HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-12-09E IDIAN-^' CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP
MEETING AGENDA
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue
Meridian, Idaho
Tuesday, December 09, 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 November 25, 2014 City Council Meeting
B. Approve Minutes of December 2, 2014 City Council Meeting
C. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: AZ 14-011 Jump Creek
by Northside Management Located Northwest Corner of N. Black Cat Road
and W. McMillan Road Request: Annexation of Approximately 86.06 Acres
from RUT in Ada County to the R-8 (Medium Density Residential) (64.63
Acres) and R-15 (Medium High -Density Residential) (21.43 Acres) Zoning
Districts
D. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: PP 14-013 Jump Creek
Located Northwest Corner of N. Black Cat Road and W. McMillan Request:
Preliminary Plat Approval Consisting of 318 Single Family Residential Lots,
2 Multi -Family Lots and 42 Common Lots on Approximately 85.9 Acres in
the Proposed R-8 and R-15 Zoning Districts
E. First Addendum to Ada County Highway District (ACHD) Interagency
License Agreement
F. Resolution No. 14-1035: A Resolution Approving an Extension of the Lease
Agreement Between the City of Meridian (Lessor) and Congressman Raul
Labrador (Lessee) for a Two Year Lease Term Extension for Approximately
1,812 Square Feet of Office Space at the Meridian City Hall, 33 East
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, December 09, 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.
Broadway, Meridian, Idaho to be used for a Local Congressional Staff
Office.
G. FY2014 Community Development Block Grant Funding Approval
Agreement
5. Community Items/Presentations
A. Idaho Smart Growth presentation: City Areas of Impact and Annexation
(Pg. 3-10)
B. Finance Department: Utility Billing Software Replacement (Pg. 20-24)
6. Items Moved From Consent Agenda None
7. Action Items
A. Public Hearing: Proposed Winter 2014-2015 Fee Schedule of the Meridian
Parks and Recreation Department (Pg. 24-25)
B. Resolution No. 14-1036: A Resolution Adopting the Winter 2014-2015 Fee
Schedule of the Meridian Parks and Recreation Department; Authorizing
the Meridian Parks and Recreation Department to Collect Such Fees; and
Providing an Effective Date Approved (Pg. 25-26)
8. Department Reports
A. Information Services Department: Department Update (Pg. 10-20)
B. Fire Department Report: Compliance Engine (Pg. 26-35)
C. Public Comment: Compliance Engine — Web Based Reporting Software (Pg.
35-38)
D. Public Works: Meridian Floodplain Administration & Community Rating
System (CRS) (Pg. 38-44)
E. Meridian Parks and Recreation Department: Rail With Trail Arterial
Crossing Design Study Presentation by Project Engineering Consultants
(PEC) (Pg. 44-49)
F. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates (Pg. 49-51)
9. Ordinances
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, December 09, 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.
A. Ordinance No. 14-1634: An Ordinance (RZ 13-010 — Three Corners
Subdivision) For The Re -Zone Of A Three Parcels Of Land Located In The
NW 1/40f The NW '/40f Section 29, Township 4 North, Range 1 East, Boise
Meridian; Establishing And Determining The Land Use Zoning
Classification Of C -C (Community Business District), R-4 (Low Density
Residential), And R-8 (Medium Density Residential) Zoning Districts In The
Meridian City Code; And Providing An Effective Date Approved (Pg. 51-52)
10. Future Meeting Topics
Adjourned at 5:52 p.m. (Pg. 52)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda — Tuesday, December 09, 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 December 9, 2014
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:03 p.m., Tuesday,
December 9, 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, Jeff Lavey, Mark Niemeyer, Perry Palmer, Jay Gibbons, 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: Okay. I will go ahead and call our meeting to order. Thank you so much for
joining us today and I'd like to make a special welcome to Council Woman Clegg. It's
always nice to see one of our neighboring city elected officials at our meetings. So, thank
you for joining us. For the record it is Tuesday, December 9th. It's a few minutes after
3:00. We will start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Thank you. Item No. 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 Item 4-F, the resolution -- proposed resolution number is 14-1035. We have
been requested to move Item 8-A up to 5-A-2, right behind 5-A. Under 7-13 the proposed
resolution is 14-1036. And under 9-A, the ordinance proposed resolution -- Ordinance
number is 14-1642 and with that I move we approve the agenda as amended.
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 2 of 52
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as amended and for the
record Councilman Borton joined us. So, Council, all those in favor say aye. Any
opposed?
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of November 25, 2014 City Council Meeting
B. Approve Minutes of December 2, 2014 City Council Meeting
C. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: AZ 14-011
Jump Creek by Northside Management Located Northwest
Corner of N. Black Cat Road and W. McMillan Road Request:
Annexation of Approximately 86.06 Acres from RUT in Ada'
County to the R-8 (Medium Density Residential) (64.63 Acres)
and R-15 (Medium High -Density Residential) (21.43 Acres)
Zoning Districts
D. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: PP 14-013
Jump Creek Located Northwest Corner of N. Black Cat Road and
W. McMillan Request: Preliminary Plat Approval Consisting of
318 Single Family Residential Lots, 2 Multi -Family Lots and 42
Common Lots on Approximately 85.9 Acres in the Proposed R-8
and R-15 Zoning Districts
E. First Addendum to Ada County Highway District (ACHD)
Interagency License Agreement
F. Resolution No. 14-1035: A Resolution Approving an Extension of
the Lease Agreement Between the City of Meridian (Lessor) and
Congressman Raul Labrador (Lessee) for a Two Year Lease
Term Extension for Approximately 1,812 Square Feet of Office
Space at the Meridian City Hall, 33 East
Broadway, Meridian, Idaho to be used for a Local Congressional
Staff Office.
G. FY2014 Community Development Block Grant Funding Approval
Agreement
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda.
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 3 of 52
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: As stated earlier, Item 4-F, the resolution number is 14-1035 and with that I move
we approve the Consent 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 as read.
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 5: Community Items/Presentations
A. Idaho Smart Growth presentation: City Areas of Impact and
Annexation
De Weerd: Item 5-A under Community Presentation is a presentation by Idaho Smart
Growth and would welcome Council Woman Clegg to the stand.
Clegg: Thank you. Well, thank you for inviting me today and -- can you hear if me I -- if I
do this? Okay. Council Member Zaremba asked if I could come today and talk to you
about the area of city impact study and tool kit that Idaho Smart Growth produced a few
years ago. I know that you all have been struggling with area of city impact boundary
dispute with one of your neighbors and if it's any consolation, you're not the only one
around the state. However, having said that, there is -- there is varying issues around the
state. Some mirroring yours and some different. But, first of all, I'd like to just introduce
the area of city impact study and tool kit that Idaho Smart Growth worked on a few years
ago. So, in 2010 Idaho Smart Growth -- actually, in 2009 Idaho Smart Growth partnered
with the University of Idaho and ULI and APA Idaho and some others on developing an
analysis of the Local Land Use Planning Act and out of that analysis it became pretty clear
that one of the things in the act that wasn't working as intended or working as well as -- as
people hoped was the area of city impact and the process around it. So, Idaho Smart
Growth followed up on the initial analysis by putting together another team of partners to
specifically look at that area of city impact with a survey and some focus groups and some
analysis beyond the Comprehensive Plan that we had already analyzed and look at how
urban policy areas could better work. So, that second group -- folks that were at the table
were pretty broad, you know, this is work that we know needs to have a broad look if
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 4 of 52
you're going to find consensus positions that might work for everyone. We included Gem
county, because they have kind of an interesting situation over there. I don't know if you
all are familiar with it, but they have a planner who works for both the city of Emmett and
the county. Brad job shares, essentially, between the two and because of that unique
position they have a process and a relationship that's a little bit closer and less
contentious than some. Kind of hard to fight with yourself.
Zaremba: I would comment that he's a former planning and zoning employee of the City
of Meridian --
Clegg: That's right.
Zaremba: -- before he went onto that position. Very fine man.
Clegg: Yeah. So, anyway, Brad -- Brad was a great resource. So, what this second
analysis looked at was both the Idaho Land Use Planning Act, but also the annexation
laws around it and, of course, you all know that areas of city impact are supposed to be
established through trade areas, geographic factors and areas that can reasonably expect
to be annexed in the city in the future. What you will notice this doesn't say is anything
about providing services and as we did our analysis that factor became more apparent.
So, why is this important? I'm probably preaching to the choir here. You guys know it.
But it's important because we have got -- most cities in the state are surrounded by
farmland. That farmland itself is a valuable resource. In many cases the farmland is
developed in ways or in places where maybe it doesn't need to be and we could keep that
productive resource and also have the houses. In other cases there is little thought given
to the folks who are left who are continuing to farm or use their lands productively and the
impact it has on them to have nearby residents. You all know that providing services for
these areas is an expensive deal. Planning for providing those services is an expensive
deal and it probably won't surprise you that what we found was that especially sewer
service is one of those things that ends up becoming a bone of contention and ends up
becoming an investment that someone has made that they think they need to recoup on in
order to make it worthwhile, which is true, but without -- without joint planning, then, those
areas become disputed and I think that's what you're facing. We also know it's important
to plan for orderly growth, so that our citizens have a good quality of life, have a place
where people can get around safely and where destinations are near enough by that we
don't create more traffic congestion, more air quality problems. So, for all of these
reasons areas of city impact are important. So, what did we do? Well, we looked at the
frame of the code that says encourage urban and urban type development to occur within
incorporated cities. We see across the state that in some cases that's not happening. We
compiled examples in a database of areas of city impact agreements. We began that
work and, then, the University of Idaho law school took it over, the third year students that
are here in Boise, and I -- I didn't include the link to that study, but if you go on Idaho
Smart Growth's site there is a link to the study of all of the area of city impact agreements
that they looked at. We also identified some policy outcomes that we think are important
and, again, this was through surreys and focus groups and a look at all of those AOI
agreements. So, providing predictability to landowners in relation to future growth and
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
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timing and location of that growth is certainly an important factor. Urban growth should
occur where city services are available to be provided. The cost of services, if -- you
know, if growth happens in places where it wasn't originally planned for it's probably not
going to be very sustainable from a cost benefit analysis. If done well and done right we
found that area of city impact agreements can act as a disincentive for development in
unincorporated areas and have development occur in a more orderly way only within
incorporated areas and we can better align land use and transportation planning, as well
as other service provision planning. There is more accountability and consistency
between regional and city plans and you can protect important resources like agriculture
on critical lands. One of the things that we identified really needs some work is the
responsibilities for planning and decision making in AOI's, which is not very clear today
and needs to be clarified. And, then, finally, preservation of agricultural land came up
again and again, so we pulled it out as a final thing. This -- none of this is news to you,
but maybe it helps to know that you're not the only one. So, what did we hear? We heard
that the majority feel state law is not adequate in its intent or direction to cities and
counties. So, again, no surprises, but, you know, you're not -- you're in the same boat
with a lot of other folks. That process is filled with a lot of conflict for a lot of jurisdictions.
I don't know how these ended up out of order. Sorry. There is a lot of issues and
tensions around area of city impact and especially around annexation. There is a wide
range of how -- how expansions are planned around the state. The majority felt that
annexation shouldn't happen outside areas of city impact, although that's happening. It's
important to include affected land owners in the decision making process and if we can
find agreement that developed -- urban development belongs in cities and it's helpful for
planning overall and, then, finally, areas of city impact should be based on the ability to
provide services within a realistic time frame. So, we talked about sewer and often sewer
becomes a contentious thing and the reason that people abrogate area of city impact
boundaries and this has happened in various ways across the state. What isn't real clear
is the other service provisions. So, I'm going to give you some examples of what's
happening in other places how that's being affected. First I will talk about some of the
options that we came up with for how to impact this. We believe there should be a review
of the Local Land Use Planning Act for any potential changes, clarification, examine,
maybe, for instance, what should go into the area of city impact criteria beyond those
three that we talked about. At APA Idaho this year there was a broad agreement among
the groups who came to the session on this that, in fact, that was something we should do
and they are interested in pursuing some kind of a process to do that over the next year or
so. We also felt like it was important to compile the cost of community services data and
any fiscal impact analysis that's been done across the state and see if there is anything
there to be gained that would inform how to make these decisions and I will get back to
that in just a minute about how that might help you. Sorry. And, then, finally, review
annexation laws for any potential changes and clarification. I think that's in part why I'm
here today, because you all have determined that maybe that's -- that's the place that you
would like to go first and, who knows, maybe that's possible. So, hopefully, this is clear
enough that you can see it. This is Idaho Falls. Idaho Falls and Ammon, Iona, Ucon,
Lincoln are all surrounded by Bonneville county. Bonneville county has its own sewer
system, which is pretty unusual around the state, but because it has its own sewer system
it has been approving development outside of city limits in many places where the cities
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
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weren't ready to provide services yet. Well, Bonneville county doesn't have water service,
they don't have police service, although they have a sheriffs department, we know that
they are probably using city taxpayer dollars to help service the sheriffs department to
serve these areas. They don't have a library system. The fire service is somewhat spotty
depending on what district it's in and so while they are able to provide sewer service, the
rest of what you consider municipal services are particularly available, at least as a
package. So, as a result the areas in gray, as you see them here, are the southwestern
boundary of Idaho Falls. Everything in gray is inside the city limits. The green line is the
area of city impact boundary and everything in red is -- has approved development by the
county on it. Now, the county would like to see Idaho Falls go ahead and annex the lands
that they have already approved for development and if you follow southwest Boise you
know how difficult that has been. Bonneville county is also unwilling to talk to Idaho Falls
about expanding its area of city impact boundary and, in fact, would like to do a trunk, so
that they can provide even more of the sewer service and yet the sewer itself is proving
not to be very sustainable, because they have to extend lines so far that the fees that they
are charging, which has now been capped, are really unable to keep up with the long-term
maintenance needs on those lines. So, Idaho Falls is feeling really boxed in and, frankly,
right now are annexing outside of their area of city impact boundary, because those are
the lands that make the most sense for them to annex. So, any change in the law that
would prohibit them from doing that would make it very difficult for them to respond in any
sensible way to the conditions that they are facing right now. They feel like that would be
a really -- really tough thing for them. The county -- they had a dispute, if you look on their
eastern boundary, with Ammon, at one time they did ultimately figure out a solution to that
short of going to court, but it came very close to that. They ended up with an agreement
that they are both willing to abide by and they have since. Go to another B county,
Bonner county way up north, we have a little bit different situation. So, we have the cities
of Sandpoint, Dover, and Pend Orielle, Kootenai all side by side. The bottom slide with
the red lines is the area of city impact boundaries. The city of Dover only has 549 people.
