City Council Approves Packet Posting

With some minor tweaking, the Monona City Council unanimously approved the policy brought forward by Alder McKeever and me to require that the information packets provided to city council members and citizen committee members also be made available on the city's web site. The policy will be implemented over time as staff develops procedures and upgrades some technology (a new scanner, for instance). The policy also encourages people doing business with the city to submit as much information as feasible in electronic form, which will make it easier to post the information. A side benefit could be the reduction in paper printed and stored.

The council also approved a developer's agreement with MSP Real Estate for the Garden Circle property. Phase I will include a minimum 88-unit independent living facility, a minimum 36-unit assisted living facility, a 36-unit memory care facility, and at least 139 parking stalls by the end of 2010. The project shall have a minimum value of $11.3 million dollars. Phase II shall have a minimum value of $5.8 million by the end of 2014, but is not guaranteed. The Financially, the agreement is not great, but it should pay out before the TIF expires. On the other hand, the city bought the property in order to change the use and many negative impacts that property brought to the city and turn it into a positive for the community. This project will accomplish that goal.

And of course we can't have a meeting without discussing some aspect or multiple aspects of the Monona Drive project. After a recent post I learned that the possibility of an asphalt overlay on Monona Drive is less than I thought. According to Pam Dunphy, the Dane County Assistant Commissioner for Public Works, Highways, and Transportation, "The County does not have anything budgeted to resurface Monona Drive outside of this project." So any overlay would have to be funded from the Monona Drive project, apparently. And since we are already over the federal cap, I believe that means the city would have to pick up nearly all of that cost (around $175,000).

We also spent time talking about asphalt versus concrete. A fine topic to discuss, no doubt, but this issue was debated, discussed, and decided months ago. We also discussed the possibility of doing the utility work on Monona Drive in 2008. The thought is that we might be able to complete the project in 2009 if we do the utility work in 2008. As I said at the meeting, this sounds like an exercise in wishful thinking. It's now late February and we are talking about doing a major utility project this year that is far, far, far from ready to go to bid. Far. Maybe I've been around too long. I've seen many, many projects take longer than expected but damn few be completed on a rush schedule. This idea just strikes me as wildly optimistic. Besides which, advancing the work to 2008 would almost certainly add $150,000 to $400,000 in project costs and would require that Monona Drive be reduced to two lanes in 1500' stretches for 3 to 4 weeks. The current plan calls for three lanes to be maintained at all times (one lane in each direction and a two-way left-turn lane). That is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned.

We did approve moving forward with real estate acquisitions, a critical path item.