HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-11-12IDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL
MEETING AGENDA
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue
Meridian, Idaho
AMENDED AGENDA
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 3:00 PM
1. Roll -Call Attendance
X David Zaremba X Joe Borton
O 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. Approve Minutes of October 28, 2014 City Council Meeting
B. Approval of Contract Change Order No. 1 to Insight Architects for the
"Storey Park Development Design" project for a Not -To -Exceed amount of
$24,575.00
C. Approval of Task Order 0759.c to Hydro Logic, Inc. for the "GROUND
WATER LEVEL AND QUALITY MONITORING, AQUIFER TESTING AND
REPORTING" project for a Not -To -Exceed amount of $110,000.00.
D. Master Service Agreement with TW Telecom for Phone Service
E. Christmas in Meridian 2014 Sponsorship Agreement Between Commercial
Tire and the City of Meridian for a Not -to -Exceed Amount of $500.00
F. Development Agreement for Approval: RZ 14-004 Citadel II Self -Service
Storage Facility by Citadel Storage, LLC Located East Side of S. Eagle
Road and North of E. Easy Jet Request: Rezone of 5.44 Acres of Land from
the R-4 (Medium Low -Density Residential District) Zoning District to the C-
C Zoning (Community Business District) Zoning District
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Wednesday, November 12, 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. Award of Bid and Approval of Agreement to Pegasus Planning and
Development for the "Project Development Plan — Multi Purpose Event
Center" Project for a Not -To -Exceed Amount of $30,000.00
5. Community Items/Presentations
A. Ada County Highway District (ACHD) Presentation - Downtown Boise
Origin -Destination Study (Impact Fees) (Pg 3-8)
B. Meridian Development Corporation Downtown Branding Effort Update (Pg
8-19)
6. Items Moved From Consent Agenda None (Pg 19)
7. Department Reports
A. Police and Fire Departments: Joint Public Safety Update (Pg 20-29)
B. Public Works: FY15 Engineering Capital & Enhancement Plan (Pg 29-34)
C. Program Year 2013 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Action
Plan Amendment (Pg 34-37)
D. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates (Pg 37-39)
E. Mayor's Office: Resolution No. 14-1030: A Resolution Appointing J. Scott
Walters to the Solid Waste Advisory Commission Approved (Pg 19-20)
F. Amended onto the agenda: Parks Department: Recreational Pathway
Easement — Cottonwood Development for Vicenza Estates Approved (Pg
39-41)
G. Amended onto the agenda: Public Works Development: Water Main
Easement — Cottonwood Development for Vicenza Estates Approved (Pg
39-41)
8. Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 14-1629: An Ordinance (AZ 12-013 Locust Grove Water
Reservoir #2) for Annexation and Rezone of a Parcel of Land Located in the
NW 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of Section 29, Township 3, Range 1 East, Boise
Meridian, Ada County, Idaho and Determining the Land Use Zoning
Designation Classification of Said Lands from RUT to R-4 (Low Density
Residential District) in the Meridian City Code; and Providing an Effective
Date Approved (Pg 41-42)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Wednesday, November 12, 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.
B. Ordinance No. 14-1630: An Ordinance (RZ 14-004 — Citadel II Self Storage
Facility) For The Re -Zone Of A Parcel Of Land Located In The SW 1/4 Of
Section 21, Township 3 North, Range 1 East, Boise Meridian, City Of
Meridian, Ada County Idaho; Establishing And Determining The Land Use
Zoning Classification Of R-4 (Low Density Residential) Zoning District To
C -C (Community Business) Zoning District In The Meridian City Code; And
Providing An Effective Date Approved (Pg 42-43)
9. Future Meeting Topics None
Adjourned at 5:05 p.m.
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda —Wednesday, November 12, 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 November 12, 2014
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:01 p.m., Tuesday,
November 12, 2014, by President Charlie Rountree.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, David Zaremba Joe Borton,
Genesis Milam and Luke Cavener.
Members Absent: Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Bruce Chatterton, Caleb Hood, Warren
Stewart, Jamie Leslie, Mark Niemeyer, Sean Kelly, and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll -call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Joe Borton
Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Genesis Milam _X_ Lucas Cavener
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd`. I will go ahead and start tonight's meeting -- or today's meeting. Thank you
all for joining us. For the record it is Wednesday, November 12th. It's one minute after
3:00. We will start with roll call attendance.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us in the
pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: On the agenda we have been asked to add under Department Reports Item 7-F,
which is to Parks Department recreational pathway easement for the Cottonwood
development for Vicenza Estates and Item G, Public Works Department water main
easement Cottonwood Development for Vicenza Estates. And I believe -- and on Item
7-E, the proposed resolution is 14-1030. And under eight, the ordinances, 8-A
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 2 of 43
proposed is 14-1629 and Item B is proposed 14-1630. With that I move we approve the
amended agenda.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as amended. All
those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of October 28, 2014 City Council Meeting
B. Approval of Contract Change Order No. 1 to Insight Architects
for the "Storey Park Development Design" project for a Not -To -
Exceed amount of $24,575.00
C. Approval of Task Order 0759.c to Hydro Logic, Inc. for the
"GROUND WATER LEVEL AND QUALITY MONITORING,
AQUIFER TESTING AND REPORTING" project for a Not -To -
Exceed amount of $110,000.00.
D. Master Service Agreement with TW Telecom for Phone Service
E. Christmas in Meridian 2014 Sponsorship Agreement Between
Commercial Tire and the City of Meridian for a Not -to -Exceed
Amount of $500.00
F. Development Agreement for Approval: RZ 14-004 Citadel II
Self -Service Storage Facility by Citadel Storage, LLC Located
East Side of S. Eagle Road and North of E. Easy Jet Request:
Rezone of 5.44 Acres of Land from the R-4 (Medium Low -
Density Residential District) Zoning District to the C -C Zoning
(Community Business District) Zoning District
G. Award of Bid and Approval of Agreement to Pegasus Planning
and Development for the "Project Development Plan — Multi
Purpose Event Center" Project for a Not -To -Exceed Amount of
$30,000.00
De Weerd: Item 4 is Consent Agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 3 of 43
Bird: On the Consent Agenda I do want to mention one thing, that I think these
sponsors should get mentioned publicly and under Item 4-E we have a sponsorship with
Commercial Tire for the Christmas parade in the sum of 500 dollars, which we
appreciate. With that I move that we approve the agenda as published and for the
Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Madam
Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
De Weerd: Council, before I move into Item 5 1 did want to note this morning I attended
a meeting on behalf of the city, along with Ken Corder and two of our youth council
members. The Idaho Philanthropic Organization is celebrating -- let's see. Is
celebrating National Philanthropic Day and one of the groups that were recognized was
the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council and they were named the outstanding youth in
philanthropy for the state for this year and so we were in attendance to accept the
award. I will tell you that one of our youth members spoke, Danny, and -- to accept the
award and -- and he got up there and he said I know people really don't think youth can
do much of anything, but we can and, then, he proceeded to tell them what they have
done. So, they made the city proud and certainly showed us very well to many in the
room that are philanthropists and know what that's all about and so, anyway, did want to
share that with you and as all of you do know, following this at 6:30 we do have a town
hall meeting, so, hopefully, you can join us for that afterwards.
Item 5: Community Items/Presentations
A. Ada County Highway District (ACHD) Presentation - Downtown
Boise Origin -Destination Study (Impact Fees)
De Weerd: So, we will go into 5-A, which is with Ada County Highway District to
discuss kind of downtown and what a recent study showed. Thank you, Gary, for
joining us.
Bird: Holy cow, it's been a few years since he's been here.
Inselman: It has been.
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 4 of 43
De Weerd: I was going to say something and I decided I would be --
Inselman: Thank you, Mayor and Council. So, this will be a -- kind of a scaled down
version of a presentation we gave our commission in July on the results of a downtown
Boise origin -destination study and the relation to Meridian. The hope was we would find
some findings that we could, then, look to the future of when certain characteristics
were present in downtown, then, perhaps it's time to look at, you know, if it's appropriate
to have a different impact fee structure in the downtown area versus the rest of the
county. So, I will run through this fairly quickly, so if you have any questions, any
points, just, please, let me know. Again, the purpose of the study was to look at
downtown characteristics and obtain characteristic data for the downtown to see if there
were difference -- enough differences between the downtown area and the rest of the
county to look at perhaps a different impact fee structure downtown. So, we worked
with CCDC, the city of Boise, Chamber of Commerce, and different groups downtown to
try and get as good a participation as we could. Unfortunately, you will see from this we
had a desired number of locations of 30 to survey. We could only come up with 20 that
would participate and that's historically been our -- the real crux of the problem with
obtaining data down there, particularly for residential uses, as people don't want to take
surveys or share that kind of information. Not -- I can understand that and it makes it
very difficult to obtain the data. You will see the different businesses listed on the right
that we did survey. I'd perhaps say that we did contract with Kittelson & Associates to
do this work for us, so they were the ones out there doing it. A total of 1,488 surveys
were taken, so it was an extensive undertaking. Generally, as expected, we saw
different modes split for the downtown area. There was less vehicle trips and a little
more walking, biking, transit. The trip rate generally was plus or minus our averages. It
was much higher on the local small retail was a little surprising and the trip rate is very
hard to determine downtown, because you can't just count cars like you do at an
isolated business and in and out of the parking lot, because you have no idea where a
lot of those customers are coming from, because they are parked and walk several
blocks to where they were going. So, it's an estimated trip rate based on surveys and
determining mode splits and counting people instead of cars and so it hasn't been
validated. So, it is an estimated trip rate and you can't really compare it one for one
against IT trip generation manual, but it gives us a good idea. The new trip factor is a
pass by rate. We did find that in general when people are going downtown that was the
reason for their trip. There is not a lot of pass by trips to the downtown and that would
make sense, particularly for people that don't live down there. If you're heading to
downtown Boise that's the reason you're on the road. One of the surprising findings
was the trip length. On average the trip length for people driving to downtown were
greater than the averages that we use in our impact fee formulas and for the county --
countywide as an average. So, when people are driving to downtown they are driving
from further away than people thought and that is for the office land uses there was an
average trip rate of seven miles. That pretty much encircles the entire city, which -- and
that's the average rate. Obviously, people are coming from Nampa, Caldwell, which is
across the entire county, but on average it was about seven miles, which, you know,
shows that they do impact nearly every road in the -- in the city in trying to reach the
downtown area. And the network adjustment factor was plus or minus the average that
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November 12, 2014
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we use. So, the conclusions from the study was -- you know, as expected it's very
difficult to find willing property owners and businesses to participate. As expected the
lower vehicle note splits and lower trip rates -- the biggest unexpected result, aside from
the trip length is just the incredible variation between what you would think are like types
of land uses or businesses. The small retail coffee shops and restaurants, they are very
specific. You could have one coffee shop that had an incredibly high trip rate and trip
length, because it's very popular, and another one a couple blocks away and completely
different characteristics. So, it's very hard to generalize across even supposedly light
land uses for -- to draw any conclusions. The only real promising result that looked like
it could warrant further study was the office land use. Unfortunately, the three office
buildings surveyed were the three big towers, Wells Fargo, Banner Bank, U.S. Bank.
