June 19, 2007

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 Hack presiding and members Amyx, Dever, Chestnut and Highberger present.  

RECOGNITION/PROCLAMATION/PRESENTATION:

With Commission approval Mayor Hack proclaimed June 21, 2007 as “Dump the Pump Day”; and June 23 – 24, 2007 as ”Amateur Radio Days.”  

CONSENT AGENDA

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to receive the Contractor Licensing Board meeting minutes of April 26, 2007; the Board of Zoning Appeals meeting minutes of April 5, 2007; the Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting minutes of February 20, 2007 and April 17, 2007; the Recycling & Resources Conservation Advisory Board meeting minutes of April 11, 2007; and the Sustainability Advisory Board meeting minutes of May 9, 2007.  Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to approve claims to 605 vendors in the amount of $1,649,108.57.  Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to approve the Drinking Establishment Licenses to Red Lyon Tavern, 944 Massachusetts; and Jefferson’s Restaurant, 743 Massachusetts.  Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to concur with the recommendation of the Mayor and appoint Lora Jost to the Lawrence Arts Commission, to a term which will expire January 31, 2008; reappoint Mike Treanor to the Lawrence Humane Society, to an additional term which will expire May 31, 2008; appoint Russell Blackbird to the Sister Cities Advisory Board, which will expire December 31, 2007; appoint Steve Bradt to the Special Alcohol Advisory Board to a term which will expire June 30, 2010; and appoint George Bear Eoannou to the Sustainability Advisory Board, to a term which will expire December 31, 2007.  Motion carried unanimously.

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to set a bid date of July 17, 2007 p.m., for the Kaw Water Treatment Plant Building Envelope Repairs.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                       (1)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to authorize the Finance Department to purchase the Selectron VoiceUtility System for an amount not-to-exceed $53,635.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                      (2)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to authorize the City Manager to enter into an Engineering Services Agreement with BG Consultants for $22,000 for services related to waterline relocation at 19^th Street from Alabama Street to Tennessee Street in conjunction with street improvements.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                                                               (3)              As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to place on first reading, Ordinance No. 8098, an ordinance providing for the adoption of the “Development Code of the City of Lawrence, Kansas, June 12, 2007 Edition” incorporating by reference said amendments, codifying the code in “The Code of the City of Lawrence, Kansas 2006 Edition” Chapter 20, and repealing the existing sections.  Motion carried unanimously.   (4)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to initiate a text amendment for Section 20-403 to consider adding Restaurant, Quality to permitted uses in the IL (Limited Industrial Districts; and refer this matter to the Planning Commission for consideration.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                        (5)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to authorize advertisement of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for engineering and construction inspection services for the design of modifications to Pump Station 25 (East Hills Business Park).  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                                 (6)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to authorize the City Manager to negotiate a design-build contract with the design-build team of CAS Construction/Professional Engineering Consultants for the Preliminary Design and submission of a Guaranteed Maximum Price for the construction of the West Baldwin Creek Sanitary Sewer Interceptor Project in accordance with the recommendations in the 2003 Wastewater Master Plan.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                             (7)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to authorize the Mayor to sign a Release of Mortgage for Jeremy Benzel, 1522 Lindenwood Lane and a Subordination Agreement for Elizabeth Patrick, 2734 Bonanza.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                                                                     (8)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to approve the use of right-of-way request for a temporary closing of 7^th Street between Vermont and Massachusetts on Sunday, July 15, 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.; and a temporary closing of the 900 block of New Hampshire Street on Sunday, October 14, from 1:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                                          (9)

As part of the consent agenda, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to approve a license agreement to install a 3 foot picket-style fence along New Hampshire and a 6 foot privacy fence along 18^th Street as requested by Lois and Frederick McMillan.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                                                     (10)

Commissioner Amyx pulled Ordinance No. 8120 from the consent agenda for a separate vote.  It was then moved by Highberger, seconded by Hack to adopt on second reading Ordinance No. 8120 establishing a domestic partnership registry.  Aye: Dever, Chestnut, Hack, and Highberger.  Nay: Amyx.  Motion carried. (11)

CITY MANAGER’S REPORT:

Johnathan Douglass, Management Analyst, City Manager’s Office, said at a joint City/County Study Session there was a question regarding funding relationships between the City and the County, in particular dispatch and the Health Department and the budget manager prepared a demonstration on the effect of those funding relationships on hypothetical taxpayers. 

He said last week Commissioner Dever requested some history on the Train Horn Quiet Zone process and staff provided a memo outlining the history and financial numbers.

Mayor Hack thanked Douglass for all of his work on the All American Cities, not only on the original nomination and application for that nomination, but the work on the presentation and while they did not walk away with the award, she thought they walked away with a far better understanding of the Lawrence community. 

Douglass said he had a lot of help from other City staff and people out in the community involved in those organizations that were highlighted. 

Mayor Hack said they also had a wonderful dedication of the Parks and Recreation improvements to Clinton Park on Friday night and Commissioner Highberger and Vice Mayor Dever were present along with some of the people from Parks and Recreation and Pinckney Neighborhood.  She said it was a beautiful park. 

Lastly, she wanted to commend Sheila Stogsdill, Acting Planning Director, for the Planning Commission orientation.  It was the first time the Planning Commission had a day and a half orientation in the City Commission meeting room and that Planning Commission was an enthusiastic and excited group of individuals to get started on their job, but now had a good amount of tools to get that job done.  She asked Stogsdill to supply the City Commission with copies of the Planning Commission’s notebook and their presentation because it was good information everyone could use.  She heard many comments and compliments on the orientation.                                                                                                                                        (12)

REGULAR AGENDA ITEMS:

Conduct a public hearing on a request by Worldpeace, LLC, d/b/a Ingredient for a waiver of the restriction of the sale and serving of alcoholic liquor within 400 feet of a school or church, pursuant to section 4-113(a) of the Code of the City of Lawrence, Kansas regarding a proposed restaurant (drinking establishment license requested) at 947 Massachusetts Street.

Mayor Hack called a public hearing on a request by Worldpeace, LLC. d/b/a Ingredient for a waiver of the restriction of the sale and serving of alcoholic liquor within 400 feet of a school or church.

Frank Reeb, Administrative Services Director/City Clerk, said the City Code contained a provision that prohibited the sale or serving of alcohol liquor within 400 feet of a school or a church.  That same section of the code, however, contained a process by which an applicant for a Drinking Establishment License could request a waiver of that distance restriction.  That process included scheduling a public hearing, publishing a notice of that public hearing, and then specifically sending a written notice to any school or church within 400 feet of the proposed Drinking Establishment.  He said World Peace L.L.C., d/b/a/ Ingredient, proposed to open a restaurant at 947 Massachusetts.  They would like to sell alcoholic liquor along with their menu of gourmet sandwiches and gourmet pizzas.  The First United Methodist Church, at 946 Vermont, was within 400 feet of that proposed establishment and as a result, Ingredient had requested a waiver of that distance restriction.  The previous occupant of that location, Qdoba, a couple of years ago also requested a waiver and it was granted on three conditions.  Those conditions were that the current ownership be maintained, in other words that waiver was not transferable.  It was also conditioned on the business plan remaining as it was presented to the Commission at that time.  Third, it was also conditioned on the primary entrance remaining along Massachusetts Street.  He said he spoke with the representative of the First United Methodist Church and they indicated they did not plan on being present as they did not have any concerns with the proposed establishment or sale of alcoholic liquor by World Peace, L.L.C.  Steve Kerner, the managing partner, was present and might want to give the City Commission a little bit of information about the proposed restaurant.  He said, as noted in the staff memo, staff was recommending approval of this waiver conditioned on those three similar types of conditions.  He said he would also note the City Code provided, in any event they do as a Commission approve this waiver, that they specifically find the proximity of the restaurant was not adverse to the public safety or welfare. 

Commissioner Amyx asked if there were any other locations where the Commission denied the waiver requests.

Reeb said a couple of years ago, the first time Pepperjax Grill came before the City Commission, they did deny a distance restriction waiver request as part of a cereal malt beverage application.  Pepperjax Grill came back one year later and that waiver request was approved.  He said the first time Salvation Army did have some concern and primarily as a result of that concern, the City Commission denied the waiver request.  He said that was the only establishment he could think of in recent times. 

            Mayor Hack called for public comment. 

Upon receiving no public comment, it was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger, to close the public hearing.  Motion carried unanimously.           

Commissioner Amyx asked if Commissioners Highberger and Hack were on the City Commission when the granting of the waiver for the restaurant Pepperjax was allowed and asked if that was when those three rules applied.

Mayor Hack said those three rules applied to Qdoba which was the prior occupant to Ingredient.  She said she recalled there was a concern from the Salvation Army.  The second time Pepperjax applied, the concern did not prove to be a concern anymore for the Salvation Army and the Salvation Army withdrew their concern and then the Commission approved the waiver.  She said there had been several waivers such as Rick’s Place at 9^th and Illinois. 

            Reeb said the Replay Lounge had an issue with their license and it lapsed for over 60 days and Replay had to have a similar public hearing process and their request was approved.

Commissioner Amyx asked if those establishments generally have conditions placed on their establishment.

            Reeb said Qdoba was the first establishment to have conditions, but he thought those conditions were appropriate because it clarified the establishment would remain owned and operated by the applicant and the waiver was not transferable.

Commissioner Amyx said he did not have any problems with the conditions, but wanted to make sure the City Commission was handling this issue in a fair manner across the board for people who find themselves in locations next to churches or schools. 

Moved by Highberger, seconded by Dever, to find the proximity of the proposed establishment is not adverse to the public safety or welfare and approve the request from Worldpeace LLC, d/b/a Ingredient for a waiver of the restriction of the sale and serving of alcoholic liquor within 400 feet of a school or church subject to conditions of 1) the restaurant at 947 Massachusetts will at all times during the distance restriction waiver be owned and operated by Worldpeace LLC, doing business as Ingredient; 2) the business plan as presented and discussed at the June 19 2007, City Commission meeting; and 3) the primary entrance to the establishment will be along Massachusetts Street.  Motion carried unanimously.              (13)

Consider pesticide-free park program improvements for 2008 budget.  

Ernie Shaw, Interim Parks & Recreations Director presented the staff report.  He said since 2005 staff had the opportunity to implement a pesticide reduction plan in the City parks and to date there were 33 lower profile parks and one high profile park, Watson Park, which were pesticide free areas.  He said for over two years their experience was educational and learned that some alternatives work and others were less effective in controlling or eliminating a problem in turf, shrubs, trees and flowers.  Staff also made it a practice to use preventative and alternative measures whenever they could such as to purchase blue tag certified weed free seed products so when they start a new turf area, or overseeding existing areas, it was less likely the turf had to compete with weeds that were typically in many of the turf seeds.  Staff also made it a practice, whenever possible, to landscape areas with native plants that were easily taken care of and had a better life than some other plants. 

The Parks and Recreation Department had some of the most educated and dedicated staff that continually kept up to date on the best practices to keep the City’s parks, landscapes, and turf and forestry areas in the best condition possible.  He said he thought it was recently verified by the citizen survey that gave extremely high ratings to the satisfaction people had for the parks in this community. 

He said staff outlined five steps that could help move the City closer to more pesticide free parks while continue to protect the City’s investment and public appeal of the park system.  He said the first four steps would not take any additional funds to speak of, but the fifth step would take funds.  The five steps were:

1) Eliminate the use of pesticides in the wood chip areas under all playgrounds and in all picnic shelters in all parks.  While not providing any appreciable cost savings, this effort will allow for these high traffic areas to be pesticide free.

2) The attached spreadsheet provides pesticide/herbicide application information for 2006 and will be an annual addition to the City’s website.  Setting up the spreadsheet and entering the data consumed significant staff time this year, but we anticipate a quicker turnaround in future years, now that the template is complete. 

3) Maintain all mulched landscape areas in the parks and public landscape areas with least toxic practices of pest control. Professionally certified horticulture staff will use best management practices to address weed and pest problems in these areas using the least toxic manner possible. First considerations will be given to all possible pesticide free options (we are currently experimenting with an orange peal extract solution) before applying the least toxic chemical to control the problem.  Staff anticipates that this effort will be cost-neutral, with no additional or reduced costs for this level of maintenance.

Every year, the City invests thousands of dollars to beautify public spaces and parks around town.  With this ever-increasing workload and growing number of landscape areas in the City, staff recommends that our professionally trained staff be allowed to use the most cost-effective manner possible to control pests before they damage or degrade the landscapes in which the City has invested.  We have studied the citizen suggestion that we create weeding jobs, e.g. seasonal and full-time positions and/or contract to local lawn care companies.  While the use of local contractors on an as-needed basis to control weeds might address the need to identify invasive and noxious weeds early and control them quickly to prevent further spread, these contractors most likely will not be responsive if hand weeding is specified as the required method.  And if a contractor is responsive to this type of project, costs could prove to be as problematic as our estimates for providing this labor in-house.  Put plainly, it’s difficult to find seasonal labor willing to do this type of work at a reasonable wage.  Even paying more is no guarantee that turnover and inefficiency won’t be constant issues to supervise, thus increasing costs and decreasing positive outcomes.  This prediction is not based on guesswork, but on staff experience in trying to hire and keep employees on task for these types of jobs (e.g. trash pick-up, weed pulling, watering, etc.). 

4) All athletic fields in the parks will be managed using least toxic practices of pest control. Historically, most of these areas are irrigated to maintain a higher quality playing surface. With this higher level of maintenance, there often is a higher risk for potential problems. It is very important that problems are addressed quickly ensuring turf quality is maintained for the safety of participants. In these locations, the public expects a nicely watered, green, smooth surface with a minimum amount of weed invasion. To date we have not found pesticide free solutions for problems that often arise in this type of turf. These problems range from grub control to selective weed control in the turf. The pesticide-free products we have used have been minimally effective and have not been cost effective or practical on a larger scale. We will continue to try new pesticide-free agents as they come on the market and strive to minimize the use of chemicals, using best management practices for turf care.  As in item #3, this will be a cost-neutral effort.

5) Eliminate the use of pesticides in the 20 additional sites listed. This would bring the total number of pesticide-free parks to 52.  Assuming that eliminating the use of pesticides doesn’t necessarily equate to a reduction in level of maintenance for these sites, trimming of park turf areas will continue.  Based on that assumption, staff would need to find an alternative to the use of the chemical Round-Up, which is currently used to chemically trim park turf areas at these sites.  The City would need to hire additional part-time staff to string trim the parks, consisting of three crews of two people that would travel from park to park trimming behind the mowing crews April through October.

