I'd like to call to order the Morgan Town City Council special meeting of February 28, 2017.
and clerk would please call the roll.
No one doing deputy mayor, Kawikki.
Here.
Where's Nugent?
Yeah.
Jenny Samine.
Here.
Jay Redmond.
Here.
Mayor Schambover.
Here.
Our first item is unfinished business.
Item A that proposed 2017 paving list.
I wonder if you wanted to kind of open up and give a summary.
Absolutely.
I'm happy to do that.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
So what you have included in the packet is a revised paving list based on the
In last week's discussion some of the other locations that have been identified previously and are included in this particular list.
So there will be some when Mr. Davis speaks to the particulars about those additional streets that are identified.
There will be a recommendation to remove some because of mob conducting some projects later on.
And perhaps a few others that could be delayed into the next cycle at that time.
Additionally, we look at the concept that we had discussed before breaking the project into two concurrent contracts.
that would be potentially handled by two different contractors.
And the concern that was expressed is having adequate enough inspection staff because we do have to have someone out the entire time while construction is undergoing, whether it be laying the cement or applying the asphalt.
So I work with Mr. Davis on about that to compile an estimate of using an outside engineering firm that can do that type of work.
I understand the, I guess, a little bit of reluctance that he had mentioned last year, apparently an outside firm was used.
But many times that was fulfilling gaps when we had absences, say if an employee had a sketch on a Catholic or called in sick or whatever, and so to him an engineering firm, a scramble and send someone at the last minute, it may not be the best qualified person, not to diminish the ability of the firm, whereas if we know this from the beginning of the paving project and we segregate out the work and have the private sector firm handle, you know, the specific
the area or the element of the paving project, I think can produce as high quality level as
if it's our own employees.
So I think by having a good understanding with that firm of what our expectations are,
I think for any private sector firm, even in the short time that I worked in the private
sector, you always look for opportunities where you can do more work.
So that's kind of a foot in the door for them, if you will.
And so I think this is an opportunity and not guaranteeing anything, but nevertheless,
we have to have that utmost quality, because if there's something that's missed in the inspections,
then it's on the inspector for missing that.
So here's a identified cost.
This is a very ambitious program, we're taking on a lot of different areas concurrently,
and there was some discussion of having this completed by a time certain.
I don't feel comfortable to say that this will be completed by July 1st, that was a date
that was thrown out there and sure we want to set a high bar, but I don't want to set
an expectation that we cannot live up to.
At the same time, I believe it's worthwhile to have contact with the residents and information
that we can provide where we are at with the project.
Because, of course, unfortunately, the person that's less than less will keep asking when
it's my street going to be done.
And I think we need to provide fairly regular updates.
And so we're talking about some ideas of how we can do that and we'll roll out the particular
sonnet.
But I think of having good communication with the residents so they understand what exactly
is going on.
So we have the project list before you, and can talk about the particulars, but like I said, this
Damien will specify four streets that
both he and I feel comfortable of removing because of the work being done or that can be delayed
just until the next paving cycle. So hopefully this will bring some resolution and that we can move
forward and more importantly that we can bid this out and we can schedule the project as
quickly as possible so we can get going and when the students leave for the summer and
there's less congestion that this can be completed on a timely basis.
So I appreciate the opportunity to give some overview and may it may defer to our director
of engineering.
Sure.
Mr. Can we suspend the rules and have Mr. Davis come up?
Yes.
By consensus.
Sure.
Uh, the last meeting, I guess, you tasked me involved with looking at the, the, what,
what adding those additional streets says 11 additional streets that weren't included on
the table list.
Frontline additional.
The original list of 70 free streets.
Uh, there's 11 of them on there.
Uh, uh, what that amounts to is a lot of number two miles of streets.
$340, $324,000 for the additional cost, looked at cost inspectors, two inspectors,
this is between $15,000, $70,000 based on time frame.
The price would go up or down whether depending on how fast or slow the contract went.
The four streets that Paul, Mr. Break, was talking about are small streets as two, one is
Pine Street, and one is Cypher, Cambridge Alley, those two can go off the list and be done
by our public work department.
I think the last meeting council approved them buying some paving equipment, and so those
of the streets that they did public works could handle other small, tiny streets.
Cypress Street, the street that was on the list, we're going to be trying to get it done,
but we had some issues with the ownership of the actual road, one of the joining neighbors
claim ownership of half of the road, and so we can't, we still have resolved that issue,
so Cypress Street would come off there.
And then the other one's number 47 is Bradley Street.
Mother's currently working on a project and putting together,
don't have a time for anyone, but there's,
they had some flooding issues on Bradley Street.
There's a couple of callers they want to upgrade.
So we would probably remove that until they actually did their upgrades.
We will pay for them to come back to their own care right back.
So Bradley would leave.
Mr. Memphis, can I ask you where that street is?
is over. You know, or Hoffman Street? Oh, like a Hoffman to Amherst and then Bradley.
Okay. It's right on the edge of the city. Kind of, you know, Stuart, Tom Road and Hoffman
Street. Thank you. So it's worth more. Third. Third. Where is it on the, pardon, where is
on our list. Number 47 is Bradley in the priority conflict.
Oh, up here. So that would be
number 47, number 54, number 55, and number 60 that I would remove. So that would be an
additional set of streets with these. Well, it's still these streets are small, so it doesn't
We're moving much mileage, so you're still looking at a little under two miles of streets,
cost is roughly 200, with those streets about $40,000, so you're looking at an additional
$290,000, with those additional 7 streets, with the removal of the floor.
Councilor King?
I had sent a question about Windsor.
My Mac show Windsor Avenue, although it's in my warden, it would be great if it was
pay. My maps show that it's a state street. It is. It's a county route. It's county
route with the five over two. The city is trying to take it over from the state. We requested
the state to give it back. Give it to us. Because the state doesn't maintain it. Right.
Windsor, Munsey, Drummond, those three streets are in that little neighborhood there that
their county route with the five over two. The state doesn't maintain them. So we're in
the process of asking the state for them back. So we won't pay it until we get it back
from the state. We could, we could move forward paving it or we could not. I don't see any
reason why we could move forward paving it.
We have to talk to the state, but I don't
see why we could pave it in the meantime just to get it up to better condition.
Pardon us, drummond on the list.
It's just as attached to, it's in really bad condition
and it's attached, it's just the last little piece of Windsor.
I don't think Drummond is here.
But I think Drummond is not a state route.
It's a little loop there.
Maybe it's Coons.
That's a Drummond's Coons, Coons, Monzy, and Windsor,
right the state routes.
Yeah, Drummond's in between those though.
But Drummond lives there.
Maybe you could pencil it in for a consideration for next year.
Councilor Rettlin?
We'll be like now as the next year is going to be a completely different assessment of
the roadway.
So next year's this list is going to be whatever streets aren't paved on here this year we're
going to be throwing the pool with the residents' streets and fight for their lives based on their
rankings and condition.
Councillor Rettlin?
Well, I have another question based on what you just said, but you're saying it's the
for the year or the six I guess or six or the ones that you're taking off they'll just go back into the pool for next
they'll go back in the pool yeah Windsor I'm here not Windsor but um Brandon we might make an exception for us and sits
a mob project they're going to be carrying it up we may come in and restore it and we can make that exception
probably for that street since it's going to be tore up to help mob so they don't have to put the full cost of
restoration on that street we could work with them to where they cared up fix the problems that it has
and then we come and restore it.
You know, that'd be a good way to share and help them all out.
Okay, my question relates come off of the list
from the inspector issue.
If I'm reading this right,
this is essentially two full-time inspectors
for the entirety of the project.
Yes, correct?
Does that cover all the inspection needed on this project
or is in other words, will your department also be doing some
of the inspection, or does this encompass the contractor?
This would be if we split the contract into two, I would have my staff on one contract
and I would have to hire additional staff for the other contract.
So two inspectors per contractor, yes.
We'll ask what it up as one of my contractors or one of my inspectors would be dealing entirely
with the concrete aspects of the Paving Project, the AD ramp upgrades, any sidewalk stuff
like that.
And the other one is deal with the asphalt placement and say with the other one has a one conquering one asphalt.
So if we were to not do two contractors, which I'm not suggesting, then this cost would be half of this cost will go away because my cost will go away in my budget.
My salary budget.
Let's see, okay.
Yeah, this is just if I split into two higher additional spectrum to cover that second contract.
Thank you.
Just two comments, actually.
One is I'm happy to see the list as presented in that the people who were on the waiting list are back on.
That's good to see.
My concern was in the past was not for who you had chosen or for the reasons that you chose them.
It's just that we had created an expectation.
people would queue up, would give them a number, and they were picking, waiting patiently,
and then we turned around and we added people who hadn't queued up before.
So, I'm pleased to see that we do that. Now, having said that, I do have the concern,
and I think we all do, and I think you do too, in that we want to do this job properly.
I'm hoping that we're not fighting off more than we can chew and that when we do this that we do this in a manner that will be perceived as being worth the weight.
But other than that, thank you. Thank you for the compromise and thank you for bringing this forward.
We made a lot of people happy and hopefully when this is completed, they will continue to be happy.
Thank you.
Councillor Neill, did you have a question?
Thank you.
Okay.
I do have a question.
I'm concerned.
The person street, the fortney to East End, that is on the side of the road around Woodburn Elementary School.
and I mean that is a building that we own is a city and we have tenants there and I just wondered if
the priority for that could be moved up. I mean it's down at number 51 but as we speak we have
the grapple parking lots and grapple all over the reds and in that you know
Once we approve, once you approve this list, you know, this is the list, priority doesn't matter anymore. This is the list that we're already paving.
So whether it's paving the beginnings, season, middle, season, or end, season, I'm going to leave that to the contractor to, you know, what their schedule is, where, how they want to tack the project. So, I mean, once it's approved on this list, the priority number kind of goes away, and this is the paving list. There's no, you know, priority anymore. It's, you know, this is the list that we're going to do.
It's like whatever sign they're working on.
Yes, that's what you're saying.
And if they do split this contract into two,
I'll probably split it, you know,
north side and south side of town.
One contract will be working north, one will be south.
I do appreciate, um,
op a detail that's been put into this.
It certainly is a better understanding of,
you know, the whole scoring issue
and the evaluation criteria.
I think that's very important.
I would support the hiring of
to inspectors. I think that's certainly a need that, you know, that's something that
I think that we learned from last year in trying to achieve this. We didn't have enough
personnel. And so I think that's a positive that's coming out of that.
And like Mr. Brick was saying, that last year we did have an adjunct for our one handout providing
the specter in case one of our specters was sick for the day or they had something. And
So we probably will have actually a third aspect of something like that that would be on a floor that you know in case one of the
My my staff would be able to make it that day or some reason that we'd be able to call to me on
To get something out there to
Myself would be out there too. Okay
Councilor Sully
So my question is
The additional paving that you're looking at was
roughly
We $325,000?
Yes.
And does that include the cost of these additional?
That is those 11 streets and highlighted in yellow that $324,000 is just those costs.
If you were to lose the four streets, I was talking about it's roughly $40,000, little $140,000.
So minus that from?
So the additional inspectors is not within that?
No, no.
So the cost of the street to be the 324 minus the 45 support street from the move plus the roughly 70 grand to our digital cutters.
And then so we're going to be at $300 or almost $400,000 increased in cost to the contract.
So I appreciate looking at the asphalt components and the concrete components of the contract because I think that that's really important
And to think about that, because I know that in the Evansdale portion of the Paving
contract, there was some concern about curbs and so on.
So that would be the concrete work that would be required.
How are curbs handled, I guess, is that right?
We do not do curbs, we're not fixing curbs as we're paving.
Curbs, depending on, sometimes curbs are the problem, which is possibly because they're
part of the sidewalk.
Sometimes they're part of the roadway and then there are a responsibility.
But if they are part of the sidewalk, you know, when the property is a precarious sidewalk there.
If there's a planting strip, then it's not, is that correct?
It's a little iffy, I guess.
We'll let you handle that.
And then the other question is, Dorsi's knob, once the slip is repaired,
apparently the road in is called folly grain.
and how does that fit in with the Paving Budget this year?
I don't have anything in there for that.
I mean, I don't know if when we pay for that cost,
or the city pay for that cost of payment.
But I recommend potentially doing it next year
since they are already doing a slip project.
They're going to be hauling in and out a lot of stone
in the care of the road.
I've talked to Mel previously about the road
that from our Paving Project,
We will be milling the streets, we'll have an excess amount of millings that we could use
up there to put on the road to keep it for one season and then pay the next year as part
of the payment project.
This current right now is locked, that doesn't fit into this one on there.
So at the end of the slip project the road could be made at least level because I think that
was part of what you talked to Mel about was that the road be made level, even if it was
more gravel than paving that it would be made level, so it was usable until next year's
paving season.
And then maybe could it next year under consideration to be earlier in the season just
because that's a paid, that's a place where people want to come to the lodge and have a
nice atmosphere.
There would be coordination on that one just because there are events scheduled and we didn't
work with them.
Okay.
This is the date.
We said that, you know, they did this in this one contractor.
Okay, thank you.
How's her being?
Yes.
Damien, I so appreciate this.
As you know, we've worked hard to get this extra funding and I appreciate your hard work to do this.
Several of the issues that keep recurring are with cement streets but also with drainage.
There's particular areas where as soon as the cement streets were put in,
And the drainage wasn't right in the cement when Caddy want this and then there's several
streets that don't have curbs and the drainage causes them to be cut up.
So I'm very concerned about the dressing of that and some particular streets.
I guess we all know all these streets and there's no doubt they all need to be paved there
in bad condition.
But the I'm very concerned about the drainage element in the coordination with a mug.
For example, particularly this one series of streets, I watch the cement go like this
while I'm wondering how it can be milled and-
Is it Alicin Street?
Alicin and actually South Point Circle.
I'm concerned because it's never been quite done right.
And so the street that was not done right, that I used it as an example in our community, was a cooperative effort with MOBA.
It was the Oakfield subdivision. All those, several of those roads had to be dug up in MOBA, replaced the pipes underneath.
I don't know what you call it. We did the original ballast or whatever it's called.
And then put the asphalt on. I'm very concerned about putting good money after bad.
What we'll do is, once this is list, we'll get with mob, we've got to provide this list of mobs and mobs currently out there looking at these streets and seeing what they need to do.
We'll also work with public works to public works usually goes out beforehand.
It takes care of issues like the houses repatch that needs replaced. They'll fix those.
Any base repair, they'll get those fixed and they'll have them and they'll give us reports saying these streets are ready, these streets are ready.
these streets are ready to go. And so in the time that when we put this out the bid, public
works in Moberg are we out there working on their issues at the end of the deal?
Great.
Getting the streets ready for pay rate.
Great. And then the second question is a little off the subject, but it's kind of a budget
topic that's related to paving and so forth is this year he did like 230 great curb cuts
and so forth, but as I walked in, there was a virtual pothole in their own sidewalk.
How are we going to address the sidewalk issues this year like that?
Is that going to be concurrent or separate?
With the ADA, I said, not the ADA part, I know you need more ADA, but our sidewalk conditions.
