From Agenda to Action: What Happened at the Ames City Council April 28 Meeting

Welcome to From Agenda to Action, a city of Ames podcast to help residents better understand

decisions being made at Ames City Council meetings.

I'm Susan Guiasta with City Communications and Outreach.

Today we'll go over highlights and items discussed at the April 28th Ames City Council meeting

to help me explain the meetings I'm joined by Ames Mayor John Hala.

Hi Susan.

So a lot of the items on the agenda, but overall a relatively short meeting, anything that

kind of catches your eye when you look over the agenda?

Yes, it was highlighted in the preview.

There was an acceptance of developer's proposal for purchasing six single family market

rate laws at the Baker subdivision and this is the kickoff of seeing those come to the

market and there's an excess of 20 different market rate laws that are available.

And so the council approved a proposal from Keystone Development Group and the motion

included closing on those laws before October 1st of this year.

So hopefully we'll start seeing some ground move and some construction happening.

Hopefully this fall if not early next year and having a six new single family homes

hit in the market and a price range which is really more in a lower tier of price for

the Ames community.

Well I know housing has been a long time priority of the Ames City Council so this certainly

moves you closer to those goals.

It absolutely does and we're looking forward to seeing those get going but then after

that additional tranche of lots will come out for sale also.

So ultimately we'll have well over between 20 and 30 new single family homes in that area

and in price points that are again the lower end of the market price point for Ames and

we believe that that will be a real great place for people to get started in owning a

home.

Great.

Well we jumped right into that planning issue just a reminder for those of you who

listened to our preview.

We did get through proclamations all of our consent agenda and the subdivision was part

of our planning part of the agenda.

We also had a report from our Water and Pollution Control Department about the Zina World

Water District.

Yes the man for rural water has continued to go up and so the request was to increase

the amount of gallons be able to be purchased per day from our water treatment plant and

that's been increased up to a half million gallons a day and it also included some amendments

to the previous agreement and also the purchase out of rights in some limited areas of the

Zina World Water District areas that council was very interested in seeing amended which

will be reduced the cost of some of the developments that are going on up in the northwest

part of town and hopefully further streamline the construction of new single family homes

and or multi-family residences up in that area.

Sounds like good news speaking of water and water rates.

We had first reading of an ordinance regarding water and sewer rates.

Yes every year council considers the specific water and sewer increases this year the water

rates are going up by 3.5% and sanitary sewer rates are going up 5.5% which will be billed

on or after July 1st of this year and people may wonder why do they continue to go up?

There's a very specific process that they go through financial modeling that goes on and

a lot of the money which is being collected helps to further cost and or go towards paying the

debt down on some significant improvements are being made at the water treatment plant as well

as a wastewater treatment plant. So one thing that we always like to do whenever there's

rate increases is explain to people the ways that they can mitigate those expenses by conserving

natural resources. So I know the city has rebates and information on the website to help them decrease

their use of water and thus reduce both water and sewer. That's correct since a sewer is billed on

a a pro rata of the water usage you're right the reduction in water consumption actually translates

into reduction and the sewer rates. Well thank you Mayor Harlow for that wrap up of the meeting.

Just remember this podcast is one of the many ways the city is working to keep residents informed

about what happens at aim city council meetings. Our next regular city councilman is scheduled for

Tuesday May 12th and we'll be back both before and after that meeting to help you stay informed.

From Agenda to Action is a City of Ames podcast