HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-10-14E IDIAN
CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP
MEETING AGENDA
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue
Meridian, Idaho
AMENDED AGENDA
Tuesday, October 14, 2014 at 3:00 PM
1. 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
2. Pledge of Allegiance
3. Adoption of the Agenda Adopted
4. Consent Agenda Approved (Pg 2-3)
A. Approval of Task Order 10492.A to Keller Associates for the "WELL 27
WATER TREATMENT FACILITY" Project for the Not -To -Exceed Amount of
$210,000.00
B. Temporary Construction Water Main Easement Agreement with the Holy
Nativity Episcopal Church at 838 West Cherry Lane
C. Permanent Water Main Easement Agreement with the Holy Nativity
Episcopal Church at 828 West Cherry Lane
D. Approval of Cooperative Agreement between the City and Valley Regional
Transit for "Annual Dues and Service Contribution" for a Not -To -Exceed
Amount of $172,160.00
E. Police Department: Renewal Agreement for New World Record
Management System (RMS) for the Period of October 1, 2014 through
September 30, 2015
F. Partial Release and Termination of Sanitary Sewer and Water Easement for
Touchmark Meadow Lake Village
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, October 14, 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.
G. Approval of a Recycled Water Use Agreement with Wal-Mart - Meridian NW
Store #5841-00
H. Approval of City Wide, Evergreen Sole Source Purchase for Taser Body
Worn Cameras and Associated Evidence.com Storage, Licenses & Service
Packs from Taser International and Taser Electronic Weapons from
Proforce of Prescott Arizona
5. Community Items/Presentations
A. Light My Fire Check Presentation (Pg 3-4)
6. Items Moved From Consent Agenda None (Pg 4)
7. Department Reports
A. Mayor's Office: Resolution No. 14-1023: Resolution Appointing Cheyenne
Quilter to the Youth Seat of the Meridian Arts Commission Approved (Pg 4-
5)
B. Mayor's Office: Resolution No. 14-1024: Resolution Appointing Bradley
Pipal to the Youth Seat of the Meridian Transportation Commission
Approved (Pg 5-6)
C. Public Works Department: Strategic Plan Update (Pg 6-19)
D. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates (Pg 19-25)
E. Legal Department: Discussion Regarding Private Security Licensing (Pg
25-27)
F. Community Development: Discussion regarding the Meridian Road
Interchange Barrier Rail Art (Pg 27-32)
G. Community Development: ACHD 2015-2019 Integrated Five Year Work Plan
Adoption (Pg 32-34)
H. Community Development: Eagle Road Speed Limit Change Motion
approved to Send a Letter (Pg 34-38)
8. Future Meeting Topics None (Pg 38)
9. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(f) — To Consider And Advise
Its Legal Representatives In Pending Litigation
Into Executive Session at 5:09 p.m.
Out of Executive Session at 6:38 p.m. (Pg 38-39)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, October 14, 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.
Adjourned at 6:38 p.m.
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, October 14, 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 Workshop October 14, 2014
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, October
14, 2014, by President Charlie Rountree.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Charlie Rountree, David
Zaremba Joe Borton, Genesis Milam and Luke Cavener.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Caleb Hood, Tom Barry, Warren Stewart, John
Overton, Mark Niemeyer, Robert Simison and Dean Willis.
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: I'd like to welcome you to our Meridian City Council meeting. Thank you for
joining us. For the record it is October 14th. It's five minutes after 3:00. We will start with
roll call attendance, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us --
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: A couple blanks to fill in on Item 7. 7-A the resolution number is 14-1023. On
7-B the resolution number is 14-1024. And with those, Madam Mayor, I move that we
approve the agenda.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as noted. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
Meridian City Council Workshop
October 14, 2014
Page 2 of 39
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Approval of Task Order 10492.A to Keller Associates for the
"WELL 27 WATER TREATMENT FACILITY" Project for the Not -
To -Exceed Amount of $210,000.00
B. Temporary Construction Water Main Easement Agreement with
the Holy Nativity Episcopal Church at 838 West Cherry Lane
C. Permanent Water Main Easement Agreement with the Holy
Nativity Episcopal Church at 828 West Cherry Lane
D. Approval of Cooperative Agreement between the City and Valley
Regional Transit for "Annual Dues and Service Contribution" for
a Not -To -Exceed Amount of $172,160.00
E. Police Department: Renewal Agreement for New World Record
Management System (RMS) for the Period of October 1, 2014
through September 30, 2015
F. Partial Release and Termination of Sanitary Sewer and Water
Easement for Touchmark Meadow Lake Village
G. Approval of a Recycled Water Use Agreement with Wal-Mart -
Meridian NW Store #5841-00
H. Approval of City Wide, Evergreen Sole Source Purchase for
Taser Body Worn Cameras and Associated Evidence.com
Storage, Licenses & Service Packs from Taser International and
Taser Electronic Weapons from Proforce of Prescott Arizona
De Weerd: Item 4 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 from Council, Madam Clerk.
Meridian City Council Workshop
October 14, 2014
Page 3 of 39
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 5: Community Items/Presentations
A. Light My Fire Check Presentation
De Weerd: Okay. Item 5 is under Community Presentations and so I believe Chief
Niemeyer.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is one topic on the agenda I'm
very honored and humbled to be up here again this year. This is the Light My Fire check
presentation. But more than that I want to say a few words of thanks before I bring
everybody up. There is going to be a few of them come up here with me. This
organization Light My Fire has been absolutely instrumental year after year in helping to
provide funds for our fire prevention and our public education message, as well as our
burn out fund and, you know, anytime you have something like this you always wonder
when it's going to stop, when people are going to get burned out, and it seems that the
energy with this group just continues on and on. They have gotten into the habit of
challenging myself and the Boise fire chief to see who can auction off -- I think the highest
glass of water was one year and some items last year, so it's become even a more
traditional challenge now. But everything they do it is meant to give back to the
community and so I'm very humbled and honored to have them here tonight. So, with that
I'm going to Chief Palmer and Pam Orr to come up, as well as the representatives from
Light My Fire. I'm not sure who is going to be speaking, but I will turn it over to them.
Palmer: Good afternoon. Members of the Council, Madam Mayor. So, I would like to
introduce some of the key players with Light My Fire.
De Weerd: They don't need introduction. Right?
Palmer: They don't. I know they are very well known in the community. So, we have
Andrea Bradshaw, who is with Belfor. And Chrissie Kay with CTR. Mary Cahoon with
Disaster Kleenup. And -- I'm sorry.
Barnes: Stephanie Barnes.
Palmer: Stephanie Barnes. I almost called you Angela. Stephanie Barnes is with the
insurance industry in the local area. So, we owe these folks a lot of gratitude. They work
extremely hard throughout the year. It's not just a single event, it's all year around that we
work on this and we enjoy the fruits of the labor here at the fire prevention division, as well
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October 14, 2014
Page 4 of 39
as Boise. So, we enjoy our activity with them and we certainly appreciate all their efforts,
so thank you.
Cahoon: I would also as a committee like to thank Pam and Parry for helping us as well.
They are always with us the whole time, every committee meeting, and working their tails
off to help us raise the funds. So, thanks Pam and Parry as well. So, I'm thinking
probably all you know, but possibly not. Over 300,000 dollars has been raised since
1993. That's when this committee first started with Bob and Judy at the helm, the
Ricketts, and they are not here today. Normally they are. But I want to give them thanks,
too, because they had that torch for a long time and, then, just passed it on to myself arid,
then, Andrea Bradshaw with Balfor as vice -chair and secretary and, then, Sonya Johnson
with Johnson CPA. Anyway. So, with that the fun part is we have got money. Big time
money. And so I know for -- it's for the fire prevention and safety, we have 7,860 dollars.
Chief Niemeyer. And I know that there is a matching grant that goes along with that,
which is huge. So, awesome on your end of it to match what we do out there in the field.
And, then, for the burnout we have 5,240 dollars to turn over to them. And we have a
save the date for 2015 and, of course, these people that are doing all this work continue to
champion this on. We came up with a Fire Fiesta this year and so, anyway, it's going to
be on February the 20th. It's a Friday. So, save that date on your calendars and we are
going to pass one out to each one of you and we guarantee it's going to be a Fire Fiesta
that's going to be hotter than a flame broiled Habanero jalapeno. So, please, mark your
calendars, so that we can ignite the night at the Riverside Inn and raise funds for fire
prevention and the burnout fund. Thank you.
De Weerd: I like to come just to see how you guys are dressed. I mean they go all out,
so -- and I will tell you that as much as this event benefits our agencies, we don't see very
many elected officials there. So, that is a challenge to the elected officials to be in
attendance and support an organization that has deep and longstanding roots in our
community and giving back and making a huge difference. So, Mary, Stephanie, Andrea
and Chrissie, thank you so much for being here and for all of your efforts. They make a
huge difference and I know that any of our personnel -- our fire personnel will tell you what
a huge difference it makes in the work they do and the people that fall victim to -- to these
different life situations. So, thank you.
Cahoon: Thank you.
De Weerd: And I am -- I am not kidding you, their outfits really -- if anything I go to just
see how those ladies are dressed.
Item 6: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 7: Department Reports
Meridian City Council Workshop
October 14, 2014
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A. Mayor's Office: Resolution No. 14-1023: Resolution Appointing
Cheyenne Quilter to the Youth Seat of the Meridian Arts
Commission
De Weerd: We will move to Item 7-A. Council, in front of you I do have Resolution 14-
1023 Cheyenne Quilter to the youth seat of the Meridian Arts Association. You have her
information. She is a sophomore, so we are really excited. She's got some great ideas, a
lot of enthusiasm and energy and she's been involved in a number of AP classes and in
the arts arena, so she's ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work. She met with the
chair yesterday and myself and the chair has given her endorsement of this appointment
and so I will stand for any questions that you have.
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I move that we approve Resolution 14-1023, appointing Cheyenne Quilter to the
youth seat of the Meridian Arts Commission.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 7-A. 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.
B. Mayor's Office: Resolution No. 14-1024: Resolution Appointing
Bradley Pipal to the Youth Seat of the Meridian Transportation
Commission
De Weerd: Item No. 7-B is Resolution 14-1024. The name in front of you I'm sure several
of you at least note the last name. Brad Pipal is the son of Julie Pipal, who has been
really involved in our Meridian Interchange Taskforce and Randy Pipal served on our
ACHD -- I think it's --
Zaremba: CICAC.
Meridian City Council Workshop
October 14, 2014
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De Weerd: Yes. Whatever. All those different alphabet numbers or -- alphabet numbers.
There you go. So, they are no strangers to transportation. He's got a passion for it and a
real enthusiasm. My only -- my only disappointment is he's going to be a senior, so he's
only going to be on there for a year. We had for both of these seats five -- five for
transportation and seven applicants for the Meridian Arts. So, there is great interest,
enthusiasm and just amazing young individuals that have an interest in having a voice in
our community. So, it's very exciting. But in front of you I do have Brad and I
enthusiastically bring his name to you and ask for your confirmation.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move we approve Resolution No. 14-1024, the resolution appointing Bradley
Pipal to the youth seat of Meridian Transportation Commission.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 7-B. Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
C. Public Works Department: Strategic Plan Update
De Weerd: Item 7-C is our strategic plan update from Public Works Department, so I will
turn this over to our director Tom Barry.
