03/02/1999 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 3/2/99 • Ordinance 99-25, which provides for the borrowing of $150,000 to fund the •~:~. ChestnutBarton storm project. The committee unanimously recommended approval of Ordinance 99-25. 2) With the agenda being complete, Councilwoman Kasler raised questions regarding Ordinance 99-18, specifically regarding the loss of five vacation days for those city employees who do not take five days of vacation in any calendar year. After some discussion, and based on Councilwoman Kasler's research, the committee unanimously recommended holding Ordinance 99-18 in committee. The chair directed that it be returned to the Law Department for further review. Mrs. Kasler, member of the Finance Committee, gave a minority report: 1) With regard to Ordinance 99-22, street lighting represents a $100,000 portion of the ordinance. As previously mentioned, there were lengthy discussions regarding what approach should be taken to address street lighting needs throughout the city. The administration proposed beginning with the oldest streets first and spending $100,000 in 1999, $100,000 in 2000 and approximately $200,000 in 2001 on this installation. Although the oldest streets first approach may on the surface appear to establish objectivity to the process, presently there appear to be several flaws in that proposal in her opinion. The oldest street first idea has been revered as a plan. However, the oldest to the newest is as far as it goes. The following are the flaws that cause Mrs. Kasler concern with this ordinance: • First, to date, Council has not been apprised of any costs for performing any lighting installation on any streets. Engineering estimates have not yet been completed; and, therefore, a plan to spend $100,000 on street lighting this year is merely a plan to spend $100,00 on a yet to be determined number of streets and yet to be determined streets. • With regard to the yet to be determined streets, Mrs. Kasler would like to request verification that the streets named in the body of the Ordinance are in fact among the oldest in the city. If they are not among the oldest, then that list flies in the face of this what is presumed to be an oldest to newest. • Third, and most importantly and probably what took the most discussion during the committee meeting, was that over the years the city has deemed it necessary for a variety of reasons to survey select neighborhoods regarding their desire for street lighting. Whether these surveys were done because these residents represented the squeaky wheel and were simply the most vocal in their requests, is frankly irrelevant at this point. Historic reasons for surveying those neighborhoods has not been duly investigated or clearly established. Notwithstanding those reasons, the city took it upon itself to perform that survey in certain areas. The survey included questions regarding whether or not street lights were desired and further requested residents to select from various styles of lighting and poles from pictures provided with this survey. Certainly, it is understandable that anyone asked to select the street light they would prefer would be under the impression that in fact street lights were being provided. In fact, to the best of her knowledge, these residents were promised street lighting. Despite that survey, and more importantly despite that promise, out of all of ~"~` the areas that were surveyed, Twin Woods is the only area that has not received street 4 i