If you look at the area that it encompasses compared to the area of the city of Sandpoint,
which has about 7,000 people, you can see that it is pretty sparsely populated and almost
none of it has urban services. Dover annexed much of this in an attempt to stop
Sandpoint from growing to the west and ultimately Sandpoint did take them to court and
ultimately the judge did order mediation. They were able to come to an agreement that at
least they have both been able to live with it. It's not a great agreement, but all of them tell
me that it's better than what they had previously, which was no agreement and everybody
just annexing willy-nilly to try and get the -- their foot in the door first. I'm not suggesting
that litigation is the best solution, but it is a solution that's been tried in Idaho. It did
ultimately work and at least for now the -- the cities there, instead of fighting each other,
have decided to band together and go to the county collectively and try to come up with
some more sensible area of city impact boundaries that they can all jointly agree on. So,
it was a long, contentious process. Ultimately it's -- it's led to them cooperating more
closely than they did previously. So, now we have area -- and I -- if I have this wrongly
outlined I apologize. I tried to call Bruce today. I think I have it about right and so I wasn't
able to double-check it. But here is the area that you guys have in dispute with Kuna -- at
least one of the waterways that runs through it in blue. I know there is at least one more
waterway that runs through it. I wasn't sure which one you were all talking about for
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 7 of 52
potentially using as a boundary. So, I guess I'd like to suggest that while changes to the
annexation law at the state level might solve your problem in the short term, it might have
unintended consequences for some other folks and I'm not sure will solve everybody's
problem in the long term. I think long term we are going to have to have this larger
conversation statewide, at least that's, you know, from everything -- everyone we have
talked to that's probably the solution, see if we can come to some consensus changes
potentially in the annexation chapter that you all have focused on, but also potentially in
the local land use chapter and in the criteria that goes into creating an area of city impact
boundary. In the short term I guess, you know, what's the way forward for you? I think
you have some choices. One of the things I know you use as an impact analysis tool --
and I wonder if there is maybe a potential if there would be agreement on Kuna's part to
use it -- to use that tool to do an analysis of that disputed area, do some scenarios
assigning various parts of it either way and see what the outcome is and see if that would
help inform anybody and make for a better decision. I -- you know, again, I don't know,
but I'm just suggesting that might be a path forward. Mediation, if there is a way to come
to mediation short of court would be I think a great solution if -- if Kuna would -- would
agree to it. Of course you could go the route of Sandpoint. I don't know if that's a great
solution, but -- but also that there was an example of that having happened in the state
and changes to the annexation law. I think, you know, those are rightly on the table. You
should be thinking about ways to protect your own investments, recognize that those
changes at least right now are not widely supported across the state and may likely have
some opposition. Don't know for sure. And, then, finally, offer that ultimately over the
long term, if you use the tool kit that you receive, Idaho and ISG and ULI develop together
or some other method to come to a broader, longer term conversation with both the
county and Kuna and yourself, ultimately maybe Boise and Eagle as part of that, you
know, maybe -- maybe that's a better longer term solution. So, you know, I don't know
that there is a lot of new information here, but maybe information that at least gets you
thinking in ways that potentially you hadn't been thinking so far. With that I would stand
for questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Elaine. Any questions from Council?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Elaine, you have mentioned a suggestion or maybe alluded to that it's going to
take a lot of municipalities across the state to come together to discuss this. What's that
trigger point going to be to get people to come together to talk bit it? I mean you have
provided here some great examples that I would say, boy, that seems to be the reason we
all need to get together and yet it hasn't happened and so I'm curious, based on your
expertise, why has this not happened and what's it going to take before we are willing to
get together and talk about it?
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 8 of 52
Clegg: Well, I would say it's been bubbling on the back burner. The surveys that we did
in 2010 and 2011 we heard a lot of what I shared with you and, frankly, your action to
bring forward say proposed changes in law is getting a lot of attention. I think that's a
good thing, because I think that attention ultimately might lead to this process. I would
also say that over the last two years, after we finished this tool kit Idaho Smart Growth and
ULI and University of Idaho have offered presentations at the Association of Idaho Cities,
at the Idaho Association of Counties and APA Idaho at ULI and in each of those forums
the consensus was that we needed a process to come together and see if we could find a
solution. I think part of what it will take to make that happen is especially AIC and the IAC
making a commitment to it and making sure that it does happen. But I would say absent
the other groups and absent the realtors and absent the building contractors, it's probably
not likely to be successful. So, it's not short term. I think that's the other thing, it's a big
undertaking and I think, you know, people rightly know that and they are, oh, boy, do I
have to do this. I think -- personally I think we are at a point where we have to do it and I
think our -- over the last week I have talked to six other counties and municipalities trying
to gather information for this and I would say all six of them would agree that we are at the
point we need to do it.
Cavener: Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I -- I did learn some things
from it.
Clegg: Well, good
Zaremba: I think one of the objections that I have heard to making any changes to the
current law stem around what if one city is more ready to expand than another city is and
let's say the residents that are in between -- if somebody wanted to develop property into
houses or commercial instead of agriculture, this city is almost there and this city isn't --
Clegg: Yeah.
Zaremba: -- almost there and they may be in the impact area of the city that's two miles
away and they are saying the way the law currently is they can annex into either city and,
therefore, would annex into the one that is closer to them -- has grown closer to them and
I don't know if -- just throwing that out -- are there any ideas of how we could help fix that?
To me it comes down to agreement between the two cities and can they talk. The law
probably has to force that somehow, so --
Clegg: The conversations that I heard in those presentations I have given at the
conference especially do -- do center around finding a mechanism and criteria that we
find consensus around and from that point really putting some teeth in the law, so that
once an area of city impact is established it means something. That that adjoining
jurisdiction can't, like Kuna is going today or like Dover did previously or like Ammon at
Meridian City Council Workshop
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some point did. So, oh, yeah, we are ready, go ahead. Come our direction. And, you
know, there is no -- I'm not trying to cast blame onto anybody, it's just, like you said, they
are there and they have got their service provision and they think everything is good, but
they haven't done as has to happen when you do an area of city impact agreement, they
haven't done the bigger analysis of whether they can provide others services, whether it
makes sense long term to provide the maintenance of the extension about a particular
service, whatever it is, and other services as well and so to me the changes, at least from
what I have heard, would be to agree to some realistic, more detailed criteria than what
we have today and, then, put some teeth in the agreements once they are reached, so
that, you know, that scenario doesn't play out. No. The mechanisms of how this can
happen -- you know, those would remain to be seen right now. You know, the group of
nine is not working, so there has to be some ultimate decision making body -- maybe it's
the county, maybe it's a mediation process first, maybe it's -- you know, in the cases
where there have been long term disputes that finally got worked out, the mediation was --
with respect if you don't decide somebody else is going to was finally what made it
happen.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Zaremba: And in kind of a sideways question to that, if you are -- if two cities are able to
work it out and with agreement from the county, does anybody ever discuss that if a city
that is giving up area of impact to another city let's say, has invested resources -- and
certainly they have invested planning resources, but if they have bought property to put a
future water tank on or bought property to put a future fire station in the area that they are
giving up, is there any discussion of compensation or --
Clegg: You know, the discussions I have heard they haven't gotten that detailed. I would
say that is certainly part of the discussion in the disputed Sandpoint -- what about the
investments we have already made, what about, you know, all of that stuff and I honestly
don't know the answer to how they came to a conclusion on that. I would say other than
stuff that's in the ground -- you know, if you have got sewer pipe in the ground it's pretty
hard to divest yourself of that, but if you have got land you can at least divest that by
selling it. So, you know, I -- that's a great question. It's part of what I think needs to be on
the table as you figure out what the criteria are. You know, many folks have talked about
the criteria also including some analysis of critical land, some analysis of economic
productivity, the existing working land, some analysis that would better inform -- does it
make sense to urbanize this area or is this area better left unurbanized and if it is better
left unurbanized where does it make sense to urbanize. You know, much more
involvement than what we have today. You know, one thing I didn't get into -- when the
Local Land Use Planning Act was passed in Idaho in 1975 it was accompanied by two
other bills and those two other bills were supposed to implement it. It included an office of
state planning and it included some resources for -- in the public works realm to help cities
and counties make -- make the Local Land Use Planning Act actually work. Well, you
know, true to form Idaho passed the act, but they didn't pass the implementing statutes
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and so we are left with an act that doesn't offer any technical assistance, doesn't offer any
real enforcement mechanism, and it is a shortcoming and I think like Council Member
Cavener alluded to, it's -- you know, what -- when does it become time to actually deal
with it and I guess maybe now is the time. Hopefully. You know, whether the act that you
guys are proposing goes through or not, I think -- you know, I think it's raised enough --
raised this issue enough that it's got a lot of attention, so -- I don't know if that's helpful.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions or comments?
Clegg: Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to come and let you know -- Idaho
Smart Growth, regardless of what happens here, is going to continue to pursue ULI and
APA Idaho and AIC, IAC some kind of a process, so we will be sure and keep you
informed if we get anywhere with that.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Elaine.
Clegg: You bet. Thank you.
A. Information Services Department: Department Update
De Weerd: Okay. We moved Item 8-A under Item 5-A, which is our Information Services
Department update.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is our Information Services annual
department update. Services being the key word in the name our department and -- so,
that's mainly what we do is provide support services to Mayor and Council, the rest of the
city departments and the general public also. So, we are divided into the clerk's office, so
we provide support to all of you and also through our licensing and public records
requests and other things to the public. Information Technology is split into two different
divisions being the network infrastructure and, then, the software engineering. So, what I
have decided to do this year -- and now I'm really glad I did, because I have a bad head
cold and starting on a cough, is each one of the managers of those divisions is going to
present what they have worked on this last year, their accomplishments, some statistics
and, then, what project they have looking ahead for next year and, then, I will wrap up the
end of our presentation. So, we will start off with the IT side of things with David Tiede.
De Weerd: Thank you. Hi, David. Thank you for joining us.
Tiede: Absolutely. Glad to be here, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. To get
started, just to kind of give you a quick overview of my staff. We have Stephanie, who is
our administrative assistant in IT. She handles purchasing, inventory, everything else you
can think of in the office for us. Does a great job. Jamie Beehn is one of our support
specialists. He handles MDC support, layer -- or level two support, so if it can't be
addressed over the phone typically he's your guy, he's out in the field, he's on site,
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whatnot. Eli Daniel is also a support specialist. He joined us this last year. Does kind of
the same role as Jamie. Chad Neal is our systems administrator. He handles the
infrastructure side and that includes servers, storage, network, wireless, you name it.
Krystal Goodman is our support technician. She is kind of the front line of support. Our
help desk. Answers all the calls we get. Cases usually get passed to her. And, then,
Kristy Vigil recently joined our team as our system analyst and she is helping with our
Accella implementation and doing business analysis for things moving forward. So, this is
kind of a snapshot of what we do. You guys probably saw this last year as well. A wide
gamut of those things that we take care of. All services to the city. This is some of the
statistics we have had in the last year for FY -2014. We have handled over 3,200 help
desk calls. Dealt with almost 4,000 cases, which were submitted through our case
management system. Processed nearly 400 purchases of technology -related items and
that also includes 400 POs and 200 internal invoices, which are us billing back to the
departments if we buy the item. Our big project last year was the fiber project, which
you're all aware of. As you can see here, this is what we have in place now today. This is
just a map of the city facilities that we have. Fire Station Six on there, obviously, but we
do not have connectivity there, it just runs through that. We have redundancy up and
running over the existing wireless infrastructure. It's a backup to the system. It's spills
over pretty seamlessly. It's literally something we can do remotely. It takes a couple
minutes if that. We also have redundancy built in, so that if we have a hardware failure
somewhere in the network it will automatically spill over, so -- this will enable us to do a lot
of other things down the road. Obviously, it's a lot more redundant and scalable than what
we had. Some of the projects that you will be seeing here in a few minutes are actually
due to us having this up. So, some of the projects we are working on are continuing to
expand our Shore Tel system, which, again, goes hand in hand with the fiber project that
will enable us to do that. We have been spending a lot of time on supporting new
buildings coming up, so that's another project we are working on and, then, also our
backup replacement. So, I will go into that in a little more detail in each of those. So,
obviously, throughout the city we have varying phone systems. Usually those were put in
when the building was put in. Quite a few of them are outdated and costly to support, so
as we have the fiber network we have continued to expand when we put in this building
and the police department and used those pooled resources. That allows us to reduce
some of the costs with existing regular telephone lines that we pay a monthly fee. We are
able to lump those together and reduce the cost of that. It also helps us reduce the cost
of maintenance that we pay to a third party. So, good things. There is also efficiencies
that we gain -- or the departments gain from being on a modern phone system. They can
dial by extension across facilities and whatnot and we also have been testing out
conferencing, which is a new feature that we have added on here recently, which has
been pretty useful. Our -- we have started deploying at wastewater and the new admin
building. We plan to expand out there as well. The water department here will be
installed within the next month or so and, then, the fire stations are next to come online
with the system, so -- going into a little bit more detail about our supporting new buildings,
we have been involved with quite a few of the buildings you see up here, of course. With
wastewater we are involved with selecting equipment, helping design some of the areas
that needed infrastructure, closets, rooms for equipment, whatnot and that includes the
admin building and the lab building and the office and also, which I forgot to add on here,
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the new maintenance building. So, keeping us busy. We also have expanded -- added
wireless out at the wastewater division as part of continuing to expend -- add the network
equipment and whatnot that's needed. We have been involved with the police remodel
and dealing with a new server room that they are adding on, partially to support us and
partially for their needs. So, that's been fantastic. It's moving along right now. We -- the
room is pretty much built. They are putting racks in. Obviously, there is a new cooling
system and other things that go into that as well. We have some new equipment that we
will be installing as well there. I forgot to change the slide. It's supposed to say public
safety training facility, so I apologize for that. We have also been involved in figuring out
what equipment we will need for that and helping with design as far as where things will
go and what's needed out there. So, that's moving forward. And, then, also water is
doing a small remodel internally in their building and we have been helping with that a little
bit for some of the SCADA needs. And also expending and adding wireless out there.
The last item that's a rather large project on our plate this year is the backup replacement.
