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The QCTimes said a few weeks ago that they were no longer going out to the Elmore area, and are looking for a new place to expand. It would be nice to have a home improvement store on the west end, possibly by the popular new W.Kimberly WalMart.
 

I have met with Menards and Home Depot. Both are concerned about the lack of city services and infrastructure. The land is available and for sale. We need the West Side Diversion Tunnel.
 

What will it take to get discussion started on the diversion tunnel? If talks
are nonexistent about updating the infrastructure how can we ever hope to draw attention to anyone considering developement of the land? What else do you think needs to be in place or updated to draw builders to the second ward area? The writer is correct in that the city should be trying to add developement to the Northwest also. Why limit ourselves to the Elmore and 53rd arena?
 

The tunnel has been talked about for nearly ten years. Coming up with the 28.5million to complete the project is the problem. I have argued on council that we should have been working on ways to finance this project rather than amenities. I agree our city should look nice, however, we are becoming one-sided and development in the 2nd Ward is nearly at a standstill.
 

I live in the area of Fairmount and Central Park and when you came around campaigning last year I complained to you about coming home every so often and finding that water had been blown out of my toilet bowl and sewage blown out of my basement floor drain. This happens every 4 to 6 weeks and neighbors noticed that it occurs when a city of Davenport truck is seen parked in our block. You got back to me and reported that the city needs to clear the drain lines of back flow or pluggage of some kind. Also something about the lines draining up hill. I appologize if I remember your response incorrectly but does this have something to do with the diversion pipe?

In fact what I am talking about happened yesterday. I came home and had to clean up water blown out of my toilet. It gets my carpet wet and of course I get mad at having to sanitize my carpet and replace it every couple of years. My biggest complaint and question is about the sewage I have to clean up off of my basement floor. Why is smelly black sewage coming out of my floor drain? Obviously we never dispose of any bodily waste in that drain. Where is that coming from? I am sick and tired of bleaching and sanitizing this mess caused by the city workers. If this pipe gets fixed or replaced will the drains work properly and then the city workers would not have to blow out the system?

PS .. after rereading my statement I want you to remember that this does not affect just me but my neighbors on either side of my house and the people living across the street.

Thank you sir.
 

Donna Bushack had told us that once the church developed the property at Hillandale and Kimberly that Public Works would order in sidewalks along Kimberly from the HyVee on Pine up to the new Walmart. The church is now built, and no sidewalks have been installed on either side of Kimberly Road.
 

Hickory Grove Road also needs sidewalks installed for the whole distance. There are people in wheelchairs driving them in the street because of the lack of sidewalk installation. I believe that they are traveling either to the Handicapped Center and up to Walmart and Kmart. Traffic goes fast along there and they should be off the street.
 

If the Davenport Parking Manager can file a claim with the Scott County Treasurer for the past due parking fines, I find it hard to understand why we are going to pay an outside firm a large percentage to collect them for us. It seems like delinquent parkers would be more than happy to pay if they can't renew their licence plates until the debt is paid. That way Davenport would collect 100% of what is due them, compared to a percentage, and no guarantee that they will all be collected thru an outside firm.
 

If the Davenport Parking Manager can file a claim with the Scott County Treasurer for the past due parking fines, I find it hard to understand why we are going to pay an outside firm a large percentage to collect them for us. It seems like delinquent parkers would be more than happy to pay if they can't renew their licence plates until the debt is paid. That way Davenport would collect 100% of what is due them, compared to a percentage, and no guarantee that they will all be collected thru an outside firm.
 

The south side of 34th Street between Hillandale and Thornwood is posted no parking. The section 8 duplex tenents don't think that those No Parking Signs apply to them. Would it be possible for either the meter maids or the police to ticket them?
 

I will get a memo from public works on the drain system at Fairmount and Central Park. I will also request one on the progress of the sidewalk on Kimberly and Hickory Grove and I will report the memo here. I have already requested for the Parking manager to take care of parking on 34th and Hillindale.

I ran a 24-Hour Run on Saturday and Sunday. I apologize for taking so long to get back to these posts. Keep them coming though.
 

So you are not always bogged down with graffiti reports, is there or can there be a place on the city of Dav website to report graffiti?
 

It sometimes appears that when the aldermen make requests of staff, or ask questions, that it takes too long to get responses. You would think that conference calls among department heads would be held by phone daily. With everyone on the line, any question or concern that an alderman places with Malin should be handled or corrected immediately. It appears that problems take weeks to solve, and sometimes even then, it may or may not be the answer to what the alderman asked. Is this a correct preception of what goes on down at city hall Alderman Hamerlinck?
 

To 5:04 - the city website is very difficult to use. We pay a high priced I.T. Director, and there has been no improvement. Just a couple days ago, I attempted to find the HAPPEN program after seeing a blip on the tv about it. The TV instructed you to click onto "latest News" and click further to the Happen program. I got frustrated and gave up. If it's there I sure couldn't find it. Also, if there is a page that shows aldermans email addresses and phone numbers at home, I would like to know how to get to that page. When you call the aldermans secretary, she gives you a generic addy for city hall, and I'm not so sure the alderman you send a message to ever gets it.
 

Parking Manager Flaherty here - Today the City's Parking Division patrolled 34th and Hillindale and wrote 7 parking citations. For the foreseeable future we will continue to patrol the area on a regular basis. We have found these things clear-up rather quickly with a few parking tickets. But we’ll stay on it.


PS - Brian (the parking enforcement officer who issued today's tickets) and Chad (the parking enforcement officer who will patrol the area tomorrow) hate being called meter maids.... Jackie doesn’t care for it much either.