So, you can't really apply the results to the small one or two story office buildings and
we currently have -- the Zion's Bank building just opened. They are going to do an
individual assessment. It was our thought to wait, see what their results came back
with, compare them with these and, then, we will look to see if it warrants further study
for the office category in general for the downtown area and we would really like to
obtain some data on the smaller office buildings. In the -- in those towers we seem to
get the same businesses time and time again and what was really odd is Banner Bank
was one of the buildings surveyed and when it was built they did do an individual
assessment and the result came out that they would have owed us money, so they
didn't turn it in. So, it's hard to draw a conclusion is -- you know, if there is really a
reduction warranted or not. So, we are going to see what comes back with the Zion's
Bank building when they do their study. The residential -- again, we would need a lot
more participation. We only had two locations participate. One was a senior housing
type of development where, actually, our rate is far less than what the survey results
said that their impacts were and the other one, you know, with only one use we couldn't
draw any conclusions. So, as more residential units are developed downtown hopefully
we can get a little better participation in the future to see if it does warrant any type of a
difference in the impact fee and the -- again, the retail and restaurant land uses, they
are so unique that it didn't -- it's not worth trying to establish a general rate and when
everything is said and done and you looked at, you know, the pluses and the minuses
and the different characteristics, it really kind of averaged out to where even though
their characteristics are a little different, a little lower trip generation, longer trip length,
plus and minus on the others, the fee winds up being about the same. So, our
recommendation to our commission was to not do any further study at this time. We will
look to participate in future efforts with CCDC, CBA, the city, whoever cares to, you
know, look at these things further in the future and, then, reevaluate as more data is
collected and so that was -- that was our recommendation and the commission
concurred with that back in July. So, we are kind of in a, you know, wait and see mode
now with what we get back from the Zion's Bank building study and, then, I know there
is some groups downtown that want to do some further surveys, particularly of
residential uses. So, we will try to participate with that. So, if I could answer any
questions you may have.
De Weerd: Well, Gary, it seems that when ACHD decided to -- to look at this and look
at can impact fees in downtowns be adjusted, the whole idea was adjusted down and I
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
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know the other cities in Ada County have -- were told let's look at what happens with
this before we look at any of the other communities. We do know as folks are looking at
developing downtown that impact fees are sometimes more than the cost of the TI for
the -- the building they are looking at locating in and that's -- that's deterred a lot of
redevelopment in our downtown. I don't think you're going to find the same results that
you find in Boise and probably any of the other communities in Ada County. So, is there
a chance that ACHD will look at downtowns for the other communities and look at the
impact fees for adjustment?
Inselman: Mayor de Weerd, the discussion at the time -- you know if it was a few years
ago now, obviously, before we undertook the downtown study, the assumption was
downtowns being ideally more compact, more dense, people walking, biking, transit as
or if it's available, that was the reason for the -- or the thought process that there
possibly should be a reduction in the traffic impact fees and so that's why we looked at
downtown Boise first because it had all of those factors together already. It is more
dense. It has -- while not a large residential component, some residential, has transit,
and, then, like we just went through, we found that it didn't warrant a reduction in the
fees. I agree with you that we will find very different characteristics in the other -- in the
other cities. I don't know -- I can't really answer will we look at each city individually, I
think we would have to perhaps hear a proposal from the cities on exactly what do they
want in participation and in how to conduct something. We are about -- we are starting
the update to our capital improvements plan, which does, then, lead to the update to
impact fee ordinance, so in the next year and a half -- just under two years we will be
looking at the entire program, so we do have an opportunity to make adjustments to the
program overall as warranted through that effort.
De Weerd: When impact fees become a deterrent for redevelopment and, then, that
development is driven to the fringe, that is concerning, and I think that's why I, for one,
would like it to be evaluated in terms of your impact fee should also kind of reflect where
you want your growth to occur, so it's an incentive and not a disincentive. So, any
questions from Council?
Borton: No.
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: No?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor? And I'm pondering.
De Weerd: I saw that.
Zaremba: There is quite a bit of history to this and there was a time when ACHD's
capital investments citizen's advisory committee had a lot of discussions about impact
fees and impact ordinances and as I recall one of the issues was that ACHD has to
track the comparison between the income and out go or the expense of each impact fee
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 7 of 43
district and we had discussions about whether there should be one district or seven
districts or 15 districts to adjust for differences in needs and -- and to be fair, a lot those
differences would have been geographically different sizes and might have been small
one, might have been big ones and my recollection was that even though the discussion
stretched over probably a year or so with the committee, the fewer zones you could
have the -- really, the fairer it was to everybody, let alone easier for ACHD to track it.
So, this is not a new topic and I don't mind that it's being explored again, but it just
seemed to make sense not to start having a whole lot of separate -- separate zones and
as I recall they have one zone now for the whole county; is that correct?
Inselman: Councilman Zaremba, that's correct. The -- part of the thought process was
with the trip lengths that people travel and the small size of the county it -- if you have
small zones you could be crossing three or four of them with the average trip length of,
you know, five to seven miles long and, then, you are into an equity issue of, you know,
where should the money go? Are you impacting this zone or that zone and with the way
our statutes are written it's very difficult to make the impact fees in a sensitive type of a
program. I mean it's -- for them to pay their proportionate share of their impacts on the
roadway, it's kind of a -- unfortunately , it's kind of a side effects of if it's really impacting
someone's decision on where to locate or not, to craft the program to try and make it a
disincentive to go to the fringe and incentive to come into a downtown area would be
very difficult legally to do within the state of Idaho.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with the Mayor on -- I think that while having one district it's nice, but the
other four basic cities in Ada County, you can't compare with what Boise has got. None
of us have the big high rise buildings that has five, six, seven hundred people working in
it and stuff like that. We are -- go down to a Hyde Park and do that and check that. I
mean I don't see anything in ten years coming to Meridian that's going to -- downtown
Meridian that's going to even come close to drawing the traffic that one or two buildings
in Boise draws every day. So, I -- I know you have got the same costs -- pavement in
Meridian cost just as much as it does in Boise or curb and gutter and all that, but I still
think that there has to be a way that these smaller outlets can have some kind of a
break in the cost, because -- and another thing, it's easier in Boise for those people that
build a high rise office building to get their costs back than it is in Meridian where we
don't have the space and nor is our square footage as high as that. So, I -- I would like
to see Kuna, Meridian, Eagle and Star kind of assessed at a different -- than downtown
Boise myself. Our downtowns. Now, I know our outlaying malls and stuff like that are
no different than Boise malls, so I have no problem with that. But the downtown I do. I
just don't see why our impact fees have to be compatible to downtown Boise myself.
De Weerd: And, frankly, I think we have all had the discussions about if you can bring
jobs closer to where people are living you can reduce the need and certainly the cost to
expanding roads and if we continue to -- to just grow the jobs in Boise you will never be
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 8 of 43
able to -- to build ourself out of the congestion. So, if you can work with the cities to try
and build those employment centers in downtowns where there is existing infrastructure
and -- and capture those -- those trips, so we are not sending all of our citizens to Boise
to work and shop it would be helpful and be a win-win for all of us, building our
downtowns, continuing to build our community identities and -- and collecting those trips
that -- that he want to stay within our community and that is the goal and that's what we
were hoping that we would see is there would be recognized value in the trips that are
captured, instead of continuing to generate it to another area.
Inselman: Yeah. I agree with everything you said and we -- we do recognize that it's
just how do you -- how can you quantify that at this time and we just don't have any data
to quantify that. You know, if there are businesses that are trying to locate into Meridian
and they are concerned about our fees, I'd ask you to, please, have them call me,
because a lot of times if we just look at the limited information we see on a development
application and someone looks at the fee chart, we may not even be looking at the right
category, depending on what -- what they put on their application. It really makes a
difference when they give us the details of what they are really doing and where they
are locating.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, I see nods over there. We will work with you as you have
indicated an interest in working with us and I certainly appreciate that. Thank you for
J oining us. It is nice to see you:
Inselman: It's been several years.
De Weerd: Yeah. It has. Thank you, Gary.
B. Meridian Development Corporation Downtown Branding Effort
Update
De Weerd: Item 5-B is our Meridian Development Corporation downtown branding
effort update and, Council, while Dan is coming up you did approve an agreement that
the MDC today voted to be a 50-50 partner with us on the Pegasus report that we are
moving into. So, thank you, Dan. We appreciate the partnership with the MDC.
Basalone: You're welcome, Mayor de Weerd, as always. We are glad to work in
partnership. As you mentioned, my name is Dan Basalone. I'm vice -chair with the
Meridian Development Corporation, better known as MDC, so I will use the acronym in
my presentation and we thank you for giving us time at your session today to discuss
the branding effort for downtown Meridian. Before I start with a little bit of background
information and introduce our main speaker, I do want to introduce two people in the
audience who are here in support of the branding effort and one is a Joe Kozlowski,
who is the newly elected first president of the Meridian Downtown Business Association.
Joe. And with him is --
De Weerd: Congratulations, I think, Joe.
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 9 of 43
Basalone: And with Joe is Glen Walker, a downtown businessman, who is on the new
board or directors of the Downtown Business Association. Glen.
De Weerd: Glen, thank you for joining us.
Basalone: In late 2013 MDC engaged CH2M Hill to assist MDC with a master way
finding and signage plan for the MDC district. Given the newly completed split corridor
project and other revitalization efforts, MDC felt it was time to have a comprehensive
plan that addressed various forms of signage for vehicles and pedestrians. In early
2014, after engaging the various stakeholders, a master plan was adopted by MDC.
Also during this period business and property owners began their discussions regarding
the formation of a new DBA for Meridian. With the adoption of the way finding plan and
the formation of the DBA, it became apparent to the MDC board that in order to begin
implementation a formal branding effort was needed for downtown Meridian. The board
felt it was imperative that also stakeholders were telling the same story for our
downtown. In June of this year CH2M Hill kicked off a branding study for the MDC
district. The effort began with two visioning sessions with stakeholders who discussed
their vision for downtown Meridian in both the short and long term. CH2M Hill took that
information and began the research phase. This included speaking with Pegasus
regarding their economic development strategic plan that was presented to the City
Council this summer, along with reviewing all known studies, vision documents, and
demographics pertaining to Meridian. As a result of the research phase, CH2M Hill
created three different logos and tag lines for consideration. We are currently in the
listening phase in that MDC is soliciting feedback from all stakeholders, including this
City Council, regarding the options for logos and tag lines. Your input is important to us.
