Committee Minutes

MINUTES/FLOOD PROTECTION COMMITTEE
-Thursday, April 20, 2000 - 5:00 p.m.______________

Members present: Hafner, Bakken, Glassheim, Carpenter, Polovitz.

1. Matter of mitigation of Riverside Pool (Greenway Budget).
Charles Grotte, asst. city engineer, reviewed the several handouts on the CIP for the Greenway which had been distributed: 1) fiscal year breakdown of the various projects, including various funding sources; 2) projects by fiscal year and funding sources; and 3) items interacting with the Park District and defines what Park District, City and Corps would pay for; and the issue today is dealing with the pool, which was listed as second item in the year 2002, previously had in the year 2004 and after some discussion with the Park District and Board they indicated they would like to do that sooner; that they had included this the year 2004 as that’s when the Corps would be building actual levees in the Riverside Park area and that’s basically latest date would want to do that. He stated they have $830,000 to relocate the pool or build a splash pool, etc. as requested by the Park District.

Mr. Grotte summarized funding based on all the projects: the Corps of Engineers is paying approx. $2 million; another possible grant from the Corps of Engineers for another $200,000 and is something they have not applied for as yet; and City’s share of that - dike funding of approx. $5.3 million and does include the $830,000 for the pool plus $83,000 to build a low level levee in the Riverside Park area to protect some of the other Park District property; NDDOT TE grant for cost share program that the Federal Highway money that goes through ND DOT for trails, etc. , $1.2 million; and possibly some money from the EPA in one of their environmental restoration programs of $300,000; Park District’s share of all the work in the three parks is about $373,000 and is described in more detail on the single sheet; US Fish & Wildlife Service in conjunction with the nature center; and private funding of about $1 million which they anticipate in the Greenway.

Mr. Grotte stated this is an overall look at everything you could spend dike funding on and doesn’t mean we’re going to or would do it but are items that people have shown interest in and they would need to address the items as they proceed. Hafner stated his concern was just because someone shows an interest in it, they don’t go through the process of approving them, but have to consider individually.

Hafner stated they need to make a decision on the pool mitigation so the Park District knows what they can do. Lisa Dresser stated that they are not buying out the pool but actually mitigating the impacts of the pool.

There was some discussion - that of the $5.3 million how much of that is included in the base flood protection project and how much would be the betterment part that they’ve talked about in the special assessment. Mr. Grotte stated that they need to match the Corps $2 million, and that numbers not indexed but based on 1998 dollars and part of the
continuing process where try to index them to future or current year dollars, but when
index the $2 million it ends up being $2 and a quarter so needing to match that amount,
and part of the confusion that comes in, understand we can use DOT money to match some
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of that, and of the $1.2 million DOT they are probably matching $700-800,000 of the Corps money because some of the things we’re using DOT match on the Corps not participating in so it’s not 100% but probably be in the $700-800,000 range so when consider that and take that from the $2.2 or $2 million down to $1.2 million need to match out of the Corps money of the $5.3 $1.2 is probably Corps match or in that range, and the other $4.1 would be betterment pot that they once establishes the $5 million amount, and can get better numbers as they proceed.

Glassheim stated that his problem with this is the timing, if pushing up money for constructing a new swimming pool in 2002, then 2 or 3 years with no improvements in Riverside area, and doesn’t find that acceptable. Hafner stated if the Park District wants to accelerate those things they would need to indicate that. Grotte stated the Corps improvements as they intend to do recreation features in conjunction with the levee construction unless we revise the phasing to do Riverside Park sooner, which is possible. Hafner stated he would like to see the committee fine tuning this and move onto the council with approval of this so that the Park District can go on with their plans and if want to come back and revise the plan, we can amend at later date. Hafner stated that the only difference now is that they want to do the splash pool sooner, everything else is the same.

