Gilbert City Council Meeting

June 3, 2002

Basic stuff:

The meeting was called to order shortly after 7:00 pm at the city hall. Mayor Bob Jaquis and council members Chris Benda, Lynn Henn, and Peg Uthe were present as was the city clerk, Dianna Schmidt. The consent calendar was approved.
  

Open forum:

No one spoke during the open forum, a time on the agenda in which visitors are allowed to speak to the council about matters not on the agenda.

  
Transportation services for summer swimmers:

A representative of the Heart of Iowa Regional Transit Agency (HIRTA) proposed to provide transportation four afternoons a week to youth and other interested persons who wish to swim in Ames. His busses are already out in the county during the week, delivering meals in the late morning, and it would be convenient to provide the additional service of taking swimmers to the pool and returning them to Gilbert later in the afternoon. When asked about the price of the transportation for swimmers, he replied he had not realized the service might duplicate the Youth and Shelter Services (YSS) summer program and wanted to make sure the price that HIRTA requested was consistent with the YSS rates. He will get back to the council with a price. Joy Leister, former member of the Gilbert Parks and Recreation Commission, asked if the city could provide funds to hire a part-time supervisor, saying that as a parent, she would want someone to oversee the youth at the pool and make sure that all went well with the transportation (i.e making sure everyone gets back on the back and back to Gilbert, etc.) The council seemed to agree with her perspective.

   
Street dance:

Chris Hadaway, who recently opened a Tropical Ice snow cone parlor and game room on Main Street, asked if she could hold a street dance on June 22. Video games and other activities would start in the later afternoon/early evening and go until mid-night. She and the council discussed fencing off a portion of First Street and perhaps part of Main Street near her building. If the event is successful, Chris would like to hold two additional street dances this summers. There was also some discussion of the possibility of holding one of the dances on the same day in July that the West Story Fire Department holds an open house in Gilbert. The department has not yet announced the specific date. Chris said her motive for providing the street dances is not one of making money but of providing recreational activities for Gilbert’s young people.

   
Appointment to fill council vacancy:

Without discussion, the council passed Resolution 392 to appoint Jonathon Popp to become a city council member to fill a vacant unexpired term which ends on December 31, 2003.

    
Renewal of tax abatement plan:

The council discussed the tax abatement plan that has been in place for several years in Gilbert and is soon to expire. The plan provides a reduction in property taxes to persons who build/purchase new homes in Gilbert. It was initially adopted when there was little, if any, new housing in Gilbert and a need to provide incentives for constructing new homes. The mayor said the main purpose for putting the matter on the night’s agenda was to get public input regarding the abatements; however, no visitors commented on the process. At the next meeting, there will be a public hearing about the abatements, followed by a council decision on whether or not to renew the plan.

The mayor said he had talked with Rich Lepper, who is Gilbert’s primary developer, and said Rich favors renewal of the abatement plan. The mayor also said there are people who would like to have their children in the Gilbert schools and who could live either in north Ames or Gilbert. Supposedly, the tax abatements are enough of an incentive for some of those people to choose to buy homes in Gilbert.

The mayor distributed papers (presumably charts and graphs) to the council members with data he had compiled from records at city hall and the county assessor’s office. He had calculated the taxes on a sampling of an equal number of houses contiguous to each other in three areas of town to compare the amount paid by. The sample areas were 1.) Shepard Street and Second Street  2.) Rothmore Drive and Gretten Street  3.) Christian Peterson Avenue.  The mayor said he did the calculation in response to concerns he has occasionally heard that the tax abatement plan unfairly favors new home owners. He concluded his presentation of data, saying that the new properties are “not carried” by the older properties.

The mayor also addressed two other assumption people have about the abatement plan. His first point was that the abatement process does not start over when a home is sold to a new buyer. His second point was that the abatement plan does not provide a 100 percent reduction in taxes. Apparently, a home buyer gets only a 75 percent reduction of taxes in the first year of ownership. There was little other discussion about the abatement process, and it appeared the council members were in accord with the mayor’s thinking, which favored renewing the plan.
   

Property tax exemption:

The council approved a tax exemption for 137 Christian Peterson Avenue. This is a standard procedure at council meetings, and there is usually little if any discussion.

    
General discussion among council members:

During the general discussion at the end of the meeting, the mayor announced that a city newsletter would be coming out at the end of the week. He also presented a petition that had been delivered to city hall, calling attention to a house that had burned several months ago (perhaps 18 months) on Gretten and had not been cleaned up to the satisfaction of the petitioners. The council had already sent the owner of the house a letter with a July 1 deadline to adequately deal with the damaged property. The council then expressed concern about a house on Second Street near the railroad tracks that had recently burned and hoped the damage at that site would be dealt with more promptly than was the burned home on Gretten. Concern was also expressed about the street lights on Rothmore and the length of time that they have not been working. Apparently, the problem is a complex one, and Alliant Energy and other parties are investigating to find the cause and implement a solution.

Meeting adjourns.
     

This unofficial summary provided by Gilbert Gazette editor, Helen D. Gunderson. When the minutes of a  meeting become available (after they are approved at the next council meeting), we will post them. You may also wish to look for the minutes in the fine print of the legal notices in the Ames Tribune about 14 days after a council meeting. 

If someone has an eye for proof-reading and finds typos, mis-spelling, grammar, or other errors, please let us know so we can make corrections. It's difficult and time-consuming to prepare the summary, and although it would be wise to find a copy editor before posting the summaries, we feel it is important to make the essence of the material available to the public as soon as possible.

Also, the city council tape records each meeting, and the clerk maintains the cassettes for use in writing the minutes and clarifying future questions about meetings. As far as we know, those tapes are part of the public record (unless the a city uses the tapes only for preparing minutes then destroys the tapes). And as far as we know, citizens and other persons may arrange with the clerk to listen to the tapes at city hall.