We envision all MDC, the city and the chamber to utilize this logo when appropriate,
particularly on way finding and signage materials. However, the newly formed DBA will
likely be the organization to use this logo the most and, therefore, it will be imperative
that they buy into the final product. With this I'd like to introduce Betsy Roberts of
CH2M Hill. In your packet is a presentation that she gave to the MDC board last month.
I would like to have her walk you through this information and, then, we would like to
hear your comments and questions. Thank you, Mayor.
De Weerd: Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Betsy, for joining us. If you will state your
name and address for the record.
Roberts: I will. Betsy Roberts. CH2M Hill at 322 East Front Street, Boise, Idaho. And
thanks for your time and Dan did a great job of setting me all up here. I believe all of
you have this packet, our PowerPoint presentation -- this set of slides in your packet. I
will go through that briefly, since Dan really walked you through the process, I'm just
going to hit some highlights. So, tell me to slow down if there is something you want to
ask about. I know you have got a town hall meeting to go to also, so I want to keep it
moving. The slides are numbered, so we can use that if we need to to go backwards or
forwards.
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 10 of 43
De Weerd: Can you put it up on the board?
Bird: Do you have a thumb drive?
De Weerd: Do you have it on a thumb drive?
Roberts: I don't have it on a thumb drive right now.
De Weerd: Our public would like to probably see it.
Holman: Sorry, Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Holman: If we saved it in here as a PowerPoint, then, I should be able to drop it onto a
drive and Caleb can pull it up, but let me look just really quick. That's what I'm trying to
get to.
De Weerd: Okay. And it's helpful for those that are in attendance to follow what we are
seeing.
Roberts' That sounds good.
De Weerd: So, if you will give us just a moment.
Roberts: Okay.
De Weerd: Yeah. I guess we could sing happy birthday while we are -- don't have
anything to do. It's Councilman Borton's birthday. So, on the count of three. One.
Two. Three.
(Happy Birthday sung to Councilman Borton.)
Bird: There you go. She got it.
De Weerd: Just so we would stop singing; right?
Roberts: Have to go through the safety moment. That's a CH2M Hill thing.
De Weerd: A safety moment.
Roberts: Yes.
De Weerd: That's an engineer thing and --
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Roberts: The doors are that way, in case of emergency. How is that? That's an easy
one. Well, running through this, Dan did a great process of -- the overview process that
we took. I think one key is that we did have a good group of stakeholders involved and I
just want to reiterate that the DBA, economic development group, folks that could
provide comments along the way as we developed this and provided objectives in
different phases back out. So, we have gotten feedback along the way, as well as the
MDC, and it was specifically the way finding committee from the MDC that's been
leading this push. So, on the next slide very briefly a summary of the research results.
I think you're probably all aware of this, but it is interesting to see that greater than 50
percent of the residents in Meridian are younger than 34 years old. This is the group of
folks that you're really needing to pay attention to, the Gen X's, Y's and Z's, the Y's
being the millennials and so we are looking at that group and the Z's are, obviously,
very much influenced by the Gen Y's and Gen X's, who are probably their parents. So,
here is characteristic. Again, no big surprises there. Lots of families, downtown
neighborhoods, all these were characteristics of some of our folks that we were trying to
-- as part of our groups. These are different people that we were looking at. The key
employers, the Meridian cyclists, folks like that, as some of our stakeholders as well.
The next slide some research results. Communication style. A common theme there.
Again, no big surprise. Social media. Even through Gen X'er right here, I have adopted
social media, so we know there is some of us that it doesn't come as easy as others.
The Y's and Z's, that's just exactly where they go right off the bat. Interesting, though,
and I think we have all heard this as well, but the Gen V's attention span eight seconds.
Getting in there blast them fast kind of thing. So, we need to know this as we are
setting up our brands and our logo, et cetera. Values. Comments. Theme. And you
folks use this tag line a lot. Family. The importance of families being connected, but
also we noticed in here the shared value -- diversity, along with that connectivity, which
is kind of a neat situation to see. The next slide, some key brand aspects. Then how
do we go about creating our logo? What do we need to think about, knowing who our
audience is? And there is a lot of science behind this, as well as just some thinking
about who your audience is and really some gut reactions, too, on some of the graphic
artists and the branding folks' expertise. I don't know if any of you have heard this study
that NPR had out just the other day on the color. I thought the timing was great,
because there is science behind what do colors mean to different people and in this
case orange stood out as this is the group -- the young group that you're trying to
attract. Orange -- orange is vibrant, energy, youth, creativity. So, those are the folks
we want to reach and this is a way -- this is a color that will speak to them. Lines also
do this. Curved lines, circles, things like that we want to incorporate into it. Hopefully
never ending. Timeless. We have also talked about some tag lines that we can throw
in if you want to add a couple words to the bottom of it. That's -- we have gotten some
interesting comments that maybe we need to just leave those off, maybe we have them
and can use them in certain situations. Downtown brand attributes. I think the real key
here is the very bottom sentence that talks about the cultural values that the downtown
core represents. A respect for the past and the platform for the future. So, this was one
of the guiding principles that came out. It really was looking at both and you look at it
and you have got, you know, the greenery over here and you start thinking about, yes,
but we are all moving forward as well and we have the youth and the vitality in the
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forward moving side. So we keep those in mind as we move forward. Trying to get to
the really exciting part, because it's always nice seeing the logos. We did create three
objectives and this was where we asked for our partners to help. Another one of the
places we asked for our partners to help. We needed to have our brand building
objective and, really, that is we need to build this, we need to create it. We need to
create a brand promise. We had to have an objective that talked about awareness.
How are we going to do that? That's really getting people seeing it and starting to make
it click. Oh, this means downtown. What does downtown mean? What do we need to
do to get people downtown maybe the first time to go, oh, hey, there is some really cool
restaurants here and, then, following that is the strategic engagement objective, which
is the behavior changing. So, the next time they are going, hey, honey, let's go out for
dinner, they don't go let's go down to Boise, but they go, you know, Meridian was really
cool and maybe something flashes up and it's got the logo and they again -- downtown
Meridian. Yeah. There is some neat restaurants there. It's a fun place to go. There is
concerts.
De Weerd: And they will hop on their bike and come down; right?
Roberts: There you go. Love it. So, the next one is the fun one. There it is. We have
-- so, taking all of that -- and, again, this is science and art put together. You know,
trying to use the colors that will speak to the folks that we are trying to reach, trying to
use those lines. Here is some different ideas that have been push forward. The first
one on the far left has more of a vertical element to it and kind of -- has an interesting
line work that way. And we talked about the challenges, too, of when you want to use
these and how you want to use them. You know, are you going to feel stuck if it's more
vertical? Do you want something more horizontal? So, there is some practical things
we need to think about as well. The middle one with the circle, the timelessness, and,
again, continuing to use the orange and blue colors. And the third one incorporates the
sunshine that has been part of the MDC's sign work, trying to keep that as part of the --
the logo, since it is out there already as well. Some comments we have gotten already
-- that I think are good, especially like on the far left one -- the word Meridian might be
too light to show up in certain situations and on different signs. So, we need to think
about those things. We will be probably working on another version here, hoping to get
lots of comments, though. Any gut reactions?
De Weerd: Did you hear what the results were from the MYAC? From MYAC?
Overwhelmingly the second one.
Roberts: The middle one?
De Weerd: Around 72, compared to 30 on -- for the left one, the vertical. And the sun
was not popular at all.
Roberts: Interesting. I didn't have that all down here.
De Weerd: I mean there were a handful.
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Roberts: Right. Does that kind of ring true here? I'm kind of curious.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I don't know my -- and take my opinion for one person's opinion, but I think
the sun. I always like to look at logos that can be done single color, versus multiple
color. I think the one of the sun easily lends itself to being a single color logo. I like the
one in the circle second. The curvature is the one I like the least. It's looking very 70s
to me.
De Weerd: Okay. Some of us are retro. Yes, Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I was actually thinking very similarly. I like the down -- the sun, but I would use
a different orange and maybe that's what the -- why the young -- they didn't like it,
because it's more of a yellow. It's kind of an off-putting color to me. I would pick a more
vibrant orange and maybe based on what you were talking about that it would -- the
generations would be to make those lines on the sun a little bit squiggly. A little curvy.
Roberts: I like it.
De Weerd: You ask ten people and you will get ten different opinions.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Well, I will admit I was leaning towards the sun one as well. I guess what I
keep wishing is whenever we talk about Meridian, including downtown Meridian, we
have some acknowledgment of the meaning of the name. I'd like to have surveyor's
instruments in some kind of a logo sometime. I know we got that with the artwork that's
in our lobby, but we have a name that means something and there needs to be a way to
take advantage of that. So, of these there I prefer the sunrise myself. I mean the sun --
sun one myself. But not to start over, but if there would be some way to incorporate
surveyor's instruments or a play on the name meridian, that -- that I think would be
distinguishing from all other city downtowns.
Roberts: In respect of history --
Zaremba: Yeah.
Roberts: -- as we have talked about being important here, too. That's interesting.
Okay. I will sketch it in and, then, get it to the artist.
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Zaremba: Yeah. How do you draw that? I don't know.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton, can you offer yet another -- a different --
Borton: Oh, yeah. For what it's worth. I like what you have done on the two to my left
with the split corridor incorporated into the logo, trying to capture that as part of
downtown. I like the one in the center the most and I voted as part of your survey and I
forget if that's what I picked, but the one on the left intrigues me in a 1970s sort of ABA
basketball sort of way. The one on the right for me doesn't interest me. The one in the
center in particular does, because I'm wondering -- and this might be something that
Joe and the DBA talks about is, you know, that's the type of logo as a downtown
business owner myself that I might incorporate and utilize on my stationery and
marketing materials when I'm informing folks where my business is, I might feel more
comfortable to use as well.
Roberts: And that would be the middle one?
Borton: The middle one.
Roberts: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with Councilman Borton. The middle one is my favorite. And I think -- I
think the main thing is the people that we need to make sure buys into this is your
downtown business association. They are the ones that's got the stake in it and I
appreciate that coming from a downtown businessman that -- owner, that -- I like that
one. I like the center one by far the best. I think it does more for the downtown.
De Weerd: I don't know. You could say the sun rises and sets on downtown.
Zaremba: Uh-huh.
Bird: The difference is I could draw that one.
De Weerd: Well, there you have it.
Roberts: There we have it. Thank you. And it is challenging to make a decision,
because you really are trying to look at who you're trying to attract, which one of those
generations am I in, and so, you know, what's my filter, what's my lens, how is it going
to be used and what's some of the science behind it, you know, to say -- personally
maybe I say I don't like orange, but that's something that speaks to a lot of people,
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okay, great, so -- so, we are in that process of making that decision and I will talk about
that a little more in just a minute on the schedule. But the next slide down talks about
the tag lines and some ideas here for tag lines. As I mentioned briefly before -- some
people have said, gosh, I really -- I liked it better without any tag line at all, which might
be a situation that we have that, you know, we use the logo by itself. If there is a
situation that is appropriate, we had a tag line and maybe there can be several different
tag lines for different situations. You wouldn't want to go out and have a gazillion of
them, no. So, we took some of the words that seem to be descriptors that we have
been hearing around here that came back a lot and we have had some variations of
these as well, which I think are great and we will be pulling all of those together, too, so
-- don't know if any one hit anybody or --
Milam: Madam Mayor? I do.