Mr. Vein stated that the council has already adopted the first three chapters of the greenway plan and in that are the features that are shown in here - the capital improvements plan that shows features that have been adopted - don’t have to do all of those things and everyone of those will have their own individual approval processes later on but this lays out the framework, have the sources, the uses so have a mechanism for financing and implementing the plan that has already been approved and this would be the basis by which we will proceed as a staff, and if there are things you don’t want to do should probably take it out, and not that everything in here is going to be done but is a strong indication that that’s the direction we’re going; and that there will be a lot more discussion on this.

John Staley, Park District, stated they could move on the in-line skate rink this summer and the Board has expressed to him this past week strong sentiment to try to get that done, that the 2002 approx. time for building the splash pool also works with their Board. It was noted that the in-line skating rink is to be paid for by the Park District.

Tim Burke, 208 Conklin Avenue, stated he was a member of the Riverside Neighborhood
Assn. but not speaking for them, has been interested in this and they are concerned about
the fact that money to mitigate the Riverside Park is going to be used in other parts of the community. He stated another concern is that the Park District stated at a meeting several weeks ago that they intend to study on a community-wide basis their aquatic recreation needs and didn’t expect to have that study done until the end of the summer or into the fall at which time they might find out where this wading pool might go, but would like to have the use of the pool as long as possible and if there’s a way to have the water
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recreation facility ability mitigated in that neighborhood, that’s what they would also like to see; and since it is up to the city council to decide whether or not they would allow these funds to be used for mitigation, they would like to see the city council use that authority to leverage. Hafner stated it wasn’t their place to tell the Park Board what to do, that it may be an advantage from other citizens of this community to put a splash park somewhere else, but it is his understanding that the splash park more than likely get built in the north end, maybe not in Riverside. Bakken stated Park Board would want to look at it from their viewpoint where is best place to put a pool, not because north, south, etc. but handiest place to have it for people to utilize it, and present location not handiest place to get to. Mr. Burke stated that the Park District said at a meeting that they will study the needs for water recreation and plan to have some kind of assessment of the maintenance needs of the 3 facilities they have now and what they would like to do with some of these mitigation dollars and now Riverside people he’s familiar with are not comfortable with seeing that money taken out of the Park not knowing what benefits they may receive from that.

After further discussion it was moved by Carpenter to adopt the proposed CIP program for fiscal years 2000-2005; Polovitz seconded the motion. The motion carried; Member Glassheim voted against the motion

2. Matter of continuation of committee.
Chairman Hafner stated the committee has accomplished many of the major goals for the committee and maybe time to move some of these issues to appropriate standing committees. Moved by Carpenter and Bakken that we end on 4th Tuesday of June, 2000. Motion carried.

(Carpenter noted that the fourth Tuesday of June is date of new council would be sworn in and the current council ends, and most of the issues will be concluded by then)

3. Matter of consultant selection for Greenway clean-up.
Mr. Grotte reported they have advertised for consultant to do clean up, which would be removing some streets and utilities no longer needed within the Greenway and doing some repairing and restoration in aftermath of that rather than leaving bare dirt, would try to develop area back into natural state where appropriate. He stated they did receive two proposals: one from CPS and other from Widseth, Smith and Nolting, that a selection committee met on April 5, and unanimous that CPS be selected; both firms are well qualified civil engineering firms but submittal from CPS did have Barr Engineering in conjunction with their firm to do the restoration type work, Widseth Smith and Nolting did not have anyone identified specifically for that work although they did reference a landscape architect they had worked with before but was not part of their submittal, and that’s the reason for the decision. Carpenter and Bakken recommended approving
negotiating with CPS for a contract for that project, and bring back to public service for
approval. Motion carried.

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It was noted that engineering would determine which streets and utilities to remove, and
big concern in on storm water since they still have a Corps dike in Lincoln area and have
some temporary levees and need drainage, etc. Consulting firm will be paid on an hourly to a max. type contract, they have their fees and when get contract back through the negotiation process they will give anticipated fee and would bring that back to committee.