The sidewalk in front of City Hall put money into my budget this year to redo the sidewalk
out there. Public works is going to page in the meantime. What are issues out there is
there's a election involved underneath that sidewalk. So I've requested money in my
budget to address that. So that one that's one I just thought of today but there's
several other city sidewalks. So at the same time you're going to be working on
the city sidewalks. If there's a city-owned sidewalk then yes we can work with public
works to do those. If it's a private residence property then we try to send out
letters ahead of time. With the project this side is a little hard to send out
to get people to fix their so that's what's going to go for next years that we'll
have a five-year tenure list that will be able to send out letters and people have
you know two years notice that hey I need to fix my sidewalk because you're
paying me here two years. So people have that notice you know years ahead of time
that they need to start thinking about their sidewall vehicles are planning, whereas now
we put together our paving list in December, and to get people out there. Last year we
did send out letters and we had several people on Kingwood Street.
We had about 15 people
fix their sidewalks as part of a paving project last year, residents. But hopefully moving
forward next year, we'll be able to plan a little more and have residents have a little
notice and they'll be able to plan and, you know, make that good to big investment.
You know, you four to five thousand dollars of picture sidewalk where you're
asking, you know, I'll take your sidewalk isn't not to be able to, you know,
30 minutes to slide that $4,000 down and get a contractor. So hopefully we move
forward next year that people have that ability to start planning that.
Okay, and then also moving forward next year you're considering some sort of
program so that we could either bond it or work with people to have an
an economy of scale for them to do this,
so it's all even and done the same time.
And that's something that, yeah, we have to find out
what we want to do with sidewalks.
It's been talked about for a while now
with pedestrian safety board.
How do we want to address sidewalks?
Do we want to, as the city takes responsibility for them
in charge of fee?
Do we want to have an incentive program
where we pay for half of it?
There's been several things to wrap up
but there's never anything, you know, a policy brought forth thing.
This is how we're going to move forward sidewalks.
And maybe, you know, I know Jeff was working on it for a while,
but it never came through.
And, you know, Glenn, you know, just busy keeping his head
with the water with the amount of stuff he had to do.
So I know he didn't have it as part of the priority.
And so, you know, that might be something for Mr. Break, you know.
You know, before I ask him.
Do you have any questions?
Just a couple of questions, so I understand this list and someone will hold on to this
obviously.
When I see ramp cost here, that's the ADA ramps we're talking about at dot com, okay.
I noticed that Alonstreet is split into the two different blocks.
Is that because the ramps were only required in the one block and not in the others, that
why you wanted it?
What happens?
Call Creek Street?
What happens?
That's all paid.
So we have to be milling on one side and once that we don't do it, we're addressing it to the problem.
I said, okay, yeah, that's it, thank you.
Any other questions or comments, Councillor Summings?
So to follow up on the concrete streets, so will all concrete streets, once they've been milled, have the fiber in the asphalt?
That will happen to all the concrete ones.
That's really good issue.
We'll try that.
I'll see how it works.
Sure.
Thanks.
Madam Mayor.
One last clarification.
The estimate of cost that you're estimate is opposed to what's the likelihood that we can get
a lesser bid price.
Last year was a, you know, it keep it really low, lower than expected because of the prevailing
waves this year.
The stores are prevailing.
So, you know, I tried asking them on the high side, so I'm not, you know, a shock, but
so I, you know, I think Vids will come in and probably lower than what I'm anticipating.
I'm hoping.
But, you know, we've had progress where we've thought things were going to come in and
it's coming a lot higher.
But I think there's going to be a lot of competition this year, both with the asphalt.
I've been told that there's another asphalt plant that's wanting to get on this project,
whereas in past we don't agree.
So now there's another company's open up an asphalt plant and they want to be on this.
So they actually have some competition with the asphalt.
I know there's been several other contractors that have, or interested in this project,
that traditionally haven't done paving, but they're trying to get into that market.
So I think they're going to be paving or bidding on it.
So, you know, I think there's going to be a lot of competition for this project.
So, there might, it might not be that pretty, pretty good.
Thank you.
Councillor Kahn.
So, last but not least, thank you so much.
Some of the issues that have come up with the paving projects this year are signs, and
I sent you this email to, signs, stop bars, and then hump markings.
I don't really see that in this budget, but that'll be done by public works or another contractor.
The speedhouse will be done by the contractor, it's part of there, but public works has,
I spoke with public works director about that, if he wouldn't be included in the project and he said no, he would rather have his guys taken care of it.
So, he's ordered material to take care of that and the stock bar should be in the house.
stop bars, crosswalks.
And so his guys, we've taken care of that.
Once we pay, they'll be following behind us,
putting those down.
But when we do speed up, see, call in traffic
responsible for those.
Thanks.
So that's part of the bid process.
Yes.
As there will be a bid on speed up,
and that'll be all inclusive of the asphalt,
the pavement markings, the labor.
And so they'll give us a little some item for our speed up.
Super, thanks.
One thing I feel like we're still a little bit gray on here
is the contract date.
So...
But all depends on what you guys, you know, approve this tonight,
and I can get moving on it.
And we'll start putting together a schedule
and whether it's two contracts, one contract,
it changes the schedule.
So this contract doesn't start until July 1,
or does it start now?
We have to bid this out.
And that's what we're going to do with the bidding process, which is about a month process.
We'll have to advertise, advertise twice, we'll have a pre-construction meeting.
We have a pretty good meeting and then we'll open bids, and that's usually about a month, three weeks to a month process. Once we do open bids, we'll have to come back to the city council for council to approve that, and depending on where that bid opening falls, we may have to wait a week to get on council meeting or two weeks depending on where it falls at because we have to meet the Thursday before the meeting deadline to get on that agenda. And so that's usually, you know, four to six weeks to get approval from council.
Council, from, you know, advertising day one to approval to move forward.
Once that will meet with the contractor, usually within that week of approval of the
Council, we usually, that, you know, sometimes we meet with the contractor, kind of go forward,
you know, get them the contract documents sign all that stuff.
And then we'll start talking about start date.
And then from that start date, they'll have, depending on, you know, what we do, whether
it's, you know, two contracts, one contract, you know, anywhere between, you know, 120 days
to, you know, 180 days to do the project. We'll set a deadline.
But this contract could start in this fiscal year.
Yes.
It'll start in this fiscal year, but we completed in the next fiscal year.
is there a reason this was a question asked in me last year? Is there a reason if they don't finish a street that they couldn't come back like in May of the following year and finish the rest of the street?
Our goal is to finish. There were a project where we haven't finished. We finished this year past the deadline by two weeks but we finished.
So, my goal is to, if this is the list that we're doing, this is the list we're doing.
You know, my goal isn't to get halfway through where to come back the next year or
do it.
It's to get this whole thing done.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
So, do we need a motion?
I'm sorry.
To follow up on what the mayor just said.
But so what I'm not getting this vibe that you don't believe that we still might not
have two contractors.
It's just a great investment that's what we have.
And then, you know, again, are we just going to go with the Einstein theory and continue
the fact that we're heading for all of them, that's for a different result.
Because here we are, people in this town have always been putting up with us every year
that we have construction going into when the students get back and one of the
requests from almost every person who lives in this town is not to have that
problem where the students come back and it sounds to me like that's not the
buyer here that's not something that you don't believe it's possible. I don't
believe it's possible to get this stuff before July 1. So what we do is we break it
I feel like how I have it on this thing is award streets or college area streets.
Okay.
We'll have two deadlines in our contract.
One is for the majority of the lawyers, the other ones for the student areas.
They'll have to have those student areas done by August 1st or whatever, you know, two
weeks use of music, say two weeks of course school starts.
They have those streets done.
If they don't, then there's a look at the image associated with that.
That means that when they start, once students leave, they can have those streets that are
working on them.
They have that time to be done.
If they're focused on that, once that's done, then they can move on to the outside streets.
The streets that are in the college areas of the city.
But I mean, we're looking at 12 miles of roadway that if you're on a highway,
You know, they can pay 12 miles pretty easily because they just put it off and they just lay out and they don't have to worry about driveways, they don't worry about traffic, they don't have to worry about anything, just they're like an asshole.
But in the city, you know, you have to set up traffic control, you have to maintain that traffic control, you have to look at, you know, a deal with, there's a lot of things you have to deal with when you're out there,
they're paving a city street versus, you know, in a highway and it takes time.
So your best case scenario on this?
Let's say everything wins with us.
And Mr. Break allows you to take, have two contractors.
What is, in your opinion, what's the best date we could shoot for you?
Well, I have to look at how we break it down.
What's the north one side?
Because we may have to say this contract is, you know,
So, a certain time this contract has a little more time because they may have more streets
or less streets.
On call, then we can get to college streets done by the time the college students get
back.
I'm not confident that we can get the remaining streets done by the time the college gets
to get back.
There may be construction to August with those streets.
September, October.
Not that far.
I don't think that far.
I mean, with this year, we did eight miles of streets and I'd say we could have cut a
But we could have cut a month and a half off of that contract and got a month and a half
sooner.
So we're adding four more miles to the contract and I still think we could have get this
done in the same amount of time.
So I think we finished, I'd never, never refurbished, yeah, so I think we could have cut a month
and a half off of that contract.
So, I still think, if there's two contracts, I think we can cut more time off, but we just
have to sit down and look that and schedule it, and I want you, so you'll give counsel
the expectations once you're in.
And as part of the big process, two, we're going to request when they're sending their bids to submit
a schedule, too.
We'll go through an exercise to see what we can, what we think is a reasonable time to
get this contract done and then we'll have the contract date and contract as that you know that date.
Thank you.
Okay.
So, do we need a motion to accept this proposed list?
You for proof.
Second.
Any further discussion?
Your questions or comments?
Hearing none?
I'll call the roll.
My name?
Yes.
50 Miracle Wreckies?
Yes.
Miss New Jersey?
Yes.
Jimmy Serene. Yes, J. Redman. Yes, Nancy Gamm. Yes, and that passes 7-0.
So, a motion to adjourn? So moved.
Second. Second.
It's out of the jacks.
Thank
you.
Yes.
The working town city, the city council committee of the whole meeting for Tuesday, February 28th.
The committee of the whole meetings, the working density council are intended to provide an opportunity for council to receive information, ask questions, and identify policy options in an informal setting.
No official action is taken at these meetings.
At this time, I will ask you to sell and sell it to your cell phones, and we'll begin
this meeting with presentations.
Our first presentation is the Botanical Garden presentation.
Bill Mills, executive director.
Actually, I'm Bill Johnson, the president of the board, and I'll introduce Bill in a second
here.
So thank you all for the opportunity to be here tonight.
I had the opportunity to address council a couple of months ago in regard to the execution
at that time of a new 50 year lease for the property and would just like to express
thanks on behalf of the board to council for approving that.
That's really going to put up great opportunities at the garden.
One thing I mentioned at the time that I was here previously was that we have over the
past year been engaged in a master planning process that we think is going to lead to
tremendous investment in new infrastructure, new facilities and new opportunities for activities
and events.
at the garden. So we wanted to take this opportunity to just bring you up to date on what those plans actually look like.
And also very excited to introduce to those of you who haven't met him. Bill Mills, who's executive director who's been with us now for 11 months.
At the beginning of this year, we were able to bring Bill on at the...
Actually full time, thanks to a grant we received from the Stanley Smith horticultural trust. So just another step in making the botanical garden a real institution and contributed to the community. So with that, I'll introduce Bill. Talk about the master one. Good evening. And thank you for this opportunity. And thanks for your support all this time. And we
we hope to have your support in the future.
I'm gonna just walk you through our master plan
and if you wanna go to the next.
The master plan for the Tannic Garden
was a collaborative effort with the community
and our board members and lots of other people,
we had the held surets to kind of figure out
where the garden needed to move in the future.
This is just a little diagram. That area there is our lower parking lot which currently
exists and these are the conceptual renderings for that area. You can move to the next slide please.
This is our entire campus. We currently enter here off of Tyrone Road and the proposed entrance
will shift over here and the little cottage which the garden bought with a couple acres
of land which is certainly there is probably going to be the home for an 8,000 square foot
welcome center which we are very lucky to have a foundation that's very interested in building
that for us. A large event lawn will be created down here in what is currently woods and we see a
strong connection between this event lawn say for a wedding or for a concert and for receptions to be
held up there afterwards and we look forward to this building being a serious stream of revenue
before the garden, so that we've become sustaining.
And this, for those of, you know, this is Imperial East
over this area here.
And we will be reflecting part of the basin.
So what used to be the Morgantown reservoir,
will once again become the body of water.
And we've been working with the Army Corps
of Engineers on that.
The next slide, please.
So this is up in Tyro mode.
We're going to move the entrance over parking for those if you've ever come to a big event
is a major issue which is why our request to the city is for working on more parking
on which I'll show you that where that's going to be going in.
It's not exactly sure whether the building is going to be here or over here
but we're working with architects on that process there.
Next slide, please.
So this is the event lawn, which will be right on the edge of the expanded reservoir.
And it will be a great place to hold concerts, theater performances, community events,
and weddings and receptions.
We're creating parking in a series of pods so that we don't look like Walmart.
And we want the place to be as wouldsy as possible.
So you can see there'll be, there's a pod there and there are other pods further on a slide please.
So this is the current lower parking lot. There'll be a series of terraces and walls.
And they may not look like this. This is kind of just more about use of space.
These walls might be curved and we're talking about what that will all look like.
But the main access of this garden will be a long view shed that will look down upon the water
And these lawns will also be able to be used for different kinds of events small concerts and things like that
And then there'll be a series of different kinds of theme gardens throughout that
And over here we're going to take water from the rise of war this is a it kind of an
an intermittent stream right now it's running strongly but it dries up in the summer time
but we want to keep that running partly to create white sound for the event one which can
help buffer the sound of the rifle range that we share the neighborhood with.
The next slide please.
This is our current home.
This is the welcome center that used to be the WVU solar house that was shipped to California
ship back to campus and then gifted to us which we put back together at great
banks and great cost but it has created a really a wonderful soul for this
garden. It's where we host all kinds of events, Thunder Hazard events, Classroom
events, summer camp for kids on and on. It's been a real in fact we had a meeting
right before we came here in that facility and next week we're going to be putting
down a beautiful hickory floors and it will be quite a wonderful place for small events.
We are looking at, we have an outdoor space and an indoor space that complement one
another.
So, eventually, we are going to have a number of venues, so on one given day, we might
have four different events happening in this garden.
Next slide please.
This is kind of an overview.
you, the welcome center would be right up here, the expanded basin, water will come in
from Jones Run into a new pool here, and this pool really acts like a reservoir.
So in the summertime, say in August and September when we are incredibly warm, that will be
able to pull water down and run up through a series of wetlands here so that this doesn't
become a stagnant pool.
That was a real concern, and we've done some studies on making sure that we do have enough
water and that we didn't need to use water from tibs room, which would be a much more
heroic event.
There'll be a new boardwalk here and there'll be boardwalks that go out through the
wetlands and a boardwalk here, which will be right at water level so children will be
able to touch the water and have kind of wonderful experiential times there.
The next slide please.
This is obviously a side view.
this is the the major event on this
is
the pavilion which will be really important architecturally
as and once again you can kind of see the just the gradual lay in the land we're trying to
save as many trees as possible and use the natural angles of the property and when you walk out
the woods. You can just see where that really plays nicely there. And this, as you can see here,
these are the gardens in the core of the garden, and you can see the series of terraces that will
take place. And once again, the long, long that will open up the access for a view of the pool.