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I strongly like the middle one. The discover, celebrate, and connect.
Roberts: Okay. Great.
Zaremba: I would second that.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
Roberts: Okay.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I will be the odd one. I like the uncover history, discover community.
Roberts: Okay.
Bird: But I want it under the middle one.
Roberts: We are just doing tag lines right now. It's okay.
Borton: I agree with the middle one, Madam Mayor.
Roberts: Okay.
Borton: The discover, celebrate, connect.
Roberts: Okay.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Luke.
Cavener: Maybe I'm the cynical one in the bunch and that's -- it's hard for me to get
really excited about tag lines, especially in an infancy. You know, I think that it's
important to see who we are before we decide to associate a tag line with that. So, I
like all of them. They all sound nice, they all sound catchy. I also think that it's
somewhat arbitrary language that could be under any other logo for any other
downtown municipality anywhere in the country. So, my thought would be is to hold off
on a tag line until we really establish who we are.
Roberts: I like that. And it does fit with that idea that we don't have to have one. We
can use them, apply them in the right situations and maybe that fits -- let's see. Well, I
was hoping to go -- okay. We will go to the next slide.
De Weerd: So -- but today we are uncover history, discuss community with the history
walk, the history center, and a lot of it that -- that one captures who we are today.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: Did the youth council have an opinion on tag lines?
De Weerd: We didn't show the tag lines.
Cavener: Okay.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I could probably best speak for the youth, so --
De Weerd: I think Luke could.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: I'm sorry, you are not a Z. I think you fell in the X and Luke is a Y. Mr.
Cavener.
Cavener: Oh, I just was going to let Councilman Borton know that Council Woman
Milam informed me that her daughter and I are in the same category, so --
Zaremba: I'm probably a W.
De Weerd: I'm just glad I fell in a category.
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Roberts: This is the first time we have had this discussion from the PowerPoint. I like it.
Okay. On the next slide, then, another goal of ours was to create some messages that
could be woven through posters, which will be the next slide that we look at and other
messages that go out. So, things that you want to create with it. You know, if there is a
concert coming up, any of the items to get woven into the language that gets put on the
poster. It's, you know, free concert or low cost or no cost -- whatever. Trying to convey
those things that were important messages that we were hearing from folks in the
community. And, again, Dan did mention the reports that we have been through and
Pegasus. There is a lot of good information out there that we were able to glean and
pull from and find some really good themes running through all of them, which was
great, to help support what we were doing here. So, experience Meridian downtown,
you know, as you're talking about what are the different things. Come down for these
reasons on farmer's market night, maybe there will be a new farmer's market night here
-- all of the other things that you can do at the same time for no cost, et cetera. So, let's
look at the poster, the next slide down. And this is just an example --
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Can you go back one? I would suggest rewording that first bullet a little bit.
Meridian downtown is transforming. One, that's a little bit more direct and, two, it's not
sure whether it's the downtown that's transforming or if I come there I will be
transformed. But I would say Meridian downtown is transforming.
Roberts: That's good. And we -- we can do that, then, what we are hoping is that these
will be used by different businesses doing something. So, anybody could word it slightly
differently as they use them, but the idea -- so, you're right, if we can give them a better,
more concise one, they can just use it, so -- okay. And the -- sample template for a
poster. We are -- we have noticed we have had some color changes here, so we are
working on that. These are -- these are a little brighter, a little darker on the blue,
deeper orange. In some cases the deeper orange might be good and we may need to
take that back up to some of the logos we have got, but this is what something could
look like with just one of the logos that we had created on the side there and putting the
City of Meridian's logo on this as well. Again, if there is a specific business that's doing
something, that business's logo, but this artwork could be available for use by anyone,
by any group as necessary. And we have retro font in there, don't we. So, we can
change that. We don't like retro font. All right.. And, then, let's quickly go through the
schedule and I think -- maybe I will start at the end, so you see kind of where we are
trying to get to and, then, work back from there. One of the main goals in getting this
done this fall and now winter is to be able to allow the way finding group to actually
install some of the way finding signs and have a logo on it. So, that's our goal is to get
going, get this selected. Again, as you can see right here it's very challenging to just
zero in and nail that one logo. Any piece of art -- not everybody is going to agree to it.
So, working backwards, we have got a -- there is an MDC way finding meeting next
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Wednesday. We are hoping to have any other comments. If you want to e-mail
anything to Ashley, please, do. Thoughts or comments. We will be trying to collect all
those, get it in front of the way finding committee and, then, Lefty, who is our real
marketing expert who works with me, to incorporate some different ideas, take those
into account with the logo, change some fonts, do a couple other things and present
those back to the way finding. Shooting for hopefully like a January or so decision time
frame, so we can start with the installing signs. I think that's -- that's really the gist of
where we are right now. We have also talked about there is a lot of steps in there that
we were working through, that's why you see this table with way finding and the
stakeholder groups, different activities that were being done by different partners. This
is not a one shot, hey, they have this cool report and you have a logo and we are done,
see you later. This is an ongoing process and this is kind of what the schedule talks
about and that strategic objective of, okay, now we need to get the changed behaviors.
So, this is something that goes on forever to some degree, just making sure that it's
always out there in front of people and you're pulling people in. One suggestion had
been to get a BSU student in who is in marketing to help out with some of these things
as well. So, there is some different ideas on getting support to carry this forward and
continue to some of those behavior changes and matrix later on to measure how are we
doing, how are things looking. So, any questions?
De Weerd: I don't see any.
Roberts: Okay.
De Weerd: Any concluding comments from Council?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Just one briefly. This is really -- I think it's really hard to do and I appreciate the
work that's gone into it and the help that MDC's provided and, in particular, the DBA and
what the are trying to do is extremely difficult. Their input is really, really valuable and I
think it's our obligation as a city to be there to support and provide input and assistance
in any way we can to try and help that group continue and be successful and this is one
of the endeavors that they are involved in. It's really incumbent upon I think this city to
participate actively and help in any way we can.
Roberts: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Betsy.
Roberts: You are welcome and thank you for finding the pdf to get it up on screen. I
will be ready next time. Appreciate it.
De Weerd: Anything from Dan or Ashley? You will need to speak in the mike.
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Basalone: I just, once again, want to thank you for the time today to really go in depth
in this discussion and to get your input. It's greatly appreciated. Nothing -- you know,
there is an old saying: None of us is as smart as all of us and I think when we all put
our heads together, city, MDC, ACHD, the chamber, MDA, we are a stronger
community. So, thank you so very much. And, Joe, appreciate your comments. I want
to find out how you stay so youthful looking.
De Weerd: Yes. For a Generation Z guy or something. Okay. Council, before we
move to 7-A, I would like to see if we can move 7-E up. I do see that my appointee is
here and while I'm sure we will be totally engrossed with the subject matter on all of the
things in advance of that one, I would like to at least take action on that, so he's free to
leave soon thereafter -- whenever he would like.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would have no problem with moving 7-E -- 7-E up to ahead of 7-A and I would
make that in a motion to change the agenda.
Zaremba`. Second.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to change the agenda to entertain 7-E in
advance of A. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 6: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
Item 7: Department Reports
E. Mayor's Office: Resolution No. 14-1030: A Resolution
Appointing J. Scott Walters to the Solid Waste Advisory
Commission
De Weerd: Council, in front of you under 7-E is Resolution 14-1030. It's appointing J.
Scott Walters to the Solid Waste Advisory Commission. Myself and Steve Cory met
with the applicant and he has attended SWAC meetings and is very interested as a
citizen to participate in the process and we had a very good discussion and I would
stand ready to entertain any questions that you might have and if I can't answer them I
would -- I would ask -- it is Scott. You go by Scott? To come forward and maybe he
can enlighten you. Any questions from Council?
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Bird: I have none.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Seeing none, I move that we approve Resolution No. 14-1030, appointing J.
Scott Walters to the Solid Waste Advisory Commission.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call
roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
De Weerd: And not to railroad anyone -- I never ask for -- if you have any comment
until after the vote. Would you like to say anything? An acceptance speech is good.
Walters: Thank you for the opportunity to serve.
De Weerd: Thank you for being here. We certainly appreciate your interest and it was
already exhibited and we greatly appreciate that, too. Thank you for joining us.
Item 7: Department Reports
A. Police and Fire Departments: Joint Public Safety Update
De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-A is under our police and fire departments, which you will get
an update on the public safety project. Thank you.
Leslie: Madam Mayor, City Council. The chief couldn't be here tonight, so I'm here to
give you a brief update on what's going on with the police department. The last month
and a half we spent a lot of time with promotional exams and we have a new lieutenant
position that we got this year. So, those two positions created two corporal openings,
two sergeant openings, and a lieutenant opening. The lieutenant exam was the last one
and it was today, so that announcement should be coming out shortly. So, we have the
promotional part of it done. We have been busy also with hiring and filling vacancies.
We have a data clerk position that's -- or the interview is on and, then, candidates are in
the background process and, then, we are selecting candidates for the other three open
positions from retirement that we had recently, to include the MIDC coordinator. We
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have five new patrol officer positions that we were in the process of collecting applicants
for and we -- we did lose two officers starting Monday to Boise police, so that's two
more opening, so we have a total now of seven police officer positions to fill. Tonight
City Hall -- or is the city town hall meeting is public safety oriented. One of our SROs is
going to be there, Mr. Gomez. He's going to talk about internet safety. There is also
some other presentations on computer and other types of fraud that happen specifically
during the holidays. So, we look forward to doing that tonight. Training center is well
underway, moving pretty smoothly. We have had very few obstacles to overcome,
some product delays, carpet, et cetera, some things like that were kind of unexpected,
but weren't that big of a deal. We are about -- we have -- the second story remodel is
about three-quarters complete, so east and west wings -- the west wing is waiting for
carpet, which will be installed Wednesday. There is some tape and texture on the east
side where detectives was located. That's completed. The lobby expansion, which was
slotted to start in February will now start in December, so we are a little ahead of
schedule on the remodel side. Poured some concrete today for the curb and gutter at
the training center site. The expansion of the police department has a roof on it and will
be weather tight here in the next day or so, which is good, seeings how we are getting
snow probably tomorrow. And, then, the brick for the outside of it goes on Thursday.
Tomorrow. So -- our canines -- we do have two new dogs that will replace the dogs that
had retired. So, we have a canine training academy going on right now. Actually had
some members from some other organizations there, Caldwell I believe is there and I
think Nampa has a representative there. So, the dogs are undergoing their training,
which will be completed, oh, probably the end of December, so we will have the two
new dogs and, then, the new dog handler with his new partner up and running by the
end of December. And that pretty much outlines everything that's going on with the PD.
