HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-12-08Meridian City Council December 8, 2015
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:00 p.m., Tuesday,
December 8, 2015, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Keith Bird, Charlie Rountree, David Zaremba Joe Borton and Genesis
Milam.
Members Absent: Luke Cavener.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Jacy Jones, Tom Barry, Warren Stewart, Mark
Niemeyer, Perry Palmer, Steve Siddoway, Mike De St. Germain and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X _ Joe Borton
X__ Charlie Rountree X_ Keith Bird
__X__ Genesis Milam _____ Lucas Cavener
__X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Welcome to the Meridian City Council meeting. It's always nice to see friendly
faces in the crowd. So, thank you for joining us. For the record it is Tuesday -- you know,
they are always friendly, so -- just sometimes you're here for different reasons. More
cheery today. Okay. For the record it is Tuesday, December 8th. It 3:00 o'clock. We will
start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us 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.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I move that we adopt the agenda as published.
Bird: Second.
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De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as published. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Interagency Agreement Between the Ada County Highway
District and the City of Meridian for the Replacement of Water
Valve Lids with the 2016 Arterial and Collector Capitol
Maintenance Projects
B. Professional Services Agreement for Fabrication and Installation
of Main Street and Fairview Avenue Public Art Project for an
Amount Not-to-Exceed $40,000.00
C. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law: Paramount Subdivision
(H-2015-0022) by Brighton Investments, LLC Located Southeast
Corner of W. Chinden Boulevard (SH 20/26) and N. Fox Run Way
Request: Modification to the Development Agreement (Inst.
#103137116, Amended as Inst. #113083665) for Paramount
Subdivision to Include a Conceptual Development Plan for the
Subject Property
D. Final Order for Approval: Final Plat for Decatur Estates
Subdivision No. 1 (H-2015-0027) by 4345 Linder Road, LLC
Located 4345 N. Linder Road Request: Final Plat Approval
Consisting of Thirty-Five (35) Building Lots and Nine (9)
Common Lots on 15.17 Acres of Land in an R-4 Zoning District
E. Development Agreement Graycliff Estates (AZ-15-012) Generally
located southwest of W. Harris Street and S. Meridian Road, in
the NE 1/4 of Section 36, Township 4 North, Range 1 West.
F. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law: AZ 15-012 Village
Apartments by DevCo Located 2700 N. Eagle Road Request:
Annexation and Zoning of 0.38 of an Acre of Land with a C-G
Zoning District
G. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law: CUP 15-019 Village
Apartments by DevCo Located 2600 N. Eagle Road Request:
Conditional Use Permit Approval for a Multi-Family Development
Consisting of 336 Dwelling Units on 16.68 acres of Land in a C -G
Zoning District
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H. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law: Village Apartments MDA
15-011 by DevCo Located 2600 N. Eagle Road Request:
Modification to the Development Agreement to Include a
Conceptual Development Plan for the Property and to Remove
the Requirement for Detailed Conditional Use Permit Approval of
Future Uses
I. Authorization for the Purchasing Manager to Sign PO #16-0122
for the Not-To-Exceed Amount of $74,934.00 for
Taser/Evidence.com License Fees Per the Agreement Approved
by City Council 11/18/2014
J. Approval of the Professional Service Agreement with Epique
Events and Gifts for the Meridian Youth Farmer’s Market in the
Not-to-Exceed Amount of $5,000.00
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I move that we approve the Consent Agenda, authorizing the Clerk to attest
and the Mayor to sign.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is no
discussion, Madam Clerk, will you, please, call roll.
Roll Call: Rountree, yea; Bird; yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener,
absent.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 5: Community Items/Presentations
A. Check presentation to the City of Meridian Fire Department from
Light My Fire, Inc.
De Weerd: Item No. 5 is a check presentation. If you have ever been to a Light My Fire
event you know what I'm talking about when I say there is plenty of opportunity to spend
lots of money and usually we do, but if you haven't been there you really must go. So,
chief, I will turn this over to you.
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Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, this is, once again, one of the favorite
days that I have throughout the year, because we recognize the partnership that our fire
department has had -- longstanding partnership with the Light My Fire group. The hard
work of this group benefits two components of our department. One is a burnout fund,
which, as you know, offers us the ability to give back a little bit to our citizens in their most
dire need when they -- they have a house fire and they get burned out of their home and,
secondly, and very importantly it helps support our prevention efforts. This past year a lot
of these funds were spent directly on car seats. It allows us to do car seat inspections
and also to provide car seats for those parents -- those new parents that have one that is
not going to work for them as we inspect those. So, with that I would like to bring up the
group behind you. There is a whole clan that's going to be coming up and I am going to
turn this over to Deputy Chief Perry Palmer to say a few words on the prevention side
and, then, we will do the check presentation.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, it is a pleasure to be here before you
today to accept these funds. Being part of the group I know the dedication and the hard
work that goes into it by all the folks behind me. I know the Mayor has attended and
several of you have the event that we have every fall. I hope that you will be able to make
it again this year.
De Weerd: I think it's in the spring.
Palmer: It is the spring. I'm sorry. It's generally cold out.
De Weerd: I just want to make sure we set the right expectation .
Palmer: It's in February. How about that?
De Weerd: Yes.
Palmer: I'm sorry. So, anyway, we are looking forward to a great event this year. We
hope that you can make it as well and as the chief already indicated, the funds go to a
very worthy cause, whether it's smoke detectors or car seats, materials that we are able to
hand out to the kids during fire prevention month or anytime of the year and, then,
certainly the burnout fund. It's a great boost to that fund in helping people in their time of
need. So, with that I think Mary Cahoon is the one that's going to present the check, so I
will bring her forward.
Cahoon: Thanks, Perry. This is a terrific day for Light My Fire. This is what we do ten
months out of the year, working to get people to donate things and, then, to raise money
for both prevention and burnout and the people standing behind me are the ones that do
the work and I want to recognize them. Over here W inder Buchanan, Crissie Kay, CTR.
Megan Scharar, CTR. Bob Ricketts. He has been doing this 23 years. He is a veteran.
He's the one that's carrying the torch for a really long time and Judy is not here, but she's
been partnering with him as well. Blaine Tewell with Paul Davis Restoration. Perry
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Palmer also works really hard to help us as well. And Andrea Bradshaw with B elfor is not
here today and, then, I wanted to mention one other, Sonja Johnson with Johnson CPA.
She's our bean counter. We need her help big time. So, 23 years, over 330,000 dollars
has been raised and it's a split between Boise and Meridian. Meridian jumped in
-- oh. And Pam Orr is not here today. She is a challenger, man. That girl, she can raise
money like nobody else can, I'm telling you. Anyway. So, today we -- through the year
we have raised 32,800 dollars net proceeds and that's a split between Boise and
Meridian, Boise is a little bit bigger. You're number one, though; right?
De Weerd: You just keep going.
Cahoon: Exactly. Precisely. And so 60 goes to Boise, 40 goes to here, and so today, tah
dah, if you want to spin that check around, Bob. We have 13,120 dollars. Yea. Chief
Niemeyer, for you 7,820 dollars and bingo, bango, bongo, baby, this thing is going to
double; right? Because there is a matching grant fund. So, that one doubles up for more
safety and prevention, which is huge. And, then, Joe Borga -- you're welcome. I'm too
fast for them. And, then, Joe and Darren. Yes. With the burnout. For you guys we h ave
5,248 dollars. So -- which is great. I know that this year there were a ton of people who
got burned out of their homes. There was a big apartment complex fire and you guys
gave some to Mountain Home and spread that money out there where people really
needed it and as we were talking before we entered in Joe was saying that there is a hotel
that donates -- two hotels.
Joe: The Sandman Hotel and the Marriott.
Cahoon: Okay. And so two local hotels here in Meridian -- the great city of Meridian,
number one; right? And -- and they were maxed out, which is great for Meridian, but -- so
no money had to go out for hotel stays. In the middle of the night it used to be what are
we going to do with these people who don't have anywhere to go, they mi ght have
slippers on or not, and so it's a great honor and a privilege for us to help people that are
struggling at that point in time. So, February 5th we are going to have a Night To
Remember. It is Hollywood Then and Now. So, we encourage you to dress up as your
favorite movie star or movie character and come on down and spend some money and
have some fun with us and so if -- Perry, do you want to hand that out to each one.
De Weerd: And I can tell you that Mary and this whole team, including Judy, they deck
themselves out to the theme. You hardly even recognize them. But they really get into
the spirit.
Cahoon: Anyway, we thank you and we encourage you to come and join us.
De Weerd: Thank you. Thank you. Would any of the rest of you like to say anything? I
will tell you how much we appreciate this. It does benefit our citizens, our community and
the communities around. So, I would say that borders are not important when it comes to
helping others; right? So, what you all do to help those families in the hour of their
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greatest need is greatly appreciated. So, thank you and I look forward to February 5th.
Anything from Council?
Bird: Just thank you.
Rountree: Thanks for the effort.
De Weerd: Thank you. We will ask the chief to come in and give a tease prior to, so we
know what the live auction items are and just know that the chief usually throws
something in there as well, so we will let you bid in advance.
Item 6: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 7: Department Reports
A. Parks and Recreation Department: Parks and Recreation Master
Plan Presentation
De Weerd: So, we will move right into Department Reports and have Mr. Siddoway
introduce our next speaker.
