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Public Works Minutes 2009 03-17-09 APPROVED W/ CORRECTIONS 10/20/09 UNITED CITY OF YORKVILLE 800 Game Farm Road Yorkville, IL 60560 PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE MEETING City Hall, Conference Room Tuesday, March 17, 2009 – 6:00 P.M. PRESENT: Chairman Joe Besco Alderman Joe Plocher Public Works Director Eric Dhuse Alderman Robyn Sutcliff City Engineer Joe Wywrot Alderman Bob Allen Doug Haig (Sunset Motel) Bob Mays (Resident) Tony Scott (Kendall Record) Jay Labelle (Resident) PRESENTATIONS: NONE The meeting was called to order @ 6:01p.m. MINUTES FOR CORRECTION/APPROVAL: The minutes for January 20, 2009 and February 17, 2009 were reviewed and approved as presented. Items Recommended for Consent Agenda: 1.PW 2009-31 Water Department Report for January 2009 2.PW 2009-32 Water Department Report for February 2009 3.PW 2009-33 Raintree Village (Rt. 126 Improvements) – Bond Release th 4.PW 2009-34 Menards Commercial Commons 5 Addition - LOC Expiration All the items recommended for Consent Agenda will move on to City Council on Consent Agenda. NEW BUSINESS: 1.PW 2009-35 Fox Hill/Sunflower Estates SSA Area Maintenance RFP Results Annual proposals for contractors – The winning bid is awarded to Waldschmidts & Associates from Wheaton. Last year’s bid was $84 an acre. This year’s bid was $20.50 an acre. There was a feeling of optimism that the bid presented was too low. It was noted that there were two other bids also in the $20’s. References were checked and verified. Qualifications are acceptable. This item was moved forward to consent agenda. 1 2.PW 2009-36 Rt. 47 Widening - Update Joe Wywrot discusses final design. Trail – Location of the trail has changed. Best we can do without going back to phase 1 engineering. Sections of Rt. 47 will have no trails, because there is simply not enough room. Looking for alternative off route trails, but we don’t have to make these decisions right now. The city can discuss this at a much later time when they decide build this trail. Looking at city wide trail planning as well as looking at what we want to have downtown. An adhoc committee formed of businessmen and residents will be coming up with recommendations about the downtown area to send to city council that talks about what type of sidewalk treatment, lighting, etc. etc. An interesting problem that IDOT is running to downtown has to do with all the store fronts. As you walk down the streets you see steps leading up to the doorway on many of the businesses. With the amount of money that is going to be allocated towards this project, have to comply with the Federal American with Disabilities Act Requirement; there can be no steps. So that mean the sidewalk would need to be raised up. What IDOT is looking at right now is having what they call a special zone with an immediate backed up curb. IDOT is obligated to replace the parking for 20 stalls near the downtown area. The City is the lead agency as far as finding the property, preparing the plan and building the parking area, but IDOT will pay within reason. A question was brought up, if there is a residence in the downtown area that the city could acquire, what would be the appropriate way to handle this? Ultimate goal is to acquire an area for parking as close to Rt. 47 as possible. Proper steps would be to have discussions with IDOT and the property owner. Any final agreement would have to be approved by City Council. Utilities: A lot of situations where we have utilities crossing the road or parallel to the road, and now underneath the pavement. We should not be in a position of to have hundreds and hundreds of feet of 40 year old water main under a new concrete highway. We recommend we replace that water main with new stuff prior to widening Rt. 47. 2 Miscellaneous – Street lighting system that exist that was put in by IDOT back in the 70’s. IDOT doesn’t pay for street lighting. They will remove, but not replace it. Joe Wywrot’s recommendation is to not replace the lighting. It will cost several hundred thousand dollars to put that in. With the development in that area, there will be enough ambient lighting from the surrounding property. If it’s ok, Joe would like to give that direction to IDOT to eliminate the stand alone section. Public Works committee concurs to eliminate this lighting. Guardrail - Provide guardrail at the top of the embankment on Jefferson Street. There’s going to be a 3 to 1 slope going down. Jefferson Street doesn’t have any curb. If a car by chance would slide off for some reason, it would slide off onto Rt. 47. IDOT’s original position is that was something that