners aware of that through a re-site plan that would come back to the City Commission and might alleviate some of those concerns and certainly within the purview of this body.

She said as Wildgen mentioned about the floodplain, there was a floodplain development permit which was on her desk waiting to be reviewed. She said the channelization would modify that floodplain. She said many times when looking at those maps people assume that the floodway or the channel of the floodway went through the middle of the drawing which was not always the case. There were many times those streams or creek beds were to one side or the other and there was some type of embankment as there was in this case so that the fringe area was on the other side.

One of the issues staff would double check was making sure that fencing and structures were certainly specifically prohibited in any drainage easement, but how that related to the floodplain regulations was part of what staff continued to review making sure everything was going to fall in place correctly.

Commissioner Dunfield said another issue raised was the connection of the sidewalk along 15^th Street.

Wildgen said staff planned to connect the sidewalk.

Wildgen mentioned that there was comment about landscaping on the west side of the west building. He said there was a specific request for a sidewalk to connect 14^th Street to 15^th Street and that was seen on the site plan. He said the site plan could be modified if additional landscaping was needed in that area.

Day said staff further talked at a staff level about that particular sidewalk and the landscaping. The sidewalk shown between the property line and the building was closer to the building. She said staff also talked about an alternative that would put the sidewalk closer to the property line and leave more area for greenspace along that building site and that was another option that could be considered to help mitigate that concern. Because there were existing trees at that location, staff was reluctant to make that a formal recommendation, but it was an option if the City Commission considered that a direction that they wanted to go.

Commissioner Schauner asked about the landscaping that was proposed and if that vegetation was deciduous or evergreen.

Day said there was a mix of vegetation, but there was quite a bit of deciduous vegetation.

Wildgen said Crystal Miles, Landscaping Supervisor for the City of Lawrence, provided the landscaping portion of the site plan.

Commissioner Schauner’s concern was that if the vegetation was deciduous, the effect of screening was lost for 4 to 6 months out of the year and evergreen would provide 12 month coverage.

Day said the area had a building, enclosure fencing, and screening abutting and other tree plantings that would occur on the site.

Commissioner Schauner was referring to screening that abuts the fencing.

Day said staff could certainly make that screening clearer on the site plan.

Commissioner Schauner said Sinclair made the statement that this property was purchased with stormwater money and that there were some promises made to neighbors about the use of that money for other purposes and essentially she was led to believe that the money would not be used to purchase that property. He asked staff about their recollection of those conversations.

Wildgen said that staff needed part of that land for a stormwater project, but not all of that land. In fact, all of the stormwater improvements were to the east of the east building, but staff had to buy the total parcel and the land could not be split. He said he recalled telling the City Commission, at the time, that there was a possible public use for the balance of that property besides open space. A lot of that land was covered with storage, heavy bricks and other types of material and you could not see what was going to be left after the project was completed. He said that suggestion of public use was made at that time and that was why that suggestion was in the Capital Improvement Plan.

Commissioner Schauner asked if those buildings currently resided in a floodplain.

Day said yes.

Commissioner Schauner asked if there were restrictions to paving or improving, in any fashion, that property as long as it remained officially in the floodplain.

Day said no. Some improvements and developments were allowed in the floodway fringe areas.

Commissioner Schauner asked about floodplain terminology.

Day said floodplain was the term that was used to cover that whole area. Floodway was the channel that carried that 100 year storm. The floodway fringe area was when it was outside and flowing to the sides of those channels. She said that was the easiest description that she could give.

She said the improvements were in, overall, the floodplain, but she did not believe that the improvements were in the actual floodway.

Commissioner Schauner asked if those improvements were permitted under the City’s floodplain regulations, for example, the fencing.

Day said she believed the fencing was permitted, but she would need to double check that idea as part of the Floodplain Development Permit that staff was reviewing. She said she did not think that fencing would be expressly prohibited.

Mayor Rundle asked if the permit would take into account the newly defined floodplain regulations. He suggested placing a note directing those items that could be administratively changed on the site plan.

Wildgen said staff could bring back the monopole type tower to the City Commission if staff was directed to do so. He said the tower had not been engineered or designed at this time.

Commissioner Hack said Turney had some concerns about lighting and making sure that the landscaping was well maintained. She said those were conditions that would be helpful and would reassure the neighbors that this building would be the type of facility that they could live with.

Day said there was a note on the site plan that stated outdoor fixtures were shown with a symbol, there were wall packs, and the fixture was exempt from the photometric plan requirement which was correct. She said the site plan also showed that outdoor security lighting shall be restricted to wall mount units as shown and pole mounted lighting shall be prohibited. She said staff could add to that sentence that all lighting shall be shielded and directed downward.

Mayor Rundle asked if staff could comment on the concern of weapons or drugs at that location.

Wildgen said there was never any intent to store weapons or drugs at that location, nor use security dogs.

Commissioner Schauner said Wildgen made a comment that the current LEC on 15^th Street was unable to handle that storage requirement and he asked if that was because of lack of space or lack of ease with which certain things could be stored at that location.

Wildgen said that building was an existing building that was bought by the City and the building was modified for certain uses. He said staff did not have a choice of designing that building for that type of use.

Ron Olin, Police Chief, said the facility on west 15^th Street did not have anything that resembled a garage so any storage of large items could not be done. There were occasions when his staff needed a place, out of the elements, to process an automobile or to store a motorcycle that might have been used in some crime. He said those were the types of items that would be stored at that location. He said currently there was no type of facility in which to process those types of items.

He said concerning the drugs and guns, that proposed facility could not be used for that type of use because it would be a security risk. He said they would keep the guns and drugs at their current facility which was manned 24 hours a day. He said those types of concerns, while sincere, were really beyond the uses that were foreseen for that proposed facility.

He gave an example of the use. He said they had a need to process a couch and for his staff to take a couch to the second floor of the Law Enforcement Center through the front door and up the stairs was awkward. He said his staff needed a place that was large enough to process an item that large in an area that was secure and that was exactly what that proposed facility would give his staff.

Mayor Rundle said it seemed that this type of evidence was of the lowest security risk.

Olin said he could not imagine that type of evidence would be of any real value to a thief for example. He said that was not what his staff was looking at with this proposed facility.

Vice Mayor Highberger asked if Olin had any idea of the volume of traffic that would be generated by the use of that proposed facility.

Olin said his staff might be there 5 times one day and might not be there for the next 2 to 3 days. He said the amount of traffic would be judged by the type of high profile cases and the evidence that was in his staff’s possession that would need to be processed which was unpredictable. He said for the most part, the facility would be used 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday – Friday, because the evidence technicians and the evidence room supervisor work those hours.

Vice Mayor Highberger asked if this area was in the Rails to Trails study area.

Finger said yes.

Hack said she lived close to the LEC and she had found that they have been a good neighbor and the facility was well maintained. She said the additional notes on the site plan would hopefully ease some of those concerns for Turney because those were legitimate concerns.

Vice Mayor Highberger asked if the initial site plan for this proposed project was filed before the Rails to Trails Area Plan.

Wildgen said yes.

Vice Mayor Highberger said he just wanted to make sure the City was following the same rules that the City Commission asked everyone else to follow. Because that site plan was previously filed he no longer had that concern. He said overall that facility would have minimal impact. He said if this storage facility was approved, it would be a dramatic improvement over what had been at that location for the last 30 years. He said he thought staff had gone a long way in addressing major concerns. He said he was generally supportive of the project.

Mayor Rundle asked if an opportunity presented itself to move this storage facility closer to the police station would that be done if it fit into budget.

Wildgen said certainly if there was another opportunity that the City Commission wanted to consider in the future there was no objection to being closer to either one of those buildings.

Commissioner Schauner said his first preference would be to tear down those buildings and use that area as greenspace, but he sensed that was not the preference of the Commission. He said if in fact the buildings were used for the proposed purpose, he would like to see staff go above and beyond what they expected of private citizens in landscaping and making this building not intrusive and attractive as they could. He would prefer staff to over plant with shrubbery and a mural be placed on one of the walls. He said he did not want to be just a good neighbor, but a neighbor that everybody would like to live next to for this property because of its location to the Riggs house and others. Again, if this was the wish of the Commission, he would like to make sure that they go above and beyond what was required, perhaps even on the site plan in terms of providing evergreen materials that would screen that property 12 months a year.

Moved by Hack, seconded by Rundle, to approve the site plan (SP-09-61-04) for the City of Lawrence Evidence Storage Facility for the change of use of existing buildings from industrial/building manufacturing to use as a storage facility, (property is located at 900 East 15^th) subject to the following revised conditions:

Provision of landscape material around the north, east and west sides of the screening fence and along the west side of the building.

In addition to the existing condition, the City Commission added the following conditions:

Provision of a revised note 20-709 to include the following language “Any proposed changes in use as listed above shall be subject to review and re-approval by the City Commission.”
Provision of a revised note 20-14A02 to include the following language “All sight lighting shall be shielded and directed downward, per staff approval.”
The landscape plan shall be revised and approved by Parks and Recreation staff to assure that non-deciduous vegetation is used for screening.
Provision of a revised note 14B to include the following language. “The proposed tower is not intended for private communication carriers. Any proposed communication carrier wishing to locate at this site is subject to a new public hearing per City Code.”
Provision of a revised site plan to show a sidewalk extended to the east along the entire frontage of property owned by the City.

Motion carried unanimously. (20)

Discuss proposed ordinance from Phil Bradley concerning restrictions on smoking in public places.

Phillip Bradley, representing the Kansas Licensed Beverage Association, read a prepared statement, he said: “I am Phillip Bradley and here at the behest of the ART Coalition, Appeal to Reason and Tolerance. Many of the coalition members are here while others could not be here due to work, family, or other obligations.

Thank you for allowing us to appear and putting this item on the Agenda.

We are here to ask you to consider amending the current smoking ban policy in order to help solve the issues that have arisen.

When last we appeared before you on November 16, 2004, we brought a proposal for an alternative to the current ordinance. As we stated then, we suggested this as an opportunity to begin a dialogue to help alleviate some of the unintended impacts of the current ban and establish standards to protect people from airborne toxins. The Commission agreed to put this plan on the agenda and consider the issues at a future meeting. This is that meeting.

In the spring of 2004, when this ban was passed by the Commission, individual Commissioners indicated that they were not interested in considering any of the issues that we and others raised at that time. Instead, Commissioners chose to wait to see if any issues developed and deal with them then. As the Commission knows and has acknowledged, problems have arisen, and we ask you to help us and the community in finding common ground to generate solutions.

The drink tax revenue for the City of Lawrence for August and September of ’04 is over 8% below last year’s trends even before correcting for the increase in number of establishments, increase in population, inflation, and increase in prices. With those factors, the difference would be substantially larger.

Besides the decrease in establishments and revenue, these are some other issues that all cause hardship and that we request be adjusted.

• Establish Safe Harbor – What diligent efforts can we do that will insure that if an individual violates this Ordinance that we are protected from his act?;

• Establish consequences for the perpetrator and not just the business owner;

• Address Enforcement – including equality, definition of outside and other;

• Allow sidewalk areas that can be used as outdoor sections of the business when other options are not available;

• Non-staffed facilities with separate HVAC.

A variety of groups, individuals, and entities have recognized impacts across many differing business categories. The draft ordinance passed in KCMO has exemptions and mitigating clauses in its control efforts to decrease the impact and even has an enacting trigger to assist in leveling the playing field.

Over 1800 municipalities in the US have enacted restrictions on smoking within businesses. There are only a couple dozen that match the Lawrence ban in its extent of prohibitions. Since this strict ban was enacted, few communities across the country have followed the path of our city. In elections and city council/commission actions in the past year, fewer than 10 percent have decided to impose a ban as strict as the one before us.