Siddoway: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's my pleasure to be
here today. After a year's effort we have with us today Art Thatcher with GreenPlay and
Kim Warren also is our local partner with Breckon Land Design. It's been exactly a year
since we kicked this project off. So, it was December -- somewhere around the 15th of
last year that we held our first meetings on mission, vision and values type discussions
and moved soon in January onto the focus groups and things that -- you will receive a
summary of here shortly. But I just wanted to acknowledge the -- the work done by -- by
GreenPlay and Breckon Land Design as their team and also Design Concepts and ROC
was the surveyor. You can see their logos all on the -- the slide in front of you. Have
really appreciated their -- their work. It's been a lot of work, but it's very rewarding work
and it's the kind of work that we are not just excited about, but passionate about getting
done because of what it means, because it sets the -- the vision and the future and tells
us where we are today and helps us think about where we need to -- to go. Art was
before you in a joint meeting. As you will recall in October and we were with the parks
and rec commission. At that time we presented in detail the -- the findings and
recommendations. Since that time we compiled a draft that was sent out to all of you. It
went out to the public, e-mailed directly to our focus group members, ValleyTimes and
Frank back here was good enough to publish an article encouraging the public to review
what was posted on the website and, anyway, we are to the point now where the final plan
has been compiled, the -- the final working draft was uploaded to Agenda Manager. The
only difference between that and what you have been given as hard copy today is it has
received final formatting. All the content is the same. It now has a cover page. Updated
table of contents. Photos. Those kinds of things. So, with that I would like to turn some
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time over to Art Thatcher to present an overview to you of the process, where we have
been and where we are today, after which I will come up and talk about where we need to
go next. Thanks.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Welcome, Art. It was nice seeing you at the Coffee with
the Mayor.
Thatcher: It was nice to see you as well. Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, just
kind of what -- this is the bitter sweat part of the job is kind of presenting the final -- the
final product and knowing that -- that I get to come back occasionally to -- to kind of check
in on you. But it has been a wonderful process and I would like to congratulate you on
being named the most livable city in the country. It's a fabulous honor and from my year
here I can see it was very well deserved. And so what we are doing today is going to go
over the -- the master plan and kind of the whole process and he said -- you know, I have
been before you on a couple of occasions and I have kind of given you updates, so really
just want to give you the breadth of the -- of the project. So, as you remember, the
process that we went through is we had a -- a public engagement process that we went
through, the focus groups, stakeholder meetings. We have had the online community
forum. The blind mixer that transitioned over to My Sidewalk. We did the community
survey. The Design Concepts came in and did our inventory of all of your facilities and
the amenities. We analyzed the level of service, came back and presented our findings,
did a visioning workshop with the staff, looked at your operational -- operations and
maintenance and, then, came up with recommendations that we went over last -- in
October. And so we are on schedule. We were scheduled to deliver this product in
December, so I'm happy to say that we are on schedule and as Steve said we are on
budget as well. And so as the project tasks went, we were kind of tasked with looking at
the department's mission, vision, and values and looking at the classification system that's
currently being used, you're existing inventory, defining your level of service goals, doing
the community outreach, making recommendations, coming up with a strategic action
plan, looking at your current staffing and your department's organizational setup,
reviewing the urban forestry management strategies, looking at your -- at your pathways
and making recommendations as far as your pathways plans are concerned and, then we
were also -- Breckon Land Design was tasked with doing three conceptual designs for the
current vacant properties that you -- that you have, the undeveloped park properties that
you currently have. So, we -- we went through the mission, vision, and values. We held
two workshops. Reviewed the current mission, vision, and values. Held one that was
staff driven. Reviewed the -- the city's strategic plan to make sure that they were -- they
worked with each other and they kind of validated the new mission, vision and values as
far as the plan. We looked at the concurrent park classification system, how you classify
your parks. Reviewed those against the -- what was the NRPA standards that were
developed in 1998. A lot of departments took those as the -- kind of the law. They were
just recommendations of park classifications. We also made some recommendations of
your classification system and really using the -- the size, as well as the component based
system of classifying your parks so that they more closely match what you currently offer
in your park system. So, we -- as I said, Design Concepts came in and did the inventory.
They -- they looked at all of your parks, looked at your indoor facilities, went and looked at
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alternative providers, did a scoring of all of your components and your HOAs and the
schools, looked at their locations, as well as looked at your 21 miles of pathways and your
13 miles of micropaths and so we took all of those and we matched all your components,
all of your other service providers and in the -- in the final document these were in 11 by
17, so they are a little easier to read. I know it's kind of -- very difficult to read in this
format, but they are 11 by 17, so they are more legible. But I just wanted to show you that
we did map everything, not only yours, but the schools, as well as the county and the --
the homeowners associations. So, as we -- as look at those, we kind of -- you know, the
summary -- you have very high quality, well maintained parks. They are well distributed.
You know, as we talked about kind of the definition of your community parks and your
neighborhood parks -- some of your neighborhood parks could use a little bit more, you
know, unique qualities or, you know, identifiable characters that we talk about kind of later
in the plan. You have great restroom standards. Your pathway system is disconnected
and so, you know, looking at kind of connecting your pathway system. The quality of your
HOA parks and other alternative providers vary greatly from what you provide and, then,
your schools are important to your overall level of service with limited access and so, then,
we take the -- all of that information and we do a level of service component -- base level
of service analysis where we do half mile radii around your -- your components and your
neighborhood parks, the three mile radii around your -- around your regional larger parks
and so we begin to look at where you -- where you have coverage, where alternative
providers have coverage and begin to look at where there may be gaps in service. And,
then, these are further in the -- in the plan are broken down into multiple levels and there
are a series of six maps that breakdown these levels through the plan and the
appendices. So, we look at all that and kind of our findings and the overall level of service
is -- you have a great variety, well distributed recreation opportunities. Your overall level
of service is high, but accessibility is -- you know, is mostly by automobile. Seventy-five
percent of Meridian is over the kind of the half mile threshold, so you have a, you know,
great percentage in the community that's over that -- that half mile threshold and, then, the
alternative providers play an important role in -- in supplying your neighborhood level of
service, especially with your HOAs. So, then, we look at walkability and, again, we look at
that half mile radius around -- around your components. You can see where there are
right angles and straight lines that we also look at barriers to walkability and so -- those
are your major thoroughfares as we look at these and, again, kind of looking at not only
your -- your components, but also those of the schools, the county, and the -- and the
other service providers. And so as you look at walkability, you know, from a demographic
analysis you will see that -- you know, that 98 percent of the population under 19 has
walkable access to some recreation services, which is fabulous and that's not just yours,
but there is a heavy reliance on alternative providers for your walkability in the
neighborhood. Neighborhood parks, you know, meet the threshold. There is a lack of the
connectivity of pathways to those and there is a surprising discrepancy between, you
know, average household income between the north and the south. One of the things that
we noticed looking at the demographics and -- but generally the no service areas are in
the -- kind of the lower household income areas. So, then, we did the focus groups. We
looked at -- we had 125 people participate in eight focus groups. We did individual
interviews with many of the members of Council and, then, held a -- a town hall meeting to
report our findings. So, we also did a survey. We did a community survey. We mailed
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out 3,500 random surveys to the community. We also did open link, which was available
to anybody. The mailed survey response, we had 721, a 21 percent response, which I
said before that is fabulous. Normally we are looking at an eight or a ten percent
nationwide as we do our surveys and so this is -- you know, a great -- a great response
rate. Also we added another 651 from the open link. So, we had a total response of
1,392. So, a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 and typically what we are looking for in
the surveys is a plus or minus five. So, you know, we had a really great representation in
the community through the survey. And this is just a sample of one of the -- one of the
graphics from the survey. You should -- you have seen the full report of the survey and,
then, the full report is also available in the appendix of the full report. And so this just
looks at the -- the potential for future added, expanded, or improved facilities. The indoor
on the top, as well as the outdoor on the bottom and you will see that we have divide d the
-- the invitation sample, which was the mailed sample, and, then, the open link and that
they pretty much validate each other as we look at the results. So, we also looked at -- at
your population projections, using the COMPASS projections noting that you are, you
know, one of the fastest growing communities in the country and looking to -- to really
gain, you know, population over the next years kind of through the life of the -- of the
master plan. So, we looked at the pathways and your recreation connectivity. We -- we
mapped those and mapped the areas where -- where they were. You got, you know, 29
different segments of existing pathways that -- that are not all connected. You have 13
miles of micropaths, 133 miles of proposed pathway, which is a -- you know, very
aggressive, you know, planned for -- for your pathways. We looked at your hierarchy of --
you know, there is park pathways that are -- you know, that are within your developed
parks. There is community pathways that -- that are developed either within HOAs or
within the community and, then, regional pathways. We looked at how those connections
are being made. So, then, as we -- we developed all of that and kind of came up with
some preliminary recommendations, you know, improved connectivity, continue to
improve on your level of service, you know, especially kind of at the neighborhood park
level to upgrade an additional component to your -- to the -- to the neighborhood park.
Working with neighborhoods to create identities, working with the -- the parks and
recreation commission to kind of create those individual identities within the parks.
Continue with your alternative service providers and, then, considering programming
needs as you begin to develop your existing undeveloped park land. And so we looked at
those reoccurring themes as you will remember, you know, connectivity, pathways,
maintaining what you have, keeping up with your rapid community growth, acquisition for
future parks to maintain your level of service as your population grows. The need for
internal recreation facilities. Communication marketing technology, organizational
development and staffing and, then, funding sources for -- both for capital, as well as for
operational. And, then, we kind of separated out the programming theme, you know, what
we heard from the survey, what we heard from -- from the -- from the focus groups, you
know, nonsports activities, kind of that balance between passive and active recreation.
Communitywide events. Team programming. Increasing your outdoor recreation events
or programming. More art in the park. Senior programming and cultural and performing
arts were areas that -- and so if you remember, we took all of those and put those into the
key issues matrix to help us begin to develop the -- our recommendations and looking at
those sources of that information. And so we developed a recommendation, which I
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presented to you in October, you know, focusing on maintaining, on sustaining, and
improving and developing timelines of, you know, short term -- up to three years, mid term
four to six, and long term seven to ten and so the four goals that we developed, continuing
to improve organizational efficiencies, increasing financial opportunities, continuing to
improve programs and service delivery and, then, maintain and improve facilities and
amenities. And, then, you remember we kind of went through and we developed the -- the
strategic actions -- objectives, strategic actions, and, then, the implementation plan for --
for each of those. I'm not going to -- we went over these in October. I'm not going to go
over each one of these, but through the organizational efficiency we looked at, you know,
maintaining your existing level of service , communication, signage agencywide,
maintaining your -- your qualify service standards for your amenitie s. Increase use of
social media. Appropriate partnerships. Technology. Staffing to meet the demands.
