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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-07-08 Budget1. K E IDIAN I 4 CITY OF MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL MEETING SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA BUDGET WORKSHOP Tuesday, July 8, 2014 at 8:00 a.m. City Council Chambers 33 East Broadway Avenue, Meridian, Idaho Roll -call Attendance: X David Zaremba X Joe Borton X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Genesis Milam X Luke Cavener X Mayor Tammy de Weerd Adoption of the Agenda Adopted 3. Consent Agenda Approved (Pg 1-2) A. Southern Highlands Lift Station Lot Lease for Southern Highlands B. Development Agreement for Approval: MDA 14-006 Center Community Subdivision by Oak Leaf Development Company, Inc. Located North of Chinden Boulevard and West of N. Jayker Way Request: Development Agreement Modification to Amend the Approved Concept Plan and Substitute 6.77 Acres in an Existing R- 15 Zoning District C. Final Order for Approval: FP 14-025 Oaks South by Coleman Homes, LLC Located South Side of W. McMillan Road Between N. McDermott Road and N. Black Cat Road Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Forty -Two (42) Single Family Residential Lots and Nine (9) Common Lots on 16.83 Acres of Land in the R-8 Zoning District D. Final Order for Approval: FP 14-024 Bienville Square No. 3 by Centre Point, LLC Located West of N. Eagle Road and South of E. Ustick Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda — Tuesday July 8, 2014 Page 1 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. Road Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Forty (40) Single Family Residential Lots and Four (4) Common/Other Lots on 5.27 Acres of Land in the R-15 Zoning District 4. City of Meridian FY2015 Budget Meeting Presentation (Pg 2-123) Motion passed to bring forward on July 9th, 2014, two (2) budget amendments for the Story Park Improvements Adjourned at 4:34 p.m. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda — Tuesday July 8, 2014 Page 2 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. City of Meridian Proposed Presentation Schedule Schedule subject to change FY2015 Budget July 8, 2014 Tuesday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Start End Minutes Department 8:00 - 8:10 0:10 Council assemble, review any additional materials 8:10 - 8:50 0:40 Budget Overview (SK, TL) Merit/Benefits (PP) 8:50 - 9:20 0:30 Community Development 9:20 - 9:30 0:10 HR 9:30 - 9:50 0:20 Other Government 9:50 - 10:05 0:15 Break 10:05 - 10:15 0:10 Finance 10:15 - 11:00 0:45 Parks Department 11:00 - 11:45 0:45 Fire Department 11:45 - 1:00 1:15 Lunch (Ordered in) 1:00 - 1:45 0:45 Police Department 1:45 - 1:55 0:10 Street Lights 1:55 - 2:30 0:35 IT 2:30 - 2:45 0:15 Break 3:00 - 5:00 2:00 Council Budget decisions and discussion Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda — Tuesday July 8, 2014 Page 3 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. Meridian City Council Budget Meeting July 8. 2014 A special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 8:00 a.m., Tuesday, July 8, 2014, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, David Zaremba, Keith Bird, Joe Borton, Charlie Rountree, Genesis Milam and Luke Cavener. Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Stacey Kildenmann, Todd Lavoie, Bruce Chatterton, Jeff Lavey, Mark Niemeyer, Steve Siddoway, Patrick Dilley and . Item 1: Roll -call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Joe Borton X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Genesis Milam _X Lucas Cavener X Mayor Tammy de Weerd De Weerd: Okay. I will go ahead and start our budget workshop. For the record it is Tuesday, July 8th. It's ten minutes after 8:00. We will start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk. Item No. 2: Adoption of the Agenda. De Weerd: Item No. 2 to is adoption of the agenda. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I move that we approve the agenda as published. Bird: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as published. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 3: Consent Agenda A. Southern Highlands Lift Station Lot Lease for Southern Highlands Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 2 of 123 B. Development Agreement for Approval: MDA 14-006 Center Community Subdivision by Oak Leaf Development Company, Inc. Located North of Chinden Boulevard and West of N. Jayker Way Request: Development Agreement Modification to Amend the Approved Concept Plan and Substitute 6.77 Acres in an Existing R-15 Zoning District C. Final Order for Approval: FP 14-025 Oaks South by Coleman Homes, LLC Located South Side of W. McMillan Road Between N. McDermott Road and N. Black Cat Road Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Forty -Two (42) Single Family Residential Lots and Nine (9) Common Lots on 16.83 Acres of Land in the R-8 Zoning District D. Final Order for Approval: FP 14-024 Bienville Square No. 3 by Centre Point, LLC Located West of N. Eagle Road and South of E. Ustick Road Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Forty (40) Single Family Residential Lots and Four (4) Common/Other Lots on 5.27 Acres of Land in the R-15 Zoning District De Weerd: Item 3 is our Consent Agenda. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I move that we approve the Consent Agenda as published. Authorize the Clerk to attest and the Mayor to sign. Bird: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is no discussion, Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam yea; Cavener, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 4: City of Meridian FY2015 Budget Meeting Presentation De Weerd: Well, we are right on schedule. It's 8:10 and we will start with our CFO. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 3 of 123 Kilchenmann: Good morning and welcome to the FY -15 budget workshop. We have had a lot of fun developing the budget, so I'm sure you're going to enjoy joining us in our process. It's been a lot of work and everybody -- De Weerd: Stacey, you want to pull that -- Kilchemann: And everybody has put a lot of thought and time into this, so we have asked questions, I think everyone is well prepared. I'm just going to do a little intro on the revenue that we are forecasting for FY -15. I gave you a revenue manual that explains this more in detail. Kind of takes an economic look at just Meridian, as well as the state. So, I'm just going to review a few points that I had in that -- that revenue manual. So, the first step when you start to forecast municipal -- municipal revenue is forecasting new construction. That's a key to almost all of our revenue sources and, of course, it's always challenging, because it's so vulnerable to changes in the economy. There is a lot of sources that you can use that are Idaho specific and even Ada County specific and even Meridian specific. I have learned, though, you always need to take them with a grain of salt, because they tend to be a bit optimistic. So, the top one -- Idaho does a three year look forward every year and, then, they keep -- every quarter they update that. The graph on the top just shows the bottom numbers -- or the upper numbers, like the black one that's at the top, it's forecasting housing starts, that was a housing start forecast for where we would be in 2008 and, then, as you look -- when we get down to 13, the yellow line, it's considerably lower, so that was kind of an optimistic forecast. So, what we are using is we are going with just basically the three years of the Idaho forecast, which is on the bottom, and it's showing the growth we have seen in '13 and '14 and the housing forecast has it going up until 17 and, then, leveling off. We are a little bit more conservative with that. We try to end up about where the COMPASS forecast is for the end of 2023. So, residential development. We need to look at residential and commercial and an interesting thing that's happening not just in Meridian, but across the country, is the growth of multi -family housing. If you look at the bottom graph that says annual number of multi -unit building permits sold, you can see how much it's increased for us. If you look at that graph from 2006 to 2014 year to date. What really has become a bigger factor is that paradigm of home ownership changes and it's going to require some new tools in our forecasting basket, because multi -family generally have different rates, both on the utility side and on the other side. So, if we look at the top, that's our forecast for residential building permits, that top graph in blue, going to 2017. So, we are kind of leveling off at'14 and, then, slowly starting to dip and if you look at the actual numbers we are now starting to -- our residential is starting to fall below what it was -- where it was this year at this time and, then, the bottom is just as we go through our forecast for 2013 we just level it off to agree to the COMPASS end number. So, business development is a little harder to project as far as income, because projects can vary widely in size and how much we collect. The fee calculations are complex. They can be on number of fixtures, square footage, value -- there are a lot of factors in there that make it hard -- much harder to predict than residential. So, we usually just keep it pretty level and use history and try not to be overly optimistic. Commercial revenue is surprisingly less for most city revenues than those we collect from residential development. For example, it's 40 percent of all connection fees. It's Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 4 of 123 32 percent of our tax revenue and about -- it's averaged about 43 percent of building permit revenues since 2005. So, the graph just shows history of -- our dollar permits sold. New commercial square footage in the middle. So, we can see -- even though the dollar amounts were higher in '12 and '13, the actual square footage was at an historic level in '6 and 7. And, then, the bottom is that COMPASS where they estimate where we will be in commercial square footage in 2013 -- 2023. So, just a look at the General Fund revenue budget. It's pretty much dominated by property tax. So, property tax is kind of our known. We know now -- at this time of the year we know where our property tax will be. Our next largest source of revenue is government revenue sharing, which is largely sales tax sharing and rural fire. Largely sales tax. And we have seen -- if you look at sales tax historically -- and there is some graphs in the revenue manual -- that one is also very vulnerable to the economy, as you can imagine. But just a brief explanation of property tax calculation. So, I took '15, which -- this is FY -15, tax year 2014, and, then, last year. So, what we do is we start with whatever last year's budget was. So, for '15 it was the 22 million. And we are allowed to multiply that by three percent and come up with a number, which is the 22.6. They have given a number for new construction, because property tax lags so far behind, so we get a number for that, we get a number for annexation, then, we can multiply that by last year's levy and so we have a new -- we have that piece that's new construction, annexation, so if we add the three percent -- or last year's property tax, the three percent, the new construction, and the annexation, we come up with a maximum property tax allowed. So, we can see that there is a lot of very -- our value -- taxable value has gone up considerably, which has lowered our levy rate. So, from .00425 it's lowered to .0039 and I think when values were really falling our highest I think was .0045 and now as value increases you can see that the levy rate is decreasing. So, because there was talk about should we take the levy rate, should we not take the levy rate, you can calculate a -- you can do a million iterations of taking one percent, taking two percent, and so forth. I just did a simple one. So, the top table I just -- I did two columns. I said take the three percent for five years, don't take the three percent for five years, and that gives you those two columns of how it would impact the levy rate, assuming the new construction stays the same in both examples. Those calculations I showed you before. And, then, the second table is what does that do to our revenue. Well, if you do that again, take it for five years, don't take it, the cumulative loss to the city is 11.9 million dollars. And, then, the bottom one I took an average home -- so, the week of June 18th the average listing 300,000 and I ran it through this same example, how much would they pay if we take it, how much would we pay if they don't take it, and over five years it comes out to be 320 dollars. So, this is just -- the levy rate is just one element and it's a fairly small element of your property tax bill. Taxable value is huge. When people really see their taxes go up it's because their taxable value went up, which you can see that this year, because I have got almost everyone's property tax amount -- our levy rates are actually going down. There is also the effect of legislative exemptions that shift tax, so we have had a lot of tax shift lately between residential and commercial and I just listed a couple house bills that really impacted -- or that favored the development community. They also set the homeowners exemption. We have the personal property tax legislation and, then, there are a lot of industrial -specific tax exemptions. Other taxing entities. Meridian is just one part of the total tax bill. So, Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 5 of 123 somebody could -- Meridian tax could go down, there could be a school bond or another tax could go up and people tend to just look at the bottom level tax. So, they don't necessarily notice the slight variations in Meridian's tax. In 2012 -- for example, in 2012 and --'11 and '12 we didn't take the levy increase and people still experienced property tax increases. So, I won't go through this now, but these graphs you can look at are actual homes that we have been tracking. So, we picked four addresses from different parts of Meridian and we have tracked where their property tax has been each year. So, just to talk about our fund balance a little bit in relationship to taking the three percent. Our fund balance has dropped to about 1.6 million and we are estimating that's where we will be at the end of the year. This is our unreserved fund balance. The reserve -- or the operating reserve is four months of personnel and operations. It's a standard practice to keep that money in reserve. As you reach grow out you don't have money coming in for new construction and cities like Boise borrows to get between property tax payments, so the larger you get and the older you get the harder it is to live between those two tax payments. So, we also needed to cover -- we are running into trying to cover replacements and maintenance. Almost all of our assets -- General Fund assets were constructed within a 15 year period. So, we have buildings with a 35 million dollar book value, improvements, which is largely parks, was a 30.5 million book value. We have equipment at 11.5 and what's interesting about our equipment is even though it's within this period, of course, a lot of it has a shorter life and it's 64 percent depreciated. So, that means we are looking at probably -- we should start thinking about replacing 64 percent and a lot of those are fire -- police and fire vehicles and as we add people we add more vehicles, we have more vehicles to replace, so it's -- it becomes very difficult to cover this out of just one year's operating income. We also have an amendment habit. We have things that come up. Opportunities we didn't foresee in advance. So, if we eat down our fund balance that means those opportunities have to be foregone. Do you remember that property tax revenue lags almost two years behind. So, the development is going to be in and going and, in theory, if we waited for the property tax we wouldn't provide the service until we collected the property tax. And, then, one of the most important things I think that has protected us in the last decade is the realization that development is up and down. It can go up and it can go down just as fast and just as hard and we have been fortunate that we haven't had to reduce service levels or lay off people and that all results from having a strong fund balance and working to keep your base low. I'm going to switch quickly to the Enterprise Fund. Whole different story. So, the Enterprise Fund is all fee based. No tax money involved. What we are trying to do in the Enterprise Fund is cover three types of costs. The operating cost of getting services to and from customers on a daily basis, that's turning on the faucet and flushing the toilet. Replace and maintain the existing system, all the infrastructure that's in place, and, then, we need to be able to expand infrastructure and make treatment and delivery improvements. So, you construct your fees in a variety of ways to capture those three costs, you just have to be careful that the fee -- that you're not capturing the cost in two different fees. So, you have to come up with a philosophical approach on where each cost is going to be captured. So, water sales -- a brief look at history. They are kind of the bread and butter of the utility system. Sewer sales are pretty consistent. They just kind of chunk along with account growth, which has been about three percent. If you Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 6 of 123 look at the graphs you can see on the lower right-hand side sewer just climbs right along there with account growth. Water has actually been better than account growth, because of days like today. The hotter the better, unfortunately. We have had very hot shoulder -- hot, dry shoulder season that you can look at -- I think I read that -- I can't remember how many summers here -- each summer has been hotter than the one before and you can see that by looking at the water graph and now we have a few things like sprinkler only accounts that come into play that aren't necessarily easy to predict. So, we -- I projected them with account growth, but they certainly have exceeded it so far. But we might get rain some day, so -- and connection fees. The connection fees are very variable. They can be a huge source of income for the Enterprise Fund or they can be -- they can dip to practically nothing as far as revenue. think in the last decade we have had a high of something like 12, 13 million to a low of two something million. So, that's fees that are paid when a property is born and it connects to the water -sewer system and can receive service. About 85 percent of the collections are from residential and about 60 percent are for wastewater. That's kind of how it breaks out if you look at it as a whole. This is a look at their fund balance. They do -- they have a reserve of 9.5 million dollars, which is about four months of their operating revenue. Theirs is a reserve for a little different reason, though. Theirs is a reserve for an emergency or any kind of emergency repair. So, their fund balance they principally use for capital infrastructure projects. Right -- or at the end of 2013 they had ten million dollars in construction in progress. They have 233 million dollars worth of a cost in buildings, lines, machinery and equipment. Their accumulated depreciation is 59 million. So, they are left -- they are about 25 percent depreciated. So, that is just a brief overlook at revenue. Are there any questions? De Weerd: Council, any questions? Bird: I have none. Kilchenmann: Okay. Todd is going to do a few -- De Weerd: I'm sorry, Stacy. Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I had a question on this -- on the percentage and amount left in the reserve account in the General Fund of 11 million dollars, plus or minus. Now, I understand that's for four months of operation, but I guess my question is if things got really that tough would we sit here and operate the city in full? And could not some of that money be redistributed and put to use, instead of just sitting there? Kilchenmann: There have been a few issues. One is it's -- it's very difficult to react that quickly. So, it's -- we are building our base at a rather rapid rate or we have over the last ten years and I don't feel very comfortable that we only have 1.6 million dollars in fund balance -- unreserved fund balance. So, we could probably change our philosophy, come up with a different philosophy on how we -- how we keep a reserve. That's just a standard practice is to keep four months. But the lower it is, the more nervous it makes me, because the economy can change in one month. That's what we Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 7 of 123 saw in the recession. In one month. We -- there is no -- I don't believe it's possible for us to react that quickly. So, yeah, we could come up with some other methodology, you know, do a percentage or do something like that. But that's -- that's why we typically maintain it at that level and with 1.6 million dollars, if there is -- we had amendments that totaled two million dollars this year, so if something comes up that we need an amendment, yeah, we are going to be going into that fund -- into that reserve. Does that answer your question? Rountree: Yeah. And a follow up. It's my understanding that having that balance keeps us from having to utilize anticipated revenue bonding and the potential of not having the tax revenues reported in the city on a timely basis. Kilchenmann: Pardon? I'm not sure I understood. Rountree: In other words, we don't do any -- Kilchenmann: Borrowing. Rountree: --borrowing. Kilchenmann: Correct. Rountree: Okay. Kilchenmann: Hopefully ever. De Weerd: We always have to have our naysayer there. Niemeyer: there. Bird: Madam Mayor? Rountree: Well, I know. De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Rountree: That's why we hired her. Bird: Stacy, what you're telling me, then, is basically we are about four months -- we are about 2.77 million cost to run the General Fund for a month? Kilchenmann: Yeah. Those are just operating, not capital. Bird: That's the -- I understand that. I would hope that there is some elected official there that would be smart enough to after one month -- and I think you would know in one month that you're not getting something coming in and we would certainly be smart Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 8 of 123 enough to start chopping overhead -- might be some seven of us up answering phones, but we could do her. So, I -- while I think we need a reserve -- and we have never -- we have never come close to not having enough cash to cover our -- in the 17 years I have been -- Kilchenmann: You're getting there. You're getting there. Bird: Well, if we get there you come let me know. De Weerd: Council, any other questions? Rountree: I have none. De Weerd: Okay. Kilchemann: Okay. Todd is going to do some housekeeping and give you an overview before we start the department reports. Lavoie: Good morning. De Weerd: Are you the good cop or the bad cop today? Lavoie: Today I will be the good cop. I will let you be the bad cop. De Weerd: Okay. Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, first off I want to say thank you very much for your participation this year. As you can see it's a lot of work. I think a few of you this is your first time through the rounds, but, again, it takes a lot of work on your part and definitely a lot of work on the staffs part within the city, so I want to say thank you to you guys and thank you to all the staff members within the city to put the budget in front of you guys. So, with that I will go ahead and go over some of the housekeeping. What we are going to do is go over the documents that have been received since June 9th. I will go ahead and walk you through those documents, go over the budget from an overview position and, then, we will touch on some capital replacements and enhancements that you will see over the next two days. So, the first thing we want to go through is a housekeeping -- like Stacy mentioned. These are the items that have been received since June 9th. I'm going to try to walk you through this to show you kind of where you need to amend your books. The first thing you will see in your packet that I gave you is your updated budget summary sheets. These are the summary sheets for the -- it's summary sheets for the General Fund, Enterprise Fund, and Development Services Division. It's the first paper clip set of documents. If you will just amend that to your books. This is the latest and greatest on the numbers that we have. Bird: Dated 7/7? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 9 of 123 Lavoie: You got it. The packet that you should have should be the latest that we have to date. So, if you put that in your summary section, that should update that part. The next item that we have to update would be the City Hall section. Since June 9th we received a new enhancement. So, if you wouldn't mind appending your budget book for the City Hall. You have a new enhancement for the parking lot and, then, the summary sheet that supports that change for the parking lot. Next department that has some changes would be the IT Department. We have three changes for their division. The top sheet you have is the updated summary for the IT Department. The IT Department removed one enhancement, that's the AV maintenance, and, then, they made salary changes to their part-time software engineer and their software engineer enhancement. Those enhancements have been submitted to you. The next item that we had changes for were the department in Other Government. You should have a summary sheet in there for Other Government. We just had a few changes to increase the base budget for some newsletter production. The next department that you will find in the packet that I gave you represents the parks and recs division. The Park Department's budget, an enhancement for the Storey Park development. You should have the enhancement and the updated summary sheets. The next section that you will have represents the Police Department. The Police Department had three changes on their budget that you can see on the summary sheet for the Police Department. They removed two vehicles. And, then, we had an adjustment to the STEP plan value. So, those are represented on the summary sheet that was submitted to you. The next department is Public Works. You should have a summary sheet that just needs to be updated for the summary section. The Public Works Department suggested one engineer's salary and, then, we adjusted some cell phone costs. And I apologize about this. The Water Department is the next section of the submitted documents that I gave you. You received an updated summary sheet, along with two updated enhancement forms. The Water Department changed the source water program enhancement from one time to ongoing and, then, Wells 16-B and C enhancements, they increased the value of that request and, then, they also removed the GIS enhancement and, then, the last item to update -- again, apologize for the number of these -- Wastewater Division removed their Ashford Greens enhancement request. You should have the updated Wastewater Division summary sheet to go into your budget book. So, I apologize about that. We will try to get them to you faster next year. De Weerd: Todd, can you maybe walk Council through -- I know many of them have been part of the process of -- this is months in the making when we do a budget, but kind of walk them through the process that Finance, the departments, Mayor and Council go through to get to this point. Lavoie: Sure. I can definitely do that. Borton: Madam Mayor? Just a quick question before that. I was trying to do what you just did by hand and there was also some changes on the July 3rd one, some interfund transfer changes. Does that -- was there anything significant about those? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 10 of 123 Lavoie: Interfund transfers is -- would be related to -- if we changed any wages within the enhancements. So, we removed three IT wages. We removed some potential enhancements during our discussion. That changed the transfers as well. Borton: Okay. Lavoie: So, those adjustments occurred naturally. I didn't give you those updates or number, but they should reflect automatically within the summary sheets that you have. Borton: All right. Thanks. Lavoie: You're welcome. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, as you -- as the Mayor requested, we start this process in February. Today is July now and so it takes a good four or five months of a lot of work between the Mayor and Council and all the department staff to put this together. In February I will -- I deliver the base budget projections to the departments for them to review and discuss and, then, as you recall during the month of March we had a meeting with all the departments and the Finance Department and we discussed all the base budget line items in detail. Those are the meeting that had we in our department with the department staff, the Mayor, and yourselves. During the March meetings we discussed the line items. We debate them and, then, at the end of March we decide upon a final base budget that we feel is representative of the level of service that you have requested from us. The base budget is decided upon by the end of March, early April, and after it's determined a base budget, we kind of review the wages to make sure that we have everybody in the right positions. HR listens to the departments, they satisfy any request to acknowledge any reclassifications for employees. Those adjustments are delivered to me and I update the wages portion of the budget and, then, in the month of May, late April, I deliver the first draft budget to the Mayor for review. So, that draft has all the base budget items that we discussed in March and, then, all the wages and reclassifications that the HR Department delivered to me and, then, the Mayor goes through the base budget, does any final review questions of the departments, interacts with the Council Members, and, then, at that point the base budget is in its solid position for delivery. During the month of April all the departments submit to me enhancement requests. This year we had think it's 95 enhancements that were delivered to you guys for review and those are in those books. We will listen to those enhancements for the next two days. During the month of May the Mayor and her directors and I will go through all the enhancements for review and discussion. By the end of May, the Mayor, the department directors, have gone through all the budget items, all the enhancements, all the base budgets and by the end of May the Mayor has developed her budget draft proposal for submission to you guys. So, on June 9th I delivered the Mayor's balanced budget to you guys for review, which is the budget book that you have in front of you and, then, from June 9th to now represented the changes that we incurred for the budget items and, then, that gets us to today, which is now the current budget proposal, which you will hear for two days and, then, obviously, we will adjust the budget accordingly to your questions. The staff members will be here for the next two days to answer any questions regarding the enhancements. If you wish to get into the base budget and the items in there we can Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 11 of 123 answer those. Normally we don't touch those too much, because we have spent the months of March and April discussing the base budget line items in detail. But if you wish to ask the questions, they are here available to you guys. But mostly the discussions will be about the enhancements inside the budget books that you guys have today. So, in theory, that's kind of how we approach the budget, how we balance the budget, and how we get to today. So, a lot of work, not only on your part, but the department staff members within the city to get this budget where it's at today. De Weerd: Council, I would also say that there are a couple changes that made it into today that you just added to your book that I do not agree with. So, when we get to them we will discuss that and -- I guess that's enough said right now. Any questions for Todd? Lavoie: All right. Well, I will go ahead and touch off on the base budget or the budget proposal that you have in front of you. We are going to review the city as a whole and, then, three departments that we report on, General Fund, Community Development Division, and, then, the Enterprise Fund. So, the first one that you have the presentation in front of you, if you have questions we can definitely get the answers to you by the end of the session. So, the city as a whole we are requesting 68.6 million dollars. With that you can see the General Fund makes up 35 million, the Community Development Division makes up three million and the Enterprise Fund makes up 28.9 million. The graph itself kind of shows you as a whole what the city -- how the city is divided. In this case, if we are just looking at the graph, the largest percentage is 22 percent for the wastewater, with police coming in second at 21 percent. So, that's how kind of the graph reads there. Another way to kind of look at 68.6 million dollars that we are going to propose to you is we break down the budget into multiple functions. As you can see, 51 percent of the 68 million represents just personnel wages -- personnel cost. So, that's going to be the wages, the benefits, the PERSI, the insurance. So, 51 percent of the 68 million is just for the personnel costs. Ongoing those represent the utilities. We have got to pay the bills. We have got to pay the gas bill, the water bill, you know, the office expenses. So, that's the ongoing operating expenses to run the city. So, 73 percent represents those two items alone. The one time in the capital, they are kind of the same to an extent. They are both one time expenditures. These are only going to occur once. They should be expended during fiscal year '15 and will not reoccur in '16. Whereas, the ongoing, the personnel, those are going to be ongoing costs. They are not only going to be spent in '15, but they will also continue '16, '17 in the future. So, again, this just kind of shows you a different perspective of how the budget is divided and, then, this -- again, another way of looking at it. This represents kind of how your budget book's laid out. The city itself has a 47 million dollar base budget. Those are those discussions that we talked about in March and of that 47 million you can see that it's gone up 7.52 percent year over year. Two percent of this represents your total replacements. Now, the replacements are those items that previous years you have -- not you in particular, but the Council has approved the departments to deliver level of service of. So, these are the items that you have approved for them to spend and at some point they are going to need to be replaced. So, these items here are just replacing that current level of service that was already Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 12 of 123 approved in prior years. And, then, the enhancements represent 29 percent. These are those new items that they want to propose to you, either continuing levels of service or whatnot. Again, we will go through those in detail as the budget goes through. So, again, just a different perspective on how the budget can be displayed. Again, 69 percent of your budget is for the base and those are the ongoing needs. Again, we talked about that base budget. That's that item that keeps moving on in the future and future. These are the discussions that we had in March. This is what your total city base budget looks like -- has looked like since 2007. This particular graph is stacked so you can see the General Fund, Development Service Division, and the Enterprise Fund Again, this is the base personnel. Those are those wages, PERSI, and such and, then, the next slide shows those operating expenses. These are the bills that we have to pay to keep the business running on a day-to-day basis. So, this is the base. These are the numbers that we look at to make sure that we can continue to pays these bills on a month-to-month basis. And, then, if you put it all together this is what your total city budget request has been at the same time in July, year over year, since 2007. So, this is inclusive of all enhancements, replacements, and base budgets. So, now I'm going to take the same approach and just explain the General Fund. Same methodologies are used. This year represents the General Fund, the 35 million dollar request, which is up 1.27 percent from last year and you can see from the graph how that budget is divided amongst the four major components that we report to you guys with. Again, another perspective of how it's divided, those categories that we utilize with the personnel ongoing, one time, and capital. You will see in the next three divisions -- three reports what the General Fund Community Development Division and the Enterprise Fund. There is another factor called transfers. Councilman Borton asked about it earlier. These are the -- these transfers represent costs within the General Fund that are spread to the Enterprise Fund and the Community Development Division to help them with their daily operations. So, these are just costs that are moved to those particular divisions. So, in the General Fund it's a negative number. In the Community Development and Enterprise you will see it as a positive number. As the city as a whole it's a zero, since the negatives offset the positives. So, the next three slides you will see a negative and, then, positives for the Enterprise Fund and The Community Development. Today you will be presented with 5.0 million dollars of enhancements and also 1.1 million dollars in replacements. Of that you can see the total base budget for the General Fund is 83 percent, 14 percent will be enhancements and three percent will be the replacements. The General Fund we will be asking for -- or proposing to you 7.5 new full-time employees and they will be requesting 19 vehicles, of which six will be new vehicles to the system and 13 will be part of that replacement program, which was previously approved in prior years' budgets. From the same perspective this is your base personnel. These are those wages again, the PERSI, the insurance, this is what it's looked like over -- since 2007. And those are the operating costs that the city will incur to keep the business running as you have requested for level of service and, again, as a whole this includes all the enhancements, replacements, and the base budget since 2007. Okay. Now, we will just move into the Community Development Division. They are requesting 3.4 million dollars and as you can see the pie how it's distributed. A big portion of the Community Development is based on growth of our building permits. A large portion of their expenses within the building division are Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 13 of 123 incurred just from the building and the permit production. The good thing is every dollar they bring in -- or they spend they bring in revenue, so it's an offset. So, if the expenses go up the revenue is there to offset the expense. So, that's the good thing. And, again, that's how it's broken out with the building department, economic development, planning and the community development admin. Again, using the same graphs that we have used in the past, personnel makes up 39 percent of this particular division. A majority of their expenses is due to the growth of permits and the inspections. Again, those expenses are offset by revenues. Today you will be presented with a request of 3.2 million dollars of base budget requests. Four percent will be enhancements and 14,000 dollars worth of replacements for this particular division that you will hear from Bruce later today. Again, using the same slides, this is their base personnel over the last -- or since 2007 and this is their operating expense. Again, you can see it fluctuates with the growth of the city and the permit sales. And, then, this is their total request enhancements, base, and replacements. So, that gets us to the Enterprise Fund. They are requesting 29.9 million dollars. You will hear from them the majority of -- tomorrow. Of that their total request is down 8.64 percent and you can see how their department is distributed amongst their four major reporting groups. In slicing them in the function, 26 percent of their budget is made up personnel, which is different than the General Fund. If you remember, General Fund is much larger than that. Again, ongoing is 21 percent and their capital is 38 percent and that trails through, there is the positive number. The offset is the negative number that you see on the General Fund set up high. So, tomorrow you will hear from the Enterprise Fund. They are requesting 29.9 million dollars in total, of which 14.9 is their base budget, so you heard about those items in March and April. They will be requesting 14.8 million dollars in enhancements and, then, 169,000 dollars worth of replacements. They are proposing nine new full-time employees, along with six vehicles, of which two of them will be new to the fleet and four of them will be part of the replacement program. And looking at their base personnel, this is what their base personnel has done since 2007 and this is their operating expenses since 2007 as a base. So, none of these base items include the enhancements that are proposed to you. And as a whole this is what their particular Enterprise Fund requests have looked like since 2007. So, with that I'm going to go all the way back to the city as a whole. The total replacement requests that the city -- that we will be proposing to you is 1.3 million dollars, which is down 6.9 percent from last year to today. Again, these are those items that were previously in prior budget meetings. These are just the replacements for those items. The General Fund will be requesting 1.1 million, Community Development 14,000, and Enterprise 169,000. The enhancements. Again, we will be requesting -- or proposing to you 19.9 million dollars worth of enhancements. That's 75 total enhancements you will be reviewing -- or receiving and you can see from the graphs that we are down year over year. General Fund and the Community Development, those will be presented to you today, so you will have 32 enhancements presented to you today and tomorrow you will have 43. And with that I bring you to Stacy's slide and, then, the following slide we will be ready for any questions that you will have for us and we will be here for the next two days, staff members will be available to you. If you have any questions we will try to get the answers to you as soon as we can. And with that we stand for any questions. