Minutes
Monday, July 14, 2003
The meeting was called to order at 4:00 p.m. Members present were: Alderman Koehler and Alderman Grabowski. Also present were Robert Kufrin, Wayne St. John, Doug Schachtner, Bill Schaper.
Alderman Koehler, seconded by Alderman Grabowski, made a motion to approve the minutes of March 10, 2003 and July 25, 2002. All aye; motion carried.
A skatepark would include skateboards, inline skating, and BMX bikes. In checking with CVMIC, Doug indicated that the city would only be liable if we were negligent or charged admission. An informational meeting was held a year ago and 140 people attended. Several people asked to be put on the Parks and Recreation Commission agenda and were heard. A site, design, cost estimates and funding alternatives were prepared. A design committee and a site committee met on several occasions. The Abendschein site was recommended. The park itself for the facilities would include 18,000 to 20,000 square feet excluding any landscaping. There is currently $500,000 available in impact fees for community park development, which this project could be applied toward. Doug expected a plan design to cost $3,000 to $5,000, which could also come from the impact fee fund.
Alderman Koehler suggested that new homeowners receive a brochure with their first tax bill to educate them on what is allowed and what is not. Bob explained that we put information in the Acorn to explain the basics of building permits, but there can be a high rate of turnaround in a subdivision—three different people may have owned a particular home in 10 years and the third owner won’t even know who built the house. Many residents ask for help at the Engineering counter, want to match a particular style house with a specific lot and they don’t go together well, but they want to make it happen anyway. A person can build a home in Oak Creek and never even know that a permit had to be applied for if the developer has taken care of all of the paperwork behind the scenes. Whose responsibility is it to educate homeowners of what permits are required for what situations?The city does not enforce deed restrictions, which are a private agreement between the lot buyer and a subdivision association with rules created by the subdivision association. Every subdivision could effectively have a different set of rules, so we could have 50 or 100 different sets of deed restrictions. Those deed restrictions in some cases are legally recorded and sometimes we don’t know how they’re actually handled. All we have are our city zoning codes and building requirements. We have no ability to presume what is or is not acceptable. We have no legal authority to enforce any deed restrictions unless they parallel our requirements. Their recourse is to take the issue to court.Alderman Koehler suggested that after a permit application is submitted, the city conducts an Inspection and verifies the staking prior to construction starting and then again after the construction is complete. If someone encroaches with a movable structure (shed, garden, play apparatus) or if they put their fence on the city’s property, we tell them to move it. Every permit that’s issued must have wording to tell the owner that they cannot plant anything on the city right of way or easement. Alderman Koehler asked how to keep plantings out of the easement when people don’t need permits. Bob suggested including it routinely in the Acorn to inform residents why it’s important not to obstruct rights of way and easements. Bob will work with Ed and put together some suggestions on making changes to permits and related brochures as well as putting notices in the Acorn regularly. If we presented a council report to explain how we’ll address these issues as they come up. We’ll be aggressive on defending our right of way and eliminating encroachments. When that comes up, it will be passed because it will have little resistance from residents because no one will think it applies to them and everyone will talk about it and there may be some concern but when a special request is made, it requires Council willpower to keep saying it and uphold that decision. It does the city no good to have a policy and use staff time on it if exceptions are made.
The Drexel Avenue project was done as a federal project, which took six years total. In both the 13th Street contract and the Rawson repair contract we put language in to state that if anyone got a better deal, we got it too. Franklin just got a better deal on the 76th Street repair project. If you use federal money, you can’t assess. On Drexel, the only assessments we did were for the improvements that we missed. There was no curb and gutter, there was some street lighting, but it was basically only the things that weren’t there. When we do a project with 80% money maximum, 20% local share (that’s what we’re doing on Pennsylvania), you can assess for the 20% local share. But when we go and do this marriage with the county, we have no local money in it to assess.The dilemma with Puetz is we could probably do some intermediate repairs to Puetz Road, railroad tracks to 13th and even over to 27th, that would last a while because we have such a problem with stormwater on both sides. Bob anticipated that the DNR would not grant permission to fill in the wetlands on both sizes sufficient to widen Puetz out to four lanes. The Committee can do three things: go on record not recommending the project at all; the committee can recommend doing it in two phases - $40,500 for design and recommend that the city participate under the SPT funding for the local share; or the committee can take no action and not recommend but refer it to Council for their determination. This issue will be carried over to the next meeting (July 24th).
When we were going to change out garbage trucks this last time, we hung onto some of the old ones longer so we changed out more at one time so that we had the hope of going to a mechanized system. We didn’t have containers budgeted and we needed one more truck, so we bought trucks that could do either manual or mechanized pickup, so that we could survive manual until such time as the mechanized system came forward. Then the economy went south and it didn’t get in the budget. The mayor is very interested in going to the mechanized system.We’re changing how we do garbage pickup in this city. Residents can’t put this container out next to a telephone because we won’t be able to get the claw around it. If the employee has to go out and physically move the cart, that defeats the purpose and efficiency and mechanized pickup. Suggested changes to the ordinance indicate that the container has to be five feet away from a vertical obstruction and that there is no parking within 15 feet of a container on the day of pickup. The Police Department will have the authority to enforce the parking requirements and issue tickets. It would be most efficient to have one container per residence, however we recognize that there are some families where 96 gallons won’t be enough for a week. A second container can be rented. Although there will be more required of residents (the container must face a certain direction, the resident will need to keep track of their own container, etc.), there will also be advantages (the container will be on wheels so they will be easy to move, no more animals eating from bags and making a mess, they won’t have to purchase multiple garbage cans). The rental fee for a second container must be high enough so that the container is perceived as a necessity. The elderly will want to downsize so they won’t have to drag the big container around, however will they then want multiple smaller containers?On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we have three garbage trucks out on routes. If we have a double pickup day on one of those three days, we need six trucks. We currently have three automated trucks, but we need four to be efficient and the mayor is not inclined to buy more equipment. If we want to go with three, then we can’t do the whole city. The automation mechanism cannot be installed on any of the old trucks. The extra truck would cost $133,000, but if we go fully to the cart system, we could save an additional $18,000 on the truck because we wouldn’t need to buy a low entry cab because the employee won’t be getting in and out of the truck. The four rearloaders are only used for the yard. We would trade in the old sideloader for the new sideloader. We would end up with four automated trucks and two rearloaders.If we were going to try to do the whole city with three trucks because it is not en vogue to buy equipment right now, which is the message we’re getting from the mayor, then our only choice to do that is to start modifying the way we do business. Currently, on a single holiday, the trash is picked up the day before. On a double holiday, it’s the day before and the day after. We would have to push everybody in the week putting Saturday in the equation and then run Saturday on overtime. If we have a Monday holiday, we would change everybody’s pickup day that day for garbage, but we won’t do it for Waste Management on recycling. The other alternative is to try to run a double shift on that double collection day to make the equipment go, so we’d have to run 16 hour days. On a Monday and Tuesday, it’s not the end of the world because we can throw a third truck out there. Based on Cudahy’s experience, Bill hopes to cut down to two trucks over time. The 2002 budget included $87,500 for half of the purchase of a garbage truck, with the other half anticipated to be allocated in 2003. The committee discussed issues related to the yard being open late on Tuesday evenings.
No discussion took place.
Alderman Koehler made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 6:45 p.m. Alderman Grabowski seconded. All aye; motion adjourned.