For many many years -- probably -- well, since I have been alive we have used tapes for
backup and tapes work great, but they introduce a lot of problems. Some of those
problems are the reliability of the tape. If we back it up is it going to be good when we go
back to it. There is the cost of the tape. As we grow bigger and bigger and get more and
more data we have to have more and more capacity. We also have to have more time to
back those up, so that's one of the key factors that goes into this making a decision to
move away from this was we are running into problems with how quickly we can back up
our data. Right.now it's taking us almost a full week to complete a whole backup, which
presents a problem, because we can't guarantee the integrity of the data that we have for
the city. So, we have replaced it with a new system. It's actually in process right now and
our backup window that normally takes just under seven days goes down to about six
hours. So, we are able to get backups more regularly, get the data protected that we
need to protect. It is also being replicated off site to our police department. In the future
we may look at doing the co -lo facility for that redundancy, but right now that's where it's
being backed up to. So, that gives us a little bit more resiliency in case we do lose
something. And that pretty much covers our new projects. I think the next slide is moving
on to the next segment. But I guess I wanted to open up if there are any questions or
comments about anything I have mentioned.
De Weerd: Thank you, Dave. Any questions from Council?
Bird: I have none.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Dave, thanks for your part of the report. I'm just curious of the -- of the 3,200
calls that you received, the help desk calls, how many of those get escalated to level two
and how many of them is Krystal able to provide support for right away?
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Tiede: Councilman Cavener, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, I do not have those
statistics on me right now, but off the top of my head, since I looked at the numbers last
week, the calls that were directly to tier one were about a third of those. Now, those are
inbound calls. That doesn't mean that resolution happens with her necessarily --
Cavener: Sure
Tiede: -- but I would say probably closer to about 40 percent get resolved at tier one, so --
Cavener: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you. And the baton has been passed to Mike.
Tanner: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, talk about our software engineering
side. I think it's the more exciting part, but that's just me.
De Weerd: Oh, yeah.
Tanner: As you know, we support a lot of different projects. This is kind of a slide --
essentially all the different apps that we currently support and, actually, the list goes even
beyond what have here.
De Weerd: I guess a more interesting PowerPoint slide. It had action, Dave.
Tanner: I'm going to talk about some of our -- the structure I have for my direct reports
right now. On the GIS side we have Doug Green, who is our GIS developer, so rather
than just normal GIS functions he also performs some of the developments and actually
creating apps based on GIS, which I think is really cool. We have Matt Tenold, our GIS
analyst. Porter Merrill is our current graphics intern we have. Does an amazing job. Has
helped a lot of people out in different departments. Nick Phares, our software engineer,
has done some pretty cool apps in the last few years. We have an org change. We used
to have a part-time person, Summer White, she is no longer with us, but we are replacing
her and going full time, we now have Ryan Schafer, our new software engineer full time
and we also now also have Dwain Nells, software engineer, giving us, basically, at this
point three full-time software engineers. Apparently it looks like Ryan and Dwain are
going to be helping a lot with Accella implementation that we have, trying to go with three
full ones, better and more efficient. Looking at some of our accomplishments that we had
for this last year, one of the big apps that Nick Phares ended up doing -- this was an app
called contract management. Started out really -- oh, here is a screen shot of it. Started
out really as a finance app and it's going really as a citywide type application. It was really
created to organize all the different contracts within the city into, basically, a central point.
Also lines for file attachments and basically a central organization place for all contracts in
the city. So, anybody can find it and come up with what they are looking for and really is
being expanded and being used by all the different departments and we have organized
these things through. Here is another screen shot. This is actually drilling into a contract.
You can kind of see some of the information they have on there. Being able to -- it will
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find milestones and dates -- different parts of the contracts and notifications have been
built into it to allow people to see when something is coming due and when it's done, so
on and so on. And I had mentioned we had a milestone system to -- for the obligations on
it and the requirements for it. We are also looking at tying it directly to our MIT, which is
our city finance system that we have to be able to track payments against it and for PO
changes and change orders. He did a fantastic job on this application. Another app that
we developed this year -- again, Nick Phares did -- called City Asset Tracking or
nicknamed CAT, we needed a way in IT really to be able to track all the different pieces of
hardware that we have, whether it's assets, along with licensing, maintenance of all the
stuff that we try to support, so kind of know where it's at and where it's been. Provides
ways for us to -- to inventory, so -- you have all seen the symbol on the computers, that
way we know where every single asset is at, along with knowing what's been disposed of
and what we need to get rid of, along with the whole life of that asset. Along with that we
are also having connection information in there for how we relate back to the county on
their network and what IP addresses get assigned to what equipment. Here is a screen
shot of it, for example, listing out all our -- for example, our switches. If you drill into one
of those items it gives you a lot more detail on it, giving you when you purchased it,
whether -- basically when the warranty date is on it, when it's going to expire, what the
current location is. Serial number. All the important information that we try to keep track
of of all this equipment that we have. It's been a huge benefit for the IT Department for
this year. Especially for Stephanie. The last thing I want to talk about is addressing for
utility billings. As you know, we are replacing our utility billing system. One of the big
efforts that we did on this was a combined effort between IT, Desk Service, Aspire and
MUBs, basically, try to go through all our addressing that we had in Coselle, which is our
current utility billing system to try and correct, because a lot of the addresses were bad in
there and just really messy. We started off within that system with about 32,000
addresses. Created an automated, got that down to about 5,000 and, then, on top of that
created a little app for them to go through -- with that 5,000 to be able to associate those
addresses in Coselle to our MEAD addressing in our enterprise data, enterprise
addressing layer for the entire city and be able to relate those two together and find all the
ones that were missing. And we have this little app that comes up, so all the addresses
are stored mainly in Coselle and allows them to associate with MEAD by clicking on it
and, then, associating the address. At this point we are down to about the last couple
hundred addresses from about 5,000. It's been a huge project to undertake. We have
had crews out there basically going around the city and verifying addresses, because we
have had a lot that have been wrong over time and it's just amazing how off they get and
so it's one big giant effort to try to get these things all corrected, so as we go in the MEAD
we have correct addresses to go on. Upcoming projects for this next year. Got some kind
of good projects coming up. Our biggest one we are doing is our Accella reconfiguration.
Even though we have had Accella now for about three years or so, we really want to go --
kind of take a step back and try to reconfigure this thing to get it -- make it a lot more
efficient type system and right now a lot of the end users might not be quite as complete
as they should be. Some cases too many steps to be able to do a particular task. The
system allows you to back yourself into a corner. Sometimes they consider not even used
and at this point looking at it from our time -- the amount of time and effort it takes us to
support it, we don't think it's maintainable with the current staff we have. So, we'd like to
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kind of go through this thing, at this point putting two FTEs on it, plus another software
engineer for a short amount of time until we can get to the right place, basically bring this
thing back up from the ground up and make it work. Basically treat it almost like it was an
in-house software -- software application and go through and really look at all the
different processes that we have that relate to the applications and try to make it work
better, try to make it work as if we had written it in house. So, all the business processes
that Acella uses, try to make them more efficient. We want to take it one department at a
time, do it -- slowly one department at a time, make sure it is correct. We also have been
teaming up with Canyon county on this, because they kind of ran into the same issue that
we did and kind of trying to follow in their footsteps with success. I think it will be a really
good thing to get this done, try to make -- Acella is a really really good system, it just
needs a little bit of tweaking to get it to work at the most optimal level that it can. The
other big project that we are working on this year -- and this is really a long title -- Public
Works Capital Constructions Project Tracking. Hopefully we will get a better name for it
before we go too far in it. This project will allow basically Public Works for -- and them
internally for project tracking. It tracks costs and commitments, allowing them to drill down
to expose details, such as PO numbers, accounts and commitments. Basically it's just a
way for them to track all their internal projects that they have going on, all the financials,
the cost. Not necessarily the project management side, but really more the financial side
of it. Also to be able to use for budget forecasting and that's the next one. Do you guys
have any questions?
De Weerd: Any questions?
Bird: I have none. Very good
De Weerd: See, you were so thorough, Mike, we didn't have questions. Well, we are
anxious to hear the clerky things.
Jones: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you for the opportunity
to speak with you. I'm actually very excited to tell you what we have been up to. I have
been in my role for about year and a half and, then, I can tell you from being in the
management level I have a completely different understanding about the functions of the
clerk's office and appreciate what our team does. So, I'm going to go through some
specific successes for each one of our team members. That being said, though, while we
are all a subject matter expert in our specific area, we absolutely are cross -trained on
everything that our office does, so there is a seamless transition in between staff if we
have absences and things we are able to provide the same level of service to the public,
so -- so, Holly Binkley is our administrative assistant and she is really our customer
service wizard. She's the front line for City Hall and provides that first point of contact to
the public. She answers the main phone line to City Hall. So, when a member of the
public calls the city's main phone Holly is the employee that answers that call. In FY -2014
she answered 19,760 external phone calls, which is 1,647 calls from the public on
average a month. Some of these calls are really quick and she transfers them to other
departments. Some of them are lengthy, because they need research done, they are
looking for information on community services, city code, city policies, or ultimately
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needing assistance that comes from other government agencies and while that is
probably likely enough to keep her busy full time, she also provides support to us in a lot
of different areas. She provided support to a committee this year to help update our
external room reservation policy and it was adopted in August. We are getting a lot of
positive feedback from the public on that. Our HOAs really appreciate that that fee is
waived. So, that's one of the positives. She also maintains the city clerk's website and
the searchable document site. On our end searchable documents is laserfische and Holly
has been taking a fine tooth comb through our electronic record naming system and she's
examining and renaming files, so that all document names are consistent. Over time as
employees change some of the names -- naming becomes inconsistent and a little bit lax,
so this project absolutely will decrease search times and making searchable documents a
more user friendly tool, which you guys should see the benefit of. She is often introduced
to the City Hall volunteers as the most important person they will meet and she's
established a wonderful partnership supporting those volunteers. Barb Hatch from PD
gave her this wonderful feedback thanking her for treating our volunteers so well. She's
happy to assist all volunteers. She helps them become familiar with the building and what
each department does, what each employee does, and she does a really great job of
keeping everybody on track. So, Sherry Finch is one of our assistant city clerks and she
is the passport queen for our office. When we started doing passports in November of
2012 we really had no way to anticipate what that -- what the effect of adding that function
would be on our office. The demand for passports in the valley continues to be high and
we have virtually lost Sherry to passports. She easily spends seven hours of her day in
passport appointments or on passport calls. In FY -14 Sherry responded to 4,134
passport calls, which averages out to 344 calls a month. And these are people wishing to
schedule passports, they have got questions about their application process, so not only
is she operating in that -- in the office meeting room all the time -- she offices -- or is often
in her cubicle responding to those calls. She provides a level of customer service that is
unparalleled in the valley in my opinion. Each applicant is seated, they are greeted
warmly. She doesn't treat the process like an assembly line, but takes the time to engage
with each applicant that she works with. And it's through the conversation with those
applicants that she often finds and is able to correct errors in their application and she
does this all while strictly adhering to the requirements and procedures established by the
state department. Sherry has a nearly perfect record from the state department and in
two years we have been doing this she's only been caught with two errors, which I think is
absolutely phenomenal. In FY -14 she processed 2,250 passports, which is 238 more
than in FY -13 and while we never intended passports to be a money making endeavor for
our office, Sherry's -- the revenue that we gain from our 25 dollar acceptance fee is
enough to pay her fully loaded salary, which is, again, awesome for the city. So, Sherry
receives positive feedback from our passport applicants all the time and I will quote one of
them who said: I'm guessing that Sherry treats everyone with the same world class
professionalism and warmth that she did me. And that really describes Sherry very well.
She's an absolute star and we know that she is representing our office well, but the state
department has also commented that as well, because she's an extension of that
department, so she's doing well. Nancy Radford is our assistant clerk and she is really
our licensing guru. Nancy knows the licensing code extremely well and does an
absolutely fabulous job of relaying it to the public. Nancy does not turn a blind eye to
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things she sees in the community, even in her off time. If Nancy drives by a fruit stand on
the weekend and she knows it does not have a permit, she makes a mental note of that
and when she gets back in the office on Monday she follows up with that business owner.
Nancy actively engages with our business community to process temporary use permits
and beer, wine, and liquor applications. She's proactive and reaches out to businesses to
remind them of our permitting processes. She sends letters at the beginning of the
renewal season to both local and corporate offices to help keep the community aware of
our timeline. She also keeps a calendar of large events from year to year to contact
applicants and remind them of submittal deadlines. Nancy is absolutely necessary to the
success of large events in Meridian, like Dairy Days. She works closely with the applicant
or applicant's agent on the requirements of the city. She is also happy to take their
feedback and present that to our TUP team to look at how we handle large scale events in
Meridian. I know that our TUP team would absolutely agree with me on that. She's -- she
is invaluable and I attend all large scale event meetings with her with those applicants
and, honestly, I'm there for no other reason than to take minutes and support her,
because she absolutely leads those meetings. She keeps discussion on track and she's
very position oriented, which I appreciate. She participates in monthly meetings with our
team from CenterCal, which is at The Village to insure timely and successful business
openings at The Village. She has also processed more than 536 printed applications this
year, which is 162 more than she did at the same time last year. And I have to commend
Nancy on her dedication to our public. If a member of the public comes in with a business
idea that doesn't fit within our code Nancy will sit with them and she will brainstorm a way
to change their business plan so that it does align with our code. A member of our team
gave her this kudo. I don't know who, but Nancy worked her magic and an angry
customer left smiling and that's what Nancy does. She advocates for the -- the success of
our local business community all while adhering to the code and I think she's good at it.
Machelle Hill is our deputy clerk and she is our development extraordinaire. Machelle
works closely with the planning department to complete project files for the development
applications. She does all state code transmitting and noticing requirements. So far this
year Machelle has processed more than 123 development applications. She closely
monitors our project files and keeps detailed notes, so that we have a clear paper trail for
each project and can identify the status of any project starting the approval process, which
is crucial for the applicant, so that they have a contact not only in the planning
department, but in our office, so know where they are at. Many of the functions that the
state code requires of the city clerk fall within Machelle's tasks. She supports the city's
varied commissions and maintains their minute books. She's transcribed minutes for over
42 commission meetings so far this year. We have been working with Machelle to get her
trained up on how to process public record requests and she supported me on those this
past year. With two of us well acquainted with the records request law we are more
available to city staff and the public when questions arise. Machelle is always a huge
champion for Accella and she truly believes in what Accella can do for the city. She's
established close relationships with her counterpart in the planning department and
received kudos this year for being very instrumental in file clean up. She spent hours
going through our Accella files to make sure that work was properly closed, so that the
electronic record was accurate and she continues to maintain the Accella records to
insure its accuracy and I know she has already worked closely with our new Accella team
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in IT to make sure that that implementation goes over smoothly in our office as well. So, I
am the senior deputy clerk and often a lost record finder. If a member of city staff or the
public is looking for a record I can generally find it for you. With Machelle's office our -- or
with Machelle's help our office has closed 126 -- actually, 129 now. Sorry -- public record
requests this year and we have also worked with our internal process to help streamline
how requests are handled. Public record requests are heavily mandated by law. That
being said, though, we are always open minded looking at how we handle them in our
office to make sure that we are giving them as efficient and transparent to the public as
best as we can. I provide support for you guys for your meetings and your packets, all the
contracts, agreements, resolutions, ordinances, documents, that come out of these
meetings I make sure that they are completed and routed to the appropriate departments
and the large consent, while you guys can approve it in just a couple seconds, it can take
a couple days work on our department's end to process all of that. I also provide support
for the Historic Preservation Commission and act as their administrative assistant. This
year we partnered with MDC to launch the updated historic walking tour. This tour has
been adopted by the West Ada School District and is part of the curriculum for third grade
students and through a substantial partnership with MDC that we are now hosting field
trips of that for all third grade students. So, they have coming into the building and
checking out a little bit about what City Hall is all about and, then, getting to go out on the
walking tour, which is pretty fantastic. And I manage our office and I say that really only in
title, because what we do in our office we definitely do as a team and our success and
cohesion is really based around the way that we all interact well with each other. So, we
are looking to the future and seeking ways to be more successful in how we serve the
public we would like to implement Accella citizens access to receive and process license
and permit applications in 2015. Right now all of these applications are still handled over
our counter. We would love it if applicants could do it from their computers at home and
provide that -- no one likes to come in, so that customer service for that I think is really
important. So, along that same line we want to use Accella in its full function in 2015 to
complete both the internal and external side of our development application transmittals.