Barry: Well, good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. It's my pleasure to present to
you on behalf of the Public Works Department our 2014 strategic plan focus presentation,
encapsulating the work that we have done since October of 2013 to present and also
showcasing for you our plans proceeding into this next fiscal year. You are familiar with
the mission of the Public Works Department, but just quickly -- it is to anticipate, plan, and
provide exemplary public services and facilities that support the needs of our growing
community in an efficient, customer focused and financially responsible manner. I want to
give you a couple quick statistics on where we are over this last year. In the last year's
time we have added 815 new water accounts, 922 new sewer accounts, eight new miles
of water lines, five new miles of sewer line, one new water booster station, 169 new active
fire hydrants, 230 new sewer manholes. We have almost doubled our water storage by
adding an additional 2,000 -- or, excuse me, two million gallon reservoir. We have had
129 projects inspected over this past year, which required a number of re -inspections and
the like, but here is an interesting number. Almost 1,500 acres in our community have
been developed in the last year. Those are what we receive record drawings on. So, you
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October 14, 2014
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can see we are continuing to grow at a very rapid pace. As you know, we try to plan
strategically our work and, then, employ that work tactically. We are going to continue the
theme that we have started a couple years back in reporting using a modified balanced
score card. This -- these are the five areas that we would like to report to you on:
Customers, operations, employees, financial and strategy. And we will highlight the
accomplishments and challenges that are going forward in each of these areas. As a
matter of customers, I wanted to mention a couple of highlights -- or highlight, rather, a
couple of the accomplishments that we have had this year. The wastewater resource
recovery facility, which is going to be hard for us all to learn, but that's the new name of
the wastewater treatment plant. We were able to upgrade that RV dump and it has
immediate success and feedback -- positive feedback from the community on the RV
dump. Its design, its utilization has gone up tremendously this year. You won't notice it
too much about this time of year, because RV'ing is -- the season for RV'ing is kind of
dwindling. But we have had quite a bit of activity at the RV dump lately after its
construction and got a lot of really good positive feedback from that.
De Weerd: Is there a better name than RV dump?
Barry: Well, it's typically referred to in the industry as a dump station, but -- I mean you
can name it what you want I suppose. That's typically what it's called on all the blue signs
that you see around the country, so --
Bird: It's nice to have.
Barry: It is very nice to have. It's two bays --
De Weerd: The RV transfer station or something. It's so nice with the landfill. It's not just
the dump. So -- sorry.
Barry: Well, we haven't updated I guess nationally, but we just use the terminology that
most folks know. We could put that on a list, of course, of things to do, to try to rename
the dump -- RV dump. But, in any event, it's been -- no guarantees, though. I think it
would confuse people. In any event, we have made some improvements in water quality.
We have noticed a 25 percent reduction year over year on brown water complaints so far.
That's been mostly done through operational changes and some facility improvement that
we have made or more or less improvements to the actual wells themselves and blending,
for example, and some other improvements that we have been able to make to the overall
operation of the system. We are still struggling to get full control over the iron and
manganese issues and radionuclides, which I will speak to in' just a minute, otherwise
known as uranium, continue to plague us in regard to water quality. The water asset
plans, phase one and phase two, I wanted to highlight because that's been an important
work that's been undergone for this last two years and, in fact, we were able to advance
work in both of these phases, which have now helped us to identify close to 50,000 new
assets just on the water division side. So, this is important, as you know, for
characterizing not just the type of assets that we have in our community, but soon we will
be able to characterize also their condition, their age, their materials and those types of
Meridian City Council Workshop
October 14, 2014
Page 8 of 39
things and put those into a depreciation and repair -replacement cycle to help us better
predict failures and prevent or mitigate those failures in advance. Also Meridian Heights
Water and Sewer District, we have done our service installations over this last year. They
are connected to sewer. We have been servicing them on sewer. You knew that. We
have also connected them to water. They have not been receiving our water just yet, but
they are -- we have a valve turned off, but that connection has been made and right now
we are just finishing up -- we expect probably this week or next week to be finished with
all of the water meters that are going into each of these remaining properties that were
without water meters, so that we can transition in December on time and, then, begin
servicing them water. So, that's -- that's been on track. As a matter of fact, we are a little
bit ahead of schedule on that particular project. Customer contact and outreach. We
have really stepped it up this year. Obviously we did the Public Works Week celebration,
the expo, and the activities in and around that particular event -- or week's events I should
say. But we also reached out to all of our customers this year, both developers and utility
rate customers to inform them of some of the challenges that we have had financially in
trying to meet both growth and regulations. We have just gone through all of that recently,
so you're well familiar with that. But we sent out, you know, 30,000 plus fliers to the
community members, several hundred letters and we have also been to several
association meetings and the like, so -- and as you saw from the information you have
received from the association we still maintained a very favorable relationship between
our departments and the associations -- most notable associations we work with. Just a
couple quick statistics on Public Works Week. We did increase our attendants at Public
Works Week. It keeps growing year after year. The estimate is somewhere around eight
to nine hundred folks this last year for the expo alone. That doesn't include some of the
other activity numbers. We did fill the bus, so for the first time we had a waiting list as
well. There has been talk about maybe adding a second bus to the tour, because it's
gotten pretty popular. We are going to evaluate that over this next year and see if there is
really demand for that. But we -- you know, we have the expo, facility tour, the golf
scramble, which helps to raise money as well for the Meridian Food Bank. In total we
donated 5,000 plus -- I think the final number was somewhere around 7,000 dollars to the
Meridian Food Bank, which is really tremendous for us. So, we are very excited about
that. Challenges in the customer area. Our utility billing software is antiquated, it's no
longer being supported and needs to be updated. This is a project that we have been
working with the Finance Department on for some time. We have a project manager also
in charge for helping navigate these waters with us. The utility billing software analysis
and needs assessment and RFPs for different types of models are all kind of here and
that work is in process right now. We hope to be able to deploy sometime early next year,
at least in trial some of the selections or hopefully the final selection in that time. We have
got some challenges that are mentioned on water quality, mostly iron and manganese, as
I have talked about before. We are putting in water treatment. You know that. We have
brought several projects and amendments to you to talk about and deploy our iron and
manganese treatment technology that some of the key wells around the community, but
we have also been up to installing other types of improvement strategies. For example,
we have tried to occlude, which means pull out the screens in our wells and reposition
those screens so they pull from different water quality aquifers, for example. We have
done some blending. We have experimented with some pilot tests in the ground, both
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October 14, 2014
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reducing iron and manganese, as well as radionuclides in our system and so we still have
a lot of work to do, so that's why it's listed here as a challenge, but it's something that we
are actively working on. The engineering design standards are pretty well wrapped up.
We have a few more details to work, then, we are going to deploy the public outreach --
build on public outreach campaigns that we have had recently and the relationship that we
have established with BOMA, as well as the BCA, to get these design standards in front of
them and get their feedback before we go and bring them to you for your consideration.
Essentially, that work we hope do be able to wrap up by March. That includes the public
outreach process and so we will have more for you on that in the coming months. We
have been partnering developers and contractors to help provide some tolerance
information or flexibility in the field for what would otherwise seem on a case-by-case
basis problematic standards for construction, so, we sat down with developer groups and
even individual developers to talk about their particular project and some of the concerns
they have in being able to meet the specifications. We have developed -- so far this year
we have had two major meetings with large development constituencies and both of those
I think have favorable outcomes and resulted in some flexibility that we were able to show
to the developing community and also offered a nice exchange in what's going on in the
field and the challenges in the field with what we see in the -- in the office with regard to
design standards and specifications. So, that's been good. It does continue to be a
challenge, which is why the design standards are going through a robust public process
this next year and, hopefully, through that we will be able to mitigate some of those
challenges we have had in the past. We would also like to focus this next year on
developing some effective customer surveys, particularly around inspections and also
pretreatment. We do have customer comment cards that the water division deploys quite
regularly with regard to their contacts and always receive pretty good ratings from those
folks who turn those particular cards in, but we would like to really work to develop a little
bit formalized customer contact and evaluation programs, so that way we can focus on the
needs of the community and make sure that we are satisfying those. So, that's on our list
to do over this next year. The employee section. We do have some accomplishments
that we would like to highlight. For example, we have made some important strides on
advancing the workforce development strategy that we deployed about a year or so ago.