He said the estimated cost to hire people and purchase equipment would be about $74,600 in the first year and then after the first year vehicle and equipment expense at $59,000 per year.  

Mayor Hack asked Shaw if he would like to comment on the e-mail received about the use of the pesticides that were outside the parameters.

            Shaw said those pesticides were used in three locations, Surge was used at Holcomb and Broken Arrow outfields in early April and Trimec was used at the Clinton Lake Softball Adult Complex in early April of 2006.  Those chemicals were shelf items from 2005 that were used up instead of destroying.  He said in their memo, as of 2006, everything staff ordered was Type 3 and 4 chemicals and not 1 and 2 type chemicals.  He said at this time there were no 1 and 2 chemicals left on shelf. 

            Shaw said he talked to one of the manufacturers who said that Surge, although it was listed as a class one pesticide herbicide, but it was only to the applicator when it was in full strength and it stated about pouring into the tank and making sure eyes were covered.  He said once Surge hit the water and mixed, it then became a class 3 herbicide so anything the public would come in contact with would still be a class 3 chemical once it was mixed and put down. 

Mayor Hack said according to Shaw’s memo, in order to increase the use of pesticide free parks by 20, it would be an initial cost of something in the area of $85,000 and then back off to about $60,000.

            Shaw said the cost was about $75,000 depending on the vehicle purchase, weed eaters and gas.  He said after that, it was hiring staff to run those weed eaters and gas to get staff around in that vehicle would be somewhere around $59,000 a year. 

Vice Mayor Dever asked if that cost included any volunteer labor to help with that process, or was it all City staff.

Shaw said it was all City staff.

Mayor Hack said Shaw indicated other items in the memo such as improving the public notification, landscaping with native plants, and some of the requests and concerns from the pesticide free groups that they were intending to do or continue to do.

Shaw said staff was constantly trying to use best practices.  He said again, the Parks and Recreation Department had some of the best educated staff around and they were constantly being asked by other communities on how their parks worked and the good ratings received from the community and Lawrence’s Parks and Recreation Department was one of the leaders in this area as far as Parks and Recreation.  He said staff, especially on the horticultural side was degreed in horticulture, certified in a number of things, and kept up to date on all current practices. 

He said when pesticide free parks was first started, in 2001 their pesticides were reviewed and they were amazed at how little staff sprayed compared to other communities, even back then, and had improved over the last four or five years.  He said they have not found a way to completely go pesticide free on those athletic fields and still be safe and keep those fields looking the way staff felt those fields should be.

Vice Mayor Dever asked why the reliance was so low on chemicals compared with other cities.

            Shaw said he thought the reason was because of staff.  Staff always had the philosophy they did not want to spray any more than they had to.  It was costly and they did not go out and spray because it was that time of the year.  He said if there was not crab grass and did not have crab grass last year, they were not going to go out and spray a lawn that did not need it. 

Vice Mayor Dever asked staff to comment on the choice of turf grass used for Lawrence and perhaps any alternatives that might have a safer level of pesticides.

Crystal Miles, Horticultural Manager, Parks and Recreation Department, said there were two types of grass, warm season and cool season.  She said with the cool season grass they got a longer growing season so they were planning the turf type fescues.  She said there were a few blue grass areas in the city, but not very many because it required more water. She said turf type fescues were pretty drought tolerant. 

The other side of grasses were the warm season grasses and those would be the native grasses such as tall blue stem, little blue stem, and Bermuda grass.  Kansas was a transitional zone so those only grew in the summer.  She said they would have a nice green area in the summer and the area would be brown in September through May.  She said Bermuda did well in the summer in the parks and considered it a weed because it grew for a short period, but come the fall and it was brown so it was not something they could play athletics on very easily.  It was one of the problems in Kansas because it was a transitional zone and it made it a challenge to grow trees and quality turf grass.

Mayor Hack called for public comment. 

Vice Mayor Dever asked if the only suitable choice was the blue grass.

Miles said it was the best choice for the longest season to have green grass, along with durability, ground cover, erosion control, more sustainable and do a better job for the public.   

Marie Stockett, speaking on behalf of a citizen’s group called the Pesticide Free Parks Project, said Parks and Recreation had done a great job of maintaining the current 34 pesticide free parks in the City and the City should be proud of their efforts.  She said Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department also reduced pesticide use and in 2001 they had a list of around 70 pesticides that they used around the City and in 2006 that was reduced to around 20. 

She said there were areas that need work, however.  The first area was how incredibly important it was to follow the current pesticide use policy.  That policy was not followed last year and that needed to be rectified. 

She said the two pesticides that were used were category 1 and category 2 still had to be transported within City limits, stored on City property and City employees were expected to handle that pesticide in the category 1 and category 2 state working with it and mixing it.  She thought that was a clear violation of the policy last year, but felt Parks and Recreation seemed like they were on the right track to rectifying that. 

She said as to the pesticide record, updating it annually was not sufficient and it needed to be current.  Every pesticide application should be listed, not only in parks but the golf course and other areas that Parks and Recreation maintained.  The pesticide records should be organized into categories by individual parks, the golf course and other areas.  Each pesticide application should be listed in chronological order for the ease of citizen use.  She said she took the pesticide record and looked up the negative health and environmental effects of the pesticides that were used in 2006, which she gave to the Commission and City Manager’s Office.  She said the negative health effects include cancer, endocrine disruption, reproductive effects, neurotoxicity, kidney and liver damage, and birth defects.   The environmental effects included toxicity to birds, aquatic fish and bees.  She said she would like that to be submitted to the public record. 

She said pesticides needed to be kept out of the flower beds.  After working with the volunteer program for the past two years, they knew that it would take one person no more than an eight hour day to weed all of Watson Park.  She said that would mean it would take one person no more than three weeks time to hand weed the 19 higher profile parks in Lawrence.  She said one to two full time weeders should provide more than adequate labor for the parks system, that was if beds were set up for pesticide free maintenance which would require a barrier which could be as low tech and low cost as 10 layers of newspaper and heavy mulch.  She said although Parks and Recreation had not been supportive of a volunteer program or volunteer help, there were still people in the community who were willing to help Parks and Recreation, hand weed flower beds. 

She said as far as maintaining turf around fences, poles, trees and benches, the City needed to use weed prevention methods.  This was where the system was set up so that weeds were discouraged or prevented from thriving.  The current Parks and Recreation Plan, which called for 6 full time people to weed eat all over the City was not the most cost effective and efficient mode of maintenance.  Weed prevention strategies would be most effective.  Some techniques included putting barrier down and then heavy mulch, putting down a thick layer of scrap lime, or even flame weeding would be more effective than weed eating.  She said she could see the current weed eating plan as a transition step where they move away from pesticides and could support it in that way, however weed prevention strategies should be the goal. 

She said for the future, new parks needed to be designed with pesticide free maintenance in mind which would include concrete footers under fencing and concrete slabs under poles and benches so that employees could mow right up to those areas and then there was no need to apply pesticides or weed eat and it would save the City 20 years or more in maintenance costs.   

She said as sports fields go, she would like to see the City choose a sports field for pesticide free pilot project in the future.  Parks and Recreation would need help and guidance in this effort from experts and professionals that have successfully accomplished this.  She said there were green turf professionals across the country available to consult with the City and help Parks and Recreation.  There were also classes and professional books on the subject this way children did not have to be unnecessarily exposed to harmful chemicals while playing their sport. 

She said they would like to see the City take steps to make the golf course as greens and ecologically friendly as possible.  It was positioned at a critical place in the water shed so applying pesticides to this area was not a good idea.  She said she saw in the proposed 2008 budget for the golf course, a line item for somewhere around $40,000 in chemicals.  She said $40,000 would buy a massive amount of pesticides and applying that quantity of chemicals to this area was far from ideal.  She said there were examples of ecologically friendly golf courses around the country and the most well known was in Nebraska and it was run by the National Arbor Day Foundation.  She said that organization would be a great resource for Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department. 

She noted that Shaw mentioned a consultant that came to Lawrence in 2002 and when she spoke with the consultant about the situation in Lawrence a couple of years ago, he said that he did not understand why Parks and Recreation Department did not want to maintain the beds when there was community support for it.  He said that they would know how to do it without pesticides.

She said she wanted to remind the Commission that in March 2007, she came to the Commission with recommendations from the Pesticide Free Parks Project and she wanted to make sure those recommendations were addressed.

Jeff Wilson, Lawrence, said he saw this as an ethics issue and did not find it ethical to pay this City to maintain a park system in which it was spraying dangerous chemicals on himself and his children.  He said he did not find it ethical that the City sprayed a park that had thousands of children every Wednesday night running around getting damaging chemicals in their bodies for the rest of their life.  He did not find that ethical and could not imagine how the City Commission did.  He said he did not know how Lawrence grew to a park system so large with 20 parks and wanted to keep adding more parks and asked to have all the parks safe before adding another park.  He said he did not know if it was the scientific evidence the City did not find compelling, Kansas had a bad reputation in that regard and would like Lawrence not to further that reputation.  He said he did not know if it was the community support the City did not believe in, but he did not find it ethical that his kids go to his parks that he paid for and they get chemicals sprayed on his children. 

Brent Swain, Lawrence, said it was important to think about the cumulative nature of pesticides and the fact the City was not the only source of toxicity and there were many other sources of toxicity in the environment today and everyone needed to pitch in and do everything they could.  It was much like recycling or energy efficiency and required leadership.  He said as elected leaders, they needed some leadership to go beyond just what they thought they had a mandate for and see if they could go the extra step what they considered to be sustainability for the next generation to have a cleaner environment. 

            He also said from a pragmatic standpoint, he heard that with the playing fields, for instance, it was potentially possible to find strategic areas in the playing fields that were not the actual playing surface and maybe allow them to be the grass.  He said maybe they could educate the public to widen their comfort zone of visual aesthetics when looking at the ground cover. 

Laura Routh, Lawrence, said while the efforts of the Parks Department thus far were laudable regarding a pesticide free parks program, she was afraid the recent memo provided by the department continued to show what she felt was a clear bias in favor of using herbicides.  It seemed to her that City staff padded the cost estimates for providing pesticide and herbicide free landscapes and exaggerated the negative impacts without giving a balanced report on the benefits. 

The United States Environmental Protection Agency concluded that many endangered species of plants as well as amphibians and reptiles might be at risk from Round Up or Glyphosate use.  One study showed an effect on growth and survival of earth worms.  Round Up inhibited microbial fungi which were crucial organisms for healthy soil.  She said Round Up had been shown to impair nitrogen fixing bacteria and killed beneficial insects.  She said Round Up could also increase the spread and severity of plant diseases. 

She said personally she thought they were asking the wrong question.  She said instead of trying to figure out how to kill weeds, they should figure out how to plan and grow landscapes that would work in harmony with the native soil, climate, and habitats.  Wild flowers and hearty perennials, particularly native ones, could often reduce weed populations and provide beautiful, blooming plants.  She encouraged the City to stay the course in its commitment to pesticide free parks.  She implored staff to set aside their biases and seek additional, sustainable, and creative ways to provide beautiful landscapes for their public lands without endangering the health and safety of the community and their children.  

Kevin Kennedy, Lawrence, said he was an environmental health scientist and the Program Manager for the Environmental Health Program at Children’s Mercy Hospital.  They were involved in exposure assessment for children and evaluating what kind of exposures might have led to symptoms or health problems for kids.  He applauded the City on its efforts to try to make the parks pesticide free and unfortunately the vast majority of communities in the country did not follow similar practices and they were very lucky to live in Lawrence who attempted to follow pesticide free park initiatives.  He encouraged the Commission to continue that policy and actually to expand that policy to all parks, specifically because he did not see it as an aesthetic issue, but a health issue. 

He said it was pretty conclusive that a lot of those chemicals were not good for humans to be exposed to, but particularly for children to be exposed to.  He said he wanted to reiterate that children have unique health issues and were far more susceptible to pesticide exposure because of faster respiration, higher metabolism, they breathe faster, their skin was more sensitive, their internal organs are still developing, their hormonal systems could be effected by very low concentrations of some chemicals that might or might not be used, but many of the chemicals had not been fully studied on how chemicals might impact children.  Most toxic exposure analyses were based on a typical 150 pound human being and were not based on children at all and all exposure standards were based on adults and not really on children.  He said they were dealing with a whole different group of human beings and a unique group of human beings.  He said he was present to advocate that the City Commission try to make all parks pesticide free because it was in the best interest of our kids and the entire community.

Commissioner Highberger said he felt really good about pesticide free parks being initiated a few years ago and appreciated staff efforts before the pesticide free parks program.  He said staff was committed to reducing pesticide use over the years and would like to see that effort continue.  He said he supported moving forward with a complete pesticide free system.  He said he understood that some of the playing fields and golf course might take a little longer, but would like to see the major parks become pesticide free and it was a health issue as much as it was a budget issue.  He said in terms of the budget, he was still not convinced it would take all the funds indicated in the memo to achieve the goals, but he suggested allocating the money recommended and making it clear that those goals could be accomplished for less and that money could be allocated for other parks uses.

Vice Mayor Dever said many of the comments brought up were good points and many people overlooked the exposure pathways for children and adults in general.  He said he was in favor of expanding efforts for pesticide free parks, but really herbicide and chemical free was a better way of putting it.  He said the Commission had to be minimal on their impact both on the environment and on the budget.  He said hopefully there could be a conclusion to making an effort for those pesticide free parks by using both volunteer labor and directing staff in finding ways to achieve those goals without spending a whole lot of money on the process and identifying ways to move forward in more pesticide free parks. 

Mayor Hack said she did not want pesticide free parks people on one side and Parks and Recreation staff on the other because it would not solve this issue.  She said the City had trained staff with horticultural and advanced degrees.  She said staff had 3,500 acres of parks to take care of which was a ton of responsibility and as this community grew, those areas of growth would want the same types of parks that those in older areas had.  She said pitting one group against another did not get any of those best practices accomplished or what was good for the community.

She agreed with Vice Mayor Dever.  She was very concerned about the additional costs, but trusted staff’s assessment of those costs.  She said staff just spent hours trying to come up with a fiscally sound budget.  She asked staff for more of a breakdown of those costs.  She said the City had invested in those parks, golf course and ball fields, but to just experiment with those areas, things could go south in a minute.  She said in talking with Parks and Recreation staff, it only took a 24 hour period to destroy a green which would cause additional expense to the community.  She said she would like to maintain the status quo, but find out about those additional parks and what would be proposed before she would go ahead with the additional funding. 

