Annotated Agenda

 Noteworthy items on Monday night at 7pm include the Council's consideration of Craig Berte for Public Safety Director  (Item #13),  approval of the city's new Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Specialist job description (Item #14), the proposed adoption of a Resilience Plan for the city (Item #30) and contract approval for the $1.5M Center Street Streetscaping Project up in North Cedar (Item #35). The meeting also features a  LOT of administrative items like health care coverage approvals and towing agreements which always come up right before the new fiscal year starts. <

This week, we have several significant items to consider in the Standing Committees and Regular Council meetings.   First, the Community Relations Committee will meet at 5:10pm to learn about the Resilience Plan, as well as a Destination Iowa grant proposal to better connect the downtowns of Cedar Falls and Waterloo via the Cedar River.  Councilor Ganfield will head up that first meeting as the chair of that standing committee; I'll attend the standing committee meetings but will not chair them.  This will be our first time with this new approach to distributed governance.

Hello neighbors!  In the Monday regular council meeting Monday night, the council will vote on formalizing some changes to the council Standing Committees (Items 13 and 19).  Also, the council will hear a new initiative that's been successfully adopted in other Midwestern cities called "No Mow May", which allows residents to refrain from mowing in May in order to encourage the recovery of our decimated pollinator insect populations.  I've included the details as Item #21. The council is also being asked to approve up to $39K for our river consultant to update the plans for the River

Monday night's meeting (starting at 7pm)  is fairly routine; the only major new items (in my opinion) are a request for city council to appoint an acting police chief for 180 days (Item 11) and an ordinance revision which would remove exemptions for pre-1969 homes to tap into the sanitary sewer to remove stormwater.  

Prior to that meeting, at 5:10 the council will meet in a work session to discuss collaborative opportunities with senior UNI leadership (50 minutes) and then a continuation of our discussion of the new downtown zoning ordinance.  

This is a very involved council meeting, with the most significant item likely being the vote on the maximum levy (Item #3),  Many other administrative items are being considered as well.  Also, I'll be removing the Personnel Policies (Item #15) from the evening's agenda and expect it will be considered on March 7th instead.