We have a management academy and leadership development program that we have
been running our senior executives and our strategic leadership team members through to
help accentuate skills based training mostly around personnel and organizational
performance management. We have also been running key staff through project
management training as well. Some of them are on track to get their project management
certifications, which will be very helpful in our organization, because we are a very project
intensive type of department. Computing technology and resources is something we have
been trying to also push as it relates to skills based training and, then, finally, safety has
been an area that we focused pretty heavily on over this last year. I'm pleased to report
that about 95 percent -- 96 percent of the entire department has been through OSHA
standard training and received their ten hour occupational training certificate -- safety
certificate. We also have a pretty high number -- I think it's 90 percent or so that have
gone through CPR and first aid as well and we are also running high numbers in the
ICRMP risk management training that's asked of us each year and we will be going
through that again this year as well. We have done several staffing analyses over this last
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October 14, 2014
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year. One I have presented to you in November of last year that we did internally. We
have also had some consultants help us with the long term staffing analysis for both water
division and the wastewater division and we are using those to help guide our growth and
to make sure that we are responsive and able to meet the demands of the community, as
well as functionally operate the systems that we are deploying to meet both environmental
and -- environmental regulations and growth required operation. We have turned our
attention to trying to recognize employees more. We continue to -- during our Public
Works annual picnic identify key members of the Public Works Department who have
gone above and beyond and serve as examples to other employees, as well as recognize
cross -functional teams and work groups for teamwork and the like. We do feel like there
is more work that needs to be done there, so you will see that as an ongoing challenge for
us. We don't feel like we are there as it relates to really acknowledging and recognizing
and rewarding the efforts of staff that we are doing some things that at least we should
point out. Employee satisfaction action plans are something that we have deployed
throughout the entire department since the last time we did an employee satisfaction
survey, which would have been February or March of last year. So, each division, after
we got the feedback, we went and sat with a select group -- three focus groups of staff --
individuals and helped characterize root cause analysis and, then, develop some action
plans with the division managers on how each of those divisions would help to improve
the overall employee satisfaction. We are making progress on that, but, you know,
sometimes that progress is a little slower than you would like and there is a lot more to do
than you think, so that will still continue to be an area of focus for us in the next year. For
challenges under the employees, recruitment and retention continues to be a very
daunting challenge for us. You know that we have struggled for years since I have been
here to recruit high level staff members in the organization. It is also becoming more --
increasingly difficult, rather, to recruit even the operator levels. We have got three
positions that have been open for some time in the collection system program. It's been
difficult to find operators within water and wastewater. We sort of trade operators
between municipalities in the Treasure Valley and right now I think we are all pretty well
picked over and, you know, we have about the best we can get with what we have in the
valley and at least for those who are willing to move, you know, from one organization to
another. So, our market is changing and we have to draw from markets outside the
Treasure Valley and that creates problems for us, because we pay market in the Treasure
Valley and in Idaho, but in order for us to fill these positions that have to be filled, we have
to look a little bit more at the -- at some of the obstacles associated with us being able to
attract a skilled workforce and, then, once we get them here we have to work harder to
keep them here, for example, and that is another area that we want to focus on. We
realize that, you know, folks who join an organization will -- you know, 70 percent of them
will make up their mind as to whether or not they want to stay in that organization in the
first six months that they joined the organization. So, we have a lot of work to do in our
department and I think in talking with our HR director citywide we have a lot of work to do
to develop what we call on boarding plans that really set the employee up for success
right at the very beginning. We are doing this in our department, something we started
and are kind of pioneering for the city under HR's tutelage as well and -- so, we have
developed on -boarding plans. We would like to refine those. But those are, essentially,
30, 60, 90 day plans been prescribed, you know, what we want you to do in certain
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periods of time, what relationships we want you to build where you can go for information,
how you're ,supposed to perform, what the expectations are -- all the stuff set up in on -
boarding plan, where in the past, I'm sorry to say, but we used to just tell people here is
the employee phone book, there is your desk, there is your phone, welcome to the city
and that was about it. You wonder why people -- you know, sometimes you wonder why
the issues come up later -- personnel issues and the like. Well, people weren't
appropriately welcomed and trained and pointed in the right direction. So, in any event,
we have a lot of work to do in that area. Workforce development also includes, once we
have skilled people, making sure that we accentuate their skills and in some cases we
might get the best person that we can through a recruitment and they need to be trained
immediately themselves, either in our system, our operation, our technology that we are
using. The skills based training is certainly very important for us in the department and so
is leadership training for key leadership position. So, those are areas that we also need to
focus time and attention on. And, then, lastly succession planning. We bring this up
every year and we just don't seem to be able to make the kind of traction that we would
like to on succession planning. We seem to do this on a onesy, twosy kind of basis, you
know, so and so said they are interested in this, okay, let's put them on some special
projects or let's give them this opportunity or let's -- let's talk about career counseling them
or give them some extra training. We do that, you know, for maybe, you know, less than
half a dozen staff in the department, but we really don't have a road map that takes each
and every staff person up the chain or even laterally or even incorporates maybe a career
change that they might themselves want to -- want to deploy. This next year we are going
to be focusing on our employee satisfaction survey. That's going to be run with the city
employee satisfaction survey, probably about February or March time, so we get a lot
more data that we can, then, use to continue to identify issues and challenges that we
need to work on as a department. As I mentioned on recognition, still areas that we want
to deploy more resources on and, then, workplace safety, we still have a lot of work to do
there. You will be hearing from Dale Bolthouse, our operations manager, deputy director,
to request some funds here over the next couple of months to help finish out some of the
facility improvements that we need to do in order to improve the safety of those facilities.
We had about 150 or so issues that were brought up in a safety audit, most of which are --
about 85 to 90 percent of those have all been fixed and addressed, but the remaining
priorities to require some funding that we are going to be asking for to make sure that we
can accomplish all the work in that safety audit that has been identified for us to consider.
Under the financial area -- I don't need to spend much time on this, because we spent a
lot of time together on our finances as a department, but, essentially, we are proud of how
we put together the rate model and updates to that. Now, it's a ten year model, instead of
just a five year model. The NPDES permitting and financial planning, that's all been done
and you're very familiar with that. A ten year capital improvement plan for sewer, which
extended five years of that -- of the plan to go to ten years. Regional assessments for
sewer and the adjustments to the sewer assessment fee, as well as the utility rate
analysis and the adjustments that we made to the weights are also things that, you know,
we are required, as you know, to help meet the growth and the regulatory challenges that
we have as a department. To look at continuing challenges financially, we need to stay
on top of the financial planning and forecasting for the department to make sure that we
guide our financial resources to meet the required needs of going forward, particularly
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over this ten year period where we have this compliance schedule with the Environmental
Protection Agency to meet these new permit requirements. So, those two first bullets, you
know, sort of address that. The ten year capital improvement plan needs to be developed
for the water side of the system. We do have a five year capital improvement plan for
water. We would like to extend that out to ten years, as we have in wastewater. We have
ideas of what needs to happen in that last five years, but we really need to formalize that.
Fee leveling is still going to be a challenge for us. So, we have started that work. It's in
process, but we are not very far along with that, so put that down as a financial challenge.
And, then, depreciation financing. I have mentioned to you several times we are sort of
punting on this particular challenge for the next, you know, five or ten years as it relates to
financing strategy, but it relates to work that we can be doing now that doesn't require
financing. There is quite a bit of activity that needs to take place. For example, the asset
management program, which will help identify assets, help characterize those assets, help
put them on a depreciation schedule, helps us to understand what the assets are that we
have and what the replacement cost, based upon a certain life cycle are going to be
required, you know -- you know, going forward. We did a quick analysis just -- just to give
-- and if you look at our sewer system alone, the sewer system is valued right now at a
little over 200 million dollars. That's just a collection line in the sewer system. If you say
that those have a 50 year life cycle, it's arguable, depending upon what the sewer lines
are made of, but if you say it's a 50 year life cycle, what would it cost to replace those
sewer lines today in 50 years. Well, what we did is we went backwards to 1964 and we
said what was a dollar worth in 1964 compared to today and today a dollar is seven times
more than it was 1964. So, if you take that 200 million dollars and you say, well, you
know, if you just, you know, kind of project that into the future and say the same kind of
thing is going to happen, you can immediately see that there is going to be a huge
problem in replacing the infrastructure that we currently have. All this infrastructure, for
the most part, was given to us by developers. It's going to be our responsibility to
continue to operate, repair, and, then, finally replace it. Fortunately, the average age of
our infrastructure is install year 2000. So, we do have some time, which is good. We
have to deal with stuff, which there isn't a whole lot of, but it does require some attention
in the interim. So, anyway, that's it for depreciation financing. On operations, we have
done a lot of great things. Records retention and management, which has been the most
-- it's a very important project, but it has been very tedious. I think most anyone who has
worked on records retention will understand that and we going through years and decades
and whatnot of information to figure to out, you know, do we have two copies of this or
one copy or where is the other copy or what -- is this the original or, you know, what does
this mean. Do we still need it and all that kind of stuff. We have done all that work -- or
most of that work in the department and I want to thank Susan Deardorff, Melanie Hoyt
and also Pam Melroy for their tenacious work on this. They have done a fantastic job.
You can see the before and after pictures there, I mean we just had stuff dumped in the
basement and all over the department and that kind of stuff and now we have a filling
system, you can find just about anything that you need, if we have got it. So, really really
good work there. It also includes the records drawing process in the SRP. This was
important, because what we realized is that there was a process deficiency or problem
whereby we were releasing certificates of occupancy prior to getting the record drawings.
This created situations where we had -- we had occupancy in certain types of buildings
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and some of the infrastructure wasn't really ready to be utilized, so that's been improved,
which has been important for us and the negotiations with EPA and DEQ on our permits
and also our permit implementation plan have all been accomplishments on an
operational front that we are very proud of as well. We did receive a three year
administrative extension, which is kind of a bad word; right? If you're -- if you're the EPA.
But in this case the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality issued us a three year
permit extension on our reclaimed water permit, which was very good, actually. So, we
were able to keep things just as they are, not changes to regulatory status. They are very
pleased with our program in the city, using it statewide and even regional model, so we
are really pleased with that and that gives us a little bit of time to work through these
environmental protection agency issues to know what the impact is going to be on the
recycled water program prior to us making any adjustments with the EPA on the upcoming
permit update. And, then, safety inspection improvements, as I mentioned, 150 or so
inspections. We have addressed -- about 85 percent of them, 90 percent of them
addressed, so pretty proud of that. The wastewater administration and laboratory building
-- just about done. Should be done here in the next couple of weeks and, in fact, we hope
to be able to have a ribbon cutting. We are trying to save the ribbon cutting for when we
can put folks in both buildings. The admin building is just pretty much -- pretty much
done, but the laboratory building is still lagging a little bit, so we just -- instead of having
you come out twice, we are just going to wait until the lab building is done. Ground
reservoir two is completed. It's been tested. It's not quite online yet, but folks in the
Tuscany neighborhood seem to be fairly pleased. Trees went in. This is a picture here.
And if you look at it actually from the opposite side -- it's pretty difficult to see if you have
driven down to see that. So, we are pretty pleased. I know -- I want to thank Clint
Worthington for his tenacious work on this. He's done a really nice job keeping the
residents happy and working with them to address issues and whatnot. Inventory
management. If you look in the upper right that's a picture of our inventory stock. This
has been an ongoing project for us. I'm pleased to report both water and wastewater
have really nice inventory stock rooms at this point in time and a system for pulling stock
and a classification system for that stock that they are pulling. So, that actually looks
really nice. Five Mile Creek sampling bridge, which is in the lower left, we did have to put
in a new bridge, because we were noncompliant with regard to safety, as well as
noncompliant with sub plain related issues, which recently came up in this -- in this
evaluation and so we put in a bridge that has to be removable, so in the event there is a
flood situation we can actually pull the bridge and place it back in and we have already
done one exercise that way to make sure that the bridge is able to be removed within a
timely fashion, so -- sewer and water connection for the district -- Meridian Heights Water
and Sewer District. I have already mentioned that, so I won't touch on that again. And,
then, the fermentation process at the wastewater treatment plant has been an important
project that's going to help us reduce phosphorus loadings at the wastewater treatment
plant. Very very expensive and important process for us -- or project for us and I'm
pleased to report that that's gone very well. Challenges in operations. Our permit, of
course. One of the things we are realizing is as this community uses less water, the load
of the wastewater treatment plant, meaning the -- the influent changes and so we have
less solution, so it's more concentrated loads that come into the wastewater treatment
plant. So, what we are seeing is no longer are we dealing with a hydraulic capacity issue,
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October 14, 2014
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we are dealing with a load issue. So, our hydraulic capacity has been rated at 10.2, our
load for the wastewater treatment plant is much lower than that, because over the years
there has been a reduction and we just, you know, have been working with consultants to
help us understand what that impact of lower water use is. You know, when we changed
the plumbing codes to low flow fixtures and sinks and toilets and all this kind of stuff, we
end up with less water and more concentrated flow. So, we are actually trying to deploy a
little bit more capacity laden improvement over the water quality ones to make sure that
we can remain -- so that we can continue to accept the loads that we have at the waste
water treatment plant.
De Weerd: So, Tom, why do we continue to try and repair pipes and not let the ground
water seep into it?
Barry: Well, because --
De Weerd: Come on.
Barry: Yeah.
De Weerd: We are diluting.
Barry: Yeah. There has been some that have suggested, oh, why don't we just turn our
wells in and drain wells into the sewer system to -- you know, dilution is the solution to
pollution, but --
De Weerd: That's what I have always heard.