Commissioner Amyx said pesticides could not be good for anyone.  He said the City Commission was being asked to consider going to a pesticide free park system.  The only way to accomplish that goal was for City staff and everyone involved with the pesticide free parks system to develop a program over a period of time that would get those parks to that point and those discussions could be started now.  He said to make this a pesticide free parks system, volunteer programs would be needed.  He suggested directing staff to continue the current program and develop a timeline that in the next 5 years, to go to a pesticide free program.

Commissioner Chestnut said he would like to see a way to continue to progress, but progress as cost effectively as possible.  Obviously, the Commission had the same goal, but it was how quickly they could get to that goal.  He said there was contrast about how much it was going to take.  He said this issue needed to be addressed over a longer period of time to see how to be pesticide free, but it was not going to happen immediately.  He said there was a lot of technology and research going into developing alternatives which would present itself over time.  He said it was a dialogue between the interested parties and the Parks and Recreation Department because he thought some of the solutions might become more viable in the next year or two that could really start leaping them forward.  He said he would like to see adding a few parks, but try to do it without adding a lot of head count. 

Commissioner Highberger said he understood the progressive plan made sense, but those progressive steps had been taken and it was time to make the next step, which was adding a substantial number of those 20 parks.  He said a five year plan was stretching it out too much for his taste.

Mayor Hack said they were looking at 20 additional parks.  She said they had gone from 0 to 32 in three years.

Commissioner Highberger said a substantial number of those parks were all but pesticide free to start with.  He said there was only one signature park.

Mayor Hack said she saw the implications which were an $85,000 hit at the beginning, but she had to rely on staff’s accuracy because staff dealt with those costs to do business everyday.  She would like to see a 3 year timeline to go totally pesticide free, but if it could be done quicker, then it should be done quicker.

Debbie Van Saun, Assistant City Manager, said the amount of collaboration was a goal along with the use of new technology and products as those products came on-line.  She said staff was very interested in those aspects of the program as well and that might mean those pesticide free parks might come along faster than what was suggested.  She said it was hard to know what was on the horizon as far as alternatives.  She said staff provided a list of eight that they were using right now on a test case basis and staff was continuing to do that, but some failed and some succeeded.  She said that would also help move things along, but it would not be as definitive as the number of months or years that it might take.   She said it would certainly help the spirit of the program in the collaboration.       

Mayor Hack said it was a good point to mention that staff was not sitting back relying on hearing about new technology or products in Newsweek.  The Parks and Recreation Department was commended consistently for the City’s parks, by not just our citizens.    She said staff was doing the best job they could at this point. 

Van Saun said staff could bring back an option that would be a bit of a program improvement to allow for some ability to move forward.

Vice Mayor Dever said he liked Commissioner Amyx’s idea of trying to identify a park with a group and then that group would be responsible, not only would they have the credit, but the responsibility for that park.  Part of the problem he heard was that participation wanes in weeding in the hot summer months and rose in the spring and fall.  He said more community involvement should be encouraged, a list should be identified, have someone take responsibility for that list and become a team.  He said it would be everyone trying to take care of this problem not just Parks and Recreation Department because it was a massive 3500 acre estate that needed to be managed and that was hard to do on a limited budget.

Mayor Hack said there might be opportunities for business partnerships as well.

Van Saun said there was a strong park program and staff had been active in promoting that and was another avenue that could be used in a collaborative sense.

Commissioner Highberger said he appreciated those comments, but did not want to be overly rosy about it.  He said he would stick up for staff this time because he knew the organizations he had been involved in that supervising volunteers could take a lot of staff time and could be frustrating.  He said encouraging volunteer participation was really great, but it was going to require a commitment on the part of the City too.                                                    (14)

Consider Rental Registration of Multi-family properties program improvement for 2008 budget.

Brian Jimenez, Codes Enforcement Manager, presented the staff report.  He said members of the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods asked staff to research expanding the rental registration program at the beginning of 2007 regarding the number of multi-family residents, the costs involved, how much additional staff was needed, all those variables that were included in expanding the program with which staff’s memorandum addressed. 

He said there were two inspection options to consider which were:

1. 100% inspection of multi-family every three years; and

2. A percentage of multi-family units based on the total number of units located on a single parcel.  

He said some cities inspected a percentage of their apartment complexes.  For example, if there was a 100 unit complex, 33% would be inspected every three years and in a nine year period those inspections would be completed.  There was also discussion that new construction, 10 years or newer, might be exempt from the program so every year units might be added.  Those were all possibilities. 

He said the table that showed the annual cost included the worst case scenario based on 100% inspections every three years and the approximate number of staff it took to accomplish, including vehicle, supplies, work stations, office supplies, etc.  He said if not conducting the 100% inspection process, one inspector could possibly be dropped.  One important element of that process was the addition of clerical staff.  Their department currently had four divisions and two clerical staff that were maxed out on their duties.  They probably used a quarter of the time of one clerical staff for their program related to rental inspections.  A lot of the inspectors did a lot of clerical duties and had assumed more of those duties over the last couple of years.  The department implemented the contractor licensing program which was very time consuming so a lot of their times were now focused on that program, but staff willingly assumed more clerical duties.  He said staffing would be a key element of the program.   He said he contacted the Unified Government of Wyandotte County which was comparable to Lawrence in the number of units and might have a couple thousand more units than Lawrence, and had two clerical staff.  He said staffing had been an issue that had come to the forefront in the past and certain articles in the paper brought this issue up again by citizens. 

Commissioner Highberger asked if the City could reasonably set inspection fees that would cover the ongoing program costs.

Jimenez said the inspection process was a revenue generator.  The program might not completely pay for itself, but it was close to offsetting staff’s costs.  He said based on yearly things like salaries and merit increases, it dropped significantly after the first year because they would need vehicles for those people and capital outlay would decrease.  Again, this program was a revenue generator that provided money in that category.

Mayor Hack asked if the program was self sustaining as opposed to adding additional revenue.

Jimenez said yes.  He said self sustaining was a good term.

Commissioner Chestnut said when they discussed this issue a few weeks ago Jimenez indicated that initially there would be a significant deficit starting out because of how long it would take to get the registration going.  He said in other words, almost 12,000 units were not going to pay that registration fee right out of the box. 

            Jimenez said yes, but there was another possibility of implementing the licensing fee and start the inspection program a year later.  He said when single-family licensing was started, there was an influx of rental licenses coming in at once and slowed down over time, so initially they had a huge amount of applications and fees coming in.  He said staff was looking at the process of changing their payment schedule and doing a simple schedule based on last names with certain last names being due each month.  He said that type of payment schedule would be implemented in the fall for next year rental licenses pertaining to single family. 

Commissioner Chestnut asked what the process was currently for a tenant complaint inspection because he was assuming complaint driven inspections were the bulk of how those were generated at this point. 

Jimenez said all single family rentals were required to have an inspection by the staff.

Commissioner Chestnut said he was speaking about the multifamily.

Jimenez said staff received phone calls, e-mails, or written complaints and staff set up a time to meet with the tenant.  Staff performed the inspection and there was usually a specific area of concern and looked at everything, not just their specific complaint.  Usually there were code violations and the inspector would go back to the office, enter a case for that property, check the case history and make sure everything was correct, and enter the violations.  He said depending on the severity of the code violations, usually staff would send a courtesy letter stating the property was inspected and the attached document outlined what was wrong and needed to be corrected in which the property owner was given a timetable to correct that violation or violations.  He said hopefully there would be compliance before that time period was up, if not, depending on the severity of the code violation, staff at their discretion, could send a notice of violation.  He said sometimes those violations ended up in court.

Chestnut asked if Jimenez had any idea on how many complaint driven violations occurred each year.

Jimenez said in 2002 when he started working for his department there were approximately 60 violations.  Currently, those violations were around 150 or more per year.  He said those violations had increased each year since he came on board.  Approximately 75% - 80% of those complaint inspections were multifamily. 

Commissioner Amyx said if approved, what would those inspections include.

Jimenez said the inspection would include exterior and interior.  Basically, electrical, mechanical, structural, and life safety issues were looked at.  He said one major change was currently, under the City’s housing code, which was under the Uniform Codes, there was a requirement to have one smoke detector per floor on any structure built prior to 1997.  He said he was informed by the fire department that it was not consistent with state guidelines anymore and the new International Property Maintenance Code the City was looking to adopt with the other International Codes would require additional smoke detectors to bring it up to state guidelines, which were one per floor and one in each bedroom.  He said it might go from a two story unit that needed only two smoke detectors currently, and if there were three bedrooms on the second floor, five smoke detectors would be needed.  He said that was a big change but one that was very important for life safety issues.  He said staff also looked at general maintenance.  The City’s code required ground fault receptacles near kitchen counter tops and in bathrooms of existing structures.  He said a big issue for staff in multi family dwellings were basements that were converted to sleeping rooms that were not anywhere near code compliant.  He said overall staff performed a top to bottom inspection of housing codes which would be the property maintenance code. 

Commissioner Amyx asked if the inspections were more thorough than the Fire Department inspections.

Jimenez said any unit, three or more, or occupied by 6 or more people, the Fire Department inspected common interior areas and those areas were required to have a fire alarm system.  The Fire Department thought they had a good grasp on those particular types of units, but knew there were many of those units that were missed.  He said the Fire Department supported that type of inspection.  Staff could probably identify those properties that were missing those fire code requirements and make those properties come into compliance.  Again, the Fire Department only inspected an interior common area of any structure that had three or more units or if the Fire Department thought there were six or more people living in those structures, which by the Fire code, it was a congregate residence.  He said occupancy was another issue, but through the inspection, staff could determine if the occupancy requirement was in compliance or not.  He said there was a boarding house part of the old zoning code that was omitted and now was placed back in the development code.  If there was a house with 7, 8 or 9 people living in that house, they either needed to get down to the occupancy limits per multifamily zoning or needed to submit proper documents to planning for site plan approval.  He said there was another element to help the City identify those problems. 

Vice Mayor Dever said he was trying to acquire a better understanding of the mission of those inspections because he was not involved in the prior conversations, but read up on the history.  He said it seemed this inspection process was a huge undertaking and it would be easy to get sidetracked.  He said if there was an overall mission or purpose for the inspection process, what that would be.

Jimenez said the way he looked at it was to provide safe housing to all tenants in Lawrence regardless of the zoning district lived in.  He said the inspections process would not affect the good landlords.  He said it would help staff identify the bad properties in multifamily that needed some upgrades or code compliance.  He said it would ensure tenants that every three years, if they went that route, the City had conducted inspections and looked at the necessary things to ensure the property those tenants were renting was compliant with the property maintenance code that was going to be adopted.

Vice Mayor Dever said the Unified Government of Wyandotte County was referenced and asked if they noticed any impact of the cost of this process on the rental rates in their community.

Jimenez said the more units those landlords had the less money it would be.  He said currently, Lawrence’s cost was $25 per unit.  He said he heard concerns from property owners regarding that the City was causing landlords to raise their rent.  He said it was going to trickle down, but the question was how much.

Commissioner Chestnut said there was probably a history with single family with which the fee section was not the problem, the cost was once those violations were found, how much money it would take to get up to code.  He said the City’s codes had been amended quite a bit and would be looking at current code, but the current standard that particular multifamily unit was built to had to get moved up.  He asked if there was a transition.

Jimenez said not necessarily.  He said staff did not make exceptions for things like life safety issues, smoke detectors, or proper egress from sleeping rooms.  He said things such as locations of furnaces and water heaters in prohibited locations in today’s code staff was not making property owners move those to a new area.  That violation was simply noted and that property was notified that once those appliances were changed out, what was needed to change those appliances out.  He said staff provided education to the property owner, but if it was a life safety issue staff would want those property owners to make that change.  He said for the most part, it did not come into play that often.  He said he perceived that most of those repairs were not that expensive, but the property owner might have a different take on those costs.  He said if it was a bad property, it might take some money to get the property repaired. 

Mayor Hack asked if there was a waiver on the housing around the Centennial and Schwegler area regarding the size of the windows because those windows were smaller then they should be by today’s code.

Jimenez said if it was built to code at the time, staff was okay.  The exception was in basements because it had to be compliant with today’s standards regarding egress.   The egress in basements was considered a major life safety issue. 

Commissioner Amyx said under the current inspection program, litigation was involved regarding a tenant and asked if the City was waiting on anything to come back from court.

Commissioner Highberger said there was suit about the constitutionality of the rental inspection ordinance brought up by the landlord association.  He said that issue had not been resolved.   

Toni Wheeler, Director of Legal Services, said there was a lawsuit pending which was on appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.  The issue was applicability because it was limited to the RS zoning districts and the allegation was it was not a fair application of the law.  Also, later in the lawsuit, the administrative warrants were questioned.  She said one of the tenants or property owner did not consent to the inspection and staff went to the district court and received an administrative warrant and there was some question about the legality of that warrant.        

            Commissioner Highberger said adopting the proposed ordinance would make the first part of that lawsuit moot.

Wheeler said yes, it would take that challenge away.

            Mayor Hack called for public comment.

Candice Davis, Oread Neighborhood Association, and a landlord, said she supported the rental registration program that was proposed in March.  She said the benefit of such program was largely that it was self sustaining, at least financially. She believed rental registration could largely pay for itself by the second year.  There were over 12,000 multifamily zoned rental apartment units in Lawrence.  She said it was mentioned that Lawrence charged $25 in the single family zoned neighborhoods which that cost seemed modest when broken down into the 12 months so it was a little over $2 a month for each unit.  She said a lot of landlords and tenants could absorb that cost.  She said it seemed to be a modest amount when considering safety.  The rental registration program already existed in single family zoned neighborhoods for five years which worked well and there was a history of implementing such a program. 

Presently, the complaints in the multifamily zoned areas were complaint driven and she believed that created a lot of problems at times and sometimes there were repercussions on the people who reported their complaints.  There were also problems when there were a lot of students, particularly in the Oread Neighborhood and if there were problems, sometimes those students ignored the problem and moved on.  A large portion of the complaints the City was receiving were in the multifamily zoned neighborhoods. 

She said the goal of rental registration was to ensure the basic maintenance and safety standards for all rental property and to see that those standards were enforced.  She believed it was important to have safe living conditions for all tenants and would have an overall positive effect and impact on all neighborhoods preventing property deterioration and in some cases especially in the older neighborhoods, the demolition of some of the older homes. 

She said multifamily zoned rentals had a much higher density and were a much greater risk to tenants.  She mentioned the Boardwalk Apartment fire and the fact that there were a number of people in that apartment complex and those types of buildings needed to be safe. 

She said in being a landlord, a person was running a business and believed they should be required to meet minimum safety and welfare standards for the people they were earning money from. 

