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in Grant County · Public works committee (part 2) · 2025-04-15 · full transcript
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Source: YouTube automatic captions. Part two of the same committee meeting; the recording begins mid-sentence. Copied into the combined index from the marion-city-council-indexed report; same text, key prefixed by body.
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    0:00  I don't know what it would take, how long the paving is meant to last. Um I've been through some of these alleys that are in pretty bad shape and that is
    0:09  a heck of a bumpy ride u for sure. So they definitely need attention, but you know that would be my question is, you know, is this a temporary fix? Is it a
    0:17  permanent fix? What's the upkeep going to look like? Those sorts of things.
    0:26  Thank you, Robin.
    0:30  Um, Mike Graph, do you mind if you come up and I can ask a couple questions of you, please?
    0:45  Mike Graph, director of engineering.
    0:46  Thank you. Um, we had talked a little bit over the last week about alleys. Can you give some of the um the statistic
    0:55  information about number of alleys that are or percentage that are paved right now versus uh stone
    1:03  um percentage that kind of what you were thinking of what was getting repaired with this round and what was still
    1:10  sitting out there. So when I was tasked last year to come up with uh just a cost
    1:19  analysis, uh I drove alleys, I didn't drive every alley. It's I mean that's there's two two people in our department
    1:27  to try to qualify all that is is rather difficult. So we put together the numbers that that best served the dollar
    1:35  amount that we were given to look at. Uh we were given directions on how to do that.
    1:44  Um so people that uh that have paved
    1:51  alleys, I would I would say that they would probably tell you that yeah, they're paved, but that's just because there's a little bit of asphalt on them.
    1:58  Doesn't mean that they're that they're paved. Um so I I don't really I don't have a
    2:06  percentage number for you. I I just know that uh when we started looking at it, we we decided to go into quadrants and
    2:15  start working our way out because it's so difficult when you're bringing equipment to move it around to all over
    2:22  town. So, we tried to tried to focus in one area. Uh, and I think obviously we
    2:28  started in district one. Uh, and uh, we we did quite a bit through the
    2:34  wintertime uh, and moved on into Ward Five and now we've kind of stepped stepped back. The asphalt plants are
    2:42  open. Um, they opened up actually the 14th and already broke down. So, we didn't get binder down on, but we've got
    2:50  some a couple very long alley in district one that's that's prepared for binder and surface. Um, so I don't have
    2:59  those specifics. I just I'm taking them individually as I go. So,
    3:07  well, and I think we had talked maybe kind of just generalities. Would you say 50% of the city is paved alleys or uh
    3:17  No, I would say probably 40%. Is paved versus rock because I think uh under
    3:24  under Maui's administration uh they started in in the north part, worked their way back and then uh they
    3:32  typically used their own manpower. They they bought a paver uh and uh they didn't do they did a little bit of
    3:40  grading and then they just put an inch and a half of asphalt on it. They didn't didn't do what I would consider a
    3:47  longevity. Uh obviously alleys don't get the the same amount of traffic that streets do. So that they they've held up
    3:54  for quite a while doing that. Doesn't make it right. Uh but I would say actual asphalt paving that was done was probably about 40% under that.
    4:06  Um, if we did a program, would I'm trying to think of where I was going with that.
    4:16  Um, do you feel like it would be realistic to look at a 10-year time frame? Um, or would we in order to do it
    4:25  right and make sure that they meet a specification that'll hold up? Yeah.
