Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/13/2006 Work Session . City of Springfield Work Session Meeting MINUTES OF THE WORK SESSION MEETING OF THE SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL HELD MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2006 The City of Springfield Council met in a work session in the Library Meeting Room, 225 Fifth Street, Springfield, Oregon, on Monday, February 13,2006 at 5:30 p.m., with Council President Woodrow presiding. ATTENDANCE Present were Councilors Woodrow, Ballew, Lundberg, Fitch, Ralston, and Pishioneri (5:35pm) Also present were Interim City Manager Cynthia Pappas, City Attorney Joe Leahy, City Recorder Amy Sowa and members of the staff. Mayor Leiken was absent (excused). 1. Joint City Council/Museum Board of Directors Meeting. . Development Services Director Bill Gri1e presented the staff report on this item. The City of Springfield and the Springfield Museum Board of Directors are in the second year of a Management Agreement relationship. This year the City gave the Museum Board an additional $15,560 above the base funding of $34,440 for the support and marketing of planned special events. Approximately $8,000 was budgeted to add frequency and market penetration with publications; $3,000 for exhibit costs for a Manhole Cover Art Exhibit; $2,000 to support the creation ofa family stories exhibit; and $l,OOO each to support a Mayor's ExhibitlEvent, Downtown Springfield Cruz and Christmas Parade, and Adam Grosowsky's Exhibit. The Management Agreement defines the relationship between the City and Museum Board, assigning the Board responsibilities to manage and operate the Museum and act as trustee for the historical collection which is a City-owned asset. Section 4 of the agreement provides that: "Manager (i.e., The Museum Board) shall report to the City Council on the activities of the Manager in the management of the Facility not less than annually. Manager agrees to provide this report to the City on or before December 31 each year." See attached: Springfield Museum Annual Report/Update, January 5,2006. The Springfield Museum Board of Directors welcomes the opportunity to present a summary of its activities from the past year. Ms. Redmond asked the Museum Board members to introduce themselves and tell how long they had served on the Museum Board. The following Board Members introduced themselves: Bob Schroeter (1 year), Doug Lauderbach (2 'is years), Margot McDonnell (5 years), Kathie Hardy (7 years), Maureen Sicotte (7 months) and Betty Schmitt (7 months), . Ms. McDonnell gave a brief history ofthe Museum. She distributed a document regarding the history of the Museum. She said the Museum opened in 1981. She said the Museum had been through a lot of changes, but there had been constancy in the Museum's mission. She discussed the building where the Museum was housed. In 1986 Council agreed to fund a Museum Director position and Kathy Jensen was appointed and remained Director until she retired in 2004. Ms. Redmond was now the Museum Director. In 2004, discussions were held regarding whether or City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13, 2006 Page 2 . not the Museum should be separate from the City. The Museum was now an independent contractor and formed an agreement with the City in 2004. The City owned the Museum and the historical collection. The Board of Directors was responsible for the management and operation of the Museum and the Director. She discussed some of the committees that were formed to take on the new independent role. She said the Museum Board currently had II members and four open positions. The Board Members had three year terms. She said the Museum Committee had six positions. She noted the many roles and duties that Ms. Redmond carried out as the Museum Coordinator. Ms. Redmond said there were many exciting things to share with Council. She distributed a calendar which was a new project the Board had started this year. She also distributed a testimonia11etter from an artist and the Museum's Exhibit Schedule for 2006. She said the Board had focused on increasing visibility and community awareness and had taken several steps toward that goal, including the calendar. She discussed a column she was writing for the Springfield News and the partnership with the Register Guard in creating a book. She said the images in the book were from the Lane County Historic Museum, the Springfield Museum and the University of Oregon. Promotion for the book offered a lot of publicity for the Museum and was a fundraising opportunity as well. . Ms. Redmond said the Board had approached the City to ask for space in the lobby to display cases for artifacts and documents. This would be a rotating exhibit in City Hall sharing part of the Museum's collection. She discussed the additional $15,000 received from the City last year and how that was used to leverage publicity. She gave examples and explained how revenue was generated from that funding. Ms. Redmond noted the increase in admission revenue during Adam Grosowsky's exhibit. She noted the publicity from that exhibit and the number of people who attended. Ms. Redmond discussed the Manhole Art Covers exhibit. She said a manhole cover from Japan was already here, and additional covers were coming from all over the United States. She said