We would like to complete the laserfische project that I spoke about that Holly has been
working, standardizing file names. This clear naming system for electronic documents
across the board will, again, make things easier for your lives and for the lives of the
public, too, which is important. We would like to complete the second phase of the
walking tour project and cover the properties north of Pine Street. We are on target to
complete that in March. Without stepping too much on HPC's strategic update, I can tell
you that we are looking to pursue the establishment of an historic district. This district will
not only provide protection for our historic buildings, but could become a destination for
our city and we would like to start processing public record requests on Accella. Right
now it's all done manually using e-mail and an Excel tracking spreadsheet, but Accella
absolutely has the capacity to handle that and that's one of the benefits of being in IT,
because we have already put a bug in our Accella team's ear and they know that we will
be looking at doing that this year. So, we are also scheduled for a facility inspection from
the state department for our passport facility. The last time we did one was in 2013 and
we got great feedback and scored really really high and we would like to maintain that. It's
making sure that our standards are staying up. You know, when you start a new process
your hyper aware of the requirements and we want to make sure that as time goes by that
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we are maintaining that same level and doing the procedures as adhered to as we
possibly can. So, with that I can wrap up my portion and just say thank you to you guys
for -- from me personally for my -- your support of the walking tour and the project, but just
for supporting our team and understanding the goals and the values of the team, what we
are going for. So, I can stand for questions and, then, I think the IT team is still here, too,
if you have got questions on any of that.
De Weerd: Thank you, Jacy. Council, any questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: Maybe just a comment for both teams. I'm quickly scribbling down one
question after another question I want to ask and I realize that we probably want to get
home before 10:00 o'clock, so I will follow up with some of these maybe offline, but a
comment just -- and thank you for all you do. I was doing some math. It sounds like Holly
on average gets like 76 calls a day, we are processing eight passports a day, working on
-- Nancy is working on two applications a day if you break it out. It's mind boggling and,
then, on top of that the great customer service that you provide and I just wanted to follow
up on something you said that nobody wants to come down here and I would argue that, I
think that you guys provide great support. So, while we want our citizens and our
customers to be able to come down here -- not because they have to, but because they
want to and I think they will continue to do that because of the great support you provide,
so thank you.
Jones: Thank you
De Weerd: Well said. Anything further? Thank you, Jacy
Jacy: Thank you all.
De Weerd: And you didn't mention with the HPC walking -- history walking tour it won an
award and it was highlighted at the Association of Idaho Cities conference, got a lot of
positive comments we found at the national conference that it is a superior model. So, it's
pretty cool and it got a lot of positive comments from the students, the parents and the
teachers. So, it's exciting to see Meridian history in our schools and you were an integral
part behind that., So, thank you.
Jacy: Thank you. And if you all at anytime are interested we have a bunch of thank you
cards sitting in our office from the third graders, so if you ever have a bad day and are in
the area of City Hall pop by and take a look at those, because what you guys are doing
and what MDC is doing is fantastic for these kids, so thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you
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Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, as you can see we have a stellar team
in this department. A lot of what we do is just kind of behind the scenes in providing
support for other people, but I think we make people's jobs more efficient and easier to do.
So, in this next year as we roll out the citywide strategic plan and finalize that, IT and the
clerk's office will, then, be able to formulate our strategic plan for the city, because of our
support role it will naturally follow right along behind the citywide strategic plan. So, I will
also be updating IT policies. The original policies were passed in 2010. Time to take a
look at those, update, probably expand them a little bit more, incorporate a few more
areas and just update everything, so that will be a huge project over the next year and
doing the same in the clerk's office, really looking at all of our different rolls and the
different projects that we have and finalizing some policies in both offices. So, that's what
I'm headed into for the next year, so thank you very much.
De Weerd: Thank you, Jaycee. I think your department models superior customer
service. Your team touches all of us in a unique way and they always do it with a smile
and you're greatly appreciated, especially when people need your team they need you
yesterday and they -- they respond very well. So, heartfelt thanks to all of you.
Holman: Thank you. I'd like to add one more thing. I know Jacyee spent a lot of time
talking about all the accomplishments of her team that when we talk about the walking
tour -- when she took over in the clerk's her responsibility or what she was given was just
at the HPC meeting take minutes, recordings, make sure we have accurate minute books
and everything that she has done beyond that has been her own initiative and she sets
the example and the standard very high for the rest of her team, so just want you to know
everything you hear of her doing and all these accolades, that was all initiated -- self
initiation. She did it all on her own. So, we are very proud of that and she presented it to
the District Three clerks office last Friday, walked through how she did it and even set up
a model for them to show them how you could do it if you had no budget, how you could
scale it down and do something similar in these smaller towns that also have historic
districts or would like to have an historic district or a walking tour. So, we are trying to
spread the knowledge and spread some of the, you know, work that she has already done
and help other cities, so -- thank you.
B. Finance Department: Utility Billing Software Replacement
De Weerd: Thank you. Item 5-13 is under our Finance Department. Public Works finance
department.
Pepin: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I am out of the Finance Department, but I
am happy to be reporting on an activity or a project that is not just the Finance
Department, so on behalf of Stacy Kilchenmann, the project sponsor, and, then, the
steering committee, which I'm lucky to be a part of, we are here today with our project
manager, who I will introduce to you in a moment, so she can take over and give you an
update on where we are with this critical initiative.
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De Weerd: I have questions. Yes, this is certainly a huge undertaking and I think that
Council will be impressed with what has happened up to this point and excited to move
forward.
Pepin: Absolutely. Uh-huh. Well, while Caleb is looking for those I wanted to highlight
before I introduced our project manager, who can really give you the details on where this
project is at -- this is really a cross -collaborative effort amongst multiple departments in
the city and, then, also divisions within those departments. It takes great work from the
folks that just presented to you from the IT Department, from both sides of the house.
Also from a Public Works perspective as a member of that team, the water division, our
GIS division, our asset management division and, then, also in the Finance Department
with Keith Watts in purchasing, with Rita Cunningham and with our utility billing, our
MUBS folks with Kaitlin and her team, it's really become a citywide project that I know
you're all very proud of when we can work together as teams. So, I won't get into details.
What I would like to do is introduce you to a project manager that we brought on board
last February. When you try to manage something like this that is that involved in so
many different teams, we need to go outside to do something like this and Sheryl Bishop
has done an outstanding job to this point bringing these teams all together. She's PNP
certified, which is, as you probably know, that's recognizable by the Project Management
Institute. She has 25 years of professional business experience. She holds a bachelor's
degree in economics, a graduate degree in business administration. Her areas of
expertise involves implementation of projects, performing contract negotiation and vendor
management services and I am happy to welcome Sheryl to our team and to provide an
update on where we are.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mike.
Pepin: You're welcome.
Bishop: Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it
De Weerd: Welcome, Sheryl.
Bishop: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I have a report to present to
you that we can add to your packet. So, just a little bit of background. Your report has a
little more detail in it than the slide show. The slide show is just for reference purposes.
De Weerd: You can tell you're working in the Finance Department.
Bishop: So, a little bit of background. So, Finance, of course, has been weighing the
need to replace the utility billing system for some time, since early 2012 at least. When it
became apparent that upgrades to Coselle were simply not providing added value in
terms of substantially reducing the billing cycle, which apparently runs about six to seven
hours a day, increasing auditability of all transactions. Right now the audit lines do not
track all of the deletes and adds to the system and automating the integration between
other courses and like Accella enhancements that need to share the information. So, we
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December 9, 2014
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contracted with Moss Adams to deliver requirements and needs assessment for us and,
then, this year contract -- I came on board with Express IT to provide you some project
management services and begin the RFP process. So, on the RPF process, late in 2013
the Finance Department did solicit assistance from Moss Adams. Moss Adams is a
consulting firm that specializes in accounting controls -- distraction there. Specializes on
accounting controls and computer systems with expertise in the utility industry. So, Moss
Adams provided a team of experts who came on site, as well as did some remote
requirements gathering and with that they provided a needs assessment that we
developed an RPR from. So, the RFP was distributed on August 12th and seven software
vendors responded -- we actually had 17 originally who were interested, seven actually
turned in proposals for that. So, the city proceeded to evaluate the vendor responses.
We based our evaluations on technical requirements, on functional requirements, on
vendor profile, as well as vendor references and, of course, the overall cost and we broke
cost down for five years. So, as we continued through the evaluation process we were
able to narrow down our selection of seven vendors to two. We offered those two vendors
the opportunity to come on site and demo their systems and after those demonstrations
the city determined that we had one system that we would like to take a look at, so we
sent an evaluation team to conduct an on-site performance audit and audited the Tru
Point Solutions Tru Bill system. We visited Sacramento's suburban water district. They
have a similar setup, about 40,000 accounts that they service at this time. Similar
business model. And we determined that after the on-site visit our VR2 requirements that
were addressed as out of the box, meaning all customized, not necessarily configured,
were available, operational, and, then, working well at Sacramento. The evaluation team
unanimously voted to award three point solutions to contractors who had an intent to
award. So, tomorrow we will be announcing our final contract ranking and our intent to
award the contract. We will base our contract negotiations on the city standard terms and
conditions and also the RFP document system requirements, the scope of services and
the cost proposal that was provided to us by the vendor. The city's target percent of fully
approved contract the City Council on or before January 6th. And just looking forward, the
estimated five year cost to own of the Tru Bill utility billing system, this including the
installation, data migration, configuration, training, testing and implementation is a little
over 500,000. The capital budget for the system implementation is 710,000. At this time
we are projecting to be under budget. The duration from the initial out-of-the-box
installation, which means no configuration, this is just out-of-the-box functionality, through
post implementation, could take up to 12 months. More than likely about eight to ten, but
could take up to 12. Much of that is due to the fact that the system is highly configurable.
We want to spend a lot of time taking a look our business rules and making sure that we
program a system to do exactly what we need it to do now, what we anticipate it -- that we
need it to do several years down the road. So, with that I will stand for questions.
De Weerd: Thank you. Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just because I'm aware there is a big push in many people to deal with
customers to approach them in the media of their choice, I know I prefer to get a bill on
paper and write a check and send it, but other people prefer to get it on their e-mail and
others on cell phones or whatever mobile device they have. Is that -- are we going that
direction to -- maybe we are doing some of that now.
Bishop: So, Madam Mayor and Council Members, great question and thank you for the
opportunity to talk a little bit about what this can offer. So, yes, we will have -- this is,
essentially, a web based system. So, what that means is you have a database that sits
behind, you have a web browser that's customer facing and you have a web browser
that's internal facing. Essentially you hit the same system from two different angles. So,
the nice thing about that is the customer portal, customers can come online, they can see
their information realtime. As we are updating information here at the office that
information is visible to the public. So, we can do -- as with our current system we have a
current contract with BDS and they do our credit card processing for us and they do all our
payments and so forth. We will be talking with them in the future about how best we can
integrate that, as opposed to doing an import and export a day, we would like to do a
realtime integration with that data. So, if we can make that happen with BDS and with
their third party vendors, great. And, if not, the system we are purchasing has a third
party vendor called Element that we will certainly pursue that as well. So, yes, we do
have online. It can still be a paper copy. Hopefully we can meet all of the criteria there --
the constituents are interested in terms of how they want to see their data, as well with the
customer portal in addition to having normal billing information, we are hoping to provide a
historic usage and be able to show some graphs and they can play with that and see how
they are going with their usage.
Zaremba: Thank you.
Bishop: Did that address your question?
Zaremba: Uh-huh.
De Weerd: Thank you, Sheryl. We appreciate your leadership on this. I have heard
gleaming reports from Stacy about the role you have played and appreciate -- we know
the more up front we can do to make this address all of the user needs the better the
implementation is going to be.
Bishop: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I -- and for the record, the team is wonderful to work
with. We have a great bunch of folks that are working together to collaborate to make this
a success and, frankly, the project manager is all we do is put a schedule together for the
resources to make the job -- to make it work. So, thank you.
De Weerd: Well -- and to the team members I know there has been a lot of participation
and appreciate, too, making sure that every user has an opportunity to give input and give
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experience from their perspective. So, it sounds like we are headed in the right direction.
Appreciate your caution and implementation and seeing how we roll this out. So, thank
you to all.
Bishop: Thank you on behalf of the team.
Item 6: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 7: Action Items
A. Public Hearing: Proposed Winter 2014-2015 Fee Schedule of the
Meridian Parks and Recreation Department
De Weerd: We will move to Item 7-A under Action Items. Public hearing on the proposed
winter 2014-15 fee schedule for the Meridian Parks and Recreation Department. I guess
this is your swan song, uh?
Dilley: This is it. One last one. Yeah. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, our
activity guide for the Parks and Recreation Department is scheduled to print and be in the
Meridian Press this Friday and we are here, obviously, to pass the fee schedule. We
have about 239 individual activities that people can sign up for this time around and it's
probably our biggest winter yet, so -- so, before you is the Parks and Rec Department fee
schedule and with these new activity fees. You might notice a change in the fee
schedule, which we did implement with the help of city staff and Council Member Milam,
we amended the new delineation amongst the fees for taxable or nontaxable fees
regarding recreation opportunities. It's my hope that the resolution to adopt the new fee
schedule will be passed today and I can stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. It is a public hearing and it's unrelated, but since you are going into the
private sector, just to keep your hand in the public sector, we are looking for an advisor for
our TAC -- MYAC TAC committee.