Barry: Yeah. No. That's a bad way to measure a system. We don't want to do that. So,
the reality is that, yes, on one level that can make some sense, have dilution in the
system. On another level it does impact capacity of the system as well and even though
not as focused on hydraulic capacity, because we expect our permit to be renewed soon,
the reality is we still have a capacity limit of seven mgd, so we still have a capacity issue
regardless of whether or not it is the most pressing issue over load, so -- but we still have
to be diligent with managing our capacity under the current permit that we have with the
EPA. So, that's partly the answer. Impact on continued growth and capacity planning. I
have kind of touched on that. We broke ground on the maintenance facility at the
wastewater treatment plant. It's not really a challenge there, it's just a project to kind of
squeeze in a maintenance facility in and amongst all the other infrastructure that's at the
wastewater treatment plant. Safety capital projects, which Dale will speak more to you in
the coming weeks or months, will also pose a bit of a challenge for us as we deploy
strategies to get up to date on the -- the audit that we have had. And, then, technology,
incorporation GIS asset management and automated meter reading technology, still areas
that we have a lot of work to do. So, some accomplishments on -- with regard to strategy.
I don't want to go through all the NPDES stuff, because we have beat it up to death, but
we have been very strategic on the strategy that we deployed for dealing with our NPDES
upcoming permit and most of that you are already aware of. The recycled water program,
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October 14, 2014
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just to give you a benefit here, the recycled water program this year produced so far year
to date out 66 million gallons -- 66 millions gallons of water in 2014. That's almost double
what we did in 2013 and more than doubled in what we did in 2012. So, you can see that
we are not only able to produce, but we are also able to distribute a lot more recycled
water. In fact, we have avoided 43 exceedences in 2014 alone by diverting the water that
would ordinarily go to Five Mile Creek and, then, kept us as an exceedence, because we
had that seven million gallons flow limit -- per day flow limit and actually divert it to a better
and higher use. So, that's been very very good and that strategy has been serving us
well. On the legislative front, you know, we had a strong legislative presence now. I think
-- not just the department, but the city for that matter and with good relationship that we
have established. We work critically with a lot of other jurisdictions on the eminent domain
issue, which ultimately was able to be put to rest last year. We are not certain if it's put to
bed completely, but there was a lot of work that went into that. We had a lot of legislative
issues that I feel I was going to run you through. Many of them will reoccur this year, you
know, we will be bringing you up to speed on that in January and others have kind of
moved to the wayside. So, we have developed some important regional partnerships.
We have always been regional partners with Nampa -Meridian Irrigation District, but our
relationship with the board and the staff has improved greatly over this last year. As you
know, we are able to negotiate a master agreement with them for the Public Works
Department and all of our projects -- and that's going very very good, by the way. So,
have regular conversations with one or two of the board members of Nampa -Meridian,
usually -- probably once a month or so, which is great, so the lines of communication are
wide open there and they seem very very eager to work collaboratively with us on a
number of different projects. Also regionally we have been working with DEQ and the
Lower Boise River Watershed Advisory Group -- or advisory committee to provide
modeling assistance and technical assistance on the development of the total maximum
daily load or TMDL project that's going on for the lower Boise River. Our challenges can
be summed up for the most part with growth and regulations. They continue to be a
challenging input for our organization on a number of different fronts. So, what we tried to
do is organize our top ten focus areas for this next fiscal year in and around those general
categories. So, customer satisfaction under that caveat we want to really continue to
focus on Meridian Heights Water and Sewer District. Those folks have been using flat fee
water -- unlimited water for a flat fee. They are now going to water meters. So, we really
feel like we need to educate them on how much water their lawns really need, instead of
how much lawn they are used to -- or how much water their lawns have been used to
getting. And also educate them on bills and how to lower the bills and those types of
things. We want to extend the customer satisfaction surveys, like I mentioned. Water
system improvements. I already mentioned those, but I'm just trying to focus now on the
areas that we are really going to put our time and attention to over this next year. On
employee satisfaction, workforce development, we talked about recruiting, retaining
employee development and succession planning. Those are all areas that we really want
to focus on over this next year. And, of course, developing and getting information on the
employee satisfaction survey to come. Financially, continue to focus on financial planning
and asset management activities to insure that we are prepared for the next great
challenge in our department, which will be depreciation financing. Operations. We want
to focus on organizational performance management. We continue to try to drive better
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October 14, 2014
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improvements in our organization and in our operation and that work has proven very
fruitful for us over the last five to six years. We want to continue that work. And, then, of
course, focusing on NPDES strategy and implementation. Lastly, on the strategy side we
do want to update our strategic plan for the department. We have been sort of putting this
work off as the city develops its city-wide strategic plan, so that we can make sure that our
strategic plan folds nicely up and under the city-wide strategic plan. We also feel strongly
that from an accreditation standpoint, which is something we have talked to you before,
that we are going to incorporate a lot of the accreditation BMPs or best management
practices into the strategic plan, but at this point in time we are not prepared to move
forward with an accreditation -- with a formal accreditation program. So, essentially -- and
we are also focusing on the legislative community presence. So, with that I will stop.
That's all we have with regard to the strategic focus, the kind of things we have been
doing and things we are focusing on over this next -- I think we will focus on this next year
and I will turn it over to you for questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Tom. Any questions from Council?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: First maybe a couple of comments. Tom, great presentation. You have a very
large elephant to feed us and I appreciate you serving it to us one bite at a time. Maybe
secondary thing to click, I was over in Tuscany the other day and the water source does
look very very nice. I hadn't been over there in a number of months and it's really started
to come together and I think it's achieving the vision that you as a department had set out.
In addition, you know, as someone who has I think -- you have a lot of employees, I want
to commend you on your renewed efforts on employee satisfaction. I know that's
something that you have really spearheaded and worked hard on and I know I have heard
from many of your employees how much they appreciate that. So, I wanted to thank you
for that. Really, my only question is related to your -- what you plan to measure with your
-- with your customer surveying. Is it dissatisfaction? Is it water quality? I mean what's
the goal of surveying?
Barry: Thank you, Councilman Cavener, for all of your comments and your question. So,
right now we are still trying to figure it out, but we want to measure timeliness. That's
always an important thing. How quickly did we respond. Did our -- did our response or
answer or problem solving meet your needs and if not how could it be improved. You
know, were we kind and courteous, were we knowledgeable, some of those types of
things. And a lot of that's already in the city -- city customer comment card. What we
don't really have is -- we don't have a formalized program in our department to really pull
all those cards, pull all the data, in point -- input and evaluate them altogether and say
how are we doing as a department in this particular area. So, what we are talking here is
really formalizing some of what we are already doing and, then, expanding or enhancing
gaps or areas that we are sort of not doing or, you know, feel like we should be doing.
Inspections, for example, are an area that I'd really like to focus on over this next year.
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October 14, 2014
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You know, we are customer basing I think this relationship that we have with our
developing partners, whether they be developers, contractors, consultants or whatnot.
We want to make sure that the interface that we have between our staff and their folks are
positive and productive and so getting information or feedback, other than the occasional
horror story that we get from somebody who is upset, we feel like there is a lot of really
great things going on, too, that we want to balance that, so that's -- we are not reacting to
situations that are worst case scenarios, but we actually have a methodical way of
approaching customer service through data that we have collected that shows whether we
are or whether we aren't collectively meeting the needs of the community. So, it's sort of
still being worked on.
Cavener: Okay.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Thank you. Tom, these will kind of go in order of broad to really specific, but
you mentioned the APWA accreditation and I know we have talked about that for a couple
years now. Do you have a timeline when you're going to initiate that process and do you
have a goal when you might be seeking that or obtaining it?
Barry: Thank you, Councilman Rountree. The -- we have moved away from formally
going after accreditation, which is probably new for you to hear. We evaluated this not too
many months ago as an executive team and really looked at the value of the accreditation
program and while we are all bought into the value of being accredited, we don't know,
you know, 35,000 dollars is really worth the certificate. So, what we have decided to do is
to actually take the best management practices which are in the accreditation manual and
integrate them into our strategic plan where and when appropriate and that way we can
get the benefits of working at a higher level, a high performance organization, without the
cost associated with getting the certificate. We decided that if we did that and we were
able to prove that these -- and incorporate these best management practices, that we
would be no worse off if we decided at some point to go after the certificate, because we
would have already been doing those things and we can prove that up and, then, we can
go after the certificate. So, you know, the formal program, that track that we were on, we
sort of abandoned it and now we are doing an information inclusion of the best
management practices where appropriate into our strategic plan.
Rountree: Thank you. That answered all the questions I had about that topic.
Barry: Okay.
Rountree: I didn't see anything -- and it may be down too far in the detail, but there has
been some talk in the past about the -- the city taking over the pressurized irrigation
system. Is that still on the table with Nampa -Meridian and the other irrigation districts or is
that too complicated at this time?
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October 14, 2014
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Barry: I can give you a very brief update. It is complicated. We do have a feasibility
study that's underway. There have been discussions that I have had and staff has had
with the leadership of Nampa -Meridian Irrigation District and also Settlers Irrigation
District. Both seem to be favorably inclined to having us take on that role. The reality is
that the cost associated with taking on that program, as well as the operational impact that
we would have as a department, i.e., fiscal resources and personnel resources, looked at
this point in time to be sort of unfeasible for us. So, we are not really aggressively
pursuing it, but we would like to wrap the feasibility study up, which gets us to a decision
point that we can bring to you and say this is kind of what we think at this point in time
based upon the research we have done and the interactions we have had with the various
stake holders. We either think that it's worth pursuing and we would like to develop this
plan for you or we don't think it's worth pursuing at all. I know that the districts are very
favorable to having us do this. I'm, as a director, not convinced yet that it's the right thing
for us to do, so --
Rountree: And I notice there is a difference in the number of hookups between water and
sewer and it's not as close as I would have anticipated. Is that due primarily to Meridian
Heights or are there other reasons why there is more sewer hookups versus water
hookups?
Barry: No. Typically it's due to the way different parcels get developed. So, there is
different rules for septic systems and different rules for wells. A lot of folks want to use --
continue to use their water well, but their septic system failed and they can't get a new
septic system, for example. So, we don't require them to hook up to water if their septic is
actually working, because the financial burden is pretty high to do both. We make them
pay a sewer assessment fee and, then, hook up to sewer, because the Central District
Health won't give them a certificate to, you know, rebuild their septic system. But it seems
like a huge cost impact to them to require them also to do the water system. So, typically
you will see -- and those scenarios go both ways, you know.
Rountree: Okay.
Barry: So, that is the difference.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions? Well, I know that you are -- I first want to thank
Susie. I am totally impressed with the file management and the records retention and --
that's been a huge beast and an enormous monster. So, hats off to the team that was
able to muddle though all of -- all of the paper and make some sense of it. I understand,
too, you have gone to using technology -- cutting edge technology. You have a voice
activated copier in the water department. Oh, my God.
Barry: Some of us still need training on that.
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October 14, 2014
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De Weerd: Yeah. And if you talk to the copier more it will -- you know, you have to
develop a friendship, Dennis, before -- uh-huh. But I want to thank you and your team.