Maintaining and keeping current with your SOPs and your volunteer program that -- that
you have. Financially looking to -- to increase sponsorships. Evaluating your impact fee
ordinance periodically, as it's listed out. Pursuing grants and philanthropic opportunities
and, then, implementing a cost recovery and a pricing policy. Through your programs --
we talked about the expanding indoor modern recreation terms trends and expanding
programs around working hours and commuting citizens. Increasing programs for
seniors. Special needs. Teens and tweens. Looking for that -- developing and
maintaining a signature event as it ties into the newly adopted strategic plan and, then,
providing this family centered recreational opportunity. The facilities and amenities,
keeping those up. Making sure you're maintaining what you have. Expanding your
pathways and activity. Connecting those -- those disconnected portions of your pathways.
Adding an indoor recreation space. Developing new amenities. Acquiring parks to -- to
keep up with your growing population. Improving parking at parks . We talked about that.
Not necessarily building more parks, looking at ways to do that either through alternative
parking plan and looking at scheduling and those things. And continuing to improve your
ADA access at all your facilities. We also looked at upgrading your comfort and
convenience, shade structures, splash pads, those things at existing facilities. Adding
destination park amenities, addressing your current and future athletic fields needs.
Considering programming needs, you know, as you begin to look at existing parks and
developing new. And, then, monitoring demand in trends for your recreation components.
And so we also -- as I mentioned, we also worked very closely with staff to look at your
staffing plan and your organizational development and benchmarking with other
communities in the region. We reviewed the NRPA -- the 2015 field report, which
compares communities all across the country. We -- Breckon Land Design, working with
Elroy and the staff, went through your urban forestry management strategies. Also
Breckon Land Design and design concepts, with Jay in looking at your pathways. Making
recommendations about your pathways and -- and doing -- putting some priority to which
ones to establish and maybe which ones to maybe look to the HOAs or the developers to
establish and build and, then, Breckon worked with staff and conducted -- we did some --
some Skype calls to review concepts within the -- kind of the three undeveloped pieces of
park that you currently have and, then, Breckon Land Design conducted three public
meetings to kind of look at those to -- to bring out and to preview the -- the concept plan
that they had -- that they had established. We did a -- a bus tour and went out and looked
at those. Breckon Land Design presented those concepts to the group, went out and
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looked at each one of those properties. The south Meridian regional park was one that --
that we looked at and so this is the -- you know, the design, kind of the concept of it, you
know, active with some passive areas within it. You know, multi-use of those diamond, as
well as rectangle fields. There was two concepts around the -- the west Meridian regional
park. You know, one being more around a softball complex and -- and, then, used as a
softball complex based when the -- when the parks were being developed. The second
being around -- more of a multi-sport rectangle field complex to -- to meet demand and
need, again, on when it was being developed. And, then, we also looked at the -- the
Margaret Aldape park land and how that could be -- the concept of how that would be --
be into -- into more of a passive recreation and nature preserve type of -- type facility.
And so those are kind of the process, where we went, and the different steps and kind of a
brief outline of what the final product is. You know, we have give n you the plan and you
don't have all of the appendices, there is like 300 pages of the appendices, but they will be
available, you know, online to you that -- there are a couple of copies that can be passed
around.
Siddoway: I will just interject that to avoid killing too many trees, we decided to not print
the entire appendix for everybody, but we did want to just print a couple of copies so you
could see -- most of this you have received before, copies of the -- the survey results,
things like that. So, we just want you to know that we are aggregating all of that data into
the appendices that will be published together with the final plan.
De Weerd: So, Steve, we will get that one back to you, but if you can put it in a binder
and put it up in City Council's room, that would be a library where they can all access it
when they need to.
Siddoway: Absolutely.
De Weerd: Okay.
Siddoway: They are all also online on the -- the web page if you want to access them
from home. Links to them were provided in the e-mails that we sent you out previously.
De Weerd: Of course. Council, any questions for Art?
Bird: I don't have any questions.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: I appreciate -- I appreciate the work, Art. Very very thorough. It certainly gives us a
brenchmark to work off from and to go into the future with. You certainly covered the
ground and did a fine job in my book.
Thatcher: Thank you very much.
Bird: Thank you very much.
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De Weerd: I agree. I appreciate the -- the data, some of the comparisons that you gave
towards other communities of various sizes. There was one picture in there and I can't --
can't find it. Oh, there it is. On page 46 where you show two different playgrounds or a
play structure in two different environments. I would like it footnoted that that one in the
middle that's barren wasteland is not in Meridian. Well, neither of them were, but --
Thatcher: Neither of them are.
De Weerd: It would be worth footnoting that that is not Meridian. But I know you also
mentioned alternative sites. One of the things early on -- and certainly when I got involved
with the city through more my volunteer time and Mr. Rountree was the Council liaison to
the parks commission, we knew that we would never be able to establish our service level
to what the community desire was without partners. We wrote the open space ordinance
and knew that a lot of that supplementing in order to get green space to where people
lived to build that sense of community even within our community, it was neighborhood
parks owned by neighborhood associations and it was going to be a collective series,
whether it's schools, neighborhoods, or city owned or Western Ada Recreation District.
So, that was something that we knew in order to provide the level of service and the 98
percent within walking distance of a green space, that was how we were going to have to
do it. But it was nice to see that 98 percent.
Thatcher: And as a Council you all are to be commended for your forward thinking on that
and we work with a lot of communities around the country that are playing catch up that
have boomed with development and have not, you know, done impact or, you know, in
lieu of and looking at the developers providing those green spaces and trails within their
developments and so, you know, by getting out ahead of that you guys are to be
commended and it shows with your 98 percent walkability.
De Weerd: Yeah. With that 98 percent it's great to show that, but it would also be
interesting to show the service level with consideration to those open spaces that are not
city owned.
Thatcher: And there are -- there is a -- one of the maps does show just your facility -- just
your amenities and your properties and, then, there is the overlay, which -- which adds the
other piece. So, you will see where -- where there may be perceived gaps and, then, how
that is filled by alternative providers.
De Weerd: I saw the overlay, but I mean what is the service level of acres per thousand.
Siddoway: And that would be a future goal of ours, because with this analysis for the
HOA owned sites we only had point data and not acreage data. So, the analysis is based
on -- on points, not acres, so it would be -- it would be a future goal of ours. We are
unable to do it with the data we have today, but we can work with planning and others to
try and aggregate that data now that we have the points identified.
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De Weerd: Excellent.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I think it should be noted that before 1998 we had -- City of Meridian had one park,
Storey Park, and in '98 we put Tully in and got started. So, I think while our community is
growing I think the -- the parks department -- and we didn't have a parks department and I
think we have done very -- very well in the 17 years that we have developed and
maintained and the thing I'm most proud of is everything we have put in I think it's been
pretty first class and it's going to be around for a while.
Thatcher: Absolutely. I -- I use you all as an example quite a lot as I -- as I talk with other
elected officials around the -- around the country. You know, one of the things that -- that
impressed me as I met with you individually was that -- that many of you, you know,
indicated to me that you -- you weren't going to build anything unless you could continue
to maintain it at the level that it was built and I think that's a great, you know, commitment
or your part to the community and to the facilities that you're building and I use you all as
an example around the country all the time, so I hope -- I hope you're okay with that.
De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor. I'm just going to comment it's -- it's easy to see how well
accepted our parks are. Almost any day you drive around and the parks are busy. They
are full and being well used and appreciated by everybody and I appreciate the work that's
gone into the plan to prepare for our future growth and keeping the same kind of attitude
about our parks and keeping a balance of making sure we have enough parks and
recreation for future populations, so appreciate the good work --
Thatcher: Thank you.
Zaremba: -- and the forward thinking.
De Weerd: And you made a point and I know you have -- you said it each time you have
been here is this is a living document and it's -- it's evolving all the time. This morning you
were approached or Steve was approached with rugby teams and, you know, the trending
of how popular this is going to -- is becoming and possibly will be with the Olympics now
incorporating it in. So, it's being aware of that. Pickle ball has been an ongoing
discussion as well. So, this is a dynamic plan. It's a ten year plan. We know that there is
probably some great possibility that there will be some things that change, but you have
given us a solid foundation of where we are headed over that time period, knowing that
there is going to be adjustments along the way, but this is solid information. We greatly
appreciate the time, the talent of your team, and you spending as much time in our
community to really get to know us, so when you did make recommendations it was
relevant.
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December 8, 2015
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Thatcher: Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Anything further from Council?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Art, can you describe -- or maybe Steve, but one of you describe briefly the
recommendations with regards to reclassification of the parks. I noted that in here and it
made reference to the national standard. Is there an actual recommendation that we
change how we are classifying parks going forward?
Siddoway: Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, there are some minor changes. I will say
a few things and, then, Art can fill in the blanks, but you won't see big changes from what
we have always been doing. We did adopt the term -- we had some documents that used
the term regional park for places like Settlers and Kleiner. We had some that used larger
end park. I think our last master plan actually classified them larger end parks. We tend
in our vocabulary to call them regional, so I think we use that -- that vernacular. Also
things like Centennial Park over here by the -- the community center. Thank you. Was
identified just like a special use, because it was smaller, like a mini park I think, but it
functions more as a neighborhood park. So, even though it wasn't meeting our typical
size standards of seven acres, things like that, because of its function it was -- it's now
labeled with the neighborhood parks. So, I think minor tweaks like that. Art, do you have
anything to fill in?
Thatcher: Yeah. There is -- really, the reason that we look at it and the reason we kind of
have consolidated using your terminology and make recommendation s of -- like changing
the acreages or getting a wider range of acreages and also looking at some of the
proponents within the parks -- because the NRPA standard -- like a neighborhood park
would not have a rectangle field or a diamond field in it, so when you build a neighborhood
park and you put a baseball diamond in it, it becomes an exception to that classification
and so what the recommend is that you kind of broaden your definition of what they are, of
what a neighborhood park is, to meet what you are currently using as the components
within your park. So, it's really not a -- not a full reclassification, but more of a modification
of the definitions of what you use for your terminology and what components are in there,
because we go to some communities that, you know, they have more exceptions -- what
they call specialty parks than they do those parks that fit into their classification system.