The next slide, please.
These are more side views, just to show you the wetland uses and the different
expanded ponds down in this area here. The big pond will, when you drive down
into the garden, it will really become a very significant reflecting pool, so
when you're looking down from the back of the visitor center, you'll see the
sky reflecting in that night. You'll see lights in there as well.
The next slide
There are two. There's also a membership form. I think it brought you into the member of the bar, and you love that.
But there's also the list of classes so you know what kind of events we have happening in there.
And we have a new employee who will be starting.
So we'll be using the 60% education programs to master
plan is about a $15 million investment.
We have the funder for the law and for the building.
We're talking many millions of dollars that they're talking to us about contributing.
So if it's a major economic investment in the city of Washington and we find that we have
a tremendous number of people who are coming from out of state, sometimes surprisingly because
they're like, well, we're the garden. We say, well, they're conceptual at this point.
But we said, we have incredibly beautiful trails that you can come and see.
Obviously, one additional question for me is, is there a timeline on this? It's a very attractive
presentation. Thank you. There is a time. I'm hoping this is reals
in the sky, but I'm hoping in two years we might think about breaking ground for the
visitor center.
The parking, the expansion of the parking is going to start probably this summer.
We are renovating the upper parking lot to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
We're expanding the gardens there.
We have a couple that gave us a very significant amount of money to put a nice garden next to
the welcome centers will be actually do have some some landscape there too.
So I would say overall it's a ten-year project because we have we have to go out and seek
where obviously these findings and we're looking at it not as a Morgan town centric.
They were looking at it as the state but kind of part of it.
They're ambitious.
It is.
That's what we're selling.
Part of why I think this is important is if you speak with the Convention Visitors Bureau
So they talk about all of the sites that are in Preston County, which I love, and it's very nice that we have them.
But I think it's very important that we look at sites near Morgantown.
We have a lot of visitors and it's nice if there are things for them to do before and
after they come here for other events, it helps with people staying overnight in hotels.
It helps with residents' quality of life, if they can come there and come to some of the activities.
There are also putting grass turf on the event lawn so that will be in a nicer shape and able to be used now.
Correct.
Is that within the next year or something?
The smaller the two event lawns we have to have complete by fall.
So it's becoming more operational with more things that are available now to then be able to head into this plan.
And so this is not kind of, from me looking at it as coming to some of the events into the board meetings,
I can see that they're doing the steps to get there, which is wonderful.
When you see a presentation and then you see that it's being operationalized, it's very, very important.
And we were talking beforehand about this multiplier of, you know, they have the city property,
and then they're working so hard at finding their own funding to improve it.
So, it's a wonderful model for us if we have other opportunities like this to have a
nonprofit that works so hard at putting it together.
I just wanted to say thank you so much, I always believe that the Botanic Garden was just
a magical place and so many people, including my own family, that's the first place you want
to go when they come to town.
We like that.
And even I was just thinking our when we did our city managers search our
consultant that was one of the first places she went to coax. I thought that
was was really interesting. So thank you for your vision for the future.
You're welcome. And I just wanted to say last year when we had our fundraiser which
is a thick down dinner for 240 people in that environment was pretty special
thing. So when you see that advertised for this coming year you should come
and I'm enjoying the rockest crowd.
Thank you, have a good evening.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Our next presentation is Dr. Smith,
one county health department,
clean interior data updates.
Heaving, thank you for having me.
And I want to say that with health department,
certainly appreciate the continued financial support
that you'll have given us through the years.
I have the one public service announcement to make.
Influenza is here in the county,
coming pretty hard in a lot of places.
So it's still not too late to get a flu shot.
CDC recommends that you can get one
all the way up through flu seasons.
So if you have it, give us a call, get you hooked up.
My predecessors informed me that the clean-endor regulation
that we adopted for the county,
we live really stole from the city and so the foundation should be something
that you all are quite familiar with. I have, I didn't bring enough for everybody
but if you want to go to our website which is www.monmo and chd for
county health department.org you can go to environmental and download one of
This is the sign copy that I would point out to you that on the very back page of that
one, it started in 1992, so this February marked the 25th year, and so Michael, congratulations
to Morty Town for having the foresight and the ability to move forward with that.
West Virginia, unfortunately, as our Governor points out, we are 50th and so many categories.
And smoking is one of them.
The rest of the nation continues to decrease its smoky rates, West Virginia goes up.
we have about 26
So, we looked at this clean indoor air regulation this year, and a couple of things had come up. When it was first started, as mentioned, it was lifted and put into a document. And then it was revisited.
I'm from 92 to 99 in the 99 to 2012 and at that last revision the basically there was
no smoking indoors but a couple of exceptions were noted and that was because the members
of the Board of Health did not want to disrupt any existing businesses and so there were
So at that time, hook a lounge and some cigar bars in the bingo hall, places where smoking
was allowed.
Our environmental services folks who visit each and every public building in the county
say that the bingo is, you know, there's really not a lot of smoking and then you had to have
a hundred cards.
There were no existing cigar bars because in order to have that you couldn't serve
food. Sir food you couldn't smoke, so that sort of that all. And the existing hook-a-bar
in Oregon Town Club. So there was no reason to have those exceptions open. The other
thing that has occurred since the last draft in 2012 is now the creation of vaping or
the electronic cigarette. And we see that the most growing population of that are hospital
kids and there's a body of evidence that's growing that inhaling the metallic fragments
and all the chemicals in that certainly not going to be good for you as well.
So we took the opportunity to add some language that was not in here before about the vaping
type of thing.
So we enclosed the electronic cigarette parts in there with a little bit of language about
how that the FDA has thought so seriously about that they now control all of the electronic
cigarettes.
We struck the language of the cigar bar and the hooker bar and then added a little bit
of additional language about electronic cigarettes because you know anything we're saying, we're
saying several times, and then finally the bingo operations were removed.
So, as it stands, our rules and regulations make us post anything that we discuss at the
Board of Health has to go before the, be posted in the courthouse for 30 days for comment.
I'm pleased to announce that despite previous years where here it was pretty raucous at
times during that, we only had two comments that were made on the Clean Endor air regulations
and they were both very positive in support.
So it ended its posting at the county
was voted on and took effect February 1st.
Am I a good calling here for the newspaper,
got one of the hovel presses last time
and announced it in the newspaper.
So we are open for questions.
Any questions about them?
I'm happy to entertain.
Are there any questions?
And I'll pass this around that has the changes in there.
Some are struck out and some are just added, but they're all yellow now.
So just to be clear, no vaping and indoors?
Correct.
Yeah, if it's indoors, and it's a public, I should say, you certainly can do what you want
to do when you're hungry, perhaps you're hungry.
My question follows that line so I just don't remember and it's not in my package.
I was put in the necessary terrain we had to add in the clauses to our ordinance to reflect this.
This is now different to our existing ordinance.
We could certainly bring back the ordinance to update our code.
So kind of what you're asking here is for us to possibly bring back our ordinance and
that data code to match the county code.
I would not be so bold.
But I am.
It's not in the middle of it.
Okay.
So what would he like?
I think what you would like is for us to ask the city attorney, thinking, to bring back
ordinance and adjusted to match. I think it would be uniform. Well, thank you very much
for taking the time to do the chance to talk to you the other day and I just really appreciate
your work on behalf of our city and their county. Councillor Sillink. So apparently turn
about a spare play if you have matched us for now. You can take my dress. You can take my dress.
That's wonderful, and then will there be some sort of public education component?
Something to let people know that because I have seen people inside venues here, such
as our met theater they for, I mean, you definitely see that, and I think sometimes people
just don't know that that's equivalent to smoking, and now we're making it explicit.
So it would be nice in a friendly way to coach people that, number one, there's a reason that it's dangerous, and then number two, that it's not allowed.
Your points are spot on.
We don't, unfortunately, in the health department under existing regulations have any way of enforcing anything.
Our environmental folks will go out at night to bars where people will still, you know.
smoke and try to, you know, enlighten folks.
It's been in the newspaper, it's been posted.
It's an uphill battle to try and get people not to,
but the education will continue.
So it might be nice to see if there's some sort of
partnership that could be made, say, with the University
or some other entity to make posters or, I know,
posters are old fashioned, but to make posters or to put something online or to make short
public announcements, something that would have a little creativity to it that could
bolster whatever efforts the health department would normally.
I don't know how we could make those contacts, but we could maybe help with that.
I'd be happy to entertain any of those thoughts.
We work pretty closely with the School of Public Health.
Perfect.
Yeah.
They're often looking for internships and projects, so maybe we could have that for a semester
too.
Actually, what we find is fairly enticing to those leadership roles and to their students
are the little YouTube videos, and we've been housing those on our website and we even
have a phone app in the alley.
So we have a public information officer that you could send things to so we could also put them up on the city website
Absolutely
Oh, I'm sorry
Thanks for being here, Dr. Smith
Always a pleasure to work with you. I work with you for a long time at the hospital and nice to see you again
I think this body is ready and willing to support what you got here and we'll make the changes
Thanks.
There you go.
Thank you again for your presentation.
All right.
Appreciate it.
Good night.
Thank you.
No, I'm OK.
Thank you.
All right.
Next, we have a presentation from Clear Fibre.
A proposed Fibre Internet service.
You're going to have to move again.
He's going to just have a project manager.
He's going to pass these around.
Oh, OK.
He's just going to have to have it a PowerPoint.
Basically, this printout.
Yeah, this gives me a little bit of a little bit of the weather as well, but I originally
started to come here and talk with the city engineer, Damian, about the things too in
that meeting, just about building fiber optics in Morgantown.
And fiber optics is your best kind of internet connection areas.
And so as everyone, as you can see, it all passed out, we're going to go through all this.
but our model is building by demand and what that means is that we don't just build
everywhere and expect people to come. We actually building and construct our
internet service to areas where people want the most and I'll highlight those
also in this presentation as well but as you guys know probably have currently
there's really only two main service providers for residential which is where our
He is in Morgantown. One is Comcast, or it's been any of the other is Frontier.
You know, in a lot of areas, Frontier is somewhat slower in the other areas.
Spinnie does have the speed, but does have some price points.
There are sometimes higher. And you know, what we're trying to do here is bring both the speed
and not in reliability, but also the cost.
and just flip into the second page of this, kind of gives a little bit of an overview about the company,
and I myself moved here, I have a baby on the way and the wife that lives here as well,
and we really wanted to start something in, work in town, and we actually have started,
not in more of a time, we've started in Star City, constructing underground biorethropics.
So this whole proposal you'll see here today is for us to get an agreement together and
With the city market down to the permits to do underground fully 100% underground fiber optics
So we won't be adding new poles or attaching to new poles or anything like that. I mean, there's a big reason for it
Also on the slide too, you'll see that you know the people that we have on board such as project manager
Has been doing this a very long time for them water lines sewer lines
We have people in the team that work for notable companies such as Google Fiber, you've
never heard of that company.
And everyone has 100% here local.
So there's not like outsourced anything.
But for the next page, well, why is Fiber so important?
If you don't know if Fiber is the best kind of connection you can get, there's another
better kind of connection right now.
The other companies are either using old phone lines or they have their coax cable system,
which has been around for years as well.
So it just doesn't quite have the throughput and the capacity
that a fiber connection can have.
And so, as it says here, you can download an HD movie
in seven seconds.
You can turn on Netflix within a second pops up.
I mean, these are things that people want in the area,
and you'll see here at the bottom of the slide
that there's over 1,000 customers in Washington alone
that have already signed up for our service.
And they're just, I would say, patiently waiting.
that might not be the correct card, but they are eagerly waiting for us to get a permit
together and agreement together with the City of Mortgantown to start this construction.
And you'll see, like I said, we've already started this in Star City and are building all
underground platforms to the home, many are loving it currently as well.
The construction part, which is probably the biggest part and most questions that arise
is what does that consist of? Just like any other utility company, we would go along the right
of ways of the city streets, whether that's 25% or 15% or wherever that consist of, and we would
call on the locates, take one one before you dig, you know, dominion, water companies, everyone else
comes, they mark their lines, and we then navigate around those lines, not hitting them. Now that could
be anywhere from, as it mentions, two feet to seven feet in the ground. Obviously, we don't
want to hit a line and they don't want to hit a line, so it's very important that we get those
low-pays. And by the way, you have to do it anyway, as you probably know. Being that everything is
underground, that means there's not an aesthetic issue in the area where we put up another telephone
pole, such as like South Park and Whitburn, which we would be starting in the Morgantown area,
is that there's already a bunch of polls and you want to keep that history there.
So putting everything on the ground is kind of, but in my opinion, a way to go.
And the guy has a little picture there too.
You can kind of see the crew working.
And they've had that a sidewalk.
When he broken up, there were several sidewalks.
We would obviously our expense placed that sidewalk and decode to city code.
We don't tend to have to do that a lot, but there are times we have to locate services.
You'll see handholds of pedestals, we've got a scene around town, we'll have one in
your yard, the basic premise is that when we run the lines on the ground, we have to bring
them up to a pedestal as you see our handhold, and then from there, that's how we service
the customers.
So we'll bear in line, similar to Out Dominion with a gas company or our company with our underground
to their house, and that's how we service the internet to them.
you'll see kind of a map here of the South Park and First Ward areas. It's
kind of hard to see on here and we can get bigger pictures of images of leaf
name because as well. Because the orange line proposing where we want to go. Same
thing with the next one where it's proposed five routes for Woodburn and then
Suncrest as well. Like I mentioned we're done by demand so the South Park
Woodburn and the two main areas first that we could fill the two and that'll take us several weeks about if
he wants to deliver that and then we'd be working at places like Sun Press to you know we're still trying to qualify for that
And then it's moving out from there
The last thing I touched on
But a little bit was firemen to the home itself. So, from those pedestals that you saw, we would
pour, or, this is a vibrating plow, so it doesn't disrupt the yard, but we would go this
from, for some of your signs up for our service, we would then use one of these methods to
get to their house. In that way, it's truly 100% underground for them as well. And there's
a lot of benefits to that from weather and other things, but most of the people just want
the internet would rely on the connection to release another option.
You know what kind of what that pretty quickly, but I've never did any questions with some
of my hands.
Thank you so much.
I was watching your projects actually take place and start city the other day.
And so that made me think of all these questions.
So, if I live in the Suncrest, they would, if one person on my road wanted it, they'd
really kind of have to put the cable all along the road for people to access it.
Right.
So, what we would do is similar to other utility companies where they have theirs already
in the ground.
We would just do it on the city right away.
So usually it's like if we like it serves a 20-foot from center, so we would stay within 20
foot from the center of the road and we bury our underground.
Usually we try to put our pedestals or hand holes which fit flush with the ground by
a tough existing telephone pole, because that way is not like a sore thumb type of
mythology.
You hit my next question, yeah, and with that question, let's suppose the telephone pole
is between two properties which they frequently are here in the person who gets
the pedestal is the one with the service. I assume in terms of aesthetics. So
in other words there could be the person who has the pedestal. I don't know if
I'm explaining this right. What I saw in Star City is they're you're digging all
along. And then I did not see the pedestal put in. But I could say if I had the telephone
pole, let's say, and I didn't want the service, I assume that the person next to me, they
would get the pedestal. Yeah, I mean, we're going to, I mean, our
goiers are not to make anyone angry or do anything or go as seriously as to get it to people
that want it. Just like anything, I guess it's sitting right
by the way, is there are times where there's pedestals or even telephone poles right now?