What you're doing is exactly what our citizens expect you to do and time after time after
Public Works Week and those tours that are now sold out, people see what pride you and
staff have in the work they do and -- and truly give confidence to those on the tour and I
hear it repeated. So, I don't hear it firsthand even from the people that are taking the tour,
hear it from people who heard it from people that took the tour. So, there is great -- great
multipliers in what you're doing in your department and the pride that your department
shows in the work they do and I just have to thank the Council. You're getting the tools
needed to do a job and the training for our staff to feel confident and proud to be working
where they are and during the time where we have a grain of our workforce in Pubic
Works folks and careers in particular, this means a lot to the employee retention area and
that sort of thing. So, I, too, would like to thank Council for what you do to support this
department in getting them where they are today. So, just thank you for your report today,
Tom, and thank you to your team.
Barry: Well, thank you all for you support. We very much appreciate it and couldn't do it
without you. Thank you.
Milam: Thanks, Tom.
D. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates
De Weerd: Council, 7-D is -- is something that we had a conversation with our Council
president and felt that maybe weekly -- or monthly at our workshops it would be good for
each of the Council members that have committees, commissions that you serve on and
represent the city as an opportunity to give updates, I know you're assaulted with
mountains of paperwork and minutes and so it is assumed that you read every single
word and I think Mr. Zaremba probably does. But I do think that this will be a nice
opportunity for those that have meetings to -- to bring those critical items that Council
members should be aware of and have that opportunity. So, I don't know if you want to
start it today, but I thought it would be helpful to just put a placeholder on the agenda and
ask -- at least give the opportunity for -- for anything that's noteworthy in the involvements
that you do have. Mr. Rountree?
Rountree: Madam Mayor, we did talk about this and I thought that it was an opportunity to
have exchange of information as it related to our work with the various groups that we
work with. I did get an e-mail asking do we have to prepare a report. No. This is a
reflection of what you have heard working with your -- in your liaison positions and with
the various commissions and if nothing exciting or nothing kind of innovative or new hasn't
happened, then, it's business as usual and that's fine as well. So, I'm going to start and
I'm going to say I have the Mayor's office, of course, nothing happens there, so we are
okay there. Actually, the Mayor is taking on more and more things that require some of
her time and she will be absent a little bit because of it, but primarily the Association of
Idaho Cities and she's going to be touring doing work across the state to -- spreading our
message, as well as the message of cities throughout the state of Idaho. So, I think that's
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October 14, 2014
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something that will benefit the city. As far as committees I'm on, I'm still the ex -officio
member of SWAC. You heard last week that there may be an update on the grass
clipping recycling program. Hopefully next month. Things that they talk about are pretty
much complaints. How long are we going to allow bags be picked up for leaf collection or
clean up days. Occasionally they deal with somebody who has a complaint and the most
recent complaints have been about the trash receptacles being located the sidewalks.
Now, we do have an ordinance that says that those should not be obstructing the
sidewalks, but there is nothing in the ordinance that says where they need to be placed.
So, they have basically said the ordinance is fine, the few instances where it's bothered
people -- in one instance they -- Republic asked the individual to get a feel what's going
on in the neighborhood and the individual did and found out quite resoundingly that the
neighbors wanted their trash receptacles to be located on the sidewalk, not in the street,
so -- and they do a good job of listening to those kinds of things and resolving them before
we see them. The last thing looks really interesting to me is that we do have a recycle
program where we invest recycle funds into the community through a grant program. That
particular fund has not seen any in flow of cash in the last number of months, because the
commodity prices are just absolutely nothing. There is a little value in aluminum and
clean paper, which is not what we provide in our recycle program, so the way that
program works for those that don't remember and those that didn't know is that -- and it
started with SSC and now with Republic is the funds that that recycle program generate
are first used to pay for the recycle program and, second, if there is any profit, then, that
came into the grant program. If the recycle commodities didn't generate enough cash to
pay for the recycle program, then, the service is picking up the difference, so it's not
costing the city or our customers anything to have the recycle program. So, they have
been paying extra funds above and beyond what recycle values have been for a number
of months and they don't have a very solid projection if that will come back soon, if ever.
But they monitor it. Staff monitors that pretty much on a monthly basis to get an idea of
what's happening with commodities. So, that's -- that's my reflections on the things that
have done and I wouldn't expect anything different from anybody else and, again, if things
have been status quo that's cool, too.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I will take off second and I will be short and sweet. I have the legal department and
the police department. Our legal department is going along real well. I do want to
compliment again as usual Mr. Nary and Michelle for the fine job they did in the
negotiations. Michelle takes -- makes sure that all the minutes and all that stuff is taken
care of and Bill is the number one negotiator and has done a great job in all the years that
have been here. The police department -- our remodel and our new building is going
along on schedule, looking nice over there. We had a real nice article on Channel 2 last
week regarding that and -- and they also stated what we know once we bring in the firing
range and everything, that place is going to be a definite economic boost for this
community. Excuse me. My other deal is Meridian Development Corporation. We
continue just to work hard to do some improvements downtown. We are looking at doing
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some improvements on Main Street between Broadway and Pine, which I think will be
very attractive if we get it accomplished. With that I will stand.
De Weerd: And with MDC they will be bringing something to Council in the next several
weeks on -- they are trying to find a downtown logo and so they will be coming for your
feedback to see what your thoughts on it are as well. The Youth Council voted on it last
night and it was overwhelming on what their selection was, so -- I'm not telling what it was.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Ms. Milam.
Milam: I have got some books for you. Just kidding. So, I -- I have got lots going on. We
have lots of stuff going on. I am liaison to the HR department and they are knee deep in
open enrollment. They have delivered nine separate presentations to employee groups
and during the same time they are working with everyone on annual performance review
and merit increase process. The busiest time of the year. If they seem stressed out
maybe they are a little bit. They have a lot going on up there. In addition they are getting
the project plan together to install and implement the new benefit software, which won't
help this year for open enrollment, but it will make everything much easier during the next
year and everyone can enroll -- next year they will be able to enroll online. And they are
interviewing candidates for administrative assistants. So, anyway, if you know anybody
that's looking for an administrative assistant, send them over.
De Weerd: It's closed.
Milam: Oh. Sorry.
De Weerd: Just thought I would --
Milam: That's all HR. They are very very busy. I am also with the fire department. Union
negotiations are complete, which is fantastic and last week -- last Saturday they had
public safety. They had 585 participants and Joint Fire Academy is continuing going well.
Three meridian recruit firefighters are all performing well. There will be a live burn on
Friday, November 7th. October 27th begins a multi -agency officer development program
that Meridian is helping to lead. This 12 week program has courses that will prepare
future company officers prior to the promotional testing process. They also -- Meridian fire
is participating with Boise fire, Eagle fire and Ada County paramedics to develop
standardized emergency scene operating guidelines and this project began approximately
two months ago and to date ten standard emergency operating guidelines have already
been developed. There has been an identified need for several years, so this process is a
very very big positive and last, but not least, public safety school tours are ongoing and
will continue through November. With district budget cuts affecting transportation, Pam
Orr has done an excellent job in insuring this early fire prevention education is continued.
Those are my department reports and I have an arts -- Meridian Arts Commission report.
The most recently accomplishments following over two years of work led by MAC and
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including several community stakeholders, Under the Sun and Dreaming, a large scale
stainless steel public art piece by C.J. Rench was installed on September 15th at the split
corridor, Main and Ada. Meridian's first traffic box art wrap was installed at Main and Pine.
The wrap was created from a piece of artwork entitled Sunset Walk by Cory Ramsey and
the commissioners selected the piece at the art -- school district art show in April. MAC
hosted a downtown art walk last week on Tuesday, October 7th, to invite the community
to see these newly installed public art pieces and to come to the opening reception for the
last exhibit in Initial Point Gallery, works by the Idaho Watercolor Society. Approximately
75 people attended the reception, with about 25 joining the walk. MAC recently
completed its 2014 to '19 strategic plan and they contributed to the production of
Seussical presented by the Treasure Valley Children's Theater on September 19th at
Kleiner Park band shell. And upcoming activities that we have is a call for artists for 2015
Initial Point Gallery series was released on September 2nd and proposals will be accepted
through October 24th. MAC will jury the proposals on November 6th and MAC is holding
a special meeting on Thursday, October 16th, to discuss the method by which is will
obtain artwork for additional traffic box community art project installations. MAC is
planning on installing up to five new boxes in FY -15. The Meridian Development
Corporation has generously pledged 5,000 dollars towards this project and it seems to be
very well received. Hopefully you have all had the chance to admire the work. That's all I
have.
De Weerd: And we can sponsor one for 1,700 dollars, so --
Milam: And we actually had people asking about sponsorships at the -- at the art opening
De Weerd: It might be a little bit more. I know that at their strategic meeting next week
about the art wraps they will be trying to really narrow down what the true cost and
sponsorship opportunities will be and if you saw on the art wrap it does have a nice
placard that talks about the piece and the sponsorship and those kind of things, so --
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I would be happy to report. So, I am the liaison for the IT and the Clerk's
department and as we all know our IT department is the big support system for all city
employees and as is often the case they are often challenged with new opportunities to
serve our employees. I had the opportunity to attend their staff meeting last month and
understood about 15 percent of what they were working on. As I understand only about
ten percent of all the things that they are accomplishing. As you know, we continue to
implement the Accella program throughout the city and in the process of identifying some
great candidates for a software engineer and a systems analyst position. I'm also the
liaison to the parks department, which is always a nice break in my month when I get to sit
down with Steve and learn all the new things that are going on in the parks department
and Steven and the parks department -- I really think probably with the exception of Public
Works, touches our citizens and serves as a PR arm every day and I'm appreciative of the
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great work that they continue to do and it's always nice that there is challenges that
emerge, but typically by the time that they become critical they have found a unique and
exciting way to solve those challenges. So, nothing super over important to report at that
point, but I also serve on the parks commission and last month since we last met we went
on the parks tour. I want to thank those of you that came along. I enjoyed learning some
of the gems about our parks, as someone who has lived in Meridian and frequented a lot
of our larger parks to learn about some of the hidden blessings that we also have in our
community and I was also thankful for PAL, for -- for purchasing our dinner and they
continue to be a great community partner.
De Weerd: Thank you. And I might add that I just presented a Meridian Way coin to our
first not full-time employee to a parks employee, one of our seasonal -- Jergenson? Eric
is located -- he is part of the maintenance crew out at Heroes Park and what a gem he is
in terms of his attitude and his work at the park itself, but it goes beyond just how he
serves in his functional capacity. He's also an amazing park ambassador. We got an
e-mail from a park patron in that area that noted that Eric spends time to the greet her kids
and their dog, that knows them by name, their kids talk about him, and he's always got a
smile and just a positive attitude. So, I was proud to go to the parks meeting yesterday
and present the coin to Eric and have that opportunity thank him for -- for the face he puts
on our parks, the face he puts on our city, that really demonstrates our CARE values. So,
did want to make special note of that. Any other reports?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I have got Public Works, which you just heard, so they stole my entire report.