Any questions or things that you have heard about that are going on that I didn't maybe
cover?
De Weerd: Any questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Oh. Sorry. Like who said that? Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Jamie, your thoughts on talented new recruits that are going to be made
available. I mean are there -- are there talented people that are out there that we are
going to be able to recruit and retain?
Leslie: I think so. Based off our current candidate pool it looks like we had a split in
what we asked for, so we asked for some certified and noncertified. So, we are at that
point in time where our last hiring cycle was all certified officers and so this time we
were looking for some noncertified officers as well to kind of bring a balance to the
organization. But there are several -- I shouldn't say several. There is like 20 or 25
certified applicants that are definitely very promising and I think our nonapplicant pool is
rather large, too, so -- I mean it's like in the hundreds. So, yeah, optimistic that we will
be able to fill the -- fill those spots with some qualified individuals.
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Cavener: Great. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, lieutenant.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, thank you for allowing us to do
this joint presentation. Happy birthday, Councilman Borton. You look great for 30.
With that -- before I start I'm going to be coming back to you in March or April time
frame. I have asked to come back about mid year, so I can present a more complete --
as far as a data analyst analysis presentation to you on some of the issues that we are
going to talk about today, but I do want to provide you with where we are going for FY -
15, the priorities that we have within our divisions. You can see there on the first page
we really broke it down into my office, the operations, planning, the prevention, and,
then, the administration support, as well as the public education. The biggest priorities
that I have coming up this year are the FY -15 strategic plan. We do have a five year
strategic plan that goes through 2016 and we only have one item left on it and so we felt
like it was time to update it, instead of just waiting for the one to finish and so we will be
doing that this year. To develop a master plan and staffing analysis by January 30th.
Obviously, the budget is something we do every year, so it's not a new item, but
certainly one that takes up quite a bit of time as we know. We are going to look at
bringing in process improvement change management training for the department. This
is an area that we have struggled. I just talked to the Mayor about this. She was in
Denver on some process improvement training that's very exciting. Kind of where we
were leaning as well as a department to look at our processes and how we can evaluate
them and look for ways that we can do them better, trying to find waste where we can
and be more efficient. So, that's some training we are going to be bringing into the
department this year. And, then, our fire engine replacement. That's in process right
now. That was an approval in the budget. We are an all Pierce department. We have
been for many years. I believe Councilman Bird has been back to the Pierce plant with
Chief Anderson. The benefit that we have with Pierce is that they have a local service
tech in the area. No other manufacturer does. That's a challenge for us. But we are
taking a look at every manufacturer out there. We are doing that analysis to make sure
that if we go with Pierce again it's for the right reasons. So, we are doing our due
diligence there. And, then, lastly, completion of the strategic plan for the city is a really
big deal. I think it's a great move going forward and we have that wrapping up I think in
March. As far as operations go, one of the things we need to establish is the battalion
swing up program. When we brought those positions on a swing up program allows us
to get overtime when needed, try and get it down to the lowest level and that's the
firefighter level. Every other position has a swing up program, so we will be looking to
establish that. Emergency operations guidelines, standard operating guidelines, those
are in process as well and that's going to be about a 12 month process to finalize those
and, then, research and analyzing and determining the most appropriate alternative
response vehicle program. This has been in the CIP for about four years now. It's
something that we are looking at to have a unit that can go out and handle the
nonemergent calls, so we are not tying up our critical resources doing so. This is a
trend across the fire service in the country, because we recognize we are sending large
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apparatus and a lot of people to smoke alarms or smoke detector replacements or
repair, things like that. Nonemergency medical calls doing that so don't have to send a
large apparatus and full crew to. So, we are exploring options there and we will bring
that before you. In planning we are going to implement new RMS software. This is our
records management software for incidents. They are very legal bound, if you will. It's
what we write our reports on when we go out and treat a patient or when we go out and
fight a fire. So, this is a very important move for us to make sure we are getting the
right software. Our current software is very clunky. IT has blessed us to move on to
something different, because they struggle with trying to deal with the current software.
This has been planned for for a while and so we will have a decision on a vendor
probably in a month. It is going to take some time working with IT to transfer over old
data into the new software and, then, move forward. Develop and adopt and
communicate a standard of cover. That's really the response time standard that we are
going to be talking about and really developing what that community standard is. And,
then, also developing key performance indicators -- the Mayor and I have talked about
this as well -- across all divisions within the department and recognizing what those are,
so we can, then, report on those monthly and those reports will go to you as well. In
prevention, Chief Palmer is putting together new fire inspection software. Again, I'm
going to talk about this mid year once this has been established, but I believe that we
are going to find efficiencies gained in the amount of time it takes staff to do these
reports. This is a web based program and it's live in the field. We also expect better
customer feedback on that. So, when we are doing those inspections we can get the
feedback right then and there, not wait until we get back to the office and, then, send
them an e-mail later with the feedback they need. These are inspection softwares and I
think, Councilman Zaremba, to your point a few months ago our engine companies are
still going out, they are doing those pre -fire planning inspections, if you will, so they are
still out with our business owners, it's just not in a compliance manner, it's more of a
friendly manner to look at hazards, makes sure they identify the fire department
connections, etcetera. So, that's still going well.
Zaremba: I can verify that. In my other hat I'm executive director of the Air Quality
Board and we had a visit today from the inspector.
Niemeyer: Good.
Zaremba: He's coming back in a month, because we have some things we need to
correct.
Niemeyer: So, he had a smile on when you came?
Zaremba: Yes. It was a very pleasant encounter.
Niemeyer: Good. Completing all level one and level two inspections. We talked about
that the last time I was here. Those are the big ones, the hospitals, the schools, those
are mandatory annual inspections. Our level threes are the small businesses and we
have been able to get about ten to 15 percent of those. With Joe Bongiorno on now as
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a fire inspector we expect to -- our goal is 50 percent in the first year. We will see
where we go from there. But certainly we expect to see an increase in improvement
there. We are trying to work with the building department to look at our fixed facilities.
John McCormick does a great job maintaining facilities. We are trying work with him to
become more efficient. We handle our own facilities right now and if you think about it
we have five houses, plus garages that are really big and so we think there is a lot of
efficiency to be gained there, hopefully some cost savings by using the same vendors,
same process and so we are going to be working with building this year to try and get
that moved over. And, then, Compliance Engine is something that all fire departments
in the valley, minus a few of the smaller ones, have gone to. This is an inspection that
is done by the folks that do hood inspections and fire alarm inspections. We don't do
those. Those are specialized through the state. But this is a piece of software that's
web based again where the business owner can actually go in and view what that
inspector looked at and documented and announces his -- his arrival early. There is a
lot to it that Chief Palmer is going to bring to you in December, so I'm not going to go
into too much detail on it, but I think it's a good thing and the fire departments and the
BCA both support it. So, that's been a huge positive I think that's coming. Public
education. We have been doing employee CPR classes. We are going to continue
that. For FY -15 we are going to look at offering that to our community as well. We think
that's a good use of our resources. The city employee classes have been going very
well, very well received, and we are going to get Councilman Borton here in one soon.
So, we are going to look to expand that to the community and get community CPR out
as well. We know we can save lives by doing that. It's one of the most critical things
you can do to save a life of a heart attack or a cardiac arrest patient. So, looking
forward to that.
De Weerd: Chief, will you be participating in the Go Red Week?
Niemeyer: I e-mailed Chief Jones today and he has got a nasty cold, so I haven't heard
back from him yet. But I know he did make contact with Jessica. He reached out to her
on that.
De Weerd: And I know last year there was legislation passed that -- with the high
schools. Will we be participating in -- in any fashion with the training there?
Niemeyer: I don't believe so. The school systems have brought in their own instructors.
They haven't reached out to us yet to ask for assistance. If they do we absolutely will.
But I know just in my daughter's high school they have their own instructors in the health
classes that have come in to do that. It was a great move I believe. The other area that
we haven't been able to hit on -- and we know that we need to and that's fall education.
Out of our EMS calls falls make up a large percentage of our EMS calls. Typically it's in
the elderly but not always. But we know we can do better in getting education out on
decluttering homes, clearing walkways, just basic things that folks can do to prevent
falls. So, if we can prevent some of those calls from happening that will be a good
thing. So, that's one of the areas we are going to focus on. Developing a tracking
system to capture all public education interactions. And, then, lastly, our smoke
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detector program has been excellent. It's been one that other departments have looked
to say how can we do that. We want to continue that and maintain it. We are in a
maintenance mode with that, but what we do want to do is enhance our carbon
monoxide education. Carbon monoxide continues to be a killer. You still see the
headlines and so that's an area we can get more education out to our community and
our public. So, that will be a high priority for FY -15. And, then, just a couple things.
Administrative support. One of them is one that I know IT is very excited for us to do
and that is to clean up our computer drives. Jaycee is over there doing the happy
dance. Drives tend to be like rabbits and just magically they multiply when you blink
and with drives we tend to put a lot of stuff on those computer drives and pretty soon IT
is asking for me tigabytes or terabytes or whatever they need to have more storage.
So, we are cleaning that up and looking at duplication. That's more of a process for us.
Then moving forward we will keep those drives a little bit cleaner, which will make IT
happier. We are also working on a customer service feedback tool. Emily is going to
be heading this up. We get a lot of feedback from e-mails and from customer comment
cards, but we want to take a more proactive approach in getting feedback from the folks
that we see that we respond to. So, we are putting together a program where that
questionnaire will go out to a random sampling every month of folks that we have gone
on, whether it's a fire call, an EMS call, or just a public service call. Just ask them how
we did. We have about four questions we are going to be asking them. Our goal is to
have excellent service 90 percent of the time or greater, so we want to make sure we
are measuring that and it's one of those key performance indicators we are looking at.
The backside are some updates on what we are doing now. We do have the part-time
public education assistance that you all approved in the budget. That is posted right
now. That will close mid December and we hope to have that person on board the start
of January. Our joint municipal firefighter recruit academy, we started with three.
Unfortunately, we have to report we are down to two. We did have one that wasn't able
to pass the eight week or mid way skills test. They get six opportunities to pass that
and, unfortunately, he couldn't get through it. So, we are down to two on that. The two
are moving forward. They are going great. They had their first live burn last week that I
went and attended and, yeah, they were smiling and very excited to actually get out and
put their skills to use. So, that live burn was in Boise. Their graduation is January 5th
from 11:00 o'clock to 2:00 o'clock. So, hopefully, you can -- you can put that on your
calendar and I will provide a final update at our mid year report. There is going to be
some things there, I'm just not ready to say what they are, because we haven't finished
yet. But by doing this together we know there is some cost savings that I will be
bringing to you in our mid year report. EMS JPA we just had a report on that not too
long ago with Darby here. So, again, in the mid year report I will provide you with any
new updates as the EMS Joint Powers Agreement continues, but it has proven to be
very successful and we are very happy about that. The two other multi -agency
collaborative efforts we have been doing -- we have the officer development program.