She said another positive thing about this program was increasing some jobs in the community at Neighborhood Resources. 

The Oread Neighborhood Association believed that City wide rental registration was a logical and reasonable request.  They believed that Neighborhood Resources could formulate an effective plan that could be slowly implemented over time, perhaps five to six years.  She said perhaps Neighborhood Resources could start with one staff person and just focus their attention the first year on collecting money from landlords and implementing inspection on the following year.

Phil Hemphill, Lawrence, said he was a landlord for 38 years.  He said he knew of at least half a dozen properties, single family homes that were rentals, that had never signed up or never required to be signed up for the registration program that was in effect.  A number of those units had more than three bedrooms and rented to more than three people, which was a part of the original ordinance which was not having more than three unrelated adults living in a single family home.  Added to that, as it came into being, they had more of the health safety aspect of it come into play.  He said he had been through inspections over the last five years of six or seven properties that he had registered and never been asked once how many beds there were or how many tenants that there were in the properties. 

He asked Jimenez that they would have an initial flood of applicants to start the program, but it would taper off. 

            Jimenez said that was correct.

            Hemphill asked Jimenez what was being done to fine properties that were rentals and were in violation and would staff end up with the same kind of thing happening for multifamily.  He said it was harder to duck when they had a six unit apartment building, but it went back to if they were not enforcing rules and regulations already on the books, then why not correct that problem before moving on to the next level.  He said there were a host of properties out there not registered.  He said he was against the rental registration in the first place because he was a good landlord and took care of his property and never had anything more than the absolute minimal problems with any inspection.  He said once again, the City was penalizing the good and missing the landlords who really ought to be part of that program. 

He said he received a notice in his water bill that he was going to have to register his property under the current program and had not seen anything in his water bill saying that as a tenant, he had a right to report health safety violations and who to report them to.  He said 10,000 to 15,000 people would be moved in Lawrence in the next couple of months, and asked if staff could notify those people through public service announcements if they felt their place had health safety problems.  He said staff was not taking advantage of or promoting the opportunities for people to take care of their own problems without making a multitude of people signing up and paying money. 

Gwen Klingenberg, Lawrence, said she thought she could address a part of the question about the single family homes that did not have to register at this point.  She said one of the reasons why they have asked for multifamily registration was because in Lawrence there were large areas where there were single-family home structures being used as apartments that were in multi-family districts.  She said if there was a single family structure with apartments and not in a single family zoning district, those places did not need to register. 

She said regarding the International Codes and the extra smoke detectors and alarms was required because safety and decent housing was number one in all the needs of everyone.  There were several organizations in Lawrence that worked hard to provide decent living standards and this rental registration program was a giant step in that direction.  There were many substandard housing situations in this community.  She was sure that any renter would be willing to pay the small added fee the landlord charged to guarantee safe and decent housing. 

This program was also another step toward maintaining affordable housing in this community by keeping apartments up to standard and by keeping deterioration from happening throughout the older neighborhoods.  She said by doing that, there were a lot of single family structured homes that had apartments that someday, by maintaining those and keeping those structures from demolition by neglect, could be rehabilitated back into single family homes which would maintain and help maintain the affordable housing stock.

Marilyn Roy, Lawrence, asked if the new ordinance would move the City in having every single rental inspected every three years and every single rental property registered versus only the single family home rentals being registered.  She said now it sounded like multifamily rentals needed to be registered, but still not all of the rentals were registered.  She asked if the idea was to get all of the rentals registered. 

Mayor Hack said the original ordinance was for houses being rented in single family zoned areas and that was the limitation of the three unrelated and also carried the inspection.  She said this ordinance would expand that program to properties that were located in multifamily which included apartments and homes that were at one point single family that had been flipped into apartments and boarding houses.  She said this would expand the rental registration to include those in multifamily zoned areas.

            Roy said she did not think her landlord had her house registered, but she lived singly in a single family home. 

Mayor Hack said her home was already registered.

            Roy said she would like to plead for some mechanism that would allow a renter to stay in their home once the inspection was completed and the landlord was declared negligent.  She said her friend still lived in the lower floor of a two apartment older home that was once a single family home and was still terrified to report the negligence in her home because she could not afford to live anywhere else and knew that should she report to the City, the City would come and inspect and would notify the property owner that she would probably be required to move out so that either the landlord would fix the property or she would have to move out.  If the property owner decided not to fix those violations, then she would need to move out anyway and the structure would be torn down.  She said she knew what the landlord tenant laws were and she thought there must be a way to provide for people that were in situations like that so that they did not have to be afraid to report and knew the landlord would be required to fix those violations and the tenant was able to stay on the property while those violations were being fixed. 

Betty Alderson, Lawrence, said she lived in a single family neighborhood that had been invaded by renters.  She said it was true, not all the people who had single family homes and had them overloaded with people were inspected because they did not bother to do so and did not have any mechanism of sending an inspector down the street and knocking on every door and asking if it was owner occupied or renting.  She said they were talking about a rental registration ordinance tonight which involved health and safety.  She said early on when people were complaining about this issue and she asked the City what the experience had been in the inspections and what was found, she said all of those violations were health and safety issues that should have been found and the rentals should not have existed in the first place.  She said if their neighborhood saw a house that was sold and all of the sudden there were six cars in front of it every night, they knew it was being rented to too many people and called the City to see if the structure was on the inspection list.  She said she would like to see every time a structure changed hands, the structure would need to be re-inspected, but she understood that was not the case and was inspected every three years.  Initially, there were a whole lot of registrations because everyone was registering and the same time.  The re-registrations came up at different times now and were probably a more staggered kind of thing.  She said rental registration had helped, but it was no more perfect than any other ordinance in town that was enforced on a basis of citizen complaint because they were expecting neighbors to tell on neighbor and there should be a better way to do some of those things.  She said she was in support of the multi-family registration and was overdue. 

James Dunn, Lawrence, said the Landlord Association was not the entity that brought the lawsuit on the current ordinance.  That lawsuit was brought by both tenants and landlords and the Landlord Association was just for people as housing providers.    

He said the proposed ordinance was focused on multifamily zoning districts, and asked if there were other zoning districts in this community that had residential properties that were neither single family or multifamily.  Also, if the ordinance was intended to pick up all rental property, to focus on zoning districts, someone would be left out.  He said he was also concerned about liability issues.  If an inspector went into a property and inspected it and verified that property as appropriate for living and there was an issue involving specifically something that was inspected that caused a health and safety issue down the road, like a fire, what would be the liability for the City on an inspected property if that was the specific issue. 

He said he was comfortable with the current ordinance where individuals could call in for an inspection and there were a number of situations in the community already which were generated through a call in situation.  If a car was blocking a sidewalk, there was no bureaucrat that was watching for cars blocking a sidewalk someone needed to call that violation in as a citizen.  He said there were a number of programs in place that were complaint driven that related to housing and health and safety.

He said originally this whole matter of rental registration as the initial mount of a new program was a budgetary issue and if it did turn into a budgetary issue he would rather have it wait a while because he did not want to see the “T” system or library hours cut for a rental registration program. 

Tom Harper, Lawrence, said he was a resident of Centennial Neighborhood and a property owner in Oread so he would be affected by this proposed ordinance.  He said he was in favor of it and was really excited and passionate about this registration.  He said revenue generating and safety issues were a win-win situation and it was really hard to debate this issue.  He said as he listened to the pesticide issue earlier, it seemed like the natural progression from five years ago when they started the single family zoned rental registration to today where it seemed like they had that under their belt and the City was doing a good job.  He said of course someone could nit pick and say the City did not have all the single family rental houses registered, but they were human beings and doing the best they could and could not herd all the cattle into the gate.  He said it was time for this City Commission, like the Commission five years ago did, to take a bold step, phase the multi-family registration program in and work with the City staff and do it in a reasonable way, in a cost effective way, and start working toward ensuring safe housing for all people in Lawrence.  He said that was the mission statement in brief, which was hard to argue with.

He said his main concern as he drove through some of the older neighborhoods in town and saw the huge, old homes and all the tenants that lived in those homes and what a safety hazard some of those structures were.  He said to be able to get Code Enforcement or the Fire Department in to look at what was going on in those structures, was a good thing and was going to increase the quality of life for the people living in that house and affect the quality of life for people living in that neighborhood because those homes had a myriad of problems that went with them when there were too many people in homes that were unsafe.  Typically, those homes were the ones with the noise ordinance violations, the parties, the trash, declining property values, etc. 

He said he wanted to emphasize that these homes were owned by absentee landlords, whether they were absentee emotionally, simply did not care, not in town, or managed by property management companies that were not staying on the ball.  He said those were the people they were after and of course they would get the good landlords in there, too, and they would have to pay $25 per unit, which was tough.  He said the market would bear whatever tenants would pay for those units so if that $25 was too much, he had to eat it, but knew he was contributing to a good thing for the community.  He said the bonus from this rental registration was revenue generating.

Matt Hoy, Attorney for Lawrence Apartments Association, Inc., said back in March this same issue was being discussed and he had sent a letter to the Mayor that he did not believe made it to the agenda packet.  He said he thought there were efficiency issues that merited the Commission’s consideration.  He said Jimenez had indicated the reports from tenants identifying landlord issues had gone up so at some level with additional information being given to tenants it was shown that tenants could utilize the reporting mechanisms that were in place.  Even with that, what were being reported were 150 a year out of nearly 13,000 apartment units, which was nearly 1% and it might be that that ratio of issues being identified did not suggest creating or expanding the bureaucracy of the city government.  He thought that was something City staff needed to examine and look at.  He said it would be interesting to look at not just the number of the issues that were identified, but what specifically were those issues.  It was information that would be helpful in making a decision like this.  He asked if they were the type of issues where they knock on the door and look through the unit, or were they the type of issues that may not be ascertainable.  He said what would also be very helpful for City Commission consideration was the result from those reporting issues; such as were the landlords responsible and did they remedy the issue.  He said if so, that would seem to indicate the system was working.  If not, why was that the case and why had additional enforcement mechanisms not been utilized and were penalties not severe enough.  He said the City already had enforcement mechanism in their City Code to utilize and those mechanisms ought to be reviewed. 

He said many of the anecdotes had shared experiences where they were dealing with a structure that was substantially different than apartment buildings.  Apartment buildings were typically newer constructed buildings built to code, inspected when built, they were managed by professional managers, routinely inspected for insurance purposes and then anytime a modification was made in the larger apartment complexes did rehabilitation construction and the time that was done, a building permit was requested and applied for, given, and inspections were taken.  He said it was a different thing than what the older homes in the Oread Neighborhood that were built in the turn of the century that had been over time cobbled together into a rental unit.  He said he thought part of the City’s consideration ought to be if they were dealing with apples and apples or were they dealing with structures that were really different and if they were, should they be treated differently.  

Candice Davis, Lawrence, said there are some apartment complexes that were in very, very bad shape and she would say that any number of these complexes that happen to be south of 23^rd Street had become really bad and they were not old homes, but large units.  She said she had to wonder about the safety of a lot of those units.  She said there were many large complexes behind Dillon’s and Hobby Lobby. 

Mayor Hack asked Jimenez to respond to questions raised by the public such as the non-compliance issue, the additional zoning districts other than single and multi family, and the liability issue. 

Jimenez said staff did take measures to seek out non-compliers.  He said he recently gave a staff member that assignment and as to date, minus a few applications, there were approximately 150 – 175 new applications that were submitted.  He said the unique thing about single family was the higher proportion of owner/occupied which made it more difficult, where in multi-family, especially in older complexes, staff knew those were rental units.   He said staff’s job in multi-family would be much easier than in single family as far as identifying those units.  He said in single family residents, ownership changed quite frequently and there were a lot of unique circumstances involving single-family that would not as often prevent themselves in multi-family.  He said staff found that many tenants did not know what a housing code violation was along with many property owners.  He said some of the extreme violations were raw sewage backing up into the house where the tenant thought it was left over pet smells.  Another example was a gas leak, where the leak was so potentially explosive that when Aquila arrived, they advised staff to immediately cross the street and it was the highest reading that person from Aquila ever received and the tenant was unaware of that situation.  He said staff did find extreme cases, but not very often.  He said those were examples where the inspection process had done some good.

He said regarding the additional zoning districts other than single and multi family, it might be good to include all rental units.  A good example would be downtown with all the apartments on the second floor from 6^th Street to 11^th Street.  He said there was some residential multi-family office space that would be included in the original multi-family. 

Mayor Hack asked staff about the liability issue brought up by a citizen.                  

Toni Wheeler, Director of Legal Services, said the question was whether the City could be exposed to additional liability if an inspector negligently conducted an inspection or failed to inspect when he had a duty to inspect.  She said there were provisions under the Kansas Tort Claims Act that would extend some protections to a city in that situation.  It was a little bit hard to predict not knowing the facts, but she thought there were provisions of the Kansas Tort Claims Act that would provide them some protections in that instance.

Victor Torres, Director of Neighborhood Resources, said he thought Jimenez did a good job tonight presenting information to Commission and Jimenez was one of the inspectors that he hired when they initiated the program and had all of the details as far as how it worked.  He said there were some things staff heard tonight that might be a problem for the new program and staff would find a lot of things they were not involved with now.  Staff would be looking at initial inspection and probably several follow up inspections.  If there were 12,000 units it would not be 12,000 inspections, but probably three or four times that many. 

He said secondly, staff would probably find a number of other things during inspections such as the number of tenants living at that location which created other cases that were initiated.  He said regarding the number of properties that were to be registered that were not, staff had a computer program that identified the number of units.   He said neighborhood groups called Neighborhood Resources to check a property out, set up a case, follow up on it, and sometimes they needed to be registered. 

He said regarding the revenue that was generated, it was revenue that would be in addition to the budget.  The money was coming in, but not enough to cover the entire program.   

Mayor Hack said in Torres’ estimation, a program that extended either to multifamily or beyond that to apartments would increase the costs to Neighborhood Resources and would not be covered by the fees.

Torres said it was very likely because staff would cause a number of other cases to be generated which caused additional workload and additional inspection staff which might not necessarily be rental inspectors, but other zoning inspection staff.  He said staff would be opening up a lot of additional cases.

Commissioner Amyx asked if staff had any idea of what the real cost was of one of those inspections.

Torres said the $25 charge was an administrative fee and was never intended to cover the actual cost of that inspection.  Their inspectors would go three or four times.  If it was a new rental unit, staff might be at that location one time.  He said if it was a multifamily unit, staff might be at that location for an hour or longer depending on the number of code violations identified.  He said it was hard to say what the actual cost was per unit.