4. Matter of authorization to advertise for Greenway mowing.
Mr. Grotte reported that Urban Development developed contract to mow the area in the Greenway downtown and some vacant lots on the dry-side of the levee which is a regularly mowed type of effort, but what they are looking for is mowing the remainder of the City-owned property in the Greenway and vacant lots in the path of the dike, etc. and would have various levels of mowing, and requested authorization to advertise for the mowing contract, and have coordinated with Urban Development and they will mowing from Kennedy Bridge to Point Bridge, and this would be for everything else other than Perk District lands.

Moved by K.Polovitz and Glassheim to authorize call for bids for mowing. Motion carried. (Comm.only)

5. Matter of farming in the Greenway.
Referred to staff.

6. Matter of authorization for selection of Greenway promotional video.
Lisa Dressler stated that they want to ask approval from the committee to go through the selection process for the promotional video as part of Charles Flinks’ contract, had provision that they would work with a local entity.

Moved by Bakken and Glassheim to put out RFP for the promotional video. Motion carried. (Comm. only)

7. Matter of amendment to HPC Contract for professional services on the hazardous waste
investigation at four sites. (Project #4956)._______________________________________
Mike Yavarow, project engineer, reported that HPC is High Plains Consortium, the consulting firm that they hired to investigate the four potential hazardous waste sites that were identified previously by the Corps, ie., the form coal gasification site, Freight Depot site, the RR Depot and the English Coulee pesticide site; and basically at this time they’ve been working close with NSP and have identified the majority of the work, and analysis at this point has eliminated 3 of the sites and dealing with the NSP site and are trying to get additional money to finish the analysis and complete the report and wrap up this part of
the project. He stated this work was cited in the Corps’ work, their mediation work costing approx. $1.6 million, which would have been money that would have had to come out our
betterments, and at this point in time verbally NSP has assumed all liability for the work
and expects to potentially mobile a consultant to further examine the contamination for the
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east of the site and clean up site this fall. Hafner questioned if that would include the
expenses we've already had, Mr. Yavarow stated we haven’t asked them to do that.

Moved by Carpenter and Polovitz to approve the amendment for an increased cost of $14,823.00. Motion carried.

8. Matter of amendment to in-kind contract with GFEG for property survey work along the English Coulee (#4821) and along the levees (#4820).__________________________
Mr. Yavarow presented two separate amendments, one for the English Coulee work and one for work along the dike line; that the amendment for the English Coulee which totals an estimated quantity fixed price contract of $82,782.79, and hopefully will complete the entire surveying work required on the Coulee, that this is not construction surveying, but is surveying to identify ownership of parcels, prepare rights of way, basically all the parcels we will be acquiring will be partial takes because it’s all farmland, and will have to prepare certificates that will be used to get appraisals and for the recordation. He stated that on the City side in town, $56,783.81, there is replatting that will have to be done which shows up in the estimate where it doesn’t show up in the English Coulee. Mr. Yavarow stated that each additional piece of work that has been done up to this point required its own surveying but these are strictly for the acquisition part of the project. Mr. Grotte stated that GFEG’s contract is for several different types of in-kind services including lift station relocation, watermain relocation, sewer relocation and this is one element to that contract and the way it is set up is that each time we have a piece of work identified we bring it in as an amendment to the basic contract and will notify committee that the in-town levee part of it is first installment, there will be more costs as the continue, and this is the first piece of that and will have more amendments later; for the English Coulee part should cover whatever they need to do on the Coulee and part of the $350 million. Polovitz and Glassheim moved approval of the amendments to the existing contracts in the amounts of $82,782.79 for Project No. 4821 and $56,783.81 for Project No. 4820.

The committee scheduled their next meeting for Wednesday, May 3, 2000 at 5:00 p.m.; and adjourned their meeting at 6:00 p.m.

Alice Fontaine
City Clerk

Dated: 4/24/00