We offered this proposal realizing that it was not perfect and would need work and that floor levels would have to be established. We know that is just one possible solution and acknowledge that there are more issues and more solutions. We offer this as one way to address the stated concerns of the Commissioners and to start a process that would lead to solutions and community consensus. The restrictions and requirements in St. Louis Park, Minnesota have been well received by the government, citizens, and businesses of that community and provide one example of an intelligent foundation from which to build. St. Louis Park’s plan has encouraged the diversity and innovation of the business community in the prosperous outskirts of the Twin Cities.

There are impacts and outcomes from this Ban. The Commission has the means to address them; the Commission has the resources to address the. Interested citizens are willing and able to work with the Commission, the diverse groups involved, and staff. The City Commission has tools and staff to study, seek additional information and input, generated solutions, and work towards change that addresses the need for consensus. All that is needed is a desire to help.

Three Commissioners have been quoted in the Journal-World as not being interested in compromise; however, an issue as important and controversial as this deserves further consideration from our elected officials. We are asking the Commission to let us know now, if you or at least three of you, are interested in considering an alternative plan or any other adjustments.

If so, then we welcome your leadership, thank you, and ask the Commission to set a time to start on this process.”

Michael Fox, with University of Kansas, said in summarizing the economic impact statement presented to this body on March 31, 2004, the author of the economic impact statement of the report of the Mayor Task Force on smoking in public an in places of employment predicted, “A full impact exemption free smoking ban in Lawrence with complete compliance would conceivably result in the 10% reduction of alcohol beverage sales, a 2.5 million loss in sales across the City at bars, clubs, restaurants, bowling alleys, and country clubs.”

He said the report went on to say that to remain in revenue neutral position would require a 10 million dollar increase in restaurant sales. Based on the recent state liquor excise tax revenue figures presented to Wildgen and others for the third quarter of 2004 by the Kansas Department of Revenue, compared to the same quarter in 2003, before the smoking ordinance, the City of Lawrence experienced a 0.2 percent increase in alcohol beverage sales. While small, it was none-the-less significant for two important reasons.

First it was almost exactly what El Paso experienced in its full year after its smoke free ordinance went into effect. He said suggesting the experiences of other communities in which those ordinances did not have a major effect on the economic stability of the hospitality industry within the community, might be similar to our own.

Secondly, a 0.2 percent increase was not a 10 percent loss as the author of the economic impact statement on the Mayor’s Task Force predicted. In efforts to put a spin on this figure, either suggesting that the measure was not an accurate barometer of City revenues, or that this gain as Bradley suggested, represented a loss from expected increases and should be weighed against the statement he just read. He said at this time the community had not suffered economically as a result of the smoking ordinance.

He said he was working with Dr. Joshua Rosenbloom of the K.U. Center for Business and Economic Analysis, on analyzing those and other wage and earnings figures. He said they understood as researchers that any data source was less then perfect, but they also understood that valid data, as KDOR tax revenue was, could not simply be discredited because the results were not what some people would like.

He said it was clear to everyone that there would be winners and losers after this ordinance was enacted, but the reaction among some business owners to blame the smoking ordinance for their own business hardships when the Chamber of Commerce told them that a third of all restaurants in the City fail within two years has muddied the landscape for others for whom the ordinance might have some real economic impact.

He said if the City Commission were to consider any compromises at this time or in the future, he strongly encouraged the Commission’s deliberations to be around compromises to current City architectural standards or if the Commission felt inclined, to provide temporary tax relief to businesses who, after a full and public audit of financial records, could demonstrate that they experienced significant hardship as a direct result of the smoking ordinance.

He said he believed that most of the community agreed with him that there was no middle ground on compromising for health. He said either there was clean indoor air free of toxic second hand smoke, or there was not.

If the City Commission considered a compromise at some point, he urged the City Commission to compromise on porch construction or tax breaks, but he also urged the Commission not to compromise on employee and public health.

Kay Kent, Director Lawrence/Douglas County Health Department, said she would like to reaffirm that the public health stance on exposure to second hand smoking had not changed. Exposure to second hand smoking was a serious health hazard whether on the job, in public places, or at home. Environmental tobacco smoke was designated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a non-human carcinogen. A smoke free environment remained the most effective method for reducing exposure to second hand smoke and protecting the public’s health.

Health Department staff had talked with those involved in enforcing the Tobacco Discloser Notification Ordinance in St. Louis Park, Minnesota and similar to Lawrence they had a task force that studied the issue of second hand smoke. She said they were told that the intent of the St. Louis Park Tobacco Disclosure Notification Ordinance was to raise public awareness about the dangers of second hand smoke.

She said it was their understanding that the testing being done in the non-smoking sections of licensed establishments was to show that designation of smoking and non-smoking areas was not enough to protect individuals from exposure to second hand smoke and that special ventilation systems did not eliminate that exposure.

She said they were told that the ordinance was regarded as a step to creating smoke free environments, not an alternative to, or instead of, creating smoke free environments. She said some licensed premises in St. Louis Park decided to go smoke free rather than have signs posted on their door warning the public of exposure to second hand smoke.

She said it was her belief that considering the ordinance from St. Louis Park as an ordinance for Lawrence to model after and conducting measurements and nicotine levels was a diversion from the real issue. The real issue was that there was no safe level of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and even St. Louis Park said that to their public.

She commended the City Commission for their decision that they made back in April to pass the Lawrence public and workplace smoking restriction ordinance. The ordinance was good public policy and she urged the City Commission to keep that policy.

Don McGlen, Engineering Manager at the Lawrence Hallmark Facility, said the purpose of the article was to improve and protect the public’s health by eliminating smoking, to guarantee the right of non-smokers to breathe smoke free air and to recognize the need to breathe smoke free air. Since 1997, they had provided that type of environment for their smokers and non-smokers. They had dedicated non-smoking break areas and dedicated smoking areas that turn the air approximately once every six minutes. He said they were requesting an exception be considered by the Commission to allow separate break areas within manufacturing facilities.

Vice Mayor Highberger asked McGlen if there were any paid employees, including janitors, who were required to be in those smoking areas.

McGlen said no non-smokers were required to be in a smoking break area. He said there were janitors in that area at times, but the break areas were only occupied 4 hours a day with smokers.

Kathy Bruner, Lawrence, provided an update on the smoking issue. She said currently there were 168 national signatures on the world health organization framework on tobacco control including Australia, Canada, China, Japan, the European community, United Kingdom, and the U.S.A. She said all were pledged in article A to provide their citizens protection from exposure to tobacco smoke in indoor workplaces. Two more nations, Norway and New Zealand had already joined Ireland in implementing a comprehensive national indoor smoking ban and Australia and Scotland had announced plans to join them. Seven states California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Delaware, and Rhode Island had comprehensive statewide indoor smoking bans and three states Florida, Idaho, and Utah exempt only free standing bars. In addition to those cities in those states, eighteen hundred and eleven other municipalities now have local clean air indoor ordinance with 152 including all workplaces.

St. Louis Park, Minnesota, which was the model being proposed by ART (Appeal to Reason & Tolerance), would be completely smoke free on March 31, 2005 under a law recently passed by the a Hennepin County Commission.

Three states, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Montana recently passed ballot initiatives increasing cigarette taxes by 60 cents to one dollar a pack in order fund health care coverage and reduce smoking. Nine out of eleven communities passed voter referendums supporting clean air ordinances in the last election including the most similar to Lawrence which was Lincoln, Nebraska, which retained its comprehensive indoor smoking ban by a two to one margin.

She said the U.S. Government was prosecuting a 280 billion dollar racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco industry alleging a conspiracy to mislead the public about the harms of second hand smoke.

This progress represented an international cultural change brought about by increased citizen knowledge about the health risks of active and passive smoking and increased governmental awareness of the costs involved.

Worldwide almost five million people die yearly of tobacco related illnesses, five hundred thousand in the U.S. alone including sixty thousand passive smokers. Government in every country, at every level, was attempting to protect their employees from environmental tobacco smoke. There was generally decreased tobacco use because frankly people could not afford it anymore.

Health care costs were going through the roof and threatened to bankrupt this country. The largest preventable cause of those rising costs was tobacco related illness. She said it was indeed an international, irreversible cultural change and it would not be stopped. Lawrence was just a small part of it, but because what the City Commission had done, hundreds of employees would not be exposed to potentially life threatening toxins and literally thousands of K.U. students a year would not be forced into a social culture of smoking, risking addiction which would have eventually killed half of those students. She said the Commission had done a good thing, more good then they would ever know and the Commission would continue to do good well beyond their life time if the Commission kept their resolve.

John Fittell, Lawrence, said what he would like to see happen was for everyone to have good air. He said he would like to see the proponents of removing the ban have the right to create a room to see what they could do with measuring air quality.

Dr. Steven Bruner, Lawrence, said the current proposal from the clean air ordinance opponents was an attempt to avoid the health risk from environmental tobacco smoke or ETS by the use of ventilation systems. He said the opponents further proposed to monitor the effectiveness by the measurement of nicotine in the air. They termed this plan a compromise. He said there was a problem with the concept of compromise when it applied to a life and death situation. There really was no halfway, you were either dead or not.

Experts on ventilations systems estimated that they could decrease ETS exposure by no more than one-half under optimal conditions, thus decreasing the ETS related deaths from 60,000 a year to 30, 000 a year. If a person or a loved one was one of the 30,000, it looked like a pretty bad compromise. He said this plan failed in other ways.

First the proposed monitoring standard was flawed. Nicotine was not the harmful agent in cigarette smoke. It was merely the addictive agent that kept the smoker coming back to the carcinogenic trough.

He said he prescribed nicotine to smoker’s everyday to help them break their habit and avoid the health hazards of smoking. Neither was nicotine a scientifically validated marker for the 4,000 chemicals, 150 toxins, and 60 or so carcinogens in ETS.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) had designated a safe level for nicotine which was for its use in pesticides and referred to its ability to cause birth defects in pregnant women. Nicotine was not for use as a marker for the safe level of ETS.

He said both NIOSH and the EPA had consistently said there was no known safe level of ETS, in part because ETS was not a single toxin but an ever changing combination of many toxins, many of those were gases. He quoted from the EPA Position Paper which read: “Although some have argued that tobacco smoke cannot cause cancer below a certain level, there was no evidence that this threshold exists.” In the absence of such evidence, carcinogens at any level were considered by the EPA to increase risk somewhat although the degree of risk was certainly reduced as exposure decreased. The increased risk observed in the second hand smoke epidemiology studies were further evidence that any threshold for second hand smoke would have to be at very low levels. This referred to the fact that merely being married to a smoker increased your own risk for lung cancer by 24 percent. More impressively being the non-smoking spouse of a smoker elevated the risk for coronary disease by a third as much as if you were a pack a day smoker yourself.

He said exposure studies and hospitality venues reveal average ETS levels 1.5 times higher in restaurants allowing smoking than in a single smoker home and 4.5 times higher in bars. Some single room bars had levels 10 times higher than in single smoker homes, pity the poor bartender. He said clearly a 50 percent reduction in those exposures and risks was not acceptable as most jurisdictions had decided.

Scott Hazelett said he was member of Mayor’s Task Force on smoking and his primary purpose was studying the ventilation and architectural options as an exemption. He said the task force looked at many different compromises and combinations of compromises. Whatever compromise that was proposed, in every case, there was at least one person that either privately or publicly came forward and asked not to explore that option because it would give another person an unfair advantage over another person’s business.

The current ordinance, as written, created the most level playing field available so the members of the business community could survive or fail based on their own merits.

Vice Mayor Highberger said he understood in previous discussions about the ventilation option that it went nowhere because it was felt on both sides that the expense of installing equipment that would get air to anywhere close to an acceptable level would be so expensive that it would work a great hardship on small businesses.