    4:30  Well, I mean, it just depends on on obviously where the finances come from. Uh, some
    4:39  years you may have a a a windfall uh or um you know, you might find money either from the county that like we did with
    4:47  the 1.1. So, you're able to do a few do able to do more uh in that year. Uh but
    4:54  let's if you're just in reality speaking and we're looking at let's just say a
    5:00  $500,000 number um then I mean the the math is going to fluctuate because like
    5:07  uh uh M Mr. McKinley said uh that you know some areas are going to require an
    5:14  8 inch some are going to require four inches of stone and three and a half. So it so you're going to spread your dollars out more. Some some are going to
    5:22  take more. So that's why when I gave you the options, you know, I tried to I I always hasten to say if you do every
    5:31  alley, it's going to cost this or if it's every alley, it's going to cost this because as we know, every alley is different. Um and I'm not going to
    5:38  disparage any homeowner that believes that their that their um alley is 100% pristine. I mean, if that's been
    5:47  down for 30 years, the subbase has deteriorated. Um, and you just have to look at each alley in particular. So,
    5:54  that's going to change. Again, I think myself looking at it as as a consumer uh
    6:02  or as a taxpayer that I don't know that, you know, each year might be better to sit down and say, what do we have? How
    6:11  much money do we have? And if we're going to allocate that money, put a stipulation on it and say with that
    6:18  money, this is how we're going to do them. The engineering department doesn't really care. I'm not I'm not advocating for stone. I'm not advocating for
    6:25  asphalt. Uh we'll do whatever that is required of us. Um, but again, I I have
    6:32  to be cognizant as you folks do with the tax dollars. And I think it we might be better served just like knowing what we
    6:40  have each year on the tax side and and like we have with many things, put a stipulation on how you use that money
    6:48  and and and the way that you do the the asphalt. That that's just the way that I would look at it. Now, can the alleys
    6:56  um if they were paved, can that be part of that community crossings or is that for roads specifically? It's it's for
    7:03  roads specifically. Um, in order, and I've done a lot of research on this, uh, an
    7:11  alleyway would have to be a dedicated street, which, um, then you would have to, um, name the street. You'd have to
    7:20  dedicate the street. Then you have to you have to plow all of it, just like you would do streets. Now you would be dedicating an alleyway that that now
    7:29  requires more maintenance for which I don't know how many alleys get actual snow plow coming down that may you know
    7:37  Robin stated that they they help assist if they can't get a truck down there but I don't know I I don't drive that truck.
    7:43  I don't know how many alleys actually get done. So there are stipulations that you have to do and there is still no if
    7:51  if you take that to the state and say we're going to put we've dedicated this this alley we've named this alley and we're going we want to put it in system
    7:59  that they still would allow it. So you could go through that process and still not get any funds from the state.
    8:06  Okay. And then to further understand, do we have a a general width of an alley or is it
    8:14  just kind of a mix depending on how the subdivision was built when it was built?
    8:18  It's a mix. I I'd say standard alleys are 10 to 11 ft. Some are a little wider. There's no there's no two-way alleys. They don't have any of that. Uh
    8:28  and uh most of the alleys that when they were put in um were were done by the subdivision. They weren't done to any
    8:37  particular specification. They were just access points. So, uh although you know that there's rightway and and I want to
    8:45  make sure that everybody understands that there there's an alley rightway, but it's typically the easement. You know, it's it's it's for the utilities
    8:53  to put sewer and and water and fiber optic and that kind of stuff. It was never deemed from from the get-go that it
    9:01  would be something that it would be traveled by the general public. would be for the use of that the property owners and that's what I that was the next
    9:09  question was as far as easements go. So technically while there may be a utility easement there is the alley technically
    9:15  the property owners no land or is it pulled separate? It it is pulled separate. It's done by the platting uh
    9:22  and and so we have there's lots of alleys that are out there that were platted but never developed. They're
    9:29  just grass and trees and uh so it the way that it was done numbers of years ago. It was it in the plat it it showed
    9:38  an alley and it showed a basically a rightaway and easement. Uh but nothing has ever been that I can see that was
    9:46  ever put in writing. How how they were to be maintained from the very first day that they were put in to where we're at now.
    9:53  Okay. Other questions?
    9:58  I have a question. Sorry. Go ahead.
   10:15  This is obviously a very peculiar situation
   10:30  because it better pick out a district and work on that for a year. Give me some of your ideas where we need to go at least in year one.
