Council discusses stormwater management, live streaming meetings at work session

Vestavia Hills City Council members met Monday to explore in more depth several issues facing the community.

City Manager Jeff Downes presented the council with several items that will likely come before them for a vote in the coming months.

The first was an update on a through-road agreement with Jefferson County.

Through-road agreements are for roads that “connect multiple communities as a carrier of traffic,” and the county makes agreements for maintenance of the roads with the municipalities they connect.

Downes explained that in 2009, when the county fell on hard financial times, through-road agreements were dissolved, and the county is just now going through the process of re-upping them.

In the city’s original through-road agreement with Jefferson County, roads in Cahaba Heights were not included because the area had not been annexed into the city, he explained. Additionally, Tyler Road and Massey Road were part of the agreement, but no longer truly fit the criteria for a through road.

For that reason, Downes said he and his staff are lobbying with the county to replace Tyler Road and Massey Road with Crosshaven Drive, Green Valley Road and the sections of Dolly Ridge Road not in the original agreement.

He said he will continue to push his contacts with the county, but that ultimately the measure would have to be approved by the council before it could move further.

“Bottom line is, that before anything is actually finalized, it has to come back to you guys to authorize the execution of this,” he said to the council members.

Downes also discussed an issue he said he heard about a lot over the weekend with the significant rainfall, and he knows council members have heard about as well.

Until 2005 when City Engineer Christopher Brady was brought on board, there were inconsistencies in the city’s oversight of stormwater management as development continued throughout the area.

Some of the infrastructure, Downes said, is incompatible for the volume of stormwater seen in years with a lot of rain — like this one.

“We just have a lot of poor infrastructure in Vestavia Hills, period,” he said.

As the aging infrastructure begins to fail, the city is struggling with the effects. This can take the form of sinkholes forming when pipes are overwhelmed and water runs under roads and properties; or it can take the form of drains overflowing and destroying lawns or landscaping.

“We’re struggling as a city with what to do with it,” he said.

Up to this point, the city has not had a budget line item for dealing with stormwater infrastructure, so when issues arise in public right of ways, the city has to pull from reserves or redirect funds from other projects.

Additionally, some private issues can spill over and affect the greater community, which Downes said could provide an argument for public-private partnerships.

And while there have been talks recently of including a long-term plan to address stormwater issues, and the city’s standards have been upgraded with its recent MS4 permit, that isn’t going to alleviate the pain the city will feel in the short term.

“When a person is in the middle of a flash flood crisis, they don’t care about the future plans,” Downes said.

The other major item of discussion at the work session — live streaming council meetings — brought heated comments from some council members, as members discussed the pros and cons of investing in technology that would make live streaming possible.

Downes said live streaming meetings can be done, but that the process could be costly depending on how it is done.

“Really it’s a philosophical thing,” Downes said. “It can be done. It’s taking existing resources and plugging them here.”

Councilor Kimberly Cook said her experience live streaming the recent Community Spaces Plan forums was positive, with the videos getting hundreds of views each.

Councilor Rusty Weaver said, however, that TCU Consulting expressed concern with live streaming meetings where discussion is the goal, as it can discourage attendance.

Councilor George Pierce said he recognized that some residents cannot make it to council meetings and would appreciate being able to view some informational meetings at home or elsewhere.

Councilor Paul Head said that he was adamantly against using resources that would otherwise be used for things like stormwater management, paving and sidewalks to live stream meetings, and that he wishes more people would contact councilors directly to express their opinions, rather than using social media.