Wheeler said if the program was expanded there would be additional work in her department in helping to obtain the administrative warrants.  She said she was not sure that was addressed previously. 

Jimenez said that was true with the initial inspections, but hopefully when going back three years after that, the majority of those structures were code compliant.

Mayor Hack said the Commission was looking at the issue of multifamily districts, multifamily housing, or apartment uses in districts that were not zoned multifamily like the downtown area, apartment issues, and cost issues.  She said until she had more concrete information on the fiscal impact to the department, she had a problem moving forward. 

Commissioner Amyx said he thought a number of the speakers were right when talking about safety being very important, but with Torres’ last comments about the program not paying all of its way, he was not sure that program could be done.  He said an idea was brought up about initiating a program on a smaller scale and starting inspections sometime in the future.  He also suggested looking at some of the older units that had gone through the conversion.  If the majority of the Commission wanted to do a program, the program could be crafted starting out small and move along to a fully expanded program.  He thought the Commission should wait on their decision until additional information on costs were provided and have this issue be part of the 2008 budget session discussions.

Mayor Hack said she wondered if the Commission should delay the conversation because of the budget and the fiscal impact to the 2008 Budget.  She said she understood the mission of this being health and safety issues, but also understood that part of the issue with the single family was to preserve single family neighborhoods and it was expanded more into the inspection.  She said if the real mission of this issue was to take older originally designed single family homes in older neighborhoods and rehabilitate those back to single family, she did not think that was the Commission’s charge, but thought their charge dealt with health and safety issues of citizens.  She said given that, she was not sure where that balance of those two were in terms of the mission. 

Commissioner Highberger said this was something that had been discussed for quite a while and would like to see the Commission move forward.  He thought there were ways to structure the program.  He thought staff could address some of the concerns raised by Matt Hoy and it would be reasonable to delay initial inspections of new construction or if a new unit had undergone a major renovation that required a permit staff could delayed inspections for a certain time.  He said this was a health and safety issue and one of the biggest comments that he received from KU students about houses being inspected, but not their apartments.  He said he did not think rental inspection would make housing more affordable anywhere.  The Commission had the responsibility to make sure the communities housing stock was all safe.  Again, he would like the Commission to move forward on this program. 

Vice Mayor Dever said he would like to hear from staff about working on the current program and also wanted to make sure there were not too many loose ends with the program already in place.  He said there were ways to improve the health and safety and target the neighborhoods that needed inspections the most.  He said there were bad buildings and there were good buildings, but the majority of the bad buildings were the building that could be targeted by age and if they were going to do anything, it would probably be something along those lines.  He said just putting in more bureaucracy, enforcing and encroaching on buildings any further as an across the board rule was hard to swallow and he thought they needed to target any kind of laws or enforcement rather than just pass a rule that included 12,000 units.  He said those inspections would be overwhelming.  He said he liked the idea of improving the health and safety for tenants, but did not know if an ordinance was the way or craft something more efficient and effective in dealing with the problems. 

Commissioner Highberger said he would not advise targeting areas geographically and avoid doing anything that encouraged vacancies in the older neighborhoods.  He said he did not want to do anything that would give anyone any sort of competitive advantage or disadvantage. He said he did not want to pass something that only targeted a few houses in the Oread Neighborhood that did not apply to newer apartments. 

Commissioner Chestnut said everyone would agree that safety was paramount.  He said one issue that was not addressed was how effective was the program right now.  He said the comments and all the staff memos that were presented, which were definitely informative addressed essentially the program and what it would take to move up.  He said there were many substandard housing units, which he thought also applied to single family units, and asked what was done in this program to move the bar up and did staff feel the program was effective.  Now the Commission was entertaining, multiplying that by six and he thought that was a quantum leap.  He said regarding the budget, the Commission had allocated a significant amount more resources toward this entire program.  Neighborhood Resources had grown quite a bit and was sure it was a result of that and did not think it was cost neutral program or even close to it now so the Commission was now going to multiply that times six and what did that mean.  He was very uncomfortable with a lot of the discussion.  He said if they brought all the department heads in, all would have an impact statement on what this would do to this particular department.  He said the Commission needed to understand much more comprehensively what they were getting into.  He said there was some discussion by Jimenez about what was done as far as exceptions.  He said when going into a single family home and talked about bringing things up to compliance, but had exceptions for X, Y and Z.  He said property owners needed to have that dialogue about what was going to happen.  He said when discussing rental rates and affordable housing, he thought those needed to be understood, too, because it could be a difficult thing.  He said a landlord was not going to be concerned about the fee, but the impact on further investment.  He said not for safety issues, but for code in bringing up the standard because the construction at the time did not dictate those standards.  He said it was problematic when those standards were not clearly defined.  Currently, he said there were more questions for him than answers which was why he thought this issue needed more study. 

He said as far as educating the community, he asked what was done in the community to pursue tenant education.  He said quite honestly 150 complaints a year did not sound like a whole lot, which led him to believe there was probably not a lot of awareness of how to and what to because they brought up that it was less than 1% and his guess was there was a much higher percentage of violations, but a lot of people did not know what to do so they lived with the situation and moved on.  He asked if staff had looked at progressing education aggressively in an education program in the community because renters were a big part of the population and that was probably something they needed to move forward with. 

He said there were a lot of comments about absentee landlords and so on, but he thought the vast majority of landlords were people that really wanted to do the right thing.  He said non-compliance was not necessarily a reason not to do something.  He thought they needed to judge this program on its merits and not necessarily whether they could make this program fully compliant.  He said there were a lot of questions and the thing that scared him was going from 2,100 to 15,000.  He asked if the Commission was comfortable and had they looked at this program in a comprehensive way.  He said intentions were good, but a poorly executed plan program that was going to grow that huge proportion could really turn out to be a mess. 

He agreed with Commissioner Highberger that it became problematic to try to discriminate one property from the other because once they put that on the books, it might not apply in the future.  Obviously, newer structures become older and if this program was going to happen, the cost needed to be considered across the board and not try to find it in small pockets because then it may appear to be not fair and might force economic decisions that were adverse that they did not want to happen in poor neighborhoods and older neighborhoods.  He said he would like to study this program further, but it would be something hard to fit onto their plate in the next four to six weeks.  He said he did not think the Commission had any idea of what the impact would be if they started moving down this path. 

Mayor Hack said in terms of the City’s current program, one of the issues was non-compliance, but Jimenez did a good job of addressing that issue.  She said getting a better handle on those that were non-compliant had resulted in an increased number of folks who had registered.  She said the Commission always wanted to make sure the City was enforcing what was on the books. 

She said regarding needing more information on costs, she asked for information on what a phased in program might cost and the long-term consequences.

The question of targeting neighborhoods by age was a conversation that was needed. 

The reason for this program was for the health, safety and welfare of the public in this community.  She said the Commission also discussed demolition by neglect and there had been situations where a piece of property had just been allowed to decline over the years and the City was faced with was the structure needing to be reviewed by the Historic Resources Commission. 

Debbie Van Saun, Assistant City Manager, said there might also be logistics issues that have not been brought forward to the Commission.  She said there might be models in other communities that had used a phased in approach for this type of program.  She said she was somewhat concerned about the timeliness about getting this program ready to discuss for the 2008 budget.

Mayor Hack said she did not see any way that this program could be part of the discussion for the 2008 budget.  She said the City did not even have the funds for this program as a start up program.

Commissioner Amyx said he would withdraw his comment about placing the rental registration discussion in the 2008 budget discussions because currently there was no time or no resources to take this program on.   

Mayor Hack said she did not want anyone to think that they were not going to go through with this program, but right now the program could not be done.

Commissioner Chestnut said in the short term, tenant education could be addressed.  Also, he would like to address the question of when a tenant knew a landlord was not in compliance and the difficulty for that tenant to make a complaint because it might result in being asked to move.  Obviously, it was not a unique problem in Lawrence, but everywhere and he wanted to look at alternatives, especially in older neighborhoods, because it was a serious issue for people feeling trapped.  He said an inspection program was not going to address the fact of trying to educate people to what their options were which could be an important part of what the Commission could address now.                                                                                                     (15)

Consider fee waiver requests from Tenants to Homeowners, Inc. and Habitat for Humanity. 

Victor Torres, Director of Neighborhood Resources, presented the staff report.  There had been some letters and correspondence sent to the City Commission, including one letter from the Chairperson of the Neighborhood Resources Advisory Committee supporting the request.  He said the fee waiver request was for 12 new homes that were under construction and would be $3,000 per house.

Debbie Van Saun, Assistant City Manager, said the system development charge piece of the utilities portion of the code allowed for the City Commission to exempt certain properties from the system development charges, but that exemption had not been done on a regular basis. 

Commissioner Amyx asked what would happen if a developer asked for exemption for building affordable housing as part of his project.

Van Saun said the wording in those letters of support was a little unclear on the system development charges that were covered in the code.  There was also discussion about tap fees which was a different type of fee that was charged to make the actual tap to the City‘s main and was not strictly covered like the system development charges.    She said regarding the request for $3,000 for each home, currently the 2007 water and sewer tap fees for a 5/8 inch meter for residential property was what she assumed they were talking about and there were other fees involved in new service for a new house.    

            Mayor Hack called for public comment.

Brent Swain, Lawrence, Habitat for Humanity, said their group met once a month and discussed maintenance issues as well as the issues of new construction for the habitat homes.  He said when discussing issues with decay of some of the rental properties over time, Habitat for Humanity had a lot of support from a variety of community groups and churches.  He said there were a lot of controls in place to assist the homeowners in maintaining their properties which was ongoing.  He said the question about a landlord constructing low income housing and wanting their fees waived too; the answer was Habitat for Humanity had a very good track record in the community of building ongoing, durable, and good quality housing.  There were economies of scale and durability involved that were helping the City and a system for trying to rehab houses.  Their group discussed rehab and were coming up with an idea every time a home was vacated, trying rehab homes as needed.  He said those were all things the City did not get with a typical landlord because there was no community support and all those other controls.

Commissioner Highberger asked if Habitat for Humanity had mechanisms for maintaining the affordability of Habitat housing if a Habitat owner moved out in a few years, did that house go to the market value or were there provisions in the Habitat arrangement that kept that house affordable.

            Swain said what kept the house affordable was trying to make sure the house was overbuilt to begin with.  They tried hard to keep it within the simple, livable, and decent paradigm. The house would not rise into another category of marketability unless everything around the structure decayed to below that level.  He said those homes were market value. 

Mayor Hack said all those houses built for Habitat for Humanity was a very small percentage that remained within that realm of affordable housing.   

Rebecca Buford, Executive Director of Tenants to Homeowners, said if they wanted to use the housing trust mechanism, every dollar subsidized would remain part of the subsidy into a permanently affordable house that was controlled with a restricted resale price.  She said she would not be coming back asking for more subsidy for those homes because once those homes were constructed that would be it for those particular homes.  She said she they were putting in $1.5 million dollar valued development of 10 single family homes and received over $400,000 in additional grants from the Federal Home Loan Bank, from Capitol Federal Foundation, from lenders, from their general contractor that donated $20,000 in his development fee.  She said she did not like it when she heard developers and other people complain and say they were not pulling money in from other segments of the community to make those projects work.  She said when they asked the City for $30,000 in the $1.5 million development budget and when they also considered the federal funds had been slashed from several hundred thousand to $90,000 this year, she really thought it was a reasonable request particularly when it was going to be a permanent affordable stock of housing.  She said they were not talking 10 houses, but every family that lived in those 10 permanently affordable houses for the next 100 years.  She said all of the houses under Tenants to Homeowners standards would be 92% energy efficient and Energy Star rated, which meant really low energy utility bills which she thought was incredibly important for affordable housing at this time and also, visible, 3 fully accessible single-family houses.  She said she could not emphasize enough how the $2,000 or $3,000 really made a difference as they were trying to count their pennies with federal cuts and shortage of funding, but had pulled a lot together and were asking the City to embrace in this cooperative effort to affordable housing. 

Charlie Dominguez, board member for Habitat for Humanity, said those homes were built with help from the community development segment of Lawrence.  He said their program was on a budget crunch as well, but they managed to get by.  People talk about the character of Lawrence and how Lawrence had affordable housing, which was a big goal of this City.  He said $3,000 was a tremendous amount for their clients and was a decision maker on whether their clients could afford the home or not.  He said everyone wanted their citizens in a safe place and Habitat built those houses together as a community and encouraged everyone to help.  He said when moving a person from a renter into an owner of a home, that person would buy in the community, school system, and might even volunteer to clean up the parks.  He said the Commission needed to remember Habitat was helping the City and it was truly a win-win for everyone.

Commissioner Chestnut said he loved Habitat for Humanity.  He said the issue he had was with the process.  He said when the Commission waived fees, they were burying a contribution and believed the Commission should entertain an outside agency request for this money in lieu of waiving fees because the fact was there were a lot of great organizations the Commission supported, but they were foregoing fees that would be coming into the City.  He said he thought the Commission needed to take this organization’s request into consideration with all the other great organizations the Commission supported with the Humane Society and all the other outside agencies and make a decision based on that because those were the tough decisions that had to be made.  He said he loved the program and needed to look at what could be done to promote that program, but thought the Commission needed to take that $24,000 in consideration with all the other groups that were right now putting in 2008 budget requests.  He said also it helped the Commission track to what they were doing and what they were committing to.  He said instead of waiving fees, they might rebate that money back in that process if they considered their application.

Mayor Hack said the only issue in terms of timing was that those outside agency request for everyone else were due in May.  She said she agreed that in the future about Commissioner Chestnut plan, but did not know if that hit the 2008 question.  She said there might be some legal issues to discuss in providing waivers based on income levels because there were issues in terms of fees attached to houses and whether they were appropriate or not and being used for what they were assessed for.  She said those were issues they had to have conversation about as well.

Commissioner Dever said he was in favor of doing whatever the Commission could to help with this program.  He said the City was in a unique position where those fees were charged by the City in order to monitor, evaluate and mitigate some of those costs that were associated with building homes.  He said the agencies they were dealing with were different than the average person who was trying to build lower income moderate family homes.  He said this program was important and would like to encourage people to own homes, pay taxes, and participate in the program.  He said the materials and supplies that were used in the construction of those homes were often times donated, but also purchased.  He said there were a lot of tangential benefits to those programs and he did not want to focus on the fees and connections.  Again, he felt comfortable supporting this type of program, written in the right format. 

Commissioner Highberger said he was supportive of the request.  He said he was not sure how familiar the new commissioners were with the land trust program, but it was structured so the houses in that program remained permanently affordable and he thought Habitat’s process involved sweat equity from families who lived in those houses.  He asked if the Commission could give some commitment on the part of the City toward creating more affordable housing in the City. 