Dilley: Oh, really?
De Weerd: So -- uh-huh. So, I'm recruiting you.
Dilley: Are you?
De Weerd: I know you would miss the kids and -- we will talk.
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Dilley: Okay. We can talk. Yeah.
De Weerd: I had to get it on the public record. Thank you, Patrick.
Dilley: Thank you.
De Weerd: We do appreciate all you have done. You have brought a great sense of
energy to our recreation programs and certainly you have left a huge influence and a huge
mark on our youth council and you will be missed.
Dilley: Appreciate that. Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Thank you. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone who would like to offer
testimony on this item?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Seeing no public testimony, I move we close the public hearing on --
Zaremba: Second.
Cavener: -- on the fee schedule, Resolution 14-1036.
De Weerd: It's been moved and seconded to close the public hearing on Item 7-A. All
those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
B. Resolution No. 14-1036: A Resolution Adopting the Winter 2014-
2015 Fee Schedule of the Meridian Parks and Recreation
Department; Authorizing the Meridian Parks and Recreation
Department to Collect Such Fees; and Providing an Effective
Date
De Weerd: Item 7-B is Resolution 14-1036.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I move that we approve Resolution 14-1036, fee schedule for the winter
recreational activities for the Meridian Parks and Rec and include all staff testimony.
Milam: Second.
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Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve 7-B. If there is no discussion,
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: Department Reports
B. Fire Department Report: Compliance Engine
De Weerd: Item 8-B is under our Fire Department and turn this over to Perry. Chief
Palmer.
Palmer: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's my pleasure to be here
today to talk to you about reporting on inspection, testing, maintenance and fire protection
systems. Not necessarily an exciting topic to talk about, but a very important one to -- to
us. We have a lot of systems in town and it's important that we continue to have a safe
community, because we have a lot of good systems in place to protect our citizens. So,
the -- if I work this right. There we go. So, ITM, it's important that -- that's the inspection,
testing, maintenance. We are going to talk about how big of an issue it is and, then, we
are going also talk about the Compliance Engine to follow up. So, sprinkler performance,
we have a lot of buildings in our community that have automatic fire sprinklers. This is
national statistics that sprinklers when they operate they are effective in 91 percent of the
reported fires. Ninety-two percent of the activations were wet pipe systems and those
were what you typically find inside a heated space, so inside the building itself. And 81
percent are dry pipes, which are typically where you would find outside. They are
exposed to the freezing weather. Sometimes you will even find them inside freezers and
coolers, because they need to have protection, too. So, just real quickly -- so, since
statistics -- they are a little bit old, but they are the most current that we have of why
sprinklers fail to operate. The most prevalent is the system is shut off before the fire.
That could be on purpose. The system is problematic and rather than fix it, it gets shut
off. It can be for nefarious reasons that it's shut off. But, essentially, that is the biggest
cause. Manual intervention defeats the system. It could be a valve that's closed. It can
be, again, a nefarious reason that it happened. Damage components, which I think relate
a lot to why systems are shut off. Lack of maintenance, an inappropriate system for the
fire. Reasons when sprinklers -- oh, we just talked about that one. Sorry. Okay. So, why
are sprinklers ineffective? And this is why the inspection is so important. Water did not
reach the fire. Could be for a whole host of reasons. Either the sprinklers aren't placed
properly, they are occluded by storage of materials, shelves, what have you. Not enough
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water is released and, again, this could be just the fact that it's not reaching the fire.
Again, damaged components, manual intervention, and lack of maintenance.
Inappropriate systems for the fire. So, you could have a situation where maybe it needs
to have a fire pump and it doesn't have one, so there is not adequate pressure. The water
system isn't appropriate for the need. There we go. So, in Meridian we have
approximately 3,200 occupancies. Those are individual occupancies, not necessarily the
building, and out of those 3,200 occupancies there is approximately 18 that have some
kind of afire protection system and when we are talking about fire protection systems we
are focusing on fire sprinklers, fire alarms, which would include pole stations, and smoke
detectors and, then, hood systems, which you typically will only find in restaurants. So, a
lot of these will have multiple systems as well. You could -- you could have two or all
three. So, last year Meridian Fire did receive reports for approximately 500 systems, so
that left about 1,300 systems that we received no report for. So, when we do get the
reports the system that we look at -- we have to look at the reports, we have to review
them, look for any deficiencies that need to be addressed. We have to file and -- scan
and file those reports and, then, the follow up as needed. So, the challenges that we face
with that is -- it takes time. So, we have limited inspectors, although we did recently add
one, so thank you very much for that. It's made a big difference so far. But we have to --
a lot of verification that we have to do. We have to make sure that the occupancy is still
the same as what the report says as it relates to our records and that the testing -- you
know, how have those intervals been occurring, if there are repairs to be completed
generally we don't get any updates with those, so that creates a lot of follow up time for us
to see if the repairs have been done. He did them. What it entailed. And, then, the
inspection versus the maintenance schedule, trying to coordinate those -- those efforts.
So, one of the things that many departments across the country that face this same
situation are doing is they are turning to third -party reporting. That allows them to address
the inspection needs and follow that and, then, be able to be in compliance. Many times
we go out and do inspections and the -- we may do that inspection in January, but the
system isn't scheduled to be tested until March. Typically we won't go back in March just
to check to see if that system was done. It's -- it's a lot of extra effort, time, and it
interrupts our schedules, so by having a third -party reporting system, then, we are able to
dash board that, essentially, at our desk and at a glance we can see all the occupancies
that are currently scheduled to be tested, if they have been tested, if they are compliant,
noncompliant, what repairs have been made, when they were made, and who did them.
So, that's -- that's one of the exciting changes that this can do for us. So, the Compliance
Engine is a system that we have been looking at. We have looked at several that are out
there and after looking at all of them we felt like Compliance Engine afforded us the best
opportunity to gather the information and make sure that -- that all the things that we need
to have done are taking place in a timely fashion. The cost is the most reasonable of the
ones that we looked at. That price is left in for the duration of the contract, which at a
minimum would be three years. So, essentially, what they do is they send out a reminder
notification to the businesses 30 days in advance that they are needing to have their
system tested, whatever that may be. If that test does not occur, then, they get a
reminder letter that now they are out of compliance. We also get that letter as well. That's
a letter that's generated by us on our letterhead that goes out to them. Then it -- when the
inspection is done, then, we get a -- basically, like I said, that dashboard report. So, the
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contractor that's doing the inspection is able to attach their report, but we, basically, just
get a snapshot of how many deficiencies did they find or was the system in compliance. If
the system is in compliance we verify the information is still accurate with our records. If it
is we just download it into our system. If there is deficiencies we evaluate what those
deficiencies are and if it's a critical fail that gives us the opportunity to immediately go out
to the facility and talk with the people about getting the repairs done. In some cases it
may require a file watch if it's that critical. So, again, it's an effort to make sure that the
building is safe for the occupants and ultimately for our firefighters as well. We are able to
have remote access. Right now all of our records are in-house, so we have to verify those
records before we go out. With this system in the field we are able to look on the spot and
see any of the information that we want to have and we will make sure that if the building
owner wants access to those test records, that we will be able to get those test records to
them. Sometimes they get those, sometimes they don't. But it is -- it's their building, so if
they want to have the records we will make sure that they get that. So, here is some of
the cities that are currently using the Compliance Engine. Again, there are other systems
out there and I will say that to that end it's like most anything, there was a -- there was a
need. The AHJ's, which the fire department is considered the authority having jurisdiction
-- has had this gap for a long time. There is two or three businesses out there that
recognize that and put a system together, but with most things there is always the
opportunity to build a better mousetrap. So, Compliance Engine is the best program that's
out there for use today. In fact, one of the things that we wanted to do was to make sure
that we could focus on a system that would be usable and compliant for -- for all of our
local jurisdictions. So, there is a handful of contractors that do this type of inspection and
maintenance work in the valley here and so being able to report to one system that works
for Nampa, Eagle, Caldwell, Meridian, Boise, was important to us. Some of us are on a
shorter time frame than others, but, essentially, everyone in the valley here is looking at
going to this system, so -- but, again, to my previous point, we will always look for if there
is something better out there that is equal to or better than what we are doing and it could
be -- but it's equal for us, but it's more beneficial to the contractors or it's more beneficial
to the business owner. We are certainly always open to looking at that. But right now
Compliance Engine has the best track record, the best endorsement, and the best
testimonials of any of the components that are out there. So, with that I would stand for
any questions that you might have.
De Weerd: Thank you, Perry. Council, any questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Chief, just one question. The slide about the cost, who -- who pays for that? Is
that the business or the occupant? Is the city paying -- that part wasn't made clear to me.
Palmer: Okay. I appreciate the question. Thank you, Councilman Cavener. The cost is
borne ultimately by the person doing the contracting. So, when they submit their report it's
a ten dollar fee per system per year. So, essentially, if it's a sprinkler system, as an
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example, it's ten dollars some places like -- let's take Lowe's, for example. They have four
different zones, plus a dry system. So, they have actually a wet and a dry system and
they have five different sprinkler risers. It's not 50 dollars. It's ten dollars. It's ten dollars
for the system. If they have a fire alarm in addition to that, then, that would be ten dollars,
and if they have a hood system -- in some restaurants they have all three, then, that would
be 30 dollars, but the hoods are required to be done twice a year. So, that would be an
additional ten. So, it would be 40 dollars, then, for a restaurant -- a large restaurant.
Cavener: Mayor, a couple of quick follow ups. Is that fee uniform? Is it an industry
standard? Is that -- I guess how is that fee derived?
Palmer: That is the fee that Compliance Engine charges for covering their cost of sending
out the notifications, maintaining the website, and delivering that information to the AHJ.
Cavener: So, if someone is building a project in Nampa or in Boise, they would expect to
pay the same cost?
Palmer: Correct. Yes. We would all -- all the -- all the AHJ's would enter into a similar
contract with a similar time frame and so that is their standard cost. The reason I say that
it's ultimately borne by the contractor is -- you know, I'm not speaking for them, but they
may choose to pass that cost on, they may not, depending on the occupancy and what
other arrangements they may have, so --
Cavener: Thank you.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam
Milam: How do the contractors feel about this? Have you spoken with them?
Palmer: Well, Council Member Milam, yes, we have. We have had four different
meetings where we have invited all the stakeholders, which include -- we have had
BOMA, we have had the contractors, we have had business and property owners that
have looked at the program. I think that -- that it's -- they see the benefit to this in that
they understand where we are at in not getting all the reports that we need. I think
ultimately it works to their benefit, because theoretically they will get more business,
because people will be aware of the requirement and they will make that outreach to get
the work done. Ultimately we have -- we have the authority to require the repairs that the
contractors don't. So, the follow-ups that we do making the repairs is also a potential
benefit to them and I think ultimately for the property owners, they have the assurance as
best you can that their system is adequately functioning and, ultimately that probably
equates to their insurance -- excuse me -- their insurance company being a little happier
and that if they have a system that's been out of compliance for two or three years and
they have a fire, their could be certainly a battle there as to -- they didn't maintain the
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system that would have prevented the fire from being as large as it was and ultimately that
could be to their benefit.
Milam: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Your statistic of -- we are getting 500 reports and not getting 1,300 reports, is it
the occupant who is supposed to initiate that report? Who initiates the report?
Palmer: Councilman Zaremba, that -- that is -- it's a requirement of the property owner to
make sure that their systems are tested. Right now it's the requirements that the
contractors submit the report, but there is no real teeth to that to require them to report.
That's why we are bringing before you an ordinance that that would be a requirement
through the fire code that they report to the AHJ all of their test findings and reports to us.
It is a provision in the fire code, but with the ordinance, then, it -- what that allows us to do
is require them to report to that -- this system, the Compliance Engine.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, follow up. So, my guess would be that there are 1,300 people
out there that don't know they are supposed to make the report or do you have any reason
to believe they know they are suppose to and they refused to or -- my guess is people just
don't know.
Palmer: Councilman Zaremba, I believe it's a combination, actually. I think there is some
that know that just don't want to take the time to do it. I think there is others that -- it's one
of those things that it's kind of out of site, out of mind. We find a lot of times that we go
into occupancies that are two to three years out of compliance, because that's the
schedule that we are able to get in there on and we find that their system hasn't been
tested that long and many times we will get the comment back, well, like I called, but the
company is no longer in business or I wasn't able to get a hold of them and then -- so,
they move onto other things and, again, it's one of those things -- it's a little bit out of sight,
out of mind until you need it and, then, you want to make sure that it works and the only
way that we can have some assurance that it's going to work is that it be tested on a
frequent basis to make sure that it's working. So, I think it's a combination of what you're
saying. I don't think that you can attribute it to one particular thing.
De Weerd: Would this be something similar to our backflow testing?
Palmer: Exactly. Yes.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Don't the owner of the building or whoever is carrying the insurance is the one that
is responsible, am I not right? And are not insurance companies -- most insurance
companies I know that are insuring these -- these buildings are out there doing yearly
inspections themselves, making sure everything is right. I mean my insurance company
always shows up every year to make sure that -- that everything is kosher if they are
going to insure me at a decent price. How do we work with the insurance companies on
this and who -- who is going to -- who is going to make sure that this is maintained or
inspected on a yearly basis?
Palmer: Councilman Bird, good questions. Unfortunately, I don't have the experience that
you have as being a business owner and how that relates to the insurance company.
Certainly as the -- as it goes for the annual inspection, again, when we go out and we do
the inspections one of the things that we look at is for the tag and the currency of it. If we
find tags -- and this is one of the benefits of being able to on site check the records, is that
we will be able to determine who did the last check and are they still in business and if
they are not, then, we can work with the business owner as to who their options are that
they could use. If we find somebody that has done the testing that's not reporting, as the
ordinance requires, then, we will be able to work one on one with them. This will be a -- a
process that, you know, I don't think anybody would expect that we would have all of a
sudden a hundred percent compliance after a year. It's going to take a period of time, but
certainly those departments that have entered into this program have generally seen a 90
to a hundred percent increase in the first year of their compliance reporting.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I have a couple more questions, Perry. One is why -- why don't we do the
inspections ourselves? And the second question is do you need something from us as
Council?
Palmer: Okay. Good question, Council Member Milam. We -- we have the ordinance
before you, so that would be the -- the thing that you could do for us. And, I'm sorry, the
first part was --
Milam: Why don't you do the inspections.
Palmer: Oh, why don't we do it. Because it would cost more -- a whole lot more than ten
dollars for us to do it. The departments that -- that do do this typically they charge a
permit fee of anywhere between 90 and 125 dollars to cover their costs for the filing, the
letters, the -- the man hours that it takes to support this kind of a program.