the city would need to pay for, but they may be softening their position. They may provide a barrier, but he doesn’t know exactly what that may be; curbing, guardrail or something else. This item is now an informational item. Resident Jay Labell asked if the city is going to notify the residents about the parking? Joe Wywrot replied yes; the city will notify the residents. Douglas Haig from the Sunset Motel he just finished working with Smith Engineering on a program. The engineer put together what it would cost to put the sewer and the water on Rt. 47 from the west side going under to Walnut St. The reason he asked Smith Engineering to put that together, because one day that property will be available for someone else. He was in the process of purchasing that property, but the whole thing fell apart because of K&K Wells wanted their share of the money and the owners said NO. Doug is requesting to put a traffic signal at Walnut to come through Horton’s property and the Sunset Motel then the property can be developed. Then the income can be given to the city. Joe Wywrot said regarding K&K Well drilling, K&K would like to get a landmark traffic signal themselves, but are unable to do so because of private driveway. Joe talked to IDOT about putting a traffic signal at Walnut and there is not enough traffic to warrant a signal. The way to go with this is for your property to access by way of landmark. Informational Item Only. 3 3.PW 2009-37 Resolution Authorizing Support for the Illinois Vacant and Abandoned Properties Act This is in support with other metro west council governors encouraging support from municipalities on this particular resolution. The committee agrees this is a good thing. This item moves to City Council for discussion. 4.PW 2009-38 Weed Abatement Procedures The committee had asked a few months ago to start looking at this to see what we can come up with. Brendan McLaughlin reviewed Aurora’s and Naperville’s Procedures to get different ideas to help make ours a little less congestion. Eric Dhuse mentioned that our biggest problem last year was trying to find the owner of the property. Other municipalities put notices in the paper or directly on the property. A comment was made about the condition of the current market and that the city could be looking at a lot of empty lots. Developers are sitting on hundreds of empty lots which will continue to grow weeds. We can take action about giving notice and cutting down the weeds, but recouping the costs could take years. We also need to take a look at the budgetary constraints. Raintree subdivision approach has been to mow around the scattered limited number of units for a buffer around them, but they’re not going to mow around all of the empty lots. The same thing with Grande Reserve, they have acres and acres of lots. An idea was talked about at the staff level, of taking care of a lot across the street if it touches your lot and it’s a vacant lot that’s when you can file a complaint. But if it’s down the street in a phase and you have nothing but vacant land, how can complaints be feasible this year. Even the ones that just touch a corner of your lot, what do you do. The ones that touch the whole back or side of your yard, they can be seen as violations. At some point we need to determine what a nuisance is. Joe Wywrot mentioned that they handle these on a complaint basis. If someone was living in Raintree unit 2 complains about Raintree unit 6 a ½ mile away, do we actually go out and enforce the weed ordinance. The ordinance doesn’t make any distinction a lot next door or way out yonder. We need to add an addendum or a revision to the ordinance to get some clarity of what is a nuisance and what isn’t. Ideas will be discussed and decided upon. This item will be brought back to the committee with proposed changes to the ordinance. ADDITIONAL BUSINESS: 1.A couple of concerns from the residents of Windett Ridge were shared with Joe Wywrot about drainage issues and the catch basin. Joe Wywrot to address. 2.The end of Warren St. is another concern. Eric Dhuse said if we get our miscellaneous patching that we’re asking for in the budget for the various patching all over town, we’re going to try and direct the drainage into the storm sewer. 4 3.Bob Mays inquired about the patching of Morgan & Washington. Eric Dhuse replied that it on their list. 4.Bob also thanked the Public Works Department for picking up chunks of blacktop in Mrs. Olsen’s yard. ADJOURNMENT OF THE PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE MEETING: With no further business to discuss, the meeting adjourned. Minutes respectfully submitted by Tim Dlugopolski 5