That's taking future company officers and we bring them in -- it's about a four month
academy that we put on. It's on their own time, so they are volunteering their time to
come in, but what it does it helps prepare them better for their future jobs as company
officers if they get through it. I have provided you just a copy -- it's the big colorful
spreadsheet here with the agenda for the officer development program. This is
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something I'm pretty proud of. When we came in it's something we wanted to do. We
started doing this here in Meridian by ourselves and, then, we partnered with our -- our
other agencies and now we are doing it together, which is kind of spared some of our
resources and costs. Everything from company officer, emergency operations down is
what we have always done. We have textbooks. We provide them the textbooks. We
cover the textbooks. But everything above that is never covered in preparation for a
company officer test. But those are the issues that, really, they are going to face about
60 percent of the time as a company officer. It's the -- it's the interactions with their
personnel. It's evaluations. It's discipline. It's budgeting. And we feel that this is a
great way to prepare them better as future supervisors in our department. It's been well
received and we have seven different agencies participating right now. All of the folks
that have gone through it, even though they are dedicating a lot of their own time to it,
they have been very pleased with it and very happy with the outcome. So, some we are
very excited about. We also just finished an engineer development program. That was
with Caldwell, Nampa, Star. Again, both of these programs we are actually obligated in
the contract to provide, so if we didn't have these partnerships we would be doing this
by ourselves. And so the partnerships has made it a whole lot easier to bring these
great programs to our future promotions. We do have a promotional ceremony on
December 17th. Certainly want to invite all of you to that. It's at 6:00 p.m. here at the
City Council chambers. And, then, response times, I just want to review what our goals
are as of right now. The other attachment that I have you can thank Todd, he's taught
me how to print off Excel spreadsheets in really small print. Hard to read it.
Bird: I was going to say, you had to have Stacy print that out.
Niemeyer: So, we will be coming back mid year to provide slides and we will go through
that. But just as a reminder what our goals are. The one area that we can affect
greatly, the most -- the biggest area we can affect is what's called turnout time. It's the
time from when the bell goes off to the time that the wheels roll. And the standard that
we have adopted is the national standard and the EMS calls that's 60 seconds. For fire
calls that's 90 seconds and for any cross -manned station, like Station One, that's 120
seconds. And so right now for all calls -- we haven't broken it down yet to EMS and fire,
we are at about 125 seconds, which is pretty Clang close to the goal. So, we will break
that out. We will have a mid year report that will break it out in EMS calls, fire calls, and
we will be able to show you where we are at with that performance. Response as far as
travel time, we are about 47 seconds over our goal right now with travel. A lot of that is
due to road construction, weather, traffic, so we will continue to monitor that and
continue to push improvement in that as well. Overtime, that will be a mid year report. I
have not forgotten about the wager that Councilman Bird and I have. We are watching
that very closely. October wasn't very kind to us. We have got four firefighter vacancies
right now. We have two of those vacancies filled with recruits. With that the next
academy was going to be in the fall. We are trying to push one for the spring, so we
can try and get those two vacancies filled as quickly as we can. We also have three
significant injuries of members that are out eight to 12 weeks with significant surgical
injuries, so that certainly hampers us. Our vacation time and sick time is right in line
with what it -- what it always is. So, with that I will stand for any questions.
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Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Bird.
Bird: On the injuries, were they job related or --
Niemeyer: One was. Two were not.
Bird: What did we have happen?
Niemeyer: We had a dislocated shoulder. We had on off duty knee surgery and I --
Bird: Yeah. I know about that.
Niemeyer: -- can't remember the third off the top of my head.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions from Council? I appreciate this --
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Oh. Sorry. Yes, Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Mark, on the -- I'm curious on the customer feedback. I have always liked those
kind of programs. Do you have any idea how that's going to be set up? I know Emily is
working on it, but is it e-mail, mail, what are you thinking?
Niemeyer: That's what we are working through. We have examined what others have
done, so we are trying to find what's the best way to do it and I don't know if there is just
one way to do it. Everybody communicates a little bit differently, so we have looked at
e-mail, we have looked at web -based program that we would send them the link and
they would offer up their feedback. We have also looked at mailings, which, obviously,
costs money, but some folks feel that's the way they do things. So, we are evaluating
trying to determine what's the best method to get that feedback from them.
De Weerd: You know, I think that the water department uses the customer comment
cards and people are really good about returning those and I think on -- even on the
customer comment cards it does have a link that they can go on and do it online.
Niemeyer: Yeah.
De Weerd: So, you might consider that.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: I think those customer cards are neat, but the customers that they are working
with are under stress at that time, you can give them a card and they are not going to
know where it's at. I think Mark's on the right deal of checking out to whether it's --
whether they mail, which would cost more, but probably give the people that -- because
when we make a call to them they are not calm and collected, I mean it's -- they are
stressed, and that give them time to do it. A lot of people -- especially us older people
aren't real -- we don't get onto the technology like young people do and most of our calls
are --
De Weerd: Some of us.
Bird: -- to older people. So, I think -- I think you're on the -- I think there is one or two
ways, like you said, and I think while it costs a little more, I think maybe the mailing of a
comment card, like the Mayor said, one of those comments cards, but I think if we give
it at the time of service it's just going to get thrown -- people aren't going to even know
what it is.
Niemeyer: Yeah. That's one thing we talked about. It's a great point. There is some
divisions, like our prevention division, that's not under stress, we can hand the card right
then and there. With folks that we go to on calls, fires, EMS, you're right, that's the last
thing they are going to think about and so the follow up would come later.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Mark, I might also suggest a phone call. Somebody doing a phone call survey.
If they sit down and do all of it at once it's not going to take a lot of time. That way you
know if you're getting a hold of people. Probably cost less than mailing everybody
something and a return address -- you know, envelope, because you want them to -- my
point is you want people to send it in or respond, whether they are satisfied or
dissatisfied. Unfortunately, a lot of people are only going to respond if they are
dissatisfied. And so to kind of even the playing field you really want to make sure you
catch everybody.
Niemeyer: Good -- good suggestions. I will take that back.
De Weerd: It's easy to get addresses. It's more difficult to get phone numbers.
Bird: I was going to say, the phone numbers are going to be hard to come by.
De Weerd: But we wish you luck.
Milam: Yes.
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De Weerd: And look forward to hearing what you decide.
B. Public Works: FY15 Engineering Capital & Enhancement Plan
De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-B is under our Public Works Department. I'll turn this over to
Warren. You're not going to go through that whole big thick --
Stewart: Page by page.
De Weerd: Right?
Stewart: No. I'm not going to do that. Apologize if I don't talk as well as I would like. I
have been battling a little bit of a cold. Sometimes it's hard to speak and breathe at the
same time.
Bird: Understand.
Stewart: But this is the fifth year, I think, that we have, essentially, presented a capital
improvement plan here at the city of Meridian. So, I just -- many of you have been here
for that entire time and, you know, I try to make this a little more brief and brief as we go
on. We do have some knew Council members that may not have heard that. I think a
Couple of them were here last year when I presented, even though they weren't Council
members yet. But I will probably go into just a little bit more detail, so that those that
haven't been here before will understand this process, but, don't worry, it's not a long
presentation. I don't remember if this thing still has the slide numbers, but not all those
slides I'm going to go through, so --
Bird: Just get through a hundred, not two.
Stewart: Yeah. No. About five, I think.
Bird: Where is Tom?
Stewart: So, first of all, I want to thank everybody who helped put this document
together. This takes a lot of work and effort from a lot of different people within the
Public Works Department and even other departments to try and gather all of this data
and put this information together. So, I do want to especially give thanks to my staff and
those that helped to put it together. Hopefully it will be informative and helpful. I kind of
want to briefly just go through the purpose of this presentation. I won't read all of these,
but, obviously, for us it's an opportunity for us to give this document to individuals,
especially our City Council members, that helps you guys to, hopefully, understand what
our five year plan is with regards to capital improvements throughout the city and it also
provides some additional detail. Now, one thing I do want to make mention is we now
have a ten year CIP for this sewer division, wastewater. But that's just more of a
summary like you will see in the beginning of this document. This is actually -- the five
year CIP adds a little bit more detailed information on each project. So, if you have a
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question or, you know, concern about a project, you can go to this document and get
additional detail and information. So, there is, basically, two phases in the capital
planning and, essentially, implementation process. We are only going to cover this
planning phase, which is the -- essentially, the project identification, estimating,
prioritization, scheduling, and the preparation of this document. Execution, design, and
construction and so forth, that's -- you know, that's not the discussion for today. The
discussion for the day is, essentially, how we go about preparing this document for you.
First thing is project identification. There is a few different ways that we identify
projects. A lot of these things come out of the master planning efforts that we do. We
try and update those master plans on a five year basis -- every five years. You know,
we hire consultants to help us do that and they identify a lot of these projects. Growth is
another significant driver to what projects are included. Regulatory requirements,
system modeling, we do modeling on the system to determine where we have
weaknesses and those weaknesses need to be addressed. Some of it's agency
coordination with like ACHD and projects that they are going to be doing. And
essentially -- and also infrastructure condition. Oops. Hit the wrong thing. So, on
estimating. I'd kind of like to cover this a little bit. There is some factors that go into
estimating. Public Works construction is -- is interesting. Some of the projects are fairly
straight forward. We know for various different types of water main construction,
whether it be out in a green field or whether it be in a city street or so forth what those
water main costs approximately are. When it comes to some of the wastewater
treatment plant projects, those are rather unique and so finding good information to
estimate the cost on those projects is not always easy to come by and we rely a lot on
our consulting engineering firms, who are doing this type of work in other places to help
us with those cost estimates. We also pull a lot of that cost information out of the
master plans, which is, again, prepared by the professionals that we hire to help
develop those. We look at industry publications. There is various publications from
construction industry and architectural industry that help to provide some information on
cost estimations. We also look at current economic trends and conditions, when the
project is going to be constructed, so we know whether -- what the weather might be.
And also the complexity of the project. But especially when you look at a five year
document like this when there is no specific plan or specifications that are developed,
it's not always easy to develop those cost estimates and the industry standard is those
cost estimates developed on, essentially, ideas or conceptual ideas are -- you try and
shoot for somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of what the actual cost will come out.
So, some of those challenges to that is -- you know, to getting that correct, is,
essentially, the time from the estimate to construction. Even in the first year of this
document, the 2015, which you will see, a lot of times we are putting estimates together
18 months ahead of when we plan to go out for construction and in 18 months
sometimes the construction contractor availability and economy can change fairly
significantly and that can have a real impact on that. Again, unique projects and also
the economic variability provide some challenges to these and so we try and update
these as these projects roll closer and closer and closer, we will try and refine those
numbers and get those more and more accurate. But that does present some
challenges. Next one is prioritizing these projects. There is several factors that go into
prioritizing a project. Regulatory compliance. Growth meeting growth in the city.