The other department is finance and one of the more current issues that we are working
on -- and we meet Thursday morning -- is budget process and talking about procedural
and substantive changes, improvements we might want to consider to that process and
the manner in which we get to where we get, so -- again, we are going to meet I think
Thursday morning and continue those discussions. The historical preservation
commission has been active, been very successful with their history walks, which has
expanded, and there is also more recent discussion on updating the inventory of historical
properties as time passes and properties age, there is more eligible projects that we --
that we can capture and there is some discussion about that expansion provides -- us
providing opportunities for an historical district, the pros and cons of that are being
discussed. So, that is what is going on with those departments and that commission.
De Weerd: So, I might add on HPC, they worked with MDC, the Meridian Historical
Society, and the school district to bring Meridian history into our third grade classes.
Those tours will be between now and the end of the month and we are looking for
volunteers, if any of you have an interest in greeting these third graders and helping
perform tours of City Hall, it is a perfect opportunity to put a public face on an elected
official and share why local government is important to these third graders and it does
make an imprint and a longstanding impression on these young people to share with how
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the local government really does affect their daily lives and I talked to a parent a couple
weeks ago that told me a story of her third graders that are now fifth graders and when
they did the tour of City Hall their take aways and they are very favorable. So, if you have
an opportunity, any extra time on your hands Robert does have a schedule of when these
schools are bringing their kids through and we can always use another tour guide to help
talk about the city. Okay. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I am pleased to be liaison to the community development
department and the good news is our community continues to develop. The blending of
the planning and zoning group and the building services group and the economic
development department has been going very smoothly. In retrospect that seems to have
been an excellent idea to make that blending. I think the end result for the customers of --
of those blended efforts, the end result for the customers has been very good and
progressive and the evidence of that is that we continue to have applications and continue
to hear that we have the best application and permit process of any jurisdiction nearby.
That's all good news and the progress there is good. Let's see. I'm an ex -officio member
of the Meridian Transportation Commission. They have gotten off to a good start as well.
They are a blend of the old transportation safety committee and the transportation task
force -- were two separate bodies, now this is an official commission and a blending of
those. They are finding their way around. They are having a lot of good presentations
from other people around the community to let them know what's going on. They have
had a few decisions to make. They have made some recommendations to this Council.
We get regular reports on that from Caleb Hood and I can't add anything to what he
reports, because he reports very thoroughly. But they do seem to be doing a good job
and are enthusiastic about what they are doing as well. So, that's a good thing. I'm on
the board of Valley Regional Transit as the Meridian representative. This year I'm
chairman, actually. The interesting thing is that with no secure funding Valley Regional
Transit has managed to survive nearly 12, 13 years now. So, secure funding is still a
topic of conversation. We are still talking about it. They are continuously finding
efficiencies. We just opened a brand new center in -- it's right on the border between
Nampa and Caldwell, but to serve the Canyon county service and the inter -county line
and, in fact, the company that is doing those services is also doing our Saturday service in
Meridian, which is also going very well, getting a lot of ridership and good comments. So,
that's pretty much where VRT is until some more funding shows up, but things seem to be
going in the right direction there as well.
De Weerd: Well, I'm glad to hear that the Saturday fun bus is having a good ridership.
know that it was brought up to Youth Council last night that we will have a specific
Saturday that they will be incentified to take the fun bus and to do selfies and hash tag
whatevers and all of that fun stuff and there is a number of them that are extremely
interested. They will make it fun I'm sure, so -- thank you for your report.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay.
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Rountree: Madam Mayor? David reminded me of something you may be interested in.
COMPASS, which I chair this year, is in the process of restructuring their meeting and
their board functions, hopefully moving to no more than four meetings annually for the
board and executive committee to do the monthly business. We are also in the process of
working with Federal Highway Administration to educate the Idaho Transportation Board
and their executive management on the relationship between MPO PMA and federal
funds, which seems to have been lost at the Idaho Transportation Department and there
has been some significant issues in the past few months about funding and not funding
projects that -- the most recent is the removing of the 1-84 improvement in the Nampa -
Caldwell area from the state -- the Idaho implementation plan and that's caused a bit of an
uproar, plus some expectations and the rug's been pulled out from under us, so we -- we
will be working with ITD to try to resolve some of those issues. And I'm also the citizen's
and Meridian's representative on the Air Quality Board, of which David is executive
director now and we are doing pretty much business as usual and have been -- a few
things as related to some of the policy and some of the ordinances that address siting and
number of service type activities, monitoring stations, et cetera.
De Weerd: Well, I imagine there is some more serious conversations that will be ahead of
us as they lower the air quality standard and if that means we are automatically in
noncompliance and what that means for the valley, so I know the Air Quality Board is
particularly focused on the emission testing, but being how it's the only group that is
talking about air quality, it most likely will be the logical group to start talking about what
additional strategies are in terms of meeting these new higher standards. So, we will look
forward to those discussions and updates to come. And I say that tongue in cheek I think,
so -- Item 7-E is under our legal department -- and, Council, thank you for that. I think you
touched on some key activities in each of the departments and what's going on in the
commissions and committees that you're involved in and I -- to me it was very beneficial
listening to each of you and your report. So, thank you for doing that. Not too bad for a
first time short notice. Good job.
E. Legal Department: Discussion Regarding Private Security
Licensing
De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-E is under our legal department. I will turn this over to Mr. Nary.
Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. And Lieutenant Overton is
here also for the police perspective on this topic. I will give you a little background. In
your packet is the current city ordinance for private security services. We require any
security company that operates in the city their security guards receive a license through
the city and they do a background check before we issue a license to them. We don't
require that level of licensing for employees of the company. So, if, for example, a large
company like Scentsy or St. Luke's hires their own employees to be security guards, we
don't require licensing. So, we only require it if a private company operates essentially as
a third party. It came to our attention recently that one of our larger employers in the city
had hired a new firm that wasn't licensed and its security guards weren't licensed in the
city and so we had a meeting with the clerk's office and the police department to discuss
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our approach with that and really -- and I will let Lieutenant Overton give the police
perspective, but what we found is that we don't really have a particular problem that we
are really addressing. The only problem we have really with security guards -- private
security guards is we want to make sure that they don't make people think they look like
police officers or other police officers think they are police officers. And so our
recommendation was to not go through the licensing process, to not create this additional
layer, but to maintain the standards that are already in the ordinance, which is to make
sure they are clearly identifiable as security officers and not police officers. So, that way
there is a distinguishment for police when they respond to an incident or for the public to
understand who those folks are in relation to whatever job they are performing. So, what
have provided you with is a copy of our ordinance with essentially deleting out everything
but the definition and the standards. In our discussion again we found that we don't really
have a significant issue in our community of security guards of this type. Again, many of
them are employees of the company, so we don't even address those. The ones that
sometimes are problematic is they actually fall under this requirement, even if it's for a
single event. So, sometimes when we have a single event that requires security guards,
although technically they have to go through the licensing process, which might take a
month or more to do, when they are going to have an event that they are going to do in 30
days that's the only event they are going to have. So, it seems like a cumbersome
process for something that we didn't find was a significant enough law enforcement issue
to require a continued licensing program for that. So, with that if the Mayor and Council is
okay I will let Lieutenant Overton maybe give the police perspective as well.
De Weerd: I don't know if anyone needs a lot of explanation to reduce red tape. Just a
guess, but -- yes, lieutenant.
Overton: Thought I was going to get a break for a moment. Madam Mayor, Members of
the Council, a little history. Back in the early '90s we did have a security company
operating in the city who drove around in police cars, looked very much like ours, their
uniforms very much like ours and were a problem. Last 20 years has not been a problem.
We have not had that same type of incident. We dealt with it. That subject ran for sheriff
and didn't get it a few times anyway. Over the past 20 years when we have done all these
background checks we are not finding any issues, but what we are finding is they are
doing their own background checks. They are bonding their own employees and we are
making them jump through a second hurdle and as Bill Nary explained, the second
avenues we are recommending some of the companies to some of the large scale events
that come into Kleiner Park that aren't companies that have gone through our process and
by doing that we are delaying some of these large scale events from coming into the city,
because we want them to be compliant and have the best people possible, but these
people haven't gone through our process. But yet they have gone through it with their
own company. So, it hasn't been a problem for us. It is another layer that we are putting
upon those companies and I think we all agree that they are fully capable of doing that.
We still put those requirements in place to regulate them in case they do decide to once
again try to mimic the police department. That was a -- that was a limited issue when we
had it and we dealt with it and we haven't seen it in 20 years and I do not see it being a
problem in the future.
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De Weerd: Thank you, lieutenant. Any questions? No?
Nary: Madam Mayor, if the Council is okay we will bring back a cleaned up ordinance with
the appropriate section deleted and just the sections regarding the operating standards
and we will bring that to you in the next week or two.
De Weerd: I think that would be excellent.
F. Community Development: Discussion regarding the Meridian
Road Interchange Barrier Rail Art
De Weerd: Item 7-F is under our Community Development Department.
Hood: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, you seem kind of a little bit surprised that
was under community development and I was, too, actually, a little bit. When I was going
to planning school they didn't tell me I was going to be presenting about art this much, but
just a little bit of a vacuum.
De Weerd: Stretch yourself, Caleb.
Hood: No. I'm growing for sure. So, the interchange task force that you mentioned that
Julie Pipal served on has been working for about two years now on some of these things,
so I wanted to provide you a little bit of updates on some of the concepts, one of them
being the barrier rail art. I also brought Robert, because he is the community resident art
expert, so he's going to talk a little bit about the barrier rail art.
De Weerd: I don't know when that happened.
Hood: Before we get to the -- to that element in particular, I just wanted to update the
Council on something that's occurred over the past couple of months. In July -- late July
the Mayor sent a letter over to Amy Revis, who is the new District Three engineer
inquiring about potentially putting a monument sign, a welcome to Meridian sign -- it's
been a while now, but we have two versions of them. One is a horizontal version, real
similar to our reader board sign, brick element that's over here and, then, we have got a
vertical version of one that's, you know, basically, our -- the city logo essentially
welcoming folks to the community. So, we inquired to Amy Revis again late July, didn't
hear anything for about two months, so I followed up with an e-mail to my contacts saying,
hey, where is this at in the process. Received a response late last week from Jason
Brinkman and I will just read a little bit of his response to our request. It says: What I can
tell you at this point is that I have researched and cleared the regulatory hurdles to such a
sign installation, which are not trivial within the interstate corridor. So, they are going to
allow some sign. They are still looking at all of the regulations that are required and kind
of some of the design elements. We may need to do some customization to our two
designs to either lower them below vision triangles, make sure there is not an issue there.
But if this moves forward, which it looks like it will, this will be placed in the southwest
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side. So, if you are -- if you're eastbound on the interstate and you're getting off kind of by
the Sandman there, this will go right in the triangular landscape island that would be
between -- if you're going southbound on Meridian Road or northbound on Meridian Road.
