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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSeptember 14, 1988 COW r COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE MEETING September 14 , 1988 The Committee of the Whole Meeting was called to order at 6 :40 p.m. Members present : Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple, Shales, Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Absent : None. Consideration of adoption of the 1987 edition of the State Minimum Sanitary Requirements for Design and Operation of Swimming Pools and Bathing Beaches . This regulation was reviewed and recommended by the Elgin Board of Health at their meeting on August 15 , 1988. Staff recommends amending Chapter 6 . 65 . 020 of the Municipal Code to incorporate the 1987 edition. Councilwoman Popple made a motion, seconded by Councilman Walters to approve staff ' s recommendation. Yeas: Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple , Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays : None. Consideration of a request from the Elgin Area Convention and Visitors Bureau for advance funding of the fourth quarter of 1988. This year, with the widley publicized State funding problems , the State has been late in funding the Elgin Area Tourism Program. Since State funds represent approximately one- third of the budget , this has created significant cash flows for the center. Staff proposes we fund the fourth quarter of 1988 in advance on an estimated basis and then correct the overage/underage when the final results are in in February. Current revenue estimates appear to be right on target and the variation should be small. Staff recommends that Council authorize the staff to advance for fourth quarter payment for 1988 and review the contract for possible modification. Councilwoman Shales made a motion, seconded by Councilman Fox to approve staff ' s recommendation. Yeas: Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple , Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays : None. Consideration of recommendations concerning holiday decorations for 1988. Councilwoman Moylan made a motion, seconded by Councilwoman Popple to approve the proposal submitted by Season' s Greetings Company in the amount of $4 , 170 . 00 . Yeas : Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan , Popple , Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays: None. Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 2 Consideration of recommendations regarding parking restrictions on National Street between the river and Wellington. Council reviewed a recommendation to consider the installation of No Parking on National Street from the C&NW tracks to the east bank of the Fox River. Councilwoman Popple made a motion, seconded by Councilman Fox to have this proposal brought back to the next meeting, amending said proposal to include No Parking on the National Street Bridge. Yeas : Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple, Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays : None. Consideration of recommendations regarding water service materials purchase. Councilman Fox made a motion, seconded by Councilman Walters to approve staff ' s request to purchase water service material in the amount of $23,226. Yeas: Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple, Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays : None. Consideration of a recommendation regarding granting of construction easements at Spartan Meadows . Councilwoman Shales made a motion, seconded by Councilwoman Popple to have the subject easement placed on the next Council Agenda for formal passage. Yeas: Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple, Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays: None. Consideration of appointment of a Council representative to the National League of Cities meeting. Councilman Gilliam made a motion, seconded by Councilman Walters to appoint Councilwoman Moylan Council Representative. Yeas: Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple, Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays : None. Consideration of a report on Insurance. Councilwoman Popple made a motion, seconded by Councilman Walters to accept the proposal from R.C. Hanchette & Associates for a total cost of $691, 623 , and to accept the renewal quotation from Management Services , Inc. , for Worker' s Compensation claims administration for a total cost of $18,200 . Yeas : Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple , Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde . Nays: None . i t Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 3 Consideration of report on 1414 Dundee Avenue The legal department furnished Council with a status report in the case of Gerald Kopanski v. City of Elgin. Consideration of a report on the Harris development . Staff reviewed with the Council the unresolved issues for the subject development . Compensatory Storage - since almost the entire site is within the 100 year flood elevation, the proposed building pads much be raised to at lease one foot above the 100 year event . Compensatory storage is required when filling the flood plain. The developer has asked the City to waive its compensatory storage requirements as mandated by our flood control ordinance. Such a waiver, however, may result in the inability of property owners to obtain flood insurance or acquire loans in flood prone areas throughout the City. The developer has requested the City to provide the fill to elevate the proposed building pads . The estimated cost of this process is $156 , 000. The developer has requested the school and park site contributions be waived by the City. The estimated loss of revenue is $55 , 674 to $49 ,674 for Parks and $6 , 282 for :schools. The City offered to finance the cost of demolition in an amount not to exceed $324 , 000 . This amount would allow all structures to be demolished and removed from the site. The developer has requested the site be fully cleared of all material. In an effort to compromise staff obtained a proposal on a demolition plan that would remove the remaining buildings , streets , underground tanks and concrete and foundations to two to three feet below grade . This cost is estimated to be $425, 000 , $221,000 over the budgeted amount . If the flood