   10:43  Well, again, I didn't go out and evaluate every alley. So, I guess that's a great question. I
   10:51  if it's it's very suscept it's very I susceptible to what you think is about
   10:58  Ally and what Erica might think is about Ally. And then I've got, you know, they're contacting you as council people that says my alley is worse than that
   11:05  alley over there. And then somebody has to be the intermediary has to go out and say that one's worse and this one's worse and then try to try to scale that
   11:14  down. Not a bad way to do it because there are alleys that as some folks have have talked about that are landmines.
   11:21  You can't get a car down them. Uh yeah, we you know over the years all we've done is either add stone to it or if they were
   11:30  paved just throw some some asphalt in it. That's literally all we've done.
   11:34  This is the first year uh or actually starting last year is this is the first time that any administration other than
   11:42  the Mauy administration has ever talked about alleys. Not that it's not a great conversation. These people are affected
   11:49  by it. But trying to quantify them the same as I do a street is is a lot
   11:56  harder. I really respect you as a city engineer. I think
   12:26  Well, I mean, obviously this is this is a different different situation than we've ever dealt with before.
   12:33  Um, again, I'm my department is not uh we will do
   12:41  whatever the the the council and and the administration asks us to do. Uh I I you
   12:48  know, that's my job to do that. Uh I'm not in favor either way. I if it if it helps the general public get something
   12:55  done. But I I am a little concerned with if if I go qualify some areas uh and
   13:03  then I deem it that it's stone having to do maybe a process of having to have more conversations about it. I think
   13:11  that that that t just takes more time. I think whoever's in my seat with with experience or whatever, you just have to
   13:20  rely on them to do do it. And you're going to get calls uh you know from constituents and say why did you do that
   13:26  alley and not you know let me let me be the bad guy or whoever sits in my seat be the bad guy because they're the ones that's got to go out there and qualify
   13:35  them and we're not always right. I mean there's lots of valleys that we miss and still missed and probably will miss. So, it's it's tough.
   13:49  I did have a question on you the percentage of stone alleys. I'm just wondering how you got that because everywhere I've driven around town other
   13:57  than new alleys, I I haven't found any stone and then I mean Google Street View, I I drop a pin everywhere and all I see is asphalt. So, I'm Where are all
   14:05  these stone alleys that you're talking about?
   14:08  Well, it majority of uh Mr. Ford Ice's area was asphalted. The further that you
   14:16  got south, it it was hit and miss. So, uh and again, I'm not saying that I've driven every alley, but I would say if I
   14:25  go by an alley right now that it's probably I'm seeing a 60/40. When I drive an alley, I'm like, "Oh, that's
   14:32  stone." Or that one has been asphalt uh that is no longer asphalt. Now, it's turned to stone. So that's that's kind
   14:39  of where I get
   14:50  that other questions,
   14:52  [Music]
   14:53  comments, Mr. Kane, I thought I saw you. Well, I I I did raise my hand and Mr.
   15:00  Brunner commented uh a lot of things that I were was going to say, but uh
   15:08  I'm going to sit here and I I don't have any answers. Um I don't have a good answer to to our problem that we're
   15:15  facing. I think we all know that we're dealing with a finite amount of money and if we if we uh we do have a plan in place now.
   15:26  Um, and that's why we're sitting here in front of this committee because we've stoned some alleys
   15:35  and the taxpayers are not satisfied with that. Understand that. Um, I was a part
   15:43  of the uh, city council back in the 90s under the Ron Mauy administration when we paved a lot of alley alleys
   15:51  and the main reason was we wanted to get away from Mr. Mauy, Mayor Mauy wanted to get away from the dust. It was a dust
   15:59  bowl in the in the middle of the summer in August and you hadn't had rain for six weeks and so one car drives up and
   16:06  down an alley and it's a dust bowl and you've got nice vehicles um and you you you either wash it by
   16:15  hand or you run through the car wash and the next day it's like you haven't done anything. So I I I understand all that.
