03/28/05 Regular - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Meeting March 28, 2005 attended a conference for the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C., where they lobbied our congressmen on Capitol Hill about help relating to community block grant money. She explained that the President has proposed a new Strengthening America’s Community Initiative, which combines 18 grants, which includes the CDBG, into one economic development administration. At $3.71 billion dollars the new program is nearly $1 billion dollars less than the current CDBG program alone. The CDBG program has proven itself to be invaluable to us. She wanted the constituents and the Council to know how influential it was to have both she and the Mayor there to talk to various Congressmen about not agreeing to the President’s proposal. She said the Mayor addressed them about how these funds were used in University City to create jobs, to provide affordable housing, and it was a pleasure to be there with him to encounter Congressmen and that she learned a lot from the experience. Mayor Adams commented that he had commented to other municipal officials from Missouri and across the country the importance of spreading this message to as many people as possible. His purpose is not to attack the current administration, but to share the feeling that it is targeting certain programs and to get us to focus upon saving certain programs that are helping our citizens in both our community and in the nation, and while we spend our time doing that, they dismantle something else. He said it is disheartening to watch this happen, for example, AMTRAK, whose expenses are being shifted to the state. Mr. Wagner commented upon a report from the City staff on the lateral sewer and repair program and the report given at the last Council meeting by the University City Community Forum and made some brief points. He noted a discrepancy between the presented report on the average cost of a repair and what was in the City staff report. He asked the City Manager to obtain a year’s worth of records: who had repairs, how much did each cost, so it can be seen where the averages came from in order to determine which was correct. He suspected it might be that the averages were taken over a different window of time, or something like that. He would like to see those statistics. Also, there are a number of points of interest there and he would like the whole issue to be continued in a study session with some priority. Mayor Adams said the Council needed to consider another agenda item that Ms. Brot had pulled. ( Pulled from the Consent Calendar) Olive Enhancement Phase II: Mr. Ollendorff recommended approval of the award of a contract to Gershenson Construction Company for carrying out some of the work in the Olive Enhancement Phase II Project. They are items not included in this bid so this is not the total, but it is the bulk of the work for that project. Ms. Welsch moved approval and Mr. Sharpe seconded. Page 13