plain requirements cannot be mitigated, the alternative would be for the developer to modify the site plan to provide for few but taller buildings . Such a change in the site plan could allow for the necessary compensatory storage to be located in the open areas as well as parking lots . The developer has been reluctant to move toward a more mid rise development concept because previous marketing studies indicated a strong market for the low rise building concept . Staff is continuting negotiations with the developer, but if a timely settlement cannot be reached, staff is recommending proceeding to look for another development . Staff does not want to have to do this because it would mean going back to square one. r � Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 4 Councilwoman Popple asked if the developer could meet with the Council as a group. Councilwoman Shales stated she did not want a mid-rise development down there , but she assumed any other developer would have the same problems. Councilwoman Moylan stated the Council must have a deadline for this development and Harris should be asked to meet with the Council. Councilman Fox also stated there is a need to move on this project and he would like to have Harris in so the Council could respond to her proposals. Councilman Gilliam stated it looked like the City and Harris were about one-half million dollars apart . A majority of the Council indicated they , did not want a high rise development on the subject site. The City Manager stated he would try to get Harris in on the next agenda. Riverfront Retreat Councilman Walters made a motion, seconded by Councilwoman Popple to reschedule the subject retreat to September 22 , 1988, from 4 : 00 p.m, to 7 :00 p.m. Yeas: Councilmen Fox, Gilliam, Moylan, Popple, Shales , Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays: None. Consideration of a report on capital projects for the month of August . Status Report Public Hearing in consideration of licensing of residential rental property. Jennifer Becker: This program is for the registration of all rental residential property in the City. That means that all single and multi-family rental residential property would be required to be registered in the City of Elgin. The program would work in conjunction with the city-wide exterior code inspection. The registration period would be for four years . The registration fee would be $25 . 00 per structure, that $25 . 00 fee would cover the four year period. i Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 5 The program will allow the City access to the interior of the structure without a complaint being filed, we will still operate on a complaint basis , but this will give us another alternative to the interior access of the building. Basically what will happen is the inspectors will go out into the City, they will each be given a sector of the City that will be their responsibility of all the rental residential in that sector. They will go from house to house and if a certain number of exterior code problems exist , they would request to inspect the interior of the structure. The program provides the City with increased ability to locate and identify it with illegal rental conversions , and the program also provides the City with a listing of local owners and managers which will give us faster ability to identify the owners and managers to contact in an emergency situation. Edna Krueger, 32 Woodland: I can understand the possible need for some kind of licensing, but by the same token I have a real serious problem if I am asked to waive my rights relative to gaining entrance to my buildings. I see this as a very serious situation, my consitutional rights are in jeopardy. I would appeal to you to give some serious consideration when you ask someone to waive rights that they are guaranteed under the constitution and/or any other laws. Ina Dewes , 1208A Hemlock Lane: I am presently on the Board of Directors of Crestwood of Elgin, and I am here because it has been considered as an apartment and it is not . Poplar Creek Townshouses Cooperative is the title owner of the 250 townhouse units located in the vicinity of 45 Poplar Creek Drive in Elgin. The occupants of those townhouses own Poplar Creek Townshouses Cooperative and the property operates as a housing cooperative with the occupant owners paying their proportionate share of its expenses as their carrying charges for occupancy of their townhouse homes . Gary King, 16 Rugby Place , President of Gifford Park Association: I would like to say that GPA supports the proposed ordinance. We worked long and hard to try to improve the housing stock in the District through a number of different means . We feel this identifies all locations in the form of single, two-family, and on up, as opposed to the one from last year which started from three units and up. This creates a valid mechanism to gain entry, which does not appear to be too heavy handed in its application, still relies on the neighborhood and the tenants to help apply the information. It can also be pretty much cost self-sufficient through the application of the four year re-registration fees. i Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Paage 6 Chuck Gessart , 540 Thorndale: I would like to speak in favor of this . I just purchased a single family home and upon looking through the building it was cut up into seven roominghouse rooms . The house has three bathrooms , seven gas stoves , seven sinks and along with that seven cars parked on Division Street each night . We are converting it back into a single family. Don Potuznik, 321 S. McLean: I don 't want anyone coming into my apartment building and bothering my tenants . The people here tonight are people who care about Elgin and do not keep a dumpy place. I have a couple of places that you can come and look at anytime you want , but I am not going to sign anything that gives away my rights . I think there should be a reliable tenant association in this town where the landlords could check on perspective tenants . What we are doing here is nailing the property owners who do care against the wall. You can't even get the Elgin Housing Authority to evict the tenants they should evict . Therese Calcone, Gifford Park: My husband and I are homeowners in the Historic District , I think a licensing