Mayor Hack said the program was outstanding nationally, and were lucky to have that program be so successful in Lawrence.  She believed there was a way to distinguish between a Habitat project and affordable housing project by someone who was putting it in a development.  She said she was fine with moving forward, but asked if this was an on-going policy commitment on the part of the City.

Buford said she would not turn down a policy, but her letter was written considering those 10 single-family homes that would occur in the next year to year and a half.

Mayor Hack said in a letter written by Jean Lilley, Habitat for Humanities, indicated their current building program between 6 and 7 houses per year and were asking for $18,000 to $21,000 each year to support their building program.  She said she would like to know the length of time and whether it was a one time or annual request.  She said she would also like to know about the legalities of waiving those fees. 

Van Saun said regarding the system development charges, staff had to be careful about the way they worded things in making sure they were addressing concerns and not being unequal in their application.  She said staff could bring back a policy that would allow the Commission to move forward, yet limit specifically what the Commission’s intent was for those types of waivers.

Dominquez said when they started with this request it was for a particular neighborhood and they did not foresee that coming anywhere near that many homes in the future, it was simply because they had that granted land.  

Mayor Hack asked staff to draft a policy so the Commission could wrap their arms around what they were being asked for.

Commissioner Chestnut asked Van Saun about other fees.

Van Saun said she was talking about the system development charges.  The tap fees were separate from development charges and the actual charges for builders for making a tap to the water line which was considerably less than the development charges and did not know if that was included.

Commissioner Chestnut asked if staff could clarify those fees in the policy.  If the majority of the Commission wanted it to be a go, he hoped it would be a much bigger number in the future.

            Gwen Klingenberg said both groups were 501(c)(3) non-profits and so were not developer groups and something the Commission could use to distinguish from other requests because they were specifically designed to build affordable houses and that was all they did as a non-profit organization.                                                                                                           (16)

Receive staff report concerning sidewalk issues and traffic calming improvements funding issue.  

Chuck Soules, Public Works Director, presented the staff report.   He said the City Commission provided $250,000 in the 2007 budget for sidewalk and traffic calming projects. 

He said regarding sidewalks, staff recommended closing the gaps on major arterial roads.  On February 22, 2007 staff met with the Pedestrian Advisory Committee to discuss criteria that should be considered to fill in “gap”/missing sidewalks. The committee agreed with staff that arterials should have a high priority for sidewalks.  The second priority would be collector streets with sidewalks missing on both sides, and areas with accidents involving pedestrians.  Additional criteria included transit stops and pedestrian traffic generators.

The City has submitted a grant application for the Safe Routes to Schools Program that could provide other funds that might be available for sidewalks around schools.  Therefore, at this time (2007) the available city budget should be spent on sidewalks that meet the above criteria.

He said if the Commission would like to proceed with those sidewalks staff would recommend the following streets:

1. 6^th Street, South Side, Rockledge to Schwarz;

2. 9^th Street, North Side, Sunset to Iowa; and

3. Trail Road, South Side, Lawrence Avenue to Rockfence Place.

He said the project included the construction of a 6 foot sidewalk in those areas with and estimated project cost of $150,000.

The sidewalk maintenance remained the responsibility of the property owner and if the Commission desired, staff wanted to pursue repairs to those sidewalks.

The program will initially focus on sidewalks with a condition rating of critical.  Staff would notify the adjacent property owners of their responsibility.  The city will offer the owner the option of having the city bid the work and charging the costs back to the property or taking care of the repairs themselves.  This process would take a considerable amount of staff time.

He said traffic calming improved safety and livability of neighborhoods.  It involved changes in street alignment or the installation of physical measures to reduce traffic speeds or cut-through volumes.  The goals of traffic calming included: slower speeds, reduction in accidents and their severity, improved safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, reduced cut-through traffic, reduced need for law enforcement, safe and attractive streets, improved quality of life, and pollution reduction.

He said there were approximately 11 traffic calming project  that had been approved and 4 of those projects were approved by the Traffic Safety Commission, but the City Commission deferred action on those projects.  If the City Commission’s desire was to proceed, the University Place Neighborhood Traffic Calming Plan was at the top of the project priority rating list.  Staff also recommended the construction of the diverter on 18^th Street between Maine and Missouri, and the construction of a raised crosswalk on Louisiana between 18^th and 19^th.  Staff would provide design in-house and the estimated cost for construction was $100,000.

Commissioner Highberger said further east of Sunset on 9^th Street, there was a place where it would be almost impossible to build that sidewalk through because there was a steep concrete wall.  He said it did not make sense to spend a substantial amount of money to build a link that was not going to be connected.

Soules said that neighborhood wanted to get to Iowa Street safely so they could get over to the elementary school. 

Commissioner Highberger asked if there had been any potential design work done on the possible permanent traffic circles in the University Place project.  He said he knew that traffic circles received the most negative feedback. He asked if that design work was completed. 

Soules said the design work was not completed, but the City had an engineer on board and the engineer planned on doing most of the design work for those traffic calming projects in-house. 

            Mayor Hack called for public comment. 

Robert Hagen, Traffic Safety Commission, said he had two purposes of coming to the meeting.  The first was to support the recommendation provided by the Public Works Department concerning the sidewalks and the traffic calming projects. 

Secondly, he would like to address some more general concerns regarding the City’s traffic calming policies.  He said as he read through the supporting documents that Soules provided, he was very impressed by the work that had been done to develop a comprehensive City wide plan for sidewalk improvement.  He said his primary suggestion to the City Commission was to consider the same approach to traffic calming and look at the entire City as a whole and identify those areas that were priorities for traffic calming. 

The current City policy was one that he followed before it was enacted.  In his view, the policy was not broken, but there were several important issues that it did not address very well.  He said the first issue was they needed to distinguish more clearly between what he would call mature projects, such as the University Place and those that were very preliminary.  He said what he meant by that distinction was those in which a neighborhood had gotten together, had extensive debates, and developed a very precise set of proposals for what was needed.  In contrast, a couple of the projects tabled by the City Commission in recent meetings, for example on Trail Road and 27^th Terrace, were projects that had not really been evaluated fully by the neighborhood and in fact were passed on to the City Commission by the Traffic Safety Commission as areas worthy of further investigation and study.  He said it was quite different from those in which there was a very firm constituency and a good neighborhood support for a specific plan.  He said the present policy did not make that distinction very clear. 

The second issue was the current policy focused on individual elements, such as a single traffic circle or a speed hump.  He said there was no clear mechanism to look at area wide solutions to problems, but it was important because frequently the problems that were brought by residents who were concerned about traffic problems on other streets. 

He said the third issue was how to deal with the cost issues.  He thought there had been several suggestions floated and one might be to include explicitly cost criteria in recommendations of the Traffic Safety Commission forwarded onto the City Commission.  He said it was much cheaper to put in speed humps than traffic circles and perhaps those should be given higher priority.  Another suggestion that had been offered was benefit districts or letting neighborhoods pay for improvements in their areas.  Those obviously had complex issues but ones that ought to be considered. 

He said there were serious questions of public education that were eluded to concerning traffic circles.  He thought there was a great deal of confusion about traffic calming, what it was, what it could do, and what it could not do and something they needed to explore both in terms of public education and perhaps to the new members of the City Commission.

John Poertner, member of the University Place Neighborhood Association, said he was in support of the University Place Neighborhood plan.  The University Place Neighborhood was an interesting neighborhood because it was very small, compact and a nice combination of families of a variety of ages and student rental.  He said their neighborhood was very fragile and when the neighborhood association started being concerned about the traffic they saw this as an important part of the fragileness of the neighborhood.  There were several families with young children that felt if they could not get a handle on the traffic, they needed to leave the neighborhood.  The traffic was situated that once someone rushed down 23^rd Street and 19^th Street, they wanted to rush up to the campus, or vice versa.  The Neighborhood Association went through a rather lengthy process with City staff talking about a variety of alternatives and looking at possible solutions that were practiced in other community and came up with the current plan.  He said a neighborhood survey was conducted to find out if the majority of the neighborhood was in favor of the plan and there was some opposition, but a clear majority that favored the plan. 

He said many people in the neighborhood thought the temporary arrangements constructed at that location had worked.  When encountering those traffic calming devices, a person needed to slow down.  He said when discussing this issue as a committee people thought stop signs were appropriate, but stops signs did not really work in that area and people violated stop signs rather frequently and it was difficult to violate a calming device.  The diverter on 18^th Street was a critical part of keeping the neighborhood integrity.  The large University parking lot dumped out on Naismith and on that street and before that diverter, it was a race track.  

The entire plan was well developed with the neighborhood and was working its way up the priority.  He said they were delighted it was now top priority and asked the City Commission to fund the plan.

Gwen Klingenberg, Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, West Lawrence Neighborhood Association, and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, said sidewalks connected the City.  Many people walk from neighborhood to neighborhood to get to grocery stores, parks and so forth.  There were bus stops in Lawrence that were not on sidewalks and during inclement weather, it led to being muddy or snowy waiting for the bus.  She said try walking down 6^th Street and crossing back and forth on 6^th Street to stay on a sidewalk where everyone knew that 6^th Street was very dangerous.

She said in older neighborhoods the sidewalks that existed were mostly in need of repair; however their fixed income, low income, and median income families who could not afford to replace large sections of sidewalk lived in those neighborhoods.  Over the past couple of years, some research into what other cities were doing had barely been scratched.  There were several possible funding sources and many cities had created ways to help people to replace or maintain their sidewalks.  With the high percentage of damaged sidewalks in Lawrence, Lawrence needed to continue conversations and find affordable ways or options to help replace or maintain their sidewalks.  She asked the City Commission to keep the conversation open and help Lawrence work on ways to help their fixed low and median income families find affordable solutions.

She said with 6^th Street being built double to triple the amount of development the Northwest Plan recommended, her neighborhood with five entrances was looking at a major cut through traffic problem.  They would love something temporary.  Most of the cut through traffic that would be speeding through their neighborhood had no personal stake in their neighborhood and their wish to get through and on their way was the highest interest at the time.  She said the biggest concern for most neighborhoods was their family and their neighbor’s families and their safety.  She asked on behalf of all neighborhoods they honor the traffic calming approvals that were made.  

Russell Hilton, Lawrence, said Carmel Drive, where he lived, was identified as one of the sections of Lawrence that had a problem with traffic.  In their particular case, a lot of people cut off of Inverness and used Carmel Drive as a by-pass to get to 15^th Street or to stay off of Wakarusa.  The 12 years he lived in that area, he had seen increasing traffic and increasing speeds.  It was an area that not only had empty nesters, but there were young families living on either end to the south and north of them and it concerned him.  He said it was only a matter of time before there would possibly be a child hurt crossing the street with the speeding traffic.  He said he was wondering if their was a vehicle, such as a benefit district, that could be used if a particular neighborhood would like to install speed humps or a certain place to go to find out how much it would cost to install each speed hump and then perhaps people in the neighborhood could get together and make a decision to fund that themselves if it would be something that would be 5 to 10 years down the road before the City could fund it. 

Amy McGarragher, Lawrence, said she asked for traffic calming devices, sidewalks, signs, or anything that would help the traffic problem and hoped that sidewalks would work for Trail Road because it would at least get the kids out of the road and walkers off the road.  She did not think sidewalks would help the traffic cutting through and the speed of that traffic, but she was excited to hear the potential for sidewalks.  She asked about plans for a next step.  

Paul Matthews, Lawrence, said he had met with the City Commission before about the problem of 9^th Street when going east over a hill and curving to the right before turning into 8^th Street.  He said they bought their house 7 years ago and were informed before buying the house that there had been a fatality in their front yard.  The night before closing on the house, a motorcycle crashed and the rider was in critical condition and they thought the rider would not survive.  He said since they bought the house, he had witnessed at least four accidents.  Also, he had a split rail fence that was being knocked down.  He said he thought it was on a list of areas to improve and he wanted to reiterate that it was very dangerous.  He said traffic speed monitors were placed where a vehicle would go up a hill and most vehicles typically slow down anyway and he did not think it was a good representation of where the problem was.  He said if a speed bump was placed at the top of the hill, then people would go airborne.  There were other incidents that happened on their property where people were being chased by the police at 2:30 in the morning.  He said he talked to someone on the Traffic Safety Commission about placing a guard rail on that corner so if an accident occurred in his yard, at least a guard rail could possibly protect his kids.  He said a person could turn right on Rock Creek Road and go around and suggested that a vehicle not be allowed to enter at 9^th Street at the bottom of Lawrence Avenue.   

Derrick Samuel, Lawrence, said he was present to discuss the sidewalk issue.  He said the City had given him until July 20^th to repair the sidewalk in front of his house, on Haskell Avenue, which might be 75 feet of sidewalk.  He said he did not make a lot of money and there was no way by the 20^th he could pay for putting in a sidewalk.  He said he was half tempted to tear the sidewalk out because halfway up the street there was no sidewalk.  He knew it was not good for the neighborhood, but on the other hand he could not afford the sidewalk. 

Dana Lattin, appeared on behalf of the Hillcrest Neighborhood Association, said Commissioner Highberger requested information about the sidewalk between Sunset and Iowa Street.  She said she recently moved to the neighborhood and moved from Massachusetts Street which had a traffic calming issue and moved into a neighborhood that did not have that issue.  She said on the other hand they did not have the pedestrian ways they had when they lived on Massachusetts Street.  She said they moved to the neighborhood because they could walk to work and their children could walk to school.  She said she could not get out of her neighborhood safely without a car and sometimes even in a car she was nervous about pulling out onto 9^th Street because when pulling out at Sunset it was at the crest of the hill.  Recently, there were a lot of heavily loaded dump trucks coming up that hill because they were pulling out dirt at the new football complex at the University. 

The reason she went to the Pedestrian Advisory Committee was she had started investigating how they could look at the best option for getting their children safely to school.  She said it was ridiculous to drive and given that gas was $3.00 a gallon and was better health wise, it was better to walk than drive. 

At this point and time, they could not cross 9^th Street so she went to the City requesting this issue be studied.  She said Leslie Rigney, City’s Neighborhood Program Specialist, suggested that she attend the Pedestrian Advisory Committee meeting and that was where she met staff from Public Works where they discussed the sidewalk issue.  She said getting a sidewalk from Sunset to Iowa would be helpful, but she did not think it was the best solution and it might be appropriate to look at a bigger scheme for a solution.  She said it would improve her option in walking her kids to school, but she was not going to let her children cross 9^th and Iowa by themselves and could not imagine someone wanting to take that job on as a crossing guard.  She said she would prefer a pedestrian light somewhere along 9^th Street.   