   16:22  Um but here again we are dealing with a finite amount of money if we start paving
   16:30  alleys. We're we're robbing money from other projects to pave alleys. And
   16:39  so what's the most important things to do? Our biggest expenditure in the city is is police and fire protection.
   16:51  Um, we certainly don't want to pull back there an inner police and fire. I think we I would hope that we would all agree
   17:00  with that. So, we have limited amount of monies uh that we can pull from other departments
   17:08  uh really chump change to to throw at this problem. So, um like I said, I
   17:15  don't have an answer. All I know is we have a finite amount of money to deal with and what's coming down in the next two
   17:24  or three years. We're not really sure tax-wise. So, I think we have to be very very careful. I don't think we need to
   17:33  have a knee-jerk reaction here and say, "Wow, we we need to do this and we need to start this in the next 30 or 60 days
   17:41  and start paving all the alleys." And so I think we just have to to tread very lightly and I think we all need to do a lot of
   17:50  research as we move forward on this project. Like I said, I don't have an answer. So thank you.
   17:59  Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Um yeah, we had a lot of thorough discussions about
   18:06  this a while back about paving, not paving, some or the others and the cost of the projects and there was a lot of
   18:15  intelligent discretion there. In my mind, this ordinance seems to um
   18:23  approach the problem with a blunt instrument. I think it's kind of heavy-handed. Yeah, I thought we had had
   18:30  this figured out without a new ordinance. And if trust me, if I had I don't have an alley. If I had an alley
   18:37  that wasn't on a hill, I'd love for it to be paved. So anyway, um but I thought
   18:43  we had this figured out and it would have been without burdening future
   18:51  administrations and those administrations not knowing how it would be funded. just to me it seems it's not
   18:57  unlike an unfunded mandate. Um there's chaos going on in Washington. There's
   19:04  chaos going on in Indianapolis. We don't know what is going to be what we're
   19:11  going to be sitting on, what we will have. Um, and it also it it allows for a couple
   19:20  exceptions, but rather in my mind, rather than relying on the intelligence and the training and the experience of
   19:28  the city engineer and that department, it also includes uh the city council in determining the request worthiness. I
   19:37  don't know beans from applesauce about paving. Um, I would listen to I mean, maybe there really are Republican and
   19:44  Democratic ways of paving streets and alleys. I don't know. I just think this not opposed to paving alleys. Good
   19:53  heavens, but we got to pay for it. I don't like saddling future administrations with unknown costs and
   20:01  how they'd pay for it. I just think we need a lot more discussion about this. And thank you. Thank you.
   20:10  I see one more comment. If we can keep it fairly quick, we're going to have to close up here for the other meeting. So,
   20:19  okay, you guys were saying uh you know, you guys have to pay for it. You guys have to pay for it. Uh alleyways and
   20:27  easement uh through mine. I got I got electric going through there. I got cable going through there and I got
   20:35  phone. Cable company happens to be Bright House. They got to use that easement. Okay. Uh Duke Energy and stuff
   20:42  of that nature. Well, if they're going to use an easement, they ought to be able they ought to pay something, you know, to be
   20:50  able to use that easement. Why not try getting a hold of them and say, "Hey, you want to use this easement? You guys
   20:57  need these alleys paved? They're driving big trucks down through there and stuff. Have them pitch in. You know, you
   21:06  ask the Marian Utility Company, hey, could could they afford to I don't know if you guys have or not, but get a
   21:14  whole ask them, you know, uh we pay enough in our cable bill anyway and then they're tearing up the roads and stuff.
   21:23  I mean, are they sitting there just tax-free, whatever, get to do whatever they want? I
   21:30  mean, that that would be a way to recoup some of the money, you know, maybe. I don't know what your guys' I mean, I
   21:38  don't know your guys' uh situation, contracts or whatever with them, but I mean, their business, their billion
   21:46  dollar industry, they got a lot more money than what it sounds like we do as a city. Thank you.