So, you know, we just kind of worked the terminology and the definitions so that those
exceptions can fit into their terminology.
Borton: Okay.
Siddoway: Madam Mayor, just a word about process. We actually are not here to ask for
a formal motion, although I'm half tempted to do that, but processwise what we want to do
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December 8, 2015
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is tomorrow night we are making this presentation to the commission. They will be
making their formal recommendation. We wanted to come today and get any feedback
that you have for us on this final draft. Assuming a favorable outcome at the commission
meeting tomorrow night, we would, then, bring back to you next week on consent a
resolution adopting this plan for your approval.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. I appreciate you laying out the process and, please, also
extend the Council and my appreciation to the parks commission. I know they have been
intricately involved in this. They have spent a lot of time on it and we greatly appreciate
their participation and their stewardship on it.
Siddoway: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you again, Art.
Thatcher: Thank you very much. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas.
B. Public Works: Utility Rates and Assessment Fees Update
De Weerd: Thank you. Merry Christmas to you. Item No. 7-B is our Public Works
Department and I will invite Tom Barry up.
Barry: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I wish I had something
as fun to fun talk about with you this evening as the parks master plan, but, unfortunately,
I don't. Although some get excited about utility rates and fees. I do have some good
news to share with you and, then, also some recommendations as it relates to some of
the revised modeling we have done in light of the water and sewer assessment fees.
Before I get started I wanted to recognize and thank Suzie Deerdorf and the senior
executive team, John McCormick, Mike Pepin, Dale Bolthouse, and their teams for
helping us update and revise the information that's gone into this and for their
contributions in putting it together. Okay. So, I want to talk briefly about the agenda
today. It's actually going to be pretty short. We don't have a whole lot of information to
share with you. As you know, this is an update --
De Weerd: Just say Merry Christmas.
Barry: I know. It's a gift. It is a gift. If you don't have any questions it will go quicker, too.
So, in any event, just a brief agenda here and --
Bird: I believe he's telling me to be shushed.
Barry: No. Of course not. We will talk about some of the activities we have spent our
time doing since September -- or since April of 2015. As you know, this is a periodic
update, you have asked us to come back to you frequently on this issue. We will talk very
briefly on the rate model, the water and wastewater rates, the water and wastewater
assessment fees and, then, finally, a recommendation and proposed implementation. So,
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December 8, 2015
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to get started, the activities that we have been doing over the last six or eight months is
that we -- you know very well that we have evaluated and confirmed the fee methodology
for water and sewer rates and we shared that information with you, got your direction to
move forward on this, continuing to utilize the existing methodologies. We have done
that. We have revised the water assessment and also the wastewater assessment fees
utilizing that methodology. I will get into that a little bit more later in the presentation and
show you what the results are, the results -- or in light of that. We have also been working
on the ERU. This is equivalent residential unit fee leveling project. As you know we
brought to you a recommendation with regard to clarifying and confirming the
methodology used for multi-family customer classes. That's been implemented via your
direction as of October 1st of this year and we are currently evaluating the commercial
and industrial customer classes and hope to bring something more holistic back to you
here in the future. Finally, we have been continuing to tweak the rate model. The rate
model sees out ten years now. We have also been modifying some of the projects in light
of some new information we have gotten and some of that I will be sharing with you
tonight. And principally we have level loaded projects throughout the -- the ten year
period and what that does is it allows us to sort of smooth the peaks and the valleys
through the rate model and sort of bring a little bit more stability over the long term . That
has a huge impact in helping to stabilize the rates and fees going foreword. So, we
continue to do that. Now, as it relates to the rate model, I'm not going to go into detail
about the model, because, quite frankly, the information that we rely on for running the
model isn't quite ready and we mentioned this in the past that, essentially, we do rate
updates about once a year and we try to target that somewhere around March or April or
so. That's because it gives the finance people an opportunity to close the books, remove
the carry forward numbers, revise all the information that goes back into the beginning
fund balance, which allows us to do the rate calculations and give you better information
as it relates to what our recommendations would be. So, quite frankly, the timing of this
presentation doesn't really coincide with the acquisition of that particular data set or those
data sets. So, therefore, we are not really doing much on the rate model. But what we
can tell based on some limited tweaks over the last six to eight months is that the model
does continue to show a holding steady trend, which is very good. Now, there is really no
more surprises or any of that kind of stuff. We pretty much have certainty on what's going
on with the NPDES permit now, it's just a matter of kind of organizing that work and
putting it into a logistical fashion. There is an impact associated with the south Meridian
infrastructure advancement projects that we are going to be doing over the next couple of
years and that's included in the model. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the impact is as
large as we had initially predicted, which is good. So, at this point in time we are
recommending today no rate increase for water or for sewer base or usage rates. W e
would -- as we have been directed in the past we will reevaluate the model April or so of
next year, we will have better numbers and, then, finally, we are kind of continuing to talk
about this idea of indexing the rates to inflation to kind of help additionally smooth out
some of the peaks and valleys over the long term. So, that's the good news on the rates.
We are recommending no increase at this point in time for either area of water or sewer
rates. And we want to talk a little bit about the water assessment now. This is the hook-
up charge or connection charge, connection fee, hook-up -- it's used -- a lot of different
terms are used, but, essentially, we call them the assessments. So, for water I wanted to
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December 8, 2015
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walk you through a little bit of a history. Our current fee is 1,725 dollars per connection or
per ERU. The calculation that's used -- the methodology we use is both a buy-in
methodology, which means that we include the water supply, storage, and distribution
components. People are buying into existing capacity and, then, they are also helping to
advance the replacement of that with the purchase of new capacity and we call that future
CIP components. So, with both of those components we end up with a calculation of 17.5
for water, at least that's what we currently have been utilizing since 2007. So, this fee has
not been updated since 2007. We did begin looking at it just as we entered the recession,
of course, it was the wrong time to be looking at fees and those types of things, so it kind
of got put aside and, then, we, as you know, have been focusing pretty heavily on
wastewater. But the recommendation here is to revise the fee and based on the model
that we have used and you have directed us from a methodology standpoint to use, it
shows that the current fee is lacking and that a revised fee of -- resulting in an increase of
179 dollars to the proposed new fee of 1,973 dollars is in order. So, that would be about a
ten percent increase. We were actually delighted to find out that this fee didn't go up as
high as we thought it would, beings that it hadn't been looked at since about 2007. And
you may be asking how does this compare to the regional average, particularly Treasure
Valley. So, we put in the benchmarks and you will notice that we are about right in the
middle with the new fee. So, the revised fee puts us very competitive -- as a matter of
fact, right in the middle of the other eight cities and, moreover, it puts us substantially
under the regional average. So, still very, very competitive I would think with regard to the
water assessment. So, that gives some idea as to how we kind of shape up. So, the
recommendation is going to be this evening that we consider implementing the full amount
for the water assessment and I will get do that summary here in just a moment. If we look
at the wastewater assessment -- now, we are moving from water to wastewater. The
current fee is 3,400 dollars -- or 3,425 dollars. This was last updated in October of 2014
when we raised the amount to 676 dollars. Largely in light of the anticipation of all of this
growth related -- growth related impact, but again, a little bit premature with regard to
getting our draft permit and know some of the other impacts associated to -- to growth.
And I will talk with you about some of the things that have changed between then and
now. First I want to talk to you about the calculation. Again we will use the same
methodology. It's a buy-in approach with regard to buying in the collection system and the
treatment plant components and, then, replacement of that with future CIP. So, those two
components are included and factored into the overall calculation for the wastewater
assessment fee. Now, I want to talk briefly about some of the changes since our last
modification, because it seems that, you know, we -- we have raised this just last year,
which went into effect January 1st of this year and it was a pretty substantial increase.
Again, that fee had not been looked at until last year -- until 2007 also. So, it was a
substantial increase. A couple of things that have changed, essentially, are that we did
receive our NPDES permit and the result meant that we -- I mean this is since we last
looked at this fee rather. We revised the ten year CIP project list, which includes growth
related regulatory components. So, anything that's built in the future related to capacity or
growth has to be built to this new standard, this new regulat ion. So, that has helped also
refine some of the numbers in the CIP going forward. We have also added the south
Meridian infrastructure cost to the CIP since this was last looked at. That was an
increase, as you're well aware, of about eight million dollars. Additional we have
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December 8, 2015
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reevaluated the growth matrix through the last several years and the result is that growth
is occurring much more rapidly than we had previously believed. In fact, if you just look at
the population changes here -- I mean it's no surprise, you have all lived through this --
since 1990 there has been an 852 percent increase in population. Since 2000 to present
161 percent and, surprisingly, since just 2010 there has been a 22 percent increase and
the forecast moving forward shows continued growth with no flowing at least recognized in
the new future. Lastly, I wanted to mention -- well, not lastly, but one other component I
wanted to mention is that we had begun a capacity analysis of the wastewater treatment
plant, largely precipitated by some concern identified by our previous wastewater
superintendant in regard to treatment plant performance and what we realized is that over
the years the treatment plant has begun to struggle in keeping up with the treatment of the
wastewater stream that's come into the treatment plant and we realized that the -- the
primary culprit of this is that the wastewater strength is increasing due to the fact that
water -- water consumption throughout the city is decreasing. So, if you look historically at
the early 2000s, the average water consumption per household was ar ound 14,000
gallons per month. Today it's 7,600. It's almost half. What that means is that you do not
have as much dilution potential in the wastewater stream, so what you get is a decrease
in the flows, but an increase in the concentration or what we c all load. That load is what's
really causing some trouble and is consuming capacity at the wastewater treatment plant.