there would be a traveling art show of ten fiber art pieces inspired by the manhole cover designs. The Museum was going to have a contest for a Springfield manhole cover design. She said there was amazing artwork on some of the manholes. She noted the expense in shipping them due to their weight. . Ms. Redmond discussed the Springfield Stories Exhibit which was bumped back one year for further research and would appear in 2007. She discussed two volunteers, Craig Spillman and Nancy Karp, who had done a great job on setting up the exhibits. She discussed a publication that would be coordinated with an event with Mayor Leiken. She discussed two exhibits that had been received by the Museum this year: a full telephone switchboard display and a doll house handcrafted by Frank Brown, manager of Springfield Utility Board (SUB) during the 1950's and early 1960's, for his daughters for Christmas in 1932. Ms. Redmond said that doll house was currently on display. She noted the work done by Estelle McCafferty and Jan McKee on cataloging, digitalizing images, researching questions from the community, and offering support for other items such as the calendar and the newspaper column. She discussed the storage issue that was resolved by working with the City on storage at Booth Kelly. She said it had created a savings for the City and was beneficial to the Museum. . Ms. Redmond said the Development Committee had been working with Mayor Leiken on a . Mayor's event that would be a fundraiser. This event would honor living Springfield Mayors and would be scheduled sometime in May. Garden tours would again be held this September. The Washburne Historic District would be working with the Museum to put on a vintage City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13,2006 Page 3 . wedding dress fashion show and tea at the Willamalane Activity Center on July 9. If the Board approved the proposal, the Museum and Washburne District would split any profits. The Museum had created a corporate membership this year and extended the friends program. Ms. Redmond discussed the gift shop and the success they had experienced during special events. She noted that the Museum had continued to support local artists in the gallery and in the store. She discussed the school tours that were expanding, including visits from homeschoo1ers, and how they showed the students that history was incorporated in every day things from the past. . Mr. Lauderbach discussed the guest book inside the Museum. The guest book was signed voluntarily so did not show the exact number of people who visited the Museum. Those that did sign in were asked to sign their name and provide their zip code. In 2005 over 2400 people signed the guest book. . Of those 2400 people, ten percent were from outside Oregon, about l07 people resided outside of Lane County and approximately 2l 00 people from within Lane County. Nearly sixty-eight percent ofthe people who visited the Museum were from the City of Springfield. They had eighteen school visitations and additional visits from the Homeschoo1 Association. He discussed the Museum Board and Museum Committee. Those members contributed over 5000 hours of volunteer time to the Springfield Museum. He discussed Adam Grosowsky's exhibit which lasted three weeks. During that time, over $8500 of his artwork sold. Of that sales money, Mr, Grosowsky donated $2500 to the Museum. Mr. Lauderbach noted the large number of historical artifacts associated with the City of Springfield which were stored by the Museum, including over 2800 historical photographs. He discussed some of the stored objects including furniture, spinning wheels, the telephone switchboard, historical documents, historical books and other historical material relating to the City of Springfield. One of the responsibilities of the Museum was to maintain, display and preserve those items for future use. Councilor Fitch said she was impressed with what the Museum had done since becoming independent. - Councilor Ralston asked if the Museum would be asking fo~ additional funding from the City this year. Ms. Redmond said the Board was currently working on their budget and it did not appear they would need the additional $l5,000 that was requested last year. She did note the importance of the original amount of $34,000. Councilor Pishioneri said he would like to see as many displays in the public setting as possible. Ms. Redmond said there may be an opportunity to partner with other cities and Lane County to put an exhibit at the airport. Councilor Woodrow said they had done a great job and he appreciated all the volunteer hours and the work hours. 2. 