Executive Department
3rd Quarter Report
Fiscal Year 2003
Activities and Accomplishments
A) The Grants/Special Projects Director, continued to work with the HotSpot program, serving as the Lead Coordinator. Ann Northam is doing well in the Church Street Neighborhood Advocate position. HotSpot meetings continue to be held the third Tuesday of every month at Grace United Methodist Church, now at 5:30 p.m. The HotSpot mailing list consists of over 100 agency representatives and area residents.
B) The Boundless Playground bid opening was held on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 at 2:30 p.m. All of the bids received were well over the funds available in our project budget, with the lowest bidder being approximately $100,000 over budget. Scaling the project back was considered, but the cuts that would have to be made to meet the current available funding would require a complete re-design of the playground. We were also informed that time was running out on the grant funds, and that these monies would have to be encumbered by June 30, 2003. All of these factors led to the decision to complete the project in two phases.
Phase 1 will include all major site excavation, the creation of the parking areas and the asphalt accessible trails, and the purchase and installation of the play equipment and the safety surfacing for the school-age play area. Phase 2 will include the purchase / installation of the play equipment and safety surfacing for the pre-school play area, picnic tables, benches, trash cans, handicapped-accessible water fountain, fencing and landscaping. Our current estimate for completion of Phase 2 of the project is approximately $160,000. We are now in the process of trying to raise the funds necessary to complete Phase 2.
C) The City received funding approval on two Program Open Space applications from the State Board of Public Works for the following projects:
Lake Street Playground Rehabilitation
- Phase 2 $75,000
Rehabilitation of the
City Park Tennis Courts $73,850
The City Council accepted the funds for these two projects on February 24, 2003 through the passing of Resolution No. 935.
D) The City was awarded $80,000 for the Chipman Cultural Center elevator project through Year 2 of the Community Legacy program. This grant will allow us to install an elevator at the Chipman Center to make the second floor of this facility accessible to disabled individuals and ADA compliant. The Subreceipient agreement between the Chipman Cultural Center and the City of Salisbury was completed and forwarded on to the Chipman Center board for their signature. The Architectural and Engineering design work for this project will be bid out in the next quarter.
E) The proposals for the Pedestrian Connectivity Study and the Downtown Lighting Analysis (funded through Community Legacy) were opened on January 24, 2003. Five (5) proposals were received, and after reviewing all of the proposals we invited three of the firms to come in and give us a presentation.
On February 25, 2003 each of the three firms came in to meet with us and discuss their ideas for the project. All three firms had bid the project at an amount higher than the available funds, so at the end of the presentations we asked each firm to revise their proposal to meet our budget constraints. The revised proposals were received in mid-March, and we selected Davis, Bowen & Friedel to complete the project. We felt that their revised proposal gave us the most for our money.
The City Purchasing Director will now issue a purchase order so that the work may proceed. We have asked Davis, Bowen & Friedel to try to have the study completed by early August.
F) The $150,000 in Housing Rehab revolving loan funds received through Community Legacy is being handled by Salisbury - Wicomico Department of Planning, Zoning & Community Development (PZCD). They have pre-qualified seven (7) applicants residing in the Community Legacy neighborhoods. Two of the projects had been put out to bid previously, and are now being re-bid because the contractors that responded cannot begin work until mid-May at the earliest. They hope to have the remaining five applicants in the bid implementation stage soon. The limited number of contractors willing to do these small rehabilitation projects has presented a challenge. The PZCD staff will be aggressively marketing the program to additional new contractors during the next quarter. On a positive note, we have been informed that these Community Legacy revolving loan rehabilitation funds do not have any income restrictions, so this will make it easier to identify qualified applicants for the program.
G) The Salisbury Neighborhood Housing Service (SNHS) began working with the $150,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds that they received for their owner-occupied housing rehabilitation program. SNHS is running into the same problems that the Planning, Zoning & Community Development staff have been experiencing - extremely busy housing inspectors and lead hazard inspectors, and a shortage of qualified contractors willing to do jobs this small. We hope that the rehab projects will begin to move more quickly now that all the necessary inspections have been completed for several of the properties.