Yeah, they're massive.
Yeah, yeah.
But we're going to do, we would do everything in our power.
And it's not, you know, it's not an overnight process.
It's not an overnight process.
We only do roughly 500 feet a day.
So, I mean, Woodburn and South Park alone is like 80,000 feet of fire.
If you do all the side streets.
So, you know, you're talking several months of doing this.
But we're going to go to the areas where they want it first.
And the nice thing about the, if there is sidewalks is that our handles are flush,
as you probably see all the time.
So that's kind of an easy way to get around that, but the bit that we do have to do that,
we're going to, I mean, we'll ask to see, like we're going to put a closer to the person
who wants a service, if that helps answer your question.
Yes. And then, so what would happen is, if we voted on this, you could see us,
then the residents would have three choices.
Oh, does the PSC allow for three choices on the data system?
So the attorney, I know that in the case of taxi services
and so forth, we had to go through the state PSC.
These types of services won't require the same
certificate of convenience and necessity.
We have a few different, non-exclusive,
excuse me, franchise agreements with telecom providers.
Thank you.
I just have two questions. I missed your name.
Oh, my name is Chad. I'm sorry.
Chad.
And this is Jesse.
Chad, it's your last name.
Oh, it's a huge announcement.
Okay.
Thank you.
Well, I think this is an exciting endeavor.
Is this something that you would do in our downtown also?
Yes, we would pull the connection.
So we would start over on Wagner Street
and for South Park and Woodburn and we do have plans as long as it qualifies
to like I said the as long as enough people sign up in the downtown zone
what we call it that we would come down down the challenge of the downtown is
the obviously a lot more and more but it's something we can navigate for
sure the qualifies will definitely do it we follow the material everything's
ready. It's kind of just this next step. And I had there is agreement. I don't know.
I think we have. You got it. Okay. So it's and that proposal. I mean, it's like any franchise agreement,
there's usually two normal ways of doing it. One is doing it by a percentage of revenue or sales,
a profit. And then the other one being this proposal one is her foot. So we on every quarter,
every month, every year, you know, they would beam, we would pay a per foot. And there it says
five cents per foot. Where do you guys obviously beam is acceptable? And so it's kind of a way
to give back to City of Morgan Town and to you for us having these lines of our ground. We also
have in there a small retainer for any attorney fees or anything that you might have to draft or
We're going to, you know, the people
working on what this is and we're willing to pay for it.
I know just one of the connections looks like goes across the
South High Street Bridge. Yeah, there's,
um, yeah, so that would be the,
that's what I was talking about. We need to go to downtown.
That would be the last.
Okay, that would be the last.
That would be the last.
And I guess my question I guess condo would be run on the side or underneath the bridge,
but however I'm not saying it's the bridge is not ours, right?
I don't know. I mean, in general, the State Route City still has a right-of-way.
That may not be the same case with some extreme British.
Okay. I don't know that. Yeah. Just that was the one connection that I looked and I said,
are we going to need to include other people?
Yeah, so all these. And I've checked with the right-of-the-state right-of-the-party
It's obviously like the, you'll know you probably can't tell in here, but your South
High Street, it doesn't come down South High Street, so for that part, we're going to do that
probably much later on, that'd be the Department of Highways route, and so they're required
to permit.
So all the routes that are listed here are within your guys' city of Morgan Towns, jurisdiction.
Thank you very much.
Clarification.
Constellin.
So, how does this, what does this connect?
Act 2, what's the provider that brings fiber here?
So we, great question.
So we buy a wholesale from some work providers, I'm not sure
by any of the a's of them I'll have to say, but one of them is local.
So there are brokers that are.
Yeah, there's like, and then you buy that bandwidth.
And you can resize, I don't know if resize is a correct word,
but you wholesale it from the, and then.
But you would clarify what would bill the customer install the customer service
So but this will all be this will be a network. This will be a network. Yeah
And so instead of those cables on telephone poles are going to be five-room. I think I
Think that's great under the ground
One of the dimensions
the hand holes hand holes and pedestals
about how large are those? So there are rains, the pedestals, about two and a half feet tall.
Yeah, they just got this high.
That's the green pedestals.
And they had those rains from...
Two and a half, one and a half, two and a half, two and a half, two and a half, two and a half.
But they're set in the ground?
Yes, they're completely set flush with the ground.
So blend this on, treat upwards, and it's a nice, and even if it was said, the path is not
wrong.
You know, I don't have a trip in the answer or a follow-up answer.
Those sound more desirable than the pedestals.
Do you have to do pedestals?
We do not.
No.
We can do all.
Actually, we have a surplus of these other handholds.
Oh.
Thank you so much.
Wow.
Maybe we could take advantage of that.
The pedestals are sort of a white beigey color.
Other green.
Well they're green.
This one might be faded a little bit, but the other actually green.
Okay, I was wondering if they could be green.
Yeah.
Because then they might, or even like a green brown or something.
But yeah, so that would be better than a whiteish color.
Yeah.
Just for the landscape a little.
Not until they get.
Yeah, they're the other green they get.
Good.
We have a lot of church apartments that are needed in ladies who are living here.
There are some inconsistencies, some typos minor, but some inconsistencies where you
were asking either for 15 or 10 years, bracketed 10 years, but the word 15 in front of it.
I was definitely a draft of what are you requesting ten years ten years of
being preferable ten years all right and then I have a rather
ninety question having put this into the ground and saying bypassing five
homes that didn't want it to the one home that did and then sometime in the
future, someone buys a house under those five. How do you grow about getting that to them?
Do you have to re-bore? Do you have to go out?
Yeah, it's a great question. So every time we set up what we call a splice point or a
handhold or a pedestal, they're all home runs to the home. And what that means is we run a
small little cable to flat from that box or from that handhold to the home in your situation.
Like you said, if someone buys a home or went on, what's the sign of six months or
half?
We would just have to run a line from our box to them.
Now, a lot of times what that can, what that consists of is running it through our conduit
that we put in.
It's that orange conduit that you might have seen inside the rows and whatnot.
And so, let's say it's a four-hundred-foot block, and they're smack dab and middle, we have
two pedestals on each side or handles.
We would just pick one of those pedestals, run it down our farm to their house,
you know, dead center, their house, or to the right or left of their house and then run it to their house
that way. So we would come out of our farm to it. But you have to tie in the original,
you have to tie in the original farm, so we don't have to disrupt, disrupt it again.
Okay. And I saw from your sign sometime back that you are recruiting, you don't have it currently
installed, but you are advertising in, for example, the South Park area.
Yeah, so a little bit about how we did the on the by-demand is that we use a
software that we have and we call it surveys. Basically we said we did a bunch
of marketing to say okay hey people at Moria Town who wants this internet? Do you
want it at all? And we got an unbelievable amount of people that came in and they
took the surveys and that allows us to gauge like for example woodburn being
a really strong area, a South Park being a really strong area. And so they
actually still out the surveys and it now allows us to take it to like the area of government.
Star City, you know, be in the first one. So we went there first and we got the permits
for them and that's why they got it first. But there's been a lot more people after
that that sign up in more detail.
And to continue on in case your physical location, you are right. So we're right now we have
We have an office there in the right on the high street in the system bank building.
And with all of our stuff, we have multiple trucks and crew.
And really right now, everyone's hands on deck, building the Fiber and Star City.
We will be contracting out a lot of this in the Morning Town area, with a very reputable company.
A few repal corporation, and we'll be doing a lot of work ourselves.
that we'll be getting a big, we're looking for office space once we get the agreement in place.
This is really where we're wanting to be here, more attempt.
So once we actually get established agreement, once you get a physical retail location
and people could come in and test the internet, you know, things like that, pay their bill.
And all of us that didn't mention here, all of our stuff is free installation in their contract.
So we don't, you know, lock in the contract, you know, charge the installation and we don't
like the service and the storage of the cancel.
But being at a gig of its speed, it's like 20 times faster than what is currently in
the area.
So that's the red.
You just hit on something I wanted to ask you about being, I'm just trying to look at
this from a business standpoint and I know from a technological standpoint, I'm limited
it in my knowledge. Yes, I see free installation where your largest competitors charging a hundred
dollars. I see ten times the speed of basically half the price and no contract. I don't understand
how are you able to, and this is again, I'm not questioning you. I'm just like how are
you able to deliver? How are you able to do this and why is Comcast not running down this?
That's a great question.
I actually get asked this a bit.
So, the first thing is that just from a business standpoint,
you know, I can't obviously don't know for sure,
because I'm, you know, don't operate Comcast or just gonna,
but they already got the original infrastructure
in place with no competition.
There's no real reason for them to upgrade.
That would be one initial thought.
The second thought would be that, you know,
it takes a lot, it does take a lot.
I mean, they obviously have a lot of money.
Thank you.
Just be looking at the public stocks, but I've always sensed that they're not really, they're
made home bases really in Pittsburgh and more in town done seem to be a real big thing for
them. Once again, I'm not trying to step on this, but just what it seems like. And, you
know, here's the thing, we're not going to take, we're not going to get every single customer
in order. I want to, I just want the customers to go in our service. We want a different, something
different something faster. They've been needed at cost savings at their home, so they probably
could do it if they really wanted to. I don't know if they would ever do that in the future.
And how we're able to do it so competitively is just the nature of fiber optics is that you can
a lot of times in a cable network or other networks is that you have your different nodes and
when you split off, you know, at times it bogs down.
I know there's times when all the students are on it,
you kind of bogs down with ours.
We can use the same lines, it doesn't do that.
Because it's fiber optic, so that allows us to buy
at our head end, which you run up to.
You know, you buy from multiple providers and resell that.
You know, I'm on a whole cell level,
is that we buy it, you know, a very, very cheap,
and then we can distribute that out to all these people
without it, it'll be integrated along the way.
So it's just a, I guess it's the business, it just makes sense, which is all paper, I guess
it comes out too.
I don't know if I helped answer your question.
Well, I did, it just, it looks too good to be true.
Right, yeah, it's not the case, but yeah.
From a customer, I mean, when I just look at this and I know what I'm writing my checks
to Comcast for now, I just, I don't know, I'm, well, you certainly
and trade, I can tell you that.
Usually the second question that comes up is,
is there any price hikes?
Are you going to give me a promotional price?
So I mean, our theory now is we're
going to keep this unless inflation goes way high.
You know, we're going to go with inflation.
So two to three, four years down the road.
As long as, you know, I think it's the same.
We're still planning on doing 49.95.
Now, you're a, this is obviously internet service.
We're talking about that.
Now, we can also do phone as well, both services.
OK, that was my next question.
And then TV service, we were partnered with Direct TV.
It's not something that has been a real great demand is having put a TV down our service.
It also requires a lot of different regulations and a million different things.
But the answer to that is that if someone wants TV service,
then you obviously have the option to go directly with Comcast or Dish or Director,
or we can install Direct TV on their behalf.
or they can do 80% of our customers are doing
using a slaying place, they should view
a group who would, you know,
the million different things.
Say, they want a bunch of money.
Say they want a bunch of money.
That's probably what,
89% of our customers do.
So, what's, I'm sorry.
I was gonna say we got one here.
We do.
So, is this the way to the future?
No, five optics, the way all this is gonna go and
Yeah, I was just wondering now you've started in the star city has there been like any kind of maintenance issues that you've encountered.
So that's the, originally I met with the city attorney and the city engineer and our
original proposal was to put telephone poles.
And so telephone poles is a lot easier because you can just put a man, you can hang it and
we try to go on the existing telephone poles that are there and we've not had any luck
doing that as well and so we thought well why not just let's do it right the first time
Unless a backhoe or something hits our line and they're digging, you know, whether it
doesn't really affect it, it's got to be some pretty catastrophic that.
And so when we decide that we're going underground, we'll take the extra time to do it, but also
it looks better and it's going to be more reliable.
The thing that's not on here is that we don't obviously, you know, the business wants it, we
also do it for businesses.
Our business can really use a thousand megs of internet, gigabitternet, more than anyone
resolution does, but our focus right now is residential. Of course, we would definitely
sign up for business. But his a little bit more money is not good. Thank you. Well,
I have learned a hot seat. The first one, I mean, extracts just a little bit of information
for my own purposes. Cost per foot, putting things underground. What's that? You've got to have
some sort of estimate as to what that costs. Our cost per foot. Construction costs per foot.
It costs us, and we're from $5 to $10 a month.
Okay, that's good information.
Thank you.
I'll use that in some other circumstance.
Now, and I don't mean to make you uncomfortable,
but you've told us about your business,
and you've told us about your proposal.
Now, tell me about, you were background,
why we should believe what you're telling you.
Are you telling us?
Yeah, so I've been doing this for 11 years.
years, I'll just even know the point, the point plus years, we have people on our team
that have been doing it even longer, so really surround myself with it.
Well, no, no, when you tell me you've been doing it, how have you been doing it?
This is the interview.
I started 11 years ago myself, actually 12 years ago this year, just a few months from
now. And I started just basically doing voice services. It's kind of where I started and
when I say voice, I mean, pho service. It sounds like my thing was pho service. And I
grew, I grew my, I helped grow a company. And they sold it. And we revenue about 3.2 million,
a bit about billion months a month in voice service. And what that all means is that I really
used that to jumpstart into the fiber world, into the internet world, and I really did a lot
of networking, meaning behind the same stuff, not so much like running the lines underground,
and physically doing the work. We always contracted that out a lot. And so, when I got to
Morgantown in January of last year, 2016, I really wanted to, I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to,
I knew I really wanted to make a difference here at Morgan Town, but also create a lively
business for my own.
What needs you pick, Morgan Town?
Well, one being my wife lives here for several years, and so I chose Morgan Town, moved
here for that.
So we got married, and I really liked the area I saw that.
And as any entrepreneur probably would say, I saw the opportunity, and still see the opportunity.
And so with some lines of credit that I have and some assignment investor, it was obviously
a cost of good amount of money to do the math and I'm able to provide the service.
So everything has been bought, it's all in warehouse and right now, and so we're just now
really needing, I guess, this permit or anything to put together.
Maybe jump the gun on that a little bit, but there's definitely to the man who's there.
The people we have working for us will follow every step to the code, and if that helps,
answer some of your questions.
Some of them.
And I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable, and certainly, I just want to make sure that
what we're dealing with is reputable and qualified.
I understand.
Any additional questions? Councilor Gas?
Well, that brings up a point I was reading over the contract. And one of the concerns
would be, by the way, thank you very much for choosing work in town. I think it'd be
nice to try an innovative thing. But of course, we always have that caution, parental caution
of our turf or something. But my concerns would be related to bonding and programming.
In other words, one of the things we found with construction concerns is that often I
create a little more damage than plan. And so one of the things we've been a little weak
on is bonding groups to make sure that they can fix whatever's hurt or broken. And so
So I couldn't quite follow that in the contract,
but I'm not the attorney.
And so can you address that a little bit?
Yeah, I'm personal foremost.
Our insurance policy with the city of Morgan Tanner,
however you want to put it with,
they would be an additional insurer of it,
in case something like catastrophic align with it,
something like that.