Hazelett said that was correct. He said the systems were very expensive to install, operate, and took up space which some of the smaller existing businesses did not have enough ceiling to begin with. He said that idea potentially gave an advantage to outside the city, chain type businesses that could build a new building and have the funding to install and pay the energy costs to operate that system. He said in the end it did not solve the problem. It would cause local businesses to spend money that really wasn’t solving the problem.

Joe Douglas, Lawrence physician, said he has had asthma since he was a child. He said a few weeks ago his friends asked him to go out dancing and he did, at an establishment that he had been to years ago and have avoided ever since because of the smoke. A year ago he would have not gone out dancing because of the smoke, nor a year ago could he have danced because of the smoke. He said after reading an article about smoke free establishments in Ireland, he supported anything that would help sidewalk seating because it seemed to be very successful and well accepted in those locations. He said he would like to keep the indoor air clean.

Mayor Rundle asked Douglas about the article that Douglas mentioned.

Douglas said the December 12^th Edition of the Sunday, New York Times had a report on the smoking ban in Ireland and the idea of outdoor seating.

Kalen Vickers, Lawrence, said she was very supportive of the current ordinance. She had worked in the food service industry for over 25 years and to say that she really had a choice of whether she could work in a smoking or non-smoking area was not accurate. To make a decent contribution to raise her family, she had no choice. She said change was hard. She said information that was available about smoking being harmful could not be ignored.

Andrew Arnone, Lawrence, said he had heard about a compromise to allow for outdoor seating for smokers. He said he was a supporter of the smoking ban, but he was also opposed to any changes in zoning or allowing outside drinking areas because of the noise and it would worsen the neighborhood. He said if the City Commission was considering that idea, he would discourage outside drinking areas.

Dave Pomeroy, Topeka, said he spent every Friday and Saturday in Lawrence since the ban went into effect and he thanked the Commission for the ordinance. He said even a tobacco company was admitting that second hand smoke was harmful whereas a few years ago that company did not admit that smoking was harmful. He said he thought they were trying to protect themselves from more lawsuits. He said he had a report that linked breast cancer in young women and exposure to second hand smoke.

He said what the Commission had done was great and they would save lives. He said there should be no compromise in health.

Tim Turfler, employee of Astro’s, said he was the enforcer of the City’s smoking ban. He said they had been open for 15 years and they had worked hard to get where they were. He said once the fruits of their labor allowed their income to increase, they took care of their employees with health insurance, dental insurance, and some profit sharing.

He said they did not compete with just Lawrence businesses, but with statewide businesses. He said they held tournaments throughout the year that drew in money and people from outside of Lawrence and the state, but their business was going elsewhere. He said unless something changed, they would no longer be in business and they needed the City Commission’s help.

Patricia Sinclair, Lawrence, commended the members of the Commission for their decision to disallow smoking in public places, including bars and restaurants and she urged the Commission not to consider any compromises or changes in that ban. She said it was difficult to hear about businesses facing difficult economic times and people losing their employment however, the decision was made for the health of the public and should stand.

Last month one representative from Harbour Lights, in addressing this body, said that employees who chose to work in a bar or restaurant chose to put themselves in harms way in a way similar to a soldier, firefighter, or police officer. In fact, our government affords workers protection from hazards in their ordinary jobs, this was not combat, and the comparison was insulting. Not only was smoke hazardous to staff and patrons of those establishments, but it also adversely affects musicians who perform.

The proposal that was before the City Commission was not only ill advised but was unenforceable. She said as seen over the past year, drinking establishments had a great deal of difficulty in renewing their City licenses in a timely fashion, let alone comply with anything more complex. The City did not have the resources to enforce or administer such a plan, even if it were a wise one. She said the City Commission was being asked to rescue businesses that blame their financial problems on a smoking ban yet, over the years, business after business leaves downtown. It seemed drinking establishments were financially rewarding. Other stores could no longer afford the rising rents and were forced out by some of the very businesses that were before the City Commission tonight. She said it was unfortunate that some businesses were faltering.

She sincerely hoped that established businesses which were an asset to Lawrence such as Free State Brewery were able to weather that transition, but we did not need a downtown that was all bars and did not need or want smoking in drinking establishments.

Carrie Lindsey, Lawrence, said she was a non-smoker. She said she had been a co-owner of a small bar in Wichita and knew that with a smoking ban where there were no exemptions for outdoor seating or other compromises, they would have gone out of business. She said one of the issues she had such a hard time listening to was the lack of acknowledgement over choice of a legal issue. She said even Vickers talked about her husband owning a sign company and how he had to have a ventilation system because he used spray paint and he was given the opportunity to have a ventilation system or not have a business. She said smoking was a legal activity and people had the right to make choices to smoke.

She said she had a hard time believing that the five Commissioners that she thought of as being progressive, forward, free thinking people, could not recognize that in some instances a person had a right to make a choice to do bad things to your body, health or well being. She said she understood keeping a ban in any place that had children.

She said the City funded different organizations though CDBG Funds, but now had a constraint on their funding, a lot of that funding came from when the bars had the St. Patrick’s Day parade and those bars funded social service agencies. She said those bars did contribute to this community, but businesses like The Gap and Abercrombie and Fitch did not contribute and those businesses were the cause of downtown rent going up.

She urged the City Commission to consider that a compromise was not failing, but good government. She said Lawrence was not a community that imposed restrictions on personal choice. Again, she urged the City Commission to look at compromising with those businesses.

Mayor Rundle said it seemed that this was not a single proposal, but there were several prongs to address.

Commissioner Dunfield said one of the things this ordinance did was eliminated discrimination. It gave people additional choices and made it possible for people who had asthma or other cardiac conditions to participate in activities in any establishment in this City. He said that choice was taken away if they compromise this ordinance based on hours of operation, restaurant versus bars, or special ventilation systems. He said if they compromised, they would be removing choice from individuals and denied people the opportunity to participate in those events and to go to those places. This ordinance did not prevent anyone from going anywhere at anytime in this City. The ordinance stated that if you were a smoker, then you would need to leave your cigarettes in your pocket or purse.

He said the task force looked at many alternatives. He said this City Commission took those reports and studied many options and alternatives and the Commission did not come up with that comprehensive indoor plan arbitrarily or without a lot of study and soul searching, and consideration of alternatives.

He said as Hazelett said all of the compromises pitted one business against the other’s interest and that was not a good thing. All of those types of compromises failed to meet the basic test of protecting the health of employees which was what the City Commission started out to do.

He said this was an enormously popular ordinance. He said there was a lot of emotional debate about this ordinance and the Commission had emotional discussion on other issues as well, but this was the only ordinance that he could say without any doubt that he knew where the consensus was on this issue. This was as close to consensus on a major issue that he had seen on any controversial issue in his time on the City Commission. He said people appreciated this ordinance.

He said he was convinced that what the Commission was doing was just a little step ahead of the curve. He said what was happening in Lawrence concerning this matter was not unusual and he thought five years from now the Lawrence ordinance was going to be the “norm” nationwide. He said someone made the point that this was an international movement.

He said that did not mean that the City Commission could not make compromises and there were issues that needed to be considered. He said the City Commission talked about the outdoor drinking issue and the Commission had indicated willingness to pursue outdoor areas.

The issue that was raised about employee smoking rooms in a manufacturing plant or other businesses of that sort, there was some logic to that issue as long as the only persons using those rooms were the smokers and as long as the ventilation was separate from the rest of the plant’s ventilation was something that needed to be discussed.

Commissioner Highberger said this was not his crusade and he could not take credit for it. He said after listening to all the information that was presented and talking to hundreds of people, he was still convinced that the smoking ordinance that was passed was in the best interest of this community in the long term. He supported the smoking ordinance.

He said it was not in the Commission’s interest to downplay the negative effect that this ordinance had on some people. He said it was clear that there were some people that were experiencing negative economic consequences because of this ordinance and the City Commission need to look at ways to mitigate that concern while still protecting the public health.

He said during the initial discussion the Commission looked at a number of compromises, but those compromises had downsides. As far as the ordinance presented by ART, he could not support it. He said the ordinance did not address the underlying health concern and it would be superceded by the Hennepin County ordinance. He did not support the compromise, but in terms of the other ideas that were presented, he would be more than happy to look at some of the enforcement problems, safe harbor question, consequences for individual violators and sidewalk dining, but that idea would need to be balanced against the concerns of the neighborhood and the Commission might want to look at keeping that idea downtown. He said he would also like to take a look at Hallmark’s proposed idea. He said he would be happy to serve on a committee to work out some of those details, but he stood solidly behind the main points of the existing smoking ban.

Mayor Rundle said he did not have much to add. He said, as to the statement made concerning the three Commissioners who were not interested in compromise, well he was interested in compromise, but not in the current proposal which was a roll back of the ordinance. He had been in discussions with the people who promoted the original sidewalk dining ordinance to try and determine if there was a willingness to discuss that idea and what the pitfalls were. He said he was also looking outside the community for real experience where those communities did have sidewalk dining in place, but there were a few businesses that did not have the option because of the physical constraints which left those businesses on an uneven playing field. He was willing to look into those other items mentioned by Commissioners Highberger and Dunfield as well.

Commissioner Schauner said he concurred with everything that the previous Commissioners had stated. He said the Commission made the right decision in April and it remained the right decision. The proposed ordinance was a significant roll back and was not an ordinance that he would support. He said the current smoke free ordinance was the right ordinance for the right reason, at the right time

He said he was not unwilling to talk about outdoor smoking venues. He said there were some complicated factors with outdoor smoking venues, but he was willing to sit down and visit about those issues with the various stakeholders including City staff. He did not support the proposal.

Commissioner Hack said she did not think that there was a proposal on the agenda other than to listen to the appeal to reason.

Commissioner Schauner said he was referring to the smoking ban proposal that there had been discussion in the press about.

Commissioner Hack said the statement that was given at the beginning of this discussion was to clearly look at some alternate solutions. She said she wanted to clarify her position. She said her position from the beginning had not precluded smoking regulations of some kind. She said her position was also that this community had been one that had the ability and the willingness to work on alternate solutions for a variety of problems. This smoking ban, the way it was now, was what she was opposed to. This smoking ban has had consequences on manufacturers, small business owners, and the downtown area.

She said she did not think the Commission could shy away from information gathering and negotiating, but she did not think the City Commission had a facilitated conversation by someone who could lead a discussion, someone who did not have a dog in this fight. She was not talking about any of the Commissioners because she did not think the Commission was capable of facilitating and she did not mean that disrespectfully. She said there were facilitators in this community that could put the stakeholders at the table and come up with some workable solution to those very problems that they all said this particular smoking ban had. She said perhaps that would be looking at outside dining or ventilation systems.

She said there was not an ordinance on the table that the City Commission was looking at, but she did believe that the Commission could look at alternate solutions.

Commissioner Schauner said he could not support the St. Louis Park ordinance.

Commissioner Hack said she did not think that was what they proposed.

Commissioner Schauner said with respect to a couple of items in the ART proposal this evening, all the Commissioners had expressed some interest in looking at outdoor venues for drinking establishments. He said he believed there had been some facilitated discussion and that was the smoking task force that had gone on for approximately one year.

Commissioner Hack said that the discussions were not with a facilitator.

Commissioner Schauner said he did not know if a facilitated discussion, at this point, was going to serve any particularly useful purpose other than perhaps looking at some outside opportunities for drinking establishments in the downtown area or perhaps on site plan issues where those businesses did not have the ability to go outside.

Mayor Rundle asked if the Commission needed to discuss their consideration of those issues at a future time.

Commissioner Dunfield suggested that the Commission ask staff to take a look at those five bullet points and put together a report that talked about those particular issues. He said the sidewalk dining issue was already discussed in conjunction with the larger discussion of downtown so that idea might be best separated from the list. He said he thought he heard the Commissioners indicate, at least some level of interest in researching all of those particular bullets. He asked staff for a report and then they could decide whether they needed to place those issues on the agenda or hold some type of workshop.

