2013-10-14 Reg - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Mayor Welsch asked Mr. Wilson if staff would honor a resident’s request if they saw that sweeping was needed. Mr. Wilson stated that they would. Council has indicated that they would like to see U City become a cleaner city by addressing these issues and were willing to step forward and spend additional time doing that. Mr. Glickert informed Mr. Wilson that he was taken aback when he heard an annual sweeping of the alleys, when staff says you do not have the staff. Mr. Glickert noted we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 police cars running up and down the roads, so why can’t they go up and down the alleys and report any incidents back to Public Works? He stated that a couple of months ago Mr. Sullivan told us during a public hearing about the inordinate number of streetlights that were out. So here again I’m thinking our police are out in the evenings. They can report back to Public Works. Mr. Glickert appreciated Mr. Wilson trying to change the culture of Public Works. Mr. Wilson informed Mr. Glickert that any time the police have reported something to his department the department has followed up on it. Mr. Crow stated that he was pretty much ready to go forward with this resolution because Council has had this conversation for quite some time and had actually moved through what he would call the majority of the more substantive issues and they had also been addressed by the City Attorney. Now we still have an issue with the alleys that is clouding this, his question would be whether they could move forward with Resolution 2013-16 if the first section; “Now therefore the city supports the street sweeping policy of the Public Works and Parks Department,” be removed, because that seems to be the portion that is still incomplete. He stated that while he is okay with delaying the vote, he would like to find a way to move the resolution forward. Mr. Kraft stated that he thought it was fairly clear that the real issue here is that there were 3 miles of streets that the city was just basically ignoring and the resolution is very clear in that City Council supports the Street Sweeping Policy. Now all of a sudden alleys were on the agenda. He stated that although he does not have an alley, he is sympathetic to people with alleys, so maybe we add another resolution in the future that says the city supports the alley sweeping policy of UCity. We ought to see if we agree on the Street Sweeping Policy and vote on it, and then we will come back with an Alley Sweeping Policy. Mr. Kraft stated that what he learned from the study session was that we were not sweeping the alleys at all, so when Mr. Wilson said the City was going to try and do them once a year that was one more time a year than they have been swept so far. Mr. Kraft said while it is an improvement, it does not mean that the city can’t do better. Elsie Glickert, 6712 Etzel Ms. Glickert stated that as a resident who has lived with an alley for 88 years she remembers when they were mud. She also remembered that the previous administration was the one that stopped sweeping the alleys. She stated that alleys are an important part of the cityscape and knows people who have had their property values diminished because rd of the condition of the alleys in the 3 Ward. Ms. Glicket stated the point was made that the police patrol the alleys all the time, so certainly they can make a referral, but in her opinion, the alleys should be swept just as much as the streets. Mr. Sharpe stated that he remembers during his tenure on City Council that the alleys were swept on a regular basis. He then thanked Mr. Price for bringing the fact that we cannot ignore our alleys to the attention of Council. As a matter of fact, Ms. Glickert, on several occasions, has taken me on a tour of the alleys so that I could get a feel for what they looked like in order to generate some interest and make some improvements. Alleys do 9