That also goes for the other utility companies
that are there.
So that's all of the insurance as far as the agreement goes,
you know, as you said, like there's some typos and things.
It is just a raw draft of just some language put together.
David just asked me to kind of drop it off, and you guys might have one already, that
matter.
But, you know, we can strictly stay in that contract to things like, you know, there's
a repair that needs done, you need to outline what that is, what the cure time period is for
that.
I'll be totally, we'll be totally for that.
that whatever it might be, broken concrete sidewalks
lad, you know, yeah, X amount of money to secure it,
road repair.
Gaslight and break.
Yeah.
I'm not trying to be weird, but I feel like I'm the mother
of my lawn, you know.
No problem.
And side note, you know, Dominion and Star City, their policy
is they, you know, obviously we call and get the
locates from love and like that, they actually stay on
site while we dig.
So the whole time they're, they have a truck sit in there and so and that's what made me ask about like
Gas line breakers. Yeah, yeah, and then they obviously would be sure
You know, the instruments we use are very precise
That's the reason because it's you know, it can be dangerous being a gas line house
Good will that answers that question?
well
except for attorney review but then also one of the issues that's been with
concast lately and I'm not knowledgeable enough about this streaming and
computers and that is knowledgeable as the mayor's family is about Roku and all
that jazz but so I'm assuming there'll be some education that will come along
or possibility of education that will come along with the people who don't
and understand that stuff, or how would that all work?
Correct, yeah.
So we go a little bit beyond what everyone else does.
We install the service.
We get them hooked up, meeting them.
We install our motor router.
And then we get the next step we usually do
is we'll connect with their computer,
their tablet, their iPad, their TV.
We typically, you know, spend a little bit of an extra time
than when everyone else would connect with them
and kind of showing them.
So, it's not just like another customer number, it really does sign up especially at the beginning and going forward is really means a lot to us.
You don't have 60,000 customers and we'll have what we sign up in the area.
So you will be able to educate people and that's great.
And then along that line, one of the issues that we're having with Comcast, and this is very timely because of it, is there a drop there putting us in the Pittsburgh.
I'm just looking for that word and so how do we work streaming on the West Virginia
stations?
Is there an option to stream West Virginia news in West Virginia?
So ours, just thinking about us, it's just a pipe to the internet, so since we're not
doing TV directly, when we're using direct TV, it'll be kind of up to their programming,
but as far as-
I hope to direct TV.
It's a direct TV program and also puts us in the Pittsburgh viewing area, which is
a big issue.
I didn't know if there was a way to resolve this issue for us.
I mean, just off the top of my head, there is a way to, you know, stream it to a rope, your
device, and do locals, we'd have to get in touch with local stations, and do that.
It's something that could be done.
Because that's a solution that we're looking for right now, in fact, in fact, it's on the
agenda.
I believe.
Yes.
that's on the agenda today, you may see.
So that would be an enticement.
It would be great.
I know it could be done, because I've
worked with teams that have done it before,
and they've done TV over fiber.
It just wasn't original business plan,
but something like that wouldn't take much more
to do, like police service.
Because as you may see, I don't know.
I've read it somewhere in my packet,
But when there's an issue here with customers wanting to drop a Comcast now, so you're
kind of hitting the market if this was the right thing, which I'm not sure, at the
right time, if you could take care of that glitch that they can't seem to handle, just
a minute.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
I noticed, I mean, you're seeking a franchise agreement with us essentially is what we're
talking about.
But I see that you already have what about 500 customers in Morgantown already or sign-ups, I guess, right?
Yeah, so this graph right here that shows the thousand nineteen customers.
Yeah.
These are all surveys.
These are all people that have signed up and said, I want the service once you come to my street.
I see.
Okay.
I understand.
Just making sure.
So you have not delivered any service?
No.
Yeah, because I basically going down the channels would be the franchise agreement from getting the permit for right away.
Thank you.
Just one last question, let you go.
Assuming you get to franchise, when do you anticipate construction, distribution?
Theoretically, you sign it tomorrow, we'd start the next day.
We're basically got everyone ready, queued up. We got all the signups ready too. So I mean that's that's the driving force is from a pure business standpoint. We got to make money. So we got that, but from an economic standpoint and everything else, you know, it makes sense as well. So we can start as soon as possible. Okay. Got insurance and everything ready.
Additional questions? No? Yes. Thank you very much. Enjoy your presentation. If I just may, what's the, is there like a timeline?
Let's begin it back because I get calls early every day.
I don't have to push it.
We'll have a discussion on this and it may be moved to the agenda for our next meeting.
I would be the first opportunity for consideration.
Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Well, it's clear about presentations.
We're going to open the public portion.
If you wish to speak during the public question, please come to the microphone, state your name,
and address for the record and minute your comments to four minutes.
The declarative public question is open.
Is there anyone wishing to speak?
No
one wishing to speak during the public question.
Now, saying that, I declare the public question closed.
Item for discussion.
First on our list is the botanical garden.
I mean, is there anything that we need to discuss
and we feel there's no, you know, behind the presentation?
I'm sorry.
I have a minor matter.
We should be referring to it as a botanic garden, I believe.
You're right. Don't say.
No, it's written in here, and I made the mistake myself
because it just sort of flows off that way,
but just for accuracy, it should just be botanic garden.
All right next on the list for the discussion is the mine county health department presentation
cleaned into our air updates is that something that we want to move to the agenda for consideration
to update our current ordinance and move it to the end.
Do I have consensus on that?
So then we should move that to some future agenda.
As soon as it could be made ready.
Very good. Thank you.
The next is the clear fiber and the proposed fiber internet service.
Let's counsel's pleasure,
counsel Gents.
Prior to moving it to the agenda, I was hoping the City Manager would evaluate this
and the course of the conversation about the Comcast issue, he seemed to have some knowledge
about these kinds of franchise agreements and I would like for him and the City Attorney
just sort of for elimination and correct me if I'm wrong, but we're in the Pittsburgh market
because the federal government put us there. So we can't change that. But we can't change
us, and the only thing we can ask for is we can request a particular service we provided
to us and my understanding is that we can't demand that. So where I was around it he's
indicated that you can't stream this information. Yes, but I really don't think that's an
issue in terms of this particular franchise request.
Just lack knowledge here, isn't the city, can I ask the city manager to comment?
Certainly, so again, we're talking, providing a franchise for internet service net television.
So it's a different issue.
What's been indicated, at least for the local news portion, you can go to the particular television
station, you can see the local programming only.
So that is a means of obtaining that information.
But as far as leveraging a solution, it's an entirely different topic.
So since we are talking about internet and that television.
But nevertheless, it's work expeditiously with the city attorney and
bring up franchise agreement and a state of the time frame.
But depending on which your interests we will move it along as quickly as we can.
So,
and I don't mean to stop discussion, but that is an item that will come to you again.
A little further down. So, is there any additional discussion?
No, I wasn't meaning to compare it to the Comcast thing. I just thought he'd know something that I don't know.
Oh,
because of sling.
Do we have four franchise agreement? Do we have templates or protocol, for instance,
If there does need to be a repair, or that type of thing so that we're not just sort of leaving things open.
Because I know we have a lot of difficulty, for instance, with just changing light bulbs and
getting the power company to work with us on changing light bulbs.
So I think it would be smart to look at whatever the appropriate means are to make sure that
But if similar to what the discussion was, that if there are repairs to be made, that
they'd be made timely and that we make use of their insurance or whatever the appropriate
method is as a franchise agreement, which you all would probably know better than many
of us.
But if we could just be sure that we're covering ourselves that way, it sounds great.
We do, and we have some existing franchise agreements for this type of service.
there are also, in substance and good provisions in the proposed agreement, I wouldn't anticipate
any difficulties working through coordinating what needs to be done from that proposed
agreement to what we need to do together in place. There are some notification requirements
in state code before we grant a franchise, but as far as getting the agreement together,
I'm sorry. I was just I was just going to suggest that's moved it forward by
consensus.
Yes, please.
Very good. We'll move on.
Excuse me. We have a couple items that seem to be related and I see that we have a city
planet joining us.
Accessory structures and uses.
Are you going to give us some sort of background on this?
No. I'll defer to the director.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening.
We have four.
Let me say this.
Introduce yourself.
I'm sorry.
Chris Fletcher.
Director of Development Services, City of Morgantown.
Thank you.
Yes sir.
We have four planes.
Any good.
Text amendments.
This evening.
Do you want me to go through all four of them or go through one and then at discussion of
questions and then move on to the next one?
What is your pleasure?
Why don't we do the incident and have their own particular requirement?
Why don't you just run down through them?
Okay.
We'll personally begin by saying that a multi-year effort to comprehensively redraft the
city's zoning regulations was completed in January 2006.
This project was followed by the first time codification of the city's subdivision
ordinance and zoning ordinance into the planning and zoning code.
After a decade of administration and monitoring floorlares, staff will be presenting several
zoning text amendments in 2017, intended to address frequently requested and approved
variances, clarify regulatory intentions, and remedy potentially confusing or inconsistent
provisions within the code itself.
many of these recommended revisions will continue to advance comprehensive plan
objective number seven which provides for monitoring and improving the
effectiveness of the development regulations and the development process. So
the first ordinance before you deals with accessory structures and accessory uses
and I'll just go through some of the the bulleted points that it's in the staff
report and I'm on page 45 of your packet. First the ordinance amendment will
We will clarify the intended parallel between the concepts of accessory structures and
accessory uses.
The ordinance will recognize and permit the likelihood of utility connections between
a detached accessory structure and its principal structure, connections including wires for electricity
service or pipes requirement.
This ordinance will remedy the fact that currently listed examples of accessory structures in
the code relate more to residential principal uses, particularly single family dwellings, and
do not include examples of or recognize accessory structures common to commercial office or industrial
principal uses. And lastly, this particular ordinance will establish separate supplemental
regulations for accessory structures and uses in non-residential districts to clarify
they are allowed were prevented. So that's the first one that's on your agenda.
Should I pause are there any questions on this particular?
And then, yeah,
Councillor Neugin.
I noticed that you said that these are frequently brought before planning commission
and these are requested and approved variances before the Board of Zone ideals.
Can you give me an idea for a point of reference how frequently I would like
the past ten years. Accessory uses in the manner that we're seeking to change it have been addressed.
I would say the one that's more frequent and I would probably say a couple times a year maybe on average.
I guess we'll take a guess at, but the one that's more frequent is the one that requires in non-residential districts all your accessory structures to be 50% or less than the area of the first floor
or ground floor of your house, okay, for instance.
We have a lot of small homes in Morty Town because they're older.
The standard size for a detached garage is 24 feet by 24 feet.
A lot of times that exceeds the 50% of the footprint or that first floor area of the house itself.
If it doesn't, if you can build the detached two-part garage,
then often you don't have the ability to put up a tool shed.
So, there have been several variances requested for that, and I think all of them have been
granted, and the merits on the request is, well, the house is what it is, and it doesn't
have a garage, and it's small.
And it's really in all neighborhoods, in your neighborhood, I mean, there's a lot of
gunnison homes in Suncrest, some of the homes in Foesward, or have a smaller footprint,
that really that 24 by 24 detached, two-car garage exceeds that standard.
So, if I were to identify one, that would be one that's probably more commonly requested
and I think all the time granted by the Board as any of those.
And I guess I asked that because I noticed that we're looking like we're going to add
in the lift stations, and I know that speaks to the more industrial commercial purposes.
We haven't had many of those, only what one.
One lift station, usually they're underground, we've had one that was partially out of
ground. Yes. And just the state allow us in our code to define those structures as items for the
code. I mean, or do they have to be defined for accessory or principle or usage. The state
code allows us to determine what we consider to be a principle use and what's an accessory use.
Okay. But if you want to look at the definition for accessory use, that's actually part of the ordinance
and there's just a couple of terms that are being proposed to be changed there.
It is common zoning terminology, common practice for an accessory used to contribute to
the comfort, convenience, or necessity of the principal use.
And right now, our accessory structures, the only examples that are included in the definition
are your detached barrage's car port sheds, greenhouses, playhouses, and the like.
So, if you were to have a commercial building or a manufacturing industrial building which
has lots of accessory structures, it's really not even contemplated that that in fact could be,
it should be an accessory structure.
I know it's broadening, if you will, it's broadening the use, the intended use of that for really
any principal use, where it's from it.
The only reason I asked that is because when I recall that conversation about the lift station,
And I have to agree that I think a list station there, that's going to be an integral component of the building and so me to me an accessory seems something that is secondary or optional.
And even if it is for the necessity of the principal use, so I just didn't know if that should perhaps be defined elsewhere or by doing this.
Yes, I know we were addressing that, but your recommendation for this is based off of
the garage situation that is more commonly requested.
Well, I was providing you the very examples of the variance.
I mean, we're doing lots of things with this particular ordinance, not just addressing one
thing.
Okay.
I wanted to make sure we weren't changing it for that one instance.
Yes, sir.
Any additional comments?
Two things.
Continue on.
Thank you.
Okay.
The next staff report begins on page 53 of your packet.
This one deals with principal uses and premises.
This particular ordinance will provide a definition for the term mixed use building, which
is currently appears twice in the planning and zoning code, and is also used in the proposed
modified definition for principal use.
This ordinance also provides a definition for premises, which currently appears approximately
60 times in the planning and zoning code, but there is no definition for premises.
And lastly, this particular ordinance recognizes an industrial manufacturer's
And in the staff report, we will see an arrow photograph of the Petito mine equipment site on east for highway avenue, where clearly there are multiple, multiple, multiple principal buildings where they have different, different lines or different buildings.
different operations in the several different buildings.
Again, this ordinance is attempting to do multiple things.
Any questions for the one at this particular issue?
Thank you, continue on.
Okay, the next one, Stafford Fort begins on page 58 of your packet.
This address is maximum parking.
Maximum parking standards promote balanced land use management practices
processes and can promote desired transportation demand management strategies. However, how
much maximum parking standards often relate to the development of surface parking lots
to discourage the over development or over supply commonly associated with big box development
patterns and result in adverse impacts on both the built and natural environment. This particular
elements will exempt parking structures, parking garages, parking structures from the
maximum parking standards, which advances desired vertical development and integrated
land use patterns while inducing developers to better plan for costs associated with
parking construction operations and maintenance. In general terms, it's easier, if you will,
So it's cost-efficient, if you will, to pay more
service to provide parking.
Where, if you're going to propose a structured parking
garage, you're going to sharpen your pencil.
You're going to know what that's going to cost to construct
and operate and maintain.
So we don't want to discourage or we
don't want to penalize, if you will,
someone that wants to get vertical with their parking.
And that's what that ordinance does.
Do we have any questions for the planner on this one?
I think that could have a real impact in our downtown if it's great.
Potentially, or anywhere.
Well, anywhere.
Parking structures are permitted.
But many times we've gone back and forth on parking numbers and the numbers that someone
wanted to make and the numbers that just seems as though that makes a lot of sense because
the purpose for limiting parking is to limit the service lots.