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Agency projects. In other words, ACHD project and where they are scheduled and
planned. System efficiencies or for savings, sometimes we schedule those if we have
had, for instance, some -- some projects that take some lift stations offline, because we
can save the upgrades that were necessary with those and also the ongoing operational
costs associated with operating those lift stations. So, sometimes those increase the
priority. Operational control or safety is another factor. .Infrastructure age and also
service level, especially as it relates to fire protection. Scheduling is the next part of
that. So, we are, essentially, trying to develop a schedule for the design and bidding
and construction phase of all these projects. It also has to take into account just -in -time
financing. So, we trying to look down the road and say, okay, how much time is it going
to take for us to do this project and over how many years are we going to have to plan
the financials for this particular project and -- but that can be a little tricky as well, but we
are getting better and better at that I think. And, then, finally, it comes to the document
preparation. We take all of that information -- I think I skipped over one in there. Maybe
it was in sort of the prioritization, but we also have one of the forms in here where we
actually go through and we rank and rate each project according to its impact on
customer service and so forth and so you will see that in the document. But we take all
that information and we assemble it together and we put together this document, which
we refresh every year. It's just an informative document for you. We don't ask you to
adopt it, because, obviously, you can't do that, because it has financial obligations
associated with it. You do that on your annual budget process. We use this piece of
information here to help us develop the enhancements that we provide every year
during the budget process. So, hopefully, that gives you some idea of what goes into
our preparation of the document and also I would stand at this point for any questions
that you might have on this year's CIP.
Bird: Council, any questions for Warren?
Borton: Mr. Vice-president?
Bird: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Warren, can you give me the -- kind of the quick explanation of depreciation
funded versus capital funded? I didn't know that distinction.
Stewart: Yeah. So, essentially, right at this time it doesn't mean anything, other than,
essentially, we are tracking that, because we don't do true depreciation funding within
the city. But one of the things that we try to do in this document is identify those
projects that if we did true depreciation funding or depreciation financing those projects
would be eligible for that type of funding. So, they are, essentially, projects that would
be eligible for depreciation funding if we did depreciation funding, looking down the road
to the time when we may do that kind of effort.
Borton: Okay.
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Stewart: So, it's helpful for us. It, essentially, identifies to you what kinds of projects or
which projects would be eligible for that type of funding if we did it that way.
Borton: Okay. Follow up?
Bird: Go ahead, Mr. Borton
Borton: Is that done by Public Works or by Finance? That distinction.
Stewart: That distinction is done by Public Works. At this point. Because this project --
or this document here is developed, essentially, by Public Works specifically through the
engineering department. So, we identify that. It's, basically, for us right now to sort of
say, okay, let's start keeping track of what we think -- what projects we think would be
depreciation eligible and we will identify that. At some point we believe that will become
helpful in -- that we have on that topic.
Borton: Okay. Thank you.
Bird: Any other questions, Council? I have got a couple for you, Warren.
Stewart: Sure.
Bird: On our last five year one, what percent did we complete or get started? Do you
have any idea? Of our capital improvements that we had planned?
Stewart: As far as the 2014 capital improvements?
Bird: Well, no, the ones we had from 2000 --1 think it was from 2010 or 2009 to 2000 --
the five year plan -- the last five year plan. And I know I'm --
Stewart: Go ahead.
Bird: -- that you don't -- that you weren't here I don't think all that time, but --
Stewart: Well, I have been here for every one of these documents that have ever been
done. That started after -- essentially the year after I started with the city.
Bird: But the other five year plans that -- the capital improvement stuff, do you have any
-- have we done 50 percent of them, completed 50 percent and started another ten
percent or 20 percent? Have any idea?
Stewart: I don't have the statistics.
Bird: Okay.
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Stewart: My guess is that if you went back and you looked at the 2010 CIP and we
looked at the number of projects that were completed out of that, it would be much more
significant than 50 percent.
Bird: I knew it would be. I just threw that out.
Stewart: Part of the issue is as you go forward there is some projects that we have
identified five years out from now that at -- we will learn more in the next three or four
years. Some of those projects will actually fall off and we will decide, you know, that
one may not be necessary and they will drop out of the CIP. The vice -versa also
happens. Somewhere in the next four years I'm sure there are projects that will pop up
in the CIP that we have not brought in there now, because there will be issues that will
come up that we have to address that we just don't know about at this point. So, I
couldn't -- you know, with those things in mind I couldn't really tell you what that number
is, but my, you know, gut feeling is that it's -- it's a fairly high percentage overall. They
don't -- not a lot of projects fall out and a lot of new ones come in, but -- but I don't have
the statistics.
Bird: And I appreciate that, because -- and you guys do do it. And one other follow-up
question. I know the costing of these projects is being done by your consultants mostly;
right?
Stewart: Much of it is. Certainly on the significant projects.
Bird: I know some of it -- in our day we -- when we'd go back ten years to see what --
like in the glass business how much it cost a square foot in 1990 compared to 1992, so
in 2000 we had a pretty good idea of the project would be -- in 2000 what it was going to
cost over the average. Is there any way we can do that? Because, to be truthful with
you, I can't think of a single big project the last two years that haven't had an add
addendum or an add -- change order -- change order come back for a budget
amendment is what I'm trying to get across.
Stewart: Councilman Bird, Councilmen, we have had a lot of projects. In fact, we
haven't had to do -- most of the projects we don't have to do budget amendments on.
Some projects we have to do change orders on, but we have had several projects we
haven't had to do change orders on. I can think of several of them this year that we had
deductive change orders, where we actually had costs that came in lower than the
contract that was originally let. So, we have a, you know, variety that come from a lot of
different places. Most of the time the change orders that come in are not a result of,
you know, essentially, estimates that are out of line or whatever the case may be,
unfortunately, to coin a phrase that a consultant of ours often uses -- and Kyle will get a
kick out of this -- we so have a discovery environment. Most of the work that we do is
underground. You can't go out and look at it. You cannot see what you don't -- what's
under there. And in some situations we know that information prior fairly well. If you're
talking about a brand new development out in, you know, green field conditions is you're
not likely to run into a whole lot of surprises. You start working in the downtown corridor
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or you start working out at the wastewater treatment plant where things were built 40,
50, 60, even 70 years ago, when records weren't kept --
Bird: We haven't been out there that long.
Stewart: Some of the downtown stuff has.
Bird: Oh, yeah. But not out at the wastewater.
Stewart: Those things that we constantly run into that we simply do not know and could
not anticipate. Even site conditions, soil conditions, vary across a single site. So, you
will have some situations where we can go out and drill a test hole and the test hole
says, you know what, you're not going to encounter poor soil conditions and that will
work for a hundred feet of line and, then, low and behold, the next hundred feet that --
that's not even the same and we run into the soil conditions that are dramatically
different than -- and we have to make changes as a result of that. We can make some
pretty good estimates on certain types of projects, because those numbers and that
information are well known. When you start talking about a IFAS project out at the
wastewater treatment plant, there might be one other project like that in the state of
Idaho that's ever been done. So, coming up with good estimates on that is not as easy
as going to, you know, square footage costs from past projects. So, hopefully, that
answers your question.
Bird: I understand. Thanks, Warren. Appreciate it. You can have it back. I think that's
it.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions?
Stewart: Thank you.
C. Program Year 2013 Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) Action Plan Amendment
De Weerd: Thank you, Warren. Item 7-C is under our Community Development office.
Hood: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's my pleasure to
introduce to you Sean Kelly. Sean actually started with us this last summer as an intern
and he is now our CDBG administrator, taking over for Lori Den Hartog. Lori left us in
late August and Shawn has filled those shoes nicely so far. He is a quick study and a
great asset to -- to Community Development. So, before I turn the mike over to him
fully, I just wanted to let you know of a couple other housekeeping items. You may or
may not know, but Kristy Vigil is no longer in Community Development, in Planning.
She has moved up to the third floor, part of Dave Tiede's team now.
De Weerd: Did you hear that? Moved up in the world.
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Hood: I didn't say in the world, just in the building, so -- so, we have a vacancy right
now. Assistant planner right now is currently open in our department. And, then, Justin
Lucas is actually leaving us. This Friday is going to be his last day. So, that position is
also going to be open here after the first of the week, so -- with that I just wanted to kind
of give you a heads up on those couple of things and I will turn it over to Sean. So,
thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. And I will say that just on behalf of Justin, Justin is going back
to Ada County Highway District as their planning manager. It's -- it's a nice move up for
him. Justin certainly was a great asset for our city and we certainly want to wish him
well and just extend our appreciation to what he has been able to do as he's been with
the city with our heartfelt thanks.
Bird: Amen.
De Weerd: So, thank you, Sean. We appreciate this is your inaugural presentation.
Kelly: Indeed, Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, just a little bit of
back story on me, so that you're aware. I might look a little bit old to be an intern with
planning over the summer. I am a Gen Xer and that actually came from -- I'm a retired
army sergeant first class. Disability retired in 2009. Had to find a new career, because
killing Bagdaddies and those types of things don't really translate well to CDBG.
De Weerd: We just thought that working in community development ages you rapidly.
Kelly: It could have been that, Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Oh. There you go.
Kelly: But thank you for that.
De Weerd: Thank you for being here.
Kelly: Absolutely. Madam Mayor, Members of Council, this is -- you should have had a
memo. That memo should have elucidated on the issues of the Centennial Park ADA
restroom and the issues that we had with that. I tried to put this into one slide, which is
pretty much a summary of what that memorandum was, to bring your attention to a
couple of key points. The funds that we have available are the obligated funds from
prior years. We do have funds every year that tend to move to next year and we need
to spend those funds in the year that they are spent. This is a 2000 year -- or season --
project year 2013 project. This is 2011 funds that we are planning on using for that.
We have consulted with HUD. HUD has said that this is an appropriate and authorized
increase in use of these funds. This is a minor amendment, which means it does not
trigger our citizen participation plan. That means we don't have to go through the 50
days citizen participation process, the public process, and we have a resolution that's
already been drafted. We did this very quickly and that's ready for your approval next
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November 12, 2014
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week on a consent agenda if you do approve this and staff is recommending approval.
And I will stand for any questions.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Sean, is -- is any of this money the money that MDC turned back for -- for fagade
over at the rec -- city community center?
Kelly: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, I think that this money is left over from admin
from 2011. 1 can -- I can check on that. I don't have those numbers. I have the
actual --
Bird: Well, they returned that back and I -- they were going to use it to do the facade or
something on the community center over there and I would have no problem with that --
that 7,000 taken there. I think this is great. It's got to be done and as long as the boys
from the fund don't have no problem with it, I'm for it a hundred percent.