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 14 of 123 De Weerd: Council, any questions for Todd at this point? Lavoie: Thank you. De Weerd: Thank you, Todd. Okay. First up I guess now we will enter into our -- the budget process and first up is Bruce Chatterton. Perfect timing. And the ocean separates. Rountree: It parts. Lavoie: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I am -- I apologize. I apologize, Madam Mayor. We actually have Patti. She's going to do the benefits presentation. De Weerd: Oh, yea. I paid -- Perkins: Since I'm new they make me go first. De Weerd: Well, she paid me to skip her. Oh. Sorry. Did I say that out loud. Perkins: I did not hear a thing. De Weerd: Thanks, Patti. Perkins: Good morning. De Weerd: Good morning. Perkins: I apologize for my husky voice. I will try to get through this without coughing into the microphone. Wait for my next slide to come up. Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, thank you for my very first opportunity to present the HR budget for fiscal year'15. I, actually, even needed remedial training on how to get the slides to advance and I think I have got it down, but-- yea. All right. First of all, I wanted to just give you a little bit of background very briefly on the HR department and kind of what we have been doing since I arrived in October of last year. I'm very proud to say that we have completed our team as of March of this year and that team consists of myself, plus Crystal Ritchie, who has been the stalwart in the whole thing as our HR manager. Christena Barney joined us as benefits coordinator and Lori Berg as HR generalist and we have Corey Bush as our admin. We have been very very busy. The last nine months on and we have a few accomplishments that I just would like to note for you. We did restructure the HR support to the departments. We are using a business partner model, as opposed to the structuring the support to -- a little differently as it had been in the past. This way the HR generalist in support is vertically integrated into the -- each department and handles all of the HR issues or needs -- pardon me -- for the entire department, as opposed to having to go to multiple parties. The updated service anniversary recognition processes and how we do that. We perform the compensation plan review. We revamped wellness program and changed vendors. We created an Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 15 of 123 informal on the spot recognition program, launched a new employee newsletter and conducted a benefit plan review and also established audits benefit billing. Pardon me. hope that's not going to continue the whole time. We have an off site at great expense at my home scheduled -- in September so that we can really further articulate our mission and strategic plan for the city. And we have many other projects identified to really improve processes and service to the leaders and the employees of the city and just in case you thought I was exaggerating, that is my white board in my office. That is a list of all the projects that we are going to be looking at and have been looking at. So, we are very very busy. I have two really important items to discuss in this budget presentation and the very first one is compensation to the city employees. As you know, this is the -- you can see that the compensation is a very large part of the General Fund, very large part of the city's budget, but that is the way it is in many many businesses and it is important to insure that we are compensating our employees fairly and appropriately, so that we cannot only retain the city employees that we have, but we are able to attract appropriate level individuals when we -- when we have need to replace folks. So, what I would like to talk about is really the compensation plan that was started prior to my arrival under Bill Nary on -- which we kind of call Employees First, which is really about taking care of the people that take care of our citizens and we want to continue with that philosophy. It was developed in fiscal year '13, implemented in '14 and communicated quite broadly to the staff that this would be an ongoing effort for our compensation philosophy. Sticking with this program and seeing it through for multiple years and future years really does provide the city with the very best chance that we have to remain competitive with the other public sector employers and to avoid large scale collections to pay scales in the future years. So, with that I am recommending a one percent market adjustment for all employees based on employment market comparisons and competitive plans to increase salary ranges and those competitors I'm talking about are the other public sectors, employers in the area, and throughout Idaho. I'm also recommending two percent merit increase pool, so that we are able to recognize performance and this would be applied by a matrix similar to the way that we did last year. We had a little larger pool last year. This is a percent less in the merit pool, but the -- the primary driver in the matrix is a performance rating and, then, it takes into consideration that individual's position in the salary range. The idea being that the folks in the lower end of the salary range we get an opportunity to move up quicker than somebody who is paid high in the range. The market merit increases would be effective in October and November for all other city employees -- October for fire and November for all other city employees. So, that is -- I will pause just real briefly if you have any questions on that recommendation. De Weerd: Council, any questions? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Patti, why November for all other employees? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 16 of 123 Perkins: Fire is by contract and November is the -- Bird: Yeah. November is our -- October is our starting of a new year. Perkins: Well, it starts -- the effective -- the beginning date is -- Barb help me with this -- is October 21 st, so it's seen in the November paycheck. Bird: Oh. Okay. But they are getting paid in October? Perkins: That's correct. Okay? All right. Thank you. So, this is the real fun part. Benefits. We have spent a very long time talking about benefits and it is much like the budget process, it has a -- has quite a long process with lots of people involved. We have a benefit committee that gets together to kind of vet some of the options and that we then -- we being me and the benefits coordinator kind of make a decision based on that input, bring to the director team and the Mayor and, then, finally to you. I don't have to tell you what's all been in the news that the Affordable Care Act has really had an impact on employers. We were anticipating that it would. It is now here and not only do we have the increases associated with the Affordable Care Act, but we have got just basic other increases that have gone on due to medical technologies, prescription drugs, like Humera and some of those kind of biologic drugs are very very expensive, they are like a thousand or more a month for folks and, then, there are other market factors that have to do with increase in -- in cost of medical care. So, the Affordable Care Act, there is actually a five percent pass through baseline increase that we are going to experience and I will show you how it plays out in just a little bit and, plus, we are faced with this specter in 2000 -- fiscal year 2015 of covering seasonal workers, which we have never had to do. The Affordable Care Act requires that we provide medical insurance for anyone that works at least six months full time and -- or at least 30 hours. And we have a number of seasonals that work seven months, eight months, so Steve Siddoway and I are going to get together and -- with Todd and try to come up with some way to mitigate that. We have a little time to do that. But those are some things that we anticipate coming -- coming in the future. We also have a pretty high experience rating. Right now to date our experience rating for the current plan year is 132 percent, which means that we pay -- if what we pay and get during the period is a hundred percent, we are using 32 percent more than what we are paying for and that impacts our renewal rates. That's a cyclical thing. It doesn't happen this way every year, so sometimes we benefit. This year we are not benefiting so much. So, the good news is that -- no increase in dental. Yea. Delta Dental. We do have a very slight increase in Willamette Dental. That is the provider that we use for orthodontia and that kind of stuff. Very small enrollment base in that plan. Vision service plan, it has no increase. However, for the first time this year the employees will actually see that broken out separately. It used to be bundled with the medical on costs. That is broken out separately. So, the fun part is Blue Cross of Idaho -- you will see -- and I will discuss this a little more in depth in the next slide -- that we have between 11 or -- to almost 16 percent increase in the cost of the insurance. For the flexible spending account on -- we are going to introduce a 500 dollar roll-over option. You are allowed to put up to 2,500 dollars a year pre-tax into a flexible spending account to use for Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 17 of 123 medical, the costs -- prescription costs and that kind of stuff. We have always observed a use it or lose it kind of option and the IRS has recently allowed employers to allow a roll-over option and what that means is that if I put 2,500 dollars in my account this year, but I only use 2,000 of it, I can roll that 500 dollars into next year and I can still have another 2,500 dollars taken out of my pay for the next year. However, I would still only be able to roll-over 500 dollars into the following year. So, it's not a cumulative kind of plan, but it is inching us towards some changes and some use of the idea of a health savings account, which is kind of where we would like to see our plans go in the future. We just aren't ready to go there yet. So, Blue Cross of Idaho, they first came to us with a 17.9 percent increase for exactly what we have today. That is, as Bill will attest, the largest percent that they have ever started with. We have been very successful in past years in negotiating those costs down. They were very resistant this year and so resistant that we said, you know, even though you're a big employer in our city and there are some really good reasons to stay with you, we think we need to look around and so we did, we did do our due diligence, it was a little later in the process than we had anticipated, because, quite frankly, Blue Cross didn't get us our numbers until June. mean it was -- they were very very slow. But we did look at a number of options and there were some that were a little less, but it wasn't significant enough to warrant a change. There is what I call the nuisance factor in the change in administrative costs and change from one plan to another, plus the changed management effort when you have to tell employees, no, I'm sorry, you can't go to this doctor anymore, because it's no longer in the network, you have to go to this doctor. We just felt like there was not enough difference in costs, you know, two -- one or two percent just didn't make it worthwhile. We did negotiate -- or Mercer. I can't say -- take any personal credit for it, but we did negotiate the 17.9 percent down to 15.7 percent, which is still very very high and so we thought we should look at some other options. We -- the city has been very very generous and continues to be generous and I think that that is a credit to the city on -- however, it may not always be practical going forward. So, we did develop a different option, which I will talk about that is 11 percent increase and it does push some of the cost to the employee. Plus we would like to start to integrate wellness into our plan design and to do that you have to provide some incentives -- and I will talk about how I think that we can do that without additional outlay of cash to the city, but, really, the purpose of wellness is to incent healthy behaviors and it really isn't about -- it's really about increasing the overall population health of your employees, so that it, then, does impact your experience rating. So, if you kind of look, you remember that I said that we had 132 percent usage or experience rating this year so far, you know, that could change, it could go down, but it's pretty high. So, if we can make sure that we have as healthy an employee base as possible on -- that will help us in that -- it will help us in the renewal, just even integrating it in future years. Here are the numbers. And I won't go through all of them, but you can see kind of what we are talking about and what the -- what the increases are. The current 500 deductible plan and the renewal at 17.9 percent has an over 650,000 dollar bottom line hit. On -- if -- with the negotiated renewal that drops to 583,000 on -- and, then, we have proposed another option to look at on -- so that you have a choice on -- that is 11 percent increase and it does, as mentioned, push some of the costs onto the employee. So, instead of a 500 dollar deductible, we would raise it to 750 dollars, so that's an additional -- and that's an Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 18 of 123 individual deductible. It increases a co -payment -- an office co -pay from 20 to 25 dollars. It also increases the total out-of-pocket expense to the employee on -- and it reduces the hit to the bottom line by 175,000 dollars. It will, however, I will tell you, not be a happy thing to introduce to the employees. They are very -- they count on these benefits, but we have been very very generous. We are -- if I look at our peer group of cities, it's about, oh, I would say, oh, 40 percent have the employees pay something -- 40 to 50 percent, in there, and the rest are still paying a hundred percent of the employee premium. And just one other thing. This may answer a question, Keith, that you have. This is based on our current cost structure, which is paying a hundred percent of the employee premium and 80 percent of the -- the dependent. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: We take the employee and spouse, your -- we are saving -- we are saving -- and can't figure out why Blue Cross can't come down better. We are only saving 68 dollars and our employee is paying 250 more for deductible. It don't make sense. I mean it makes sense to Blue Cross. Perkins: That it does. Bird: But it don't make sense to me. Perkins: Well, it's -- yeah. I wish I could explain it -- Bird: I know. Perkins: -- so it would make sense. One of the things that we are proposing -- one of the things that we are proposing on wellness -- and this is something that other employers have been doing for some time on -- so, it's -- and I would say that nationally it's about 40 percent of employers have some sort of wellness program integration. The Council last year, just before I arrived, passed a no tobacco usage policy at the city and so to kind of piggyback on that, that's a natural place to start and very typical of what employers are doing to integrate wellness, that you provide an incentive for those individuals who do not use tobacco and you provide an incentive for those individuals who participate in wellness and our participation gauge in this case is a biometric screening. Biometrics is just getting your blood drawn and having the blood glucose, the cholesterol, and those kinds of things looked at. That is not any information that comes to HR. That is only -- that's done with Blue Cross and the wellness program and the wellness coach and the only thing we know is whether or not somebody participated, because we are not going to be holding anybody to certain glucose levels or cholesterol levels or any of that kind of stuff. It's really about education and you can't fix what you don't know and so if you never get these screens done, you don't know when your blood level -- you know, your glucose levels are getting high, you can't take preventative measures. It's not up to us to tell you to do that, but if you don't know you Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 19 of 123 won't even have the opportunity. So, this will give people the opportunity to get that preventative stuff done, so that they, then, ultimately do not end up in that 132 percent high usage. So, that's the theory behind it. It does take some time to show up. It's not a -- gee, it will happen next year. But since we proposed premiums for the employees, it's hard to -- to get an incentive going, unless you institute a premium charge and, then, discount off of it. So, that's what we are proposing that we take a look at doing this year and we would say we would charge employees a 40 dollars a month premium. But if you are a nonsmoker or a nontobacco user, you can get a 25 dollar discount on that and if you participate in the biometric screening, then, you get 15 dollars off of that. So, then, you're back to paying no premium. So, we are talking about choices that employees have. These are not on -- these are not genetic decisions. These are not genetic goals. These are choices that employees have. We would put a program around the tobacco usage that somebody could get the discount if they enroll in a tobacco cessation program and, then, they will need to deliver us a certificate of completion and so, again, it's really about educating and trying to develop health habits. It's not about punishing, but it does give that employee the choice if they just don't want to be bothered, if they like to do what they do, they have an option and this 40 dollars is pre -past to the employee. So, it is not a money maker, but it would potentially offset some of the costs of the benefit program. If you -- and as I have done a rough calculation, it's between about 12,000 and 32,000 dollars, depending on -- the 32,000 dollars is based on somebody who is paying the full premium. The 12,000 dollars is somebody paying just 15 dollars a month and the -- we assume for the purposes of our calculations that we have 20 percent tobacco users in the employee population and that we would get 80 percent participation enrollment. So, those are pretty standard assumptions and numbers to use. So, we really think that -- and these calculations are based on our current enrollment of 342 employees. So, even though we have more employees than that, not everybody takes our insurance if they are covered elsewhere. So, we cover right now 342. So, if somebody is a tobacco user this year, but they go through smoking cessation, even after they decide to pay the premiums for a year, they are a nonsmoker next year, then, they would get the benefit of the discount in subsequent years. And with that I would stand for questions. De Weerd: Council, do you have questions for Patti at this time? Bird: I have none. Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: Patti, question on the wellness program. So, really, the smoking cessation element, how do we verify that someone remains tobacco free? Perkins: We can't. Without actually testing for nicotine you really can't and if we instituted testing that will increase our costs. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 20 of 123 Cavener: True. Perkins: So, the way that we would handle this is through affidavits. We know it's not a perfect system, but, again, it's not -- the idea is not to make money, the idea is to incent healthy behaviors and there is no question that we will have people that will game it. There is no question. But there will be more that won't. Cavener: Follow up, Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Uh-huh. Cavener: What was the response of the wellness committee towards this idea? Perkins: Actually, the wellness committee on -- is excited about this and there are -- there were a number of people on the benefits committee that were looking for this change as well. There will be a population of employees that will be unhappy about the tobacco usage, I guarantee it's -- they weren't happy with the policy, so they are not going to be happy with this either. But it really is a very small percentage and, again, the idea is not -- we are not trying to punish them, we are trying to give them a choice, but we want to incent them to really change their behaviors. Cavener: Okay. Thank you. Perkins: Uh-huh. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions? Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: The recommendations that you have made with respect to salaries and benefits -- Perkins: Uh-huh. Rountree: -- it's my understanding that those recommendations have been factored into the budgets and that's what we are presented with today? Perkins: That is correct. Rountree: Okay. So, any changes would reflect a change of the ultimate bottom line; correct? Lavoie: Yes. Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, the budget does take into consideration the full 15 percent accepted. So, if you approve the 15.7 percent I have Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 21 of 123 allocated enough funds to cover that. If you reduce it to the 11 point something percentage -- Perkins: Eleven. Lavoie: -- 11 percent, again, that would just create a positive decision in your cash. So, I have budgeted 15.7 just in case. De Weerd: But the recommendation is the 11 percent? Lavoie: I apologize, Mr. Rountree. Were you asking about the insurance or the compensation of three percent? Bird: Compensation. Lavoie: Oh. Yeah. It's about that. The budget that you have to presented to you in the summary sheets were the three percent that were recommended by the HR, except for the police STEP plan. The police STEP plan has a separate line that was presented to you as a change in the supplemental documents and that is not based on three percent, that's based on a different calculation method that -- Perkins: We are still working on it. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Are you turned on? Borton: Yeah. Too far away. De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: Can you put the slide, Patti, back with -- that shows the 11 percent? Perkins: That one? Borton: Oh. Okay. Thanks. Excellent. De Weerd: So, Todd, the 11 percent is not the one in front of them that was contemplated, is that it? Bird: 15.7. De Weerd: That is what -- because that is what the recommendation was. Lavoie: Yes, Madam Mayor. The HR -- they're representing the 11 percent. I did allocate enough fund to cover 15.7 percent if you wish to go that way. So, the balanced Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 22 of 123 budget that you have in front of you can absorb the 15 percent request if we wish to go that way. If you go with the 11 that will just create a positive position in our cash forecast. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions from Council? Rountree: I have none. De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Rountree: Oh, I do have a question. De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: On the position sheet -- and I have noticed this and I should know the answer and it's probably right in front of my nose, but there is position ideas and division codes and I understand that. We have positions that have no I.D. and we have positions that have no descriptors, yet we have money allocated to those positions. What are those positions? Perkins: I don't -- I'm not looking at what you're looking at, so I am not sure. Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Council Member Rountree, are you -- are we referring -- I apologize I'm not exactly sure what we are looking at. Are we looking in the budget book and is it based on the wages information? Is that what we are looking at? De Weerd: Yeah. He's looking at the purple sheet. Rountree: I'm looking at the purple sheet. Lavoie: Correct. Okay. So, the purple sheet represents the wages for that particular division. This is slot numbers. You will see a little number in there. That's a tracking mechanism that we have within the city for each position. Each position -- each position in the city has a slot number, but every slot number doesn't have a particular human body sitting in it at the moment. So, there will not be a potential employee I.D., because that position is still vacant, if that makes sense. Not yet? Rountree: Well, it makes sense. I just wanted to see if that's where -- Lavoie: Yeah. So, every position that you approve we assign a slot number to. That slot number now resides in the HR division as a -- I guess position for here to eternity. Now, we can apply multiple employee either IDs to that position slot for a tracking mechanism, so if you wish to hire another budget analyst it will be the previous and the new employee would be the new one. So, you would always have multiple employee IDs one position ID. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 23 of 123 Rountree: Well, it seems to me that there is a potential there to -- if we have no employees there and there is no intent for employees, that we ought not to -- excise that from the budget presentation and I noticed that on a number of them. You have a position with zero and no money. Some divisions have none of those. So, I don't know -- I haven't calculated that, but in this particular case you're looking at about 27, 28 thousand dollars. De Weerd: Mr. Rountree, one of those is the intern program and because there is a number of them they don't have the ID. Rountree: Then, the position ought to describe what it is within the budget book. That's what I was assuming, that the intern program was somewhere, but I have no way of knowing that when I look at this. De Weerd: In HR -- Rountree: In HR. De Weerd: -- is what he's referring to. You have two line items, one for five thousand and one for 20,000 that is unidentified. Perkins: The 20,000, that's the work life skills program interns and the 5,000 -- yeah. don't -- De Weerd: And that's the point is we could fill that in as to what that program is. Rountree: And that occurs a number of places. De Weerd: Okay. We weren't quite under HR, believe it or not, but we are a little bit behind schedule. Perkins: I went a little long. But the next one will be really fast if you want to cue up my -- De Weerd: You're not next. I'm sorry. Perkins: I am. De Weerd: No. Bird: No. Community -- De Weerd: Community Development. Rountree: Community Development is. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 24 of 123 Perkins: Todd has changed. Put me back to back. Okay. He told me. Bird: He changed the agenda? Perkins: He did. Rountree: Should have done that earlier. Bird: We approved it as printed. De Weerd: Well, just -- just get it all over with, because Councilman Rountree was already tracking you and that's why his question was there. Okay. Go ahead. Perkins: All right. Very quickly. The human resources processes that we have are very very highly manual. We have lots and lots and lots of paper and some of those papers are in triplicate. In particular open enrollment and new enrollment for employee benefits is very very cumbersome and it is not only a manual process for HR, it's a manual -- very manual for employees, for payroll, and requires quite a bit of resources to administer. With the complexities of the Affordable Care Act and the -- the need to be able to flex and change our plans, we really feel like we need to be more efficient and able to be more nimble in handling our benefits programs. We have an existing HR system that will allow for addition of other modules to help us increase our efficiency and accuracy and in particular we are interested in getting some modules to really help us with this benefit enrollment process. The total cost is a one-time cost is 48,263 dollars and it is, as I said, a one-time cost, including maintenance for that year. Annual ongoing cost of 6,000 dollars maintenance would begin in fiscal year'16 for the addition of these three modules. These three modules were together on -- will allow us to administer benefits in a more seamless way. It will allow the employee to update their personal information in the HR system, so they will be able to have real-time address and phone number changes, emergency contact, that kind of stuff. Right now it's on a piece of paper that has to be data entered. It will allow online benefits enrollment, updating of dependents, marital status, changes, those types of changes and, then, finally, a module that will actually send all of that benefit information directly to the carrier. Right now it goes through finance, who sends a lot of the information. It's very cumbersome. Just to give you a perspective on -- Christina had an address change for an employee and it required her to complete five separate pieces of paper and, then, fax those pieces of paper to the carriers. We have issues with faxes getting lost, with forms getting lost. Anytime you have multiple touches of data you have opportunity for errors. So, this would really help us be much more efficient and make it easier I think for everybody concerned. As I mention reduced -- this would reduce the opportunity for errors, because of the multiple touches. Increases speed at which changes and information can be transmitted. Increases our efficiency, which will allow us to spend our time on more value added activities than pushing paper. It actually will reduce the need for physical file space. If you -- we have so many file cabinets we had to scrounge old fire safe file cabinets from the basement, because we were running out of room. Increases the ease of open enrollment for employees and for us and it -- this is Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 25 of 123 especially cool for wastewater, water, fire station, police station, because right now everybody has to bring their forms here. It will allow them online enrollment. And, then, this also will provide a foundation for future automation of recruiting and training modules that we would hope to add at a future date. De Weerd: Council, any questions? Bird: I have none. De Weerd: Bruce. Chatterton: Yeah. Council Members, good morning. Todd did a great job of going over the Community Development base budget, so I'm only going to talk now about our enhancements. We have four. One I'm going to spend 99 percent of the time talking about. The other two pretty -- pretty minor. First, we are proposing a new FTE to bring the building official in house and I will talk a little bit about that. Why this position is needed. Some of the history around our revenues and the fact that this is a revenue neutral. At times we may actually make some money on bringing this position in house. And, then, we have two other minor enhancements. First off, maybe just to review very quickly for your newer Council Members. We have a somewhat unusual system in Meridian for a city our size, in that a good part of our building department function, the function you would normally see in a city, has been outsourced to a series of contractors, of companies, and under several different contracts. I have to say that we are proud of our reputation for permitting. We are really second to none in the state and elsewhere and we continue to get feedback about our speed and efficiency. This is about enhancing that reputation, enhancing that speed and efficiency. So, we have -- we have really seven different contracts. We have a building official, which we will be talking about that. Building inspections, otherwise called the structural inspections. Building plan review. Mechanical and electrical. And those are currently handled by the Division of Building Safety with the state of Idaho under our contract. Plumbing and fire review. Now, this system allows us to have a smaller staff. If we got all these folks in house, all of them, we would probably be looking at a staff of around 45. What this means is that we have these companies -- these contractors who -- and Stacy talked about how cyclical our business is. I have some information on that coming up. When times are lean the contractors are able to lay off and to downsize their workforce. When it's busy the burden of hiring is on them. So, both the good and the bad. And it's nice not to have -- have the direct responsibility for hiring and firing based upon that -- that somewhat volatile and cyclical system. This is not a new discussion about the building official, though. This was -- this slide, 2013 slide, is what I presented to City Council over a year ago and we reviewed it a little bit at my annual focus about a month ago. We talked at that time about some of the threats. Typically this is a system used by much smaller cities that are not full service municipalities. There are some limitations on how much we can implement the Meridian Way and the CARE values, because to do that fully would create some co -employment concerns, that is, basically, you would have the -- just the Labor Department or IRS saying this is effectively an employee and it forces us to have an arm's length approach. So, what we said at the Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 26 of 123 time, over a year ago was we needed to benchmark our program against other jurisdictions, see what other jurisdictions are doing. We wanted to consider a hybrid system and, as I said, we have an enhancement for 2014. We are the busiest permitting jurisdiction in the state of Idaho and we are also the largest without having a building official. Eagle, Star and Middleton all have building officials. So, obviously, our closest rivals in population, Boise, Nampa, Pocatello, all have building officials. If you can imagine for a second the city engineer being a contractor. Now, that's not an uncommon thing for a very small city, but it's hard to imagine Warren not being part of Tom's team. If you can imagine for a second the fire marshal -- deputy Fire Chief -- you know, Perry not being a city employee. You kind of get a feel for what it's like to not having a building official on staff. It really is a missing member of our team. So, what does a building official do? Very very important. A building official insures that all new and renovated construction is safe. As I mentioned, like the fire marshal does for existing inspections. The building official has to be a problem solver. Makes sure that our codes are used in the appropriate manner in the interest of the community and part of that problem solving is not being just a regulator, but being a facilitator. Using the inherent flexibility in the code, as opposed to a black and white approach, using that inherent flexibility to insure that the intent of the code is met, not just the black and white letter of the law. And also insures that our levels of service are improved and maintained. What's not getting done now under our system? Really, it's a matter mostly quality, primarily. There is some tangibles you have to talk about. We don't have a full-time presence to respond to customers and the public. Actually, I'm not so sure we can, because if we were to require our contracted building officials to be here full time, that would probably be one of those things that would say, yeah, you have got co -employment issues and this person is not a contractor. Our contractors are dedicated to our work. They perform to the specifications laid out in their contracts. But those intangibles mean that it -- it really is not possible to have the full sense of ownership and dedication of a contractor versus a team member. Earlier in my career I was actually a contracted planning director for a town about the size of Boise. Did that for about a year and, then, they recruited me to come in house. I was running a small consulting firm. I can tell you, though, even though I did -- I performed well under that contract and it was a good experience and they were happy with me, at least they -- because they brought me in house -- there was a real difference in my approach. I was part of the team. I was able to lead. I was able to be part of the Mayor's and the city manager's team in that city. So, there is a real -- there is a real difference in this. We also can't do best training or normal employee performance review and, as I said, this really feels like a missing member of our team. So, talk for a second about one company right now that currently has three contracts. The building official, the building plan review, and building or structural inspections. The building official contract is the smallest of those -- of those three contracts. Plan review and building inspections would not be affected by -- by their stand-alone contracts. So, in order to fund a building official, we are looking at a total -- this is fully loaded, hiring at the mid range of around 92,000 dollars. 92,602. And it is right for budgeting. We are showing that at the midpoint. Obviously, we would do our best to hire within that first third of the -- of the hiring range. And, obviously, we have approximately 30 percent added on here for fully loaded benefits. So, that gives you an idea of what it would cost us. Let's look at Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 27 of 123 what we are spending now on the building official. And this is 2006 to year-to-date this year. As you can see, under that contract for the building official in '06, '07, the pre -real estate recession, we were covering what we would be thinking that we need to pay this individual to bring them in house and you get into the real estate recession. We are going -- you know, we were actually making less during those times and, then, obviously, recovery 2012, 2013 and 2014 year to date would be about double that 66,000 number that we are looking at -- probably a little bit more than. That's a bit conservative. It comes out to within a few hundred dollars to the exact amount, if you average out over these years. What we have made of the contract. Within a few hundred dollars of what it would cost us to bring this position in house. So, effectively, revenue neutral. Stacy talked a lot about the cyclical nature of permitting. The top is commercial. The red line, the blue line, is residential. You can, obviously, what happened during the real estate recession, the fact that we have continued to -- to recover and the fact that residential on the bottom is much less volatile overall than the commercial numbers are. Now, every year, Community Development, either gives nothing back to the General Fund or gives revenues in excess of budgets. It's not profit. It's not the same thing as profit and I'm not pretending its profit. Stacy would throw something at me if I were to say that. And as you can see -- and let me just add in 2013. When times are great we return money for capital projects to the city. Lean times we return nothing and for this -- this year, 2.4 million dollars -- excuse me. For the previous year and I think, Todd, you said -- projected around three million dollars for this year? That's right about here? Kilchenmann: No. Sorry. It's part of a million. Chatterton. Okay. I think it's going to be more than that, but we will -- Kilchenmann: Okay. Chatterton: We will -- okay. Lunch. Bird. How much? What did you -- I know, but how much did Stace say? A million? I agree with you, Stace. Chatterton: So, the point is that any business you want to be able to plow some of those proceeds back into the business and this is one of the reasons that we are proposing this change. What are the advantages? So, if we bring this in house, it's effectively paid for through permitting revenues, smoothed out over the long term. It's a full-time position for the price of a part-time contract. We would have improved customer responsiveness. We would demand that and we would be in position to demand that. It would take care of the concerns that HR and legal have with co - employment over someone effectively being considered an employee. It completes our team. Our team is not -- is not employed fully without this position. And, then, it puts us finally on an even playing field with -- with other jurisdictions around the state. Talk about benchmarking. I have two other minor enhancements. Any questions about this one that -- of course, this one is the big one and I have spent some time describing it. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 28 of 123 Bird: Mr. Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: You have got about ten minutes. Chatterton: Okay. Bird: In the first place, returning revenue into the coffer don't hurt. Why when our permits -- in two months in 2006 we did more permits than we are doing in a whole year. Do we need this official? Another thing. I've never seen a public department that you higher one this year, next year you will have another one you want, and pretty soon -- I can tell you from 42 years dealing with inspectors and stuff, the ones that have in- house ones are the worst, because they think they own you and just go ask your contractors whether they would sooner have Meridian come inspect them or Boise. Chatterton: Mayor and Council Member Bird -- I'm sorry, were you -- Bird: Yeah. I'm done for right now. Chatterton: I didn't want to forget the point that you made. I understand what you're saying about some building officials. That has not been my experience under my management, however, Council Member Bird. I have gotten the right building officials in place who are part of the team and get it. No building official has ever owned me. But I do appreciate that. That is something that bears a lot of watching. This is primarily a technical position and, you're right, they are often individuals that are in this field that are very black and white. Whenever, I have worked with an individual like that that feels like, you know, they should own the whole -- the whole situation, we found a way to separate and whenever I have a hired one it's been the right person for that position in two other cities. Bird: Follow up? Thanks, Bruce. But, anyway, you know, when it did get slow we -- you didn't have to go through your department and I just -- I just can't figure out when we were really really busy why all of a sudden -- we didn't need this. Now all of a sudden we do need it. Did we in our reorganization of this department short that staff or what? And I mean I can tell you right now, the guy that has this contract if you ask 90 percent of the people out, they will tell you he's the building department of Meridian. So, -- and I haven't heard any complaints and I probably deal with the construction world as much as any of you guys. Chatterton: And, Council Member Bird -- De Weerd: Mr. Bird, I guess I would first go to the -- the building official is not solely on new development. The building official has a lot to do with the existing housing stock and as we continue to grow and as we age you have more and more issues. It is also Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 29 of 123 about code enforcement, it is a member of that code enforcement team, and as I have talked on occasion with inspectors, this is all about the long-term health of our existing and our future building stock. Some of that you can -- you can ask a contract to oversee. This particular area you can't. It's hard to quantify, it's hard to build into a contract, and -- and these are discussion items that our team really discussed as you vetted this enhancement request. Bird: Let me ask you a question then. You say it's for new housing -- or old housing and stuff. Every time they come in and get a permit isn't it handled just like the new permit? I mean the inspections and everything? All remodels I have ever done or seen is handled just like a new building, so -- and you got a code enforcement officer for everything. The buildings -- when they bring in the stamped thing and we inspect the plans, we are saying that they are -- if it's built right it's built safely. Chatterton: Madam Mayor and Council Member Bird, to kind of talk about your last point first here before I forget the other ones -- the building official is involved with enforcement activities and we have had several where we have had the building official sign a letter on City of Meridian letterhead and its just the fact that, yes, they are the building official, there are certain powers under state law, under our local ordinance, and it's odd for that individual to not be a city official, the same as it would be for the city engineer or the fire marshal. The city is really not represented by the building official at many of the different venues that we have. Code Council, building officials, because it's a different kind of relationship. We send other staff to represent our city, because we don't have an FTE who is a building official and, finally, this isn't a new discussion at all. I should have mentioned that going back years ago when the building development services function was still part of Public Works that Tom Barry did propose this and looked very very carefully at that. It's been seen as a need for some time. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Thank you. I would comment that particularly when we have what seems to bring surplus work during high peak volume times, when the economy is exciting and good, I'm generally in favor of contracting that kind of work out, because you know the economy is going to slide again and we don't have to fire a contractor, we just don't give them anymore work. So, if for doing surplus kind of work beyond -- above and beyond the core work that we think is going to continue, I have no problem with contractors. think they are a good idea. I encourage all departments, though, to consider as we grow are there other core functions being done by a contractor that is not really surplus work, that as we grow we can expect this need to continue and what is the point where it is right to bring it in house. Bruce and I have had discussions about this position and, actually, I think I remember having discussions with Tom about it before. It sounds to me like this is the right time to bring this one in house and, as I say, I encourage all departments to consider that as we grow. The importance of having a core staff that we know will be continuous -- we haven't talked about HR and how do we keep employees Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 30 of 123 that we need. We have no particular way of keeping a contractor. If it comes to the end of their contract and they say they don't want to do it anymore, we have lost them. Of course, employees can quit as well, but its less likely. So, I guess the point that I'm getting to it is I agree that this is a time to make this an in-house position. I think what Bruce has presented is -- is an excellent idea. Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Member Zaremba reminded me of a point is that think you can outsource work -- you can outsource review for the code. That's the building plan reviews and inspection. Really, I think we have a problem when we start outsourcing authority and the building official, like the city engineer, like the fire marshal, like other positions in the city, has actual authority under -- under ordinance and that's where it starts to get iffy. So, the idea is to bring the authority in house to continue outsourcing the work, which, of course, is -- we are talking about here less than four percent of total what we pay to contractors right now would be involved with this position. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: One quick question. Is -- if it's an enhancement of that sum, but it's -- it's revenue neutral, the thought being that you're spending about 90,000 on average for those contracted services? Is that -- that's the general idea? Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Member Borton, that's correct. Yes. Borton: So, a question for Stacy or Todd. Is that reduction in the ongoing operation expense reflected in the budget? I mean it's an enhancement, but in the sense it isn't? Chatterton: Well, we would be spending the money, but simply spending it -- it would be going to an FTE, as opposed to a contractor. So, I don't know that it would -- we would still be bringing the revenues. Borton: But it sounds as though on those assumptions that it's new monies being spent, it's just being allocated to an in-house employee? Chatterton: If you assume that those revenues will be there, yes. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, what we do is -- because that contract expense is an estimate -- Borton: Right. Kilchenmann: -- so, first we estimate the revenue and, then, we estimate the expense and the contract for building inspection includes building officials all one contract -- or it's separate in the contract, but it flows to the financial statements as one. So, then, the Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 31 of 123 amendment process will -- will higher, just so it looks pretty. percentage of revenue is from answer that? adjust up. If revenues are higher we will just expense o, that's how we do it. We take it -- what our traditional each of those contracts and do it that way. Does that Borton: Somewhat. It sounds -- there is an offset in there somewhere? Kilchenmann: Not for this, no. We didn't reduce the expense by the cost of this person. Borton: Madam Mayor? I apologize if I'm being dense. It sounds as though, using his comments, that there would be a wash. You might not have reflected it, but next year's budgeted contract expenses are reduced, assuming those assumptions are true, approximately we will say 80,000, 90,000. Kilchenmann: It -- well, the revenue would be somewhat less and the personal expense would be somewhat less and the contract expense would be somewhat less. Borton: Right. Kilchemann: So, it would wash through. The end result would probably be less revenue perhaps. Somewhat less. I don't know exactly the percentage of revenue we make on this piece of the contract. Well, it doesn't matter. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? I'm not getting that connection that -- the revenue is determined by the number of permits. There is nothing that anybody can do, whether it's an employee or a contractor, to change that number. So, I don't see that the income projection would change. I agree with Joe's question, it does mean the contract services should go down the equivalent amount that personal expense goes up. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba -- right. It's -- personnel goes up, contract goes down. Net revenue goes down. But obviously -- the total revenue stays the same. Borton: Madam Mayor? Kilchenmann: Because this becomes a fixed cost, instead of -- De Weerd: We are seeing how jet lagged you are. Borton: That revenue drops, does that mean that the expenditures were less than -- using round numbers 90,000? If you're assuming an expenditure of that portion of the contract will save 60 grand, then, you're going to have a net loss of 30,000. Kilchenmann: Correct. Whatever the percentage is. Yes. Borton: Okay. All right. I'm just -- Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 32 of 123 Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I believe there is one other thing that we haven't put in here. We have got a one time cost capital of probably 30,000 dollars for a vehicle. I don't see it anyplace in here. Or do we already have a vehicle? Chatterton: Right. That was a transfer from -- from Public Works of a still good shaped vehicle. That's correct, Council Member. Bird: Okay. De Weerd: Yeah. Or an old police vehicle or maybe legal's old vehicle or -- Bird: Maybe we can get one of the one ton fire trucks that run around. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: To the point of contracted services, it's -- there are great efficiencies, but there is great challenges. So, to Councilman Bird's comments, if there is not a long line of complaints I think that's some testament to your leadership and management of that contract. It's probably more difficult than perhaps an in-house employee to manage, so job well done. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: And I would also include the other Bruce. I think he has been pretty -- worked pretty close with the contractors and has a very good reputation out there, too, so -- don't know, I just -- I can't -- I can't justify it, but I think it will probably be five to one, so -- De Weerd: Yeah. And I think maybe this -- this will be a topic in discussion, so you might want to huddle with your team and find out, you know, where some of those slates are that this position could fill. Chatterton: Thank you. Very quickly onto things which will pale in comparison. We did need a laserFische license -- this is to help us with a backlog of old files. City Clerk has - - we are teaming with them and trying to use our resources, our staff resources, to digitize some of these old plan sets. So, that's 1,300 dollars. Finally, an RQ license that's Geographic Information Services, GIS. We sometimes -- we have eight licenses Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 33 of 123 out there right now. Sometimes folks are getting locked out. We are not getting GIS -- GIS is such a big part of mapping of what we do, it's just -- it's a core tool for what every planner and folks in the building group need. We just need another license as a little bit of a safety valve and I think I have had some thoughts and direction, unless there are more. De Weerd: Anything further? Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Madam Mayor, I'm really confused in the budget book. I'm looking at a document that dated 7/7/2014 and it talks about community development budget requests summary. I think that's the one we just got to replace the community development? Bruce, you're through with your presentation? Chatterton: Yes, I am. Rountree: On that document it has enhancements. A building official and, then, it goes through one, two, three, four compensation plans and it has the laserfische and, then, and GIS desk -- desktop basic, which I think is covered under one of the other of the four separate sections we have in the budget book for Community Development, which makes it very difficult to put the pieces together. I appreciate you putting the fine point on all of this stuff, but I would like to see community development as a department and I would like to see the budget put together that way, so I can make heads or tails out of what Bruce is telling me and, further, I would like to see another run at the budget based on the discussion we have just had about having a building official, as opposed to a contractor building person, and what difference that would make in the budget before would be even inclined to move forward with anything on this particular budget. Chatterton: Madam Mayor and Council Member Rountree -- Rountree: I'm just saying that, because I have spent most of my time listening to Bruce trying to find what he's talking about and -- and it's not terribly orderly in my mind how it's presented. Chatterton: Mayor and Council Member Rountree, I may have been remiss in not indexing what I was saying carefully to your book. I was trying to just simply do four -- four enhancements and let's talk about those, so -- Rountree: But I have more enhancements than that here. I don't see that compensation plan in other departments. I don't know what that is. Is that the three percent increase or -- Bird: That's your three merit thing. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: You don't see that anywhere -- Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 34 of 123 Bird: We don't see it in others. Rountree: Yeah. We don't see it in others. Kilchenmann: It should be in every department. It really is a merit pool. It should be title merit pool. Rountree: I didn't see that in any HR. I haven't seen it in some others. So, I -- in our desire to get everything transparent it's becoming very oblique. But I appreciate your effort, but without better explanation I get lost trying to follow what's being told to me. And that's not you and that's not them, because they are doing a great job getting stuff. But keep in mind -- I have gone through this without presentations and now I'm trying to follow it and I'm seeing the stuff and I'm not hearing about it. Just a comment. Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, I appreciate the feedback. We will definitely -- we continue to try to make the book as easy as possible -- legible as possible and readable -- understandable as possible. I think the paperwork that you're speaking of today is that summary sheet. The summary sheet actually represents his division as a whole that goes at the top of your book under the summary section. Bruce also has a Community Development Division that falls into a subsection of this book as well, which is approximately five tabs in. So, I can see there could be some confusion there. I do apologize. So, the sheet I gave you earlier was the -- Bruce's overall division, but Bruce also has an admin community division that we also report on independently. So, I can see the confusion. We will see what we can do to work on that. Rountree: And in economic development and the planning department, so -- trying to put all that stuff together and seeing the enhancements doesn't work. De Weerd: I think we could do it like police. Police have different codes for each of their divisions, but it's all under one tab and that's what we need to do. Rountree: And a question for Bruce. Yol you're talking about the building that -- plan entail? indicated that in community development review and fire inspection. What does that Chatterton: That is, basically, fire safety reviews, sprinklers, alarms, exiting, Council Member, for new buildings or for renovation. And that's separate from what the fire department does with annual and in some buildings. So, one is maintaining what w that what's built new is safe. Rountree: Okay. Thank you. Bird: Madam Mayor? cases every two year inspections of existing e have out there. The other is making sure Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 35 of 123 De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Bruce -- actually, we have -- I think it's Jacksons, just like our structural people that they look through the plans and stuff and they are just doing the plans. Chatterton: That's correct. It's plan review. Yes, Council Member. Bird: Yeah. De Weerd: Okay. Any further questions for Bruce at this point? Okay. We will break for ten minutes. Chatterton: Thank you. (Recess.) De Weerd: We will go ahead and start again. Our next up is under Other Governments and so I will turn this to Robert to discuss the enhancement request under Other Governments. Simison: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I am here to talk about a couple things in Other Government and City Hall and like a few of the other things you have heard today, a little education for half of our Council who hasn't seen this or heard this in some fashion previously. But a couple years ago we went ahead and put together a plan that was approved by City Council in 2011 to put the Welcome To Meridian signs up that, hopefully, you have all seen around town, you know, the nice little blue flag on posts. In addition to part of that plan, there was a decision to create some monument signs which City Council also approved a design for those monument signs that would go out either in certain locations once we reached our final build out point or in other locations adjacent to the freeway, which we may or may -- you know, they are already in our city limits and, of course, the purpose of these signs is to create community identifiers. We know a lot of people still think part of Meridian is in Boise. You know, telling where one city begins and the other ends, you know, it's important to have those community identifiers and be part of our community. Also it is not uncommon, I'm sure you have seen it in many cities, to have them off the freeway so when people get off and welcome them to their cities. So, that was really kind of the purpose behind this -- the sign plan that was approved in 2011. So, just to bring you up to date, what I have right here is the location where our monuments signs -- not the little signs that you see up now, but where monument signs would be designed. We had a full monument and a small monument and you will see that the full monuments are right there along the interstate and at some various other locations in the city. Now, how do we get those signs done? Well, what we have been doing is -- through community development we have incorporated some of the signs being put into development agreements as people come in. We currently have two in development agreements which are included. One is the Car Maxx location right there on Fairview. They have Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 36 of 123 agreed to do a sign when they come in to do their building. The other is the property on the northwest corner of Linder and Chinden, catching traffic traveling south on Linder coming into the city. So, those are two that are already in the process of development agreements and we will continue to work with new developments that come in to have these signs. De Weerd: And, Robert, I think we have one more that was in a development agreement on the -- for Black Sky, something like that, or Black Knight -- Knightsky. It was at Linder and Chinden, the northwest corner when they come in. Simison: Yes. So, what this enhancement is for is a 30,000 dollar enhancement to do two signs, essentially, and those are for the city to do one sign specifically and another is a partner -- I would say we probably have an unfunded liability out there -- you can agree or disagree with that, especially the lawyers on the Council, but in terms of Locust Grove and Chinden, the church right there on the corner has agreed to allow us to work together to put a monument sign on their property either as they develop or in our own time and the neighbor right across the street, which is where we originally had planned on putting the sign, when they came through for an update to their plan agreed to pay 5,000 dollars towards a sign. So, we have a willing partner to pay for part of a sign, locations to put a sign, but we don't have our side of the money on a table yet to pay for that sign if given the opportunity. So, really, this enhancement is to create the monetary -- to have the money there, so we don't have to come and do a year end -- or a year end enhancement or a budget amendment to pay for that when given the opportunity. The other one is at the Meridian Road interchange, but with the work that's being done there at the interchange we are looking at putting one on the southeast corner, which is kind of where the curb is that -- there is a parcel over there that's not encumbered. We have a Walgreens sign on the other side. You would normally put it on the right-hand side, but they are not going to tear down their sign to put up our sign and we have made contact us the landowner on that corner and they are willing to have some discussions with the city about potentially putting a sign on that location. So, that's what we're looking at is those -- is 30,000 dollars -- they have got a budget of about -- well, cost estimate of about 15,000 dollars each to complete and that was -- that was done about a year and a half ago on that estimate. I'm sure the costs have changed slightly. That's why we did 30,000, you know, knowing that we have about 25,000 in known construction costs. I think it was 5,000 dollars for any changes and/or potential -- if we have to do some minor landscaping replacements if we mess up the property or those type of things. It also includes some ongoing costs for maintenance. So, I will stop there if there is any questions on that one and you can see an example of what the sign would look like, as well as here. One of those two versions, depending upon how it fits into the property that would be selected. De Weerd: Council, any questions at this point? Bird: I have none. De Weerd: Okay. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 37 of 123 Simison: Okay. The next one is -- and, sorry, this didn't make it into your original package, so it's kind of -- I don't want to say forgotten, but a lost soldier, but the Meridian Road parking lot. De Weerd: I'm sorry, Robert. What is the street sign replacement? You may not know that. Todd, do you know what that is? The 5,400 dollars. Simison: I know that's a community development one that they had put together to replace some actual street signs in a specific part of town. I just don't recall which part of town that was for. De Weerd: Okay. Not -- will someone be covering that? Okay. So, we will skip to the replacement that you have got regarding the parking lot. So, we will do that and, then, we will have someone talk about the street sign replacement. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: On the Other Government we have got compensation also in there as an enhancement; right? De Weerd: The compensation is all part of the citywide compensation plan. What Finance did is broke it department by department so you know the actual cost to each code, because I think Finance developed this book really by code. So, you will see it by code just like you get your monthly Finance reports. It's a broken out just like that monthly report is. So, the compensation plan Patti talked about, it's overall. Now you see it in each department what that specific department's portion is. Does that answer that, Mr. Bird? Bird: Yeah. I thought that's what it was. I just wanted to -- De Weerd: Okay. Bird: I just wanted to note it that we did have the compensation for this in there. Simison: Okay. As it relates to the Meridian Road parking lot, the city purchased the properties across the street, which were a former business and home, and envisioned that as being a parking lot and the city survey which was just completed showed that parking is one of the top three items residents would like to see added or improved in the downtown. In addition, by adding parking across the street for city employees it can allow us to move them out from parking at the old city hall building, which allows that building more flexibility when the time comes if there is a need or desire to change how that building is being utilized. If there was a decision right now by the city to sell it, for example, we would be displacing 30 employees from parking and may not have a real Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 38 of 123 viable solution in the short term. So, by constructing this parking lot sooner it creates that opportunity. In addition, when they did the road improvement here at the split corridor they did put in a HAWK signal right here at the corner, which allows for a safer passage across the street for people to utilize that as a parking lot. So, as I mentioned, the city purchased the property. The CIP has construction of it in fiscal year 2015. Working with Max we have put together a projected cost of 320,000 dollars, plus I believe there is 4,000 ongoing for the -- maintaining the parking lot. De Weerd: And, Robert, excuse me for a minute. So, this -- this enhancement was handed out to you this morning and it's under the City Hall tab, if you're trying to find it. Just thought I would mention that. Okay. Simison: Based upon the preliminary design that was done in-house, we estimate getting anywhere between 45 to 50 parking spots on that property, depending on how it's configured and where the access point is. If we try to take everyone off onto Broadway how -- you know, to create something similar to what the City Hall parking lot has here with only one place in or out, versus a secondary. So, that's why you see a varying in how many -- how many spaces are we going to get, it just depends on the ultimate configuration. Once we have had a professional make that determination. So, with that I would be happy to the stand for any questions on that item. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Robert, on the parking lot we also need to note that we -- we will be able to eliminate our contract with the UP out here on the parking spot and we won't have to be able to -- we won't have to be paying that lease every year. De Weerd: I don't think that was contemplated, Mr. Bird, because we would lose our whole paved area out there, but what it would do is allow a greater and probably more intense use if -- if we get a different lease in the former City Hall, that they don't have to -- they can use all the parking over there and we can move the employees that park over at the former City Hall to the lot across the street. The other aspect is there -- there is some risk because we have noticed that as the American Legion has events they are using every dirt spot they can and -- and some of our veterans are not in the shape to be hiking some of those areas. So, it just -- there is some liability over there. Any other questions on this? Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Madam Mayor. Not on this subject. I have an Other Government question would ask when we are done with these subjects. De Weerd: Okay. Simison: Thank you. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 39 of 123 De Weerd: Thank you. We will just do the replacement sign and, then, we will get to additional questions. Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Members, I apologize for not being in the room for this one. The replacement signs, 5,400 dollars, we -- this is a contingency really. Maybe all of it is contingency. We are really putting it out there and we hope we won't need it. As you know, we go through a process with our own addressing technician and with the addressing committee with Ada County of making addresses more consistent and findable for emergency services. For EMS, fire, and police and other emergency services. And that involves often changing the name of streets to make them consistent, to make them less confusing. We have the need to change a number of these signs. We are working right now with ACHD to either simply get the signs changed out, we are going to try to use our influence over there, or perhaps to get them to put temporary stickers over the existing sign. But in some cases the sticker won't work, because you need a wholesale change of the sign. So, this is an issue that we are working with ACHD. We hope we won't need this money at all. If we do we may need just a portion of it. De Weerd: Any questions from Council? Bird: I have none. De Weerd: So, I guess bottom line is you wouldn't have to come through with a budget amendment. Chatterton: We would be money back, yes. De Weerd: You are anticipatory. That is pretty good. Chatterton: You wouldn't let me spend it on anything else, so -- De Weerd: No. Okay. Rountree: Thanks, Bruce. De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Zaremba, did you have a question regarding Other Government? Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I do and it's about other government and a couple of things that I'm not finding, so I need direction to find. Actually, I have two separate subjects. The first question is dues that we pay to other governments -- and I'm thinking of COMPASS, VRT, probably AIC, other organizations like that, I see Allumbaugh House listed on the Other Government agents, but I'm not finding those other dues. Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, that is correct, we don't have a line for every single organization we expense to. What we do is we provide you in the very Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 40 of 123 back of the book under supporting documents there is an Excel spreadsheet that has about 15 organizations on it that show you who we are spending money for, what we are spending money on. We actually do consolidate a lot of those expenses under one or two line items in general, so we don't have 15 individual line items. I'm more than happy to show you that Excel spreadsheet at the very back of the book that gives you the supporting documents, supporting information on all the dues that we do pay within the city. Zaremba: Thank you. That helps on the one question. The other that I'm not seeing -- I do see a line item for senior transportation and one midday express and in the 2014 budget we had an enhancement of 60,000 dollars for what's going to become the Saturday service. I thought that was going to become base budget for "15, so I haven't done anything about it and I'm not saying it reflected here. Is that in the other -- Lavoie: Councilman Zaremba, that is -- that has been accounted for. It's on that supporting documentation. You will see that the VRT, the total budget itself has increased by 60,000 dollars year over year and so we did put that into your base budgeting. Zaremba: I just didn't look far enough. Thank you. Lavoie: Good questions. Zaremba: I'm done. De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Any further questions for Other Government? Not at this point? Then we will move to Finance. De Weerd: Is that a picture of the ceiling? Lavoie: That's it. Milam: Your dollars at work. Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Council Members, we would like to propose a request for 2,000 dollars for a ceiling, as you would say, Mayor -- actually, we would like to have -- Bird: A projector. Lavoie: Yeah. A projector. We have worked with IT. The IT Department has given us a budget of -- expected budget of 2,000 dollars to install a projector, hardware and all wiring needed to install this particular project in our conference room. Again, it will help us with meetings, outside vendors come in and we don't have a projector for them, so, again, it's just a projector that will help us conduct meetings, display on the screen in our conference room. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 41 of 123 Bird: Does it have a magnifying glass on it so we can read it? Lavoie: We will get that for you. De Weerd: The reason they need a projector is so they can see the numbers. Bird: That's what I mean. A magnifying glass so they can. Lavoie: We will make sure it's large format high def for you. De Weerd: Any questions for Todd? Rountree: Nope. Milam: No. Lavoie: Thank you. De Weerd: Thank you, Todd. Okay. Let's turn this over to our parks director. Siddoway: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. We are here today to present the Parks and Recreation budget for fiscal year 2015. To begin off with, though, we wanted to return and report on some of the accomplishments that we have realized with the money that you gave us last year with the FY -14 budgeted funds. One of the items that we think is worth mentioning and celebrating is the top one with Storey Park, we were able to realize the Land and Water Conservation fund land exchange, a three way deal between the city, the dairy board, and Mr. Newman with the speedway. That's been a win-win and beneficial to -- to all the parties. We have also been able to accomplish things like the split corridor landscaping that was completed last fall when the split corridor was done. With the 77 acre well rights, just mention we did get those rights and a well is being drilled this week. So, the well construction is underway out there. I won't read the whole list to you. We did get the Generations Plaza water feature upgrades, a much needed safety upgrade. We are working on an art wrap for the box, so that it's less visually intrusive out there. Five Mile Creek pathway is under construction. You have probably seen the work out there near -- near Bridgetower. I'm going to jump down to the two photos that we have. I think it's worth mentioning that the park dedication plaques, which you see on the top photo, have just been delivered in the last week and they will be distributed out to the various parks and, then, those bottom photos are of the recent improvements in 8th Street Park. The restroom is in place. The playground is in. The -- there is still a shelter coming, which is ordered and to be delivered later this summer and installed by fall. So, we are looking forward to those improvements coming there. But I also want to recognize the group that's behind me, the Parks and Recreation team really deserves the credit, not me, for these accomplishments. They work very hard to use these funds wisely that you give us and deliver the projects that you -- that approve for us in a timely manner. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 42 of 123 De Weerd: And I will say anyone that goes out to our parks can see the pride that has instilled in that. The growth numbers and our programs speak well to the recreation side and I understand we have the top graduates from the University of Idaho in recreation, so, you know -- Colin, I think that's great that we are making those kind of statements out there, so -- and I agree with them. Siddoway: Meridian really is getting known across the state as the city that's doing it right and it's amazing how many calls we get from different communities just asking questions and looking at how we do things. So, just a few specific parks -related accomplishments. The tennis court projects in Village Square in Settlers Park is not yet completed, but is making great progress. You have probably seen the work out there underway. About a month or so from completion. It will be done later this summer. Splash pad modifications out there were also done. It's now a fully safe freshwater system. Drains to the pond and, then, we reuse that water for irrigation. Jumping down to Kleiner Park, I just want to mention that the Park Ambassador Program this year has been expanded not just to Kleiner Park, but they now are able to travel out and visit other parks and they have expanded that program to other parks in our system. I think goose management is another one that's worth mentioning. We have seen great success with that over the winter. If you have been out there recently you have seen some geese lately. That's because we are not allowed to haze during the molt, but that will change again soon and we will be out there again with our contract with the dogs you see on the lower right chasing those geese as soon as they can fly. Bird: Not very good swimmers. They got life vests on. Siddoway: Without going into too much detail, we have also -- so, just real briefly on the dogs, one dog does swim. He swims the length of that pond. One dog runs the edge and between the two of them they make a great team. A lot of times if you just have dogs, you know, run the edges the geese will just swim from side to side and kind of mock your efforts. But with this team one dog will run the edges and one dog will just take off and swim the length and by the time they get close enough together those geese will take off and fly. We don't have the details on here, but, as you know, we put on many events throughout the year. We gave you updates on these items last month in our strategic presentation, so I just wanted to mention advanced classes and camps and the adult sports programs that are all delivered to our citizens with the funds that you approve for us. We did receive several awards in the last year. I was just -- I just want to really hit the first one. That's probably the one I'm most proud of this first year. The Idaho Recreation and Parks Association awarded Kleiner Park its outstanding facility and parks award for the entire state of Idaho for the year 2013. So, we were very pleased to receive that award last fall. You can see others that have come in. Some tennis grant awards, our Tree City USA, and the Environmental Excellence Award for our efforts with -- Elroy Huff and our tree program. So, I don't have the forms that are in front of you, so I just want to make sure that -- I think I have seven enhancements on that form that I am going to be presenting to you in detail and that will be the focus of my presentation to you today. You can see those seven lined out right here and I will go through them individually in greater detail. So, the first one should be Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 43 of 123 no surprise. We were before you about three weeks ago, we had a lengthy discussion about the Storey Park development and the dog park. It was requested in the motion at that time that it come back before this body as part of the budget process, so that's why you received the enhancement that you did. The total is just under 1.6 million dollars. It would be used to complete the remaining undeveloped portion of Storey Park in the new configuration that we now have as a result of the land trade -- the land swap that was described as one of the accomplishments. I think it's important to point out that the entire amount is not for a dog park, the majority of that is for the needed park improvements in the park and, then, a small portion is for the dog park. I will show you that split here momentarily and -- so, the bulk of it is in those capital outlay needs and, then, a variety of operating needs is the balance of it. This project is anticipated in our capital improvements plan and it is 22 percent eligible for Park Impact Fees. So, the specific split on the capital cost breakdown is at -- about 1.3 million dollars of that 1.6 is for park improvements that would be needed to finish up that park, irrespective of whether it's a dog park or not. If we were to build that out as a picnic, open space area, with turf, trees, restroom, shelter, parking and drive aisle improvements, utilities and drainage, that cost would be there. The balance of 226,000 dollars is the specific improvements beyond that that would be for the dog park. The fencing. The upgraded surfaces. The additional shelters that would go in the dog park. The walking paths in there and the additional drinking water. Now, part of the motion that was made three weeks ago was to, please, take a look at a phasing option and, Councilman Rountree, believe you requested that and so we have done that. The photo -- or the illustration over to the right is a graphic of what we looked at. So, in this one it has the -- the dog park improvements, the immediately adjacent parking, but no connection through to the existing park. So, there is no connection there. They function has two separate entities. And those -- that connection could be made as a future second phase. Councilman Bird mentioned when he seconded the motion, he predicted that the cost would probably go up to about 1.8 million and it turns out he's almost right on. So, we do see an increase by mobilizing twice and splitting the project that we did get those -- a cost estimate for that breakdown from the construction management team. And so we would like to build the entire project, Option A, at once. That would be our recommendation. We think it saves us both time and money. And if the project is determined to be funded I think there are a couple of different funding options. The first one is to just approve it with the rest of the FY -15 budget. If -- what would we do if we got it with -- in October 1 with the FY -15 budget funds. Well, we would work on it -- continue to work agency approvals and specifically work on utilities this fall. But there would be no paving done this year. It would happen next year. As I have looked into the likely time frames, we would likely be finished with construction in early fall of next year, somewhere around Labor Day. If you wanted to move forward now with an amendment, which is the second option, we would move forward immediately with the budget -- sorry -- the bid process and probably the key difference is we would be able to get to paving this fall. Landscape and establishment would happen next spring and we would project to be open somewhere around Memorial Day, which would give us the use of that park through the summer season next year. We are prepared to do either. So, we will take your direction on that, but some of the benefits I see in being able to move forward as much as possible this fall has to do with weather. The spring weather Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 44 of 123 is much wetter, less predictable. I believe that, you know, getting the weather sensitive improvements, specifically the pavement done this fall would be a benefit. We would have better -- there are certain improvements that can only be done when water is out of the ditch and we do have the Nine Mile Drain running right through the middle of this project and I think we would have some better coordination with the irrigation district and the ability to do some of those improvements during the fall while water is out of that -- out of the ditch and I also believe there would be fewer impacts to the speedway by being able to work on the parking lot and the drive aisle improvements while the races are not, you know, while they are in their off season, rather than trying to do it next spring and summer when the races are in. So, that's kind of the options as laid out for you and I will pause there and see if you have any questions on this one, because I know it's a big one and has had a lot of discussion. De Weerd: Council, any questions? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Steven, I don't think I missed this, but if we were to improve this, are you ready to -- is it ready to go out and get designed and ready to go, so that right after October we could have it out for bid? Siddoway: Yeah. If you gave us the green light now, we would -- we're about at 90 percent plans. So, we are real close to finishing the plans. We are doing some coordination with Public Works, because they have a sewer project that is crossing the park to get to the -- the well house and we want to make sure those projects are coordinated together. So, in short, yes, we would move forward just as quickly as we have -- Bird: I think it would be a very good move to do that, because I don't want to see us working there when the races are on next spring. It will be for both parties for your contracts and everything, so -- the more we can get done the better off we are. Thank you. Milam: Madam Mayor? It's kind of late in the game for this, Steve, but just out of curiosity remind me how necessary a restroom is and what part of that expense is just restroom related, because I know that's pretty high, isn't it? Siddoway: It's actually not that high. We would use the exact same -- in fact, I can show you the restroom that we would use, because we wouldn't -- we already have it designed with the one that went in at 8th Street park. So, this -- this picture right here with the restroom that was built this year in 8th Street Park, is the same restroom that we would pick up and use. The cost for that -- do you remember, Mike, what the specific cost is? We will get some -- I could guess, but I would be wrong one way or the other, so -- Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 45 of 123 Barton: Thanks. Madam Mayor, Council, the cost for an identical restroom to the picture that is on this slide is approximately 75,000 dollars for that restroom. Fairly economical with the sewer project, as Steve said, was coming across the park, that connection is economical. There is power close by. Water is being brought into the site. So, in terms of a restroom it's about as economical as you can get and if this park was square or -- and there was a restroom that was centrally located, we would probably be okay with the existing facilities, but because of the -- just the nature and the layout of this park and it's so linear, in addition to the dog uses and conflicts between baseball players and children and stuff, we see the need for -- to add a restroom to this. Milam: Okay. Thank you. Siddoway: And I would just add to that, that the -- the question was also specifically discussed by the Parks and Rec Commission, is one needed, and the recommendation from that group is that, yes, one is needed here. Milam: Okay. Thank you. De Weerd: So, Steve, then, are you going to still have -- you have the restroom with the visitors center and the chamber. Siddoway: Yes. De Weerd: And are you going to be removing the restroom that's by the softball field, then? Siddoway: No. We would be connecting it better to the park. But one of the reasons for the reconfiguration of the drive aisle is to get that to have a better relationship with the softball fields. De Weerd: How many restrooms do we have in Kleiner Park or Settlers Park? Siddoway: Kleiner Park has three sets of restrooms and Settlers Park has three sets of restrooms. De Weerd: Okay. And because of the distance it necessitates it in Storey Park, too? Siddoway: Correct. Yeah. It's a function of the layout. It's easier. It's linear. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions from Council? Borton: Madam Mayor? An accounting question maybe for Stacy on this. To Steve's point where he comments on the budget amendment option, which I know has been visited earlier, is that a mechanism of spending fund balance now, with the option of taking this same sum, which is put into this budget amount and rather than reallocating Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 46 of 123 it to another expenditure, allocating it back to fund balance to sort of replenish what's spent? Does that make sense? Kilchenmann: No. It really -- Borton: So, here the -- Kilchenmann: It doesn't make any difference really. Borton: Well, the -- well, go ahead. Kilchenmann: Because you would be -- the way I did the funding is I used the capital improvement plan. Of course, impact fees and, then, some -- I don't know, Todd, is it current revenue or is it -- yeah. So, if we did an amendment -- oh, are you talking about the General Fund piece? Borton: Yes. Kilchenmann: So, yes, it would reduce the General Fund balance now, yes. Borton: All right. And that -- Kilchenmann: And, then, hopefully, we -- next year we earn the amount of revenue projected and it would replenish it by an equal part, because we used revenue to take it out. Correct, Todd? We didn't use -- yeah. We didn't use the fund balance. Borton: So, if that were to be the course of action this enhancement would be removed -- Kilchemann: Correct. Borton: -- creating 1.5 million of additional revenue that could -- could be allocated to other enhancements -- Kilchenmann: Four hundred thousand. Because part of it's being financed by the capital improvement fund, which can only be spent on capital projects. Borton: Okay. Kilchenmann: And, then, the impact fee, you know -- Borton: Right. Kilchenmann: So, you would create another 400,000. Borton: Okay. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 47 of 123 Kilchenmann: Which will be good to put away and save. So, we can save for future projects. Borton: And not be required to be experienced on some other -- Kilchenmann: No. We could like move it to the public safety fund or the capital improvement fund. Zaremba: Madam Mayer? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: This is, actually, kind of a follow-up question to that, I guess, or maybe a different way of askng in the same question, but if we did change to make this a 2014 amendment, as opposed to a 2015 enhancement -- so, we are talking about being able to start the project three or four months earlier than it would be otherwise and make some good progress during good weather, but what happens -- I'm assuming not -- and this may be a question for all amendments. I'm assuming not all of that would get spent during this fiscal year. What do we do with an amendment that doesn't get spent? How is the rest -- is there a carryover for an amendment or what's the deal? Kilchenmann: Amendments -- once a project has been appropriated, which can be done through the regular budget process or as an amendment, if the project isn't spent we do that, we seek carry forward. So, yes, we are carrying prior -- prior year's budgets forward until they are spent. Zaremba: Okay. So, it doesn't go away on September 3rd -- Kilchenmann: No. Zaremba: Okay. Kilchenmann: Not if it's at capital -- Zaremba: I kind of thought so, but -- that's good news. Kilchemann: Well, too bad it does, because that would save money. Zaremba: Thank you. De Weerd: Any other questions? Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 48 of 123 Rountree: Question for Stacy. The use of impact fees, are they restricted at all? I know they are based on recreation that we have and -- Kilchenmann: Yes. Rita can -- Rita could answer this in great detail, but we can only use 22 percent for this project. Rita, do you want to expand on that? Rountree: Now is that for the full projector is that just for parks? Kilchenmann: Yes. We --we take the whole --this particular project, so if we take this whole project it's only 22 percent eligible for impact fees. Rountree: Okay. Kilchenmann: Do you want Rita to explain why it's 22 percent? Rountree: No. Kilchenmann: No. Rountree: I wanted to hear its for the whole project, not just the park portion. Kilchenmann: Correct. You take the whole project, the 1.6 -- Siddoway: About 345,000 dollars should be impact fees. Okay. Our second request for you is administrative assistant. You can see our current administrative assistant Ali, who I think is also out here in the audience. You know, during our presentation to you last month we kind of highlighted some of the growth of the department. What I have done for this one is -- is narrowed that focus just to the winter, because, really, if you go upstairs right now we have part-time seasonal office assistants that help us through the summer. So, we have that period. But what we are seeing is that we have that need year around and we need -- we need two people at that counter throughout the year. Some of the numbers, just to help you understand the justification or the reason for that request and the need -- 2007 is the year that we added our first front desk office assistant Jenna Smith, who Ali Aldape now has that position. Following activity -- following winter activity guide registrations we are at 611. We -- last year we had 1,722. All of those are phone calls and things that come in in the wintertime only. This does not include summertime. Our winter sports leagues had 45 teams and 424 participants. We now have 237 teams and 1,838 participants. Also comparing the Department of revenue over that time from these types of activities, 219,000 back in 2007, up to 470,000 today -- or last year. We have anticipated this one in our capital improvements plan. We have been talking with HR about it for a couple of years and we would request your consideration on adding a full-time -- full-time office assistant at the front desk. Any questions before I move on? De Weerd: Why don't you just go through all of them. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 49 of 123 Siddoway: Go through -- okay. I will go through the rest of them and, then, stand for questions. Our third one is the pathway connections project. This one should look familiar. It's our annual request of 100,000 dollars to go towards making priority pathway connections within the city. The current priority project that's underway using the current funds is out near Bridgetower Subdivision along Ustick. There is -- following the Five Mile Creek. That project is nearing completion. The paving has been done. They are doing some collar work and things around the manholes. Our priority idea for the current funds, if we can make it happen, would be to extend that section near downtown that goes from Pine Street down to Badley, connected out from Badley all the way out to Fairview. Now, there are a few different property owners involved in that. We already have an easement from Sterling Creek homeowners association. We have permission from the business owners association -- I think its Initial Point -- that would allow us to do some survey work. We are still working on that permission from the one trust that owns the -- the main piece of property between there and Fairview and -- but, anyway, that -- if we can negotiate that, I just wanted to let you know that's our priority location. A backup idea that we have is out along the Nourse Lemp Canal, kind of north of Settlers Park in North Meridian, there is a mile there that we could work with the irrigation district to get a pathway along as a backup. Our fourth request is for a -- basically a computer request. Out at -- the first part is -- it's kind of in two parts. One part is connectivity and computers. We need two desktop computers and connectivity at our two major parks, out at Settlers Park and Kleiner Park. The reasons why those computers are needed, one, our -- these major parks need regular adjustments for events and other activities going on in the park, adjusting water windows and things with maxi-com. We do have a centralized location. It wouldn't change our ability to adjust things from the shop, but we -- like, for example, this weekend we have an event in the park that requires us to unlock the restrooms early. It would be nice to be able to make some of those modifications within the park with the park staff. We also have a need to do -- get all of our staff on electronic time cards. We -- currently there are crews that show up and spend their entire day at these two parks and don't come into the shop. Having those computers at those shops would allow them to fill out and do their time cards there, instead of the current process of filling out time -- paper time cards, getting them to their park supervisor, who, then, routes them to the foreman, who approves them, and sends them into the office for input. So, it would be much more efficient. think will save both time and money that way. And there is also just some critical communication that goes on, especially for weekend events, shelter reservations that are made last minute, event -- modifications to events, to be able to just communicate by e-mail back and forth to those parks. The second part of the enhancement is two laptops. One for the maintenance division and one for recreation. Why those are needed -- the park maintenance one -- we need one for water quality monitoring. For example, we have to plug in a laptop computer to the improvements out at the Centennial Park -- or, sorry, not Centennial. I mean Generations Plaza splash pad to check water chemical levels, things like that. We have been checking them out for that, but we have almost constant needs out there. We go out there at least weekly. Lately we have been out there daily. We would also use it at the shop for regular staff trainings that are held there and they would also be able to be used for maxi-com Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 50 of 123 irrigation in some of the other smaller parks. We would be able to use it, dial in, and rather than -- and be able to just call up a certain zone and be able to run part of the system while you're in the park. The recreation laptop is needed specifically for summer camp is our most desperate need. We have to have one at each of the summer camp sites. We send -- we have a department one that goes to one of the sites. We have had -- been able to check one out in past years to go to the second site, but the demands for the IT computers are such that we are not able to check one out anymore and IT has asked us to, please, just request one for our program. But they need it for summer camp communication with the sites to be able to check the registration paperwork, make sure they have got all the right kids, check the current roster on Monday mornings, which change every Monday morning and to be able to share files back and forth. So, that is the reasons behind the request for the computer needs. The next one, number five, is the Meridian Road interchange landscaping. This one is a request that should look familiar. It is -- it would landscape the interchange that's currently under construction. You can see the groundbreaking photo at the top. The concepts, which is the large image in the middle, should look familiar. It was developed by the interchange task force and approved by City Council last year. There was an agreement already tied to this that the city has committed to ITD that we will landscape the interchange or their -- we actually have to payback more than this amount if we don't landscape the interchange. So, the concept includes, you know, the trees on the slopes key locations. Low water consumptive plants. There is a boulder field in the areas below the roadway parapet that are designed to be an historical entrance to the Snake River plain and -- anyway, this enhancement would allow us to do the landscaping project as part of the construction that is going on out there currently. The last two deal with neighborhood parks. Both are a hundred percent impact fee eligible. So, the first is William Watson Park. William Watson Park is in the Bainbridge Subdivision in north Meridian. Brighton Corp is getting ready and working on developing some of the westerly phases of this project and it's moving toward the east where the neighborhood park is located. They donated seven and a half acres that you see here to the city back in 2007, worth 1.2 million dollars. I have been in contact with Brighton Corporation this spring. They said that they would like to start gearing up and get ready for those future phases that would include the park. We do have a small amount of 250 some thousand in our current budget that has been carried forward year after year. This would add to that and give us the funds that we think are needed based on the most recent information we have from the developers on the intended cost, but we do not yet have construction documents, so those are still needed in order to refine the project, but we would like to plan ahead and prepare for this project that we believe may come next year in conversations with Brighton Corporation. The second neighborhood park is in Bellano Creek. The formal name is still to be determined. It was previously platted as Isola Creek, if you remember it coming through Council with that name. But it is over near Bridgetower, kind of across the street from the wastewater treatment plant. They have committed to donating nine acres for a future neighborhood park there. Not yet donated, but it is in an upcoming phase. In talking with Coleman Homes they also believe that construction of this one is probably a couple of years out and it would be good this next fiscal year to do the design. So, these funds are not for a construction, these are just to get the construction documents done and in place. We would be Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 51 of 123 splitting this cost with the developer and developing the plan, so that we know next year what the right amount is to come and ask you for on the construction portion of this project. With that that concludes my presentation of enhancements and I would stand for any questions. De Weerd: Council, any questions? Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Madam Mayor. Actually, this is unrelated to budget, but the very last one you were talking about, which used to be Isola I think you said and is now Bellano Creek, there was some discussion that -- the white line that runs through this I think is a waterway or is that a pathway that -- Siddoway: It is a pathway. I think in concept its planned to be tiled. Zaremba: Okay. So -- yeah. That was my question. We had some discussion about whether or not the change in elevation of the waterway could create a decorative waterfall and I am taking it that that's not happening. Siddoway: No. Until we go through the actual design development and construction documents, I don't think we can say definitively. This was the concept plan that the developer brought through and they anticipated it being tiled and I believe the tiling was at their expense. But it is -- there is a nice water feature there. It's a bit of a waterfall there today and I think it needs to be explored as part of the design process. But right now the assumption is it would be tiled. Zaremba: And that's not really a budget question, so thank you. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: Steve, on your enhancement number two, the administrative assistant? Siddoway: Yes. Borton: The supporting narrative that you talked about, it states that position is intended to replace two existing part-time positions? Siddoway: Correct. Borton: And, then, on the bottom it looks as though you have got a calculation of the net offset of -- Siddoway: About 9,000 -- Borton: Yeah. About 9,000 dollars. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 52 of 123 Siddoway: -- 9,000 dollars of actual salaries and, then, some additional in FICA and workers comp. That is correct. So, that -- those funds would come out of the budget. Borton: Okay. So, I guess this is where I'm going. Same question as that reduction of that expense -- Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, we do have the value of 80 -- almost 9,000 dollars represented in your budget summary, yes, as an upset. Borton: A net nine increase? Lavoie: Yes. It reduces the overall cost of his request by 9,000 dollars. Borton: Okay. It reduces the overall cost for -- Lavoie: So, his request is 48,711 dollars at the moment for the admin assistant. Borton: Right. Lavoie: We will be able to reduce that cost by the nine'ish thousand dollars by reducing the seasonal part-time budget. So, at the end of the day he is asking for 48. What was that? Siddoway: I would get 39 or something like that. Lavoie: That's where it will be a net. Yes. Siddoway: That was a net. Lavoie: So, net positive increase. Borton: You're talking about -- I'm getting myself backwards. I apologize. And maybe made it too simple, but it's -- using just round numbers, if you have got two part-time seasonal employees who are 20,000 each and you're spending 40 -- Lavoie: No. They are -- Borton: -- a round number -- Bird: They are 4,500 each, evidently. Siddoway: They are 4,500 each. They are 9,000 total. Borton: Oh. Okay. I was thinking it was a bigger -- or they were closer. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 53 of 123 Siddoway: No. Borton: Okay. Thank you. De Weerd: Any other questions? Thank you, Steve. Siddoway: Thank you. De Weerd: Okay. Next on the agenda is our Fire Department. Niemeyer: Madam Mayer, Members of Council, good morning. De Weerd: It's still morning. Niemeyer: It is. And I want to thank Todd. I'm usually saying good afternoon. He usually puts me right after lunch, so I appreciate the opportunity to switch it up just a little bit this year. I will wait to get started -- as soon as this computer decides to boot up. And you know me and this little gizmo in front of me, so I will do my best to navigate the arrows and the taps. So, real quick, I would like to start our presentation off just overviewing our coverage area, our response area. As you know, we have a great relationship and partnership with the rural of fire district. So, our response area covers 50 square -- 54 square miles. You can see the incident totals there in FY -13. We are looking at FY -14 as matching those totals or slightly increasing our call volume. Talking about the organization. I was very pleased with the recent city survey and the responses we got back from the community as it pertained to the fire department and the services we provide. It was pretty evident that the community is pleased with what we are doing, which was nice to see. But, really, that is -- that's a direct result of the people we hire and we have hired some great people that are very dedicated to the city and the department and with that I would just like to briefly touch on those folks. The administrative team -- and I'm going to ask these folks to stand up if you would. Chief Palmer and Chief Amenn, Chief Jones, and Judy Gerhart -- I don't know if she made it back. She didn't. She was grabbing lunch real quick. On the right you can see all the various responsibilities that those folks have and that's just a touch of the work that they do. But those are -- their primary responsibilities and duties, they do a great job and I want to thank them for all the work that they put in and do. And, then, these folks manage very important aspects of our department and programs. I know Chief Fedrizzi is here, so I'm going to ask Kevin to stand up. Kevin manages our training division. Pam Orr and public education. Kenny Bowers, our fire inspector, really, the face of the department for many years. There should be an E after Christie. I neglected to put an E after her name. Christie is our admin one. And, then, Emily Stroud, who I will get to in just a second, a great addition to the department. And, then, our operations -- these are the most visible folks, because they are out there every day in the fire engines doing a great job for us. Eighteen station captains, 18 engineers, and 21 firefighters. We did have a vacancy -- firefighter paramedic vacancy. We recently offered the job to a gentleman named Aaron Howell. Tested number one on the joint recruitment testing. He's a paramedic. We are very excited. He's very excited. He comes to us from Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 54 of 123 Canyon County Paramedics. So, we are excited to bring him on board and that academy for him will start August 18th. That's our first joint academy. We also are anticipating a vacancy in September. September 20th to be exact. And that is the position of Katie Malburne. We hate losing Katie, but she has accepted a PA school offer at the University of Washington. I have known Katie for a very long time. Worked with her as paramedics and, then, worked with her within the fire department. This has been a goal of hers all along and we are very excited for her. We hate to lose her, though. She's a great employee. A great asset. Just to touch on recent departures. Bill Johnson did leave us. He accepted an assistant chief position in Depot Bay in Oregon. He's doing great there. He's enjoying it. We are very happy for him. And, then, we did lose Ricky Williams, a firefighter paramedic, who returned back to Arizona in a large municipal department that he worked for previously. So, it's just an update on the staffing. Real quick progress on the FY -14 budget. Just want to highlight some things. We did hire our records clerk position, Emily Stroud, in November of 2013. A ton of energy. A wealth of education and knowledge. She has been a great addition to our staff. She is a recent NNU graduate. So, she hit the pavement running and hit the gravel running and she's done a great job ever since. Portable APX radios. This was a big ticket request. This was 50,000 dollars. That 50,000 dollars under pricing would have got us nine of those radios. We were able to work with regional partners and through a regional grant. We are going to spend about two-thirds of that and we will end up purchasing 21 units. So, the original idea was to have enough spares just to manage when ours goes out of service, but for lesser cost we were able to achieve 21. Those are currently on order and should be here within the next month, to month and a half. So, we are very happy about that in finding some savings there. The other enhancements are CPR AUD program. We are currently offering CPR classes for city employees. That is phase one. Phase two will be the purchase AUDs to be located in city parks and throughout the city. And, then, phase three, which was a longer project, about a three year project and that is to offer a hands only CPR program out to our community and so we have started that project. It's a three project. We are working with our partners to develop an overall hands on CPR program for all agencies in Ada County. We are very excited about that. The cardiac monitor replacements and purchases. Those are bought, trained on, and deployed currently. They are out in the field. Station security card entry system to become consistent with the rest of the city in our buildings. That is in the process of being installed. That will be wrapped up here shortly. And, then, the apparatus wireless headsets. These were to allow our engineers to not be tethered to the vehicle, so they could actually be mobile around the vehicle on a fire. We are currently evaluating two brands and those will be purchased within the next 30 days. So, that's the update on the FY -14 enhancement request and we thank you for your support on that. We are planning to build a budget. I just want to hit briefly on the plans that we have within the fire department, because it really is these plans that drive our budget requests and it's what we look to first before we move on in any kind of budgetary process and it's the big plans that we have that we look to, our strategic plan, the CIP, our apparatus replacement plan, the station maintenance and replacement plan, the annual comprehensive training plan and, then, the comprehensive fire inspection plan. I just want to hit on a couple of those briefly. First is our strategic plan. We want to thank you for your support. In 2011, November to be Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 55 of 123 exact, we approved that and moved forward and we started that plan that following year in January. So far to date we have met 23 of the 39 initiatives found within that plan. We are currently working on ten of the 39 and, then, six of them we have not yet begun. So, we are sticking to our plan. We are moving forward. And, again, some of these plans help drive the budget as we come every year. Our comprehensive training plan is also a budget driver. Mainly because of all the outside agencies that have influence on what the training requirements or standards are and so the long list there are other agencies -- outside agencies that either have requirements or standards that we look to to follow within our training. I want to go through the entire list and there is a lot of acronyms there. I apologize. If you want to know what an acronym stands for I can tell you later. But the reality is each employee, based on these standards and requirements, are looking at about 366 hours of training annually in multiple configurations. So, putting that plan together is the job of Chief Fedrizzi and he's done a great job in coordination with our other staff. The comprehensive and layered fire inspection plan. I have been pleased with this. When Chief Palmer came in that's one of the first things we worked on and he's done a great job with it. We do have three priorities as we go through our inspections and I appreciate Bruce kind of clarifying earlier what we do versus what the contracted fire plan review does. Our priority ones are our annual inspections. Those are the big ticket items. They are schools, hospitals, hotels, movie theaters, apartment complexes, and any occupancy that serves alcohol. So, we are looking at not only restaurants and bars, but stores as well. We have about 130 of those total. That number is growing. Just to give you an idea on man hours and what it takes to do those, those inspections are performed by both the fire marshal, Chief Palmer, and also our fire inspector. It takes about 240 man hours annually for the schools and about 520 man hours annually for the other facilities based on the amount of time it takes to inspect those facilities. We are currently meeting those goals for the priority one. Those are our number one priority. We are meeting the goal there. It is worth mentioning every year around this time the firework stands are also an annual inspection, obviously. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it certainly takes some time to go out and inspect all those different firework stands and, then, do follow-ups as well. Our priority two inspections, those are done every two years and the occupancy types are included there are high value or high-risk churches and large gathering places. Currently we have about 50 of those total with the entire service area. And that number is growing as well. Not only is the city growing, but our rural district is growing as well on a commercial side. And those are performed primarily by the fire inspector. Typically take about two to three hours to complete and we are meeting the goals there. Our part three are all other nonresidential occupancy types and there is about 2,500 of those. Those are these small businesses located within a city and within our jurisdiction. Those are the ones that we are not able to meet and so with that we had planned asking in FY -15 in this presentation for another fire inspector. We have had that in our strategic plan since its inception. It's also been in the CIP for the last four years. But we took a look at our staffing and said can we do it with existing staffing at no cost to the city, so we wouldn't have to come with an enhancement request, and we were able to do that by doing some department realignment, looking at the needs today, as opposed to the needs four years ago we were able to realign our staff. We were able to open up a fire inspector position and to use Councilman Borton's term, it's cost Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 56 of 123 neutral to the city. So, no additional funding and no additional requests for this position in FY -15. The challenges that we have -- the biggest challenge we have moving forward is replacing an aging fleet. That is a significant challenge and I want to thank Finance, the Mayor, our rural district for sitting down and being convicted of finding a solution long term. This is a big issue and it's a big cost. Unfortunately, fire trucks -- the costs are going up about three percent every year. They are the most critical toolbox we have. Safety standards change about every three years, which drives up cost. The biggest one we saw recently was emissions changes that came from the EPA that drove the cost of a fire engine up fairly significantly. So, we are working to find solutions. The goal is to create a long-term plan. We have the replacement plan in place. The challenge is funding it. And that's always a challenge. So, working with Finance and the Mayor and our rural district we will, hopefully, land at a place that we can look out over the next ten to 20 years and be proactive in a plan and not reactive. We are looking at some alternative responses to the EMS joint powers agreement. In other words, do we have to go on every single call that we are going on today and that's a discussion that's happening with all of our partners and I think we will find some good solutions there. And, lastly, we are looking at alternative service delivery models. In other words, do we need to send a fire truck on every call or can we create different models that would allow the fire truck to go when needed and on the most critical calls and then, hopefully, extend the life a little bit on the engines. So, those are some solutions that we're working on to try and fix the problem or the challenge. So, moving to the FY -15 budget request. Our first priority, again, to the strategic plan and to our CIP. We are asking for a part-time public education assistant. I think you all know Pam now well enough and if Pam were here today and I asked her to stand up and say do you need any help she would tell you no. But our job is to recognize when people do need help and Pam has done an incredible job. I give a lot of credit to Chief Anderson, my predecessor, for hiring a lot of really good people and Pam was one of them. But her -- she is stretched very thin. Pam doesn't like saying no, but the reality is her time, she can't meet all the requests. So, it's either we continue to offer the service we are today or we are going to have to look at prioritizing and not doing as much as the public would desire. The need -- those requests since 2005 have about tripled as far as what we get requested for from education and let me clarify. That is education. It's not -- we do get a lot of calls from businesses saying can you please come to my grand opening and park your fire truck in front of my X and we tend to say no. In fact, we do say no. These are actually education requests where they want us to come and talk to school kids, elderly, special groups about fire education and prevention. It's very important to discuss briefly that education and prevention is just as important as operations. Judy was the one that created this analogy, so I steal it and I steal it every time, but we are a football team and to win a game you have to have good offense and good defense, because both of those together make us safe and we get the high reward in the citizen survey that we saw recently. So, going back to that, that was the one area of the city survey that we noticed that people are wanting more of and we simply can't offer and that is fire public education. The benchmarks that will allow us to maintain what is currently being requested by the citizens, it does meet our strategic plan initiative 6-D. It allows Pam to explore additional offerings that the community has been requesting -- just a few of those. Our elderly fall education, that's a big one that they have been Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 57 of 123 asking for, and we just simply haven't had the time to do that. Pam definitely wants to be more involved in the daycares. She has expressed an interest for the last four years. Unfortunately, she has not had the time to do that. So, there is -- there is some things with his position that will allow her to expand what she is doing as well just a little bit. And it also does address the city survey identified need. Our second request is for mobile fire inspection reporting. This is software. The need there is the ability to input inspection information while in the field and keeping our database current. Currently we go out and we fill out a paper form, we come back, we hand it off to somebody and, then, somebody else has to reenter everything that we already entered on paper. It doesn't quite make sense and it's not a good utilization of staff time. We don't have the ability currently to view past inspections when we are out there inspecting with a business owner. If we wanted to look at something in the past we don't have that ability today. We do expect to gain some efficacy in time and accuracy to the elimination of redundant entries and we do have an old system that, quite frankly, is poorly supported and not IT friendly and I think -- I know Dave Tiede was in the room, he's not anymore -- Firehouse is simply going away. One reason we did when we evaluated our software is to say what works best. The department had always maintained this all -in -one mentality and a lot of fire departments did and they are moving away from it, because they recognize the all -in -ones are really good at certain things, but not great. And so we had data errors. We had recordkeeping errors. And so we took the approach that we are looking at a best in breed software solution for the person doing the job and that's what this is. It does to meet a strategic plan initiative 8-A and 8-H. It is supported by IT. This is a web -based or Cloud -based program, so we can gain access to it anywhere. We don't have to have a software program residing on the server. It does not require IT to manage a sequel database or any other database and it will talk to other city software programs. It is an open platform. That's IT term for, it talks to each other and that's something very important to IT and to us. Next request is for the ShoreTel phones. This has been a request, quite frankly, from IT for a few years and we are just now getting around to it. The phone system at our fire stations are outdated. They are no longer supported. This will standardize the phone system throughout the city. A couple of benchmarks, other than standardization, is it will allow us to do teleconferencing from one station to the other. When we installed the video system that did not have voice capability, so we started trying to use our current phone system. It does not allow multiple stations to connect at the same time. So, we have an issue with that. And the new ShoreTel system -- I can't tell you exactly all about the ShoreTel system, maybe Jaycee can if you have questions, but this will standardize what we are doing with the rest of the city. SCBA respiratory fit tester. This is a piece of equipment that we use to fit test our masks. This is required annually and it's required anytime you put a new one in service and in the past since I have been here and long before I got here we had been borrowing this testing equipment, this piece of equipment from other departments and that has become problematic as they have needed theirs more often. The ability for us to do timely fit testing has been very challenging. So, I think the time has come for us to purchase our own. This is required by OSHA and by NFPA before you put a piece of equipment in service. We don't want those things leaking when they go into a fire. No fire is safe, but we want to do everything we can to make sure we are providing the utmost safety when they go in. So, again, the benchmarks. We are going to meet an Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 58 of 123 OSHA regulation, provide required fit testing in a timely and efficient manner, and maintain readiness and effectiveness. Turnout gear washers. We currently have two. One at Station One and one at Station Five. The washing of our turnout is required by OSHA and required by NFPA after every fire. When you come out of a fire there is over a hundred toxins that you're exposed to and there is a number of those that are carcinogens. So, I know a question was asked me awhile back why don't you just take them home and wash them. These are very specialized pieces of clothing that we don't send home. We don't them putting them in their cars. We want them to stay contained until they get washed, so we can get those carcinogens off the turnouts. We do have a need for immediate cleaning. Because we only have two there is a lot of running around that happens after a fire in getting those turnouts to our outlying stations or to the two stations identified. What we are requesting are smaller washers that are capable of handling one station. Currently are washers are large capacity that are capable of handling five to six to seven sets of turnouts. What we are going to put in every station, if this is approved, is a smaller washer just for the personnel assigned to that station. So, the cost is less than the large capacity washers. It does increase the longevity of the washers from ten to 15 years. There has been studies done on that when you have multiple washers that are being used, as opposed to two that are used over and over and over again. This will also allow us to meet NFPA Team 51, which is the standard for a care and maintenance of PPE. And with that I will thank you for your support. I do want to thank the departments that we work with. It's a great team in the City of Meridian and between Finance and all the directors, HR, the Mayor, I think we have got a great team that's fun to work with and we appreciate all their help in supporting our department and we appreciate your support as well. And I would stand for any questions. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I got some questions for you, Mark. First of all, I see you are replacing a couple of vehicles. Niemeyer: Correct. Bird: And what are those four? Niemeyer: Those vehicles our staff vehicles. Bird: Used by who? Niemeyer: They will be used by the two fire inspectors. So, we are going away from the SUVs that we have typically bought in the past and with those replacements, instead of replacing them with SUVs, we are going to replace those with cars. So, there will be a significantly less cost. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 59 of 123 Bird: Well, while we are talking about that, is there a reason we have to buy one ton 350s? Niemeyer: The one tons are cheaper on the government bid than the three-quarter tons. Those are our command vehicles that do go off road. They go down ditch banks, up in the hills, and, quite frankly, we looked at the three-quarter ton and they were more expensive on state bid than the one tons. That's really the primary reason we bought the one ton. Bird: And on your chart here -- I have got two charts of how you have got it set up for your organizational charge and which one are we going by? Niemeyer: We were asked to present two charts. One is what we were doing today and, then, one that is the restructuring, so that as Council you could clearly see where we are going with the department. So, we do have two charts. I know that's confusing. I'm not sure which one you have on top and which one on bottom. Bird: Well, I have got the simple on top and the -- the one with all the captains and everything on the bottom. Niemeyer: Kind of hard for me to know. Let me come up and take a look so I know. Bird: That's the latest. This is from -- have you seen that one before? Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? It's -- the one we put in the books of May 2014 on top, that's the final one. Bird: That's the final one? Kilchenmann: And there is like a grey box up in the right-hand corner. Milam: Yeah. That one. Bird: The other one come out afterwards, I guess. I think. But, anyway, getting back to questions. On your inspections why are engines not doing inspections anymore? Niemeyer: Councilman Bird, Members of the Council, currently they are doing inspections. As you probably know, we have every year taken an off-site retreat to look at our operations and involve the entire team in how we are moving forward. One of the areas that we identified is -- firefighters are not best built to do inspections, they are best built to do pre -fire planning, which is a requirement for us to have as ISO comes through town and looks at our pre -fire plans. We don't have those plans in place currently and so we wanted to reemphasize their time to pre -fire planning. Fire inspection is a whole other discipline and so we want to make sure that we are putting the right folks on the job who do our inspections. In addition to that, you could see in the slide there is 366 hours annually of training that's required by the crews, so when you added training, Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 60 of 123 public education, pre -fire planning and responses to the mix, the day is pretty full. So, we want to make sure we focus -- focus our folks on the right thing. Bird: Well, your hours -- let's see. Their year is, what, 2,900 hours -- working hours? Niemeyer: 2,920, sir. Bird: So, that's -- their training is about a tenth. Our calls are probably -- the one station I know is averaging a call every 66 man hours, so -- I just, think, personally, that -- and not being a fireman, that I would think that on buildings I would like the guys that are going to be first in to know what's in there and I know it's been successful to have the engine companies do it and it's not that they don't have the time. Niemeyer: Just to follow up, Councilman Bird. I appreciate the comment, because we are on the same page. Pre -fire planning takes those companies -- takes them to the buildings and they look at how are we going to fight the fire. So, they are actually walking through the buildings, they identify the fire hookups, the control panels, all of that and so that really is what the pre -fire planning is designed to do is get our folks very familiar with how to go into that fire or how to go into that emergency and mitigate it. Bird: What is the difference between that, Mark, and inspection? Niemeyer: Inspection -- Bird: They should know where all the -- they should know where are all the fire extinguishers are hanging? They should know where the electrical outlets and everything are. What kind of tools or equipment is in there. That's inspection and pre- planning in my book. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I think we have talked about this before, but it's similar to what Mr. Bird is saying. Many many years ago in another jurisdiction I had a business that -- that the guys from the local firehouse, the closest station to me, came through my business probably three times a year and I was in a strip mall, they were just going through the strip mall. I -- I always understood that that wasn't a real inspection from the fire inspector, I think I saw the real fire inspector once about a month after I opened the business and in 12 years never saw him again. But I did feel that if the guys from the station had found something that they thought the fire inspector ought to come look at, that they would have referred the fire inspector to come, but it was useful both ways. It was useful to them to know when the -- if they had to respond to my strip mall or even my own store, they already knew what was inside of there and what they were likely to find, but they also did things that were helpful for me. I mean they would come in, they would walk around and say, well, now, you have got this desk between where you Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 61 of 123 usually are and you're obvious exit. So, how about rearranging a little bit, so that you have a direct access to your exit and I thought it was very helpful. So, along with the requirement to sort of be fire inspected, I thought it was a very helpful service and, don't know, maybe there is people that would object to that, but I always felt it was a wonderful thing that they wanted to know ahead of time and I think Mr. Bird is encouraging that to -- to be part of the program and I certainly am, too. Bird: Madam Mayor? Zaremba: And it takes the pressure off the fire inspector, you know. I think. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: And I -- David, I had -- in my office was an old chicken coop, but Cole Collister first and, then, Boise when they absorbed Cole Collister, come in every year and did that for me. Their engine company. And the thing I liked about it was when they would leave with the paper in December every year when the insurance company come in to renew, I would just show him that. He was happy. He didn't go look. He knew the fire - - the engine company. I think it's important that the engine companies have -- and, you know, you're talking about getting it done, all it would take is three or four per shift per station a month and we would be caught up between Kenny and -- because I don't support having another inspector. In fact, I don't support having anybody more upon -- up in administration right now. De Weerd: I don't think it's a request in front of you right now. Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milam: My question -- I have quite a few questions that are totally unrelated to that, think. Didn't you originally have an engine request? Did that go out or would that be prior -- De Weerd: Mrs. Milam, the things that did not make the budget that's in front of you were withdrawn and removed. So, the fire engine that was requested for this -- for this next budget year is not being requested. Milam: And -- De Weerd: Right. It was in there and it's been removed. Milan Okay. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 62 of 123 Bird: There should be a fund for fire engines. De Weerd: Yeah. Well, you know, in the past we -- we have had a fund that we built up over time and we did have some money put into that fund this year for this budget year request. I believe -- Stacy, did that get removed? Kilchenmann: Yes. Because now we are down to -- depending on what happens when you meet later with the police request, we did have about 400,000 that we were going to put in there. Right now we only have 40,000 left and the balance of the public safety fund has been in the public safety training centers, so that's -- that's where it went. But that -- I really wished I had made a stronger point for that this morning, because we really do start -- need to start replenishing that fund for the larger items. De Weerd: And, you're correct, Mr. Bird, we did have that in the past. Mrs. Milam, any follow up? Milam: Well, yeah, just -- I mean after looking at all of their records and it seems like something that's pretty necessary. We are asking for 350,000 dollars for a parking lot that -- for 50 people, as opposed to something that I would consider more important. 1 did have a question. Administration vehicles. And this is just my observation. You have got 13 employees and 11 vehicles. Every administration person has a city vehicle pretty much? Niemeyer: Currently the answer to that is no. We do have two spare vehicles. One is owned by the district and one is owned by the city. We do have a primary response vehicle -- command vehicle and we also have a backup response vehicle. A pick up. So, if -- for the battalion chief, the command officer, whatever we call them, as that vehicle goes down there is something else they can go back into to respond as the command vehicle and not every -- not every staff member, our administrative support staff, do not have vehicles. Our chief officers do. Milam: So, one of those vehicles couldn't be used, as opposed to purchasing a new vehicle? Do you really need the backup? Does that get utilized very often? Niemeyer: Not very often. It is used occasionally as either of our initial one goes in for oil changes or repairs or if we get busy enough and we put on a second command officer, because of the call volume they will go into that vehicle, that pickup. Milam: Okay. Thank you. De Weerd: Any further questions? Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 63 of 123 Rountree: I'm going to preface my question. Each year we have before us this document and each year we review the document for what it says and what it contains and each year we pass an ordinance that approves this document. So, my question to you is on what basis is your budget prepared? I have an org chart here that no way represents what you have in place at this moment. There is nothing on the administrative level here that represents what you have in place. Nothing. So, explain that to me, because when we pass a budget, the org chart goes with it, and when we start manipulating it you are not coming before the Council and asking for a budget amendment or a change in the ordinance that represents the org chart. I know you have been mislaid, possibly, that, oh, that's not the Council's business, but I will tell you quite frankly, when you start messing with the organizations and do not inform this Council of those changes, which you have not done, there is a real problem. So, would like an answer to the question: On what basis did you prepare your budget? On what organization structure. If it's this one, then, you're operating out of compliance with the budget. If it's the one you're operating under, then, I guess you are in compliance with your requested budget. De Weerd: Councilman Rountree, I guess I will first answer that. With the reorganization in the fire department our chief and his team worked with our legal department and our HR department and followed the protocol for doing this step by step. Rountree: Excuse me, Madam Mayor. De Weerd: Just let me finish and, then, I will recognize you. Then they did come to Council and talked -- updated Council on the division chiefs and what was put in place a number of years ago, updated, and said this was not working and as it fell under personnel, it did happen in executive session and you did get an update. So, I guess don't know if the chief wants to fill in or Mr. Nary or even our HR director, but we do have several directors who helped advise and guide our chief though what the process was on that. Rountree: In response to that, the Council was informed that there were issues with the division chiefs and FMLA and how they were being given overtime or not given overtime. The Council was never informed that the division chief organization was not working. Apparently, that decision has been made, because you are operating under battalion chiefs -- three battalion chiefs and have eliminated the division chief and that's our restructuring to how you can get your inspector, so you don't have to have an enhancement for inspector. The point is, in my opinion, the move has made a fairly significant change in the budget, particularly with respect to overtime. Niemeyer: Councilman Rountree, to address that issue -- I guess I would -- I haven't seen an increase in overtime as any result of a -- of a restructure. Rountree: Let me read this. This is the message from the chief in 2012. In the past 12 months we are highlighting -- with highlighting new and exciting programs, hiring of full- Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 64 of 123 time vital positions and the development of strong business analytics that will aid us in future decisions. Over the past year we have improved business model, service delivery and customer satisfaction. We are addressing response times, service delivery models, budgetary forecasting and stability and project time management. So, where are your analytics about this change and how do you know there has not been a budgetary impact? Niemeyer: Councilman Rountree, to go to your first question on the analytics, there were several factors that were analyzed. One was the efficacy of the current program and that was done over a course of two years through off-site retreats that involve the entire staff that were critical to the division chief program. For two years we heard it wasn't working. We identified the issues that weren't working. Did everything we could to solve those issues. Got to the point coming into a busy fire season where everyone agreed that the model was not working. We had employees reporting to two bosses. That was a significant problem. Again, we tried to overcome all the problems that we were experiencing with the model that was not done in the fire service and, quite frankly, we had nowhere else to turn to look for advice on how to make it work. That is when we began to discussion with the Mayor, with HR, with legal on what are our options to become more efficient and more effective and to go to a model that we know does work. That was the analytics done as it pertained to the program. It was a process of two years. Rountree: So, you have concluded the division chiefs are not necessary? Niemeyer: We concluded the program as it was laid out was not functioning. It was not operating well. We had issues identified that all the staff, including the division chiefs, agreed to, could not be overcome. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I'm confused. You're telling me to go off of this one? No battalion chiefs are listed on it. This is the -- this is May 2014. No battalion chiefs are listed. And when we originally agreed to bring those three people up and sit in negotiations, it was negotiated as battalion chiefs and the next thing I know they are division chiefs. We have no job description for a battalion chief that I know of and, in fact, I asked you and you had none. Niemeyer: Councilman Bird, if I could -- I could clarify. Currently today the title of those positions are division chiefs. That is the title. That's what's found within human resources under the title of that position. As you know, we are negotiating, which I can't get into, but those are being discussed as far as what the positions are and where they are. I think where it gets confused is when those division chiefs are out in the field as a command officer they are called Battalion 31. That is a fire service term countywide, statewide, nationwide, when you respond as a command officer. We call lieutenants Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 65 of 123 lieutenants in the police department. We don't call them something else when they respond. So, as far as command response goes, throughout the entire Treasure Valley, those command officers that respond are battalion chiefs in the sense of the rank when they're out there on a fire. We are very rate structured when we are on a scene. I think that's where the confusion lies is under the current HR classification they are division chiefs today. De Weerd: And I think that's what Councilman Rountree referred to earlier on the -- the discussion about the FMLA -- F -- whatever. Niemeyer: FLSA. De Weerd: Yeah. Yeah. I knew I got that wrong, so -- Rountree: So, how are they being compensated from that status versus when they are performing the division chief jobs? Niemeyer: So, the salary -- working with HR, the salary is the exactly the same as it was prior to making any kind of -- Rountree: More hourly; right? Niemeyer: I'd have to look it up. I don't have it in front of me. Rountree: Is it higher or lower? Niemeyer: It's lower. Because they are working more hours. So, we ran that through Todd as well and with HR we all agreed to what the hourly rate would be to make up these people's salaries that they were before. Rountree: Are they making more overtime? Niemeyer: They are making about the same as they were before. Bird: Oh, come on now. You better look at last month. Rountree: You better look at your -- De Weerd: We want to keep protocol here. When you want to speak I will recognize you. Bird: Okay. I won't -- Rountree: Back to the first question. Fire inspector. You said that your field people are doing inspections. How many are they doing? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 66 of 123 Niemeyer: Again, I don't have the data in front of me. I don't want to mislead you and give you a wrong figure. Rountree: And weren't they, essentially, told that they weren't going to be doing inspections for the purpose of strategically positioning more effort to get an additional fire inspector? Niemeyer: Councilman Rountree, I don't know where that came from. That is untrue. What we have told our field crews is that we are trying to gear them more towards pre - fire planning, again, which is a requirement for ISO and it does get us -- Rountree: Mark, excuse me. Whom you're talking to you. I didn't ask a question that don't have the answer. You're now on record of having said that -- you're on record of having said that in the absence of elected officials and that was I guess a strategic move on your part. So, if we want to go through this again -- De Weerd: Mr. Rountree, I'm calling a recess. We will reconvene in ten minutes. (Recess.) De Weerd: -- this meeting back to order and we are around the noon time. Is there any other questions? We can bring this back with further questions during discussion time. Rountree: Madam Mayor, I'm done with the exception only one question. What is this budget based on? The flowchart we have or another flowchart? Niemeyer: To answer your question, Councilman Rountree, the budget is based on the chart that is sitting in front of you that you -- Rountree: Very good. That's all I needed to know. De Weerd: Okay. Council, our lunch is in and we will reconvene at 1:00 o'clock. (Recess.) De Weerd: Okay. I will go ahead and call our budget workshop to order again. Next on our agenda is our Police Department. So, I will turn this over to our police chief. Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, good afternoon. I'd like to welcome Ralph back. He came to the best part of the presentation. I'd like to introduce you to my chiefs in the back of the room, but I think three of them left already, so -- and if you notice I took my jacket off in case it gets as hot as it did on that last presentation and I'm prepared to sweat just a little bit more, but -- Milam: He's got a gun -- Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 67 of 123 Bird: There is a difference. You guys carry guns. Yeah. We can't get wild with you. De Weerd: I think all you of have a bullet proof vest on. Lavey: I do not have a bullet proof vest on, so I might have to have my command staff come up here and surround me or something, but -- with that being said, let me get started. There has been some joke about how many slides I had. Some people said had two, some people said that I was competing with other people, but I believe there is 23 slides that are here, three or four of them are on substance and the rest are just -- De Weerd: Fluff. Lavey: -- fluff. Bird: This is Tom Lavey is it? Barry: I have 40. Lavey: Councilman Bird, I said 23 slides, not -- Bird: Not 123. Lavey: Now that we are loosened up a little bit -- De Weerd: You will pay for that next week, you know. Lavey: Yes, I will pay for that. I have already paid for it thus far, you know, so -- with Tom. Just wanted to cover our mission statement: To provide the highest quality service in partnership with our community. To preserve and protect life and property through education, prevention, and enforcement. And those are just words on the paper. Our staff really takes this to heart, as evident with what we will cover here in just a little bit. I doublechecked. This is our current org chart that we are currently operating under. It is small in size, because I took advice from -- Bird: Did Todd make that or Stacy for you? Lavey: It actually -- we are a large enough agency that we can't fit it all on one piece of paper. We have a 16 by 20 copy of that in the police department, just so we can actually read it. Trying to put it into PowerPoint is really difficult. So, I actually have it in hard copy form as well, if anybody would like it. But that is our current org chart that we are operating under. And that's really broke down into 88 sworn officers, including myself. Twenty-three staff positions, which are nonsworn support positions, and out of those 23 positions two of them are part time, nonsworn positions. And I have to say that -- that I need to recognize the men and women of the Meridian Police Department, because without them what we have accomplished would not be accomplished. I give them a little bit of direction and I step out of the way and I let them go and do their thing Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 68 of 123 and it's because of the service that they provide to this community that gives us our low crime rates that we enjoyed, our quality of life that we enjoy, and it gives us, you know, a place that is great to live, work, and raise our family and it's because of them I just need to say thank you, so -- this slide is a little hard to read. It wouldn't format properly. Tried to give it in large enough font that everybody could read it really threw the format off, but if you go down and you look at the very bottom of the slide you will see priority three, priority two, priority one. Those are all response times. The first column is our average response times over the last nine years. The next column to the right is our response times for the first quarter of 2013 and third slot or column is our response times for 2014. Currently. You will see that they are improving. Priority threes are lights and siren response. Code two is get there quickly, but safely, and priority ones are usually report type calls and we are improving in all of those areas. But if you will see, it takes us three and a half minutes to get to an emergency call. That's three and a half minutes that our officers are in route to the scene and the person that has called 911 has to take care of themselves. We cannot let those numbers increase. We want those numbers to decrease, if at all possible. So, we are on track. Top of the page forgot to mention that is our number of calls for service in 2013, 58,938. That is a drop in calls for service of 62,000 in 2012 and when we went back to find out why, because was hopeful that we were having less calls for service, we realized because of the Idaho Humane Society contract and no longer responding to dog calls, that that was the drop in calls for service. So, we haven't seen a drop in calls for service, we have just transferred some of those to the -- to the third -party contract with IHS. So 58,000 -- 59,000 calls for service in 2013 is what our officers handled. Bird: Madam Mayor, could I interrupt? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Jeff, would you go back to that. How many of -- do you have any idea out of those 58,000 how many of those were priority three calls where we had the good response time? Lavey: Councilman Bird, I don't have that breakdown in front of me, but I do have a breakdown that shows how many of those are officer initiated, how many of those are public initiated, how many of those are 911 calls, but keep in mind if a person calls 911 that's not necessarily a priority three call -- Bird: No. I understand that. Lavey: But -- see if I can find it. Give you some -- Bird: Maybe you will find it and come back to it. I just -- Lavey: I have mental hold calls. Protective custody calls. De Weerd: And that was mine. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 69 of 123 Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, these are actually only broke down in quarters. But this will just give you a rough idea. For the quarter, the nine year average for the first quarter of this year, which would have been January, February, March, is board 4,600 calls, which are public initiated and 241 of those are 911 s, 4,330 of them are nonemergency numbers and, then, two of them we can't -- we can't track. And, then, 8,600 are officer initiated calls. Bird: Okay. Lavey: That's what we average per quarter. So, times that by four. Bird: Thank you very much. Lavey: The next slide is what we call our DDACTS map and I'm going to go into what is DDACTS in the next slide, but I just want you to take a glance at this map really quick and its color coded. Yellow are crashes. Blue is crime. But, really, the only significance that you need to look at is the bigger the number the worse it is. And so that red line that you see on there is what we call a DDACTS zone and that's because we have a lot of crashes and we have a lot of crime in those areas and so we concentrated some of our resources there and I'll explain that more in the next slide. But what is DDACTS. DDACTS is another acronym that stands for Data Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety. It's really predictive policing and we have software that actually will take a look at our crimes in an area, our traffic crashes in the area, are traffic violations in the area, we will overlap everything and see where the most significant impact is occurring in the city and, then, what we will do is we will take our police resources and concentrate them in those areas. So, we are getting twice the bang for our buck, really, is -- while we are working those areas were are actually reducing crimes, we are actually reducing crashes. We have had significant success in that DDACTS zone, which is, essentially, the Eagle corridor. You have heard me talk about it before in front of Council and I have some numbers to share. But, again, they are really kind of hard to read and I did not bring my magnifying glass, but I do have hard copies here. De Weerd: Todd can read them. Lavey: So, if you question me on them I can -- I can tell you. And we will really cover this a little bit more in depth when we talk about one of our enhancements with Analytical Services restructure within the department. But the next slide here is just a quick snapshot of some of the results and, like I said -- and I know it's hard to read, but just look at on the far right column and look at all of the negative numbers. Negative is good. And that is a reduction in -- in actual crime 31.9 percent. Crashes -- you're going to see crashes injury A, injury B, injury C and fatal. Really how to word that -- or read that is the first injury is the most minor complaint of an injury. B -- or injury B would be a visible injury, maybe a cut or laceration. Injury C would be a more serious injury where you actually have to go to the hospital and, then, of course, we all know what a fatal is. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 70 of 123 And, then, nonreportable and property damage report. We have seen a significant reduction in those crashes by working our DDACTS zone on the Eagle corridor. We have had so much success that we're actually looking at another DDACTS zone and it is in the area of Overland Road between Linder and Meridian and, really, what brings us to the most activity is that -- that big market that's there. We have a lot of calls for service that keeps bringing us to the area. But it's not just that one, it's the build-up that we are starting to see in the south part of town. Lowe's. Walmart. South of town by Victory. We're just seeing a lot of -- a lot more crashes and we are seeing a lot more crime that's starting to build up and so we are going to probably put another DDACTS zone down there as well. So, we keep looking at that through our crime analysis. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Chief, those barriers that they have got at -- on Overland there by Stoddard, have they helped increase the crashes at all? Lavey: Increase or decrease? Bird: Increase. Lavey: I do not have the numbers to say what impact that they have had on actual crashes. I will say that they have had a major impact on confusion and if people do not get into that turn lane right there going into Walmart and Lowe's, then, they're going all the way down to Stoddard and, then, trying to get into Walmart and it cannot be achieved unless you go south on Stoddard and loop around. It's really quite confusing and until somebody actually realizes, oh, I need to turn here at this light, then, it's a learning curve. We have not had any significant major issues that I'm aware of, but that would be a question I would have to study and get back to you on that. Bird: Okay. Thanks. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: This is probably a way in the future discussion, but it's related to the DDACTS idea I think. At some point is there going to be a need to have substations in more concentrated zones, like the DDACTS zones? I mean I think we have other departments in the city that have -- Fire Department has five stations, talking about a sixth one, and they think as traffic gets worse they will need that for their response times. Is there any future in relating DDACTS zones and substations for the police? Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, but I'd love to talk about that, because those are easy ones and we have actually had some great successes to report on that. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 71 of 123 We have two substations within our capital improvement plan and the idea behind what we have been working on for the last several years is not to put a major expansion on the police department. We actually at one point in time had a 5.5 million dollar expansion onto the police department and we are not doing that and if you recall we are in the process of remodeling at a much much cheaper rate of 800,000. The idea behind that is to get those resources into the field and for some time in the capital improvement plan we have had two substations. The first is in Station No. 6. It's been delayed, of course, because we don't know when we are going to build that station, but the reason why we chose Station 6 is because of the Ten Mile corridor. We have visions that as that corridor builds up, if it has the potential to turn into a -- a Garrity at 1-84, we're going to have a lot of resources that are going to be needed out there and we would like to have a substation in that area. If for some reason Station 6 does not work out, our plan is to look at some sort of commercial development and put a substation into some sort of commercial development within the Ten Mile corridor. That is currently a vision and we just keep that in mind as we move forward on that. The second substation that we are -- have been looking at is in The Village and we have stalled a little bit on that, because they were extremely extremely busy. But we have met with them last year and pitched that idea to them. De Weerd: We met with him last week. Lavey: Well, no, I'm getting to that. Remember last year we had pitched the idea to them and we pitched the idea of -- is there a small back of the woods type place that we could have and they said, well, we would really like for you to be more visible and let's discuss it and so their vision was even grander than ours and they had -- because of all their businesses coming, they just had a lot on their plate and so with talking to the Mayor, I said, hey, we need to re-initiate contact with them, which we did. I was not able to be there last week for the initial discussion, but I can report great results and, then, I can also report great results after the fact to the point where we are also meeting this Thursday. They have a location picked out. They have plans already in place in what they think the layout should be. I have accused my deputy chief of actually picking the location, because it's near the Yard House, but we are looking at putting a substation there in between the Yard House and Kleiner Park. It would actually -- so, the officers could actually come out of Kleiner Park and, then, make contact with that. Another hotspot in the city is that intersection, because it is the busiest intersection in the state and we have a lot of great things with our park and with what The Village bring in. There is just a lot of people that show up there. So, it is a high priority for us to have a substation and we will have our bike units working out of there for the most part during the summertime. So, kind of digress a little bit, but that answers your question is that we are looking at getting those resources out into the field, so they don't have to come back to the station to do what they need to do. Zaremba: Great. I appreciate that. It brings up another question, though. If you were able to find a spot in The Village would there be some tenant improvement expense that needs to be -- or would that be small enough that you could do an amendment during the year? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 72 of 123 Lavey: We are -- De Weerd: No amendments. Lavey: -- currently in negotiations -- De Weerd: No amendments. Lavey: We are currently in negotiations, but my plan would be zero dollars. Not -- on the record I'm not guaranteeing that, but that's what my plan would be is -- De Weerd: At this point we will -- Rountree: You're on the record. De Weerd: -- that they will pay us. Zaremba: That's good news. Lavey: It would be a give and take. They would -- they would pay it and we would provide them a level of service for it and there would be some sort of contract. We would bring it in front of Council to look at it to make sure it's all up and up and every knows what they are doing, so -- but that's -- that's our current plan. Now, whether that works or not we will see. And if it doesn't work, then, I will have to wait until next year, because Finance has told me no amendments without revenue backing. De Weerd: But with that said, I think that your staff has done some great research on other partnerships that this organization has had with other police departments and I think it will be fine. Lavey: Yeah. Zaremba: Cool. Lavey: I think it will be a net zero to the city. Zaremba: Cool. Thank you. Lavey: I would like to say that my visitation will be brief, but anything I do is never brief, but I have tried to keep it as simple as I possibly could. We have nine enhancements that we are going to present today and those nine enhancements include four FTEs. Out of those four FTEs, two of them are grant funded. I will go more in depth to that on their -- on their individual slides and, then, we have one part-time position we would like to convert to full time. So, those are our enhancements. This is a summary page of the enhancements. The TIP program, the traffic motorcycle, analytical services restructure, Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 73 of 123 DUI officers, detective position, LINEL segmentation, special projects, admin, body cameras, and school resource officer, which we always use the acronym SRO. I'm sure there is probably some of those on there you're going what in the heck is that and, then, that's where we will start to explain it on these future slides. If you recall, in May I came in front of the Council on the TIP program and Council unanimously approved the contract that would put this in place -- I think the contract says November of 2014. The TIP program is a Trauma Intervention Program. It's an Ada County wide program. Every agency within in Ada County, including law enforcement, fire, EMS, coroner's office, are going to use this program and, essentially, it is a group of citizen volunteers that help our citizens in a time of need for trauma-related events. Once we establish that in Ada County and show success, it is our goal to make this a Treasure Valley wide program. That was a little trickier trying to get that many people on board quickly, because we have been working on this for a year and a half. But that would be our goal is to have a Treasure Valley wide program in the future. And this -- the cost to the city is 12 cents per person based upon our COMPASS population figures. We take our COMPASS figures, times it by .12, and that's how much the city's buy -in is. The nonprofit organization covers all other costs. I would anticipate at that point when you figure would increase sometime in the future. Traffic motorcycle. I believe I have also explained this in front of Council before, but we used existing monies used -- we used existing monies to train and equip an officer for a motorcycle unit last year. Somehow we forgot to forward the enhancement for FY -14 for the actual motorcycle. So, we have actually had three trained motor officers on two motorcycles and they do not ride piggy back, but they do have to take turns on the amount of motorcycles and the unique thing about the motorcycles is that they are really the only effective method for traffic enforcement on several of our roadways within in our city, at least during the morning and afternoon commutes and we would like to move forward and add that third motorcycle, so we have a total of three motorcycle units working the streets and that is a one-time cost of 33,800. That's the motorcycle. That's the radio. That's the emergency equipment and everything to make it operational. And, like I said before, the uniforms, the helmet, the training, everything is already been paid for. I guess that's the next in line. Analytical services restructure. You heard me use the term predictive policing before. You have heard me use the term DDACT before. I want to break it down and tell you that this restructure has a 27,500 dollar in personnel costs, it has 7,000 dollars in operational costs. Those operational costs -- some of those are one- time expenses there for training and, then, I would like to bring Lieutenant Overton forward so he can really talk about what the benefit is to both the city and to our citizens. He's the supervisor of that unit. So, I'm going to turn it over to him for just a moment. Overton: Thank you, chief. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. The analytical services restructure was a brain child we have been thinking about for several years. When I started, those of you that have been around a long time, you remember Jean Moore, she had an IBM Selectric typewriter. We don't do business that way anymore. And as police records change we have to change with it and what this restructure represents is the ability for us to try to keep up with the fact that we are not dealing with a lot of paper records anymore, although we still deal with paper. We are pushing data. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 74 of 123 We are pushing data between large systems of software computer programs, whether it's a CAD program, an ITS program, a records management system. E -site. We are pushing tremendous amounts of data and we have to have people that I can go into that data and pull out the information. You have made several requests to the chief in the few minutes he was up here for data. But the people I'm talking about are the ones who pull for him. That's who they are and that's a the training we get them, because they have to develop queries to run into these enormous data sets, reaching across two or three different programs to, then, grab that information to tell you exactly how many of those runs are code three runs and they can do it. There is an expense to it. It generally costs to be a crime analyst, a lot more for training, and it's a lot more technical and requires more education. The amount of work they do is done by one person right now and I can tell you she can't get it all done and most days there is a line at her desk. She is actually the person -- her name is Beth Erickson -- who is going to be the supervisor of that entire unit. Now, in reality, what we have done is we have taken the old record section and our crime analysis and brought it together into one and that's what we are calling as nine positions as analytical services and we divided it up into two parts. We took what was records and we have made it -- now it's going to be a five person team, instead of a larger team, because where we are getting most of our requests for information right now is a tremendous amounts of request both from the public and internal on data. Data in all different ways. Data for budget. Data for policy. Data for grants. Data for homeowner's associations. We do a lot of tactical analysis for the patrol teams when they are looking for a certain people and certain crime trends. When it comes to just community services, we do a lot of supporting for the traffic team on their staff. We do a lot for bulletins for neighborhood watch, with the new Next Door program. We provide tremendous amounts of information when asked. We can't do that if we are not trained up on how to gather and pull out information and the training for those classes -- police training is expensive. I have told the chief this over the years. Crime analysis training exceeds that of most police training on average. The last crime analyst we trained all the way up ourselves cost us about 10,000 dollars over three and a half years and finding those trainings -- they were never in Meridian, Idaho. I had to ship them as far as Vancouver, Canada, and Jacksonville, Florida, for some of the training, because they will only have them in specific places. Now, you heard DDACTS mentioned. DDACTS is one of the backbone programs these crime analysis people will be running. DDACTS is such a hot topic right now across the country and we are actually -- and I don't even brag about it, because we are actually such a leading agency in effectively showing how well DDACTS that both Beth and the chief have been brought down to trainings to show off how we do DDACTS Meridian, Idaho, that we are able to get all three of our new crime analysts in through a DDACTS training at zero cost to us. Now which is good, considering that's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our first one went in May, our other two are scheduled to go in July. Now, we initially are going to pay per diem on those, but, then, we file for that and get that returned back to us once the training is complete. So, if we can find the training -- I know Councilman Bird should be happy for this -- when I can find the training for free I'll give him another free training I can. Bird: And I love it. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 75 of 123 Overton: But some of the crime -- some of the crime analyst training is very expensive and, then, we find that we have got to send them to it. So, that's kind of where we go with a crime analyst. Now, we are calling this no longer records clerks, we are calling them data clerks, because, really, we are spending more time pushing data. Reports are now e-mailed. They are over secure servers. We are not handing paper very often anymore. So, we are really kind of rebranding and renaming what our main goal is with those folks. We did have the records supervisor, who retired this last year, and when she retired it actually opened the door -- unfortunately not at probably the optimum time in the middle of a budget year, for us to get this started. So, what you're seeing is a proposal. I met with the chief, our command staff, Patti, as she has just walked in the door, coming in as our new HR director, and we met with the Mayor and we proposed this as a two-step plan. Much of what we've done we already put in place. We have already promoted the three crime analysts. We have already promoted the analytical services manager. We have already promoted a senior data clerk. We did that through the salary savings by not taking that records supervisor and utilizing it, we brought it back to a data clerk salary and took those salary savings to build this new structure under this new name. We are about to interview for two data clerks within the next two to three weeks to fill out that team. All the other promotions have already been done. So, without anymore from me, because I know chief wants to get back up here, are there any questions about or anything that we can answer? I will stand for questions. Bird: Madam Mayor? Lieutenant Overton, the 27,500, is that just additional cost for the existing people we got? That surely isn't two new employees. Overton: No. No. That's just the existing cost for the employees to bring -- Bird: That's what I thought and then -- Overton: There is kind of a two step promotion. Bird: Okay. Overton: I couldn't give them everything without going over budget and I like to keep Stacy happy. So, that's why we are doing it this way. Bird: So do we. Overton: No further questions? Thank you. Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird -- and I guess this would be an opportune time to point out that in order for us to do this we would have to add three full-time positions, which you do not see that request in front of you today, and I need to brag on one of our lieutenants and IT and this is why -- because of the internal software that we have developed and put in place, ITS, which is the internet -- or the tracking system -- Incident Tracking System, and E -citations, which -- electronic citations, we are no longer Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 76 of 123 doing the paper forms for the most part, those items actually get data entered into the system. We no longer have to have a person that sits in front of the computer and types of all that information in and so we have used those existing bodies to reclassify what they do. So, instead of laying them off and asking for three full-time positions, we have restructured this to say this is what we cannot now do. So, that's -- that's what you're seeing and, then, I did not talk about what Beth and I are doing with DDACTS, but Beth just got back from San Jose, California, free of charge, to go down and train them and, then, I go to Westchester county, New York, in September -- yeah, in September to take our program to them in New York as well. That's how successful we have been so far. But it's not just us, it's other agencies across the state. We are just two subject matter experts out of about 40. But they have a grant that's been paying for all of the training so far and that grant is about ready to run out and so we are taking advantage of it the best that we can, which gets me down to that 7,000 in operational cost may be lower, but, then, it may not and it's in there to cover full cost if we can't get the -- the rest of the training for free of charge. Next enhancement is DUI officers. I don't really like how that's worded, because they are not officers that are DUI, but they are actually officers that are -- they are going after DUIs. But its not just DUIs. The reason why that title is there is because it is a grant funded position. So, their primary duties will be DUIs. We have seen a decrease in DUIs this past year and some would say, well, why -- why do you want DUI officers, then, if you're seeing a decrease. The decrease because we do not have officers out there enforcing DUIs, they are busy taking other calls, so you see our DUI crimes increasing, increasing, increasing, increasing and, then, we just -- then also they dropped off. But I will tell you that there is about 12,000 DUIs in the state of Idaho per year and 6,000 of those in the Treasure Valley. I would like to think that people are getting it and they are not. We are getting DUI arrests every single week. So, this would give two officers the ability to go out and do DUI enforcement, but also they would be available to do any traffic enforcement and if you recall recently in the city survey it had mentioned that traffic enforcement was one area that our citizens wanted more of. This would give them two additional officers to provide more traffic enforcement. And, then, like any other position, they would also be available for patrol officers as well. We will find out in September whether we get the grants are not through the Office of Highway Safety. If we get the grant I have come forward in front of Council before with hundred percent grants, eighty percent grants, and, then, we also have to come before Council with some of the COPS grants where this 25-50-75 -- basically, the way it works is for the first year they cover 75 percent of the cost, we cover 25. Second year its 50-50. Third year they only cover 25. Fourth year we cover a hundred percent. Really, it's a tiered approach that we can start preparing for covered at one hundred percent. Currently in the budget they are fully funded one hundred percent for just in case. So, you don't have the revenue that that will generate added into the budget. So, if we do get the grant, the net revenue will come in and will reproduce the -- I don't have the figure in front of me. I think it's like 200 and -- I don't know if it's on the next slide. There it is. Two hundred and ninety- seven thousand four hundred to fully fund those two officers, operational costs, one time cost, ongoing costs and capital costs. Out of those cars that's 80,000 just for cars -- 80,000 out of the 297. So, everything that we do to bring revenue in would drop that Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 77 of 123 297. It would not go any higher than that. And I have covered everything else there. This is just a lot of -- De Weerd: Chief, I think it's important to note, too, this is also proactive. As we met with The Village, Toby Keith -- I Love My Bar and Grill or whatever it's called -- when they open their doors we -- we are going to need these officers and this is -- is really looking to be what we potentially can be pretty faced at that time. Lavey: Yeah. That -- Madam Mayor, I thank you for saying that. And this will probably be an opportunity to talk about why we are so successful and what we would like to do out of The Villages is we want to set the tone at the beginning. We don't want to go out there and try to take it back, because if we try to take it back after it's become unruly, it's never pretty. We would like to set the expectations and the tone at the very beginning, so we don't have those problems and that's the one thing about the partnership with Hugh Crawford out there, is he's awesome to work with. He contacts Lieutenant Overton on any of the events that they are having out there and says how do I do this, what do I do here, and he's working with this great partnership, so we can actually have our expectations set at the very very beginning. So, this is a proactive position that we are taking. I would come in front of Council and say that we should do this regardless of whether we have the grant or not, but if we do not get the grant I understand that and I will come in front of Council, explain to you we don't have the grant and, then, we can decide what we do. It is fully funded in the budget, but if you choose to not do that, I guess it's your choice, but I would highly recommend against that. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Jeff, have you heard anything from the grants office with respect to the, quote, unquote, bankruptcy of the highway trust fund? Where the money would come from and that the money will run out as of -- I think the end of next month? Lavey: So, that is -- when I was referring to DDACTS and as the money lasts, that's what they are operating on is that rumor that their grant will dry up and they will no longer have those monies to move forward. I know that if we are awarded this grant we will be guaranteed that monies, but, yeah, there is -- there is no guarantee that those federal moneys are going to be coming -- they are really really struggling with what they are going to have in the future. The need is there, it's just a matter of where they place that priority as far as the funds. That rumor is out there. It's not been confirmed yet, but we would probably know in September. Rountree: And with respect to your slide, does the 297,000 include 80K? Lavey: Yes. Rountree: Okay. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 78 of 123 Lavey: Yes. Rountree: So, that makes it fit with the budget books? Lavey: Yes. Rountree: And that's in total 75 percent participation -- Lavey: That 297,400 is one hundred percent -- that's how much it would cost this city to buy the two cars, the personnel salaries, the one-time expenses, such as uniforms and everything, Taser, and, then, ongoing expenses of training. That's how much it will cost the city for the first year. The second year it will be reduced 80,000, plus about 6,000 dollars in the one-time expenses. So, if you -- roughly 86,000 cheaper than the next year if we were fully funding these positions. Rountree: Right. Lavey: Am I messing that up, Todd? Lavoie: Well, Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, I think what you're looking at is the enhancement form. If you -- we just picked it up and just now. I do apologize. The enhancement form is actually invalid, the one I gave you. If you look at the very top, it says 80,000 dollars for wages. The enhancement form that I sent you. It looks like that was meant to be 80,000 times two, because there is two DUI officers. So, that was an error on our part. We did not pick that up and it was submitted. So, I will have to adjust those numbers for you during our discussions after the presentations. So, that does change the budget somewhat, but I apologize I didn't pick that up until now. So, the numbers we will have to change. I can address all the figures at that time after we recalculate this enhancement for you. So, we do apologize about that. Rountree: That makes it work even better. Lavey: Okay. So, take everything I've said and just forget it. All the reasons why it makes sense to do it are still valid. Bird: Okay. Lavey: The numbers Finance will give you. The 80,000 is still valid for the cars, as far as -- as far as the fully loaded salaries they give you -- Bird: That's two cars; right? Lavey: That's two cars. Yes. This -- I'm just going to cover this really really fast and think by just me reading it you can -- you can hear the words, but this really sets it up for the next position I'm going to talk about. Health and Welfare referrals contain highly Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 79 of 123 sensitive information involving allegations of physical and sexual abuse to the most innocent of victims, our children. Within recent years our Health and Welfare referrals have dramatically increased. Recently in one week our police department received 52 referrals in a one week time. The very nature of these referrals they become top priority and require immediate respond. These investigations need to be detailed thorough and require specific experience by the detectives. In addition, arrangements are made throughout for investigation with doctors, nurses, victim witness coordinators and the prosecutor, who also need to be involved during investigation. Needless to say, these investigations are time consuming. All of our detectives are currently averaging at least ten child abuse investigations per month on top of all the other felony cases that they are assigned. Last year we did 1,430 some Health and Welfare referrals. Health and Welfare referrals are -- it's an intake form that Health and Welfare receives information of a child that possibly is in danger, whether it's emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, hazard living conditions -- something is going on where someone is concerned of the welfare of that child. Now, the state law requires certain individuals to report, doctors, nurses, counselor, if that child is endangered, but, then, just the general public also will report and, then, unfortunately, we have a lot of custodial type situations where one spouse will report on the other spouse and they are often unfounded, but we don't know that until we investigate. We have to investigate every single one of these, because if we make even one mistake you will read this on the front page of the newspaper. You will read about in CNN. We cannot not do these Health and Welfare referrals. So, this new detective position we are requesting -- primary purpose will be crimes against persons. They will be doing Health and Welfare referrals. But that's not all they will do. They will do those, plus all the other felony cases that are assigned to them. You must see in the enhancement -- and I have rounded these figures, but they will be close to what you see on the enhancement. Sixty-four thousand for personnel cost. Fifteen thousand operation costs. Seven thousand four hundred is one time. That would be the uniforms and the other personal things like cell phone, Taser, that sort of thing. And, then, 23,500 in capital is the car. LINELL segmentation. What the heck is that? First, let me say it is IT software and it's IT approved. They know about this. What this will do is this will put a basic firewall in between the City Hall security system and the police department security system, so they will operate as independent systems. So, someone at City Hall can't go in there and manipulating the security system over at the police department and likewise, unless we give them that authority. The reason why this is significant is we have SEGIS rules that are established by the FBI that says only certain people are allowed in our building, unless they meet these factors or they are escorted or they are fingerprinted and at one point in time we discovered that every single director and elected had access to the entire police department, including the evidence locker. We fixed that really closely and you didn't know that, but we would have had you on camera if you would have came over there to the police department anyways, but that is something that we have done an audit on and says we need to fix that. What's even more important is as we bring on other city departments -- the fire department was talking about going to this security system and, then, the Public Works and the new buildings out there are going to be on the same security system. We need the separation to keep us compliant. The good news is it's a one time cost and it's only 8,000 dollars. Usually you do not find anything in the IT Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 80 of 123 world that costs 8,000 dollars. So, that's what that one is. Special projects admin. Back in 2000, 2001, we were at 50 employees in the police department and I know you couldn't read that org chart, but if you read that -- if you were able to read the org chart you would have saw 113 employees. We have four other employees that you have seen in these enhancements, so that's going to put us at 117 employees in the police department. We currently have a part-time civilian doing this position and he cannot keep up. We currently have our co -lieutenants and the other lieutenants doing internal investigations, policy, training coordination, IA Pro Blue Team, which is IA, internal affairs, and our Blue Team is our documentation or early warning system that we use and our other admin duties are currently being done by a multitude of people, but in a recent survey in the department our patrol staff said we need those lieutenants in the field. We need that supervision in the field. We have sergeants going in six different directions, we need -- we need a -- the supervisor back here. I need to make that position full-time. I need to shift some of those duties to one person, instead of a multitude of people. That is going to be one very busy person, but that's not to say that they are going to be doing all of it. You're going to see a proposal here in just a minute about body -worn cameras. That is going to be something else that we will be adding to this position. But we currently have 86,000 in the city and we have a hundred -- I put 118, because I think I was counting the part time to full time. But they are actually already counted as a part time. So, it's 117 employees. You're going to see an increase in personnel costs of 78,000. That is because it is a sworn position. It's no longer a civilian position. To make it full time and to attract the type of person that need, I cannot get a full-time civilian, because of PERSI. They can't take that position and I would like to go and get a retired police officer to take that position, but he can't take that position full-time, because of the PERSI requirements. And, then, 23,000 in capital it a one-time expense and that would be for a vehicle. Body -worn cameras. It is our intent or our desire or our vision to have a camera on every uniform officer in the City of Meridian. Why? Well, for a multitude of reasons, but probably the biggest reason -- and Mr. Nary can probably attest to this -- is risk management. There will be no longer the he said, she sad. There will be -- it will be on camera exactly what occurred. So, what does that do? Well, that brings us citizen and officer accountability. If the officer knows he's being recorded or she's being recorded, they have to hold themselves accountable. Oftentimes the citizen doesn't realize they are acting the way they act or don't want to realize the way they act and all it takes is for them to look at the camera and go, oh, I do not like that. A recent study in California showed that they have reduced their officer complaints by 74 percent because of body -worn cameras. Now, fortunately for us, we don't have that many officer complaints. In fact, on that IA Pro software that I talked about earlier, I can tell you currently this year we have had 62 accommodations for good serve that our officers have done out of 24 complaints. That's pretty darn good. And out of those 24 complaints there has been three substantiated and they are usually for demeanor type conduct. We would also reduce the false accusations and compliance. Sorry to say in this -- in this day and age we do have a lot of false accusations and I don't know if they intentionally lie or if they were in such a state during the incident that they don't really recall whether it was an emotional state or it was an intoxicated state and, frankly, some people just like to tell their version of it. This would also capture that. This is a county -wide project. It puts us in a couple Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 81 of 123 of positions. I realize that we don't necessarily mean to do it, because everybody else is doing it, but let me tell you some of the consequences if you don't. One of the things that we are finding is that the calls that the prosecutors are getting is getting higher and higher and that's why they have plea bargaining and they try to work out these cases as best they can before they go in front of the courts. We are starting to see jurisdictions now that the prosecutors are not taking cases if it's not on tape. They are saying, you know, what, I got ten cases that I got video on and your case doesn't have video on it, I'm going to go with the cases that I can win and they are not taking these cases forward. And, unfortunately, our citizen suffer because of that. The other consequence that you have is that our officers are being recorded anyways, because of the other cameras that we have to be prepared for the question, what is Meridian trying to hide? Why are they not recording their officers? So, those are just some of the consequences that we have. And in a recent technological summit that I just went to and, actually, Lieutenant Colaianni went to, predicts that in the next three to five years it's going to be a federal mandate that every officer will have a body camera. Now, that will be an unfunded mandate. But this would get ahead of that. The other thing you're starting to see now is the -- the departments that have consent decrees, the federal government has come in and is saying you are required to have body cameras. So, we would like to put a camera on every officer for those reasons that I mentioned. You're talking about 46,000 dollars in one-time capital costs. Those are for the cameras themselves. Those are for all the accessories. And those are also for the infrastructure in place within the department. We believe that we can get a better rate on some of the infrastructure right now, because we are currently going through a remodel. Some of the infrastructure that needs to go in place is data lines need to -- more data lines may be installed. More electrical boxes need to be installed to -- for the charging stations and, then, the data lines to download it. And, then, there is a 45,000 dollar operational cost. This is based upon licensing and storage costs per year. That price could drop, depending on what our storage needs are. That price could increase in the future. I will tell you that I was talking with -- I don't know if this is a good time to bring up Albuquerque PD, because they have been on the news, unfortunately, for a lot of negativity, but they have 220 body worn cameras and they said in five years' time they have taken up 13 terabytes. Now, of us up here are the gurus of technology, but we do know that terabyte is really really big and very very expensive and as we move forward we need to make sure that we have retention policies that if we are not using this, if it's not flagged for evidence, if we don't need to keep it for pull up purposes, we need to get rid of it, so we cannot collect this -- this data. So, one of the things that we are doing is we are working together with a county -wide group to make sure we all have the same retention policies. So, we don't have to sit there and answer, well, we don't have a copy of this tape, but, then, all of a sudden Boise police does have a copy of our officers doing whatever. Why do they have it and why do you don't have it? Who is not telling the truth. So, because of two different retention plans. So, we are actually trying to work together so we are all doing things similar to make sure that we don't have those problems. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 82 of 123 Bird: Before he gets off this, what is the expected life expectancy of these cameras, chief, under normal use? I know they can be hit or dropped or something and -- Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, with the vendor that we are currently working with, we would be under a multi-year program that we could opt out at anytime. So, what they would do would give us new cameras twice within a five year period and what that does -- it does two things. One is it gets rid of the old cameras, gives you a brand new camera and, they also give you new technology. So, if we enter into an agreement with them, we would have the opportunity to have three separate cameras over a five year period and, then, we start all over again. Bird: Okay. Lavey: If we do enter into an agreement, which we will have to bring forward in front of Council. If we do enter into an agreement we have -- we can opt out. We also are locked into whatever price of that camera we buy it for then, we can buy that camera for that same price during that -- that same period. So, if we bought the cameras for 500 dollars and, then, we need new cameras in four years, we are still buying them at 500 dollars, even though they are selling to everybody else for 700 dollars. Those -- I'm just throwing those numbers out there. They are not accurate numbers. Bird: It sounds like a winner. Lavey: They also replace any damaged camera, so there will be no additional out-of- pocket expenses if we go this route. There is other funding routes that we can get, but this is the one that we are proposing in front of you. I believe this may be the last slide. School resource officer. Acronym SRO. We have currently school resource officers in the middle schools. We have what we call -- we call them NCOs. Neighborhood contact officers in the high schools. The reason why we call them NCOs is they are responsible for the school, they are responsible businesses that are around the school, and they are responsible for the residents around the school. So, they really encompass all that. Now, SROs really kind of do, too, but their main focus is the kids within the schools. This new SRO would be assigned to the Renaissance High School. Point out that this is the largest school district -- I mean this is the largest building in this school district. This encompasses the district office, the high school, ISU, but it also encompasses the training center and you have a lot of significant events that are non - school related that show up there at the training center. If we move forward on this, this would be the most efficient SRO costwise within our -- our contract. Our current contract with the school district was supposed to cost 50-50 based upon a nine month salary, not loaded, not benefits. So, whatever an officer costs for a nine month period, they pay 50 percent of that. Thus, the school district and the ISU have agreed to pay 25,000 dollars apiece, which brings in an additional 50,000 dollars in revenue. The remainder of the budget requests this year is 61,000, but that includes a one-time operational cost of 40,000 dollars for the -- for the patrol care. And I don't -- I don't -- think it was -- it's either 11,000 or 21,000 is the remainder that the city would be paying Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 83 of 123 for an out of the remainder some of that are ongoing costs and some of those are one- time costs. So, the -- the cost to the city is relatively low. I will tell you that I -- I resisted this last year, wasn't sure it was really necessary and, then, after processing that and watching what has occurred in the news and some of the recent legislative changes, I believe it's necessary to have a school resource officer in that -- in that building. And, then, just -- this is just a real quick briefing on the -- the police -fire training center. We opened the bids on June 24th. Lieutenant Leslie is extremely busy working on those big proposals right now. Our hope -- although we are already here way into July, we be able to start construction July, early August. I will set the bar high for him. He's listening right now, but that's currently where we are at on that. They are fine tuning, sharpening some pencils and fine tuning some stuff before we move forward. We will bring another update to Council soon, but if there is questions I'm sure he can answer those questions for you. So, with that being said, I am prepared to answer any questions on what I presented today. If you would like to talk about the training center, I will turn it over the Lieutenant Leslie and if we confused you in any way on the analytical services proposal, we will try to help with that as well, probably should have just had Beth present it and she would have done a far better job than we did, but, hopefully, it was adequate enough for you to understand that. So, thank you. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Chief, thank you. A couple of times you mentioned that people would need vehicles at 40,000 dollars and, then, some other people needed vehicles at 23,000 dollars. I could guess that the difference is the equipment that has to go into them, but I would rather not guess. Why are those two numbers significant? Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, you were paying attention. That's good. I would like to be able to give you all of the cars for 23,000. The difference is a marked patrol car with all the lights and siren and speed rated, pursuit rated and everything else. Cages, push bars and everything else, versus an admin car where we just buy a car off and, then, equip it with a radio. That's the difference. You put out 20,000 dollars worth of equipment -- that includes a computer, that includes the e -Citation printer, the scanner, all those things that the normal admin cars do not have. Zaremba: Thank you. Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: Chief, I appreciate your -- your report and I'm very interested in this -- these body -worn cameras. My curiosity is you touched on developing a policy with -- and similar with Boise and the county. Is it the intention that as an entity that you guys will Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 84 of 123 all purchase the same equipment or will we have different equipment than our neighbors to the east? Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, do you know how difficult it is to try to get all of us to agree on one thing? Actually, getting us all to get together to agree on the policies -- well, I won't say it was a miracle, because it wasn't. It just -- because it really just makes sense. I will tell you that Nampa has been with body cameras for many many years and they are happy with what they have, so they don't want to change. will tell you that Boise, Ada County, us, are looking at the same vendor, because we realize that that's a leverage. If we can generate more business to them they are willing to give us a better deal. Garden City is currently testing multiple products trying to figure out which ones they are going to go with, but their chief has just said, well, you're all going with this and it probably makes sense for us to as well. I will tell you that there is two types of -- of -- with the vendor we are using there is two types of cameras. One is a -- what we call a body worn and one is a flex and if you would see any of the videos on -- you know, whether it's been YouTube or Facebook or something, you will see the difference. You will either see the officers with their hands out here, because they are pointing their gun and all you see is the view of everything through there -- through their hands. That's because the camera is right here on their chest. That's a cheaper version of the camera and it only records what's in the front of the officer and a little bit peripheral. The other camera out there is what they call a flex and it's worn in multiple of ways. If they are in a SWAT operation it could be worn on the helmet. If you allow baseball hats, it can be clipped to a baseball hat. It can be clipped to the sunglasses. It can be clipped to a collar. It would be clipped to an epaulet of the uniform. That is the camera that we are looking at going to, with two different attachments. One would be a glass attachment, sunglass attachment, and whether it's sunglasses or whether it's clear glasses, you would be able to wear it, with a second mounting bracket right here on their collar. So, when the officers have to take their sunglasses off or if it gets dark time, they just pull the camera off. It's magnetic. Pull the camera off, clip it right here, and they can still film. The significance of that is that the camera is filming what the officer looks at. So, if I am here looking forward and all of a sudden I hear something and look over here, if I have this camera on my chest I'm still filming forward, but if I look am now filming what just attracted my attention. It also has a greater peripheral view. That's the cameras that we would like to go to. That's the cameras that are in this proposal. But, really, it comes down to cost, preference, and a whole bunch of other things, too. Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milam: I have some question, chief. Since we are on cameras. And I didn't -- I looked, didn't see in here, how many cameras is that for that price? Lavey: I believe it's 54 and a few extras. I could be wrong on the numbers, but that's approximately how many it is. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 85 of 123 Milam: Okay. Follow-up question, Madam Mayor. So, you mentioned that we would need to -- obviously, we are going to need to go -- somebody has to watch the videos, to monitor them, and you're going to store them and, then, at some point we are going to be deleting them. So, are you going to be coming back to us saying now I need an FTE to review all of the images and delete and store -- is that -- how much work is that going to create? Lavey: Great question. And there is a plan in place and our current plan is to not put these in place for approximately ten months. So, any significant impacts that it may have on staffing I will have a better idea next year. I do believe, though, that our existing restructure will be able to maintain any of the public information requests. I do believe that the one position that I mentioned in here will be able to handle all of our -- our internal requests. Retention is -- once we establish the retention it's done automatically. So, we go in and we flag it and say non -- nonevidentiary videos are kept for X number of days. We need to determine what that is, whether it's a traffic stop in 30 days, or if it's -- if it's based on 180 days because of tort claims, we will have to determine what that is. After 180 days, if it's not flagged to keep it, it's automatically deleted. We do nothing. We have no staff time, anything. It's all automatic. The officers will flag the video as they go and so if it's related -- I'm losing my voice -- as they go make a traffic stop, if something significant happens there and they got something recorded where they need to save it, then, they will go in and flag it and say save it and, then, it's done automatically and it's attached to their -- it will be attached to their report. The one area that I do not have an answer for you yet is public information requests and redaction purposes. Our goal -- and we have been working with the prosecutors and they don't like this, but we are giving them the unredacted version and say you need to figure out what needs to be redacted before you forward it out. That's what ISP currently does and there is some resistance there. We said -- our primary purpose of taking these videos is for risk management, not evidentiary. If you want to use it for evidentiary, you decide what needs to be redacted. However, as the bearer of the record, if we get a public information request we have to go in and review that and redact that. We currently use a contract -- Boise city contracts to do all of our redactions and they will continue to do all of our redactions. We had a plan in place to bring forward a police attorney for a multitude of reasons and one of those reasons would be to cover the redactions of our current public information request and potential on the video. We decided that we will currently use our contract to continue that service this year. It didn't make sense to bring it forward. Next year when I come in front of Council I will have to say either we are going to continue with the contract, we are going to have an increase in the contract, or we are going to have to do it in-house. I do not have the answer for you yet. There is a potential for that, yes. But -- but we might be able to deal with it with existing services and existing contracts, I just don't know the answer yet. Milam: Okay. Thank you. Rountree: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 86 of 123 De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Where is the special project position upgrade file in your org chart? I will tell you, we have a May 7th org chart that I'm looking at and I'm trying to find it. Lavey: So, the -- the org chart that I presented to you is our current org chart. It will not have any of the new positions on there. So, the -- Rountree: Well, it does? Lavey: It does? Rountree: Yeah. Lavey: Then you have a much more updated one than I do. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? We asked the departments to put them in -- like in yellow. Remember, this was in May -- Rountree: Yeah. Kilchenmann: -- and Jeff's staff did it. I guess the analytical part -- Rountree: This is what we have. Kilchenmann: So, that you could see -- yeah. The yellow are the new positions requested. Now, they did this in May, so some of it may have changed, like some enhancements -- Lavey: I can answer that. Rountree: And I -- yeah. I'm just asking a question. This is the information we have. Now, I can find the SRO and the detective and the DUI and the motor officer, but I can't find the special projects and I can't -- and I see other things on here that haven't been talked about, so I assume they are not on the drawing board at this point in time. So, this is what we have in our budget book. I just want to have the right information. Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, this is -- I guess this is reverse roles where I do not have the information to be able to answer. You had it. Rountree: I appreciate that. Lavey: You will see on the orange on that chart you're looking at -- Rountree: Right. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 87 of 123 Lavey: -- we have proposed positions based upon our CIP. However, through the process we had to prioritize and we chose not to push forward some of those positions. Rountree: Okay. That's fine. Lavey: The blue ball is where that position you're asking me would be. Rountree: And that was an assumption I made, but I didn't want to make an assumption. Lavey: Yeah. Once I'm looking at the same document you're looking at, it's easy for me to answer that question. But I didn't realize that you were given that. So, apologize. Rountree: No. Not a problem. At least you can answer it. So, the captains are not -- and the new impact team detective is not and the new K-9 officer is not something that we are going to see and the analytical piece, the -- the new unit that you have prepared is in blue and that's how it's structured? Lavey: Correct, sir. Rountree: Okay. Now -- and that brings up a point that I'm going to reinforce again, is that we need a policy with respect to the budget that deals with revenue neutral changes in organization structure and staffing, because this was made -- and understand the purpose behind it, but it is not really and truly revenue neutral, because we now have a budget enhancement to support this activity and it's, again, brand new information to the Council and we don't have a policy in place that does that that I think we need. So, we have fair and early warning and/or knowledge of this stuff as we move through the budget. And, again, I'm not directing that at you. Lavey: No. I know. I recognize -- Rountree: Anybody else -- I'm just saying we need to have that policy. It's -- you know, don't like -- I don't like surprises. So, anyway -- but I think what you did is -- you know, it's fair, it's direct, it made sense, I just would have liked to have known about it and where you are going with it I don't have a problem. It seems like it's an efficiency and it's probably going to work better than how it's worked. Lavey: Councilman Rountree, I imagine that we will be discussing what has been brought up all day today into the future and we will take into consideration everything that has been said and try to make improvements as necessary and I appreciate your comments as well. Thank you. De Weerd: And I guess I would just once again say they were following policy and procedure and -- and, I don't know, Bill, does the state statute explain how well this Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 88 of 123 works? I don't know on -- from your counsel and HR what -- what our processes have been based on. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the state statute in regards to city councils only relate to budget and policy. So, the practice has always been, at least the ten years I have been here, is unless there is a budgetary impact and a departmental change, that it isn't required for the Council to approve it. The caveat is it has always been with the departments, if you make a departmental change in the midst of a budget year that doesn't have any impact in this budget year, but is an ongoing -- whether it's an additional staff member or its ongoing expensive, then, it will have to come back as an enhancement and the Council can vote up or down. If you -- the Council doesn't approve that enhancement, then, that organizational change may or may not be able to continue without it. But that's always been the standards. Organizational charts are not a part of a budget or ordinance. State statute requires that budgets are passed by ordinance, but the only thing that's in the ordinance -- we prepare the ordinance, Finance prepares the attachment -- is the budget summary. So, it's not the individual department structures or organizational design that is part of the budget ordinance. So, none of that is part of what you approve in August. So, if the Council wants to discuss policy, that's fine, but the state statute only -- only relates to policy, not to personnel or organizational structure or departmental directives or any of that. All of that is in under the purview of the mayor of the city, not for the city council. Rountree: But you're right on. We established policy, we established budget, and we have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers. The bottom line is, as I pointed out earlier, we approve this budget and we approve this budget based on the information we are given with respect to organization and staffing. If that changes, I don't care if it's revenue neutral or not, it changes and we need at a minimum -- a minimum courtesy to be involved in that. Nary: And, Councilmember Rountree, I wouldn't disagree with you on that. As a courtesy that certainly is correct. But what the Council is approving in your budget is the amount of the budget of the city and the number of people that are employed. So, the headcount is part of the budget. What they are directed or assigned to do is not part of the budget. But I wouldn't disagree that as a courtesy that certainly is appropriate. I don't disagree with that. But I'm just saying statutorily that's what you're approving when you approve your budget. Rountree: So, how does that protect us from a fiduciary standpoint? If -- if you can change this person to that, that person to this, and go round and round and round and I'll keep it within the budget, yet the public comes to you and say how come you got a position like this and we don't know about it. Nary: To be honest, Council Member Rountree, your answer is talk to the Mayor. She's in charge of that. That's not the Council's purview. Rountree: That still doesn't protect me from the fiduciary responsibility. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 89 of 123 Nary: But, Council Member, it does. Again, your responsibility is to -- how much is the total bottom line of the budget and how many people are employed in that. Not what their duties are or daily job duties they have. That's the Mayor's responsibility. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: To that point, is the role of the Council -- I guess to address Mr. Rountree's concerns -- that if there is a change, using the example that he did, that flopped positions or created something that we weren't -- we didn't have the background or weren't part of or weren't comfortable with, thereby not maybe understanding that particular role, our ultimate authority is to not fund it. Correct? A budget process. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Borton, yeah, certainly you have the ability to choose what you will fund or won't fund. Borton: Okay. Nary: All I was -- all I was saying is that what individual employees are directed or assigned to do within the department director's discretion and ultimately the Mayor is the overseer of that. But if you don't like the function -- that's not the person, but the function that's being done, certainly you have the right to review that and decide we are not going to pay for that function any longer. Borton: I see. Okay. Rountree: So, in order to do that -- Madam Mayor, in order to do that we need to know that there is a change. October 1 you change all these positions. The next budget cycle we have a bunch of positions we don't like and don't want to fund, but you have already done it for a year. So, somewhere the process of communications and the ultimate governmental buzz word transparency is lost amongst the elected officials. Nary: It's a communication issue. You're correct, sir. I agree with that. Rountree: Yeah. De Weerd: Any other questions? Okay. Well, now that we are so far behind schedule, I'm sure streetlights is going to go really quick; right? Peterson: That's the plan. De Weerd: All right. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 90 of 123 Peterson: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. My name is Austin Peterson, I'm the transportation and utility coordinator. This enhancement is for 50,000 dollars for the installation for the installation of new street lighting on streets that are inadequately -- inadequately lit and do not meet the lighting guidelines of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Street lighting has been proven to reduce the average crash rate between vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists by ten percent. Well lit streets are also a deterrent to crime and increased security. Four years ago the Public Works Department was given a directive by Council to increase street lighting within the city limits and we have been working on that and over the past few years we have received very positive feedback from the community regarding projects constructed with these funds. This enhancement is a continuation of that program. These particular funds will be used to finish lighting North Linder Road between Cherry Lane and Sandalwood Drive, which will be started this year and also to start lighting Pine Avenue between North Ocean Avenue and Linder Road. Both of these lighting projects will compliment new sidewalk and bike lanes installed by ACHD with Safe Routes To School programs. I will now stand for questions. De Weerd: We love short and sweet. So, Council, any questions? Bird: I have none. Milam: No. Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: How many lights does this purchase? I mean how many lights are we talking about? Peterson: Madam Mayor and Councilman Cavener, this -- the particular project has not been designed for Pine Street, but the continuation on North Linder Road will be four type one lights, which are the 40 foot tall lights with the 12 foot mast arm and, then, I'm expecting to install about eight more on Pine Avenue. De Weerd: Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. Our next item up is our City Clerk - Information Services director. Milam: We like short and sweet. Holman: Madam Mayor, I'm going to zippity zap right through this. So -- De Weerd: Zippity zap? Holman: Yeah. You saved the best for last, so -- and that's not Tom tomorrow. I mean today. Okay. Our budget presentation for 2014. This is our org chart. As you know, Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 91 of 123 I'm in charge of the City Clerk's office and IT. We are called Information Services, but, really, we are -- could be called support services. So, our needs are driven by the growth of the city and the needs of other departments. Clerks serve both internal and external customers. IT serves mainly our internal customers. Just quickly, I don't have any enhancements for the clerk's office, but I didn't want to not have an opportunity to kind of show what we have done this last year. Passports. That was something that we did a budget amendment for a couple of years ago -- about a year and a half ago and we did 2,115 of those last year and at 25 dollars per passport application our revenue back in was 52,875 dollars. So, we are funding that position or offsetting at least with some revenue, so that has been highly successful and much appreciated by our public. And we should be in our slow season now, but we are not slowing down this year. It has not slacked off. We are very very busy. Which is good. Public records requests continue to be -- keep us very busy. We did 179 total in FY -13 and we are set to hit that this year. Probably more than that. Admin phone calls we averaged 1,300 a month. Agendas, packets, minute books, everything to do with committees, commissions, councils, we do 200 plus of those a year and, then, all of the vicinity notices and everything for any land use projects, we handle all of that. Licensing and permitting, everything from temporary uses to dog licenses and mobile sales units, 560 of those a year and room reservations we handle about 2,500 of those a year and there are five girls that handle that -- or five women in our office that do that. They do a lot of work. So, we are doing good stuff there. We are very busy. We don't get bored. Let's see. Information Services is -- this is just kind of a visual of everything that we do. Rountree: Is that how you do it? Holman: Just like that. Very organized. Only we understand how. Information Technology we handle lots of different things. Purchasing of IT hardware and software for all departments, that includes licensing for all the different softwares that we handle. Help desk and city employee training. Computer installs and replacements. Infrastructure and connectivity. GIS. And software engineering. We had about 3,000 help desk phone calls last year and about 4,500 case management requests. So, what we are asking for this year for enhancements are one and a half software engineers. The numbers you see in front of you are fully loaded numbers, including the ongoing operating and one time costs. I wanted them to match exactly what was handed out this morning, so I went at lunch and hurried up and updated those numbers. So -- anyhow. So, to explain -- I guess I want to just briefly let you know what these engineers are doing and how our need for engineers are driven by the requests from the different departments within the city. We currently have three human beings that are software engineers, but really two full-time software engineer positions. Mike Tanner, our software engineering manager, Nick Phares and Somer Weich -- and hope I said her last name correctly. Mike was our first software engineer. He started in 2008. Somer started in 2011. Somer's position is part time. In 2010 Mike was promoted to be the software engineering manager, which was taking on management duties. It really reduced him to about a -- probably about a half time software engineer, so we have two -- two total software engineers in IT for our city. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 92 of 123 De Weerd: And in 2014 he was one of the supervisors of the year. Holman: Yes, he was. So, software engineers, why they like us. And by they I mean departments and -- you could -- if you just listen to what John Overton was discussing earlier about changing records clerks to data clerks, those are through efficiencies that we created through our engineering. Councilmember Bird and Councilmember Zaremba went to a presentation we did at AIC this year regarding e -Citation and ITS and what we create in our department is truly amazing. We have very very gifted engineers that I believe could hold their own with anybody out there in the valley, private or public. We are very very fortunate to have them. De Weerd: But don't tell them that. Holman: They want to stay. They like it here. They do. So, some of the efficiencies we create for other departments, as I said with ITS and e -Citation, we free up time for employees in other departments by things that we engineer and create. It allows them to put off hiring more personal, creates efficiencies, allows them to maybe take on other duties. We created a Public Works training application, which helps them track all of their training in their department, because they have so much different training that different people need, which brings up time for someone in their department to not have to do that. Finance time cards -- I know Stacy said before we have one person in the city that handles the time card program and that's through a lot of work by Nick and working with Nick, Barb Holler, and with HR. So, our software engineers serve dual roles. They aren't just always sitting up there creating new stuff. What they are doing a lot of time is ongoing support of third -party applications that different departments have bought and in-house written applications we have done ourselves. Timesheet. Accella. ITS. Wastewater treatment plant. Pretreatment application. They are taking phone calls. Creating new reports. Making changes as business needs change. New project development. Examples would be contract management database that Public Works is -- I'm sorry -- that Finance is working with Nick on. Budget enhancement application that we are talking about putting together for next year and a Public Works project tracking application. That's some of the new projects coming down the line for us. So, when a department decides that they need a new software for whatever their need might be, they have a decision to make versus do they want us to develop it in house or do they want to have a third -party vendor do it and that's really up to them, we are not going to push them either direction. They know what their needs are, whether there is something out on the market that's going to meet their need or whether they want something created in house. The pros of doing it in house -- you're not changing your business processes to meet the needs of the software, but you're creating business software to meet the way you do business. ITS and e -Citation are a perfect example of this. We designed that for our offices in the field and worked backwards towards our people that are gathering the data and created a system that's been so successful that it's being use valleywide in law enforcement. The customer gets exactly what they want. There is no fixed yearly maintenance costs or agreements. More easily integrated with other systems, because we know the other systems we have and we can design it to integrate with those. The application can be changed quickly as Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 93 of 123 business processes change. It's a phone call to IT or a case management request. The downside of in-house. Typical support is limited to one to two people. We have three total. So, you're limited there. Engineers support more than one software, so you're competing for resources. And if an engineer leaves and processes are not accurately documented, the knowledge can leave with the person. That is a big concern with in-house development is the risk. Pros of third -party or off-the-shelf vendor. The application is typically supported by a company that has a support mechanism. They have a 1-800 number you can call. You pay for different levels of support. The right to second support costs a lot of money and it goes on down. It's a tiered system. Generally the product has been tested against a large install base, against many different organizations. Products should be baked and tested. I didn't know what that meant when Mike sent it to me. I believe it means the product will be mature and tested. The product can be viewed or demonstrated in a similar environment before purchase, meaning a neighboring city has it or you can go see someone else using it, because it exists already. De Weerd: And baked in a police term is something totally different. Holman: Okay. And so the downside of third -party vendors are you use the product as is. If you want customization you're going to pay for it and it's usually big money. Bug fixes are slow. They are usually quarterly. You don't call -- you can't call IT and say, hey, this report isn't running or it's giving me an error, can you fix that. Generally you call them and, then, quarterly they will send out fixes and, hopefully, your fixing is in that next quarter. Maintenance costs are typically 20 percent annually of the initial purchase price. Vendors don't expose their inherent issues, limitations, or design flaws. You will never ever ever see that in a product demo. Products can be bloated with unnecessary features for our business, but yet fall short in other areas that are critical to us. So, by the numbers these are all the things that our software engineers are handling and probably have left quite a few out, but this is what we put in this slide. And it's pretty. Applications that we support right now. Fifty-eight internal applications and 186 third - party applications. We currently support 535 total users. That's each user per application, difference licensing. Outstanding and upcoming projects. Total outstanding software projects and case management -- and that's just stuff that's been actually put down on paper and submitted -- with Accella that we have 47 projects, ITS and e - Citation, 38. And you can see the rest of them. That's a total of I think a hundred -- can't remember how many. But, anyways, it's a lot. A hundred and twenty plus. Major projects can take two to four months. Minor projects can take one hour to one month or more. That's just an estimate. So, best case scenario -- if no one ever called us and asked for anything and we didn't get any phone calls and nothing changed and everything went according to plan, we would get these done in two years with our current staff. On average it would be probably ten to 12 years to get all of these things done that departments have submitted to us, which means, obviously, they are not going to wait that long, they will probably have to try to find a third -party solution to do some of these projects. So, big projects that are coming up. We have requests for a contract management database we are working on right now. I think we are -- I don't know, would you say we are in the middle of it or towards the end of it, Todd? Okay. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 94 of 123 We are in the beginning of that. I was being very optimistic. Budget enhancement application for Finance, Public Works tracking application, police NIBOR, which is part of our ITS and e -Citation programs, that's how we report our crime stats to the state. And the utility billing replacement, which is an enterprise system. Accella is also an enterprise system and I want to just briefly, at the end of this discussion, explain what an enterprises system -- enterprise -wide system is. Tom does not want me to get it confused with the enterprise system. Enterprise -wide system. Enterprise -wide systems are different than departments specific systems. They have to be able to be used across the enterprise and scope can't be limited to just one department's needs. They have to be scalable and able to easily grow with the business to handle the size of data and concurrent connections. Many people connected at the same time. Reliable and flexible. They need to be configurable to behave differently as our business needs change and as we have learned with Accella those business needs can change weekly as far as reporting and flow -- process flow. So, we have another one coming down the pipe, which is utility billing replacement, which there is a few unknowns about that right now, because we don't know what we are going to -- to purchase at this point, but we are anticipating a worst-case scenario that it could be like Accella -- Stacy says it's going to be much more simple and will not require that much support and we hope that she is right. But it's going to be a big system like Accella. We will have to do data imports and cleanup, integration to include hooks into other systems, like Accella. GIS data will need to be loaded into the new system and when it is deployed it will most likely not have every report created that they ever thought of. We are going to have to do customization probably. And ongoing support to include process changes, report changes, and integration changes and I wanted to dive into that a little bit, just to understand as the city gets bigger and we buy these systems that need to talk to multiple departments, they have to have software engineering support to work correctly and to be able to continue to operate and grow with the city. So, in a nutshell, we are driven by what other people want and by looking at the things that are coming down the pike in the projects and the applications that we support, we feel that we will need one and a half engineers. We currently have -- Somer is our part-time engineer. All she does is Accella. She doesn't even touch any other projects anymore and we would like to have her full time to continue, because we could fill up her time with Accella full time. We would like another engineer to do some cross -training in ITS and, basically, be able to handle all these other projects that other departments are asking for, besides incident tracking, Accella, and utility billing. It would give us also some flexibility to cross -train across different platforms and different applications. So, if that's what we were asking for and I am sure you know this, but our positions are split between -- they were paid half by the Enterprise Fund and half by the General Fund. If you have detailed technical questions I brought my backup, support. So, feel free. And that's it. Did I -- that was not 35 minutes. I zipped right, through it. Any questions? Bird: I have none right now. De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 95 of 123 Zaremba: Madam Mayor, if I may. I'm intrigued by your mentioning a revision of the utility billing system. I actually had a citizen ask me the other day -- he picked up his water and utility bill and said do you mail every one of these and I said, well, I think we do and he said how much money could you save in postage and envelopes if you e-mail them or had them online. So, since you mentioned rebuilding that building, is there any thought of adding different methods of billing -- Holman: Stacy is jumping out of her seat, so I'm going to let her answer it. Kilchenmann: I am just jumping -- Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, we have been doing online statements for a considerable amount of time. So, you can actually go online, get your statement, you can do direct pay where we take it out of your checking account. You can pay by phone. So, yeah. Zaremba: Cool. I didn't know that. And the citizen didn't either. Kilchenmann: Apparently not. He must not look at our website or ask the question. Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. Holman: Are there any other questions? Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milan: Jaycee, I have a question. Did we just receive replacement -- these forms changed for the request that -- considerably different numbers -- Holman: For replacements for what? Milam: For the enhancements. Lavoie: Madam Mayor and Council Member Milam, what you received were the updated enhancements to replace what you had in the books. So, between the date we pushed the book to today the wages were increased on those enhancements -- Milam: Considerably. Lavoie: They were. Holman: That was part of -- and I know, Council Member Cavener, you had questions about this, too. We went through earlier this year where we had a consultant look through all of IT wages and where they were at. They compared us against other public agencies and the private sector and Patty came up and presented on that and that was our software engineers were two of them that were below market. So, that was -- I'm Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 96 of 123 trying to remember when that all came to fruition, but I know that this number you're seeing is their new fully loaded -- Milam: So, was that -- that was within the last month, though? Because this one is dated June and this one is dated July. De Weerd: I think it was in May, wasn't it? Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Council Member Milam, that was really -- since June the 9th is when I published that book to you. So, I was updated between June 9th and July 7th. So, when the actual report was, maybe Patty can give that actual report date. Perkins: When I came up to do the -- the plan review, that was folded into that. That compensation budget amendment that I presented, which I believe was the end of May, if I recall correctly. It was not folded into that. Holman: And to follow up on that, Council Woman Milam, we backed off of what the actual results came back as. We can't pay what it came back as. Dave and Mike's position came back above the top of the director's level. So, we can't compete with the private sector ever. But we do have -- you know, we can in benefits and things like that that public employees have and that's what -- when we didn't come back with a recommendation of what the actual results were, we ratcheted that back and -- but, engineers, that's a very very hot commodity in the valley, so -- Milam: Thank you. Holman: Any other questions? Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Your comment about being driven by the users, I hope -- and I have said this continually -- as I see the IT group grow, is that you all need to be in the driver's seat and you need to make certain that we do not go crazy with systems and databases and all of those kinds of things that require more and more individualized support, because somebody thinks they need a business application that really and truly might not be necessary. So, somebody has to push back and I do guess do you have that ability to question -- does your staff have the ability to question the need for certain applications you're being requested to do? Holman: Madam Mayor, Member of the Council, Council Member Rountree, yes, we do. We have standards -- and Dave might be able to -- he could answer that probably in more detail for you, but, yes, we do. It's a partnership between us and the departments. So, they -- we have said we can't -- we can't do that, we shouldn't do that. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 97 of 123 I think they are comfortable and I think the departments and department heads respect us enough to take that recommendation. Rountree: I appreciate that it's still that way. Thank you. Holman: Anything else? Okay. Thank you. De Weerd: Okay. We will take a break. Let's say at 3:15 we will reconvene. Bird: Madam Mayor, before we take a break, we needed to amend the agenda and -- Rountree: No. No. We are okay. Bird: Oh, we -- Rountree: Yeah. We are okay. Bird: Okay. I'm sorry. Let's take a break. De Weerd: Okay. (Recess.) De Weerd: Well, we will reconvene and you have heard the presentations from the General Fund and so now it is Council discussion and any follow up questions for any of the department directors. Rountree: So, Tammy, if you -- for the new folks on the Council you want to run down the process with respect to questions and changes and additions and deletions and, then, I think before we get to that point it might be good if we have Finance kind of give us a lowdown of what they gleaned out of the conversation. I know they have uncovered some things that -- have Finance give us a rundown of what they picked up. You have uncovered some things on some of those sheets that may answer some questions, but if you would do that -- De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: So, they kind of have an idea of what happens next. De Weerd: Yeah. Well, what happens next is now the ball is in your court. We have presented you a balanced budget, knowing that you will have questions and there will be robust discussions and so the department directors will be on hand to answer any additional information that you had requested. I guess, again, to just talk about as we looked at the budget this year we also realized that there is -- there is change coming and we are kind of in that in between where we are moving towards a priority based budget. In the past we -- we almost -- we had an evaluation I think from a master Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 98 of 123 student at one time who evaluated our process and it was his opinion we are as close to zero based budgeting as we can through our performance based evaluation, but we are going towards a priority based budgeting process that will bring greater transparency -- and I have heard that mentioned today and how can we be transparent in some of the activities and actions that we have talked about today and priority based budgeting gets us to that point and you will see an evaluation of all programs in each department. If they are mandatory, if they are funded, unfunded, if they are community priority based or as a support service and it will all be rated on what their priority is in terms of moving the needle in the direction that our community wants to move. We are in the interim part. Positions this year -- we did see that there was somewhat of a void and we will be working on a process that before positions are submitted to Finance they will be submitted first to HR for a vetted process and certainly as we look at that policy we will be looking for your input on that as well. I see that it has been discussed as we look at department restructuring. We have been keeping our Council liaisons involved in that, but we need to go that step further and involving the entire Council. So, we will be moving on trying to bring something back for discussion with you on that. The items that were withdrawn, as I noted earlier, were removed completely through the books. You saw some remnants of those that didn't quite make it in one form or another. We thought it was important that each item be based on the merits that -- that was part of that vetting process and so you probably will see that in the future budget years. My recommendation for the benefits is to go to the 11 percent as presented and I think it's -- as Patty had indicated, it's still very comparable to what -- what can be expected. We just can't keep absorbing the kind of increases that we are seeing and with the Affordable Health Care Act that -- that is having a bottom line impact and we need to plan for that and that's what our benefits committee has been building towards. We also had a last minute addition. I know that our Finance director had sent that out to you in terms of a salary compensation that has not been fully vetted. Unfortunately, came in the -- not even the 11th and a half hour, it was more like five to noon and that has not been looked at in terms of the short-term or the long-term aspects. We don't want to find ourselves in the same situation that other communities have found themselves in where their budgets are so overloaded they -- they have to start laying off and that has never been our approach. But, Council, this is now in your hands in terms of looking through the budgets that have been presented to you today. You did not hear from a number of departments. Those departments were because they did not have an enhancement in front of you. So, I will -- I will note that we had five budget sections or tabs that have reductions to their base. We also had five that were well under a five percent base increase. So, you do have employees and departments that are very cognizant to the bottom line. The others that have been impacted have been impacted because of the rate of growth that our community is facing and the impact of making sure that they can deliver those services or provide the maintenance and aesthetics that our citizens have come to expect. So, we will open it up for questions at this time. As you go through your summary sheets, if there are replacements or enhancements that you have questions on that you need additional information before you have a discussion or make a recommendation, we would stand ready to -- to enter those. Was that a good enough summary, Mr. Rountree? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 99 of 123 Rountree: 1 think probably the only thing that I didn't hear is that it is a balanced budget as presented based on the three percent. De Weerd: Yes. The budget in front of you is balanced, whether you take the 11 percent or the 15.7 percent on the increase in benefits, it also does include the three percent increase. It actually does contemplate the initial review for the STEP plan in our police department. Again, that hasn't been vetted -- or there hasn't been a recommendation from HR or from our chief on what specifically to do with that at this point. So, with that said we would entertain your questions. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? If I could just -- a clarification on the -- so, in the police compensation it normally would have -- it's included in there at the amount that we roughly calculated for one year and because you haven't heard anything about it or it hasn't been presented, it -- you have a meeting scheduled next week, but I wanted you to see it in context of the rest of the budget, because like if you wanted to see the dog park so you know what the impact is -- we can always improve a budget that's higher than the one you actually adopt at the public hearing. You cannot go the other way around. You can't approve a lower budget and, then, somewhere in between now and August decided to increase it. Plus we have noticed in requirements to meet. So, what you approve today -- or at the end of our two day workshop, you can lower within the limitations of how long we need -- or you can do it up until the time we do the actual public hearing. So, it's August 17th. So, to explain that. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: And -- Bird: Go ahead. De Weerd: Excuse me for just a moment. But as was also explained earlier, is because of some of the activity between when you got your budget books and today, what I had done -- and you will see that in your budget books -- we had -- you had more than a balanced budget and I had put money into the capital improvement plan to specifically in concern for funding in our capital improvement plan. As our Finance director has mentioned, she's uncomfortably concerned or she's uncomfortable with where we are with our reserve and making sure that we are able to fund future needs as well in the manner that we have been able to in the past by paying cash, by saving, and working at it. We will look at the capital improvement plan over this next year and when we bring it back to you it will be fiscally constrained or financially constrained. So, when we talk about funding the capital improvement plan we do know it's realistic in what's listed on there, which we have tried to do, but -- with that said, again, I -- Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: You raise a question for me to ask. I'm aware that maybe over the past several years we have helped the Enterprise Fund a reserve and I think we are aiming for six months of reserved in the Enterprise Fund. I don't remember whether we have Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 100 of 123 done that for the General Fund or not and the fund balance, I suppose is sort of the equivalent, but shouldn't that be like a six month reserved as well? De Weerd: We do. We have the four month reserve, but I guess we are also -- what you also don't see is depreciation in the General Fund budget and I think that's what Stacy and Todd have tried to refer to. As you look at the replacements, those replacements are there to maintain a level of service and actually even some of your enhancements are there to maintain a level of service. That we currently are providing and anticipating that new level because of our growth. So, I guess I would see if Stacy has anything she would like to add to that. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor and Councilman Zaremba, we have by policy a four month operating reserve in the General Fund. The Enterprise Fund we talk about an emergency fund, we kind of look at about nine million dollars. It's not really related to anything in particular. General Fund -- Enterprise Funds have monthly income. They are completely fee based, where the General Fund relies primarily on property tax, which comes twice a year. So, a little more strict requirements for the General Fund, but that -- where I keep telling you the restricted fund balance, that's -- that's the fourth month of operating. De Weerd: And I guess tomorrow at the end of this we would like to get your feedback on how we can bring next year's budget -- don't want to always look one year ahead, but I think Councilman Rountree mentioned something on the -- for the budget book and we want to always look at how we can -- can answer your needs, the information you are looking for to -- to really have it at our finger tips and to really look at the transparency. We have worked with -- through Todd and I know that Jaycee and Todd have had discussions with our IT department on a tool for that priority based budgeting. It was a great opportunity to plug that now as a priority to our priority based budgeting and as you consider our software engineers, because we need them. How was that? Does that give me a priority for our priority based budget? Again, just to say we did fully vet it. The process of each of our liaisons for the department sitting down with us and going through line item by line item, looking at fixed costs and what needs to have plans to -- to certain line items and seeing the detail that the departments do go through to get us the correct number, not a padded number, and my thanks to department directors in going through that process as well. We feel that you have a budget in front of you that meets the needs of our community that will accommodate the growth that we are experiencing and that it does align with the vision, mission, and values of our city. think that in advance we did answer some questions as far as we have been trying to put comprehensive plans together in terms of the compensation plan that you have heard before now. Also looking at maintenance and how we can continue to maintain what we do have. You also heard numbers earlier by Finance on what our capital assets are and unlike the city to the east, they are going out for a bond to update and upgrade some of their existing facilities. If we have a plan that we can commit to financially, we can avoid having to do major rehab projects if we can take things -- care of things and still be able to justify that that expense is necessary and -- I guess I will Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 101 of 123 stop there. I don't want to be like the chief and lose my voice. I didn't say that. You did. Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Madam Mayor, if we are ready to get into the weeds, I would comment -- certainly appreciate the process that has gotten us to this point. As you mentioned, the budget basically starts out balanced and also that -- not only has each liaison been through these with their own departments, but the directors have vetted them against each other and expressed their opinions and I appreciate all the work that goes into that. I'm easy. I am convinced that every one of these ought to be done. Again, if we make any changes, then, we have to change something else as well and the one subject that I would open that's apparently been a can of worms occasionally -- I would like to re -discuss the timing of the build out of the Storey Park expansion and there is more to that than just a dog park as we have seen. The dog park is about a 200,000 dollar part of the build out of the Storey Park expansion and I guess my point on that -- it sounds like we are working toward having that happen. My -- what I wish to reopen is a discussion of the timing and that means whether it goes into next year as an enhancement or this year as an amendment and I think it serves, in my opinion, several things. The land water board that had to be a party into the land swap and all of that, the probably understood commitments of the speedway that they expect of us and certainly the people who own dogs and I are looking for a dog park, if this could get going sooner, so much more of it could be done during the time that the Speedway is not in service and when the irrigation canals are not in use -- if we actually wait to do it in the 2015 budget -- and I know this has been said before -- that puts it off far enough that it really extends -- the useful time is almost a year and I realize I'm repeating the side that I went on when we voted and I was out voted, but I just am asking if we discuss that again. De Weerd: Steve, did you have in your presentation -- I don't recall -- a comparison and timelines if you do the amendment now versus an enhancement in 2015? Siddoway: Yes, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. The difference in timeline was -- if it -- Memorial Day versus Labor Day, in rough -- rough numbers. If we get the - - the main difference being in the paving that we could get done this fall if we move forward with the amendment. If not, the paving will be done as soon as the weather clears and we can get good road base in next summer and in rough numbers we think the difference will be a Memorial Day opening versus a Labor day opening. De Weerd: Okay. Council, any comments on that specific topic? Any thoughts one way or another? Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Cavener. Cavener: More of just maybe a comment to share with the Council. In the six short months that I have been on the Council I have been contacted by citizens by -- for a Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 102 of 123 variety of different reasons and a variety of different issues. All of those combined are less than the amount of contacts that I have received from our citizens who voiced their frustration and their concern about this project being held back. I think that those that have been involved in the planning of this have stated that they have been told time and again that this project was coming and happening and they felt that once this project would come and happen it would open the doors for them to be able to fundraise on their own. I just think it's important that this Council knows that, that of all the contacts that I have heard they vastly outweigh the relationship with the dog park than all my other comments that I have received combined. Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milam: I'm not sure that I have a full understanding of what it does to the end budget, but in my -- if it all ends up the same I would prefer to get it going so that we can use it next summer, as opposed to waiting and not really be able to utilize it until the summer of 2016, if it's something that to the community is really asking for, which it seems they are. De Weerd: Okay. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, can you like vote on it, so we could move on? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: You took the words right out of my head. Kilchenmann: Just saying -- De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I may need to refer this to Mr. Nary, but I -- I believe there is a technical requirement. Since we did have a vote of the Council and there was a majority decision, I personally resent people that were in the minority and keep trying to bring the same thing up, but I am one of those this time, unfortunately. But I believe there is a technical rule that somebody that was in the minority cannot make a new motion, it has to be somebody that was in the majority; is that correct? De Weerd: But I think the motion was to bring it to the budget discussion -- Nary: Right. De Weerd: -- and so you wouldn't be working against the intent of that motion. The intent of the motion was to look at the expense of the dog park as part of the large picture, which is what you are doing right now. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 103 of 123 Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: If I recall the motion, it was a motion to bring it through the budget process to see if we got it passed through the budget process for next year. Now, without doing an amendment I don't know how we can legally -- while I would like to get it started, I don't know how we could -- how we could do it and as far as I'm concerned we have passed that one -- we will either pass that 1.594 through our budget amendment, take effect October 1st, or, then, we have to come back -- I don't know. I mean I do not -- Mr. Nary, tell me how you would do a budget amendment now after we have already passed it -- if we pass it as a budget. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, my recollection was the discussion was as the Mayor stated, to bring it back as part of this discussion. Part of the conversation at the time was too also look at whether or not -- to still consider whether to do it in this fiscal year or the next fiscal year. I believe -- and, then, again, I may be wrong, but that's what I recall Council Member Borton raising -- that was why he wanted it talked as part of this discussion. You can still do it within this budget year as an amendment if you wish. That's a new motion. That's a new issue. Or you can make it a part of your budget for FY -15. So, either one of those is within your authority or power to do. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: I agree with your recollection as to what that was and I think as part of this big process the Parks Department did exactly what they were asked to do in seeing the dog park and the expense, in light of all of the other expenditures for the next fiscal year is extremely valuable. The question that I brought up during Mr. Siddoway's presentation was the mechanics of a budget amendment now -- and I think I might have asked this to Finance -- of approving a budget amendment now to get the project started now -- I'm comfortable with that process. What I'm not comfortable with is the expenditure of fund balancing to do it now and, then, the removal of this from an enhancement and allocating those funds to another expenditure. De Weerd: And you articulated that very well earlier this morning, which you can avoid by dedicating any -- any budget amount would be to repay the General -- or the capital improvement plan -- Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, you could either -- you could direct it to the public safety fund. You could direct it to capital improvement fund, which would restrict it for only capital projects. Or you can direct it to the General Fund balance. But I would -- it's most restricted if you either put it in the public safety fund or the capital improvement fund. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 104 of 123 Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: If -- Milam: Sorry, Joe. De Weerd: Did you have a follow up? Borton: I did. If I could briefly. It would be restricted to no more or less than its current restrictions from where the funds are coming from if it was funded from a budget enhancement. Is that a tongue tie statement? Kilchenmann: Yeah. I'm not sure -- yes, because right now it's like you just coming from new revenue, like fresh revenue. If we actually physically move it into one of those funds its not just rolling into the big General Fund balance. Does that answer your question? Borton: Correct. It could be in the simplest sense -- the fund balance isn't necessarily a separate account, so to speak. Kilchenmann: No. But the other two are. Borton: Okay. So, it would be in effect a dollar for dollar replacement of those funds. They are just spent earlier. Kilchenmann: Yes. If you -- if we took it out right now and just took it out of '15, it would look like you have 400,000 more dollars to spend in '15, but we can take that 400,000 dollars and direct into one of those specific funds and, then, it's like taking it away, because I think your concern is -- then it just looks like we just spent -- we just moved it, it's still there, it doesn't change, but -- and in order to prevent that from happening we can't do that. Borton: Madam Mayor? Since we are on the topic we will just continue on down the track. Can you -- you're deleting stuff and moving stuff -- Kilchenmann: I'm not. My hands are just -- De Weerd: Why don't we move off -- are you moving off this topic? Borton: No. No. De Weerd: Okay. Borton: No. I'm going to continue on it. You reference 400,000. Can you show me what you're deleting where that was coming from? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 105 of 123 Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, what we did was remove the 1.5 million dollars from capital. We had assigned using from 55 -- that other account that Stacy represented -- the capital improvement fund, the one that has a little more restriction. We were going to utilize 800,000 dollars -- promote that to use 800,000 dollars to fund this program for fiscal your'15. So, we are going to get rid of that request. Instead we will move that request to fiscal '14, just kind of like what you're saying, we are just moving the timelines. So, when you do that process, remove the funding source and remove the capital, that gets your fund -- or your at a positive 452,000 dollars. Now, if you wanted to replenish that capital improvement fund, we can add whatever dollar amount that we wish. I was using 400 has an example, you as a Council can dictate that that money is going to go to that fund to replenish it, which leaves 52,000 dollars for you to discuss as -- you know, however, we wish to use that money. Does that answer the question? Borton: It does. Other than I apologize if I missed it. The math between the 1.5, less the eight -- Kilchenmann: Impact fees. Borton: Okay. Impact fees. Lavoie: That is correct. Kilchenmann: But this way we -- so, we can't just go through the budget and decide to use -- buy 500 chairs or something. So, we can get the money back in to replenish or to any kind of restricted capital funds is what I would recommend. Borton: With -- Madam Mayor? If -- if the process of the funding for a budget amendment is similar as here, where a component comes from the capital improvement fund, the impact fee fund, the remainder from General and that can be replenished like you just described, I'm comfortable with that process. That preserves the fund so they are not expended elsewhere. So, I don't believe, though -- in fact, I'm certain that doesn't need to be done as a budget amendment today. That can be done tomorrow. It can be done next week. So, we can -- De Weerd: It can't because of the deadlines. Zaremba: The publishing and stuff. Borton: Is that a statutory deadline? De Weerd: In order to publish it. Rountree: We have to publish in August. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 106 of 123 Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, next week -- next Tuesday would be the -- will be providing Bill with a number to provide to you on July 22nd, your tentative fiscal year '14 and '15 budget. So, the 22nd of July is when we will be back with the final numbers. So, the 15th -- next Tuesday is the last day for amendments for you guys. Kilchenmann: And, Madam Mayor, one more follow up. I recommend that personnel operating we would leave in '15, because the park is not going to open this year. We didn't need those. Borton: Okay. Nary: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Nary. Nary: Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, maybe not just for Councilman Borton, but the folks who are listening. Really, the noticing requirements are statutorily driven and, basically, the rationale and what the state law says is all you're doing as the city is you establish a budget in one year as to what you think you're going to spend and, then, at the end of the year you pass an ordinance of what you actually spent. So, actually, the whole process in between is all internal as to what amendments you choose to do or not do or how you do them and cities do them in a variety of different ways. But really that's -- that's the dates that we keep talking about is we have a requirement statutorily to make sure we pass what we actually spent in fiscal '14. So, in August you end up with two ordinances, what you really spent in this currently fiscal year and what you intend to spend in this coming fiscal year. So, maybe not just for you and everybody else, but people in the audience, that's what we are driving towards on those dates. Borton: Okay. Thanks. Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: In summary of that, I don't think it's necessarily a motion now to do that. I can express some supportive of it if it's put on an agenda for next week. If it's a motion that would come next week, I could be supportive of it. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, if you -- if you all agree we can just take it out. We could go back to the start with admin and start going -- going through the list of items to see where you end up. De Weerd: That seems to be the more logical way of doing it. Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 107 of 123 Milam: My question was if -- does it all have to be one item or can we do a budget amendment for the amount that we need -- for 2014 that we need this fall to do the paving and, then, put the rest in the '15 budget? Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Council -- that's what we will do. We won't -- we need the personnel and operating this year, so we will leave that in there. Oh, I see what you mean. Break up the capital part. Milam: Just recommend it for 2014 only for the amount that we actually need, because the whole point of doing it now would be so we can get the paving done. De Weerd: I think what Finance likes to do is commit the entire amount when you put it out to bid you can't really put it into two different contracts, you have to be able to bid out the whole project. Milam: But it would be in our budget for -- it would still be able to bid it out -- De Weerd: It would roll over. That would be the cleanest way to do it. Otherwise, you have to -- to put it out to bid in two separate bids -- two to separate parts -- Bird: No. You phase it and it's -- De Weerd: And, then, it costs more. Milam: I mean it's going to be phased anyway. Once this is adopted in August we still have the commitment; right? Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, it's very difficult to calculate exactly how much work we are going to get done. If you have ever been involved in construction, it's -- to try to for Steve to try to calculate how much actual physical work they are going to get done -- it's the same amount, so it's just easier. Especially if we did a contract for all of the concrete work. Well, we might no actually finish that, so it would be easier just to do it -- De Weerd: I could lend him my crystal ball and, then, you could just figure it out. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: It would be my request to bring back two separate budget amendments, one for Storey Park and one for the dog park. The same sum total. De Weerd: It's just you have already broke out -- Borton: It's the same break out we already got. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 108 of 123 De Weerd: -- what -- what the -- Borton: We have two separate -- De Weerd: Yeah. Borton: Since they are two -- two separate components to it. De Weerd: Even though it would be one project. Borton: Correct. De Weerd: Because you get economies of scale. Borton: Not a phasing. Correct. Kilchenmann: I'm sure Steve can -- Cavener: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Cavener: Actually, it was Mr. Cavener. De Weerd: Who said that? Cavener: It was down here. De Weerd: Oh, yes. Mr. Cavener. Cavener: Maybe a question for -- for Bill. What occurs if we're not all here next week? Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Cavener, if you choose not to do a motion today that's fine and you take it out of your budget. If you bring a budget amendment next week and all of you aren't here, you potentially could have not enough people to vote in favor of the amendment and yet you've already removed it from your budget. So, then, we don't have even in '15, without doing a budget amendment in '15, to be able to fund it. So, if you do a motion today directing staff to bring it with the intention of simply approving it next week, then, at least staff isn't wasting the time and, then, you don't have the mix up that you might have if not everybody is here. Siddoway: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Steve. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 109 of 123 Siddoway: Councilman, I just want to make sure I understand the request for two -- the two separate budget amendments is not two separate phases, it is for the 1.3 million dollars of park improvements and the 226,000 dollars -- De Weerd: It is to reflect the true cost of the park improvement versus the dog park. Siddoway: Right. As separate amendments with the intent that they would go forward or be voted on together. De Weerd: As one project. Siddoway: As one project. Okay. I would just offer that -- and maybe this is a legal question -- if I receive that direction today I could bring this back -- excuse me -- for your deliberations tomorrow or would it need to -- does it need to wait until next week? Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, it can be either one. We just amend the agenda for tomorrow to add it would be the only difference. Siddoway: So, I just offer that as well. De Weerd: Okay. Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milam: Steve, I would like that tomorrow. Rountree: Is that a motion? De Weerd: Was that a motion? Milam: It's a direction. De Weerd: Is that a motion? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Borton. Borton: No. I interrupted. Milam: No. It's okay. Borton: I was going to make a motion. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 110 of 123 Milam: Oh. Go ahead, Joe. De Weerd: It's like a tennis game. Borton: We are very polite. A courteous Council. De Weerd: I know. You're so polite. Zaremba: I would move, but I can't. Milam: You have got the exact wording that you want in there. Borton: Well, I got some strings attached and I don't know how it -- that will come into the budget amendment. But I would move to approve a budget amendment to incorporate the -- and I don't have the dollar figure in front of me -- the breakdown -- the exact dollar figured for the -- Bird: Twenty-six for the park and the 1.3 for the -- Siddoway: The exact breakdown was 1,344,860 for the park improvements; 226,408 dollars for the dog park. Borton: Thank you. Move to bring forward for tomorrow two budget amendments, one for Storey Park expansion improvements in the amount not to exceed 1,344,860 dollars and a second amendment for the dog park component improvements of that park in an amount not to exceed 220,408 dollars and I don't know if an amendment would also potentially represent the funding restrictions we are going to place today, but -- De Weerd: You can do that separate. Borton: Okay. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, it will be on the amendment itself. Borton: Okay. De Weerd: So, I have a motion. Milam: Second. De Weerd: And a second. Any discussion from Council? Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam yea; Cavener, yea. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 111 of 123 De Weerd: Just so I couldn't say all ayes, uh? MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Borton: One last comment to Councilman Zaremba's remark. I don't think it's being a pest or problematic. People are passionate about certain things and, then, we hear things from the community, so I don't have any problems continuing discussing things. It might not change opinions, but I think Finance and the Parks Department has done a good job doing just what I needed to see is that expenditure in light of all of the other expenditures of the city. So, I appreciate those efforts. De Weerd: Thank you. Council, if it is okay we will go through our enhancement list, so if you will start down your summary sheet at the top with the City Hall parking lot and as you go through if -- if you have any further questions or concerns, please, bring them up at that time. So, we will first do the admin section. So, in front of you on the screen that Finance has -- or your screen in front of you -- any questions regarding any of these enhancements under the admin section of the General Fund? Milam: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milam: The City Hall parking lot development, is that the one over here we were talking about that we might need in case we do something over at the old city hall? De Weerd: Well, I think when -- I don't know if you were on Council when we purchased the parking lot, but -- Milam: No. De Weerd: Because of dust abatement and we do need to pave it. So, it's -- it's kind of an ordinance that we have that we need to follow our own ordinance. Milam: Okay. Thanks. De Weerd: That's the best way I could answer it. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I would also add there are particular times -- Concerts On Broadway, the City Business Day, Public Works Week -- when we certainly could use that parking lot. Public Works Week in particular uses this parking lot for their displays on Public Works Day. So, I think we would all benefit by having that completed as a parking lot. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 112 of 123 De Weerd: Thank you. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: I think from my perspective -- when I look at the budget as a whole, one of the issues that I brought up a couple months ago -- just a real broad brush philosophy concerns the -- the up to three percent increase that we have discussed and Finance presented and what revenue that generates, the exponential effect of it and I had expressed back then and my position now is that it's not something that I am in favor of, generally speaking, and we have been presented a balanced budget and there is no changes that are required in order for it to be balanced, assuming the three percent is included. I am not absolutely certain it should be removed or should be included, but when I look at the presentation from today and items -- and I think the parking lot and Mrs. Milam's comments and questions, that's an example of maybe one of the items that I need to -- I try and reconcile with the 660,000 dollars that's generated by the three percent, can that be -- that expenditure be saved by removal of certain items and that maybe one. It's, you know, my position today that that should come out or must come out, but it's one that in light of my desire to not -- not have to take the three percent that may be up for consideration and I think for me when -- as I go through these, there might be some that I will comment on that give me cause for concern. There is going to be public input that we very much appreciate that, you know, my make certain items remain or might make them more comfortable in removing them, but I think that's how I might approach, rather than taking them out, understanding we can't go back up, I might just make a comment on some that might be removed, at least in my mind, in order to allow the three percent to -- to not be taken. De Weerd: Thank you, Mr. Borton. I certainly know that was an item that has been in discussion. If you look at the budget that you received in your book, you did have an amount which was the bottom line, I believe it was one point something million that was dedicated to the Public Safety Fund. That has since been -- has changed with some of the changes that you got today and our future council -- or our past councils have -- or the city has long time had a commitment to have a save and spend philosophy. In the end it maintains commitment to a level of service to our citizens in both in service on the street, but also in maintaining the assets that we have in our community. We have taken that fiscal responsibility very serious in terms of analyzing each year at the three percent is necessary and as Finance showed you early on, over a five year period I believe it was close to 11 million dollars if we did not take the three percent increase that we would forego and with that you take a look at our capital improvement plan that is a plan that maintains expected levels of service, this is maintaining, not enhancing. That is -- that's not fiscally constrained and right now that list to maintain a level of service is not affordable. So, this is the discussion that we have had at the directors level if we forego that three percent we need to, then, look at your capital improvement plan in accommodating future growth and say what are we willing to not maintain that Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 113 of 123 level of service and that's why you have the budget in front of you as proposed and taking the three percent is to maintain that level of service and that commitment. So, again, it did go back to the capital improvement plan that is not affordable even at this point and trying to see how we can fund the expectations of Council and this community as we provide service to them. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I think both are good points, but we do need to keep in mind that whatever we do today doesn't get cast in concrete. We can lower it, but we can't raise it, and would keep in mind what Councilman Borton said, is that we might not want to do the full three percent, we might want to do a portion. I don't know where we will be at that point in time. I'm not going to read minds. And if we were to try to reduce it, certainly in that particular item he brings up is one that probably could be deferred, but, again, then, you get into the different maintenance mode that you're talking about. But my real comment is what happened to the 15,000 dollars for the AV maintenance contract? Holman: You want to know what -- okay. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree, do you really want to know that answer? We did some research into it and if I understand correctly -- and, Dave, you can come up here and correct me if you need to -- trying to get numbers together for a company that would support that and provide us with a contract, we couldn't get responses and come up with what we thought would be an accurate number -- accurate enough number to come forward with an enhancement. So, we decided to put it off until next year, do a little bit more research, and be able to come back with something a little bit more accurate. We have been getting by this long without it, so we are going to do it for another year. Rountree: Thank you. Holman: You're welcome. Rountree: We can probably kick that item out of there. De Weerd: But it would have been nice to have Dave come up and say that. Rountree: Well, yeah, but, then, we would have to put him on the spot. De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I would just throw in one more comment about the parking lot across the street. Meridian Development Corporation is already counting that in their inventory of parking spaces as they discuss downtown redevelopment and their new thrust for economic development centered here. They are including that in what they are talking about. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 114 of 123 De Weerd: And as is people cannot park on it, because it's -- it's against our ordinance. will just continue to -- to stress that. We expect other developers to pave. It would be hypocritical to not do it ourselves. Just saying. So -- Rountree: Let Meridian Ford go for a hundred years. De Weerd: Do as I say, not as I do. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, for information purposes part of this is in the Enterprise Fund. So, a total is 320,000 dollars and the requestor's split it between the funds. De Weerd: Well, anything else in this that you also need further information on? If not, we can move to down to the next item under fire. If there are no questions under fire, we can move to parks. Okay. So, tell me if I'm moving too fast. Rountree: You're moving too fast. De Weerd: Oh. Okay. Rountree: Just a question for Steve. On the interchange landscaping we have confirmed with -- with ITD and SHWA that as we move forward with those projects, even though the work is on a federal aid project, we do not have to conform to Davis - Bacon? Siddoway: I don't know, because I have not been involved until just recently. It's been mainly in the planning world. Rountree: Even on a federal project. Okay. Zaremba: I'm not hearing that. Rountree: You want to come up? De Weerd: So, our purchasing agent will -- manager will answer that question. Watts: And Bill might be able to give me some -- enlighten us as well, but my understanding of the law is that it only pertains if federal funds are involved. That's what the Davis -Bacon law actually states. Nary: Correct. De Weerd: And I think one thing that I -- that Steve didn't mention in his presentation is this is a commitment that was made again when the design first began. If we do not fund this it will cost us more in reimbursement to ITD than this project is going to cost, so-- Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 115 of 123 Rountree: Madam Mayor, I fully understand that. I just want to make sure that we don't see another 30 percent from some fluke into the interpretation by the Federal Highway Administration. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: And that wasn't referring to a person, it was -- sorry. Bird: Madam Mayor? Yeah. And I got the same concerns. Is any of that money going to be federal money that -- are we getting paid back or anything? It's all our own money, Steve? Okay. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: One question for Steve -- and I apologize that I didn't bring it up earlier. On the Ballano Creek -- is it Ballano now or used to be Ballano? Siddoway: It used to be Isola. Now it's Ballano. Borton: It's referenced that he wants to -- that would be started in phase five of the subdivision? Siddoway: Correct. But they are building more than one year. Borton: Okay. Siddoway: I think it was already final platted -- either two or three. I can't remember. Just in the -- this last year. So, they are moving forward more rapidly. Borton: Okay. I thought they were sort of stuck in the middle of phase two. So, it seemed that it might be maybe several years out before they would get to phase five. Not the case? De Weerd: They have been going up fast. Siddoway: They have been going quickly. Even with this it would still be two years out before we would be using the construction dollars. This is to give us the design funds for next year, assuming that it would be ready to build the following year. De Weerd: And these -- both William Watson and Ballano are impact fees. Siddoway: Correct. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 116 of 123 Borton: Thanks. De Weerd: Okay. Do you want to move down to police? And as the chief noted on the DUI officers, this is a grant that's been applied for. If we find that we don't get the grant we will come back for an update and discussion. Yes, chief. Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, I just found out an hour ago that we should have an answer by July 16th, which is next week. So, I would probably be able to inform Council fairly soon whether that happens or not. De Weerd: A great time. Borton: Madam Mayor, to my earlier point, the reference to the compensation plan -- and there is more information coming -- it's a big dollar figure there that -- for about -- Lavey: Madam Mayor? I will comment on that, too. Borton: Okay. Lavey: We have received information as of late Friday night and we had put something together as a hold place, knowing that we can go down, but we can't go up here. And so that's what you see in front of you. Borton: Okay. Lavey: On Tuesday you will have a full explanation and we'll go from there. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions for the chief? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Bird: I got some -- in the fire department a couple things. I -- in the employees -- administrator employees on that chart, I -- until some things are done I'm only -- I would like to just fund -- not the special fire -- or the new fire inspector or the position that he was using that to switch to take -- take that one out and I think that I would like to see our engines do more inspections, but I -- I don't know how the rest of you guys feel. don't think right at this point we need to hire another employee. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? There isn't any inspector employee. We don't have a request for one, so you want to take -- you want to reduce the base budget? The only request in fire for an employee is a part-time public education specialist. Bird: I understand that. So, yes, I don't -- I want to take out the position that is being eliminated up there. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 117 of 123 Kilchenmann: Is it yellow on the org chart? Bird: No. It's over on that flow chart. It's division chief communications. De Weerd: And based on what? Bird: I just think that -- De Weerd: To the fire chief and you know the operations? Bird: Well, I think that -- no, I don't, but I think at this point until some stuff is looked at that we need to hold off on -- on getting a new employee up there. But I'm one. Maybe the others don't agree with me. They are the ones that vote. Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? So, you realize on the chart where it says fire inspector and it's yellow, Councilman Bird, that that -- that was one they thought about asking, but they did not ask for it and it's probably my fault, because I didn't have them to go back and redo this org chart, so these org charts were done at the very beginning of the whole process and, then, as we went through our vetting process we took positions that people have thought about requesting out and I did not have them go back and redo these org charts. Bird: Madam Mayor? Please. De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Stace, I realize that, but the chief sat right up here and stated that he took that out, because he was just going to transfer the one that he -- this communications chief to the fire inspector. Am I not right? Niemeyer: Councilman Bird, that is correct. There is no new additional FTE requested. It was a reallocation of current FTEs to meet the needs of today. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: If I follow what Councilman Bird's talking about, I'm not comfortable addressing any change or reduction in a base budget now. I understand there might be concerns that are raised that might need to be answered before a final decision on the budget. It might end up getting Councilman Bird's issues addressed, but in light of the fact that you can't go the other direction, I don't know if we want to change that now. It's really what we are looking to do. Maybe it is. Milam: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 118 of 123 De Weerd: Mrs. Milam. Milam: You have an updated version of this, don't you, that shows the positions the way they were actually moved and not showing vacant positions, but the actual transition of those positions? Niemeyer: We do. Milam: Are we going to see that tomorrow? De Weerd: And, again, I will note the restructuring in both fire and police, the liaisons were involved in those processes, so we will -- we will bring back a procedure that brings greater visibility and accountability to restructures -- that's what I will commit to. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I would just comment on the subject of having two fire inspectors. I don't have a problem with there being two of them and I think there is enough for both of them to do and in addition to that I will throw in something that Patti from HR is probably going to throw rocks at me, because maybe we can't discuss this, but I would guess that one of our fire inspectors is nearing retirement and succession planning would tell me that somebody ought to be working with him for a transfer of knowledge and I don't know how far that retirement is away and I'm probably not supposed to discuss that personnel issue, but it is secession planning is something that we do need to think about and include in our planning and sometimes that may mean we have two people doing one job for some period. So, I support the two fire inspectors. Niemeyer: Councilman Zaremba, I will just add for the record, I don't know when that date is and I hope it's a long ways off. Zaremba: I hope it's a long ways off, too, because we all love Kenny. De Weerd: Council, any other questions on the General Fund? If there are none, we will go ahead and ask for adjournment and -- Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Kilchenmann: We need to do Development Services. De Weerd: Oh. Sorry. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 119 of 123 Kilchenmann: We could actually do the Enterprise Fund and surprise Tom and have it all done. De Weerd: No. He's got his presentation all set for tomorrow and he always has more slides than General Fund collectively -- combined. Okay. Any questions under our Community Development? Lavoie: Madam Mayor, I just wanted to point out to you that a request was discussed with the building official where would be the offset. De Weerd: Yes. Lavoie: I have added that to the display here. If we were to approve those building official, reduce the contractual expenditure, that negative of 118 would represent our estimate for fiscal year "15, a savings in contractual expenses. De Weerd: Bruce, do you want to -- who came up with that number? Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor, Todd did, so I'm going to have -- De Weerd: Just under transparency -- Kilchenmann: Todd came up with that number and he's going to explain that it it's very -- depending on what the revenue is. De Weerd: I just thought I would ask the question. Lavoie: Sounded good. De Weerd: Sounded good. Lavoie: We have a mathematical formula for all contracts within the building division. We take those contracts and apply them against the revenue projections conducted in Finance. So, the building official is the contract that Bruce talked about. We have three different contracts with that individual. So, we have that particular contract isolated. So, basically, in the formula we just remove that as an expenditure calculation and that was the difference between having the contract in place versus not having the contract in place. Crunching the numbers as you would say and that's the difference between having a building official contract against the revenue versus not having a building official contract against the revenue. Kilchenmann: And Madam Mayor -- De Weerd: And, Todd, those were expenditures specifically for the building official part of his contract? Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 120 of 123 Lavoie: That is correct. De Weerd: Okay. Kilchenmann: But, Madam Mayor, I would use this only for illustrative purposes and not leave it like this, because it's going to change a lot, depending the revenue. So, this just shows you an example of if the revenue was like it is this year, which is what '15 is based on, so about the same number of building permits. Of course, as building permit sales go down that affects that. So, I really don't recommend when we set the budget that we actually leave that offset in there. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I would suggest that line 39 the, second column, which -- where it says building official offset, that we say instead building official contract potential offset. Kilchenmann: Actually, we will just -- we will just leave it out. Bird: I was going to say we eliminate it. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Borton. Borton: And I think the number is high if you look at the figures he had, like a rolling side year average. It had been -- the figures he had shown 50, 60 thousand dollars spent on several years. So, it may be less than that. I don't know if it's a wash. That's out of savings. De Weerd: I think in some years it will be less and in some years it's going to be more. It was just illustrative, as -- Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Todd, go back and hit '09, '10 and '11, see where -- see if we are 118,000. Let's just eliminate it. Get that 118 out of there. It's not a true figure. De Weerd: It's going to come off. Bird: Okay. It hasn't yet. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 121 of 123 De Weerd: It was just for your reference. It will not stay on that, so -- Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, this is a presentation that was presented to you earlier by Bruce Chatterton that shows you the expenses paid by year. So, like you said, Mr. Borton -- Bird: And in three -- in three years there you're not -- you're averaging about 60,000. De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Excuse me. Yeah. Thinking to myself. De Weerd: You had further information as well, Bruce? Chatterton: This is just to point out, Madam Mayor, that -- those -- those three years that really -- '07 -- excuse me -- '09, '10, and to a certain extent '11 were the worst real estate recession that we have had. Those really don't reflect the more healthy permitting years. But, then, our -- it averages out to right about on the dollar what this position would cost. Obviously, as Todd pointed out, we are doing considerably better this year, if the reduction in that contract would be 118,000 dollars, it would easily cover the 92 for the FTE. De Weerd: Bruce, I think it's important, as you talked with the team about this particular enhancement, that you're looking specifically on the savings or the expenditures we have as the official building official. You also mentioned that this person could also do some plan review and can be that economic development piece and fast track and -- and also spot checking. There were other core responsibilities that we can't require a contract to do, that this would be an enhancement to the services that we are able to provide in terms of economic development, in terms of customer service, and in terms of that team component, whether it's being the representative to the Building Contractors Association or to the code enforcement and evaluating nuisance properties. Chatterton: And, Madam Mayor, yeah, I agree with everything you have said. It's really the value for the service the dollars we are spending, for the same dollars roughly averaged out over these -- these years. Obviously, it's cyclical. We have a full-time building official, whereas now we have only a part-time building official, someone always available to represent the city. It really has -- it comes down to taking an efficient system and making it better because of better responsiveness. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: What -- how do you cover it when he's on vacation and -- or he's out sick and stuff and you got things coming in? That's something you got to think about with an employee. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 122 of 123 Chatterton: Yes. Madam Mayor, Council Member Bird. Very good point. We cover it as we do other positions through cross -training and being able to -- to bring about coverage. Same thing is with Bruce Freckleton, myself, Caleb are on vacation, we make sure that we are able to handle the issue during that period of time through cross - training. Bird: But you're not going out on jobs inspecting. De Weerd: Is that a follow-up question? Bird: Follow up. Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Member Bird, we do have -- the inspection contract would not be affected by bringing this FTE in. We will still have -- Bird: Excuse me. Follow up. That's just what I wanted to hear you say. Because 118,000 don't go completely away. They are still part -- the inspection is part. Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Member Bird, just to clarify, the inspections are -- are we saying the same thing? Bird: Yes. Chatterton: It would not affect the contracted inspection services that we currently have. De Weerd: And none of these numbers are part of that. The inspection services. Chatterton: Correct. The services of the building official. De Weerd: Any other questions? Okay. We will just continue this tomorrow. If -- in looking at the budget this evening you have any further questions we will have a discussion period tomorrow as well. More opportunity. And with that said if there is nothing further, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Rountree: So moved. Bird: Second. De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 4:34 P.M. Meridian City Council Budget Workshop July 8, 2014 Page 123 of 123 (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) MAYOR TAMMY DE WEERD DATE APPROVED ATTEST: JAYCEE `HOLIVIAN, CITY CLERK