So this just makes it just makes good it just makes good logical sense to not
To exempt the parking structures. Well over the last 10 years there have been several
I don't know I thought my head but there have been several variants requests to exceed the maximum parking requirement
And almost every time that conversation there's an error in the room of BZ at white
This is more in town parking is like one of the biggest problems that we have or proceed to real problems depending on where you're at
And there's a purpose for it, you know, but the applicant that stands here and I'm sitting
there, BZM, I was here, why do we have, what it's important, you know, but this is trying
to keep that on the surface lots, but not discourage, or not, again, not penalize someone
who's comparable.
Do you have a comment on this?
Questions?
Okay.
The last one is on page 63 of your packet.
This relates to gas station mini-marts.
The types and extent of product lines retailed at gas station
minimart uses continue to evolve.
Many locations now offer fast food, fair, and eating areas as
evidence locally by BFS and sheet establishments.
And you'll see this anywhere you travel.
And this has become the norm in the industry.
The current definition for gas station minimart does not appear
to fully recognize this evolving business model and should be
updated to reflect changes in the land use.
This ordinance will modify the definition for gas station minimart, also will address the
parking requirement.
The current minimal parking requirement for gas station minimart may not include sufficient
parking provisions for establishments, gas station minimart establishments, that are also
offering fast food, fare, and dining areas.
Although parking congestion has not been observed at recently developed gas station minimart locations,
some sites have sought and been granted variance relief to exceed the 115% maximum partner requirement.
As such, a slight increase in the minimum partner requirement for gas station many more uses,
offering dining areas appears proven.
Questions on this? No?
Very good.
Now, just for the record, this has gone through the planning commission
and it comes with the planning commission's recommendations for acceptance.
Yes sir.
Okay.
All four.
Very good.
And they were presented in four separate because they're almost in cylinders and, you know,
they don't necessarily relate.
And it's proper prior to call us to separate these ordinances.
Very good.
May the to the agenda?
Each item?
By acclamation.
Very good.
Thank you very much for your presentation.
Okay.
Number eight.
I think here we come to the concast issue and it's a parenthesis here with the hand out of the meeting.
I'm not quite sure I understand what that means.
It's done, but it's not here.
So, if you compare with us.
Just send it to us.
Okay.
Discussion.
Tell us what's in it.
Yeah.
There you go.
Thank you.
It's all right.
Have a good one.
Yeah.
Well, we acknowledge the dispute that's going on and really encouraging the parties, because
this is three separate letters that's sent to Comcast and to Nexstar, which owns WBOY,
as well as the TV station, and that we acknowledge the receipt of the notice from Comcast and
and encouraging really the parties
to reach an amicable solution
that it's really the best interest in the citizenry.
So as the city attorney has pointed out,
of from an enforcement perspective,
we don't have that ability,
based on the FCC,
this is considered what they call an out-of-market.
So there's already one other MVC affiliate
that is in their eyes that of course we all disagree with.
comes from Pittsburgh, but since this comes from Clarksburg,
it's considered that additional station
and there's not an obligation to carry that.
So, in essence, that's what the letter is,
depending on who you speak to and the particular parties,
they have a, would prefer a different description
and with this, that's an essence of business dispute
between these parties.
And so they may describe it differently, the face that they present from a public relations
point of view.
But we do have a letter prepared and wanted to make sure that you were comfortable with
that before releasing that to the entities and have direct conversations, particularly,
with the person that handles the local government relations on behalf of the cable provider
and urge them to come up with a solution.
So there's not an interruption come,
I believe March 14th is the cutoff date.
So if I may defer to the city attorney,
if there's any other pertinent information
that I've overlooked.
So I think that's a good description.
I'm not sure I can add a whole lot specifically
we're restricted as the franchise and authority
from dictating the programming decisions for commercial stations, the designated market areas which mentioned are established based on the annual Nielsen report that's released and the same regulations that adopt that have some provisions for petition to the federal communications commission to alter those, but they appear directed only to cable operator or a station provider rather than a local franchising authority like the city.
So what you're saying is we don't have a, we don't have standing to petition to the federal government to change our market area.
Not that I've seen, it's something I could look into further if the city is interested, but really I think the city manager
you're accurately described this as a business
decision between the two parties in our real role
to play is to encourage them to work it out
in the expressed interest of the citizens.
I would send that letter as soon as we can
since the time is, we've often asked our manager
to send something of this nature just to send it.
Oh, sure.
What's different this time around, so our discussion last week was centered around responding
to the cable provider.
And so upon looking at this and realizing that there's other parties, we wanted to make
you aware that we're sending out this correspondence to two other entities that really weren't mentioned
in the meeting.
So it's just more of a freer information, but there's nothing that's substantive that would
to diminish our public policy perspective in this deliberation.
So this is clearly consistent of what your intent is.
And so we'll send it up to my own and we'll provide you an
electronic copy of this.
So if there's any questions that come up from the residents.
Is that, I mean, that would, I just want to say, I appreciate your due
diligence on that because you're absolutely right.
There is more than one party involved in this.
So I certainly support go going ahead and sending it out and sending us a copy.
Okay, all right, we will do that.
Is that the will of the council?
Just one thing to add, you know, a Morgan town has been part of the Pittsburgh DMA for decades.
That was something the FCC decided I'm not sure how long the City of Trent probably knows.
I mean, decades and decades ago.
I mean, trying to read between the lines on this, I think might lead to the answer.
And that is, over the course of time, B-O-Y has always had some sort of agreement with
the cable provider to offer their service into this market, and I don't know what that
agreement was, but I'm guessing when B-O-Y was sold or when next star bought that group
of stations that somehow next star decided they didn't want to, and it's probably their
paying the cable provider to the broadcaster station.
Next star probably made some corporate
decision they weren't going to pay to have that happen again. However, I can't see how
that will continue in that Morgan town is probably the primary market for WBOY and not
Clarksburg. So I'm pretty confident that the two parties will work it out in some way.
And now if we did want to pursue changing the DMA designation from working time, I mean
that would be something we could pursue through our federal level, through our congressman
or senators.
I mean that's where it would have to be pursued, so that would be an issue for congressman
McKinley or Senator Manchin or I don't know that there's you know any real
possibility but that that would be the avenue to go but it's always been a
perplexing I've always been perplexed while Morgan Town was in the Pittsburgh
DMA but that's the way it's always been so hopefully they'll just work it out
amongst themselves and I feel pretty sure they will since a lot of B.O.Y.s
advertisers are here in this area and that's he's paying their their bills so
Let me just reiterate, we're telling our city manager to go forth, we'll express our desires, we'll leave it to him to phrase that correctly in a letter to the various entities, and we don't need to see it, we'll bring it back to deliberation.
They're beyond the fact that they're going to send us the copy when they send us the copy.
The current was sent out, which is great.
Prior to, for comments, we're just simply, I think they know our intent.
There you go.
All right.
That's good.
Thank you.
One other thing.
I mean, we could do, you know, to our constituents and the people in the city is to encourage
them to contact next star and encourage them to work out whatever, because Comcast lose
is nothing in this, so again, I kind of read between the lines I think, so I think it's
next star that has to come to the table with the cable provider, and so if people want
to complain, I guess is what I'm saying, is people want individuals want to complain,
Collin Comcast is the waste your time because they got no skin in the game they couldn't care less doesn't matter to them
It's next star. It's B.O.Y. that stands to lose if they're not in this marketplace
To me that's where the that's where we should direct people's complaints to go is to I don't need to be argumentative, but
I had people approach me at empty balls and tell me that they were so discouraged with this
that they were actually going to drop their contrast.
So, it can't cast us, it has something to lose.
Perhaps not as much, but they do.
What we need
the thing to do is to make a better one, our website, the various entities that are
players in this. I think that's a rule. If someone, once they're at a complaint letter,
that they have the appropriate people to complain to.
And in this point in time, it's quite easy to carve and copy
everybody.
So by all means, OK.
Thank you, Julie.
Completely agree.
And I think we do need to hit up all the parties,
because many people are talking about dropping their compass.
I don't know if they will, but maybe they'll
be signing up for something else.
But I think that it's.
There's the Rob.
Smart.
Even though Comcast is large and probably not paying attention, it would be smart to fire
it off to all of them.
No more discussion on this.
We have a course of action.
Good.
Very good.
Next on our list for discussion is a regulation to support the work of Project West Virginia
and preserve our community and our future of our citizens.
I
think we have the resolution included in our packet is there some discussion, some explanation of what this might be?
Can you provide that or the
best person to?
Constellin, I think you may have some information on this. You want to show that with us?
I wish that I had brought more information on this.
I think that our mayor may have looked up a little bit more information about this.
I became aware of this a couple different directions and I know that it's something that has been taken to other communities.
And that it's just voicing concerns that as we go through this budgetary process at the particularly at the state level that they look to making sure that citizens.
needs are met that we're not making huge cuts and that we're taking care of education, public safety, roads,
some of the issues that we all talk about every day and that just asking our legislators to work together and
come up with real solutions and do it in a timely fashion and it's something that we've all talked about and
and this is a resolution supporting it
and I would be in favor of it.
And I don't know what else the mayor may have,
but I didn't, I mean, that really sums it up.
I went to the website and it's basically
a grassroots group, West Virginia based
that wants us to support these different items
and I think really looking at the quality of life
and looking at the future of West Virginia.
And the lady that brought it to us,
I just thought when we have people bring resolutions to us,
we usually discuss them.
Any other discussion on this?
So it's certainly nothing here to object to.
I mean, we all want the best that we could possibly have.
And I think perhaps after I visit to Charleston recently and talking with some of our legislators,
we understand that West Virginia's got a pretty difficult course or road ahead of it to navigate.
I don't know whether this helps or hinders and there's nothing that I can find objectionable
to what the request is, other than finding
the where we're called to implement the request.
In other words, do we have enough money to do it, but serving in principle, you know, this
is a good thing.
What's the Rillow for Council?
To me, but to the agenda.
Yeah, to the agenda.
The resolution.
Comments?
Mr. Chairman.
Again, do we know what communities have signed on?
It sounds like some research was done on this resolution.
What other municipalities do we have?
I don't.
I don't know.
And who's funding that the organization said it was grassroots?
Do we know who's funding?
I have no idea.
I know that they were doing a lot of budget analysis,
and I have,
once again, this was brought to us by a citizen
who wanted to know the process for bringing something forward.
And so it was done.
So now it's our choice of whether this is something
that we'd like to sign on to.
And are there other efforts that are out there?
It sounds like, again, we're joining this.
when shouldn't we just be supporting the work of all groups who seek to find responsible solutions to the budgetary challenges facing the state?
I think that it's a coalition type of project, so it has three or four different partners.
And we certainly, I didn't, I assumed that we would have someone here that would describe more about it than what we know.
And we just didn't happen to do that, and that's something that we certainly could
for willing to take a little bit of a presentation when it comes to their council meeting.
We certainly could do that.
But I don't know a lot more information than what's on this page, except for, I believe,
there were three, at least three partners that were coming together to put this together.
And, obviously, it's just a resolution.
It's a resolution.
However, it's making our decision.
Be assured of what we're signed on to.
I think it'd be helpful.
I guess my concern is it's very generic.
And I find it interesting that they are asking or demanding
real budget solutions.
questions. I don't know what Protect West Virginia is offering. I don't know what they're
about or they're from.
And also too I was in Charleston and talked to one of the
legislative people that we're talking about getting rid of the income tax. And I was an
interesting discussion and actually it does make sense but I think throwing it out here it's
very interesting it's almost saying that whatever this has an over time that whatever's happening
in Charleston's wrong and we're going to send a resolution down there to say you're wrong that's
the overtime and that's what I get from it because obviously what they've seen so far
they don't like and that's fine there's a lot of people don't like what's going on
down there but you know there's a lot of people that are also saying people are tired
of being 50th in the United States in a lot of ways so there's a lot of hard decisions made
down there and it would be tough to be a legislative person down there but we should have to be
care for when we put something like this that is very generic, and it uses terms that
they're doing budget cuts, slashing this, that, and the other thing, and the risk of
hurting families. They haven't even passed a budget yet. They've just made discussions.
questions. And it's almost like this is like poking a dog.
Just have to be careful because
here we just had my colleague just beside and he said she doesn't know anything about
him. And further, we have a resolution from this, going to say that we're going to join
him. I think I'm concerned about that.
He's what you just said. So I'm done.
Councilor Gates.
Our state, our country is, guess, facing some budget. In our city, we're
facing some budget issues. In terms of resolutions, we read resolutions day of that and so forth.
To me, resolutions are just saying that we respect the day of this, the day of that. And this
This group to me just says that it's public, that education, public safety and roads are important.
So to me, this is just saying those are important.
I wasn't looking at any overtones or undertones.
I agree that we are enrolled in safe communities.
We've passed a safe community fee.
That's one of our core values here under this City Council.
So education is a core value for all of us sitting here, and roads we pass with the safe community feed the roads of funding, and certainly every council, every word in this room has is benefiting from passing that budget, which increased our budget almost 25%.
So it's just, to me, it's just saying these are our core values.
I didn't see any other valence in it.
I don't know.
Councilor Whitman.
Well, I have to say I'm also concerned with sort of the vagaries of it,
and not only the resolution, but again, I don't know really anything about this particular organization,
which I would like to know a lot more.
I just, when I read it into a towel, I just,
well, even just looking through it and looking at the words,
You know, I see the word budget cut three times in here, and then I see where it's demanding real budget solutions.
Well, sometimes, you know, when you run a business, a real budget solution is a cut.
So I don't know that I could, and I don't think there's any way.
I mean, I'm not privy to the entirety of the budgetary process in West Virginia, but I'm watching it like everyone else is from where I am.
And I frankly don't see anybody offering a solution that does not include some cuts.
I just don't see that's, I don't think West Virginia is going to get out of the mess we're in without some cuts.
And so when I read this resolution, this seems to be endorsing no cuts.
And so I would not be able to support it as it's written, but I still would like to hear
more from the organization and learn a little more about what they're thinking.
You know, I could reconsider that, but as I said, sometimes real budget solutions are
cuts.
I mean, real budget solutions are not always tax increases, sometimes they're cuts.
and I think that's where West Virginia is right now, so I support the thought behind it.
I don't want to damage our state any further either, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions.
And I think that's where we are and I just again don't know enough about this to support it.
I would like to suggest that this come back to the March committee of the whole
and that the maybe invite the resident that presented this to us and the
organization to come and give a presentation about it if people would like
more information and I'd also suggest that you know when we have things on the
agenda like this that you know we all try to look up more information ourselves
So
bring it back to the meeting of the law next month.
I don't want to make a modification to that suggestion.
I would suggest that we'll get to the end of the legislative session, which is what
this is trying to influence.
And if we wait a month to do this, that it becomes less useful.
And so I would suggest that if we're wanting to do anything with it, that we bring it to the next meeting where representative is available and have them speak in the public portion before this comes up so that we would be better informed before we considered it with you be willing to modify that that be because it's a resolution.
We don't need what I'm hearing here is that there's some language here that some of our
counselors find uncomfortable and to bring it forth to the next meeting and even with an
explanation doesn't change the language.
Then maybe for this year we should just drop it because
because I don't know the legislative session will be about how well living more than half
over.
Yeah because it started a month later.
Right.
It started in February.
It ends in April.
So I just think the decisions are.