H) On March 17, a re-constituted subcommittee consisting of various City and County officials met to continue discussing revisions in the Fire and Emergency Services Agreement between the City and County. The committee had not met since the County elections in November. Tony Sarbanes, County Council President, replaced former Council member David Ennis on the committee and Joe Scott, City Vice-President joined the City’s team. Mr. Sarbanes also asked a representative of the County Fire Chief’s Association to begin sitting in on the discussions. Because of the new members on the subcommittee, the meeting was devoted primarily to bringing the new members “up to speed” on the work of the committee and the issues that had not yet been resolved. The committee agreed to met again in May.
I) The GIS User’s group directed the consultants to begin editing the street center line data layer that was developed by the Salisbury University Geography Department so that it would correlate to the most recent aerial photographs that the City and County had available. Other data layers that Frank McKenzie began working on include: ambulance districts, city and county zoning maps, sheriff’s and police patrol districts, and flood zone maps. Both the City and County agreed to include funds in their FY 04 budget requests for continued development of other data layers.
J) On January 13, 2003, the Council, on a 4-1 vote, adopted a new annexation policy which is designed to provide some incentives for property owners to request annexation to the City. The policy represented an attempt by the City to become more aggressive in pursuing annexation rather than simply relying upon people to approach the City.
The following summarizes the adopted policy:
Under certain circumstances when it is in the public interest to do so, the City
may offer
incentives to encourage property owners to annex their properties to the City. Properties
lying within Priority Annexation Areas may be eligible to be offered such incentives. These
areas were identified because they meet one or more of the following criteria:
1) annexation would smooth out the City’s boundaries making the City’s area more compact
2) adjacent development is occurring
3) the area is desirable to have in the City because of tax base or other reasons
4) the area needs urban services
5) the area is urban in character
6) annexation and growth of the area is consistent with the comprehensive plan
7) annexation and growth of the area is consistent with the water and wastewater plan
8) infrastructure improvements are needed in the area
If the City approaches a property owner requesting that the property owner sign an annexation petition, the following optional offers may be made to the property owner as inducements to encourage the property owner to sign the petition:
a) subject to approval of Council, a partial exemption from paying City property taxes for a period of up to ten years, on a graduated scale as follows:
1st year - 100% exemption
2nd year - 90% exemption
3rd year - 80% exemption
4th year - 70% exemption
5th year - 60% exemption
6th year - 50% exemption
7th year - 40% exemption
8th year - 30% exemption
9th year - 20% exemption
10th year - 10% exemption
11th year and thereafter - 0% exemption
or:
b) a full exemption from paying City property taxes for a period of up to five years:
or:
c) a full exemption from property taxes until a property owner requests water and sewer
services, or until there is a change of ownership, or until there is a change in use of the property.
d) the City may pay one-half of the costs for the required annexation advertisements.
e) the City may pay one-half of the water and sewer connection and assessment costs at such time as the property owner requests connection to the water and sewer systems.
Any offers made to any property owners under this policy are subject to approval by the City Council as a part of the annexation process.
This policy adoption occurred following presentations by the Executive Officer, which were taped for broadcast on Access 26. He also made a presentation at the Mayor’s neighborhood roundtable on December 17, 2002. Following these presentations, a number of favorable comments were received on this approach.
K) Throughout the quarter, the City and Urban Salisbury continued to work together on bringing a student housing project downtown. In response to this idea, the City Council declared several downtown parking lots surplus and authorized the staff to send out requests for proposals for the sale and development of these lots. The initial deadline for submittal of proposals was February 12, 2003, however, this deadline was extended at the request of several potential bidders. At the end of the extension, several proposals were received by the Council. After reviewing the proposals, the Council requested that the Finance Director provide them with an analysis of the proposals in advance of Council interviews with the developers. At the end of the quarter, interviews with the developers had not yet been scheduled.
L) A committee to look into the possibility of establishing a “desirable ratio” between owner-occupied and rental properties was formed by Mayor Tilghman. Amy Liebman was appointed to chair the committee. The concept of a “desirable ratio” came out of the report from the City’s Housing Process Action Team and is based on the notion that we will never know whether we have too many rental units unless we know what is a desirable number against which we can measure. The committee had their first meeting on January 23, 2003 and continued meeting throughout the quarter.
M) On February 21, 2003, a scheduled promotion ceremony in the Fire Department was postponed at the last minute in response to protests by volunteers at the City’s Fire Stations #1 and #2. Their protests centered around the creation of the Battalion Fire Chief classification and their concern that the Battalion Fire Chief would deprive the volunteer officers of opportunities to direct fire scene operations. They also expressed a great deal of opposition to many of the changes in the Fire Department being fostered by Chief Steve Brezler. They perceived many of these changes as threats to the volunteer component of the department.
