Committee Meetings June 22, 2009

Alderman Ebersohl and Hejna were not in attendance at this meeting.

Municipal Building, Property and Capital Improvements

• Senior services Relocation update

After reviewing four locations not including the YMCA part of the Traube Tent building is under consideration for the location of this program. Other locations did not meet certain requirements such as handicapped bathrooms and other improvements needing to be done before they could occupy the building.

The council then discussed if they negotiate a lease for the building and then the program asks the city for additional money as they have in the past on top of the monthly rent the city provides them with. It was decided Pat who runs this senior program will need to talk with the council. A motion was passed to allow Paul Ellis to begin negotiating a lease agreement for the council’s approval.

Mayor Hutchinson noted he has spoken with Representative Reitz regarding money for such a program.


• Shoemaker Schoolhouse update

A punch list has been made to restore the building completely. Paul Ellis is looking for grants to complete the work in the neighborhood of $50-60K. The city will need to consider the long term costs of staffing the facility if it will be a tourist information type of facility.


• Oak Street building

Paul Ellis presented a 5-year plan for the building to get more of it tenant ready, replace the parking lot, and expand some of the current tenant base to raise the revenue created by this building. Most if not all of the revenue generated by the tenants will be invested back into the building to attract more tenants and provide a better facility to the current tenants.

• Police Department roof

The roof is scheduled to be replaced by Lakeside roofing as soon as the can get it on their schedule, which looks to be mid to late July. The work will cost roughly $34K and consist of a new sloped roof with 1/8” of slope per a foot, gutters, and downspouts. Currently the roof is flat and has no gutters and downspouts.



Committee of the Whole

• Legal RFQ Submissions

This meeting was scratched as the council would like more time to review the RFQ’s that have been submitted.


Parks, Playgrounds and Recreation

Alderman Row left sometime during this meeting.
-Write-up in progress


License, Insurance Claims, CEMA, and Contracts

-Write-up in progress


Personnel

-Write-up in progress

June 15, 2009 Programmatic Agreement Discussion at the Regular Session City Council Meeting

June 1, 2009 Programmatic Agreement Discussion at the Regular Session City Council Meeting

The Programmatic Agreement

This is the copy of The Programmatic Agreement that I could get. Just posting so people know what all the talk is about.

I too had the questions of why Columbia Crossing was mentioned specifically in the document but after the discussion in the following videos and rereading the document a few times it is clearer now.

Land Owners - Proggrammatic Agreement

A representative of the landowners in the bottoms gives their reasoning of why the city should pass/approve the Programmatic Agreement.

Topix

It came to my attention that someone or maybe even multiple people have begun posting on the topix.com forums under my name. "Levi"

I have not posted to topix since May when I let everyone know I updated the blog until yesterday when I explained recent posts were not mine. From now on I will only post on topix as "Levi Ottwell", anything else is simply not me.

My feelings on the subject vary. I wonder who would be so childish to post under an actual persons name, as I dont believe I have provided anything but rather unbiased information about what is going on up at city hall on Mondays. I was also a little miffed that someone would do it, my name is rather unique and thus many people would assume exactly who "Levi" is on a Columbia, IL specific site.

It also crossed my mind that someone thought me relavant enough to use my name. I people are reading my site. I wish more people would step out from behind an alias and share their opinions.

Updates

I apologize for not keeping as up to date as I would like to but work was busy for a couple weeks there and hopefully I can catch up here and stay current for a while.

Videos should be added this weekend regarding the Programmatic Agreement disscussion that have taken place at the past two council meetings.

I will be moving my video hosting services over to youtube as I have found the vimeo.com service to be causing an issue for a few users. Videos will now be broken down into less than 10 minutes a piece to meet youtubes requirements but I can make the files larger in actual file size.

Vimeo lets videos be as long in time as you wamt but they limit you to 500mb a week in uploads. I liked that the videos could be longer but I cannot stay under this upload limit each week. Youtube only lets videos be 10 minutes in length but the file size can be 1gb each. Shorter videos but better quality and no weekly limit on file sizes.

Just thought I would let everyone know the reason behind the switch but in reality it wont matter as I will still embed the videos into the blog as before.

Committee Meetings June 8, 2009

Alderman Row and Oberkfell were not in attendance at this meeting.

Parks, Playgrounds, & Recreation

• Update on walking trail issues

It seems work will begin again on the walking trail between Loucust and Cherry streets once a few more details are ironed out with the concrete plant and Turner Hall. The Turners have agreed to grant a 20’ wide ingress/egress easement to Metter Park from the walking trail.


• Park Rules Discussion

Discussion started on how the city may want to pass an ordinance to allow fines to be assessed to people who break the posted rules in the city parks. Questions then fired up regarding the amount the fines would be. Tom Adams stated the amounts by state standards are $75-$750. The mayor added that the city has many ordinances where the fine is as little as $25.

When an alderman asked what or who determines the fine the questioning went over to Chief Edwards. He explained that 99% of the time when they are called for an ordinance violation they simply talk to the individual about what they are doing and give them a warning. The second time they are called they issue a fine, the third time they have to talk to the individual regarding the same issue they double the fine, it would triple for the fourth instance and so on.

Alderman Stumpf then asked if the city comes out ahead when issuing fines. In short the answer was no, after lawyer fees, court costs, and police time spent there is not really a monetary gain for the city in this situation unless the fines grow large enough.

No action was taken on an ordinance to assess fines to those who break the rules at the city parks, it was decided that Alderman Niemetz will look into the situation a little further.

One last tidbit of info from the meeting that may prove useful to those who use the parks is that the only area on any city property that dogs are not allowed is the walking trail at Bolm-Schuhkraft park by Parkview elementary. This is not so much an issue of people not cleaning up after their pets (which from what I have seen does not always get taken care of) but rather that dogs on leashes while people are rollerblading, jogging, and biking is not an ideal situation as explained by the council.

Personnel

• Executive Session
- EEOC Complaint
- Update on collective bargaining and employees salaries

End of Meeting

I have no issue on asking Chief Edwards if the fines provide revenue or not. Although I think it is important however for the council to continue to remember that not all services provided by the city can support themselves. We pay taxes to the city to provide us as citizens certain services. I appreciate the fact that the city and its police force can fine people who are not abiding by the law or city ordinances.

The mere fact they can fine people keeps most people from doing wrong in the first place and thus keeps a certain amount of order to things. Its costs money to enforce laws, it's not a for-profit endeavor. I hope our police department can never support their own operating costs by assessing fines, writing tickets or the seizure of drug related property. If they can then our city has become something none of us would want to be a part of.

Agenda for June 1, 2009

There are a couple of items that should cause some interest for Columbia residents on the agenda for tonight, I would encourage people to come and get involved.

-Bottoms Land Owners Programmatic Agreement/Fish Lake Interchange Programmatic Agreement

I would have to assume this Columbia Crossing related issue will be the most interesting topic of the night. There are many points of view on the subject and variables to take into account.

-Motion for aldermanic committees recommendations

This is located under the report of standing committees. I would have to say this will be a very heated subject as well, given how the topic was accepted at the committee meetings last week Tuesday. I see this motion either failing or going to the mayor to break the tie, in which case it passes.

-I know its not on the agenda but I would assume that there would/could be some update to the Meyer/1700 Ghent Road issue.