They're being made, some of the decisions are being made over the next one. So, for it to be effective for citizens, I'm not sure that if we wait a month, that that will,
we
could get someone to speak during the public portion of our next meeting. Then we could decide at that point what we wanted to do with it is that a legitimate,
I mean, this is a legislative process. So I'm just trying to think of a way that we could, if we, it's a proclamation, I mean, it's not a proclamation, it's one step different, it's a resolution.
I would be glad to leave it as coming up again at the March committee of the whole and maybe ask that if somebody were to speak at the next meeting in the public portion and were to change people's minds that we potentially could consider at the next meeting.
My understanding is to have something, and perhaps somebody can correct me, maybe our
council can correct me on this, that to have a resolution we don't necessarily have
to bring the resolution first to the committee of the whole before we put the resolution on
the agenda.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
So, let's do it this way.
If you can get somebody that come and talk during the public portion next time around
and we can have a better understanding and perhaps maybe even have them reconsider
what you're asking here in terms of a resolution, we may be able to bring it forth more quickly.
Is that help?
Yep.
Is that acceptable?
Is that all right?
If once you have a compromise?
Mm-hmm.
I have consensus.
Good, then we'll move on.
Thank you.
All right, last for discussion is fiscal year 2017-2018
budget discussion.
Go ahead.
Chairman, if I can start with the introduction,
then I have Scott provided additional details.
I want to talk about process-wise.
So last week, you received this draft document,
that includes the general fund, coal severance fund, and the capital escrow funds budgets.
So for purposes of this evening, we are holding a workshop to discuss some of the particular elements and
questions that you have and perhaps additional research that the staff can do and provide additional clarity.
At the following meeting, the regular meeting on March 7th, that will be included as part of the agenda.
So the first reading of the budget ordinance will be done at the council meeting.
The following meeting in March on the 21st will be the second reading of the ordinance.
And ultimately what we're up against the requirement that we provide the two budgets, the general fund and the coal severance fund, those are required to go to the state auditor's office on or before March 28th.
So just a review of the looming deadline and what we're required to incompliance the state law.
So, to go over to this very briefly and kind of highlight the letter that it presented that gives you an overview of the upcoming spending plan.
This grant budget has $33.4 million that includes a projected $980,000 carryover and a contingency of $281,000.
It's a slight decrease.
We've had this different variation depending on the activity of the B&O and
that's adjusted the overall dollar amount that we need to look at.
But you, in comparison to this time last year, my predecessor,
the budget that he presented is a slight decrease.
So of course, since we're in the service providing business,
the salaries and taxes and benefits account for over 55% of the budget.
So, meaning translate into our workforce.
So, what we are able to do through the municipal service fee is that this includes five police
hires, four road officers and a support staff person at a cost of over 302,000.
and there's an additional public works employees at the cost of $53,000, including salary and benefits.
So for the last two years, we've increased our workforce through adjustment and
re-enlightment of 10 new police officers and five additional staff in the streets department.
Including the budget plan, but as in that funded by the municipal service fee is two budget maintenance.
staffers at a total cost of 120,000 and just based on the number of facilities that we have and the amount of maintenance that's required.
We do include a retention plan for the firefighters that mirrors what was done in the police department.
So that's included in here, it's an increase of $1.75 per hour and that's for a more senior
firefighter and the overall cost is $130,000.
Speaking of adjustments for the entire workforce, there's calculated out a cost of living
increase or otherwise referred to as COLAG, that's based on the consumer price index CPI for 12 months looking at the information from the federal Department of Labor through the end of the calendar year of 2016 is at 2.1%.
So that's included in calculated that cost is $275,000 and that adjusts the base pay of all employees.
Health insurance does, for the workforce, there's an increase based on the cost of healthcare going up and
participated in the renewal in January of 2018 and so that's approximately $520,000.
And part of that cost that's a large amount of over half a million is attributable to the new employees.
So just for the base workforce it's about $300,000 and then an additional $200,000 because we're adding on new employees.
So just be aware of that.
Again, as I mentioned, the municipal service fee, there's equipment associated with that where we purchased a little less than $900,000 for the street's department.
That includes replacing five cruisers per year, and as we were called last week, we approved the purchasing of the paving equipment and the new pickup trucks, plows and spreaders, and so again, that was included because of the fee.
that we're able to provide those additional services.
So the budget does include a quarter million dollar contribution to the fund's stabilization
or excuse me, the financial stabilization fund, and to continue the city's effort
of a rainy day fund.
With this increase, the fund balance will exceed the 1.5 million, up from less than just
is to half a million at the end of fiscal year 2016.
So post state law, the maximum that we can set aside
in this arrangement would be 30% of the general fund,
which would be $11 million.
So this, the broad brush overview,
if I may, Mr. Chairman, defer to Dr. Goffen
and indulge you in additional particulars
that pertains to the budget plan.
But I did want to acknowledge, I would be remiss for all the work that Jim and Glenn Kelly
really were instrumental. I wish I could take credit for only being three weeks on
putting this thing together. So I got the privilege of writing the cover letter then
then Carol Allen is part of my staff that's really, and of course all the department directors that
tirelessly put together, there's some metals in the agencies and so it's truly a team effort
But I get to be the lead the parade if you will and so, but I really should acknowledge the work that was done prior to my arrival here. So, thank you.
Just whatever is complicated, whatever is comfortable.
Do you feel that you just tap on that microphone to make sure that it's on?
Okay, very good. Do you have any questions? Discussions?
Representation?
We're going to get a budget without any questions.
Wow.
Definitely not.
Okay, let's go.
Last but not least.
Not
so yet.
Go ahead.
But I just wanted to make a comment.
And I do appreciate how you laid this out, Carol or Jim, who ever did.
I noticed that the budgets by service and I appreciate you noting that it's a service industry we're in.
And that 70% is police, fire and public works.
And so I was just saying that for the public, you can probably view this online, is it available on our city website?
It's a small, I don't believe it is, but that's easy enough.
We'll put it in another place.
I appreciate that because I think the simplest part would be nice to be online and that
would be the pie sheet that's budget by service type people often ask me especially since
we've increased the, we have the user fee or the safe community fee and so forth with Pupin.
Then of course the fire fees were raised the other year and then we had a fire loved
And so forth and so on.
People always asking me about basically what's on this pie chart.
So this is just a comment.
It's not a question.
I'm just asking you to post that, please.
And the explanation, I think, is really good.
I'd like your cover couple pages if that could be just so people
could, that would just really help my residents.
So thank you for such an excellent presentation.
Thank you.
Very well written, easily understood.
Thank you for that.
I need that help.
So, as you get down through, you did the coal, you did the, and that's, that will be
a permanent level to the base wage, but also a new insurance, which is another 500,000,
so roughly, all the other, that's $800,000, roughly.
also the wages that went up for the adjustment for the fire department that's
120,000 that's about 920,000 and then I think there was another one in there so
what we've added to the base is approximately about a million dollars give it
Sure.
Okay.
So when we look at the user fee, we roughly get about $4.2 million, move it off.
Roughly about $4.5, $4.5, $4.5, so that's your estimate.
So right now for this coming year, we will, from now on, get roughly $3.5 because you've
added a million to the base, because those are hard operations numbers.
When you look at insurance, you look at COLA as you look at
adjustments to the salaries.
My concern is,
if you look at in long term,
then it would get down to 3.5.
And then when we look at hard numbers again and add to the
budget, another COLA, another adjustment
for the following year, it may be another million dollars.
Then, if you use a fee, it goes to $2.5 million.
I'm just concerned we've got, you know,
I know we have to take care of our employees,
and that's like, that's a number one thing for all of us.
But also to it, we have smart about how we're doing this
because if you look at this in a short period of time,
it would be approximately three years you'd roughly be back in here asking for that
thrill or fee to go up because you're adding to the hard numbers to the base.
I understand retention is very, very important and it's something we wanted to do and adding
police officers was the will of this council and but I'm just concerned I mean I think it's
It's great that we have the money right now, but we're not looking at business development
to help the base so that the user fee actually does what it's supposed to be doing, because
sooner or later it's going to get to the payment budget because that 4.5 is for a lot of
different things, paying, equipment, all the things that are executed through that.
The retention was one of the places of it, of course, but retention was from military operations.
So, I hear thoughts on that and concerns, and I can pull it off the place here.
Well, if I may, I would have jumped into this first off. To suggest, I don't think this is your words, but to suggest that the user fee is surplanting the funding. Because, keep in mind, there's been carryover that's been brought into this budget. We've gone as an organization long time with not having filled positions. So, it's really offset by our normal operating costs that are paying for that. So, so it's number one. And anticipation in the future,
Since this is first school around, I can tell you this year's budget next year and I don't mean this is critical, but I'm going to show you projections and we're going to look at things in the long term and making sure that we're right size in the organization.
But based on the service demands and the department directors, they know where we need to have the staffing in place.
At the same time, I'm concerned about, we have competing employers in this area.
And, you know, what I don't want to continually,
I mean to recruit new employees because we lose someone.
And I realize it's acknowledged that it's for retention purposes that we remain competitive as an employer in that regard.
So, I think being the good stories of the public money.
So it's, you know, asking the right questions, and I think for future purposes, when we add to the base,
keep in mind that the workforce, they went in several years where there were no increases at all.
You know, granted those were lean years, and so we were living with intervenes, and I get that.
But now that we do have the ability with the ebbs and flows, and particularly with the additional collection with the B&O,
which had nothing to do with the municipal service fee, we do have the ability of making those
sort of adjustments. So I feel pretty, I feel very confident in the spending plan that
we put forward, but periodically as there's adjustments in the economy, we'll have to adjust
accordingly. We'll have to either look at being a better deploy of technology that we can
make better use of our workforce. We may have to look at partnering with other organizations
and look at where there may be duplication of services. We may have to look at making
reductions and or using perhaps the private sector to help supplement the services.
So there's many different options that we can adjust the organization as we move forward.
But where we're at right now is taking care of our people infrastructure within the organization and so as we look at adding to the workforce
that retention part that is very critical because again, being in the recruiting mode of, you know, recruiting both in the public and the private sector
right now it's an employee market, not employer.
And so from that respect, we do have a very dedicated work force and one to keep those individuals.
If someone chooses to improve themselves professionally, I won't hold anyone back.
But for the individuals that we have that institutional knowledge and, you know, it pains me when I see, you know,
and coming months, even within the police and fire,
they're eligible to retire, but there's institutional knowledge
that is walking out the door.
And so I think we talked about that during my interview process
of succession planning.
And I want to be able to train the employees within the workforce
so when those retirements naturally occur
and the employees have that desire to move up within the organization
that we have equipped them with the ability to promote them and so we can retain as much
of that institutional memory as possible.
So that's kind of a, I'm giving you much, much broader philosophical than what you asked
for, but giving you a lot of careful thought to this, you know, I'm coming in in the middle
of the conversation, but what you have going on here is not that unique.
But I think you do ask some good questions.
I think we need to do some pretty hard projections, and my plan is to give you that three or five
year outlook because the economists can give us kind of an indicator of where the, you know,
north central part of West Virginia is heading, and we can extrapolate that information.
I think with the university, with future building plans, you know, there we're getting a little
bit of a lot on the construction, but, you know, we're anticipating there's the possibility of
Rebecca Bump back up, and so, I think we do need to be conservative, we don't need
to live beyond our means, and I get that, and I can tell you that coming from the state
of Michigan, we've had a decade of recession, and so I'm used to reduction, reduction, reduction,
but it's also at the same time it's challenged us to be very innovative and to look at different
practices and how we can best utilize, but at the same time, you know, keep a good
people that we have within the workforce. So I'm sure Jim can add to that if
there's anything else that I didn't cover in that regard. So if I may, Mr. Chair,
to allow him to expound further, please.
Well, the layers that you speak of, the user fee, as you know, is broken down into
to the different categories, police personnel, street personnel, equipment, and then payment.
So what, you know, with the retention pay that we've built in for our police department,
that is for retention and that's because the cost of training new officers and bringing
new officers on board is significant, as you know.
But that cost, yes, it does take away from the user fee, the $4.5 million, but that's
what it's intended to be used for that.
So those retention pay increases for the police force amounted to approximately $500,000.
dollars. So that's a piece of the user fee that people are paying for. Additionally,
the new staffing that we've built into the plan, approximately $720,000 of that is
police, that 10 additional officers that are going to be on the street.
Right now,
While that's all I anticipate as we're able to add at this point, unless our user fee does go up over time and the employers move in and we get additional funding available there, but the point was to staff up to a level that utilized what the public was expecting.
We've done the same on the street department side.
We've added five additional user fee related positions to maintain our streets, to do paving, repairs,
different plowing, different things of that nature.
So likewise, the equipment we're trying to utilize the amounts of money, which are significant $468,000 for
of a police department to buy cruisers,
equip the new officers, different things like that,
and buy equipment for our street department.
So the 44% that goes to paving,
which is a little over $2 million a year,
that automatically goes to paving.
I mean, in my mind, those funds are already spoken for.
I mean, there are some layers here, we did a budget in a fire retention pay, and that's something that gave me disgust.
I mean, it definitely does not come from the user fee, but it's based on a comparable increase for
our firefighters that the police force, the 10 year employees received.
Any
additional questions or comments?
Good.
Go ahead.
Let your finger up first.
You can go.
I mean, I had specific questions, you know, looking through the, looking through some
of the general fund, for example, on page two, IRP trucks, the, that seems like an outlier
and our revenues this year can you help provide some understanding why that number is up?
I, I don't have a whole lot of information on the IRP truck.
That's based on, that's a check that we received from the State of West Virginia,
the auditor's office.
It's based on registrations of trucks and I think based on the truck traffic that
fee has gone up and is trending up.
However,
we have it proposed in the budget as $90,000 when this actual 2015-16 was $156.
So I guess we're just expecting to go back down.
It's not a problem.
It comes in high.
I mean, you want a budget conservative with your revenues because we don't want a budget
high on our expense side and then revenues not come in to support it.
But I mean, trending-wise, tracking for the year 2016-17, we are tracking towards
about $100,000 halfway through the year.
So $90,000 is a little bit down from that, I know, gas and things like that are off-sum,
So, I can get additional information on the RP fees.
And then, remind me on the utility taxes, are those fixed or the variables that
are based on the revenues?
It's like an excise tax, based on usage, that would consume them.
So, but it's on the amount that the add consumers overall pay.
So, you know, for example, we've had our utilities, we've seen those increase and however
the, I'll say you there, then I'm looking at the projected for this year is 172, like
I'm just using the Mub utility tax, actual 2015-16, so it looks like we've adjusted that
upwards.
Okay.
Yeah, that's based on their increase fee.
Right.
Okay, so this definitely takes into fact all those increases.
Yes, and gas utilities are down this year, so we're trending below budget there.
However, we're trending above budget on the electric side because the electric had a 9% increase last year.
That's helpful.
I don't want to use dropping off as well, so you can see that it's been trending over.
Well, that's, yeah, I know that that's something that has been discussed at the county level as well.
So that's an interesting one to look at.
On the expenditures we can maybe switch over into there.
I see that we're adding cell phone expenditures, some departments.
Is there a standard amount that's being offered per employee?
How's that can offer any information on that?
Yeah.
At the director level, it's a $60 a month stipend.
And for lower levels that are determined to be needed, it's a $30.
Yeah.
That's helpful enough.
If you want to switch over to us, see which page is police,
the 20 page.