program also protects the tenants . Some people are afraid to complain about the conditions in which they live for fear that the landlord might evict them. Pat Hill, 1095 Florimond Dr. : I have no problem with this program except for one big exception here where a registration permit may be revoked when the owner, agent , tenant , or occupant has been convicted of the sale , use, possession of a controlled substance. I certainly have no way of knowing - I screen them very well but if they are involved with drugs in any way I would have no way of knowing it , and to punish me is absolutely ludicrous, Buford Turner, 37 N. Jane Drive: I rent from one of the best landlords in the city. I would suggest that if you have complaints coming in why don ' t they follow- up the complaints instead of charging every landlord that is not entitled to this charge. Chuck Bennett , 18 S. Edison: During the 26 years I have been managing property in Elgin, I cannot think of a single time that I have ever seen a landlord go over to property and dump out garbage in the hallway, or park his old junk car on the property. I have never seen him tear off the doors , tear the , plumbing off Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 7 the wall, or do any other damage, its all been done by tenants . I have a suggestion that we consider licensing tenants in Elgin. You say that you can get them out in 30 ,da Y s well you have not been to the courts lately. So why don 't we license the tenants and then it will be up to you folks to get them out , and all these bad people will move out of Elgin. Mayor VanDeVoorde: This Council has not made up its mind, we are just listening to facts and information. Bob Sites, 432 Hubbard Ave. : It is very unfair to ask the tenants to have their property inspected and not observe single family units that are not rental units . I think we should include single, non rental residences in this ordinance , if there is to be such an ordinance. I think this ordinance is very unfair and needs further consideration. Arthur Allen 400 E Chicago Street : I would like to speak for this ordinance , and I would like to say how discouraging it is for me, as a property owner in Elgin, to listen to a parade of landlords and realtors come before this body and blame the tenants for the deplorable homes . The Bureau of Inspections Services has 400 complaints every month, that is almost 5 , 000 complaints a year. If there are 5 , 000 complaints occurring something horrible is wrong, and no amount of landlord smoothing it over, and asserting constitutional rights , or hiding in an horrified fashion at a $25 . 00 fee should distract your attention to the fact that we do have 5 , 000 complaints . We do have a horrible property situation in this town. If we cannot as a city go after the terrible conditions , then there is something wrong with us , because at that point we stop protecting ourselves , we stop acting out of a principal of self-interest , and if government is anything, it is all of us operating toward self-interest . I did not think that the real estate community would come in here this evening, blame the tenants and blame $25 . 00 to avoid correcting these kinds of serious problems . I would hope that you would support this ordinance and give a proper response to the property owners who have come here this evening. Lee Fitzsimmons , 1168 Fairwood: I drive around this town, I sell real estate in this town, and I would like to know just how bad this town is . I would like to know the percentage of bad buildings in this town, is it 5% , is it 2% , how much is it . You are getting 5 ,000 complaints a year, it would seem to me that the Bureau of Inspection has a right to go out and take care of those now. Why are you licensing the 95% of the people that own good buildings in this town, they care about this town, and you are going to penalize Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 8 them. I can pick out the bad things and the Bureau of City Inspections can go over there right now, without licensing me, without disturbing my tenants , and take care of that right now. They have 400 complaints a month, they are going to ask us to be licensed so they can add more to that , they can 't handle what they got now, why are we going to license people so we can open up that opportunity. Al Cox, 600 Marguerite : I have a heard a lot here about licensing and waiving of rights and so forth, however, rental is a business , no different than a resturant , or any other business . These people are making money from furnishing a home. So what is the big deal about getting inspection, the inspection should be done no matter what the outside looks like. Glenn Tyson, 1306 Blackhawk Drive: I don 't think there should be any objection to this ordinance , with a couple of exceptions . One , if the concern of the community is in good structures , there should not be any discrimination against who owns the property, whether it is rental, whether it is owner occupied. If you are after upgrading the community and the property every piece of property should be subject to investigation and checking for codes . Mel Schrock, 2000 Country Knoll Lane: We have been managing a lot of property over 26/27 years , and I don ' t see any real purpose in this ordinance, because I think we are trying to take care of the city complaints as quickly as possible. Over the years we have been cooperating with the City and I don ' t want to get to the point where we are fighting each other, if the landlords take care of everything they can that is all that is necessary, and I think most of us are doing that . If you have 400 complaints you should look into these areas rather than take on the whole town. Larry Mann, 120 McKinstry Dr. : I guess most of us resent new ordinances , more big brother action, I think that is the manner of small business , and that is what most of us are, small business . I think the majority of the people in Elgin take pride in the buildings that they have and try to keep them up. I feel that we have a small interest group that is encouraging this and I don ' t see why additional ordinances are necessary. If we have had 400 complaints a month that is being done without any ordinances . Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 9 If a party has a building that is badly neglected and the City complains , I have seen where some of those things have been corrected, and six months later the situation was identical and the party was asked to correct them again, they did 'nt and the people did not move out because I kind of wondered where we would put all of these people, who are living in some of these areas that are unsatisfactory. Now if I have a neighbor whose property is not taken care of, I think I can make enough noise in City Hall myself iiwithout asking the City Council to pass a special ordinance . Gary Crittenden, 2306 Knollwood: I am opposed to the concept of the ordinance as being unwarranted. Historically bodies of this nature under estimate the cost of such a project . You under estimate the success of this program, and my third objection is that you already have the necessary mechanism and ordinances in place to take care of these problems , namely, the zoning ordinance , the building codes and the health codes. I only ask that you be sure of your facts . How much property are we talking about in relation to the total City, 2% , 5% , 10% , are you asking the majority of the people to support a minority situation. 400 complaints a month, are those complaints legitimate , take a good look at them and make sure they are not duplicate complaints . Patricia er Challen representing g Limited Partnership Asset Management Corp. , that represents investors who own a parcel of rental property here in Elgin. Our concern is that we did not learn of this hearing until this afternoon, nor were we provided a written copy of the ordinance. There is no question that we should support efforts to comply with the building codes , we are all in favor of that . We are concerned with the technical aspects of the ordinance and we would like to have the opportunity to sit down and work with the municipality and go over the statistics . I would like to know more about the complaint system. I believe as others have said that there may not be a need and purpose to really get the results that you want to achieve. We manage about 42 ,000 units in Illinois , Indiana and Wisconsin, and what we see in most of these municipalities is a system set up in response to complaints , and/or when the property turns over, or sells , there would be an inspection conducted. I would like to know more about the 400 complaints in relation to the total number of rental units in the area, how the complaints are applied, or allocated to the different properties, the nature of the complaints . Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 10 We are concerned about a uniform application of any type of ordinance. I feel I have not been given the time to sit down with you and try to work through these problems , and I would ask for more time before you move to pass any ordinance . Mayor VanDeVoorde: Gordon, does your staff have more work than they can take care of now. Gordon Burkart : There is tremendous amount of work out there. What Council has allowed us to do in the last two or three years has been to pursue a very aggresive enforcement program. I apologize for some of the numbers that you are hearing, because we do not have the ability right now to break down 400 complaints per month in rental and non rental areas . If we sat down and examined where our complaints are coming from you will find that a lot of them are generated by our people , there are complaints from tenants , and there are complaints from landlords . Mayor VanDeVoorde: Because of the time, I think we have two choices , to adjourn this public hearing, or continue it to another time, what is the pleasure of the Council. Councilwoman Shales : I would move that we adjourn this public hearing. Councilwoman Popple : Second. Councilman Walters: I think there are more comments to be made on this , I do think there needs to be some more discussion about this. I don ' t know that adjourning the public hearing at this point would necessarily be in our best interest , I feel that perhaps to continue it would allow us to have more opportunity to have people come in an talk to us . Councilman Fox: I feel like John does only because there are a lot of comments made this evening that I have a lot of questions about , and when I ask those questions some of the answers need to come from people who are sitting out here, and I feel they should have that opportunity to react to anything that any of us might say when we have the opportunity to talk. For those reasons I would like to continue this. Councilwoman Shales : Adjourning the public hearing is not going to adjourn all further discussion, I have written down four things that I want explored and I think we can get imput from these people without continuing this particular Committee of the Whole Meeting September 14 , 1988 Page 11 I think we could work into some of these areas much better if this public hearing is closed. If we change the ordinance in any way we will have another public hearing. Councilwoman Popple: My second also is going along with Councilwoman Shales ' idea, not so much to end the discussion, but to end the imput enough for the Council to have an opportunity to discuss things . As it continues here we are not having that opportunity and I think we definitely will have to have time to talk about this , and I would also like Councilman Gilliam to be present . Councilwoman Moylan: I will vote to close it tonight , but there are several questions that I have , there is more information I need on some of these articles , we can open it again and seek further information, so I will support adjourning it at this time. Mayor VanDeVoorde : I too will support adjourning this matter, I think the public hearing served its purpose. Councilman Fox: I am going to vote no only because I think it should be continued not because I am opposed to the motion itself. Yeas: Councilmen Moylan, Popple, Shales and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays: Councilmen Fox and Walters . Adjournment Councilman Walters made a motion, seconded by Councilman Fox to adjourn the Committee of the Whole Meeting to go into Executive Session to discuss personnel, litigation, and acquisition of real estate. Yeas : Councilmen Fox, Moylan, Popple, Shales, Walters and Mayor VanDeVoorde. Nays : None. The meeting adjourned at 10 :05 p.m. Marie Yearm City Clerk