October 2nd Council Meeting

We have a couple agenda items I want to discuss. The items are the possible 2008 street improvement project, water/sewer rate study, special assessment policy for petitioned projects, police lieutenant and nuisance enforcement time lines.

The first item relates to two different street projects. the first is the Palomino Acres neighborhood. The streets included are Pinto Lane, Appaloosa Lane and Buckskin Blvd. The Council invited, by letter, all the residents of this neighborhood to discuss the possible placement of curb and gutters. The streets in this area were constructed without the necessary curb and gutter to handle the water from rain. this causes localized flooding. In essence the water from this neighborhood unfortunately floods through a few yards. The Council has received numerous complaints and we are asking the neighborhood for their input. We can use ditches to slow the water, build up to date curb and gutter improvements or leave as is. The first option is less expensive but would eat up a lot of land, destroy many mature trees and cost home owners on average $4,500. The second option is more expensive at an average cost of $6,600 but would bring the system up to modern standards. The city as a whole would still be picking up a majority of the cost. There is no good option here to fix a past planning mistake. The curb and gutters should have been installed when the area was first built to handle the water runoff issue.

Another option I will ask about is what would the impact of rain gardens throughout the entire neighborhood have. Is this a plausible option and would the residents be willing to take on this low impact option.

The second major street project is upgrading the existing sanitary and storm sewer bottlenecks. This includes the area of 2nd ave from Spirit Brook to Elizabeth, Elizabeth Street from 2nd Ave to BNSF, Alley west of BNSF and Broadway at alley intersection.

The Council will be awarding a bid to have our water and sewer rates studied. This study will include the water treatment plant and an option without it. Once we receive the outcome of the studies The Council will decide the final rates and how to fund the water treatment plant.

The special assessment for petitioned projects (429) is one of those items that quickly make you fall to sleep except for the fact they can cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. The idea behind these 429 projects is that if a group of land owners agree they can ask the city to build the road and utilities infrastructure and assess back 100% of the cost to the landowners. The current process however does not charge enough for city staff time and carrying cost of money---since the city acts as the banker. It is critically important that the city makes development pay for itself.

The police lieutenant position will add a necessary supervisor to our Police department. We had originally worked to hire a Sergeant but we received a number of union complaints about the process and the position classification. It was important to us to have a position that would still have a majority of policing activity but not be in the current union so supervision of officers would not be an issue. With the passage of this position we will hire a lieutenant and if filled by a current department employee we will add another patrol officer as well. This will give us a net gain of 1 police position.

The Council has for the first time has put teeth into nuisance abatement. We have been frustrated however by the amount of time it takes to resolve these nuisances. The City Attorney will present a way to dramatically improve the time line for a number of the nuisances.