Vice Mayor Highberger suggested that businesses have some type of input on some of those issues such as the enforcement issues. He said staff could accept comment from affected businesses. . (21)

Consider approving UPR-10-05-04: Use Permitted upon Review request for a preschool. The property is described as being located at 4931 W. 6^th Street, Suite 118, and a portion of the adjacent property located at the southeast corner of West 6^th Street and Congressional Drive

Paul Patterson, Planner, presented the staff report. He said this particular Use Permitted upon Review came before the City Commission back in July where the applicant was looking at establishing a child care center and the applicant was looking at having the state regulation change which would not require an outdoor playground area. That change did not happen therefore, the applicant was coming forward with an outdoor playground area for the City Commission’s consideration.

He said the applicant would like to locate the outdoor play area in the private detention basin area. He said the applicant was proposing to have an elevated play deck, approximately 35 feet by 60 feet or 2,100 square feet, and also have a ramp leading into the detention basin when the area was not wet. The private detention basin had two culvert openings. The one opening would be underneath the deck. There would be screening fencing underneath the deck so that children could not access that area and the other culvert opening would be outside the fenced area within the detention basin itself.

The elevation of the proposed decking itself, the basin area had a floor elevation of 1,000 feet above sea level. The deck itself was 4 ½ feet above that or ½ foot above the entire detention basin and the play deck area would never get wet. There was proposed screening along the outer area of the deck itself and underneath the deck. He said in the back of Googles of Fun there was a truck access and split into two directions, one was to the east and one to the north.

He said the applicant was proposing removable gates and before the children went outside, they would put the gate barriers in place and then remove those barriers once the children were safely across the truck delivery area.

He said there were some duplex townhouses behind their property. The ambient noise that the applicant was familiar with was the truck deliveries and trash service pickup. There was no comment from the property owners who would receive the most impact.

Staff was recommending approval of the UPR. The Planning Commission recommended approval on a 7-1 vote, but they had added a 10^th condition which was that the outdoor play area could only be used during daylight hours.

Commissioner Dunfield asked if the only reason why this issue was not on the consent agenda was because there was not a unanimous vote because one of the Planning Commissioners thought there were too many conditions being asked.

Patterson said the Planning Commission meeting was rather silent. He said he did not believe that Commissioner actually voiced one way or another, what the concern was. He said the minutes to that meeting did not reflect that concern.

Commissioner Schauner asked how the deck would be accessed.

Patterson said the deck would be assessed off the ramp that led from the traffic area onto the deck. He said there was also an ADA ramp that went from the elevated deck down to that area. He said there were two back doors that would lead to the deck.

Commissioner Schauner asked if those were loading doors.

Patterson showed the delivery area. The access to the delivery area was from the west and then it went one way to the east and one way to the north.

Commissioner Schauner said he read that the loading and unloading would be in the evening in front of Googles of Fun.

Patterson said that loading and unloading was for the children’s parents. He said parents had to come into the facility to sign off that the child was being dropped off and also had to sign when the child was being picked up.

Commissioner Schauner asked what type of precedent would they be setting by permitting an over structure in a water detention area.

Patterson said this area was a private detention basin and was not a public facility or public detention basin. The Stormwater Engineer, Chad Voigt, had looked at the plan and there was a condition that it did need to meet his approval as far as making sure that the water could flow around the structure appropriately.

Commissioner Schauner said the area was a detention area required by the site plan.

Patterson said it was a detention area for the run-off of the parking area to collect those waters and disperse that water back into the drainage system.

Commissioner Schauner asked if the vacant area to the west of that development was zoned commercial.

Patterson said this was a separate lot from the remainder of the project. He said that area was zoned RO-1 (Residence Office District). There was proposed office space that could be built in the future, but there was no proposal to build that office building at this time.

Amy Gottschamer, owner of Googols of Fun, said they thought the child care was something that was needed and wanted in Lawrence. She said they wanted to offer a quality and unique environment.

The safety issues that were brought to their attention had been addressed and were open to any suggestion should there be other concerns. She asked the City Commission to feel confident that they were following all the requirements of the state as well.

Andrew Arnone, Lawrence, said he had a three year old child and he enjoyed taking his child to that facility. He said this facility had an educational twist and there were lots of activities. He said the facility was neat, clean and fun and he supported the proposal.

Moved by Dunfield, seconded by Highberger, to concur with the Planning Commission recommendations to adopt the findings of fact and approve the UPR (UPR-10-05-04) for a preschool, property described as being located at 4931 West 6^th Street, Suite 118, and a portion of the adjacent property at the southeast corner of West 6^th Street and Congressional Drive, subject to the following conditions:

1. Execution of a Site Plan Performance Agreement;

2. Provision of a copy of an approved license from the Douglas County Health Department prior to operation of the child care facility. (Submit the copy to the Lawrence Planning Department and reference file UPR-10-05-04);

3 .The use permit is for a Child Care Center for a maximum of 45 children under Googols of Fun’s direct supervised care in the facility at any one time;

4. The existing building will require a supervised fire alarm system to the approval of the City Fire & Medical Department, which must be zoned to show activation at Googols of Fun;

5. The permit will be administratively reviewed by the City in 5 years (Calendar Year 2010);

6. The permit will expire at the end of 10 years (Calendar Year 2015), unless an application for renewal is approved by the local governing body;

7. Provide “One-way”, “Do not enter” signage at ends of the truck delivery lanes and provide appropriate gate/barriers and “Caution children crossing” signage, between Googols of Fun and the outdoor playground area;

8 Design the support for the play deck and safety fencing so as not to obstruct stormwater flow, to the approval of the City Stormwater Engineer; and

9. Provide the following note on the site plan, “A building permit is required for the outdoor play area and elevated play deck from Neighborhood Resources.”

Motion carried unanimously. (22)

Receive revised 2005 Water/Wastewater Rate Information.

Keith Barber, Black & Veatch, said since the November 9^th meeting they were asked to perform some additional work to project rates under the defining block rate structure for the next five years. He said Table A was the actual rates, table B was the typical bills, and table C showed the increase in the typical bills. He said staff had prepared a memorandum that explained those tables. He said the last page of the memorandum summarized the findings, which was graphically shown.

He said one of those tables showed the typical bills for the existing declining block rate structure. The table indicated that both the bills that would have been developed under the modified declining block rate and the uniform charge would be lower than what was being indicated by continuing the current rate. Also the table indicated that the uniform volume rates would be more favorable to those customers than the existing declining block rates.

He said as far as residential was concerned, uniform rates would be more beneficial to approximately 93% of the customers, multi-family was 92%, and commercial/industrial was approximately 91%. He said most customers would be better off under the uniform volume charges. The only customers that would benefit under the current rate structure were those users in each group that had the higher usage.

He said Black & Veatch and City staff had met with the Chamber of Commerce and the public to discuss some of those issues. He said there was a concern brought up by K.U. that had been addressed by City staff.

Commissioner Schauner asked about the memo dated December 7^th from Debbie Van Saun to Mike Wildgen in which Van Saun said in part to switch to uniform volume water charge for 2005 for all customer classes and beginning in 2006 begin a transition to a two tiered block rate schedule for residential water customers setting a break point between the two blocks at 10,000 gallons a month. The latest memo made some reference to 19,109 residential customers using more than 2,000 but less than 20,000 gallons per month would be favored most by the uniform rate structure. He asked how that percentage would change if they went to a two tiered system in 2006 because the rate point would be changed that year.

Barber said it was his understanding that that option was tabled for future consideration. He said what was projected in the last letter was straight uniform rates as one of the alternatives. He said they did not look at the inclining block rates that they did back in September.

Commissioner Schauner asked if there was no two tiered structure being considered.

Barber said not at this time. He said that idea was always there for the future if that was the Commission’s direction. He said the latest analysis that they had performed was a single rate.

Commissioner Schauner said with no two tier break point for residential.

Barber said correct.

Vice Mayor Highberger said there was no inclining block and they were still looking at the possibility of a declining block.

Jason Boots, KU Student Senate, said there were numerous options and all of those options placed a strain on the University of Kansas. He said at this point there was no alternative so far that alleviated the extra strain that was going to be placed on the University. He said it would be naïve of them to think to day, out of thin air, pull up some sort of rate structure tonight to pass. He said it would also be naïve of them that the City Commission was not going to pass one of those options tonight because 2005 was rapidly approaching.

He said it was important for the City and the University to continue to work together to try and find something in the future that was going to help the University out over the next five years. He said it was going to cost the University accumulatively $800,000 based on both sets of water rate structures.

He said over the next year or so the University would probably be paying the same rates. However, there were other issues that could be talked about as the Provost stated in his letter. He said he thought there was a possibility of other rate structures coming up over the next year that could be put forth to help alleviate some of the strain put on the University.

He said the dialogue between the City and University had been increasing whether it was zoning, water rates, or other issues.

He said of the water rates proposed, there was one water rate that saved the University $50,000 over five years which although not incredibly substantial on the grand scheme of $800,000, would be helpful.

He said he would like to continue conversations between the City Commission, Black & Veatch and the Provost as to possible solutions to helping alleviate some of the financial strains placed on the University through those water rates.

Mayor Rundle said there was nothing that said they could not do that on a year to year basis once the rate structure was set. He said he sensed a readiness for the City Commission to bring this issue to a vote. He said he believed the City Commission needed to approve those water rates and continue to move forward on the development of all those capital projects that were on a critical timeline.

He said what he was struggling with was what was driving the Wastewater Treatment Plant Expansion. He said since the joint meeting between the City and County he was trying to understand how they got there. He had the impression that when they did the current wastewater treatment expansion, it was to take them to the year 2020. He said in looking back at archives of the Journal World, it was clear that was the direction they were headed based on the information that was provided to Black & Veatch from the City.

He said they were now looking at $199,000,000 expansion estimate. A significant portion of that money was attributed to growth. He said to miss the mark by that huge amount was something that they had to understand and try to make sure that they don’t repeat that in the future. He said there was no choice whether the Commission did or did not take action. He said the Commission needed to keep moving forward.

Commissioner Schauner said it was interesting that in conversation with people about trying to talk about water and wastewater rates it was amazing how quickly people’s eyes glazed over. He said in most of the conversation he had with people invariably he received questions about roundabouts.

He said even though they were talking about spending $100,000,000, he was not sure that this had set in yet for the typical consumer of those services. He said he was very concerned about the long-term impact, not just with K.U., but other commercial enterprises as well as residents of the wastewater treatment rates.

He said the affordability question in Lawrence was more than just the initial purchase price of a home, but it was also the costs of living. If water rates, wastewater rates, and tax rates continued to escalate one’s ability to make the initial purchase would only be part of the equation that would need to be considered before they located in Lawrence.

He said he concurred with the Mayor’s comment of making sure that this money was spent and that they try to keep an eye on the ultimate mark which was not underestimating the need for that product in the future.

Commissioner Highberger said his position had been the same as it had been for the last several months. He said he supported the uniform block structure as proposed. He said he understood the concerns raised by K.U., but the staff memo laid out the situation clearly and if there was a more detailed calculation of K.U.’s water usage, they might come out with a worse rate than what they were getting now. He said the difference in the two water rates was a fairly small amount, but the real problem was the wastewater rates. He said everyone in this town was going to be paying higher wastewater rates for many years. He said he felt sad that he had to approve the use, but the City Commission could either approve those usages or stop issuing building permits in 2010. Again, he supported the uniform rates with no special rate for K.U.