I'm sorry, but are we going to go through this step by step or just everybody just asked
a question?
It's just that it can be done.
Over time, I see we're projecting page 20, or 19, I'm sorry, I thought it was 20,
it's 19,
we're keeping the over time about the same as it stands for that, I mean,
that's a major, that department has the large over time.
I was just wondering what point might be anticipated if possible, unless the new way
that the new zones will be handled, will we see, can we expect that that number will come
down at some point?
Yes.
I've spoken with Chief Preston, and as we get the ten officers on the street, he'll
be able to do some things with scheduling to avoid these super long shifts where guys are
doing the bar duty and different things like that on the weekends.
So yes, he anticipates that number, we'll definitely come down.
We're looking probably 2018 because the staffing that we're talking about adding now, by the time we get these July 1, we'll be the budget here.
At the time we get those staff on board, sent to the academy, trained.
We're looking into 2018, middle of 2018, towards the end, before we're fully staffed.
Okay.
It's helpful. And the coal severance, yes.
Yeah, that's not listed. It's a pink page in between the as per such.
I see we're keeping the coal severance tax. It's just, and this is obviously just an estimate, $60,000.
Is the rationale for that? Perhaps what is that?
Why are we keeping that number as it is? Is that related to the airport?
No, that's that's that's based on.
On call, severance, tax for the county. So we're named. Oh, I know that, but that's, yeah, we're proposed. Depending on getting balances 5490, and we're, you know, just seeing where it's trending, it doesn't seem like realistic to expect that we're going to have $60,000 coming back. Does it? I think we've, we've kind of hit bottom or 2015, 16. We were at 68,000. And this year we are trending.
being towards at 60 or low 60s, so based on that that's how I determine being comfortable with projecting 60,000 for next year.
Thank you.
So I'm in agreement with on being that we do need to be careful with adding new employees and I think it's part of the sort of how
about a weather long term as a city.
And so we have done a nice job of adding some employees.
And they're well within our needs and they have been a good idea.
And just that we need to be careful because we do have this piano tax that goes up and down.
And for many years, so part of the history is that some of the, some years we're relying on one time
money to help pay salaries, which is not a good idea.
So, we've worked very hard to get to a point where we're not doing that and we don't want
to go back to it again, so that's why the cautionary too.
But meanwhile, I think we need to really look at how we do bring businesses in, how we have
a lot of work that's been done by the Brownfields group to try to analyze properties and try to
properties back into reuse, we obviously have properties that are right for development that just haven't come in and so if we could focus both on developing a comprehensive plan and working on our economy generally but also work on specific development plans and concept plans wherever that wherever that can be a priority that would help us in many ways to provide jobs that would help us to increase our tax base.
that's just what Morgan Town at this point needs to work on.
We also have in the past, when we're talking about this, we do have someone in the tax office that works on tax collection and hard to collect areas and just making sure that people aren't compliance with their tax collection.
Is that something that continues?
Yes.
And so what is that person if you don't mind in the middle of a budget discussion if you wouldn't mind just refreshing us kind of what they're working on now and what they might be working on in the next year and you may not that's deciding the budget conversation but it certainly is part of the budget conversation.
Yeah, we have Denise Stephan Easy that is our B&O construction.
She follows the large projects very closely and I attribute a lot of our stronger collections
over the past two years, over the last year specifically to her efforts.
She's developed some key relationships with the purchasing department at WVU, which as you know has a lot of the major projects going on.
She gets contracts for these projects, follows up with the subs.
She's developed relationships with the contractors who then do work for her collecting from subcontractors.
So, she's done an excellent job on the B&O construction side.
As you know, from my memo recently, we had our tax auditor that resigned and took a job
at a local bank.
What Denise has approached me, we're actually going to start utilizing her in those to
take on some of that tax compliance auditing function for us and sort of
restructure the department based on what I'm seeing and what my staff is
capable of right now. I think she's an excellent person for the role and have
a lot of confidence in what she's doing for us down there. Great.
Then we
We haven't the past worked on grants in grant writing, but we haven't done it to a consistent level.
And that's maybe something else that we could do as far as enhancing our revenue side is and would
be a way that I would see would be appropriate to spend city funds on developing.
We were trying to hire grant writer and I don't know where that is right now, but-
It's included in the budget.
And so it's been included in the budget, but we have to figure out how to get it, get it in operation.
And since you've only been here for a short time, this is not necessary to approve, I mean, to have a person in place tomorrow,
but it seems as though that would really help our revenue side, as if we had.
And we have people that have even kind of complained that we have not applied for grants, you know, funders that have said, where are your grants?
So that's a good problem to have.
Well, particularly in light of, you know, speaking of recent retirements with the community
development director, Mr. Bat, who's since left and so that's going to be a gradual transition.
You know, you'll hear about the CDBG program, you know, in the coming months, but what our
hope is is that we could combine that the whole process of administering the CDBG and then
lump that in with the grant writer because they truly are interrelated so you may not see that
immediately but I think over reasonable amount of time and you know the conversation with Mr.
Fletcher about that earlier today's matter fact and so but it's you know we have a number of
positions that we're recruiting but definitely a priority and you know you know yes this question
But, you know, another one that's right up there is the HR function that's very, very
critical because I need to recruit the recruiter.
So, you know, we can get into the positions.
Yes, we can get into the positions.
We absolutely do.
Yeah, so.
And we have some retired people that are, well, more people that will be retiring that.
Oh, for sure.
So, that's, you know, if you want to talk about the things that keep me up at night, that's
That's what's weighed on my mind of knowing that, you know, what the projection is of individuals leaving and being able to keep up with, I mean, that's a significant amount of our workforce.
And so for our HR manager, they'll be ramping up in high recruitment mode, so.
And then opportunities for sharing equipment, I know, I think Bow Park was talking about not having a stump grinder and the city may be lent to stump grinder and some different examples of sharing of equipment and as we acquire more equipment, there may be possibility of doing more sharing with other organizations that might have some equipment that we need that doesn't get used every day.
but could be shared.
And then I really appreciate the idea of projections.
I think that it would be very nice to be looking.
We have all of the years prior, but it would be nice
to be looking out at some of the expectations.
Oh, exactly.
So based on the indicators and things like that,
projections that frequently, the kind
of a certain, you know, from an overall business perspective, but we can put that into context
and be able to, you know, say what direction that we're heading.
So, you know, what we want to avoid is being in a reaction mode.
So if we see something that's coming, then we need to get our house in order to be able
to prepare for that, whether it be changing our business practices or, you know, as we realize
that there's in that case, if we have to go through a reduction of force,
that if we anticipate there's retirements, then we just do that through attrition.
And so, you know, kind of gradually bring the work force down, but, yes,
we need to be looking at least minimum two, three years out.
So then as you're thinking and this may or may not be related to budget,
but as you're, it is related to budget, perhaps.
But thinking about who the primary contact is at the city when somebody wants to develop a business.
And how that works through city government would be, we've had some models before and
discussion before about how to get your permits and whether we have a one stop shop or not.
And I know that there's some talk about efficiencies, but I think if we could highlight that path as it's being developed.
and figure out ways to, without violating our own ethics,
making sure that you're working through how business comes
to Morgan Towne and being very friendly about that.
Oh, absolutely.
That's a strong interest of mine.
Well, we're right for that right now.
So we've got lots of empty lots.
So all right, that's it.
Thank you.
Anything else from anybody else?
No?
I was just waiting.
Thanks.
I had several questions, but you're asking some of them already, so it's good.
Constable Gatz, do you have a question?
Oh, yes.
Pacific?
Oh, I did have some specific questions, but I thought we'd get to them anyway.
We have all these agency requests, and I wondered how that was going to be handled.
The
way the budget is billed, currently, I looked at past the past few years what we've
done as a city and basically applied the same amount, realizing that we're going into
a tighter year for sure with regard to capital escrow funding available because the projects
index aren't anticipated.
So keeping agencies that have been there steady at their past rate, knowing
prices and no additional agency requests were added to the preliminary budget.
Can I ask more questions along that line?
Yes.
There's some things that are part of our function.
part of our charter, part of our ordinances, such as
tree board, we need the tree board provides the urban
forest or position with their work, and so a case like
that, using that, the urban landscape commission, the
groups like that are part of our function, and so those
groups that are part of our historic landmark commission
They fulfill a mandate that's from the state.
I'm just off the top of my head.
These are groups that are part of our function where volunteers perform a role that's mandated
either by our state, our ordinances or something outside of our employees.
But in addition to their volunteer labor, which is very valuable, they need equipment, supplies,
other kinds of things.
and I would like to see those maintained prior to the agency request because these are part of our mandate.
And so I'd like to see those sometimes increased to maximize, because in a way it's like a grant.
These people provide free services and we just provide the equipment as the match.
And the match is very miniscule in most of these cases to the amount of labor savings are huge.
And so I'd like to see them put ahead of the agency requests.
Also some of the agency requests I noted were from groups we gave seed money to expecting them to move on and acquire their own funding.
So I just have some questions about that, and also the agency and then there's some agencies in there that are outside our central mission.
Our central mission is to provide inside the city limits for the people of Morgantown.
And so I would like to look at these things in these contacts if possible, and I don't know how to do that.
Well, I would offer this as a response, if there's a consensus among you all that you would like from the staff perspective for us to take a closer look, we can come back with a recommendation.
This is one area that I wish that I had the lecture a little bit more time.
I know.
And so, Jim, I concur with his methodology the way that he went about that, you know, it makes sense.
However, with that being said, if there's something that we need to fine tune where there's general parameters,
I don't have a problem of where we sharpen our pencil and take a look at and bring back, you know, an amendment to that area.
Because as far as I know, these agencies, they have not been notified what has been recommended.
So at this point, it's not dollars that they're counting on.
And they put this request in a good faith effort that we will do the best that we can.
But there's no promises in that regard.
So that's-
That would not surprise me if we do do some tweaking that will probably be in that area.
So what do you think about those agency requests are between ¼ and ¼ million, and we're talking about a, decreasing circumstance from 38 to 33. So how do we do this? That would be one area. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just saying. And so, but on the other hand, we wouldn't want to be decreasing.
In the tree board budget, for example, their budget would include the facts that all these trees were affected by the animal ash for, for example, and they need to be replaced and so that's the, and that's part of our mandate.
So I'm not disagreeing, I just would like to encourage you to sharpen your pencils in these areas, and I'm sure that there's counselors who would know more about it.
But I only know about the four, five or six boards that I'm involved with.
So I just want to mention that.
Additional comments?
I'm there.
A couple of years ago, we increased the fire service fee, two and a half percent.
I think that was correct.
And at that time, I think that brought us up to maybe 70% of where we should be.
And I guess my concern is are we keeping up with inflation or are we keeping up with that fee?
Is it something that we should think about?
I know there was a levy past county levy past for fire departments which the city of
Morgantown, I don't believe gets any of that money and I'm just concerned about our fire
department that we're keeping the funding, they are keeping the base going up.
So, I didn't know if there was any thought into that or any comments on that or I don't
know how other Councillors feel about, you know, maybe increasing that a little bit this
year, too, or increasing the fire fee.
I didn't give any consideration to that.
I will tell you specifically with the fire fee for tax exempt organizations with the
alpha-john being from the fire department we've been able to do a lot of
measurements and there's been significant square footage finding in that
category and you can see from the chart that we are seeing growth there. We budgeted an
additional $200,000 in fire fees for next year. Okay. That's a conservative number based on
what what the fire cheapest is sharing with me but we're we're basing it taking steps. Right. And
and that process is going to continue.
He's going to be measuring.
He's going to continue.
That's good.
I just have a lot of large buildings being built in the city.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm just kind of looking there in the future
to make sure we have ourselves covered.
If I'm not mistaken, the high price is
covered at 60% of our cost, approximately.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
On those lines that you mentioned, the levy is paid for by the residents or entities
in the city and those funds go to the county fire fee or the county fire department.
Is there a provision in the levy to request like fees for our departments or are various?
And I noticed that too that the library fee is the same in a library levy was passed
or we receiving any funds from the library levy or I know that previously we had been helping
aren't it still in other libraries?
How does all this levy money play into this budget?
Where is there any, or how does that work?
We are not receiving any fire related money from the levy.
The
library, the Morgan dump up with the library is receiving money from that, that's we support them.
And so we're not receiving that tax money, the actual library, which we received in those funds.
And then both are related, they're receiving the special heavy funds for the ice arena.
I just had one other question that I know that there was a meeting with the Hazel Rebe McQueen Foundation about the ample theater.
So, I just wondered if the $73,000 about Hazel Ruby McQueen Park, is that the amphitheater?
That's the study and correct the erosion issue that's taken place down there.
Okay, along the river?
Yes.
The erosion?
Oh.
So, it was erosion not revamping the area or anything.
it was a revision. It was a engineering study. It's an engineering study and work associated
with that area. So as far as the page, page, page 2 of capital S curve. So as far as
like the amphitheater repair that was talked about, is there anything in the budget, I couldn't
find anything. Maybe I missed it.
I think they're not working on fixing it right now. I think they're
because I'd asked about that also.
It might be part of a request. It is not in the budget.
Okay. Okay. Confirm that. That's, tons like that. Along that line, that's part of the ongoing
situation with Bow Park is what is city, what is Bow Park, and then the ongoing thing with the
commission, I think, with WVU, the county, the city, Bow Park as to the programming. It seems as though
the city and Bow Parker paying a lion share of that and that's part of the negotiations
that we might need to address with Bow Parker and the new city manager. I don't, I just
know that it exists.
Any more budget information? Question?
Discussion?
Well thank you very
much.
I am not necessarily in favor of taking a sharp pencil to some of these
nonprofits. They're generally groups as our budget director explained that we
have promoted for many years. They're serving some of them are serving
functions that are almost quasi-governmental because they're providing for instance housing
for low income people in an area where we have very high housing costs. I think that
we've paired it, we've paired down the list over the years of who we give to at other points
when we had trouble with our budget. And since we haven't added anyone at this point
And I just didn't know what the consensus was for looking at the relatively short list and
not funding groups that we have normally funded.
If there was a specific group that somebody was concerned about and they wanted to mention
it to the manager, that would be fine with me.
But in general, most of those are in place for a reason that it's a strong community
need and it's serving some sort of almost quasi-governmental function, even though
it is not closely related and would be if we had poorer economic times that would
be where we would make a cut, but I'm not in favor of that at this point, so I'm just
I don't know what the consensus is before we send it back.
I think you find it, and I'll speak for all of us, that we're all in agreement with
that, that these are, they have proven to be very worthwhile organizations, but let me
call upon it too.
It never hurts to look to see perhaps where we're doing what we should do and what we might
do more, or what we might do differently, so I don't mean let's give a chance to our new
city magnitude.
But if council members who are familiar with an organization or two that they would like to see their budget modified and they could just convey that to the manager, that might help him in an early years, new here and has not has not become familiar with the organization.
So I would just say that if people have them to please pass them along so we're not just sort of sharpening to sharpen, but that we, if you have suggestions, you make them to him.
Madam Mayor.
I just want to say one last thing, how much I appreciate all your hard work and your
staff's work and the department heads and putting this document together.
It's well done.
Thank you.
Yes it is.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Do I have a motion to adjourn?
Second.
Thank you.
You ready to jump?
All right.