Now, we just received this report in June of this year and that report has got us
concerned, because it suggests that the treatment plant capacity that we currently believe
that we had, which was 10.2 million gallons per day, is actually almost a million and a half
gallons less than that. What that means is we have less capacity than we thought on the
existing system and that has a huge impact on the way we need to accommodate growth
going forward. So, that's another impact. The overall result, essentially, is that we must
add -- if we want to continue to grow and accommodate growth, we must add more growth
and capacity projects and we need to add them sooner in the CIP to accommodate our
current growth rates and projections. That all has an impact and all of that information
has been fed into this model and has shown that we need to make adjustments to the
wastewater assessment fee. So, the recommendation is that we update this fee to reflect
current growth-related costs and the fee that the model spits out essentially says that we
would need to increase the fee by about 459 dollars per ERU or per connection. Now, we
take the current fee from 3,425 dollars up 13.4 percent to 3,884 dollars. Now, we know
that that's a big increase. We don't like to see big increases and we know when you take
that in conjunction with the water assessment increase of around 180 or so dollars, that
that's a big impact to the developers and seeing that we have just asked the developers to
absorb a big increase this last year, our recommendation is to consider a two year
implementation phase-in plan on the wastewater assessment increase, which would mean
in the first year we would recommend that the full water assessment revised rate and half
or 230 dollars of the wastewater assessment go into effect and, then, we would wait a
year and, then, increase the second installment of the wastewater assessment by ano ther
229 dollars to the final number of 3,884 and you may be asking yourself, well, how does
this compare regionally and this is -- these are what the numbers look like. This is with
the fully proposed wastewater rate. So, assuming at the end of the two year period, if you
agree with that implementation, we would still be right in the middle of all the Treasure
Valley cities, essentially, and lower than the regional average. So, we still feel that we
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December 8, 2015
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remain competitive, but that the growth related cost we are feeling actually gets dispersed
among the -- the developing community. So, that gives you an idea of what the
wastewater assessment would look like and how it would, essentially, look --
De Weerd: Tom?
Barry: Yes.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird has a question.
Barry: Yes, sir.
Bird: Can I -- question back there, Tom. Your splitting it up in two years, but in one year
we went up 13.4 percent or something in one year from October of '14 to December 8th of
'15. What's going to say that -- that in '17 that this 459 is going to cover our costs? If we
went 13.4 in one year and we are going to take it up in two years, are we going to still be
okay?
Barry: Thank you for your question, Mr. Bird. Just to clarify, the 13.4 percent increase is
the full amount, not the first installment. So, we are recommending --
Bird: I know that.
Barry: Okay. Great. So, the first installment would be, essentially, half of that.
Bird: Yes.
Barry: So, the second --
Bird: But one year -- but, Tom, maybe I wasn't clear enough. But in one year, from
October of 2014, when we put this new assessment in, to December 8th of 2015.
Barry: Right.
Bird: We are down 459 dollars by your calculations; right?
Barry: That's correct.
Bird: Okay. Now, we are going to take that 459 and split it up for two years.
Barry: Uh-huh.
Bird: So, what from -- what from December 8th of 2015 to December 8th of 2016 we are
not 459 short again. I mean are we covering ourselves? And it's like the water
assessment, ten percent, are we -- are we covering ourselves? Are we going to be back
in six months saying, oh, my goodness -- you know, it's -- for the payers -- the rate payers
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December 8, 2015
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they sooner be get hit more often with littler percents than us going from 207 to two -- I
mean it's unbelievable that we can go from 2007 to 2015 and only need ten percent
increase. Because I know our costs on the material have went up more than ten percent.
Barry: Right. So, Mr. Bird, there is no crystal ball and there is no magic bullet. We can't
tell you that the rates would not need to go up again and we cannot tell you when they
may need to go up. And the way the -- and I shouldn't say rate. The assessments in this
case. The way the assessments are calculated is based upon what gets put into the CIP
and how we apportion the growth related components to the nongrowth related
components. Things like repair and maintenance and upgrades and regulatory
requirements and those types of things. So, obviously, if we ever get accelerated growth,
like we have going on now, that that will accelerate the pace at which we must replace the
capacity that's being consumed. So, we are sort of in this situation where if you look
historically from the assessments, 2007 was a great booming year. 2008 things started to
tank a little bit, we started modifying rates in 2009 and '10. We didn't touch assessments,
because we really didn't want to suppress an already depressed growth market. We
didn't feel comfortable -- I don't think anyone did until around 2012 or '13 that maybe we
were out of the woods on the recession, so, then, we began doing the studies, of course.
We are deep in thought as it relates to what's going to happen regulatorily and how we are
going to manage the regulatory requirements and we have also seen the recovery of
growth actually surge in these last two years or so. So, that sort of compounded this
situation. We feel like looking forward and using the model that we have to project, that,
essentially, we are going to be in a good spot where we are sort of stuck updating the
historical lapse in increasing the assessment and we are also stuck with accommodating
this very recent growth increase and, therefore, once we catch up, so to speak, we believe
that we will be able to achieve more stable assessment and even rate increases going
forward, which is, again, why we have kind of been promoting this idea of indexing the
rate and indexing the fees, so that way every year there is just a small incremental
amount to get exactly at your recom mendation, Mr. Bird. And I hope maybe that helps.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Maybe a shorter way to explain that is they had on paper 1.4 million increase
in -- or loss of capacity and increase in this number is catching up.
Barry: It is.
Rountree: I wouldn't -- I would hope we don't see that happen in a year. That accrued
over a bunch of years.
Barry: It did.
Rountree: So, to me that's where a fairly high percentage of this percentage increase
comes from.
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December 8, 2015
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Barry: It is. It's definitely a substantial component of the revision to the wastewater
assessment. It has come from the study that it took us a few years to even realize that we
needed to do the study based upon what we were seeing at the wastewat er treatment
plant.
De Weerd: So, Tom, if you didn't step it would the 459 impact be less because you're --
you're not losing money in the first year?
Barry: No. Madam Mayor, we just cut that recommendation in half and didn't carry any
costs -- additional costs for losses forward. We just -- it wouldn't be less, it would be 459
either way, whether you take it all at once or you decide to take it over two years. Now,
you could direct us to say, you know, maybe it should be a little bit more the first year and,
then, you know, you make up some of the loss, you know, with a different formulaic
approach. We just straight lined it by splitting it in half and saying, you know, we kind of
feel for these big increases and we felt -- felt that maybe we could provide some relief.
We incorporated that strategy into the rate model and have accommodated that in the
production going forward. So, essentially, you know, it's kind of up to you, the Council, to
decide if you would like to take that full impact now or take it over two years and, of
course, anything else that you wish to direct us with regard to implementation or otherwise
is -- you know, we can get information back to you for consideration as well.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Thank you. Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: If that -- if they are covered I don't mind taking it over two years, but I just hope we
are not back here in another year wanting -- have to go up more, because of the cost and
I understand how this is all derived at and stuff, but -- and I want to keep it as -- as
economically as we can for our developers and builders, but I also want to make sure that
we are not subsidizing it.
De Weerd: That growth pays for itself.
Bird: That it pays for itself.
Barry: Well, what we can assure you is that with the implementation of these assessment
changes, that the growth will be paying for itself. If growth continues to advance quicker,
then, there may be needing to be some modifications. If it goes slower, you know, maybe
not. So, that's the reason we modeled these assessments is to insure that the
assessment component is fair and equitable and that the impacts associated with growth
are being covered by the sources of growth. Okay. So, if there is no other questions
there, just very quickly to end here. If you -- I think I should share this slide with you that
we are in the middle as it relates to the wastewater assessments with a fully implemented
recommendation. If you combine the assessment for water and sewer to look at the total
water and sewer cost from an assessment basis, you see we are still in line with the
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December 8, 2015
Page 22 of 37
regional average. We are under the regional average and that we are still right in the
middle as it relates to total impact associated with water and sewer assessments or hook-
up charges. So, you know, we still feel very good about that. We t hink it's reasonable.
We think it's fair and we think that we are still very competitive, given the environment and
the community that we are in and the draw that this community has seen in popularity,
particularly over the last, you know, decade or more. So, in any event, that's what we had
to share with you with regards to what the recommendation is on the assessments. This
is the timeline that we would recommend for consideration of how to implement the
assessments. Essentially, we have made the presentation to you this evening with our
recommendation. We do want to talk with the BCA about this. We have already
requested time on their calendar for their first meeting in January. Of course, they meet
once a month, so it looks like we will be allowed an audience with t hem in early January.
We also would like to conduct a developer focus group to allow opportunities for additional
questions and answers and information. We would like to hold that on or around the 25th
of next month and, then, provide the revised fee schedule to the clerk on the 29th. Notice
for the hearings on February 1st and the 8th. Conduct the public hearing on the 16th of
February next year, and, then, hopefully, if all goes well, adopt the resolution of the
assessment fees on the 23rd of February and immediately implement them on the 1st of
March. So, that is the recommendation with regard to implementation that's all we have,
essentially, for you this evening to consider. I will take any questions, comments, or
concerns you might have at this time.
De Weerd: Thank you, Tom. Council, any additional questions? Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor. Thank you. This is very well explained. I always have a
question hanging in my head about extraordinary waste I guess I would call it and what
always comes to mind -- the example I use -- say somebody wants to do a hair and nail
salon, what they are going to be putting into the waste stream is some pretty nasty
chemicals and there are other businesses that do that kind of thing. I don't see that we
charge them anymore for that and I have been told we do have some sort of a program
that -- to deal with that, but I keep forgetting what it is. Refresh my memory if you would.
What happens with somebody that's burdening our system more than the average
person?
Barry: Thank you, Councilman Zaremba. That's a fantastic question. We do not have
tiered rate or separated rates for different industrial classes, for example. This is largely
because the majority of the waste that ends up at our treatment plant is residential waste.
That is not to say that we don't have impact from restaurants or salons or chemical
companies or those types of things, but the proportionate impact of those types of loads
on the treatment plant is pretty small in comparison. What we do have is a very good
pretreatment program and a pretreatment program requires those businesses that meet
the pretreatment requirements to install and maintain pretreatment devices, including
inspections, cleaning, maintenance, standard operation of those facilities, so as to avoid
the kinds of impacts that you're referring to at the wastewater treatment plant and we have
two staff in that program that manage the program and go out and inspect on a routine
basis and handle all the reporting for EPA and whatnot. Pretreatment programs are
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required under our NPDES permit as well. So, we feel pr etty well protected there and we
haven't seen the impacts that you're referring to at the wastewater treatment plant to the
degree that would cause us significant concern and even from a proportionate standpoint
to even rise to the level of recommending a separate or tiered sort of impact based rate
for wastewater.
