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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-02-14 Government Operations Committee Minutes Government Operations Committee February 14, 2012 Minutes Councilors: Gallant, Blanchette, Longo Staff: Farrar, Gastia, Yardley, Willette, McNeil Others: Christopher Nill and several members of the Bangor Dog Park Committee Meeting Convened: 5:00 PM 1. Resolve 12-086, Accepting and Appropriating a $79,000 Grant from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services – STD Clinic/HIV Counseling, Testing, and Referral Councilor Longo made a motion to move the consent agenda. Moved and seconded. Unanimous committee vote. 2. Bangor Dog Park Project Update Tracy Willette, Director of Parks and Recreation, presented and stated that Members of the Bangor Dog Park project would like the City to consider the Essex Woods property as a new location (was intended to be a plan B site to Round House). The Essex Woods site was th discussed at the Nov 15 Government Ops meeting and feedback provided was to reach out to neighbors to see what their concerns are and to be sure the park did not impede on existing activities. Mr. Willette would like to move forward to full Council for consideration to change the dog park location from Round House to Essex Woods. Mr. Nill from the Dog Park Committee handed out photos and addressed two concerns from the previous meeting: 1) Feedback was obtained from the two closest neighbors, 673 & 671 Essex St. Mr. Atwood’s biggest concern was noise from barking dogs. Mr. Nill said that he explained to him that this would not be like a kennel and there would not be constant barking. He also mentioned that the park hours would be similar to the local park hours. Mr. Nill said that Mr. Atwood did mention that he has pets and enjoys seeing the dogs there. The second neighbor was concerned with cleanliness and if the location would impede other uses. Mr. Nill stated that he explained that there would be on-site clean-up bags and trash containment that would be taken care of on a regular basis. He also explained that there are new site options. Mr. Nill said they both appreciated that we are including their input in the decisions and he invited them to come to future City Council meetings. 2) Site location: The committee is proposing three sites for the training yard that they feel will not impede other uses in Essex Woods. Site A) Drawback: proximity to the basketball court. Transplanting trees between the two might help. Site B) Drawback: is the proximity to large dog park. This could be distracting. Ground work would be minimal. Site C) Impact of integrity to Essex Park Woods. A lot of trees would be affected and may impact esthetics. (least preferable spot of Dog Park Committee) Mr. Nill explained to the Council members that they would only thin trees as needed and would work with the forestry manager. Longo moved staff recommendation on this item. Seconded. Opened for public comment: Ms. Dolly, a member of the dog park committee, said that they are planning to have a town meeting to let everyone know what they are planning to do, where the funding will be coming from, who will be taking care of the grounds, etc. The committee endorsed the proposal to designate Essex Woods as the new location, and all three sites will be sent to Full Council for discussion with the understanding that site A is the Dog Park Committee’s preferred site for the small training yard. Unanimous Committee Vote. 3. HVAC Remediation Project at the Police Department Chief Gastia stated that in Dec 2006 they took occupancy of current new police station. Since that time there have been recurring problems with the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system; not heating and cooling properly, a lot of humidity problems, not proper exchange of air. The PD has worked with the architects, contractors as well as sub-contractors who were all unable to identify the problems. An independent consultant, Turner Building Science and Design, was hired in June 2010 to assess situation and make recommendations. Based on the recommendations, in Sept 2010, WBRC, designers of the building, indicated that they saw some validity and conducted a cost analysis at their expense. This report was received Feb 2010. April 2011, the City evaluated all of the recommendations from Turner and WBRC. Cost analysis has come in at approximately $178,142 to fix. The City has approximately $121,000 in original building funds (retained with the understanding that we may have to use for this). We have also looked at the Police Dept Operational budget which has funding to purchase a maintenance agreement which has not been expended. Chief Gastia is requesting approval to release the RFP next week to continue this process. Chief Gastia explained that if we do not complete this project, the system will continue to not be working properly and there are also future concerns (rust/mold) due to the humidity levels, which are over 75% in during the summer in the fitness room. He also feels that we can also save money on electric bills by completing this project. Councilor Longo moved to approve staff recommendation. Motion seconded. Councilor Gallant stated that this committee is just endorsing sending out the RFP at this time. He mentioned that this is a huge investment city has made in this new police station and we have seen where high humidity has caused problems with other city buildings. Unanimous Committee Vote. 4. Regulation of Political Signs Councilor Longo moved to postpone this item indefinitely. Councilor Blanchette would like the item to be heard. Councilor Longo withdrew his motion, but would like to reintroduce it after the discussion. Norm Heitmann, City Solicitor, stated that some of the concerns were duration, size, st placement and numbers. Mr. Heitmann said that the signs are protected by the 1 amendment. State or local government has to have a compelling interest as to why they are regulating the signs, and ordinances should spell those out. He mentioned that different municipalities & state have different rights when it comes to public vs private property. We would need to look for guidance from the legislative history of court cases that have been out there already. 1) In regards to a challenge, if someone wants to know why we are doing what we are doing, this needs to be clear and 2) if there is a challenge, we need to have the information to back up what we did. Councilor Gallant opened the item for public comment. Resident, Steve Sleeper of Silver Road expressed his disapproval of this idea. He painted more than a dozen signs in the last election and stated that they are very careful about where they were placed. He feels it is a really bad idea to be limiting the size of the signs. He thinks it is working well as it is and does not think that it needs to be changed. Councilor Longo agreed with Mr. Sleeper’s comments and moved to postpone this item indefinitely. Councilor Gallant seconds this after the discussion. The motion passed to postpone the item indefinitely. 5. Community Connector Transit System Update – Additional buses, Advertising and New Route Superintendent McNeil stated that a year ago some used buses from New York became available. The state of Maine received 14 of them, and Bangor received 5 of the 14. The life of this type of bus is 500,000+ miles and these have been excellently maintained. We have started working on them 2 weeks ago, adding our logo, installing some purchased items and some from older buses, etc. We need to have driver training. It is expensive to paint them all red; however Mr. McNeil feels that we need to make them look more in line with our fleet. He brought pictures to show current white buses, plus full-wrapped busses. He asked our advertising company if they could wrap new Orion buses to take some of the expense from repainting entire bus. The proposal is to just paint the front of the bus red, so citizens will be able to identify them as transit buses, and this can be done at a fairly reasonable cost. Mr. Farrar explained that they are asking permission just to paint front nose of the buses. This does not necessarily require full council approval, but given the interest that the committee and the council have had, we just wanted to run the concept by the committee. Councilor Gallant thought that $2,500 per bus is excessive. Mr. McNeil clarified $2,500 is the total for 5 busses. He stated that the red nose helps citizens identify that this is a city bus. Local company came in and said they could paint it within a week or two. Longo moved staff recommendation. Gallant seconded. Vote doubted. Longo: yes, Gallant: yes, Blanchette: no. 2-1, motion passed. Discussion of route: Now that we have the buses needed to perform this new service, nd we are planning to begin on April 2. Plan on M-F running about 12hrs per day. Mr. Farrar commented that when they met with the Council last spring to discuss adding the new route, it was mentioned that we would be contacting some of the businesses in that area to see if they would be willing to make a financial contribution. Now that we have the buses, it would be our intention to follow up on that Council Order that gives our staff or a representative of Council the opportunity to go out and meet with some of those businesses. He does not see a need to come back to a committee with the outcome, but will inform the Council if we are successful or not. Meeting Adjourned: 6:20 PM