So, there is a landscape island there. And, then, we have talked with parks and Mike
about modifying the landscape plans to accommodate this and, essentially, just pull some
things out. So, ITD -- we had a meeting last week with our interchange task force. It
looks like they are going to drop some conduit for power, just in case this moved forward
again and it looks like it is. But just wanted to let you all know Robert put in that
enhancement I think it was for this fiscal year to do two of those signs, so the funds are
already there and this was one of the locations that was previously identified. So, I think
that's the update I have on the Meridian Road interchange art, so I don't know if you
wanted to transition, but --
Simison: Well -- and also at that meeting -- I'm just going to pass this out real quick. For
those who may not remember, last year we went through a process where we purchased
a design for overpass art -- art that would go along the overpass barrier rail. The decision
was made earlier this year to not move forward with that as a budget amendment into the
city budget based upon the priorities that were already in there. We did talk to ITD at the
meeting on Thursday. We think that there is still an opportunity to get something into the
interchange through the process. We haven't got all the details back, but at the same time
we also think that might be an opportunity to have the funds in the existing budget without
doing an amendment to increase the budget to move forward with this interchange art
proposal. So, in talking with the Council president we wanted to come before you and ask
City Council if this is something that you think is worth pursuing at this time in terms of
identifying the funding for it and moving forward with a potential -- not necessarily this
design, we might have to value engineer the design to -- on the cost, but working with
some of the -- I think Brian McClure and Community Development would be the one to
actually do some of that designing, engineering, taking this concept that we have
approved and seeing what we could get up in the construction project, so it would be done
and what that really means is it saves the city money on the back end if we were to go
back and do it once the interchange is completed, we would, obviously, have tracked
control costs, not knowing what that may be, if it would include track control on the
interstate and not just over it, we just think it would be easier and more cost effective to do
this now as compared to doing it in the future. So, if we could get some basic feedback
on shall we pursue this or not at this point in time.
De Weerd: And I guess a little background, because only half of this Council is -- was
here when the designs were put out for public response. It was vetted through our
Meridian Arts Commission. We had it -- we traveled around a little bit with it to get public
comment on which design kind of won the opportunity to be on the interchange art. So, it
has -- it has a longer life than -- than just the last six months -- or nine months. Ten
months. So, I just wanted to make sure you knew this is something that, again, happened
over the last year and half I believe.
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Simison: Correct. It was just about a year ago this month in October when we had the
final public outreach opportunity when that decision was made and I think it was brought
before Council in November of last year, so it would have been right before the election.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: When we were going through that process it occurred to me recently that at
that time nobody ever asked the question of whether there would be lighting on it. Caleb
mentioned putting in conduit for the possible monument Meridian signs, but is there any
thought of having any lighting for this at night? I mean it's -- we are trying to make people
realize this is Meridian, it's not just any overpass anyplace and during the daytime it will be
spectacular, but I -- it occurred to me to wonder could there be some lighting.
Hood: I guess I can -- I can -- if that is a question directed this way, I can let you know we
have not talked about that.
Zaremba: I don't know if it --
De Weerd: I think we are all thinking no.
Zaremba: I just kind of threw it out there. We don't know what that would add to the cost
or anything.
Simison: Well, I would just add I think the overpass area is going to be lit up like a
Christmas tree and so -- now, there may not be direct light shining on the barrier art, but
it's going to be a very well lit overpass area.
Zaremba: Ten Mile is well lit, so that may very well be true.
Rountree: It would be every much that, if not more.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Robert or Caleb, maybe you can just provide some clarification for me. So,
when the decision was made to take this out of the budget -- I assume that was
communicated to ITD that we weren't going to move forward with the project, so they
moved on getting Meridian Road interchange construction occurring. Are we within the
sweet spot where we are able to get this accomplished? Have we had those discussions?
I mean where -- I reckon it's probably chicken and the egg -- you know, maybe have
someone go talk to them until you -- I guess I want to know kind of where we are at in the
process.
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Simison: We had a brief discussion with -- who was the project manager?
Caleb: Jamie Koontz.
Simison: Jamie, the project manager, last Thursday night and there seemed to be an
indication that, yes, there is an opportunity, especially -- even if we were to only get it up
on the east side of the overpass, but the west side it may be a situation where they put up
the railing, but perhaps when they go back and do new construction they could take it off
and -- because what we are trying to do is once the manufacturer of the rail is doing the
work that we can attach it at that point in time before it goes up. That being said, it's still --
we probably assume it would be cheaper, even if they put up the rail, to take it down and
put the art on once they are doing construction in that area, as compared to altering traffic
through that period. So, the short -- long answer is we have had a brief discussion. We
haven't had specifics in terms of what our timing is, what their timing needs are. I know
Caleb is trying to get in touch with the actually fencing contractor through their process to
figure out where we are, but, yes, right now is -- I think is the time where we need to make
the decision if we are going to try to do it during construction.
Cavener: Follow up?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Cavener: Robert, when you were -- when you guys were exploring the thing, what's the
manufacturing timeline on getting the signage made?
Hood: Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, we haven't really looked at that. There is not
a whole lot of local companies that do this type of work. Some of what you have there --
again, Brian will need to -- what we are trying to do is basically -- some of the birds and
other elements span across some supports and what we are trying to do is keep them on
individual panels, that way, again, they can be manufactured through whoever we hire as
a city, given to the state's fencing contractor, welded on or clipped on or whoever and,
then, they just place the panel with the artwork in order, one, two, three, four and so on,
so you get that -- that design. But we don't know. I mean that's some of the sweet spot.
We wanted to find out if this is even something we should explorer, we would need to go
find a contractor to do this, get on their schedule, so -- the shop drawings are done for the
barrier rail art, so we know what the barrier rail art is going to be, because that's been
engineered. We haven't gone as far with some of this other work. We have got some
basic cost estimates, but we haven't followed that all the way through to time -- you know,
how long is it going to take them to actually get those and, then, again, put them on the
panel and so we have -- we just haven't gotten that far yet. We wanted to make sure that
there is a level of interest here before we do a lot of that leg work.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
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Milam: So, what are the cost estimates and what do you estimate would be the difference
if we did decide to wait?
Simison: I can tell you that the cost estimates -- we have had an initial to one side as low
as 25,000, based upon an initial design from the firm outside the Seattle area and -- but
that is -- again was maybe taking in all the elements that they were presented with. If we
scale it back it could probably be less. Max Jensen was able to think that we could do
both sides for about 85,000 locally, using -- you know, that's a contingency built in on
various components. But, again, those are high level without knowing who all is doing
what amount of work and are they going to do the full thing or only partial and has it been
value engineered to -- so it can all be just done -- are we going to do all the birds the
same size, so it's only one thing or are we going to have multiple sizes. So, those are the
kinds of -- that's the range I think at this point in time. Now, with the extra cost, well,
above and beyond traffic control I would defer to an ITD professional who may have
worked there to know traffic control might be on the interstate for 24 or 48 hours.
Rountree: It may be a significant amount and not too far from what you're talking about,
the cost of manufacturing the artwork in itself. And you're not going to install it over traffic,
so lanes are going to have to be closed. So, if we are going to do it it would be very
economical in terms of ultimate cost to do it between sometime now and when they install
the rail on the east side. So, as they close the lanes to do that they can do it at the same
time. Otherwise, you got four lanes of traffic you're going to have to divert and more than
likely it would have to be at night. It's expensive.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I don't know a compelling argument not to do it now. If there is one I'm missing it.
Simison: I think it's just a question of what potential was --
Borton: Right.
Simison: Is there any interest now in pursuing this and, if so, we can come back with
monetary in terms of what it would look like or -- I don't know if it's technically an
amendment, because we are not planning on raising the amount of the budget. It might
be a transfer of the funds from one part of the budget to another to make it accomplished.
So, if Council's interested in doing that we can go more full in depth on this moving
forward and bring that back.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I would be in favor of doing it now, as opposed to waiting.
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De Weerd: Well, yeah, I guess it's either you do it now or you don't do it at all.
Rountree: Won't do it.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: As long as it can be accomplished at a reasonable cost in a reasonable timeline
think we are all in favor of it.
Rountree: If we are going to do it let's do it now.
De Weerd: Okay. It looks like that's --
Rountree: Not only the cost to do that, but there is an inconvenience, too, and that's a
hundred thousand vehicles a day. So, that's a lot of people that you're going to -- you're
going to slow me down for what?
Bird: One question. And I'm sure this has been taken into consideration, Robert, but
railing we are putting that on, I don't know how much this is going to weigh or stuff -- I'm
sure that has all been calculated and engineered to receive this extra weight?
Hood: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, in anticipation of part of Councilman Cavener's
question, the state is still sort of anticipating that some day we are going to hang
something from here, so it has a load bearing of that barrier rail art -- has somewhat been
factored in as an engineer, because we don't know exactly what we are putting on, but it's
factored in.
Bird: Okay.
De Weerd: Okay. So --
Simison: I think we have what we need.
De Weerd: Okay.
Simison: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Hood: I'm going to stay here. I'm not walking away.
G. Community Development: ACHD 2015-2019 Integrated Five Year
Work Plan Adoption
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De Weerd: Okay. I guess, Caleb, we can move to Item 7-G.
Hood: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I wanted to -- to circle back
with you. During that August 12th Council meeting we discussed ACHD's initial draft of
their five year work plan -- integrated five year work plan. Excuse me. I'm still trying to
get in that habit. We -- after that meeting there was -- or the direction during that meeting
for a letter to be composed and sent to ACHD asking that the scope of the Pine Avenue
project between Locust Grove and Main Street be expanded to be comprehensive, to not
just be a community programs project, but to be a full roadway widening project to its
ultimate configurations. So, that was pretty well received by both ACHD staff and their
commission and they were working on the impacts, then. Well, what does that have? So,
just this last Friday I received the next draft of the integrated five year work plan for 2015
to 2019 and, really, the only impact or change from the initial draft version of that
document was the Pine Avenue project. So, let me go through -- before in the -- when we
spoke last time that project was a 661,000 dollar project that, again, basically, had some
shoulder improvements, some sidewalk connections that were made -- basically about 5th
Street to some of the -- the pathway that parks had done along the north side of the
roadway -- this would do some work on both sides, but it was, again, primarily pedestrian
involved project. Now it's been rescoped and now it's under roadway projects and the
current cost estimate is 2.25 million dollars. It was previously a 2017 construction project.
It's still planned for construction in 2017, but still the construction years are 2017 and
2018. So, they didn't have enough money in 2017 to do it all in that fiscal year, but
construction will essentially start at the same time, it's just a bigger project and will span
those two fiscal years at ACHD. So, the impact that that had was -- it took some of the
money away from the East 3rd Street project. That was another -- that was an economic
development impact project that we requested a couple of years ago and so that project
has slipped slightly in the program. It was planned for 2019 and now it is showing PD.