Zaremba: Great. Thank you.
Barry: You bet.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further from Council?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: A couple of questions. One is a super short answer and one maybe not so short,
so you can pick which is which. It seems like it would make sense in the order of things
for there to be the presentation of the updated capital improvement plan to Council and
that be adopted, which would drive what capital improvements are needed or not needed
on which year, which would, then, drive the rates necessary to fund that. So, I didn't see
that in the discussion or in the outline, so why is that?
Barry: Well, the capital plan is updated every year annually in the Public Works
Department and shared with you at around this time each year. So, the capital plan that
we are operating under right now does include those projects that we have included in
these rate models and in the analysis going forward. The difference is that the capital
plan that we provide to you is a five year look. We have now internally been able to
develop ten year capital plans, which allows us this longer forecasting in an attempt to
achieve better stability in both the assessment and the fee analysis for the financial. So,
you know, you could as a Council at anytime say any particular project in the CIP or the
five year CIP that's developed, we don't want to devote as much funding to say capacity
or growth related capital projects. That would, indeed, have an impact on this calculation,
because if the City Council did direct staff to slow growth, so to speak, in the form of
pushing out or not doing certain types of growth or capacity related projects, those would
come off conceivably or be pushed outside the window of the model and would not be
considered in the analysis and, therefore, the assessment fee would go down. The
question is, you know, at some point we will be out of capacity and it takes typically three
to five years to bring online a lot of these capacity -- particularly at the treatment plant a lot
of these capacity and technology improvements. So, we have not heard to date by any
counsel to slow growth or to postpone projects or to eliminate growth projects and,
therefore, the capital plans that we have provided are in alignmen t with the
recommendation that we were presenting financially tonight.
Borton: Madam Mayor? And maybe just a comment. It seems like an update of that --
and it's my understanding that is to take place in January, February, we are going to be
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doing a capital improve plan update. That discussion at that time, there has been a lot of
changes in the landscape of -- especially with the permit approval of what you have got to
provide over the next five years and ten years, that maybe it makes sense to weave that
process approval into your schedule. That would give -- it seems like it would give some
more credibility and comfort for the Council to have gone through that process, update of
that plan.
Barry: Sure. If that's the direction that Council would like to go, we can certainly do that.
Of course, that delays the process on other fronts, in particular these -- the installation of
these assessment fees, if that's the desire of the Council. I know that the Finance
Department has asked us to incorporate the Public Works capital plan into their process
and, quite frankly, I don't recall what their process is. Typically by this period we have
already presented to you our five year capital plan for the Public Works Department, but in
light of that request we have not provided that update to you and, instead, we will be
partnering with the Finance Department. I'm going to turn it over to Warren Stewa rt, he's
got a little bit of additional information on this, since he's in charge of our five year capita l
plan for the department.
Stewart: Thanks, Tom. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Borton, the
capital plan -- you are correct, usually as the engineering staff we present a revised
capital improvement plan -- five year capital improvement plan to the City Council every
year and that is actually -- Connie is busy up in her cubicle today assembling the books
that we can give to you. So, that's -- that's in process. In the past we have actually done
that in a form of a presentation, which many of you have been a part of. The last couple
of years there hasn't been a lot of discussion, so we actually have been talking internally
this year whether we would do -- do that in the form of a presentation or whether we would
simply give you that document and allow you to ask questions individually if you would like
to. We are more than happy to come and do that in presentation format. I would say also
that the five year CIP has never been adopted per se. We present that, get your
feedback, but it has never been a document that you have formally gone through an
adoption process for. So, it's just been more of an informational document that we have
presented to you. It's there because you don't -- we don't actually adopt it, because you
have to vote on a -- essentially a budget on an annual basis, so it's there for information.
But, you know, if you guys would like something different, if you have recommendations
for how you would like to see that, we are certainly open to that.
Borton: Madam Mayor? It's just a thought and it's not -- I haven't gotten it from anywhere
or anything. It just seems to me to be part of the process to give certainty and credibility
to the end result, especially if rates are to increase. Especially at the magnitude that they
are proposed. And even though it's not a capital improvement plan that's not adopted, in
essence, at least in Public Works it is to the extent that it's components are used to derive
a resulting assessment fee in this case. So, it's not a formal adoption, but in effect it is.
So, it just seems like it's already a part of the process, that that could be woven into your
schedule.
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Barry: Yeah. So, Councilman Borton, this is a great example of how too frequent of
communication with the Council creates a situation where the process is sort of trumped
by the communication. And what I mean by that is we have had for years a process
where we would come in April or so and update you on the rates and fees and those types
of things. That allows for us to close the books, as I mentioned earlier, revise the
numbers for ending and beginning fund balances, carry forward the funds and also have
this conversation that you're wanting to have on the capital plan. So, it happens typically
at the end of the year and the beginning of the first of the next year. So, you would have
already seen that information and by April we would have been talking about all of this
stuff in light of having those conversations. The fact that we are here today is sort of out
of the logical order that we have followed it the past and created the situation you're kind
of responding to. You might recall last year when we made this recommendation the
Council directed the staff to come every six months to the -- back to Council and revise or
update you on these fees and those sorts of things and we mentioned that that could be
difficult, because of the vary types of process things you're referring to. So, that is, in part,
the reason why this may be difficult, because we are a little bit out of process and we
would prefer to be having these conversations in the normal process, which is, essentially,
March to April of each year for that very reason.
Borton: Okay. I mean we are discuss -- it's just an idea. It seems to make sense. I
don't --
Barry: It makes perfect sense.
Borton: -- know if it's a conclusion or going back to that order -- there may be a reason
that those that preceded me can -- can explain as to why this order is necessarily
preferred. But, at any rate, it just seemed to make sense. You're doing it already, we are
reviewing it, that it should be part of the process, but -- that was the short answer
question, by the way. So, the long one -- if you can give a short one -- you probably can.
It's on Slide 11.
Barry: I don't have slide numbers, Councilman Borton.
Borton: I can see it in the lower left. See lower left. Right there.
Barry: This one? Okay.
Borton: Yes. So, when you make reference to the lost capacity --
Barry: Uh-huh.
Borton: -- if the -- if the treatment plant capacity is found to be 10.2 mgd, it seems as
though that conclusion is based, all things being equal, on an assumption on the
concentration of the load that goes into it. So, the question is what was that assumption
that was utilized generally that has changed now because the concentration is so much --
so much greater that it effectively eliminated 1.5 mgd, which is massive.
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Barry: It is massive.
Borton: So, is there an underlying assumption that 10.2 is based on? Has that been
altered?
Barry: Well, I want to be careful about assumptions versus the science behind it. So,
when we had the treatment plant rated it was rated hydraulically.
Borton: I mean that same way.
Barry: Yeah. Okay. So, it was rated hydraulically and what that meant is how much --
how much volume could the treatment plant push through it and 10.2 was the hydraulic
number that was given. What wasn't looked at at the time was how much could it
effectively treat and meet the requirements of the NPDES permit. That's different than
volume. That's load. And so those numbers weren't looked at. Essentially what we were
required to rate the plan on was that flow limit. You might recall we had the flow limit in
the NPDES permit and that flow limit was seven mgd and we went and did the hydraulic
calculations to show that the treatment plant can produce or actually treat more than that
hydraulically. We did not realize that the -- how significant that the impact of the load
change was going to have on the effectiveness of the treatment plant and so the data that
was used there was jar testing. For example, we looked at -- we did make an assumption,
we actually looked at what the loads were and compared them to design and other criteria
for the treatment plant to evaluate, essentially, what can it do separate of how much --
how much volume it can push, what can it do loadwise and still stay in compliance with
the NPDES permit. So, it is a little different.
Borton: Madam Mayor. That makes sense. I used the word assumption in the
economics way, not --
Barry: Okay.
Borton: -- like it's an assumption. I know there is science behind it. But the 10.2 is based
just on the -- the ability to process without regard to the concentration --
Barry: Right. The volume that you can push through, whether it's -- whether it's distilled
water or, you know, wastewater or whatnot, what's the volume you can push through --
Borton: Okay.
Barry: -- not what can it do based on what it's got to perform to on the load standpoint.
Borton: Okay. Thank you.
Barry: Hopefully that helps.
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Borton: Yeah.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor. I will stick my neck out and try and interpret something. At the
time that the Council asked to have reports like this every six months maybe a year or so
ago when we asked, there were an awful lot of unknowns and things that were likely to
change, even in the period of six months. We didn't have a permit yet. We weren't
confident that growth was going to bounce back yet and as those things have stabilized
we do have the permit now and we only need to analyze that once. Growth is reasonably
predictable I think, at least within some parameters and my suggestion would be to go
back to the previous program of bringing these kind of reports once a year when it fits into
the cycle that all the information is available. So, I understand what I believe the reason
was to ask for more frequent reports. I'm not sure that's necessary anymore. It would be
my suggestion that we retract that request.
Barry: That would -- that would certainly help the department in getting you better
information and in an order that is in alignment more with what Councilman Borton has
suggested.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: We would all like an ideal world without changes. Yes, Mr. Borton.
Borton: Is there a ballpark -- what kind of revenue are we talking about on a -- on a city
wide scale? Does this change generate -- these are rounded estimates to what it
creates?
Barry: Right. So, we looked at that and we looked it over, essentially, a two year period
in the model and I don't have those numbers right off the top of my head, other than to say
I think on the wastewater with the full implementation, it's prett y darn close to 510,000
dollars over two years and on water it's somewhere around like four hundred and -- is it
like ninety thousand or something to that effect. So, you're pushing close to a million
dollars of additional revenue in a two year period, ha lf that for an annual number. That is
predicated on what is an assumption and that is how many permits we are going to get on
a future basis and that number is 1,100 ERUs or connections, which seems pretty close in
alignment with what we have had over the last three or four year average. So, maybe that
gives some context to what the impact is.
Borton: Thank you.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Ms. Milam.
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Milam: Tom, are those numbers that you just said -- maybe -- and maybe you said it --
with the two years -- be half and half or is that if we had it once or -- I mean that number
can change based on how --
Barry: Right. Yes. Councilman Milam, the -- the numbers that I gave were on full
implementation. So, the first year if you halved the wastewater amount you would
probably only receive about 490 plus half of the 510, which would put you at -- you know, I
don't know -- yeah.