Dan Abrahamson, Lawrence, said he noticed that Lawrence Avenue’s speed humps had risen to No. 2.  They had lived in the 900 block of Lawrence Avenue for 44 years.  Lawrence Avenue used to end at Harvard and was a dead end street.  When Lawrence Avenue was opened down to 15^th, it became another raceway.  They had called the police on several occasions and asked the police to watch that area and the police would watch for a day or two, then the police were gone, and traffic sped up again.  They did manage to get the speed limit reduced to 25 mph, but people drive at 50 -60 mph.  He said between 9^th and Harvard was a raceway.  He said they were hoping to get a couple of speed humps and if there was a stop sign at Steven Drive and Lawrence Avenue, they would have to very flagrantly violate it to keep going.  He said he was sorry the City was running out of money just as they were at the No. 2 spot.  He said Arizona had two speed humps and those speed humps work wonderfully.  He said with the $15,000 he saw listed for Lawrence Avenue in the paper a couple of speed humps would be very welcoming.  He said they hoped the City Commission would consider those speed humps.

Mayor Hack said in the Capital Improvement Budget for traffic calming and sidewalks, they had allocated $250,000 and asked if the decision was all sidewalks, all traffic calming, or a combination.

Soules said it was started at 50/50 and ended up $150,000 for sidewalks and $100,000 for traffic calming, but that money could be split any way the Commission desired.

Mayor Hack asked what would be accomplished with $100,000 on traffic calming.

Soules said his estimates were conservative, but staff was looking at the 18^th Street diverter in University Place between Maine and Missouri and the pedestrian raised crosswalk on Louisiana between 18^th and 19^th, but he was hoping to do a lot better than that.

Mayor Hack said that money would not take care of all the University Place issues, just one diverter.

Soules said no, there was a couple traffic calming circles in the area as well.

Mayor Hack said the issues of sidewalk maintenance and who was responsible was discussed, but the Commission never gave any direction to staff.  In terms of what the policy was and perhaps what other communities did and a number of other options, she asked staff for additional information.  Also, regarding the benefit district issue, she did not know all the legalities of a neighborhood deciding to form a benefit district for traffic calming.

Soules said a benefit district was a viable option.  He said when the City was short on funds and an interest group wanted to take on a project within their own area and pay for it, the Commission should look at that option.

Mayor Hack said the other issue was traffic assessment.  She said when the Commission discussed left hand turns on Iowa, they talked about looking at the entire corridor and knew the street assessment and sidewalk gaps were discussed, but perhaps some further studies about traffic issues comprehensively was going to be worth their time.         

She said  the Commission should direct their conversations to the $250,000 expenditure.  She asked for further information on sidewalk maintenance, benefit districts and traffic assessments.

Commissioner Highberger said he wanted to go forward with University Place traffic calming and Lawrence Avenue and the remainder of funds applied to sidewalks.  He asked if it was possible to work out long term financing for repairing sidewalks for the man who lived on Haskell Street.

Soules said staff asked that that resident present his concern to the City Commission.  He said the City received a complaint from someone in that neighborhood and knew this was a tough issue for that resident.  He said staff would work with that resident.

Commissioner Highberger said he would like to initiate a traffic study and have the Traffic Safety Commission look at a pedestrian crossing on 9^th Street between Iowa and Avalon. 

Mayor Hack said that was assuming the neighborhood felt it was safe for their children to cross at 9^th and Iowa.   

Commissioner Chestnut said the City was presently in a tight budget, but this situation had been ongoing for some time and a lot of the projects had been on the books for three years.  He said he was concerned about looking at this issue comprehensively and looking at everything across the board.  He said this was not going to be effective if it continued to be incremental, which it was right now.  He thought they needed to start considering traditional methods.  There were some communities that indicated they had gone back to stop signs because he wondered if those communities had gone down the same path and have been in the position of Lawrence where the city could not fund it.  He said after the budget, they needed to look at it in terms ranking, but also in terms of what they could do for the greatest amount of area, cost effectively It was not about being short on funds now because it had been here forever. 

Mayor Hack said they had been chipping away at some of those issues.  She said 19^th and Barker proved to be incredibly successful.  She agreed with looking at projects in a comprehensive way.

Commissioner Chestnut said there were diverse opinions about the effectiveness of stop signs and he knew stop signs cost significantly less.  Even as a stop measure in some of those instances, they needed to look at cost effective ways to address those issues.

Mayor Hack said Commissioner Highberger had proposed the University Place diverter, and perhaps a raised crosswalk on 9^th Street, and Lawrence Avenue.

Commissioner Highberger said he could go either way on Lawrence Avenue.  He said he could see the top two traffic calming project plus the remainder on sidewalks.

Commissioner Amyx said State law gave the City authority to participate in benefit districts up to 95%.  He said if there was any thought in the City participating in some of those benefit districts and doing other projects along with that.  He said there could be overlay districts where they would receive more tax money from a different area that might be causing problems in other areas.  He said there were great projects to work on, but if the Commission’s goal was to make their money go as far as it could, he thought there were other things that could be looked at. 

Commissioner Highberger said he would not be opposed to some of the cost sharing for some of those projects.  On the traffic calming where there was a high percentage of non neighborhood traffic, it seemed like a City responsibility where the numbers were less.  He said he could support some level of property owner participation on some of those projects, but he wanted to move forward in this budget year.

Commissioner Amyx said the Commission could ask staff to look at those options for participation and some of the projects might be able to move up in that list, by participation from property owners and thought that would be something that should be considered.

Mayor Hack said the issues of sidewalk maintenance, benefit district options and neighborhood participation needed to be discussed.  She said there was the issue of the University Place diverter, speed humps on Lawrence Avenue, and the sidewalk projects. 

Vice Mayor Dever asked if the idea of not spending the money and doing nothing was thought about because Soules brought that up as a solution.  He said he wanted to make sure the Commission considered that option.

Commissioner Chestnut said concerning the benefit district, they needed to consider that also in terms with traffic that was created by other things.  He said as living in West Lawrence, there was going to be a significant change in traffic flow along that corridor over the next four or five years and would probably cut in two streets on 6^th and everyone south of 6^th Street was really concerned where that was going to go.  He said when looking at benefit districts, they were not only considering neighborhoods, but also had to consider commercial situations too. 

Commissioner Amyx asked what the diverter would look like.

Soules said the diverter needed to be designed, but it would allow traffic to leave, but not enter and would have a gate that could be opened on game days so traffic could get through. 

Mayor Hack asked if the gate could be opened on game days to let traffic flow.

Soules said the Police and Fire had access to that gate, but KU Police monitor the gate and could be opened to direct traffic. 

Commissioner Amyx asked if staff would suggest that sidewalks be installed for some of those property owners.

            Soules said staff needed to talk to the property owners and would keep those sidewalks in the City’s right-of-way.  He said they were not going to tear out trees and would be working with neighbors to try and get around everything. 

Moved by Commissioner Highberger, seconded by Chestnut, to approve funding for the construction of an 18^th street diverter between Maine and Missouri streets; the Pedestrian Refuge between 18th and 19th on Louisiana, traffic calming (speed cushions) on Lawrence Ave and directed staff to use the remaining portion of the $250,000 on sidewalk improvements based on the priorities identified in the June 13^th staff memo; and locate/ identify a safe pedestrian crossing on 9^th  between Iowa and Avalon;.  Aye: Amyx Chestnut, Hack and Highberger.  Nay:  Dever.  Motion carried.                                                                               (17)

Receive staff update on energy-related and environmental initiatives. 

Dena Mezger, Assistant Public Works Director, presented the staff report.  She said recently she became involved in the Energy Management Committee.  She said staff tried to summarize all the initiatives the City, so far, decided to support by some action, either by a department or by commission action.  She said the Cool Cities Campaign and the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement were very closely linked.  The U.S. Mayors’ Agreement was very much a part of the Cool Cities Campaign which was created by the Sierra Club.  She characterized those as the main aim being to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions.  A large portion of that work involved doing an emissions inventory to determine what kind of emissions this city was putting into the air through the energy use, waste, and transportation habits and then determine how those could be reduced over a period of time. 

The City had also become part of a Green Power Partnership which was an initiative to increase the use of green power in the community and City government uses.  She said one mechanism that could be used was the green tags, which was one investment the City made this year. 

The City also had agreed to be part of the National Plug In Partners and also the Daimler-Chrysler Agreement and both those initiatives had to do with support for encouraging the production and use of plug in hybrid vehicles, both as individual vehicles, fleet vehicles, transit vehicles, any number of different types of vehicles that were not currently on the market, but to encourage producers to look at making those available. 

The last two initiatives, the Integrated Management Systems and the EPA Performance Track were focused on utility operations and the Utility Department was working mostly on those issues in energy conservation, energy management, green power, and all the kinds of things within the Utilities operations realm. 

She said the City had at least philosophically supported all of those programs and the City had allocated resources in the terms of funding and/or staff time to several of those programs.  She said the green tags was one program which purchased so many kilowatt hours of renewable energy in essence through Zephyr Energy as part of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.  She said it was to encourage the production of green power and to enter it into the grid system so it replaced more fossil fuel power. 

As far as the major tasks, the Green House Gas Emissions Inventory was probably the largest task to get some of the things going.  Some of the data had been collected, but some of the things really needing to be done were finding and using some standardized software packages or methodologies.  One of them that looked to be the most promising was ICLEI Software (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) provided by an environmental group that encouraged environmental responsibility and action on local government levels.  She said for a membership of about $1,200 - $1,500 a year, there would be complete access to a very well supported and well produced software package that could do that inventory.  She said that was one of the recommendations staff wanted to make at least for next year, if not even possibly get started this year so they could start on that inventory and go ahead and fund the membership so they could access that product and begin some of the data input as soon as possible. 

She said the other thing was the continuing Green Tag purchase.  That was based on 3% of the City’s power usage, meaning City government operations; City Hall, city buildings.  Last year it was calculated to be 870 kilowatt hours and at $10 per tag, it came out to be $8,700 which staff would anticipate that to be roughly the same on an annual basis which was part of the green power partnership the City entered into was to continue to do something like that. 

She said as far as the inventory besides access to the ICLEI software, there would be some staff time to put that together.  Staff had researched different communities on their process and depending on how large the community it looked like it was a quarter to a half of a FTE just to do that initial data gathering, input and get that base line information.  She said that did not necessarily mean that one person for all that time, but could be spread over people helping to gather the data and inputting that.  It was not something that would necessarily have to be time intensive for one staff person.  She said staff thought they could do that relatively economically if using that software.

She said the overall impact to the 2008 Budget would be somewhere in the $10,000 range when looking at membership, continuing the green tags program, and salary for existing personnel and would not necessarily be an additional cost.  She said some communities hired consultants to do inventory.  Based on what staff could see, it was in the $20,000 - $40,000 range depending on how much those consultants did.  They were not sure that was the economical choice or the most responsible choice at this point because they believed it was possible to do in-house with a few good tools.  She said that was staff’s recommendation for 2008. 

She said staff had done some of the City buildings and a facilities group was implementing various things around City Hall and some of the buildings to try to minimize or reduce energy use.  Staff also talked today about some other measures staff could start like more recycling in City Hall itself and other things.

Commissioner Highberger asked if there had been any investigation of the State Facility Conservation Improvement Program.  He said it was a state program where the state would finance energy improvements and it would be paid back through the energy savings made by the energy.  He said Topeka had just launched a fairly major initiative with that program and asked if that was on this City’s plate at all.

            Mezger said she was not familiar with that program and had not gotten quite that far.  She said it was certainly something staff would start exploring to help fund those initiatives and if that was a possibility staff would certainly be looking at it. 

            Mayor Hack called for public comment. 

George Brenner, representing the Sierra Club’s Cool Cities Committee, said in response to the report just heard, he was happy as a new resident of Lawrence that this City had signed the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement.  Some of them probably know the National Director of Global Warming and Energy Programs visited Lawrence about 9 months ago and indicated the Sierra Club was in the process of training staff to assist cities in using the ICLEI software.  He talked to Dave Hamilton that morning and he said if the City was interested, they would be happy to send a staff member, Ms. Stephanie Cutts, to work with the City staff in using the software.  He said that person would not only be able to train in the use of the software but actually stay in Lawrence long enough to conduct the initial assessment of green house gas emissions for whatever year targeted.  He strongly encouraged membership in ICLEI because it provided many benefits beyond just the software, but also ongoing programs for improving their green house gas emissions and saving dollars in the process. 

Brent Swain, Lawrence, said he was a member of the Sustainable Advisory Board and wanted to catch the City Commission up to speed on what they had discussed back in the City sponsored planning meeting.  He had a short list of three things they wanted to make sure got followed through with.  The Green Power Community and as they understood it they would go the extra step and get recognition for having bought the green tags which was to become a green power community.  He said they were getting recognition for something they were already doing.  He said a little bit of follow through on that would be a good thing.  He said another thing was the FCIP program.  It was a state facilities conservation improvement program and they would help with getting service companies to help the City evaluate the best places it could save energy and come up with the best comprehensive program and then guaranteeing the savings by paying back the loans with whatever the future energy savings would be and it was guaranteed.  He said it was program that he could not think of a reason not to do, but apparently had been tabled and he was not sure why that was.  He said as far as he knew when they had a report in their meeting two months ago, it was tabled because supposedly they were already doing everything right and there was nothing left to do, which was a shock.  He said he thought there was a lot for them to do in energy conservation in Lawrence and thought they needed to follow through on the FCIP program and that would help with their green house gas audit. 

He said the third thing was they wanted incentives for better building practices.  They wanted to try and figure out a way to give incentives and maybe even educate architects.  He thought there was a lot to be done in the area of residential and commercial.  Incentives were something that helped them bootstrap without spending money, which was why they were incentives.  They were spending money, but spending money they were going to recoup.  He said if they could shift to a long term view like that, they were not going to be caught in the cycle of ever increasing energy costs and decreasing budgets.  He thought part of the reason they were in that decreasing budget was because of energy and they were going to see it get worse and worse.  He said there had to be incentives for recertification for people to design to lead standards otherwise they were spending money so they could get a badge on their chest. 

Moved by Highberger, seconded by Dever, to direct staff to proceed as recommended in the June 13^th staff memo.  Motion carried unanimously.                                                         (18)

Receive draft Neighborhood Revitalization Plans: downtown and target neighborhoods. Commission discussion is requested as this would have future budget implications related to assessed valuation.  If the Commission desires to proceed with consideration of this project, additional neighborhood, general public, Douglas County, and School District input would be solicited prior to final adoption of a plan.