On the same day, the volunteers at Station #2 announced their desire to secede from the Salisbury Fire Department and to establish their own fire district. They sent the City a letter giving the City until May 1 to remove all City owned equipment from Station 2.
On March 3, 2003, Chief Brezler announced his intention to resign effective March 28.
Following a series of meetings between the Mayor, the Executive Officer and representatives of the volunteers, the Mayor held a meeting on March 19 with all department members and announced the steps she was willing to take to bring unity back to the department. One of the elements in her plan was to continue on with the implementation of the Battalion Fire Chief position, however, in doing so, she clarified that the Battalion Fire Chief was subordinate to the volunteer Assistant Chiefs. Accordingly, on March 28, which was Chief Brezler’s last day with the department, the promotion ceremony, which had originally been planned for February 21, was held.
Station #2 volunteers were not satisfied with the resolution proposed by the Mayor on March 19. They continued to make preparations to establish their own Fire District. On Saturday, March 22nd a number of officers failed to report for driver re-certification training On Sunday, March 23rd, they took a major piece of fire apparatus out-of-service and removed it to another location for “maintenance”. They left a voice mail message with the Fire Officer responsible for engine maintenance, which was not retrieved until Monday. Therefore, for over twenty-four hours the Fire Department had no notice that a major piece of fire apparatus was not available. On Monday, March 24, another piece of equipment was reported missing. The Deputy Fire Chief found out that one of the volunteers had it and asked that it be returned. The request was refused. As a result of these activities, the Fire Chief reported to the Mayor on Tuesday, March 25th that he had effectively lost control of Station #2 and that, in his opinion, public safety was compromised.
Faced with this knowledge the Chief, with the approval of the Mayor, sent a letter to all Station 2 members asking them to declare whether they wished to remain with the Salisbury Fire Department. Eleven members indicated that they wished to remain with the department and twenty-one did not respond. Those who did not respond, were sent a letter advising them that they were no longer associated with the department. The City began immediately to man the station with volunteers from Station #16.
At the end of the quarter, this situation remained unresolved.
N) On March 12, 2003, the Mayor held a meeting with members of the City staff to review a proposal to create a committee to provide the City with advice on the future development of the City Park. The Mayor also hoped that this committee could raise funds to help pay for projects to restore and maintain the park. The Mayor’s concern was sparked by the deterioration that had been witnessed in many of the facilities in the Park and the difficulty that the City was experiencing in funding upgrades to these facilities. Following this meeting, the Mayor decided to proceed with plans to form such a committee. The next step would be to hold a meeting with residents of the neighborhoods surrounding the Park to gage their interest in such a committee. Assuming that there was support in the community, the Mayor planned to recommend the creation of such a committee to the City Council.
O) During the quarter, work began on developing the Mayor’s FY 04 budget proposal for Council consideration. In accordance with instructions, the department heads submitted their budget recommendations to the Mayor’s Office toward the later part of February. Budget review meetings were held with the department heads during March. Following these reviews, department heads were asked to reduce their budget requests to the level of their original FY 03 budgets. If, in so doing, a critical project or program would not be funded, the department heads were asked to bring this situation to the attention of the Mayor’s office. At the end of the quarter, these revised budget submittals were being reviewed with the intention of using them as the basis for the Mayor’s budget recommendation to the City Council.
P) In the 2002 General Assembly session, the City asked State Delegate Norman Conway to sponsor legislation to reduce from four (4) to two (2) the number of required newspaper advertisements in the annexation process. This request was made in an attempt to reduce the cost incurred by a property owner in the annexation process, thus making annexation a little more attractive. The City had seen advertisement costs as high as $3,000 for single-lot annexations. This bill was amended so that it applied only to annexations of 50 acres or less before being passed by the House of Delegates. Unfortunately, the bill died in the Senate in the last days of the session.
This year, the City asked both Del. Conway and State Senator Richard Colburn to sponsor this legislation. Both agreed to do so and companion bills were introduced in the House and the Senate. The legislation applied to annexations of 50 acres or less. On March 11, the Mayor and Executive Officer testified on behalf of the bill before the Senate Committee to which the bill had been referred. On March 18, they testified before the appropriate House committee on these bills. At the end of the quarter, both bills were alive and making their way through the legislative process.