Milam: Thank you
Bird: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Bird
Bird: But when the building is complete and before the occupancy is signed off, we do
check and make sure the alarms are working, the fire sprinkler system is working and
stuff, so we do do the inspections on the new buildings at the -- at the occupancy time.
Not yearly.
Palmer: No. Councilman Bird, you are correct. The -- Rick Jackson, our contractor for
finalized safety before they sign off on the certificate of occupancy, they do go out with the
sprinkler company or with the fire alarm company. They don't physically do the testing
themselves, but they are there to witness the testing and sign off on it. You are correct.
Bird: Yeah.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions?
Bird: Madam Mayor, I do have one other
De Weerd: Yes. Follow up.
Bird: Are these based on a three year contract, these prices?
Palmer: Councilman Bird, yes, they --
Bird: I have a problem of giving a three year contract. I don't mind having a one year with
options, but we as a Council shouldn't in debt a future -- another Council, because, you
know, fiscal year'16 we could have four new people up here and --
Palmer: Right. Councilman Bird, to that point, this isn't a cost to the city. It's cost neutral
for the city. It's a cost that's borne by the -- the contractors and the three year contract
locks into pricing for that three years that it can't be increased.
Bird: You're administrating this.
Palmer: We are the recipient of --
Bird: Unless you're working free. It costs the city. Wages cost the city.
Palmer: My time costs the city.
Bird: Yeah.
Palmer: Yes. Correct.
De Weerd: Mr. Nary, how does that work?
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Nary: I guess I was trying to confirm something else. I'm sorry, I missed -- what was the
question on -- what was the cost of what?
De Weerd: Well, the three year contract and Mr. Bird said the preference would be not to
go beyond a year by year.
Nary: Yeah. I -- it should have -- it should have an annual clause for renewals for the --
the cost. So, we would -- it would end up being an annual basis anyway. We have to do
it that way. So, we would have an annual accrual -- or, excuse me, an annual clause on
the renewal in regards to the fee -- the cost, so that there isn't an additional beyond one
year.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
Nary: So, I think all you have is -- well, what you should -- Chief Palmer said there is an
ordinance. There is not an ordinance. There is a resolution that was intended to be on
next week. It's not on today and it's not in the packet. Emily might have additional
information.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: As far as the cost goes, for the way I see it, to answer Councilman Bird's question,
the initial expense is going to be probably in -- in putting the -- all of the information up
front and, then, in the long run it seems like it would be a time saver cost savings to the
city, because it's all going to be automated by the company and the contractors are paying
the ten dollars, so to me I see it as a cost savings in the long run.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, if I could interrupt just briefly to I think
answer Councilman Bird's question. The authority having jurisdiction is the fire
department, it is our responsibility to insure these inspections are being done. Right now
it's very difficult to do, because it's all self reporting and it's in various forms. So,
Compliance Engine is a piece of software, a web based piece of software that these
inspectors can go to, enter the data and that allows, as Chief Palmer indicated, a very
easy dashboard to say how many inspections have been done. In other words, it's
benchmarking something we are discussing heavily right now within the city leadership
team. So, if we know we have 2,800, 3,000, 1,500, whatever that number is, businesses
that need those hood inspections systems, the sprinkler inspection systems and the alarm
system inspections, that gives us a very easy access to determine are we in compliance
with that or not, hence the name Compliance Engine. So, the cost to the city as far as
Chief Palmer's time, that would be here today and it has been, it will be here tomorrow, to
insure those inspections are being done, but right now we have no good mechanism to
gage are those inspections being done properly and in a timely manner. It also gives us a
centralized point to look and see if there was an issue with the inspection -- now as we go
out and follow up on that to insure the repairs were done, again, it's one database, one
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place to look, as opposed to several different ways of getting that data from the
contractors. So, Chief Palmer's time was there yesterday, it will be there tomorrow, we
are doing that -- this does give us an easy way to benchmark are we are achieving the
goal of getting these done. Hopefully maybe that answers or clarified the question a little
bit.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Yeah. I'm not doubting the inspections and stuff, because when we go out to
inspect the building we don't run through a sprinkler system, because we are not capable
of it. I don't think there has been a single guy in this room that's ever installed a sprinkler
system. All I'm saying is I don't like to be tied down for three years for future Councils. If
you want to have it on a yearly contract with an option, that's great with me. We have
done it a hundred times and I just want to know if -- if the prices were based on a three
year contract or if we could renew it every year.
De Weerd: So, this sounds like it's on a three year contract. Does the price change if it's
on a year by year?
Palmer: Madam Mayor, it does have the potential. That was the reason why that was
their standard was a three year, but we saw it as an advantage, because it would lock that
price in for that three year period. It does have an out clause, like most contracts do, that
we could exit out on a 60 day basis. We retain all that data. That belongs to us, even
though it's on their cloud, but it does belong to us, so it's always our data that we -- we
own and retain. But the primary reason for the three year was just to lock in that pricing.
That was one of the concerns that the contractors had was because there is another
company out there that raised their rates significantly and they didn't want to get caught in
something like that, so --
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Can you find out -- is there -- is there a fee to cancel the contract?
Palmer: No.
Milam: Just a 60 day notice?
Palmer: Yes.
Milam: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Perry.
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Palmer: Thank you.
C. Public Comment: Compliance Engine —Web Based Reporting
Software
De Weerd: Item 8-C is a public comment on this very topic. I do have a gentleman that
has signed up. James Bedal. Bedal.
Bedal: Bedal. Yes.
De Weerd: Sorry.
Bedal: No. That's fine.
De Weerd: If you will, please, state your name and address for the record.
Bedal: My name is James Bedal and my address is 3604 Banner Avenue in Boise, Idaho.
83709.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Bedal: Thank you.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Before he starts his testimony. I did talk to Mr. Bedal today on the phone. He called
me to ask what the procedure would be and I'm the one that -- I did talk to him, we did not
talk anything other than I told him if he had a written thing to bring it -- eight copies and
that was it.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Bird: We did not discuss anything about this.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bedal: Madam Mayor and Council, thank you very much for taking the time to hear my
comments. Before I get started I would like to thank Chief Palmer. I had met with him a
couple times on this topic and he's been very willing to listen and hear our concerns and,
in fact, has been able to actually delay this vote at one point to get some more
information. I'd like to briefly just go over what I have in front of you today. The
companies I represent are Taylor Brothers Fire and Safety and Taylor Brothers,
Incorporated. Our companies have been in the valley for over 50 years. We have a
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number of people in our company that are active board members, both locally and the
Idaho Fire Protection Forum and the National Fire Equipment Distributors Association
where we sit on the boards. I reviewed the Meridian 2011-2016 strategic plan and really
applaud the Meridian Fire Department for identifying the importance to really manage risk
reduction in keeping the community as safe as possible. To that end we must have
visibility of inspection, testing, and maintenance reports from the property owner to the
contractor and in this report I will refer to the contractor as a fire equipment distributor,
which is who we are, and all the way back to the Idaho Insurance and Rating Bureau. I
think Councilman Bird had mentioned the insurance companies have a large stake in this
information. We, too, identified in 2006 that we have to have a better way of collecting,
sorting, and submitting our inspection reports. In 2006 our company launched a software
initiative. We spent over 250,000 dollars creating a tool that allow us to manage these
reports. We have got hundreds of hours in the field working with this tool. Our current
tool within a month we will be able to report digitally our information to AHJ's throughout
the valley, throughout the country, to the Idaho Surveying Rating Bureau and to the
property owners. As I listened to your IT -- I'm going to go off script a little bit. As I
listened to your IT group I was really taken by a lot of the products that they created. The
contact management software they created to manage the contracts that the city has.
What we are talking about is we created such a tool for ourselves to manage our business
we are sitting in front of is somebody telling us we can't use our tool that we spent
hundred of thousands of dollars creating. What I want you to do is go use this tool and
pay this company to use it. And that's why I'm here today. Many of my fellow fire and
equipment distributors in the valley and nationally have invested money of their own to
create a tool to collect and manage the inspection reports digitally. I'm confident that
digital submissions are going to be a requirement throughout the country in the next ten
years. All agencies will receive these digitally. I have no doubt in my mind. Compliance
Engine is leading the way in that effort and I agree with that part. Just to quickly describe
to you -- and I think there is a little confusion on exactly what is the process that goes on
here. Local fire distributors, us, we go out and we do the inspections, we collect the data.
We are the ones that put the boots on the ground, that are standing inside the business
making sure that their sprinklers are compliant, their hoods are compliant, their
suppression systems are compliant. We take and we report that -- we collect that data
either on paper, we do it in software tools that we have created, we can also buy -- there
is lots of software companies out there that create tools for us to collect the data. That's
the data collection part. We are not talking about submission at this point, just how do I
collect it. I will handwrite it or do it digitally. And, then, we submit that information to the
AHJ's as they require. Some AHJ's don't require us to submit them to them at all, they
just want the property owner to have them on site in paper form. It's law based on the
standards that they have those reports. Some want us to submit them in a pdf. Some
what us to submit them as a batch file. So, there is a variety of different ways to submit
them. But that's our responsibility to do that and we do it very diligent at that. The
distribution of the report is very important. The distribution of the report is ultimately what
we are talking about here. Is that we corrected the data from the age -- and our job is to
submit that report. The Compliance Engine, if you will, is an electronic scoreboard.
Everything else is happening locally. So, basically, what we end up with us we have five
components. We collect the data, we store the data, we share the data, and we analyze
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December 9, 2014
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the data. The third party companies have simply an analyzing for the AHJ's to use and I
think that that's great. The challenge that comes to the fire equipment distributor is
financially as soon as we submit that report we have to pay the Compliance Engine.
Every time we hit submit. We do hundreds of reports a month. That's a cash flow
problem for small businesses. That money is out there. And now I have got to wait on
average 42 days to get it back and so, then, there is a cash flow issue that goes on here.
What we are doing -- if we go with the full compliance is the fire equipment distributors
are, basically, forced to use a tool and pay for a tool that we have already designed and
have ourselves. A third -party company -- in this case in Chicago has access to store our
data that comes from Idaho. We have the exclusive conduit to the AHJ's to report. We
like our relationships with the AHJ's. Now our relationship is through a company in
Chicago.
De Weerd: Can you summarize?
Bedal: Yes. I will summarize. Thank you very much. Compliance Engine is a good tool.
It allows us -- allows them to sell the tool to the City of Meridian -- excuse me. I have got
that wrong. Compliance Engine has a good tool, allowing them to sell these tools and use
-- let me just -- I will summarize here. The Compliance Engine is coming to you and they
are offering you a free tool in exchange they are taking authority of the AHJ and forcing us
to pay for an inspection fee to them. This isn't free to the community. It can only be called
one thing and it's a tax and the tax is something that we have to levy onto the property
owners and we are paying an outside state -- an outside agency to do that. I believe that
we can solve this problem locally and I think my letter kind of outlines how we might be
able to do that. If Meridian does this and we have a hundred percent compliance based
on the numbers that Chief Palmer provided us, this would be around 72,000 dollars a
year at a hundred percent compliance. If we do this in the valley we are talking over
280,000 dollars a year throughout the whole valley of these funds and they are not staying
in Idaho and I think that if we take a little more time we will be able to do this. Under full
disclosure I have taken our technology that we have developed and I have given it to a
software company locally and I have asked them to develop a middle layer -- data layer
and offer that to AHJ's throughout the country at no fee. I mean they can take that and
they can create their own industry out of that. That would allow the Compliance Engine to
go ahead and sell a product of value. If they have got a product of value to me as a fire
equipment distributor, come to me and sell me a product of value and I will buy it from you
if it's of value. And if they have a product of value to come and sell it to you as authority
having jurisdiction. Don't give it away free. If you have a tool sell it to the authority having
jurisdiction and the city and let them use that tool. Thank you for your time.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: If I'm understanding the problem in the first place, we are trying to find a way to
get 1,300 people to report who are not currently reporting and I guess my question for
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December 9, 2014
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you, since you seem to be close to the industry, do you have a suggestion for how we can
do that?
Bedal: Well, in the anecdotal data that I have nationally is that it's not that the reports
aren't happening, the are not being done. The property owner is delaying it. They are not
doing it, and so we don't have a nice way of calling up the City of Meridian and saying we
did the inspection and they didn't take our bid, they won't fix it. We don't know if they are
going to fix it with some other company or are they not going to fix it at all and what I have
seen is where these products have been applied you get about a 30 to 35 percent jump in
compliance or reporting simply by sending out the letter. Simply by sending out the letter
saying you're due and it's coming from the fire department. So, there is definitely some
very big positives in doing that.
Bird: Any other questions, Council? Thank you, Mr. Bedal.
Bedal: Thank you.
Bird: We have nobody else. Is there anybody else in the public that would like to speak
to this subject? Seeing none, Council, what -- we need to close the public hearing. Have
we got a motion?
Milam: Mr. Vice-president, I move that we close the public hearing -- is this a public
hearing or a department report?
Bird: On 8-C.
Milam: 8-C. Public comment.
Bird: Second.
Cavener: Second.
Bird: Okay. We have got a motion and a second to close the public comment on Item
8-C. All in favor say aye. Opposed by the same?
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
D. Public Works: Meridian Floodplain Administration & Community
Rating System (CRS)
Bird: Okay. Next one is Public Works on our flood plain administration and community
rating system. That's Mr. David Miles.
Miles: I want to be the first to say good evening, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor.
Zaremba: Good evening.