2007-2011 Capital Improvement Program - A Community Reinvestment Plan. . City Engineer Ken V ogeney presented the staff report on this item. The draft City of Springfield 2007-2011 Capital Improvement Program, A Community Reinvestment Plan, was reviewed at the Planning Commission's February 7, 2006 meeting. The Commission recommended Council approval of the plan. . City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13,2006 Page 4 . The CIP attempts to balance the use of scarce capital construction funds with the long list of infrastructure needs for our community. It is not a document with budget authority, but it serves as a guide for programming funds and planning the annual workload of Public Works staff. There are a few completely new projects being proposed in the next five years of programmed funding, and we are making significant progress toward completing the backlog of projects from previous year's capital plans. These items are detailed in the attached Council Briefmg Memorandum. Mr. V ogeney introduced Assistant City Engineer Steve Rodolf and Civil Engineer Jeff Paschall, who had contributed, along with other Public Works staff, to the work done on the CIP. Mr. Vogeney noted there was a new subtitle, "A Community Reinvestment" per suggestions by Councilor Pishioneri and others to help the community understand what the project was about. Mr. Vogeney said a new category had been added to the CIP called Justice Center Facility. He noted that the categories were listed on page 4 of Attachment A included in the agenda packet. He said four projects from other categories had been moved into the category Neighborhood Improvements, where they were a better fit. . Mr. Vogeney said a public input campaign was held in October and November of 2005 where staff solicited input from the public, other public agencies and private agencies. The agencies had no projects to add to the City's CIP. There was one response from residents regarding BlueBelle Street requesting sidewalks, street lighting and street trees. All of those items fell under maintenance activities, so Mr. Vogeney forwarded those requests to maintenance. Mr. Vogeney said five new projects had been included in the CIP.The fIrst was Gray Jaqua, although it had not been formally approved by Council yet. Because it involved some City costs, it had been included in the CIP. The second was the Jasper Road Sewer Extension which had been removed last year, but was added back in for the coming CIP. The third new project was the Federal Office Building proposal, which was a joint project with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Forest Service and the National Guard. The fourth project is part of the Jasper Road Extension project. Lane County would be out for bids on that project this year, with bid opening in July of2006. One obligation of the City was payment if the rail spur needed to be relocated or modifIed. Councilor Fitch asked if all wetland issues had been resolved. Mr. Vogeney said the County had informed the City that all paperwork had been submitted and was in process. Mr. V ogeney said the fifth project was the extension of South 48th Street from Main Street for a development proposal on land south of the Daisy Street extension built several years ago. . Mr. V ogeney referred to page 6 of Attachment A, the summary of proposed expenditures in all categories. He said it had been requested to show the debt services separate from the projects, so that had been shown on this chart. He said the five year CIP was proposed to be nearly $66M, which was substantially larger than past CIP's. He explained why this figure was larger, mainly due to the Justice Center and the Federal Office Building. He referred to the chart on page 7 of Attachment A, which was the summary of proposed revenues and expenditures. He discussed the figures on that chart. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13, 2006 Page 5 . Councilor Fitch said she was pleased to see the projects were dispersed throughout the community. She said she also liked the new category and the placement of projects in each category. She said it was good information. Councilor Lundberg referred to AttachmentB, page 2 in the agenda packet. She asked if the City came out ahead by $843,000 on the South 42nd Street project. Mr. V ogeney said that was correct. Part of the transfer of ownership agreement with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) was to set aside a maintenance reserve for 42nd Street. He said Mr. Paschall was currently working on the design of the second phase to fmish the street and to preserve the $800,000 for long-term maintenance needs. Councilor Lundberg said the Pioneer Parkway overlay was scheduled for 2007. She discussed the bottleneck of construction work in that area and asked why the overlay needed to be done in 2007, rather than waiting. Mr. V ogeney said the traffic and condition of the road would get worse if it was postponed. He said this had been originally programmed to start in 2004, but was bumped to 2005, 2006 and now to 2007. By waiting, additional work may need to be done besides just the overlay because of deterioration of the road. He discussed the increases of traffic in future years with the opening of the RiverBend Medical Center. He said the roundabout construction was scheduled to be done by October 2006. . Councilor Lundberg said it would be helpful to give citizens an overview of the projects upcoming in the Gateway area because it was so congested. Mr. V ogeney said staff was scheduled to present to Council in March the proposed public information campaign for this year's construction season in that area. It would include websites, mailings and newspaper articles. Staff was working closely with Community Relations Coordinator Niel Laudati and the staff at ODOT to put it together. Councilor Pishio.neri asked about street lighting. Traffic Engineer Brian Barnett said the item in the CIP for street lighting included: full testing and replacement of rotten poles; based on Council change of lighting types, replacement of lights on arterials, collectors, then neighborhoods; and putting in new street lights based on citizen requests. He said funds were budgeted for the current fiscal year to begin that work. At this point, the downtown street lights had already been changed over using Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. Councilor Pishioneri thought the training video on the website for roundabouts was a good idea and he would like to encourage something similar at the kiosk at Gateway. Mr. V ogeney said the transportation division was also putting together a public information campaign on how to use the two lane roundabout. Councilor Ballew said City participation in private development did not sound right. . Mr. V ogeney said he would look at renaming that. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13, 2006 Page 6 . Councilor Ballew asked about the increase in the Sewer Capital Projects. Environmental Services Manager Susie Smith said the wet weather flow management plan was developed in partnership with Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission (MWMC), Eugene and Springfield to optimize the way the collection system and regional wastewater treatment facilities manages peak wet weather flows. Out of that plan came targeted basin rehab work that both cities signed onto for the five to ten year period. That plan had Springfield ramping up eventually to $lM per year. That plan would be updated this year and further ramping could be required later. . Councilor Ballew said the fees were getting more noticeable. She next discussed the lighting. She said the lighting was beneficial to individual residents. She asked why the City didn't do benefits assessments or lighting districts as a way to fmance them. A district could also fmance the maintenance. Mr. Vogeney said he would look into that. Councilor Woodrow asked about the Jasper Road Extension (JRE) and who was building it. Mr. Vogeney said the County was building it. Councilor Woodrow asked if there were plans for soundwalls between South 57th Street and Mt. Vernon. . Transportation Manager Nick Amis said there were no plans for soundwalls. He said soundwalls were discussed during the stakeholders meetings when the JRE was first proposed. He said he would get the information from those discussions to Council. Councilor Lundberg asked Mr. Amis to also provide the costs for the soundwalls. 3. Fire and Life Safety Fees and Charges. Finance Director Bob Duey presented the staff report on this item. In October and November 2005, a Mayor's Blue Ribbon Committee (BRC) met to recommend options to resolve fmancia1 issues related to maintenance of current service levels in Fire & Life Safety. The BRC recommended options to increase revenues by $636,000 annually through a combination of raising existing fees and implementing new fees. The BRC report was presented at a November 28 Council Work Session and again at a mid-year Budget Committee meeting on December 6. Staff was instructed to prepare revenue options for further Council consideration. The financial impact of the fees depends on which of the options Council may wish to implement. A discussion of the type of fee and the amount of revenue estimated for each option is included in the attachments. Federal grant applications, expansion of ambulance account services (billing) clients and fIrst response fee options are included in this discussion. Attachment A shows all fees proposed at the February 6 and February 13 Work Sessions. The shaded portion indicates the fees and revenues that have not yet been discussed by Council. Fire & Life Safety fee and revenue options are an integral part of overall city revenues required to balance the FY 06-07 budget. . City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes. February 13,2006 Page 7 . Mr. Duey said this was a continuation of the fee and charges discussion from last week. He said all fees would be brought to Council on February 27 and to a public hearing on March 6. Planning fees could be discussed on February 27. Discussion was held regarding the figures on page I of Attachment A. Chief Murphy said the topics in the shaded area on Attachment A were the only fees that would be discussed during tonight's Council meeting. He said the listed options were Blue Ribbon Committee recommendations. It was up to Council to adopt or not adopt any or all fees. He referred to the Federal grants. He said they had only focused on grants that relieved the General Fund of assumed responsibility. He said there was no down side to the grants other than there was a match. The items would need to be purchased regardless of whether or not the grants were received, so there could be substantial assistance with the grants. He said they were applying for more than $100,000, but hoped to receive $100,000 from those applications. Chief Murphy referred to Attachment C, page 1, Increase Ambulance Billing Clients Option. He discussed the other communities that were contracting with the City and the need to compete for these contracts based on the siz~ ofthe city. He said many clients were small. He discussed the advantages and disadvantages with small and large cities. He discussed the City of Eugene and why they split off to do their own billing. The net increase was what was important. Councilor