Commissioner Hack concurred with Vice Mayor Highberger with respect to the uniform block rate. She said she appreciated the work of City staff and Black & Veatch for their patience with the City Commission. She said we were always reminded of the three legged stool in terms of rate increases and infrastructure expansion was certainly there as well as any kind of regulatory issues that needed to be dealt with. She said while growth drove some of this issue, there were the two other legs of the stool that they needed to keep track of.

Commissioner Schauner said he hoped the scope of work for the adequate public facilities would include these issues and he assumed that money would be a significant piece of that discussion and work by the consultants.

David Corliss, Assistant City Manager/Legal Services Director, said the first phase of the fiscal feasibility study would be a survey of those cost of growth issues. He said one of the things that the consultant was going to ask the City Commission was did they want to look at what Black & Veatch had prepared in the past regarding the City’s system development charges and the impact fees that they had right now. He said if that was part of the scope of Phases 2 and 3 then that would be included in that work. The first phase of the work was to survey the City’s issue and determine how they could best attack those issues.

Moved by Hack, seconded by Highberger, to receive the revised 2005 Water/Wastewater Rate Information and direct staff to prepare the appropriate ordinance. Motion carried unanimously. (23)

Receive Planning Commission recommendations concerning proposed Development Code and Zoning Map. Receive and discuss Planning Commission recommendation concerning draft City/University of Kansas land use cooperation agreement.

a) Development Code. TA-10-05-04: Pursuant to the provisions of K.S.A. Chapter 12, Article 7, consider the adoption of “Development Code, November 17, 2004, Edition,” enacting a new Chapter 20 of the Code of the City of Lawrence, Kansas, establishing comprehensive zoning regulations and other land use regulations. The “Development Code, November 17, 2004 Edition” is a general and complete revision of the City’s existing zoning regulations, Ordinance No. 3500 and all amendments thereto, and affects all property within the corporate limits of the City of Lawrence, Kansas. The “Development Code, November 17, 2004 Edition” is incorporated by reference as if fully set forth in this notice. Copies of the “Development Code, November 17, 2004 Edition” are available for review at the Office of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Department, City Hall, 6 E. 6^th Street, Lawrence, Kansas. The “Development Code, November 17, 2004 Edition” is also available on the Planning Department’s website at: www.lawrenceplanning.org. This item was referred back to the Planning Commission by the City Commission at its meeting on July 20, 2004.

b) Zoning Map. Z-10-49-04: The proposed “Zoning Map, November 17, 2004 Edition” includes zoning designations for all property located within the corporate limits of the City of Lawrence, Kansas. The proposed “Zoning Map, November 17, 2004 Edition” is incorporated by reference as if fully set forth in this notice. Copies of the proposed “Zoning Map, November 17, 2004 Edition” are available for review at the office of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Department, City Hall, 6 E. 6^th Street, Lawrence, Kansas. The proposed “Zoning Map, November 17, 2004 Edition” is also available on the Planning Department website at: www.lawrenceplanning.org. This item has six subparts which include: 1) those zoning designations that convert based on the table in section 20-110(e) of the Development Code; 2) public and quasi-public properties that convert to GPI (General Public and Institutional Use) District and to OS (Open Space) District; 3) the main campus of Lawrence Memorial Hospital that converts to H (Hospital) District; 4) the primary campus of the University of Kansas that converts to a U (University) District designation of U (UK) and Haskell Indian Nations University properties that convert to the U (University) District; 5) properties annexed into the city that retained their County Zoning designation that convert to the UR (Urban Reserve) District; 6) existing Planned Unit Development Districts that convert to special zoning district categories unique to each existing Planned Unit Development. Maps for each of these special base zoning districts were developed for discussion purposes. These designations are part of the official zoning map and appear on the composite zoning map of all district designations. Initiated by the Planning Commission at its meeting on August 25,2004.

c.) Receive Planning Commission recommendation on proposed City/University of Kansas land use cooperation agreement.

Linda Finger, Planning Director, presented the staff report. She said the revised development code came back to the City Commission with revisions from the Planning Commission taking into account the areas that were of major significance that this body looked at several months ago as well as some additional areas that staff had found. The document came to the Commission with zoning map revisions all but two sections of zoning map revisions and those were the CP (Commercial Parking) areas that did not automatically convert. They had been initiated by the Planning Commission in August to separate districts that were consistent with the uses that they served the CP, detention areas, multiple family parking lots and those would be handled tomorrow on the Planning Commission’s agenda

The second area was inner neighborhood areas. There was a task force that met along concurrent with the original first three years of work on the code and they were looking at an original town site zoning. She said RS-5 was the district to do that and there was no automatic conversion to this smaller lot. There were 13 neighborhoods that would be impacted by this issue and those would be considered by the Planning Commission also.

There were two questions that had been raised since the Planning Commission’s meeting. One question was the cluster housing and allowing detached single-family dwellings in a cluster housing development where otherwise if it was a regular multi-family development, it would require a special use permit. The Planning Commission discussed that in February and also in November and came to the conclusion that they did not believe a special use permit was necessary.

The second issue concerned the RMD (Residential Multi-Family Duplex District). That district as well as the RM-1 was recommended in Section 20-110e of the new development code to convert automatically to RM-12. She said it was the same density of development, but it did not have a building type restriction which was currently what the RMD had. She said in that district today, a person could have a single family detached or a duplex dwelling. In the RM-12 a person could have an attached dwelling unit that had at least 50% of common wall. She presented a map to the City Commission to help clarify issues. She said there were 14 areas where there were single lots zoned RMD between other zoning districts.

She said the City Commission had received a letter from Joyce Wolf from the Indian Hills neighborhood that spoke to 4 specific areas that were developed with duplexes. She said those areas were zoned either RM-1 or RM-3. Whatever the City Commission decided to do with the RMD district would not directly address those areas.

The Planning Commission only briefly addressed this item and there was no action by the Planning Commission to create a second district. The intent was to allow a mixture of uses so that there were a variety of uses.

Commissioner Dunfield asked if there was a new RS district that allowed for duplexes which was RS-7.

Finger said RS-7, RS-10, RS-5, and RS-3 would allow two attached dwelling units and they would need to meet the minimum lot area requirements. She said if living in an RS-7 district to have an attached dwelling you would need to be on a 14,000 minimum square foot lot so that each lot that was created through the split of that duplex would be 7,000 square feet to meet the minimum in that district. A site plan was also required when in a single-family district with an attached dwelling.

Vice Mayor Highberger said there was an issue raised about the wording of accessory buildings in residential areas. He said the way it was currently worded it would seem to prevent accessory dwellings in RS-3 and RS-5 districts.

Finger said correct that was because those dwelling were small.

Vice Mayor Highberger said his concern was that the RS-3 and RS-5 were going to be used for some of the more traditional neighborhoods where it was more common to see the accessory dwelling.

Finger said RS-5 was more in the infill areas and there were not many RS-3 districts unless some of those duplex lots were zoned to RS-3.

Finger spoke about the cooperative agreement between the University of Kansas and the City of Lawrence. She said the Commission did consider this as part of the zoning code revisions and they did that because the revisions that would be necessitated by this agreement would need to apply to the development code. The Planning Commission’s action was to unanimously not recommend the cooperative agreement and to retain the U zoning designation for both the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University.

Since the Planning Commission acted, the City Commission had received a revised proposal from the University of Kansas.

David Corliss, Assistant City Manager/Legal Services Director, said the development code that was recommended by the Planning Commission contained a U district that had regulations that impacted the property that was titled to the State where the University of Kansas was located. The University had indicted that they could not support a U district that included regulations on their property. He said the City Commission might recall that in the task force discussions, the draft agreement that the task force came back with, was a cooperation agreement between the City and the University that would replace the U district regulations as they would apply to K.U.

The City Commission had several options. The first option would be to adopt what the Planning Commission had recommended which was the adoption of the development code as presented with the revision that included U district. The second option might be to remove the U district from the development code and from the zoning map pending additional discussions with K.U. A third option, which was not acceptable to the University, was to make the U district provisions affective within 6 months.

Finger said 4^th option would be to take the U district and to gut the entire district taking all of the sections from A out, revise subsection A and 218 which was the district definition so that it paralleled the UR district which was section 220 which was a holding zone and was a special purpose district created solely for University property owned by the State and/or Federal institutions and that was the sole purpose of this district was for identification on a map.

Corliss said any recommendation to proceed with the development code that was different than what the Planning Commission recommended, would require 4 affirmative votes.

Commissioner Dunfield said of the options that were laid out, if the Commission were to accept the agreement between the City and K.U., how would that fit into those options.

Finger said if accepting the revised agreement between the City and K.U., then the Commission would need to look at staff’s original recommendation in the staff report which created U district and UK district and stratified the U district into two separate districts.

Vice Mayor Highberger said the difference between K.U. and Haskell was that K.U. had been negotiating with the City and Haskell Indian Nations University would completely ignore the City.

Corliss said the difference was that Haskell had Article 6, Section 2 of the United States Constitution to fend off any municipal zoning in the interlocal cooperation agreement set out the balancing of interest. He said essentially Vice Mayor Highberger was correct.

Vice Mayor Highberger asked about the 200 foot buffer area around the U district.

Finger said the 200 foot buffer area around the U district was the notification area in which the people in that area could protest.

Joyce Wolf, immediate past president of the Indian Hills Neighborhood Association, said a year ago all of those residences along 29^th Street Terrance were not zoned for their current use. She said they were going to ask that those areas be down zoned so that they would reflect their actual use. She said if those areas were to be redeveloped, they would like those areas to be redeveloped as duplexes so that duplexes replaced duplexes.

She said for instance, when those duplexes were no longer serviceable and needed to be replaced, their concern was that those duplexes would be demolished and under the new proposal 3-4 story apartments could replace those duplexes.

She said she conferred with a person that was more knowledgeable about this issue and that person commented that the easiest way to handle this situation was to create a duplex overlay district and use it only where duplexes currently existed.

Vice Mayor Highberger said if the area went to an RM-12 the area would have a similar density. He said he could not imagine how that area could be redeveloped to 3 story apartment buildings at that density.

Finger said it was required that minimum setbacks were met, off street parking, and in all of the RS districts today and in the future it was 3 stories or 35 feet. In the RMD district it was 2 stories or 35 feet; RM-1 was 3 stories 35 fee as well as RM-12 districts.

Commissioner Dunfield said it sounded as if the new development code had zoning categories that would be appropriate for this case that would maintain the duplex character as the maximum built out capacity. He asked why that idea could not happen automatically as part of that new map.

Finger said that idea was not in a table in the new development code.

Commissioner Dunfield said what he thought Finger was suggesting was that staff would need to track those particular cases. He said once there was a new development code in place, that staff could go back and revisit those particular items as a clean up process.

Finger said staff would like to bring those items back to the City Commission in February.

Commissioner Hack asked if it would address the concerns covered by a duplex overlay district.

Finger said it would be a better option.

Wolf asked if those owners would need to incur some costs for site planning.

Finger said if the duplex were leveled then they would need to site plan.

Commissioner Schauner said the current ownership was not going to tell much because ownership could change. He said Finger talked about gathering information including ownership, he asked how that was relevant to this issue.

At 9:59 it was moved by Dunfield, seconded by Highberger to extend the meeting to 10:30. Motion carried unanimously.

Finger said if staff found out that those duplexes were sold separately and each half was owned separately that would tell staff that those owners already had a vision that was happening.

Commissioner Schauner said the question that Wolf was asking was broader. He said not only were those established neighborhoods used for duplexes, but much of the new development out by the turnpike was duplex development as well. He asked how all the areas in town were covered to ensure that streetscape and other issues of concern were not changed.

Finger said there were some larger areas on the map that staff would come back and make suggestion that it might not be appropriate to go to an RS-3 when there was an area that was large.

Wolf said there was no duplex that was owned by two people. She said those duplexes were either owner occupied or the whole duplex was owned by one person.