John Miller, Staff Attorney, presented the staff report. He said staff prepared two draft neighborhood revitalization plans; one for the downtown commercial district and one for target neighborhoods for the City Commission’s consideration.  Staff created a draft resolution outlining the City’s Neighborhood Revitalization Act policies.  Staff was asking the City Commission to receive the report and direct staff to proceed with the project and work with the various stakeholders in the community including the Neighborhood Associations, Downtown Lawrence, Inc., County, and School District.  Staff was asking for policy direction on additional items or those items could be discussed at a future date once staff met with City Commission’s approval with those stakeholders and discussed in more detail the proposed draft plans.  He said staff was asking the Commission to receive the report and direct staff as appropriate.

Mayor Hack said asked if staff needed to formulate policy direction on the next steps with the various stakeholders.

Miller said staff needed to discuss with the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods some limited information regarding the types of programs for the Downtown Commercial District and the Target Neighborhoods.  Staff had outlined that information in the memorandum and was asking if staff could go back to the stakeholders with a more detailed plan and begin discussions with those stakeholders over policy issues and bring those issues back to the Commission for direction and approval. 

Commissioner Amyx said staff’s memo discussed future budget implications related to assessed evaluation and asked if the Commission needed to make a decision at this time because of the 2008 budget or was this something for the future.

Miller said most of it would be in the future and the Commission did not need to make a decision specifically regarding the 2008 budget on this item. 

Commissioner Amyx said anything decided at this time would have no financial implication on 2008.

Miller said he did not believe so. 

Mayor Hack said the information received at the agenda meeting was that it would not have any financial impacted for 2008, but potentially in the future.

Miller said it was his understanding that it did not have implications on the 2008 budget.

Mayor Hack said they were looking more at policy decisions and moving the NRA forward in 2008.

Vice Mayor Dever asked if staff was asking if the City Commission was in support of this plan.

Mayor Hack said yes, also with the other stakeholders such as the County and School District as taxing entities and it was huge issue to get those entities signed off on this plan.

Miller said this information regarding the plan would give those entities an opportunity to see the broader picture.    

Commissioner Amyx said for instance in East Lawrence Neighborhood would the Neighborhood Revitalization Plan be used for a specific project or would the NRA be for anything inside the boundaries of those maps that was now a project.

            Miller said when staff talked originally with the 8^th and Pennsylvania Neighborhood Revitalization, the discussion was staff bring this back to the City Commission and the City Commission could then look at addressing this plan on a broader perspective than just the very isolated 8^th and Pennsylvania Project.  This was staff’s work to this date to bring to the City Commission showing a broader approach to the Neighborhood Revitalization Act to specific target neighborhoods and to the downtown district.

Commissioner Amyx said it was quite an area the Commission would be considering for the revitalization plan.  He said he had it envisioned as different blocks within neighborhoods and did not realize it would be the entire targeted neighborhood and downtown.  He said boundaries could be discussed at a later time. 

Miller said staff was presenting a draft version and if the City Commission would like staff to look at the scope of those plans, it could be discussed at this time or at a future date.

Commissioner Chestnut said he tried to read the 8^th and Pennsylvania Revitalization Plan, but the plan was difficult to understand.  He said one issue he was still trying to ascertain was property naturally appreciates, and asked how that worked into it when those projects went forward because he was concerned about was it might shift the tax burden significantly for those who chose not to improve.  He said for Instance, if a person that made a major improvement and had $100,000 valuation on commercial or residential property and it was locked in for 10 years, did that number move up at all just for inflation as far as assessed value that those property owners paid taxes on. He said he could see the tax burden shifting to unimproved properties. 

Miller said the report that was prepared with a variety of staff members indicated that it should be increased property tax payments due to increases in appraised values and a portion of the rebates were retained by the fund, but staff could look at the issue.  He said staff had discussed that particular issue with the City’s Finance Director.

Commissioner Amyx said if someone in a targeted neighborhood made improvements, but another neighbor across the street could not afford those improvements, he asked if those improvements would force the person’s property that could not afford improvements to go up in value.   

Commissioner Chestnut said that scenario would definitely have an impact, but if a person was making improvements on a $150,000 house and improved the house up to $200,000 would that person would be locked in at $150,000 over a 10 year period or did that $150,000 appreciate 3% or 4% which would be the average increase in valuation over time.  He said if that was locked in at the $150,000, then all of the sudden it would appreciate all the properties around it and would have that impact to shift the burden to other places.  He said he knew they could not answer that now, but it would be nice to have some numbers and examples.

Miller said staff could discuss with other communities that type of financial impact and see if there had been any tax burden shifting as a result.   

Mayor Hack said the intended consequences were known, but wanted to make sure there were no unintended consequences that would burden neighbors.

Commissioner Highberger said in other community plans that were taken into consideration, he asked if it was common to have the 95% rebate for new construction.  He said his concern was the way this plan was structured, it seemed like the biggest incentive was for new construction and he was not sure that was the primary goal for most of those areas. 

Scott Wagner, Legal Services Management Analyst, said that rebate was typical.  On a prior Commission Agenda in August, staff posted virtually every Kansas Neighborhood Revitalization Plan.  He said he had looked at just about every revitalization plan that was adopted within the State of Kansas and that rebate amount was pretty typical.  Where it did vary was in reconstruction and remodels, some communities had adopted a 50% rebate level and others adopted what staff proposed.  He said there were some plans out there where communities adopted a 50% rebate for new construction.  He said those decisions were policy driven and one of the policy inputs staff was seeking at this time or with their future discussions with stakeholders or when staff brought it back to the Commission and/or a discussion with the other taxing entities.  He said those were types of decisions the City Commission could make as those plans were discussed. 

Commissioner Highberger said it was his preference to see a lower rebate for new construction, 95% rebate for affordable new construction, otherwise 50%. 

Wagner said the plan provided some pretty powerful incentives for new construction in vacant lots.  He said one of the other considerations was commercial areas within those targeted neighborhoods where vacant lots or redevelopment of lots would also have some powerful rebates in place.   Again, he said those were the types of policy direction and feedback staff would be seeking.  He said the numbers debate was a bigger question and was on the same analysis as the City’s tax abatement policy. 

Commissioner Chestnut said he supported aggressive rebate numbers across the board; new construction, remodels, additions, as proposed. He was talking about the base line property, unimproved, that that number was frozen for 10 years and would think there should be an appreciation factor.  In other words, as that value went up it was prorated so that person did not pay taxes on that 2008 assessed number with no improvement and did not grow over time.  He thought it needed to grow over time in fairness.

Wagner said staff could get those numbers and different communities had calculated the rebate method differently and some communities had locked those rebates in based upon the amount of investment and the appraised value continued to go up over a lifetime. 

Mayor Hack called for public comment.

KT Walsh, East Lawrence Neighborhood Association representative, said initially she was enthusiastic about the possible benefits, especially for low income families and the ability to help people to stabilize their homes and be able to stay in their neighborhoods. After studying all the materials and court test results that were sent out, it was clear it would be a great tool for downtown, developers and landlords, but it appeared that it would only benefit those who already had cash in the bank or the ability to get loans and repay those loans.  She thought it was a fine tool, but initially they were looking at it as something that would really be able to help low income families along with some other people, and it was pretty clearly not the case.  She said they would like to know if there were other tools that might help low income families.  She said the plan would be useful downtown.

One of the ideas in the draft plan was that there would be a 15 year instead of a 10 year rebate for historic register properties which she thought was a powerful incentive. All of this was up for discussion and had the same questions the City Commissioner had brought up.  Part of the challenge for locally owned businesses was finding the dollars to modernize their interiors and compete with the chains.  She said if it could be partnered with the City efforts to conserve energy, it could be a greener city and help merchants and offices downtown upgrade from fluorescents to LAD lighting, install dual flush toilets, etc.  She said there was a lot of cross over and written very broadly and the way she read it and the way the courts have interpreted it, it could be used for streets, sidewalks, lighting, and sewer.  She said this could be a valuable tool with a lot of work and it could be customized for the community. 

Miller said those were the myriad of issues staff and the different stakeholders could explore. 

Mayor Hack said being a neighborhood revitalization act was different from working with low income families.  She thought it did not mean they were mutually exclusive, but thought the purpose needed to be determined.  She said Commissioner Chestnut’s question was valid concerning improving a certain area and were the comparables going to hurt someone in terms of their own property assessed valuation. 

Gwen Klingenberg, Lawrence, said she was also really excited about this plan at the very beginning, but for the low income it was not going to be a really good item.  She said what she did like was that in neighborhoods sidewalks could be fixed, although Miller thought the revitalization act might not work that way, but she had seen in other cities where things like sidewalks were done.  With the issue of traffic calming, sidewalks were obviously one of her big issues.  She said with this plan along with help from CDBG money and emergency funds, it might be a way to help the City help those people to fix their sidewalks.                                         (19)

PUBLIC COMMENT:

            Dan Partridge, Director of Lawrence/Douglas County Health Department, said he wanted to take the City Commission back to the City Manager’s Report and present an alternative perspective on the issue at hand.  He said first, he would point to the divergence on the execution of the spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet presented to the City Commission in the City Manager’s Report showed $415,000 for repair and maintenance which was for the entire Community Health Facility Building.  The Health Department represented 30% of that building, to be fair, 30% of $415,000 needed to be taken and that number could be seen in the table he presented to the City Commission. 

            He said the other point of divergence he had with the analysis was really the concept of comparing mill levies as the perspective to use.  He presented to the City Commission a before and after picture of what the financial impact was on the owner of a $160,000 home and it was really much less of  a number.  He said it was $3.68 and it was the difference of 0.2%, not 96% percent because the money that the Public Health Department needed came from property tax owners regardless of where they lived.  He said the before and after needed to be looked at, not comparing the two mill levies. 

He said there was a broader question involved which was what the shape of the local Health Department was and what should it look like.  He said it was a complex answer because there was no one size fits all answer.  Local Health Departments ran the gamut from City departments to County departments to joint departments to State departments and the real answer was, what was best for the community and that was a local decision. 

Locally, they decided for 122 years the City of Lawrence had felt that public health served its mission and he thought that history of serving the mission of public health was one they should not turn away from lightly.  When he looked at the mission statement for the City of Lawrence, he saw that it spoke of improving the quality of life for the citizens of Lawrence.  He said they just described public health and public health was about improving the quality of life for everyone.  The Health Department improved the quality of life for the City of Lawrence every time they provided an immunization to a child, every time they went to the home of an elderly person who needed help to connect to resources, every time they provided any of the myriad of service that they did.  He said they could get bogged down into the question of equity, but to him the question was if they were helping the City serve their mission and did they deserve the City’s support. 

He said when they met with the City Commission two weeks ago to present their budget, he asked for commitment to enter into a dialogue about formalizing the funding relationship that they had with the City Commission for 65 years and he encouraged the City Commission to take them up on that offer.  He said he would like to see an ad hoc committee formed so that they could work together collaboratively rather than fire memos at each other. 

Mayor Hack said when the City Manager returns they would have the opportunity to spend more time with this and have further discussion.  She said she appreciated his concerns and the encouragement to get together and talk about it.                                                              (20)

FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS: 

TBD

 Salvation Army Site Plan and Rezoning;  Retail Marketing Analysis Code provisions  Neighborhood Revitalization Act proposals for target neighborhoods and downtown; NRA policy statement  Special Use Permit information for Alcohol Establishments and Entertainment Venue Ordinance    Adoption of Joint City Ordinance No. 8097, and County Resolution No. ____, to replace Chapter Seven – Industrial and Employment Related Land Use, in Horizon 2020  with a revised Chapter 7 entitled “Chapter 7 – Industrial and Employment Related Land Use in Horizon 2020, CPA-2004-02 Edition”, and repealing the existing chapter.

REGULAR AGENDA (cont’d):

Consider motion to recess into executive session for 30 minutes for the purpose of discussing possible acquisition of real estate.  The justification is to keep possible terms and conditions of a possible acquisition confidential at this time.  The regular meeting will resume in the Commission meeting room.

Moved by Amyx, seconded by Chestnut, to recess into executive session for 30 minutes at 11:45 for the purpose of discussing possible acquisition of real estate. The justification is to keep possible terms and conditions of a possible acquisition confidential at this time.      Motion carried unanimously.                                                                                            (21)

      The Commission returned to regular session at which time it was Moved by Highberger, seconded by Amyx, to adjourn at 12:15 a.m.  Motion carried unanimously. 

APPROVED:  

_____________________________

Sue Hack, Mayor

ATTEST:

___________________________________                                                                       

Frank S. Reeb, City Clerk

CITY COMMISSION MEETING OF JUNE 19, 2007

1. Bid Date Set – Kaw Water Treatment Plant parking project, July 17^th.

2. Finance purchase – Selectron VoiceUtility System, not to exceed $53,635.

3. Engineering Service Agreement – Waterline relocation, 19^th from AL to TN with BG Consultants for $22,000.

4. Ordinance No. 8098 – 1^st Read, adopt Development Code, June 12, 2007 Edition.

5. Ordinance No. 8120 – 2^nd Read, Domestic partnership registry.

6. Text Amendment – Zoning, 20-403, add Restaurant, Quality to permitted uses in IL (Limited Industrial Districts) 

7. RFP – Engineering & Construction, Pump Station 25 (E Hills).

8. Design-Bldg Contract – CAS Construction/Professional Engineering – W Baldwin Creek Sanitary Sewer, 2003 Wastewater Master Plan.

9. Mortgage Release – 1522 Lindenwood – Benzel & Subordination Agreement – 2734 Bonanza – Patrick.

10. Temp Use of R-O-W – 7^th between VT & MA on Sunday, July 15 10am – 3 pm & 900 blk of NH on Sunday, Oct 14, 1 am to 10 pm.

11. License Agreement – 3 ft picket-style fence, NH & a 6 ft privacy fence along 18^th.

12. City Manager’s Report.

13. Public Hearing – Ingredient, waiver of restriction of sale & serving alcoholic liquor near church or school.

14. Pesticide-free park Program – 2008 Budget.

15. Rental Registration – Multi-family properties for 2008 Budget.

16. Fee Waiver – Tenants to Homeowners for Habitat for Humanity.

17. Sidewalk & traffic calming – funding issues.

18. Energy-related & environmental initiatives for 2008 Budget.

19. Neighborhood Revitalization Plans – downtown & targeted neighborhoods, budget implications.

20. Public Comment – Health Department discussion.

21. Executive Session