Milam: Two fifty-five.
Barry: Don't worry, I do the budget for the department, too. I'm not exactly sure, but
somewhere on the order of maybe 700,000 or so. And, then, you get the full amount of
close to the 900 and something over a million annually thereafter. So, you do lose --
roughly you lose about 250,000 in that first year, with an implementation over two years
for the wastewater portion. I think that's where you -- okay.
De Weerd: Okay. So, anything further from Council? What is the time frame that you are
suggesting in your out reach activities and that sort of thing, Tom?
Barry: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The time frame that is on the screen now, essentially,
we are requesting some direction tonight, so that we can know how to proceed and
whether it is prudent or not to begin these conversations with the BCA as soon as their
first meeting in January. If it is and we are allowed on their agenda in the -- at the first
meeting in January, we would recommend a month to give them an opportunity to
communicate and evaluate these impacts and be prepared to come for public comment to
the City Council sometime in -- the 16th or so at the hearing in February. That would also
allow a time to insert a focus group meeting to have conversations with impacted
stakeholders and to help educate and inform and potentially evaluate differences or
opportunities that maybe we haven't thought about in regards to how to finance these.
So, ultimately, if the schedule we have on the screen here is implemented, then, we would
be able to -- with your approval of whatever is suggested at the public hearing, be able to
implement it as soon as the first of March. If the Council should so desire to give a -- sort
of grace period to warm up to this of a few months, that would delay the implementation of
the fee and, of course, the later the construction fees and you implement the fee, the
bigger the impact of potential revenue losses as well. So, that's why we think
communicating it pretty openly at this point in time is prudent to sort of allow for that
period between now and the first of March, if this schedule is to be accepted or acceptable
by the Council.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Tom, I think -- I think the Council -- the schedule is very very good. Very doable.
And it gives us plenty of time to receive comments and stuff, so -- I don't see anything
wrong with -- at least we got a time schedule to get it done.
Barry: Uh-huh.
Bird: Instead of talking about it and doing it a year from now, but, you know, what's --
what's scheduled here I don't see anything wrong with it.
Barry: Thank you, Mr. Bird.
De Weerd: Okay. Do you want an update, Council, after the developer focus group,
perhaps whatever the Council meeting is after that.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Borton: For me I'm not certain how the -- a capital improvement plan discussion isn't
woven into this still. So, for what it's worth. I mean if it delays it 60 days, that's not the
end of the world. It's a more accurate, complete process. So, I mean the BCA and the
developer focus meeting is fine. I just -- I'm not -- I haven't heard a compelling reason
why that additional step isn't included. If it's done annually, if it's done around this time, if
there is one -- otherwise, I would include that. I mean they can probably run parallel and
maybe that presentation would occur in January or February anyway.
De Weerd: Now, I guess with the NPDES activities and all the other things that we have
heard from Public Works, is primarily -- and certainly the wastewater treatment plant,
maybe a little bit less so and is though in water. We have seen that capital improvement
list. I can't manage it's going to change a whole lot, because we have had so much focus
on it to delay this, but certainly it's -- it's your purview. I just don't see how it's going to
change significantly.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tom and Warren, I take it you got the CIP five year ready. You're getting -- you said
they were putting it together now for us?
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, that's correct. We have that five year
capital improvement plan --
Bird: If you had it out on our desks within this week, there is no reason that this can't --
the capital improvement can't be presented to us in the January workshop. Shouldn't take
too long. We have got plenty of time to look it over and, then, we can say the schedule.
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I'm like the Mayor, I -- I think we -- to put it bluntly, we jack around too much on stuff,
instead of doing it. First time we have had a schedule. Let's get it done.
De Weerd: Just to clarify that, I'm not like the Mayor in that statement.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: So, I think it -- would that work, Warren, that you get those out and we -- we
can schedule this for the January workshop, answer any questions -- okay? Does that
work?
Bird: Madam Mayor, one -- if I could say one more thing.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: One more thing. I'd like to get this implemented in March, so that these builders and
developers -- their busiest time starts in April and they need -- they need to plan ahead
and know what -- if the costs are going to be up higher and what they are going to be. So,
I just think we -- I'd like to see us --
De Weerd: I think you need to start the conversation and --
Borton: Madam Mayor?
D Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I don't disagree, but you have to be able to answer the question show me the
math, show me how you got there and the CIP is part of that process.
Barry: Well, it's not going to be a problem for Public Works to get you that information. It
exists today. We can produce it today. Typically you would have that conversation this
month's workshop, but in light of time to partner with the Finance Department and getting
you General Fund CIP and Public Works CIP all at one time, that got pushed off. So, we
can -- we can bring that to you as Mr. Bird suggested and we can begin to look at that
information and we will have a stand -alone conversation if that's your desire in the
January workshop and the General Fund, if it's ready, can maybe have it t hen. If not, they
can have it another time. But in light of what's been discussed today we would be more
than happy and prepared to present that information at the January workshop.
De Weerd: Don't worry, I will tell Stacy.
Barry: Okay. Thank you for that. I don't want to have a broken leg for Christmas.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further from Council?
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Barry: As far as -- Madam Mayor, if I may, the implementation schedule for the
wastewater, is that something that the Council can agree to or is it rather -- did we
presume too much and maybe you would rather have that all at once? I just want to be
able to say to the developers as we communicate this with them kind of what the
expectation of the Council at least or the feeling of the Council might be.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tom, don't you think you will get a feeling for the BCA and the focus group of
whether they would accept the full or would like it split? I think the Council would be
willing to go either way.
Barry: Okay. If it's a viable option, Councilman Bird, then, we can present it as that and
they can make their recommendation and we could bring that back to you. No problem.
Let them know that they have got options. Sure.
De Weerd: Okay.
Barry: Thank you all.
C. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 7-C is under City Council liaison and committee
updates. We will start with Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Okay. Well, let's see. You have heard from the Public Works Department
and --
De Weerd: Is your microphone on?
Zaremba: -- there is a lot of important work going on there. I don't believe I have anything
to add to that. The Legal Department is continuing to do what they do , save us all from
making mistakes that's appreciated. I would like to focus a little bit on Valley Regional
Transit. As a board member and Councilman Rountree is a board member, we need to
make two replacements there. It would be nice to have a couple of people that are very
enthusiastic about public transportation or public mobility I will call it, including alternates.
VRT does good work. Their meetings are informative and helpful. Generally the first
Monday of the month the executive board meets. They also have a full board meet ing
once every quarter, the first Monday of the quarter. So, you can spend more time than
that if you want, but it's not necessarily an everyday thing that you have to do and I do
have the schedule if anybody wants to look at it, but it would be helpful -- it actually isn't
necessary that our board members be council members, that's not a Valley Regional
Transit rule. As a matter of fact, I was a board member all the time that I was on the
planning and zoning before I was here. So, that’s not one of thei r requirements, we have
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always had at least one of the members be a council member and I agree with that. It
doesn't mean the second has to be. And, then, we also have two alternates, which
probably will continue to be Caleb and Bruce Chatterton, so that we are able to attend the
meetings and have a vote, even if the primary member can't make it. But I just want to
make sure that our connection with VRT doesn't drop and it would be helpful to have
some interest in it on the part of the Council and I -- since we actually don't transfer until
the first Tuesday in January, their meeting next month is before that and I plan to attend,
but if we have some idea of who is go ing to be replacing myself and Councilman
Rountree, I would invite them to join me at tha t meeting. They certainly could go and
become known. So, if anybody is interested let me know. The process is the Mayor
needs to appoint you and the Council needs to pass a resolution. VRT requires a
resolution of the Council for their board members, so that's the process that you certainly
could come to the January meetings with me. Let me know.
De Weerd: Thank you, David.
Zaremba: And I'm happy to talk to anybody that wants to know, you know, what the
process is, what the commitment is. I have also had Elaine Clegg, who is a city
councilman in Boise and Jim Hansen, who is a -- an ACHD commissioner, volunteer to
talk to whoever for Meridian would -- would be interested to talk about the commitment
and enthusiasm is as well. So, you can ask me o r if you don't think you will be able to
handle my enthusiasm for it, you can talk to either of the other two people as well. That's
it for me.
De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor, we have a good historic preservation commission. Had a great
planning meeting last -- what is today? Last week. Really good talking about -- Hillary
and Blaine and the commission led a good discussion about trying to assist developers in
incentivizing downtown development where more of the historic bui ldings are, without
impeding the ability to do so and encouraging preservation of historical components of the
properties and the places in doing so. One of the questions that they wrestled with, which
the council can comment on is, you know, was there a desire and appetite to investigate
an historic preservation district, that general concept and kind of the pros and cons of that
type of regulation within certain boundaries, primarily around downtown, because of the
age of the properties or take a less regulatory approach and focus on opportunities to
educate developers and brokers and landowners in ways that they can improve their
properties without tearing them down, preserving their history, and becoming a little more
educated in some of the opportunities that are even more cost effective than you think. It
was a great discussion. It seemed to lean more towards empowering and educating folks
in the ability. Madam Mayor was present as well and that seemed to be more the focus,
to try and have the historic preservation commission become more active in that
education and empowerment role with those that might want to develop in the city and in
particular downtown, which I thought was a great focus that they brought to the
discussion. With regards to fire, the chief and I met yesterday with -- the union negotiation
process and plan is continuing. The master plan process is continuing. Some of us
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participated in interviews with the consultant, provided some feedback on some
opportunities and challenges that the district has. We talked -- at least I did with him
about the -- the challenges and regional master planning with some partner agencies
participating more and less than others and the impact that could have on the output. If
you don't have every agency participating necessarily. I'm not certain when the final result
end product is going to be done, but that was most of the focus this month.
Niemeyer: Commissioner Borton, that will be April is the final.
Borton: Okay. A lot of work to be done. So, that's the update that I have got.