Caleb Morse, League of Women’s Voters, said they supported the requirement of a UPR for cluster housing in RM districts. He said residences of single-family homes in cluster developments probably would benefit from the same type of notification that other residents in single family houses that were built in RM districts were given. He said there were requirements for UPR’s for single family houses in other RM district.

The discussion concerning how to deal with existing uses as duplexes was a positive one. He said it would be a good idea to include existing duplexes that were zoned RM-1.

He said they anticipated that there were a lot of owner occupied townhouses in some of those larger duplex zoned areas and staff might want to consider how to deal with those so that they were not rezoned to a blanket RM district because of the difference of scale.

He said they had argued all along for adequate buffering between RM districts and RS districts. He said they were encouraged by the change that the Planning Commission recommended with the setback being equivalent to the height of the building. He said housing of that scale in the RM district had been used effectively as buffering between higher density and lower density and that might be a reason to keep an RM district in the code or some equivalent that was used for that purpose.

He seconded the unanimous recommendation of the Planning Commission and concurred with their concerns. He said he was concerned that there was no indication in the new or old cooperation agreement that University projects would be expected to meet even the minimum zoning requirements that there was for other developments.

He said he saw that there was some regulation about stormwater for new developments and traffic generation, but the things that neighbors were often concerned about were setback and massing. He said there was no guarantee that that minimum protection would be afforded by the cooperation agreement.

He said he was pleased that there would be an official Building Advisory Committee. He said he did not see any indication how the basic conflicts between the parties would be resolved. Since his main concerns which were setbacks, massing, and the provision of light and air, were not addressed in cooperation agreement, he anticipated that those concerns were not going to be of interest and would not be addressed.

He said he personally thought it was a legitimate interest to protect its neighborhoods. He said he hoped that it was not that that kept the City Commission from trying to assert that authority.

If the City Commission adopted the University district at this time, with some kind of restrictions along that area you were only talking about 150 feet where those protections would be afforded to neighbors. If the City Commission found a better agreement in the future, that agreement could always be put on as another overlay district. He said given that the agreement could be terminated rapidly, it would give the neighbors a lot of piece of mind to know that there was something that would protect those neighbors should that issue fall through in the future and to know that the City would enforce those rules.

He said he hoped upon termination the cooperation agreement would revert back to a stricter set of zoning regulations if there was not an underlying zoning district.

He said neighbors raise those issues with a lot of concern and they were not raising those concerns to be obstructionist to the City and University. He said in the long run, the arguments that they were making were in the best interest to the City and the University. If the City Commission adopted a U zoning district, the University might not like it now, but in 25 years when central Lawrence was thriving with healthy, safe, and stable neighborhoods and did not look like a lot of University towns in the Midwest, the University would be very glad that the Commission adopted the U district.

Gwen Klingenberg, Lawrence, said she came to discuss the two areas Finger mentioned earlier. She said the top area that ran along several cul-de-sacs were a lot of houses that those town homes were backed up against which was all one property. She said if all that property was bought and someone decided to build an apartment complex because they had the ability to have 12 units that neighborhood would look like Joseph Street and Canyon Court.

The other area had very large duplex lots and the Commission was considering RS-3 and RS-5 district, but she wanted to make sure the Commission understood that some places staff might need to look at an RS-10 district because they still wanted the ability to keep the area to duplexes which were buffer zones between commercial and single-family.

Candice Davis, Vice President of the Oread Neighborhood Association, said she concurred with the comments made by Caleb Morse. She said over the years it became tiresome to keep coming back against an institution that was as large as the University of Kansas.

She said the ONA supported the U zoning district and appreciated the Planning Commission’s support of denying the agreement. She said the Planning Commission recognized the limitations that existed in that agreement. She said she found it interesting that the University of Kansas very quickly came up with some modifications to that agreement and while she was hopeful that they could work to make improvements, she would like to see some input on the part of neighbors into the agreement to make that agreement even more meaningful.

She said ONA’s recommendation was to support the U zoning district and honor the Planning Commission’s actions on behalf of neighborhoods and the stand they took on the interlocal agreement. She said if the City Commission looked could consider the interlocal agreement in the future and then replaced the U zoning district in the future.

Janet Gerstner, Lawrence, reminded the Commission that this area represents a large part of the City and there were neighborhoods on all sides of that area including west campus and would involve a tremendous amount of neighborhoods in what ultimately was decided.

She said her main concerns were that the original interlocal agreement as well as the changes that had been proposed, none of that had any direct neighborhood discussion or input or even questions answered about how it worked or a chance to even raise questions.

She appreciated that the University came back quickly and in fact offered some proposals. However, there were a lot of things left to be addressed in the interlocal agreement that were not addressed with their new proposals. The largest concern was the manner in which the buffer zone would be dealt with. There was very general terminology that was used for that concern. As a general practice, that should involve the establishment of an Ad Hoc Community Building Advisory Committee. Such committee should review architectural plans and drawings, site and footprint layouts, provide recommendations for changes and improvements and other issues.

She said it was fine for folks to throw things out there but this did not go any further in discussing how any of those issues would actually be resolved or dealt with. She said she saw this issue as placing the burden on individual neighbors.

She appreciated the intent that was put forth by K.U. and the document, but it was issues like this that needed more discussion.

She said another issue of concern was the notification of 5 working days and proposed 10 days which would make it more workable. She said the document went on to say that an impact analysis would be done and provided to the City no less than 21 days prior to development. She asked was the notice really 21 days or 5 days. She said there were many issues like that that were unclear in the document. She said another issue was how to measure timeframes.

She said she appreciated the thought, discussion, work and support from the Planning Commission on this issue. She said the goal of planning was to lay things out very clearly so that a novice could pick up the development code and understand what was going on. She said it made complete sense to have a U district that was equal for the University of Kansas as well as Haskell Indian Nations. She urged the City Commission to adopt a development code with the U district at this time. She said she found it encouraging that there was room for negotiation on the interlocal agreement and she urged the City Commission to allow some discussion of what existed and send it back to the Planning Commission. She hoped, as a community, to keep pursuing those ideas with the University.

Jason Boots, KU Student Senate, reiterated some things said in the Provost’s letter. He said it was important for neighbors to realize that the University was making a lot of concessions in the cooperative agreement that they did not necessarily need to make. He said at this point there was nothing that said that the University would need to follow any regulatory guidelines place on them by the City. The only way that could be figured out was through massive amounts of litigation that he was not sure the City or the University could necessarily afford. He said that was what the University was trying to do with this cooperative agreement which was to avoid such type of a step.

He said he understood that the neighborhoods around the University were concerned about building being put in near the boundary lines, but that was the idea behind the buffer. The University through work on the new scholarship hall on Ohio Street had shown that it was able to work with the neighborhood to come up with feasible plans that both sides could agree to. Right now was the best time to pass that cooperative agreement. Obviously coming from the Planning Commission with a unanimous denial, the City Commission might not be willing to do pass that agreement. However, as coming in with the new planning code, now would be the best time to pass that agreement. The University over the past couple of days had represented some of those concerns of the neighbors as far as the timeliness and when this contract would go into effect. He said the neighbors had mentioned that they were tired of working on this issue and obviously the University was tired as well. The reason the University came back so quickly with those changes was because they were ready for this issue to be over.

He urged the City Commission to pass this cooperative agreement and if not, he thought the University was still interested in looking at the cooperative agreement with the surrounding neighborhoods.

Michael Pomes, President of the Park Hill Neighborhood Association, said he wanted to turn the attention back to the duplex issue. He said he originally came into this meeting saying that this was not a Park Hill Neighborhood Association problem because they did have multi-family units along Kentucky Court. Looking at the fact that a duplex could be changed and replaced with a multi-family dwelling, then maybe what needed to be done with the intent of the zoning ordinance was to make sure that they were preserving the present character. He said that way the multi-family units on Kentucky Court stay that character and did not get upgraded to anything bigger than that or a duplex stayed as a duplex.

Moved by Hack, seconded by Schauner, to extend the meeting to 11:00. Motion carried unanimously.

Marci Francisco, Lawrence, said after she heard the remarks regarding the University and the process concerning the scholarship hall she wanted to discuss this matter. She said she knew the University was very pleased about how that process worked and how the building looked. She said many people in that neighborhood remained concerned that parking had not been provided for the scholarship hall that was going to house 50 people.

She said they understood when the first scholarship halls were built adjacent to their neighborhood that the university could guess that students living in scholarship halls might not be able to afford to have cars. That was not the situation today.

The students in that new scholarship hall would have an opportunity to park in the garage, but they could still drive down Ohio Street to see if there was a parking space and if there was no parking space the students could park in that garage. She said that opportunity did exist for the neighbors, but they had to pay the price of $4.00 an hour to park in that same garage.

She suggested looking at permit parking, but permit parking meant that the neighbors would need to ask the City to pass an ordinance and other processes that created an imposition. One of the things they wanted to do with planning was to avoid having to add that extra bureaucracy to make a building and parking area that would work so that you don’t have to add other layers of regulations. In this case, the University would have some assurance about what was going to happen in the areas adjacent to its borders, but the neighbors did not. She said that was what the Planning Commission understood when they went ahead and passed unanimously the U district. At this point, the agreement really did not provide any assurance and it was not working out the issues when there was not a particular concern on the table and that was an advantage of planning.

She said there was more work to do, but meanwhile she thought it was important that a district be identified. The U district was an appropriate designation. It would give them the opportunity to identify on a map, land, no matter if the ownership was the University or the Endowment that might adhere to some specific agreements and then they could move forward with talking about overlay districts for K.U. and the older neighborhoods.

Commissioner Schauner said he wanted the development code to move forward without any undue delay. He said it was critical that the character of the neighborhoods be protected where the duplexes currently existed. He said an overlay for duplexes or a thorough search of those areas where duplexes were currently located needed to be done and make sure those areas can’t “up zone” and create larger buildings on those sites by combining lots at some point in time. People who lived in those areas needed some predictability with respect to what their neighborhoods would look like.

Commission Dunfield said he would also throw the cluster housing issue into that mix because he was leaning both ways on those two issues. He said predictability was very important especially in established neighborhoods, but predictability was also the enemy of creativity. One of the things that they were trying to do with the new development code was to encourage more mixed uses, more traditional, walkable styles of development that typical zoning made very difficult, if not, denying outright. He said it was important to resolve the question of the duplex districts in the established areas and the initiation of a rezoning to an appropriate RS designation was the way to do that.

On the other hand, on newly developing areas, he did not have a problem with the cluster housing being allowed by rights. Again, he said he was trying to find the right balance between predictability and openness to better ways of developing than what they had typically seen. He said he thought that was the reason the Planning Commission made the decision that it made on that issue and he supported that decision.

Mayor Rundle said he thought that the Commission should address the duplex issue and any others by doing whatever they needed to do to preserve the character. If it was going to be a positive impact for another class to apply and to allow for creativity could be proposed and certainly public discussion would support a change rather than letting those changes be accidental by rezoning. This way there would be a public process and discussion and would not happen overnight without a dialogue.

He said he was not sure he understood the cluster issue, but the same principles applied. He favored approving this issue and initiated the actions and review to address those short comings.

Commissioner Highberger said he did not have anything to add to what the Commission had addressed. He said he thought they would be tweaking this document for the next couple of years. He said this revision did not get him anywhere near what he wanted to see, but he was comfortable with the process of making the duplex corrections in February as suggested.

He said he would like to have further discussion about the accessory dwelling unit issue, but that could be addressed after they adopted that document.

Commissioner Hack said she agreed that the development code needed to move forward. She said the development code would never be perfect because things change such as design standards.

Commissioner Schauner said he hoped that when the Commission discussed cluster housing, creativity and other issues, the two issues that should also come up are setback and massing. He said the Commission could be creative, but if there was not enough setback and too much massing next to a smaller structure, then the character to that living arrangement would be changed. He hoped the City Commission would keep those two issues in the forefront as they had future discussions.