Thanks for the tip!
 

Viewed the lighting samples at he dam last night and must agree with the QC Times article that it was "underwhelming". Pending the final cost of the chosen scheme, and since others beside the city of Davenport are paying for it, just do it and move on. Let's not spend a lot of time discussing this. Toss the river renaissance folks a bone and go on to something really important.
 

Thanks for getting right on the parking problem on 34th Alderman Hamerlinck.
 

I spoke with Malin, there will be a place on the new city website for Graffiti reports.

The new website is also suppose to be more user friendly. For what it is costing us, it better be.

I must thank Parking Manager Flaherty for getting on the 34th Street issue. I must say he is doind a great job in that department.

Keep any additional ideas you have coming.
 

1) Could you please explain about the yard waste cart program please. Years ago, public works sent out info on it that actually made it more expensive than using the paper sacks. Yearly flat fee was assessed, plus every time they picked up the cart they charged the same fee as 5 sacks would cost. It made it much cheaper to just use sacks. After hearing at the committee meetings that the trash men are 3rd in injuries, I would think that if every house had one of these yard waste carts, it would really cut down on injuries to the workers. People would probably use it too if you didn't have to pay the equivilant of 5 sacks each week. (we don't have to have it picked up each week, BUT grass clippings smell so horrible after a few days that you almost have to put a cart out if you are out on that system every week.) 2) Additionally, could you tell about at the committee meetings that NEO said that they are only collecting 42% of what it really costs to mow lawns and pick up broken bags of trash at properties. Somehow that doesn't make sense. If NEO is assessing a minimum of $165 to do this, something doesn't seem right. Maybe we should hire some college kids and pay them, for example, $50 to cut the lawn or pick up some trash and the city would be money ahead. It would seem that a mowing crew could at least cut 10 lawns per day, (that would bring in a minimum of $1650.00 per crew of 2 employees) so it makes one wonder how that money is being spent that they are going in the hole in that account. Can you shed light on that? Thank you.
 

(update) The east side of the Geifman's was painted by a couple of guys Thursday morning. Looks much better - thanks for getting that done. Alderman Hamerlinck, please look at the island in front of HyVee in the middle of Kimberly. The grass is about a foot tall and looks aweful.
 

Anon 9:27


Over at the SoLo Blog (solodavenport.blogspot.com), we have solved these web links for you, and have a current discussion on the HAPPEN program.

Ald. Hamerlinck: Appreciate your blog - would you consider adding some more active blog links (Fly's blog succumbed to a no-pest strip), and on the comments, could you turn on the day stamp for comments?

Keep up the Good work!
 

During Thursday's committee meetings, Dee explained that the order for the new garbage carts had to be adjusted. This is another situation where we planned to fail with a lack of planning. The brochure that went out a few weeks ago was too wordy and confusing. It also gave people the easy way out, and that is to do nothing. People lead a busy life, and when given a chance they will do just that: do nothing. By this lack of response to the city, you AUTOMATICALLY receive a medium trash cart. Additionally, the website was not user friendly, and if you threw your brochure away, you did not have the code number to easily order your cart online. So Dee should have not been surprised when there was little response. So what does this mean after the program starts? That alot of people will have too small a cart, and will come to the first and second ward rural areas to dump their trash instead of paying $4 per bag. If public works was really thinking, they would resend out a card, and make it a requirement that the card be returned. If there is no response, a household would get no cart, and that would force people to call and public works and deal with it. This may be a nightmare before it's over.
 

Could you make sure with the overhaul of the City Website that it is made webtv friendly please? About 5 years ago, webtv really promoted and sold to seniors because of the ease of use. One time Fly on his blog tracked webtv usage, and he said it was about 20 percent of his users were on it. If changes aren't made, that leaves out a lot of seniors that would take advantage of using the Davenport website.
 

Another situation that has not been well thought out is soon the garbage men will wear another hat as NEO environmental inspectors. First problem is that many of the alley garages don't have the house numbers on them. It is safe to say that 50-80% of the numbers are either partially missing or totally missing, depending on the neighborhood. So that means that if the garbage man sees an environmental violation, he has to double park in the alley, get out and take a photo, and then either walk thru someones yard to get the number, or drive around the block to the front of the house to secure the house numbers. Secondly, it seems as if the NEO neighborhood sweeps are effective. If the trash men take over, it seems there would be nobody to do these ''sweep'' duties.
 

It would be an improvement if the City cable channel would show either more or all of the commission meetings. They only show a few of them, and they are at such odd times, and not on a schedule like the counci meetings are shown. People love seeing what is going on at these public meetings, and you can bet they would be watched as much as the City Council meetings are viewed.
 

I was so glad to see on the drive home tonight that they finially mowed out on Kimberly in front of the HyVee. Hopefully they will come back where the tractor didn't cut and make it look even better with a weedwacker. Thanks alderman Hamerlinck for getting them to mow it finially. Could this be put on a schedule so it could be mowed every week or two so it doesn't get looking like that again?
 

I think we need to have the weedwacher follow as well. I will work on the schedule.
 

The weedwacker is also needed at Hillandale and Hickory Grove by the bike path. Also, where the railroad tracks were replaced a year ago on Kimberly and just west of Eastern Ave, the area close to the railroad tracks looks like an overgrown jungle.
 

You know, I think an Alderman should have plenty to do without running around making sure the grass is cut here and there. Why don't you people do as I have done? If you see something that needs done, GO DO IT! I have volunteered hundreds of hours trimming trees along the boulevards and “weed whacking” in the downtown area. Do something pro-active rather than doing your “windshield surveys”. Yes, I do have a day job.