Kelly: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, that money that we are talking about from the
MDC project, I think most of that was actually the Idaho sidewalks project that we have
actually planned now and I think that's where they got leverage to put that into the 2015.
Bird: I think you're right.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Cavener
Cavener: A couple just quick comments. Sean, welcome aboard. Thanks for your
service. We are happy to have you here. Appreciate you doing your due diligence on
this and making sure that -- that these funds were appropriate. I think it's important to --
I know Councilman Bird and myself often get hesitant when we start going into these
projects about if it's going to trip Davis -Bacon wages and I appreciate you looking into
assure that that's not going to happen and I just want to thank you for reaching out and
making confirmation that this qualifies for the CDBG program. So, no questions, just
more of a comment. Appreciate your hard work.
De Weerd: Thank you. Any other comments? Questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Seeing no additional questions or comments, I assume we need a vote to
approve this amendment?
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Bird: You mean to bring the resolution forward?
Cavener: So, we don't need to vote on anything tonight. Okay. Never mind, then.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you.
Kelly: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council.
Bird: Thank you.
D. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates
De Weerd: Okay. Under 7-D, Council, we will start with Mr. Zaremba and would
appreciate any updates to the Council that you have on your various activities with
representatives for the city.
Zaremba: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The most activity that is out of the ordinary is
probably at Valley Regional Transit where the -- the committee to design a potential
Meridian bus service is active. We do expect to be able to come before this Council
probably end of February, early March, to discuss budget implications and anything that
we may need to do and get some direction from the Council of how -- how we proceed
at that time, but we do hope to have a plan. The Saturday service is being used. I
learned some days better than others. It does have its ups and downs. It's not
necessarily all unaccompanied youth. There are quite a few families that are using it
and of those that know about it's well received and we often hear the comments how do
you get more people to -- to know about this and that's always the challenge. But we
are making progress on -- on planning the next step and preparing to come before the
Council, as I say, late February, early March, and see if we are going to take a next
step. That will be the discussion.
De Weerd: And just a special note. It is the Saturday fun bus not this -- was it this last
Saturday? Time sure flies. We had I think 26 MYAC'ers riding the fun bus and I don't
know if you have seen the video that one of the members put together, but -- so, if you
haven't you really need to take a look at it.
Zaremba: I have not. Where would that be?
De Weerd: We will send it to you.
Zaremba: Cool.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor, I don't have anything probably too new or substantive to provide
you. You have heard from Public Works and what they are undergoing. I'm meeting
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November 12, 2014
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with Finance I believe the week of the 24th of November to circle back on some of the
budget discussions and maybe some process improvements to line out for the spring
that might help next year go even better.
De Weerd: And I will thank all of the Council Members. They have each attended one
of the director meetings and given feedback on their thoughts in making that budget
process better, so thank you. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Madam Mayor. First of all, MDC, which I'm a member of, they give their
presentation today, so I don't need to add anything to that. My attorney office keeps
doing their good job as usual and Bill and Ted and Emily and Mrs. Pogue and the chief
one Michelle, do a great job for us and get everything done on time and our police
department, you already got a report on some of that, but I went out and looked at the
buildings the other day by myself and walked around. We are getting a beautiful job out
there and it's -- a lot of it's thanks to Lieutenant Leslie and we continue to be the best
law enforcement department in the state of Idaho, if not the United States in my book.
Thank you guys, all your employees.
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I have a three page report for the fire department. Oh, wait. Mark already
covered that. So, HR, they have been working on open enrollment. They are working
on reviews and merit and they had a -- their off-site to review priorities for next year.
The arts commission -- we held a special meeting last week to select artists for the
gallery for 2015. They didn't -- some amazing artwork also we work also. But there
were not enough entries to fill the year, so Dwight Williams is working on that, if
anybody knows somebody they think would be a good asset for a gallery showing next
year, get in touch with Dwight Williams. I think we should also challenge our youth
member to see if we can do a youth exhibit or we even work with the school district on
the -- the program they already have and see if they want to put it on display here as
well.
Milam: Madam Mayor, a youth member is coordinating a month with --
De Weerd: Very good.
Milam: She's at Renaissance and it's her school or possibly collaborating -- yeah,
different -- other high schools, but she's kind of taken that project on. It's really
awesome. But there is still room for --
De Weerd: Very good. Thank you.
Cavener: Just a couple brief points to note. Last week in the Parks Department they
celebrated the ribbon cutting for Eighth Street Park. I was able to attend and I know a
few of you all were able to attend. I'm excited to have that park officially reopened. In
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November 12, 2014
Page 39 of 43
addition, while not officially open, the tennis courts at Settlers are finished up and
according to Steve are already being used heavily.
De Weerd: Yes, they are.
Cavener: And I think they are going to wait in light of the temperature condition, we will
wait to have a ribbon cutting in the spring when we can go out and actually enjoy a
game. Caleb stole a little bit of my thunder, but Kristy Vigil has moved up to IT and I
think that is a -- a huge asset to the IT department. A loss for community development,
but, you know, IT touches our employees lives more than probably any other
department and she is a great asset to the city and to the department and I know that IT
is lucky to have her.
De Weerd: Thank you so much. We are appreciate your -- your reports. And I just
wanted to say that I appreciated the opportunity to travel to Denver and attend the Peak
Academy where we did an extensive training in LEAN and learning more about tools to
identify and eliminate waste to reduce redundancies and find better efficiencies. We are
bringing back the tools that we learned and deploying them first in Public Works. Public
Works will be our guinea pig. They are already using some of these tools and so we
saw that as the best way to integrate that into city practices. It was extremely
interesting and helpful, really stressed a process that I have already discussed with
several of our department directors. They have all expressed interest and intrigue as to
how they can learn from many of the things that we learned about at the Peak
Academy. So, if -- if you want to know more I have an abundance of information and a
lot of examples as to how the ringing approach really has been utilized in other
communities. It's just catching on, but it's -- there is a lot that can be done in improving
our processes. So -- so, thank you again for your department reports. We have already
heard 7-E.
F. Amended onto the agenda: Parks Department: Recreational
Pathway Easement — Cottonwood Development for Vicenza
Estates
G. Amended onto the agenda: Public Works Development: Water
Main Easement — Cottonwood Development for Vicenza
Estates
De Weerd: 7-F and G were added to the agenda. This was requested to be put on by
myself through the process and I would like to -- to make a special call out to Michelle in
the attorney's office. She really showed how walking it through the process and getting
it taken care of was greatly appreciated. So, if you will, please, extend my appreciation
to Michelle.
Nary: I will do that.
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November 12, 2014
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De Weerd: Thank you. So, do we need to discuss this or this was just put in this place
because it was new?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Member of the Council, I think if you wanted to I think Jay is here
from parks and planning, but, basically, these were fairly routine easements. There was
some discrepancy as to how long we had been -- had them in the city and why and all
that. We had some contacts with the property owner on Friday, so it was after the
deadline, so that's why it didn't make the agenda initially when we became aware of it.
We did process it as quickly as possible. I think they are a fairly routine item. I don't
know that there is any -- anything unique about them, but he wanted to get them done
quickly for a variety of reasons and it wasn't a problem to add it, so we were okay with
that.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Anything?
Bird: I have nothing, Mayor.
De Weerd: Okay. I would entertain any motion.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I move that we approve the recreational pathway easement for Cottonwood
Development for the Vicenza Estates.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 7-F. Any discussion from
Council?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes:
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
De Weerd: Item 7-G.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
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November 12, 2014
Page 41 of 43
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we approve the easement for a water main easement at Cottonwood
Development with Vicenza Estates.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 7-G. Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 8: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 14-1629: An Ordinance (AZ 12-013 Locust
Grove Water Reservoir #2) for Annexation and Rezone of a
Parcel of Land Located in the NW 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of Section
29, Township 3, Range 1 East, Boise Meridian, Ada County,
Idaho and Determining the Land Use Zoning Designation
Classification of Said Lands from RUT to R-4 (Low Density
Residential District) in the Meridian City Code; and Providing
an Effective Date
De Weerd: Item 7-A is Ordinance 14-1629. Madam Clerk, will you, please, read that by
title only.
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 14-1629, an
Ordinance AZ 12-013, Locust Grove Water Reservoir No. 2 for annexation and rezone
of a parcel of land located in the northwest one quarter of the northwest one quarter of
Section 29, Township 3 North, Range 1 East, Boise meridian, Ada County, Idaho, as
described in Attachment A, and annexing certain lands and territories situated in Ada
County, Idaho, and adjacent and contiguous to the corporate limits of the city of
Meridian, as requested by the City of Meridian, establishing and determining the land
use zoning classification of said land from RUT to R-4, Low Density Residential District,
in the Meridian City Code, providing that copies of this ordinance shall be filed with the
Ada County Assessor, the Ada County Recorder, and the Idaho State Tax Commission,
as required by law, and providing for a summary of the ordinance and providing for a
waiver of the reading rules and providing an effective date.
De Weerd: You have heard this ordinance read by title. Is there anyone who would like
to hear it read in its entirety? Frank says no.
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 42 of 43
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Seeing none, I move that we approve Ordinance No. 14-1629 with suspension
of rules.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 8-A. Madam Clerk, will you
call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
B. Ordinance No. 14-1630: An Ordinance (RZ 14-004 — Citadel II
Self Storage Facility) For The Re -Zone Of A Parcel Of Land
Located In The SW Y4 Of Section 21, Township 3 North, Range
1 East, Boise Meridian, City Of Meridian, Ada County Idaho;
Establishing And Determining The Land Use Zoning
Classification Of R-4 (Low Density Residential) Zoning District
To C -C (Community Business) Zoning District In The Meridian
City Code; And Providing An Effective Date
De Weerd: Item 8-B is Ordinance 14-1630. Madam Clerk, will you read that by title
only.
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 14-1630, an
Ordinance AZ 14-004, Citadel II Self -Storage Facility, for the rezone of a parcel of land
located in the southwest one quarter of Section 21, Township 3 North, Range 1 East,
Boise meridian, City of Meridian, Ada County, Idaho, establishing and determining the
land use zoning classification of R-4 Low Density Residential Zoning District to C -C,
Community Business Zoning District in the Meridian City Code, providing that copies of
this ordinance shall be filed with the Ada County Assessor, the Ada County Recorder
and the Idaho State Tax Commission as required by law and providing for a summary of
the ordinance and providing for a waiver of the reading rules and providing an effective
date.
De Weerd: You have heard this item read by title only. Any interest in hearing it read?
No?
Milam: Madam Mayor?
Meridian City Council Workshop
November 12, 2014
Page 43 of 43
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I move that we approve Ordinance No. 14-1630 with suspension of rules.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 8-B. Madam Clerk will you
call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea;
Cavener, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 9: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Item 9 is Future Meeting Topics. Council, any items for future agendas?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. Seeing none.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we adjourn.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. All
ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:05 P.M.
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