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December 9, 2014
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Miles: I will try to be brief and stay at the hundred thousand foot level as best I can. For
all of you that were at the AIC conference this past week I will keep this either as riveting
or more riveting than water rights, I promise. Anyway, I have got a short presentation for
you tonight regarding Meridian flood plain administration program and an opportunity we
have known as the community rating system. The community rating system is
administered by FEMA to communities that exceed national flood insurance program
standards and it's a voluntary program for the community to enter and some of the
benefits which we will talk about throughout the presentation are that they offer insurance
-- flood insurance, premium reductions to citizens and community members that are
located in the community -- of a participating community of the CRS program. Currently
Meridian is not in the program and we -- citizens that have flood insurance are not
receiving a discount. But the short agenda for you, as I said, and we will try to stay at the
highest level we can, not to bog down too many details, but we will go over some of the
flood plain administration program responsibilities that I undertake as a flood plain
administrator on a day-to-day basis. We will touch on the program status as it relates to
the community rating system program and, then, we will talk about the community rating
system program itself and I was feeling a little inadequate, I don't have any animation in
my slide show tonight, but I do have lots of pictures and graphs, so hopefully that will
suffice. As you have before you a list of the day-to-day things that I do as the flood plain
administrator under the flood plain administration program -- I won't read through them all,
but I will touch on some of the highlights. We are dealing in permitting development
projects, enforcing the regulations, investigating any complaints, providing customer
service, collaborating and conducting map studies and map revision with FEMA and other
project engineers. In fact, we have a FEMA federal map revision coming for Nine Mile
Creek very soon -- actually, I just got an update -- within the next two weeks we should
have some preliminary data on that. So, it's quite a bit of information and oftentimes we
do get questions that folks ask, so why are we in this program to begin with? What's the --
why do we have to do this, so to speak, and the program I'm referring to is the national
flood insurance program. And to that we -- there are effects of not participating and I just
wanted to touch on those effects really quick. If we were to not participate in the flood
insurance program some of the impact that we would see as a community -- there would
be not flood insurance -- federal flood insurance made available to the citizens in our
community. There would be no federal mortgage insurance to properties that are located
in the flood plain. There would be no federal grants or federal disaster assistance to
properties that are in the flood plain. If there were to be a disaster the feds would not
provide any disaster assistance. So, those are some of the benefits of being in the
national flood insurance program and certainly one of the things that we would have to
look at if we weren't in that program is liability to the city. You know, would we have to
come up with an additional program to cover if there were a disaster in that area, how
would we fund that, how would we take care of that. So, we kind of -- we trudge on and
we participate in the national flood insurance program and we move forward. So, some of
the program milestones that we have achieved recently and in light of the CRS program
opportunity, are listed here on the -- on the slide before you and in relation to CRS, we
knew we had to do at least two things to look at the CRS program and how it impacts
Meridian. We knew we had to do what's known as a community assist visit -- basically an
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December 9, 2014
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audit where FEMA comes to us and we happen to be in our cyclical process of that
anyway, so that was initiated in 2011 and it was completed in 2013. So, we did that. We
also knew that we needed to do some sort of impact analysis. What does CRS mean for
Meridian? What would it mean administratively? What are the benefits? So, we did that
as well. We have worked with our consultant Tetra Tech and we have those results
throughout today's discussion. Excuse me. This evening's discussion. So, a couple of
additional benefits that we got to undertake through those two processes. We have got to
review our past and current practices and flood plain management. Obviously, we
continue to administer the program and the regulations that we are supposed to
administer. We resolved some outstanding issues that we had previously under our prior
audits and we also, most importantly I feel, is that we strengthened our stakeholder
relationships not only locally with folks like the irrigation districts, but at the state level with
folks that IDWR, the Department of Water Resources, as well as regionally. We worked
with FEMA regional representatives and been able to expand our reach and we talk with
them on a day-to-day basis over issues that oftentimes can get, you know, lost in the
minutia of details and -- we through our efforts we have been able to strengthen those
relationships. As you see over on the right there is a couple of bullets in red that we are
going to continue to talk about. So, if nothing else I have got four more bullets to talk
about and if you see those in the upper right-hand corner we are almost done. So, why is
CRS, the Community Rating System program, important to Meridian? Down in the bottom
right you will see a chart and figure about disasters across the nation related to weather
incidences and what you have is the fact that the number of incidences are increasing and
the cost of damage of those incidents is also increasing and why is that important to
Meridian? Well, if you don't know FEMA, because of these disasters, particularly in the
last ten years with the likes of Hurricane Katrina, Super Strom Sandy, there was Hurricane
Irene and several others as well. Those costs have impacted FEMA and FEMA is now in
a budget deficit. FEMA has identified several ways to make up that deficit and,
unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where you're sitting, one of the ways that they
identified to make up those costs is by raising flood insurance premiums across the board.
Higher premiums, more money to their coffers helps them in their program deficit. So, we
felt at this time, knowing that, this was a good time for Meridian to look at the CRS
program and see if it makes sense for Meridian to be able to kind of maximize our efforts
and capitalize on our efforts that we are currently doing today and see if there is a way to
benefit not only the city, but also the community members that are impacted by the flood
plain. Some of the benefits that we have through that -- you know, our current standards
that we currently enforce under the flood plain management rules help makes Meridian a
desirable and safe community, taking credit for those community standards that we
enforce will help us accumulate a percentage or a point, which I will get into further, to be
able to pass those efforts and those points in a form of savings onto community members
in the way of premium reductions. It also helps us maintain the flood plain areas as good
stewards, not only to the environment, but also to the community members. Again, if we
are passing on community savings by way of premium reductions, I think that's a good
benefit to the community for things that we are already doing today. And, lastly, it also
keeps our city viable and competitive in terms of economic development. There are other
cities locally that have this program in place already, so we feel like having this program in
place will continue to protect us in that economic development. So, our impact analysis.
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We took a look at where we are at today and in Meridian there is about 1,100 parcels that
are impacted by the one year flood plain. Of those 1,100 parcels there is about 107
polices right now in force, for a total of just a little more than 73,000 annual flood
insurance premiums and those policies insure approximately 21.6 million dollars worth of
property. In our impact analysis we looked at our existing conditions and looked for any
low hanging fruit that we might find for any potential next step that we could take and I
have got that down on the right there and I will explain the point system of the program in
a minute, but our existing conditions today would, essentially, level Meridian at what's
known as a class level eight or a ten percent savings to community members that have
flood insurance policies in place. We did identify some low hanging fruit by way of a
public information flyer, as well as some increased activity that we already undertook
through our kind of database management of customer service responses. When we get
calls about the flood plain we keep track of those and we identified some things that we
could do additionally and you will see that we are only 145 points away from the next
class level up, which is a class level seen and I will talk about those more in a couple
more slides. The class eight, class seven, points, CRS, what are we talking about? On
the right you will see a chart there that lays out the essentials of the CRS program. It's,
basically, a points program, it's calculated on points. The more points that a city earns in
their flood plain administration, the lower the class level, therefore, the higher the
insurance premium reduction that a community member receives that's located in the
special flood hazard area. Again, it's a voluntary program that FEMA and the NFIP
implement for communities that enforce higher standards than the minimum NFIP
standards and the reason they do that is because it assists FEMA in their goals of
reducing flood damage, increasing flood insurance awareness to the community and to
help achieve a comprehensive approach to flood plain management throughout the city.
And just for a comparison, I put down there in the lower left the breakout of Idaho
communities that are in this program. Currently there is 22 communities in Idaho that are
in the program. They range anywhere from a class level six to a class level ten and you
will see there that I put the four local communities that are in the program here in the
Treasure Valley and they have been in the program for a while and they are anywhere
from a class six to a class eight. So, as I said a moment ago, our existing conditions in
Meridian would allow us to be a class eight and I just wanted to touch briefly on how --
how that -- how we get to that class eight based on, you know, what is it that we do that
gets to that eight. Most of our points are derived from our ordinance and our working with
the hazard mitigation plan. We have standards that require elevating above the base
flood elevation by two feet. We put a buffer on FEMA's boundary to account for any map
inaccuracies. We require flood studies where no flood studies exist. And we do electronic
permit tracking. We coordinate with our hazard mitigation plans and, again, we also do
customer service and outreach. The graph down below shows that all of those things
together -- 80 percent of the points that we would qualify for today come from our
ordinance and come from our efforts in our hazard mitigation planning, which I thought
was kind of interesting. The options that we could undertake to get to the next class level
-- up a class level seven would be to develop a public information flyer and we would use
that for public outreach, both here at City Hall and we could use that at -- on our internet
services. We would also use that at public outreach events, like the Public Works and,
then, we also identified that mailing that out to a targeted audience would afford us the
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necessary point to get to that next class level seven ranking. Additionally, there is a small
component that we would do with our database tracking system where we would,
basically, have to add two columns to our system that says not only what is the flooding
source and who we have talked to and what was their question, but what is the base flood
elevation and what are the water surface elevations in that area. It's a very simple fix I
feel for things that I already do just to amend that chart to that next class level. There is a
warning. There is a warning. As with any federal program there is always a paperwork
burden that we have to undertake. It is manageable, however. I find it interesting that
FEMA always puts a paperwork burden disclosure and tells you how long they think it's
going to take you to fill out the form. That's always fun. Anyway, there is an initial audit
review and it's, basically, approving of our record. We have to go through and fill out a
paper application. FEMA signs off that we are ready to enter the program. An insurance
specialist with FEMA comes down, looks at our paperwork, goes through our records,
says, okay, are you doing X, Y and Z? Yes, you are. Great. They take that paperwork
back, they rent it and score. So, all told it's about a six to eight month process just to get
into the program. On top of that there is also an annual verification and there is also a
cyclical recertification. So, annually, I would have to fill out the form that you will see there
on the right. It basically quantifies how many buildings are in the flood plan, how many
permits have you issued in any given year and some other statistics as well. That's
followed up similarly in the five year certification. However, with the five year certification
the insurance specialist comes back, says, okay, are you doing what you said you have
been doing. That's the nuts and bolts of it. And, Mayor, for you for awareness, these
documents that we completed in the department, you as the CEO would be required to
sign them as well, so there is that component as well. So, I do have a recommendation
based on all those findings. I believe that it's most advantageous for the city to enter the
program and to strive to enter at a class level seven. As I said, we found that low hanging
fruit to be a public information flyer, distributing that at a targeted mailing and upgrading
our database management and I will talk to the targeted mailing of the flyer, because
that's really the cost component. We have identified. We have identified funds in our
existing budget where we think we can address some cost savings in that matter to cover
that. We looked at with Finance Department a utility billing insert, but because of the
number of accounts in the utility billing it came out slightly cheaper to do a targeted
mailing and we feel that a targeted mailing would be more effective as well, because we
are going to target people that are actually in the flood plain and people that actually work
in the flood plain, rather than generating a potential 29,000 other requests of what is this
document I just got? So, we feel like that's a more appropriate method. With the targeted
mailing it's estimated to run us about 600 dollars a year to do that mailing of that and, as I
said, we have identified in our budget we think we have the funds to handle that currently.
Again, just to summarize this year's benefits really quickly. One, it helps us achieve our
strategic initiative in our Public Works strategic plan for the environmental division. But
more importantly, it's really about providing a service to the community for things that we
are doing today as a city that we aren't required to do. FEMA recognizes that if a city is
going above and beyond, which we have been for the last six years under our flood plain
standards, that they will give a benefit under this community rating system program. And
to pass those savings along to community members that are impacted by this, to me it
seems like a very valuable thing to do for not a whole lot of extra effort. There is some
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December 9, 2014
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staff time on my part, but it's things that I am already doing today and it's simply another
thing that I would undertake as part of my role as a flood plain administrator. Most
importantly I think it provides that community safety. It continues to encourage that,
continues to educate the community and it continues to insure that we are being good
stewards with our financial resources and passing on those savings for those efforts that
we are doing. It protects our economic element locally here. We are competitive with
other cities. So, those are some of the benefits that I find in the program. And we have
got one more slide. Again, I'm recommending that we enter the program. It's in line with
our strategic initiatives. It seems to have a decent benefit for not a lot of extra effort. I
have talked with other local communities who are in it, they find that it's not vary impactful
to them, save for the flood plain administrator, who you talk to when it's their site cyclical
audit and they say, yeah, it's a couple extra hours of my time, but all in all the community
is getting a cost insurance savings and that's worth it and the public good for the
information that you're getting people.
De Weerd: Well, David, I would say do it
Miles: Great. I would be happy to answer any questions if you have any
De Weerd: No. We are in full support.
Miles: Great.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Just for my own knowledge, of the 22 cities in Idaho that signed up, how many of
them have had a -- has a major waterway run through it? Like Pocatello, Portneuf, and all
them. Not how many of them have --
Miles: I would say -- I don't have the specifics. I would be happy to get them for you.
Bird: No. Just off your head, what do you think?
Miles: Probably half I would say.
De Weerd: I appreciate your thoughtful approach to this, David, and I would agree that
much of this you are already doing and it looks like the major cost is going to be 600
dollars in mailing and if you're standing in front of Council saying you can absorb that in
your current budget, I think it's -- it's a no brainer; right?
Miles: Right.
Bird: Bring a resolution back.
Zaremba: Go for it.
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Miles: I would be happy to do it.
Bird: Let's do a resolution so it's all and done.
De Weerd: Okay. You can figure out how to write that one up.
Nary: Okay.
Miles: Thank you very much for your support. Appreciate your support and your time for
me. Thank you.
De Weerd: Can't wait to read it. Thank you, David.
Miles: You're welcome.
E. Meridian Parks and Recreation Department: Rail With Trail
Arterial Crossing Design Study Presentation by Project
Engineering Consultants (PEC)
De Weerd: And thank you for everything you do. Jay.
Gibbons: Madam Mayor, Councilmen, I'm here before you today. Appreciate the
opportunity to come and have my consultant on the Rail With Trail arterial crossing design
study present to you their draft final report. As you know we have been working on that
with Project Engineering Consultants out of Utah for the past six months. They have
prepared a final report that we are taking some comments and reviewing. We wanted to
come before Council and ask for your input and insight prior to finalizing, at which time,
then, we will come back with -- I will come back with a resolution for the Council to affirm
the results of this study and we will move forward with that. I am going to introduce Lars
Anderson, he's with Project Engineering Consultants. They have extensive experience
with Rail With Trail projects actually on the ground. They have completed a few and have
more in the works in Utah. So, with that this is Lars.
De Weerd: Thank you. And thank you for joining us, Lars.
Anderson: Yes. Madam Mayor, Council Members, thanks for inviting us here today.
We'd like to just go through some research that we have found in doing this study and,
again, the focus on this study is not the actual alignment of the trail, but the crossings of
the arterials. ITD was included. ACHD, COMPASS, were all included as -- during the
study. If I remember how to do this right. I think I do that. Okay. So, the project
overview. It started over on Black Cat and went over to Locust Grove Road. Did not
include Eagle Road, because that one was a bigger chunk than we could take on for this.
So, there was seven locations all together. And, again, we did look at alignments and we
will show you some examples, but, really, the focus was on these arterials that you see
here. This is an example of what we created. We created one -- a map like this for every
intersection and in some intersections where it goes from an existing cross-section of two
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or three lanes and proposed to go to five lanes, we created as many as eight different
alternatives for each intersection, because we included inside the railroad right of way for
both north and south. Outside the railroad right of way north and south and, then, also for
the five lane section, the future condition. So, there is a whole bunch of maps in this
report. I have given some copies to Jay, but it's pretty thick and I didn't want to go through
all of them with you, because you would be really bored. The idea here is that if UPR,
DVR and WATCO that mange the railroad right now, if they allow the trail to be in the right
of way, then, you know how it could cross. This is actually the condition that they would
like to see, because it has less of a gap where people cross and, then, also the train
crosses. So, this is their preferred, if you want to call it that, except they counter that and
say they don't actually prefer to be in the right of way at all. So, I don't really know how to
interpret that.