   21:56  Thank you. Any other thoughts or Okay. Um, I think
   22:05  what I'm going to suggest is that we continue to look at this ordinance and if there's some additional language or
   22:14  thought processes that um, you guys have, kind of do the same thing we did with the parking ordinance where if you would email me any
   22:22  additional questions or thoughts you have um, or maybe different definitions or possible languages and see if we
   22:31  can't put all that together to be able to discuss from that point. Um I have talked to attorney Harker about it as
   22:39  well and I did look and saw that um President McKinley had put a feeler out through the municipal list serves to see
   22:46  if anybody had an ordinance of this type as well um so that we could get some additional languages and thoughts and see what other people are doing. I think
   22:54  maybe we do a little more of that research along that. Maybe and I'll probably do some calls and see if we can't figure out if anybody how other
   23:03  people are approaching this. Um and then we can have another meeting come together here in a couple weeks and work
   23:11  on those updates and thoughts. Well, just like um when I write my own paper, it's always perfect.
   23:19  So, I don't think there's anything wrong with this because Marty and I help write it. I just wanted to address what Councilman Klein had said because I know he I don't think you were at the last meeting where I addressed this um Mr.
   23:29  Klein, but this ordinance the way it's written does not set a dollar amount. It
   23:37  can I'm open to uh you know 10 20 30 year plan, but it it allows exceptions
   23:45  for a reason. If there's 10 alleys that you want in your district rock, there is
   23:52  a way to do it. It's not that they need to come to the council for us to give an engineering opinion. It says the city
   24:01  engineer and council because my belief is that the city engineer, they're the ones that determine, okay, does it need to be replaced and and how much would it
   24:10  cost? But then it puts it on, we'll say the people, the representatives, us, to go to your district and go to that
   24:17  street and go talk to those people and go, "Hey, we're thinking about converting your alley to Iraq. What do you think?" Right? That's the
   24:24  representative person in me that goes, "Well, let's just put it to the people." Right? If they feel like they've been paying taxes for 40 years and they're
   24:32  going to be up in arms and that rock alley, if you convert it to rock, could potentially have some negative effects that we aren't aware of. Well, then I
   24:40  just feel like that should be that conversation. We're not that big of a city that we we can't do that. Um, so I just wanted to address that was why I put the Marian Common Council on there.
   24:51  It just it's a checks and balance, right? So, and you're right. I've heard about, well, what about future administrations? That is exactly why
   24:59  I've presented this because Ron Marie, right, is the one that did the allies before. and what's happened since. Every
   25:08  administration has ignored it until the new administration we have now. So that's the I mean everything that's been brought up I just go you just made my
   25:16  point. You just made my point. It's been ignored. I police fire all that's important. The problem is alleys have been ignored and they've been ignored
   25:24  too long. I appreciate the mayor. I appreciate the city engineer Mike Graph addressing this. I just feel like maybe
   25:32  there should be more um consideration to the asphalt. So, I just wanted to make sure I said that because I know you weren't here last time.
   25:47  Okay. Well, why don't we do that? Um unless somebody on the committee feels otherwise. Um, just email me any
   25:54  language changes or thoughts on if there's a different timeline you think is better or some other way that makes
   26:02  if this is something we want to go forward with the language that makes all of us comfortable. Um, or if we're not going to be able to find that language
   26:10  compromise in the middle there. Um, I know everybody had quite a bit of discussion at the last meeting, so I'm sure there's some additional thoughts out there.
   26:20  Um, so I would say why don't we say two in the next two weeks and then I'll
   26:26  compile all that and we'll reconvene. Okay. It also gives us more time to figure out this tax change too.
   26:34  Exactly. Exactly. So Okay. Does that work for committee? Okay.
   26:42  Move we adjourn. Move we adjourn.
   26:45  Second. Okay. All in favor? I. All in favor, leave.
   26:50  Committee adjourned. Thank you. Thank you for all of you that came and spoke.
   26:55  You're welcome to stay for the next meeting. We like to have people here.