De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Madam Mayor. Well, the past month I didn't have much liaisoning to do with
the Mayor in another continent, but I did have opportunity to make a couple of
administrative decisions with respect to staffing and I think that they were pleased with
that and one discussion with one department head that it probably was not at his
particular pleasure, but other than those administrative activities, not an awful lot
happened in the liaison field. The November air quality board meeting was canceled,
because of lack of quorum and that seems to be a bit of a problem with that particular
organization, David, and I don't know how to get around it. Haven't heard yet if we are
going to have one in December.
Zaremba: We actually are not having a December meeting either.
Rountree: Maybe not in December, but that's -- that's a committee that needs a new
elected official on, maybe two -- yeah. Two. A citizen and an elected official. David is the
director, but that needs to be done and probably this month would be a good time to get
that thought about and get some candidates and interest shown. At COMPAS S I will
bring good news that a new transportation bill has been passed by the house and senate
and this was actually signed by the president on Friday. It is a five year bill that's called
the FAST Act. Fix America's Surface Transportation Act of 2015. Again, it's a five year. It
does put additional monies in transportation. I have not heard how the formula distribution
will affect Idaho, but there is going to be more -- appears to be more money available for
locals from -- from some of the funds that have been identified in that bill, which is a good
thing. First long-term bill since about 2004 or '5. Something other than a two year bill or a
two year extension. COMPASS's and VRT's joint annual meeting and holiday celebration
-- Christmas celebration, if you will, is coming up this month. Do you have the date of
that, David?
Zaremba: On the 21st, I believe.
Rountree: Yeah. It is on Monday, the 21st, in Nampa at noon. I think folks that are
interested in either COMPASS or VRT probably ought to try to attend that. It's also a
board meeting. That, along with the Air Quality Board and VRT and the COMPASS spot
that I occupy needs to be filled, along the same lines as what David indicated. That does
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not necessarily have to be an elected official, but it has to be recognized by the City
Council. I have offered to the Mayor that I would continue to serve on that board, if that's
the pleasure of the Council. It happens to be one area that I particular ly enjoy, the
transportation field, but if there was interest I would certainly encourage some folks to
show that. Trying to think what else. Oh. Down to two meetings . The slide to retirement
is getting shorter and shorter and quicker and quicker and looking forward to the
opportunity to take off in January and get out of this nasty weather system we are having
and hopefully get into some sunshine. And welcome back, Mayor. We have talked a little
bit about your trip. It sounds like a wonderful experience. It's one that I hope to get the
opportunity to do in the next few years. Again, things went smoothly. We talked about
what little bit went on and the city seems to run pretty much like a pretty well tuned watch
and I appreciated staff and their support through that time and at all times. So, looking
forward to the Christmas holiday to be over with and the tensions and whatnot that that
brings about and the fun that it brings with the family that we can anticipate being together
and having those wonderful times. So, that I will wrap up my comments on the city
council liaisonee workshop comments.
De Weerd: Thanks for the countdown, Mr. Rountree. It reminds us. Just -- I did have a
good break and certainly during my travels I know our director team sometimes cringes
when I come back from a vacation, because I'm usually loaded with great ideas or
observations and I certainly have some observations that I saw from the communities and
cities that I was able to visit. So, I will be sharing those as they apply. I have hit the
ground running. We did have our work group 20-26 meet. We have established three
different subcommittees within that group as we look at amount community, the ITD
board, and legislative. So, those groups have established themselves and did have some
initial comment. Caleb did define each of the working groups and drafted a brief
discussion or description of what their focus areas and goals will be and so we -- we got
good participation with that. So, they are moving forward and focused on the three
priorities of ITD and safety, the economic impacts and mobility. Our school funding work
group will be meeting I think next week and their last meeting happened while I was out of
town. They had some legislators there that spoke with them and next meet ing will have
Tommy Ahlquist there that will be bringing -- he's been involved in a work group that has
done outreach to evaluate what other states were doing in terms of school funding and
growth and how community systems are keeping up with it. So, that should be an
interesting conversation. We continue -- our directors have continued to work on the
strategic plan. You should have received all of the worksheets that will be on the agenda
for next week and next week we also have our Ada County Highway District joint meeting.
I met with the director yesterday to discuss the agenda items and we are deep in the
legislative issues that possibly can come up in the upcoming months and both our team,
as well as the Association of Idaho Cities to anticipate what we might expect in the
upcoming session. Now we are working to pull together the annual report and starting on
State of the City activities. So, I will say that MYAC is also gearing up for their legislative
breakfast and also starting to plan for Ignite Youth, as well as their Christmas party next
week. So, they are very busy, as is the senior advisory board. We will be getting the
grant from the CDBG to develop our resource guide applicable to seniors in Meridian. We
have a number of resource guides that we can pull information from . They have had
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December 8, 2015
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discussion on appropriate distribution and we did get permission from HUD to be able to
have that as an online guide, which was good news that we will be able to publish it online
as well for our citizens. So, a lot activity from both the senior advisory board and the
Youth Advisory Council. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The Parks Department we already heard a nice
presentation today from it and I publicly want to thank Steve and his staff for the beautiful
float they put together for us.
De Weerd: Oh, my gosh.
Bird: And I know I speak for Councilman Zaremba and Councilman Borton and his wife
and Mayor Tammy and Gen and certainly -- Genesis and Tristan and Marge and I, we --
we so appreciated that, Steve. Will you pass that onto your guys. They did -- they did a
beautiful job on that. I mean they went above and beyond, as they always do on that.
Our Finance Department is getting the audit done. Rita thought that by the end of
January that they would probably be done with it and it would start coming back to us, so
the March 1st date we should hit pretty easily, if not sooner. MDC is -- we had a
presentation from -- from Phil and Bruce and -- regarding the new Ten Mile district and
which they are going to present to us as a Council and, then, the MDC will make their
recommendation -- their formal recommendation at that time. With that, Mr. Zaremba and
Mr. Rountree, you have go two and a half meetings. You got to be here in January.
Milam: He's always out of town that month.
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Well, believe it or not, I don't have a huge long list today. The police chiefs are
finishing up their conference through Wednesday over at the training center. Four officers
are finishing their advanced training next week. They will hit the streets the week of
Christmas. Many other testing processes to fill open support positions and all is going
well at police. There is nothing going on in IT or clerks. Same old same old working hard
and making sure that everything runs right. If you notice, traffic boxes are starting to look
really beautiful around here. The arts commission is just wrapping them as fast as they
can with some -- with some student art and they are really looking good, So, keep your
eyes open for new ones, they are coming all the time. That's about it for me.
De Weerd: Thank you. And, Steve, I would like to -- to join Keith in giving kudos to your
staff, not just the float, but the bazaar, to the parade, to the beautiful tree, to the festival
that follows the parade -- just the beautiful decorations out in the -- in our plaza. I had the
opportunity and honor to recognize a couple of Steve's employees for longevity awards
and I shared with his work team that they -- they have everything to do with infusing the
Christmas spirit in our community in so many different ways that it's just a true joy and I
wanted to make sure that they didn't look at the month of December with great chagrin
that -- or dread, that they truly have the spirit of Christmas and they wore that with great
pride. So, that winterland parade -- or winter lights parade was the best ever. I think
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December 8, 2015
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every single entry in that was just top notch. It was a class -- a very classy parade and
thank you, Mr. Borton, for your sponsorship -- you and your partners, it's great to have this
as building that community spirit. You saw organizations and churches and businesses
and individuals -- we had a band and that was so awesome. We need to get our schools
out -- our school bands and get them marching in that. Having the Christmas music was
awesome. But what an amazing community that we live in and, yeah, no wonder we are
the number one community to live in this -- in this nation and it's because of all the
different efforts. The Meridian symphony -- I don't know if any of you went to that, but that
was -- every year I swear they get better. You think can they really do that, can they get
better again next year and sure enough they do and they even put up with me and they
call that a tradition now. So, I love being part of their tradition. It's a great place to live.
So, I will -- yes.
Bird: Steve, I was absolutely shocked -- and I think all of us on the float were shocked,
the amount of people that were out on a Friday night, not -- you know, not the warmest of
anything, but we had a great, great attendance and that -- and, you know, we give them a
program that was second to none. I think -- I think that's just fantastic. The City of
Meridian is blessed to have two of the finest parades this state sees. I mean we know the
dairy show is the largest one in the state and this has got to be one of the classiest, if not
the classiest. So, tell your guys they just -- first class on everything. Tammy hit it right on
the head.
De Weerd: I guess, Steve -- and I should read the ValleyTimes, but could you perhaps
come up here and tell us who won? Because I had that question today. One of the --
Bird: Do you know, Frank?
De Weerd: Oh. Buckle up for Bobby asked me if I knew who won and I don't.
Milam: Maybe City Council.
De Weerd: Did the City Council float win?
Bird: Did the City Council win, our float?
De Weerd: I'm sorry, but you can't talk from back there, because Dean will not have it.
Oh, the Women in Construction float was awesome.
Siddoway: I will verify the winners and e-mail that to everyone. I think Women in
Construction won one of them. I don't know who all the winners were, though. So, I will
find out the list and get that out to you.
De Weerd: Okay.
Siddoway: But thank you. Obviously, many hands go into this and a couple other efforts
going on right now worthy of acknowledgment. The Santa's mailbox out front, there is a
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December 8, 2015
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huge volunteer effort going on with that and, then, Garrett's volleyball fundraisers, which is
also a fantastic Christmas event. There is lots going on, of course, this time of year.
De Weerd: Yeah. I don't know if all of you know that the tournaments -- the funds that are
raised in that always get turned back into the community. In the past it's been in
partnership with the Kiwanis and this year with Head Start. So, if any you have free time,
they are wrapping and there is a lot of presents to wrap and so kudos to Garrett on that
and the Santa's letters -- last year they had 850 letters that were written to the kids that
submitted letters to Santa and I imagine because of the -- the popularity last year, the
additional questions that parks has received, they will break that record again. So, if you
have legible handwriting and would like to -- oh, help Santa, always looking for volunteers
to help Santa.
Item 8: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Okay. Anything for future meeting agenda topics that we haven't already
discussed? Okay. I would enter a motion to adjourn.
Rountree: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:07 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
MAYOR TAMW De WEERD
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