The City Commission discussed the University issue.

Mayor Rundle said the Commission had to acknowledge that a great deal of work had gone into both the major revisions as well as the issues dealing with K.U. He said they all acknowledged the importance of K.U. to the community.

He said he was troubled when someone assumed that massive litigation was the only possible alternative if the Commission moved ahead into a changed world and perhaps consider rezoning the University. He said just as the University was concerned about its well being in times of limited funding, an individual homeowner had the same concerns on a smaller scale. He said the City Commission in looking out for the community and being physically responsible had to be concerned about the health of neighborhoods and the health of the University. He said there was a mutual interest that would moderate any controversy.

He said he would like to see some version of a University zoning district. There were a number of alternatives that were available. The University property was zoned at this time and there were regulations that went with those zoning districts. This would give them something that was more appropriate to the University. He did not think there was going to be a massive change in the community’s perspective on the University that would not be careful and move slowly on proposals that did come forward. The neighbors of the University wanted that same considered approach to their concerns as well.

Vice Mayor Highberger said if it was up to him the university would be subject to city zoning. On the other hand, he thought they should be thankful that the University had not been subject to the City’s existing zoning code over the last 20 to 30 years otherwise, this City would have a University that looked like South Iowa Street.

He said he was very sympathetic to the concerns of the neighbors. Again, if it was up to him he would make all building decisions at K.U. subject to City oversight. He said he was not a land use lawyer, but the way he read the cases, it was unclear. He said if the City went to court, the City might be able to get more authority over the existing K.U. campus. He said he thought it was extremely unlikely that they would get complete City zoning over areas that were not part of K.U. Campus.

He said he was disappointed in the neighbors who did not feel they had enough participation in the process and he wanted that to change. He suggested not adopting the development code so there could be more neighborhood input. He said it needed to be recognized that it was not very clear that the Commission had the authority to get everything they wanted.

Commissioner Hack said she could understand Vice Mayor Highberger’s frustration because he had spent an incredible amount of time on this issue. She agreed with Vice Mayor Highberger in that she would like to see option 2 which was to remove this issue from the development code and map and have further discussions.

She said there had not been a lot of situations between those two groups that had fostered a whole lot of trust on either side and she hoped by further discussion they could get to that point. She said she understood the legal aspects of this issue from the University standpoint.

Commissioner Schauner said he thought the Commission should follow the lead of the Planning Commission and adopt the U zoning. He also believed that if a client brought that cooperation agreement to him and asked for his opinion, he would tell the client not to sign that agreement. The cooperation agreement was so vague and nebulous that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.

He said one of the things missing in the proposal was a process in which the neighbors had more support than just themselves. The City needed to find a way to make its own staff available to neighbors in those discussions and negotiations. Otherwise, the neighbors would tire. The University was a non-person and lived forever. The neighbors get tired and had other things to do. He said when they look at future discussions about this agreement, they needed to find a way to get the City resources involved in assisting neighbors in preserving their quality of life and dealing on a more even playing field with the University. Anything short of that idea would make those arrangements in the proposed cooperation agreement meaningless as a practical matter.

He said he has also read the cases and he said it was not clear on exactly how much authority the City had to impose zoning on the University or other state owned property. The Herman case which was cited in the agreement was a case in which the plaintiff didn’t even allege that the state was unreasonable. They were there to talk about the issue of exactly how far could the zoning go just as a matter of law. He said what the court said was that they were really talking about a balancing test that was fact specific and anything broader than that as an explanation or use of that case was a mis-statement of what the court said.

He said he thought they needed to move forward with the U district and continue to have dialogue with the University and find a way to get the neighbors involved at the table and find a way to provide more City resources in assisting the neighbors in future discussion with the University about the development of the 150 foot buffer area.

Commissioner Dunfield said pragmatically speaking, he did not know about the specific language and how enforceable and clear it was and there might be a lot of work that needed to be done in that area, but in terms of the basic outline of the agreement, it represented the sort of compromise that both the City and the University could live with. He said they mean to preserve neighborhoods, but they also had to preserve the other distinctive environments that make Lawrence what it was and the University campus was certainly one of those environments. Both the University campus and downtown were districts where the kind of zoning that they imposed on other parts of the City would destroy that distinctive environment.

He said no agreement like this was going to solve all of the concerns and issues. He said the essence of that agreement and what made it a landmark, historic event, if they could not blow it and manage to go on from there and make the agreement work was that it defined a clear boundary and that was a big step forward. He said they needed to make sure as they go on in this process and continue to negotiate that they needed to keep in mind that that was a really important outcome.

For the City Commission to impose a zoning district upon K.U, that they knew that the University would not accept on its face was a poor way to repay that whole negotiating effort that a number of people had been involved in. He said he did not think that you would repay that good faith effort by imposing what you know to be an unacceptable solution on the other party that you were negotiating with.

He said he agreed with Commissioner Hack in that they should remove that district from the map for now, go ahead with the new development code and continue the negotiations and come back to the City Commission hopefully with an agreement that was more satisfactory to all sides.

Mayor Rundle said if the Commission did not approve the U district, he asked if that required a super majority vote.

Finger said yes.

Mayor Rundle said it was not that the neighbors were tired of a 3 year negotiation process, but it would be more accurate to say that it was a 30 year effort to try and maintain some stability. He said he thought it was not a slap to the University to send that agreement back to the Planning Commission for comment. He said if that agreement was truly the best they could figure that out and approve the agreement at a future date. He said the recent events had been a great movement forward. He said you could certainly look at all of those proposals and all the concessions that had been made.

This had been a very positive movement on the part of the University. He said when the scholarship hall was designed there was a great deal of input from students and neighbors. The University learned that it wasn’t such a bad process. He said the University could see that they could have probably made some concessions and not have any of the extra expense they might have had with that scholarship hall.

He said this agreement was the most positive thing and the University had made concessions, but there was a great amount of ground to cover. He said it was more the sense that he felt of the University trusting in the process and the community.

He said there was zoning in place and he did not see any difference between leaving the zoning in place and putting a more appropriate zoning in place. He said there was not going to be a great flurry of activity that would follow from that zoning.

Commissioner Hack asked Finger what currently existed at the University.

Finger said the RD district would not exist once they adopt the new code.

Commissioner Schauner said as they continued to discuss the matter with K.U., they could at some time, either amend significantly, or remove the U district from the code.

Finger said that was correct.

Commissioner Schauner said they could put the code in place now subject to further discussion or modification.

Commissioner Dunfield said if it was the Commission’s intention to come to an agreement with the University, why first take the step of imposing a zoning category that they knew was unacceptable to the University. He said why not leave the question open. Unless it was the Commission’s intention to ultimately put that idea in place and to fight the University then why would the City Commission impose something that was unacceptable to the University. He said the City and University should keep working until they had an agreement that everyone could live with.

Commissioner Highberger said his concern with approving the U district as it existed was that this topic had not gotten any public scrutiny or comments since the negotiation process for the last year. He said if the City Commission was going to push the issue with imposing zoning on the University then the Commission should do it with more public scrutiny.

Mayor Rundle said he did not look at this issue as a fight. He said this issue should be looked at like the smoking ban because a certain constituency was very vocal and the City Commission came back and conducted a hearing on that issue.

Commissioner Schauner said he was troubled about some of the conversation. He said it assumed that the University representatives were something other than very sophisticated managers of their property. He said that idea was doing those representatives a dis-service. He said those representatives were very sophisticated people and understood that negotiations took place all the time, people take positions and people say things that were ultimately subject to negotiations and modifications. He said he did not think it was unreasonable for this body to take a position from which it had already demonstrated in this discussion. He said he did not think the Provost was going to be mad or not talk to the City Commission if they imposed U zoning that people stated that they were willing to talk about and make modifications. He said he gave the University credit for coming to the table in good faith to talk with the City Commission about fixing a mutual relationship. He said he did not understand why the Commission thought the University was going to be mad if the Commission did something to protect the City’s interest and the interest of the neighborhood.

Commissioner Hack said that thinking just echoed what Commissioner Dunfield said which was why put in place something that was essentially dropped as a consideration according to Vice Mayor Highberger in the beginning times of the one or two year conversations with the University and the Commission knew that idea would not be agreeable to both sides. She said yes the representatives from the University were managers of property, but they were also residents of neighborhoods and many of them were residents in neighborhoods that circled the campus. That idea was the mutual agreement that needed to be found.

Commissioner Schauner said he thought the Commission could find that mutual agreement back at the negotiating sessions with the University and not at this Commission meeting.

Commissioner Highberger said he heard consensus to continue the negotiation process. The question was what to do with the blank spot on the map in the mean time.

Moved by Rundle seconded by Highberger, to extend the meeting until 11:05

Mayor Rundle said if the Commission failed to approve that district, was this issue then sent back to the Planning Commission. He said if there was a movement for a substantial change, then it would take 4 votes and if there were only 3 votes, then he asked if the issue would go back to the Planning Commission.

Corliss said it would take 3 votes to send the issue back to the Planning Commission. He said if the Commission did not take any action, then the issue died. He said it would take 4 votes to overrule substantial modification from the recommendation from the Planning Commission. He said the options were: Option 1 - Adopt the proposal as presented by the Planning Commission which would include the U district as written; and Option 2 - Remove the U district provision from the development code and also from the zoning map which would take 4 votes.

Mayor Rundle asked if the Commission could include the University as an issue that the Commission wanted to send back to the Planning Commission for further discussion starting with the agreement and that could at least be the basis of the public discussion.

Corliss asked the City Commission if the U district would become law. He said if the discussion about the U district was being sent back to the Planning Commission, then the Commission would be implying that the U District was not in the code.

Mayor Rundle asked Corliss to elaborate on the option of not enforcing the new development code for 6 months and any ramifications of that idea.

Corliss said it was not uncommon to set an effective date into the future. He said the ordinance that staff was drafting would make the new development code effective January 24, 2005 and the Commission could set another effective date for the U district.

He said there were some transition issues in the way the U district was written as far as the institutional plans being required and there were provisions where the buffer area of 150 feet had to be determined and there were certain uses that were allowed and certain uses that were not allowed. There was a lot of work to be done.

Finger said if the Commission did not adopt the cooperation agreement, the U district would come forward if the Commission adopted the code as the Planning Commission recommended with an institutional master plan which would review the campus plan and create a 150 foot buffer that would be very similar to what you see on the map that the University created.

Commissioner Schauner asked if the Commission could adopt the Planning Commission recommendation and with 4 votes or more delay implementation of the U zone for a period of time and instruct the parties to go back to the table to talk about the cooperative agreement.

Corliss said that was within the authority of the Commission.

Commissioner Hack said Finger’s proposal was to pull the U district from the code and then change it to a district that was held for state or federal educational purposes until an agreement was reached. She asked if that idea could be implemented

Finger said it would take 4 votes because that would substantially modify Section 218 in the code which was the U district. It would take all subsections after “A “out which was similar to Section 220 which was the UR district. That was basically a special purpose based district and its purpose was to identify, in this case, educational facilities owned by the state or federal government.

Commissioner Dunfield said he might be misunderstanding that district, but it sounded like if the Commission were to adopt that idea, the University would think they were on their own and would not have an incentive to continue negotiating.

Moved by Highberger, seconded by Schauner, to extend the meeting to 11:20.

Commissioner Dunfield said if the Commission implemented that idea with the understanding that that category was considered temporary and if the Commission had not reached an agreement with the University at that time, then the Commission would go back to considering what that U district would actually look like.

Commissioner Schauner asked for neighborhood comment.

Caleb Morse said as a neighbor it might be workable. He said he understood Commissioner Dunfield‘s objections and they were exactly his objections. He said the U district as written gave the University some incentive to negotiate for lesser restrictions.