So, there was a negative impact, if you will, but we -- we sort of asked for that. We said
this -- Pine is a higher priority than East 3rd Extension. Please take some of those funds
if you need to and make this project whole. So, that, again, was well received and that's
in the draft version. Going through the rest of the current draft of the integrated five year
work plan, I don't see any other changes. There was a slight tweak of about 50,000
dollars to a roadway project. Didn't change its construction year or anything. So, again,
the integrated five year work plan is, essentially, what we looked at before. In my staff
memo I said I would bring a copy. I did not print copies for everyone. If you would like it I
can e-mail it to you. It's a very comprehensive document. It talks about everything that
the district is going to do in the next two fiscal years and it's very detailed for the next
essentially seven years, with the next five construction years and two years of plan
development. So, I don't know how much more you want to talk about that. I could run
through all the projects that are in Meridian. I don't have any pretty maps that show that at
this point, but roadways, intersections, community programs, other projects are all part of
that, but I didn't, again, want to rehash some of that stuff that we did when we came up
with priority lists earlier this year and when we reviewed some of this again just in -- I think
it was August. So, Madam Mayor, I guess what I would ask is if everyone is comfortable
with that report, what I would like to do is have the Council authorize you to sign a letter to
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October 14, 2014
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ACHD just endorsing that 2015-2019 integrated five year work plan as currently drafted.
don't see any other things that we need to bring up and, again, the one request we had in
there they addressed, so -- we can get more details, but -- that's my report, so --
De Weerd: Thank you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I'm comfortable with that. I think they have been responsive to
our requests and accommodated the projects that we have been anticipating as best they
could, so --
Hood: Okay.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: So, if you can draft a letter, along with our appreciation. Yes, Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I was just going to ask Caleb to refresh my memory that the transportation
commission I know has been supportive of the direction we were going all along and I
don't remember the last discussion.
Hood: Yeah. Madam Mayor and Councilman Zaremba, I should have mentioned that.
Usually the transportation commission -- what we would like to do is send a
recommendation to you all. We just missed it. We had our meeting -- transportation
commission meeting met last Monday. This draft was just released Friday and I told the
transportation commission that at our meeting, I said, you know, hopefully, next year we
are able to sync these up, but they meet monthly and just didn't -- didn't work out this year
where this draft was reviewed and recommended for endorsement by the Council. So,
didn't -- but I did, essentially, share that same information, because ACHD staff said here
is, essentially, what it's going to say, they just didn't have the whole document to review
and they seemed comfortable with -- with forwarding on a recommendation for approval
as well, so thank you, councilman, I forgot to mention that.
De Weerd: Okay. So, if everyone is comfortable we will get a letter out to ACHD.
Zaremba: I agree.
De Weerd: Okay.
Hood: I'm going to move onto the next agenda item. I don't know if you want to -- need to
read it?
H. Community Development: Eagle Road Speed Limit Change
De Weerd: No. We will go ahead and move on to Item 7-H.
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October 14, 2014
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Hood: And, Madam Mayor, as I transition from ACHD-related topics of transportation to a
state related topic, I wanted to just let you know I have been in communications with Kristi
Little at ACHD recently. They hired Kittelson & Associates to do an origin and destination
study last year for downtown Boise. The hope there was that we could come up -- and
there is a big survey done and I won't get into all the details of what -- how they did that
methodology. A little bit of the results, though, were that they found that the average trip
length into downtown Boise was actually longer than the average trip length in the rest of
Ada County. So, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of seven and a half to eight
miles. A lot of it has to do with the employment center being downtown and a lot of the
workforce being in Nampa or Caldwell or Gem county and so there is a lot of people that
also work in the north end or Harris Ranch that work downtown. But your average trip
length was, again, right near the average or even, again, a little longer, which surprised
folks, because they thought, okay, yeah, housing and jobs and there is a lot of opportunity
there, but, you know, long story short ACHD is not taking anymore action on looking into
the downtown core areas. We think that there may -- that downtown Meridian is definitely
different than downtown Boise and there may be an opportunity -- maybe to ask there for
ACHD to look at our downtown and say, you know, maybe our workforce is closer in,
maybe our trip lengths aren't as long, we are pretty central to the valley, in hopes that --
guess the idea here is that impact fees may be lessoned in the downtown area if we can
justify them in saying, look, people aren't driving as far, you don't have projects planned,
it's all built up to what it's going to be, and, again, you're close in. So, I just wanted to let
Mayor and Council know that I am going to have a conversation with Kristi and figure out
who -- if it's her or someone else as appropriate at ACHD to come and discuss that
potential topic with you in the near future. So, just want to let you know I don't know how
that dialogue is going to go, but I will ask them to kind of report out on the Kittelson study
and, then, maybe see if the Council wants them to, essentially, explore hiring a consultant
to look at downtown Meridian for the same reason. So, again, that wasn't on the agenda,
was transitioning there, from ACHD to ITD, so I don't know if there is any comments
there. It looked like Councilman --
Borton: There is. Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Caleb, is there a -- is there a mechanism for doing what that concept implies with
multiple property owners, like an extraordinary impact fee zone in the downtown that
reduces impact fees? I didn't know there was -- is there such a vehicle to even
accomplish that?
Hood: So, Madam Mayor, it has been done on a national -- and there are other metro
areas that actually have those -- those -- sort of the opposite. It would -- effectively could
drive your impact fees up a little bit everywhere else. I mean if you exclude your
downtown or have a lesser impact fee in downtown you still have the same amount of
projects, so the dollar amount gets spread out. Now, it's a large area, so it would probably
maybe only go up a couple bucks or something like that. But that's what ACHD is trying to
do is try to establish some local numbers that would justify having a lesser impact fee.
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Again, these mixed use kind of downtown core areas -- again, this one didn't go so well
and so they kind of dropped it, but we were -- I was watching this one, tracking this one,
because they talked about extrapolating that. It's downtown, so, you know, it's five miles
is the average trip length and it's a little -- maybe Meridian and Eagle and some of these
other downtown areas you could justify having a lesser impact fee, but -- so, yes, there is
some precedent or other studies for setting up special areas, but you got to have, again,
the numbers and methodology to justify that. We can't arbitrarily say or are showing
preference to this area by having a lesser or no impact fee. I hope that answers your
question.
Borton: It does. I just -- if they are going to present this --ACHD in that presentation do
they have the procedural structure to do that today or -- there would be a change also,
assuming they wanted to and the numbers drove making such a change, they would also
have to make some policy changes, too?
Hood: Correct. Madam Mayor. Yes. That's correct. And they don't have -- again,
Kittelson and Associates was hired to do this, because they worked out of state and can
do some of these things. But, yes, it would be -- there is some policy implications for sure
if -- if the numbers back it up they would have to say, yes, let's apply this.
Borton: Okay. Thanks.
Hood: So, onto the Eagle Road speed and safety engineering study update. Eagle Road
has been a concern for several years and, you know, the DDACT I think is the term that
police uses, you know, not just for crashes, but all kinds of incidents that happen along
and near that corridor, but several years ago -- actually, when the traffic safety
commission was still around we had talked to the police department about some of their
concerns with crashes on -- on Eagle Road and their timing has just never been right to
actually study Eagle Road, because it was either going to be widened by CenterCal or the
medians were going to be put in or -- so, there was a little bit of a window earlier this year
where the state actually did a speed analysis study on -- on State Highway 55 at our
request and so some findings -- a couple of exhibits are -- were included in the memo for
this topic today. Kevin Sablan actually came to the transportation commission meeting in
September and discussed those results with the transportation commission. The state is
recommending and the transportation commission also is floating on a recommendation to
you to lower the speed limit on Eagle Road. It currently is lesser -- the first exhibit there --
from essentially the overpass at 1-84 to Fairview at 50 miles an hour and, then, it jumps
from Fairview north to 55, the proposed speed limit, to keep it consistently 50 all the way
to the north channel of the Boise River. So, it would only be a five mile per hour reduction
from Fairview north. The average speed -- if you average the entire corridor that they
looked at, 48 miles an hour was the average speed again from St. Luke's to Eagle. Forty-
eight . Now, it varies anywhere from 36 to 55, but looking at those places it made some
sense to have a consistent speed limit. When we reported this out when Kevin came to
the transportation commission, we discussed it a little bit, I kind of took away a little bit that
-- well, first of all, let me say that -- that Sergeant Gonzales says that the number of
crashes are significantly reduced with the medians and that being said, too, the number of
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October 14, 2014
Page 37 of 39
significant crashes are also reduced, because you don't have the head -ons or the T-bone
type. There is still a significant number, it's not -- I don't think we are where we would like
it to be, but they are not as severe and they are not as frequent. Still too many, but the
numbers are down. I think, reading in between the lines a little bit, I think Sergeant
Gonzales anyways, to put words in his mouth, 45 would probably be his ideal number, but
the number -- but based on the 85th percentile for speed being at 48, 50 is certainly -- he
said something to the effect that he's comfortable with that, but certainly we reserve the
right, if we don't like that and the numbers don't -- the crashes don't seem to go down or
traffic flow doesn't seem to be what we want it to be, we could ask the state to reevaluate
it sometime in the future. I guess the other thing that came about with that is talking with
ACHD as well as doing some signal timing, if we change the speed limit, to make sure
that the signal timers are also into that loop, so that traffic can flow efficiently. We spent
some time talking about, you know, flowing to capacity ratios and if you slow the traffic
down now are you not getting as many cars through and all that kind of stuff. But I guess
long story short is the state is recommending 50 miles an hour for Eagle Road as it goes
through Meridian, through Boise, into Eagle and I just wanted to make sure that you all
area aware and are comfortable with that and if not please let me know that.
Rountree: That's about what it's moving at now anyways.
Bird: Yes. That's what I was going to say, it don't move -- about like that.
Rountree: That's how you set speed limits.
De Weerd: Less tickets.
Bird: I'm in favor of it.
De Weerd: We would need a motion to accept. Right? Is that correct? To write a letter?
Hood: Madam Mayor, I'm -- they would take a letter. I can just report back to Kevin, too.
I don't think they need anything official from us. He was still trying to reach out to the city
of Boise and the cities of Eagle -- cities of Eagle and Boise to make sure that they knew
that this was happening. I took from him that they are pretty much going to change the
speed limit, unless we throw up our hands and scream and shout, so -- we can certainly
draft a letter if you would like, but I don't think that's necessary.
Rountree: Madam Mayor? I would suggest that we do draft a letter and express our
appreciation for them doing this study, because sometimes it's tough to get them to do
that and making the recommendation to -- we will certainly monitor and work with them
and keep track of the statistics and see what kinds of savings we might see from this and
not significant -- fatal injuries, but the number of injuries and crashes that will be reduced
and hopefully we can help them assign some kind of an economic value to that five mile
an hour speed limit change.
Bird: Is that a motion? I will second it.
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October 14, 2014
Page 38 of 39
Rountree: Yeah. I move that we send a letter of appreciation and agreeing to the speed
limit.
De Weerd: A second --
Bird: I second that.
De Weerd: Okay. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye.
All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 8: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anything under future meeting topics?
Bird: Not at this time.
Item 9: Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(fl — To Consider
And Advise Its Legal Representatives In Pending Litigation
De Weerd: Okay. Item No. 9 is Executive Session.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(f).
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn into Executive Session. 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.
EXECUTIVE SESSION: (5:09 p.m. to 6:38 p.m.)
De Weerd: Could I have a motion to come out of Executive Session.
Bird: So moved.
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October 14, 2014
Page 39 of 39
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
De Weerd: Do I have a motion to adjourn?
Milam: So moved.
Bird: So moved.
Borton: Second.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: , Aye.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:38 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
MAYOR T
De WEERD
ATT ST: "
JAYtEE Q0LMAN, CITY CLERK
10 / 2 /A�-
DATE APPROVED