City of Estacada
Infastructure
Committee
Meeting
Minutes
1) Call to Order – Bill Strawn
2) Roll Call & Announcements
Present: Randy Ealy, Bill Strawn, Jerry Polzin, Diedre Landon
Absent: Richard Hartwig
3) Status Reports:
4) Proposed Recycling Center~
o Jerry mentioned that the proposed site of the recycling center is not
very convenient. The wastewater
treatment plant is not centrally located in town and he wonders if this will
affect the amount of use that the center will receive.
o The center will handle both cardboard and newspaper. Neither one of these items are easy to
transport, so the location shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Most people would choose to transport the
recycleables in a vehicle, so the extra distance shouldn’t be too much of an
issue.
o Once the site is in place, if there doesn’t seem to be much use at this
location, is it possible to try relocating it to another property closer to the
downtown area?
o While the site may be inconvenient, it is a trade off: cleanliness for
a better situation and location.
5) Main Street Re-Alignment~
o Jerry mentioned that he would be interested at looking at the idea of a
round-about at the intersection of Highway 211 and Highway 224. He feels that this option is both cheaper and
safer. The CIP does list this as an
alternate method.
o Randy feels that we need to work within the neighborhood to get support
for this project. Working directly with
the property owners to find out what concerns they have, so that we can address
them directly.
§
The councilors seem to have
reacted well to the proposal. There
hasn’t been any negative feedback at this point.
6) Wade Street – Stop Signs~
o The idea has been implemented and it is now operational. We relocated the signs that are stopping
traffic along 2nd Avenue and rotated them so that 2nd
Avenue is a steady flow of traffic, but that Wade and Zobrist are stopped. This allows better safety for the children,
while also slowing down traffic in the area.
§
This change has helped the
East and West traffic, but it hasn’t helped with the speeding along 2nd
Avenue.
·
Could we possibly add a stop
sign at 4th & Wade to slow down the traffic?
7) SCA Roadway Improvements
They looked at cost estimates for a full-blown
reconstruction constructed to City standards.
Slurry sealing is not an option due to the bad alligatoring along the
road.
8) The 1st block section base wasn’t stable during the reconstruction that was done in the past.
9) The 2nd block has had pavement failure, it has never been reconstructed.
We could strip the East side and repave with minimal mat or rebuild it to meet our standards. The cost is approximately $50,000 per block.
10) 2002 SCA Funding Approval
We received a letter from the Oregon Department of
Transportation. They have approved our
$25,000 grant for the 2002 SCA project.
11) Franchise Fees
Many cities are looking at the possibility of charging a
1-5% franchise fee on all utilities that are located in the right-of-way.
12)
The City of Estacada has an
excavation permit. Do we have a
right-of-way permit? Not really, but we
use the excavation permit for work that is done in the City right-of-way. How do we track them? We track most of the work that is done in the
right-of-way through locates that we are called to mark.
o Franchise customers have never been charged for the excavation permits,
because we feel that this is covered in their franchise fee. We mark courtesy locates so that they don’t
cut into our existing systems.
o Why isn’t the City a part of the one-call locate service? We do not have digital maps, so we cannot
submit them to the locate service. They
do not allow you to sign up unless you can provide them with maps that outline
your utility lines.
13) Excavation Permit
Who do we charge for excavation permits? Homeowners, contractors, etc.
14)
Do we or can we charge
consulting fees? We do not charge them
currently, we will look into other City policies to see how they collect fees
for various administrative services.
15)
What do other cities charge
for excavation permits? Call around to
get some prices.
16) Planning/Building Department
Fees
Randy would like to do an audit of the planning
department. He wants to start generating
some revenue to help our planning department get out of the hole.
17)
Can we generate some extra
revenue using business licenses or excavation permits? We can charge for the business license and
excavation permit and divide the profit between the funds based on what the
project entails.
o We can charge an annual business license fee for business that do a lot
of work in the City, and possibly create a one-time fee for contractors that
will only be doing one job per year in the City limits? This would give them a break on one or two
permits, but if they do 3 or more jobs they would end up saving money with the
annual license.
18)
Can we charge consulting
fees? If someone wants soft-costs for
development, etc. We can charge a flat
fee for them to sit down in the office with Bill Strawn and Diedre Landon to
get some prices and code information.
But this will generate revenue even if the project never makes it out of
the planning stages.
o POD, can we get the planner and/or the building inspector in town on
specific days and hours so that we can advertise?
§
Residents would know that
they will be in town and can make arrangements to come by the office to have
any questions answered?
·
Do other cities charge for
POD’s?
·
Are we going to continue with
the quarterly newsletters to the residents?
If so, we could advertise this in the newsletter.
19)
The City should implement a
sign permit fee. This fee can be charged
on all non-permitted signs within the City.
This would help the City regulate which signs were being installed and
we could set design standards.
20) Misc. Information
We need to
begin budgeting the employee hours more effectively. We should budget them in the fund that the
employees are working in. Not just take
a guess as to where the money will come from.
Track the
budget status, stop changing the line items.
This will allow us to find out where we need to budget more money next
year, so that our budget will be more accurately demonstrating where the money
is being spent.
Change the bar
graph on the Activity Report. If you use
different fills, such as patterns this would allow black and white copies to
give an accurate reading as well as color copies.
21)
Save the e-mail attachments
in different forms so that everyone can open them. The office 2000 version is to new for many
computers. Please save in an older
version so that everyone can open the attachments.
22) Member Recruitment
They would like to recruit at least one additional member
to be a part of the infastructure committee.
There was an advertisement sent out by City Hall for some new
members. No one had any suggestions at
the meeting.
23) Agenda for Next Meeting
No one had any specific topics by the end of this
meeting. If anyone comes up with a topic
that they would like to see brought up at the next meeting, they will contact
Diedre Landon via phone, fax or e-mail.
She will see that it is put on the agenda.
Phone: 503-630-8274
Fax: 503-630-8276
E-Mail: Landon@cityofestacada.org
24) Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at
6:01PM by Randy Ealy.