De Weerd: They get recreational immunity if it is, so --
Anderson: Yes. This next one shows the same situation, but outside the right of way.
So, you can see the challenge with that, because pedestrians would cross separated from
the railroad and there is a distance of a hundred feet there and that's not ideal. But it is
possible. If -- the main point here is if the railroad does not want you to have a trail in their
right of way, you can still proceed with the trail. It's more expensive and you have to get
easements, but it is possible. This shows the future expansion. One of the situations the
railroad shared with us is they said the light rail transit was coming soon. They didn't
really define what soon was, they just said that it was possible and so we looked at other
light rail systems throughout the country and typically they have about a 25 foot offset
from the freight line and so we showed here and showed how much additional width they
would have in separation. The separation between the light rail and the proposed
pedestrian trail is greater than the majority of Rail With Trail projects throughout the
country and we will show you an example of those. Most of them are within 25 to 30 feet.
This one is 50 feet away from the proposed light rail. Of course, the light rail could
change a little bit in there, but you get the idea. The pedestrian trail would be significantly
separated from any railroad. There we go. And this shows a cross-section of what it
would look like. It's a 21 foot trail section, which means a one foot offset from property
line, two foot shoulders on each side and a 16 foot -- did I add that up right? Yes. Sixteen
foot paved section, which allows for two five foot bike lanes and a six foot multi-purpose
lane. So, you get commuters that are not running into people that have strollers or are
just walking their kids on bikes. There is a separation of uses there. This is really where it
hits the road. The cost for existing road and, then, for the future five lane sections, if you
are able to go inside the railroad right of way you can see the costs are significantly less
than outside the right of way. That is mostly because outside the right of way we included
the cost for you to purchase easements and that drilled up the cost quite a bit, as you can
imagine. Also included in here are the future five lane road onlys would be a HOC signal.
A pedestrian signal if -- if they crossed, a pedestrian could hit a button and it turns on red
flashers for them, so that the motorists see them crossing and if that HOC signal is
outside of the right of way, then, that adds another stop for the motorists in addition to the
railroad stop. So, not ideal, but certainly doable and it's been done elsewhere. We were
asked to look at some potential crossings of above and below grade for the five lane
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sections. This could also be used for Eagle Road if the study went to that area. These
were not originally part of the arterial study. These were mostly just so you had a frame of
reference of what it cost for an overpass or an underpass. The overpasses have some
challenges in that they are typically switchbacks, as you can tell from this picture and so
they are not really conducive to the bikers that -- and so the commuter bicyclists don't like
these very much, because of the tight turns, whereas the underpass aren't really friendly
to families and kids and it's a little challenging for them to want to go through an
underpass sometimes where it's dark or -- and the vandalism and things like that you can
see. So, both of them have their pros and cons. And you can see the overpass is
generally less and that's because the underpass hits so many utilities, gas lines and water
lines that you have to loop and it gets really expensive that way. Sorry. Okay. ITD
helped -- I shouldn't say they funded the study, because they didn't really. They
administered the funds that came from COMPASS and as part of that requirement,
because they are federal funds, you have to look at all the environmental resources. So,
we looked at wetlands. We looked at historical structures. And in red are the historical
structures. There is quite a few of them, especially on Main Street. So, you get an idea of
where those are concentrated. However, we were able to navigate our way through those
and none of the historical structures will have a negative impact due to this project. The
wetlands also are there and there are a couple canals that have wetlands associated, but,
again, they could easily be -- you could easily align around them and no real issues to be
concerned with. We just had to look at it. As well as probably your favorite graphs out
there, the slick spot cover graph, we had to look at and see if there was any out there.
We didn't find any, but they make you do that, as well as all the other things that say no
effect. There was a lot of looking. This is what Madam Mayor talked about, the -- the
statute about recreation and we shared this with the railroad. They took comfort, but not a
lot in this. They said they would have to look into it further and so this in red highlights
that, the landowner being the railroad owner, doesn't have any liability if someone is
injured on a Rail With Trail. We did want to share with you a recent federal highway study
that was done in 2013 where they found up to 2011 almost 1,600 deaths in corridors from
trespassers. With Rail With Trail they only found one death and that was in Bellingham,
Washington, where a young woman crossed through the guards and the lights and people
that were standing there, still went through there and was hit by the train and so
sometimes you just can't design enough to keep someone from doing that and yesterday
in Utah a bicyclist saw the lights, saw the guards down, still went through the guards and
was hit and killed by the train. So, sometimes you just -- that kind of thing, unfortunately,
happens, but the Rail With Trail systems you don't see that very much, because they have
positive fencing and crossings that prevent that.
De Weerd: What an awesome slide.
Anderson: Do you think that helps?
De Weerd: Yes. Thank you.
Anderson: Yeah. And it's federal highways that came up with this. So, it's not, you know,
some group that's trying to promote it so much as federal highways. And, then, this talks
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about that one fatal -- fatal and two injuries on Rail With Trails in 20 years, where it
happened. I do want to point out that last point, that a lawsuit was filed and the railroad
and trail manager were not found to be liable. Neither one was found liable for that.
There is a lot of Rail With Trails -- not Rail To Trail conversions, they are different. Rail to
Trail means they remove the railroad and put a trail on top of it. These are Rail With Trails
and there is 88 trail managers. There are over 140 trails throughout the country. Eighty-
eight managers had seven claims filed against them and none of them were filed against
the actual railroad. These are for trail conditions. In no case were they found liable -- was
the railroad found liable -- was the railroad found liable for any of the situations along the
Rail With Trails. Even when it says -- even when the gate was left open by the railroad
they still weren't found liable -- negligent because of their immunity. Another system here
where it shows Rail With Trail. They often provide safe alternatives, they provide fencing,
and they provide a lot more eyes along the trail, so you have less vandalism, you have
more safety, they improve the situation. Of course convincing the railroad of that is a
challenge. This one is interesting. It shows all the different Rails With Trails in the
different states. The two in Utah our company actually designed both of those and we are
designing a third one right now and they have proven very successful, very popular and
with the same owners that you have here. The difference are the operators of the railroad
here are different, so --
De Weerd: It looks like Idaho and Michigan are kind of the outliers, uh?
Anderson: Yeah. You do have a Rail To Trail up in --
Bird: Moscow.
Anderson: Yeah.
De Weerd: Oh, no. Coeur d'Alene.
Bird: Coeur d'Alene. Kellogg.
Anderson: This is -- this is an interesting slide where it shows that the before
development a lot of the railroad owners had an attitude -- a negative attitude towards the
trail and, then, that changed after the trail was developed. So, a few are opposed, but
they are trying to pass the negative feelings, but they weren't as opposed as -- after as
they were before. And this shows the distance between the track that I alluded to in the
slide earlier, that the majority are between 11 and 20 feet. The next courses are 31 to 50
feet. We fall in that last category of below five percent, 51 to 75 feet away. There is just a
lot of space out there. There is a lot of room. It's a 200 foot wide corridor. This shows
some other examples. Pennsylvania and Oregon and it shows sometimes the rail -- the
trail is very close to the railroad track, with a short -- the picture in the lower right-hand
corner, that's a short four foot chain link fence and other times it meanders through a
linear park, just depends on the situation. So, lots of trails out there that are just like the
one that's being proposed here. This one is the most impressive, because they actually
created a system where they -- they rent bikes and the railroad will drop people off and,
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December 9, 2014
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then, they ride the bikes back and it's created a six million dollar industry in their town that
they otherwise didn't have. So, economic benefit as well. And it's a freight train. They
have a separate train that they carry the bikes on it. A separate car. And this one is
interesting, because if you ever thought there would be liability it would be with an
electrified track. This one has a third electrified track running along it with just a simple
fence and they have had no deaths there. So, if someone touches the electrified track
they would instantly be electrocuted and they have had zero deaths with that with the trail
right next to it. So, you can't say -- nothing is foolproof, but these are not -- you're not
creating a hazard by putting a trail in the right of way. And this shows that in this case it
was just a 12 foot wide trail with a very short fence. What's interesting here is they are
able to buy the easement from the railroad company for 750,000 dollars for the -- and with
the stipulation that it had to be 20 feet away from the railroad and so they were able to
build their trail in Columbus, Ohio. And this one shows one in Fort Collins where -- this
was interesting, because they had 11 to 20 trains per day -- a large number of trains
traveling at 30 to 40 miles per hour and they still were able to build the trail without any
conflicts. And, lastly, this shows more of an urban condition that could be in your
downtown where they don't have any positive separation between the trail and the tracks,
yet it is a very popular trail where they have, you know, trail days and all kind of events
along the trails. That's our presentation. Do you have any questions?
De Weerd: Thank you so much. Council, any questions?
Bird: No. Just a great report.
De Weerd: Yeah.
Milam: Very interesting. Thank you.
Bird: Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Where were you a couple years ago. Gosh. Exciting stuff.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Real quick. Have you -- have you found a common cited statistic by rail
operators which maybe contradicts what you have provided that explains the opposition?
Anderson: No. No. Not anything that's based in -- they haven't shared any facts with us.
It's all more anecdotal.
Borton: Okay. Thanks.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 49 of 52
Anderson: Okay. Thank you
Gibbons: Madam Mayor, just as a quick follow up. I will note that we gave this
presentation to the parks commission last month at their -- their monthly meeting. I gave it
to the -- our Meridian Transportation Commission last Monday on the 1st of December.
We had a lot of input from -- from that committee. They were very in tune. Next Thursday
I have a presentation with the RTEC committee at COMPASS, so -- and there could be a
COMPASS board to follow that. That depends, but -- so, we are getting this out there.
We will see where it goes. We will continue to work with the railroad and looking for
community partners and see what we can accomplish with that.
De Weerd: Thank you, Jay. And thank you again, Lars.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: This is kind of a side issue, but some of you may know that COMPASS had
planned a presentation by Union Pacific Railroad for tomorrow at 3:00 or 3:30, something
like that. It has been postponed indefinitely. It's not going to happen tomorrow.
Apparently the presenter can't make it, but --
De Weerd: Was it Dan Harbeke?
Zaremba: -- that's a shame, because I was looking forward to that and they have not
picked an alternate date for it. I'm sorry, what was your question?
De Weerd: Who was supposed to present?
Zaremba: Somebody from the Union Pacific Railroad was going to talk about their plans.
De Weerd: It looks like Dan Harbeke is going to be leaving or transferred to Houston or
somewhere in Texas, so -- which is unfortunate. He's been -- he's really helped improve
the communication. I wonder if that had an influence to it.
Zaremba: That name sounds familiar. It might have been.
De Weerd: He's their government affairs person.
Zaremba: Yeah.
F. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates
De Weerd: So -- okay. Okay. Thank you again. Okay. Council, any reports?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
Page 50 of 52
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Just the Police Department, which the chief will -- next month or so will bring forward
his new realignment and promotions for the people, but our remodel and our new building
out there is going well. The Police Department got to find out how some subcontractors
work and where they get rid of all their trash when they get -- when they don't want to haul
it off. Between the walls, so -- other than that it's doing pretty good. I haven't heard Bill
complain, so I guess legal is doing -- Michelle is keeping legal in line, so -- that's mine.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Let's see. HR -- they are working on modules for open enrollment, so next year
we should all be able to -- we will all get into our own stuff, instead of doing paperwork,
and if you haven't met Jessica, she's the new admin assistant and she's really sweet and
you should all go meet her. And she's also -- she's going to be facilitating some strength
training programs throughout the city in different departments. Fire Department -- on next
Wednesday, the 17th, is their promotional ceremony here at 6:00 o'clock and they would
like as many people to show up as possible. Arts Commission is right now having their
open house upstairs, so as soon as this meeting is over everybody should go upstairs and
check out the new art exhibit.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I will be brief. We had the information services presentation tonight and I think
they did a great job of covering things. We alluded to it during Patrick's presentation, that
Patrick is leaving the Parks Department and I know he is leaving a -- a big void in that
department, but I'm excited -- when the previous person in that position left they found
someone great and I remain confident that the next person they bring will be great.
De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor. I meet with Tom tomorrow, so I will have a better story tomorrow
and the latest and greatest. But we have heard about the community rating system with
Public Works. One of the things a bit more current is budget stuff with Finance and
among things we are looking at and discussing a participatory budget component
potential, which is another interesting way to get more public input and participation and
having some greater impact on a portion of the budget and so it's something that came
back from the National League of Cities, so I have given -- I got a book that I have given
to Stacy, she is reading it and tolerating me. I will talk more about that. So, that will come
Meridian City Council Workshop
December 9, 2014
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back probably more in January with a little more detail in what that means and what the
opportunity for the Council could be well in advance of the budget calendar, so --
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: My liaison department, Development -- Community Development is continuing
to do its regular outstanding work. The committees that I belong to are trucking along
pretty much the same. I guess the news is everybody is doing well.
Item 10: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: That's good news. Okay. Anything under future topics for the agenda? If not,
I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Zaremba: So moved.
Holman: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Holman: There is an ordinance on the other --
De Weerd: Oh, that's right. Sorry.
Zaremba: Unmoved.
Item 9: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 14-1634: An Ordinance (RZ 13-010 — Three
Corners Subdivision) For The Re -Zone Of A Three Parcels Of
Land Located In The NW'/4 Of The NW'/4 Of Section 29,
Township 4 North, Range 1 East, Boise Meridian; Establishing
And Determining The Land Use Zoning Classification Of C -C
(Community Business District), R-4 (Low Density Residential),
And R-8 (Medium Density Residential) Zoning Districts In The
Meridian City Code; And Providing An Effective Date
De Weerd: Madam Clerk, will you, please, read this ordinance by title only.
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 14-1634, an
ordinance RZ 13-010, Three Corner Subdivision, for the rezone of three parcels of land
located in the northwest one quarter of the northwest one quarter of Section 29, Township
4 North, Range 1 East, Boise meridian, City of Meridian, Ada County, Idaho. Establishing
and determining the land use zoning classification of C -C, Community Business District;
R-4, Low Density Residential, and R-8, Medium Density Residential Zoning District, in the
Meridian City Code. Providing that copies of this ordinance shall be filed with the Ada
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December 9, 2014
Page 52 of 52
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. I don't see anyone who would
like to hear it read in its entirety, so do I have a motion?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve Ordinance No. 14-1634 with suspension of rules.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve. Madam Clerk, will you call role.
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: Okay. Now I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Bird: So moved.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor?
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:52 P.M.
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