Ballew asked if other communities were doing billing for other communities or if Springfield was the only one providing this service. . Chief Murphy said Springfield Fire and Life Safety was the only government agency that he was aware of that performed billing for other jurisdictions outside of their immediate neighbors. He said private billing services did compete with Springfield, so they needed to be more efficient. Private agents could compete with lower employee costs and benefits. A consultant familiar with this service had said that Springfield was doing a high performance job and Springfield should sell it. Councilor Pishioneri asked about costs related to response to homeowners under different insurance coverages. Chief Murphy said that was related to their next topic. Councilor Lundberg noted Springfield was in competition with other jurisdictions. She asked if Springfield had lost any other jurisdictions besides Eugene. She asked if the $20,000 noted on the chart was if no other accounts were lost and several new accounts were gained. Chief Murphy said it was based on the bottom line. He said ifhe lost a client, he would expense down and adjust so $20,000 could be brought in. He said $20,000 was a reasonable goal. He said a down side was that these services were being added on to a staff that was already lean. This proposal would mean that more of that resource time would be spent on generating revenue. . He said they were not losing their mission, but needed to focus on the bottom line. Councilor Ralston said he noted Crooked River and Redmond had a contract with Springfield and asked about Bend. .. Chief Murphy said Bend did their own billing. He said the larger the city, the more likely they would do their own billing. He said Springfield had the economy of scale to serve smaller City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13, 2006 Page 8 . clients. The core group was account services technicians. He said if clients were lost, staff would have to be scaled back and staff understood that risk. The more experienced staff would be retained to maintain efficiency. Councilor Ralston suggested looking at Prineville as a prospective client. Chief Murphy said the state of Oregon would be remarketed before going out to Washington. Councilor Pishioneri said he wanted to know if motor vehicle accidents respondents would be assessed response fees. Yes. Knowing that could increase the appeal to join FireMed. He said if additional costs would be incurred by the Fire and Life Safety Department for costs not covered by auto insurance, more people might be willing to pay an increase. He suggested staff look at whether or not the $2 increase in FireMed was enough. Chief Murphy said he agreed. Councilor Pishioneri asked if $2 was a big enough increase on FireMed. Chief Murphy said they would not know until it was increased and the marketing plan was complete. It would need to be reevaluated each year. Incremental small increases might be a better way to go. . Councilor Ballew said with technicians with expertise there would be fewer rejections and fewer discrepancies than other jurisdictions. The better quality and success rate would be a strong selling point when approaching other jurisdictions. Chief Murphy said that was correct. Jurisdictions looked at the cost versus the collection performance. He said it was worth paying a per-account fee if the agency was getting a higher collection. He said they would be remarketing, but noted that most of their clients came from word of mouth by current clients. Councilor Fitch discussed first responder fees and noted that they were not widespread in Oregon. She felt it was something too new and that more study needed to be done before making a determination to implement them in Springfield. Of all the fees and charges presented, many were very exciting, but the first responder fee warranted more study before going in with the other fees. She said that fee was going to take more time and education before she would be ready to implement it in Springfield. She appreciated the Blue Ribbon Panel and their ideas. She discussed some of the other fees that had been discussed on February 6. Councilor Lundberg discussed fIrst responder fees and accident response fees. She asked if those were two different fees. Chief Murphy said they were different fees. He said the fIrst responder fee being proposed was all inclusive like those in California, Iowa and other states. He said Mohawk Valley and McKenzie Fire and Rescue do highway emergency response fees only for highway incidents with certain apparatus and exceptions. He said that is only a limited fee, while in California it is a full fee any time the trucks role. . Councilor Lundberg discussed the highway response fee and why it would be charged. She said she agreed with Councilor Fitch. The purpose of Measures 47 and 50 was to cap the ever growing cost of public government. She said trying to find ways around that, jurisdictions. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13, 2006 Page 9 . needed to be respectful of why those measures passed. She also noted that the first response fee was a small part of the revenue needed. She said they needed a further look at this fee and more discussion before going forward. She would like the public to have more time to learn about this fee and be prepared for it. Councilor Ballew said it was only a small part, but there wasn't time to wait. She asked if Council was fine with charging for a portion of the fee, such as rescue or medical. Councilor Pishioneri asked about the highway accident response fee. He gave an example and asked what the citizen would be charged. Chief Murphy said staff could bring back assumptions for certain situations. He discussed joint agreements with other rural fire districts and how that could eliminate the response fees for FireMed clients. If Council gave direction to go forward with the first responder fee, he would bring that information back. Councilor Pishioneri asked if one-half of responses were currently FireMed clients. Chief Murphy said that was correct. He said twenty-five percent of every person in Springfield city limits was FireMed members. He said fifty percent of those members would never see one of those bills. He gave an example of insurance carriers and what they would cover. Medicare and Medicaid would not cover certain things, but FireMed covered whatever insurance would not. . Councilor Pishioneri asked about the percentage of users of the system. Chief Murphy said the FireMed members used about half of the response calls. He said the demographics of the FireMedmembers included many senior citizens, who were heavy users. He said in order to capture a net of $l 00,000 in revenue, those losses had to be figured in. He . discussed token/partial user/marginal cost user fees and how they could be charged to the user. Councilor Ralston referred to the chart on Attachment D, page l. He said he recognized the intent of the tax limitation measures that were passed, but people still wanted to be rescued. He agreed with Councilor Ballew and said this fee needed to be implemented as soon as possible. People had to be willing to pay for services.. Councilor Fitch asked how many of the 1400 responses were auto-related and how many were home-related. Chief Murphy said approximately twenty-five to thirty percent were for auto-related calls. Councilor Fitch said she was not opposed to this fee, but still had questions. She discussed times when a driver had no insurance and where the costs would be charged. She said this fee could bring in $lOO,OOO, but $200,000 may need to be paid to the City Attorney to fight lawsuits. Councilor Ralston said the insurance companies should work out the payment situation. Mr. Leahy said the City Attorney's Office did look at this and found no prohibition against the fee. . City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13,2006 Page 10 . Councilor Woodrow said he understood the need for the money, but would prefer looking at the potential for getting the funding elsewhere. He said the negative connotation perceived by the public would be detrimental to the Fire Department. The public felt their taxes should pay for the Fire services, He said the fIrst responder fee should be looked at more thoroughly and a better education program for the public needed to be planned before implementing this fee. He said he was in full favor of all the other fees, but felt they needed to be cautious about the fIrst responder fee. Councilor Pishioneri said it was worth looking at as a revenue source and commended them for looking into it. He said it would be beneficial to pencil out some scenarios that could occur and who would be charged. That information would be helpful for him when constituents asked questions about when they would be charged. Councilor Ballew noted that the charge would be minimal. Councilor Woodrow said he was concerned with the citizens who would be upset about such a fee, but would never let their Councilor know. They would just remain angry with the City because they did not understand the fee. He said the education process was not yet in place. Councilor Lundberg said the City did have several measures coming along and we needed to be cautious and make sure people understand the fee before implementing it. She said the City was already asking the public for a lot and she would prefer to err on the side of caution. Councilor Ballew said the public would not be happy with any of the fees. . Councilor Woodrow said timing was a key factor and he also felt it was important to wait because of the November levy. Ms. Pappas asked when Council wanted the first responder fee to be brought back to Council for discussion. Discussion was held regarding whether or not to include the fIrst responder fee during the public hearing on March 6. Several councilors said they would appreciate public comment on this fee. Ms. Pappas gave Council some options regarding including or not including this fee for the March 6 public hearing or a later public hearing. Council said they would like to bring the first responder fee back during the March 6 Council meeting as a separate item. Mr. Duey noted that Council would be discussing this further during their February 27 Work Session and could make their fma1 determination at that time. Councilor Woodrow said it would be helpful if staff could bring back additional information on the fee prior to the February 27 Work Session. The meeting was adjourned at 7:14 pm. Minutes Recorder - Amy Sowa . City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 13, 2006 Page 11 . Attest: ~kw~ Amy So a City Recorder . . --