Marci Franciso said she agreed that it would help for them to have something that they could go back to if negotiations failed and also a reason for K.U. to say they wanted to continue with negotiating. She said she understood that the University had spent some time negotiating, but they had not came down and participated in public meetings. She said having the U district gave the University reason to continue negotiation.

Janet Gernster said the U district gave some definition as to what would happen and it gave them something to go back to. She suggested keeping this code intact as the Planning Commission recommended or having the effective date 6 months off seemed like an acceptable option.

Jason Boots said from the University’s perspective either option that had been discussed, whether they left it as a blank spot on the map or left it as a state educational zoning area, was acceptable. He said one idea would be implementing one of those two options and putting a 6 month effective date on the U district zoning. He said that would allow the University to continue the negotiations knowing that if they did not negotiate something within the next 6 months they would be subject to the U zoning and also at the same time show the good faith of the City and the Commissioners that the University was not trying to impose ill will upon the Commission, but that the University was trying to negotiate.

Mayor Rundle asked if that idea could be accomplished in one motion if there was interest in that idea.

Commissioner Highberger said he could support the new code including the U district with a 6 month extended effective date because that would give them time to review and make any changes that the Commission thought were necessary.

Commissioner Schauner said so essentially approve the Planning Commission recommendation with a 6 month later effective date for the U district. He said he could support that idea. The Commission was trying to do the right thing by neighborhoods that by themselves did not have a lot of power and the neighborhoods needed the Commission’s assistance with this issue.

Mayor Rundle said it was his personal pledge that they would come to a consensus on this issue and he was not going to be the stumbling block to that idea anymore than he thought any of the neighbors were.

Commissioner Dunfield added that in addition to the neighbors and the University officials, the Commission had to look at the impression that all of that discussion made on the community as a whole. The signal that the Commission needed to send to the community as a whole was that they were going to work together to resolve this issue. If they could do that by approving the Planning Commission’s recommendations with a 6 month delay in imposing the U district then he would like to make that a motion.

Morse said that in the odd chance that some of that land was sold to a private developer in the next 6 months, he asked what non zoning would be referred to.

Finger said the developer could not do anything until that area was zoned.

Corliss said he did not agree with Finger. He said the property would be zoned as a U district. He asked what would that parcel be mapped as.

Finger said it would show up as a U district with a bracket underneath that said this district would not take effect until July of 2005.

Corliss said staff was not enforcing that district on the University. The University could go ahead and construct within the next 6 months. He said what Morse was asking was what happened if that property was zoned by a private property owner.

Finger said if the University sold some of that land, there would need to be some zoning designation for the site plan process because staff would need something to base setbacks or density requirements on.

Corliss said the property was still in the City and they did not have the state statute that protected them from the building permit requirement and they would need to pull a building permit, but they could not pull a building permit because the property was not zoned. He said he stood corrected.

Moved by Dunfield, seconded by Schauner, to receive the Planning Commission recommendations concerning the proposed Development Code and Zoning Map; receive the Planning Commission recommendation concerning draft City/University of Kansas land use cooperation agreement; and, directed preparation of an ordinance adopting the development code for first reading on the December 21, 2004 agenda (effective January 24, 2005 except the “U” district which would be effective 6 months later); Approved proposed zoning map, November 17, 2004 edition; and directed staff to continue negotiations concerning City/University of Kansas land use cooperation agreement. Motion carried unanimously. (24)

Rundle asked if the Commission needed direction to do those other initiations concerning duplexes.

Finger said the Commission needed clarification on the duplex because there were two slightly different issues that were raised. One issue was to protect the integrity of the neighborhood and duplexes and the other was the RMD zoning. Not all the duplexes in the City were in RMD zoning. She said she did not have a map that showed where all the duplexes were located. She said if the Commission wanted staff to identify where all the duplex structures were that would take longer because staff would need to go back to appraisal records to try and figure out where those duplexes were.

Commissioner Schauner said that was what he thought staff should do.

Mayor Rundle said if going to an A classification to something that was similar, it seemed that some of those issues would be major rezoning questions.

Finger said it would be a simple matter to do RMD but there was a class of zoning. If wanting to look at a building type, then staff needed to find a way to map that building type.

Mayor Rundle asked if staff could see any more challenging legal issues in the situation where a duplex was built in an area not currently zoned for a duplex. If it was built as a duplex but not zoned as a duplex, was the fact that they would be rezoning the whole town enough of a basis for properly addressing that issue.

Corliss said he did not know if there was a good answer to that issue.

Commissioner Dunfield said the intention was to protect the structure and the neighborhood character. He said that was easy for the RMD and it might be more difficult for the other zoning districts, but that was for staff to tell the Commission and for staff to research and pursue.

Finger said staff could report back to the Commission in March so that staff could find all the duplexes outside of RMD districts.

Moved by Rundle seconded by Highberger, to extend the meeting to 11:30. Motion carried unanimously.

Corliss said the duplexes that were currently outside of RMD could be only one of two categories, there were legal non-conforming uses or they were illegal and the City did not know about those duplexes.

Finger said correct. She said staff could narrow down the search down to RM-1 and RMD properties.

Wolf suggested that her neighborhood association could assist with mapping in their neighborhood and mark where the duplexes were located. She said LAN would meet tomorrow night and they could request assistance.

PUBLIC COMMENT

Patricia Sinclair, Lawrence, said she did not know what happened about the police evidence storage, but after 10 months of frustration with trying to keeping up with this issue, reading, emailing, researching, and attending meetings, it seemed with her interpretation of the code concerning the floodplain either allowed a project that was not allowed according to our floodplain code article 9A or there was some sort of misrepresentation, deception in hiding information that led her not to be able to understand that the floodplain was different from what was shown on the site plan. She said she found it very distressful because she had contracted Planning well in advance after they had all been through the file and told them when she would like to review the file and even went today to review the file, but now Sandra Day said she had on her desk, waiting for review, some sort of a stormwater floodplain study. She said that was public record and if that information applied to this issue she should have been able to see that information and direct her comments based on that information.

She could not imagine that the City Commission was approving a site plan that showed a floodplain area that was not the one that was there. She could not imagine that you would do that for a private person.

It seemed that they were saying that the area of the floodway was going to be different once the storm channel was completed in which she had no knowledge of. If there was such a document or study, that document was not made available to her nor was it reviewed by planning. If they were not ready with that information this should not come before this body for decision of the site plan tonight. In fact, the City Commission should have been able to review, in her opinion, a site plan that showed accurately where the floodplain was.

There were also questions by Commissioner Schauner some of which she did not believe were not accurately answered.

The old site plan showed that the boundary of almost that entire property said floodplain boundary and now it said floodway boundary. The difference between floodway was that smaller channel and floodway plus flood fringe equals floodplain. As she read the code, the code applied to the entire floodplain. Either way, there had been a change in representation of what the term was on that map. She could not understand even the note on the map that showed 2-98 floodplain and the Stormwater Manager did not anyway indicate that they saw this construction of that channel that this was going to alter those boundaries.

Mayor Rundle asked that those comments be written up and asked Sinclair to email further concerns so staff could respond.

Sinclair said she would be brief, but she wanted this to be public because she had sent emails last week in which she never received any responses.

Commissioner Dunfield said the City Commission understood Sinclair’s point and they would make sure that staff would respond to that point and ensure that staff was following City regulations in everything that had to do with this site plan. He said staff would respond to Sinclair’s issues.

Mayor Rundle said the City Commission only extended the meeting until 11:30 p.m.

Sinclair said she had waited all this time to for public comment and she would appreciated four or five minutes more so that the City Commission would understand her entire ideas as much as her tired brain was able to express.

Moved by Schauner, seconded by Rundle, to extend the meeting until 11:35 p.m.. Motion carried unanimously.

Sinclair said she knew they had asked about this because it was mentioned about the Rails to Trails in the proposed park where they built The Woods instead. She asked different people in the city what was to happen because they wouldn’t get the Rails to Trails in its entirety. She said she wanted the City commission to understand that from 15^th to 19^th Street there were no stormwater improvements at all. Some portions of the channel were cleared out where they had an easement. Otherwise there were not improvements between 15^th Street and 19^th Street. There was the new development at 15^th and Haskell Avenue that would generate more water coming down. There was an open channel and if it was required to have a stormwater review that would change the boundaries that should have been done and should have been on Sandy Day’s desk for review and should have been available for her to read. She said this plan meant nothing if the boundary were to be changed.

She said it was very frustrating and it even seems as though the HRC received incorrect instructions as to what they were allowed to rule on, not that their position was binding, but you obviously gave its some weight. She said this was totally inappropriate in a residential neighborhood and it was certainly not comparable to the place on west 15^th Street which looked like a palace with an enormous setback with beautiful woods and lots of room for expansion at that location.

She said she was just befuddled by what happened tonight, particularly with regard to the legal issues and the public right to have permanent information that the public could base their comments on and not come and get blind sighted at a meeting by people saying that there was something different than what they were presented.

Commissioner Schauner said staff would give her a response. He suggested that the response should come to the City Commission from Day or Planning staff about the floodway changes if there were any and how that channelization might make a difference and when that would happen.

Sinclair said and what the current code applied to because she believed it applied to the entire area of the floodplain even though this map showed the whole thing being in the floodway anyway. She said it would be a moot point for this project.

Commissioner Schauner said they would get the answers and he appreciated Sinclair staying for public comment.

Moved by Schauner, seconded by Hack, to adjourn at 11:35. Motion carried unanimously.

_____________________________

Mike Rundle, Mayor

ATTEST:

___________________________________

Frank S. Reeb, City Clerk

CITY COMMISSION MEETING OF DECEMBER 14, 2004

1. Bid – Clinton Pkwy & Wakarusa Relief Project to Nowak Construction for $79,185.

2. Contract – Bus bay & Shelter installation at various sites to RD Johnson for $56,431.30.

3. Bid – 2005 Water Treatment Chemicals

4. Agreement – Fiscal Impact Study to Tischler & Assoc.

5. Contract – Design & Construction of N Lawrence Pump Stations 1, 2 & 3 to Bartlett & W Engineers, not to exceed $313,702.30

6. Contract – Biosolids land application services for 2005 to Nutri-ject Systems for $106,000.

7. Bid Date – Rehab project at 811 E 11^th and 2236 East Dr., Jan 4, 2005.

8. Ordinance No. 7799 – 1^st Read, Rezone (Z-04-15-04) 26.712 acres from A to RS-2, N of Harvard.

9. Ordinance No. 7849 – 1^st Read, “reserve parking for persons with disabilities” in front of 1505 Vermont.

10. Ordinance No. 7850 – 1^st Read, traffic yield on 29^th at Kensington Dr.

11. Ordinance No. 7847 – 2^nd Read, “No Parking” S side of Kresge along entire frontage of

12. Ordinance No. 7843 – 2^nd Read, max assess, Lake Point Drive.

13. Ordinance No. 7848 – 2^nd Read, max assess, 3^rd, Alabama to Illinois.

14. Resolution No. 6574 – City Boundaries.

15. Site Plan – (SP-08-56-04) Cornerstone Plaza 2, 1981 23^rd St.

16. UPR – (UPR-09-03-04) Village Meadows Retirement Community, W 6^th & w of Congressional.

17. Project Info Form – Save America’s Treasures Grant from NPS.

18. Subordination Agreement – 333 Johnson Ave., Diane Bucia.

19. City Manager’s Report.

20. Site Plan (SP09-61-04) Lawrence Evidence Storage, 900 E 15^th.

21. Smoking – Restrictions in public places.

22. UPR – (UPR-10-05-04) preschool at 4931 West 6^th.

23. 2005 Water/Wastewater Rate Info.

24. Development Code & Zoning Map discussion.