CITY MANAGER’S REPORT

Week ending January 18, 2013

2012 City Clerk’s Office Annual Report

The recently completed 2012 City Clerk’s Office Annual Report documents the activities and accomplishments of the City Clerk’s Office last year. Some performance measurements which may be of general interest include:

· Average length of City Commission meetings in 2012 was 2 hours 30 minutes (up from 2 hours 23 minutes in 2011)

· Exactly 1,000 pages of City Commission meeting minutes were produced; 89% were approved within three weeks of the meeting date and 96% were approved without amendment

· 994 licenses/permits issued (up from 903 in 2011)

· $119,504 in license/permit revenue collected (up 3% from 2011)

· 53 street events processed (up from 34 in 2011)

· Community currently has 132 drinking establishments (liquor), 11 on-premise cereal malt beverage (CMB) establishments, 26 retail liquor stores, and 35 retail CMB stores

· Responded to 49 open records requests (up from 36 in 2011), which does not include requests responded to directly by other departments, all within the time limits required by State law.

2012 Street Division Annual Report

Please see the attached 2012 Street Division Annual Report. The Street Division maintains street, curbs, gutters, city-owned sidewalks and ramps, the Kansas River levee system, open drainage, and North Lawrence storm water pump stations. The attached presentation includes before and after photos of many of the division’s 2012 projects.

Stakeholder meeting held regarding rental licensing

Planning and Development Services staff presented a draft outline of expanding the rental licensing program to the public during a stakeholder’s meeting on January 7, 2012.  Stakeholder comments were requested and are being reviewed by staff as the ordinance is drafted to implement the City Commission’s recent direction to prepare an ordinance and implementation strategy to expand the program to all rental units in the city. A full report will be presented in the near future for the Commission’s consideration.

City receives settlement payment in class action suit – ADDED 01/18/13

On May 25, 2012, Syngenta, producer of the herbicide atrazine, and attorneys for several community water systems, agreed to settle a class action lawsuit related to the herbicide.  The parties elected to settle in order to end the business uncertainty and expense of protracted legal proceedings.  In the settlement agreement, Syngenta acknowledges no liability and continues to stand by the safety of atrazine. The payments were designed to reimburse the water systems for increased costs to treat water containing atrazine to comply with regulatory standards. As part of the settlement, the city received a payment of $309,150, which will be credited to the Water and Wastewater Fund. Utilities Department staff supplemented the data already on file in the lawsuit with additional test results that the city had performed.  The city’s share of the settlement was based on the number of entities filing a claim and formulas related to the quantity of water processed.